SENECA was born at Corduba, in Spain, about 4 B.C. His parents brought him to Rome and educated him thoroughly in rhetoric and philosophy. He soon became celebrated as a pleader in the courts, and his writings raised him to eminence among the Stoics at a time when the despotism of a series of the worst tyrants made the Stoic philosophy of repression the only recourse of the intellectual classes at Rome. Seneca was a man of much flexibility of intellect and he became a Senator under Caligula; but under Claudius, Messalina caused him to be banished to Corsica, where he remained until recalled to become the tutor of Nero. The promise of virtue which characterized the early years of Nero’s reign was due to Seneca’s teaching, but when in 65 A.D. the philosopher was compelled by his pupil to commit suicide, it is not unfair to inquire of the system whether the same flaw in it which made so great a writer and teacher as Seneca himself one of the most notorious usurers of Rome, might not have been instrumental in making Nero what he became in the later years of his reign. Seneca’s chief works as a moralist and essayist are “On Anger,” “On Clemency,” “On Benefits,” “On Providence,” and “On Tranquillity.” His tragedies show that he had talent as a poet and maker of maxims scarcely inferior to that of Pope among the Moderns. His tragedies are imitated from Greek originals, it is true, but this is equally true of all other Latin verse. Among writers of Latin prose, Seneca ranks with Cicero in power of synthesis, but his prose style has found few imitators, while that of Cicero has been a model for students in all succeeding generations.