Chapter II: Drama (2)

Phaedra then begins to show her true colours. 'Nay!' she replies, 'he will not come. Pluto holds him fast, the would-be ravisher of his bride, unless indeed Pluto, like others I wot of, is indifferent to love.' Hippolytus attempts to console her: he will do all in his power to make life easy for her:

et te merebor esse ne viduam putes
ac tibi parentis ipse supplebo locum.

I shall prove me worthy of thee: so thou shalt not deem
thyself a widow. I will fill up my absent father's room.

These innocent words are as fuel to Phaedra's passion. She turns to him again appealing for pity, pity for an ill she dare not name--

quod in novercam cadere vix credas malum.

He bids her speak out. She replies, 'Love consumes me with an all-devouring flame. 'He still fails to catch her meaning, supposing that the passion of which she speaks is for the absent Theseus. She can restrain herself no longer: 'Aye, 'tis for Theseus!' she cries (646):

Hippolyte, sic est; Thesei vultus amo [185]
illos priores quos tulit quondam puer,
cum prima puras barba signaret genas
monstrique caecam Cnosii vidit domum
et longa curva fila collegit via.
quis tum ille fulsit! presserant vittae comam
et ora flavus tenera tinguebat pudor;
inerant lacertis mollibus fortes tori;
tuaeque Phoebes vultus aut Phoebi mei,
tuusque potius--talis, en talis fuit
cum placuit hosti, sic tulit celsum caput:
in te magis refulget incomptus decor;
est genitor in te totus et torvae tamen
pars aliqua matris miscet ex aequo decus;
in ore Graio Scythicus apparet rigor.
si cum parente Creticum intrasses fretum,
tibi fila potius nostra nevisset soror.
te te, soror, quacumque siderei poli
in parte fulges, invoco ad causam parem:
domus sorores una corripuit duas,
te genitor, at me natus. en supplex iacet
adlapsa genibus regiae proles domus,
respersa nulla labe et intacta, innocens
tibi mutor uni. certa descendi ad preces:
finem hic dolori faciet aut vitae dies,
miserere amantis.[186]

Even so, Hippolytus; I love the face that Theseus wore,
in the days of old while yet he was a boy, when the first
down marked his bright cheeks and he looked on the dark
home of the Cretan monster and gathered the long magic
thread along the winding way. Ah! how then he shone upon my
eyes. A wreath was about his hair and his delicate cheeks
glowed with the golden bloom of modesty. Strong sinews stood
out upon his shapely arms and his countenance was the
countenance of the goddess that thou servest or of mine own
bright sun-god; nay, rather 'twas as thine own. Even so, even
so looked he when he won the heart of her that was his foe,
and lofty was his carriage like to thine. But in thee still
brighter shines an artless glory, and on thee is all thy
father's beauty. Yet mingled therewith in equal portion is
something of thy wild mother's fairness. On thy Greek face is
seen the fierceness of the Scythian. Hadst thou sailed o'er
the sea with thy sire to Crete, for thee rather had my sister
spun the magic thread. On thee, on thee, my sister, I call
where'er thou shinest in the starry heaven, on thee I call
to aid my cause. Lo! sisters twain hath one house brought to
naught--thee did the father ruin, me the son. Lo! suppliant at
thy knees I fall, the daughter of a king, stainless and pure
and innocent. For thee alone I swerve from my course. I have
steeled my soul and stooped to beg of thee. Today shall end
either my sorrow or my life. Pity, have pity, on her that
loves thee.

Then the storm of Hippolytus' anger breaks. Here at least Seneca has used his great rhetorical gifts to good effect. The passion may be highly artificial when compared with the passion of the genuinely human Phaedra of Euripides, but it is nevertheless passion and not bombast: crudity there may be, but there is no real irrelevance.

There is less to praise and more to wonder at in Seneca's dialogue. Instead of rational conversation or controversy, he gives us a brilliant but meretricious display of epigram, the mechanical nature of which is often emphasized by a curious symmetry of structure. For line after line one character takes up the words of another and turns them against him with dexterity as extraordinary as it is monotonous. The resulting artificiality is almost incredible. It appears in its most extravagant form in the _Thyestes_.[187] Scarcely less strained, though from the nature of the subject the extravagance is less repellent, is a passage in the _Troades_. Achilles' ghost has demanded the sacrifice of Polyxena. Agamemnon hesitates to give orders for the sacrifice. Pyrrhus, Achilles' son, enumerates the great deeds of his father, and asks, indignantly, if such glory is to win naught save neglect after death. Agamemnon has sacrificed his own daughter, why should he not sacrifice Priam's? Agamemnon--in the speech quoted above--refuses indignantly. 'Sacrifice oxen if you will: no human blood shall be shed!' Pyrrhus replies (306):

hac dextra Achilli victimam reddam suam.
quam si negas retinesque, maiorem dabo
dignamque quam det Pyrrhus; et nimium diu
a caede nostra regia cessat manus
paremque poscit Priamus.

_Agam_. haud equidem nego hoc esse Pyrrhi
maximum in bello decus, saevo peremptus
ense quod Priamus iacet, _supplex paternus.

