Roman religion as set forth in T.A. is a case of creed in flux : the pluralistic pagan pantheon shuffles with Christian monotheism for subscription . The returning Titus intends, and has carried through, rites entailing human sacrifice ad manes fratrum--but these with due deference to Jupiter, Thou great defender of this Capitol (I,1 :77) . Saturninus, when promptly marrying Tamora, swears by all the Roman Gods (I,1 :322) . The precocious Machiavellian, the Boy Lucius, privately prays the Roman Gods confound you [Chiron and Demetrius] both (IV,2 :6) . But there are other indications that belief in this pagan pantheon is loose and lacks conviction . The Clown, en route to the tribunal plebs about a civil dispute, and so patently a Roman, knows not Jubiter. I never drank with him in all my life (IV,3 :84-5) . Demetrius and Chiron have classical names, have had some classical education---as IV,2 :20-24 and their literal re-enactment of a classical tale of rape and mutilation show . And, when Tamora is parturient, Demetrius proposes to Chiron that they pray to all the gods For our beloved mother in her pains (IV,2 :46-7) . Of course these may be Gothic gods, but given the foregoing and the fact that no Gothic pantheon is set forth, the likelihood is that Demetrius's gods are classical . Given this, a specific divinity, Lucina, goddess of childbirth, is to hand to be invoked . But Demetrius's prayers are catch-all and come-who-may . So too is the invocation of Roman Marcus--Apollo, Pallas, Jove, or Mercury, Inspire me (IV,1 :67-8)--as he endeavours to elicit Lavinia's revelations . Titus, at a similar moment and pitch of emotional intensity for the Andronici, having just sacrificed a hand to save his sons, lifts one hand up to heaven, invoking any power [that] pities wretched tears (III,1 :207-9) . The emperor responds with gory heads and hand, but no god, let alone a specific god, lends a hand . Mt Olympus is vacant, and Titus in the archery cameo (IV,3 :50ff.) articulates this conviction : the gods, now individually specified, are assigned to points of the zodiac [Greek 'zodion', diminutive of 'zoon', animal], and made targets in a mock-hunt .
Christianity is historically the faith that supplants the Pantheon in Rome, and makes Rome the fount of Catholicism . In T.A., references to it are less frequent than to the Pantheon---the re-enactment of the Tereus-Philomena tale, and the attempts to elicit a revelation from Lavinia, ensure classical preponderance---but they are there : Sith priest and holy water are so near (I,1 :323) ; For now I stand as one upon a rock (III,1 :93) ; As begging hermits in their holy prayers (III,2 :41) ; With twenty popish tricks and ceremonies (V,1 :76) ; a ruinous monastery...wasted building (V,1 :21-3) . The main tenor of these is Catholic, and from the last example it seems that Catholicism in that Roman world is in a parlous, if not moribund, state . A purposive index of this is that, of all the characters, the sole one who is, by his use of terms---God be with you, sir (IV,3 :118) ;God and Saint Stephen give you godden (IV,4 :42) ; By'r Lady (IV,4 :49), if not by conviction : I could never say grace in all my life (IV,3 :99)---explicitly Christian is a Clown, he who knows not Jubiter .
The Pantheon and Catholicism in T.A. are shown to have form but no substance . What has substance --perhaps so as to eclipse these creeds--is the cult of family, more specifically the cult of paterfamilias, with Titus as the given archetype, and most specifically an--at first--unshakable belief in and adherence to precedent . Goths and Romans alike attach an uncommon, almost biblical importance to first-born sons, to seniority among contending brothers, to the intrinsic value of being 'he who precedes' . Titus gives Alarbus, the noblest that survives (I,1 :102), over to be sacrificed, and Tamora's plea for piety for Alarbus is put for my first-born son (I, 1 :120) . Aaron, who is otherwise an inveterate rogue, goes to extraordinary lengths to preserve the life of his first-born son and heir (IV,2 :92) . Tamora's surviving sons are on the verge of killing each other over their rival love-claims on Lavinia (II,1 :25ff.), the gist of their dispute turning on the value of seniority . Saturninus pleads his imperial candidature on the grounds of mine age...my successive title...I am his first-born son (I,1 :4-8), and Titus promptly recommends the election of our emperor's eldest son, Lord Saturnine (I,1 :224-5) . Titus not only has been ten years away at weary wars , but he also misses the opening candidacy speeches, wherein Bassanius is seen to be more worthy, and where too he declares his love for Lavinia . Not privy to these factors, Titus chooses Saturninus apparently on seniority alone, bur perhaps too corroboratively, on the basis of Saturninus's ready belligerency when his claim to empery is threatened (I,1 :201-7) : the old warrior choosing an apparent new warrior . First-born and worth are co-extensive for Titus, as seen earlier in his choice of Alarbus, who then proves to be first-born .
