Chapter II: Drama (1)

I

THE STAGE

The drama proper had never flourished at Rome. The causes are not far to seek. Tragic drama was dead in Greece by the time Greek influence made itself felt, while the New Comedy which then held the stage was of too quietly realistic a type and of too refined a wit and humour to be attractive to the coarser and less intelligent audiences of Rome. Terence, the _dimidiatus Menander_, as Caesar called him, though he won himself a great name with the cultured classes by the purity and elegance of his Latin and the fine drawing of his characters, was a failure with popular audiences owing to his lack of broad farcical humour. Plautus with his coarse geniality and lumbering wit made a greater success. He had grafted the festive spirit of Roman farce on to the more artistic comedy of Athens. Tragedy obtained but a passing vogue. Ennius, Accius, and Pacuvius were read and enjoyed by not a few educated readers, but for the Augustan age, as far as the stage was concerned, they were practically dead and buried. The Roman populace had by that period lost all taste for the highest and most refined forms of art. The races in the circus, the variety entertainments and bloodshed of the amphitheatre had captured the favour of the polyglot, pampered multitude that must have formed such a large proportion of a Roman audience.

Still, dramatic entertainments had by no means wholly disappeared by the time of the Empire. But what remained was of a degraded type. The New Comedy of Athens, as transferred to the Roman stage, had given ground before the advance of the mime and the _fabula Atellana_. The history of both these forms of comedy belongs to an earlier period. For the post-Augustan age our evidence as to their development is very scanty. Little is known save that they were exceedingly popular. Both were characterized by the broadest farce and great looseness of construction; both were brief one-act pieces and served as interludes or conclusions to other forms of spectacle.

The Atellan was of Italian origin and contained four stock characters, Pappus the old man or pantaloon, Dossennus the wise man, corresponding to the _dottore_ of modern Italian popular comedy, Bucco the clown, and Maccus the fool. It dealt with every kind of theme, parodied the legends of the gods, laughed at the provincial's manners or at the inhabitants of Italian country towns, or depicted in broad comic style incidents in the life of farmer and artisan. Maccus appeared as a young girl, as a soldier, as an innkeeper; Pappus became engaged to be married; Bucco turned gladiator; and in the rough and tumble of these old friends the Roman mob found rich food for laughter.[86]

The mime was of a very similar character, but freer in point of form. It renounced the use of masks and reached, it would seem, an even greater pitch of indecency than the Atellan. The subjects of a few mimes are known to us. Among the most popular were the _Phasma_ or _Ghost_[87] and the _Laureolus_[888] of Catullus, a writer of the reign of Caligula. In the latter play was represented the death by crucifixion of the famous brigand 'Laureolus'; so degraded was popular taste that on one occasion it is recorded that a criminal was made to take the part of Laureolus and was crucified in grim earnest upon the stage.[89] In another mime of the principate of Vespasian the chief attraction was a performing dog,[90] which, on being given a pretended opiate, went to sleep and later feigned a gradual revival in such a realistic manner as to rouse the wildest applause on the part of the audience.

Both Atellan and mime abounded in topical allusions and spared not even the emperors. Allusion was made to the unnatural vices attributed to Tiberius,[91] to the deaths of Claudius and Agrippina,[92] to the avarice of Galba,[93] to the divorce of Domitian,[94] and on more than one occasion heavy punishment was meted out to authors and actors alike.[95]

Legitimate comedy led a struggling existence. An inscription at Aeclanum[96] records the memory of a certain Pomponius Bassulus, who not only translated certain comedies of Menander but himself wrote original comedies; while in the letters of Pliny[97] we meet with Vergilius Romanus, a writer of comedies of 'the old style' and of _mimiambi_. He possessed, so Pliny writes, 'vigour, pungency, and wit. He gave honour to virtue and attacked vice.' It is to be feared that such a form of comedy can hardly have been intended for the public stage, and that Vergilius, like so many poets of his age, wrote for private performance or recitation. These two writers are the only authors of legitimate comedies known to us during the Silver Age. But both _fabulae palliatae_ and _togatae_, that is to say, comedies representing Greek and Roman life respectively, continued to be acted on the public stage. The _Incendium_[98] of Afranius, a _fabula togata_, was performed in the reign of Nero, and the evidence of Quintilian[99] and Juvenal[100] shows that _palliatae_ also continued to be performed. But true comedy had been relegated to a back place and the Silver Age did nothing to modify the dictum of Quintilian,[101] _in comoedia maxime claudicamus_.

As with comedy so with tragedy. Popular taste rejected the Graeco-Roman tragedy as tedious, and it was replaced by a more sensuous and sensational form of entertainment. The intenser passions and emotions were not banished from the stage, but survived in the _salticae fabulae_ and a peculiar species of dramatic recitation. Infinitely debased as were these substitutes for true drama, the forms assumed by the decomposition of tragedy are yet curious and interesting. The first step was the separation of the _cantica_ from the _diverbia._ Lyric scenes or even important iambic monologues were taken from their setting and sung as solos upon the stage.[102] It was found difficult to combine effective singing with effective gesture and dancing, for music had become more florid and exacting than in the days of Euripides. A second actor appeared who supplied the gesture to illustrate the first actor's song.[103] From this peculiar and to us ridiculous form of entertainment it is a small step to the _fabula saltica,_ which was at once nearer the legitimate drama and further from it. It was nearer in that the scenes were not isolated, but formed part of a more or less carefully constructed whole. It was further inasmuch as the actor disappeared, only the dancer remaining upon the stage. The words of the play were relegated to a chorus, while the character, actions, and emotions of the person represented by the words of the chorus were set forth by the dress, gesticulation, and dancing of the _pantomimus_. How the various scenes were connected is uncertain; but it is almost a necessary inference that the connexion was provided by the chorus or, as in modern oratorio, by recitative. To us the mimetic posturing of the _pantomimus_ appears an almost ridiculous substitute for drama; but the dancing of the actors seems to have been extraordinarily artistic and at times to have had a profound effect upon the emotions of the audience,[104] while the brilliant success in our own time of plays in dumb show, such as the famous _Enfant Prodigue,_ should be a warning against treating the _pantomimus_ with contempt.

