Seneca
On a charge of an illicit connection with Julia, daughter of Germanicus, Seneca was banished to Corsica. During his residence there he wrote some books. Recalled to Rome on the marriage of Agrippina to Claudius, he was appointed tutor and the mentor of Nero and subsequently the mad emperor's subservient minister. Seneca taught the loftiest principles of duty that the pagan world had ever known.
"It pleased me," said Seneca "to inquire into the eternity of the soul - nay! to believe in it. I surrendered myself to that great hope." But he also says "when the day shall come which shall part this mixture of divine and human, here, where I found it, I will leave my body, myself I will give back to the god's." Here and there among literary men a Seneca or a Persius showed that virtue was not yet extinct. We will be happy if we are pleased with what we have, if we avoid the self-torture of comparing our own lot with some other and happier one. If a great many people appear to be better off than yourself, think how many there are in a worse position.
Seneca was accused of participating in the conspiracy of Piso and Nero ordered him to commit suicide. Seneca was the courtier-philosopher, the millionaire stoic moralist, the tutor of Nero as a boy, his minister when the boy became emperor and Nero's victim when boundless power had maddened the grown man.
Seneca was a Roman Philosopher, circa 8 BC-65 AD. Seneca was born in Cordoba, Spain and received early advantages in training and travel, gaining forensic success as an orator in Rome.
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