The Kill

"Versane Natura Est"?
Natural and Linguistic Instability in the Extispicium and Self-

Blinding of Seneca's "Oedipus"
Author(s): Austin Busch
Source: The Classical Journal, Vol. 102, No. 3 (Feb. - Mar., 2007), pp. 225-267
Published by: The Classical Association of the Middle West and South, Inc. (CAMWS)
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VERSANE NATURA EST? NATURAL AND LINGUISTIC
INSTABILITY IN THE EXTISPICIUM AND SELF-BLINDING OF
SENECA'S OEDIPUS
Abstract: In the Naturales Quaestiones Seneca explains the efficacy of exti

with reference to their intelligible position in the grand chain of fate ordering
Some aspects of the extispicium from Seneca's Oedipus cohere with that ex
ation, especially the ritual's obvious allegorical references. Others, however, ra
possibility that nature is fundamentally chaotic rather than rationally ordered
example, the sacrifice's bewildering rainbow-like flame with its obscuring c
smoke and the perplexing poetic discourse with which Manto describes the ent
Oedipus' self-blinding, likewise examined through the interpretive lens provid
the Naturales Quaestiones, constitutes a rational attempt to restore nature's
But this attempt is compromised both by Oedipus' mad fury and by the same k
linguistic confusion that destabilizes the extispicium.
fter Creon leaves the stage in Act 2 of Seneca's Oedipus,
A Oedipus orders Tiresias, Apollo's uates, to clarify the oracle

Creon has just reported by identifying who must be punished
for Laius' death (291-2):
Sacrate diuis, proximum Phoebo caput,

responsa solue; fare, quem poenae petant.
You who are consecrated to the gods, nearest to Apollo,

explain the answer: say whom the punishments seek.1
Tiresias responds by ordering that candidum tergo bouem / curuoque

numquam colla depressam iugo (a bull with a white hide / and a cow
whose neck was never pressed down by curved yoke) be brought to
the altar for an extispicium (299-300). The elaborate description of the
sacrificial ritual that follows has long been derided as silly and
pointless-a perverse emendation to the tightly structured plot of
1I would like to thank Profs. Eleanor Leach and Susanna Braund for their
thoughtful responses to earlier versions of this essay, as well as the editor, S. Douglas
Olson, and anonymous referees of CJ for their penetrating comments and critiques.
I quote Seneca's tragedies from Zwierlein's OCT (1986). Unless otherwise noted,
all translations of ancient texts are my own, although I have consulted and been
influenced by Fitch's Loeb and by a draft of Susanna Braund's translation of the play,
which will appear in the University of Chicago Press edition of Seneca's works.
THE CLASSICAL JOURNAL 102.3 (2007) 225-67
226 AUSTIN BUSCH
Sophocles' Oedipus, which Seneca

for instance, calls it "hocus-pocu
hundred lines merely to give ano
more sympathetic to the Oedipu
account for the scene with refer
sounds, implicitly accepting M
relevance to the tragedy's plot a
only to deepen the dreadful atm
Fitch, for instance, writes in t
edition that the "scenes of anim
are at the heart of Seneca's play
cles, ...do not advance the plot, b
horror of the situation."4
This article argues that the sce
ficance whose recognition illumi
blinding, the play's denouement
than a matter of acquiring an ae
horrifying atmosphere of Senecan
to how specific elements of the e
question the religious and philos
extispicia and other forms of au
Oedipus and Manto, as well as
would have shared the assumpt
animal could communicate divin
2Mendell (1931) 13. See also the comm

translation of Watling (1966) 207: "Senec
far superior prototype, the Oedipus Tyr
circumstantial details of the occult ritual
3 Mendell (1931) 13 writes that "the sc
exhausts even Seneca's vocabulary, but it
the plot is concerned." See also, e.g., Para
4 Fitch (2004) 9-10. In an influential es
items Fitch lists in his critical bibliog
articulates a general approach to the
comments its extispicium sometimes rec
standing of Seneca's peculiar qualities as a
usual questions (as to sources, dramatic u
his works merely as poems-not portraya
static situations well known to the reade
(1953) 447-64, on the other hand, argues t
5 Kohn (2004) notes how the extispiciu
violates usual extispicium practice. On
Oedipus describes the entrails is precise
sacrificed are cattle, as opposed to the m
supposed to generate an answer to a qu
"Yes" or "No." Kohn suggests that dram
gences, observing that the plot requires
VERSANE NATURA EST? 227
himself articulates this assumption in

where he provides a careful explanation o
at one remove through extispicia and othe
[3] "quomodo ergo significant, nisi ideo mitt

hoc motae ut nobis occurrerent, dextrum ausp
"et illas" inquit "deus mouit." nimis illum otio
facis, si aliis omina, aliis exta disponit. [4]
geruntur si non a deo pennae auium regun
ipsa securi formantur. alia ratione fatorum se
ubique praemittens, ex quibus quaedam nob
sunt. quidquid fit, alicuius futurae rei signum
uaga diuinationem non recipiunt; cuius rei ord
"cur ergo aquilae hic honor datus est, ut mag
aut coruo et paucissimis auibus, ceterarum
quaedam nondum in artem redacta sunt, qu
possunt ob nimium remotam conuersationem
quod non motu et occursu suo praedicat aliqu
[3] "How then do they have any significance,

reason?" In the same way that birds, though
order to meet us, give us an auspicious or
moves them," someone says. You too easily
attending to petty affairs if he arranges omen
others. [4] Nonetheless, those things are carrie
the wings of birds are not controlled by G
arranged under the ax itself. Another theory e
which everywhere emits signs of what will co
us, others unknown. Whatever happens is
happen. Fortuitous, irrational and aimless thin
The orderly series to which a thing belongs is
"But why is the duty of giving auspices of g
eagle, or to a raven and a very few other bird
presages nothing?" Because some animals hav
the method, while others cannot be brought in
are too remote. Otherwise, there is no anima
thing by means of its movements or its encoun
Seneca imagines the natural universe as

with each element connected to others in
The observer who uses reason to discern t
predict the outcome or determine the
attending to something apparently-but n
and that cattle are larger than sheep and can theref
indeed they appeared on stage at all; see n. 36, belo
6 1 quote Hine's (1996) Teubner edition of the NQ
228 AUSTIN BUSCH
namely a portent. Herington

cosmos underlying this stoicizin
Stoic ... the Universe is a cipher
could see it all, we should see th
cause, in which all reality is bou
mind of the cosmos" (mens uniu
this intricately ordered cosmos,
(diuina ope, 2.32.4) organizing
rational structure.8 For Seneca,
word for the rational and even d
why he calls this structure a
2.32.4).9 Rational examination of
tutes the natural cosmos can reveal where and how an individual
person or community fits into it-that is, a person's or community's
destiny.
Consistent with this understanding of extispicia and other por-
tents, the cattle's exta in the Oedipus' extispicium rationally reveal
information about what has happened and will happen to Oedipus
and Thebes. Aspects of the ritual so clearly gesture at events in the
Theban cycle of myths that Norman Pratt, in his exhaustive analysis
of the scene, speaks of an "easily recognizable allegory" which the
mythologically informed audience would have enjoyed deciphering,
and he is surely correct." When the fire from the sacrificial altar
divides into two hostile flames (321-3), Pratt rightly notes that
"reference is made to the fatal hostility of the brothers Eteocles and
Polynices, which continued even after death in the schism of fire
rising from the funeral pyre which their corpses shared."11 As a com-
plement, the transformation of libational wine into blood (324) fore-
casts the death of the brothers at one another's hands.12 The smoke
7 Herington (1966) 461. For technical discussions of how the Stoics understood
divination, see Sambursky (1959) 65-71; Hine (1981) 346-8; and especially Bobzien
(1998) 87-96, 144-79 (esp. 156-79), whose analysis complicates Herington's by insis-
ting that a divinatory sign is not a cause of the event it predicts but a "causal
occurrent," either incidental to or symptomatic of the predicted event's causal history.
Seneca was not the only Roman philosopher to take seriously the Stoic understanding
of divination. Cicero discusses it in detail at, e.g., Div. 1.12, 125-8; 2.35, where he
apparently relies on Posidonius' lost books on divination, and at Fat. 11-14, where he
discusses Chrysippus' theory of divination.
8 For a thoughtful discussion of the association of God with fate in Stoic (particu-
larly Chrysippean) thought, see Bobzien (1998) 45-7.
9 For an especially clear expression of this equation in Seneca's thought, see NQ
2.45.1-3. For a general discussion of the equation of fate and natural order in Stoic phi-
losophy, see Reesor (1978) 197-201; Sandbach (1989) 80-2; and Bobzien (1998) 44-58.
10 Pratt (1939) 93-9 (94). Davis (1991) 158-9 also has instructive comments on the
extispicium's allegorical significance.
Pratt (1939) 94.
12 Pratt (1939) 94.
ominously clouding Oedipus' head (325-7) su

for his sons' fraternal hostility, but perha
and at the same time obliquely foretells his
that turns its face from the fire (337-9) li
self-blinding,14 and what Pratt calls the
heifer" (cf. 341-2) portends Jocasta's suic
capita of the animal's liver (360-2) point to
civil war, a reference made unmistakable by
hostile ualido robore insurgit latus

septemque uenas tendit; has omnis retro
prohibens reuerti limes oblicus secat.
The hostile flank rises up with powerful

forth seven veins; an oblique borderline in
preventing them all from turning back."16
As Pratt observes, "the seven veins which r

symbolize the expedition of the Seven ag
which crosses them represents the fact that
tion are never to return home."17 Finally,
innuptae bouis (373) figures the perversity
has simultaneously given birth to a son
children she produces with him are also her
The portentous significance of these ex
evidence of nature's rational structure: the entrails of the sacrificed
cattle, like other elements of the extispicium, reveal the fate of Thebes
and its king, with which they are connected in a complex signifying
sequence whose links the observer can discern by means of rational,
informed interpretation. Understood in this light, the anomalies in
the cattle's entrails find analogies in the disturbing natural phe-
nomena, such as earthquakes and lights in the sky, that Seneca
discusses alongside portents in the Naturales Quaestiones. These
phenomena only apparently-at first sight-point to alarming
confusion in nature requiring supernatural explanation, such as the
capricious anger of a hostile divinity (NQ 6.3.1). Upon closer,
rational examination, it becomes clear that they suas ... causas habent
(have their own causes, 6.3.1) and play a well-defined role in the
13 Pratt (1939) 95.

