Phaedra and Other Plays
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€18.50
a very short introduction
A01=Seneca
Author_Seneca
Category=DD
Category=DSBB
Category=DSG
classics
don quixote
edith hall
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_poetry
gifts for book lovers
gifts for readers
gifts for writers
greek
greek myths
greek plays
greek to me
greek tragedy
hers to take
how to read a book
julius caesar
literary gifts
literature gifts
love in the time of cholera
mary beard
monologues
one hundred years of solitude
ovid metamorphoses
phillipa gregory books in order
read this if you want to take great photographs
seamus heaney
the book that did not want to be read
the iliad
war of the worlds
what time is love
Product details
- ISBN 9780140455519
- Weight: 269g
- Dimensions: 129 x 198mm
- Publication Date: 25 Aug 2011
- Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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Living in Rome under Caligula and later a tutor to Nero, Seneca witnessed the extremes of human behaviour. His shocking and bloodthirsty plays not only reflect a brutal period of history but also show how guilt, sorrow, anger and desire lead individuals to violence. The hero of Hercules Insane saves his own family from slaughter, only to commit further atrocities when he goes mad. The horrifying death of Astyanax is recounted in Trojan Women, and Phaedra deals with forbidden love. In Oedipus a nervous man discovers himself, while Thyestes recounts the bitter family struggle for a crown. Of uncertain authorship, Octavia dramatizes Nero's divorce from his wife and her deportation. The only Latin tragedies to have survived complete, these plays are masterpieces of vibrant, muscular language and psychological insight.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca statesman, philosopher, advocate and man of letters, was born at Cordoba in Spain around 4 BC. He rose to prominence in Rome, pursuing a career in the courts and political life while also acquiring celebrity as an author of tragedies and essays. After retiring from public life, he devoted his last three years to philosophy and writing. Following the discovery of a plot against the emperor, in which he was thought to be implicated, he and many others were compelled by Nero to commit suicide in AD 65.
R. Scott Smith is Associate Professor of Classics at the University of New Hampshire. His books include An Anthology of Classical Myth (as co-editor and translator) and The Unknown Socrates (as co-editor and contributor).
