Product Description

Based on the legends used in Greek drama, Seneca’s plays are notable for the exuberant ruthlessness with which disastrous events are foretold and then pursued to their tragic and often bloodthirsty ends. Thyestes depicts the menace of an ancestral curse hanging over two feuding brothers, while Phaedra portrays a woman tormented by fatal passion for her stepson. In The Trojan Women, the widowed Hecuba and Andromache await their fates at the hands of the conquering Greeks, and Oedipus follows the downfall of the royal House of Thebes. Octavia is a grim commentary on Nero’s tyrannical rule and the execution of his wife, with Seneca himself appearing as an ineffective counsellor attempting to curb the atrocities of the emperor.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #73460 in Books
• Published on: 2005-02-24
• Original language: Latin
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

About the Author
Lucius Annaeus Seneca (c.4BC - AD65) was born in Cordoba, Spain, where he was brought up studying the traditional virtues of republican Roman life. He became a teacher of rhetoric but attracted attention for his incisive style of writing. Closely linked to Nero, his death was ordered by the emperor in AD65. Seneca committed suicide. E.F. Watling had translated many Ancient Classics for Penguin, including plays of Sophocles and Plautus. He died in 1990.

Customer Reviews

Bloody Roman versions of classic Greek tragedies
Seneca was tutor to Nero and we can see in these sometimes bizarre, but always compelling, tragedies an attempt to educate the young emperor in the lessons of good rulership: the fragility of power, the importance of clemency, the concern with the ethics of a good life (and death) reappear again and again.

But Seneca is also writing himself belatedly into an essentially Greek tradition, and the intertextual readings of epic and tragedy are crucial to an understanding of these plays. Negotiating the literary and cultural past, and the political (contemporary) present, Seneca creates something unique: frequently bloodthirsty, not very subtle, but always compelling.

This is the version of tragedy that had such a huge impact on the English Renaissance, not least Shakespeare. But these are still fascinating in their own right, and are the main extant examples of Roman tragedy.

This edition dropped a star from me because it hasn't been updated since 1966, and while the translation is readable and flowing (if not as accurate as the Loebs), the introduction and notes are very out-of-date. It's also rather odd that the 'Octavia' is included, which wasn't written by Seneca, when his other plays aren't available in Penguin translations.

But that's a small quibble, and these are fascinating little gems of literary history, gory, frequently over-blown, and all the more engaging for that very reason.