Accademia Editorale
Seneca's Thyestes: The Tragedy with No Women?
Author(s): Cedric Littlewood
Reviewed work(s):
Source: Materiali e discussioni per l'analisi dei testi classici, No. 38 (1997), pp. 57-86
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Cedric Littlewood
Seneca*s Thyestes:
The Tragedy with No Women?*
It is a familiär Stoic paradox that only the wise man is king.
The tyrants of the terrestrial world, though they impose their
will on their subjects apparently without restriction, hâve no
true power. The exercise of politicai power is in the ancient
world a characteristically masculine activity, and the paradox
of power incorporâtes a paradox of gender: he who appears to
exercise a masculine characteristic to its füllest extent is in fact
no man at ali. A tyrant's power is illusory for two reasons.
First, Fortune is capricious, and a tyrant, beset by the hatred
and envy of his subjects, occupies a precarious position. Second, through his dévotion to luxury and his lack of control,
the tyrant betrays himself as effeminate and impotent in the
very exercise of his power. While Seneca's Hecuba advanced
thè fall of Troy as the greatest example of the first flaw in terrestrial power1, 1 would like hère to discuss Thyestes as an example predominantly of the second.
A key différence between the two flaws or failures of
tyranny is of course that for the second, freedom of action
must be granted the tyrant if he is to betray himself. After a
brief preliminary considération of the implications of the
structure of Thyestes and its 'play within a play' for this necessary freedom to act the rôle of tyrant, I shall embark on the
primary subject of the article: the way in which the ethic of
terrestrial power undermines itself through its expression.
Central to this discussion of the self-defeating rhetoric of terrestrial power are the figures of the animal and the woman.
* For discussion,
reading and criticism of this article I am grateful to A.M. Bowie, D.P. Fowler, A.R. and RJ. Littlewood, E. Theodorakopoulos, the anonymous référées of MD, and particularly, as ever, to M. Comber. I hâve used O.
Zwierlein's O.C.T., 1986, repr. 1991, throughout with FJ. Miller's Loeb 1917,
repr. 1961, unwieldy but very literal translations, which I hâve altered where necessary. Other texts I hâve translated myself.
1. Non umquam tulit / documenta fors malora, quam fragili loco / starent superbi (Tro. 4-6).
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Cedric Littlewood
These are both foregrounded in Atreus' long and apparently
dislocated statement of thè crisis he faces (220-241): his power
is insecure, he says, because his royal animal and royal wife
hâve escaped from their enclosures. Of thèse two figures that
of the animal prédominâtes in the main body of the text leading up to the cannibalistic feast, the woman in the banquet itself, but to a certain extent the two figures can be read together. Not only are they introduced together and in parallel,
but they share the same binary opposition: 'man'. Particularly
in ancient philosophy and moralism, 'woman' and 'animal'
are characterized as the negative of 'man', and inevitably
therefore the distinction between them is eroded.Though the
majority of the article is devoted to the play staged by Atreus
and the rôle Thyestes plays within it, in the final section I
move back through the frame to consider the contrast between the futile cyclism of politicai power and hard line(ar)
Stoicism in the drama taken as a whole.
1. Sat. Quonam ergo telo tantus utetur dolor?
At. Ipso Thyeste.(258-59)
Att. 'So what weapon will your great anguish use?
At. Thyestes himself.'
In thè quote given above the attendant asks what the instrument of Atreus' revenge will be, and Atreus replies with the
name of an agents Thyestes. The problem is easily solved: because Atreus knows how Thyestes will act, Thyestes' actions
become the instrument of his plans. Atreus' response does,
however, underline an important point, that the plan cannot
succeed without the desires of Thyestes, specifically spes improba (295) and vêtus regni furor (302). Within the narrowly
defined context of the dramatic world as Atreus créâtes it for
Thyestes, Thyestes is allowed to play the protagonist: quod
est in ipso scelere praecipuum nefas, I hoc ipse faciet (285-86.
'What is the crowning outrage in this crime he himself shall
do'). On the other hand, the fact that Atreus is staging the
tragedy within which Thyestes will play his rôle qualifies that
agency: certainly Thyestes is acting on the impulse of his own
free will, but Atreus, as thè producer of the context within
which Thyestes is exercising that free will, enjoys a higher
level of agency. Thyestes' rôle becomes an expression both of
Seneca's Thyestes: The Tragedy with No Women?
59
his character and of the superiority of Atreus not simply as a
more powerful player, but as the player of a more powerful
game. These two détails, that Thyestes exercises free will and
that Atreus is operating in a différent context or a différent
game are central to the reading of Atreus' revenge.
By allowing Thyestes to play the agent, by allowing him
free expression of his character, Atreus stages a démonstration of the fatal limitations of that character. Precisely the
same point can be made about Juno's intention in the Hercules Furens. She too abandons a conventional confrontation
with her enemy in favour of the tactic of allowing him to play
the protagonist: quaeris Alcidae parem? / nemo est nisi ipse:
bella iam secum gerat/ ...veniet invisum Scelus / suumque
lambens sanguinem Impietas ferox I Errorque et in se semper
armatus Furor - I hoc hoc ministro nostro utatur dolor (84-85,
96-99. «Do you seek Alcides' match? None is there save himself; now with himself let him war... Hateful Crime shall come
and savage Impiety, licking kindred blood, and Error, and
Madness, armed ever against itself - this, this be the minister
of my pain»). It is Hercules' conception of virtus, his badge of
identity, which condemns him to destruction at the end of the
play. Hercules' ethic is one which makes him liable to destruction and Juno has exploited that potential in such a way
that when realization dawns on thè hero he is on the verge of
suicide and «the myth of the sufficiency of virtus has been
shattered»2. Juno and Atreus may stage the tragédies which
ensue, they may provide a context within which the tragédies
take place, but ultimately what is represented in the text or on
the stage is the victim himself.
This tragic structure, most famously used of course in Euripides' Bacchae, that the victim be allowed to play the protagonist in the tragedy staged by the avenger, is intimately
bound up with the content of ail thèse plays, for ail three are
tragédies of power. Dionysus does not hâve the influence in
Thebes he would like, Juno feels her position as queen of
Heaven is compromised by thè apotheosis of thè victims or
the créations of Jupiter's râpes, and Atreus of course desires
to destroy his rival to the throne. What is at issue in ail thèse
2. G. Lawall, Virtus and Pietas in Seneca's Hercules Furens, pp. 25-26 in AJ.
Boyle (ed.), Seneca Tragicus, Aureal 1983, pp. 6-26.
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Cedric Littlewood
tragédies is (personal) power, defined by Atreus as ultimate
agency: thè power to determine thè very nature of ail agency,
to become the pattern by référence to which ail action has
définition and meaning {Thy. 204-7, 211-13 cf. Herc. F. 397408, 447-53). As Dionysus' actions show, thè kind of power,
not simply the magnitude he represents is utterly différent
from thè power held by Pentheus: whereas Pentheus dépends
on thè state and an army of male Citizens, Dionysus' power
has a supernatural dimension and he opérâtes through women
(and the womanish). Juno and Atreus, however, are less assured than Dionysus because they see their own status and
power as nothing more than a phase in an endless cycle of
shifting dominance. What they both desire is to break free
from the cycle and achieve a lasting security, and this cannot
be achieved within conventional boundaries: with varying degrees of success ail three figures attempt to remove themselves
beyond the rules or the limits of the destructive game of
power and to allow their opponents to play by themselves; to
self-de(con)struct.
Though Atreus speaks the prologue to thè tragedy he
stages, he does not, like Dionysus or even Juno, speak the
prologue to the tragedy proper. Whatever Atreus' credentials
as a metadramatic figure3, however cleverly he manipulâtes
thè dramatic word, thè first scene remains unknown to him.
The fact that his agency is as predictable to Furia as Thyestes'
is to him qualifies his agency in precisely the same way. Just
as thè knowledge and power of Atreus reduced Thyestes'
agency to a quasi-instrumental level, so Furia's intention, unknown to ail but Tantalus, makes Atreus the instrument of
furor. The supernatural frame, the existence of a supervening
context which he does not perceive, mocks his striving for ultimate power and the revenge he undertakes to achieve it.