_Pyrrh_. _supplices_ nostri _patris_
hostesque eosdem novimus. Priamus tamen
praesens rogavit; tu gravi pavidus metu,
nec ad rogandum fortis Aiaci preces
Ithacoque mandas clausus atque hostem tremens.

By this right hand he shall receive his own.
And if thou dost refuse and keep the maid,
A greater victim will I slay, and one
More worthy Pyrrhus' gift: for all too long
From royal slaughter hath my hand been free,
And Priam asks an equal sacrifice.

_Agam_. Far be it from my wish to dim the praise
That thou dost claim for this most glorious deed--
Old Priam slain by thy barbaric sword,
Thy father's suppliant.

_Pyrrh_. I know full well
My father's suppliants--and well I know
His enemies. Yet royal Priam came
And made his plea before my father's face;
But thou, o'ercome with fear, not brave enough
Thyself to make request, within thy tent
Did trembling hide, and thy desires consign
To braver men, that they might plead for thee.
MILLER.

Agamemnon retorts, 'What of your father, when he shirked the toils of war and lay idly in his tent?'--

levi canoram verberans plectro chelyn.

_Pyrrh_. tunc magnus Hector, arma contemnens tua,
cantus Achillis timuit et tanto in metu
_navalibus pax alta Thessalicis fuit_.

_Agam_. nempe isdem in _istis Thessalis navalibus
pax alta_ rursus Hectoris patri _fuit_.

_Pyrrh_. est _regis_ alti _spiritum_ regi dare.

_Agam_. cur dextra _regi spiritum_ eripuit tua?

_Pyrrh_. mortem _misericors_ saepe pro vita dabit.

_Agam_. et nunc _misericors_ virginem busto petis?

_Pyrrh_. iamne immolari virgines credis nefas?

_Agam_. praeferre patriam liberis regem decet.

_Pyrrh_. _lex_ nulla capto parcit aut poenam impedit.

_Agam_. quod non vetat _lex_, hoc vetat fieri pudor.

_Pyrrh_. quodcumque _libuit_ facere victori _licet_.

_Agam_. minimum decet _libere_ cui multum _licet_.

Idly strumming on his tuneful lyre.

_Pyrrh_. Then mighty Hector, scornful of thy arms,
Yet felt such wholesome fear of that same lyre,
That our _Thessalian ships_ were left in _peace_.

_Agam_. An equal _peace_ did Hector's father find,
When he betook him to Achilles' _ships_.

_Pyrrh_. 'Tis regal thus to spare a _kingly life_.

_Agam_. Why then didst thou a _kingly life_ despoil?

_Pyrrh_. But _mercy_ oft doth offer death for life.

_Agam_. Doth _mercy_ now demand a maiden's blood?

_Pyrrh_. Canst thou proclaim such sacrifice a sin?

_Agam_. A king must love his country more than child.

_Pyrrh_. No _law_ the wretched captive's life doth spare.

_Agam_. What _law_ forbids not, yet may shame forbid.

_Pyrrh_. 'Tis victor's right to do whate'er he _will_.

_Agam_. Then should he _will_ the least, who most can do.
MILLER.

The cleverness of this is undeniable: individual lines (e.g. the last) are striking. Taken collectively they are ineffective; we feel, moreover, that the cleverness is mere knack: the continued picking up of the adversary's words to be used as weapons against himself is wearisome. It would be nearly as great a strain to listen to such a dialogue as to take part in it: the atmosphere is that of the school of rhetoric, an atmosphere in which sensible and natural dialogue is impossible.[188]

The characters naturally suffer from this continued display of declamatory rhetoric. They have but one voice and language; they differ from one another only in their clothes and the situations in which they are placed. It is true that some of them are patterns of virtue and others monsters of iniquity. But strip off the coating of paint, and within the limits of these two types--for there are but two--the puppets are precisely the same. There is none of the play of light and shade so essential to drama: all is agonizingly crude and lurid. This is not due to the rhetoric alone, there is another influence at work. The plays are permeated by a strong vein of Stoicism. Carried to its logical conclusion Stoicism lays itself open to taunts such as Cicero levels at his friend Cato in the _pro Murena_,[189] where he delivers a humorous _reductio ad absurdum_ of its tenets. Such a philosophy is fatal to the drama. It allows no room for human sentiment or human weakness; the most virtuous affections are chilled and robbed of their attractiveness: there are no gradations of temperament, intellect, or character: pathos disappears. The Stoic ideal was a being in whom the natural impulses and desires should be completely subjected to the laws of pure reason. It tends in its intensity to a narrowness, an abstract unreality which is unfavourable to the development of the more human virtues. What it gave with one hand the more rigid Stoic philosophy took away with the other. It preached the brotherhood of man and took away half the value of sympathy. And here in the plays there is nothing of the _mitis sapientia_, the concessions to mortal weakness, the humanity, which characterize the prose works of Seneca and have won the hearts of many generations of men. There the hardness of Stoicism is softened by ripe experience and a tendency to eclecticism, and the doctrinaire stands less sharply revealed. 'Sous l'austérité du philosophe, on trouve un homme.' The most noteworthy result of this hard Stoicism upon the plays is the almost complete absence of pathos springing from the tenderer human affections. Seneca's tragedy may sometimes succeed in horrifying us, as in the ghastly rhetoric of the _Thyestes_ or the _Medea_. He moves us rarely.

