Literary and Ideological Memory in the Octavia
by Lauren Marie Donovan B.A., Cornell University, 2003
A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Classics at Brown University
PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND
MAY 2011
© Copyright 2011 by Lauren M. Donovan
This dissertation by Lauren Marie Donovan is accepted in its present form by the Department of Classics as satisfying the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Date John Bodel, Advisor
Recommended to the Graduate Council
Date Shadi Bartsch, Reader
Date Jeri DeBrohun, Reader
Date Joseph Reed, Reader
Approved by the Graduate Council
Date Peter M. Weber, Dean of the Graduate School
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Curriculum Vitae
Lauren Donovan was born in 1981 in Illinois, and spent her formative years in Concord,
Massachusetts. She earned a B. A. summa cum laude in Classics from Cornell University in 2003, with a thesis titled “Ilia and Early Imperial Rome: The Roman Origin Legend in
Text and Art” and received the Department of Classics prize in Latin upon graduation.
Before beginning her graduate work at Brown University, Lauren taught Latin and Greek at the high school level for two years. During her graduate career, Lauren has presented talks on many topics including the idea of learnedness in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, the role of Prometheus in Apollonius’ Argonautica, and various aspects of her dissertation work on the Octavia. She has also been the recipient of the Andrew W. Mellon
Fellowship in Humanistic Studies (2005) and the Memoria Romana Dissertation
Fellowship (2010). She is currently a visiting instructor at Wesleyan University.
iv Acknowledgements
My dissertation has benefited from the support of countless people. First and foremost is my advisor, John Bodel, who introduced me to the Octavia in a Tacitus seminar and who has given many hours to the project’s development over the years. My work has benefited greatly from the insightful comments of my readers, Shadi Bartsch, Jeri
DeBrohun, and Jay Reed. I remain grateful to the faculty and staff in the Classics
Department at Brown University for their constant encouragement. The Memoria
Romana Dissertation Fellowship provided me with a crucial source of intellectual and financial aid; it also brought me to Rome for a colloquium with other young scholars of memory who in turn gave me invaluable advice on my project.
I am indebted to my writing group, Caroline Bishop, Liz Gloyn, Isabel Köster, and
Darcy Krasne, from whose close readings, challenging comments, and support I have benefited in innumerable ways. My fellow graduate students at Brown have always provided wonderful colleagues with whom to discuss works in progress; Jennifer Thomas in particular provided me with much intellectual support, especially regarding the
Octavia’s engagement with Vergil and Lucan. I also participated to great benefit in reading groups on Statius and Tacitus with fellow graduate students Bryan Brinkman,
Scott DiGiulio, Timothy Haase, Karen Kelly, Leo Landrey, and Mitchell Parks.
Finally, I thank my husband, Zachary Ginsberg, and my parents, Marion & Brendan
Donovan, whose love and support have always been a source of strength and inspiration.
I dedicate this dissertation to two extraordinary teachers. To Alex Banay for fostering my love of Latin poetry; to Judy Ginsburg, requiescat in pace, for setting me on this path and for introducing me to the complexities of Julio-Claudian memory.
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For Alex Banay and Judy Ginsburg optimis magistris
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 1
CHAPTER 1: ON THE MODEL OF AUGUSTUS 20 Seneca’s Augustan Narrative 27 Nero’s Bloodless Accession and Octavian’s Bloody Past 41
CHAPTER 2: ON THE MODEL OF OCTAVIAN 57 Nero and the Triumvirate: A Lesson in Family History 58 Actium and the Augustan Legacy 76 Conclusion: Towards and Ideology of Imperial Rule 91
CHAPTER 3: OCTAVIA AND THE POETICS OF CIVIL STRIFE 96 Towards a Poetics of Civil War 98 The Octavia and Generic Markers of Civil War 105 The Seditious Nature of Nero’s Citizens 112 Civil War and Civil-War Poets 121 Nero’s Prefect and the Suppression of the Riot 135 Conclusion 144
CHAPTER 4: MODELS OF STRIFE 147 Pompey the Great and Narratives of Loss 149 Nero, Collective Guilt, and Caesar’s Assassination 170 The Aeneid Undone 183 Conclusion 199
CHAPTER 5: THE ROMAN PEOPLE’S EXEMPLARY STRIFE (PART I) 203 The Problems of the Octavia’s Chorus 205 Over Her Dead Body: Ode I 208 Roman Identity and the “Crush, Kill, Destroy” Mentality: Ode II 223
CHAPTER 6: THE ROMAN PEOPLE’S EXEMPLARY STRIFE (PART II) 234 Burning Down Troy: Ode III 234 The Danger of Favorable Factions: Ode IV 248 Exemplary Women: Ode V 262 Civil Blood Makes Civil Hands Unclean: Ode V 271 Conclusion 277
CONCLUSION 278
BIBLIOGRAPHY 282
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INTRODUCTION
The Octavia is one of the mysteries of imperial literature. We are not sure who wrote it, exactly when it was written, or for what purpose.1 We are not even sure to what genre it ultimately belongs.2 The question of its staging and stageability likewise remains hotly debated, as do the implications of potential staging on the interpretation of the drama as a whole.3 Despite these difficulties, however, the play remains an early witness to the period after the Julio-Claudians when the dynasty’s celebrated literature was being reread in light of its tragic fall and the civil strife that followed. At least one scholar, while noting its near-certain composition in the period after Nero, classifies it as the final work
1 For a history of the question of authorship, see Goldberg (2003). The dating, however, remains controversial. Some argue for a composition under Galba, while others prefer a Flavian date, either under Vespasian (as I think most likely) or Domitian. For various positions, see Boyle (2008) xiii-xi; Ferri (2003) 1-30; Wilson (2003a). As will be evident, I consider the memory of 69 CE to inform the text’s response to Julio-Claudian ideology; its precise date, however, matters little to my analysis of the play’s themes.
2 Scholars are still at odds as to whether the Octavia is best classified as a tragedy or a praetexta. Manuwald (2001, 259-339) gives a complete history of the question before advancing her own opinion that the Octavia exemplifies the “darker” imperial type of praetexta. See also Kragelund (2002) with the responses of Flower, Manuwald, and Wiseman. I will refer to the Octavia predominantly as a drama, as it is not necessary for us to decide between the two generic classifications of “tragedy” and “praetexta” in order to interpret its themes. I use the terms “tragedy” or “tragic” when explicitly discussing its reflections of tragic conventions, but I do not seek to classify it exclusively in these terms.
3 Unlike its Senecan counterparts, many have felt that the Octavia, more than any other surviving imperial drama, demands performance on the public stages of imperial Rome (e.g. Flower [2006] 2003 on the Theater of Pompey; Wiseman [2001] on the Theater of Marcellus). It has none of the “problems” that make the staging of Senecan drama so controversial and it contains many stage directions or other cues that suggest that the playwright had performance in mind (Boyle [2008] xxv-lv; Kragelund [2005] 86-96; Smith [2003]; Sutton [1983]). While my interpretation does not require us to decide whether, when, or how the play was staged, its status as a drama remains important to any analysis. Thus, following Littlewood (2004), I use the language of “audience” and spectatorship throughout the dissertation, and note where ideas of performance become important for individual points of interpretation.
1 of Julio-Claudian literature.4 That the play is wholly invested in the Julio-Claudian family, its literature, and the way the dynasty will be remembered is clear from its very beginning. In this sense it is indeed a “Julio-Claudian” text: it is haunted by Rome’s first dynasty, both literally and literarily, even as it reshapes that dynasty’s memory and reinterprets its literary monuments for a new age. In this dissertation, I explore how the
Octavia confronts a brief moment in Neronian history and restages it as a powerful challenge to the Julio-Claudian dynasty’s historical claim to have put an end to civil war.5
Civil strife in the Octavia functions as a structural and thematic motif; this motif in turn strips from the Julio-Claudians their public projection of peace and security, and connects their politics inescapably with civil war and its destructive passions. The play advances this theme through its complex engagement with Julio-Claudian literature, and especially the era’s civil-war literature. Intertextuality thus becomes the play’s central mode of shaping both the literary memory of Julio-Claudian literature and the cultural or ideological memory of the Julio-Claudian family after the dynasty’s fall.
Three interrelated propositions inform how I approach my subject, two methodological and one thematic.6 First, the Octavia is a self-consciously intertextual play, by which I mean that one of its fundamental modes of generating meaning derives from its echoes of literature that came before. Second, the Octavia is a play about memory, in terms of both how its characters remember the past and also how the play as
4 Sullivan (1985, 73) suggests that thematically and literarily the play belongs more to Julio-Claudian literature than to what follows. I view the play more as a transition, having much in common with the concerns of Flavian poetry (e.g. the role of civil war under a monarchy).
5 The Octavia focuses on 62 CE, Octavia’s divorce, and the riots in her favor. Nevertheless, the events mentioned in the play span from the monarchy through the Republic and the Julio-Claudian period, and thus 62 CE becomes, in essence, a microcosm through which the playwright confronts larger themes.
6 I borrow this language of “propositions” from Boyle’s (1987) twelve “propositions” about the defining markers of Senecan dramatic artistry and the methodologies through which it is best approached.
2 a whole masterfully reshapes the memory of Neronian and Julio-Claudian Rome. Third, the Octavia is a play about Roman identity; more specifically, it is a play about civil strife, past and present, and the role that civil strife has played in Roman history as a constitutive element of Roman identity.7 None of these approaches to imperial literature is necessarily unusual on its own, but the text privileges each as a means of interpreting it, and each also raises its own set of questions and brings with it its own intellectual history. Thus it will be of use to lay out precisely what I mean by these three propositions and what about the text has led me to categorize it in these terms.
The study of an ancient text’s allusive program has gained increasing scholarly attention over the past decades, especially in the study of imperial poetry.8 This does not mean, however, that a unified methodology has developed that would please all working in this area. Rather, the plurality of ways of understanding intertextuality has engendered a plurality of studies on the subject, as each scholar articulates his or her own way of reading a text’s allusive language. Nevertheless, several fundamental advances have been made with wide influence on how we currently approach the subject. First, we have freed ourselves from the idea that we can recover how an author “intended” his work to be read, and instead we locate meaning in the point of a text’s reception.9 At the same time, we are no longer as driven to remove the author completely from the process, and recent studies approach intertextuality in terms of the space created between author and
7 While this might seem obvious, the play’s “Romanness” has often been underestimated. Both Kragelund (2002 and 2005) and Smith (2003) recently argued for the its predominant interest in Rome and Roman identity, and my work both advances and builds on their arguments as will be noted throughout.
8 See e.g. Edmunds (2001); Hinds (1998); Pucci (1998); Wills (1996); Conte (1986). Schiesaro’s (2003, 221-51) and Boyle’s (1987; 2008, lix-lxvi) discussions of intertextuality in Senecan drama have especially informed my own thinking on the subject, as has Edmunds (2001) and Hinds (1998).
9 Fowler (1997, 127) nicely summarizes the issue: “meaning is realized at the point of reception, and what counts as an intertext and what one does with it depends on the reader.” Cf. also Pasquali (1968) 275.
3 audience in which meaning is generated.10 Throughout my study, I refer both to the author’s creation (whether intentional or not) and the audience’s perception; I nevertheless avoid such fraught terms such as “allusion” or “reference” in preference for
“intertext,” “echo,” “parallel,” and “reminiscence.” I reserve the language of allusive reference for historical (rather than literary) allusions in the text.11 A further advance has been a move away from what Stephen Hinds terms “philological fundamentalism,” or the desire to impose a strict sense of criteria through which “reference” can be distinguished from “accidental parallel.”12 Even commonplace language or topoi are not forbidden from consideration.13 The “proof” must rest in the intertext’s ability to generate meaning upon analysis, as it is this very meaning that makes it relevant for the text’s interpretation. Thus not every parallel will be an intertext for every reader, and it is likely that not all will agree with every echo I analyze.
My analysis focuses on echoes that engage their model text on both a lexical and thematic level, but I also examine how topoi and marked vocabulary (which I often describe as allusive “texturing”) reinforce the play’s allusive program. At times lexical parallels are further marked by metrical position, “Alexandrian footnotes,” the
10 See Fowler (1997) 115-37 and Hinds (1998) esp. 47-51. Outside of Classics, literary memory has long been approached in these terms. Especially influential in the development of my own thought has been Renate Lachmann (1997). In Lachmann’s (largely poststructuralist) formulation, intertextual meaning arises from the space between texts generated by the textual memories that an author—consciously or unconsciously—leaves behind in his text and the textual memories that the reader brings to it.
11 For the difficulty of terminology, see Edmunds (2001) 133ff. Edmunds (138) rejects the term “intertext” as inherently problematic, preferring to use “allusion” without intentionalist associations.
12 Hinds (1998) 17-51.
13 Hinds (1998) 34-47. “[That anything can be an intertext] is a truth often suppressed by professors of Latin for reasons of pedagogy and (perhaps) peace of mind; but it is a truth none the less,” (Hinds [1998] 26). Cf. also Edmunds (2001) xvii.
4 sequencing of ideas, or other structural and linguistic cues.14 For example, Seneca and
Nero (Oct. 440-3) echo the four imperial virtues of Augustus both in their language and also by the order in which they present the virtues through which they look back to
Augustus’ clupeus virtutis, his Res Gestae, and other Augustan texts.15 Here too is a recent advance in intertextual studies: no longer is it understood exclusively in poetic terms. Instead, we have turned to prose texts, and especially historiography.16 In the study of allusion, our definition of “text” is expanding to include non-poetic examples and thus
I also analyze echoes that may seem far removed from the traditional realm of literature.
Within the Octavia, literary echoes work both intertextually and intratextually.17
Certain passages are especially marked moments where the Octavia engages its literary predecessors as clearly as possible. Such moments become “gateway intertexts” that authorize us to seek further points of connection between the two dialoguing texts. For example, when Octavia calls herself the “shadow of a great name” (magni resto nominis umbra, Oct. 71) and aligns herself with Lucan’s Pompey (stat magni nominis umbra,
Luc. 1.135), we are invited to seek additional complementary echoes throughout the text, even if subsequent points of contact are less marked.18 Thus the Octavia generates meaning not only from singular echoes but also from wider patterns across the text.19
14 Hinds (1998, 26) describes Morgan’s “philological criteria” from his study on Ovid (Morgan [1977] 3). The term “Alexandrian footnote” was coined first by Ross (1975, 78), but cf. also Hinds (1998) 1-5.
15 For a discussion of this passage, see Chapter 1 pp. 23-6. I follow Boyle’s (2008) text, noting alternative readings from Zwierlein’s OCT (1986) when significant for my argument.
16 Intertextuality in historiography is now a hot topic. Cf. Polleichtner (2010); Damon (2010a); Levene (2010) 82-163; Marincola (2010); O’Gorman (2007) and (2009) 233-40.
17 Similarly, Gaisser (2009, 136) speaks of the different “reverberations” which Catullus’ intertexts create through their intratextual reminiscences throughout the corpus.
18 For Octavia’s echoes of Pompey, see Chapter 4 pp. 149-61. The names “Octavia,” “Seneca” and “Nero,” etc. refer to the Octavia’s characters, not their historical counterparts. When reference is made to historical
5 These patterns are further aided by its dialogic or agonistic structure. The Octavia uses its dramatic structure to pit different readings of canonical Julio-Claudian texts against each other, asking the audience to engage with these texts from divergent interpretive positions. Thus we see Seneca and the Nurses offer readings of the Aeneid that emphasize its teleological promise of peace to the Julio-Claudians (e.g. Oct. 82-3;
Oct. 479-81; Oct. 752-3), while Nero and Octavia read the epic in terms of its civil-war undertones and its conflicting voices (e.g. Oct. 465; Oct. 523-26; Oct. 652-3).20 These divergent readings create not only a plurality of models through which to remember
Julio-Claudian Rome, but also a plurality of readings of those Julio-Claudian texts.21 As
figures, the distinction will be carefully noted (e.g. “the historical Seneca” vel sim.).
19 This mode of engagement is not unique to the Octavia, and can be found in authentic Senecan tragedy as well. Cf. Littlewood (2004, 142) on patterns of Horatian echoes in the Thyestes. The Aeneid’s more notable and overarching engagement with the Iliad and Odyssey can be felt both in individual echoes and in its large-scale patterns even in the absence of precise markers at every turn (cf. Edmunds [2001] 140-41). “The more obvious, and obviously intended aspects of Vergil’s allusive program encourage the reader to look further for less obvious, less obviously intended examples as well…here a situation arises in which, if a Homeric scene is not represented by an obvious Vergilian imitation, the reader is encouraged to hunt for it,” (e-mail from Joseph Farrell quoted by Edmunds [2001] 154). Despite the prevalence of such arguments in previous studies of Latin literature, it nevertheless bears repeating as the Octavia’s echoes have often been read in terms of singular points of contact between two texts without regard for wider patterns.
20 On the allusive engagement with Vergil in these passages, see Chapter 1 pp. 29-35 (Seneca); Chapter 3 pp. 112-21 (Seneca and Nero); Chapter 4 pp. 183-199 (Octavia; the Nurses; Agrippina). While the Octavia’s engagement with Greek and Roman drama has been well studied, its equally pervasive engagement with non-dramatic models remains less so, a balance my dissertation implicitly addresses. Littlewood (2004, 2) has similarly called for a wider study of the influence of non-dramatic models on Senecan drama, suggesting that its generic identity as tragedy has narrowed our perspective unhelpfully.
21 Littlewood (2004, 70-3) notes something like this in his reading of the Phaedra where the conflict between Hippolytus and Phaedra can be read as a conflict of perspectives created by the different uses to which each puts the language of love elegy. Littlewood, however, argues that Hippolytus’ echoes damn him without his knowledge (which he calls “deviant intertextuality”), while Phaedra’s support her viewpoint. Schiesaro (2003, 115) argues for a similar conflict in reading between Atreus and Thyestes. The Octavia’s characters do not seem damned by their echoes; rather their “different perspectives” (Littlewood’s term) or “different readings” (my own) of identical models further characterize their opposing ideological positions. Boyle (1994, 26-7) demonstrates the powerlessness of the Troades’ characters who struggle against the scripts that the literary tradition provides; the Octavia, however, seems to challenge the determinism of earlier literature by pitting various readings against one another.
6 the play stages heated debates over power and the future of the Julio-Claudians, so too it stages metaliterary debates over how to read its literary predecessors.
As a result of these metaliterary dialogues, the Octavia’s characters at times seem almost aware of the intertexts they activate. For example, as Nero contradicts Seneca’s vision of the principate as an inherently peaceful institution—a vision that Seneca’s speech constructs largely out of Vergilian language—Nero’s language activates a series of counter-allusions to Lucan as an alternative epic model. On one level, the playwright does this for our benefit; on another, however, the characters themselves seem self- consciously to offer these metaliterary readings as part of their argumentative strategy.
Scholars have previously argued that characters in Latin poetry, and especially in
Senecan drama, possess an eerie understanding of the literary models through which they are read.22 Thus Alessandro Schiesaro suggests that, “[Seneca’s] Atreus is fully aware of the intertextual inspiration of his actions, and this knowledge of precedents and models will give him a decisive advantage at crucial junctures. Atreus explicitly displays his knowledge of the Ovidian story.”23 And yet such an awareness of the literary tradition is logically (and chronologically) impossible for such mythological characters to have.24
22 For Medea’s literary self-consciousness, see e.g. Littlewood (2004) 103ff; for Atreus’ see below.
23 Schiesaro (2003) 115. Fulkerson (2005) and Pavlock (2009) have argued for similar awareness in characters from Ovid’s Heroides and Metamorphoses respectively. Schiesaro’s analysis of the different levels of allusive awareness displayed by Atreus and Thyestes has much informed my own reading of the Octavia. In the Octavia, however, the difference seems less marked by special characters who knowingly echo their models against less-special characters who are unaware of their language; instead the conflict seems to center on the different readings of models implicitly suggested by different characters. On the influence that characters have on the interpretation of an intertext that stems from them—whether or not they are conscious of it—see Edmunds (2001) 74.
24 Perhaps the most studied instance of such allusion is Ovid’s Ariadne who “remembers” her previous experience in Catullus’ poem (Ov. Fast.3.471-6). Ovid puts the allusive markers into Ariadne’s own voice, conflating experiential and literary memory (cf. Hinds [1998] 3-5; Conte [1986] 57-69). Few would suggest, however, that Ovid means his Ariadne (a mythological figure from the Bronze age) to have read Catullus’ poem. Instead, Ariadne’s memory becomes a metaphor for Ovid’s allusive practices.
7 A better example for the Octavia comes from historiography. To take a famous example from Sallust’s Bellum Catilinae, the character Cato the Younger alludes to
Thucydides’ description of stasis and its effect on language (Sall. Cat.52.11). Cato’s reminiscence, however, also significantly revises and reinterprets Thucydides’ meaning, as if Cato self-consciously twists Thucydides’ words to fit his own argument.25 Some critics would not read Cato the character as aware of his Thucydidean echo and would instead ascribe to Sallust the passage’s allusive irony. Nevertheless, Batstone and others notably see a sense of self-awareness in Cato’s echo of an historian that the historical
Cato had no doubt read. And thus the difference between Cato and Atreus as characters is that Cato reflects his historical counterpart, including the types of things that his historical self would have read. Similarly, the intertexts I examine throughout the Octavia all derive from Julio-Claudian literature—from works at times directly addressed to the imperial family—and thus from works that were likely read by the historical counterparts of the play’s main characters. In other words, the historical Nero was familiar with
Vergil, Horace, and Lucan, and thus it is reasonable to see in his language a self- conscious evocation of the literature produced under and in response to his dynasty.26
25 Batstone (2010, 48) notes: “it is at least ironic that Cato’s citation is itself an example of a war with words. Who is the custodian of vera vocabula if not Cato? The younger Cato’s use (in Sallust’s text) of the Thucydidean topos, then, is not the citation of authority or a political analysis; it is Cato’s effort to use the Thucydidean topos for his own purposes: he is calling the senate’s disagreement about policy ‘the failure to use the right words.’ In other words, Cato shows that even the Thucydidean analysis of the abuse of language can be used for ulterior purposes.”
26 O’Gorman (2000, esp. 144-75) reads Tacitus’ Nero and Seneca similarly, noting how they virtually “quote” from the historical Seneca to different effect. Tacitus’ Nero elsewhere also speaks in decidedly Vergilian language. In Tacitus, according to O’Gorman (2000, 162), “Nero is an emperor who quotes rather than speaks,” and her reading of the self-conscious allusions of Tacitus’ characters has much in common with how I read the metaliterary awareness of the Octavia’s.
8 Additionally suggestive is how the Octavia’s Seneca borrows the words of his historical counterpart.27 This overlap between the two “Senecas” encourages us not to distinguish between them, and to read the Octavia’s Seneca as if he were “knowingly” reworking his own material. And yet no distinction exists in the text to differentiate between Seneca’s repurposing of Senecan words and his repurposing of other models, causing us to wonder if the character can be aware of these other models as well.
Furthermore, as Seneca and Nero create a veritable tapestry of intertexts out of Julio-
Claudian literature, they put into action the theory of allusivity found in the historical
Seneca’s own writings.28 In this way, the dialogue between Seneca and Nero becomes almost programmatic for how we might read and understand the play’s literary echoes and its characters’ metaliterary role in activating them.
And so the Octavia poet weaves into his play the echoes of Julio-Claudian literature to position his rereading of Neronian and Julio-Claudian Rome against the texts that came before. In the Octavia, this type of intertextuality becomes the method through which the poet rewrites the memory of Julio-Claudian Rome from an era marked by
27 Throughout my dissertation, I follow Harrison in turning away from the question of the Octavia’s allusions to Senecan material: “the number of near quotations from [Seneca’s] works is too sizable to be accidental and too often remarked in scholarly literature to bear repeating here” (Harrison [2003] 116). Nevertheless, the persistent echoes of his historical counterpart in Seneca’s speech to Nero have crucial implications for how we might read the metaliterary awareness of the Octavia’s characters, and thus I occasionally note such allusions in the chapters that follow. For the extensive history of Senecan echoes in the Octavia, see Ladek (1909); Trabert (1953) 74; Runchina (1964); Bruckner (1976) 129, 132-3; Whitman (1978) ad loc; Calder (1983) 193-5; Zwierlein (1984) 224-233; Tarrant (1985) 121; Poe (1989); Williams (1994) 191; Chaumartin (1999) 175; Stark (2000) 230-1; Manuwald (2002 and 2003); Wilson (2003a); Ferri (2003) ad loc; Fitch (2004) ad loc; Boyle (2008) ad loc.
28 Quid tibi do ne Aetnam describas in tuo carmine, ne hunc sollemnem omnibus poetis locum adtingas? Quem quominus Ovidius tractaret, nihil obstitit quod iam Vergilius impleverat; ne Severum quidem Cornelium uterque deterruit. Omnibus praeterea feliciter hic locus se dedit, et qui praecesserant non praeripuisse mihi videntur quae dici poterant, sed aperuisse. Sed multum interest utrum ad consumptam materiam an ad subactam accedas: crescit in dies, et inventuris inventa non obstant. Praeterea condicio optima est ultimi: parata verba invenit, quae aliter instructa novam faciem habent. Nec illis manus inicit tamquam alienis; sunt enim publica (Sen. Ep.79.5-6).
9 peace and concordia to an era of perpetual strife that unites the dynasty’s later history with the civil wars that they had claimed to suppress.29 And it is this aspect of the play’s intertextuality that brings me to my second proposition.
The Octavia is highly reflective of the “culture of memory” in Imperial Rome, or the emphasis throughout Roman culture on remembering the past in ways useful for the present.30 Like the study of intertextuality, the field of cultural memory studies has exploded over the past decades, and within Roman studies alone many important works have recently appeared that address cultural memory from a variety of perspectives.31
While a broad survey of the divergent methodologies and theoretical underpinnings of cultural memory studies would be an impossible task for this introduction, it will nevertheless be useful to situate my own work within this expanding theoretical landscape. Most important for my dissertation is the idea of “literary memory” and the role that it plays within the Octavia. By “literary memory” I mean not only the idea of intertextuality put forth by Conte, but also how literature seems to shape characters’ memory within the play, and how the play itself shapes our memory in turn.32 To return
29 At many points I discuss parallels pointed out by others before me, and I note this intellectual debt carefully. Nevertheless, my dissertation advances our interpretation of these previously noted parallels by reading them not as singular points of contact, but as part of a wider intertextual network of the play as a whole. Above all I try to move past the purpose of the “reader-philologist” who privileges “philological discovery” over interpretation of a discovery’s significance. On these terms, cf. Edmunds (2001) 42-3.
30 I am not alone in noting the play’s multivalent engagement with ideas of memory, and Boyle’s (2008) commentary is filled with memory language. The significance of the play as a reaction to and a construction of memory has been discussed recently by Flower (2006) 202-9. Her focus, however, is on the play’s relationship to the other memory sanctions that occurred after Nero’s death, and thus she does not examine the role of memory within the play.
31 E.g. Flower (2006); Hölkeskamp (2006); Gowing (2005); Walter (2004). Useful summaries of how the idea of memory has influenced scholarly approaches to the ancient world can be found in Farrell (1997) and Small and Tatum (1995). The more recent studies cited above, however, tend to focus on broad historical and cultural questions, rather than the study of memory within literary works despite the growing number of studies on the intersection between cultural and literary memory in other fields.