Furthermore, the lack of an awareness of or involvement in a
higher, more powerful world is one of the chief means of differentiating between men on the one hand and women and
animais on the other (see below, sections 3-6). Atreus reduces
Thyestes to the level of an animal and a woman, but this
means of asserting his power over Thyestes is undermined by
3. See A. Schiesaro, Seneca's Thyestes and the morality of tragic furor> in J. Elsner and J. Masters (edd.), Reßections of Nero, London 1994, pp. 196-210.
Seneca's Thyestes: The Tragedy with No Women?
61
the double frame of the tragedy, as Atreus, ail unknowing,
plays the same rôle he détermines for Thyestes in the tragedy
staged by Furia and Tantalus.
2. Atreus' play, then, begins at line 176 with a Statement of
his frustration at his own failure to respond to the scelera and
the dolos of his brother. Thyestes' outrages are known to
Atreus, the Satelles and the audience, and are not specified
until 220 f. The passage has not received the attention it deserves and I shall quote it in füll:
Fas est in ilio 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.
Est Pelopis altis nobile in stabulis pecus,
arcanus aries, ductor opulenti gregis,
cuius per omne corpus effuso coma
dependet auro, cuius e tergo novi
aurata reges sceptra Tantalici gerunt;
possessor huius regnat, hunc tantae domus
fortuna sequitur. tuta seposita sacer
in parte carpit prata, quae cludit lapis
fatale saxeo pascuum muro tegens.
hunc facinus ingens ausus assumpta in scelus
consorte nostri perfidus thalami avehit.
Hinc omne cladis mutuae fluxit malum:
per regna trepidus exul erravi mea,
pars nulla nostri tuta ab insidiis vacat,
corrupta coniunx, imperi quassa est fides,
domus aegra, dubius sanguis et certi nihil
nisi frater hostis.
(220-241)
«Whatever is right to do to a brother is right to do to him. For
what has he left untouched by crime, or where has he failed to
sin? My wife he has debauched, my kindom stolen; the ancient token of our dynasty by fraud he gained, by fraud overturned our house. There is within Pelops' lofty folds a lordly
flock, and a sacred ram, the rieh flock's leader. Over ali his
body a fleece of spun gold hangs, and from his back the newcrowned kings of the house of Tantalus hâve their sceptres
wreathed in gold. His owner rules; him does the fortune of
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Cedric Littlewood
the house follow. Hallowed and apart he grazes in safe meadows fenced with stone, that guards thè pasture with its rocky
wall. Hirn did thè treacherous one, daring a monstrous crime,
steal away, with the partner of my bed helping the sinful deed.
From this source has flowed thè whole evil stream of mutuai
destruction; throughout my kingdom hâve I wandered, a
trembling exile; no part of my family is safe and free from
snares; my wife seduced, our pledge of empire broken, my
house weak, my offspring dubious - no one thing is certain
but that my brother is my enemy.»
The effect of this double crime is the disruption and inversion
of définition so familiär in Senecan tragedy: the brother,
through the taint of crime, becomes no brother; what was nefas becomes fas; the king becomes an exile in his own kingdom; the royal blood itself becomes questionable. There are
two parts to the crime: the theft of the golden ram and the
adultery, but both are clearly linked. The faithless wife was
party to the theft of the ram, but more significantly both séduction and theft are instances of fraus (224). Furthermore,
not only are both crimes presented in parallel (coniugem
stupro abstulit I regnumque furto; specimen antiquum imperi I
fraude est adeptus, fraude turbava domum [222-24]) but there
are obvious similarities between the wife and the ram: both
are necessary to sustain royal power - whether for quasimagical and symbolic reasons, or for the more mundane need
for an heir - and both must be kept enclosed within the stone
walls of the royal palace. The animal and the woman, the twin
foundations of royal power have escaped their prison and the
king is king no more.
'The woman' is of course Aerope, who is a character of
some stature in ancient tragedy. Quintilian, when discussing
the masks used on the tragic stage, uses her as an example of a
sad figure, just as Medea is an example of a savage figure4.
Though prominent in Ovid's account of the myth5, Aerope
does not have a rôle in any extant tragedy. However, it has
been conjectured that she was an important character in a lost
4. Quintilian 11, 73.
5. Tristia 2, 391-92.
Seneca"s Thyestes: The Tragedy with No Women?
63
play of Sophocles6 and, probably more importantly, in Varius' Thyestes7. Ail thèse suggestions on lost plays are highly
speculative and it would be dangerous to build an argument
upon them, but were any of them true they would serve to
underline the striking anonymity of Aerope in Seneca's
Thyestes, which is the only Senecan tragedy without a major
rôle for a woman. Avoiding the pattern given by Ovid and the
tragedians whom Quintilian has read, Seneca is clearly determined to leave Aerope faceless, and it is to this colourless abstract, Voman/wife', that I shall address myself in the reading
which follows.
One might expect Atreus to spend the rest of the tragedy
trying to recapture the animal and the woman, but instead he
décides to take his revenge through the famous banquet, the
ram and the queen apparently forgotten. This is peculiar because Atreus is very clear that the two crimes are not simply
offences deserving punishment but thefts of the foundations
of his kingship. Surely vengeance is not a sufficient response
to the crisis which faces him? For the rest of the tragedy,
however, Atreus speaks from a position of power: Thyestes
not Atreus is currently the wandering exile (297), Atreus is
the brother in a position to offer a share of the kingdom (52627), and Atreus begins his crime in thè sacred giade which is
the heart of the royal palace and the locus of royal power. In
short, the real danger which threatens Atreus in 238-41 simply seems to evaporate. This is a misleading impression: the
symbols of Atreus' politicai crisis are not abandoned, and
both éléments do in fact figure prominently in Atreus' revenge and in the rhetoric of the struggle for power.
Sed quibus captus dolis
3. Sat.
nostros dabit perductus in laqueos pedem?
(286-87)
But with what wiles caught will he be led to
«Att.
set foot within our snares?»
6. A.C. Pearson, The Fragments of Sophocles, Cambridge 1917, p. 93, 'Welcker
should be restored as the alternative title. The évidence is
thought that
very slight, but, if the feminine form is correct, it would follow that Aerope was
one of the most prominent characters'.
7. See R. Tarrant's édition of Thyestes, Atlanta, 1985, p. 41, \... potentially the
strongest single influence on Seneca's treatment*, and n. 148 (also p. 41).
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Cedric Littlewood
As stated above, the golden ram which is the talisman of the
royal house of Pelops does not figure in Atreus' plans, or indeed at any point after its introduction. However, Atreus' intention to entrap Thyestes within the royal palace and
thereby to win the absolute power he desires is often expressed in terms of the capture of an animal8. In Atreus' first
speech (176 f.) Thyestes is introduced in terms which combine
the language of hunting and politicai conflict: non silvae
tegant / hostem nec altis montium structae iugis I arces (18587. «Let no forests shelter my enemy, nor citadels, built high
on mountain tops»). The Satelles quickly adopts the trope, as
quoted at the beginning of the section, and even Thyestes
himself seems happy to contrast the treacherous life of the
royal palace with the life of an animal: Répète silvestres fugas
(412)9. The centrepiece of this System of imagery is Atreus'
soliloquy on Thyestes' arrivai:
Plagis tenetur clausa dispositis fera:
et ipsum et una generis invisi indolem
iunctam parenti cerno. iam tuto in loco
versantur odia, venit in nostras manus
tandem Thyestes, venit, et totus quidem.
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
8. There is perhaps a difficulty in identifying the capture of a domestic herdanimal, a ram, with the capture of a wild beast: sheep are not animais to be tracked and snared. It should be remembered, however, that this ram, through its status as a talisman and its miraculous fleece, is no ordinary creature. In Euripides'
Orestes it changes from a soft, attractive creature into a destructive mon\'
/
/
ster/prodigy:
(722) again,
(998-1000), and in the same poet's Electra it becomes a
and also
(711). The ram of course remains relentlessly passive
throughout the myth: the transformation is one of the perspective or understanding of those who see the human actions which are centred around it. Even the
guile used by Thyestes and Aerope to steal the ram was not directed at the ram,
rather at Atreus, who would have objected to its removal. Nonetheless, I offer
the constructionist argument that the the docile sheep can be transformed into a
destructive monster/prodigy through the actions of Thyestes and Atreus in the
same way that Thyestes can be transformed into a beast (and later a woman - see
p. 8 f.) through his treatment at the hands of Atreus.
