On Firmness

Seneca the Younger (c. 4 BC - AD 65), fully Lucius Annaeus Seneca and also known simply as Seneca (/ˈsɛnɪkə/), was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, dramatist, and--in one work--humorist of the Silver Age of Latin literature. As a tragedian, he is best-known for his Medea and Thyestes.He was a tutor and later advisor to emperor Nero. He was forced to take his own life for alleged complicity in the Pisonian conspiracy to assassinate Nero. However, some sources state that he may have been innocent.His father was Seneca the Elder, his elder brother was Lucius Junius Gallio Annaeanus, and his nephew was the poet Lucan. Seneca was born in Cordoba in Hispania, and raised in Rome, where he was trained in rhetoric and philosophy.Miriam Griffin says in her biography of Seneca that "the evidence for Seneca's life before his exile in 41 is so slight, and the potential interest of these years, for social history as well as for biography, is so great that few writers on Seneca have resisted the temptation to eke out knowledge with imagination." Griffin also infers from the ancient sources that Seneca was born in either 8, 4, or 1 BC. She thinks he was born between 4 and 1 BC and was a resident in Rome by AD 5. Seneca says that he was carried to Rome in the arms of his mother's stepsister. Griffin says that, allowing for rhetorical exaggeration, means "it is fair to conclude that Seneca was in Rome as a very small boy." Be that as it may, it is clear that he was in Rome at a relatively early stage in his life.Seneca's essay on the firmness of the wise person presents the Stoic idea of the Sage in very clear and practical terms, as a role model to aspire to. The author is very clear that the Sage is not a hypothetical, unreachable by actual human beings, as is the case for instance in Christianity, where the equivalent of the Sage, Jesus, is literally a God. In a sense, the role of the Sage in Stoicism is similar to that of Buddha: showing the way.