Anna Lydia Motto and John R. Clark in their recent article on Seneca's Hercules Furens sought to refute what was becoming the orthodox approach to the play — an approach based on Aristotelian poetics and the view that Hercules' madness is a natural phenomenon arising from a tragic flaw, usually identified as pride and ambition. A long list of scholars have contributed to this orthodox approach, which was most fully articulated by Jo-Ann Shelton, who saw Hercules' madness as ‘an internal, psychological development.’ In Shelton's very negative view of Hercules, ‘pride and ambition motivate [his] actions. And madness is an extension of his boastfulness.’ According to Shelton, ‘through [Juno's] words, we learn of, even as they are occurring, the progressive stages in the development of Hercules' pride, ambition and madness.’ This ‘naturalistic’ interpretation of Hercules' madness may appeal to twentieth century psychological critics, but it fails to account for the literary tradition behind the figure of Juno in Seneca's play, and in failing to do so it accepts at face value her allegations that Hercules is an ambitious, overreaching adventurer intent on storming the heavens. Motto and Clark rightly perceive that Hercules is ‘persecuted’ by Juno and persecuted ‘not for what he does,’ but ‘for what he is’ (that is, the bastard offspring of her husband's latest amour with a mortal woman) and that the play is not a story of ‘the abuse of strength and the growth of destructive pride,’ but ‘the story of deliberately oppressed and maligned greatness.’

Titles count for something. When conferred upon poems and plays they have the capacity both to rouse and to control the expectations of potential readers and spectators. You buy tickets to a performance of the Antigone only to find when you take your seat that it is a modern comedy; whether you are furious or whether you are amused, you are at least surprised. The titles of literary works have implications; they may be designed to entice, to intrigue, to whet the appetite, to shock. Giving something a name enables it to be spoken about as a distinct entity; giving a text a name may also imply some particular fully or partially defined purpose or character. But while titles sometimes describe, they can also mislead. To the minds of critics, titles are apt to suggest certain issues and questions for consideration, but may also tend to discourage the consideration of other issues and questions of equal or even greater importance.

Almost every aspect of the Senecan text known as Phoenissae has been disputed except its authorship. The title, Phoenissae in the Etruscus, Thebais in the A-tradition of Mss, seems in each case to have been imposed for extraneous reasons, the former because of the close relationship between the text's second Jocasta-based phase and the opening episodes of Euripides' Phoenissae, the latter under the influence of Statius' epic poem of the Seven against Thebes. Euripides' chorus of Phoenician captives is not tightly integrated with his play, but there is no reason other than convention to assume that Seneca had intended to compose choral material for these scenes, still less to identify the chorus as Phoenician women. Do these scenes represent a complete dramatic action? Hardly, since the long opening dialogue lacks the characteristic expository material of a prologue and the extended last scene reaches a stalemate with no indication of either a moral resolution or a physical exodos. Indeed the crucial deaths of the brothers in mutual slaughter and of their mother from grief must surely have been the climax of any drama projected by Seneca as they were for Euripides. Do these scenes represent a continuous action in the Senecan sense, which need not entail continuity of both place and time? So most scholars in recent years have argued.

Seneca's Medea exhibits its protagonist in a world — it seems — without justice, a victim of the broken faith of Jason and Creon, of a cultural isolation resulting from the Argonautic expedition, a prisoner of her past actions. During the play Medea develops ‘a freedom of indifference’ through her scelus, her ‘crime’: the killing of Creon and Creusa, the destruction of Corinth, the murder of her children. Medea achieves this freedom from the ties of the world, not by killing her children, the objects of her love, but by destroying her love for Jason which makes those children and all else in life of value. In the following analysis of the play particular attention is given to the development of the figure of Medea. Attention is also given to the evolution of the verbal, imagistic, symbolic and ideological patterns which clarify the significance of that development and the tragedy's thematic focus.

