CHAPTER IX.
SENECA'S RECALL FROM EXILE.
Of the last five years of Seneca's weary exile no trace has been preserved to us.

What were his alternations of hope and fear, of devotion to philosophy and of hankering after the world which he had lost, we cannot tell.

Any hopes which he may have entertained respecting the intervention of Polybius in his favour must have been utterly quenched when he heard that the freedman, though formerly powerful with Messalina, had forfeited his own life in consequence of her machinations.

But the closing period of his days in Corsica must have brought him thrilling news, which would save him from falling into absolute despair.
For the career of Messalina was drawing rapidly to a close.

The life of this beautiful princess, short as it was, for she died at a very early age, was enough to make her name a proverb of everlasting infamy.