Seneca, Lucius Annaeusbyname Seneca The Younger  ( born c. 4 BC BCE , , Corduba (now Córdoba), Spain—died AD 65 CE , , Rome )  Roman philosopher, statesman, orator, and tragedian. He was Rome’s leading intellectual figure in the mid-1st century AD CE and was virtual ruler with his friends of the Roman world between 54 and 62, during the first phase of the emperor Nero’s reign.
Early life and family

Seneca was the second son of a wealthy family. The His father, Lucius Annaeus Seneca (Seneca the Elder), had been famous in Rome as a teacher of rhetoric; the his mother, Helvia, was of excellent character and education; the his older brother was Gallio, who met by St. Paul the Apostle in Achaea in AD 52 CE; the his younger brother was the father of the poet Lucan. An aunt took Lucius as a boy to Rome; there he was trained as an orator and educated in philosophy in the school of the Sextii, which blended Stoicism with an ascetic neoNeo-Pythagoreanism. Seneca’s health suffered, and he went to recuperate in Egypt, where his aunt was the wife of the lived with her husband, the prefect, Gaius Galerius. Returning to Rome about the year 31, he began a career in politics and law. Soon he fell foul of the emperor Caligula, who was deterred from killing him only by the argument that his life was sure to be short.

In 41 the emperor Claudius banished Seneca to Corsica on a charge of adultery with the princess Julia Livilla, the Emperor’s emperor’s niece. In that uncongenial milieu he studied natural science and philosophy and wrote the three treatises entitled Consolationes (Consolations). The influence of Julia Agrippina, the Emperor’s emperor’s wife, had him recalled to Rome in 49. He became praetor in AD 50, married Pompeia Paulina, a wealthy woman, built up a powerful group of friends, including the new prefect of the guard, Sextus Afranius Burrus, and became tutor to the future emperor Nero.


Philosophical works and tragedies.

The Apocolocyntosis divi Claudii (The Pumpkinification Pumpkinification of the Divine Claudius) stands apart from the rest of Seneca’s surviving works. A political skit, witty and unscrupulous, it has as its theme is the deification—or “pumpkinification”—of Claudiusthe emperor. The rest divide into philosophical works and the tragedies. The former expound an eclectic version of “Middle” middle Stoicism, adapted for the Roman market by Panaetius of Rhodes (2nd century BC BCE) , and developed by his compatriot Poseidonius in the 1st century BC BCE. Poseidonius lies behind the books on natural science, Naturales quaestiones (Natural Questions), where lofty generalities on the investigation of nature are offset by a jejune exposition of the facts. Of the Consolationes, Ad Marciam (To Marcia) consoles a lady on the loss of a son; Ad Helviam matrem (To Mother Helvia), Seneca’s mother on his exile; and Ad Polybium (To Polybius), the a powerful freedman Polybius on the loss of a son but with a sycophantic plea for recall from Corsica. The De ira (On Anger) deals at length with the passion of anger, its consequences, and control. The De clementia (On Mercy), an exhortatory address to Nero, commends mercy as the sovereign quality for a Roman emperor. De tranquillitate animi (On Mental Tranquility), De constantia sapientis (On the Steadfastness of the Wise Man), De vita beata (On the Happy Life), and De otio (On Leisure) consider various aspects of the life and qualities of the Stoic wise manphilosopher. De beneficiis (On Favours) is a diffuse treatment of benefits as seen by giver and recipient. De brevitate vitae (On the Brevity of Life) demonstrates that our the human span is long enough if time is properly employed—which it seldom is. Best written and most compelling are the Epistulae morales, addressed Ad Lucilium epistulae morales (Moral Letters to Lucilius). Those 124 brilliant essays treat a range of moral problems not easily reduced to a single formula.


Stature and influence.

Hostile propaganda pursued Seneca’s memory. Quintilian, the 1st-century AD -CE rhetorician, criticized his educational influence; Tacitus was ambivalent on Seneca’s place in history. But his views on monarchy and its duties contributed to the humane and liberal temper of the age of the Antonines (Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius, and Commodus; AD 138–192 CE). Meanwhile, the spread of Stoicism kept his philosophy alive: ; new horizons opened when it was found to have Christian affinities. There was a belief that he knew St. Paul, and a spurious collection of letters to substantiate substantiated it. Studied by St. Augustine and St. Jerome, Seneca’s works consoled the Christian philosopher Boethius in prison. His thought was a component of the Latin culture of the Middle Ages, often filtered through anthologies. Known to Dante, Chaucer, and Petrarch, his moral treatises were edited by Erasmus; the first complete English translation appeared in 1614. In the 16th to 18th century, Senecan prose, in content and style, served the vernacular literatures as a model for essays, sermons, and moralizing. John Calvin, Montaigne, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau are instances. As the first of “Spanish” thinkers, his he had an influence in Spain that was always powerful. Nineteenth-century specialization brought him under fire from philosophers, scientists, historians, and students of literature. But later scholarly work and the interest aroused by the bimillenary commemorations of his death in Spain in 1965 suggested that a Senecan revival might be under way. In his 40 surviving books, the thoughts of a versatile but unoriginal mind are expressed and amplified by the resources of an individual style.