George W. M. Harrison
Note: I wish to record my thanks to Athina Papachrysostomou, Menelaos Christopoulos and Andreas P. Antonopoulos for including me in this conference. Thanks also are owed to Richard Seaford, who was generous of his insights and time. This work has been greatly facilitated by Anne Bowtell and Jenny Moody and, as always, Jane Francis.
Abstract
Characters in the anonymous Octavia are positioned through their use of myth. Octavia, her nurse, the male chorus and the female chorus, especially, show their status, education, gender and generation by attitudes towards myth and mytho-historical material. If language might argue the unifications of the chorus at the end of the play, lines 201–220 resist definitive assignation even by this formulation of analysis.
The habit of mind of the Neronian court was to think in myth and mythologized history.1 The Octavia is a play once assigned to Seneca that relates the events surrounding Nero’s shunning of Octavia and her subsequent murder at his command. Only one character self-identifies with a figure from mythology: Octavia envisions herself as Electra (57–59), familiar from surviving plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, but known to a Roman audience as well from other Greek and Roman plays no longer extant:
O mea nullis aequanda malis
fortuna, licet
repetam luctus, Electra, tuos …
My travails in no misfortunes
can find equivalents,
even should I recount your griefs, Electra …2
Significantly Octavia sings her lines in self-absorbed self-pity to herself in the meter of laments; verse gravestones closely contemporary to the play survive in this meter. This is the meter assigned to her most often in her lines.
Mythological reference and historical reference in this play mark the distances among the various characters. If Octavia had already defined herself in the language of myth and tragedy, the nurse’s opening lines, the proper prologue to the play, reflect recent history other than conventional references to Dawn as Aurora and the rising sun as Titan. The mention of Alcyone3 and Procne and Philomela is Octavia’s first bid, like Hecuba in the opening of Seneca’s Trojan Women, to claim priority of suffering (vince, 7, 8) characterizing their complaints as ‘commonplaces’ (assuetos … questus). Although they are all birds of lament, they signify, as well, Octavia’s wish that she could ‘just fly away’, echoed by the chorus at the end of the play (hanc [Octaviam] quoque tristi procul a poena / portate, 976–977).4
Octavia expresses a wish to her mother (genetrix, 10) that she had died at the same time as her, using one of the three Fates, Clotho (15), by metonymy.5 Messalina leads inevitably to Agrippina, mother of Nero and wicked step-mother par excellence (saevae … novercae, 21).6 Agrippina is compared to the Erinys but since the Erinys harassed those guilty of murder within their family, Agrippina equally should have an avenging Fury in addition to being pursued by one. History convicts Agrippina of forcing a dynastic marriage on Octavia whose wedding torches Octavia compares with funereal torches (Stygios … ignes, 24). In Greek and Roman thought, marriage was symbolically the death of the bride as it was to be in actuality for Octavia. Agrippina segues naturally into Claudius (pater, 25), father of Octavia and victim of Agrippina’s ambitions, equating Octavia with Orestes and Electra. It is easy to see Britannicus, murder victim of Nero, lurking behind the reference to Claudius’ invasion of Britain. The tyrant (33) can only be Nero and his holding captive the family of the murdered ruler (prole … capta) is suggestive of Aegisthus at Mycenae.
The nurse enters and it is apparent that she is as unaware of Octavia as Octavia is of her.7 Her remarks seem directed to the audience; their substance on the ‘fickleness of fortune’ is reminiscent of choral odes of captive women, such as in the Hercules Oetaeus:
fulgore primo captus et fragili bono
fallacis aulae quisquis attonitus stupet, 35
subito latentis ecce Fortunae impetus
modo praeponentem cernat eversam domum …
Whoever gawks captivated by ‘instant glitter’
and awestruck by the ‘fragile goodness’8 of 35
of a fake9 palace should discern the home
overturned, suddenly laid prostrate
by the blows of Fortune …
Choruses lamenting their fates lament fates recent to them as does the nurse. Her reason for pointing to the palace and how others are taken in by the glitz is to indicate how far the mighty have fallen,10 a staple of tragic choruses, as opposed to philosophical tracts,11 on the fickleness of fortune.12 The nurse identifies herself with those who have fallen, dramatically potent since that will be Octavia’s fate. Her very first word, fulgore, shows she is not Octavia. To Octavia fulgor and tonans are symbols for Jupiter; for the nurse it is the surface sheen of fools’ gold. She then repeats most of what Octavia has just said: Claudius conquered the British channel, grandly styled the Ocean (40), forced to accept his fleet against its will, and conquered Britain (41) imposing the Roman yoke on them. She adds nothing to what Octavia has said other than hyperbole: their shores were unknown (ignota … freta, 42), his fleets were so large (tantis classibus, 42), the sea was covered (the language is that of embroidery [texit, 42]), the Britons were barbarians (gentes barbaras, 43), the seas were savage (saevia maria, 44). He alone was safe (tutus, 43), that is, until his wife killed him (coniugis scelere occidit, 44). Then follows a spread sheet of palace murder: Nero kills Agrippina (45) in three words, a mere five syllables. His murder of Britannicus, however, is made ‘unmanly’ since he resorted to poison (cuius extinctus iacet / frater venenis, 45–46). The nurse, later put in positive light by the pro-Poppaea chorus, does not view the marriage of Octavia to Nero as a brother-sister hieros gamos but as unfortunate. The nurse is unaware of a divine parallel of the enmity of Zeus and Hera in the mutual hatred of Nero and Octavia: odio pari / ardens mariti mutua flagrat face (“she flames up with a hatred equal to her husband, burning with mutual fire,” 49–50) nor does the nurse reference the Stygian marital torches to the torch of hatred.13