32 Conte (1986).
10 to a frequent example, when Seneca and Nero clash over Augustus’ memory, Seneca’s language recalls the opening of Vergil’s Aeneid (Oct. 479-51) and Nero’s the first lines of
Lucan’s Bellum Civile (Oct. 518). These are no mere learned games that the author is playing. Rather, by this point these texts have, in a sense, become more than literature: they have become themselves authoritative vehicles for different ways of remembering the origins of Julio-Claudian Rome and different ideologies of empire.33
In her various works on “cultural texts” and “memory spaces,” Aleida Assmann suggests that works of literature can transcend their literary status and instead become reflections of and vehicles for cultural memories of constitutive significance to their society.34 For Assmann, the “cultural text” par excellence is the Bible, but she also examines other canonical works. Recent work has broadened her findings to examine further the role played by literature generally (not just “canonical” or “high” literature) in conveying and shaping memory from its composition to its various receptions.35 It is in this area of the now booming “cultural memory industry” that I situate my own work.
33 The Romans were well aware of the idea that literature could become an ideologically charged vehicle for such cultural memories. See, for example, Ovid’s assertion that the Aeneid has come to belong to Augustus (Ov. Tr.2.533 w. Thomas [2001] 76ff).
34 Cf. Assmann (1995) and (1999). The term “cultural memory” (kulturelle Gedächtnis) was coined by Aleida and Jan Assmann as a further refinement of the terms “social memory” or, even older, “collective memory” used by other theorists. Jan Assmann uses “cultural memory” to refer to memories of constitutive significance that a society adheres to as part of their group identity. It is in this sense that I employ the term throughout my dissertation, although I will at times substitute the perhaps less precise “historical memory” without distinction. I avoid Halbwachs’ original term “collective memory” due to the bias against it over the past few decades; while the term “social memory” (coined by Fentress and Wickham in 1992) has been embraced by many as a useful substitution for “collective memory,” the type of argument that I pursue is inherently involved in the aspects of memory that Jan and Aleida Assmann have coined their term to express, and thus I follow their terminology. For an overview of memory studies generally (in as much as one can be said to exist), see Olick and Robbins (1998). For the intersection between literary and cultural memory, see Grabes (2005) and Erll and Nünning (2008) 299-343.
35 Cf. Erll ad Nünning (2005) 284-6.
11 Studies on the intersection between cultural and literary memory in Classical literature have largely focused on certain types of literature: the literature that makes up our own current idea of “canon.” Thus the role of memory in the Aeneid has often been studied, due in large part to the privileged position that the epic held in Roman society and still holds in our own.36 Ruth Scodel has recently analyzed the idea of memory in
Aeschylus’ Oresteia, a similarly well-studied and highly regarded work, this time from the Greek world.37 The idea that literary memory of the type outlined above is most productively studied in “high” literature or “high” genres remains a persistent a priori assumption in the field of Classics, much as Assmann herself privileges the Bible or other canonical works in her analysis. My work, however, challenges these assumptions by demonstrating the utility of memory theory for analyzing a work of literature that is neither canonical nor will ever be regarded as a landmark cultural monument in the way that the Aeneid or the Oresteia are. Regardless of its “lower” status (and perhaps even in part due to this status), the Octavia becomes an interesting lens through which to investigate the clearly articulated intersection between literary and cultural memory in a work of imperial literature. Not only does the Octavia as a work of literature construct a vivid new memory of Julio-Claudian Rome, but its various characters also mediate their memories through intertextual memory, turning the Octavia into a metaliterary reflection on Julio-Claudian literature and its engagement with imperial ideology.
Up to this point I have been speaking in general terms about how intertextuality as a system works within the play and how it functions as a part of the play’s wider
36 Cf. Barchiesi (forthcoming); Bettini (1997); Hardy (1991).
37 Scodel (2008).
12 engagement with cultural memory. My dissertation, however, neither seeks to address all literary echoes within the play, nor to analyze every type of memory present within the text, as such analysis would unhelpfully privilege method or mode over meaning for its own sake.38 Rather, I investigate how the intersection of literary and cultural memory advances the play’s larger thematic concern with Roman identity and thus my analysis focuses on the Octavia’s engagement with Roman texts that share similar concerns. I do so not to create a skewed or distorted picture of only one aspect of the play’s literary memory or to suggest that its engagement with Greek tragic and Senecan models is insignificant; rather, my dissertation investigates an aspect of the play’s literary artistry— its Romanness—that has been largely ignored in order to readdress the balance between the play’s reflections of Greek mythological literature and its more predominant meditations on Rome and Roman identity under the early empire.39
More precisely, I am interested in how the play activates conflicting memories of civil war—and especially of the civil wars fought by Julius and Augustus Caesar— through its reminiscences of literature that addressed these same issues. As Breed,
Damon, and Rossi note, “the patterns and cycles of Roman civil war remain effective
‘intertexts’ far into their future via translations and appropriations.”40 In this way, the
38 For the plurality of allusive modes and models—both Greek and Roman—in the Octavia, see Harrison (2003) and Boyle ad loc throughout the play.
39 On the surprising lack of interest in the Octavia’s engagement with Rome and Romanness, see n. 7.
40 Breed, Damon, and Rossi (2010) 4. The idea of civil war as a recognizable body of “intertextual” material works nicely as a metaphor for my reading of how literary and civil-war memory blend together in the Octavia. In a slightly different context, Littlewood (2004, 13) notes that “the past repeats itself through verbal reminiscence.” The importance of intertextuality to Roman civil-war narratives is nicely encapsulated by Petronius’ Eumolpus whose Bellum Civile regurgitates many of the most common themes of previous civil-war poetry: ecce belli civilis ingens opus quisque attigerit nisi plenus litteris, sub onere labetur. Non enim res gestae versibus comprehendendae sunt, quod longe melius historici faciunt, sed per ambages deorumque ministeria (Petr. 118).
13 play creates a fundamental continuity between the Julio-Claudian principate and the civil wars of Rome’s past to challenge the dynasty’s own public image.41
The Julio-Claudians’ ancestors were no strangers to civil war. Julius Caesar waged civil war against Pompey, Cato and the Roman senate; Augustus Caesar waged civil war in turn against Brutus and Cassius, Sextus Pompey, and Marc Antony. But After
Actium, so the story goes, everything changed. At that moment, the civil wars were suppressed by Augustus and the dynasty he founded. Monuments to peace and associated virtues sprung up all over the Roman world, and especially in the city itself. Rather than
Republic and civil wars, the Roman world had pax et princeps, and the institution of the principate became the solution to civil wars in ideologically charged hindsight.42
There are few who would agree with every detail of the preceding summary, and a number of recent studies have readdressed the “myth of Actium” and the way imperial
Rome responded to and represented the civil wars.43 Nevertheless, despite diverging opinions over Augustus’ civil-war rhetoric and its reflection across Rome, one idea remains unchallenged from ancient evidence: with the origin of the principate, Rome came to understand that the era of civil war had come to a lasting and ideologically significant end.44 The Octavia poet thus approaches Julio-Claudian history from an
41 O’Gorman (2000) similarly notes how, throughout the Annals, Tacitus emphasizes the continuity between the principate and the civil wars that preceded it (cf. O’Gorman 19, and 23-45). Many have become interested in Tacitus’ representation of Julio-Claudian rule as a form of civil war (cf. also Damon [2010b] and Keitel [1984]), and Damon further notes that in Tacitus, Octavia’s fall is precipitated by accusations of fomenting strife (Damon [2010b] 267-68). Nevertheless, none note how significantly the Octavia anticipates Tacitus in this respect.
42 For the collocation, see Tac. Ann.3.28.3 and Tac. Hist.1.1.1. The idea behind the collocation, however, predates Tacitus and is found often in Augustus’ own Res Gestae (e.g. RG 3, 12-13, 25, 34-5).
43 See, e.g., Breed, Damon, and Rossi, eds (2010); Lange (2009); Osgood (2006); Gurval (1995).
44 In 28 BCE, Augustus issues an edict repudiating his illegal actions up to 29 BCE (cf. Levick [2010] 69). Aside from the emphasis put on the restoration of peace in the Res Gestae (e.g. RG 34), the idea appears
14 interesting vantage point as an early witness to the period after the Julio-Claudians fell and, more significantly, after civil wars had broken out again and had proven that the institution of the principate was not, in fact, a solution to civil strife. Civil war and principate were now no longer separate systems, but had become fundamentally intertwined as emperor after emperor drove a bloody path to imperial power.
Against this background of Rome’s recent (re)experience of civil war, the Octavia poet could look back and question the ideological rhetoric of pax et princeps, seeing in
Julio-Claudian history a reflection of the civil wars that the dynasty claimed to have quelled. Thus when the Octavia’s Nero suggests that he intends to rule on the model of
Octavian instead of Augustus, when Octavia reads herself as Rome’s new Pompey, and when the chorus of Roman people reads itself through the lens of the city’s strife-ridden exemplary past, the playwright asks us to understand that civil war was continually and dangerously waged throughout the Julio-Claudian period. Only its form had shifted: instead of generals on the battlefield, we have rival Julio-Claudians battling within the palace as their rival factions seditiously attack its gates. The passions of civil war remain, as does the idea that civil war is fundamentally tied to Roman identity across disparate political circumstances and time periods. In the following five chapters, I trace the theme of civil strife throughout the play, considering both how its characters reflect on Rome’s past experience of civil strife and how the play aligns the figures of Neronian Rome with opponents from Rome’s strife-ridden history. Throughout each individual study runs the common thread that through its engagement with Julio-Claudian literature, the Octavia
widely in Julio-Claudian literature and beyond. Cf. H. Carm.4.15.17-20; Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom.1.7.2; Man. Ast.1.922-4; Vell. 2.89.3-2.90.1; Sen. Apocol.10; Sen. Clem.1.9-11.
15 stages continuity between principate and civil war, fusing literary and ideological memory into one all-encompassing and strife-filled spectacle.
In chapters 1 and 2, I analyze the dialogue between Seneca and Nero from the play’s second scene. Although this dialogue nominally focuses on the philosophical ideal of the “good king,” pitting Senecan-style philosophy against Neronian political practice, the thematic focus of the debate is the memory of Augustus, and through this focus the dialogue asks what influence the legacy of his civil wars have on his imperial heirs. In chapter 1, I analyze the speech of Seneca, and how the philosopher advises Nero according to the master narrative of his family, in which the principate created a fundamental break between itself and the preceding civil wars. Throughout this narrative,
Seneca’s language weaves together Augustus’ own Res Gestae, numismatic slogans, and the more optimistic passages of Vergil’s Aeneid, to create a tapestry of Augustan ideology. When Seneca turns from Augustus’ past to Nero’s present, however, he describes Nero in language with which earlier authors had described Augustus’ civil wars, bringing Neronian Rome into dangerous contact with those very civil wars.
In chapter 2, I examine Nero’s response to Seneca, and how the princeps not only offers a markedly different memory of Augustus and his accomplishments, but also activates a host of intertextual models that seem to answer Seneca’s point for point. From
Nero’s point of view, the triumviral period was Augustus’ great accomplishment and along with this contrast in historical memory, his language allusively invokes Lucan’s
Bellum Civile as a rival literary model both to Vergil’s Aeneid and to Augustus’ Res
Gestae; it is out of Lucan’s bloody epic that Nero’s ideology of the principate and rhetorical stance is born. That Nero ends his speech by claiming Octavian for an imperial
16 model gives us vital insights into how we should read the rest of the play, inviting us to read the Neronian present in terms of civil war, and to understand that what may seem to be a domestic dispute between rival family members is rather a reflection of the same political strife through which they came to power.
In chapter 3, I take Nero’s assertion to its logical conclusion by examining how the drama engages with what I have termed the “poetics of civil war.” The immense body of Roman civil-war literature under the early empire created a recognizable repertory of images and a fixed vocabulary for civil strife instantly recognizable to Roman audiences.
By redeploying these generic markers with reference to Neronian Rome, the play turns its historical narrative of an age marked by peace into a narrative of civil war. I also explore more specific echoes within the play that link the riot of 62 CE with “purple passages” from civil-war literature, such as Vergil’s simile of the seditious mob and the great statesman, or Horace’s ode to Pollio on the difficulties of writing about civil war.
Through these various intertextual appeals, the play creates a metaliterary dialogue about its own place in the narrative tradition of Roman strife.
In my 4th chapter, I explore how the playwright intertextually models Octavia and
Agrippina on figures from Rome’s strife-filled past and uses them to restage on an allusive level the hallmark struggles of previous eras. For example, as I have noted above, Octavia calls herself the “shadow of a great name,” aligning herself with Pompey and the losing side of the Roman civil war experience. Agrippina too recalls Pompey, and reenacts with her death the erstwhile Republican general’s famous demise. Nevertheless,
Pompey is not the only model upon whom the playwright shapes his characters, and as
Pompey and Caesar clash again, so do Aeneas and Turnus. Even Dido—the royal woman
17 who had to die in order for Rome to rise—finds parallels in the Octavia’s leading ladies.
Out of this plurality of literary-historical figures from Rome’s strife-ridden past, the playwright stages the dynasty’s collapse on the model of the legendary battles and antipathies that brought the Julio-Claudians to power and creates out of the Imperial period further iterations of the civil strife played out in Roman legend and history.
In my 5th and 6th chapters, I turn to the dueling choruses of Roman citizens whose presence imbues the very structure of the play with an image of Rome divided against itself. The presence of two choruses that share one collective identity has long frustrated scholars who variously attempt to redefine one of the choruses as made up of an insignificant subset of Nero’s court, not to be confused with the chorus of “true” Romans who stage mass revolution in Octavia’s name. Through a close reading of the choruses’ various odes, I demonstrate that each chorus displays the same thematic engagement with civil strife that the play’s other characters do, and that the Roman people variously reenact in Neronian Rome the strife of Rome’s legendary past.
My 5th chapter focuses on the first two choral odes and challenges the prevailing reading of these passages as songs of praise to the Roman people that both hold the key to the play’s interpretation and also demonstrate its production during the populist reign of Galba. When the odes are read with an eye towards both their redeployment of the language of foreign conquest to a civil-war context and the logical gaps between the people’s stated aims and the exempla they champion, they become far less straightforward as praiseworthy illustrations of the Roman people’s noble character and instead suggest the population’s fundamentally seditious and fickle nature. My 6th chapter traces this theme of sedition and fickle character through the remainder of the choral
18 odes, tackling the long-standing question of the Octavia’s second chorus and the significance of this second chorus to our reading of the play. From both choruses’ perspective, strife becomes a constitutive and inescapable element of Roman identity destined to be replayed again and again even as political power structures change. When read with an eye towards their thematic engagement with civil strife, the choruses’ shared identity as two factions of Roman citizens no longer seems necessary to explain away, but instead becomes a fundamental aspect of how the choruses replicate the strife of
Rome’s past in its Imperial present.
Civil strife runs throughout the Octavia as a thematic program, and a large portion of the play’s multivalent intertextuality is oriented towards framing the events of 62 CE in terms of civil war and its dangerous passions. From the explicit focus on civil strife in the exempla adduced by play’s various characters to the intertextual echoes of strife from
Roman history and legend, the passions of civil war and their reflections across Roman history crucially shape the play’s events into yet another iteration of Rome’s ancestral curse. This thematic unity also links the play and its playwright with the important narrative tradition of civil strife in Roman literature: the Octavia becomes a poem of civil war, and its playwright a civil-war poet. By using one moment in Neronian history to restage Julio-Claudian Rome as an era of continual civil strife, the play offers a fundamental challenge to the peaceful ideology of the Julio-Claudian principate at a time when the historical memory of Rome’s first imperial family was undergoing immense transformation in light of their dramatic fall from power. The play powerfully links
Roman identity with civil war, and shows that even under the principate, civil war continues to be Rome’s inescapable, horrific destiny.
19
CHAPTER 1: ON THE MODEL OF AUGUSTUS
Upon coming to the throne in 54 CE, the historical Nero had supposedly promised the
Senate that he would rule after the model of Augustus, his great-great-grandfather. But which Augustus would this be? The virtuous emperor who brought Rome out of chaos into a golden age of peace, or the young man who had won his power through a series of brutal and bloody civil wars? Scholars ancient and modern tend to read this anecdote as applying exclusively to Nero’s early years while he was still under the influence of
Seneca and appeared to the world an ideal young ruler, a period sometimes referred to as
“the five good years” of the Neronian principate.1 In other words, we usually associate
Nero’s “Augustan phase” with the early and positive aspects of Nero’s reign, rather than with the less savory actions for which he is also later remembered. Nevertheless, this is not the only possibility for what it means to choose Augustus as one’s model. After all, not everyone remembered Augustus exclusively in peaceful and merciful terms; some had not forgotten Octavian’s bloody path to power.2
1 According to Suetonius, Nero “proclaimed that he would rule according to the model of Augustus” (ex Augusti praescriptio imperaturum se professus, Suet. Ner.10.1). For Augustus as Nero’s model, see most recently Champlin (2003) 139-44; See also Griffin (1984) 50-66 esp. 62-63, 96, 115, 200-5, 216. This proclamation or general ideological position may also lie behind the comparison that the historical Seneca made between Nero and Augustus (Sen. Clem.1.9-11 w. Braund [2009] 61-64). Regarding Nero’s “five good years,” Tacitus, Suetonius, and Cassius Dio agree that a period of good rule preceded Nero’s descent into tyranny. The specific legend of a quinquennium (five-year period) of good rule stems from Aurelius Victor, who records how the emperor Trajan claimed that Nero’s quinquennium was so outstanding that no emperor had yet surpassed it (On the Emperors 5). Nevertheless, critics are divided as to which five years Trajan meant; some even suggest Nero’s final five years (Shotter [2008] 73). For different turning points in the reign of Nero, see Shotter (2008) 56-73; Champlin (2003) 25; Griffin (1984) 37-8, 83-4.
2 For a survey of different scholarly approaches to Octavian/Augustus and his principate, some favorable
20 These two interpretive possibilities for Nero’s Augustan model lie at the heart of the Octavia’s second scene and inform much of the action throughout the rest of the play.
In this scene, the playwright stages a debate between Nero and his weary tutor Seneca over the memory of Augustus and the implications of that memory for Nero’s principate.
In doing so, he brings to the forefront the possibility that Nero picks the “wrong”
Augustus—the brutal triumvir Octavian—as his model, a possibility with wide-ranging and multifaceted implications for our interpretation of the play’s account of Neronian
Rome and its strife-ridden politics.
This chapter and the one that follows form a complementary pair that explores how Nero and Seneca confront and respond to the memory of Augustus and his former identity as Octavian, and how they approach the idea of remembering the civil wars that brought him to power. I explore in this first chapter how Seneca champions the memory of a merciful ruler whose troubling involvement in civil war can be suppressed, sanitized and reincorporated into a larger grand narrative of peaceful rule.3 I then go on in my second chapter to examine how Nero, in contrast, revels in his ancestor’s violent past, remembers each gruesome detail, and devotes little space to the peaceful virtues of
Augustus’ more mature incarnation.
To underscore their divergent ideological positions, the poet has each character weave together a variety of literary models from the Julio-Claudian period as if to
and some more hostile, see Levick (2010) esp. 7-10 and 23-53. I follow Levick and others in referring to Augustus as “Octavian” when discussing the triumviral period. I acknowledge, however, that Augustus himself did not use this name and that his Roman contemporaries at times used it for derogatory purposes (cf. Levick [2010] 26-7). On the conventions for referring to Augustus by different names for different periods, see Levick (2010) 5; see also Rubincam (1992).
3 In doing so, Seneca in many ways echoes Augustus himself whose Res Gestae traces themes rather than chronology in order to create out of his reign a more perfect narrative. On the Res Gestae’s influence throughout this passage, see below.
21 validate their readings of history through appeal to the literature which had treated the same issues and historical events. Seneca’s language predominantly blends echoes of
Vergil’s Aeneid with Augustus’ own Res Gestae along with other texts in order to paint a picture of Rome’s first emperor that glosses over the more troubling aspects of his rise to power. Nero’s language responds to the challenge by activating oppositional interpretations of Seneca’s intertextual models while also reminding us of models that
Seneca overlooks, such as Lucan’s Bellum Civile and other literary reflections of the civil wars that Seneca tries to avoid. Thus the battle over Augustus’ memory—and over the significance of that memory for Neronian politics—becomes also a battle over literary memory, or over which model best reflects imperial ideology and practice. As each remembers Augustus and his civil wars, so we are asked to remember the literary tradition that had commemorated this man and his wars in conflicting ways. Through a close reading of this dialogue, this chapter and the one that follows analyze these conflicting literary and ideological memories, and explore the greater significance of this scene for interpreting the theme of civil war in the Octavia as a whole.
The Octavia’s second scene opens with Seneca alone on stage recalling wistfully the joys of exile (Oct. 377-84) and pondering the myth of the Ages of Man (Oct. 385-
434). Right on cue, just as Seneca reaches the degeneration of the Iron Age, Nero marches on stage and demands the severed heads of his cousin-rivals Plautus and Sulla
(Oct. 435-38). Seneca immediately attempts to dissuade Nero from his murderous course, urging him instead to follow the path of mercy. And thus their dialogue begins, springing from an argument about current political difficulties, but slowly evolving into a wider-
22 ranging and more philosophical discussion on proper kingship on the Augustan model
(Oct. 440ff).
Although the dialogue begins with the current pressing issue of Nero’s rebellious relatives, the opening lines hint at the ideological debate that soon arises. Augustan ideology heavily influences the course of the dialogue from the beginning, long before
Augustus is ever mentioned by name. For as Seneca and Nero hurl one-line epigrammatic assertions at each other, they also immediately activate the four imperial virtues of the
Augustan age:
SEN. Nihil in propinquos temere constitui decet. NER. Iusto esse facile est cui vacat pectus metu. SEN. Magnum timoris remedium clementia est. NER. Extinguere hostem maxima est virtus ducis. (Oct. 440-4).
SEN: It’s proper to decide nothing rashly against one’s relatives. NER: It’s easy to be just if one is free from fear. SEN. Clemency is a great cure for fear. NER. Great courage belongs to a leader when he cuts down his enemy.
Seneca urges Nero to commit no rash action against his relatives, an injunction that exemplifies the Augustan virtue of piety (pietas).4 Nero replies that only one who is free from fear can be truly just, recalling Augustus’ emphasis on justice (iustitia). Seneca urges restraint once more by extolling the virtue of mercy (clementia), which only leads
Nero to add that true courage (virtus) comes from annihilating one’s enemy on the battlefield.5 If we were to read this exchange in a vacuum, it would seem that the two
4 To my knowledge, Boyle (2008) is the first scholar to note the significance of the four Augustan virtues here, and he also notes that they are presented in reverse order from their standard list. Seneca’s language further recalls the technical legal description of Augustus’ triumviral power (triumvirum rei publicae constituendae creavit, RG.1.4; triumvirum rei publicae constituendae, RG 7.1). Cf. also the lex Titia de triumviris rei publicae constituendae in 43 BCE (Cf. Cooley [2009] ad RG 7.1); the slogans on triumviral coinage (III VIR RPC = Triumviri Rei Publicae Constituendae [e.g. BM Coins Rom. Rep. II 579 nos. 29- 31]); and later accounts of this (e.g. triumviratum rei publicae contituendae, Suet. Aug.27). Thus when Seneca asserts that a princeps must make decisions (constituere) that benefit rather than harm the state, he echoes the law through which Augustus was given the power of life and death over his own citizens.
5 As many have noted, Seneca here also seeks to define mercy (est clementia) and in doing so intertextually
23 men are not so much having a discussion, but rather talking past each other in vague epigrammatic statements that neither respond to nor prompt the lines that proceed or follow. Neither Nero nor Seneca challenge the other on the definition of a particular virtue; rather, they jump quickly from virtue to virtue as if following a scripted set of talking points that must go in a certain order.6 And in some sense, they are following a script—a script provided by Augustus himself for his imperial descendents.
In 27 BCE, the Senate had given Augustus a golden shield to be placed prominently next to the Altar of Victory in the Curia Julia.7 On this shield was a
activates our memory of his historical counterpart’s De Clementia, a political treatise which lies behind this entire dialogue.
6 In a different sense, Littlewood (2004, 7-9) notes that the historical Seneca’s tragic characters share a feeling that their actions and words have been scripted for them. Littlewood, however, sees this as part of how Seneca and his characters self-consciously draw attention to the fiction of mythological literature and their own recycling of past texts rather than actual events. Similarly Edmunds (2001, 136-7) suggests that allusions of this sort call attention to a work’s inherent fictionality. The notion of characters who realize that their words follow pre-existing scripts is useful for the Octavia’s characters who constantly reflect— intertextually and otherwise—on how history repeats semper idem. Nevertheless, in the Octavia at least, the scripted nature of its characters’ words does not seem to further fictionalize the events staged or to render them mere literary constructs, but rather echoes the language of elite discourse in imperial Rome.
7 Boyle’s observations ad loc have influenced much of my following discussion. The date of the shield is still contentious and perhaps should be pushed back to 26 BCE instead of 27, on which see Cooley (2009) and Scheid (2007) ad RG 34. Augustus himself seems to record the shield as part of his honors of 27 BCE, although the chronology of honors within the Res Gestae is far from straightforward: clupeus aureus in curia Iulia positus, quem mihi senatum populumque Romanum dare virtutis clementiaeque et iustitiae et pietatis causa testatum est per eius clupei inscriptionem. (RG 34.2). Wilson (2003b, 87 n.51) also notes some similarities between the two texts but does not press them further. For the visual representation of the shield in Augustus’ public imagery, see Levick (2010) 73-4; Zanker (1988, 92-98) notes how the qualities celebrated on this shield “came to define what the Senate expected in a virtuous ruler and how that ruler defined himself” (95). Ramage (1987, 74) notes that the shield was visually present all over the Roman city and abroad, and that mention of it in the conclusion of the Res Gestae would trigger a reader’s memory of these visual images to enhance the climactic effect of the text’s conclusion. He also notes (75ff) that the opening chapters and, in a sense, the entire text of the Res Gestae is implicitly organized around demonstrating these virtues in action (cf. also Cooley [2009] ad loc). Levick (2010, 73) credits the shield as the single most powerful image of Augustus’ proclamation of peace and a break with his bloody past, and also suggests (227-8) that it indicated a proactive gesture by the Senate who wished for an era of peace to begin, and who thus emphasized clementia out of fear that peace had not yet been securely established. Our best copy comes from Arles and was set up one year after the Senate dedicated the original to Augustus, and it preserves what is probably the original inscription: [clupeus] virtutis L. clementiae, iustitiae, pietatisque erga deos patriamque (Zanker [1998] fig. 79). For Augustus’ imperial virtues in general and related iconography, see Levick (2010) 227-8; Cooley (2009) ad RG 34; Ramage (1987) 73-104; Wallace- Hadrill (1981).