This form of entertainment was first introduced at Rome in 22 B.C. by the actors Pylades and Bathyllus,[105] the former being famed for his tragic dancing, the latter for a broader and more comic style, whose dramatic counterpart would seem to have been the satyric drama.[106] The satyric element seems, however, never to have become really popular, the _fabula saltica_ as we know it dealing mainly with tragic or highly emotional themes. Indeed, to judge from Lucian's disquisition on the art of dancing, the subjects seem to have been drawn from almost every conceivable source both of history and mythology.[107] Many of these _salticae fabulae_ must have been mere adaptations of existing tragedies. Their literary value was, according to Plutarch, by no means high;[108] it was sacrificed to the music and the dancing, for the emotional effect of which Lucian can scarcely find sufficiently high terms of praise.[109] The themes appear to have been drawn from the more lurid passages in mythology and history. If the libretto was not coarse in itself, there is abundant evidence to show that the subjects chosen were often highly lascivious, while the movements of the dancers--not seldom men of the vilest character--were frequently to the last degree obscene.[110] Inadequate as this substitute for the drama must seem to us, we must remember that southern peoples were--and indeed are--far more sensitive to the language of signs, to expressive gesticulation and the sensuous movements of the body[111] than are the less quick-witted and emotional peoples of the North; and further, even if for the most part these _fabulae salticae_ had small literary value, distinguished poets did not disdain to write librettos for popular actors. Passages from the works of Vergil were adapted for such performances;[112] Lucan wrote no less than fourteen _fabulae salticae,_[113] while the _Agave_ of Statius,[114] written for the dancer Paris, is famous from the well-known passage in the seventh satire of Juvenal. Nothing survives of these librettos to enlighten us as to their literary characteristics, and the other details of the performance do not concern us here.[115] It is sufficient to say that the _pantomimus_ had an enormous vogue in the Silver Age, and won a rich harvest by his efforts, and that the factions of the theatre, composed of the partisans of this or that actor, were scarcely less notorious than the factions of the circus for the disturbances to which they gave rise.[116]

Of the musical recitations of portions of existing tragedies or of tragic episodes written for the occasion we possess even less knowledge. The passages selected or composed for this purpose were in all probability usually lyric, but we hear also of the chanting of iambics, as, for instance, in the case of the _Oedipus in Exile,_ in which Nero made his last appearance on the stage.[117] Of the part played by the chorus and of the structure of the librettos we know nothing; they may have been purely episodic and isolated or may, as in the _salticae fabulae,_ have been loosely strung together into the form of an ill-constructed play. That they were sometimes written in Greek is known from the fact that the line quoted by Suetonius from the _Oedipus in Exile_ mentioned above is in that language. Of the writers of this debased and bastard offspring of drama we know nothing save that Nero, who was passionately fond of appearing in them, seems also to have written them. (Suet. Ner. 39.)

The tragic stage had indeed sunk low, when it served almost entirely for exhibitions such as these. Nevertheless tragedy had not ceased to exist even if it had ceased to hold the stage.[118] Varius and Ovid had won fame in the Augustan age by their Thyestes and Medea, and the post-Augustan decadence was not without its tragedians. One only is mentioned by Quintilian in his survey of Roman poetry, Pomponius Secundus. Of him he says (x. 1. 98), 'Of the tragedians whom I myself have seen, Pomponius Secundus is by far the most eminent; a writer whom the oldest men of the day thought not quite tragic enough, but acknowledged that he excelled in learning and elegance of style.' Pomponius was a man of great distinction.[119] His friendship for Aelius Gallus, the son of Sejanus, had brought him into disgrace with Tiberius, but he recovered his position under Claudius. He attained to the consulship, and commanded with distinction in a war against the Chatti in A.D. 50. Of his writings we know but very little. Of his plays nothing is left save a brief fragment[120] from a play entitled _Aeneas_; whether it dealt with the deeds of Aeneas in his native land or in the land of his adoption is uncertain, though it is on the whole probable that the scene was Italian and that the drama was therefore a _fabula praetexta_. Whether his plays were performed on the public stage is not quite clear. Tacitus tells us of riots in the theatre in A.D. 44,[121] when 'poems' by Pomponius were being recited on the stage. But the words used by the historian (_is carmina scaenae dabat_) point rather to the recitation of a dramatic solo than to a complete tragedy of the orthodox type. Pomponius, dramatist and philologist,[122] remains a mere name for us.

Another distinguished writer of plays was Curiatius Maternus, a well-known orator; it is in his house that Tacitus places the scene of the _Dialogus_, and he is the chief character of the conversation. He had written his first tragedy under Nero,[123] and at the time of the _Dialogus_ (A.D. 79-81) his _Cato_--a _fabula praetexta_--was the talk of Rome.[124] He had written another historical drama on the ancestor of Nero, L. Domitius Ahenobarbus, the persistent foe of Julius Caesar, who perished on the field of Pharsalia.[125] He had also written plays on the more hackneyed themes of Medea and Thyestes.[126] He had all the opportunities and all the requisite gifts for a successful public career, but his heart was with the Muses, and he resolved to quit public life and to devote himself wholly to poetry, for there, in his estimation, the truest fame was to be found.[127] Here our knowledge ends. Of the details of his life we are as ignorant as of his plays.

