OUP (2017) h/b 561pp £112.80 (ISBN 9780198744726)
The myth of Thyestes is a disgusting saga of adultery, cruelty, incest and cannibalism. Thyestes sleeps with the wife of his brother Atreus and gets the golden lamb which entitles him to rule instead of Atreus. Atreus kills Thyestes’ children and serves them up to their father in a meal, after which the sky turns black. Atreus admits his crime and the polluted Thyestes is forced into exile, cursing his brother as he goes. The Delphic oracle warns Thyestes that he can only get final revenge on Atreus by impregnating his own daughter Pelopia: he does this by raping her, producing Aegisthus who goes on to kill Agamemnon, thus avenging his father by the murder of Atreus’ son. Seneca starts his version of the horrific tale with the ghost of Thyestes’ grandfather (and inveterate god-goader) Tantalus being told by a Fury to inflict catastrophe on the house of his descendants; Thyestes returns from exile in rags and is given a fake welcome by his brother who proceeds to give him the welcome-home banquet from Hell.
This is the fourth (so far) in a sequence of large-scale editions of Senecan plays by B. and is another superb achievement. The book, at over 700 pages with introductory material, is lavish in scale: every word of Latin (and other languages) in the Introduction and Commentary is translated into English, making this a volume which could be used with profit by the Latinless student of drama.
It starts with a lengthy introduction exploring the life and times of Seneca, his philosophy (and in particular his theories about anger and kingship), the history of Roman theatre, the myth, the play, reception, metre. Pages xl – xlii give us a judicious discussion of the old debate about whether these plays were written for the stage at all or were composed for recitation only. B. is firmly of the view that these plays were staged. Section VII of the Introduction (‘The Play’, pp. lxxix – cxiii) is hugely insightful and inspiring in its elucidation of the themes at work here, and the section on reception (cxiv – cxxxviii) shows detailed knowledge of much of the canon of western drama. Fraternal rivalry has a long and nasty history in the ancient world, and B. well brings out the political and historical resonance of the tale in the homo homini lupus world of Nero’s court. Cannibalism also has a long history in ancient literature—from Homer’s Polyphemus right up to the final pages of Petronius (with its own history of the practice as well as a gross example of it enacted there and then), and it might have been good to see this anthropological theme given more sustained prominence in the Introduction—especially as it so wonderfully graces the front cover.
B. sees the tragedy as one of ‘moral blackness’ (p. xcviii) where ‘scelus is unpunished; the gods dictate nothing; no prayers are fulfilled.’ The soi-disant god Atreus (885-889) gets away with his crime just as securely as any god does and cosmic order crumbles in a Götterdämmerung which is appalling. As with so many bleak texts, the beauty and power of the Latin is one redeeeming agent in ‘Seneca’s theatre of violence’ (pp. l-liv) and the reader is not surprised that Senecan drama was so influential in Shakespearean and Jacobean hands.
The text printed is new, diverging in 33 places from Zwierlein’s 1986 OCT. The apparatus criticus is relegated to ten pages following the text, which is thus printed unencumbered by footnotes. There is a facing English translation, which claims to be ‘performable’ but whose use of archaic and stilted English (especially in the lyric sections) would make it less powerful to a modern audience. B.’s use of ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ does not have the effect of rendering the language solemn (as one assumes was his intention) and lines such as these (from the ‘Star Ode’) sound almost like parody or pastiche:
Where dost thou turn and destroy the day
In mid-Olympus? Why, Phoebus, wrench
Thy face from view? (791-793)
The translation sticks close to the text and certainly helps the student to decipher the Latin. It often also helps the commentary to bring out linguistic elements in the text—but (again) the effects do not always come off. So for instance line 779 artusque mandit ore funesto suos is rendered ‘and champs his own flesh with the gravest mouth’ which succeeds in delivering the strong verb mandit with the expressive ‘champs’, but the translation ‘gravest’ (while putting the funus in funesto) is to my ear infelicitous and jarring. The following phrase however is wonderfully done: nitet fluente madidus unguento comam/ grauisque uino becomes: ‘He glistens, his hair drips with scented oils;/ He’s weighted with wine.’
The commentary is full and generous, covering every aspect of the text and its performance. The care taken with detail is immense. The lemmata quote the relevant Latin text and its translation, and all supporting textual matter is simultaneously translated and cited. B. answers our every question, supplying us with the necessary background information on such matters as Stoic philosophy (e.g. on 283 and 1006-7), the historical and legal background (see e.g. the note on stuprum at 46-8n.), the geography (e.g. the river Tagus (350-7n.)) and mythology (e.g. Gigantomachy [801-812n.]). Literary effects being used and sought and the intertextual links to the other nine plays in the Senecan corpus are well explored and explained, as is the reception of this play in subsequent ages. B. goes out of his way in both the translation and also in the commentary to bring out how the text might have been staged, unpacking what is implicit in the text into explicit stage-directions as at 517, 901. This is especially effective in places such as 907-8—where the italicised stage-directions outline in dramaturgical terms what the following lines will enunciate. Explanations of the Latin are also accurate and helpful: B. often provides a literal translation and grammatical exegesis in the commentary (e.g. 330-3 eatur, 218 eant) and all this makes this volume an abundantly helpful guide to this rich and fascinating play.
The book is well edited and proof-read; it has a select bibliography covering work right up to 2017, a general index, an index of Latin words and an index of passages from other plays in the Senecan corpus, but no index locorum. This is an expensive book and may well be currently out of the reach of some libraries and individuals: I hope that a paperback edition will bring the price down and give this excellent book the wide readership it deserves.
John Godwin