Lyc. cogere. Meg. cogi qui potest nescit mori. Lyc. effare potius, quod novis thalamis parem regale munus. Meg. aut tuam mortem aut meam. Lyc. moriere demens. Meg. coniugi occurram meo. Lyc. sceptrone nostro famulus est potior tibi? Meg. quot iste famulus tradidit reges neci. Lyc. cur ergo regi servit et patitur iugum? Meg. imperia dura tolle: quid virtus erit?[193] Lyc. obici feris monstrisque virtutem putas? Meg. virtutis est domare quae cuncti pavent. Lyc. tenebrae loquentem magna Tartareae premunt. Meg. non est ad astra mollis e terris via.[194] Lyc. Thou shalt be forced. Meg. He can be forced, who knows not how to die. Lyc. Tell me what gift I could bestow more rich Than royal wedlock? Meg. Or thy death or mine. Lyc. Then die, thou fool. Meg. 'Tis thus I'll meet my lord. Lyc. Is that slave more to thee than I, a king? Meg. How many kings has that slave given to death! Lyc. Why does he serve a king and bear the yoke? Meg. Remove hard tasks, and where would valour be? Lyc. To conquer monsters call'st thou valour then? Meg. 'Tis valour to subdue what all men fear. Lyc. The shades of Hades hold that boaster fast. Meg. No easy way leads from the earth to heaven. MILLER
So, too, a little later (463) Amphitryon crushes Lycus with a true
Stoic retort:—
Lyc. quemcumque miserum videris, hominem scias. Amph. quemcumque fortem videris, miserum neges.[195]
Lyc. Whoe'er is wretched, him mayst thou know for mortal. Amph. Whoe'er is brave, thou mayst not call him wretched.
Admirable as are the sentiments expressed by these virtuous and calamitous persons, they leave us cold: they are too self-sufficient to need our sympathy. Pain and death have no terrors for them; why should we pity them? But it would be unjust to lay the blame for this absence of pathetic power entirely on the influence of Stoicism. The scholastic rhetoric is not a good vehicle for pathos, and must bear a large portion of the blame, though even the rhetoric is due in no small degree to the Stoic type of dialectic. As Seneca himself says, speaking of others than himself, 'Philosophia quae fuit, facta philologia est.'[196] And it must further be remembered that of the few flights of real poetry in these plays some of the finest were inspired by Stoicism. The drama cannot nourish in the Stoic atmosphere, poetry can. Seneca was sometimes a poet. His best-known chorus, the famous regem non faciunt opes of the Thyestes (345), is directly inspired by Stoicism. The speeches of Agamemnon and Andromache, together with the chorus already quoted from the Troades, all bear the impress of the Stoic philosophy. The same is true of the scarcely inferior chorus on fate from the Oedipus (980).
But there are other passages of genuine poetry where the Stoic is silent. The chorus in the Hercules Furens (838), giving the conventional view of death, will stand comparison with the chorus of the Troades, giving the philosophic view. The chorus on the dawn (H.F. 125) brings the fresh sounds and breezes of early morning into the atmosphere of the rhetorician's lecture-room. The celebrated
venient annis saecula seris quibus Oceanus vincula rerum laxet et ingens pateat tellus Tethysque novos detegat orbes nec sit terris ultima Thule (Med. 375)
Late in time shall come an age, when Ocean shall unbar the world, and the whole wide earth be revealed, and Tethys shall show forth a new world, nor Thule be earth's limit any more.
has acquired a fictitious importance since the discovery of the new world, but shows a fine imagination, even if—as has been maintained—it is merely a courtly reference to the British expedition of Claudius. And the invocation to sleep in the Hercules Furens proved worthy to provide an inspiration for Shakespeare[197] (1063):
solvite tantis animum monstris solvite superi, caecam in melius flectite mentem. tuque, o domitor Somne malorum, requies animi, pars humanae melior vitae, volucre o matris genus Astracae, frater durae languide Mortis, veris miscens falsa, futuri certus et idem pessimus auctor, pax errorum, portus vitae, lucis requies noctisque comes, qui par regi famuloque venis, pavidum leti genus humanum cogis longam discere noctem: placidus fessum lenisque fove, preme devinctum torpore gravi.