Philosophical Works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Vol. 2

adopted one is called in the Eusebian Chronicle: "Junius Annaeus (I would prefer Annaeanus) Gallio, brother of Seneca, and a distinguished declaimer": is it using that double family name (which was rare, or rather, did not exist among the ancients) to note into which he went by adoption, and in which he was by nature? It appears so, if the nomenclature or writing is correct. This is the one to whom our Seneca wrote and sent the books On Anger, whom he calls Novatus in them: yet the same man, in the writing On the Happy Life, he calls Gallio his brother; and likewise in his Epistles, his lord Gallio; respectfully, as to an elder brother, of course. But observe, therefore, that he does not seem to have been adopted at the time the books On Anger were written, that is, while Gaius was alive: but finally afterwards, and it was then that he [changed] his cognomen. But the youngest brother is Annaeus Mela, named by Tacitus, Dio, and Eusebius, who was only a Roman knight (for the former was a Senator) and begot his son Lucan, "a great support (says Tacitus) of his renown." And these, therefore, are the three brothers, concerning whom Martial is to be understood:

He calls him learned, that Declaimer: the triple house, the three sons and the families mentioned.

CHAPTER III.

He came, therefore, as a boy to Rome, and there, in the best arts, his excellent talent grew. "His adolescence fell in the principate of Tiberius," as he himself admits. (Epist. CVIII): and at that time, when "foreign rites were being suppressed." That was the fifth year of Tiberius, the 772nd from the founding of the city: which is manifest from Tacitus, who writes that "Egyptian and Jewish rites were banished" in that year. (Annals, Book II, at the end). Therefore, Seneca would have been in the fullness of his adolescence then, twenty or twenty-two years of age. For that he had attained a somewhat greater age under Augustus himself is clear from the fact that he observed a comet, or flame, before his death, of which he reports: "We saw before the death of the Divine Augustus a similar prodigy" (Quæst. Nat. I, ch. 1): and such things would not be noted with such curiosity by boys. I believe he had his father himself as a tutor in eloquence: and the books and prefaces of the Controversiae say as much.