This collection of articles is a welcome addition to the bookshelves of Senecan scholars or those interested in the reception of Senecan tragedy. The articles, originally published between 1956 and 1981, display P.'s breadth of knowledge and erudition by first establishing the importance and relevance of Senecan tragedy for the modern reader, and subsequently charting Senecan influence in the works of Racine, Metastasio, Alfieri and Rubens. Later generations of scholars have expanded many of these insights, but this volume offers us a strong foundation for understanding Senecan tragedy and the challenges it poses for authors and artists wishing to draw upon its characters, themes and poetic insights.

The opening chapters comprise two general pieces on Senecan tragedy, ‘Il Teatro di Seneca’ and ‘Seneca Autore di Teatro’, that stress P.'s belief in the centrality of Seneca for the history of Western theatre, and one article specific to the Oedipus, ‘La Poesia nell’Oedipus di Seneca'. Because of the psychological depth of Seneca's characters, their struggles against a hostile fate/fortune and their passionate efforts to derive meaning for themselves and their actions, P. views Seneca as the prime candidate for ‘il fondatore del teatro moderno’ (p. 17). P. finds an urgency in Seneca's tragedies that is representative of the political, philosophical and poetic milieu of the Neronian age, but that can also be seen lurking behind much Elizabethan, Baroque and even twentieth-century theatre. His emphasis on Senecan tragedy as living theatre is refreshing and shows his appreciation of Seneca as a poet, a position not particularly common among classicists when the first of these pieces was published in 1956. Of course, Seneca's poetry is heavily laced with the rhetorical flourishes of his day and the second piece argues against the thesis that Seneca's tragedies were meant to be recited (cf. O. Zwierlein, Die Rezitationsdramen Senecas [1966]). Through the careful analysis of scenes from the Agamemnon, Phaedra, Thyestes and Oedipus, P. proves that these plays are meant for the stage and that Seneca derives dramatic power from the impassioned language of his characters. P.'s article on the Oedipus both apologises for perceived inconsistencies (it was a youthful work, according to P.'s chronology), and extols Seneca's successful elaboration of Sophocles' O.T. and, especially, the novel scenes of extispicium and necromancy that further elaborate Seneca's characterisation of Oedipus. He rightly finds in the extispicium a chance for Seneca to expound on the tragic world of Thebes in which mutatus ordo est (366) and natura uersa est (371), indicating not only the incestuous relationship of Jocasta and Oedipus, but also the distorting lens of tragedy through which Seneca views his own contemporary world (p. 76). According to P., young Seneca had discovered a literary form that allowed him to explore the psychological underpinnings of individuals and the human condition in general through figurative and dramatic language, and this article details P.'s erudite reading of Seneca's accomplishment.

The following three chapters examine the broad influence of Seneca on the golden age of French tragedy (especially Racine's Andromaque) and Metastasio's La Didone Abbandonata. The first piece provides, essentially, source criticism of Racine's Andromaque, teasing out the importance of Seneca's Troades (unsurprisingly) as well as Medea and Hercules Oetaeus (surprisingly). While Racine himself stresses the importance of the Aeneid and Euripides' Andromache for his version, P. carefully traces how Seneca and Ovid (especially the Heroides) also can been seen running ‘like a hidden, underground life-giving stream’ (p. 97) beneath the theatre of the siècle d'or, and especially in Racine's works. Close examination of linguistic parallels strengthens the degree to which Racine appropriates Senecan language and imagery, but P. often does not push the parallels as far as contemporary reception and intertexual critics might wish. Nevertheless, he marshals the evidence to display convincingly that Racine, possibly in spite of himself, returns again and again to the language of Seneca and Ovid to explore the emotional and psychological lives of his characters. The following article is concerned primarily with Metastasio's reading of Racine and his virtuoso adaptation of the Andromache in his libretto, La Didone Abbandonata. P. stresses that Metastasio was essentially creating a new mixed genre of comedy and tragedy, which the tragedies of Racine heavily shaped because of their ability to link the myths and figures of antiquity to contemporary tastes and concerns. The third piece, ‘Seneca Tragico e la Poesia Tragica Francese del Siècle d'Or’, broadens the scope of Seneca's sway to Corneille as well as Racine. P. restates the importance of Racine's Andromaque as an index of Senecan influence, and remarks upon how Racine continued Corneille's use of classical models for novel innovations. While this sort of contaminatio is clearly known to Corneille and Racine (as seen in the prefaces to their plays), P. details the cross-pollination with a particular eye to Seneca's corpus as a whole, uncovering for example that Phaedra's speech in the fourth act of Racine's Phèdre owes as much to Seneca's Medea or the Hercules Oetaeus as to Seneca's Phaedra (pp. 199–200).

The next two pieces consider Seneca's place in Italian drama as P. analyses his impact on Alfieri's Agamennone and d'Annunzio's Fedra. For Alfieri, Seneca's versification and sublimity were worthy of emulation (p. 217) and he found in Seneca's Agamemnon a suitable myth for his exploration of the psychology of power. What makes Alfieri's character of Agamemnon so shocking and exceptional is that he is the lone ruler in Alfieri's theatrical œuvre that is magnanimous and enlightened in his rule. Alfieri will often deploy Senecan language, but place it in the mouth of a different character or use it to describe a different character than in the Senecan original. Alfieri has followed some hints in characterisation from Seneca's Thyestes, especially Thyestes' expressions of happiness at seeing Argos again, now uttered by Agamemnon at his homecoming. By doing so, Alfieri aligns the character of Agamemnon with Thyestes, not his true father, Atreus, and reveals the way in which he is inverting the tangled history of the house of Atreus (Aegisthus, the true son of Thyestes, acts like the Senecan Atreus). Such moments point not simply to recollection, but to re-elaboration of the Senecan original in order to adumbrate primary themes in the play. In turning to d'Annunzio, P. finds Ovidian and Senecan antecedents to the monstrous passion of d'Annunzio's Phaedra, who is deemed a Nietzschean ‘Ueberweib’ by P. This article, to my mind, was the least convincing as the verbal connections to Seneca and Ovid are slight, although the impetus to push the emotional extremes of the dramatic characters certainly has Senecan analogues.

P.'s appreciation of the art of Rubens, ‘Ovidio e Seneca nella Cultura e nell'Arte di Rubens’, is a welcome appendix. As a member of the circle of Lipsius, Rubens knew and appreciated the works of Seneca (cf. M. Morford, Stoics and Neostoics [1991]), and P. points out details from a selection of Rubens' paintings that derive from a close reading of Seneca and Ovid. While some may quibble that many of these mythological tales would have been known from a variety of sources, artistic as well as poetic, P. acts as a fine tour guide through Rubens' artistic output highlighting Ovidian and Senecan touches. A final postscript by M.L. Doglio provides an overview of P.'s work on the reception of Senecan tragedy and offers a fitting conclusion to the volume as a whole. Our view of Senecan tragedy has been enormously enriched by P.'s contributions, and this volume exposes how Senecan tragedy reverberates through various eras and genres, provided that we know how to listen for it.