And Gods Went Away Long Ago...

Abstract

The article concerns the question of the formal and moral gods' presence in Senecan tragedies. The problem cannot be solved exhaustively on the literary level only without touching the influence of religious trends on the poet in those days, and connection between Seneca's attitude to religion in his prose writings and dramas.

It may be assumed that supreme beings exist in these dramas in various manners: 1) pure moral i.e. as embodiment of justice, 2) semidramatic, as the more or less active dramatis persona, 3) as the negation of traditional gods because of their indifference, cruelty and fallacy.

But these so different portraits of upper creatures mentioned above seem to be paradoxically the trial of author's another view on stoicism, so sublimely showed in his dialogues and the philosophical letters.