But there are a few striking exceptions to the rule, notably the beautiful passage of the _Troades_, where Andromache bids her companions in misfortune cease from useless lamentation[190] (409):

quid, maesta Phrygiae turba, laceratis comas
miserumque tunsae pectus effuso genas
fletu rigatis? levia perpessae sumus,
si flenda patimur. Ilium vobis modo,
mihi cecidit olim, cum ferus curru incito
mea membra raperet et gravi gemeret sono
Peliacis axis pondere Hectoreo tremens.
tunc obruta atque eversa quodcumque accidit
torpens malis rigeusque sine sensu fero.
iam erepta Danais coniugem sequerer meum,
nisi hic teneret: hic meos animos domat
morique prohibet; cogit hic aliquid deos
adhuc rogare--tempus aerumnae addidit.

Why, ye sad Phrygian women, do ye rend your hair and
beat your woeful breasts and bedew your cheeks with
streaming tears? But light is our sorrow, if it lies
not too deep for tears. For you Ilium but now has fallen,
for me it fell long ago, when the cruel wheels of the
swift ear of Peleus' son dragged in the dust the limbs of
him I loved, and groaned loud as they quivered beneath
the weight of Hector dead. Then was I overthrown, then
cast to utter ruin, and since then I bear whatso falleth
upon me, with a heart that is numb with grief, chilled and
insensible, and long since had I snatched myself from the
hands of the Greeks and followed my husband, did not my
child keep me among the living: he checks my purpose and
forbids me to die; he constrains me still to make
supplication to heaven and prolongs my anguish.

Even here the pathos is the calm and reasoned pathos of hopelessness, the pathos of a Stoic who preaches endurance of evils against which his philosophy is not proof. Here, too, we find the Stoic attitude towards death. Death is the end of all; there is naught to dread; death puts an end to hope and fear: to die is to be as though we had never been (394):

post mortem nihil est, ipsaque mors nihil.
velocis spatii meta novissima;
spem ponant avidi, solliciti metum.
tempus nos avidum devorat et chaos:
mors individua est, noxia corpori
nec parcens animae: Taenara et aspero
regnum sub domino limen et obsidens
custos non facili Cerberus ostio
rumores vacui verbaque inania
et par sollicito fabula somnio.
quaeris quo iaceas post obitum loco?
quo non nata iacent.

Since naught remains, and death is naught
But life's last goal, so swiftly sought:
Let those who cling to life abate
Their fond desires, and yield to fate;
Soon shall grim time and yawning night
In their vast depths engulf us quite;
Impartial death demands the whole--
The body slays nor spares the soul.
Dark Taenara and Pluto fell,
And Cerberus, grim guard of hell--
All these but empty rumours seem,
The pictures of a troubled dream.
Where then will the departed spirit dwell?
Let those who never came to being tell.
MILLER.

Death brings release from sorrow: the worst of torture is to be forced to live on in the midst of woe--

mors votum meum--cries Hecuba--(1171)
infantibus violenta, virginibus venis,
ubique properas, saeva: me solam times.

O death, my sole desire, for boys and maids
Thou com'st with hurried step and savage mien:
But me alone of mortals dost thou fear.
MILLER.

So, too, Andromache, in the passage quoted above, almost apologizes for not having put an end to her existence. Polyxena meets death with exultation (_Tro_. 945, 1152-9): even the little Astyanax is infected with Stoic passion for suicide (1090):

nec gradu segni puer
ad alta pergit moenia. ut summa stetit
pro turre, vultus huc et huc acres tulit
intrepidus animo....
non flet e turba omnium
qui fletur; ac, dum verba fatidici et preces
concipit Vlixes vatis et saevos ciet
ad sacra superos, sponte desiluit sua
in media Priami regna.

And with no lingering pace the boy climbed the lofty
battlements, and all about him cast his keen gaze with
dauntless soul.... But he alone of all the throng who
wept for him wept not at all, and, while Ulysses 'uttered
in priestly wise the words of fate and prayed' and called
the cruel gods to the sacrifice, the boy of his own will
cast himself down to death on the fields that Priam ruled.

The enthusiasm for death is carried too far.[191] Even the agony of the _Troades_ fails really to stir us: it depresses us without wakening our sympathy. So, too, with other scenes: in the _Hercules Furens_ we have the virtuous Stoic--in the persons of Megara and Amphitryon--confronting the _instans tyrannus_ in the person of Lycus: it is the hackneyed theme of the schools of rhetoric,[192] but derives its inspiration from Stoicism (426):

