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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 July 2014
Almost every aspect of the Senecan text known as Phoenissae has been disputed except its authorship. The title, Phoenissae in the Etruscus, Thebais in the A-tradition of Mss, seems in each case to have been imposed for extraneous reasons, the former because of the close relationship between the text's second Jocasta-based phase and the opening episodes of Euripides' Phoenissae, the latter under the influence of Statius' epic poem of the Seven against Thebes. Euripides' chorus of Phoenician captives is not tightly integrated with his play, but there is no reason other than convention to assume that Seneca had intended to compose choral material for these scenes, still less to identify the chorus as Phoenician women. Do these scenes represent a complete dramatic action? Hardly, since the long opening dialogue lacks the characteristic expository material of a prologue and the extended last scene reaches a stalemate with no indication of either a moral resolution or a physical exodos. Indeed the crucial deaths of the brothers in mutual slaughter and of their mother from grief must surely have been the climax of any drama projected by Seneca as they were for Euripides. Do these scenes represent a continuous action in the Senecan sense, which need not entail continuity of both place and time? So most scholars in recent years have argued.
1. Cf. Leo (1963), 75f.
2. Cf. Leo (1963), 76f.
3. Cf. Mesk (1915), 313f. He argues that the end of the scene was either unfinished or lost after composition.
4. Leo (1963), 75f. Leo believed the presence of Oedipus in Thebes during the second Jocasta-based sequence was incompatible with his wandering on Cithaeron in the first phase, since he interpreted the setting on Cithaeron as an imitation of Sophocles Oedipus at Colonus, representing Oedipus’ journey towards Athens. For refutation of this see Mesk (1915), 297. Zwierlein (1966), 107f., also stresses the discontinuity of the separate scenes (‘contradictory, abrupt and unlinked scenes … nor organised in a contained context of action’), but recognises that this is not different in kind from Seneca’s other plays. Tarrant (1978), 229 n. 81, has summed up the issue: ‘Seneca neglected traditional dramatic form in favour of unifying motifs and images because his conception (and experience) of tragedy was more literary than theatrical.’
5. Mesk (1915), 299ff., lists verbal echoes and parallels in the two emotionally contrasted scenes. For further correlation see below.
6. Opelt (1972a), 284f.
7. Paul’s discussion (1953) is based on a misleading distinction between drama of Handlung (action) and drama of Affectus (emotion). Associating the former with an early period in Seneca’s literary development, the latter with a supposed later Euripidean period, he was led to argue somewhat inconsistently that Seneca composed the second, Jocasta-based part of Phoenissae first and designed the Oedipus scenes later to supplement it. But individual Senecan tragedies contain both phases of action and of affective discursive rhetoric.
8. For this analysis, and for the disagreement of the Mss in recording scene-divisions see Tarrant (1978), 229, and Zwierlein (1966), 107f.
9. For this unprecedented violation of conventions governing off-stage action see Tarrant (1978), 252: ‘They accomplish a change of scene, so that the setting described in them becomes the actual setting of the scene which immediately follows … no other “redefinition” of the scene in ancient drama, including early tragedy and Old Comedy, is quite so bold. The physical limitations of the ancient theater seem completely left behind, and the properties of narrative and dramatic poetry uniquely juxtaposed.’ Tarrant offers Phd. 580–88 and Ag. 775–81 as partial parallels.
10. On the curse, see Opelt (1972a), 276; she rightly parallels the curse and its implementation in these scenes with the action of the Fury upon Thyestes in the prologue of Seneca’s Agamemnon, and of Tantalus in the Thyestes; the effect of the curse is revealed in the behaviour of the tragic personae of the ensuing scene(s).
11. Mens Cithaeron, 13. Mesk (1915), 307, compares Soph. Oed. 1451ff. and Oedipus’ reproach at Oed. 1391 that Cithaeron had failed to kill him.
12. Seneca increases the incidence of such hallucinations in the plays he adapts; cf. Med. 958–71 (the furies, followed by ghost of Absyrtus) and Tro. 680–84 (Andromache’s hallucination of Hector’s ghost come to her aid).
13. In Sophocles’ play Oedipus’ only weapon seems to have been the staff (sceptron) of 810f. While this too has a potential for symbolism, Seneca has invested the sword with an almost magical destructive power in 106–09. But this is a rhetorical flourish, and Seneca makes no attempt to renew the symbolism in Jocasta’s scene of intervention: clude vagina impium ensem (467f.) is unstressed in the general context of disarming Polyneices, as is quid strictum abnuis / recondere ensem addressed to Eteocles in 489f.; instead the symbolic focus is turned to sceptra as cause of corruption (584, 648) and object of desire (599). Euripides gives more stress to the sword as death weapon in Phoenissae 1374, 1404ff., 1417, 1420f. At 1455 Jocasta snatches a sword to kill herself ‘from the corpses’; that is, Euripides does not allow the listener to determine whether she dies by the sword of Eteocles or Polyneices. It is the symbol of death in battle, not of specific guilt or power as in Seneca.
