524-532

All of these myths were well known, though we may be less familiar today with the story of Hercules fighting Pluto at Pylos. Seneca himself has treated Hercules’ Labors more than once already in this play (44–63, 205–48). As usual in Latin literature, the originality and interest derives not from the material, but from the way the author uses it. In this ode, Seneca’s artistry shines through in the musicality of his verse, the careful intratextual links he draws between various sections of his text, and his creative responses to the several earlier treatments of these myths.

The meter is the Lesser Asclepiad. Unlike the shifting patterns of longs and shorts possible in the anapestic dimeter of the first ode, or in the iambic trimeters of the acts, every line of this ode has the exact same metrical pattern (– – – u u – || – u u – u x). The topics of this ode are the relentless cruelty of Fortune, the endlessness of Hercules’ Labors, and the inescapability of death. The unvarying rhythm expresses these ideas in sound, and heightens our sense of the challenge that Hercules has in front of him, as he tries to beat Fortune and overcome the laws of the Underworld. But Seneca finds many ways to produce musical variety within the constant rhythm of the ode. We will point out many instances of alliteration, anaphora, and other sound effects in the individual notes. Here we highlight some striking sound-play in pairs of words: the roads travelled by Sarmatians (539 sēmita Sarmatīs), the lord of death afraid to die (565 mortis … morī), Hercules finding a path back from the “pathless” Underworld (567–68 invius ... viās), the judges of the Underworld weeping for Eurydice (581 Eurydicēn iūridicī), and, in 588, Orpheus’ love (amor) not tolerating delay (mora). 

The previous ode was integrated closely with the plot of the acts surrounding it: the Chorus began the ode by describing the sunrise that Juno had noted at the end of Act 1, and ended the ode by pointing out the appearance of Megara and Amphitryon, whose speeches begin Act 2. This ode, in contrast, would seem to be strangely separated from the plot. At the end of Act 2, Amphitryon has heard the sounds of Hercules returning from the Underworld, and Hercules himself will appear at the beginning of Act 3. We might therefore expect the Chorus to be in a triumphant mood. Instead they begin with complaints about the unfairness of Hercules’ labors that recall Amphitryon’s and Megara’s complaints at the beginning of Act 2. The ode ends with a sententia expressing hope that Hercules’ strength will be able to overcome the power of the Underworld, just as Orpheus’ song did. But this hope is belied by the lines immediately before: Orpheus’ temporary victory was followed by Eurydice’s second death. In place of hope and triumph, then, Seneca’s Chorus gives us an expression of despair and the endlessness of Hercules’ suffering, just at the moment when he returns successfully from his greatest Labor. This triumph, we understand, will be as short-lived as Orpheus’, and similarly result in the deaths of his loved ones.

Within the ode itself, Seneca creates verbal and sonic links between individual lines and sections. Consider, for instance, the two Labors that he treats briefly in 529–30, the Lernaean Hydra and the Apples of the Hesperides: serpentis resecet colla ferācia, / dēceptīs referat māla sorōribus. Each of these lines features a three-syllable word ending in –tis, a three-syllable third person verb starting with re–, a two-syllable neuter accusative plural noun, and a four-syllable word. The longer descriptions of Hercules’ theft of Hippolyta’s Belt and of Cerberus focus on the desolation and stagnation of Scythia and the Underworld. In Scythia, the frozen Black Sea has no waves (537 illīc dūra carent aequora flūctibus) and stands still (stat pontus). Similarly, in the Underworld, the waters have no waves (550-1 illīc ... flūctibus aequora) and stand still (554 stat ... pelagus).

More subtle links are produced by a pair of motifs running throughout the ode: dangerous snakes and thefts from, or of, women. Hercules’ defeat of the Lernaean Hydra in 529 is followed by his theft of the golden apples from the “sister” Hesperides in 530, apples which are guarded by a giant snake (531–32). This is followed by Hercules’ theft from Hippolyta and his trip to the Underworld to steal Cerberus, who, as Seneca notes elsewhere (794–95) is terrifying not just for his three dog heads but also for the snakes that surround them. The Underworld in turn is described not as realm of Pluto, but of “Sicilian Proserpina” (549): Hercules is stealing from another woman. And Proserpina is called “Sicilian” in an allusion to her own abduction by Pluto from Sicily. Orpheus descends to the Underworld at the end of the ode to retrieve—one might say “steal”—Eurydice from Pluto, after her death from a snake bite. But Eurydice is stolen back from Orpheus, just as he emerges from the Underworld. This is the thought that Seneca leaves us with as Hercules emerges from the Underworld to rejoin his wife and children.

Intertextual connections to previous poetry complement the intratextual links within Seneca’s play. In every case, these intertexts helped to anchor Seneca’s treatments of the myths in his literary heritage. In several cases, the echoes of previous authors enhance our understanding of Seneca’s meaning. From Virgil, Seneca adapts his description of the Underworld as “impossible to return from” (548 irremeābilēs; cf. Aeneid 6.425 rīpam inremeabilis undae [i.e., Styx]), and of the numberless souls that cross the River Styx (556–57 gentēs innumerās… tot populī; cf. Aeneid 6.706 innumerae gentēs populīque). The Chorus hopes that Hercules will have a “easy road” back from the Underworld (568 facilēs … viās). A famous phrase from Virgil’s Aeneid taught that only the descent to the Underworld was easy (Aeneid 6.126 facilis dēscensus Avernō).

Equally pointed is the description of the Fates’ spindles as “irrevocable”: Parcārumque colōs nōn revocābilēs (559). The very rare word revocābilis appears in Latin poetry only once before Seneca, at Ovid, Metamorphoses 6.264–65. When Apollo and Diana slaughter all the children of Niobe, the last victim begs in vain for mercy from the gods: “parcite!” mōtus erat, cum iam revocābile tēlum / nōn fuit, arquitenēns (“‘Spare me!’ The archer god was moved, but now his arrow could not be called back.”) As we will soon see, Hercules can no more overcome the powers of the gods than Niobe could, and he will also cause his children’s death by slaughtering them himself.

For the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, Seneca had particularly recent and famous models: Virgil, Georgics 4.467–503 and Ovid, Metamorphoses 10.11–63. These too he cleverly adapts for his own purposes. For instance, he begins with the phrase immītēs … umbrārum dominōs, which combines descriptions of Pluto in both Virgil and Ovid (Georgics 4.492 immītis … tyrannī and Metamorphoses 10.16 umbrārum dominum). Thus, while the plural dominōs in Seneca refers to the various authority figures in the Underworld persuaded by Orpheus’ song (Pluto, Proserpina, Minos, the Furies, etc.), it also subtly acknowledges that Seneca’s two models presented two different versions of Pluto. But ancient poets did not simply echo or recombine material from their predecessors. Each new version of a story added to what had come before, as part of a never-ending process of literary creation. In Virgil’s version of the Orpheus myth, he famously does not give the contents of Orpheus’ songs and prayers in the Underworld. Ovid fills in this gap with a long speech by Orpheus (Metamorphoses 10.17–39). Seneca does not reproduce this, but instead fillsin a different gap by giving a speech to Pluto (582–87), which is found in neither of his models.