The Passions in Play: Thyestes and the Dynamics of Senecan Drama

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T H E PA S S I O N S I N P L AY Thyestes and the Dynamics of Senecan Drama

This is the first monograph in English devoted to the most important of Seneca’s tragedies, Thyestes, which has had a notable influence on Western drama from Shakespeare to Antonin Artaud. Thyestes emerges as the mastertext of ‘Silver’ Latin poetry, and as an original reflection on the nature of theatre comparable to Euripides’ Bacchae. The book analyses the complex structure of the play, its main themes, the relationship between Seneca’s vibrant style and his obsession with dark issues of revenge and regression. Substantial discussion of other plays – especially Trojan Women, Oedipus and Medea – permits a comprehensive re-evaluation of Seneca’s poetics and its pivotal role in post-Virgilian literature. Topics explored include the relationship between Seneca’s plays and his theory of the emotions, the connection between poetic inspiration and the underworld, and Seneca’s treatment of time, which, in a perspective informed by psychoanalysis, is seen as a central preoccupation of Senecan tragedy. a l e s s a n d ro s c h i e s a ro is Professor of Latin Language and Literature at King’s College in the University of London, having previously taught at Princeton University and the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He has published widely on Latin literature, including Simulacrum et imago (1990) and co-editing, with Phillip Mitsis and Jenny Strauss Clay, Mega nepios: il destinatario nell’epos didascalico (1993) and, with Thomas Habinek, The Roman Cultural Revolution (1997).

THE PASSIONS IN PLAY Thyestes and the Dynamics of Senecan Drama

ALESSANDRO SCHIESARO

   Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge  , United Kingdom Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521818018 © Alessandro Schiesaro 2003 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published in print format 2003 - isbn-13 978-0-511-06125-7 eBook (NetLibrary) - isbn-10 0-511-06125-0 eBook (NetLibrary) - isbn-13 978-0-521-81801-8 hardback -  hardback isbn-10 0-521-81801-X

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of s for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

per mia madre e in memoria di mio padre

Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo. S. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams

Contents

Acknowledgements Note on translations

page ix xi

Introduction

1

1

Poetry, passions and knowledge

8

2

Staging Thyestes

26

The poetics of furor Tantalus’ tongue Framing Thyestes Tragedy, terminable and interminable

3

A craftier Tereus

70

Thracium nefas Crime, ritual and poetry The logic of crime Perfection, of a kind

4

26 36 45 61

70 85 98 117

Atreus rex

139

Non quis, sed uter De clementia

139 151

5

Fata se vertunt retro

177

6

The poetics of passions

221

Intertextuality and its discontents Passions and hermeneutics: the audience Allegories of spectatorship The challenge of epos

Epilogue

221 228 235 243

252

Bibliography Index of passages cited General index

256 269 281 vii

Acknowledgements

This book has been, alas, very long in the making and has also accumulated a large number of debts, both personal and institutional. It was begun in the idyllic surroundings of the Classics Department at Princeton, where it was fostered by much material support, but especially by the stimulating friendship of Josh Ober, Froma Zeitlin and Richard Martin, and, not far from East Pyne, that of Glen Bowersock, Adrienne Mayor and Daniel Mendelsohn. I also remember with gratitude the brilliant students of my graduate seminars, and the help I received on several occasions from excellent research assistants. In London, help at crucial junctures has come from John Henderson and Victoria Rimell. My colleagues Carlotta Dionisotti, Ingo Gildenhard, Roland Mayer and Michael Silk have been a great source of learning and friendship. The anonymous readers for Cambridge University Press have offered much appreciated criticism and advice. Michael Sharp has been a very supportive – and patient – editor. My thanks to them all. Sadly, Don Fowler can only be thanked in memoriam for all he has done for this book and its author. The book incorporates, in a revised form, material that has previously appeared in Vergilius 38 (1992); Materiali e Discussioni 39 (1997); J. Elsner and J. Masters (eds.), Reflections of Nero (London, 1994); C. Gill and S. Braund (eds.), The Passions in Roman Thought and Literature (Cambridge, 1996); P. Parroni (ed.), Seneca e il suo tempo (Rome, 2000). The quotation from Eugène Ionesco, La cantatrice chauve, scene 8, at the beginning of the Introduction is reproduced by permission of the publisher from Emmanuel Jacquart (ed.), Théaˆ tre Complet (Collection Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, no. 372) (Gallimard, Paris, 1990). ix

x

Acknowledgements

The quotation from W. H. Auden, ‘Epitaph on a Tyrant’ (1939) on page 117 is reproduced from Collected Poems by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd, London and Random House Inc., New York. Citations from Seneca’s tragedies are from Zwierlein’s OCT edition (1986). Translations of some authors are taken, by kind permission, from the editions listed in the Note on translations. Other translations are my own. Abbreviations of classical works correspond to those used in the Oxford Classical Dictionary and, when not available there, in the Oxford Latin Dictionary.

Note on translations

The following published translations have been used in this work: a e s c h y lu s : vo l . i i : ag a m e m n o n . l i b at i o n - b e a re r s . e u m e n i d e s . f r ag m e n ts , Loeb Classical Library Volume 146, translated by h . w. s m y t h , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1926. The Loeb Classical Library ® is a registered trademark of the President and Fellows of Harvard College; Lucan: Civil War, translated with introduction and notes by S. H. Braund (Oxford World’s Classics) (1992). Reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press; Ovid: Metamorphoses, edited by E. J. Kenney, translated by A. D. Melville (Oxford World’s Classics) (1998). Reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press; p l ato : vo l s . v/vi: t h e re p u b l i c, Loeb Classical Library Volumes 237/276, translated by pau l s h o rey , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936/1937. The Loeb Classical Library ® is a registered trademark of the President and Fellows of Harvard College; p lu ta rc h : vo l . i : m o r a l i a , Loeb Classical Library Volume 197, translated by f r a n k c . b a b b i t t , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1927. The Loeb Classical Library ® is a registered trademark of the President and Fellows of Harvard College; Seneca: Medea. With an Introduction, Text, Translation and Commentary, by H. M. Hine. Published by Aris & Phillips, Warminster, 2000; Fantham, Elaine: Seneca’s Troades. A Literary Introduction with Text, Translation, and Comc 1982 by PUP. Reprinted by permission of Princeton mentary; Copyright University Press. s e n e c a : vo l s . i/ii: m o r a l e s s ay s, Loeb Classical Library Volumes 214/254, translated by j o h n w. b a s o re , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1928/1932. The Loeb Classical Library ® is a registered trademark of the President and Fellows of Harvard College; s e n e c a : vo l s . v / vi : e p i s t l e s, Loeb Classical Library Volume 76, translated by r. m . g u m m e re , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1917/1920. The Loeb Classical Library ® is a registered trademark of the President and Fellows of Harvard College; s e n e c a : vo l . viii: xi

xii

Note on translations

t r ag e d i e s, Loeb Classical Library Volume 62, edited and translated by j o h n g . f i tc h, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002 (for Hercules furens). The Loeb Classical Library ® is a registered trademark of the President and Fellows of Harvard College; Virgil: Aeneid , translated by David West (Penguin Classics). Published by Penguin Books Ltd, Harmondsworth, 1991.

Introduction

Mme Martin: Quelle est la morale? Le Pompier: C’est a` vous de la trouver. (E. Ionesco, La cantatrice chauve)

Thyestes embodies a tragic conflict, and an even more tragic contradiction, between a desire to speak and the need to remain silent. Or, for us, between the desire to watch and the repulsiveness of what is on display. The sheer dramatic force of this tragedy – Seneca’s best1 – springs from casting Atreus’ horrific violence as the creative drive behind poetic fiction. Thyestes stands out among the other plays by Seneca precisely because it mobilizes in novel, engaging fashion the archetypical connection between tragedy and violence, power, sacrifice. In this play we witness in its most engaging form a sustained reflection on the power and limits of poetry, a reflection which on the one hand appears to sum up almost a century of Latin literature and on the other codifies ‘Silver’ poetics at its expressive (and, in a way, theoretical) peak. Thyestes foregrounds the complexities inherent in creating poetry as well as in reading or watching it. Atreus dominates the stage as a gifted poet, mired in the tension between order and chaos, passion and reason, enthousiasmos and craft. Inspiration, role-playing, deception and recognition are not only staged, but metadramatically analysed and questioned,2 and force the audience to reflect on whether enjoyment of this type of poetry is not also a form of collusion with it. 1

2

It has attracted Richard Tarrant’s remarkable commentary (Tarrant (1985)), to which my work is much indebted. Giancotti (1988–89, vol. i ) is also often useful. Among critical works specifically devoted to Thyestes Picone (1984) is especially important; Mantovanelli (1984) offers a stimulating reading of several aspects of the play; Guastella (2001) deals at length with Thyestes in the context of a wide-ranging analysis of revenge as a tragic theme in Seneca and his successors. In English, there is much of value in Littlewood (1997), with whom I occasionally, if independently, concur. Like sex, self-reflexivity was not invented in the sixties: the scholiast to Il. 3.126–7 already remarked that as she weaves a cloth portraying the contexts between Greeks and Trojans Helen is ‘a worthy archetype of [the poet’s] own poetic art’. See Bergren (1983) 79.

1

2

The Passions in Play

As the prologue shows, the poetic word, qua poetic word, can voice realities which would otherwise tend to be repressed, and the act of creation embodied in that word is inevitably an act of rebellion against logic and order. The complex framework of the prologue also renders the balance of moral responsibilities in the play difficult to determine and at every point pressures the audience to distinguish good from evil, illusion from reality, and hypocrisy from sincerity in the midst of conflicting, often contradictory, signals. The conflict between different forms of logic and different attitudes to the passions can be most readily observed in the opposition between the rationality of Thyestes and the chorus vis-à-vis the idiosyncratic unpredictability of Atreus. Atreus is not irrational, nor is he mad. He operates according to different logical protocols, closer to those of the unconscious than those normally adopted in waking life. Therein lies, I argue, a great part of his irresistible appeal. The primary aim of this book is to subject Seneca to the same kind of sustained literary analysis as is now taken for granted for other major Latin authors. I do not propose to offer a systematic psychoanalytic reading of Thyestes,3 although Freudian and post-Freudian theories of literature have shaped my approach to both literature in general and this tragedy in particular. Thyestes invites from the very beginning an engagement with concepts masterfully explored by Freud, since its prologue stages a conflict between the Fury’s order to unleash the tragedy and Tantalus’ desire to repress it. As the Fury succeeds, the words of the tragedy emerge as the product of a violent creative urge rooted in the underworld of the Furies and their passions: Thyestes, like the sixth book of Lucan’s Bellum Civile, is a harrowing exploration of the kinship between prophecy, death and poetry. The underworld and its passions, alluring and disconcerting alike, are always lurking beneath the surface of the text, just as in the most sacred part of the Roman forum a small opening, the mundus, permitted a ritualized and strictly controlled contact with the realm below: ianua patet, ‘the door is open’, Varro informs us, to the gods below, whose presence is controlled but not denied, regulated but not destroyed.4 In Seneca’s poetry, too, ‘for the people of Dis a way is given to those living on earth’ (Oed. 573: iter . . . populis Ditis ad superos datur). 3 4

Such as, for instance, Segal’s (1986) monograph on Phaedra, or Janan’s (1994) on Catullus. Varro ap. Macrob. Sat. 1.16.18 ( = fr. 66 Salvadore): mundus cum patet, deorum tristium atque inferum quasi ianua patet, with Coarelli (1983) 207–25.

Introduction

3

Freud’s theories about time and temporality and the post-Freudian focus on the unconscious as an alternative set of logical protocols5 offer valuable guidance as we approach a play that is marked by temporal discontinuities and leaps of logic, and approach a character such as Atreus, who is unable to overcome the past and to set clear boundaries between himself and his brother-doppelganger. Atreus will be able to punish his brother precisely because he is able to trust his instincts and to manipulate words in unpredictable and duplicitous ways, to appropriate, even, distinctly ‘feminine’ characteristics as they suit him: Thyestes’ ‘logic’, one-sided literalness, will be no match. In turn, these insights help us understand the role and function of Seneca’s intertextuality, a pervasive and intense feature of his writing, as indeed of other key first-century authors such as Ovid and Lucan. Ancient tragedy does not exist, of course, in a vacuum, and each play elicits from the audience a preferred set of emotional identifications. Thyestes could (and may even aspire to) invite the audience (an admittedly vague term) to identify with the emotional suffering of the eponymous hero, as he is disgraced, betrayed and horribly punished. We would fear with him as his brother’s deception unfolds, and suffer with him as his children are slaughtered. But the specific dramatic construction of Seneca’s Thyestes radically modifies this expectation: its elaborate metadramatic structure offers a detailed knowledge of the Fury’s and especially of Atreus’ machinations and makes us party to the superior level of knowledge the latter enjoys over his brother. We side with the creator of fear and horror, not with his victim: on the whole we do not fear with Thyestes, we plot with Atreus, even if the hallmark of any successful work of art, as Freud was the first to admit, resides precisely in its ability to fragment the audience’s identification. Specifically, since Atreus is endowed with all the characteristics of a successful creator of poetry, we inevitably pay tribute to his inventiveness as we revel in the aesthetic rewards of the tragedy and tacitly admit the possibility that powerful poetry may well be at odds with moral propriety. We do not have to posit a radically modern notion of consciousness to accept that Thyestes challenges the Stoic prescription that poetry should have an educational value. Among the modes of representation which have a particular impact on the interpretation of the play, I single out, especially in chapter two, the technique of framing. Frames, to be sure, have attracted considerable interest from literary theorists, and deservedly so. Yet I will stress their 5

I refer especially to the works by Matte Blanco and Orlando listed in the bibliography.

4


unusually emphatic role in the emotional dynamics outlined above. As Freud himself recognized, the very theatricality of the play acts as a frame by positing a distance between the audience and the events on the stage. In Thyestes, however, this general, external frame is supplemented by a very specific and elaborate set of internal frames which articulate different layers of dramatic action. These frames offer the audience an ordered and apparently reassuring context which acts to lower their intellectual defences and to pave the way for the emergence of violent, repressed contents. By the time these contents emerge fully in Atreus’ extraordinary mise en scène, the audience is engulfed in the emotional violence of the tragedy. Indeed, the same interplay of order and violence constitutes a defining feature of Atreus’ personality throughout, as can be observed, I will argue, in the eerily ordered procedure he follows in slaughtering his nephews. Once we accept that the very structure of Thyestes maps out a profound conflict, we must of course investigate the nature of the repressed emotional truth that we are invited to experience alongside Atreus, a truth simultaneously hidden and revealed by the play. This search is more awkward if we focus predominantly on Atreus’ cruelty or we privilege the political dimension of the conflict foregrounded by the chorus and by Thyestes – that is, Thyestes’ expulsion from his father’s kingdom, his exile, and Atreus’ subsequent willingness to welcome him back as a partner in power. The harrowing emotional background of the play can be glimpsed, rather, in Atreus’ brief but uncontradicted references to Thyestes’ past behaviour. Atreus’ revenge is not primarily motivated by issues of power, even if eliminating his nephews strengthens the dynastic position of his own offspring. The deep-seated causes of Atreus’ anger and violence are Thyestes’ incestuous relationship with Aerope and the consequent uncertainty about the true paternity of Agamemnon and Menelaus. By privileging a political reading of the play and heeding Thyestes’ reflections on the nature and limits of power, the chorus actually distracts our attention from the primal emotions which motivate Atreus and inevitably cast Thyestes in a less flattering light. Despite the fact that he has come to laudable conclusions about the relative merits of power and powerlessness, Thyestes nevertheless remains an incestuous adulterer. The political subplot of the play is to a significant extent an enabling device for the emergence of darker instincts and issues which could not immediately command centre stage. In turn, the truth which seeps out in the confrontation between the two brothers makes the moderate political outlook of Thyestes and the chorus, their insistence that passions can be tamed and conflicts amicably resolved, look very dubious indeed.

Introduction

5

Atreus’ anxiety about his paternity helps to explain why he plans and executes his revenge in such a way as to ascertain in the process his sons’ instinctive allegiance: in the end they do not inform their uncle of the impending slaughter, and by their deeds they show to Atreus that he is, in fact, their father, as he finally realizes with joy: ‘now I am convinced that my children are my own; now I believe that I can trust again the purity of my marriage-bed’ (1098–9: liberos nasci mihi | nunc credo, castis nunc fidem reddi toris). A predominantly political reading of the play opens up the possibility of a moralistic reading, but tames its deeper emotional power. Atreus’ anger at the incestuous betrayal and his horror at the thought that the children are not his own are emotions readily shared by (at least) a Roman audience, and his revenge fulfils a profound if repressed truth – that in a similar situation they too would want to exact a similarly gruesome retribution. If, as Freud famously argues about Oedipus Rex and Hamlet, successful tragedies focus on basic emotions and impulses of the human condition (a concept which retains full heuristic value even as we modulate it in a historical perspective), then we can understand why Thyestes is still considered the best of Seneca’s tragedies, and why its emotional impact is comparable to that of other great masterpieces of theatrical literature. As a play which goes to the heart of the connection between poetry, power and incest, Thyestes can rightfully aspire to a hallowed position in the canon. The temptation to read Atreus as a larger-than-life Nero – a trend that might have started very soon after the play was written6 – is still strong. As the pre-eminent literary work of (probably) the fifties,7 this tragedy is inevitably linked in our historical perception with the image of the emperor. The association may well be inevitable, but we should resist the temptation to see the tragedy as a document of sorts for the decadence of Neronian Rome, or – for that matter – as a manifesto for moral resistance to that decadence. All this would be predicated, obviously, even if not explicitly, on several dubious assumptions: that, for instance, (this) tragedy reflects the social situation in which it was produced; or that Nero was in fact the cruel and rather quirky tyrant who sang while Rome burned. Both assumptions, if proved, could most probably help our understanding of the play. Indeed, 6 7

Calder (1983) neatly shows that the character of Nero in the pseudo-Senecan tragedy Octavia follows in Atreus’ footsteps. There are no certainties about the dating of the tragedies, but metrical data point to a late date for Thyestes (Fitch (1981); cf. Nisbet (1990)). Calder ((1976) 28–30, (1983) 184) argues that Agamemnon is likely to follow Thyestes. For a more sceptical position on the dating of Ag. see Tarrant (1976) 5–6.

6


it is perfectly plausible that a play such as Thyestes could have political overtones. Augustus, for instance, paid good money for Varius’ Thyestes, which was staged after the victory at Actium and hinted at a connection between Atreus and Antony. Centuries later, Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, which relies on both the Thyestes and its Ovidian model,8 will offer a coded but perceptible critique of contemporary royal power. But if I refrain from casting Thyestes in the dubiously honorific role of prime witness for a reconstruction of ‘Neronian Rome’, it is because we know little about the circulation of the plays (the longstanding quarrel about their performability having all but displaced such a crucial issue),9 and thus we are ill at ease when it comes to evaluating the relationship between the text and its possible audience: the emperor?10 dissident aristocrats? family members? nobody at all? (Conversely, we do not know to what extent the archetypical sadist Nero transmitted to us by generations of awed and scandalized critics is a product of historical accuracy or the crystallization of anthropological horrors in an appealing – if repulsive – set of rhetorical topoi).11 Atreus’ winning combination of wit and violence would have looked very different if staged in front of Nero not long after Britannicus was conveniently dispatched, or in the secrecy of Seneca’s home as the Pisonian conspiracy took shape. As long as we lack for Seneca’s Thyestes the details we possess about the circumstances in which Varius’ Thyestes and Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus were represented, it is much better to focus on Thyestes as a reflection on power, creativity, perversion and desire which need not be explained in terms of a specific political background. A tragedy such as Thyestes must also have been a considerable challenge for its self-professed Stoic author: Atreus’ elaborate revenge plot is crowned with success, and Thyestes’ less than compelling gestures towards restraint and morality are met with defeat (compare the very different ending of Titus). Thus we would probably do well, on the one hand, to dispense with a political reading (especially a` clef ), and, on the other, to relinquish the desire to reunite the whole Senecan corpus under the reassuring, conclusive 8 9

10 11

The relative importance is debated; see p. 70 n. 1. I have little doubt that the tragedies, whether or not they were actually staged, were written as performable theatre plays. In practice, it is plausible that they were performed in small, private theatres, in the Hellenistic tradition; Calder (1976–77), (1984); Marshall (2000). Other theories: (i) Lesedrama, purely for recitation, as advocated most extensively by Zwierlein (1966) – cf. the review by Lefèvre (1968); (ii) ‘recital’ with several voices, but no costumes and no stage setting, rather like operas in concerto-form – see Fantham (1982) 34–49; (iii) full staging, actual or potential – see Walker (1969); Herington (1982); Sutton (1986). Calder (1976). See Elsner and Masters (1994) for discussions of Neronian culture, and specifically of the ‘myth of Nero’, from a variety of methodological points of view.

Introduction

7

sign of Stoic orthodoxy, or even only of Stoicizing morality. We must give up the illusion of a ‘Seneca morale’, who structures his literary production along the constant axis of philosophic doctrine, and welcome in its stead the nuanced image of an author who is at times enigmatic, often contradictory and always challenging. Yet precisely because it should discourage a specifically ‘Neronian’ reading, Thyestes can safely be considered the mastertext of ‘Silver’ poetics. The play pushes to breaking-point a debate about the role and function of the poetic word which lies at the heart of works such as Ovid’s Metamorphoses or Lucan’s Bellum Civile. Its exploration of passion, hatred and horror is more concentrated and sustained than in Lucan or Statius; its lumping together of the personal and the political amplifies a line of thought which is central to post-Virgilian literature, as are its preferred forms of expression – self-reflexive, highly charged, bordering on the illogical. I hope that this book will also shed some light on that peculiar poetics and its main representatives. I have framed the treatment of Thyestes with more general reflections on the nature of tragic poetry gleaned both from other Senecan tragedies and from his prosework. My goal was not to superimpose on the play a normative explanation that would forcedly orient interpretation, but, on the contrary, to claim that the tragedies’ own self-reflexive statements on the nature of poetry afford readers considerable latitude in their own exegetical explorations. Thus, in chapters one and six I argue from within Seneca’s own corpus for the legitimacy of an ‘open’ reading of Thyestes. In chapter two I disengage the metadramatic aspects of the prologue and reflect on the methodological implications of this self-reflexive aspect of the play. Chapters three and four are devoted to the analysis of the main characters, Atreus, Thyestes and the chorus. There I privilege what I consider to be the aspects of their textual existence that impact most extensively on the play as a whole: Atreus’ role as master of ceremonies in the sacrificial slaughter of his nephews and his unchallenged epistemic prowess; Thyestes’ contradictory and ineffectual penchant for moralization; and the chorus’s detachment from events and its incapacity to understand and affect them significantly. In chapter five I expand my analysis to a number of other plays in order to come to terms with two interconnected and fundamental aspects of Thyestes and other tragedies: their obsessive dealings with the past at the level of subject matter, and (most explicitly) their privileging of intertextual connections.

chapter 1


iterque populis Ditis ad superos datur (Seneca, Oedipus 573)

negat enim sine furore Democritus quemquam poetam magnum esse posse, quod idem dicit Plato (Cicero, De divinatione 1.80)

i At the core of Seneca’s Oedipus stands Creon’s stunning narrative of his search for a truth that has so far escaped his fellow-citizens, even that cunning antonomastic observer, the king of Thebes. Overcoming a deep reluctance to speak, on account of Oedipus’ threats, Creon retells his experience in all its gory detail (509–658). Suitably enough, the setting for his account is grim and terrifying, remote and obscure: ‘there is, far from the city, a wood dark with ilex-trees near the well-watered vale of Dirce’s fount’ (est procul ab urbe lucus ilicibus niger | Dircaea circa vallis inriguae loca, 530–1).1 It is in this extraordinary location, whose wilderness is the usual environment for magical contacts with the divine, that the sacerdos (548), soon referred to as a vates (552), begins his portentous rites. The prophet, who is possessed by divine powers, intones a magic song: ‘he unfolds a magic song, and, with frenzied lips, he chants a charm which appeases or stirs the evanescent ghosts’ (561–3: carmenque magicum volvit et rabido minax | decantat ore quidquid aut placat leves | aut cogit umbras), then ‘sings again, and looking at the ground, summons the shades with a deeper, stunned voice’ (567–8: canitque rursus ac terram intuens | graviore manes voce et attonita citat). Thus he succeeds in evoking the ghosts of the dead: ‘ “I am heard,” says the priest; “I have uttered prevailing words; blind Chaos 1

For a comparable setting in Thy. 641–90 and its interpretation see ch. 4.

8


9

is burst open, and for the people of Dis a way is given to those living on earth” ’ (571–3: ‘audior’ vates ait, | ‘rata verba fudi: rumpitur caecum chaos | iterque populis Ditis ad superos datur’ ). The prophet’s invocation has horrific consequences: ‘trembling’ (horror, 576) shakes the grove, the earth splits open (582–6), and a triumphal procession of infernal creatures abandons its chthonic dens: ‘then grim Erinys sounded, and blind Fury and Horror, and all the forms that eternal darkness creates and hides’ (590–2: tum torva Erinys sonuit et caecus Furor | Horrorque et una quidquid aeternae creant | celantque tenebrae). There follow (592–4) ‘Grief ’ (Luctus), ‘Disease’ (Morbus), ‘Old Age’ (Senectus), ‘Fear’ (Metus) and ‘Pestilence’ (Pestis).2 The prophet is not disturbed by this, unlike Manto (595–6). Then other ghosts appear: Zethus, Amphion, Niobe, Agave with the Bacchants, and Pentheus, a catalogue of tragic figures.3 Last, apart from the crowd, Laius shows his face, and speaking ‘in a rabid voice’ (ore rabido, 626), reveals the cause and nature of the plague. This scene powerfully enacts what poetry and poets do. The traditional connection between the magic and prophetic power of poets and seers, crystallized in the multifaceted use of the words vates and carmen, finds here a contextual motivation.4 The vates, who through his song, that is, through carefully chosen words endowed with active power, rata verba, can bring to life the underworld’s demonic creatures, is analogous to the poet, whose inspiration vivifies the characters of tragedy. The regenerative powers of the vates and the poet intersect in the parade of tragic characters described at 611–18: both the vates5 and the poet can access a domain open 2

3

4

5

Violenta fata, horridus Morbi tremor, Macies, Pestis and Dolor close off the tragedy in Jocasta’s final invocation at 1059–60. A different list of personifications appears in Her. F. 96–8 and 690–6 (see Fitch (1987) 150 and 300), recalling Virg. Aen. 6.273–81. At Ovid, Met. 4.484–5 Luctus, Pavor, Terror and Insania escort Tisiphone back on earth as instruments of Juno’s rage. See also the metaliterary cortège of Fama at Met. 12.59–61 (Credulitas, Error, Laetitia, Timores, Seditio, Susurri), with Zumwalt (1977) and Feeney (1991) 247–9. Zethus and Amphion (whose mother Odysseus meets in the underworld: Od . 11.260–5) figure in Euripides’ lost, but once very famous, Antiopa (177–227 Nauck2 ), and in Pacuvius’ tragedy by the same name (1–20a Ribbeck2 ). They build the walls of Thebes by playing on the lyre (Hes. fr. 182 Merkelbach and West). Niobe, Tantalus’ daughter and Amphion’s wife, gives her name to tragedies by Aeschylus and Sophocles. The subject was popular for plays and mimes well into imperial times, if Nero is reported to have sung that very role (Suet. Nero 21). Agave and Pentheus appear in Euripides’ and Accius’ Bacchae, and in Pacuvius’ Pentheus (for which we have only Servius’ argument, ad Aen. 4.469). All these characters are Theban; on Thebes as a privileged locus of tragedy see Zeitlin (1990), a classic paper. On vates see Newman (1967). The intersection of meanings between vates and sacerdos in passages such as Hor. Carm. 3.1.2–3 or Prop. 3.1.3 is also relevant (see the use of sacerdos at Oed . 548). On the importance of the concept of vates in Lucan see O’Higgins (1988) and Masters (1992). On carmen see Sharrock (1994) 63–4. The term vates does not appear to refer directly to dramatic poets, nor would it be possible for this particular self-reflexive narrative, which is necessarily linked with a mythic plot, to stage anything like

10


only to a non-rational, horrific form of Dionysiac inspiration,6 and both testify to the limits of a rigid faith in rational forms of explanation.7 ii When the play opened, we saw Thebes being slowly destroyed by the plague, and Oedipus paralysed by fear, after the Delphic oracle predicted the monstrous deeds he has in fact already accomplished. We are told that he fears ‘unspeakable things’ (infanda timeo, 15), yet his reaction is portrayed as excessive: such a situation should be confronted with reasoned poise, but Oedipus is completely engulfed by passions, as he declares at 25–7: cum magna horreas, quod posse fieri non putes metuas tamen: cuncta expavesco meque non credo mihi. When you dread some great calamity, you must fear also events which you think cannot happen. I dread every thing, and I do not trust even myself.

Jocasta’s exhortation at 82–6 confirms that we are to consider Oedipus’ emotions excessive, if not altogether unjustified: regium hoc ipsum reor: adversa capere, quoque sit dubius magis status et cadentis imperi moles labet, hoc stare certo pressius fortem gradu: haud est virile terga Fortunae dare. This very thing, I believe, is regal: to contain adversity and, the more dubious your station and the more the greatness of power wavers, the more to stand firm, brave, with unfaltering foot. It is not a man’s part to turn the back to Fortune.

This overwhelming fear is the real motor of the tragedy (not so, famously, in Sophocles). It is this that spurs Oedipus to engage in his painful search for truth through a tortuous path. His first chance to discover the truth is in fact vitiated by a residual trust in reason. In the scene beginning at

6 7

a properly named poeta. In Horace’s Letter to Augustus (Epist. 2.1.211–13), the tragic poet is equated with a magus who ‘with inanities wrings my heart, inflames, soothes, fills it with false terrors like a magician, and sets me down now at Thebes, now at Athens’. Further observations below, ch. 3, passim. By stressing the ‘irrational’ passions at work in the tragedies I do not want to deny the importance of the rational elements of artistry and craftsmanship which play an extremely prominent part in these texts. On the contrary, it is precisely thanks to the elaborate forms of its ‘mannerist’ rhetoric that ‘irrational’ and disruptive contents find their expression: ‘the figure is the perpetual tribute paid – and how willingly it is paid – by the language of the conscious ego to the unconscious’ (Orlando (1978) 169).


11

line 202, Creon brings the intricate and convoluted vaticinium of the Pythia (211; 213–14), but the king replies that he can easily handle the task, since this is precisely his prerogative: ‘to read riddles to Oedipus alone is given’ (216: ambigua soli noscere Oedipodae datur). Oedipus’ trust in his rational faculties outlasts even Creon’s second and much more explicit description of a magical rite, as Oedipus, while trying to deny the impact of what he has just heard, boasts that he knows himself better than the gods do: ‘and yet my soul, conscious of innocence and known to itself better than to the gods, makes denial’ (766–7: sed animus contra innocens | sibique melius quam deis notus negat). In the face of this new and powerful challenge he will have to delegate his responsibilities more than once, and will confess to the impotence of his vaunted rational skills. The real breakthrough in learning the truth occurs only because of the elaborate magic rite organized by Tiresias and Manto and reported to Oedipus by Creon. I want now to consider this compelling scene which lies at the structural and emotional centre of the play. When Creon and Oedipus meet, the king asks his brother-in-law to reveal the results of his consultation with the inhabitants of the underworld. The stichomythic dialogue (509–29) leading up to Creon’s long speech (530–658) is best read alongside a similar exchange between the Fury and Tantalus in the prologue of Thyestes, where Tantalus tries to resist the Fury’s order to bring to earth the ‘crimes’ (scelera) that actually constitute the play. His refusal to provoke scelera is a refusal to produce the words that recreate that scelus in the play. In Oedipus, Creon begs for the right to be silent, and Oedipus, like the Fury, must persuade him with force. Just as the words of Tantalus come into existence only because violence quashes his intransigence, Creon’s revelation is similarly marked as a forced confession of truths which he claims are best left unsaid. Further details concerning the relationship between the various characters should be taken into account. Oedipus, the vates and Laius are structurally linked. Oedipus consults Creon, who turns to the priest, who is then able to interrogate Laius. As is fitting in a mise en abyme,8 the inset scene is a microcosm of the larger framework, and this makes reflection perceptible. It is significant that Laius speaks with the same ‘rabid voice’ (ore rabido, 626) with which he had been summoned by the vates (rabido . . . | . . . ore, 561–2). With different degrees of power and knowledge, these three characters all embody a desperate search for truth, the very search that motivates the tragedy from its inception. Oedipus opens the 8

The standard treatment of mise en abyme is still Dällenbach (1977).

12


play with his investigation, and the answer to his questions will come only from tragedy. The search for truth thus becomes a search for poetry.9 The uncontrolled fear that pushes Seneca’s Oedipus to search for explanations (unlike his Sophoclean counterpart)10 eventually leads him to discover in the song of Laius the truth he was afraid to know. Passion leads to poetry, and poetry is the revelation of truths carefully hidden from the upper world of reason and power. As the vates literally finds a way for the creatures of Acheron to come back to earth (573: iter . . . populis Ditis ad superos datur), so Laius allows a terrible and suppressed truth to be voiced and heard. Poetry evokes Erinys, the new Muse of this poetry, but also the sources of a deeper knowledge, one which Oedipus’ proud rationality had failed to grasp. Knowledge can be found in a poetry which is profoundly passionate in its origins and inevitably chthonic in its appearance. It is a knowledge which exists and acts in lieu of reason and against it. At the end of the play, Oedipus, the cunning thinker and observer, the man who boasts his ability to interpret ‘traces’ (vestigium, 768) in his search for truth, ultimately destroys the instrument and symbol of his reason. Vision had already proved to be an unreliable source of knowledge. In the scene starting at line 303, Manto describes every phase of a sacrifice to Tiresias, who tries to understand why the plague is destroying Thebes. In spite of Manto’s accurate report, however, Tiresias admits finally that the truth cannot be found in this way, and alia temptanda est via (392). (It is worth noting, again, that great emphasis is placed on the medium of analysis: Tiresias’ blindness, which requires Manto’s description, emphasizes the problematic status of vision more than an eye-witness account would have done.) The analysis of signs through the eyes, the ultimate rational pursuit which recalls Oedipus’ pride in his rational faculties, is doomed to failure. As Tiresias explains, the usual signs cannot ‘express the name’ of the culprit (390–4).11 As he gouges out his eyes Oedipus becomes a second Tiresias, thereby implicitly recognizing the blind seer’s superior cognitive power (971),12 a power deeply rooted in the chthonic realm of blood and passions.13 9

10 12 13

This relationship is foregrounded by the fact that Oedipus had failed to draw useful conclusions from Manto’s prophecy at 233–8, because at that stage he was still proudly relying on his rational abilities. He failed to understand the oracle himself, but he took reasonable and obvious steps towards solving the enigma. In parallel fashion, the text did not emphasize at that point the ‘poetic’ character of the prophetess’s song, who was nonetheless called vates (230) and acted near the fons Castalia. 11 On alia temptanda est via see below, pp. 226–7. Cf. Bartezzaghi (1988). See ‘night’, nox (977); ‘darkness’, tenebrae (999). See the string of adjectives at 551–5: funesto (551), lugubris (553), squalente (554), mortifera (555).


13

iii Seneca’s tragedies offer repeated and complex descriptions of the passions in action and of the effects of passions on both agents and victims. My intention in this chapter, however, is not to analyse the passions which animate the characters themselves – Medea’s and Phaedra’s destructive love, for instance, Atreus’ thirst for revenge, or Thyestes’ own quivering determination to resist passion. Rather, I aim to examine the way in which these characters establish a connection between passions and poetic creation, and thus problematize the relationship between passions and aesthetic pleasure. The basic assumption of my enquiry, which I have already put to work in my reading of the central rhesis in Oedipus is that, at several critical junctures, the actions of certain characters embody a reflection of the text on itself and offer important insights into its poetics. Senecan tragedy is a highly metadramatic form of theatre; that is, one highly self-conscious in its reflection on the nature and modes of its existence. In this respect, Seneca’s metapoetic concerns are clearly on a par with those that animate works such as Ovid’s Metamorphoses or Lucan’s Bellum Civile.14 After Virgil, poetry appears increasingly unable to resist the compulsion to mirror in its own body the processes of composition and the narrative mechanisms that make it possible. Succumbing to this temptation can produce the pleasing, if slightly dizzying, effect of the mirror reflecting its image onto another mirror, endlessly complicating the modalities of reference. But it can also produce a sense of enclosure bordering on anguish. For such a mistake, after all, Narcissus dies. Such a line of enquiry forces the critic to confront similar dangers. It does offer, however, considerable strategic advantages over approaching the tragedies armed prevalently or exclusively with references to Seneca’s prose works, as if they could be considered a theoretical, systematic explanation of the convoluted, dense universe of the tragedies. The prose works, too, can be shown to oscillate between points of view, and to display self-repressive tendencies.15 If we are to link the tragedies to the prose works, we should at least be ready to dispose of any rash assumptions of hierarchy, and to see the connection going both ways. There is no reason to believe that the explicit statements of the prose works should have a higher claim to ‘truth’ than the tragedies, and thus be used to muffle the potential disruptiveness of the tragedies. 14 15

For an analysis of the role played by metapoetic elements in Ovid see Rosati (1983) and Hinds (1987); for Lucan see Masters (1992). On Senecan tragedy Boyle (1997) 193–207 is especially good. See pp. 20–1 later in this chapter.

14


While I cannot review in detail here the extensive critical debate on metadrama, some elements should be clearly established.16 ‘Metadrama’ and ‘metatheatre’, terms which play a prominent role in the modern theorization of the theatrical experience, encompass a variety of phenomena. It is useful, therefore, to retain Abel’s original term ‘metatheatre’ in order to designate only that most elaborate and (from a structural point of view) least ambiguous of ‘meta’-phenomena, the ‘theatre-in-the-theatre – a phenomenon which is as structurally constrained as it is historically circumscribed’.17 ‘Metadrama’, on the other hand, embraces more varied and often less intrusive ‘peripheral forms’18 which bear important semiotic implications. As the equivalent in theatrical terms to ‘metanarrative’, ‘metadrama’ can usefully indicate moments when the play, through a variety of devices, reflects on itself and its functioning. There are no proper ‘metatheatrical’ elements in Senecan tragedy, no techniques that fracture the ‘fourth wall’, and the dramatic illusion with it. Even in Thyestes the fictional illusion is never directly challenged and broken, and, although I will often refer to Atreus’ ‘performance’, the tragedy hosts no formalized, Shakespearean play-within-the-play, no Plautine slave ready to step aside and address the audience outside the boundaries of fictionality.19 Yet it would be difficult to play down the structural elements which, I will argue, make the audience aware of the constructedness of the performance by distinguishing between different dramatic levels. A pivotal role in such a complex structure is played by the recessing frames which encompass distinct sections of the tragedy. Framing, as I will suggest,20 is a structuring criterion which massively influences the audience reaction to the play. Although framing and metadrama are likely allies, framing by itself need not be metadramatic, and both terms should thus be retained in order to account for two different aspects of Senecan tragedy. As a working definition, which I will refine as I proceed, I will therefore consider to be ‘metadramatic’ the elements in the play that are explicitly concerned with the structural arrangement and the internal 16

17 18 19

Important insights on metadrama, and further bibliography, can be found in Hornby (1986). I have benefited mostly from Schmeling (1982), as well as from Hamon (1977), Prince (1977), Hutcheon (1984) and Stam (1992). Although his notion of metatheatre does not directly bear on my argument, Abel (1963) – who coined the term – is essential reading. Calderwood ((1971) 4–7) has useful remarks on the notion of metadrama that I will employ, which is not limited to ‘forays across or . . . around the borders between fiction and reality’, but is based on the assumption that plays are ‘also about’ plays. Abel (1963). I adopt a distinction suggested by Schmeling (1982) 10. See Schmeling (1982) 5 for a list of various phenomena, all to a certain extent ‘metadramatic’. 20 See below, pp. 45–61. See Slater (1985), and especially M. Barchiesi (1981) 147–74.


15

organization of the drama, especially as they focus on the ‘authorial’ role of certain characters, even if those references do not trespass the boundaries set up by the scenic space. For example, I will regard as metadramatic those parts of Thyestes which are extensively concerned with the preparation and the mise en scène of Atreus’ revenge, although neither the prologue nor act 2 breaks the barrier of scenic illusion. Atreus and other Senecan characters who also wear the robe of inspired creator transcend their role as characters in the play and go on to assume, implicitly but clearly, some of the functions that other forms of poetry assign to internal narrators. Endowed with a knowledge of events that is far superior to that of their fellow-characters (it is they, after all, who steer the plot in the desired direction), Atreus and his metadramatic colleagues double up as authors-on-stage and constantly remind us of the non-realistic nature of the staged events. It is no coincidence that metadrama plays such a vital role in tragedies which can only be products of an intensely self-conscious literary project. In Seneca’s Rome, tragedy is a form of expression which has by now lost the relative – ritual and political – immediacy which it enjoyed in its original Greek setting, and even, it could be argued, in the early stages of Roman literature. When Seneca writes his tragedies, writing tragedy inevitably appears to be a problematic, regressive operation: the metadramatic layers detectable in many Senecan plays testify to the harrowing complexity of that project. In other ways, of course, Seneca’s Rome is also one big theatrical stage, where power is constantly enacted and represented, and where, to borrow Dupont’s phrase, the actor is king – and the king is an actor. If power is necessarily predicated on a careful orchestration of symbols, Imperial Rome is in many ways the quintessential ‘theatre of power’.21 A final caveat. For twenty-first-century readers (and critics) the concept of self-reflexive, metadramatic or ‘narcissistic’ texts is reasonably familiar, if nothing else because of the extensive metanarrative inclinations of that most successful modern literary genre, the novel. Hardly less important is the use of metanarrative structures in contemporary cinema.22 Whether or not we accept the suggestion that the novel has always harboured from the very beginning the ‘seeds’ of a ‘narcissistic’ reading,23 we must acknowledge that metanarrative devices abound even in novels which have nothing in common with the most explicit products of nouveau roman. Yet it is precisely our familiarity with these ideas that risks impairing our 21 22

See Dupont (1985), with Woodman (1992) and Bartsch (1994). The topic is well treated by Stam (1992), with ample bibliography.

23

Hutcheon (1984) 23.

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understanding of its ancient counterpart. In modern fiction, metanarration is actively opposed to realism: the reader is constantly reminded of the fictional status of the representation. In the case of Senecan tragedy it would be misguided simply to see ‘narcissistic’ tendencies set against aspirations to realism. What forms of realism, if any, we can detect in ancient literature is, of course, a major question of literary history; among other factors, significant epistemological issues are involved here.24 Whereas Greek tragedy flirts constantly with the temptation – or illusion – of portraying reality, Senecan tragedy is seemingly oblivious to its allure. Therefore an understanding of metanarrative in the tragedies must necessarily be attuned both to the specific issues raised by Seneca’s writing and to the inclinations of Latin literature at that time.25 A distinction should, of course, be observed between ‘realism’ and ‘reality’. Senecan drama is emphatically alien to realistic forms of representation, despite the fact that some elements of ‘reality’ (itself a tricky term) can indeed find their non-realistic representation there. However, more often than not the attempts to read some of the plays as tragédies a` clef , starring Nero as Oedipus or Agrippina as Phaedra, look reductive and unconvincing.26 What the tragedies tell us about Seneca’s Rome is more interesting and less obvious. iv It is a mark of self-reflexivity in Seneca’s tragedies that the character who controls the dramatic action and displays superior knowledge and power on stage can often be seen as embodying the playwright, and can thus offer implicit insight into the poetics of the play. There are several candidates for this metadramatic role: Juno in Hercules furens, Medea, Atreus.27 I want to focus again, however, on a less typical and more complicated case, that of Oedipus. First, a brief detour. A passage from Medea offers an interesting introduction to the way in which certain parts of Seneca’s tragedies can tell us a great deal about how the author represents his own function. This does not mean, obviously, that they should be taken as public confessions of 24

25 26 27

It would be interesting to combine Auerbach’s (1959) treatment of realism with an analysis of metanarrative structures. This is particularly true in the case of a text of enormous density such as Petronius’ Satyricon, whose metafictional elements are prominently displayed. I will return to the whole question sketched here several times in the course of this book. See Calder (1976–77), an excellent discussion. I will deal in ch. 3 with how Atreus fits into this group of female characters.


17

the historical author, or that, qua metadramatic, they should have a higher claim to authenticity and univocity than anything else in the tragedy: they merely represent important moments for the text to reflect on itself and its poetics. In the prologue Medea seeks to transform the storm of her emotions (mens intus agitat, 47) into a revenge-plot. In doing this she is the prime mover of the play, and thus already close to embodying a quasi-authorial function. Medea’s decision to find a ‘way’ (viam, 40) for her revenge and, later, her selection of the most appropriate means to do so, and her careful realization of her plans – all constitute the decision to create and represent a tragedy. In this respect, Medea is similar to other characters who occupy a central position in Senecan plays: Juno in Hercules furens or Atreus in Thyestes. Indeed, Atreus’ first line on stage – 176: ignave, iners, enervis . . ., ‘undaring, unskilled, unnerved . . .’ – echoes Euripides, Medea 807–8: ‘let no one consider me impotent (), weak ( ) or spiritless ( )’.28 All appear on stage debating their vengeful plots out loud and giving voice to the torments of creation.29 In search of inspiration for her actions Medea invokes divine powers ‘with an ominous voice’, voce non fausta (12). The invocation30 to her idiosyncratic Muses follows the regular form of kl¯esis (13–17): nunc, nunc adeste sceleris ultrices deae, crinem solutis squalidae serpentibus, atram cruentis manibus amplexae facem, adeste, thalamis horridae quondam meis quales stetistis . . . Now, now, come to help me, goddesses who avenge wickedness, your hair defiled with dishevelled serpents; grasping black torches in bloodstained hands, come to help me, as grim as you were when you stood outside my wedding chamber.

Now, while she prays that the Furies approach with their dirty hair and black torches, she echoes the poet’s invocations for divine inspiration and concludes her proem, some thirty lines later, with a clear indication of the 28

29 30

The connection is particularly interesting in the light of the metaliterary resonances of line 176 itself; see below, pp. 131–2. Note also the possible connection between Thy. 257 and Eur. Med. 376–80, where Atreus and Medea discuss various options of revenge. The connection may be flagged by via at 244 (profare, dirum qua caput mactem via), cf. at Med. 376. A connection with Accius may also be discernible, see p. 81, n. 24. On the prologue to Hercules furens see below, pp. 183–4. See Petrone (1984) 13–14 and Nussbaum (1994) 445.

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forces she intends to rely on. Ira and furor, Medea claims, will drive her actions, and the plot with them (45–52): effera ignota horrida, tremenda caelo pariter ac terris mala mens intus agitat: vulnera et caedem et vagum funus per artus – levia memoravi nimis: haec virgo feci; gravior exurgat dolor: maiora iam me scelera post partus decent. accingere ira teque in exitium para furore toto. Wild deeds, unheard-of, horrible, calamities at which heaven and earth alike shall tremble, my heart deep within is planning – wounds, slaughter, death, creeping from limb to limb. Ah, too trivial the deeds I have rehearsed; these things I did in girlhood. Let my grief rise to more deadly strength; greater crimes become me, now that I am a mother. Gird yourself with wrath, and prepare for deadly deeds with the full force of madness.

Medea seems to be aware of the essentially literary nature of her pursuit. Not only in the sense captured by Wilamowitz’s dictum that she must have read Euripides’ tragedy about herself,31 but also because she explicitly hopes for literary recognition of her deeds. Directly after the invocation to her ‘Muses’ which we have just read, she goads herself by saying ‘let your repudiation be told as equal to your wedding’ (paria narrentur tua | repudia thalamis, 52–3). The tragedy we are watching fulfils this wish. In a similar fashion, Atreus vows that his revenge must not be approved by anyone in future, but nor must it be passed over in silence: age, anime, fac quod nulla posteritas probet, | sed nulla taceat (192–3). The mise en abyme (of sorts) from Oedipus is the one that delves deepest into the reconstruction of creative processes, and also the one that spotlights most forcefully what begins to appear as the circular nature of these processes. Fear will lead to poetry, and poetry will produce fear. But the metadramatic resonance of Oedipus is also different in important respects from that of other plays. To a limited extent, Oedipus embodies the functions of the playwright, as do Medea, Juno or Atreus. His quest for truth is the raison d’être of the tragedy and its catalyst, alongside Medea’s, Juno’s and Atreus’ thirst for revenge. But he must delegate these functions to 31

Wilamowitz (1919) iii.162. It is precisely her awareness of being ‘a Medea’ (910: Medea nunc sum, which harks back to 171: NUT. Medea – ME. fiam), of being part of a literary universe, that substantiates Medea’s metadramatic character.


19

other characters, presumably because his persistent trust in reason makes him unwilling to yield fully to the forces of inspiration and poetry. In the end, poetry and truth will come from a real ‘prophet’, a vates. Oedipus immediately rejects the truth offered to him, relying on the deceptive evidence that Merope is in fact married to Polybus. It will take a whole new act of the play, and a careful analysis of ‘traces’ (vestigia), for him to accept that he himself is the culprit. This delay between Laius’ revelation and Oedipus’ refusal to accept it intensifies the tragic irony that permeates the play. At this point, it is really only Oedipus, ever the cunning investigator, who continues to believe in reason and refuses to see the truth which the chthonic force of poetry laid out in no uncertain terms. His reaction to Laius’ revelation is to suspect that the vates and Creon are plotting to seize the throne (669–70). Oedipus’ staunch defence of his rational methods of pursuing truth and his consequent denial that passions can give answers to his doubts relate directly to his continued grip on power even in the face of overwhelming adversity. His tragedy dramatizes the relationship between poetry, passion and truth, and identifies a clear winner, since passion is shown to contain the seeds of truth and lead to its full discovery. We are now able to appreciate a fundamental difference in the way that Oedipus fulfils his responsibilities as protagonist and prime mover of the tragedy in comparison to Medea or Atreus. He does not enjoy the privileged, omniscient point of view of the author as they do. Stirred by passion, he instigates a drama, but one which he cannot control and which will eventually turn against him. Medea and Atreus act within the plots they have constructed, while remaining unchallenged masters of their plans. Their authorial function is always foregrounded and never challenged. Oedipus, on the other hand, quickly abandons his role as the omniscient author-on-stage and reveals his nature as an impotent spectator, repeatedly threatened by events outside his control. The enormous force of Oedipus’ dramatic consistency is predicated precisely on his double status as author and spectator. He sets in motion the search for poetry, which will turn him into a desperate victim – a guilty one, in fact. For us, he embodies the dangers associated as much with yielding to, as with resisting passions. Thus his plight dramatizes one of the hermeneutic possibilities offered to spectators. This tragedy represents the dangers of Oedipus’ passions, and, at the same time, the futility of denying that passions have a valid claim to truth. Poetry is a passion, not only for the enthusiastic author who creates it, but also for the audience which receives it.

20

The Passions in Play v

The contrast between passion and reason, which I have chosen to foreground, is often named as the crucial tension animating these tragedies. However, I should point out again that I will not focus primarily on the usual issues concerning the articulation of passions in the plays. My main topic in this preliminary chapter remains a more specific one: how passions can be described as the driving force not just behind the actions of several characters but also behind the very existence of the tragedies as we read them, and especially how this genetic function is represented in the tragedies. As we will see in chapter two, this genetic force operates at more than one level, since passion underlies the Fury’s determination to put in motion Atreus’ revenge, just as passion – for Aerope and for power – had motivated Thyestes’ initial attack on Atreus. By entertaining the hypothesis that passions might generate tragic poetry we are forced to face a set of familiar questions about the relationship between the tragedies and the rest of Seneca’s corpus. Yet one could reasonably claim that those questions are, in a sense, irrelevant. For instance, it could be argued that we should read each tragedy as a separate and selfstanding unit. Or that the attempt to relate the tragedies at any cost to Senecan philosophy is a petitio principii: we ask how the tragedies can be compatible with the author’s philosophy because we have already decided that they should be since they were written by the same person. But, in a sense, to do so would take away much of the fun. After all, no reader of Medea or Phaedra can avoid wondering how works of such extraordinary, even tropical luxuriance could have been penned by the same author who fiercely (if anything too fiercely), advertises elsewhere the virtues of stylistic restraint and moderation. The fluid state of Senecan chronology in general, and not just that of the tragedies, makes it impossible to advance a model of diachronic evolution and compels us to read the corpus as an unnaturally static organism, with all its lines of tension prominently and seductively displayed. The critical debate on the relationship between philosophy and tragedy in Seneca revolves around a predictably limited range of options. It is fair to say that the presumption of a connection, or even the desire to establish a solidarity of intents between the two domains, is still widespread. The emphasis, of course, varies widely, between those who tend to see in the tragedies and the prose work a similar ideological bent, and those more inclined to read in the tragedies a denunciation, if not a complete subversion, of the prose works’ restrained optimism. In an interesting, if somewhat


21

dogmatic, monograph Joachim Dingel has argued that the tragedies stand as a collective rejection of the Stoic philosophical principles advocated in Seneca’s prose works, and that they give voice to the author’s truer and deeper feelings.32 One of the fundamental shortcomings of Dingel’s ‘Romantic’ approach lies in the sweeping generalization on which it is based. By pitting ‘tragedies’ and ‘prose works’ against each other he forces very different texts into two seemingly homogeneous and compact categories. Surely no one would deny the consistency which characterizes the tragedies as a whole, in matters both stylistic and psychological. And a similar assessment can probably be made about the prose works, which display a broader range of modes, styles and tendencies, in part because of their diverse generic affiliations. But any interpretation of the relationship between the prose works and the tragedies which downplays the specific characteristics of each individual work is unsatisfactory, and may at best offer a general suggestion – almost a metaphor – of that relationship. As I mentioned briefly above, it would certainly be rewarding to highlight in Seneca’s prose the inner tensions it is often unable to repress.33 Even there, for instance, the well-known contradiction between the theoretical dictates of stylistic immediacy and the actual richness and rhetorical complexity of the style is a strong enough indication that significant conflicts may be lurking not too deep beneath the surface. vi Having briefly attempted to establish the premise that Senecan poetry and Senecan prose should be considered equally relevant in the attempt to understand the principles of the author’s poetics, I would now like to turn to the explicit remarks regarding the nature of poetry and poetic inspiration which Seneca offers at several points in his essays. In the process of representing the evolution of their plots, Juno, Medea, Atreus and, to a certain extent, Oedipus reveal the passions of furor, ira and metus as the sources which will inspire and animate their endeavours. These passages seem to amount to a very strong case for the genetic connection between passions and poetry, since they indirectly represent poetry as arising from a deeply passionate realm which has no room for reason. In his prose writings Seneca confronts this very issue and tries to resolve in several different ways the obvious tension between an ‘enthusiastic’ view of poetry and his teaching on the dangers of passions. In the pages that 32

Dingel (1974).

33

Interesting observations in Moretti (1995) and Too (1994).

22


follow, I address especially these attempts at resolution and connect them with the metadramatic features that I have already discussed, with the aim of reconstructing some aspects of Seneca’s theory of tragedy and tragic passions. The connection between poetry and furor (in the sense of enthousiasmos) dates back to Democritus and Plato.34 According to the Phaedrus (245a), which Seneca translates at De tranquillitate animi 17.10, ‘the sane mind (compos sui) knocks in vain at the door of poetry’.35 The enthused poet who transgresses his human limitations to reach out to the sublime nature of creation is mentioned several times by Seneca, and De tranquillitate animi offers a particularly interesting set of reflections. In the first chapter of the dialogue, Serenus voices his misgivings (1.14): Then again, when my mind has been uplifted by the greatness of its thoughts (cogitationum magnitudine), it becomes ambitious of words, and with higher aspirations it desires higher expression, and language issues forth to match the dignity of the theme; forgetful then of my rule and of my more restrained judgement, I am swept to loftier heights by an utterance that is no longer my own (oblitus tum legis pressiorisque iudicii sublimius feror et ore iam non meo).

Seneca replies that this need not be interpreted as the sign of a continuing sickness, but as the natural oscillation of a body not yet accustomed to its new health. By the end of the book, it is Seneca himself who admits that a moderate amount of relaxation (remissio, 17.5) and moderation of efforts (temperamentum, 17.7) are a necessary counterbalance for even the most temperate of souls. Even a certain degree of ‘drunkenness’ (ebrietas) can be welcome (17.8): At times we ought to reach the point even of intoxication, not drowning ourselves in drink, yet succumbing to it; for it washes away troubles, and stirs the mind from its very depths and heals its sorrow just as it does certain ills of the body; and the inventor of wine is not called the Releaser (Liber) on account of the licence it gives to the tongue, but because it frees the mind from bondage to cares and emancipates it and gives it new life and makes it bolder in all that it attempts. But, as in freedom, so in wine there is a wholesome moderation.

This leads rapidly to the conclusion of the dialogue, the locus classicus for the Senecan theory of the enthused poet (17.10–11): 34 35

Indeed enthousiasmos appears to be the invention of philosophers; see Tigerstedt (1970), with Finkelberg (1998) 19–20. The most explicit Latin statement for this notion of poetic enthusiasm, ultimately Democritean and Platonic, is probably Cic. De or. 2.194; see also Tusc. 1.64, and Pease’s commentary ad loc. for further indications.


23

For whether we believe with the Greek poet that ‘sometimes it is a pleasure also to rave,’ or with Plato that ‘the sane mind knocks in vain at the door of poetry,’ or with Aristotle that ‘no great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness’: be that as it may, the lofty utterance that rises above the attempts of others (grande aliquid et super ceteros) is impossible unless the mind is excited (mota). When it has scorned the vulgar and the commonplace, and has soared far aloft fired by divine inspiration, then alone it chants a strain too lofty for mortal lips (aliquid cecinit grandius ore mortali). So long as it is left to itself, it is impossible for it to reach any sublime (sublime) and difficult height; it must forsake the common track and be driven to frenzy and champ the bit and run away with its rider and rush to a height that it would have feared to climb by itself.

Although Seneca is not engaged here in an explicit declaration of poetics, and is addressing rather the issue of philosophical reflection, the presence of the Platonic quotation and the term cecinit (17.11) suggests that the same state of enthusiastic lack of control lies behind artistic creation and philosophical excitement.36 The idea that – magnitudo animi, ‘greatness of soul’ – is inextricably connected with – magnitudo ingenii, ‘elevation of thought’37 – and that the latter finds expression in the ‘sublime’ () is rooted in Cleanthes’ theory that poetry, thanks to metre, song and rhythm, is the only means which can adequately express ‘divine greatness’ ( ).38 Seneca, too, shares the idea that ‘the beauty of things’ generates enthusiasm, as he declares in rather extreme terms in Letters to Lucilius 108.7: A certain number are stirred by high-sounding phrases, and adapt themselves to the emotions of the speaker with lively change of face and mind – just like the emasculated Phrygian priests (Phrygii . . . semiviri) who are wont to be roused by the sound of the flute and go mad (furentes) to order. But the true hearer is ravished and stirred by the beauty of the subject matter, not by the jingle of empty words (rapit illos instigatque rerum pulchritudo, non verborum inanium sonitus).

The explicitly irrational overtones that mark the vocabulary of inspiration in this passage and make it so similar to its poetic counterparts are quite surprising in the light of the Stoic strictures against passions.39 36 37 39

I will return more extensively later to the importance of the sublime in the poetics of Thyestes. See below, pp. 127–32. On the issue in general see Michel (1969). 38 SVF 1.486. See Mazzoli (1970) 47. See Ps.-Longinus, Subl. 7.3. It is even more important that these passages confirm quite explicitly that yielding to passions constitutes also a superior form of knowledge. The enthusiasm of the poet or the philosopher is what enables him to apprehend which prose, i.e. a rational and controlled form of expression, would be unfit to represent (Cleanthes puts it precisely in these terms in the fragment I alluded to above, n. 38).

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While, in this particular context, the orgiastic frenzy of the converted is justified by their sources of inspiration and their goals, more complex problems arise if we try to apply this theory to poetry in general. In his wideranging analysis of the issue, Giancarlo Mazzoli has argued that, following Posidonius’ strictures against Chrysippus’ theory of ‘apathy’ ( ), Seneca is here embracing Peripatetic elements, namely the notion that a controlled and moderate excitement can in fact lead to ‘cheerfulness’ (! ).40 According to Mazzoli, this explanation holds true for poetry as a whole. But the vocabulary of Letter 108.7, with its references to the ‘Phrygian eunuchs’ (Phrygii semiviri), does not suggest moderation and control. And even if this explanation can be considered satisfactory in the specific case of philosophical enthusiasm, it becomes more difficult to apply it to poetry in general, since poetry is not bound to the exclusive representation of philosophical examples (paradeigmata). Cleanthes’ Hymn to Zeus would plausibly fall into this category, but Seneca’s tragedies, with their powerful representations of negative examples, are a different matter altogether. This problem is enhanced by other Senecan passages which show a considerable degree of ambivalence towards poetry. At De brevitate vitae 16.5 Seneca attacks the frenzy (furor) of the poets that nurtures the errors of men by offering lascivious images of the behaviour of gods. Furor is recognized here explicitly as an error of the poets who abandon moral themes and educational messages.41 As other passages make eloquently clear, poets are not bound by the respect for truth or morality.42 Their inspiration is potentially dangerous precisely because it transcends, ‘like an oracle’ (more oraculi),43 the limits of human rationality: this can lead to the possibility of speaking, ‘with a voice greater than human’ (grandius ore mortali),44 great philosophical truths, or, on the contrary, of depicting falsehoods in appealing terms and deceiving mankind. Like Hesiod’s Muses, who can say many true things but also many false things resembling truth (Theog. 27–8), the poets are ambiguous and ultimately unreliable sources who should be constantly checked for accuracy and moral worthiness. I emphasize, again, the chthonic aspect of poetry and the ambivalent nature of the poet because these are the elements that resonate most dramatically in the tragedies. When he describes the soul of the irate man, at De ira 2.35.4, Seneca compares it with the terrible fictional underworld created by poets: 40 43

Mazzoli (1970) 55–6. See De brevitate vitae 2.2.

41

See De vita beata 26.6. 44 See Tranq. 17.11.

42

See Ben. 1.3.10; 1.4.5.


25

As is the aspect of an enemy or wild beasts wet with the blood of slaughter or bent upon slaughter; as are the hellish monsters of the poet’s brain, all girt about with snakes and breathing fire; as are those most hideous shapes that issue forth from hell to stir up wars and scatter discord among the peoples and tear peace all to shreds; as such let us picture anger . . .

Erinys and the Furies are just fictions, Seneca says, and in fact, as he points out in Consolatio ad Marciam 19.4, the whole apparatus of punishment in the underworld is a product of poetic craftmanship: Reflect that there are no ills to be suffered after death, that the reports that make the Lower World terrible to us are mere tales, that no darkness is in store for the dead, no prison, no blazing streams of fire, no river of Lethe, that no judgement-seats are there, nor culprits, nor in that freedom so unfettered are there a second time any tyrants. All these things are the fancies of the poets, who have harrowed us with groundless terrors (luserunt ista poetae et vanis nos agitavere terroribus).

Poets create fictional representations devoid of truth and use them to stir human souls with empty terrors: the close connection established here between ‘play’ (lusus) and terror is particularly striking. Poetry springs from the same form of enthusiastic furor as that which generates the inspired sublimity of the philosopher, but it is not confined to great moral truths. Its morality and educational potential are linked to its contents: poetry can instruct, but can also deceive and mislead, and exploit its capacity to strike the mind for objectionable purposes. It has a positive function when it celebrates the beauty of ‘divine greatness’ ( ), as, again, in Cleanthes’ Hymn to Zeus. But what happens when it generates examples of vices, as do so many tragedies? How do these examples, presented through the powerful means of poetic expression, affect the audience? These are the main questions that will accompany this exploration of Thyestes, a play dominated by the ambiguously attractive figure of Atreus; a play, to be sure, that makes it exceedingly difficult to evaluate the nature and purpose of poetry, which is rooted, as it clearly is in Thyestes, in the disruptive world of passions. I will leave to the very end of this book, after engaging at length with appealing portraits of evil and less than compelling attempts at moral rectitude, to examine the effects that the tragic text might have on the audience, and how it could be deemed compatible with the Stoic requirement that poetry have an educational function.

chapter 2

Staging Thyestes

the poetics of furor libet reverti (Seneca, Agamemnon 12)

Quis inferorum sede ab infausta extrahit avido fugaces ore captantem cibos? quis male deorum Tantalo visas domos ostendit iterum? peius inventum est siti arente in undis aliquid et peius fame hiante semper? Who drags me forth from the accursed abode of the dead, where I snatch at food ever-fleeing from my hungry lips? What god shows Tantalus again the homes he saw to his ruin? Has something worse been invented than parching thirst in the middle of water, worse than ever-gaping hunger?

The Thyestes begins by staging the process of its own construction. Tantalus not only wonders at the unexpected turn his punishment is taking, but also questions the very existence – the theatrical essence – of the drama that is bringing him on the scene. His questions, while ostensibly bearing on his fate as a mythic character, also look in anguish at the unfolding of the tragic action, as if he watches himself from the outside becoming a character of a dramatic text. Who dragged him from the depths of the underworld and forced him onto this stage? What is this novel situation that is worse than hell, one where, paradoxically, he is punished by being forced to punish others? Similarly, the subsequent fight between the Fury and Tantalus’ shadow embodies a creative conflict between passive forces, on the one hand, which try to resist the drama’s violence, and active forces, on the other, which create and further the dramatic action. This initial self-reflexive gesture is one of the strategies that complicate the audience’s perception and suggest with increasing intensity a fractured, conflictual understanding of the text. Violence is encoded already in the 26

Staging Thyestes

27

prologue’s dialogic form, which opposes two parties with different opportunities and levels of power to reinforce words with deeds. Division, fracture and conflict impose themselves as dominating forces from the very first lines, when Tantalus’ evoked shadow addresses his yet unknown counterpart. Dialogue, it should be noted, appears only in this Senecan prologue,1 and we can better evaluate the implications of this form of expression if we compare this prologue with that of Hercules furens. The enraged Juno who delivers the entire prologue of Hercules furens is in many respects parallel to the Fury: both superhuman characters provide the impetus which sets in motion the dramatic action, and both correspond in function to the creative momentum which underlies each tragedy as a whole. Moreover, Juno’s words and attitude establish a close connection with the role of Juno in Aeneid 7, a text which, as we will see shortly, forms an essential backdrop to the prologue of Thyestes. Yet the two scenes differ significantly: Juno’s speech is not a dialogue and does not stage a conflict between a sinful creative impulse and a moral resistance to the creation of nefas, a conflict represented in Thyestes by the Fury and Tantalus’ shadow respectively. This structural difference deprives the prologue in Hercules furens of the dialectical contrast between silence and speech – one which, I will now argue, is central to Thyestes. Tantalus has a dramatic consistency which is not altered by the Fury’s final, inevitable victory. He is a guilty man, as he readily acknowledges: ‘I should be the one to suffer punishment, not to inflict it’ (Thy. 86–7: me pati poenas decet | non esse poenam). His moral opposition to the Fury’s demand is heightened by this admission. The Fury wants Tantalus, who resists in vain, to arouse new, terrible scelera on earth. Those scelera are the tragedy itself, since Thyestes is precisely the tale of a compelling and memorable scelus. Textual markers are uniformly pointed: this prefatory debate might be read as a symbolic enactment of the birth of the play and an open (although far from neutral) window onto the forces that preside over its creation. Indeed, if Tantalus’ firm appeal to moderation had succeeded, there would be no Thyestes at all. Tantalus is appalled at the request to come back to earth; his anguish is clear in the repeated questions in lines 1–5, which I quoted above. Iterum is the keyword here.2 Tantalus questions the senseless 1 2

Hine (1981) offers a persuasive analysis of the prologue and its thematic links to the rest of the play. Iterum is often a metaliterary mark. Haupt suggested early on that at Ov. Fast. 3.471–2 the adverb signals Ovid’s allusion to Catullus’ Ariadne (Haupt (1875–76) 71, with Conte (1985) 38). The verb soleo has similar functions; see Leo (1878–79) 149–55. See later, p. 193, n. 44, for further observations on this topic and its thematic relevance.

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drama of re-enactment, and the novel ‘invention’ (see inventum, line 4). Indeed, the Fury reminds him that his scelus would not be original: ‘let the banquet be spread – you will come as a guest to a feast of crime well known to you’ (62–3: epulae instruantur – non novi sceleris tibi | conviva venies). But what is personally and morally unacceptable is precisely what this tragedy and its poetics are made of: re-enactment, repetition, obsessive return of, and return to, what could (and should) best be left unsaid.3 The tragedy firmly rejects the moral option of silence. The question that Tantalus utters here for the first time is also the key question of the play as a whole: why again?4 The Fury inspires scelera, the very scelera that make up the whole of Thyestes. Thus the Fury effectively inspires this poetry: from the very beginning of the play, there is no escaping the daunting connection between poetry and scelera. Tantalus does try to resist. After much remonstration he finally assumes a firm and fierce stance (90–5); he simply will not obey: ‘here I will stand, and prevent the evil deed’ (95: stabo et arcebo scelus). His attempts to impart moral guidance and avoid errors would befit a sage, perhaps even a Stoic sage. His resistance, however, does not last long, as the Fury tortures him on stage (96–100): quid ora terres verbere et tortos ferox minaris angues? quid famem infixam intimis agitas medullis? flagrat incensum siti cor et perustis flamma visceribus micat. sequor. Why do you terrify me with the sight of your lash, and fiercely threaten me with your twisted snakes? Why do you rouse pains of hunger deep in my innards? My heart burns with fiery thirst, and in my burnt-out vitals a flame is darting – I follow you.

Tantalus’ words attest to the impossibility of his moral stance and of his didactic purpose. The vehement language which describes his intentions 3

4

The prologue of Agamemnon is centred as well on the topic of return and reiteration. While the relative chronology of Ag. and Thy. in Seneca’s literary production cannot be certain, in mythical time the actions of Ag. come after those narrated in Thy. and are in fact a direct consequence of them (on the dating of both plays see p. 5, n. 7). The ghost of Thyestes in the prologue effectively recalls Tantalus’ shadow, especially since they both claim to prefer the underworld to the devastation awaiting them on earth. Thyestes’ exclamation at line 12 – libet reverti – means precisely that he would rather return to the underworld than assist in the terrible revenge which is about to happen. It should be noted, however, that according to Fitch’s metrical study (Fitch (1981)), Ag. would have been written before Thy. For a more sceptical position on the dating of Ag., prior to Fitch (1981), see Tarrant (1976) 5–6. The whole issue is reassessed in Nisbet (1990). It is tempting to charge transcribor (13) with metadramatic resonances, if for no other reason than its etymological reference to writing. The verb is seldom used in poetry, see Virg. Aen. 5.750, 7.422; Ov. Ibis 187; Met. 7.173. See Tarrant (1985) 89 and Jacobi (1988) 153.

Staging Thyestes

29

(moneo, stabo, arcebo)5 is suddenly and irrevocably reversed in the bitterly ironic repetition of a Stoic-sounding sententia: sequor is what the sage should say when facing destiny, since it is better to follow willingly than be dragged.6 Naturam sequi – ‘following Nature’ – is the paramount principle of a truly Stoic life: Tantalus does after all respect this intimation, his true nature being germane, rather unsurprisingly, to that of the Fury.7 The Fury’s power is the power of unavoidable destiny. The Fury is the Muse of scelus, and her victory is the victory of poetry (of this particular brand of poiein) against the repressive silence advocated in vain by Tantalus. Tantalus’ pained questions at 96–9 synthesize a number of associations that Thyestes will repeatedly explore. First, his doomed resistance to the Fury’s instigation recalls the similar reaction that seers display when the god violently overpowers them and forces them to speak – compare the violence of Apollo on the Sybil at Aeneid 6.77–80 and 100–1.8 Secondly, the particular choice of images makes the languages of erotic desire and creative impulse intersect, and cruelly deprives both of their comforting metaphorical value. The standard association of fire and eros connotes the Fury’s order as an irresistible, sinful desire redolent of erotic passion.9 At the same time, these images are bound up with the vocabulary of poetic enthusiasm, the burning power which moves poets to create.10 In this respect the passage anticipates a central moment later in the play, where a merciless Atreus 5

6

7

8

9 10

Compare the behaviour of virtus in De vita beata 15.5 (illa fortiter stabit et quidquid evenerit feret); the fact that the sapiens remains unperturbed in the face of natural disasters: stabit super illam voraginem intrepidus (Q Nat. 6.32.4); Ben. 5.2.4: (vir bonus) ad ultimum usque vitae diem stabit paratus et in hac statione morietur; and Jocasta’s attempt to stop the massacre at Thebes: ibo, ibo et armis obvium opponam caput, | stabo inter arma; petere qui fratrem volet, | petat ante matrem (Phoen. 407–9). The original suggestion, however, is probably Virgilian; see Aen. 7.373–5 (Allecto and Latinus): his ubi nequiquam dictis experta Latinum | contra stare videt, penitusque in viscera lapsum | serpentis furiale malum totamque pererrat. Sequor was athetized by many editors, starting with Bentley, but modern texts retain it (see Hine (1981) 267–8 for a defence of Bentley’s decision). Its relevance for the characterization of Tantalus is crucial, and the parallel with Thyestes’ sequor at 489 seems decisive. See also Plaut. Trin. 1–2, a passage with interesting points of connection with the whole scene at hand; see below, n. 18. There are other instances of half-lines in the Senecan corpus, such as Phoen. 319, Tro.1103 and Phaed .605. See Calder (1984); Tarrant (1985) 103; and Zwierlein (1986) 298. Cf., for instance, Seneca’s use of sequor in De vita beata 15.6 (with Schiesaro (1996)), where he claims that the principle always to be followed is deum sequere, ‘follow god!’ An emphasis on sequi occasionally lends Aeneas a Stoicizing connotation; see M. W. Edwards (1960). At Aen. 6.77–80 the language (excussisse, fatigat, domans, fingit premendo) alludes to the taming of horses, which could also be suggested by the use of verbere at Thy. 96 (cf. the whipping motion suggested by 101, on which below, p. 178, n. 6). For the metaphoric associations of ardere and related images see Fantham (1972) 10–11 and 87–8. On the ‘warmth’ of inspiration see Ov, Fast. 6.5–6: est deus in nobis, agitante calescimus illo: | impetus hic sacrae semina mentis habet and especially Ov. Tr. 4.1.41–4, in explicit connection with Bacchic inspiration: utque suum Bacche non sentit saucia vulnus, | dum stupet Idaeis exululata modis, | sic ubi mota calent viridi mea pectora thyrso, | altior humano spiritus ille malo est. For the association of

30


strives to find inspiration for his new creation – the plot of his revenge and of the rest of the tragedy (250–4):11 dira Furiarum cohors discorsque Erinys veniat et geminas faces Megaera quatiens: non satis magno meum ardet furore pectus, impleri iuvat maiore monstro. Let the fearful band of Furies come, the discord-sowing Erinys, and Megaera, shaking her twin torches; the frenzy burning in my breast is not great enough; some greater horror must fill me.

Atreus, far from being tortured by the Furies, appeals to them for the impulse to act creatively, to produce in effect a dramatic text which he will perform and inflict upon Thyestes. Both passages implicitly depict the Fury’s impulse as a sinful desire which finds its final realization in poetry. This furor cannot be resisted, and the play enacts the sinister force of a victory against morality, reason and fas. In this same prologue Seneca offers intimations about the literary background in which we should situate these declarations of poetics. Three texts in particular stand out, belonging to three authors whose presence looms large in Seneca’s tragic world: Euripides, Ovid and Virgil.12 Friedrich Leo first pointed out a connection between the prologue of Thyestes and the dialogue between Iris and Lyssa in Euripides’ Hercules furens (822–74).13 The actual verbal coincidences are faint, but the overall structure of the dialogue is close to Seneca’s scene in important details. At the beginning of the second part of the play, the two infernal characters appear on stage to lay the curse of madness on Heracles. Like Tantalus’ shade, Lyssa does try to resist Iris’ commands, albeit unsuccessfully (Eur. HF 843–54). No physical torture ensues, but Iris replies scornfully to Lyssa’s noble attempt at changing her mind: ‘Zeus’ wife did not send you here to display wisdom’ (857: ’ ’ ).

11 12

13

calor and prophetic inspiration, see Ov. Met. 2.641 incaluitque deo, quem clausum pectore habebat (Ocyrhoe). On this passage see p. 46 below. A connection with Accius’ Atreus, cautiously suggested by La Penna (1979) 136, n. 1, cannot be ruled out. According to La Penna, inc.inc. lviii and lix Ribbeck2 must refer to Tantalus, and might thus belong to the prologue. Leo (1912) 201–2. Calder ((1983) 185–6) compares the scene with the dialogue between Hephaestus and Kratos at the beginning of Aeschylus’ Prometheus (1–87), mediated through Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus, and argues that Sophocles, not Euripides, is Seneca’s primary model.

Staging Thyestes

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As she prepares to yield, Lyssa invokes the sun as witness of her resistance and unwillingness to accomplish the monstrous deed demanded by Iris (858–73). At the end of her speech, which illustrates in great detail the events that will soon follow (and is thus similar to the anticipatory function of the Senecan prologue), Lyssa sends Iris back to Olympus and enters the house where she will wreak destruction (872–3).14 In Thyestes Tantalus seems to perform both actions, since he first enters the house, and then is sent back to the underworld by the Fury.15 Seneca’s Fury herself offers at least one other strong signal of intertextual self-awareness in her first, most effective speech (Thy. 54–7): ornetur altum columen et lauro fores laetae virescant, dignus adventu tuo splendescat ignis – Thracium fiat nefas maiore numero. Decorate the lofty column and let the doors be green with festive laurel; a fire worthy of your arrival must shine brightly – then let the Thracian crime be done, but multiplied.

