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Pseudo- Seneca’s Octavia , or. . .

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

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Pseudo- Seneca’s Octavia , or. . .

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

  2. “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 generationLike that which walked upon a younger worldWhen Saturn was ruler of the sky.” (p. 272) Ps-Seneca Octavia

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

  4. Discussion Is Octavia Tragedy?

  5. Is Octavia Tragedy? • Why tragic? • How like/unlike. . . • Athenian tragedy? • Roman Republican tragedy? • Senecan tragedy? Ps-Seneca Octavia

  6. Comments. . . no yes pitiful that she can’t learn we want her to learn oct’s nurse is genuinely deluded • 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!!! Ps-Seneca Octavia

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

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

  9. Thyestes: “Senecan Formula” Ps-Seneca Octavia

  10. Octavia: “Senecan Formula”? Ps-Seneca Octavia

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

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

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

  14. Ps-Seneca Octavia

  15. 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 sinFalls like a breaking flood. We are crushed downUnder our own intolerable ageWhen crime is king, impiety let loose,And lawless love gives reign to Lechery.” Ps-Seneca Octavia

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