HERCULES OETAEUS

C.A.J. Littlewood

Dating

Hercules Oetaeus is of uncertain authorship. If truly Seneca’s its many reminiscences of other plays in the corpus suggest a very late date. The death and trans guration of Hercules have seemed to some a subject very attractive to a philosopher who would make a Stoic end to his own life in ad65 (Rozelaar 1985: 1391–401). Fitch’s scheme of relative dating, generally accepted for the tragedies of undisputed authorship, would place Herc. O. earlier however, certainly before Thyestes and Phoenissae (Fitch 1981: 303 n. 21). And it is harder then to explain anomalous features of Herc. O. as the signs of a play hastily written and lacking revision. Echoes of Silius Italicus and Statius suggest a later date around the beginning of the second century ad (Zwierlein 1986b: 313–343). But it is not easy to determine which is the source and which the echo: literary parallels on their own are not a secure basis for dating (Nisbet 1995: 210). Herc. O. has certain stylistic features that distinguish it from the securely Senecan plays in the corpus. Both Herc. O. and Octavia end with a brief lyric summation after the manner of Euripides not of Seneca. Other distinctive features are more tendentious. Too often arguments for and against Senecan authorship become a debate over the quality of the poetry (Rozelaar 1985: 1353–1363 on Friedrich 1954).

Content

The content of the drama is briey as follows. Eurytus, king of Oechalia, had refused Hercules his daughter Iole. Hercules sacked the city, killed Eurytus and sent Iole back to Trachis as a captive. The  rst act of the drama shows Hercules celebrating his victory over the entire world and Iole’s melancholy journey into exile and slavery. Discovering Hercules’s latest conquest, his wife Deianira resolves to win back his afections and sends him a robe smeared with the blood of the centaur Nessus. Nessus had once tried to abduct Deianira, was shot by one of Hercules’s poisoned arrows, and, dying, 516 c.a.j. littlewood gave her some of his blood to use as an aphrodisiac. But the centaur’s blood turns out to be poison not a love-charm, and Hercules is brought home in mortal agony. Deianira commits suicide. Hercules learns that a dead man has destroyed him, as was once prophesied, and gives orders for a pyre to be constructed on Mount Oeta. In the  nal act of the play Philoctetes reports that Hercules had mastered his agony amid the ames and counselled the onlookers, notably Alcmene, to show similar fortitude. Alcmene grieves her dead son, but Hercules, now a divine spirit, appears and comforts her with the news of his apotheosis.

Topics

Herc. O. is an extraordinary play. Over 650 lines longer than its closest rival in the Senecan corpus, Herc. O. exceeds also the limits of Sophocles’s Trachiniae. Sophocles ended his tragedy with Hercules being carried ofstage to his pyre. The author of Herc. O. adds a coda, the  fth act, in which Hercules burns away his mortal part and becomes a god. Here uniquely is the Stoic hero many had expected to  nd in a philosopher’s tragedies. Scholars such as Marti found here at last a drama to resolve the questions raised by its tragic predecessors, primarily Seneca’s own, but also those of the Greek tradition.1 No Senecan play ends so positively, but the inspiration for the ending is ultimately Ovidian (met. 9.101–172, discussed below). Although the efect is unusual, the method of composition (Greek tragedy reworked through Ovid and/or Virgil) is typically Senecan. By enduring the ames of the funeral pyre Hercules wins a more secure and lasting victory than that aforded him by his triumphs over monsters and tyrants. His victory over the ames completes his life (1614–1616). Hercules’s claim to Jupiter at the beginning of the play, that all the world had been subdued (1–103), is only now ful lled: en domita omnia (“see, everything has been mastered!”: 1612). Hercules’s death teaches a lesson: Esse iam lammas nihil / ostendit ille (“He showed that even ames are nothing”: 1610f.). Hercules tells Alcmene to control her grief and appears tranquil himself (1673–1685). The audience learns the lesson and Alcmene, dry eyed, comes to resemble her son (1686–1690). Even half-burned, Hercules stands upright as an example to those watching; he continues to speak to them and give them courage (1736– 1744). The scene bears comparison with the  fth act of Troades in which

1 Marti 1945: 241f. See also Marucci 1997: 109 on Herc. O. as going beyond and completing the Senecan corpus.