14 Pratt (1939) 95.
15 Pratt (1939) 96.
16 Pratt (1939) 97-8.
17 Pratt (1939) 98.
18 Pratt (1939) 98.
230 AUSTIN BUSCH
orderly structure of the natural

(NQ 6.3.2-4):
nobis autem ignorantibus uerum omnia terribiliora sunt, utique quorum

metum raritas auget. leuius accidunt familiaria, at ex insolito formido maior
est. quare autem quicquam nobis insolitum est? quia naturam oculis non
ratione comprendimus, nec cogitamus quid illa facere possit sed tantum
quid fecerit. damus itaque huius neglegentiae poenas tamquam nouis territi,
cum illa non sint noua sed insolita.... et cum timendi sit causa nescire, non
est tanti scire, ne timeas? quanto satius est causas inquirere....
To us who are ignorant of the truth, all these things are more terrible
wherever their infrequency increases fear. Familiar occurrences are easier to
bear, but more serious dread arises from what is unusual. But why do we
find anything unusual? Because we comprehend nature only with our eyes,
not with reason; nor do we consider what nature can do, but only what it
has done. And so we pay the penalty for this negligence by being terrified of
things that appear anomalous [tamquam nouis], when they are not really
anomalous [noua], but merely unusual [insolita].... And since the cause of
our fear is ignorance, is it not worth while to learn, so as not to fear? How
much better it is to inquire about these things' causes....
Analogously, the cattle's "unnatural" entrails in the Oedipus are not

in fact anomalous, for they reflect nature's order by appropriately
indexing Oedipus' and his family's sinful violations of it. They
therefore play a discernible role in the fatorum series, which Seneca
discusses in Naturales Quaestiones 2.32.4, as natural intimations and
inferences of the crimes Oedipus and his family commit.
In this sense, the disordered exta resemble the plague afflicting
Thebes, which the Oedipus also represents as a violation of nature, by
drawing attention to the confusion it occasions in the natural world
(37-51) as well as in Theban society (52-70). As Henry and Walker
(1983) 133 point out, in Seneca's Stoic context this plague is best
understood as the natural effect of Oedipus' sin:
In making human actions defile the air so that it destroys life instead of sus-
taining it, Seneca gives poetic expression to the Stoic concept of the material
universe and the moral order inextricably united. Storms and earthquakes,
for example, would be considered by a Stoic not only to be the results of
physical causes, and not only divine acts of judgment, but indissolubly both.
For Stoic philosophers, including Seneca Philosophus, portentous

disturbances of the natural universe associated with apparent
infringements of nature's laws never indicate real confusion in the
natural order. Instead, the chaos occasioned by "unnatural" phe-
nomena such as earthquakes, plagues and disordered animal entrails
is a factor of the limited perception and insight exercised by specta-
tors who do not rationally discern the profound order beneath the
superficial turmoil such phenomena repre

observers content themselves with the
natural world that superficial sense-perce
comprehending nature with penetrating
ratione comprendimus, NQ 6.3.2), for far
extremely disruptive phenomena ultimat
provided one examines them rationally t
nature's abstrusely complex but nonet
Accordingly, the Naturales Quaestiones
natural causes for even the strangest phe
cosmos, such as meteoric fires in the
rounding heavenly bodies (1.2), comets
(Book 6), not to mention unusual animal
When Tiresias initially blames himself f
stand the bizarre exta he encounters, the
same presupposition about nature that un
tiones, namely that even apparently "unn
nally reflect nature's laws (328-30):
Quid fari queam

inter tumultus mentis attonitae uagus?
quidnam loquar?
What could I say,

wandering in the turmoil of a senseless
What could I speak?
Tiresias is thoroughly perplexed, totally

intricate array of natural signifiers he en
But he insists that this is not the fault of
natural order it reflects, but rather of his m
attonitae uagus, 329). Tiresias goes on to s
faculties were not disrupted by this tum
would surely be able to probe the extis
intelligible signs (330-1):
sunt dira, sed in alto mala;
solet ira certis numinum ostendi notis.
They are frightful omens, but deep.

The gods' wrath is customarily shown by marked signs.19
19 Compare the defense of divination in Cic. Div. 1.117-18 (LS 42E): sed ita a
principio inchoatum esse mundum, ut certis rebus certa signa praecurrerent.... ea quibus bene
percepta sunt, ii non saepefalluntur; male coniecta maleque interpretatafalsa sunt non rerum
vitio, sed interpretum inscientia. (The world was from its beginning set up in such a way
that certain things should be preceded by certain signs.... Those who properly
232 AUSTIN BUSCH
The prophet, however, takes a

problem might not after all lie
posedly cannot penetrate what
sacrifice. He broaches the possibi
spring from irrational confusion in
to be more precise, in the extisp
sacrifice under consideration a
314-28):20
quid istud est quod esse prolatum uolunt

iterumque nolunt et truces iras tegunt?
What is this that [the gods] want and again do not want
to be revealed, concealing their savage anger?
The extispicium, Tiresias implies, may not be just apparently con-

fusing but fundamentally so: it reflects the divine agency (diuina ope)
that ultimately directs natural portents and nature itself (NQ 2.32.4),
but in so doing it reveals a divinity characterized by contradictory
impetuses irrationally conflated.
The possibility that the extispicium's prodigies reflect a nature
characterized by chaos rather than order, in contrast to the Naturales
Quaestiones' understanding of nature, emerges with especial clarity
from an examination of the different ways in which the description
of the sacrificial fire in Oedipus 314-28 and Book 1 of the Naturales
Quaestiones represent the natural phenomenon of the rainbow. The
passages invite comparison, for both develop the same Ovidian de-
scription of a rainbow from Metamorphoses 6, which occurs in a simile
describing Arachne's marvelous art (63-7):21
qualis ab imbre solet percussis solibus arcus

inficere ingenti longum curvamine caelum,
in quo diversi niteant cum mille colores,
transitus ipse tamen spectantia lumina fallit:
usque adeo, quod tangit, idem est; tamen ultima distant.
perceive these are rarely deceived. The falsehood of bad conjectures and bad inter-
pretations is due, not to any fault in the world, but to the scientific ignorance of the
interpreters.) As this implies, Stoics understood divination to be a reliable science. Dif-
ficulties in interpreting omens were therefore blamed on the interpreter, rather than
on the omens themselves. See the brief discussion in Bobzien (1998) 91.
20 As Bettini (1985) 145 observes, rnpotuavTeid (examination of fire) and Kcanvo-
tavtwia (examination of smoke) were conventional modes of sacrificial divination in
the Greco-Roman world.
21 I quote Anderson's (1977) Teubner edition of Ovid's Metamorphoses.
As, after a rain, when the sun's rays are

is accustomed to dye the broad sky with
in which shine a thousand different colo
where one color changes to the next de
for where color touches color it is much
points are different nonetheless.
Although scholars often note the echo of

20, and observe that Seneca quotes the sam
Naturales Quaestiones, no one, so far as I h
has explored the differences between Sene
material in the generically distinct works.
ences in the ways related literary work
material can reveal a great deal about their
ests and ideological presuppositions, atten
in order.
After quoting the final three lines of th
morphoses in the Naturales Quaestiones, S
the following comment: nam commissura
naturae, quod a simillimo coepit in dissimillim
colors] is deceptive: nature's method is
starting off as all but identical end as tot
claim that the rainbow's transitus ipse ... s
raised the possibility that nature, of whic
deceives the observer. Seneca Philosophus
possibility when he says that the rainbow'
cating that the rainbow deliberately mi
Seneca suggests, intentionally frustrates
comprehend the rainbow, by concealin
transformation. This natural phenomenon
inquiry rather than lying open to it. But S
bility to dismiss it, for he immediately g
with usque eo, mira arte naturae (NQ 1.3.4
marvelous that it can be said to deceive th
that the rainbow's colors change but canno
they alter. Although the Ovidian paradox
nature defies reason by deceptively disgu
as continuity, a possibility Seneca's use of
end Seneca Philosophus assimilates Ovid
bow's perplexing appearance to his own
intricately ordered structure: nature give
skill or method, an ars so complex that it
only to the uninformed observer. Seneca
22 Jakobi (1988) 101 discusses the allusion, as does
234 AUSTIN BUSCH
represents an informed observer

dically reflects nature's order, w
sense-perception can discern eve
sitions. In fact, he conducts pr
Book 1 of the Naturales Quaestio
various seemingly anomalous ligh
In Oedipus 315-20 Seneca draws
of the rainbow to make a differ
Manto and Tiresias begin the exti
cial fire and observes, non una f
constant flame had not just on
literally ambiguous and intertwin
echo Metamorphoses 6.63-7:
imbrifera qualis implicat uarios

Iris colores, parte quae magna p
curuata picto nuntiat nimbos si
(quis desit illi quiue sit dubites
caerulea fuluis mixta oberrauit
sanguinea rursus; ultima in ten
As rain-bringing Iris weaves va

who, curved in a large part of th
announces storm clouds (you w
what color does or does not be
wandered about mixed with ye
became blood red; at the end it
The allusive rewriting of Ovid's

rainbow darker and more omin
that nature defies reason, an idea
ones backed away as soon as it w
appears ab imbre (after a rain, M
goddess of the rainbow, imbrifer
that picto nuntiat nimbos sinu (
storm clouds, 317). The rainbow i
departure, but rather announces
Along the same lines, while Ovid
cate transformation of the rainb
tamen spectantia lumina fallit: / us
ultima distant (Met. 6.66-7), Se
foreboding dissipation into obscu
and mentions the presence of
blue of night's sky (caerulea) am
description in the Oedipus underscores

ambiguity as well as the dread it foreb
multicolored flame elicits receives empha
especially in the parenthetic quis desit illi
would hesitate to say which color does or
and in the claim that the colors seem to have wandered into one
another (oberrauit, 319). No mira ars naturae operates here, as Mauri-
zio Bettini's astute comment on the passage implies:
Il caeruleus si mischia di fulvus, il fulvus di sanguineus.... I1 senso di con-

