Most

11
disiecti membra poetae:

The Rhetoric of Dismemberment in
Neronian Poetry
Glenn W. Most
I hold your
hand in
mine.
-T. Lehrer
I
At the climax of his Phaedra, Seneca assigns to a messenger the task of

recounting the fate of Hippolytus: the youth had set out for exile after
Theseus had cursed him and asked Neptune to destroy him, but a monster
which suddenly came from the sea so terrified his horses that they bolted
and overturned his chariot; Hippolytus became entangled in the reins. The
messenger claims, by convention, that he is unwilling to tell his tale (991-
92, 995); but what happened next he describes in extraordinarily precise,
abundant, and ghastly detail:
late cruentat arua et inlisum caput

scopulis resultat; auferunt dumi comas,
et ora durus pulcra populatur lapis
peritque multo uulnere infelix decor.
moribunda celeres membra peruoluunt rotae;
tandemque raptum truncus ambusta sude
medium per inguen stipite ingesto tenet,
paulumque domino currus affixo stetit,
haesere biiuges uulnere-et pariter moram
dominumque rumpunt. inde semianimem secant
uirgulta, acutis asperi uepres rubis
omnisque ruscus corporis partem tulit.
errant per agros funebris famuli manus,
per illa qua distractus Hippolytus loca
longum cruenta tramitem signat nota,
maestaeque domini membra uestigant canes.
necdum dolentum sedulus potuit labor
explere corpus-hocine est formae decus?
391
392 Innovations of Antiquity
qui modo patemi darns imperii comes

et certus heres siderum fulsit modo,
passim ad supremos ille colligitur rogos
et funeri confertur. (1093-1114)1
Far and wide he bloodies the fields, and his shattered head bounces off rocks;
thorn bushes tear off his hair, a hard stone ravishes his fair face, and his luckless
beauty perishes from many a wound. The swift wheels roll over his dying
limbs; and finally, while he is being dragged along, a tree trunk, projecting
with a point sharpened in the fire, holds him fast by a spike thrust through the
middle of his groin, and for a little while, with its master stuck, the chariot
stands still, the horses are stopped by the wound-and at the same moment
they burst the delay and their master. Then the shrubs cut him as he dies,
rough bramble-bushes with sharp thorns and every broom carries off a part
of his body. The slaves, funereal bands, wander through the fields, through
the places where Hippolytus, tom apart, marks a long path with a bloody
sign, and sad dogs track down their master's limbs. Not yet has the mourners'
busy toil succeeded in filling out the body-is this the glory of his form? He
who just now gleamed like the stars, the famous companion of his father's
rule and his certain heir, is gathered together from all sides for the funeral pyre
and is collected for burial.
Hippolytus may be renowned for his skill with horses (e.g., 809-11, 1054-
56, 1072-77): but to manage to fall with such disastrous results would rather
seem to betoken quite an unusual degree of clumsiness. How many chariot
accidents in ancient times, one wonders, resulted not only in the driver's
death, but in his total dismemberment? Indeed, the atomizing dispersal
Hippolytus undergoes here is so complete that the combined toil of all his
slaves and all of his dogs cannot put him together again. To be sure, this is
no ordinary accident: Neptune's help has been invoked, and he has responded
with a terrifying marine monster. But to grant Theseus' prayer and bring
Hippolytus' career to a premature end, it would have sufficed simply to kill
the young man: why does Seneca prefer instead to tear him limb from limb?
Hippolytus' accident, of course, belongs not to the annals of traffic safety,
but to the domain ofliterature: and comparing Seneca's version to those of
his predecessors casts significant light upon it. 2 The messenger's account in
Euripides' Hippolytus, the ultimate source of much of Seneca's play, describes
the overturning of the chariot in two lines and Hippolytus' entanglement in
the reins in another two lines (1234-37), and compresses the whole account
of the destruction of the youth's body into another line and a half ("crushing
his dear head against the stones and shattering his flesh," 1238-39). That
Seneca has read this passage in Euripides quite closely is indicated by his
virtual translation, at the beginning of his own account of the carnage, of
3
the Greek poet's reference to Hippolytus' head being crushed by the stones:
Rhetoric of Dismemberment / 393
but where Euripides' account is poignantly brief and unspecific, Seneca's is

drawn out and circumstantial. 4 What is more, Euripides' Hippolytus sur-
vives his accident long enough to return to the stage and. speak with Theseus
and Artemis, while the injuries of Seneca's Hippolytus are, to put it mildly,
fatal. For these spectacular injuries, Seneca's source is not Euripides at all,
but a Latin poet, Ovid, who wittily places in the mouth of Hippolytus
himself the narration of the manner of his death:
excutior curru, lorisque tenentibus artus

uiscera uiua trahi, neruos in stipe teneri,
membra rapi partim partimque reprensa relinqui,
ossa grauem dare fracta sonum fessamque uideres
exhalari animam nullasque in corpore partes,
noscere quas partes: unumque erat omnia uulnus. (Metamorphoses 15.524-29) 5
I am thrown out of the chariot, and you could see my living flesh being
dragged along by the reins which held my limbs while my sinews were held
fast on a stake, and in part my limbs being snatched away, in part caught and
left behind, and my broken bones making a loud noise and my tired soul being
breathed out and no parts left in my body which you could recognize as parts:
for everything was a single wound.
Here too we find the pointed stake, the body torn in two, the massive
wounds and the indistinguishable body parts: Seneca's ultimate refer.,ence
point may well be Euripides, but he is above all a Latin poet, and he seems
incapable of reading the Greek text except through the medium of the Latin
poem which influenced him and his contemporaries so deeply. 6
Thus there can be little doubt that the manner of Hippolytus' death in
Seneca has been shaped by reminiscence of Ovid. But at the same time, it
is evident that Seneca has gone far beyond his Ovidian inspiration, not only
by lengthening and elaborating the details of his own narrative, but above all
by repeatedly reminding the viewer (or the listener or reader/ ofHippolytus'
dismemberment throughout the rest of the play. When Phaedra learns of his
death, she rushes out of the palace, crying, "Hippolytus, is this your face I
see, this what I made of it?" and asks what monster "scattered and ripped
apart these limbs" (1168-73). Theseus, having finally learned the truth,
wishes a similar fate upon himself: he should be tied to the tip of a pine tree
bent down to earth, so that, when it is cut free, he will be split in half (1220-
25). 8 The Chorus tell him that he has all eternity to lament, but now should
"quickly hide the limbs horribly scattered by a savage mangling"; when he
asks them to bring him "the remains of his dear body . . . and the weight
and the limbs piled up at random," he cannot refrain from asking, "Is
this Hippolytus?" (1244-49). To assist him in answering this question, the
Chorus helpfully suggest, "Father, put in order the scattered limbs of his
394 I Innovations of Antiquity
torn body and restore the wandering parts to their proper place. Here is the
place for his right hand, here you should put the left hand; I recognize the
signs of the right side. How great a part is still missing to our tears!"
(1256-61). Under the strain, the unity of Theseus' own body seems to be
threatened: he addresses his hands and cheeks, bidding them not to interfere
while "a father counts the limbs of his son and composes a body"; he
goes on-and here, if anywhere, Senecan theater reaches the limits of the
tolerable- to ask, "What is this thing, shapeless and horrible, torn off with
many wounds on every side? I am not sure what part of you it is, but I know
it is a part of you: here, put it here, not in the right place, but in a vacant
place" (1262-68). And in almost the very last words of the play, Theseus
expresses contempt for the corpse of Phaedra but sends out his servants to
"seek out the parts of (Hippolytus'] body wandering through the fields"
(1277-80).
Thus the severed pieces of Hippolytus' body dominate Seneca's Phaedra
to a degree for which even Ovid's palpable influence can provide no explana-
tion: what was in Ovid a single, comparatively discreet hint seems to provide
Seneca with a launching pad from which he can take off into an obsessive
preocuppation all his own. How is this peculiar emphasis upon Hippolytus'
dismemberment to be explained? Thinking of the kind of sparagmos associ-
ated with gods like Dionysus and Osiris, and with such heroes as Pentheus,
Orpheus, and Lycurgus, a number of scholars have suggested that the fate
of Hippolytus be explained with reference to such myths of the dismember-
ment and dispersal of a god's body or of his enemy's. 9 The association is
tempting: but in fact it does not provide much help with our problem. For
sparagmos is limited to a certain category of divinities 10 and is entirely foreign
to the cult of Aphrodite, the goddess Hippolytus has offended; and there is
not the slightest indication in Seneca's text of any religious value at all in the
specifics ofHippolytus' death. Hence those who interpret Hippolytus' death
as a sparagmos are driven to seek evidence outside the text for such implica-
11
tions at least in the Greek myth, if not in Seneca's version of it; but the
Greek versions never stress dismemberment, and it cannot be explained
why, if this had been Seneca's intention, he would have chosen so entirely
to suppress any hint of it.
Instead, it would seem preferable to pursue a suggestion the text itself
emphatically provides, namely the repeated association of Hippolytus with
the word forma. Various forms of the substantive appear in the Phaedra nine
times 12-by contrast, no other genuine play of Seneca's contains more than
two occurrences, and the total number of other attestations in his extant
tragedies, apart from the Phaedra, is only five. 13 The choral ode which follows
upon Hippolytus' rejection of Phaedra insists upon the youth's Jorma: it
begins by celebrating his forma as the most splendid in human history ("Let
the report which admires a more ancient age compare with you every past
beauty: your forma will shine out more fairly like the full moon," 741ff ),
but then goes on to warn that forma is a two-edged benefit (761), quickly
passes away (773), and is often punished (820), and to pray that Hippolytus
might have the good fortune to survive to old age, so that his noble forma
might display the image of ugly (deformis) senility (822-23). In Latin, of
course,forma can mean not only "beauty," but also "shape"-thus, Theseus's
anguished question, "hoe quid est forma carens ?" does not mean that the
unidentifiable piece he sees before him is merely deprived of beauty, but
rather that it is totally lacking in its characteristic form. 14 In this light, the
fate of Hippolytus in Seneca comes to seem almost a play on words which
is all the more ghastly for its being so rigorous: the man who more than all
others was distinguished in his life by his forma (as "beauty") is punished by
a death which deprives him of allforma (as "shape") whatsoever. If so, then
we may detect an uncanny foreshadowing of Hippolytus' death in the very
same choral ode which is directed at his celebration. For here the chorus
praises the youth's beauty, part for part, in a detailed analytic catalogue
for which the death that follows a little later will be merely a horrific
concretization: only at first reading does their praise for his "face . . . face
. . . face . . . brow . . . neck . . . hair . . . shoulders . . . forehead . . . hair
... body ... muscles ... chest ... hand ... fingers" 15 seem innocuous.
Such an explanation certainly takes account of the coherence and imagina-
tive unity of Seneca's tragedy; 16 and if this were the only play of Seneca's to
have survived, we might well be tempted to conclude the interpretation
here. As it is, chance has preserved at least seven other tragedies by Seneca,
and comparison with them casts a different and rather unsettling light upon
Hippolytus' fate. For the dismemberment of Hippolytus, when viewed
within the context of the rest of Seneca's tragedies, turns out to be not only
a painful consequence of the specific ambiguity of the term forma, but also
just one member of a whole series of equally horrifying mutilations. The
most celebrated occurs in the Thyestes: here Atreus murders the children of
his brother Thyestes, cooks them, and serves them to the latter for dinner.
Not only is the children's death the central scene in the tragedy: what is
more, the procedure whereby Atreus dismembers them and roasts some of
their parts on spits but boils the .others in pots is described once by a
messenger with the sort of precise detail we associate more with cookbooks
than with tragedies (755-72) 17-and, as though that were not enough, is
then repeated by Atreus himself to Thyestes when the latter begins to suffer
from the symptoms of acute gastric discomfort (1057-65). Nor is the theme
of dismemberment limited to these scenes: it recurs frequently throughout
the Thyestes and plays an important role in the play's thematic structure. 18
But what is more, there is not a single tragedy in the Senecan corpus in which
the mutilation and amputation of human bodies does not play a significant
role, appearing even at moments where neither the literary tradition would
seem to require it nor common sense to tolerate it. 19 If in Euripides' Heracles

