Save him, ye gods, from monstrous madness, save him, restore his darkened mind to sanity. And thou, O sleep, subduer of ill, the spirit's repose, thou better part of human life, swift-winged child of Astraca, drowsy brother of cruel death, mixing false with true, prescient of what shall be, yet oftener prescient of sorrow, peace mid our wanderings, haven of man's life, day's respite, night's companion, that comest impartially to king and slave, thou that makest trembling mankind to gain a foretaste of the long night of death; do thou bring gentle rest to his weariness, and sweet balm to his anguish, and overwhelm him with heavy stupor.
But the poetry is confined mainly to the lyrics. In them, though the metre be monotonous and the thought rarely more than commonplace, the feeling rings true, the expression is brilliant, and the never absent rhetoric is sometimes transmuted to a more precious substance with a far-off resemblance to true lyrical passion. In the iambics, with the exception of the passages already quoted from the Troades and the Phaedra, touches of genuine poetry are most rare.[198] In certain of the long descriptive passages (H.F. 658 sqq., Oed. 530 sqq.) we get a stagey picturesqueness, but no more. It is for different qualities that we read the iambics of Seneca, if we read them at all.
Even in its worst moments the rhetoric is capable of extorting our unwilling admiration by its sheer cleverness and audacity. A good example is to be found in the passage of the Thyestes, where Atreus meditates whether he shall call upon his sons Menelaus and Agamemnon to aid him in his unnatural vengeance on Thyestes. He has doubts as to whether he is their father, for Thyestes had seduced their mother Aerope (327):—
prolis incertae fides ex hoc petatur scelere: si bella abnuunt et gerere nolunt odia, si patruum vocant, pater est. eatur.
And by this test of crime,
Let their uncertain birth be put to proof:
If they refuse to wage this war of death
And will not serve my hatred; if they plead
He is their uncle—then he is their sire.
So to my work!
MILLER'S translation slightly altered.
Equally ingenious is the closing scene between Atreus and Thyestes after the vengeance is accomplished and Thyestes has feasted on the flesh of his own sons (1100):
Thy. quid liberi meruere?
Atr. quod fuerant tui.
Thy. natos parenti—
Atr. fateor et, quod me iuvat, certos.
Thy. piorum praesides testor deos.
Atr. quin coniugales?
Thy. scelere quid pensas scelus?
Atr. scio quid queraris: scelere praerepto doles,
nec quod nefandas hauseris angit dapes;
quod non pararis: fuerat hic animus tibi
instruere similes inscio fratri cibos
et adiuvante liberos matre aggredi
similique leto sternere—hoc unum obstitit:
tuos putasti.
Thy. What was my children's sin?
Atr. This, that they were thy children.
Thy. But to think
That children to the father—
Atr. That indeed,
I do confess it, gives me greatest joy,
That thou art well assured they were thy sons.
Thy. I call upon the gods of innocence—
Atr. Why not upon the gods of marriage call?
Thy. Why dost thou seek to punish crime with crime?
Atr. Well do I know the cause of thy complaint:
Because I have forestalled thee in the deed.
Thou grievest, not because thou hast consumed
This horrid feast, but that thou wast not first
To set it forth. This was thy fell intent,
To arrange a feast like this unknown to me,
And with their mother's aid attack my sons,
And with a like destruction lay them low.
But this one thing opposed—thou thought'st them thine.
MILLER.
These passages are as unreal as they are repulsive, but they are diabolically clever. Seneca's rhetoric is, however, as we have already seen, capable of rising to higher things, and even where he does not succeed, as in the passages quoted above from the Phaedra and Troades,[199] in introducing a genuine poetic element, he often produces striking declamatory effects. The exit of the blind Oedipus, as he goes forth into life-long banishment, bringing peace to Thebes at the last, is highly artificial in form, but, given the rhetorical drama, is not easily surpassed as a conclusion—
mortifera mecum vitia terrarum extraho. violenta Fata et horridus Morbi tremor, Maciesque et atra Pestis et rabidus Dolor, mecum ite, mecum. ducibus his uti libet (1058).
With me to exile lead I forth 'all pestilential humours of the land. Ye blasting fates', ye trembling agues, famine and deadly plague and maddened grief, go forth with me, with me! My heart rejoices to follow in your train.