fusione, di incertezza, e accresciuto anche dal verbo con cui Seneca indica
questa mescolanza fra i colori: oberravit, ciascun colore "vaga," si muove a
casaccio, serpeggia nello spettro della fiamma senza un carattere preciso.24
In the end, any idea that the bizarre rainbow-like flame could em-
body an intricately ordered nature permeable to rational inquiry is
banished as the flame bursts apart to bring forth obscuring smoke
(321-7):
sed ecce pugnax ignis in partes duas

discedit et se scindit unius sacri
discors fauilla-genitor, horresco intuens:
libata Bacchi dona permutat cruor
ambitque densus regium fumus caput
ipsosque circa spissior uultus sedet
et nube densa sordidam lucem abdidit.
But behold! The contentious flame separates

into two parts and the discordant ashes of a single ritual
divide. Father, I shudder as I watch!
The libation of wine changes to blood;
dense smoke surrounds the king's head,
settles even more thickly around his very face,
and conceals the murky light with a dense cloud.
It is no accident that this smoke covers Oedipus' face (325-7), for

it is Oedipus who attempts to learn the identity of Laius' killer (cf.
291-2), whom he vows to punish in order to bring the Theban plague
to an end and restore nature's order (221-2). Indeed, just before this
scene Oedipus invokes Apollo and the other gods precisely in their
capacities as law-givers and peaceful governors of the natural
cosmos, in order to swear that the crime will be expiated (249-57):
23 Mastronarde (1970) 298 n. 12 comments on "the ambiguity of brightness and

beauty giving way to darkness and blood."
24 Bettini (1983) 140.
236 AUSTIN BUSCH
tu, tu penes quem iura praecipi

tuque, o sereni maximum mun
bis sena cursu signa qui uario l
qui tarda celeri saecula euoluis
sororque fratri semper occurre
noctiuaga Phoebe, quique uento
aequor per altum caerulos curr
et qui carentis luce disponis do
adeste....
You, you [Jupiter], to whom belong the laws of the rushing sky;
and you [Apollo], greatest beauty of the peaceful universe,
who traverse the twice-six signs in your varying course
and roll out the slow ages with your quick wheel;
and you, the sister always opposing your brother, night-
wandering Phoebe; and you [Neptune], ruler of the winds,
who drive your dark blue chariot through the deep sea;
and you [Dis] who govern a house lacking light;
come forth....
Oedipus here calls on the gods who govern the natural cosmos, invok-
ing them exclusively with reference to their roles in nature, because
he is concerned with restoring the natural balance the regicide has
disturbed, a disruption apparent in the unnatural plague devastating
Thebes. Nor is this the only place where Oedipus displays a deep
respect for and desire to preserve the laws of nature. In 24-5, for in-
stance, he says that he fled Corinth in order to preserve nature's laws
after receiving an oracle from Apollo presaging parricide and incest,
which nature forbids:25 in tuto tua, / natura, posui iura (I put your laws,
nature, / in safety, 24-5). He calls for the extispicium precisely in order
to inquire of nature the source of its violation, which he is convinced
the plague registers and which he is committed to extirpating.
In the course of this extispicium, the flame's Ovidian rainbow,
which in the Naturales Quaestiones emblematizes nature's intricately
ordered structure, explodes into chaotically competing tongues of
fire throwing dark clouds of smoke over Oedipus' face (325-7). On
one level, the cloud of smoke from the sacrificial flame coming to
rest on Oedipus constitutes a response to the question he employed
the haruspex Tiresias to resolve: responsa solue; fare, quem poenae petant
(explain the answer: say whom the punishments seek, 292). The
punishments are for Oedipus, who is guilty of Laius' murder and
will ultimately punish himself for that crime with self-blinding, as
25 The Oedipus draws attention to how incest violates nature at, e.g., 638-9: egitque
in ortus semet et matri impios /fetus regessit, quique uix mos est feris (He drove himself
into his source and again produced an impious / brood in his mother, which is hardly
the custom of animals in the wild).
the mythologically informed audience

cannot miss the intimation of Oedipu
immediately after suggestively describ
his face, Manto recalls Oedipus' quest
identity which initiated the extispicium (f
by asking Tiresias another question
which the original was couched: quid si
same time as providing an answer to Oe
settling on his face (325-6) the cloud fr
evades Oedipus' inquiries by blinding
lucem abdidit (327). This gesture at orac
the extispicium conceals rather than rev
aggressively inquisitive gaze of Oedi
sacrifice. In philosophical terms, it show
attempt to discern how elements of the ex
structure, thereby suggesting that the
order, on which the extispicium relies f
may not be perspicuous to rational inquir
While the smoke obscuring Oedipus
guilt for Laius' murder and foreshado
crime is ironic, it is not reducible to dr
the case that the smoke means differen
the audience and the play's hero. More e
extispicium that confirms Oedipus' guilt
what figuratively prevents the hero hi
culprit, whose identity the extispicium
that he could punish the guilty party
nature's violation. These impulses to con
conflated in the cloud of smoke that
recall the confusing chromatic conflatio
like flame, whose colors wandered into
they became difficult to distinguish (3
tion to the irrationality of such confla
hearing Manto's description of the rainb
paradoxically want and do not want to r
quid istud est quod esse prolatum uol

iterumque nolunt et truces iras tegunt
26 It may be possible to maintain nature's orde

cept of co-fatedness, which Bobzien (1998) 221-8
own criminality is co-fated with the crimes he co
and in particular the extispicium, sympathetically r
which Oedipus himself desires to rectify, neither
pointing to him as the criminal.
238 AUSTIN BUSCH
What is this that [the gods] wa

to be revealed, concealing their
With these words the prophet s

elicits cannot be explained aw
Oedipus' limitations of perceptio
omen in question simply happen
interpret. The fault, these lines s
paradoxically frames its answers
that the answer itself actively o
Since the oxymoronic conjunctio
and to hide it surfaces in a ph
rainbow, an emblem of nature
Naturales Quaestiones, this incom
suggest that nature might not b
the effect of the ambivalence is
an infringement of nature's law
light of Manto's description of t
of colors in the sacrificial flame,
dictory impulses toward revel
smoke paradoxically displays,
must wonder whether the divin
essentially confused rather than
Manto's description of the sacr
the conviction, expressed by Sen
tiones, that even the most my
follow rules that make sense if
Philosophus insists that myste
and confused animal exta, and
earthquakes, lie open to rational
observation reliant on sense-perc
accordingly, the rainbow functi
abstrusely complex but in the e
mira ars. The dark and chaotic i
into a concealing cloud of smoke
other hand, raises the possibil
transparently reveal nature's rat
inquiry: they are not passively di
lead even those who make concerted efforts to discern how
mysterious phenomena may be integrated within nature's grand
signifying structure. It is not the case, then, that the natural phe-
nomena associated with the extispicium are ultimately perspicuous
although highly complex, for these phenomena, according to Tiresias,
are characterized by irrationally conflated impulses to reveal and
conceal (332-3), chaotically conflicting impetuses emblematized in
the chaotic rainbow-like flame that bursts into a cloud of smoke
settling on Oedipus' eyes. This paradoxi

Laius' murderer and prevents inquiring
the sign; it simultaneously points out the
breaching nature's laws and at the same ti
recognizing and punishing that criminal in
The Oedipus tradition can associate th
acterizes the flame Seneca initially uses
confusion, with the multicolored plumag
The Greek Oedipus tragedies that precede
make this link explicit. Sophocles' Oedip
Sphinx's riddling song as multicolored or r
pcpiya, 130). A surviving fragment from E
explicitly links the Sphinx with the rainbo
[6i patv upb6 itn]tno;M 'H(iou, XpI)o0m6v ?[v

[vcdjtoa 0 Orl]p6a Fi & [rTp]0; v kpo; Pdr[Xot,]
[Kuav.Toruv 60s] It5 Ipt[ 6V]Tfl ]yE [Io[Afl].
If she pointed it toward the horses of the sun, like gold
the beast's winged back beamed; if toward a cloud,
like some rainbow it flashed back dark blue light.27
Given the Sphinx's conventional association with rainbows in the

Oedipus tradition, the rainbow-like flame, which bursts into a
smoky cloud obscuring Oedipus' face and eyes during the exti-
spicium (325-7), certainly recalls the multicolored Sphinx with her
analogously obscure riddle. Indeed, in an earlier speech Seneca's
Oedipus actually describes the Sphinx as blinding him with her words:
nec Sphinga caecis uerba nectentem modis / fugi (I did not flee / the
Sphinx binding together her words in blinding ways, 92-3). The
sacrificial flame in the scene of the extispicium evokes this description
of the Sphinx not only by blinding Oedipus' eyes (325-7; cf. caecis ...
modis, 92) but also by the bewildering conflation of its colors (315-20),
which recalls the similarly confusing nexus of the Sphinx's riddling
words that Oedipus, on Thebes' behalf, confronted (92-3).28 This con-
junction of imagery suggests that the extispicium, which Oedipus
demands in order to discover and expiate the sin responsible for
27 For the fragments of Euripides' Oedipus with translation and commentary, see
Collard, Cropp and Gibert (2004) 114-32. For an attempt to interpret this fragmentary
passage in the context provided by Seneca's Oedipus, which Euripides' play probably
influenced, see Dingel (1970).
28 See Mastronarde (1970) 304-5 and Bettini (1983) 144. It is worth noting that a
popular etymology linked the Greek 1apiya to the verb acpiayytv, which means "to bind
tight" (see Albert Schachter, "Sphinx," OCD 1435).
240 AUSTIN BUSCH
Thebes' destruction, itself figur

riddling assault on the city.
I suggested above that the ima
ficial fire gestures at a confuse
but the link between its perplex
undermine that possibility, for
permeable to reason. Oedipus, af
tying" the Sphinx's "knotted w
nodosa sortis uerba et implexo

ac triste carmen alitis solui ferae.
I untied the knotted ominous words, the entwined deceits,

the sad song of the winged beast.
But this reading does not adequately come to terms with the intra-
textual link between the extispicium's rainbow and the description of
Oedipus' encounter with the Sphinx in 92-102, for Oedipus does not
so much solve the Sphinx's riddle as defer it. In a sense, Oedipus
takes the Sphinx's place as Thebes' adversary: his incest and parri-
cide both bring to the city an affliction comparable to the Sphinx's
and themselves constitute a riddle analogous to but even more per-
plexing than that monster's. In the Oedipus' opening lines Seneca
describes the destructive plague that ravishes Thebes after Oedipus
supposedly saved it from the Sphinx in terms hauntingly similar to
those in which, a few lines later, he describes the havoc the Sphinx
wrought in the city before the hero arrived. As a result of the plague,
bones are scattered about (66-8):
non ossa tumuli lecta discreti tegunt:

