He guided, under
circumstances of extreme difficulty, the cause of virtue, and his death
is one of the noblest antiquity records; but his life was deeply marked
by the taint of flattery, and not free from the taint of avarice, and it
is unhappily certain that, after its accomplishment, he lent his pen to
conceal or varnish one of the worst crimes of Nero. The courage of Lucan
failed signally under torture, and the flattery which he bestowed upon
Nero, in his "Pharsalia," ranks with the Epigrams of Martial as probably
the extreme limit of sycophancy to which Roman literature descended.
While, too, the main object of the Stoics was to popularise philosophy,
the high standard of self-control they exacted rendered their system
exceedingly unfit for the great majority of mankind, and for the
ordinary condition of affairs. Life is history, not poetry. It consists
mainly of little things, rarely illumined by flashes of great heroism,
rarely broken by great dangers, or demanding great exertions. A moral
system, to govern society, must accommodate itself to common characters
and mingled motives.
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