the maddened hero slays his wife with an arrow (999-1000), in Seneca's
Hercules he disintegrates her skull so thoroughly with a single blow from his
club that her head vanishes and only the trunk of her body is ·left to be seen
20
(1024-26). In Euripides' Trojan Women the body of Astyanax is brought
onto the stage to be prepared for burial by Hecuba after the Greeks have
hurled the child from the walls ofTroy (1118ff.); in Seneca's play, when the
chorus voice the wish that someone gather up the body, the messenger
responds that this is impossible, for his bones have been so scattered and
crushed by his heavy fall that all that remains is a shapeless corpse (1110-
21
17). Sophocles' Oedipus blinds himselfby driving a pin into his eyes (1268-
70, 1275-79); Seneca's scrapes them out of their sockets with his hands-
indeed, they practically spring out of their own accord (961-70). In Aeschy-
lus' Agamemnon, Clytemnestra slays her husband with a blow to the head
(1343, 1345, 1384-90);· in Seneca's, the result is that the head is practically
cut off, so that "the blood flows forth from the trunk over here, while over
there the face lies grumbling" (901-3).
Suddenly, Seneca is starting to look a bit sinister. Does his apparent
obsession with human dismemberment make him a more appropriate sub-
ject for psychoanalysis than for literary criticism? Reading such passages, it
is hard not to be reminded for example of Melanie Klein's concepts of partial
objects and the paranoid position, or, more generally, of Freudian and
Lacanian theories of the castration complex and of paranoia; 22 and indeed,
Seneca's works have recently been subjected to a number of psychoanalytic
interpretations. 23 No doubt such an approach can cast significant light upon
certain aspects of Seneca's imaginative universe. But before we hasten to
exhume the poet's limbs and arrange them on the analyst's couch, we should
note that his peculiar obsession is not confined to himself alone, but seems
to be shared by a number of his contemporaries. The Hercules Oetaeus, which
is transmitted among Seneca's works but is usually regarded as not being
the work of Seneca himself, 24 differs in this regard not at all from Seneca's
undisputed works: here Hyllus recounts how Lichas' body, thrown aloft by
the tormented hero, splits in half, the trunk falling into the sea, the head
among the rocks, and immediately after describes how Hercules tried to tear
himself apart limb from limb in his desperate attempt to strip off the deadly
robe; 25 Deianeira's reaction is to wish that she herself might be ripped to
pieces ·by jumping from the cliff of Oeta. 26 So too, the Octavia, which
scholars almost unanimously assign to an unknown admirer and younger
27
contemporary of Seneca, refers several times to severed heads; in the
fragments of Petronius' Satyricon, surely a product of the Neronian period,
there are numerous scenes of and allusions to threatened amputation of the
membrum virile and other forms of mutilation of the body; 28 and when the
Neronian satirist Persius attacks the bombast of mythological tragedy, the
example he picks is the representation ofThyestes dining upon the limbs of

his own children. 29
But among Seneca's surviving contemporaries, it is his nephew Lucan in
whom the fascination with dismemberment seems to have reached its most
extreme form. The Bellum Civile is strewn with mangled limbs and severed
heads. 30 In Lucan's account of the naval battle at Massilia, for example, a
Greek soldier places his hand on a Roman ship; it is cut off, but does not
lose its grip; and its owner, whose courage grows with adversity, attacks
with his left arm and leans forward to retrieve his missing member-only
to have his left arm as well chopped off (3. 609-17). Only a few lines later,
another combatant is transfixed by a grappling hook: instead of letting him
drown, his friends grab his legs, with the result that he is torn in half; Lucan
de.scribes in considerable detail the gush of blood from his body and the
different ways in which his various parts die (3.635-46). Indeed, it might
even be suggested that this obsession not only generates single episodes in
Lucan's epic but even governs centrally its imaginative world: for the crucial
scene upon which the Bellum Civile is concentrated as a whole is that of the
~ecapitation of Pompey in Egypt, which Lucan recounts at a length that
may be excused, but is hardly justified, by his cynical point that, back then,
the art of cutting off heads with a single swift blow had not yet been perfected
(8.667-75). To be sure, the death of Pompey had impressed itself deeply
upon the imagination of generations of Romans-Virgil's peculiar reference
in the Aeneid to the decrepit Priam's corpse as "a huge trunk upon the shore,
and a head torn from its shoulders, a body without a name," is a well-known
31
example. But in Lucan's vision, the amputation of Pompey's head is not \
only the most important and memorable of a whole series of mutilations: it
also becomes a central symbol for a world in which divine providence seems
no longer to function but instead to have been severed from the universe
32
which it should rule as, by a Stoic analogy, the head rules the body.
One way to assess the importance of dismemberment in Lucan is statisti-
cally, by comparing the relative frequency of the kinds of wounds he de-
scribes to those in other ancient military epics written before and after him.
Already Homer's descriptions of wounds inflicted during the battle scenes
of the Iliad are remarkably detailed33-so much so that one scholar of the
last century maintained that Homer must have been by profession a military
surgeon, 34 while another in this century argued seriously that anatomical
knowledge as detailed and accurate as Homer's could only have been ob-
tained by dissections of human cadavers for research purposes 35-and in this
36
regard inaugurated a tradition which lasted throughout all antiquity. Prima
facie, we might expect ancient depictions of such wounds to be generally
rather similar. After all, it is only during the last few centuries that the
remarkable technical advances in weapons of war have opened up extraordi-
nary new possibilities for wounds and injuries which older military medicine
could scarcely have imagined. Until the modern period, the limited variety
of traditional battlefield weapons-sword, spear, arrow, rock-meant that
only certain types of wounds were at all probable: (1) cuts, if the sword or
spear was moved in an arc, resulting in an incision which was usually long
but could also be deep; (2) amputations, a variety of radical cut in which the
same movement of the same weapon resulted in the total severing of one
part of the body from the rest; (3) punctures, when an arrow, sword, or
spear entered the body with a linear rather than circular movement, resulting
in a wound deeper than it was long; and finally (4) crushing wounds, when
a rock or some other blunt instrument fractured the bones and provoked
37
massive internal trauma. All four kinds of wounds are exemplified in the
death of Hippolytus in Seneca: in what seems almost a systematic synopsis
of the variety of "ways in which human flesh is modified by the application
38
of gross violence, " Hippolytus is (1) cut by shrubs (1102-3), (2) torn to
pieces (1101-2, 1103-4), (3) transfixed by a spike (1098-99), and (4) his head
is crushed (1093-94). Small wonder that so little remains of him for those
who would mourn him.
The accompanying chart provides approximate casualty statistics for mili-
tary portions of the Iliad, the Aeneid, Lucan's Bellum Civile, Silius Italicus'
Punica, and Statius' Thebaid: 39
crushing lines/
cuts amputations punctures blows misc. casualty
Hom. 8 (7.7%) 6 (5.8%) 81 (77.9%) 9 (8.7%) 2.1
Virg. 4 (6.5%) 10(16.1%) 43 (69.4%) 5 (8.1%) 2.2
Luc. 10 (33.3%) 10 (33.3%) 2 (6.7%) 8 (26.7%) 8.4
Sil. 5 (4.6%) 13 (12.0%) 70 (64.8%) 12 (11.1 %) 8 (7.4%) 3.1
Stat. 9 (17.6%) 37 (72.5%) 2 (3.9%) 3 (5.9%) 2.9
While the precise figures listed here are no doubt open to some degree of
modification, there can be little doubt concerning the general trends that
they reveal. If we set aside Lucan, we find an overwhelming preference
among all epic poets for puncture wounds, which are responsible for be-
tween two-thirds and three-quarters of all types of injuries. This may well
be motivated in part by considerations of military tactics, but it is certainly
also generically quite appropriate for poets whose emphasis by convention
must be upon the prowess of a single hero-a man who can kill at a distance,
who demonstrates his valor by a simple, economic blow which makes his
startled adversary realize too late that he has been turned into a target, his
complex system of muscles and intentions revealed as nothing more than a
Rhetoric of Dismemberment I 399
bag of blood ready to be pricked. 40 This traditional emphasis upon the v~lor
of the victor rather than upon the suffering of the victim is also responsible
for the generic peculiarity that in epic a single wound usually suffices to kill
a warrior at once41 -so for example the Odyssey claims that every arrow
Odysseus shot slew a suitor (22.116-18), something some ancient scholars
at least found so implausible that they suggested he must have dipped his
• • 42
arrows m p01son.
There are, to be sure, a number of differences between the statistics for
Homer on the one hand and those for Virgil, Silius Italicus, and Statius on
the other; 43 yet these seem virtually negligible when all these poets are
grouped together and compared with Lucan. Only in Lucan are cutting
wounds just as frequent as puncture wounds and do there seem to be no
cases of cutting wounds which do not result in amputation of a bodily part.
Amputations, to be sure, figure among standard epic wounds starting with
Homer. But, first, in all the authors examined other than Lucan they are far
rarer (though, interestingly, they are considerably more frequent among all
the Roman poets than they are in Homer): there are 13.5 puncture wounds
for every amputation in Homer, 4.3 in Virgil, 5.4 in Silius Italicus, and 4.1
in Statius. Against the background of these figures, the proportion in Lucan
of one puncture wound for every amputation becomes truly remarkable.
And, second, there is a tendency among the other epic poets (except Statius)
to use amputation to punctuate, as it were, a series of killings, starting it off
or closing it out: 44 amputation seems to be considered so much more terrible
than other kinds of wounds that it can provide a suitably impressive opening
to an aristeia or a climax after which a pause or shift in perspective is all the
more welcome. In Lucan, on the other hand, only once does an amputation
end a series of deaths: 45 evidently amputations have become so frequent in
the Bellum Civile that they have lost some of their exceptional impact and,
by their very drastic quality, can come to stand for injuries in general.
Indeed, for Lucan wounds seem to have interest less as tokens of the valor
of the man who inflicts them than as steps in the mutilation of the man who
receives them: in stark contrast to all other epic poets, Lucan often names
the victim but not his murderers; and he often includes amputations only as
part of a whole sequence of terrifying wounds inflicted on the same man.
We have already met the soldier who, at Massilia, loses first his right hand
46
and then his whole left arm: Lucan is not finished with him there, but has
him go on to protect his brother's shield with his naked body, to be pierced
by numerous spears, yet still to have enough strength to leap onto a Roman
ship (3.618-26). In Book 6, Scaeva is wounded by innumerable spears and
arrows, whereupon, refusing to shield his breast, he is wounded by still
more; then a Cretan archer shoots him in the left eye, and Scaeva rips out
the arrow together with the eye hanging from it and tramples upon both;
he pretends to be dying and deceives with a six-line speech an enemy soldier
whom he kills with a blow of his sword to the throat; he delivers another
speech, and only then collapses (6.189-262)-only to return from his
wounds to fight another battle four books later (10. 543-46). 47 The statistical
expression for this tendency is the extraordinary contrast, in the average
number of lines devoted to the description of the wounding or killing of
each casualty, between Lucan and the other epic poets-Lucan's are about
three to four times longer than the others'. Like Seneca, Lu can lingers on
mutilation; yet it is striking that, in both authors, the mental sufferings of
the physically wounded are scarcely if ever mentioned. The fictional bodies
are gashed; but the persons whose sufferings seem to concern these authors
most are not the victims, but ourselves.
II
l '
How is such an obsession to be interpreted? Although the general emphasis

