SENECA, LUCIUS ANNAEUS (c. 4 B.C.—A.D. 65), second son of Seneca the elder, statesman and philosopher, was born at Corduba. He studied at Rome under the Stoic Attalus (Senec. Ep. "When I listened to Attalus declaiming against the vices, the errors, the evils of life, I often pitied humanity and regarded him as a lofty figure beyond the stature of mankind. He used to say he was a king, but to me he seemed more than a king who could pass judgment upon kings") and Sotion (Senec. /.c., "I shall not be ashamed to confess what love for Pythagoras Sotion inspired in me"). Devoting himself to rhetoric and phil osophy he rapidly attained eminence at the bar, and his popu larity attracted the attention of Caligula who, "despising the milder and more polished style of oratory," described Seneca's compositions as "mere prize exercises (commissiones meras), sand without lime" (Sueton., Calig. 53). His career was inter rupted when in A.D. 41 Claudius, at the instigation of Messalina, banished him to Corsica. In A.D. 49 Agrippina secured his recall to become tutor to her son Domitius, afterwards the emperor Nero (Tac., Ann. xii. 8, Sueton., Nero 7), at that time II years of age. When Nero came to the throne, Seneca and Afranius Burrus had paramount influence with the youthful emperor (Tac. Ann. xiii. 2) and Seneca was probably concerned in the promising manifesto with which Nero inaugurated his reign (Tac. Ann. xiii. 4). The death of Burrus (A.D. 62) greatly impaired Seneca's influence (Tac. Ann. xiv. 52) Mors. Burri infregit Senecae potentiam, quia nec bonis artibus idem virium erat altero velut duce amoto, et Nero ad fleteriores inclinabat. His enemies pointed out to Nero the vast and increasing wealth of Seneca, his popularity with the citizens, his rivalry with the emperor in oratory and poetry, which latter art he had cultivated more assiduously since Nero com menced poetry, his disparagement of Nero both as an equestrian and a singer : "How long was everything of distinction in the State to be attributed to the invention of Seneca? Nero surely was no longer a boy but in the flower of adult manhood. Let him doff his pedagogue—in his ancestors he had teachers enough" (Tac. Ann. xiv. 52). Seneca requested an interview which was granted. His speech and Nero's reply are given by Tacitus Ann. xiv. 53-56. The interview ended amicably, but Seneca practically withdrew into private life and was rarely seen in Rome, "as if detained at home by his weak health and his philosophic studies." (Tac. /.c.) Finally, in A.D. 65, on a charge of complicity in the conspiracy of Piso, he was ordered by Nero to end his life (Tac. Ann. xv. 61, Sueton. Nero 35). When the fatal message reached him, "undismayed he asked for tablets to make his will. When this was refused by the centurion, he turned to his friends and said that, since he was prevented from rewarding their services, he would leave to them the one thing, and yet the best thing, that he had to leave—the pattern of his life. . . . At the same
time he reminded his weeping friends of their duty to be strong, now by his conversation, now by sterner rebuke, asking them what had become of the precepts of wisdom, of the philosophy which through so many years they had studied in face of impend ing evils. . . . Then he embraced his wife and, with a tenderness somewhat in contrast to his fortitude, entreated her to moderate her grief and not nurse it for ever, but in the contemplation of a well-spent life to find honourable consolation for the loss of her husband" (Tac., Ann. xv. 62-63).
The most important of Seneca's works are his philosophical writings, a series of essays on practical ethics, or lay sermons, as they might be called, preaching a modified Stoicism. These, with the approximate dates of composition are : Ad Marciam de consolatione (A.D. De Ira, 3 books ; Ad Helviam de consolatione (42) ; Ad Polybium de consolatione (43-44); De brevitate vitae (49) ; De constantia sapientis ; De cle mentia, 2 books (55-56) ; De vita beata (58-59) ; De beneficiis, 7 books (62-64) ; De tranquillitate animi (62-63) ; De otio (63); De providentia (63-64); Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium Enjoying in his own time an unrivalled popularity as a writer, Seneca, it is abundantly clear, did not maintain his vogue. Quin tilian, in his review of Greek and Roman writers suitable for the reading of the student of oratory, defers Seneca to the last on account of the erroneous report that he condemned him utterly.
The remaining works may be dismissed briefly: (I) Naturales Quaestiones, 7 books (written about A.D. 63), a popular sketch of astronomy and meteorology; (2) Ludus de morte Claudii (apotheosis, apocolocyntosis) (written about A.D. 54), a short and not unamusing skit on the deification of the emperor Claudius, introducing, in the manner of the Menippean satire, snatches of verse, both Greek and Latin, in the midst of the prose. (3) Nine tragedies—Hercules Furens, Thyestes, Phoenissae, Phaedra (Hip polytus), Oedipus, Troades (Hecuba), Medea, Agamemnon, Her cules Oetaeus—modelled on Greek exemplars, show the rhetorical characteristics of his prose and are of small poetic merit. The Octavia, the only extant specimen of a tabula praetexta (a his torical drama on a Roman subject), is proved by internal evidence to be by a later writer. (4) A number of epigrams have come down to us under Seneca's name—nine lamenting his exile in Corsica, after the fashion of Ovid in the Tristia, are printed in Haase (Teubner) vol. i., p. 261, seq. They possess no special interest or distinction.
The letters of Seneca to St. Paul—which were known to Jerome and Augustine—are universally admitted to be a forgery.