Part 4

Socrates looked at him and said, "I return your good wishes, and will do as you bid." Then turning to us, he said: "How charming the man is! Since I have been in prison, he has always been coming to see me, and at times, he would talk to me, and was as good as could be to me, and now see how generously he sorrows for me. But we must do as he says, Crito; let the cup be brought."

"Not yet," said Crito; "the sun is still upon the hill-tops, and many a one has taken the draft late, and after the announcement has been made to him, he has eaten and drunk and indulged in sensual delights; do not hasten then--there is still time."

Socrates said: "Yes, Crito, and they of whom you speak are right in doing thus, but I do not think that I should gain anything by drinking the poison a little later; I should be sparing and saving a life which is already gone: I could only laugh at myself for this. Please then to do as I say, and not to refuse me."

Crito, when he heard this, made a sign to the servant; and the servant went in, and remained for some time, and then returned with the jailer carrying the cup of poison. Socrates said, "You, my good friend, who are experienced in these matters, shall give me directions how I am to proceed." The man answered, "You have only to walk about until your legs are heavy, and then to lie down, and the poison will act." At the same time, he handed the cup to Socrates, who, in the easiest and gentlest manner, without the least fear or change of color or feature, looking at the man with his eyes, Echecrates, as his manner was, took the cup and said: "What do you say about making the libation out of this cup to any god? May I, or not?" The man answered, "We only prepare, Socrates, just so much as we deem enough." "I understand," he said. "Yet I may and must pray to the gods to prosper my journey from this to that other world--may this, then, which is my prayer, be granted to me!" Then holding the cup to his lips, quite readily and cheerfully, he drank off the poison. And hitherto most of us had been able to control our sorrow; but now we saw him drinking, and saw, too, that he had finished the draft, we could no longer forbear, and in spite of myself, my own tears were flowing fast; so that I covered my face and wept over myself, for certainly I was not weeping over him, but at the thought of my own calamity in having lost such a companion. Nor was I the first, for Crito, when he found himself unable to restrain his tears, had got up and moved away, and I followed; and at that moment, Apollodorus, who had been weeping all the time, broke out into a loud cry, which made cowards of us all. Socrates alone retained his calmness. "What is this strange outcry?" he said, "I sent away the women mainly in order that they might not offend in this way, for I have heard that a man should die in peace. Be quiet, then, and have patience." When we heard that, we were ashamed, and refrained our tears; and he walked about until, as he said, his legs began to fail, and then he lay on his back, according to directions, and the man who gave him the poison, now and then looked at his feet and legs; and after a while, he pressed his foot hard and asked him if he could feel; and he said, "No"; and then his leg, and so upwards and upwards, and showed us that he was cold and stiff. And he felt them himself, and said, "When the poison reaches the heart, that will be the end." He was beginning to grow cold, when he uncovered his face, for he had covered himself up, and said (they were his last words), "Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt?"

"The debt shall be paid," said Crito. "Is there anything else?" There was no answer to this question; but in a minute or two, a movement was heard, and the attendants uncovered him; his eyes were set, and Crito closed his eyes and mouth.

Such was the end, Echecrates, of our friend, whom I may truly call the wisest, the justest, and best of all the men whom I have ever known.

SENECA

If we wish to be just judges of all things, let us first persuade ourselves of this: that there is not one of us without fault; no man is found who can acquit himself; and he who calls himself innocent does so with reference to a witness, and not to his conscience.

--Letters of Seneca

True Americans and patriotic, who live in York State, often refer you to the life of Red Jacket as proof that "Seneca" is an Iroquois Indian word. The Indians, however, whom we call the Senecas never called themselves thus until they took to strong water and became civilized. Before that they were the Tsonnundawaonas. The Dutch traders, intent on pelts and pelf, called them the Sinnekaas, meaning the valiant or the beautiful. Then came that fateful day when the Reverend Peleg Spooner, the discoverer of the Erie Canal, journeyed to Niagara Falls, and having influence with the authorities at Washington, gave to towns along the way these names: Troy, Rome, Ithaca, Syracuse, Ilion, Manlius, Homer, Corfu, Palmyra, Utica, Delhi, Memphis and Marathon. He really exhausted Grote's "History of Greece" and Gibbon's "Rome," revealing a most depressing lack of humor. This classic flavor of the map of New York is as surprising to English tourists as was the discovery to Hendrik Hudson when, on sailing up the North River, he found on nearing Albany that the river bore the same name as himself.

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In the eighteenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles we read of Paul being brought before Gallio, Proconsul of Achaia. And the accusers, clutching the bald and bow-legged bachelor by the collar, bawl out to the Judge, "This fellow persuadeth men to worship God contrary to law!"

And the little man is about to make reply, when Gallio says, with a touch of impatience: "If indeed it were a matter of wrong or of wicked villainy, O ye Jews, reason would that I should bear with you: but if they are questions about words and names and your own law, look to it yourselves; I am not minded to be a judge of these matters!" And the account concludes, "And he drove them from the judgment-seat."

That is to say, he gave Saint Paul a "nolle pros." Had Gallio wished to be severe, he might have put the quietus on Christianity for all time, for Saint Paul had all there was of it stowed in his valiant head and heart.

Gallio was the elder brother of Seneca; his right name was Annaeus Seneca, but he changed it to Junius Gallio, in honor of a patron who had especially befriended him in youth.

