* The author is part of the community of La Vanguardia readers
Lucio Anneo Seneca (Córdoba, 4 BC - Rome, 65 AD) stated that "man is the master of the world." He belonged to a wealthy family from the Baetic province of the Roman Empire. His father was a prestigious rhetorician, whose dialectical skill was later highly appreciated by scholastics, and he ensured that his son's education in Rome included a solid training in the rhetorical arts.
He was Nero's tutor and senator of the Roman Empire. Philosophy was, for him, a fundamentally practical matter, whose main objective was to guide men towards virtue, communicating to them the knowledge of the nature of the world and their own place in it so that this would make them capable of guiding their lives in accordance with divine will.
His work constitutes the main written source of Stoic philosophy that has survived to the present day. He covers both plays and philosophical dialogues, treatises on natural philosophy, consolations and letters. He outlined the main characteristics of late Stoicism, of which along with Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius he is considered the greatest exponent of it.
Stoic doctrine presents man as teacher of the world. He can dominate the world if he dominates himself: he is the master of his passions. It is our inhibitions, fears and beliefs that prevent us from carrying them out.
Church fathers like Saint Augustine quote it frequently. Tertullian considered him a "saepe noster", that is, "often one of our own", and Saint Jerome even included him in his Catalog of Saints. The thought of Galen (129-200 AD) is part of Stoic philosophy.
He advises that "the teacher must start from the individuality of the student, aware that he is forming a soul, not simply instructing an intellect."
Seneca's influence runs throughout humanism and other Renaissance currents. His affirmation of the equality of all men, his contempt for superstition, his anthropocentrist opinions, his advocacy of a sober and moderate life as a way to find happiness, would find a place in Renaissance thought. Another phrase of his: "If we have provided ourselves against cold and hunger and thirst, the rest is vanity and excess."
Erasmus of Rotterdam was the first to prepare a critical edition of his works (1515) and Calvin's first work was an edition of De clementia, in 1532.
Robert Burton cites him in his Anatomy of Melancholy, and Juan Luis Vives and Thomas More held him in high esteem, and echoed his ethical ideas. In Montaigne's work, the Essays, references to the work of Seneca are constant. Many of Montaigne's essays resemble the structure developed by Seneca in his Letters to Lucilius, which have been seen as a clear antecedent of the modern essay.
