senex_, an old
man. The common English composite plant ragwort is called _senecio_ from
the white and feathery pappus or appendage of its seeds; and similarly,
Isidore says that the first Seneca was so named because "he was born
with white hair."

Although the father of Seneca was of knightly rank, his family had never
risen to any eminence; it belonged to the class of _nouveaux riches_,
and we do not know whether it was of Roman or of Spanish descent. But
his mother Helvia--an uncommon name, which, by a curious coincidence,
belonged also to the mother of Cicero--was a Spanish lady; and it was
from her that Seneca, as well as his famous nephew, the poet Lucan,
doubtless derived many of the traits which mark their intellect and
their character. There was in the Spaniard a richness and splendour of
imagination, an intensity and warmth, a touch of "phantasy and flame,"
which we find in these two men of genius, and which was wholly wanting
to the Roman temperament.

Of Cordova itself, except in a single epigram, Seneca makes no mention;
but this epigram suffices to show that he must have been familiar with
its stirring and memorable traditions. The elder Seneca must have been
living at Cordova during all the troublous years of civil war, when his
native city caused equal offence to Pompey and to Caesar. Doubtless,
too, he would have had stories to tell of the noble Sertorius, and of
the tame fawn which gained for him the credit of divine assistance; and
contemporary reminiscences of that day of desperate disaster when
Caesar, indignant that Cordova should have embraced the cause of the
sons of Pompey, avenged himself by a massacre of 22,000 of the citizens.
From his mother Helvia, Seneca must often have heard about the fierce
and gallant struggle in which her country had resisted the iron yoke of
Rome. Many a time as a boy must he have been told how long and how
heroically Saguntum had withstood the assaults and baffled the triumph
of Hannibal; how bravely Viriathus had fought, and how shamefully he
fell; and how at length the unequal contest, which reduced Spain to the
condition of a province, was closed, when the heroic defenders of
Numantia, rather than yield to Scipio, reduced their city to a heap of
bloodstained ruins.

But, whatever may have been the extent to which Seneca was influenced by
the Spanish blood which flowed in his veins, and the Spanish legends on
which his youth was fed, it was not in Spain that his