Please, no journal entry for this assignment!
Text Access
Pseudo-Seneca. Octavia. Trans. E. F. Watling. Seneca. Four Tragedies and Octavia. 2 ed. Penguin Classics. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1966. 255-96. (Available via bookstore.)
Date, Author, Genre
The play was NOT composed by the philosopher-tragedian-courtier Seneca — hence "Pseudo-Seneca" for author, though that would better read "anonymous." (The play comes to us in manuscripts containing Seneca.) The play postdates Seneca (died 65 CE) and the empror Nero (died 68), perhaps by as much as thirty years (see arguments in Ferri's 2003 commentary). But its author, who clearly knew their Seneca, must forever remain unknown.
As to genre, at a certain, fairly superficial level, we needn't worry. For purposes of classification, it is an example — the only complete example to survive — of a praetexta, a play on a Roman historical/legendary topic. Yet note the frequent attempts to connect the action, mood, etc. of the play to Greek mythology — what's that all about?
Background
The following supplements the more or less decent background supplied by the Penguin translator.
The events of the play take place over the course of three days early in 62 CE, in the course of which Nero will divorce his current wife and stepsister, Octavia, to marry his girlfriend, Poppaea. The following delineates not just the play's action, but relevant prequel and sequel events:
- Octavia (ca. 40 CE-62), daughter of the emperor Claudius (r. 41-54) and Messalina, originally will have been named CLAUDIA, after her father
- Agrippina, Claudius' niece and second wife, persuades her new husband to adopt her son, Nero, and to favor Nero over Claudius' natural son, Brittanicus, as heir apparent
- That makes Claudius' daughter "Claudia" and Nero step siblings
- Agrippina also engineers a marriage between Nero and this same daughter of Claudius. But for that to happen, "Claudia" has to be adopted into another family — in this case, that of the Octavii — in order for the marriage not to violate laws against incest. So "Claudia" becomes an OCTAVIA prior to her marriage to Nero
- In 54/5, soon after Nero's becomes emperor, Octavia's brother Brittanicus, because he's a competitor for the throne (he is Claudius' natural son, whereas Nero was adopted), is poisoned by Nero
- Nero's marriage to Octavia finally happens in 53. But Nero soon finds two other women, the ex-slave Claudia Acte, and the noble woman Poppaea Sabina, more attractive. See further below for Poppaea's marital history. . .
- In 59, Nero arranges for Agrippina, his mother, with whom he has been competing for power, to be killed (see further below)
- Nero, claiming that Octavia is (a) barren, and (b) unfaithful, and (we think) probably connecting her (supposed) infidelity to (supposed) plots by Nero's enemies, in 62, banishes Octavia to an island where she is executed
Note that prior historical examples figure into the drama's allusive texture:
- Lucretia (see Accius' Brutus study guide)
- Virginia/Verginia (ca. 465-449 BCE), who, when lusted after by a powerful member of the Roman elite, was killed by her father to protect her virtue
- Agrippina, whose killing by Nero, her son, is treated as a precedent for Nero's treatment of Octavia
- Messalina, the niece of the emperor Claudius and his wife; also the mother of Brittanicus. Messalina, while still married to Claudius, married her lover, Gaius Silius. Both Messalina and Silius were executed in 48 CE
- Tullia, who (ca. 510 BCE) egged on her husband, Tarquin "the Proud," to wrest the kingship of Rome from her father, Servius Tullius, whom they arranged to have murdered. Tarquin the Proud's kingship, and kingship at Rome, came to an end with Tarquin's expulsion as a result of the rape of Lucretia by Tarquin's son
So political themes are prominent, particular those of tyranny. Compare, then, Nero in this play with Atreus in Seneca's Thyestes or with Creon in Sophocles' Antigone. Similarities? Differences?
Notes
257 "shed more tears / Than the sea-haunting Halcyons." In mythology, the halcyon is a bird (the kingfisher), formerly a queen, known for its mournful cry.
257 "O mother." Octavia's mother, Messalina, was murdered at the command of her father, the emperor Claudius.
257. "vile stepmother's." Refers to Agrippina, Octavia's stepmother, but also her mother-in-law (mother-in-law because Agrippina married Claudius, Octavia's father, after the death of Messalina, Octavia's biological father).
258. "Stygian torches." "Stygian," from "Styx," river of the dead. Death torches.
258 "My hapless father’s life; / Whom once the whole world, beyond Ocean’s bounds, / Obeyed; whose captains put to rout / The Britons." Emperor Claudius' generals conquered most of Britain.
258 "who died, / Slain by a wicked wife." Claudius was murdered by, or on orders of, his third wife, Agrippina.
259 "Here his sister, and his wife – / For she is both." Octavia is the natural daughter of Claudius, Nero is his adoptive son. Octavia and Nero are husband and wife.
259 "Ill-starred Electra." Though unlucky ("ill-starred") in many ways, Electra was allowed to mourn her father (Agamemnon) and to have a brother (Orestes) who loved her.
259 "brother dead." Nero had Brittanicus, Octavia's blood brother, murdered.
261 "His haughty concubine." Nero's extra-marital lover, Poppaea.
261. "a ship of death." Supposedly on Poppaea's prompting, Nero had a death yacht built to kill his mother, Agrippina. I.e., it was designed to sink and drown her. But Agrippina swam to shore and made it back to her sea-side villa. She eventually had to be slain by a soldier.
- Read the historians Tacitus and Suetonius on the death of Agrippina.
