Seneca

Seneca was born at Corduba in Spain, son of a celebrated rhetorician. He studied philosophy and law in Rome and entered the Senate, but in 41 CE a court intrigue sent him into eight years' exile on Corsica. In 49 Agrippina recalled him to tutor her son Nero, and when Nero became emperor Seneca was in effect his chief minister; the first five years of the reign were later remembered as good government.

He amassed enormous wealth, a glaring contrast with Stoic teaching that his enemies never let pass. His defence was that the sage does not refuse riches but does not depend on them. In 62 he asked leave to retire; Nero refused, but he withdrew from politics all the same. In 65 the Pisonian conspiracy was uncovered and Nero ordered him to die. Tacitus records that he opened his veins, that poison failed, and that he finally suffocated in a hot bath, dictating his last reflections as he went.

His philosophical writing consists mainly of letters and short treatises, epigrammatic and dense with images, among the most powerful prose in Latin. The one hundred and twenty-four Moral Letters to Lucilius discuss time, friendship, fear, suicide and virtue, turning Stoicism into a daily discipline. His tragedies influenced Shakespeare and his letters Montaigne.