Seneca

For other uses, see Seneca (disambiguation).

Seneca
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Statue of Seneca in Córdoba, his native city, next to the Puerta de Almodóvar. Amadeo Ruiz Olmos, 1965.
Born	Lucius Annaeus Seneca 4 BC Corduba
Died	Rome
Cause of death	Suicide

Lucius Annaeus Seneca (Corduba, 4 BC – Rome, AD 65), called Seneca the Younger to distinguish him from his father, was a Roman philosopher, politician, orator and writer known for his works of a moral character. The son of the orator Marcus Annaeus Seneca, he was quaestor, praetor, senator and suffect consul under the reigns of Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero, as well as tutor and advisor to the Emperor Nero. His role as tutor during Nero's childhood is depicted in the famous play Britannicus by Racine.

Seneca stood out both as an intellectual and as a politician. An accomplished orator, he was a dominant figure in Roman politics during the reigns of Claudius and Nero, being one of the most admired, influential and respected senators. Between the years 54 and 62, during the first years of the reign of his young pupil Nero, Seneca governed the Roman Empire de facto together with Sextus Afranius Burrus. This earned him numerous enemies, and he was forced to withdraw from the front line of politics in the year 62. Accused, perhaps falsely, of taking part in the Pisonian conspiracy against Nero, he was forced to commit suicide by his former pupil in the year 65.

As a writer, Seneca went down in history as one of the foremost representatives of Stoicism. His work constitutes the main written source of Stoic philosophy that has survived to the present day. It encompasses plays as well as philosophical dialogues, treatises on natural philosophy, consolations and letters. Using a markedly rhetorical, accessible style, far removed from technicalities, he outlined the main features of late Stoicism, of which, together with Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, he is considered the foremost exponent.

Seneca's influence on later generations was immense. He was quoted by Christian writers and philosophers such as Lactantius, Saint Augustine and Saint Jerome. During the Renaissance he was "admired and venerated as an oracle of moral, even of Christian edification; a master of literary style and a model for dramatic art".

Biography

Origins and youth

Portrait of Seneca after an ancient model (pseudo-Seneca), by Lucas Vorsterman I (1638). National Library of France.

His family came from Corduba—present-day Córdoba—in the province of Baetica in Hispania. Tradition has placed his birth in Corduba around the year AD 1 (three possible dates are considered for his birth: the years AD 1, 4 and 5). Martial, also a Hispanic, states this in an epigram:

Duosque Senecas unicumque Lucanum / facunda loquitur Corduba [...]

— Martial: Epigrams, I, 61, 8-9.

Seneca's father, Marcus Annaeus Seneca, was an imperial procurator who became a renowned expert in rhetoric, and he married a young noblewoman born in Urgavo (present-day municipality of Arjona, Jaén), Helvia. Besides Lucius, Marcus had two other sons who, in their own way, also attained some prominence. The first, Novatus, better known as Gallio, was the governor of Achaea who declined to exercise his jurisdiction over Saint Paul and sent him to Rome. The second, Mela, though less ambitious, was a skilled financier famous for being the father of the poet Lucan, who was therefore the nephew of Lucius Seneca.

Not much is known about the life of Lucius Seneca before the year AD 41, and what is known comes from what Seneca himself wrote. Be that as it may, it is clear that he came from a distinguished family belonging to the highest Hispanic society at a time when the province of Hispania was at its height within the Roman Empire.

It seems that he spent the first years of his life in Rome, under the protection of his mother's half-sister, his aunt Marcia. It is claimed that at that time he lived humbly in a room on the upper floor of a public bath, which is probably false, since Marcia was a wealthy person. During this time, it seems, he was taught rhetoric and introduced to Stoicism by the philosopher Attalus.

Marcia was married to a Roman eques (knight), who in the year 16 was appointed governor of Egypt by the Emperor Tiberius. Seneca accompanied the couple to Alexandria, in Egypt, where he acquired notions of administration and finance while studying the geography and ethnography of Egypt and India, and developing his interest in the natural sciences, in which, according to Pliny the Elder, he would stand out for his knowledge of geology, oceanography and meteorology.

Under the influence of the Eastern mystery cults present in Egypt, he at first showed a certain inclination toward the Pythagorean mysticism taught by Sotion, an eclectic-Pythagorean philosopher, and toward the cults of Isis and Serapis, which at that time were gaining a great number of followers among the Romans. This would lead him to adopt vegetarianism, then popularized by such doctrines. Later, however, he leaned toward Stoicism, a philosophy he would hold until the end of his days. His education, then, was highly varied, rich and open: besides his training in Egypt, it seems that he had already studied grammar, rhetoric and philosophy in Rome; it is also possible that at some point he traveled to Greece to continue his education in Athens, something very common among the patricians of his time. Be that as it may, he left in writing that he had studied with Sotion, with the Stoic Attalus and with Papirius Fabianus. Later, he was a close friend of the Cynic Demetrius.