_Lyc_. cogere. _Meg_. cogi qui potest nescit mori. _Lyc_. effare potius, quod novis thalamis parem regale munus. _Meg_. aut tuam mortem aut meam. _Lyc_. moriere demens. _Meg_. coniugi occurram meo. _Lyc_. sceptrone nostro famulus est potior tibi? _Meg_. quot iste famulus tradidit reges neci. _Lyc_. cur ergo regi servit et patitur iugum? _Meg_. imperia dura tolle: quid virtus erit?[193] _Lyc_. obici feris monstrisque virtutem putas? _Meg_. virtutis est domare quae cuncti pavent. _Lyc_. tenebrae loquentem magna Tartareae premunt. _Meg_. non est ad astra mollis e terris via.[194] _Lyc_. Thou shalt be forced. _Meg_. He can be forced, who knows not how to die. _Lyc_. Tell me what gift I could bestow more rich Than royal wedlock? _Meg_. Or thy death or mine. _Lyc_. Then die, thou fool. _Meg_. 'Tis thus I'll meet my lord. _Lyc_. Is that slave more to thee than I, a king? _Meg_. How many kings has that slave given to death! _Lyc_. Why does he serve a king and bear the yoke? _Meg_. Remove hard tasks, and where would valour be? _Lyc_. To conquer monsters call'st thou valour then? _Meg_. 'Tis valour to subdue what all men fear. _Lyc_. The shades of Hades hold that boaster fast. _Meg_. No easy way leads from the earth to heaven. MILLER

So, too, a little later (463) Amphitryon crushes Lycus with a true Stoic retort:--

_Lyc_. quemcumque miserum videris, hominem scias. _Amph_. quemcumque fortem videris, miserum neges.[195]

_Lyc_. Whoe'er is wretched, him mayst thou know for mortal. _Amph_. Whoe'er is brave, thou mayst not call him wretched.

Admirable as are the sentiments expressed by these virtuous and calamitous persons, they leave us cold: they are too self-sufficient to need our sympathy. Pain and death have no terrors for them; why should we pity them? But it would be unjust to lay the blame for this absence of pathetic power entirely on the influence of Stoicism. The scholastic rhetoric is not a good vehicle for pathos, and must bear a large portion of the blame, though even the rhetoric is due in no small degree to the Stoic type of dialectic. As Seneca himself says, speaking of others than himself, 'Philosophia quae fuit, facta philologia est.'[196] And it must further be remembered that of the few flights of real poetry in these plays some of the finest were inspired by Stoicism. The drama cannot nourish in the Stoic atmosphere, poetry can. Seneca was sometimes a poet. His best-known chorus, the famous _regem non faciunt opes_ of the _Thyestes_ (345), is directly inspired by Stoicism. The speeches of Agamemnon and Andromache, together with the chorus already quoted from the _Troades_, all bear the impress of the Stoic philosophy. The same is true of the scarcely inferior chorus on fate from the _Oedipus_ (980).

But there are other passages of genuine poetry where the Stoic is silent. The chorus in the _Hercules Furens_ (838), giving the conventional view of death, will stand comparison with the chorus of the _Troades_, giving the philosophic view. The chorus on the dawn (_H.F._ 125) brings the fresh sounds and breezes of early morning into the atmosphere of the rhetorician's lecture-room. The celebrated

venient annis saecula seris
quibus Oceanus vincula rerum
laxet et ingens pateat tellus
Tethysque novos detegat orbes
nec sit terris ultima Thule (_Med._ 375)

Late in time shall come an age, when Ocean shall
unbar the world, and the whole wide earth be
revealed, and Tethys shall show forth a new world,
nor Thule be earth's limit any more.

has acquired a fictitious importance since the discovery of the new world, but shows a fine imagination, even if--as has been maintained--it is merely a courtly reference to the British expedition of Claudius. And the invocation to sleep in the _Hercules Furens_ proved worthy to provide an inspiration for Shakespeare[197] (1063):

solvite tantis animum monstris
solvite superi, caecam in melius
flectite mentem. tuque, o domitor
Somne malorum, requies animi,
pars humanae melior vitae,
volucre o matris genus Astracae,
frater durae languide Mortis,
veris miscens falsa, futuri
certus et idem pessimus auctor,
pax errorum, portus vitae,
lucis requies noctisque comes,
qui par regi famuloque venis,
pavidum leti genus humanum
cogis longam discere noctem:
placidus fessum lenisque fove,
preme devinctum torpore gravi.

Save him, ye gods, from monstrous madness, save
him, restore his darkened mind to sanity. And thou,
O sleep, subduer of ill, the spirit's repose, thou
better part of human life, swift-winged child of
Astraca, drowsy brother of cruel death, mixing
false with true, prescient of what shall be, yet
oftener prescient of sorrow, peace mid our wanderings,
haven of man's life, day's respite, night's companion,
that comest impartially to king and slave, thou that
makest trembling mankind to gain a foretaste of the
long night of death; do thou bring gentle rest to his
weariness, and sweet balm to his anguish, and overwhelm
him with heavy stupor.

But the poetry is confined mainly to the lyrics. In them, though the metre be monotonous and the thought rarely more than commonplace, the feeling rings true, the expression is brilliant, and the never absent rhetoric is sometimes transmuted to a more precious substance with a far-off resemblance to true lyrical passion. In the iambics, with the exception of the passages already quoted from the _Troades_ and the _Phaedra_, touches of genuine poetry are most rare.[198] In certain of the long descriptive passages (_H.F._ 658 sqq., _Oed._ 530 sqq.) we get a stagey picturesqueness, but no more. It is for different qualities that we read the iambics of Seneca, if we read them at all.

