19-29 June 1998, University Theatre, The Arts Centre
Lucius Annaeus Seneca was one of the most influential and wealthy men of Rome in the first century AD. As well as being the young Nero's tutor and ultimately also his first minister, until falling out of favour and into a forced suicide, Seneca was a not inconsiderable philosopher and prolific author.
His works on Stoicism include a large collection of Moral Epistles, a number of Dialogues and other works written in a vivid and interesting prose style. Among the most successful of these is the extant treatise On Anger, in which his view of anger as a totally destructive and dehumanising emotion is eloquently argued. Also included in his work is a body of tragic dramas, based to a certain extent on the mythic tragedies of the Athenians, but singularly individual in their Latin verse style and, in the Medea in particular, investigating through the medium of a most notorious myth the impact of anger, jealousy and madness on one of the most (in)famous heroines of antiquity. |