9. Cf. Hippolytus' desire for escape in Phaedr. 718, silvae, ferael
Seneca's Thyestes: The Tragedy with No Women?
65
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 tarnen tegatur. aspice, ut multo gravis
squalore vultus obruat maestos coma,
(491-507)
quam foeda iaceat barba.
«The prey is fast caught in the toils I spread; both thè sire
himself and, together with the sire, the offspring of the hated
race I see. Now on safe footing does my hatred fare. At last
has Thyestes corne imo my power; he has corne, and the
whole of him! Scarce can I control my spirit, scarce does my
rage admit restraint. So when the keen Umbrian hound tracks
out the prey and, held on a long leash, with lowered muzzle
snuffs out the trail, while with faint scent he perceives the
boar afar, obediently and with silent tongue he scours the
field; but when thè game is nearer, with his whole strength of
neck, he struggles, loudly protests against his master's loitering, and breaks away from his restraint. When rage scents
blood, it cannot be concealed. See how his thick hair, ail unkempt, covers his woeful face, how foui his beard hangs
down».
The figure gains force as it transpires that not only are
Thyestes and Atreus playing out the rôles of hunted and
hunter, but Thyestes even looks like a wild animal. The hunting trope does not simply foreshadow the resuit of the conflict between Atreus and Thyestes, it also establishes a more
fundamental hierarchy10:Thyestes is a lower order of being, a
creature to be hunted or broken (see 199 f.) rather than persuaded or threatened. The true significance of Atreus' words
and deeds is inaccessible to him as if he did not really understand what he hears and sees. The same kind of forceful
distinction between those who comprehend and those who
do not can be seen clearly in Odysseus' représentation
of Philoctetes in Soph. Philoctetes. Odysseus describes
10. To what extent the fréquent erotic dimension to hunting should be read
into Atreus' revenge on Thyestes I am uncertain. The subtext of rape would be
désirable in an interprétation (see especially below section 6), and I shall leave it
accordingly in my subtext.
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Cedric Littlewood
Philoctetes as living where there are no paths and no people
dwell (2), and this seems a fitting location for a man who,
when he was in human society,
/ 9
/ ,
(9-11). Similarly
,
with thè famous représentation of Dido as a wounded deer in
Aeneid 4 (69-72), thè deer, as a (sub-rational) animai, could
not but be «incautious», and this of course makes thè point
that thè Gods are as différent a species, as inaccessible and incompréhensible in their thoughts and deeds, and as inescapable as humans are to animais. There is a further dimension common to thè characterisation of Dido and Thyestes,
that both of them are overcome by forces which subvert thè
proper path of reason: not only do they fail to see thè machinations of thè Gods/Atreus, but in addition their carefully rehearsed resolutions11 are undermined and destroyed by forces
which operate at a more primitive level. Dido is afflicted by an
erotic desire which does not address her resolution but simply destroys it, and Thyestes succumbs, one can only assume,
to thè spes regni which Atreus mentioned earlier, in défiance
of thè Stoic arguments which he has just advanced. In each
case thè resuit is to expérience a disastrous transformation
into an animal. This is shown with painful clarity in thè last
words of Thyestes' agon with his son/children: Pro me nihil
iam metuo: vos facitis mihi / Atrea timendum
/ Serum est
cavendi tempus in mediis malis. / eatur. unum genitor hoc
testor tarnen: / ego vos sequor, non duco (485-89. «For myself I
have now no fear; it is you, my sons, who make Atreus cause
of dread to me... It is too late to guard when in thè midst of
dangers; but let us on. Yet this one thing your father déclares:
I follow you, nòt lead»). His décision to meet Atreus and enter thè palace clearly makes no sense at ali, and it is accompanied by thè peculiar renunciation of agency which is a hallmark of thè dominance of passion in Senecan tragedy12.
The cannibalistic feast is of course integral to thè thème of
humans degenerating into animais: Thyestes' dinner is 'thè
precise point where man has become no more than an ani-
li. Aen. 4, 15-19; Thy. 423-89.
12. On this see C. Littlewood, Dramatic Rôle and Moral Voice in Seneca's Tragédies, Oxford D.Phil. Thesis, 1995, pp. 39-65.
Seneca's Thyestes: The Tragedy with No Women?
67
mal'13;it is a perversion, set against a background of warped
and luxurious civilization, of the substitution of animal for
human sacrifice after the hunt. Atreus, as the sacrificer and
producer of the banquet, clearly bears responsibility for this
perversion, but what of Thy estes? He abandoned his rational
opposition to the royal palace and as a resuit is soon to be
found tearing the flesh of his children like an animal14,but
does his total ignorance of Atreus' plans in any way exonerate
him? Does his bestial sub-rationality confer a certain innocence on his actions? Clearly there are two sensés of rationality to be distinguished hère: the rationality which distinguishes the virtuous from the vicious, and the rationality
which distinguishes the human (reasoning) from the animal
(instinctive). That there are two sensés of the term allows for
the piquancy of paradox as a man acts in such a way as to hâve
no true agency, or reasons in favour of non-rationality. But
the collapse of irrationality into non-rationality makes the serious philosophical point, beloved of the moralists, that to act
counter to the dictâtes of virtue is to turn one's back on the
exercise of the faculty which distinguishes humanity from the
animais:
separat hoc nos
a grege mutorum, atque ideo venerabile soli
sortiti ingenium divinorumque capaces
atque exercendis pariendisqueartibus apti
sensum a cadesti demissum traximus arce,
cuius egent prona et terram spectantia. (luv. 15, 142-47)
'This distinguishes us from dumb animais, and for this reason
we alone hâve been allotted a sacred intelligence, capable of
divine things and designed for practising and developing
skills. Through this faculty we have dragged down from the
citadel of heaven the feeling which animais, because they are
face-down and looking at the ground, lack/
13. P. Vidal-Naquet, Hunting and Sacrifice in Aeschylus' Oresteia pp. 141-59 in
J.P. Vernant and P. Vidal-Naquet, Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece, New
York 1988 (first published Paris 1972) p. 152.
14. obiecit fens I lamanda jorsan corpora? (747-48) et. iweros avidus pater /
gaudensque laceret (277-78), lancinât gnatos pater (778).
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Cedric Littlewood
The tripartite division between right-thinking, wrong-thinking and not thinking at ail obviously has a place in moral
thought15, but not to the exclusion of the influential version of
thè homunculus fallacy whereby the rational human self is
identified with a man battling with aspects of the soûl which
are part of a composite human identity but yet at the same
time sub-human16. To be truly virtuous is to be truly
human17.
Both humans and animais possess bodies, but only humans
also possess a rational soûl. Therefore humans face a décision
in their actions whether to serve thè body or the soûl: certain
kinds of activities are strongly associateci with thè body and
therefore not worthy of the conception of humanity outlined
above. Such a distinction is sharpest in a Platonic schema
which allows a fundamental division between the imperfect
particular objects of the terrestrial world and the perfect
other-worldly forms which are only accessible to the intellect,
but it has more generai application, as witnessed by the familiär trope of the «flight of the mind»18.Desires for worldly objects are regularly represented as a metaphorical thirsts19,and
the force of the metaphor lies in the implicit suppression of
rationality: thirst is a desire of thè body not the soûl, and a
soûl which thirsts is choosing to act out a bodily rôle. The
rhetoric of thè pursuit of power in this tragedy is founded
15. See e.g. Sen. dial. 3, 3, 7-8.
16. The Iochs cUssicus is Piato Rep. 439b-441c; cf. also Piato Phaedrus 245a248c. The philosophical influence of Piato on Seneca may be traced through Posidonius: see J. Rist, The Imprint of Posidonius, pp. 201-218 in Stoic Philosophy,
Cambridge 1969, M. Laffranque, Poseidonios d'Apamée, Paris 1964, Ch. 12 esp.
p. 466 f., but this philosophical intricacy is probably unnecessary, and one need
look no further than the familiär tradition of psychological dualism in which the
forces of reason (identified with the self) are assailed by passion from outside.
For this see R. Padel, In and Out of the Mind, Princeton 1992, passim.
17. Cf. Epictetus, Disc. 1, 6, 20; Sallust Jug. 1-2, and especially Cat. 1-2. For
further development and discussion of the origins and prevalence of the topos
see P. McGushin, C. Sallustius Crispus:Bellum Catilinae: a Commentary, Leiden
1977, Appendix II, pp. 292-95; Carl Büchner, Sallust, Heidelberg 1960 repr. 1982,
pp. 131 and 342; D.C. Earl, Thè Politicai Thought of Sallust, Cambridge 1961 pp.
