Here is a lively, readable, and accurate verse translation of the six best plays by one of the most influential of all classical Latin writers--the only tragic playwright from ancient Rome whose work survives. Tutor to the emperor Nero, Seneca lived through uncertain, oppressive, and violent times, and his dramas depict the extremes of human behavior. Rape, suicide, child-murder, incestuous love, madness, and mutilation afflict the characters, who are obsessed and destroyed by their feelings. Seneca forces us to think about the difference between compromise and hypocrisy, about what happens when emotions overwhelm judgment, and about how a person can be good, calm, or happy in a corrupt society and under constant threat of death. In addition to her superb translation, Emily Wilson provides an invaluable introduction which offers a succinct account of Seneca's life and times, his philosophical beliefs, the literary form of the plays, and their immense influence on European literature. The book also includes an up-to-date bibliography and explanatory notes which identify mythological allusions
TROJAN WOMEN The action is set in the city of Troy, in the aftermath of the ten-year war. The Greeks led by Ulysses and Agamemnon have used the trick of the wooden horse to break the siege, invade the city, and defeat the inhabitants. The wealth of Troy is looted; the Trojan men are dead, including the great hero Hector, killed by Achilles; the Trojan women are raped and enslaved, and will be taken home as servants and concubines by the various Greek soldiers. But before the Greek eet can set sail, fate has decreed that two Trojan children must be killed: Astyanax, son of Hector and Andromache, must be thrown from the city walls; and Polyxena, daughter of Hecuba and Priam, the king and queen of Troy, must be given in marriage to the dead Achilles, and then slaughtered. Senecas play plots the fullment of these terrible predictions.
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Do you rule a palace, and are you not afraid of the ckle gods? Are you naive enough to trust in happiness? Then look at me, and at this city, Troy. Fortune has never given greater proof that those who stand proud, have no sure footing. The pillar of mighty Asia, the glorious work of the gods, has toppled and lies on the ground. Men came long ways to ght for Troy: from where they drink the freezing river Tanais, which spreads to seven mouths; and men who feel the days rst newborn light, mingling the warm Tigris with the scarlet sea, and even the Amazons came, neighbours to Scythia, who gallop down the shore in hordes of virgin girls. But Troy has been cut down by the sword. Pergamum*
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Look! Those beautiful high walls now lie in a heap. Our homes are burnt. Flames circle round the palace, thick smoke engulfs the house of our forefathers. But the winners want their booty; re cannot stop them. Burning Troy is torn apart: we cannot see the sky for the waves of smoke. As if under a dense cloud this black day is dirty with the ash of Troy. We lost, but they are hungry still, and eye our stubborn city, slow to fall. Now at last those brutes forgive us for the last ten years. Even they feel horror at this ravaged city, and though they see Troy conquered they cannot yet believe the victory possible. Looters are stealing the treasures of Troy. The thousand ships cannot hold the plunder. I call as witnesses my enemies the gods, and the ashes of my homeland, and my lord the king of Phrygia,* buried beneath your kingdom, covered by your city, 30 and you, the hero whose death marked Troys fall,* and you great ocks of my dead children, smaller ghosts: all this disaster, all that
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10 20 106 trojan women
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