arsisse satis est-pars quota in cineres abit?
dest terra tumulis....
No individual graves cover collected bones;

cremation is enough. How small a portion disappears in ashes?
No land is left for graves....
The result of the Sphinx's assault on Thebes is virtually identical:

albens ossibus sparsis solum (the ground was white with scattered
bones, 94). Moreover, Seneca later insists that Oedipus' crime consti-
tutes an enigma similar to the Sphinx's. According to Laius' ghost,
Oedipus' murder of his father and marriage to his mother, with
whom he sired his own siblings (cf. 634-40), was an implicitum malum/
magisque monstrum Sphinge perplexum sua (entwined evil, / a wonder
more perplexing than his own Sphinx, 640-1; see also 103-8). In the
end, then, the ratio by means of which Oedipus solved the Sphinx's
riddle resolved nothing, for he himself replaces the riddle and brings
a new curse to Thebes, so that Bettini

enigma che Edipo andra a proporre in
traditional solution to the riddle ("a man
which Oedipus articulates at the beginnin
fice: "Who" (or, to risk overtranslation in
"What man") "was the killer of the famo
incluti regis fuit?, 221).30
This is precisely the question whose an
Tiresias attempt to determine by means
lows, but the description at the beginnin
an incomprehensible rainbow that am
before exploding into a cloud of smoke
ing gaze (315-27; cf. 332-3), in various
confusing enigma (92-3). The oracular "so
pus both confronts and constitutes th
riddling confusion the extispicium must
rational inquiry, such as that conducted
the Sphinx's riddle, or by Tiresias, Manto
to Oedipus' own, does not resolve enigma
The links between the Sphinx, with its
and entwined deceits / and sad song" (101
describing the extispicium's sacrificial fla
tus of this extispicium as a verbal event. T
the communicative function of portents
naturally analogizes them to language,
strates by representing portents as simila
Book 2 of the Naturales Quaestiones: longu
nem nuntiant, et quidem notis euidentibus, l
scriberentur (they give message of a l
succeeding one another, with signs that a
if they were written, 2.32.1).32 It is not
function that assimilates portents to lang
29 Bettini (1983) 144.

30 See H. Lloyd-Jones (1978) 60-1 for a text and his
31 Bettini (1983), esp. 142-3, discusses the threefold
extispicium's rainbow, Oedipus' sin and the riddle of
malum / magisque monstrum Sphinge perplexum s
incest, are most important in this context, for they
the Sphinx's riddle and to the rainbow simile from
they echo: imbrifera qualis implicat uarios sibi / Iri
analysis is sound, but the conclusions he draws f
modification. See also Mastronarde (1970) 304-5.
32 On divination as language, see also Cic. Diu. 1.
interpreters of omens to grammatici poetarum, "g
Bettini's (1985) 145-7 thoughtful discussion of the
supposing the need for exegesis.
242 AUSTIN BUSCH
their ability to communicate, lik

nature's order, as discussed a
cannot here explore this aspec
generally accepted among Stoics
ventional, but rather constitu
natural order, much like the por
Seneca discusses in Naturales
natural, inasmuch as words' mea
fore unstable, but soundly tethe
in the natural cosmos: Eioi al 6v
Xzoa-, qCircEt, ittLtouabcov TC. V
6v6aaxaa (names ... as the Stoics b
their primary sounds are imitati
are said, LS 32J).34 This presupp
tion of Stoic etymological an
Hellenistic world (see the titles
for example, how words' soun
how the shapes of the mouth wh
the things in the natural cosmo
elsewhere that the Stoic presup
nature explains why Seneca tend
tions he often assigns to words
reference to nature or natural law
General links like these betwe
language are not alone relevant
underscores its extispicium's co
that its original interpreter has
Tiresias cannot see, Manto must
order for her father to interpre
original audience would have re
most scholars agree that even if
sacrifice and consultation of
formed.36 Already analogous to
33 For helpful comments on this St

(1971), esp. 96; Atherton (1993) 92. For
problems of Stoic linguistics, which is c
92-110. I cite Stoic philosophical texts
Long and Sedley (1987), abbreviated LS
I adapt the translation from Long and
35 See e.g. Ep. 3 (amicitia); 4 (pauperta
Senecan redefinition and its relationship
36 Based on a close reading of its dr
vincingly argues that the scene of the e
looking at an imaginary altar offstage a
ence, the sacrifice she alone witnesses.
into words that the prophet as well as th

the Oedipus' extispicium is a verbal event
The intratextual connections discussed above between the
rainbow-like flame obscuring Oedipus' face with smoke and th
Sphinx who "binds together words in blinding ways" suggest t
the language describing the Oedipus' extispicium will itself be riddli
and twisted. Although Seneca describes portents in the Natura
Quaestiones as "giving messages ... in signs that are plain and f
clearer than if they were written" (2.32.1), the Oedipus' extispicium, far
from exceeding writing in transparency, itself constitutes a verb
event consisting of exceptionally perplexing language. As I arg
below, the discourse with which Manto describes the extispiciu
cultivates hermeneutic uncertainty: it contains numerous example
of oxymoronic and ambiguous diction, of words juxtaposed in way
that raise questions about what Manto sees, rather than representin
the scene with unequivocal clarity and precision. When, in describ
ing the heifer's entrails to Tiresias, Manto says mutatus ordo est, se
nil propria iacet (the order has been changed; nothing lies in its prop
place, 366), this statement may be applied to the language w
which the entrails are described, as well as to the entrails themselv
There is nothing surprising about this feature of Manto's discours
Like much stylized oracular diction in the Greco-Roman world, it
characterized by heightened ambiguity: it conceals as well as revea
obfuscating even as it discloses vital information to the seeker
Seneca therefore uses the word uates, which means both "prophet
and "poet," for the Sphinx (93) as well as for Tiresias (571, 670), f
the language Tiresias and Manto employ to describe the extispicium
and to enunciate its prophetic implications is as rhetorically comple
and ultimately as perplexing as the Sphinx's riddling carmen.
Before exploring the extispicium scene's semantic uncertainty, i
will be useful first to show how linguistic perplexity can undermin
the "easily recognizable" allegorical interpretation of the ext
itself could have been staged, perhaps with drugged calves or trained cattle used
ensure the animals' pliancy, although he admits that this may be far-fetched (
Rosenmeyer (1993) 239 draws attention to just how unlikely such a staging would
Fitch (2000) 9-11 insists that neither Rosenmeyer nor Sutton is right: this scen
though not Seneca's entire tragic corpus, nor indeed all of the Oedipus-was writ
for recitation, as Zwierlein (1966) had earlier argued all Seneca's tragedies were.
37 The fact that the ambiguity characterizing Manto's description of the exti
spicium is a conventional feature of classical prophetic discourse does not give
reader license to overlook or ignore the interpretive and philosophical problem
causes in Seneca's Oedipus. This ambiguity's conventionality rather ensures that th
issues it raises have a wider resonance in the broader context of Greco-Roman
discussions and representations of divination.
244 AUSTIN BUSCH
discussed above with referen

declares about the liver that cap
heads rise up together in equal
observes, seems to foreshadow t
as a result of Oedipus' crime,38
siege engine.39 But torus may a
case the line could be underst
from equal wedding beds."40 Thi
protuberances reflect Oedipus
shared Jocasta's bed, can be
marriage couches. Homonymic
determine the precise significan
scribes: torus has contending m
(arbitrarily) preferred, radically
symbolic significances attach
the exta present.41
Semantic uncertainty affects
exta elsewhere in the scene as w
poses the words rigor and trem
tremulo debiles artus micant (it
stiffness, 376). Karlheinz Tbcht
line's strange diction, which is
"der Ablativausdruck bildet mit dem Verbum einen Pelonasmus ...
und in sich ein Oxymoron."42 One can, of course, make sense of the
gratuitous oxymoron. By translating rigore tremulo as "twitching
convulsively," E.F. Watling suggests that the fetus' limbs are firm
and unbending, but still shake rapidly back and forth, like a body
shivering in the cold or an epileptic suffering a seizure-a reasonable
reading. But the juxtaposition of rigor and tremulus, which after all
have precisely opposite meanings, does not make for a particularly
perspicuous turn of phrase, especially since Manto calls the stiff
limbs that convulse debiles, "feeble" or "flimsy." Debilis is usually
38 Pratt (1939) 97-8. Kohn (2004) makes the same observation. The caput iecoris
(which corresponds in contemporary physiological jargon to the "processus caudatus";
see Mareile Haase, "Haruspices," Der neue Pauly 5.169-70) was a particularly
important sign for a haruspex (cf. Cic. Div. 2.32). The presence of a divided caput (i.e.
two capita) conventionally gestured at civil strife; cf. Ovid, Met. 15.795; Luc. 1.627-9.
39 See torus', def. 2c, OLD 1952.
40 See torus', def. 5, OLD 1952.
41 Pratt (1939) 98 notices the homonym but does not recognize its destabilizing
effect on the allegory he lays out.
42 T6chterle (1994) 350. T6chterle's German translation preserves the oxymoronic
quality of the line: "in zittriger Starre zucken siech Gelenke" (p. 77). Other translations,
such as Watling's (1966), eliminate it: "twitching convulsively its feeble frame."
43 Watling (1966) 223. See also Miller's (1917) old Loeb translation, which Watling
may be following.
associated with flaccidity rather than

firmness), as in Lucretius' description of
when overtaken by sleep (DRN 4.951-3):
debile fit corpus, languescuntque omnia

bracchia palpebraeque cadunt, poplitesq
saepe tamen submittuntur uirisque reso
The body becomes flimsy and all its lim

the arms and eyelids droop; and even w
to bed, it often happens that the knees
strength.44
Accordingly, although it is possible to make sense of rigore tremulo

