Seneca's Phaedra

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Text Access

Seneca, Lucius Annaeus. Phaedra. Trans. E. F. Watling. Four Tragedies and Octavia. 2 ed. Penguin Classics. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1966. 95-150. (Available via bookstore.)

Introduction to Senecan Tragedy, to Seneca's Phaedra

These notes should be approached as supplementary to the very good biographical, literary, and mythological summaries provided by your Penguin translations. PLEASE READ THOSE (back cover, first couple of pages of book, of play).

Times: The Early Principate

Politics

In 27 BCE, the soon-to-become Augustus, the last man standing after decades of violent and disruptive infighting between Rome's leaders, ceremoniously returned sovereign power to the Senate and People of Rome (the SPQR, or SENATVS·POPVLVS·QVE·ROMANVS), only to have it returned right back to him through a series a measures endowing him with close to monarchial — though not total — control of the state, or RES·PVBLICA. The emperor styled himself "first among equals" (princeps inter pares). The emperor's subjects, poets like Ovid, styled him son of a god, and destined to become a god. The name "Augustus" itself means "venerable," "majestic"; the emperor's guardian spirit, his genius, became the object of public worship.

Returning to the autocracy engineered by Augustus, it verifiably provided a welcome degree of political stability. But it also meant that the Senate, long the most powerful and aristocratic governing body at Rome, had its powers greatly reduced; the old Republic was, to all intents and purposes, dead. Things were better, but with so much power concentrated in one person, the ancestral Roman hatred of kings came face to face with the reality of one-man-rule, dynastic strife, and diminished power for the old ruling class.

Things deteriorated under the rule of the next four Caesars: the misanthropic Tiberius (r. 14 CE-37), the sociopathic Gaius (aka Caligula, r. 37-41), the scholarly but too-easily manipulated Claudius (r. 41-54), the and the more or less unhinged Nero (r. 54-68). This was a period when persons of rank had to watch their backs at all times. Any word or deed capable of interpretation as disloyalty to the emperor or his family could bring with it charges of treason. Members of the old senatorial class, because they could not openly criticize Caesar, had taken to doing so covertly, for instance, through the writing of supposedly mythological or historical works. Hence tragedies with titles like Cato (Cato the Younger, Republican martyr) or Atreus (the extremely evil Greek king) as a way of maintaining "plausible deniability" when voicing protest. Yet even the faintest hint of disloyalty in a line of drama could prove lethal for the playwright.

Philosophy

At the same time, two philosophies from Greece were competing for the minds of Roman intellectuals. From a Roman perspective, neither philosophy appealed primarily for its contribution to ancient science, metaphysics, or logic (Stoic logic was actually a stupendous achievement unequalled until little more than a hundred years ago!). What really matter was the concern of each with ethics: the art of living, which is to say, the path to happiness. Hence the Roman philosopher's — Seneca's — concern with questions addressing the possibility of a moral order in a seemingly chaotic world, of independent agency in the face of fate, the problem of suffering and evil, and so on — concerns arguably shared between Seneca's prose and tragedy.

As to the philosophies in question, they can be very briefly summarized as follows:

• Epicureanism, which taught that the gods exist but ignore human beings, who should imitate the gods by seeking to live lives totally free from disturbance: ambition, lust, but mostly the fear of death (the Epicureans believed in no afterlife)
• Stoicism, which taught that human beings should seek to "live in accordance with nature" (kata phusin, secundum naturam). Nature, the Stoics believed, is guided by rational principles: logos (Greek) or ratio (Latin). By living thus, one achieves both wisdom and virtue, and therefore, happiness. ("The mind, in its effort to gain wisdom, takes its start from those things that follow nature, and thus achieves knowledge of the good," Cicero De finibis 3.33.) Besides wisdom, nothing matters. Wealth, power, pleasure — all of it, though generally viewed as advantages, were viewed by the Stoics not as evil but as "indifferent" (adiaphora, indifferentia)
• Connected with early Imperial Roman Stoicism was a fashion for philosophical suicide: deaths staged as acts of protest against the corrupt rule of the Caesars. Especially for the Stoics, suicide could represent honorable release from intolerable situations. One of those to die thus was our own playwright, Seneca.

Note that Seneca was a committed Stoic though also clearly knowledgeable in Epicureanism; you'll find evidence of both philosophies in his works.

Rhetoric

Finally, a word about rhetoric. Higher male elite education in Seneca's day centered around two subjects: philosophy and rhetoric, with the emphasis ultimately on rhetoric. For even under the emperors, achievement in rhetoric, the art of persuasion, was the aristocrat's ticket to success in politics. (Yes, politics of a sort continued to be practiced.)