6-7.
18. See R. Miller-Jones, Posidonius and the Flight of Mind, «Class. Philol.» 21,
1926, p. 97 f. See also Lucr. 1, 62-79, Sen. nat. lpr. 2 and 2, 6, 1, epist. 74,
30-33.
19. See e.g. Sen. dial 11, 11, epist. 15, 9-11, 19,7, 73, 2, 74, 11.
Seneca's Thyestes: The Tragedy with No Women?
69
upon such a dégradation of the proper activity of the soûl:
Tantalusmakes a rationaldécision to return to Hell and suffer
his punishments, but is prevented from following this course
by the activity of Furia, who arouses hunger within his bones
(97-98) and transformshim from a sentient being into an unreasoningforce: Me pati poenas decet, / non essepoenam. mittor ut dirus vapor / tellure rupta vel gravent populis luem I
sparsurapestis (86-89. «It is right for me to suffer punishments, not be a punishment. I am sent as some deadly exhalation from the riven earth, or as a pestilence, spreading
grievous plague among the people»). Tantaluswill destroy his
house like an infection as he causes his descendantsin turn to
succumb to the same unreasoningthirst: Huncyhunctfurorem
divide in totam domum. I sic, sic ferantur et suum infensi invicem I skiant cruorem(101-03. «This, this madness distribute
throughout the palace. So, as you are, may they be driven on,
raging to quench their thirst each in the other's blood»).
When the Fury first spoke she urged Tantalusto drive his descendants to crime, and listed a variety of crimes which they
could commit (23-67), and it is noticeable that when Tantalus
objected and had to be coerced through a ravening thirst or
hunger, the second command to spread furor through the
house does not contain any référence to rational activity: the
plague causes the palace to tremble at the unspeakablecontact
and Nature to be disrupted (101-21). As Tantalus recognized,
the hunger which ultimately leads Thyestes to his banquet is
profoundly dehumanizing,and it is a reflection of this fundamental change of status that there is such a violent dislocation
in the characterisationof Thyestes: in one breath he is offering rationalobjections to the meeting with Atreus and the entrance into the royal palace, and in thè next he acquiescesand
the objections vanish utterly.
4. I arguedabove that the victory of the thirst/hungerover rational objections represents a degeneration to a sub-human,
bestial level, and that it is through this degeneration on the
part of Thyestes that Atreus is enabled to capture the animal
and secure his royal power. It should be added however that
animaisare not the only créaturesin which desires tied to the
body are dominant; being locked within and subjugated to
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Cedric Littlewood
one's body is peculiarly feminine20. If anything, Thyestes-aswoman is initially a more promising rôle than Thyestes-asanimal in that it embodies more simply the perversion of rationality discussed above: unlike animais, women, as human,
hâve the potential for true reasoning and yet are so constructed as to be less likely than men to actualize it. To use the
terminology employed above, women are humans congenitally prone to play the rôle of animais. In Atreus' statement of
crisis quoted in section 2 the two foundations of his royal
power, the animal and the woman, had broken free from their
respective prisons, and it is a very basic move to link the récurrent hunting imagery with the need to recapture the animal. Unfortunately there is no obvious analogous figurative
System through which to construct the recapture of the
woman. To some extent the conception of woman as animal
outlined above allows one to construct the recapture of the
woman through the recapture of the animal21.Again, one can
read in Atreus' victory over Thyestes a suppression of
Thyestes' masculinity in as much as the exercise of politicai
power, which is Thyestes' birth-right, is a distinctively masculine activity. If 'the feminine' is constructed as essentially
parasitic upon or negatory/subversive of 'the masculine'22,
then the emasculation of Thyestes can also be read as a feminization, and the Thyestes-as-woman rôle resurfaces. Both of
thèse modes of constructing woman, and hence Thyestes-aswoman, seem to me to be productive and, if Atreus' statement
of crisis is to be integrateci with the rest of the tragedy, desir20. See e.g. F. Zeitlin, Playing the Other, p. 74 in Nothing to do with Dionysos?,
Princeton 1990, edd. J. Winkler and F. Zeitlin. In addition to being 'the-not- rational' the body, as the feminine context, becomes the definer and bearer of moral significance. See the discussion below (sections 5-6), and note Foucault's
coinage «biologico-moral responsibility» in The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1,
London 1979, p. 104.
21. On women as hunted animais see e.g. C. Sourvinou-Inwood pp. 65-68 in
'Reading' Greek Culture, Oxford 1991, esp. nn. 43, 46, 47. On the emasculation
of being turned into prey see P.M.C. Forbes Irving, Metamorphosis in Greek
Myths, Oxford 1990, p. 89.
22. So, up to a point, J. Kristeva in La Femme, Ce N'est Jamais Ça, «Tel Quel»
59, 1974, pp. 19-25: «Mais, plus profondement, une femme, cela ne peut pas
être... Une pratique de femme ne peut être que négative» (pp. 20-21); «La révolte.... casse la structure même du langage» (p. 20). See also J. Henderson p. 51
in Satire Wntes 'Woman': Gendersong, «Proc. Camb. Philol. Soc.» 215 (N.S. 35)
1989, pp. 50-80.
Seneca*s Thyestes: The Tragedy with No Women?
71
able. But nonetheless, taken in isolation, they are perhaps
rather tendentious. In the absence of a single major figurative
System like the hunting trope further support for this thesis
can be advanced from three quarters: the obsessive concern
with virility in Roman Stoicism, whose doctrines Thyestes
implicitly rejects when he enters the palace of Atreus, the
banquet scene itself, and more generai socio-political considérations.
5. Totus contextus illorum virilis est.
(Sen. epist. 33, 1)
When Thyestes enters the palace of Atreus he rejects the Stoic
invulnerability he has constructed for himself in his argument
with his son. Tantalus (the son) holds out to Thyestes the lure
of royal power (pater, potes regnare [442]) only for it to be
broken by the destructive paradoxes of Stoicism. Thyestes interrupts half-way through thè line with cum possim mori, and
Tantalus' summa est potestas fares similarly, interrupted and
broken by Nulla si cupias nihil (443). Stoicism, and particularly Roman Stoicism, is founded on paradoxes of power and
freedom23.Because it dépends on a déniai of the conventional
understanding of power and freedom, the threats or lures of
tyranny can hâve no impact upon it, and the true Stoic is invulnérable. Atreus is well aware of this invulnérable shell and
it causes him some anxiety: if Thyestes turns out to be nimis
durus (299) or a rigentem virum (304), he will hâve to be attacked indirectly, through his children (299-302). The
adamantine hardness of Stoicism is at once ultimate power
and ultimate masculinity (and, by extension, ultimate virtue);
fused with the tough farmer-soldier of Roman moralism it
constructs the pinnacle of achievement for the race made from
stones24. The binary oppositions hard/soft, virile/effeminate
provide much of the rhetoric for the distinction between good
and bad25:examples are unnecessary, but it is perhaps worth
23. They are of course related, and between them account for four out of six of
Cicero's Paradoxa Stoicorum.
24. See Verg. georg. 1, 60-63, 94-99, 121-35, 160.
25. For the collapse of good into virile, see most elegantly Sen. dial. 3, 12, 2: et
sic bono viro digna faciet, ut nihil faciat viro indignum. On hard/soft C. Edwards,
The Politics of Immorality in Ancient Rome, Cambridge 1993, pp. 96-97, finds a
rare exception to the traditional rhetoric in Gellius to which one might add Juve-
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Cedric Littlewood
observing Seneca's verbal contorsions in epist. 112. He is
clearly attraeteciby the near oxymoron of a hardened sinner:
sed valde duruscapitur,immo, quod est molestius,valde mollis
capituret consuetudinemala ac diutinafractus (112,1. «But we
are taking him when his characteris very hardened,or rather,
which is worse, very soft, broken by bad and inveterate
habits»).
Virility is not acquired as an inaliénablepossession by any
accident of birth: a large proportion of the targets of Roman
satire and Roman moralism are effeminate or soft men, and
occasionally also women are seen to behave in a virile fashion
or are exhorted to do so. In Seneca's Consolatio ad Helviam
Matrem his mother is imagined as saying, 'Ubi studia, quibus
libentius quam f emina, familiarius quam mater intereram?