upon cruelty in Latin literature of the first century after Christ is a well-
known and frequently studied phenomenon, 48 the fact that this attention to
cruelty tends to take the peculiar form of a fascination with the dismember-
ment of the human body seems neither to have been widely recognized nor
to lend itself to any obvious explanation. It is not without various partial
antecedents; but comparison with them serves only to throw into stronger
relief the peculiarity of these Neronian texts. Thus the religious significance
of certain Greek and Near Eastern myths of sparagmos was mentioned above.
Yet, though there is no doubt that Seneca and his contemporaries were
familiar with such tales, no plausible link can be established between them
and the vast majority of the passages examined earlier, both because there
is no evident religious coloring whatsoever to these latter and because most
of them have nothing to do with the specific cults for which ritual dismem-
berment is attested. Again, a few celebrated passages of Greek tragedy
describe similar mutilations of the body, 49 and some of the attested titles of
early Roman tragedies, 50 and a small number of the transmitted fragments
of these 51 and of early Roman epic52 give evidence that a similar taste was
not foreign to Republican Rome. But neither among the surviving Greek
tragedies nor, as far as we can tell from the fragmentary evidence, in early
Republican poetry is there anything like the persistence and emphasis with
which this theme is treated in Neronian literature. The only significant
precursor for this feature seems to be Ovid, who is responsible for a number
of memorable scenes of dismemberment, not only in his account of the
death of Hippolytus but elsewhere as well. 53 Indeed the· Metamorphoses as a
whole can be read as a sustained meditation upon the passions of the body:
not only upon those emotional upheavals which exclusively focus the atten-
tion of so many of Ovid's characters on single objects of desire or hatred, but
also upon the body's elaborate sufferings, which make its transformations,
catalogued in all its individual parts, into a comprehensive cartography of
54
every feature of the human anatomy-in the modes of loss and pain. But
the very encyclopedic quality of Ovid's study of human corporeality makes
his dismemberments less striking in the context of the varieties of suffering
he portrays than they might seem if considered in isolation: there is no
evidence that Ovid was more obsessed by amputations than by the many
other modes of bodily alteration he recounts.
Of course, the kind of complex and multifaceted phenomenon we are
considering here does not admit of simple causal explanation: instead of
attempting to reduce the Neronian interest in dismemberment to the direct
effect of some specifiable cause, it is surely preferable to try to identify
various kinds of contexts for it with which connections of affinity or similar-
ity can be established. To do so is not to aim at a strictly deterministic
explanation-compatibility is very far from causality-but rather at a herme-
neutic interpretation in terms of coherence within a larger cultural matrix. 55
Relations of embeddedness, parallelism, and mutual implication organize
ideological structures and lend them the kind of flexible systematicity which
permits the competent participants within a particular culture to assume
intelligible roles easily but usually does not limit their choices intolerably.
Intentions and self-understandings play an important role in directing in-
quiry; but precisely because the relations involved often operate below the
level of the participants' full awareness, the external observer can aim at
identifying not only those connections which the subject themselves might
recognize, but also the even more interesting ones they might not. The
criteria for favoring one kind of account over another are, then, not so much
causal efficacy nor even the participant's explicit avowals, as rather richness
and concreteness of detail, scope, applicability to other domains, and so on.
In the case of Neronian culture, these criteria suggest at least three kinds of
context as potentially fruitful: history, philosophy, and rhetoric. 56
The most obvious, and the most frequently suggested, context of inter-
pretation for the emphasis upon scenes of cruelty in Silver Latin literature
is provided by the notorious circus spectacles which provided audiences
throughout the Roman empire with frequent opportunities to enjoy the
sight of the many varieties of human suffering. 57 Indeed, there is abundant
evidence that daily life in Imperial Rome supplied a great deal of organized
carnage for the delectation of people for whom real warfare had become a
remote and negligible possibility. 58 The very theatricality of these spectacles
is striking 59-thus, in one of his letters to Lucilius, Seneca lists the variety
of forms of the public infliction of punishment current in his day (in part
echoing the language of the messenger's report of the death of Hippolytus),
and goes on to single out the actual sight of these torments as being primarily
responsible for their psychological impact (14.4-6). In Imperial Rome, the
line, always thin, that separates theater from life could easily vanish-indeed,
transgressing that line seems to have been eagerly performed for its effect
upon audiences (until this too eventually became predictable, and boring).
Criminals condemned to represent roles in publicly staged mythical dramas
could be seen actually torn to pieces by animals-intentionally if the myth
was that of Prometheus, unintentionally if it was that of Orpheus but the
bear had been insufficiently trained 60-or castrated as Attis or burned alive
61
as Hercules. In the venationes, the shows in which animals were hunted by
bestiarii in the mornings before gladiatorial contests, there were no doubt
frequent opportunities to see human limbs being mutilated as well: 62 but if
this were not enough, criminals could be displayed being torn apart by
63
animals -or, for fun, dogs could be set loose on them after they had been
covered in furs. 64 The public's fascination with extreme cases of human
injuries is strikingly attested by the curious but apparently common practice
that those who had been thrown to the animals could be rescued after they
had been partially eaten so that they could be treated by doctors and kept
alive until the next day, when their mangled bodies could be finished offby
the very same animals. 65 Not surprisingly, such spectacles were a frequent
object of polemic for the Church fathers; 66 but ancient medical writers
emphasize their scientific benefits-the demonstrations of human anatomy
67
provided by these injuries made it unnecessary to vivisect human subjects.
The circuses must have not only satisfied, but also further whetted, a
68
widespread appetite for viewing the pains of other humans; poetic texts
could respond to the same needs not only more economically, but also with
a degree of drastic exaggeration that no doubt could make reality seem
disappointingly tame in comparison. It is significant in this regard that scenes
of carnage in epic and drama often betray the language of the gladiatorial
shows, 69 and that Virgil's repeated references to combat taking place on the
harena are surely (involuntary?) reminiscences of the sands of the arena rather
than allusions to the actual topography of Latium. 70 But unless they are
further specified, animal hunts and gladiatorial shows seem too broad and
undifferentiated a context for the particular literary interest in dismember-
ment during the Neronian period we have been examining. Their drawback
in the present connection is not only chronological (such spectacles had been
popular at Rome for centuries before this period: 71 why then should there
be this sudden upsurge of interest in dismemberment during the Neronian
period?) and traumatological (such spectacles can certainly be connected
with a fascination with human injury and suffering in general, but it is hard
72
to see them as closely linked with dismemberment in particular). Above
all, we do not know how to interpret them unless we ask not only what
those who attended them saw, but also what they thought they were seeing.
One way to specify further, and thereby to enrich with hermeneutically
productive detail, the interpretative context furnished by the games might
be to see in them a dramatic enactment of a meditation upon the identity of

human beings in their difference from animals. After all, on the one hand,
the venationes opposed men to wild beasts in mortal conflict while the
gladiatorial contests were often viewed as demonstrations of the capabilities
of the very lowest classes of humans (slaves, prisoners of war, convicts,
professional combatants), those closest to animals; 73 while on the other hand,
in the lives of most people the sight of a dismembered human body is
fortunately extremely rare-even in the most savage spectacles in ancient
Rome it could scarcely have been the most usual type of injury-while the
sight of another kind of dismembered body is relatively frequent: that of the
animal that is cut limb from limb before it is cooked or afterward, before it
74
is eaten. From Homer on, 75 the consumption of meat in ancient culture
formed the climax of a publicly performed spectacle of slaughtering, dis-
jointing, and cooking the animal whose theatrical elements were most often
regularized by the religious sanctions of sacrificial procedure. In Rome, the
link between spectacle and bestialization is suggested by the strong tendency
to associate the practice of visceratio (the distribution of meat at a public
sacrificial feast) with gladiatorial contests. 76 May we see the anomalous
dismemberment of human bodies against the background of the ordinary
dismemberment of animal bodies?
Most ancient philosophers agreed that there were fundamental differences
which separated human beings from animals. 77 How then was the confronta-
tion between men and beasts in the circuses likely to be interpreted? Chrysip-
pus' application of the widely held ancient view that animals exist for the
78
sake of men not only to the obvious cases of domesticated animals (the
horse was created to pull our wagons, the ox our plows, the dog to help
with hunting and to protect our houses), 79 but also to wild beasts like
leopards, bears, and lions, which according to Chrysippus fulfilled the func-
tion of providing "a training-ground for human bravery, " 80 may help explain
what many spectators at Roman venationes thought they were watching. In
one of Plutarch's dialogues, a character named Sodarus praises animal shows
as a demonstration of the triumph of skill and rational courage over irrational
force and violence, 81 and doubtless the vast majority of the audiences at such
spectacles viewed them, consciously or unconsciously, along these lines: the
frisson of terror at the ferocity of a savage beast was made endurable by the
fact that the animals were kept at a safe distance, and in any event soon
gave way to an exultant admiration of the expertise with which a bestiarius
succeeded in tricking and killing them. At the end, the humans were alive and
the animals were dead: what could provide a sweeter feeling of triumphant
ontological superiority?
But what if the animals won? Seeing the fate of a hunter torn apart by
animals, spectators could have reacted in either of two ways: either they
could have felt a terrifying identification with the man's fate and concluded
that no human, not even themselves, was superior to (such) an animal; or

