[Sidenote: Lucius Annæus Seneca.] Lucius Annæus Seneca, the son of the rhetor Seneca, whose work on the oratorical teachers of the period of Augustus and the subsequent years has already been mentioned, was born at Corduba, in Spain, about the beginning of the Christian era, but was educated in Rome, where he studied under Sotion, the Stoic Attalus, and a follower of the Sextii, Papirius Fabianus, besides attending schools of rhetoric. His mother, Helvia, was a lady of noble birth, whose sister married Vitrasius Pollio, who was for some years governor of Egypt. Seneca appears to have spent some time in Egypt with his aunt, through whose influence he obtained the quæstorship after his return to Rome, at some time between 42 and 37 A. D. A speech which he delivered in the senate nearly caused his death by arousing the jealousy of Caligula in 39 A. D. In 41 A. D. he was banished to Corsica through the influence of Messalina, on the charge of too great intimacy with Julia Livilla, Caligula’s younger sister. Such stories were circulated about all the members of the imperial family, and we have now no means of knowing whether there was any truth in the charge against Seneca and Livilla. Probably the real reason for Seneca’s banishment was his connection with the faction of Agrippina. At any rate, Agrippina recalled him from Corsica eight years later, after the execution of Messalina, obtained for him the prætorship, and made him tutor to her son Domitius Nero. His influence over his young pupil was so great that when Nero came to the throne, Seneca, with the aid of his friend Afranius Burrus, commander of the prætorian guards, directed the imperial government. He restrained the ferocity of Nero and checked the ambition and vengefulness of Agrippina. Owing to his influence the early years of Nero’s reign were long remembered as a period of rest and peace at Rome. But Seneca obtained and held his influence in great measure by yielding consent to Nero’s wishes, even when they were opposed to his better judgment or his conscience. He was probably privy to the murder of Claudius, by which Nero became emperor, there is no indication that he opposed the murder of Germanicus in 55 A. D., and he probably had some connection with the murder of Agrippina in 59 A. D. It is natural that in spite of his remarkable intellectual and social gifts, he was unable to maintain his moral ascendency over the emperor. With the death of Burrus, in 62 A. D., Seneca’s power was broken. He recognized the fact, withdrew so far as he could from the life of the court, and in 64 A. D. offered to give up his great wealth. But his retirement did not save him from Nero’s cruelty, and in 65 A. D. he was accused of sharing in the conspiracy of Piso and compelled to commit suicide.