Seneca's Medea and De ira: justice and revenge

Rodrigo Sebastián Braicovich

doi:10.11606/issn.1981-9471.v11i2p106-119

Abstract

I try to show Seneca’s Medea provides us with two elements -which, as far as I am aware, have not received proper attention- that complement his approach to the phenomenon of anger and can improve our understanding of the Stoic psychology of action defended in De ira. The first element is linked to the question of whether the angry person is responsive to reasons or not; the second one concerns the question of indifference, tolerance and forgiveness, and addresses the issue of Medea's inability to conceive of a more appropriate or desirable irtreaction to Jason’s offense than anger.

Highlights

Among other things, Medea can certainly be seen as the fulfillment of a promise made by De ira: Necessarium est itaque foeditatem eius ac feritatem coarguere et ante oculis ponere quantum monstri sit homo in hominem furens quantoque impetu ruat non sine pernicie sua perniciosus et ea deprimens quae mergi nisi cum mergente non possunt
As a sort of paroxistic complement to the repertoire of monstrous characters that De ira displays in its attempt to “lay out before us all of anger’s vices”, the main goal of Medea becomes the vivid and tragic incarnation of the theoretical description of anger laid out throughout the first two books of De ira; it becomes, to borrow from Chaumartin, “a didactic account of a thesis”3, the main aim of which is to put across certain specific doctrines that a merely theoretical approach cannot accomplish
The pedagogic function of Medea (along with the rest of the exempla qua vites (De ira 3.22.1) that are represented by most of the main characters of Seneca’s tragedies) has been heatedly discussed throughout the last six decades, and a strictly programmatic interpretation of Seneca’s tragedies like the one proposed by Berthe Marti long ago4 is currently out of favor among interpreters, the elements we find in Medea that clearly derive from De ira are too numerous and too central to be ignored

Summary

Introduction

Medea can certainly be seen as the fulfillment of a promise made (and only partially fulfilled) by De ira: Necessarium est itaque foeditatem eius ac feritatem coarguere et ante oculis ponere quantum monstri sit homo in hominem furens quantoque impetu ruat non sine pernicie sua perniciosus et ea deprimens quae mergi nisi cum mergente non possunt. A basic list of those elements could be summed up in the following ideas concerning the nature and features of anger: i) that, unlike other passions, anger expresses itself in a multiplicity of externally perceptible manifestations; ii) that anger seeks any object to attack when it has become deprived of its original target; iii) that, in a stark contrast to the Stoic sage, the actions and thoughts of a person who is possessed by anger are marked by fluctuations and inconstantia; iv) that the angry person may even be willing to sacrifice his own life or well-being if that is what it takes for the injustice to be avenged; v) that the angry person's criterion of what constitutes a fair reparation of the original injustice that triggered his anger tends to be completely irrational and disproportionate; vi) that the passion of anger, once it has been unleashed, cannot be restrained or brought under control (i.e., that the angry person is not responsive to reasons9), and vii) that it can only be controlled or checked by another sound estimation of it It must be arraigned before us and condemned; its evils must be searched out and made plain; it must be set side by side with the worst vices, so the sort of thing it is becomes clear” (Tr. Kaster).

Revenge and justice

Medea and De ira