Thyestes embodies a tragic conflict, and an even more tragic contradiction, between a desire to speak and the need to remain silent. Or, for us, between the desire to watch and the repulsiveness of what is on display. The sheer dramatic force of this tragedy – Seneca's best – springs from casting Atreus' horrific violence as the creative drive behind poetic fiction. Thyestes stands out among the other plays by Seneca precisely because it mobilizes in novel, engaging fashion the archetypical connection between tragedy and violence, power, sacrifice. In this play we witness in its most engaging form a sustained reflection on the power and limits of poetry, a reflection which on the one hand appears to sum up almost a century of Latin literature and on the other codifies ‘Silver’ poetics at its expressive (and, in a way, theoretical) peak.

Thyestes foregrounds the complexities inherent in creating poetry as well as in reading or watching it. Atreus dominates the stage as a gifted poet, mired in the tension between order and chaos, passion and reason, enthousiasmos and craft. Inspiration, role-playing, deception and recognition are not only staged, but metadramatically analysed and questioned, and force the audience to reflect on whether enjoyment of this type of poetry is not also a form of collusion with it.