they could have maintained their feeling of confident superiority but this
time extended it to include superiority not only to animals, but also to the
particular luckless or inexpert man in question. But in the former case the
boundary between men and animals had been definitively breached, and in
the latter it had been rescued only by being reinscribed within the class of
humans, some of whom were now reduced to the status of animals. Hence,
viewing the venationes, spectators could just as easily conclude that there was
no real difference between animals and at least some men. Cicero reports in
a letter on a series of spectacles which provided the audience not with delight
but with a feeling of pity for the animals and the conviction that there was
a certain community between them and humans; 82 while the dialogue of
Plutarch's mentioned above is directed as a whole to demonstrating that
animals do indeed have a share of logos, and ends up persuading Soclarus
too of this point. 83
Even viewing the venationes, some ancient intellectuals could worry not
so much about the physical health of the bestiarii as rather about the moral
well-being of the spectators: according to Plutarch, the latter, by accus-
toming themselves to the sight of blood and wounds, became bestialized
84
themselves. But matters were clearly far worse when it came to gladiatorial
shows and the public punishment of criminals: for here the wounding and
killing of humans was not an unforeseen by-product, but the central point
of the whole spectacle. These shows provided the repeated sight of the
drastic animalization of human beings: even when they were not covered
by animal skins, 85 the sufferers were treated in a way, and endured injuries
of a sort, familiar to most people only in the case of animals. Viewing
their torments, many spectators could be thrilled to feel superior, intact, a
86
survivor: for the relation of a man to an animal is like that of a god to man.
If we recall that one of the most prominent features shared by the Latin
87
poets of the Neronian age is a strong commitment to Stoicism, it may be
possible to specify the question of human bestialization even further. For
the Stoics were particularly emphatic about the unbridgeable differences
between men and animals: only men share in divine logos, only men enjoy
a communitas with the gods. 88 Hence, for the Stoic, such spectacles could
provoke revulsion for their rupture of the discontinuity between rational
man and irrational animal: thus Seneca warns that the vices that creep into
the circus spectators through the channel of pleasure make them less than
89
human and turn them into beasts no less savage than the ones they watch.
But on the other hand, if the Stoic believed that only the sage was truly
rationaI9° and that practically no man was a sage, 91 then perhaps he could be
driven to draw the conclusion that most humans were in fact nothing more
than animals with reason, but devoid of reason, and hence simply animals:
the spectacles could then offer him the corroboratory sight of people who
were certainly for the most part not acting like sages and console him by
reminding him of his difference from them. The same passage in Seneca
concedes that the spectacles provide enormous pleasure, and offers only a
lame excuse for why Seneca went to one in the first place-and no excuse
at all for why he remained.
One way to interpret the Neronian obsession with the dismemberment
of the human body, then, is to see in it the symptom of an anguished
reflection upon the nature of human identity and upon the uneasy border
between men and animals. In Seneca, this reflection tends to focus upon
tragic characters who, raging with uncontrollable Juror, inflict mutilations
upon their own or others' bodies like wild beasts; 92 Lucan, on the other
hand, seems to prefer to present heroic figures whose ratio is so powerful
that they can divorce themselves from their own bodies and treat them as
though they belonged to some animal, not to themselves. 93 And even when
dismemberment is simply suffered, and neither inflicted nor sought out, its
bestializing implications are often close to the surface. Thus, in the case of
the death ofHippolytus in Seneca's Phaedra, it has frequently been remarked
that Hippolytus begins the play with a monody in which he is presented as
a hunter, but ends up being hunted himself by his slaves and dogs. 94 But it
seems to have been less noted that the climactic last words of the first
half of that monody, addressed to his hunting companions, just before the
beginning of his prayer to Diana, are a sinister foreshadowing of what will
later be the fate ofHipploytus' own body: they encourage the hunter, "now
a victor, to carve up the entrails with the curved hunting-knife. " 95 .1
But for a Stoic, human dismemberment could raise awkward questions \
of personal identity which were not limited to the uneasy borderline between
man and animal. For in Stoic physics, only bodies were thought to exist, 96
and one of the chief characteristics of bodies was that, rather than being
constituted by irreducible components like the Epicurean atoms, they could
be divided to infinity into ever smaller parts. 97 What prevented this dissolu-
tion, ever present as a conceptual possibility, from occurring in actuality,
was that bodies were held together by a sustaining force (TJ (]1)VBKTLK'YJ alTia)
which permeated all their parts, bound these together like glue, and thereby
guaranteed their identity. 98 In terms of the four elements, it was the breath
and fire diffused in bodies throughout their watery and earthly components
that were thought to be responsible for holding these together by their elastic
99
tension. The application of this general principle to the particular case of
human and animal bodies is made explicit in two passages, one in Philo and
one in Galen:
Everything that is sustained by glue is immediately forced into a natural union.

Now our body, which is composed of many parts, is united externally and
internally, and it holds firm by its own tenor. And the higher tenor of these
parts is the soul: being at the center, it moves everywhere, right to the surface
and from the surface it returns to the center. The result is that a single animate
nature is enveloped by a double bond, thus being fitted to a stronger tenor and
union. 100
Every substance with fine parts the Stoics call spirit and they think that the
function of this spirit is to produce cohesion in natural and in animal bodies.
By natural bodies I mean those that are produced by nature and not by human
skill, like copper, stones, gold, wood and those parts of the animal body that
are called the primary and homoiomerous parts, that is, nerves, arteries, veins,
cartilages, bones, and everything else of the same sort. Men join bits of wood
together with glue, nails, pegs, clay, gypsum and lime. Similarly nature is
found connecting all the parts of the body so as to form a united whole by
means of cartilages, ligaments and tendons. 101
The tendency of the Stoics to concretize this metaphysical sustaining force

and to seek for it an anatomical equivalent and site led them to conceive the
parts of the soul as flowing out from their seat in the heart (or, in another
image, stretching out like the tentacles of an octopus) throughout the rest
of the body as a whole, uniting and animating it and equipping it with
sensation, motion, and other faculties. 102 On such a view, dismemberment
posed disturbing questions: for at what point did the mutilation of a body
lead to the loss of personal identity of that body's owner? The generally
observed phenomenon of gradual change already raised problems for the
Stoic notion of the continuity of personal identity: 103 but suppose the change
involved was as drastic as an amputation. Chrysippus formulated the para-
dox: if Dion was defined by his being whole-limbed, would he cease to be
Dion if his foot were amputated? 104 And the anatomical, and philosophical,
issues at stake became even more interesting if the amputation was sudden
and particularly violent: what would happen if a part of the body were cut
off so quickly that the parts of the soul it contained could not be withdrawn
in time? Is it not likely that it would retain enough of its capabilities to be
able to continue to function, at least briefly? Might not the man who was
speaking when his head was lopped off continue to say a few words with
his dying breath? 105 Might not the body of the running man go on for a few
steps after he had been decapitated, leaving his head behind? 106 And might
not t h e h an d t h at graspe d an enemy ,s sh"1p, 107 or a bn"dl e, 108 or a swor d, 109
continue to do so even when it was no longer joined to its arm?
No doubt familiarity with Stoic physics and medicine could have shar-
pened the interest of poets for scenes of dismemberment and led them to see
in such scenes the occasion for reflection on the nature and limits of personal
identity. 110 But it should not be forgotten that Seneca, Lucan, and the other
poets discussed above were above all poets, whatever the degree of their
immersion in philosophical culture and whatever the philosophical interest
of the literary examples they provide. Hence a curious feature of the language
of ancient rhetoric and literary criticism acquires a particular interest in the
present connection: namely, the fact that words for the body and parts of
the body form an important part of the conceptual vocabulary with which
the ancients analyze texts and parts of texts. 111 Already Aristophanes puns
112
on the word µ.£A:q to mean both the "limbs" and the "songs" of tragedy
(virtually the same pun will return in Horace's celebrated phrase, disiecti
membra poetae); 113 and in a well-known passage in the Phaedrus 114 Plato devel-
ops the analogy between a discourse and an animal's body which will recur
in a number of important passages in Aristotle's Poetics. 115 Throughout
the rest of antiquity, words meaning "body," "head," "limb," and other
anatomical parts continue to be used terminologically in both Greek and
Latin to refer to a wide variety of rhetorical, grammatical, and metrical
116
units. So too, the belief, widespread in antiquity, in the fundamental
similarity between a man's discourse and his character leads to the frequent
application of moralizing terminology drawn from the description of bodily
beauties and defects to the characterization of discursive virtues and vices-
117
so for example throughout Seneca's letter to Lucilius on prose style.
In antiquity, the body and its members could provide not only a subject
matter for literary discourse, but also a way of talking about its style. And
if the kind of sentence that typified that style was characterized, not by a
single grand hierarchical structure organized hypotactically, as in Cicero's
stately periods, but instead by a series of paratactically coordinated small
phrases with as large a number of sententiae as possible, then the ancient critic
was inclined to deploy the language of bodily mutilation. Seneca himself
criticizes certain authors as having an "amputated" (amputatus)11 8 or "torn
120
off' (abruptus)11 9 style; others add the term "cut off' (abscisus). But not
only did Seneca criticize such a style: he also became famous, during his
lifetime and afterward, for practicing it himself. 12 1 Modern scholars often
refer to Seneca's prose style as pointed or staccato, 122 and it has long been
recognized that this avoidance oflarger governing structures on the level of
the sentence is connected with the emphasis upon the episode at the cost of
sustained dramatic development in Seneca's tragedies and upon the single
observation or paradox at the cost of prolonged philosophical argumentation
in his dialogues and letters. 123 Ancient scholars, on the other hand, tend to
speak in terms of a dismemberment of the body of the sentence: thus
Quintilian accuses Seneca of having "shattered the weight of his subject
matter with the tiniest sententiae" 124 and writes that if the sententiae are packed
too thickly, the effect is
to break up a speech into fragments: every sententia comes to a stop, and so