Octavia continues where she left off: she is the new Electra (59) except Electra was able to do what is not possible for her: Electra could mourn (maerenti, 60) her father (parentem, 61). Electra was able to secure revenge (scelus ulcisci, 62) and with the help of her brother (vindica fratre, 62). She credits loyalty (pietas, 63, fides, 64)14 of the people around him as having saved Orestes, something not done for Britannicus.15 The instincts of the author of the Octavia to focus on Electra are good, maintaining a one-to-one correspondence.16
The first interchange between Octavia and the nurse does not have much mythological or historical content. Lines 72–98 are important because they make it clear that Octavia knows that her divorce will necessarily bring her death.17 To the nurse’s question what day will bring the end of her miseries (solvet curis, 77) Octavia answers the one that will send her to the Stygian shades (qui me Stygias mittet ad umbras, 79). The nurse then wishes that the ill-omened remark of Octavia will not happen until some remote future (80) and she hopes for a gentle god (deus … mitis, 82–83), who will bring a kinder outcome (meliora … tempora, 82–83). The language shifts and for the only time in the play Octavia compares Nero unfavourably with wild animals: vincam saevos ante leones / tigres truces (“I should rather submit to savage lions or terrible tigers”), 86–87. The image comes from one gladiator submitting to another, remarkable since Octavia otherwise shows aristocratic restraint and so a clear sign of her extreme distress.18
The meter shifts to iambic trimeter and a pair of longer speeches by the nurse and Octavia and then stichomythia for almost all of the lines between 99–272. Myth and history largely disappear, but when they are mentioned, they are in the mouth of Octavia: Nero’s earlier mistress, Acte, is alluded to (famulae, 105)19 and is balanced by Poppaea (125–133). ‘Stygian’ is used twice in these lines, once for the murder of Agrippina which Octavia blames on Poppaea (127) and a second time for the murder of Octavia demanded of Nero by Poppaea (135). If the nurse lives only in her moment, her sense of ‘Realpolitik’ is better than Octavia’s. She places the blame of Octavia’s predicament squarely at the feet of Claudius: frustra parentis invocas manes tui (“useless, you summon the shades of your father,” 137. The indictment is detailed and is followed by Tacitus and Suetonius, both writing later than this play: he preferred Nero to his own son, Britannicus (139–140); he married his own niece, Agrippina (genitamque fratris coniugem … toris nefandis flebilis iunxit face, 141–142). This sets in motion Agrippina’s dynastic chess board: Lucius Junius Silanus Torquatus had been betrothed to Octavia but a whisper campaign brought about his death (145–146; 1 Jan AD 49 = day of marriage of Claudius to Agrippina). Octavia was married to Nero (147–154; married, 9 June AD 53). Pietas quits the Palace (160) and Erinys enters (161);20 the Stygian torch polluted the penates (163), one of the nurse’s few mythological associations.21 Agrippina poisons Claudius (164–165; 13 October AD 54) but is killed in turn by Nero (165; 23 March AD 59). If Octavia credits Poppaea, her rival, with the death of Agrippina, the nurse has a different version of events: Agrippina’s recognition of how cruel Nero was prepared her to become sympathetic to Britannicus, bringing about first his murder and then hers.22 In her sole, mythological allusion, the nurse counsels patience – as Nero’s attention wandered once already and returned soon, so he will do again – Cupid is a god without staying power.
Octavia is unmoved. Sooner than reconcile with Nero, seas will join with stars (222), fire with waves (223), Tartarus with heaven (223) and other conventional opposites. She pins a baseless hope (utinam, 237; pro summe genitor, 245) that Jupiter (229) will destroy Nero. The northern stars (Bootes, 234) are mentioned in respect to a comet (232) that for Octavia could bear signs of his fall.23 Nero is then compared unfavourably to other, earlier monsters which have celestial associations: Typhon (238) born from mother earth (Tellus, 239) than whom Nero is proving more destructive. Yet Jupiter has not sent thunderbolts with his right hand (247) against Nero. Octavia refers to Nero (249) by his patronymic and not his adopted name. As son of a non-Julian, he fouls the name of Augustus (251).
Venus (258) comes in for her share of blame for having provoked Messalina to adultery and then to bigamy (nupta demens nupsit incesta face, 260). This unleashed the Furies (262–264), allowing Octavia to divert the blame from Claudius to Messalina:
illos solute crine, succincta anguibus
ultrix Erinys venit ad Stygios toros
raptasque thalamis sanguine extinxit faces
with her hair, braided by snakes, let down,
Erinys came as avenger to the hell-bound bed
and staunched in blood the torches ripped from the bed.
What happens at lines 201–221, between the two interactions of Octavia and her nurse, remains problematic. The manuscripts detect a lacuna of 26 or 30 lines after line 173 and one suspects that had those lines survived one might have a better understanding of what is happening here.24 Risking circular argument, the mythological content and the level of word choice argues against the nurse, to whom Zwierlein assigns these lines, but cannot be sung by Octavia because of the direct address to her in line 219 (tu, quoque).25
passa est similes ipsa dolores
regina deum,
cum se formas vertit in omnes
dominus caeli divumque pater
et modo pennas sumpsit oloris 205
modo Sidonii cornua tauri;
aureus idem fluxit in imbri;
fulgent caelo sidera Ledae,
patrio residet Bacchus Olympo,
deus Alcides possidet Heben 210
nec Iunonis iam timet iras,
cuius gene rest qui fuit hostis.
vicit sapiens tamen obsequium
coniugis altae pressusque dolor:
sola Tonanetm tenet aetherio 215
secura toro maxima Iuno,
nec lortali captus forma
deseerit altam Iuppiter aulam.
tu, quoque, terris altera Iuno,
soror Augusti coinunxque, graves 220
vince dolores.
