SENECA, ANNAEUS, rhetorician, born at Cordova; taught rhetoric at Rome, whither he went at the time of Augustus, and where he died A.D. 32.

SENECA, L. ANNAEUS, philosopher, son of the preceding, born at Cordova, and brought to Rome when a child; practised as a pleader at the bar, studied philosophy, and became the tutor of Nero; acquired great riches; was charged with conspiracy by Nero as a pretext, it is believed, to procure his wealth, and ordered to kill himself, which he did by opening his veins till he bled to death, a slow process and an agonising, owing to his age; he was of the Stoic school in philosophy, and wrote a number of treatises bearing chiefly on morals; d.  A.D. 65.

SENEGAL, an important river of West Africa, formed by the junction, at Bafulabe, of two head-streams rising in the highlands of Western Soudan; flows NW., W., and SW., a course of 706 m., and discharges into the Atlantic 10 m. below St. Louis; navigation is somewhat impeded by a sand-bar at its mouth, and by cataracts and rapids in the upper reaches.

SENEGAL (136), a French colony of West Africa, lying along the banks of the Senegal River.  See SENEGAMBIA.

SENEGAMBIA, a tract of territory lying chiefly within the basins of the rivers Senegal and Gambia, West Africa, stretching from the Atlantic, between Cape Blanco and the mouth of the Gambia, inland to the Niger; embraces the French colony of Senegal, and various ill-defined native States under the suzerainty of France; the interior part is also called the French Soudan; the vast expanse of the contiguous Sahara in the N., and stretches of territory on the S., extending to the Gulf of Guinea, are also within the French sphere of influence, altogether forming an immense territory (1,000), of which ST. LOUIS (q. v.) in Senegambia proper, is considered the capital; ground-nuts, gums, india-rubber, &c., are the chief exports.

SENESCHAL, an important functionary at the courts of Frankish princes, whose duty it was to superintend household feasts and ceremonies, functions equivalent to those of the English High Steward.

SENNAAR (8), capital of a district of the Eastern Soudan, which lies between the Blue and the White Nile, situated on the Blue Nile, 160 m.  SE. of Khartoum.

SENNACHERIB, a king of Assyria, whose reign extended from 702 to 681 B.C., and was distinguished by the projection and execution of extensive public works; he endeavoured to extend his conquests westward, but was baffled in Judea by the miraculous destruction of his army.  See 2 Kings xix. 35.

SENS (14), an old cathedral town of France, on the Yonne, 70 m.  SE. of Paris; the cathedral is a fine Gothic structure of the 12th century; has also an archbishop’s palace, and is still surrounded by massive stone walls; does a good trade in corn, wine, and wool.

SENUSSI, a Mohammedan brotherhood in the Soudan, founded by Mohammed-es-Senussi from Mostaganem, in Algeria, who flourished between 1830 and 1860.  The brotherhood, remarkable for its austere and fanatical zeal, has ramified into many parts of N Africa, and exercises considerable influence, fostering resistance to the encroachments of the invading European powers.