The Suicide of Seneca  

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The Suicide of Seneca[1] (1871, Museo del Prado) is a painting by Manuel Domínguez Sánchez.

Background

In AD 65, Seneca was caught up in the aftermath of the Pisonian conspiracy, a plot to kill Nero. Although it is unlikely that Seneca conspired, Nero ordered him to kill himself. Seneca followed tradition by severing several veins in order to bleed to death, and his wife Pompeia Paulina attempted to share his fate. A generation after the Julio-Claudian emperors, Tacitus wrote an account of the suicide, which in view of his Republican sympathies is perhaps somewhat romanticized. According to this account, Nero ordered Seneca's wife to be saved. Her wounds were bound up and she made no further attempt to kill herself. As for Seneca himself, his age and diet were blamed for slow loss of blood and extended pain rather than a quick death; he also took poison, which was also not fatal. After dictating his last words to a scribe, and with a circle of friends attending him in his home, he immersed himself in a warm bath, which was expected to speed blood flow and ease his pain. Tacitus wrote, "He was then carried into a bath, with the steam of which he was suffocated, and he was burnt without any of the usual funeral rites. So he had directed in a codicil of his will, even when in the height of his wealth and power he was thinking of life’s close."

See also

• Seneca the Younger
• The Death of Seneca (David)
• History of suicide
• Suicide
• Forced suicide
• Pseudo-Seneca
• Double Herm of Socrates and Seneca
• Philosophy of suicide
• List of suicides
• Epistulae morales ad Lucilium
• Phaedra (Seneca)
• Annaea gens
• Senicide