Early political career

Nero and Seneca. Eduardo Barrón González, 1904. Museum of Zamora

Seneca always had poor health, especially because of the asthma he had suffered since childhood. So much so that he went as far as writing that the only thing that kept him from killing himself was his father's inability to bear his loss.

In the year 31, Seneca returned to Rome where, despite his poor health, his provincial origin and the fact that he came from a family with comparatively little influence, he was appointed quaestor, thus beginning his cursus honorum, in which he soon stood out for his brilliant style as an orator and writer. By the time the Emperor Caligula succeeded Tiberius in the year 37, Seneca had become the leading orator of the Senate and had aroused the envy and jealousy of the new, megalomaniac Caesar, who, according to the historian Cassius Dio, ordered his execution. According to the same historian, it was a woman close to Caligula's innermost circle who managed to have him revoke the sentence by convincing Caligula that Seneca, asthmatic and of notoriously poor health, was also suffering from tuberculosis and would soon die on his own. As a consequence of this incident Seneca withdrew from public life.

In the year 41, on the death of Caligula and the enthronement of Claudius, Seneca, who was still a prominent figure in Roman politics, was again sentenced to death, although the penalty was commuted to exile on Corsica. The reasons for this sentence are unknown, but the official verdict accused him of having committed adultery with Julia Livilla, Caligula's sister, a rather improbable fact. More plausibly, it has been suggested that Claudius's wife, the celebrated Valeria Messalina, would have considered him dangerous now that Caligula was dead. Claudius's enthronement had taken place against the opposition of the Senate, and Seneca, who because of his prestige as an orator was probably one of the most influential senators, could have been a potential political enemy for Claudius.

Exile in Corsica and return to Rome

His exile in Corsica lasted eight years. During that time he wrote a consolatio, or consolation, to his mother Helvia, following the death of his father Marcus, which stands out for advocating Stoic attitudes very different from those displayed, in that same period, in the Consolation to Polybius, named after one of Claudius's imperial freedmen, who held great power and influence over the Emperor. In this letter, which was probably never intended for publication, he shows himself abjectly flattering and seeks imperial pardon.

The exile lasted until the year 49 when, after the fall of Messalina, Claudius's new wife, the equally celebrated Agrippina the Younger, managed to rehabilitate him. He was recalled to Rome and, at Agrippina's suggestion, was appointed praetor in the city. His rise did not end there, for in the year 51, again at Agrippina's urging, he was appointed tutor to the young Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, the future Nero, Agrippina's son by an earlier marriage. Such a drastic change in his fortunes was due, according to the historian Tacitus, to the fact that she, besides seeking an illustrious tutor for her son, believed that Seneca's fame would make the imperial family more popular; a grateful Seneca, beholden to her, would moreover serve as an important ally and a wise advisor in the plans she harbored for her son Nero to attain power.

In the year 54, the Emperor Claudius died, according to most historical sources poisoned by Agrippina herself, and his stepson Nero rose to power. Although there is no evidence whatsoever that Seneca was involved in the murder of Claudius, he did mock the old emperor in his satirical work entitled Apocolocyntosis divi Claudii ("Pumpkinification of the Divine Claudius"), in which Claudius, after being deified, ends up, following a series of vicissitudes, as a mere bureaucrat in Hades. With the rise to power of the young Nero, who was then 17 years old, Seneca was appointed political advisor and minister alongside an austere military officer named Sextus Afranius Burrus. He was also honored by his pupil with the office of consul suffectus between May and October of 55.

Government of the Roman Empire

Imaginary marble bust of Seneca, made in the 17th century. Museo del Prado.

During the following eight years, Seneca and Burrus, whom all Roman historians regarded as the worthiest and most enlightened people in Nero's circle, governed the Roman Empire de facto. That period would stand out, according to the Emperor Trajan himself, as one of the periods of "the best and most just government of the entire imperial era". Their policy, based on compromise and diplomacy rather than on innovation and idealism, was modest but efficient: at every moment they sought to restrain the excesses of the young Nero, while avoiding placing great real power in the hands of Agrippina. Thus, while Nero devoted himself, following Seneca's instructions, to morally "acceptable" leisure, Seneca and Burrus took hold of power, in which they promoted a series of legal and financial reforms, such as the reduction of indirect taxes; they prosecuted concussion, that is, the corruption of provincial governors; they waged a successful war in Armenia under the command of Corbulo, which established a Roman protectorate in that country and proved, in the long run, fundamental for safeguarding the empire's eastern frontier; at Seneca's urging, expeditions were sent to find the sources of the Nile river... It is worth noting that neither Burrus nor Seneca held any institutional office during this period, beyond that of senators, and so they exercised power from behind the imperial throne, as mere favorites and advisors of the young Caesar, who apparently held his tutor in high esteem.

