Anna Lydia Motto and John R. Clark in their recent article on Seneca's Hercules Furens sought to refute what was becoming the orthodox approach to the play — an approach based on Aristotelian poetics and the view that Hercules' madness is a natural phenomenon arising from a tragic flaw, usually identified as pride and ambition. A long list of scholars have contributed to this orthodox approach, which was most fully articulated by Jo-Ann Shelton, who saw Hercules' madness as ‘an internal, psychological development.’ In Shelton's very negative view of Hercules, ‘pride and ambition motivate [his] actions. And madness is an extension of his boastfulness.’ According to Shelton, ‘through [Juno's] words, we learn of, even as they are occurring, the progressive stages in the development of Hercules' pride, ambition and madness.’ This ‘naturalistic’ interpretation of Hercules' madness may appeal to twentieth century psychological critics, but it fails to account for the literary tradition behind the figure of Juno in Seneca's play, and in failing to do so it accepts at face value her allegations that Hercules is an ambitious, overreaching adventurer intent on storming the heavens. Motto and Clark rightly perceive that Hercules is ‘persecuted’ by Juno and persecuted ‘not for what he does,’ but ‘for what he is’ (that is, the bastard offspring of her husband's latest amour with a mortal woman) and that the play is not a story of ‘the abuse of strength and the growth of destructive pride,’ but ‘the story of deliberately oppressed and maligned greatness.’