Lucius Annaeus Seneca was born around 4 BCE in Cordoba, in the Roman province of Hispania, and spent most of his adult life at the center of Roman power at exactly the moment that Roman power was at its most treacherous. He served as tutor and later as chief advisor to the emperor Nero, the most erratic and dangerous ruler of the first century CE. He accumulated enormous personal wealth while writing extensively about the dangers of excessive attachment to wealth. He preached equanimity while navigating a court in which political missteps meant exile or execution. He was eventually ordered...