Arvey and welcome to Empress of Rome, a podcast about the rulers of the ancient Roman Empire.

I'm your host Matt Smith and with me as always is Dr.

Rianna Evans, a lecturer in ancient Mediterranean studies at Latrobe University.

This is episode X, X, X, V, I, Seneca the Younger.

Now we're already familiar with Seneca as being the tutor and advisor to the Emperor Nero,

but there's a lot more to this man behind one of Rome's most

infamous emperors. He was a writer of tragedies, he was a stoic philosopher, and he was one

of the richest men in the Roman Empire. He's Rianna Evans. Seneca was born in 4

B.C. to an equestrian family. So they're very, very wealthy, but they're not from

the absolute top stratum of Roman society.

So 4BCE is during the reign of Augustus.

He's firmly in power by this point.

He's been prekeps for 23 years.

So Seneca's basically born into the imperial system. He hasn't ever known the

Republican system and it kind of makes sense that he's part of that and eventually

will become very close to one of the emperors. So what do we know about his early life then?

We don't know a lot. We know he was born in Spain. His family is Roman citizens, but a Spanish family from Cordoba or Cordova, modern Spanish. But we know that he spent

most of his life in Rome. He seems to have come there very young. There's a story that

he was carried in one of his female relatives arms to Rome as a baby,

which may be an exaggeration. But we don't know a lot after that. We can tell that he obviously had the classical training of an elite

Roman boy he had the best education in Greek and Roman literature and oratory. He knows all of the tricks that anybody

who'd been educated in that way would have. He has a great facility with words and

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