From a very young age, I cherished the idea of writing about Seneca. He is well known – not overly, maybe just supposedly – as a moralist, as a philosopher and as a playwright. But his political activity, more than just being Nero’s instructor, tends to remain in the dark… perhaps intentionally. The contradictions between Seneca’s works and his attitude are so far-reaching that no keen playwright could ignore them. Because he is – in parallel – the protagonist and the antagonist of his life.
In an age where decadence, widespread corruption and a sense of sluggishness make it bear resemblance to ours, there is a man from Cordoba – the most Roman of all the Stoics and the most Stoic of all the Romans – who personifies the temptations which power poses to ethics, and the contagion with which amorality assaults virtue.
Almost all the themes that political theory and practice arouse, and have aroused throughout history, unfold in Seneca: from the manipulation of the governor to the tacit consent to injustice; from resignation to ambition; from the exercise of liberty to the support of tyranny; from submission to rebellious challenge; from capital punishment to the oppression of reason.
His enormous riches and his omnipotent power oppose his contemptuous and benevolent reflection. His extraordinary passion for command, to his silent suicide. In this story, reality is elusive and usually richer than imagination. Because neither is it coherent nor does it have – or want to have – perspectives.