24 celebratory inscription proclaiming Augustus’ chief virtues: virtus, clementia, iustitia, and pietas. The shield itself was known as the “shield of virtue” (clupeus virtutis) and copies were set up around the empire, several of which survive to this day. The virtues themselves subsequently became the chief imperial virtues for emperors striving to follow Augustus’ example. Augustus himself even celebrated this honor in the concluding paragraphs of his Res Gestae, a position of great significance in the text; in this passage, Augustus preserved the order of the virtues as they had appeared on the original shield: first virtus, followed by clementia, iustitia, and pietas. Thus Seneca and
Nero not only engage directly and openly with the four imperial virtues of the Augustan age, but do so in exactly reverse canonical order beginning with pietas and ending with virtus, echoes both the inscription from Augustus’ original shield and his celebration of this shield in his Res Gestae. Nero and Seneca are not, in the end, talking past one another or ignoring what the other has said; they are, in a sense, talking past their own conversation about the current crisis over Sulla and Plautus, and instead ask us to read
Neronian politics through the wider ideology of the Augustan age.
Already, however, it becomes clear from context that Nero’s understanding of
Augustan virtue and its utility is diametrically opposed to that of Seneca, despite the fact that each appeals to the same set of core ideological values. It is no accident that Seneca advises pietas and clementia, nor should it escape our attention that Nero anchors on iustitia and virtus.8 Seneca champions the image of a peaceful Augustus who was inherently merciful and abhorred violence as a means of acquiring power. We will see
8 In his Res Gestae, Augustus had notably paired virtus and clementia together and iustitia and pietas together (cf. Cooley [2009] ad RG 34 and Ramage [1987] 74ff.). If this pairing of virtues carried through elsewhere in the promotion and reception of the shield, then Seneca and Nero further break the order and interpretation of these virtues suggested by Augustus himself.
25 throughout the scene that, in order to evoke this particular memory of Augustus, Seneca’s intertextual language is quite selective, omitting words, phrases, and original context from his models when prudent and emphasizing models which support a peaceful memory. Nero, on the other hand, anchors on the military character of Augustan ideology by selecting iustitia and virtus as the imperial virtues which most appeal to him.9
Throughout this scene Nero will show himself quick to mete out “justice,” which he seems here to define narrowly as the execution of those who seek to undermine imperial authority. To Nero, justice exists only to extinguish those who would oppose him, and thus becomes an “imperial” virtue because only the emperor has recourse to it. Nero similarly understands virtus entirely in a military context and defines it as crushing one’s foe in combat. As the agonistic debate between Seneca and Nero begins, the reader quickly sees that the Augustus of Seneca, characterized by peaceful idealism, is not the same as the Augustus of Nero, who ruled with an iron fist and eliminated his enemies.
Two conflicting Augustan ideologies become the scene’s focus, and the way each man remembers Augustus—either as peaceful monarch or violent triumvir—directly informs the way he reacts to the events of 62 CE and the action within the play.
Seneca’s Augustan Narrative
Seneca’s reminiscences Augustus’ own language continues throughout the debate. When
Nero reiterates his intention to execute his rivals, Seneca counters that the father of the
9 For virtus and iustitia as the implicitly military virtues amongst the four, see Zanker (1988) 95. Note, however, that others (including perhaps even Augustus) link virtus with clementia as virtues of the battlefield (cf. supra). For clementia as a virtue particularly associated with civil war in imperial Rome, see McNelis (2007) 176.
26 fatherland ought to protect his citizens (servare cives maior est patriae patri, Oct. 444).10
Besides offering a nice epigrammatic statement on ideal kingship grounded in the Roman ideology of fatherhood and pax Romana, Seneca’s language here once again echoes
Augustus’ own words. In addition to the shield of virtues, in 27 BCE the Senate and people also awarded Augustus the corona civica, or the oak wreath which acknowledges that the recipient has saved the lives of Roman citizens.11 In order to celebrate this honor, various citizens including Augustus minted coins featuring the wreath and the legend “on account of saving the citizens” (ob civis servatos), language directly echoed here.12
Furthermore, when Augustus commemorates this honor at the end of his Res Gestae
(coronaque civica super ianuam meam fixa, RG 34), he connects it in narrative sequence with his subsequent acclamation as “father of the fatherland” (senatus et equester ordo populusque Romanus universus appellavit me patrem patriae, RG 35), a narrative juxtaposition of honors which the Octavia’s Seneca also echoes and preserves.13 Thus
10 Augustus himself had used virtus to describe his victory in civil war (RG 1-4). In this context, Nero surely means hostis to refer to a fellow citizen—thinking of his own issues with Plautus and Sulla, and perhaps already anticipating how he will revel in Augustus’ annihilation of his enemies in civil war. For the rhetorically pointed and polemical use of hostis in civil-war literature and propaganda of the late Republic and early empire, see Flower (2006) 86-87, 90-100, 103-104; Roller (2001) 28-29 esp. n. 25, 54-56). Cf. also TLL s.v. hostis 3057.35ff. Augustus’s pursuit of his father’s hostes (469) falls under this category, as do many of the citations of the Octavia. Kragelund (2005, 72 n. 25) notes that the use of hostis at lines 443, 469 and 864 is the proper legal terminology for Plautus, Sulla, and Octavia as enemies of the state. The term, however, appears frequently throughout and seems to have escaped the realm of legal terminology. Not all references to Julio-Claudians as hostes can be strictly legal in sense if one obeys chronology.
11 27 BCE was a fundamental turning point in Augustus’ representation and it is out of the events and honors of this year that Augustus’ peaceful image became predominant, leading to the emphasis on this time period in the Res Gestae (Levick [2010] 65-74). It is thus no accident that the Octavia poet has Seneca focus so exclusively on the ideology and public imagery of this time period in his retrospective account of Augustus as a peaceful ruler. For the corona civica, its visual iconography, and its significance for Augustus’ public imagery, see Levick (2010) 72; Zanker (1988, 92-8). Although the wreath had origins in the Republic, it soon became an unambiguous symbol of the hereditary monarchy that Augustus instituted.
12 Boyle (2008, ad 444) notes this echo of the official language celebrating Augustus’ corona civica. For the coins, see Mattingly (1923) 46 and 65-92. Number 61 on Plate IV is a particularly good visual example. See also the list of examples in Cooley (2009) ad RG 34.
13 For the careful ideological sequencing and combination of honors in the final two chapters of the Res
27 when Seneca opposes Nero’s murderous plans, his language activates a two-fold intertext with the end of Augustus’ Res Gestae and with Augustus’ ideologically charged numismatic slogans.
It is important to note, however, that even here Seneca further sanitizes Augustus’ language, divorcing it from the original context in which it was used (the result of victory in civil strife) and, in fact, using it to argue against Nero’s desire to emulate Augustus’ establishment of peace through victory over fellow citizens. At the end of the Res Gestae,
Augustus had directly and unapologetically linked the honor of the corona civica and associated honors with the period of restoration immediately following the civil wars
(postquam bella civilia exstinxeram, RG 34.1), suggesting implicitly by the sequencing of events presented in the text that his victory in these wars contributed to the honors awarded him.14 Similarly the coins minted in 27 BCE and following with the legend “for saving the citizens” (ob civis servatos) are also linked with Augustus’ victories in civil war both in the ancient evidence and on modern interpretation.15 Thus, although Seneca
Gestae, see Ramage (1987) 71-116. See also Cooley (2009) and Scheid (2007) ad loc.
14 The connection between these honors and the civil wars seems clear, even if it is not always highlighted as such. Cf. Levick (2010) 209. Julius Caesar was awarded a corona civica for ending the civil wars in 45 BCE (App. B Civ.2.16.106; Dio. 44.4.5; cf. also Weinstock [1971] 163-7). Augustus’ honor was likely for similar accomplishments in civil war (Val Max. 2.8.7; cf. Cooley [2009] and Scheid [2007] ad RG 34). I am particularly fond of the rather snide quotation from Pliny the Elder noted by Cooley: postquam civilium bellorum profano meritum coepit videri civem non occidere (Plin. HN.16.3.7). For further discussion of this honor, its representation in the Res Gestae and its appearance in Augustan visual culture, see Ramage (1987) 76 with n. 173.
15 For the official decree awarding Octavian the name “Augustus” as well as the corona civica, see CIL 12.231. See also Val. Max. 2.8.7; Sen. De Clem.1.26.5; Plin. Nat.16.8; Dio. 53.16.4. Ovid also echoes this language while describing Augustus’ corona civica in the Tristia: causa superpositae scripto est testata coronae: /servatos civis indicat huius ope (cf. Luck [1977] ad Tr. 3.1.47-8). Ovid redeployed this Augustan language at line-beginning in order to emphasize the distance between imperial representation (Augustus as the savior of the world) and reality (Augustus as the man who doomed a Roman citizen to danger and exile) (cf. Huskey [2006] 32-34; Miller [2002] 13; Newlands [1997] 66). Both Galba and Vespasian echo the slogan in their own civil-war coinage—a further post-Neronian association which this language would bring for the Octavia’s audience; Ramage (1983, 207-12) suggests that this line of the Octavia is
28 uses language laden with Augustan ideological and intertextual associations, his redeployment of this language strips away its original association with civil war and instead repurposes it as a declaration of peace on an Augustan model, creating out of
Augustan history and ideology a more perfect narrative of merciful rule.
Augustan slogans, however, are not the only echoes that Seneca’s language brings into his narrative to support his idealized image of imperial rule. Vergil’s Aeneid and
Augustus’ own Res Gestae similarly inform Seneca’s words. In order to counter Nero’s persistent assertions that violence makes a leader powerful, Seneca creates a list of peaceful behaviors that befit a Roman ruler—a list that unsurprisingly culminates in
Augustus as the ideal Roman emperor:
Pulcrum eminere est inter illustres viros, consulere patriae, parcere afflictis, fera caede abstinere, tempus atque irae dare, orbi quietem, saeculo pacem suo. haec summa virtus, petitur hac caelum via. (Oct. 472-6)
It’s wonderful to shine among illustrious men, to advise the fatherland, to spare the afflicted, to abstain from wild slaughter, to give time for tempers to abate, to give quiet to the world, peace to one’s own age. This is the highest virtue, thus heaven is sought.
In this list of appropriate behaviors, Seneca tells Nero that one ought to spare the afflicted
(parcere afflictis, Oct.473). Readers of Vergil would hear in this phrasing an echo of
Anchises’ proclamation to Aeneas and future Roman leaders on how best to rule their empire from Book 6 of Vergil’s Aeneid:16
Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento (hae tibi erunt artes), pacique imponere morem,
deliberately reminiscent of the coinage of the civil wars of 68-70 CE, and notes that (202-4) Claudius had also used this slogan upon coming to power in order to distance himself from the memory of Caligula.
16 This echo of Vergil’s Anchises was most recently noted by Boyle (2008) ad loc. Ferri (2003, ad 472-5) suggests that Seneca’s description is reminiscent (at least in tone and content) of how Cicero had praised Julius Caesar’s clemency (animum vincere, iracundiam cohibere, victo temperare, adversarium nobilitate ingenio virtute praestantem non modo extollere iacentem… simillimum deo iudico, Cic. Pro Marc.8).
29 parcere subiectis et debellare superbos. (V. Aen. 6.851-853)
You, Roman, remember to rule peoples with your authority (these will be your arts), to place custom on peace, to spare the fallen and to crush the proud.
When Seneca goes on to suggest that this ideal leader will refrain from anger and slaughter (caedes and ira), and will offer quiet to the world and peace to the great age
(saeculum) before becoming a god through imperial virtue, we are further reminded of many of the Aeneid’s most prominent motifs.17 Vergil’s epic had opened and closed with a focus on ira that raised thematically significant questions as to the way it should be quelled and the role it played in Rome’s rise to power.18 The prophesy of renewed golden and peaceful saecula recurred at several key points throughout the epic in connection with Augustus Caesar, as did associated allusions to his apotheosis, most notably in the prophesy of Jupiter in the epic’s first book.19 Thus Seneca in these few lines creates an image of the ideal princeps reminiscent of the way in which Vergil’s various characters heralded Augustus and the age of peace that he would inaugurate.
It is important to note, however, that Seneca’s echoes privilege only those aspects of the Aeneid that champion the union between peace and principate, pax et princeps,
17 Of course, these notable “buzz words” appeared beyond Vergil’s Aeneid across Augustan culture. In particular, they share a certain ideological patterning with the Ara Pacis and the Forum of Augustus. That Seneca may activate our memory of the peaceful monuments of Augustan Rome is perhaps significant given that Nero will soon remind us of how, under Octavian, the Forum dripped with blood and gore from severed heads. I owe this point to Jeremy Hartnett.
18 Saevae memorem Iunonis ob iram (V. Aen.1.4); ille, oculis postquam saeui monimenta doloris/ exuuiasque hausit, furiis accensus et ira/ terribilis (V. Aen.12.495-7). The thematic significance of anger in the Aeneid has not wanted for critical attention, inspiring a long-standing (and on-going) debate between the Vergilian scholars Michael Putnam (1990, 1995) and Karl Galinsky (1988, 1994). See also Braund (1997) 214-6; Wright (1997) 169-84. Despite continued debate over Aeneas’ final anger-fuelled action, ira clearly remains central to the epic poem’s reception in the post-Augustan period.
19 Nascetur pulchra Troianus origine Caesar/ imperium oceano, famam qui terminet astris/ Iulius, a magno demissum nomen Iulo./ Hunc tu olim caelo, spoliis Orientis onustum,/ accipies secura; vocabitur hic quoque votis./ Aspera tum positis mitescent saecula bellis. (V. Aen.1.286-91). See also Anchises’ prophesy: Hic vir, hic est, tibi quem promitti saepius audis,/Augustus Caesar, divi genus, aurea condet/ saecula qui rursus Latio regnata per arva/ Saturno quondam…(V. Aen.6.791-94). See also, however, Thomas (1988, 2-7) on the nuance of condere in this passage.
30 omitting passages and themes that might contradict this reading. Gone from Anchises’ proclamation to spare the vanquished is the coordinating command to crush the proud
(debellare superbos, V. Aen.1.853); Seneca retains only the peaceful and merciful half of the famous hexameter, stopping us in our tracks as we mentally fill in the missing half.20
When Seneca declares that a true princeps is free from wrath (ira) and also from slaughter (caedes), we note that he overlooks the significance of the Aeneid’s final scene and its interpretive implications for how Vergil meant us to understand Aeneas’ journey and its relevance for early Imperial Rome. Seneca’s speech ignores Augustus’ role in events like the proscriptions or Philippi. Only the Golden Age of peace and its associated ideological rhetoric appeals to Seneca as he tries to advise Nero on the Augustan model—or, we should say, on an Augustan model.
Seneca’s engagement with Vergil’s Aeneid—and indeed his distilling of Vergil down to its Augustan aspects—becomes more manifest as Seneca turns from praising
Augustus generally to giving a brief account of his rise to power:
sic ille patriae primus Augustus parens complexus astra est, colitur et templis deus. illum tamen fortuna iactavit diu terra marique per graves belli vices, hostes parentis donec oppressit sui. (Oct.477-81)
Thus it was that that man first, Augustus the father of the fatherland, embraced the stars, and is worshipped in temples as a god. Nevertheless, that man fortune tossed for a long time on land and sea through the grievous ups and downs of war, until he crushed his father’s enemies.
This three-line account is startlingly vague in how it presents a teleological narrative of the young Octavian who suffered unnamed traumatic experiences in order to perform a
20 The Octavia poet has his Nero catch this omission, and when he tells Seneca that “to preserve the lives of citizens who are hostile to the emperor and fatherland, who are swollen with pride at their famous lineage, this is pure dementia” (servare cives principi et patriae graves/ claro tumentes genere, quae dementia est, Oct. 495-6), the phrase “swollen with pride” stands in for Vergil’s superbos. Nero’s retort here also nicely counters Seneca’s assertion that a good ruler preserves the lives of his citizens (Oct. 444, examined above) and shows that Nero too can repurpose such language to his own ideological ends.
31 deed of great piety. A fundamental part of Seneca’s vision of the triumviral period is created by how his language asks us to read early Augustan history through the lens of
Vergil’s Aeneid. In particular, Augustus’ struggle to bring piety and order to Rome echo quite closely Vergil’s similar description of Aeneas’ mission at the opening of his epic:
Arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris Italiam, fato profugus, Laviniaque venit litora, multum ille et terris iactatus et alto vi superum saevae memorem Iunonis ob iram; multa quoque et bello passus, dum conderet urbem, inferretque deos Latio, genus unde Latinum, Albanique patres, atque altae moenia Romae. (V. Aen.1.1-7)
I sing of arms and of the man who first came from the shores of Troy to Italy and Lavinian shores, exiled by fate, that man having been tossed much on both land and sea by the force of the gods, on account of the mindful wrath of savage Juno; having suffered also much at war, until he could found his city and could bring his gods to Latium whence comes the Latin race and Alban fathers, and the walls of high Rome.
A number of similar lexical and syntactical choices reinforce the echo, as do the contextual parallels between the two men who, driven by fate, wander over land and sea suffering misfortunes of war to complete their mission. The adjective primus initially characterizes both men to emphasize the significance of their struggles and subsequent accomplishments. Neither seems a particular favorite of fate, given that fortuna in the
Octavia and fatum in the Aeneid appear equally hostile in driving the men through further misfortunes. The demonstrative ille similarly marks each unnamed man as the cultural hero of his epic voyage, and in both passages this demonstrative appears in close connection with a description of the leaders’ extended and difficult journey. Seneca also uses Vergil’s frequentative verb (iactare), despite the fact that it is not an obvious lexical match for Octavian’s experience in the triumviral period, as it implies a man haplessly and helplessly buffeted by forces beyond his control (like Aeneas), rather than a powerful young man with an army at his back. Even the climactic clauses with which both Seneca
32 and Vergil end their respective narrative units—clauses that describe their subjects’ teleological mission—share a certain parallelism of phrasing: Aeneas suffers until he could piously found Rome, while Augustus suffers until he could piously eradicate the enemies of his father and, implicitly, found Rome again. Piety and Roman glory teleologically drives each man towards greatness.21
By activating our literary memory of Vergil’s proem and by crafting Augustus’ rise in similar terms, Seneca’s language asks us to read Augustus’ civil wars and subsequent principate through the lens of Vergil’s Aeneid. We are invited to fill in the gaps where Seneca leaves off, tracing Augustus’ dutiful mission in our mind on the model of Aeneas’ through the civil wars to the promise of Rome’s (re)founding and the golden age that the children of Aeneas would restore. Thus Seneca links Augustus with
Rome’s founding, with the glory of Aeneas’ epic mission, and also with a text that, by the time of the Octavia, had become in Roman eyes a cultural monument of the Augustan age of constitutive significance to the dynasty he founded. The Octavia poet does not have Seneca recycle Vergil’s words for mere literary ornament, or solely to add epic texture to Augustus’ rise to power; instead he uses Vergil’s epic—and this particular reading of Vergil’s epic—to craft a specific historical memory of Augustus; this memory subsumes the triumviral period within the ideology and rhetoric of the later Augustan age and explains Augustus’ role in the civil war retrospectively as part of one man’s struggle to bring piety and order back to Rome. We are not asked to remember Augustus’ march on Rome with his army at his back, the proscriptions, or the hallmark battles of Philippi,
21 Seneca’s language here conflates Vergil’s Aeneas and the historical Augustus in ways reminiscent of how Vergil’s various characters read Rome’s first princeps as heir to Aeneas’ empire and the dynasty Venus’ son founded in Italy. Vergil’s Augustus, at least in one possible reading, becomes an Aeneas freed from Juno’s wrath and his own propensity for ira. Cf. n. 18.
33 Naulochus, or Actium. Instead the atrocities of the civil-war period are subsumed into an echo of Aeneas’ wanderings after Troy; Augustus’ wars remain conveniently unnamed.
As the Octavia poet has Seneca read Augustus through Vergil’s Aeneas, it is as if he paints the philosopher as a particular type of reader—what we might now call an
Augustan reader, or one who reads into Vergil’s epic the seeds of Augustan ideology over and against the conflicting voices found in the same poem.22 Through Seneca’s intertextual language, Vergil’s epic has become more than a literary text, but rather has become a way of reading and remembering the Augustan age through which the triumviral period can be redeemed from the perspective of what came after. As Seneca’s language asks us to read the Aeneid as a vehicle for this particular brand of cultural memory, it further grounds this Augustan reading in additional ideologically charged echoes, blending into the Vergilian reading of Augustan history echoes of Augustus’ own treatment of the civil wars.
The description of Augustus’ extensive struggles over “land and sea” (terra marique, Oct. 480) recalls Vergil’s own similar language (terris et alto, V. Aen.1.3), especially given the other Vergilian echoes in close proximity. Nevertheless, the specific collocation used here picks up on more than Vergil’s epic proem: it also echoes once more a slogan frequently repeated in texts of Augustan ideology in the period following the civil wars and especially following Actium.23 The collocation in and of itself is hardly unique on its own, and in fact it is a common periphrasis in Latin for “everywhere” or
“all over the world.” Despite this wide usage, however, the phrase becomes further
22 For the most recent comprehensive treatment of the Aeneid as an Augustan epic, see Thomas (2001).
23 Note also that terra marique is incompatible with Vergil’s hexameter, but not the Octavia’s trimeters.
34 marked as a frequent part of Augustus’ proclamation of his universal peace in public inscriptions, in contemporary accounts of the Augustan age, and in later works written about this proclamation after the Augustan restoration. When Augustus won the naval battle against Sextus Pompey at Naulochus—a victory thematically implicit in Seneca’s descriptions of battles on sea (Oct. 480)—he is said to have declared that the civil wars had come to an end once and for all. A monument to the naval victory was set up in the
Forum Romanum in the form of a column bearing the beaks of enemy ships (columna rostrata) with the following dedicatory inscription: “peace, long disturbed, was reestablished on land and sea.”24 Although the sentiment was at best premature, the language with its ideological implications—including the collocation terra marique— reappears frequently and in many media after the victory at Actium.
Directly after Actium, Octavian set up a victory monument at the newly founded
Nicopolis (“Victoryville”) with a prominent dedicatory inscription that described his
“peace brought on land and sea” (pace parta terra marique).25 The formula also appeared three times in Augustus’ own Res Gestae and each time in prominent thematic connection with his victories in civil war and his subsequent restoration of peace.26
24 Appian is our best account of the columna rostrata and its inscription (App. B. Civ.5.130). Some suggest that Augustus recorded the inscription in his memoirs and that this was Appian’s source (Osgood [2006] 300 n.13). See further Osgood (2006) 300ff; Gurval (1995) 41, 61-65; Zanker (1988). For the four columnae rostratae made from the beaks of captured warships after the conquest of Egypt, see Richardson (1992) s.v. Columnae Rostratae Augusti et Agrippae.
25 For the inscription, its significance, and its various reconstructions, see Gurval (1995) 65ff, esp. n. 116. For the columna rostrata, its position, significance, and appearance on contemporary coinage, see Richardson (1992) s.v. Columna Rostrata (Augusti).
26 Boyle (2008, ad loc) notes the echo of the formula used in the Res Gestae and suggests its purpose is to lend a touch of authenticity of Seneca’s narrative of Augustan history. I think there is more to the intertext, however, than a desire for authentic language. Wilson (2003b, 87 n.51) also notes some similarities between the two texts but does not press them further. Cooley (2009, ad loc) notes that “the celebration of an individual’s rule over land and sea follows in Hellenistic footsteps and first emerges at Rome with Pompey… Peace by land and sea, however, was the necessary prerequisite for closing the gates of Janus
35 Augustus asserted at the outset of his Res Gestae that he had been a victor in civil wars on land and sea (terra et mari, RG. 3), but notes that he had afterwards offered universal clemency or forgiveness to anyone who asked for it in order to establish peace. He repeated this collocation with slight variatio (terra marique, RG. 4.2) when describing the deeds for which the Senate awarded him triumphal honors. These triumphal honors must refer to those he celebrated in 29 BCE after Actium and Egypt, given that the princeps notoriously never again accepted triumphal honors. Thus the collocation appears once more in the context of negotiating the memories of his victories in civil war and the restoration that followed. Most significantly, Augustus had used this formula in his long periodic description of the way in which he had closed the Temple of Janus and the significance of such action for his people and for Roman history (terra marique, RG.
13).27 In this passage, Augustus returned to the language with which he had celebrated his victories at Naulochus and Actium and repurposed it to celebrate his lasting gift to the
Roman people: universal peace guaranteed from future strife by the principate. And thus a collocation which itself might seem rather commonplace becomes marked when used in
(RG 13), and appears to have been a new twist given to the traditional theme by the Romans, perhaps during the Augustan era itself.” Thus although the idea is commonplace, Augustus’ frequent appeal to the collocation in the context of his restoration of peace turned it into a recognizable slogan of the Augustan era significant for our interpretation of this passage which treats the same events. For an additional perspective on this collocation throughout the Res Gestae, see Ramage (1987, 54-6, 62-4).
27 For the repetition of his celebratory collocation, see Cooley (2009) and Scheid (2007) ad loc. It is likely that Augustus had minted coins celebrating this event bearing a similar formula, given that Nero celebrates his own closing of the Temple of Janus with coins bearing the same slogan in a direct allusion to his ancestor (pace P.R. terra marique parta Ianum clusit S.C.). Boyle (2008) ad 479-81. Cf. post bellum Actiacum ab imperatore Caesare Augusto pace terra marique parta (Liv. 1.19.3); terra marique victus hostis punico/ lugubre mutavit sagum (H. Epod.9.27-8); ergo non dabit poenas, qui tot civilibus bellis frustra petitum caput, tot navalibus, tot pedestribus proeliis incolume, postquam terra marique pax parata est (Sen. Clem.1.9.4); in hoc terra marique pacem peperi? ideo civilia bella compescui? (Sen. Apocol.10.2); Ianum Quirinum, semel atque iterum a condita urbe ante memoriam suam clausum, in multo breviore temporis spatio terra marique pace parta ter clusit. Bis ovans ingressus est urbem, post Philippense et rursus post Siculum bellum. Curulis triumphos tris egit, Delmaticum, Actiacum, Alexandrinum, continuo triduo omnes (Suet. Aug.22.).
36 the context of Augustus’ rise to power and peaceful ideology. When the Octavia’s
Seneca, then, borrows this language to characterize Octavian’s early years, we are flooded by our memories of the numerous times that Augustus and others had similarly described this period and its lasting significance.
This echo of the Res Gestae is particularly significant for our understanding of the
Octavia passage on a thematic level. The Res Gestae was the monumentalized text through which Augustus retrospectively crafted his own memory and with which he marked his dynastic legacy by mounting it on his mausoleum.28 It is thus a consummate text of Augustan ideology with which numerous later authors engage in order to craft memories and counter-memories of the Augustan age, and especially of the civil wars.29
Seneca’s speech most clearly signals its engagement with Augustus’ Res Gestae when he reaches Augustus’ mission (hostes parentis donec oppressit sui, Oct. 481). While
Seneca’s syntax echoes Vergil’s proem (dum conderet urbem, V. Aen.1.5), in content and in phrasing Seneca virtually borrows Augustus’ own ideologically charged rendering of the factors that led inescapably to civil war (qui parentem meum interfecerunt RG. 2).30
28 For the presentation, distribution, and cultural impact of the Res Gestae, see the recent introductions to the editions and commentaries of Cooley (2009) and Scheid (2007). The Res Gestae were mounted on bronze tablets and displayed prominently on Augustus’ Mausoleum. Scholars have suggested that even the Mausoleum has its roots as a civil-war monument through which Octavian publically and prominently showed his allegiance to Rome while highlighting Antony’s desire to be entombed among Ptolemaic kings with Cleopatra (Levick [2010] 46-7; Zanker [1988] 72-7). The best recent discussion of the Res Gestae and the history of its various interpretations is Levick (2010) 220-39. Her analysis of Augustus’ audience (intended or not) is particularly enlightening as to how the document permeated different aspects of Roman culture and so reached different classes of people (225ff).
