Books by Seneca

The volume includes Trojan Women, Thyestes, Phaedra, Medea, and Agamemnon, plus a preface.

John G. Fitch's new Latin text of Seneca's play, Hercules Furens, is based on a collation of the chief manuscripts, including the Paris manuscript T.

Living in Rome under Caligula and later a tutor to Nero, Seneca witnessed the extremes of human behaviour. His shocking and bloodthirsty plays not only reflect a brutal period of history but also show how guilt, sorrow, anger and desire lead individuals to violence. The hero of Hercules Insane saves his own family from slaughter, only to commit further atrocities when he goes mad. The horrifying death of Astyanax is recounted in Trojan Women, and Phaedra deals with forbidden love. In Oedipus a nervous man discovers himself, while Thyestes recounts the bitter family struggle for a crown. Of uncertain authorship, Octavia dramatizes Nero's divorce from his wife and her deportation. The only Latin tragedies to have survived complete, these plays are masterpieces of vibrant, muscular language and psychological insight.

This is the largest selection of Stoic philosopher and tragedian Seneca's letters currently available. In them Seneca advises his friend Lucilius on how to do without what is superfluous, whether on the subject of happiness, riches, reputation, or the emotions. We learn too about Seneca's personal and political life in the time of Nero.

This 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 volume includes Phaedra, Oedipus, Medea, Trojan Women, Hercules Furens, and Thyestes, together with an invaluable introduction and notes.

Here is a moving and accomplished translation of this complex play dealing the the violent passions stirred by innocence and beauty and the terrible power of ideology, hatred, and misunderstanding.

A major writer and a leading figure in the public life of Rome, Seneca (c. 4BC-AD 65) ranks among the most eloquent and influential masters of Latin prose. This selection explores his thoughts on philosophy and the trials of life. In the Consolation to Helvia he strives to offer solace to his mother, following his exile in AD 41, while On the Shortness of Life and On Tranquillity of Mind are lucid and compelling explorations of Stoic thought. Witty and self-critical, the Letters - written to his young friend Lucilius - explore Seneca's struggle to acquire philosophical wisdom. A fascinating insight into one of the greatest minds of Ancient Rome, these works inspired writers and thinkers including Montaigne, Rousseau, and Bacon, and continue to intrigue and enlighten.

This edition of Seneca's De otio and De brevitate vitae introduces students to the complex artistic method and provocative message of Senecan philosophy. It emphasizes the relevance of both works to modern reflection on the claims of the 'balanced' life and on the complex relationship of the individual to society.

This volume offers clear and forceful contemporary translations of the most important of Seneca's 'Moral Essays': On Anger, On Mercy, On the Private Life and the first four books of On Favours. They give an attractive, full picture of the social and moral outlook of an ancient Stoic thinker intimately involved in the governance of the Roman empire in the mid first century of the Christian era. A general introduction describes Seneca's life and career and explains the fundamental ideas underlying the Stoic moral, social and political philosophy that informs the essays. Individual introductions, footnotes and biographical notes place the essays in their historical and philosophical contexts, and further assistance to students is provided by section headings in the translations which organize the principal transitions in the argument and the more unfamiliar aspects of Seneca's writing.

Based on the legends used in Greek drama, Seneca's plays are notable for the exuberant ruthlessness with which disastrous events are foretold and then pursued to their tragic and often bloodthirsty ends. Thyestes depicts the menace of an ancestral curse hanging over two feuding brothers, while Phaedra portrays a woman tormented by fatal passion for her stepson. In The Trojan Women, the widowed Hecuba and Andromache await their fates at the hands of the conquering Greeks, and Oedipus follows the downfall of the royal House of Thebes. Octavia is a grim commentary on Nero's tyrannical rule and the execution of his wife, with Seneca himself appearing as an ineffective counsellor attempting to curb the atrocities of the emperor.

Seneca's tragedy Agamemnon is a brilliantly rhetorical piece, written for the study rather than the stage. In this edition Professor Tarrant provides a much needed critical text. In his introduction he discusses the sources, dating, structure and mode of production of Agamemnon and Senecan drama in general, and includes a detailed survey of the manuscript tradition.