Through allusive amplification (maiore numero)16 the Fury inaugurates here a map of intertextual connections which will prove crucial for the whole play: the Thracian nefas par excellence is the bloody story of Tereus, Itys and Procne, especially as told in Ovid’s Metamorphoses.17 The Fury underlines her truly metadramatic function by showing her knowledge of mythical and literary history, and by explicitly alerting us to the allusive resonances of the play. The Fury’s intertextual competence is one of the ways in which she acquires a metadramatic status: her references to other poetic texts reflect the genesis of the play and its modes of signification, and go well beyond the dramatic level acted on the stage. What she effectively proposes and realizes is a self-conscious mise en abyme of Ovid’s and Sophocles’ story which will span the remainder of the play. The agonistic stance expressed in maiore numero acknowledges the new dimension that this dramatic repetition of nefas will assume. As we will see shortly, any repetition of nefas 14

15 16

17

The chorus notes the Bacchic connotation of her actions in the house: (897), a significant detail in view of the Bacchic overtones of Thyestes; see pp. 133–8. A further element of contact between this scene and Seneca’s play can be detected at HF 865–6, where Lyssa specifically points out that Heracles will not be aware that he is killing his own children. The succession of these actions is somewhat problematic; see below, pp. 178–80. On the thematic importance of maius and related concepts see pp. 130–1. Maius in relevant contexts can often also encode a statement of poetics, as in Virg. Ecl. 4.1 and Aen. 7.44 (where the ‘Iliadic’ part of the poem is ‘greater’ than the first part, just as the Iliad is ‘greater’ than the Odyssey). See later, pp. 179–80.

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is necessarily worse than its model – more obsessive, more painful, more ‘guilty’. At the level of poetics, the repetition will encourage the exploration of a more intense and emotionally loaded language of recursive patterns and of elaborate internal echoes.18 The most evident intertext for the prologue of Thyestes, however, is the opening scene of Aeneid 7.19 The sequence of events in Virgil’s poem is more intricate, but the fundamental pattern is very similar. Enraged by the apparent triumph of the Trojans, who have finally landed in Italy (7.286–322), Juno summons Allecto and commands her to bring discordia and destruction into the Latin field (7.335–40), thus igniting the war against Aeneas and his people: tu potes unanimos armare in proelia fratres atque odiis versare domos, tu verbera tectis funereasque inferre faces, tibi nomina mille, mille nocendi artes. fecundum concute pectus, dissice compositam pacem, sere crimina belli; arma velit poscatque simul rapiatque iuventus. You can take brothers who love each other and set them at each other’s throats. You can turn a house against itself in hatred and fill it with whips and funeral torches. You have a thousand names and a thousand ways of causing hurt. Your heart is teeming with them. Shake them all out. Shatter this peace they have agreed between them and sow the seeds of recrimination and war. Make their young men long for weapons, demand them, seize them!

The Fury’s orders to Tantalus strongly echo Juno’s words (Thy. 83–6): ante perturba domum inferque tecum proelia et ferri malum regibus amorem, concute insano ferum pectus tumultu. First throw your house utterly into confusion, and bring in strife along with you, bring passion for the sword, the bane for rulers, and with wild upheaval strike the savage breast. 18

19

In spite of some notable differences (Calder (1983) 196, n. 22), it is also worth noting the possible connection (Leo (1912) 202) with the prologue (1–3) of Plautus’ Trinummus, where Luxuria and Inopia, mother and daughter, set in motion the action of the comedy: LU. sequere hac me, gnata, ut munus fungaris tuom. | IN. sequor, sed finem fore quem dicam nescio. | LU. Adest. em illae sunt aedes, i intro nunciam. There is no traumatic conflict in this dialogue, which is quickly resolved by Inopia’s only slightly puzzled obedience. Alone on the stage, Luxuria embarks on an extended and explicitly metadramatic monologue, addressing the audience directly and giving precise indications about the play that has just begun. Tarrant (1985) has useful notes (listed at p. 85, n. 2) on several of these passages. The model is pointed out by Monteleone (1980) 77. See Timpanaro (1981) 127–8, for a thorough analysis of the connections between Juno in Hercules furens – where the goddess acts again as the primum mobile of furor – and in the Aeneid .

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The vivid expression concute pectus as well as the insistence on domus as the target (Aen. 7.336 and Thy. 83) and the use of inferre (7.337 and 84) link the two texts. Furthermore the results of Juno’s and the Fury’s destructive orders are alike; the Fury points out to a bewildered and reluctant Tantalus how his presence has affected the house of the Pelopides (Thy. 103–7):20 sentit introitus tuos domus et nefando tota contactu horruit.21 actum est22 abunde. gradere ad infernos specus amnemque notum; iam tuum maestae pedem terrae gravantur. Your house feels your entering and has recoiled in horror from your unutterable contagion. Enough! More than enough! Go to the caves of the underworld and your familiar river; already your step falls heavily on the saddened earth.

The Fury’s words resonate with Juno’s final admonition to Allecto (Aen. 7.552–4): terrorum et fraudis abunde est: stant belli causae, pugnatur comminus armis, quae fors prima dedit sanguis novus imbuit arma. There is enough terror and lying. The causes of war are established. They are fighting at close quarters and fresh blood is staining whatever weapons chance first puts into their hands.

When Allecto, at Juno’s request, returns to Acheron, she relieves earth and sky of their painful burden. Terrae gravantur at Thyestes 107 elaborates on Virgil’s description of the forces of evil once again oppressing the earth (Aen. 7.568–71): hic specus horrendum et saevi spiracula Ditis monstrantur, ruptoque ingens Acheronte vorago pestiferas aperit fauces, quis condita Erinys, invisum numen, terras caelumque levabat. Here they point to a fearful cave which is a vent for the breath of Dis, the cruel god of the underworld. Into this cave bursts Acheron and here a vast whirlpool opens its pestilential jaws, and here the loathsome Fury disappeared, lightening heaven and earth by her absence. 20 21 22

Lines 103–7 foreground the issue of the temporal structure set out in the prologue: see below, ch. 5, pp. 178–80. On the possible Bacchic overtones of this image see below, p. 138, n. 60. This use of ago (which is absent in the Virgilian model) can be considered a technical theatrical term; see OLD s.v. 25 and 43. But the very form actum est is often used to describe a situation which has deteriorated beyond repair, and in the Fury’s mouth it is appropriate to preserve especially this sense of ultimate destruction.

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In Seneca’s prologue, however, the impact of this founding scene extends further, beyond the direct association between the Fury’s and Allecto’s acts of pollution. The second part of the dialogue between the Fury and Tantalus, for instance, echoes Allecto’s fateful visit to Turnus at Aeneid 7.406–74. The metaphoric taedae with which Allecto excites Turnus after his initial refusal (‘with these words she threw a burning torch at the warrior and it lodged deep in his heart, smoking with black light’ – sic effata facem iuveni coniecit et atro | lumine fumantis fixit sub pectore taedas, 7.456–7) become the all too real fires employed by the Fury to bend Tantalus’ well-intentioned reluctance at Thyestes 98–9. Here we should contrast Turnus’ self-assured, even overtly mocking reaction to Allecto, appearing to him in the shape of old Chalybe, with Tantalus’ high-minded, explicitly moral concerns. Another significant point of contact between the two texts can be established. Before approaching Turnus, Allecto had successfully stirred Amata to action (7.385–90): quin etiam in silvas simulato numine Bacchi maius adorta nefas maioremque orsa furorem evolat et natam frondosis montibus abdit, quo thalamum eripiat Teucris taedasque moretur, euhoe Bacche fremens, solum te virgine dignum vociferans Not content with this, she flew into the forests, pretending that she was possessed by Bacchus, and rose to greater impieties and greater madness by hiding her daughter in the leafy woods, hoping to cheat the Trojans out of the marriage or delay the lighting of the torches. ‘Euhoe, Bacchus!’ she screamed. ‘Only you are worthy of the virgin . . .’

The diffracted allusion to this passage is to be found in the ‘second prologue’ of Thyestes, where Atreus deliberates the best way to obtain his revenge. In act 2 Atreus is under the inspiring spell of furor and ira introduced into his house by Tantalus and the Fury: structurally, this position coincides with that of Aeneid 7. Atreus’ words at Thyestes 252–4 – ‘the frenzy burning in my breast is not great enough; some greater horror must fill me’ (non satis magno meum | ardet furore pectus, impleri iuvat | maiore monstro) – are redolent of Amata’s maius nefas and maior furor at 7.386. Maius, at any rate, is the hallmark of Atreus’ monologue throughout.23 The connection between the two scenes, supported by structural as well as lexical arguments, sets up an association between Atreus and the world of Bacchic frenzy: this 23

Seidensticker (1985) identifies in the maius-motif the binding element of this play, and indeed a fundamental characteristic of Senecan drama in general.

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is a relationship whose importance, as we will see, goes well beyond the scope of this specific instance.24 By pointing directly at Aeneid 7 and acknowledging Virgil’s archetypal role as a poet of furor, Seneca reconstructs a meaningful sequence of literary history and invokes a powerful model for his own nefarious endeavours. Seneca establishes an important continuity with the second half of the Aeneid.25 The thematic connection, as we have seen, is clear. Juno’s very words to Allecto – ‘you can take brothers who love each other and set them at each other’s throats’ (7.335) – leave us in no doubt that the new battles in store for the Trojans will be of a different kind from those told in the first six books. The merging of Trojans and Latins at the end of the poem retrospectively casts their conflict as a civil war. Seneca now shows that the fratricidal origins of Roman history, symbolically enshrined in the conflict opposing Romulus to Remus, reach even further back.26 Yet it is precisely this tale of horrors which is Virgil’s ‘greater work’ (maius opus, 7.45), his ‘higher order of things’ (maior rerum . . . ordo, 7.44), or, indeed, the maius nefas of Amata (7.386) which Atreus, too, will strive to emulate. These Virgilian echoes also show how Thyestes condenses the horrors of civil strife in the polarized contrast between two brothers. The theme had obvious, obsessive resonances in the culture of the first century.27 By alluding to Virgil, Seneca implicitly reflects, too, on a crucial issue of poetics, the same issue that Tantalus had raised in his opening speech: why again? He also defines his own writing as repetition, as a painful, irresistible return to horrors which have already been sung. Seneca thus situates his tragedy in a tradition of Juno-inspired poems (and actions) whose authoritative model he traces back to Virgil: these poems are characterized by the violent subversion of an ordered world structure guaranteed by Jupiter, and allied with the chthonic (and, crucially, female) forces of ‘irrational’ passions and desires.28 But Thyestes differs from the Aeneid in another relevant detail. Whereas in Aeneid 7 Allecto is instructed by Juno, in the tragedy her counterpart, the Fury, acts of her own accord, and the absence of a divine figure prevents a further displacement of moral responsibility on the gods. The Fury has learnt her lesson and now acts on her own initiative. The second half of the Aeneid impresses on the reader a set of ethical dilemmas which the first, for all the suffering it described, did not present 24 25 26 27 28

See ch. 3, passim. On Seneca and Virgil see especially Putnam (1995) 246–85. Hardie (1993) 23; Quint (1993) 79; see Hor. Epod. 7.1; Luc. 1.95; Virg. Aen. 7.317; 12.313. A useful survey can be found in Frings (1992). On the model of epic inspired by Juno, as opposed to the epic under the sign of Jupiter, see now Hershkowitz (1998) 95–124.

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so poignantly. (The final books of the poem are also much more extensively engaged in the detailed description of killing – one thinks particularly of the large battles in 10 and 11 – and thus confront the reader with the same questions about the aesthetic appeal of violent representation which are inevitable for Seneca’s and Lucan’s audience. In this respect it is important to stress the continuity of first-century literature vis-à-vis its Virgilian model.29 ) At the beginning of book 7 a ‘happy ending’ is within reach; hence Virgil’s (and Juno’s) decision to start the poem all over again, as it were, with a second proem, and to expand it considerably with a detailed account of a quasi-fratricidal strife is all the more disturbing. Poetic innovation and moral responsibility run hand in hand; the latter six books are more troubling because they represent new and ‘unnecessary’ amplifications of the plot, because they reproduce the physical horrors of war which the Trojan exiles hoped to have left behind, and above all because they give voice to the unsurpassed evil of civil war. All the moral implications of these poetic strategies are active in Seneca’s text, which – as a whole – stands as a challenge to the repressive decorum of silence. Thyestes repeatedly presents ethical instances (which are more or less convincing, more or less hypocritical) and pits them against a subversive passion which generally gains the upper hand. It is around ethics and its enemies that the play enacts the struggle between repression and subversion. From an ethical point of view, then, Seneca is as guilty as Virgil, since he chooses to retell a story whose devastating contents he knows well: once again, to sing of nefas is in a sense to perpetrate it.30 Seneca raises the stakes of his moral conflict by giving voice at the beginning of the play to an alternative which the Aeneid had only implied: Tantalus does proclaim his intention to steer away from the Fury and her orders, but his ultimate defeat only amplifies the horror of nefas. Yet this is precisely what Virgil had done, and Seneca attempts in turn to displace moral responsibility by invoking such a mighty predecessor. The spiral of violence and poetry about violence, it seems, offers no escape. ta n ta lu s ’ to n g u e libet loqui pigetque (Seneca, Phaedra 637)

The presence of a perceptible metadramatic level in the prologue of Thyestes implies a complex of voices, motives, contrasting forces and cross-references 29

See Narducci (1979) 80–9.

30

A point very effectively made by Masters (1992), esp. 10.

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which must undermine a moral, didactic reading. The metadramatic dimension acts as a bent mirror, which multiplies and distorts, complicates and blurs our perception. The central action of the play – Atreus’ revenge – will have to be perceived by the audience within the alienating frame provided by the prologue, with its discordant attempts at establishing responsibility and causal connections. In experiencing the play as a whole, we cannot forget what the prologue implies for the rest of the tragedy: an intrinsic complicity between tragic nefas and its representation is imposed on the audience in the revelation of the Fury’s ‘backstage’ deliberations. The audience is made to realize that the aesthetic pleasure afforded by the play is coextensive with that nefas, since the prologue, in offering a tangible embodiment of the power of poetry and its source of inspiration, has established that connection before their very eyes. We can walk out there and then. But if we keep watching (or reading), we forfeit our claim to na¨ıve innocence. The play’s very existence, the prologue tells us, is guaranteed by the unrelenting evil of the characters who perform it, such as the Fury and Atreus. Only if we neglect the structural importance of the prologue is it possible to locate the ‘essence’ of the play in the contrast between two ethical types, Atreus and Thyestes, whose actions may bear comparison with, for instance, a character described in De ira or some sort of Stoic proficiens.31 Constrained by the supposedly clear-cut choice between a Stoic proficiens with suspect credentials and a blood-thirsty, monstrous tyrant, the audience might have reasons to doubt the poignancy of the play and its emotional impact. The real dramatic and emotional crisis of the tragedy lies not so much in the tension between Thyestes and Atreus – both of whom, for different reasons which I will consider further on,32 are unlikely ethical prototypes – as in the ethically troubling connotations of the very act of representation that is foregrounded by the prologue. From this point onwards the audience will be continuously forced to negotiate the conflicting aspects of that representation – pleasure and pain, moral horror and, at a certain level, an implicit acceptance of that very horror. The Fury and Tantalus establish in a tense dialogue the connection between their deeds and the tragic text they will bring to life. The Fury intensifies 31

32

For information on previous treatments of the play along these lines, and a new proposal, see Lefèvre (1985). I will consider below (pp. 163–76.) to what extent the chorus is left unscathed by the cognitive turmoil that is forced on the audience in the prologue and can thus be seen as a reliable incarnation of a superior moral stance. See below, pp. 139–51.

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the tragic plot by conquering Tantalus’ resistance and instigating him to pollute the house of his descendants (Thy. 23–9): perge, detestabilis umbra, et penates impios furiis age. certetur omni scelere et alterna vice stringatur ensis; nec sit irarum modus pudorve, mentes caecus instiget furor, rabies parentum duret et longum nefas eat in nepotes; Forward, cursed shade, and drive your sinful house with fury. Make them vie in every kind of crime and draw the sword on either side; let there be no limit to shame in their anger; let a blind fury incite their souls; make the rage of parents last, and make the long trail of sin reach their children’s children.

What she is plotting is indeed a nefas, as she reiterates at line 56: ‘let the Thracian crime be done, but multiplied’ (Thracium fiat nefas | maiore numero). In a series of instructions spanning lines 52 to 67, the Fury effectively organizes the staging of the drama. Fiat nefas (56), epulae instruantur (62: ‘let the banquet be spread’) and, finally, mixtus in Bacchum cruor | spectante te potetur (65–6: ‘let blood mixed with wine be drunk before your eyes’) articulate in a careful sequence the fundamentals of her plot, the specific form the pollution will take, and the audience which is supposed to be watching the performance. The Fury insistently declares her intention to subvert the moral order of events, to give space (and voice) to what is normally repressed and silenced. The language of subversion defines her speech at several critical junctures. She begins by voicing her desire that the two restraining qualities of modus (26) and pudor (29) give way to furor (27), rabies (28) and, of course, nefas (28). In a similar vein, she cautions that no repulsion for novel crimes will be tolerated: ‘give no one time to hate a past crime – let a new one unceasingly arise’ (29–30: nec vacet cuiquam vetus | odisse crimen: semper oriatur novum). Ira will know no bounds, will in fact overturn all prohibitions: ‘let there be nothing which wrath deems forbidden’ (39: nihil sit ira quod vetitum putet). In the war between morals and immorality that she is at the same time describing and waging, there will be one clear winner, which will rejoice over previously powerful leaders of people: Libido victrix (‘Lust triumphant’, 46). The hierarchy of crimes will also be overturned: in the house of the Pelopidai, she assures, stuprum will become levissimum (‘a trivial crime’, 47). Her conclusion is sweeping and unequivocal: ‘let fraternal sanctity and faith and every right be trampled under foot’ (47–8: et fas et fides | iusque omne pereat). Nefas will hold sway in

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a completely subverted, topsy-turvy world, from which fas has been utterly banished. It is worth lingering on the formulations that the Fury adopts in describing her project. She insists on a subversion of values which can best be described as a denial of accepted norms and values: fas will be replaced by nefas. Both of these terms encode an important linguistic aspect: originally, fas and nefas referred to days in which certain kinds of utterances were allowed or forbidden.33 By ordering fiat nefas, the Fury is precipitating the speaking of ‘unspeakable’ crimes which will exist for us precisely because they will be written, spoken, represented. Tantalus’ desire to preserve fas, and resist the attack of nefas, is equally couched in linguistic terms (89–95): ducam in horrendum nefas avus nepotes? magne divorum parens nosterque (quamvis pudeat), ingenti licet taxata poena lingua crucietur loquax, nec hoc tacebo: moneo, ne sacra manus violate caede neve furiali malo aspergite aras. stabo et arcebo scelus.34 Shall I, their grandfather, lead my grandsons into horrible crime? O great lord of gods, and my father too (though this fact may cause you shame), even though my tongue be condemned to severe punishment and tortured for speaking, I will not withhold even this; I warn you, do not defile your hands with execrable slaughter; do not stain your altars with a madman’s crime. Here will I stand, and prevent the evil deed.

The dialectic of free speech and repression articulated in these intricate lines is revealing. In the subverted world foreseen by the Fury’s forceful advocation of nefas over fas, in both its linguistic and moral dimensions, Tantalus feels that his own ability to announce the moral injunctions he wants to deliver is painfully restrained by the Fury’s torture. His lingua . . . loquax (92) will be punished for trying to advocate the values of fas, which no longer have any place in a world dominated by the Fury. Later on, the play will pointedly pit Atreus’ resourceful wordiness against Thyestes’ 33

34

As Varro explains in his definition, according to which the dies nefasti are those in which the praetor cannot utter (nefas fari) the official formulae ‘do’, ‘dico’, ‘addico’ (De lingua Latina 6.30); cf. Ov. Fast. 1.47–8. Scelus and nefas are used in largely overlapping fashion by Seneca (in spite of, for instance, the distinction suggested by Cic. Paradoxa 25). Nefas, however, foregrounds in its very semantic structure a conflict between ‘talk’ and ‘silence’ which is central to my interpretation of the play. A significant instance of this contrast is found in the exchange between the messenger and Theseus at Sen. Phaed . 991–3: NUNT. o sors acerba et dura, famulatus gravis, | cur me ad nefandi nuntium casus vocas? | TH. ne metue cladis fortiter fari asperas.

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inability to recognize that the words he hears are shifty signifiers in a scheme that is too elaborate for him to understand. Even at his most tragic Thyestes is not nearly as articulate as his rhetorically proficient brother. Groping in vain for an explanation of his despair as the tragedy reaches its dénouement, he privileges non-verbal forms of communication, tears, moans, gestures: ‘grief loves accustomed tears; miserable people have an ominous desire to weep. I feel like uttering ill-omened laments; I feel like tearing apart my clothes, full of Tyrian purple; I feel like shrieking’ (952–6: maeror lacrimas amat assuetas, | flendi miseris dira cupido est. | libet infaustos mittere questus, | libet et Tyrio saturas ostro | rumpere vestes, ululare libet). Soon afterwards, once Atreus’ crime has been unveiled in all its magnitude, words again seem to fail him: ‘what cries in my misery shall I utter, what complaints? What words will suffice me?’ (1036–7: quas miser voces dabo | questusque quos? quae verba sufficient mihi?).35 Tantalus, on the other hand, had once been a victim of his own excessive verbosity. The mention of his ‘impertinent tongue’ recalls a salient aspect of his mythological record, the fact that he had been punished by the gods for revealing their secrets to human beings. The prologue of Euripides’ Orestes refers explicitly to Tantalus’ ‘intemperance’ (), and, largely through Euripides’ influence, he is later consistently identified as the paramount example of ‘supremely audacious verbal hybris’.36 In Seneca’s Thyestes, Tantalus’ hybris, paradoxically, consists in verbalizing a moral restraint: the cruel thwarting of his attempt in the midst of painful torments graphically exposes how, in a Fury-dominated world, there is only room for advocating nefas, for voicing and acting the language of pollution and crime.37 The prologue of Thyestes provokes an uneasy reflection on the very nature of theatrical experience,38 but its intricate and ambivalent intersection of silence and speech has much in common with another first-century literary work, Lucan’s Bellum Civile. Just before the climactic moment of the battle at Pharsalus, Lucan, who is fraught with doubts and worries about the 35

36 37 38

The messenger confesses his difficulty in reporting Atreus’ crime at 684: quis queat digne eloqui?, a topical declaration of inadequacy (see Tarrant (1985) 189). But Thyestes’ words are motivated well beyond their topicality. Willink (1983) 32; cf. Willink (1986) 79–80. Ovid, for instance, calls him a taciti vulgator (Am. 3.7.51) endowed with a garrula . . . lingua (Am. 2.2.44). Critics have connected the contrast between ‘voice’ and ‘silence’ in authors such as Ovid with the issue of free speech in the Principate; see Baldo (1989) and Feeney (1992). It is useful to keep in mind as a background the Romans’ tormented attitude towards actors and their ethical status; see C. Edwards (1993) 99, and the whole chapter for discussion of the actors’ ambivalent role in society.

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very nature of his task, entrusts a pained reflection to the narrator’s voice (7.552–6):39 hanc fuge, mens, partem belli tenebrisque relinque, nullaque tantorum discat me vate malorum, quam multum bellis liceat civilibus, aetas. a potius pereant lacrimae pereantque querellae: quidquid in hac acie gessisti, Roma, tacebo. Mind of mine, shun this part of battle and leave it to darkness, and from my words let no age learn of horrors so immense, of how much is licensed in civil war. Better that these tears and protests go unheard: whatever you did in this battle, Rome, I shall not tell.

The prologue of Thyestes explodes the contradiction which Lucan so acutely faces, and which pervades the very structure of his poem. Having chosen to sing of Pharsalia and the evils of civil war, Lucan atones for his guilty projects by repeatedly delaying the narrative process, postponing (or even silencing) the revelations of truths that are as historically inevitable as they are morally shocking.40 But in Thyestes there is no narrator who can negotiate the conflicting demands of his project. The stage for the play is bare, and ‘good’ and ‘evil’ must confront each other in isolation. The outcome of the match is predictable, yet it is still important to notice how little opposition nefas receives, here or elsewhere, in the play. We will see a number of instances in which delay or resistance are at work, but they will be silenced even more swiftly than Tantalus’ compunctions are laid to rest in the prologue. Unlike an epic poet, the dramatist Seneca is not statutorily supposed to sing the great (positive) deeds of the past,41 and the proem to Thyestes carries Lucan’s logic one step further as it radically denies the act of resisting the poisonous advance of nefas. Tantalus, as we have seen, is punished a second time, but for reasons antithetical to those which warranted his penalty in the well-ordered divine cosmos of Greek myth: there he had been punished for revealing divine secrets, for voicing a nefas; here he is punished for trying to voice a fas, a lesson of moral restraint. The comparison between his current and past predicaments highlights very clearly the violent subversion of rules which 39 40 41

Narducci (1979) 33; O’Higgins (1988) 215–16; Feeney (1991) 277. A point which is brilliantly stressed by Henderson (1987) and Masters (1992). Feeney ((1991) 277, n. 119) rightly refers to Virg. Aen. 9.446–9 and especially 10.793 as explicit declarations of this purpose. It might be added that a direct, phonic echo of 10.791–3 (tuaque optima facta, | . . . | non equidem nec te, iuvenis memorande, silebo) could be traced in Luc. 7.556 (quidquid in hac acie gessisti, Roma, tacebo); for similar examples of ‘phonic’ allusion see Conte and Barchiesi (1989).

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follows the gods’ fall from a position of control in the universe and their substitution by the Fury’s infernal power. Tantalus has not been able to understand that the world has changed, that, in the world of nefas (of Libido victrix), fas is inevitably suffocated: his restraint would effectively amount to the suppression of the nefas embodied by the Fury’s poetic performance, which cannot, will not, be tolerated. Tantalus, himself a victim of repetition, is once again forced to heed his mythical propensity for verbal hybris; he tries to give his hybris a moral purpose by putting it to the service of morals, but he is quickly and violently disappointed. Tantalus’ own past error and present behaviour underscore the essential nature of the confrontation between himself and the Fury as a contrast between a repressive silence, which would deny nefas any means of expression, and an avoidance of scelus, which is also realized in linguistic terms. At the same time, this reference buttresses the equation of silence and inaction on the one hand, and word and action on the other. The prologue’s articulation of a dialectic between repression and its removal scaffolds the creative struggle represented in the play. Indeed it invites consideration of the basic structure of the play in the light of the assumption that literature might indeed be ‘a return of the repressed made available to a community of men but rendered harmless by sublimation and fiction’.42 In a series of powerful monographs now grouped under the general title ‘Literature, reason, and the repressed. Three Freudian Studies’,43 Francesco Orlando has over the past thirty years developed a coherent theory of literature that is rooted in Freud’s reflections on the linguistic characteristics of Witz. By exploring extensively the linguistic analogies of Witz and poetry, both of which are indebted to the peculiar logical forms of the unconscious,44 Orlando has argued that literature exploits the ‘formal return of the repressed’ which creates pleasure by a number of expressive devices – precisely as Witz does – and at the same time conveys, in an institutionally acceptable form, contents which would be subject to partial or total social censorship. Orlando’s own masterful readings of Racine’s Phèdre45 and Molière’s Misanthrope,46 as well as of a number of philosophical texts from the Enlightenment, testify to the theory’s wide applicability 42 43 44

45

Orlando (1978) 19 and 137–8. Orlando (1971), (1973), (1979) and (1982): the first two volumes are available in English as Orlando (1978). See also, more recently, Orlando (1993). In his later works Orlando draws extensively on the ground-breaking work of Ignacio Matte Blanco, who provides an exhaustive formulation of the ‘logic of the unconscious’; see Orlando (1993) passim, and especially Matte Blanco (1975). 46 Orlando (1979). Orlando (1971).

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and impressive heuristic potential. Yet it is clear that certain literary texts seem to embody more strongly than others the idea that they represent a return of the repressed; furthermore, the rhetorical complexity of these texts can be readily considered to be one of the ways in which repressed contents are camouflaged. In the case of Senecan tragedy both assumptions would prima facie withstand examination: in the case of Thyestes, however, the analysis of the prologue that I have proposed highlights a persuasive thematization of the return of the repressed which warrants further investigation. In a very important sense Thyestes can be read as an experiment in the nature and limits of tragic (poetic) language and an answer to the problem of the relationship between poetry and reality. The antagonisms raging in the play invest a number of different spheres of human nature and activity. Language is one of these spheres, and the conflict between Tantalus and the Fury is also a friction between the words of tragedy and the silence preserved by their avoidance. The prologue thus represents poetry as the medium through which scelera and nefas can be expressed, and against which the moral restraint personifed by Tantalus’ shadow remains fatally impotent. Not only are words actions, as the double aspect of scelus and nefas itself powerfully suggests, but the words of poetry represent a decisive victory against the repressive morality of silence. If we extrapolate the conflict between (repressive) silence and words already encoded in the word ne-fas, we can better visualize the reversal brought about by voicing deeds and words (fas) which had been deemed worthy of censure and perhaps oblivion. It is not by chance that ‘evil’ Senecan characters such as Atreus (age, anime, fac quod nulla posteritas probet, | sed nulla taceat: ‘up, my soul, do what no coming age shall approve, but none forget!’, 192–3) and Medea (paria narrentur tua | repudia thalamis: ‘let the story they tell of your divorce be like the one they tell of your marriage’, 52–3) are obsessed with the hope that their actions will not be passed over in silence. Their rebellion, which subverts normative codes of conduct, demands a similar overturning of the decorum of silence and is coextensive with it. Atreus will do unspeakable things, and that is precisely why he wants to ensure that they will be spoken and talked about for ever. In giving voice to nefas, poetry reverses the repressive instance that ne-fas would encode. Silence was, after all, the standard, expected reaction to nefas. At the political level, for instance, damnatio memoriae awaited the enemies of the state whose very names, let alone actions, were consigned to eternal oblivion by a stroke of the pen. For a long time, literature seemed bent on extolling virtues rather than on giving any space to offensive conduct.

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Seneca himself refers explicitly to the difference in treatment (Consolatio ad Marciam 1.4): legitur [sc. Cremutius Cordus], floret, in manus hominum, in pectora receptus vetustatem nullam timet; at illorum carnificum cito scelera quoque, quibus solis memoriam meruerunt, tacebuntur. But he is now read, he lives, and ensconced in the hands and hearts of men he fears no passing of the years, but these cut throats – even their crimes, by which alone they deserved to be remembered – will soon be heard of no more.

It will fall to Tacitus to subvert this basic rule and to claim for his historical prose, which does not shrink from mentioning negative behaviour if necessary, the hitherto little-explored function of a deterrent (Ann. 6.7.5): neque sum ignarus a plerisque scriptoribus omissa multorum pericula et poenas, dum copia fatiscunt aut, quae ipsis nimia et maesta fuerant, ne pari taedio lecturos adficerent verentur: nobis pleraque digna cognitu obvenere, quamquam ab aliis incelebrata.47 And I am not unaware that many writers omit to discuss the dangers and punishments of many men, either because they flag at the quantity, or because they are afraid to afflict their readers with experiences which they have themselves found excessive and sad: as far as I am concerned, many things came to my notice which I consider worthy of record, even if they have been left unrecorded by others.

At a more radical level, the presentation of Atreus’ actions as an intrinsic victory over repression, together with the collusion established between poetic word and scelus, gives scelus an emotional appeal which defies the feeble attempts at moral correctness that are ostensibly advocated in other parts of the play. Also, as we have seen, any attempt made by the audience to identify their emotions with any given character is distorted by the play’s intricate metadramatic structure; for any action represented in the play must not only be interpreted and judged per se: the very form of its representation also carries upsetting ethical connotations. The most important case in point is Atreus himself. The text constantly challenges its audience to assess the ethical status of Atreus and his actions, but also questions the ethics of the author’s choice to represent them. Thus the possibilities of emotional identification offered to the audience are multiplied and result in a potentially endless set of conflicts. The audience must constantly assess the plausibility of Atreus’ complaints and the explanation 47

The issue is discussed by Luce (1991) 2912–13, to which I am indebted. He identifies in Diodorus 1.1.5 and 15.1.1 the only other instance of history acting as a deterrent in ancient historiography. I will explore below (pp. 228ff.) whether Seneca’s tragedies, too, might be considered a deterrent against morally repulsive behaviour.

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he offers for his actions, and at the same time deliberate whether they can enjoy the aesthetic emotions offered by Seneca’s poetry without colluding ipso facto in its powerful violation of fas.48 Conversely, the audience might sometimes sympathize with Tantalus’ advocacy of silence and simply wish that the tragedy did not exist at all. The function of this polymorphic prologue, as I have tried to show, is radically to complicate a straightforward opposition between the oppressing force of Atreus’ violence and the moral values defended, however faintly, by Thyestes, the satelles and the chorus. The prologue introduces a dynamic which subjects otherwise clear-cut values to multiple transformations and interactions. The prologue functions as a vital metadramatic frame for the drama as a whole, ensuring that dramatic and metadramatic dimensions are always co-evident. It also casts in a different light a dilemma which I have already touched on,49 namely whether we should read the tragedies as negative illustrations of values and ideas advocated in Seneca’s prose works. The very architecture of the play promotes a multiplication and diffraction of meanings that makes summary comparison with other texts necessarily absurd. What the prologue impresses upon us is first and foremost the lacerating power of the poetic word, which imposes on its creator and its public a set of moral implications that cannot necessarily be bound into a reassuring unity. framing thyestes libet videre (Seneca, Thyestes 903)

i The prologue sets up a pattern of representation which is essential to the structural organization of the tragedy as a whole. The Fury and Tantalus cease to act, but they are not meant to disappear. The tragic action will unfold before their eyes, and Tantalus, too, will be forced to watch the monstrous banquet he has unavoidably, if unwillingly, precipitated: ‘let blood mixed with wine be drunk before your eyes’ (65–6: mixtus in Bacchum cruor | spectante te potetur). The conflict between the Fury and Tantalus draws a line between active and passive forces, performers and spectators, 48

49

This is the most explosive aspect of the ‘return of the formal repression’ which Orlando posits as one of the forms in which the repressed returns: certain densely figurative parts of the work offer a direct aesthetic pleasure. See above, pp. 2ff.

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power and powerlessness; it is rewarding to read it also as a meditation on the implications of poetry and its effects on both author and audience. Tantalus, once he has performed his primary task, becomes a spectator himself, an impotent, horrified prisoner. As he lurks in the background throughout, his perspective remains an imposing, if latent, counterpart to our own troubled experience as spectators of Thyestes. The conflicting drives personified by the Fury and Tantalus in the prologue infect the play as a whole. This contrast generates in the text a series of oppositions that are subordinate to and dependent on the basic polarization of silence and tragedy instigated by the Fury and equally liable to be construed as a conflict between repression and its removal. Just as the contrast between Tantalus and the Fury pits one of the principal moving forces of the tragedy against the potentially most effective obstacle to it, further dramatic confrontations in the play mirror the same antithesis. The satelles’ initial reaction to Atreus’ plans in the second act is precisely one of resistance. Functionally, then, the satelles and Tantalus are paired together in their vain attempt to stop Atreus and the Fury respectively. Atreus complains about his inactivity (176–8: ignave, iners, enervis . . . | . . . | inulte, ‘undaring, indolent, nerveless, unavenged’), and braces himself for new, spectacular actions, indeed for a new scelus (203). The satelles, on the contrary, advocates the restrained morality which Tantalus had unsuccessfully embraced, and tries to counter Atreus’ machinations with an invitation to desist from the proposed scelus. However, as we will see shortly, he ultimately changes his initial attitude, accepts Atreus’ point of view and tries to expose the weak points of his plot rather than insist on the need for restraint. As in the prologue, if Atreus yielded to the satelles’ invitation, there simply would be no tragedy at all. Once again, the intimate connection between the unfolding of the plot and Atreus’ responsibility is foregrounded. The equivalence between nefas as an action and a poetic representation of that action is made emphatic in Atreus’ self-presentation at 176–204. Atreus plans to perpetrate a nefas (193) of unrivalled atrocity, one which can therefore aspire to immortal fame, to never being silenced (192–3).50 The remarks that follow, at 250–4, after a brief altercation with the satelles show that Atreus is again a victim of the same furor of poetic creation as is symbolically represented by the prologue, when Tantalus is forced to submit to the Fury’s irresistible force of inspiration. 50

See Aaron in Titus Andronicus 3.1.133–5: ‘What shall we do? Let us that have our tongues | Plot some device of further misery | To make us wondered at in time to come.’

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The same pattern is repeated in the dialogue between Tantalus and his father, Thyestes, at 404–90. Here, too, the contrast between father and son focuses on Thyestes’ reluctance to further the dramatic plot (436: placet ire, pigris membra sed genibus labant, ‘I would like to go, but my limbs waver on my shaky knees’) and Tantalus’ insistence that he follow the prescribed series of events (440: evince quidquid obstat et mentem impedit, ‘overcome whatever opposes and thwarts your will’). Thyestes’ final words (488–9: eatur. unum genitor hoc testor tamen: | ego vos sequor, non duco, ‘let us on. Yet this one thing your father does declare: I follow you, not lead’), in fact, pointedly echo Tantalus’ shadow’s ultimate confession of defeat: sequor, ‘I follow’ (100).51 Finally, in the first meeting between the two brothers, Thyestes incarnates a role which by now we have learnt to recognize as ineffective and morally dubious. Thyestes does indeed try to resist Atreus’ enticements, much as Tantalus had done in the prologue, and as the satelles had perfunctorily attempted to do in the first act, but his sudden and rhetorically startling surrender to Atreus’ argument is not comparable either to Tantalus’ suffering while he is tortured or to the undeniably weak position of the satelles: Thyestes, whose superficial determination had begun to vacillate while he was talking to his son, acquires in this central scene of the play the new role of a moving force. In this way he signals his final transformation from victim to accomplice. The whole tragedy thus hinges on the antithesis of two sets of functionally similar characters: on the one hand, the Fury, Atreus and Tantalus, on the other, Tantalus’ shadow, the satelles and Thyestes. The two groups possess different degrees of textual knowledge and stand in different positions vis-à-vis the metadramatic aspect of the play. The first group includes all the forces that work towards the tragedy’s resolution, those whose furor in carrying out the proposed nefas is coextensive with the removal of the repression that lifts the play from silence into existence. The second group is made up of characters who in one way or another want to uphold that repression, those who try, with different degrees of determination and credibility, to stop the ruinous pattern of events instigated by their antagonists. This contrast is reinforced, as we will see, by the fact that the two groups represent authors and victims of deception.52 The moving forces of the tragedy, furor, nefas and furor-inspired poetry, are embodied by consummate deceivers, against whom Tantalus’, Thyestes’ and the satelles’ moralizing attempts are 51

52

Note also that Tantalus’ exhortation in the two following lines (489–90: respiciet deus | bene cogitata. perge non dubio gradu) echoes a similar command on the Fury’s part: perge, detestabilis | umbra (24–5). On Tantalus see below, pp. 48–9.

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completely ineffectual, partly because they are predicated on an incomplete, flawed knowledge and assessment of the events. The systematic correspondences among the characters of the play map the opposition between repression and its removal that was emphasized in the prologue and reiterate and expand the basic conflict between poetic expression and morally justified silence. A further set of oppositions is also implied: between nefas and fas, ratio and furor, honesty and deception. The conflict between Atreus and Tantalus on the one hand, and the satelles and Thyestes on the other, reflects the contrast between the Fury and Tantalus’ shadow in the prologue, since it dramatizes the fundamental dichotomy between furthering and suppressing the dramatic plot. The prologue sets up a conflict which pervades the whole play, leading the audience to suspend judgement on the utterances and actions of the characters, not only in the prologue, but throughout the play. At the same time, we must also be prepared to recognize that Atreus, the playwright with bloody hands, stands out in the play as the incarnation of a victory against the constraints of moral repression, a triumph which is inevitably connected with the force and pleasure of poetry. Before turning in the following chapters to analyse the main characters of the play and their epistemological horizons, I should make a closer examination of the structural relationship between the various scenes and the different levels of the tragedy that I have outlined. The play unfolds at different levels. The first is represented by the prologue and the indication of the apparently limitless agency of the Fury, whose presence will have to be felt, though not seen, in the rest of the play. Indeed, if spectante te at line 66 is to be taken literally, Tantalus is throughout the play an unseen, incapacitated spectator of the events that he has been forced to precipitate. As a hidden spectator of the events that will unfold, Tantalus would parallel Hermes in Euripides’ Ion, a prologue character ( ! ) who hides away (probably behind a panel shaped as a bush) as soon as he notices Ion arriving on the scene at the end of the prologue (78–80), and never reappears.53 Although hiding-scenes at the end of a prologue are to be found in several authors,54 Seneca’s te spectante retains the defining features of Ion 53

54

See Halleran (1985) 102. In Seneca’s probably Euripidean model Tantalus remained to see the banquet (Lesky (1922–23) 533); according to Steidle (1943–44) and Hine (1981), however, Seneca’s Tantalus does leave once and for all when he has polluted the house. This issue is closely connected with the interpretation of the Fury’s seemingly contrasting orders at 66 and 105–6 (gradere ad infernos specus | amnemque notum): does the Fury change her mind in the course of the prologue and relent on her initial order that Tantalus watch the ensuing actions (so Tarrant (1985) 98), or do the two contrasting orders follow each other in a compressed temporal sequence? I discuss the issue in ch. 5, pp. 178–80. Aeschylus (Taplin (1977) 334–5), other tragedians (Soph. El. 77–85; Eur. Hipp. 51–3; Hec. 52–4), Old and New Comedy (after Leo (1908) 68, see, e.g., Fraenkel (1962) 22–6 and Handley (1965) 171–2).

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(a play, incidentally, deeply concerned with the issues of viewing, spectatorship and representation), where the ! is a divine character who remains on the scene to watch the events but does not reappear later in the play.55 At a further, included level, we can place Atreus’ deliberations on how to fulfil his wish for revenge, his own author-like plotting. At the third level, finally, we watch Atreus turn into an actor of the play he has devised, and Thyestes being taken in by the elaborate performance of his brother. It might be useful to sum up these distinctions as follows: First level

Second level

Third level

(a) Prologue

(b) Play

(c) Atreus’ play

1 Fury, Tantalus (1–121) [T 2 A

I chorus (122–75) Atreus, satelles (176–335) II chorus (336–403)

N 3

Thyestes, Tantalus (404–90) T

A 4 L 5 U

Atreus alone (491–507) Thyestes, Atreus (508–45) III chorus (546–622) chorus, mess. (623–788) IV chorus (789–884) Atreus alone (885–919) Atreus, Thyestes (920–1004, agnoscis)

S]

Atreus, Thyestes (1005–1112)

ii An analysis of the second level of dramatic action in Thyestes reveals a close structural similarity to the prologue, since the dialogue between Atreus and his satelles parallels that between the Fury and Tantalus’ shadow.56 The specific metadramatic implications of this part of the play are particularly evident in the characterization of Atreus, whose plotting is insistently associated, as we have seen, with the creative activity of a poet. This second part of the play opens with a monologue by Atreus, which parallels Tantalus’ opening speech. Seneca favours the use of an expository monologue at the beginning of several plays (Hercules furens, Troades, Medea), or, as in this case and in Oedipus, an opening monologue which 55 56

Eur. Hec. 52–4 offers another interesting point of comparison: the ghost of Polydorus disappears as his mother, Hecuba, arrives on the scene, having dreamt, he claims, of his own presence. I will discuss later (ch. 4) the possible political implications of the dialogue between Atreus and the satelles.

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then turns into a dialogue for the rest of the first act:57 Atreus’ first appearance is thus overtly characterized as a programmatic gesture. There is no need to suppose that the Fury and the satelles should arrive on stage with their respective counterparts, although their initial words pick up at half-line:58 in both cases it is a solitary speech, heavily punctuated by questions, which has pride of place. Just as the Fury did, Atreus vows to take his revenge on Thyestes by producing a nefas of great novelty – quid novi rabidus struis?, asks the worried satelles (254: ‘what strange design are you plotting in your rage?’) – and unsurpassed audacity: fiat hoc, fiat nefas | quod, di, timetis (265–6: ‘let it be done, let a nefas be done at which, o gods, you take fright’). His nefas, as we will see, is an eloquent poetic artefact, a deceitful ploy whose author (quid sit quod horres ede et auctorem indica, says the chorus at line 639: ‘tell what it is that makes you shudder, and point out its author’) fully exploits the potential of words to ensnare and betray. Atreus’ nefas is the core action of the whole tragedy, the well-devised and well-acted scheme to which Thyestes is doomed to succumb. While the pairing of nefas and poetry was already clearly established in the prologue, Atreus’ declaration of poetics adds significant details to our understanding of exactly what kind of poetic activity the text is referring to. The scene opens, as the prologue did, by pitting Atreus against the satelles in a debate on what should be the presiding force of creation (248–54):59 sa. nulla te pietas movet? at. excede, Pietas, si modo in nostra domo umquam fuisti. dira Furiarum cohors discorsque Erinys veniat et geminas faces Megaera quatiens: non satis magno meum ardet furore pectus, impleri iuvat maiore monstro. s a. Does no sense of Piety move you? at. Away, Piety, if ever you have had a place in our house. Let the fearful band of Furies come, the discord-sowing Erinys, and Megaera, shaking her twin torches; the frenzy burning in my breast is not great enough; some greater horror must fill me. 57

58 59

The beginnings of Phoenissae (a dialogue throughout) and of Phaedra (a monody followed by two scenes) privilege other options. As Tarrant ((1976) 157) notes, Seneca’s ‘predilection for the introductory monologue is “Euripidean” ’. In addition to Tarrant see Anliker (1960) 23–9. At lines 23 and 203 respectively. As Tarrant ((1985) 128–9) rightly points out, many features of Atreus’ behaviour closely resemble Seneca’s description of an iratus (cf. especially the angry man’s inclination towards the sublime, Thy. 268 with De ira 1.10.2). On Atreus as an iratus see the important article by Staley (1981). While my emphasis here is different, his perspective should certainly be kept in mind.

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As the Fury invoked the precedent of Procne and Philomela, here Atreus, echoing in maiore monstro (254) the Fury’s maiore numero (57), names her as his Muse. The tortures inflicted by the Fury on Tantalus’ shadow become the self-conscious ardour of the new poet, the metaphoric fire of inspiration or the unsettling force of poetic enthusiasm (96–9): quid ora terres verbere et tortos ferox minaris angues? quid famem infixam intimis agitas medullis? flagrat incensum siti cor et perustis flamma visceribus micat. Why do you terrify me with the sight of your lash, and fiercely threaten me with your twisted snakes? Why do you rouse pains of hunger deep in my innards? My heart burns with fiery thirst, and in my burnt-out vitals a flame is darting.

In two later, closely related passages Atreus insists he is being dominated by the sweeping force of inspiration. First he confesses his emotional distress (260–2): at. fateor. tumultus pectora attonitus60 quatit penitusque volvit; rapior et quo nescio, sed rapior61 at. I do confess it. A mindless tumult shakes and churns my breast deep inside. I am dragged away, I do not know where to, but I am.

His conclusion clearly recalls the Fury’s intimation at line 56 – ‘let the Thracian crime be done, but multiplied’ (Thracium fiat nefas | maiore numero): fiat hoc, fiat nefas | quod, di, timetis (265–6: ‘let a nefas be done at which, o gods, you take fright’). Rapior provides a description of Atreus’ state of mind that is paralleled in a densely programmatic Horatian ode, 3.25, where the poet explicitly connects the force of Bacchus’ inspiration with his transportation into uncharted, perilous territories.62 As we will see shortly, it is precisely this type of Bacchic, enthusiastic poetics that Atreus embodies on 60

61

62

Its Greek equivalent " " # also has distinct Dionysiac overtones; see Mendelsohn (1992) 111. Attonitus is first found in poetry in Virgil, but an Ennian model is possible. For Bacchic overtones see Aen. 7.580 attonitae Baccho . . . matres and Hor. Carm. 3.19.14 attonitus . . . vates (with Livy’s description of revellers at Bacchanalia at 39.15.9 vino . . . attoniti). On Seneca’s abundant and nuanced use of the adjective in the tragedies see Pasiani (1967). The structure of lines 261–2 recalls the famous Catullan distich (85) about the epistemological quandary caused by erotic passion: odi et amo. quare id faciam, fortasse requiris. | nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior. Quo me, Bacche, rapis tui | plenum? quae nemora aut quos agor in specus | velox mente nova? (lines 1–3). Cf. lines 17–18: nil parvum aut humili modo, | nil mortale loquar. On this passage see Pasquali (1920) 14 and 549–50 (with bibl. 813–14); and La Penna (1971). See also Sat. 2.1.10: si tantus amor scribendi te rapit, and Ovid’s Medea (fr. 2 Ribbeck2 ): feror huc illuc, ut plena deo. I will return later to the Dionysiac aspects of Atreus’ character, pp. 133–8.

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the stage of Thyestes, and that we, the spectators, should consider to be the driving force of the play. Subsequently, as the satelles is reduced to a completely impotent sparring partner, who does little more than feed his master the next line, Atreus caps his own poetic prologue by describing in further detail the grandiose nefas he is plotting,63 and by invoking his own special Muses, Procne and Philomela (267–77): at. nescioquid animus maius et solito amplius supraque fines moris humani tumet instatque pigris manibus – haud quid sit scio, sed grande quiddam est. ita sit. hoc, anime, occupa (dignum est Thyeste facinus et dignum Atreo, quod uterque faciat): vidit infandas domus Odrysia mensas – fateor, immane est scelus, sed occupatum: maius hoc aliquid dolor inveniat. animum Daulis inspira parens sororque; causa est similis: assiste et manum impelle nostram. at. My mind swells with something greater, larger than normal, and beyond the bounds of human custom, and it urges on my sluggish hands – I do not know what it is, but it is some great thing. So let it be. Haste, my soul, take hold of it. (It is a crime worthy of Thyestes, and worthy of Atreus, such that each of them could perform it.) The Odrysian house once saw an unspeakable banquet – this is a monstrous crime, I grant, but it has been done before; let my grievance find something worse than this. Inspire my soul, o Daulian mother and sister; my case is like yours; help and urge on my hand.

The nature of the poetic creation which Atreus envisages is evidently very close to the one imposed by the Fury on Tantalus. His deeds will have to be sublime, literally exceeding human boundaries – supraque fines moris humani (268). They will be original, as the satelles unwillingly points out by asking quid novi rabidus struis? (254).64 And, above all, they will have to outdare all precedents, just as the Fury had demanded: Thracium fiat nefas | maiore numero (56–7). These features – in particular the programmatic combination of novelty and awareness of the tradition65 – would be enough to lend Atreus’ declaration of intents a distinct literary colour, even if he had not used a number of key terms which Seneca elsewhere applies explicitly 63 64 65

I will analyse the character of the satelles below, pp. 154–64. On Atreus’ ‘sublimity’ see the next chapter, p. 127. Compare especially Letters to Lucilius 79.6, in which Seneca discusses the relationship between invention and tradition with regard to a poem on Aetna which Lucilius might be tempted to compose.

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to poetic creation.66 The most important of such parallels is undoubtedly with De tranquillitate animi 17, where, as we have seen in chapter one,67 Seneca offers the most overt endorsement of the Democritean and Platonic theory of poetic enthusiasm, and praises the emotional excitement that leads to sublime poetry.68 It is worth quoting again the last few lines of the dialogue (17.10–11), important elements of which are closely paralleled by Atreus: For whether we believe with the Greek poet that ‘sometimes it is a pleasure also to rave’, or with Plato that ‘the sane mind knocks in vain at the door of poetry’, or with Aristotle that ‘no great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness’ – be that as it may, the lofty utterance that rises above the attempts of others is impossible unless the mind is excited (mota mens). When it has scorned the vulgar and the commonplace, and has soared far aloft fired by divine inspiration, then alone it chants a strain too lofty (grandius) for mortal lips. So long as it is left to itself, it is impossible for it to reach any sublime (sublime) and difficult height; it must forsake the common track and be driven to frenzy (efferatur) and champ the bit and run away (rapiat) with its rider and rush to a height that it would have feared to climb by itself.

Atreus emphasizes in a similar fashion the connection between the ‘irrational’ force of poetic inspiration – one that literally ‘snatches away’ – and a grandiose, sublime form of poetry which deserves the highest praise. Indeed, poetic enthousiasmos can transform man into a semi-divine entity, a vates whose utterances have a higher claim to truth.69 It is especially worth noting that the last sentence of the passage appears radically to subvert the hierarchical principle on which Stoic ethics is predicated, by relegating the rector to a subordinate position. Poetry, as an irrational force, smashes the barriers of both rationality and decorum, and overrides any hesitation enforced by timor (Tranq. 1.14): ‘then again, when my mind has been uplifted by the greatness of its thoughts, it becomes ambitious of words, and with higher aspirations it desires higher expression, and language issues forth to match the dignity of the theme; forgetful then of my rule and of my more restrained judgement, I am swept to loftier heights by an utterance that is no longer my own’ (rursus ubi se animum cogitationum magnitudine levavit, ambitiosus in verba est altiusque ut spirare ita eloqui 66

67 69

This comparison is developed in full by Picone (1984) 56–61. Picone’s book offers a fascinating reading of Thyestes, though he places a different emphasis on Atreus as ‘doppio negativo del vates’ (59). 68 Mazzoli (1970) 50–9. Above, pp. 22–3. I agree with Mazzoli ((1970) 52, n. 94) that this passage is connected with the description of the Sybil at Virg. Aen. 6.48–51. See Picone (1984) 59, n. 39, and further references to De ira 2.35.6; De vita beata 2.2; 9.2; Ep. 108.26.

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gestit et ad dignitatem rerum exit oratio; oblitus tum legis pressiorisque iudicii sublimius feror et ore iam non meo). On the basis of these connections, it is now clear that the metadramatic implications of the Fury’s actions, perceptibly if indirectly suggested in the prologue, constitute an essential dynamic of Thyestes as a whole: act 2 confirms more explicitly what the audience already had cause to suspect at the very beginning of the play. As for Atreus, we are now effectively invited to consider him a magnum ingenium as well as a sublime poet, one who attains greatness by overstepping the boundaries of timor and mores through a superior form of enthousiasmos. It would still be possible to suppose that Atreus’ poetic activity is represented here as an anti-model of the ‘true’ poet, a negative mirror for the moral conscience of the Stoic author.70 Such an interpretation, however, is rooted in the assumption that Seneca’s prose works try to justify the un-Stoic aspects of the Democritean-Platonic theory of poetic inspiration by subordinating them to a morally praiseworthy goal, and by trying to restrain the potentially disruptive effects of the sublime. I have already tried to show71 that even if we confine analysis to the theoretical prose works, it is very difficult to arrive at such an unambiguous assessment of the moral implications of poetry. I would suggest that metadramatic passages such as Oedipus 509–65872 emphasize the feeling of ambivalence and awe surrounding the process of poetic creation, and indeed set inspiration and creation in a twilight zone of horrific, haunted groves. In the case of Atreus, however, any comforting solution seems to be denied by the context itself. Nothing in Thyestes suggests the notion that Atreus should be imagined as a negative model of the poet. The principles he advocates – originality, knowledge of the tradition, desire to reach the highest peaks of creation – are nowhere accompanied by a critique of the notion of good or successful poetry. Perhaps we might argue that the text frames Atreus’ poetry as ‘bad’ by exposing its association with unethical deeds, and that we should therefore be able to distinguish between his abstract principles of poetics and his wholly unprincipled conduct. But, even if we set aside for the moment a more nuanced evaluation of Atreus’ motives and behaviour,73 we are still bound to recognize that his poetic success is intrinsically twinned with his thirst for revenge: he devises his seductive and successful plot precisely as a means to exact retribution from his brother. 70 72

71 See ch. 1, passim. Picone’s thesis (1984) 59. 73 Ch. 3, passim. Ch. 1, pp. 8–10.

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However, if, as I have suggested, act 2 replicates in a more obvious way a set of ideas already clearly established in the prologue, we should feel fully justified in reading the connection between Atreus and the sublime poet described in De tranquillitate animi as thoroughly consistent, in so far as it upholds the equation between poetry and the lifting of repression, and is predicated on the inherently ambiguous notion of poetry as a transgression of psychological, moral and expressive limits. All sublime, grandiose poetry is nefas, is inevitably implicated in transgressive actions, since it abandons self-composure in a heady atmosphere of semi-prophetic creation. Atreus is but one example of sublime poetry, one which concretizes the emotive alliance between poetry and nefas. As it repeats itself for the second time, the contrast between poetry and repression so forcefully voiced by Tantalus and the Fury seems even more skewed in favour of the latter’s violent, trangressive force. In the dialogue between Atreus and the satelles, even Tantalus’ credible, if short-lived, attempt at resistance has disappeared. So has the sense of impotent despair with which he surrenders himself to the overwhelming force of the Fury. The satelles is an ineffective dialectical adversary, whose ethical considerations will be summarily dismissed by Atreus’ swift, pragmatic attitude.74 The victory achieved by the Fury in the prologue has been decisive, and its effects are felt throughout the drama over which she grimly presides.

iii Atreus reappears on stage as the crafty author and director of his own tragic play in a brief aside in act 3: he is in front of the royal palace as Thyestes and his children approach, and comments smugly on the favourable turn that events have taken. The beast (his brother) has been captured. All that is required now is to keep up the fiction, to start acting as planned. The emphasis on deception is explicit: ‘when rage scents blood, it cannot be concealed; yet it must’ (504–5: cum sperat ira sanguinem, nescit tegi – | tamen tegatur).75 The ensuing performance will be based, unsurprisingly, on deception: Atreus’ last words before addressing his brother, praestetur fides (507), are revealing, since they mean both ‘let me be true to our promise’ (ironically), and ‘let me put on a display of fides’. This scene marks the transition between the second and third levels of the plot: it opens with Tantalus and Thyestes approaching the royal palace unaware of what has 74

See below, pp. 154–61.

75

On lines 497–505 see below, pp. 99–100.

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been plotted within (404–90), it gives space to Atreus’ aside (491–507), and it ends on the two brothers meeting in what is for Atreus a masterful display of intrigue (508–45). It is in this third and innermost level of the tragedy, where the revenge finally takes place, that Atreus doubles up, not unlike a cunning Plautine slave, as an actor in the play he has himself plotted. But the performance has begun even before he appears on the stage: it falls to Thyestes and his son – ignorant actors – to begin the dramatization of the plot that Atreus has carefully orchestrated; they have been duped into coming here by Atreus, who, as we soon realize, is watching the proceedings very closely. Thyestes’ arrival in the vicinity of Argos clearly represents a fresh beginning. We might compare it, for instance, to Orestes’ arrival at Argos at the beginning of Aeschylus’ Choephoroe, or Odysseus’ landing on Lemnos in Sophocles’ Philoctetes. In the first few lines of Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus the blind Oedipus wonders where he has finally got to, and Dionysus arrives in Thebes as Euripides’ Bacchae begins.76 The most interesting parallel, however, can be found in the prologue of Sophocles’ Electra. There Orestes reaches Mycenae accompanied by the old pedagogue, who, like Thyestes, first talks about the satisfaction of his old desire to return (8–10): ‘and look! before us, at our very feet you see Mycenae of the golden hoard, and there the grim palace of Pelops’ line, deep stained with murder’. The dialogue between Thyestes and Tantalus is structured along the lines of the two dialogues that precede it, namely that between the Fury and Tantalus in the prologue and the debate between Atreus and the satelles in act 2, both directly or indirectly charged with inceptive functions. The closing lines of this scene – Thyestes’ tormented sequor (489) – again mark with explicit verbal echoes the connection with the prologue. As the vigilant Fury presides over the actions she has initiated, we must imagine that Atreus is watching the first act of his new play. Frames and levels of spectatorship multiply, and, as we will see, inevitably complicate our own act of viewing.77 Indeed, a great deal of prominence is assigned in this scene to the issue of viewing and understanding. Thyestes approaches his city and the royal palace as a confused spectator of the performance laid on for him by his brother (407: cerno). Although he cannot fully understand the dangers awaiting him, he nonetheless hesitates to be drawn onto the stage that 76 77

The verb $ is often used to mark the arrival of supernatural entities on the stage at the very beginning of a play; see, for example, Eur. Bacch. 1, Hec. 1, Tro. 1, Ion 5. Ch. 6, passim.

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Atreus has prepared. He is aware of the distance between appearance and reality, of the seductive illusion of spectating, though ultimately he is unable to draw the right conclusions from these premonitions (414–16): clarus hic regni nitor fulgore non est quod oculos falso auferat: cum quod datur spectabis, et dantem aspice. there is no reason why the shining splendour of power should mislead my eyes with its false radiance; when you look at a gift, check who is giving it, too.

The spectators’ point of view is aligned with the privileged viewing position of Atreus (and also of the Fury and Tantalus’ ghost). We know full well that Thyestes’ intimations of impending doom are justified, and his words, like much in the ensuing dialogue with his son, are pregnant with tragic irony. As he first sees Thyestes at line 491, Atreus is certain that he has succeeded in his ploy: his viewing is endowed with full awareness and understanding. The repetition of cerno in the third line of his speech (493) echoes the presence of the same verbal form in the fourth line of Thyestes’ own opening remark (407), and in so doing calls attention to the very different levels of awareness and understanding that accompany Thyestes’ and Atreus’ viewing. This time, however, there is irony in the tyrant’s words, and the exclamation with which he greets his brother at line 508 – fratrem iuvat videre (‘it is sweet to see my brother’) – underlines the fact that Atreus’ viewing is geared towards a full emotional satisfaction, rooted in the complete control of the situation. It is the pleasure of poets, but is also the pleasure of spectators who have been privileged with an inside knowledge of the play’s creative mechanisms. Atreus’ manipulation of the emotional connotations of viewing is clear at line 525, when his exhortation – oculis . . . nostris parce (‘spare my eyes’) – craftily exploits the duplicity of his perspective. Far from being disturbed at the sight of Thyestes, he enjoys both his current pitiable state, and the anticipation of the fact that if Thyestes renounces his present misery and accepts to share the throne, he will fall prey to an even worse fate. Several other details in the scene emphasize how different the characters’ level of cognition can be, and therefore call our attention to the different fictional levels operating in the scene. For instance, Thyestes’ praise of quies at line 469, which he himself is ultimately unwilling to transform into actions, is expressed in words that shortly afterwards will be echoed by Atreus with completely different implications: as praestetur fides (507) echoes praestatur fides (469) in the same metrical position, we are almost invited to suspect that Atreus has listened to his brother and is now exploiting his

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own words to express very different contents. A similar ironic twist can be detected in Tantalus’ final words at 489–90: ‘a god will regard with favour what has been well devised. Haste on with assured step’ (respiciet deus | bene cogitata. perge non dubio gradu). Not only is there no intimation in the play of the gods’ moral agency,78 but in fact we are led to assume shortly afterwards that Atreus – who would certainly not object to being called a god – has been watching this scene all along.

iv In the fourth act of the tragedy a messenger relates to the chorus and the audience a series of actions which they cannot witness directly and, by sharing with them events which Thyestes will ignore until a later stage (1052–68), aligns them with Atreus’ true intentions and behaviour.79 This double narration of the pivotal scene of the tragedy effectively thematizes the reiteration of nefas. Each different level of narration no longer encases a subsequent one, but instead the same action can be watched more than once from different perspectives corresponding to different audiences. This new element reinforces the density of the play’s structure, a topic on which I will shortly focus: the key action of the plot is never performed on the stage (as tragic conventions prescribe), but its absence is reflected in multiple mirrorings, in an attempt to fill the void with competing narratives, each bearing different emotional connotations, and each involving a different audience and hence different reactions.80 But here, too, it is tempting to invoke that particular concept in order to account for the multiplication of an object which still denies us direct access and can only be perceived at a certain remove. It has often been said that Senecan tragedy suffers from an excess of parataxis, an inability to privilege an organic plot vis-à-vis the centripetal tendency to align somewhat detached scenes. Thyestes, with its largely organic plot, would be the exception that proves the rule. Yet Thyestes precisely suggests that this paratactical arrangement might be more the product of a specific epistemic and aesthetic Weltanschauung than an index of artistic weakness. The structure of the final act of Thyestes is symmetrical to that of act 3, which interposes Atreus’ monologue between two scenes en abyme. In act 5, however, it is the ‘staged’ dialogue between the two brothers which occupies the intermediate position: the 78 80

79 I will discuss other aspects of this speech later, pp. 87ff. Ch. 4, pp. 152–4. I will discuss Seneca’s fractured treatment of time in ch. 5.

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beginning and end of the act are reserved instead for what I termed the second level.81 At the beginning of act 5 (885–919) Atreus celebrates his triumph shortly before revealing to his brother the gory details of the massacre. At line 889 a verbatim repetition from his ‘prologic’ speech (279: bene est, abunde est, ‘it is well, more than enough’)82 marks the close connection between the two sections, both of which emphasize the exceptional grandiosity of the nefas he has perpetrated (885–8): aequalis astris gradior et cunctos super altum superbo vertice attingens polum. nunc decora regni teneo, nunc solium patris.83 I move on a level with the stars, and, above all others, touch with proud head the lofty heavens. Now I hold the glory of the realm, now my father’s throne.

These opening lines clearly recall the end of Horace’s first ode: quodsi me lyricis vatibus inseres, | sublimi feriam sidera vertice (Carm. 1.1.35–6: ‘but if you include me among lyric bards, I will hit the stars with my exalted head’). Later, as Atreus congratulates himself at the sight of his brother’s desperation, a more tenuous reference to the same poem surfaces again, as nunc meas laudo manus, | nunc parta vera est palma. perdideram scelus, | nisi sic doleres (1096–8: ‘now I praise my handiwork; now is the true palm won. I would have wasted my crime, if you weren’t suffering this much’) echoes the contrast between true and Olympic celebration which Horace’s ode develops at lines 3–6 after Virgil, Georgics 3.10–20 (palma figures in both passages).84 The allusion to such well-known programmatic passages again highlights the fact that Atreus sees his actions as artistic achievements comparable to those of famous poets even as he plans the final step of his revenge – revealing to Thyestes the full import of the nefas. In this last section of the tragedy Atreus insists with renewed emphasis on the visual dimension of his actions, and confirms his awareness of the 81

82 83

84

The second and third scenes are separated in the tragedy by two choruses (546–622; 789–884), a long speech by the messenger (623–788) and Atreus’ monologue at 885–919, which all contribute to alter the spectator’s point of view. I discuss these important internal links again in ch. 5, p. 179. These lines are a plausible model for Tamora’s cries of joy at Titus Andronicus 2.1.1–4: ‘Now climbeth Tamora Olympus’ top, | Safe out of fortune’s shot, and sits aloft, | Secure of thunder’s crack or lightning flash, | Advanced above pale envy’s threatening reach’, where they are mischievously shot through mock-Stoic images of the serene security of the sage such as, for example, Thy. 365–8. Atreus’ ‘Priamel’ should be read in conjunction with Thyestes’ own reference to the same Horatian ode in his proemial speech at 404–20: the palma (410) he enjoyed most was that of racing paterno . . . curru (410), while Atreus, following Horace’s own predilection, has chosen the rewards of poetry. See below, p. 116.

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centrality of spectatorship. The first indication of this awareness surfaces when, having just embarked upon his plan, Atreus is able to visualize the scene that will later unfold on stage: tota iam ante oculos meos | imago caedis errat (281–2: ‘already before my eyes flits the whole picture of the slaughter’). Now Atreus wants to make sure that all concerned have a clear picture of the nefas: the gods should be kept back so that they can see what has happened (894–5: ut ultricem dapem | omnes viderent, ‘so that they all may see the avenging banquet’), or at least Thyestes should: quod sat est, videat pater (895: ‘but it is enough if the father alone sees it’). The next scene, in which Atreus is still acting the self-assigned role of the loving brother until the anagnorisis shatters the fiction of this second level of the representation, will afford him the pleasures of spectatorship, as Thyestes slowly and painfully discovers the truth. Atreus will watch Thyestes watching, will be the spectator of a pained spectator: ‘it is a pleasure to note, when he sees his children’s heads, how his complexion changes, what words his first grief pours forth’ (903–5: libet videre, capita natorum intuens, | quos det colores, verba quae primus dolor | effundat).85 The pleasure will reside primarily in the slow unfolding of Thyestes’ reactions in front of his brother: ‘I do not want to see him miserable, but his becoming so’ (907: miserum videre nolo, sed dum fit miser). The daedalean structure of the play once again multiplies the levels of spectatorship and thematizes it.86 As we have seen in chapter one, Stoic theory devotes a considerable amount of attention to the plight of spectators, torn between a critical analysis of the actions they are watching, and the ever-present risk of being too deeply affected by them.87 As Atreus steps back and watches the performance that he has staged, he impersonates just such an affected, undetached spectator, who derives direct satisfaction from witnessing the spectacle: libet videre, capita natorum intuens . . . (903). In a further indication of structural affinity, Atreus prescribes for Thyestes what the Fury had initially intimated to Tantalus’ ghost: mixtum suorum sanguinem genitor bibat (917: ‘his sons’ mingled blood let the father drink’) echoes mixtus in Bacchum cruor | spectante te potetur (65–6: ‘let blood mixed with wine be drunk before your eyes’). Before the anagnorisis marks the tragedy’s sudden return to its second level of action, Atreus can enjoy a spectacle similar to, but hugely more satisfactory than the one he had been treated to at Thyestes’ arrival. We observe Thyestes’ emotional monologue with him and, to a certain extent, 85 86

A particularly perverse desire. See Virg. Aen. 10.443 with Harrison (1991) 186. 87 Ch. 6, pp. 235–43. Ch. 1, pp. 14–15.

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through him. Thyestes is relapsing into the doubtful, sceptical mood that had coloured his dialogue with Tantalus, but once again he seems unable (or unwilling) to excavate his doubts: for Atreus, and for us, his words are hopelessly entrapped in a tragic irony which is only intensified by Atreus’ double entendres in the ensuing dialogue. The interplay of different levels of tragic action foregrounds the power of Atreus’ deceit. We see Atreus plotting his revenge and carrying it out while completely fooling his brother with a charade of friendliness. I will discuss at the end of this book whether we are entitled to read in this multiplication of levels a cautionary tale – that by watching the poet’s cunning behaviour we can learn to mistrust his ploys – or whether his deceitfulness inevitably forestalls any such resistance on our part. Anagnorisis plays a pivotal role in the shift between these different levels of the tragedy.88 Anagnorisis reveals again89 a state of things which should have never been forgotten: Thyestes is tragically forced to recognize Atreus’ true nature only because he has failed to heed his own confused but true premonitions, hesitantly voiced when he arrived on stage. The deceiving power of poetry, it appears, is such that it can make people forget even what they already sense and ought to understand. But in the present context anagnorisis also points up the play’s dramatic structure and exposes to Thyestes his irredeemable epistemic inferiority. While the audience sides with Atreus’ superior form of understanding, it is also aware of a further vantage point which is denied even to Atreus, since they have been watching the events of the play alongside two closer spectators – the Fury and Tantalus’ ghost. t r ag e d y, t e r m i n a b l e a n d i n t e r m i n a b l e humanae vitae mimus . . . (Seneca, Letters to Lucilius 80)

i The tortuous relationships between different levels of dramatic action in Thyestes heighten the audience’s perception of the play as an artificial literary product, and its metadramatic structure prominently foregrounds the process of artistic creation. The audience, rather than being confronted with a finished, self-contained entity, faces a work in progress, as the play’s ingredients are slowly and meticulously cooked up, live. By shattering the illusion of fictionality, metadrama carves up a schism between the readers’ 88

Ch. 6, p. 248.

89

See a more extended discussion of this topic in ch. 5.

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involvement in the artistic creation and their awareness of its fictional status. This ‘paradox’ accents the readers’ active rather than passive involvement in the process of decoding and understanding.90 By turning the fictional, theatrical nature of the play into such an upfront thematic concern, Thyestes occupies a distinctive place in Seneca’s tragic corpus and bears comparison with the other mastertext which develops similar reflections, Euripides’ Bacchae.91 I have argued that metadrama inevitably introduces a critical dimension, a distance between the events represented on the stage and the audience’s perception of them. By complicating the structure of the play and directing the audience’s attention towards its inner mechanisms, metadrama lures the audience to reflect on what exactly they are watching and how it is constructed. They are watching a tragedy, a performance provoked – as in this particular instance – by revenge, by the regressive desire for retribution which spans generations and involves human as well as superhuman agents. It is a revenge plot based on deception and lies, and the audience is granted a privileged epistemic viewpoint by being shown, from the very beginning, how that dissemblance operates. It would be too optimistic, however, to conclude that this critical gap is what ensures the ‘philosophical’ and moral viability of plays which revolve to a disturbing extent around anger, violence, nefas and horror. On the contrary, the frames encompassing different levels of action in a play such as Thyestes may well be seen to complicate further the effects of the performance precisely because they raise the audience’s threshold of awareness. As I have already pointed out, framing ensures the multiplication of points of view and the production of competing accounts of and reactions to the events, thus reducing the possibility of a unified response on the audience’s part. But framing, and especially repetitive, multiple framing, inevitably produces a more general disturbing effect. The compact boundaries of the dramatic action are highlighted, and yet eo ipso effectively annihilated in the apparently unstoppable fugue of frames.92 The violent actions encased in Atreus’ inner play and, at a remove, in the prologue are portrayed as the direct result of a violent sequence which, evidently, the frames are hardly able to control. As the next frame portrays Atreus struggling to devise an original plan, apparently propelled only by his own thirst for revenge, the audience’s awareness of his motivations shatters his image of ‘uncaused 90 92

91 See pp. 133–8. Hutcheon (1984) 7, referring to the modern novel. Or, with Derrida (quoted by Goldhill (1991) 259), ‘frames are always framed’.

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cause’. But this epistemic superiority is also bound to provoke further worries: as frames appear inevitably enframed, so the starting point of violence and nefas, ever more elusive, is constantly pushed back without any guarantee that it might find an ultimate resting point. How can we safely exclude the possibility that there has been a prologue behind the prologue? Who sent the Fury? Does someone know more than we do, in spite of all the indications attesting to our privileged point of view? It is precisely through this mechanism of regress ad infinitum – thematized in the play by three inset levels of dramatic action – that frames lose their potential as controlling, ordering devices and rather turn out to be no more than flimsy fences easily trespassed by uncontrollable forces. Frames, multiplied in a sequence of horrors, become the signposts – and the harbingers – of the trouncing of order.93 In yet another sense, frames have a crucial role in the play’s signifying strategies. Framing introduces into the tragedy a structuring device which appears to ensure the orderly succession of embedded levels of action. Yet we are soon led to realize that the markers provided by frames guarantee that each successive level of action is perceived as dialectically juxtaposed to the previous one, and that critical ingenuity is required in order to extract further meaning from this ‘interplay of difference’.94 Framing imposes comparison between the various dramatic techniques at work in different levels of the play, as we will see, and also between the characters who share analogous functions in those different levels: the Fury, Atreus and Tantalus junior, we noted, all press ahead with the development of the plot which Tantalus’ ghost, the satelles and Thyestes himself resist in vain. Finally, framing introduces a comparison between the various aspects of each character as he enters a new frame: which Thyestes is more credible – the worried exile who hesitates to follow Tantalus’ enthusiastic recommendations or the gullible, power-greedy man who blithely accepts his brother’s pleas? Here, too, frames separate, and at the same time ensure that we juxtapose and compare the actions they encase. By privileging what they encase95 and – almost literally – setting each scene against a well-defined backdrop, frames give those comparisons a sharper profile. Seneca privileges in his plays detached scenes which do not necessarily follow each other with compelling coherence and urgency. 93

94 95

The interplay of frames recalls in some ways Euripides’ ‘most Euripidean’ play, Orestes, which also shows the traditional tragic forms, saturated by ‘too many options crowding in from the past’, as it reaches a breaking-point. See Zeitlin’s (1980) brilliant analysis (quotations from pp. 51 and 57). Goldhill (1991) 236, a very perceptive discussion of the role of framing in Theocritus. A role of frames aptly stressed by Caws (1985) 21, 262 and passim.