(15. «Where are the studies in which I shared more eagerly
than a woman, and more companionablythan a mother»), and
in the following section to be a woman is to carry a certain
name: Non est quod utaris excusatione muliebris nominis...
(«You must not use the excuse of the name of woman»). The
description of his mother's virtues concludes, Non potes
itaque ad optinendumdolorem muliebre nomen praetendere,
ex quo te virtutes tuae seduxerunt;tantum debes a feminarum
lacrimisabesse quantum a vitiis (16. «So you cannot maintain
your pain by putting forward the name of woman from which
your virtues hâve distinguished you. You ought to be as far
from the tears of women as from their vices»). Gender is a
matter of role-playing, and it is possible for a woman to be
virile as it is depressingly common for a man to be effeminate26.
In Seneca's tragédies rôle playing and identity are of great
concern: «Self-dramatization,the character'sintense récognition that he is creating his rôle for the délectation and horror
of others... is also a kind of existential exercise. Medea wishes
to become Medea, and Hercules Hercules, to conform to both
their own expectations and to those of their enemies and
nal (of ail people) 15, 131-33: mollissima corda / humano generi dare se natura fatetury/ quae lacrimas dédit, haec nostri pars optima sensus. Though not Ione voices, they are certainly unusual.
26. See e.g. Sen. epist. 19, 9 on Maecenas: ingeniosus Me virfuit, magnum exemplum Romanae eloquentiae daturus, nisi illum enervasset félicitas, immo castrasset.
Seneca's Thyestes: The Tragedy with No Women f
73
friends»27. Rôles, even the particular rôles of thè name of a
dramatic character, are determined; what is of concern is to
what extent the protagonists will be able to play the rôle of
the characters whose name they bear. This peculiar, self-conscious distance is evident also in the close examinations of
characters' psychological statesi more often than not characters observe and analyse the interplay of the psychological
forces which constitute their own identity, rather than the
identity of others. In Seneca's tragédies even more than in
those of Euripides28,rôles are there to be played or discarded,
and this includes gender rôles29.
«Irrationality, runaway émotions, or lack of bodily or
mental control are attributes only ascribed to women»30. This
judgement on Senecan tragedy is largely correct, provided
that it is taken out of context. In the context of her article
Robin argued that only (représentations of) bio/psycho-logical women behave in this way, which is manifestly untrue:
Oedipus and Thyestes, to say nothing of Hercules, are obvious counter-examples. If, however, gender is understood in
more fluid, role-playing terms the judgement becomes both
valid and useful31. In the first counter-example, that of Oedi27. T. Rosenmeyer, Senecan Drama and Stoic Cosmology, Berkeley 1989, p.
52.
28. For fluid gender rôles in Euripides see e.g. H. Foley, Medea's Divided Self,
«Class. Ant.» 8, 1989, p. 81, R. Garner, Deatb and Victory in Euripides' Alcestis,
«Class. Ant.» 7, 1988, pp. 58-71.
29. See e.g. Clytemnestra's desperate threats to her daughter: Animos viriles
corde tumefacto geris; / sed agere domita feminam disces maio (Ag. 958-89).
30. O. Robin, Film Theory and the Gendered Voice in Seneca, p. 116 in Feminist Theory and the Classics, edd. . Rabinowitz and A. Richlin, New York
1993.
31. Hercules, and Tantalus in this tragedy, are perhaps special cases in that
they are both possessed and arguably in some sensé displaced by a female demon/passion, but I cannot find a maie character in Seneca's tragédies who exhibits the characteristics of passion which Robin describes without being feminized in some way. Normally, as with Oedipus in the discussion below, it is made
clear that there is a quality of virile virtue which the character does not possess,
but this is by no means the only way. Atreus, who I later suggest (p. 13 f. and ,
for ths passage, p. 15) is not as masculine and as powerful as he thinks he is, says
early in the tragedy, rapior sed quo nescio rapior (260-62). This certainly looks
back to the characterisation of Tantalus, possessed by the (female) Furia, but
also perhaps to Horace carm. 3, 25,1-3: Quo me, Bacche, rapis tui / plenum? quae
nemora aut quos agor in specus/ velox mente nova? In this poem Horace takes as
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Cedric Littlewood
pus, the divergence of biology and rôle32is marked: Oedipus
is paralyzed by fear and uncertainty (cuncta expavesco meque
non credo mihi [27]), and ends his first speech torn between a
passive prostration at thè altars and, with a pleasantly ironie
twist, a desire to run to his parents (71-81). In his second he
rehearses his victory over the Sphinx, and boasts that he is
prepared to face Mars himself or the Giants, only to collapse
once again into a feeble dependence on Apollo (108-09) and
an acknowledgement of his own «madness» {démens [103]).
These manifestations of confusion and inadequacy frame a
sharp, Stoic response from Jocasta33:
Quid iuvat, coniunx, mala
gravarequestu? 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.
(Oed. 81-86)
«What good is it, husband, to make evils heavier with
lamentation?This very thing, I think, is régal - to face adversity and, the more dubious one's position and the more
the greatnessof empire totters to its fall, the more firm to
stand, brave with falteringfoot. It is not manly to turn the
back to Fortune».
Clearly Jocasta is more of a man than Oedipus34, and a similar
kind of argument can be advanced regarding the agon between Jason and Medea in her play (M éd. 515-557), where
his pattern of Bacchic inspiration and wonder the figure of Euias: both are driven off the path to a place they hâve never been. For Horace's persona, the gender-shift is part of the movent to the 'place he has never been'; «playing the
other» is an important part of that new world.
32. For an example of biology and rôle in parallel, see Ag. 226-309.
33. Cf. Antigone to (again) Oedipus, Pboen. 188-90: at hoc decebat roboris tanti
virum, / non esse sub dolore nee victum malis / dare terga. For a historical Roman woman of this stamp cf. the celebrated Arria Paeti in Pliny epist. 3, 16, 1-6
and Martial 1, 13.
34. K. Töchterle, author of the most récent commentary on Oedipusy Heidelberg 1994, is equally taken by the importance of gender in this scene and gives a
list of loci communes in which the rhetoric of Stoic condemnation is given added
point by the fact that a man is lectured on virtuous/virile endurance by a woman
(p. 201).
Seneca's Thyestes: The Tragedy with No Women?
75
Medea is keen to challenge kings and to assert her status as a
royal and politicai force, and Jason, acknowledging her status
as the equal of a rex (516), confesses that sceptres terrify him
(529) and that only his children confer meaning on his existence (544-49). Medea seizes on the vulnerability that Jason
reveals, his attachment to his children, and makes préparations to wound him through them. The loss of one's family,
particularly one's children, is in Seneca's terminology a
muliebris dolor35and it is through this implied weakness and
dependence that both Jason and Thyestes are rendered vulnérable to revenge. In short, in his departure from an essentially virile philosophy in favour of a subordination of himself
to his children (ego vos sequor non duco [489]) Thyestes sets
himself up for an expérience of «womanly pain»36.
6. The opening of the banquet is seen through the eyes of
Atreus: he Orders the slaves to open the doors of the banquethall, exposing the Ione eater37 to his and the audience's
(whether figurative or literal) gaze. The first view of Thyestes
is striking in that it represents the future, but is expressed in
the présent: libet viderey capita natorum intuens I quos det
colores, verba quae primus dolor I effundat (903-05. «It is
sweet to see, when he sees his children's heads, what hue his
cheeks display, what words his first grief pours forth»). Although Thyestes does not discover that his children hâve been
murdered, let alone that he has eaten them, until line 1006, his
body nonetheless colours, gasps and stiffens into a stunned
paralysis as he plays out the rôle Atreus appoints for him.
Back in thè more secure présent Thyestes présents a debauched spectacle, carolling drunkenly and losing control of
35. dial 11, 2-3.
36. There is perhaps an earlier tradition of Thyestes as feminine. See Pearson
/
,
,
(1917) p. 94 on Sophocles Frag. 140:
'The parallel to Aegisthus is so close, that one may
'
.
,
suspect his father Thyestes is referred to'.
