The Complete Tragedies, Volume 1: Medea, The Phoenician Women, Phaedra, The Trojan Women, Octavia

by Seneca, Shadi Bartsch (Translator/Editor), Susanna Morton Braund (Translator)

Edited by world-renowned classicists Elizabeth Asmis, Shadi Bartsch, and Martha C. Nussbaum, the Complete Works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca offers authoritative, modern English translations of the writings of the Stoic philosopher and playwright (4 BCE–65 CE). The two volumes of The Complete Tragedies presents all of his dramas, expertly rendered by preeminent scholars and translators.

This first volume contains Medea, The Phoenician Women, Phaedra, The Trojan Women, and Octavia, the last of which was written in emulation of Senecan tragedies and serves as a unique example of political tragedy. The second volume includes Oedipus, Hercules Mad, Hercules on Oeta, Thyestes, and Agamemnon. High standards of accuracy, clarity, and style are maintained throughout the translations, which render Seneca into verse with as close a correspondence, line for line, to the original as possible, and with special attention paid to meter and overall flow. In addition, each tragedy is prefaced by an original translator’s introduction offering reflections on the work’s context and meaning. Notes are provided for the reader unfamiliar with the culture and history of classical antiquity. Accordingly, The Complete Tragedies will be of use to a general audience and professionals alike, from the Latinless student to scholars and instructors of comparative literature, classics, philosophy, drama, and more.

Genres: Classics, Philosophy, Drama, Ancient History, Poetry

274 pages, Hardcover

Published February 21, 2017

About the author

Lucius Annaeus Seneca (often known simply as Seneca or Seneca the Younger); ca. 4 BC – 65 AD) was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist of the Silver Age of Latin literature. He was tutor and later advisor to emperor Nero, who later forced him to commit suicide for alleged complicity in the Pisonian conspiracy to have him assassinated.

Reviews

[Rafael · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had previously read only Seneca's Medea, which I found very enjoyable and more expressive than Euripides's.
Phoenician Women was simpler but still moving, unfortunately it's only a fragment. Phaedra has the most disturbing theme, but I enjoyed it the most (along with Medea), with its complex characters and dramatic intensity. Trojan Women I found confusing and frankly a bit boring. Finally, Octavia (attributed to some admirer of Seneca's) starts with an interesting theme but again I found it boring and somewhat repetitive.

[Mehmet · Rating 5 out of 5]

All in all a great volume with good translators introductions, will go over the plays one by one. The eventual average of course does not come to a 5, but I enjoyed the Trojan Women so much that I will label this under 5 anyway.

The Trojan Women-5: My favorite of all of Seneca's dramas, I felt that this was heads above the rest and is an incredible work. Reciting it aloud is the way to go and I am anxious to be able to watch a good production. Here Seneca follows his transformation of Euripides's all the way through, to incredible effect, and does so for a play with a big cast and a much bigger cast then his usual domestic scope. Seneca's Trojan Women offers no hope, (there is no Cassandra in this play) and is contemptuous of most of the zany adventures and banal transformations that many others used to complement the post-homeric narrative. His version of defeat is pitch black, horrific, and endlessly interrogated for its dynamics. Separation into two plots, often criticised, I think works excellently. Agamemnon has to come to terms with the monsters his war created and will persist long after him in attempting to talk down the blood thirsty soul of Achilles and his messenger son Neoptolemus, revenging his fate upon the whole world. One gets the feeling that the hero who chose to be remembered forever over having peace ensures that those who helped him along with that decision will never know peace either. Even as a ghost who speaks through messengers, his endless hate, pain and rage over the consequences of that choice are palpable. Meanwhile, Odysseus must extinguish the last hope of Trojan resurgence and hope by murdering Hector and Andromache's child. He is business-like, polite, and entirely aware of what he is doing, yet will do it because it is logically the right thing for him to do to ensure his son will not have to come here again and finish the job he did not. I never appreciated why so many were disgusted by his craft across the Trojan epic works until I saw Seneca make clear the implications of it so relentlessly. Both of these encounters are extended and hotly argued debates that are boundlessly creative, desperate and painful, with Odysseus's verbal interrogation and breaking of Andromache is of a scale of horror and pain that no amount of gore can match. One thing that I feel is that readers think Andromache giving up her son for Hector's grave strikes people odd. I feel Seneca expects readers to know that the destruction of the grave is meant to represent a crime of unimaginable horror and disrespect that cannot even be conceived of. The cultural weight of the burial place is meant to be boundlessly and cosmically critical for the Trojans, threatening it is Odysseus's way of torturing Andromache in ways she could not have even conceived of. Euripides ultimately justifies the pain that the survivors go through after sympathising with them, Seneca accepts that emotional (Achilles and Neoptolemus) and logical (Odysseus) justifications for what is done to them are real, but refuses to countenance a world that renders it so in the higher sense, Stoic abandonment becomes one that derives from utter disgust towards the very marrow of how the world works. The tension and struggle that Seneca infuses into Euripides makes this play soar and soar. My one issue actually was with the provided introduction, which confusingly makes no actual comparison with Euripides's Hecuba or Trojan Women, or Sophocles's lost Polyxena, and I think as such avoids a great deal of interest. Despite this however, the introduction also raises the excellent point about how only a man at the center of empire could have written this. Despite the expectations of many other readers that he would side with the Trojans as his side because of the Roman origin beliefs, I feel that through and through Seneca realizes that his culture shares much more with the Conquering side and its decisions throughout the play. An excellent work that as such comes to term with the power yielded by the culture that produced it and the audience that watches it. Otherwise, I sobbed to this play, and if there was only one Seneca play that one could read, I would hope it would be this one.


