Seneca the Younger

Roman philosopher and statesman

• Born: c. 4 b.c.e.
• Birthplace: Corduba (now Córdoba, Spain)
• Died: April, 65 c.e.
• Place of death: Rome (now in Italy)

An influential intellectual, Seneca also showed great abilities as coadministrator of the Roman Empire during the first years of Nero. In literature, Seneca’s essays and tragedies were influential from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, when English playwrights took his dramas as models.

Early Life

Although Seneca (SEHN-ih-kuh) the Younger was born in Corduba, his father, known as Seneca the Elder, was a conservative Roman knight who had achieved fame as an orator and teacher of rhetoric in Rome. His mother, Helvia, was an extraordinarily intelligent, gifted, and morally upright person whose love for philosophy had been checked only by her husband’s rejection of the idea of education for women.

The familial conflict was handed down to the next generation: The oldest of the three brothers, Gallio, pursued a splendid political career, but the youngest, Mela, spent his life making money and educating himself (the poet Lucan was his son). Lucius Annaeus Seneca, the second child and bearer of his father’s name, was torn between public life in the service of a corrupted state and life as philosopher and private man.

Going to Rome at a very early age, Seneca received an education in rhetoric, which was the first step toward becoming an orator with an eye to public offices. The youth also saw teachers of Stoic philosophy who taught a life of asceticism, equanimity in the face of adversity, and an evaluation of the daily work of the self, which laid the foundations of Seneca’s eclectic philosophical beliefs.

In Rome, Seneca lived with an aunt; she guarded the precarious health of the thin, feeble boy. His physical deficiencies and what were perhaps lifelong bouts with pneumonia almost led the young man to suicide; only the thought of how much this act would hurt his aging father stopped him. As intense studies distracted his mind from his sufferings, Seneca would later state that he owed his life to philosophy. In the light of his physical afflictions and his own description of himself as small, plain, and skinny, scholars doubt the veracity of the only extant antique copy of a bust of Seneca, which shows the philosopher and statesman as a corpulent old man with sharp but full features and receding hair.

Seneca’s ill health apparently caused him to spend a considerable portion of his youth and early manhood in the healthier climate of Egypt. It was not before 31 c.e. that he permanently left the East for Rome.

Life’s Work

As a result of the lobbying of his aunt, Seneca successfully entered public service as quaestor (roughly, secretary of finances), in 33. Although it is no longer known which positions he held during this period, it is most likely that he continued in ever more prestigious offices.

Besides serving the state under two difficult emperors, Tiberius and Caligula, Seneca began to achieve wealth and fame as a lawyer. From the later works that have survived, one can see how his witty, poignant, almost epigrammatical language fascinated Seneca’s listeners and how his pithy sentences, which reflected his enormous vocabulary, must have won for him cases in court. Further, Seneca’s consciously anti-Ciceronian style, which avoided long sentences and ornamental language, established his fame as an orator. Early works (now lost) made him a celebrated writer as well. Seneca’s first marriage, dating from around this time, cannot have been a very happy one; he fails to mention the name of his wife, despite the fact that they had at least two sons together, both of whom he wrote about in the most affectionate terms.

Under the reign of Caligula (37-41 c.e.), Seneca’s ill health proved advantageous. His oratorical success had aroused the envy of the emperor, who derogatorily likened Seneca’s style to “sand without lime” (meaning that it was worthless for building), and Caligula sought to execute Seneca. Seneca was spared only because one of the Imperial mistresses commented on the futility of shortening the life of a terminally ill man. Later, Seneca commented, tongue in cheek, “Disease has postponed many a man’s death and proximity to death has resulted in salvation.”

In 41, the first year of the reign of Claudius I, a struggle for power between Empress Valeria Messallina and Caligula’s sisters Agrippina and Julia Livilla brought Seneca into court on a trumped-up charge of adultery with Princess Julia. Found guilty, Seneca escaped death only because Claudius transformed the sentence into one of banishment to the barren island of Corsica. There, for the next eight years, Seneca dedicated his life to philosophy, the writing of letters, and natural philosophy; he also began to draft his first tragedies. The most powerful nonfiction works of this era are his letter of advice to his mother Ad Helviam matrem de consolatione (c. 41-42 c.e.; To My Mother Helvia, on Consolation, 1614) and the philosophical treatise De ira libri tres (c. 41-49 c.e.; Three Essays on Anger, 1614). Both works are deeply influenced by Stoic philosophy and argue that to deal with misfortune is to bear the adversities of life with dignified tranquillity, courage, and spiritual strength; further, violent passions must be controlled by the man who is truly wise.

The execution of Messallina for treason in 48 and the ensuing marriage of Claudius to Agrippina the Younger brought the latter into a position of power from which she could recall Seneca. Intent on using the famous orator and writer, Agrippina made Seneca the tutor of her son by a previous marriage, a young boy whom Claudius adopted under the name of Nero. Rather than being allowed to retire to Athens as a private man, Seneca was also made a member of the Roman senate and became praetor, the second highest of the Roman offices, in 50. Further, his new marriage to the wealthy and intelligent Pompeia Paulina drew Seneca into a circle of powerful friends—including the new prefect of the Praetorian Guard, Sextus Afranius Burrus.

