In which body of work do we hear the real Seneca? Or are they two equally authentic expressions of what has been called his “compartmentalized mind”? Did he write his tragedies as a covert cri de coeur, a release of moral revulsion he could not otherwise express? That certainly seems the case, as will be seen, with his most ambitious, most harrowing drama, Thyestes—perhaps the last play he completed and the only one that can be securely dated to his years under Nero.