Even in its worst moments the rhetoric is capable of extorting our unwilling admiration by its sheer cleverness and audacity. A good example is to be found in the passage of the _Thyestes_, where Atreus meditates whether he shall call upon his sons Menelaus and Agamemnon to aid him in his unnatural vengeance on Thyestes. He has doubts as to whether he is their father, for Thyestes had seduced their mother Aerope (327):--

prolis incertae fides
ex hoc petatur scelere: si bella abnuunt
et gerere nolunt odia, si patruum vocant,
pater est. eatur.

And by this test of crime,
Let their uncertain birth be put to proof:
If they refuse to wage this war of death
And will not serve my hatred; if they plead
He is their uncle--then he is their sire.
So to my work!
MILLER'S translation slightly altered.

Equally ingenious is the closing scene between Atreus and Thyestes after the vengeance is accomplished and Thyestes has feasted on the flesh of his own sons (1100):

_Thy_. quid liberi meruere?
_Atr_. quod fuerant tui.
_Thy_. natos parenti--
_Atr_. fateor et, quod me iuvat, certos.
_Thy_. piorum praesides testor deos.
_Atr_. quin coniugales?
_Thy_. scelere quid pensas scelus?
_Atr_. scio quid queraris: scelere praerepto doles,
nec quod nefandas hauseris angit dapes;
quod non pararis: fuerat hic animus tibi
instruere similes inscio fratri cibos
et adiuvante liberos matre aggredi
similique leto sternere--hoc unum obstitit:
_tuos_ putasti.
_Thy_. What was my children's sin?
_Atr_. This, that they were thy children.
_Thy_. But to think
That children to the father--
_Atr_. That indeed,
I do confess it, gives me greatest joy,
That thou art well assured they were thy sons.
_Thy_. I call upon the gods of innocence--
_Atr_. Why not upon the gods of marriage call?
_Thy_. Why dost thou seek to punish crime with crime?
_Atr_. Well do I know the cause of thy complaint:
Because I have forestalled thee in the deed.
Thou grievest, not because thou hast consumed
This horrid feast, but that thou wast not first
To set it forth. This was thy fell intent,
To arrange a feast like this unknown to me,
And with their mother's aid attack my sons,
And with a like destruction lay them low.
But this one thing opposed--thou thought'st them thine.
MILLER.

These passages are as unreal as they are repulsive, but they are diabolically clever. Seneca's rhetoric is, however, as we have already seen, capable of rising to higher things, and even where he does not succeed, as in the passages quoted above from the _Phaedra_ and _Troades_,[199] in introducing a genuine poetic element, he often produces striking declamatory effects. The exit of the blind Oedipus, as he goes forth into life-long banishment, bringing peace to Thebes at the last, is highly artificial in form, but, given the rhetorical drama, is not easily surpassed as a conclusion--

mortifera mecum vitia terrarum extraho.
violenta Fata et horridus Morbi tremor,
Maciesque et atra Pestis et rabidus Dolor,
mecum ite, mecum. ducibus his uti libet (1058).

With me to exile lead I forth 'all pestilential humours of
the land. Ye blasting fates', ye trembling agues, famine and
deadly plague and maddened grief, go forth with me, with me!
My heart rejoices to follow in your train.

So likewise the last despairing cry of Jason, as Medea sails victoriously away in her magic car--

per alta vade spatia sublimi aethere,
testare nullos esse qua veheris deos

Sail on through the airy depths of highest heaven, and
bear witness that, where thou soarest, no gods can be.

forms a magnificent ending to a play which, for all its unreality, succeeds for more than half its length (l 578) in arresting our attention by its ingenious rhetoric and its comparative freedom from mere bombast. Excellent, too, is the speech (_Phoen_. 193) in which Antigone dissuades her father from suicide. 'What ills can time have in store for him compared to those he has endured?'--

qui fata proculcavit ac vitae bona
proiecit atque abscidit et casus suos
oneravit ipse, cui deo nullo est opus,
quare ille mortem cupiat aut quare petat?
utrumque timidi est: nemo contempsit mori
qui concupivit. cuius haut ultra mala
exire possunt, in loco tuto est situs,
quis iam deorum, velle fac, quicquam potest
malis tuis adicere? iam nec tu potes
nisi hoc, ut esse te putes dignum nece--
non es nec ulla pectus hoc culpa attigit.
et hoc magis te, genitor, insontem voca,
quod innocens es dis quoque invitis....
... ... quidquid potest
auferre cuiquam mors, tibi hoc vita abstulit.