The death of Claudius in 54 brought highest power to Seneca and Burrus. Their successful working relationship began when Burrus’s guard proclaimed Nero emperor, and Seneca wrote the speech of accession for the seventeen-year-old youth. For five years, from 54 to 59, the statesmen shared supreme authority and successfully governed the Roman Empire in harmony, while Nero amused himself with games and women and let them check his excesses and cruelty. Internally, the unacknowledged regency of Seneca and Burrus brought a rare period of civil justice, harmony, and political security. Seneca’s Stoicism led him to fight the cruelty of gladiatorial combat and to favor laws intended to limit the absolute power of the master over his slaves. At the frontiers of the empire, the generals of Burrus and Seneca fought victoriously against the Parthians in the East and crushed a rebellion in Britain, after which a more reformist regime brought lasting peace to this remote island.

Seneca’s fall was a direct result of Nero’s awakening thirst for power. Increasingly, Seneca and Burrus lost their influence over him and in turn became involved in his morally despicable actions. In 59, Nero ordered the murder of his mother, Agrippina, and Seneca drafted the son’s address to the senate, a speech that cleverly covered up the facts of the assassination.

Burrus’s death and replacement by an intimate of Nero in 62 led to Seneca’s request for retirement, which Nero refused; he kept Seneca in Rome, although removed from the court. Seneca’s best philosophical work was written during this time; in his remaining three years, he finished De providentia (c. 63-64; On Providence, 1614) and wrote Quaestiones naturales (c. 62-64; Natural Questions, 1614) and his influential Epistulae morales ad Lucilium (c. 62-65 c.e.; Letters to Lucilius, 1917-1925), in which he treats a variety of moral questions and establishes the form of the essay.

Early in 65, a probably false accusation implicated Seneca in a conspiracy to assassinate Nero, who ordered him to commit suicide. With Stoic tranquillity and, loosely, in the tradition of Socrates and Cato the Younger, Seneca opened his arteries and slowly bled to death. Fully composed, and with honor, the Roman noble ended a life in the course of which he had wielded immense political power and enjoyed great status as statesman and writer.

Significance

Consideration of the life and work of Seneca the Younger remains controversial. On a professional level, critics have attacked his philosophical work as eclectic and unoriginal, but it is through Seneca that more ancient ideas were handed down before the originals became known. For example, Seneca’s tragedies are easily dismissed as static, bombastic, lurid, and peopled by characters who rant and rave; still, English Renaissance works such as John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi (1613-1614) could not have been created without their authors’ knowledge of Seneca.

The reputation of Seneca the man has suffered from his political alliance with Nero, one of the most monstrous creatures of popular history. The ancient historian Tacitus is among the first to censure Seneca for his complicity in the cover-up of Agrippina’s murder: “It was not only Nero, whose inhuman cruelty was beyond understanding, but also Seneca who fell into discredit.”

A final evaluation of Seneca cannot overlook the fact that his public service ended in moral chaos after a period of doing much good for the commonwealth. It is interesting to note, however, that Seneca’s most mature writing came after his de facto resignation from political power and responsibility. It is for his brilliantly written letters to Gaius Lucilius that Seneca achieves the status of philosopher, and these words have been with Western civilization ever since.

Bibliography

Griffin, Miriam Tamara. Seneca: A Philosopher in Politics. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1992. Definitive study of Seneca; dramatizes the problem of public service for a corrupted state. Clearly written. Contains a good bibliography.

Harrison, George, ed. Seneca in Performance. London: Duckworth with The Classical Press of Wales, 2000. Twelve papers discuss characterization, staging, and Seneca’s place in the history of Roman art and literature.

Henry, Denis, and Elisabeth Henry. The Mask of Power: Seneca’s Tragedies and Imperial Power. Chicago: Bolchazy-Carducci, 1985. An interpretative study of Seneca’s tragedies, placing them in their cultural context. Includes a good bibliography.

Holland, Francis. Seneca. 1920. Reprint. Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1969. For a long time, this work was the only biography on Seneca available in English. Still useful and readable, Holland’s study is thorough and aware of the problematic status of its subject.

Motto, Anna Lydia, ed. Essays on Seneca. New York: P. Lang, 1993. Collection of critical articles on Seneca’s life and work, written with a focus on his philosophical and dramatic work.

Motto, Anna Lydia, ed. Further Essays on Seneca. New York: P. Lang, 2001. This volume continues the criticism and interpretation begun in Essays on Seneca.

Roller, Matthew B. Constructing Autocracy: Aristocrats and Emperors in Julio-Claudian Rome. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001. This book takes as its subject Rome’s transition from a republican system of government to an Imperial regime and how the Roman aristocracy reacted to this change. According to Roller, writers and philosophers negotiated and contested the nature and scope of the emperor’s authority; among these were Lucan and Seneca the Younger, on whom the text focuses.

Sorensen, Villy. Seneca: The Humanist at the Court of Nero. Translated by W. G. Jones. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984. A well-written, scholarly work that is understandable to a general audience. Brings alive the man, his time, and his political and philosophical achievements. Includes interesting illustrations.

Sutton, Dana Ferrin. Seneca on the Stage. Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1986. This volume argues against tradition that Seneca’s tragedies were not merely written to be read but crafted to be performed. Supports its claim with its discovery of stage directions that are “clues” hidden in the text of the dramas.