'He who precedes' is precisely the label one attaches to Titus : by his initial situation of returning triumphator, by his pre-eminence as warrior-leader compared with the stay-at-homes (A nobler man, a braver warrior, lives not this day within the city walls, I,1 :25-6), by his status of paterfamilias of the Andronici--the current family in a 500 years continuum of none but soldiers and Rome's servitors (I,1 :350-3) . The elaborate attention Titus gives to the entombment of yet two more fallen warrior-hero sons, and the protracted solicitation required to obtain his sanction for Mutius's interment in the family tomb, consolidate the sense that the Andronici's creed is in a family pantheon, leaving little room to subscribe with conviction to the Pantheon, and even less to Catholicism . But past members are nowhere cited, their deeds are not blazoned forth, no more than are the lares, the mask-images of famous ancestors, donned for that initial funeral procession, as is the Roman custom . Sleight of words turns these lares into loud 'larums' (I,1 :147), and the ancestors continue to remain unspecified, nebulous, anonymous . By this deft process of cultivating a family pantheon whilst invoking these ancestors in their anonymity, the emphasis, interest, and respect verging on awe necessarily falls on the decimated Andronici's extant few and on 'he who precedes', as paterfamilias, as father who in battle outlives 21 sons : Titus . Lavinia's tributary tears (I,1 :159) are shed in tribute to her fallen brothers, but are also 'tributary' to( i.e. serving to increase the larger stream of) the tears of joy Shed on this earth for thy [Titus's] return to Rome (I,1 :161-2) . 'Honour' is on the lips of all Romans who address Titus . Indeed, Titus is prepared to excommunicate, to expel his remaining few family from the Andronici pantheon, for supporting Bassanius's legal claim of betrothal to Lavinia, and he kills one son in an attempt to restore the situation : all in defence of family honour . That is, until one realises that it is an inglorious ego-trip, for 'Titus' means 'honourable' .
One way or another, Titus is certainly foremost, primus inter pares in a cluster of Romans and Goths who alike assert the intrinsic value of seniority, of precedent . This shared belief, that weighs against convicted subscription to Pantheon or Catholicism, and which goes to explain the lack of protest--save in private rumblings, out of pique or jealousy--at racial intermarriage between Saturninus and Tamora, is a mundane application of the Arian dogma 'that the Son was separate from the Father and, although divine, different in substance and nature ; that the Son was begotten by the Father and was therefore not coeternal'.
In effect, the Father, or He who precedes, is doubtlessly superior . In T.A. , of all the proposals on seniority, Tamora's, in her appeal for Alarbus, is the only one that is maternal and other-centred . The rest wrap ego and ulterior motives up in more seemly arguments on primogeniture, the intrinsic superiority of being older, or on the cult of family, with its ready paterfamilias : Arianism, here, is the cult of self .
Some of these advocates of seniority are nor rampantly egocentric . The Andronici sons and brother Marcus, while devoted to family and paterfamilias, defend the prior claim in law--because it is in law--of Bassanius to Lavinia . And then Saturninus, under severe provocation from Titus, holds to the extent of egal justice (IV,4 :3-4) ; there naught hath passed But even with law against the willful sons Of old Andronicus (IV,4 :7-9) . Titus and the Tamora materfamilia are another case, however . Titus disregards legality concerning the betrothal, for family honour, i.e. Titus, has pre-eminence . Similarly , Chiron and Demetrius openly quarrel So near the emperor's palace (II,1 :46), and are openly prepared to jet upon a prince's right (II,1 :64) . Both Titus and the Gothic dynasty are lawless if the ego needs. The Goths differ in that they are more explicitly so--by way of their race's name . When the Goths initially are in servile tow to Titus, Demetrius recollects their former status : When Goths were Goths and Tamora was Queen (I,1 :140) . Both on homophony (Goth-God) and meaning ('Goth' means 'god'), divinity is universal among the Goths, with Tamora as 'She who precedes' : a family pantheon similar in kind to that more sacerdotally cultivated by Titus . With the marriage to Saturninus, the Gothic dynasty forms not the power behind the Roman throne--the law still holds, and is, variously, enforced--but has a certain position of power from which to deceive and effect as they lawlessly will : 'Now Goths are Goths' .
