Sendal. See Sexdel.
Sendel, a kind of taffeta, frequently used of old in the making of ecclesiastical garments and banners. The clergy in 1343 were forbidden to wear their hair rolled with fur or sendel.
Senderling, John Z., D.D., a Lutheran minister, was born Nov. 12, 1800, at Philadelphia, Pa. Having in early life a thirst for knowledge and a desire to be useful in the Master's service, he was advised to prepare for the (iospel ministry. In 1817 he entered Hartwick Classical and Theological Seminar}', where he remained seven years. Immediately after graduating he was li- censed to preach, and took charge of a small Church in Clay, Onondaga Co., N. Y. In 1826 he went to Centre Brunswick, near Troy, and then to the city of Troy, where he remained till 1856, when he received a call as pastor of St. Paul's Church in Johnstown, N. Y. In the
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spring of 1867 he resigned his pastorate, and lived a re- tired lilc until Dec. 20, 1877, when he was called to his rest. (B. P.)
Seneca, Lucius Ann^eus, was a teacher, rhetori- cian, philosopher, poet, essayist, epistolograplier, natural- ist, advocate, magistrate, and statesman, under the later Roman emperors of the adseititious Julian house. It is in tlie character of philosopher that his reputation has endured through all subsetiuent times. This reputation has been preserved, as it was generated, mainly by the piquancy of his style, the terseness of his expression, the incisiveness and the epigrammatic felicity of his phrase, and the constant ostentation of an earnestness which was, in some degree, factitious, and of a profun- dity which is more apparent than real. By whatever arts his renown was attained, or by whatever accidents it was perpetuated, the name of Seneca has ever contin- ued tlie most notable and the best known in the scanty catalogue of Roman philosophers, and of Romans pre- tending to philosophy. There has been no period in which any smattering of letters survived when Seneca was not admired and cited. His own profession, " Nidla dies sine linea," has been applicable to him in many forms. The fathers of the Church, the schoolmen of the Middle Age, the poets of the Renaissance, and their corrivals the Elizabethan dramatists, had all frequent recourse to Seneca, and Shakespeare was reproached with his too ready use of the convenient repertory of gnomes and maxims. In his own day, Seneca occupied a conspicuous station. His abilities merited a very high position, and his accomplishments accorded witli his abilities. He obtained the quaestorship and the praitorship in the official hierarchy when these honors were conferred by imperial favor. He was the instruc- tor and chief minister of an emperor whose excesses and atrocities have made the name of Nero a synonym for all that is brutal and heartless in despotism, despicable in license and vanity, and unparalleled in crime. He lauded frugality and simplicity (i'e Tranquill. Animi. i, 5-8 ; Ep. II, ii, 9), and echoed the desire of Propertius :
" Uthiam Ronise nemo esset dives ; et ipse Stramiuea posset dux habitaie casa."
But while eulogizing cottage life — "domus hiec sapi- entis angusta, sine cultu, sine strepitu, sine adparatu" (/>? Constant. XV, v) — he passed his days in sjilendid villas and in palaces. He professed the wise man's in- difference to the hazards of life, the caprices of fortune, and the conditions of existence, but he dwelt in all the luxury and indulgence of Roman sybaritism. He preached the blessings of obscurity in the press of cour- tiers, of whom he was the chief. He strenuously com- mended poverty, but he more sedulously increased his millions, and is charged with provoking the most serious of British revolts by the sudden recall of his usurious loans. These contrasts were human weakness — "mor- talibus mos est ex magnis raajora cupiendi" (De Benef. Ill, iii, 2) — but they were not the sage's triumphs over human intirmities and worldly temptations. He ad- dressed his treatise On Clemency to Nero, but he dis- guised, if he did not sanction, the poisoning of Claudi- us; he justitied the assassination of Agrippina by her son, and he failed to prevent the divorce and munler of the empress Octavia. He might well exclaim, "Mali inter malos vivimus" (^De Ira, III, xxvi, 4). Could he find an excuse in another of his sayings, "Mansuete immansueta tractanda?" {ibiil. xxvii, 3). He expatiated on the evil of avarice, and wrote at great length On Be- neficence, but he enriched himself by imperial confisca- tions. He exulted in the perfect free<lom of the true philosopher, and cringed to the freedmen and minions of an imbecile and semi-idiotic sovereign {Consol. ad Polyh.; Dion Cass. LXI. x). He was prominent among the Stoics of the time, whom he patronized by his coun- tenance and by his predications, he was chief among the satellites and profligates of the court, whom he re- buked by his precepts, but did not stigmatize by his
retirement. In all things he was a rhetorician and an actor. His literary productions glitter with the corus- cations of unintermitting paradox and antithesis; but the paradox of his tenets and the antithesis of his style are less novel and less startling than the contrasts be- tween his professions and his career, his doctrine and his practice {iravTa ra trni'Tiiora olf t^tXoirii^fi ttoi- iov t'lXfyx^)] [Dion Cass. LXI, x]). The image and examjjle of his life were his bequest to his friends. They should have been accompanied with the epigraph,