In one line
Lucius Annaeus Seneca was a playwright, a senator, a power broker and a moral philosopher, often all at once. He wrote about poverty from inside enormous wealth and about virtue while serving a murderous emperor, and he knew the contradiction better than his critics. His last letters, written in forced retirement, are the closest thing ancient philosophy has to a personal mentor in your pocket.
The life
Seneca was born at Corduba in southern Spain, probably between 4 BC and 1 AD. His father, also Lucius Annaeus Seneca, was a wealthy equestrian with a passion for rhetoric whose collection of courtroom exercises still survives; we call him Seneca the Elder. One of Seneca's brothers, Gallio, became proconsul of Achaea and appears in the Bible as the governor who refused to hear the case against Paul at Corinth (Acts 18:12–17). Another brother was the father of the poet Lucan.
The family moved to Rome when Seneca was a small child. He studied rhetoric, as every ambitious young Roman did, and philosophy, which was less usual. In Letter 108 he remembers his teachers with affection: Attalus the Stoic, who preached against luxury so powerfully that the young Seneca gave up oysters, mushrooms and perfume for life; and Sotion, a Pythagorean, under whose influence he went vegetarian for about a year, until his father, worried about how it looked, persuaded him to stop.
His health was poor. He suffered from what sounds like asthma or chronic bronchitis, and says that as a young man he thought of suicide and was held back only by the thought of his father (Letter 78). He spent time recovering in Egypt, where an aunt's husband was the Roman governor (Consolation to Helvia 19).
Back in Rome he rose through the Senate and became famous as an orator. According to Cassius Dio (59.19), the emperor Caligula was so jealous of a speech that he ordered Seneca's death, and relented only when told that the man was sickly and would die soon anyway. In 41 AD the new emperor Claudius exiled him to Corsica on a charge of adultery with the emperor's niece Julia Livilla, a charge most historians suspect was political. He spent eight years on the island. From there he wrote a consolation to his mother, assuring her that exile had taken nothing from him that mattered.
In 49 Claudius's new wife Agrippina had him recalled to be tutor to her twelve-year-old son, Nero. When Nero became emperor in 54, Seneca and the praetorian prefect Burrus effectively ran the government for several years, and the early reign was remembered as a good one. Seneca wrote speeches for the young emperor and an essay, On Mercy, addressed to him. He also became extraordinarily rich. In 58 a prosecutor publicly accused him of making 300 million sesterces through imperial favour and high-interest loans in Italy and the provinces (Tacitus, Annals 13.42).
The partnership turned dark. When Nero had his mother murdered in 59, Seneca wrote the letter to the Senate that justified the killing (Tacitus, Annals 14.11). After Burrus died in 62, Seneca asked Nero to let him retire and offered to give back his fortune. Nero refused the money and, in practice, let him withdraw (Annals 14.53–56). In those last three years Seneca wrote his best work: the 124 Letters to Lucilius, the Natural Questions and several of his essays.
In 65 a conspiracy to kill Nero, led by Gaius Calpurnius Piso, was betrayed. Seneca's involvement is unclear, but Nero ordered him to die. Tacitus tells the scene in detail (Annals 15.60–64). Denied the chance to make a will, Seneca told his friends that he was leaving them the one thing he still had, and the finest: the image of his life. His wife, Pompeia Paulina, insisted on dying with him, and both opened their veins. Nero, not wanting a reputation for cruelty, ordered her saved, and she lived on for some years. Seneca's blood flowed slowly because he was old and thin. He took hemlock, which did not work, and was finally carried into a hot bath, where he died of the steam.
The big ideas
Time is the only thing that is truly ours
The first letter to Lucilius opens with it: "Everything else is someone else's; time alone is ours" (Letter 1.3, our rendering of omnia aliena sunt, tempus tantum nostrum est). In On the Shortness of Life he argues that life is not short; we make it short by wasting it. "We are not given a short time, but we waste a lot of it" (De Brevitate Vitae 1.3).
We suffer more in imagination than in reality
Letter 13: "More things frighten us than harm us, and we suffer more often in opinion than in fact." Fear lives in the future. Most of what we fear never arrives, and what does arrive is rarely as bad as the rehearsal.
