Classics 351
April 7, 2022

L: Assereto, Tantalus, ca. 1645; R: Goya, Saturn Devouring his Children, ca. 1820

Response #2 Options (due Tuesday, April 26; optional draft due Thursday, April 14)

Performance, Tuesday, April 12: Thyestes 885-919, Atreus's celebratory monologue?

Seneca (Lucius Annaeus Seneca = Seneca the Younger) < influential family of Cordoba, Spain (born. ca. 4 BCE-1 CE), tempestuous career in Roman imperial court (sentenced to death under Caligula (37-41 CE); exiled under Claudius (41-54 CE) to Corsica; emperor Nero’s (54-68 CE) tutor & political advisor; isolated from emperor in latter years; suicide (65 CE) described in Tacitus Annales 15.62-4 ("Conspiracy of Piso"); enormous post-classical influence (e.g. Shakespeare, philosophy)

Nero (L), Seneca (R)

• Seneca the Stoic philosopher & rhetorician (philosophical letters, essays): Stoicism elevates reason as universal principle = discovering what is good & rational and living tranquilly in accord with nature as a sapiens/philosopher (free of desires & fear of death); sapiens dedicated to virtue, in search of wisdom/truth
  
  
• Stoic values: self-reliance, self-sufficiency, freedom from ambition & passion (tension for Roman elites in public life), strength & consistency in face of hardship, imperviousness to good/bad fortune = chance (e.g. wealth is an "indifferent")
  
  
• traces of Stoicism in the tragedies (usually not associated with main characters):
  
  Thyestes 388-390 (Chorus, end of Act 2)
  A king is a man without fear,
  A king is a man without desire.
  Everyone makes this kingdom for himself.
  
  Thyestes 615ff. (Chorus, end of Act 3)
  No one should trust too much in his good fortune,
  no one should give up hope of better luck.
  
  ... No one has supporters rich enough
  that he can guarantee himself tomorrow.
  God moves our lives around on his swift spindle
  and turns them upside-down.
  
  
  Theater mask, Fresco from Herculaneum, 1st century CE
  
  
• Roman tragedy: 240 BCE; plays based on Greek models (esp. Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides); Roman Republican tragedy lost (e.g. Accius, Pacuvius, Ennius in 2nd century BCE; Ovid's lost Medea); + plays on Roman historical themes (Octavia, wife of Nero, divorced in 62 CE)
  
  
• Seneca: dates of plays unknown (Thyestes, Phaedra, Medea,Trojan Women), perhaps written in exile (not in Nero's reign, but reflect experience in Caligula's court?)
  
  
• themes of passion, emotional excess (esp. anger/the irrational, obsessive rage), tyranny/autocracy, destructive ambition & lust for power, family dysfunction; our worst human/animal instincts
  
  
• Seneca's "gothic" factor: monstrous anger, violence, grim humor, horror, etc.
  
  
• Senecan performance: public theater unlikely; recitation? private court performances?

  
  
• spectacle as theme: tragedies a product of age of violent mass entertainment (cf. amphitheaters of early Roman Empire); Senecan characters often see themselves as spectacles (metatheater); ourselves?
  
  
  
• Mythical background of Thyestes = what spectators (need to) know (cf. Chorus #1, 122-174):
  
  -Tantalus (king of Phrygia & son of Zeus/Jupiter) serves son Pelops to the gods, punishment (cf. his Ghost in Thyestes); sets family themes of insatiability/over-reaching desire/improper feasting/cannibalism/self-destruction
  
  -reconstituted Pelops wins Hippodamia with help of charioteer Myrtilus, claims much of Peloponnesus (worshipped as hero at Olympia); cursed by Hippodamia's father Oenomaus and/or Myrtilus > family under multiple curses (not Seneca's emphasis)
  
  -Pelops's two sons: Atreus & Thyestes
  
  -Aerope, wife of Atreus: affair with Thyestes, competition for throne of Mycenae; talisman of golden ram (originally owned by Atreus: Thyestes 220ff.); alternating rule & exile
  
  -Atreus & Aerope: two sons, Agamemnon and Menelaus (= Atreidae; Trojan War)
  
