15/3/07 - Classical Literature - Seneca: Thyestes (2)

Thyestes represents the true king. He wants to be known to himself but not to others. He wishes for obscurity. He does not fear death. See Seneca, De Beneficiis, 7.2.5-3.3 and Moral Epistles 108.

See Marvell poem, a representation of the third act of Thyestes. Thyestes speaks about true happiness.

In Act 4 is the description of a crime that is worse than anything imaginable. The act itself is about something great, beyond the bounds of nature, worse than evil. Seneca's teaching was not to persuade but to astonish and to do something unique that no one else had done before. The crime is suitably over-the-top as could be expected from a rhetorician.

The landscape in the play reacts to and feels evil and reflects it in its behaviour. In Stoic philosophy, nature is treated like an animal. The whole universe is a rational being governed by Zeus. Pneuma - breath or air - is within everything, e.g. stone, trees, animals, humans. It represents rationality and the soul. Everything feels because it has pneuma.

To what extent does the palace reflect the evil and false kingdom of Atreus/Nero?

The fourth ode is the reaction of the chorus to nature's reaction. They believe the world is ending. The destruction of the universe is described. It is a long and important ode. A good example of eschatology - a vision of the end of the world.