Seneca as Nero's Tutor — Stoicism at the Imperial Court
Seneca's career is one of the most spectacular and morally troubling in Roman history. Born in Cordoba, Spain, around 4 BCE, he was brought to Rome in infancy. His philosophical training was Stoic from the beginning. His rise was interrupted by exile to Corsica in 41 CE, engineered by the Emperor Claudius's freedman Messalina, apparently for a supposed affair with Caligula's sister. Eight years of island exile produced his Consolations. Recalled in 49 CE at the instigation of Agrippina the Younger, he was appointed tutor to the future Nero. When Agrippina poisoned Claudius in 54 CE and Nero became emperor at sixteen, Seneca became the most powerful private citizen in Rome. The quinquennium Neronis — the first five years of Nero's reign — was marked by sound administration, clemency, and fiscal responsibility. Simultaneously, Seneca was producing the work on which his philosophical reputation rests. The Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium — 124 letters — are the most intimate and searching document of Roman Stoicism. His tragedies — Medea, Phaedra, Thyestes — are the only complete Latin tragedies to survive and exercised enormous influence on Renaissance drama, from Elizabethan revenge tragedy to the French neoclassical stage. In April 65, following the Pisonian conspiracy, the emperor sent a military tribune to his Campanian villa with the order to die. Seneca's death is described by Tacitus with extraordinary pathos.
- Year: 54 CE
- Category: Cultural
