In his play Thyestes, Seneca utilizes the tragic tale of the house of Tantalus to explore the psychological depths of tyranny, revenge, and dynastic miasma. The Thyestes details the relationship between the brothers Atreus and Thyestes and their struggle for supremacy, which results in Thyestes‘ cannibalistic consumption of his own children. This is a mythological house known for such transgressions and the opening scene presents the ghost of Tantalus (grandfather of Atreus and Thyestes), who infects the household with his insatiable thirst and hunger. These motifs resonate both physically and figuratively throughout the play. Atreus and Thyestes were supposed to rule the kingdom alternately but their power-sharing agreement had been broken, first by Thyestes and then by Atreus. Seneca‘s tragedy focuses on Thyestes‘ return from exile to Mycenae and Atreus‘ plotting and successful realization of revenge. Atreus‘ character is a seductive figure, who is superior in strength and verbal wit to the simpering Thyestes, and his self-conscious reflections on power and the limits of vengeance offer insight into the Neronian conceptions of autocracy and violence.
Seneca‘s version of the story begins in the middle of things. Pelops has already passed away some time ago. Thyestes and Atreus, in a succession dispute which has followed, have each taken measures to seize power. The brothers had an initial agreement that whichever prince owned a golden ram from their father‘s flock would reign unchallenged. Atreus held the golden ram first. But Thyestes, after seducing Atreus‘ wife, was able to get control of the ram, thus throwing Atreus into exile. Somehow thereafter, after an indeterminate
period of time, Atreus secured control of the kingdom‘s throne again for himself, and Thyestes was exiled, reversing the situation. As the play opens, Thyestes has returned to the kingdom after being exiled, and some sort of meeting between the estranged brothers is anticipated. Whether this meeting will involve a reconciliation, or something far worse, we don‘t know. But the first figure onstage in Seneca‘s play Thyestes is neither the reigning king Atreus nor his banished brother, but instead the ghost of their departed grandfather Tantalus – Tantalus, whose awful crime had set in motion the curse on the House of Atreus.
Seneca‘s Thyestes explores the power of a tyrannical figure over the world of the play and, therefore, some have found parallels with the Roman Empire of Seneca‘s day. Scholars such as Fitch and Volk date this play to the final years of Seneca‘s life under the emperor Nero, and find similarities between the figure of Nero and Atreus. Such allegorization of Senecan tragedy can become Procrustean, but the play does illustrate the magnetism of evil and the seeming futility of any resistance in ways that generally evoke the Neronian court. Critics have often tried to find connections between Seneca‘s avowed Stoicism in his prose works and the tragedies. Seneca‘s Stoic treatise De Clementia offers a fine counterpoint to the tyrannical expression of power found in the Thyestes and shows the drama‘s perversion of Stoic tenets about good rule. While the Chorus and Thyestes may proclaim Stoic sententiae, the action of the play continually disrupts and undermines any positive Stoic message. The bestial pleasure that Atreus enjoys and the power of the emotions to determine the actions of the characters speak against traditional Stoic ethical views. In general, while Stoic language and imagery may appear in the Thyestes, the tragedy‘s pessimism is antipodal to the ordered and rational Stoic world-view. Literary interpretations that take into consideration Seneca‘s response to the Augustan poets, as well as the intricate imagery and symbolism of the language, may prove more convincing for readers coming to the play for the first time.