Il vendicatore imperfetto: Egisto nella riscrittura senecana

Abstract

This paper analyses the transformation of Aegisthus character in Seneca's Agamemnon. In this drama, the son of Thyestes, born by incest, becomes a type of corrupted avenger, whose heroic imperfection carries out the revenge on Agamemnon in the peculiar way of his father, that is to say by adultery and blood confusion. The role of Aegisthus in the play shows clearly the cultural meaning attributed from Seneca to the plot of vengeance: if Greek revenge was "a solution", a form of necessary repayment to a violation, restoring the regularity of cosmos, Senecan revenge is a criminal competition establishing the chaos, corresponding to virtutum certamen that, in Roman society, opposed fathers and sons.