Essay · By Stephen Pasquini
In AD 65, the emperor Nero ordered his old teacher to die. Seneca was accused of joining a plot against the emperor, and he was given no trial. What we know of his last evening comes mostly from the Roman historian Tacitus, and it’s one of the most famous death scenes in ancient history. Here’s what happened, why it happened, and what his death meant to the people who read his letters afterward.
A note for readers: this essay describes Seneca’s forced death, which was ordered as a form of execution. If you or someone you love is struggling, please reach out. In the US, call or text 988 (Suicide and Crisis Lifeline); help is available in most countries.
The road to AD 65
For eight years Seneca was one of the most powerful men in Rome, Nero’s tutor and chief advisor. But as Nero grew more violent, Seneca tried to step away. In AD 62 he asked to retire, offered to give back his fortune, and withdrew from court as much as he could. Those last quiet years are when he wrote the Letters from a Stoic.
Tacitus reports that some writers believed Nero had already tried to have Seneca poisoned. By then Seneca was living on very simple food: wild fruit, and water from a running stream.
The accusation
In AD 65, a group of senators and officers planned to kill Nero and make a nobleman named Gaius Calpurnius Piso emperor. The plot was discovered, and the arrests began. One of the conspirators, Antonius Natalis, mentioned Seneca’s name. Natalis said he had once been sent to visit Seneca and complain that Seneca refused to see Piso. Seneca had answered that frequent meetings would help neither of them, but that his own safety depended on Piso’s.
That was all. Tacitus says Nero was glad of the excuse. There was even a rumor that some of the plotters meant to kill Piso afterward and give the throne to Seneca himself, as the most respected man in Rome. Whether Seneca knew anything about the plot, we still don’t know.
The last evening
Seneca had just returned from Campania and stopped at a country house four miles outside Rome. He was having dinner with his wife, Pompeia Paulina, and two friends when soldiers surrounded the house. A tribune questioned him; Seneca calmly denied any guilt and said he had no talent for flattery, as Nero knew better than anyone. The tribune reported back that he saw no sign of fear. Nero sent a centurion with the sentence of death.
Seneca asked for tablets to write his will. He was refused. So he turned to his friends and told them that since he couldn’t leave them anything else, he would leave them the one thing he still had, and the finest: the pattern of his life. If they remembered it, they would be known for goodness and loyal friendship.
When they wept, he gently, then more sternly, called them back to courage. Where, he asked, was all their philosophy, all those years of preparing for hard times? Everyone knew Nero’s cruelty. After killing his mother and his brother, what was left but to kill his teacher too?
Paulina
Seneca embraced his wife and begged her not to give herself over to endless grief, but to take comfort in the memory of a life well lived. Paulina refused to be left behind; she insisted on dying with him, and he did not stop her.
But Nero, Tacitus says, had no quarrel with Paulina and didn’t want to look even crueler. He ordered her saved, and her household bound her wounds. She lived a few more years, devoted to her husband’s memory, and Tacitus says she stayed strikingly pale for the rest of her life.
A slow death
Following the custom forced on condemned Romans of rank, Seneca opened his veins. Tacitus says that because Seneca was old and thin from his simple diet, his death came very slowly. Even then, he called in his secretaries and dictated his last thoughts; Tacitus says they were published, though they haven’t survived.
Tacitus also tells us that Seneca asked a trusted friend and doctor for the poison used in Athens to execute condemned prisoners, the same kind Socrates drank, but it had no effect. In the end he was carried into a steam bath, where he died. His last recorded words were a quiet religious gesture: sprinkling water on the servants nearby, he called it an offering to Jupiter the Liberator.
He had left instructions, written years earlier when he was still rich and powerful, that his body be cremated without any funeral ceremony. Even at the height of his success, Tacitus notes, he had been thinking about the end.
What his death meant
Seneca spent his last years writing to Lucilius about how to face death without fear, and readers have always seen his final evening as the test of those letters. He comforted his friends, cared for his wife and kept his composure. To many, that made his words more believable.
It’s worth staying honest, though. Tacitus wrote about fifty years later, and other ancient writers, like the historian Cassius Dio, were much harsher on Seneca, calling him a hypocrite who preached simplicity while growing rich. We also don’t know if he played any part in the plot.
His death became a favorite subject for painters. Peter Paul Rubens and Jacques-Louis David both painted it, and both show the same thing Tacitus wanted remembered: a philosopher who met an unjust death calmly, among friends.
For Seneca’s own thoughts on facing the end, read Letter 26: On Old Age and Death. For the story of how he and Nero got here, see Seneca and Nero.
Frequently asked questions
How did Seneca die?
In AD 65, Nero accused Seneca of joining the Pisonian conspiracy and ordered him to take his own life, a common form of execution for Roman aristocrats. According to Tacitus, he died slowly at his villa outside Rome, surrounded by his wife and friends.
Why did Nero order Seneca’s death?
Seneca’s name came up during the investigation into the plot to kill Nero. The evidence was thin, but Nero had already turned against his old teacher, and Tacitus suggests he was glad of the excuse.
What happened to Seneca’s wife, Paulina?
Paulina tried to die with him, but Nero ordered her saved. She survived for several more years.
How old was Seneca when he died?
About 69. He was born around 4 BC and died in AD 65.
Go deeper
James Romm’s gripping account of Seneca’s years at Nero’s court.
Tacitus’s own history, including the full account of Seneca’s last day.
Emily Wilson’s sharp, balanced biography of Seneca.
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