Moral essays. With an English translation by J.W. Basore

INTRODUCTIONat Corduba about 4 B.C., he was brought to Romewhile still a child in arms. There, carefully nurturedand broadly trained in rhetoric and philosophy,he entered upon the senatorial career and gainedthe quaestorship probably under Tiberius. By hiseloquence in the Senate, he is said to have arousedthe jealousy of Caligula and to have escaped deathonly because, it was averred, he was already doomedby ill-health to die. Of his ill-health we hear muchin his writings, but he outlived Caligula and missedno opportunity to take pitiless revenge upon himwith his pen. Under Claudius he fell upon actualdisaster. Through the agency of the empress Messahna,Seneca, now estabhshed as a man of lettersand, apparently, of fashion, was accused of an intriguewith the notorious Julia Livilla, sister of Caligula,whom her uncle promptly upon his accession hadrecalled from exile, and both were banished. Afterhe had spent eight weary and fretful years in dismalCorsica, during which, however, he found some solacein writing and study, Agrippina, now the wife ofClaudius, secured his recall in a.d. 49, and raised himto the post of tutor to her young son, the futureemperor Nero. A year later he was praetor. Fromthis time Seneca's fortunes were linked with thoseof Nero. He grew in honour, wealth," and power, andfor five years after Nero's accession was, along withBurrus, the virtuous old praetorian, the emperor'sacknowledged confidant and guide. But graduallyhis influence weakened, and after the death ofBurrus in a.d. 62 he sought unavailingly for obscurity" There are many references to the lordly wealth whichSeneca amassed. Cf. Tac. Ann. xiii. 42.6; Juv. x. 16;Dio, Ixi. 10. 2.viii