Sennár lies within the northern limits of the tropical rains, which reach to Khartum, and fall between June and September. In this part of its course the Blue Nile rises from May to August, when the northern and western winds prevail, nearly coinciding with the cool and healthy season. But they are followed by the hot khaúsín from the south or the samúm (simoom) from the north-west charged with fine sand from the Libyan Desert. Still more dreaded are the miasmatic exhalations caused by the glowing sun playing on stagnant waters after the floods and giving rise to the “Sennar fever,” which drives the natives themselves from the plains to the southern uplands. The temperature, which rises at times to over 120° Fahr., is also very changeable, often sinking from 100° Fahr. during the day to under 60° Fahr. at night.

The soil, mainly alluvial, is naturally fertile, and wherever water and hands are available yields bounteous crops of maize, pulse, cotton, tobacco, sesame, and especially durra, of which as many as twenty varieties are said to be cultivated. The forest vegetation, mainly confined to the “Isle of Isles” and the southern uplands, includes the Adansouia (baobab), which in the Fazogl district attains gigantic proportions, the tamarind, of which bread is made, the deleb palm, several valuable gum trees (whence the term Sennári often applied in Egypt to gum arabic), some dyewoods, ebony, ironwood, and many varieties of acacia. These forests are haunted by the two-horned rhinoceros, the elephant, lion, panther, numerous apes and antelopes, while the crocodile and hippopotamus frequent all the rivers. The chief domestic animals are the camel, horse, ass, ox, buffalo (used both as a beast of burden and for riding), sheep with a short silky fleece, the goat, cat, dog, and pig, which last here reaches its southernmost limit. The tsetse fly appears to be absent, but is replaced in some districts by a species of wasp, whose sting is said to be fatal to the camel in the rainy season.

The “African Mesopotamia” is occupied by a partly settled partly still nomad population of an extremely mixed character, including representatives of nearly all the chief ethnical divisions of the continent. But the great plain of Sennár is mainly occupied by Hassanieh Arabs in the north, by Abu-Rof (Rufaya) Hamites of Beja stock (Robert Hartmann) in the cast as far as Fazogl, and elsewhere by the Funj (Fung, Fungheh), traditionally from beyond the "White Nile, and affiliated by some to the Kordofán Nubas, by others more probably to the Nilotic Negro Shillúks. These Funj, who have been the dominant race since the 15th century, have become almost everywhere assimilated in speech, religion, and habits to the Arabs. Nevertheless on their sacred Mount Guleh the traveller Pruyssenaere found them still performing pagan rites, while according to Marno the Búrúns, the southernmost branch of the race between the Berta highlanders and the Nilotic Dcnkas, are addicted to cannibalism. The Berta highlanders themselves (Jebalain, as the Arabs collectively call them) are of more or less pure Negro stock and number about 80,000, grouped in several semi-independent principalities. The " no-man’s-land” stretching north of Dar-Berta and east of the Tumat valley is also occupied by distinct nationalities, such as the Kadalos in the extreme north, the Sienetjos and Gumus in the east, here bordering on the Abyssinian Agaws, the Jabus and Gánti in the south. Most of these appear to be of Negro or Negroid stock; but the Sienetjos, said to he a surviving remnant of the primitive population of the whole country, are doubtless akin to the Sienetjos of Damot and Gojam in Abyssinia. They are certainly not blacks, and have a yellow or fair complexion, lighter than that of southern Europeans.

The Sennári people cultivate a few industries, such as cottonweaving, pottery, gold, silver, and iron work, matting, and leather work (camel saddles, sandals, &c.), noted throughout Sudan. But their chief pursuits are stock-breeding, agriculture, and trade,— exporting to Egypt and Abyssinia gold, hides, durra, sesame, gums, ivory, horses, and slaves. The chief centres of population, all on the Bahr-el-Azrak, are Fazogl (Fazoklo), now replaced by Famaka, at the Tumat confluence; Roséres, formerly capital of an independent state; Sennár, also an old capital, which gives its name to the whole region; Wod-Medineh at the Rahad confluence; and Khartum, just above the junction of the two Niles. A few miles above Khartum are the extensive ruins of Soba, former capital of the Funj empire, which at one time stretched from Wady Haifa to Dar-Berta and from Suakin to beyond Kordofán, but which was overthrown by Ismail Pasha in the year 1822.

