Seneca
4 BCE – 65 Roman philosopher, playwright, statesman
The leading Roman Stoic, whose essays and letters shaped later ethics.
- Religion
- Stoicism, with a near-monotheistic sense of a rational divine order; later Christians admired him.
- Affiliations
- Adviser and tutor to the emperor Nero. No secret society.
Seneca wrote essays and letters that made Stoic ethics practical, on anger, grief, time, and the good life. As Nero's tutor and minister he lived the tension between philosophy and power. Ordered by Nero to kill himself, he died as a Stoic model of composure.