said, a worse person, because he had been among his fellow men. Roman society itself, he concluded, was nothing more than a collection of wild beasts.16 The characters in Seneca’s plays, which resemble The Texas Chain Saw Massacre in their taste for blood and horror, suffer unspeakable torments. However, the characters learn to bear their suffering with what Seneca called fortitudo and constantia, or constancy. They prefer to endure the “slings and arrows of outrageous Fortune,” in the words of Shakespeare (whose tragedies were heavily shaped by Seneca’s), rather than try to fight back.
