Sénèque

Born in Corduba, on the Iberian Peninsula, around 4 BC, Lucius Annaeus Seneca belongs to a Roman world in a constant state of expansion and transformation. His life spans nearly seven decades of an imperial century where philosophical thought closely brushes against the exercise of power—and is sometimes burned by it. From the provinces to Rome, from Corsican exile to the palace antechambers, his existence traces an arc that fiction would not always dare to invent.

In 31 AD, he enters Roman public life, at the very court of the Empire. Six years later, he is elected quaestor, opening the doors of the Senate to him. But imperial favor is unsteady ground: during the reign of Claudius, he is exiled to Corsica, where he remains from 41 to 49. These years of forced removal, far from silencing his voice, seem to have sharpened it. It is in adversity that the philosopher forges some of his most profound reflections, notably his 'Consolations', of which the 'Consolation to Polybius' bears the mark of this period. Recalled to Rome in 49, he is entrusted with a singular mission: to become the tutor of the young Nero. Agrippina's influence then earns him the praetorship in 50, followed by a suffect consulship in 55.

Seneca is a thinker who is not content to merely meditate in seclusion. Nourished by Stoicism and also influenced by Pythagoreanism, he develops a practical philosophy focused on the art of living and self-mastery. 'On the Shortness of Life' questions our relationship with time with an acuity that has lost none of its force; 'On Anger' examines this devastating passion with the precision of a clinician of the soul; 'On the Happy Life' poses the question of happiness without naivety, as a man who knows the contradictions of existence. As for the 'Letters to Lucilius', they undoubtedly constitute the pinnacle of this philosophy in action: a philosophical correspondence where each letter is an invitation to think better, to live more justly. 'On Clemency', composed in 56, addresses the imperial power directly and attempts to outline the contours of a temperate sovereignty—a text whose political significance is inseparable from the role Seneca is then playing alongside Nero.

But Seneca is also a playwright. His 'Oedipus', 'Phaedra', and 'Medea' take up the great Greek tragic myths and plunge them into a tense, violent Latin, infused with a dark energy. These tragedies, where human passions reach their point of incandescence, have exerted a considerable influence on European theater far beyond Antiquity. The 'Apocolocyntosis', on the other hand, reveals an entirely different facet: this biting satire, which turns into mockery what others surround with solemnity, shows a Seneca capable of fierce irony.

His life as a man of power is not without its shadows. In 58, Publius Suillius Rufus publicly attacks him, criticizing his wealth—an apparent contradiction for a philosopher who preaches detachment. More gravely still, he takes part in the assassination of Agrippina in 59, an act revealing the extent to which proximity to imperial power could corrupt even the highest of minds. The philosopher who wrote about clemency finds himself complicit in a political murder. This tension between thought and action, between the ideal and compromise, is perhaps what makes Seneca so profoundly human in our eyes.

He dies in Rome on April 12, 65 AD, driven to suicide by the order of Nero himself—the very emperor he had educated, advised, and attempted to guide. The scene of his death, as Antiquity has handed it down to us, has become one of the most striking images of philosophy confronted with tyranny. What continues to move us about Seneca is precisely this unresolved tension between wisdom and the world, between the aspiration to virtue and the brutality of reality. His texts do not reach us from some serene empyrean: they are written by a man who knew exile, power, compromise, and violent death, and who nevertheless never ceased to seek, in words, a form of truth.

Bibliography

• On the Shortness of Life
• On Anger
• On the Happy Life
• Letters to LuciliusExplored
• Oedipus
• Phaedra
• Medea
• On Clemency56
• Apocolocyntosis
• Consolations
• Consolation to Polybius

In the library

• Letters to LuciliusPublished on Sunday, 1 November 2026