Is this true education? or rather,
should our great aim ever be to translate noble precepts into daily
action? "Teach me," he says, "to despise pleasure and glory;
_afterwards_ you shall teach me to disentangle difficulties, to
distinguish ambiguities, to see through obscurities; _now_ teach me what
is necessary." Considering the condition of much which in modern times
passes under the name of "education," we may possibly find that the
hints of Seneca are not yet wholly obsolete.
[Footnote 6: Ep. cviii.]
What kind of schoolmaster taught the little Seneca when under the care
of the slave who was called _pedagogus_, or a "boy-leader" (whence our
word _pedagogue_), he daily went with his brothers to school through the
streets of Rome, we do not know. He may have been a severe Orbilius, or
he may have been one of those noble-minded tutors whose ideal
portraiture is drawn in such beautiful colours by the learned and
amiable Quintilian. Seneca has not alluded to any one who taught him
during his early days. The only schoolfellow whom he mentions by name
in his voluminous writings is a certain Claranus, a deformed boy, whom,
after leaving school, Seneca never met again until they were both old
men, but of whom he speaks with great admiration.
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