ever after from having followed her husband more than half-way on the
road to death.

No trace of the villa where this pathetic tragedy took place can now
be seen; but near the spot where it must have stood, close beside the
road, is a marble bas-relief of the death of Atys, the son of Croesus,
killed in the chase by Adrastus, placed upon a modern pedestal; and
this is supposed to have formed part of the tomb of Seneca. There is
no inscription; probably none would be allowed during the lifetime of
Nero; and we know that his body was burned privately without any of
the usual ceremonies. But if this fragment of sculpture be genuine,
the well-known classic story which it tells was an appropriate
memorial of one who perished in the midst of the greatest prosperity.
No one who is familiar with the history of this "seeker after God,"
this philosopher who was a pagan John the Baptist in the severity and
purity of his mode of life, and in the position which he occupied on
the border-line between paganism and Christianity, and who left behind
him some of the noblest utterances of antiquity, can gaze upon this
interesting bas-relief without being deeply moved. It speaks
eloquently of the little dependence to be placed upon the favour of
princes; and it points a powerful moral that has been repeatedly
enforced in sacred as well as profane history, that he who becomes the
accomplice of another in crime, strikes, by that complicity, the
death-blow of friendship, and makes himself more hated than even the
victim of the crime had been. When Seneca sanctioned, and then
defended on political grounds, the matricide of Nero, from that moment
his own doom was sealed. Over the former "guide, philosopher, and
friend," the shadow of this guilty secret rested, and it deepened and
darkened until the pupil embrued his hands in the blood of his
teacher. This touching fragment of sculpture is all that now remains