may survive me: may all the cruelty of destiny be weared out on me!"

Whether the prayer of Seneca was granted we do not know; but, as we do
not again hear of Marcus, it is probable that he died before his father,
and that the line of Seneca, like that of so many great men, became
extinct in the second generation.

It was probably during this period that Seneca laid the foundations of
that enormous fortune which excited the hatred and ridicule of his
opponents. There is every reason to believe that this fortune was
honourably gained. As both his father and mother were wealthy, he had
doubtless inherited an ample competency; this was increased by the
lucrative profession of a successful advocate, and was finally swollen
by the princely donations of his pupil Nero. It is not improbable that
Seneca, like Cicero, and like all the wealthy men of their day,
increased his property by lending money upon interest. No disgrace
attached to such a course; and as there is no proof for the charges of
Dio Cassius on this head, we may pass them over with silent contempt.
Dio gravely informs us that Seneca excited an insurrection in Britain,
by suddenly calling in the enormous sum of 40,000,000 sesterces; but
this is in all probability the calumny of a professed enemy. We shall
refer again to Seneca's wealth; but we may here admit that it was
undoubtedly ungraceful and incongruous in a philosopher who was
perpetually dwelling on the praises of poverty, and that even in his own
age it attracted unfavourable notice, as we may see from the epithet
_Proedives_, "the over-wealthy," which is applied to him alike by a
satiric poet and by a grave historian. Seneca was perfectly well aware
that this objection could be urged against him, and it must be admitted
that the grounds on which he defends himself in his treatise _On a Happy
Life_ are not very conclusive or satisfactory.