The Epistles of Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Seneca would not deprive her of so much glory. Such, besides, was his fondness for her that he was loath to leave one he loved above all things exposed to insults and injuries. "I had laid before you," he said, "the delights and solaces of living; you prefer the renown of dying. I shall not envy you the honor of the example. Let us share equally the fortitude of an end so brave, but greater will be the splendor of your own death."

Immediately after this conversation, they had the veins of their arms opened at the same instant. Seneca was aged Supposed to be about 63, from what the Emperor says to him: "Thy age, moreover, still retains soundness and vigor; is still capable of managing thy revenues with sufficiency, and of enjoying them with pleasure.", his body cold and thin from a meager diet, so that his blood flowed exceedingly slowly. Hence, he ordered the veins of his legs and those about his knee joints to be cut. As he was succumbing to grievous agonies, he persuaded her to retire, lest his own sufferings might weaken his wife's resolution, or he himself, by beholding her pangs, lapse into weakness and impatience. And his eloquence flowing even to the last moment of his life, he called for his scribes and dictated many things to them This is great (as Lipsius observes) in Seneca, to consult in his last moments the good of posterity, and to treat his friends and family with a lecture on morality and virtue..

Toward Paulina, Nero bore no personal hate, and, to avoid feeding the public abhorrence of his cruelty, ordered her death to be prevented. Hence, at the persuasion of the soldiers, her domestic slaves and freedmen bound up her arms and staid the blood, though whether with her own concurrence is uncertain. However, she added but a few years to her life, ever retaining for the memory of her husband a reverence worthy of all praise. Seneca, meanwhile, affected by the tedious protraction of life and the slow advance of death, applied to his old friend and physician, Statius Annaeus, for a dose of poison, such as they gave at Athens to condemned criminals. He swallowed it, but in vain, for his limbs were already chilled and his juices stagnated, becoming impenetrable to the rapidity of the poison. He therefore had recourse to a hot bath, from which he sprinkled some of his slaves, adding that, "Of this liquor he made a libation to Jupiter the Deliverer." From thence he was conveyed into a stove and suffocated with the steam. His corpse was burnt without any funeral solemnity, as he had enjoined in his will when, in the plenitude of his opulence and authority, he had provided for his decease and obsequies.

There was a rumor that Subrius Flavius, in a secret consultation with the centurions (and even with the knowledge of Seneca), had determined that as soon as by the aid of Piso, Nero was slain, Piso too was to have been dispatched, and the empire transferred to Seneca as one who well deserved it for his integrity and virtue.