Young men were, accordingly, heavily schooled in rhetoric. At the same time, rhetoric itself came to be cultivated as an art form in its own right, with master rhetoricians composing and publishing demonstration pieces — "declamations" (declamationes) — on a variety of often fictitious or mythological topics. Rhetoric of this type penetrated to all corners of Roman literature, both poetry and prose. Seneca's father compiled a collection of declamations for use by his sons (still survives); Seneca's tragedies and other works often betray evidence of this rhetorical training.

Seneca: Life

Lucius Annaeus Seneca (ca. 10 BCE-65 CE) came from a wealthy Italian family (of not the very highest, but next-to-highest, rank, namely, "equestrian") that had settled in Roman Spain. His father was a land owner with strong interests in rhetoric and history. Relatives also achieving distinction included:

• L. Junius Gallio Annaeanus, Seneca's eldest brother, who served as governor of Greece and heard there a case against the Christian Saint Paul. This brother is actually mentioned in the Bible (Acts 18.12ff.)
• Lucan, distinguished poet forced, like his philosopher-tragedian uncle, to commit suicide by the emperor Nero

Seneca himself, as would have been normal for any politically ambitious aristocrat, was educated in philosophy and rhetoric at Rome. Through family connections he reached the questorship during the reign of the emperor Tiberius (14-37 CE). Soon into the reign of the emperor Claudius (41-54), Seneca fell victim to a palace intrigue. He was, as a result, relegated to the island of Corsica for seven-and-a-half years. In 49, Seneca was restored to Claudius' favor, when the emperor's new wife had him appointed to tutor her son, the future emperor Nero (r. 54-68). It was probably during these years following relegation that Seneca composed his tragedies.

For a time, Seneca, together with Nero's mother Agrippina and others, were able to keep the emperor Nero's wayward tendencies in check. However, Seneca clearly played a less than honorable role in Nero's successful plot to murder his mother (59). But Seneca, the philosopher preaching moderation and virtue, also used his connections to enrich himself hugely, becoming, as he did, one of the greatest landowners in the empire. Though we should not summarily dismiss Seneca's ethical and other writings on account of his actions and record, it is hard for those facts not to color one's interpretations of the man's thought and writings.

Anyway, Seneca's influence over Nero began to wane to the point that Seneca thought it best to go into retirement; note that Seneca sought but failed to get Nero to accept his considerable wealth. Finally, after the failure of a conspiracy to kill Nero, Seneca (probably innocent) and his nephew Lucan (definitely guilty) were implicated in the conspiracy and forced to commit suicide. Seneca did so in high fashion. Inviting his friends and family to witness the event, he opened his veins and discoursed on learned topics as the life bled out of him.

Is there a relationship between the writer's life and the writings themselves? Let me quote C. J. Herington on that very topic as it applies to the extremely complicated and baffling case of Seneca:

What does seem relevant is the clear fact that Seneca himself lived through and witnessed, in his own person or in the persons of those near him, almost every evil and horror that is the theme of his writings, prose or verse. Exile, murder, incest, the threat of poverty and a hideous death and all the savagery of fortune were of the very texture of his career. (In Arion 5 [1966] p. 430)

However remote, bizarre, grotesque, or unnatural we may nowadays find Senecan tragedy, it was certainly "relatable," if to no one else, then at least to Seneca himself.

Seneca: Works

Seneca wrote widely: philosophical and scientific works, the "moral epistles" (letters of an ethical-philosophical character), tragedy, an outrageous send-up of the despised — but safely dead — Claudius.

Seneca's tragedies were probably all written in the years following his return to Rome under Claudius, thus 49 CE into the reign of Nero. Still extant are:

• Agamemnon
• Raging Hercules
• Trojan Women
• Medea
• Phaedra
• Oedipus
• Phoenician Women
• Thyestes
• [The Octavia, included in your collection and assigned for our class, probably dates from the early 100s, through transmitted with tragedies authentically by Seneca]

They are quite saturated with rhetoric and replete with philosophical musings; they can also be quite gruesome in terms of their action and its description. Yet despite all that, they show considerable connection with Greek — especially Euripidean — originals in the of a back-story prologue and of a chorus punctuating the action with reflective passages, in debates evincing political and/or intellectual concerns, in exploration of human psychology and motivation.

