We often use the terms “character” and “person” interchangeably. But what exactly does each term actually mean, and where do they intersect?
Dr Erica Bexley investigated these issues in the third academic talk of Durham’s Classics Society this Epiphany Term, in Senecan drama. By analysing the intersections between purely-fictional and quasi-human instances of character in Seneca’s tragedies, Dr Bexley argued that “character” has many more human, “personal” qualities than previously thought. Giving us a taste of three chapters from her forthcoming book on Identity in Senecan Drama: Character, Person, Text, Dr Bexley demonstrated these ideas through the topics of self-coherence, role models and family, and bodies and minds.
How can we define “characters” and “people”?
On the simplest level, Dr Bexley argued, a “character” is a purely-fictional persona. But characters can be more complex, and sometimes represent human qualities, without being actual people. Thus, the problem of a literary character rests on two opposing poles: on the one hand, characters are purely fictional constructs, lacking independent mindsets. We cannot extrapolate more about a character that what the creator chooses us to tell us. But on the other hand, we can — to an extent. Characters in some ways do work with our want to give them personalities. They can be quasi-human entities, with implied human capacities, attitudes, and psychologies. Thus, where a character’s humanity begins and ends can be difficult to define.
Most critics in the 20th century treated “character” as an entirely fictional entity, a de-personalised component of language and plot. Only recently have characters been explored as modelled on human beings. Dr Bexley extended this approach, and interpreted literary characters in Senecan tragedy as belonging to both “character” and “people” simultaneously. By doing so, she pinpointed where the purely-fictional and quasi-human overlap.
But what precisely is “identity”, and how is it formed? One’s personal identity is derived from multiple sources. Dr Bexley, however, focused on Senecan characters’ identities in three ways. First, she viewed identity as “sameness” (idem), implying being a coherent person over time. Her second way is through the links of genealogy, family and role models, which govern expectations of how one should behave. Her final approach interprets identity as the convergence between the psychological interior and physical exterior, through both innate physical appearance and learned elements. From these, consciously or unconsciously, we extrapolate a person’s identity, and this process reveals just how close character is to person.
Chapter 1: Self-coherence
Dr Bexley’s first chapter interprets self-coherence as a marker of identity. Consistent behaviour can be both personal (being true to yourself) and aesthetic (does a character behave according to expectations / genre ).
Seneca’s Medea exemplifies both forms of coherence in her 55-line tirade against Jason. Medea calls upon the gods to “devise a bloody revenge”. Although she is currently unaware of her impending infanticide, she starts recalling the murder of her younger brother and remarks “greater crimes befit (decent) me now”. The usual interpretation sees “decent” as a self-conscious, metatheatrical reference to Medea’s role: she has read Euripides’ Medea and knows the part she must play, measured against a prior dramatic version.
This interpretation is valid, but depicts Medea as a fictional construct, a dramatic character locked in a narrative arc. Dr Bexley argues we can also think about Medea here in human terms, through the idea of decet. Because decet is a keyword in Stoicism (cf. Cicero, On Duties) referring to consistent personal behaviour, we can interpret Seneca’s Medea as making a moral judgement about what currently suits her personal character. Specifically, Medea thinks about the correlation between her past conduct (murdering her brother) and her future conduct (murdering her children), and she wants to make sure she behaves consistently to her expectations. Thus, we see the overlapping of this decorum (suitability) simultaneously as a principle of personal behaviour and an aesthetic principle.
There is another example of decet connoting artistic/aesthetic appropriateness. In the Art of Poetry, Horace uses decet to describe the fit between a character’s language and emotions. “Sad words suit (decent) a sorrowful face, threatening words an angry one”. This word and background concept of suitability is the point of intersection between the character and person, between behaviour as a fictive construct and an implied human personality. For Medea, both concepts must be consistent, and so overlap.
