.. 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.
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