Any one may despise all things, but no one _can_ possess all things.

The shortest road to riches lies through contempt of riches.

But our Demetrius lives not as though he _despised_ all things, but as though he simply suffered others to possess them." These habits and sentiments throw considerable light on Seneca's character.

They show that even from his earliest days he was capable of adopting self-denial as a principle, and that to his latest days he retained many private habits of a simple and honourable character, even when the exigencies of public life had compelled him to modify others.
Although he abandoned an unusual abstinence out of respect for his father, we have positive evidence that he resumed in his old age the spare practices which in his enthusiastic youth he had caught from the lessons of high-minded teachers.

These facts are surely sufficient to refute at any rate those gross charges against the private character of Seneca, venomously retailed by a jealous Greekling like Dio Cassius, which do not rest on a tittle of evidence, and seem to be due to a mere spirit of envy and calumny.