¹ According to some variants of the myth, Teiresias went blind when he saw Athena naked in the bath (cf. e.g. Callim. Hymn 5.70–82). It is worth noting that it is possible to trace a mythological pattern linking blinding as punishment specifically with sexual transgressions (voyeurism, incest, rape, and so on). See e.g. Devereux, G., ‘The self-blinding of Oidipous in Sophokles: Oidipous Tyrannos’, JHS 93 (1973), 36–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

² Cf. G. Mader, ‘nec sepultis mixtus et uiuis tamen | exemptus: rationale and aesthetics of the “fitting punishment” in Seneca's Oedipus’, Hermes 123 (1995), 303–19, at 305–6: ‘In Seneca … the nexus knowledge/ignorance is not a comparable issue [to that of Sophocles’ OT], nor can the self-blinding be explained primarily in these terms … The blinding amounts to an act of self-definition.’ See also Staley, G.A., ‘Making Oedipus Roman’, Pallas 95 (2014), 111–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 113: ‘Seneca does not simply translate Sophocles, he adapts him, he Romanizes him, he writes a tragedy of a different sort: not Oedipus as a hero searching for the truth, but Oedipus as spectator to the revelation of a truth which he already suspects.’

³ Cf. C. Pimentel, ‘Quo uerget furor?’ Aspectos estóicos na ‘Phaedra’ de Séneca (Lisbon, 1993), 28–9: ‘O homem sofre sempre o castigo merecido e inevitável, já que é ele quem, livremente, escolhe a via do uitium. Que não é nunca obra dos deuses, mas sempre dos homens. Tudo se joga no domínio do humano, o crime e o castigo.’

⁴ Several scholars (such as F.-R. Chaumartin, ‘Philosophical tragedy?’, in G. Damschen and A. Heil [edd.], Brill's Companion to Seneca [Leiden and Boston, 2014], 653–72; F. Giancotti, Saggio sulle tragedie di Seneca [Rome, 1953]; M. Nussbaum, ‘Poetry and the passions: two Stoic views’, in J. Brunschwig and M. Nussbaum [edd.], Passions & Perceptions: Studies in Hellenistic Philosophy of Mind. Proceedings of the Fifth Symposium Hellenisticum [Cambridge, 1993], 97–149; N. Pratt, ‘The Stoic base of Senecan drama’, TAPhA 79 [1948], 1–11; N. Pratt, Seneca's Drama [Chapel Hill, 1983], among others) read Seneca's plays as invested with a didactic-pedagogical, moralizing function that distinguishes them from the Attic theatre. This perspective is summarized by Campos, J.A.S., ‘Séneca, Brecht e o teatro épico’, Classica 23 (1999), 9–26Google Scholar, at 11: ‘Anti-aristotélico e anti-horaciano na teoria, o teatro de Séneca visa … objectivos diferentes da tragédia clássica grega, e mesmo da tragédia latina tal como praticada por Énio, Pacúvio ou Ácio. De há muito tem sido apontada como finalidade deste teatro uma intenção de ordem pedagógica … decorrente da própria intencionalidade didáctica através do exemplum praticada pelos pensadores de obediência estóica.’

⁵ Fitch, J.G. and McElduff, S., ‘Construction of the self in Senecan drama’, Mnemosyne 55 (2002), 18–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 21 state that ‘An increasingly intense concern with the self can be observed in the evolution of tragic drama since the fifth century b.c. During this evolution, the focus of tragedy moves away from interaction between the dramatis personae, towards the self in isolation and the psychology of the passions. There is an increasing use of those dramatic techniques which show the personae as thinking aloud, rather than interacting with others’.

⁶ E. Fantham, ‘nihil iam iura naturae ualent: incest and fratricide in Seneca's Phoenissae’, in A.J. Boyle (ed.), Seneca Tragicus: Ramus Essays in Senecan Drama (Victoria, Australia, 1983), 61–76, at 69 notes Seneca's sexual colouring of Jocasta's suicide: ‘Sophocles’ Jocasta had hanged herself … a death not designed to point to specific sexual guilt … Seneca returns more than once to the womb as symbol of a woman's guilt. It is as though the offence of sexuality and motherhood outside the norm, Roman stuprum, were the female counterpart to the male's offence of murder.’