Titus's egocentrism, his 'Arianism', is covert, masked in what in Rome is a universal cult : that of one's paterfamilia . And Titus is of a patrician family and a culture of long standing and considerable depth . But that Roman culture is, in T.A., in Arian relation --as inferior Son to superior Father--to the preceding classical culture : that of the Greeks . That sense of Roman inferiority is registered numerically, qualitatively, or in doubts of not coming up to the Greek mark . Titus has five and twenty valiant sons, Half of the number King Priam had (I,1 :79-80) . Titus says of Saturninus : whose virtues will, I hope , Reflect on Rome as Titan's rays on earth (I,1 :225-6) .Marcus addresses Titus : Thou art a Roman, be not barbarous : The Greeks upon advice did...and wise Laertes' son Did....(I,1 :378ff) . In contrast, Tamora disbelieves, and so qualifies, the validity of classical antecedents : conflict such as was supposed The wandering prince and Dido once enjoyed (II,3 :21-22) ; Had I the power that some say Dian had...(II,3 :61ff.) . Demetrius when under Titus's yoke says : but hope withal The self-same Gods that armed the Queen of Troy...May favour Tamora (I,1 :135-9) . But Demetrius unfettered can say : Better than he [Bassanius] have worn Vulcan's badge (II,1 :89) . Unfettered, Goths are Gods, and the Goths' eminence noire, Aaron--who only becomes voluble in the text when unfettered and safe behind Tamora (II,1)--does not so much disbelieve as believe himself , the Gothic materfamilia, and their concerns to be the equal and more of classical antecedents : faster bound to Aaron's charming eyes than is Prometheus tied to Caucasus (II, :16-17) ; Lucrece was not more chaste Than this Lavinia (II,1 {108-9) ; His Philomel must lose her tongue today, Thy sons make pillage of her chastity (II,3 :43-44) . It is no accident that when Titus enacts his part of the revenge cycle, he matches Aaron in going beyond the attempt at equivalence to classical precedents : Far worse than Philomel you used my daughter, And worse than Progne I will be revenged (V,2 :195-6) ; as woeful as Virginius was, And a thousand times more cause than he (V,3 :50-51) . The use of classical allusions in T.A. is an index of changes in character-status . The Titus of later on joins the Goths in being bloodily vengeful, in making literal a literary cameo, in becoming explicitly egocentric, in outdoing classical precedent : he becomes a Goth-god .
Whatever were the failings of the early Titus, pitched as he was from a warrior's life into a court ambience he clearly mistrusts (I,1 :152-5), his transformation is to a character patently worse than 'what preceded' . Lucius, who starts by advocating bloody sacrifice Ad manes fratrum, later says when pressed by Aaron into a precise statement of belief : Even by my god I swear to thee I will (V,1 :86)--this directly after Aaron charges him with being religious And hast a thing called conscience, With twenty popish tricks and ceremonies, Which I have seen thee careful to observe (V1 :74-77) . Lucius, the former pagan pantheist has in the course of the play transformed into Christian monotheist--a not unimportant point for the play's conclusion and Rome's future, for Lucius is soon to be emperor-elect . Lucius's progress is akin to Edgar's in King Lear : not a central protagonist, he nevertheless witnesses the prevailing carnage, is transformed by the experience, and, as Shakespeare's ruler-designate, survives to mend a rent, chastened world .
