Robert Cowan

BLOATED BUSKINS: SENECA AND THE SATIRIC IDEA OF TRAGEDY

If satire is epic’s ‘evil twin’, then tragedy is satire’s ugly sister.1 Both epic and tragedy soar aloft in the stratosphere of the generic hierarchy, viewed humbly and from a distance by satire’s pedestrian muse, who at the same time scoffs at their overblown irrelevance.2 Many of the same criticisms, often framed as backhanded compliments, are cast at both genres by their poor relation, but there are also distinctions. Epic, even if cloistered in an ivory tower, is constructed as sharing the impossible purity of that ivory, the better for its lofty and noble themes to be befouled, debased and perverted in the distorting mirror held up by its evil twin.3 Tragedy, however, is itself a perversion, ethically and aesthetically, a mishmash of vice and excess which is a natural target for satire, the self-appointed social policeman, but which also bears an uncomfortable resemblance to satire’s own nature. Much work has been done in recent years on satire’s engagement with and tendentious construction of tragedy, but very little on tragedy’s reciprocal engagement with satire.4 The latter will be the focus of this article, approached from two, closely-related angles. First, I shall explore the ways in which Senecan tragedy can be seen to engage creatively with the ‘idea’ of tragedy—however stereotyped and distorted, or rather because it is stereotyped and distorted—which satire constructs. Such an approach must of course situate itself in the growing body of work on generic

Cinna's trouser snake - or the biter bit?: Alternative interpretations of Cinna fr. 12 'FRP'

Abstract The only extant choliambic line by Cinna, comparing some action to a Psyllus doing something to an asp, is preserved by Aulus Gellius to illustrate that the adjective somniculosus can have the causative sense ‘sleep-inducing’ as well as the active one of ‘sleepy’. If Gellius is correct, then the simile’s missing verb is likely to have one of the Psylli, famed for their ability to lull snakes to sleep, doing just that to a ‘sleep-inducing asp’. The situation which would be compared to this must be that of someone receiving a taste of their own medicine. This would also account for the Psyllus’ imprecise epithet Poenus, which would pun on poena. If Gellius is wrong, and somniculosus means ‘sleepy’ as in almost all other instances in Latin, the combination of snake and sleep imagery, which can be paralleled separately in other texts, with the abusive choliambic metre might suggest that what is being compared to the asp is the flaccid penis of an impotent man.

Haven’t I Seen You before Somewhere? Optical Allusions in Republican Tragedy

To discuss the visual dimension of Republican tragedy, we must inevitably climb to our seat in the cauea and enter a world of speculation. This chapter surveys some of the theoretical and practical issues surrounding the very notion of optical and specifically theatrical allusion in general and particularly with regard to ancient drama, before considering its implications for Republican tragedy. Considering the limited evidence for all aspects of Republican tragedy, it examines the possibilities for allusion in the better-preserved texts of fifth-century Attic drama. In terms of the visual dimension, it is notable that the majority of the vases depicting scenes from Attic drama come from Magna Graecia. The most suggestive examples of probable visual allusion in Republican tragedy come in plays which deal not with the same plot as a predecessor, but with a variation on or sequel to it. Keywords:ancient drama; Magna Graecia; Republican tragedy; visual allusion