Of Spanish descent, Seneca was born in Cordova
into a distinguished family of some means. As a
young boy, he went to Rome to pursue an education.
His father, Seneca the Elder, was of the
wealthy equestrian class and spent a great deal of
time in Rome. A renowned orator, Seneca the
Elder counted among his intimates the outstanding
rhetoricians of the time. In his declining
years, at the urging of his three sons, he penned
his memoirs, basing them on recollections of his
eminent colleagues. He was also an exacting disciplinarian
who planned his sons’ education to
prepare them for prominent political positions
in Rome.
Seneca’s mother,Helvia, was a woman of exceptional
intelligence with a profound interest in philosophy.
She might have pursued formal study if
her husband, 30 years her senior, had not opposed
it. However, she played an influential role in her
son Seneca’s career.
Seneca was frail and perpetually dogged by ailments,
but he overcame his frailty and compensated
for his physical limitations by exercising his
mind. A self-disciplined and enthusiastic pupil, he
received instruction in language, literature, and
rhetoric, for which he proved to have a natural
flair. His teachers of philosophy included Attalus
the Stoic and representatives from the Cynic sect
and the Pythagorean school.
Having spent his early adulthood visiting
Egypt, Seneca returned to Rome in the year 31 to
launch his political career. His aunt, into whose
care he had been entrusted in Rome, was married
to the governor of Egypt and used her influence to
get Seneca elected to the quaestorship (a financial
administrative position); later, he became a magistrate
of public works. As a lawyer, Seneca’s
trenchant oratory and pithy observations secured
his reputation and earned him a private fortune.
Regrettably, these orations, and all his works prior
to 41, have been lost.
The emperor Caligula was jealous of Seneca’s
fame and talent and would have condemned him
to death if a courtesan had not persuaded Caligula
that Seneca was in poor health and soon to die.
Ironically, this brush with mortality prompted
Seneca to abandon his profession in favor of writing
and philosophical study. During Claudius’s
reign, though, the milieu of political intrigue
nearly undid him once again when the emperor’s
third wife,Messalina, unjustly charged Seneca with
illicit goings-on in the company of the princess.An
execution was ordered, but his sentence was later
commuted to banishment, and Seneca spent eight
years in Corsica.
In Ad Helviam Matrem de Consolatione (Consolation
to Helvia), Seneca uses his rhetorical eloquence
to entreat his mother not to lament his fate,
making the Stoic argument that the mind is boundless,
infinite, beyond time and place, and incapable
of being “exiled.”He goes on to explain that while he
may be banished physically, he still possesses the
knowledge of nature’s beauty and his own goodness.
Ad Polybium was also written and published
during this period. Addressed to one of the emperor’s
freedmen, it is written in a spirit very different
from the philosophy with which Seneca
consoled his mother. The exile describes his abject
misery and heaps extravagant praise upon the attendant
in an effort to have his expulsion retracted.
Though these appeals were fruitless, Seneca was
eventually recalled from Corsica in 49 by Agrippina,
Emperor Claudius’s fourth wife, to tutor her
son, Nero, in rhetoric and etiquette.
Five years later, Agrippina poisoned Claudius,
and Nero acceded to the throne. For the next five
years, under the tutelage of Seneca and Burrus, the
young emperor’s prefect, Nero administered the
public affairs in Rome with integrity and benevolence.
Seneca recognized Nero’s brutal nature,
however, and wished to instill in him a sense of
mercy and forbearance. Agrippina, on the other
hand, scorned moral instruction and, as a result,
Seneca retired from public life.
During his retirement, Seneca wrote a multitude
of works, but his writing ended when, in the
year 65, he was accused of complicity in a conspiracy
to assassinate Nero, who subsequently ordered
him to commit suicide, an order he obeyed with
stoic courage.
Critical Analysis
Although Seneca dabbled in diverse schools of
philosophical thought, he was particularly influenced
by Stoicism, the creed of the Roman aristocrat,
which found its way into even his courtroom
discourse. Stoicism held that nature is governed
by divine reason, and since humans should strive
to coexist in concert with nature, living a life illuminated
by reason is the ultimate virtue. Those
who conduct themselves in this way have no fear of
ill fortune, nor should they be tempted by good
fortune, for they are masters of their inner domain.
Seneca also believed that when he encountered
vice in others, it was his obligation to attempt reform.
These tenets must have provided no small
comfort to him when he was expelled to Corsica,
particularly his self-assurance of his own virtue.