Lucius's transformation is coextensive with a transformation in Roman belief and practice . The opening scenes are an examination of classical Roman pietas--religious piety, human compassion, patriotism, and devotion towards relatives . In short space : the Pantheon plays second fiddle to the cult of family,seniority and Self ; Tamora's plea for piety is rejected ; Titus the patriot ignores the people's hearts (I,1 :211) and inflicts a Saturnalian Lord of Misrule upon them ; the mooted dutifulness, family feeling and togetherness among the Andronici become discord, defiance and death . From that initial, highly public performance of tributary tears, of tears of joy, of mourning weeds and burial rites linked with sacrifice Ad manes , we pass through the phase of Gothic revenge to the schematic midpoint, the tear-cameo (III,1) . Here the Andronici do experience carnage in the raw--their own raw, and weep within the confines of family . At this nadir, they rediscover Roman pietas : humility, compassion one for the other, heart-felt tears, genuine family feeling, and now an other-centred patriotism--in the command given to Lucius to Hie to the Goths -and raise an army there (III,1 :286) . From the tear-cameo, we pass through the phase of Titus's revenge to the concluding scenes . There we again have a tear-cameo(V,2 :147-175) involving The poor remainder of Andronici (V,3 :131), but this time attended lachrymosely by a representative Roman Lord (V,3 :95) : the Andronici's earlier rediscovery of Roman pietas is reaffirmed, but now as a societal ethos . Now, although a fitting sacrificial victim, Aaron, is ready to hand, the various burials are effected without reference Ad manes . Now there is mutual esteem between Goths and Rome's new war-leader, betokening a unification of purpose and race, and Aaron the Moor, deemed beyond the pale, is given a Moorish-style slow death, fast'ned in the earth (V,3 :183) . Now the ancient Roman practice--not seen at the start--that a candidate for imperial office display his war-wounds is restored . Now the dead Tamora is vilified for having been devoid of pity V,3 :199), as the European concept of Christian pieta slips into place in a pristine, caring ethos . And now, as we have seen, Rome has an emperor who is Christian and monotheist .
T.A is a revenge-tragedy with many classical and Elizabethan antecedents . But Shakespeare does not bow to hallowed precedent, by merely parading the revenge-genre in new clothes . He changes the substance, harnessing the genre to effect a resolution in Roman Christian pieta . The result is that the Son is superior to the Father .
The Pantheon and Catholicism in T.A. are shown to have form but no substance . What has substance --perhaps so as to eclipse these creeds--is the cult of family, more specifically the cult of paterfamilias, with Titus as the given archetype, and most specifically an--at first--unshakable belief in and adherence to precedent . Goths and Romans alike attach an uncommon, almost biblical importance to first-born sons, to seniority among contending brothers, to the intrinsic value of being 'he who precedes' . Titus gives Alarbus, the noblest that survives (I,1 :102), over to be sacrificed, and Tamora's plea for piety for Alarbus is put for my first-born son (I, 1 :120) . Aaron, who is otherwise an inveterate rogue, goes to extraordinary lengths to preserve the life of his first-born son and heir (IV,2 :92) . Tamora's surviving sons are on the verge of killing each other over their rival love-claims on Lavinia (II,1 :25ff.), the gist of their dispute turning on the value of seniority . Saturninus pleads his imperial candidature on the grounds of mine age...my successive title...I am his first-born son (I,1 :4-8), and Titus promptly recommends the election of our emperor's eldest son, Lord Saturnine (I,1 :224-5) . Titus not only has been ten years away at weary wars , but he also misses the opening candidacy speeches, wherein Bassanius is seen to be more worthy, and where too he declares his love for Lavinia . Not privy to these factors, Titus chooses Saturninus apparently on seniority alone, bur perhaps too corroboratively, on the basis of Saturninus's ready belligerency when his claim to empery is threatened (I,1 :201-7) : the old warrior choosing an apparent new warrior . First-born and worth are co-extensive for Titus, as seen earlier in his choice of Alarbus, who then proves to be first-born .
'He who precedes' is precisely the label one attaches to Titus : by his initial situation of returning triumphator, by his pre-eminence as warrior-leader compared with the stay-at-homes (A nobler man, a braver warrior, lives not this day within the city walls, I,1 :25-6), by his status of paterfamilias of the Andronici--the current family in a 500 years continuum of none but soldiers and Rome's servitors (I,1 :350-3) . The elaborate attention Titus gives to the entombment of yet two more fallen warrior-hero sons, and the protracted solicitation required to obtain his sanction for Mutius's interment in the family tomb, consolidate the sense that the Andronici's creed is in a family pantheon, leaving little room to subscribe with conviction to the Pantheon, and even less to Catholicism . But past members are nowhere cited, their deeds are not blazoned forth, no more than are the lares, the mask-images of famous ancestors, donned for that initial funeral procession, as is the Roman custom . Sleight of words turns these lares into loud 'larums' (I,1 :147), and the ancestors continue to remain unspecified, nebulous, anonymous . By this deft process of cultivating a family pantheon whilst invoking these ancestors in their anonymity, the emphasis, interest, and respect verging on awe necessarily falls on the decimated Andronici's extant few and on 'he who precedes', as paterfamilias, as father who in battle outlives 21 sons : Titus . Lavinia's tributary tears (I,1 :159) are shed in tribute to her fallen brothers, but are also 'tributary' to( i.e. serving to increase the larger stream of) the tears of joy Shed on this earth for thy [Titus's] return to Rome (I,1 :161-2) . 'Honour' is on the lips of all Romans who address Titus . Indeed, Titus is prepared to excommunicate, to expel his remaining few family from the Andronici pantheon, for supporting Bassanius's legal claim of betrothal to Lavinia, and he kills one son in an attempt to restore the situation : all in defence of family honour . That is, until one realises that it is an inglorious ego-trip, for 'Titus' means 'honourable' .
