Nero asked "whether Seneca was preparing a voluntary death." On the
tribune replying that he showed no gloom or terror in his language or
countenance, Nero ordered that he should at once be bidden to die. The
message was taken, and Seneca, without any sign of alarm, quietly
demanded leave to revise his will. This was refused him, and he then
turned to his friends with the remark that, as he was unable to reward
their merits as they had deserved, he would bequeath to them the only,
and yet the most precious, possession left to him, namely, the example
of his life, and if they were mindful of it they would win the
reputation alike for integrity and for faithful friendship. At the same
time he checked their tears, sometimes by his conversation, and
sometimes with serious reproaches, asking them "where were their
precepts of philosophy, and where the fortitude under trials which
should have been learnt from the studies of many years? Did not every
one know the cruelty of Nero? and what was left for him to do but to
make an end of his master and tutor after the murder of his mother and
his brother?" He then embraced his wife Paulina, and, with a slight
faltering of his lofty sternness, begged and entreated her not to enter
on an endless sorrow, but to endure the loss of her husband by the aid
of those noble consolations which she must derive from the contemplation
of his virtuous life.
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