Gallio seems to have been a man of good, sturdy commonsense--he could distinguish between right living and a mumble of words, man-made rules, laws such as heresy, blasphemy, Sabbath-breaking and marrying one's deceased wife's sister. The Moqui Indians believe that if any one is allowed to have a photograph taken of himself he will dry up in a month and blow away. Moreover, lists of names are not wanting with memoranda of times and places. In America there are yet people who hotly argue as to what mode of baptism is correct; who talk earnestly about the "saved" and the "lost"; and who will tell you of the "heathen" and those who are "without the pale." They seem to think that the promise, "Seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you," applies only to the Caucasian race.

In the earlier translations of Seneca there were printed various letters that were supposed to have passed between Saint Paul and Seneca. Later editors have dropped them out for lack of authenticity. But the fact that Saint Paul met Seneca's brother face to face, as well as the fact that the brother was willing to discuss right living, but had no time to waste on the Gemara and theological quibbles, is undisputed.

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It was the proud boast of Augustus that he found Rome a place of brick and left it a city of marble. Commercial prosperity buys the leisure upon which letters flourish. We flout the businessman, but without him there would be no poets. Poets write for the people who have time to read. And out of the surplus that is left after securing food, we buy books. Augustus built his marble city, and he also made Vergil, Horace, Ovid and Livy possible.

Augustus reigned forty-four years, and it was in the twenty-seventh year of his reign that there was born in Bethlehem of Judaea a Babe who was to revolutionize the calendar. The Dean of Ely subtly puts forth the suggestive thought that if it had not been for Augustus we might never have heard of Jesus. It was Augustus who made Jerusalem a Roman Province; and it was the economic and political policy of Augustus that evolved the Scribes and Pharisees; and ill-gotten gains made the hypocrites and publicans possible; then comes Pontius Pilate with his receding chin.

Jesus was seventeen years old when Augustus died--Augustus never heard of him, and the Roman's unprophetic mind sent no searchlight into the future, neither did his eyes behold the Star in the East.

We are all making and shaping history, and how much, none of us knows, any more than did Augustus.

Julius Caesar had no son to take his place, so he named his nephew, Augustus, his heir. Augustus was succeeded by Tiberius, his adopted child. Caligula, successor of Tiberius, was the son of the great Roman General, Germanicus. Caligula revealed his good sense by drinking life to its lees in a reign of four years, dying without heirs--Nature refusing to transmit either infamy or genius. Claudius, an uncle of Caligula, accepted the vacant place, as it seemed to him there was no one else could fill it so well. Claudius had the felicity to be married four times, and left several sons, but Fate had it that he should be followed by Nero, his stepson, who called himself "Caesar," yet in whose veins there leaped not a single Caesarean corpuscle.

The guardian and tutor of Nero was Lucius Seneca, the greatest, best and wisest man of his time, a fact I here state in order to show the vanity of pedagogics. Harking back once more to Augustus, let it be known that but for him Seneca would probably have never left his mark upon this bank and shoal of time. Seneca was a Spaniard, born in Cordova, a Roman Province, that was made so by Augustus, under whose kindly and placating influence all citizens of Hispania became Roman citizens--just as, when California was admitted to the Union, every man in the State was declared a naturalized citizen of the United States, the act being performed for political purposes, based on the precedents of Augustus, and never done before nor since in America.

Seneca was four years old when his father's family moved from Cordova to Rome; this was three years before the birth of Christ. Years pass, but the human heart is forever the same. The elder Seneca, Marcus Seneca, had ambitions--he was a great man in Cordova: he could memorize a list of two thousand words. These words had no relationship one to another, and Marcus Seneca could not put words together so as to make good sense, but his name was "Loisette": he had a scheme of mnemonics that he imparted for a consideration. He was also a teacher of elocution, and had compiled a yearbook of the sayings of Horace, which secured him a knighthood. Augustus paid his colonists pretty compliments, very much as England gives out brevets to Strathcona and other worthy Canadians, who raise troops of horse to fight England's battles in South Africa when duty calls.

Marcus Seneca made haste to move to Rome when Augustus let down the bars. Rome was the center of the art-world, the home of letters, and all that made for beauty and excellence. There were three boys and a girl in the Seneca family.

The elder boy, Annaeus, was to become Gallio, the Roman governor, and have his name mentioned in the most widely circulated book the world has ever known; the second boy was Lucius, the subject of this sketch; the younger boy, Mela, was to become the father of Lucan, the poet.

The sister of Seneca became the wife of the Roman Governor of Egypt. It was at a time when the scheming rapacity of women was so much in evidence that the Senate debated whether it should not forbid its representatives abroad to be accompanied by their wives. France has seen such times--England and America have glanced that way. Women, like men, often do not know that the big prizes gravitate where they belong; instead, they set traps for them, lie in wait and consider prevarication and duplicity better than truth. When women use their beauty, their wit and their pink persons in politics, trouble lies low around the corner. But this sister of Seneca was never seen in public unless it was at her husband's side; she asked no favors, and presents sent to her personally by provincials were politely returned. The province praised her, and perhaps what was better, didn't know her, and begged the Emperor to send them more of such excellent and virtuous women--from which we infer that virtue consists in minding one's own business.