Rehearse the worst
Seneca recommends setting aside a few days to live on the cheapest food and the roughest clothing, asking yourself, "Is this what I was afraid of?" (Letter 18). Practising poverty on purpose takes away its power to frighten you when it is not on purpose. Later writers called this "negative visualization"; Seneca called it preparation.
Anger is temporary madness
His three-book essay On Anger is the most detailed ancient analysis of the emotion. Anger, he says, begins as a judgment that we have been wronged and that revenge is right. Catch the first movement before you assent to it. Delay is the best remedy (On Anger 2.29, 3.12).
Philosophy is for living, not for show
Seneca is impatient with clever logic. Philosophy "teaches us to act, not to talk" (Letter 20.2). Its point is to make you steadier, kinder and less afraid, not to win arguments.
Friendship and borrowing from rivals
Seneca was a Stoic, but the first thirty letters often close with a saying of Epicurus, the founder of a rival school. A good idea belongs to whoever uses it, he says: "whatever is well said by anyone is mine" (Letter 16.7).
What their lines mean for you
At work. Audit your time the way you would audit money. Seneca's point is that people guard their property fiercely and give away their hours to anyone who asks.
In training. His advice to Lucilius on exercise is short: choose simple, quick exercises that tire the body without wasting the day, and get back to training the mind (Letter 15). Use your workouts; do not live in them.
In anger. Wait. Seneca says the greatest remedy for anger is delay. Most messages sent in anger would not survive a night's sleep.
In grief. Seneca wrote three consolations, to his mother, to a grieving mother named Marcia, and to Claudius's freedman Polybius. His counsel is tender and firm: grief is natural, but do not let it become a habit or an identity. Remember that the person you lost was always mortal, and be grateful for the years you had.
On the water. Seneca uses sea images constantly: the storm that tests the pilot, the long voyage that was not a journey at all because the traveller was tossed about and never moved forward (On the Shortness of Life 7.10). A full life is a voyage with a heading, not a drift.
In ambition. He served power and was nearly destroyed by it. Read him as a warning from the inside: wealth and office are on loan, and the loan can be called in.
Where people get them wrong
- "Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end." This is a lyric from Semisonic's song "Closing Time" (1998). It is often printed under Seneca's name, but no ancient source has it.
- "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." Widely attributed to Seneca; not found in his works. The idea is not his either: Seneca had little time for luck at all.
- "We suffer more often in imagination than in reality." Genuine, from Letter 13.4.
- "It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it." Genuine, from On the Shortness of Life 1.3.
- "Seneca was a hypocrite, so his ethics don't count." The charge is old (Tacitus reports it, and Cassius Dio repeats it with relish). Seneca answers it himself in On the Happy Life 17–18: he is not a wise man, he is a man trying to get better, and he speaks about virtue, not about himself. Judge the advice on its merits.
- "Seneca was a Christian." A forged set of letters between Seneca and Saint Paul circulated from the fourth century and was taken as genuine for a thousand years. It is a fake.
Read them yourself
- Moral Letters to Lucilius, tr. Richard M. Gummere: Wikisource
- Minor Dialogues (On the Shortness of Life, On Anger, On the Happy Life, the consolations and more), tr. Aubrey Stewart: Project Gutenberg #64576
- On Benefits, tr. Aubrey Stewart: Project Gutenberg #3794
- Author page with texts and translations: Wikisource, Seneca the Younger
- Tacitus's account of his death, Annals 15.60–64: search Project Gutenberg for Tacitus
Timeline
- c. 4 BC: born at Corduba in Spain
- c. 5–10 AD: brought to Rome as a child
- c. 20s: studies with Attalus and Sotion; illness and a stay in Egypt
- c. 31: returns to Rome; begins a political career
- c. 39: Caligula reportedly orders his death and relents
- 41: exiled to Corsica by Claudius
- 49: recalled by Agrippina to tutor Nero; praetor the following year
- 54: Nero becomes emperor; Seneca and Burrus guide the government
- c. 55–56: writes On Mercy for Nero
- 59: Nero murders Agrippina; Seneca drafts the letter justifying it
- 62: Burrus dies; Seneca asks to retire
- c. 63–65: writes the Letters to Lucilius and the Natural Questions
- 65: ordered to die after the Pisonian conspiracy; dies near Rome