Excerpt from Seneca's Tragedies, Vol. 1 of 2: With an English Translation He started from the Stoic system, but in him its barren austerity was toned down, the harshness softened, its crotchets laid aside; nor did he disdain additions from other systems. His paramount pur pose is the forcible and eloquent presentation and advocacy of moral principles conducive to the benefit of the individual and of society. A group of nine tragedies has also come down to us, assigned by tradition to Senecan authorship. A tenth tragedy, the Octavia, has been transmitted with the other nine, but there is fairly good ground for doubting its authenticity.1 As to the nine, there is no good reason for not considering them the work of Seneca the Philosopher. They agree in general with the philosophical principles and spirit of the prose works, exhibit the same stylistic peculiarities (allowing for the natural difference between prose essay and dramatic poetry) and by their clear stylistic agreement among themselves can readily be accepted as the work of one hand. It should in fairness be said, however, that all critics are not in agreement as to the assignment of all the nine tragedies to Seneca. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.