weather is wettest and coldest when the sun is in Capricorn. For the same reason, when the sun is in Cancer, the periodical conflagration arrives. But his faith is without hope. "The license of the waves is not forever. When the destruction of the human race is accomplished, and beasts are destroyed together, into whose nature men had been translated, earth will drink up the waters again; nature will constrain the sea to be still, or rage within his own bounds; ocean will be driven from our habitations to his own secret places. The old order will be restored. Every living creature will be born anew; and earth shall receive the gift of man, knowing nothing yet of guilt, born under happier stars. But they too shall only abide in innocence while the breed is new. Naughtiness creeps up apace; virtue is difficult to find, and craves a ruler or guide; vices are learned even without a master."1 Pliny the Younger quotes Seneca as one of the great men who condescended to literary amusements below what might have been thought their dignity. A respectful posterity has preserved few records of their amusements. The epigrams or elegies on his exile in Corsica are doubtful and insignificant. The satire on the death of Claudius is decidedly more spiteful than witty. The title 'ATOKONOKúrTwoc, or pumpkinification, has little point; for, although it rhymes with ȧrobéwog, or deification, one does not see why poor Claudius was bound to turn into a pumpkin more than into any other vegetable; unless the author intended to hint at a dull and unsavory joke that; being dead, he swelled before he burst. The introduction is better, but not good: he tells us that he will relate what happened in heaven upon the faith of a servile visionary, and that unless he pleases he is not bound to give any evidence at all. It is a fair joke to compare Claudius's voice and movements to the bleating and the gait of a sea-calf; but it is less edifying to hear that Hercules as a travelled god was deputed to act as interpreter, and canvassed actively to promote the deification of Claudius, having been deified himself; while Augustus, who had never interfered with the affairs of heaven before, came forward to protest against the deification of the relation who had "Nat. Quæst." III. xxx. put so many of his family and of his countrymen to death. The hymn recited at Claudius's funeral, setting forth how he decided heaps of cases in the height of summer upon hearing sometimes one side and often neither, is amusing, and so is his naive surprise when he finds all his victims ready to meet him in the world below. His final damnation to play dice with a box with no bottom is hardly severe enough; and we do not know whether he is better or worse off when adjudged as a slave to Caligula, who makes him over to one of his freedmen to exercise jurisdiction over the ghosts of his (the freedman's) household. The flattery of Nero is long in proportion to the shortness of the work, and turns upon nothing better than his voice and golden hair. He succeeds better in drawing inspiration from his inexhaustible contempt for Claudius, who is very nearly deified "because it will be for the public good that there should be somebody in heaven to bolt hot turnips with Romulus." It is surprising to find that one of Claudius's great offences was his zeal in spreading the privileges of Roman citizenship; for apparently Seneca was quite willing to recognize men of all conditions as brethren, without the least desire to equalize the conditions. We need not lay too much stress on the contrast between the flattery of Claudius in the consolatory letter to Polybius and the satire of the 'ATOKONOKUvTwoLC. Claudius was a well-intentioned but decidedly ridiculous person, in whom it was easier for an exile to believe, who compared him with Caligula, than for a courtier who compared him with his own expectations from his own pupil Nero. Besides, the clumsy cruelty of Claudius broke out after Seneca had flattered him. The plays which have reached us under Seneca's name are commonly thought unworthy of his reputation, for this reason, among others, that a play requires organic structure, which no works of Seneca possess, and also because the philosophical works of Seneca are sui generis, while the tragedies invite comparison with the works of the great Attic period. It has always been doubted whether they are even genuine, although the "Medea" is quoted as Seneca's by Quinctilian, and there is no serious reason to question the evidence of the MS., ex cept that the "Octavia" contains such unmistakable allusions to the fate of Nero that it cannot be the work of Seneca, who did not live to witness it. There are metrical points in the "Edipus," the "Hercules Etæus," and the "Agamemnon which have made it doubtful whether they are by the author of the rest. It is difficult to maintain any system of strophes and antistrophes in the chorus, and the anapæst monometers are apt to degenerate into adonics oftener than in the other plays. Of course it is possible that Seneca may have grown a little careless, and otherwise the plays are very like him in tone and spirit. Still it is true that they are below the level of his prose, though they had merit enough to influence all the attempts of the Renaissance at the revival of tragedy. They are not the expression of his convictions; they are not founded, like the tragedy of Æschylus, on an apprehension of religious tradition which seeks at once to deepen and to soften the tradition it has received, nor, like the tragedy of Sophocles, on a serious and lofty recognition of what is most permanent in life; nor even, like the tragedy of Euripides, on an anxious discussion of real problems; but are an elaborate and eloquent protest against things in general, and especially against the inequalities of fortune. They belong to the literature of revolt, and they are thrown into a dramatic form because the author does not wish to take the responsibility of revolt in his own person. When a Stoic is quite serious, he believes in duty and in providence, but these are the weak places of his system: the strong place is the glory of virtue. The interest of the "Hercules Etæus," the longest and the soberest of the plays, turns on the contrast between the resignation of the hero and the natural complaints of his mother; and though Hercules appears in his divine glory to rebuke her lamentations, yet the narrative of his sufferings is arranged so as to glorify him at the expense of heaven. So, too, in the "Troades," the main idea is the cruelty of the gods, who have delivered a blameless nation for the sin of a single woman, who herself escapes without punishment. Rather than acknowledge that the gods can have revealed that Polyxena is to be sacrificed to the ghost of Achilles, the chorus sing a musical and really poetical ode, to explain that they do not believe in the immortality of the soul, and set forth that death would be no good if it brought no end, no rest; and this is exactly in the style of Seneca, who never loses an opportunity of praising death. Like most of Seneca's plays, the "Troades" has little action, and much bitter wit: the nearest approach to action is when there is a scolding-match between Agamemnon and Pyrrhus, because Agamemnon objects to the sacrifice of Polyxena; but when both heroes have proved they know how to be insolent, Agamemnon announces he will ask Calchas and give way to fate. It is less undramatic when Helen gives up the attempt to deceive Polyxena. The scene in which Andromache hides Astyanax in the tomb of Hector, and then gives him up rather than have Hector's ashes outraged, does not want for action, though it is grotesque enough; for Andromache makes an odd figure when she reflects that, if she allows the tomb to be destroyed, her son will be buried in the ruins. Seneca shows to more advantage when he remarks that the Greeks dared to show their sense of the cruelty of their chiefs while the conquered Trojans were compelled to hide their tears. Even when Seneca follows a really dramatic play like the " Medea" or the "Agamemnon" pretty closely, he ceases to be dramatic. He dislocates the connection and the movement of his original in order to heighten parts which are not highly flavored enough for his crude eagerness. So, for instance, in the "Medea" we have a discussion in which Medea convinces Jason he is using her badly, the conventionalities under which he escapes in Euripides not being to the writer's taste. Again, he gives up an act to a description of the dreadful enchantments by which Medea prepares her revenge. In the "Edipus" a pompous description of the enchantments of Tiresias and his daughter Manto is a poor substitute for the irony of Sophocles, who shows us an unwilling minister of fate forced to speak by the stubborn earnestness of the king, who repays him with suspicion. In the "Thyestes" a whole act is devoted to the evocation of Megæra and the ghost of Tantalus, and another to a long speech of the messenger who describes the solemn sacrifice and cookery of the children of Thyestes, interrupted at rare intervals by the chorus, whose questions serve to bring out some new horror. After this, we are introduced to Thyestes feasting and trying to enjoy himself: his awe would be impressive if, when his brother comes to explain the real state of things, Thyestes did not hear the cry of his children, whom he has eaten, sounding within him. But here and elsewhere Seneca has the faults of his qualities: he is always anxious to pile up the agony higher than the Greeks have piled it before him. It is rare when he is simply cold, as in the "Hippolytus," where, though Phædra makes a formal declaration of her passion to its object, as in the first draught of the great play, which Euripides was compelled to withdraw by the Attic sense of propriety, she moves us so little that we are not seriously affected when Hippolytus delivers a lecture on the different kinds of sporting dogs. With all this, it must be owned that the dialogue, if it led to anything, is extremely brilliant. The scolding scene in the "Troades" is wonderfully clever, apart from its tame concluclusion; and in the "Thyestes" the scene between Atreus and his henchman, though quite unnecessary for the action, contains a brilliant theory of tyranny from the point of view of the tyrant and the public who have to put up with him. The scene between Agamemnon and Cassandra is more nearly dramatic, and worth reading, even after Æschylus: A. Festus dies est. A. Jovem precemur pariter. A. Ne metue dominam famula. A. Nullum est periclum tibimet. C. Festus et Trojæ fuit. C. Cecidit ante aras pater. C. Herceum Jovem? C. Et Priamum simul. C. Ubi Helena est, Troiam puta. C. Mors mihi est securitas. C. Quod non timet. Here we have the Stoic sentiment that popular goods are real misfortunes, which is quite independent of the doctrine of the blessedness of virtue; for Hippolytus and even Thyestes appear, like Hercules, as innocent victims of the injustice of destiny; while the chorus preaches the advantage of |