A few other names of tragic poets are known to us. Paccius wrote an _Alcithoe_,[128] Faustus a _Thebais_ and a _Tereus_,[129] Rubrenus Lappa an _Atreus_,[130] while Scaevus Memor,[131] victor at the Agon Capitolinus and brother of Turnus the satirist, wrote a _Hercules_ and a _Hecuba_ or _Troades_.[132] Martial (xi. 9) styles him the 'glory of the Roman buskin', but he too is but the shadow of an empty name. The tragedies of the age are lost to us, all save the tragedies of the philosopher Seneca, plays of which, save for one casual reference[133] in Quintilian, contemporary literature gives no hint, but which, however little they may have deserved it, were destined to have no negligible influence on the subsequent history of the world's drama.

II

SENECA

Lucius Annaeus Seneca, one of the most striking figures among the great writers of Rome, was born at Cordova[134] about the opening of the Christian era, to be the most remarkable member of a remarkable family. His father, who bore the same name, was the famous rhetorician to whom we have already referred. His elder brother, M. Annaeus Novatus,[135] was adopted by L. Iunius Gallio, whose name he assumed, had a distinguished public career, and is best known to us, in his capacity of governor of Achaea, as the 'Gallio' of the Acts. The youngest of the family, M. Annaeus Mela,[136] remained in the equestrian order and devoted himself to the acquisition of wealth, regarding this as the safest path to fame. He succeeded to some extent in his object, but his main claim upon our remembrance is as the father of the poet Lucan. Lucius Seneca came to Rome at an early age,[137] and, in spite of the bad health which afflicted him all his life long,[138] soon made his mark as an orator. Indeed, so striking was his success that--although he showed no particular eagerness for a political career--his sheer mastery of the Roman speech wakened the jealousy of Caligula,[139] who only spared his life on the ground that he suffered from chronic asthma and was not likely to live long, and contented himself, therefore, with mordant but not unjust criticism of the style of his intended victim.[140] But though oratory provided Seneca with the readiest means for the gratification of his not inconsiderable vanity, and for the exercise of his marvellous powers of wit and epigram, it was not the pursuit of rhetoric and its prizes that really held the first place in his heart. That place was claimed by philosophy. His first love was Pythagoreanism, which he studied under Sotion[14l] of Alexandria, whose influence was sufficient to induce his youthful pupil to become a convinced vegetarian. But his father, who hated fads and philosophers, persuaded Seneca without much difficulty to 'dine better', and the doctrines of Pythagoras were soon displaced by the more fashionable teaching of the Stoics. From the lips of Attalus[142] he learned all the principles of that ascetic school. 'I besieged his class-room,' he writes; 'I was the first to come, the last to go; I would waylay him when out walking and lead him to discuss serious problems.' Whether he denounced vice and luxury, or extolled poverty, Attalus found a convinced disciple in Seneca. His convictions did not possess sufficient weight to lead him to embrace a life of austere poverty, but he at least learned to sleep on a hard mattress, and to eschew hot baths, wine, unguents, oysters, and mushrooms. How far his life conformed to the highest principles of his creed, it is hard to say. If we are to believe his detractors, he was guilty of committing adultery with the Princess Julia Livilla, was surrounded with all the luxuries that the age could supply, and drained the life-blood of Italy and the provinces by extortionate usury.[143] During his long exile in Corsica he could write a consolatory treatise to his mother on the thesis that the true philosopher is never an exile;[144] wherever he is, there he is at home; but little more than a year later he writes another consolatory treatise to the imperial freedman Polybius, full of the most grovelling flattery of Polybius himself and of the Emperor Claudius,[145] the same Claudius whom he afterwards bespattered with the coarse, if occasionally humorous, vulgarity of the _Apocolocyntosis_.[146] He was tutor to the young Nero, but had not the strength to check his vices. He sought to control him by flattery and platitudes rather than by the high example of the philosophy which he professed.[147] The composition of the treatise _ad Neronem de Clementia_ was a poor reply to Nero's murder of Britannicus.[148] He could write eloquently of Stoic virtue, but when he himself was confronted with the hard facts of life over which Stoicism claimed to triumph, he proved no more than a 'lath painted to look like iron'. Such is the case against Seneca. That it can be rebutted entirely it is impossible to claim. But we must remember the age in which he lived. Its love of debauchery was only equalled by its prurient love of scandal. Seneca's banishment on the charge of an intrigue with Livilla is not seriously damaging. The accusation _may_ have been true: it is at least as likely to have been false, for it was instigated by Messalina. That he lived in wealth and luxury is undoubted: his only defence was that he was really indifferent to it; he could face any future; he had, therefore, a right to enjoy the present.[149] That he ground down the provincials by his usury is possible; the standard in such matters was low, and the real nature of his extortions may never have come home to him; he must have depended largely on his agents. With regard to his management of the young princeps the case is different. Seneca was given an almost impossible task. Neither his nature nor his surroundings made Nero a suitable subject for moral instruction. Seneca must have been hampered at every turn. He must either bend or break. At least he won the respect of his pupil, and the good governance of the empire during the first five years of Nero's reign was due largely to the fact that the power was really in the hands of Seneca and Burrus.[150] Many of the weaknesses of his character may be accounted for by physical debility, and we must further remember that a Stoic of the age of Nero found himself in a most difficult position. He could not put his principles into full practice in public life without incurring the certain displeasure of the emperor. The stricter Stoic, therefore, like Thrasea, retired to the seclusion of his estates 'condemning the wicked world of Rome by his absence from it'.[151] Seneca, weaker, but possessed of greater common sense, chose the _via media_. He was content to sacrifice something of his principles to the service of Rome--and of himself. It is not necessary to regard him as wholly disinterested in his conduct; it is unjust and absurd to regard him as a glorified Tartuffe.[152] Such a supposition is adequately refuted by his writings. It is easy for a writer at once so fluent and so brilliant to give the impression of insincerity; but the philosophical works of Seneca ring surprisingly true. We cannot doubt his faith, though his life may at times have belied it. He reveals a warmth of human feeling, a richness of imagination, a comprehension of human failings and sorrows, that make him rank high among the great preachers of the world. Even here, it is true, he has his failings; he repeats himself, has little constructive talent, and fails at times to conceal a passion for the obvious beneath the brilliance of his epigram. But alike in the spheres of politics and literature he is the greatest man of his age. In literature he stands alone: he is a prose Ovid, with the saving gift of moral fervour. His style is terse and epigrammatic, but never obscure; it lacks the roll of the continuous prose of the Augustan age, but its phrases have a beauty and a music of their own: at their best they are touched with a genuine vein of poetry, at their worst they have a hard brilliance against the attractions of which only the most fastidious eye is proof. He towered over all his contemporaries. In him were concentrated all the excellences of the rhetorical schools of the day. Seneca became the model for literary aspirants to copy. But he was a dangerous model. His lack of connexion and rhythm became exaggerated by his followers, and the slightest lack of dexterity in the imitator led to a flashy tawdriness such as Seneca himself had as a rule avoided. He was too facile and careless a composer to yield a canon for style. The reaction came soon. Involved, whether justly or not, in the Pisonian conspiracy of 65 A.D., he was forced to commit suicide. He died as the Stoics of the age were wont to die, cheerfully, courageously, and with self-conscious ostentation.[153] Within a few years of his death the great Ciceronian reaction headed by Quintilian began. The very vehemence with which the Senecan style was attacked, now by Quintilian[154] and later by Fronto,[155] shows what a commanding position he held.

