1. Pseudo- Seneca’s Octavia, or... “Tragedy Is US”?... Cameo with busts of Nero and Octavia, 1 st cent. CE

2. “Trope of Decline” “Is all this glory doomed to age with time and perish in blind chaos? Then must come Once more upon the world a day of death, When skies must fall and our unworthy race Be blotted out, until a brighter dawn Bring 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 Ps-Seneca Octavia 2

3. Agenda Discussion Is Octavia Tragedy? Recap and Update Seneca and “Pseudo-Seneca,” the Octavia Genre, Rhetoric, Theme Seneca, Pseudo-Seneca... 5-Dec 20113 Ps-Seneca Octavia

4. Discussion Is Octavia Tragedy?

5. Why tragic? How like/unlike... Athenian tragedy? Roman Republican tragedy? Senecan tragedy? 5-Dec 20115 Ps-Seneca Octavia

6. 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 20116 Ps-Seneca Octavia

7. Recap and Update Seneca and “Pseudo-Seneca,” the Octavia

8. Play Facts Author Genre Composition date, context Setting Characters Nero, ca. 55 CE 5-Dec 20118 Ps-Seneca Octavia

9. Poppaea Sabina Rufrius Crispinus Claudius Messalina Agrippina Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus Brittanicus Octavia Nero adoption Octavia, Nero: Family Tree 5-Dec 2011 Ps-Seneca Octavia 9

10. Thyestes: “Senecan Formula” Thematic StructureDramatic Structure CLOUD OF EVILACT 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 EVILACT 3 cont. Atreus & Thyestes – “reconciliation.” ACT 4. Messenger. Sacrifice, locus horridus. ACT 5. Atreus, Thyestes. Recognition & reversal. 5-Dec 2011 Ps-Seneca Octavia 10

11. Octavia: “Senecan Formula”? Thematic StructureDramatic Structure CLOUD OF EVILSCENE 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 EVILSCENE 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 Ps-Seneca Octavia 11

12. Genre, Rhetoric, Theme Seneca, Pseudo-Seneca...

13. Praetexta in crepidata’s Shoes? Electra ≈ Orestes ≈ Agamemnon ≈ Octavia Britannicus Claudius “No other fate can equal mine, … not though I should remember thine, Electra …” (Octavia, p. 259)

14. Praetexta in crepidata’s Shoes? Octavia ≈ “Augustus”-Nero ≈ Juno/Hera Jupiter/Zeus “… shall our Augustus banish from her ancestral house / His sister wife?” (Chorus, p. 268)

15. SENECAPS-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 Ps-Seneca Octavia 15

16. Trope of Decline & mos maiorum (“Tragedy Is Us,” Seneca, p. 268, 273) “… our forefathers knew true Roman virtue” “Now upon our heads The gathered weight of centuries of sin Falls like a breaking flood. We are crushed down Under our own intolerable age When crime is king, impiety let loose, And lawless love gives reign to Lechery.” 5-Dec 2011 Ps-Seneca Octavia 16