29 For example, in the De Clementia, the historical Seneca explicitly invokes the language of Augustus’ autobiography only to suggest different readings of the events Augustus records (e.g. the use of vindicare at Clem 1.9.3 and RG 1.1 with Braund [2009] ad loc). In the opening of his Annales, Tacitus demonstrably responds to Augustus’ Res Gestae both by deliberately naming all the men whom Augustus left unnamed (Tac. Ann. 1.3) and by emphasizing the significance of the proscriptions for Augustus’ rise to power (Tac. Ann.1.2). For Tacitus and the Res Gestae, see most recently Cooley (2009) 48-51 with and up-to-date bibliography on the question.
30 I follow Cooley (2009, ad loc) who retains interficere over the more emotional and often-repeated
37 The rhetoric of Seneca’s narrative can be productively analyzed in terms of how it reflects a larger “social amnesia” around the civil wars. I borrow the term from the theoretical vocabulary of cultural memory studies, but the idea—even if not expressed in these terms—is often present in scholarly discussions of the Augustan age.31 After
Actium, there arose across Roman society a desire or need to forget Octavian’s recent past in order to move forward under Augustus. Augustus naturally facilitated this process by forging new narratives of the past that competed with or, in some senses, replaced older memories. Nowhere is this more the case than in the remarkably revisionist treatment of the triumviral period in the Res Gestae, but the process began right away and is perhaps best visualized by an event that Augustus himself records for posterity. After
Actium, the victor wished to dedicate golden tripods to Apollo in thanks; in order to do so, he melted down eighty silver statues of himself from his Octavian-period, removing these visual memory-triggers from the city and quite literally forging a new image of the pious princeps out of the melted remains of his former self (RG 24.2; Suet. Aug.52).32
trucidare printed in Scheid’s (2007) text. Levick (2010, 204-5) notes how Augustus’ celebration of the title pater patriae at the end of the Res Gestae looks back thematically and ideologically to the pious act of vengeance with which he began the inscription. In the Octavia, Seneca begins with pater patriae and ends with the pursuit of his father’s enemies, only to return shortly to the idea that now Nero is Rome’s pater. The engagement not only with the words of the Res Gestae but also with its structural presentation of ideas is striking.
31 For the problems of social amnesia and the productive results that can also arise from it, see Bakieva (2007, 94): “social amnesia is terrible because it destroys the base of culture, in other words, the viability of culture…at the same time, sometimes it is amnesia, artificially created forgetfulness, that is the stimulus of society’s progress.” I am indebted to Shreyaa Patel for pointing me to this passage. For Augustus’ facilitation of society’s amnesia regarding his Octavian years, see Suet. Aug.36; Tac. Ann.3.28.3; Dio 53.25. See also Levick (2010) 231ff; Bringmann (2007) 310ff; Osgood (2006) 298-312; Eder (2005) 22-3. Gowing (2005, 1-7) discusses social amnesia in the early empire and the problems that forgetting caused for Roman identity. Thus it is not just, as some suggest, that Augustan propaganda rewrites everything (cf. Levick [2010] 132-3); Rome itself seems to have been an active part of this rewriting of its own accord.
32 On the various implications of this passage, see Levick (2010) 256; Cooley (2009) ad loc; Scheid (2007) ad loc.
38 Nevertheless social amnesia cannot be enforced from the top down; a ruler cannot actually force people to forget something. Rather, social amnesia is best understood as a collective cultural process of selectively privileging certain memories over others, and allowing more difficult memories to fade away.33 Seneca’s speech to Nero implicitly endorses this form of social amnesia by rewriting the triumviral past as one man’s struggle to perform deeds of piety for his country, and by eliminating from his account any specific events or names that might trigger alternative memories. In this way he reincorporates the “forgotten” triumviral period into his grand narrative of Augustan history, but does so in such a way as to eliminate from that period the elements that ran counter to Augustus’ later image.34 His echoes of Vergil’s Aeneid and the Res Gestae serve these rhetorical ends as he asks Nero to remember Augustus only in certain ways.
Seneca’s brief narrative of the triumviral period weaves together echoes of
Vergil’s Aeneid and Augustus’ own Res Gestae, fusing the two into a singular and authoritative vehicle of cultural memory to celebrate Augustus’ civil wars in retrospectively ideological terms as sacrifices made for his country and as stepping- stones on the path to universal peace. It must also be noted, however, that Seneca omits the details and horrors of civil war to a larger extent than either the Aeneid or the Res
Gestae did. The Aeneid’s engagement with civil-war memory, its depictions of the
33 On the role of the community as marking a memory as of constitutive significance, see Kirk (2005) 5.
34 The utility of social amnesia as a concept through which to understand Seneca’s speech is further underscored by Seneca’s omnipresent focus on the welfare of the Roman people. His advice to Nero is not designed for Nero’s own benefit, but rather seeks to shape him into a good emperor for the Roman people. In opposition to those who see Augustus’ propaganda machine in post-Actian rhetoric, scholars of social amnesia emphasize its utility for (and its origins in) the community. Seneca’s focus on the Roman people throughout the dialogue shows similar concerns (e.g. Oct. 444, 455-61, 491). This is a fundamental difference between his account and that of Nero. Nero has no use for social amnesia because he is interested in mechanisms of acquiring power, not in facilitating society’s progress after power is acquired.
39 horrors of war, and its reflections of the turmoil of the period have been well studied.35
So too Augustus, while certainly crafting a narrative of civil war that was favorable to his accomplishments, did not entirely efface the civil wars from his autobiographical text.
The Res Gestae in many senses is a civil-war text in that it begins and ends with
Augustus’ role in these wars and what he had been able to accomplish as a result of them.
Seneca goes much further than Augustus or Vergil had in trying to bury references to the civil conflicts in an ideological veneer, seeking to bend Nero’s historical memory. Out of the complicated and divergent texts of Vergil and Augustus, Seneca creates a more perfect narrative of Augustus’ civil wars that emphasizes the benefits that came of them and that paints Augustus’ early career in patriotic and uncomplicated terms.
This account of the triumviral period represents the culmination of Seneca’s efforts throughout the dialogue to sanitize early Augustan history by divorcing Augustus’ legacy as much as possible from the unsavory associations of civil war, highlighting instead the ideological rhetoric with which the post-Actian age had remembered its bloody past. At the same time, however, it is this confrontation of the triumviral period— however dressed up in epic and monumental phraseology—that ultimately causes Seneca to abandon his historical narrative of Augustus’ rise to power and to transition to Nero’s own accession. And it is this moment of transition during which Seneca briefly suggests
35 The thematic significance of civil war to the Aeneid has been well documented. See most recently Quint (2010) and Rossi (2010). See also Rossi (2004) 165-8; Thomas (2001) 27-30, 208-12; Harrison (1988a). Keith (2002) suggests that Ovid had already read Vergil this way. Alessando Barchiesi’s topic for his Sather lectures (2011) is the very idea of collective war memory in the Aeneid. His forthcoming monograph on the subject has been provisionally titled The War for Italia: Conflict and Collective Memory in Vergil's Aeneid.
40 that behind his ideological rhetoric and sanitized historical memory lays a darker and more violent counter-memory waiting to be reawakened.36
Nero’s Bloodless Accession and Octavian’s Bloody Past
Without so much as a transitional adverb, Seneca abruptly drops the topic of Augustus in mid-narrative and transitions to Nero’s bloodless accession, omitting any revisionist account of Augustus’ celebrated victory over Eastern Cleopatra in which he could have gloried (Oct. 482). The transitional line is even more marked by its central position in the speech: Seneca’s concluding monologue is twenty lines long with exactly ten lines devoted to each emperor. The abrupt shift from Augustus’ reign to Nero’s “bloodless” accession occurs at the exact center of this speech, and thus becomes a pivot on which numerous thematic, linguistic, and intertextual patterns hinge.
illum tamen fortuna iactavit diu terra marique per graues belli vices, hostes parentis donec oppressit sui— tibi numen incruenta [sc. Roma] summisit suum... (Oct. 478-82)
Nevertheless, that man fortune tossed for a long time on land and sea through the grievous ups and downs of war, until he crushed his father’s enemies. But to you Rome submitted her divine authority bloodlessly…
36 As we turn from Seneca’s idealizing account of Augustan history to an account of Nero’s accession that is far less straightforward, it is important to recall Seneca’s own pessimism when he was alone on stage. In his description of the Ages of Man—a clear metaphor for the degeneration within the principate (cf. Boyle [2008] ad loc)—his narrative overflowed with violent imagery and internecine conflict (e.g. sed in parentis viscera intravit suae/ deterior aetas, Oct. 416-7). The philosophical complexities and political allegories implied by Seneca’s monologue are beyond the scope of this study (and have not lacked critical attention, cf. Boyle [2008] ad loc). Nevertheless it is important to keep in mind that Seneca’s entire description of ideal kingship and Augustan history has been a construct created to advise Nero, rather than a genuine expression of the character’s private thoughts and beliefs as we earlier heard them. This disjunction between Seneca’s own philosophical musings and his political advice to Nero is of crucial importance to keep in mind as we read his following confusing and conflicting account of Nero’s rise to power.
41 The subtext to this sudden shift from Augustus to Nero is clear: bloody successions like
Augustus’ are to be avoided. This is as close as Seneca comes during the dialogue to admitting that certain aspects of Augustus’ memory are less appealing than others. As much as Seneca may weave together a narrative that downplays the violence of the triumviral period, he cannot ultimately eliminate from historical memory the loss of
Roman life that the period entailed; he cannot change that Augustus came to power through civil war. He can, however, imply that, despite Augustus’ bloody rise to power, the principate he established—with its cardinal virtues of mercy and piety—had prevented subsequent rulers from having to repeat the violence of his early years. In other words, because Augustus established a peaceful empire out of bloodshed, his successors, including Nero, may come to power bloodlessly.
Praise of Nero in terms that contrast his own accession with Octavian’s violent rise to power is not unique to the Octavia’s Seneca, but in fact recalls an important passage from his historical counterpart’s De Clementia.37 In that treatise to Nero at the outset of his reign, the historical Seneca had urged Nero never to look to the pre-Actian
Augustus as an exemplum, but instead only to remember what had happened after he came to sole power (Sen. Clem.1.9-11). He had gone on to describe in some detail the more gruesome aspects of Augustus’ early civil wars:
Haec Augustus senex aut iam in senectutem annis vergentibus; in adulescentia caluit, arsit ira, multa fecit, ad quae invitus oculos retorquebat. Comparare nemo mansuetudini tuae audebit divum Augustum, etiam si in certamen iuvenilium annorum deduxerit senectutem plus quam maturam; fuerit moderatus et clemens, nempe post mare Actiacum Romano cruore infectum, nempe post fractas in Sicilia classes et suas et alienas, nempe post Perusinas aras et proscriptiones. Ego vero clementiam non voco lassam crudelitatem. (Sen. Clem. 1.11.1)
37 There has been much work done on the echoes of the De Clementia throughout this scene. See, most recently, Braund (2009); Boyle (2008) ad loc; Ferri (2003) 70-75; Manuwald (2002). Tacitus’ Seneca similarly echoes his own De Clementia at Tac. Ann.13.11.2.
42 This was how Augustus was in old age, or when he was on the verge of old age; in his youth, he was fiery and ablaze with anger, doing many things he was ashamed to remember. No one will dare to compare the leniency of the deified Augustus with your own, even if he brings an old age that was more than mature into competition with the years of youth. He may well have displayed moderation and mercy, but this was after the Actian sea ran red with Roman blood, after his own fleet and an enemy’s had been wrecked off Sicily, after the sacrifices at Perusia and the proscriptions. I certainly do not call “mercy” that weariness of cruelty.
In the end, however, he said that these events have no relevance for Nero, since Nero had come to power without shedding a drop of blood from his fellow citizens:
Praestitisti, Caesar, civitatem incruentam, et hoc, quod magno animo gloriatus es nullam te toto orbe stillam cruoris humani misisse. (Sen. Clem. 1.11.3)
You, Caesar, have offered us a bloodless state, and with pride you have boasted that throughout the whole world you have not spilled a drop of human blood.
The De Clementia’s account of Augustus’ triumviral past and its stark injunction to Nero that he should not learn from this period of history lies in direct contrast to the sanitized and allegorized account of the same period given by the Octavia’s Seneca. The Octavia’s
Seneca does not draw the important distinction between Octavian and Augustus that was so key to his historical counterpart’s political philosophy; as a result, he allows the period of civil war—or at least a certain memory of the civil wars—to be included somewhat dangerously in his grand narrative of Augustan power. And yet the De Clementia clearly lies behind much of this dialogue, hovering as an intertextual ghost and as a counter- voice to the text itself.38
Through this one word (incruenta), our mind is suddenly flooded with gruesome civil-war images that directly contradict the account of the triumviral period that we have just experienced, reminding us of the violence that the Octavia’s Seneca has repressed.
38 The historical Seneca had also ironized Augustus’ terra marique elsewhere, and this echo too would hover behind the language of the Octavia’s Seneca as well: cum civibus primum, deinde cum colleges, novissime cum adfinibus coactus armis decernere mari terraque sanguinem fudit (Sen. Brev.Vit.4.5). There is irony both in the way the historical Seneca appropriated for his description of violence a formula which Augustus had used to characterize universal peace and also in the fact that the Octavia’s Seneca seems far less comfortable describing violence.
43 By using the language of his own historical counterpart, the Octavia’s Seneca thus briefly and seems to allow that there is only so far one can go in reshaping memories of the past to serve present purposes, and that conflicting memories of the past are alive and well, offering conflicting lessons for the present. With this one word we are now invited to question the sanitized three-line account of the triumviral period that Seneca just offered, and indeed to question whether the character actually believes them; furthermore, we are impelled to remember that Augustus was not always a merciful man who saved citizens and privileged Roman life above all else. He was once a very different man indeed. Thus as we continue through Seneca’s account of Neronian Rome, we do so with a mind recently flooded with conflicting memories and with the recently awakened realization that Seneca has been privileging certain memories over others to suit his didactic purpose. We are thus more prepared than ever to question Seneca’s narrative of Nero and to read between the intertextual lines.
Nero’s accession, according to Seneca, was a vision of how a good ruler should come to power: peacefully, popularly, and with divine favor.39
tibi numen incruenta summisit suum et dedit habenas imperi facili manu nutuque terras maria subiecit tuo; Invidia tristis victa consensu pio, cessit; senatus, equitis accensus favor; plebisque votis atque iudicio patrum tu pacis auctor, generis humani arbiter electus orbem spiritu sacro regis patriae parens: quod nomen ut serves petit suosque cives Roma commendat tibi. (Oct. 482-91)
But to you Rome submitted her divine authority bloodlessly and gave you the reins of empire with easy hand and subjected both earth and sea to your will. Grim ill-will having been conquered by a pious consensus yields. The favor of the senate, of the equestrians is all aflame. By the prayers of the plebeians and by the judgment of the senators you are elected the author of peace, the arbiter
39 Our skepticism over Seneca’s account may already be raised by the juxtaposition of this passage with our memory of the previous 400 or so lines of the play that paint a very different picture of Nero’s character and popularity (cf. Chapter 3 pp. 112-21; Chapter 5 pp. 253-5).
44 of the human race, the father of the fatherland, you rule the world with sacred breath. Rome begs that you protect this name and she entrusts her citizens to you for protection.
Given this implied contrast between Nero’s “bloodless” accession and Augustus’
“bloody” rise to power, we might naturally expect the passage’s echoes to further reinforce this division between the politics of then and now, and to further emphasize how Nero’s peaceful and bloodless rule diverged from Octavian’s troubling past. It is therefore jarring when Seneca’s language once more recalls Augustan history in his description of Nero, juxtaposing his brief contrast between the men with an account of
Nero that once more reads the two emperors in parallel.
As we have seen, Seneca abruptly departs from his narrative of Augustus’ bloody power struggle and his reminiscence of the opening of Vergil’s epic as he shifts from
Augustan to Neronian history. Seneca’s Vergilian echoes, however, persist as his language continues to paint Nero in Augustus’ image, challenging the separation Seneca had implicitly imposed between how each man came to power. When Seneca asserts that grim ill-will, or jealous rivalry conquered by pious consensus had retreated at Nero’s accession (invidia tristis, victa consensus pio/ cessit, Oct. 385-6), the audience hears an echo not of the opening of the Aeneid, but of another Vergilian proem:
stabunt et Parii lapides, spirantia signa, Assaraci proles demissaeque ab Iove gentis nomina, Trosque parens et Troiae Cynthius auctor. Invidia infelix Furias amnemque severum Cocyti metuet tortosque Ixionis anguis immanemque rotam et non exsuperabile saxum. (V. Georg.3.34-39)
Here stand Parian marbles, statues breathing life, the offspring of Assaracus and names of the race sent down from Jove, both the Trojan parent and Apollo the builder of Troy. Wretched Ill-will will fear the Furies and the severe flow of Cocytus, and the twisted snakes and huge wheel of Ixion and the unconquerable stone.
45 Vergil had opened the third book of his Georgics with a promise to build a temple in honor of Octavian’s triumphs at Actium and Alexandria (V. Georg.3.26ff).40 According to Vergil, in the central panel of this temple’s pediment would eternally stand the image of grim ill-will departing in fear from the sight of the dynasty descended from Troy and
Jove, the dynasty founded by Aeneas and continued by Augustus and his Julio-Claudian descendents.41
A combination of theme, language, and structure lend greater cumulative weight to the parallel. At the most obvious level, each passage is in praise of a newly risen ruler whom Rome welcomes and celebrates, and in each passage a personified invidia departs in flight from the heroic youth. Furthermore, in both texts invidia stands prominently in the nominative as the first word in the line, followed by its adjective and verb of defeat.
Seneca even echoes Vergil’s military imagery (e.g. victa) as he paints a picture of invidia defeated in the face of Julio-Claudian piety. And yet this echo also creates confusion as it suggests continuity between Octavian’s rise to power and Nero’s accession, and also lends to Neronian history a military color that it need not have otherwise had. Why, we might wonder, was there invidia to defeat at all if Nero’s rise to power was truly as popular and bloodless as Seneca leads us to believe? It made sense to describe Augustus’
40 The Georgics’ temple has been be read as a metaphor for the epic Vergil promises to write to glorify Octavian’s victories. That he promises to sing of the descendents of Troy (V. Georg.35-6) and of Actium cause the reader familiar with the Aeneid to take this passage as looking forward to that epic or at least the Augustan epic as Vergil initially conceived of writing it. See Levick (2010) 264; Kraggerud (1998); Thomas (1988) ad loc. The proem to Georgics 3 seems to have been written overtly for Octavian’s triple triumph of 27 BCE in which his victory in civil wars was celebrated across the city of Rome and the Roman world. Thus in compositional context and content, the proem is unmistakably a text of civil war, even if a largely celebratory one. For this important context to the Georgics, see most recently Nappa (2005).
41 The columns holding up this image will be built, according to Vergil, from naval bronze donated by the conquered Nile (atque hic undantem bello magnumque fluentem/ Nilum ac nauali surgentis aere columnas. V.Georg.3.28-9), i.e. from the spoils of Actium, Alexandria, and Augustus’ final victory in the civil wars that had brought this Trojan dynasty to power.
46 triumph as the victory of pious consensus over the forces of discord and ill-will and to do so through military metaphor; this description, however, seems ill-suited to Seneca’s idealized vision of Nero’s peaceful accession, creating a jarring tension between context and intertext.
I argued above that Seneca’s language weaves together echoes of Vergil’s Aeneid and Augustus’ own Res Gestae to create a master narrative of Augustan ideology through which to advise the young Nero. Here too Seneca’s Vergilian language does not stand alone, but is instead blended with other Augustan rhetoric. In describing Nero’s glorious and peaceful rise to power, Seneca begins with an extended appeal to the concept of consensus, a cornerstone of Augustan ideology to which Seneca had already alluded earlier (quae consensus efficiat rata, Oct. 460).42 Seneca is thus instructing Nero in the central tenants of Augustan public ideology at the point where he turns from his narrative of Augustan history to the realities of the Neronian principate. Of special significance to our present passage is the conclusion of the Res Gestae:43
In consulatu sexto et septimo, postquam bella civilia exstinxeram, per consensum universorum potitus rerum omnium, rem publicam ex mea potestate in senatus populique Romani arbitrium transtuli. Quo pro merito meo senatus consulto Augustus appellatus sum et laureis postes aedium mearum vestiti publice coronaque civica super ianuam meam fixa est et clupeus aureus in curia Iulia positus, quem mihi senatum populumque Romanum dare virtutis clementiaeque et iustitiae et pietatis caussa testatum est per eius clupei inscriptionem. Post id tempus auctoritate omnibus praestiti, potestatis autem nihilo amplius habui
42 For the most recent treatment of the concept of consensus under Augustus and following, see Lobur (2008) esp. 12-36. Lobur (2008, 28ff) discusses this passage from the Octavia, but sees it more as a generic and accidental reflection of Augustan ideology rather than a carefully constructed response to and reshaping of it. See also Osgood (2006, 350-403) who examines the development of the image of a unified Italy after Actium that gave Octavian universal consent. Augustus himself emphasized the importance of consensus on his coinage (Boyle [2008] ad 460).
43 Wilson (2003b, 87 n.51) notes how the Octavia’s use of pater patriae in conjunction with specific imperial virtues in this passage echoes the final chapters of the Res Gestae. He implies, however, that this echo would lend credence to Seneca’s interpretation of history and bring implicit shame on Nero for failing to live up to the Augustan model.
47 quam ceteri qui mihi quoque in magistratu conlegae fuerunt.
Tertium decimum consulatum cum gerebam, senatus et equester ordo populusque Romanus universus appellavit me patrem patriae, idque in vestibulo aedium mearum inscribendum et in curia Iulia et in foro Aug. sub quadrigis quae mihi ex s.c. positae sunt censuit. Cum scripsi haec annum agebam septuagensumum sextum. (RG 34-5)
In my sixth and seventh consulships, after I had extinguished civil wars, and at a time when with universal consent I was in complete control of affairs, I transferred the Republic from my power to the dominion of the senate and people of Rome. For this service of mine I was named ‘Augustus’ by decree of the senate and the door-posts of my house were publically wreathed with bay leaves and a civil crown was fixed over my door and a golden shield was set in the Curia Julia, which, as attested by the inscription thereon, was given me by the senate and people of Rome on account of my courage, clemency, justice, and piety. After this time I excelled all in influence, although I possessed no more official power than others who were my colleagues in the several magistracies.
In my thirteenth consulship the senate, the equestrian order, and the whole people of Rome gave me the title Father of my country, and resolved that this should be inscribed in the porch of my house and in the Curia Julia and in the Forum Augustum below the chariot which had been set there in my honor by decree of the senate. At the time of writing I am in my seventy-sixth year.
Here, at the climactic conclusion to his monumental autobiography, Augustus highlighted the consensus which brought him world domination (per consensum universorum potitus rerum omnium, RG. 34). Augustus then goes on to highlight how in the wake of acquiring such power, the senate, the equestrian order, and the whole people of Rome had heralded him as “father of the fatherland” (senatus et equester ordo populusque Romanus universus appellavit me patrem patriae, RG. 35). Augustus further echoed with his use of
“universally” (universus) his use of the identical collective adjective in the previous chapter (universorum), bringing the two concluding paragraphs together into one final proclamation on the Augustan legacy that omits the chronological disjunction between the events themselves.44 Further relevant to the Octavia passage is how Augustus had notably varied the traditional phrase “the senate and people of Rome” (senatus
44 On the artistry of these passages and the chronology of events within, see Ramage (1987) 100-16. See also Cooley (2009) and Scheid (2007) ad loc. Levick argues that these chapters displays Augustus “at his most disingenuous and his most skillful,” (Levick [2010] 233).
48 populusque) by including the equestrian order in the list and also by applying to the
Roman people the adjective universus in order to emphasize by his variation on a traditional formula the universal favor that his accession and reign engendered.45
Seneca’s language picks up on Augustus’ passages in his phrasing, his structure and the climactic final lines in which he describes how all of Rome welcomed the young
Nero to the imperial throne. The universal consensus of the senate, the equestrian order, and the Roman people together had proclaimed Nero the arbiter of peace, the master of the human race, and the father of the fatherland (senatus, equitis accensus favor/ plebisque uotis atque iudicio partum/ tu pacis auctor, generis humani arbiter/ electus orbem spiritu sacro regis/ patriae parens, Oct. 486-490). Seneca’s language and structure mimics the order in which the honors were given according to the Res Gestae and also the final position of these honors as the culmination of Augustus’ accomplishments in his concluding chapters. He also mimics Augustus’ variation on the traditional language of
“Senate and People of Rome” by including the equestrian order, further adapting
Augustus’ language for his own needs.
Nevertheless, once more Seneca’s language raises important questions regarding just how parallel the rise to power of these two rulers was. Consensus, according to
Augustus, had made him all-powerful at his accession, and yet part of this power—at least in Augustus’ eyes—seems to have been his ability to acquire universal favor in a time of great discord and to create universal consent out of chaos (postquam bella civilia
45 On the significance of the inclusion of the equestrian order here, see Cooley (2009) ad loc. Augustus himself acknowledged his equestrian ancestry in his Memoires, and this likely lies behind the prominence given to the equestrians in the Res Gestae (cf. Levick [2010] 4-5).
49 exstinxeram, RG 34.1), restoring order to Rome after the civil wars.46 In this time of strife, this consensus was integral to the preservation of the nascent principate and became also a symbolic reminder of (and a popular slogan for) the break between the principate and what had come before. For Nero, such universal devotion would of course be useful, but when read against the problems facing the young Octavian, consensus hardly seems as remarkable or necessary to emphasize if Nero really did come to power in a stable system marked by harmony and peace.47 Thus once more, Seneca’s echoes raise questions about whether we are meant to read Nero’s “bloodless” rise to power as parallel to or divergent from Octavian’s victory out of civil war—questions that we cannot precisely answer from the conflict between Seneca’s master narrative and the diverging intertextual associations activated by his language.
The memory of Augustus as a civil-war figure and the implications of this memory for Nero’s reign also pepper other aspects of Seneca’s fulsome narrative. When
46 I borrow my language here from Osgood’s (2006) final chapter “Out of Chaos Consent.” Augustus also emphasized that his reaction to this universal consent and power was not to gain more power, but to transfer back to the Senate their power over the Roman people (rem publicam ex mea potestate in senatus populique Romani arbitrium transtuli, RG 34.1). Cf. Levick (2010) 64. Augustus’ description of his own power in this passage finds echo in Seneca’s description of Nero as the “arbiter of the human race” (generis humani arbiter Oct. 488). There is no talk in the Octavia, however, of transferring any of this power back to the people once consensus has made him all-powerful.
47 For the rhetoric of consensus and tota Italia as a marker of periods of political unrest or civil strife, see Levick (2010) 47-8. In his brief analysis of this passage from the Octavia, Lobur (2008, 29) notes a disjunction between what was appropriate praise for Augustus and for Nero: “this play also serves as a reminder that aspects of imperial ideology even several generations after the founding of the principate included visions of legitimate rulership that were much more republican in aspect than absolutist.” He thus implies that it is not necessary to praise Nero in these terms, and yet Seneca does anyway. Manuwald (2002) also notes that the idea of kingship and consensus as expressed here seems to ill-fit with contemporary Neronian needs; she posits, however, that this return to consensus-ideology is the result of the year 69 CE and its influence on the play’s composition—a striking possibility. Either way, however, consensus does not seem to have played a large role in Neronian ideology. See, however, how the historical Seneca emphasized to Nero the value of consensus in creating a people who would protect him with their lives in the case of political turmoil: non est hic sine ratione populis urbibusque consensus sic protegendi amandique reges et se suaque iactandi, quocumque desideravit imperantis salus; nec haec vilitas sui est aut dementia pro uno capite tot milia excipere ferrum ac multis mortibus unam animam redimere nonnumquam senis et invalidi (Sen. Clem.1.3.4). Seneca no doubt had Augustan ideology in mind in this passage.
50 Seneca refers to Nero as the author of peace (tu pacis auctor, Oct. 488), he recalls once more Augustus’ civil-war past. Augustus had never referred to himself with this title either in the Res Gestae or otherwise in his extant writings or slogans, but Ovid had done so in the opening poem of his Epistulae ex Ponto.48 Like other programmatic poems, it lays out the content, structure, theme, and underlying ideology of the corpus that follows.
This particular poem was addressed to Ovid’s friend Brutus—a telling name in and of itself—and declared that these new poems have no desire to become monuments in the way that his previous literature had (Ov. Pont. 1.1.1-6).49 These poems, Ovid asserted, were the children of an exile and sought only the protection of their patrons in Rome (Ov.
Pont. 1.1.21-2). Ovid went on to say that the recipients of his “exiled” literature need not fear, for the writings of Antony and Brutus—both opponents of Augustus in his civil wars—were still read after the fall of the men themselves; and furthermore Ovid’s crimes were not as bad as theirs (Ov. Pont. 1.1.23-6). Ovid suggested that if Aeneas was praised for carrying his father through the flames of Troy (Ov. Pont. 1.35-6), Ovid’s poems who carried within them “the author of peace” (Ov. Pont. 1.1.32), “the father of the fatherland” (Ov. Pont. 1.1.36), and the descendent of Aeneas (Ov. Pont. 1.1.35) should receive free passage due to bearing a father of greater significance (Ov. Pont. 1.1.36).
Seneca’s praise of Nero activates our memory of Ovid’s exilic poem in language, theme, and content, and especially reminds us of how Ovid had creatively emphasized the break between Augustus’ current incarnation and Octavian’s former civil-war
48 Boyle (2008, ad 488-90) says that Ovid’s description of Augustus in this poem is “concordant with Augustus’ own self-imaging.” This may be the case, but the proximity of this title to names which would recall the civil wars as well as the context of a group of poems through which Ovid himself deals with the aftermath of Augustus’ wrath suggests a more complicated interpretation of Ovid’s language.
49 For the significance of names in the Epistulae ex Ponto, especially in light of how they follow the nameless Tristia, see most recently Hinds (2007) 208 with n. 29-31. See also Oliensis (1997) 181.
51 identity. To further enhance the problems associated with describing Nero straightforwardly in these fulsome terms, we must also remember that the historical
Seneca had borrowed this phrase from Ovid twice in his tragedies (Sen. HF. 250 and Sen.
Pho. 349) and both times the phrase preceded acts of violence motivated by hate.50 Thus just as the Octavia’s Seneca had echoed his historical counterpart’s De Clementia and thereby reminded us of Augustus’ bloody past, so here his language also activates the ironic doublespeak of Seneca the Younger’s tragedies to similar effect. It is unclear whether or not Ovid himself meant his lines to be complimentary, or whether there was an element of the hostile or ironic in them. That he wrote from exile and juxtaposed
Augustus’ peaceful titles with the names of Antony and Brutus—men with whom Ovid implicitly identified in his experience of imperial wrath (Ov. Pont. 1.1.23-6)—might lead us to read the praise ironically. For our purposes, however, Ovid’s intent or even the way various readers after Ovid (such as Seneca the Younger) read the lines matters little. By bringing this line from Ovid’s exile poetry into his concluding statements (much as he had brought Vergil’s Georgics in earlier), the Octavia’s Seneca once again praises Nero in terms that recall Augustus’ rise to power in civil war, and further aligns the new princeps with his ancestor’s bloody past. On the surface, Seneca’s concluding flattery of
Nero echoes earlier celebrations of Augustan ideology; in the end, however, Seneca’s own words activate intertexts that simultaneously call into question whether Nero mirrors or diverges from his great-great-grandfather, and also what it would mean to advise Nero on an Augustan model that could and did include civil war.
50 Boyle (2008) ad 488-90.
52 As we have seen, prior to turning to Nero’s accession, Seneca’s language blended
Augustus’ Res Gestae, associated numismatic slogans, and even the proem of Vergil’s
Aeneid to create a sanitized narrative of the Augustan history and to suggest a teleological destiny that both justifies Octavian’s violent actions in civil war and also suppresses the more violent aspects of that period. As he turns to his narrative of Neronian history,
Seneca’s language further recalls Augustus’ Res Gestae and associated slogans, and even echoes yet another Vergilian proem. Nevertheless, the way in which Seneca uses similar literary models in his accounts of both Augustus and Nero creates tension and confusion rather than clarity: before, Seneca’s reminiscences of these texts had down-played the role of civil war in Augustus’ principate; now they add echoes of civil war to a narrative that otherwise need not have had it at all.
This is a crucial point for our interpretation of Seneca’s monologue and Nero’s response to it, and also for our further understanding of the role of intertextuality in the play. The echoes of the Res Gestae or the Georgic’s proem are not troubling on their own merits, as these texts were obviously and prominently available to later authors who could engage them to celebrate a later monarch. By the time of the Octavia’s composition, these passages would have been part of a wide corpus of Augustan texts that celebrated the emperor’s accomplishments. Had Seneca used these lines above in his narrative of Augustus’ pious mission, we would scarcely read them differently than we read Seneca’s earlier engagement with the Res Gestae or Vergil’s Aeneid; in that context, the echoes would seem little more than additional literary layers designed to evoke an ideologically charged memory of Augustus that emphasizes the break between civil war and principate. And yet it is not in this context that the Georgics 3 proem or the Res
53 Gestae’s concluding chapters appear; rather Seneca applies Vergil’s military language and Augustus’ retrospective reading of the post-civil war period to Nero’s early reign, painting the two Caesarean accessions as parallel rather than divergent phenomena.
Seneca’s language colors Nero’s accession unmistakably with the memory of civil war, bringing Nero’s accession into contact with civil-war politics when he need not have done so at all.
This implied parallel between Augustan and Neronian accession politics becomes even more disturbing when it is juxtaposed with the immediately preceding lines in which Seneca draws a stark contrast between Augustus’ “bloody” past and Nero’s
“bloodless” present. So which is it? Is Nero’s reign a shift in character from ruthless civil-war power politics? Or is it in some sense a continuation of those same politics, plagued by the same discord, and subject to the same extreme measures to maintain peace? The quick succession of transitions and conflicting echoes within these twenty lines causes us to confront not only two different memories of Augustus—one a bloody youth, the other a clement ruler—but also confront two diverging ways of reconciling
Nero’s relationship to this ancestor—a break from the past on one reading, and on the other a disturbing continuity. Here we are, left without a rubric in the text through which to decide which interpretation to follow. And Seneca’s account of imperial history has created this space of confusion for us where it need not have existed, causing us to reflect upon how we remember Augustus, how we reconcile his legacy with the events that led him to power, and, consequently, how we are to interpret Nero’s Augustan model and its significance for Neronian Rome.
54 The historical Seneca’s De Clementia had left no such space for confusion, as it had overtly condemned Augustus’ pre-Actian identity while asserting that only after
Actium did he become a model worthy of emulation by peaceful Nero. The Octavia poet, however, writing a scene that is in many ways a response to this political treatise, muddies the waters: his Seneca includes the triumviral period in his celebration of
Augustus, at times seeming to celebrate the civil wars in the same breath as he celebrates the accomplishments of the later Augustan age. At other times, however, the poet seems to allow for counter-memories and counter-voices, leaving us adrift as we try to make sense of the Augustan legacy and the role of the civil wars in that legacy. His Seneca offers an equally confusing picture of Neronian Rome, at one point demanding a separation of Nero’s peaceful reign from Octavian’s violent past, and then, just a few lines later, implicitly suggesting that Nero’s accession mirrored Octavian’s own rise out of civil war. For every fulsome line of praise for Augustus or Nero, there exists a counter voice in the same passage out of the same echoes that both reminds us of the civil wars and suggests the relevance of these memories in Neronian Rome; for every Augustan intertext that seems to praise Rome’s first princeps, his descendent, and his legacy, there exists elsewhere another redeployment of these same models that calls into question such a straightforward reading.
And so we are left at the end of Seneca’s speech unsure of how we ought to remember Augustus—either as the clement monarch or the violent youth—and, more pressingly for the rest of the play, what it means that Nero will imitate Augustus’ model in his own reign. While at the scene’s opening, Seneca may have wished to suppress all memories of Octavian’s civil wars, by the scene’s end the conflicting memories of these
55 wars latently fill every line, inviting Nero to respond not only to his ancestor’s imperial virtues, but also to the period of violence that won him his throne. And it is exactly this side of Augustus—his former identity as Octavian hidden intertextually beneath Seneca’s language—that Nero seizes upon, seeing in his ancestor’s experience of civil war a more practical imperial ideology than one rooted in peace and mercy.
56 CHAPTER 2: ON THE MODEL OF OCTAVIAN
We have been prepared for Nero’s response to Seneca and his focus on violence as a means to power from his first words on stage, at which point he ordered the execution of his rivals and then justified this execution as a display of the Augustan virtues iustitia and virtus (Oct. 437ff). Seneca himself had left as a dangerous subtext to his own praise of
Nero the possibility that Neronian Rome might share similar politics with the civil wars that brought his ancestor to universal power. Perhaps one of the most interesting ways in which this scene responds to and reshapes the De Clementia is by allowing Nero the opportunity to respond to his tutor and lay out his own imperial ideology.1
The Octavia’s Nero does not disappoint our expectations, but seizes upon the latent counter-narratives of bloody civil war that lurk behind Seneca’s largely peaceful historical memory, and finds in those counter-memories a more perfect exemplum through which to maintain his own power. Civil war, according to Nero, lies crucially behind imperial politics, no matter what the principate’s peaceful and public ideology might lead us to believe. In this chapter, I examine not only how Nero refutes Seneca’s peaceful image of Augustus, but also how his language confronts the literary models which had supported Seneca’s idealizing memory, and proposes his own more gruesome readings of some models while adding yet more to the mix. At times, it seems almost as if Nero himself were self-consciously crafting his own intertextual responses, engaging in a debate not only over memory but also over literature as a vehicle for that memory.
1 O’Gorman (2000, 151) notes similarly the power created by the “rhetorical confrontation” between Seneca and Nero at the end of Annals 14, a scene which she notes is the only extant example if paired speeches in the work.
57 To emphasize Nero’s diverging understanding of Augustus’ power, the playwright fills his language with Lucan’s Bellum Civile, the epic of Julius Caesar’s (and the Julio-Claudians’) rise to power.2 Even when Nero’s speech echoes models beyond
Lucan or does not recall a particular passage, nevertheless throughout his account of the triumviral period his language appears coated with a “Lucanean texturing,” “resonance,” or “patina” by its redeployment of Lucan’s language and rhetorical stances. Given that
Lucanean language was completely absent from the corresponding speech of Seneca, such texturing becomes important for understanding Nero’s ideological renegotiation of
Augustus’ memory and its significance for his own reign.3 “Intertextuality tells us what story it is to tell; and a grim, [Lucanean] story is what it turns out to be.”4
Nero and the Triumvirate: a Lesson in Family History
When Nero begins to describe the horrifying events that Augustus took part in after
Caesar’s murder, such as the proscriptions under the second triumvirate, he weaves into his narrative the themes, language, and historical events from Sulla’s proscriptions as
2 This choice of model with which to describe Augustus’ role in the civil wars was perhaps even suggested by the fact that Lucan had dedicated his epic to Nero and had implied—whether seriously or not—that all the civil wars of the late Republic could be excused since they had led to Nero’s principate (multum Roma tamen debet civilibus armis,/ quod tibi res acta est, Luc. 1.44-5).
3 Quint (1993, 147) notes that Lucan creates out of his reception of Vergil a resistance “to the political unity and uniformity that the imperial regime sought to impose upon its subjects, to the formal closure it placed upon its version of history. The poem speaks against the desire for endings that would freeze history into any final shape and unalterable political configuration.” Quint’s language could apply also to the Octavia’s own confrontation of Julio-Claudian history and its literary models.
4 I borrow Pelling’s (2010) terms for the Thucydidean influence on Greek historians of Roman civil war. Pelling’s analysis (2010, 115) of Appian’s use of Thucydides—both as an allusive model and as linguistic texturing—is a useful way of reading Nero’s parallel use of Lucan.
58 visualized in Book 2 of Lucan’s epic.5 In this part of Lucan’s Bellum Civile, a nameless
Roman citizen had compared the war between Caesar and Pompey and its associated destruction to what he remembered about the power struggle between Sulla and Marius.
Lucan’s nameless man vividly remembered how Sulla had drained what little blood
Rome had left (ille quod exiguum restabat sanguinis urbi/ hausit, Luc. 2.140-1).6 Nero similarly asks Seneca how much of her own blood Rome saw during the reign of the second triumvirate (quantum cruoris Roma tum vidit sui/ lacerata totiens, Oct. 503-4).
Nero’s question in and of itself is designed to shock and to evoke the sort of gruesome imagery for which Neronian literature in general—and Lucan’s epic in particular—is known. Additionally, however, the similarity in context and phrasing (if not explicitly in language) between Nero’s question and Lucan’s might further suggest that we compare the destruction caused by Sulla with that done by Augustus. In other words, the
“Lucanean texturing,” even without precise allusive markers, can be one way in which
Nero’s language generates meaning.
In Lucan’s passage, Sulla had marched on a Rome already war-torn and with little blood left to spill. Lucan’s reader was left to ponder how, if Sulla had taken what Rome had left, the city could possibly shed any more blood under Caesar. Nero pushes Lucan’s implicit question further when he recalls how often Rome saw her own blood (lacerata totiens, Oct. 504). Nero’s use of “so often” (totiens) here points not only to the historical memory of Augustus as the final general to march on Rome in the series of invasions at the end of the Republic; the adverb simultaneously acts as an intertextual marker,
5 On the historical sources for the Proscriptions, see Levick (2010) 31-4.
6 For this parallel, see most recently Boyle (2008) ad 503-5. To further underscore the Lucanean intertext, Nero twice repeats Lucan’s verb “drain of blood” in its identical form only fourteen lines later (hausit, Oct. 516) and then again at Oct. 521.
59 reminding us of how previous poets—including Lucan—had literarily dealt with the same types of memory.7
Throughout his extensive narrative, the Octavia poet has his Nero echo Lucan to challenge Seneca’s particular memory of Augustus’ role in the civil wars and also the associated political allegories that Seneca’s language borrows from the Aeneid. Nero makes clear that he views Seneca’s reading of Augustan history and ideology to be the old-fashioned interpretations of an old man (senex, Oct. 445), out of touch with the current mode of remembering the past and perhaps even out of touch with current poetics
(Oct. 445-7).8 In order to highlight the contrast between the poetry and politics of then and now, and his own critique of Seneca’s narrative, Nero seamlessly moves from his gruesome Lucanean image of war-torn Rome to a jarringly positive description of divine
Augustus whose pious virtue had paved his way to heaven. The inherent irony in Nero’s juxtaposition of these two seemingly incompatible images of Augustus is further
7 In doing so, it is almost as if the character Nero positions himself agonistically as a civil-war poet par excellence for his own family history. The historical Nero seems to have fancied himself a poetic rival of Lucan, and this only increases the agonistic literary rivalry that could be felt metapoetically and playfully in these lines. Nero challenges and surpasses his intertextual models by painting a more gruesome picture, showing absolute mastery of the grotesque aesthetic characteristic of Neronian literature. See Chapter 5 n. 59 for Kragelund’s suggestion that the historical Nero’s poetry on Troy lies behind the Troy Chorus, further suggesting that Nero’s presence both as historical emperor and as author, much as Augustus is through his Res Gestae. There is also an echo of Propertius’ famous recusatio (Prop. 2.15). At the conclusion of the gruesome catalogue of civil-war battles which the poet says he could narrate if asked to immortalize recent history, Propertius personifies Rome as a mourner and suggests that if all men led their private lives as Propertius had, none of this sorrow would be necessary (nec totiens propriis circum oppugnata triumphis/ lassa foret crinis solvere Roma suos, Prop. 2.15.45-6). Even as Nero looks back intertextually to Lucan’s Sulla and his Caesar’s march on Rome, he links both with the memory of Augustus’ greater atrocities.
8 Masters (1992, 10), following Bloom, notes a similar agonistic rivalry within Lucan’s stance as the new poet who must “represent the past as corrupt, dead, tottering” in order to assert his own primacy with reference to the established “old” tradition. By calling Seneca an old man, Nero appeals both to his own status as youthful ruler and perhaps also to his status as young “poet” who proposes a new imperial ideology grounded in his own poetic sensibilities. One common theme that emerges from Citizens of Discord (2010, e.g. 18-19), is the creative impetus furnished by civil war throughout Roman history spanning many genres and time periods. The poet of the Octavia not only plays with conflicts of civil war memory, but also with the literary monuments that arise from this conflict and the desire to remember (and memorialize) what many would prefer to forget. He has his character Nero, in a sense, position himself as a rival poet within a rich vein of material.
60 reinforced by the fact that Nero borrows the language with which Seneca appeals earlier to this peaceful Augustan ideology.9
…ille qui meruit pia virtute caelum, divus Augustus, viros quot interemit nobiles, iuvenes senes sparsos per orbem, cum suos mortis metu fugerent penates et trium ferrum ducum, tabula notante deditos tristi neci! exposita rostris capita caesorum patres videre maesti, flere nec licuit suos, non gemere dira tabe polluto foro, stillante sanie per putres vultus graui. (Oct. 504-13)
That divine Augustus whose piety earned heaven—how many noble men did he kill, young, old, scattered across the world, when fear of death drove them to flee home and the triumvirate’s sword, all on lists for grim execution. The doleful fathers saw severed heads spiked on the Rostra and could not grieve their kin, nor groan in a Forum befouled with gore, as rank pus distilled from rotting faces.
Seneca offers Nero a memory of Augustus that emphasizes how the man’s virtues and devotion to peace had earned him a seat in heaven (Oct. 472-8). The beginning of Nero’s sentence (ille qui meruit pia/ virtute caelum, divus Augustus), if taken out of context, appears to fit completely with Seneca’s patriotic expression of early imperial cultural memory with its emphasis on Augustus’ piety, mercy, peaceful character, and glorious deification. In a rhetorically masterful midsentence shift, however, Nero subverts
Seneca’s construct of a peaceful monarch and his coordinating attempts to consign the triumviral period to oblivion, and brings right to the surface the problems inherent in celebrating Augustus while forgetting his past. How many men, asks Nero, did that pious and divine leader kill? How many did his proscriptions send into exile away from their homes and their native household gods?
9 Cf. Oct. 472-92, esp. 476-8: haec summa virtus, petitur hac caelum via./ Sic ille patriae primus Augustus parens/ complexus astra est, colitur et templis deus. There is perhaps also irony in Nero’s pointed use of “pious Augustus” to describe the historical period before he had adopted the honorific title and its peaceful associations. While later imperial authors (and especially poets) were given to using the blanket title “Augustus” regardless of chronology, there was at least some effort (especially among Roman historians) to distinguish between titles for Octavian and those for Augustus. Cf. Rubincam (1992).
61 As if to underscore further his counter-memory, his language also suggests a different reading of the Aeneid and its thematic significance from that which Seneca intertextually activates. Nero borrows from Aeneas himself his description of men sprinkled throughout the globe, homeless, stripped of their identity by war’s cruelty:10
Tum sic reginam adloquitur, cunctisque repente improvisus ait: ‘Coram, quem quaeritis, adsum, Troius Aeneas, Libycis ereptus ab undis. O sola infandos Troiae miserata labores, quae nos, reliquias Danaum, terraeque marisque omnibus exhaustos iam casibus, omnium egenos, urbe, domo, socias, grates persolvere dignas non opis est nostrae, Dido, nec quicquid ubique est gentis Dardaniae, magnum quae sparsa per orbem. Di tibi, si qua pios respectant numina, si quid usquam iustitia est et mens sibi conscia recti, praemia digna ferant. Quae te tam laeta tulerunt saecula? Qui tanti talem genuere parentes?’ (V. Aen.1.594-606)
Then thus he addresses the queen, having suddenly appeared before everyone he says: ‘I am here before you, whom you seek, Trojan Aeneas. Snatched from the waves of Libya, o you who alone have pitied Trojan labors, you who welcomed us with a city, with a home, remnants of the Greeks, exhausted from all our trials on both land and sea, needing everything, we do not have the power to repay you enough for all your kindness, Dido, neither we nor anything anywhere of the Dardanian race, scattered all throughout the world. May the gods, if any gods respect pious men, if anywhere justice and a mind conscious of right mean anything, may they confer just rewards on you. What happy ages gave birth to you? What so fortunate parents bore a woman such as you?’
Aeneas had prayed to find in Carthage a people moved by piety, justice, and a sense of what is right (V. Aen.1.595-610). To his delight he also found a people living in an age of peace and prosperity whose native household gods had found a home that was also welcoming to exiled Trojans. By borrowing Aeneas’ own description of the harrowing fate of Trojan refugees (sparsa per orbem), Nero reads the suffering of Aeneas—the mythological founder of the Julio-Claudian dynasty—onto the pain of Augustus’ victims
(sparsos per orbem, Oct. 507), further emphasizing the distance between the memory of a peaceful Augustus and the counter-memory of his violent past. Instead of fostering for his
10 Ferri (2003, ad 505-7) notes the echo in phrasing.
62 people a society driven by the four hallmark Augustan virtues with which the dialogue began, Augustus strips them of their identity and drives them fearfully into exile, as the anti-Roman forces of cruelty and divine opposition had done to his ancestor in the
Aeneid.
Nero’s phrasing also recalls Lucan’s description of those who rallied around
Pompey in the wake of his brutal loss at Pharsalia (sparsus ab Emathia fugit quicumque…/ adsequitur Magnum, Luc. 8.203-4).11 Lucan, of course, also likely had the
Vergilian passage in mind and thus both reminiscences should be felt.12 That the context of Lucan’s line is the aftermath of a Caesarean victory in civil war makes its echo especially appropriate as Nero remembers the losing faction in Augustus’ civil wars: although anonymous and without a “Great” name to rally around, they similarly suffer for choosing the wrong side in a Caesarean civil-war narrative. Through this masterful introduction to Augustus Caesar’s rise to supremacy, Nero’s language not only suggests that Lucan’s Bellum Civile is better text through which to remember Augustus’ rise to power than the patriotic reading of the Aeneid which Seneca’s language activates, but also suggests the inherent inaccuracy of reading Vergil’s Aeneid as a pure expression of patriotic memory. Through his Nero, the Octavia poet explores the counter-memories within Vergil’s own text, both in terms of how the epic poet wove various memories of
11 Ferri (2003, ad 505-7) also notes this passage. Littlewood (2004, 6-7) succinctly demonstrates how the historical Seneca read Greek drama through Latin poetry; similarly the Octavia poet has his Nero read Vergil through Lucan to create a unified imperial ideology of power grounded in violence.
12 For the complexities of Lucan’s relationship to Vergil and an attempt to surpass traditional subversive and oppositional readings, see Thomas (2001) 83-92. On Lucan’s role in divorcing the Aeneid from its teleology and political allegories to create a new type of civil-war epic in which the family is condemned rather than celebrated, Roche (2009, 4) notes: “this is not to deny political engagement with the principate to the authors of the intervening period, but Lucan categorically emancipates Latin poetry from the veil of political allegory. The bluntness and the insistence of his subject matter highlight its revival.”
63 Augustus’ rise into his own epic poem, and in terms of how later authors like Lucan responded to and reworked these memories.13
Nero’s language continues to weave echoes of Lucan, Vergil, and other literary accounts of civil war into the second triumvirate’s reign of terror. When Nero describes how men were forced to see the heads of proscribed citizens stuck onto the rostra
(exposita rostris capita caesorum patres/ videre maesti, flere nec licuit suos/ non gemere,
Oct.5 10-13), he recalls many similar scenes from Lucan’s epic, including the memory of
Book 2’s anonymous narrator as noted above.14 This man remembered seeing the face and severed head of his own brother and had searched through the bodies strewn about to find the one whose neck would be a match (Luc. 2.169-73). These bodies, like those that
Nero describes, were wet with dripping gore (dira tabe polluto foro/ stillante sanie per putres vultus, Oct. 512-3; cf. cum iam tabe fluunt, Luc. 2.166). In Lucan too, parents searched for the bodies of their children, much as the bodies that Nero describes above were gazed at silently by their fathers.15 Nero’s collocation of “gore” (tabes) and “bloody
13 As I suggested in my introduction, the play creates a series of metaliterary dialogues on reading. This is especially (but not exclusively) the case with Vergil’s Aeneid; certain characters such as Seneca and the various Nurses seem to promote an exclusively teleological and patriotic reading of the dynasty’s celebrated epic, while others such as Nero and Octavia read into the epic the darker aspects of their dynasty’s history. The whole drama, in a sense, hinges on the antitheses of different types of reading, as it stages the process by which it becomes one more literary reflection on the dynasty and its legacy. Schiesaro (2003, 59 with n. 84) notes similar intertextual tendencies in the Thyestes, but this seems a less operative principle in the authentic Senecan drama.
14 The linguistic parallel is noted most recently by Boyle (2008) and also by Ferri (2003) ad 510-13.
15 Ferri (2003, ad loc) notes the similar context between the two passages but reads both as part of the larger recurrent clichés of civil-war literature without potential further significance. He also suggests that Livy’s account of the proscriptions under the second triumvirate lies behind this entire passage, noting certain parallels between the account of Cicero’s death preserved in Seneca the Elder (Sen. Suas.6.6) and this passage. The reader would likely also think of Vergil’s Priam who had to watch his son slain before his eyes just before he became a headless trunk, which itself recalled Pompey. There is perhaps also deliberate irony in the fact that Nero’s opening words demand the head of a Sulla; that Nero’s rival and the late Republic’s most famous butcher (before Augustus, of course) share the same name was too delicious for the playwright to ignore.
