A good idea of these dramas for reading and recitation, with their accompaniment of cold, rhetorical pathos and their strong leaning toward the horrible, may be gained by the plays of Seneca.
Of the fifty tragedies of Theodectes we have the names of about thirteen (among them were Ajax, Alcmeon, Helen, Lynceus, Mausolus, Oedipus, Orestes, Tydeus, and Philoctetes) along with a few unimportant fragments.
The names of two of the latter, Socrates and Nomos (referring to a law proposed by Theodectes for the reform of the mercenary service) are preserved by Aristotle (Rhetoric, ii.
12 = Stobaeus, Anthologium 3.32.14):[3] ἅπαντ' ἐν ἀνθρώποισι γηράσκειν ἔφυ καὶ πρὸς τελευτὴν ἔρχεται τα<κ>τοῦ χρόνου, πλὴν ὡς ἔοικε τῆς ἀναιδείας μόνον· αὕτη δ' ὅσῳπερ αὔξεται θνητῶν γένος, τοσῷδε μείζων γίγνεται καθ' ἡμέραν It's fated for everything among mankind to grow old and to approach the end of its allotted time except, so it seems, wickedness alone: as the race of mortals does increase, by the same degree does wickedness day by day.
[4] Historian Flavius Josephus writes that Theodectes once endeavored to mention the Jewish Law in his poems, and became blind because of his encroachment on the Holy will of God at the time.