Ancient · c. 4 BC – AD 65
Who influenced Seneca?
Influences and legacy
Stoic playwright and reluctant courtier whose letters made philosophy a daily practice.
Seneca was influenced by Zeno of Citium, and went on to influence Tertullian and Michel de Montaigne. That is 3 lines of the 448 documented lines of influence between the 279 thinkers on this map.
Read on Wikipedia Portrait: Calidius, CC BY-SA 3.0 See the whole map
Who was Seneca?
Born in Corduba in Spain and trained in rhetoric and philosophy, Seneca was exiled to Corsica under Claudius in 41 and recalled in 49 to tutor the young Nero. When Nero became emperor, Seneca and the prefect Burrus ran a capable government for about five years. His influence faded, and in 65 he was ordered to kill himself for alleged part in the Pisonian conspiracy, which he may have had nothing to do with.
His twelve essays and 124 letters on moral questions are among the main sources for Roman Stoicism, and his tragedies include Medea, Thyestes and Phaedra. Renaissance readers treated him as an oracle of morals and a model of style.
Summarized from the lead of the Wikipedia article.
Who influenced Seneca?
1 direct influence on this map, earliest first.
- Zeno of Citium c. 334–262 BC
Who did Seneca influence?
2 thinkers on this map draw directly on Seneca.
- Tertullian c. 155–220
- Michel de Montaigne 1533–1592
The line of teachers behind Seneca
The longest documented line of influence ending at Seneca runs 8 generations back, to Thales of Miletus.
Two steps away from Seneca
Indirect influences
- Through Zeno of Citium: Diogenes of Sinope, Crates of Thebes
The second generation
- Through Michel de Montaigne: René Descartes, Pierre Bayle, David Hume, Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Through Tertullian: Augustine of Hippo
Contemporaries of Seneca
Thinkers on this map born within 25 years of Seneca, with no direct line between them.
- Philo of Alexandria c. 20 BC – AD 50
- Musonius Rufus AD 20–101
Seneca by the numbers
- Direct influences
- 1
- Direct followers
- 2 — #50 of 279 on this map
- Thinkers upstream
- 10
- Thinkers downstream
- 152
- Wikipedia languages
- 99 — #13 of 54 among ancient philosophers
- Card rarity
- Epic
Schools and lineages
- Stoics: Zeno of Citium, Seneca, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius
Questions about Seneca
- Who influenced Seneca?
- Zeno of Citium.
- Who did Seneca influence?
- Tertullian and Michel de Montaigne.
- When did Seneca live?
- c. 4 BC – AD 65. The map files Seneca under the ancient world.
- How rare is the Seneca card?
- Wikipedia carries an article on Seneca in 99 languages, which makes it an Epic card. Legendary starts at 100 languages, Epic at 50 and Rare at 25.
More ancient philosophers
- Confucius 551–479 BC
- Aristotle 384–322 BC
- Plato c. 428–348 BC
- Socrates c. 470–399 BC
- Pythagoras c. 570–495 BC
- Laozi c. 6th c. BC
- Cicero 106–43 BC
- Thales of Miletus c. 624–546 BC