He was poet as well as philosopher. Quintilian tells us that he left scarcely any branch of literature untouched. 'We possess,' he says, 'his speeches, poems, letters, and dialogues.'[156] Two collections of poems attributed to Seneca have come down to us, a collection of epigrams and a collection of dramas. There is strangely little external evidence to support either attribution, but in neither case can there be any serious doubt as to the general correctness of the tradition.

The _Anthologia Latina_, compiled at Carthage in the sixth century, opens with seventy-three epigrams, of which three are attributed by the MSS. to Seneca (_Poet. Lat. Min._ 1-3, Baehrens). The first is entitled _de qualitate temporis_ and descants on the ultimate destruction of the world by fire--a well-known Stoical doctrine. The second and third are fierce denunciations of Corsica, his place of exile. The rest are nameless. But there are several which can only be attributed to Seneca. The ninth is entitled _de se ad patriam_, and is addressed to Cordova by one plunged in deep misfortune--a clear reference to his banishment in Corsica. The fifty-first is a prayer that the author's two brothers may be happier than himself, and that 'the little Marcus may rival his uncles in eloquence'. The brothers are described one as older, the other as younger than the author. It is an obvious inference that the brothers referred to are Gallio and Mela, while it is possible that the little Marcus is no other than the gifted son of Mela, Marcus Annaeus Lucanus, the epic poet.[157] The fifteenth represents him as an exile in a barren land: he appeals to a faithful friend named Crispus, probably the distinguished orator Passienus Crispus, the younger, who was consul for the second time in 44 A.D.[158] There are also other epigrams which, though less explicit, suit the circumstances of Seneca's exile. The fifth is written in praise of the quiet life. The author has two brothers (l. 14), and at the opening of the poem cries, 'let others seek the praetorship!' In this connexion it is noteworthy that at the time of his banishment Seneca had held no higher office than the quaestorship. The seventeenth and eighteenth are on the same subject, and contain a solemn warning against _regum amicitiae_, appropriate enough in the mouth of the victim of a court intrigue. Epigrams 29-36 are devoted to the praises of Claudius for his conquest of Britain. Claudius had banished him and was a suitable subject for flattery. For the rest the poems are largely of the republican character so fashionable in Stoic circles during the first century of the empire. There are many epigrams on Cato [159] and the Pompeys. Others, again, are of a rhetorical nature, dealing with scholastic themes;[160] others of an erotic and even scandalous character. We can claim no certainty for the view that all these poems are by Seneca, but there is a general resemblance of style throughout, and probability points to the whole collection being by the same author. The fact that the same theme is treated more than once scarcely stands in the way. We cannot dictate the amusements of a weary exile. It would be rash even to deny the possibility of his being the author of the erotic poems.[161] Philosopher as he was, he had been banished on a charge of adultery: without in any way admitting the truth of that accusation, we may readily believe that he stooped to one of the fashionable amusements of the day, the composition of pointed and unsavoury verse; for the standard of morality in writing was far lower than the standard of morals in actual life.[162]

The poems repay reading, but call for little comment. They lack originality. The thought is thin, the expression neat, though scarcely as pointed as we might expect from such an author, while the metre is graceful: the treatment of the elegiac is freer than that of Ovid, but pleasing and melodious. At times powerful lines flash out.

qua frigida semper
praefulget stellis Arctos inocciduis (xxxvi. 6)

Where the cold constellation of the heaven gleams
ever with unsetting stars.

shines out from the midst of banal flattery of the emperor with astonishing splendour. The poem _de qualitate temporis_ (4) closes with four fine lines with the unmistakable Senecan ring about them--

quid tam parva loquor? moles pulcerrima caeli
ardebit flammis tota repente suis.
omnia mors poscit. lex est, non poena, perire:
hic aliquo mundus tempore nullus erit.

Why speak of things so small? The glorious vault of
heaven one day shall blaze with sudden self-kindled
flame. Death calls for all creation. 'Tis a law, not
a penalty to perish. The universe itself shall one day
be as though it had never been.