there must constantly be a new beginning after every one: the result is that the
discourse breaks down and lacks a structure, since it has been thrown together,
408 / Innovations of Antiquity
not out of individual limbs, but out of scraps, and since those phrases, well-
rounded and cut off on every side, cannot cohere with one another. (8.5.27)
And according to the author of the treatise On the Sublime, "Chopping up

the sentence too much also reduces its sublimity: for whenever it becomes
too brief, this mutilates its grandeur; I am referring now not to phrases
which are concise in the right way, but to ones which are extremely tiny
and broken into little pieces. " 125
There is an obvious correlation between the scenes of amputation of
human bodies in the works of Seneca and his contemporaries on the one
hand and the dismemberment of the body of the sentence for which Seneca
was celebrated on the other. What happens to the bodies of the characters
in Seneca's and Lucan's fictions corresponds to what happens to the bodies
of these fictions as well; conversely, we may well imagine that authors who
were wont to amputate discourses will have been interested in seeing what
happens when the same procedures were applied to the literal human bodies
from which the figural language for analyzing such stylistic phenomenon
was drawn. The result is paradoxical: these fictions may well be filled with
scattered limbs, and their style and architecture may well tend to sacrifice
large-scale structure for momentary effects; but on a more profound level
there is an astonishingly rigorous coherence between precisely these phe-
nomena of dissolution and dismemberment. Perhaps it is not too much to
suggest that this coherence may make its own contribution to the continuing
literary effectiveness of these odd texts and helps explain why we still
remember them.
III
Hermeneutics may be said to fulfill its project as anthropology. The act of

literary interpretation tends to be set into motion by a perceived perplexity
in a specific text; but once it has begun, its own dynamics drives it inexorably
beyond that text's limits. No text contains its meaning within itself; to
understand a single text better one must violate its borders and move outside
it toward larger contexts in which it can be situated: its author, its genre, its
period, and inevitably its whole cultural matrix, which allocates to it and to
these their places and their values. Thus what begins as textual interpretation,
followed through far enough, turns eventually into cultural analysis: the
small part must be illuminated from its distant whole. But conversely, the
culture itself is not accessible to us in any form other than textual-as
Geertz puts it, "The culture of a people is an ensemble of texts, themselves
ensembles, which the anthropologist strains to read over the shoulders of
those to whom they properly belong" 126-so that the only way to construct
that larger context is on the basis, precisely, of the interpretation of such

problematic texts. There is a familiar methodological difficulty here, long
since designated (not resolved) as the hermeneutic circle, which has been
much discussed in recent work in the social sciences. Insofar as the study of
Greco-Roman antiquity attempts to situate with regard to one another
literary texts and the culture from and for which they were created, it
shares in the same difficulties, and prospects, as any other anthropological
127
discipline. To be sure, it is hampered in comparison with field anthropol-
ogy by the fact that the culture it studies is dead and the consequence that
its evidence is fragmentary, essentially finite, and limited in many important
regards; on the other hand, it has at least this advantage, that it can no longer
massively influence its objects by its attentions.
In the present case, the peculiarity of Seneca's text and the peculiarity of
Seneca's culture, composed for us ofjust such texts, reflect upon one another
and are mediated by factors ofboth short and long duree. The bizarre features
of Hippolytus' death can be explained within the economy of the Phaedra,
yet they reach out beyond it to engulf not only this play, and not only its
author's other plays, but finally a large number of contemporary works
within a single disquieting obsession. For these Roman Stoic poets, history,
philosophy, and literary criticism provide obvious local contexts ofinterpre-
tation. But the hermeneutic movement initiated here could be pursued in
other directions as well. From Homer on, for example, the ancients seem
to have been particularly concerned with the question of the proper burial
of the dead body and to have been subject to marked anxiety on this score-
one finds widespread traces of fear that the body could be outraged by
animals or men (hence the tendency to burn it), fear that its owner might
not rest easily but might return if it were not buried, fear that if the body
were not intact and whole the dead man could not leave. It is easy to set the
shock value of dismemberment within the context of such anxieties: yet it
remains unclear on this account why precisely the Neronian period should
have directed so much attention to this issue. Was this perhaps an age in
which individuals began to feel completely lost within the immobile vastness
of the Roman Empire? Was it at this time that Stoic cosmopolitanism, which
had begun in celebration, turned into consolation? Could one feel oneself a
tiny, meaningless fragment within the body politic and the cosmic whole?
Might such uneasinesses have found their outlet in the sadistic enactment of
dismemberment upon fictional bodies and the bodies of fictions?
With such questions, we have left the available evidence behind us. What
is certain is that when Seneca's Theseus, faced by his son's shapeless remains, .
asks in horror, Hipploytus hie est? (1249), his question is not only dramatically
poignant and psychologically appropriate, but also opens out onto per-
plexing issues of personal identity and of our relation to our body for which
dismemberment is only an especially drastic occasion. Every represented
torment of the human body implies a reflection on what it means to be a

