The Medium and the Messenger in Seneca’sPhaedra,Thyestes, andTrojan Women

Abstract

AbstractThe language of Seneca’s messenger speeches concentrates preceding patterns of imagery into grotesquely violent action. In three tragedies –Phaedra,Thyestes, andTrojan Women– the report of an anonymous messenger dominates an entire act. All three scenes describe gruesome deaths: the impalement of Hippolytus on a tree trunk inPhaedra, Atreus’ butchering of his nephews inThyestes, and the slaughter of Astyanax and Polyxena inTrojan Women.In portraying violence, these messenger speeches repurpose language established in earlier scenes to realize and deform a dominant theme of each play: distorted sexuality, appetite, and moral dissolution.