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