Post on 19-Jan-2016
Pseudo-Seneca’sOctavia, or. . .
“Tragedy Is US”?. . .
Cameo with busts of Nero and Octavia, 1st cent. CE
2Ps-Seneca Octavia
“Trope of Decline”
“Is all this glory doomed to age with timeand perish in blind chaos? Then must comeOnce more upon the world a day of death,
When skies must fall and our unworthy raceBe blotted out, until a brighter dawnBring in a new and better generation
Like that which walked upon a younger world
When Saturn was ruler of the sky.” (p. 272)
5-Dec 2011
3Ps-Seneca Octavia
Agenda
• Discussion• Is Octavia Tragedy?
• Recap and Update• Seneca and “Pseudo-Seneca,” the Octavia
• Genre, Rhetoric, Theme• Seneca, Pseudo-Seneca. . .
5-Dec 2011
Discussion
Is Octavia Tragedy?
5Ps-Seneca Octavia
Is Octavia Tragedy?
• Why tragic?• How like/unlike. . .
• Athenian tragedy?• Roman Republican tragedy?• Senecan tragedy?
5-Dec 2011
6Ps-Seneca Octavia
Comments. . .no
• all the characters know their fate• no error
• no character can learn from their suffering• sympathy (but not pity)
for oct• (o’s nurse reassuring?)
• nero doesn’t learn!!!
yes
• pitiful that she can’t learn• we want her to learn• oct’s nurse is genuinely
deluded
5-Dec 2011
Recap and Update
Seneca and “Pseudo-Seneca,” the Octavia
8Ps-Seneca Octavia
Play Facts
• Author• Genre• Composition date,
context• Setting• Characters
Nero, ca. 55 CE
5-Dec 2011
Thyestes: “Senecan Formula”
Thematic Structure Dramatic StructureCLOUD OF EVIL ACT 1. Fury incites Tantalus’ ghost. Choral ode. Prayer
against tragic cycle.
DEFEAT OF REASON BY PASSION
ACT 2. Atreus and Minister. Debate, portrait in tyranny.ACT 3. Thyestes and sons. Retirement v. return.
EXPLOSION OF EVIL ACT 3 cont. Atreus & Thyestes – “reconciliation.”ACT 4. Messenger. Sacrifice, locus horridus.ACT 5. Atreus, Thyestes. Recognition & reversal.
5-Dec 2011
Octavia: “Senecan Formula”?Thematic Structure Dramatic Structure
CLOUD OF EVIL SCENE 1, day 1. Octavia, Nurse, Chorus. (Octavia’s plight, what to do.)
DEFEAT OF REASON BY PASSION
SCENE 2. Seneca, Nero, Prefect, Chorus. (Seneca remonstrates with Nero.)
EXPLOSION OF EVIL SCENE 3, day 2. Agrippina’s Ghost, Octavia, Chorus. (Restless dead, indignant living.)SCENE 4, day 3. Poppaea, Nurse, Chorus. (Poppaea’s dream.)
SCENE 5. Messenger, Chorus. (Angry mob. Chorus: Love v. arms.)
SCENE 6. Nero, Prefect. (The tyrant rages.)
SCENE 7. Chorus, Octavia. (Fickle mob, Octavia’s lament.)
5-Dec 2011
Genre, Rhetoric, Theme
Seneca, Pseudo-Seneca. . .
Praetexta in crepidata’s Shoes?
Electra ≈Orestes ≈
Agamemnon ≈
OctaviaBritannicusClaudius
“No other fate can equal mine, … not though I should remember thine, Electra …” (Octavia, p.
259)
Praetexta in crepidata’s Shoes?
Octavia ≈“Augustus”-Nero ≈
Juno/HeraJupiter/Zeus
“… shall our Augustus banish from her ancestral house / His sister wife?” (Chorus, p. 268)
15Ps-Seneca Octavia
SENECA PS-SENECA
SENTENTIA
quod non potest vult posse qui nimium potest (Nurse, Thyestes 215).“A man who can do much would like to do / More than he can.” (Penguin p. 106)
odio pari | ardet maritus, mutua flagrant face (Nurse, lines 49-50).“She loathes and shuns; he burns with equal fire of venomous hatred” (Penguin p. 259)
PERVERSE EXAGGERATION
“I walk among the stars! Above the world / My proud head reaches up to heaven’s height” (Atreus, Thyestes p. 84)
“. . . the forum / Stank with putrid gore / that dripped from rotting faces” (Nero on past civil war, p. 277)
THE TYRANT’S CREED, THE TYRANT’S DILEMMA
“Let them hate so long as they fear” (Atreus in Accius Atreus)“Men compelled by fear / to praise, may be by fear compelled to hate”
(Minister in Seneca Thyestes)“Let him be just who has no need to fear” (Nero in Octavia)
5-Dec 2011
16Ps-Seneca Octavia
Trope of Decline & mos maiorum(“Tragedy Is Us,” Seneca, p. 268, 273)
“… our forefathers knew true Roman virtue”
“Now upon our headsThe gathered weight of centuries of sin
Falls like a breaking flood. We are crushed down
Under our own intolerable ageWhen crime is king, impiety let loose,
And lawless love gives reign to Lechery.”5-Dec 2011