Seneca's Medea as Reception of Ovid: The Characterization of Medea as Magician, Criminal, and Collector of Magical Materials

Abstract

In this thesis, I investigate Seneca’s reception of Ovid’s Medea of the Heroides 6 and Metamorphoses 7 in his tragedy Medea. While there has been significant attention given to Ovid’s description of Medea of the Metamorphoses and her use of magic, there has been little comprehensive examination of the ways that Ovid, and in turn, Seneca, characterize and comment on magical practice through the portrayals of their respective Medeae. I compare the various details surrounding Medea’s use of magic presented by both authors, which includes Medea’s ritual practice as a magician, her actions as a criminal, and her engagement with landscape where magic dwells. I explore Medea’s characterization as a magician by comparing the way in which Ovid describes Medea’s reason for using greater magic, her relationship with the gods, and the outcome of her greater magical endeavour in juxtaposition to Seneca’s Medea. The criminality of Medea is portrayed variously by Ovid in his Heroides 6 and Metamorphoses 7 wherein the former emphasizes Medea’s criminality and the latter arguably complicates an easy assessment of Medea’s actions as simply villainous. I examine Seneca’s selective adoptions and inversions of these portrayals of Medea. I also highlight Medea’s role for both authors as collector of magical materials, a theme which includes an appraisal of what makes a landscape magical, the importance of boundaries, and the fallout of traversing them, in Seneca’s view. By comparing the characterization of Ovidian and Senecan Medeae as magician, criminal, and collector by these authors, I identify the themes through which Ovid and Seneca provide the most commentary on the practice of magic.