The Tragedies Volume II

by Seneca

Are there no limits to human cruelty? Is there any divine justice? Do the gods even matter if they do not occupy themselves with rewarding virtue and punishing wickedness? Seneca's plays might be dismissed as bombastic and extravagant answers to such questions--if so much of human history were not "Senecan" in its absurdity, melodrama, and terror. Here is an honest artist confronting the irrationality and cruelty of his world--the Rome of Caligula, Claudius, and Nero--and his art reflects the stress of the encounter. The surprise, perhaps, is that Seneca's world is so like our own.

Genres: Plays, Mythology, Fiction, Drama, Classics

312 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1995

About the author

Lucius Annaeus Seneca (often known simply as Seneca or Seneca the Younger); ca. 4 BC – 65 AD) was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist of the Silver Age of Latin literature. He was tutor and later advisor to emperor Nero, who later forced him to commit suicide for alleged complicity in the Pisonian conspiracy to have him assassinated.

Reviews

[Evan Leach · Rating 3 out of 5]

Only ten tragedies survive from the entire Roman Republic and Roman Empire: nine by Seneca and one by an unknown author. This collection of five plays, a companion to Seneca: The Tragedies Volume I, is sort of the ‘b-side’ of Roman drama:

Oedipus: The famous story of history’s ultimate momma’s boy. Not as good as Sophocles’ more famous version, but even darker and not without merit. However, a bizarre translation by Rachel Hadas, which uses rhymed couplets and makes Seneca sound like Lewis Carroll, made this kind of a weird read. 3 stars.

Hercules Furens: Easily the strongest play in this collection. This is the tragic story of when Hercules returns from the underworld, loses his mind, and slaughters his own family. Nice translation by Dana Gioia, too. 4.5 stars.

Hercules Oetaeus: The story of Hercules’ tragic death. This extremely long tragedy (at 2010 lines it’s easily the longest Roman tragedy…and I’m almost positive it’s longer than any of the Athenian tragedies too) can drag at times, particularly when describing Hercules’ labors for the 4th or 5th time, but has its share of high points too. 2.5 stars.

Octavia: This interesting play, which was probably not by Seneca (although he makes a cameo appearance in the cast), is notable for being the only surviving Greco-Roman drama to reference contemporary, rather than mythical, events. It tells the story of Claudia Octavia, daughter of the Emperor Claudius and wife of the infamous Nero. 3 stars.

Phoenissae: Phoenissae is made up of the surviving fragments from either a single play or separate dramas. The fragments are not bad, but they’re not helped by some surreal additions by translator David Slavitt. Slavitt whipped up, completely from scratch, a scene to throw in the middle of the play and one to close things out. He is very up front about this, and it’s not as if he’s trying to sneak his work in as Seneca’s, but the effect was jarring. I really enjoyed the work Slavitt did on the other five tragedies in this series that he translated, and I’m not sure what came over him while working on this one. 2 stars.

I wrote some more extended thoughts on Seneca when I reviewed the first book in this series , so I won’t repeat them here. I will say that I thought the lengthy introduction by Dana Gioia, included in this volume, was outstanding and definitely influenced how I looked at these plays. As I alluded to at the beginning of this review, I don’t think these plays are as essential as the five included in Volume I of this collection, with the exception of Hercules Furens. But lovers of ancient drama will find something to enjoy in all of them. 3 stars, recommended.

[Elizabeth Amisu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hercules Oetaeus

[Keith · Rating 4 out of 5]

My overall sense of Seneca as a playwright is that he would have been better served writing dramatic poems. He has moments of brilliance and music – some speeches are beautifully expressive. Yet, the interplay of characters and the dialogue just don’t carry me. They seem stiff and formal, a bit lifeless and rote.

Again, there are beautiful passages in his plays, including Atreus’ diabolic speeches in Thyestes, and the Chorus in The Trojan Women (Ask whither go we after death? //Where they live who never have been born.”)

