1. I accept the identification of Lucina with Juno, an identification common in Latin literature, the phrase Juno Lucina occurring at Plautus, Aul. 692; Terence, And. 473, Adel. 487; Cicero, De Nat Deor. 2. 68. For a discussion of this identification see Krill (1972/73), 202.

2. A reading of this prologue indicates the inadequacy of an interpretation of this play as a battle between passion and reason. See for example Herington (1966), 449ff. Such an interpretation ignores the whole subject matter of Medea’s prologue, especially the question of justice, which is also a major concern of her dialogues with Creon and Jason. Herington confines his analysis of the plays to the dialogues between the main character and the Nurse or Attendant, ignoring the remainder of the plays’ contents.

3. Henry and Walker (1967), 174, see the epithalamium, through its refined images and emphasis on constant light, as exposing ‘the incoherence of Medea’s desires and extinguishing her fury’. Rather the reverse seems to be true. Because of her isolation on the stage during her prologue Medea has tremendous dramatic force. She is the audience’s first encounter in the drama, and, however horrific a figure she may be, we must at this time — inevitably — be in sympathy with her plight and view the action accordingly. Braden (1970), 33, more correctly interprets the epithalamium as a ‘cultural analogue to Medea’s private incantations’.

4. The threefold allusion to the goddess who restrains Mars, gives treaties to war-mongering peoples, and who holds the cornucopia (62–66), points to her identification as Pax, while the relationship with Mars points to her identification as Venus (Homer Od. 8.266f.; Lucretius, DRN. 1.31–37; Ovid, Met. 4.169–89; Seneca, Phd. 124–27). The double identification seems to be deliberate on Seneca’s part, especially considering that the inclusion in the epithalamium of a goddess with the characteristics of Pax is unusual. For a discussion of the identification see Krill (1972/73), 202f.

5. Mars’ amour with Venus was discovered by Phoebus, who with the aid of Vulcan caught them in a net. For this reason Venus hates the race of Phoebus; cf. Phd. 124–27. For the identification of Pax with Venus see n. 4 above.

6. Costa (1973), ad he. There is no similar list of sacrifices in the epithalamia of Catullus 61 and 62.

7. So Horace uses the phrase in the ‘Cleopatra Ode’ (C. 1.37.1–4) as an exhortation to the celebration of a victory which, as the poem progresses, proves hollow.

8. Costa (1973), ad loc, views Medea’s line (139f.) —

melius, a melius dolor

furiose, loquere.

Speak better, ah better,

Mad grief!

— as simply a resurgence of her love for Jason, rather than recognizing it as an attempt on Medea’s part to retain her all-important link with Jason. Many critics — see, for example, Costa (1973), 61; Henry and Walker (1967), 176; Herington (1966) 449; Evans (1950), 175f.; Motto (1973), 84; Marti (1945), 230 — who view Medea as a one dimensional character, or as a personification of a particular passion, fail to appreciate the psychological implications of significant verbal echoes in Medea’s speeches. For example the use of vivat (‘may he live’, 141) recalls its original use in the prologue (20ff.), where Medea sought vengeance against Jason. The change of mood in its use (140–42) indicates Medea’s developing awareness of her need for Jason alive in order to validate her past crimes on his behalf and her continued existence.

9. Herington (1966), 453ff., sees this dialogue as an argument of the ratio of the Nurse against the passion of Medea. Rather the Nurse, as Braden (1970), 20, sees it, evinces a ‘cringing respect for the external world’. At any rate the dialogue is one indication that Seneca in his plays is doing something other than presenting his moral philosophy in dramatic form. In the dialogue it is, ironically, Medea, not the Nurse, who assumes the attitude of the Stoic sapiens (163, 176; cf. Ep. 5.7; De Vita Beata 26 4; De Ben. 4.10; Ep. 36.6).

10. This evident fear of Medea negates the claim of Henry and Walker (1967), 175, that ‘Medea’s preoccupations … rarely seem likely to proceed into action at all’. As the play progresses, Medea’s power over the universe (166f.) is apparent in the fact that her revenge takes the form of a reversal of natural order — the fire that is fed by water.

11. Cf. Lawall (1979), 420ff., who views Creon sympathetically as a humane, responsible and statesmanlike king who evinces both a noble concern for the political security of his kingdom and a ‘tragic insensitivity or crudeness in his handling of Medea’.

12. Lawall (1979), 423f., wrongly views Jason’s dilemma sympathetically, comparing it with Aeneas’ abandonment of Dido for the good of Rome. Jason in this play is hardly so sensitive a character. He displays no love or pity for Medea as Aeneas does for Dido. Rather, he exhibits only a cringing fear of Medea (43If., 444–46), and uses this opportunity to be rid of her.

13. Costa (1974), 101, believes these descriptions (380–96, 670–739) of one character by another point to a recitation of the tragedies. However, even if Medea is on stage throughout the Nurse’s description, it does not lessen its function. The Nurse’s description (380–96) focuses on aspects of Medea’s passion which could not be acted or illustrated as well in a monologue by Medea. If in fact, as seems almost certain, masks were used in the performance of Roman tragedy, the necessity of such a description would be obvious.

