Troades
A PLAY BY SENECA, TRANSLATED BY ANNABELLE WATSON
Hecuba: Whoever trusts in sovereignty and powerfully rules in a great hall, and does not fear unjust gods and gives a trusting spirit to happy things, let him see me and you, Troy: Luck never brought a greater documentation of how on fragile ground stand the arrogant. The overturned kingdom (summit) of mighty Asia has fallen, the famed work of the divine; to whose arms she came and who drank the chilly Tanaïs, spreading its seven mouths and who is the first greeting the emerging day, in which the warm water of Tigris mix with the swelling sea, and she who, watching the wandering Scythians from her border, strikes the Pontic shore with the unmarried hoards, is struck by the sword; Pergamum lies upon herself.
Class transation: Whoever trusts in royal power regno - dative, supreme autocratic power - greater meaning dominatur - strong meaning, lord and master potens - being a person of power and influence / adv rebus - dative ??? magna aula - abl
Anyone who is of the sovereignty, believing its bullshit., of the humans, not gods. levis - fickle/unjust/flighty/unpredictable/changeable?? dedit - WORD ARRANGEMENT. credulum - trusting, but more gullible. animum - MIND rebus - circumstances
ABAB pattern, similar to chiasmus. similar to golden line ish
This has all been a qui clause / relative
‘the fickleness of gods’ dedit - look up tense
‘given up his mind to prosperous circumstances’ let that person see me/look upon me, and you, Troy.
Thhe whole city is destroyed, all society is dead. POST armageddon
She was queen, so she is the Quicumque.
So if anyone is enjoying life, don’t take it for granted.
Plays often start at dawn, so this is the first sight of Troy non umquam ;
Fortune brought, Luck, Fortuna is more formal. This is more a nuance of Chance, unpredictability. documenta - plural.
Troy is the greatest proof of how fate can change. superbi - more at the height of good fortune, on the highest rung stand in how fragile the situation is. no matter where you are, shit’s still gonna go down. Everything can disappear. Take me as proof.
She sets herself up as a mythical example of a mythical reality.
The thought of stoics at this time, is about people having the psychological strength to stand up to misfortune. how to deal. Cosmos will end in an explosion and then will start again.
Quicumque has had the subject all this time, the verb is delayed. The visual is important. More effective to have vocative than sole of accusative. SPECTACLE.
Columen - the pillar of Asia. The idea that Troy was Asia, Greece of Europe. The incontinental war.
Two actions - one by Participle then verb.
Caelitum egregius labor - this is an apposition to the entire action.
Columen imagery recurs in the play. Also Troy = Asia (part of the whole)
The gods literally tipped over the column.
Alluding to this scene in the Aeneid. Ommission or by contrast of the Euripides’ Trojan Women, where Poseidon begins the play. Absence of gods here rather than in the Euripides. There are gods at play, just not on this plane.
This is a catalogue of those who came from parts of the world. It is the world war, from furthest north, east. Refer to them peripihrastically. Relies on background knowledge.
Cuius - refers to Troy. To the arms, the warcause. The war of whom. These are the allies
Latin 201/3
Geographically named people. Tarneis - Russian. Who drinks from the Tarneian. (greek masc. acc.) Pandentem with FROZEN Tarneis. spreading out its seven mouths. In myth all myths have seven mouths where they meet the seven seas.
Came to the arms/support of whom. RHESUS.
Primus - he receives the renewed daylight.
Tigrin is warm rather than Tarnein. It mixes into the sea and merges its waters into the dative/abl red sea.
This refers to Memnon - the son of Aurora, dawn, and Tiphynus (human) et qui, et qui, and et quae - the amazons, bitches too!’ close by, looking out upon the wandering scyths, pontic - black sea, with
