Instructions for Winners and Losers in Seneca’s “Agamemnon”

Abstract

This article provides a historico-pedagogical and historico-cultural commentary on the tragedy “Agamemnon“, which modern academics consider to be an example of Seneca’s innovative dramaturgy. In the tragedy, Seneca presents the original version of the famous myth about the murder of king Agamemnon, who had just returned victorious from the Trojan war. Seneca takes Aeschylus’s version of the same name as the basis for his own tragedy and presents the crime against Agamemnon as a deserved punishment and as a warning to those around him.