The Prototypes of Seneca's Tragedies

Abstract

IN AN article published elsewhere' I have argued that Seneca the dramatist never attempted to be the Roman successor of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, even though he may have borrowed from them some of his plots. His sole intention in writing the nine tragedies which are generally attributed to him was to teach Neostoicism through the medium of book-drama, and his plays are problem-plays which should be read as one philosophical whole more akin to an Essay on Man than to a set of tragedies. The existence of similar philosophical plays in Latin before Seneca is indicated neither by the dramatic fragments that have been preserved nor by the evidence of any ancient writer. Modern readers who have read numerous problem-plays and have frequently seen drama made a vehicle for ideological propaganda may not realize how much independence a Roman writer of the Empire would have needed, to depart fundamentally and with no ancient precedent from the traditional dramatic genres. Lucretius had shown the use that could be made of Latin poetry to expound the Epicurean doctrine and had stated clearly that he had chosen this form in order to