Another example is Atreus in Seneca’s Thyestes. Like Medea, Atreus is acutely aware of his role as a dramatic character, as well as an individual who needs to live up to his literary past as a tyrant. While Atreus kills Thyestes’ children, and evil portents “move everyone”, the messenger tells us, “Atreus alone stands his ground (constat sibi)”. On the personal level, these two words imply both that he stands his ground and is being consistent, keeping through with the course of action he has planned. Thus, this phrase works a lot like decet. It is used in Seneca’s philosophical writings to mean “to remain true to oneself”: in Epistles 35 Seneca advises Lucillius to “endeavour above all else to be consistent (ut constes tibi) to yourself.” Thus, Atreus is an implied person, continuing to act in a way the audience expects of him from earlier in the play.
Yet, the phrase constat sibi also has aesthetic connotations — it can also make us think of characters as coherent literary entities. In his Art of Poetry, Horace advises “if you bring to the stage something untried, make sure it maintains the character it had at the beginning to the end.” Medea and Atreus must keep their previous literary identities. Thus, we see the intersection between the aesthetic mode of being and the personal one, applied equally to fictional and actual beings. A character’s and person’s behaviour has to develop along a logical continuum to keep being recognisably the same, idem.
Chapter 2: Role models and family
Borrowing and imitating the behaviour of certain individuals is also fundamental to identity formation. This activity in Roman culture was manifested as “exemplarity”. Great men are described with a view to future imitation. Most of these moral lessons focus around family patterns.
Copying ancestors’ actions is one way of living up to one’s name. This Roman narrative of exemplarity is deeply interwoven with family groups: your name comes with certain expectations. This exemplifies how people resemble characters, becoming stuck in certain patterns. In Senecan tragedy, the play where genealogical precedence dictating family relationships is particularly heavy is the Trojan Women. The action is framed by the presence of parental models: Pyrrhus cannot escape his father Achilles’ characterisation, nor can Astayanax his father Hector. Indeed, the memory of Hector is so overwhelming that no one ever mentions Astyanax by his name — but always refers to him as ‘Hector’s son’.
On the one hand, characters are expected to behave in a certain way because it is part of their genetic inheritance. But on the other hand, that genealogy can represent a literary background, as well as a biological one. References to parents can be seen as references to parent texts. Thirdly, references highlight a fictional character by drawing attention to roles. When imitating someone else, their identity becomes a role you can put on or take off.
When Agamemnon and Pyrrhus quarrel in Act II, Agamemnon highlights his deja-vu — he has previously argued with Pyrrhus’ father Achilles in the same context of the Trojan War and over a girl’s fate: “being unable to govern one’s anger is a young man’s fault… but for Pyrrhus it is paternal. I once endured patiently the harsh arrogance of raging Aeacides.” Genealogically, being Pyrrhus inherits his arrogance from his father.
But the passage can also be read meta-poetically as a self-reflexive comment on Pyrrhus’ literary background. Agamemnon’s remark refers to the opening quarrel of the Iliad, where Achilles insults Agamemnon for appropriating Briseis. By comparing his account to the earlier Iliadic scene, Seneca’s Agamemnon highlights that literary past. There is a strong sense Achilles is Pyrrhus’ literary father, as well as his literal one.
Astyanax is another example. When interacting with him, Andromache cannot see anything but Hector. She judges Astyanax entirely on his dead father’s behaviour. Like Pyrrhus’ relationship to Achilles, Andromache defines Astyanax as the genuine offspring of his father, listing his bodily similarities. Astyanax’s physical similarity to Hector assumes similar behaviour — “are you going to lead the Phrygians back to Troy?”, she asks. There are certain behavioural traits she assumes chiefly from his bloodline.
But we can also look at this through metatheatrical terms — Astyanax’s body is in a sense reperforming Hector. When Andromache describes her son with “this is how he was (sic…talis)”, she speaks a lot like a director, instructing the actor how to stand, look, act. This reveals Hector’s status as a constructed fictional role, and a part to be played. Likewise, Astyanax’s inherited qualities are constructed, to be picked up and taken off as necessary. They stop being biological characteristics and become dramatic performance: Astyanax dually resembles Hector in both fictional and parental terms.
