tawdriness such as Seneca himself had as a rule avoided. He was too
facile and careless a composer to yield a canon for style. The reaction
came soon. Involved, whether justly or not, in the Pisonian conspiracy
of 65 A.D., he was forced to commit suicide. He died as the Stoics of
the age were wont to die, cheerfully, courageously, and with
self-conscious ostentation.[153] Within a few years of his death the
great Ciceronian reaction headed by Quintilian began. The very vehemence
with which the Senecan style was attacked, now by Quintilian[154] and
later by Fronto,[155] shows what a commanding position he held.

He was poet as well as philosopher. Quintilian tells us that he left
scarcely any branch of literature untouched. 'We possess,' he says, 'his
speeches, poems, letters, and dialogues.'[156] Two collections of poems
attributed to Seneca have come down to us, a collection of epigrams and
a collection of dramas. There is strangely little external evidence to
support either attribution, but in neither case can there be any serious
doubt as to the general correctness of the tradition.

The _Anthologia Latina_, compiled at Carthage in the sixth century,
opens with seventy-three epigrams, of which three are attributed by the
MSS. to Seneca (_Poet. Lat. Min._ 1-3, Baehrens). The first is entitled
_de qualitate temporis_ and descants on the ultimate destruction of the
world by fire--a well-known Stoical doctrine. The second and third are
fierce denunciations of Corsica, his place of exile. The rest are
nameless. But there are several which can only be attributed to Seneca.
The ninth is entitled _de se ad patriam_, and is addressed to Cordova by
one plunged in deep misfortune--a clear reference to his banishment in
Corsica. The fifty-first is a prayer that the author's two brothers may
be happier than himself, and that 'the little Marcus may rival his
uncles in eloquence'. The brothers are described one as older, the other