VI. SENECA.
3 B.C.-65 A.D.
Seneca the Younger, or 'the Philosopher,' was born in Spain at Corduba; was educated at Rome; was banished in 41 A.D. to Corsica by Claudius; was recalled in 49; became Nero's tutor; largely deserves the credit for the good government of the early part of that emperor's reign; was consul in 57, but lost influence with Nero, and was compelled by him to commit suicide on a charge of participation in the conspiracy of Piso.
His writings are chiefly philosophical and ethical. The frequent close resemblance of his views to those of Christianity occasioned the fabrication of a correspondence between himself and St. Paul. St. Jerome considered this genuine and therefore included him among the Christian saints.
Nine tragedies of Seneca's composition are extant. These have powerfully influenced the development of the English and French drama.
His style is forced and ornamental, moving, for the most part, in brief, disconnected, and often paradoxical sentences.
For Reference: Teuffel, Schwabe, and Warr, History of Roman
Literature, vol. 2, p. 38 ff.; Leo, L. Annaei Senecae Tragoediae
(Berlin, 1878-1879); Sherburne's Tragedies of Seneca Translated
(London, 1702); Kingery, Three Tragedies of Seneca (New York, 1908);
Harris, The Tragedies of Seneca Translated (The Clarendon Press,
1904).
Metres: Anapaestic Dimeter Acatalectic with Anapaestic Dipody,
G. & L. 777, 780, 782: Selection 1. Dactylic Hexameter, B. 368; A. &
G. 615: Selection 2.
1. Cf. Horace, Carmen, 1. 3. 9-40. 1. Audax: cf. ll. 24, 39. nimium: cf. l. 8. 7, 8. With too slight a partition dividing the ways of life and death, i.e. separating from himself by merely a thin plank the sea in which he would perish. Cf. Juvenal, 12. 57-59. Line 7 nearly equals inter vitam et mortem. 18. Hyadas: a group of seven stars in the head of Taurus, whose setting at both the morning and the evening twilight was attended with storms. 19. Oleniae…caprae: one of the horns of the goat Amalthea, which fed Jupiter with its milk, was placed among the stars. The goat was Olenian, i.e. Aetolian. 21. Attica plaustra: Charles' Wain (the Great Dipper), which Bootes was imagined to drive. The latter constellation is called tardus as being so placed in the sky that it requires a long time for its setting. 24. Tiphys: the pilot of the Argo. 28. Thessala pinus: the Argo, the first ship, which, built under the direction of Pallas, with Jason as leader and heroes like Hercules, Castor, and Pollux as crew, sailed to Colchis in the Far East in quest of the Golden Fleece (which perhaps originally meant the fleecy, golden clouds of sunrise). The Sirens, Scylla, and the Symplegades were some of the dangers of the journey. Medea, daughter of the king of Colchis, aided Jason to secure the fleece and fled with him. See Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, 'Argonautae.' 32. illa: the Argo. 34. montes: the Symplegades, floating rocks at the entrance of the Euxine, which clashed together to crush whatever might come between them. 36. velut…sonitu: groaned as with ethereal sound, i.e. dashed together with a sound like thunder. 38. mare deprensum: the sea caught between and forced up by the closing rocks. 42. In the prow of the Argo was a piece of the speaking oak of Dodona. 43. virgo Pelori: Scylla. 45. omnes…hiatus: opened all her mouths together. 48. dirae pestes: the Sirens, maidens who by sweet songs lured sailors to their shore and devoured them. Orpheus saved his companions by drowning the Sirens' song with the music of his lyre.
These stories are told in Odyssey, 12, in Apollonius Rhodius, 4. 889 ff., and (in English) in Charles Kingsley's Greek Heroes.
55. Medea, abandoned by Jason for Creusa, in the later action of this play slays her rival and her own children. 68-72. Thule: a distant island not identified,—possibly Iceland, more probably the largest of the Shetland Islands,—regarded by the ancients as the northern limit of the known world.
Seneca, considering the progress of maritime discovery in the past, was led naturally to the thought that new lands would some day be discovered beyond the ocean. The conception was not new. Cicero, Tusculanae Disputationes, 1. 28, speaks of a south temperate zone, cultivated and inhabited, unknown to us. This, of course, is not necessarily beyond the sea, though Mela places it there. Cicero again in De Republica, 6. 20 implies that there are other islands than the Roman world surrounded by other seas than the Atlantic. Plato, Timaeus, 24-25, says that beyond and surrounding the Atlantic there is a vast continent, between which and the western coast of Europe and of Libya are a number of islands, of which Atlantis before its submergence was the largest. Strabo, 1. 4. 6, says it is quite possible that in the temperate zone there may be not only the island that forms the world as known to his contemporaries, but two such or even more, especially near the circle of latitude which is drawn through Athens and the Atlantic Ocean. See Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, 'Atlanticum mare' and 'Atlantis.'
Lowell, in his Columbus, represents the discoverer as naming this passage,—said also by tradition to have made a deep impression on his mind,—along with Canto XXVI of Dante's Inferno and Plato's Timaeus and Critias, as inspiring him to his attempt:
Then did I entertain the poets' song,
My great Idea's guest, and, passing o'er
That iron bridge the Tuscan built to hell,
I heard Ulysses tell of mountain-chains
Whose adamantine links, his manacles,
The western main shook growling and still gnawed.
I brooded on the wise Athenian's tale
Of happy Atlantis, and heard Bjorne's keel
Crush the gray pebbles of the Vinland shore:
I listened musing to the prophecy
Of Nero's tutor-victim…
And I believed the poets.
The son of the discoverer wrote in his copy of the tragedies opposite these lines,—'This prophecy was fulfilled by my father, the Admiral Christopher Columbus, in the year 1492.'
2. Agamemnon returns to Argos after the capture of Troy, his wife Clytemnestra expressing deep joy at his return. He has brought with him as a captive Cassandra the seer who, suddenly swooning, sees in prophetic frenzy Agamemnon's death and her own at the hand of Clytemnestra and her paramour, Aegistheus. Agamemnon worships Jupiter and Juno at the altar and then enters the palace to his death.
1, 2. Tandem…terra. Cf. Aeschylus, Agamemnon, 503 ff., 810 ff. laris: Roman coloring. 3. diu: taken with felix. 4. Asiae: objective genitive, after potentes, B. 204, 1; A. & G. 349, a. 5. vates: Cassandra. corpus: accusative of specification. 7. recipit diem: i.e. revives. 9. optatus ff.: with a double meaning to the audience. 10. Festus ff.: Troy fell immediately after the festivities that celebrated the withdrawal of the Greek fleet. Cf. Aeneid, 2. 246 ff. 11. Cecidit ff.: for the death of Priam cf. Aeneid, 2. 506 ff. 13. Priamum: King Agamemnon's fate is to be such as King Priam's. Priam was slain at the altar, and these altars (aras, 1. 11) awaken forebodings. 14. Ubi ff.: where faithless wives are, is calamity. 15. Libertas: the freedom of death. 19. dum excutiat deum: until she casts off the influence of Apollo who has thrown her into the prophetic frenzy. 21. pater: Jupiter. 24. cuncta: accusative of specification. 25. Argolica Iuno: Hera had a famous shrine at Argos. For an account of excavations there see Waldstein, The Argive Heraeum. 26. Arabumque donis: incense. supplice fibra: the entrails of the sacrificed animals (pecore votivo), whose condition was supposed to indicate the will of the gods.