Ancient Greek & Roman
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Lucius Annaeus Seneca, known as Seneca the Younger, was born at Corduba (Córdoba) in Spain and brought up in Rome, where he became a leading Stoic philosopher, a senator and a writer of letters, essays and tragedies. He served as tutor and then adviser to the young Emperor Nero, and grew immensely wealthy in that office.
Ten tragedies on Greek mythological themes survive under his name, among them Medea, Phaedra and Thyestes. Written in Latin verse, they are rhetorical and violent, and they were a decisive influence on the revenge tragedy of the English Renaissance. In AD 65 Seneca was implicated in the Pisonian conspiracy against Nero and was ordered to take his own life.
This archive presents his Medea in Frank Justus Miller’s 1907 English verse translation, and will add his other tragedies in time.
Major Works (12)
- Agamemnon — translated by Frank Justus Miller (1907)
- Hercules Furens — translated by Frank Justus Miller (1907)
- Medea — translated by Frank Justus Miller (1907)
- Octavia — translated by Frank Justus Miller (1907)
- Oedipus — translated by Frank Justus Miller (1907)
- Phaedra — translated by Frank Justus Miller (1907)
- Apocolocyntosis — translated by W. H. D. Rouse (1902)
- Moral Letters to Lucilius, Volume I (Letters 1–65) — translated by Richard M. Gummere (1917)
- Moral Letters to Lucilius, Volume II (Letters 66–92) — translated by Richard M. Gummere (1920)
- Moral Letters to Lucilius, Volume III (Letters 93–124) — translated by Richard M. Gummere (1925)
- Thyestes — translated by Frank Justus Miller (1907)
- Troades — translated by Frank Justus Miller (1907)