37. The détail that lhyestes is eating alone emphasises his vulnerability to
Atreus' gaze, but is also traditional in représentations of tecnophagy: «II est certain que l'isolement du 'convive' accentue le sacrilège que représente le repas
contre nature, opposé au festin sacrificiel, toujours communautaire» p. 107 in M.
Halm-Tisserant, Cannibalisme et Immortalité, Paris 1993. See also p. 100 and p.
101: «Les repas tecnophagiques finissent... toujours par des métamorphoses ou
par des châtiments terribles».
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Cedric Littlewood
his mind: ecce, iam cantusciet I festasque voces, nec satis menti
imperai (918-19). His enjoyment does not last, however, and
Thyestes soon falls prey to anxieties he cannot name or explain (discussed below). Meanwhile Atreus circles him, observing him and mocking him with irony; he expresseshis superiority through the use of words whose significanceis understood by him and by the audience, but not by Thyestes. It
is possible to read into the vision of a drunkenThyestes at the
banquet echoes of Roman invective against women, «typified
as promiscuous and drunken»38.More important however is
the expression of Atreus' dominance through the gaze and
through an exclusion from language. Both thèse devices are
familiärfrom discussions of power and gender, and the heavily emphasised focalization of the audience's gaze through
Atreus is worthy of note. Compare L. Mulvey, «As the spectator identifies with the main male protagonist, he projects his
look onto that of his like, his screen surrogate, so that the
power of thè male protagonist as he controls events coïncides
with the active power of the erotic look, both giving a satisfying sensé of omnipotence»39(my italics). Thyestes, performing
an inadequate and secondary rôle in discourse, becomes a
body to be viewed, moulded and abused;he suffers a distinctively feminizing mode of dégradation.
Thyestes' banquet is a unique scene in Senecan tragedy in
that it is thè only scene in which the expériencesof body and
mind are so completely divorced: Thyestes attempts to celebrate his new prosperity, but his body, stuffed with the flesh
of his sons, rebels:imber vultu nolente cadit, / venit in médias
voces gemitus (950-51), subitosfundunt I oculifletus, nec causa
38. A. Richlin p. 68 in Invective against Women in Roman Satire, «Arethusa»
17, 1984, pp. 67-80. The connection of promiscuity with drunkenness is particularly useful hère in view of Thyestes' crime of adultery with Atreus' wife: see
also (Richlin's direction) thè link between drunkenness and adultery as grounds
for divorce in Roman législation, discussed by S.B. Pomeroy pp. 153-54 in Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves, New York 1975.
39. L. Mulvey, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, «Screen» 16. 3, 1975, 12
reprinted in Visual and Otber Pleasures, London, 1989, 20. I argue later (section
7 below) that Atreus' revenge undermines itself in the very way that it expressed
and enacted. For a more ambivalent discussion of the gaze as simultaneously powerful and vulnérable see C. Barton, The Sorrows of the Romans, Princeton
1993, pp. 91-95. Note especially, «The curious (and resentful) eye was often linked in Roman thought with metaphors of eating and cannibalism».
Seneca3s Thyestes: The Tragedy with No Women?
77
subest (966-67), nolunt manus I parere (985-86). It is normal
for thè bodies of passionate Senecan protagonists to expérience a disorder which parallels the disorder in their soûl, but
it is unique for thè body to act unilaterally; to hâve a life of its
own. The expression of bodily autonomy is extreme, even by
Senecan standards: «A groan Interrupts me when I am speaking», «Suddenly my eyes stream tears and there is no reason»
(950-51, 966-67, above). It soon becomes clear, however, that
Thyestes' body really does hâve a life of its own: Quis hic tumultus viscera exagitat mea? / quid tremuit intus? sentio impatiens onus I meumque gemitu non meo pectus gémit / adeste,
nati, genitor infelix vocat, / adeste, visis fugiet hic vobis dolor
(999-1003. «What is this tumult that disturbs my vitals? What
trembles inside me? I feel a load that will not suffer me, and
my breast groans wih a groaning that is not mine. Corne, my
sons, your unhappy father calls you, corne; this pain will pass
away at the sight of you»), volvuntur intus viscera et clusum
nefas I sine exitu luctatur et quaerit fugam. I da, f rater, ensem
(sanguinis multum mei I habet Me); ferro liberis detur via
(1041-44. «Their flesh is turning around within me, and my
imprisoned crime struggles vainly to come forth and seeks
way of escape. Give me your sword, brother, the sword reeking with my blood; by the steel let a way be opened for my
sons»)40. In the culmination of Atreus' revenge Thyestes is
transformed into a monstrous perversion of a woman giving
birth, and the role-play, the name-bearing, becomes flesh.
Technically, Thyestes is about to vomit not to give birth,
but the association or confusion of stomach and womb, food
and embryo is familiär from a range of Latin and Greek texts
of various genres. The Greek scientific and medicai texts are
perhaps the most distant from a passage of Latin tragedy, and
I shall merely refer the reader to discussions by P. Dubois41
and L. Dean-Jones42. The starting point in Latin literature is
given by E. Gowers: «Embryonic in Plautus are the linguistic
40. Cf. in matre si quod pignus etiamnunc latet, / scrutabor ense viscera et ferro
extrabam (Med. 1012-13).
41. P. Dubois, Psychoanalysis and Ancient Représentations / Women, Chicago
1988, pp. 110-129 on the womb as an oven, and pp. 125-26 on Aristotle's représentation of pregnancy as the cooking of the embryo.
42. L. Dean-Jones, Women's Bodies in Classica! Greek Science, Oxford 1994, p.
52 on the sympathy between throat and vagina, «Hansen notes that on several
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Cedric Littlewood
confusions between womb and stomach which become more
fréquent in satire»43.Thus, Quia Alcumenam ante aedis stare
saturam intellego, where saturarti signifies both «stuffed füll»
and «pregnant»44. The représentation of foetuses/babies as
méat is rare: Gowers discusses Juvenal 2.32 where Julia's
countless abordons are a «pouring forth of pièces of méat like
her uncle» (patruo similes effunderet offas). This représentation does not hâve to be disgusting and does also exist outside
the Roman rhetoric of invective. Compare, for example,
Ovid's description of the birth of a bear-cub: nec catulus,
partit quem reddidit ursa recenti, I sed male viva caro est; lambendo mater in artus / fingit et informam, quantum capit ipsa,
reducit («A cub that a she-bear has just brought forth is not a
cub, but a scarce-living lump of flesh; but the mother licks it
into shape, and in this way gives it as much of a form as she
has herself»). Devouring and then vomiting forth has précèdent as a form of monstrous birth45,but by far the most common form of food/foetus or stomach/womb parallelism is to
be found in hyperbolic descriptions of sexual activity (not always formai rape) where the tongue or pénis intrudes intra
viscera and unnaturally displaces what is naturally there,
whether this is a foetus46 or yesterday's dinner47.Richlin (who
provided me with the Martial référence) gives further examples in her study of masculine sexual aggression in Roman invective, humour and satire48.The linguistic confusion (and associated parallelisms) which Gowers observed dérives, then,
largely from a tradition of masculine aggression, which guides
and reinforces the interprétation of thè scene in Thyestes.
occasions in antiquity authors claim that a girPs throat expands when she has
been deflowered».
43. E. Gowers, The Loaded Table, Oxford 1993, p. 75.
44. Cf. also Plaut. Amph. 681, Et quom te gravidam et quom te pulcbre plenam
aspictOygaudeo.
45. So Cat. 64, 154-55, quod mare conceptum spumantibus exspuit undis, / quae
Syrtis, quae Scylla rapax, quae vasta Charybdis...
46. Mart. 11, 61, 6-8 and 11-12, Modo qui omnes viscerum tubos ibat / et voce
certa consciaque dicebat /puer an pue lia matris esset in ventre. /...../ nam dum tumenti mersus haeret in volva / et vagientes intus audit infantes.
47. luv. 9, 43-44, an facile et pronum est agere intra viscera penem / legitimum
atque illic hesternae occurrere cenaef
48. A. Richlin, The Garden of Priapus, Oxford 1992, passim. See esp. p.
llf.
