Sublime

Things without all remedy / Should be without regard: What’s done is done.

Du reste, d'après le grand principe de tous les Stoïciens, c'est la nature que je prétends suivre : ne pas s'en écarter, se former sur sa loi et sur son exemple, voilà la sagesse. La vie heureuse est donc une vie conforme à la nature ;

In theory, Seneca’s attitude toward exile was an entirely positive one. 24 In his Consolation to Marcia, composed before the time of his own exile, he treats exile as one of the usual list of disasters that may befall a person—along with other disasters like shipwreck and fire and imprisonment and slavery—which must all be treated with equanimity b

The real appeal of the play, like many of these tragedies, lies in the astounding vigor with which Seneca’s Medea articulates her own autonomy, her selfhood, and her power to continue as herself, regardless of any external circumstances.

Seneca would continue to be a polarizing figure throughout much of the next two thousand years. Our earliest surviving response to Seneca’s life, character, and relationship with Nero is a play that has come down to us among Seneca’s own tragedies: the Octavia.

have been able to see exile as a positively helpful thing—a preferable rather than nonpreferable “indifferent.” He could have responded to his own exile as the idealized character “Seneca” does, in the drama Octavia that was composed after his death. Lamenting his current constraints under the tyrannical rule of Nero, this “Seneca” cries,