He might interfere, as we know he did, to render as
innocuous as possible the pernicious vanity which made Nero so ready to
degrade his imperial rank by public appearances on the orchestra or in
the race-course, but he could hardly address again such noble teachings
as that of the treatise on Clemency to one whom, on grounds of political
expediency, he had not dissuaded from the treacherous murder of a
mother, who, whatever her enormities, yet for his sake had sold her
very soul.
Although there may have been a strong suspicion that foul play had been
committed, the actual facts and details of the death of Agrippina would
rest between Nero and Seneca as a guilty secret, in the guilt of which
Seneca himself must have his share. Such a position of things was the
inevitable death-blow, not only to all friendship, but to all
confidence, and ultimately to all intercourse. We see in sacred history
that Joab's participation in David's guilty secret gave him the absolute
mastery over his own sovereign; we see repeatedly in profane history
that the mutual knowledge of some crime is the invariable cause of
deadly hatred between a subject and a king.
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