Moral Letters to Lucilius

Seneca the Youngerc. AD 62–65

A collection of 124 letters on philosophy and the conduct of life, written by the Stoic Seneca in his last years. One of them mentions in passing that Gallio, his brother, fell ill in Achaia and took ship.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca was a senator, a Stoic philosopher and an adviser of the emperor Nero. He wrote the letters to Lucilius in his last years, and died in AD 65 when Nero ordered his death (Tacitus, Annals 15.60–64).

The letters matter for this history in one small point. Gallio, the proconsul of Achaia before whom Acts brings Paul, was Seneca’s brother (Tacitus, Annals 15.73). In Letter 104 Seneca recalls that Gallio, when he began to run a fever in Achaia, at once took ship, saying that the sickness belonged to the place and not to his body. The remark comes from Gallio’s own family. It places Gallio in Achaia, where Acts and the Gallio Inscription from Delphi make him proconsul, and it suggests that he left the province, at least for a time, on grounds of health.

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