CHAPTER I.

THE FAMILY AND EARLY YEARS OF SENECA.

The exact date of Seneca's birth is uncertain, but it took place in all
probability about seven years before the commencement of the Christian
era. It will give to his life a touch of deep and solemn interest if we
remember that, during all those guilty and stormy scenes amid which his
earlier destiny was cast, there lived and taught in Palestine the Son of
God, the Saviour of the world.

The problems which for many years tormented his mind were beginning to
find their solution, amid far other scenes, by men whose creed and
condition he despised. While Seneca was being guarded by his attendant
slave through the crowded and dangerous streets of Rome on his way to
school, St. Peter and St. John were fisher-lads by the shores of
Gennesareth; while Seneca was ardently assimilating the doctrine of the
stoic Attalus, St. Paul, with no less fervancy of soul, sat learning at
the feet of Gamaliel; and long before Seneca had made his way, through
paths dizzy and dubious, to the zenith of his fame, unknown to him that
Saviour had been crucified through whose only merits he and we can ever
attain to our final rest.

Seneca was about two years old when he was carried to Rome in his
nurse's arms. Like many other men who have succeeded in attaining
eminence, he suffered much from ill-health in his early years. He tells
us of one serious illness from which he slowly recovered under the
affectionate and tender nursing of his mother's sister. All his life