Seneca

Lucius Annaeus Seneca, known as Seneca the Younger (Corduba, c. 4 BC-Rome, AD 65), was a Roman philosopher, statesman, orator and playwright born in the Spanish province of Baetica. He is called the Younger to distinguish him from his father, Seneca the Elder, also a well-known orator. He is the leading Latin voice of Stoicism, and his output, which includes moral essays, letters, dialogues and tragedies, is the most important surviving body of primary material for the school.

He came from a wealthy family. He spent part of his youth in Rome, where he studied grammar, rhetoric and philosophy under teachers such as Sotion, the Stoic Attalus and Papirius Fabianus. In his early twenties he was drawn to the Pythagorean ideas of Sotion and gave up meat for about a year, until his father urged him to stop, as the practice was linked to foreign cults. His health was fragile for most of his life because of asthma. After a stay in Egypt with his aunt Marcia, he returned to Rome and began a public career as quaestor.

His political path was uneven. Under Caligula he came close to execution, according to Cassius Dio, and survived because the emperor was told he would soon die of tuberculosis anyway. In AD 41, under Claudius, he was condemned to death, but the sentence was commuted to exile on Corsica, where he spent eight years. There he wrote consolations, including one to his mother Helvia. In AD 49 he was recalled to Rome thanks to Agrippina the Younger, who had him made praetor and tutor to her son Nero.

Between AD 54 and 62, after Claudius died and Nero took power, Seneca governed in practice alongside the praetorian prefect Burrus. He drafted speeches for the young emperor and argued for moderate rule. His influence declined over time. Enemies criticised his wealth and his acceptance of Agrippina's murder, and in 62 he withdrew from public life. In 65, accused perhaps unjustly of joining the Pisonian conspiracy, he was ordered by Nero to take his own life. He died calmly, a scene that has inspired many paintings.

His thought starts from the idea that happiness depends on virtue and on a sound judgement about what lies within our power. He separates what depends on us from what does not, and recommends accepting external events with firmness. In On the Shortness of Life he argues that time is not scarce but wasted. In On Anger he treats that passion as a vice to be corrected. In his Letters to Lucilius he offers practical philosophy, daily self-examination and a reflection on death as a natural part of life. He wrote in a clear, personal style, free of technical jargon.

His influence was vast. Christian writers such as Lactantius, Augustine and Jerome cited him with admiration, and in the Renaissance he was regarded as a master of style and of moral thought. His tragedies, such as Medea, became models for later European drama. He is still read today as a guide to living and as a witness to Stoic reflection.