When Caligula succeeded Tiberius in A.D. 37, Seneca had become a leading speaker in the Senate, and so aroused the jealousy7 of the new emperor that according to Dio Cassius he ordered his execution and was only induced to let him off by a woman close to the imperial throne who said that Seneca was ‘suffering from advanced tuberculosis and it would not be long before he died’.8 This incident apparently resulted in his temporary retirement from political affairs.
