Six Tragedies (Oxford World’s Classics)

Tutor to the emperor Nero, Seneca lived through uncertain, oppressive, & violent times, and his dramas depict the extremes of human behavior. Rape, suicide, child-murder, incestuous love, madness, & mutilation afflict the characters, who are obsessed & destroyed by their feelings. Seneca forces us to think about the difference between compromise & hypocrisy, about what happens when emotions overwhelm judgment, & about how a person can be good, calm, or happy in a corrupt society & under constant threat of death.

In addition to her superb translation, Emily Wilson provides an invaluable introduction which offers a succinct account of Seneca's life & times, his philosophical beliefs, the literary form of the plays, & their immense influence on European literature. The book also includes an up-to-date bibliography & explanatory notes which identify mythological allusions.

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Emily Wilson is a professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She has been named a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome in Renaissance and early modern studies, a MacArthur Fellow, & a Guggenheim Fellow. In addition to Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, she has also published translations of Sophocles, Euripides, & Seneca. She lives in Philadelphia.