Matthew Roller (Johns Hopkins University)
Early in Tacitus’ Dialogus, several friends visit Curiatius Maternus, following his sensational recitation of a drama entitled Cato. Powerful persons have taken offense, and they urge Maternus to revise the work for safety. By no means, replies Maternus: he will soon complete a Thyestes that will say anything the Cato left unsaid (Dial. 3). Scholars have long recognized that Maternus’ Thyestes, and other dramas on this theme, can be taken—by contemporaries and by moderns—as offering anti-monarchical commentary, and even as applying to specific contemporary individuals (see. e.g., Leigh, Erasmo, Boyle). Indeed the risk Maternus runs is illuminated by Dio Cassius’ account (58.24) of Aemilius Scaurus, whose drama Atreus was perceived by Tiberius as an attack on himself, resulting in Scaurus’ forced suicide. Accius’ Atreus and Varius’ Thyestes (TRF 1.161-66, 229 Ribbeck), along with Seneca’s Thyestes, have also been given “political” interpretations.
But (c)overt political commentary is not all this theme can do in the Roman empire. In this talk, after sketching the “politics” issue as just indicated, I explore the wider landscape of this theme. Martial and Pliny depict the intense literary activity of aristocrats and lower status “professional poets,” leaving little doubt that many dramas (on all themes) were written in the first two centuries CE. Authors wrote in Latin (as just indicated) and in Greek, though evidence is lacking for new dramas in Greek on Thyestes/Atreus in the Roman period. Indeed, most surviving imperial references to Greek dramas on this topic are to Sophocles (Atreus, Thyestes: TrGF 4 F 139-41, 247-66) and Euripides (Thyestes: TrGF 5 F 391-97).
The Thyestes/Atreus complex of dramas provides opportunities for early imperial authors in both languages to reflect broadly on a variety of themes. First, the social dynamics of powerful households: Dio Chrysostom (Or. 66.6) and Lucian (Merc. Cond. 41, with Schmitz) use these dramas (or texts) as paradigms for domestic relations in such houses. Second, Dio Cassius, in two passages examining Nero’s performance of such roles (63.9, 22) focuses in the first on status degradation—a matter of appropriateness—and in the second on the apparent paradigm of criminality Nero takes up (the “tyrant” theme). In a lighter vein, Martial can present his experience at a convivium where his host endlessly recites a Thyestes as Thyestean suffering for himself (Epigr. 3.45, with Fusi). The Christian apologist Athenagoras makes the theme’s cannibalism bear theological weight in a defense of resurrection (De Res. 4.4.). Finally, Seneca’s philosophical deployment of the theme in his dialogue De Ira involves tales of tyrants killing the children of their guests at banquets and even feeding the parents the flesh, spurring surprising reflections on anger and its control (e.g., Ira 1.20, 2.33, 3.14-15; cf. Roller 2001). My survey also reveals the varied ways imperial tragedy can be realized: fully staged productions, the performance of extracts in various settings (Heldmann), recitations of works in progress, and completed texts available for reading.
No single interpretive frame emerges for grasping the Atreus/Thyestes dramatic complex in Imperial society, nor should we expect it. Rather, we see the diversity of uses to which this rich theme is put in diverse imperial contexts.