Seneca: Medea

Helen Slaney

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781474258623
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Letteratura
• Subtopic: Teatro antico e classico

Composed in early imperial Rome by Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Stoic philosopher and tutor to the emperor Nero, the tragedy Medea is dominated by the superhuman energy of its protagonist: diva, killer, enchantress, force of nature. Seneca's treatment of the myth covers an episode identical to that of Euripides' Greek version, enabling instructive comparisons to be drawn. Seneca's Medea has challenged and fascinated theatre-makers across cultures and centuries and should be regarded as integral to the classical heritage of European theatre. This companion volume sketches the essentials of Seneca's play and at the same time situates it within an interpretive tradition. It also uses Medea to illustrate key features of Senecan dramaturgy, the way in which language functions as a mode of theatrical representation and the way in which individuals are embedded in their surrounding conditions, resonating dissonantly with the principles of Roman Stoicism. By interweaving some of the play's subsequent receptions, theatrical and textual, into critical analysis of Medea as dramatic poetry, this companion volume will encourage the student to come to grips immediately with the ancient text's inherent multiplicity. In this way, reception theory informs not only the content of the volume but also, fundamentally, the way in which it is presented.

1

Seneca and Roman Drama

Medea survives. Here you see the seas and land, iron and fire and gods and thunderbolts.¹

Medea, avenger and infanticide, is one of the iconic figures of classical tragedy, and in her treatment by Roman playwright Seneca she takes on superhuman stature as the avatar of an outraged natural world. Medea the betrayed wife and murderous mother remains, but it is not (or not only) interpersonal conflicts which Seneca’s tragedy plays out, but also the global consequences of greed and recklessness. It is a theme with particular significance for Seneca’s Rome, and one which distinguishes the reception history of Seneca’s Medea from that of her ancient Greek counterpart.

The question of performance continues to haunt discussions of Senecan tragedy, recent perspectives ranging from Kohn’s 2013 defence of full-scale production to Bexley’s 2015 reminder that recitatio constitutes performance in its own right. I take the view that while it may never be possible to determine with certainty how Medea was staged in antiquity, this represents only one point in its performance history, and that subsequent stagings are equally valid manifestations of the text.² As well as situating Seneca’s Medea in ancient Rome, then, this study also considers pivotal moments in its reception history. Early modern translations such as Studley’s (Chapter 4) and Corneille’s (Chapter 5) became canonical in their own right, shaping perceptions of the Latin text they impersonate. Whether translations for the stage are regarded as descendants, parasites, surrogates, interlocutors, or acts of violence,³ they become integral to the meaning it has historically accrued. Instances of reception amplify or bring to the surface particular aspects of the text that might otherwise remain latent, such as the rediscovery of theatre’s ritual potential that arose in the mid-twentieth century (see Chapter 6). As a gemstone catches the light on different facets as it turns, so a work of theatre acquires different dimensions in the enactment.

1.1 Personal context

The Roman Medea was composed in the mid-first century CE and is commonly attributed to philosopher and courtier Lucius Annaeus Seneca, tutor to the young emperor Nero and later one of his close advisors. In addition to Medea, the tragedies transmitted under Seneca’s name comprise six other mythological dramas corresponding to extant Greek antecedents, mainly Euripidean – Phaedra, The Madness of Hercules, Trojan Women, Oedipus, Agamemnon, and the fragmentary Phoenician Women – as well as Thyestes, of which no Greek equivalent survives.⁴ Two further texts, Hercules on Mt Oeta and the fabula praetexta or history-play Octavia are now generally acknowledged to be the work of a later poet or poets, although by medieval and early modern readers they were received as genuine.⁵ On the basis of stylometric analysis, Medea has been placed at the midpoint of Seneca’s career as a tragedian and dated to approximately 50–60 CE.⁶ Questions regarding the tragedies’ authorship have been raised for example by Frederick Ahl, who attributes them to Seneca’s rhetorician father,⁷ and by Thomas Kohn, who speculates that the literary dynasty of the Annaeii could have produced more than one ‘Seneca’ active around the 50s CE, and therefore the centuries-long game of reconciling the worldview of Seneca philosophus with that of Seneca tragicus may have a simpler solution.⁸ The general consensus remains, however, that the same Seneca was responsible both for the tragic corpus and philosophical texts such as De Clementia (‘On Mercy’) as well as a scientific treatise, Questions of Nature, and a satire on the death of the emperor Claudius entitled Apocolocyntosis (or ‘Turning-Into-A-Pumpkin’).

Seneca’s position within the imperial court, then, provides one crucial context for the historical interpretation of these tragedies, including Medea; his philosophical writing and adherence to the principles of Stoicism provides another. This is not to suggest that the plays’ meaning is exhausted with reference to authorial biography, but in reading Medea against our knowledge of the circumstances in which it was most likely to have been composed enables us to tease out those elements which contribute most vividly to a working conception of its contemporary significance. Assuming that its textual evolution occurred within the decadence, violence, and surveillance culture of the autocratic Julio-Claudian court, Medea like all of Seneca’s dramas presents an extreme focalization of imperial excesses.

