Chapter 2 investigates how identity in Senecan tragedy is achieved via sympathetic identification with others, whether individuals or groups. The chapters focuses on Roman practices of exemplarity, which encouraged the formation of individual selves via the appropriation of others’ - often normative - characteristics. This habit of coyping and becoming a copy of other people connects the human individual to the fictional character, which is by nature inherently replicable. The two plays discussed in this chapter are Troades, where Astyanax is constantly characterised as a ‘second Hector’, and Hercules, where the protagonist pursues self-aemulatio in place of family attachments.

Chapter 1 examines behavioural coherence as a marker of both fictional and actual identity. Concentrating on the recognition scenes in Medea and Thyestes, this chapter contends that Senecan recognition is less about revelation than about validation of an identity achieved through consistent, habitual conduct. It discusses key concepts of decorum and Stoic persona-theory as ways of evaluating Atreus‘ and Medea’s self-construction. It also demonstrates how such behavioural repetition has gone largely unnoticed, as scholars have focused instead on the textual repetition highlighted by dominant methods of intertexual analysis.

The Introduction sets forth the book’s main parameters and situates its study within the current landscape of Senecan scholarship. In addition, it provides a detailed overview of major theoretical approaches to literary character from the late nineteenth century to the present, arguing against the limitations inherent in both the formalist/structuralist method of character criticism, and the humanist/psychological method, and proposing instead a blended theory of character that recognises both structural and person-like qualities. The final section of the Introduction narrows focus to theatrical contexts and considers how stage performance affects the presentation and reception of fictional character.

Chapter 4 discusses autonomy (or its lack) as a key element in characters’ fictional ontology. It divides the topic into three themes - freedom, revenge, and suicide - each of which plays a vital role in Seneca’s dual concept of personal and fictional independence. The first section addresses Stoic isolationism as an assertion of individual sovereignty and demonstrates that this trait is shared by Seneca’s sapiens and tragic characters alike. The second section examines revenge as, simultaneously, an amplification and limitation of characters’ autonomy. Finally, the chapter considers Senecan suicide as an expression of free agency in the midst of misfortune, charting its importance across both the prose and the dramatic works.

Chapter 3 charts the prevalence of physical description in Senecan tragedy, arguing that this is not a symptom of Rezitationsdrama, but a consequence of Seneca’s interest in physiognomy and pathogonomy, both of which use bodily signals to evaluate the quality of people’s internal psychological / emotional / mental states. Like coherence and exemplarity, physiognomic analysis unites the quasi-personal and purely fictional elements of character, on the one hand by encouraging audiences to infer a psychology behind characters’ surfaces, and on the other by focusing attention on textual signs and symbols. This chapter discusses the confluence of bodily and mental states in Seneca’s Phaedra and Oedipus.

Now that we have come to the end, I would like you to turn back, dear reader, to the front cover of this book, or, in the more likely event of your reading it in digital form, to scroll back to the top. Take a close look. The image is of a face carved from the pages of an old volume, a piece of art combining the plastic forms of sculpture and mask with hints of more abstract fictional representation. As sculpture, the work’s medium and its content coincide in being fully three-dimensional: this is not a physically flat description in print, or a (slightly less flat) painting, but a material, graspable visage, and the very fact of its materiality draws a particularly close analogy to an actual human face. It is, however, a face with no back; the head stops abruptly at the book’s cover. Unlike more traditional sculpted portraits, this is not a bust, it has no neck and shoulders; it is a detached, free-floating face, and this incompleteness evokes, to my mind at least, the theatrical mask.

Xenophon’s Life and Times

An enduring challenge for scholars of Xenophon's Anabasis has been to provide an explanation for the work. The difficulty stems from the multifaceted nature of the text, from uncertainty about the author's motivation for writing and from his binary orientation as historian–philosopher. The combined effect, as one writer put it, is that the work has resisted a commonly agreed-upon modern classification. A central argument of this study is that, by way of his focus on leadership and apologia, Xenophon in Anabasis gives us his version of Socrates and demonstrates his worth through Xenophon the character's success. Viewed from another angle, the Anabasis project presents Socrates in an unfamiliar way and philosophical setting: the larger-than-life figure of the man himself, vocabulary, inward gaze and Athenian background that distinguish conventional Socratica are all virtually absent. Yet, as I have tried to show, the work is imbued with a philosophical tenor, mainly through ‘Xenophon’ in the story acting in a manner like Socrates and putting into action principles of Socrates’ teaching. We are implicitly invited to compare the Socrates of Xenophon to other versions of the philosopher, and to other philosophers such as Gorgias, the teacher of Proxenos and Menon, and to judge for ourselves which is most beneficial to us, our friends and country.