64 matter” (sanies) is one of Lucan’s favorites throughout his epic.16 Lucan often paired these descriptions for bloody and gory decomposition with the verb “dripping” (stillare) and the adjective “putrid” (putris) to highlight the devastation brought on Roman bodies by its people’s propensity for civil war; Nero borrows all these terms from the epic poet’s linguistic repertoire to construct his own equally gory image.17 Furthermore, the image of decomposing and unrecognizable faces and those who must look upon them is one that
Lucan finds rhetorically effective and in which he seems to take voyeuristic pleasure.18
Thus Nero’s language not only repurposes the epic poet’s favorite vocabulary, but also appeals to his poetic persona who revels in lurid description and bodily decomposition.
The Octavia poet has his Nero speak in a Lucanean voice to construct a literary memory of the greater devastation committed by Augustus and his fellow triumvirs.19
Even the way in which Nero asserts that fathers overwhelmed with sadness could not mourn or weep for their slain kin finds situational parallel in Lucan’s text.20 In the opening of Book 2, a Roman matron had urged her fellow citizens to mourn now, for
16 E.g. saniem tabemque (Luc. 4.321); stillantis tabi saniem (Luc. 6.548).
17 E.g. stillavit (Luc. 7.837); stillantis tabe (Luc. 9.697); destillant tabe (Luc. 9.772). See also putria membra (Luc. 2.141); monimentaque rerum putria (Luc. 7.397-78).
18 E.g. Luc. 2.189-90, 3.758-61, 6.224-25, 7.574-5, 7.626-30, 8.710-11. For more on the way Lucan dwells on unrecognizable bodies, see Quint (1993, 146-7) and Bartsch (1998, 15ff). There may also be an echo in this passage of the De Clementia on Augustus’ atrocities: quod magno animo gloriatus es nullam te toto orbe stillam cruoris humani misisse (Sen. Clem.1.11.9).
19 Cf. Tac. Ann.3.28.1 and Dio. 47.15.4. Lucan had only alluded to Augustan history; the Octavia poet has his Nero agonistically confront it head on and use Lucan’s vocabulary and poetic persona to outdo Lucan himself. Perhaps the poet believes that only through the voice of a Julio-Claudian can Augustus’ civil wars be done poetic justice. Masters (1992, 25) has observed that “Lucan’s treatment of Caesarian material is a deformation, involving chopping and changing; it is an act of defiance, an act of rivalry and aggression, perhaps even of desecration.” The same can be said in many ways of how the Octavia poet and his Nero are positioned vis-à-vis the material of Lucan and of other Julio-Claudian poets.
20 Caesorum patres/ videre maesti, flere nec licuit suos/ non gemere (Oct. 510-2).
65 soon it would be too late (Luc. 2.38-42).21 Once Caesar (or Pompey) wins the war and establishes imperial rule, claimed the matron, the people will have to rejoice and will no longer be allowed to mourn their losses. The theme of silenced voices and the need to act other than how one feels ran throughout Lucan’s epic as a leitmotif which Nero taps into not only through specific echoes, but also through his wider engagement with the themes and ideological difficulties of Lucan’s Bellum Civile.22 Thus the Octavia poet has his
Nero read Augustan politics through a Lucanean lens when he suggests that under
Caesar’s heir, Romans could no longer show their true grief. Unlike Lucan, however,
Nero sees no problem with this situation.
It should now be clear that Nero’s description of Rome under the second triumvirate echoes in many ways the language, situations, and themes of Lucan’s Bellum
Civile.23 The parallels between these two texts, however, run deeper than general ideological outlook, generic turns of phrase, or descriptive details. Nero’s language also activates specific intertexts to reinforce continuity between Republican civil wars and
Julio-Claudian rule. When he describes the severed heads of those proscribed, Nero not only recalls situational parallels from Lucan’s epic as examined above, but he also recalls one of the crucial moments from his battle of Pharsalus in Book 7. When Lucan’s Caesar roused his troops for battle, he explained to them how only the victor writes history, that the side that wins at Pharsalus would be remembered as those that had justice on their
21 “nunc,” ait “o miserae, contundite pectora, matres,/ nunc laniate comas neve hunc differte dolorem/ et summis servate malis. nunc flere potestas/ dum pendet fortuna ducum: cum vicerit alter/ gaudendum est,” (Luc. 2.38-42).
22 For Lucan’s greater thematic focus on suppressed grief and silenced voices, see Behr (2007). For the theme of acting for the emperor, see Bartsch (1994), and especially her analysis of this passage (177).
23 The Octavia poet’s desire to remember Augustan history through the Bellum Civile is suggested by Lucan himself, who weaves into his account of Caesar’s rise anachronistic memories of life under Augustus: e.g. Lucan’s allusion to Philippi (Luc. 1.680) and his reference to Palatine Apollo (Luc. 3.103).
66 side, while the losers would be remembered as those who had always been guilty (Luc.
7.253-63).24 Later in his speech he returned to this idea when he said that this battle would decide whether his faction had earned the rewards or the punishments of civil war
(Luc. 7.303). He ended by reminding his men of the horrors Sulla had committed when in power, and asked them to picture his own head stuck on the Rostrum, as it would be if
Sulla’s “pupil” Pompey won the day and had the chance to gloat over his father-in-law’s decomposing corpse:
Aut merces hodie bellorum aut poena parata. Caesareas spectate cruces, spectate catenas, et caput hoc positum rostris effusaque membra Saeptorumque nefas et clausi proelia Campi. Cum duce Sullano gerimus civilia bella. (Luc. 7.303-7)
Today, either the reward or the punishment for war is ours. Picture the crosses ready for Caesar, picture the chains, and this head of mine stuck on the Rostra and my limbs unburied; think of the crime in the Saepta, and the battle waged in the closed off Campus. We war with Sulla’s pupil.
Caesar’s speech was a rousing success; his troops fought hard and earned the right to write history; in fact it was Caesar who was later confronted with Pompey’s severed head both in historical fact and in Lucan’s epic. Thus the readers of Lucan, reading Caesar’s speech in light of his subsequent victory, would already have felt the significance of
Caesar’s assertion that the victor writes history given how they themselves, living under
Caesar’s heirs, celebrated their past in Caesarian terms.
In his description of Augustus’ silenced, proscribed, and murdered opponents,
Nero activates Caesar’s language and paints Augustus’ victims as sad fathers who “gaze at the heads of the slain exposed on the rostra” (exposita rostris capita caesorum patres/
24 In manibus vestris, quantus sit Caesar, habetis./ haec est illa dies mihi quam Rubiconis ad undas/ promissam memini, cuius spe movimus arma,/ in quam distulimus vetitos remeare triumphos,/ haec, fato quae teste probet, quis iustius arma/ sumpserit; haec acies victum factura nocentem est./ si pro me patriam ferro flammisque petistis,/ nunc pugnate truces gladioque exsolvite culpam:/ nulla manus, belli mutato iudice, pura est. (Luc. 7.253-63).
67 videre maesti).25 The language of vision (spectate) in Lucan, however, was part of
Caesar’s rhetorical strategy: by asking his troops to imagine his death, based on their memory of Sulla, he thus wished to prevent it from being realized—it was merely a successful fear tactic designed to spur his men to victory. In Nero’s narrative, however, the men actually see (videre) before their eyes the decomposing faces of their loved ones.
What for Lucan’s Caesar had been an unrealized mental picture becomes an actual memory—a lived experience—for Augustus’ Romans. In Nero’s eyes it also becomes a model of imperial policy as Augustus shows Rome what a victor in civil war is entitled to do to his people. In order to highlight further this echo of Lucan’s Caesar, the playwright has Nero pun on Caesar’s name when he describes the dead men as “slaughtered”
(caesorum), a word absent from Lucan’s corresponding passage but one which recalls the epic poet’s use of Caesar’s name (Caesareas...cruces at 7.304).26 Caesars—Julius Caesar in the epic of Lucan, Augustus in the narrative of the Octavia’s Nero—control memory, while losers have no voice and must stage their emotions to please their new masters.
Nero has no intention of losing in his own battle for power and for the ability to control how he will be remembered.27
The proscriptions provide Nero with ample subject matter with which to recall the gruesome memory of his ancestor’s actions and also with numerous literary texts with which his language can productively engage. The historical Augustus himself, both as emperor and author, had avoided activating the memory of the triumviral period,
25 The similarity is noted by Boyle (2008) and Ferri (2003) ad loc, but neither pursues it further.
26 For earlier, predominantly Ovidian, readings of the verb “to slaughter” (caedere) as a pun on the name “Caesar,” see Barchiesi (2001) 128-9; Michalopoulos (2001) 46-7; Ahl (1985) 80-1 and 90.
27 The irony in Nero’s implied desire to control his memory would not be lost on the Octavia’s audience, in front of whose eyes a post-Julio-Claudian history was unfolding for a new civil-war victor.
68 eliminating its more controversial aspects from his own autobiography, and the Octavia’s
Seneca follows suit.28 Nero, on the other hand, suggests that the proscriptions were a crucially defining moment in his ancestor’s rise to power, an element of constitutive significance for the cultural memory in which Nero finds value, despite Augustus’ own desire to sink this particular period into oblivion. Nero also goes on to remember those battles which Augustus himself had proudly celebrated; unlike Augustus, however, Nero emphasizes the continuity between triumviral violence and the victories which Augustus had heralded as the beginning of his reign of peace.29 Where Augustus tried to create a significant break in historical memory, Nero sees crucial continuity and lessons for his own reign.30
Although Augustus could find no easy way to reconcile the memory of the proscriptions with his later refashioned image as peaceful princeps, he nevertheless celebrated quite publically his victories at Philippi over the armies of Brutus and Cassius and at Naulochus over Sextus Pompey: Philippi became a pious son’s just war against the murderers of his father (RG 2), and Naulochus became the battle in which Augustus had rid the sea of deadly pirates (RG 25). Augustus had famously announced after Naulochus that here was the desired end of the civil wars, and many of the celebratory coins which
28 Osgood (2006, 298-312) notes that after Naulochus, Augustus began to distance himself from his past in a way that had lasting implications for post-Actian rhetoric. In the introduction to Citizens of Discord (2010, esp. 9-10), Breed, Damon, and Rossi note the significance of Augustus’ decision not to adopt the name Romulus, but that even so “he could not escape the fact that his Rome had been founded once again by an act of civil war…what Augustus could do, he did. He attempted to rewrite the story of his own civil war, casting Antony to the side and introducing Cleopatra at the center of his narrative, and he emphasized Rome’s bright new future.” For Cleopatra in the Octavia and in Augustan narratives, see below.
29 Modern scholars too have seen continuity in politics between the two periods. Cf. Levick (2010, 70ff) on various interpretations of this potential continuity.
30 For Roman authors who emphasize a break between these periods in line with Augustus’ own ideology in the Res Gestae, see Introduction nn. 42-4.
69 scholars connect to Actium might commemorate this earlier ideologically-charged naval victory instead.31 Nero may even allude to this notoriously premature commemoration of universal peace when he transitions abruptly from the proscriptions to the battles of
Philippi, Naulochus, and finally to Actium and Egypt:
Nec finis hic cruoris aut caedis stetit: pavere volucres et feras saevas diu tristes Philippi, hausit et Siculum mare classes virosque saepe caedentes suos, concussus orbis viribus magnis ducum. (Oct. 514-18)
Nor was this the end of blood and slaughter. Grisly Philippi long fattened the birds and savage beasts; and Sicilian seas gulped down ships and men continually killing their own fellow men.
The bloodshed, gore, and violence which pervade Nero’s account of the proscriptions continues throughout his account of the battles that had ultimately formed the ideological core of Augustan retrospective narratives. By describing these battles as a continuation of the violence of the proscriptions (nec finis), denying in effect a boundary between the two periods, Nero strips bare Augustan retrospective rhetoric—with its emphasis on remembering certain events while forgetting others—and focuses instead on the continuity of the violence itself. For Nero, the battle of Naulochus is not a significant end of violence or a victory of civilians over the destabilizing force of pirates. Rather it becomes a massacre of fellow Romans who cannot help but kill their own men (saepe caedentes); thus in contrast to Augustus’ own commemoration of the battle as an end point, Nero highlights a Roman inherent predisposition to civil strife that even an ocean cannot quench. Given the significance of these battles in Augustan ideology and the
31 Appian (B. Civ.5.130) and Dio (49.15.1-2) describe the lavish celebrations after Naulochus that anticipate in many ways the post-Actian celebrations. Appian ends his account of the civil wars at this point. For the premature celebration after Naulochus, see recently Levick (2010) 40-1; Osgood (2006) 298- 349, esp. 298-312. For Augustus’ victory coinage, appropriate to Naulochus and Actium, see Gurval (1995) 47-65.
70 number of ancient authors who had treated them, it is not surprising that Nero’s language continues the pattern of weaving his narrative out of echoes of previous Julio-Claudian literature. Lucan’s epic remains one of Nero’s primary models, but he also recalls other literary memories of civil war in his reimagined narrative of his family’s rise to power.
And, much as in Seneca’s complementary speech, in Nero’s reading, these models are twisted into a more perfect narrative through which the princeps can champion his own political ideology.
As Nero transitions from the proscriptions to Philippi, Naulochus, and Actium
(nec finis hic cruoris aut caedis stetit, Oct. 514), his language recalls how Manilius had made a nearly identical transition within his account of Augustus’ civil wars (necdum finis erat: restabant Actia bella, Man. Ast.1.913).32 Nero, however, repurposes Manilius’ language to construct a different memory of Augustus. The first book of Manilius’
Astronomy, a work likely written under Augustus or Tiberius, had concluded with a description of Augustus’ civil wars and the cosmic portents heralding these disastrous periods in Roman history (Man. Ast.1.905-21).33 Rather than succumb to the pessimism at times inherent in such narratives, Manilius had constructed his account to build teleologically to Augustus’ victory at Actium, the battle which became in Augustan ideology the actual end (finis) of the civil wars and consequently the start of universal peace (pax Romana). Manilius underscored the ideological significance of Actium by
32 The parallel language and context is noted by Ferri (2003) ad loc.
33 Manilius also mentions the civil wars at 4.43-62. For the dating of Manilius, see Volk (2009) 137ff. For the intertextual relationship between Manilius’ poem and the account of Augustus in Book 1 of Vergil’s Georgics, as well as the different historical vantage points coloring their interpretations of history, see Volk (2009) 47-8. Lucan may have been familiar with Manilius, and Manilius was certainly an important poetic intermediary in civil war narratives between the Augustan age and Lucan (Volk [2009] 1 and 115); the Octavia’s Nero slips naturally between the two texts.
71 ending his account and his first book with an image of personified Civil War (Discordia) in chains (Man. Ast.1.922-4) and by alluding to the princeps’ apotheosis (Man. Ast.1.925-
6).34 Manilius’ historical excursus within his greater work had thus championed the cause of the divine Augustus, father of the fatherland, and commemorated history from the point of view of the victor and his subsequent accomplishments. Manilius told the reader that the end of civil wars did not come quite yet (necdum finis erat, Man.
Ast.1.913) in order to build anticipation for Actium and its retrospective significance, and to further emphasize Augustus’ peaceful accomplishments.
Nero borrows the language of ideological boundaries and historical periodization from Manilius’ civil wars to suggest an opposite reading: civil wars never end. There are always Romans ready to kill fellow Romans (classes virosque saepe caedentes suos, Oct.
417), and there will always be new civil war poets to commemorate them by bending old words to new meaning.35 This intertext therefore is not only apt for its contextual parallel as a transition to the battle at Actium. Through it, the Octavia poet also allows his Nero to look to a text which had used civil war to celebrate Augustus’ peaceful legacy, and then to repurpose these words to suggest their opposite meaning: Augustus’ power is in fact rooted in ruthless and systematic violence.36 Nero does not condemn Augustus’ actions, but neither does he consign them to whitewashed oblivion. On the contrary, he
34 Volk (2009, 47-8) discusses the echo of Vergil’s chained Furor.
35 “The civil war will go on forever, as will the practice of writing through rewriting…Lucan is re-using material that has already been used and re-used.” Master’s (1992, 29) words are equally appropriate to the Octavia poet’s Nero when read as a self-aware character. Cf. also Grimal (1970) 88-9.
36 The question of whether or not Augustus changed between the triumviral period and the later Augustan age is still hotly debated (cf. Levick [2010] 12-19). “Certainly we have no privileged access to his, or to any other individual’s thoughts. What we do have is the plain evidence of Octavian’s ruthless years, when, if he had been living in modern times and had not been a politician, he could have been termed a sociopath, while we have nothing to contradict the view that Augustus’ motivation remained essentially the same, even if his techniques changed,” (Levick [2010] 13).
72 celebrates this violent memory and imitates it in the hopes of achieving his own apotheosis as a result (nos quoque manebunt astra, Oct. 530). To Nero, the civil wars are the key to his ancestor’s power and deification, not the ideologically charged peace which followed them or the retrospective narratives that had memorialized his ancestor’s power as if granted from on high rather than won in blood.37
Despite the incorporation of echoes from other sources, Lucan’s epic still remains at the forefront of Nero’s language throughout this passage. When Nero describes how grim Philippi for a long time nourished wild birds and savage beasts (pavere volucres et feras saevas diu/ tristes Philippi, Oct. 515-6), he recalls how Curio’s unburied body in
Book 4 of Lucan’s epic had similarly fed Libyan birds (Libycas en, nobile corpus,/ pascit aves, Luc. 4.809-10). Although the idea of dead bodies feeding birds, wild beasts, and fish is present already in Homer, the verb “to nourish” (pascere) is unusual in connection with this common literary trope.38 The verb’s position at the start of the line in both texts further reinforces the echo of Lucan’s dead warrior and his significance to Lucan’s epic.39
Moreover, the adverb “for a long time” (diu, Oct. 515), much like “so often” (totiens,
Oct. 504), and “once again” (iterum, Oct. 522), functions as an intertextual marker that draws our attention both to the tradition of Roman historical memory as well as to
37 There may also be in Nero’s language of boundaries and end points an echo of another premature and retrospectively ironic proclamation of an end to civil war. Just before Pharsalia, Lucan’s Pompey promised his troops that that day would end the civil war (finis civilibus armis,/ quem quaesistis, adest, Luc. 7.342- 3), and Lucan’s readers would have already recognized the irony. If the passage were recalled here, it would seem even more ironic to those who had subsequently lived through the civil wars of 68-69 CE. Civil wars do not end; merely the leaders who wage them shift.
38 Boyle (2008, ad loc) is excellent on the interpretation of this line.
39 Curio plays a key role in Lucan’s dismantling of the heroic/epic code, cf. Sklenár (2003) 34-45; Saylor (1982); Ahl (1972).
73 Lucan’s prior literary treatment of parallel events.40 Lucan had emphasized the great loss that Curio represented for Rome and how Curio himself and generations after him had been seduced into folly and impious action by Caesar’s family, doomed to be remembered in disgrace rather than glory (Luc. 4.811ff). Thus when Nero’s language adapts Lucan’s to describe those who died at Philippi and Naulochus, it implicitly brings along Lucan’s associated condemnation of the Julio-Claudians as those who create ignoble men from once loyal citizens to wage their wars.
In case the reader has up until now somehow missed the overall Lucanean flavor of Nero’s speech, the Octavia poet makes even more clear how his Nero constructs
Augustan history through Lucan’s epic lens. As Nero begins the climactic ten-line conclusion to his account of Augustus’ civil wars, he asserts that the entire world was rocked from the great might of the Roman generals in conflict (concussus orbis viribus magnis ducum, Oct. 518). Critics are unanimous in noting that Nero has “stolen” this line from the programmatic opening of Lucan’s Bellum Civile where the epic poet had emphasized the universally catastrophic ramifications of the civil war between Caesar and Pompey (certatum totis concussi viribus orbis/ in commune nefas, Luc. 1.5-6).41 In order to draw further attention to his borrowing from Lucan’s proem, the Octavia poet has Nero substitute the adjective “great” (magnus) for Lucan’s adjective “entire/every”
(totus). Throughout his epic, Lucan had referred to Pompey the Great, Caesar’s nemesis,
40 Diu of course also generally nods to the trope’s long history starting with Homer and Nero’s redeployment of epic language. Additionally, throughout Roman poetry from Vergil onwards, writers stress that by chance two decisive civil war battles—Pharsalia and Philippi—had been waged in virtually identical locations (e.g. V. Georg.1.489-92; Ov. Met.15.824; Luc. 1.680). The adverb diu certainly taps into a common conflation of the two battles, but also continues to nod to Lucan as the playwright’s specific literary predecessor in civil-war narratives.
41 See most recently Boyle (2008, ad loc), but the line of critics who note this intertext extends back to Hosius (1922) and earlier.
74 not by his proper name but with the adjectival designation “Great One.”42 Thus while
Nero describes the final clash between Augustus and Antony, his language recalls the preceding struggle between Caesar and Pompey, implying that Augustus’ conflict is even more significant—even more magnus—for the Roman world. The comparison between and conflation of the memories of Caesar’s civil wars and those of Augustus of course predates the Octavia and is certainly omnipresent in Lucan’s own narrative;43 what is significant, however, is that the Octavia’s Nero repurposes this rhetorical commonplace to create an ideology of empire rooted in memories which his ancestor thought better forgotten. Nero does not share Lucan’s pessimism, even if he does share his aesthetics and historical interests; rather, it is as if he considers Lucan’s epic and the memory of
Augustus’ pre-Actian self as didactic tools for ruling through fear.44
Actium and the Augustan Legacy
It is not surprising that as Nero describes Actium—the battle which the Augustan age remembered as the moment at which the civil wars came to an end and an era of peace began—his language activates a number of intertexts with the works of Latin literature which had previously memorialized these events. Seneca’s account breaks off just before
Actium, turning instead to Nero’s own “bloodless” accession. Nero similarly neither
42 E.g. Luc. 1.123; 1.346; 2.245; 2.276. There may also be additional significance in that Nero has just mentioned the horrors of Naulochus in which Augustus fought against Pompey’s son Sextus.
43 For the conflation of Philippi and Pharsalia, see above n. 40. Nero also seems to share a well-established ancient view that sees what we today would view as two wars as one continuous civil war (cf. Vell. 2.48.3 and 89.3 with Woodman [1983]; Man. Ast.1.906-21; Sen. Ira 2.11.3).
44 Critics often refer to Lucan’s confrontation of history’s “uncomfortable truths”; Lucan may have been uncomfortable with these truths, but the Octavia’s Nero was not.
75 narrates the battle nor even mentions it by name, but he does tackle its aftermath, and his language weaves out of the poetry and the rhetoric which had variously commemorated its significance a new ideological narrative for a new age:
superatus acie puppibus Nilum petit fugae paratis, ipse periturus brevi. hausit cruorem incesta Romani ducis Aegyptus iterum, nunc leves umbras tegit. (Oct. 519-522)
The defeated foe sought the Nile on ships geared for flight, he himself soon to die. Again incestuous Egypt drank a Roman leader’s blood and now entombs weightless spirits.
As Nero describes Antony’s defeat, he echoes Propertius’ similar account of
Cleopatra. Both authors describe the final flight to Egypt after Actium in two lines and, despite the differences in genre and meter, Nero’s syntax even seems to echo the self- contained shape of Propertius’ elegiac couplet:
illa petit Nilum cumba male nixa fugaci, hoc unum: iusso non moritura die. (Prop. 4.6.63-4)
She sought the Nile, trusting in a raft badly prepared for flight, for this one reason: she would not be destined to die on the fixed day.
The verb for seeking (petit) safe haven appears in the same form in both accounts, as does the periphrasis of “Nile” for Alexandria (Nilum).45 Each poet focuses on ships prepared for flight, and each ends his description with a haunting image of impending death conveyed through the future active participle and the ablative of time.46
Nevertheless, despite these linguistic and syntactic similarities, Propertius’ memory of
Actium—at least as expressed in his poem—had been quite different from the one Nero
45 For the difficulty ancient authors had in dividing the battles at Actium and Alexandria into two separate campaigns (worthy of Augustus’ two triumphs), see Lange (2009) 90-94.
46 Propertius’ Cleopatra also looks back to the Aeneid’s Dido (moritura, V. Aen.4.308), and thus Antony too echoes Vergil’s tragic heroine, cruelly sacrificed for the Julian clan’s path to power. Manilius similarly described Pompey’s death (quis te Niliaco periturum litore, Magne, Man. Ast.4.50).
76 offers, and once more we see the Octavia poet bending his intertextual language to suit the diverging ideology and historical memory of the various characters who redeploy it.
Prior to his description of Cleopatra’s flight, the elegiac poet had narrated how
Apollo Actius appeared during the battle to ensure Caesarean victory (Prop. 4.6.26ff; cf. esp. vincit Roma fide Phoebi: dat femina poenas./ sceptra per Ionias fracta vehuntur aquas, Prop. 4.6.57-8).47 Just after these lines, Propertius moved swiftly from an account of Cleopatra’s death to a description of the triumphs Augustus produced and the monuments awarded in thanks to Apollo (Actius hinc traxit Phoebus monumenta, quod eius/ una decem vicit missa sagitta rates, Prop. 4.6.67-8). The one dark spot on this bright event, according to the poet, was the absence of Cleopatra from the triumphal parade, and as the poet remembers the celebration, he sighs over the wonderful triumph she would have made (di melius! quantus mulier foret una triumphus, Prop. 4.6.65).
The writers and artists of the Augustan age understandably proceeded carefully when it came to remembering and commemorating Actium.48 On the one hand, the battle
47 For the imagery and significance of Apollo Actius in Augustan Rome, see Zanker (1988) 85-9. See also the more cautious discussion in Gurval (1995) 87-136, esp. 89-90.
48 The “Myth of Actium” (whether one sees it growing organically throughout the age or under the impetus of Augustus) and its subsequent reception is too large a topic to treat fully here, nor has it wanted for scholarly attention. Syme’s (1939) famous reading of the battle’s ideological significance in the tyranny of Augustan Rome has been rightly challenged. Zanker’s (1988) important study on the public imagery of Augustan Rome synthesized much of the visual evidence for Augustus’ public imagery leading up to Actium as well as for the battle’s reception in Augustan Rome. More recently, Gurval’s (1995) study challenges prevailing scholarly assumptions about how Augustus had represented Actium and what the battle meant to contemporary Romans. The forcefulness of his argument has been appropriately questioned by reviewers (e.g. Pelling, Gowing, Toher, and Dench), but he nevertheless, he raises important questions about how we have read and interpreted the Augustan evidence to suggest a “Myth of Actium” that developed on the order of the princeps and that was immediately recognizable to contemporaries. More recently, Osgood (2006, esp. 350-403) looks at Actium not from the prospective of what it became in the late Augustan and post-Augustan period, but of how it seemed at the culmination of the turbulent triumviral period. Within this framework he sketches the development of the myth in public imagery and propaganda, a term which Osgood reclaims after it had been dismissed by both Zanker and Gurval. Osgood collects a dizzying array of sources from all across the Roman world, and while his aim is less to offer overarching conclusions about the ultimate significance of the battle, his narrative of the event and its aftermath forms an ideal counterpart to both Zanker and Gurval in the current scholarship on the subject. Lange (2009) also
77 became an ideological touchstone that came to signify Augustus’ right to rule and that of his heirs. Actium was remembered as the day on which Augustus had suppressed the madness of civil strife and restored peace to the state, and such an event was celebrated not only in visual art but also in the literature of the day. On the other hand, however,
Actium was still a victory in civil war, and thus not the most traditional of events around which to build a patriotic memory or an ideology of peace and piety.49 Most of the
Augustan poets who lived through this event touched on its significance in their work, and what has been called a “Myth of Actium” developed with its own rhetoric through which these authors, and even Augustus himself, could commemorate the event despite its unsavory civil-war associations. One of the primary means of disassociating the victory from civil strife was the subsequent focus on Cleopatra and her army of Eastern non-Romans. By focusing on this strange and hyper-sexualized foreign queen, Actium could be represented as a foreign victory in which Romans could take pride.50 Relief
focuses on the battle’s ideological significance in Augustan Rome, and questions whether or not Augustus mean to conceal its civil nature.
