‘Very possibly,’ answered the uncompromising freedman. ‘Nevertheless, I agree with Musonius that stylists who do not act up to their own precepts should be called fiddlers and not philosophers.’ When Cornutus rose to leave, the feelings of the most envied man in Rome were far from enviable. He would have given much to secure the Stoic’s approval. And yet the sophistries by which he blinded his own bitter feelings were unshaken. ‘Cornutus,’ he said to himself, ‘is not only discourteous but unpractical. Theory is one thing; life another. We are in Rome, not in Plato’s Atlantis.’ Seneca lived to find out that facing both ways is certain failure, and that a man cannot serve two masters. In point of fact the struggle was going on for the preponderance of influence over Nero. Agrippina thought that she could use him as a gilded figurehead of the ship of state, while she stood at the helm and directed the real course. Burrus and Seneca, distrusting her cruelty and ambition, believed that they could render her schemes nugatory, and convert Nero into a constitutional prince. Both efforts were alike foiled. The passions which were latent in the temperament of the young Emperor were forced into rank growth by influences incomparably less virile than that of his mother, and incomparably more vile than those of the soldier and the philosopher. Otho was a more effective tutor than Seneca, and Seneca’s own vacillation paved the way for Otho’s corrupting spell. Claudius had been governed by an ‘aristocracy of valets;’ Nero was to be governed neither by the daughter of Germanicus nor by the Stoic moralist, but by a despicable fraternity of minions, actors, and debauchees. CHAPTER IX _NERO AND HIS COMPANIONS_ ‘Res pertricosa est, Cotile, bellus homo.’--MARTIAL, iii. 63. Nero had been spending the morning with some of the new friends whose evil example was rapidly destroying in his mind every germ of decency or virtue. Though it was still but noon, he was dressed in a loose _synthesis_--a dress of light green, unconfined by any girdle, and he had soft slippers on his feet. This negligence was due only to the desire for selfish comfort, for in other respects he paid extreme attention to his personal appearance. His fair hair was curled and perfumed, and his hands were covered with splendid gems. But even a brief spell of imperial power, with late hours, long banquets, deep gambling, and reckless dissipation, had already left their brand upon his once attractive features. His cheeks had begun to lose the rose and glow of youth and to assume the pale and sodden appearance which in a few years obliterated the last traces of beauty and dignity from his ruined face. With him sat and lounged and yawned and gossiped and flattered a choice assemblage of spirits more wicked than himself.