⁷ This is a wish that is also later expressed by the Oedipus of Seneca's Phoenissae, and more than once (224–9 and 231–3): ego ullos aure concipio sonos, | per quos parentis nomen aut nati audiam? | utinam quidem rescindere has quirem uias, | manibusque adactis omne qua uoces meant | aditusque uerbis tramite angusto patet | eruere possem! | … inhaeret ac recrudescit nefas | subinde, et aures ingerunt quicquid mihi | donastis, oculi (‘Do my ears take in any sounds through which I can hear the name of parent or son? If only I could cut off these pathways, drive in my hands and root out every avenue for voices, every narrow passageway open to words! … The evil is embedded in me and breaks open repeatedly, and my ears force on me all that my eyes have spared me’). All translations (with some modifications) are taken from J.G. Fitch, Seneca: Tragedies, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 2002 and 2004).

⁸ Translated by B.A. Storr, Sophocles: Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone (Cambridge, 1961).

⁹ Boyle, A.J., Seneca Oedipus (Oxford, 2011), 325Google Scholar: ‘Like Theseus in Phaedra, an “easy death” (mors facilis, Pha. 1208) is not sufficient. Failure to be satisfied is a constitutive feature of the Senecan tyrannical man, whether seeking vengeance or atonement––and every Senecan tyrant knows that there are greater punishments than death.’ See also Mader (n. 2), 306: ‘When Seneca alters the Sophoclean sequence and places the self-mutilation before Jocasta's suicide, one effect of his modification is to deprive the blinding of its impulsiveness and to transform it into an act which proceeds from a transparent and explicit rationale.’

¹⁰ See also Ov. Pont. 1.2.37–40 uiuimus ut numquam sensu careamus amaro, | et grauior longa fit mea poena mora. | sic inconsumptum Tityi semperque renascens | non perit, ut possit saepe perire, iecur ‘My life is such that I never lose the bitterness of sensation and my punishment becomes worse through its long duration. So Tityus's liver unconsumed and ever growing anew perishes not, in order that it may have the power to be ever perishing’, transl. A.L. Wheeler, Ovid: Tristia, Ex Ponto (Cambridge, Mass., 1953).

¹¹ The term mors longa is taken from Virgil (Aen. 8.488 longa morte) and is also used by Statius in Theb. 1.48 to designate Oedipus’ blindness, and is adapted for funus longum in Teiresias’ description of Oedipus at Theb. 4.614 (cf. 11.696). Blindness is also figured as mors longa at Phoen. 94–5: funus extendis meum | longasque uiui ducis exequias patris ‘You are protracting my funeral, prolonging the exequies for your still-living father’.

¹² On the self-blinding of Oedipus as a replication of Teiresias' extispicium, see Staley (n. 2), 120–2.

¹³ C. Segal, ‘Boundary violation and the landscape of the self in Senecan tragedy’, in id., Interpreting Greek Tragedy: Myth, Poetry, Text (Ithaca and London, 1986), 315–36, at 323 says that the apparition of the vengeful Laius is ‘virtually a foreshadowing of the Freudian superego, a harsh, demanding, guilt-raising father figure, a projection of the son's own conviction of his inherently evil nature’.

¹⁴ Boyle (n. 9), 264.

¹⁵ Mader (n. 2), 310 considers that ‘pollution and purification are axial motifs in Seneca's Oedipus’.

¹⁶ Cf. Boyle (n. 9), lxvi: ‘The Sophoclean Oedipus’ instant reaction is transformed into Senecan fusion of furor, ira and ratio, violent passion and precise calculation, a highly deliberated act of self-punishment, in which the poena itself, figured as both exile and castration, responds directly to the crimes of parricide and incest.’

