Page:The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, A Roman Slave.djvu/17

 part of these sayings, all that remains of the works of the poet, precious fragments snatched by science from the ravages of time. This little collection is, as it were, the storehouse of ancient ethics, and Seneca in his long essays has added nothing to them. The very form in which Syrus presented them, in the nervous conciseness of his iambics, must have been far more efficient in gaining men over to the practice of virtue, than all the arguments of the Stoic school. Marcus Agrippa, that illustrious contemporary of our poet, declared that a single saying had made him a good brother and fast friend. Seneca, who has written so much on wisdom, has admitted how much she can gain by the neatness and brevity of poetic expression. "We discourse lengthily," said he, "to men on the contempt and use of riches, and the principles of morality, but the precepts, clothed in verse, make a more vivid and lasting impression on the mind." To make such impressions in favor of virtue and morality was the glorious purpose which Syrus had in view.