NON QUIS, SED UTER

Despite its title, Thyestes is of course a play about Atreus, whose fundamental role in articulating the plot is matched by his consistently overpowering presence on stage. The designation of Atreus' counsellor as satelles is metaphorically most fitting: other characters revolve around the larger-than-life royal protagonist with the limited, virtually non-existent autonomy of satellites locked in a gravitational field that they cannot control. The counsellor voices his feeble resistance as Atreus' plot is already marching along briskly; the chorus is feeble and unable to affect, at times even to understand, the irresistible progress of the revenge. And Thyestes, too, for all his aspirations, most often appears to be the necessary but hardly self-determined complement to his brother. After all, he is lured into a carefully organized trap, and his every reaction, practical as well as psychological, has been successfully gauged and pre-analysed by Atreus.

The unquenchable enmity between the two brothers only casts their blood-bond into sharper relief. Indeed, Atreus conjures up an image of his brother that virtually mirrors himself – an image that the chorus finds plausible. This elusive yet powerful bond adds significantly to the disturbing appeal of the play: because they know each other so deeply, and because we can only glimpse the nature and depth of their relationship, both Atreus and Thyestes are never polar opposites, representing two well-defined sides of an ethical debate.