Hercules is a tragedy of great theatrical, poetic, and cultural value. Written probably at the intersection of the principates of Claudius and Nero, it addresses central issues of early imperial Rome, even as it speaks profoundly to our times. Among its concerns are violence and madness; imperatives of family and self; Rome, identity and place; the nature of virtue; the longing for immortality; the theatre of rage; and the empire of death. The play is dramatically innovative, spectacular, and arresting: from its fiery, monumental god-prologue (the only one in Senecan tragedy), through meditative soliloquies, impassioned speeches, trenchant dialogue, a failed wooing scene with an impressive after-life in Tudor drama, a stunning entrance for Hercules and his captured hellhound, Theseus' ecphrastic narrative of the hero's infernal 'labour', to a familicidal madness scene and an emotionally turbulent, non-violent finale, in which the instinct for self-punitive suicide is thwarted by the claims of kinship and the acceptance of intolerable suffering. The whole is bound together by some of Seneca's most affective choral lyrics, as intellectually engaging as they are emotionally potent. Hercules is A. J. Boyle's sixth, full-scale edition for OUP of a play by or attributed to Seneca. It offers a comprehensive introduction, newly edited Latin text, English verse translation designed for both performance and academic study, and a detailed exegetic, analytic, and interpretative commentary. The aim has been to elucidate the text dramatically as well as philologically, and to locate the play firmly in its contemporary historical and theatrical context and the ensuing literary and dramatic tradition. As such, its substantial influence on European drama from the sixteenth to the twenty-first centuries is given emphasis throughout; this and the accessibility of the commentary to Latinless readers make the edition particularly useful to scholars and students not only of classics, but also of comparative literature and drama, and to anyone interested in the cultural dynamics of literary reception and the interplay between theatre and history. Cover 1 Hercules 4 Copyright 5 Dedication 6 Epigraph 8 Preface 10 Contents 16 INTRODUCTION 18 I. Seneca and Rome 20 Life and Works 20 Julio-ClaudianRome 24 II. Roman Theatre 31 Republican Theatre 31 Imperial Theatre 38 The Performance Debate 45 III. The Declamatory Style 48 IV. Seneca’s Theatre of Violence 56 V. Seneca and Suicide 62 VI. The Myth before Seneca 74 VII. The Play 85 Act I: Juno, Furor, and Place 86 Ode I and Act II: Dawn to Imminent Execution 90 Ode II and Act III: Hercules and Hell 97 Ode III and Act IV: Death, Triumph, and Madness 103 Ode IV and Act V: Hercules, Furor, and Place 110 Performing Virtue 119 The Heroic Self 124 Rome, Death, and the End of Place 133 Theatre of Rage 141 VIII. Reception of Seneca’s Hercules 144 Antiquity 144 Renaissance to 1800 147 After 1800 155 IX. Metre 164 Dialogue 164 Iambic Trimeters 164 Choral Odes 165 Anapaests 165 Asclepiads 166 Sapphics 166 Glyconics 166 Anapaestic Colometry 166 Line Numbering 168 Semiotics of Seneca’s Lyric Metres 168 X. The Translation 169 TEXT AND TRANSLATION 172 Hercules 173 Actus Primus 175 Act I 176 Actus Secundus 189 Act II 190 Actus Tertius 215 Act III 216 Actus Quartus 235 Act IV 236 Actus Quintus 253 Act V 254 Selective Critical Apparatus 269 SIGLA 270 Differences from the 1986 Oxford Classical Text 279 Commentary 286 Title 286 Dramatis Personae 287 Scene 288 Time 289 Act Division 289 Stage Directions 289 Disposition of Roles 290 Masks 290 Audience 291 Act I (1–124) 291 First Choral Ode: The ‘Dawn Ode’ (125–204) 348 Act II (205–523) 380 Second Choral Ode: The ‘Hercules Ode’ (524–91) 475 Act III (592–829) 493 Third Choral Ode: The ‘Celebration Ode’ (830–94) 555 Act IV (895–1053) 572 Fourth Choral Ode: The ‘Lamentation Ode’ (1054–1137) 617 Act V (1138–1344) 635 Select Bibliography 698 1. Latin Texts: Editions, Translations, and Commentaries 698 2. Other Texts and Works of Reference and Criticism 703 Indexes 746 I. LATIN WORDS 746 II. PASSAGES FROM OTHER PLAYS OF THE SENECAN TRAGIC CORPUS 753 III. GENERAL INDEX 791
