Philosopher, dramatist, rhetorician, Stoic and pragmatist, Seneca was one of the most contradictory figures in ancient Rome, embracing a stern ascetic morality while amassing a fortune under Nero and eventually committing suicide. This definitive biography reveals a life lived perilously in the gap between ideals and reality.
Emily Wilson is an Associate Professor in the Department of Classical Studies. She has a BA from Oxford in Classics, an MPhil, also from Oxford, in English Literature (1500-1660), and a PhD from Yale in Classics and Comparative Literature. She is the author of Mocked with Death- Tragic Overliving from Sophocles to Milton and The Death of Sophocles- Hero, Villain, Chatterbox, Saint.
Seneca lived in a world where dissimulation was a way of life, and
the confusion between reality and failure woven into the very
fabric of the state. It is the mirror he holds up to it which makes
him such a great and unsettling writer, and which Wilson's fine
biography does so much to explicate
*Telegraph*
Absorbing
*Observer*
Morally our author is tough on Seneca, contrasting, for example,
his lickspittle approach to Nero with Boudicca's resistance. But
she is a persuasive extoller of his writing and the final chapter
about his diverse legacy is breathtaking
*Spectator*
The most famous and poignant example of a philosopher trying and
spectacularly failing to improve a ruler, is that of the Roman
Stoic Seneca, whose life is wonderfully retold here by the
classicist Emily Wilson
*Sunday Times*
This is a riveting and complete picture of Seneca's complex and
compromised life. It is impeccably researched, carefully
structured, and written with admirable brio. For good or ill, ours
is a Senecan age
*Simon Critchley, The New School for Social Research*
A fresh, perceptive, and in-depth look at the enigmatic Seneca,
giving us a nuanced perspective into the conflicted mind and
motives of the philosopher who embraced lofty Stoic ideals while
serving Nero and amassing great wealth in the process. I honestly
could not put it down, it is so insightful and well written and yes
-- suspenseful, even though we know the ending
*Margaret George, author of Elizabeth I: The Novel and Helen of
Troy: A Novel*
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