Adviser to the notorious
Roman Emperor Nero, author of many influential tragic plays, frequent
commentator on the meaning of death, and a suspected conspirator in a plot to
assassinate Nero, Seneca ended his own life in a three-part suicide: slitting
his wrists, then swallowing poison, and finally suffocating in a hot steam
bath.
He was born in 4 B.C. in
Córdoba on the Iberian peninsula to a wealthy rhetorician known as Seneca the
Elder and his wife, Helvia. A sickly child, young Seneca was sent to Rome,
where studied rhetoric and Stoic philosophy and was looked after by his aunt
(whose name is not known). The two of them lived for fifteen years in Egypt,
and in 31 A.D. returned to Rome, where Seneca was elected a magistrate.
The Senecas, both father
and son, had trouble with the Emperors.
The Elder got into a dispute with Caligula, who spared his life only
because he was so old. When
Claudius succeeded Caligula, he banished Seneca the Younger to Corsica for
having an affair with Caligula’s sister, Julia Livilla. In exile, Seneca wrote
his Consolationes, consoling a friend
on the loss of her son. Death, and how to prepare for it, occupied much of
Seneca’s works throughout his career.
By 49 A.D. Seneca was back
in good graces with the royal family, and Caligula’s sister, Agrippina the
Younger, who was Claudius’ fourth wife, invited him to Rome to tutor her
12-year-old son, Nero. When
Claudius died in 54 A.D.—probably poisoned by his wife—the ambitious Agrippina
finagled the imperial succession for Nero instead of Claudius’ older son,
Britannicus, and Seneca became the young Emperor’s adviser. Agrippina turned against her son and
began urging Britannicus to depose him. Nero had Britannicus poisoned and then,
with the complicity of Seneca, he engineered the murder of his mother.
According to the historian Tacitus, Seneca then wrote a glowing defense of Nero’s
actions to present to the Senate.
Although a Stoic who
believed contentment was achieved by a simple, unassuming life, Seneca did not
shy from palace intrigue, and he became enormously wealthy by currying favor
with the Emperor and by masterminding a scheme in which money was lent on extortionate
terms to the aristocracy in the Roman province of Britain.
Seneca’s notable plays,
which had great influence on Elizabethan and Jacobean drama in England and on
the works of Corneille and Racine in France, included such tragedies based on
Greek mythology as Herculess Furens (The Madness of Hercules), Troades (The Trojan Women), The
Phoenician Women, Phaedra, Thyestes,
Agamemnon, Oedipus,
and Medea. British revenge
tragedies, beginning with Thomas Kyd’s The
Spanish Tragedy and culminating in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, owe their inspiration to Seneca.
Seneca’s views on death
are embodied in his many essays and epistles, with such titles as “On the
Shortness of Life,” “On the Terrors of Death,” “On Despising Death,” and “On
Old Age.” In them he expresses such Stoic views as:
Life
is long enough, and it has been given in
sufficiently generous measure
to allow us to accomplish
great things if we use our time well.
If
you are angry with your slave, or your master, or
your patron, or your
employee, just wait a little while.
Death will come, and that will make you
all equals.
Since wailing cannot
recall the dead, and sadness
cannot alter fate, and death,
once it comes, is permanent,
our grief is futile and should cease.
The
wise man does not hasten his death, but when it
comes he should make
a graceful exit.
Alas, Seneca’s exit was
none too graceful. In 65 A.D. a Roman statesman named Piso hatched a plot for
Nero’s assassination. At least forty senators and other officials were conspirators,
and although Seneca was not directly involved, Nero suspected him along with
the others—and ordered him and his wife Pompeia Paulina to commit suicide. The usual way was to slit one’s wrists,
and both of them did so. Nero ordered Pompeia spared and her wounds were bound
up. As for Seneca, his blood coagulated and wouldn’t flow. He then took poison,
which was also ineffective. Finally, in desperation, he drew a hot bath in
hopes that it would encourage the flow of his blood. Instead, at last achieving
success in doing away with himself, he suffocated in the steam from the bath.
He was sixty-nine.
During the Middle Ages,
Seneca’s writings were very popular because of the views he expressed in his
essays “On Anger” and “On Clemency,” which echoed the teachings of Christ. Some overly enthusiastic Christians
even insisted that he had been converted by Saint Paul and that his final bath
was an attempt to baptize himself.
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