However, as Nero grew older, he began to free himself from Seneca's "benign" influence, in such a way that, while the exercise of power was wearing down the philosopher, he was beginning to lose influence over his pupil Nero. Taking advantage of Seneca's loss of influence and exhaustion, in the year 58 Publius Suillius Rufus, an advisor of the young Nero, went as far as accusing him, absurdly according to Tacitus, of sleeping with Agrippina, thereby launching a smear campaign in which the philosopher was accused of crimes as outlandish as deploring the tyrannical imperial regime, extravagance in his banquets, hypocrisy and flattery in his writings—it was at this moment that the letter to the freedman Polybius came to light—, usury, and, above all, excessive wealth. Indeed, Seneca's wealth in this period became proverbial, as when the poet Juvenal speaks of the great gardens of the immensely rich Seneca. It is likely that the philosopher's immense wealth brought about his fall before Nero, who would not tolerate a private individual overshadowing him in that respect.

Fall and death

Main article: The Death of Seneca in art

The suicide of Seneca, in the Nuremberg Chronicle, published in 1493.

In the year 59, Seneca's former great protector, Agrippina, was murdered by Nero, which would mark the beginning of the end for Seneca. Although they were possibly not involved, Seneca and Burrus had to carry out a campaign to clean up the Emperor's public image in order to minimize the impact the crime might have. Seneca wrote the famous letter to the Senate in which he justified Nero and explained how Agrippina had conspired against her son. This has been heavily criticized ever since, and has been a frequent source of the accusations of hypocrisy against Seneca. When Burrus died in the year 62, Seneca's position in power became untenable, as he had lost a good part of his political capital and his support. The smear campaign, moreover, deprived him of closeness to the Emperor, who, surrounded by flatterers and upstarts such as Tigellinus, Vitellius or Petronius, would soon begin to talk of getting rid of his old tutor.

Thus, in that same year 62 Seneca asked Nero to let him retire from public life, and offered his entire fortune to the Emperor. The retirement was tacitly granted, although the fortune was not accepted until years later. In this way, Seneca managed to withdraw from the increasingly dangerous Roman court, and began to spend his time traveling with his second wife, Paulina, through southern Italy. At the same time, he began to write one of his most famous works, the Letters to Lucilius, a true example of the essay, in which Seneca offers all kinds of wise counsel and reflections to Lucilius, a close friend who supposedly served as Roman procurator in Sicily. This work would serve as an example and inspiration to Michel de Montaigne in writing his Essays.

Even so, Seneca did not manage to rid himself entirely of the obsessive perversity of his former pupil. According to Tacitus, it seems that in his last years Seneca suffered a poisoning attempt, foiled thanks to the simple diet the philosopher had adopted, anticipating an attack of this kind. Be that as it may, in the year 65 he was accused of being implicated in the famous conspiracy of Piso against Nero. Although there was no firm evidence against him, Piso's conspiracy served Nero as a pretext to purge Roman society of many patricians and knights whom he considered subversive or dangerous, and among them was Seneca himself. And so Seneca, along with many others, was sentenced to death, a victim of the failed conspiracy.

The Suicide of Seneca (1871), by Manuel Domínguez Sánchez.

On Seneca's death, the historian Tacitus relates that the tribune Silvanus was charged with delivering the news to the philosopher, but, as he was one of the conspirators and felt great shame before Seneca, he ordered another tribune to bring him Caesar's notification: a patrician such as Seneca was expected not to choose to await execution, but to commit suicide after receiving the death sentence. When Seneca received the message, he calmly weighed the situation and asked for permission to draw up his will, which was denied him, since Roman law provided in such cases that all the conspirator's property should pass to the imperial patrimony.

Knowing that Nero would act cruelly toward him, he decided to open his veins on the spot, cutting himself on the arms and legs. His wife Paulina imitated him to avoid being humiliated by the Emperor, but the guards and servants prevented her, and other sources state that she actually did commit suicide, although Suetonius states that she lived until the principate of Domitian. Seneca, seeing that his death was not coming, asked his physician Eustacio Anneo to give him Greek poison (hemlock), which he drank but which had no effect on him. He finally asked to be taken to a hot bath, where the steam ended up suffocating him, a victim of the asthma he suffered from.

Seneca's suicide was followed, moreover, by those of his two brothers and of his nephew Lucan, who knew that Nero's cruelty would soon fall upon them as well. Seneca was cremated without any ceremony. He had so prescribed in his will when, in his days of wealth and power, he thought about his last moments.

Philosophy

"Errare humanum est" (To err is human). A phrase attributed to Seneca, although it does not appear in his writings.

As "a major philosophical figure of the Roman Imperial Period", Seneca's lasting contribution to philosophy has been to the school of Stoicism. His writing is highly accessible and was the subject of attention from the Renaissance onward by writers such as Michel de Montaigne. He has been described as "a towering and controversial figure of antiquity" and "the world's most interesting Stoic".

