Page:Imperialdictiona03eadi Brandeis Vol3b.pdf/211

SEN Nero, and to make him his heir, to the exclusion of his own son, Brittanicus; and she was now desirous that his training should be intrusted to persons wholly devoted to her interests. Nero was eleven years of age when Seneca undertook his education. What effect his instructions may have had on the conduct and disposition of the young prince, it is impossible to determine exactly. Suetonius represents him as more disposed to minister to his own vanity, than to the improvement of his pupil (in Vit. Ner., c. 52). Among the frescoes discovered at Pompeii, there is one which represents a butterfly endeavouring to curb and direct a dragon. This is said to have been designed to typify the relation in which Seneca and Nero stood as master and pupil—(see Oxford Essays, 1858—Art. "The Ancient Stoics," p. 108). Doubtless there was much truth in the emblem. Yet it is not probable that Seneca's lessons were altogether thrown away, or that his control was totally ineffectual. Tacitus commends both him and Burrus for their judicious management of Nero (Annal. xiii. 2). Although they could not fix in his mind the principles of virtue, they certainly laid some arrest on the development of his vicious propensities, and retarded the outbreak of those hideous excesses into which he plunged before the close of his career. Considering the nature of the material given him to mould, we may wonder, not that Seneca should have failed in forming a good prince, but that he should have succeeded in preventing so bad a one from being execrable from the very first. Nero became emperor,. 54. In about a year afterwards, Brittanicus was put to death by his orders. As Seneca was believed to have been enriched by his downfall, it has been inferred that he had some share in his destruction. That Seneca had amassed great wealth is certain; but it is by no means clear that it was obtained through the murder and spoliation of Brittanicus. A darker stain rests on his memory in connection with Nero's next great crime—the murder of his mother, Agrippina (. 60). Agrippina was steeped in crimes, and her ambition was such that she was continually plotting how she might wrest the sceptre from her son; but her wickedness does not extenuate the guilt of the parricide and his abettor. Seneca not only assented to the murder, but was, moreover, the author of the letter addressed by Nero to the senate, in which he accuses his mother of a conspiracy against him, and alleges that she had committed suicide on its failure. Whatever truth there may have been in regard to the conspiracy, there was none in regard to the suicide. In the year 63, Nero got rid of Burrus by means of poison. Burrus was a man of greater force of character than Seneca, and was therefore more obnoxious to the emperor, on account of the stronger opposition he offered to his evil designs and depraved practices. From this time the power of Seneca ceased; and Nero, under the influence of two infamous parasites, Tigellinus and Rufus, now gave himself up to every species of cruelty and excess. They excited his jealousy and tempted his cupidity by enumerating the possessions of Seneca, whose life was itself a standing reproach to the emperor. It was, therefore, resolved that he should die. He was falsely charged with being privy to the conspiracy of Piso; and the emperor's commands were conveyed to him, signifying that he must prepare for death. He heard his doom unmoved, and his bearing showed that he could practise, as well as preach, the principles of an exalted stoicism. His veins were opened, and he expired in a warm bath, endeavouring, as his life ebbed away, to assuage by his exhortations the sorrow of his surrounding friends, and to confirm their virtue by his example. He died, . 65.—(Tacit., Annal. xv. 62.) In regard to the character of Seneca, opinions have been divided. By some he has been represented as vain and avaricious, as a time-server, and a hypocrite. It is truer, as well as more charitable, to suppose that his faults were incident to his situation, rather than indigenous to himself; that in circumstances the most inimical to virtue, he preserved his virtue, if not spotless, still tolerably entire; and that, true to the principles of his philosophy, he succeeded in making the best of a very bad position. Stoicism, as expounded by Seneca, and as practised by him and other noble Romans, was the one redeeming feature of this—the worst of times. It inculcated a reliance on the wisdom, and an acquiescence in the decrees, of Providence; and at a time when the lives, the liberties, and the possessions of men were in the highest degree unstable and precarious—when the whole Roman empire was broken-hearted and in despair—it taught the useful lesson, that to overcome the fear of death was to stand superior to every earthly calamity; and that to be conscious of an inner and spiritual freedom, as the true life of the soul, and as that which the power of the imperial tyrant and his minions could never reach, was to enjoy a peace which the world could neither give nor take away. Such is the purport of the philosophy which Seneca enforces, often with eloquence and solemnity, although his style is generally deficient in natural grace, and somewhat too antithetical. The work in modern times which most closely resembles the writings of Seneca, both in thought and in expression, is Young's Night Thoughts. A useful and cheap edition of the works of Seneca was edited by Frederic Haase, and published by Tübner, Leipsic, 1853. The tragedies sometimes ascribed to him, are now generally acknowledged to be his. His epistles to St. Paul are spurious.—J. F. F.  SENECA, M., who has sometimes been confounded with his son, the philosopher, was born at Corduba in Spain about 61. He had a wonderful memory, and was the author of two collections of commonplaces, still extant. The title of one of these is "Controversiarum Libri decem;" of the other, "Suasoriarum Liber." Only five books of the former now remain. He died about the end of the reign of Tiberius.—D. W. R.  SENEFELDER,, the inventor of lithography, was born at Munich in 1771, and died there on the 26th of February, 1834. The son of an actor, he wished to adopt his father's calling, who, however, sent him to the university of Ingolstadt, in order to study law. But the father died when young Senefelder was about eighteen, and his legal studies had to be abandoned. Thus thrown on his own resources, he turned to the stage, but met with no success; and wrote a comedy or two which brought him a few florins. The cost of printing proved a serious difficulty in the way of publishing his literary compositions; and being of an inventive turn, he set about devising a means of bringing his writings before the public without the assistance of the printer. He tried various methods, and among others a kind of etching. But he was miserably poor; the copper plates were costly; and though he used to grind and polish them afresh after each attempt at engraving, the process was tedious and troublesome. Till therefore he could acquire facility in writing backwards, he resolved to practise on a piece of the fine white stone found in the neighbourhood of Munich. He even tried etching on the stone, but could not get clear impressions from it. How he came to make the first step in the invention of lithography he has himself related. His mother (he was unmarried) asked him one day to make out the washing bill. He had no paper, so he took a piece of the smoothed stone, and wrote the bill on it with the ink he had prepared for his experiments—a modification of the wax-ground he used in etching. The stone was laid aside, and when he saw it again some time after, the ink was so firmly set that it occurred to him it might be possible with an acid to eat away the stone where not protected by the ink (which being like the etching ground, he knew would resist the action of the acid) and leave the writing in relief. So satisfied with the results of his trials was Senefelder, that, not being able to raise money enough in any other way, he actually offered himself as a substitute for an artillery conscript, but was found ineligible. He, however, induced a musician to enter into partnership with him, the object being to print musical scores by the new process. They met with a certain amount of success, and the elector promised if the method should be found really practicable, to grant them a patent for its sole use within his dominions. Senefelder was, however, unable to overcome the various mechanical difficulties. But about 1798, he invented the process now known as lithography which depends not, like his first method, upon leaving the portion to be printed from in relief whilst the rest of the stone is eaten away, but upon the capacity of the stone for receiving a drawing made with a greasy substance, and the affinity of the drawing so made for absorbing a printing ink of a like composition in proportion to the quantity of grease in the several parts of the drawing. The capability of this process was soon made apparent. Senefelder received advice and assistance from the artists of Munich, who fully appreciated its usefulness. The exclusive privilege of employing the process in Bavaria was, in 1799, granted to the inventor, who established a lithographic establishment in Munich which met with much success; and he entered into partnership arrangements for working the process in other countries. These however, though lithographic presses were very generally established, brought 