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Historical person

Seneca

c. 0s BCE–65

Seneca was a Roman Stoic philosopher, dramatist and adviser to Nero. His career combined moral writing with political power and immense wealth, ending in forced suicide after the Pisonian conspiracy.

Seneca's philosophical writings, including the Moral Letters and essays on anger, providence and the brevity of life, applied Stoic ethics to the practical pressures of wealth, fear, status and mortality. His political career sat uneasily beside those teachings: he accumulated great wealth and exercised influence during the early years of Nero's reign. Accused of involvement in the Pisonian conspiracy in AD 65, he was ordered by Nero to take his own life.

Margaret George’s The Confessions of Young Nero presents Seneca as one of the advisers who guides the teenage Nero at the beginning of his reign, trying with Burrus to restrain both the emperor and Agrippina’s influence. Emperor Nero follows that relationship to its darker end, when the Pisonian conspiracy brings Seneca’s enforced suicide as the court turns against former advisers. The Satyricon and the Apocolocyntosis pairs Petronius with Seneca’s own savage satire on the deification of Claudius, showing the literary voice behind the statesman. Letters from a Stoic gives Seneca directly, reflecting on death, wealth, friendship and moral independence during his final years. The biography Nero places his political career in the wider problem of how far Seneca and Burrus shaped the early principate before Nero concentrated authority around himself.

Series

Historical novels and book series featuring Seneca (2 series)

Penguin Classics: Ancient World in Order

by various authors 32 books 4.6(13,212)

Penguin Classics: Ancient World brings together foundational works of literature, history, philosophy, drama and poetry from the earliest civilisations through classical Greece and Rome. The wider Penguin Classics series began in 1946 with E. V. Rieu’s translation of Homer’s Odyssey, reflecting its original aim of making important texts…

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Nero Series in Order

by Margaret George 2 books 4.0(5,563)

Margaret George’s Nero duology reconstructs the life of Rome’s last Julio-Claudian emperor, beginning with a childhood in which imperial blood makes Nero a target and ending with the collapse of his reign. Told largely through Nero’s own perspective, the series follows his passage through the courts of Caligula…

All books in this series

Non Fiction

Non Fiction featuring Seneca (2 books)

Biographies, histories and other non-fiction are listed separately from the historical novels above.