Stoicism was a popular philosophy in this period, and many upper-class Romans found in it a guiding ethical framework for political involvement. Seneca shows some interest in Platonic metaphysics, but never with a clear commitment. The soul (spiritus) of man is what is rational and divine in man. "That day, which you fear as being the end of all things, is the birthday of your eternity". It was once popular to regard Seneca as highly eclectic in his Stoicism, but modern scholarship sees him as a fairly orthodox Stoic, albeit a free-minded one. He also frequently quoted Epicurus, especially in his Letters. His interest in Epicurus is mainly limited to using him as a source of ethical maxims. Even so, Seneca follows Stoic virtue ethics as opposed to Epicurean hedonism, upholding the superiority of virtue over pleasure.

However, if they (virtue and pleasure) were entirely inseparable, we should not see some things pleasant but not honorable, and others most honorable, but difficult and attainable only through suffering. [...] Virtue is a lofty, sublime, royal, invincible, untiring quality: pleasure is low, servile, weak, perishable; its haunts and homes are the brothel and the tavern. [...] The supreme good is immortal: it knows no end, and admits neither satiety nor regret [...] but pleasure dies at the end.

Seneca wrote a number of books on Stoicism, mainly on ethics, with one work (Naturales Quaestiones) on the physical world. Seneca drew on the writings of many of the early Stoics: he often mentions Zeno, Cleanthes and Chrysippus; and frequently quotes Posidonius, with whom Seneca shared an interest in natural phenomena. Seneca did not concern himself with the logical doctrines of Stoicism and only concerns himself with physics from a moral and religious point of view, as it helps one lose the fear of natural phenomena and of death, and allows one to admire the greatness of the world and of the divinity. His moral essays are based on Stoic doctrines. Seneca took an indulgent view of the imperfections of humanity (hence the maxim attributed to him: "Errare humanum est"), transforming his basic moral maxim into love among men, even toward slaves.

What is our purpose? What precepts do we offer? Should we bid them refrain from bloodshed? What a little thing it is not to harm one whom you ought to help! It is indeed worthy of great praise when man treats man with kindness! Shall we advise stretching forth one's hand to the shipwrecked sailor, or pointing out the way to the wanderer, or sharing a crust with the starving? Yes, if I can tell you first everything which ought to be granted or withheld; meanwhile, I can lay down for mankind a rule, in short compass, for our duties in human relationships: all that you behold, that which comprises both god and man, is one: we are the parts of one great body. Nature produced us related to one another, since she created us from the same source and to the same end. She engendered in us mutual affection, and made us prone to friendship. She established fairness and justice; according to her ruling, it is more wretched to commit than to suffer injury. Through her orders, let our hands be ready for all that needs to be helped.

His works discuss both ethical theory and practical advice, and Seneca stresses that both parts are distinct but interdependent. His Letters to Lucilius show Seneca's search for ethical perfection and "represent a kind of philosophical testament for posterity". Seneca regards philosophy as a balm for the wounds of life. For him, "philosophy, he says, teaches us to act, not to speak", the Sage being "the educator of the human race". The destructive passions, especially anger and grief, must be uprooted, or moderated according to reason. He discusses the relative merits of the contemplative life and the active life, and considers it important to confront one's own mortality and to know how to face death. Voluntary death is acceptable when the body is not in a condition to fulfill the natural end of life: happiness. Suicide, then, is valid as a moral option, since it allows us to leave life with dignity when the individual deems it fitting according to his freedom and in full use of his rational faculties, given that life is not measured by its length; in Seneca's words, "foolish is he who lives to suffer". One must be willing to practice poverty and to use wealth properly, and he writes about favors, clemency, the importance of friendship and the need to benefit others. The universe is governed for the best by a rational providence, and this must be reconciled with the acceptance of adversity.

Assessment and reputation

Later reputation

Michel de Montaigne (here after a portrait by Dumonstier) never ceased to acknowledge Seneca's influence on his magnum opus, the Essays.

Tertullian, who considered that many of the moral doctrines set out by Seneca bore a great resemblance to those set out in the Bible.

Seneca is one of the few Roman philosophers who has always enjoyed great popularity (at least in continental Europe; in the Anglo-Saxon world it was not until the 20th century that the figure of Seneca was rescued from oblivion), as shown by the fact that his work has been admired and celebrated by some of the most influential Western thinkers and intellectuals: Erasmus of Rotterdam, Michel de Montaigne, René Descartes, Denis Diderot, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Francisco de Quevedo, Thomas De Quincey, Dante, Petrarch, Saint Jerome, Saint Augustine, Lactantius, Chaucer, John Calvin, Baudelaire, Honoré de Balzac... all showed their admiration for Seneca's work.

Together with that of Cicero, Seneca's work was one of the best known to medieval thinkers, and since many of his doctrines are compatible with the Christian idiosyncrasy, Fathers of the Church such as Saint Augustine often quote him; Tertullian considered him a saepe noster, that is, "often one of ours", and Saint Jerome went as far as including him in his Catalogue of Saints.