Medea-3.5: An very competent play with much to recommend it due to its interrogation of the potential ways in which Stoic self-justification can lead to horrific consequences, and its metatextuality regarding a Medea who knows what being a Medea culturally is. My issue with this is that those themes are not pushed through entirely, and as such it fundamentally remains quite close to Euripides's version of Medea, which itself is absolutely Excellent.

Phoenician Women-3.5: A great work, sadly incomplete. It appears that the Phoenician Women was never completed (it does not even have the Phoenician Women) and it steers extremely close to Euripides, but I greatly enjoyed both Jocasta and Oedipus in this play and it appears the aim was to focus on the fundamentals throughout compared to the source play, which I think has merit.

Phaedra-3: Same reason with Medea, which is that the tragedy perhaps drives a little too closely to Euripides's Hippolytus without standing on its own interesting queries enough, which are fascinating. Questions on compulsion, heredity, and doubt and fear as to the naturalness of any Human action are fascinating undercurrents throughout this play. It was really enjoyable to read this backwards into Euripides, but it was just as entertaining to do so forwards into Corneille.

Octavia-2.5:This is not actually by Seneca! It was written by someone who clearly knew his work and was devoted to recreating that feeling. The result is that the gets the general organisation quite well, but none of the the characters and their dialogues have any actual weight or power to them. Nero is an intensely forgettable antagonist, Octavia has zero agency and spends the entire play bewailing that with nothing much else in way of character. Seneca himself is a character and is a pez dispenser of stoic quotes. Agrippina is interesting for the small part she plays and Poppaea is probably the only character with something approaching a conflicted character but is basically a bit character. One thing I must note however is that I thought that the translation and introduction were excellent, and that the skill of Fantham was limited by the product in her hands and one is saddened but grateful that she kept it as close to the original mediocrity without doing anything to salvage it. One interesting thing about this play however is that I feel this might have influenced Elizabethan theater quite a bit, especially the more situational products.

[Michael Landes]

Great collection. Really interesting introduction about how different his tragedies are from his philosophy, which is again different from how he lived his life––gave a great, nuanced, not-lionizing view of the man. The plays themselves obviously range from genuinely great (Medea, Phaedra) to total messes (Phoenician Women and Octavia, not even by Seneca), but I'm confused by why this series chose to order these plays this way, as it isn't chronological nor obviously by subject. Overall a great overview, and generally successful translations.

[Keith · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good collection of Seneca tragedies benefitting from useful introductions, good synopses and generous notes. The translations are also solid.

It seems hard to get a translation that is engaging yet the translator did not take unspecified liberties. The edition put out by Johns Hopkins press admits to trying to enliven the plays – presumably for performance – but doesn’t tell you where the changes were made.

This edition is almost a line-for-line edition – reportedly providing a very close translation but not imitating the various verse forms Seneca use.

Overall, I think this is a very good edition. But not perfect. You will not find a word about how or if these were performed in any fashion we would recognize as drama. The editors are completely silent. Perhaps that’s in volume 2? (You can see my general thoughts on the performances of Seneca’s tragedies here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....)

Here are my thoughts on the tragedies as I read them.

The Trojan Women**** – This play is marked by some very good speeches including Andromache’s opening speech, Agamemnon’s speech to Pyrhus, and the Chorus’ speech at the end of Act II. The rest is a bit stiff and maudlin. It is especially odd that Andromache gave up her son to save Hector’s tomb. That hardly seems like a good trade off – one that even Hector would have approved of. Despite that, this is one of Seneca’s better play.

The Phoenician Women *** – This play is unique since lacks any Phoenician women in the play, even though it is called Phoenician Women. It’s believed to be a fragment or an unfinished play in which a chorus of Phoenician Women would have been added (providing an interesting insight into how Seneca wrote his plays – odd though it is).

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bartsch's translation of Seneca's Medea is a must read.