¹⁷ Cf. Boyle (n. 9), cviii: ‘Worth mentioning, too, is Freud's interpretation of Oedipus’ self-blinding as a substitution for castration, which gains extra purchase in Greek and Roman texts because of the ancient association of the phallus and the eye.’ This correlation of eye and phallus has also been noted by W. Deonna, Le Symbolisme de l’œil (Paris, 1965), 68–70. However, Boyle does not seem very committed to Freud's idea, perhaps because of what Mader (n. 2), 304 n. 4 describes as ‘the tendency of psycho-analytical criticism to isolate (and so overemphasize) the nexus incest/self-blinding, and to regard the latter as a symbolical act of self-castration’. Regarding this theme, see also Buxton, R.G.A., ‘Blindness and limits: Sophokles and the logic of myth’, JHS 100 (1980), 22–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁸ See Claassen, J.M., ‘Exile, death and immortality: voices from the grave’, Latomus 55 (1996), 571–90Google Scholar, at 571: ‘Exile and death were closely related. Because exile frequently served as pre-emption of or substitute for the death penalty, it was often portrayed in literature as the virtual equivalent of death.’

¹⁹ The Senecan method runs contrary to that of Sophocles’ Oedipus, who uses the fibulae of Jocasta's dress to blind himself (cf. OT 1268–9).

²⁰ In Sophocles (OT 1263–4), as in Homer (Od. 11.278–9), Jocasta hangs herself. Because her suicide is a spontaneous act and carried out under the dominion of the kind of passions that Stoicism disapproved of (Oed. 1004–8), Seneca's Jocasta does not consider that she could still be useful to her children, one of the conditions which, according to Stoicism, should stop one from pursuing the idea of suicide. It is, however, worth noting the objection that the still-living Jocasta in the Phoenissae is not particularly useful, inasmuch as she cannot make her sons Eteocles and Polynices renounce their fratricidal struggle. But the truth is that she does try to, which, in part, confirms what I have just said. In fact, in the Phoenissae, much less useful to their children is Oedipus who, as we shall see, completely rejects the idea of intervening to try to heal the rift between his sons, as he actually believes Eteocles and Polynices to be worthy of their father.

²¹ On Oedipus abandoning Thebes as a scapegoat whose departure removes all pollution from the city, see e.g. Mader (n. 2), 310–19.

²² Boyle (n. 9), lxvii.

²³ Boyle (n. 9), 361. Henry, D. and Walker, B., ‘The Oedipus of Seneca: an Imperial tragedy’, Ramus 12 (1983), 128–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 136.

²⁴ Boyle (n. 9), 361. Cf. Boyle (n. 9), lxvii.

²⁵ M. Frank, Seneca's Phoenissae: Introduction & Commentary (Leiden, 1994), 81 stresses that ‘Seneca may be adopting the notion, common in Greek thought, that the polluted are unfit to look on the sun, the source of purity … Alternatively, this may be a more general reminder of Oedipus’ sightlessness and pollution, diem being a contrast to the noctem of his blindness and of his moral uncleanness.’

²⁶ See Frank (n. 25), 86–7: ‘The substance of Oedipus’ supplication … is an inversion of the usual kind of prayer, in which a deity is asked either to grant something positive or to avert an evil … Seneca here manipulates a traditional form in order to impress powerfully upon his audience the bizarre paradox of Oedipus’ situation.’

²⁷ Frank (n. 25), 123–4 notes Oedipus’ ‘macabre generosity, allowing his hand to deliver its death-dealing blow in whatever part of his body it wishes, since his whole being has been polluted by his parricide and incest’.

²⁸ Cf. e.g. Seneca's Troades, where the death of Astyanax is given a similarly bloody description. The young son of Hector and Andromache is led by Ulysses to the top of a tower on the crumbling walls of Troy. Faced with imminent death, for his executioner will push him from the top of the tower, Astyanax takes the initiative to jump. His bones are shattered and crushed by the violence of the fall. The features of his body and face, which used to recall his father, become unrecognizable. His neck breaks with the impact on the rock (soluta ceruix silicis impulsu, Tro. 1115). His head opens, casting out his brains (caput | ruptum cerebro penitus expresso, Tro. 1115–16). On Seneca's apparent obsession with human mutilation and dismemberment, see e.g. G.W. Most, ‘disiecti membra poetae: the rhetoric of dismemberment in Neronian poetry’, in R. Hexter and D. Selden (edd.), Innovations of Antiquity (New York and London, 1992), 391–419.