14. Most critics wrongly see Medea’s magical incantation as the unfortunate consequence of Seneca’s rhetorical style and the Roman taste for the gruesome and the horrible: Eliot (1951), 71; Mendell (1941), 146; Blitzen (1976), 86. Tobin (1971), 20, sees the incantation scene as a means of creating dramatic suspense and intensifying the emotion of horror. Rambaux (1972), 1028, rightly states that, rather than merely satisfying the Roman taste for sensationalism, the magical incantation speech is evidence of Medea’s power. However he also sees (p. 101 1f.) the speech as an obstacle to the development of Medea as a humane and sympathetic character: ‘Si l’on oublie un instant la violence typiquement annėenne et les incantations magiques, 1’hėroine emerge comme une figure humaine, noble et par moments digne de pitié, independante et, comme telle, en opposition avec Jason lie a la terre.’

15. Braden (1970), 28, takes this line as evidence of the power of the Senecan character’s hypnotic rhetoric to change or control his world: ‘When the Chorus remarks of Medea’s appearance, “Who would think she was an exile?” (857), they are testifying to the ability of a suitably self-determined psychology to alter its situation by sheer presence; and that is perhaps the main thing going on in the Senecan play — intimidation.’ If not the main thing, it is certainly one thing.

16. The subtle development in this speech of Medea’s decision to kill her children is missed by many critics, who view Medea as a one dimensional character or simply as the embodiment of uncontrolled passion. Regenbogen (1961), for example, views Medea in this last monologue as a fresco painting of varied emotions from which all motives for action are missing. For a similar view of the lack of psychological development in the character of Medea see Blitzen (1976), 86; Coffey (1960), 16f.; Motto (1973), 84; McDonald (1966), 60. Rambaux (1972) makes some pertinent observations on the play and takes perhaps the most sympathetic view of Seneca’s dramatic technique and his characterization of Medea which I have encountered. He correctly notes (1017ff.) the importance of the past in Seneca’s tragedy, but seems to overemphasize the extent to which Medea’s slaughter of the children is to be seen as self-punishment for the murder of Absyrtus. One of the most important aspects of the killing of the children is that Medea frees herself from all human relationships and their attendant dolor. For a discussion of the thematic significance of Medea’s murder of the first child see Lawall (1979), 425, who relates it to the punishments suffered by the Argonauts and Medea’s role as ‘an agent of Neptune’.

17. There is a strong contrast here with the ending of Euripides’ Medea, in which Medea leaves Corinth for Athens with hopes of repentance and atonement for crime.

18. ‘Functions’ is important. The following analysis of the Argonautic odes is intended among other things to undermine the commonly held view that ‘the odes in the Senecan plays have not a natural and necessary function but are used almost exclusively to mark divisions between acts’ (Mendell [1941], 138). For a similar view see Canter, (1970), 31f.; Flickinger (1926), 93; Cunliffe (1965), 34; Watling (1966), 24f.; Pratt (1948), 6; Calder (1976/77), 6; Grimal (1964), 2ff.. Costa (1974), 106f., sees the themes on which Senecan Choruses moralize as being drawn from the action of the play, but he still relegates the dramatic function of the Chorus to that of ‘the “ideal” listener and commentator familiar to us from Euripides’. He cites the epithalamium of the Medea as being the only instance of a Senecan Chorus which has an organic role in the play.

19. Cf. Lawall (1979), 419f., who emphasizes the ‘happy optimism’ of this ode concerning man’s political and technological control of the world — an optimism which is undercut by the gloom of the second Argonautic ode and ‘shattered by Medea’s triumph and Jason’s anger and despair at the end of the play’. Whereas Lawall views the optimism of this ode as genuine, it would seem to me that the Chorus’ belief in civilization’s control is fragile and tenuous.

20. The absence of law (sine lege) was a characteristic of the Golden Age at Ovid, Met. 1.89ff. Lucretius drew a distinction, analogous perhaps to the one made by Seneca here, between the mutual alliances, foedera, of primitive man (DRN. 5.11 10ff.) and the laws, leges, which had to be instituted to control man’s growing greed and ambition (DRN. 5.1136–60). However, it is important to note that Seneca draws a distinction between leges and foedera for the purposes of this play. Elsewhere the words seem interchangeable; e.g. Phd. 176, 540, 910, 914.

21. For this reading of Virgil’s first eclogue, see Boyle (1975), 105–07, and Putnam (1970), 51ff.

22. For a further discussion of the links between the punishments incurred by the Argonautic voyage and Medea’s slaughter of her children see Lawall (1979), 425, who notes that the stories of Hercules, Meleager and Hylas prefigure Medea’s murder of her sons.

23. Dingel (1974), 108f., says that Jason’s final words are right in that, because the gods in the play support and vindicate Medea, they are not real gods. This view recognizes neither the natural order in the world, represented by the gods, which is seen to operate in the play, nor Medea’s role as nature’s instrument of punishment for civilization’s breach of the foedera mundi in the Argonautic voyage. For a similar view of the injustice of the Senecan gods see Hunter (1974).

24. I take this opportunity to thank the editor of this volume for his extensive criticisms of an earlier version of this essay.