SENECA, LUCIUS ANNAEUS

born c. 55 BC, , Corduba, Spain died AD 39, , Corduba? author of a Latin work on declamation, a form of rhetorical exercise. Only about half of his book, Oratorum sententiae divisiones colores, survives; a 4th-century epitome preserves some of the rest, including two more prefaces, giving lively sketches of the persons whom he quotes. Seneca disapproved of the artificial cleverness, often degenerating into absurdity, of many declaimers. He preferred the firmly disciplined style of Cicero. But he preserved some hundred examples of the declaimers' art. In the prefaces to the divisions of his work, he made valuable and amusing observations on the literary life of the early empire. He also preserved various accounts, such as Livy's, of the death of Cicero. The romantic topics of many of the suasoriae became part of the collection of tales known as the Gesta Romanorum. born c. 4 BC, , Corduba, Spain died AD 65, , Rome byname Seneca The Younger Roman philosopher, statesman, orator, and tragedian. He was Rome's leading intellectual figure in the mid-1st century AD and was virtual ruler with his friends of the Roman world between 54 and 62 during the first phase of the emperor Nero's reign. Additional reading Text and commentaries (Dialogi): A. Bourgery and R. Walty, 4 vol. (192242). (Epistulae morales): L.D. Reynolds, 2 vol. (1965). (Naturales quaestiones): P. Oltramare, 2 vol. (1929). General works. C.W. Mendell, Our Seneca (1941), is good on Seneca the writer. A.L. Motto, Seneca Sourcebook (1970), is a guide to Seneca's thought as reflected in his extant prose works; F.L. Lucas, Seneca and Elizabethan Tragedy (1922), is a good introduction to the subject, although written before recent advances in Senecan studies. C.D.N. Costa (ed.), Seneca (1974), contains seven essays by British scholars. Miriam T. Griffin, Seneca: A Philosopher in Politics (1976), is definitive.