In iambics that caressed the ear like flutes, poets had told of Jupiter clothed in purple and glory. They had told of his celestial amours, of his human and of his inhuman vices. Seneca believed in Jupiter. But not in the Jove of the poets. That god dwelled in ivory and anapests. Seneca's deity, nowhere visible, was everywhere present.[53] Creator of heaven and earth,[54] without whom there is nothing,[55] from whom nothing is hidden,[56] and to whom all belongs,[57] our Father,[58] whose will shall be done.[59] [Footnote 53: Nemo novit Deum. Epit. xxxi. Ubique Deus. Epit. xli.] [Footnote 54: Mundum hujus operis dominum et artificem. Quaest. nat. i.] [Footnote 55: Sine quo nihil est. Quaest. nat. vii. 31.] [Footnote 56: Nil Deo Clausam. Ep. lxxxx.] [Footnote 57: Omnia habentem. Ep. xcv.] [Footnote 58: Parens noster. Ep. cx.] [Footnote 59: Placeat homini quidquid Deo placuit. Ep. lxxv.] "Life," said Seneca, "is a tribulation, death a release. In order not to fear death," he added, "think of it always. The day on which it comes judges all others."[60] Meanwhile comfort those that sorrow.[61] Share your bread with them that hunger.[62] Wherever there is a human being there is place for a good deed.[63] Sin is an ulcer. Deliverance from it is the beginning of health--salvation, _salutem_."[64] [Footnote 60: Ep. xxvi. 4.] [Footnote 61: De Clem. ii. 6.] [Footnote 62: Ep. xcv. 51.] [Footnote 63: De Vita Beata, 14.] [Footnote 64: Ep. xxviii. 9.] Words such as these suggest others. They are anterior to those which they recall. The latter are more beautiful, they are more ample, there is in them a poetry and a profundity that has rarely been excelled. Yet, it may be, that a germ of them is in Seneca, or, more exactly, in theories which, beginning in India, prophets, seers, and stoics variously interpreted and recalled. However since they have charmed the world, their effect on Nero was curious. Seneca was his preceptor. But so too was Art. The lessons of these teachers, fusing in the demented mind of the monster, produced transcendental depravity, the apogee of the abnormal and the epileptically obscene. What is more important, they produced Christianity. Christianity already existed in Rome, but obscurely, subterraneanly, among a class of poor people generally detested, particularly by the Jews. Christianity was not as yet a religion, it was but the belief of a sect that announced that the world was to be consumed. Presently Rome was. The conflagration, which was due to Nero, swept everything sacred away.