Seneca the Younger

Born around 4 BC in Roman Spain, Seneca trained in rhetoric and philosophy before exile to Corsica in AD 41 under Claudius. Recalled in 49, he became tutor to the teenage Nero, then advisor when the boy took the throne in 54. For five years he and the praetorian prefect Burrus ran a competent government, but as Nero's grip loosened, Seneca's influence drained away. In 65 he was implicated - possibly falsely - in a conspiracy to kill the emperor and ordered to commit suicide, which he did with the Stoic composure that later painters couldn't resist. His twelve essays and 124 letters became one of the most important records of ancient Stoic thought, and his tragedies - Medea, Thyestes, Phaedra - defined the form for the Renaissance, when Europe read him as both a moral oracle and a literary master.