Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero

by James Romm

The quote suggests a continuing effort to cut a deal with the princeps, a deal Nero had already once refused. Seneca will go quietly into retirement and not defame the regime, in exchange for being left unharassed. If Nero will become an Augustus and provide safety, Seneca will become a Vergil and give praise. A parent, a teacher, a god—Seneca, in his midsixties, could not have relished giving these roles to Nero in his midtwenties, his own former pupil. He kept the discussion general and left the analogy implicit. But in another work composed at the same time, Natural Questions, he was more direct. Here, in a treatise dealing with meteorology and earth science, Seneca again dared to make mention of Nero, a name he had not set down in writing for nearly ten years.