Deservedly made vassal, who, once just,
Frugal, and mild, and temperate, conquered well,
But govern ill the nations under yoke,
Peeling their provinces, exhausted all
By lust and rapine; first ambitious grown
Of triumph, that insulting vanity;
Then cruel, by their sports to blood inured
Of fighting beasts, and men to beasts exposed,
Luxurious by their wealth, and greedier still,
And from the daily scene effeminate.
What wise and valient men would seek to free
These thus degenerate, by themselves enslaved;
Or could of inward slaves make outward free?"
MILTON, _Paradise Regained_, iv. 132-145.



CHAPTER IV.

POLITICAL CONDITION OF ROME UNDER TIBERIUS AND CAIUS.

The personal notices of Seneca's life up to the period of his manhood
are slight and fragmentary. From an incidental expression we conjecture
that he visited his aunt in Egypt when her husband was Prefect of that
country, and that he shared with her the dangers of shipwreck when her
husband had died on board ship during the homeward voyage. Possibly the
visit may have excited in his mind that deep interest and curiosity
about the phenomena of the Nile which appear so strongly in several
passages of his _Natural Questions_; and, indeed nothing is more likely
than that he suggested to Nero the earliest recorded expedition to