“While we wait for life, life passes.”
Letters to Lucilius
Seneca advised the young emperor Nero before withdrawing from court. His Letters to Lucilius teach a practical Stoicism: control judgement, accept fortune, use time well. He was ordered to take his own life in 65 CE after being accused of conspiracy.
His tragedies — Medea, Thyestes, Phaedra — retell Greek myth with rhetorical horror, and were read and imitated from the Renaissance onward, influencing Shakespeare and Racine.
Legacy
He is the most readable of the Roman Stoics and a bridge between ancient philosophy and Christian ethics.