Seneca and the Idea of Tragedy

200 Pages·2009·1.16 MB·English

by  Gregory A. Staley

SENECA AND THE IDEA
OF TRAGEDY
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SENECA AND THE IDEA
OF TRAGEDY
Gregory A. Staley

2010
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Staley, Gregory Allan.
Seneca and the idea of tragedy / Gregory A. Staley.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-19-538743-8
1. Seneca, Lucius Annaeus, ca. 4 b.c.–65 a.d.—Tragedies.
2. Mythology, Classical, in literature. 3. Tragedy. I. Title.
PA6685.S73 2009
872 ′ .01—dc22 2009010340
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
To my wife, Mary Ann
quid enim iucundius quam uxori tam carum esse ,
ut propter hoc tibi carior fi as?
Seneca, Epistle 104.5
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Preface
I have been thinking about Seneca’s idea of tragedy ever since I was an
undergraduate at Dickinson College, where Robert Sider guided me in writing
my honor’s thesis on the topic. I turned to Seneca to help me construct a
rationale for my own interest, which was then just emerging, in a life dedicated
to ideas and literature, and I assumed that, as philosopher and poet both, Seneca
would provide answers to my questions about the value of the humanities. As
it turns out, Seneca did not make the task easy, which is partly why it has taken
me so long to write this book. At Princeton University I made Seneca the topic
of my dissertation, under the direction of Bernard Fenik and D. J. Furley, who
shaped in ways that are still visible in this book my approaches to literature and
philosophy. As a fellow at the American Academy in Rome in 1983–1984 I drafted
most of what is now chapter 2 of this book. I am grateful to the academy, to its
library, and to its staff for creating a marvelous setting for the life of the mind
and to the National Endowment for the Humanities for funding my year of
research in Rome.
My sense that Seneca wrote tragedy as a Stoic, however, became less secure
as I read the work of R. J. Tarrant, Elaine Fantham, A. J. Boyle, and Gordon
Braden, among others. After setting Seneca aside for many years, I returned to
him afresh in 2000–2002, when I enjoyed an extended period of leave, funded
by the University of Maryland and by the Helen Clay Frick Foundation. The
chair of my department at that time, Judith Hallett, was instrumental in making
this all possible. I conducted most of the research for this book in the Milton S.
Eisenhower Library of Johns Hopkins University, where the staff has always
viii preface
made me feel at home. Alan Shapiro and Matthew Roller of the Hopkins Classics
Department helped me to secure research space in the library during my leave,
and I thank them for that crucial support. I was able to make the fi nal revisions
to my manuscript during a semester of sabbatical leave funded by the University
of Maryland and its Department of Classics; I am grateful to the chair, Hugh
Lee, and to my colleagues in the department for their support of my research.
I had long suspected that Seneca approached tragedy with Aristotle’s
analysis of the genre in mind, but I was unable to advance that argument since
I could not establish a chain of evidence that would lead from Aristotle to
Seneca. Kathy Eden’s book Poetic and Legal Fiction in the Aristotelian Tradition
(Princeton University Press, 1986), which demonstrates that Aristotle’s ideas
about images and their role in persuasion had a later infl uence even when his
Poetics was not available, opened the way for me to make my case. Although I
consistently argue against the reading that Alessandro Schiesaro offers of
Senecan tragedy in his book The Passions in Play: Thyestes and the Dynamics of
Senecan Drama (Cambridge University Press, 2003), I admire his book greatly,
learned much from it, and was spurred to refi ne my own interpretation through
the strength and clarity of his arguments. I have met neither of these scholars,
but this book would not have been possible without them.
I have discussed various parts of my argument over the years with Margaret
Reesor, Philip Lockhart, Gary Meltzer, Kathy Geffcken, James Lesher, Jørgen
Meyer, and Eva Stehle and am grateful for the guidance and insights they have
offered me. Stefan Vranka, my editor at Oxford University Press, saw the
potential of this project and patiently worked with me to develop it. I thank
him and the two anonymous readers he called on to read the manuscript. The
careful reports these readers prepared have improved this book immensely; I
appreciate the time and effort they devoted to helping me make my case.
T he dedication acknowledges the crucial role that my wife, Mary Ann, has
played in bringing this book to print. We met many years ago as summer
students at the American Academy in Rome and have shared our love for Latin
and for each other ever since. Mary Ann has endured late dinners, lost weekends,
authorial moodiness, and self-centeredness with grace and constant faith in the
worth of my work.
Ellicott City, Maryland
February 12, 2009
Acknowledgments
T he image of comic and tragic theater masks on the cover, taken from a Roman
mosaic in the Musei Capitolini, Rome, has been reproduced with the permission
of Scala/Art Resource, New York.
E xcerpted translations from the Loeb Classical Library, from the volumes
listed below, have been reprinted by permission of the publishers and the Trustees
of the Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, by
the President and Fellows of Harvard College. The Loeb Classical Library® is a
registered trademark of the President and Fellows of Harvard College:
Plato, Plato Volume I, Loeb Classical Library, Vol. 36, trans. H. N. Fowler,
1914.
Strabo, Geography I , Loeb Classical Library, Vol. 49, trans. Horace Jones, 1917.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Loeb Classical Library, Vol. 73, trans. H.
Rackham, 1926.
Seneca, Epistles 1–65, Loeb Classical Library, Vol. 75, trans. Richard M.
Gummere, 1917.
Seneca, Tragedies II , Loeb Classical Library, Vol. 78N, trans. John G. Fitch,
2004.
Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria II, Loeb Classical Library, Vol. 125, trans. H. E.
Butler, 1920–1922.
Epictetus, Discourses Volume I , Loeb Classical Library, Vol. 131, trans. W. A.
Oldfather, 1925.