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
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.
In these lively renditions into contemporary English, David R. Slavitt
does for Seneca what he accomplished for Virgil and Ovid, calling
attention to the extraordinary work of a great Latin poet and making it
accessible and appealing to modern readers. The volume includes five of
Seneca's extant tragedies-Trojan Women, Thyestes, Phaedra,
Medea, and Agamemnon-plus a preface.