During the Middle Ages, in fact, the legend arose that Saint Paul had converted Seneca to Christianity, and that his death in the bath was a kind of covert baptism. The origin of this legend may have been that Saint Paul met Seneca's elder brother, Gallio (Acts 18: 12-17), to whom he later alludes in the last of the letters to the Gentiles (II Timothy 4:16), on account of which a false correspondence between the apostle and Seneca would have been written.

Seneca's supposed conversion to Christianity was a recurring theme during the Late Roman Empire and the Middle Ages; it formed part of the "Golden Legend", and several spurious letters between Seneca and Saint Paul even appeared in which they exchange doctrinal points of view; in one of them, dated to the 3rd or 4th century, the Great Fire of Rome is even recounted, although Seneca was probably outside the city at the time. On the other hand, his work Naturales quaestiones, a treatise on the natural sciences already praised by Pliny the Elder, was during the Middle Ages the unshakable reference work on the matters it addressed; only Aristotle enjoyed greater prestige in that field.

Plato, Seneca, and Aristotle in a medieval illustration (c. 1325–1335).

Moreover, Seneca's influence can be seen throughout humanism and the other Renaissance currents. His assertion of the equality of all men, his advocacy of a sober and moderate life as a way of finding happiness, his contempt for superstition, his anthropocentric views... would all find a place in Renaissance thought. Erasmus of Rotterdam, for example, was the first to prepare a critical edition of his works (1515), and Calvin's first work was an edition of De Clementia, in 1532. Robert Burton quotes him in his Anatomy of Melancholy, and Juan Luis Vives and Thomas More held him in high esteem and echoed his ethical ideas. In Montaigne's work, the Essays, references to Seneca's work are constant, both in form and in opinions, many of which are common to both thinkers: for example, the justification of suicide as a way of avoiding a worse death is analogous in both. Formally, many of Montaigne's essays resemble the structure developed by Seneca in his Letters to Lucilius (the posing of a topic, but not of a thesis about it; a more or less linear development in which examples are added but digressions are avoided; and a final conclusion on the topic posed, deduced from all the foregoing), which have been seen as a clear forerunner of the modern essay. And, although the ideas presented by Seneca cannot be considered original or systematic in their exposition, his importance is paramount in making many of the ideas of Greek philosophy accessible and popular.

At present, his work has fallen into a certain oblivion, brought about by the modern abandonment of the study of classical languages and disciplines. However, it continues to surprise by the relevance and accessibility of many of his ideas and by the ease of reading and the clarity with which it appears in vernacular translations of his work: the Letters to Lucilius have been compared to a self-help book, and indeed, following the film Gladiator, both these and the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius were republished with great success in the Anglo-Saxon world.

Assessment

Museum of Fine Arts of Córdoba. Mateo Inurria (1894-1895)

From his beginnings, Seneca embraced Stoicism, above all in its moral aspect, and all his work revolves around this doctrine, of which he became, at least in theory, one of the foremost exponents. However, although in his work he always presents himself as a Stoic, already in his own time he was branded a hypocrite, as he was unable to live according to the principles he advocated in his work.

Indeed, throughout his life he was accused of having slept with married women, and while it is true that such accusations were often nothing more than mere slander, in many other cases they seem to have been well founded. Furthermore, his close relationship with Nero's excesses demonstrates the profound limitations of his teachings regarding the temperance and self-discipline proper to a Stoic. Likewise, it would be inexplicable for a true Stoic to write the letters he sent to Rome from his exile in Corsica, begging, in the most servile and humiliating manner, for his pardon. In his Pumpkinification of Claudius he ridiculed some behaviors and policies of the Emperor Claudius that any Stoic would have applauded, thereby showing that he placed his principles at the service of Nero, disparaging Claudius while proclaiming that Nero would be wiser and longer-lived than the legendary Nestor. In this work he presents a criticism of the deification of humans, taking the case of Claudius as a clear example, and seizes the opportunity to criticize and ridicule him.

The letter to the Senate in which he justifies the murder of Agrippina has always been seen as unforgivable and as an act of great moral baseness. In the face of other acts of Nero, such as the murder of Britannicus or the repudiation of his first wife Octavia, Seneca always kept a silence that many have seen as cowardice and even acquiescence. The accusations of corruption that accompanied his government, which might well be sustained in view of the fabulous fortune he made in that period, would be further proof of Seneca's inability to put into practice the Stoic principles he so admired.

However, it must be noted that the vast majority of the accusations leveled against Seneca were made either by political opponents during the philosopher's lifetime, so that their validity must be taken with caution, or long after his death, so that Seneca's weaknesses were very possibly in reality much smaller than they appeared to be. Be that as it may, Seneca has gone down to posterity as one of the saddest examples of a man who failed to live according to his own ideals.

At present, environmentalists use his name in the expression "Seneca effect" or "Seneca cliff" to express that the decline of civilizations is faster than their rise. This reference is based on the quotation that says: "It would be some consolation for our weakness and our affairs if all things perished as slowly as they come into being; instead, growth proceeds slowly, while the fall is rapid." Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Letters to Lucilius. Book XIV, Letter 91, 6.

