Oedipus’ vehement insistence on violent self-punishment is no more virtuous than that of Hercules in Act 5 of Herc, or than the vehement insistence on punishing others which we encounter so often among Seneca’s dramatis personae. Grotesque physicality of eyes starting from their sockets seems likely to alienate any possible admiration or even sympathy. The combination of intense passion with the Is Oedipus’ self-punishment in any sense admirable? Responses to such questions necessarily vary according to the audience, particularly in the unstable world of Seneca’s tragedies. In fact it places him in a no-man’s-land between the world of the living (characterised by light and sight) and the dead (949–951): this is emotionally acceptable, since it isolates him from painful contact, and it also has connotations of ritual appropriateness, namely segregation of deathly pollution from the life-giving cosmos, rather as Laius said Oedipus should be denied connection with earth and sky (658 see Mader 1995). His Oedipus fastens on blindness as an adequate self-punishment: death by the sword would be too brief, whereas blindness is a prolonged death, a death-in-life (936–949). In Seneca that thematic association disappears, as we have seen. In Sophocles Oedipus explains that he could not bear, for shame, to look upon his family, whether in the world of life or of death but his self-blinding also fits the play’s thematic association of blindness with inner sight, that is, knowledge of truth. The meanings attached to Oedipus’ self-blinding are also very different in Sophocles and Seneca.

Seneca’s play, then, combines political and psychological issues in a way that is based in Sophocles but goes beyond him. Laius could not even share the road with an unknown young man (770). Laius must either kill his son or be killed by him: it is not difficult to see this as a metaphor for any dominating father. As the possessor of political power both oppresses and fears those below him, so with the possessor of power in the family. In an Oedipus play the Oedipal overtones of this view of power become apparent.

Play by seneca the younger