1. ‘In a breathtaking Prestissimo’: Schetter (1972a), 448.

2. Anliker (1960), 29–34, in his penetrating study of the Oedipus compares the scene of Oedipus’ isolation among the dying with Livy xxii.6 and 49, quoting especially 49.xi, me in hac strage meorum militum patere exspirare, ne … reus iterum … sim (‘let me perish in this massacre of my troops, so that I may not once more face a charge …’). Oedipus longs for death as L. Aemilius did, to avoid facing cross-examination (Oed. 71–4, and 34, Phoebi reus, ‘charged before Apollo’) when he is the last survivor. Both speeches have indeed a self-appraising Roman ring. Anliker does not comment on the differences between Seneca’s king and Livy’s defeated consul; significantly, there is nothing in Oedipus’ words to match the generosity of spirit shown by L. Aemilius. Those who die around him are undifferentiated omnes, not milites mei; he is given no friends to name, and does not speak of his family. There is of course no hint of real communication in the dialogue with Jocasta (81–109).

3. Laius’ ghost says that the parricide must be deprived of air as well as banished from his country; auferam caelum pater (‘I, his father, will take away the sky [from him]’, 658). This recalls the Roman punishment for parricide: to be tied in a sack and thrown into the sea: ut omni elementorum usu vivus carere incipiat et ei caelum superstiti, terra mortuo auferatur (‘so that while still alive he may begin to lose all use of the elements, and that while he survives the sky may be taken from him, when dead even the earth’, Just. Inst. iv. 18.vi; cf, Cic. pro Rosc.Am. xxvi. 71, and de Inv. ii. 50.cil). Suetonius (Aug. 33) implies that this punishment was carried out only in the case of parricides who confessed their guilt.

4. There is a strange ambiguity in the peacefulness of this passage and a strange absence of horror in the picture of Hades, suggesting perhaps that all positive suffering and terror is now found in Thebes; cf. the impulse of Tantalus’ ghost to return to the greater security of Hades (Thy. 68–83).

5. The importance of the air-imagery is strangely overlooked in the long article (for some of the plays, meticulous) on figurative language by Pratt (1963). In addition to the passages mentioned in our article, there is the striking reference to the spirits who rise from Hades in hope of air (598f.): ilico ut nebulae leves volitant et auras libero caelo trahunt all at once, like light clouds, they flit about and draw breath in the open sky. The Icarus-chorus also has more relevance to the main theme than is often thought; the folly and audacity of attempted flight consist in the strange presumption of the idea of conquering the element of air (892–910). T. S. Eliot in Murder in the Cathedral made a comparable use of air as the medium for ‘the deathbringers’, scents and forms which trouble the Chorus of the women of Canterbury, so that finally they cry ‘Clear the air! Clean the sky! Wash the wind!’ at the moment of Becket’s murder.

6. These scenes appear to be original additions by Seneca to the Oedipus legend (although as Müller [1972], 377, pointed out, we do not know whether any scenes of sacrifice or apparitions were included in the lost Hellenistic tragedies on the subject of Oedipus).

7. Paratore (1956). This article is remarkable for its analysis of what is significant in Seneca’s divergences from Sophocles, as well as for its searching comments on poetic detail in the play.

8. Cf. Henry and Walker (1963a), 109: ‘the Seneca of the tragedies is, so to say, disloyal to Stoicism.’

9. The ‘battle against fate’ was an important issue for Stoics of Seneca’s generation, but the theme goes back to Republican days, as Busch (Maurach 1975) has shown.

10. There is of course no question of libet being ironic. The whole tone of Oedipus’ last speech seems clearly to become more and more positive, as Oedipus accepts the scapegoat-role laid on him by the gods. Cf. iuvant tenebrae (‘darkness pleases’, 999) and frui tenebris (‘enjoy the darkness’, 1012), where similarly irony is out of the question.

11. As Schetter (1972a), 427ff., points out, citing Seneca’s praise of Mucius Scaevola: vides hominem … poenas a se inriti conatus exigentem? (‘Do you see this man inflicting punishment on himself for an attempt that failed?’ Ep. 24. v; cf. Oed. 926, quid poenas moror? ‘Why do I delay my punishment?’) and also the sententia of Ep. 65. xxii, contemptus corporis sui certa libertas est (‘Scorn for one’s body is an assured form of freedom’).

12. The resemblance between Jocasta’s death and that of Nero’s mother (Tac. Ann. xiv.8) is hard to accept as mere coincidence, especially when joined to the widespread rumour of incest between Nero and Agrippina. It is generally assumed that Seneca wrote his tragedies at an earlier date than Agrippina’s death in A.D. 59, but there is no certainty about this. Although Paratore (following Leo) speaks of Oedipus as an early work, the order of the plays’ composition is an open question. If Seneca’s Jocasta does not copy Agrippina, did Tacitus draw on some account of Agrippina’s death which had used reminiscences of the Oedipus? Jocasta in the Phoenissae uses the same terms, when inviting her sons to kill her, if they will not give up their civil strife: hunc petite ventrem, qui dedit fratres viro (‘aim at this womb, which brought forth brothers for my husband’, 447).