The most famous and most unknown sentence by Seneca

Abstract

The paper offers an analysis of a passage of act 2 of Vincenzo Bellini’s Norma, tracing it back to Seneca’s Medea (ll. 932-3, 949-50). By means of a comparative reading of different treatments of Medea’s myth, the paper shows how the different narrative, ethical, and characterological context of Bellini’s Norma radically changed the specific and dramatic meaning of Medea›s original lines.