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Yet, far from laying bare the ‘rhetorical’ nature of Senecan tragedy, frames underline the most profoundly dramatic aspects of the play.96 Frames define boundaries and thus mark separation and even detachment, but precipitate comparison and contrast. They dissect different parts of the play, but they hardly arrange an orderly, inert sequence of tableaux; on the contrary, they highlight the inevitable collision of dramatic levels and the relentless conflicts that plague successive generations.

ii As I turn now to a specific aspect of the critical detachment inherent in Thyestes, my argument becomes more speculative. I propose to analyse how certain features of the play invite a critical reflection on the particular form of tragedy that Seneca is writing, and on its position in the history of tragic forms. My starting point is the distinction between different levels of action which I summarized earlier in the chapter. Through a succession of frames, Thyestes isolates an inner core, a deepest level, where Atreus acts out a plot of his own devising and successfully punishes his brother. As I observed earlier, this third level of the tragedy is composed of a compact sequence of scenes. It begins in the second act with the exile’s arrival to his land, and the dialogue between himself and Tantalus (404–90). After Atreus’ monologue at 491–507, which reverts to a higher level of the tragic structure, the two brothers meet (508–45), thus sealing the fate of Thyestes’ children. Before reaching the third and final scene of this third level of action, the climactic confrontation in which the horrific reprisal is declared (920–1004), the tragedy sets aside the orderly succession of different levels observed so far and turns to a lengthy and elaborate messenger’s speech.97 The three scenes which occupy the innermost frame of Thyestes constitute a miniature tragedy. This is not, strictly speaking, an instance of ‘playwithin-the-play’; and yet there are strong enough signs that this part of the play has a specific, well-outlined structure. (In fact, this could be seen as a very bold and experimental example, ante litteram, of the play-within-theplay form, one in which the boundaries of fiction and reality are more fluid.) It is certainly a performance through which Atreus achieves, all too directly, his ultimate goal of revenge. The first scene devised by Atreus, Thyestes’ arrival, is a clear marker of dramatic beginning. The emotional centre of the play is devoted to the studied deception: the blindfolded Thyestes offers his children as ‘pledge of his faith’ (520: obsides fidei), or, in Atreus’ words, as 96

On this topic see ch. 6.

97

On which, see pp. 169–70.

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‘destined victims’ (545: destinatas victimas). In the final encounter between the two brothers Atreus revels in its image of oblivion, and even more in Thyestes’ reaction to the final revelation. This structure is not very different, for instance, from that of Sophocles’ Philoctetes, which hinges on Odysseus’ deception. In Thyestes, this ‘beginning, middle and end’ structure is encased within a prologue and an epilogue, which problematizes the premises and consequences of the included play. The five acts of Thyestes operate as a framing device which embraces the three-act inner tragedy, organized by Atreus and to a noticeable extent modelled on Greek standards. It is as if Seneca’s ‘posteriority’ is thematized here by an encompassing structure which becomes a showcase for, and a commentary on, a type of tragedy that no longer exists and is no longer viable.98

iii Of the three levels of tragic action that I have described, only the third and innermost level of the tragedy finds a coherent closure on stage: Atreus’ revenge is plotted, carried out and revealed in the three ‘acts’ that I have analysed. But the two other levels of the tragedy – the first one, in which the preliminary decisions about the nefas were taken, and the second, in which Atreus mulls over his plan and later reveals it to Thyestes – remain undoubtedly open and portend no shortage of future evils. In this case the ‘interplay of differences’ marks a contrast between Atreus’ teleological plot and the unending potential for tragedy embedded in his family’s curse. In this way Thyestes affords its audience both the reassuring satisfaction of closure and the tormenting promise of renewed terrors. Nothing could be more final than the cannibalistic banquet, a funeral of sorts,99 and nothing more open-ended than the final words exchanged by the brothers, a curse fulfilled in subsequent stages of the mythical narrative, which the audience can already begin to fathom (and, indeed, remember): TH. vindices aderunt dei; | his puniendum vota te tradunt mea. | AT. te puniendum liberis trado tuis (‘TH. The gods will be my avengers; my prayers deliver you to them for punishment. AT. For punishment, I deliver you to your children’, 1110–12). Ultimately, even at the apex of his success, Atreus, too, cannot achieve 98

99

The five-act structure differentiates Seneca’s plays from their Greek models, though not the comic ones; see Tarrant (1978) 218–19, esp. 219 and n. 40 and Hunter (1985) 35–42. On act division in Senecan drama see Anliker (1960) 49–93. Antecedents can indeed be found in Greek comedy, certainly in Menander’s Dyscolos and possibly in four more of his plays (Aspis, Epitrepontes, Samia and Sicyonios). See Horace’s Ars P. 189–90, with Brink (1971) 248–50. See Fowler (1989) 85 = (2000) 249.

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complete satisfaction, because his desire is so boundless that it could never, by definition, be completely fulfilled. The micro-dramas which make up the play try in vain to order and set boundaries onto a flow of emotional cravings which ultimately reject all constraints.100 This contrast between closure and lack of closure, entrenched in the very core of the plot, might be read as a reflection on the nature of tragic action and the forms that it can take on stage. The ‘inner plot’, a self-contained unity, does achieve a clear-cut conclusion in the horrendous anagnorisis at line 1004. By dropping his mask as an actor and returning to the role of author, Atreus denudes the foundations of his closed tragedy. At the same time, he indicates his dissatisfaction with that form: there is, in fact, no real possibility of tragic closure. Closure, as achieved on stage by the banquet, can only be a momentary illusion, predicated on deceiving an unguarded spectator like Thyestes. We will observe later that this is one of the many ways in which Thyestes is portrayed as a tragic hero of old, deaf to the cunning devices and linguistic creativity of his brother, and therefore inevitably bound to be defeated.101 For the audience, which has been alerted to the metadramatic organization of the play, as for Atreus, closure remains an elusive option which the open-ended finale shatters without recourse. There is no guarantee that the evils visited upon the House of Argos by Tantalus’ reappearance have really ended. True, the Fury did say that she had seen enough (105), but her intimation that Tantalus watch Thyestes while he drinks his children’s blood (102), coupled with the absence of closure at the end of the play, mean that Tantalus and his curse ominously overshadow the play’s final moments. Here, too, we can observe the discomforting effect of open frames, of frames which fail to fulfil their task and thus highlight the absence of a reassuring resting point. Similarly, Atreus cannot claim that he has achieved a conclusion. He has succeeded in taking revenge, and he has without question won this round of confrontation with his brother. But his very last words, which in a way do signal closure by capping the second level of tragic action he had set in motion at 176–204, are in fact totally open-ended. The frame is now complete, but its closure is more formal than substantial. Greek tragedy, too, is deeply sensitive to the signifying potential of closure and openness, and often hints within the play, or even towards its conclusion, at future developments of the family plots, thus announcing new stages of literary invention. It is only in the Oresteia, however, that we can find something approaching the open-endedness of Thyestes. At 100

See later, p. 94.

101

I develop this line of analysis in ch. 3.

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the end of Agamemnon (1662–73), for instance, the repartee between the coriphaeus and Aegisthus, centred on predictions of violent retribution, offers a relevant parallel to the last few lines of Seneca’s play.102 The conclusion of Choephoroe, though projecting an open window onto Orestes’ future, is less explicit in its heralding of specific events, and the curtain falls on Eumenides with a convincing finality. In Sophocles it is only Oedipus at Colonus that closes with the announcement of a sequel, as Antigone pleads with Theseus to be sent back to Thebes, where the fight between her brothers is imminent.103 Against the background of Greek tragedy, we can better appreciate the novelty of Thyestes’ reflection on closure, yet it would be misguided to posit a radical opposition between a tightly closed Greek model and Seneca’s openended finale. While it is important to recognize that the ending of Thyestes is indeed unusual in its degree of openness, it is preferable to couch the discussion in terms of different balances between elements of closure and openness which characterize different tragic experiences. Sophocles intersperses his main narrative with inset stories which lack a definite ending and repeatedly announce future developments, but the main plot does normally achieve its telos, which thus appears to be challenged by the divergences of the inset narratives.104 Instead, Seneca opposes the openness of his main plot to the ‘included closure’105 of Atreus’ mise en abyme. The Sophoclean dialectical model is also present, of course, in Virgil. The unending debate between openness and closure in the Aeneid, the constant struggle between Jupiter’s teleology and Juno’s passion for delays, digressions and alternative plots is extended within the text, while the poem’s end offers (ostensibly) a ‘Jovian’, closural ending.106 Seneca turns this model inside-out, upturning 102

103

104 105 106

‘Aeg. But to think that these men should let their wanton tongues thus blossom into speech against me and cast about such gibes, putting their fortune to the test! To reject wise counsel and insult their master! Chorus It would not be like men of Argos to cringe before a knave. Aeg. Ha! I’ll visit you with vengeance yet in days to come. Chorus Not if fate shall guide Orestes to return home. Aeg. Of myself I know that exiles feed on hope. Chorus Keep on, grow fat, polluting justice, since you can. Aeg. Know that you will make atonement for your insolent folly. Chorus Brag in your bravery like a cock beside a hen. Clyt. Care not for their idle yelpings. I and you will be masters of this house and order it aright’ (trans. Smyth). ‘Ant. . . . Then send us back to Thebes, if yet we may heal this mortal feud and stay the self-wrought doom that drives our brothers to their tomb. Theseus I will do that . . .’ (1769–76). Note, however, that the chorus has the last word: ‘and now cease your laments. Everything has been ordered appropriately’ (1779). On Sophocles: Knox (1964); Roberts (1989); Kraus (1991). On Aristophanes: Bowie (1993). See also Foley (1985). A term I borrow from Fowler (1997a) 18 = (2000) 302. See Hershkowitz (1998) 68–124; Quint (1993) 50–96. On epic, not only Virgilian, closure: Hardie (1997).

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the balance of the two principles. He reflects on epic’s ambivalent desire for closure as much as epic reflects upon tragedy’s, and calls into question both genres’ hope (or illusion) of actually achieving a definite closure. The lack of closure at the end of Thyestes is compatible with the fact that the play carefully eschews a conclusive moral statement. Thyestes’ appeal to an absolute moral order is immediately quashed by Atreus’ mocking disillusionment, and even the chorus, as we will see, is denied (literally) the last word.107 Openness is the vehicle which finally expresses the absence of absolute points of reference, of divine guarantees of order and morality to which characters and audience alike can turn in search of an authoritative take on events. Here, again, Seneca seems to have gone one step further in the deconstructive approach displayed by the Aeneid; it is no longer a question of opposing Jupiter’s teleology to Juno’s openness, since we are not even sure that a divine figure can effectively embody superior principles.108 Significantly, as Atreus questions Thyestes’ gesturing towards divine sanctions (both moral and narrative), he is ultimately interrogating the very nature of his victory. He succeeds in undermining Thyestes, but he is nonetheless confessing that closure must be temporary and illusory for himself as well: he might not care in this moment of triumph, but we know that he will indeed care later. His mythical saga is emphatically not over. We understand now how important it is that the tragedy’s conclusion forcefully recalls and returns to its beginning. The very structure of the final exchange between Atreus and Thyestes mirrors the one between Tantalus and the Fury. The parallelism again reinforces the sense of openness repeatedly suggested in the play: indeed, it is almost as if the tragedy closed (momentarily) with a new prologue, a preview of coming attractions. We will see that this deconstruction of beginnings and endings carries with it a sense, among other things, that finality is elusive and that repetition inevitably prevails. At the beginning of Agamemnon it will be Thyestes who returns to earth as a ghost and sets in motion a new plot of revenge.109 Atreus’ ability to bring his own masterplot to a definite close is a function of his power in the tragedy. His intellectual and material resources are definitely superior to those of Thyestes and allow him to execute his plot to the letter. He is impotent, however, to control the tragedy’s final openness, the promise of future evils which will tip the scale against him and his descendants. As a playwright, and as a tyrant,110 Atreus’ power is shown to 107 108 110

Ch. 4, pp. 175–6. 109 See p. 203. On this final reference to the gods see p. 152. Note that the language of poetic achievement evoked at 885–8 (above, p. 59) neatly doubles up as a reference to the ruler’s katasterismos.

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be almost absolute, but temporally limited. His victory, complete as it might seem, is hardly an instance of imperium sine fine: the end of Thyestes proves the inevitability of a next instalment. Thyestes, by triggering the illusion of teleology in its inset play, is the only one of Seneca’s tragedies to develop a significant metadramatic reflection on this issue, and in a sense it provides a theoretical explanation for the uncertain closures which we find in other plays. If the ability to close off narrative is indeed a sign of power, then the lack of closure which characterizes Thyestes and other Senecan tragedies must be seen as an indicator of the fact that power structures and roles are inherently fluid, and that the stable certainties of Stoic fate are ultimately predicated on the unstable and unforeseable workings of Fortuna. The constrast between the internal closure and the openness staged by frames can also offer some insight into the relative artistic appeal of these two methods of structuring a text. Atreus’ plot converges on the intense pleasure of anagnorisis, which implies for him the ultimate success of his plot, and for the audience is the most intense point of the whole play, the moment of revelation. The play’s final postponement of closure, however, defers fulfilment and pleasure, pointing towards an as yet unseen tragedy. These are two different principles of aesthetic pleasure, and Atreus ultimately proves his mastery in both; in this, too, he shows a multiple personality consistent, as we will see, with his ‘Dionysiac’ nature.111 Although Atreus fashions himself (and, to a great extent, actually is) controlling, he is in turn controlled by the Fury and the overarching authority of the author. It is Seneca’s decision, ultimately, to deny his play an organic and convincing closure, and to let it end with the ominous announcement of future nefas. In writing the tragedy Seneca has already defied the intimation of closure that came to him in the form of literary tradition, has reopened in a self-conscious, painful fashion a tragic discourse whose vitality had by his time already been questioned. At the end of the play it falls once again to the authorial voice, masked by the silent Fury, to declare the issue forever open. 111

Ch. 3, passim. Atreus also appears to be flouting gender boundaries, as discussed in ch. 3. Narrative closure and openness (or, better, different degrees of closural definition) are susceptible to a genderoriented interpretation. See Fowler (1997b) 10 = (2000) 293, who relates closure and openness to ‘logo-’ and ‘phallocentricity’, building on Cixous (1986) 88, (1991) 49–50 and Gallop (1982).

chapter 3

A craftier Tereus

t h r a c i u m n e fa s t i t. How now, Lavinia? Marcus, what means this? Some book there is that she desires to see. Which is it, girl, of these? . . . b oy. Grandsire, ’tis Ovid’s Metamorphoses . . . (Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus 4.1)

i Explicitly invoked by the Fury in the prologue and by Atreus in his inspired monologue, the allusive pattern which links significant moments of Thyestes to the Ovidian tale of Tereus and Procne (Met. 6.412–674) is crucially important. Both stories culminate in the revengeful slaughter of children who are then cooked and served to their ignorant fathers in perverse banquets; neither narrative spares its readers the goriest details. Seneca’s recognition of Ovid’s Tereus as the foremost archetype of narrative violence will be heeded centuries later by Shakespeare in Titus Andronicus, a play steeped in classical sources (Seneca and Ovid), and routinely criticized for its grotesque excesses of violence and goriness.1 As Marcus first catches sight of Lavinia’s violated body, he not only evokes the Ovidian model, but reiterates the agonistic comparison with Ovid inaugurated by Seneca’s maiore numero (2.4.38–43): Fair Philomel, why she but lost her tongue, And in a tedious sampler sew’d her mind; But, lovely niece, that mean is cut from thee. 1

On Titus’ classical background see Waith (1957); Tricomi (1974); Miola (1983) 42–75; Bate (1995) 90–2; James (1997) 42–84. The emphasis on the Ovidian model is justified, but should not detract from the importance of Thyestes, much favoured by an earlier generation of critics, as appears now to be the case (Baker (1939) 119–39, endorsed by Bate (1995) 29, n. 2). The strong metatheatrical component of Titus is arguably inspired by Seneca rather than Ovid.

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A craftier Tereus, cousin, hast thou met, And he hath cut those pretty fingers off, That could have better sew’d than Philomel.

Lavinia overcomes the silence to which mutilation has doomed her by pointing her family to the relevant section of the Metamorphoses, just as the horrors of Thyestes emerge from the silence that Tantalus’ ghost had advocated in vain, thanks to the powerful inspiration of Ovid’s Thracium nefas. Thematic parallelism offers an ostensibly adequate explanation for the intertextual relationship, a relationship which is further encouraged by the connection that the Metamorphoses establish, in turn, not only with Sophocles’ prototypical (and lost) Tereus, but also with Accius’ Atreus, one of Seneca’s most influential models.2 On a more general level, it is hardly surprising to find the Metamorphoses registering in the intertextual background to Senecan tragedy, whether one might want to explain this pervasive phenomenon as a generic (‘Silver’?) stylistic affinity or a more pointed signifying strategy.3 Plotting, however, is not the only aspect of these texts that bears comparison, and I will in fact postpone this issue for the time being. As we have seen, the Fury acknowledges the hellish atmosphere of the Tereus story4 and places her own endeavours under the aegis of Tereus’ nefas, advocating a new ‘Thracian nefas’5 with even more victims.6 This strategy of excess announced at the outset is clearly a very important aspect of the way in which Thyestes will negotiate its relationship with the Ovidian model. But even more significant is the presence of such a clear programmatic intention at the core of a section of the play with strong metadramatic resonances. Thracium fiat nefas is the founding gesture of a tragedy which will come to light under the ominous auspices of its astonishingly violent precedent. Indeed this opening announcement instructs any comparison of the two texts to take into account the whole span of Ovid’s episode, and not just its climactic resolution, even if the Fury stresses (if the text is 2

3 4 5 6

The most significant points of contact between Accius’ Atreus and Ovid in this episode are registered by Bömer (1969–82) ii. 117. On the possible connections with Accius’ Tereus, and in general, see Fränkel (1945) 377–81. Jacobi ((1988) 153) argues against a direct connection between Seneca and Accius. The issue of the relationship between Seneca and Ovid has received considerable attention (recently from Jacobi (1988)), but a satisfactory critical analysis is still missing. This atmosphere and its implications will be discussed by Ingo Gildenhard and Andrew Zissos in their forthcoming monograph on Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The whole episode of Tereus, Procne and Philomela begins in Ovid with the words Threicius Tereus (6.424), almost an internal ‘heading’. Maior can also carry metaliterary overtones, as, famously, in Virg. Aen. 7.44–5 (see above, p. 31).

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sound) that the finale will indeed form a privileged point of contact: ‘not yet does Thyestes cry for his sons – and when will he [sc. Atreus] lift his hand?’ (58–9: nondum Thyestes liberos deflet suos | ecquando tollet?). The story of Tereus and Procne, to be sure, is not just a celebrated tale of violence, revenge and moral ambiguity which displays significant analogies with the plot of Thyestes. More importantly, the myth of Philomela can be considered the ur-myth about the origin of a certain type of poetry, one which is produced ‘by the disorder of relations and the confusion of identity represented as incest, cannibalism or civil war’,7 and is fuelled by the dark forces of violence and vengefulness. In the background of Thyestes stands the incestuous relationship between Thyestes and his sister-in-law Aerope. This concern for perturbed family connections (dubius sanguis, 240)8 will lead Atreus to pour his nephews’ blood into his brother’s cup, to find a cannibalistic resolution to the fratricidal strife that for a Roman audience inevitably recalls the horrors of civil war. By positing at the outset such a strong correlation with the Procne episode, the plot of Thyestes alerts us to its powerful implications for a reflection on poetry, its power and its dangers. This set of associations is recognized in Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, where it is actually amplified and extended, as several characters deploy their passions – lust, revenge, ambition – in self-consciously metatheatrical fashion. The arch-villain Aaron is a master of words – as his name suggests9 – who engineers the larger part of the plot and is fully conscious of his metatheatrical role (5.1.63–6): For I must talk of murders, rapes and massacres, Acts of black night, abominable deeds, Complots of mischief, treason, villainies, Ruthful to hear yet piteously performed.10

His lover and accomplice Tamora is equally aware that she is setting in motion ‘the complot of this timeless tragedy’ (2.3.265) as she writes and delivers a fake letter which will precipitate the death of Titus’ sons. Later in the play she tries to deceive Titus by staging a nightmarish pantomime (‘I must ply my theme’, 5.2.80) in which she acts as ‘Revenge’ (‘I am not Tamora: | She is thy enemy and I thy friend. | I am Revenge, sent from th’infernal kingdom . . .’, 5.2.28–30) and her own children are cast in the 7 9 10

8 See below, p. 102. Kilgour (1990) 33. ‘An Elizabethan audience would have known that the biblical Aaron had an eloquent, persuasive tongue (Exodus, 4.10–16)’ (Bate (1995) 125). ‘Lamentable to hear about, yet done in order to excite pity’ (Bate (1995) 247).

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roles of ‘Rape’ and ‘Murder’. Titus himself, as he prepares to take his own revenge, invokes the Ovidian mastertext, ‘For worse than Philomel you used my daughter, | And worse than Procne I will be revenged’ (5.2.194–5), and proceeds to stage his own version of the Thyestean banquet: ‘I’ll play the cook’ (5.2.204). Most strikingly, Shakespeare’s Lavinia collapses the two Ovidian archetypes of female ability to overcome censorship and repression through a mediated form of quasi-artistic expression. She is a novel Philomela, as she makes explicit by pointing out the relevant sections of the Metamorphoses, but she then proceeds to write down the names of the villains with a staff on a ‘sandy plot’ (4.1.69), much like Io had done, once metamorphosed into a cow (Met. 1.649–50). Both writing and poetry are born under the same sign – that of a violated woman who cunningly devises alternative means to tell her story.11 Words play an important role already in the first part of the story of Tereus. Overcome by his desire for Philomela, Tereus showers her with emotional language which is supposedly conveying Procne’s desire for her sister to come to visit her, but in truth merely encodes his lust into acceptable (speakable) forms: facundum faciebat amor (‘love made him eloquent’, Met. 6.469). It is thanks to this elaborate and deceitful speech that Tereus is able to overcome his father-in-law’s disapproval and depart with Philomela (6.473–4). Beguiling words become once again Tereus’ preferred weapon, when he falsely reports to his wife that Philomela is dead and misleads her with a moving description of commenta funera (6.565). Only once in this first part of the tragedy does language function transparently. Significantly, this happens when Tereus, alone with his prey, unveils to her the true nature of his unlawful and unholy desire (6.519–26): iamque iter effectum iamque in sua litora fessis puppibus exierant, cum rex Pandione natam in stabula alta trahit silvis obscura vetustis atque ibi pallentem trepidamque et cuncta timentem et iam cum lacrimis, ubi sit germana, rogantem includit fassusque nefas et virginem et unam, vi superat frustra clamato saepe parente, saepe sorore sua, magnis super omnia divis. The voyage now is done, and now they leave the weary ship and land on their own shore; and then the king drags off Pandion’s daughter up to a cabin in the woods, remote and hidden away among dark ancient trees, and there pale, trembling, 11

Cunning being a trait ‘most associated with the feminine domain’: Zeitlin (1996) 349, 358.

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fearing everything, weeping and asking where her sister was, he locked her, and revealed his own black heart and ravished her, a virgin, all alone, calling and calling to her father, calling to her sister, calling, even more, to heaven above.

This time words do tell the truth, and this truth is the central crime of the scene. Indeed, Tereus consistently embodies the connection between nefas and words, both when he exploits them in order to conceal his desires, and when, once the restraining factors represented mainly by the presence of Pandion have been overcome, he is finally free to remove the mask of repression and voice his desire. The privileged relationship between words and nefas is also apparent ex negativo in the brief section where Philomela vows to report the whole truth about Tereus’ crimes. She will set aside her modesty and speak up (6.544–8): ipsa pudore proiecto tua facta loquar; si copia detur, in populos veniam; si silvis clausa tenebor, inplebo silvas et conscia saxa movebo. audiet haec aether, et si deus ullus in illo est. I’ll shed my shame and shout what you have done. If I’ve the chance, I’ll walk among the crowds: or, if I’m held locked in the woods, my voice shall fill the woods and move the rocks to pity. This bright sky shall hear, and any god that dwells on high!’

Her wish is brutally crushed by the mutilation that Tereus inflicts on her as she tries to speak, luctantem loqui (6.556). The violent removal of Philomela’s tongue shatters her illusion that words, if clear and explicit, can still have a role in the world of nefas. It is interesting to contrast the dark setting in which Tereus reveals his passion to her (6.524: fassus . . . nefas), redolent of the obscure, menacing shadows that haunt infernal or semiinfernal landscapes – one is reminded of the locus horridus in Oedipus and Thyestes – with Philomela’s vain invocation of a divine order represented by the aether’s listening to her (6.548). The second ‘act’ of Ovid’s narrative is taken up with Philomela’s cunning attempt to reveal the hidden truth, and Procne’s plotting of a terrible revenge against her husband. It is in this context that words – spoken or otherwise conveyed – again play a crucial role. Philomela has no way to express her feelings verbally. Her mouth lacks a means of expression (6.574: os mutum facti caret indice), but she can resort as an alternative to ingenium and sollertia (6.575).12 The novel indicium sceleris will thus be a craftily textured cloth (6.576–9): 12

Ingenium being, of course, a poet’s virtue; see OLD s.v. 5.

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stamina barbarica suspendit callida tela purpureasque notas filis intexuit albis, indicium sceleris, perfectaque tradidit uni, utque ferat dominae, gestu rogat; on a clumsy native loom she wove a clever fabric, working words in red on a white ground to tell the tale of wickedness, and, when it was complete, entrusted it to a woman and by signs asked her to take it to the queen.

The outcome is indeed a carmen13 (6.582), which her sister can read in the fabric in spite of the constraints and the repressive violence to which its author has been subjected: Philomela, though horribly mutilated, has found what T. S. Eliot will call her ‘inviolable voice’ (The Waste Land 101). Philomela’s muted words actualize the double meaning of textus as both ‘cloth’ and ‘text’ and evoke the metaphorical association between ‘weaving’ and ‘plotting’:14 her message thus overcomes the repressive force of violence described in the earlier part of the story. To the strength of Tereus’ actions Philomela opposes the silent reproach of her embroidered messages, powerful enough to unleash Procne’s avenging furor (6.581–6). I touch here upon an issue of crucial importance in the ideological texture of Metamorphoses. There, too, Philomela’s web strengthens the equation of poetic word and return of the repressed which I have highlighted in Thyestes. The structural function of Philomela’s ‘words’ is not dissimilar to that of Tereus’ normal verbal utterances. His dissemblance breaches the decorum of silence that he should be respecting and displaces his feelings. The limitations imposed upon Philomela are those of violence and confinement, yet words function in the same way, by slyly overcoming the barrier of silence and inaction. It is precisely this consistency in the way words operate that makes them ambivalent and double-edged. Words are inherently disruptive because they can subvert moral principles just as easily as nefarious ones.15 Even in the latter case, however, the ultimate balance of good and evil is difficult to ascertain. Certainly Philomela’s encrypted ‘words’ overcome Tereus’ immoral orders, and manage to reveal the fate she has suffered. The impressive might of her words is emphasized by their positioning in a 13 14 15

Ovid does not reveal explicitly whether the carmen is composed of images or letters (see Bömer (1969–86) i i.158). The connotations of carmen, however, are unmistakable. Bergren (1983) 71–5; Scheid and Svenbro (1996). Other emphases, of course, can be preferred. In a perceptive article (Segal (1994)), for instance, Charles Segal has chosen to insist rather on Procne’s ability to keep her reactions at bay when she deciphers her sister’s messages. This is certainly an important aspect of the narrative, which touches more on the issue of the reader’s response to the (poetic) message. As far as emotional and cognitive dimensions are concerned, however, this episode underlines the liberating potential of the poetic word. I would also be inclined to argue that what Segal considers to be the unsatisfactory ‘pseudosolution’ of the final metamorphosis is in fact a compromise between an attempt to somehow condemn the cruelty of the tale and the need to preserve the story’s confused moral balance.

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linear sequence which connects crime to punishment: Philomela’s ‘writing’ becomes an indispensable instrument of revenge. Yet this revenge is highly problematic, because Procne’s actions will reduce the moral chasm between herself and Tereus to dangerously narrow proportions. Procne’s perverse revenge problematizes the reader’s ability to side emotionally with either the victims or the villains.16 The words used to describe Procne’s reaction on reading the woven carmen – fasque nefasque | confusura ruit poenaeque in imagine tota est (‘she stormed ahead, confusing right and wrong, her whole soul filled with visions of revenge’, 6.585–6) – apply equally well to the readers’ confusion, as they suspect in Procne’s muted rage the intimation of further unspeakable violence to come. Struck by the unusual message that she has received, Procne reacts with apparently restrained emotion. Once again, the words and cries that her dolor would have normally elicited must be stifled in the presence of a violent, repressive force. In this case, however, Procne’s conscious and voluntary gagging of her emotions is geared towards a delayed yet fuller satisfaction, one that will come not from words but from deeds. For us, reading this scene of reading, this is yet another confirmation of the psychological impact of words, which rouse emotions and stir up violence. Since they are the cause of Procne’s avenging murder, Philomela’s words testify once again to the close connection between words, which work against repression, and nefas.17 By revealing to her sister the nefas she has endured, and stirring her Bacchic furor,18 Philomela is functioning here as a quasi-divine mover of events. If Procne’s reaction is reminiscent of Virgil’s Amata – the Bacchic woman who sets in motion, at the human level, the violent narrative of the second half of the Aeneid – Philomela is structurally analogous to Juno and the Fury, whose decision and responsibility it is to stir Amata to action. Thus, by speaking unspeakable words, Philomela is endowed with the same inceptive function assumed by the Fury in the prologue to Thyestes. 16 17

18

A point well stressed by Segal (1994). I am thus inclined to disagree with Segal’s rather optimistic conclusion that ‘as the web of words that calls attention to its textual origins, it [the weaving] objectifies the crime and in that way enables the reader to take the full measure of its horror’ (Segal (1994) 266). The Dionysiac connotation is reinforced by the Horatian model for fasque nefasque at Met. 6.585, that is, Carm. 1.18.7–11 (at 10): ac ne quis modici transiliat munera Liberi, | . . . | . . . monet Sithoniis non levis Euhius, | cum fas atque nefas exiguo fine libidinum | discernunt avidi. Note the reference to Sithoniae . . . nurus immediately following at Met. 6.588. See Titus Andronicus 2.1.133–5 (Demetrius, Tamora’s son, as he accepts Aaron’s invitation to ‘revel in Lavinia’s treasury’ (131)): ‘Sit fas aut nefas, till I find the stream | To cool this heat, a charm to calm these fits, | Per Stygia, per manes vehor’ (the last line is based on Sen. Phaed . 1180: per Styga, per amnes igneos amens sequar (Phaedra vowing to pursue Hippolytus)).

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It is important to stress that female characters embody this force of (written) poetic creation associated with a removal of repression, as explicitly recommended, indeed, by Ovid himself at Ars amatoria 3.611–32. Even under strict control, women will always be able to deceive – dare verba – husbands and custodians: tot licet observent, adsit modo certa voluntas, | quot fuerant Argo lumina, verba dabis (‘even if as many guardians watch you as Argos had eyes, you’ll manage to deceive if you really want to’, 3.617–18). We face here an instance of the ‘Bacchic’ paradigm that endows women and goddesses with a subversive creative power such as that of Juno in the Aeneid,19 who challenges and sabotages at every turn Jupiter’s fixed, teleological prescriptions. This disruptive power is one that Atreus – a ‘Bacchic’ character whose self-identification with a female character, Procne, highlights his complex gender connotations – claims for himself. But we also face a subversive transformation of the traditional prescription of female silence and tameness into an exuberant, active and pernicious loquacity. Readings of the Procne story that are informed by a feminist perspective have focused especially on the ‘voice of the shuttle’, and its potential to grant voice and power to the silenced weaving of women.20 It is a voice whose profoundly disturbing energy is never lost sight of: it can denounce crimes, and call for revenge, just as easily as it can unleash the powers of hell. Thyestes lays great emphasis on the force of poetic language. The prologue, as we have seen, represents both the bond between words and nefas, and the violent dialectic between repression and its removal which words precipitate. Other parts of the play, too, insist on this connection. Atreus’ cunning use of words – appealing, mendacious and ultimately victorious – is consistently matched against Thyestes’ inability to look beyond their literal surface, hence his final demise. Atreus has read his Ovid, and displays through a number of revealing allusions a detailed knowledge of Tereus’ story, in particular of Procne’s avenging plans. Thyestes, on the other hand, fails to ‘remember’ Tereus’ plight and is thus unprepared to counter his brother’s plan. He betrays his lack of awareness when he proclaims that lacrimis agendum est (‘it is time for tears to push forward my case’, Thy. 517) – a doomed proposition which ironically ignores Procne’s much more effective injunction to the contrary: ‘non est lacrimis hoc’ inquit ‘agendum’ (Ov. Met. 6.611) and Juno’s authoritative precedent ‘non lacrimis hoc 19 20

On women as ‘catalysts, agents, instruments, blockers, spoilers, destroyers’ see Zeitlin (1996) 347. See Joplin (1984), an insightful reading of the Tereus and Procne episode from a feminist standpoint. See also the recent essay by Richlin (1992). On the theme of violence in Ovid see Galinsky (1975) 132–40.

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tempus’ ait Saturnia Iuno (Virg. Aen. 12.156: ‘no time for tears, now said Iuno daughter of Saturn’). Atreus’ highly figurative and rhetorically powerful form of expression embodies the poet’s own craftmanship. Like the Muses, who – traditionally – can sing the truth, but can also sing convincing lies,21 poets can bend words to express any feeling and any emotion, whether true or false, deeply moral or astonishingly cruel. New prominence, too, is granted to the notion that the play presents itself as a way to overcome ideological, literary and ethical limitations. The strength of Philomela’s web is indeed the strength of Thyestes as a whole. Both texts show that the words of poetry can reveal unexpected extremes of violence, and that there is no limit to the creativity of human wickedness. Seneca competes with his model at a metanarrative level as well, further blurring the distinction, already problematic in Ovid, between good and evil. Atreus’ desire to surpass all previous horrors powerfully reflects the play’s agonistic relationship with its literary ancestor.22 By remembering and repeating well-known criminal deeds, those of Tereus and Procne, Seneca is already raising the moral stakes of his own writing, since his rewriting will necessarily exemplify a new, bloodier advance in the literary depiction of horrors, and will necessarily result from yet another brutal breach of the decorum of silence. If Tereus’ and Procne’s final metamorphosis guarantees that their violence will forever be encoded in the bloody stains of their feathers, then Seneca’s play testifies that the message has not been lost.

ii After highlighting, in Ovid’s narrative, concerns and reflections which carry perceptible metaliterary overtones, I would like to focus on a comparative analysis of the two plots, which, by introducing for the first time a set of concepts central to the rest of this book, will greatly assist an understanding of some key features of Seneca’s play. It is useful to look at analogies and important differences between the two episodes, especially outside the comparison between the two banquet scenes: if we focus a comparison exclusively, or even predominantly, on these sections, we may end up playing down the extent to which the two texts clash in their articulation of the plot. On the one hand, Ovid plots his story on a large narrative stretch which encompasses a series of episodes that are all closely linked to each other 21 22

Bergren (1983) is excellent on the specific connection between Muses, women, truth and language. See Tarrant (1985) 130.

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and are all equally indispensable for a coherent understanding of the finale. His story is neatly divided into two main sections, the first one leading to Philomela’s rape and mutilation, the second, chronologically distinct (Met. 6.571: signa deus bis sex acto lustraverat anno, ‘through all the twelve bright signs of heaven the sun had journeyed’), centred upon Procne’s revenge and leading up to the banquet and the final metamorphosis. Thyestes, on the other hand, chooses to stage only the last part of the confrontation between the two brothers, and voices the causes of Atreus’ furor in a limited number of carefully worded, almost coded references. Yet the programmatic reference to the Thracian nefas which defines the Fury’s creative intention invites further comparisons between the two plots. To begin with, the first part of the Tereus episode foregrounds the same themes of deceit and betrayed trust that play an equally important role in Thyestes. In Ovid’s poem, the narrator’s voice explicitly insists on the contrast between reality and appearance which only Philomela’s cunning stratagem will reveal to Procne. Tereus, madly in love with his wife’s sister, is able to conceal his lust under the veil of soothing words (6.469–74): facundum faciebat amor, quotiensque rogabat ulterius iusto, Procnen ita velle ferebat; addidit et lacrimas, tamquam mandasset et illas. pro superi, quantum mortalia pectora caecae noctis habent! ipso sceleris molimine Tereus creditur esse pius laudemque a crimine sumit. Love made him eloquent; and, if at times he pressed his pleas too far, why, Procne wished it so; he even wept, as if she’d ordered tears. Ye Gods above, how black the night that blinds our human hearts! The pains he took for sin appeared to prove his loyalty; his villainy won praise.

In Pandion’s trusting of his daughter to Tereus, we recognize what Thyestes himself will do: both men maintain that fides will guarantee the safety of their offspring. Pandion reminds his son-in-law of his obligations (498), and Thyestes, in an astounding feat of self-deception, goes as far as claiming that those children will in fact ensure his own loyalty: ‘as pledge of my faith, brother, take these innocent boys’ (Thy. 520–1: obsides fidei accipe | hos innocentes, frater). The second segment of the story told by Ovid – Philomela’s rape – does not find a direct counterpart in Seneca’s play. It is very much present, however, in the background to Thyestes, that part of the mythical plot which is not directly staged but is alluded to and offers a very interesting, if incomplete, explanation of the events Seneca portrayed. Philomela attacks

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Tereus, blaming him for the violence she has endured, for ripping apart the family (Met. 6.537–8): omnia turbasti: paelex ego facta sororis, tu geminus coniunx, hostis mihi debita poena. You have confused everything. I’m made a concubine, my sister’s rival; you’re a husband twice, and Procne ought to be my enemy!

The charge is not dissimilar to Atreus’ invective against his brother as he is planning his revenge (Thy. 222–4): coniugem stupro abstulit regnumque furto: specimen antiquum imperi fraude est adeptus, fraude turbavit domum My wife he took away with his debauchery; he stole my kingdom; the ancient token of our dynasty he gained by fraud, by fraud unsettled our house.

This background is necessary in order to understand fully the rigorous selection of relevant aspects of the plot which Seneca operates vis-à-vis his model. All the intertextual pointers concur in establishing a connection between Atreus and Procne.23 As he sets out to repeat the horrors witnessed by Tereus’ family in the even more audacious form willed by the Fury, Atreus follows in Procne’s footsteps while planning the nefas and carrying it out. The allusion to Ovid is clarified in the crucial scene of Thyestes where Atreus reveals his plans to the counsellor. Even in this deceptively clearcut case it is interesting to look for specific insights on how Seneca has systematically reworked his model. The beginning of Atreus’ monologue condenses in a question the experiences and emotions which Ovid had divided between Philomela and Procne. In Atreus’ words to himself (178–80) post tot scelera, post fratris dolos fasque omne ruptum questibus vanis agis iratus Atreus? after so many crimes, after a brother’s treacheries, and breaking every law, you are busy with idle complaints – is this Atreus in a rage?

we recognize Procne’s impatient exhortation to action after Tereus’ crime has been revealed (Met. 6.611–13): 23

Both are compared to a tigress, at Ov. Met. 6.636–7 and Thy. 707–14, on which see below, p. 123 and nn. 111–12.

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‘non est lacrimis hoc’ inquit ‘agendum, sed ferro, sed siquid habes, quod vincere ferrum possit.’24 ‘This is not time for tears, but for the sword’, she cried, ‘or what may be mightier than the sword.’

This intertextual strategy sheds some light on the multifaceted character of Atreus, who, in the portion of the plot that is elaborated by Seneca, is a new avenging Procne, but also represents himself as a female victim – a battered Philomela. It is through allusion that Atreus’ protestations about his own rights acquire the special emotional value warranted by Philomela’s innocence. And a similar overtone could readily be detected in line 220, where Atreus replies to the shocked counsellor that, when it comes to Thyestes, the very notion of fas becomes blurred beyond recognition. Fas est in illo quidquid in fratre est nefas (‘whatever is wrong to do to a brother is right to do to him’, Thy. 220) recalls, in its apparent oxymoron, the moral justification that Procne uses to absolve herself as she contemplates the punishment she has in mind for her husband: scelus est pietas in coniuge Tereo (Met. 6.635: ‘loyalty for a husband like Tereus is a crime’). It is Atreus, again, who recalls Procne’s words – magnum quodcumque paravi: | quid sit adhuc dubito (Met. 6.618–19: ‘some mighty deed I’ll dare, I’ll do, though what that deed shall be, is still unsure’) – as he announces his plan: haud quid sit scio, | sed grande quiddam est (‘I do not know what it is, but it is some great thing’, Thy. 269–70).25 And both Atreus and Procne are able to imagine in detail the final outcome of their revenge: poenaeque in imagine tota est (Met. 6.586: ‘her whole soul is filled with visions of revenge’) prefigures Seneca’s tota iam ante oculos meos | imago caedis errat (‘already before my eyes flits the whole picture of his slaughter’, Thy. 281–2). In order to pursue his revenge, Atreus displays qualities traditionally associated with women in Greek and Roman culture: ‘secrecy, guile, entrapment’.26 Thyestes’ trust in the traditionally male qualities of steadfastness and earnestness which he advertises especially in act 3 will prove to be no match. 24

25 26

See also the exchange between the satelles and Atreus at Thy. 257 (on which see above, p. 17, n. 28): SAT. ferrum? AT. parum est. SAT. quid ignis? AT. etiamnunc parum est, which may also recall Accius’ Procne planning her revenge – atque id ego semper sic mecum agito et comparo | quo pacto magnam molem minuam (634–5Ribbeck2 = 446–7 Dangel). On the possible connection between the Dionysiac atmosphere of Accius’ Tereus and Thyestes see p. 133, n. 137 below (on 446–7 Dangel). See Ovid’s Medea (Her. 12.212): nescio quid certe mens mea maius agit, which echoes in a metanarrative vein Propertius 2.34.66 (nescio quid maius nascitur Iliade): Bessone (1997) 32–41, 282–4. Zeitlin (1996) 360.

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In the final revelation of their plot, Atreus and Procne show their affinities once again: quidquid e natis tuis | superest habes, quodcumque non superest habes (‘whatever is left of your sons, you have; whatever is not left, you have’, 1030–1) recalls ‘intus habes, quem poscis’ (Met. 6.655: ‘it’s inside you, the son you’re looking for’). Also the more shaded connection between Atreus and Philomela resurfaces in the cruel joy with which Atreus appears to accomplish what for the girl had remained an unfulfilled desire. To Philomela’s muted satisfaction – nec tempore maluit ullo | posse loqui et meritis testari gaudia dictis (6.659–60: ‘she never wanted more her tongue to express her joy in words that matched her happiness’) – he can oppose eloquent cries of joy: nunc meas laudo manus, | nunc parta vera est palma. | perdideram scelus, | nisi sic doleres (‘Now I praise my handiwork; now is the true palm won. I would have wasted my crime, if you weren’t suffering this much’, Thy. 1096–8). The analogy established in the text between Atreus and his Ovidian models lends him a psychological chiaroscuro, and further discourages the temptation to oppose bluntly his supposedly all-negative ethos to the supposedly positive ethos of his brother Thyestes. From the Metamorphoses, in fact, Seneca inherits the key issue of the ethical responsibility of the main characters (Tereus and Procne), an issue which the final metamorphosis pointedly refuses to resolve by sealing the fate of both spouses in a new, but eternal, condition. To Tereus’ responsibility Ovid opposes a monstrous revenge with intractable moral implications. If Tereus’ tyrannical cruelty is neither lessened nor justified by the terrible punishment his wife prepares for him, neither does Procne personify a fully endorsable moral option. The pointed and systematic connection between the Metamorphoses and Thyestes reinforces precisely this precarious and destabilizing morality. The impact of the final banquet on the overall ethical connotation of the Ovidian characters applies, in reverse, to the tragedy as well. For one thing, the link between Atreus and Procne invites the reader to credit Atreus with the same objective, if partial, justification which monstrous suffering guarantees to both Procne and Philomela. Secondly, the association between Thyestes and Tereus reflects upon this apparently blameless victim the inhuman traits which make Tereus’ redemption impossible even in the context of his extreme punishment. A synopsis of the two plots offers one final insight. The Tereus episode foregrounds the notion that victims will turn into executioners, and, of course, vice versa. Philomela and Procne’s revenge against Tereus is increasingly horrific. At the end of the tale Tereus, the violent and cunning villain,

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is thoroughly defeated. This intertextual model introduces in Thyestes, too, a lesson of reciprocity and continuity that is pointedly reinforced by other features of the play. The Fury had already made clear from the very beginning, in a series of generic statements, that the vicissitudes of revenge and counter-revenge would continue: certetur omni scelere et alterna vice | stringatur ensis (‘Make them vie in every kind of crime and draw the sword on either side’, 25–6). The story of Tereus, Procne, Philomela and their successors unequivocally confirms this sinister intimation.

iii The two lines along which I have chosen to carry out a comparison between the Procne episode and Thyestes neglect a number of basic characteristics of the Ovidian story, since they only concentrate on analogies and differences of plot and on thematic implications. Yet at this point it is fruitful to take into account a more basic and specific implication suggested by this intertextual connection. As I have already mentioned in passing, the Fury and Atreus do not simply refer to a generic plot for the Procne story, but explicitly invoke the specific instantiation of that mythical story-matter accomplished by Ovid in his Metamorphoses. The story of Tereus was certainly a productive tragic theme at least from Sophocles onwards,27 yet it is to his epic predecessor, rather than, for instance, to the tragedy of Accius, that Seneca insistently refers. The importance of this choice is heightened, of course, by the prominent position of the Fury’s initial arousal of the Thracium nefas in a prologue fraught with programmatic, metaliterary implications. Thus the recognition of the fact that Tereus and Procne are tragic characters only throws into sharper relief the fact that Thyestes invokes an epic text as its authorizing Muse, and as a fundamental model that must not only be equalled, but surpassed. Generic affiliations become all the more pertinent when Ovid himself steps into the picture, so that simple labels such as ‘epic’ (or indeed ‘tragic’) cease to be encompassing or definitive: the Metamorphoses provide numerous and dazzlingly complex instances of generic cross-fertilization and manipulation. Ovid himself, to begin with, looks to Sophocles and Accius as his models and is engaged in the same exercise of transgeneric appropriation that we witness in Thyestes – only the direction is different. It is reasonable to assume that Seneca capitalizes on that complexity, as he alludes in his play both to an epic poem, which in turn alludes to tragic 27

An extensive analysis of the tradition is offered by Cazzaniga (1950); see now also Ciappi (1998).

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models, and to those tragedies directly, thus creating an intricate web of allusive relationships which resembles the stemma of a heavily contaminated textual tradition. Seneca imitates Ovid not only in the subject matter and expressive options of his work, but also in his intricate intertextual protocols, which thrive on multiple references. Yet again, to extrapolate the methodological and structural aspects of the phenomenon jeopardizes a full appreciation of its core element: why does the tragedy of Thyestes begin with an explicit and programmatic evocation of epic? The Fury herself provides an interesting point of comparison. The Fury who dominates the prologue is a direct descendant of the Virgilian Fury responsible for bringing the second half of the Aeneid into existence. An epic Fury, she coherently invokes epic models, although she is herself closely connected in turn with a tragic precedent, Euripides’ Lyssa. It is almost as if tragedy could not refer back directly to tragedy, but should necessarily rely on an epic filter and thus testify to the impossibility of an immediate connection, to a hiatus in the continuous tradition of tragic writing. Here again Senecan tragedy highlights its posteriority, its position outside the mainstream of tragic writing. But, again, it is not just any filter that is interposed between Seneca and, say, Sophocles and Accius. It is specifically the filter of Ovid’s Metamorphoses and peculiar aspects of Virgil’s Aeneid – the epic of violence and horrida bella rather more than the celebration of heroic virtues and beliefs. This might very well be the most far-reaching implication of Seneca’s choice. By giving pride of place to the Fury of Aeneid 7 and to Ovid’s Procne he has not only demonstrated the shifting boundaries of generic affiliations, thus reclaiming from the start his freedom to experiment; he has also presented epic as the expression of nefas, as the corrupted, doomed voice of history gone sour. It is not easy for History directly to enter the hallowed halls of mythical tragedy, especially of a tragedy written in a land, a language and a time other than that of Classical Athens. But the shadow of history, with its pains and burdens, can reveal itself, indirectly, in the peculiar selection of epic themes to which we are treated in the prologue. Epic, we are warned, is not going to provide a sound moral counterpoint to the towering horrors of tragedy. Epic is in fact nothing less than the explicit justification invoked by the Fury: after Virgil’s civil war and stories such as Ovid’s Procne, only further violence and horror are conceivable, if anything maiore numero. At the end of this book, once we can rely on a more substantial dossier, I will deal more again with the issue of epic elements in Senecan tragedy, and in particular with the hypothesis that the presence of epic might encourage in the audience the form of critical spectatorship which Bertolt Brecht

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considers the defining characteristic of ‘epic’ theatre – a detached reflection on the actions performed on stage which would certainly befit a tragic form that is rich with philosophical intimations.28 For the moment I emphasize the suggestion that ‘epic’ acquires early on in Thyestes a function which does not seem to encourage such a reflection on drama. Rather, epic appears from the very beginning of Thyestes as the voice of destruction and violence, of endless horrors and cruel, often excessive revenges. Other instances, from other plays, will do little to soothe our sense of surprise and anxiety as we contemplate the polluting force of infernal epic. c r i m e , r i t ua l a n d p o e t ry ‘I’ll play the cook’ (Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus 5.2)

A playwright, a spectator and an actor, Atreus is also high priest of his own rites, even a god himself. In act 4, where he appears in the messenger’s detailed narrative, all these aspects are revealed together:29 in the climactic moment of his nefas, standing alone in the recesses of his palace, Atreus shines through in all his idiosyncratic depravity, as he undertakes what looks like a Dionysiac sparagmos30 with due respect for all the procedures of a proper Roman sacrifice.31 It is in this murder-as-sacrifice,32 already present to a certain extent in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon33 and Accius’ Atreus,34 that Atreus achieves the paradoxical combination of ‘holy and horrible, fulfilment and uncleanness, sacrament and pollution’ which is at the heart of the Dionysiac experience.35 The location for Atreus’ sacrifice is out of this world. Behind and below the public quarters, the royal palace ‘splits up’ (649: discedit) into many rooms, until it reaches an arcana regio (‘a secret spot’) located ‘in its innermost recess’ (650: in imo . . . secessu). Only barren trees survive in this 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

35

Ch. 6, pp. 246ff. On this scene see esp.: Burkert (1983) 104–6; Petrone (1984); Picone (1984) 94–7; Tarrant (1985) 180; Dupont (1995) 193–6. For child-murder in Dionysiac rituals see Dodds (1960) xix and n. 3; Burkert (1983) 105. Human sacrifice is considered un-Roman (Livy 22.57.6), though occasionally attested (Suet. Aug. 15). On sacrifice in Rome see Scheid (1988); on its imagery, Huet (1994). See Euripides’ Cyclops for the association of cannibalism and sacrifice: there ‘the horror of cannibalism is intensified by the careful, civilized sacrificial practice’ (Seaford (1984) 152). See Ag. 1096–7 (where the children of Thyestes are called sphagas), with Zeitlin (1965). Accius 220–2 Ribbeck2 = 51–3 Dangel: concoquit | partem vapore flammae, veribus in foco | lacerta tribuit. The sacrificial overtones of the description are revealed by the use of focus; see Dangel (1995) 281–2, with further references. Dodds (1960) xvii.

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locus horridus,36 a natural enclosure in the bowels of a man-made building. This space is filled with the ‘gifts’ (659: dona) which played crucial roles in the family’s history – the trumpets, Oenomaus’ chariot, the broken wheels – a pictorial documentation of the ruling house’s tormented past. Spoils of war regularly celebrate the rulers’ achievements, and Seneca is here alluding pointedly to Latinus’ regia in Aeneid 7.37 Differences, however, abound, because Seneca takes pains to emphasize how far we find ourselves from the public rooms of the house, those where celebratory displays are to be expected. In this deep, dark, private domain, relics of the past line up like memories in the recesses of the mind. Everything in there is hidden, and frightening even to mention: quidquid audire est metus | illic videtur (‘whatever is dreadful even to hear of, there is seen’, 670–1). An old crowd freed from ancient graves (671–2: errat antiquis vetus | emissa bustis turba, ‘the crowd of the long-since dead come out of their ancient tombs and walk around’), and ‘creatures more monstrous than men have known’ (673: maiora notis monstra) dwell in the grove, and they make the upper chambers of the palace freeze with terror (677: attonita)38 as they wander at night amidst the cries of the gods of death (668: feralis deos). Even the light of day cannot restrain the horrors of the grove: ‘terror is not yet allayed by day; the grove is a night unto itself, and the horror of the underworld reigns even at midday’ (677–8: nec dies sedat metum: | nox propria luco est, et superstitio inferum | in luce media regnat). It would be difficult to conceive of a locus more evocative of the fundamental characteristics of the unconscious, indeed a place where nature, in all its dark, hostile power, survives in spite of the elaborate superstructures that encircle and delimit its sway, and where memories of the past roam unchecked as a constant source of fear.39 Remarkably, it is in this place of passion, violence and memory that knowledge elects to hide: ‘from here the sons of Tantalus are used to enter on their reign, here to seek help when their affairs are in distress or doubt’ (657–8: hinc auspicari regna Tantalidae solent, | hinc petere lassis rebus ac dubiis opem). Several analogies connect this grove to the one where Laius is evoked from the dead in Oedipus, and the metapoetic dimension of that scene 36

37 38 39

On locus horridus and Seneca’s role in the development of the motive see Schiesaro (1985), with further bibliography. A reference to this type of description is to be found in Letters to Lucilius 41.3, a letter which will be discussed below, p. 127. Smolenaars (1998). Attonitus can be used in connection with poetic inspiration, and has a distinct Bacchic connotation: above, p. 51, n. 60. In Freud’s celebrated simile, the mental realm of phantasy is described as a ‘nature reserve’ where useless and even harmful entities are allowed to grow unchecked (Introductory Lectures on PsychoAnalysis, Freud (1915–17) = SE xvi .372, with Orlando’s seminal treatment (1993) 17).

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is aptly matched in Thyestes by the ceremonial aspect of the sacrifice, a likely catalyst for metadramatic engagement.40 Atreus, sacerdos of his rites (Thy. 691), is here also a vates, a magician-poet like Tiresias, who performs arcane rituals and utters a sinister carmen: ipse funesta prece | letale carmen ore violento canit (691–2: ‘he himself with a sinister prayer chants the death-song with a violent voice’) recalls carmenque magicum volvit et rabido minax | decantat ore (Oed. 561–2: ‘over and over he unfolds a magic song, and, with frenzied lips, he chants a charm’).41 Significantly, the trembling of the grove at Atreus’ magic intonations (Thy. 696–9: lucus tremescit, tota succusso solo | nutavit aula, dubia quo pondus daret | ac fluctuanti similis, ‘the grove begins to tremble; the whole palace sways as the earth quakes, uncertain in which direction to fling its weight, and seems to waver’) can be compared both with the onset of horror at Tiresias’ words (Oed. 576), and with the effects of Tantalus’ pollution in the prologue of Thyestes, yet another passage with strong metapoetic implications: sentit introitus tuos | domus et nefando tota contactu horruit (‘your house feels your entering and has recoiled in horror from your unutterable contagion’, Thy. 103–4).42 Subversion of nature, too, occurs on both occasions. The Fury observes that waters start to flow backwards (107–8), and the messenger remarks on the startling metamorphosis of wine into blood as Atreus performs his ritual libation (700–1). Just as Tiresias evokes Laius’ truth from the underworld, and Lucan’s Erictho turns to a corpse in her search for knowledge, it is in these hellish, deadly abodes that Atreus conducts his painful negotiations between passion and knowledge, past and present, prediction and memory, poetry and death. The text’s insistence on the hostile, dark nature of the place is not a symptom of rhetorical excess, for the sacrifice must be performed in an uncanny underworldly location if it is to display fully its connection with the forces of nefas. But several details in the description point to a specific significance of the locus horridus. The adytum where the sacrifice takes place is located deep inside the house, ‘in a deep, secluded place’ (650: in imo . . . secessu), a ‘cavern’ (681: specus) covered by ‘an ancient grove’ (651: vetustum . . . nemus), overshadowed by dark vegetation. The Freudian ‘symbolic geography of sex’ is transparent.43 More importantly, it is very significant in 40

41 43

See Hornby (1986) 49–66. A further metadramatic aspect of Atreus’ behaviour can be gleaned in the details of how he cooks the boys’ entrails (765–7). Cooking is often characterized, in comedy, as an activity with metadramatic connotations. On cooks in comedy see Dohm (1964); on the metadramatic implications they hold in Plautus see Gowers (1993) 50–108. 42 See ch. 1, p. 38. On this passage, see above, pp. 11ff. S. Freud, Fragments of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria (‘Dora’) (Freud (1905) = SE v i i.94, 99). See The Interpretation of Dreams (Freud (1900) = SE v .348, 355); On Dreams (Freud (1901) = SE v .684); Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (Freud (1916–17) = SE xv .158–60).

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the context of the tragedy’s plot. Atreus’ crucial concern regards the true paternity of his children, which, he would like to believe, can be ascertained by the observation of Thyestes’ reaction to the death of his own offspring, and an inspection of their entrails. Thus Atreus’ descent to the womb-like arcana . . . regio (‘secret spot’, 650) beneath the royal palace becomes a fitting symbolic exploration of Aerope’s entrails, where the truth about his dubius . . . sanguis conceivably resides. The careful investigation of the boys’ entrails (755–8) is a mise en abyme of the only (impossible) ‘inspection’ which could actually assuage Atreus’ doubts, that of his adulterous, even incestuous, wife. It is in her womb that the original nefas has taken place, the confusion of generations feared by Phaedra’s nurse: ‘are you preparing to mix the father’s wedding-bed with the son’s, and to welcome in your impious womb a mixed-up progeny?’ (Phaed. 171–2: miscere thalamos patris et gnati apparas | uteroque prolem capere confusam impio?).44 The whole structure of the play, moving from one level of the action to a deeper, inner one, and culminating in Atreus’ extispicium, deep in the womb-like recesses of the palace, dramatizes this descent into the secrets of conception.45 This symbolism is much developed by Shakespeare, who stages the worst horrors of Titus Andronicus in a dark forest, ‘A barren detested vale . . . forlorn and lean’ (2.3.92–3).46 Its central feature is an ‘abhorred pit’ (98) with a strong Senecan colouring (2.3.98–104):47 And when they show’d me this abhorred pit, They told me, here, at dead time of the night, A thousand fiends, a thousand hissing snakes, Ten thousand swelling toads, as many urchins, Would make such fearful and confused cries, As any mortal body hearing it Should straight fall mad, or else die suddenly.

The ‘pit’ evokes King Lear’s obsessed description of female genitals (King Lear 4.6.123–8):48 Down from the waist they are Centaurs, Though women all above: But to the girdle do the Gods inherit, 44 45 46 47 48

The womb of Thyestes’ incestuous daughter is also a receptacle of nefas (Ag. 31): coacta fatis gnata fert utero gravi | me patre dignum (33–4). See Irigaray’s analysis ((1985) 243–364) of the cave in Plato’s Republic as a womb-like ‘source of all representations’ (Robin (1993) 111), with Leonard (1999). A locus of ‘instinctual, evil and fatal force’ (Marienstras (1985) 45). By a sort of metonymy, the pit in Shakespeare also comes to symbolize (metadramatically) the classical underworld and its hellish sources of inspiration; see Tricomi (1974) 18. Tricomi (1974) 18 n. 3; Willbern (1978) offers a psychoanalytic interpretation of the pit in Titus.

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Beneath is all the fiend’s: there’s hell, There’s darkness, There is the sulphurous pit – burning, scalding, Stench, consumption; fie, fie, fie! Pah, pah.

But Seneca’s gendered landscape of the unconscious implies ramifications which go well beyond Shakespeare’s important, if somewhat transparent, imagery. Atreus’ arcana . . . regio, as we have seen, finds a close parallel in the lucus ilicibus niger (530) at the very heart of Oedipus. There the imagery is even more heavily loaded with sexual connotations. Not only do we find a forest which is permanently kept in the dark, but the emergence of the hellish creatures from the depth of the earth is described as a painful birth, and a monstrous one since dead creatures are brought to the light (572–81):49 ‘rata verba fudi: rumpitur caecum chaos iterque populis Ditis ad superos datur.’ subsedit omnis silva et erexit comas, duxere rimas robora et totum nemus concussit horror, terra se retro dedit gemuitque penitus: sive temptari abditum Acheron profundum mente non aequa tulit, sive ipsa tellus, ut daret functis viam, compage rupta sonuit, aut ira furens triceps catenas Cerberus movit graves. ‘I have uttered prevailing words; blind Chaos is burst open, and for the people of Dis a way is given to those living on earth.’ The whole forest shrank down, then raised its foliage, the oaks were split and the whole grove shook with horror; earth withdrew and groaned deep inside: whether Acheron did not tolerate an assault against its hidden depths, or the earth itself broke down its barriers in a thunder to give way to the dead; or three-headed Cerberus furious with rage shook his heavy chains.

Poetry comes to light through a painful birthing process which gives shape to the passions residing in the underworld, and is thus associated with the fear-inspiring secrets of the female body. The story of Procne and Philomela also indicated a strong connection between poetic inspiration and womanhood. A raped and silenced Philomela had found in her thirst for revenge the strength and ingenuity for ‘writing up’ Tereus’ crimes. Philomela turns her fury into the cunning plot which takes her husband in. As she kills Itys, she overcomes her maternal function and perversely forces on Tereus an impossible birth (Met. 6.663–5): 49

Note that the sacerdos begins his rites by excavating the ground: tum effossa tellus (550).

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The Passions in Play et modo, si posset, reserato pectore diras egerere inde dapes inmersaque viscera gestit, flet modo seque vocat bustum miserabile nati.

Gladly, if he could, he would want to open his breast and eject that terrible feast, the entrails immersed into his own, and now he cries and calls himself his son’s miserable tomb.50

Thyestes, too, will be forced to a perverse ‘delivery’ as he vomits his own children.51 But Atreus, acting as the main purveyor and creator of poetic plots and explicitly acknowledging his identification with Procne and Philomela, also inevitably erodes the boundaries of his masculinity. Nefas and its poetry are described as they emerge from the feminized entrails of the earth. Medea – another avenger acting as a playwright – will put it with epigrammatic clarity: parta ultio est: | peperi (Med . 25–6: vengeance is born: I have given birth). In the merging of frenzy and control, of ira and ordo, which characterize the sacrifice, Atreus reveals once more his deeply metadramatic role. As a playwright, he carefully devised and executed a complex plot; as a sacerdos, he once again plays both instigator and executor. In both cases, he fuses inspiration and techne¯ in the heady cocktail which provokes awed pleasure, the sacred rituality of the priest in communication with the divine, the frenzied poet able to express divine enthousiasmos in refined, regulated language. The messenger himself seems to marvel at Atreus’ deliberate observance of ritual, which is reported after the physical setting of the scene has been engagingly described (Thy. 682–90): quo postquam furens intravit Atreus liberos fratris trahens, ornantur arae – quis queat digne eloqui? post terga iuvenum nobiles revocat manus et maesta vitta capita purpurea ligat; non tura desunt, non sacer Bacchi liquor tangensque salsa victimam culter mola. servatur omnis ordo, ne tantum nefas non rite fiat. After Atreus entered there in a frenzy, dragging his brother’s children, the altars are decorated – who has adequate words for this? Behind their backs he forces the noble hands of the youths, and their unhappy heads he secures with a purple band. Nor is incense missing, nor the holy liquor of Bacchus, and the knife, which 50

Author’s translation.

51

Littlewood (1997) 77.

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touches the victim with salted meal. Every detail is preserved, lest such a crime take place in breach of ritual.

The scene we are invited to imagine is eerily compelling: here is the wild tyrant dominated by furor, finally alone with his designated victims, with no one in sight, who chooses to perform his vengeance with carefully chosen sacrificial gestures, fussing about minutiae. Atreus himself seems to be aware of the fact that he has been performing a real sacrifice when he later describes his actions to Thyestes: ‘with deep-driven sword I wounded them; I slaughtered them in front of the altar; I appeased the sacred fires, offering their death as a vow’ (1057–9: ferro vulnera impresso dedi, | cecidi ad aras, caede votiva focos | placavi). These words resonate alongside Atreus’ question to the satelles in act 2: ‘tell by what means I may bring ruin on his wicked head’ (244: profare, dirum qua caput mactem via).52 Although the meaning of macto in this particular context must be closer to ‘afflict’ than to ‘sacrifice’, the technical use of the verb cannot surely be too far away, and a paraphrase such as ‘how I might offer sacrifice in such a way as to torment Thyestes most’ aptly conveys the implications of the line.53 The messenger, too, resorts to specific sacrificial language: ‘he wonders whom he should first sacrifice to himself, whom he should slaughter second’ (713–14: quem prius mactet sibi | dubitat, secunda deinde quem caede immolet).54 The nefas must be performed, of all things, rite, comme il faut. The sacrifice is divided into its customary phases, praefatio, immolatio and litatio, to be followed later by the epulum. All the most important aspects of the ritual are mentioned in the narrative: the altar is decorated (684), the victim’s head is bound with a vitta (686), wine and incense are used (687), as is salsa mola (688). No part of the procedure must be skipped (695: nulla pars sacri perit); order must triumph (689: servatur omnis ordo); ordinare is indeed a source of delight (715–16: nec interest – sed dubitat et saevum scelus | iuvat ordinare, ‘it does not matter, but still he hesitates, and has pleasure in ordering his savage crime’). Although by far the most explicit, Thyestes is not the only Senecan tragedy to represent murder in the guise of sacrifice.55 Hercules furens provides an eloquent example, by way of a noticeable departure from its Euripidean 52 53 54 55

Dirum casts Thyestes in the role of a cursed victim; the expression mactare (caput) is indeed used in sacrificial contexts – see, for example, Livy 21.45.8, Sil. 5.653. See Putnam (1995) 275. Traina (1981) neatly sums up the case for understanding mactet sibi rather than sibi | dubitat. On this and other perverted sacrifices in Seneca see especially Petrone (1984) 40–3 and Dupont (1995) 189–204.

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model. Hercules’ frenzied slaughter takes place in the context of a sacrifice he is offering to the gods, which cruelly degenerates into the killing of Hercules’ own wife and children (Her. F. 898–9: nunc sacra patri victor et superis feram | caesisque meritas victimis aras colam, ‘now I shall make offerings for my victory to my father and the gods, and honour their altars as they deserve with sacrificed victims’). Amphitryon connects sacrifice and murder by explicitly addressing his son with these charged words: nondum litasti, nate: consumma sacrum (‘you have not yet made full offering, son; complete the sacrifice’, 1039). In Troades the Greeks present the deaths of Astyanax and Polyxena as a required sacrificial offering to the dead Achilles: the youths’ blood is needed to placate his rage and allow safe sailing from Troy. The conflicting points of view in this tragedy, with the Trojans actively questioning, emotionally if not ideologically, the actions of the Greeks, problematize the equivalence between sacrifice and murder. Hippolytus’ death in Phaedra, too, has distinctly sacrificial overtones. Theseus slowly and painfully reconstructs his son’s corpse in a fashion reminiscent of similar rituals after sacrificial slaughters, when the body of the slain animal is rearranged in its proper order. Such belated pietas, incidentally, is conspicuously absent from Thyestes.56 The pervasiveness of sacrificial motives in Senecan drama invites the audience to reflect on a religious problematic which might well have been thought of as anachronistic and misplaced, once tragedy had severed its connection with its traditional Greek roots. Sacrifice occupies a central role in Greek tragedy. In Euripides especially, perverted human sacrifice, such as the slaying of Pentheus or of Heracles’ children, marks a larger social and religious crisis,57 as, in different ways, does Seneca’s exploitation of this particular motif. The analogy, however, stops here. Euripidean sacrifices ostensibly attempt to heal the wound they inflict: the poet ultimately reconstructs and reaffirms tradition through the cathartic power of sacrifice.58 Thyestes makes no overt attempt at reparation, symbolic or otherwise, for the extraordinary disruption signalled by Atreus’ perverted sacrifice. The prominence of sacrifice in Thyestes thus seems to correspond to yet another aspect of Seneca’s intertextual and metaliterary strategy. I remarked in chapter two that framing the potentially self-enclosed structure of a ‘traditional’ play that is redolent of Greek forms affords a reflection on the viability of that particular type of tragedy. Similarly, giving sacrifice the same structural importance it enjoyed in Euripides, but depriving it 56 57

Valuable observations in Petrone (1984) 31–4. Oedipus displays sacrifice in two central scenes, but they are not directly connected with murder (291–402 and 530–658). 58 Foley (1985). Zeitlin (1965).

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of any constructive, forward-looking value, betrays the awareness that this particular escape from nefas, too, is gone for ever.59 The Roman model for the association between sacrifice and murder is the final scene of Virgil’s Aeneid. On the verge of accepting Turnus’ supplication, Aeneas is struck by the sight of Pallas’ baldric, and buries his sword in the neck of his enemy (12.945–9): ille, oculis postquam saevi monimenta doloris exuviasque hausit, furiis accensus et ira terribilis: ‘tune hinc spoliis indute meorum eripiare mihi? Pallas te hoc vulnere, Pallas immolat et poenam scelerato ex sanguine sumit.’ [Aeneas] feasted his eyes on the sight of this spoil, this reminder of his own wild grief, then, burning with mad passion and terrible in his wrath, he cried: ‘Are you to escape me now, wearing the spoils stripped from the body of those I loved? By this wound which I now give, it is Pallas who makes sacrifice of you. It is Pallas who exacts the penalty in your guilty blood.’

Seneca amplifies the sacrificial protocol latent in this scene (though Aeneas’ immolat is telling enough) and makes it register at the forefront of his account. Just as Aeneid 7 had been prominent in the inaugural movements of the tragedy, the end of the poem is powerfully evoked in the climactic scene of Thyestes, in the action that effectively brings the plot to a close, if not to a closure. The end of Aeneid 12 seems to have found in Seneca a reader devoted to the point of obsession, who confronts that scene and its disturbing implications time and again in his tragedies.60 The comparison with the Aeneid yields important insights. At the conclusion of the poem we face ‘an almost too neatly schematic dramatization of René Girard’s theory of the “sacrificial crisis” ’,61 the breakdown of the foedus which Aeneas and Latinus had finally reached (Aen. 12.161–215). Aeneas’ sacrificial murder of Turnus restores the violated order, but only by means of equally transgressive violence: the reparation is far from satisfactory, and far from final. There is (fortunately) no need to rehearse here the vast body of criticism on the final scene of the Aeneid; suffice it to say that the comparison is instructive. In its basic outline, Thyestes offers a similar scenario. Thyestes has caused the violent disruption of order which Atreus concisely portrays in the statement fas . . . omne ruptum (‘breaking every law’, 179). His sacrificial 59 60

A similarly deflating attitude can be discerned in Euripides’ Cyclops, where Ulysses’ companions are slaughtered with ritual accuracy; Seaford (1984) 151–3 and 180–1. 61 Hardie (1993) 21. As Putnam (1995) 246 rightly remarks.

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killing of Thyestes’ children fulfils the need for reparation and restoration, so much so that, in Atreus’ words, it actually restores a status quo ante which might have been thought of as irrevocably lost. Whatever our assessment of Aeneas’ behaviour, his explanation for the killing of Turnus is unequivocal: Pallas must be avenged.62 This intertext thus emphasizes once again Atreus’ deep conviction that he has been wronged and is seeking a justifiable retribution. His sacrificial killing is a direct response to Thyestes’ violation of fas in the seduction of his brother’s wife. The sacrifice would thus seem to heal the wound that Thyestes inflicted and restore the order that he upset. Atreus’ retribution is especially apt in the light of the firmly held belief that incest and cannibalism are homologous acts.63 Thus Thyestes’ intercourse with his sister-in-law Aerope must be expiated with a similarly perverse and unnatural action: he will be forced to eat his own children. As he implicitly identifies cannibalism and incest, Atreus displays in all its upsetting force the working of his peculiar form of logic. Incest ‘pollutes’ the body with the seed of a close relation; eating one’s own children is a similar form of unacceptable ‘ingestion’. Atreus identifies behind these two very different gestures a common element which becomes central to his thinking and on which he bases his course of action. Like Plato’s tyrant, he overruns the boundaries which keep distinct facts and actions separate and follows a form of logic which is akin to the logic of the unconscious: analogies overcome differences and precipitate the identification of disparate actions. This form of generalizing thought was originally considered typical of schizophrenia, but it is one of the greatest achievements of postFreudian thought to have realized that this strange logic, where symmetry replaces the rigid conventions of Aristotelian thought, is actually an ineliminable component of the mind, given free rein in the workings of the unconscious but normally kept at bay during conscious activity. It is interesting in this connection to look at an observation that Freud makes in Psychopathic Characters on the Stage:64 In general, it may perhaps be said that the neurotic instability of the public and the dramatist’s skill in avoiding resistances and offering fore-pleasures can alone determine the limits set upon the employment of abnormal characters on the stage. 62 63 64

Note that Aeneas had already ordered a human sacrifice immediately after Pallas’ death: Virg. Aen. 10.517–20 and 11.81–2. Pl. Resp. 571c–d with Parker (1983) 98 and 326 and Burkert (1983) 104. On the connection between sex and eating see Kilgour (1990). Psychopathic Characters on the Stage (Freud (1942, but written 1905 or 1906) = SE v i i.305–10 at 310).

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and rephrase it in the light of the observations above. Atreus’ ‘abnormality’ does appeal to the public precisely because it displays a form of logic and behaviour which does away with the restrictions of ‘adult’ Aristotelian logic. He does not appeal so much to our ‘neurotic instability’ as to the ineliminable part of our thinking which chafes at the ‘unnatural’ imposition of criteria such as non-contradiction, asymmetry, hierarchy. We do not have to be closet cannibals to be taken in by Atreus’ extraordinary flights of logic, which are part and parcel, of course, of his being a poet. In Thyestes the disruption of bonds is rooted in the alternae vices of reality. These events, left out of the play’s direct dramatic focus, and only alluded to in more or less detail, are surely ‘real’ in that they are subtracted from the stage manipulation we witness. While we are asked to focus only on the ‘perversion’ of Atreus’ deeds, we might well wonder whether the reality he is trying to control and alter is any more acceptable or ‘normal’ than his striking revenge against it. Interestingly enough, for all the emphasis that the reversal of the sun attracts in Thyestes, it lacks the prominence it had received in earlier texts, where it was credited with a fundamental cosmogonic function.65 According to part of the earlier tradition, for instance, Atreus’ murder caused the sun to change its path once and for all. In this play, characterized by the general absence of ethical certainties, the sun does indeed show its disgust at the murder and abruptly disappears in the middle of the day, only to resume its regular route the following day. Atreus’ deeds, extraordinary as they may be, can only upset the order of nature for so long, because after all they, too, are part of nature. What we call ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ are generalizations that might well stand in relative contrast to each other, but offer very little in the way of absolute certainty. Just as there is no absolute limit to ethical disruption, there can hardly be a well-defined sense of closure and ending to human revenge. By killing Thyestes’ sons instead of their father, Atreus follows a sacrificial protocol, but he also introduces an element which is consistent with his characterization in this play. Atreus’ choice obeys a homeopathic principle that is perfectly understandable within the norms of sacrifice.66 If the personal wound that most directly aggrieves him is the doubt cast by Thyestes’ relationship with Aerope over the paternity of Agamemnon and Menelaus, then killing Thyestes’ sons repeats and returns the same wound, and fits in with the play’s insistence on the notion that horror is 65 66

Burkert (1983) 105 and n. 13. Medea, too, chooses to kill her own offspring rather than Jason himself. See Girard (1972) 24 on the issue in general.

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self-perpetuating.67 Epicurus famously maintained that pain is either very intense, but brief, or long, but then bearable. Thyestes seems to show that evil can be both extraordinarily intense and potentially endless. Sparing Thyestes not only spares Atreus’ double, but ensures the continuation of their duel in the family saga, ensures that revenge can be exacted not just once, but many times over. Thyestes’ invocation to the gods, to a principle of absolute justice that would also entail a final moment of judgement, is rejected in favour of a new phase of human action. Leaving the conflict open, of course, exposes Atreus himself to possible future retribution, and his lot will not be spared. Closure cannot possibly appeal to the tyrant who had chided his counsellor for the simplistic suggestion that Thyestes be quickly dispatched (246–8). Nothing is in fact more alien to Atreus than his feigned willingness to forgive and forget: ‘let all our anger pass away. From this day, let ties of blood and love be honoured, and accursed hatred disappear from our hearts’.68 An unequivocal rejection of finality resurfaces towards the end of the play, when Atreus contrasts process and result: ‘I do not want to see him miserable, but his becoming so’ (907: miserum videre nolo, sed dum fit miser). Killing Thyestes’ children will also guarantee the additional pleasure of watching him watch their death, or at least their corpses: ‘it is a pleasure to note, when he sees his children’s heads, how his complexion changes, what words his first grief pours forth’ (903–5: libet videre, capita natorum intuens, | quos det colores, verba quae primus dolor | effundat . . . ). Atreus has already built repetition into the structure of his revenge, killing the children himself a first time, and then forcing Thyestes to kill them, as it were, all over again; and the text reinforces this repetition by allowing the audience to hear twice, at least in part, the narrative of the murder, first from the messenger in act 4, and then, more succinctly, from Atreus himself in act 5 (1057–65). However, Atreus’ obsession with the repetition of revenge, his refusal of closure, will also prove to be his undoing. In the final line of the tragedy he gloats that Thyestes’ punishment is not a hope for the future but a fact already accomplished (1112: te puniendum liberis trado tuis – ‘for punishment, 67 68

In this respect Atreus is the victim of his own logic; see above, pp. 117ff. 509–11: quidquid irarum fuit | transierit; ex hoc sanguis ac pietas die | colantur, animis odia damnata excidant. This statement is yet another one of Atreus’ double entendres: he surely means it when he says sanguis colatur, but not in the way the sentence seems to convey. His own ‘respect’ for (his own) blood, together with the worry about the dubius sanguis that Thyestes has caused, is precisely the source of his ira. Another possible ironic connotation is detected by Tarrant ((1985) 164): ‘[t]he sacral overtones of colatur (‘be worshiped’) may also carry ironic force, since Atreus will in fact turn his bloodshed into a ritual act’. Tarrant also notes that sanguis recalls sperat ira sanguinem at line 504.

