extortionate usury.[143] During his long exile in Corsica he could write a consolatory treatise to his mother on the thesis that the true philosopher is never an exile;[144] wherever he is, there he is at home; but little more than a year later he writes another consolatory treatise to the imperial freedman Polybius, full of the most grovelling flattery of Polybius himself and of the Emperor Claudius,[145] the same Claudius whom he afterwards bespattered with the coarse, if occasionally humorous, vulgarity of the _Apocolocyntosis_.[146] He was tutor to the young Nero, but had not the strength to check his vices. He sought to control him by flattery and platitudes rather than by the high example of the philosophy which he professed.[147] The composition of the treatise _ad Neronem de Clementia_ was a poor reply to Nero's murder of Britannicus.[148] He could write eloquently of Stoic virtue, but when he himself was confronted with the hard facts of life over which Stoicism claimed to triumph, he proved no more than a 'lath painted to look like iron'. Such is the case against Seneca. That it can be rebutted entirely it is impossible to claim. But we must remember the age in which he lived. Its love of debauchery was only equalled by its prurient love of scandal. Seneca's banishment on the charge of an intrigue with Livilla is not seriously damaging. The accusation _may_ have been true: it is at least as likely to have been false, for it was instigated by Messalina. That he lived in wealth and luxury is undoubted: his only defence was that he was really indifferent to it; he could face any future; he had, therefore, a right to enjoy the present.[149] That he ground down the provincials by his usury is possible; the standard in such matters was low, and the real nature of his extortions may never have come home to him; he must have depended largely on his agents. With regard to his management of the young princeps the case is different. Seneca was given an almost impossible task. Neither his nature nor his surroundings made Nero a suitable subject for moral instruction. Seneca must have been hampered at every turn. He must either bend or break. At least he won the respect of his pupil, and the good governance of the empire during the first five years of Nero's reign was due largely to the fact that the power was really in the hands of Seneca and Burrus.[150] Many of the weaknesses of his character may be accounted for by physical debility, and we must further remember that a Stoic of the age of Nero found himself in a most difficult position. He could not put his principles into full practice in public life without incurring the certain displeasure of the emperor. The stricter Stoic, therefore, like Thrasea, retired to the seclusion of his estates 'condemning the wicked world of Rome by his absence from it'.[151] Seneca, weaker, but possessed of greater common sense, chose the _via media_. He was content to sacrifice