Works

Letters to Lucilius (1458).

The works of Seneca that have come down to us can be divided into four groups: the moral dialogues, the letters, the tragedies and the epigrams. Seneca's philosophy is expressed in these works. He did not write a systematic work of philosophy; his philosophical thought, his Stoic ideas, are displayed throughout all his work.

The dialogues are eleven moral works preserved in a manuscript of the Biblioteca Ambrosiana. With the exception of the one known by the name On Anger, they are relatively short. The long dialogue On Anger is dedicated to his brother Novatus, who had asked him to write to him about how to mitigate anger.

In exile he wrote the treatise On Providence, dedicated to Lucilius the younger. Also from his exile is the most exquisite dialogue and the one fullest of personal details, which he wrote to his mother: Consolation to Helvia. Alongside the treatise On Providence must be placed On the Constancy of the Wise Person, probably written after the year 47. Having returned to the tasks of government, he wrote the dialogue On the Shortness of Life, in all likelihood written in the year 55. To his brother Gallio (who received this name from his adoptive father, Junius Gallio) he dedicated the dialogue The Happy Life, a curious defense of his way of life as a Stoic philosopher.

During the period of his retirement from political life he wrote Natural Questions, a book dedicated to Lucilius dealing with natural phenomena, in which ethics is mixed with physics.

Written in prose and verse, but set apart from his other works as a unique case, is the Apocolocyntosis, a ferocious satire on the deification of Claudius, with political criticism and personal malice, since Claudius was responsible for his exile.

Of all Seneca's poetic work, his ten tragedies are the fruit of an independent creative activity that he pursued throughout his life, but especially in the middle period of Nero's education, Nero being a great lover of the theater and of declamation. We know that he did indeed compose them because Tacitus (Annales, XIV, 52) relates that Seneca was reproached for having written them in keeping with the taste Nero showed for them. Ten tragedies have come down to us, of which eight do seem to be his: Phaedra, Troades, Thyestes, Phoenissae, Medea, Oedipus, Agamemnon and The Madness of Hercules. One, however, is of doubtful attribution: Hercules Oeteus / Hercules on Oeta; and another is certainly apocryphal: Octavia.

Philosophical

Consolations

• Consolation to Marcia (AD 37-41)
• Consolation to Helvia (AD 41-42)
• Consolation to Polybius (AD 42-43)

Dialogues

Main article: Dialogues (Seneca)

• On Anger (AD 41)
• On the Shortness of Life (AD 48-49)
• On Tranquility of Mind (AD 53-54)
• On the Firmness of the Wise Person (AD 55-56)
• On Clemency (AD 55-56)
• On the Blessed Life or On Happiness (AD 58-59)
• On Benefits (AD 59-62)
• On the Retired Life or On Leisure (AD 62)
• On Providence (AD 63)

Letters

• Letters to Lucilius (AD 62-64)

Others

• Natural Questions (AD 62-63)

Literary

Tragedies

• Hercules
• The Trojan Women
• The Phoenician Women
• Medea
• Phaedra
• Oedipus
• Agamemnon
• Thyestes
• Hercules on Oeta (attributed)
• Octavia (attributed)

Satire

• Apocolocyntosis (AD 54)

Others

• Epigrams (attributed)

Apocryphal

• Cujus etiam ad Paulum apostolum leguntur epistolae. Correspondence between Seneca and Paul of Tarsus. The letters were dated to around AD 370 by expert Latinists during the Renaissance, and since then they have been considered a forgery.

Translations

Karl Alfred Blüher produced a fundamental study on the legacy of the Cordoban philosopher in Spanish culture: Séneca en España. Investigaciones sobre la recepción de Séneca en España desde el siglo XIII hasta el siglo XVII (Madrid: Gredos, 1983). As a Hispanic, it is natural that Spanish humanists should have had a certain devotion to him, as to other authors native to this soil such as his nephew Lucan or Marcus Valerius Martialis. But in general he was quoted indirectly and secondhand in the Spanish Middle Ages until, in the 15th century, complete codices of his works began to circulate in the hands of humanists such as Pedro Díaz de Toledo and Alonso de Cartagena, Bishop of Burgos.