Yet the gods appear almost completely absent from these mythological dramas. Thus their focus on the human element, on the corruptive influences of power and of passions like lust and anger, point to abstracted though still relevant meditation on the dilemmas of Seneca's world. Characters caught between fate, passion, and their own, better judgment, still seem tragic, though in ways different from their Greek precursors.

Senecan Tragedy, the "Senecan Formula"

Herington identifies a structural-thematic principal operative, arguably, in most Senecan tragedy, including the Phaedra — what I call the "Senecan formula," consisting of what Herington terms three "movements":

1. THE CLOUD OF EVIL, which coincides with a given play's prologue, in which an atmosphere of horror and dread is carefully cultivated.
2. THE DEFEAT OF REASON BY PASSION, often concentrated in the second act, where in several plays a noble and a lesser character debate — though really, REASON debates PASSION, with victory disastrously won by the latter.
3. THE EXPLOSION OF EVIL. Self-explanatory, it is, of course, action inevitably resulting from passion's victory over reason. Here, "the shockwave of evil races outwards, prostrating both the wicked and the noble" (Herington 456).

Seneca's Phaedra

Dating from perhaps earlier on in the chronology of Seneca's tragedies, the Phaedra combines two story-telling motifs:

• That of the evil stepmother. (Hippolytus will die as a result of his stepmother's falsely accusing him of attempted rape), and
• That of Potiphar's Wife, a motif named after the Biblical story of how Joseph was falsely accused by married woman he had been propositioned by and had turned down

In the story, Theseus, son of the sea god Neptune and foster son of the Athenian king Aegeus, has a son of own: Hippolytus. His mother was the now-dead queen of the Amazons, a race of man-hating women warriors from far to the east. Hippolytus, addicted to hunting and to the outdoors, has sworn himself to eternal virginity. In the meantime, two things:

1. Theseus has married a woman from Crete, one Phaedra, who will fall in love with Hippolytus. Phaedra is the daughter of Pasiphae, notorious for her love affair with a bull, and is the sister of Ariadne, with whom Theseus had earlier eloped, and whom Theseus then abandoned on an island. She is also half sister of the half-man, half-bull Minotaur, the result of her mother's taurophilic tendencies.
   1. Hippolytus is son of Theseus by a previous wife, the Amazon Antiope (the Amazons were warrior women from the eastern Mediterranean). Theseus has slain Antiope for reasons that are somewhat obscure. Previously, Theseus had been helped by
2. Theseus has set off with his friend Pirithous for the Underworld, there to kidnap Proserpina, queen of the dead.

In Theseus' absence, Phaedra has fallen in love with the handsome but standoffish Hippolytus. The complications that creates, and how characters in the play will deal with same, will be for you to find out, though suffice it to say that will involve Theseus wishing the last of the three wishes his god father had promised him. . . .

Important in this play is its rhetoric. Above, you'll have read about the importance of rhetoric at Rome during the time of this play's composition; in thee text you'll want to be on the lookout for that. Among other things, keep an eye out for pithy phrases loaded with often heavily ironic meaning, what the Romans called sententiae. Noteworthy is the following:

A man who can do much would like to do
More than he can. (Nurse, p. 106)

That sententia is rather tamely translated in the Penguin edition. The Latin reads, "quod non potest vult posse qui nimium potest" (line 215), better rendered, "A man with excessive power desires a power that is unattainable" (trans. Coffey and Mayer). As such, the sentiment expresses something close to the Greek-tragic "law of hubris and ate." Yet, in compressing within itself multiple levels of irony (e.g., excessive power means a kind of stunning impotence — note the triple repetition of forms of posse, "to be able," "to be empowered"), it somehow moves well into the realm of the (characteristically Roman) over-the-top.

Can you find more such quotes in your text?

Connected with that is, arguably, a fascination with the spectacular, the monstrous, the grotesque, the bizarre. That has been connected by scholars with the Roman interest in outsized, violent shows like chariot racing and gladiatorial combat. See if you can find evocations of that, too, in your text.

Themes, Issues, Further Questions

Genre

Basically, what is "tragic" about this tragedy? Now, we don't have to be essentialist about that. Still, how does this tragedy fit into the tradition examined so far: classical Athenian, Republican Roman? How does this play, understood as tragedy because somehow part of that tradition of tragic plays, nevertheless force us to rethink our definition of tragedy, especially given its over rhetoricism? What is tragedy anyway?

Character, Theme, Gender

Phaedra is a character who alleges a sexual violation and then, in full view of her husband, kills herself. How, then, is she like, how unlike, the Roman suicide Lucretia in Accius' Brutus? More generally, can we begin to detect specifically Roman and/or political themes in this Roman play treating Greek mythology, evoking philosophy, and ending with a grisly death off stage and a suicide on stage?