debiles artus micant by taking rigore tremulo to refer to convulsions of
stiff limbs, that reading is by no means self-evident, and it is ulti-
mately unclear exactly what Manto's oxymoronic diction describes.
While neither line 360 nor 376 is incoherent, neither is unambi-
guous either, especially when subjected to the kind of intense inter-
pretive pressure I am applying. One might object that such pressure
is only applied to Manto's language inappropriately, that it creates
discursive ambiguity rather than discovering it. I would argue, on
the contrary, that Seneca invites the reader to place considerable
pressure on precisely what Manto says and on how she says it. The
dramatist, after all, has constructed the scene of the extispicium so
that Manto recounts the sacrifice and describes the animals' exposed
entrails to Tiresias, who, since he is blind, relies solely on her
description of the exta to visualize, interpret and draw from them
their prophetic implications. Moreover, the drama's original audi-
ence would likely have encountered the scene from the same per-
spective as Tiresias: if the Oedipus was staged at all, this scene would
have involved Manto observing and describing a sacrifice that
occurs offstage, beyond the audience's view.45 In a context in which
Manto's description of the sacrifice and entrails bears so much
interpretive weight, the ambiguities that surface when intense
hermeneutic pressure is applied lead one to wonder how clear a pic-
ture of what she sees Manto's discourse represents, and whether that
discursive image can support the prophetic interpretation Tiresias
must construct. It is worth noting that Tiresias himself concludes it
cannot, for at the close of Manto's description of the ritual he admits
its failure (391-2):
44I quote Lucretius from Leonard and Smith (1968). I adapt Smith's (2001)
translation.
45 See n. 36, above.
246 AUSTIN BUSCH
nec fibra uiuis rapta pectoribu

ciere nomen; alia temptanda e
Entrails ripped from living ch

to summon the [criminal's] na
Given that the only access Tire

his daughter's description, his
uncover the name of Laius' mu
discourse in that failure.
Oxymoronic juxtaposition similar to rigore tremulo (376) occurs
in Manto's description of the bull's liver. Manto says about its head-
like fleshly protuberances that (361-2)
utrumque caesum tenuis abscondit caput

membrana latebram rebus occultis negans.
A thin membrane conceals each cloven head,

denying secrecy to hidden things.
The participial phrase latebram rebus occultis negans following the

main clause complicates that clause's claim, for it is difficult to
understand how a membrane can conceal (abscondit) the liver's capita
while simultaneously denying them secrecy (latebram ... negans),
especially since these capita are called "hidden things" (rebus occultis).
Although the sentence may bewilder at first glance, one can make
sense of it by understanding abscondit to imply that the membrane
merely covers the liver's heads rather than hiding them: it is so thin
(tenuis) that it actually prevents their concealment (latebram ...
negans). In this context, "denying secrecy to hidden things" amounts
to revealing secrets-an imprecise turn of phrase to be sure (what is
revealed by definition ceases to be secret), but by no means an
unintelligible one. The relevant point, however, is not that Manto's
description is senseless or even indissolubly ambiguous-it is
neither-but rather that it relies precisely on linguistic instability to
make clear sense, on words' capacity to alter or even reverse their
meanings under the pressure of a particular discursive context.
While abscondit normally means "conceal" and rebus occultis typically
refers to "hidden things," when juxtaposed with latebram ... negans
the meanings of both shift, with the latter undergoing a radical
semantic transformation indeed: abscondit refers to non-concealing
covering and rebus occultis means its opposite, rebus apertis.
Manto's description of the extispicium draws attention to seman-
tic instability a few lines later as well, when she reports on the septem
uenas ("seven veins") in the left side of the beast's liver (364-5):
has omnis retro

prohibens reuerti limes oblicus secat.
An oblique borderline intersects them,

preventing them all from turning back.
In line 367, however, she declares sed acta

are driven back around). How can "the
movement retro in 364-5, if two lines la
driven retro? Again, it is possible to ma
dictory claims' coherence: the first retro
to backward motion, and the second be t
"all turned around"-a reasonable constr
position of these and other oxymoronic
claims in Manto's description of the exti
376) calls attention to the instability o
intelligibility relies precisely on the fac
not fixed, that their meanings can rapidly
When Manto interjects mutatus ordo est,
between these superficially contradicto
retro, she is not just referring to the
language with which she describes them
tently suggests that words have no sedes
regions. They are infected by homonym
used in oxymoronic, potentially self-
switch meanings from one line to the n
in contexts that not only deny them th
demand that they be construed to mean
say (361-2). The linguistic instability to
attention does not undermine the intellig
it does raise questions about whether her
of the extispicium can withstand the seve
blind Tiresias must place on it. Even if h
make sense, it is slippery and may not
and turns, reversals and counter-rever
guities-to present a picture of the ex
enough for Tiresias to build a prophetic
ominous signs upon it. This is in fact wh
ment of the rite's failure suggests (391-2
prophet's perspective, indicts Manto's
well as the ritual itself. This final announ
hermeneutical confusion Tiresias articulat
3), which perhaps mirrors the bewilde
reader who carefully traces the complicat
46 See Bettini (1985) 147.
248 AUSTIN BUSCH
discourse as it describes the exti

ligible but are often difficult an
On the other hand, the reader
recognizable allegorical elements
fully outlines, which suggest
ultimately perspicuous rather
support an elaborate allegorical
to construct one. Two contendin
emerge from a careful reading,
other its perplexity, one seeing
the divine cosmic order on w
example, insists and the other d
gestures at conflict in the minds
natural cosmos. These interpret
logue, and neither, in the end,
fact, the real dramatic power
Senecan tragedy generally) ste
bizarrerie it represents as from
cultivates by insistently juxta
upon the other, diverse element
interpretive and philosophical
cohere with the presuppositi
sophical prose, while others in
ambiguity of Manto's exclama
argue below, encapsulates this d
natura uersa est; nulla lex uter
...conceptus innuptae bou
nec more solito positus, alieno
implet parentem.
Nature is overturned; no law r

...A fetus of an unmate
Not positioned as usual, in a p
it fills the parent.49
47 On the dialogic relationship betw

Busch (2004).
48 My understanding of dialogue is b
Bakhtin's theory of dialogism are not
framework in Bakhtin (1981) and (1984
the scene of the extispicium under the
uous discourse with contending meanin
dialogically interrelated "voices" (see Ba
I alter Zwierlein's (1986) punctuat
difficulties the sentence presents.
The reversal of nature evident in the cow's womb could be

construed straightforwardly to reflect the confusion Oedipus'
unnatural incestuous and parricidal activities have occasioned.50
Unnatural causes (especially incest) give rise to sympathetic per-
versions of nature (a fetus in an unmated cow's womb). Nature's
seemingly unnatural response to Oedipus' perverse murder of his
father and marriage to his mother is therefore paradoxically but, in
the end, intelligibly natural. This understanding of natura uersa (371)
accounts for the allegorical significance of the oracle that initially
seems obvious to an interpreter familiar with the cycle of Theban
myths: the apparently disordered elements of the sacrifice's exta
register and sympathetically reflect Oedipus' and his family's sinful
violations of natural order. The conceptus innuptae bouis is a case in
point: despite its obviously paradoxical status, this phenomenon
does not so much defy nature as naturally reflect its disruption by
Oedipus' own unnatural actions, especially given the obvious corre-
spondence between the cow's fetus and Oedipus' own unusual
offspring, which Seneca's drama describes in similarly paradoxical
terms.1 An anomalous phenomenon that itself reflects the paradox
of Oedipus' own incestuous offspring and that is therefore appro-
priately described in paradoxical language, conceptus innuptae bouis is
naturally unnatural.s This is the conclusion at which Bettini's study
of the Oedipus' imagery of confusion arrives: "L'incesto ... apre la via
a qualsiasi genere di adynaton: dopo che Edipo ha assommato in se
l'inconciliabile, il principio di identita e quello di non contraddizione
hanno cessato di fondare il mondo."53
One could argue, however, that Bettini does not take seriously
enough Manto's claim that natura uersa est; nulla ... lex manet (371). If
nature is confounded, if no law remains, if the world of Seneca's
drama has become so chaotic that one can even claim, as Bettini does,
that the principles of identity and non-contradiction no longer allow
for its stable foundation, then how can one place confidence in the
Stoic conviction that nature will reflect moral disorder in a way
discernible to reason? How, in that case, can Bettini rely on the Stoic
law of natural sympathy to explain the adynata in the drama? Would
not natural sympathy itself-indeed, the very law of cause and
" See Henry and Walker (1983) 133; Bettini (1985); Motto and Clark (1988) 153-5;
and Davis (1991) 157-9 for more-or-less explicit statements of this assumption.
51 Compare fratres sibi ipse genuit (He became father to his own brothers, 640) and
Jocasta's self-exhortation: hunc, dextra, hunc pete / uterum capacem, qui uirum et gnatos
tulit (Seela this, arm, / this womb able to hold so much, which bore a husband and his
sons, 1038-9).
52 On the paradoxical confusion created by Oedipus' incest, and its reflection in
373-5, see Bettini (1985) 149-52.
53 Bettini (1983) 148.
250 AUSTIN BUSCH
effect-be caught up in this diso

understanding of natura uersa e
Oedipus:
The malign force which is in the ascendant is not just negative. It has a
creative vitality of its own, producing strange forms, maimed and distorted
versions of nature's norms. The abnormality and unpredictability of Oedi-
pus' environment is most emphatically expressed in the extispicium, which
is symbolic of all the horror that is taking place.... What we think of as
normal laws of cause and effect have been suspended.... [Oedipus] is caught
in a world in which reason is ineffectual.'
If in the Oedipus natura uersa est, as Poe suggests, it is disingenuous

to claim that one can make sense of confused animal exta by
understanding them sympathetically to register Oedipus' and his
family's violation of nature's laws, for "the normal laws of cause and
effect have been suspended." And if language, as the Stoic Seneca
would have understood it, reflects nature and its laws, then does not
the overturning of laws like this precisely destabilize language? If
words are naturally tethered to their referents in the cosmos, their
meanings fixed in stable referential relationships, then in the Oedipus
the overturning of the natural cosmos and its laws necessarily
disrupts these secure semantic links. The phrase natura uersa est;
nulla ... lex manet may thus gesture at an overturning of nature far
more radical than the one Bettini recognizes, one that calls into
question suppositions about the rationality of both oracular and
verbal signification, which are closely related in Seneca's thought
and especially in this scene of the Oedipus.
Viewed from this perspective, Manto's description of the heifer's
womb in 373-5 opens itself up to a reading less straightforward than
the one presented above. Conceptus innuptae bouis (the fetus of an
unmated heifer) is a profoundly oxymoronic construction, yoking
together elements far more incongruous than the tentative trans-
lation provided suggests. Although conceptus normally refers to the
act of conceiving a fetus in the womb, Manto uses it as a metonym
for fetus itself, that which is conceived-a strange usage not found
before Seneca.55This poetic conceit has the effect of paradoxically
defining the unborn offspring with reference to the sexual union that
could by definition never have occurred, since its mother is unmated
(innupta). Perhaps a translation such as "that which is conceived in
the womb of a virgin cow" more accurately captures the contra-
54 Poe (1983) 146-7.