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I deliver you to your children’ – picks up premor . . . natis – ‘I am weighed upon by my sons’ of 1051), but he also foreshadows the reversal of fortunes that his offspring will endure. Indeed te puniendum liberis trado tuis could be applied to Atreus himself, since Thyestes’ revenge will be accomplished with the killing of Agamemnon. This following phase of the family history shows the force of repetition: once again incest (between Thyestes and Pelopia) will lead to murder.69 The sacrificial proceedings of act 4 encapsulate the core motives of the play and its main character, as well as, arguably, the reason for its power and appeal. Atreus had already displayed in act 2 the strength of his Dionysiac inspiration and had shown in act 3 how cunningly and masterfully he could perform in order to achieve his goals. Here we finally realize that his project goes beyond the specific objective of revenge. His ambition is effectively to create a new world order (hence the ritual importance of ordo) in which the traditional gods lose their power, accepted political philosophy is shown to be useless and void, and even the traditional categories of order and frenzy can be deconstructed and redefined. Atreus’ sacrifice is the most Dionysiac of rituals: the slaughter and cooking of victims. It is a ritual which uncannily represents both the establishment of civilization and a throwback to barbarity. Atreus does not necessarily portray Nero on stage, nor indeed should his behaviour inevitably be collated with the anedoctal evidence of extravagant cruelty which peppers Suetonius’ Lives. The ritualization of violence encoded in the murder-as-sacrifice shows that Atreus is the incarnation of imperial power at a much more radical and discomforting level.70 Almost from its inception that power had played an elaborate and risky game by suggesting, increasingly, the religious dimension of the emperor. First as a sacerdos, then as a divus, the emperor of Rome had (even in the West) relied more on the accretion of power and mystique than a careful exploitation of religious symbols would allow. Atreus shows the game for what it is – he is god to himself, and god to his subjects. His power makes him so. Dionysus, too, had become under Augustus an attractive symbol of power and regeneration, not to mention a useful figure for summoning the awed memory of Alexander. This, too, is a symbol which Atreus transforms into reality. In Bacchae the cunning god had shown the inevitable limitations 69

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On this connection see, in general, Irwin (1975). For the mythical plot see Hyg. Fab. 87 and 88; the latter offers a complicated and largely unparalleled version of the plot which, uniquely, offers a complete closure: Pelopia commits suicide; Aegisthus kills Atreus; Aegisthus in regnum avitum redit with his father Thyestes. The ritualization of violence in Titus Andronicus has more specific political ramifications; Bate (1995) 23–4.

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of an earthly power based on the limited intellectual and imaginative resources of a Pentheus. In Thyestes Atreus shows that a ruler can appropriate the animal, wild strength of Dionysiac inspiration and use it for his own purposes in a seductively creative form. We are reminded of the revolution which Lucan had encapsulated in unsurpassable, if wholly unappreciative, terms at the very outset of his Bellum Civile (1.2): ius . . . datum sceleri – ‘legality conferred on crime’. Thyestes makes us wonder whether ius and scelus can be so neatly distinguished and set against each other. t h e lo g i c o f c r i m e Videturne summa inprobitate usus non sine summa esse ratione? (Cicero, De natura deorum 3.69)

i Atreus’ extraordinary power explicates itself on several levels. His dramatic, larger-than-life personality has many different sides, from wild aggression to comic penchant for punning; throughout, he is obsessed with ever bigger pursuits, transcending, by his own admission, the ‘boundaries of mankind’ (267–8) and aspiring to reach or even surpass the power of the gods. It is the gods, indeed, who constitute Atreus’ ultimate point of comparison – his power over men is not open to discussion, and his doubts concern only how, not whether, he will defeat his brother. His nefas, he believes, will be such that even the gods will have to take notice and flee in horror (265–6; 888). His nefas, he finally gloats, has lifted him to the stars (885–6: aequalis astris gradior). In this exhilarating declaration of success Atreus combines the nefas of gigantomachy71 and the proud claims of a cultural hero such as Lucretius’ Epicurus, whose intellectual victory managed to expand the boundaries of human knowledge and ‘exalt us mortals as high as heaven’ (De rerum natura 1.79: nos exaequat victoria caelo). As we have already seen repeatedly, it is unhelpful to import into the complex texture of the tragedy a system of moral categories that has been developed out of context, as the specifics of Atreus’ case are bound to be bulldozed in the discussion of general principles.72 It is far more important 71

72

Interestingly enough, the motif is explicitly mentioned by Thyestes at 1084 among the guilty excesses that Jupiter has quashed in the past. Any such divine retribution of Atreus’ nefas is conspicuously absent from Seneca’s play. A cursory anticipation is also in the chorus’s words at 806. An important analysis of Atreus is offered by Knoche (1941), who stresses his irrational and violent features, his ‘spirit of anti-nature’, the irredeemable madness rooted in his evilness, and connects them to Seneca’s own experience under Caligula’s reign of terror. The date of publication of the article, of course, is not irrelevant. See also Lefèvre (1985).

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to understand the means by which Atreus overpowers Thyestes and in the process becomes the emotional fulcrum of the play. Atreus’ engrossing energy derives from his superior intellectual ability to manipulate the vigour of his passions. His most powerful weapons are, firstly, the method he brings to his ‘madness’: the epigraph of this section quotes Cotta’s use of Atreus (and Medea), in De natura deorum 3.68–9, as evidence that ratio is not a generous gift of the gods, because it can be turned to negative uses: videturne summa inprobitate usus non sine summa esse ratione? (‘does he not appear to have acted with the highest degree of criminality and at the same time the highest degree of rationality?’). Secondly, Atreus is able to use language creatively (and passionately) as a weapon to overcome Thyestes’ fatally narrow literalness. Thirdly, he displays an instinctive comprehension of human nature, and an ability to foresee and manipulate his opponent’s reaction. Atreus is not a madman, of course. But he shows that there is much beyond Thyestes’ unbending logic and referential use of language – that the passions associated with primal instincts and desires open up different forms of logic and expression. These may abandon the reassuring certainties of non-contradiction, but prove invaluable in the execution of Atreus’ plot. In the chthonic bowels of the palace Atreus chooses to ‘enquire the fates’ (Thy. 757: fata inspicit) by looking at the entrails of his victims. The result pleases him (759: hostiae placuere). We have already been offered an image of Atreus as a hunter of traces. In act 3, as he is finally ready to meet his brother, Atreus is certain that his plot is close to completion. Thyestes, in accepting to come back to Argos, has fallen into the trap: the prey, Atreus gloats, is firmly bound in the nets he has prepared (491: plagis tenetur clausa dispositis fera). The hunting imagery is extended in the image that Atreus offers of himself immediately thereafter (496–505): vix tempero animo, vix dolor frenos capit. sic, cum feras vestigat et longo sagax loro tenetur Umber ac presso vias scrutatur ore, dum procul lento suem odore sentit, paret et tacito locum rostro pererrat; praeda cum propior fuit, cervice tota pugnat et gemitu vocat dominum morantem seque retinenti eripit: cum sperat ira sanguinem, nescit tegi – tamen tegatur. I can scarcely contain my heart; hardly can my grief tolerate restraint. Thus a keen Umbrian dog, when he is kept on a long leash in pursuit of wild animals, and with lowered muzzle sniffs the traces, while through its lasting scent he perceives the

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boar afar, he obeys and with silent tongue explores the place; but when the prey is closer, he fights with all his head, and moans and begs the master holding him and breaks away from his restraint: when his rage scents blood it cannot be concealed; yet it must.

This extended simile has often prompted reservations in critics who either fault its epic tone, dissonant in a dramatic context, or criticize its descriptive excesses.73 It would be rash, however, to underestimate the importance of this detailed passage only because similar descriptions are offered by Ennius,74 Virgil and Ovid. Indeed, a comparison with those influential models highlights once again the specific function of these lines in the context of the play, and offers a vivid and explicit representation of a crucial aspect of Atreus’ character: his passion for, and success in, attaining knowledge and using it for his purposes. The Umbrian-dog simile effectively depicts Atreus’ intents and his heuristic methods. The dog possesses an instinctual drive which can be compared to Atreus’ own furor and ira, but this is displayed only after a diligent enquiry has enabled it to discover the prey, and should remain subordinated to a strategy of dissimulation which can guarantee the successful outcome of the hunt (504–5: . . . nescit tegi; | tamen tegatur). In this respect Seneca’s accurate choice of words to describe the search (vestigat, sagax, scrutatur, sentit) begs comparison not with generic hunting scenes, but, more specifically, with Lucretius’ simile in book 1 of De rerum natura (404–8): namque canes ut montivagae persaepe ferarum naribus inveniunt intectas fronde quietes, cum semel institerunt vestigia certa viai, sic alid ex alio per te tute ipse videre talibus in rebus poteris caecasque latebras insinuare omnis et verum protrahere inde. for as dogs, thanks to their nose, often find the resting place of a mountain prey, covered with leaves, once they have trodden on certain traces, thus in such matters you will be able to see by yourself one thing after another, and to penetrate all the secret recesses and extract from them the truth. 73 74

For a reasoned defence and an analysis of possible models see Tarrant (1985) 162. The use of sagax is a direct – if limited – point of contact with Ennius, 332–4 Skutsch (340–2 Vahlen): – veluti, [si] quando vinclis venatica velox | apta dolet si forte ex nare sagaci | sensit, voce sua nictit ululatque ibi acute. Cf. Hom. Il. 22.188–93: ‘but swift Achilles, relentlessly pressing on, kept on after Hektor. And as when a dog startles a fawn in the mountains and chases it out of its lair, through hollows and glades, and even if the fawn takes to cover and crouches in a thicket, the dog tracks it () and runs it down – even so Hektor could not get away from the swift-footed Peleion.’ See also Varius, De morte, fr. 4 Courtney, though the context may have been more ominous (Courtney (1993) 274).

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Verbal correspondences are significant even if it is not necessary to postulate a direct correlation: Seneca speaks appropriately of vestigia, the fundamental object of venatic enquiry75 and expands the description of the dog’s careful exploration (pererrat, which stresses the accuracy and scope of the search, conveys some of the force of montivagae). Comparison with the models strengthens the point, since neither Virgil nor Ovid devotes comparable attention to this aspect of the search; they focus more on the final outcome of the hunt. This simile sets the stage for the more intriguing notion that the sacrifice that Atreus performs is also an extispicium, a procedure meant to yield important information. The two details together open an interesting vista on a very important aspect of the plot which only occasionally surfaces in the text, but at all times stays firmly at the back of Atreus’ mind. Atreus is uniquely able to combine the forceful determination of his willpower – an arcane, prerational inner strength – with the seemingly endless resourcefulness of his intellectual gifts. He is not only determined to take as cruel a revenge as possible on Thyestes for forcing him out of power – and his furor will help him to do precisely that – but also concerned with a rational (if obsessive) doubt which demands to be assuaged, in principle, by careful investigation, namely whether his children are actually his own or the illegitimate offspring of Thyestes’ adulterous relationship with Aerope. The characterization of Atreus as an expert hunter and decoder of vestigia, I would argue, is best appreciated in the context of this investigation, and not only, as the simile suggests, in the context of his ability to deceive Thyestes in the rest of the play. Atreus states his concern about the paternity of his children early in the play (220–4):76 fas est in illo quidquid in fratre est nefas. quid enim reliquit crimine intactum aut ubi sceleri pepercit? coniugem stupro abstulit regnumque furto: specimen antiquum imperi fraude est adeptus, fraude turbavit domum.77 Whatever is wrong to do to a brother is right to do to him. What crime has he left untouched, or when has he ever recoiled from a sin? My wife he took away with his 75 76 77

On the so called ‘venatic paradigm’ see Ginzburg (1992) and Cave (1988) 250–4; see later, p. 135, for the important presence of venatic metaphors in Euripides’ Bacchae. In later versions of the play the presence of the illegitimate sons becomes a central motif; for a survey, see Rossi (1989). See Accius 205 Ribbeck2 = Dangel 33: qui non sat habuit coniugem inlexe in stuprum, with Lana (1958–59) 318. Turbare domum suitably recalls Aeschylus’ (Supp. 225).

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debauchery; he stole my kingdom; the ancient token of our dynasty he gained by fraud, by fraud unsettled our house.

Because of the stuprum, Atreus’ house has been contaminated, his (positive) certainties shattered: ‘my wife seduced, the solidity of my power is shattered, my house is polluted, my offspring uncertain – nothing is certain save my brother’s enmity’ (239–41: corrupta coniunx, imperi quassa est fides, | domus aegra, dubius sanguis est et certi nihil | nisi frater hostis). The revenge-plot aimed at punishing Thyestes thus doubles also as a trial which will try to ascertain the children’s real lineage and soothe Atreus’ torment about his dubius sanguis, an expression that condenses a crucial concern of Roman culture, that of turbatio sanguinis.78 Accius’ Atreus had expressed the problem lucidly (206–8 Ribbeck2 = 34–6 Dangel): quod re in summa summum esse arbitror periclum matres conquinari regias, contaminari stirpem, admisceri genus.79 This I believe to be the greatest danger in matters of high state: when royal mothers are polluted, the family is defiled, the lineage mixed up.

At the conclusion of act 2 Atreus shares with the satelles the plan he has devised in order to test Agamemnon’s and Menelaus’ loyalty and, by implication, their paternity. He intends to make them accomplices in his revenge plot against Thyestes: a sign of hesitation on their part would reveal that Thyestes, not Atreus, is in fact their father (Thy. 325–30): consili Agamemnon mei sciens minister fiat et fratri sciens Menelaus adsit. prolis incertae fides ex hoc petatur scelere: si bella abnuunt et gerere nolunt odia, si patruum vocant, pater est. Let Agamemnon be aware of my plot and carry it through, and let Menelaus stand by his brother, fully aware, too. Let this crime test how true are my uncertain offspring: if they refuse to fight and don’t want to wage the war of hate, if they call him ‘uncle’, he is their father.

In the end, however, Atreus will abandon the plan to make his children aware of his intentions out of fear that they might unwillingly reveal what he is plotting (331–3). At the end of the play Atreus declares himself satisfied 78 79

The term is used by Ulpian, dig. 3.2.11.1. On dubius sanguis see especially Guastella (1988) 68–72. For Seneca’s Atreus, the ‘greatest fault’ vis-à-vis this ‘greatest danger’ would be the absence or lateness of a suitable reaction.

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that his children are really his (1098), as if the vaticinium he has performed on the corpses of his victims had actually yielded solid results. But there is also a different aspect worth noticing here: Atreus’ adherence to logical rules of enquiry, as highlighted by the Umbrian-dog simile, is always tempered by his reliance on a form of symmetrical, ‘irrational’ logic. A trace can be detected in lines 329–30, with their paradoxical statement that si patruum vocant | pater est (‘if they call him “uncle”, he is their father’). This kind of short-circuiting identification returns in a different form at the end of the play, when Atreus chooses to interpret the death of his nephews as the ‘rebirth’ of his own children: since Thyestes’ pain at the death of his children proves unequivocally that they really were his (a point which of course had never been in question), then, symmetrically, it would follow that Atreus’ children were not the fruit of Aerope’s adulterous liaison with her brother-in-law. The physical setting of the vaticinium is extremely important. The darkness of the secret rooms of the royal palace inspires fear and awe (650–6), yet this is precisely the place where the Pelopidai usually seek ‘safe answers’ (680: responsa . . . certa) in times of crisis and uncertainty (658: lassis rebus . . . ac dubiis). The connection between the horrific appearance of these abodes and the certainty of the answers that the Pelopidai are able to obtain there is further strengthened by a reference to the Styx, an archetypal locus horridus, which is also the source of undoubted fides even for the gods (666–7). The diagnostic examination of the victims’ entrails will resolve Atreus’ concerns over the dubius sanguis (perhaps of the dubiae res of 658) of his progeny (755–60): erepta vivis exta pectoribus tremunt spirantque venae corque adhuc pavidum salit; at ille fibras tractat ac fata inspicit et adhuc calentes viscerum venas notat. postquam hostiae placuere, securus vacat iam fratris epulis. Torn from the still living breast the vitals quiver; the veins still breathe and the fluttering heart still beats. But he handles the organs and enquires the fates, and notes the markings of the still warm veins. When with the victims he has satisfied himself, he is now free to prepare his brother’s banquet.

The vocabulary of enquiry employed here is again reminiscent of the Umbrian-dog simile: note, for instance, the repetition of different verbal forms that imply Atreus’ search with technical precision. Note also the

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pregnant meaning of placuere and of securus, which I take to designate that Atreus is finally sure that his suspicions were unfounded, and that his children are really his. The very act that guarantees his revenge over Thyestes (the chief goal of his actions) is also the means by which he can lay his other concerns to rest. His empirical enquiry is successful not in spite of, but because of, its deep association with the instinctual aspects of his personality: the furor that inspired his actions thus far is now also explicitly presented as a viable source of rational understanding. At the end of the tragedy Atreus revels in his triumph (1096–9; quoted above, p. 82): nunc meas laudo manus, nunc parta vera est palma. perdideram scelus, nisi sic doleres. liberos nasci mihi nunc credo, castis nunc fidem reddi toris. Now I praise my handiwork; now is the true palm won. I would have wasted my crime, if you weren’t suffering this much. Now I am convinced that my children are my own; now I believe that I can trust again the purity of my marriage-bed.

Atreus notes first that Thyestes’ grief at the revelation of his children’s gruesome death ensures that he is in fact their father (1100–2): t h. quid liberi meruere? at. quod fuerant tui. t h. natos parenti – at. fateor, et, quod me iuvat, certos. t h. What was the children’s sin? at. They were yours. t h. Sons to the father – at. Sure. And, I am pleased to say, definitely yours.

Shortly afterwards Atreus answers Thyestes’ moralizing appeal to the gods with the retort that the true reason for his despair is in fact quite different (1106–10): fuerat hic animus tibi instruere similes inscio fratri cibos et adiuvante liberos matre aggredi similique leto sternere – hoc unum obstitit: tuos putasti. This had been your plan, to prepare the same banquet for their unwitting father, and with the help of their mother attack the children and kill them in identical fashion. Just one thing stopped you: you thought they were yours.

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The assumption underpinning Atreus’ reasoning appears to be that Thyestes’ despair at the death of his children would have been more moderate if he had been certain that Agamemnon and Menelaus, too, were his own offspring. But while he must have suspected that this was the case (or, Atreus claims, he would have made the first move to punish Atreus), the following sequence of events has made it clear to both Atreus and Thyestes that Agamemnon and Menelaus are undoubtedly Atreus’ children. Atreus characterizes his victory as a triumph of foreknowledge and anticipation: Thyestes would have tried to catch him unprepared (1107: inscio), but his own scientia has been faster, and more effective. Moreover, Atreus is now confident that the children he has killed are undoubtedly Thyestes’ own (1102: certos), and, symmetrically, that Thyestes’ suspicion that Agamemnon and Menelaus could also have been his offspring has been proven false. Thyestes has been prevented from mounting a successful revenge plan because of his unconfirmed opinion (1110: putasti) that Agamemnon and Menelaus could be his children; Atreus, however, has acted on his apprehension and searched for the truth. Thyestes’ chief mistake lies in his inability to understand that fear can be a reliable form of knowledge. Throughout his anguished canticum (920–69), Thyestes comes tantalizingly close to expressing his subconscious fears and thoughts (his language, accordingly, appears fractured, hesitant, obscure), yet he is still unable fully to grasp their significance. Atreus believes that his fresh realization of paternity, as well as Thyestes’ grief, can to a certain extent undo the past: liberos nasci mihi | nunc credo, castis nunc fidem reddi toris (1098–9). At the end of her tragedy Medea reaches a similar conclusion: ‘restored is my kingdom, my ravished virginity is restored!’ (Med . 984: rediere regna, rapta virginitas redit). Both Atreus and Medea, by envisaging their destructive revenge as a means to reshape past events, display a form of logic which is rooted in the world of unconstrained and boundless desire, finding a suitable home in the guts of Atreus’ palace.

ii Atreus’ passions are consistently intertwined with a deep understanding of human psychology, and, in general, with a marked intellectual superiority. An analysis of several passages will highlight exactly how Atreus displays his intellectual power, especially his psychological insight, his fiendish ability to manipulate language in ways which far transcend Thyestes’ literal-minded approach, and finally his superior awareness and understanding of a literary tradition which can provide useful protocols for his behaviour.

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Atreus lures Thyestes back to Argos because he correctly assumes that Thyestes will not be able to resist the seductive prospect of a return home. The whole sequence of events bears out Atreus’ initial claim that he understands full well the workings of Thyestes’ mind: ‘I know the untamable spirit of the man; bent it cannot be – but it can be broken’ (Thy. 199–200: novi ego ingenium viri | indocile: flecti non potest – frangi potest).80 The dialogue between Thyestes and Tantalus in which the former elaborates at length his hesitation as they approach the city can only bolster the audience’s impression that Atreus always knew better. As Tantalus himself points out, Thyestes’ doubts are pathetically overdue: ‘it is too late to guard when in the midst of danger’ (487: serum est cavendi tempus in mediis malis). This ability for psychological insight is initially revealed in Atreus’ discussion with the counsellor, who doubts that Thyestes – fearful as he is of a possible revenge – will accept Atreus’ invitation (294–5): s a . quis fidem pacis dabit? cui tanta credet? at. credula est spes improba. s a . Who will give him confidence in peace? Whom will he trust so much? at. Wicked hope is credulous.

Shortly thereafter the counsellor offers, in the dogmatic form of a sententia (one of his favourite forms of expression),81 a commonplace psychological reason why Thyestes is unlikely to accept his brother’s invitation (302–5): at. hinc vetus regni furor, illinc egestas tristis ac durus labor quamvis rigentem tot malis subigent virum. s a . iam tempus illi fecit aerumnas leves. at. On the one side, his ancient rage for power, on the other, miserable poverty and harsh toil will tame the man, however much hardened by so many disasters. s a. By now time has made his troubles light.

Atreus is quick to dismiss the satelles’ argument with a statement similarly couched in sententious terms: ‘You are wrong: a sense of wrongs grows day by day. It is easy to bear misfortune; to keep bearing it is hard’ (306–7: erras: malorum sensus accrescit die. | leve est miserias ferre, perferre est grave). The following sequence of events leaves no doubt as to who is right and wrong in this exchange, but the impression that Atreus actually understands the 80

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Thyestes himself will admit in due course that Atreus had been right all along, though by not spelling out any specific detail he continues to dissimulate to a degree (513–14): sed fateor, Atreu, fateor, admisi omnia | quae credidisti. On sententiae see p. 157.

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whole situation better than anybody else is also confirmed at a later stage by an unexpected source – Thyestes himself. In the canticum immediately prior to the final anagnorisis Thyestes expresses his joy at the end of his long suffering (922–4): fugiat maeror fugiatque pavor, fugiat trepidi comes exilii tristis egestas away with grief, away with terror, away with bitter want, the companion of hunted exiles.

The literal repetition of Atreus’ own words at line 303 indirectly reveals that Atreus’ evaluation of his brother’s feelings had been right all the time, and that the superficially wise satelles had actually failed to understand an important aspect of Thyestes’ personality. Towards the end of the same section, however, Thyestes’ mood shifts considerably, as he is suddenly overcome by an ominous and inexplicable sensation of fear (957–64): mittit luctus signa futuri mens ante sui praesaga mali: instat nautis fera tempestas, cum sine vento tranquilla tument. quos tibi luctus quosve tumultus fingis, demens? credula praesta pectora fratri: iam, quidquid id est, vel sine causa vel sero times. My mind gives warning of imminent grief, presaging evil for itself; when the calm sea swells without wind, a harsh tempest is upon the sailors. What distresses, what upheavals do you imagine for yourself, you fool? Let your heart trust your brother: by now, whatever it is, you worry about it either without reason, or too late.

Credula at line 962 echoes credula at line 295 and confirms that Atreus was right to assume that Thyestes would not shun his invitation. Here, once again, Thyestes proves himself an inadequate reader of signs, signs that he detects but fails to exploit, since he is a defeatist who yields to the force of events. While Atreus successfully combines passion and rational knowledge, exploiting a thorough understanding of the former as a reliable basis for the latter, Thyestes owes his demise largely to his mistrust of (subconscious) feelings as cognitive tools. Once he reaches Argos Thyestes has a final, albeit belated and ineffectual, moment of hesitation. In his exchange with Tantalus he does have doubts and fears which the play will realize; he

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suspects that Atreus is plotting his revenge, and insists on turning back: ‘but now I am returned to my fears; my mind falters and wishes to take my body back’ (418–20: nunc contra in metus | revolvor: animus haeret ac retro cupit | corpus referre). The very setting of the scene – Thyestes is already in Argos – taints his proclamation with irony, since his wise words on the potentially deceptive appearance of things are not based on previously ignored details (416: cum quod datur spectabis, et dantem aspice, ‘when you look at a gift, check who is giving it, too’). Nonetheless Thyestes insists on his desire to avoid meeting Atreus (434–7): causam timoris ipse quam ignoro exigis. nihil timendum video, sed timeo tamen. placet ire, pigris membris sed genibus labant, alioque quam quo nitor abductus feror. You ask me the cause of my fear, but myself I do not know it. I see nothing I should fear, yet I do. I would like to go, but my limbs waver on my shaky knees, and I feel I am dragged away from where I strive to go.

Thyestes confronts here the same opposition between rational understanding and emotional foreboding that we have encountered before, but he is ultimately unable to rely on the cognitive force of metus. He falls prey to Tantalus’ well intentioned, if somewhat superficial, pleas, and marches towards his destiny. Thyestes closely follows the words Atreus had used to describe the state of manic excitement which pre-empted his masterful creation of the revenge-plot (260–2):82 fateor. tumultus pectora attonitus quatit penitusque volvit; rapior et quo nescio, sed rapior. I do confess it. A mindless tumult shakes and churns my breast deep inside. I am dragged away, I do not know where to, but I am.

Atreus, however, did follow his emotions and was thus able to devise a plan whose success is now increasingly likely; yet Thyestes experiences a similar inner tension, but does not listen to his emotions and thus faces a complete defeat. Once alerted to the implications of this internal allusion, we will be even more inclined to receive Thyestes’ ensuing speech with scepticism, if not incredulity. Lines 446–70 are devoted to a long rhetorical parade, largely dependent on well-known topoi, in which Thyestes proclaims his preference 82

See p. 51 (with n. 60 on attonitus).

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for a quiet life removed from the superficial attractions of power. This speech is often considered to be paradigmatic of the positive ethical values that are potentially offered by the tragedy as a whole.83 Even if we discount for the moment the larger, and definitely more complex, ethical frame that the play elaborately constructs, the epistemological status of Thyestes’ considerations renders them unreliable and even ironic, for clearly he does not practise what he is in the process of preaching. Thyestes concludes his impassioned tirade with an adynaton which, one expects, should convey an unshakeable conviction (476–82): amat Thyesten frater? aetherias prius perfundet Arctos pontus et Siculi rapax consistet aestus unda et Ionio seges matura pelago surget et lucem dabit nox atra terris, ante cum flammis aquae, cum morte vita, cum mari ventus fidem foedusque iungent. His brother loves Thyestes? Sooner the sea will bathe the heavenly Bears, and the greedy waves of the Sicilian strait will be still; mature crops will grow in the Ionian sea and dark night will give light to earth; sooner water with fire, life with death, and wind with sea will join in a trusty pact.

Once again this intimation, which in itself is perfectly justified and expressed in such strong terms, is inexplicably discarded just a few lines later, when Thyestes reluctantly embraces Tantalus’ point of view that it is now too late for fear, and that they should proceed to meet Atreus. In fact, alongside the highly elaborate rhetorical tone of the adynaton, Thyestes’ brusque and inconsistent decision looks even more dissonant and inconsequential. The effect is similar to the one achieved at 539–43, when Thyestes rapidly retreats from his proclaimed determination not to accept the power that Atreus offers him (540: respuere certum est regna consilium mihi, ‘to refuse the throne is my fixed intent’) and quickly yields to his invitation (542: accipio, ‘I do accept’).84 The second time that Thyestes confronts a reliable insight on the true state of events, an insight offered not by rational consideration but by pure emotion, he behaves in exactly the same way. His canticum opens with an explicit rejection of pavor (922), followed by a reproach of the usual attitudes of the wretched, who cannot believe their novel good fortune (938–41): 83

See below, pp. 166ff.

84

See below, pp. 150ff.

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The Passions in Play proprium hoc miseros sequitur vitium, numquam rebus credere laetis: redeat felix fortuna licet, tamen afflictos gaudere piget.

This failing is typical of luckless people; they never put trust in their happiness: even when their good fortune returns, those who have suffered find it hard to rejoice.

Credere carries obvious ironic overtones that extend to the whole sententious tone of the phrase: once again Thyestes talks like a wise man, only to find his words received by an audience which, on the basis of its previous experience, cannot possibly believe them. Dolor swiftly follows (942–4): quid me revocas festumque vetas celebrare diem, quid flere iubes, nulla surgens dolor ex causa? Why do you restrain me and forbid my celebrating this festive day? why do you force me to cry, o grief springing up without a cause?

Thyestes repeatedly fails to understand the underlying causes of his feelings (434, 964, 967) and is thus incapable or unwilling to trust them, when they could have offered him a means of escape, at least the first time. His misdirected rationalism has only assisted Atreus’ ploys and demonstrated once more his uncanny ability to manipulate knowledge successfully in order to achieve his goals. Atreus’ words after the canticum offer final, triumphant proof of this ability, as he mocks his brother with elaborate lies about his good intentions (970–2; 976): festum diem, germane, consensu pari celebremus: hic est, sceptra qui firmet mea solidamque pacis alliget certae fidem. ... hic esse natos crede in amplexu patris My brother, let us celebrate this festive day with mutual accord; this is the day which will make my sceptre firm and bind tightly the bonds of our assured peace . . . Be sure that your sons are here in the bosom of their father.

Only when he can no longer forestall the tragic fate of his children does Thyestes seem capable of borrowing Atreus’ smart, ironic use of language. This moment comes in the emotional and expressive centre of the tragedy, when Atreus unveils (in more senses than one) the severed heads of his victims before their horrified father. To Atreus’ mocking question – natos ecquid agnoscis tuos? (‘do you recognize your sons?’, 1005) – Thyestes replies

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without missing a beat: agnosco fratrem (‘I do recognize my brother’, 1006). This is, we soon realize, a momentary insight, where the truth shines through and is at last acknowledged even by a reluctant Thyestes. In this extraordinary moment of primal pain Thyestes faces the raw truth of the feelings he had previously mistrusted: Atreus could not possibly have changed for the better. In the logic of anagnorisis, past certainties return to reclaim their importance. In his retort, Thyestes is able to compete with his brother’s epistemological and emotional self-assurance, to face reality without the painstaking veneer of pious intentions and illusions. It is, appropriately enough, only a fleeting moment of truth, and hopelessly belated at that. After his epigrammatic repartee Thyestes can only invoke divine retribution, a solution which sounds hollow and ineffectual given Atreus’ own appropriation of a divine role. Yet even this momentary ability to stare truth in the face confirms that only emotional awareness can afford such an epiphany, that one moment of piercing pain, resistant to any verbal rationalization, can reveal the truth in its vilest upsetting contours.

iii A canny master of ideas, Atreus is also an exceptional crafter of language. His power is expressed also through a careful exploitation of double entendres which fly over Thyestes’ head: the contrast between Thyestes’ literalmindedness and Atreus’ sophisticated dissemblance is another aspect of the epistemological battle between the two brothers. Atreus’ manipulative use of language is responsible for the often unsettling curious mixture of horror and wit which characterizes this tragedy. Once again this feature finds a pertinent parallel in Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, where Aaron’s ‘satanic drollery’ conceals his savage intentions in the reassuring metaphors of elevated poetic language (a mirroring of Shakespeare’s own writing process).85 Some instances of this phenomenon are particularly noteworthy.86 When Atreus promises: ‘wear the crown set on your reverend head; I will offer to the gods the destined victims’ (544–5: imposita capiti vincla venerando gere; | ego destinatas victimas superis dabo) the reader is aware of the gory implications of his words, and this awareness creates a complicity central to the emotional balance of the play. But the ironic overtones of Atreus’ double entendres are nowhere more pronounced than in his final meeting with Thyestes, when the latter is at last dimly conscious that terrible deeds 85

Bate (1995) 11.

86

See Meltzer (1988), a valuable discussion which focuses especially on act 5.

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have been perpetrated. At Thyestes’ request to give him back his children, Atreus responds with a riddle (997–8): t h. redde iam gnatos mihi! at. reddam, et tibi illos nullus eripiet dies. t h. Give back my sons to me! at. I will give them back, and no day will grab them away from you.

His response to Thyestes’ subsequent request is no different (1027–31): t h. redde quod cernas statim uri; nihil te genitor habiturus rogo, sed perditurus. at. quidquid e natis tuis superest habes, quodcumque non superest habes. t h. Give me back what you will see burned at once. As a father, I am not asking for something to keep, but to lose. at. Whatever is left of your sons, you have; whatever is not left, you have.

Riddles, puns and double entendres, far from being mere verbal accessories, are an intrinsic part of Atreus’ primacy over Thyestes. They also convey the deeper conviction that taking things at face value is a desperately inadequate strategy when confronting unpredictable, cataclysmic and ‘monstrous’ deeds. In a cosmos in which even the sun will be forced to alter its course, it is foolish of Thyestes not to realize that words may not quite mean what they seem to mean. In this respect Seneca is fully involved in a reflection on the limits of irony, which is already developed in Ovid and will become central in Tacitus.87 The different levels of linguistic awareness displayed by Thyestes and Atreus can be closely charted in a series of utterances centred on the use of the verb capio and its compounds. Capio is used many times by both brothers, and it soon establishes itself as a keyword which precipitates many of the central themes of the play, at least as soon as Atreus offers an interpretation of his brother’s behaviour in typically epigrammatic form: to the satelles’ objection that Thyestes is not likely to be taken in by the plot which he is brewing, Atreus points out Thyestes’ self-defeating inconsistency: non poterat capi, | nisi capere vellet (‘he could not be caught, were he not bent on catching’, 288–9); the ominous connotations of the word are revealed in the same scene, as Atreus elaborates on various aspects of his plan and assumes that Thyestes’ sons will easily be taken in by the illusion of a return home: ‘if too stubbornly Thyestes spurns my prayers, I will 87

On Ovid see Doblhofer (1960) and Schawaller (1987); on Tacitus see especially Plass (1988), who also has interesting remarks (92–8) on Seneca.

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move his sons with my entreaties: they are inexperienced, weighed down by grave misfortunes, and easy to trick’ (299–302: si nimis durus preces | spernet Thyestes, liberos eius rudes | malisque fessos gravibus et faciles capi | prece commovebo); even more sinister are Thyestes’ words in his highly rhetorical praise of a modest life: ‘oh, how good it is not to be an obstacle to anyone, to eat food without care while lying on the ground!’ (449–51: o quantum bonum est | obstare nulli, capere securas dapes | humi iacentem!), which are echoed – again – in the anagnorisis scene: AT. poculum infuso cape | gentile Baccho. T H. capio fraternae dapis | donum (‘AT. Take this cup, an heirloom, filled with wine. T H. I take this gift of my brother’s feast’, 982–4).88 At 520–1 Thyestes entrusts his children to Atreus – obsides fidei accipe | hos innocentes, frater (‘as pledge of my faith, brother, take these innocent boys’) – who will return them with precisely the same word: iam accipe hos potius libens | diu expetitos: nulla per fratrem est mora (‘now, rather, take these with joy; you have waited for them a long time. Your brother causes no delay’, 1021–2). And it is finally Thyestes who highlights the dramatic echoes of capio in his last (and involuntary) pun on the word: hoc est quod avidus capere non potuit pater (‘this much the father, for all his greed, could not devour’, 1040); Thyestes was unable to understand what lay in store for him, but was tragically capable of receiving the flesh of his own children.89 Ironic twists on capio come to symbolize Thyestes’ intellectual inadequacy and weak resolve. We might apply to him the chorus’s remark on Tantalus in the underworld, who is unable to reach the food and drink laid in front of him time and again: deceptus totiens tangere neglegit (‘deceived so often, he tries no more to touch’, 159). Indeed Tantalus displays a self-defeating masochism which the chorus captures with epigrammatic brevity: falli libuit (‘gladly has he been baffled’, 167).

iv Atreus’ use of ‘obscure’ forms of communication as he plots the mise en scène of act 3 is part of his dissembling character. Atreus rightly identifies dissimulation as an instrumentum regni, and in so doing he problematizes the contrast between ‘tyrant’ and ‘king’ which had been proposed in the second act. The tyrant can disguise his threats, and plausibly act as a good king – tyranny and dissimulation are closely connected in Greek and Roman 88 89

Note that gentile, too, is ominously ambiguous, since it could suggest ‘a drink consisting of your gens, with wine poured upon it’ (Tarrant (1985) 227). On metaphors of incorporation see Kilgour (1990) and now especially Rimell (2002).

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thought. The potential ambiguity of dissimulation makes the king, but especially the tyrant, a difficult ‘text’, and it inevitably raises an epistemological as well as a political problem. In Thyestes everybody dissimulates: the satelles disguises his fear; Atreus cloaks his thirst for revenge; Thyestes covers up his own worries. The distinction is not between those who dissimulate and those who do not, but between effective and ineffective dissimulation. The intellectually superior Atreus is fully aware of Thyestes’ deception, and goes on to triumph over him. Thyestes, on the other hand, suspects that his brother is dissimulating, but – fatally – he does not act on this intimation. Power and dissimulation are already linked as anthropological themes; witness the many stories in which a king seizes power by acting as a harmless fool, for instance Peisistratos and Brutus, or, before them, Odysseus , who dressed up as a poor beggar in order to regain his throne and his wife.90 In Roman political discourse dissimulation is a defect traditionally associated with Tiberius, thanks of course to Tacitus’ and Suetonius’ pathological portraits.91 It should not be forgotten, however, that a form of dissimulation characterizes imperial power from the outset. Brutus’ dissimulation marks the end of the monarchy and the beginning of the Republic, but Augustus’ own dissimulation allows an essentially monarchical power to be smuggled in as a slightly edited version of the Republican constitution. As Torquato Accetto will brilliantly point out centuries later in Della dissimulazione onesta, dissimulation is a totalizing form of communication and behaviour, because ‘the discourse of dissimulation must dissimulate’, and also because the only way to reply to those who dissimulate is by dissimulating in turn. This is why Atreus is afraid that his children may not be able to dissimulate (315). Dissimulation, in sum, is a weapon of power and against power, and must be judged according to internal criteria of efficacy and expediency. Thyestes, technically speaking, is a bad dissimulator, Atreus an excellent one. Dissimulation is deeply connected with theatrical fiction, and it is interesting to note that the product of Atreus’ dissimulation is the mise en scène of act 3. Dissimulation and deception are principles of artistic creation at least since Hesiod, well before Accetto will write, famously, that ‘everything beautiful is nothing but gentle dissimulation’. Like Hesiod’s Muses, tyrants 90

91

On Brutus see Bettini (1987). In Shakespeare’s tragedy Titus must also resort to dissimulation – he feigns madness – in order to accomplish his revenge: ‘I knew them all, though they supposed me mad, | And will o’erreach them in their own devices – | A pair of cursed hellhounds and their dam’ (5.2.142–4). See Giua (1975); Zecchini (1986); Baar (1990) 146–50 (and 51–7).

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and poets deceive or reveal the truth on a whim. A constantly dissimulating tyrant is inevitably a bad dissimulator (as Tiberius is, in fact, according to Accetto). The discourse of power, like the discourse of poetry, is very much exposed to the deconstructive force of dissimulation. Already Odysseus, as he lies while maintaining that he is ‘speaking truthfully’ (Od . 14.192), comes dangerously close to the Cretan paradox. In his Panegyricus Pliny will state that sincerity, or rather the appearance of sincerity, can be obtained by emulating those forms of spontaneous expression that it would take too long to falsify.92 Centuries later Baltasar Gracián will argue that after all sincerity itself is a lie.93 (Modern literary theory would indeed agree that the ‘reality effect’ intensifies the fictional status of a narrative.)

v As an authorial figure, Atreus is fully aware of the intertextual inspiration of his actions, and this knowledge of precedents and models will give him a decisive advantage at crucial junctures. Atreus explicitly displays his knowledge of the Ovidian story of Procne and Tereus, the single most important source of inspiration which he invokes in his very first appearance on the stage. Thus, as we have seen, when we hear Thyestes declare, in the emotionally charged meeting with his brother, that lacrimis agendum est (517), we can only suspect that he is simply ignoring Procne’s more resolute words in Ovid’s Metamorphoses: ‘non est lacrimis hoc’ inquit ‘agendum.’ 94 This is an oversight that Atreus would certainly have avoided, but it is not simply a matter of academic competence.95 The important point is that while Atreus is following a masterplot which guarantees him useful material for his revenge, Thyestes confesses his ignorance of that model, and fails to foresee the fatal danger that awaits him. No less ironic is the effect resulting from Thyestes’ inept appropriation of Virgil. In his canticum at the beginning of act 5 Thyestes begins to be dimly aware of the tragedy awaiting revelation: ‘my mind gives warning of imminent grief, presaging evil for itself ’ (957–8: mittit luctus signa futuri | mens ante sui praesaga mali). Virgil’s Mezentius had been able to realize even before the procession arrived that the corpse carried back to the camp was 92

93 95

See Pan. 3.1 and 3.4, whose contorted logic reveals a very interesting cognitive quandary. Note that similar concerns emerge already in Republican times, as the fractiousness of political life destroys deep-seated beliefs in the certainty of the meaning of key political terms: vera vocabula rerum amisimus, as Catilina points out (Sall. Cat. 52.11, with Canfora (1991)). 94 See p. 77. Oraculo Manual y Arte de Prudencia, para. 13. We should perhaps remember Ps.-Longinus’ observation that ‘in fact one finds low emotions distinct from the sublime, like pity, grief, fear’ (Subl. 8.2).

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that of his son Lausus: agnovit longe gemitum praesaga mali mens (‘Mezentius had a presentiment of evil. He heard the wailing in the distance and knew the truth’, Aen. 10.843). The almost verbatim repetition highlights the sharp contrast between Thyestes and Mezentius, the former unable to decode the ominous signs that surround him just as the latter swiftly jumps to the right conclusion.96 A similar instance of Thyestes’ insensitivity to literary models can be found in another elaborate intertextual connection which I have already touched upon.97 Finally back in Argos, Thyestes recalls with barely restrained emotion his youthful victories in the races, as he sees ‘the racecourse thronged with youth, where more than once, lifted to fame, have I in my father’s chariot won the palm’ (409–10: celebrata iuveni stadia, per quae nobilis | palmam paterno non semel curru tuli). As we have seen, these lines echo two important programmatic passages, Horace’s first ode (Carm. 1.1.3–6) and the proem to the third book of Virgil’s Georgics (3.10–20). Atreus, too, will have a chance to reactivate the audience’s memory of these models by picking up the keyword palma almost at the very end of the play: nunc meas laudo manus, | nunc parta vera est palma. perdideram scelus, | nisi sic doleres (1096–8). His palma, to be sure, has nothing to do with Thyestes’ racing exploits; it has been warranted by the astute manipulation of reality on which his revenge has been predicated all along, by his ability to produce a spectacle (Thyestes pained by harrowing grief ) which constitutes his own literary masterpiece.98 In his first ode Horace had singled out racing victories as the first item in a long list of lesser pursuits which he shuns for the glory of poetry, as he declares at the end of the poem, addressed to Maecenas: ‘but if you include me among lyric bards, I will hit the stars with my exalted head’ (quodsi me lyricis vatibus inseres, | sublimi feriam sidera vertice).99 Atreus, by contrasting his vera palma with Thyestes’ pointless evocation of past sporting achievements, shares his awareness of Virgil’s and Horace’s line of thought, which, evidently, Thyestes either did not know or did not share. 96 97 98 99

The instance is analysed by Tarrant (1985) 225. Note that, significantly, Atreus is similar to Mezentius; see below, pp. 125–6 (on the lion simile). Ch. 2, p. 59. Actors may have fought to conquer a palma already in Plautus’ time; see Plaut. Amph. 69, Poen. 37, Trin. 706 and Ter. Phorm. 16–17 with Duckworth (1952) 78. For authors see Cic. Phil. 1.36. Hor. Carm. 1.1.35–6. A parallel could also be drawn between the imagery of 885–6 (aequalis astris gradior et cunctos super | altum superbo vertice attingens polum) and that of Hor. Carm. 2.20.1–4 (non usitata nec tenui ferar | penna biformis per liquidum aethera | vates, neque in terris morabor | longius . . .). 2.20 concludes the second book of the Odes, and aequalis astris . . . of Atreus (885) signals a similar moment of completion (cf. 888–9: summa votorum attigi. | bene est, abunde est, iam sat est etiam mihi).

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By displaying his intimate, active knowledge of the literary tradition, Atreus further boosts his privileged relationship with the audience, which is invited to share Atreus’ literary awareness, and thus to side against Thyestes’ unattractive literalness, his deadly lack of literary competence. per f e c t i o n , o f a k i n d Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after, And the poetry he invented was easy to understand; He knew human folly like the back of his hand, And was greatly interested in armies and fleets; When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter, And when he cried the little children died in the streets. (W. S. Auden, Epitaph on a Tyrant)

i Through a powerful combination of qualities – passion and reason, tragic violence and tragi-comic irony – and through his ability to exceed the expected and the acceptable, Atreus embodies in the play the limitless energy that Tantalus had tried in vain to keep in check in the prologue to Thyestes.100 Atreus’ power is doubly lethal, because it not only makes room for nefas, but also gives it an unquestionable aesthetic attractiveness. Atreus the poet is cunning, funny, articulate, simply irresistible. The destruction of any boundary to nefas and decorum is thus inextricably linked to his creative power, and we, the audience, must admit that one cannot exist without the other. Thyestes discourages, we have seen, clear-cut definitions of characters and (even more) their hasty promotion to ethical types. Atreus cannot be reduced to a furious monster, Thyestes to a Stoic sapiens more or less close to possessing a bona mens. Positing a stark contrast between an unreasonable tyrant and a (potentially) ‘good king’ would be equally unreliable, if for no other reason than that tyrant and rex iustus are not ontologically opposite types. As Cicero, for instance, points out, the just king and the tyrant are different points in a continuum. Acting like a tyrant can be a momentary madness or a lifelong pattern, since it depends on a more or less successful control over passions, but one is not ‘born’ a tyrant, and the struggle is never won once and for all. A tyrannus can always be lurking behind the comforting image of the rex, and, as Cicero claims, there is very little 100

See above, ch. 2, passim.

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distance between the two: ‘when the king begins to act unjustly . . . he himself is a tyrant, the worst type, and the closest one to the best’.101 The mastertext of this juxtaposition between king and tyrant is to be found in Plato’s Republic.102 The tyrannical man comes about through a degeneration of the democratic man, because in the former remain ‘stronger and more numerous’ (571b) the ‘illicit’, indeed ‘terrible’ and ‘savage’ (572b) desires common to all men, but ‘in some individuals . . . repressed by laws and better instincts can be totally extirpated or lessened and weakened’ (571b). These desires (571c–d): are awakened in sleep when the rest of the soul, the rational ( ), gentle and dominant part, slumbers, but the beastly and savage ( ) part, replete with food and wine, gambols and, repelling sleep, endeavours to sally forth and satisfy its own instincts. You are aware that in such case there is nothing it will not venture to undertake as being released from all sense of shame ( ) and all reason ( ). It does not shrink from attempting to lie with a mother in fancy, or with anyone else, man, god or brute. It is ready for any foul deed of blood; it abstains from no food, and, in a word, falls short of no extreme of folly ( ) and shamelessness ( ).

This passage, whose wider significance will not escape Sigmund Freud,103 posits a connection between psychology and politics which will be at work more or less explicitly in most of the Hellenistic and Roman reflection on ‘the good king’, and definitely in Seneca’s own De clementia. The sleep of reason, we might well say, creates tyrants; or, to put it another way, the tyrant is he who never controls or represses his instincts but gives them immediate and complete satisfaction. We know from a great wealth of anthropological and literary material that all rulers, in more or less mediated or terrifying ways, are characterized as men who regularly break or trespass all sorts of boundaries. Rulers (especially tyrants) are all-powerful since their superhuman power makes them more similar to terrifying animals such as lions and leopards than to mere mortals.104 The literature of Imperial Rome focuses insistently on this conceptual knot. One may turn to Suetonius’ Lives of the Twelve Caesars, a fascinating 101 103

104

102 See Lanza (1977) esp. 65–94. Cic. Rep. 1.65. First of all in a 1914 addition to The Interpretation of Dreams (Freud (1900) = SE i v.67): ‘Plato, on the contrary, thought that the best men are those who only dream what other men do in their waking life’. The remark is echoed almost verbatim in Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (Freud (1916–17) = SE xv .146). There is no mention of Plato in Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming (Der Dichter und das Phantasieren (1907): SE i x.143–53), where Freud analyses the relationship between (day)-dreams, fantasy and poetic creation and effectively, if implicitly, appropriates for psychoanalysis Plato’s seminal observation. It is a well-known limitation of this and other Freudian writings on art that they focus more on the subject matter than the signifying practices shared by art and the unconscious. On the excesses of Greek tyrants see Catenacci (1996), especially 142–70 on erotic ones.

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document about the perception of power in the first century, to understand how the contemporary imagination lived with the presence, high on the Palatine, of rulers increasingly free from meaningful checks and balances. Politics must needs turn into psychology, because it is the individual ruler’s psychology, that of the rex-tyrannus, which must be controlled, reined in, bettered. The whole of De clementia, the most important work for understanding Seneca’s and some of his contemporaries’ political vision, is simply an attempt to persuade Nero that it is in his moral and practical interest to acknowledge those limits which no outside force is any longer capable of imposing. Plato’s intuition that the tyrant is a man who gives free rein in his life to alogon, the violation of rational and ethical norms, and accomplishes what moral self-repression or external laws keep out of the reach of normal people is rich in theoretical implications. If in the tyrant there is at work a form of extreme violence akin to the violence of unrepressed desires, those which get free rein in dreams unless proper rational control is exercised, then a dispassionate reflection on the tyrant’s potential emotional appeal as a literary character is in order, especially as he can be at the same time terrifying and magnificent, attractive and repulsive. In book 10 Plato deals for the second and last time with the issue of poetry and its dangers. Poetry leads people astray for at least two reasons: because poets tend to imitate in their work the worse instincts of the soul, not the better ones (603c–605c), and because poetry incites the audience to privilege the parts of the soul which are best kept under control (605c–607a). Poetry is equivalent to loosening inhibition, to yielding to alogon, which in political terms is embodied by the ‘tyrannical character’, linked as he is to irrational and uncontrollable forces. Poetry has no citizenship in a well-regulated polis, because it escapes the control of reason. The notion that poetic inspiration is connected with divine elements and contains something inexplicable is prePlatonic (Democritus), but it is Plato’s specific contribution to regard this inspiration as irrational, even Bacchic (533e–534e).105 Poetry often arrives in dreams, is inspired by supernatural sources whose epistemological status is frequently debated in Augustan poetry. The rich tradition of the inspiring dream codifies in Greek and Roman literature the positive side of the relationship between poetry and dreams. But another side is not entirely forgotten, namely the awareness that an excess of poetic irrationality can be 105

See Murray (1996) 7–9. Note in this context Zeitlin’s remarks on the gender assumptions which underlie Plato’s rejection of poetry as a dangerous ‘female’ mimesis (1996) 367–74 (on the connection between women and mimesis Zeitlin (1996) 375–416 is crucial). Indeed the tyrant, a ‘theatrical’ man who is a slave of his passions, resembles a woman: Resp. 577b and 579b–c with Zeitlin (1996) 371 and n. 56.

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compared to the disturbed and unreliable dreams of a sick man. Consider the opening of Horace’s Ars poetica (6–9a): credite, Pisones, isti tabulae fore librum persimilem cuius, velut aegri somnia, vanae fingentur species, ut nec pes nec caput uni reddatur formae. Believe me, Pisones, the book will be very similar to this picture, if idle fancies (vanae . . . species) are shaped in it as in the dreams of feverish people, so that neither head nor foot can be assigned to a single shape.

Horace contrasts the folly of this limitless imagination with the reliable rules of good judgement (9b-13): ‘pictoribus atque poetis quidlibet audendi semper fuit aequa potestas’ scimus, et hanc veniam petimusque damusque vicissim; sed non ut placidis coeant immitia, non ut serpentes avibus geminentur, tigribus agni. ‘But painters and poets have always enjoyed a full right to dare whatever they fancied.’ True, this is a licence which we poets request and concede in turn; but not to the extent that savage animals should lie down with domestic ones, or snakes should mate with birds, or lambs with tigers.

The ‘licence’ (licentia) which Horace grants to poets106 is an enlightened absolutism of sorts: there is a lot they are free to do, but they should not overturn the foundations of human nature and society. Light-hearted and full of grotesque imagery as these lines may sound, their seriousness is not to be underestimated, especially if we consider that the Horatian examples of adynata, of impossible conjunctions, recall a very important section of De rerum natura book 5 (lines 878–924). There Lucretius argues that the first living creatures created by Mother Earth must surely have been imperfect, even ‘monstrous’ to our mind, but they could not defy the basic rules of atomic aggregation which forbid the union of different species. Let me briefly restate the crux of my argument: it is possible to argue, at both a contextual and theoretical level, that poetry is the sphere of human activity where the kinds of thoughts, feelings and images which reason would rather keep under control and even silence are expressed and communicated. Furthermore, one might propose that the poet’s violation of this censorship is homologous to the tyrant’s transgression of behavioural norms. The poet, 106

Cf. Mayor (1879), and Brink ad loc.

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that is, is like the tyrant, because just like him he ignores the boundaries set by logos and nomos. Not all poets, and not all the time, of course. We should adopt in this case as well an articulation of the concept that is parallel to the one suggested above between rex iustus and tyrant, an articulation which Augustan and post-Augustan poetry and poetics encapsulate in the related but distinct concepts of poeta and vates.107 We could therefore complete the theoretical proposition by positing an analogy, on the one hand, between poeta and rex iustus, and, on the other, between vates and tyrant, the former two champions of moderation and self-restraint, the latter closer to sublime forces of Bacchic enthousiasmos or Apollinean inspiration. The parallelism that I posit does not exhaust the exegetical dividends afforded by comparing the political and the poetic. Indeed, the theoretical argument developed so far can be put to further use once we formulate a final corollary. I would like to argue that there exists between the tyrant and the enthusiastic vates a latent solidarity based on a basic homology. In first-century literature the tyrant is attractive because of the similarities between those who exercise political power and the power of the poets.108 A vates will invariably be a subject of power in his sphere of activity, and an object of power in the political domain: hence the powerful tensions and contradictions we find in the relationship between poets and rulers in the Rome of Augustus and Nero (and beyond).

ii The tyrant’s attractiveness is rooted in the characteristics he shares with the vates. Poets and tyrants are similar, first of all, because they both claim for themselves the right to act supra . . . fines moris humani (268). They both are ‘authors’, auctores, creators and innovators of reality, masters of life and death, of creation and destruction.109 Atreus’ power is explicitly connected, in the tragedy, with his ability to create a compelling mise en scène. The poet is like the tyrant, and the tyrant can dress up as a poet in order to fulfil his goals. His weapons are exactly the same: creativity, dissimulation, irony, 107

108 109

For a full picture of the emergence and development of the concept of vates in the first century see Newman (1967). One feature appears to underline the new meaning of the word after Virgil (and Varro, who, according to Isidorus, Orig. 8.7.3, suggested among others the interesting etymology of vates ‘a vi mentis’): the term vates ‘made the poet a being with more than ordinary powers’ (Newman (1967) 100). See Jocelyn (1995). A similarity that famously becomes, in the case of Nero, an identification; Bartsch (1994) 36–62. One might recall the debate between Socrates and Polus on whether rhetors have real power in the polis. According to Polus they do, because ‘like tyrants, they can kill whoever they want to, deprive anyone of his property and expel him from their cities as they think fit’ (Pl. Grg. 466c).

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double entendres, knowledge of the literary tradition. Atreus’ superiority over Thyestes in words, logic and deeds is reflected in his strong impact on the audience. If nothing else, there can be no doubt where our aesthetic allegiances lie:110 with Atreus’ energetic poiesis, his mastery of words and puns, his ruthless determination to plot, stage and act his revenge. One way to gauge the potential effect of Atreus on the audience is to look at the reactions of the characters who watch him within the play, from the docility of the counsellor in act 2 to the messenger’s horror as he recalls the sacrificial slaughter in act 4. In both cases we face the impotent awe of human beings confronted with behaviour that goes well beyond their normal horizon of expectations. The messenger provides the most articulate analysis of the reactions that Atreus inspires, and conveys them not only in his moral judgement, but also in the elaborate similes he uses in his gripping portrait of the king. Atreus is first compared to a tigress in his uncertainty over the order of the sacrifice (707–14): ieiuna silvis qualis in Gangeticis inter iuvencos tigris erravit duos, utriusque praedae cupida quo primum ferat incerta morsus (flectit hoc rictus suos, illo reflectit et famem dubiam tenet), sic dirus Atreus capita devota impiae speculatur irae. quem prius mactet sibi dubitat, secunda deinde quem caede immolet. As in the jungles by the Ganges a hungry tigress wavers between two calves, eager for both prey, uncertain where she should bite first (to the one she turns her jaws, then turns to the other, and keeps her hunger waiting), so does cruel Atreus scan the heads destined to his cruel rage, and wonders whom he should first sacrifice to himself, whom he should slaughter second.

Shortly afterwards, as the chorus enquires about the fate of Thyestes’ younger child, the messenger engages in a new comparison of a similar type (732–41): silva iubatus qualis Armenia leo in caede multa victor armento incubat (cruore rictus madidus et pulsa fame non ponit iras: hinc et hinc tauros premens vitulis minatur dente iam lasso inpiger), non aliter Atreus saevit atque ira tumet, 110

For the notion of ‘aesthetic allegiance’ see Orlando (1971) passim.

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ferrumque gemina caede perfusum tenens, oblitus in quem fureret, infesta manu exegit ultra corpus, ac pueri statim pectore receptus ensis in tergo exstitit. As in the Armenian woods a maned lion, victorious after much slaughter, lies down amidst the herd (his jaws reek with gore, but even after he has quelled his hunger he rages on: now here, now there attacking the bulls, he threatens the calves, tireless even as his jaws are tired) – not otherwise Atreus raves and swells with anger and holding the knife drenched with double slaughter, forgetting whom he is attacking, with deadly hand he drives it through the body, and the sword enters the boy’s breast and stands out upon his back.

While the first simile focuses on Atreus’ procedural doubt, the tigress image highlighting the combination of rational and bestial, the second develops at length an aspect of the lion’s behaviour emphasized in previous texts, namely the animal’s indulgence in violence well beyond the practical impulse to kill its prey.111 It is not simply hunger that drives the lion, but an instinctual passion for violence which is partly pursued for its own sake. Both similes concentrate on Atreus’ animal-like behaviour, a notion which should not immediately and inevitably translate into a moral judgement, but which does introduce a key element of his characterization. As we have already noticed, Atreus’ bestial nature plays an important role when the tragedy comes to terms with the relative positioning of, and transactions among, men, gods and animals, as articulated in sacrifice. The immediate antecedent of both similes can be found (unsurprisingly) in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. It is especially interesting to note that Procne is compared to a Gangetica tigris112 just as she sets out to murder her son; the detail of the beast’s hesitation when confronted with two victims further echoes Perseus’ own uncertainty at Metamorphoses 5.164–9. Neither passage, however, mentions lions, and while yet another Ovidian line might have suggested the choice of a different animal,113 there is much to be gained by expanding the possible implications of Seneca’s departure from 111

112 113

Note the change in gender from a male to a female animal between the two similes. The detail may be significant in the light of the Dionysiac aspects of Atreus’ personality which I discuss below. Dionysus was, notoriously, a sexually ambivalent god, described as having feminine traits, especially from the fifth century onwards; see Dodds (1960) 133–4; Detienne (1979) 20–52. The tradition is present in Rome as well, see Naev. 57 Ribbeck2 (from the Lycurgus). Note also the traditional association of Dionysus with a lion that goes back to the Homeric Hymns 7.44 (Dodds (1960) xvii with n. 6), and present in Sen. Oed. 424–6, 457–8. Met. 6.636–7: veluti Gangetica . . . | . . . tigris, to compare with Sen. Oed . 458: tigris . . . Gangetica, on which passage see the preceding note. See p. 80. According to Tarrant (1985) 195, who refers to Met. 15.86: Armeniae tigres iracundique leones. Note the insistence on ira at Thy. 735 and 737, above.

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his model. By comparing Atreus to a lion Seneca does more than reiterate Atreus’ beastly violence: he invites reflection on important thematic and metaliterary affiliations. Chronology notwithstanding, it is probably best to turn first to Lucan’s Caesar, who is characterized as a lion in the first, extended simile which the Bellum Civile devotes to its main character (204–12): inde moras solvit belli tumidumque per amnem signa tulit propere: sicut squalentibus arvis aestiferae Libyes viso leo comminus hoste subsedit dubius, totam dum colligit iram; mox, ubi se saevae stimulavit verbere caudae erexitque iubam et vasto grave murmur hiatu infremuit, tum torta levis si lancea Mauri haereat aut latum subeant venabula pectus, per ferrum tanti securus volneris exit. Then he broke the barriers of war and through the swollen river quickly took his standards. Just so in torrid Libya’s barren fields the lion, on seeing his enemy at hand, crouches in hesitation till he has concentrated all his anger; next he goads himself with fiercely lashing tail, his mane is bristling, from his massive jaws deep he roars – then if a lance, hurled by a swift Moor, or hunting-spears pierce and stick in his broad chest, ignoring such a terrible wound he rushes onward, driving the weapon deeper.

Lucan insists on the lion’s ira (a traditional detail),114 but also stresses the beast’s almost heroic defiance in the face of the enemy. Lucan’s Caesar, of course, consistently proves to be a character whose unrestrainable proclivity to nefas and violence constitutes the emotional and narrative focus of the poem, an attractive, if fearful, mixture of defiance and ruthlessness, epic grandeur and impious heroism. In this respect Caesar follows in a distinguished line of (anti)heroes whose most immediate and influential model can be traced to two important Virgilian characters, Turnus and Mezentius. They, too, are repeatedly compared to a lion, and Virgil elicits from his Homeric model a consistent series of connotations.115 In Aeneid 9 114

115

See Sen. De ira. 2.16.1: iracundia leones adiuvat; Hor. Carm. 1.16.15 with Nisbet-Hubbard (1970) 211. It is important to note that the passage refers to Thyestes’ ira, a somewhat difficult notion given Atreus’ traditional association with revenge. Among the possible explanations that Nisbet and Hubbard advance, it is worth reporting that of Vollmer (on Stat. Silv. 5.1.57), who suggested that Varius might have introduced a variation of the legend in which Thyestes’ anger played a more significant part. The most relevant Homeric similes are to be found in Il. 3.23–6 and 17.540–2, which insist on the lion’s anticipated joy at the carnage; 12.292–300 is also interesting for Sarpedon’s somewhat excessive behaviour (like a lion, he has a ! ). Il. 17.61–7 foregrounds the abundant blood in which the animal revels. Also, Odysseus’ victory is compared to the behaviour of a lion, see Od . 4.335–9 ( = 17.126–30), with Moulton (1977) 139 and 123 (with further references).

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Turnus is described as a lion standing unperturbed in front of his enemies (9.792–8):116 ceu saevum turba leonem cum telis premit infensis; at territus ille, asper, acerba tuens, retro redit et neque terga ira dare aut virtus patitur, nec tendere contra ille quidem hoc cupiens potis est per tela virosque. haud aliter retro dubius vestigia Turnus improperata refert et mens exaestuat ira. . . . crowding him like a pack of huntsmen with levelled spears pressing hard on a savage lion; the lion is afraid and gives ground, but he is still dangerous, still glaring at his attackers; his anger and his courage forbid him to turn tail, and though he would dearly love to, he cannot charge through the wall of steel and the press of men – just so did Turnus give ground, uncertain but unhurried, and his mind was boiling with rage.

This description focuses on the strength and defiance of the animal, its bloodthirstiness and grandiosity. Even when wounded, the lion will rejoice in the forthcoming slaughter and continue to display its determination (12.4–9): Poenorum qualis in arvis saucius ille gravi venantum vulnere pectus tum demum movet arma leo, gaudetque comantis excutiens cervice toros fixumque latronis impavidus frangit telum et fremit ore cruento: haud secus accenso gliscit violentia Turno. Just as a lion in the fields round Carthage, who does not move into battle till he has received a great wound in his chest from the hunters, and then revels in it, shaking out the thick mane on his neck; fearlessly he snaps off the shaft left in his body by the ruffian that threw it, and opens his gory jaws to roar – just so did the violent passion rise in Turnus.

It is precisely the pleasure gained from the anticipated slaughter that Virgil highlights in the simile devoted to Mezentius later in book 10 (723–9): impastus stabula alta leo ceu saepe peragrans (suadet enim vesana fames), si forte fugacem conspexit capream aut surgentem in cornua cervum, gaudet hians immane comasque arrexit et haeret visceribus super incumbens; lavit improba taeter ora cruor – sic ruit in densos alacer Mezentius hostis. 116

A similar, briefer description is to be found in Aen. 10.454–6. On these and other animal similes applied to Turnus see Traina (1990) 327, with further bibliography.

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Just as a ravening lion scouring the deep lairs of wild beasts, driven mad by the pangs of hunger, if he sights a frightened she-goat, or sees a stag’s antlers rising, he opens his great jaws in delight, his mane bristles and he battens on the flesh with foul gore washing his pitiless mouth – just so did Mezentius charge hot-haste into the thick of the enemy . . .

By comparing Atreus to a lion Seneca thus places him in a genealogy of characters who display a powerful passion for nefas and inspire the awed attention of the audience. Heroic in his evil, Atreus, like Mezentius or Caesar, shows that the more overt layer of moral condemnation offered by the poem’s structuring ideology can be at odds with the inner tensions and deeper emotions evoked by the text. Turnus, like Mezentius, attains grandiosity by heeding his passion (his furor) well beyond the normal bounds of human behaviour.117 The analogy with man-eating lions and tigers indirectly highlights Atreus’ involvement with cannibalism. Here again Seneca’s strategy is rich and sophisticated. The association with wild beasts and the elaborate cooking scene reported by the messenger all conjure up the image of a cannibalistic Atreus, who would thus join the series of tyrants (especially Eastern ones) who did not shrink from eating human flesh, sometimes specifically as a form of punishment.118 In this case, however, Atreus’ (and Seneca’s) masterstroke consists in shifting the blame, indeed the praecipuum . . . nefas (Thy. 285),119 onto Thyestes. Atreus is, for all purposes, the cannibal of the two, yet he cunningly manages to involve his brother in this peculiarly tyrannical nefas while ostensibly refraining from it himself. This can be seen, on one level, as the pinnacle of dissimulation, a strategy at which Atreus excels.120 On the other, however, it proves a central tenet of Atreus’ philosophy, that one cannot rely too much on ‘intrinsic’ differences between ethical types. Atreus shows how flimsy the divide between man and animal can be (hence the lion similes and the cannibalism), but shows furthermore that even among men unforeseen turns of events can result in a blurring of ethical categories. Again, who is the ‘real’ animal, Atreus, who 117

118

119

This conclusion is not weakened by the fact that the lion simile is first encountered in connection with Nisus (9.339–41). Nisus is hardly a Mezentius-like character, but it is important to remember his initial words: ‘Is it the gods who put this ardour into our minds, or does every man’s irresistible desire become his god?’ (183–4: ‘dine hunc ardorem mentibus addunt, | Euryale, an sua cuique deus fit dira cupido?’ ). Again a feature of Plato’s tyrant, Resp. 565d-566a. An analogy can also be drawn between cannibalism and incest, both forms of ‘unnatural’ appropriation of a body; see Parker (1983) 98, 326 and above, p. 94. Thus, in a sense, as he eats his children Thyestes is also perversely repeating the crime that led to his punishment. On the Greeks’ view of cannibalism see Detienne (1979) 53–67; on similar charges directed against a tyrannical Mark Antony see Leigh (1996). 120 On dissimulation see pp. 113ff. See below, p. 144.

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plots the banquet, or Thyestes, who actually eats the flesh of his children? If Atreus is a god, or at least, certainly, ‘plays god’ with Thyestes (thus also blurring the boundaries between gods and men), the latter cannot be absolved of his actions simply because he did not know what he was doing and because a superior power put him in harm’s way. Oedipus, of course, would be able to disabuse Thyestes of any such ill-conceived notion of innocence. It is equally important to frame the lion simile in the context of an explicit reflection on literature proposed by Seneca in Letters to Lucilius 41. This letter elaborates a defence of the sublime aesthetic appeal of terrifying images, such as a dark grove, a deep grotto (41.3) or a lion which is speciosus ex horrido and cannot be watched without intense fear (41.6: non sine timore aspici): its decor lies in fact in this very quality. Letter 41 does not answer in full the moral issues raised by such a vocal defence of ‘beauty arising from fear’ – speciosum ex horrido, as the phenomenon could be defined – but, interestingly, the example reinforces the intimation that one should live according to one’s nature: a tamed, dressed up lion would be a pitiful spectacle (41.6). This identification of naturalness and aesthetic appeal paves the way for a full artistic exploitation of the psychagogic and aesthetic potential of negative characters, and, of course, of such a distinctly Senecan feature as the locus horridus.121 Atreus is not artistically appealing in spite of his cruel, negative nature, but precisely because his nature, as we see in the messenger’s simile, is not in the least bridled or tamed. Atreus can thus be seen to embody a form of artistic and behavioural sublimity which transcends humanity and attracts the audience beyond and even against the purview of their ethical beliefs. What is sublime can in fact overcome the distinction between ‘beautiful’ and ‘ugly’, and aims instead at offering powerful, uncontrollable emotions: For grandeur (" #$) has the effect of transporting its audience rather than persuading it; and anything amazing and astonishing (% &' . . . ! ( ) always prevails over what is merely persuasive and pleasant. The fact is that persuasion is generally something we can resist, whereas these other effects exert an irresistible power and force ( ) ) and overcome every hearer.

This incisive analysis of the effects of sublimity is developed in the tract On the Sublime (* +, ) which, not long before Seneca composed his tragedies (or perhaps even at the same time), dealt with the notion of sublimity in a particularly influential fashion.122 There is little to be 121

In general see Schiesaro (1985), with further bibliography.

122

Subl. 1.4.

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gained in exploiting On the Sublime as a ‘source’ for Seneca’s conception of tragedy, and not just because its elusive chronology would make such a strategy risky, at best.123 But it is surely fruitful to turn to this work in search of a contemporary analysis of the sublime, and to refer to it in the present attempt to ground in specific forms of behaviour and expression Atreus’ nature as a ‘sublime’ character endowed with ‘a consummate excellence of language’ (1.3: &' ). The comparison with On the Sublime, of course, is made all the more pertinent by Atreus’ distinctive metadramatic role: as a poet on stage, obsessed with the plotting and mise en scène of his own play, Atreus develops a coherent and articulate poetics, one which centres on the unrestrained power of poetry over its creator and its audience alike.124 If the messenger’s simile between Atreus and a lion thus acquires an intriguing metadramatic overtone, a deeper connection can also be established between Atreus’ artistic project as a whole and the intrinsic nature of sublime poetry as articulated in On the Sublime. Among the ‘natural’ (8.1: -.) sources of sublimity, Ps.-Longinus lists first ‘the power of great thoughts’ (8.1: ! " /) ), and second ‘strong and inspired emotion’ (8.1: ! ! & ! ( ). Indeed, ‘nothing contributes more to greatness of expression than authentic emotion at the right moment, as if some frenzy or divine inspiration animated the words (8.4: #! ! & & ), filling them, as it were, with the divine breath of Phoebus (8.4: )(0 )’. The sublime is, in sum, ‘the echo of a great soul’ (9.2: ). I recall here my observations about in chapter one, especially in connection with Cleanthes’ aspirations to a form of poetic expression that could aptly convey ‘divine greatness’ (. ).125 There I tried to show that any attempt to rein in the potentially disruptive force of poetic enthousiasmos and reconcile it safely with the Stoics’ stated goal of a morally instructive poetry is intrinsically doomed to failure. Atreus can now offer a case study of a ‘sublime’ poet in action, one who allows us to glimpse not only, as it were, the finished product, but also the creative stages that bring it to life. Atreus’ passion is intense, grandiose and, to borrow from Ps.-Longinus, distinctly ) (10.6). He explicitly declares his intention to scare off a very special sector of his audience, the gods themselves, with his 123

124

On the sublime in Seneca valuable general indications are offered by Michel (1969). I am not sure that the connection is invalid just because in his prose Seneca would not admit that he is trying to move his readers to ekstasis (Subl. 1.4, cf. 15.9), as Traina (1987) 123 argues. 125 SVF 1.486. Cf. Mazzoli (1970) 47. See above, p. 23. See above, ch. 1.

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extraordinary nefas126 – not to mention the fact that the direct and indirect witnesses of his sacrifice (the messenger, the chorus, Thyestes himself ) react to his actions with unrestrained terror.127 An element of the intense emotions that Atreus is capable of stirring is undoubtedly connected with the very violence of his own passions. Ps.-Longinus offers, in connection with Sappho’s fragment 31 Voigt, a compelling analysis of the impact of unrestrained passions, especially of those that catalyze different emotions at once: ‘Are you not astonished at the way she summons up all together – mind and body, hearing, tongue, sight, colour, as though they were separate elements external to her, and feels contradictory sensations, freezes and burns, raves and reasons (after all, she is terrified or even on the point of death), as if she wanted to display not one single emotion, but a complex of emotions’ (Subl. 10.3). Ps.-Longinus connects sublimity with a specific attitude entertained by the poet about his past and his future. The poet who aspires to sublimity is characterized by his deeply agonistic relationship with his models, which he should imitate and emulate (13.2: and 0) as he constantly concerns himself with the judgement of posterity: ‘If I write this, how might posterity judge it?’ (14.3). Atreus entertains precisely the same concern and has a trenchant answer ready: age, anime, fac quod nulla posteritas probet, | sed nulla taceat (‘up, my soul, do what no coming age shall approve, but none forget’, Thy. 192–3). Atreus’ programme of poetic imitation is indeed predicated on and 0 vis-à-vis his models. Not only is he fully aware of the pertinent models for his own endeavour, and explicitly turns to them for inspiration (Subl. 13.2), but he also insists on competing with them, on trying to surpass their evil with an increasingly original nefas of his own. According to Ps.-Longinus’ striking image this inspiration drawn from past models ‘impregnates’ the poet just as the divine wind penetrates the Pythia: ‘many [poets] are possessed by a spirit not their own, just as (so the story runs) the Pythia at Delphi sits on her tripod near a cleft in a ground which (so they say) breathes out a divine vapour, and is thereby made pregnant (& ) by the supernatural power and is at once inspired to prophecy. Likewise, from the genius of the old [writers] a kind of effluence ( ) from those holy mouths flows into the souls of their imitators’ (13.2). As vates, the sublime poet operates at the critical juncture between overwhelming inspiration, prophecy and poetic creativity. To achieve these heights of inspiration and poetry he must go 126 127

265–6: fiat hoc, fiat nefas | quod, di, timetis. The messenger at 634–8; the chorus at 744, 789–884; Thyestes at 920–69 (before the revelation).

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beyond the closed boundaries of his masculine self, and be pervaded by an irresistible outside force precisely as Atreus does: tumultus pectora attonitus quatit | penitusque voluit; rapior et quo nescio, | sed rapior (Thy. 260–2).128 Atreus’ obsession with maius nefas is directly connected with his agonistic attitude towards tradition, and is but one aspect of his sublime nature, always in search of higher pursuits and stronger emotions, constantly obsessed with excess, with what is ‘more’ and ‘bigger’. The maius-motif 129 pervades his reflections in act 2; to him nullum [sc. facinus] est satis (‘no crime is enough’, 256); his animus pushes him to accomplish nescioquid . . . maius et solito amplius (‘something greater, larger than normal’, 267); pain forces him to devise a revenge bigger (maius, again) than the one meted out to Tereus (272–5). His never-ending search for maius is consistent with the ideology of tyranny. The tyrant constantly hungers to escape limitations, to ignore sufficiency and moderation. A relevant statement on the subject can be found in one of the most interesting literary debates ‘on tyranny’, the exchange between Jocasta and Eteocles in Euripides’ Phoenissae. A distraught Jocasta is firm in her belief that to the wise man what is adequate is always enough (554: & ( 1 21 3 " . 4 ), and that the search for ! (‘advantage’, literally ‘more’) is the pursuit of a mere name (553). But Eteocles had already made it clear that striving after ‘more’ is a given which does not require (nor indeed allow) any explanation: ‘it is not manly ( ) to lose more and settle for less’, being happy with 5 (‘less’) when it is possible to have ‘more’, ! (509–10). The search for ! , maius, can never cease; it is the prime motivator and ultimate goal of the 6 – of the ethics and aesthetics of tyranny.130 On the Sublime does not confine its analysis to the psychological tension underlying the poetics of sublimity, but takes into account a number of particularly representative techniques of expression that are related to it. A sublime style reveals itself both in specific arrangements of the subject matter and in a series of rhetorical tropes. Among the former, particular consideration should be devoted to 5', the ability to gather a number of details and present them as a compelling whole (Subl. 12.2). In his speech in act 2, for instance, Atreus overwhelms the counsellor thanks also to the elaborate accumulation of details which reinforce the vividness of his plot. Phantasia, too, is a principle that Atreus-the-author would readily embrace. Phantasia, Ps.-Longinus explains, occurs when ‘moved by 128 130

129 See p. 31, n. 16. See above, pp. 51ff. See Mastronarde (1994) 303 on the discussion in Plato’s Gorgias and Republic about the tyrant as ‘the supreme example of the ’, which is presupposed by these lines.