14. The names Eteocles and Polyneices occur freely in all cases and several positions in the trimeters of Euripides’ Phoenissae. Euripides fits some forms of Eteocles into his first and second feet by using the dissyllabic Eteocle-es and accusative Eteodea; if Seneca was nervous of these forms he could have used at least the genitive Eteoclis and ablative Eteocle attested in Statius, and would have had no difficulty with the attested forms of Polyneices.
15. Oedipus is treated as a portent more unnatural than the sphinx at Sen. Oed. 640f., implicitum malum / magisque monstrum Sphinge perplexum sua (‘a tangled evil and a monster more perverted than his own antagonist the Sphinx’).
16. Zwierlein (1966), 108 n.42: ‘Es Senecas Eigenart ist, ein Pathos-Motiv bis zum aüszersten auszuschöpfen.’
17. I follow Giardina’s text in attributing 320–327 to the Nuntius, but 347–49 to Antigone despite the arguments of Leo (1963), 79ff. The appeal from Thebes must be brought by a new speaker, but the tone of 347–49 is not compatible with the status of a messenger addressing an ex-monarch; rather it fits Antigone’s role as the voice of reason. I do not see any difficulty in her allusion to her own brothers as liberi, ‘your children’.
18. For arma dare of metaphorical arming cf. Ovid Met. 10.546, Ep. 6.140; in an erotic context A.A. 2.741, 3.1; Rem. 674, Ex P. 3.3.47. These passages do not denote sexual violation or consensual intercourse; the latter is a fairly common use of arma in Propertius, though disputed in some passages e.g. 1.3.16; 3.8.29 (more certain are 3.20.20; 4.8.88). Arma denote the membrum virile in the Priapea, Martial and Petronius, but none of these instances afford a firm parallel to the use of arma dare. However Professor Tarrant has drawn to my attention a similarly strained allusion to incest in Sen. Ag. 32, per omnes liberos irem parens, where the use of ire is unparalleled outside Martial and the Priapea. Opelt (1972), 95, interprets this reference as ‘Muttermord’, but there is equal difficulty in understanding date arma of military attack (which has no point in the context) and sexual assault.
19. Soph. Oed. 977–983. See Winnington-Ingram (1980), 183f: ‘Jocasta is governed by her affections, and will use any means, whether it is denial of Apollo or prayer to Apollo, if she can calm the disturbed mind of her husband’.
20. Note however that in Seneca’s Oedipus Jocasta condemns herself for violating the moral laws of man: omne confusum perit, incesta, per te iuris humani decus … non … umquam rependam sceleribus poenas pares / mater nefanda (‘Through you, impure women, all the beauty of human right has been confounded and destroyed. I shall never pay a penalty equal to my crimes, I the abominable mother’, 1025f., 1028–31).
21. For pietas in Jocasta cf. 380f.; hoped for from her sons, 409, 410, 451, 455 (opposed to scelus 456); in Antigone, 536 (cf. 82, 310); in Jocasta’s appeal, renewed at 585.
22. While the meaning of media … matre is undisputed, Propertian scholars have differed in their interpretation of media puella, seeing her as either arbitrator (deciding for the victor) or prize, rather than intercessor.
23. This might be the shadow of some fourth century Athenian propaganda in the style of Isocrates, but there is no trace of this in Euripides’ Phoenissae. Better to assume Seneca has in mind the Trojan war and the cooperation of Agamemnon with his wronged brother Menelaus in that expedition.
24. We may note that there is no contact between Oedipus and Jocasta in Seneca’s text nor in the Phoenissae of Euripides. But in Euripides Oedipus speaks with horror of his curse that has caused his sons’ death (1610–14), whereas Seneca depicts him as rejoicing in the deadly war that they will take on. 537, 552ff. and 623 all assume that Oedipus feels the same love of his children and country as Jocasta herself.
25. See Iliad 22.79–83.
26. On the sexual colouring given by Sophocles to Deianeira’s suicide in Trach. 924ff. see Winnington-Ingram (1980), 82. She strikes below the liver and diaphragm (931), perhaps alluding to the liver as seat of the passions (see Onians [1954], 85), but it should be noted that the liver was commonly aimed at whether in suicide (Eur. Or. 1063) or murder (Eur. Phoen. 1421; Med. 379; Hel. 982ff.). Euripides’ Jocasta pierces her throat in Phoen. 1457f.
