Lucius Annaeus Seneca (Corduba, 4 B.C. \u2013 Rome, April 65 A.D.) was a Roman philosopher, playwright and statesman,\namong the foremost exponents of Imperial Stoicism, the so-called \u201c\u201cNew Stoa.\u201d<\/i>\u201d.
\nActive in many fields, including public life, he served as senator and quaestor during the Julio-Claudian age.
\nCondemned to death by Caligula, he was later pardoned by the emperor himself.
\nHe was subsequently sentenced to relegatio in insulam in Corsica by Caligula\u2019s successor Claudius, who later\nrecalled him to Rome, where he became tutor and mentor to the future emperor Nero, at the request of Nero\u2019s\nmother, Julia Agrippina Augusta.
\nAfter the so-called \u201cfive years of good government\u201d (54\u201359 A.D.), during which Nero ruled wisely under Seneca\u2019s\nguidance, relations between the two gradually deteriorated, leading the philosopher to withdraw into\nprivate life. Nevertheless, possibly implicated in a conspiracy against Nero, Seneca ultimately became a victim\nof the emperor\u2019s repression and chose to commit suicide.
\nSeneca exercised a profound influence on later Roman Stoicism: among his pupils were Gaius Musonius Rufus\nand Arulenus Rusticus, grandfather of Quintus Junius Rusticus, who in turn became one of the teachers of the\nphilosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius.\nIn the period following his withdrawal from political life (from 62 A.D.), he devoted himself primarily to philosophical\nreflection and literary composition.
\nHe is the author of ten tragedies based on Greek mythology, the only Latin tragic works to survive in a complete\nform, representing an invaluable testimony both to an entire literary genre and to the revival of Latin tragic\ntheatre after the not entirely successful attempts of Augustan cultural policy to promote its rebirth.
\nAmong these stands out Hercules Furens (The Madness of Hercules), which recounts Hercules\u2019 return to Thebes\nafter completing his labours.
\nDuring his absence, the tyrant Lycus has seized power and threatens the hero\u2019s family, especially his wife Megara\nand their children. Hercules returns, kills Lycus and restores order.
\nHowever, the goddess Juno, the hero\u2019s enemy, strikes him with madness: blinded by delirium, Hercules mistakes\nhis own children for enemies and kills them together with his wife.
\nWhen he regains his senses, he discovers the horror of his actions and falls into despair, longing for death. It\nis his father Amphitryon who restrains him, urging him to confront his suffering and atone for his guilt.
\nIt is in the opening part of the play, within Act II, during the confrontation between Megara and Lycus\u2014a\ncrucial moment\u2014that Megara, employing a language rich in impossible images, expresses the inviolability of\nher loyalty to Hercules and her rejection of Lycus, using the image of Scylla and her maritime and geographical\nsetting as a symbol of what can never come to pass.<\/p>\n
MEGARA<\/b><\/i>:<\/p>\n
\u201cShould I perhaps touch the hand that has been stained with the blood
\nof my father and with the slaughter of my two brothers? Before that happens,
\ndawn shall extinguish the day, and sunset shall restore it,
\nand there shall be secure peace between snow and flames,
\nand Scylla shall join the Sicilian shore to the Ausonian one,
\nand Euripus, fleeing in its alternating course,
\nshall stand still upon the Euboean wave.
\nYou have deprived me of my father, my
kingdom, my brothers, my ancestral home;
\nwhat remains? The only thing left to me,
\nand dearer to me than father, brother, kingdom, and home,
\nis the hatred I bear toward you.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
The passage belongs to the opening phase of the tragedy, when Hercules is still absent.\nThebes is ruled by the tyrant Lycus, who has killed King Creon, Megara\u2019s father, together with his sons, seizing\npower through violence.
\nIn order to legitimize his rule, he attempts to force Megara, Hercules\u2019 wife, to marry him; the passage constitutes\nthe woman\u2019s response, in which she rejects him with strength and contempt.
\nMegara declares that she will never unite herself with the murderer of her family and, to make her refusal more\neffective, she resorts to a series of paradoxical images\u2014dawn extinguishing the day, fire coexisting with snow,\nnatural phenomena stopping or reversing themselves\u2014all examples of cosmic impossibilities, events destined\nnever to occur.
\nWithin this context appears the expression \u201cScylla shall join the Sicilian shore to the Ausonian one,\u201d in which\nScylla, located in the Strait of Messina between Sicily and Italy, traditionally symbolizes separation, danger,\nand an impassable boundary together with Charybdis.
\nTo claim that Scylla could unite the two shores is therefore to imagine the impossible, since the Strait cannot\ndisappear nor can the two lands merge.
\nThe reference performs a central function: it reinforces Megara\u2019s refusal\u2014she would accept Lycus only when\nthe impossible occurs, that is, never\u2014and at the same time broadens the discourse to a cosmic dimension, transforming\nan individual sorrow into a universal law that encompasses nature, geography, and myth.\nScylla thus acquires a precise symbolic value, representing the impassable boundary (just like Megara\u2019s moral\nlimit), chaos and danger, in opposition to the order violated by Lycus; in this sense, Megara appears as steadfast\nas the Strait itself, impossible to cross or bend.\nThe mention of Scylla is therefore not decorative but profoundly meaningful, for it expresses, through a geographical\nand mythical image of great power, the absolute nature of Megara\u2019s refusal and the moral impossibility\nof her union with Lycus.<\/p>\n<\/div>
Giuseppe Ribuffo<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/i>Next page: 100. Maurits Cornelis Escher, Scilla, 5 May 1930<\/span><\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1415","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nSeneca - Discover Scilla<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.discoverscilla.com\/en\/seneca-ercole-furioso\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Seneca - Discover Scilla\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.discoverscilla.com\/en\/seneca-ercole-furioso\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Discover Scilla\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-08-19T08:43:56+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Estimated reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"10 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.discoverscilla.com\\\/seneca-ercole-furioso\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.discoverscilla.com\\\/seneca-ercole-furioso\\\/\",\"name\":\"Seneca - 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