"Seneca is a figure of first importance in both Roman politics and literature: a leading adviser to Nero who attempted to restrain the emperor's megalomania; a prolific moral philosopher; and the author of verse tragedies that strongly influenced Shakespeare and other Renaissance dramatists. Here is the first of a new two-volume edition of Seneca's tragedies." Seneca's plots are based on mythical episodes, in keeping with classical tradition. But the political realities of imperial Rome are also reflected here, in an obsessive concern with power and dominion over others. Seneca's plays depict gigantic passions and intense interactions in an appropriately forceful rhetoric. Their perspective is much bleaker and more tragic than that of his prose writings. In this new translation John Fitch conveys the force of Seneca's dramatic language and the lyric quality of his choral odes.