Chapter 3: Bodies and minds
Extending beyond exploring identity through standards of behaviour, whether you behave coherently or act like your parents, physical appearance also plays a significant role in how we interpret each other’s identity. The body and face are useful, but not always trustworthy, means to get behind a person’s facade. A person’s exterior body may reveal their interior identity, both in the practised elements of appearance and via involuntary signals.
In Epistle 52, Seneca councils Lucillius on how to assess men’s dispositions prior to selecting a moral guide in an almost medical way:
“All actions are significant, and proof of character can be ascertained even from the smallest things. The lascivious man is indicated by his gait and movement of his hand…the rascal by his laugh, the madman by his face and bearing.”
Seneca uses the body as a way of accessing a person’s nature. This sounds like physiognomy, popular during the second sophistic, which focuses on the innate characteristics in your nature in relation to unchangeable parts of your body. But Seneca describes learned appearance, things you can develop. He focuses on pathognomy, the passage of the emotions across the body.
Most scholars would put a big dividing line between physiognomy and pathognomy. But Dr Bexley argues that dividing line is flawed. If you start indulging in a particular emotion, it becomes a repeated habit, transferring permanently onto your character. For example, everybody can be angry sometimes, but people who display anger frequently are known as being irate: a passing emotion becomes a habitual character trait.
Seneca’s Phaedra and Oedipus focus most on the body. The characters in Phaedra continually talk about body, both what Hippolytus’ physical beauty implies about his personal qualities and Phaedra’s physical and emotional distress. The Nurse stresses that Phaedra’s suffering elides physical and emotional: Phaedra’s body is seared by secret heat (aestus), which is both a corporeal fever and a metaphorical heat she feels for Hippolytus. The dolor, pain, she feels designates both physical pain and mental anguish. Equally ambiguous is Phaedra’s habitus: it could be clothing or an abstract condition of her mind.
The Nurse’s description generates an illusion of interiority, as though we could see ‘inside’ Phaedra’s head. This illusion of interiority makes characters quasi-human. Seneca invites us to think that there is some identity beyond the outside appearance, even though there really is not. On the other hand, Phaedra’s body can be likened to texts. Much Latin and Greek terminology of the body is applied to written composition. Portrayals of physical appearance can serve to enhance, rather than deny, a body’s fictionality.
The final scene of Phaedra exemplifies this. As Theseus tries to put his son Hippolytus’ limbs back together, he declaims: “Here put his right hand, here put his left hand, I recognise signs of his left side, but how great the parts still lacking.” Theseus likens Hippolytus’ body to a text: his membra (“components” in the broadest sense) must be set in order. There is a continual reference to counting the limbs (partes) and fashioning (fingit) a body. Previously unnoticed, Dr Bexley argues that Theseus’ recognition of the signs (notae) of Hippolytus’ left side evoke the metaphor of writing on a page and of pathognomy. This all points to the fictional nature of Hippolytus. He is a body made out of words, written by Seneca. But we cannot help also seeing the human level — in reconstructing the shape of a human body, Theseus understands who his son really was and what he did to gain this fate.
Dr Bexley concluded her paper with another quotation from Seneca’s Theseus: “Is this Hippolytus?”. This question encompasses the key themes of her talk. In the immediate context, Theseus asks whether the broken limbs set before him constitute his human son, the “person”. But the philosophical meaning for “what Hippolytus is” can be extended to character: he could partly be the actor, the character being enacted, or merely the words in Seneca’s manuscript. Are they fictional, actual, or somewhere in between — by ending on this question, Dr Bexley exemplified precisely how much the audience was important in reconstructing the “person” in the “character”.
*If you would like to hear the full talk, you can watch the live-stream on the Classics Society’s facebook page*: https://www.facebook.com/DUClassicsSociety/videos/1008488089347027.
Keep an eye out for our next talks!
Please note that this piece is the interpretation of a member of the audience, who tried his best to scribble down notes! The views expressed may not perfectly reflect the author’s ideas.
DUCS Talks Summaries are an opportunity for people who did not attend the talk to learn about it, for those who attended to clarify and expand on what they learnt, and for all to provide extra resources, research, and ideas.
James Hua
Academic Affairs Officer
Durham University Classics SocietyWith review and edits by Dr Bexley
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