Read more
Despite ancient Roman fascination with the tragic myth of Mycenae's 'king of kings', Seneca's Agamemnon is the only dramatic treatment from this tradition to have survived since antiquity. This new edition comprises an extensive introduction, Latin text, English verse translation, and detailed line-by-line commentary on the play.
List of contents
- INTRODUCTION
- I. Seneca and Rome
- II. Roman Theatre
- III. The Declamatory Style
- IV. Seneca's Theatre of Violence
- V. Seneca on Anger
- VI. The Myth before Seneca
- VII. The Play
- VIII. Reception of Seneca's Agamemnon
- IX. Metre
- X. The Translation
- TEXT AND TRANSLATION
- Selective Critical Apparatus
- Differences from the 1986 Oxford Classical Text
- COMMENTARY
- Endmatter
- Select Bibliography
- Indexes:
- I. Latin Words
- II. Passages from Other Plays of the Senecan Tragic Corpus
- III. General Index
About the author
Anthony James Boyle was born in 1942 and educated at St Francis Xavier College in Liverpool, before attending Manchester University and Downing College, Cambridge, where he also taught. He held a teaching position at Monash University in Melbourne for twenty years before moving to the USA in 1989, where he is now Professor of Classics at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. He has been editor of the Classical literary journal, Ramus, since its inception in 1972.
Summary
Despite ancient Roman fascination with the tragic myth of Mycenae's 'king of kings', Seneca's Agamemnon is the only dramatic treatment from this tradition to have survived since antiquity. This new edition comprises an extensive introduction, Latin text, English verse translation, and detailed line-by-line commentary on the play.
Additional text
It is hard to imagine this edition being superseded and (with introductory matter, at 745 pages) one cannot really demand any more from an editor. The level of detail is enormous but does not feel cumbersome, and the reader is guided in every aspect of this play by Boyle's friendly and enthusiastic authority. There are 48 pages of 'select' bibliography, an index of Latin words, an index of passages from other plays in the Senecan corpus and a general index. The book is superbly produced and edited
