"Roman streets were populated with Greek slaves; their temples with Greek gods; their minds with Greek ideas."
— Hughes, Bettany (b. 1967)
Author
Work Title
Date
July 11, 2014
Metaphor
"Roman streets were populated with Greek slaves; their temples with Greek gods; their minds with Greek ideas."
Metaphor in Context
Romm avoids a common trap; he does not judge Seneca with hindsight, but inhabits his life as it plays out. There are subtle and sympathetic observations. A self-confessed philhellene, Romm is alive to the fact that the Romans lived with the Greeks, whispering in their ears, sometimes breathing down their necks. Roman streets were populated with Greek slaves; their temples with Greek gods; their minds with Greek ideas. In many ways Seneca's life was an incarnation of the tension between Greek idealism and Roman realpolitik. His "Phaedra" and "Medea" were reworked from earlier tragedies by Euripides as therapy, a way of dealing with the uniquely Roman catalog of fratricides, regicides, matricides, incest and holocausts with which he had to tangle.
Categories
Provenance
Reading
Citation
Hughes, Bettany, "School for a Scoundrel," The New York Times (July 11, 2014). [Review of Dying Every Day, by James Romm.] <Link to NYTimes.com>
Date of Entry
07/16/2014