human being: and the more radical the former, the more urgent the latter.
Pain, for all its private intensity, is a social construct, like the body itself. 128
In the impossibility of reconstructing Hippolytus' disseminated body may
be expressed, then, at the most fundamental level, our incapacity, once that
construct has been recognized as such, to reimagine it any longer as a pristine,
organic unity.
Notes
Various versions of this paper were delivered as lectures between February and November 1989
to the Departments of Classics at the Universities of Pisa, Berlin, and Graz, and at the Institute
for Advanced Study Berlin; my warm thanks go to my hosts and audiences for their lively
interest and stimulating discussion. I would also like to thank a number of friends-especially
Elaine Fantham, Michael Frede, and Sally Humphreys-who discussed this topic with me,
making helpful suggestions and correcting me in important points. Finally, I am grateful to the
editors of this volume for their incisive methodological criticisms on an earlier version of this
paper. The mistakes that remain, like the translations (unless otherwise indicated), are mine.
1. I cite Seneca's tragedies, here and throughout, from 0. Zwierlein, L. Annaei Senecae
Tragoediae (Oxford, 1986). But in the present passage I see no good reason to follow
Zwierlein in adopting Axelson's deletion of verse 1100: the affective retardation caused
by the semantic repetition prepares for and makes all the more effective the sudden
bursting of delay in the following line (note the contrast between the perfects stetit (1100)
and haesere (1101) on the one hand, and the present rumpunt (1102) on the other).
Cf. now M. Billerbeck, Senecas Tragodien. Sprachliche und stilistische Untersuchungen,
Mnemosyne Suppl. 105 (Leiden, 1988), 112f.
2. The comparison has been made most recently in C. Segal, "Senecan Baroque: The Death
of Hippolytus in Seneca, Ovid, and Euripides," TAPA 114 (1984), 311-25.
3. For "inlisum caput/scopulis resultat" (1093-94), cf. <nro6ovµevo~ µev 1Tpo~ 1TMpcu~
cf,£Xov Kapa (1238).
4. Thus, in Euripides, the servant's use of the word cf,£Xov (1238) interjects into his speech
an expression for his emotional attachment to his beloved master (thus explaining just
why he does not linger on the details); by contrast Seneca's messenger speech is more
clinical and visually precise, and is less directed toward expressing the speaker's emotion
than toward provoking the listener's.
5. Is the strain on the sentence caused by Ovid's postponement of the governing finite verb
uideres designed to reflect the strain placed upon Hippolytus' body? In any case it is clear
that it is part of Ovid's intention to experiment with the limits of first-person narrative:
normally the narrator in such stories survives their final event; here Ovid tries out an
exception. There is a superficial similarity with the many scenes in ancient literature in
which a dead person appears in a vision or a dream to recount what happened to him or
her (e.g., Clytemnestra in Aeschylus' Eumenides, or Palinurus and Deiphobus in Book
6 of the Aeneid). But those scenes are spectral and impressive; here the impression is
more that of a kind of sophisticated morbid wit (on which cf. Segal 315), reminiscent
of the film Sunset Boulevard, in which the very first scene is devoted to the murder of the
first-person narrator, who will then go on to recount the rest of the story, leading up to
and including his death.
6. See now R. Jakobi, Der Einfiuj) Ovids auf den Tragiker Seneca (Berlin and New York,
1988), 83-89, on the death of Hippolytus.
7. This is not the place to examine in detail the issue of whether or not the Phaedra was
written with the intention of its being performed on the stage. I incline to believe that
it was not (cf. my review of A. J. Boyle, Seneca's Phaedra, Introduction, Text, Translation,
and Notes (Liverpool, 1987), in Anzeiger far die Altertumwissenschafi 41 (1988), 11-17, here
14-15); but the question is not decisive for the issues discussed here. If the play was
staged, then the spectators will have been confronted by the physical presence of (a
simulation of) Hippolytus' mangled remains for perhaps its last 170 lines (if, as Boyle
and others have argued, they are brought on at line 111 O); if not, then they will have had
to make the effort to envision them imaginatively for even longer (since the messenger's
account in lines 1093ff.). Which is less disgusting?
8. The punishment is that for which Sinis was notorious and because of which Theseus had
slain him; Phaedra has just mentioned Sinis as a possible agent of Hippolytus' death a
few lines earlier (1169). Like Hercules, Theseus comes to resemble in certain regards the
monsters he destroys. The father's wish to draw down upon himself exactly the same
punishment that he has inflicted on his son could hardly be expressed more forcibly.
9. So W. Fauth, Hippolytos und Phaidra. Bemerkungen zum religiosen Hintergrund eines tragischen
Konjlikts 1, Akad. d. Wiss. u. d. Lit. Mainz, Abh. Geistes- und Sozialwiss. 9 (Mainz-
Wiesbaden, 1958), 578ff., and 2, Akad. d. Wiss. u. d. Lit. Mainz, Abh. Geistes- und
Sozialwiss. 8 (Mainz-Wiesbaden, 1959), 432ff.; P. Grimal, L. Annaei Senecae Phaedra
(Paris, 1965), 151-52 ad loc.; G. Viansino, La Fedra di Seneca (Naples, 1968), 81; C.
Zintzen, Analytisches Hypomnema zu Senecas Phaedra (Meisenheim am Glan, 1960), 122-
30. Insofar as Viansino's line of argument is followed by G. Petrona, La scrittura tragica
dell'irrazionale. Note di lettura al teatro di Seneca (Palermo, 1984), 39ff., who suggests that
Hippolytus is being sacrificed to an angered goddess, the latter's position too is open to
the objections sketched out here; on the other hand, Petrona's remarks on Hippolytus
as the hunter hunted (43) point more in a direction I suggest below.
10. These used to be referred to as vegetation deities; cf. now W. Burkert, Structure and
History in Greek Mythology and Ritual (Berkeley, 1979), 99-101 (and 111-12 arguing
against Hippolytus as a vegetation deity), and Ancient Mystery Cults (Cambridge, Mass.
and London, 1987), 74-76.
11. So Viansino 50 and Zintzen, who must argue on the basis of external evidence for the
importance of an Orphic element to the general myth of Hippolytus or for a sparagmos
of Hippolytus as part of the myth's original form.
12. Phae. 299, 551, 743, 761, 773, 820, 822; 1110, 1265.
13. Med. 82, 860; Oed. 841; Tro. 1144; H.F. 788. Oddly, the word appears in the non-
Senecan H.O. six times and Oct. seven times.
14. When the messenger asks after reporting Hippolytus' accident, hocine est Jormae decus?
(1110), it is probable that the word should be translated as "shape," for otherwise the
phraseformae decus is virtually tautologous; on the other hand, tautology is a well-known
feature of Seneca's style.
15. Jaciem ... facies ... facies ... supercili ... calla ... caesaries ... umeros ... .frons ...
coma ... corporis ... taros ... pectore . .. manu ... digitis (795-812). Note particularly
the recurrence of pondus (799 and 1248) and of references to the hand that guides horses
(809-11 and 1259).
16. A further attractive interpretation in terms of the economy of the play is suggested to
me by E. Fantham (per litt.): "Seneca wants to emphasize how impossible it is for the
father who made the living son to restore the body after his curse. The awful precipitancy
of the curse is demonstrated by the irretrievable physical disintegration."
17. Accius, Atreus XII Rib beck furnishes a surprisingly close parallel: a case of literary
influence or of the persistence of cooking techniques? The latter is suggested by such
passages as Valerius Flaccus, Argonautica 8.254.
18. Thy. 59-63, 144-51, 277-78, 726-29, 1005-6, 1038-40. On the thematic importance of
this motif within the play, cf. R. J. Tarrant, Seneca's Thyestes. Edited with Introduction
and Commentary (Atlanta, 1985), 46.
19. Besides the passages discussed in the text, cf. Seneca, H.F. 76, 257-58; Tro. 140-41;
Phoen. 17-18, 157-62, 226-29, 363-65, 448; Med. 131-34, 278, 473-76, 630-31, 911-12;
Oed. 615-18, 1005-7 (and cf. 353-80); Ag. 974-75, 986-87 (and cf. 11, 26-27).
20. Seneca's inspiration may have been Euripides' description ofHeracles smashing the head
of his second son with his club (990-94); but Seneca substitutes a drastic heightening for
the horrific precision of Euripides' craftsman simile. Against the claim that the effect of
the blow upon Megara's head seems quite improbable, it might be urged that we are
dealing here not with an ordinary assailant, but with Hercules; but in the context of
Seneca's evident predilection for amputation, it seems likelier that Seneca takes advantage
of the tradition of Hercules' exceptional strength to let himself give free rein to his fantasy
than that this tradition compels him to adopt an image he would not have thought of
otherwise: Hercules' strength does not seem to furnish so much a cause for Megara's
beheading as rather a pretext for it.
21. Cf. E. Fantham, Seneca's Troades. A Literary Introduction with Text, Translation, and
Commentary (Princeton, 1982), 374-75, ad loc.
22. A helpful survey of the basic texts is provided by J. Laplanche and J.-B. Pontalis,
Vocabulaire de la psychanalyse (Paris, 1967), ss. vv.
23. For Seneca as the patient, cf. especially M. Rozelaar, Seneca. Eine Gesamtdarstellung
(Amsterdam, 1976); for the Phaedra as the patient, cf. for example, C. Segal, Language
and Desire in Seneca 's Phaedra (Princeton, 1986), and Boyle. For reservations about the
latter's handling of this question, cf. my review 16-17.
24. Here I cannot review and analyze the enormous scholarly literature on this subject. The
most recent discussion is 0. Zwierlein, Kritischer Kommentar zu den Tragodien Senecas,
Akad. d. Wiss. u. d. Lit. Mainz, Abh. Geistes- und Sozialwiss. 6 (Mainz and Stuttgart,
1986), 313-43: though he shows well that the play is most unlikely to be by Seneca, his
attempt to date it as late as the second century A.D. rests on much shakier foundations.
If the HO is indeed by Seneca, this merely adds one further text to those discussed above
and subtracts one from those discussed below, without materially altering the argument
made here.
25. [Seneca], H .O. 821-30. By contrast, in Sophocles Lichas dies gruesomely but is not
dismembered: Sophocles, Trach. 781-82.
26. H.0. 863-65. The theme recurs elsewhere in the play at 207-12, 1392-94.
27. [Seneca], Oct. 438, 510-13; cf. also 794-99.
28. Petronius, Sat. 36, 48, 79-80, 102, 108, 119.32, 129, 132, 141.
29. Persius, Sat. 5.8-9, 17-18. Interestingly, at the beginning ofTacitus' Dialogus Curiatius
Maternus, who is said to have produced tragedies under Nero, is shown working on a
Thyestes (3.3).
30. Besides the texts cited below, cf. especially the account of Sulla at Lucan, B.C. 2.140-
222; also 3.638-44, 663-69, 6.176, 217-19, 357-59, 7.623, 628,, and 8.676-711.
31. Virgil, Aen. 2.557-58; the reference to Pompey is noted already by Servius ad Aen.
2.557.
32. For this Stoic idea, cf. e.g. Cornutus, Theol. graeca 20 (35.6-15 Lang) . Cf. in general on
Lucan's relation to Stoic doctrine E. Narducci, La Provvidenza crudele. Lucano e la distruzi-