27. Both vertere and retro occur in similar Senecan contexts in association with the overthrow of natural law (see also n. 33 below). Compare the climax of the nurse’s diatribe against Phaedra’s intended seduction of her stepson, Phd. 173: perge et nefandis verte naturam ignibus. Both Opelt (1972), 92–118, and Rozelaar (1976), 528ff., note the associations of reversal or overthrow implied by retro with nefas and the violation of natural law. But retro in the incestcontexts of Pho., Oed., Ag. and Phd. may denote the return of the younger generation to the old for mating; cf. Sen. Oed. 636f., egitque in ortus semet … regessit, and the first adynaton of Pho. 85, using regerere to evoke the same unnatural return to source: ‘the river turning back will pile up its rushing waters at their source.’ Knox (1955), 113–15, has shown that the persistent imagery of Oedipus’ incest in Sophocles depicts him ‘ploughing the fields where he himself was sown’ (e.g. 1497f.).
28. See Eur. Andr. 158, 356; Ba. 91, 527, 1306. At Hipp. 165 the association of the womb with irrational anxiety is in keeping with Hippocratic medical theory. On hysteria in Greek Medicine and diseases of the Uterus in Greek tragedy see Simon (1978), 242–44 and 257–59. Despite the mistrust of women and their otherness which Simon illustrates from Greek sources, I find no expression in Greek tragedy of male fear of the womb as contaminating or destructive.
29. Rozelaar (1976), 17f., 27–29, 52, 82 (where however he argues less convincingly that Seneca was homosexually oriented).
30. Compare Rozelaar (1976), 124, and the material gathered by Neumann (1955), ch. 4.
31. For further reference to the embryo and the transition of birth see Epp. 121.18 and 124.8, which follow Stoic theory in denying consciousness to the embryo but affirming adaptation in the form of oikeiosis from the moment of birth.
32. Cf. Ag. 30 nefandos concubitus with Tarrant (1976), ad loc. The phrase is Ovidian; to Met. 6.540 (rape of the wife’s sister) and 9.123 concubitus vetitos (rape by a centaur) add 10.350–53 at tu dum corpore non es / passa nefas, animo ne concipe, neve potentis / concubitu vetito naturae pollue foedus (father-daughter incest). Seneca varies these phrases at the beginning and end of the stream of synonyms poured out by the nurse in Phd. 160–70: coitus nefandos … stupro … scelus … amoris impii flammas … nefas … facinus … horridum … concubitus novos. (See Opelt [1972], 107–9).
33. Only in tragedy does Seneca consistently apply iura / leges naturae to human morality. Compare with Pho. 478: Oed. 25, parum ipse fidens mihimet in tuto tua / natura posui iura (avoidance of parricide and incest); 875f., where he calls his deeds exitium iuris sacri; 943, ilia quae leges ratas Natura in uno vertit Oedipode; and Jocasta’s outcry that through her omne confusum petit … iuris humani genus. So too Phd. 914, ferae quoque ipsae Veneris evitant nefas / generisque leges servat insitus pudor. In Oed. 371ff., natura versa est, nulla lex utero manet / … conceptus innuptae bovis / … implet parentem (‘nature has reversed itself, no law is observed in the womb, but the embryo of an unmated cow fills his own mother’), the physical violation of nature is designed to reflect the moral violation of Oedipus’ incest. In the philosophical and natural works the laws of nature are usually physical, such as the inevitability of death for mortal creatures (Helv. 13.2, Nat. 3 pref. 16; 6.32.2) or the motion of heavenly bodies (Helv. 6.8), or course of rivers (Nat. 3.12), or behaviour of underground ore (Nat. 316.4). In Ben. 6.31.6 the laws are violated by Xerxes’ crossing of the Hellespont (or possibly the attempted canal through Athos). In Ben. 4.17.3 the reference is moral; no one, we are told, has so deviated from the laws of nature as to choose to be wicked for its own sake; in Ep. 4.10 and 25.4 the laws are used to define the minimum of food and shelter for human survival. Opelt (1972) is too free in asserting a violation of these laws wherever nefas / nefandus or scelus are named.
34. Opelt (1972) uses nefas as the key to her interpretation of the tragedies, and believes that Seneca has chosen his tragic themes to reflect the action of nefas; but the concept and its derivatives are far more prominent in some tragedies — notably those dealing with incest and fratricide — than others, such as Troades, Medea or Hercules Furens.
35. It is usually assumed that Catullus’ model for this account was Hesiod, Works and Days 174ff. (see Fordyce ad loc). Hesiod, however, does not include any sexual offences, or offences committed by women, in his indictment of greed, jealousy and competition for power. Commentators agree that the incest reference of Catullus cannot relate to the Oedipus-story, since the mother knowingly seduces her son.
36. Opelt (1972a), 285: ‘Die Phoenissen aber sind letztlich die Tragödie der Elternliebe; Der Vater Oedipus, der den Fluch über die Sönne verhängt, die Mutter locasta, die ihn vergeblich zu hindern sucht, setzen in beiden Teilen die scharfen Akzente, schaffen den Rahmen zur Tragödie des Brudermordes.’
