Many of his writings are Pagan sermons and moral
essays of the best and highest type. The style, as Quintilian says,
"abounds in delightful faults," but the strain of sentiment is never
otherwise than high and true.
[Footnote 51: Consol. ad Polyb. 27; Ad Helv. 17; Ad Marc. 24, _seqq_.]
[Footnote 52: Ep. 32; De Benef. iii. 2.]
[Footnote 53: De Ira, iii. 29, 32.]
[Footnote 54: Ibid. i. 14; De Vit. beat. 24.]
[Footnote 55: Ep. 55, 9.]
[Footnote 56: Ibid. 28; De Oti Sapientis, 31.]
He is to be regarded rather as a wealthy, eminent, and successful Roman,
who devoted most of his leisure to moral philosophy, than as a real
philosopher by habit and profession. And in this point of view his very
inconsistencies have their charm, as illustrating his ardent, impulsive,
imaginative temperament. He was no apathetic, self-contained, impassible
Stoic, but a passionate, warm-hearted man, who could break into a flood
of unrestrained tears at the death of his friend Annaeus Serenus,[57]
and feel a trembling solicitude for the welfare of his wife and little
ones. His was no absolute renunciation, no impossible perfection;[58]
but few men have painted more persuasively, with deeper emotion, or more
entire conviction, the pleasures of virtue, the calm of a
well-regulated soul, the strong and severe joys of a lofty self-denial.
Pages:
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236