Rome Under Claudius and Nero

To understand Seneca, you need to know something about the world he lived in.

Rome in Seneca's lifetime was the capital of an empire that stretched from Britain to Egypt. Emperors held almost total power. A good emperor could make life steady. A bad emperor could make it dangerous. Seneca lived through four. Tiberius was old and suspicious. Caligula went mad. Claudius was unsteady, ruled by his wives and freedmen. Nero began with promise and ended in horror. None of them could be trusted to leave a powerful man alone.

Roman politics in this period was less a government than a court. Power was held by the people closest to the emperor: family, freedmen, advisors, soldiers. The Senate still met, but its real authority had thinned to ceremony. Careers rose and fell on the emperor's mood. Accusations of treason flew freely, often invented for political reasons. Exile or death could come at any time, often without trial.

Stoicism was a risky business under emperors like these. The Stoics taught that no one but the good person is truly free. Some emperors did not like the sound of that. Stoic philosophers were repeatedly exiled or killed across the first century. Seneca's own life included an eight-year exile to Corsica and ended in a forced suicide.

His position at the heart of Nero's court made him visible to everyone. He could not retreat into the ordinary life he praised. He could not refuse the wealth that came with the office. He could not tell his student what he honestly thought without endangering his own life. He worked inside an impossible job and tried to do it well enough to keep the emperor from becoming what the emperor eventually became.

In 65 AD, a senator named Piso led a conspiracy to assassinate Nero. The plot was discovered. Hundreds were executed or driven to suicide in the aftermath. Seneca was one of them. The world he had spent his life trying to manage finally killed him.

That is the world of these essays. Keep it in mind as you read.