Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, playwright and orator (c. 4 BC–65 AD), born in Corduba, in Roman Hispania, into a wealthy equestrian-class family, who from a young age distinguished himself in Rome as a brilliant lawyer and orator, to the point of arousing the jealousy of Emperor Caligula, who spared his life only because someone assured him that Seneca's imminent death from illness would make eliminating him unnecessary. Exiled to Corsica for eight years by the empress Messalina on charges of adultery with Julia Livilla, he was recalled to serve as tutor to the young Nero, and when Nero came to the throne in 54 AD, Seneca became, together with the prefect Burrus, his chief political adviser during the early years of the reign, regarded as relatively moderate and prosperous; over time, however, he lost influence over an increasingly erratic and cruel emperor, and was ultimately accused of involvement in the Pisonian conspiracy against Nero in 65 AD — probably unjustly — and ordered to take his own life, a death he faced with exemplary Stoic composure according to Tacitus's account, cutting his veins before his disciples while continuing to philosophise. His philosophical work, mostly written in his maturity, includes the Moral Letters to Lucilius, one hundred and twenty-four letters of exceptional pedagogical and literary value on how to live according to virtue, face death and cultivate tranquillity of soul, along with several short essays — On the Shortness of Life, On Anger, On Tranquillity of Mind — that rank among the most accessible and widely read texts of Roman Stoicism as a whole. The glaring contradiction between his preaching of austerity and renunciation of wealth and his own immense fortune, amassed through his political role, has drawn criticism since antiquity and remains one of the most debated biographical puzzles of classical philosophy.

29 works

• Ad Helviam matrem, de Consolatione
• Ad Marciam, de Consolatione
• Ad Polybium, de Consolatione
• Agamemnon
• Apocolocyntosis
• Apocolocyntosis (ed. 2)
• De brevitate vitae
• De clementia
• De otio
• De vita beata
• Hercules furens
• Hercules Oetaeus
• L. Annaeus Seneca on Benefits
• Minor Dialogues, Together With the Dialogue on Clemency
• Moral Letters to Lucilius (Epistulae Morales)
• Oedipus
• On Providence
• On Providence (ed. 2)
• On the Firmness of the Wise Man
• On the Firmness of the Wise Man (ed. 2)
• On Tranquillity of Mind
• On Tranquillity of Mind (ed. 2)
• Phoenissae
• Physical science in the time of Nero being a translation of the Quaestiones natu
• Seneca's Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency
• The Tragedies of Seneca
• Thyestes
• Troades
• Two Tragedies of Seneca Medea and The Daughters of Troy