Who tramples under foot his destiny,
Who disregards and scorns the goods of life,
And aggravates the evils of his lot,
Who has no further need of Providence:
Wherefore should such a man desire to die,
Or seek for death? Each is the coward's act.
No one holds death in scorn who seeks to die.
The man whose evils can no further go
Is safely lodged. Who of the gods, think'st thou,
Grant that he wills it so, can add one jot
Unto thy sum of trouble? Nor canst thou,
Save that thou deem'st thyself unfit to live.
But thou art not unfit, for in thy breast
No taint of sin has come. And all the more,
My father, art thou free from taint of sin,
Because, though heaven willed it otherwise,
Thou still art innocent....
Whatever death
From any man can take, thy life hath taken.
MILLER

It is, however, in isolated lines and striking _sententiae_ that Seneca's gift for rhetorical epigram is seen at its best. Nothing could be better turned than

quaeris Alcidae parem?
nemo est nisi ipse: (_H.F_. 84).[A]
curae leves loquuntur, ingentes stupent (_Phaedra_ 607).[B]
fortem facit vicina libertas senem (_Phaedra_ 139).[C]
qui genus iactat suum,
aliena laudat (_H.F_. 340).
fortuna fortes metuit, ignavos premit (_Med_. 159).
fortuna opes auferre, non animum potest (_Med_. 176).
maius est monstro nefas:[D]
nam monstra fato, moribus scelera imputes (_Phaedra_ 143).

[A] Cp. Theobald: None but himself can be his parallel.

[B] Cp. Sir W. Raleigh: Passions are best compared with floods and streams, The shallow murmur but the deep are dumb.

[C] For dawning freedom makes the aged brave. MILLER.

[D] For thy impious love is worse
Than her unnatural and impious love.
The first you would impute to character,
The last to fate.
MILLER.

If nothing had survived of Seneca's plays but a collection of _sententiae_, we might have regretted his loss almost as we regret the loss of Menander.

Here his merits, such as they are, end: they fail to justify us in placing him high as a dramatist; and he has many faults over and above those incidental to his style and modes of thought. While freer than most of his contemporaries from the vain display of obscure erudition, he falls into the common vice of introducing 'catalogues'. They are dull in epic: in drama they are worse than dull. The _Hercules Furens_ is no place for a matter-of-fact catalogue of the hero's labours, set forth (210-248) in monotonous iambics from the mouth of Amphitryon. If they are to be described at all, they demand the decorative treatment of lyric verse,[200] nor is a catalogue of the herbs used by Medea to poison the robe destined for her rival any more excusable.[201] Again, like his contemporaries, he shows a lack of taste and humour which in its worst manifestations passes belief. Not a few of the passages already quoted serve to illustrate the point. But for fatuity it would be hard to surpass the words with which Amphitryon interrupts Theseus' account of the horrors of the underworld:

estne aliqua tellus Cereris aut Bacchi ferax? (_H.F._ 697.)

Scarcely less absurd is the chorus in the _Phaedra_, who, when hymning the power of love, give a long list of animals subject to such passion: the catalogue culminates with the statement that even whales and elephants fall in love (351):

amat insani belua ponti
Lucaeque boves.

But all such instances pale before the conclusion of the _Phaedra_. Not content with giving a ghastly and exaggerated account of the death of Hippolytus, Seneca must needs bring the fragments of his mutilated body upon the scene. Theseus, at the suggestion of the chorus, attempts to put them together again. The climax comes when, finding an unidentifiable portion, he cries (1267):

quae pars tui sit dubito, sed pars est tui!

The actual language of the plays is pure and classical. There is no trace of provincialism, nothing to suggest that Seneca was a Spaniard. Its vices proceed from the false mould in which it has been cast. There is a lack of connecting particles, and we proceed by a series of short rhetorical jerks.[202] It is the style that Seneca himself condemns in his letters (114. 1). Its faults are further aggravated by the metre: taken line by line, the iambics of Seneca are impressive: taken collectively they are monotonous in the extreme. The ear suffers a continual series of stabs, which are not the less unpleasant because none of them go deep. The verse seems formed, one might almost say punched out, by a relentless machine. It is never modified by circumstances; it is the same in narrative and dialogue, the same in passion and in calm, if indeed Seneca can ever be said to be either passionate or calm. Its pauses come with monotonous regularity at the end of the line, diversified only by an occasional break at the caesura in the third foot. Nor does the rule[203] observed by Seneca, that only a spondee or anapaest is permitted in the fifth foot, tend to relieve the monotony, though it does much to give the individual lines such weight as they possess. A more complete contrast with the iambics of the early Latin Tragedies cannot be imagined. What has been gained in polish has been lost in dignity. Whence the Senecan iambic is derived, is a question which cannot be answered with certainty. It is wholly unlike the early Roman tragic iambic. Elision is rare, and there is little variety. Instead of the massive and rugged measure of Pacuvius or Accius, we have a finished and elegant monotony. In all likelihood it is the lineal descendant of the iambic of Ovid.[204] In view of Seneca's great admiration for Ovid--he quotes him continually in his prose works--of Ovid's mastery of rhetoric and epigram, and yet more of the distinct parallels traceable between the _Phaedra_ and _Medea_ of Seneca and the corresponding _Heroides_ of Ovid, it becomes a strong probability that the Senecan iambic was deeply influenced--if not actually created--by the iambic style of the earlier poet's lost drama, the famous _Medea_.[205]