55 See conceptus2, def. 1, OLD 385.
dictory elements juxtaposed in the phrase

that the "fetus of an unmated heifer, no
place not its own / fills the parent" (374-5
for what she is saying is unclear. She may
the womb laden with a fetus, has wandere
in the heifer's body-precisely the sort of
such as Tiresias would be on the lookou
arrangement and would support the po
situated in the wrong part of the moth
instead simply be drawing out the implic
exclamation of 373: since it is in an unmat
definition "not positioned as usual," wh
womb is located. The sentence's final w
reading, for alieno in loco / implet parentem
no business in the virgin cow to begin
ambiguous discourse supports either in
significant problem, since Tiresias relies o
exta she sees to draw out their prophetic im
that her discourse is ambiguous, he wil
reliably.
It is not enough to say that natura uersa manifests itself in the
anomalous phenomena Manto describes, which reflect nature's
profound order by intelligibly registering the limited effects of
Oedipus' unnatural actions. The radical overturning of nature Manto
announces makes it impossible to account for paradoxical phenom-
ena by understanding them as "unnatural" effects springing from
"unnatural" causes; if one takes seriously the claim that natura uersa
est; nulla utero lex manet, one cannot rely on the law of cause and
effect to function. Put differently, these paradoxical phenomena
cannot be accounted for as anomalous exceptions to nature's grand
rule, which such exceptions would ultimately prove rather than
overturn, for natura uersa est; nulla ... lex manet insists that there is no
stable rule. There is no rational system into which mysterious
phenomena such as the cow's anomalous entrails can be made to fit.
Analogously, there is no reliable cosmic order that can finally
stabilize the language with which these phenomena are described,
56 Bettini (1985) 152 astutely links this line to a passage from the last choral ode of
Sophocles' Oedipus: 68t~K~t TV Tv yapov yd6tov rnd T at / sKxvoOrVa Kaa t~iKvo6;eCvov (trans-
lation adapted from Grene (1991): [Time] brings to justice the unmarried marriage, /
begetter and begot at one in it, 1214-15). He argues, "Ci pare allora che la innupta bos
portatrice, contemporaneamente, di un feto, constituisca la trascrizione 'concreta' di
cib che in Sofocle e un iyaipog ydatpoq: nel linguaggio dei signa divinatori, l'ossimoro
linguistico si trasforma in bivalente monstrum naturale."
57 Bettini (1985) 149 observes that the lines are open to both interpretive possi-
bilities.
252 AUSTIN BUSCH
an absence of stability to which

shifting and at times indefatig
draws attention. No wonder T
description of the extispicium by
quid istud est quod esse prolat

iterumque nolunt et truces ira
What is this that [the gods] w

to be revealed, concealing thei
The extispicium cannot finally

its ability to communicate is ba
in a divinely rational sequence o
of which Manto's claim that n
mentarily, the words with whi
their relationship to nature as s
wandering in meaning, without
ences, they come to be used in
and ambiguous constructions th
As noted earlier, these distin
confront one another in dialogu
the ambiguous word uertere (37
or "to overturn."58 If nature is re
valid, even if they operate in
expect. The anomalous reversal
ordered exta is then a natural r
unnatural incest, testifying to
signifying structure, which reg
If nature has been overturned o
law operates. The very princip
interpretation of oracles depend
appropriately speak of a sympat
ates rationally. Concomitantly
municate clearly. It is no longer
for nature has no order to p
meanings fluctuate in contrad
semantic revision in order to be understood, and at times even
rendering the claims they come together to make indissolubly
ambiguous.
As the word uertere allows for either interpretation of natura
uersa est and for these interpretations' conflicting philosophical
implications, so too does the scene of the extispicium allow for either
58 Cf. uert6, esp. def. 5-8, OLD p. 2043.
understanding of nature. For Stoics like S

anomalous phenomena-destructive ear
nomical phenomena or unusual animal
into nature's rational structure, even if t
structure involved registering limited dis
in Seneca's Oedipus an allegorical messa
confused extispicium, which is perspicu
possesses the insider information necessa
ficies of the animal's anomalous entrails and to discern the truth
about Oedipus' and his family's past and future crimes, and who is
further willing to work through the thorny language with which
those exta are described. The chaotic entrails reflect in a rational way
the confounding violations of nature that the Theban history of
patricide, incest, civil war and fratricide entails. If the cow's exta are
disordered, then, that is not because nature has no order, but
because the symbolic exta sympathetically reflect Oedipus' and his
family's sinful violations of that order. Accordingly, if the scene's
language is confusing, that is not because it has ceased to function
rationally in accord with nature's laws, but because it describes
natural phenomena which are anomalous, though still capable of
being assimilated into nature's rational signifying structure.
As was demonstrated above, however, the poetic discourse with
which Manto describes the exta foregrounds words whose meanings
shift before the reader's eyes, and is often gratuitously ambiguous. It
yokes together contradictory elements in ways that strain the imag-
ination, forming unusual poetic constructions that present a verbal
image of the entrails that is not always clear. This raises questions
about the conviction that nature provides a stable structure able to
ensure language's rationality, and undermines Tiresias' attempt to
draw reliable prophetic information from the extispicium. Concom-
itantly, it challenges the mythologically informed audience's confi-
dence in the symbolic meanings it may think it discerns. As was
demonstrated in my analysis of line 360, for instance, Manto's dic-
tion, whose ambiguity is occasionally indissoluble, sometimes makes
it impossible to determine the decisive meaning of even the
extispicium's most obvious symbolic gestures.
The possibility that nature is fundamentally disordered is one

Oedipus himself confronts at the drama's close. The self-blinding
that constitutes the play's denouement invites a reading that con-
strues his violent act as an insistent reassertion of nature's order in
the face of its apparent chaos. Carefully interpreted, it declares that
stable laws structure the cosmos and that rational inquiry tran-
scending sense-perception can discern these laws, precisely as Seneca
Philosophus argues in the Naturales Quaestiones.
254 AUSTIN BUSCH
When the messenger reports O

observes that se scelere conuictu
himself condemned himself / as
recounts the hero's contemplatio
his transgressions (926-34):
"quid poenas moror?"

ait "hoc scelestum pectus aut fe
aut feruido aliquis igne uel sax
quae tigris aut quae saeua uisce
incurret ales? ipse tu scelerum
sacer Cithaeron, uel feras in m
emitte siluis, mitte uel rabidos
nunc redde Agauen. anime, qui
mors innocentem sola Fortunae
"Why do I delay my puni

"Let someone assail this wicked chest either with a sword
or with a fiery flame, or let him crush it with stone.
What tiger or fierce bird will attack my entrails?
You yourself, cursed Cithaeron, capable of crimes,
either send forth wild beasts from your forests
against me, or send rabid dogs-
now bring back Agave! Mind, why do you fear death?
Death alone snatches an innocent man away from Fortune."
Oedipus initially settles on a quick death as his punishment, but,

while contemplating the various ways he might rapidly die (927-30),
he begins to distance himself from the criminal responsibility he had
set out to assume, by suggesting that Cithaeron, which he calls
scelerum capax ("accommodating crimes" or even "capable of crimes,"
930), may be guilty of his transgressions. Since Cithaeron is the
mountain on which Oedipus' parents abandoned him as an infant,
by reproaching it he brings to mind their brutal exposure of him
there, implicitly blaming that event for his sins. In meditating on
death as a "punishment," Oedipus a few lines later goes so far as to
insist that he is innocent of the crimes committed: mors innocentem
sola Fortunae eripit (Death alone snatches away an innocent man from
Fortune, 934). As soon as he utters these words, however, he recoils
from the self-justifying logic he has momentarily adopted (936-41):
itane? tam magnis breues

poenas sceleribus soluis atque uno omnia
pensabis ictu? moreris: hoc patri sat est;
quid deinde matri, quid male in lucem editis
gnatis, quid ipsi, quae tuum magna luit
scelus ruina, flebili patriae dabis?
Is this the way? Will you pay sh

for crimes so great? Will you pay for all
of the knife? You die: this is enough for
about for your mother? What about for
forth in evil? What will you pay to you
itself, which atones for your crime with
Oedipus recognizes that a quick and eas

punishment for his crimes so much as av
sibility. In the end, therefore, he rejects any
ment that might undermine the culpabil
emphatically refusing to see himself as in
Oedipus' vigorous insistence on his gu
since there is a clear case to be made
responsible for the crimes he committed
himself in a situation enabling him to ki
mother because he ran away from his Co
to the Delphic oracle's warning (12-21). In
order to preserve the laws of nature fro
Apollo had threatened (22-5):
hic me paternis expulit regnis timor,

hoc ego penates profugus excessi meos
parum ipse fidens mihimet in tuto tua,
natura, posui iura.
This fear expelled me from my father's

because of it I left my home in flight.
Trusting little in myself I placed
your laws, nature, in safety.
Confused oracular communication is at lea

Oedipus' crimes: by occasioning the very c
the Delphic oracle that prompts Oedipus' f
a divinity at odds with itself, which is
scribes the divine force governing the ext
quid istud est quod esse prolatum uolu

iterumque nolunt et truces iras tegunt?
What is this that [the gods] want and a

not want to be revealed, concealing the
Jocasta therefore has a point when she

announces his voluntary exile from Theb
nemo fit fato nocens (the fault is fate's; no o
1019). Indeed, no less a Stoic philosophica
pus was on record as having agreed with
256 AUSTIN BUSCH
situation, precisely on the basis