And what do you make of Theseus' final speech (pp. 149-150), in which he dwells at length on the death and soon-to-happen funeral of his wrongly accused son, and then devotes two lines to the less honorable burial of his wife? Does Phaedra deserve that? Is that simply a plausible reaction from Theseus, or what do you think?

The previous was a gender question. Also on the subject of gender, what do you make of Hippolytus's impalement through his groin on a sharpened tree stump — symbolic somehow? and what about Hippolytus himself: wholly innocent or culpable on any grounds?

Notes

Here follow notes keyed into the pages of your text. They should help with some of the more obscure references.

99 Land of Cecrops. Athens and its environs.

100 Molossians, Spartans, etc. These are breeds of hunting dogs.

100 "Huntress divine." Diana, the Roman virgin goddess of the hunt. (Cf. Greek Artemis.)

101 top. Those are far-away places.

101 wain. Wagon.

103 Venus. Goddess of love, = Greek Aphrodite.

103 Jove, aka Jupiter. Roman king of the gods, = Greek Zeus.

105 "The invincible winged god." Love, or Cupid, son of Venus. = Greek Eros.

106 Phoebus. I.e., Apollo.

107 "A true Amazonian." The Amazons were mythical women from the Russian/Central Asian steppe. They were dedicated to hunting and war. (We know of no actual Amazons from antiquity, though their myth might have had a basis in certain aspects — the position of women, etc. — of Scythian society.) Their society was matriarchal; to Greeks, they expressed threat to the patriarchal status quo. Theseus had to defeat an invading army of Amazons. Antiope, their leader, was mother of Theseus' son, Hippolytus. Hippolytus, averse to relations with the opposite sex (to sex altogether), and dedicated to hunting and the great outdoors, can thus be spoken of as, in a sense, "a true Amazonian."

108 Ariadne. Ariadne is Phaedra's sister. Theseus, after killing the Minotaur, fled Crete with Ariadne, his lover and accomplice. So she represents another example, along with Pasiphae, of illicit love connected to Phaedra.

109 "daughter of the never gentle sea." Venus.

110 neatherd. A herder of cattle.

124 "The Cnossian monster." The Minotaur.

130 Parthian. The Parthians were an Iranian people renowned for their skill at archery.

136 Dis. Another name for Pluto, god of death and the underworld.

141 Phaethon. Phaethon, the son of the Sun, wanted to have a chance to drive his father's chariot on its daily trip across the sky. Bad idea: Phaethon makes a mess of it. Chariot nearly totaled, Phaethon completely totaled.

145 Sinis, Procrustes, Cretan Bull (i.e., Minotaur). These are monsters previously killed by Theseus in the course of his heroic exploits.

149 "I had to ask my father for his aid." Theseus' father is often given as Poseidon-Neptune, god of the sea. Neptune granted Theseus three prayers, the third of which he unleashes on Hippolytus. But Aegeus, king of Athens, is also given as his father. In this play, both seem to be Theseus' dad — go figure.

Quiz 2 Study Guide

On the day of two classes devoted to Seneca's Phaedra, there will be a VERY SHORT QUIZ of material covered in class assignments and lectures, Euripides Iphigenia at Aulis through and including the reading for the Phaedra part 2 class.

It will be very short, plain, non-interpretive, and straightforward — a "fact-check" quiz more than anything else to encourage attentive reading and in-class listening.

It will also be relatively brief, MULTIPLE CHOICE quiz, including a "none of the above" choice for each question.

It will be administered online via myCourses. Look for the link on myCourses course site > quiz 2. The quiz will remain available for a full 24 hours, beginning 12am the morning of 21-Apr through midnight.

Once you begin to take it you will have 30 minutes to complete it.

Content-wise, expect:

Multiple choice questions targeting. . .

• Class-assigned readings, for which know. . .
  • authors (where appropriate, you won't have authors' names for everything)
  • titles (where appropriate, you won't have titles for everything)
  • characters, key actors/speakers (where appropriate)
  • basic and crucial content info
• key terms and concepts listed below, for which consult
  • your notes
  • our target texts
  • my PowerPoints
  • Terms page

Review Terms List. (For definitions, see "Terms")

• crepidata
• mos maiorum
• parody, parodic, paratragedy, paratragic
• perverse exaggeration
• praetexta
• satyr drama
• satyr
• Senecan formula
• sententia
• silen, silenos, Papposilenos
• trope of decline