Seneca

Seneca was a Spanish-born Roman senator, Stoic philosopher and dramatist, exiled to Corsica by Claudius and recalled to tutor the young Nero, whose reign he then guided for its five good years and profited from enormously. When Nero turned, Seneca withdrew to philosophy and was ordered to kill himself in 65, which he did with Socratic composure. The Moral and Political Essays the lists assign include On Anger, On Mercy, written for Nero, On the Shortness of Life and On Clemency; the Letters to Lucilius are the other half. His tragedies, bloody and rhetorical, were the model for the Elizabethans.