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passionate emotion, you seem to see the things of which you speak, and place them before the eyes of your audience’ (15.1). Atreus is fully aware of the effectiveness of this process even as he is still in the planning phase of his revenge. The strength of his inspiration and the vividness of his project are such that a full picture of the imminent slaughter is already available to him: ‘already before my eyes flits the whole picture of the slaughter; his lost children heaped up before their father’s face’ (Thy. 281–3: tota iam ante oculos meos | imago caedis errat, ingesta orbitas | in ora patris). The reader of On the Sublime need perhaps go no further than the first few lines of Atreus’ initial monologue (176–80) in search of distinctive features of the sublime: ignave, iners, enervis et (quod maximum probrum tyranno rebus in summis reor) inulte, post tot scelera, post fratris dolos fasque omne ruptum questibus vanis agis iratus Atreus? Undaring, indolent, nerveless, and, what in important matters I consider a king’s worst reproach, unavenged, after so many crimes, after a brother’s treacheries, and breaking every law, you are busy with idle complaints – is this Atreus in a rage?

This period is strongly marked by asyndeton, a stylistic device which raises the emotional pitch of the sentence and, as Ps.-Longinus explicitly indicates, is one of the hallmarks of the sublime, just like interrogations and selfinterrogations, which are another device frequently employed by Atreus.131 Significantly, the whole structure of this period – an extended self-addressed question – falls within the technai of the sublime listed by Ps.-Longinus.132 The three adjectives that Atreus uses at line 176 to describe his behaviour so far are all found in rhetorical and literary contexts. Ignavus, as we glean from Horace’s Epistles,133 can be used of an indolent, slow style, similar to the type of compositio which Quintilian will define as tarda et supina (‘slow and languid’, 9.4.137). Its Greek counterpart, argos, plays a significant 131

132

133

On asyndeton in Senecan tragedy: Canter (1925) 169ff. and Billerbeck (1988) 122–3. The Auctor ad Herennium (4.41) provides an apt description of the device’s effects: ‘this figure (asyndeton) has animation and very great force, and is suited to concision’ (hoc genus [sc. dissolutum] et acrimoniam habet in se et vehementissimum est et ad brevitatem adcommodatum). See also Quint. 9.3.54 and Calboli (1993) 370–2, esp. n. 178. Self-apostrophe occurs at 192 (age, anime). Subl. 18.1–2: ‘the impassioned rapidity of question and answer and the technique of making an objection to oneself make the passage, by virtue of its figurative form, not only more sublime, but more convincing. For emotion carries us away more readily when it seems to be generated by the moment rather than deliberately assumed by the speaker, and the self-directed question and answer represent the momentary quality of emotion.’ On the technique see Canter (1925) 140ff. and Billerbeck (1988) 123. Epist. 2.1.67, with Brink ad loc. for further references.

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role in Ps.-Longinus’ comparison between Hyperides and Demosthenes (Subl. 34.4): Yet Hyperides’ beauties, numerous as they are, are without grandeur: ‘inert (() in the heart of a sober man’, they leave the audience at peace. Nobody is afraid when he reads Hyperides. But as soon as Demosthenes begins to speak, he gathers to himself the faculties of true genius in their highest form – the intensity of lofty speech (#, ), vital emotion, abundance, variety, speed where it matters, all his unapproachable force ( ) and power ( ).

Horace will call versus . . . inertes (Ars P. 445), ‘lifeless lines’, lines virtute carentia (Epist. 2.2.123) as boring as the carmen iners with which, Calpurnius’ Lycidas will complain, a rival has inexplicably wooed his beloved Phyllis (Ecl. 3.59–60). Enervis (‘feeble’) belongs to the vast repertoire of anatomic and physiological metaphors we find in Latin literary terminology; Cicero, for instance, relates enervis to mollis, ‘weak’ (Tusc. 4.38); Quintilian relates it to effeminatus, ‘unmanly’ (9.4.142).134 Note, however, Tantalus’ description of his father as Thyestes enters the stage for the first time in act 3 (Thy. 421–2): pigro (quid hoc est?) genitor incessu stupet vultumque versat seque in incerto tenet. My father (what is it?) moves with slow step as if in a daze, keeps turning his face, and is mired in doubt.

The ensuing dialogue repeatedly contrasts the huge difference between Atreus’ determined enthousiasmos and his brother’s uncertainty (tinged with hypocrisy) as he extols the virtues of measure, exile and modest living vis-à-vis the false wealth of power. Atreus will promptly overcome his initial weakness, and go on to embody a stylistic and behavioural model grounded in energy, speed and determination. It is a model which Cicero already recognized in Accius’ Atreus, and one he recommends himself to the speaker who wants to convey vis with words.135

134 135

Enervis also occurs in Tac. Dial. 18.5, on which see Gudeman (1914) 318–19. More generally, Bramble (1974) 35–8 (esp. 36, n. 3), with further bibliography. De or. 3.219 ‘energy (must take) another kind of tone, intense, vehement, eager with a sort of impressive urgency’ (aliud [sc. vocis genus . . . sumat] vis, contentum, vehemens, imminens quadam incitatione gravitatis). There follows a quotation of Accius’ Atreus 198–201 Ribbeck2 = Dangel 29–32 (quoted below, p. 142), where the anaphora of iterum and the polyptoton maior/maius clearly contribute to the stylistic strength Cicero wants to exemplify.

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iii In his polymorphous manifestations Atreus tramples the boundaries between different realms. As author, director and spectator, he occupies the entire scenic space, with all its possible functions and points of view. As both victim and executioner, he lays claim to the audience’s sympathy for the wrongs he has suffered while also eliciting their horror at the intensity of his revenge. As the protagonist of the play, he parades an unrivalled capacity to use language creatively and metaphorically to ensnare his victims. He enjoys the prerogatives of masculine political power, but he does not hesitate to rely on his feminine inner self as he yields to passions and allows himself to be carried away by inspiration, as he deceives and entraps his enemy. His knowledge of the literary tradition establishes beyond any doubt his metadramatic credentials, just as his insistence on the sacrificial nature of the slaughter that he performs seems to secure his divine status as a man who behaves like a wild animal and shines like a god.136 What surfaces from a synoptic analysis of all these tightly interconnected aspects is not simply Atreus’ extraordinary complexity nor even his ability to unify the tensions between drama and metadrama, between the illusional power of the poetic word and the harsh impact of the reality principle realized in his all-too-real revenge. Atreus, all-encompassing, all-powerful, ecstatic, embodies the sublime in its ultimate, Dionysiac incarnation. If Dionysus – Euripides’ Dionysus above all – is the god of theatre, Atreus can be considered his (super)human counterpart, endowed with many of the same alluring ambiguities and irresistible attractions. The analogy extends to fundamental aspects of Atreus’ persona. As ‘gods’ of theatrical mimesis both Atreus and the protagonist of Bacchae act as playwrights on the stage and control the unfolding of the dramatic action. Both Atreus and Dionysus import into the tragedy comic elements which not only enrich their expressive repertoire, but also prove invaluable in the battle against less articulate opponents such as Thyestes and Pentheus. Atreus’ Dionysiac overtones are established early in the play as an effect of the intertextual connection with Ovid’s Procne, whose revenge takes place in the frenzy of trieterica Bacchi.137 Appropriating the wounded persona of the betrayed queen, Atreus also shares in the violent revenge that can be 136 137

Boyle (1983b) 212. Ov. Met. 6.587. Ovid follows Accius’ less usual version of the myth, which places the story in a Thrace converted to the cult of Dionysus; Dangel (1995) 346–7. The setting may well go back to Sophocles; Ciappi (1998) 439. On the connections between the sacrifice of Thyestes and the Dionysiac dimension of the Procne story see Burkert (1983) 181–2.

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understood only in the context of such wild rites. Similarly, when Atreus confesses to the unexplained and overwhelming power of the inspiration that has taken him over,138 he transcends the normal limits of human action and partakes of the irrational excess of the god of furor, Dionysus-Bacchus himself. Thyestes, like the Euripidean archetype of Dionysiac tragedy, Bacchae, is (among other things) a tragedy of revenge and of familial bonds ignored, overturned and destroyed. Thyestes may not be aware of what he is doing, but Atreus certainly is when he specifies that the most hideous aspect of his revenge be carried out by him. Like Agave, Thyestes is effectively blinded (wine fuddles his mind) and forced to become (at least symbolically) the killer of his own offspring. Finally, the crime committed by Atreus is similarly coloured by the religious overtones of a rite, of a novel ceremony in honour of a novel god, Atreus himself, who is even more controversial than his Greek counterpart. Atreus, like Dionysus, plays a crucial metadramatic role, appearing as the consummate manipulator of words, knowledge and emotions, and overpowering all others. Much of Atreus’ and Dionysus’ power resides in their ability to introduce into the tragic text a dimension of skilled irony, manipulation and disguise which other characters are unequipped to understand, and by which they are inevitably trapped. Pentheus is baffled by this different form of communication and is consistently taken in by it.139 In the second episode of Bacchae, in particular, Dionysus’ double entendres exploit the same linguistic ambiguity that will serve Atreus so well in his successful attempt to tease and deceive his brother.140 The god, we are reminded, is a sophos (Bacch. 656), whose knowledge far exceeds that of uninspired mortals such as the king of Thebes. We realize now that the ‘comic’ elements play a very significant role in the articulation of the play’s meaning, because they strike at the core of what sophia really is. One of the recurrent themes of Bacchae is precisely that those who appear to be ‘foolish’ (Dionysus and his followers) are actually ‘wise’, and the ‘wise’ are ultimately devoid of sense.141 Puns and double entendres bring home this fundamental opposition and its paradoxical resolution. 138

139 140

141

Lines 267–78, on which see above, p. 130. It may be worth pointing out the comparable structure of the exchange between Cadmus and Agave at Bacch. 1281–2 (KA. -! (. | AG. 7 . . .) with Thy. 1005–6: AT. natos ecquid agnoscis tuos? | TH. agnosco fratrem. Segal (1982) 230 aptly labels him an ‘authoritarian literalist’. See for instance the god’s remark on Pentheus’ significant name at Bacch. 508. Pentheus, however, does recognize Dionysus’ linguistic prowess: 8 % 7 )( - (491). See 479–80. The topic is particularly prominent in the first episode; see especially 196, with 269, 326, 332, 655–9.

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While the comparison between Thyestes and Bacchae is especially significant at a symbolic and functional level, some further thematic affinities are worth mentioning. Hunting imagery plays an important role in both plays. Agave and her fellow Bacchants literally ‘hunt down’ Pentheus until he is ripped limb from limb (731–3, 977, 1189–91). The outcome of Atreus’ hunting will be no less devastating for being almost entirely psychological: the traps he has deployed against Thyestes will indeed yield the desired, bloody result: ‘the beast is caught in the nets I placed; I see both him and, joined together with him, the offspring of the hated race I see’ (Thy. 491–3: plagis tenetur clausa dispositis fera: | et ipsum et una generis invisi indolem | iunctam parenti cerno) parallels Dionysus’ reference to Pentheus at Bacchae 848, ‘the man is falling within the cast of the net’ (/6 & ) ).142 While in Seneca Thyestes’ definition as a fera is without direct consequences, in Euripides the Bacchants attack Pentheus because they mistakenly believe that he is a lion (989–91). The lion, however, is one of the animals traditionally associated with Dionysus143 and indeed, when he is captured by Pentheus’ soldiers, he is presented as a wild beast (436: ). Dionysus thus ‘shifts’ this animal quality onto Pentheus, using him as a scapegoat, a process which is parallel to the one whereby Atreus, the really ‘feral’ cannibal, ultimately casts Thyestes in the role of a bestial man-eater. Also, the belated anagnorisis of Thyestes can be compared with Pentheus’ equally ineffectual anagnorisis in Bacchae. There the king finally acknowledges his past errors (1120–1), and realizes that his end is close (1113), but to no avail: the divine force of Dionysus should have been recognized and obeyed earlier, just as Thyestes’ ultimate understanding of Atreus’ character and intentions – agnosco fratrem – only underscores his previous intellectual failure. Agave’s recognition of her own deeds, too, is tragically belated (1345). The knowing smile of Dionysus is an apt emblem for Atreus, too, as he contemplates from a superior vantage point the extent of his success. Equating himself with the gods, Atreus becomes a veritable god of tragedy, the presiding icon of the metadramatic manipulation staged in Thyestes. As Dionysus precipitates Pentheus’ death in a sort of ‘play within the play’144 which he himself has authored, so does Atreus plot and enact his revenge over Thyestes. Common to all aspects of Atreus’ superiority over Thyestes is his ability to play at the same time from different scores, to undermine Thyestes’ 142 143 144

On hunting and nets see also 231, 451, 1021 and passim. Bacch. 1019, with Dodds (1960) 205 and xviii. Foley (1980) 109. I am indebted to Foley for many insights on Bacchae.

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certainties, and to assuage his latent fears by switching unpredictably between codes which would normally be considered mutually exclusive. Alongside Thyestes’ utterly tragic, and fatally doomed, monodimensionality,145 Atreus displays a huge range of behaviour, which is ultimately the key to outmanoeuvring his brother. At times Atreus takes issue with the boundaries of generic affiliation, and infiltrates into the tragedy a distinctly comic tone.146 We have already insisted upon Atreus’ double role as author and actor. Although Atreus, needless to say, is not another Plautine servus currens,147 as he directly addresses the audience in impassioned asides148 he comes very close to the conspiratorial attitude that several Plautine protagonists assume vis-à-vis their public.149 The crossing of boundaries thus accomplished is at least twofold, since what is at stake is not only the generic categorization of the play, but also the social status of the protagonist – a king who abandons all sense of propriety and whose behaviour on stage recalls, of all things, that of cunning, comic slaves. Pace Cicero, who decreed that ‘comic elements in tragedy, and tragic in comedy, are inappropriate’, 150 comic elements can become striking signifying strategies in tragedy, highlighting with their ironic contrappunto the fatal ignorance of certain characters, and creating opportunities for emotional release which bond the audience with the characters who control irony (a strategy famously not lost on Shakespeare). A similar manipulation of genre-specific codes underlies the final scene of the play. Setting the tragedy’s dénouement at a banquet precipitates a generic short-circuit, which further destabilizes the audience’s expectations.151 Banquets and food play a prominent role in comedy, and the text’s attention to Thyestes’ bodily functions (his untragic burping, 911)152 activates the 145 146

147

148 149

150 151 152

I borrow the term from Foley (1980) 122. On ‘comic’ and ‘tragic’ see Silk (2000) 52–97; on Euripides and the ‘comic’ see briefly Silk (2000) 51; Seidensticker (1978); Gredley (1996); and Taplin (1996). Specifically on Bacchae, and the ‘liminality of genre’ of Dionysus in the play, see Segal (1982) 254–6. Ulixes’ language in Tro. 613–14 is indeed reminiscent of clever comic slaves; see Boyle (1994) 190. Such servi could in turn evoke lofty mythological models for their enterprises; see Plaut. Bacch. 925; Pseud. 1063, 1244 with Fraenkel (1960) 9–12. On asides see Tarrant (1978) 237, who points out that they seem to belong to fourth-century tragedy as much as to comic theatre. On the importance of asides in the latter see Duckworth (1952) 109–14. In turn, clever slaves in Plautus are eager to appropriate tragic or epic models for their exploits. See again Chrysalus’ canticum at Bacch. 925–78, modelled on Iliou persis, but with likely borrowings from tragic language; Fraenkel (1960) 57–63, with Norden (1927) 370. See also Pseud. 1063, 1243–4 (all prepared by 524, 584). De optimo genere oratorum 1. A deipnon concludes Plautus’ Stichus (739–72), as well as Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, Acharnians and Birds. See Duckworth (1952) 380. Meltzer (1988) 315 with Dover (1968) 70. On burping in Plautus see Pseud. 1295, 1301. See also Manilius 5.462 ructantemque patrem natos (referring to Thyestes), with Aesch. Ag. 1598–601.

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comic intertext. At the same time, of course, we are bound to perceive the banquet as the inevitable last step in the elaborate sacrifical ritual which had structured Atreus’ killing of Thyestes’ children.153 The sudden appearance of a drunken Thyestes on the stage catalyzes the tragic irony of the drama’s final moments, as it displays a character desperately unaware of the looming disaster. Moreover, the comedy implicit in this presentation ultimately denies Thyestes the compassion that such a character could otherwise elicit. The generic boundary-crossing promoted by Atreus is yet another tool in his unequal fight against Thyestes, because he has been able to manipulate the literary code, once again, to his exclusive advantage. He has taken up the ethos of a comic hero, better to deceive his brother, and has organized a banquet which takes the normal comic obsession with food and warps it into its most gruesome and painful opposite. Thyestes, unable as usual to comprehend his brother’s ingenuity, is completely deceived, and his belated, rather weak intimations of uneasiness are drowned out by the loud incongruity of the scene. By evoking a comic intertext which Thyestes has failed to suspect, Atreus effectively invites the audience to relinquish empathy for Thyestes, and to replace these tragic emotions with a sense of physical disgust and moral detachment which strips Thyestes of any remaining sense of dignity. Equally interesting in this context is Atreus’ apparently friendly request that his brother change the exile’s shabby attire for robes worthy of his newly regained royal status: ‘take off your foul garments, spare my eyes, and put on ornaments equal to mine’ (524–6: squalidam vestem exue, | oculisque nostris parce, et ornatus cape | pares meis).154 Changing clothes, a frequent event in comedy,155 only ends in disaster for Senecan tragic characters, especially when they trade upwards.156 Agamemnon relinquishes his military garments and accepts Clytemnestra’s robe just before he is murdered (Ag. 881–4).157 In Troades, Helen treacherously persuades Polyxena to dress for her wedding while she is actually being driven to her death (883–5).158 In Thyestes we can observe the same interplay of irony and doom, as the final touches to Thyestes’ new outfit pave the way for one of Atreus’ most chilling double entendres: ‘wear the crown set on your reverend head; I will offer to the gods the destined victims’ (544–5: imposita capiti vincla venerando gere; | 153 154 155 156 157

On the sequence sacrifice–extispicium–banquet Tarrant (1985) 198 compares Ov. Met. 15.130–9. The importance of this aspect has been pointed out by Erika Thorgerson in an unpublished seminar paper (Princeton, 1994). On the metadramatic implications of robing see Segal (1982) 223. See Tro. 883, Ag. 881–3, with Tarrant (1985) 165. 158 See Fantham (1982) 341. See Tarrant (1976) 339.

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ego destinatas victimas superis dabo). There can be little doubt that the text orients the audience towards an ironic evaluation of these details, if only because of the explicit caveats offered by the chorus in the ode preceding this scene, which Thyestes is conspicuously failing to heed: ‘a king is not made by riches, nor by the colour of a Tyrian garment, nor by the royal mark of honour on his head’, regem non faciunt opes, | non vestis Tyriae color, | non frontis nota regia (344–6). In act 5, as a drunken Thyestes is suddenly overcome by anguish, his royal garments now dishevelled, the possibility that the audience may share his emotions is further reduced (909–10, 947). Bacchae, too, offers a striking example of this fatal connection: when, at line 842, Pentheus unwittingly agrees to dress as a woman, he not only elicits an ironic reaction of which he is utterly unaware, but also takes a decisive step towards his own demise. Atreus shares with Dionysus the superior power that derives from their being in control of the dramatic strategies enacted on stage. Unlike Thyestes and Pentheus, they control events because they devised the plot and set it in motion; they are not only passive actors, but also crafty authors.159 In the manipulation and transgression of boundaries that shape human society and literary expression, Bacchae and Thyestes reveal both the artificiality and the strength of those delimitations.160 Both plays force their audiences into a complex negotiation of conflictual emotions, offering them the vision of an exhilarating freedom and at the same time of the horrific extremes that freedom could provoke.161 159 160

161

Foley (1980). A tentative connection could be established between Thy. 103–4 (sentit introitus tuos | domus et nefando tota contactu horruit) and the earthquake that shakes Pentheus’ palace at Bacch. 586–92. The contexts are clearly different, yet the notion that the royal palace metaphorically shatters when (Bacchic) furor enters could perhaps be related. A tension poignantly captured in Bacch. 861, where Dionysus is called , 4 1 94 .

chapter 4

Atreus rex

non quis, sed uter dignum est Thyeste facinus, et dignum Atreo (Seneca, Thyestes 271)

i Despite its title, Thyestes is of course a play about Atreus, whose fundamental role in articulating the plot is matched by his consistently overpowering presence on stage. The designation of Atreus’ counsellor as satelles is metaphorically most fitting: other characters revolve around the largerthan-life royal protagonist with the limited, virtually non-existent autonomy of satellites locked in a gravitational field that they cannot control.1 The counsellor voices his feeble resistance as Atreus’ plot is already marching along briskly; the chorus is feeble and unable to affect, at times even to understand, the irresistible progress of the revenge.2 And Thyestes, too, for all his aspirations, most often appears to be the necessary but hardly selfdetermined complement to his brother. After all, he is lured into a carefully organized trap, and his every reaction, practical as well as psychological, has been successfully gauged and pre-analysed by Atreus. The unquenchable enmity between the two brothers only casts their blood-bond into sharper relief. Indeed, Atreus conjures up an image of his brother that virtually mirrors himself – an image that the chorus finds plausible. This elusive yet powerful bond adds significantly to the disturbing appeal of the play: because they know each other so deeply, and because we can only glimpse the nature and depth of their relationship, both Atreus 1

2

Note that the word, even in its basic meaning of ‘escort’ or ‘attendant’ does often carry a rather negative connotation (OLD s.v. 1), and can also be used in the fully negative sense of ‘accomplice in crime’ (with gen.: OLD s.v. 2). For more details on the chorus’s attitude see below, pp. 164–76.

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and Thyestes are never polar opposites, representing two well-defined sides of an ethical debate. The more we delve into the details of Seneca’s characterization, the more we are able to appreciate the complex, nuanced and often intrinsically contradictory personalities of both brothers. As it consistently tries to sustain the contrast between them, the play devotes remarkable attention to the potential deconstruction of this opposition, a process that should come as no surprise after what we have repeatedly observed about the complex structure of the tragedy, and the ethical implications of that structure. Seneca offers a far from univocal image of Thyestes: he is a character whose loudly proclaimed moral aspirations fail to assert themselves with the required degree of conviction, a character on whose conduct past and present the play casts heavy shadows of doubt and uncertainty. But even more pervasive, and certainly more disruptive in the linear development of the play, is the suggestion that, in a sense, the roles of the brothers could have been interchangeable, that – had it been his turn – Thyestes’ revenge could have been every bit as gory as the one that Atreus happens to be plotting; that – finally – their different roles in the tragedy are predicated on a specific series of actions and counteractions, but not on an essential moral difference. I will insist on this last aspect first. The audience is immediately informed of Thyestes’ crime by Atreus at the beginning of his speech in act 2 (176–80; quoted above, p. 131): ignave, iners, enervis et (quod maximum probrum tyranno rebus in summis reor) inulte, post tot scelera, post fratris dolos fasque omne ruptum questibus vanis agis iratus Atreus? Undaring, indolent, nerveless, and, what in important matters I consider a king’s worst reproach, unavenged, after so many crimes, after a brother’s treacheries, and breaking every law, you are busy with idle complaints – is this Atreus in a rage?

I will try to show later what these scelera actually are; what matters at this point is that after the prologue’s announcing of the triumph of furor and nefas in the house of the Pelopidai, it is Thyestes’ scelera, dolos and fas ruptum that are foregrounded. The fact that an obviously partisan source voices these accusations does not detract from their impact. Atreus is clearly not trying to justify his behaviour; if anything, he is complaining about his tardiness and lack of resolve. Even more importantly, nowhere in the rest of the play are these accusations rebuked: they stand unchallenged, notwithstanding Atreus’ display of cruelty. Far from setting a supposedly

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‘moral’ Thyestes against his monstrous brother, the tragedy constantly insists, through Atreus’ viewpoint, on the moral affinity, even the potential equivalence, between the two men. The complex family history of the Pelopidai gave a certain prominence to Thyestes’ crimes. He had seduced Atreus’ wife, Aerope, and possibly polluted his brother’s family line.3 Atreus, at the beginning of the play, is determined to take revenge for such crimes, and he repeatedly hints at the fact that he suspects Thyestes of preparing a revenge as cruel as the one he has in mind (193–6): aliquod audendum est nefas atrox, cruentum, tale quod frater meus suum esse mallet – scelera non ulcisceris, nisi vincis. I must dare some atrocious, bloody crime, such that my brother would have wished it to be his own – you don’t avenge crimes if you don’t surpass them.

By insisting on the notion of revenge, the play underlines the circular, repetitive nature of the conflict between brothers – and of the play which portrays it. What we are about to see is merely another round in an endless cycle of Aeschylean revenge and counter-revenge.4 In fact Atreus is constantly worried at the thought that his brother might strike first with comparable cruelty (201–4): proinde antequam se firmat aut vires parat, petatur ultro, ne quiescentem petat. aut perdet aut peribit: in medio est scelus positum occupanti Therefore, before he grows in strength and readiness, let him be attacked first, lest he attack me while I am at peace. He will either kill me or die; the crime is there, ready for him who will seize it first.

The awareness that a similar crime – exceptional as it appears – could have been devised, or is being devised by Thyestes is crucial to understanding Atreus’ psychology (314–16): istud quod vocas saevum asperum, agique dure credis et nimium impie, fortasse et illic agitur. 3

4

The motif is well developed in Greek tragedy: Aesch. Ag. 1192–3; Eur. frs. 466–9 Nauck2 , El. 699–728. For possible reconstructions of Ennius’ Thyestes and bibliography on earlier treatments of the myth see Jocelyn (1967) 412–19. On earlier treatment of the mythical plot see Marchesi (1908); Lesky (1922–23); Lana (1958–59); Lefèvre (1976) 22–7. See now esp. Kerrigan (1996).

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What you call cruel and harsh, and think is being done ruthlessly, regardless of right or wrong, perhaps is being done there too.

Such a reassured awareness of the interchangeability of their roles and their reactions seems to justify Atreus’ self-description as (so far) innocens (279–81): bene est, abunde est: hic placet poenae modus tantisper. ubinam est? tam diu cur innocens servatur Atreus? This is good, plentifully so. I like this way of punishing him, at least for now. Where is he? Why does Atreus maintain his innocence for so long?

It is not easy to determine to what extent previous Roman tragedies dwelt upon Thyestes’ own faults, yet it is clear that two traditions concerning his return to Mycenae coexisted:5 according to Accius,6 who is here following Aeschylus,7 Thyestes returns of his own accord in order to take revenge on his brother: iterum Thyestes Atreum adtractatum advenit iterum iam adgreditur me et quietum exsuscitat: maior mihi moles, maius miscendum est malum, qui illius acerbum cor contundam et comprimam Once again Thyestes comes to attack Atreus; once again he approaches to rouse me from my calm. Bigger is the danger, bigger the evil I must stir up to crush and crunch his cruel heart.

From a verse by Varius we can glean a similar scenario:8 iam fero infandissima, iam facere cogor. now I suffer unspeakable evils; now I am forced to commit them.

While Seneca ostensibly espouses an alternative version of the mythical plot and makes Thyestes’ return contingent on Atreus’ deceitful invitation, he transforms Accius’ (and presumably Varius’) version into a powerful subplot which substantially affects our perception of the events. His Atreus emerges as an unusually nuanced and composite character, who is neither the ‘quiet’, 5 6

7 8

Jocelyn (1967) 414; Tarrant (1985) 120. 198–201 Ribbeck2 = 29–32 Dangel. On this passage and its connection with Seneca’s Thyestes see Marchesi (1908) 86; Lana (1958–59) 316–17; Cipriani (1978); De Rosalia (1981) 225–6; Dangel (1995) 277. Ag. 1587–8, see Jocelyn (1967) 414, n. 1. Fr. 1 Ribbeck2 . Note that Quintilian introduces Varius’ lines as an example of audacious conduct spurred by indignatio rather than malitia (3.8.45). On the reconstruction of Varius’ play see Lefèvre (1976) and Leigh (1996).

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potentially passive target of Accius nor an irrational or deranged iratus. Or, more precisely: the intertextual memory of Thyestes’ criminal actions and intentions forces us to wonder whether Atreus’ relentless obsessions are not after all justified. The alluring force of the play resides precisely here: Atreus reasons according to a symmetrical logic akin to the epistemic protocols of the unconscious when he identifies his brother with himself, but his intimations, far from being dismissed, are actually corroborated by the chorus.9 Indeed Atreus sees the outside world as a projection of his own self – he is above anyone else: cunctos super (885), and does not recognize the independent will of others: quod nolunt velint (‘what they don’t want, let them want it’, 212). The implications of Seneca’s strategy are lit up by the fact that Accius’ fragment is emphatically recalled not only at Thyestes 202 (quiescentem), but also in the insistent maius-motif 10 which lies at the core of Atreus’ programmatic statements11 and had already been introduced by the Fury in the prologue (Thracium fiat nefas | maiore numero).12 The allusive gesture paradoxically highlights Seneca’s departure from Accius: this time the Fury is responsible for inspiring Atreus’ plans, which are no longer exclusively (or even primarily) contingent on Thyestes’ own intentions. Atreus’ depiction of his motives is essential to our understanding of the play. We cannot read Atreus as a larger-than-life monster without paying at least some attention to his claims that his cruelty was provoked, and that he is taking revenge for heinous crimes. Thyestes’ crime ‘polluted’ Atreus’ blood, and he is fittingly punished by drinking his children’s blood. There are no predetermined roles or certainties allotted. (In his own philosophical writings, Seneca observes that slaves should be treated decently because, among other factors, a sudden and unexpected turn of events can easily turn free men into slaves.13 ) An equally upsetting sense of shifting boundaries casts its shadow over the actions of Thyestes. Depending on unpredictable events, Atreus could end up as a quiet victim, viciously wronged and subsequently destroyed by his evil brother, or as a man whose justified awareness of the injuries 9

10 11 12 13

‘Symmetrical’ logic, or bi-logic, is a concept formulated by Matte Blanco (1975) and (1988). On projective identification, a concept originally developed by Melanie Klein, see Matte Blanco (1988) 103–5 and passim. Note that Atreus himself cannot escape the deflagration of the boundaries of the self which he advocates: he ‘fills up’ Thyestes with the body of his children (890–1: implebo patrem | funere suorum), but he is himself filled up by the external force of divine inspiration (253–4: impleri iuvat | maiore monstro). A term introduced by Seidensticker (1985). See 254 (maiore monstro), 267 (nescioquid . . . maius) and 274–5 (maius hoc aliquid dolor | inveniat). Lines 56–7. See above, p. 27, on the programmatic importance of iterum. Letters to Lucilius 47.10.

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he has endured pushes him towards a revenge which must necessarily be exaggerated and perverse.14 In the second part of the tragedy, once Atreus’ plans have been meticulously and successfully realized, he turns his suspicions into a mocking reproach to his brother, who, given the opportunity, would have done exactly the same. This satisfying thought is first voiced in the monologue in which Atreus contemplates the completion of his scheme (917–18: mixtum suorum sanguinem genitor bibat: | meum bibisset, ‘his sons’ mingled blood let the father drink; he would have drunk mine’), and is then communicated to Thyestes himself at the very end of the play (1104–10): scio quid queraris: scelere praerepto doles; nec quod nefandas hauseris angit dapes: quod non pararis! fuerat hic animus tibi instruere similes inscio fratri cibos et adiuvante liberos matre aggredi similique leto sternere – hoc unum obstitit: tuos putasti. I know what you complain of: you are sorry that this crime has been pre-empted; nor do you grieve that you have swallowed unspeakable foods: just that you have not prepared them yourself for me. This had been your plan, to prepare the same banquet for their unwitting father, and with the help of their mother attack the children and kill them in identical fashion. Just one thing stopped you: you thought they were yours.

This declaration echoes with perfect symmetry Atreus’ remarks in his initial monologue, and, once again, it should be noticed that neither Thyestes nor, for instance, the chorus makes any attempt at rebuking it, preferring instead to expand on the monstrosity of Atreus’ deeds. While Atreus is perfectly aware of the moral implications of his plans, of his new scelera, he also knows that the revenge he has plotted will taint Thyestes even more than himself: ‘what is the crowning outrage in this crime he himself will do’ (285–6: quod est in isto scelere praecipuum nefas, | hoc ipse faciet).15 Atreus’ observation is not groundless: the explicit ritual overtones of the actual murder connect the central episode of the tragedy to a well-known mythical background; Thyestes’ inexcusable contamination thus increases the immorality of his character. 14 15

Atreus states explicitly that the revenge is to be disproportionate to the crime: scelera non ulcisceris, | nisi vincis (195–6). See later in this chapter, pp. 145–6.

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The chorus appears to lend credibility to Atreus’ words as it voices its conviction that both brothers are to be blamed for the endless succession of evils in the family, and that they are only taking turns (340: alternis)16 in their folly (339–41): quis vos exagitat furor, alternis dare sanguinem et sceptrum scelere aggredi? What rage drives you to shed by turns each other’s blood, to seize the throne through crime?

But further interventions of the chorus on the same topic do not raise comparable doubts. In a renewed outburst of optimism the chorus rejoices again, at 546–76, at the reconciliation of the two brothers, but grants that Atreus had substantial reasons for his rift with Thyestes: his ira was indeed provoked by ‘great causes’ (552). The culmination of this attitude (perhaps the only point on which the chorus is not severely out of step with reality) comes as a reaction to the messenger’s distraught appearance on the stage. The messenger’s first words announce that a terrible nefas (624) has been perpetrated, but specify no author; the chorus’s question at 638–40 is revealing: animos gravius incertos tenes. quid sit quod horres ede et auctorem indica: non quaero quis sit, sed uter. effare ocius. You keep our minds in doubt too painfully. Tell what it is that makes you shudder, and point out its author. I am not asking who it is, but which of the two. Speak out quickly.

Much as it occupies the moral high ground, the chorus is not necessarily bound to side with Thyestes from the beginning. Its tormented question at line 640 opens a dramatic vista, once more, on what could have happened: what Thyestes himself, that is, could have accomplished against his brother. To the growing number of characters who are ready to believe in the moral equivalence of Atreus and Thyestes (first Atreus, then the chorus), we must finally add Thyestes himself, who, after discovering what he has done to his children, appropriates the very word with which the chorus had indicated his potential responsibility: uter. Thyestes immediately, if unknowingly, sides with Atreus’ contention that the monstrous banquet will make him as guilty as the brother who has devised it. Now, the meal over, Thyestes admits 16

Statius will make this hallmark of fratricidal strife the opening statement of the Thebaid: fraternas acies alternaque regna profanis | decertata odiis (Theb. 1.1–2).

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he should be punished along with Atreus (1011–12: stare circa Tantalum | uterque iam debuimus, ‘we should both of us long since have stood alongside Tantalus’), and he personally invokes Jupiter’s punishment on both of them (1085–8): vindica amissum diem, iaculare flammas, lumen ereptum polo fulminibus exple. causa, ne dubites diu, utriusque mala sit; si minus, mala sit mea. Avenge the day which has been lost, throw your flames, banish light from the sky and fill it with your thunder. Let the cause of both of us – do not wait in doubt – be equally evil; if not, let mine be evil.

These words echo Medea’s invocation to Jupiter in Seneca’s eponymous tragedy: whether his thunderbolt strikes herself or Jason, it will always punish a crime: ‘whichever of us falls will perish guilty; against us your bolt can make no error’ (535–7: quisquis e nobis cadet | nocens peribit, non potest in nos tuum | errare fulmen). But the comparison is not innocent either. In Medea, Jason’s faults play a well-defined and explicit role, incomparable with the hushed references to Thyestes’ previous crimes which surface at crucial points in Thyestes (and, for this reason, are usually played down by critics). By equating himself with Jason, Thyestes finally acknowledges that his brother’s suspicions against him were not, after all, misplaced. No amount of implicit or explicit accusations levelled against Thyestes’ past behaviour, however, can make up for the extraordinary emotional impact that Atreus’ machinations must have on the audience. In foregrounding relative differences of behaviour, not an ontological opposition, Seneca implicitly builds on a view of civil strife which has trouble establishing a reliable hierarchy of responsibility. Ovid had already rewritten the confrontation between Aeneas and Turnus in relativistic terms, and Lucan’s civil war is mired in the confusion which inevitably arises as like fights against like.17 The irrationality of the civil war goes hand in hand with the intolerance of distinctions, boundaries and clear-cut oppositions which mark the logic of the unconscious. Atreus and Thyestes are waging their own civil war. They are brothers, but their moral outlook is also similar: it is difficult to point to hard and fast hierarchies, to a well-defined sense of right and wrong. As we turn to the analysis of the brothers’ characterization, we would do well to keep in mind that the tragedy offers very little in the way of solid and incontrovertible 17

Ov. Met. 14.568–72, with Hardie (1993) 24–5. See also (as Hardie does) Sil. 9.402–5, who will remark explicitly on the interchangeability of Scipio and Hannibal.

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moral assessment, and that even the most explicit indications, such as some of the chorus’s statements, are unsteadied by context.

ii The potential equivalence repeatedly suggested in the text between the character, motives and intentions of the two brothers is matched by an image of Thyestes which no amount of goodwill can restore to bona fide Stoic credibility. Against Atreus’ resplendent violence, his sublimity of words and thoughts, Thyestes can only muster ambiguous gestures towards Stoicizing wisdom. His manner is tentative, however, his conviction faltering. The audience’s moral endorsement of Thyestes as a victim, problematized by the language of doubling and interchangeability – as well as by the sustained connection between Atreus and poetic pleasure – is made even more difficult by the portrayal of Thyestes’ actual behaviour in the tragedy. A long-standing tradition, which in modern times can be traced back to a 1938 article by Olof Gigon,18 has chosen to recognize in Thyestes a Stoic sage, a man who is seriously trying to live his life according to high moral principles and refuses to hate even after enduring the worst of revenges. Atreus’ disturbing claims that Thyestes is guilty, developed at 221–4 and answered by Thyestes at 512–14, would provide an example of dramatic discontinuity,19 just as the contrast between those charges and Thyestes’ overall characterization should in the end be attributed to the imperfect amalgamation of multiple sources.20 Along similar lines, E. Lefèvre has more recently interpreted Thyestes as a proficiens who still hesitates on the right road, a man whose behaviour would correspond to the ‘second type’ described in Letters to Lucilius 75.13, those who ‘have shed the most serious diseases and inclinations of the mind, but in such a way that they do not yet have guaranteed possession of their freedom from danger: they can still relapse’ (et maxima animi mala et adfectus deposuerunt, sed ita ut non sit illis securitatis suae certa possessio; possunt enim in eadem relabi).21 Such readings of Thyestes strive to preserve a measure of coherence between Seneca’s tragedies and his prose works. Yet almost without fail they 18 19 20 21

Gigon (1938). Thyestes’ statements at 512–14 are interpreted by Gigon ((1938) 182) in reference to a general consciousness that human beings are all guilty. Gigon (1938) 182. See Lefèvre (1985). Marti (1945b) offers a similar interpretation of Lucan’s Pompey (see Marti (1945a) for the thesis that Seneca’s tragedies represent a coherent programme of Stoic instruction to Nero, with each play illustrating a Stoic idea in dramatic form).

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stumble on a crucial methodological issue, inasmuch as they try to extrapolate from the fabric of the play a unified image of Thyestes without paying enough attention to how his words and his actions are actually presented in the plot, and how the complex interplay of different points of view affects our impression of Thyestes’ character. Even more fundamentally, such an essentialist reading of Thyestes (or indeed of any other Senecan play) is rooted in the attempt to preserve a diametrical opposition between ‘good’ (perhaps even ‘Stoic’) and ‘bad’ characters, which in turn would ensure the viability of a didactic reading of the tragedies: the representation of unmitigated evil could then be seen to act as a deterrent. ‘Good’ and ‘bad’ qualities, of course, would also be bound to determine the public’s reactions: approval and disgust, both ethical and aesthetic, would unify the moral and artistic dimensions of the plays. The ‘moral’ aspirations of Thyestes and the chorus, however, are criticized even as they are apparently endorsed. The chorus’s excessive readiness to believe the unbelievable (such as, for instance, the sudden quiet between the brothers), its loose connection with the dramatic events at large, belie its philosophical credentials and lend its vaguely stoicizing feelings a lack of conviction which deprives the audience of a solid point of emotional identification against Atreus. Thyestes is similarly denied his own authoritative voice, since his prototypical role – that of the ‘good king’, the Stoic sage – is weakened by his uncertainties and ambiguities, his sudden contradictions, his unclear resolve. What is more, his potential function as the positive emotional pole of the tragedy is undermined by the moral parallelism that is voiced by Atreus and validated by the chorus with its persistent, if feeble, doubts. Thyestes begins, quite literally, with a false step. His appearance on the stage, back at Argos after a long and painful exile, is marked by a strong sense of joy and relief (404–7): optata patriae tecta et Argolicas opes miserisque summum ac maximum exulibus bonum, tractum soli natalis et patrios deos (si sunt tamen di) cerno . . . The longed-for homes of my fatherland and the wealth of Argolis I see at last, and, greatest and best of goods to a wretched exile, a stretch of native soil and the ancestral gods (if gods do exist after all) . . .

Stoic sages, notoriously, should avoid hopes and fears alike, and the emphatic presence of optata at the very beginning of the speech can hardly be regarded as innocent.22 Thus, if we allow the participle to contradict Stoic 22

Tarrant (1985) 149.

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orthodoxy, we cannot accept Thyestes’ impassioned lines at face value: his orthodox strictures against power, and his desire to leave Argos (412–20) are overshadowed by the suspicion that he is appropriating the rhetorical stance of a Stoic sage without real conviction. Equally troubling is the conclusion of his exchange with Tantalus. After a dialogue which sets his desire to avoid Argos against Tantalus’ insistence that he go ahead, Thyestes yields to his son with a contorted disclaimer (487–9): serum est cavendi tempus in mediis malis. eatur. unum genitor hoc testor tamen: ego vos sequor, non duco. It is too late to take caution when one is deep in troubles; let us go. As your father, though, this one thing I declare: I do not not lead you; I follow.

Sequor at line 489 recalls the conclusion of the prologue, where Tantalus’ ghost, tortured by the Fury, finally submits to her with that very word: sequor (100). The analogy highlights the difference. Tantalus was tortured and in fact had no means to escape from an overwhelming supernatural entity. Thyestes has been engaged in a dialectic exchange with his son which would easily leave room for retreating. The tragic-sounding acceptance of what appears to be an inevitable destiny is totally disproportionate to the situation. When we look at Thyestes’ reactions to his brother’s proposal in act 3, we are confronted with a puzzling succession of emotional states. Atreus’ initial aside (491–507) is likely to reinforce in the audience the notion that he enjoys a superior awareness of events, and stresses again the fictionality that will dominate the whole scene: his final words – praestetur fides (507) – raise the curtain on a new play. Thyestes’ reaction to Atreus’ deceptively friendly welcome strikes an odd note (512–16): diluere possem cuncta, nisi talis fores. sed fateor, Atreu, fateor, admisi omnia quae credidisti. pessimam causam meam hodierna pietas fecit. est prorsus nocens quicumque visus tam bono fratri est nocens. I could excuse all I have done if you were not like this. But I confess it, Atreus, I do confess it: I have done everything you believed me to have done. The brotherly feelings you display today make my case as bad as possible. The man who has appeared guilty to so good a brother is guilty indeed.

Recalling Thyestes’ impassioned demonstration to Tantalus that Atreus could only be lying and trying to deceive him (423–8, 434–9), this

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unrequested admission of guilt, though couched in somewhat ambiguous terms (note especially visus in line 516), comes as a surprise, or as an unexpected confirmation of Atreus’ own charges against his brother. Thyestes’ spontaneous offer of his children as obsides seems to underline his decision, already voiced at 489 (sequor), to follow the flow of events with no further hesitation, whether this is going to hasten a tragic ending which he dimly foresees, or because he has after all accepted Tantalus’ arguments. It is in any event a serious, tragic Thyestes who enters this uneven dialogue with Atreus, and it is all the more surprising to see precisely how he turns his initial refusal into an acceptance of Atreus’ fake offer. After two longer interventions, the brothers engage in a stychomythic exchange (533–43): t h. . . . liceat in media mihi latere turba. at. recipit hoc regnum duos. t h. meum esse credo quidquid est, frater, tuum. at. quis influentis dona fortunae abnuit? t h. expertus est quicumque quam facile effluant. at. fratrem potiri gloria ingenti vetas? t h. tua iam peracta gloria est, restat mea: respuere certum est regna consilium mihi. at. meam relinquam, nisi tuam partem accipis. t h. accipio: regni nomen impositi feram, sed iura et arma servient mecum tibi. t h. . . . allow me to hide in the crowd. at. This kingdom can take the two of us. t h. Brother, whatever is yours I believe to be mine too. at. Who can turn down the gifts flowing in from good Fortune? t h. Whoever knows from experience how easily they can flow away. at. Do you want to prevent your brother from achieving such great glory? t h. Your glory has already been accomplished; mine has yet to be: it is my firm determination to turn down the kingdom. at. If you do not accept your share, I will relinquish mine. t h. I accept it; I will take the name of king which is thrust upon me; but laws and armies and I too will obey you.

Note here Thyestes’ sudden reversal: it takes him all of one line to shift from a determination to shy away from the throne, to accepting the substance of his brother’s offer.23 It is true that in the tragedies Seneca often portrays decisions precisely in this light, as sudden, abrupt deviations from a path 23

Thyestes’ specific acceptance of the regni nomen sounds particularly ironic in the light of his earlier strictures: falsis magna nominibus placent (446). Accipio is used by Thyestes with ominous connotations at 520–1 (obsides fidei accipe | hos innocentes, frater), by Atreus at 1021–2 (iam accipe hos potius libens | diu expetitos).

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which had hitherto been carefully followed. More than the acceptance per se, this extreme abruptness underlines the fundamental inconsistency of Thyestes’ character;24 the audience, relying on their privileged knowledge of the implications of Atreus’ offer, are bound to be surprised at this transition. The whole structure of the dialogue accentuates Thyestes’ unreliability and inevitably affects the substance of what he has been saying so far: his lofty Stoic sententiae are ensnared in the grotesque demise of their spokesman’s ¯ reputation. The very nature of phonai, cut and dried maxims supposed to be of use in determining one’s everyday conduct, only heightens the sense of ridicule. A sceptical evaluation of Thyestes’ character should not necessarily entail an automatic endorsement of Atreus. This is not the point. What we should keep in mind, rather, is that Thyestes is no moral testing stone, and that Atreus’ violence finds in the play no immediately convincing alternative. Even more upsetting is how far Atreus’ point of view can influence the chorus’s and the audience’s perception of his adversary: in Atreus’ perversely symmetrical logic, Thyestes is his criminal doppelganger, ontologically identical and only momentarily, by chance, cast in a subordinate role. The play is unable to counter the force of this logic and its primal appeal, a logic cherished and reviled in equal measure. The poignancy of Thyestes is precisely that it leaves us to contemplate the contrast between a ruthless but aesthetically and emotionally appealing murderer and a hypocritical, faltering and charmless adulterer.

de clementia quod nolunt velint (Seneca, Thyestes 212)

Atreus is at the same time the sacerdos and the addressee of the sacrifice, as he makes clear that he is offering the victims to himself.25 By collapsing two roles which normal religious practice obviously kept apart, Atreus signals a more general subversion of rules. Sacrifice traditionally articulates a welldefined hierarchy between gods, men and animals. Thus a god is always the recipient of the sacrifice, a man the performer, an animal its object. 24

25

One may compare Medea’s behaviour in Ovid’s Met. 7, when she stresses the importance of following virtue (69–71), but quickly changes her mind at the sight of Jason (76–7). More poignant is the parallel with Agamemnon in Aesch. Ag. 944–5 (but note how forcefully Clytemnestra argues for her request before Agamemnon yields), and Pentheus in Eur. Bacch. 845–6: in both cases the change of mind has tragic consequences. On Atreus as a god see Hine (1981) 266.

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As a man becomes god, others (Thyestes’ children) tragically fulfil the role of animal victims. Gods are dragged down from the sky, or, in turn, man can raise himself to the stars. Either way the foundations of religious and political order are fatally challenged. Atreus’ appropriation of a divine persona exacerbates the gods’ problematic status in the play and the world it pictures. Thyestes and the chorus display a firm belief (at least, a firm discursive belief ) in their existence and importance, while Atreus effectively disposes of them, and replaces them with himself. His main target, clearly, is the upper gods, the superi. It is to them that the scorning dismissal of line 888 – ‘I release the gods: I have attained the utmost of my prayers’ (dimitto superos: summa votorum attigi) – is referred, and it is they who are said to have fled at line 1021. In this particular removal of upper deities, and the concurrent promotion of violent characters connected with the underworld, Atreus fulfils Juno’s programmatic and metaliterary statement in the Aeneid: ‘if I cannot prevail upon the gods above, I shall move hell’ (7.312: flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo). Even more so, of course: Acheron is not simply exploited, but brought to earth. Thyestes’ own statements about the gods are often contradictory. In his opening speech he voices scepticism about their existence: tractum soli natalis et patrios deos | (si sunt tamen di) cerno (406–7). Later, when Atreus has revealed his actions, Thyestes reacts with utter despair: ‘the gods have fled away’ (1021: fugere superi). But suddenly, at line 1077, Thyestes embarks on an impassioned prayer to the summus caeli rector (‘exalted ruler of the sky’), who is asked to avenge Atreus’ crime. The rhetorical elaboration of ¯ can only sound hollow after the inconclusiveness of the previous the klesis statements, and provides the background for Atreus’ repartee at 1102–3, when he responds to Thyestes’ emphatic ‘I call on the gods who guard the innocent’ ( piorum praesides testor deos) with a chilling reference to his past misconduct: ‘why not the marriage-gods?’ (quid? coniugales?). The tragedy ends by reaffirming Atreus’ and Thyestes’ opposing views about the role of gods and men in shaping events (1110–12): ‘TH. The gods will be my avengers; my prayers deliver you to them for punishment. AT. For punishment, I deliver you to your children’ (TH. vindices aderunt dei; | his puniendum vota te tradunt mea. | AT. te puniendum liberis trado tuis). Atreus constantly refers to the level of human interaction, and his selffashioning as a god is in fact consistent with the notion that gods do not have any impact on human activities. The standard criteria for divinity are wrecked: each man is his own god provided that he can muster sufficient

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power. This ambivalent affirmation of divinity in a godless world communicates one of the most chilling messages of the play. The triumph on stage of a king-priest-god is, of course, an explosive combination in the context of Imperial Rome’s structuring ideology. Under Augustus the princeps26 had acquired a distinctive characterization as a sacerdos,27 prominently involved ex officio in a number of sacrificial rituals even as his divine attributes increase dramatically.28 In a world where human actions have effectively appropriated divine power, that boundless power is concentrated in new and novel gods. Such a radical redefinition of the relationship between human and divine is central to the conceptualization of power in Thyestes, a play whose political implications have often been at the heart of interpreters’ concerns. The issue is made more, not less, complicated by the fact that the play offers the superficially attractive possibility of a reading a` clef .29 Atreus could be Nero; the hapless satelles, a Seneca-like counsellor, though noticeably less successful; Thyestes, a victim, the Victim of the tyrant’s cruelty; the chorus, a righteous but powerless senatus. Clearly, if we accept these equations we are bound to steer our reading of the play in one specific direction. If Atreus is (like) Nero, then he must be wrong, because he impersonates the ultimately cruel and irrational tyrant – Suetonius’ unadorned words project here their powerful shadow. Even if we accept that Thyestes’ blatant inconsistencies hardly make him a convincing hero, we will inevitably tend to cast the chorus in the ambitious role of the external moral adjudicator who comments philosophically on the follies of human power. The main difficulty with such a reading is that it works only by taking messages out of context, most notably the second chorus on kingship and the satelles’ or Thyestes’ sententious statements.30 None of these lofty 26 27 28

29

30

The very etymology and concept of princeps (‘he who takes the first portion’) may be traced back to sacrificial ritual; Scheid (1988) 273. On the importance of sacrifice in the articulation of Roman imperial cult see Price (1980); specifically on the Ara pacis and its interpretation in this context Zanker (1988) 118 and passim. It is interesting to recall a passage from De clementia in which the characterization of the princeps as sacerdos and the imagery of murder-as-sacrifice are combined. Augustus debates whether he should punish L. Cinna, who attempted to murder him: ‘ergo non dabit poenas, qui . . . non occidere constituat, sed immolare?’ (nam sacrificantem placuerat adoriri) (‘ “shall he not pay the penalty who . . . is determining not to murder but to immolate me?” (for the plan was to attack him while offering sacrifice)’, 1.9.4). Thyestes teases the audience in this direction, thanks to a number of anachronistic references to Roman reality, especially the incongruous mention of Quirites at 396; see Picone (1976). Direct references to contemporary events in the plays are advocated by Lefèvre (1985) and (1990), but see Calder (1976–77). See above, p. 16. Note, however, that in spite of Suetonius’ attractive definition of Nero as religionum . . . contemptor (Nero 56.1), he was not the only emperor criticized in this way; see Suet. Tib. 44 and Cal. 32.3, with Barton (1994) 53.

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propositions, however, exists in a vacuum, and their meaning shifts considerably once they are assessed within the complex dynamics of the play. The politics of Thyestes, I will argue, are located not so much in what the characters say as in how, when and to whom they say it. Atreus may be a monster, and the chorus a safe-haven of restraint and reason, but what is particularly upsetting in the scenes that I want to analyse in this context is that they engage extensively with the reality outside the play, with other texts and with actual political positions. Once ‘reality’ is drawn into the world of Thyestes, it is less easy to dismiss the whole of the play as a nightmare: perhaps it is as ‘real’ as the solid political tracts it brings into the fray, and perhaps the Realpolitik it advocates in both theory and practice is not just a frenzied fiction. The dialogue between Atreus and his satelles, as we have already noticed, reiterates and expands the complex interaction between layers of dramatic plots and substantiates the connection between Atreus’ mastery of his vengeance plot and the creative force of poetry.31 It is now important to consider more systematically the role played by the satelles in that dialogue, and especially the protocols of political behaviour to which both he and Atreus refer.32 The first point to note is the disproportionate stage presence given to each of the two characters. This is hardly surprising given the respective roles they play, but this inequality is not a mere reflection of this hierarchy: in principle nothing prevents the satelles from playing a much more prominent role, and, conversely, his complete subordination can only affect the ideas he voices. The scene opens with a long monologue by Atreus (176–204), who fails to acknowledge the satelles’ presence. The latter’s opening words come in the form of a question at 204–5: ‘doesn’t public disapproval deter you?’ (fama te populi nihil | adversa terret?). The questioning mode often conveys the emotional and cognitive weakness of a character, as in the case of Tantalus in the opening scene of the play, or, as we will see shortly, of the chorus in many other instances. Here the satelles avoids both assured statements and emotional outbursts, but chooses to couch his first intervention in the respectful and hesitant mode of a question. He does not pass any general moral comment on the plans that his master is devising, nor does he try to stop him; indeed, just like the chorus, his question raises a (minor) possible objection which Atreus has already anticipated and dismissed, since he has already stated that a negative reputation is precisely what he strives for: 31 32

See ch. 2, p. 46. Tame and submissive the satelles might be, but it would be wrong to deny him a distinct personality, as Knoche ((1941) 70) does by suggesting that he simply embodies another aspect of Atreus’ irrationality.

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‘Up, my soul, do what no coming age shall approve, but none forget’ (192–3: age, anime, fac quod nulla posteritas probet, | sed nulla taceat). Atreus’ answer to this first question – a pragmatic apology for the need of sheer force in the exercise of power – prompts the satelles to explain his own political philosophy more assertively. Note that at this point the satelles does not suggest an alternative to Atreus’ exclusive focus on the best means to preserve power: the satelles – even at his most eloquent – makes no attempt to raise the discussion to a higher plane of abstract moral principles; in practice he accepts Atreus’ agenda in full, and thus poises himself for inevitable defeat. Even his belated praise of honestum (213), sanctitas, pietas and fides (216) is subordinated to the question of how to retain power and popularity, and thus fails to turn the dialogue into a loftier debate about absolute good and evil. The satelles’ exhortation comes in the apparently confident form of a sententia (213: rex velit honesta: nemo non eadem volet, ‘let the king want what is right; no one will want anything else’), but even so the clumsiness of the litotes betrays the weakness of the statement. As in the dialogue between Thyestes and Atreus, sententiae are exploited in order to highlight, in fact, the moral inconsistency and potential hypocrisy of those who utter them. Compared to Atreus’ articulate, eloquent and passionate oratory, the satelles’ staccato statements sound like perfunctory attempts to remind his master of a hardly compelling point of view. Just as Thyestes turns in the space of two lines from a determined refusal to accept Atreus’ invitation (540) to a thinly qualified assent (542–3), the satelles moves from the firm principle stated at line 219 – nefas nocere vel malo fratri puta (‘count it wrong to harm even a wicked brother’) – to the astonishing exhortation with which he responds to Atreus’ lengthy remarks: ‘slain by the sword, let him spew forth his hateful soul’ (245: ferro peremptus spiritum inimicum expuat). From this point onwards (we are not yet at the middle of the scene) the satelles – forgoing any attempt to keep the moral high ground – is effectively an accomplice in the elaboration of Atreus’ revenge plot.33 His renewed mention of Pietas after his initial acquiescence can only be understood as a reference to the way in which Atreus will carry out his vengeance: having endorsed the idea of murdering Thyestes (245), the satelles mentions Pietas when Atreus confesses that a simple killing is not enough (246: de fine poenae loqueris, ego poenam volo, ‘you speak of the punishment’s completion; I desire punishment itself ’). This scaling down of the role of Pietas, which 33

See La Penna (1979) 138. Note also La Penna’s important suggestion (133–4) that Accius’ Atreus, by way of contrast, could have staged direct and violent resistance against a tyrant.

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is consistent with the disappearance of sanctitas and fides, reflects back on the initial reference to it at line 217, and emphasizes the weakness of that first appeal. Now the satelles can only question the details of Atreus’ plot, suggesting better alternatives or pointing out dangerous loopholes in the planning. The rapid exchange at 255–8, for instance, underlines the closeness of the two men’s cooperation and the satelles’ active advisory role: at. nil quod doloris capiat assueti modum; nullum relinquam facinus et nullum est satis. s a. ferrum? at. parum est. s a . quid ignis? at. etiamnunc parum est. s a. quonam ergo telo tantus utetur dolor? at. Nothing confined within the limits of ordinary anger; I will not overlook any crime, and none is enough. s a. The sword? at. Too little. s a. Fire, then? at. Still too little. s a. What weapon, then, will such grief use?

Once again, Atreus’ impassioned speech at 267–86 has an amazing effect on his advisor, who immediately erases any remaining difference between himself and his master: the trap devised for Thyestes is now ‘ours’ (287: nostros . . . laqueos). In the final part of the scene, moreover, the satelles, by asking several questions on points of detail, shows his complete acquiescence in the revenge plot, his desire to avoid possible mistakes, and his total dependence on Atreus’ sharper intuitions. Ethical and intellectual weaknesses are thus joined together. From hesitation to tacit agreement to active, if rather useless, participation, the satelles’ moral stance has now been completely invalidated. After Atreus’ plot has been sketched out, the satelles devotes his questions to analysing Thyestes’ possible reactions (286–9 and 294–5): s a . sed quibus captus dolis nostros dabit perductus in laqueos pedem? inimica credit cuncta. at. non poterat capi, nisi capere vellet. ... s a . quis fidem pacis dabit? cui tanta credet? at. credula est spes improba. s a . But caught by what wiles will he be led to set foot in our traps? He sees enemies everywhere. at. He could not be caught if he didn’t himself want to catch . . .

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s a. Who will give him confidence in peace? Whom will he trust so much? at. Wicked hope is credulous.

In this context the satelles’ usual inquisitive mode foregrounds his subordination to Atreus as far as a proper understanding of psychological reactions is concerned. It is now Atreus’ turn to utter sententious statements – non poterat capi, | nisi capere vellet (288–9) and credula est spes improba (295) – but these seem to be predicated more on solid practical experience than on the rather cold moralistic tone of the satelles’ own pronouncements at the beginning of the scene. Atreus’ statements, moreover, will prove reliable and true in the rest of the play. This contrast between the satelles’ generic, textbook sententiae and Atreus’ authoritative, experienced beliefs is highlighted in the exchange at 305–7: s a . iam tempus illi fecit aerumnas leves. at. erras: malorum sensus accrescit die. leve est miserias ferre, perferre est grave. s a. By now time has alleviated his troubles. at. You are wrong: a sense of wrongs grows day by day. It is easy to bear misfortune; to keep on bearing it is hard.

Similarly, it is Atreus who carefully considers the reliability of his own sons as possible accomplices in the execution of the plot, and bases his judgement, once again, on actual experience: ‘the art of silence is taught by life’s many ills’ (318: tacere multis discitur vitae malis). In the closing lines of the scene, at the master’s injunction to keep their deliberations secret (333: nostra tu coepta occule, ‘as for you, conceal my plans’), the satelles replies that ‘he needs no warning’: ‘no need to admonish me; both fear and loyalty shall shut them in my heart, but rather loyalty’ (334–5: haud sum monendus: ista nostro in pectore | fides timorque, sed magis claudet fides).34 This distinction between timor and fides must be read in conjunction with the previous discussion on the role of fear in the exercise of power (205–10); there Atreus had boldly rejected the satelles’ apology of sincere popular favour for the tyrant by pointing out that truly unfettered power consists not so much in convincing one’s subjects, but forcing them to want even what they do not want: quod nolunt velint (212). Power consists in replacing psychological and moral truth with factual superiority, which forces a reliable consent: the satelles’ final words provide direct proof of the fact that fides can indeed be attained not by 34

Calder ((1976–77) 9) suggests that a pause before fides would convey very effectively the truth, namely, that timor will guarantee the satelles’ silence.

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proposing honesta, but by creating a system whereby superior power cannot be resisted. I now focus again briefly on the overall structure of the dialogue. In his transition from dissent to complicity the satelles can be unflatteringly compared with Phaedra’s nutrix. In Phaedra the first dialogue between the queen and her nurse occurs in the same structural position as the dialogue in Thyestes, namely in the first act. There, again, the nurse represents the paradigm of ratio and moderation as opposed to Phaedra’s insane passion, but she is much more active and articulate than the satelles: not only does she speak more extensively, thus acquiring substantial stage-presence, but she is also capable of putting forth an insistent, fiery rhetoric which the satelles repeatedly fails to achieve. Not unlike the satelles, the nurse shifts her position in the course of the dialogue; however, this structural similarity foregrounds the satelles’ own weakness. First of all the nurse starts changing her mind only when faced with Phaedra’s resolve to commit suicide, and her words indicate that her softening to Phaedra’s wishes is a direct result of her motherly affection for the woman: ‘and so should my old age allow you to rush headlong to your death? Stop your frenzied impulse’ (262–3: sic te senectus nostra praecipiti sinat | perire leto? siste furibundum impetum). The satelles swiftly became Atreus’ accomplice without any direct menace, either against himself or others. Secondly, the degree of the shift is remarkable. At the end of the dialogue the nurse does agree to sound out Hippolytus on Phaedra’s behalf, but again explains her choice on affective grounds, and her words convey the sense that Hippolytus is being unduly harsh to Phaedra (267–73): solamen annis unicum fessis, era, si tam protervus incubat menti furor, contemne famam: fama vix vero favet, peius merenti melior et peior bono. temptemus animum tristem et intractabilem. meus iste labor est aggredi iuvenem ferum mentemque saevam flectere immitis viri. My mistress, only comfort to my tired old age, if so unruly is the frenzy that seizes your mind, disregard fame: fame is not partial to truth, but better to those who deserve worse and worse to the good. Let me sound out his sad and intractable heart. Leave this difficult task to me – to approach this fierce youth and bend his cruel mind, harsh as he is.

After the choral ode, the nurse takes the stage again to describe Phaedra’s awful state of mind and physical distress (360–86), and before addressing Hippolytus she invokes divine protection for her deeds (406–30). These

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moments of hesitation and deferral stand in sharp contrast to the satelles’ rapid shift from a moral high ground to the level of Atreus’ plotting, and especially to his final, wholehearted subscription to his master’s criminal plans in the name of timor rather than fides (335). Before the satelles disavows any attempt to influence Atreus, he insists on four closely connected topics: the ruler’s necessity to acquire a good fama (204–5); the ambivalent effects of metus (207–10); the ruler’s duty to pursue honesta (213) and the necessity to uphold pudor, cura iuris, sanctitas, pietas, fides (215–17). With their laconic, often formulaic tone, many of the satelles’ words have a rather textbookish ring to them, and in fact they reflect widespread Hellenistic and Roman ideas on how a prototypical ‘good king’ should behave. Given this background, it is not surprising that they are often close to Seneca’s own words in De clementia, but this intertextual relationship should not be explained away. It would be pointless to evaluate the satelles’ words without considering that they reflect – if, as seems probable, Thyestes was written later than De clementia – what Seneca elsewhere considered to be the right prescription for a ruler’s considerate behaviour.35 The satelles’ very first statement concerns fama: fama te populi nihil | adversa terret? (204–5). Principes multa debent etiam famae dare (‘princes are bound to give much heed even to report’) was the advice Seneca had offered Nero in De clementia (1.15.5), but the satelles’ use of the verb ‘to terrify’ (terret) is strikingly incongruous after Atreus’ bold and self-confident opening monologue at 176–204. At 207–10 the satelles tries to impress upon his master the inherent dangers of a power based on fear: quos cogit metus laudare, eosdem reddit inimicos metus. at qui favoris gloriam veri petit, animo magis quam voce laudari volet. Whom fear compels to praise, them, too, fear makes into enemies; but he who seeks the glory of true favour will wish heart rather than voice to sing his praise.

Compare De clementia 1.12.3–4: interim, hoc quod dicebam clementia efficit, ut magnum inter regem tyrannumque discrimen sit, uterque licet non minus armis valletur; sed alter arma habet, quibus in munimentum pacis utitur, alter, ut magno timore magna odia compescat, nec illas ipsas manus, quibus se commisit, securus aspicit. (4) contrariis in contraria agitur: nam cum invisus sit, quia timetur, timeri vult, quia invisus est, et illo execrabili versu, qui multos praecipites dedit, utitur: ‘Oderint, dum metuant.’ 35

On all the passages from De clementia see now Malaspina’s rich commentary (Malaspina (2001)).

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Meanwhile, as I was saying, it is mercy that makes the distinction between a king and a tyrant as great as it is, though both are equally fenced about with arms; but the one uses the arms which he has to fortify good-will, the other to curb great hatred by great fear, and yet the very hands to which he has entrusted himself he cannot view without concern. Conflicting causes force him to conflicting courses: for since he is hated because he is feared, he wishes to be feared because he is hated, and not knowing what frenzy is engendered when hatred grows too great, he takes as a motto that accursed verse which has driven many to their fall: ‘Let them hate, if only they fear.’

The debate reaches its climax at 215–17, where the satelles sums up the essential qualities of a stable kingdom: ‘where there is no shame, no care for right, no honour, righteousness, faith – there sovereignty is unstable’ (ubi non est pudor | nec cura iuris sanctitas pietas fides, | instabile regnum est). Several passages in De clementia deal with these concepts, and similar lists of positive qualities can be found, for instance, at 1.19.8: ‘who would dare to devise any danger for such a man? Who would not wish to shield him, if he could, even from the chance of ill – him beneath whose sway justice, peace, chastity, security and honour flourish?’ (quis huic audeat struere aliquod periculum? quis ab hoc non, si possit, fortunam quoque avertere velit, sub quo iustitia, pax, pudicitia, securitas, dignitas florent . . . ?). Compare also 2.1.4: nunc profecto consentire decebat ad aequum bonumque expulsa alieni cupidine, ex qua omne animi malum oritur, pietatem integritatemque cum fide ac modestia resurgere et vitia diuturno abusa regno dare tandem felici ac puro saeculo locum. Now assuredly it were fitting that men, thrusting out covetousness from which springs every evil of the heart, should conspire for righteousness and goodness, that piety and uprightness along with honour and temperance should rise again, and that vice, having misused its long reign, should at length give place to an age of happiness and purity.

Finally, cura iuris refers at the same time to respect for judicial procedure, and to the all-important Hellenistic notion that the good ruler should constantly consider himself subjected to the rule of the Law. Indeed this is one of the notions that Seneca literally puts in Nero’s mouth in the reported speech which opens De clementia: ‘I so hold guard over myself as though I were about to render an account to those laws which I have summoned from decay and darkness into the light of day’ (sic me custodio, tamquam legibus, quas ex situ ac tenebris in lucem evocavi, rationem redditurus sim, 1.1.4). Against this careful mix of respectable Stoic concepts, Atreus’ behaviour is all the more remarkable. The disproportion in the quantity and quality

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of words he can muster vis-à-vis the satelles is part of a dramatic truth which the presumed moral superiority of the satelles can hardly efface. This was, of course, what the public expected of him, and a repenting Atreus would not have been credible. As Cicero remarks in De officiis, the famous motto oderint dum metuant can stir up an applause precisely because it fits the speaker so well: ‘When Atreus speaks in this manner, he elicits an applause, because his words are worthy of his character’ (Atreo dicente plausus excitantur; est enim digna persona oratio, 1.28.97).36 But just as it would be dramatically inappropriate to overestimate the satelles’ moral high ground, it would also be wrong to dismiss Atreus without scrutinizing his words more closely, as if they simply represented the furious outpouring of a demonic character. Atreus displays a coherent vision of power which is not simply based on ira, and thus disqualifiable as irrational, but rather on a keen perception – grounded in experience – of the realities of human interaction. Atreus’ philosophy of power consists in the exclusive focus on praxis; the exercise of power should not be predicated on anything but the most effective ways to preserve and further it, and every strategy should be evaluated according to this perspective, leaving aside irrelevant considerations about morality, divine power or the search for popular favour. The contrast between inessential and essential components of power is foregrounded in the very first words that Atreus and the satelles exchange: at the latter’s enquiry about fama | . . . adversa (204–5), Atreus replies by focusing on facta (206). The satelles’ question is predicated on the contrast between words and deeds, and on the assumption that external power could force the latter but not control the former, that an obedient population might still retain the psychological freedom to bestow on its ruler a negative fama. Atreus replies that the tyrant can force thoughts as well as deeds: ‘the greatest advantage of royal power is this, that the people are compelled as well to bear as to praise their master’s deeds’ (205–7: maximum hoc regni bonum est, | quod facta domini cogitur populus sui | tam ferre quam laudare). There is a sense of proud and almost joyful subversion of the satelles’ credibility in Atreus’ words which makes his behaviour look more convincing and consistent by comparison. Similarly, when the satelles replies that true praise only reaches those who covet favoris gloriam veri (209), Atreus quickly points out that he is not interested in a reward which even a humble subject could attain: laus vera et humili saepe contingit viro, | non nisi potenti falsa. quod nolunt velint (211–12). Atreus is here applying a 36

Contrastingly, in De ira 1.20.4 Seneca expands on the immanitas of such a dictum.

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logic which Seneca had tried to turn to very different ends in De clementia, where he repeatedly points out that the most authentic sign of distinction for a ruler lies in his ability to choose not to do something that any one of his subjects could also do: anybody can kill in revenge, but only the ruler can decide to refrain from revenge and spare a life (1.5.4). Atreus bases his decision to spurn the reward of genuine praise on precisely the same sense of distinction and uniqueness. Later in the play, Thyestes portrays himself as a ruler who supposedly enjoys the people’s favour and expects a warm welcome on his return home: ‘Argos will come to meet me, a great crowd will come’ (411: occurret Argos, populus occurret frequens). Yet the play does not provide any indication that this actually occurs, and Thyestes’ words are left without any visible sign of fulfilment, thus encouraging us to suppose that Atreus’ cynical lack of illusions is more realistic than his brother’s faith in popular favour. While the motto quod nolunt velint is a reminder of the famous oderint dum metuant, it is also significantly different, and a great deal more demanding. Atreus aspires to complete control over his people’s reactions, and is aware that force can turn dissent into consent, that his superior will can bend an initially uncooperative mind. Always an innovator, Atreus also injects into his political philosophy a sense of bold novelty, which parallels his search for private vengeance. Like the Fury of the prologue, he curtly dismisses the notion that he should look for consent and approval: like Tantalus’ shadow, his subjects will be forced to forget their own wishes and conform to his. Thyestes provides in fact a dramatic confirmation of Atreus’ insight when in the following act he yields to his son’s persuasive advice and enters the city unwillingly: ‘my mind falters and wishes to take my body back; my steps are unwilling’ (419–20: animus haeret ac retro cupit | corpus referre, moveo nolentem gradum). In his assertive defence of the tyrannical ethos, Atreus is more than a predictable stereotype of a tragic tyrant. His words are forceful, original, impressive, and his deeds cohere with his policy statements. The satelles (and, as far as he is later concerned, Thyestes) can only voice a perfunctory array of well-meaning but ineffectual commonplaces, which the tragedy itself reveals – by the way they are uttered, and the defeat they encounter – to be hardly worth serious consideration. The contrast between the two characters is illuminating, once again not because of the practical results of the confrontation – the unsurprising fact that Atreus has his way and carries out his revenge plan undisturbed – but because Seneca chooses to represent the opposition to Atreus’ plans and thoughts in an extremely ambivalent and unappealing form. The satelles did not have to turn into

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an Antigone to make his lofty thoughts more believable. The fact that he is not essential, in the rest of the play, for the actual realization of Atreus’ revenge, further characterizes his acquiescence as an act of moral weakness, of almost willing submission to Atreus’ vision. Of course Atreus held him hostage and could have easily punished any resistance; but the play does not give any indication that this might happen, and portrays instead the satelles’ parabolic descent from resistance to complicity. Although it may be superficially appealing to identify Seneca himself in the satelles, a fit complement for a Caligula or Nero in the role of Atreus, the debate between Atreus and his minion is more than a reflection of a specific incident in the history of Roman political life. It is in fact a dramatized contrast between two different conceptions of power, a losing and a winning one. It matters little which one holds the higher moral stature on paper: what really matters (on the stage, and, in fact, in the palace) is how they deal with each other, and what degree of credibility they are able to instil in the audience. The dialogue juxtaposes a truth and a fiction: the fiction of half-hearted resistance versus the matter-of-fact truth of what power really is and how it functions. In this respect Atreus embodies a view of power which in practice, if not in theory, is truly in keeping with the reality of Roman imperial rule. The chorus may well appear to be a more reliable candidate for moral guidance than the satelles or, for that matter, Thyestes himself.37 Indeed it is tempting to control the disruptive force of the play by locating a reliable moral message in the chorus’s lofty interventions, or at least by arguing that the chorus enjoys a relatively detached position apart from the moral turmoil experienced by the main characters.38 True, much of what the chorus observes in various moments of the tragic action can be connected with Stoic concepts as they are explained and advocated by other sources.39 The chorus, however, is, willingly or not, completely enmeshed in the vicissitudes of the play, both because its comments fit in the linear sequence of events and often explicitly refer to very recent developments, and because the chorus, for all its idiosyncratic behaviour, is yet another character on the stage. The chorus’s actions and reactions cannot be evaluated in the abstract, as a moral commentary which can be taken at face-value, but must 37 38 39

Among recent work on Senecan choruses in general see Tarrant (1978) 221–8; Mazzoli (1986–87); Davis (1993); and Castagna (1996). Hiltbrunner (1985) 989–91 offers an annotated bibliography. Tarrant (1985) 137. Tarrant remarks ((1985) 45) that ‘the breadth of its [the chorus’s] perspective and the dignity of its ultimate response give the play its only moments of moral sanity’. That may well be true; it is arguable, however, whether this ‘sanity’ can muster enough credibility to be counted as a realistic alternative.

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be evaluated dialectically, as another, often dissonant, voice in the conflict of contrasting points of view staged in the play. The chorus first appears on stage after the metadramatic prologue, and delivers an impassioned appeal for an end to the chain of horrors which has so far besieged the Pelopidai. The very beginning of the ode is characterized by a vein of hesitation and uncertainty40 which is evident in the repetition of hypothetical statements (122–6): Argos de superis si quis Achaicum Pisaeasque domos curribus inclitas, Isthmi si quis amat regna Corinthii, et portus geminos et mare dissidens, si quis Taygeti conspicuas nives . . . If any of the gods loves Achean Argos and Pisa famous for its chariots, if any loves the kingdom of Corinthian Isthmus, its twin harbours, and the sea divided, if any loves the far-seen snows of Taygetus . . .

