Seneca the Younger (c. 4 BC – 65 AD) was a Roman statesman and Stoic philosopher who served as tutor and advisor to the Roman emperor Nero. Nero's respect for his advisor steadily declined after the first five years of his reign, and in 65 AD he forced Seneca to take his own life for alleged complicity in an assassination plot (Tacitus, Annals 16.45ff.). Seneca is best known for his philosophical works (various essays and the Epistulae Morales) and tragedies (including the Medea, Thyestes, and Phaedra).