One of the plays is of special interest as dealing with current topics. This is the _Octavia_, whose chief character is Nero’s wife of that name, exiled by him in order to make room for the licentious Poppaea Sabina. Seneca himself is introduced as one of the characters, deploring the vices of the age and the unhappiness of those set in high position. If the play is genuine, which has been doubted on the ground of references in it that seem to apply to Nero’s death, it goes to prove that Seneca used very plain language toward his master and pupil. In any case, it shows what the relation of Seneca to Nero was generally supposed to be. Tacitus (xv. 61) represents Seneca as telling Nero by messenger that the latter has had more frequent experience of his independence than of his servility, and the _Octavia_ is fair comment upon his statement. Here is a specimen of the dialogue:-- _Nero._ Fortune has put everything in my power. _Seneca._ Distrust her favours: she is a fickle goddess. _N._ To fail to see all that one may do, betrays the coward. _S._ The credit lies in doing not what one may, but what one ought. _N._ The crowd tramples on a feeble prince. _S._ They will crush a hated one: and so forth. Seneca’s last remark may be a prophecy--some would say after the event. The play contains other allusions which suggest some of the actual details of Nero’s end. The prose works include: (_a_) Philosophical Essays such as _Anger_, _Clemency_, _Benefits_, _Calmness of Mind_, _A Happy Life_, _The Shortness of Life_, _Providence_, or _Why Providence allows troubles to afflict the Just_, _The Constancy of the Sage_, _The Leisure of the Sage_. (_b_) Letters, or rather Treatises, of Condolence, the so-called _Consolations_, addressed respectively _to his Mother Helvia_; _to Marcia_, the daughter of Cordus, on the death of her son; _to Polybius_, the powerful freedman of Claudius, on the loss of his brother. (_c_) _Letters to Lucilius_, a hundred and twenty-four in number. (_d_) _Apocolocyntosis_--a lampoon on the deceased Emperor Claudius. On such occasions deification (apotheosis) was accorded to the late ruler, and he was received into the number of the gods. This skit describes the reception of Claudius in heaven and his expulsion thence to the lower regions, with his trial and sentence there. _Pumpkinification_ is the nearest English translation of the title.[7] [7] One would have expected that Claudius’ fate would be to be enrolled among--the Pumpkins. But the piece as we have it contains no allusion to this. (_e_) _Quaestiones Naturales._ (_f_) Works no longer extant, the only one of them that concerns us being that on _Earthquakes_, referred to as a work of his youth in _Q.N._ 230.