Six TragediesMy rating: 5 of 5 stars

Park Chan-wook, Quentin Tarantino, and John Carpenter are lightweight happy-go-lucky people compared to Seneca! This selection of plays, translated by the most excellent classicist Emily Wilson (lately of Homer’s Odyssey translation fame), can be described with two words: dark & violent. Did I mention dark? If not, see his “Thyestes”. But, I would also toss out one more word: bewitching.

Emily Wilson’s introduction is one of the finest I’ve ever read of a classical author and their works. Her third sentence nails Seneca’s tragedies: “Passion is constantly set against reason, and passion wins out” (p. vii). She says his characters “are obsessed and destroyed by their emotions: they are dominated by rage, ambition, lust, jealousy, desire, anger, grief, madness, and fear”" (p. vii). Seneca’s tragedies are timeless, perhaps why they had such an impact on Elizabethan tragedy and can still serve us well today.

Wilson’s translation choices make the at times dense Seneca flow smoothly, as a knife through … well, you get the picture… Her translation is also melodic. I was reading Medea while listening to John Coltrane’s “India”. It was scary how well they synced up, with the cadence and emotional fury of the text.

As for Seneca, his first acts are amazing, in setting the tone and characters. Medea’s was wonderful, and the opening by Juno (Hera) in Hercules Furens blew me away. I enjoyed all the plays. And, continuing my love of astronomy and ancient literature, I liked these lines from Medea when discussing those who first ventured far away from their shores on ships: “The constellations were still unknown, / and the bright stars with which heaven is painted / remained unused” (Medea, 2.309-311, p. 81).

This collection is well worth your time.