One way or another, Titus is certainly foremost, primus inter pares in a cluster of Romans and Goths who alike assert the intrinsic value of seniority, of precedent . This shared belief, that weighs against convicted subscription to Pantheon or Catholicism, and which goes to explain the lack of protest--save in private rumblings, out of pique or jealousy--at racial intermarriage between Saturninus and Tamora, is a mundane application of the Arian dogma 'that the Son was separate from the Father and, although divine, different in substance and nature ; that the Son was begotten by the Father and was therefore not coeternal'.
In effect, the Father, or He who precedes, is doubtlessly superior . In T.A. , of all the proposals on seniority, Tamora's, in her appeal for Alarbus, is the only one that is maternal and other-centred . The rest wrap ego and ulterior motives up in more seemly arguments on primogeniture, the intrinsic superiority of being older, or on the cult of family, with its ready paterfamilias : Arianism, here, is the cult of self .
Some of these advocates of seniority are nor rampantly egocentric . The Andronici sons and brother Marcus, while devoted to family and paterfamilias, defend the prior claim in law--because it is in law--of Bassanius to Lavinia . And then Saturninus, under severe provocation from Titus, holds to the extent of egal justice (IV,4 :3-4) ; there naught hath passed But even with law against the willful sons Of old Andronicus (IV,4 :7-9) . Titus and the Tamora materfamilia are another case, however . Titus disregards legality concerning the betrothal, for family honour, i.e. Titus, has pre-eminence . Similarly , Chiron and Demetrius openly quarrel So near the emperor's palace (II,1 :46), and are openly prepared to jet upon a prince's right (II,1 :64) . Both Titus and the Gothic dynasty are lawless if the ego needs. The Goths differ in that they are more explicitly so--by way of their race's name . When the Goths initially are in servile tow to Titus, Demetrius recollects their former status : When Goths were Goths and Tamora was Queen (I,1 :140) . Both on homophony (Goth-God) and meaning ('Goth' means 'god'), divinity is universal among the Goths, with Tamora as 'She who precedes' : a family pantheon similar in kind to that more sacerdotally cultivated by Titus . With the marriage to Saturninus, the Gothic dynasty forms not the power behind the Roman throne--the law still holds, and is, variously, enforced--but has a certain position of power from which to deceive and effect as they lawlessly will : 'Now Goths are Goths' .
Titus's egocentrism, his 'Arianism', is covert, masked in what in Rome is a universal cult : that of one's paterfamilia . And Titus is of a patrician family and a culture of long standing and considerable depth . But that Roman culture is, in T.A., in Arian relation --as inferior Son to superior Father--to the preceding classical culture : that of the Greeks . That sense of Roman inferiority is registered numerically, qualitatively, or in doubts of not coming up to the Greek mark . Titus has five and twenty valiant sons, Half of the number King Priam had (I,1 :79-80) . Titus says of Saturninus : whose virtues will, I hope , Reflect on Rome as Titan's rays on earth (I,1 :225-6) .Marcus addresses Titus : Thou art a Roman, be not barbarous : The Greeks upon advice did...and wise Laertes' son Did....(I,1 :378ff) . In contrast, Tamora disbelieves, and so qualifies, the validity of classical antecedents : conflict such as was supposed The wandering prince and Dido once enjoyed (II,3 :21-22) ; Had I the power that some say Dian had...(II,3 :61ff.) . Demetrius when under Titus's yoke says : but hope withal The self-same Gods that armed the Queen of Troy...May favour Tamora (I,1 :135-9) . But Demetrius unfettered can say : Better than he [Bassanius] have worn Vulcan's badge (II,1 :89) . Unfettered, Goths are Gods, and the Goths' eminence noire, Aaron--who only becomes voluble in the text when unfettered and safe behind Tamora (II,1)--does not so much disbelieve as believe himself , the Gothic materfamilia, and their concerns to be the equal and more of classical antecedents : faster bound to Aaron's charming eyes than is Prometheus tied to Caucasus (II, :16-17) ; Lucrece was not more chaste Than this Lavinia (II,1 {108-9) ; His Philomel must lose her tongue today, Thy sons make pillage of her chastity (II,3 :43-44) . It is no accident that when Titus enacts his part of the revenge cycle, he matches Aaron in going beyond the attempt at equivalence to classical precedents : Far worse than Philomel you used my daughter, And worse than Progne I will be revenged (V,2 :195-6) ; as woeful as Virginius was, And a thousand times more cause than he (V,3 :50-51) . The use of classical allusions in T.A. is an index of changes in character-status . The Titus of later on joins the Goths in being bloodily vengeful, in making literal a literary cameo, in becoming explicitly egocentric, in outdoing classical precedent : he becomes a Goth-god .