The queen of heaven herself endured
similar grief,
when the master of heaven and father of gods
turned himself into all sorts of shapes;
one time he took on wings of a swan, 205
another time the horns of a bull at Sidon;
once gold rained in a shower
stars of Leda shine in the sky,
Bacchus ensconced in his father’s Olympus,
Hercules, a god, has Hebe 210
nor does Juno fear his anger,
son-in-law once a foe.
Wisdom, somewhat complaint,
hurt swallowed by a high-born wife overcomes:
Juno alone, mightiest, holds the Thunderer 215
secure in their heavenly bed,
nor has Jupiter distracted by some mortal
forms deserted his palace on high.
you, too, another Juno on earth,
sister of Augustus, and wife, swallow 220
burdensome grief.
The story hardly needs explanation and the only argument in favour of the nurse is that the choices are all the conventional, most popular stories of the amours of Zeus: Leda, Europa, Semele, Alcmene. It could hardly be calculated to win Octavia’s approval: weather out this mistress as you have others; he will quickly become bored.26
The instinct of recentiores has been to delete attribution to the nurse but the ode must be kept because of the inversion of the same material by the pro-Poppaea chorus.27 Canticum,28 sung lines among iambic tetrameter, follows Senecan practice: Cassandra in Seneca’s Agamemnon starts to have a vision at line 720. Initially of Troy, she soon sees Agamemnon’s coming murder (734–740). Her mantic gaze then sees the underworld starting at line 741 but shifts to dimeters at line 759. Although corrupt and with a lacuna, the Furies (sorores squalidae, 759) are followed by a festering giant body (ossa vasti corporis, 766), Tantalus (non caput oblitus sitim, 771), and then, paradoxically, by Dardanus radiant and dancing (exulat et ponit gradus / pater decoros Dardanus, 773–774).29 Medea makes a prayer to underworld deities on the point of poisoning the robe for Creusa (740–751) and then prepares herself physically for the act (solvens comam, 752; lustravi pede, 753) but turns to elegiac meter at 771 with a series of confused analogies,30 and then to dimeters meant perhaps as an incantation.31 Calling herself a maenad (806), she dips the gown in poison (816) and asks Hecate to increase the strength of the poison (833), she makes a vow to Hecate, acknowledging the granting of her wish and then returns to trimeters at line 843. The structure of these two parallels, however, argues against assignation to Octavia or the nurse in this scene, or, perhaps more accurately they are different enough from Senecan convention to question to whom the author intended to assign these lines and how they contribute to the structure of the play. If contrast with the pro-Poppaea chorus is intended, then the pro-Octavia chorus of magistrates seems logical.
That ode is not just an inversion of 201–221, but reverses in reminiscences the prologue delivered by Juno in Seneca’s Hercules furens. In terms of set design, the pro-Poppaea chorus must be gawking over the walls of the palace anticipating the wedding of Nero and Poppaea later that day (762–779):
Si vera loquax fama Tonantis
furta et gratos narrat amores
(quem modo Ledae pressisse sinum
tectum plumis pennisque ferunt, 765
modo per flctus raptam Europen
taurum tergo portasse trucem),
quae regit et nunc deseret astra,
petet amplexus, Poppaea, tuos,
quos et Ledae praeferre potest 770
et tibi, quondam cui miranti
fulvo, Danaë, fluxit in auro.
Formam Sparte iactet alumnae
licet et Phrygius praemia pastor,
vincet vultus haec Tyndaridos, 775
qui moverunt horrida bella
Phrygiaeque solo regna dedere.
Sed quis gressu ruit attonito
ut quid portat pectore anhelo?
If the gossip is true, the talk
is of stolen and satisfying sex-life of Jupiter
(who they say, covered in quills and feathers,
once pressed the ‘bay’ of Leda, 765
once a randy bull carried Europa,
snatched, on his back across the waves),
what stars he rules he would now desert,
he would seek your embraces, Poppaea,
which he would prefer even to Leda 770
and to you, Danaë, once on whom in awe
he ‘flowed’ in flecks of gold.
Sparta may brag the allure of its alumna
so, too, the Trojan shepherd can brag his catch,
this one [Poppaea] surpasses Helen’s beauty, 775
which started a horrible war
and brought the realm of Troy to dust.
But who rushes – the foot falls are panicked –
or, rather, what news does he carry out of breath?
Poppaea is not on stage to hear lines that would have doubtless pleased her. Like Atossa in the Persians, Clytemnestra in Sophocles’ Electra, and Deianeira in Hercules Oetaeus, her nightmare has caused her to make sacrifices and seek advice. The action flows from Agrippina > Octavia > Poppaea repeating her dream to her nurse > salacious chorus > the news of the riot > chorus’ (re)action. In terms of myth, this choral ode is a perfect doublet to 201–221. The order is the same and only Hercules is missing from the song of the courtiers of Poppaea: Leda, Europa, Danaë are all there. This chorus expects the greatest beauties to pale before the charms of Poppaea and so the substitution of Helen makes sense.