Seneca is at once the most eminent among the Latin writers of the Silver Age and in a special sense their representative, not least because he was the originator of a false style. The affected and sentimental manner which gradually grew up in the first century A.D. became ingrained in him, and appears equally in everything which he wrote, whether poetry or prose, as the most finished product of ingenuity concentrated upon declamatory exercises, substance being sacrificed to form and thought to point. Every variety of rhetorical conceit in turn contributes to the dazzling effect, now tinsel and ornament, now novelty and versatility of treatment, or affected simplicity and studied absence of plan. But the chief weapon is the epigram (sententia), summing up in terse incisive antithesis the gist of a whole period. “Seneca is a man of real genius,” writes Niebuhr, “which is after all the main thing; not to be unjust to him, one must know the whole range of that literature to which he belonged and realize how well he understood the art of making something even of what was most absurd.” His works were upon various subjects. (1) His Orations, probably the speeches which Nero delivered, are lost, as also a biography of his father, and (2) his earlier scientific works, such as the monographs describing India and Egypt and one upon earthquakes (Nat. Qu., vi. 4, 2). The seven extant books of Physical Investigations (Naturales Quaestiones) treat in a popular manner of meteorology and astronomy; the work has little scientific merit, yet here and there Seneca, or his authority, has a shrewd guess, e.g., that there is a connexion between earthquakes and volcanoes, and that comets are bodies like the planets revolving in fixed orbits. (3) The Satire on the Death (and deification) of Claudius is a specimen of the “satjra Menippea” or medley of prose and verse. The writer’s spite against the dead emperor before whom he had cringed servilely shows in a sorry fashion when he fastens on the wise and liberal measure of conferring the franchise upon Gaul as a theme for abuse. (4) The remaining prose works are of the nature of moral essays, bearing various titles,—twelve so-called Dialogues, three books On Clemency dedicated to Nero, seven On Benefits, twenty books of Letters to Lucilius. They are all alike in discussing practical questions and in addressing a single reader in a tone of familiar conversation, the objections he is supposed to make being occasionally cited and answered. Seneca had the wit to discover that conduct, which is after all “three-fourths of life,” could furnish inexhaustible topics of abiding universal interest far superior to the imaginary themes set in the schools and abundantly analysed in his father’s Controversiae and Suasoriae, such as poisoning cases, or tyrannicide, or even historical persons like Hannibal and Sulla. The innovation took the public taste,—plain matters of urgent personal concern sometimes treated casuistically, sometimes in a liberal vein with serious divergence from the orthodox standards, but always with an earnestness which aimed directly at the reader’s edification, progress towards virtue, and general moral improvement. The essays are in fact Stoic sermons; for the creed of the later Stoics had become less of a philosophical system and more of a religion, especially at Rome, where moral and theological doctrines alone attracted lively interest. The school is remarkable for its anticipation of modern ethical conceptions, for the lofty morality of its exhorta tions to forgive injuries and overcome evil with good; the obligation to universal benevolence had been deduced from the cosmopolitan principle that all men are brethren. In Seneca, in addition to all this, there is a distinctively religious temperament, which finds expression in phrases curiously suggestive of the spiritual doctrines of Christianity. Yet the verbal coincidence is sometimes a mere accident, as when he uses sacer spiritus ; and in the same writings he sometimes advocates what is wholly repulsive to Christian feeling, as the duty and privilege of suicide.

Eight of the tragedies which bear Seneca’s name are undoubtedly genuine. In them the defects of his prose style are exaggerated: as specimens of pompous rant they are probably unequalled; and the rhythm is unpleasant owing to the monotonous structure of the iambics and the neglect of synapheia in the anapaestic systems. The praetexta Octavia, also ascribed to him, contains plain allusions to Nero’s end, and must therefore be the product of a later hand.

