Sublime

that Seneca had a bad case of consumption and would die soon.

A head like his, he’ll run mad.”

Catharine and her children, and Louisa were dead. The act that destroyed them was, in the highest degree, inhuman. It was worthy of savages trained to murder, and exulting in agonies. Who was the performer of the deed? Wieland! My brother! The husband and the father! That man of gentle virtues and invincible benignity! placable and mild—an idolator

On topics of religion and of his own history, previous to his TRANSFORMATION into a Spaniard, he was invariably silent.

22 The De Clementia works to reassure the elite Roman public that this act of bloodshed, the murder of Britannicus, would not be characteristic of the future behavior of the Neronian rule, and that the right-hand man of the new emperor, his old tutor Seneca, was strongly opposed to any kind of cruelty and was in full control of his moral education.

the life story of Thomas More, scholar, philosopher, writer, and advisor to Henry VIII, who was then beheaded by the king, has been well compared to that of Seneca. 13 Seneca as a historical character (rather than as a writer or philosopher) often did come across rather badly in early modern literature and drama

The implications of Suillius’ attack were that Seneca was not only very wealthy, but wealthy despite an entirely false claim to be “philosophical,” and wealthy at the expense of other citizens. Legacy-hunting was a common corrupt practice in Rome at the time, memorably depicted in literary texts such as Petronius’ Satyricon, in which the central