 If Cicero as a new man made senator had to contend with the competitive pressures of republican politics, Seneca (c. 3 BCE–65 CE), as a new man (from Spain) made senator a century later, had to contend with the problem of advising, and surviving, the poisonous politics of intimacy with the princeps. For Seneca, Stoic philosophy (of which he was an avowed exponent, though other philosophical influences can also be found in his ideas), can be best squared with politics if the ruler is supremely virtuous: in that case, the Stoic wise man is the king or prince.