Senecan Soleo: Hercules Oetaeus 1767

Michael Winterbottom (CR n.s. 26 (1976), 39) criticizes Costa's edition of Seneca's Medea for failing to annotate sic fugere soleo (1022). ‘Did Medea’, he asks, ‘habitually escape by chariot - or is this a coy allusion to Seneca's predecessors?’ Of course it is neither; sic fugere soleo means Medea was accustomed to flee by leaving dead bodies behind to encumber her enemies (her children's in this instance, Absyrtus' and Pelias' on previous ones). According to. Seneca's usage, and that of Silver Latin rhetoric in general, once would be enough to establish such a ‘habit’, for in that fairy-world wonders and horrors become, as Atreus (Thyestes 273 f.) says petulantly, immane…sed occupatum on repetition. At Troades 249 and 360 soleo is used of the virgin-sacrificing ‘habit’ of the Achaeans, i.e. the sacrifice of Iphigeneia, which makes the sacrifice of Polyxena seem a good idea.