Some of the words are hard to translate: iactet (773) in particular approximates what would now be sign boards in small towns indicating what they are famous for. It is not a stretch since Pausanias in the late second century records that he saw in a glass case the egg from which Helen was hatched of which the local Spartans were immensely proud. Some other words pick up parts of the first half of the play not in the Zeus ode. Trucem was used by Octavia to debase Nero to animal status – he was like a savage tiger (87); trucem (767) here is again animal form but as a symbol of sexual prowess and not belligerence. The language of the courtiers celebrates sex: Leda has a sinum (764) and the feathers (205, 765) have plumes, that is, preening. Europa is raptam (766). The advice of the earlier ode, 215–218, is to ignore infidelities because Jupiter / Nero will no longer be captivated by a pleasing shape (nec … captus forma) and will not deserit altam … aulam (218) but this is exactly what the courtiers suggest Jupiter will do, that is, Nero, for Poppaea in lines 768–769.
After hearing about the pro-Octavia riot, which historically did happen, from the courier on his way to the palace to get Praetorians to quell it, the chorus defiantly picks up the challenge in the nurse’s lines to Octavia 198–200 that Cupid is all surface (levis), all about appearances (fallax), all about this moment (volucer):
Et hanc levis fallaxque, destituet deus
volucer Cupido; sit licet forma eminens,
opibus superba; gaudium capiet breve. 200
Also, flighty, false, flippant the god,
Cupid, will not linger; concede her flesh [Poppaea’s] is fantastic,
overloaded in charms; joy seized briefly. 200
Octavia’s nurse speaks her heart and hopes; Poppaea’s confidants know more about sex and appreciate its manipulative and destructive side (806–819):
Quid fera frustra bella moveris?
Invicta gerit tela Cupido:
flammis vestros obruet ignes
quis extinxit fulmina saepe
captumque Iovem caelo traxit. 810
Laesi tristes dabitis poenas
sanguine vestro;
non est patiens fervidus irae
facilisque regi:
ille ferocem iussit Achillem
pulsare lyram, 815
fregit Danaos, fregit Atriden,
regna evertit Priami, claras
diruit urbes.
Et nunc animus quid ferat horret
vis immitis violenta dei.
Why start a war you cannot win?
Cupid carries unbeatable weapons:
he back burns fires with flames
by which he often puts out thunderbolts
and drags Jupiter, captive, from heaven. 810
Defeated, you will pay a stiff penalty
with your own blood;
frothing with anger, he is not long suffering.
He is not easy to restrain:
he ordered fierce Achilles
to pluck the lyre, 815
he broke the Trojans, he broke the Greeks,32
he turned over the kingdom of Priam, famous
cities he destroyed.
And now his core bristles at what enrages –
force implacable, violence of the god.
The very next words are those of Nero, enraged that his guard was not even more brutal in suppressing the riot, making it clear, if clarity were needed, who was intended by the chorus. It does establish contrasting views of Cupid: Cupid of the nurse is that of ‘happy hour’ and ‘hook ups’; that of the courtiers is mean and vicious, deliberate and patient in extracting revenge. Jupiter who had snatched Europa (766) is in turn captured himself (810); Achilles is made to look unseemly and unheroic brooding over Briseis (814); the fall of Troy, ten years in the making, is the fall of both Trojans and Greeks. The grip that Poppaea, Cupid’s proxy, has over Nero is the defining relationship in the play.
It is the one the chorus of magistrates (273–376) never understands. The Roman genre of historical drama had the technical name of praetexta, which is the garment with broad stripe worn by a magistrate during his term of office. The few fragments of historical drama to survive from the Republic indicate that performances of historical drama were sponsored by a magistrate and / or that the characters and episodes in the play involve officials in office. None of the circumstances of the first production of the Octavia are known with precision: by definition of its genre, praetexta must be relevant to a group of military, religious and civilian officials who may well have been part of some now unknown imperial celebration that included a premiere of the Octavia. The A family manuscripts are unanimous in identifying this as a CHORUS ROMANORUM and so it is attractive, if not likely, that this was a chorus of officials.33 As old men and men of a certain dignity, they prattle on interminably, peppering their remarks with historical exempla no one really wants or needs to hear.
Their first words express shock and horror in a rhetorical question: they hope the rumours are false that are being bandied about (totiens iactata, 275). Their response to Poppaea is old fashioned, tied to ritual. Octavia is Claudius’ child (Claudia proles, 278) and so she should have possession of the penates. For them, as for Vergil Georgics 3, the obvious cure is production of an heir (pignoris pacis, 279), suggested also by the nurse.
Then they launch into an explanation based on myth and history: Juno was married to her brother (282–283), so there is no reason why Octavia, sister of [Nero] Augustus (284) should be driven from the palace of her father. The chorus initially blames itself: they were wrong not to stand up at the death of Claudius and so the present situation is a betrayal to Octavia. Exculpation follows by returning to mythical history: once upon a time Romans were real men (vera priorum virtus quondam / Romana fuit verumque genus / Martis, 292–294). They (illi) threw out kings (reges, 295).34 The suicide of Lucretia, after her rape by Tarquin, is recalled in archaistic alliteration, assonance and consonance (301–303):
mactata tua, miseranda, manu,
nata Lucreti
stuprum saevi passa tyranni.
hacked up, wretchedly, by your own hand,
daughter of Lucretius,
you endured the outrage of an odious tyrant.
Verginia’s death at her father’s hands starts the conflict of the orders (300, 296). Tullia was complicit in Tarquins assassination of her father so that he could become king and she his queen.