Cato (9) deliberates on suicide with characteristic rhetoric, artificial in the extreme, but not devoid of dignity--

estne aliquid, quod Cato non potuit?
dextera, me vitas? durum est iugulasse Catonem?
sed, quia liber erit, iam puto, non dubitas.
fas non est vivum cuiquam servire Catonem:
quinctiam vivit nunc Cato, si moritur.[2]

Is there then that which Cato had not the heart to do?
Right-hand, dost thou shrink from me? Is it hard to slay
Cato? Nay, methinks thou dost hesitate no more, for thou
shalt set Cato free. 'Tis a crime that Cato should live
to be any man's slave; nay, Cato truly lives if Cato die.

Cleverest of all is the treatment of the rhetorical theme of the two brothers who meet in battle in the civil war (72). The one unwittingly slays the other, strips the slain, and discovers what he has done--

quod fuerat virtus, factum est scelus. haeret in hoste
miles et e manibus mittere tela timet.
inde ferox: 'quid, lenta manus, nunc denique cessas?
iustius hoste tibi qui moriatur adest.
fraternam res nulla potest defendere caedem;
mors tua sola potest: morte luenda tua est,
scilicet ad patrios referes spolia ampla penates?
ad patrem victor non potes ire tuum.
sed potes ad fratrem: nunc fortiter utere telo!
impius hoc telo es, hoc potes esse pius.
vivere si poteris, potuisti occidere fratrem!
nescisti: sed scis: haec mora culpa tua est.
viximus adversis, iaccamus partibus isdem
(dixit et in dubio est utrius ense cadat).
ense meo moriar, maculato morte nefanda?
cui moreris, ferrum quo moriare dabit.'
dixit et in fratrem fraterno concidit ense:
victorem et victum condidit una manus.[163]

What had been valour now is made a crime. The soldier
halts by his foe and fears to launch his shafts. Then
his courage rekindled. 'What! coward hand, dost thou
delay _now_? There is one here whom thou shouldst slay
sooner than the foe. Naught can assoil of the guilt of
a brother's blood save only death; 'tis thy death must
atone. Shalt thou bear home to thy father's halls rich
spoil of war? Nay, victor thus, thou canst not go to meet
thy sire. But victor thou canst go to meet thy brother;
_now_ use thy weapon bravely. This weapon stained thee with
crime, 'tis this weapon shall make thee clean. If thou hast
heart to live, thou hadst the heart to slay thy brother;
thou _hadst_ no such murderous thought, but _now_ thou hast;
this thy tarrying brings thee guilt. We have lived foes, let
us lie united in the peace of the grave.' He ceased and
doubted on whose sword to fall.' Shall I die by mine own
sword, thus foul with shameful murder. He for whom thou diest
shall give thee the steel wherewith to die.' He ceased, and
fell dead upon his brother, slain by his brother's sword.
The same hand slew both victor and vanquished.

This is not poetry of the first class, if indeed it is poetry at all. But it is trick-rhetoric of the most brilliant kind without degenerating into bombastic absurdity. There is, in fact, a restraint in these epigrams which provides a remarkable contrast with the turgid extravagance that defaces so much of the dramas. This is in part due to the difference of the moulds into which the rhetoric is run, but it is hard to resist the belief that the epigrams--written mainly during the exile in Corsica--are considerably later than the plays. They are in themselves insignificant; they show no advance in dexterity upon the dramas, but they do show a distinct increase of maturity.

The plays are ten in number; they comprise a _Hercules Furens, Troades, Phoenissae_ (or _Thebais_), _Medea, Phaedra_ (or _Hippolytus_), _Oedipus, Agamemnon, Thyestes, Hercules Oetaeus_, and--sole example of the _fabula praetexta_--the _Octavia_. Despite the curious silence of Seneca himself and of his contemporaries, there can be little doubt as to the general correctness of the attribution which assigns to Seneca the only Latin tragedies that grudging time has spared us. The _Medea, Hercules Furens, Troades, Phaedra, Agamemnon_, and _Thyestes_ are all cited by late writers, while Quintilian[164] himself cites a line from the Medea as the work of Seneca. The name Seneca, without any further specification, points as clearly to Seneca, the philosopher, as the name Cicero to the great orator. The absence of any further or more explicit reference on the part of Quintilian to Seneca's achievements as a tragedian is easily explained on the supposition that the critic regarded them as but an insignificant portion of his work. Yet stronger confirmation is afforded by the internal evidence. The verse is marked by the same brilliant but fatiguing terseness, the same polish and point, the same sententiousness, the same succession of short stabbing sentences, that mark the prose works of Seneca.[165] More remarkable still is the close parallelism of thought. The plays are permeated through and through with Stoicism, and the expression given to certain Stoical doctrines is often almost identical with passages from the philosophical works.[166] Against these evidences the silence of Seneca himself counts for little. We may charitably suppose that he rated his plays at their just value. In any case a poet is under no compulsion to quote his own verses, or even to refer to them, in works of a totally different nature.[167]

