Two Tragedies of Seneca Medea and The Daughters of Troy
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Clean text
- Extent:
- ~21,300 words · 101 passages
Cite this work
- APALucius Annaeus Seneca. (n.d.). Two Tragedies of Seneca Medea and The Daughters of Troy. 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." 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. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/seneca/two-tragedies-of-seneca-medea-and-the-daughters-of-troy.
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.
Titan, dividing bright day to the world; 5 And thou three-formed Hecate, who dost shed Thy conscious splendor on the hidden rites! Ye by whom Jason plighted me his troth; And ye Medea rather should invoke: Chaos of night eternal; realm opposed 10 To the celestial powers; abandoned souls; Queen of the dusky realm; Persephone By better faith betrayed; you I invoke, But with no happy voice. Approach, approach, Avenging goddesses with snaky hair, 15 Holding in blood-stained hands your sulphurous torch! Come now as horrible as when of yore Ye stood beside my marriage-bed; bring death To the new bride, and to the royal seed, And Creon; worse for Jason I would ask-- 20 Life! Let him roam in fear through unknown lands, An exile, hated, poor, without a home; A guest now too well known, let him, in vain, Seek alien doors, and long for me, his wife! And, yet a last revenge, let him beget 25 Sons like their father, daughters like their mother! 'Tis done; revenge is even now brought forth-- I have borne sons to Jason. I complain Vainly, and cry aloud with useless words, Why do I not attack mine enemies? 30 I will strike down the torches from their hands, The light from heaven. Does the sun see this, The author of our race, and still give light? And, sitting in his chariot, does he still Run through the accustomed spaces of the sky, 35 Nor turn again to seek his rising p
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