As remarked in the Introduction, the philosophical aspect of the text does not rely only on the Socratic connection. The beginning of the work, which has attracted much interest for its absence of any indication of intent, casts it in a quite traditional philosophical frame: a young prince, treated unjustly by his older brother, and driven by his own ambition and sense of rectitude, seeks to unseat the new king and to rule instead of him. At the outset we are prompted to think about right and wrong and the nature of justice and power. The bare outline of the story provided furthermore makes us want to learn more about the Persian actors, who we are already familiar with as historical figures. The journey ahead, grounded spatially and chronologically through the march record, holds out the promise of revealing insights into their world.

Xenophon was the son of Gryllos, an Athenian who owned land in Erchia in the east of Attica. The year of his birth is not known, nor is there reliable information on when, or where, he died. For the more than seventy years that he may have lived there are few solid biographical details, and most of these derive from his own works. Yet if the facts of his own life are sparsely documented, knowledge of Classical Athenian life is comparatively rich, and by drawing on the political and social history of the city in the late fifth century we can garner a sense of the world in which he grew up and which defined who he was and became. Following a short biography, I examine three factors from the earlier years which I suggest were major influences on his life and underpin the strong apologetic Tendenz in his writings. The content and analysis of this chapter and the following one on Anabasis furnish background for the arguments in the rest of the monograph.

Biography

Sources

Xenophon was the author of fourteen complete works, a number of which supply detail about his life. In some cases the detail seems clearly autobiographical, while in others reasonable arguments can be made that he is referring to personal experience. The most prominent of these is Anabasis, his account of Cyrus the Younger's march upcountry in 401 and the subsequent retreat of his Greek mercenaries. The story provides us with a timeline for the author's movements in the period of the march and, by way of a flashforward, a window into his later life in the Peloponnese. However, there is a need for care in interpreting what he tells us about himself in his works, especially in the case of Anabasis. While many regard it as the most important source for his life, I argue in this study that the Xenophon we see in the text is an exemplary figure, a young Athenian and pupil of Socrates who applies the lessons of his teacher to the extreme situation in which he has found himself.

In May 401 the Persian prince, Cyrus the Younger, set out from his satrapy in western Anatolia to pacify a tribe of the interior. His army comprised levies drawn from the areas under his command and some 12,000 Greek mercenaries. However, unknown to all but a few of these men, his real destination was Babylonia, his true aim, to seize the royal throne from his older brother. Although he managed to lead the force into the heart of Mesopotamia, Cyrus was killed in the ensuing battle with King Artaxerxes, who went on to reign for forty years more. With Cyrus dead, the Persians had no serious incentive to destroy his Greek mercenaries and instead led them northward out of Mesopotamia. After seizing their generals in a ruse at the Zapatas River, they funnelled the men into the highlands of the Kardouchoi, a fiercely independent people once said to have destroyed a large contingent sent by the King to pacify them. The satrap Tissaphernes, who had orchestrated the removal of the Greeks from Babylonia, must have been confident as he rode west to take over Cyrus's dominion that he would not see or hear of them again as a unit. Yet they managed to fight through the territory of the Kardouchoi and, eventually, to make their way to the Black Sea. Within two years, those who had survived the retreat were on the offensive against Tissaphernes as part of a Spartan-led force in Asia Minor.

One of the Greeks on the march, Xenophon of Athens, later wrote an account of Cyrus's expedition and its aftermath. Offering an eyewitness version of events, it succeeds in conveying a palpable sense of the trials endured by the army as it fought its way home from the heart of Persian territory. Yet the work is at once more than and not quite a personal history of the expedition and retreat. Xenophon, who becomes the key protagonist in the story, refers to himself in the third person, and this ‘Xenophon’ appears more like an exemplar than a historical figure. Moreover, the intense focus on Xenophon's character throughout Books 3–7 is at the expense of a more balanced view of events.