A more serious question is whether Seneca is the author of all the plays transmitted to us under his name. The authenticity of four of these dramas has been seriously questioned. That the _Octavia_ is by a later hand may be regarded as certain. Seneca could hardly have dared to write a play on so dangerous a theme--the brutal treatment by Nero of his young wife Octavia. Moreover, Seneca himself is one of the dramatis personae, and there are clear references to the death of Nero, while the style is simple and restrained, and wholly unlike that of the other plays. It is the work of a saner and less flamboyant age.[168] The _Agamemnon_ and the _Oedipus_ have been suspected on the ground that certain of the lyric portions are written in a curious patchwork metre of a character fortunately unique in Latin lyric verse. The _Agamemnon_ further has two choruses.[169] But in all other respects the language, technique, and metre closely resemble the other dramas. Neither objection need carry any weight. There is no reason why Seneca should not have introduced a double chorus or have indulged in unsuccessful metrical experiments.[170] Far more difficult is the problem presented by the _Hercules Oetaeus_. It presents many anomalies, of which the least are a double chorus and a change of scene from Oechalia to Trachis. Imitations and plagiarisms from the other plays abound, and the work has more than its fair share of vain repetitions and tasteless absurdities. On the other hand, metre and diction closely recall the dramas accepted as genuine. It is hard to give any certain answer to such a complicated problem, but it is noteworthy that all the worst defects in this play (which among its other peculiarities possesses abnormal length) occur after l. 705, while the earlier scenes depicting the jealousy of Deianira show the Senecan dramatic style almost at its best. Even in the later portion of the play there is much that may be by the hand of Seneca. It is impossible to brand the drama as wholly spurious. The opening lines (1-232) may not belong to the play, but may form an entirely separate scene dealing with the capture of Oechalia: there is no reason to suppose that they are not by Seneca, and the same statement applies to the great bulk of ll. 233-705. The remainder has in all probability suffered largely from interpolation, but its general resemblance to Seneca in style and diction is too strongly marked to permit us to reject it _en bloc_. The problem is too obscure to repay detailed discussion.[171] The most probable solution of the question would seem to be that the work was left in an unfinished condition with inconsistencies, self-plagiarisms, repetitions, and absurdities which revision would have removed; this unfinished drama was then worked over and corrected by a stupid, but careful student of Seneca.

There is such a complete absence of evidence as to the period of Seneca's life during which these dramas were composed, that much ingenuity has been wasted in attempts to solve the problem. The view most widely held--why it should be held is a mystery--is that they were composed during Seneca's exile in Corsica (41-9 A.D.).[172] Others, again, hold that they were written for the delectation of the young Nero, who had early betrayed a taste for the stage. This view has nothing to support it save the accusation mentioned by Tacitus,[173] to the effect that the patronage and approval of Nero led Seneca to write verse more frequently than his wont. Direct evidence there is none, but the general crudity of the work, coupled with the pedantic hardness and rigidity of the Stoicism which pervades the plays, points strongly to an early date, considerably earlier than the exile in Corsica. There is no trace of the mature experience and feeling for humanity that characterize the later philosophical works. On the contrary, these plays are just what might be expected of a young man fresh from the schools of rhetoric and philosophy.[174] As to the order in which the plays were written there is practically nothing to guide us.[175] The _Hercules Oetaeus_ is probably the latest, for in it we find plagiarisms from the _Hercules Furens, Oedipus, Thyestes, Phoenissae, Phaedra_, and _Troades_. Even here, however, there is an element of uncertainty, for it is impossible to ascertain whether any given plagiarism is due to Seneca or to his interpolators.

Leaving such barren and unprofitable ground, what can we say of the plays themselves? Even after making due allowance for the hopeless decline of dramatic taste and for the ruin wrought by the schools of rhetoric, it is hard to speak with patience of such productions, when we recall the brilliance and charm of the prose works of Seneca. We can forgive him being rhetorical when he speaks for himself; when he speaks through the lips of others he is less easily tolerable.

Drama is a reading of human life: if it is to hold one's interest it must deal with the feelings, thought, and action of genuine human beings and represent their complex interaction: the characters must be real and must differ one from the other, so that by force of contrast and by the continued play of diverse aspects and developments of the human soul, the significance, the pathos, and the power of the fragment of human life selected for representation may be fully brought out and set before our eyes. If these characteristics be absent, the drama must of necessity be an artistic failure by reason of its lack of truth. But it requires also plot, with a logical growth leading to some great climax and developing a growing suspense in the spectator as to what shall be the end. It is true that plot without reality may give us a successful melodrama, that truth of character-drawing with a minimum of plot may move and interest us. But in neither case shall we have drama in its truest and noblest form.

Seneca gives us neither the half nor the whole. The stage is ultimately the touchstone of dramatic excellence. But if it is to be such a touchstone, it must have an audience with a penetration of intelligence and a soundness of taste such as had long ceased to characterize Roman audiences. The Senecan drama has lost touch with the stage and lacks both unity and life. Such superficial unity as his plots possess is due to the fact that they are ultimately imitations of Greek[176] drama. A full discussion of the plots is neither necessary here nor possible. A few instances of Seneca's treatment of his material must suffice.[177] He has no sense of logical development; the lack of sequence and of proportion traceable in the letters is more painfully evident in the tragedies.

The _Hercules Furens_ supplies an excellent example of the weakness of the Senecan plot. It is based on the [Greek: H_erakl_es mainomenos] of Euripides, and such unity as it possesses is in the main due to that fact. It is in his chief divergences from the Euripidean treatment of the story that his deficiencies become most apparent. Theseus appears early in the play merely that he may deliver a long rhodomontade on the appearance of the underworld, whence Hercules has rescued him; and, worst of all, the return of Hercules is rendered wholly ineffective. Amphitryon hears the approaching steps of Hercules as he bursts his way to the upper world and cries (523)--

est est sonitus Herculei gradus.

The chorus then, as if they had heard nothing, deliver themselves of a chant that describes Hercules as still a prisoner in Hades. When Hercules at last is allowed to appear, he appears alone, and delivers a long ranting glorification of himself (592-617) before he is joined by his father, wife, and children. As Leo has remarked,[178] this episode has been tastelessly torn into two fragments merely to give Hercules an opportunity for turgid declamation.

