The analysis of Stoic perception and evaluation of literary phenomena offers an interesting way out of the dilemma of reading the tragedies as either enactments or extended refutations of Stoic dogmata. The very explanation of how passions work and are perceived which Seneca offers in accordance with Stoic principles makes the effect of a literary utterance less safely ascertainable than one would like to expect. At the level of assensio, which is the critical juncture in the development or forestalling of a passion, readers are left alone with their hermeneutic burden. They might have thoughtful teachers to guide them in the process, much as Plutarch recommends, but the author of the text, with his responsibilities and intentions, is inevitably out of the picture.

Predictably, the situation is more muddled than this. Tragedy involves conflict, the battle between two sides, whose respective stances must be represented with equal accuracy and conviction if the play is to be effective. Bad behaviour will take centre stage, represented with accuracy and artistic as well as psychological credibility. This fact alone introduces into the play a degree of openness and ambiguity that no amount of authorial intention can hope to dispel for good. As I said earlier, I find wholly unpersuasive the proposition that Seneca must secretly have meant his tragedy to be a systematic refutation of the philosophical positions that are advocated in his prose.