critical quotations

Seneca’s characters in his plays ‘are not so much human beings as simplified exponents of

anger, jealousy, cruelty, fear, pride, and the no less dangerous love…’ – F H Sandbach 

in his plays he ‘piles on the agony’ to

create ‘an atmosphere of horror’ – F H Sandbach 

‘The largely optimistic depiction of the passions as something readily curable, in Seneca’s prose philosophical works

contrasts sharply with how he represents violent emotion in the tragedies.’ – Emily Wilson 

‘The tragedies show us what happens to people who fail to control their passions: they are stoic morality plays depicting the

downfall of non-Stoics who become overwhelmed by anger, lust and fear.’ – Emily  Wilson 

Seneca ‘uses the tragic stage to play out the other side of the story, to imagine exactly what happens, in gory detail,

when all-powerful rulers operate without any thought for mercy towards their inferiors.’ – Emily Wilson  

‘Perhaps Seneca’s devastating depiction of children’s deaths in tragedy was a way of dealing with some of the guilt he felt

at having helped to cover up the murder of young Britannicus.’ - Emily Wilson  

‘the emotional toll borne by those who, through their own

bad choices, destroy their own lives’ - Emily Wilson

‘his tragic depictions of

ambition and revenge’ – Emily Wilson 

Seneca’s Thyestes offers a ‘sadistic theatre of cruelty

evocative of Caligula’s reign.’ - Emily Wilson

‘the brilliant and

terrifying’ Thyestes – Emily Wilson 

In Thyestes ‘desire is utterly destructive

and utterly inescapable’ – Emily Wilson  

‘If the weak-willed, greedy, pompous Thyestes is one side of an unflattering self-portrait by Seneca, then

Atreus, the monstrous artist, driven by ambition and an insatiable lust for power, is another. – Emily Wilson  

‘Besides the emperor’s Atreus-like cruelties, Seneca sees himself

as nothing but a Thyestes, or an attendant.’ – Emily Wilson