It is possible that he
had not even heard the mere name of Paul, and that, if he ever thought
of him at all, it was only as a miserable, ragged, fanatical Jew, of dim
eyes and diminutive stature, who had once wished to inflict upon him a
harangue, and who had once come 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.
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