In these lines the chorus displays not only scepticism on the existence of a divine protection for Argos in particular, but also doubts about the possibility of knowing even very basic facts such as the existence of protecting gods. This cognitive inadequacy acquires a further dimension in the following lines, as the chorus deals with Tantalus’ past and thus invites a close comparison with the prologue. Lines 122–6 list several locations close to Argos, and the description of the last one, the snow-covered peaks of Taygetus, ends in a brief digression on the alternating forces of winter and summer, which provoke and dissolve the snow (127–9). Against this background of natural alternation – by definition constant and unstoppable – the chorus voices the desire that no new misdeeds plague the royal household, and specifically that there be a conclusion to the alternae . . . vices (133)41 which have so far besieged it (132–5): advertat placidum numen et arceat, alternae scelerum ne redeant vices nec succedat avo deterior nepos et maior placeat culpa minoribus. Let divine power look to us peacefully and forbid that crimes in alternate sequence return, that a worse grandson succeed his grandfather, or a greater crime please the new generations. 40 41

Tarrant (1985) 106. In this passage Seneca goes well beyond the traditional si = siquidem in prayers and conveys hesitation and scepticism. See Ag. 77–8: quas non arces scelus alternum | dedit in praeceps?, with Tarrant’s remarks ((1976) 182) on Greek parallels and his note on Ag. 44: sanguine alterno ((1976) 179).

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The chorus speaks here without any knowledge of the prologue’s events, and possibly in a temporal sequence which is parallel rather than subsequent to those events.42 But from a dramatic point of view these hopes are unequivocally voiced after the prologue has already shown that they can no longer be nurtured, that repetition constitutes the play’s moral and dramatic dynamic: a number of specific verbal parallels underlines the stridency of this contrast.43 The chorus sides here with forces which have tried to prevent the unfolding of dramatic events, and, just like Tantalus’ shadow or the satelles, it is doomed to failure. Indeed, the following emphatic statement: peccatum satis est (138) sounds particularly ironic, since the immediate context suggests, rather, a relentless pattern of return. Inextricably linked to the prologue, the first choral song looks forward to future developments in the plot. This prefiguration of events is not presented, however, as a form of predictive ability which would bestow on the chorus a claim to higher knowledge, but is rather perceived in this context as involuntary, and therefore tragically ironic. The chorus describes Myrtilus’ and Tantalus’ crimes while hoping that they will never be repeated (138: peccatum satis est), but in fact they ostensibly prefigure the monstrous deeds that the tragedy will once again evoke. Deception is the element stressed most in this part of the song, thus hinting at its importance in the subsequent unfolding of the plot;44 especially deceptus totiens (‘so often deceived’, 159) and falli libuit (‘gladly has been baffled’, 167), both referring to Tantalus, aptly describe Thyestes’ own behaviour at a later stage and reinforce the structural parallelism which links the two characters throughout the play. But precisely because of the context, this insistence on deception reflects also on the chorus’s own tendency to be deceived, its inability to grasp events effectively. Even the richly detailed description of Tantalus’ punishment is consistent with the chorus’s display of inadequate knowledge – or sheer wishful thinking. Contrary to the chorus’s opinion that Tantalus has been subjected to the most appropriate form of retribution (150–1: nec dapibus feris | decerni potuit poena decentior, ‘nor could a more fitting punishment have been decreed for such barbarous food’), the prologue has already shown that a worse torture has in fact been devised for him (70–1; 82–3). Similarly, the final image of the ode describes, with a strong sense of closure, the apparently eternal situation of Tantalus in the underworld, where he is 42 43

44

See ch. 2 and ch. 5, passim. See 25: alterna vice; 28–9: rabies parentum duret et longum nefas | eat in nepotes; 89–90: ducam in horrendum nefas | avus nepotes? (Tarrant (1985) 108 on 133–5); line 135 recalls one of the Fury’s most striking mottos: Thracium fiat nefas | maiore numero (56–7). Tarrant ((1985) 110) notes the occurrence of this theme in the first part of the play.

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forced to drink dirty shallow water after all the enticing goods presented to him have disappeared (174–5). Again, the prologue has shown that closure and conclusion are far from guaranteed, since Tantalus has already been summoned to earth and forced to provoke a new turn in the terrible series of the catastrophes suffered by the Pelopidai. Because of the chorus’s tragic inability to understand the situation unfolding on the stage, the absence of precise indications of who exactly its members are45 acquires particular relevance. It enhances the chorus’s shadowy appearance, its rarified, almost inactive existence,46 suspended in the netherworld between powerful dramatic actions. Its utterances of hope, its calls for restraint, are neutralized by the weakness of its interpretative tools. The first song makes it clear that the chorus has no higher claim to the truth, and does not offer to the public a secluded island of moral certainty amidst the turmoil of the tragedy. Subsequent choral odes strengthen these intimations of tragic irony and doomed inefficacy, and further reduce the plausibility of retrieving a deeper and truer meaning of the play from the chorus’s words. Credat hoc quisquam? The opening of the third choral ode once again foregrounds the issue of knowledge and belief. This second interlude between actions, namely between the meeting of the brothers and the appearance on scene of the messenger, centres on the chorus’s inability to see beyond the deceptive surface of Atreus’ actions: once again, the chorus and Thyestes are paired as victims of deception, and the chorus’s reiterated expressions of fear remain a mute and ineffective counterbalancing element. Since the ode directly follows one of Atreus’ most ominous double entendres (545: ego destinatas victimas superis dabo), the opening words are even more loaded with tragic irony (546–51): credat hoc quisquam? ferus ille et acer nec potens mentis truculentus Atreus fratris aspectu stupefactus haesit. nulla vis maior pietate vera est: iurgia externis inimica durant, quos amor verus tenuit, tenebit. 45

46

Tarrant (1976) 180 on the ‘impersonal quality’ of Senecan choruses; see Tarrant (1985) 106, n. 1, with Leo (1897) 510–13. On the notion, however, of the chorus as a ‘collective character’ see Grimal (1975) 265, with Picone (1976) 64. There are useful remarks on the chorus’s personality also in Rozelaar (1976) 561–63 and a nuanced discussion in Davis (1993) 39–63. Zwierlein ((1966) 74–6) sees in this ‘impersonal quality’ yet another sign that the plays were not performable. It is worth noting that in both of the parodoi that Tarrant ((1985) 106) compares with this ode, Aesch. Sept. 87–170 and Soph. OT 158–215, the chorus is seen reacting to events with a fear inspired by its perception of the disasters to come.

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Will anyone believe this? Atreus, that cruel, harsh man, out of control, bloodsoaked, stopped still at sight of his brother. No power is stronger than true fraternal love; angry strife with strangers lasts, but those whom true love has bonded together will continue to bond.

This insistence on the veracity of brotherly love is particularly striking since the chorus completely misrepresents the conflict between appearance and reality in the dealings between them: far from being moved by Thyestes’ appearance, it is in fact Atreus who is able to deceive him with a false aspectus. Tarrant rightly compares this song to several Sophoclean choruses which express hope immediately before a catastrophe,47 and the messenger will shortly provide ample evidence of such a metabole.¯ Note, however, the peculiar status of the chorus’s remarks. After the dialogue of act 3 it is clear, for instance, that the audience enjoys a superior degree of knowledge, which connects it to Atreus and differentiates it from Thyestes and the chorus. Thus the chorus’s belated mixture of belief, hope and fear must strike the audience as a tragically pointless stance. The enormous disparity in levels of knowledge, I would suggest, makes it difficult for us to identify with the chorus’s feeling. This choral ode, not unlike the first one, contains a number of potentially contradictory or at least puzzling statements. In the first stanza, for instance, it is remarkable that the actions that the chorus attributes to Pietas – the love which supposedly re-links Atreus’ and Thyestes’ hands – are themselves violent and cast an ominous light on the success of the reconciliation: ‘Love stays the steel, and joining their hands leads men, even against their will, to Peace’ (558–9: opprimit ferrum manibusque iunctis | ducit ad pacem Pietas negantes). Negantes squarely emphasizes the brothers’ unwillingness (once again mutual) to yield to peace, even if the chorus would lend it a concessive force. The second stanza displays again a sceptical inclination: ‘this sudden lull out of so great uproar, what god has wrought?’ (560–1: otium tanto subitum e tumultu | quis deus fecit?) – a question which has a rather obvious answer for the audience – lends itself to irony. Appropriately, the ensuing lines indulge in a detailed, obsessed description of the dangers now apparently past, and not of the new, apparently positive situation. As it suddenly shifts its thoughts backwards, the chorus itself falls prey to the irresistible attraction of painful reiteration. The wound of the recent bellum civile (562) cannot be forgotten even in this apparent lull, and the chorus perceptively lingers on the expectation of war rather than on actual fights, which have not 47

Aj. 693–717; Trach. 633–62; Ant. 1115–54; OT 1086–109.

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occurred so far. The concluding remark, that the fear of war is worse than war itself (572: peior est bello timor ipse belli, ‘worse than war is the very fear of war’) represents one of the few immediately authentic and believable statements uttered by the chorus. Of course, it does mean rather more than the chorus is aware of, since timor is still very much a present factor; but it is important to recognize that this moment of authenticity and credibility comes precisely when the chorus abandons its analysis of what it perceives to be the present reality (which it is utterly inadequate to comprehend) and privileges instead the self-evident emotional reality of fear. In other words: when the chorus finally yields to the same force which has already subjugated the shadow of Tantalus and Thyestes. The force of remembering, repeating and re-enacting is stronger than the peace supposedly at hand. This lack of balance between past and present, and between fear and solace, largely holds true for the following stanza, which contains an elaborate simile referring to natural forces, preceded by a positive statement on the newly acquired peace (573–6): iam minae saevi cecidere ferri, iam silet murmur grave classicorum, iam tacet stridor litui strepentis: alta pax urbi revocata laetae est. now the sword’s dire threats have ceased; now the deep trumpet-blare is silent; now the shrill of the clarion’s blast is quiet; deep peace has been restored to the happy city.

Out of nineteen lines which form the simile, only four depict the sea finally at rest; the bulk of it is occupied with a vivid account of the tempest which precedes the calm. Even as this positive side is finally introduced, at line 588, it is with a hypothetical si rather than a temporal cum (588–95): si suae ventis cecidere vires, mitius stagno pelagus recumbit; alta, quae navis timuit secare hinc et hinc fusis speciosa velis, strata ludenti patuere cumbae, et vacat mersos numerare pisces hic ubi ingenti modo sub procella Cyclades pontum timuere motae. If the winds’ strength has failed, the sea sinks back calmer than a pool; the deep waters which even a ship adorned with fully spread sails on both sides had feared to cleave, now lie open even to a small pleasure-boat; and now one can count the fish under water, right where a moment ago the Cyclades, shaken by a huge storm, feared the sea.

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None of the positive statements stands without an immediate balance in the opposite direction provided by a return to the negative past, accomplished by quae at line 590 and hic ubi at line 594. This is yet another instance of the chorus’s propensity to indulge more in the recollection of past fears than in the enjoyment of the present. By its very tortuous, revolving nature, it underscores the real lack of definitive closure which is inherent in the simile and is then made explicit in the gnomic statement of 596–7: ‘no lot endures long; pain and pleasure, each in turn, give place – more quickly, pleasure’ (nulla sors longa est: dolor ac voluptas | invicem cedunt; brevior voluptas). Indeed, just as calm succeeds tempest, tempests come back over and over again.48 The real significance of this section of the ode lies, then, more in the implications suggested by its structure than in the often less than compelling lexical choices, and this is consistent with the general interpretation of the chorus’s attitude that I have outlined so far: the chorus does say several useful and perceptive things, but almost invariably malgré soi, between the lines rather than explicitly, with tragic irony rather than full awareness. For the chorus, the storm followed by a period of calm is an apt analogy for Atreus’ conversion, and on the basis of this false assumption it expands with utter seriousness on the larger moral framework governing human actions: fortune is mutable, powerful men should beware of sudden reversals, and remember that they, too, are subject to divine punishment (596–622). The statements which hold true do so, however, in a very different sense to that envisaged by the chorus itself, and many are simply reversed. The elaborate discussion of divine retribution at 607–14, for instance, culminates in the certainty that superbi will be punished (613–14: quem dies vidit veniens superbum, | hunc dies vidit fugiens iacentem, ‘whom the rising sun has seen high in pride, him the setting sun has seen laid low’), and the chronological framework invites us to read this as a reflection – among other things – on tragic time; yet, of course, the ultimate superbus, Atreus, will be far from destroyed at the end of the tragedy. The discrepancy between the chorus’s actual grip on events and its prominent presence in the play is never more evident than in its dialogue with the messenger immediately after the third ode. The messenger’s arrival on the scene provides powerful confirmation of the cyclical and yet largely unpredictable nature of events which the chorus had endorsed in the second 48

A topical image, to be sure, but it is worth comparing Soph. Aj. 669–76, especially 674–5: ’ | , in the context of Ajax’s misleading acceptance of the status quo.

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part of the ode, and the messenger’s first line (623: quis me per auras turbo praecipitem vehet | . . . ?, ‘what whirlwind will drag me headlong through the air?’) is pointedly linked to the chorus’s last utterance (621–2: res deus nostras celeri citatas | turbine versat, ‘god shakes our affairs in a swift whirlwind’). In the scene that follows, the chorus is directly involved in the tragic action, since it interrogates the messenger and reacts to his narrative as it unfolds. Yet this active role is matched by the superficiality of the chorus’s reactions. After insisting that the messenger deliver his news quickly (626, 633, 638–40) and being informed of Atreus’ deeds, the chorus resumes its dialogic function by asking a series of questions on points of detail; all the questions are formulated along the same syntactical pattern, and all – with the partial exception of the third – display little emotional involvement: quis manum ferro admovet? (‘who lays his hand on the sword?’, 690); quem tamen ferro occupat? (‘whom, for all that, does he first attack with the steel?’, 716); quo iuvenis animo, quo tulit vultu necem? (‘with what spirit, with what countenance did the youth bear his death?’, 719); quid deinde gemina caede perfunctus facit? | puerone parcit, an scelus sceleri ingerit? (‘what did he then do after the double murder? Did he spare one boy, or did he heap crime on crime?’, 730–1). These interventions do nothing to alter the assumption that the chorus is tragically ignorant and superficial, not just unable to modify events (something which it is not expected to do), but also clumsy and unfocused in its reactions, predictable and formulaic in its expressions of horror. In fact even these emotional outcries are emphatically delayed, and the questions are, until after the better part of the rhesis, the only reaction we hear. It is only at line 743 – when almost all of Atreus’ crimes have been exposed – that the chorus gives voice to its own emotions, with an exclamation whose stylistic banality underlines the inadequacy of the response: o saevum scelus! (‘oh, savage crime!’). Subsequently, it is still questions – barely more coloured with emotion – which we hear from the chorus: an ultra maius aut atrocius | natura recipit? (‘does nature admit anything greater or more atrocious?’, 745–6) and quid ultra potuit? obiecit feris | lanianda forsan corpora atque igne arcuit? (‘what more did he manage to do? Did he perhaps throw the bodies for wild beasts to tear apart, or refuse them fire?’, 747–8) sound an almost ironic note because of the predictability of the answers they will receive. Shocked by the sudden disappearance of the sun, anguished by fear and despair, in the fourth and final song the chorus acquires a more powerful and convincing dramatic status. For the chorus this is already the end of the play; Atreus’ crimes have been told in detail, and the exchange with the

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messenger has been a true anagnorisis: now the chorus knows how wrong it had been in its optimistic assumptions about Atreus’ conversion. It is at this point, therefore, that the chorus finally seems to come into its own as far as both emotion and cognition are concerned: it knows all there is to know and has a chance to react not simply with hope or fear – both, in a sense, are preliminary reactions – but with a more forceful set of emotions. Yet again, Seneca’s handling of the ode highlights precisely opposite implications, and the chorus’s final appearance ultimately leaves in its trail more questions than answers. This ode, to begin with, is emphatically not what it could be expected to be, namely a reaction to the rhesis. The chorus is laconic and inexpressive when it hears the messenger’s chilling narrative. Even its questions, which could after all reflect a desire to learn as many details as possible before attempting a deliberate response, evidently fail to stir new emotions. The ode limits its focus to the very last fact the messenger had told, the sudden disappearance of the sun, which is described as a divine reaction of disgust at Atreus’ crimes. This novel event startles the chorus and leads it to new worries and new doubts: rather than concentrating on a set of events which had just been narrated in detail and whose causes are by now clear, the chorus wonders at length about a consequence which the messenger had already briefly but definitively explained at 783–5. Thus it is under the usual light of detachment and bewilderment that the chorus enters on stage once more, and, again, its first words are uttered as questions (789–93): quo terrarum superumque parens, cuius ad ortus noctis opacae decus omne fugit, quo vertis iter medioque diem perdis Olympo? cur, Phoebe, tuos rapis aspectus? Father of lands and heavens, at whose rising every star of the dark night flees away, where, oh where do you turn your orbit and destroy the day in the middle of its path? Why, Phoebus, do you snatch away your sight?

Tantalus’ attitude had been similar (1–4): quis inferorum sede ab infausta extrahit avido fugaces ore captantem cibos? quis male deorum Tantalo visas domos ostendit iterum? Who drags me forth from the accursed abode of the dead, where I snatch at food ever-fleeing from my hungry lips? What god shows Tantalus again the homes he saw to his ruin?

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The Fury, on the other hand, knew from the beginning that the sun might well disappear: ‘Look! Titan himself is in doubt whether to order the day to follow on, and with his reins to force it towards its destruction’ (120–1: en ipse Titan dubitat an iubeat sequi | cogatque habenis ire periturum diem), and Atreus is not worried, but pleased, that the earth is shrouded in darkness: ‘so that shame should not impede me, the day has retreated. Go ahead, while the sky is empty!’ (891–2: ne quid obstaret pudor, | dies recessit: perge dum caelum vacat). Once again the contrasting camps of characters are opposed to each other by (among other things) a different level of knowledge and a different capacity to react effectively to events: in this case, moreover, the contrast is sharpened by the otherwise dramatically inexplicable fact that the chorus goes on wondering why the sun disappeared even after it has been told. The surprising way in which the chorus frames its intervention after the rhesis makes the hypotheses that it formulates as it tries to understand the causa (803) of such a novel event even more puzzling (803–14). The emotional tone of these lines switches from the familiar examples mentioned before (the sound of the bucina, the bewilderment of the farmer) to a much loftier catalogue of possible mythical explanations, all centred around the fight between Zeus and the Giants – the archetypal exemplum of subversive violence directed against a superior power. This, in turn, leads the chorus to surmise that far more wide-ranging consequences have to be feared, and the next two stanzas alternate between the certainty of an unbearable catastrophe and the suspicion that the world has indeed come to an end. Thus the chorus is ready to consider the disappearance of the sun as a fatal blow to the regular alternation of cosmic rhythm, and a sense of permanent damage prevails: ‘have the usual movements of the world come to an end? will there be no more sunsets, no more sunrises?’ (solitae mundi periere vices? | nihil occasus, nihil ortus erit? (813–14)). After a graphic description of the novel meeting between a bewildered Aurora and the sun – insueto novus hospitio (‘startled at such unwonted welcoming’, 821) – the chorus returns to doubt and fear (827–32): sed quidquid id est, utinam nox sit! trepidant, trepidant pectora magno percussa metu, ne fatali cuncta ruina quassata labent iterumque deos hominesque premat deforme chaos . . . But whatever this may be, if only it were night! Our hearts tremble, tremble shaken by great fear, lest all things fall down shattered by fated ruin, and once again shapeless chaos weigh upon gods and men.

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¯ as But doubt and fear quickly turn into the certainty of a final ekpyrosis, the subjunctive is followed by a long string of future indicatives (starting with dabit at line 837) which culminate in the final ruin of the Chariot at line 874 (ruet). In these thirty-seven lines – over a third of the total ode – the detailed insistence on a series of specific astronomical disasters lends support to the chorus’s belief that the end of the universe is imminent.49 This belief is yet again stated in more doubtful terms at first (875–81), but is finally acknowledged in the drastic tone of a gnome (875–84):50 nos e tanto visi populo digni, premeret quos everso cardine mundus? in nos aetas ultima venit? o nos dura sorte creatos, seu perdidimus solem miseri, sive expulimus! abeant questus, discede, timor: vitae est avidus quisquis non vult mundo secum pereunte mori. Of many generations, is it ours which has been deemed worthy to be overwhelmed by the sky, its axis upturned? Has the last day come in our time? Alas for us, begotten with cruel lot, whether we have lost the sun or banished it! Away with lamenting, go away, Fear: he who does not want to die when the world is dying with him is too greedy for life.

Both tone and contents send strong signals of closure, and in fact this is the chorus’s last appearance on stage (there is no exodos, as we will see shortly); yet it is precisely the lack of closure that is highlighted in the rest of the play. Not only have the mundi vices not been permanently altered and the world has not come to an end, but the next two hundred lines will in fact repeat from a different narrative point of view the final part of the events that the rhesis had announced: in dramatic terms, that is, the banquet unfolds all over again as Atreus, instead of taking the sudden darkness as an indication of divine disgust, exploits it to further the completion of his plans. In pointed contrast to the chorus’s insistence on closure, the play ends with the promise of future retributions: TH. vindices aderunt dei; | his puniendum vota te tradunt mea. | AT. te puniendum liberis trado tuis (‘TH. The gods will be my avengers; my prayers deliver you to them for punishment. AT. For punishment, I deliver you to your children’, 1110–12). Use of the 49 50

Note that even as the chorus is ready to admit that a final end has arrived, it is still in doubt as to why exactly that happens. A gnomic closure is common in Greek tragedy: Kremer (1971) 117–21, and, for further references, Roberts, Dunn and Fowler (1997) 276.

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future tense, together with the symmetry between Thyestes’ and Atreus’ final lines, ensures that no final word has been spoken, and that the vices of their enmity still have a long way to go: whether gods or humans will enforce it, vengeance is the only prospect on which both characters agree. Once again we see that the chorus’s sustained tone is undermined by failure to really grasp what is happening. More pointedly, the description of the conflagration of the universe, coherent as it is with Stoic belief, conspicuously fails to represent the last word and again makes the chorus look misguided in its moral loftiness and basic lack of understanding. In this final song the chorus had sided with Tantalus and the satelles in its wish that no further progress be made, that an end be put to the domino-effect of nefas; that since the Fury’s and Atreus’ drive to repetition had already been fulfilled, this at least be matched by a final repetition of a different nature (note iterum at 831 and 833), the end of a cosmic cycle and the return to chaos, and silence. None of these wishes comes true: the world goes on, Atreus and Thyestes brace themselves for future reprisals, and the play chooses to continue, and even to repeat the nefas it sings. Although it has often been thought to embody the tragedy’s ‘real’ message, the second ode does not cast the chorus in a different light. A more optimistic interpretation, which sees in it ‘the play’s closest approach to a positive statement of values’ whose ‘beauty . . . remains deeply satisfying’51 is possible only if we agree to see in a positive light the chorus’s detachment from the surrounding events. This would be an awkward line to pursue, however, because Seneca’s choral odes in general, and those of Thyestes in particular, cannot really be considered self-standing interludes (embolima).52 Successfully or not, they attempt to establish a connection with reality, and consequently display, rather than emotional autarkeia, joy and fear, worry and hope. Thus the chorus’s weakness appears functionally similar to the satelles’ unexcited and quickly dismissed attempt to restrain Atreus, or to Thyestes’ own ambivalence in the choice between a properly ‘Stoic’ behaviour and the reality of his wishes and fears. As it elaborates an ideal model of ‘royalty’ just after the audience has witnessed the depth of Atreus’ deception, the choral ode emerges as a triumph of wishful thinking over reality.53 Atreus and his satelles have painstakingly 51 52 53

Tarrant (1985) 138; see Davis (1993) 172: ‘[Odes 2 and 3] establish a philosophic standard by which the play’s central characters, Atreus and Thyestes can be judged.’ Pace Zwierlein (1966) 76–80. On ‘contrastività’ as a fundamental feature of Senecan choruses see the important remarks by Mazzoli (1986–87).

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mapped the future course of actions, and there can be no further doubt that the Fury’s goals will be attained. In particular, the final part of the dialogue focuses on deception and secrecy, as Atreus and the satelles consider Thyestes’ reactions to the invitation to return home, and Menelaus’ and Agamemnon’s involvement in the ploy. In this context many keywords already present in the first ode return to the forefront: fraus (312, 316), dolus (318), fallere (320, 321). In fact the very last exchange between the two characters on stage elaborates on the importance of keeping their secrets well hidden, even from Atreus’ own sons (332–3), and, we must infer, from anybody else (334–5). The chorus appears to be still hoping for a future which is no longer attainable.54 A further unsettling implication emerges from a detailed comparison of the standards advocated by the chorus and the behaviour of Atreus and Thyestes.55 In its eloquent rehearsal of traditional Stoic topoi the chorus predictably aligns itself with Thyestes’ own moralizing, unreliable as this may be shown to be.56 But on closer inspection the chorus’s autarchic view of power is paradoxically more in tune with Atreus’ than Thyestes’ behaviour. It is Atreus, after all, who truly despises the fickleness of popular favour and the external signs of royal status.57 Were it not for his ‘ambition’ (350: ambitio) he would be an almost perfect embodiment of the qualities extolled in the ode. Thus, by opening itself to a paradoxical interpretation which is clearly at odds with the chorus’s presumable ‘authorial intention’, the song does more than reinforce the feeling that interpretation is fraught with ambiguities; it also involuntarily sanctions, in one of the most eloquent parts of the tragedy, the notion that ‘real’ power can invariably turn language to its own advantage, and that even the most hallowed of Stoic precepts are not safe from tendentious exploitations a` la Atreus. The chorus’s reaction to and understanding of events is perhaps the most important aspect of its characterization. The chorus’s lack of defining traits, its constant mood of doubt and uncertainty, its tendency to misinterpret, 54

55 57

The contrast with the preceding scene is even greater if lines 336–8 are retained (tandem regia nobilis, | antiqui genus Inachi, | fratrum composuit minas); they are deleted by Richter (1902) (followed by Sutton (1986) 40–1) because they are inconsistent with the preceding scene and anticipate 546–51, but are retained by Zwierlein and Tarrant. Calder (1989) suggests that they are spoken by the chorus as it comes back on stage – probably at 330 – and utters its real beliefs (from 339) only after Atreus and the satelles have left. This explanation presupposes that the chorus already knows that Atreus plans to pretend to welcome back Thyestes, which is unlikely given that the plan has just been hatched. 56 See above, pp. 141ff. I am indebted here to Davis (1993) 176–8. Lines 344–7 and 353–7.

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the feebleness of its emotional responses – all these factors conspire to subtract a great deal of dramatic and moral appeal from its noble-sounding and apparently inspired ethical considerations. Thus the solutions it offers on a variety of levels – the ‘true’ nature of power or the preference for a retired, ataraxic life, its faith in the gods’ presence and providence, the certainty of retribution – are all fatefully undermined. It is interesting to note that Senecan plays never give the chorus the last word,58 thus depriving it of any opportunity to deliver a final evaluation of the events. The chorus’s feelings and thoughts are only voiced between events, whether or not these have been directly witnessed or even correctly understood. Not even in structural terms does the chorus enjoy a privileged platform. It is small wonder, then, that its recipes for a better life appear in the end to be more of an exercise in abstract morality than a compelling indication of viable options. 58

The only exceptions are represented by the certainly un-Senecan Octavia, and the dubious Hercules Oetaeus; Leo (1897) 512. See p. 68.

chapter 5


fata se vertunt retro (Seneca, Agamemnon 758)

i The time has almost come to bring the reading of Thyestes, if not yet to a conclusion, at least to a point where we can take a comprehensive view of the main issues that I have analysed in previous chapters. Before doing so, I would first like to explore a set of related topics which play an important role not just in Thyestes but in several other Senecan tragedies. Accordingly, in this chapter I will largely move away from Thyestes and offer a thematic reading focusing mostly on other plays: Hercules furens, Troades, Agamemnon, Medea and Oedipus. In the next chapter I will extend the argument developed here, in order to situate my final analysis of Thyestes within a broader context. I propose to look first at certain peculiarities of Seneca’s treatment of dramatic time. There seems to exist a broad consensus, implicit or explicit, that many of the plays’ temporal structures display markedly idiosyncratic features. Unfortunately, this is often taken as further evidence for the theory that, by abandoning the conventions of Attic drama, Seneca has irretrievably adulterated the pure forms of tragedy, so that his treatment of time, like many other aspects of his dramatic technique, testifies to a decadence in the evolution of tragedy. It is well established that Seneca breaks away from many fifth-century conventions:1 the unity of time and space, the rigid delimitation of the time allotted to the tragic action, the coherent succession of scenes in an undisturbed temporal continuum – these are all rules to which Seneca finds surprising (and, I think, highly effective) alternatives. The notion that many of his plays offer detached tableaux 1

The classic treatment of this topic is Tarrant (1978).

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rather than an organic plot is predicated precisely on the sometimes loose, unconventional, often puzzling temporal connections established between acts. It is incumbent upon us to read these disjunctions and discrepancies as markers of meaning. I will take my cue from some peculiar treatments of dramatic time to investigate their semiotic and thematic significance: what does it mean for Seneca to subvert linear chronology, and what role does time play in the configuration of Seneca’s tragic thought and tragic writing? ii At the end of her harsh exhortation to Tantalus in the prologue, the Fury orders him to remain on earth and to watch the doomed banquet which will eventually conclude the tragedy: ‘go, fill up your fasting; let blood mixed with wine be drunk before your eyes; I have found foods which even you would want to flee – stop, where are you rushing headlong?’ (65–7: ieiunia exple, mixtus in Bacchum cruor | spectante te potetur; inveni dapes | quas ipse fugeres – siste, quo praeceps ruis?).2 Shortly thereafter, however, she dismisses the ghost and sends him back to the underworld: ‘go to the caves of the underworld and your familiar river’ (105–6: gradere ad infernos specus | amnemque notum). Between these two seemingly contradictory orders3 stands Tantalus’ short-lived and ultimately ineffectual rebellion (68–83a, 86b-101), as he is overcome by the Fury’s excruciating tortures (96–101). It has been suggested4 that at 105–6 the Fury is relenting precisely because of Tantalus’ emphatic reaction: first he must wreak havoc in the house of the Pelopidai (83: ante perturba domum); only afterwards will he be allowed to leave.5 Difficult as it is to imagine the Fury suddenly surrendering to Tantalus’ complaints, this is not the only problem raised by such a conciliatory explanation. In the lines that follow Tantalus’ unwilling agreement, and conclude the prologue, the Fury vividly describes the consequences of his pollution. Verbal repetitions convey her excitement6 (101–4): 2 3

4

5 6

See pp. 45ff. The inconsistency was first noticed by Lesky ((1922–23) 533), who explained it as being a result of Seneca’s imperfect adaptation of his Euripidean model. Hine ((1981) 268) believes that the Fury’s order at 105–6 is ironic, and is uttered by the Fury alone on stage, after Tantalus has in fact already entered the house and polluted it. See Picone (1984) 28, n. 48. Steidle (1943–44) 257 and Picone (1984) 28. Lesky ((1922–23) 533–7) puts the discrepancy down to Seneca’s departure from his Euripidean model: in Euripides’ Thyestes, in fact, the ghost would have remained inside the house for the duration of the whole play. See Anliker (1960) 27–8. On this point see Shelton (1975) 258–9. See Tarrant (1985) 103 for a discussion of Calder’s suggestion (1984) that the repetition marks the strokes of whip which the Fury inflicts upon Tantalus. The suggestion would probably have come from Virgil’s Dido (Aen. 4.660), who stabs herself with the words sic, sic iuvat ire sub umbras.


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hunc, hunc furorem divide in totam domum. sic, sic ferantur et suum infensi invicem sitiant cruorem. sentit introitus tuos domus et nefando tota contactu horruit. This, this rage distribute throughout the house! Thus, thus let them be dragged, and in turn, as enemies, let them thirst after each other’s blood. Your house feels your entering, and has recoiled in horror from your unutterable contagion.

It is at this point that the Fury is finally satisfied (105–7): actum est abunde. gradere ad infernos specus amnemque notum; iam tuum maestae pedem terrae gravantur; Enough! More than enough! Go to the caves of the underworld and your familiar river; already your step falls heavy on the saddened earth.

While actum est abunde reinforces the Fury’s affiliation to her Virgilian model,7 it also establishes a meaningful point of reference within the play. In act 2, after selecting the best form of revenge against his brother, Atreus expresses his contentment in much the same words (279–80): bene est, abunde est: hic placet poenae modus tantisper.8 This is good, more than enough. I like this way of punishing him – for the moment.

The parallelism between these two scenes goes beyond the repetition of abunde. Both the Fury and Atreus start by striving to find a revenge of unprecedented cruelty, and the Fury’s wish that the Thracian nefas be repeated on a larger scale (56–7: Thracium fiat nefas | maiore numero, ‘let the Thracian crime be done, but multiplied’) is mirrored at the same relative point in Atreus’ own speech: non satis magno meum | ardet furore pectus, impleri iuvat | maiore monstro (‘the frenzy burning in my breast is not great enough; some greater horror must fill me’, 252–4). Moreover, lines 103–4 are a careful, explicit reworking of two lines in Ovid’s Philomela 7 8

At Aen. 7.552 terrorum et fraudis abunde est is uttered by Juno in direct response to Allecto, just before the latter’s dismissal (559: cede locis). See Braden (1985) 45 for the suggestion that bene habet, peractum est at Oed. 998 (cf. Her. F. 1035; Ag. 901 with Tarrant (1976) 343 and references to comedy; Med. 1019; Her. O. 1457, 1472) might be connected with the language of gladiatorial games. It would indeed be tempting to see the Fury and Atreus as game-directors extraordinaires, a point which could well be supported by Calder’s suggestion noted above (n. 6). It is worth noting that abunde est appears in the Aeneid only at 7.552. Seneca, who has Atreus use the expression a third and final time at line 889 (bene est, abunde est, iam sat est etiam mihi), multiplies its model, thus effectively depriving it of much of its value. On the Virgilian construction see Fordyce (1977) 160.

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episode:9 ut sensit tetigisse domum Philomela nefandam, | horruit infelix totoque expalluit ore,10 and in the corresponding position in Atreus’ speech, before he in turn exclaims bene est, abunde est, we find a direct reference to the same story: animum Daulis inspira parens | sororque (‘inspire my soul, o Daulian mother, and sister, too’, 275–6). These verbal and structural parallels, therefore, highlight the fact that Atreus is closely following in his own speech the same sequence of thoughts and actions as was displayed by the Fury in the prologue. As the Fury’s description of the extraordinary outcome of Tantalus’ intervention acquires a cosmic dimension, and as nature forgets her habits, she crowns her crescendo by pointing out that even the sun is uncertain whether it should force the day to continue in its appointed course: ‘Look! Titan himself is in doubt whether to order the day to follow, and with his reins to force it towards its destruction’ (120–1: en ipse Titan dubitat an iubeat sequi | cogatque habenis ire periturum diem).11 This image clearly prefigures the withdrawal of the sun from its regular course12 and becomes, later in the tragedy, the icon of the nefas which has been accomplished.13 It is possible to argue that this elaborate parallelism denotes the Fury’s ability to predict in great detail the events she has herself caused. Indeed, this appears to be the most economical solution, since it implies no particular idiosyncrasy on Seneca’s part. An alternative solution to the correlations and discrepancies mentioned above would be to interpret the Fury’s overarching awareness of the events which will later unfold on the stage as a manifestation of prophetic foreknowledge.14 This is certainly the case in the prologue to Agamemnon, where it is Thyestes’ turn to anticipate the unfolding of the events. A comparison between the two prologues shows the prophetic nature of Thyestes’ words, who welcomes the realization of an ‘uncertain prophecy’ (Ag. 38: sortis incertae fides) as the king returns home 9 10 11 12

13

Met. 6.601–2. Tarrant ((1985) 103) provides a detailed analysis of the analogies and differences between Seneca’s and Ovid’s lines. The use of the participle in se periturum indicates the ‘inevitability of the action’ (Tarrant (1976) 178; see Tarrant (1985) 106). The premature, unnatural setting of the sun as a mark of horror at Atreus’ deeds is mentioned by the messenger (776), the chorus (789), Atreus (892) and Thyestes (990). We must assume that the sun sets while Atreus carries out the infanticide, and the whole of act 4 must be taking place in at least partial darkness (the messenger’s words at 623–5 would thus have a somewhat paradoxical flavour). When the chorus opens the following ode in a tone of surprised anguish (789–91), they are not witnessing the disappearance of the sun afresh, but rather commenting on it. The sun, supplanted in its role by a star-like Atreus (885–6), is still hidden when he meets Thyestes, as both brothers remark (891–2 and 990–1). See Hine (1981) for the opinion that similar repetitions are standard narrative devices. 14 Picone (1984) 32, n. 57. I return to this point at the end of the chapter.


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to be murdered: ‘now he is near at hand – to give his throat into his wife’s power. Now, now shall this house swim in blood other than mine’ (43–4: adest – daturus coniugi iugulum suae. | iam iam natabit sanguine alterno domus). Both the careful arrangement of verbal tenses, and the final notation that Thyestes’ sojourn on earth is delaying dawn (53–6: sed cur repente noctis aestivae vices | hiberna longa spatia producunt mora, | aut quid cadentes detinet stellas polo? | Phoebum moramur: redde iam mundo diem, ‘but why suddenly is the summer night prolonged to winter’s span? or what holds the setting stars still in the sky? We are delaying Phoebus: give back the day now to the universe’) exclude the possibility that the prologue is temporally coextensive with the rest of the play. Thyestes’ video (46) should therefore be considered a variation on Atreus’ boasting that he can picture in his mind the whole imago caedis. At the opposite end of the spectrum of possibilities, Shelton has suggested that the Fury actually observes in a compressed period of time all the events which the tragedy will gradually present to the audience.15 The whole action of the tragedy – Atreus’ plotting his revenge, the double murder, the banquet – would be encompassed in the prologue. This, I hasten to add, would be perfectly in keeping with Juno’s metadramatic aspects: as befits the ‘author’ of the story, she watches all the phases of the plot as they rapidly unfold in front of her eyes before they are shared with the audience. Atreus will acknowledge that he can anticipate the whole sequence of his revenge in his mind: tota iam ante oculos meos | imago caedis errat (‘already before my eyes flits the whole picture of the slaughter’, Thy. 281–2). Both solutions involve substantial difficulties. The ‘prophecy’ theory falters on the discrepancy between the two orders given to Tantalus by the Fury, first that he stay to watch the banquet, then that he return to his usual abodes. On the other hand, the fact that the prologue is taking place just before dawn, while several references in the rest of the play make it clear that we are in the middle of the day, make it difficult to assume that the clock actually turns back at the beginning of act 2. One can see the appeal of the claim that Seneca, as usual, just messed up his note cards while attempting to juggle one too many models at a time.16 The fact remains that repetition and parallelism play a key role in the structure of the play. Moreover the Fury’s orders – notwithstanding the play’s later attempts to establish an almost regular internal chronology – do jar the audience’s perception of temporal flow. The solution to this puzzle probably lies in accepting that the Fury’s orders are intrinsically 15

Shelton (1975), (1978) 17–20.

16

Lesky (1922–23).

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contradictory. Act 2 does in fact repeat the structure of the prologue, as the play ostensibly observes the regular conventions of the passing of time. There is enough evidence in other Senecan plays, as we will see shortly, to argue that Seneca is deliberately questioning a strictly mimetic notion of linear dramatic time. The inconsistency between the Fury’s two orders is a telling indication of the fact that we should expect an idiosyncratic treatment of time. In other words, if our (human) perception of events cannot dispense with the usual notions of succession and regularity, there is a level at which gods (and the playwright) devise the unfolding of actions with a synoptic, all-encompassing knowledge which we can only dimly fathom from our limited perspective. Actions, in a sense, are always already determined by a divine masterplot, a consideration which does not eliminate human responsibility (far from it),17 but inscribes it in a much larger and uncontrolled context of divine foreknowledge and planning. By disturbing the audience’s perception of time, Seneca marks repetition as an essential component of tragic actions and of our theatrical understanding of them. The confidence that actions unfold over an unwavering temporal continuum (and, therefore, according to a well-defined causal chain) is shattered even by this limited disruption to the expectation of a regular, forwardlooking temporal flow. At the beginning of the second act of Thyestes the audience is presented with events which seem to follow on directly from the action of the prologue, but which in a very significant (if not strictly literal) way should be traced back to a point in time in parallel with the prologue itself. The movement from full daylight to the uncertain shades of dawn marks, for the humans, a clear step forward in a temporal continuum. Enough clues emerge, however, to alert the careful spectator to the fact that in an important sense we are moving backwards, returning to a point in time that we have already witnessed once: the framing structure analysed in chapter two18 acquires a new, pregnant dimension: the second layer of the plot is not only structurally embedded in the first, represented by the prologue, but is to a certain degree temporally coextensive with it. One of the most significant outcomes of this dramatic technique consists in a further blurring between the responsibilities of the characters on the stage and the audience, and a deeper elision of the possibility of neatly defining innocence and guilt. The audience is involved from the very beginning in the Fury’s scheming, and subsequently treated, either willingly 17 18

It is difficult to confine the significance of this treatment of dramatic time to the text’s desire to emphasize human responsibility, a point well made by Shelton (1975) 263–7. See above, pp. 45ff.


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or malgré soi, to a detailed account of events already foreseen and foretold. The audience could (should) leave. By continuing to watch, it can no longer claim innocence. It is, in effect, an accomplice to the nefas on the stage. Such a disruption of the conventions of tragic time is unparalleled in ancient drama19 and represents a form of self-conscious expression which finds appropriate parallels in only a limited number of modern texts. Before twentieth-century ‘epic’ theatre started to exploit discrepancies in the treatment of dramatic time in order to draw an audience’s attention to the fictional nature of their experience,20 only a few authors had explored the possibilities of a non-linear arrangement of time.21 The case of Thyestes, however, is not isolated in the Senecan corpus. The prologue to Hercules furens is dominated by Juno, the only goddess (or god, for that matter) ever to enter the realm of Seneca’s tragedy, and a character rich with metadramatic resonances. These are particularly clear as Juno, after lamenting the fact that no ordeal, no matter how extraordinary, can worry Hercules or stop him (30–6), explicitly addresses the force of her inspiration in order to discover, finally, an apt instrument of revenge (75–7): perge, ira, perge et magna meditantem opprime, congredere, manibus ipsa dilacera tuis: quid tanta mandas odia? Onward, my anger, onward! Crush this overreacher! Grapple with him, tear him apart with your own hands. Why delegate such hatred?

There follows a long invocation to the Eumenides (86–8) which leads a few lines later to a direct description of their inceptive function (100–6): incipite, famulae Ditis, ardentem citae concutite pinum et agmen horrendum anguibus Megaera ducat atque luctifica manu vastam rogo flagrante corripiat trabem. hoc agite, poenas petite violatae Stygis; concutite pectus, acrior mentem excoquat quam qui caminis ignis Aetnaeis furit.22 19 20 21 22

See Taplin (1977) 290–4, 377–9 for important remarks on fifth-century tragedy. Little is known about later developments, but see Taplin (1977) 49 with n. 2. I will return to this particular aspect in the next chapter. On the issue in general see Pfister’s perceptive remarks (1977) 246ff., esp. 276ff. The symmetrical quality of the language is an important indicator of the plotting strategy that Juno has in mind, because Hercules will have to inflict on himself the revenge desired by the goddess. Juno’s furor will derange Hercules, and his own furor will destroy him. The revengeful inspiration that the goddess seeks for herself she will pass on to her unaware victim.

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Begin, handmaids of Dis, brandish the blazing pine torch violently. Let Megaera lead your troop, fearsome with snakes, and snatch a huge beam from a blazing pyre in her baleful hand. To your work: avenge the desecration of the underworld! Rouse your hearts; scorch your minds with fiercer fire than that raging in Etna’s furnaces.

Juno’s role in this prologue is in many respects similar to the Fury’s and Atreus’ exhortation in the first two scenes of Thyestes. But another structural element forcefully connects the two plays and more directly interests us here. The prologue to Hercules furens describes various actions in the present and past tenses, which the rest of the play will represent anew. Juno ‘sees’, while she speaks, all the events that the play will slowly unfold before the audience. A very provocative instance of this occurs early in Juno’s speech. At lines 66ff. the goddess is worried that Hercules will bring his attack against the sky, driven by a desire to dominate the entire universe: nec in astra lenta veniet ut Bacchus via: | iter ruina quaeret et vacuo volet | regnare mundo (66–8: ‘and he will not reach the stars by a gradual approach, like Bacchus: he will forge a path by destruction, and he will want to rule in an empty sky’). In the course of a few lines, as Juno indulges in the description of previous Herculean deeds, the future challenge has already taken place: at line 74 the future quaeret turns unexpectedly into the present quaerit: quaerit ad superos viam.23 Moreover, at line 64 Juno states that Hercules deserves to be punished because she is afraid that he will attack Olympus. Yet Hercules does so only as a consequence of the madness the goddess has inflicted on him. Juno seems able to conflate, in her divine epistemological omnipotence, cause and effect, crime and punishment.24 The most provocative instance of the phenomenon concerns the return of Hercules from the underworld. At 47–52 Juno testifies to some of Hercules’ achievements: effregit ecce limen inferni Iovis et opima victi regis ad superos refert. parum est reverti, foedus umbrarum perit: 23

24

The rapid succession of the two moments in which Juno foreshadows Hercules’ attack (67: iter ruina quaeret) and actually sees it happen (74: quaerit ad superos viam) provides a pertinent instance of what has been dubbed ‘temporal compression’ (Zwierlein (1966) 29). This and similar passages (see Tro. 351–2) are offered by Zwierlein as evidence that the tragedies were not performed, since the author broke away from the conventions of a realistic treatment of time. In Greek tragedy, he notices, the arrival of characters on the scene is always carefully arranged in such a way that a reasonable amount of time elapses between the decision to summon them and their appearance, while a text written for recitation rather than performance, he argues, would be less interested in preserving a strictly realistic arrangement of time, and such ‘compressions’ could be easily glossed over in the audience’s imagination. I agree with Calder (1970) that recitation increases, rather than reduces, the need for clarification in such passages, while pauses on the stage could easily be filled by different means. See Braden (1985) 48.


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vidi ipsa, vidi nocte discussa inferum et Dite domito spolia iactantem patri fraterna. See, he has broken through the gates of nether Jove, and brings spoils of triumph over that conquered king back to the upper world. It is not enough to return: the terms governing the shades have been breached. With my own eyes I watched him, after he had shattered the gloom of the underworld and subdued Dis, as he showed off to his father spoils won from that father’s brother.

The hero has already left Erebus dragging Cerberus with him, and has flaunted to Jupiter the victory he obtained against the god’s own brother (51–2). Hercules, however, is still described as inhabiting the underworld at the opening of act 2, and he will not proceed upwards until line 520, when Amphytrion exclaims (520–3): cur subito labant agitata motu templa? cur mugit solum? infernus imo sonuit e fundo fragor. audimur! est est sonitus Herculei gradus.25 Why is the shrine rocking and shaking with sudden movement? Why is the earth rumbling? A thunderous noise comes from the depths, from the underworld. We are heard! It is the sound of Hercules’ step.

The choral ode that begins immediately after this remark seems to occupy the time needed by Hercules to complete his ascent: at the beginning of act 3 his initial words are consistent with the notion that he has just reemerged from the underworld. In this instance it is difficult to assume that at 47–51 Juno is simply foreshadowing future events, since she takes care to insist, by the emphatic repetition of vidi, that she has already seen Hercules’ return.26 Here, again, there is a strong suggestion that the prologue covers all the events up to Hercules’ bout of madness (which in the play will begin at 926), and that at the beginning of act 2 we turn back to a moment in time when he is still in the underworld. The unfolding of Hercules’ return is further complicated by Theseus’ remarks at 813–21, where he harks back to the span of time covered by the second choral ode27 and informs Amphitryon that Hercules had 25

26

27

Shelton ((1978) 20–1) suggests that the same treatment of dramatic time applies to yet another instance. In her opening speech Juno provides a detailed analysis of the psychological processes which will lead Hercules to his final, self-defeating ordeal. This is a case, however, where it is quite appropriate to suspect that Juno is simply foreshadowing future events thanks to a more comprehensive form of knowledge. The anaphora of vidi is usually referred to events (often of a cruel nature) actually witnessed by the speaker. In Seneca’s tragedies see Her. F. 254–7; Tro. 170 (vidi ipse, vidi); Ag. 656 with Tarrant (1976) 294; Her. O. 207. See Hansen (1934) 40. An influential model must have been Virg. Aen. 2.499–501. Wagenvoort (1933) 177.

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returned with a reluctant Cerberus to the mouth of the river Tenarus, not to Thebes. The latter detail, though consistent with the internal chronology of events once we accept the proleptic nature of Juno’s prologue, seems to contrast with Amphitryon’s words at 520–3, provided that we assign them a specific topographical function.28 In any event, Theseus’ narrative also disrupts the expected overlap between the level of the story and the level of the plot, albeit one which is made acceptable by its insertion in a rhesis. Regardless of whether Juno is a vatic character, or whether the prologue really covers a temporal expanse which successive phases of the tragedy will repeat, as the curtain rises on the first act the audience will inevitably experience the anxious feeling of déjà vu. Juno’s words do not simply anticipate the course of events described in the tragedy, but offer a number of specific details which will make those events, as they actually ‘happen’ for the spectators, repeat a masterplot they already know, hence disrupting the linear arrangement of events which is a cardinal feature of dramatic texts. Juno’s words do not describe reality as much as they in fact create it: she envisages Hercules’ challenge, and – behold – the challenge really takes place shortly thereafter. In this respect she embodies the creative power of the author, and the plot that she conceives is the tragedy which happens. This is one more metadramatic feature of the prologue, which functions as a preliminary, superordinate phase of the play, encompassing the rest of the drama from a superior, proleptic viewpoint which replicates the author’s perspective. The limited examples I have presented show a treatment of dramatic time which emphatically breaks away from the linear structure that is consistently observed as the norm in ancient drama. By creating a framework in which certain sections of the play appear to revolve back to a point in time that has already been treated, and by substituting iteration for linearity, these tragedies make repetition an essential modality of tragic representation. By emphasizing repetition and serialization, the tragedy produces a strong alienating effect.29 This alienation is largely determined by the conspicuous short-circuiting of a literary canon whose rules had so far been scrupulously observed 28

29

I agree with Caviglia ((1979) 238), who rightly argues against the suggestion that line 523 or even the whole section 520–3 should be deleted because they contradict 813–17; see Leo (1878–79) 375 and Lindskog (1897) ii. 41. Fitch (1987) 252 argues that ‘[a]s elsewhere, Sen[eca] is ignoring consistency in favor of immediate dramatic impact’. I will discuss in the next chapter how these alienating structures impact on the audience.


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(at least, I should add, this is how it appears).30 The treatment of internal time is one of the most radical ways in which tragedy and epic can be differentiated, because creative manipulation of the temporal links between events is widespread in epic. The importing of typically epic narrative techniques into a dramatic text inevitably produces a jarring effect. Epic, with its complex, multiple plot-lines, had explored early in its development the possibility of narrating simultaneous events in a linear scheme. Homer, here as elsewhere, proposed a solution and imposed a rule. Simultaneous events would have to be separated and juxtaposed, arranged serially one after the other.31 Virgil, too, exploits the potential of linear arrangement, creating in his poem a complex web of temporal intersections which are essential to an understanding of the narrative.32 One should resist the temptation to read the development of this aspect of epic technique as the progressive complication of a supposedly ‘simple’ archetype (Homer), and to detect in Virgil the first symptoms of narrative ‘disorders’ magnified by his ‘Silver’ successors; in this particular instance, however, it is in Ovid that we find the first extended, systematic deviation from the recognized decorum of temporal linearity.33 Ovid extensively explores the signifying value of a fragmented and often confusing representation of time. His use of ¯ and prolepsis ¯ transcends the limited function that they have in the analepsis Aeneid, where they are rather rigidly controlled by the internal narrator(s), and become a pervasive feature of the text, poised to exploit the interplay of different narrative times to the full. If the Heroides stand as a particularly effective example of this technique,34 the Metamorphoses complicate and 30

31

32

33

34

We do not know enough, in this respect as in others, about post-classical drama, and it is reasonable to assume that significant variations in the treatment of time did occur. It is unlikely, however, that Seneca could have found a direct model for his treatment of dramatic time. See Stanley (1993) 6: ‘Like the Homeric sentence, Homeric narrative presents an ongoing series in which each successive action seems at first glance to receive equal status – just as time, in direct narrative, generally moves forward in an uninterrupted flow in which even simultaneous events seem to be treated as a linear sequence.’ The phenomenon was first described by Zielinski (1901), hence the definition ‘Zielinski’s law’ (on which see the reservations of Rengakos (1995)). The most recent and exhaustive treatment is offered by Stanley (1993), especially 6–9, 153–5 and, for further bibliography, 306, nn. 18–19. See also Whitman and Scodel (1981) and Janko (1992) 150–1. On the use of interea in the Aeneid see Reinmuth (1933). As Heinze ((1928) 306, n. 31) remarks, this is a case of ‘loose’ use of interea, which approximately equals ‘now’. But the ambiguities, as Heinze points out, remain. Three books of the Aeneid (5, 10 and 11) have interea in the first line, but only in 5.1 does the meaning ‘meanwhile’ appear to be fully active. See Harrison (1991) 58 and Kinsey (1979) 263–4. On Ovid’s treatment of time see now Feeney (1999) and Zissos and Gildenhard (1999). Virgil can also be seen to experiment with chronology: see Heinze (1928) 305 for a discussion of ‘how difficult [Virgil] found it to deal with [ . . . ] simultaneous actions’. It need hardly be remarked that the ‘simplicity’ attributed to Homer is little more than convenient shorthand. See the fine discussion in A. Barchiesi (1992) 16–19.

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muddle the temporal linearity established at the beginning35 to such an extent that they end up offering what we might call a ‘cubist’ representation of time.36 It is tempting to assume that Ovid’s sustained engagement with temporal (dis)continuity is a metaliterary register of his posteriority. ‘Going back’ in literary time – as Ovid does in his intertextual dialogues – becomes one of the ways in which the text performs its ideological negotiation of the past. (In the next chapter I will attempt to situate intertextuality within the painful, oppressive ideology of the past that Senecan tragedies seem to privilege.37 ) In epic, the narrator’s boundless power facilitates the organization of complex temporal structures into a clear, intelligible arrangement. Theatre, on the other hand, was bound to the rule of the hic et nunc, to Aristotle’s dictum that it should be made up of actions, not of stories,38 and that narrative interventions should be limited to specific, self-contained loci such as the messengers’ speeches. The temporal discontinuities that we have observed are evident enough to elicit an active interpretative gesture from the audience, yet subtle enough to dawn on us only gradually. For instance, the Fury’s speech in the prologue to Thyestes contains internal discrepancies that should alert the audience to the fact that there are – at the very least – different modes of perceiving time, and that to rely exclusively on the notion of linear, unidirectional movement is perhaps inappropriate. But it is only as Atreus’ own speech unfolds in the following act that the audience is made to recognize a number of striking parallels between the two characters, and to note the causal relationship between their utterances and actions. At an even later stage – when, for instance, Atreus voices for a third time the refrain bene est, abunde est – we perceive both the internal correlations between causes and events and the imperfectly linear structure of time that subtends them. If this deconstruction of linear narrative structures can never compare to its much more intense modern counterparts, a comparison with the latter retains nonetheless a considerable heuristic value, as I will show in the next chapter. What we can certainly say about the structure of Thyestes is that, once we perceive the repetition of a key phrase in a specific moment of the dramatic action, we are inevitably gripped by a sensation of déjà vu, coupled with the realization that – again – we have been moving backwards. The Fury herself, it should be noted again, 35 36

37

See Ludwig (1965) 56. Fasti, too, are obviously engaged in the treatment of time, juxtaposing discordant scenes which twist and turn below the surface of temporal linearity. The most stimulating recent readings of the poem are A. Barchiesi (1994) and Newlands (1995). 38 Poetics 1449b26. See below, pp. 221ff.


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reversed through a well-trodden literary background that is prominently inhabited by Euripides and Virgil. In Thyestes, the upsetting effect of such a sensation stems primarily from the denial of meaningful closure encoded in the structure of the prologue and in its relationship with the rest of the play. Not only does the prologue tear open wounds which its most prominent model, the Aeneid , had struggled hard to heal (or, at least, to give the consoling illusion of doing so), but it fashions, in its compact brevity, the illusion that the new ordeal can be concluded swiftly, if not altogether painlessly; in other words, the illusion that the audience could be treated this time only to the superhuman level of deliberations without having to face in excruciating detail the actual unfolding of events: imagine the second half of the Aeneid with only divine meetings, and no battles. But the closural sign which brings the Fury’s speech to an end is also rapidly exposed as illusional. The tragedy starts all over again in Atreus’ chambers, and this time we are going to see it all, in its horrific, unabridged version. To deny closure means that everything will happen again and again, that regression will know no end. The denial of closure encoded in the contrast between the apparently final ending of the inner level of the plot and the emphatically open finale of the play as a whole turns out to be anticipated at its beginning, too.39 In Thyestes, the non-linear organization of dramatic time and the complex framing structure of the play as a whole allegorize the force of regressive repetition which can be seen as the tragedy’s driving dynamic. Indeed, regression, at different levels and in different guises, is arguably the single most relevant operating principle of Thyestes – and of Senecan tragedy. If the prologue encompasses in its short frame a much larger portion of the tragic action, then we are bound to perceive the successive stages of the play, in which the actions unfold one by one, as a repetitive, regressive exploration of an already accomplished misdeed. There is no progression in the play: from the end of the prologue onwards, the tragedy is trapped in the repetitive exploration of the consequences of Tantalus’ pollution. The plot of Thyestes, we realize, is bent backwards, not forwards: it does not aspire to the consoling sense of progress crowned by final resolution, to reach a meaningful point of closure. The lack of closure inscribed in the end of Thyestes, with its call to further revenge, and therefore to further engagement with the past, mirrors the illusory closure of the prologue and highlights the overall regressive movement of the plot. 39

See above, pp. 61ff.

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Atreus, the protagonist of the play, embodies the enduring pleasures and pains of memory. His overarching goal throughout the tragedy is to avenge past wounds, and his conduct allegorizes the virtues of memory, even obsessive memory. His superiority vis-à-vis Thyestes is based on the fact that, unlike his brother, he firmly believes that the past cannot and will not be erased. Thyestes is tricked into thinking that Atreus has finally forgotten the slights he has endured and is ready to turn a new page in their relationship. His dogged determination proves that the past cannot be undone, and its memory lives on to determine future actions. But Atreus knows no forgetting. While his revenge in the play could be construed as a means to actively reshape the past (this time, after all, Atreus will win), he is the first to recognize, both during the play and, most emphatically, at its end, that the spiral of revenge and counter-revenge cannot find a final resting place, and that even his current victory must be seen in the light of a cyclical arrangement of history. Prevented from moving forward, Thyestes is condemned to oscillate between returning to and returning from. The future, if we can now call it that, promises only the repetition of a well-known pattern: as Thyestes consummates his revenge, he will merely repeat once more the fixed script which holds his whole family hostage. iii Repetition and regression sustain the dramatic tension in Troades. Pained reflections on the hopes and despairs of repetition loom large throughout the tragedy and especially in two crucially important scenes, the altercation between Agamemnon and Pyrrhus in act 2 and the dramatic confrontation between Andromache and Ulixes in act 4.40 But the tragedy also engages its audience in a complex evaluation of the effect and nature of repetition from the point of view of dramatic structure. Troades has long been considered to mark Seneca’s resignation to a loose structure with very limited attempts at a unified plot. The result, not unpredictably, has been explained mainly on the basis of the unsuccessful mixture of disparate Greek sources, compounded by the bold, but confusing, decision to unite in one play the fates of Polyxena and Astyanax.41 I propose to set aside for the moment a 40 41

In my reading of Troades I have found Fantham’s (1982) and Boyle’s (1994) commentaries very valuable, and the articles by Schetter (1965) and Owen (1970) particularly useful. On sources see Fantham (1982) 50–75 and Calder (1970). Although I do not agree with Calder’s strictures on the play as a whole, his analysis of the Greek models is excellent. On the lack of unity cf. Zwierlein (1966) 91.


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discussion of the play’s structure, and to concentrate instead on the role that repetition plays in its thematic texture. Even before Pyrrhus appears on the stage, the Greek messenger Talthybius has introduced into the play, with a sinister Ringkomposition, the tragic spectre of a previous mora, one infamously brought to an end by the sacrifice of Iphigenia. The Greeks, stranded at Troy by bad weather, are poised to repeat a well-known pattern of delay (164–5): o longa Danais semper in portu mora, seu petere bellum, petere seu patriam volunt. O that there is always this long delay in harbour for the Greeks, whether they will set out for war, or set out for their homeland.

Pyrrhus urges the leader of the Greek army to honour his dead father, Achilles, by sacrificing Polyxena, who had already been promised to him. The sacrifice would represent a decisive victory of the past over the present in more ways than one. It is, literally, a request coming from the underworld.42 Pyrrhus does not seem to be aware of that, but Achilles’ ghost had appeared to Talthybius, as we hear in the first scene of act 2, and had demanded that the Greeks respect their promise: otherwise he will prevent their departure, and their return home (Achilles could count on his mother’s help). Moreover, it is a request made in the name of past practices whose value Pyrrhus readily accepts despite Agamemnon’s tormented doubts: it is, in many senses, a re-enactement of the dispute that dominates the Iliad from its very beginning. The last words of Pyrrhus’ impassioned speech foreground the traditional nature of his request, and the tragic precedent that Agamemnon should keep in mind (248–9): at tuam gnatam parens Helenae immolasti: solita iam et facta expeto. But as father you slaughtered your own daughter for Helen: I ask for things now customary and with precedent.

Agamemnon’s rebuttal shows that he has undergone a significant transformation during the war, and especially at its end. To him, a simple repetition of past patterns of behaviour does not seem to make any sense. His position is based on a series of compassionate, rationalistic assumptions which question the appeal to tradition that is powerfully voiced by Pyrrhus. We find Agamemnon, here, impersonating the voice of resistance to the evils 42

The underworld as home of the dead who successfully impose their rule on the upper world is a symbol for the past. See the crucial evocation at the heart of Oedipus, above, pp. 8ff.

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of tragedy – to its nefas – precisely like Tantalus’ shadow or the satelles in Thyestes. In fact Agamemnon goes as far as stating that he would have liked to prevent the destruction of Troy (279), and, in any event, that enough, more than enough punishment has already been dealt out: (exactum satis | poenarum et ultra est, 286–7). Unlike most of his counterparts in Thyestes or other plays (the satelles, Phaedra’s nurse . . .), however, Agamemnon is a prominent character with a well-defined past from which he now tries to free himself. Unlike Tantalus’ ghost, who is loath to engage in new crimes (Thy. 86–7), but whose psychology is only defined in terms of rather simple oppositions, Agamemnon articulates in detail his psychological evolution.43 Irresistibly, though, Agamemnon is ensnared in the discourse of the past that is advocated by his opponent. The insults that Pyrrhus and Agamemnon start exchanging at line 336 are focused on their past: both look to it for compelling explanations of what they are doing – or what they should be doing. Agamemnon, of course, must yield, and he does so abruptly by promising to heed Calchas’ orders (351–2: potius interpres deum | Calchas vocetur: fata si poscent, dabo, ‘rather let Calchas, the spokesman of the gods, be called: if the Fates demand it I will grant the sacrifice’). The seer establishes at the very beginning of his response the connection between the present predicament of the Greeks and their bloody past (360–70): dant fata Danais quo solent pretio viam: mactanda virgo est Thessali busto ducis; sed quo iugari Thessalae cultu solent Ionidesve vel Mycenaeae nurus, Pyrrhus parenti coniugem tradat suo: sic rite dabitur. non tamen nostras tenet haec una puppes causa: nobilior tuo, Polyxene, cruore debetur cruor. quem fata quaerunt, turre de summa cadat Priami nepos Hectoreus et letum oppetat. tum mille velis impleat classis freta. The fates grant a way to the Greeks at their customary price: the virgin must be sacrificed on the tomb of the Thessalian leader; but in the costume that is worn for marriage by brides of Thessaly or Ionia or Mycenae. Let Pyrrhus present her as wife to his father: thus she will be properly given in marriage. But this is not the only cause that detains our ships: a blood more noble than your blood is owed, Polyxena. Let him whom the fates demand, the child of Hector, grandson of Priam, 43

On the character of Agamemnon see Anliker (1960) 65 and Schetter (1965) 401, with further bibliography (and diagnoses ranging from ‘weakness’ to ‘noble humanity’).


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fall from the highest tower and so meet his death. Then let the fleet cover the sea with a thousand sails.

These lines exploit verbal repetition as the iconic correlate of the repetition that Calchas advocates: solent occurs twice (360, 362),44 and so does fata (360, 368). The polyptoton cruore . . . cruor (367) further reinforces the effect. Repetition, moreover, stresses the ritual nature of Calchas’ order. In fact, his order that the sacrifice of Iphigenia be re-enacted specifies also that it proceed with all due respect for religious ritual: Polyxena’s death, masked as a wedding, will thus be a perfect repetition of Iphigenia’s murder and will testify further to the disturbing connection between ritual and murder which can be identified in other parts of the Senecan corpus.45 It is also worth stressing the dramatic effectiveness of Calchas’ concise intervention, which is similar to the dialogue between Creon and Tiresias in Sophocles’ Antigone,46 but which by its very brevity elides any space for discussion: it is, in all senses, a final and irrevocable decree.47 Atreus’ obsession with a maius nefas draws attention, as I remarked earlier,48 to the fact that any repetition of nefas is necessarily worse than its precedent. This obsession finds a novel incarnation in Calchas’ unexpected order that the Greeks sacrifice not just Polyxena, but Astyanax, too. This particular combination of horrors is especially striking because nothing in the plot so far has led the audience to expect Calchas’ request: indeed, there seems to be no precedent in the tragic tradition for combining in this manner the fates of the two Trojan youths. It is a development, however, which stands out as a direct, emphatic rebuttal to Agamemnon’s statement that ‘more than enough punishment has been exacted already’ (286–7): Calchas shows that more can be asked for, and more can be obtained.49 It is important to notice that Calchas is acting here as the structural counterpart of the Fury in Thyestes: his appeal to fata (360, 368) perversely parallels her reliance on furor. Both forces are responsible for the continuation of nefas in the face of moderation and restraint, and their connection disrupts any rigid opposition we might have counted on so far. The voice of fata appears to be steeped in the cruel repetition of the past and is as 44

45 47 48 49

Although in a different perspective (that of tracing elements of rhetorical colour), Leo (1878–79) 149–55 has very interesting remarks on Seneca’s use of soleo. See Tarrant (1976) 208, and above, p. 27. On iconic repetition in general, Wills (1996) 6–7 and passim. 46 Calder (1970) 76. On Atreus’ ordo sacri see above, pp. 85ff. As Braden ((1985) 37) aptly remarks: ‘Senecan dialogue is not an exchange of news or feeling, but a test of [the contestants’] self-possession.’ See above, p. 95. Schetter ((1965) 408) rightly emphasizes the central importance of Calchas’ words in the structure of the play.

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complicit with the forces of the underworld as the furor it would supposedly counteract: the voice of fata, we should remember, coincides with the dark menaces uttered by Achilles’ ghost from Acheron. The contrast between Calchas’ brief speech (his only presence on the stage) and the following choral ode, which contains a remarkable number of Epicurean reflections on the nature of death, highlights the deceiving rationality of fata. The chorus’s rationalistic doubts about afterlife seem to present both an apt continuation of Agamemnon’s speech, with which they share a sense of scepticism and uncertainty, and a tentative reassessment of the relationship between life and fate. Thus the chorus picks up both on Talthybius’ appearance, which stressed the need for Polyxena’s sacrifice, and on Agamemnon’s own doubts about this solution. The chorus’s Epicurean overtones stand in complete contrast to earlier choral lyrics, a structural problem which would deserve separate, detailed consideration. Here it will suffice to say that the contrast between Calchas and the chorus inevitably portrays the seer’s words as belonging to the vatum terriloqua dicta criticized by Lucretius immediately after his depiction of Iphigenia’s death:50 both in De rerum natura and in Troades the sacrifice of Iphigenia is invested with enormous paradigmatic importance. The moral balance of the story is at this point painfully clear: Agamemnon’s resistance to the invariable pattern of repetition is brutally cut short by Calchas and, quite literally, silenced forever at the end of act 2. Repetition will dominate in its most literal, obsessive form, as the apparently endless replica of past nefas. Agamemnon’s suggestion that a radical modification of the past could represent a valid alternative to this pattern – and to the plot of the tragedy – is rejected outright. In revolving around Achilles’ wrath over Polyxena, Troades as a whole represents a re-enactment of the archetypal menis-epic, the Iliad. In this, as in other Senecan plays, revenge – retribution for deeds and obligations long past – becomes the most reliable guarantee of tragedy, since it imposes a cycle of actions which can never stray from its archetypal model and can never alter significantly the psychological profile of the characters or the actual course of events they inevitably choose. Thus revenge encodes both the supreme power of the past over present and future, and the very essence of this form of literary production, in that it provides the masterplot which the author must follow while also clearing space for his creative innovation. Andromache’s actions, no less than those of her Greek foes, are motivated by the spell of the past. As she enters the play in act 3, she retells the 50

De rerum natura 1.102–3.


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appearance of Hector’s shadow in exact parallel to Talthybius’ report about Achilles’s ghost in act 2. Although Hector’s message is helpful,51 it shows nonetheless the cognitive subordination of the living to the dead: Achilles and Hector know more, and they can enforce other people’s behaviour. In this respect, the appearance of Hector stands as an immediate denial of the chorus’s latest reflections on the non-existence of the afterlife. But Hector’s appearance is intrinsically fraught with ambiguity: while it is ostensibly geared to prevent a repetition, in the case of Astyanax, of his own tragic fate, it visibly embodies repetition as it alludes to Hector’s archetypal appearance in the second book of the Aeneid (270–97). Thus the stage is set for the inevitable, and pointed, contrast between the results brought about by the two apparitions: while Virgil’s Hector will succeed in saving Aeneas and will thus ensure the Trojans a future that is significantly different from their past, he will be denied any such success in the Troades, where, it seems, the only permitted form of repetition is ad litteram. Andromache repeatedly voices her hope of a ‘Virgilian’ future for her son. As a new Hector, futurus Hector in Ulixes’ words (551), he will be able to build a new Troy and take revenge against the Greeks (469–74): o nate sero Phrygibus, o matri cito, eritne tempus illud ac felix dies quo Troici defensor et vindex soli recidiva ponas Pergama et sparsos fuga cives reducas, nomen et patriae suum Phrygibusque reddas?52 Dear son, born too late for the Trojans, too soon for your mother, will that time come and that blessed day when you, as defender and avenger of the Trojan land, will found a Troy renewed, and bring back your people scattered in exile, giving back its name to your country and your Phrygians?

Recidiva Pergama directly alludes to an idea which, with different overtones, is central to the Trojans’ negotiation of their past destruction and future hopes in the Aeneid.53 For Ulixes, of course, the possibility that Astyanax will in fact avenge his country represents a compelling reason to kill him now: thus repetition inevitably displays, once more, its dark, negative potential. The solution that Andromache devises in order to save her son grimly foreshadows the eventual outcome of her efforts: she hides Astyanax in 51 52 53

A contrast especially emphasized by Schetter (1965) 409. The theme is further elaborated in 659–61, 771–85. The iunctura occurs at Aen. 4.344, 7.322, 10.58.

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Hector’s tomb, and her envoy expresses the distressing ambiguity of the solution (519–21):54 dehisce tellus, tuque, coniunx, ultimo specu revulsam scinde tellurem et Stygis sinu profundo conde depositum meum. Earth, open up, and you, dear husband, rend the earth away from its farthest cavern and bury my dear treasure in the deep gulf of Styx.

Hope of future salvation is sought in the ultimate embodiment of the past – a grave – which literally swallows Andromache’s hope for the future:55 in a similarly poignant scene at the end of the tragedy, Polyxena’s blood is sucked up by the thirsty soil covering Achilles’ grave; hence Achilles establishes with an undisputed sense of finality his right over the slain maiden (1162–4): non stetit fusus cruor humove summa fluxit: obduxit statim saevusque totum sanguinem tumulus bibit. The spilled blood did not stay or float on the surface of the ground: but the mound instantly swallowed and savagely drained dry all the blood.

Thyestes, too, realizes at the end of his ordeal that he has become a monstrous coffin for his children: genitor en natos premo | premorque natis (‘I, the father, overwhelm my sons, and by my sons am overwhelmed’, Thy. 1050–1).56 Andromache’s final words find a disturbing, almost verbatim parallel in two other Senecan passages. Oedipus employs the very same words when he is finally made aware of the fact that he is the sinner (Oed. 864–8): o e. si ferus videor tibi et impotens, parata vindicta in manu est: dic vera: quisnam? quove generatus patre? qua matre genitus? ph. coniuge est genitus tua. o e. dehisce, tellus . . . o e. If I seem harsh to you, and out of control, revenge is in your hands; speak the truth: who is he? of what father begotten? of what mother born? ph . Born of your wife. o e. Open up, earth! 54 55 56

The image realizes what in Thyestes is a perverse metaphor: Thyestes is the ‘tomb’ of his children, and they can be buried, paradoxically, only if he is cremated and buried himself (1090–2). Almost certainly a Senecan innovation; see Schetter (1965) 418, n. 8. On the association of tombs with kleos, and the literary implications of this connection, see Goldhill (1991) 120–2. Lines 1050–1 fulfil Atreus’ vow at 890–1: pergam et implebo patrem | funere suorum. Accius had been even more explicit: natis sepulchro ipse est parens (226 Ribbeck2 = 57 Dangel).


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The revelation of incest is met by the desire to hide in the depths of the earth, to return to it. As we will see presently, Andromache’s decision to have Astyanax hide in Hector’s tomb is fraught with upsetting resonances connected with incest and adultery: the Oedipal connection certainly intensifies them.57 And Phaedra, too, at the end of her tragedy, wants to disappear into the depths of the earth (Phaed. 1238–9): dehisce tellus, recipe me dirum chaos, recipe . . . Open up, earth, receive me, dread Chaos, take me back . . .

Even more striking, however, is the hallucinated internal debate about the fate of Hector’s tomb which torments Andromache at Troades 642–62. As she probes her feelings, Ulixes informs her that since Astyanax is reportedly dead,58 the only way in which the Greeks can perform the requested ritual purification that is essential for their departure is by tearing down Hector’s tomb. In a harrowing aside Andromache weighs the alternative – whether she ought to preserve her husband’s tomb or save her son’s life. The alternative, of course, simply does not exist: if the Greeks tore down the tomb, both Hector’s remains and Astyanax would be destroyed. Yet Andromache desperately clings to the distinction, as she tries to preserve the contrast between past and future which has been an essential component of her thinking all along. As she inclines towards saving the tomb, she desperately wants to spare Hector a repetition of his fate: better to see Astyanax thrown from a tower than Hector killed once again (653–5): potero, perpetiar, feram, dum non meus post fata victoris manu iactetur Hector. I will be able, I will endure and bear it, so long as my dear Hector is not abused after his death by the victor’s violence.

Later she realizes that saving her son means saving a chance of a different future: serva e duobus, anime, quem Danai timent (‘my heart, of those two, save the one the Greeks fear’, 662). But there is no real possibility of choice, and Andromache finally must admit to the harsh truth which 57

58

On the connection between womb and tomb in Seneca see Robin (1993) 110–11 and, in general, duBois (1988) 54. Racine’s Andromaque explores more fully the intricate set of erotic and sexual implications that are tentatively suggested in Seneca: the plot itself, of course, hinges on romance. A particularly poignant confession is registered at line 279, where Andromaque declares, referring to Astyanax, that ‘il m’aurait tenu lieu d’un père et d’un e´poux’ – alluding to Il. 6.429–30. So Andromache had claimed at 594–7.

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for the audience has ironically been clear all along. Ulixes’ trick has in fact obliterated any distinction between past and future for her: utrimque est Hector (659), there is no choice between preserving the memory of the past and rescuing the seed of future revenge. Andromache’s ineffectual debate poignantly underlines a truth that the play has already upheld not once, but several times, namely that the only movement allowed by fata is a repetition bound to keep as close as possible to its model. If anything, Andromache’s inconsequential emotional struggle shows that she herself is ultimately more inclined to preserve the past than to give the future a chance. After all, by asking Astyanax to come out of his shelter, and by leaving him at the mercy of Ulixes (Andromache and the senex had deliberated at length on the danger of the situation, and Hector’s ghost had been extremely clear in this respect) she chooses the only option that could guarantee the preservation of her husband’s tomb. A reading of these conflicting allegiances can naturally enough be expanded into an analysis of the emotional intricacies of Andromache’s character, especially in the light of what might appropriately be dubbed a significative lapsus at line 501. Before committing a reluctant Astyanax to his frightful refuge, Andromache invokes Hector’s protection: ‘Hector, keep safe the stolen treasure of your loving wife, and with trusty ashes welcome him so that he may live’ (Hector, tuere: coniugis furtum piae | serva et fideli cinere victurum excipe, 501–2). Coniugis furtum is a surprising definition which the oxymoronic addition of piae (and fidelis in the following line) does nothing to tame: it still refers, in no uncertain terms, to adultery.59 Thus, even if we set aside the tense Oedipal implications to which Andromache effectively draws our attention with these unguarded words, it is plausible to infer that she is thinking here that her ploy to save Astyanax – victurus – constitutes a betrayal of sorts of her dead husband. By committing her son to her husband’s grave, Andromache vicariously and perversely fulfils a wish which is well known to lovers, classical and otherwise: that they might be joined together in death.60 The spell of the past, it seems, holds hostage even the one character in the play who seems to be generally sincere, if not without a degree of ambiguity, in her desire to guarantee ¯ of her son and her country a different, better future. The tomb, the sema epic honour and the symbol of epic grandeur (here charged with a gesture towards elegiac wish fulfilment), violently encodes in the drama of Andromache the demands – both tragic and appealing – of the past. Determined to save Hector’s tomb, Andromache echoes her Virgilian counterpart. In 59

Cf. Fantham (1982) 288.