As to the models to which he is indebted for his treatment of choric metres we know nothing. In spite of the fact that he employs a large variety of metres, and that his choruses at times stray from rhetoric into poetry of a high order, there is in them a still more deadly monotony than in his iambics. The chorus are devoid of life; they are there partly as a concession to convention, but mainly to supply incidental music. Their inherent dullness is not relieved by the metre. Of strophic arrangement there is no clear trace; in a large proportion of cases the choruses are written in one fixed and rigid metre admitting of no variety: even where different metres alternate, the relaxation is but small, for the same monotony reigns unchecked within the limits of each section. The strange experiments in mixed metres in the _Agamemnon_ and _Oedipus_ show Seneca's technique at its worst: they are composed of fragments of Horatian metres, thinly disguised by inversions and resolutions of feet: they lack all governing principle and are an unqualified failure. Of the remaining metres the Anapaestic, Asclepiad, Sapphic, and Glyconic predominate. He is, perhaps, least unsuccessful in his treatment of the Anapaest: the lines do not lack melody, and the natural flexibility of the metre saves them from extreme monotony, though they would have been more successful had he employed the paroemiac line as a solemn and resonant close to the march of the dimeter. But one wearies soon of the eternal Asclepiads and Glyconics which he often allows to continue in unbroken and unvaried series for seventy or eighty lines together. He rarely allows any variation within the Glyconic and never makes use of it to break the monotony of the Asclepiad. Still worse are his Sapphics. Abandoning the usual arrangement in stanzas of three lesser Sapphics followed by an Adonic verse, his Sapphic choruses consist almost entirely of the lesser Sapphic varied by a very occasional Adonic. The continual succession of these lines without so much as an occasional change of caesura to diversify the rhythm is at times almost intolerable. At the close of such choruses we feel as though we had jogged at a rapid trot for long miles on a very hard and featureless road.

Language and metre work hand in hand with rhetoric to make these strange plays dramatically ineffective. So strange are they and in many ways so unlike anything else in Classical literature, that the question as to the purpose with which they were written and the place they occupied in the literature of their day affords an interesting subject for speculation. Were they written for the stage? Decayed as was the taste for tragedy, tragedies may occasionally have been acted.[206] But there are considerations which suggest doubt as to whether the plays of Seneca were written with any such purpose. Even under Nero it is scarcely credible that the introduction of the mangled fragments of Hippolytus upon the stage would be possible or palatable.[207] Medea kills her children _coram populo_, and, not content with killing them, flings their bodies at Jason from her magic chariot high in air. Hercules kills his children in full view of the audience, not within the house as in the corresponding drama of Euripides. Such scenes suggest that the plays were written not for the stage but for recitation with musical interludes from a trained choir. Indications that this was the case are to be found in the _Hercules Furens_. While the hero is engaged in slaying his children, Amphitryon, in a succession of short speeches, gives the details of the murder. This would be ridiculous and unnecessary were the scene actually presented on the stage, whereas they become absolutely necessary on the assumption that the play was written for recitation.[208] This assumption has the further merit of being charitable; skilful recitation would cover many defects that would be almost intolerable on the stage.

It is improbable, however, that the drama of Seneca occupied an important position in the literature of their day. The golden age of tragedy was past, and it is hard to believe that these plays are favourable specimens even of their own age. The authors of the Silver Age virtually ignore their existence, and, with the exception of two references in Tertullian and one in Apollinaris Sidonius, they are quoted only by scholars and grammarians.

They have small intrinsic value: but they afford interesting evidence for the taste[209] of their own day, and their influence on modern drama has been enormous. In the Renaissance at the dawn of the drama's revival, Seneca was regarded as a dramatist of the first order. Scaliger ranked him above Euripides: it was to him men turned to find models for tragedy. Everywhere we see traces of the Senecan drama.[210] It is a tribute to the dexterity of his rhetoric that his influence should have been so enormous, but it is to be regretted in the interests of the drama. For to Seneca more than to any other man is due the excessive prominence of declamatory rhetoric, which has characterized the drama throughout Western Europe from the Renaissance down to the latter half of the nineteenth century, and has proved a blemish to the work of all save a few great writers who recognized the value of rhetoric, but never mistook the shadow for the substance.

III

THE 'OCTAVIA'

A tragedy with this title is included by the MSS. among the plays of Seneca. Its chief interest lies in the fact that it is the one surviving example of a _fabula praetexta_, or tragedy, drawn from Roman life. It deals with a tragic incident of Nero's reign, the final extinction of the Claudian house. Octavia, daughter of Claudius and Messalina, is the heroine. Her life was one long tragedy. Her childhood was darkened by the disaster that befell her unworthy mother, her maturer years by her marriage to Nero. She was a mere pawn in the game of politics. The marriage was brought about by the designs of Agrippina, to render Nero secure of the principate. To effect this end her betrothed Silanus was killed, Claudius, her father, and Britannicus, her brother, dispatched by poison. Soon her own wedded life turned to tragedy. Nero fell madly in love with Poppaea, and resolved to put away Octavia. At Poppaea's instigation she was accused of a base intrigue. The plot failed; the false charge could not be pressed home; she was divorced on the ground of sterility, and imprisoned in a town of Campania. A rumour arose that she was to be reinstated; the mob of Rome declared itself in her favour and gave wild expression to its joy. Poppaea's statues were cast down, Octavia's replaced. Poppaea was furious. She laid siege to Nero and won him to her will. The old false charge of adultery was trumped up; a complaisant freed man was found to confess himself Octavia's lover. She was banished to Pandataria and slain (June 9, 62 A.D.).

