Seneca the Younger
Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger (/ˈsɛnɪkə/ SEN-ik-ə; c. 4 BC – AD 65),[1] usually known mononymously as Seneca, was a Stoic philosopher of Ancient Rome, a statesman, dramatist, and in one work, satirist, from the post-Augustan age of Latin literature.
Seneca the Younger
c. 4 BC
AD 65 (aged 68–69)
Seneca the Younger, Seneca
Seneca the Elder (father)
Seneca was born in Colonia Patricia Corduba in Hispania, and was trained in rhetoric and philosophy in Rome. His father was Seneca the Elder, his elder brother was Lucius Junius Gallio Annaeanus, and his nephew was the poet Lucan. In AD 41, Seneca was exiled to the island of Corsica under emperor Claudius,[2] but was allowed to return in 49 to become a tutor to Nero. When Nero became emperor in 54, Seneca became his advisor and, together with the praetorian prefect Sextus Afranius Burrus, provided competent government for the first five years of Nero's reign. Seneca's influence over Nero declined with time, and in 65 Seneca was forced to take his own life for alleged complicity in the Pisonian conspiracy to assassinate Nero, of which he was probably innocent.[3] His stoic and calm suicide has become the subject of numerous paintings.
As a writer, Seneca is known for his philosophical works, and for his plays, which are all tragedies. His prose works include 12 essays and 124 letters dealing with moral issues. These writings constitute one of the most important bodies of primary material for ancient Stoicism. As a tragedian, he is best known for plays such as his Medea, Thyestes, and Phaedra. Seneca had an immense influence on later generations—during the Renaissance he was "a sage admired and venerated as an oracle of moral, even of Christian edification; a master of literary style and a model [for] dramatic art."[4]
Life[edit]
Early life, family and adulthood[edit]
Seneca was born in Córdoba in the Roman province of Baetica in Hispania.[5] His branch of the Annaea gens consisted of Italic colonists, of Umbrian or Paelignian origins.[6] His father was Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Elder, a Spanish-born Roman knight who had gained fame as a writer and teacher of rhetoric in Rome.[7] Seneca's mother, Helvia, was from a prominent Baetician family.[8] Seneca was the second of three brothers; the others were Lucius Annaeus Novatus (later known as Junius Gallio), and Annaeus Mela, the father of the poet Lucan.[9] Miriam Griffin says in her biography of Seneca that "the evidence for Seneca's life before his exile in 41 is so slight, and the potential interest of these years, for social history, as well as for biography, is so great that few writers on Seneca have resisted the temptation to eke out knowledge with imagination."[10] Griffin also infers from the ancient sources that Seneca was born in either 8, 4, or 1 BC. She thinks he was born between 4 and 1 BC and was resident in Rome by AD 5.[10]
