INTRODUCTION 



SENECA 

 I. LIFE 



Lucius ANNAEUS SENECA was the second son of Annaeus 

 Seneca (generally, but apparently without authority, called 

 Marcus Annaeus Seneca) of Corduba (Cordova) in Spain : 

 his mother was a Spanish lady named Helvia. The 

 elder Seneca was himself a man of note. He is known 

 as Seneca the Orator or Rhetorician, in contradistinction 

 to his more famous son, the Philosopher. His works that 

 have come down to us suggest by their titles, Controversiae 

 and Suasoriae, the rhetorical character of the contents. 



Seneca had an elder brother, M. Annaeus Novatus, 

 and a younger one, L. Annaeus Mela (or Mella), father of 

 Lucan the poet (M. Annaeus Lucanus). 1 The family 

 was thus a distinguished one. The poet Martial, himself 

 a Spaniard, speaks of " the house of learned Seneca thrice 

 to be numbered " (iv. 40. 2) : the allusion might with 

 equal appropriateness apply either to the three brothers 

 or to the three generations : Seneca the Elder, Seneca, 

 Lucan father, son, grandson. 



The eldest brother of the Senecan family, Novatus, 

 was adopted by a friend of the family, Junius Gallio, by 

 whose name he is known to history. Seneca on more 

 than one occasion makes reference to him in the Q.N., 

 and always in the most laudatory terms. In iv. Pref. 9 

 et sqq., he pays a high tribute to his character, and a 



1 Lucan, owing to the jealousy of Nero, was induced to join Piso's con- 

 spiracy in 65 and suffered the penalty. His heroic poem, the Pharsalia, though 

 in many respects crude, is a wonderful production for a man of twenty-six. 

 xxi 