Seneca's Thyestes: The Tragedy with No Womenf
79
When Thyestes has realised what he has eaten Atreus says
to him, Nunc meas laudo manus, I nunc parta vera est palma,
perdideram scelus, I nisi sic doleres. liberos nasci mihi / nunc
credo, castis nunc f idem reddi tons (1096-99. «Now do I praise
my handiwork, now is the true palm won [borne]. I had
wasted my crime, if you did not suffer thus. Now do I believe
my children are my own, now may I trust one more that my
marriage bed is pure»). This is reminiscent of two passages
in Medea: parta iam, parta ultio est: / peperi (25-26. «Already
borne, borne is my vengeance. I hâve borne children»), and,
when Jason has arrived to see Medea's revenge, Iam iam recepì sceptra germanum patrem, I spoliumque Colchi pecudis
auratae tenent; I rediere regna, rapta virginitas redit (982-84.
«Now, now hâve I regained my régal state, my brother, my
father; and the Colchians hâve once more the spoil of the
golden fleece; restored is my kingdom, my ravished virginity
is restored»). In both cases victory or revenge has been
«birthed», a metaphor of obvious significance in Medea,
where the connection with Medea's children is underlined by
the first person, peperi. Invoking Medea as a spécifie intertext
or as a more generai analogy, one can give a similar interprétation of the passage in Thyestes: victory/revenge is achieved
through (birthed) children. The Statements of revenge accom-plished in both Thyestes and Medea can be read as figurative
to be revenged is in some way to hâve wiped out the original
crime49- but Tarrant feels the need for further explananation
of the passage in Thyestes and writes, «It is in passages like
thèse, with their unsettling mixture of logic and sheer delusion, that Seneca's understanding of madness is most clearly
revealed»50.To explain the passage in terms of 'Seneca's understanding of madness' seems to me to be ignoring the plasticity of Seneca's dramatic worlds: words and deeds are rôles
to be played or discarded, and they dictate to 'facts' rather
than adapt to them51. It is certainly in a passionate rage that
49. So C.D.N. Costa p. 158 in his édition of Medea, Oxford 1973.
50. R. Tarrant (1985), p. 241.
51. The best example of this, and one which would take too long to discuss
hère in füll, is the agon between Medea and Creon (Méd. 179-300): Creon tries to
write Medea out of her past association with Jason with the argument that she
and Jason are not associated now, and Medea offers Creon, in a real conditional,
the choice of rewriting the past onto the présent: virgini placeat pudor / paterque
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Medea describes her children as liberi quondam mei (924.
«childrenonce mine»), but she is only deluded if once one has
been a mother one is always a mother. In view of Seneca's
Statementin diali 1,15 (quoted above) that his mother stepped
beyond thè boundaries of womanhood and motherhood, and
in view of Medea's famous détermination, now that she has
given birth, to become Medea52,this seems a rathercontroversial assumption. In Thyestes,Atreus now knows that his children are really his own and that his marriageis not tainted by
adultery, and thè justificationfor this assertion would be that
Thyestes, stuffed/pregnantby Atreus, can hardly have begotten children. There is a tradition in Roman thought linking
thè committing of adultery with 'playing thè woman'53,but
thè effeminacy in these contexts seems rather différent from
thè victimised, body-chained birth inflicted on Thyestes here;
Atreus' revenge reads very much as a phantastic extension of
thè rape of a male adultérer54
by which thè victim is ritually
exiled from thè Companyof 'real men\ And in this context,
more prominently even than elsewhere, to be exiled from thè
Companyof men is to be exiled from thè arena of politicai
power.
7.
'
,
,
(Piato,
Rep. 575a)
«But Desire, living in him autocraticallyin total anarchy and
disorder, and itself a tyrant, will drive him to every act of excessive daring, as a tyrant does his city».
Up to this point I have been reading the revenge on Thyestes
very much from Atreus' point of view. In thè play he stages
placeat: tota cum ducibus met / Pelasga tellus, hic tuus primum gêner / tauri ferocis ore flagranti occidet (238-41). Apart from the strain inflicted on the language
there are no signs of madness in either Medea or Creon in this scene. Quite simply the two are struggling to create différent and incompatible realities.
52. N: Medea M: Fiam (Med. 171); see also Medea nunc sum (910).
53. See A. Richlin (1992), pp. 3-5.
54. See e.g. luv. 10, 314-17, Val. Max. 6, 1, 13 and further références in C. Edwards cit., 1993 p. 56.
Seneca's Thyestes: The Tragedy with No Womenf
81
Thyestes dégénérâtes from man to beast/woman, and through
his capture the foundations of masculine politicai power, as
described in 222-40, are restored. Atreus' play, however, is
only a play within a play, and the degeneration Thyestes suffers as he succumbs to thè lure of spes improba (295) or the
vêtus regni furor (302) provides an ominous parallel for
Atreus who is driven by precisely the same Tantalid infection55.Atreus too is an unknowing actor in a play, that staged
by Furia, and his assumption of thè regni nomen (542) is no
more successful or lasting than Thyestes'56.
There are fréquent descriptions in Impérial Roman literature of banquets not being conducted as they should, and the
impropriety of thèse banquets is broadly of two kinds: they
promote luxury, drunkenness and many other forms of immorality, including the érosion of the boundaries of social
and sexual distinction, and further, they become an environment for the powerful, especially the emperor, to abuse their
power. Men invited to a banquet are supposed, within the
context of the banquet, to be equal, and it is a disgrâce for
such an egalitarian institution to be twisted to serve the desires of the powerful57. The tyrant at table becomes a trope for
the expression of the death of the social and sexual distinctions which make a meaningful existence possible. In
Thyestes can be read not only the traditional constellation of
broken boundaries and identities associated with both
tyranny58 and a crime within the family59, but a specifically
55. The golden ram which Atreus desires to recapture is perhaps significant as
more than just an animal. For this object of the Argo's voyage as an emblem of
crime and false goods see e.g. Sen. nat. 5, 18, 4; as an object of insatiable desire
see Fränkel's commentary on Apoll. Rh. Argonautica, Munich 1968, p. 622 f. and
especially n. 350 on 4, 428 f.
56. For the récurrent association in Seneca of the stage with illusion, and particularly illusory goods, see e.g. epist. 7, 8-12, 76, 31, 80, 7-8, dial. 6, 10,1.
57. So Sen. epist. 47, 4, Stat. silv. 1, 6, 7-50, Phny epist. 2, 6, 2-4, luv. 5. Un Nero
in this connection see J. Goddard, The Tyrant at Table, pp. 67-82 in J. Elsner and
J. Masters (1994).
58. Piato Rep. 565d-80c, discussed more fully below.
59. A. Moreau in A propos d Oedipe: La liaison entre trois crimes -parricidey inceste et cannibalisme, «Etud. Lett. Arc.» 1, 1979, pp. 97-127, painstakingly traces
every occurrence of thèse crimes in Greek mythology and finds that they tend to
occur in combination. Cf. Plutarch Moralia 990F in which a discussion of lust
'beyond the barrier' shifts to an argument on cannibalism without any break or
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Imperiai Roman concern with thè loss of an order. Presiding
over thè death of an institution, thè banquet and thè society
which it reflected, was a figure so powerful as to render ali
other power impotent, thè new source from which power and
thè measurement of power derived. And this of course is thè
ideai of kingship which Atreus describes in 205f. It is clear
that Thyestes has been lost in thè chaotic environment created
by such a tyrant, but it should be noticed that Atreus is not
free of it either: thè loss of self-control, and thè degeneration
imo animai and woman, can also be seen in Atreus60. The
tyrant himself is tyrannized.
The similarity between Atreus and Thyestes was established in Atreus' first speeches as he and Thyestes alternated
thè rôles of king and exile. Atreus' desire is to break free of
thè cyclical trap and, once and for all, to establish his superiority. The means by which he sought to achieve this have
been discussed above, but thè price to be paid undermines thè
achievement: in transforming Thyestes into an animal and a
woman Atreus suffers a similar degeneration, and thè cyclism
and futility of thè struggle for power is exposed. After telling
thè Satelles of his détermination to be avenged, Atreus expériences a confusion and a disorder within his body which is
very similar to that experienced by Thyestes-made-woman:
fateor. tumultus pectora attonitus quant I penitusque volvit;
rapior et quo nescio, I sed rapior (260-62. «I confess it. A franexplanation. On thè self-destructive, self-negatory nature of closed-system worlds with particular référence to society and gender see F. Zeitlin, Thebes: Theater
of Self and Society in Athenian Drama, pp. 130-167 in Winkler and Zeitlin (Princeton 1990) especially pp. 147-50; with particular référence to Imperiai Roman
politics see J. Henderson, Lucan / The Word at War, pp. 122-164 in The Imperiai
Muse, Victoria 1988, ed. A.J. Boyle: «In thè fearful terror of human minds and
thè ghastly torture of human tissue you are shown thè spectacle of thè scene after ali thè Star Wars have been won: One, caved-in, World» (p. 124).
