A companion to the Neronian age
Introduction: The Neronian (Literary) "Renaissance" / Martin T. Dinter -- Part I. Nero -- The Performing Prince / Elaine Fantham -- Biographies of Nero / Donna W. Hurley -- Nero the Imperial Misfit : Philhellenism in a Rich Man's World / Sigrid Mratschek -- Part II. The Empire -- The empire in the age of Nero / Myles Lavan -- Apollo in arms : Nero at the frontier / David Braund -- Domus Neroniana : The Imperial Household in the Age of Nero / Michael J. Mordine -- Religion / Darja Eterbenc Erker -- Neronian Philosophy / Jenny Bryan -- Part III. Literature, Art and Architecture -- Seneca, Apocolocyntosis / Christopher L. Whitton -- The Carmina Einsidlensia and Calpurnius Siculus' Eclogues / John Henderson -- Seneca's Philosophical Writings : Naturales Quaestiones, Dialogi, Epistulae Morales / Jonathan Mannering -- Senecan Tragedy / Emma Buckley -- Lucan's Bellum Ciuile / Philip Hardie -- Petronius' Satyrica / Tom Murgatroyd -- Persius / Marden Fitzpatrick Nichols -- Columella, De Re Rustica / Christiane Reitz -- Literature of the World : Seneca's Natural Questions and Pliny's Natural History / Aude Doody -- Greek Literature Under Nero / Dirk Uwe Hansen -- Buildings of an Emperor : how Nero transformed Rome / Heinz-Jurgen Beste and Henner von Hesberg -- Portraits of an Emperor : Nero and the Sun / Marianne Bergmann -- Neronian Wall-Painting : A Matter of Perspective / Katharina Lorenz -- Part IV. Reception -- Nero in Jewish and Christian Tradition from the First Century to the Reformation / Harry O. Maier -- Haec monstra edidit : Translating Lucan in the early seventeenth century / Yanick Maes -- Haunted by Horror : The Ghost of Seneca in Renaissance Drama / Susanna Braund -- "Fantasies so varied and bizarre" : The Domus Aurea, the Renaissance, and the "grotesque" / Michael Squire -- Epilogue -- Nachwort: Nero from Zero to Hero / Miriam Griffin.
The Passions in Play: Thyestes and the Dynamics of Senecan Drama
Acknowledgements Note on translations Introduction 1. Poetry, passions and knowledge 2. Staging Thyestes 3. A craftier Tereus 4. Atreus rex 5. Fata se vertunt retro 6. The poetics of passions Epilogue Bibliography Index of passages cited General index.
Seneca on the Stage
In the absence of the stage directions employed by their modern equivalents, ancient playwrights were obliged to ''encode'' information into their texts that can be described as implicit stage directions. It is the presence of such information that permits modern ''production criticism,'' intended to determine how ancient plays were meant to be staged. Since the early nineteenth century, it has been debated whether Seneca's tragedies were or were not written for stage production. Seneca's dramatic texts contain material that looks precisely like the implicit stage directions found in all other ancient drama, and when his plays are subjected to production criticism, it emerges that they make sound dramaturgic sense. Also, Seneca avails himself of the same artificial and sometimes irrational dramatic conventions used by other ancient playwrights, a fact often ignored by those who argue that Seneca was only writing plays for reading or recitation. The internal evidence of the plays offers much to support, and little to contradict, the idea that his plays were written with the stage in mind.