Seneca, Lucius Annaeus, called Seneca the Younger c.4BC-c.65AD
Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman and tragedian

Born in Corduba (Cordoba), Spain, the son of Marcus Annaeus Seneca, he began a career in politics and law in Rome in 31AD. However, he was banished to Corsica (41-49) by Emperor Claudius on a charge of adultery with Claudius's niece Julia, and there wrote the three treatises Consolationes. Recalled to Rome in 49 through the influence of Agrippina the Younger, he became tutor to her son, the future Emperor Nero. He enjoyed considerable political influence for a while and was made consul by Nero in 57, but he later withdrew from public life and devoted himself to writing and philosophy. In 65 he was implicated in the conspiracy of Piso and ordered to commit suicide. His writings include Epistolae morales ad Lucilium and the Apocolocyntosis divi Claudii (literally, 'The Pumpkinification of the Divine Claudius'), a scathing satire. The publication in translation of his Tenne Tragedies (1581) was important in the evolution of English Elizabethan drama, which took from them the principal division into five acts.

Bibliography: A L Motto, Seneca (1973)