Its untamable inhabitants are
described by the geographer Strabo as being "wilder than the wild
beasts." It produced but little corn, and scarcely any fruit-trees. It
abounded, indeed, in swarms of wild bees, but its very honey was bitter
and unpalatable, from being infected with the acrid taste of the
box-flowers on which they fed. Neither gold nor silver were found
there; it produced nothing worth exporting, and barely sufficient for
the mere necessaries of its inhabitants; it rejoiced in no great
navigable rivers, and even the trees, in which it abounded, were neither
beautiful nor fruitful. Seneca describes it in more than one of his
epigrams, as a
"Terrible isle, when earliest summer glows
Yet fiercer when his face the dog-star shows;"
and again as a
"Barbarous land, which rugged rocks surround,
Whose horrent cliffs with idle wastes are crowned,
No autumn fruit, no tilth the summer yields,
Nor olives cheer the winter-silvered fields:
Nor joyous spring her tender foliage lends,
Nor genial herb the luckless soil befriends;
Nor bread, nor sacred fire, nor freshening wave;--
Nought here--save exile, and the exile's grave!"
In such a place, and under such conditions, Seneca had ample need for
all his philosophy.
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