Thyestes

Seneca’s Thyestes is based on an old Greek myth from the collection of traditions involving the family of Tantalus and the royal house of Mycenae or Argos (after Homer, the two city-states were often regarded as interchangeable in literature). Tantalus, the sinful patriarch, was a son of Zeus (Jupiter to the Romans) notorious for killing his son Pelops and serving him to the gods to test their divinity. The gods saw through this trick and punished Tantalus for his impiety, casting him into the underworld to suffer an eternal “tantalizing” torment: In what became the best-known version of the myth, this torment involved unquenchable hunger and thirst, though other versions substituted this with a large boulder forever suspended over Tantalus’s head, threatening to fall at any moment.

Tantalus’s son Pelops, meanwhile, was brought back to life. He traveled to Greece, where he sought to marry Hippodamia, daughter of the Pisan king Oenomaus. Oenomaus challenged all his daughter’s suitors to a chariot race and beat them all with the help of his divine horses. Pelops paid off Oenomaus’s charioteer Myrtilus to rig the race by sabotaging the king’s chariot. During the race, Oenomaus was killed, and Pelops won Hippodamia and the throne of Pisa; he rewarded Myrtilus by casting him into the sea.

Atreus and Thyestes, the main characters of Seneca’s play, were the sons of Pelops. Their violent and unruly behavior resulted in their being exiled from their father’s kingdom. They went east, eventually settling in Mycenae (sometimes called Argos in later literature, including in Seneca’s play). Here, they entered into a brutal feud for the throne. In a nutshell, the brothers agreed that whoever held a magical golden-fleeced ram would be king. Atreus found this ram, but Thyestes seduced his wife Aerope and convinced her to turn over the ram to him (this is why Atreus is uncertain about the paternity of his sons Agamemnon and Menelaus in Seneca’s Thyestes).

Thyestes became king and drove Atreus into exile. Later, Atreus regained the throne and ousted Thyestes. This is where Seneca’s play begins, with Atreus plotting a terrible revenge on his brother. The play ends with Atreus tricking Thyestes into eating his own sons. However, the myth does not end there. The cycle of violence would continue, with Thyestes begetting a son, Aegisthus, who would murder Atreus. The pattern of wrongdoing would continue with Atreus’s sons Agamemnon and Menelaus, and with Agamemnon’s son Orestes.

Seneca’s play is full of allusions to these myths, with which ancient audiences and readers would have been familiar, not least from other literary works. The woes of the Tantalid clan were one of the most popular subjects of Greek and Roman tragedies. Aeschylus’s Oresteia trilogy, for example, dramatizes the tale of the murder of Atreus’s son Agamemnon and the revenge carried out by his son Orestes; Orestes’s revenge is also at the heart of Sophocles’s Electra, Euripides’s Electra, Iphigenia among the Taurians, and Orestes, and many other plays that no longer survive. Nor was Seneca’s Thyestes the only ancient play on the rivalry between Atreus and Thyestes. At least eight Greek playwrights—including Sophocles and Euripides—wrote on this myth, as did six Roman playwrights apart from Seneca. Of these, only Seneca’s version survives. What Seneca owed to his predecessors is thus unclear; he may not have had any single obvious source as many of his other tragedies did, instead adhering to a basic traditional outline.