Of Cordova itself, except in a single epigram, Seneca makes no mention;
but this epigram suffices to show that he must have been familiar with
its stirring and memorable traditions. The elder Seneca must have been
living at Cordova during all the troublous years of civil war, when his
native city caused equal offence to Pompey and to Caesar. Doubtless,
too, he would have had stories to tell of the noble Sertorius, and of
the tame fawn which gained for him the credit of divine assistance; and
contemporary reminiscences of that day of desperate disaster when
Caesar, indignant that Cordova should have embraced the cause of the
sons of Pompey, avenged himself by a massacre of 22,000 of the citizens.
From his mother Helvia, Seneca must often have heard about the fierce
and gallant struggle in which her country had resisted the iron yoke of
Rome. Many a time as a boy must he have been told how long and how
heroically Saguntum had withstood the assaults and baffled the triumph
of Hannibal; how bravely Viriathus had fought, and how shamefully he
fell; and how at length the unequal contest, which reduced Spain to the
condition of a province, was closed, when the heroic defenders of
Numantia, rather than yield to Scipio, reduced their city to a heap of
bloodstained ruins.
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