cultural demarcations in his first words on stage, informing us that he has been in the
underworld for four years by saying, “This is the fourth time that Eleusis has cut the
gifts of Triptolemus” (iam quarta Eleusin dona Triptolemi secat,838).
In using the Phaedra myth, with its central theme of aberrant sex, Seneca fol-
lows Ovid ’s use of this sexual theme to explore these same issues of human nature
(Feeney 1991, 195 – 96); it is distinctive that Seneca incorporates the larger natural
dimension of the Georgicsso seamlessly into the sexual one. Uncontainable sexual
impulse and madness had of course already been part of Virgil’s universe in the Geor-
gics,as Chris Kraus reminds me (amor omnibus idem,3.244).
Gellner 1983, 51.
N.b. Rust.3.1.4, where Varro makes a distinction between the fields as the gift
of divine nature and the cities as the product of human art, with land cultivation going
back into time immemorial. Blundell (1986, 145) well points out that Aratus’s location
of an agricultural life in the Golden Age (Phaen.112 – 14) is “almost certainly a reflec-
tion of the sophisticated urban society out of which Golden Age beliefs are now issu-
ing: Hesiod could never have made an idyll out of the farming life, because he was a
farmer himself and knew too much about it; but Aratus could.”
Pfligersdorffer 1982; Kubusch 1986, 75 – 86; Boys-Stones 2001, 18 – 24, 45 – 49.
§9 (G.1.144); §11 (G.1.139 – 40); §37 (G.1.125 – 28).
How fair any of this may be to Posidonius is another matter: as I. G. Kidd
(1988, 969) points out, Seneca’s polemic is so hyperbolical that it is impossible to
recover Posidonius’s real position in detail. Still, at the very least, it is clear that Seneca
“wishes to draw a sharp and excluding line between philosophy and the arts and sci-
ences; Posidonius, while distinguishing them, wanted to emphasise their natural and
necessary relationship” (968 – 69).
Boys-Stones 2001, 38.
Seneca demonstrates a characteristic unwilling fascination with the details of
technology as he goes on to itemize the intricacies of sailing and steering, adding a gra-
tuitous sentence on the modeling of the rudder on the tail of a fish. Similarly, in the
Medea,when he is describing the sails of a ship, he shows a keen zest for the ingenuity
of human technology even as he is denouncing its folly (323 – 28); cf. Epist.77.1–2 for
yet more intrigued description of sailing technology.
Pfligersdorffer 1982, 306 – 7; Kubusch 1986, 77, 84 – 85. I. G. Kidd (1988, 962 –
63), in his commentary on Posidonius F 284, derived from Seneca’s Epistle,leaves open
the question of how committed Posidonius himself was to the concept of a Golden
Age, allowing room for Seneca’s innovation with reference to the strong appeal of the
concept “in the Roman world of the 1st centuries b.c.and a.d.”
Pfligersdorffer 1982, 321; Kubusch 1986, 81 – 82.
Cf. Blundell 1986, 218 – 19.
A lead into the copious material is provided by DuQuesnay 1977, 43. I can
notes to pages 128 – 131