Part 36 (1/2)

201. For further examples cp. _H.F._ 5-18, _Troades_ 215-19.

202. This terse stabbing rhetoric is characteristic of Stoicism; the same short, jerky sentences reappear in Epictetus. Seneca is doubtless influenced by the declamatory rhetoric of schools as well, but his philosophical training probably did much to form his style.

203. Exceptions are so few as to be negligible. The effect of this rule is aggravated by the fact that in nine cases out of ten the accent of the word and the metrical ictus 'clash', this result being obtained 'by most violent elisions, such as rarely or never occur in the other feet of the verse'. Munro, J. Phil. 6, 75.

204. The older and more rugged iambic survives in the fables of Phaedrus, written at no distant date from these plays, if not actually contemporary.

205. Cp. Leo, op. cit. i. 166, 174.

206. See p. 29.

207. These horrors go beyond the crucifixion scene in the Laureolus (see p. 24), and the tradition of genuine tragedy was all against such presentation. As far as the grotesqueness and bombast of the plays go, the age of Nero might have tolerated them. We must remember that seventeenth-century England enjoyed the brilliant bombast of Dryden (e.g. in _Aurungzebe_) and that the eighteenth delighted in the crude absurdities of such plays as _George Barnwell_.

208. Cp. also _Phaedra_ 707, where Hippolytus' words, 'en impudic.u.m crine contorto caput

laeva reflexi,' can only be justified as inserted to explain to the hearers what they could not see. See also p. 48, note.

209. They have been influenced by the pantomimus and the dramatic recitation so fas.h.i.+onable in their day, inasmuch as they lack connexion, and, though containing effective episodes, are of far too loose a texture to be effective drama.

210. See R. Fischer, _Die Kunstentwicklung der englischen TraG.o.die_; J.

W. Cunliffe, _Influence of Seneca on Elizabethan Tragedy_; J. E. Manly, _Introductory Essay_ to Miller's _Translation of the Tragedies of Seneca_. The Senecan drama finds its best modern development in the tragedies of Alfieri. Infinitely superior in every respect as are the plays of the modern dramatist, he yet reveals in a modified form not a few of Seneca's faults. There is often a tendency to bombast, an exaggeration of character, a hardness of outline, that irresistibly recall the Latin poet.

211. The debt is as good as acknowledged, ll. 58 sqq.

212. ll. 310 sqq.

213. l. 915.

214. There is no direct evidence of the s.e.x of the chorus in the _Octavia_. In Greek drama they would almost certainly have been women.

215. The diction is wholly un-Senecan. There is no straining after epigram; the dialogue, though not lacking point (e.g. the four lines 185-8, or 451-60), does not bristle with it, and is far less rhetorical and more natural. The chorus confines itself to anapaests, is simpler and far more relevant. The all-pervading Stoicism is the one point they have in common.

216. The imitation of Lucan in 70, 71 'magni resto nominis umbra,' is also strong evidence against the Senecan authors.h.i.+p.

217. _Probus, vita_. 'A. Persius Flaccus natus est pridie non. Dec.

Fabio Persico, L. Vitellio coss.' Hieronym. ad ann. 2050=34 A.D.

'Persius Flaccus Satiricus Volaterris nascitur.' Where not otherwise stated the facts of Persius' life are drawn from the biography of Probus.

218. Quint, vii. 4, 40; Tac. _Ann_. xv. 71.

219. Suet. _de Gramm_. 23.

220. Ba.s.sus was many years his senior--addressed as _senex_ in Sat. vi.

6, written late in 61 or early in 62 A.D.--and perished in the eruption of Vesuvius, 79 A. D. Cp. Schol. _ad Pers_. vi. 1.

221. Lucan was five years his junior. Cp. p. 97.

222. Cp. Tac. _Ann_. xiv. 19; _Dial_. 23; Quint. x. 1. 102.

223. This friends.h.i.+p lasted ten years, presumably the last ten of Persius' life; cp. _Prob. vit_.

The second satire is addressed to Plotius Macrinus, who, according to the scholiast, was a learned man, who 'loved Persius as his son, having studied with him in the house of Servilius Nonia.n.u.s.'