The play gives us a compressed version of the tragedy. It opens with a speech by Octavia's nurse, setting forth the sorrows of her young mistress. The speech over, she leaves the stage to be succeeded by Octavia, who, in a lament closely modelled on the lament of the Sophoclean Electra,[211] bewails the sorrows of her house, the deaths of Messalina, Claudius, and Britannicus. The nurse reappears, attempts to console her, and counsels submission to fate. Octavia changes her strain and prays for death. After a lament from the chorus, Nero and Seneca enter on the scene. Seneca urges moderation and sets forth his ideal of monarchy. Nero is quite his match in argument, rejects his advice, and, concluding with the words

desiste tandem, iam gravis nimium mihi,
instare: liceat facere quod Seneca improbat (588).

Have done at last,
For wearisome has thine insistence grown;
One still may do what Seneca condemns ...
MILLER.

declares his intention of marrying Poppaea without delay. An interesting chorus follows, describing how Rome of old expelled the kings for their crimes. Nero has sinned even more than they. Has he not slain even his mother? There follows a long and interesting description of the murder,[212] which serves as an introduction to the entrance of the ghost of Agrippina in the guise of an avenging fury, prophesying the dethronement and death of her unnatural son. She is succeeded on the stage by Octavia, resigned to the surrender of her position and content to be no more than Nero's sister; once more the chorus bewail her fate. At last her rival Poppaea appears in conversation with her nurse. The nurse congratulates her, but Poppaea has been terrified by visions of the night and is ill at ease. Her rival is not yet removed and her own place is still insecure. At this point comes the one ray of hope that illumines this sombre drama. A messenger arrives with the news that the people have risen in Octavia's favour. But the reader is not left in suspense for a moment. Nero appears and orders the suppression of the _émeute_ and the execution of Octavia. The chorus mourn the fate of the beloved of the Roman people. Their power and splendour is but brief: Octavia perishes untimely, like Gracchus and Livius Drusus. She herself appears in the hands of soldiers, being dragged off to execution and death. Like Cassandra,[213] she compares her fate with that of the nightingale, to whom the gods gave a new life of peace full of sweet lamentation as a close to her troubled human existence. One more song of condolence from the chorus, one more song of sorrow from Octavia, and she is taken from our sight, and the play closes with a denunciation by the chorus of the hardness of heart and the insatiate cruelty of Rome.

It is not hard to summarize the general effect of this curious drama. Its author has read the Greek tragedians carefully and to some purpose; he has studied the characters of Electra, Cassandra, and Antigone with diligence, if without insight. He clearly feels deep sympathy for Octavia, and to some extent succeeds in communicating this sympathy to the audience. His heroine speaks in character: she is never a male Stoic, flaunting in female garb, she is a genuine woman, a gentle, lovable creature broken down by misfortune. The other characters are uninteresting. Nero is an academic tyrant, Seneca an academic adviser, Poppaea is little more than a lay figure. The most that can be said for them is that they do not rant. The chorus are on the whole a fairly satisfactory imitation of a chorus of sympathetic Greek women.[214] There is nothing forced or unnatural about them; they are real human beings; their sympathy is genuine, and its expression appropriate. But they are dull; monotonous lamentation in monotonous anapaests is the height of their capacity. The play is a failure: the subject is not in itself dramatic; if it had been, it would have been spoiled by the treatment it receives. We are never in suspense; Octavia has never the remotest chance of escape; our pity for her is genuine enough, but her character lacks both grandeur and psychological interest: the pathos of her situation will not compensate us for the absence of a dramatic plot. The fall of the house of Claudius compares ill with the tragedy of the Pelopidae. And the treatment of the story, from the dramatic standpoint, is childish. The play is scarcely more than a series of melancholy monologues interspersed with not less melancholy dirges from the chorus. The most we can say of it is that it is simple and unaffected: if it lacks brilliance, it also lacks exaggeration. Thought and diction are commonplace and uninspired, but they are never absurd--an extraordinary merit in a poet of the Silver Age.

It will have been sufficiently evident from this brief sketch that the _Octavia_ is in all respects very different indeed from the other plays that claim Seneca for their author. It is free from their faults and their merits alike. It never sinks to their depths, but it never rises to their heights. Apart, however, from these general considerations,[215] there is evidence amounting almost to certainty that the _Octavia_ is not by Seneca. The tragedy takes place in the lifetime of Seneca. Seneca himself figures in the play. The story is of such a nature that it could hardly have been written, much less published, in the reign of Nero. Yet more conclusive is the fact that the ghost of Agrippina prophesies the fate of Nero in such a way as to make it certain that the author outlived the emperor and was acquainted with the facts of his death.[216]

Who then was the author? When did he write? Evidence is almost absolutely lacking. From its comparative sanity and simplicity and its intense hatred of Nero it may reasonably be conjectured that it is the work of the Flavian age; the age of the anti-Neronian reaction and of the return to saner models in life and literature. But there is no certainty; it may have been written under Nerva, Trajan, or Hadrian. It stands detached and aloof from the literature of its age.