Furthermore, it seems like the plays don’t have a life off the stage/page. The plays are very situational and specific. They don’t shed much light on the ways of the world. Seneca reminds me of Sophocles. Oedipus Rex is a magnificent play – one of best I’ve read – but it doesn’t say much outside the play, about the wider world. (Unlike, say, Aeschylus.)

There’s also a sameness to Seneca’s plays. As Frederick Ahl quotes Seneca suggesting that people should be interested in “a brave man pitted against an evil destiny, with the brave man as the challenger.” (pg. 22) This seems to accurately describe his plays. The characters are facing an outrageous, often unjust fate. The play is usually these characters’ attempt to come to terms with this outrageously unjust fate. But not to defeat it or alter it – but to somehow deal with it.

Now what to make of Seneca’s dramatic form. Was it meant to be performed? David Slavitt calls Seneca’s tragedies “performed poems” or “masques.” Dana Gioia, in Tragedies Volume II, calls them lyric dramas. Frederick Ahl, however, strongly swears by the performability of the plays and their power on the stage.

I don’t think they were meant to be performed in any sense like Greek or Elizabethan tragedies. They might have gotten a dramatic reading, but they don’t seem fit for or aspiring to a staging. Perhaps they were performed like an opera – not that they necessarily had music, but in a very formal, ritualistic way like the original Greeks. I’ve never read it so, but perhaps they were chanted like the Greek originals. No doubt Seneca would have know that.

Ahl makes a very interesting and perhaps obvious point – a death on Seneca’s stage had to compete with real deaths in the coliseum. That’s an interesting point to consider. Whatever outrageous act the playwright put on stage for performance or mimickry, could be seen live on the gladiator floor. The implications for Latin drama – particularly the lack of it – make for interesting consideration.

Here are the plays I’ve read so far:

Hercules Furens **** – It’s hard to read this without recalling Euripides’ nearly perfect Heracles. Seneca adds a sympathetic portrayal of Juno. It also features Theseus providing a rather moving passage about the afterworld. (Though I don’t recall the Greeks ever believing that people were punished in Hades for their sins. At least that wasn’t the case when the ancient Greeks wrote. It must have been the zeitgeist.)

The other key difference is that the horrible deeds of Hercules are much more immediate and graphic. I’m not as put off as others by it. Certainly the Greeks would never have been so graphic, but the Romans were a different people (as we are today).

This translation by Dan Goiai is very good. I'm not sure how closely it tracks the original, but it is beautifully done.

Octavia **** – Kelly Cherry offers a much freer translation, mixing poetry and prose as she saw fit. The language of this play was much stronger with lines like the opening line:

“Now dawn chases the trespassing stars
Out of the sky, the sun climbs up
A ladder of radiance, carrying daylight
To the world once again.”

And …

“ …. I am dragged down
Unburied, coffined in the merciless sea.”

I enjoyed it, but there were parts I didn’t like. It was marred by sudden colloquialisms such as “shit load of gold and silver” and “a bit of a bad boy” and “I know who’s the bitch here” and “just keep getting more and more ornery.”

Again, this work is primarily a series of speeches. And many of them are moving. Cherry’s translation of Agrippina’s speech is very good (though I suspect quite different from the original). Seneca’s scene with Nero is simply an exchange of platitudes, but other than that this was a very good read.

[Jacob · Rating 3 out of 5]

Much has been written about the bombast of Seneca's writing, and this volume in particular has some moments that are almost painfully abstract, and therefore meaningless. Still, the introductions to each play in this volume proved insightful, and it is interesting to track the evolution of the tragedies from the Greeks to Seneca. The major setback of the Roman tragedies is the loss, or at least the watering down, of the agon. The verbal back and forth that adds so much tension to the Greek plays is replaced by rhetorical flourish, and quite a bit of physical dismemberment. In general, when Seneca references the epics or greek mythology, it is to remember the suffering that is ever present in them. Although we do not have a complete text of a Bacchae written by a Roman tragedian, its gory influence stains nearly all of these plays.

[Edragone · Rating 3 out of 5]

Note seulement pour Les Phéniciennes.