The _Medea_, again, is, on the whole, Euripidean in form, though it probably owes much to the influence of Ovid.[179] It is, moreover, the least tasteless and best constructed of his tragedies. It loses comparatively little by the omission of the Aegeus episode, but suffers terribly by the insertion of a bombastic description of Medea's incantations. The love of the Silver Age for rhetoric has converted Medea into a skilful rhetorician, its love for the black art has degraded her to a vulgar sorceress. Nothing, again, can be cruder or more awkward than the manner in which the news of the death of Creon and his daughter is announced. After an interval so brief as scarcely to suffice even for the conveyance of the poisoned gifts to the palace, in rushes a messenger crying (879)--

periere cuncta, concidit regni status.
nata atque genitor cinere permixto iacent.

_Cho_. qua fraude capti? _Nunt_. qua solent
reges capi, donis.

_Cho_. in illis esse quis potuit dolus?

_Nunt_. et ipse miror vixque iam facto malo
potuisse fieri credo; quis cladis modus?
avidus per omnem regiae partem furit
ut iussus ignis: iam domus tota occidit,
urbi timetur.

_Cho_. unda flammas opprimat.

_Nunt_. et hoc in ista clade mirandum accidit,
alit unda flammas, quoque prohibetur magis,
magis ardet ignis: ipsa praesidia occupat.

All is lost! the kingdom's fallen! Father and
daughter lie in mingled dust!

_Ch_. By what snare taken?

_Mess_. By gifts, the snare of kings.

_Ch_. What harm could lurk in them?

_Mess_. Myself I marvel, and scarce though the deed
is done can I believe it possible. How died they?
Devouring flames rage through all the palace as at
her command. Now the whole house is fallen and men
fear for the city.

_Ch_. Let water quench the flames.

_Mess_. Nay, in this overthrow is this added wonder.
Water feeds the flames and opposition makes the fire
burn fiercer. It hath seared even that which should
have stayed its power.

That is all: if we had not read Euripides we should scarcely understand the connexion between the gifts and the mysterious fire. Seneca, with the lack of proportion displayed in nearly all his dramas, has spent so much time in describing the wholly irrelevant and absurd details of Medea's incantations that he finds no room to give what might be a really dramatic description of the all-important catastrophe in which Medea's vengeance finds issue. There is hardly a play which will not provide similar instances of the lack of genuine constructive power. In the _Oedipus_ we get the same long narrative of horror that has disfigured the _Hercules Furens_ and the _Medea_. Creon describes to us the dark rites of incantation used to evoke the shade of Laius.[180] In the _Phaedra_ we find what at first would seem to be a clever piece of stagecraft. Hippolytus, scandalized at Phaedra's avowal of her incestuous passion, seizes her by the hair and draws his sword as though to slay her. He changes his purpose, but the nurse has seen him and calls for aid, denouncing Hippolytus' violence and clearly intending to make use of it as damning evidence against him. But the chorus refuse to credit her, and the incident falls flat.[181] Everywhere there is the same casual workmanship. If we stop short of denying to Seneca the possession of any dramatic talent, it is at any rate hard to resist the conviction that he treated the plays as a _parergon_, spending little thought or care on their _ensemble_, though at times working up a scene or scenes with an elaboration and skill as unmistakable as it is often misdirected.

The plays are, in fact, as Nisard has admirably put it, _drames de recette_. The recipe consists in the employment of three ingredients--description, declamation, and philosophic aphorism. There is room for all these ingredients in drama as in human life, but in Seneca there is little else: these three elements conspire together to swamp the drama, and they do this the more effectively because, for all their cleverness, Seneca's description and declamation are radically bad. It is but rarely that he shows himself capable of simple and natural language. If a tragic event enacted off the stage requires description, it must outdo all other descriptions of the same type. And seeing that one of the chief uses of narrative in tragedy is to present to the imagination of the audience events which are too horrible for their eyes, the result in Seneca's hands is often little less than revolting. For example, the self-blinding of Oedipus is set forth with every detail of horror, possible and impossible, till the imagination sickens.

(961) gemuit et dirum fremens
manus in ora torsit, at contra truces
oculi steterunt et suam intenti manum
ultro insequuntur, vulneri occurrunt suo.
scrutatur avidus manibus uncis lumina,
radice ab ima funditus vulsos simul
evolvit orbes; haeret in vacuo manus
et fixa penitus unguibus lacerat cavos
alte recessus luminum et inanes sinus
saevitque frustra plusque quam satis est furit.

The last line is an epitome of Seneca's methods of description. Yet more revolting is the speech of the messenger describing the banquet, at which Atreus placed the flesh of Thyestes' murdered sons before their father (623-788). Nothing is spared us, much that is impossible is added.[182] At times, moreover, this love of horrors leads to the introduction of descriptions wholly alien to the play. In the _Hercules Furens_ the time during which Hercules is absent from the scene, engaged in the slaying of the tyrant Lycus, is filled by a description of Hades from the mouth of Theseus, who is fresh-come from the underworld. The speech is not peculiarly bad in itself; it is only very long[183] (658-829) and very irrelevant.

The effect of the declamation is not less unhappy. Seneca's dramatis personae rarely speak like reasoning human beings: they rant at one another or at the audience with such overwrought subtleties of speech and rhetorical perversions that they give the impression of being no more than mechanical puppets handled by a crafty but inartistic showman. All speak the same strange language, a language born in the rhetorical schools of Greece and Rome. Gods and mortals alike suffer the same melancholy fate. Juno, when she declares her resolve to afflict Hercules with madness, addresses the furies who are to be her ministers as follows (_H.F._ 105):

concutite pectus, acrior mentem excoquat
quam qui caminis ignis Aetnaeis furit:
ut possit animo captus Alcides agi
magno furore percitus, nobis prius
insaniendum est--Iuno, cur nondum furis?
me me, sorores, mente deiectam mea
versate primam, facere si quicquam apparo
dignum noverca; vota mutentur mea:
natos reversus videat incolumes precor
manuque fortis redeat: inveni diem
invisa quo nos Herculis virtus iuvet.
me vicit et se vincat et cupiat mori
ab inferis reversus....
pugnanti Herculi
tandem favebo.