261. "that unlawful lamentable marriage." Claudius, in marrying Agrippina, married his own niece
263. "the likeness of the winged God himself." The Nurse means that Brittanicus, Octavia's full brother murdered by Nero, possessed the beauty of Cupid/Amor (= Greek Eros), god of love.
264. "the Queen of goddesses herself" etc. The Nurse compares Octavia to Juno (in Greek, Hera), queen of the gods and wife of Jupiter (in Greek, Zeus). Jupiter-Zeus, taking on a variety of disguises (swan, bull, etc.) to seduce or rape young women, was notoriously unfaithful as a husband. Note, too, that those two gods (Juno and Jupiter) were siblings, just as Octavia and Nero are step siblings.
265. Alcides. Alcides is another name for Hercules (as Heracles was known in Latin).
266 "Where cold Boötes stiff with Arctic ice." Boötes is a constellation in the northern sky.
266. "False Nero ... Domitius' son ... Augustus." Nero's birth name was Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus. On being adopted by his stepfather, the emperor Claudius, the boy became Nero Claudius Caesar Drusus Germanicus, or "Nero" for short. Nero will have gained the name "Augustus," an imperial title, as a consequence of his becoming emperor in 54.
267 "my ill-fated mother; married once, / Infatuated by illicit passion. ... She made a second marriage." Octavia's mother was Messalina, whom Claudius accused of adultery and put to death. Her "second marriage" (while still married to Claudius) with with Gaius Silius.
268 "We are to blame." We Romans of the present day have, through our neglect of virtue, brought these troubles upon ourselves; far different the Rome of "our forefathers." The trope of decline.
268 "They did well When they avenged the dying soul / Of a pure maiden." The rape, then suicide, of Lucretia led to the expulsion of Rome's kings and the founding of the Republic in around 512 BCE.
270. Acheron (Ă-ker-on). Like the Styx, a river in the Underworld.
271 ff. The philosopher Seneca, adviser to Nero, delivers a lengthy monologue recounting the myth of the ages: decline from primitive innocence combined with technological progress leading to war and chaos. He fears that, with these latest atrocities afflicting the Roman imperial family, the world will soon descend into the Stoic empyrosis, to be reborn in innocence.
271 ff. Seneca the character here evokes associations with the Stoic concept of empyrosis, the idea that the world will someday end in a vast conflagration, out of which will be born a new world. That would make sense, as Seneca was a noted Stoic. This rebirth of the world then leads to the notion of a new Golden Age, then to a fairly conventional account of the decline of human beings from the original Golden Age to a decadent present — a frequent topic in Roman literature, though a topic originally borrowed from Greek literature.
275 "NERO: Let him be just who has no need to fear. SENECA: Best antidote to fear is clemency." Paired sententiae. Note the resonance with Accius's Brutus ("Let them hate so long as they fear"). The real-life Seneca wrote a treatise, dedicated to the young Nero, on clemency, a virtue appropriate to monarchs. To quote the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "In Seneca, clementia [mercy, clemency] is a kind of restraint in a powerful person who might otherwise lash out and act cruelly, and it is something like equity."
275. Pater patriae. An honorary title: "Father of his Country." Typically born by emperors.
276. Brutus. This is Marcus Junius Brutus, who, in 45 BCE, led the plot to assassinate Julius Caesar on the Ides of March (15-Mar) of that year. He is, therefore, hailed as a tyrant-killer. His ancestor, Lucius Junius Brutus was celebrated as founder of the Republic (ca. 512 BCE) and, in his own way, a foe of tyranny, though not a tyrant-slayer. L J B is the hero of Accius' Brutus.
277 "fear of slaughter by triumvirate swords." During the Second Triumvirate (43-32 BCE), Rome was ruled by three generals, including the future emperor Augustus. The second triumvirate was a period of empire-wide strife and war.
276 f. "Roman blood" etc. etc. This passage refers to civil wars that spread through much of Italy and the Roman empire following the death of Julius Caesar in 45 BCE.
277. "two leaders." Marc Antony and Octavian, the latter being the future Augustus. From 36 BCE to 31, the Roman Empire was effectively split in two, with the west under Octavian's command, and the east under Antony's; Antony had meanwhile taken up with Cleopatra, queen of Egypt. Octavian defeated Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium (31 BCE), after which the lovers fled to Egypt, where they killed themselves in 30 BC.
286. Crispinus (kris-PIE-nus). That's Poppaea's first husband, Rufrius Crispinus, whom Poppaea divorced to marry Otho, the future emperor, in 58. But in the same year, she entered into a love affair with Nero and married him. Poppaea died pregnant in 65. (The story that she died from Nero's kicking her in the stomach is probably a fabrication.) Crispinus was executed on Nero's orders in 66.
286. "Your second husband's arms." The translator means Nero. But the Latin says not "second," but "new" (novi). Nero was in fact Poppaea's third husband.
287. "Jove the Thunderer." That's Jupiter (in Greek, Zeus), whose name in English is often given as "Jove."
287. "Let Sparta praise her daughter's beauty." This "daughter" of the city of Sparta is, of course, Helen of Troy. (Born in Sparta and wife of Spartan king Menelaus, Helen was seduced by Trojan Paris and brought by him to that city.)
292. "mother of the Gracchi." The Gracchi's mother was Cornelia (ca. 190 BCE-ca. 176/5), an exemplar of old Republican virtue. The Gracchi brothers both died struggling for Roman liberty against aristocratic foes.
293. Ship. Octavia imagines that Nero wants to do with her as he did with his mother: put her on a sabotaged ship for the purpose of drowning her.
294. "women of your name." The chorus means "of your extended family," since "Octavia" wasn't Octavia's original name.