Oedipus, then, could legitimatel
line of reasoning he adopted in
blaming fate or divinity for his
he himself is guilty and takes p
done to his father, children and
gressions are so severe that deat
punishment.60
59 Chrysippus focuses on the oracle

from them a conclusion that echoes Joc
Oi8ino6a i bv A 2cav6pov 6v Too Flpti6o
oap(xivV Trav yovfO)v OTzE & arroKzTCvat, Qva
0vat, tfl 6suvrfivat. oOzTOg oO6iv 60(P
(piowv ctvat 6itZ Tiv fK zTig Eigapapivrg; ai
in any case, even Chrysippus himself sa
ways to kill them, in order that that t
come about from them, they could not
to them from the prophesying of t
responsibility of fate.)
60 Given that even ancient philosophi
the Oedipus story recognized that it p
Stoics, who contended that the natural
fate, it is no surprise that modern read
on making sense of how Oedipus can dec
an oracle apparently acting onfatum 's b
argue that Seneca's Oedipus can declare
divinefatum is responsible for his crim
a "primitive" understanding of man, in
"In a 'shame culture,' a man is not only
regardless of innocence or will, but he is a
consequence, Seneca's Oedipus ... is gui
the eyes and opinions of gods and men.
Clark rings true: the concepts of "sha
may be appropriate in discussions of a
Senecan tragedy.
Davis' own interpretation (1991) 161-2
notion of guilt" to understand how it o
responsibility are ... logically compatible
intentionality." One might object to Dav
a way, for on this understanding it b
responsibility for negative actions, d
Inasmuch as Davis suggests that one's g
one's fate, he begs the question of how
to commit rather than resolving it.
Other modern readers have argue
ultimately unanswerable within the fra
(1974) 72-3, for instance, observes tha
Stoiker schlechthin widersinnig.... Ein
Unverriickbarkeit des Schicksals fraglos
des StOcks in Widerspruch zum stoisch
vom Fatum bestimmt ist, Verbrechen
Oedipus therefore becomes a voluntary

full responsibility for crimes not entirel
himself for Thebes, his patria, which is s
crimes (940-1; cf. 217-20).61 But Oedipus'
benefit Thebes, for, as suggested above,
Theban plague manifests a more pervasiv
the leges naturae associated with and perh
ting Oedipus' unnatural crimes. His self-p
restore order not only to Thebes but
Oedipus understands this (942-9):
illa quae leges ratas

Natura in uno uertit Oedipoda, nouos
commenta partus, supplicis eadem mei
nouetur. iterum uiuere atque iterum mo
liceat, renasci semper ut totiens noua
supplicia pendas-utere ingenio, miser:
quod saepe fieri non potest fiat diu;
mors eligatur longa.
Let that nature which overturned i

laws in Oedipus alone, by inventing new
itself be made new for my punishment
Let it be permitted to live again and to
to be always reborn in order that you m
new punishments-use your mind, wre
what cannot happen often happen over
Let a long death be chosen.
As the above translation suggests, Oed

to demand nature's alteration ("let nature be made new" or "be
changed") in order to make possible the bizarre new punishment he
invents for himself. Since nature reversed its laws to devise new
observations a step further. As mentioned above, Poe takes seriously the notion that in
the Oedipus natura uersa est, and he argues that the view of nature and of fate, which
works through nature, that the drama presents perverts Stoicism: "Fate in this play
is ... immanent in nature, like orthodox Stoic fate. And the sinister process of nature
that communicates itself to all things, animate and inanimate, implies a cosmic unity
as perfect as that of the Stoic universe. Oedipus does not stand apart from this sym-
patheia t6n hol6n.... As we have seen, 'the whole' is an inverted nature, which not only
destroys normal life but distorts and deforms it as well...."
This complicated problem, which cannot be addressed sufficiently in a footnote,
demands fresh consideration in light of Bobzien's (1998) excellent Determinism and
Freedom in Stoic Philosophy, which in its entirety is relevant to the issue, but deals in
particular with pre-Senecan Stoic discussions of the Oedipus myth at pp. 175-9 in the
context of a lengthy argument about Stoic theories of divination (pp. 144-79).
61 On Oedipus as a scapegoat in Seneca's play, see Mader (1995) 310-14.
258 AUSTIN BUSCH
kinds of offspring for him-a pe

and daughter-sisters-it must als
existence enabling him to die
perpetuity. In other words, Oe
be noua (946) in order to answ
crimes, which are likewise noua
another way to read this pass
grammar and context: "Let that
laws / in Oedipus alone, by inve
newed by my punishments" (su
bearing responsibility for natur
in the nouos ... partus that natur
renew nature and its reasoned la
insists, will restore nature itsel
temporarily disrupted by his cri
This reading is attractive beca
the infinitely repeated deaths h
punishment for his crimes (9
want his self-punishment me
nature's laws his crimes effec
unnatural familial conflation: he is a brother to his children and a son
to his wife, whom he married after killing her husband, his father.
Indeed, Seneca's drama regularly draws attention to the confused
familial relationships brought about by Oedipus' marriage to his
mother.63 Analogous confusion characterizes the chaos of the Theban
plague, the natural effect of Oedipus' crimes, which it perhaps sym-
pathetically reflects, for one of the plague's most disturbing features
is the confusing conflation of family members in death.64 Fathers and
sons, husbands and wives unnaturally die together and are jointly
cremated (54-5):
iuuenesque senibus iungit et gnatis patres

funesta pestis, una fax thalamos cremat.
The deadly plague joins young men to old

and fathers to sons; a single torch cremates a marriage.
If Oedipus wants to resolve rather than perpetuate the natural con-

fusion emblematized in familial chaos throughout the drama, he
must therefore separate himself from the relatives with whom he has
62 Construing supplicis (= suppliciis; see Garrod (1911) 214) ... meis as ablative of
means rather than dative of purpose.
63 See 638-41, 1009-10, 1034-6. On confused familial relationships in the drama,
see Frank (1995).
6 On this analogy, see Frank (1995) 124.
been joined in perverted family ties

relationships perverted by the deadly
these relatives include Laius, whom he
avoid uniting with his father in death ev
his living wife-mother and children-si
carry on in the grave the unnatural con
ren associated with the plague, which he
Therefore he abandons his idea of perpet
appropriate punishment (949-51):
quaeratur uia
qua nec sepultis mixtus et uiuis tamen
exemptus erres: morere, sed citra patre
A way must be sought to wande

no mixing with the buried dead, but n
from those who are alive: die, but stop s
Ultimately Oedipus decides on self-

punishment, and after he gouges out his
that he (971-6)
attollit caput
cauisque lustrans orbibus caeli plagas
noctem experitur. quidquid effossis male
dependet oculis rumpit, et uictor deos
conclamat omnis: "parcite en patriae, precor:
iam iusta feci, debitas poenas tuli...."
lifted his head and,

examining the regions of heaven with his hollow orbs,
tested the night. Whatever stuff hangs from his insufficiently
gouged out eyes he rips out and, victorious, cries
to all the gods: "Behold! Spare my fatherland, I pray.
I have now done justice; I have paid the penalty owed...."
When Oedipus can no longer see, he turns his orbes caui to the
heavens, experiencing or perhaps testing (experitur) the night sky.
The Latin is ambiguous, but in any case it indicates that Oedipus
perceives something about the sky that does not depend on eyesight.
It is significant that in the Naturales Quaestiones Seneca presents
knowledge of the stars that transcends bodily sense-perception as an
emblem of rational knowledge about nature's profound structure.
Only philosophia can access nature's order because, according to the
work's preface (1.praef.1), it is non ... oculis contenta: maius esse quid-
dam suspicata est ac pulchrius quod extra conspectum natura posuisset
(not content with the eyes; it suspected that there is something
260 AUSTIN BUSCH
greater and more beautiful

(1.praef.11-13):65
Sursum ingentia spatia sunt, in qu

<s>ed ita, si secum minimum ex co
expeditus leuisque ac se content
siderum atque
diuers ortus et tam
que stella primum terris lumen
descendat. curiosus spectator excu
quod diu quaesit, illic incipit deum
Upward the expanses are great an

this way: if it takes with it the least
thing base and, unimpeded and lig
in tranquility it contemplates the
diverse paths of their harmoniou
first shines its light on earth, wh
where it descends. The attentive o
things out one by one.... Therein
therein he begins to recognize G
cosmos.
The Naturales Quaestiones provides one lens th

view Oedipus' self-blinding. The night sky reflec
governing the natural universe, but this rationa
only to the observer willing to abandon superf
ception in order to rely on philosophia, which is n
Viewed from this perspective, Oedipus' self-blind
decision to stop looking at the universe superficia
beyond bodily sense-perception in order to disce
cosmos' profound divine order. As a complem
himself by gouging out his eyes, Oedipus takes re
having properly understood the Delphic orac
nouncements and the truth of his own sinful situation. His self-
blinding implies that if the divinity governing the universe and its
65 This is not the only place in the NQ where knowledge of the stars transcending
sense-perception emblematizes philosophical reasoning. In NQ 6.3.1-3 (part of which
was discussed above) knowledge of astronomical phenomena provided by sense-
perception leads to superstitious fear, while knowledge based on reason frees the
observer from it. Also, in NQ 7.1 Seneca calls for rational inquiry into regular astro-
nomical phenomena (such as the rising and setting of the stars, sun and moon) which
are not so often attended to as seemingly anomalous phenomena that appear more
spectacular to superficial sense-perception (such as comets or eclipses). He concludes:
at mehercules non aliud quis aut magnificentius quaesierit aut didicerit utilius quam de
stellarum siderumque natura... (But, by God, one could neither seek to know about
something more splendid nor learn more profitably about anything than about the
nature of stars and constellations..., 7.1.6).
oracular communications appeared inscru

because he was not observing them corre
by eliminating the possibility of furt
implication recalls Tiresias' initial wil
limited intellect rather than the extispicium
experienced when confronted with the c
sacrificial fire (329), which appeared t
rather than natural order. When Oedip
without the help of his eyes, then, he fig
commitment to investigating the cosm
Seneca Philosophus displays in the Nat
Tiresias begins to articulate at the start of t
In this context, Seneca's comment that
ever stuff hangs from his insufficiently
represents not a bizarrely gruesome rhe
Oedipus' utter condemnation of his p
perception.66 Although the profound
ficially confusing oracles Apollo gave O
perspicuous to his limited insight, it was
there to be found, had he searched for i
the night sky and the seemingly chaotic
in the Naturales Quaestiones reveal their c
only when examined by means of penetra
sense-perception. When Oedipus blind
refusing the limitations of sense-percepti
of knowledge based upon it: his eyeles
figuratively affirms Seneca Philosophu
natural cosmos-both the phenomena it
66 Scholars often observe that in Sophocles' Oedip