49 Julius Caesar encountered similar problems when celebrating his civil wars and this civil conflict also lies behind Nero’s account of Actium. For how Augustus responded to Caesar’s precedent and adapted his own triumphal celebrations and associated iconography accordingly, see Gurval (1995, 19-36). Osgood (2006) shows how Augustus developed his own image, at times desiring to link himself to his adoptive father and at times to underscore their differences. For Caesar’s own public imagery throughout the civil- war period, see most recently Raaflaub (2010). See also Rossi (2000) who examines Caesar’s representation of the Pompeians in his own Bellum Civile.
50 Although the Senate did declare war against Cleopatra (Dio 50.4.3-4, 6.1; Plut. Ant.60.1), modern scholarship may overstate the way in which Augustus desired to mask the conflict as a foreign rather than civil war. Most recently Lange (2009, 79-90) has reexamined the ancient evidence and concluded that, despite the tendency of modern scholarship to assume that Actium and Alexandria were celebrated primarily as foreign campaigns, the ancient evidence typically describes them as civil wars without problem. See also Woodman (1983) 211-13. Pelling (2010, 108) notes that Augustus’ strategy in representing the civil wars—at one time as a foreign war against Cleopatra and at another time as a civil war—changed over the course of his reign. See also Levick (2010) 48-9; Quint (2010) 142-3. The Octavia’s Nero gets at the heart of this issue of representation and memory by applying to the Roman Antony the language, scenes, and themes typically reserved for foreign Cleopatra and by omitting the famous queen from his narrative, focusing instead on the Roman conflict and its larger significance.
78 tinged with unease characterized most near contemporary reactions to the battle, both of which gradually gave way over the course of the Augustan age to a retrospective understanding that Actium had been a fundamental turning point after which nothing was the same.51
The lines of Propertius on the flight of Cleopatra (illa petit Nilum cumba male nixa fugaci,/ hoc unum: iusso non moritura die, Prop. 4.6.63-4) fit into the scheme whereby Actium became Augustus’ victory over Cleopatra, rather than Augustus’ victory over Antony. In fact, Antony has been completely removed from Propertius’ poem.
Propertius, of course, gave no straightforward praise of Actium and many critics have seen in the violence he described an implicit critique of how Augustus sought to gloss over civil war with dazzling temples.52 However we are to read Propertius’ poem, Nero’s own account of the same battle significantly differs in its rhetoric and purpose. Nero, for instance, does not include Apollo at all and thus engages as little as possible with the rhetoric of Actium developed by Augustus and contemporaries. Instead, he strips away both that rhetoric and its divine apparatus to focus directly on Augustus’ Roman adversary and the battle’s immediate repercussions. No gods appear in Nero’s account to herald the Augustan victory;53 Cleopatra does not even feature directly in his account and instead the focus remains entirely on the unnamed Roman leader.54
51 Cf. Introduction nn. 42-44.
52 For the poem as critique, see e.g. Welch (2005) 96-103. Gurval (1995, 249ff) summarizes well the opposing interpretations of this poem before offering his own reading. For the earlier poetry of Propertius on Actium, see also Gurval (1995) 167-208.
53 The absence of the gods is also well-known feature of Lucan’s epic. At one point “the narrator declares at 7.455-9 that there are no gods whatsoever if they allowed Pharsalus to take place, and if they did allow this, Rome has its vengeance upon them by deifying emperors” (Roche [2009] 5).
54 “Looking at the wealth of monuments commemorating Actium, one easily forgets how tricky it must have been to celebrate a victory without being allowed ever to refer to the defeated enemy” (Zanker [1988]
79 Nero’s language emphasizes even more his strong break with Augustan rhetoric by repurposing Propertius’ description of the conquered queen to paint a picture of the conquered Roman at the moment that both leaders had realized their demise, and thus at the moment when the last threat to Augustus’ power had been annihilated—a threat that
Nero is eager to remind us came from a fellow Roman citizen, not a foreign foe. The future active participle indicating Antony’s imminent death emphasizes the futility of his opposition to the emerging Julio-Claudian dynasty. While Propertius had wistfully—even if ironically—imagined the greater triumph that Cleopatra’s presence could have engendered, Nero leaves out all memory of triumphal honors from his account.
Nevertheless, the echo of Propertius’ “celebratory” poem would remind the reader of
Augustus’ triumph and of the Roman citizen whose death became a cause célèbre across the Roman world. Nero looks beneath the ideologically charged memories of Actium and emphasizes instead the violent power that had won his ancestor his throne. For Nero,
Cleopatra and dazzling triumphs seem to be the ideological window dressing of the
Augustan world after Actium; in Nero’s mind, he is still struggling to solidify his own power, and thus celebratory rhetoric is of less interest than how the memory of Augustus
55 can teach him first how to establish power and then to celebrate it.
82). For the suppression of Antony’s name in the wake of Actium, see Gurval (1995) 234; Flower (2006) 116-118. Vergil names Antony (V. Aen.8.685), as does Propertius when describing his suicide (Prop. 3.9.56). Propertius elsewhere calls Antony a Roman dux (Prop. 2.16.37), the descriptive periphrasis Nero uses in this passage. Under later emperors, Antony is named more frequently (cf. Vell. 2.85-88). Note, however, that Velleius still suggests that Cleopatra was ultimately responsible (Vell. 2.85.5-6) and goes on to blame Antony for all the deaths which had occurred during the triumviral period, clearing Augustus from guilt. See Woodman (1983, ad loc) for more information on the portrayal of Antony throughout Velleius and this period. For the civil war in the post-Augustan period, with special focus on the Tiberian authors, see Gowing (2010).
55 Some scholars have suggested that Octavia’s final departure at the end of the play—in chains and with a host of onlookers—in some senses mimics and perverts the spectacle of a Roman triumph, much in the same way that a triumph over Antony would have. Cf. Boyle (2008) ad Oct. 899-900.
80 Of course, Cleopatra is far from absent in intertextual resonance, and it is through echoes of the Egyptian queen that the Octavia poet has his Nero once again recall the earlier civil war between Caesar and Pompey and the role that Egypt had played in both
Julio-Claudian victories. Although the queen does not appear in propria persona in these lines, Nero describes Egypt with the adjective “unchaste/incestuous” (incesta). In an earlier poem, Propertius had described Cleopatra and her home similarly (incesti meretrix regina Canopi, Prop. 3.11.39). In Propertius’ poem, mention of the “whore-queen” came only five lines after he had alluded to Egypt as the site of Pompey’s former triumph and ultimate demise (Prop. 3.11.32-5), reminding his readers that Egypt and its rulers had become multivalent symbols in Roman memory able to recall simultaneously victory and defeat, glory and disaster. Perhaps even more suggestive is that when Lucan introduced the infamous queen into his narrative and to Augustus’ father Julius Caesar, he had called her the unchaste/incestuous sister of Ptolemy (incesta soror, Luc. 8.93) and then later the unchaste/incestuous Ptolemid (incesta Ptolemaida, Luc.10.69).
The adjective “unchaste/incestuous” (incesta)—with its connotations of unfettered sexuality and immoral liaisons—became one of Cleopatra’s defining associations as a result of how Augustus “othered” his opponents in civil war.56 Romans remembered how Cleopatra and her insatiable lust perverted Roman soldiers such that they became un-Roman. Lucan had picked up on this language but had used it to link
Cleopatra not with Augustus’ enemy Antony, but with Augustus’ own (adoptive) father
Caesar. In doing so, he took Augustus’ rhetoric of “the other” and used it to suggest that
56 For the sex and sexuality of Cleopatra as one of the primary ways through which Augustus “othered” his opponents, see Quint (1989, 8-11 with n.11). See most recently the discussion of the “Cleopatra rhetoric” in Osgood (2006) 82, 344-6. Of course this Roman view of the Hellenized east predates Augustus, but his manipulation of an existing bias for his own political benefit is no less striking.
81 Caesar too had become “other” or non-Roman through his association with the foreign queen.57 Thus Lucan’s echoes of Augustus’ rhetoric served to “other” Caesar himself while linking him to a later Augustan enemy who gave up his Roman identity out of lust for a foreign queen. Lucan had already described how Cleopatra desperately hoped to lead a triumphal parade through Rome with Caesar as her captive (Luc. 10.63-5), an ironic reversal of the triumph which some Romans had longed to see after Actium.
Lucan’s entire extended description of Cleopatra’s power—in Roman triumphal terms no less—led the epic poet to the climactic night in which Caesar and Cleopatra first met, the night which, according to Lucan, changed Roman history forever and led to its imperial destiny (Luc. 10.68-70). Further underscoring the significance of Lucan’s unchaste queen for our present passage is that Lucan had immediately followed this introduction to
Cleopatra with a question for the ages:
Quis tibi vaesani veniam non donet amoris, Antoni, durum cum Caesaris hauserit ignis pectus? (Luc. 10.70-72)
Who could not grant pardon to the love of sickened Antony, when even the hard heart of Caesar drank deep of her flames?
Nero crafts his own narrative of Actium in language reminiscent of how Lucan had prophetically alluded to the entire story of the queen’s relationships with Roman generals from Caesar to Antony, Pharsalia to Actium, and the bodies left in her wake.
Lucan’s epic responded to the rhetoric of Actium that developed in the Augustan age by appropriating the image of hyper-sexualized and foreign Cleopatra from Augustan literature, and by using it to problematize Caesar and his descendents. Propertius had
57 Of course, this is part of Lucan’s wider program of “othering” Caesar and building him on the model of an Eastern king to link him with the Ptolemaic legacy. Cf. the lessons Caesar takes regarding world domination from his visit to Alexander’s tomb (Luc. 10.1-52).
82 earlier (over)emphasized the triumphal aspects of Actium in order to force the reader to confront the loss of Roman life that these triumphs had celebrated.58 Nero’s language recalls Cleopatra as constructed by both these poets while simultaneously removing the queen from his memory of Actium. The Octavia poet has it both ways: on the one hand he nods to the tradition in which Cleopatra is used to mask that Actium had been a civil war. At the same time, however, he removes Cleopatra from Nero’s historical account and has him focus entirely on the Roman enemy Antony, a man whose experience of civil war and whose name had been neatly removed from the story for so long due to the ideological needs of the subsequent Augustan age. Nero is not interested in the way a ruler justifies the murder of Roman citizens and creates new peaceful memories to cover over a violent past; rather, he is interested in how one man crushes his Roman opponents to maintain sole power.
Nero throughout uses titles rather than names, further enhancing our ability to conflate Caesar and Augustus, Antony and Pompey and how each story ended in Egypt:59
Superatus acie puppibus Nilum petit fugae paratis, ipse periturus brevi. hausit cruorem incesta Romani ducis Aegyptus iterum, nunc leves umbras tegit. Illic sepultum est impie gestum diu civile bellum. (Oct. 519-24)
58 As one reads Propertius’ praise of Actium, one must keep in mind the haunting epigrams with which his first book of elegies ended: an image of suffering and destruction that Italy and perhaps even Propertius’ own family had experienced in Augustus’ wake (Prop. 1.21-22). For the importance of civil war— remembering and forgetting, narrating and avoiding—in Propertius’ poetics, see most recently Breed (2010).
59 One is reminded of how Cato the Elder had also famously referred to his historical protagonists by their titles rather than their names, commemorating the importance of Roman identity over the glorious accomplishments of individuals. For Nero too Roman identity was the issue, but his use of titles over names allows him paradoxically to incorporate more individuals into his narrative of Julio-Claudian domination. Augustus too had eliminated the names of his antagonists from the Res Gestae, and it is likely from this text that we are to imagine the Octavia’s Nero taking his rhetorical cues. Cf. Levick (2010) 232.
83 The man conquered in battle seeks the Nile with ships prepared for flight, he himself about to die in short time. Once again incestuous Egypt drinks the blood of a Roman leader and now buries light shadows. There civil war—waged long and impiously—was at last buried.
The reminiscence of Cleopatra through the term “unchaste” (incesta) adds further confusion, given that in Lucan’s epic this term is used to convey her powers of seduction over both Caesar and Antony, a victor and loser of civil war respectively.60 The juxtaposition of the adjective “unchaste/incestuous” (incesta) with the phrase “Roman leader” (Romanus dux) reminds us of how Lucan had deliberately confused the memory of epic winners and losers by emphasizing how this Egyptian temptress led both astray.
Egypt is a place where Romans test their identity, and at least one Caesar had been found wanting.61 Nero’s language recalls the role that Egypt played in Lucan’s Bellum Civile and also in the historical tradition, suggesting the Egypt experienced by Pompey and
Caesar as a way of reading, interpreting, and framing what happened at Actium and subsequently at Alexandria. As noted above, the conflation of the two civil wars begins almost immediately after Actium and continues throughout early imperial literature.
Nevertheless, what makes this passage particularly pointed and rhetorically interesting is that this conflation—with its emphasis on impiety and violence—is put into the mouth of the man who would be the last descendent of Julius Caesar and Augustus to hold imperial power. Nero concludes by underscoring Egypt’s significance in the memory of Roman civil war and also in the memory of his family’s own rise to power when he notes that in that place impious civil war was finally buried (Oct. 523-4).62
60 “Poetic representations of civil war repeatedly stress the indistinguishability of victor and victim” (Feldherr [2010] 230).
61 There is additional irony in the fact that Nero is the direct descendent both of Augustus Caesar and also of Marcus Antonius, although Nero does not seem to reference this ancestry here or elsewhere in the text.
62 Vespasian’s Temple of Peace with its civil-war associations and Egyptianizing décor is perhaps also significant here, as Vespasian too imagined that his reign began in Egypt as a product of civil war.
84 Perhaps the most striking way in which the Octavia poet has Nero conflate the war between Caesar and Augustus into one universal narrative of Julio-Claudian power grounded in civil strife is when he describes Egypt as the place that drank the blood of a
Roman leader (hausit cruorem incesta Romani ducis/ Aegyptus, Oct. 521-2). The historical Seneca’s father, Seneca the Elder, had recorded Pompey’s death in similar language (Romanorum sanguinem hausit Aegyptus iterum, Sen. Suas. 6.6.6).63 By using the same language as Seneca the Elder, Nero further suggests this conflation of the two anti-Caesarian civil-war figures who died tragically in Egypt. There is additional irony in that Seneca the Elder had written his work expressly to instruct his sons, one of whom was Seneca the Younger. According to the poet of the Octavia, his lessons seem to have had more impact on his son’s imperial protégé.64
As Nero brings his account of Actium, civil war, and Augustan history to a close, his language incorporates further Lucanean echoes while also revisiting and rereading the literary models activated in Seneca’s corresponding speech. By having his Nero weave multiple intertexts into these concluding lines, it is as if the Octavia poet allows Nero to demonstrate not only how much better he understands his ancestral history, but also how much more accurately he reads his models, redeploying Seneca’s earlier models and refuting his readings point for point:
…condidit tandem suos
63 Seneca attributes these words to Arellius Fuscus, the orator who had been Ovid’s teacher.
64 It is as if the Octavia’s Seneca has a deliberate blind spot when it comes to the literature produced by the family of his historical counterpart. He avoids the gruesome descriptions of the triumviral period that permeate Seneca the Elder’s Suasoriae and Controversiae; similarly, his language never intertextually engages with Lucan, his historical nephew, despite the prominence of Lucan in Nero’s response. Thus the Octavia poet is not a slave to Lucanean poetics generally, but rather has his Nero completely invest himself in Lucan’s poetics for a purpose. Given the historical relationships between Seneca the Younger, Nero, and Lucan, Lucan’s role as intertextual model becomes all the more important for how the Octavia poet defines his characters and their understanding of history.
85 iam fessus enses victor hebetatos feris vulneribus, et continuit imperium metus. (Oct. 524-6)
Finally as a weary victor he buried his swords now blunted from so many wounds and laid them aside and contained his empire through fear.
Ferri has suggested that when Nero describes Augustus’ final victory, he once again echoes Lucan.65 Book 6 of the Bellum Civile had featured one of the only aristeias in the epic, when Caesar’s man Scaeva dove into the thick of the enemy and singlehandedly fought an army. In the midst of the battle, Lucan described how Scaeva’s weapon became so blunted from fighting that it could no longer kill but only wound:
Iamque hebes et crasso non asper sanguine mucro perdidit ensis opus, frangit sine volnere membra. (Luc. 6.186-7)
No longer can his sword-point do the work of a sword, blunted and not sharp because of much blood, it bruises limbs without wounding them. The battle context of blunted swords underscore the parallel, and several points can be made about this intertext. First, Nero applies to Augustus’ final act of violence language reminiscent of the aristeia of Caesar’s champion who risked life and many limbs to keep
Pompey’s forces at bay (Luc. 6.201-2). Given how Seneca had emphasized that Augustus fought civil wars to avenge his father’s death (Oct. 481), the comparison between
Augustus and Scaeva as defenders of Caesar is thematically suggestive.
There is also irony, of course, in how Nero’s language seems to read Augustus’ glorious victory through Scaeva’s aristeia. As many note, Lucan had reduced the topos of the hero’s aristeia to hyperbolic absurdity.66 He focused not on the hero’s honor or
65 Ferri (2003, ad loc). Nero also clearly echoes the historical Seneca’s insistence that mercy cannot be equated with “weariness of cruelty,” and thus that one cannot call “mercy” Augustus’ actions in the period immediately following Actium (ego vero clementiam non voco lassam crudelitatem, Sen. Clem.1.11.2). The historical Seneca caps his brief chilling look at Augustus’ pre-Actian period with this assertion, and Nero echoes his historical tutor in his analysis of Augustus’ weary (fessus) victory. For the concept of mercy in Lucan, see Masters (1992, 178-87) and Ahl (1976, 192-7).
66 For Scaeva’s aristeia, see Leigh (1997) 158-190. For the devaluing of heroism in Lucan generally, see Gorman (2001). For gladiatorial overtones, see Leigh (1997, 243-246). The problematic display of virtus in civil-war narratives had, of course, already been treated by Sallust, one of Lucan’s most important models
86 military prowess, but rather on the body, the gory wounds inflicted, and the false sense of principle with which the heroes fought—a sense of principle that Lucan repeatedly highlighted was in vain and ideologically unsound. In civil war, an aristeia accomplishes carnage alone and serves only to delight the reader trained to find pleasure in gladiatorial spectacles; there is no honor (virtus) or accomplishment worth remembering. Lucan highlighted his perversion of this epic trope when his narrator becomes so enthralled by his own description that he yelled at Pompey’s forces, telling them what weapons to use for greater success (Luc. 6.196-201). His comparison of Scaeva to an elephant under attack (Luc. 6.207-9) further underscored the amphitheatrical lens through which Lucan asked his reader to view military accomplishment. Thus, although Nero uses the language of military heroism to characterize Augustus’ victory, his model perverts the idea of commemorating military victory at all, especially a victory in civil war.67
As we have seen, however, Nero’s language recalls literary models beyond
Lucan. In particular, his redeployment of Vergilian language becomes a key method by which the Octavia poet has Nero challenge the memory of peaceful Augustus proposed by Seneca at the scene’s opening. Readers of Vergil are well aware of the multifaceted use of the verb “to bury/found” (condere) throughout the epic.68 Vergil had used the verb in his epic proem in order to describe how Aeneas would found a new civilization and the
(cf. Batstone [2010] 65-7).
67 There is perhaps additional irony in that Augustus won his battles not through his own military prowess—as Nero suggests here—but through the talent of his generals, especially Marcus Agrippa. Augustus stayed on land during the battle of Naulochus (Osgood [2006] 300), and his strengths lay more in military tactics than fighting ability. For Augustus’ questionable military prowess, especially in his early career, see Levick (2010) 34-5; Campbell (2002) 6-7. For Augustus’ role as figurehead rather than military commander in the heat of battle, see the well-known critique of Syme (1939, 297). Cf. the prominence of Agrippa in ancient accounts of Actium (Vell. Pat. 2.84-5; Dio 50.11-14; Plut. Ant. 65-6).
68 James (1995) examines Vergil’s innovation in using the verb condere in this context.
87 Roman race (dum conderet urbem, V. Aen.1.5). Only at the end of the Aeneid, however, did his reader understand fully the implications of this line and this choice of verb from the epic’s opening. In the poem’s final lines, Aeneas, filled with rage and fury, buried his sword in the breast of suppliant Turnus, the hero of the Italians and the opposing leader in a proto-civil war (ferrum adverso sub pectore condit/ fervidus, V. Aen.12.950-1).69 By using the same verb as Vergil (condere) in a similarly climactic context, the Octavia poet has Nero read Augustus’ glorious victory at Actium through the end of the Aeneid with all of its interpretive and ideological issues.70 In doing so, Nero also strips from the line its epic veneer and lays bare the ideological problem with which Vergil had closed his epic: what does it mean to be the victor in civil war and at what cost is Roman imperial power won and maintained? The lesson Nero seems to take from Vergil is that violence won Augustus his empire and fear maintained it (continuit imperium metus, Oct. 526); the young princeps intends to follow this model of imperial rule.71
69 On the question of civil war in the Aeneid, see Chapter 1 n. 29; on the role of anger in the epic, see Chapter 1 n. 35. See also Putnam (1995) on how the end of the Aeneid—and especially its focus on rage— colors later receptions of the work. Putnam here restates with great clarity not only his reading of the Aeneid’s controversial end, but also the position of his opponents, largely championed by Karl Galinsky who read Aeneas’ final actions in a less problematic light (cf. Galinsky 1988 and 1994). For further “optimist” readings of the Aeneid’s end, see Cairns (1989) 82-4; Stahl (1990) 174-211. For further “pessimist” readings, see also Beare (1964); Johnson (1976) 114-34; Lyne (1987) 85-99, 186-8.
70 Condere appears elsewhere in civil war contexts. Cf. quo, quo scelestis ruitis? Aut cur dexteris/ aptantur enses conditi? (H. Epod.7.1-2); Caesaris haec virtus et gloria Caesaris haec est:/ illa, qua vicit, condidit arma manu (Prop. 2.15.41-2). There is also a bit of slippage in Nero’s usage, as he describes both a man who has buried his sword into countless opponents and also a man who has then sheathed his sword and founded an era of peace—both lexical possibilities for condere felt here. This slippage allows Nero also to echo the ideology of his historical counterpart’s reign. In the opening of his De Clementia, the historical Seneca appropriates Nero’s own voice to herald how he had sheathed his sword in preference for peace (conditum, immo constrictum apud me ferrum est, Sen. Clem. 1.4.3). Calpurnus Siculus also celebrated Nero’s reign in these terms (et insanos clementia condidit enses, Calp.Sic. 1.59). Not only does the Octavia’s Nero emphasize Augustus’ brutality and the body count in his wake, but he also implicates the ideology of his own reign by calling into question the rhetoric by which he too inaugurated a new age of peace on the Augustan model.
71 McNelis (2007, 5-8) explores how, in his literary response to Vergil’s Aeneid, Statius responds to the Flavian dynasty’s own appropriation of Augustus. McNelis argues that Statius’ epic shows the impossibility of replicating Pax Augusta after civil war broke out in the empire, creating a disruption
88 There is, however, one more voice that Nero must confront in order to refute completely the memory of Augustus as a man whose devotion to peace earned him a seat in heaven. We have seen that in Nero’s account of Actium, his language echoes Vergil and Lucan, while problematizing the memory of an event in which Augustus took pride.
What Augustus commemorated as the beginning of an era of peace, Nero chose to remember as the culmination of a period of gruesome violence, and this distinction becomes more than just a difference in historical periodization or interpretive nuance.
Nero’s use of the verb “to found/bury” (condere) as well as his description of swords too blunted to continue killing recall pivotal moments in the epics of Vergil and Lucan where the Augustan virtues of piety and clemency were pitted against the anti-Roman forces of bloodthirstiness and wrath. The term victor, however, appears in neither of these contexts and yet its prominence within Nero’s line suggests that a model should be sought. And indeed, the rhetoric of victory and the focus on Augustus himself as victor does loom large in another significant text that reflects Augustan ideology: namely the Res Gestae and Augustus’ own recorded memory of his rise to power.
Augustus had declared himself victor prominently at the opening of his Res
Gestae in the context of reestablishing peace after civil war. At the start of his monumental autobiography, Augustus had declared that after he had waged civil wars on land and sea, he gave clemency to all citizens who asked for it, and it is perhaps from this text (and perhaps his now lost Memoires) that later Romans came to remember Actium as
between Julio-Claudian and Flavian ideology. “In the sixties AD, hopes for continued peace had been dashed, thus opening up—indeed demanding—new perspectives on and readings of Augustan Rome” (McNelis [2007] 7). The Octavia, however, suggests a disruption between Julio-Claudian Rome and its own representation, retrojecting the failure of Pax Augusta onto the dynasty itself. Nevertheless, if the Octavia is an early Flavian text as seems likely, Vespasian’s own appropriation of Augustus as imperial model would certainly provide additional interpretive angles for this dialogue between Seneca and Nero.
89 the fundamental break between Republic and Principate, brutal civil war and universal peace. Thus the ideological reinterpretation of the memory of Actium began, and thus it is appropriate that Nero looks back to this text when confronting his ancestor’s legacy. In
Augustan rhetoric, what matters is what the victor does after the wars to rebuild the state; less emphasized is what he had to do to gain that power in the first place:72
Bella terra et mari civilia externaque toto in orbe terrarum saepe gessi, victorque omnibus veniam petentibus civibus peperci (RG 3)
I often waged wars on land and sea, civil wars and foreign wars all across the globe, and as victor I spared all citizens who asked for pardon.
Nero’s Augustus is also called victor at the climactic point when the civil wars ended, and yet in Nero’s account this word occurs not in the context of sparing those who seek pardon.73 Instead, Nero describes Augustus as victor as he remembers how his ancestor killed everyone in his way and grounded his power in fear (condidit tandem suos/ iam fessus enses victor hebetatos feris/ vulneribus, et continuit imperium metus, Oct. 524-6).74
Both versions look to the civil wars as the turning point which led to universal peace, but each suggests different memories of how that rule was acquired and attribute different motives to those who acquiesced to imperial rule.75 As Augustus’ heir, Nero has little
72 For the use of the term victor here and the implications of clementia, see Cooley (2009) ad loc. The term “victory” (victoria) is used to similar ends when Augustus celebrates the closing of the doors of the temple of Janus—the act by which he signified that Rome was finally at peace: Ianum Quirinum, quem clausum esse maiores nostri voluerunt cum per totum imperium populi Romani terra marique esset parta victoriis pax, cum priusquam nascerer, a condita urbe bis omnino clausum fuisse prodatur memoriae, ter me principe senatus claudendum esse censuit (RG 13). The Octavia’s Seneca alluded to this event earlier in the scene (Oct. 480 w. Boyle [2008] ad loc).