one dei miti augustei (Pisa, 1979); and on his relation to Cornutus my "Cornutus and Stoic
Allegoresis: A Preliminary Report, " in ANRW 2.36.3 (Berlin and New York, 1989),
2014-65, here 2053-55.
33. As 0. Korner, Die iirztlichen Kenntnisse in Ilias und Odyssee (Munich, 1929), 7~71, puts
it, "Beim Lesen der Ilias ist es, als ob wir unter der Fuhrung des Dichters einen Lehrgang
der Kriegschirurgie und chirurgischen Anatomie auf dem Schlachtfelde und im Baracken-
lager bei den Schiffen der Achaer durchmachen." Homeric wounds have been much
studied. Cf. C. Daremberg, La Medicine dans Homere (Paris, 1865); H. Frolich, Die
Militiirmedicin Homers (Stuttgart, 1879), 57-60; E. Buchholz, Die homerischen Realien 2.2
(Leipzig, 1883), 247-53; 0. Korner, Wesen und Wert der homerischen Heilkunde (Wiesbaden,
1904), 17-19, 22-27, and Kenntnisse 7~86; W. Marg, "Kampf und Tod in der Ilias," Die
Antike 18 (1942), 167-79; W.-H. Friedrich, Verwundung und Tod in der Ilias, Abhand-
lungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Gottingen, Philol-Hist. Kl. 3.38 (Gottingen,
1956).
34. Frolich.65.
35. 0 . Korner, "Wie entstanden die anatomischen Kenntnisse in Iliad und Odyssee?" Mun-
chener Medizinische Wochenschri.ft 42 (1922), 1484-87, and Kenntnisse Sf. A good corrective
to such views is provided by W. Kroll, Studien zum Verstiindnis der romischen Literatur
(Stuttgart, 1924), 304-7, who points out that epic wounds are fictional exaggerations,
not evidence of genuine medical interest or knowledge (304-5), and remarks of the Latin
epic poets, "Die fortgeschrittene medizinische Kenntnis zur Kritik an den alten und zur
Auffindung neuer Motive zu benutzen, war ein Gedanke, der diesen Dichtern ganz fern
lag" (307).
36. On wounds in Virgil, cf. especially R. Heinze, Virgils epische Technik 3 (Leipzig and
Berlin, 1928), 205-8, and P. Heuze, L'lmage du corps dans l'oeuvre de Virgile, Collection
de l'Ecole Fram;aise de Rome 86 (Rome, 1985), 67-206. For further discussions of
ancient epic wounds, cf. H. Bliimner, "Die Schilderung des Sterbens in der griechischen
Dichtkunst," Neue ]ahrbiicher 39 (1917), 499-521, and "Die Schilderung des Sterbens in
der romischen Dichtung," Neue ]ahrbucher 43/ 44 (1919), 244-72; Kroll; and O. Z wierlein,
"Das Waltharius-Epos und seine lateinischen Vorbilder," Antike und Abend/and 16 (1970),
153-84, here 154-57 (further bibliography at 154, n. 9).
37. Heuze discusses Virgilian wounds under the headings of "les corps broyes" (71-76), "les
corps coupes" (76-81: he does not distinguish here between cuts and amputations), and
"les corps transperces" (81-86). A helpful survey of kinds of wounds is provided by
K. Simpson, Forensic Medicine8 (London, 1979), 53-73, though I have not found his
terminology useful for classifying ancient epic injuries; cf. also for a general overview of
modern medical discussion of such injuries C. G. Tedeschi, W. G. Eckert, and L. G.
Tedeschi, eds., Forensic Medicine. A Study in Trauma and Environmental Hazards 1-2
(Philadelphia, London, and Toronto, 1977).
38. I adopt the phrase from G. Williams, Change and Decline. Roman Literature in the Early
Empire (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 1978), 190, who applies it to Seneca's
tragedies in general.
39. The statistics do not pretend to completeness or scientific exactness: they are intended
merely to serve as indicators of general tendencies. They are based upon II. 4-8, 1~12,
16, 2~22; Aen. 7, 9-12; Lucan, B .C. 3, 6-9; Silius Italicus, Pun. 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10, 12-
15, 17; Statius, Theb . 2, 3, 7-11. They do not include all cases of deaths or wounds, but
are limited to those in which the type of wound is described: I have tried to count every
case in which a wound to the body is specified and localized. In the statistics regarding
types of wounds, I have counted as a single case a simple list of those slain by the same
type of wound; on the other hand, when a warrior is wounded a number of times in
sequence I have counted each wound separately. The following passages, in which it is
unclear exactly what kind of wound is being described, I have excluded: II. 4.525-26,
10.483-96, 12.190-92, 16.323-24, 339-41, 20.460, 462; Virgil, Aen. 9.324-25, 705,
10. 907-8, 11.696-98, 12.511; Silius Italicus, Pun. 7.604-8. Most of these cases involve
wounds inflicted by the sword or spear which may be either cuts or punctures; omitting
them lowers the frequency of these two types of wounds in the authors involved, but
does not significantly affect my general argument about the incidence of amputations.
On the other hand, in the statistics regarding the number of lines per casualty I have
counted separately each victim appearing in a simple list of those slain by the same type
of wound but only once a warrior wounded a number of times in sequence; and, since
the exact kind of wound does not matter here, I have included the passages listed as
excluded above.
40. Cf. Heuze 82.
41. In Homer, as Marg 172, puts it, "Der Tod tritt fast immer auf der Stelle ein." Cf. J.
Griffin, Homer on Life and Death (Oxford, 1980), 90f. G. Finsler, Homer. 1. Der Dichter
und seine Welt 2 (Lepzig and Berlin, 1913), 308, goes so far as to claim that the sufferings
of the wounded are missing from Homer's battle scenes; Korner, Kenntnisse 74-75,
disagrees, but the paucity and nonspecificity of most of the evidence he cites actually
strengthen Finsler's case. Virgil tends to simplify even further the wounds he describes:
Heuze 112-13, puts the point well: "La singularite la plus manifeste dans la fa<;on dont
est representee l'arrivee de la mort, chez Virgile, est que tousles coups sont mortels. On
peut done dire que 1'.Eneide ignore le blesse-sauf un: Enee." Cf. Heinze 206-7.
42. Cf. H. Schrader, Porphyrii Quaestionum Homericarum ad Odysseam pertinentium reliquias
(Leipzig, 1890), 13f. at 1.262; Scholia ad Od 4.245; Eustathius, Commentaria 1494.48ff.
ad Od. 4.245.
~
43. Thus there are 5.8 puncture wounds for every cutting wound or amputation in Homer,
but only 3.1 in Virgil, 3. 9 in Silius, and 4.1 in Statius (perhaps an indication that, though
I later epic poets tend to a certain extent to continue to model their scenes of conflict upon
/ Homer, their adaptation of that model to contemporary realities may go beyond such
I specific points as cavalry, elephants, and details of weaponry to include basic tactical
issues). Again, there is a general tendency among the Latin poets for the frequency of the
forms of injuries which are less common or lacking altogether in Homer (amputations,
crushing blows, drownings, burns, wounds caused by animals or lightning) to increase:
they make up 14.4% of all wounds in Homer, but 24.2% in Virgil, 30.6% in Silius
Italicus, and 27.4% in Statius (in Lucan such wounds account for 66. 7% of all injuries).
44. E.g., II. 5.80-82, 11.145-47, 259-61; Virgil, Aen. 9.465-71, 10.394, 395-96, 12.380-82,
and cf. 9.770-71; Silius, Pun. 2.201-5, 4.213-15, 5.281-86, 413-19, and cf. 9.386-87,
13.246-48.
45. Lucan, B.C. 9.827-33: after six deaths caused by snakes, the seventh man cuts off his
arm in time and saves himself.
46. See above, p. 397.
47. J. D. Duff, ed., Lucan.
The Civil War (Cambridge, Mass. and London, 1969), 630, n. 1,
comments dryly, "It is remarkable that Scaeva survived his injuries."
48. Cf. in general e.g. M . Fuhrmann, "Die Funktion grausiger und ekelhafter Motive in der
lateinischen Dichtung," in H . R. Jauss, ed., Die nicht mehr schonen Kiinste. Grenzphiinomene
des .A.sthetischen, Poetik und Hermeneutik 3 (Munich, 1968), 23-66, and Williams 184-
92; on Seneca, 0. Regenbogen, "Schmerz und Tod in den Tragodien Senecas," in his
Kleine Schrifien, ed. F. Dirlmeier (Munich, 1961), 409-62, here 430-62, and C. Segal,
"Boundary Violation and the Landscape of the Self in Senecan Tragedy," Antike und
Abend/and 29 (1983), 172-87.
49. The most famous is Euripides, Bacch. 1125ff.
50. E.g. Ennius' Thyestes; Pacuvius' Pentheus; Accius' Atreus, Bacchae, and Tereus. As sug-
gested by Persius, Sat. 5.8-9, 17-18, the myth of Atreus and Thyestes continued to
attract later Roman tragedians: a Thuesta is attested for L. Varius Rufus, a Thyestes for
Gracchus, an Atreus for P. Pomponi us Secundus.
51. E.g., Accius, Atreus XII Ribbeck; ex incertis incertorum fabulis XCIII Ribbeck.
52. E.g., Ennius, Ann. 483-84, 485-86 Skutsch. For representative Ennian descriptions of
puncture wounds, cf. Ann. 356, 410 Skutsch.
53. Thus in Ovid's Metamorphoses cf. the stories of Pentheus (3. 721-23), Marsyas (6.387-
91), Pelops (6.407-10), Philomela (6.555-60), Itys (6.643-46), and Orpheus (11.50-51).
It will be noted that four of these tales are closely related and contiguous. On cruelty in
Ovid cf. F. Bomer P. Ovidius Naso. Metamorphosen. Kommentar. Buch XII-XIII Heidel-
berg, 1982), 89 at 12.236-37.
54. Fuhrmann 41f., discusses Ovid as a precursor of Silver Latin poetry's fascination with
cruelty; Segal, "Boundary" 186, briefly mentions him in connection with the language
of the body in Seneca.
55. For the methodological issues involved, cf. especially C. Geertz, The Interpretation of
Cultures (New York, 1973), in particular 3-30 on "thick description," and P. Bourdieu,
Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. R. Nice (Cambridge, 1977).
56. For a discussion of Seneca's emphasis upon the theme of outdoing the ordinary in terms
of these three contexts, cf. B. Seidensticker, "Maius solito. Senecas Thyestes und die
tragoedia rhetorica," Antike und Abend/and 31 (1985), 116-36, especially 126f. (rhetorical),
130f. (philosophical), and 134f. (historical).
57. E.g., Fuhrmann 30; Heuze 178-94; Segal, "Boundary" 186-87; and Williams 185-88.
On these spectacles cf. most recently C. A. Barton, "The Scandal of the Arena,"
Representations 27 (1989), 1-36 and K. M . Coleman, "Fatal Charades: Roman Executions
Staged as Mythological Enactments," JRS 80 (1990), 44-73. Material on them is conve-
niently gathered in L. Friedlander, Darstellungen aus der Sittengeschichte Roms in der Zeit
von Augustus bis zum Ausgang der Antoninen 10 , ed. G. Wissowa (Leipzig, 1922), 2.50-112;
L. Robert, Les Gladiateurs dans ['orient grec (Paris, 1940; Amsterdam, 1971 2); and K.
Hopkins, Death and Renewal (Cambridge, 1983), 1-30. The sight of human dismember-
ment could also be afforded by acts oflynch justice, in which angry mobs tore individuals
to pieces (Cf. C. Gnilka, "Lynchjustiz bei Catull," RhM 116 (1973), 256-69, especially
261-67); but such scenes were likely to have been far rarer than those afforded by the
circuses.
58. Cf. Hopkins 2. Mutatis mutandis, the same may perhaps be said about the increase in
bloodshed in American films over the past decade or so.
59. On the gladiatorial spectacles as political theater, cf. especially Hopkins 14-20.
60. Martial, De spectaculis 7.1-6 and 21 respectively; cf. also 8. Strikingly, these poems use
the incidents they recount as the occasion for oddly grim jokes: a hint of discomfort, or
of boredom?
61. Tertullian, Apol. 15.4-5.
62. Cf. Robert 326.
63. Strabo, Geog. 6.2.6.
64. Tacitus, Ann. 15.44.
65. Josephus, BJ. 7.373; M. Aurelius, Meditations 10.1.
66. E.g., John Chrysostom, In Epist. 1 ad Cor. Homil. 12, PG 61.103; Salvianus Presbyter,
De gubernatione Dei 6.10.
67. Celsus, De Arte medica prooem. 43, Galen 2.385 Kuhn. Cf. J. Scarborough, "Celsus on
Human Vivisection at Ptolemaic Alexandria," Clio Medica 11 (1976), 25-38.
68. And of course prosaic ones as well, cf., e. g., Tacitus, Hist. 2. 70. But poetic descriptions
tend to be more frequent, and more graphic.
69. E.g., Virgil, Aen. 12.296, Seneca, Ag. 901, Lucan, B.C. 4.285f., Silius Italicus, Pun.
10.241-46.
70. So Heuze 191-93: the passages in question are Aen. 9.589, 12.276, 340, 382, 741.
71. Gladiatorial contests are attested as early as 264 B. C.E. (Livy, Summary ofBook 16; Valerius
Maximus, Facta et dicta memorabilia 2.4. 7), venationes as early as 186 B.C.E. (Livy 39.22).
72. No doubt there will have been dismemberments on display in the circuses: but it
is hardly plausible that they will have been the most frequent form of injury; and to
argue that, though infrequent, they were nevertheless likely to have been the form that
most captured the popular interest, is simply to displace the question of the reason for
the popularity of dismemberment from literature to the circuses without explaining it at
all.
73. E.g., Pliny, Panegyric 33. It is the other side of this same coin that the gladiators could
also become the object of exaggerated admiration (cf. Friedlander 2.62f.): for on the
logic suggested here the successful combatant is most distant from the animals, and
closest to the gods.
74. While little if anything in the ancient world corresponded to the culture of frequent
ingestion of meat which has characterized a few parts of the modern world since the
nineteenth century, meat was obviously very far from being unknown in antiquity,
particularly among the wealthier social groups to whom the vast majority of Latin
(and post-classical Greek) literature was in the first instance directed. Cf. especially M.
Detienne and J.-P. Vernant, La Cuisine du sacrifice en pays grec (Paris, 1979). The line of
argument sketched out in the following pages suggests further speculations about the
theme of cannibalism which I shall not pursue here.
75. E.g., II. 1.459-69, 2.422-32, 9.206-17; Od. 3.448-73. Cf. W. Arend, Die typischen
Szenen bei Homer, Problemata 7 (Berlin, 1933), 64-79, and G. Bruns, Kiichenwesen und
Mahlzeiten, Archaeologica Homerica 2Q (Gottingen, 1970), 20ff., 46ff.
76. E.g., Cicero, De off. 2.55; Livy 39.46, 41.28.
77. The Cynics and the Epicureans form the only important exceptions.
78. E.g., Aristotle, Pol. 1.8.1256b15-22.
79. Cicero, N.D. 2.14.37 (SVF 2.1153).
80. Porphyry, De Abstinentia 3.20 (SVF 2.1152); cf. Origen, Contra Celsum 4.75, 78 (SVF
3.1173).
81. Plutarch, De sollert. animal. 959C-D.
82. Cicero, Epist. ad Fam. 7.1.3; cf. Dio 39.38.2-3, Pliny, N.H. 8. 7.21.
83. Plutarch, De sollert. animal. 985A.
84. Plutarch, De sollert. ~nimal. 959D; cf. Seneca, Epist. 7.4.
85. Tacitus, Ann. 15.44
86. Plato, Polit. 271£.
87. This is manifest above all in their ethical views but can be traced in other domains as
well: cf. in general my "Cornutus."
88. E.g., Sextus, Adv. Math. 9.88 (SVF 1.529), 8.275 (SVF 2.223); Origen, Contra Celsum
4.87 (SVF 2.725).
89. Seneca, Epist. 7.2-4.
90. ovovv exc,w is a technical term in Chrysippus for the sapiens: SVF 3.548, 563, 672, etc.
91. E.g., SVF 3.662, 668.
92. E.g., Seneca, Oed. 970. On the connections between the themes of rage and bestiality
in Seneca, cf. A. 1;3aumer, Die Bestie Mensch. Senecas Aggresionstheorie, ihre philosophischen
Vorstu.fen und ihre literarischen Auswirkungen, Studien zur klassischen Philologie 4 (Frank-
furt a.M. and Bern, 1982).
93. E.g., Lucan, B.C. 9.828-33.
94. E.g., Boyle 23, 25; P. J. Davis, "Vindicat omnes natura sibi: A Reading of Seneca's
Phaedra," in A. J. Boyle, ed., Seneca Tragicus. Ramus Essays on Senecan Drama (Barwick,
Victoria, Australia, 1983), 114-27, here 117; Petrona 43; Segal, Language 73(
95. Seneca, Phaedra 52-53: the reference to victory associates Hippolytus' hunt with the
circus games.
96. Alexander of Aphrodisias ad Aristotle, Top. 4 p. 155 Ald. p. 301.19 Wal. (SVF 2.329).
97. SVF 2.482ff.
98. Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 8.9 (SVF 2.351), Galen, 1rep1, 1r'A.iJ()ov~ 3 (SVF 2.440).
99. Galen, 1rep1,1r'A.fJOovd (SVF2.439-40), Plutarch, De comm. not. 49 (SVF2.444), Alexan-
der of Aphrodisias, De mixt. 216.14ff. Bruns (SVF 2.473, especially 155.32ff.).
100. Philo, Quaest. et solut. in Genesin 2.4 (S VF 2.802); I adopt the translation of A. A. Long
and D. N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1987), 1.285.
101. Galen, On Cohesive Causes 1, cited from M. Lyon, ed., Galen. On the Parts of Medicine,
etc. = Corp. Med. Graec. Suppl. Orient. 2 (Berlin, 1969), 53.
102. Chalcidius, ad Timaeum 220 (SVF 2.879); Aetius, Placita 4.21 (SVF 2.836).
103. Cf. Long and Sedley 1.172-73. So too, the Stoic doctrine of eternal recurrence raised
problems of personal identity to which different philosophers provided interestingly
different solutions: cf. ibid. 308-13.
104. Philo, De incorrupt. mundi 48 (SVF 2.397); cf. the discussion of this text at Long and
Sedley 1.175-76.
105. Seneca, Ag. 903, Silius, Pun. 5.416-17.
106. Silius, Pun. 13.246-48.
107. Lucan, B .C. 3.612-13.
108. Silius, Pun. 4.211-12.
109. Statius, Theb. 8.442-44.
110. For the Stoic view of personal identity, cf. especially D. Sedley, "The Stoic Criterion of
Identity," Phronesis 27 (1982), 255-75. Of course, one need not be a Stoic to find such
questions interesting: cf. e.g Ennius, Ann. 485-86 Skutsch, and Lucretius, Derer. nat.
3.642-56; and in general on ancient poetic interest in medical views on the persistence
of life in severed limbs cf. I. Gualandri, "Problemi di stile enniano," Helikon 5 (1965),
390-410, here 407-9.
111. Cf. especially J. Svenbro, "La Decoupe du poeme. Notes sur les origines sacrificielles de
la poetique grecque," Poetique 58 (1984), 215-32 = "11 taglio dell poesia. Note sulle
origini sacrificali della poetica greca," Studi Storici 25 (1984), 925-44; it is not necessary
to accept all of Svenbro's conclusions concerning the continuing sacrificial significance
of this terminology to recognize the importance of the material he has collected. For the
background of this metaphor in ancient philosophical aesthetics, cf. my "Des verschieden
Gesinnten Sinnesverbindung: Zur poetischen Einheit der Alten," in Einheit als Grund.frage
der Philosophie, ed . K. Gloy and E. Rudolph (Darmstadt, 1985), 1-29, here lff. Interesting
parallels from the modern visual arts can be garnered from the catalogue to a recent
museum exhibition: Le Corps en morceaux: Paris, Musee d'Orsay 5.2-3.6.1990, Frankfort,
Schirn Kunsthalle 23.6.-26.8.1990 (Paris, 1990).
112. Aristophanes, Frogs 862; the pun on µ£)'..'Y/ is obviously linked with that on MKveiv
5aKvecr0ai in the preceding line.
113. Horace, Serm. 1.4.62.
114. Plato, Phdr. 264B-C; cf. on this passage Svenbro 221f. = "Taglio" 934f.
115. Aristotle, Poet. 1451a3-5, 1459a17-21. Cf. on these passages Svenbro 227 = "Taglio"
943.
116. E.g., caput (cf. OLD s.v. 16a, b, 18), corpus (6b, cf. 1ld, 16), lumen (11b), membrum (Sc),
pes (11); Kecpa>..mov (LSJ Il.2, 4, 7), Kecpa>..ri (Schol.Bad Hephaestion Manual, Scriptores
Metrici Graeci 1.168.14-20 Westphal), KOLAia (Tractatus Graeci de re metrica inediti, 76.4-
5 Koster), KwAov (LSJ 11.3, 4), 'J...ayap6<; (LSJ 4), µe>..or; (LSJ[B]), vevpov (Aristophanes,
Frogs 862), ovpa ( Tractatus 75.1, Plutarch, Mor. 397D, Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae
14.632D-E, Schol. B 169.1, 5), 1rov<; (LSJ IV), 1rp0Koi'J...wr; (LSJ), CTKBAO<; (LSJ 11.4),
crwµa (LSJ IV). For a number of these examples I am indebted to Svenbro 222, 224,
230-31 = "Taglio" 936, 939.
117. Seneca, Epist. 114, especially sections 1, 3ff., 11, 14, 16, and 17.
118. Seneca, Epist. 114.17; cf. Cicero, Orat. 51.170, Lucullus 138, De part. 15, and Pliny, Epist.
1.20.19.
119. Seneca, Epist. 114.1; cf. Seneca the Elder, Contr. 2 pr. 2, and Quintilian, Inst. 3.8.6,
)
I
120.
4.1. 79, 4.2.45, 12.10.80.
Valerius Maximus, Facta et dicta memorabilia 2. 7.14, 3. 7.ext.6, 3.8.3, 6.3.10; Quintilian,
Inst. 8.3.85, 9.4.118; Pliny, Epist. 1.20.19.
I 121. Seneca himself expresses his impatience with the slow, gentle, monotonous movement
of the Ciceronian sentence (Epist. 114.16) We know of Seneca's continuing popularity
from the hostility directed toward him and those who imitate him not only by Quintilian
(Inst. orat. 10.1.125ff.) but also by such later writers as Fronto (ad M. Aurelium de
orationibus 3) and Aulus Gellius (Noct . Att. 12.2.1, 13-14).
122. The classic account is E. Norden, Die antike Kunstprosa vom. VI. Jahrhundert v. Chr. bis
in die Zeit der Renaissance2 (Leipzig and Berlin, 1909), 1.270-300 ("Der neue Stil"),
especially 295-298; cf. also A. D. Leeman, Orationis Ratio . The Stylistic Theories and
Practice of the Roman Orators, Historians and Philosophers (Amsterdam, 1963), 1.264-96.
123. Regenbogen 461 provides an excellent characterization: "ftir Seneca ist Rhetorik die Form
der gebrochenen Linie; des 'Staccato' konnte man sagen, in Satz und Vers; nicht der
geschwungenen Linie wie beim Cicero. Und dieses Staccato beherrscht ebenso den
Aufbau des ganzen Stiicks, mit seinem Mangel an einer durchlaufenden, sich organisch
entfaltenden Handlung. An ihre Stelle tritt das Nebeneinander der pointierten, affektivish
unterbauten Einzelszene. Auch hier gilt der Rhythmus der gebrochenen Linie." Cf. also
Williams 213ff., 242f., 307. The same applies to Lucan as well, though to a lesser extent:
ibid. 247-50, and E. Fraenkel, "Lucan als Mittler des antiken Pathos," in Kleine Beitriige
zur klassischen Philologie (Rome, 1964), 2.233-66, here 247f.
124. Quintilian, Inst. 10.1.130. At 8.5.34, Quintilian compares sententiae to the eyes of a body:
in small quantities they are a virtue, but if there are too many of them they can interfere
with the function of the remaining organs; cf. also 1.8. 9, 8.5.14.
125. Ps.-Longinus, De subl. 42.
126. Geertz 452.