  
  Bouguereau, Orestes Pursued by the Furies, 1862
  
  -aftermath of Seneca's Thyestes: Thyestes impregnates daughter (oracle & vengeance) > Aegisthus (Aegisthus kills Atreus; kills Agamemnon with Clytemnestra; family curse ends with Orestes in Aeschylus's Eumenides)
  

  
  -Seneca's Thyestes: occasion of Thyestes's return from exile to Mycenae; brothers in cycle of revenge
  
  
• Thyestes 25ff. (Fury exhorting reluctant Ghost of Tantalus; "prologue")
  Let every crime participate, and let the sword
  be drawn by each in turn. Let anger know no limit,
  no shame, while darkening passion whips their hearts,
  long live the father’s fury, and let eternal sin
  enter the hearts of his offspring. Let nobody have the time
  to hate a bygone sin. Let new ones always rise,
  with more than one in every one, and let crime grow
  until it is avenged. Let the arrogant brothers lose
  their power, and get it back from exile ...
  
  ... Now let the fires be lit,
  to boil the cauldrons; chop up the bodies in pieces,
  let children's blood pollute the ancestral hearth,
  let the tables be set. You will come as a guest to a crime,
  but one you already know well. Today you will have a vacation,
  to free yourself from hunger at that table.
  Fill up your empty belly; watch as he drinks that cocktail
  of blood and wine. I have found a type of feast
  which even you would avoid. Stop, where are you going?
  
  
  Isthmus Canal (cf. Fury's apocalyptic description of parched world, Thyestes 101ff.)
  

• Atreus, established autocrat ("Let them want what they do not want", 212), has lured Thyestes & sons back to Mycenae in faux-spirit of reconciliation
  
  Thyestes 190ff. (Atreus's obsessive personality)
  I do not care if this great and glorious house
  falls to ruin and kills me, as long as it kills him too.
  Come on, my soul! Do deeds that history will condemn
  but never cease to speak of. The crime that I must dare
  is black and bloody—the kind of thing my brother
  would wish he had done himself. To revenge a crime
  you must do one better. Can any brutality outdo
  the crimes of Thyestes?

  ... So now, before he has had time to gather his strength,
  a pre-emptive strike is needed, to stop him attacking me
  when I am off my guard. He will kill me, or I him;
  the winner is the one who gets there first ...
  
  ... Look to Tantalus and Pelops:
  my actions must be made to fit their mold.

• character of Thyestes (cf. Seneca's own experience): conflicted or deceptive?
  
  Thyestes 412-420 (Thyestes returning to Argos, Tantalus Junior)
                          … Go back to your exile in the woods,
  the thickly tangled groves, and the life you led in the wild,
  with animals, and like them. No reason to be dazzled
  by the false, flashy brightness of royal power.
  When you look at the gift, look at the giver too.
  Just now, I had the kind of life that everyone would pity;
  but I was brave and happy. Now, on the other hand,
  I am dizzy with fear. My heart is stuck, and longs
  to carry my body back. I find myself moving, unwillingly.
  
  
• Thyestes's Romanization & Stoicism (?)
  
  Thyestes 455-470 (Thyestes reflecting on his exile)
  That little low-lying town does not tremble at the house
  that stands up high above it on a mountain peak,
  nor does the ivory shine on the lofty ceilings;
  no sentry guards my bedroom while I sleep.
  I need no fleet to catch my fish, I do not need
  to drive away the sea away with piles of rocks,
  nor glut my greedy belly with imported goods.
  No distant field in Parthia or Geta need be ploughed
  to feed me; I need no worship with incense or altars,
  replacing Jupiter with myself. No treetops sway
  up high upon my roof; no steaming baths that take
  many hands to heat. My days are not passed in sleep,
  I do not stay awake to drink all night.
  Nobody fears me; I have no need of weapons to keep my house safe:
  Deep peace comes to those in modest circumstances.
  The ability to do without a kingdom is a kingdom.
  
  
• reunion of brothers (491ff.) & agreement to share power (534ff.: tragic irony, e.g., Thyestes: "Take these sweet children / as pledges of my faith", 520-521; Atreus: "I will sacrifice the designated offerings to the gods", 545
  
  
  GROUPS