Seekers After God | Page 7

for a few moments "betwixt the wind and his nobility." He would indeed have been unutterably amazed if anyone had whispered to him that well nigh the sole circumstance which would entitle him to be remembered by posterity, and the sole event of his life by which he would be at all generally known, was that momentary and accidental relation to his despised prisoner.
But Novatus--or, to give him his adopted name, Gallio--presented to his brother Seneca, and to the rest of the world, a very different aspect from that under which we are wont to think of him. By them he was regarded as an illustrious declaimer, in an age when declamation was the most valued of all accomplishments. It was true that there was a sort of "tinkle," a certain falsetto tone in his style, which offended men of robust and severe taste; but this meretricious resonance of style was a matter of envy and admiration when affectation was the rage, and when the times were too enervated and too corrupt for the manly conciseness and concentrated force of an eloquence dictated by liberty and by passion. He seems to have acquired both among his friends and among strangers the epithet of "dulcis," "the charming or fascinating Gallio:" "This is more," says the poet Statius, "than to have given Seneca to the world, and to have begotten the sweet Gallio." Seneca's portrait of him is singularly faultless. He says that no one was so gentle to any one as Gallio was to every one; that his charm of manner won over even the people whom mere chance threw in his way, and that such was the force of his natural goodness that no one suspected his behaviour, as though it were due to art or simulation. Speaking of flattery, in his fourth book of Natural Questions, he says to his friend Lucilius, "I used to say to you that my brother Gallio (whom every one loves a little, even people who cannot love him more) was wholly ignorant of other vices, but even detested this. You might try him in any direction. You began to praise his intellect--an intellect of the highest and worthiest kind,... and he walked away! You began to praise his moderation, he instantly cut short your first words. You began to express admiration for his blandness and natural suavity of manner,... yet even here he resisted your compliments; and if you were led to exclaim that you had found a man who could not be overcome by those insidious attacks which every one else admits, and hoped that he would at least tolerate this compliment because of its truth, even on this ground he would resist your flattery; not as though you had been awkward, or as though he suspected that you were jesting with him, or had some secret end in view, but simply because he had a horror of every form of adulation." We can easily imagine that Gallio was Seneca's favorite brother, and we are not surprised to find that the philosopher dedicates to him his three books on Anger, and his charming little treatise "On a Happy Life."
Of the third brother, L. Annaeus Mela, we have fewer notices; but, from what we know, we should conjecture that his character no less than his reputation was inferior to that of his brothers; yet he seems to have been the favorite of his father, who distinctly asserts that his intellect was capable of every excellence, and superior to that of his brothers.[4] This, however, may have been because Mela, "longing only to long for nothing," was content with his father's rank, and devoted himself wholly to the study of eloquence. Instead of entering into public life, he deliberately withdrew himself from all civil duties, and devoted himself to tranquility and ease. Apparently he preferred to be a farmer-general (publicanus) and not a consul. His chief fame rests in the fact that he was father of Lucan, the poet of the decadence or declining literature of Rome. The only anecdote about him which has come down to us is one that sets his avarice in a very unfavourable light. When his famous son, the unhappy poet, had forfeited his life, as well as covered himself with infamy by denouncing his own mother Attila in the conspiracy of Piso, Mela, instead of being overwhelmed with shame and agony, immediately began to collect with indecent avidity his son's debts, as though to show Nero that he felt no great sorrow for his bereavement. But this was not enough for Nero's malice; he told Mela that he must follow his son, and Mela was forced to obey the order, and to die.
[Footnote 4: M. Ann. Senec. Controv. ii. Praef.]
Doubtless Helvia, if she survived her sons and grandsons,