Our materials for a knowledge of Seneca are ample, and are variously presented in such works as Merivale’s Romans under the Empire, cc. 52-54; Zeller’s Greek Philosophy (Eng. tr. Eclecticism, pp. 202-245); and the histories of Roman literature by Bemhardy, Teuffel (§§ 282-285), and Simcox (ii. pp. 1-27, London, 1883). His elder brother Annaeus Seneca Novatus, afterwards adopted by a Junius Gallio, was the proconsul of Achaia before whom St Paul pleaded (Acts xviii. 12). The date of Seneca's birth must be approximately inferred from Nat. Qu., i. 1, 3; Ep., 108, 22. His mother’s name was Helvia; her sister brought him as a child to Rome and nursed him tenderly. His teachers were Attalus, a Stoic, and Sotion, a pupil of the Sextii. In his youth he was a vegetarian and a water-drinker, but his father checked his indulgence in asceticism. Before his exile he had served as quaestor, was married, and had two children born. Caligula said his style was mere mosaic (commissuras meras) or “sand without lime,” and would have put him to death, had he not been assured that so consumptive a subject could not last long (Suet., Calig., 63; Dio Cassius, lix. 19, 7). Upon a Pompeian fresco a butterfly appears as charioteer of a dragon,—Seneca and Nero. His second wife was Pompeia Paulina, of noble family; she attempted to die with him. His enormous wealth was estimated at 300 millions of sesterces. He had 500 ivory tables inlaid with citron wood (Dio, lxi. 10, lxii. 2). The judgment of Tacitus (Ann., xiii. 4, 13, 42 sq., xiv. 52-56, XV. 60 sq.) is more favourable than that of Dio, who may possibly derive his account from the slanders of some personal enemy like Suilius. Seneca has found many champions—Lipsius (the introduction to his ed.); Diderot, Essai sur les Règnes de Claude et de Néron (iii. 1-407, Paris, 1875); Volquardsen, Ehrenrettung (Hadersleben, 1839); Martha, Les Moralistes sous l’Empire Romain (2d ed., Paris, 1866). For the dates of his works, see H. Lehmann, in Philologus, viii. p. 309; F. Jonas, De ordine librorum Sen. (Berlin, 1870); A. Martens, De Sen. vita (Altona, 1871); also R. Volkmann, in Mager’s Pädagog. Revue, xviii. pp. 259-276 (1857). At least eighteen prose works have been lost, among them De superstitione, an attack upon the popular conceptions of the gods, and De matrimonio, which, to judge by the extant fragments, must have been interest ing reading. Since Gellius (xii. 2, 3) cites a book xxii. of the Letters to Lucilius, some of these have been lost. His style is elaborately criticized by Quintilian (Inst., X. 1, 125-131), also by Fronto (p. 155 sq.; Gellius, xii. 2, 1). The doubt as to his authorship of the tragedies is due to a blunder of Sidonius Apollinaris (ix. 229-231); against it must be set Quintilian’s testimony (“ut Medea apud Senecam,” ix. 2, 8). Some of the Fathers, probably in admiration of his ethics, reckoned Seneca among the Christians; this assumption in its turn led to the forgery of a correspondence between St Paul and Seneca, which was known to Jerome (comp. Augustin, Ep., 153: “Seneca . . . cujus etiam ad Paulum apostolum leguntur epistolae"). This has given rise to an interesting historical problem, most thoroughly discussed in the commentary on the Ep. to the Philippians by Dr Lightfoot, bishop of Durham (London, new ed., 1879, pp. 270-333), who cites (p. 278 note) among earlier authorities A. Fleury, St Paul et Sénèque (Paris, 1853); C. Aubertin, Étude (1853), also new ed. Sénèque et St Paul (Paris, 1870); F. C. Baur (1858), republished in Drei Abhandlungen (Leipsic, 1876); F. W. Farrar, Seekers after God (London, s.a.); and G. Boissier, in the Revue des Deux Mondes, xcii., 1871, pp. 40-71. Add the articles by F. X. Kraus in Theolog. Quartalschrift, vol. xlix. pp. 609-624 (Tübingen, 1867) and by A. Hamack in Theolog. Lit.-Zeitung, 1881, pp. 444-449, the latter being a review of E. Westerburg, Untersuchung der Sage, dass Seneca Christ gewesen sei (Berlin, 1881).

The best text of the prose works, that of Haase in Teubner’s series (1852), was re-edited in 1872-74; he followed the critical labours of Fickert (Berlin, 3 vols., 1842-45). More recently Gertz has revised the text of Libri de beneficiis et de clementia (Berlin, 1876) and H. A. Koch that of the Dialogorum libri XII. (completed by Vahlen, Jena, 1879). There is no complete exegetical commentary, either English or German. Biicheler’s edition of the ’Α.ποκοοκύντωσΐ3 may be found in Symbola philol. Βonnens., i. (1864), pp. 31-89. Little has been done systematically since the notes of Lipsius and Gronovius. There is, however, Ruhkopf’s ed. with Latin notes, 5 vols. (Leipsic, 1797-1811), and Lemaire’s variorum ed. (Paris, 1827-32, 8 vols., prose and verse). The text of the tragedies was edited by Peiper and Richter for Teubner’s series (1867), and more recently by F. Leo (Berlin, 2 vols., 1878-79). Nisard, Études de moeurs et de critique sur les poètes de la décadence (4th ed., Paris, 1878), has criticized them in detail. Of some 300 monographs enumerated in Engelmann may be mentioned, in addition to the above, G. Boissier, Les tragédies de Sénèque ont-ils été représentés? (Paris, 1861); A. Dörgens, Senec. disciplinas moralis cum Antoniniana comparatio (Leipsic, 1857); E. F. Gelpke, De Senec. vita et moribus (Bern, 1848); Holzherr, Der Philosoph Seneca (Rastadt, 1858).