Lucius Annaeus Seneca (Corduba, 4 B.C. – Rome, April 65 A.D.) was a Roman philosopher, playwright and statesman,
among the foremost exponents of Imperial Stoicism, the so-called ““New Stoa.””.
Active in many fields, including public life, he served as senator and quaestor during the Julio-Claudian age.
Condemned to death by Caligula, he was later pardoned by the emperor himself.
He was subsequently sentenced to relegatio in insulam in Corsica by Caligula’s successor Claudius, who later
recalled him to Rome, where he became tutor and mentor to the future emperor Nero, at the request of Nero’s
mother, Julia Agrippina Augusta.
After the so-called “five years of good government” (54–59 A.D.), during which Nero ruled wisely under Seneca’s
guidance, relations between the two gradually deteriorated, leading the philosopher to withdraw into
private life. Nevertheless, possibly implicated in a conspiracy against Nero, Seneca ultimately became a victim
of the emperor’s repression and chose to commit suicide.
Seneca exercised a profound influence on later Roman Stoicism: among his pupils were Gaius Musonius Rufus
and Arulenus Rusticus, grandfather of Quintus Junius Rusticus, who in turn became one of the teachers of the
philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius.
In the period following his withdrawal from political life (from 62 A.D.), he devoted himself primarily to philosophical
reflection and literary composition.
He is the author of ten tragedies based on Greek mythology, the only Latin tragic works to survive in a complete
form, representing an invaluable testimony both to an entire literary genre and to the revival of Latin tragic
theatre after the not entirely successful attempts of Augustan cultural policy to promote its rebirth.
Among these stands out Hercules Furens (The Madness of Hercules), which recounts Hercules’ return to Thebes
after completing his labours.
During his absence, the tyrant Lycus has seized power and threatens the hero’s family, especially his wife Megara
and their children. Hercules returns, kills Lycus and restores order.
However, the goddess Juno, the hero’s enemy, strikes him with madness: blinded by delirium, Hercules mistakes
his own children for enemies and kills them together with his wife.
When he regains his senses, he discovers the horror of his actions and falls into despair, longing for death. It
is his father Amphitryon who restrains him, urging him to confront his suffering and atone for his guilt.
It is in the opening part of the play, within Act II, during the confrontation between Megara and Lycus—a
crucial moment—that Megara, employing a language rich in impossible images, expresses the inviolability of
her loyalty to Hercules and her rejection of Lycus, using the image of Scylla and her maritime and geographical
setting as a symbol of what can never come to pass.
MEGARA:
“Should I perhaps touch the hand that has been stained with the blood
of my father and with the slaughter of my two brothers? Before that happens,
dawn shall extinguish the day, and sunset shall restore it,
and there shall be secure peace between snow and flames,
and Scylla shall join the Sicilian shore to the Ausonian one,
and Euripus, fleeing in its alternating course,
shall stand still upon the Euboean wave.
You have deprived me of my father, my
kingdom, my brothers, my ancestral home;
what remains? The only thing left to me,
and dearer to me than father, brother, kingdom, and home,
is the hatred I bear toward you.”
The passage belongs to the opening phase of the tragedy, when Hercules is still absent.
Thebes is ruled by the tyrant Lycus, who has killed King Creon, Megara’s father, together with his sons, seizing
power through violence.
In order to legitimize his rule, he attempts to force Megara, Hercules’ wife, to marry him; the passage constitutes
the woman’s response, in which she rejects him with strength and contempt.
Megara declares that she will never unite herself with the murderer of her family and, to make her refusal more
effective, she resorts to a series of paradoxical images—dawn extinguishing the day, fire coexisting with snow,
natural phenomena stopping or reversing themselves—all examples of cosmic impossibilities, events destined
never to occur.
Within this context appears the expression “Scylla shall join the Sicilian shore to the Ausonian one,” in which
Scylla, located in the Strait of Messina between Sicily and Italy, traditionally symbolizes separation, danger,
and an impassable boundary together with Charybdis.
To claim that Scylla could unite the two shores is therefore to imagine the impossible, since the Strait cannot
disappear nor can the two lands merge.
The reference performs a central function: it reinforces Megara’s refusal—she would accept Lycus only when
the impossible occurs, that is, never—and at the same time broadens the discourse to a cosmic dimension, transforming
an individual sorrow into a universal law that encompasses nature, geography, and myth.
Scylla thus acquires a precise symbolic value, representing the impassable boundary (just like Megara’s moral
limit), chaos and danger, in opposition to the order violated by Lycus; in this sense, Megara appears as steadfast
as the Strait itself, impossible to cross or bend.
The mention of Scylla is therefore not decorative but profoundly meaningful, for it expresses, through a geographical
and mythical image of great power, the absolute nature of Megara’s refusal and the moral impossibility
of her union with Lycus.
Giuseppe Ribuffo