Medea has dwarfed her ‘human fly’ of a husband. She plans poisoned gifts of Colchian gold for Jason's bride, inaugurates murderous rites (568-78). Despair and alarm for Jason's safety stir in the men of Corinth at the spectre: ‘Ode 3 is at the bridge between Medea the wife of Jason, Medea the human being, and Medea the manifestation of Hecate’, Bishop observes. The moment at the close of Medea's exchange with Jason is clearly critical, as she sees in a flash of certainty her route to revenge: sic natos amat? / bene est, tenetur, uulneri patuit locus (‘Does he love his sons so? / Splendid, he's mine, his weak spot exposed for my strike!’, 549f.). And we are caught still in the dramatic suspense demonstrated by Pratt which keeps spoken certainty of revenge specifically through infanticide back within the text until 924f., liberi quondam mei, / uos pro paternis sceleribus poenas date (“Children, once my children, / you pay the price of your father's wickednesses!). But already we must hesitate: did Seneca's Medea really start out in the play as a ‘human being’? Herington's phrase ‘Cloud of Evil’ is surely nearer the mark: ‘the raging sorceress Medea will shake the light from heaven as easily as she will shake the marriage torches from the hands of her enemies’ — and this is to translate lines 27f. from the play's prologue, manibus excutiam faces / caeloque lucem …

Many recent discussions of Senecan tragedy have concentrated on such issues as the author's relationship to previous Greek and Latin tragedy, the connections between his prose and dramatic works and problems of performance. Although these questions are important, I propose to set them aside as far as possible in order to examine the inner dynamics of one Senecan tragedy, Phaedra. I shall explore the ways in which Seneca's use of imagery, mythological allusion and characterisation bear upon the play's central theme, man's attempts to defy or control the forces of nature.

Phaedra begins with the organisation of a hunt. In Euripides' Hippolytus the hero entered returning from the hunt, but Seneca's Hippolytus, surrounded by a group of companions, is actually in action. The opening sentences of his first speech are commands (1-24). Indeed his first word is an imperative (Ite [‘Go!’]). He directs his men to different localities much as a general disposes his troops. His language suggests that there are analogies between a hunt and a military operation, for the successful hunter is a ‘conqueror’ (victor, 52) and the sequel will be a ‘lengthy triumphal procession’ (longo… triumpho, 79f.). Implicit in Hippolytus' exercise of power through the hunt is the notion of control. Note, for example, Hippolytus' orders concerning the hounds.

Aristotle in the Poetics repeatedly turned to the Oedipus Tyrannus for what he believed to be the finest examples of plot, structure, characterisation, and moral content in tragedy. Seneca's Oedipus contrasts with Sophocles' to a quite extraordinary degree; and it is these same elements, so much admired in Sophocles, which in Seneca are handled so differently. It is evident that Seneca was not in any sense trying to emulate Sophocles, or to meet the requirements of tragedy as laid down by Aristotle. What Seneca makes of his plot, characterisation and theme, derives only in the merest externals from Greek dramatic tradition; the nature of this Latin drama springs from sources often personal to Seneca, usually contemporary with him, and certainly Roman. We take the Oedipus as instructive example of Seneca's imperial tragedies, because its unlikeness to the Greek play often called Seneca's ‘model’ is so extreme and to many critics so disconcerting.

The two best-known essays on Seneca's Oedipus, by Willy Schetter and Gerhard Müller, argue that the play is fundamentally a tragedy of fate, and Müller goes so far as to call fate the ‘principal actor.’ Although it may be possible to question the importance that Müller attaches to the role of fate, it is clear that the universe of Oedipus is a determined one. Not only have Oedipus' murder and marriage been predestined, but the plague and its consequences have as well. If, however, fate's control of Oedipus' actions is indisputable, it is linked with a fundamental difficulty of interpretation: that of Oedipus' guilt, which the play in the end seems emphatically to affirm (see 875f. and 1025f. and below, pp. 149f.). What does it mean to speak of moral responsibility in the absence of free choice? The notion of Oedipus' guilt would seem particularly hard to reconcile with a Stoic interpretation of the play; for Oedipus' conscious intent is virtuous, and Stoicism judges action according to the will of the agent, not its result. The view that Oedipus is innocent, moreover, appeals to our own moral logic, with its individualistic bias. Yet in the end Oedipus himself is convinced of his guilt; otherwise his self-mutilation would be unintelligible. It is at least evident that Seneca is bringing prominently to our attention a conception of wrong-doing that cannot be understood in terms of Stoic ethics.

