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For centuries this portrait was identified as me — the Stoic philosopher, tutor to Nero, forced to open his own veins in 65 AD. Scholars now believe it may be someone else entirely. I find this fitting. I spent much of my life wondering whether the Seneca who wrote about virtue was the same man who accepted money from an emperor who murdered his own mother.

Philosophy is easier to write than to live. I knew this better than most. My consolation is that the gap between what I preached and what I practised was, at least, a gap I acknowledged. Most men do not even see it.