SENECA,
Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4BC-65AD)

Though rarely performed or even studied today, Roman playwright Seneca's plays were enormously influential in the Renaissance and especially to the Elizabethans and Jacobeans. Seneca was Born in Cordova, Spain (then a Roman province), Seneca was the son of a wealthy and distinguished rhetor-a teacher of rhetoric. His father wrote several extant books. Seneca's elder brother was proconsul of Achaea in AD 51-52 and was the "Gallio" before whose tribunal Paul was brought in Acts. Young Lucius Annaeus was taken to Rome in his infancy and trained for a career in politics and oratory.

He became a Stoic and began a law career. At 30, he was a quaestor, a sort of public prosecutor. He became a Senator under Caligula and Claudius. He was banished to Corsica through the machinations of Claudius' wife Messalina (a real sweety) in 43AD on the unlikely charge of adultery-Seneca was known to be sickly. He was recalled to Rome in 49AD by Nero's mother Agrippina to be Nero's tutor. The "Silver Age" of Roman literature ensued with Seneca given the lion's share of the credit. Nero had his mother assassinated (Seneca may have been involved) and Nero had Seneca write a speech to the Senate excusing the matricidal coup d'etat. In 65AD, using charges of conspiracy with Piso, Nero sent word to Seneca on his estates where he had retired, that his presence on earth was no longer required. Seneca emulated Socrates, describing his sensations as the blood drained from his wrists.

Seneca's plays were clearly written with his infamous pupil in mind. It is not difficult to imagine the tutor trying to teach his powerful student to see the folly of violent behavior. They are studded with sententiae-one line apothegms, or sayings, reflecting on the certainty of death, the fickleness of fate, the instability of power and happiness, the virtue of Stoic moderation and obscurity and the like. These sententiae are usually given to the non-strophic, non-musical chorus, which recites between the acts rather than participates in the action of the play.

The extant plays are Agamemnon; Hercules Furens; Hercules on Oeta; Medea; Oedipus; Phaedra; The Phoenician Women; Thyestes; The Trojan Women. Though many believe that Seneca's plays were never meant to be performed, all the extant plays have clear Greek models which were meant for performance. Furthermore, Nero's well-known fondness for the cithara and public recitation certainly suggests that performance was not out of the question.

Typically, Seneca's plays focus on a central character (eg. Atreus, Medea, etc.) who, consumed by hatred, lends a "perverse grandeur" to "unspeakable criminality." They are what we would call "larger-than-life" and are, often as not, utterly unrepentant and magnificent. They gave rise in the Renaissance to characters like Titus Andronicus, Bussy D'Ambois and some would say even so conscience-ridden a character as Macbeth.

Seneca frequently used a ghost of the sort we find in Hamlet, Julius Caesar and Richard III.

His messenger speeches are very graphic, and while he imitates the Greeks in keeping violence offstage, the reportage goes into detail that shocks even today.

Seneca frequently used a confidante, the best friend to whom one can reveal one's innermost thoughts and feelings, like Hamlet's Horatio. The Renaissance Neoclassicists used this device to avoid what they regarded as "unnatural" soliloquy.