Sequi naturam – living according to Nature – was to the Stoic doctrine followers’ one of
the most vital aphorisms and, in fact, the supreme and highest virtue to accomplish, an ideal
that Seneca, poet and thinker, never ceased to reiterate in his philosophical works. That same
notion of “naturalism” – in its most diverse semantic shades – manifests itself in Seneca’s corpus
tragicum, namely in two of the plays concerning the mythological nucleus of Atreus’ house:
Troades and Thyestes.
In his tragedies the dramatist from Corduba embraces nature not as a mere Stoic inert
notion, but as an aesthetic and dramatic principle of extraordinary significance. Natura shines
as a privileged poetic technique of expression of emotions and accurate and distinctive drawing
of natural spaces.