Then, disappointed by those in whom he had trusted, and embittered by his own successes in tyranny, he began to divert himself at Capri with debasing pleasures. He seemed to have thrown off all the restraint of decency and to have given himself up with his boon companions to the wildest orgies of dissipation and vice. His ancient biographers paint these scenes of his life in the darkest colors. He had broken all the fair promises of his earlier days and, instead of a painstaking ruler, had become a self-indulgent, besotted, and vindictive old man. The most charitable view that can be taken of his life at Capri is that his mind had become weakened by his gloomy suspicions, by his absolute authority and by his uncontrollable appetites. Milton in his “Paradise Regained,” when he represents Satan as tempting Christ with “all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them,” represents the former as saying: “All nations now to Rome obedience pay; To Rome’s great emperor, whose wide domain, In ample territory, wealth and power, Civility of manners, acts and arms And long renown, thou justly may’st prefer Before the Parthian.... This emperor hath no son and now is old, Old and lascivious and from Rome retired To Capreæ, an island small but strong On the Campanian shore, with purpose there His horrid lusts in private to enjoy, Committing to a wicked favorite All public cares, and yet of him suspicious, Hated of all and hating. With what ease, Endued with regal virtues as thou art, Appearing and beginning noble deeds, Might’st thou expel this monster from his throne, Now made a sty, and, in his place ascending, A victor people free from servile yoke!” It was certainly a very subtle form of temptation to suggest to a noble mind, the thought of supplanting a monarch who had become so reprobate and vile. The youth and early manhood of the famous writer and philosopher, Lucius Annæus Seneca, fell within the twenty-three years of the reign of Tiberius. He had been born seven years before the Christian era, at Cordova, in Spain. His father was a man of knightly rank; and his mother, Helvia, a Spanish lady, is praised by her son for the nobility and sweetness of her character. They were people of wealth, and had cultivated tastes.