We cannot conclude this chapter without some notice of the tragedies of Seneca. There can be no reasonable doubt that they are the work of the philosopher, nor is the testimony of antiquity really ambiguous on the point. [82] When he wrote them is uncertain; but they bear every mark of being an early exercise of his pen. Perhaps they were begun during his exile in Corsica, when enforced idleness must have tasked the resources of his busy mind, and continued after his return to Rome, when he found that Nero was addicted to the same pursuit. There are eight complete tragedies and one praetexta, the Octavia, which is generally supposed to be by a later hand, as well as considerable fragments from the Thebais and Phoenissae. The subjects are all from the well-worn repository of Greek legend, and are mostly drawn from Euripides. The titles of Medea, Hercules furens, Hippolytus and Troades at once proclaim their origin, but the Hercules Oetaeus, Oedipus Thyestes, and Agamemnon, are probably based on a comparison of the treatment by the several Attic masters. The tragedies of Seneca have as a rule been strongly censured for their rhetorical colouring, their false passion, and their total want of dramatic interest. They are to the Greek plays as gaslight to sunlight. But in estimating their poetic value it is fair to remember that the Roman ideas of art were neither so accurate nor so profound as ours. The deep analysis of Aristotle, which grouped all poets who wrote on a theme under the title rhetorical, and refused to Empedocles the name of poet at all, would not have been appreciated by the Romans. To them the form was what constituted a work poetical, not the creative idea that underlay it. To utilise fictitious situations as a vehicle for individual conviction or lofty declamation on ethical commonplace, was considered quite legitimate even in the Augustan age. And Seneca did but follow the example of Varius and Ovid in the tragedies now before us. It is to the genius of German criticism, so wonderfully similar in many ways to that of Greece, that we owe the re-establishment of the profound ideal canons of art over the artificial technical maxims which from Horace to Voltaire had been accepted in their stead. The present low estimate of Seneca is due to the reaction (a most healthy one it is true) that has replaced the extravagant admiration in which his poems were for more than two centuries held.
The worst technical fault in these tragedies is their violation of the decencies of the stage. Manto, the daughter of Tiresias and a great prophetess, investigates the entrails in public. Medea kills her children coram populo in defiance of Horace's maxim. These are inexcusable blemishes in a composition which is made according to a prescribed recipe. His "tragic mixture," as it may be called, is compounded of equal proportions of description, declamation, and philosophical aphorisms. Thus taken at intervals it formed an excellent tonic to assist towards an oratorical training. It was not an end in itself, but was a means for producing a finished rhetor. This is a degradation of the loftiest kind of poetry known to art, no doubt; but Seneca is not to blame for having begun it. He merely used the material which lay before him; nevertheless, he deserves censure for not having brought into it some of the purer thoughts which philosophy had, or ought to have, taught him. Instead of this, his moral conceptions fall far below those of his models. In the Phaedra of Greek tragedy we have that chastened and pathetic thought, which hangs like a burden on the Greek mind, a thought laden with sadness, but a sadness big with rich fruit of reflection; the thought of guilt unnatural, involuntary, imposed on the sufferer for some inscrutable reason by the mysterious dispensation of heaven. Helen, the queen of ancient song, is the offspring of this thought; Phaedra in another way is its offspring too. But as Virgil had degraded Helen, so Seneca degrades Phaedra. Her love for Hippolytus is the coarse sensual craving of a common-place adulteress. The language in which it is painted, stripped of its ornament, is revolting. As Dido dwells on the broad chest and shoulders of Aeneas, [83] so Phaedra dwells on the healthy glow of Hippolytus's cheek, his massive neck, his sinewy arms. The Roman ladies who bestowed their caresses on gladiators and slaves are here speaking through their courtly mouthpiece. The gross, the animal—it is scarcely even sensuous—predominates all through these tragedies. Truly the Greeks in teaching Rome to desire beauty had little conception of the fierceness of that robust passion for self-indulgence which they had taught to speak the language of aesthetic love!
A feature worth noticing in these dramas is the descriptive power and brilliant philosophy of the choruses. They are quite unconnected with the plot, and generally either celebrate the praises of some god, e.g., Bacchus in the Oedipus, or descant on some moral theme, as the advantage of an obscure lot, in the same play. The éclat of their style, and the pungency of their epigrams is startling. In sentiment and language they are the very counterpart of his other works. The doctrine of fate, preached by Lucan as well as by Seneca in other places, is here inculcated with every variety of point. [84] We quote a few lines from the Oedipus:
Fatis agimur: cedite fatis.
Non sollicitae possunt curae
Mutare rati stamina fusi
Quicquid patimur, mortale genus,
Quicquid facimus venit ex alto;
Servatque suae decreta colus
Lachesis, dura revoluta manu.
Omnia certo tramite vadunt,
Primusque dies dedit extremum.
Non illa deo vertisse licet
Quae nexa suis currunt causis.
It cuique ratus, prece non ulla
Mobilis, ordo.
Here we have in all its naked repulsiveness the Stoic theory of predestination. Prayer is useless; God is unable to influence events; Lachesis the wrinkled beldame, or fate, her blind symbol, has once for all settled the inevitable nexus of cause and effect.
The rhythm of these plays is extremely monotonous. The greater part of each is in the iambic trimeter; the choruses generally in anapaests, of which, however, he does not understand the structure. The synaphea peculiar to this metre is neglected by him, and the rule that each system should close with a paroemiac or dimeter catalectic is constantly violated.
With regard to the Octavia, it has been thought to be a product of some mediaeval imitator; but this is hardly likely. It cannot be Seneca's, since it alludes to the death of Nero. Besides its style is simpler and less bombastic and shows a much tenderer feeling; it is also infinitely less clever. Altogether it seems best to assign it to the conclusion of the first century.
The only other work of Seneca's which shows a poetical form is the Apokolokyntosis or "Pumpkinification" of the emperor Claudius, a bitter satire on the apotheosis of that heavy prince. Seneca had been compelled, much against the grain, to offer him the incense of flattery while he lived. He therefore revenged himself after Claudius's death by this sorry would-be satire. The only thing witty in it is the title; it is a mixture of prose and verse, and possesses just this interest for us, that it is the only example we possess of the Menippean satire, unless we refer the work of Petronius to this head.