MEDEA AND THE JOY OF KILLING

The vocabulary of extreme passions that Seneca's « Medea » reaches represent some of the most noticeable variations on its Euripidean model. Consideration of the Stoic philosophical background against which Medea's joy is to be construed helps to make sense of the disturbing degree to which it is taken in Seneca's play, given that joy also figures as a preeminent emotion among those experienced by the Stoic sage. Seneca's characters shed ambiguous light on the principles of Stoicism by wittily misapplying them to their own behavior, thereby coming somehow to legitimize their evil actions.