Lūcius Annaeus Seneca, called Seneca the Younger (c.4 BCE–65 CE) was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, orator, and tragedian. As Rome’s foremost intellectual figure in the mid-1st century CE, and as “prime minister,” Seneca was the virtual ruler of the Roman Empire 54–62 CE, during the initial chapter of the Emperor Nero’s reign.
Born to a provincial equestrian family in Corduba, now Cordoba, Spain, Seneca was the son of rhetorician Marcus Annaeus Seneca, called Seneca the Elder.
Seneca the Younger began a career in politics and law in Rome in 31 CE. However, he was banished to Corsica (41–49 CE) by Emperor Claudius on an accusation of adultery with Claudius’s niece Julia Livilla, and there Seneca wrote the three treatises, Consolation.
Recalled to Rome in 49 CE through the influence of Empress Agrippina the Younger, Seneca became the tutor to her son, the future Emperor Nero. Seneca enjoyed substantial political influence for a while and was made consul by Nero in 57 CE, but he later withdrew from public life and devoted himself to writing and philosophy. In 65 CE, Seneca was implicated in the conspiracy of Pisa to kill Nero and ordered to commit suicide.
Seneca’s writings include Epistulae morales ad Lucilium (64 CE,) a collection of 124 letters dealing with moral issues written to Lucilius Junior, and Apocolocyntosis (divi) Claudii (64 CE; ‘The Pumpkinification of the Divine Claudius,’) a scathing satire.
Seneca’s extant works comprise ten ethical treatises: On Providence (64 CE,) On the Constancy of the Wise Man (55 CE,) On Anger (in three books, 41 CE,) To Marcia, on Consolation (40 CE,) On the Happy Life (58 CE,) On Leisure (62 CE,) On Tranquility of Mind (63 CE,) On the Brevity of Life (49 CE,) To Polybius, on Consolation (44 CE,) and To Helvia, on Consolation (42 CE.)
Seneca’s rhetorical type of tragedy had extensive influence in the Italian and French Renaissance. In Elizabethan England, adaptations of Seneca’s Tenne Tragedies and his terse and epigrammatic literary style inspired the language and psychology of Christopher Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Ben Jonson.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Power exercised with violence has seldom been of long duration, but temper and moderation generally produce permanence in all things.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Oppression, Government
This is the law of benefits between men; the one ought to forget at once what he has given, and the other ought never to forget what he has received.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Benevolence, Giving
There are more things to alarm us than to harm us, and we suffer more often in apprehension than reality.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Worry, Anxiety
Freedom is not being a slave to any circumstance, to any constraint, to any chance; it means compelling Fortune to enter the lists on equal terms.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Freedom
The pleasures of the palate deal with us like the Egyptian thieves, who strangle those whom they embrace.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Diet
We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Fear
It is often better not to see an insult than to avenge it.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Insults
I never come back home with the same moral character I went out with; something or other becomes unsettled where I had achieved internal peace; some one or other of the things I had put to flight reappears on the scene.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Morality, Morals
The mind unlearns with difficulty what has long been impressed on it.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Difficulty
All that lies between the cradle and the grave is uncertain.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Uncertainty
The soul has this proof of its divinity: that divine things delight in it.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Blush not now, said a distinguished Italian to his young relative whom he met coming out of a haunt of vice; the time to have blushed was when you went in.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Shame
Those who boast of their descent, brag on what they owe to others.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Happiness, Ancestry, Ancestors, Blessings
Success is not greedy, as people think, but insignificant. That’s why it satisfies nobody.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Success is not everything, Opportunities, Success, Success & Failure, Reality
Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Preparation, Luck, One liners, Opportunity
Travel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Travel
As it is with a play, so it is with life—what matters is not how long the acting lasts, but how good it is.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Death, Wisdom, Life
To the person who does not know where he wants to go there is no favorable wind.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Vision, Win
Fear drives the wretched to prayer
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Prayer
Life is neither a good nor an evil, but simply the scene of good and evil.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Life
Courage leads to the stars, fear toward death.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Courage
If you devote your time to study, you will avoid all the irksomeness of this life, nor will you long for the approach of night, being tired of the day; nor will you be a burden to yourself, nor your society insupportable to others.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Study
The pressure of adversity does not affect the mind of the brave man. It is more powerful than external circumstances.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Courage, Adversity, Opposition, Bravery
Fidelity purchased with money, money can destroy.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Loyalty
All cruelty springs from weakness.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Weakness
There are no greater wretches in the world than many of those whom people in general take to be happy.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Appearance
Fate rules the affairs of men, with no recognizable order.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Fate
Solitude and company may be allowed to take their turns: the one creates in us the love of mankind, the other that of ourselves; solitude relieves us when we are sick of company, and conversation when we are weary of being alone, so that the one cures the other. There is no man so miserable as he that is at a loss how to use his time.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Solitude
Philosophy is the art and law of life, and it teaches us what to do in all cases, and, like good marksmen, to hit the white at any distance.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Philosophy
As the world leads, we follow.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Custom
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