Two paradigms of female virtue and then one notorious; Agrippina completes and balances the set. Nearly three quarters of their ode recalls Agrippina’s last hours: the broken boat, her escape, her realization that Nero was behind it, the assassin who finishes Agrippina, her famous last words: hic est, hic est fodiendus’ ait / ‘ferro, monstrum, qui tale tulit’ (“here is, here is where you must strike with the sword’, she said, ‘where such a monster came forth”).35
Yet the resolve of characters in this passage is of women. The long passage on Agrippina does nothing to absolve the male chorus of their cowardice in not supporting the Claudian family in the years between AD 48 up to the dramatic date of the play (AD 62). Agrippina poses a quandary: she should be monstrous, like Tullia. The chorus, however, admires her tenacious will to survive (327–349); the loyalty she excited in others (350–355); the defiance at her death (366–376). In the end the chorus must be viewed as anti-Tarquin, anti-Appius Claudius, and most resolutely anti-Nero. It is the perfect set up to the two following scenes, the discussion between Seneca and Nero and the appearance of the ghost of Agrippina.
The chorus of magistrates gets a second chance. After Agrippina leaves,36 Octavia and the male chorus take centre stage.37 Octavia asks the audience and perhaps the chorus of magistrates, or her silent retinue, to spare their tears (parcite lacrimis, 646). The obvious inference is to Agrippina (just disappeared from stage) or perhaps herself, but she explains that today, the wedding of Nero, is a festive day (urbis festo / laetoque die, 646–647) even though she knows she will pay the price of Nero’s happiness: dabit hic nostris finem curis / vel morte dies (“this day will give an end to cares, that is, by my death”), 653–654. That she will be ‘just the sister’ of the emperor (658), that is, the hieros gamos is dissolved, cuts against this sentiment but Octavia is distraught and one suspects the author found the sententia too good to resist.38
The male chorus echoes Octavia: the day long suspected in rumour has arrived; Octavia yields the imperial bed (en illuxit suspecta diu / fama totiens iactata dies / cessit thalamis, 669–670). Although they blame themselves for inaction (compressa metu segnisque dolor, 675) they ask instead where is the might of the Roman people that often broke wretched rulers (ubi Romani vis est populi / fregit diros quae saepe duce, 676–677). What seems to affront them most are the statues of Poppaea (iam Poppaeae fulget imago / iuncta Neroni, 684–685) that are already replacing those of Octavia.
It does not end well. Historically, the Praetorians crush the riot. The strength of popular opinion favouring Octavia merely determines Nero to remove Octavia around whom opposition to him could coalesce (870b-876):
NERO (to Prefect)
Ut ne inexpugnabilis 870b
esset, sed aegras frangeret vires timor
vel poena; quae iam sera damnatam premet
diu nocentem. Tolle consilium ac preces
et imperata perage: devectam rate
procul in remotum litus interim iube, 875
tandem ut residat pectoris nostril tumor.
CHORUS [PRO-OCTAVIA]
O funestus multis populi
dirusque favor …
N. So that she might not be 870
untouchable, but so that fear, or punishment, should snap
her pitiful appeal; let what is already too long delayed quash
this condemned woman so long guilty. Enough plans and prayers;
engage my commands: order her transported on a boat
far away into some remote spot to be killed, 875
finally, so that the burn in my heart should abate.
Cho. O favour of the people
Dreadful and deadly to many …
The chorus must have overheard Nero and they are beginning to get the first glimmer that their actions, unasked for by Octavia, have sealed her death. Rather than feel guilty and try to make amends, they search their memories for historical exempla. Yet, as with Verginia, Lucretia and Tullia streaming to Agrippina, their choices again are hardly appropriate to their point of comparison and could hardly have consoled Octavia: the mother of the Gracchi mourns her two sons; Livius Drusus, while tribune, was assassinated in his own house. They admit their own good intentions gone wrong (reddere cives / aulam … voluere, 892–893), but end with the tragic commonplace that poverty is better as Fortune overturns wealthy homes (896–898).39
Octavia’s questions at 899–900 indicate that a guard has come to remove her: quo me trahitis, quodve tyrannus / aut exilium regina iubet? (“Where are you taking me? What exile does the tyrant or the queen [Poppaea] order?”). The appearance of a boat makes Octavia wonder if it will break apart, as one did for Agrippina (hac est cuius vecta carina / quondam genetrix, 909–910) which re-inforces in her mind that she will die (sed iam spes est nulla salutis, 906). The trope is repeated that Pietas has gone and Erinys fills the void (911–913). The nightingale, transformed Philomela, is recalled as a bird of mourning (914–916, 921–923) and wings of escape (917–920). Wings and feathers are not for Octavia plumes of desire in the form of a swan.
Nero has over-played his hand. His slathering for annihilation has turned sentiment against him and at 899 when soldiers come to take Octavia, it attracts a crowd. Given the economy of the Roman stage, that crowd accomplishes the unification of the two choruses. Looming death for Octavia engages empathy among women, also prominent in the resolution of the Hercules Oetaeus. The reappearance of the magistrates on stage with their robes of state muddied, sullied and in tatters would have made a great visual impact on an audience recently too much inured to rough justice against elected officials and leaders.40 The language at the end of the play changes and the exempla are drawn from women of the imperial family – for the magistrates that means the family of Octavia; for the courtiers, that means the family Poppaea just joined. The author has the advantage of retrospect in that he knows that Poppaea was the wife of one emperor and one future emperor41 and that she equally became a victim of Nero. In the end the two choruses have much in common.
