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Poetic Technique and Rhetorical Amplification: Seneca Medea 579-669

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2014

John Henderson
John Henderson*
Affiliation:
King's College, Cambridge
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Extract

Medea has dwarfed her ‘human fly’ of a husband. She plans poisoned gifts of Colchian gold for Jason's bride, inaugurates murderous rites (568-78). Despair and alarm for Jason's safety stir in the men of Corinth at the spectre: ‘Ode 3 is at the bridge between Medea the wife of Jason, Medea the human being, and Medea the manifestation of Hecate’, Bishop observes. The moment at the close of Medea's exchange with Jason is clearly critical, as she sees in a flash of certainty her route to revenge: sic natos amat? / bene est, tenetur, uulneri patuit locus (‘Does he love his sons so? / Splendid, he's mine, his weak spot exposed for my strike!’, 549f.). And we are caught still in the dramatic suspense demonstrated by Pratt which keeps spoken certainty of revenge specifically through infanticide back within the text until 924f., liberi quondam mei, / uos pro paternis sceleribus poenas date (“Children, once my children, / you pay the price of your father's wickednesses!). But already we must hesitate: did Seneca's Medea really start out in the play as a ‘human being’? Herington's phrase ‘Cloud of Evil’ is surely nearer the mark: ‘the raging sorceress Medea will shake the light from heaven as easily as she will shake the marriage torches from the hands of her enemies’ — and this is to translate lines 27f. from the play's prologue, manibus excutiam faces / caeloque lucem …

Type
Research Article
Information
Ramus , Volume 12 , Issue 1-2 , 1983 , pp. 94 - 113
Copyright
Copyright © Aureal Publications 1983

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References

Several friends and colleagues gave me valuable advice on this essay, Mr. Robert Coleman, Prof. E. J. Kenney, Dr. Ruth Padel and above all Prof. Niall Rudd amongst them. I have proceeded anyway.

1. Henry and Walker (1967), 170.

2. Seidensticker (1969), 129 n. 157; Liebermann (1974), 200.

3. Bishop (1965), 314b.

4. Pratt (1939); Liebermann (1974), 158 and n. 10; Fitch (1974), 128f.

5. Herington (1966), 449. Cf. Anliker (1960), 35f. Fitch (1974), 116f., 133f. separately studies the ‘human’ and ‘inhuman’ Medeas.

6. Costa (1973), 9.

7. Liebermann (1974), 162.

8. Costa (1973), 9.

9. Ibid.

10. See Bloom (1973).

11. Brooks (1976) and Airman (1979) are two studies I would recommend, with their extensive bibliographies. On the Medea choruses, Liebermann (1974), 198–202 n. 173, gives a large bibliography.

12. The notions of crisis and threat to difference here relate to Girard’s theory of culture.

13. ‘Metrically interesting’ appears to be Costa’s only value-judgment (1973), ad 579–669.

14. Heath (1978/79), 73.

15. Braden (1970), 35f.

16. Giancotti (1953), 162.

17. For tumidiue uenti and seastorm cf. Pratt (1963), 200 n. 4, 202 n. 12, 207 n. 18, 219 n.41, 226 n. 65, and in Medea, esp. 304, 316f., 320, 322, 326, 765f., 940f.

18. Liebermann (1974), 198f.

19. Cf. e.g. Hor. C.1.16.9f.; Ov.,,Ars 2.378ff.: ardet … in ferrum flammasque ruit … coniugis admissum uiolataque iura marita est / barbara per natos Phasias ulta suos …; Ov., Her. 12.155, 181f.

20. Herington (1966), 433.

21. Ardet et odit is quoted by Juvenal, 9.96; cf. Cat., 51.4, spectat et audit. The adonius as a verse-clausula relates to the hexametric cadences of e.g. Lucr., 3.1069, haeret et odit; Hor, Epp. 1.7.20, spernit et odit; Ov., Met. 3.426, accendit et ardet; Juv., 15.71, ridet et odit.

22. See West’s brilliant essay (1973).

23. Herington (1966), 436.

24. Bishop (1965), 314b.

25. For Danubius and the clouds cf. Keller (1891), 8; Haemus and blood seems to me to be a common word-play, as with Haemon and Haemonia; Auster and Hister need faith.

26. So Costa (1973), ad 590, though he then spoils the surrealism with a reductive gloss.

27. Braden (1970), 27; Liebermann (1974), 178; Fitch (1974), 144.

28. Pratt (1963), 214f.

29. See Costa (1973), ad 426–8.

30. Pratt (1963), 215.

31. Herington (1966), 447. Cf. Lapidge (1980), esp. 836 n. 57.

32. Pratt (1963), 214ff.

33. Rambaux (1978), 1017.

34. Ibid.

35. Met.8.470f.; cf. Cleasby (1907), 61. For Medea as icon see Evans (1950); Herington (1966), 454f.

36. Cf. Hurst (1971), 305.

37. Stamm (1975), esp. 18.

38. So Costa (1973), ad 617ff., with a perhaps. Cf. Med.2–3 :: 4.

39. Ibid., ad 646ff.

40. ‘The Chorus shows that the wrath of Neptune lay behind the disasters to the Argonauts described in 607ff., even where nothing in the traditional stories suggests this … Aulis, at which the assembled Greek fleet was delayed before setting out for Troy, is said to have caused this delay in revenge for the loss of Tiphys. This connection between the two expeditions (and making Tiphys King of Aulis) seems to be Seneca’s invention … Seneca may be confusing [Periclymenus] with another P. … or he may be misled by the legend that Neptune gave the Argonaut P. the power to change his shape at will … A confusion … It was Mopsus who was killed by a snake in Libya … Here as elsewhere Seneca is careless about mythological details. Likewise the Argonaut Mopsus … seems to be confused with the Theban Mopsus … but it is not clear that the two were distinct …’: Costa (1973), ad 597–8, 622, 635, 652ff.

41. Herington (1966), 438.

42. Cf. Costa (1973), ad 379. But Herington (1966), 465 n. 39, has reservations.

43. Braden (1970), 34.

44. On uenia in 595 see Liebermann (1974), 201.

45. Vergil’s Palinurus is the obvious matrix for the helmsman-scapegoat.

46. So Henry and Walker (1967), 175; Lawall (1979), 425.

47. Gronov’s emendation fonte timendo here is, I think, just barely Latin — and so quite likely in a Senecan flourish.

48. Hollis (1970), ad Met. 8.298–328. With strauit Ancaeum uiolentus ictu / saetiger, Med. 643f., cf. Ovid, Met. 8.338–76: 338, the boar medios uiolentus in hostes fertur; 334, ictu/: 361, prosternit; 376, emend Hollis’ note on saetiger, ‘In the only other place where saetiger is found as a substantive (Martial 13.93.1) the reference is again to the Calydonian Boar.’ In Med. 644–46 Ovid’s virtuoso performance of Althaea’s dousing of Meleager is quarried — as it is again in 779f., directly after the ingredient of Oetaean ashes and before the Ovidian simile at 939ff.: Ovid pushes the counters round and round between Met. 8.463 and 51 1f. The goring of Ancaeus is told by Ovid at 391ff.; dying Meleager at 519, Ancaei felicia uulnera dicit.

49. Hollis (1970), ad 391–402.

50. So Lawall (1979), 425.

51. On the claims of kin :: marriage see e.g. Hollis (1970), ad 478–511; Braden (1970), 18.

52. Cf. Ars 2.110, Naiadumque tener crimine raptus Hylas. Seneca’s Alcestis at 662f. is from Ars 3.19f., fata Pheretiadae coniunx Pagasaea redemit / proque uiro est uxor funere lata uiri.

53. So Lawall (1979), 425.

54. Costa (1973), ad 579–669.

55. I accept Housman’s re-writing of the text: for a useful summary of the problems see Costa (1973), ad 656–63. 656, a re-working of Ov., Met. 12. 455f., nec tu credideris tantum cecinisse futura / Ampyciden Mopsum, is indispensable; 657, on the other hand, is ‘point-’less: intrusive, isolated, to be ejected (cf. falsus, 654 :: fallaci, 658). A solution along Housman’s lines does seem unavoidable.

56. Ap.Rhod. 4.1502f. A good old custom would have us remark: ‘Lost with Ovid’s Medea’ at this point.

57. RE 16.243.

58. Costa (1973), ad 652ff.

59. When the song concludes with iam satis, diui, mare uindicastis: / partite iusso, 668f., and sends us back to the first prayer in the middle of the first sequence of Sapphic stanzas, parcite, o diui, ueniam precamur, 595, it is typical of Seneca that we should inevitably recall the first Sapphic ode in Horace’s Carmina, to find that Seneca has made its opening iam satis his conclusion and its mid-way prayer, tandem uenias precamur, his earlier passage (C. 1.2.1,30).

60. Cf. Lawall (1979), 425.

61. Braden (1970), 27–29; compare Eliot’s ‘self-dramatisation’, Pratt (1948), 10.

62. Cf. Herington (1966), 444f.; Stamm (1975), 12f., 14, 18, 26f., 29f.

63. Braden (1970), 19.

64. Ibid., 38f.

65. Bishop (1965), 315a.

66. Costa (1973), ad 660–1.

67. Cf. n. 35. There is certainly nothing to be said for Bishop’s analysis (1968), 204, of 660 as ‘a pentapody of ithyphallic plus adonius … There is so far no explanation for this substitution’. There is no question of possible support from the irregularity of the dodecasyllable sumere innumeras solitum figuras, 636, a clear case of sense enhanced by rhythm, in reminder again of Ovid, Met. 12.556ff., cui posse figuras / sumere quas uellet, rursusque reponere sumptas / Neptunus dederat.

68. Hardie (1913/14), 99.

69. Try not to compare Hor., Serm. 2.4.76f., immane est uitium dare milia tema macello / angustoque uagos piscis urgere catino!

70. Pratt (1963), 216, finds Seneca heading towards ‘intellectual difficulty’ in that, if Medea’s revenge symbolizes the vengeance of the sea, this aligns her with ‘natural order and stability as well as against them through her destructive passion’. Liebermann (1974), 200f. and nn. 166–69, documents the instinct to impose schematic moral ideology on this chorus; cf. also Rambaux (1978), 1029; Costa (1974), 106; Fitch (1974), 144 n. 28. Such complaints will not readily be quelled, so long as tragedy is read for comfort — at least the comfort of ‘comprehension’. Senecan melodrama offers maximal resistance to any such reading strategy: Medea’s last line defines the text as played out, played out beyond morality, testare nullos esse, qua ueheris, deos (1027: not that a Jason can read his own meaning aright!).