Bringing the Other to Center Stage: Seneca's Medea and the Anxieties of Imperialism

This article discusses Seneca's use of the myth of Medea to explore the relationships between Rome and its borderlands. In his Medea, Seneca's characters express anxieties about the consequences of cultural conflict that reflect larger Senecan concerns about imperialism. While leaving the periphery clearly affects the emigrant, as indicated by Medea's changing perceptions of her own character, bringing the periphery to the center also changes the nature of the center. Such concerns ultimately reveal trepidation about the loss of traditional Roman identity in the quest for imperial power and in the desire for the wealth of peripheral lands.