Seneca’s career spans almost the entire turbulent Julio-Claudian dynasty. Born in Corduba, Spain, during the final years of Augustus’s long reign, he trained at Rome in rhetoric and philosophy while the subsequent emperor, Tiberius, grew increasingly paranoid and vicious. Although spending several years in Egypt, Seneca became sufficiently embroiled in the imperial household that in 41 CE, upon Claudius’s accession, he was exiled to Corsica on the pretext of having seduced Caligula’s sister. Claudius’s actual motive was the political need to purge the court of Caligula’s associates.⁹ Intercession by Agrippina (Caligula’s other sister) transmuted Seneca’s sentence from death to exile. When Agrippina married the reigning emperor Claudius in 49 CE, she not only had Seneca recalled, but also appointed him tutor to her twelve-year-old son, now Claudius’ successor. In 54, Claudius died – reputedly poisoned – and Agrippina’s son ascended the throne, becoming at the age of seventeen the emperor Nero. While remaining his tutor, Seneca also took on the roles of advisor, speechwriter, conscience – and, according to Miriam Griffin – publicist and manager of Nero’s public image.¹⁰

Perhaps the starkest illustration of how Seneca manipulated this image is his composition of the philosophical treatise De Clementia (‘On Mercy’) immediately following the suspicious death of Nero’s half-brother Britannicus in 55 CE. Britannicus, Claudius’s son by his former wife, had been growing too popular; according to anti-Caesarian historian Tacitus, Nero had him poisoned at a banquet and ordered his body immediately cremated to conceal the traces (Annals, 13.15–16). Shortly afterwards, Seneca published De Clementia. Ostensibly defining the virtue of clemency and arguing for its utility, it also served the dual public-facing functions of painting a flattering imperial portrait and issuing a warning about the consequences of imperial displeasure. Nero, we are told, possesses the rare virtue of total innocence (Clem. 1.1.5), his ‘crowning glory’ being that he has never shed a drop of citizen blood (Clem. 1.11.23). His subjects universally admire his benevolent disposition (Clem. 1.1.9). Nevertheless, what makes such self-restraint so admirable is its coexistence with absolute power (Clem. 1.7.3, 1.8.5, 1.19.1). The Princeps can easily take vengeance. Nations tremble when he raises his voice. He alone has the capacity to pardon those who have offended (Clem. 1.5.4). As Griffin points out, however, the corollary is that this places the emperor above the law:¹¹ it is no longer legal rights which defend a citizen, but the arbitrary whim of an autocrat. ‘Mercy makes all the difference between a king and a tyrant’ (Clem. 1.12.3), Seneca writes, but the further implication of this statement is that it is only the exercise of clementia which distinguishes imperial justice from tyranny. Nero’s anger, like that of Medea, is compared to a terrifying thunderstorm (Clem. 1.7.2–3; cf. Med. 411–14; 579–86). In order to survive, one should perhaps refrain from provoking it, rather than testing the limits of imperial goodwill.

Until Nero’s accession, Seneca had been a prominent member of Agrippina’s circle, but as relations soured between mother and son he consolidated his position behind the emperor. By 59 CE, Seneca seems to have begun assisting Nero to plot Agrippina’s assassination, and after her death he certainly participated in the official cover-up (Tacitus, Annals 14.7–10). From this time onwards, however, Seneca’s own authority began to fail as Nero became less concerned with governance and more abandoned to hedonism. Many of Seneca’s tragedies, including Medea, contain a scene in which a clear-headed advisor attempts unsuccessfully to dissuade an impetuous protagonist from a catastrophic course of action. Indeed, the later fabula praetexta (toga play) Octavia represents Seneca himself struggling to restrain Nero from killing his wife Octavia, sister to the late Britannicus.¹² Octavia’s Seneca speaks in the same rapid-fire sententiae, or pithy aphorisms, as characters such as Medea’s Nutrix: ‘Those with more power have all the more to fear’ (Oct. 450). ‘It’s more admirable to do what you ought, than what you can’ (Oct. 454). ‘Swords keep a ruler safe,’ sulks Nero; ‘Loyalty’s preferable’, Seneca parries (Oct. 456). The paradigm of the thwarted counsellor was transferred from biography to tragedy, and back again.

In 62 CE, Nero became convinced of Seneca’s involvement in a conspiratorial plot and ordered his former advisor to be put to death. Seneca’s suicide, described in detail by Tacitus and frequently later depicted in art, has acquired iconic status. As was customary, Seneca was not immediately executed but was granted a brief period in which he might retain his dignity by arranging his own death in a manner of his choo...