Seneca

Related Terms: Plautus Aristophanes and New Comedy Terence Cicero Nero Varro Related Resources: Seneca Resources Apocolocyntosis Seneca: A Thinker for Our Times Biography Philosophy Tragedy Elsewhere on the Web: Ancient History Sourcebook: Tacitus: The Death of Seneca 65 CE Colorful, but ultimately gruesome account of Seneca's most difficult suicide. Seneca's Career and Works From the 1906 The Drama: Its History, Literature and Influence on Civilization, edited by Alfred Bates.

Definition:

Born in Spain in 4 B.C., Lucius Annaeus Seneca (known as Seneca or Seneca the Younger) was sent to Rome where he studied Stoic philosophy mixed with neo-Pythagoreanism. Seneca wrote tragedies, possibly not intended for dramatic performances, letters, and possibly a Menippean satire about the death of Nero's step-father, the bumbling Roman Emperor Claudius. This Menippean satire is known as the Apocolocyntosis, a title translated as the "Pumpkinification of Claudius."

Seneca served as tutor to Nero, and then, when Nero became emperor, he served as advisor to Nero. Eventually Seneca fell out of favor. Nero, turning to other advisors, had suspicions about Seneca. In Roman fashion, Seneca took the honorable way out of his troubles. He committed suicide, in A.D. 65.

Seneca's works include:

• Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium
• de Providentia
• de Consolatione ad Polybium
• de Consolatione ad Marciam
• de Consolatione ad Helviam
• de Constantia
• de Otio
• de Brevitate Vitae
• de Tranquillitate Animi
• de Vita Beata
• de Ira
• de Clementia
• Apocolocyntosis
• Medea
• Phaedra
• Hercules
• Agamemnon
• Oedipus
• Proverbs

Also Known As: Seneca

facilius enim per partes in cognitionem totius adducimur comes from Seneca's Epistulae Morales LXXXIX.

Trnslation: "We are more easily led part by part to an understanding of the whole."