Philobiblon records 97 manuscripts with vernacular renderings of Seneca into Castilian, Catalan and Galician-Portuguese in the 15th century alone. The tragedies were rendered into Catalan. Antoni Canals translated De providentia between 1396 and 1404. Two Catalan translations of the Letters to Lucilius are known, one from French and the other direct. The wife of Alfonso the Magnanimous read one, and Martin the Humane ordered the translation of an excerpta compiled by the Italian Dominican Luca Manelli. In Castile, almost all his works were translated during the reign of John II, and the Marquis of Santillana also commissioned translations. Alonso de Cartagena translated Luca Manelli's Tabulatio, De providentia, De clementia, De constantia, Libro de las siete artes liberales (Letter 88 to Lucilius), and De vita beata (included in De otio). He also translated apocrypha: De remediis fortuitorum, Formulae vitae honestae, De legalibus institutis and eleven Declamationes of Seneca the Elder. The converso jurist Pedro Díaz de Toledo, of the circle of the Marquis of Santillana, translated the apocryphal Proverbia Senecae. Seventy-five of Seneca's letters were rendered anonymously into Castilian from an Italian version that in turn came from a French one, and were translated in 1425 by order of Fernán Pérez de Guzmán. A second Castilian version of 81 letters derives from a Catalan one. The one commissioned by the Marquis of Santillana was lost. And Nuño de Guzmán ordered the translation of the Apocolocyntosis from the Italian version of Pier Candido Decembrio. Even the apocryphal correspondence between Seneca and Saint Paul was translated. In the 16th century the humanist Martín del Río produced a critical Latin edition of the Tragedies of which he was very proud: In L. Annaei Senecae Cordubensis poetae gravissimi Tragoedias decem, Antwerp, Officina Plantiniana, 1576.

In the modern era, Seneca's tragedies were translated by Agustín Ruiz de Santayana, father of the philosopher, and by Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo. Recent is the one by Leonor Pérez Gómez (Tragedias completas, Madrid: Cátedra, 2012, 2 vols.), although in the 20th century the exiled Republican Canon José Manuel Gallegos Rocafull translated an Obras completas de Lucio Anneo Séneca (Mexico, UNAM, 1944 and 1945, 2 vols.) that in fact includes only the moral treatises (he published the Letters with the FCE), and also very well known was the Castilian translation by the Francoist priest Lorenzo Riber, Obras completas de Séneca: discurso previo, traducción, argumento y notas... (Madrid: Editorial Aguilar, 1943, 1949, 1957, 1966).

There are specific Castilian translations of the Letters to Lucilius by the Canon of Granada Francisco Navarro y Calvo (Epístolas morales, Madrid: Luis Navarro, 1884, which also includes the treatises; but they seem to have been made from French), J. M. Gallegos Rocafull (Cartas morales, Mexico: FCE, 1951-1953, 2 vols.), Jaime Bofill y Ferro (Barcelona: Iberia, 1955, 2 vols, id. 1964; reprinted in Barcelona: Planeta, 1985); Vicente López Soto (Barcelona: Juventud, 1982) and Ismael Roca Meliá (Madrid: Gredos, 1986), and into Catalan by Doctor Carles Cardó (1928-1931), 4 vols., with the Latin text and critical apparatus.

Eponymy

• The lunar crater Seneca is named in his memory.
• The asteroid (2608) Seneca also commemorates his name.

See also

• Marcus Annaeus Seneca (Seneca the father)
• (2608) Seneca

Bibliography

• Juan Manuel Díaz Torres, ed. (2013). Obra completa. Biblioteca de Grandes Pensadores (in español). Madrid: Editorial Gredos. ISBN 978-84-249-3673-0.
• Medea (in español). Trans. Valentín García Yebra. Madrid: Editorial Gredos. 1982. ISBN 84-249-0330-7/ISBN 84-249-2311-1.
• Tragedias (in español). Complete works. Madrid: Editorial Gredos. ISBN 978-84-249-1853-8.

1. Volumen I: Hércules loco. Las troyanas. Las fenicias. Medea (in español). 1997. ISBN 978-84-249-3536-8.
2. Volumen II: Fedra. Edipo. Agamenón. Tiestes. Hércules en el Eta. Octavia (in español). 1988. ISBN 978-84-249-3541-2.

• Epístolas morales a Lucilio (in español). Complete works. Madrid: Editorial Gredos. ISBN 978-84-249-1642-8.

1. Volumen I: Libros I-IX, epístolas 1-80 (in español). 1994. ISBN 978-84-249-1033-4.
2. Volumen II: Libros X-XX y XII, epístolas 81-125 (in español). 1989. ISBN 978-84-249-1398-4.

• Diálogos. Apocolocintosis; Consolaciones a Marcia, a su madre Helvia y a Polibio (in español). Madrid: Editorial Gredos. 1996. ISBN 978-84-249-1805-7.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
• Diálogos; Sobre la Providencia. Sobre la firmeza del sabio. Sobre la ira. Sobre la vida feliz. Sobre el ocio. Sobre la tranquilidad del espíritu. Sobre la brevedad de la vida (in español). Madrid: Editorial Gredos. 2000. ISBN 978-84-249-2261-0.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
• Cuestiones naturales (in español). Madrid: Editorial Gredos. 2013. ISBN 978-84-249-1110-2.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
• Cartas a Lucilio (in español). Literal, non-vernacular translation from Latin. Third edition. Barcelona: Editorial Juventud. 2006. ISBN 978-84-261-1933-6.
• El libro de oro y el tratado de los beneficios (in español). Translation, prologue and notes by Juan Bautista Bergua. Clásicos Bergua. Madrid: Ediciones Ibéricas, La Crítica Literaria. ISBN 978-84-7083-004-4.
• Sobre la brevedad de la vida, el ocio y la felicidad (in español). Barcelona: Acantilado. 2013. ISBN 978-84-15689-64-5.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
• Sobre la felicidad. Sobre la brevedad de la vida (in español). Prologue by Herminio Álvarez Regueras. Madrid: Editorial EDAF. 1997. ISBN 978-84-414-0222-5.
• De la ira (in español). Sequitur, Ediciones. 2020. ISBN 978-84-15707-69-1.
• El arte de mantener la calma: Un manual de sabiduría clásica sobre la gestión de la ira (in español). Translated by Jacinto Pariente. KOAN. 2021. ISBN 978-84-15707-69-1.

