The Philosopher Who Served a Tyrant

Lucius Annaeus Seneca was born around 4 BC in Cordoba, in what is now Spain. His father was a famous teacher of speaking and writing. The family moved to Rome while Seneca was young, and he was educated in the best schools in the city.

His health was poor from early on. As a young man he spent time in Egypt, living with his aunt, recovering from a serious lung condition. He came close to dying more than once. Later he would write that he had sometimes sat with the thought of ending his own life to escape the suffering. Philosophy, he said, was what kept him going. It gave him a reason to stay.

When he returned to Rome, he built a reputation as one of the greatest speakers of his generation. Too great. The Emperor Caligula reportedly wanted him killed because his speeches made the emperor look weak by comparison. Seneca survived only because someone at court told Caligula that Seneca was dying anyway and was not worth the trouble.

He was not dying. He survived Caligula. Then things got worse.

When Claudius became emperor in 41 AD, the empress Messalina accused Seneca of an affair with the emperor's niece. Most historians believe this was a lie, a political move to destroy her supporters. It did not matter. The Senate sentenced Seneca to death. Claudius commuted the sentence to exile. Seneca was sent to the island of Corsica, far from Rome, far from everything he had built. His young son died around the same time.

He spent eight years on Corsica. He was in his forties. He had no political power and no way back without help from people who had already shown they would destroy him when it suited them.

He wrote anyway. He wrote to his mother to comfort her. He wrote essays. He wrote a letter to one of Claudius's powerful advisors, flattering the emperor shamelessly, begging to be recalled. The letter embarrassed him later. He was not above humiliating himself to get his life back.

In 49 AD the new empress, Agrippina, arranged his return to Rome. Her price was that Seneca would tutor her twelve-year-old son. That boy was Nero.

When Nero became emperor in 54 AD, Seneca was at the height of his power. He effectively co-ran the empire for the first five years of Nero's reign. Historians credit him with holding Nero's worst impulses in check for as long as he could. During those years he became one of the richest men in Rome. The man who wrote about the worthlessness of wealth was lending money across Italy at high interest.

He did not deny it. I am not a wise man, he wrote. I am someone trying to become one. I write about what I am working toward, not about what I have already achieved.

By 65 AD, Nero was the monster history remembers. Seneca had tried to retire. Nero refused. After a failed plot against the emperor, a soldier arrived at Seneca's door with the order: he was to take his own life. He had been preparing for this for years, he told his weeping friends. He opened his veins. He drank poison. Both worked too slowly. He was put in a hot bath to speed the process. He kept talking until the end. He was 69 years old.

This volume contains three of his essays.

On the Shortness of Life is the one most people know. It is the most urgent. Seneca argues that we do not have a short life. We have a life we waste.

On Tranquility of Mind is about the restless feeling that comes when you are not living the life you actually want and cannot figure out why. It is written as a conversation. A young man named Serenus describes the problem in his own voice, and Seneca answers him.

On the Happy Life asks the question almost no one actually asks themselves: what do I think happiness is, and is that what I am working toward?

These three essays cover the full territory of a life poorly lived and a life well lived. They were written by a philosopher who lived inside a tyrant's court, a teacher of simplicity who lived in luxury, a man who believed life is short and gave most of his to politics he could not escape. The contradictions are the point. He knew them. He wrote anyway.

He wrote to a friend. He wrote to you.

Daimon Classics