But his limbs were already cold, and the draught proved fruitless.

He then entered a bath of hot water, sprinkling the slaves who stood nearest to him, with the words that he was pouring a libation to Jupiter the Liberator.[36] Even the warm water failed to make the blood flow more speedily, and he was finally carried into one of those vapour baths which the Romans called _sudatoria_, and stifled with its steam.

His body was burned privately, without any of the usual ceremonies.

Such had been his own wish, expressed, not after the fall of his fortunes, but at a time when his thoughts had been directed to his latter end, in the zenith of his great wealth and conspicuous power.
[Footnote 36: Sicco Polentone, an Italian, who wrote a Life of Seneca (d.

1461), makes Seneca a secret Christian, and represents this as an invocation of Christ, and says that he baptized himself with the water of the bath!] So died a Pagan philosopher, whose life must always excite our interest and pity, although we cannot apply to him the titles of great or good.
He was a man of high genius, of great susceptibility, of an ardent and generous temperament, of far-sighted and sincere humanity.