Sympathy for Octavia is apparent: historically, she was popular in her lifetime and became more popular after death:
Regitur fatis mortale genus
nec sibi quidquam spondere potest 925
firmum et stabile,
quam42 per casus voluit varios
semper nobis metuenda dies.
Human race is ruled by fate
nor can something firm and stable 925
ever be pledged,
how daylight, always to be feared by us,
careens in outcomes.
Magistrates must comprise at least part of this chorus because they turn to exempla (animum firment exempla tuum, 929). The examples, however, are imperial women who fared badly: Agrippina the Elder, wife of Germanicus, mother of Caligula and Agrippina, heads the list (932–940). Her large family is mentioned but more prominently her frequent clashes with her brother-in-law, the emperor Tiberius. Livia, wife of Drusus, son of Tiberius and later suspected of poisoning Drusus once she became the mistress of Sejanus is next (941–943). Julia, daughter of Livia and Drusus, was put to death in the reign of Claudius without trial and without charge (944–946). Messalina, mother of Octavia, is next (947–951) whose power was her hold on Claudius but whose summary death was ordered by a freedman of Claudius (famulo, 950) and execution by a common soldier (militis, 951). The list would not be complete without Agrippina (952–957), recalling the earlier ode. What makes her death memorable here is rough treatment by the sailors (violate manu 954), a lingering death (ferro lacerata diu, 956) and her status as sacrificial victim of her son (saevi iacuit victima nati?, 957).
Octavia’s farewell is a prayer to the denizens and deities of Hell (964–968) because gods of heaven hate her (962–964). It leaves the chorus little to say in the exodus, but they make the appeal that Octavia might be an Iphigeneia spirited away to Taurus and not the Iphigeneia at Aulis, a status of sacrificial victim of Nero the chorus had just granted to Agrippina. Agrippina and Octavia share more in Nero’s enmity than in what separated them. The final line of the play is the sum of the mythological and historical exempla throughout the entire play: Rome is glad for citizen gore (civis gaudet Roma cruore).
Two final observations that show the inter-connection of myth and history: first, the extended episode between Seneca and Nero (377–592) is a reevaluation of Augustus. Seneca in the play speaks like the Seneca known from his prose. The essays Seneca aimed at or dedicated to Nero, particularly De Clementia, not surprisingly, have a high per centage of the reminiscences in these lines. The content is historical revisionism introduced by Seneca on the ages of mankind (391–434), interrupted only at lines 435–436 by the appearance of Nero on stage. The third word said by Seneca is Fortuna (377) and he cannot resist mentioning his exile on Corsica (382), which reminds him of Nature (386), both of which are subjects of his essays. It is not accidental that his view of how this is the worst moment in all of the ages of man are spoken at the arrival of Nero with the Praetorian Prefect in tow.
Second, in a very real sense this is Agrippina’s play. She is the nexus that holds together all of the characters in the play. Their relationship to her – positive, negative, wavering, changing – is the relationship that underpins all others. She is the character most often mentioned throughout the play. The only character in the play not to mention her is Seneca. Significantly, she is the only person in the play whose character is re-assessed,43 and it is reassessed positively. She starts with Octavia and her nurse as the root cause of all that has gone wrong during the last fifteen years. But the callousness and pitilessness of her death begins a reappraisal by the magistrates. She moves from the ledger side of Tullia to that of the victims of lust and depravity. By play’s end, that is exactly how she is described, and Octavia, the protagonist of the play, is described in terms that equate her with Agrippina as Poppaea cleans house in her ascendancy over Nero.
The scenes of Agrippina’s appearance as a ghost and Poppaea recounting her nightmare mesh, but do not over-lap perfectly. In this they cannot and it would be bad theatre if they did. Agrippina’s concern is Claudius in the underworld seeking revenge for murdering him while Poppaea is haunted by her first husband, Crispinus, and her sons, put out of the way by Nero. Claudius in the underworld is no concern of Poppaea and equally one could not expect Agrippina to have a care for Crispinus. But, for both, the language of myth and the underworld is conventional. The history they repeat is that which they experienced and to a large extent were prime movers. Given the norms of the imperial Roman stage, it is attractive and easy to see Poppaea writhing in her bed in the palace on the right of the stage after Agrippina had come up and disappeared from the stage for her scene; that is, the appearance of Agrippina is the dream of Poppaea. What increases the attractiveness of this suggestion is that in recounting the dream she tells her nurse that she saw her mother-in-law, that is, Agrippina, brandishing a torch: sparsam cruore coniugis genetrix mei / vultu minci saeva quatiebat facem (“my spouse’s mother, with a threatening, savage look was shaking a torch, splattered with gore”), 722–723. In her dream, she sees her own bed (thalamus, 718, toros … iugales, 726–727) surrounded by women in mourning (turba est maesta: resolutuis comis / matres Latinae, 720–721). She then sees her first husband and her son (727). Even though Crispinus (731) was dead, Nero came along and stabbed him in the throat (733).
