Like Father Like Son:
Intertextuality in Seneca the Elder and Younger

Christopher V. Trinacty (University of Arizona)

In two sections of his Suasoriae and Controversiae, Seneca the Elder discusses the application and misapplication of poetic allusion in the works of declaimers.  My paper points out the importance of the reader, or audience, in Seneca the Elder's ideal of imitatio.  I look at identical moments of imitatio in the works of Seneca the Younger in order to reveal differences in their understanding of the workings of imitatio.  The strong Stoic and tragic voice of the younger Seneca influences his interpretation of material that his father includes in his rhetorical works.  I conclude by showing how these loci help us better understand intertextuality in Roman literature.

At Cont. 7.1.27 the elder Seneca discusses the different colores used by declaimers in their quest for witty and pointed sententiae.  Seneca claims that the Greek Cestius often missed the mark in his attempts to imitate canonical Roman poets.  It is not Seneca,  hoewever, who reports Cestius' ineffectual imitatio, but rather Julius Montanus, who claims that Cestius intended to imitate Virgil (aiebat illum imitari voluisse Vergili).  Montanus also traces the pedigree of Virgil's allusion.  Cestius' description of night (nox erat concubia, et omnia, iudices, canentia sub sideribus muta erant) is an infelix rendering of Virgil's description of night (nox erat et terras animalia fessa per omnis / alituum pecudumque genus sopor altus habebat, Aen. 8.26-7).  Cestius' hackneyed contrast of canentia /muta elicits objection from Montanus.  However, more interestingly Montanus goes on to discuss more favorable instances of imitatio among the poets.  Virgil, we are told, was following Varro (Frag. 8, Morel).  Varro's lines stress the silence of night but, with the exceptions of forms of nox and the imperfect of the verb esse, reveal hardly any verbal similarities to the Virgilian lines.  This may give the cautious reader reason to wonder.  Was this topos (the description of night) so well-known that almost any formulation of "It was a dark and quiet night" would immediately caus e the reader to think of Virgil and Varro before him?  It appears that verbal similarites are not as important as the connections, which the intelligent interpreter makes for himself.  Montanus further shows how these words become Ovid's (in illius versu suum sensum invenit) with a slight change.  His conclusion highlights the mutability of the intertextual source material, and the ease with which Roman poets adapted each other's material.

Elsewhere Seneca the Elder states that Ovid freely appropriated the language of others, non subripiendi causa, sed palam mutuandi, hoc animo ut vellet agnosci (Suas. 3.7).  But even though Ovid wishes these lines or half-lines to be noticed, he places the material in different contexts and expects it to articulate a different view.  The potential ability for such verbal allusions to create meaning, sometimes unexpectedly, is the prerogative of the poets, the speakers, and the readers.  At Suas. 3.5-7 Seneca writes that Fuscus tried to appropriate Virgilian lines in order to impress Maecenas, in particular the phrase plena deo.  This description was likewise taken up by Gallio but with a variant meaning.  Seneca relates how the use of this phrase confused some of his listeners, including Tiberius, until he explained its meaning to them.  Ovid utilizes the phrase in his Medea, feror huc illuc, vae, plena deo (Frag. 2 Ribbeck) and thereby shows another application, as well as his intention to acknowledge Virgil.

These two passages (Suas. 3.5-7, Contr. 7.1.27) show Seneca the Elder's reaction to the use and abuse of alluisve material and, in his explanations, we can see how the different perspectives of the audience and the speakers create divergent interpretations.  Both of these passages also attracted the attention of Seneca the Younger (one of the original readers of Seneca the Elder's treatises).  He quotes the same Virgilian line at Ep. 56.6 and alludes to the Ovidian quote at Med. 862.  In these two places, he posits his own interpretation of the material and reveals a unique view of the poetic tradition that accords with his own philosophical tenets (in theEpistulae) and his intertextual project in the tragedies.  Seneca the Younger shows himself to be a perceptive reader both of his father's work and of the Roman literary tradition as he manipulates allusive material in order to strengthen his Stoic arguments or foreshadow the violence of his Medea.