Ipsaque morte peior est mortis locus. The underworld in Seneca’s

The present paper analyses the episode of Hercules’ journey to the underworld in Seneca’s Hercules furens. The starting point is the contemporary psychoanalysis school of object relations; the research method combines psychoanalytic interpretive methods with a philological text analysis. The underworld passage, showing Hercules’ weakness and superbia, can be treated as the key to understanding the entire play.