The earth also opens up for Agrippina (tellure rupta, 593) and she comes up from Tartarus (593). She bears the Stygian torch (594) that she waved at Poppaea, but it is her right hand that is bloody and not the torch. She hisses that the torch will be a funereal one for the marriage of Poppaea (nubat his flammis meo / Poppaea nato iuncta, 596). Not surprisingly, she has not forgotten or forgiven the break-away ship (601–602) or the murder of several of her retainers along with herself (606–609). Resentment over-flows over the damnatio memoriae arranged by Nero, including defacing of inscriptions and pulling down of statues (610–613), something that will happen to Poppaea in the riot. Furies and the four main denizens of Tartarus are mentioned (614–623). The rest of her monologue (624–645) is dedicated to the ephemeral prosperity of his palace and diplomacy which will dissolve into a reign of shame and terror.44
The characters in this play are distinguished by level of language which is a factor of level of learning and expresses itself, at least partially, in the use of myth and history. All characters are consistent within their roles. Intriguingly, if a date of AD 69 is accepted for the Octavia, the number of years between the death of Octavia and the play is very close to the number of years between Salamis and Aeschylus’ Persians. What emerges, however, is the level of care and artistry the author of the Octavia brought to his task.
Finally, all the foregoing brings one back to the dimeters at 201–221. The care that the author has used in differentiating levels of language should make it easy to determine to whom the lines should be assigned. Any argument, however, for or against any character, is risky. Tragic heroines do address themselves in both Greek and Latin but not ones with whom the author of the Octavia would wish to associate her. The author has already indicated that the touchstone for Octavia is Electra and nothing in any of the plays in which Electra is a main character look like this ode. Since the parallel to 201–221 is the ode sung by the chorus of female supporters of Poppaea, the natural choice would be the male chorus. Here there is some support in the play. Octavia’s nurse and Poppaea’s nurse are easily comparable and Seneca as paidagogos has an analogous role, that is, they all give advice that is instantly ignored. The few lines of Poppaea in the play problematize any attempt to understand the sentiments as the opposite leaf to Octavia in a diptych. The playwright, rather, saw Poppaea as the mirror to Agrippina. Even so, the level of mythological reference is not in keeping with the historical lens of the male chorus and so the logical choice for 201–221 is still not without problems.
Bibliography
Harrison, G.W.M. forthcoming. Double Chorus in Roman Tragedy. In From Antiquity to Modernity: Performing Greek and Roman Drama, eds. Sarkissian, A. and Poláčková, E. Brill.
Harrison, G.W.M. 2000. Semper ego auditor tantum?: Performance and Physical Setting of Seneca’s Plays. In Seneca in Performance, ed. Harrison, G.W.M., 137–149. Swansea.
Paré-Rey, P. 2014. Les tragédies de Sénèque sont-elles spectaculaires? Réflexions sur quelques principes de composition. Pallas 95: 33–58. →
Zwierlein, O. 1986. L. Annaei Senecae: Tragoediae. Oxford.
Notes
1
On the notions of myth and history, their methodological approaches and their multileveled association, see the Preface to the present volume.
2
All texts cited from the Oxford Classical Texts; all translations are by the author.
3
Alcyone and Ceyx link this play to the Hercules Oetaeus since in myth they lived at Trachis, site of the death and apotheosis of Hercules. Hubris led Alcyone and Ceyx in their happiness to compare themselves to Zeus and Hera, a claim that the choruses, Hercules and Deianeira all also make for Hercules and Deianeira. Zeus’ destruction of Ceyx at sea led to their transformation into kingfishers.
4
Swallows and nightingales are topoi at least as far back as Aristophanes, Frogs 679–685, a mock invocation to the Muses lampooning Cleophon; see also Seneca, Agamemnon 665–667, sung by the chorus of captive Trojan women, who mention Cycnus and Ceyx as other birds of mourning.
5
Octavia’s anguish is indicated by the confusion of the request: she makes a wish now for an action in the past ending with the concessive clause si quis remanet sensus in umbris (13). The repeated illa (23) heightens her agitation.
6
Preserving the reading of the hyparchetype A (lux) against the emendation (nox) of Helm (1934) 287, n. 1, avoids whether nox should be treated as a deified abstraction. The comparison is between the light (lux) that Octavia hates and the night (nox) that is now equally despicable because of the possibility of disagreeable sex (thalamis, 24). Retaining the ms. readings instead of Zwierlein’s text maintains the progression from Dawn (2) to dark (Stygios, 24).
7
The nurse initially uses iambic trimeters (34–56); she does not shift to dimeters until she converses with Octavia (71–98).
8
By way of compliment to Martha Nussbaum.
9
An impossible word to translate in this context because the nurse is almost certainly pointing at the part of the stage representing the palace from whose battlements Poppaea views the riot and its suppression. A stage set by definition has to be fallacis.
10
A favourite trope of Seneca in his prose and plays and repeated by Seneca in his scene with Nero in the Octavia.
11
Significantly, when Dionysus chooses Aeschylus over Euripides in Aristophanes Frogs, the chorus of initiates concurs that writing tragedy is more important than Socrates (χαρίεν οὖν μὴ Σωκράτει / παρακαθήμενον λαλεῖν, / άποβαλόντα μουσικὴν / τά τε μέγιστα παραλιπόντα / τῆς τραγωιδικῆς τέχνης, 1491–1495).
12
Such as, for example, Seneca Oedipus 980–996 and Agamemnon 56–107; also Hercules Oetaeus 104–172.
13
An interest in incest is one of the charges Aeschylus lays against Euripides in Aristophanes Frogs 1081. The number of verbal reminiscences between the Octavia and Seneca’s Oedipus (esp. 918–922, 929, 1038–1039) might suggest that Seneca had Claudius and Agrippina in mind. At a minimum, this seems to be what the author of the Octavia believed. Zeus / Jupiter – Hera / Juno brother-sister marriage is a staple in Seneca, for example, Agamemnon 340 and 805. The theme is repeated often in both halves of the Hercules Oetaeus.
