Seneca, L. ANNÆUS, son of the preceding, also a native of Corduba, was born about 4 B.C., and carefully educated for the bar, under his father's eye, in Rome, where, in Caligula's reign, he narrowly escaped the death to which that emperor, jealous of his enlightened liberalism, had destined him. After years of exclusive devotion to philosophy and rhetoric, he entered the Curia, but, 41 A.D., lost the favour he had won with Claudius by getting involved, through the emperor's infamous wife Messalina, in a state-trial which ended in his banishment to Corsica, whence he did not return till after an exile of eight years. Entrusted by Agrippina with the education of her son Nero, he acquired over the youth an influence as strong as it was salutary, and, having already at Agrippina's instance become prætor, he was, at that of Nero (now emperor), made consul, 57 A.D. His high moral aims and intellectual gifts, possibly through defect of the courtier's tact, gradually incurred the aversion of the rapidly deteriorating emperor, who at length came to regard him with jealousy and hatred. He has been taxed by imperial apologists, but unjustly, with vanity and ambition—more plausibly, perhaps, with love of wealth and the power it brings. His wealth, accumulated under Nero's profligate extravagance, excited, it is said, the rapacity of the emperor, whose sinister designs he anticipated by offering to refund it, with the exception of a pittance on which he proposed to retire. These overtures Nero rejected, whereupon, under pretence of illness, he withdrew from the public gaze. An attempt on Nero's part to poison him having failed, he was drawn into the Pisonian conspiracy, accused, convicted, and condemned. Left free to choose his mode of death, he elected to open his veins, and gradually succumbed to syncope, 65 A.D. His second wife, Pompeia Paulina, who wished to die with him, and actually had her own veins incised for the purpose, survived him a few years.
A noble, upright character, Seneca was yet the object of calumnious detraction—to such a degree that the utmost caution is necessary in passing judgment on him. In philosophy he inclined to the Stoic system, though not indisposed to engraft upon it the tenets of the Epicurean school. But his moral independence is an outstanding feature in his voluminous dicta, which, often profound, are always sharply and distinctly reflected in the steel-mirror of his style. Earnestness and self-abnegation are their most memorable note, especially in their inculcation of man's duty to himself and to his neighbour. The relations of his teaching to Christianity have recently evoked a number of treatises, attempting to prove his correspondence, if not personal association, with the apostle Paul, his contemporary in Rome. The points of divergence, however, between him and the teacher of the Gentiles are more numerous than the points of coincidence (see the Dissertation in Lightfoot's Com. on Philippians). His writings, apart from much that has been fathered on him, include three books De Ira; three consolatory pieces addressed to his mother Helvia, to Polybius, and to Marcia (De Consolatione); treatises De Providentia, De Animi Tranquillitate, De Constantia Sapientis, De Clementia (ad Neronem Cæsarem), De Brevitate Vitæ (ad Paulinum), De Vita Beata (ad Gallionem), De Otio aut Secessu Sapientis; seven books De Beneficiis; 124 Epistulæ ad Lucilium, comprising free speculations on philosophical questions of every kind, in which his characteristic powers appear to special advantage; a scathing satire on the Emperor Claudius, in the form of a parodied apotheosis (Apocolocyntosis sive Ludus de Morte Cæsaris); finally, seven books Quæstionum Naturalium, addressed to Lucilius the Younger—the only surviving Roman treatise on physics, if not the first in Latin literature (of the same compass at least). It reveals a decidedly exacter and wider knowledge and a sounder critical faculty than the later work of the elder Pliny.
Seneca had also a poetical side, if we may accept as his the epigrams (mainly referring to his banishment) and the eight tragedies (Hercules Furens, Thyestes, Phædra, Edipus, Troades, Medea, Ag- memnon, and Hercules Etæus, along with two scenes from a Thebais) usually comprised among his opera omnia. These are imitations of Greek models, and are distinguished by great mastery of style, vigorous imagination, and keenness of psychological insight. But their purely rhetorical, eminently undramatic, character unfits them for the stage, if indeed they were ever intended for it. In versification they are 'correct' to a fault, till the monotony of their cadences becomes as wearisome as their declamatory strain.
Of editions of his prose writings that of Gronovius (1661-82), of Ruhkopf (1797-1811), and, best of all, that of Fickert (1842-45), still hold their place, while some of his special treatises have been carefully edited by Koch and Vahlen, and by Gertz. His tragedies may be most conveniently read in the editions of Gronovius (1661-81), of Schröder (1728), of Bothe (1819 and 1822), of Peiper and Richter (1867), and of Leo (1878); Minor Dialogues, translated by A. Stewart (1889). See also a paper by H. A. J. Munro on Peiper and Richter's edition in the Journal of Philology. A striking portrait of the philosopher-statesman at Nero's court, especially in relation to his assumed association with St Paul, is given in Mr Hugh Westbury's novel, Acté (1890).