Among his many works of moral philosophy are “De Ira” (“On Anger”), “De Providentia” (“On Providence”), and “De Brevitate Vitae” (“On the Shortness of Life”). He was also what today might be called an ethicist. He was a celebrated rhetorician, a satirist, the author of several books of natural history, and a playwright. If poets and philosophers dream of influencing those in power, Seneca was uniquely positioned to do so.
And so Nero turned to the man he had always relied on, Lucius Annaeus Seneca, better known as Seneca the Younger, or just plain Seneca. (Even in imperial Rome, matricide was, apparently, bad P.R.) Now this was impossible.
The whole point of the affectionate display and the gift of the boat had been to make Agrippina’s death look like an accident. This series of unfortunate events put the emperor in a pickle. When Nero learned that his mother had survived, he sent his minions to stab her. She was picked up by a fishing boat and deposited safely onshore. The rowers rushed over and bashed her on the head with their oars. Acerronia-“rather unwisely,” as Tacitus puts it-kept screaming that she was Agrippina and needed help. Agrippina and a second attendant, Acerronia, swam free.
The hull, too, had been crafted to break apart in all the confusion, though, it failed to do so. The deck of the ship fell in, yet, rather than killing Agrippina, it crushed one of her attendants. But just about everything that should have gone wrong didn’t. The gift was supposed to be a death trap. Then, when it was time for her to leave, he presented her with a gift-a beautifully appointed boat to ferry her up the coast. During the festivities, he treated her with great affection. In a gesture designed to appear conciliatory, Nero invited his mother, Agrippina, to join him at a festival in Baiae, a resort town near present-day Naples. As you can imagine, the two were not on good terms. Sometime in the spring of the year 59, the emperor Nero decided to murder his mother. Seneca was venerated as a moral thinker he was also one of Nero’s closest advisers.
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