ABSTRACT
From the year 62 or 63 until his death in 65, Seneca was absorbed in his writing and in meditation. He dictated the Letters to Lucilius to his secretaries (as was the custom then) and, in all probability, published the first volumes of them. His last years were those of a writer fully occupied with writing, and a meditator fully occupied by his interior life, of a subject of Nero knowing his days were numbered, and of a citizen confronted by a political drama that demanded he take a stand. Seneca shut himself up in solitude and lettered leisure in order to continue his political activity through other means of action-the spread of wisdom and the testimony he bore as a thinker to wisdom, by his attitude and by his conspicuous silence. Seneca realized that with the Letters to Lucilius, he had his life’s work in hand. Like a poet who promises immortality to the beauty he sings, Seneca announced to Lucilius that he was making their two names immortal. With the help of old age, he was aware that his progress toward wisdom was considerable, and that he was in the process of self-transformation. Moreover, he knew that he was ready to face death unafraid, and could wager all on the final scene. As for what his attitude toward Nero should be, he sought counsel from his philosophy. The political problem of those days was not simple. It bears an external resemblance to those we have lived through in this century, and the same ethical options and collective reactions can, in a vague form, be found in it, but the givens and the stakes were different.