60

Ov. Met. 4.157, with Bömer ad loc.


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the third book of the Aeneid she is recognized by Aeneas while she offers a libation to Hector’s empty grave, an ‘empty tomb’ (tumulus inanis, 3.304) which seals her unwavering determination to live in the past, in a miniature Troy built around a ‘false’ Simoenta (3.302: falsi Simoentis ad undam).61 Against Andromache stands the unwavering request of immutability and repetition, voiced in different guises by Pyrrhus, Calchas and Ulixes, even as the latter proclaims that killing Astyanax is necessary in order to avoid a new Trojan war:62 as the protagonists who catalyze the string of events which constitute the tragedy, they also embody the narrative progress of the play and guarantee its successful arrival at an end, of a sort. But they advocate an apparent progression which ultimately results in the denial of meaningful change, and strives in fact to assure that no substantial change will ever occur. Even Astyanax’s physical appearance is moulded by the spell of the past: he greatly resembles his father; indeed, too much to give him any hope of a happy future, or to keep at bay the incestuous undertones of Andromache’s feelings (Sen. Tro. 646–8).63 This similarity, which Euripides had briefly remarked upon (Eur. Tro. 1178–81), is especially magnified in Troades (461–8): o nate, magni certa progenies patris, spes una Phrygibus, unica afflictae domus, veterisque suboles sanguinis nimium inclita nimiumque patri similis. hos vultus meus habebat Hector, talis incessu fuit habituque talis, sic tulit fortes manus, sic celsus umeris, fronte sic torva minax cervice fusam dissipans iacta comam. Dear child, true offspring of a mighty father, sole hope of Troy and of your shattered family, scion of an old race, too glorious and too like your father; these were my dear Hector’s features; he was like this in his walk and in his bearing; he held his gallant hands just so; just so he carried his shoulders high and seemed to threaten with frowning brow, shaking his streaming hair with the toss of his neck.

Only later do we discover why Astyanax is nimium . . . similis to his father. Seneca departs from the tradition according to which the boy is buried on 61 62

63

See also Andromache’s reaction to the appearance of Aeneas, which seems to be echoed in 3.310–12: ‘verane te facies, verus mihi nuntius adfers, | nate dea? vivisne? aut, si lux alma recessit, | Hector ubi est?’ Owen ((1970) 130) argues that ‘to the present victor belong the future and the power’, which is certainly true at the immediate level of action witnessed in the play. But it is important to remark that the future that Ulixes has in sight is essentially a repetition of the past. Compare Phaedra’s comments about Hippolytus’ close resemblance to his father as a youth at Phaed . 646–8.

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Hector’s shield,64 and he has the messenger describe in graphic detail the complete destruction of his body after the fall from the tower (1111–17):65 ossa disiecta et gravi elisa casu; signa clari corporis, et ora et illas nobiles patris notas, confundit imam pondus ad terram datum; soluta cervix silicis impulsu, caput ruptum cerebro penitus expresso – iacet deforme corpus. His bones are fragmented and crushed by the violent fall, his weight cast down to the earth below blurs the features of his noble body, his face and those lineaments of his glorious father; his neck is broken by the impact of the flint, his head split open and the brain squeezed out from inside – the body lies there a shapeless horror.

It is at this point that Andromache interrupts the messenger and sees that her hopes are to be cruelly realized: Astyanax will follow in his father’s footsteps only in the most gruesome of senses – ‘in this, too, he is like his father’ (sic quoque est similis patri, 1117).66 One more scene embodies the power of repetition in a perversely effective way. In the fourth act of the play Helen reflects alone on her involvement with marriages that are destined to be ‘unhappy’ and ‘sorrowful’ (861: funestus, inlaetabilis). She is referring, of course, not only to the devastating long-term consequences of her wedding, but more specifically to the nefas which opens the Trojan expedition, the sacrifice of Iphigenia. Her aside (861–71a) declares her completely self-conscious nature as a character who is aware both of the moral implications of her actions and of the literary background to which she is inevitably connected. Dismemberment is, of course, a disturbingly common feature of Senecan death, as, for that matter, of other first-century authors.67 As the basic model of natural order, the body, dissected and scattered, is warped into the supreme emblem of disruption, and symbolizes a breaking down of spatial order which is germane to the dissolution of temporal linearity that I have been discussing so far. Sometimes a disjointed body, as in the case of 64 65

66 67

Eur. Tro. 1133ff.; see Enn. scen. 73 Ribbeck2 = 106–7 Jocelyn. Homer does not describe Hector’s dismemberment, but places enough emphasis on the damage that the corpse suffers because of Achilles’ cruelty: see Il. 22.396–404, and especially 401–3, which climax, as Seneca does, at the head. See also Virg. Aen. 1.483: ter circum Iliacos raptaverat Hectora muros. A poignant reversal of Catullus’ wish in 61.214: sit suo similis patri (cf. Procne’s words as she sees Itys, Ov. Met. 6.621–2: a! quam | es similis patri); Leigh (1995) 471. See especially Most (1992).


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Hippolytus, who is disfigured beyond recognition, aptly portrays the cracks in a reading of reality as a coherent, organic whole. The conflict between points of view and competing narratives, together with the weak causal links between acts and scenes, testifies to a pervasive epistemic quandary. How can we comprehend and represent a reality which has long ago lost firm internal points of view? How can we reconstruct a narrative which overcomes the puzzles and limitations of human understanding? In Theseus’ anguished question at the sight of his dismembered son – Hippolytus hic est? (Sen. Phaed. 1249) – we can infer a much larger question on the nature of representation and the understanding behind it. Reality, diffracted in a range of conflicting perspectives, escapes a unified approach, as if the very abundance of details (of ‘moments’) denies the possibility of a complete, immediate vision. Thus the threat that circularity and repression pose to the norms of continuity and linear progress is also played out in the spatial dimension of the tragedy. In the metonymic, often less than organic, segues that regulate the development of the play’s actions lies the intimation that the fundamental categories of perception must face a new reality, where the ‘natural’ order has been ripped up and replaced by an obsessive regression and return, where the present is menaced by the spell of the past (as represented by a literary heritage). So much so, in fact, that only individual moments survive, arranging themselves in erratic, shifting structures. Spatially, the fundamental inversion of ‘above’ and ‘below’ fatally connects upper world and underworld, and inverts their traditional hierarchy. This is not, however, the only instance of spatial disruption. Troades, for instance, by alternating scenes in the Trojan and Greek camps in direct succession, and using two different choruses (one of Trojan women, the other of Greek sailors),68 represents a reality torn between two competing, opposed points of view, and resists a uniform approach. Troades, it seems, can understand and express emotions and events only by partial, metonymic approximation. Gone is the illusion that a linear Aristotelian plot can ensure a united, coherent vision of events, and can signify a logical chain of causal connections. Events succeed each other in a less than orderly fashion, forcing the sometimes puzzled audience to reconstruct the relationship that glues them together. Considerable effort is required simply to understand the underlying structure of the plot. 68

In Hellenistic tragedy (Sifakis (1967) 113–26) and Senecan tragedy the chorus is no longer present uninterruptedly from beginning to end and might well have followed the Hellenistic practice of leaving the stage after each ode, thus making it possible for the scene to change and for time to elapse (Calder (1975), (1976–77) 6; Tarrant (1978) 221–8; Davis (1993) 11–38). On secondary choruses in classical Greek tragedy see Wilamowitz (1909) 116, n. 13; Lemmers (1931) esp. 131–42; and Carrière (1977); on Eur. Hipp. 58–71, see Barrett (1964) 167–8 and Taplin (1977) 230–8).

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Astyanax’s death is thus highly symbolic, as are the deaths of so many other children in Senecan tragedy. In Hercules furens, Troades, Medea, Phaedra and Thyestes, children are sacrificed to a regressive logic of revenge, punishment and furor. Their deaths testify to the overwhelming power of the past over the future. In this appalling elimination of potentiality, Senecan tragedy also overturns one of the main principles of epic narrative. Epic strives to construct a bridge between the past and a future that should normally be different from the past. In the Aeneid, for instance, it is Anchises who dies, leaving Aeneas (and Ascanius with him) free to construct his own new identity and that of his fellow citizens, once Trojans, soon to be Romans. It is remarkable that while Senecan tragedy adopts, as we have seen, distinct traces of epic discourse, it deprives it of any forwardlooking implication and constantly imposes its conflictual, gnomic, static perspective.69 iv Endowed with prophetic powers, Cassandra foresees a distortion of the linear continuity of time at the conclusion of her prophecy in Agamemnon; the king will die, Troy will be avenged (752–8): haec hodie ratis Phlegethontis atri regias animas vehet, victamque victricemque. vos, umbrae, precor, iurata superis unda, te pariter precor: reserate paulum terga nigrantis poli, levis ut Mycenas turba prospiciat Phrygum. spectate, miseri: fata se vertunt retro. Today this boat of dark Phlegethon will carry the royal souls, vanquished and vanquisher. I pray you, o shades, and equally I pray you, waters upon which the gods take their oath: for a little open up the cover of the dark world, that the insubstantial crowd of Phrygians may look at Mycenae. Look, poor souls: the fates turn backward on themselves.

Here, the opening of the gates of Acheron portends Cassandra’s desire that her fellow Trojans (although it is difficult to overlook the larger impact of spectate) see the breaking down of historical progression which had determined their demise: the decrees of fate seem to be turning backwards, and now it is time for the Greeks to suffer. Paradoxically, the prophetess is able 69

It is useful to compare this opposition with the different connotations of the main characters of Lucan’s Bellum Civile. While Caesar embodies epic discourse (winning, progressive, geared towards the future), Pompey (as Cato) gives voice to a tragic instance which hopelessly reverts to an irretrievable, vanquished past.


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to conjure up an image of the future course of events precisely because her eyes are turned backwards,70 in more senses than one (712–15): stetere vittae, mollis horrescit coma, anhela corda murmure incluso fremunt, incerta nutant lumina et versi retro torquentur oculi, rursus immoti rigent. Her fillets hang still, her soft hair rises in horror, her gasping heart rumbles with pent-up murmuring, her glance roams uncertainly, and her eyes, turned backwards, circle, then again stare unmoving.

Cassandra looks back to the past history of Troy, but by denying her eyes their normal forward-looking perspective, she also privileges a point of view which is the antithesis of the norm. She looks back,71 and she looks down, just as she hopes that dead Trojans will be allowed to look up from the underworld, another form of vision which is exceptional and unnatural. By looking back and down, Cassandra signals the arrival on stage of a reversal of fortune which transforms winners into losers, even if it does not manage to accomplish the opposite feat. Inspired by her underworldly furor, Cassandra sees more and better than anybody else, but the price to pay for her epistemological prowess is inscribed in her power’s dark, chthonic origin. The movement backwards, accordingly, has none of the empowering overtones that connote the archetypal reversal of the Trojans’ defeat elaborated in the Aeneid. Cassandra’s own death, pointedly linked to Agamemnon’s in the iunctura victamque victricemque (754), denies the possibility of escaping from the web of the past. Dying together, as the inhabitants of the underworld express their impotent, purely negative joy at Agamemnon’s demise, signals the regressive nature of their desire to repeat the past, albeit as winners. As Cassandra herself had desperately acknowledged, Troy is forever destroyed, and her prophetic abilities seem utterly pointless, since they have not been heeded when they should have been: ‘Now Troy has fallen – what have I, false prophetess, to do?’ (725: iam Troia cecidit – falsa quid vates agor?). At the very beginning of Agamemnon another character had testified to the regressive quality of backwards movements. As he dominates the prologue, Thyestes reflects that his incest has subverted the law of nature (34–6): versa natura est retro: avo parentem, pro nefas, patri virum, gnatis nepotes miscui – nocti diem. 70 71

See Tarrant (1976) 304 for parallel descriptions of frenzied ecstasy. On torqueo as a sign of frenzied anger see Hershkowitz (1998) 92–3.

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Nature has been turned backwards: I mixed father with grandfather – monstrous! – husband with father, grandsons with sons – and day with night.

Incest forces a repulsive mixing of different generations and perturbs their natural motion forward. As unnatural as streams rushing back towards their sources,72 incestuous offspring move in the wrong direction: they look at the past, not at the future. A similarly upsetting image of incest is established in the tragedy of Oedipus. Creon scathingly attacks the king who has ‘returned to his mother’s womb’ (Oed. 236–8): nec tibi longa manent sceleratae gaudia caedis: tecum bella geres, natis quoque bella relinques, turpis maternos iterum revolutus in ortus. You will not enjoy the pleasure of your slaughter for long: you will wage war against yourself, and will bequeath war to your children too, you who have foully returned to your mother’s womb.

Later in the play, Oedipus will mark his belated awareness of his nefas by invoking a similar image of reversal (868–70): dehisce, tellus, tuque tenebrarum potens, in Tartara ima, rector umbrarum, rape retro reversas generis ac stirpis vices. Open up, earth! And you, lord of darkness, and king of the shades, drag to the deepest Tartarus this succession of ancestry and progeny which has turned back on itself.

But the most extensive engagement with images of unnatural and ominous reversal comes in one of the most powerful scenes of the play, the sacrifice performed by Manto at 303–402. Unable to see, Tiresias asks his daughter to describe to him the manifesta . . . signa (302) marked in the entrails of a slaughtered cow. The findings are portentous (366–71): mutatus ordo est, sede nil propria iacet, sed acta retro cuncta: non animae capax in parte dextra pulmo sanguineus iacet, non laeva cordi regio, non molli ambitu omenta pingues visceri obtendunt sinus: natura versa est; nulla lex utero manet. 72

For retro in such contexts see Thy. 115 (iam Lerna retro cessit) and, somewhat differently, Thy. 459 (the unnaturalness of ‘pushing back’ the sea by building in it). Similarly, of blood flowing backwards, in the sacrifice at Oed. 349.


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The position has changed; nothing lies anymore in its place, but all has been reversed: on the right side lies the lung, filled with blood and unable to breathe; the heart is not on the left; no caul with soft covering stretches with rich folds over the entrails. Nature is subverted: no rule is left for the womb.

The retroflection of the internal organs of the cow is the iconic correlate of the incest which Oedipus has committed,73 an equally devastating upheaval of natural laws.74 No less stomach-churning is the presence of a foetus in the womb of an ‘unmarried cow’ (373–5): quod hoc nefas? conceptus innuptae75 bovis, nec more solito positus alieno in loco, implet parentem What monstrosity is this? A foetus conceived by a virgin heifer, unusually placed in a strange location, fills its mother.

The oxymoron fits Oedipus’ own situation, since the real monstrosity of his marriage to Jocasta is, in effect, a return to the status quo ante of his prenatal existence.76 In his nefarious regression, Oedipus cancels the passing of time, denies the normal flow of events which should preclude his renewed union to Jocasta, and questions the necessary correspondence between causes and results: as an unmarried cow can conceive (a hysteron proteron of sorts), so can he overstep societal and natural boundaries and return to Jocasta’s womb. The tragic suffering never seems to deter Oedipus’ obsession with returning. Even as he fully acknowledges his monstrosity, the punishment he initially proposes for himself privileges a repetitive modality which would actually entail the endless rehearsal of his crimes, an endless, explicit return to Jocasta’s womb (942–7): illa quae leges ratas Natura in uno vertit Oedipoda, novos commenta partus, supplicis eadem meis novetur. iterum vivere atque iterum mori liceat, renasci semper ut totiens nova supplicia pendas . . . 73 74

75

76

Bettini (1984) offers a persuasive analysis of this scene and its anthropological implications. In the prologue to Thyestes the Fury points out that as soon as Tantalus’ ghost has polluted the house, water starts to flow backwards, another appropriate indication of retroflection as sign of perversion: cernis ut fontis liquor | introrsus actus linquat . . . ? (107–8). The unnatural association of conceptus and innuptae has perturbed the manuscript tradition as well, part of which (A), prefers the facilior infaustae. See Bettini (1984) 149–50 for a more extensive discussion of this point. Bettini (1984) 151–2, who also compares Soph. OT 1213–15: Time condemns the (1214) because, Bettini argues, ‘l’unione incestuosa si configura simultaneamente come “generante” e come “generata” ’.

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Let Nature, who in Oedipus alone reverses her fixed laws, devising strange births, be changed anew for my punishment. Let me live again and again die, be born again forever to pay new penalties as many times . . .

Later, the first scene of Seneca’s Phoenissae finds him, old and blind, moving slowly with Antigone in the aftermath of the disaster that has wrecked his life. He resists his daughter’s help, and voices his desire to turn back, to seek once again the slopes of Mount Cithaeron, the place where he was found, a thinly veiled disguise for an unavowable desire to return. Oedipus embodies in Seneca’s tragedies the temptation and danger of returning to an impossible past, a retrogression which, taken to its extremes, threatens nature and history alike. No less than Thyestes’ and Oedipus’ incests, Cassandra’s desire to even the score with her Greek foes is a nefas, predicated on a violent reversal of history which is geared to annihilate the past even more than simply to reverse fortune. Cassandra is ready to die, provided that she can see the death of Agamemnon, and that the dead Trojans can ascend briefly from the underworld in order to see what could have happened, but did not, and can no longer happen. The intertextual thread connecting Cassandra to Dido encourages comparison of the negotiation of Trojan past and future which is at the core of Virgil’s Aeneid. Resolved to die, the queen of Carthage – furens (4.465) – is assailed in her sleep by tormenting images (4.465–73): agit ipse furentem in somnis ferus Aeneas, semperque relinqui sola sibi, semper longam incomitata videtur ire viam et Tyrios deserta quaerere terra, Eumenidum veluti demens videt agmina Pentheus et solem geminum et duplices se ostendere Thebas, aut Agamemnonius scaenis agitatus Orestes, armatam facibus matrem et serpentibus atris cum fugit ultricesque sedent in limine Dirae. As she slept Aeneas himself would drive her relentlessly in her madness, and she was always alone and desolate, always going on a long road without companions, looking for her Tyrians in an empty land. She would be like Pentheus in his frenzy when he was seeing columns of Furies and a double sun and two cities of Thebes; or like Orestes, son of Agamemnon, driven in flight across the stage by his own mother armed with her torches and black snakes, while the avenging Furies sat at the door.

It is worth noting the elaborate allusive game that Agamemnon plays with its model, as the striking detail of the geminus sol (Ag. 728), inserted in a text


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in which Cassandra describes Agamemnon (if not Orestes) agitatus scaenis, thus fulfils the theatrical reference suggested by the Aeneid (Ag. 728–31): sed ecce gemino sole praefulget dies geminumque duplices Argos attollit domus. Idaea cerno nemora: fatalis sedet inter potentes arbiter pastor deas. Look, the day shines with a double sun, and double Argos lifts up twin palaces. I can see the groves of Ida: the fateful shepherd sits in judgement of the powerful goddesses.

At the very core of the Aeneid stands the complex, often obsessive elaboration of the relationship between past and present, and the Aeneid , too, highlights the temptations and dangers inherent in the desire simply to return to an unattainable status quo ante. But there are conspicuous differences between the way in which the poem negotiates these opposite trends and Seneca’s own approach to the same critical theme. The battle between past and future which dominates the first part of the Aeneid finds a resolution, albeit a painful and uncertain one, in the ultimate predominance of a teleological solution of the plot which breaks with the repetitive, ineffectual compulsions displayed by the Trojans in the earlier phases of their wanderings.77 In Agamemnon, but also in Oedipus and Thyestes, any such teleological drive is conspicuously absent. Regression and return impose seriality as the dominant organizing principle of the plays, and there seems to be no counterbalancing force which might eventually displace them. There is, in effect, no clinamen which may lead to a future that is significantly different from the masterplot of the past. Looking back, and obsessively insisting on the repetition of a past nefas, prevents the successful repression of nefas which many characters in these tragedies advocate, often with less than compelling force. While there is no guarantee that looking forward, to the future, will bring no new crimes, it is certain that further engagement with age-old ones will only perpetuate the spiral of revenge and counter-revenge. Rather than looking at epic as a possible (if far from entirely successful) solution, Senecan tragedy makes it an integral part of the problem. Epic models of representation import into the tragedy a disruption which is ethical as much as it is narrative. The radically different status of epic vis-à-vis dramatic representation – once freed from its prescribed boundaries, such as the messenger’s speech – contaminates the texture of tragedy 77

Quint (1993) 50–96.

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and precipitates the incumbent threat of nefas. Metastatizing as an alien entity in the play, epic narrative and temporal structures thematize the breaking down of narrative conventions and the ethical boundaries they imply. The opposite process is well documented in the Aeneid, where tragedy powerfully deconstructs the forward-looking, self-assertive conventions of epic narration. Seneca shows that the epic’s linearity is illusory, perhaps true only, if at all, in strictly relative terms; in a different context, he shows that epic, too, is the embodiment of nefas. In the prologue to Thyestes it was precisely an epic intertext which vigorously introduced nefas; we see now that the association extends to other important aspects of the play. But this complementary demonstration is hardly neutral. To show that epic can be to tragedy what tragedy was to epic proves that relative hierarchies and privileges are hardly tenable, that there is no haven safe from the menace of nefas, and that the illusory strength of the epic masterplot is precisely that – illusory. In retrospect, Thyestes and other Senecan tragedies question the discursive assumptions on which the Aeneid was built, and shatter any optimistic ideals that it may have nurtured. v An impossible dream of return also torments Medea, the arch-heroine of Senecan drama. While it is undoubtedly difficult, and perhaps dangerous, to privilege specific thematic links in the compact poetic texture of Medea, it is more difficult, still, to forgo such a partial investigation in the name of a hypothetical organic approach (which, incidentally, might be faulted even more in the case of Seneca’s tragedies than in others). Thus it is legitimate, I believe, to privilege in a reading of Medea a particular obsession, a recurrent thread which lends the protagonist’s actions and emotions their common denominator: her desire to push her life backwards, to deny the future any real possibility of unfolding and deviating from the past. Medea, although we might want to see her portrayed as an unruly, furious and uncontrollable maenad, in fact consistently evaluates her predicament and displays a dogged determination to achieve her goals. She is far from irrational: ‘irrationality’ is a weapon she wields with poise and sophistication, clear intent and strategy. Far more ‘irrational’, to her, is the supposedly rational explanation of events which Jason half-heartedly tries to uphold. Like Atreus, Medea could easily be dismissed as a dreadful embodiment of boundless revenge: yet, even more than Atreus, she forcefully communicates her clear-headed reasonings to the audience.


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Medea strives to arrest the implacable sequence of events set in motion by the announcement of Jason’s wedding. When the tragedy opens she already knows what is going to happen, and the epithalamion sung by the chorus after the prologue only confirms the truth in a suitably contrasting shallow tone. Deeply wounded in her pride, Medea longs for a return to a past in which she was Jason’s partner, a role from which she has now rather hastily been displaced by Creusa. Images of return, accordingly, play a central role in the tragedy.78 Creon, in act 2, orders her to return home, but the return she has in mind is less literal and less circumscribed. She insists that Jason should be given back to her, that their story (history) turn back to the point before the tragedy started, before it all happened. She might be guilty, but if she is, she still deserves what was once hers (Med. 245–6): si placet, damna ream; sed redde crimen. If you so decide, condemn the accused woman; but give me back my crime.

Towards the end of the confrontation her pleas become insistent (272–3): profugere cogis? redde fugienti ratem vel redde comitem – fugere cur solam iubes? non sola veni. You force me to flee? As I flee, give me back my ship, or rather give me back my companion – why order me to flee alone? I did not arrive alone.

A similar iteration returns in her dialogue with Jason: redde supplici felix vicem (‘give me, a suppliant, my reward’, 482), and again redde fugienti sua (‘give your wife’s property back as she flees’, 489), are the high points of her appeal.79 It is important to stress the fact that this particular aspect of Medea’s psychology is wholly Senecan. Euripides’ heroine makes no attempt to win back the object of her passion. She is resigned to her fate, determined only to take on Jason as agonizing a revenge as possible. In her triumph, Seneca’s Medea finally achieves the nefarious return she has so much longed for. Her actions describe a stripping away of features that she considers external, to reveal only the inner core, the true Medea (or ‘Medea’). She sheds first her status as a wife, returning to be only a mother: materque tota coniuge expulsa redit (‘the wife in me is driven out, the mother is completely reinstated’, 928). But even that is too much, and 78 79

A comparably impossible dream is voiced (perhaps deceivingly) by Clytemnestra in Ag. 241: sed nunc casta repetatur fides. Compare a similar exchange between Electra and Clytemnestra in Ag. 967–8: CL. redde nunc gnatum mihi. | EL. Et tu parentem redde.

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the path backwards can proceed further: rediere regna, rapta virginitas redit (‘my kingdom has been restored, my raped virginity is restored’, 984). She is willing to eradicate any trace of motherhood from her very womb: in matre si quod pignus etiamnunc latet, | scrutabor ense viscera et ferro extraham (‘if any pledge even now lurks unseen within its mother, I shall probe my womb with the sword and tear it out with the steel’, 1012–13). Mater, which a few lines earlier meant ‘mother’ (928), is now (1012) a strictly physiological marker, pure anatomy, simply a ‘womb’. At the conclusion of her revenge, before flying away, driven in a blaze of serpents, she has succeeded in bringing back a past which is – paradoxically – both before crime, and yet full of it. Her virginity is back, but at the price of multiple murder, and infanticide. She has held true to the vow she expressed in her magic rite: indeed, she has ‘bent the courses of the seasons’ (759–64): temporum flexi vices: aestiva tellus horruit cantu meo, coacta messem vidit hibernam Ceres; violenta Phasis vertit in fontem vada et Hister, in tot ora divisus, truces compressit undas omnibus ripis piger; I have bent the courses of the seasons: the summer earth has shivered at my chant, Ceres has been compelled to watch a winter harvest. The Phasis has turned its violent waters back to its source, and the Hister, which branches out into so many mouths, has held back its sullen waters, reluctant to move in any of its channels.

Again, it is worth while to contrast this turn of events with its Euripidean model. The Greek Medea displays a realistic preoccupation with her future, and ensures for herself a safe refuge at Aegeus’ palace in an episode which is completely omitted by Seneca. In sharp contrast to Euripides’ Medea, who plans her departure towards ‘Erechtheus’ land’ (1384), at the end of this play Medea does not have a new city to move to, and simply disappears into the sky, returning to the ancestral abodes of her family. In her triumph over the laws of time and nature – Oedipus’ own triumph – Medea denies the constrictions that reality imposes on emotional drives. She erases the notion of temporality with the same determination with which the unconscious refuses to acknowledge time’s existence80 and 80

On Freud’s central tenet that the unconscious ignores temporality see especially The Interpretation of Dreams (Freud (1900) = SE iv.328 and v.577–8; the latter passage, in which Freud discusses the relationship between lack of temporal awareness and anger, is especially interesting in connection with Medea); On Beginning the Treatment (Further Recommendations on the Technique of PsychoAnalysis vol. i) (Freud (1913) = SE xii.130); New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (Freud (1932) = SE xxii.74). In general, see De Ritis (1991) 233.


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the unidirectionality of causal connections81 – another crucial aspect of its symmetrical, generalizing logic which emerges in contrast to the prevailing ‘adult’ logic that is based on Aristotelian principles.82 Medea is, at a certain level of abstraction, a wish fulfilled, a compulsion satisfied against the requirements of logic and reality. We are reminded of Atreus’ similar victory over the basic principle that what is done cannot be undone; by punishing Thyestes with abandonment, he is able to restore what has been lost, to assure himself that his children are really his own and that his wife has never been seduced by a wanton brother: liberos nasci mihi | nunc credo, castis nunc fidem reddi toris (‘now I am convinced that my children are my own; now I believe that I can trust again the purity of my marriage-bed’, Thy. 1098–9). This is, quite literally, a dream come true, or, in psychoanalytic terms, an instance of Ungeschehenmachen, the ‘retroactive annulment of an event’,83 which is perfectly possible, of course, in the unconstrained realm of symmetrical logic and ‘negative magic’. Medea, like Calchas or Ulixes in Troades, embodies the power of the past over the present and the future. She does not accept Jason’s change of mind, and she alters the regular succession of times, both natural and historical, in order to achieve her goals. The moral balance, as is usual with Senecan characters, is less easy to determine than one might be tempted to think. Jason is a lame, ineffectual character, excused without much enthusiasm by the chorus, on the basis of his intrinsic weakness. His desire for change – for a new bride – is essentially rooted in selfishness, his desire to save himself and, perhaps, his children. Functionally, his role is similar to Andromache’s, but nothing remains of her emotional appeal, of her complex, engaging inner turmoil. Medea’s reasons – compared with Ulixes’ – are also basically private in nature. She cannot claim that the future of a whole nation is at stake, that Astyanax’s survival will provoke endless agony for the mothers of Greece. Yet, paradoxically, her actions acquire a grandiosity that completely overshadows Ulixes’ Realpolitik. Her greatness lies precisely in her adamant conviction, deeply personal and undebatable nonetheless, that she will halt the course of events. The tone is set from the beginning, when she defiantly asks the sun, her ancestor, whether it can still bear to proceed in its 81

82 83

On the parallelism between the elision of chronology and the unconscious’ undermining or abolition of causal links see Fragments of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria (‘Dora’) (Freud (1905) = SE vii.17), with The Interpretation of Dreams (Freud (1900) = SE iv.247). It is interesting to read in conjunction with Freud’s remark the important arguments put forth by Goldschmidt ((1969) 47–9, 168–86) on the prevalence of the present in the Stoics’ ideology of time. Bodei (2000) 3–19. Notes on a Case of Obsessional Neurosis (the ‘Rat Man’) (Freud (1909) = SE x .235–6); ‘negative magic’, Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety (Freud (1926) = SE xx.119–20 at 119).

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path – should it not turn back right now (Sen. Med. 28–31)? Creon had dimly foreseen the truth: giving Medea time, even a little time, means giving her the very weapon she needs (292).84 She wants to control time in order to bend it backwards. The certainty of her furor is rooted in the certainty of natural events (401–7): dum terra caelum media libratum feret nitidusque certas mundus evolvet vices numerusque harenis derit et solem dies, noctem sequentur atra, dum siccas polus versabit Arctos, flumina in pontum cadent, numquam meus cessabit in poenas furor crescetque semper . . . while the earth stays at the centre and keeps the heavens balanced, while the bright universe maintains its constant revolutions, while the grains of sand are innumerable, while day attends the sun and stars the night, while the pole keeps the Bears dry as they revolve, while rivers flow down into the sea, never shall my madness falter in its search for vengeance, and it will increase constantly.

But she also carries out her proposal to subvert and destroy everything: sternam et evertam omnia (‘I shall ruin and destroy everything’, 414). At the end of the play her furor and her dolor do acquiesce: she has altered the regularity of time with her rites, and she has found a limit to her revenge (1018–20). The apparent adynaton is fulfilled precisely as she kills her second son: misereri iubes – bene est, peractum est. plura non habui, dolor, quae tibi litarem. You’re telling me to have pity. [She kills the second son] Good, it is finished. I had nothing else, anguish, to sacrifice to you.

Her cry of joy, which turns on its head the chorus’s moralizing sententia at the beginning of the play (175: tempori aptari decet, ‘it is right to adapt to circumstances’), is revealing: meus dies est. tempore accepto utimur (‘The day is mine; I am enjoying the time I have been granted’, 1017). By taking control of time, Medea ensures that there will be, in a sense, no future: Jason has lost Creusa and his children, and Medea disappears into the sky, back to her ancestors’ home. All Jason can do, as Medea poignantly 84

In Euripides, Creon remarks explicitly on the fact that the time he finally grants Medea is not enough for her to commit any of the deeds he fears: see 355–6 (these lines are deleted by Nauck and Diggle, but retained by Murray and Page).


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remarks, is ‘to take back’ his children, the emblem of their past life together that he had rejected: recipe iam gnatos, parens (1024).85 It should be observed that Medea pointedly refrains from any idealization of the past, even as she longs for its return. Her intent is largely negative: things should not change, Jason should not marry again. Her fixation on a surpassed state of events finds a significant echo in the second chorus of the tragedy, where the women of Corinth elaborate on the nefas of seafaring. It is easy to file this ode in the bloated category of laudationes temporis acti, and to dissect it in search of topoi: the dangers and intrinsic impiety of navigation, the longing for a long-gone golden age with no ambitions and no sorrows, the deprecation of the geographic and moral disorder which marks a degenerate present. Yet the chorus itself resists such a simplification. The contrast that it institutes between past and present is less facile and less reassuring. In the midst of expected judgements, it is remarkable, for instance, that the idealized life of the farmer ‘who has reached old age in his ancestral fields’ (patrioque senex factus in arvo, 332) should be characterized as ‘lazy’ (piger, 331), as if it lacked, together with the nefarious practice of navigation, a vital élan which is not intrinsically immoral, and which we would in fact expect to be praised in the context of Roman ideology.86 Medea draws attention more than once to the weight and implications of her name. In her dialogue with the nurse, she is fully aware of the potential embedded in it: Medea superest (‘ “Medea” is left’, 166), ‘Medea’ as a recognizable entity, as a persona somehow distinguishable from the person who carries it. Again: Medea – fiam (‘I’ll become “Medea” ’, 171). At the end of the play, as her revenge is being carried out, she feels that she has lived up to the expectations: Medea nunc sum (‘now I am “Medea” ’, 910). It is time for the others, particularly for Jason, to acknowledge this fact: coniugem agnoscis tuam? (‘do you recognize your wife?’, 1021). Recognition is a belated act of cognition which reveals something previously hidden, or unfocused, which, in this sense, stands as the ultimate victory of the past. To be able to ‘recognize’ Medea as ‘Medea’, or Atreus as ‘Atreus’, is predicated on the immutability of fundamental characteristics which define them as what they are. These characters can deceive and disguise, but their inner nature sooner or later shines through and is revealed in a flash of horror. Both Medea and Atreus embody the superiority of the past over the present – and the future. They both guarantee that past patterns will prevail; 85

86

The order does not imply any action on either Medea’s or Jason’s part: there is no need to suppose that Medea actually throws the children’s corpses from the roof, and to construe this event as evidence of the fact that the play could not have been staged. See Biondi (1984) 87–141 and Nussbaum (1994) 464ff. for a fine analysis of this ode.

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they rise from the certainty of a model which their antagonists need time to learn. Once they do, once they ‘recognize’, they admit the fallibility of their desire, or hope, for change. Thyestes, for instance, had indeed suspected that Atreus could not possibly have changed, and that Tantalus’ exhortation was therefore dangerous. He was right: his only mistake was not acting on such a good hunch. Even at a later stage he tries to dispel his depressing forebodings, to discard his past worries: the ‘old Thyestes’ should make room for a new, impossibly happy one (Thy. 937: veterem ex animo mitte Thyesten, ‘dismiss the old Thyestes from your thoughts’). Similarly, Jason entreats Medea to change, to accept something new and different in lieu of what she can no longer have. On a more positive note, Andromache, too, ‘recognizes’ her son’s character, which is strikingly similar to her dead husband’s: ‘I know your nature: you are ashamed to show fear’ (agnosco indolem: | pudet timere, Tro. 504–5). vi As I remarked in the opening section of this chapter, regressive repetition is complicit with the action of repressed forces and impulses of destruction and upheaval. At the most basic level, regression denies the movement forward inscribed in the natural passing of time. This turning back implies, sometimes literally, a return to darkness, the darkness of unspeakable crimes, of nefas and furor. As her eyes turn back, Cassandra sides with a compelling form of knowledge which is chthonic and subversive, and she reveals nothing less than the violent overturning of the fate’s decrees. In their struggle upstream against the linear determinism of time, Senecan characters stage a rebellion against the notions of law and order represented by time’s unerring flow. If time is inreparabile, it is a sort of counterfactual, ultimately impossible reparation that they stubbornly try to achieve. The desire to turn back the clock on history, personal and otherwise, finds its most poignant expression in the emphasis placed on the past, which slowly bulges out of proportion as it invades the present and conditions the future. We should ask ourselves, at this juncture, what may be the overall implications of this obsessive regression that seems to characterize many of the tragedies on the various levels I have discussed. We might perhaps take our cue from an incisive passage in Seneca’s Letters to Lucilius 122 that raises an intriguing set of associations. In his attack against those who ‘live backwards’ – retro vivunt (122.18) – Seneca expounds the immoral connotation of fighting time’s natural forward movement. Inverting the order of day and night is the most powerful icon, and to a


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certain extent the cause, of a denial of nature which immediately affects morality. It is a sign of dubious distinction to alter the normal arrangements of time, the temporum dispositio (122.18), even if the sinners who choose to live in this manner reveal their obsession in a number of seemingly innocuous activities: they crave spring flowers in the middle of winter and will do anything in order to obtain them (122.8), just as they strive to prevent, even to erase, natural ageing (122.7). In the latter case Seneca makes explicit the connection between the artificiality of tampering with time and the connotations of sexual immorality which configure the whole process as nefas: ‘do they not live against nature, those who strive to retain the glow of adolescence at the wrong age? Can there be something more cruel or miserable? He’ll never be a man so that he can continue to lie under a man. His gender should have spared him this iniquity, but now not even age will’87 (non vivunt contra naturam qui spectant ut pueritia splendeat tempore alieno? quid fieri crudelius vel miserius potest? Numquam vir erit, ut diu virum pati possit? et cum illum contumeliae sexus eripuisse debuerat, non ne aetas quidem eripiet?, 122.8). The connection that is raised in the letter between sexual deviation and the subversion of nature’s laws of ordered time finds a remarkable counterpart in a tragic passage which I have already had an opportunity to discuss. In his speech at the beginning of Agamemnon, the shade of Thyestes complains that he has mixed together things which the norms of nature keep separate: children with their fathers, grandparents and their descendants, day and night (Ag. 34–6).88 Merging day and night is revealed as the emblem of a much more upsetting tampering with natural laws. (We will see in a moment how this image can be connected with the repeated instances of the sun turning its course that dot several tragedies.) Less upsetting, but equally revealing, is the connection between morally inappropriate behaviour and interference with the natural flow of time that is inscribed in a well-known mythical episode, which is repeatedly mentioned in the tragedies and voiced with particular emphasis by an enraged Juno in the prologue to Hercules furens. From the very moment of his conception – when Jupiter, eager to prolong the night he was spending with Alcmena, prevented the dawning of a new day – the hero symbolizes the disruption of natural order which will be especially evident in his trampling of the thresholds of the underworld (24–6):89 87 89

88 See above, p. 203. Author’s translation. Appropriately, the structure and names of the constellations are now a permanent cosmic reminder of Jupiter’s unfaithful behaviour. See especially line 5: tellus colenda est: paelices caelum tenent, and 6–18.

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The Passions in Play in cuius ortus mundus impendit diem tardusque Eoo Phoebus effulsit mari retinere mersum iussus Oceano iubar.

[This son] for whose begetting the whole world lost a day, when Phoebus, with orders to keep the sunlight immersed in Ocean, shone forth late from the Eastern seas.

This very detail of the mythical narrative, which elsewhere in the tragedies is explicitly referred to as a breaking down of natural laws,90 is mentioned by Seneca at De brevitate vitae 16.5 in the context of his attack against the poetarum furor: Jupiter’s crime is magnified and perpetuated in the poetic descriptions of his lascivious deeds. The immorality, even perversion, of holding back personal or public history must arguably be read in conjunction with the notion of time that structures Stoic thinking about the physical universe. Although repetition is prominently inscribed in the Stoic concept of palingenesis, I have observed a number of instances in which repetition acquires distinctly negative overtones and is portrayed as a dangerous obsession. The contradiction is only apparent. The kind of repetition that, for instance, Medea advocates, unduly forestalls the natural and expected evolution of the cosmic cycle which ¯ 91 This form of repetition will eventually culminate in a purifying ekpyrosis. slows down the movement of the cycle and constantly threatens its potential for renewal. It is a sinful form of restitutio in integrum, which we should contrast with the righteous attitude described by Seneca at De providentia 5.8: our fate has been determined since the moment of our birth, and wisdom resides in a complete acceptance of its decrees; to go with the flow of the universe is indeed a relief: ‘it is a great consolation that it is together with the universe we are swept along’ (grande solacium est cum universo rapi). Acceptance of nature, a basic tenet of Stoic thought, necessarily implies acceptance of time, and of the movement forward which will lead to destruction and purification. A rebellion against Stoic orthodoxy alone, however, can hardly account for the far-reaching prominence of this theme in the tragedies, and it might 90 91

Ag. 814–15: cui lege mundi Iuppiter rupta | roscidae noctis geminavit horas. ¯ as final catastrophe, It has been argued that Seneca presents a distinctively pessimistic view of ekpyrosis which is at odds with the traditional Stoic notion of a natural, purifying event (Rosenmeyer (1989) 151–9). It is rather clear that Senecan heroes try hard to precipitate what they would like to see not just as a phase in the unstoppable process of creation and destruction, but as a final catastrophe, which might come in the form of a flood (Q Nat 3.29–30). Also, contrary to the surviving (Greek) Stoic authorities, Seneca posits a direct correlation between their wickedness and the catastrophe, which, again, is portrayed in terms of punishment. On this issue, see Barnes (1978); Lapidge (1978); Mansfeld (1979); Long (1985).


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be worth while to expand our points of reference to include other firstcentury authors. I will start, though, from Virgil. The teleological ambition of an epic such as the Aeneid is inextricably linked with a treatment of narrative time that privileges linearity and control. The story has to proceed forward, to approach its ultimate goal. Regressions and digressions, tempting as they are, must be restrained lest they obstruct the chosen path forward. Virgil gives this principle emphatic expression not in the Aeneid but in his Georgics, at a point when the insisted description of the furor equarum92 threatens the ordered unfolding of his didactic project (G. 3.284–7): sed fugit interea, fugit inreparabile tempus, singula dum capti circumvectamur amore. hoc satis armentis: superat pars altera curae, lanigeros agitare greges hirtasque capellas. But in the meanwhile time flies, flies irretrievably, while, seized by love, we linger around each topic. Enough now about herds; the second part of our labour remains, to lead the woolly flocks and shaggy goats.

There is something to be gained by insisting on the contrast between the furor-led temptation to digress and the rationality of the move that Virgil opposes to it. The flow of time is undeniably determined by Fate.93 There is, literally, no going around that fact. Or is there? The narrator’s fiddling with the linearity of time is an act complicit with furor, with the subversive forces down below. Arguably, there is no act of poetic creation which could be deemed completely innocent in this respect. By retelling events, poetry is bound to repeat, and thus to disclaim the uniqueness and linearity of time. Moreover, any act of poetic evocation inevitably disrupts the temporal framework of the events that it narrates, whether they are historical or not: there can be no perfect coincidence of histoire and récit. Yet, as I remarked earlier, certain works display much more obviously than others their willingness to challenge the ordered unfolding of time. In the Bellum Civile, too, the ‘comforting logic of chronology’94 is abandoned in favour of fractured, competing narratives which stubbornly refuse any call to order, not to mention unity. Lucan’s poem, as Ralph Johnson elegantly puts it, ‘has no unity unless it is the absence of unity, and, having no unity, it needs no heroes to enact unity’.95 Time becomes one of 92

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G. 3.266, with Schiesaro (1993a) 140. It is worth remembering in this connection the importance of Juno’s furor as a principle of delay (explicitly acknowledged by the goddess herself at 7.315) which structures in a very basic sense the Aeneid as a whole. 94 Johnson (1987) 110. 95 Johnson (1987) 110. Cf. Sen. Ben. 4.7.2; Helv. 8.3.

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the most charged signifiers in the poem, endowed with competing ideological values: delay is pro-Pompeian as much as proceeding forward is pro-Caesarian. As he engages in the re-enactement of a nefas, and thus inevitably displays his Caesarian allegiances, Lucan multiplies morae which can at least postpone Caesar’s inevitable victory.96 The ‘momentary’ nature of Lucan’s heroes (many are able to hold the stage convincingly for a while, but none can give the poem in its entirety a sense of unity) can provide useful insights into Senecan tragedy as well, especially if we consider it alongside the ‘cubist’ diffraction of time in Ovid’s Metamorphoses which I recalled earlier.97 Taken together, the experiments with time undertaken by Ovid, Lucan and Seneca testify to a shared sense of uneasiness and anxiety. Never before (pace Lycophron, an exception that confirms the rule) had classical texts built up such a comprehensive onslaught against the linearity of time. By the beginning of the twentieth century similar challenges, however, had indelibly marked the experience of Western culture. In this more recent scenario it is possible to connect experimental attitudes towards time with a flurry of scientific discoveries and philosophical reflections which substantially modified our perception of time and imposed uniformity and order on that which was previously defined only by ignorance and superstition.98 But Roman culture, too, had experienced its own ‘Copernican’ revolution. Bringing order to the confusion that had reigned for several centuries, Caesar introduced, just one year before his death, a new, reliable calendar. It was, by all accounts, no mean feat, as Lucan’s Caesar remembers in his meeting with the Egyptian priest Acoreus (10.184–7): fama quidem generi Pharias me duxit ad urbes, sed tamen et vestri; media inter proelia semper stellarum caelique plagis superisque vacavi, nec meus Eudoxi vincetur fastibus annus. For sure, I was brought to Pharos’ cities by report about my son-in-law, but still report about you too; always in the midst of battles I found time for higher things, for regions of the stars and sky, nor will my own year be worsted by Eudoxus’ calendar.

It is undoubtedly striking that Caesar seems here almost to equate his pursuit of Pompey to his insatiable drive to know. In his desire to reveal the inner secrets of nature, Caesar momentarily turns into a cultural hero of sorts, redolent in many respects of Lucretius’ portrayal of Epicurus, 96 97

One of Masters’ most important acquisitions, see Masters (1992) passim. 98 Kern (1983). See above, p. 188.


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who pushed himself to the edge of the world in order to comprehend the regulatory mechanisms of all things, and even more of Alexander the Great, the ruler who embodied a profound link between the thirst for knowledge and the thirst to conquer. As the ‘inventor’ of the new calendar, Caesar marks the ordered passing of time as a personal accomplishment intertwined with the vicissitudes of Roman history. There will be, as we know, a well-ordered ‘time for Augustus’,99 but it was his predecessor who had explicitly paved the way. Caesar’s ordered annus proceeds smoothly and without uncertainties, not unlike his plan to catch Pompey and progress to a new form of political organization. It is not simply a matter of observing that political power is intrinsically involved in the regulation of the calendar and especially of its festive days, as Ovid’s Fasti amply attest. Rather, we should try to recapture at least part of the fundamental sense of (new) order and predictability that lay at the core of the Julian reform, and to imagine that such a powerful revolution could come to be seen as the perfect target of equally forceful counterreactions. It is precisely because there can now be, literally, such a thing as ‘time for Augustus’, that the active and unpredictable manipulation of time in poetry can acquire a significant disruptive force. Reacting to the myth of progress and renewal that is so central to Augustan rhetoric, the disruption of time portrayed by Ovid, Lucan and Seneca problematizes in different ways the most basic category of human understanding, implicitly questioning its very foundations. Causality and chronology waver under the repeated attacks of analogy, association, regression, repetition and delay.100 The unstoppable vector of history that was promoted by Augustus can now be shown to be simply one of many possible movements of history and hence deprived of any teleological impact. History can bend back on itself and explore darkness and regression, can eliminate the future and proclaim the triumph of the past. Not even time is safe from nefas: it can actually be one of the ways in which nefas achieves its victory. Neither is poetry safe: poetry, too, bends backwards, thanks to the multiple opportunities afforded by a novel, creative poetics. 99 100

Wallace-Hadrill (1987). I do not believe, however, that the foregrounding of ‘irrational’ elements and the development of avant-garde poetics especially in first-century a d literature should be read only as a reaction to Augustanism and its undoubted impact on cultural protocols. The drive towards rationalization is an important feature of Roman culture at least from the second century b c onwards (Moatti (1997)), and any reaction to it should be read not simply as antagonistic to the political powers who may at certain times appear to be fostering it (too reductionist a move), but primarily in the context of an ongoing cultural debate (see Schiesaro (1997); and Schiesaro (1993b) 263).

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In the reversal of ‘upper’ and ‘lower’ worlds, as in the constant return of the past, Senecan drama gives voice to the dead who emerge from Acheron to impose their dreadful rule on the living. Time turns back not so much to redress the misfortunes of the past as to guarantee that no change and no variation can occur. It is difficult not to read in this reversal a pained scepticism about the regularity imposed by Augustus on time and space – a regularity and faith in the future that Augustan poets had tried to make their own. In, for instance, Virgil’s promise of imperium sine fine101 (a promise that the Aeneid powerfully questions at several critical junctures), or in Horace’s Epode 16, we can read the hope that the new Augustan beginning has interrupted the law of cosmic cycles and, thanks to the king’s vital force, has inspired a progression which will not have to be tempered by catastrophe.102 Two or three generations after these hopes had been tentatively expressed, they have lost even their qualified problematic appeal and are ripe for deconstruction. Seneca, as I mentioned, presents us with a dramatic visual icon for the fundamental disruption of natural laws which recurs with remarkable frequency in tragedy. His tragedies often display the sun’s uncertainty in following its course or even its extraordinary retrocession.103 Shocked at the sight of the nefas perpetrated by Atreus, the sun withdraws, throwing mankind into utter darkness as the text repeatedly emphasizes. It is indeed tempting to recall that Caesar’s calendar, for the first time based entirely and reliably on the sun’s regular movements, seems to have been one of the immediate motivations behind a surge in the popularity of solar cults.104 The sun, elevated on the one hand to the position of supreme guarantor of the regularity of time, displaying in its perturbed and unpredictable movements the irrational criminality of human actions, can now become, in Seneca’s obsessed and distraught universe, the ultimate symbol of disorder. 101 103 104

102 Eliade (1954) 133–40, esp. 136. Aen. 1.257–96. Rosenmeyer (1989) 160 and Schmitz (1993) 90. Bickerman (1980) 51, with Nilsson (1932) 166 and Weinstock (1948) 37.

chapter 6


i n t e rt e x t ua l i t y a n d i ts d i s co n t e n ts

i The thematic insistence on the role of the past in the tragedies is displayed to great effect in the extensive and for some even hypertrophic allusive dimension of Seneca’s writing.1 I now want to explore this dimension of intertextuality further. By problematizing the relationship between intertextuality, poetry and the past, I also want to look again at the connection between poetry and passions, and at what implications such connections might suggest for the interpretation of Thyestes and other plays. In the second section of this chapter I will therefore focus again on the Stoics’ theoretical discussion of the role of the audience confronted by theatrical outbursts of passion, and in the third section I will investigate how spectatorship is dealt with in the tragedies themselves. The last portion of this chapter will be devoted to an issue which is crucial both within the tragedies and in the possible modalities of their reception, that is, the relationship between this form of drama and epic. I will also look further at possible analogies between Seneca’s plays and modern ‘epic drama’, which may be characterized by the particular mode of reception it demands and purports to foster. Can Seneca’s theatre be considered ‘epic’ in any Brechtian sense? Was his notional audience predicated on a similar set of presuppositions? Intertextuality is indeed one way of looking back, of allowing a past constituted by texts, words and narratives to shape the present and possibly the future. All texts are by definition intertextual, even if and when they happen 1

In his important discussion of Seneca’s intertextuality Segal ((1986) 202–14) focuses especially on the implications of the sword at Phaed. 896 (hic dicet ensis, ‘this sword will tell you’). The sword, which replaces the writing tablet with which Theseus accuses Hippolytus in Eur. Hipp. 877, is, according to Segal, ‘the visible mark of Seneca’s own “anxiety of influence” ’, ‘the trace of the earlier writer’s absence’ (208).

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to be only marginally engaged in overt allusive strategies.2 Yet it is generally and rightly admitted that Seneca and, for that matter, several other first-century authors revel in the expressive possibilities afforded by a sustained dialogue with their models. The tragedies not only insert themselves explicitly in a history of literary production which revolves around wellknown and repeatedly staged myths, but their language, too, signals at every turn their genetic connection with previous points of reference, tragic and otherwise. Considered in this perspective, intertextuality acquires a crucial role both as the marker of an ideological obsession with the past, and as a self-conscious form of critical reflection on a text’s literary affiliations. In deciphering the connections between intertextuality and the ideology of the past, it is interesting to start by comparing the relationship established by the Aeneid with its Homeric models and the modalities that configure Seneca’s connection with his tragic antecedents. Senecan tragedy differs drastically from the Aeneid in its exploitation of and reflection on literary models. The Aeneid rewrites Homer in more senses than one. Its two halves follow the lead of the Iliad and the Odyssey, but the inverted order in which they are recalled establishes an active gesture of modification. The Aeneid follows in Homer’s steps, but this time the Trojans will win, proving that the curse of repetiton can indeed be broken. Similar considerations arguably extend to Latin epic as a genre. Steeped as it is in a dialogue with its Greek models, Latin epic shows from its very inception the ability to Romanize a past that is connected with, but ideologically independent of, its Greek counterpart. Thus, from Ennius’ Annales to Naevius’ Bellum Poenicum, Roman epic emerges as the preferred medium for a negotiation of tradition and innovation in the literary (and historical) realms.3 Tragedy does not enjoy the same kind of freedom. Of course the playwright is able to choose from different versions of the same myth, and, by plotting it creatively, can easily shape his own distinctive voice. But tragedy as a whole, rooted as it is in a mythical continuum which is relatively flexible but ultimately fixed, is impervious to the insertion of completely new material, and to the same kind of active modification of the plot which is encouraged by epic. Even a play such as Thyestes, which testifies to the degree of originality and freedom that the poet enjoys in the treatment of his 2

3

The divide between allusion and intertextuality is questionable, and, while it is certainly useful to retain a terminological distinction, these two concepts must often be considered more as different points on a graded continuum than as alternative options. On this point see now Fowler (1997a) = (2000) 115–37, and Hinds (1998). On this topic see now Goldberg (1995).


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chosen theme, cannot escape a largely predetermined series of events. The contrast is especially glaring if we compare the plays, again, with the epic Aeneid, which had enjoyed unprecedented freedom in the manipulation of the mythistorical histoire that it stages. There is no mythic masterplot to rule what should happen to Turnus, while Thyestes’ children still cannot escape their fate. This lesser degree of freedom paradoxically entails a higher degree of responsibility. If the Aeneid can attempt to impose a new narrative order which carefully balances nefas and ratio, if it tries to continue and modify the Homeric plot by staging a reversal of fortunes which looks forward to general reconciliation, as opposed to endless revenge, Seneca’s tragedies are constitutively denied any such illusion. They will only be able to reiterate the nefas, to return to it, incessantly and regressively. Seneca’s tragedies stem from a continuous, even obsessive confrontation with their models. As they give new life to the tragic experience first brought onto the stage by the Greeks, thus questioning with an elaborate scheme the apparently seamless experience of watching a tragedy, they inevitably problematize the relationship with their Greek counterparts. The metadramatic activation of the plot and the consequent denial of any immediacy to the tragic experience intensify features that Greek tragedy had only intermittently displayed (especially in such plays as Euripides’ Ion or Helen, or, in different forms, in the case of Sophocles), and come to represent the most individual hallmark of Seneca’s tragic writing. The pervasive characteristic of Seneca’s tragedies is their belatedness: they represent an anachronistic return to the past, a frustrated desire for lost forms mediated by an overwhelming and oppressive intertextual memory. Senecan tragedy validates its existence (and its novelty) by displaying total awareness of its epigonic nature and by laying bare its internal mechanisms. Oedipus embodies perhaps more vividly than any other play the torment of Seneca’s post-Virgilian quandary. And the thematization of ‘posteriority’ is what makes the opening scene of Phoenissae, for instance, so harrowing. In general, all the characters in these tragedies are intensely aware of their previous existence in the domain of literature, and they reflect, as do the tragedies themselves, on the intermediate stages of writing which divide these belated mythical narratives from their supposed ‘originals’. It is precisely the metadramatic structure and the manipulation of time which colour the existence of these plays, and our enjoyment of them as acts of defiance – aesthetic as much as ethic. The author-on-stage – be it Medea, Thyestes or Juno – advertises in no uncertain terms the constructedness and artificiality of the text as well as the fact that a fresh representation of nefas could (should) have been avoided.

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If all post-Ovidian literature is programmatically self-conscious to a very high degree, Seneca’s own narcissism takes the form of a sustained critique of authorial responsibility as it is showcased in the author’s staged counterparts – a group of obsessed, determined criminals. It is not just that poiesis is (literally) staged as a constructive process: it is portrayed as a pollution which inevitably involves author and audience alike. Whether they were staged or not, Seneca’s tragedies imply a form of communication which is not primarily or exclusively written; yet the tension they dramatize between the visible (staged, spoken) and the invisible (implied, hidden, written) is their defining characteristic.

ii The analysis of intertextuality, especially this particular brand of Senecan self-conscious, metadramatic intertextuality, can fruitfully move towards an evaluation of rhetorical features as they interact with the psychological processes of the reader. All texts, especially those involved in the narration of mythical events, are necessarily repetitive: they repeat a mythic story, they repeat each other. But some texts more than others display a high degree of perceptible, thematized repetition, which they force the reader to acknowledge. The intertextual gesture that impels the tragedy of Thyestes from the shadows of non-existence makes explicit, as I showed in chapter one, the ethical problems implicit in the creation and fruition of this play. This intertextual impulse vehiculates the crucial metadramatic theme of the moral responsibility of a certain type of poetry and, at a more general level, makes an issue of the decorum of poetry by calling into question its limits. Intertextuality, at any rate, can never be a neutral operation in either its contents or in the dynamics of its perception. It will offer the well-read reader the pleasure of recognition, a chance to share with the author control over the text and its signification; or it may puzzle and disempower those who perceive it in an unfocused manner. It will be a way to activate memories of pleasurable events (the very act of remembering can be pleasurable), or to recreate the painful experience of nefas; to encourage identification with the emotions provoked by the past, or to look at them with relief, anguish, hope or terror.4 It is arguably in this intrinsic tension that we can locate the peculiar force of Seneca’s poetic project (and of those authors 4

It would be interesting to extend the interpretation of intertextuality that I sketch here through an engagement with modern philosophical and psychological theories of memory and its ambivalent nature as either a source of pleasure or as a catalyst for the onset of psychiatric conditions. See, for instance, Hall (1996).


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who are closest to him in this respect). Gone is the illusion that the world is ordained in a logical sequence of discrete events, of clearly defined ethical and aesthetical alternatives. Andromache’s desperate monologue in Troades offers a sequence of thoughts that can be extrapolated as a more general epistemic protocol: the categories she carefully defines (living and dead, husband and son, honour and safety) turn out to be so intertwined as to be useless. There exists no real choice between giving up Hector’s tomb or Astyanax’s safety. Both have already been lost. The text provokes both pleasure and pain; its poetics invite us to rejoice in agnition and to recoil in horror as intertextual memories exhibit their violent, confusing potential. Infandum, regina, iubes renovare dolorem, in Virgil’s words. Or then again: forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit.5 From this perspective the vast mass of circumscribed intertextual points of contact with previous poets, especially Virgil and Ovid, becomes in Thyestes, and in Senecan tragedy at large, a source of horror and at the same time a reiterated – if imperfect – apology for its legitimation. Intertextuality becomes an internal, ambiguous mode of defence for inconceivable monstrosities: it partially displaces responsibility while almost compulsively deepening the original wound, in a solution that is apparently preferable to the repressive force of silence. This is possible only – in all conceivable senses – after: after Virgil, after Ovid, after almost one hundred years of engagement with the memory of the systemic disruption that was witnessed in the first century. As the poet Atreus has made abundantly clear, imitation of and competition with the past are also essential components of his poetics of the sublime.6 The urge to transcend the limits of humanity seems to emerge from the same terrifying depths of horror from which his unquenchable thirst for revenge has originated. Atreus offers a compelling image of the mutually reinforcing connection between furor, poetic inspiration and an obsession with the past. Determined to take revenge for the wrongs he has suffered, he is equally determined to surpass the poetic models he explicitly chooses as points of reference. In the end, we are left to contemplate with surprising satisfaction the pleasure that his revenge, and his poetry, have been able to afford us. It is precisely with these intimations in mind that I now return to the scene from Oedipus with which I opened this book.7 There Laius’ evocation of the ghosts of the underworld suggested a compelling vision of poetry slowly and painfully emerging from its chthonic dens. Tiresias, the seer 5 6

‘The sorrow you bid me bring to life again is past all words’ (Aen. 2.3); ‘The day will come, perhaps, when it will give you pleasure to remember even this’ (Aen. 1.203). 7 Above, pp. 8ff. See pp. 117ff.

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whom Seneca forces to confess his impotence against the plague which ravages Thebes, had ordered this rite once his own attempts at understanding had failed (390–7): nec alta caeli quae levi pinna secant nec fibra vivis rapta pectoribus potest ciere nomen; alia temptanda est via: ipse evocandus noctis aeternae plagis, emissus Erebo ut caedis auctorem indicet. reseranda tellus, Ditis implacabile numen precandum, populus infernae Stygis huc extrahendus . . . Neither the birds which on their light wings cut the depths of heaven, nor entrails grabbed from still living breasts can summon up the name; another route must be attempted: the king himself must be evoked from the regions of eternal night, so that, released from Erebus, he may point out the author of the murder. The earth must be opened up, the implacable power of Dis must be implored, the people of infernal Styx must be drawn forth here . . .

It is from the dead, not from the living, that knowledge will eventually arise, and for that purpose the earth has to be prised open and forced to yield its secrets. (This is, incidentally, a scene that would have pleased Ps.-Longinus, the author of On the Sublime, who had not hesitated to include among his examples of sublimity a similar image that he found in Homer.8 ) As he prescribes a procedure that in Seneca’s poetry acquires strong metadramatic overtones, Tiresias comes close to a number of other first-century characters whose competence in the domain of divination and prophecy was closely intertwined with the nature and effect of poetic creation.9 Tiresias’ own words are implicated in the language of poetics. Alia temptanda est via (392) echoes the programmatic passage from the beginning of the third book of the Georgics in which Virgil declares his dissatisfaction with a number of overexploited poetic subjects, and vows to embark on a project of startling novelty.10 The Virgilian allusion not only underlines Seneca’s analogous intention to innovate (in fact the whole scene with Laius is conspicuously absent from his Sophoclean model), but strongly reinforces the supposition that the scene as a whole can be read, at one level, as a reflection on poetics. What should not be overlooked, however, is the sharp antiphrastic undertone of the allusion. Virgil’s aspiration to fame is couched, in metaphoric terms, as the desire to lift himself up 8 9 10

Subl. 9.6, which quotes together Il. 21.388; 5.750; 20.61–5. Cf. above, ch. 1, pp. 8ff. The parallel is pointed out by Palmieri (1989).


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from the ground and to be able to fly from mouth to mouth (G. 3.8–9): temptanda via est, qua me quoque possim | tollere humo victorque virum volitare per ora (‘I must attempt a path whereby I, too, may rise from earth and fly victorious on the lips of men’). Tiresias’ project revolves around the diametrically opposed movement, an exploration of the depths of Acheron which will be made possible by the ghosts’ ascent. The ‘new way’ of poetry outlined by Tiresias in his own programmatic statement will have to emerge from a deep involvement with chthonic forces, with the shocking world of Acheron. Poetry is to be the medium which enables underworld and upper world to communicate, and in so doing transgresses the semiotic and ethical boundary which should guarantee the separation of those worlds and protect the living from pollution. Poetry blurs the thresholds between dead and living and between past and present, thus preventing the former from being lost for ever, and subjecting the latter to the constant anxiety of unwelcome returns. The choral ode that separates Tiresias’ intimation from its actual fulfilment celebrates in ‘a people’s hymn’ (populare carmen) the achievements of the god Bacchus.11 Its seemingly digressive intonation heightens the level of dramatic suspense after the rites have been announced, and the audience knows that they are being performed elsewhere in the same time span (401–2: dum nos profundae claustra laxamus Stygis, | populare Bacchi laudibus carmen sonet, ‘while we loosen up the gates of Styx in its abyss, let the people’s hymn resound with Bacchus’ praise’); the carmen is thus coextensive with those arcane procedures, is part of the evocation through carmina that had been mandated by Tiresias.12 In fact we will hear from Creon that Tiresias pours wine – Bacchus – on the earth as he begins his rites (566–7). Bacchus is a uniquely appropriate character to be called into the picture at this point. (It is, as we know, with Bacchic figures, Agave, Pentheus, the Bacchae themselves, that Laius’ tragic catalogue ends.13 ) In Tiresias’ negotiation between the living and the dead, Bacchus appears as a powerful intermediary who embodies both the joyful enthusiasm of inspired love and the dreadful dangers of orgiastic rites. He is not only the divine patron of Thebes, but also a powerful reminder of the tragic confusion of roles and natural norms which Oedipus has brought on his city: he is, in fact, the very symbol of nature acta retro.14 The ode focuses at an early stage on the confusion of sexual identity that characterizes the god, and on his power to metamorphose objects and human beings alike (418–22; 486–8). 11 12 13

See esp. Mastronarde (1970); Davis (1993) 202–7; Töchterle (1994) 362–7; Caviglia (1996). See carmen magicum (561); canit (567); rata verba fudi (572). 14 See Paratore (1956) 125. Lines 616–18. See p. 9 above.

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Bacchus continuously shifts between the dark violence of blood and the resplendent light of his smiling appearance; he is the principle of life as much as of deadly violence. The numerous points of contact between the ode and the following necromancy scene15 reinforce the notion that the invocation to Bacchus is an essential component of those rites and shares to a certain extent their metapoetic implications. Bacchus, the god of life and death, of light and darkness, of masculinity and femininity, of blood and milk, is also the perfect symbol of a poetry which constructs a bridge between the dead and the living, the joyful frenzy of the Bacchic orgy and its obscure, threatening undertones. The form of poetry that emerges from Oedipus’ metadramatic reflection is centred on a pained yet inevitable relationship with the past, one which passion, furor and Bacchic enthusiasm can access and elaborate for the living. The underworld is not only the repository of all things dead, but also of all the dark forces that project their grim shadow on powerless mortals. It is in the context of this ideology of the past that intertextuality should be set and allowed to acquire some of the eerie connotations that must inevitably accompany such an extended interaction with the world of the dead. It can hardly be meaningless that it falls to Oedipus to outline a poetics of regression, but it is Thyestes that focuses extensively on the extraordinary power which accrues to the character who has fully understood those principles and knows only too well how to exploit them. And Atreus, the Dionysiac poet, is the ultimate embodiment of this form of poetics, at once sublime and regressive. pa s s i o n s a n d h e r m e n e u t i c s : t h e au d i e n c e ‘There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr. Gray. All influence is immoral – immoral from the scientific point of view.’ (O. Wilde, Portrait of Dorian Gray) ac nescio quomodo ingenia in immani et invisa materia secundiore ore expresserunt sensus vehementes et concitatos; nullam adhuc vocem audii ex bono lenique animosam. (Seneca, De clementia 2.2.3)

The choral ode in Oedipus prompts us to confront once again the overwhelming force of poetry, its ability to dredge up from memory and nefas dark secrets and terrible truths, a cocktail of pleasurable and painful passions. It is a combination of emotions which brings us back to the same issues that I faced when I began this investigation: what are the function 15

See Mastronarde (1970) 310–11.


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and effect of poetry? How are we, the audience, supposed to confront the emotional reality of Seneca’s plays, sprung from their underworldly roots? What role do these emotions play as we try to assess the ideological balance of each play? Or, to put it in wider terms: can there be a truly coherent Stoic theatre? In search of answers to these questions it is interesting to turn once more to Stoic thinkers in order to clarify, first of all, the theoretical framework of the issues at stake. Afterwards, however, it will be poetry, again, which must offer its own less systematic but hardly less compelling answers, in the form of metapoetic images culled from the plays themselves. Although they insist on the potential educational value of poetry,16 the Stoics are also keenly aware of the possible dangers it presents to the audience. Plutarch’s How the Young Man Should Study Poetry (Quomodo adulescens poetas audire debeat), which is very close, as far as we can ascertain, to traditional Stoic thinking,17 expresses all these concerns very clearly. Poetry can be dangerous for the very same reasons as it can be useful. It is a form of expression which is more effective than prose, both because it enables the poet to express himself more concentratedly, and because it arguably captures the audience’s attention better than prose. Cleanthes, as we learn from a reference in Seneca (Ep. 108.10) formulated this thought with particular clarity: ‘Cleanthes used to say, “As our breath produces a louder sound when it passes through the long and narrow opening of the trumpet and escapes by a hole which widens at the end, even so the fettering rules of poetry clarify our meaning.” ’18 There are two main ways in which poetry can be dangerous. First of all, listening to poetry produces pleasure in the listener, a passion that has to be accounted for, justified and contained. It is an irrational movement of the soul, and the Stoics must negotiate its existence by taking into account, on the one hand, the necessity to avoid passions altogether and, on the other, the potential benefit of the excitement of poetry for the reader. Secondly, poetry can deceive the reader into endorsing morally objectionable ideas, and, by representing passions in the characters, it can induce passions in the audience. These different forms of influence rely on the assumption that poetry itself can be analysed into two separate entities, matter and form, or – in Stoic terms – logos and lexis, a rhythmical pattern of sounds which is 16 17 18

De Lacy (1948) and Tieleman (1992) 219–48. De Lacy (1948) 250, n. 47. Nussbaum (1993) 122, too, uses Plutarch, with caution. For a similar evaluation of Cleanthes see Philodemus, De musica (28.1–14 Neubecker = SVF 1.486).

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peculiar to poetic expression. Much like music,19 to which Stoic authors often compare it, poetry affects the hearer with harmonious sounds and the appropriately composed relationship between different parts,20 and a wellcrafted ‘form’ (lexis) alone can produce pleasure in the hearer, irrespective of the content it expresses. As an irrational movement of the soul, such pleasure should normally be avoided, but, if controlled and moderated, it can be justified because of its educational benefit, provided that the content of the poetry is morally acceptable. However, only those still struggling in the way to wisdom, the proficientes, will need such inducements, which the wise (sapiens) will normally eschew.21 It is necessary to remember, in any case, that the ability of poetry to produce pleasure irrespective of its moral contents is a constant danger which educators should carefully guard against. At the level of logos, or content, as well as of education, poetry appears to be an equally double-edged form of expression. For one thing, poetry can produce sympathetic passions, and, for this reason, it is essential that the audience should restrain itself. The reader, says Plutarch (Mor. 16e): will check himself when he is feeling wroth at Apollo in behalf of the foremost of the Achaeans . . . he will cease to shed tears over the dead Achilles and over Agamemnon in the nether world . . . and if, perchance, he is beginning to be disturbed by their suffering and overcome by the enchantment, he will not hesitate to say to himself, ‘Hasten eager to the light, and all you saw here lay to heart that you may tell your wife hereafter’ [Od . 11.223–4].

Poetry can also represent immoral ideas and forms of behaviour. I quote Plutarch again on this point (16d–e): Whenever, therefore, in the poems of a man of note and repute some strange and disconcerting () statement either about gods or lesser deities or about virtue is made by the author, he who accepts the statement as true is carried off his feet, and has his opinions perverted ( ); whereas he who always remembers and keeps clearly in mind the sorcery of the poetic art in dealing with falsehood . . . will not suffer any dire effects or even acquire any base beliefs.

A little later (17d) Plutarch quotes two short passages from the Iliad and Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis, and comments: 19 21

20 De Lacy (1948) 246 and n. 20, 248, n. 33. De Lacy (1948) 248, n. 33. But the Stoics also posit that even the philosopher can derive pleasure from poetry. His is not but , a state of ‘rational elevation’ which derives from a correct judgement, that is from a correct evaluation of the contents of the poem in question: De Lacy (1948) 250, with n. 48.


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These are the voices of persons affected by emotion and prepossessed by opinions and delusions. For this reason such sentiments take a more powerful hold on us and disturb us the more, inasmuch as we become infected by their emotions () and by the weakness from whence they proceed. Against these influences, then, once more let us equip the young from the very outset to keep ever sounding in their ears the maxim that the art of poetry is not greatly concerned with the truth . . .

These two possibilities – that poetry will stir passions, and that it will liberate wrong ideas – come closest to the core of the issue here at stake, for they are inescapable in the case of tragedy. Plutarch gives an interestingly simple answer to the issue (18a–b). In the case of artists, such as painters, who depict unnatural acts ( ), for instance Medea slaying her children, ‘it is especially necessary that the young man should be trained by being taught that what we commend is not the action which is the subject of the imitation, but the art, in case the subject in hand has been properly imitated’. To imitate ‘ “beautifully” means “fittingly and properly” and ugly things are “fitting and proper” for the ugly’ (18d). While Plutarch insists on the fact that education and judgement must avoid the audience’s endorsement of wrong ideas represented on stage, Strabo seems more confident that the text can safely orient the reactions of the audience. A pleasant mythos (he says at 1.2.8) produces in the audience an impulse ( ) towards that particular behaviour, while a frightening mythos exercises a deterring effect called . This clear-cut distinction, however, is undermined by the observation, in the same paragraph, that fear, too, can produce pleasure,22 here called or . De Lacy notes that the term is used in On the Sublime precisely to describe the pleasurable excitement provoked in the audience by great literature,23 a state ‘closely akin’ to the enthousiasmos of the poet producing such literature.24 Strabo’s apparent trust in the idea that the intrinsic shape of the text can produce the desired effect of or matches the rhetorical writers’ confidence that the reaction of the audience can be safely oriented. This confidence, in turn, presupposes a set of ‘shared values and cultural norms’ which shape the audience’s 22

23

‘And what is new is pleasing, and so is what one did not know before; and it is just this that makes men eager to learn. But if you add thereto the marvellous ( ) and the portentous ( ), you thereby increase the pleasure (), and pleasure acts as a charm to incite to learning . . . Now since the portentous ( ) is not only pleasing (), but fear-inspiring ( ) as well, we can employ both kinds of myth [pleasing and fear-inspiring] for children, and for grown-up people too.’ 24 Russell (1964) 62. Subl. 1.4. De Lacy (1948) 270.

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reactions and allow the rhetor to foresee them.25 As Ps.-Longinus points out, however, phantasia operates differently in poetry and in rhetoric, since the latter is bound by verisimilitude and must eschew exaggeration. The impact of poetic enthousiasmos and phantasia are altogether less easy to gauge in advance even within a cultural system which does not admit the existence of a free, creative, ‘modern’ imagination.26 So far, I have tried to show that Stoic theories on poetry fail to provide an adequate explanation of how the moral and educational value of poetry can be safeguarded in forms of poetry which represent negative exempla. The next step is to investigate the dynamics of aesthetic reception: how the audience perceives poetry and is influenced by it. The Stoic theory of passion posits a fundamental distinction between instinctive reactions and rational assent. When presented with a frightening appearance (species), any human being, wise or not, will receive an involuntary ‘impulse’ (ictus) which will make him or her jump, or blush, or involuntarily perform any such acts. As Seneca points out in De ira 2.2.1, these reactions are not controllable, and therefore reason cannot prevent their unfolding (quorum quia nihil in nostra potestate est, nulla quominus fiant ratio persuadet). Among the various examples of involuntary reactions, De ira includes episodes related to the effect of poetry and other forms of artistic expression (2.2.3–6): This [impulse of the mind] (ictus animi) steals upon us even from the sight of plays upon the stage and from reading of happenings of long ago. How often we seem to grow angry with Clodius for banishing Cicero, with Antony for killing him! Who is not aroused against the arms which Marius took up, against the proscriptions which Sulla used? . . . [4] Singing sometimes stirs us, and quickened rhythm, and the well-known blare of the War-god’s trumpets; our minds are perturbed by a shocking picture and by the melancholy sight of punishment even when it is entirely just . . . It is said that Alexander, when Xenophantus played the flute, reached for his weapons.

This ‘impulse’ (ictus), however, is not a passion, because, again in Seneca’s words (2.3.1), ‘none of these things which move the mind through the agency of chance should be called passions; the mind suffers them, so to speak, rather than causes them’ (nihil ex his quae animum fortuito inpellunt adfectus vocari debet: ista, ut ita dicam, patitur magis animus quam facit). Essential to the existence of a passion (adfectus) is the assent (assensio) which the receiver of such an ictus will or will not grant to the ictus. ‘Passions’, says Seneca (2.3.1), ‘consist not in being moved as a result of impressions of 25

Webb (1997) 123–5 at 125.

26

Webb (1997) passim, esp. 123–4; Pedrick-Rabinowitz (1986) 107.


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things, but in surrendering oneself to them and following up this fortuitous movement’ (ergo adfectus est non ad oblatas rerum species moveri, sed permittere se illis et hunc fortuitum motum prosequi). The involuntary reactions to poetry or painting, in so far as they are ‘the movement of minds not wishing to be moved’ (motus . . . animorum moveri nolentium), are not proper adfectus, but only principia proludentia adfectibus (2.2.5): Such sensations, however, are no more anger than that is sorrow which furrows the brow at the sight of a mimic shipwreck, no more anger than that is fear which thrills our minds when we read how Hannibal after Cannae beset the walls of Rome, but they are all emotions of a mind that would prefer not to be so affected; they are not passions, but the beginnings that are preliminary to passions.

