Sublime

il se vend au plaisir, quand il pense l'acheter.

Latin quotes will include a great deal of Seneca’s aphorisms—lines like “Necessity is usually more powerful than duty” (Trojan Women 581), or “Nature takes revenge on everybody” (Phaedra 352), or “Crime must be hidden by crime” (Medea 721). The aphorisms often speak to recurrent preoccupations of Seneca’s, with fortune and its many reversals (“A

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.