Abstract

This article collects and examines the evidence for the life and work of Seneca from antiquity up to the threshold of the earliest humanist movement, in some cases providing a new edition of the texts. Since the account in Tacitus, ‘Annales’ xv 60-65 was not available, St Jerome’s ‘De viris illustribus’ and the apocryphal correspondence of Paul and Seneca played a major part, accompanied by the ‘Passio Sancti Pauli’ and brief texts containing introduction and comment on both genuine and spurious works, plus the ‘Consolatio Philosophiae’, this last for the passage in which Boethius speaks of Nero’s offer to let Seneca choose how he would die. As more of Seneca’s works became known in the 13th century more substantial biographies were possible, but still within the existing framework. The medieval image of Seneca was constructed from three principal elements: as Nero’s tutor, as a friend of St Paul, as a valued teacher of morality. Apart from a few cases Seneca was not seen as a Christian.