Leigh, 'Seneca Troades', Bryn Mawr Classical Review 9508
URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/bmcr/bmcr-9508-leigh-seneca
@@@@95.9.4, Boyle, ed., Seneca: Troades
A.J. Boyle (ed.), Seneca Troades. Leeds: Francis Cairns,
1994. Pp. 250. ISBN 090520588X (pb).
Reviewed by Matthew Leigh -- University of Exeter
Seven years on from his 1987 ARCA commentary on the
Phaedra, A.J. Boyle (henceforth B.) has returned to
Senecan tragedy and produced a text, translation and commentary
of the Troades. B.'s preface rightly acknowledges the
"distinguished edition" of the Troades of Elaine Fantham.
While B. does not seek to rival Fantham in depth of scholarship,
he emphasises the greater accessibility of his own work: a verse
translation that can serve for students of classics in
translation, a considerably lower price. For Latinists,
meanwhile, B. includes a selective critical apparatus (pp. 124-8)
and appendices on metre and on variants from the Oxford text of
Zwierlein (pp. 235-9). The work also differs from Fantham in one
critical respect: B's emphasis on the performability of Senecan
drama.
The first thing to say is that B. and his editors have
indubitably identified a hole in the market. There exist a number
of editions of Senecan dramas aimed at undergraduate Latinists,
but too many are marred by a limited intellectual approach or an
ill-disguised distaste for the author. Even as exemplary a study
as Tarrant's Thyestes is rendered inaccessible to a large
part of B.'s target audience by its want of a translation.
Whether B.'s work is truly suitable for all or even part of that
audience is another matter--certain sections of this work are of
considerably greater value than the rest.
The 101 pages of commentary on the text (pp. 133-234) are by
far the most successful part of this work. B.'s English is
relatively sober, his notes consistently aimed at answering the
questions students raise. This is as true of his elucidation of
points of grammar as it is of his explanation of geographical
references and proper names. B. also identifies and discusses
important themes and ideas: the problem of the two Senecas, the
metatheatrical emphasis on viewing and spectacle, the symbolism
of the tragic wedding (though a reference to Seaford, JHS
1987 would help). A number of notes are particularly helpful and
go beyond what is found in Fantham: 298f. on human sacrifice at
Rome; 329 on the tyrant's refusal to kill an opponent; 613f. on
Ulysses as a comic slave; 892f. on the function of plague in
Roman political rhetoric. The following observations might be
added:
n. 46, how does Boyle know that "the archetype of both E and A
(which has seva) clearly read scaeva"?; n. 49f.,
for Luc. BC 128f. read 2.128f.; n. 96-7: Iterum luctus
redeant veteres. / Solitum flendi vincite morem. B. notes the
allusion to previous theatrical treatments in Hecuba's
instruction that the old laments should return but has nothing on
the language of literary competition in "vincite" (cf. Hor.
Ep. 1.4.3, Sen. Ep. 79.7) or in "solitum" (cf. Sen.
Thy. 267-86 with Tarrant at 272-7, Stat. Theb.
10.829); n. 126, the vague reference to "a similar phrase ... in
earlier Roman tragedy" should be more specific, i.e. Ribbeck
TRF ex incertis incertorum fabulis 69; n. 134 B.'s failure
to parallel bis capte senex with Verg. Aen. 9.599
and 635 bis capti Phryges is particularly striking in the
light of his general concern for the repetition of trauma; n. 148
has nothing on "non videre" as a topos of consolation, for which
see F. ad loc. and cf. Cic. Phil. 2.12 and 12.19f.; n.
293f.--why no reference to the fame of Achilles and Plut.
Alex. 15?; n. 357f., cuius ingenti mihi / mercede
constant ora, and n. 360f., dant fata Danais quo solent
pretio viam: / mactanda virgo est, are a brutal response to,
for instance, Verg. Aen. 10.49 and 113, and compare
interestingly to the mercantile metaphors and attitude to fate at
Luc. BC 1.33-8; n. 373, F. ad loc. "Seneca has singled out
the first and last moments in this sequence from death to
cremation" cf. B. ad loc. "A vignette of the first and last
stages of cremation and burial"; n. 407, for quaeris quo
iaceas post obitum loco? cf. Luc. BC 4.393f., Felix
qui potuit mundi nutante ruina / quo iaceat iam scire loco;
n. 427 ought to note the paradoxial language of standing and
falling in nondum ruentis Ilii fatum stetit; while n. 461,
certa progenies, observes that this distinguishes the
legitimate Astyanax from the bastard Pyrrhus, n. 464,
nimiumque patri similis, might make more of the reversal
of Cat. 61.214 sit suo similis patri, or of the echo of
Procne's greeting of her sacrificial victim Itys at Ov.
