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: