An Analysis of Seneca's Thyestes

Author(s): Joe Park Poe

Source: Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association , 1969,
Vol. 100 (1969), pp. 355-376
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2935921

REFERENCES
Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2935921?seq=1&cid=pdf-
reference#references_tab_contents
You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

The Johns Hopkins University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and
extend access to Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association

This content downloaded from

129.194.26.164 on Mon, 05 May 2025 16:16:57 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 AN ANALYSIS OF SENECA'S THYESTES

JOE PARK POE

Tulane University

These days not much attention is paid to the plays of

recently published collection of essays on Roman dram
devoted to Senecan tragedy as such.' The reason for th
anyone familiar with Seneca's plays and with the kind o
cism done by Classicists: by comparison with most Gr
Senecan tragedy is deficient in both plot and characte
means, to those whose critical thinking has been informed
Poetics, that it also is deficient in meaning.2
However, to concentrate exclusively on plot and charac
much of the content of Seneca's plays. Evidence of thi
III2 lines of Seneca's Thyestes, the play which I propos
in this paper, are devoted to the prologue and the chor
to parts of the play which formally are exterior to the
Another i66 lines are taken by a messenger's speech w
in full and sanguinary detail Atreus' killing of Thyestes' children
and his preparation of them for table. It cannot be said that this
speech either furthers the plot or adds to the picture we have of the
character of Atreus or Thyestes. But the speech has great emotional

I T. A. Dorey and Donald R. Dudley (ed.), Roman Drama (New York I965). There
are two essays secondarily concerned with Senecan drama: one about Seneca's influence
on Shakespeare, the other about his influence on Corneille.
2 Representative of the hostile criticism often received by Seneca, when he is not
being ignored, is C. W. Mendell's Our Seneca (New Haven I94I). Mendell condemns
Seneca for being bad Sophocles. Critics favorable to Seneca often have been defensive,
meeting the hostile critics on their own ground, so to speak. Thus Charles Garton,
"The Background to Character Portrayal in Seneca," CP 54 (I959) I-9, tries to show
(unsuccessfully, it seems to me) that Seneca's characters are not stereotyped. For a
briefreview of the history of criticism of Senecan drama see P.J. Enk, " Roman Tragedy,"
Neophilologus 4I (I957) 282-307.
12*

This content downloaded from

129.194.26.164 on Mon, 05 May 2025 16:16:57 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 356 JOE PARK POE [I969

impact; and it must hav

a dramatic presentation.
Descriptions like this, o
play a prominent role in
there. In fact, a preocc
to be a characteristic of
certain authors of the p
Seneca's plays and in Lu
Thebaid.3 There is no r
Satyricon but there certa
ghoulishness, I think (s
commonplace as early as
of Tibullus and Propertiu
In spite of its frequency
death is a characteristic of
almost entirely by critic
terms. Those who do bot
inspiration usually attrib
shocked attention, or so
for blood.5
However, this general
Otto Regenbogen publi
importance of violence
Regenbogen showed th

3 See, for instance, Thebaid

8.75I-66, I0.296-305, II.85-87, I2.22-3I, I2.3I7-2I.
4 For the preoccupation with death in the "cena Trimalchionis"
"The Sibyl in the Bottle," Virginia Quarterly Review 34 (I958) 262-
text of Petronius ends with a specifically ghoulish passage: the terms of
that the heirs must eat the body of the deceased, followed by a conv
preparatory to the fulfilling of these terms (Satyricon I4I).
5 See, for instance, W. C. Summers, The Silver Age of Latin Literat
30 and 37, and J. Wight Duff, A Literary History of Rome in the Si
i9602) 259-60. This element in Silver-Age literature is not even m
Butler in his Post-Augustan Poetry (Oxford I909).
6 " Schmerz und Tod in den Trag6dien Senecas," Kleine Schriften, ed
(Munich I96I) 409-62, reprinted from Vortr. Bibl. Warburg 7 (I92
esp. pp. 446-47, 454-58, 46I-62. I have profited greatly from Regenbo
and I am indebted to this essay for most of the citations to Seneca's p
which I give.

This content downloaded from

129.194.26.164 on Mon, 05 May 2025 16:16:57 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Vol. IOO] AN ANALYSIS OF SENECA S THYESTES 357

is not merely superficial and sensationalist

connected with beliefs expressed in his ph
essays Seneca not infrequently speaks of st
able part of life, even for the wise man,
desirable thing-a refuge and a relief. Sene
of a death-wish in the minds of many of
men of the strongest character;7 he appr
reasonable to suppose that this is at least
this morbid state of mind. But if the pro
in Senecan drama is not inconsistent with
philosophical writings, nevertheless Regen
plays to be merely Stoic tracts.8 The play
Stoic thought but of the social and politic
were written. Death looms large in Sene
presence with which he and other aristo
lived from day to day.
I think that most of what Regenbogen
of the times in which he lived clearly did
morbidity of Seneca's thought. The trou
not go far enough. His was what I would call a "sociological"
interpretation,9 which saw Seneca's morbidity as a symptom of, or

7 In E. M. 24.2S Seneca speaks of an "affectus qui multos occupavit, libido moriendi."

And he adds that this "animi inclinatio ... saepe generosos atque acerrimae indolis
viros corripit."
8 As does Berthe M. Marti, "Seneca's Tragedies, a New Interpretation," TAPA
76 (I945) 2I6-45 and "The Prototypes of Seneca's Tragedies," CP 42 (I947) i-i6.
For other views of the importance of the Stoic content in Seneca's tragedies see N. T.
Pratt, Jr., "The Stoic Base of Senecan Drama," TAPA 79 (I948) i-i I, and J. F. Brady,
A Study of the Stoicism in Senecan Tragedy (unpub. diss. Columbia Univ. I958).
9 In this context two articles should be mentioned, by Helen Bacon (above, note 4)
and by William Arrowsmith, "Luxury and Death in the Satyricon," Arion 5 (I966)
304-3I, which discuss the morbid element in Petronius. Both writers discuss luxuria
in Petronius, especially as it is directed to indulgence of the body, as well as the emphasis
put by Petronius on the more repulsive aspects of the physical processes; they connect
these with the preoccupation of Trimalchio, in particular, with the thought of death.
But both think that, with regard to these things, Petronius is writing primarily as a
social critic. In other words, like Regenbogen they explain these things as inspired
by social conditions, and they go no further.
Another recent article, by Werner Rutz, "Amor Mortis bei Lucan," Hermes 88 (I960)
462-75, discusses the prevalence of the death-motif in Lucan. Rutz largely is con-
cerned with demonstrating that Lucan goes further than Seneca in his attachment to

This content downloaded from

129.194.26.164 on Mon, 05 May 2025 16:16:57 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 358 JOE PARK POE [I969

perhaps it would be better to say a reaction against, the social and

political conditions in which he lived. It explained why suffering and
death are so much on Seneca's mind, but it did not explain adequately
why Seneca dwells so long and lovingly over such lurid, macabre
descriptions as (760-67),

ipse divisum secat

in membra corpus, amputat trunco tenus
umeros patentes et lacertorum moras,
denudat artus durus atque ossa amputat;
tantum ora servat et datas fidei manus.
haec veribus haerent viscera et lentis data
stillant caminis, illa flammatus latex
candente aeno iactat, etc.

Something other than fear of death, or weariness with suffering,

inspires the gusto with which here Seneca describes the cutting up
and cooking of dead bodies. This is more than merely negative.
That is, more is involved than the poet's horrified revulsion from th
circumstances of his environment. An intellectual synthesis has taken
place (whatever the elements of the synthesis may be), for the poet is
not simply recoiling from horror in a normal and predictable way.
Of course this fascination with death-particularly the grisly physical
details of death-is a perverted thing. The poet invites his readers
to participate vicariously in an experience which is both sadistic and
masochistic. But that the phenomenon can be called a "fascination"
-that the death-motif clearly is of such a great interest to Seneca
and that it is found in other authors as well-is an indication of its
importance. Perhaps the importance of the death-motif has been
so little understood because the attitude of mind betrayed by the
author is outside the range of tile normal reader's expectations and
personal experience. But surely it is not outside the literary experience

death, and that his attitude toward death is not based on orthodox Stoic doctrine (see
especially pp. 463-64, 467). Following H. H. Eckert, Weltanschauung und Selbstmord
bei Seneca und den Stoikern, in antiker Mystik und im Christentum (diss. Tiibingen I95I),
an essay which I have not been able to see, he asserts (473-74) that by Seneca suicide is
regarded as a release from a life which has become otherwise intolerable, but is not
always justifiable. For Lucan, however, death is a positively desirable thing. Rutz
is not much concerned with the question of what informs Lucan's attitude toward
death.

This content downloaded from

129.194.26.164 on Mon, 05 May 2025 16:16:57 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Vol. ioo] AN ANALYSIS OF SENECA S THYESTES 359

of anyone in this century. The answer must

inherited the condescending prejudice of thei
literature is mostly meaningless bombast and empty, if sometimes
stimulating, exaggeration. The intent of this paper is to show that
in Thyestes, at least, this is not true. Thyestes has something to say
about the enormous satisfaction which Atreus derives from his slaughter,
and indirectly about the satisfaction derived by the poet from describing
the slaughter or by the reader from reading the description: the play
declares that it is the satisfaction of a natural human impulse to violence
and ultimately to self-destruction.IO

10 This passage is one instance of a kind of literary necrophilia, which, as I indicated

above, seems to me to be a characteristic of several authors of the early Empire. This
necrophilia, I believe, is inspired by the feeling that life is unwholesome, a death-thing,
a dealer and receiver of death. This idea is an oxymoron. But necrophilia is itself
a psychological oxymoron. It is a perversion of normal instincts, a love of what is
beautiful in its repulsiveness, desirable in its horror.
Undoubtedly these paradoxes sound suspiciously glib, but I believe that it can be
shown that other authors, like Seneca, do associate with a life-process something noxious
and unwholesome. A literal necrophilia is to be found in the elegiac poets ("The
last embrace" is a commonplace of elegiac poetry), who frequently associate love with
sickness and death. Tibullus, in particular, hardly seems able to talk about love without
mentioning death. Sometimes his references to sickness or death seem oddly inappro-
priate, in their unpleasantness, to love poetry. The most extreme example is 2.6.29-40,
where he says, " Spare me, I pray by the bones of your sister ... for fear that she may send
evil dreams to you and she may stand by your bed looking just as she did when she
fell headlong from a high window and went to the underworld covered with blood."
(In a like passage, 4.7.3-12, Propertius says, "Cynthia seemed to bend over my
bed, Cynthia,who recently was buried.. . . She had the same hair and eyes as when she
was carried to the pyre, her clothing was burned to her side, and the fire had eaten
away the beryl she wore on her finger. The waters of Lethe had withered her lips, and
the thumb-bones rattled in her fragile hands." Love's dream.)
The reason love and death are connected in Tibullus' mind is stated (among other
places) clearly in 2.4. Love is a destructive thing-a debilitating and paralyzing force
(2.4.1-4). It is a sickness bringing torture and suffering (S-Ic). But in spite of this
the poet does not want to be freed. Not in order to be freed from his suffering, but
to win his mistress' favor, he is willing to drink any sort of hellish potion (55-6o).
Love may be a destructive force, but it seems to have an irresistible attraction. In
his first poem Tibullus comes closer than anywhere else to conceiving of love as a
happy possibility (I.I.43-49). But within a few lines he is envisioning his own death
(59-62):
te spectem, suprema mihi cum venerit hora,
et teneam moriens deficiente manu.
flebis et arsuro positum me, Delia, lecto,
tristibus et lacrimis oscula mixta dabis.
This reflection on death is not at all the maudlin self-pity of a man thinking, "All this

This content downloaded from

129.194.26.164 on Mon, 05 May 2025 16:16:57 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 360 JOE PARK POE [I969

An "Aristotelian" i
character and individual motivation, can only lead to the conclusion
that there is not much there: that it is nothing more than a melodrama
(moreover, melodrama of a morally reprehensible kind). There is no
inner conflict of character, but a conflict between two personalities,
a good man and a bad man. That Thyestes is comparatively innocent,
and even a good man, is quite apparent from the first scene in which
he appears. He has been dispossessed of his birthright, his share of
the throne, and even has suffered great physical privation, but he
is not embittered, for he sees clearly the way of true virtue (470):

immane regnum est, posse sine regno pati.

His mouth is full of the ethical sententiae which in Rome answered

for philosophy (443, see also 446-70):
TANTALUS (Thyestes' son): summa est potestas-
THYESTES: nulla si cupias nihil.
In fact, Thyestes in his indigence is portrayed as an easily recognizable
type-the wandering ascetic sage." That Atreus is the very opposite
must end." On the contrary. After the vision of happy love in 43-49, there is a
progression: I'm a slave (55)-Let me be (57-58)-I'll die (59-62).
Tibullus states plainly that he both abhors and desires what he feels is torturing
him. And it is apparent that in death he feels a kind of perverse satisfaction. This,
if anything, is a fascination with an abomination. As such it testifies to a perversion
of what we may think of as normal human values. However, morbidity, necrophilia,
masochism, and sadism are found in post-World War I "naturalistic" literature, and
have become common motifs since. Surely they are able to be understood, if not
appreciated, by Classicists of today. So that the small amount of critical discussion
of this phenomenon in the elegiac poets and later literature is very strange. For a
fascination with an abomination may be more than just a literary curiosity, or a deplor-
able symptom of moral degeneracy. When it appears it implies in the author (or,
if it appears in a literature with significant frequency, in the culture) a shift in attitude
about what is good and bad, or at least about what is interesting and uninteresting.
Senecan drama is not just second-rate Greek tragedy at all, but literature of an entirely
different kind. It is not drama of the citizen concerned with his relative position in
his society or above his society, but of man looking at the beast in himself. A fascination
with an abomination is symptomatic of a recognition of new human motives: new,
or not previously apprehended, forces working on the lives of men. Thus, deplorable
as it may seem, a fascination with an abomination indicates a new dimension of under-
standing. It sees in the abomination a beauty to which other states of mind may be
blind; or, if not its beauty, at least its vertu (which the fascinated subject may recognize
to its own horror or grief).
"I For a contrary opinion-that the play emphatically declares Thyestes guilty and
worthy of punishment-see Marti, "Seneca's Tragedies, a New Interpretation" (above,

This content downloaded from

129.194.26.164 on Mon, 05 May 2025 16:16:57 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Vol. IOO] AN ANALYSIS OF SENECA S THYESTES 36I

type needs no demonstration. He is a sp

never a doubt, but glories in his villain

resupinus ipse [Thyestes] purpurae atq

vino gravatum fulciens laeva caput.
eructat. o me caelitum excelsissimum,
regum atque regem! vota transcend
satur est, capaci ducit argento merum
ne parce potu; restat etiamnunc cruor
tot hostiarum.

This is the stuff of melodrama, and, a

which is morally outrageous. With its emphasis on torture and
suffering, if Thyestes is concerned with no more than the criminal
deception of an innocent victim, it can be no more than a sensational-
istic exercise in sadism. (Of course, even if that is all there is in the
play it at least indicates an interesting psychological condition in
Seneca and whatever audience he had.) However, Atreus' act of
treacherous violence is not viewed in the play merely as the inexplicable,
cruel caprice of an individual. Seneca universalizes Atreus' act, so
to speak, and sees in it an instinct rooted in man's very nature and
common to all men.
Regenbogen's article showed that in his philosophical dialogues
Seneca sometimes concerns himself with man's unhealthy instincts.
Death, for instance, can be more than just a refuge which is to be sought
from suffering by any normal, rational man. There can exist a per-
verse lust for death (E. M. 24.25) or a pleasure in suffering (Ad Marc.
I.7). In addition to this masochistic desire, he also recognizes the
existence of a sadistic voluptas in the infliction of suffering and death
(De ira 2.32.I, 2.5.2). In Atreus is to be found the embodiment of
sadistic voluptas. The origin of this sadistic impulse is discussed in

note 8) 239-40. 0. Gigon, "Bemerkungen zu Senecas Thyestes," Philologus 93 (1938-

39) 176-83, agrees with me.
12 Ulrich Knoche, "Senecas Atreus, ein Beispiel," Die Antike i8 (I94i) 60-76, has
shown that in the figure of Atreus, Seneca is portraying a type with which he is con-
cerned in his philosophical dialogues: the brutal tyrant who is the perversion of a true
king. This is true enough, but of course Seneca is doing more than picturing a kind
of cruelty that any normally intelligent man (especially one living in the age of Nero)
could imagine well enough for himself. In this play, among other things, Seneca is
investigating the source of this cruelty.

This content downloaded from

129.194.26.164 on Mon, 05 May 2025 16:16:57 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 362 JOE PARK POE [I969

detail in De tranq. 2.IO-I4, and is condemned morally in accordance

with good Stoic dogma: it derives from an individual's abuse of his
mind; his failure to control his desires as he should grows always greater
until it culminates in a lust for human blood. In Thyestes, however,
Seneca says something quite different. Atreus' act is motivated by
something bigger than he is. It is preordained by something inherent
in his nature; it is a something, moreover, over which his objective
self-consciousness exercises no control.
It must be of fundamental significance that Atreus' violence is
described in terms which associate it with eating, one of the basic
animal functions. (In fact, the act of ingestion-suggested, of course,
by Thyestes' eating of his children-might be called the controlling
metaphor of the play. As well as Atreus' violence, Tantalus' act in
the prologue of infecting his progeny with sinfulness also is symbolically
an act of eating; it is clear that the deeds of both Atreus and Tantalus
somehow are referable to Thyestes' meal, and that the acts of Atreus
and Thyestes, so different in moral intent, in some way are of the same
kind.) Atreus' killing of the children is described figuratively as an
act of cannibalism. Immediately before the murder he is like a ieiuna
tigris (707-8). His act of murder fills him but does not satisfy his
"hunger"; in the midst of his slaughter he is like an Armenian lion
which kills and eats its victims, and seems insatiable, continuing to
kill even when his hunger is banished (733-36):
in caede multa victor armento incubat
cruore rictus madidusI 3 et pulsa fame
non ponit iras; hinc et hinc tauros premens
vitulis minatur dente iam lasso piger.

Early in the play, in the first scene, when he conceives his crime, he
feels himself filled withfuror, but still is unsated (252-54):
non satis magno meum
ardet furore pectus; impleri iuvat
maiore monstro.

And he feels that he never can be satisfied; two lines later he adds that
nothing is enough (256):
nullum relinquam facinus et nullum est satis.

13 Twice later (780, 948) madidus is used to describe Thyestes (see below, note i6).

This content downloaded from

129.194.26.164 on Mon, 05 May 2025 16:16:57 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Vol. IOO] AN ANALYSIS OF SENECA S THYESTES 363

Special notice should be given to the words magno, mai

satis above. Adjectives and adverbs of size and extent are very
common in this play; especially those in the comparative degree,
indicating spatial increase or growth. In this first scene Atreus denies
all moderation, refuses to accept a limit of any kind. Any vengeance
is too small. He seeks to discover a crime which is not just immane
(273), but maius (274) than any ever before committed (2S4-55):

SATELLES: quid novi rabidus struis ?

ATREUS: nil quod doloris capiat assueti modus.

For, says Atreus (I95-96), scelera non ulcisceris nisi vincis. This frenzied
desire for vengeance, which he feels as a horror filling him physically,
but only whetting his appetite (252-54, see above), swells and wells up
within him (267-68):

nescio quid animo maius et solito amplius,

supraque fines moris humani tumet.

It is like a storm which shakes him within as it grows, and sweeps

him away to new dimensions of criminality (260-62):

tumultus pectora attonitus quatit

penitusque volvit; rapior et quo nescio
sed rapior.

He is possessed by an impulse that transcends conscious desire,I4 and

yet paradoxically he desires the possession. In the midst of his slaughter
the word tumet is repeated. After killing two of the three sons, still

'4 This point should be stressed: Atreus is affected by a madness which is beyond the
control of his conscious mind. Atreus' desire for vengeance may seem to fit comfortably
within the assumptions of fifth-century tragedy, but the fact of hisfuror and its intensity
should tell the discerning reader that he is, indeed, driven by aliquid novi. Fifth century
Greek tragedy is drama of the polis and, with few exceptions, recognizes the motives
only of the (anti-)socially oriented man. (Contrast the last scene of Sophocles' OT
with the last scene of this play. Oedipus' concern for the children of his incestuous
lust are entirely social ones, and he betrays no feeling whatever of inner impurity.)
In Atreus there is a new kind of motivation at work. If Thyestes were merely a drama
of intrigue the character of this long first scene (more than i5o lines) would be inex-
plicable. Few lines of this scene are devoted to Atreus' plot against his brother or
his reasons for hating him. The primary purpose of the scene is to show that Atreus
is manic, in a state of mental transport.

This content downloaded from

129.194.26.164 on Mon, 05 May 2025 16:16:57 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 364 JOE PARK POE [I969

his ira tumet (737), and he

is complete (889):

bene est, abunde est, iam sat est etiam mihi.

The familiarity of the antithesis appetite-moderation makes it

tempting to interpret this play as a Stoic tract. The insatiable Atreus
grows to madness because of his emotional self-indulgence, while
Thyestes is Atreus' opposite. Although he lives in a state of privation,
he wants nothing because he lives a simple life and his needs are small
449-53, 470):

o quantum bonum est

obstare nulli, capere securas dapes
humi iacentem! scelera non intrant casas,
tutusque mensa capitur angusta cibus;
venenum in auro bibitur....

immane regnum est posse sine regno pati.

Thyestes has had moderation imposed upon him, and his calm,
sensible words provide a striking contrast with Atreus' wild ravings.
Clearly this play is very much influenced by Stoic assumptions.
But this is no more than you would expect from Seneca, and the
Stoic interpretation cannot be pushed too far. For in fact it is not
Atreus, who gives free rein to his passion, who suffers. It is Thyestes.
Atreus, who sits on a lofty throne, is not punished but fulfilled.
There is, then, a serious flaw in an interpretation which sees this play
as a Stoic moral allegory about temptation, self-indulgence, and its
fruits. In fact, the real interest in the play is not in Thyestes' temptation
and fall at all. The real interest is a grisly, morbid one, in Atreus'
rabid butchery. There is something in his own conception of Atreus
which greatly interests Seneca, if it does also horrify him. The
detailed description, which dominates the play, of the slaughter of
the children and the cooking of their flesh, necessarily involves the
vicarious participation of the poet (and of the audience, to the extent
that it is receptive to the play) in Atreus' ghoulish acts. The very
length of the description of Atreus' furor shows that Seneca sees in
it not just a matter of individual wickedness, to be condemned objec-

This content downloaded from

129.194.26.164 on Mon, 05 May 2025 16:16:57 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Vol. ioo] AN ANALYSIS OF SENECA S 'THYESTES 365

tively or moralized upon, but an instinct w

himself shares and which he expects his audie
Thus, even though immoderate appetite-phy
ticular-is identified with Atreus' sinfulness, i
the beginning that the moral of the play is q
Stoicism is committed to the idea that the w
and that evil is unnatural and an aberration
incontinent cruelty are, on the contrary, part
In the prologue his grandfather, Tantalus,
by a Fury for the purpose of impregnating h
criminality. (This seems to be nothing mo
prefiguring the reawakening of the lust for viole
in the family; for before Tantalus is told that he
which will "drive his house to madness" [2
that they will be guilty of deeds of unprecede
Atreus' violence is not an isolated phenom
among many, and a manifestation of the furo
just as Atreus' individual desire for vengeance
appetite which he is able to satisfy only throu
violence, in the prologue all the sinfulness and
symbolized by the act of eating. The Fury in
his hunger (64-66):

tuamque ad istas solvimus mensas famem

ieiunia exple, mixtus in Bacchum cruor
spectante te potetur.

She compels Tantalus to fill himself, and by t

progeny with his own criminality (53): imple
This is a "filling" which (as later it is seen m
an individual) will not satisfy but only whet
by turns they will thirst for vengeance, says

hunc, hunc furorem divide in totam dom

sic, sic ferantur et suum infensi invicem
sitiant cruorem.

But if it is appetite-as inherited by Tanta

indulgence which is at the source of violence,

This content downloaded from

129.194.26.164 on Mon, 05 May 2025 16:16:57 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
366 JOE PARK POE [I969

beenTantalus' torture has h

awful torment (1s2-57, I69
stat lassus vacuo guttur
impendet capiti plurima
Phineis avibus praeda fu
hinc illinc gravidis fron
et curvata suis fetibus ac
alludit patulis arbor hiat

instat deinde sitis non le

qua cum percaluit sangu
exarsit facibus, stat mis
fluctus ore petens, quos
avertit sterili deficiens v
conantemque sequi deser
altum de rapido gurgite
Instead of making him fran
at any
price, the torture ha
horrors to be committed by
agonies rather than submit
This starvation of Tantalus
that.
Implicit in the assump
virtueis an ethic not just of
"Amate poenas" (82), says Ta
Love them indeed, for they
is heir. "When will it be
" to escape from the world
The passion for violence in
It fills him (253-54), grow
only in physical action (88
who is a Stoic to have, for
and emotion-indulgence of
-are essentially the same.
irrational and rational, not
pected is that Atreus' tumes
him but has grown to him
Tantalus in him. This pass
grows ever greater. Says T

This content downloaded from

129.194.26.164 on Mon, 05 May 2025 16:16:57 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Vol. ioo] AN ANALYSIS OF SENECA S THYESTES 367

iam nostra subit

e stirpe turba quae suum vincat genus
ac me innocentem faciat et inausa audeat

And the Fury answers (30-32, 56-57):

semper oriatur novum
nec unum in uno, dumque punitur scelus,
crescat.

Thracium [Procnae Philomelaeque] fiat nefas

maiore numero.

This growth of violent passion is a function of the growth, or repro-

duction, of the house of Tantalus (26-29):

ne sit irarum modus

pudorve, mentes caecus instiget furor,
rabies parentum duret et longum nefas
eat in nepotes.

The first chorus prays, in vain (I34-35):

[ne] succedat avo deterior nepos

et maior placeat culpa minoribus.

This is inheritance of guilt, but it is more. Just as passion in an indi-

vidual like Atreus, when once indulged, tolerates no limitation but
grows to monstrous proportions, passion in this family grows from
life to life, multiplying as the family multiplies (4I-42): liberi pereant
male, peius tamen nascantur. It is the function, in other words, of a
life-process.
In this context it should be noticed that the virtuous Tantalus who
recoils from his offsprings' criminality is more than just sterile; he
actually is destructive of the life around him. It cannot exist in his
presence (IO7-II):

cernis ut fontes liquor

introrsus actus linquat, ut ripae vacent
ventusque rarus igneus nubes ferat?
pallescit omnis arbor ac nudus stetit
fugiente pomo ramus, etc.

Unlike Atreus, whose pent-up impetus shakes him within, almost as

This content downloaded from

129.194.26.164 on Mon, 05 May 2025 16:16:57 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 368 JOE PARK POE [I969

if struggling for relea

of an unprecedented cr
by his abstinence (I52):
lassus and its synonym
tions. The chorus prays (I36-37):

tandem lassa feros exuat impetus

sicci progenies impia Tantali.

Atreus later describes the children of Thyestes (while they and Thyestes
still are in a state of virtuous deprivation) as fessi, wearied by their
sufferings (30I). But Atreus himself does not begin to lose his violent
energy until he is wearied by slaughter. The messenger describes him
as a lion in the midst of slaughter which has had its fill but continues
killing dente iam lasso piger (736).
Since, therefore, Tantalus, who in the prologue is virtuous and
abominates his progeny'sfuror, denies, or wishes to deny, his physical
appetite utterly; since he is sapped of his vital force and even destructive
of life; since, on the other hand, Atreus' desire for vengeance is de-
scribed as a physical appetite; since, far from being lassus he is possessed
of an impetus which is criminal; since criminality grows with the
reproduction of the family; then it seems appropriate to expand the
equation referred to above (pp. 364 and 366), emotion=appetite.
This play says emotion = appetite = impulse to fulfilment of the natural
physical functions. That is to say, emotion (or perhaps it should be
called passion, for here we are concerned with intemperate and destruc-
tive emotion) is not just equated with, or derived from, an unnatural
appetite for too much; in this play passion specifically is connected
with animal appetite, and is derived from, or is a function of, the
normal vital impulses for the maintenance of life.

The idea that violentfuror is associated with the physical, or animal,

processes of life brings us back to the death-wish which Regenbogen
recognized as an important element of Seneca's thought. Seneca's
great interest in the idea of self-destruction is evidenced most clearly
in this play in Thyestes' frantic prayer, at the play's climax, for a thun-
derbolt to strike him and burn out his defilement, and a cataclysm
to engulf the world (I035-96). One critic has called this final outcry

This content downloaded from

129.194.26.164 on Mon, 05 May 2025 16:16:57 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Vol. IOO] AN ANALYSIS OF SENECA S THYESTES 369

an intense luxuriation in violence," 15 and

A weariness with life-even a fear of life a
death as a refuge-may be accounted for by
death and suffering in the first century and t
aristocracy with these things. But simple f
not adequately explain the ecstatic libido m
scribes in this passage and which he recogn
his era's mentality. The source of this mal
in the figures of both Thyestes and Tantal
the external circumstances of the environm
life as such, and a recognition of the self-
being-as something noxious and unclean. Thus Tantalus' desire
for self-torment, in order to discipline the evil within him (68-73).
As for Thyestes, Seneca takes some care to convey to the audience
an impression of Thyestes' uncleanness, emphasizing the repulsiveness
of his appearance as he eats his meal and afterwards. He is a greasy,
disgusting creature, head glistening with oil and heavy with wine
(780-8I, 948, 90o-ii):

nitet fluenti madidus unguento comam

gravisque vmo.

pingui madidus crinis amomo....

resupinus ipse purpureae atque auro mcubat

vino gravatum fulciens laeva caput.
eructat.

Not only does he belch. Food sticks in his throat, gagging him (78I-
82), and wine mixed with blood dribbles out of his mouth as he tries
to drink (987-88):

admotus ipsis Bacchus a labris fugit

circaque rictus ore decepto fluit. I6

It should be noticed that in these descriptions of revolting gluttony

moisture figures largely-I think with significance. Tantalus, on the
other hand, until he is driven to sin by the Fury, is siccus Tantalus

I5 Pratt (above, note 8) I2.

16 The words madidus (780 and 948, quoted above) and rictus (988) have been used
before in connection with Atreus. In the simile describing him as a lion in the midst
of slaughter, he is cruore rictus madidus (734).

This content downloaded from

129.194.26.164 on Mon, 05 May 2025 16:16:57 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 370 JOE PARK POE [I969

(I37). The account of

of the choral ode wh
II (see above, p. 367) it is made plain that he is destructive of life
because he deprives it of moisture, the stuff of life. It should be
remembered that this dry torment is productive in Tantalus of virtuous
scruples.
In the descriptions of Thyestes above, the oily moistness of Thyestes'
hair is mentioned twice (780, 948), and probably the impression which
this gives of a voluptuary sleekness, or healthy carnality, is important
to Seneca. By contrast, before Thyestes succumbs to temptation and
abandons his ascetic life, his hair has the appearance of a dry, matted,
bristly thatch (505-7):

aspice Ut multo gravis

squalore vultus obruat maestos coma.
quam foeda iaceat barba.

This, then, is the reason for Thyestes' prayer for a thunderbolt

to strike him when he discovers what a horror his appetite has led him,
albeit unknowingly, to commit: it is to cleanse himself by fire (I087-
92). For Thyestes, death is not just an escape from the torments of
the environment into unconsciousness. Like Tantalus, Thyestes calls
down torment upon himself. There is an incontinent relish in his
verbal self-flagellation because it brings some satisfaction of atonement
and purgation.
I believe that the idea that violence, or violent passion, is a "natural "
thing, deriving ultimately from animal energy, further explains
Thyestes' desire for self-torment and death. Certainly it explains the
lust for the infliction of suffering and death which is to be seen in
Atreus and with which Seneca is more than once concerned in his
philosophical writings (see De ira 2.32.I, 2.5.2, 2.5.5, De tranq. 2.IO-
14). Atreus' cruel violence is the fulfilment of a natural impulse, or
inner need. It arises from the need for the impetus within him to
find expression when it becomes too great to be contained. It is,
if you please, natural activity run riot. "Natura enim humanus
animus agilis est et pronus ad motus," says Seneca (De tranq. 2.II).
In this passage from the De tranquillitate (2.IO-I4) Seneca says that
souls which are not kept tightly under control first take a masochistic

This content downloaded from

129.194.26.164 on Mon, 05 May 2025 16:16:57 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Vol. ioo] AN ANALYSIS OF SENECA S THYESTES 37I

pleasure in labor and pain (2.I2) and subse

in bloody violence (2.I4). In other words, the desire to suffer and
to inflict suffering are attributed to the same source. Perhaps, then,
Thyestes' verbal abuse of himself and his desire for his own destruction
-which partly is informed by his self-loathing-also are motivated
by this same natural impulse which drives Atreus. For cannot self-
destruction be viewed as the ultimate act of violence? Man's nature
is sinister, and the human condition contains in it the seeds of its own
destruction. After Atreus has filled Thyestes, communicating to him
hisferus impetus (I36), this impetus within Thyestes becomes so chaot-
ically forceful and tumultuous that it threatens to overwhelm all of
its surroundings, including its source (see below, p. 376). In fact,
Thyestes' nihilistic call for a self-destruction which will involve
the whole world (IO76-96) is only an extension of a willingness ex-
pressed by Atreus to die in the collapse if only he can pull down the
house of Pelops upon the head of his brother (i90o-i):

haec ipsa pollens incliti Pelopis domus

ruat vel in me, dummodo in fratrem ruat.

Atreus'furor is so indiscriminate in its intensity that it is directed even

toward himself. And when Thyestes calls for a thunderbolt to destroy
him (IO89-90):

me pete, trisulco flammeam telo facem

per pectus hoc transmitte,

he is echoing Atreus' earlier calling down upon himself of the Fury's

torch (250-53):

dira Furiarum cohors

discorsque Erinys veniat et geminas faces
Megaera quatiens; non satis magno meum
ardet furore pectus.

A few lines later (255, 258) the sort of emotion Atreus feels is twice
called dolor. Thus thefuror of Thyestes, after he has eaten, is of the
same kind as thefuror of Atreus. For Atreus' destructive force, like
Thyestes', is masochistic as well as sadistic: he not only wishes to hurt
Thyestes, but takes pleasure in his own distress.
After Thyestes has indulged his appetite and has been filled with

This content downloaded from

129.194.26.164 on Mon, 05 May 2025 16:16:57 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 372 JOE PARK POE [I969

his children, he feels

easy to smile at this an
is more significance to
quis hic tumultus vi
quid tremuit intus ?

volvuntur intus visc

sine exitu luctatur e

To a reader with a lit

IOOO, I04I-42) might suggest a teeming womb. However, this is a
comparatively minor matter. What is more important is that the
tumultus which Thyestes feels within him after he has eaten is further
confirmation of the equation I suggested above: emotion = appetite =
instinct for fulfilment of the natural physical functions. For, disgusting
as Thyestes' meal may be, it is eaten without conscious knowledge
of the truth and certainly is motivated by nothing more than normal
animal appetite. As soon as Thyestes has put away his tristis egestas
(924) and nourished himself, he feels a violent turmoil within him
(999-IOOO, see above). Long before he suspects the nature of his meal
or his brother's treachery he feels coming upon him an uncanny
disquiet, a nulla surgens dolor ex causa (944). This quickly grows to
distressed agitation (954-56):
libet infaustos mittere questus,
libet et Tyrio saturas ostro
rumpere vestes, ululare libet.

This terrible foreboding rises within him like a tranquil sea which
swells before the storm (as Atreus' passion swelled within him; see
above, p. 363). He then adds (96I-62):
quos tibi luctus quosve tumultus
fingis, demens.

The strictly physical tumultus within Thyestes, which derives from his
appetite, uncannily produces a corresponding emotional tumult. I
say uncannily, but it seems to me that the reason is clear and, within
the framework of ideas of this play, logical enough: to Seneca animal
vitality is passion and violence. There is no need for any intermediary
conscious mental process.

This content downloaded from

129.194.26.164 on Mon, 05 May 2025 16:16:57 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Vol. IOO] AN ANALYSIS OF SENECA S THYESTES 373

The description of the turbulence welling up inside T

similar that it must be intended to recall the lines descr
violent tumult of passion filling Atreus (253), which sha
he feels swelling within him (267-68) and about to swe
(260-62, quoted above, p. 363). Perhaps it should be pointed out
here that the disturbances both within Thyestes and within Atreus
have a common source-Tantulus. In the prologue Megaera orders
Tantalus (83-86): "ante perturba domum.... concute insano ferum
pectus tumultu." In other words their inner turbulence is hereditary,
and natural to them.
Atreus' storm not only shakes him but buffets his surroundings as
well (262-65):

imo mugit e fundo solum,

tonat dies serenus ac totis domus
ut fracta tectis crepuit et moti lares
vertere vultum.

