command extending only to Seneca, the life of Paulina was preserved; and,
according to some authors, she was not displeased at being prevented from
carrying her precipitate resolution into effect. Seneca's veins bleeding
but slowly, an opportunity was offered him of displaying in his last
moments a philosophical magnanimity similar to that of Socrates; and it
appears that his conversation during this solemn period was maintained
with dignified composure. To accelerate his lingering fate, he drank a
dose of poison; but this producing no effect, he ordered his attendants
to carry him into a warm bath, for the purpose of rendering the
haemorrhage from his veins more copious. This expedient proving likewise
ineffectual, and the soldiers who witnessed the execution of the
emperor's order being clamorous for its accomplishment, he was removed
into a stove, and suffocated by the steam. He underwent his fate on the
12th of April, in the sixty-fifth year of the Christian aera, and the
fifty-third year of his age. His body was burnt, and his ashes deposited
in a private manner, according to his will, which had been made during
the period when he was in the highest degree of favour with Nero.

The writings of Seneca are numerous, and on various subjects. His first
composition, addressed to Novacus, is on Anger, and continued through
three books. After giving a lively description of this passion, the
author discusses a variety of questions concerning it: he argues strongly
against its utility, in contradiction to the peripatetics, and recommends
its restraint, by many just and excellent considerations. This treatise
may be regarded, in its general outlines, as a philosophical
amplification of the passage in Horace:--

Ira furor brevis est: animum rege; qui, nisi paret,
Imperat: hunc fraenis, hunc tu compesce catena.
Epist. I. ii.