60. Cf. V. Rudich, Politicai Dissidence under Nero, London 1993, pp. 84-85 on
Nero: «In Aristotelian terms, which reflected thè customary attitude of both
Greeks and Romans, he must hâve been regarded as either a god or a beast, and
in thè populär imagination he acquired thè mingled characteristics of both. On
thè one hand, his extravagances and even his crimes endowed him with supernatural, or at least heroic, status, since omnipotence, an absence of all restraint, and
a breach of conventional boundaries between good and evil were characteristic
of thè divine and thè semi-divine. On thè other hand, his night-time drinking
bouts, bordello orgies, fist-fights and banditry in thè streets and so forth must
have relegated him to a level somewhat lower than human».
Seneca's Thyestes: The Tragedy with No Women?
83
tic tumult shakes and heaves deep my breast. I am hurried I
know not whither, but I am hurried on»). He then searches
for a rôle or a pattern for his crime and fixes on Procne and
Philomela as worthy inspirations (275-76): it is a répétition of
their cannibalistic feast that he stages61.However, not only are
both thèse inspirations women, but between them they represent not only the victim of adultery but also of rape: to enact
the Daulian revenge involves playing the raped. Furthermore
the mode of revenge is one which relies heavily on disguise
and trickery, both of which undermine masculinity62.
As Atreus pursues his course of revenge he gives in to passion within his soûl, and even in his hunting, his animalizing
of Thyestes, he too characterises himself as an animal, an Umbrian hound, and acquires a master and a leash around his
neck: cervice tota pugnai et gemitu vocat I dominum morantem seque retinenti eripit (502-03. «with his whole strength of
neck he struggles, loudly protests against his master's loitering and breaks away from his restraint»). The messenger describes Atreus' descent imo madness and bestiality at great
length in the sacrifice scene, and there is no need to argue for
Atreus' füll participation in the perversion of reasoning in
favour of irrationality (see above section 3). Atreus enacts his
sacrifice at the heart of the luxurious royal palace, in the space
beyond an immane tectum, cuius auratas trabes I variis columnae nobiles maculis ferunt (646-47.«a great hall whose gilded
architraves columns glorious with varied hues upbear'). He
takes particular care to omit none of the éléments familiär
from animal sacrifice, ne tantum nef as I non rite fiat (689-90
«lest so great a crime be not duly wrought»), and crowns his
ritual murder with a reading of the entrails (755-58) and a dismembering and roasting of the flesh over the sacred fiâmes63.
He is specifically likened to a wild beast as he performs the
61. It is also very much a version of Ovid's Tereus and Procne story in Met. 6
that Seneca stages. For a list and brief commentary on the parallels, see R. Jakobi, Der Einfluß Ovids auf den Tragiker Seneca, Berlin 1988, pp. 155, 157-58,
160-62, 164, 166-67. The important generai point is that, through Ovid, Procne
and Philomela are recalled repeatedly throughout Atreus' revenge, not simply
when he invokes them by name.
62. Cf. F. Zeitlin cit. (1990), p. 81 on Bacchae.
63. Cf. JuvenaPs horror at the behaviour of the Egyptian savages who hâve become mere animais because they cannot endure the tedium of waiting for the
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sacrifice64,and the description dérives much of its force from
thè fact that he acts as he does not out of some simple ferai
compulsion but precisely because he knows the rite to be a
crime: it is an acceptable revenge because rather than in spite
of its evident criminality65. Combined with this déviant rationality is the sub-rationality of an animal: he is so carried away
on a tide of bestial passion that he does not even know against
whom he rages (oblitus in quem furerei [739]). In short, by the
time Atreus reaches the culmination of his revenge and his assertion of superiority, he has undermined that very assertion
by taking up the same rôle that he has written for Thy estes.
The question to be answered is whether Atreus can walk,
Dionysus-like, through the chaos which he both créâtes and
embodies, or whether, like Thyestes, he will be destroyed66.
The answer seems very clear, for no sooner has he claimed
parity with the gods and a final victory over Thyestes than he
becomes unsatisified with his play and tries to rewrite it: hoc
quoque exiguum est mihi: I ex vulnere ipso sanguinem calidum
in tua I defundere ora debui, ut viventium I biberes cruorem
... omnia baec melius pater I fecisse potuit, cecidit in cassum dolor: I sadit ore natos impio, sed nesciens, / sed nescientes (105356, 65-68. «Even this is not enough for me. Straight from the
very wound I should hâve poured thè hot blood down your
throat, that you might drink gore of your living sons... AU
thèse things better the father might hâve done; my grief has
fallen fruitless; with impious teeth he tore his sons, but unwittingly, but them unwitting»). The hunger which drove Atreus
to revenge and Thyestes to the palace is a hunger that cannot
be satiated, and the victory collapses into thè eternai punishment of Tantalus.
flesh of their enemies to cook: tardumque putavit / expectarefocos, contenta cadavere crudo (15, 82-83).
64. ieiuna silvis qualis in Gangeticis / inter iuvencos tigris (707-8); silva iubatus
qualis Armenia leo (732).
65. Cf. C. Gill, Two Monologues of Self-Division: Euripides Medea 1021-80 and
Seneca Medea 893-977, pp. 25-38 in Homo Viator, Bristol 1987, edd. M. Whitby,
P. Hardie, M. Whitby, p. 32.
66. Cf. «This country 's planted thick with laws from coast to coast - Man's
laws not God's - and if you eut them down... d'you really think you could stand
upright in the winds that would blow then?» R. Boit, A Man for AU Seasons,
London 1963, p. 39.
Seneca's Thyestes: The Tragedy with No Women?
85
The most famous description of tyranny is perhaps that
given by Piato in his Republic, and many of the éléments of
that description are to be found in Thyestes:degenerationto a
bestial level (571c), drunken desire and banquets (573a-b),
cannibalism (565d, 571d), incest (571c-d), fratricide (565e)67,
and mad challenging of the Gods (573c). The description of
thè tyrant within thè state is justified, as indeed is the Republic itself, by analogy to the rational self68within the soûl, but
since there is a causal connection between tyranny in the soûl
and tyranny in thè state, this is more than mere analogy. Plato's moral argumentdépends on a reversaiof rôles for the individual/self: whereas the tyrant tyrannizes thè state, the rational self is tyrannized within the tyrannicalsoûl (574e-575a,
quoted above): thè outward show of power is an illusion concealing slavery. The rhetoric of power and slavery, real power
and illusory power is central to this section of the Republicit reads like a Stoic text, and the reason for this is that thè origin of thè desire for a power which turns out to be illusory is
a misevaluation of externals, a failure to recognize that the
soûl, not the outside world, is the locus of true and lasting
goods (572c-d)69.Thus far Piato and thè Stoics are in complete
agreement.There are two sphères in which autocratiepower
may be exercised,and in thè politicai sphère, the chief institution of public masculinity, that power is an illusion or a
mask70concealing its opposite.
xrj
(Piato,Rep. 579b)
67. Also parricide (569b), (see . Moreau [1979] above in note 60) but this does
not figure in Thyestes.
68. See note 17 above.
69. For a Stoic Statement of the indifférence ot the external see e.g. ben. epist.
71, 11-14. For the Epicurean variant, Lucr. 3, 1053-75. I add Lucretius partiy for
Seneca's generai approvai of Epicureanism, and partiy for the image of politicai
and other unnecessary desires as endless, cyclical punishments in Hell (3,
978-1002).
70. D. and E. Henry, The Mask of Power, Warminster 1985, p. 58, «Events
show that this is a delusion; the force of furor which has been unleashed destroys
the villain as well as his victims.» Cf. also Sen. Herc. F. 107-109: ut possit animum
captus Aleides agi, / magno furore percitus, nobis prius / insaniendum est: Iuno,
cur nondum furisi
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(The tyrant) «lives hidden away in his palace for thè most part
like a woman».
The paradoxical,and very Stoic, conclusion is that thè play
with no women is a play with no men.
University of Birmingham