Seneca as Nero's Tutor — Stoicism at the Imperial Court
Seneca was Nero's tutor, then his chief minister, then ordered to kill himself. He was born in Spain about 4 BC to a wealthy equestrian family, made his name as an orator and writer, was exiled to Corsica for eight years on a charge of adultery with an imperial princess, and was recalled in 49 by Agrippina to educate her eleven-year-old son. When Nero came to the throne in 54, Seneca and the praetorian prefect Burrus effectively governed, and the first five years were remembered afterwards as good administration. He also wrote the speech in which Nero explained his mother's murder to the senate. That is the difficulty with him and has been since Tacitus. His philosophy is Stoic — that virtue is the only good, that anger and fear are to be mastered, that a wise man is indifferent to fortune — and he accumulated an enormous fortune as a moneylender, including loans to Britain that Dio blames for provoking Boudicca's revolt. The letters to Lucilius and the essays on anger, benefits, tranquillity and the shortness of life are among the best things written in Latin prose. He withdrew from court in 62 and was implicated in the Pisonian conspiracy in 65, probably without evidence. He opened his veins, found the blood too slow, took hemlock, and finally died in a hot bath while dictating. Tacitus reports the whole thing at length. His nephew Lucan, the poet, and his brother Gallio, who appears in the Acts of the Apostles as the proconsul who declined to hear a case against Paul, both died in the same purge. The family produced three of the best Latin writers of the century and lost all of them in two years.
- Year: 54 CE
- Category: Cultural