Seneca's Agamemnon is a revenge-drama; there is little scholarly dispute about this point. Agamemnon takes revenge on Troy, and then returns home to fall victim to Clytemnestra's desire for revenge. However the connection, if indeed one exists, between these two acts of vengeance has been a point of considerable scholarly disagreement. The issue of revenge is, of course, not limited to Agamemnon and Clytemnestra because many acts of vengeance are mentioned in this play. Agamemnon's murder, in fact, may be seen as the intersection of two tracks of avenging actions: those involving the house of Tantalus in particular, and those involving the Trojans and the Greeks. In addition, each deed of vengeance by one party may also be perceived from a different perspective as an expiatory action by another party. For example, Aegisthus' stabbing of Agamemnon can be viewed either as Aegisthus' revenge or as Agamemnon's expiation for depriving his cousin of a royal home and power (as well as Agamemnon's expiation for the cruelty of his father to Thyestes). The siege of Troy can be viewed either as the Greeks' revenge or as the Trojans' expiation for Paris' rape of Helen (as well as the Trojans' expiation for the perfidy of Laomedon). I said that there are two tracks of avenging actions, but more precisely there are three, because Clytemnestra's desire for revenge on Agamemnon can be separated from Aegisthus' desire; Clytemnestra's feelings of injury arose only after Agamemnon assumed leadership of the Greek expedition against Troy.

Athenian tragedies are dated by didascaliae that commemorate public performance, less satisfactorily by historical allusion or parody in dated comedy. Because Seneca's were never publicly performed and, therefore, lack didascaliae, and because precise historical allusions and comic parodies do not exist, we have no absolute date for Thyestes. Traditionally the tragedies are assigned to the eight year exile in Corsica (41-49). There the busy statesman enjoyed the leisure necessary for composition. But Quintus Cicero (Ep.Quint. 3.5.7) wrote four tragedies in sixteen days. The speed of Pliny's composition is attested. There is a further objection. Seneca did not write tragedies because he was bored. He had something compelling to say. More easily the fifties. Neronian classicism and the youth's histrionic enthusiasm stimulated the playwright, a view not inconsistent with Tacitus Ann. 14.52. Relative chronology, argued from the texts themselves on stylistic grounds, is another matter. Thyestes precedes Agamemnon.

Carlyle, On History

Petronius, Satyricon

Tantalus as paradigm disturbs. The cooking and serving of one's children's flesh to test the omniscience of gods seems gruesome index of perverse ambition, a hunger for knowledge, superiority, power, for which the everlasting frustration of corresponding bodily appetites seems not only fitting punishment but emblem — emblem of man's status as appetite, his natural affinity with the beast. To the saga of the Tantalidae Seneca devotes two plays: Agamemnon and Thyestes. Dramaturgically and stylistically they differ. Verse-dialogue, lyric metre, prologue integration, interrelation between chorus and act, the choral persona, the structuring and unfolding of dramatic language and imagery, the messenger's speech, dramatic structure, movement, tempo are handled very differently in each play. Even the number of actors and choruses differs. Formal similarities of course abound: the ghost-prologue, the protagonist-attendant scene, the thematic employment of imagery (and similar imagery at that), chorus-act ‘joins’, the spectacular and thematic use of ‘theatre’, the use of postclassical dramatic conventions — the five-act structure, entrance monologue-asides, choral exit and re-entry. But these only underscore the marked dramaturgical differences between the two plays, their distinguishing characteristics and defining style.

Orpheus has a prominent place in the choral odes of Seneca's Medea, Hercules Furens, and Hercules Oetaeus (the last, even if not by Seneca, may be considered within the context of Senecan drama). Outside of the tragedies, Seneca has only a passing reference to Orpheus as the figure with whom poetry begins (Ep. 88.39). In the tragedies he treats Orpheus as a magical poet-savior and a civilizing hero. In contrast to Virgil and Ovid, to whose versions of the Orpheus myth he clearly alludes, he deliberately de-emphasizes the brutal death at the hands of the Thracian maenads.

Seneca draws on the double focus of the myth in the earlier tradition. On the one hand Orpheus is the consummate poet who knows the mysteries of nature and through his art stands in special sympathy to it. On the other hand as a victim of love and the furor it may bring, he is also a tragic figure who through passion experiences loss, mourning, and death. In this latter aspect the Hercules Oetaeus contrasts his end unfavorably with the future apotheosis of its hero (H.O. 1035); but, as we shall see, Seneca elsewhere takes a more favorable attitude to the poet-hero.