²⁹ On Seneca's treatment of the Theban legend, see e.g. Frank (n. 25), 16–29.

³⁰ Cf. G.W.M. Harrison, ‘Themes’, in G. Damschen and A. Heil (edd.), Brill's Companion to Seneca (Leiden and Boston, 2014), 615–38, at 622: ‘In Fantham's reading of the play, as it survives (1983: 61–76), Oedipus blinded himself to expiate the curse on his family. The enmity between his two sons makes him realize that his self-mutilation was for nothing. In anger he curses his sons to commit even greater outrages than he did, greater than his because his acts were [committed] unknowingly trying to avoid pollution, while they will deliberately kill each other, thereby ending the curse by ending the lineage.’ See also Fantham (n. 6), 63: ‘[Antigone's] pleas to choose life and reject death are the moral principles familiar from Seneca's prose works, inappropriate to the extent that they presuppose a morally normal addressee.’

³¹ Various forms of death are considered throughout the play and, at times, even listed by Oedipus or Antigone (cf. e.g. Phoen. 67–73, or 110–21), which illustrates Seneca's claim in Ep. 70.24 that nihil obstat erumpere et exire cupienti. in aperto nos natura custodit … non deerit ad mortem ingenium, cui non defuerit animus ‘When a man desires to burst forth and take his departure, nothing stands in his way. It is an open space in which Nature guards us … If you do not lack the courage, you will not lack the cleverness, to die’, transl. R.M. Gummere, Seneca: Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales (Cambridge, Mass., 1970).

³² Frank (n. 25), 75.

³³ See Fantham (n. 6), 62: ‘Seneca has explored independently in the Oedipus scenes [of the Phoenissae] the experience of nefas (call it sin, or guilt or crime) and the different explanations that can be offered for its transmission to the brothers.’

³⁴ Frank (n. 25), 75 stresses that ‘from the passive surrender to his fate’ (expressed in Phoen. 11 ‘let my blind feet travel where they will’, patere caecum qua uolet ferri pedem) Oedipus suddenly changes, in line 12, to a delirious desire to actively seek death; that the abrupt change in state of mind and tone, ‘characteristic of the declamatory style’, is supported by ibo, ibo; and that Oedipus’ earnest desire to seek death is expressed by the use of words that denote speed and action: celer (Phoen. 13), egit (Phoen. 17), cucurrit (Phoen. 19), fugas (Phoen. 21), fugiens (Phoen. 23), insiluit (Phoen. 24).

³⁵ Fantham (n. 6), 65 notes that lines 355–8 (frater in fratrem ruat. | nec hoc sat est: quod debet, ut fiat nefas | de more nostro, quod meos deceat toros, | date arma matri!) suggest the horror of the possibility of another rape in the Phoenissae, the rape of Jocasta by her own sons: ‘The phrase [ut fiat nefas de more nostro] should provide a climax of awfulness beyond the other wicked deeds which [Oedipus] demands from his sons. And it should involve a nefas committed against their mother, parallel to his own actions. Oedipus’ sin against his mother was incest; the enormity would be outdone if his incestuous sons were to emulate him and do sexual violence to their mother/grandmother.’

³⁶ Frank, M., ‘The rhetorical use of family terms in Seneca's Oedipus and Phoenissae’, Phoenix 49 (1995), 121–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 126 emphasizes the rhetorical use of family terms in Seneca's Phoenissae: ‘Characters constantly both address and refer to one another in terms which indicate their consanguinity, and words indicating family relationships occur more frequently in Phoenissae than in other Senecan tragedy … Particularly in the first half of the play (1–362), words denoting kinship are used as a rhetorical device to stress the genetic chaos which reigns in the Theban royal house.’

³⁷ Cf. Ker, J., The Deaths of Seneca (Oxford, 2009), 135CrossRefGoogle Scholar: ‘Yet the mors longa that would separate him from his father in the underworld (949–51) also requires him to be vigilant against future encounters with Jocasta (1014–18). The wandering Oedipus of Phoenissae in fact enjoys separation from Jocasta (who in this play lives on, but never appears with Oedipus), and he now strives after death.’

³⁸ Ker (n. 37), 135.