Tragedies. Volume II: Agamemnon. Thyestes. Hercules Oetaeus. Phoenissae. Octavia (Loeb Classical Library No. 78)

THIS EDITION HAS BEEN REPLACED BY A NEWER EDITION (20050126) Seneca Is A Figure Of First Importance In Both Roman Politics And Literature: A Leading Adviser To Nero Who Attempted To Restrain The Emperor's Megalomania; A Prolific Moral Philosopher; And The Author Of Verse Tragedies That Strongly Influenced Shakespeare And Other Renaissance Dramatists. Here Is The First Of A New Two-volume Edition Of Seneca's Tragedies. Seneca's Plots Are Based On Mythical Episodes, In Keeping With Classical Tradition. But The Political Realities Of Imperial Rome Are Also Reflected Here, In An Obsessive Concern With Power And Dominion Over Others. Seneca's Plays Depict Gigantic Passions And Intense Interactions In An Appropriately Forceful Rhetoric. Their Perspective Is Much Bleaker And More Tragic Than That Of His Prose Writings. In This New Translation John Fitch Conveys The Force Of Seneca's Dramatic Language And The Lyric Quality Of His Choral Odes.--jacket. V. 1-- Hercules. Trojan Women. Phoenician Women. Medea. Paedra --v. 2. Oedipus. Agamemnon. Thyestes. Hercules On Oeta. Edited And Translated By John G. Fitch. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. Latin With English Translation On Opposite Pages. Seneca, Lucius Annaeus, born at Corduba (Cordova) C.5 or 4 B.C. of a noble and wealthy family, spent an ailing childhood and youth at Rome in an aunt's care. He was victim of life-long neurosis but became famous in rhetoric, philosophy, money-making, and imperial service. After some disgrace during Claudius' reign he became tutor and then, in A.D. 54, advising minister to Nero, some of whose worst misdeed he did not prevent. Involved (innocently?) in a conspiracy, he killed himself by order in A.D. 65. Wealthy, he preached indifference to wealth; evader of pain and death, he preached scorn of both; and there were other contrasts between practice and principle v.1. Hercules furens. Troades. Medea. Hippolytus. Oedipus -- v.2. Agamemnon. Thyestes. Hercules Oetaeus. Phoenissae. Octavia.