Seneca - College of Stoic Philosophers

THE PHILOSOPHY OF SENECAi8iversive tendency. Such ideas, he may havethought, might be suited to the schools of declamation;but introduced into serious treatises andfound in conjunction with much that was really justand wise, they could not be too strongly condemned.Was Seneca the author of the tragedies whichbear his name ? That they were written by himor by one of his family we know from the quotationby Quintilian of an extant line of the Medea,^while other mentions are made of the tragedies of'Seneca 'by the grammarians of the second century— Terentianus Maurus, and Valerius Probus. Itis evident, however, that one of the plays, theOdavia, cannot have been written by LuciusSeneca, who appears in it as a principal character,since it contains in the guise of a prophecy afairly accurate description of the death of Nero.''Conceding this, most modern writers have neverthelessattributed the remaining eight tragediesto the philosopher. Yet apart from the fact thatthere seems no sufficient reason for separatingthe Octavia from the rest of the collection, thecase against his authorship seems to me so strongas to be almost conclusive. Quintilian, in hisaccount of Roman writers of tragedy from Acciusand Pacuvius down to Pomponius Secundus, whommakes no mention ofhe had known personally,Seneca.This, if at the time he was writing Seneca' 1— " quas peti terras " 'jubes ?* 'Interrogamus, aut invidiae gratia ut Medea apud Senecam:(Quint, ix. 2. 8).Veniet dies tempusque, quo reddat suisAnimam nocentem sceleribus, jugulum hostibus,Desertus, et destructus, et cunctis egens.'Oct. 629-631.