Each of the three boys grew
up to a man of genius, and each of them grew up to stain his memory with
deeds that had been better left undone, and to die violent deaths by
their own hands or by a tyrant's will. Mela died as we have seen; his
son Lucan and his brother Seneca were driven to death by the cruel
orders of Nero. Gallio, after stooping to panic-stricken supplications
for his preservation, died ultimately by suicide. It was a shameful and
miserable end for them all, but it was due partly to their own errors,
partly to the hard necessity of the degraded times in which they lived.
CHAPTER II.
THE EDUCATION OF SENECA.
For a reason which I have already indicated--I mean the habitual
reticence of the ancient writers respecting the period of their
boyhood--it is not easy to form a very vivid conception of the kind of
education given to a Roman boy of good family up to the age of fifteen,
when he laid aside the golden amulet and embroidered toga to assume a
more independent mode of life.
A few facts, however, we can gather from the scattered allusions of the
poets Horace, Juvenal, Martial, and Persius.
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