Seneca’s Epistulae morales, a collection of 124
moral essays, largely reflect and promote Stoic
ethics, morals, and social outlook, with numerous
asides providing an insider’s glimpse into Roman
political life in the mid-first century. They include
De Providentia (On Fortune), which explores why
bad things happen to good people; and De Ira (On
Anger), which conveys Seneca’s aversion to anger
and the blood lust and unbridled violence that it
engenders. He argues that greatness exists only in
tranquillity; that people of character may choose
not to act impulsively; and that by cherishing others,
people can set aside real and imagined abuses.
De Clementia (On Mercy), another moral essay,
was intended as instruction for Nero. Mercy,
Seneca says, means refraining from retaliation or
punishment when one has the power to inflict it.
In one particularly persuasive passage, he reminds
Nero of an incident in which the emperor demonstrated
leniency. Burrus was about to execute two
outlaws and produced paper on which Nero was to
seal their fate, but the emperor cried out, “Would
that I had not learned to write.” Seneca praises
Nero lavishly for his response:
What an utterance! All nations should have
heard it. . . .What an utterance! It should have
been spoken before a gathering of all mankind,
that unto it princes and kings might pledge allegiance.
What an utterance! Worthy of the
universal innocence of mankind. . . .
Seneca also suggests that if Nero continues to behave
in such a manner, his greatness will be assured:
That kindness of your heart will be recounted,
will be diffused . . . throughout the whole body
of the empire, and all things will be molded
into your likeness. . . . There will be citizens,
there will be allies worthy of this goodness, and
uprightness will return to the whole world. . . .
(De Clementia, Book II)
Throughout the centuries, Seneca has inspired
thinkers and artists—Romantics, transcendentalists,
absurdists, existentialists, and more—who
have been attracted by the Stoic belief in selfreliance,
the notion that God is present in both the
natural and the rational, the refusal to become embroiled
in a civilization gone mad while maintaining
a sense of responsibility to society and
humankind, and the fascination with the questions
of death and suicide. As Anna Lydia Motto writes
in her work Seneca:
Among the outstanding personalities of imperial
Rome there is no one who can more readily
arouse our interest and admiration than
Lucius Annaeus Seneca. Tutor, guardian, minister,
victim of Nero, author of tragedies, scientific
treatises, philosophical essays, and moral
epistles, he was a man to honor—and to
serve—any age. . . .
From Seneca’s Epistulae morales and other surviving
works, it can be deduced that his philosophical
and literary training served him well. His
Naturales quaestiones (Natural Questions) is a
seven-book scientific discourse on the natural universe,
most notably cosmology. Apocolocyntosis
divi Claudii (The Pumpkinification of the Divine
Claudius) is a satire, and his 10 tragedies—including
Phaedra, Agamemnon, Oedipus, Medea,
Thyestes, and Hercules Enraged—are adaptations of
Greek myths and legends (see MYTHOLOGY, GREEK
AND ROMAN). These works, as scholar Kenneth J.
Atchity points out, reflect “the hope and despair
of a progressively decadent empire” and reveal
Seneca’s knowledge of “the darkest recesses of the
human heart.” Perhaps this is why Seneca holds a
significant place in the body of world literature, for
despite the passage of time, the heart of the matters
upon which he expounded remain timeless.
English Versions of Works by Seneca
Hercules. Translated by Ranjit Bolt. New York: Theatre
Communications Group, 1997.
Moral and Political Essays. Translated by John M.
Cooper. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University
Press, 1995.
Oedipus of Lucius Annaeus Seneca. Translated by
Michael Elliot Rutenberg. Wauconda, Ill.: Bolchazy-
Carducci, 2001.
Seneca: Tragedies: Hercules, Trojan Women, Phoenician
Women, Medea, Phaedra, Vol. 1. Edited by
John G. Fitch.Cambridge,Mass.:Harvard University
Press, 2002.
Works about Seneca
Henderson, John.Morals and Villas in Seneca’s Letters:
Places to Dwell. Cambridge,U.K.: Cambridge University
Press, 2004.
Mayer, Roland. Seneca: Phaedra. London: Gerald
Duckworth & Co., 2003.
Motto, Anna Lydia. Seneca. New York: Twayne Publishers,
1973.
Pratt, Norman T. Seneca’s Drama. Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press, 2001.
Veyne, Paul. Seneca: The Life of a Stoic. Translated by
David Sullivan. London: Taylor & Francis, 2002.