Seneca

Seneca the elder (Lucius, or Marcus, Annaeus Seneca) , c.60 BC-c.AD 37, Roman rhetorician and writer, b. Corduba (present-day Córdoba), Spain; grandfather of Lucan and father of Seneca the younger. He spent most of his life in Spain but made frequent trips to Rome, where he observed the leading orators of the day. Seneca the elder wrote two major works, the Controversies, a collection of imaginary legal cases as they might be argued before a court of law; and Persuasions, model orations on various subjects. The prefaces to the Controversies contain valuable material on famous Roman orators. He also wrote a history of Rome from the time of the civil wars to the 1st cent. AD

Seneca Most populous division of the Iroquois Confederacy; a tribe of Native North Americans who inhabited n New York. In 1848, the Seneca Nation was formed by the peoples of the Allegany and Cattaraugus reservations. Other Seneca live in Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and Ontario. Today, c.7000 Seneca live on reservations in w New York.

Seneca the largest tribe of the Iroquois-speaking Five Nations. Located in western New York, in the 1760s the Senecas actively urged Indian resistance to the British in the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes region and thus provoked what came to be called Pontiac's Rebellion (1763–66).