From acclaimed classical historian author of Ghost on the Throne a high-stakes drama full of
murder madness tyranny perversion with the sweep of history on the grand scale. At the
center the tumultuous life of Seneca ancient Rome's preeminent writer and philosopher
beginning with banishment in his fifties and subsequent appointment as tutor to twelve-year-old
Nero future emperor of Rome. Controlling them both Nero's mother Julia Agrippina the Younger
Roman empress great-granddaughter of the Emperor Augustus sister of the Emperor Caligula
niece and fourth wife of Emperor Claudius. James Romm seamlessly weaves together the life and
written words the moral struggles political intrigue and bloody vengeance that enmeshed
Seneca the Younger in the twisted imperial family and the perverse paranoid regime of Emperor
Nero despot and madman. Romm writes that Seneca watched over Nero as teacher moral guide and
surrogate father and at seventeen when Nero abruptly ascended to become emperor of Rome
Seneca a man never avid for political power became with Nero the ruler of the Roman Empire.
We see how Seneca was able to control his young student how under Seneca's influence Nero
ruled with intelligence and moderation banned capital punishment reduced taxes gave slaves
the right to file complaints against their owners pardoned prisoners arrested for sedition.
But with time as Nero grew vain and disillusioned Seneca was unable to hold sway over the
emperor and between Nero's mother Agrippina-thought to have poisoned her second husband and
her third who was her uncle (Claudius) and rumored to have entered into an incestuous
relationship with her son-and Nero's father described by Suetonius as a murderer and cheat
charged with treason adultery and incest how long could the young Nero have been contained?
Dying Every Day is a portrait of Seneca's moral struggle in the midst of madness and excess. In
his treatises Seneca preached a rigorous ethical creed exalting heroes who defied danger to
do what was right or embrace a noble death. As Nero's adviser Seneca was presented with a more
complex set of choices as the only man capable of summoning the better aspect of Nero's nature
yet remaining at Nero's side and colluding in the evil regime he created. Dying Every Day is
the first book to tell the compelling and nightmarish story of the philosopher-poet who was
almost a king tied to a tyrant-as Seneca the paragon of reason watched his student spiral
into madness and whose descent saw five family murders the Fire of Rome and a savage purge
that destroyed the supreme minds of the Senate's golden age.
