Seneca the Elder

Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Elder (ˈsɛnɪkə; c. 54 BC – c. 39 AD), also known as Seneca the Rhetorician, was a Roman writer, born of a wealthy equestrian family of Corduba, Hispania. He wrote a collection of reminiscences about the Roman schools of rhetoric, six books of which are extant in a more or less complete state and five others in epitome only. His principal work, a history of Roman affairs from the beginning of the Civil Wars until the last years of his life, is almost entirely lost to posterity. Seneca lived through the reigns of three significant emperors; Augustus (ruled 27 BC – 14 AD), Tiberius (ruled 14–37 AD) and Caligula (ruled 37–41 AD). He was the father of Lucius Junius Gallio Annaeanus, best known as a Proconsul of Achaia; his second son was the dramatist and Stoic philosopher Seneca the Younger (Lucius), who was tutor of Nero, and his third son, Marcus Annaeus Mela, became the father of the poet Lucan. Seneca the Elder is the first of the gens Annaea of whom there is definite knowledge. His branch of the Annaea gens consisted of Italic colonists, of Umbrian or Paelignian origins. During the renaissance his name and his works became confused with his son Lucius Annaeus Seneca. In the early 16th century Raphael of Volterra saw that there must be two different men. He noted that two of the elder Seneca's grandsons were called Marcus and since there was a Roman custom for boys to be given the name of their grandfather, Raphael adopted the name of Marcus for the elder Seneca. Until the 20th century this was used as the standard praenomen. However it is now accepted that this naming custom was not rigid, and since in the manuscripts he is referred to as Lucius, many scholars now prefer this praenomen since it would also help explain why their works became so confused. Growing up in Spain of wealth and equestrian rank, Seneca the Elder (here Seneca) was a young contemporary of the venerable Roman orator Cicero, whose voice of advocacy he might have sought out were he reared in Italy.