On Seneca

• Asmis, Elizabeth; Bartsch, Shadi; Nussbaum, Martha C. (2012), "Seneca and his World", in Kaster, Robert A.; Nussbaum, Martha C. (eds.), Seneca: Anger, Mercy, Revenge, University of Chicago Press, ISBN 978-0226748429
• Braund, Susanna (2015), "Seneca Multiplex", in Bartsch, Shadi; Schiesaro, Alessandro (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Seneca, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-1107035058
• Campbell, Robin (1969), "Introduction", Letters from a Stoic, Penguin, ISBN 0140442103
• Citti, Francesco (2015), "Seneca and the Moderns", in Bartsch, Shadi; Schiesaro, Alessandro (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Seneca, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-1107035058
• Colish, Marcia L. (1985), The Stoic Tradition from Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages, vol. 1, Brill, ISBN 9004072675
• Gill, Christopher (1999), "The School in the Roman Imperial Period", in Inwood, Brad (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Stoics, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0521779855
• Habinek, Thomas (2013), "Imago Suae Vitae: Seneca's Life and Career", in Heil, Andreas; Damschen, Gregor (eds.), Brill's Companion to Seneca: Philosopher and Dramatist, Brill, ISBN 978-9004154612
• Ker, James (2009), The Deaths of Seneca, Oxford University Press
• Laarmann, Mathias (2013), "Seneca the Philosopher", in Heil, Andreas; Damschen, Gregor (eds.), Brill's Companion to Seneca: Philosopher and Dramatist, Brill, ISBN 978-9004154612
• Reynolds, L. D.; Griffin, M. T.; Fantham, E. (2012), "Annaeus Seneca (2), Lucius", in Hornblower, S.; Spawforth, A.; Eidinow, E. (eds.), The Oxford Classical Dictionary, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0199545568
• Sellars, John (2013), "Context: Seneca's Philosophical Predecessors and Contemporaries", in Heil, Andreas; Damschen, Gregor (eds.), Brill's Companion to Seneca: Philosopher and Dramatist, Brill, ISBN 978-9004154612
• Wilson, Emily R. (2014), The Greatest Empire: A Life of Seneca, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0199926640

External links

• BOCCACCIO: De mulieribus claris (On Famous Women); XCIV: De Pompeia Paulina Senece coniuge (On Pompeia Paulina, wife of Seneca).
  • Spanish translation; ed. by Pablo Hurus, from 1494.
    • Reproduction, with indexes and engravings, in electronic facsimile, in the Parnaseo repository of the University of Valencia.
      • Reproduction of the engraving; clicking on it brings up the text.
      • Indexes.
        • On the name of the repository, see "Parnassus".
    • Latin text, on the website of the Biblioteca Italiana.
    • Latin text on the website of the Bibliotheca Augustana (Augsburg).
      • Pompeia Paulina: wife of Seneca and perhaps sister of Aulus Pompeius Paulinus.
        • Pompeia Paulina, on Commons.
        • Images of Pompeia Paulina, on the website of the Warburg Institute.
        • Pompeia Paulina, on the website of the Perseus Project.

• PALOP FUENTES, Pedro: Séneca, estilista de genio y originalidad deslumbrante (admission speech at the Royal Academy of Sciences, Fine Letters and Noble Arts of Córdoba). 15 February 1958.
  • Transcription in the academy's bulletin: reproduction, in PDF.

• PALOP FUENTES, Pedro: play Séneca.
  • Séneca, in the 2 July 1971 broadcast of the TVE program Estudio 1, directed by Pilar Miró and with performances by Ismael Merlo, Mayrata O'Wisiedo (Agrippina), Miguel Ángel (Tigellinus), Manuel Tejada (Petronius), Estanis González (Anicetus), Antonio Medina (Pallas), Francisco Merino (Afranius Burrus), María del Puy (Poppaea), Gloria Muñoz, Pedro Sempson, Victoria Rodríguez, Valentín Conde, Enrique Cerro, Avelino Cánovas, Narciso Rivas, Javier de Campos, Fernando Chinarro and Vicente Sangiovanni.
    • Another copy.
    • Another copy.