Medea reaches maturity: on Ovidian intertextuality in Sen. Med. 905-15

This article offers some thoughts on Seneca’s Medea and especially on lines 905–15 near the end of the play, which are key to understanding the construction of the protagonist’s identity throughout the text. They bring to the fore the joint presence of anger and love in the character’s psychology and, recurring to elegy as a point of entry, attempt to delineate an intertextual relationship with Ov. Am. 2.18, aiming at evoking the ‘ghostly’ presence of Ovid’s lost Medea. The article falls into two major sections: the first part focuses on distinctive features of Seneca’s portrayal of his heroine, like the representation of her intense emotions, the maius-motif, the sophisticated and complex interplay between previous models and the character’s poignant self-awareness. The second part revolves around the issue of intertextuality, whereof one specific moment is spotted at a microexegetical level in the epilogue of the play.