Description
Book SynopsisPhaedra * Oedipus * Medea * Trojan Women * Hercules Furens * ThyestesSeneca''s plays are the product of a sensational, frightening, and oppressive period of history. Tutor to the emperor Nero, Seneca lived through uncertain and violent times, and his dramas depict the extremes of human behaviour. Rape, suicide, child-killing, incestuous love, madness and mutilation afflict the characters, who are obsessed and destroyed by their feelings. Passion is constantly set against reason, and passion wins out. Seneca forces us to think about the difference between compromise and hypocrisy, about what happens when emotions overwhelm judgement, and about how, if at all, a person can be good, calm, or happy in a corrupt society and under constant threat of death.Seneca was one of the most prolific, versatile, and influential of all classical Latin writers, and the only tragic playwright from ancient Rome whose work survives. This new edition of his six best plays captures Seneca''s style in a verse
Trade ReviewI am awstruck by how good this is * Times Literary Supplement, A. N. Wilson's Book of The Year, 3/12/2010 *
Wilson catches the beauty of their descriptive passages with simple felicity. * TLS, *
A fine new translation. * William Fitzgerald, Times Literary Supplement *
This edition of Seneca's tragedies is fresh, affordable, and teachable. * Bryn Mawr Classical Review *
Table of ContentsPhaedra ; Oedipus ; Medea ; Trojan Women ; Hercules Furens ; Thyestes
