A tragic figure in the history of philosophy, Seneca (c. 4 BC–AD 65) was the childhood tutor and advisor of the Roman emperor Nero (37–68). After schooling the young emperor in rhetoric, politics, and Stoic philosophy, however, Seneca was betrayed by his famous student and forced to commit suicide, ending the career of one of ancient Rome’s foremost thinkers.
Seneca was born in what’s now Córdoba, Spain, and educated at a prestigious academy in Rome. As a young student, he took a particular interest in the Greek school of philosophy known as Stoicism. The Stoics, who had first flourished about two centuries earlier in Athens, believed that living simply, upholding virtue, and accepting one’s fate were the keys to happiness.
For an avowed Stoic, however, Seneca’s lifestyle during his youth was notably unrestrained. After entering politics, he developed a reputation as an adulterer and was exiled to the island of Corsica in AD 41 for allegedly sleeping with the niece of the emperor Caligula (12–41). Some of the earliest of Seneca’s works that still exist were written during his eight-year exile.
After finally returning to Rome in AD 49, Seneca became Nero’s tutor and continued to write plays, poetry, and essays. When Nero became emperor in AD 54, at age sixteen, Seneca was initially one of the emperor’s closest advisors; he even participated in Nero’s plot to kill his mother, Agrippina (15–59). Seneca tried several times to retire, but Nero, increasingly unstable, insisted that his advisor remain in Rome.
In AD 65, however, Nero accused Seneca of participating in the Pisonian conspiracy, a plot to assassinate him. The emperor ordered his teacher to commit suicide—an order that Seneca obeyed with Stoic resolve by slitting his wrists. When the wounds failed to kill him, he finished the grim task by immersing himself in a bath and suffocating himself.
ADDITIONAL FACTS
- According to the Roman historian Suetonius (69–130), Seneca was briefly a vegetarian but was forced to eat meat by the emperor Tiberius (42 BC– AD 37), who distrusted vegetarians.
- The first English translation of Seneca’s writings appeared in 1614.
- Seneca’s wife, Paulina, tried to commit suicide with her husband, but was prevented from doing so by Nero’s soldiers because the order applied only to the philosopher himself.
