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Senecan Soleo: Hercules Oetaeus 1767

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

David Armstrong
David Armstrong
Affiliation:
The University of Texas, Austin
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Extract

Michael Winterbottom (CR n.s. 26 (1976), 39) criticizes Costa's edition of Seneca's Medea for failing to annotate sic fugere soleo (1022). ‘Did Medea’, he asks, ‘habitually escape by chariot - or is this a coy allusion to Seneca's predecessors?’ Of course it is neither; sic fugere soleo means Medea was accustomed to flee by leaving dead bodies behind to encumber her enemies (her children's in this instance, Absyrtus' and Pelias' on previous ones). According to. Seneca's usage, and that of Silver Latin rhetoric in general, once would be enough to establish such a ‘habit’, for in that fairy-world wonders and horrors become, as Atreus (Thyestes 273 f.) says petulantly, immane…sed occupatum on repetition. At Troades 249 and 360 soleo is used of the virgin-sacrificing ‘habit’ of the Achaeans, i.e. the sacrifice of Iphigeneia, which makes the sacrifice of Polyxena seem a good idea.

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , May 1982 , pp. 239 - 240
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1982

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References

1 Actually it appears from Costa's note on 1022 (Seneca: Medea (Oxford, 1973), 159) that he understood soleo to refer to the second of these alternatives (‘M.'s serpent-chariot was familiar to many writers’, etc.). But. especially given the immediately preceding words in 1021 (coniugem agnoscis tuam?). Herrmann's annotation must be correct: elle a tué Absyrte en quittant la Colchide el Pélias en quittant la Thessalie.