_ad init.Ep_.

lxxix.) He also wrote a poem on the fountain Arethusa.

_( Nat.Quaest_.iii, 26.)] This passage will furnish us with an excellent example of Seneca's invariable method of improving every occasion and circumstance into an opportunity for a philosophic harangue.
By this wife, who died shortly before Seneca's banishment to Corsica, he had two sons, one of whom expired in the arms and amid the kisses of Helvia less than a month before Seneca's departure for Corsica.

To the other, whose name was Marcus, he makes the following pleasant allusion.
After urging his mother Helvia to find consolation in the devotion of his brothers Gallio and Mela, he adds, "From these turn your eyes also on your grandsons--to Marcus, that most charming little boy, in sight of whom no melancholy can last long.

No misfortune in the breast of any one can have been so great or so recent as not to be soothed by his caresses.