Seneca

Seneca (c. 4 bc-ad 65), Roman philosopher, dramatist, statesman, and eminent writer of the Silver Age of Latin literature. He was born Lucius Annaeus Seneca in Córdoba, Spain, the son of the Roman rhetorician Marcus (Lucius) Annaeus Seneca known as Seneca the Elder. Receiving thorough training in rhetoric and philosophy in Rome, Seneca the Younger, as he was known, was deeply influenced by the teachings of the Stoics, whose doctrines he later developed. In ad 49 Seneca was made a praetor and appointed tutor to Nero, the adopted son of the Emperor Claudius. Upon the death of Claudius in 54, Nero became emperor. Much of the decency and moderation of the first five years of his rule was the result of the sane guidance of Seneca and Sextus Afranius Burrus (died ad 62), Roman commander of the Praetorian Guard. By 62, however, Seneca had lost all control over the emperor. The great wealth that Seneca had amassed aroused the jealousy of Nero, who attempted unsuccessfully to have him poisoned. Seneca, by this time in retirement, devoted himself to philosophical study and writing. In 65, however, he was implicated in a conspiracy to kill Nero, led by the plebeian Gaius Calpurnius Piso (died ad 65), and he committed suicide by imperial order.

Seneca's artificial and epigrammatic style well represent the Silver Age. His orations and several scientific works are lost, but his extant writings are numerous and include the Apocolocyntosis Divi Claudi (The Pumpkinification of the Divine Claudius, about ad 54), an amusing but unkind satire on the deification of Claudius; seven books of Quaestiones Naturales, an examination of natural phenomena, from a Stoic standpoint, related to one or other of the four elements; Epistulae ad Lucilium (63-64), 124 letters addressed to a friend; and several Stoic treatises on subjects such as anger (41-44), tranquillity of mind, and philosophical retirement (55-56). His dialogues and moral treatises are human and persuasive, (showing humility), rather than dogmatic. He also wrote nine tragic dramas in verse that are all free adaptations of ancient Greek legends, the first four possibly based on the plays of Euripides.

Seneca is considered one of the outstanding Stoic philosophers of Rome; his interests were chiefly ethical, but his beliefs were more spiritual than those of the earlier Stoics. His verse tragedies exerted a profound influence upon the development of classical drama in Italy, France, and England when they were revived during the Renaissance. Later dramatists were attracted to Seneca by his ornate and rhetorical style, his regularity of form, his sensational themes of crime, horror, and revenge, his reflective and introspective qualities, and the Stoic fatalism of his characters.