If we apply this doctrine to the case of poetry, or, more specifically, to dramatic poetry, we can say that the text produces an ‘image’ (species) which provokes an ‘impulse’ (ictus) of, for instance, fear, pleasure or hate, but that only when the mind has granted its assent to such an ‘impulse’ will poetry have produced a real ‘passion’ (adfectus). This structure appears to be consistent with Plutarch’s almost exclusive emphasis on the fact that the audience should be educated to resist the ‘impulse’ of poetry, and it entails interesting consequences for the critical interpretation of Senecan tragedy. Before, however, turning to these consequences by way of conclusion, I would like to elaborate further on the dynamics of passions and on other Senecan passages which shed light on the relationship between poetry and adfectus. In Letters to Lucilius 115, Seneca criticizes poetic endorsements of wealth as a value (115.12): ‘Verses of poets also are added to the account – verses which lend fuel to our passions (quae adfectibus nostris facem subdant), verses in which wealth is praised as if it were the only credit and glory of mortal man.’ The torch is a remarkable metaphor for the ictus, since it implies not only that the tragic endorsement of negative thoughts can produce an involuntary ‘impulse’, but also that such thoughts constitute intrinsically dangerous temptations.27 As Seneca states in Letter 7.2, ‘nothing is so damaging to good character as the habit of lounging (desidere) at the games; for then it is that vice steals subtly upon one through the avenue of pleasure’. The ‘impulse’, we know, can be resisted, but it is still a temptation, indeed a dangerous one since it is associated with the pleasure of poetry, the pleasure of hearing certain sounds and forms of expression, and, according 27

The torches are also traditionally associated with the Furies, whose connection with poetry I explored above.

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to Plutarch, the pleasure essentially linked with the very act of mimetic representation. In the following paragraphs of Letter 115, Seneca relates an anecdote about Euripides’ career. Hearing some lines praising wealth,28 the audience rushed forward, pushed away the actors and tried to end the performance. Euripides came to the stage and asked them to wait and see what ‘end’ (exitum) that ‘admirer of gold’ would eventually get (115.15). This episode seems to imply that, in order to preserve its educational value, tragedy should stage evil actions only if it also shows the retribution they deserve. Again, we are confronted not so much with the fact that Senecan tragedy represents immoral conduct, but that it conspicuously fails to offer a convincing image of punishment.29 The relationship between passions and poetry that is established in the passages above implies a remarkable shift of responsibilities from the author to the audience. Surely, the author is responsible for his intentions, and should be judged accordingly (if we so desire). But, whatever these intentions, the real burden of interpretation falls on the audience, and ultimately lies outside the author’s sphere of influence. It is left to the audience’s interpretation, if they so wish, to fulfil the educational intentions of the author. It is perfectly possible to assume that Seneca’s intention in portraying Medea was to move his audience to a stern criticism of the passions which dominate her. But it is equally possible that, contrary to his supposed aims, a reader will end up feeling great sympathy for Medea and her crimes, and thus forgo any chance of being morally improved. In the hermeneutic process that links the author to his text and the text to its audience, there is a gap which the author’s intention cannot bridge and which effectively renders the question of the educational value of poetry aporetic. Another section of Letter 7, the famous letter on circus games, provides an interesting confirmation that this particular brand of the Stoic theory of interpretation is heavily focused on the reactions of the audience. At 7.5 Seneca exclaims: ‘Come now, do you not understand even this truth, that a bad example reacts on the agent? Thank the immortal gods that you are teaching cruelty to a person who cannot learn to be cruel.’ Although some interpreters choose to read in these lines a disguised praise of Nero’s 28 29

Danae, fr. 324 Nauck2 ; Seneca mistakenly attributes the lines to the Bellerophon. Letter 108 also acknowledges the possibility that adfectus be stirred by poetry (108.11–12): ‘but our minds are struck (feriuntur) more effectively when a verse like this is repeated: “he needs but little who desires but little” or “He has his wish, who wishes only for what is sufficient.” When we hear such words as these, we are led towards a confession of the truth. Even men in whose opinion nothing is enough, wonder and applaud when they hear such words, and swear eternal hatred against money. When you see them so disposed, strike home, keep at them . . .’


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clemency, I am inclined to think that the person ‘who cannot learn to be cruel’ is Seneca himself, caught watching the slaughter of the arena despite himself. Unlike the crowd, Seneca is able to resist the ictus that comes from the performance because his moral principles lead him to deny his assent to such a monstrosity. But, again, the point is precisely that he is uninfluenced by the evil example in front of his eyes not because of its intrinsic evilness, but simply because his principles are already against it. If his principles had been different, the same ‘text’ could have provoked very different results. This applies to the spectators of tragedy as well. A negative spectacle will probably not affect the sapiens, but it might well invite a wrong assent from the morally weaker proficiens (let alone the insipiens). And, regrettably, there are very few sapientes in this world. a l l e g o r i e s o f s pe c tato r s h i p gaudet magnus aerumnas dolor tractare totas. ede et enarra omnia. (Seneca, Troades 1066–7)

Senecan tragedy can often be seen to dramatize the emotional quandaries of spectatorship, referring to watching and being watched as essential components of the actions performed on stage. It is easy enough to connect this emphasis with more or less obvious features of ‘Silver Latin’ aesthetics: an obsession with form over content; the substitution of voyeuristic detachment for a sense of active purpose that is now regrettably lost; the ‘baroque’ (or ‘Mannerist’) penchant for overwrought, graphic descriptions. Ovid started it, it is often assumed, with his flamboyant fantasy and his passion for ekphrasis. The history of later reception seems to have crystallized this figurative quality of Ovidian and post-Ovidian representations into consistent patterns: comparing the two is much like distinguishing between the restrained Virgilian landscapes of Poussin and the colorful reworking of Ovidian themes offered by Titian or Rubens. To say that this contrast is, by now, commonplace, is not to deny it a measure of truth, even less a prima facie appeal. Yet it pays to set aside for a moment the temptation to outline too neat a history of post-Virgilian literature, and to concentrate instead on how seeing and watching function in a specific Senecan context. I thus choose to discuss a scene from Troades which, I believe, offers the most engaging and poignant of paradigms. First, however, I will concentrate for one last time on Thyestes itself, in order not to lose sight of the relevance of the topic as far as this particular play is concerned.

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At the very centre of the dramatic action in Thyestes stands the elaborate relaying of the slaughter scene to a hardly composed chorus by an equally distressed messenger. Seneca retains in this scene the structural pattern that characterizes the whole play: the messenger, an unseen spectator, guarantees that Atreus’ deeds are not lost for the chorus and the audience in spite of the messenger’s own wish that the image of that nefas might abandon him: ‘what whirlwind will headlong bear me through the air and in murky cloud enfold me, that it may snatch this awful horror from my sight?’ (623–5: quis me per auras turbo praecipitem vehet | atraque nube involvet, ut tantum nefas | eripiat oculis?). In fact the messenger’s words – haeret in vultu trucis | imago facti (‘the picture of that ghastly deed still lingers before my face’, 635–6) – echo an expression previously employed by Atreus himself: ‘already before my eyes flits the whole picture of the slaughter’ (281–2: tota iam ante oculos meos | imago caedis errat), and thereby guarantee that the spectacle Atreus had envisaged has now been carried out in all its enormity. We should also remember that all those watching are in turn being watched: the Fury had said early on that Tantalus’ ghost would be forced to watch, unseen, the macabre developments of the plot: ‘let blood mixed with wine be drunk before your eyes’ (65–6: mixtus in Bacchum cruor | spectante te potetur). The detailed description of the site where the slaughter takes place, Atreus’ royal palace, is a privileged locus for analysing the mixed emotional responses that are elicited by this spectacle, since the messenger’s reaction to the horrific scene exemplifies the reactions that his own rhesis is expected to provoke in the reader. (The chorus, who might otherwise fulfil this function, is, as usual, rather restrained.30 ) The messenger makes only a lame attempt to stifle the overpowering force of the human sacrifice that he has watched. He starts by hoping that the dire image might be erased from his memory (624–5), and a few lines later he begs to be dragged away because that image is still painfully stuck in his mind (635–8). But his resistance is weak and fleeting: the chorus does not have to prod him much in order to obtain a full and emphatic report on the most minute aspects of the sacrificial rite. The words of horror carry an irresistible force: they flow unchecked past the superficial attempt at removal advocated by the messenger in selfprotection. Once his initial opposition is overruled, the horrendous scene is recalled and described in an impressive display of eloquence. In his capacity to recreate for our eyes an otherwise irretrievable scene, the messenger is yet another authorial persona in the text and is subject in turn to the disruptive dialectic of the repressed and the repressive that shapes the play 30

On the chorus’s reaction see above, p. 170.


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at different levels. Here again we have a graphic account of a negative force that the messenger wishes he could resist, but which demands to be represented, and to which he can only succumb: there is no hiding what he has seen, just as Tantalus’ shadow cannot help stirring up the dramatic actions demanded by the Fury. The rhetorical elaboration of the speech thus acquires a significance which goes beyond Seneca’s ‘Baroque’ predilection for florid expression. The self-conscious richness of language in the rhesis becomes the clearest textual signifier of the unopposed literary triumph of Atreus’ deeds; the pleasure of the messenger’s words, both the pleasure he provokes in the well-read audience and the pleasure to which he yields as he relishes his own description, stand in direct contrast to the moral judgement of Atreus’ deeds that is suggested by the messenger’s and the chorus’s incidental remarks. The Ovidian subtext which powerfully structures Atreus’ thoughts about his revenge is also important here. We remember that the figurative story sent to Procne by Philomela provokes an explosive response (Met. 6.581–6): evolvit vestes saevi matrona tyranni fortunaeque suae carmen miserabile legit et (mirum potuisse) silet: dolor ora repressit, verbaque quaerenti satis indignantia linguae defuerunt, nec flere vacat, sed fasque nefasque confusura ruit poenaeque in imagine tota est. the savage monarch’s wife unrolled the cloth and read the tragic tale of her calamity – and said no word (it seemed a miracle, but anguish locked her lips). Her tongue could find no speech to match her outraged anger; no room here for tears; she stormed ahead, ready to confuse right and wrong, her whole soul filled with visions of revenge.

Fasque nefasque confusura ruit expresses, even more than the qualified moral detachment of the narrator, the notion that such a reading (or vision) will provoke emotional consequences of a morally ambivalent nature, a collapse of clear-cut distinctions between fas and nefas. The rhesis of Thyestes, as we have seen, problematizes the emotional response of the readers and questions their possible identification with the chorus: once again the poetic word appears to be working against the repressive force of rational criticism. Nowhere in the Senecan corpus is this issue thematized more effectively than in the final scene of Troades, a tense three-way dialogue between the messenger, Hecuba and Andromache. As the messenger appears and announces to both women that they have suffered tremendous losses, Andromache invites him to relate the events in detail (1065–7):

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The Passions in Play expone seriem caedis, et duplex nefas persequere: gaudet magnus aerumnas dolor tractare totas. ede et enarra omnia.

Recount the order of the slaughter, and unfold the story of the double crime: a great grief delights to consider its sorrows entire: speak out and recount it all.

The messenger obliges by describing first the death of Astyanax. His language makes it clear that the underlying association is with a theatrical performance, a tragically real one. The centre of the ‘stage’ is occupied by the tower from which the Greeks plan to throw the boy. Around the tower stands a crowd of Trojans and Greeks alike (1075–87): haec nota quondam turris et muri decus, nunc saeva cautes, undique adfusa ducum plebisque turba cingitur; totum coit ratibus relictis vulgus. his collis procul aciem patenti liberam praebet loco, his alta rupes, cuius in fastigio erecta summos turba libravit pedes. hunc pinus, illum laurus, hunc fagus gerit et tota populo silva suspenso tremit. extrema montis ille praerupti petit, semusta at ille tecta vel saxum imminens muri cadentis pressit, atque aliquis (nefas) tumulo ferus spectator Hectoreo sedet. This tower, once famous and pride of the walls, is now a cruel outcrop, surrounded on all sides by the spreading crowds of princes and common folk. The whole throng has assembled abandoning the fleet. For some a distant hill offers a free view from open ground, for others a high cliff, upon whose summit the eager crowd poised the tips of its feet. A pine tree supports one man, a laurel another, another a beech tree, and the whole wood quivers with its load of people. Another man makes for the edge of a steep hill; yet another treads on a half-burned dwelling, or the projecting masonry of the falling wall, and there is even (o abomination!) a barbarous spectator who sits on Hector’s mound.

Unlike the boy, the crowd weeps (1099–1100: non flet e turba omnium | qui fletur); as soon as the messenger relates Astyanax’s brave resolve in jumping voluntarily from the tower, Andromache interjects with a histrionic lament (1104–9). Finally, we come to Polyxena’s death. This time, the messenger emphasizes even more the theatrical aspects of the scene (1118–28): praeceps ut altis cecidit e muris puer flevitque Achivum turba quod fecit nefas, idem ille populus aliud ad facinus redit


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tumulumque Achillis. cuius extremum latus Rhoetea leni verberant fluctu vada; adversa cingit campus et clivo levi erecta medium vallis includens locum crescit theatri more.31 concursus frequens implevit omne litus: hi classis moram hac morte solvi rentur, hi stirpem hostium gaudent recidi. When the boy fell headlong from the lofty walls and the Greek crowd had wept for the wickedness it had committed, the same people turned back to another wicked act and the tomb of Achilles. The Rhoetean waters beat on its far side with gentle breakers; a plain fringes the near side, and a valley grows, rising with an easy slope and enclosing a central space, like a theatre. The numerous throng filled the whole shore: some believe the delay of the fleet will be ended by this death, others are glad that the young shoot of the enemy has been pruned back.

The crowd’s reactions are especially singled out, as the messenger insists on them three times (1128–31, 1136–7, 1147–8): magna pars vulgi levis odit scelus spectatque; nec Troes minus suum frequentant funus et pavidi metu partem ruentis ultimam Troiae vident. A great part of the shallow crowd both hates the crime and watches it; the Trojans as eagerly attend their own burial and panicked with fear look on the last fragment of falling Troy. terror attonitos tenet utrosque populos. Awe holds both peoples in shock. omnium mentes tremunt, mirantur ac miserantur. The minds of all are trembling, they marvel and they pity her.

The final remark on the reaction of the ‘spectators’ once again conjoins the two different groups (1160–1): uterque flevit coetus; at timidum Phryges misere gemitum, clarius victor gemit. Each crowd wept: but the Trojans sent up a hesitant groan, while the victor groaned more loudly. 31

On the textual issues raised by these lines, and their bearing on the interpretation of theatri more, see Fantham (1982) 377 and Zwierlein (1986) 111–12.

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There are two intertwined elements of great interest in this scene. The first is the explicit use of the theatrical analogy which the messenger exploits throughout as a structuring device for his narration. The second is the insisted focus on the emotional reactions of the people watching the deaths of Polyxena and Astyanax, which, in the context of that analogy, invites reflection on the relationship between that form of involved spectatorship and the reactions which the audience would be expected to experience while watching the play. The latter issue should perhaps be dealt with first. By watching watchers watch – an ‘allegory of spectatorship’32 – the audience is naturally invited to acquire a critical distance from the very act of watching. This is especially true since the messenger carefully distinguishes the reactions of Greeks and Trojans, and points out that the latter are able to refrain from crying out although they would be expected to be hit harder by the tragic events unfolding before them. If the Trojans are able to avoid uncontrolled despair, this should prove that a form of restrained spectatorship is indeed possible. One could consider this a form of ‘critical spectatorship’,33 since the Trojans’ moderate reactions must doubtless be rooted in their rational determination to offset the effects of the painful scene they are watching with the desire to maintain a dignified appearance in front of their oppressors.34 Furthermore, both Trojans and Greeks are watching real events, not a mimesis of those events. Thus, a fortiori, spectators should infer that they can avoid being completely overwhelmed by emotions mediated by a mimetic representation. The analogy between the Greeks and Trojans watching the deaths of Polyxena and Astyanax and the audience watching the play, however, is not immediate. The tragedy, in fact, presents an intermediate level which frames this allegory of spectatorship and complicates its extrapolation, since the messenger relates the events not directly to the external audience (us), but to an internal audience made up chiefly of Hecuba and Andromache. They, too, react to the speech, and, although their emotional involvement is obviously of a more directly compelling nature, their reactions represent another point of reference and comparison which is offered to the ultimate audience of the play. After the first part of the messenger’s exposition (1068–103), Andromache reacts with an outburst of pained indignation 32 33 34

A term I borrow from Stam (1992) 29 and passim. I anticipate here a reference to Martha Nussbaum’s notion of ‘critical spectatorship’ which I discuss more fully in the next section of this chapter, p. 244. Presumably they must also moderate their cries for fear of retribution – tyrants may even order relatives to display ‘joy’ after the execution of their family members: Jal (1963) 286–7.


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(1104–10). Shortly after, upon hearing of her son’s brave behaviour, her reaction is one of pride, as she observes the similarity between son and father: sic quoque est similis patri (1117). Finally, Hecuba expresses her feelings by voicing her despair and regretting that she has to survive the demise of her family (1165–77). Between the events narrated and the audience watching the play there are, therefore, a number of layers. The event is (i) watched by the Greeks, the Trojans and the messenger, whose reactions are (ii) described to Andromache and Hecuba, whose own reactions are, in turn, (iii) displayed on the stage. At each of the first two levels, however, the tragedy foregrounds different modalities of reaction. The Greeks weep uncontrollably, and watch despite hating what they have to see; the Trojans – who cannot but detest the events in front of them – are able to superimpose a level of rational consideration onto their reactions; Hecuba, Andromache and the messenger react with violent emotions. The differing attitudes of the Greeks and the Trojans prove that emotional reactions are not a direct, univocal consequence of emotional involvement: hence we lose, I suspect, the exemplary value of metadramatic alienation. The mise en scène of spectatorship does invite the audience’s critical reflection on its own acts, and thus fosters the possibility of critical viewing. But the further complication of this model finally turns it on its head, as it shows that no definite pattern of behaviour is really predominant. The audience is left with the tantalizing impression that a form of critical distancing is indeed possible, but that no coherent prescription for it can be given. What the scene ultimately provides is the illusion of critical spectatorship, a form of controlled reaction which is theoretically possible but actually elusive, since it depends too much on individual attitudes and reactions. By multiplying the internal points of reference, and thus (apparently) offering substantial stimuli for a critical analysis of the implications of spectatorship, the play finally leaves the audience alone with, and probably puzzled by, its own critical burden. A critical juncture in the mirroring of spectatorship occurs in the final scene of Troades, and in the poignant observation that the text reserves for the behaviour of most Greeks in the ‘shallow mass’ (magna pars vulgi levis), which is described as ‘hating the crime and watching it’ (odit scelus spectatque, 1129). The paratactic arrangement of these verbs cannot obliterate the concessive force of odit: the epigrammatic tension of the expression represents intrinsically contradictory emotions: the ‘authors’ of the scelus abhor it and yet are compelled to watch it. There are several disturbing implications of this remark which need to be untangled. On the one hand,

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we notice that the scelus resists control on the part of its creators, since it elicits widely differing reactions from different groups of people: some of the Greeks rejoice at the Trojans’ demise (1126–8: hi classis moram | hac morte solvi rentur, hi stirpem hostium | gaudent recidi), others ‘hate’ the crime. The latter also show by their reaction that the staged scelus they have planned cannot be controlled to its end, and in fact turns against them emotionally. Moreover, it is clear from the messenger’s observations that the scelus commands attention in spite of its loathsome nature.35 It should be noticed, however, that the concessive force of odit is far from determined by the syntax of the phrase; the modern reader, alerted by Freud’s well-known dictum, might well be inclined to suspect in such a vague syntactical arrangement traces of a causal connection between odit and spectat. The scelus keeps the vulgus riveted precisely because it is cruel and hateful.36 This suggestion finds circumstantial corroboration elsewhere in the speech. Shortly after line 1129, the messenger describes Polyxena’s arrival on the scene of her death, exploiting the pathetic quality of the wedding-asfuneral motif.37 The extended simile at 1140–2 foregrounds the ‘perverse’ reaction of the crowd to Polyxena’s beauty, even as the reference to natural events tries to downplay the disruptive potential of the pleasurable association between imminent death and moving beauty. The three-line portrait of Polyxena is fraught with erotic overtones. Her beauty is especially resplendent, the messenger confesses, ‘in spite’ of her demure and shy behaviour (1138: tamen), a detail which would clearly befit a bride, and which in this context focalizes her as an object of sexual desire in the eyes of the male narrator and the predominantly (we assume) male crowd. Such an implication, moreover, is clearly brought out after the simile, as the messenger confirms that Polyxena’s beauty stirs strong emotions in the beholders and – for the second time – reinforces the association between aesthetic pleasure and the awareness of a cruel, imminent death (1143–8): stupet omne vulgus, et fere cuncti magis peritura laudant: hos movet formae decus, hos mollis aetas, hos vagae rerum vices; movet animus omnes fortis et leto obvius, Pyrrhum antecedit; omnium mentes tremunt, mirantur ac miserantur. 35 36 37

A paradox already discussed by Plato, Resp. 439e–440a. See Boyle (1994) 229 on the theatrical force of spectare. The suggestion is made explicit at line 1132: thalami more praecedunt faces. For further references to this motif see Schiesaro (1985) and Seaford (1987).


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The whole crowd is dazed, and generally all men praise more what is about to die: some the grace of her beauty moves, others her delicate youth, others the straying course of fate: but her brave spirit moves all as it goes to confront death. She goes before Pyrrhus, and the minds of all are trembling, they marvel and they pity her.

The generalizing remark at 1143–4 (et fere cuncti magis | peritura laudant) has been suspected as an interpolation,38 but it actually reinforces the poignant tone of the simile, and suitably glosses the contrasting emotions that are experienced by the vulgus watching Polyxena’s death. The analysis of the final scene of Troades is consistent with my previous reading of Stoic theoretical statements on the emotional impact of performance. Critical distance is severely jeopardized, if not annulled, by the voyeuristic involvement of the audience in the spectacle that they are watching. It is not difficult to see how this involvement plays an important role in Thyestes as well. There Atreus himself is the delighted spectator of his own creation, who relishes all the details of Thyestes’ distress: miserum videre nolo, sed dum fit miser (907), he exclaims, as the curtain rises on the crowning glory of his masterpiece, a drunken, ignorant Thyestes acting out a grotesque combination of inner pain and outward intoxication. While the reading I offer is always open to the objection that, in the final analysis, Atreus could actually be set up to provide a negative model of spectatorship (he is pleasurably affected by tragic events), this strategy would be less easy to uphold with respect to the Trojan audience, which is legitimately upset by the horrors it observes. In both cases, however, what we, as the audience, are offered, is the example of an internal audience deeply affected by the events in front of them, and unable to resist the ictus they receive. the challenge of epos If Stoic theories fail to offer a coherent and fully convincing account of how the emotional impact of the tragedies could be contained, and prevented from affecting the audience’s internal balance, the allegories of spectatorship that I have examined appear to confirm that it is indeed difficult, if not impossible, effectively to insulate viewers from the pathos that they experience. Stoic theories emphasize the critical burden of the spectators, who are asked to evaluate the moral implication of the text without a firm and unequivocal internal point of reference. 38

Lines 1143b–1144a as well as 1147 are deleted by Zwierlein (1976) 190 and 188 respectively, as interpolated comments. Fantham (1982) 380 deletes 1143b–1144a but not 1147. Boyle (1994) rightly retains both. Further see Boyle (1994) 231 for a discussion of the role of spectacle in tragedy according to Aristotle, with reference to these lines.

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My reading of the Stoic sources, and their implications for an understanding of Senecan drama, is, however, only one possible reading. For instance, Martha Nussbaum has eloquently argued that the Stoics intend to promote a ‘critical spectatorship’, and that such a form of spectatorship may escape the seemingly unsolvable contrast outlined by Stoic sources between the potential benefits and dangers of poetry.39 The ‘critical spectator’ will observe the tragedy with ‘a concerned but critical detachment’ and will analyse every aspect of the play with a reasoned coolness: ‘the Stoics hope to construct a spectator who is vigilant rather than impressionable, actively judging rather than immersed, critical rather than trustful’.40 I sympathize with Nussbaum’s assertion that we should look at the spectator as the locus for a resolution of these tensions. I am less optimistic, however, about the expectation that Seneca’s tragedies can be seen to bear out such a hypothesis. True, the insistence of many plays on passions and their inner workings does highlight one of the elements that are crucial to the formation of a critical, detached spectator, who is reminded of the existence of such mental processes. But I am not sure that the repellent nature of many central characters discourages the audience’s emotional identification, or that we could consider the chorus’s moralizing orthodoxy as ‘a guide for the spectator’s response’.41 But is the spectator’s identification with such powerful characters as Medea or Atreus really discouraged, especially when their apparent lack of reason (of ‘ordinary’ reason) is set against the commonplace superficiality or moralizing dullness of the characters who surround them, primarily the chorus? And especially when the central negative character of the play is invested with the responsibility and prestige of creating his or her own play: can we really loathe Atreus if we enjoy Thyestes? This is not to say that the notion of ‘critical spectatorship’ could not be precisely the answer that Seneca himself would have given if asked how he would justify his poetic project on a theoretical level. What he could not have guaranteed, however, is that this solution would actually work in his tragedies, that the philosophical infrastructure of his plays effectively avoids the possibility of a 39

40

Nussbaum (1993). Nussbaum distinguishes between two different Stoic views, the ‘non-cognitive’ and the ‘cognitive’, represented respectively by Posidonius (and, to a large extent, Diogenes of Babylon), on the one hand, and Chrysippus, Zeno, Seneca and Epictetus, on the other. The ‘noncognitive’ position argues that emotions are non-rational movements which poetry can order by equally non-rational forces such as rhythm, harmony and melody. The authors of the ‘cognitive’ line insist that emotions are evaluative judgements, and that poetry has an educational function in as far as it tries to modify those judgements. Pratt (1948) argues, on the contrary, that Seneca’s tragedies reject Chrysippus’ theory of passions while embracing Posidonius’ notion that irrational emotions have no cognitive value. Tragedies would thus be, like music, means to affect the irrational (!") and emotional ( ) part of the soul ‘through the irrational’ ( # $ "). 41 Nussbaum (1993) 148. Nussbaum (1993) 137.


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‘misinterpretation’ which would transform his supposedly didactic project into a dangerous source of passion and turmoil. The notion of ‘critical spectatorship’ is rooted in Brecht’s theories on drama. To bring Brecht42 into the picture is doubly interesting, first because it enables us to explore further the issue of the audience’s reaction, and secondly because it may be helpful in explaining the generic interaction between drama and epic which we have already had an opportunity to confront. The idea that tragedies should inspire strong emotional reactions finds its most influential expression in Aristotle’s canonic definition of the genre (Poetics 1449b24–8): tragedy is, then, a representation of an action that is heroic and complete and of a certain magnitude – by means of language enriched with all kinds of ornament, each used separately in the different parts of the play: it represents men in action and does not use narrative, and through pity and fear it effects relief to these and similar emotions.

The opposition that Aristotle draws here between drama and narration ( ""% ) is predominantly concerned with the tragedy’s different impact on the audience and is echoed in the sections of the Poetics which discuss the relative features and merits of tragedy and epic.43 Thus, towards the end of the surviving part of the essay, Aristotle notices that the tragedy’s reliance on music (something which epic does not have) increases the pleasurable effects of tragic poetry by making them more evident (& ");44 tragedy is more compact and concentrated than epic, and ‘greater concentration is more pleasurable than dilution over a long period: suppose someone were to arrange Sophocles’ Oedipus in as many hexameters as the Iliad ’.45 Drama affects the audience more deeply than epic does, since its strategies of communication, its plotting of actions, and its forms of expression hold readers and spectators more deeply enthralled in the mimesis in front of them. Drama relies on a swift, tightly connected succession of events, on a forward-looking momentum which inevitably builds up suspense and preludes to climax. As Friedrich Schiller remarked several centuries later in his insightful commentary on Aristotle’s fundamental opposition,46 ‘dramatic action moves in front of me’, while ‘I move around epic action, and it does not, as it were, appear to move.’47 Schiller emphasizes especially the different effects on the readers: 42 43 46

There is only a cursory reference to Brecht in Nussbaum, who is mainly concerned with ancient sources. For a cogent argument on the limitations of Brecht’s view of Greek theatre see Lada (1996). 44 Poetics 1462a. 45 Poetics 1462b. Poetics 1449b; 1461bff. 47 Letter of 26 December. In an epistolary exchange with Goethe in December 1797.

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When the event moves in front of me [i.e. in the case of dramatic action], I am firmly shackled to the present as I apprehend it through my senses, my phantasy loses all freedom, a constant restlessness rises in me and stays in me, I must always remain by the object, all looking back, all reflection is forbidden, because I am following an external force.

Not so with epic, which allows ample freedom for readers to set their own pace: ‘I can proceed at uneven steps, I can, according to my subjective need, linger for a longer or shorter time, I can move backward or forward . . . I maintain a quiet freedom.’48 Schiller’s masterful amplification of the contrast drawn by Aristotle already brings us back to some of the central interpretative concerns about Senecan drama which I have highlighted above. Yet it is necessary to move one step ahead and interrogate another theoretical application of Aristotle’s opposition before I return to our author. A direct link connects Schiller’s words with what arguably remains the most incisive attempt at a redefinition of theatrical communication in the twentieth century. Around the names of Peter Szondi, Erwin Piscator and especially Bertolt Brecht, a fullyfledged theory of ‘epic theatre’ has evolved, one which brings the contrast between epic and drama to its most radical consequences and suggests that drama should utterly renew itself by abandoning the essential characteristics which set it apart from epic. Brecht’s theoretical reflection proves invaluable for widening our notion of theatre beyond the norms that are powerfully encoded in Aristotle. Comparing his notion of ‘epic theatre’ with Seneca’s experimentalism, anachronistic as it obviously is, can have a heuristic value. Beginning in the 1920s, Brecht’s theoretical reflections and his dramaturgic activity are affected by his thorough re-evaluation of the basic premises on which theatre, even modernist theatre, had so far been predicated. His central point of dissatisfaction with ‘bourgeois theatre’ is that it encourages the audience’s emotional identification with the characters and actions on the stage, and thus prevents them from reflecting critically on the circumstances which govern their lives, on the power structures which silently articulate their fate. Alienation (‘the A-factor’) is the only effective means of acquiring knowledge, and alienation should govern both the author’s construction of the play, the director’s staging of it, the actors’ acting and, finally and consequently, the audience’s reactions. With epic theatre: [t]he stage began to tell a story. The narrator was no longer missing, along with the fourth wall. Not only did the background adopt an attitude to the events on the stage – by big screens recalling other simultaneous events elsewhere, by 48

Ibidem.


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projecting documents which confirmed or contradicted what the characters said, by concrete and intelligible figures to accompany abstract conversations, by figures and sentences to support mimed transactions whose sense was unclear – but the actors too refrained from going over wholly into their role, remaining detached from the character they were playing and clearly inviting criticism of him.

The production ‘took the subject-matter and the incidents shown and put them through a process of alienation: the alienation that is necessary to all understanding. When something seems “the most obvious thing in the world” it means that any attempt to understand the world has been given up.’49 ‘It is thanks to these strategic choices that “the spectator was no longer in any way allowed to submit to an experience uncritically (and without practical consequences) by means of simple empathy with the characters in a play” ’.50 This form of theatre – which Brecht, drawing on Aristotle’s opposition, calls ‘epic theatre’ – effectively becomes a form of instruction, forcing the audience to acquire critical distance and to react rationally to the staged scene. The contrast between ‘dramatic theatre’ and ‘epic theatre’ thus becomes central to his theoretical approach. The opposition, he cautions, is not made of ‘absolute antitheses but of mere shifts of accents’.51 It is mostly a matter of ‘different methods of construction’ which depend ‘on the different way of presenting the work to the public’.52 The audience’s reactions to the epic, as opposed to the dramatic theatre, are described by Brecht in terms which echo Schiller’s intimations: The dramatic theatre’s spectator says: Yes, I have felt like that too – Just like me – It’s only natural – It’ll never change – The sufferings of this man appal me, because they are inescapable – That’s great art; it all seems the most obvious thing in the world – I weep when they weep, I laugh when they laugh. The epic theatre’s spectator says: I’d never have thought it – That’s not the way – That’s extraordinary, hardly believable – It’s got to stop – The sufferings of this man appal me, because they are unnecessary – That’s great art: nothing obvious in it – I laugh when they weep, I weep when they laugh.53

There are numerous elements of great interest in Brecht’s and Schiller’s analysis of the spectators’ reaction to these two different forms of theatrical communication. Indeed, it would be possible to adopt their description of the effects of epic theatre on the public and apply it to Senecan tragedy, where it would buttress the assumption that the plays are meant to furnish elements of moral and philosophical instruction, and do so by exploiting a form of critical spectatorship derived from alienation. However, I will first explore further the contribution that Schiller’s and Brecht’s insights make 49 52

Brecht (1936) 71. Brecht (1936) 70.

50 53

Brecht (1936) 71. Brecht (1936) 71.

51

Brecht (1930) 37, n.1.

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to an understanding of ‘the different methods of construction’ presiding over epic and dramatic theatre. As Brecht rightly emphasizes, ‘dramatic elements’ can be found in epic works, and vice versa: The bourgeois novel in the last century developed much that was ‘dramatic’, by which was meant the strong centralization of the story, a momentum that drew the separate parts into a common relationship. A particular passion of utterance, a certain emphasis on the clash of forces, are hallmarks of the ‘dramatic’. The epic writer Döblin provided an excellent criterion when he said that with an epic work, as opposed to a dramatic, one can as it were take a pair of scissors and cut it into individual pieces, which remain fully capable of life.54

Brecht is looking at a central feature which distinguishes epic from drama from the point of view of plotting and pacing. Drama creates tension by its strict adherence to unity of action, but also by organizing each scene in a continuum which creates an ever-increasing tension. What Brecht calls the ‘linear development’ of drama as opposed to the epic’s development ‘in curves’55 is responsible for the drama’s premium on emotional solutions which are precipitated by an unstoppable crescendo of tension. Walter Benjamin provided an apt analogy for this structural model when he intimated that the peripeteia (and, we might add, anagnorisis with it) is the crest of the wave which breaks and sweeps the audience with it and rolls forward to the end.56 Epic relishes a plot which might ultimately be teleological, but which relies heavily on delay rather than suspense, on structural parataxis, on changes of viewpoints, on carefully orchestrated movements backwards and forwards in the temporal frame of the narration. The narrators who control the epic narrative are free from many of the constraints imposed on the dramatic writer, since they can alter the linear arrangement of the plot almost at leisure. They can pause to describe and refrain for a while from portraying actions. They can move sideways to a different plot or subplot without destroying the texture of their creation. In dramatic theatre, Brecht says, ‘one scene makes another’. In epic theatre, as ‘evolutionary determinism’ is replaced by ‘jumps’, ‘each scene [is] for itself ’.57 I have insisted especially on the different notions of internal time and scene-succession which characterize epic and drama because they recall important (if problematic) aspects of Senecan theatre. Seneca, it is often claimed, constructs his plays as a sequence of relatively unconnected scenes which are not organically linked: such a lack of what Brecht would call 54 56

55 Brecht (1930) 37. Brecht (1936) 70. 57 Brecht (1930) 37. Quoted by Stam (1992) 41.


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‘growth’ (as opposed to epic ‘montage’) is strongly reinforced by the chorus’s suspended, dream-like interventions, which do nothing to ease the transition among different moments of the plot. The internal articulation of time, too, is remarkable. As we have seen in Thyestes and in Troades, for instance, Seneca tampers with the linear, unidirectional flow of time which is essential to traditional drama, and he replaces it with a complex intertwining of different temporal levels. In Thyestes, we also noticed, the centrality of Atreus’ killing and his subsequent revelation to his brother are further problematized by the framing structure, which makes it clear that the central plot, so traditionally hinging on such climactic moments, is but a part of a larger whole whose borders are nowhere to be grasped in the play as we see it: all the play ultimately guarantees is that we can glimpse snippets of an extended sequel of actions without being able to know exactly how they may evolve. What are we supposed to do with the substantial presence of epic elements in Senecan tragedy? One solution could be to extend Brecht’s observations about the fact that dramatic and epic elements inevitably coexist in various artistic forms, and thus, in effect, expropriate the issue of much of its interpretative potential. Or, on the other hand, we could fully embrace, as I mentioned, all the corollaries which Brecht suggests concerning the effects of epic theatre on the audience. Again, I would first like to explore a middle ground which privileges literary history before turning to the epistemological and cognitive implications of Seneca’s strategy. We would do well to recognize, first of all, that by the time Seneca wrote his plays epic had become an extremely flexible and far from unambiguous medium in Latin literature. The ‘epic’ thread in a text which is still predominantly dramatic is much less surprising after Virgil and Ovid, who had shown that within an epic frame dramatic and dialogic scenes could be combined with sustained narratives and the constant presence of one (or indeed more than one) narrator. Virgil had shown, too, that extensive contacts with tragedy were essential to his poem, and he appropriated – both specifically and generically – a great deal of the Greek and Roman tragic tradition. Ovid, for his part, demonstrated that the interplay of frames and contents, narrators and tales, were essential elements in the work’s fractured and polyphonic signification. The Metamorphoses are structured on the combined claims to truth and reliability of different narrators, whose narratives are often nested one inside the other in a confusing array of layers: some narrative frames, for instance, remain open for hundreds of lines. And, of course, what Ovid ultimately accomplishes is a violent disruption of the notion of closure.

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The bewilderment which is part and parcel of the effect of the Metamorphoses ultimately deprives epic of some of its supposedly ‘critical’ function vis-à-vis drama. The Metamorphoses show how an energetic exploitation of epic’s structural freedom – its possibility to shift narrative, narrators and time – can lead not to the critical distancing and empowerment of the readers, but rather to a form of confusion which effectively denies the privilege of insulation, rendering them victims of an emotional identification which epic could theoretically discourage. A certain level of framing helps readers understand their position in the flow of narratives, provides critical distance and ultimately affords them a privileged point of view which they might understandably mistake for that of the narrator. But Ovid multiplies this effect to the point that readers, dazzled by the web of frames within frames and narrations within narrations, can only forget the larger, ‘critical’ picture, and are as likely as the audience of a play to focus on the tale in hand, identifying with a character while forgetting what is implied or suggested by part or all of the metadramatic framing. There is a noticeable analogy between this technique and Seneca’s predilection for rather detached acts within a play, and both authors have often been censored for what critics have seen as their inability to create a coherent continuum between scenes. Such a continuum is exactly what works such as Metamorphoses or Thyestes radically question, by adopting, as we have seen, an internal logic which makes more space for patterns of thought akin to the working of the unconscious.58 When Seneca conspicuously introduces epic elements into his drama he accomplishes more than a mechanic Kreuzung der Gattungen, but less than a total revolution. ‘Epos’ no longer guarantees the interpretative effects that would be consistent with a distinctly didactic view of Senecan drama, since, at a basic level, its narrative norms are no longer based on clearly articulated structural patterns. Long rheseis and extended similes violate the relative stylistic homogeneity of the tragedy, without offering, on an ideological level, any less troubled or disconnected impression of reality. Stories such as those of Tereus and Polyxena hark back to epic, where in turn they had been imported from tragedy. The ‘safety’ of an external epic that is relatively unscathed by the pervasive violence of passions is questioned when tragedy and epic intersect not just once, but twice, and project onto each other a relativizing, troubling shadow. 58

On episodic narratives in imperial literature see Williams (1978) 246–53 and Johnson (1987) passim. For the unconscious rejection of temporality and causality see above, p. 211.


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In the context of Senecan drama, therefore, even the Brechtian notion of epic theatre as a guarantor of critical distance can hardly ensure the ethical and didactic viability of the plays. Rather, the comparison between Brecht and Seneca illustrates how Seneca ‘contaminates’ epic with tragedy far more than he ‘disinfects’ drama with it. Framing, we have seen, is the main vehicle of metadramatic reflection in the play, as it enacts, before the spectator’s eyes, the constructedness of the tragic experience and encourages speculation on the specific literary features of the tragedy. Responsibility is emphatically foregrounded, and an involuntary acquiescence on the part of the audience made more and more difficult.

Epilogue

Verum . . . nulli . . . nisi audituro dicendum est (Seneca, Letters to Lucilius 29)

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. But for all the reasons explored above, his choice of the tragic form is inevitably perilous and ambivalent. A full recognition of the doubleedged powers of poetry, a recognition which could derive directly from the theoretical principles of Stoic poetics, would have perhaps recommended a different course of action. For instance, it could have supported an attempt at poetry along the lines of Cleanthes’ Hymn to Zeus, where the pleasurable impact of the medium is put to the service of an impeachable moral lesson. 252

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But to resort to the psychagogic qualities of poetry in order to represent negative passions, to create powerful phantasiai of winning evil, is to take a step too far on the path to collusion with the enemy. Seneca’s tragedies do precisely what most tragedies, or at least good tragedies, must do: they present a forceful ‘display’ (phantasia) of contrasting forces and passions and ask the audience, brought to ‘ecstasy’ ( ), to examine their feelings and assumptions. This examination will be all the more difficult, and all the more rewarding, the more the poet will have been able to make a compelling case for the very forces that constitute tragedy. This position is perfectly in line with what our Stoic sources have to offer on the subject of poetics, but they cannot go further than that. As I have tried to show, when they try to explain how, exactly, the fearful myths presented by tragedy can produce ‘steering away’ (

) rather than ‘incitement’ (

), they do not offer anything more than a suspiciously circular argument. This is true in a particularly poignant way in the case of tragedies, such as many written by Seneca, which do all they can to blur the possibility of a clear-cut ethical reading, by presenting figures such as Medea and Atreus as deeply connected with the fascinating tension of poetic creation, for instance, or by depriving characters such as the satelles and the chorus in Thyestes of much of the poetic credibility and ethical consistency which might mould them into powerful counter-examples. The audience, at least an audience of proficientes, will only be able to resist the wicked allure of the various forms of tragic passion on the strength of previously held moral convictions, which can thus be tested and perhaps strengthened. Only in this very restricted sense does tragedy preserve an educational function, the only function which Stoicism is ready to grant it. But the risks implicit in writing tragedy are considerable, all the more so, as I just emphasized, in the case of Seneca. What we ultimately face is the impossibility of Stoic tragedy. For sapientes will have no interest in it, and proficientes are as likely to be deceived by it as they are to draw useful precepts. As Seneca admits in one of his Letters to Lucilius (29.1), ‘for one must not speak the truth to a man unless he is willing to listen’ (verum . . . nulli . . . nisi audituro dicendum est). Where do these theoretical considerations leave the present reading of Thyestes? Above all, I hope they might allow an appreciation of this and other plays that is less focused on the philosophical ‘truth’ they supposedly encode, less predicated, that is, on the dubious assumption that a final message can indeed be ascertained. I am not advocating a free-floating indeterminacy as much as I am trying to place tragedy’s complex signifying strategies squarely at the centre of the reader’s and the critic’s attention.

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There is no code to be broken: rather, there are emotions to be experienced and negotiated, rational intimations to be assessed. Everything in Thyestes points to future evil. The alternae vices of the House of the Pelopidai admit no other solution. What we have watched is but a fragment, a segment of a longer, more painful story. The curtain comes down to announce not ‘the end’, but ‘to be continued’. The intersecting layers of dramatic action that structure the play offer an illusion of order and enclosure just as they remain ultimately at the mercy of an exterior, non-human force, a Fury that has appeared and disappeared to motivate the action and can return, as she indeed will, at any moment. In this respect everything, even Atreus’ undoubted triumph, is momentary and elusive. Thematically and ideologically, the play is a celebration of nefas: it reaffirms its poetic excitement, its dazzling aesthetic quality, its right to be foregrounded. But it shows, or at least hints at, more: that perhaps fas and nefas, just as they cannot be taken as reliable guides in deciding a priori what can actually be said or not be said in poetry, and what will or will not be poetically successful, might not even constitute reliable moral definitions in themselves. There is no way in which we can escape the moral dilemma that Seneca imposes on us when he celebrates Atreus’ deeds, since he explicitly connects them to the appeal of poetry; but he goes further, since he relentlessly undermines the superficial moral judgement expressed by the chorus: Atreus does have his reasons; the murders he commits could be seen as an archaic, fascinating ritual in which he tries to restore, by horrendous retaliation, the integrity of the genos that has been obscenely perverted by Thyestes. Once these elements of doubt are allowed to creep into the otherwise neat system of Stoic morality, there is no way back; once we start doubting what is fas and what is nefas, who is right and who is wrong, the moral certainties which Seneca seems to offer in much of his work begin to crack (perhaps they were a generous illusion all along). The fact is, and Thyestes shows it splendidly, that the other world, the one of passions, blood, revenge, hatred, deceit and darkness, has its appeal; its horror is inextricably fused with voluptas, its pleasure and beauty (moral or otherwise) forever disjointed. The sparagmos is now complete, since no certainties, whether moral or poetic, survive the force of the tragedy intact. Like Procne, we are left to ‘storm ahead confusing right and wrong’. Atreus is, simply, too good not to be true. His overwhelming physical domination of the play in every conceivable aspect triggers the audience’s emotional response to a degree which is unparalleled by any other character. The issue, again, is not whether Seneca, in a round-table debate over ‘Poetry and Emotions’ with his fellow Stoics, would have defended him or not; in

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all likelihood he would have argued that yes, the ‘moral’ lesson of the play is to be found in the chorus’s well-meaning purple passages about power’s selfrestraint, or in the satelles’ sheepish advocation of a moderate, considerate tyranny. Or again, as he defensively puts it in De vita beata, he would have defended Thyestes on the basis that, after all, what you really need to do is to try to be wise (repent and you will be saved). Poètes maudits are (at least in their theoretical dimension) a very recent discovery, and there is no point in asking Seneca to provide a satisfactory prototype. But Seneca could no better control the implications and emotional provocations of his play than any ‘modern’ author can. And, without purporting to explore his own personal ambivalences about the kind of writing he offers, I suspect that he would have been the first to admit (perhaps sotto voce) that he had intentionally stacked the cards against Thyestes, the satelles, and the dully moralizing chorus. There is too much pleasure in Atreus for the author or the audience to be unaffected by it. Atreus is fulfilled, emotionally and artistically, not to mention intellectually. He is, in his own words, a (pagan) god who has scared away the pious gods of traditional religion, the guarantors of a world order whom Thyestes ineffectually invokes even as their power has been shattered by Atreus’ determined cruelty. He relishes passions and he relishes pain, his enemies’ pain. There is pleasure to be found in passions, and it is a pleasure that Thyestes and Atreus want us to share with them.

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Index of passages cited

ACCIUS (Ribbeck2 ) 198–201: 132 199–202: 142 205: 101 206–8: 102 220–2: 85 226: 196 634–5: 81 AESCHYLUS Agamemnon 944–5: 151 1096–7: 85 1192–3: 141 1587–8: 142 1598–1601: 136 1662–73: 67 Prometheus 1–87: 30 Seven at Thebes 87–170: 166 Supplices 225: 101 ARISTOTLE Poetics 1449b: 245 1449b 24–8: 245 1449b 26: 188 1461b: 245 1462a: 245 1462b: 245

CALPURNIUS Eclogue 3.59–60: 132 CATULLUS 61.214: 200 85: 51 CICERO De natura deorum 3.68–9: 99 De officiis 1.28.97: 161 De optimo genere oratorum 1: 136 De oratore 2.194: 22 3.219: 132 De republica 1.65: 118 Paradoxa stoicorum 25: 39 Philippicae 1.36: 116 Tusculanae 1.64: 22 4.38: 132 CLEANTHES Hymn to Zeus SVF 1.486: 23, 128

AUCTOR AD HERENNIUM 4.41: 131

DIODORUS 1.1.5: 44 15.1.1: 44

BRECHT ‘The Modern Theatre Is the Epic Theatre’: 247–8 ‘Theatre for Pleasure or Theatre for Instruction’: 246–7

ENNIUS Fragmenta scenica 73 Ribbeck2 : 200 Annales 332–4 Skutsch: 100

269

270 EURIPIDES Antiopa 177–227 Nauck2 : 9 Bacchae 1: 56 196: 134 231: 135 269: 134 326: 134 332: 134 436: 135 451: 135 479–80: 134 491: 134 508: 134 586–92: 138 655–9: 134 656: 134 731–3: 135 842: 138 845–6: 151 848: 135 861: 138 977: 135 989–91: 135 1019: 135 1021: 135 1113: 135 1120–1: 135 1189–91: 135 1281–2: 134 1345: 135 Danae 324 Nauck2 : 234 Electra 699–728: 141 Hecuba 1: 56 52–4: 49 Hercules furens 822–74: 30 843–54: 30 857: 30 858–73: 31 865–6: 31 872–3: 31 897: 31 Hippolytus 51–3: 48 58–71: 201 877: 221 Ion 5: 56 78–80: 48 Kressai 466–9 Nauck2 : 141

Index of passages cited Medea 355–6: 212 376: 17 376–80: 17 807–8: 17 1384: 210 Phoenissae 509–10: 130 553: 53, 130 554: 130 Troades 1: 56 1133: 200 1178–81: 199 HESIOD Catalogus mulierum 182 Merkelbach–West: 9 Theogonia 27–8: 24 HOMER Iliad 3.126–7: 1 3.23–6: 124 5.750: 226 6.429–30: 197 12.292–300: 124 17.61–7: 124 17.540–2: 124 20.61–5: 226 21.388: 226 22.188–93: 100 22.396–404: 200 22.401–3: 200 22.402: 124 Odyssey 4.335–9 = 17.126–30: 124 11.223–4: 230 11.260–5: 9 14.192: 115 HOMERIC HYMN TO DIONYSUS 7.44: 123 HORACE Ars poetica 6–9a: 120 9b–13: 120 189–90: 65 445: 132 Carmina 1.1.3–6: 59, 116 1.1.35–6: 59, 116 1.16.15: 124 1.18.7–11: 76 2.20.1–4: 116 3.1.2–3: 9

Index of passages cited 3.19.14: 51 3.25.1–3: 51 3.25.17–18: 51 Epistles 2.1.67: 131 2.1.211–13: 10 2.2.123: 132 Epodes 7: 35 Satires 2.1.10: 51 HYGINUS Fabulae 87: 97 88: 97 ISIDORUS Origines 8.7.3: 121 LIVY Ab Urbe condita libri 21.45.8: 91 22.57.6: 85 39.15.9: 51 [LONGINUS] 1.3: 128 1.4: 127, 128, 231 7.3: 23 8.1: 128 8.2: 115 8.4: 128 9.2: 128 9.6: 226 10.3: 129 10.6: 128 12.2: 130 13.2: 129 14.3: 129 15.1: 131 15.9: 128 18.1–2: 131 34.4: 132 LUCAN Bellum Civile 1.2: 98 1.95: 35 1.204–12: 124 7.552–6: 41 7.556: 41 10.184–7: 218 LUCRETIUS 1.79: 98 1.102–3: 194

1.404–8: 100 5.878–924: 120 MANILIUS Astronomica 5.462: 136 NAEVIUS 57 Ribbeck2 : 123 OVID Amores 1.1.1: 71–6 2.2.44: 40 3.7.51: 40 Ars amatoria 3.611–32: 77 3.617–18: 77 Fasti 1.47–8: 39 3.471–2: 27 6.5–6: 29 Heroides 12.212: 81 Ibis 187: 28 Medea 2 Ribbeck2 : 51 Metamorphoses 1.649–50: 73 2.641: 30 4.76–7: 151 4.157: 198 4.173: 28 4.484–5: 9 5.164–9: 123 6.412–674: 70 6.424: 71 6.469: 73 6.469–74: 79 6.473–4: 73 6.498: 79 6.519–26: 73–4 6.524: 74 6.537–8: 80 6.544–8: 74 6.548: 74 6.556: 74 6.565: 73 6.571: 79 6.574: 74 6.575: 74 6.576–9: 74–5 6.581–6: 75, 237 6.582: 75 6.585: 76

271

272 6.585–6: 76 6.586: 81 6.587: 133 6.588: 76 6.601–2: 179, 180 6.611: 77 6.611–13: 80–1 6.618–19: 81 6.621–2: 200 6.635: 81 6.636–7: 80, 123 6.655: 82 6.659–60: 82 6.663–5: 89–90 7.69–71: 151 7.76–7: 151 7.173: 28 12.59–61: 9 14.568–72: 146 15.86: 123 15.130–9: 137 Tristia 4.1.41–3: 29

Index of passages cited Pseudolus 524: 136 584: 136 1063: 136 1243–4: 136 1295: 136 1301: 136 Stichus 739–72: 136 Trinummus 1–2: 29 1–3: 32 706: 116 PLINY Panegyricus 3.1: 115 3.4: 115

PACUVIUS 1–20a Ribbeck2 : 9

PLUTARCH Quomodo adulescens poetas audire debeat 16d-e: 230 16e: 230 17d: 230–1 18a–b: 231 18d: 231

PHILODEMUS De musica 28.1–14 Neubecker: 229

PROPERTIUS 2.34.66: 81 3.1.3: 9

PLATO Gorgias 466c: 121 Phaedrus 245a: 22 Respublica 439e–440a: 242 533e–534e: 119 565d–566a: 126 571b: 118 571c–d: 94, 118 572b: 118 577b: 119 579b–c: 119 603c–605c: 119 605c–607a: 119

QUINTILIAN Institutio oratoria 3.8.45: 142 9.3.54: 131 9.4.137: 131 9.4.142: 132

PLAUTUS Amphitruo 69: 116 Bacchides 925: 136 925–78: 136 Poenulus 37: 116

SALLUST Bellum Catilinae 52.11: 115 SAPPHO 31 Voigt: 129 SCHILLER Letter to Goethe (26.12.1797): 245–6 SCHOLIA TO ILIAD 3.126–7: 1 SENECA Agamemnon 12: 28 31: 88 33–4: 88 34–6: 203–4, 215 38: 180

Index of passages cited 43–4: 181 44: 164 46: 181 53–6: 181 77–8: 164 241: 209 656: 185 712–15: 203 725: 203 728–31: 207 752–8: 202 754: 203 814–15: 216 881–3: 137 881–4: 137 901: 179 967–8: 209 1096–7: 85 Consolatio ad Helviam 8.3: 217 Consolatio ad Marciam 1.4: 44 19.4: 25 De beneficiis 1.3.10: 24 1.4.5: 24 4.7.2: 217 5.2.4: 29 De brevitate vitae 2.2: 24, 53 16.5: 24, 216 De clementia 1.1.4: 160 1.5.4: 162 1.9.4: 153 1.12.3–4: 159–60 1.15.5: 159 1.19.8: 160 2.1.4: 160 De ira 1.10.2: 50 1.20.4: 161 2.2.1: 232 2.2.3–6: 232 2.2.5: 233 2.3.1: 232 2.16.1: 124 2.35.4: 24–5 2.35.6: 53 De providentia 5.8: 216 De tranquillitate animi 1.14: 22, 53–4 17: 53 17.5: 22

17.7: 22 17.8: 22 17.10: 22 17.10–11: 22, 53 17.11: 23, 24 De vita beata 2.2: 53 9.2: 53 15.5: 29 15.6: 29 26.6: 24 Epistulae ad Lucilium 7.2: 233 7.5: 234 29.1: 253 41.3: 86, 127 41.6: 127 47.10: 143 75.13: 147 79.6: 52 108.7: 23, 24 108.10: 229 108.11–12: 234 108.26: 53 115.12: 233 115.15: 234 122.7: 215 122.8: 215 122.18: 214, 215 Hercules Furens 5: 215 6–18: 215 24–6: 215–16 30–6: 183 47–51: 185 47–52: 184–5 51–2: 185 64: 184 66–8: 184 67: 184 74: 184 75–7: 183 86–8: 183 96–8: 9 100–5: 183–4 254–7: 185 520: 185 520–3: 185–6 521–3: 186 523: 186 690–6: 9 813–17: 186 813–21: 185 898–9: 92 926: 185

273

274 1035: 179 1039: 92 Medea 12: 17 13–17: 17 25–6: 90 28–31: 212 40: 17 45–52: 18 47: 17 52–3: 18, 43 166: 213 171: 18, 213 175: 212 176: 17 192–3: 18 245–6: 209 272–3: 209 292: 164, 212 331: 213 401–7: 212 414: 212 482: 209 489: 209 535–7: 146 759–64: 210 910: 18, 213 928: 209, 210 984: 105, 210 1012–13: 210 1017: 212 1018–20: 212 1019: 179 1021: 213 1024: 213 Naturales quaestiones 3.29–30: 216 6.32–4: 29 Oedipus 15: 10 25–7: 10 82–6: 10 202: 11 211: 11 213–14: 11 216: 11 230: 12 233–8: 12 236–8: 204 291–402: 92 302: 204 303: 12 303–402: 204 349: 204 366–71: 204

Index of passages cited 373–5: 205 390: 12, 226 390–4: 12 390–7: 226 392: 12, 226 401–2: 227 418–22: 227 424–6: 123 457–8: 123 458: 123 486–8: 227 509–29: 11 509–658: 8, 54 530: 89 530–1: 8 530–68: 11 530–658: 92 548: 8 550: 89 551: 12 551–5: 12 552: 8 553: 12 554: 12 555: 12 561: 227 561–2: 11, 87 561–3: 8 566–7: 227 567: 227 567–8: 8 571–3: 9 572: 227 572–81: 89 573: 2, 12 576: 9, 87 582–6: 9 590–2: 9 592–4: 9 595–6: 9 611–18: 9 616–18: 227 626: 9, 11 669–70: 19 766–7: 11 768: 12 864–8: 196 868–70: 88, 204 942–7: 205–6 971: 12 977: 12 998: 179 999: 12 Phaedra 171–2: 88

Index of passages cited 262–3: 158 267–73: 158 360–86: 158 406–30: 158 605: 29 646–8: 199 896: 221 991–3: 39 1180: 76 1238–9: 197 1249: 201 Phoenissae 319: 29 407–9: 29 Thyestes 1–4: 171 1–6: 26–7 1–121: 49 4: 28 9–11: 56 13: 28 23: 50 23–9: 38 24–5: 47 25: 165 25–6: 83 26: 38 27: 38 28: 38 28–9: 165 29–30: 38 39: 38 46: 38 47: 38 47–8: 38 52–3: 43 52–67: 38 54–7: 31 56: 38, 51 56–7: 52, 143, 165, 179 57: 38 58–9: 72 62: 38 62–3: 28 65–6: 38, 45, 60, 236 65–7: 178 66: 48 68–83a: 178 70–1: 165 78–80: 48 82–3: 165 83: 33, 178 83–6: 32 84: 33 86b–101: 178

86–7: 27, 192 89–90: 165 89–95: 39 90–5: 28 92: 39 95: 28 96: 29 96–99: 29, 51 96–100: 28 98–9: 34 96–101: 178 100: 29, 47, 149 100–4: 178–9 101: 29 101–4: 178 102: 66 103–4: 87, 138, 179 103–7: 33 105: 66 105–6: 48, 178 105–7: 179 107: 33 107–8: 87, 205 115: 204 120–1: 172, 180 122–6: 164 122–75: 49 127–9: 164 132–5: 164 133: 164 133–5: 165 135: 165 138: 165 139–40: 165 150–1: 165 159: 113, 165 167: 113, 165 174–5: 166 176: 17, 131 176–8: 46 176–80: 131, 140 176–204: 46, 66, 154, 159 176–335: 49 178–80: 80, 131 179: 93 192: 46, 131 192–3: 18, 43, 46, 129, 155 193: 46 193–6: 141 195–6: 144 199–200: 106 201–4: 141 202: 143 203: 46, 50 204–5: 154, 159, 161

275

276 205–7: 161 205–10: 157 206: 161 207–10: 159 209: 161 211–12: 161 212: 143, 151, 157 213: 155, 159 215–17: 159, 160 216: 155 217: 156 219: 155 220: 81 220–4: 101–2 221–4: 147 222–4: 80 239–41: 102 240: 72 244: 17, 91 245: 155 246: 155 246–8: 96 248–54: 50 249: 131 250–4: 30, 46 252–3: 143 252–4: 34, 179 253–4: 143 254: 50–2, 143 255–8: 156 256: 130 257: 17, 81 260–2: 51, 108, 130 261–2: 51 265–6: 50, 51, 98, 129 267: 130, 143 267–8: 98 267–77: 52 267–78: 134 267–86: 156 268: 50, 52, 121 269–70: 81 272–5: 130 274–5: 143 275–6: 180 279: 59 279–80: 179 279–81: 142 281–2: 60, 81, 181, 236 281–3: 131 285: 126 285–6: 144 286–9: 156 287: 156 288–9: 112, 157

Index of passages cited 294: 107, 157 294–5: 106, 156 295: 107, 157 299–302: 113 302–5: 106 303: 107 305–7: 157 306–7: 106 312: 175 314–16: 141–2 315: 114 316: 175 318: 157 320: 175 321: 175 325–30: 102 329–30: 103 331–3: 102 332–3: 175 333: 157 334–5: 157, 175 335: 35, 159 336–403: 49 336–8: 175 339: 175 339–41: 145 340: 145 344–6: 138 344–7: 175 350: 175 353–7: 175 365–8: 59 386: 35 396: 153 404–7: 148 404–20: 59 404–90: 47, 49, 56, 64 406–7: 152 407: 56, 57 409–10: 116 410: 59 411: 162 412–20: 149 414–16: 57 416: 108 418–20: 108 419–20: 162 421–2: 132 423–8: 149 434: 110 434–7: 108 434–9: 149 436: 47 440: 47 446: 150

Index of passages cited 446–70: 108 449–51: 113 459: 204 469: 57 476–82: 109 487: 56, 106 487–9: 149 488–9: 47 489: 29, 56, 149, 150 489–90: 47, 58 491: 57, 99 491–3: 135 491–507: 49, 56, 64, 149 493: 57 496–505: 99–100 497–505: 55 498: 79 504: 96 504–5: 55, 100 505: 131 507: 55, 57, 149, 210 508–45: 49, 56, 64 512–14: 147 512–16: 149 513–14: 106 516: 150 517: 77, 115 520: 64, 150 520–1: 79, 113, 150 524–6: 137 525: 57 533–43: 150 539–43: 109 540: 109, 155 542: 109 542–3: 155 544–5: 111, 137 545: 65, 166 546–51: 166–7, 175 546–76: 145 546–622: 49, 59 553: 145 552–4: 33, 38 558–9: 167 560–1: 167 562: 167 568–71: 33 572: 168 573–6: 168 588: 168 588–95: 168 590: 169 594: 169 596–7: 169 596–622: 169

607–14: 169 613–14: 169 621–2: 170 623: 170, 236 623–5: 180, 236 623–788: 49, 59 624–5: 236 626: 170 633: 170 634–8: 129 635–6: 236 635–8: 236 638–40: 145, 170 639: 50 640: 145 641–90: 8 649: 85 650: 85, 87, 88 650–6: 103 651: 87 657–8: 86 658: 103 659: 86 666–7: 103 667–8: 103 668: 86 670–1: 86 671–2: 86 673: 86 677: 86 677–8: 86 681: 87 682–90: 90–1 684: 40, 91 686: 91 687: 91 688: 91 689: 91 690: 170 691: 87 691–2: 87 695: 91 696–9: 87 700–1: 87 707–14: 80, 122 713–14: 91 715–16: 91 716: 170 719: 170 730–1: 170 732–41: 122–3 735: 123 737: 123 743: 170 744: 129

277

278 745–6: 170 747–8: 170 755–8: 88 755–60: 103 757: 99 758: 177 759: 99 765–7: 87 776: 180 783–5: 171 789: 180 789–91: 180 789–93: 171 789–884: 49, 59, 129 803: 172 803–14: 172 806: 98 813–14: 172 821: 172 827–32: 172 831: 174 833: 174 837: 173 874: 173 875–81: 173 875–84: 173 885: 116, 143 885–6: 98, 116, 180 885–8: 59, 68 885–919: 49, 59 888: 98, 152 888–9: 116 889: 59, 179 890–1: 143, 196 891–2: 172, 180, 215 892: 180 894–5: 60 895: 60 903: 60 903–5: 60, 64, 96 907: 60, 96, 243 909–10: 138 911: 136 917: 60 917–18: 144 920–69: 105, 129 920–1004: 49, 64 922: 109 922–4: 107 937: 214 938–41: 109–10 942–4: 110 947: 138 952–6: 40 957–8: 115 957–64: 107

Index of passages cited 962: 107 964: 110 967: 110 970–2: 110 976: 110 982–4: 113 990: 180 990–1: 180 997–8: 112 1004: 66 1005: 110, 111 1005–6: 134 1005–112: 49 1006: 11 1011–12: 146 1021: 152 1021–2: 113, 150 1027–31: 112 1030–1: 82 1036–7: 40 1040: 113 1050–1: 196 1051: 97 1052–68: 58 1057–9: 91 1057–65: 96 1059–60: 9 1077: 152 1085–8: 146 1089–99: 211 1090–2: 196 1096–8: 59, 82, 116 1096–9: 104 1098: 103 1098–9: 5, 105, 211 1100–2: 104 1102: 105 1102–3: 152 1104–10: 144 1106–10: 104 1107: 105 1110: 105 1110–12: 65, 152, 173 1112: 96 1112–13: 152–4 Troades 164–5: 191 170: 185 248–9: 191 279: 192 286–7: 192, 193 336: 192 351–2: 184, 192 360: 193 360–70: 192–3 362: 193

Index of passages cited 367: 193 368: 152, 193 461–8: 199 469–74: 195 501: 198, 202 501–2: 198 504–5: 55, 214 519–21: 196 548: 9 551: 195 594–7: 197 613–14: 136 642–62: 197 646–8: 199 653–5: 197 659: 198 659–61: 195 662: 197 771–85: 195 861: 200 861–871a: 200 883: 137 883–5: 137 1065–7: 237–8 1068–103: 240 1075–87: 238 1099–1100: 238 1103: 29 1104–10: 238, 241 1111–17: 200 1117: 200, 241 1118–28: 238–9 1126–8: 242 1128–31: 239 1129: 241, 242 1132: 242 1136–7: 239 1138: 242 1140–2: 242 1143–4: 243 1143–8: 242–3 1143b–4a: 243 1147: 243 1147–8: 239 1160–1: 239 1162–4: 196 1165–77: 241 [SENECA] Hercules Oetaeus 207: 185 1457: 179 1472: 179 SHAKESPEARE King Lear 4.6.123–8: 88–9

Titus Andronicus 2.1.1–4: 59 2.1.131: 76 2.1.133–5: 76 2.3.92–3: 88 2.3.98: 88 2.3.98–104: 88 2.3.265: 72 2.4.38–43: 70–1 3.1.133–5: 46 4.1.69: 73 5.1.63–6: 72 5.2.28–30: 72 5.2.80: 72 5.2.142–4: 114 5.2.194–5: 73 5.2.204: 73 SILIUS ITALICUS Punica 5.653: 91 9.402–5: 146 SOPHOCLES Ajax 669–76: 169 674–5: 169 693–717: 167 Antigone 1115–54: 167 Electra 8–10: 56 77–85: 48 Oedipus Tyrannus 158–215: 166 1086–109: 167 1213–15: 205 1214: 205 Oedipus Coloneus 1769–76: 67 1779: 67 Trachiniae 633–62: 167 STATIUS Silvae 5.1.57: 124 Thebaid 1.1–2: 145 STRABO 1.2.8: 231 SUETONIUS Augustus 15: 85 Caligula 32.3: 153

279

280

Index of passages cited

Nero 21: 9 56.1: 153 Tiberius 44: 153 TACITUS Annales 6.7.5: 44 Dialogus 18.5: 132 TERENTIUS Phormio 16–17: 116 ULPIAN Digest 3.2.11.1: 102 VARIUS 1 Ribbeck2 : 142 De morte, fr.4 Courtney: 100 VARRO De lingua Latina 6.30: 39 Fragmenta operum incertorum (Salvadore) 66: 2 VIRGIL Aeneid 1.203: 225 1.257–96: 220 1.483: 200 2.3: 225 2.270–97: 195 2.499–501: 185 3.302: 199 3.304: 199 3.310–12: 199 4.344: 195 4.465–73: 206 4.469: 9 4.660: 178 5.1: 187 5.750: 28 6.273–81: 9 6.48–51: 53 6.77–80: 29 6.100–1: 29 7.44: 31, 35

744–5: 71 7.45: 35 7.286–322: 32 7.312: 152 7.315: 217 7.317: 35 7.322: 195 7.335: 35 7.335–40: 32 7.336: 33 7.337: 33 7.373–5: 29 7.385–90: 34 7.386: 34, 35 7.406–74: 34 7.422: 28 7.456–7: 34 7.552: 179 7.552–4: 33 7.559: 179 7.568–71: 33 7.580: 51 9.183–4: 126 9.339–41: 126 9.446–9: 41 9.792–8: 125 10.1: 187 10.58: 195 10.443: 60 10.454–6: 125 10.517–20: 94 10.723–9: 125–6 10.791–3: 41 10.793: 41 10.843: 116 11.1: 187 11.81–2: 94 12.4–9: 125 12.156: 78 12.161–215: 93 12.179: 93 12.313: 35 12.945–9: 93 Eclogues 4.1: 31 Georgics 3.8–9: 227 3.10.20: 59, 116 3.266: 217 3.284–7: 217

General index

Abel, L. 14 Accetto, T. 114–15 Accius Atreus 30, 84 Bacchae 9 Aeschylus Agamemnon 84–5 beginnings in 56 closure in 66–7 revenge plots in 141 Alexander the Great and Caesar 219 and Dionysus 97 anagnorisis 60, 61, 66, 111, 171, 248 anal¯epsis 187 Atreus and cannibalism 126–7 and foreknowledge 105 and memory 189–90 and nefas 193 and Nero 97, 153 and passions 105–8 and paternity doubts 5, 88, 101–2, 105 and Procne 80–3, 133–4 and satelles 154–64 and the sublime 127, 225 as animal 98 as Dionysiac character 133–8 as god 97 as poet/director 55–6 as sacerdos 84–9, 151–3 compared to a lion 122–8 compared to a tigress 122 intertextual competence 115–17 linguistic prowess 111–13 logic of 94–5, 98–105 metadramatic role 90 puns of 77, 113–15, 133 audience, reaction of 182–3 see also frames

Auerbach, E. 16 Augustus and Dionysus 97 and time 219–20 Bacchic/Dionysiac elements 97, 133–8 and Augustus 97 and enthousiasmos 121 and inspiration 10 and sparagmos 84–5 and women 77 in Alexander the Great 97 in Horace 51 in poetry 31, 33 in Procne 133–4 in Virgil 76 beginnings in Aeschylus 56 in Euripides 56 in Sophocles 56 belatedness in Senecan tragedy 223 in Oedipus 223 in Phoenissae 223 bi-logic 143, 210–11, 250 Brecht, B. 245–8 Caesar 126 and Alexander the Great 219 and calendar reform 218–19 in Lucan 124 Calder, W. 16 cannibalism 94, 126, 135 children, death of 201–2, 212 chorus 164–76 in Sophocles 167 in Thyestes 144–6, 148, 165–7, 169–70, 174–6 in Troades 201 Chrysippus 24 civil strife in Thyestes 146–7 Cleanthes 24, 229–43

281

282 closure in Aeschylus 66, 67 in Greek tragedy 66–7 in Ovid 249 in Seneca 65–9, 95–7, 173, 189 in Sophocles 67 in Virgil 67–8 comic elements in tragedy 136–7 critical spectatorship 244 deception 61–2, 73, 79 Democritus 22, 53 Dingel, J. 21 dismemberment 201 dissimulation 114 Dupont, F. 15 ¯ 173 ekpyrosis Eliot, T. S. 75 emotions, Stoic theories of 231 Ennius 222 enthousiasmos 22–5, 29, 53, 90, 93, 121, 231 epic and tragedy 83–5, 207–8 in Ovid 249–50 in Senecan tragedy 249 Euripides 84–5 and metatheatre 223 and sacrifice 92–3 Bacchae 61–2, 76, 97, 133–8 beginnings in 56 Hercules furens 30 Medea 17 Orestes 40 Phoenissae 130 extispicium 101–2 frames (narrative) 14, 45–64, 92, 182, 250 Freud, S. 16–19, 42, 87–8, 94 furor 21, 25, 46, 47, 143 Fury/Furies 24–5, 30, 37–9, 84, 188–90

General index ictus in Stoic theory of passions 232, 233 incest 94 and poetry 72 in Agamemnon 204 in Oedipus 196, 204–6 in Troades 197 intertextuality 221–8 and Bacchic elements 227–8 and defence mechanisms 225 and horror 225 and memory 224 in Oedipus 225–8 in Virgil 222, 226–7 iterum 27 Juno as metadramatic character 183–4, 186 knowledge 12, 47, 57–8 Lef e`vre, E. 147 Leo, F. 30 lexis in Stoic theory of poetry 229 lion-simile as stylistic icon 127 and Caesar 124 locus horridus 85, 87–9, 103, 127 and sexual symbolism 87–8 [Longinus] 127–30, 132, 226, 232 Lucan, Bellum Civile 40, 87, 98, 124, 146 and metapoetry 13 Lucretius 98, 100, 120, 218 maius-motif 31, 34, 35, 51, 70, 130 Matte Blanco, I. 42, 94, 143 Mazzoli, G. 24 metadrama and metatheatre 13–15, 36–7 in Lucan 13 in Oedipus 54 in Ovid 13 in Thyestes 49, 54 Mezentius 73, 124–6 mise en abyme 11, 18–19, 31

gigantomachy 98 Gigon, O. 147 Girard, R. 93 Gracián, B. 115

Naevius 222 nefas 31, 36–9, 41, 43, 47, 50, 74, 76, 91, 193 Nero 97 and Atreus 153 Nussbaum, M. 244

Hesiod 24–5 Horace 120 Bacchic elements in 51 Epode 16 1, 220 hunting imagery in Thyestes 99–100, 135

Orlando, F. 10, 42 Ovid and Aeneid 146 Ars amatoria 77 irony in 112 Metamorphoses and metapoetry 13, 249

General index passions 20 peripeteia 248 phantasia 130–1 in [Longinus] 232 Picone, G. 53 Piscator, E. 246 Plato 22, 53 and bacchic inspiration 119 description of tyrants 94, 118–20 Plautus’ Trinummus 32 play-within-the-play 64 Plutarch 229–31 poetry and the female body 89–90 and tyrants 118–20 as danger 72, 229 as power 77–8, 87 Posidonius 24 Procne 81 as tigress 123 Dionysiac features 133–4 ¯ prolepsis 187 psychoanalysis and time 186–7, 211 in post-Freudian thought 94 regression 189, 207 and repetition 189, 214 in Phoenissae 206 repetition 35, 186, 224 and female characters 76–7 and regression 214 in Agamemnon 194 in Stoic thought 216–17 repression/return of the repressed 39, 42–4, 55, 75, 76 revenge in Thyestes 141 sacrifice and murder 93–4 satelles 46, 102, 106, 139, 154–64 scelus 11, 27–9 Schiller, F. 245–6 Schmeling, M. 14 Seidensticker, B. 34 Seneca and theory of enthousiasmos 22–5 dating of works 20 De clementia 118–19, 159–64 style of prose works 13 Seneca’s tragedies Agamemnon 28, 68, 137 Hercules furens 27, 91–2, 183–6 Medea 16–19, 43, 90, 146 Oedipus 8–12, 18–20, 54, 87, 89 Phaedra 92

283

Phoenissae 158–9, 206 Thyestes passim Troades 92, 137, 188–90, 194–5, 197–9, 225, 237–43 sententiae 29, 106, 157 Shakespeare, W. King Lear 88–9 Titus Andronicus 70–3, 111 Shelton, J.-A. 181 Sophocles 10, 83 and metatheatre 223 Antigone 193 beginnings in 56 chorus in 167 closure in 67 Oedipus Rex 12 Philoctetes 65 Tereus 83 spectatorship 57, 60, 235 in Aristotle 245 in Thyestes 235–7 in Troades 237–43 Stoic theories of passions 229–35 sublime 23, 53, 55, 127–32 and intertextuality 129–30 stylistic features of 131–2 Suetonius 97, 118 sun 95 disappearance of 170–2 reversal of path 220 Szondi, P. 246 Tacitus 44 and irony 112 Tantalus in Thyestes 27–8, 37–8, 40, 41 Tarrant, R. 167 Tereus–Procne episode in Ovid 179–80 in Seneca and Ovid 26–31, 70–1, 79, 115 Thyestes 140–7 and gods 152 and Horace 116 and rational understanding 108–11 and Stoic ethos 147–8, 151 and Tantalus jr 149–50 and Virgil 115–16 and women 90 lapsus of 148–9 time and alienating effects 186–7 and Augustus 219–20 and Caesar 218–19 and political discourse 218–19

284 time (cont.) and undoing of the past (Ungeschehenmachen) 211 ‘cubist’ treatment of 188 in Agamemnon 180–1, 202–4 in epic 187–8, 202 in ‘epic’ theatre 183, 248 in Epistulae ad Lucilium 214–16 in Euripides’ Medea 210 in Greek tragedy 177 in Hercules furens 183–6 in Lucan 217–18 in Lycophron 218 in Medea 208–14 in Ovid 187–8 in psychoanalytic theory 186–7, 211 in Senecan tragedy 177–220, 248–9 in Thyestes 178–83

General index in Troades 190–202 in Virgil 187, 195, 202, 206–7 reversal of 214–16 Turnus 146 as a lion 124–5 tyranny and maius-motif 130 in Euripides’ Phoenissae 130 Varius 142–3 vates 8–9, 12, 53, 87, 121 vestigia 12, 19, 101 Virgil 84–6, 146 Aeneid 7 and Thyestes 27, 32–4, 84–5 and Homer 222 closure in 67–8 Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U. von 18

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