-but it yet remains,
and in all likelihood will ever remain, undecided whether it was Lucius
Annoeus Seneca, the same who distinguished himself as a philosopher,
and whose admirable moral sentiments have been given to the world in an
English dress and arrangement, by Sir Roger Lestrange. There have not
been wanting critics of considerable eminence to maintain that the name
of Seneca was assumed in order to conceal that of the real author.
Quintilian ascribes to him the tragedy of Medea. The Troas and the
Hippolytus are also said to be of his composition, while the
_Agamemnon_, the _Hercules Fureus_, and the _Thyestes_ and _Hercules in
Oeta_, are supposed to have been written by his father _Marcus_
Annoeus Seneca, the declaimer. Be the author of them who he may, there
can be but one opinion on the merit of the compositions. The style is
nervous and replete with beauties, but, according to the corrupted taste
of the time in which they were written, abounds too much with ornament,
is often turgid and inflated. Those tragedies, however, contain much
good morality, conveyed in brilliant sentences and illustrated by lofty
and glowing imagery.

As it became the fashion of every writer of eminence, as well as every
pretender to letters, among the Romans to dabble with the drama, there
were a multitude of tragic poets whose names were soon forgotten, and
many whose names alone are incidentally mentioned while their works
shared the fate of their bodies, and were buried in their graves.
_Gracelius_ wrote a tragedy called _Thyestus; Catullus_ one intitled
_Alemeon; Caesar Adrastus; Augustus Ajax; Maecenas Octavio_; and _Ovid
Medea_. _Marcus Attilius_ translated the Electra of Sophocles into Latin
verse, and wrote some comedies also, but in language so barbarous and
unintelligible that it procured him the name of _Ferreus_, or the iron
poet. A poet of the name of Publius Pontonius, a relative and bosom
friend of Pliny, wrote tragedies which were greatly admired by the
emperor Claudius: and he was of so bold and independent a temper, that
when ordered by the emperor to strike certain passages out of one of his
plays, he peremptorily refused, and said he would appeal to the people.
This man was a great soldier as well as a poet, and once had the honour
of a triumph.

There were many others--Diodorus an Alexandrian of whom Strabo speaks
handsomely, and Sulpitius whose eloquence Cicero has praised, calling
him the tragic orator. All