Two Tragedies of Seneca Medea and The Daughters of Troy
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~21,300 words · 101 passages
Cite this work
- APALucius Annaeus Seneca. (n.d.). Two Tragedies of Seneca Medea and The Daughters of Troy. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/seneca/two-tragedies-of-seneca-medea-and-the-daughters-of-troy
- MLALucius Annaeus Seneca. Two Tragedies of Seneca Medea and The Daughters of Troy. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/seneca/two-tragedies-of-seneca-medea-and-the-daughters-of-troy.
- ChicagoLucius Annaeus Seneca. Two Tragedies of Seneca Medea and The Daughters of Troy. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/seneca/two-tragedies-of-seneca-medea-and-the-daughters-of-troy.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
Medea and The Trojan Women in an old English translation.
Context and history
Medea holds the most quoted line in all of tragic Seneca — Medea nunc sum, now I am Medea — and The Trojan Women is his bleakest work: no revenge, no justice, only women waiting to learn whose property they will be. The Latin original is also in the catalogue, and is what should be cited. The tragedies are not a literary appendix to Seneca's philosophy: they are the main road by which he set it out. Anger, the fear of death and fate, argued for in the letters, are here shown at work.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
_Chorus._ Fear not the power of flame, nor swelling gale, Nor hurtling dart, nor cloudy wain that brings The winter storms; fear not when Danube sweeps 585 Unchecked between its widely severed shores, Nor when the Rhone hastes seaward, and the sun Has broken up the snow upon the hills, And Hermes flows in rivers. A wife deserted, loving while she hates, 590 Fear greatly; blindly burns her anger's flame, For kings she cares not, will not bear the curb. Ye gods, we ask your grace divine for him Who safely crossed the seas; the ocean's lord Is angry for his conquered kingdom's sake; 595 Spare Jason, we entreat! Th' impetuous youth who dared to drive the car Of Phœbus, keeping not the wonted course, Died in the furious fires himself had lit. Few are the evils of the well-known way; 600 Seek the old paths your fathers safely trod, The sacred federations of the world Keep still inviolate. The men who dipped the oars of that brave ship; Who plundered of their shade the sacred groves Of Pelion; passed between the unstable cliffs; Endured so many hardships on the deep; And cast their anchor on a savage coast, Passing again with ravished foreign gold, Atoned with fearful death upon the sea 610 For violated law. The angry deep demanded punishment: Tiphys to an unskillful pilot left The rudder. On a foreign coast he fell, Far from his father's kingdom, and he lies 615 With nameless shades, under a lowly tomb. Becalmed in her still harbor Aulis held The impatient ships, remembering in wrath The king that she lost thence.…