Seneca - Four Tragedies and Octavia

LUCIUS ANNAEUS SENECA (c. 4 B.C.A.D. 65) was born in Cordoba, Spain, the second son of Annaeus Seneca the Elder. His father had a great respect for the traditional virtues of republican Roman life, and brought his three sons up accordingly. As a young adult, Seneca studied intensively the Stoic and Pythagorean philosophies and resided in Egypt for a period because of ill health. 33 he was married to his first wife, had held the office of quaestor, and was achieving success as an advocate and teacher of rhetoric; he was also attracting attention by his incisive style of writing. 33 he was married to his first wife, had held the office of quaestor, and was achieving success as an advocate and teacher of rhetoric; he was also attracting attention by his incisive style of writing.

He was forced to retire into private life at one point because of the suspicions of the emperor Caligula. He returned on the accession of Claudius, but was exiled in A.D. 41 to Corsica, accused of adultery with Claudius niece. He wrote several works during the eight years in Corsica, including De Ira. He was recalled to Rome in A.D. 48 to act as tutor to the future emperor Nero, and became his principal civil adviser when he took power.

The first five years of the reign were peaceful and moderate, for which much credit must be given to Seneca. However the feud between the emperor and his mother, Agrippina, weakened his position and he asked to retire in A.D. 62. Nero and Seneca parted on seemingly amicable terms, but the various political conspiracies which followed implicated Seneca, though probably on very flimsy evidence, so that his death was ordered in A.D. 65. E. F. F.

WATLING was educated at Christs Hospital and University College, Oxford. His translations of Greek and Roman plays for the Penguin Classics include the seven plays of Sophocles, nine plays of Plautus, and this selection of the tragedies of Seneca. He died in 1990. SENECA

THYESTES PHAEDRA THE TROJAN WOMEN OEDIPUS WITH OCTAVIA Translated with an Introduction by E. F. WATLING PENGUIN BOOKS PENGUIN BOOKS Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2 Penguin Books India (P) Ltd, II Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi 110 017, India Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, Cnr Rosedale and Airborne Roads, Albany, Auckland, New Zealand Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England
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First published 1966
Copyright E.

F Watling, 1966 All rights reserved
The terms for performance of these translations may be obtained from the Society of Authors, 84 Drayton Gardens, London sw10 9SD to whom all applications for permission should be made
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ISBN-13: 978-0-140-44174-1

FOR want of convincing evidence to the contrary, scholars have on the whole accepted the tradition that the dramatic works ascribed to SENECA were written by the same Lucius Annaeus Seneca (c. 4 B.C.A.D. 65) who was the author of a large collection of philosophical essays and letters, and whose life, more particularly the later part of it, as a minister closely and at last fatally involved in the turbulent affairs of the reign of Nero, is known in some detail from the pages of Tacitus and Suetonius. Dissent from this identification is prompted not so much by any ascertainable facts as by the sense which all readers feel of an astonishing incongruity between the humanity and dignity of the prose works and the bombastic extravagance, the passionate yet artificial rhetoric, of the tragedies. And not less has been noticed, and frequently commented on, the discordance between the high moral principles professed by the philosopher and the cynical time-serving behaviour of the emperors adviser. A trace of the disgust which this paradox could arouse even in the seventeenth century, when Senecas reputation in England stood higher than at any other time, appears in a line spoken by a character in Marstons play The Malcontent, who replies to the mention of Senecas name: Out upon him! He writ of temperance and fortitude, yet lived like a voluptuous epicure, and died like an effeminate coward not an entirely true statement but a typical plain mans summary judgement of an enigmatical personality.

The extant prose works pronounced the verdict from which few readers would dissent: There is in Seneca much with which one can agree, much even to admire; but his work requires selection; one could wish that he had done the selecting himself. Of the tragedies, with which we are here primarily concerned, the literary fate has been a peculiar one. Their reputation in the authors own lifetime, or immediately afterwards, can only be guessed, in the absence of any evidence of their actually having been performed; but at least their preservation is a reasonable ground for assuming them to have commanded some respect. Among scholars of the last two centuries, few have done anything but condemn the Senecan tragedies as horrible examples of literary and dramatic incompetence, travesties of the noble Greek drama, the last wretched remnants of declining Roman taste. The following extract from Schlegels lectures on drama (published in English in 1815) is representative of the view which all but excluded Seneca the tragedian from the serious consideration of classical students: The state of constant outrage in which Rome was kept by a series of blood-thirsty tyrants led to similar outrages upon nature in rhetoric and poetry [the Senecan tragedies] are beyond all description bombastic and frigid, utterly devoid of nature in character and action, full of the most revolting violations of propriety, and so barren of all theatrical effect, that I verily believe they were never meant to leave the schools of the rhetoricians for the stage. With the old Tragedies, those highest of the creations of Grecian poetical genius, these have nothing in common but the name, the exterior form, and the mythological matter: and yet they set themselves up beside them in the evident intention of surpassing them, in which attempt they come off like a hollow hyperbole contrasted with a most heartfelt truth.

Every common-place of tragedy is worried out to the last gasp; all is phrase, among which even the simplest is forced and stilted. An utter poverty of mind is tricked out with wit and acuteness. Their persons are neither ideal nor real men, but misshapen giants of puppets; and the wire that sets them a-going is at one time an unnatural heroism, at another a passion alike unnatural, which no atrocity of guilt can appal. By this and similar pronouncements the modern student will easily have been brought to the conclusion that to read the Senecan tragedies in the original language is an unrewarding task, and to read them in translation,

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