_Seneca's Medea_ (Vol. i., p. 107.; Vol. iii., p. 464.).--I cannot feel
much doubt that the prophecy ascribed to Medea was a mere allusion to
events actually past. It was a compliment to Claudius upon the recent
reduction of Britannia under the Roman arms, with nothing future, unless
it were an encouragement to bring Caledonia, Ireland, and the small
islands, into similar subjection. The Oceanus was supposed to extend
indefinitely westward, beyond the world, into the regions of Night and
Chaos, and was not only dreaded for its stormy navigation, but from
feelings of religious awe. The expedition to Britain was peculiar from
being ultra-mundane, and an invasion of the ocean, so that
"Oceanus
Vincula rerum laxet et ingens
Pateat tellus."
For that reason only they called the Britons "penitus toto divisos
orbe." "Britain (said the pseudo-Hegesippus) lying out of the world, was
by the power of the Roman empire reduced into the world," cit. Camden.
And the same is implied in another place of Seneca himself--
"Ille Britannos
_Ultra noti_
_Littora ponti_, etc.
Dare Romuleis
Colla catenis
Jussit."
But the "Poemata Pithaeana," reprinted in Camden, form the most lively
commentary on the chorus of the Medea. They are likewise of the Claudian
age, they relate to the conquest of Britain, and they are nothing but an
expansion of that one idea, the trans-oceanic voyage and ultra-mundane
conquest--
"Oceanus.... Qui finis mundo, non erit imperio. Oceanus medium
venit imperium. At nunc Oceanus geminos interluit orbes, Pars est
imperii, terminus ante fuit. Et jam Romano cingimur Oceano.
Oceanus jam terga dedit, etc. Conjunctum est, quod _adhuc_ (i.e.
_nunc_) orbis, et orbis erat," &c.
The Chorus of Seneca has no more of prophecy, or sagacious conjecture,
or other anticipation of the future, than Gray's "Bard," or the prophecy
of Medea in Pindar's "Pythians," both of them fulfilled before the
poet's time. Whatever may seem of a larger import, in Seneca's language,
than events had fully justified, belongs to the obscure and lofty strain
of remote vaticinations, or to the exaggerations of flattery.