This is early in the play. Later, when he performs his terrible sacri-
fices, his violent passion is so overwhelming that the grove in which
the sacrifices take place trembles, and an earthquake shakes the whole
palace. The natural order of things is thrown into disorder, as
statues weep and wine turns to blood. The strength of Atreus' evil
shakes even the heavens, terrifying the gods (696-705). Finally it
causes the sun, even, to flee the sky (789-93). The chorus fears that
the whole universe will be shattered and fall into formless chaos (828-
32):

trepidant trepidant pectora magno

percussa metu.
ne fatali cuncta ruina
quassata labent iterumque deos
hominesque premat deforme chaos.

Again, it is easy to smile and to depreciate the importance of passages

like this as nothing more than empty ("poetic") exaggeration. The
difficulty an academician reading in camera may have of maintaining
his willing suspension of disbelief makes it tempting to assume a
superficiality of intent on the part of the poet. Consequently no one
except Regenbogen, to my knowledge, ever has considered whether

This content downloaded from

129.194.26.164 on Mon, 05 May 2025 16:16:57 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
374 JOE PARK POE [I969

this amplification of re
that of arresting the a
out, I think correctly
order of the universe i
is due to the Uv)7Tra6 E
would not have describ
he had not been prepar
action has reverberati
of disbelief would have
modern reader. But t
is why Seneca chooses t
As a Stoic, Seneca may
not have felt compell
it have for the passion
The answer, I believe,
storm of passion withi
indulged knows no limi
with this convulsion of
(given the existence of av
This frenzy grows with
expression-that is, wh
shakes the world. It is
Atreus' storm first is de
or arbitrarily inserted b
ing the fearfulness of
the storm image is use
progeny of Tantalus g
his vitals, and the image
lable and uncontainable
impulsive (one is temp
But to return to Thy
is so similar to that in
is so fierce, bloodthirs
passive, even virtuous,
what happens to Atreu

'7 Regenbogen (above, note 6

This content downloaded from

129.194.26.164 on Mon, 05 May 2025 16:16:57 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Vol. IOO] AN ANALYSIS OF SENECA S 'THYESTES 375

end, for in the closing lines Thyestes' inner turm

ysms offuror more violent than Atreus'. Thyest
at the play's climax is far more than an unhappy
cry for oblivion. It is clear enough that the aut
that Thyestes, if not as consciously evil as Atreus, a
Atreus, who is so energetic, so lustful after v
insatiable, is also in his own way passive. He is n
own soul or his own desires. His decision to seek vengeance is not
a rational one. His personal motives are very lightly touched upon
(only one passage of twenty-four lines is devoted to his motivation),
and clearly the author is unconcerned with them or wishes to depreciate
their importance. Much more space is devoted to Atreus' own highly
rhetorical description of the intensity of his passion: he is swept away
by a storm of emotion rising from within his bosom. Atreus' reasons
for vengeance are not nearly so important as his extreme desire for
it, which is like a physical hunger. Really there is no reason behind
his madness. He is driven by a necessity of his race that he thirst for
blood (I02-3). The rational side of his being is dominated by his
appetitive, irrational side.
This subjection to passion is what Thyestes has in common with
Atreus. He may have the best of intentions, Atreus the worst. Cer-
tainly Thyestes has none of the malice Atreus has in abundance. Yet
at the end Thyestes, too, is overcome by emotion which he cannot
contain and which threatens to be more violent and destructive than
Atreus'. I have tried to show that in this play passion is a coordinate
of vitality. If this is so, it is easy to see what makes Thyestes' emotion
so invidious that his cries of paternal despair have to bc likened to
Atreus' blood-lust. His emotion is more than just natural grief; it
is born before he suspects the death of his sons, and literally grows
out of his indulgence of his appetite. Thyestes' furor is not a moral
affection, to be avoided at will, but an inevitable concomitant of his
existence. He cannot escape his animal impulses, his creature condi-
tion of being alive and desiderative.
In this play, vitality/passion is an expansive, explosive thing, like a
storm. The family grows, criminality grows with it, furor grows
within Atreus, and then out of him. Thyestes fills himself to repletion,
and within him turmoil grows. When Thyestes discovers what he

This content downloaded from

129.194.26.164 on Mon, 05 May 2025 16:16:57 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 376 JOE PARK POE [i969

has done he is stricke

more violent, seeking to burst out (1041-42, quoted above, p. 372).
In self-loathing he turns upon himself. He begs for a sword with
which to cut out the obscenity (1044). When this is denied he begins
to beat himself (I045-46). As he becomes more distressed he calls
for a thunderbolt to strike him and burn out the impurity (i089-92):

me pete, trisulco flammeam telo facem

per pectus hoc transmitte. si natos pater
humare et igni tradere extremo volo,
ego sum cremandus.

However, this is more than a matter just of self-hatred; that is, in

the extremity of his grief Thyestes does not, as would any rational
man, long only to die. Figuratively the tumult within him already
has burst forth. Its violence is not directed just against himself and
his brother, but against all his surroundings. He calls upon the earth
to swallow up all Mycenae (I006-II):

sustines tantum nefas

gestare, Tellus? non ad infemam Styga
tenebrasque mergis rupta et ingenti via
ad chaos inane regna cum rege abripis
non tota ab imo tecta convellens solo
vertis Mycenas?

Finally he prays for a cataclysm (1078-80, Io85-87):

nubibus totum horridis
convolve mundumn, bella ventorum undique
committe et omni parte violentum intona.

ignesque torque. vindica amissum diem,

iaculare flammas, lumen ereptum polo
fulminibus exple.

The swelling storm of Atreus' madness shook the world. Now

Thyestes' passion threatens to engulf the universe.

This content downloaded from

129.194.26.164 on Mon, 05 May 2025 16:16:57 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms