Four Tragedies and Octavia (Penguin Classics)

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Description

Based on the legends used in Greek drama, Seneca’s plays are notable for the exuberant ruthlessness with which disastrous events are foretold and then pursued to their tragic and steadily bloodthirsty ends. Thyestes depicts the menace of an ancestral curse hanging over two feuding brothers, whilst Phaedra portrays a woman tormented by fatal passion for her stepson. In The Trojan Women, the widowed Hecuba and Andromache await their fates by the hands of the conquering Greeks, and Oedipus follows the downfall of the royal House of Thebes. Octavia is a grim statement on Nero’s tyrannical rule and the execution of his wife, with Seneca himself appearing as an ineffective counsellor making an attempt to curb the atrocities of the emperor.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the most productive works all the way through history and across genres and disciplines. Readers consider the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and latest authors, in addition to up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.


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