Medea’s revenge and Seneca’s Stoicism

Abstract This chapter compares the treatment of revenge in Seneca’s tragedies with the Stoic analysis of anger and revenge presented in his philosophical treatise De ira. In doing so, it raises the question of the relation between Seneca’s tragedies and his philosophy. The chapter’s primary aim is to show that the figure Medea plays a key role in both bodies of work and, on that basis, it argues for the consistency and unity of Seneca’s views on revenge as a whole. It is divided into nine sections. The first section gives an account of the controversy about how, if at all, the tragedies relate to the philosophy. Sections two to four focus on De ira, first presenting Seneca’s views on anger, women, and revenge, then showing how revenge occupies a central role in the Stoic definition of anger, and finally analysing Seneca’s theory of the three ‘movements’ (motus) of anger, his main innovation compared to earlier Stoics. Sections five to seven turn to Medea, assessing first her role in Roman Republican drama, which the surviving evidence suggests was significant, and then the enormous influence of Euripides’ Medea both on philosophers, especially in the Stoic school, and on poets. Elements of Stoic interpretations of Euripides’ Medea can be seen in Seneca’s Medea and De ira. Sections eight and nine analyse the similarities between Seneca’s descriptions of anger and madness, which often involve Furies, in the tragedies and in De ira, while also considering these descriptions within their first-century CE context.