Distract his heart with madness: let his soul
More fiercely burn than that hot fire which glows
On Aetna's forge. But first, that Hercules
May be to madness driven, smitten through
With mighty passion, I must be insane.
Why rav'st thou not, O Juno? Me, oh, me,
Ye sisters, first of sanity deprive,
That something worthy of a stepdame's wrath
I may prepare. Let all my hate be change
To favour. Now I pray that he may come
To earth again, and see his sons unharmed;
May he return with all his old time strength.
Now have I found a day when Hercules
May help me with his strength that I deplore.
Now let him equally o'ercome himself
And me; and let him, late escaped from death,
Desire to die... And so at last I'll help
Alcides in his wars. MILLER.

She is clearly a near relative of that Oedipus who, in the _Phoenissae_, begs Antigone to lead him to the rock where the Sphinx sat of old (120):

dirige huc gressus pedum,
hic siste patrem. dira ne sedes vacet.
monstrum repone maius. hoc saxum insidens
obscura nostrae verba fortunae loquar,
quae nemo solvat.
... saeva Thebarum lues
luctifica caecis verba committens modis
quid simile posuit? quid tam inextricabile?
avi gener patrisque rivalis sui
frater suorum liberum et fratrum parens;
uno avia partu liberos. peperit viro,
sibi et nepotes. monstra quis tanta explicat?
ego ipse, victae spolia qui Sphingis tuli,
haerebo fati tardus interpres mei.

Direct me thither, set thy father there.
Let not that dreadful seat be empty long,
But place me there a greater monster still.
There will I sit and of my fate propose
A riddle dark that no man shall resolve.
* * * * *
What riddle like to this could she propose,
That curse of Thebes, who wove destructive words
In puzzling measures? What so dark as this?
_He was his grandsire's son-in-law, and yet
His father's rival; brother of his sons,
And father of his brothers: at one birth
The grandame bore unto her husband sons,
And grandsons to herself_. Who can unwind
A tangle such as this? E'en I myself,
Who bore the spoils of triumph o'er the Sphinx,
Stand mute before the riddle of my fate.
MILLER.

There is no need to multiply instances; each play will supply many. Only in the _Troades_[184] and the _Phaedra_ does this declamatory rhetoric rise to something higher than mere declamation and near akin to true poetry. In these plays there are two speeches standing on a different plane to anything else in Seneca's iambics. In the _Troades_ Agamemnon is protesting against the proposed sacrifice of Polyxena to the spirit of the dead Achilles (255).

quid caede dira nobiles clari ducis
aspergis umbras? noscere hoc primum decet,
quid facere victor debeat, victus pati.
violenta nemo imperia continuit diu,
moderata durant; ...
magna momento obrui
vincendo didici. Troia nos tumidos facit
nimium ac feroces? stamus hoc Danai loco,
unde illa cecidit. fateor, aliquando impotens
regno ac superbus altius memet tuli;
sed fregit illos spiritus haec quae dare
potuisset aliis causa, Fortunae favor.
tu me superbum, Priame, tu timidum facis.
ego esse quicquam sceptra nisi vano putem
fulgore tectum nomen et falso comam
vinclo decentem? casus haec rapiet brevis,
nec mille forsan ratibus aut annis decem.
... fatebor ... affligi Phrygas
vincique volui; ruere et aequari solo
utinam arcuissem.

Why besmirch with murder foul the noble shade of that
renowned chief? First must thou learn the bounds of a
victor's power, of the vanquished's suffering. No man
for long has held unbridled sway; only self-control may
endure ... I myself have conquered and have learned
thereby that man's mightiness may fall in the twinkling
of an eye. Shall Troy o'erthrown exalt our pride and make
us overbold? Here we the Danaans stand on the spot whence
she has fallen. Of old, I own, I have borne myself too
haughtily, self-willed and proud of my power. But Fortune's
favour, which had made another proud, has broken my pride.
Priam, thou makest me proud, thou makest me tremble. I count
the sceptre naught save a glory bright with worthless tinsel
that sets the vain splendour of a crown upon my brow. All
this the chance of one short hour may take from me without
the aid of a thousand ships and ten long years of siege ...
I will own my fault ... I desired to crush and conquer Troy.
Would I had forbidden to lay her low and raze her walls to
the ground!

The thought is not deep: the speech might serve for a model for a _suasoria_ in the schools of rhetoric. But there is a stateliness and dignity about it that is most rare in these plays. At last after dreary tracts of empty rant we meet Seneca, the spiritual guide of the epistles and the treatises.

Far more striking, however, from the dramatic standpoint, are the great speeches in the _Phaedra_, where the heroine makes known her passion for Hippolytus (600 sqq.). They are frankly rhetorical, but direct, passionate, and to the point. They contain few striking lines or sentiments, but they are clear and comparatively free from affectation. Theseus has maddened Phaedra by his infidelities, and has long been absent from her, imprisoned in the underworld. An uncontrollable passion for her stepson has come upon her. She appeals to the unsuspecting Hippolytus for pity and protection (619):

muliebre non est regna tutari urbium;
tu qui iuventae flore primaevo viges
cives paterno fortis imperio rege,
sinu receptam supplicem ac servam tege.
miserere viduae.

_Hipp_. Summus hoc omen deus avertat.
aderit sospes actutum parens.

'Tis no woman's task to rule cities. Do thou,
strong in the flower of thy first youth, flinch
not, but govern the state by the power thy father
held. Take me and shield me in thy bosom, thy
suppliant and thy slave! Pity thy father's widow.

_Hipp_. Nay, high heaven avert the omen. Soon shall
my father return unscathed.