127. For an important recent assessment, cf. S. C. Humphreys, "Anthropology and the
Classics," in Anthropology and the Greeks (London, 1978), 17-30.
128. Cf. now E. Scarry, The Body in Pain. The Making and Unmaking ofthe World (New York
and Oxford, 1985).

Most

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Most

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

11

disiecti membra poetae:

At the climax of his Phaedra, Seneca assigns to a messenger the task of

late cruentat arua et inlisum caput

qui modo patemi darns imperii comes

but where Euripides' account is poignantly brief and unspecific, Seneca's is

excutior curru, lorisque tenentibus artus

seem to require it nor common sense to tolerate it. 19 If in Euripides' Heracles

example he picks is the representation ofThyestes dining upon the limbs of

How is such an obsession to be interpreted? Although the general emphasis

be to see in them a dramatic enactment of a meditation upon the identity of

that no human, not even themselves, was superior to (such) an animal; or

Everything that is sustained by glue is immediately forced into a natural union.

The tendency of the Stoics to concretize this metaphysical sustaining force

to break up a speech into fragments: every sententia comes to a stop, and so

And according to the author of the treatise On the Sublime, "Chopping up

Hermeneutics may be said to fulfill its project as anthropology. The act of

that larger context is on the basis, precisely, of the interpretation of such

torment of the human body implies a reflection on what it means to be a

Lucan's relation to Stoic doctrine E. Narducci, La Provvidenza crudele. Lucano e la distruzi-

126. Geertz 452.

You might also like