14
The verbs are illustrative: Orestes was seized (rapuit 63) from his enemies, a word already used of the gods seizing (and transforming) women chased by their husbands. Tegit (64) is used in the sense of enclosing, sewing something into something else, presumably for safe keeping, and not how the nurse used it of Claudius’ fleet that embroidered the British Channel.
15
The chorus of magistrates later admits this failing.
16
Seneca in Trojan Women and Agamemnon has the chorus dispute with a character over priority of suffering.
17
See also l. 174: extinguat et me, ne manu nostra cadat.
18
Wild animal imagery, especially lions and tigers, always accompanied by adjectives is not unusual in Seneca and is always pejorative: Oedipus 918 (leo) and 929 (tigris); Medea 863 (tigris orba) and Thyestes 707–713 (tiger in Ganges).
19
On Acte, see also 193–197. Octavia as well indicates that her real fear is not death (non mortis metu, 106) but a fraudulent charge made as a pretext for her death (sed sceleris – absit crimen a fatis meis, 107). There follow details of a recurring dream of Octavia’s of Britannicus and Nero fighting one another which is a precursor to the appearance of the ghost of Agrippina (115–124).
20
Several times in the corpus of Seneca’s authentic works it is mentioned that Astraea was the last deity to desert the earth.
21
Although the nurse would have considered the reference ‘religious’ and not ‘mythological’.
22
This makes both dramatic sense for this play as well as historical sense: Agrippina in a rare moment of reflection and remorse contributes to her own death.
23
Haley’s comet did pass in AD 66, four years after the dramatic date of the Octavia but two years before the death of Nero and so before the earliest possible date of composition of the Octavia.
24
Cambridge Corpus Christi 406 (saec. xiii), followed by Scorialensis T III and Vaticanus Lat 2829, detect 30 missing lines while Parisinus Lat 8260 (saec. xiii) considers 26 lines missing.
25
Self-reference of a character in tragedy to himself / herself in the second person singular does occur in Seneca in Medea and Atreus in the Thyestes. It is, however, uncharacteristic of the historical Octavia and Octavia in this play.
26
The language of 219–221 turns on the trope of brother-sister marriage / hieros gamos recurring in several points in this play and also a persistent motif in the Hercules Oetaeus.
27
See e.g. Oxoniensis Canon. Class. Lat. 93, c. 1400. Earlier mss. of the A family repeat an attribution to the nurse, which is problematic since at 196 she is the last attributed speaker. To assign lines 198–200 to Octavia could only be done as a rhetorical question delivered with a sarcasm not found in her other lines. Since its reminiscences come from a choral ode, these lines also want to be part of a choral ode.
28
On cantica in Seneca, see Paré-Rey (2014).
29
The scene concludes with Cassandra fainting on an altar (775–776); she is soon revived upon the appearance of Agamemnon (782). Thyestes 920–964 is slightly different: Atreus had been exulting to the audience over the meal he has just prepared (885–919). Thyestes, in an aside to himself, indicates his foreboding. The manuscripts are far from unanimous: some assigning all the lines to Thyestes, some assigning all the lines to the chorus, and others giving some lines to Thyestes and some to the chorus. Andromache, however, answers Ulysses with dimeters at Troas. 705–735 when asked to hand over Astyanax.
30
Typhoeus (773), Nessus (776), Mt. Oeta (777), Althaea (780), Harpies (782) and feathers from Stymphalian birds (783). Some were murderers of children; some were associated with poisonous garments.
31
The incantation of the satyr chorus in Euripides’ Cyclops similarly shifts meter.
32
Although properly ‘son of Atreus’ (Agamemnon), it includes the Greeks in general through the oath of the suitors of Helen.
33
There is the extra frisson since during the Empire sometimes officials volunteered or were compelled to act on stage.
34
Zwierlein detects significant transposition and defective lines 288–313 that make interpretation and line enumeration difficult.
35
Jocasta, in Seneca’s Oedipus 1038–1039, stabs herself in the womb.
36
Perhaps by a trap door / lift, for which see Seneca Ep. 88.
37
On the configuration of the Roman imperial stage, see Seneca Ep. 84. The much greater width of the Roman stage would have allowed for a stage set for the Octavia, and for the Hercules Oetaeus, with one side of the stage representing a two-storey palace and the other an open space. For the Octavia, Octavia and her supporters could have occupied an open space to the side of the palace on which Poppaea and her supporters would have appeared.
38
In between is a reference to not having to sleep in the same bed as Nero did with his slave-mistress (famula, 657). Logically, this should be Acte but one wonders whether Poppaea is not meant. Poppaea has been the focus; to remember Acte at this point is odd but could again be a sign of distress.
39
It is especially frequent in Seneca, both verse and prose, and in the Hercules Oetaeus.
40
Tattered robes have a long stage history from Aeschylus’ Persians to Agamemnon in both Aeschylus and Seneca and Thyestes in Seneca.
41
Poppaea was married to Otho at the time she began her affair with Nero.
42
I adopt quam of the recentiores as the adverb, since there can be no antecedent for quem without suspecting a lacuna at 926 for which there is no warrant.
43
Setting aside Augustus who is discussed only in one scene by two characters.
44
The debts paid to Cassandra’s scene in Seneca’s Agamemnon (741–774) have already been mentioned. The necromancy scene in Seneca’s Oedipus (530–658) is much longer and Lucan’s necromancy, Pharsalia 5, also has echoes.