Formed to fascinate society, here there were none for him to fascinate; gifted with an eloquence which could keep listening senates hushed, here he found neither subject nor audience; and his life began to resemble a river which, long before it has reached the sea, is lost in dreary marshes and choking sands.
Like the brilliant Ovid, when he was banished to the frozen wilds of Tomi, Seneca vented his anguish in plaintive wailing and bitter verse.
In his handful of epigrams he finds nothing too severe for the place of his exile.

He cries-- "Spare thou thine exiles, lightly o'er thy dead, Alive, yet buried, be thy dust bespread." And addressing some malignant enemy-- "Whoe'er thou art,--thy name shall I repeat ?-- Who o'er mine ashes dar'st to press thy feet, And, uncontented with a fall so dread, Draw'st bloodstained weapons on my darkened head, Beware! for nature, pitying, guards the tomb, And ghosts avenge th' invaders of their gloom, Hear, Envy, hear the gods proclaim a truth, Which my shrill ghost repeats to move thy ruth, WRETCHES ARE SACRED THINGS,--thy hands refrain: E'en sacrilegious hands from TOMBS abstain." The one fact that seems to have haunted him most was that his abode in Corsica was a living death.
But the most complete picture of his state of mind, and the most melancholy memorial of his inconsistency as a philosopher, is to be found in his "Consolation to Polybius." Polybius was one of those freedmen of the Emperor whose bloated wealth and servile insolence were one of the darkest and strangest phenomena of the time.

Claudius, more than any of his class, from the peculiar imbecility of his character, was under the powerful influence of this class of men; and so dangerous was their power that Messalina herself was forced to win her ascendency over her husband's mind by making these men her supporters, and cultivating their favour.

Such were "the most excellent Felix," the judge of St.Paul, and the slave who became a husband to three queens,--Narcissus, in whose household (which moved the envy of the Emperor) were some of those Christians to whom St.Paul sends greetings from the Christians of Corinth,[31]--Pallas, who never deigned to speak to his own slaves, but gave all his commands by signs, and who actually condescended to receive the thanks of the Senate, because he, the descendant of Etruscan kings, yet condescended to serve the Emperor and the Commonwealth; a preposterous and outrageous compliment, which appears to have been solely due to the fact of his name being identical with that of Virgil's young hero, the son of the mythic Evander! [Footnote 31: Rom.xvi.

11.] Among this unworthy crew a certain Polybius was not the least conspicuous.