Whatever were the failings of the early Titus, pitched as he was from a warrior's life into a court ambience he clearly mistrusts (I,1 :152-5), his transformation is to a character patently worse than 'what preceded' . Lucius, who starts by advocating bloody sacrifice Ad manes fratrum, later says when pressed by Aaron into a precise statement of belief : Even by my god I swear to thee I will (V,1 :86)--this directly after Aaron charges him with being religious And hast a thing called conscience, With twenty popish tricks and ceremonies, Which I have seen thee careful to observe (V1 :74-77) . Lucius, the former pagan pantheist has in the course of the play transformed into Christian monotheist--a not unimportant point for the play's conclusion and Rome's future, for Lucius is soon to be emperor-elect . Lucius's progress is akin to Edgar's in King Lear : not a central protagonist, he nevertheless witnesses the prevailing carnage, is transformed by the experience, and, as Shakespeare's ruler-designate, survives to mend a rent, chastened world .
Lucius's transformation is coextensive with a transformation in Roman belief and practice . The opening scenes are an examination of classical Roman pietas--religious piety, human compassion, patriotism, and devotion towards relatives . In short space : the Pantheon plays second fiddle to the cult of family,seniority and Self ; Tamora's plea for piety is rejected ; Titus the patriot ignores the people's hearts (I,1 :211) and inflicts a Saturnalian Lord of Misrule upon them ; the mooted dutifulness, family feeling and togetherness among the Andronici become discord, defiance and death . From that initial, highly public performance of tributary tears, of tears of joy, of mourning weeds and burial rites linked with sacrifice Ad manes , we pass through the phase of Gothic revenge to the schematic midpoint, the tear-cameo (III,1) . Here the Andronici do experience carnage in the raw--their own raw, and weep within the confines of family . At this nadir, they rediscover Roman pietas : humility, compassion one for the other, heart-felt tears, genuine family feeling, and now an other-centred patriotism--in the command given to Lucius to Hie to the Goths -and raise an army there (III,1 :286) . From the tear-cameo, we pass through the phase of Titus's revenge to the concluding scenes . There we again have a tear-cameo(V,2 :147-175) involving The poor remainder of Andronici (V,3 :131), but this time attended lachrymosely by a representative Roman Lord (V,3 :95) : the Andronici's earlier rediscovery of Roman pietas is reaffirmed, but now as a societal ethos . Now, although a fitting sacrificial victim, Aaron, is ready to hand, the various burials are effected without reference Ad manes . Now there is mutual esteem between Goths and Rome's new war-leader, betokening a unification of purpose and race, and Aaron the Moor, deemed beyond the pale, is given a Moorish-style slow death, fast'ned in the earth (V,3 :183) . Now the ancient Roman practice--not seen at the start--that a candidate for imperial office display his war-wounds is restored . Now the dead Tamora is vilified for having been devoid of pity V,3 :199), as the European concept of Christian pieta slips into place in a pristine, caring ethos . And now, as we have seen, Rome has an emperor who is Christian and monotheist .
T.A is a revenge-tragedy with many classical and Elizabethan antecedents . But Shakespeare does not bow to hallowed precedent, by merely parading the revenge-genre in new clothes . He changes the substance, harnessing the genre to effect a resolution in Roman Christian pieta . The result is that the Son is superior to the Father .
