Seneca (-4 - 65). Seneca the Younger AD65, fully Lucius Annaeus Seneca and also known simply as Seneca, was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, dramatist, and, in one work, satirist of the Silver Age of Latin literature. Seneca was born in Córdoba in Hispania, and raised in Rome, where he was trained in rhetoric and philosophy. His father was Seneca the Elder, his elder brother was Lucius Junius Gallio Annaeanus, and his nephew was the poet Lucan. In AD 41, Seneca was exiled to the island of Corsica by the emperor Claudius, but was allowed to return in 49 to become a tutor to Nero. When Nero became emperor in 54, Seneca became his advisor and, together with the praetorian prefect Sextus Afranius Burrus, provided competent government for the first five years of Nero's reign. Seneca's influence over Nero declined with time, and in 65 Seneca was forced to take his own life for alleged complicity in the Pisonian conspiracy to assassinate Nero, in which he was likely to have been innocent. His stoic and calm suicide has become the subject of numerous paintings. As a writer Seneca is known for his philosophical works, and for his plays, which are all tragedies. His prose works include a dozen essays and one hundred twenty-four letters dealing with moral issues. These writings constitute one of the most important bodies of primary material for ancient Stoicism. As a tragedian, he is best known for plays such as his Medea, Thyestes, and Phaedra. Seneca's influence on later generations is immense, during the Renaissance he was a sage admired and venerated as an oracle of moral, even of Christian, edification; a master of literary style and a model dramatic art. Seneca was born at Córdoba in the Roman province of Baetica in Hispania. His father was Lucius Annaeus Seneca the elder, a Spanish-born Roman knight who had gained fame as a writer and teacher of rhetoric in Rome. Seneca's mother, Helvia, was from a prominent Baetician family. Seneca was the second of three brothers; the others were Lucius Annaeus Novatus, and Annaeus Mela, the father of the poet Lucan. Miriam Griffin says in her biography of Seneca that the evidence for Seneca's life before his exile in 41 is so slight, and the potential interest of these years, for social history as well as for biography, is so great that few writers on Seneca have resisted the temptation to eke out knowledge with imagination. Griffin also infers from the ancient sources that Seneca was born in either 8, 4, or 1 BC. She thinks he was born between 4 and 1 BC and was resident in Rome by AD 5. Seneca tells us that he was taken to Rome in the arms of his aunt at a young age, probably when he was about five years old. His father resided for much of his life in the city. Seneca was taught the usual subjects of literature, grammar, and rhetoric, as part of the standard education of high-born Romans. While still young he received philosophical training from Attalus the Stoic, and from Sotion and Papirius Fabianus, both of whom belonged to the short-lived School of the Sextii, which combined Stoicism with Pythagoreanism. Sotion persuaded Seneca when he was a young man to become a vegetarian, which he practised for around a year before his father urged him to desist because the practice was associated with some foreign rites. Seneca often had breathing difficulties throughout his life, probably asthma, and at some point in his mid-twenties he appears to have been struck down with tuberculosis. He was sent to Egypt to live with his aunt, whose husband Gaius Galerius had become Prefect of Egypt. She nursed him through a period of ill-health that lasted up to ten years. In 31 AD he returned to Rome with his aunt, his uncle dying en route in a shipwreck. His aunt's influence helped Seneca be elected quaestor, which also earned him the right to sit in the Roman Senate. Seneca's early career as a senator seems to have been successful and he was praised for his oratory. Cassius Dio relates a story that Caligula was so offended by Seneca's oratorical success in the Senate that he ordered him to commit suicide. Seneca only survived because he was seriously ill and Caligula was told that he would soon die anyway. In his writings Seneca has nothing good to say about Caligula and frequently depicts him as a monster. Seneca explains his own survival as down to his patience and his devotion to his friends: I wanted to avoid the impression that all I could do for loyalty was die. In 41 AD, Claudius became emperor, and Seneca was accused by the new empress Messalina of adultery with Julia Livilla, sister to Caligula and Agrippina.