Met. 6.621f., a! quam / es similis patri; n. 613f.
likening Ulysses to a comic slave should cite Plaut.
Bacch. 925ff., Pseud. 1063f., 1243f. for comic
slaves likened to Ulysses; n. 1157ff. the death-leap of Polyxena
is rather reminiscent of Evadne at Eur. Suppl. 1014ff.,
while the internal audience recorded by the messenger at 1123ff.
is paralleled at Eur. Suppl. 1074f. in the representation
of Iphis as having seen the foul deed.
It is a matter of some regret that B.'s scholarly standards
are not carried over from the commentary to his introduction.
What with the wholesale reproduction of the sections on Life and
Works and Literary Background from B.'s Phaedra and the
absurd prose and empty posturing of the closing discussion of the
Troades itself, it is tempting to apply to this
contribution the terms which B. himself uses in order to describe
the late Julio-Claudian world: "spectacular, histrionic and
self-consuming".
B.'s introduction will be the principal deterrent to any
university teacher contemplating use of this edition. It is
simply as badly written a piece of prose as any this reviewer has
encountered. Take for example this only slightly compressed
version of p. 28:
Seneca's Troades is not merely palimpsestic; it images
a palimpsestic world ... The palimpsestic world imaged is the
world of the play. But it is not only the world of the play.
Late Julio-Claudian Rome, especially--but not only--the Rome
of the last Julio-Claudian emperor, Nero, was itself a
palimpsestic world. ... It was a palimpsestic world on the
verge of dissolution, and portrayed as such by the great
writers of the period, Lucan, Petronius, Seneca, all of whom
dissolved themselves through suicide before Nero's reign
ended. It was a palimpsestic world on the verge of
dissolution, in which the modalities of life had become
perversely and irredeemably confused.
B. writes in his own idiolect. Those familiar with his previous
work will not be surprised to encounter the mannered repetition
of certain terms which appear to be his own patent--"index" is
used either as noun or verb on nine separate occasions, "efform"
thrice.[[1]] Yet the problem is not just one of taste: not even
the constant, hypnotic chanting of the passage cited can lull the
suspicion that this is intellectually rather insubstantial
material. On a basic level, it is open to question whether B.
really knows what a palimpsest is. More seriously, the author's
obsession with the confusion of the "modalities of life" leads to
some serious incoherence in his own thought. The same page of the
Introduction can illustrate this:
According to the Roman historian Suetonius (Nero 10.1), Nero at
the start of his reign proclaimed his intention to rule ex
Augusti praescripto--that is, in accordance with the
prescription of the founder of the dynasty, the first emperor,
Augustus; his professed aim was to realise Augustus'
pre-text. Ironically he fulfilled this aim in ways he
never comprehended. For what Nero succeeded in doing was to
recycle the tyranny of his predecessors (including that of
Augustus) together with the political, social, religious and
legal forms of the Roman world emptied of their substance.
B.'s pre-text says it all. It is only by this feeble
mistranslation that he can so torture the text of Suetonius that
it conforms to the confusion of literature and life which he
asserts.[[2]] At the same time, B. recklessly throws in another
confusion. It is an important phenomenon of imperial history that
the reign of Augustus provided a normative model for later rulers
to follow and to which they could represent themselves as
returning in reaction to the lamentable deeds of their
predecessors. For B. the 'historian' then to underline the irony
of Nero's final repetition of sins attributed not just to the
successors but also to Augustus himself is for him utterly to
contradict the sense immanent in the passage of Suetonius which
he uses as his prop. Moreover, the only reason to introduce this
contradiction is in order to permit B. to place his own
construction on Nero's reign, one which, of course, he has
crudely borrowed from the repertoire of the tragic historians. On
two levels, therefore, with his pre-text and his tragic
reversal, it is B. who is confusing modalities and doing so in a
very ugly way.
One could go on. It is quite clear from B.'s commentary that
he is capable of writing the sort of clear and intelligent prose
which permits the artistic and ideological complexities of the
play to emerge. The show oratory of the introduction has the
opposite effect.
NOTES
[[1]] Where does he get this stuff from? Looking up "efform" in
the OED, I discovered that the term, however obscure, did exist.
It is used, for instance, in Beresford's 1805 Song of Sun 31,
'Stains on themselves they bring, tho' first efform'd of purest
mold, by God.' 'Nuf said, I suppose.
[[2]] Cf. p. 31, "Inverting inherited types (especially
Euripidean types) he presents a series of tired, self-critical
warriors, endeavouring to break free of their pre-scripted