Greatest Empire: A Life of Seneca

By any measure, Seneca (?4-65AD) is one of the most significant figures in both Roman literature and ancient philosophy. His writings are voluminous and diverse, ranging from satire to disturbing, violent tragedies, from metaphysical theory to moral and political discussions of virtue and anger. Seneca found himself at the turbulent center of Roman imperial power, making him thus an important witness to the Empire's first dynasty, the Julio-Claudians. Exiled by the emperor Claudius in the wake of a sex scandal, he was eventually brought back to Rome to become tutor and, later, speech-writer and advisor to Nero. Seneca was suspected of plotting against Nero, condemned to die, and ultimately took his own life-an act that is one of the most iconic suicides in Western history.

The life and works of Seneca pose a number of fascinating challenges. How can we reconcile the bloody tragedies with the prose works advocating a life of Stoic tranquility? How are we to balance Seneca the man of principle, who counseled a life of calm and simplicity, with Seneca the man of the moment, who amassed a vast personal fortune in the service of an emperor seen by many, at the time and afterwards, as an insane tyrant? In this definitive and moving biography, Emily Wilson presents Seneca as a man under enormous pressure, struggling for compromise in a world of absolutism. The Greatest Empire offers us the portrait of a life lived perilously in the gap between political realities and philosophical ideals, between what we aspire to be and what we are.


Author: Emily Wilson
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 10/21/2014
Pages: 272
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.12lbs
Size: 9.45h x 6.46w x 0.94d
ISBN: 9780199926640


Review Citation(s):
New York Review of Books 10/09/2014 pg. 31
Library Journal 12/01/2014 pg. 106
Choice 04/01/2015 pg. 1310
Christian Century 08/05/2015 pg. 38

About the Author

Emily Wilson is Associate Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.



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