to repudiate the kind of rational inquiry he prac
career and throughout the tragedy until the final a
more mystical or religious knowledge possessed b
the hero thus assimilates himself by gouging out
38; Musurillo (1967) 85-8; Champlin (1969); Goldh
Goldhill (1986) further suggest that this might const
and inventive spirit" associated with the cultural f
(Knox (1957) 116). My reading suggests that Oedi
develops some of these same themes, although in a
calls attention to the limitations of Oedipus' previ
failure of reason or rational inquiry per se. On the
himself, at which he arrives rationally, figures his
form, purged of base sense-perception. (Whether
separate question, dependent on whether the co
ordered. As I have argued, Seneca's tragedy orch
insisting that it is and voices claiming it is not.) M
that the plays of Sophocles and Seneca are not co
development of this cluster of themes.
262 AUSTIN BUSCH
information it provides-has a
transcend superficial modes of
deep and divinely ordered stru
blinding as the transcendence of
of explaining his final victoriou
plague devastating Thebes (974-6
et uictor deos
conclamat omnis: "parcite en patriae, precor:
iam iusta feci, debitas poenas tuli...."
And, victorious, he cries

to all the gods: "Behold! Spare my fatherland, I pray.
I have now done justice and have paid the penalty owed...."
Oedipus' self-punishment represents a triumphant reaffirmation that

the natural cosmos has a rational structure discernible to those who
look for it properly, as he had earlier failed to do. Since his self-
blinding implies that the universe finally does make sense, Oedipus
can exultantly demand that it behave sensibly: the plague, a prime
emblem of natural confusion (37-70) for which Oedipus now takes
responsibility (926-74), must be lifted.
Although I have emphasized the rational way Oedipus decided
on his punishment and have framed his actions as an assertion that
nature itself is rational, the reader of the play cannot ignore the fact
that the messenger describes these actions in decidedly irrational
terms. Any interpretation of the drama's close, therefore, must also
take Oedipus' furor into account (957-61):67
Dixit atque ira furit:

ardent minaces igne truculento genae
oculique uix se sedibus retinent suis;
uiolentus audax uultus, iratus ferox
iamiam eruentis....
He spoke and raged with anger:

his overhanging eye-sockets burn with savage fire
and his eyes hardly hold themselves in their seats;
his face is violent, threatening, enraged, fierce;
now he is digging....
Even in his reasoned self-punishment the possibility emerges that

fury and irrationality are in the ascendant and that Oedipus' self-
blinding perpetuates precisely the chaos he means to resolve. Still,
67 For other language of madness and fury in the messenger's description o

Oedipus, see 919-25 and 970.
one must recognize with Poe that Sene

messenger's furious description of him, "
spontaneously pierce his eyes with a pin,"
He is rather presented as "acting slowly
thought."69 This leads Poe to characterize
paradoxical act of "reasoning mania," an
that recognizes in his self-punishment el
madness, of order and chaos."7The fact
Oedipus' most deliberate and reasoned a
that his attempt to reassert nature's order
attempt is, at least in part, characterized
chaos it attempts to resolve.
This possibility also emerges from a car
discourse with which Oedipus suggests th
restore nature's order, for Seneca here onc
way that calls their meanings into ques
Oedipus suggests that an appropriate self-
nature's renewal (943-5). But, paradoxicall
precisely because it has nouos / comment
new offspring, 943-4) in him. The juxtap
with nouetur suggests that the renewa
punishment attempts may not resolve but
perversion necessitating that renewal in t
fact that Oedipus goes on to call the natu
he contemplates noua (946) indicates his a
of nature may reiterate its perversion
possible to construct a reading of these
possibility of repeated natural perversion
made strange (Natura ... nouetur, 943,
strange new punishments (noua supplicia,
strange offspring (nous ... partus, 943-4) O
Seneca's perplexingly ambiguous diction, w
iteration of nouus / nouare in the space of
more complex reading, especially since Oe
the noua / supplicia (946-7) he initially
robust interpretation will recognize the c
68 Poe (1983) 154. See also Mader (1995) 306,

blinding in Seneca's tragedy with his self-blinding
the Sophoclean sequence and places the self-mutila
effect of his modification is to deprive the blind
transform it into an act which proceeds from a transp
69 Poe (1983) 154.
70 Poe (1983) 154.
71 The translations of Watling (1966) 247 and F
reading.
264 AUSTIN BUSCH
impending self-punishment
nature's order (943-5), to restor
(943-4) his incestuous and fratr
nally refusing to join his fath
involve perpetuating the unnatu
by his sin (943-4; cf. 638-41, 1
related Theban plague (cf. 54-5),
the prospect that his self-pun
perversion. Complementarily, h
nation of the heavens insist that there is a rational divine order to be
observed in nature, even if it is so profoundly complex as to
confound superficial surveillance relying on sense-perception. None-
theless, the rationality of Oedipus' refusal to perpetuate nature's
confusing perversion by means of his self-punishment is stained by
the warped chaotic rage with which he rips out his eyes (957-61).
The inescapable dialogic tension between reason and madness, order
and chaos, renewal and perversion that his self-blinding displays
suggests that there may be no way of exceeding nature's chaotic
distortion, which infects the drama even at the linguistic level, so
that nature's "renewal" finds itself juxtaposed with, and perhaps
semantically assimilated to, the linguistically related "perverse new
brood" nature conceived in Oedipus (943-5), which necessitates that
renewal in the first place.
An unresolved dialogue between conflicting elements of the

drama-"voices" insisting that nature makes sense, and "voices"
challenging that conviction-emerges with especial clarity in the
scene of the extispicium and in the messenger's report of Oedipus'
self-blinding. Some aspects of Seneca's drama suggest that nature's
laws and the language reflecting them are rational. The relatively
clear allegory of the extispicium, for instance, indicates that even a
natural phenomenon as confused as the cattle's disordered exta may
occupy a comprehensible position in the rationally structured natural
cosmos. At the same time, the difficult and confusing language with
which Manto describes the exta raises questions about how orderly
nature's structure really is, forcing the reader to ponder the possi-
bility that nature's laws are incapable of rationalizing the fluctuation
of words' meanings. This possibility, however, remains just that: one
possibility among others. Dialogically contentious voices charac-
terize Seneca's Oedipus throughout: some assume or even assert
nature's order, while others question or challenge it. At times, more-
over, hermeneutically ambiguous discourse orchestrates a dialogue
between alternate interpretations of the same passage, each of which
may have distinct philosophical implications. Oedipus' final exit
from the drama constitutes an example of this kind of dialogic
hermeneutical ambiguity. Seneca has th

stage personified elements of natural cha
lent fates" hold the position of prominenc
Violenta Fata et horridus Morbi tremor,

Maciesque et atra Pestis et rabidus Dolor
mecum ite, mecum. ducibus his uti libet
Violent Fates, the bristling shaking of D

Barrenness, dark Plague and raging Ang
come with me, with me. It is pleasing t
On the one hand, the tragedy's final line

Oedipus manages to restore order to the
removing the malignant forces that have
Seneca Philosophus and other Stoics saw
rationally governing the natural univer
leads away the perverse uiolenta fata and
exit with them echoes the statement his
that the cosmos is governed by orderly f
On the other hand, it is significant that o
their accompanying personifications of
Oedipus immediately comes to a close, for
be no dramatic universe without them
leaves open the possibility that the dram
is so fundamentally disordered that on
universe can no longer exist.
AUSTIN BUSCH
SUNY College at Brockport
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"Versane Natura Est"?

Natural and Linguistic Instability in the Extispicium and Self-

Abstract: In the Naturales Quaestiones Seneca explains the efficacy of exti

fter Creon leaves the stage in Act 2 of Seneca's Oedipus,

A Oedipus orders Tiresias, Apollo's uates, to clarify the oracle

Sacrate diuis, proximum Phoebo caput,

You who are consecrated to the gods, nearest to Apollo,

Tiresias responds by ordering that candidum tergo bouem / curuoque

THE CLASSICAL JOURNAL 102.3 (2007) 225-67

Sophocles' Oedipus, which Seneca

2Mendell (1931) 13. See also the comm

himself articulates this assumption in

[3] "quomodo ergo significant, nisi ideo mitt

[3] "How then do they have any significance,

Seneca imagines the natural universe as

namely a portent. Herington

ominously clouding Oedipus' head (325-7) su

hostile ualido robore insurgit latus

The hostile flank rises up with powerful

As Pratt observes, "the seven veins which r

13 Pratt (1939) 95.

orderly structure of the natural

nobis autem ignorantibus uerum omnia terribiliora sunt, utique quorum

Analogously, the cattle's "unnatural" entrails in the Oedipus are not

For Stoic philosophers, including Seneca Philosophus, portentous

superficial turmoil such phenomena repre

Quid fari queam

What could I say,

Tiresias is thoroughly perplexed, totally

They are frightful omens, but deep.

The prophet, however, takes a

quid istud est quod esse prolatum uolunt

The extispicium, Tiresias implies, may not be just apparently con-

qualis ab imbre solet percussis solibus arcus

As, after a rain, when the sun's rays are

Although scholars often note the echo of

22 Jakobi (1988) 101 discusses the allusion, as does

represents an informed observer

imbrifera qualis implicat uarios

As rain-bringing Iris weaves va

The allusive rewriting of Ovid's

description in the Oedipus underscores

Il caeruleus si mischia di fulvus, il fulvus di sanguineus.... I1 senso di con-

sed ecce pugnax ignis in partes duas

But behold! The contentious flame separates

It is no accident that this smoke covers Oedipus' face (325-7), for

23 Mastronarde (1970) 298 n. 12 comments on "the ambiguity of brightness and

tu, tu penes quem iura praecipi

the mythologically informed audience

quid istud est quod esse prolatum uol

26 It may be possible to maintain nature's orde

What is this that [the gods] wa

With these words the prophet s

settling on Oedipus' eyes. This paradoxi

[6i patv upb6 itn]tno;M 'H(iou, XpI)o0m6v ?[v

Given the Sphinx's conventional association with rainbows in the

Thebes' destruction, itself figur

nodosa sortis uerba et implexo

I untied the knotted ominous words, the entwined deceits,

non ossa tumuli lecta discreti tegunt:

No individual graves cover collected bones;

The result of the Sphinx's assault on Thebes is virtually identical:

a new curse to Thebes, so that Bettini