セネカの悲劇『テュエステス』の pietas について

Abstract

It is my purpose in this paper to examine the importance of the word, pietas, which appears frequently (ten times) in Seneca's tragedy, "Thyestes". Pietas originally meant religious morality which is based on the relationship of man with the gods. But in the works of Seneca, including prose works, it has three shades of meaning, as follows : (1) piety towards the gods ; (2) respect for parents and ancestors or affection for family ; and (3) one of the general virtues. In most cases in his nine tragedies. Seneca uses pietas only in its second meaning. But in Thy., as in the prose works, there are some instances in which pietas is used to mean one of the general virtues. At first sight, there seems to be no case in Thy. in which pietas is used to mean piety towards the gods, as in his other tragedies. But in two cases (510, 717), pietas, which seemingly refers to Atreus' affection for his brother and nephews and respect for his grandfather, contains hidden meanings and irony. For example, sanguis ac pietas (510), which means affection for blood relatives, reminds us of sacrificial rites of offering victims' blood to the gods. Such a double meaning is also seen at 717. Atreus killed his nephews after the formal manners of sacrificial rites and showing respect for his ancestor, chose as the first victim the one who had the same name as his grandfather ; he committed the taboo of pietas in the sense of having affection for his nephews, but at the same time ironically observed the rules of pietas in the sense of religious piety and respect for his ancestor. Such irony can be seen many times in Thy., and it is possible to say that such irony of pietas is a key point in the interpretation of Thy. as a whole. In the third choral ode, pietas is the supreme power which can restore the peace disturbed by the violence of anger (ira) ofmen. The conflict between pietas and ira and pietas' victory over ira would remind us of an episode in De Ira (II. 33.6) which is similar to the story of Thy. in a sense. In the episode, a father whose son was killed by the tyrant's malice patiently endured and accepted the invitation of the tyrant to the banquet given on the day of his son's execution, and drank wine before the tyrant as if he drank the blood of his own son. He bore such humiliation because he had another son ; he repressed his anger (ira) because of his affection (pietas) for the son. His attitude was very different from that of either Atreus or Thyestes. The moral drawn from the episode is that ira should be repressed with pietas. Such an idea is the same as that expressed by the chorus in Thy. The chorus in Seneca's tragedies often expresses an idea that seems to reflect Seneca's own thought. In Thy., too, the chorus states that pietas should overcome ira, while in the world where a series of episodes of the tragedy unfolds, cursed brothers act as the antithesis of the chorus' ideal and their abominable deeds cause a tragical result. Given these considerations, it can be said that the word, pietas, is one of the essential elements in unifying the tragedy, Thy., as a whole and that lack of pietas, which is depicted with skillful use of irony, causes the tragic result in Thy.