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 766 BENEOA FALLS SENEGAS this period, says Tacitus, Seneca " kept no more levees, declined the usual civilities which had been paid to him, and under pretence of indisposition avoided appearing in public." It is said that Nero tried to poison him, and soon afterward he was accused of complicity in the conspiracy of Piso, and ordered to commit suicide. Without showing any sign of alarm, Seneca had the veins of his arms opened ; but as he was thin from age and meagre diet, the blood flowed slowly, and the veins in his legs were also opened. As he suffered excessively, a dose of hemlock was given, but without produ- cing any effect. He was then placed in a warm bath and afterward taken into a vapor stove and suffocated. His wife, Paulina, caused her own veins to be opened, but by order of Nero they were tied up by her attendants, and she lived a few years longer. Besides the two treatises already mentioned, Seneca wrote De Ira ; De Comolatione ad Marciam ; De Pro- videntia ; De Animi Tranquillitate ; D Con- itantia Sapienti* ; De dementia ad Neronem Ccssarem ; De Brevitate Vitas ad Paulinum ; De Vita Beata ad (r'allionem, to which is some- times added De Otio ant Secettu Sapientis ; De Beneficiis ; 124 Epistolat ad Lucilium, contain- ing moral maxims and observations ; Apocolo- cyntosis, a satire on the emperor Claudius; and Qumitionum Naturalium Libri VII. Several other works by Seneca are now lost. Ten tragedies are attributed to him, but their au- thenticity has been denied: Hercule* Furent, Thyestes, Thebau or Phoenmas, Hippolytu* or Phcedra, CEdiput, Troades or Hecuba, Medea, Agamemnon, Hercules CEteut, and Octavia. The character and the works of Seneca have been the subject of much controversy. Though a stoic philosopher, he was charged by a con- temporary with having amassed an immense fortune by extortion. He was no believer in the superstitions of his country, and has been called an atheist ; but his religion appears to have been pure deism. On the other hand, it has been asserted that he was a Christian, and was acquainted with St. Paul; and 14 spurious letters purporting to be written by him to that apostle were printed in the old editions of his works. The editio princeps of Seneca is that of Naples (fol., 1475). Of the numerous later editions, that of Schroder (4to, Delft, 1728), the Bipont edition (Strasburg, 1809), and that of F. II. Bothe (2 vols. 8vo, Leipsic, 1819) are valuable. There have been several transla- tions into English. SENECA FALLS, a village of Seneca co., New York, on the outlet of Seneca lake, the Cayuga and Seneca canal, and the New York Central railroad, 160 m. W. by N. of Albany; pop. in 1870, 5,890 ; in 1875, 6,125. It has abundant water power and a variety of manufactures. The chief articles produced are steam fire en- gines, woollens, pumps, flour, machinery, and farming utensils. There are two national banks, an academy, two weekly newspapers, and seven churches. SENECA LAKE, a narrow sheet of water, lying nearly N. and S. in the W. part of New York, bordered by Seneca, Schuyler, Yates, and On- tario cos. It is about 37 m. long by 2 to 4 m. broad, has an elevation of about 450 ft. above the Atlantic, and about 200 ft. above Lake On- tario, and is surrounded by beautiful scenery. It flows into Lake Ontario through the Seneca and Oswego rivers, and is connected by canals with the Erie canal, with Keuka or Crooked lake near its.W. border, and with the Chemung river. It is 630 ft. deep, and was never known to be frozen over till March 22, 1856. It is navigated by steamboats running from Wat- kins at the S. to Geneva at the N. extremity. SENECA OIL. See PETROLEUM. SENECAS, one of the five Iroquois nations in New York, W. of Sodus bay, Seneca lake, and Elmira. They called themselves Tsonnunda- waono, but received from the Dutch the name of Sinnekaas, which in time became Senecas. They were the hereditary doorkeepers of the cabin, and had eight sachemships, belonging to the Turtle, Snipe, Hawk, Bear, and Wolf fam- ilies. When first known to the French they were bounded W. by the Attiwandaronk or Neuters on the Niagara, and the Erike S. of Lake Erie. By conquest the Scannonaenrat, a nation of the Hurons, most of the Neuters, the Eries, and the Andastes or Susquehannas were successively incorporated with them. Chau- monot began a mission among them in 1657, followed by Fremin in 1668. They permitted La Salle to put up a block house at Niagara ; they were afterward hostile, but were won over by Joncaire, and in 1712 permitted the French to build a fort at Niagara. When Pontiao formed his general league of tribes against the English, the Senecas alone of the Six Nations joined him, destroying Venango, attacking Fort Niagara, and cutting off an army train near Devil's Hole in 1763. In the revolution they sided with the English. Gen. Sullivan invaded their country, and, after defeating the allied tribes at Newtown, destroyed several towns, and ravaged the whole canton in 1779. They made peace at Fort Stanwix in 1784. Much of their lands were soon after ceded or yielded to speculators, including the preemption right of what they still retained. In 1812, though earnestly solicited by their countrymen of the Six Nations in Canada, they formally declared against the English and rendered service to the American armies on the frontier. A part of the tribe settled at Sandusky and Stony Creek, Ohio, joined the hostile tribes in the west, but made peace at Spring Valley in September, 1815. This band ceded all but a reservation with the Shawnees in 1818, and in 1831 sold that and removed to the Indian territory on the Neosho. The Senecas in New York still occupy the Alleghany, Cattaraugus, and Tona- wanda reservations (66,000 acres), but white settlers have encroached so that there are thri- ving towns there. The Senecas in New York in 1870 numbered 3,060 ; those in the Indian