Maxima Virtus in Seneca's Hercules Furens

Abstract

The Hercules plays (the Hercules Furens and doubtful Hercules Oetaeus) differ signally from Seneca's other dramas and certainly deserve attention by themselves in a special place.' For one thing, Hercules is an honorable hero, one enshrined in Stoic pantheon; he is a demigod who literally experiences apotheosis. Thus, Senecan plays concerned with him do not merely conclude in a blaze of horror and with a spurt of climactic passion. In a special sense that is never for a moment true of Agamemnon or Medea or Phaedra or Oedipus or Atreus, Hercules endures. Indeed, he does more: Hercules transcends and superscribes his action and prevails. And, particularly in Hercules Furens, Herculean triumph is accomplished in human terms; his achievement is realized, not as a god, but as a man. Yet, when we turn to reception and reputation of Hercules Furens, we encounter difficulties among critics in comprehending Seneca's plays because of a chronic tendency to look for analogies and similarities to classic Greek theater and for adherence to doctrines laid down in terms of Aristotelian poetics. Simply put, Hercules' madness appears to a great number of interpreters as being caused by his hamartia or tragic flaw. Thus, R. W. Tobin asserts that the hero's folly is presented as an extension of his ambition and pride, his drive to carve a place for himself among gods.2 We ought, of course, to take exception to Tobin's employment of word folly, for surely Hercules' ravening, rampaging madness constitutes behavior that drastically exceeds foolishness or mere uncomprehending, clownish, idiot imbecility. Nevertheless, Tobin's central thesis is clear: Hercules' aspirations to godhood, to scale skies, constitute an out-and-out case of hubris that gods justifiably punish; from such a perspective, his madness is a piece of appropriate poetic justice.