Part 1 (2/2)

While these tragedies were Greek in subject and form, it is not at all necessary to suppose that they were servile iinals The Romans did undoubtedly impress their national spirit upon that which they borrowed, in tragedy just as in all things else Indeed, the great genius of Rome consisted partly in this--her wonderful power to absorb and assimilate material froht borrow, but what she had borrowed she made her own co differences between Greek literature and a hellenized Roman literature would naturally be the differences between the Greek and Roious and conterave and intense, fond of exalted ethical effects, appeals to national pride; and above all, insisted that nothing should offend that exaggerated sense of both personal and national dignity which characterized the Roman everywhere

All these characteristics edies ih, this did not develop a truly national Roedy, as was the case, for instance, with epic and lyric literature We have already seen how er was the production of the _fabulae praetextae_ With the rich national traditions and history to inspire this, we can account for the failure to develop a native Roedy only upon the assuift of dra and developing great dramatic plots and characters, which foric drama

We shall not weary the reader with quotations fro as to the development of the plot or the other essential characteristics of a drama A play is not like an animent It will be profitable, however, to dwell upon a few of these fraget some idea of the nature and contents of all that is left of an extensive literature

There is a very drament of the _Alexander_ or _Paris_ of Ennius It represents Cassandra, in prophetic raving, predicting the destruction which her brother Paris is to bring upon his fatherland It is said that Hecuba, queen of Troy, before the birth of Paris, drea this, Cassandra cries out at sight of her brother:

Here it is; here, the torch, wrapped in fire and blood Many years it hath lain hid; help, citizens, and extinguish it For now, on the great sea, a swift fleet is gathering It hurries along a host of calamities They coed shi+ps

Sellar

Several of the fragments show a certain ination in these early tragedians The following passage froree It is a description of the first shi+p, _Argo_, as she goes plowing through the sea It is supposed to be spoken by a rustic who froress It should be reht to him as were the shi+ps of Columbus to the natives of newly discovered Aly strained lides on, Like soall the sea With flying spray like backward strea, Or soe mass of rock reft off and driven By furious winds, or seething whirlpools, high Upbeaten by the ever-rushi+ng waves; Or else when Ocean crashes on the shore, Or Triton, fro waters' depths, A rocky mass to upper heaven uprears

Miller

Sellar, in speaking of the feeling for natural beauty, says of Accius: ”The fragments of Accius afford the first hint of that enjoye”; and quotes the following passage from the _Oenomaus_ as ”perhaps the first instance in Latin poetry of a descriptive passage which gives any hint of the pleasure derived fro the common aspects of nature”:

By chance before the dawn, harbinger of burning rays, when the husband forth the oxen from their rest into the fields, that they h, and turn up the clods froe, and then turn to the exquisite and fuller pictures of natural beauty which Lucretius and Vergil have left us, we shall agree that Accius was hi rays”

2 LATER ROMAN TRAGEDY AND SENECA

Tragedy long continued to flourish after Accius, but its vitality was gone Such ustan period, and Maternus, Pomponius Secundus, and Lucan in the first century A D, aedies, and even produced some coil and Horace, was perhaps the edy on _Thyestes_ which was presented as part of the public rejoicings after the battle of Actium Of this play Quintilian said that it would stand coedy on _Medea_, which was highly praised by Roedies on _Medea_ and _Thyestes_, as well as _praetextae_ on _Do reedians were for the most part of a dilettante sort, and that their plays were purely literary (see, however, the case of Varius), intended for dra and declae

Of this sort also were the ten tragedies commonly attributed to L

Annaeus Seneca, the philosopher, who is better known as the author of numerous philosophical essays He lived in the time of Nero, and was, indeed, the tutor of that emperor Of these ten plays, nine are modeled after the Greek, and one, the _Octavia_, which is undoubtedly not Seneca's, is a _praetexta_, in which Seneca himself appears

These plays are of especial interest to us, aside from their intrinsic value, for the triple reason that they are the sole representatives of Roedy preserved entire, that they reflect the literary coe in which they were produced, and that they had so large an influence in shaping the early English dra-stone between ancient and lish, dra reveals their extreht of the author in the horrible and weird, the pains he has taken to select fro of all the tales as the foundation of his tragedies, the boldness hich he has broken over the time-honored rule that deeds of blood should not be done upon the stage, and his fondness for abstruse ical allusions Add to these features the dreary prolixity hich the author spoilsthes, also his frequent exaggerations and repetitions, and we have the chief defects of these tragedies

And yet they have equally raphic descriptions, touching pathos, nificent passion, subtile analysis of character and motive But when all is said, it must be adhly rhetorical and artificial, such alone as that artificial age would be expected to produce

Such as they were, and perhaps because they hat they were, the tragedies of Seneca, rather than the Greek plays, were the edy The first and obvious reason for this no doubt is the fact that the Middle Age of Europe was an age of Latin rather than of Greek scholarshi+p, so far as popular scholarshi+p was concerned And this made Seneca rather than Euripides available But it is also probable that his style and spirit appealed strongly to those later-day ireat, indeed, was the popularity of Seneca's tragedies in the early Elizabethan age, that he ht be said to have monopolized the attention of writers of that time

He was a favorite with the schools as a classical text-book, as old Roger Aschalish then for the first tile volume in 1581 by Thomas Newton, one of the translators

In addition to the version of 1581, the tragedies of Seneca were again translated into English by Glover in 1761 Since that date no English version was atteo undertook the task again, and produced a metrical version of three of these plays

We have selected the tragedy of _Medea_ for presentation to the readers of this voluedy, and (alas for the fate of so edy