73 “His actions after Actium arguably demonstrated a degree of clemency…His early career, however, was not known for displays of mercy” (Cooley [2009] ad RG 3.1).
74 “A consenus that has been mercilessly described as the silence of the exterminated system” (Levick [2010] 50 with n. 132).
75 Levick (2010, 227) posits here in the Res Gestae an echo of Vergil’s “surely already famous” line (parcere subiectis et debellare superbos, V. Aen.6.853), a line which we have seen variously reflected across the Octavia’s dialogue. The only other place in the Res Gestae where Augustus styles himself victor
90 interest in the cultural amnesia that arose from the Augustan age around the civil wars; instead Nero seeks out the memory of the turbulent period that led his ancestor to his throne, and in this memory finds a model for maintaining his own imperial power.
The Two Sides of Augustus: Towards an Ideology of Imperial Rule
Nero’s response to Seneca is a rhetorical tour de force. Throughout the scene, he demonstrates a patently different way of remembering Augustus, while his language similarly engages a wider range of literary models than those suggested by Seneca.
Seneca had tried to remember Augustan history strictly through the ideologically charged cultural memory of the Augustan age, and his language echoed to similar ends the numismatic slogans, the Res Gestae, the so-called Augustan voice of the Aeneid and other public voices of the Augustan age. The Octavia’s Nero too seems to have read the
Aeneid and the Res Gestae; his readings, however, suggest that his tutor Seneca appeals only to the surface level of these texts, glossing over their ideological complexity and the counter-voices that provide a man such as Nero with a recipe for acquiring power. By offering two contradictory memories of Augustus’ civil wars, and thus two different modes of writing and reading civil-war narrative, Seneca and Nero almost create a “civil war” of literary interpretation in which we are left having to choose sides, whether we
is when he recounts how, shortly after Actium, he melted down silver statues of himself in order to dedicate tripods in the temple of Apollo (RG 24.2). Much as Lucan’s account of the civil wars responded directly to Caesar’s (Masters [1992] 17-25), the Octavia poet has his Nero do the same with Augustus’ account of the civil wars. Once again, however, Nero’s status as their Julio-Claudian descendent shifts our interpretation of this similar literary endeavor. According to Julius Saturninus, a source of unknown date cited by Suetonius, Octavian had once had a very different understanding of clementia and its utility, asserting against Lepidus’ appeals to the virtue that the proscriptions had “left everything open to him,” (Suet. Aug.27.2). This is the “Augustan” voice that Nero champions.
91 prefer Seneca’s more palatable memories or Nero’s gruesome aesthetics. Nero is less interested in how victory can be represented and remembered after the fact; rather he is interested in power—both in acquiring and in maintaining it. Nero sees that Augustan power was rooted unapologetically in the violence of the civil wars that Seneca delicately omits, and thereby suggests a rather shocking lens through which an imperial heir of the
Julio-Claudian house might remember Augustan history and his own imperial inheritance.76
Were these lines spoken by any character in the Octavia other than Nero, critics might refer to them as subversive or oppositional readings of imperial literature and
Augustan history.77 In other words, were Seneca, Octavia, Agrippina, or even Poppaea to describe Augustus in these terms, the reader would be reminded that they all died at the hands of Augustus’ direct descendant and thus their critique of Augustus could be read as an implicit critique of the system he established that brought a tyrant like Nero to power.78 Indeed, there is something oppositional about what Nero says if we define opposition as that which contradicts what the ideology and the cultural memory of the
76 Damon (2010b) demonstrates how Tacitus’ Nero also uses civil war exempla to guide his decisions.
77 The issue of “subversive” or “oppositional” literature is too large to treat here. Scholars have largely moved away from terms like “subversive” (and its implied binary of authorial stances that either unilaterally support or condemn the current regime) towards a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between literature and politics. Nevertheless, questions persist about of freedom of speech, double-speak, figured language and other means through which an author might voice his political discontent. A good discussion of “subversive” as a term and a mode of thinking can be found in the recent volume Writing Politics in Imperial Rome edited by Dominik, Garthwaite, and Roche (2009, 3-5) and also in Rutledge’s chapter therein on freedom of speech under the empire (2009, 23-61). Cf. also Levick (2010) 164-67 and 270-1. Ahl’s seminal studies (1984a and 1984b) on subversion and figured speech are still crucial reading on the subject.
78 So Levick (2010) suggests that Augustus’ descendents condemn him through their failure. Levick’s analysis of the problems with using Augustus’ as an exemplum nicely encapsulate the problems with his memory from the period of the Julio-Claudians through the Flavians (Levick [2010] 293ff). “The first princeps had become one of the foundations on which the future of post-Neronian Rome was to be built,” (Levick [2010] 296); and yet the Octavia calls into question what such a foundation would mean.
92 Augustan age have led us to expect. While Seneca largely depicts Augustan history as he imagines Augustus himself wanted it remembered, Nero emphasizes triumviral history and the impossibility of remembering Augustus accurately without remembering the men he killed to gain power.79 Nero suggests continuity between the civil wars of the late
Republic and the political struggles of his own reign, and so he proudly takes from the triumviral period—rather than from the subsequent Augustan age—his own imperial ideology.80
Nero worships Augustus’ memory and seeks to rule from his model, much as the historical Nero professed at the outset of his reign. The Augustus that the Octavia’s Nero chooses to remember, however, is not the virtuous princeps of legend, but rather the young man whose massacres in civil war led him to imperial power. Nero, as the last of the Julio-Claudians, seeks in the memory of his dynasty’s rise an exemplum for the bloody violence with which he seeks to maintain his own power, seeing in civil-war politics the answer to his current problems. Nero revels in the anxiety, confusion, and fear of those Roman authors who experienced the civil wars and their aftermath; this anxiety is what keeps his family in power. Although the play focuses on the end of the
79 I agree with Wilson (2003b, 88) who concludes: “Nero is caught saying what no princeps would ever admit publically.” I suggest, however, that that does not make it untrue. The need to reconcile these two sides to Augustus seems to have become a topos in early imperial literature (cf. Williams [2009] 204-6 and Hardie [1992] 61). The poet of the Octavia, however, is one of the earliest to treat this topos from the point of view of the end of the dynasty Augustus created and the renewal of the civil wars which he had claimed to have suppressed. Thus such meditations on Augustus throughout the Octavia naturally reflect also on the new claimants to the throne, and on the distance between representation and reality in their own emerging and ideology.
80 “Whatever the mitigation to be allowed to him, or the blame to be attached to his antagonists, Octavian, participant in the Perusine war as well as the campaign of Philippi and the proscriptions, must bear the greatest responsibility—and be credited with systematic and rational efforts to realize his ambitions,” (Levick [2010] 24-5). So too Nero will display a cool and reasoned approach to systematically eliminating threats against him within the play. Given the bloody year of civil war into which the historical Nero’s own principate descended and out of which the Flavian dynasty arose, the Octavia poet makes his Nero eerily prescient.
93 Julio-Claudian dynasty, at its center is a renegotiation of how to remember the dynasty’s beginning. By looking to the beginning, we come to understand the end. Civil war and civil war memory remain paramount throughout.
It is notable that Seneca nowhere finds the strength to respond to Nero’s drastically different memories of Augustus.81 Perhaps there was nothing he could say.
The validity of Nero’s account of Augustus’ rise to power and its suitability as a way of reading his own political situation is confirmed in many ways by the outbreak of civil strife throughout the rest of the play.82 As we turn from the play’s reflection on Rome’s previous experience of civil war under Augustus to its depiction of life under Nero, we must keep much in mind that, to Nero at least and possibly also to Seneca, civil-war politics and imperial power are two sides of the same coin, and thus we must be prepared
81 When Seneca speaks again, he and Nero have moved onto a new topic: dynasty and the production of an imperial heir (Oct. 533ff). Wilson (2003b, 87-88) sees no fault in Seneca for not responding to Nero because a “refutation is unnecessary: the audience already knows what is wrong with Nero’s attitude.” I am not sure that we can interpret this striking silence so one-sidedly given that previously when Seneca had swiftly switched topics from Augustus to Nero, he did so out of an inability to continue to rationalize Augustus’ early career and instead chose to turn to Nero’s “bloodless” accession (Oct. 482ff).
82 Nevertheless critics are quick to read Nero as a rather flat character who offers a distorted memory of Augustus: a typical stage tyrant whose understanding of imperial politics pales in comparison to Seneca’s ultimately correct but unheeded advice. See, e.g. Manuwald (2003, 51) who suggests that in his response to Seneca’s rational appeal to the ideal ruler, “Nero’s long response shows his embarrassment; he can only insist on his claim to arbitrary rule and interpret the model of Augustus disparagingly.” Wilson (2003b, 87) claims that “everything Nero says, forceful though it is, condemns him out of his own mouth as unfit to rule, as being no pater patriae [like Augustus in the Res Gestae], and as irredeemably deficient in the beneficent virtues that served as the primary qualifications for divine honors [such as Augustus had won].” Poe (1989, 451) concludes that the reader would be left in no doubt as to whether Seneca or Nero was more informed or more judicious. Sullivan (1985, 64) suggests that in this passage Nero becomes his own accuser. What I hope to have demonstrated, however, is that Nero’s intertextual engagement with overlapping and at times contradictory Julio-Claudian literary memories—as well as his ability to oppose the memory of civil war that Augustus created while idolizing Augustus himself—renders his character and his role within the drama more complex than critics have acknowledged. It is interesting that in this debate over Augustan history, there is a tendency to view him as the rhetorical loser; in the debate between Seneca and Nero in Tacitus’ Annals, however, critics allow for the victory of Nero’s rhetoric (cf. O’Gorman [2000] 151-2). I think critics have judged the Octavia’s Nero too quickly on the basis of what we would like to believe about imperial history, as opposed to on the validity of his arguments.
94 to recognize and analyze reflections of civil war when we see them played out across the stage of Neronian Rome.
CHAPTER 3 – THE OCTAVIA AND THE POETICS OF CIVIL STRIFE
At some point between the years 63 and 66 CE, Nero closed the doors of the temple of
Janus for only the fourth time in Roman history, and for the first time since his ancestor
Augustus had closed them in 29 BCE as part of his celebration over the end of the civil
95 wars.1 Nero minted coins in celebration of this event, declaring that he “closed Janus when peace for the Roman People had been imposed on land and sea” (e.g. Pace P R
Terra Mariq Parta Ianum Clusit).2 According to the emperor’s public imagery, peace characterized his reign. And yet in 62 CE the Roman people had rioted against him on behalf of his erstwhile wife Octavia, and in 66 CE the emperor escaped one of the more notorious conspiracies against his life. Only two years later in 68 CE, Nero would flee for his life as various usurpers rose up against him, an event that developed, upon Nero’s suicide, into the bloody year of the four emperors after which a new dynasty rose to power and once more dramatically closed the doors to the temple of Janus for perhaps the final time in Roman history.3 In retrospect, then, it may seem that Nero protested too much about the peaceful nature of his reign.
Several scholars have suggested that, in his account of Julio-Claudian—and especially Neronian—Rome, Tacitus explicitly challenges the rhetoric of pax et princeps, writing of the principate as an era during which emperors like Nero continually waged a form of civil war on their own citizens.4 No one has noted, however, that this rendering
1 The exact dating of Nero’s closure of the temple is controversial. Suetonius dates the closure to 66 CE and most of the numismatic evidence is from this year. Some of the coins celebrating it are from 64/5 CE which could either imply that the ceremony was planned to take place earlier, or perhaps that it even did take place when peace with Parthia was achieved in 63 CE (Shotter [2008] 99, 196-7; Champlin [2003] 140, 223-5; Griffin [1984] 122 and n. 12). Tacitus notoriously does not mention Nero’s closure in the extant Annals, and according to Orosius (7.3.7) Tacitus later states in his Histories that the temple remained open from Augustus through Vespasian. Numismatic evidence points to the Neronian closure actually happening, and dispute over it may in fact have arisen from anti-Neronian Flavian propaganda. Cf. Syme (1979) and Townend (1980). Nero also minted an Ara Pacis coin in 64 CE (e.g. RIC2 No. 458), and thus clearly associations with peace (and with Augustan peace at that) peppered Nero’s public image, an aspect of Nero’s reign that we have seen the Octavia is very interested in confronting and challenging.
2 RIC2 no. 50; BMCRE 64.
3 The only two non-Neronian closures of the temple in the imperial period were to celebrate the end of civil wars in 70/71 CE (Levick [1999] 70-71), an association available to a Vespasianic author and/or audience.
4 Keitel (1984) and Damon (2010b). Keitel’s arguments will be discussed in more detail at the end of the chapter in connection with Nero’s creation of an urbs capta narrative.
96 of Julio-Claudian Rome is not unique to Tacitus. In fact, the Octavia is perhaps the earliest (or at least the earliest surviving) text to explicitly read Neronian Rome in this way, taking an era of documented peace and restaging it on the model of a civil war with all the generic markers, language, and thematic resonance that a Roman audience had come to expect from such narratives of strife.5 My previous two chapters have analyzed the dialogue between Nero and Seneca over the memory of Augustus’ civil wars and the significance of that memory to Neronian Rome. We saw how, in the end, Nero did not choose Augustus as his model, but his bloody alter ego Octavian, seeing in the period of civil war the fundamental tools for gaining and maintaining imperial power. At the end of that dialogue, we were left to wonder what Nero’s professed celebration of his ancestor’s civil wars would mean for the current political situation of 62 CE.
This chapter begins to answer that question by exploring the relationship between
Nero and his people during the riot of 62 CE. In it, I explore the playwright’s redeployment of stock civil-war motifs within a period of history largely free from strife on any large scale, and how he uses his audience’s familiarity with civil-war narratives to create an instance of civil war where none technically existed. I will also examine the play’s wider engagement with the “poetics of civil war”—by which I mean not only the poet’s redeployment of generic markers for civil-war narrative, but also his engagement with certain archetypical and programmatic earlier exemplars of civil-war narrative in
Julio-Claudian literature. The playwright often has his characters activate and play with ideas of civil-war narrative in a self-conscious and at times metapoetic manner; in doing so, he creates out of certain characters a series of “poet-figures” who continue to read
5 Of course Lucan predates these authors, but Lucan was implicitly rather than explicitly treating imperial history in his epic, and thus the Octavia reflects a new turn in the representation of imperial history.
97 onto Neronian Rome the narrative strategies and programmatic passages of the playwright’s predecessors in civil-war poetry. By staging and restaging certain prominent motifs and passages from previous well-known civil-war narratives, the Octavia poet not only turns its subject into such a narrative, but also turns himself and some of his characters into self-conscious civil-war poets who inherit an established and important tradition of Roman literature.
Animis temere conceptus furor: Towards a Poetics of Civil War
This chapter largely traces the Octavia’s depiction of the riot of 62 CE through a series of close readings that focus on how the play restages this riot through its engagement with earlier civil-war literature. Before doing so, however, something must be said about how the play as a whole engages with the traditional cultural and generic markers of civil-war narrative, from certain words, phrases, and motifs to wider thematic concerns that often appear in texts that describe Romans fighting fellow Romans. Much of the programmatic terminology from earlier Roman civil-war literature appears frequently scattered throughout the play to characterize both the strife within the Julio-Claudian household and the people’s riot on behalf of Octavia. This powerful vocabulary and imagery implicitly asks us to read the dynastic purge of 62 CE and the subsequent riots in the streets of Rome in terms of the civil wars of the late Republic.6 Nevertheless, suggesting
6 On the role of generic markers in influencing interpretation along these lines, see Fowler (1982) 82-9. “The generic markers that cluster [in important places]… have a strategic role in guiding the reader. They help establish, as soon as possible, an appropriate mental ‘set’ that allows the work’s generic codes to be read,” (Fowler [1982] 88). Civil-war narrative is of course not a “genre” in the strict sense, but Fowler’s work and recent work on genre theory in general notes the fluidity of genre and its subcategories. Thus civil-war narrative can have its own “generic markers” in Roman literature. Cf. also Jauss (1982, 23): “a literary work…predisposes its audience to a very specific kind of reception by announcements, overt and
98 that the poet incorporates the language of civil war into his account of Julio-Claudian dynastic history presupposes that there was an easily recognizable language of civil war for the taking.7 After a brief excursus on the nature of this language, the sources for its use, its development over time, and the imagery associated with it, I examine the
Octavia’s redeployment of these stock “poetics” and the wider narrative significance of this generic positioning for our interpretation of the play as a whole.
The desire to offer a unified picture of Roman civil-war narrative, its tropes, and generic markers across Roman literature is perhaps a flawed enterprise. After all, long before Lucan’s Bellum Civile, Cicero had been able to praise Pompey’s civil wars without the least bit of irony (Cic. Man. 28). Osgood’s recent synthesis of the triumviral period and its literary legacy aims at just such a unified account, but even he notes that his work emphasizes a plurality of voices, experiences, and reactions to civil war, nor does he try to enforce uniformity where it may not exist. At the same time, however, for our purposes it is less necessary to understand what civil-war narratives looked like when the subject first gained popularity in the late Republic. On the contrary, we are inherently more interested in what civil war looked like to authors of the early empire, in the time period after the phenomenal success of Lucan’s Bellum Civile and a period in which
Horace’s poetry saw its height of post-Augustan popularity.8 By this period, no matter
covert signals, familiar characteristics or implicit allusions. It awakens memories of that which was already read…and arouses expectations…which can then be maintained intact or altered, reoriented or even fulfilled ironically in the course of reading according to specific rules of the genre or type of text.”
7 “The problem of boundaries is still more acute in the case of quotations that refer not to a particular text but to a system. The term system is used here to refer to verbal categories, literary and non-literary, larger than single texts,” (Edmunds [2001] 143). Edmunds’ discussion of these “systems”—which include genres and their various sub-categories—is a useful way of reading the role of civil-war “poetics” in the Octavia.
8 Batstone (2010, 51) is particularly instructive. He notes that, “most discussions of Roman civil war depend heavily on a single version of civil war, one that defines civil war as inherently Roman, an ancestral
99 how varied they had appeared in the past, civil-war narratives now had defining characteristics and language associated with them, and it is to these characteristics and their previous deployment that we now turn.9
At the time of the play’s composition, the language of civil war would have been invariably wrapped up in the reception of Lucan’s Bellum Civile.10 Lucan’s epic had made concrete and, in a sense, “canonical” many aspects of civil-war narrative that had originated previously. The Bellum Civile characterized Roman civil war as an unnatural crime (nefas and scelus) committed by a citizen body (cives, civilis) who, infected by madness (furor) and frenzy (rabies), viewed their own fellow citizens as enemies (hostes) and their own city as a battleground.11 Lucan and his contemporaries had in turn been
curse that requires bloodletting. But was civil war a single reality, an identifiable thing, a Roman attribute, fully developed in all its horror by Lucan but a reality for all who lived through and after the hundred years of the Republic?...but civil war…in Lucan’s sense is not the civil war we find when we look at the earliest expressions of concern over civil discord, or the first mention of bellum civile. This, of course, raises an important question. When did civil war become civil war?” For Batsone (53), Horace was a fundamental turning point as his poetry was the earliest retrospective account of civil war (and for Batstone, hindsight is the key to the process by which civil war is aestheticized in later Roman literature) and it also crystallized a working language for civil war which was incredibly influential on future authors. See also Breed, Damon, and Rossi (2010) 8-10.
9 Thus, even if the Octavia poet filters his different sort of civil-war narrative through his own experience or Rome’s wider recent experience of civil war in 69 CE, he nevertheless does so by appealing to the now “canonical” idea of what a civil war should look like. We might productively compare Statius and Valerius Flaccus in this regard, whose accounts of civil war are as much about their reception of previous civil-war narrative tradition as they are about the memory of 69 CE.
10 O’Gorman (1995) 117. O’Gorman’s analysis of how Tacitus not only engages with Lucanean language and content, but also attempts to rival Lucan’s poetics has greatly influenced my thought and analysis of how the Octavia’s various characters engage in civil-war poetics while painting Neronian Rome as a civil- war landscape. Cf. also Ganiban (2007) whose work, though nominally about Statius’ reception of Vergil, mentions Lucan on nearly every page as an important predecessor in civil-war “poetics.”
11 For the poetics of civil war as expressed by Lucan and variously interpreted by his critics, see Bonner (2010); Conte (2010); Fantham (2010) esp 1-2 with nn. 1-4; Bartsch (1998) esp. 10-72; Henderson (1998b); Masters (1992) esp. 205-15; Bramble (1982). For nefas and scelus as civil-war terms in Lucan, see e.g. Luc. 1.2, 1.6, 1.37, 1.325, 2.4, 2.75, 2.192, 2.286, 7.95, 7.242, 7.699. For the rhetorical use of civis and civilis, see e.g. Luc. 1.1, 1.8, 1.14, 1.44, 1.192, 7.95, 7.241. For the focus on madness (furor and rabies), see e.g. Luc. 1.8, 1.68, 1.666, 1.669, 1.680, 7.51, 7.245, 7.474. For Horace’s influence on Lucan, especially in terms of Epode 7 and 16, see Roche (2009) 24-5. See also Mayer (1982) 313-15; Pichon (1912) 230ff; Malcovati (1947) 98ff; Paschalis (1982).
100 influenced by writers of the Augustan age such as Horace, Vergil, and Livy, who had described civil war as part and parcel of Roman identity, a reflection of an original sin that they hoped—however sincerely—had been expiated by the rise of the Augustan age.12 Behind the Augustan age construction of civil-war literature lay the authors of the late Republic; one thinks predominantly here of Sallust and Cicero, who had each variously described how the madness of one man could infect the Roman people en masse and drive them into civil strife against their country.13 Pollio’s Histories, which I discuss in more detail below, were obviously a crucial link in the chain of the narrative tradition of Roman civil war that is now unfortunately lost to us, as are likely other influential intermediary steps between Horace and Lucan.14
No matter how disparate the projects or opinions of each author may have been, out of these literary and historical reactions to Roman civil strife developed a unified
12 One thinks primarily of Horace’s poetry (e.g. H. Carm.1.2.29, 1.25.33, 1.35.35, 1.37.5, 3.24.24, 3.24.30, 4.5.22, H. Epod.7, 16.14, 16.29). For Horace’s role in the development of a particularized language with which to discuss civil war and its expiation, see Thome (1992) 89-92. See also Ganiban (2007, 35 n. 44) who, although arguing for Vergilian roots for the language, nevertheless discusses much Horatian material. Horace, seems to be the originator (or, less likely, the earliest surviving exemplar) of the idea of civil war as Rome’s hereditary curse in Epode 7 (Batstone [2010] 51-3; Wiseman [2010] 25). For other Augustan authors similarly interested in creating a literary vocabulary with which to discuss civil strife, see e.g. V. Geor.1.505-506, V. Aen.7.583, Liv. 1.13, Liv. 1.46-48. For the increased use of ethical vocabulary, especially in connection with civil-war literature and for discussions of Roman hereditary bloodguilt in the late Republic and early Augustan age, see Jal (1963); Ganiban (2007) 34-35 with n. 44; Thome (1992) 89- 92; Cipriano (1978) 82-91. For Augustan ideology as related to concepts of sin and the Golden Age, see Wallace-Hadrill (1982). For the idea that the curse has become dormant under the Pax Augusta and the possibility of society-wide expiation, see V. Aen.1.292 ff., H. Carm.1.2, Carm.1.35.33ff., Carm.3.3.18 ff.
13 The revolution of Catiline and its various literary treatments seems to have been an important turning point in the development of civil-war narrative. Cicero makes much use of the vocabulary that would become standard civil-war fare, especially in his accusations against Catiline as a revolutionary (e.g. Cic. Cat. 1.1; 1.6; 1.11-12; 1.14; 1.17; 1.25; 1.27; 1.31; 1.33). Sallust in many ways echoes Cicero, although their literary and rhetorical aims are quite different (e.g. Sal. Cat.15; 24; 31; 54). The most recent analysis of Sallust’s contribution to the rhetoric of civil strife in Roman literature is Batstone (2010) who not only analyzes Sallust’s reception of Thucydides and his influence on Lucan, but also his own wider “poetics” of civil war and their significance. For a slightly different take on Sallust’s position—focusing more on his role in the development of ideas latent Cicero and Varro—see Wiseman (2010) esp. 37ff. See also Fantham (2010, 210) on Sallust’s use of civil discord and concord as programmatic themes.
14 For the influence of Pollio, see below pp. 130-35.
101 vocabulary.15 The religiously charged vocabulary for monstrous crime—nefas and scelus—is consistently used as a periphrasis for civil war (bellum civile) to underscore its impiety (impietas) and how it undermines the ideological underpinnings of the Roman state. The various peoples involved in the battle are envisioned as if they are infected by an uncontrollable madness (furor; rabies) from which they cannot extricate themselves.16
The motif of civil madness, commonly described as civilis furor, appears frequently in civil-war literature to underscore the inherent irrationality of the collective Roman people and the necessity of having a strong leader to guide them back to the path of correct behavior.17 The language of citizenship (civis; civilis) is also juxtaposed with rhetorical inversions of the term for foreign enemy (hostis) to underscore the ideological tensions inherent when Roman fights against Roman.18
In addition to this programmatic language, certain motifs also recur throughout civil-war literature. The image of the father-in-law (socer) versus the son-in-law (gener) becomes a central scene in such narratives, especially in the wake of Caesar’s civil war
15 For current thinking on civil-war narrative, see the introduction to Breed, Damon, and Rossi (2010).
16 “Rage and madness (furor, rabies) become perhaps the most prominent of the metaphors that take hold of Roman conceptions of civil war,” (Breed, Damon, and Rossi [2010] 6).
17 Livy describes the raging of the citizens against Camillus in the aftermath of the siege of Veii in similar terms (furere civitatem, Liv. 5.25). Horace had championed the Augustan age as one in which civil madness was finally kept at bay (custode rerum Caesare non furor/ civilis aut vis exiget otium/ non ira, qua procudit enses/ et miseras inimicat urbes, H. Carm.4.15.17-20). Seneca the Elder similarly described the power of civil madness in the preface to the first book of his Controversiae (bellorum civilium furor, qui tunc orbem totum pervagabatur… Sen. Cont.1.Praef.11). In general, these phrases for civil madness (furor populi, civilis furor, civium furor, or civica rabies) seem to have appealed to authors of civil-war literature due to the inherent paradox in the juxtaposition of a term for frenzied and uncontrolled passion with the Roman people, who ought to be guided by reason. The furor of an individual is a useful tool in political invective; the furor of the entire populace is cause for alarm.
18 For the rhetorically pointed and polemical use of hostis in civil-war literature and propaganda of the late Republic and early Empire, see Chapter 1 n. 10.
102 with Pompey.19 Hand in hand with this image of the ultimate familial bond under siege is the perceived inversion of traditional Roman morals as well as the associated ethical terminology.20 In other words, not only are virtues such as clementia, pietas, iustitia, virtus, etc. shown to have no place in civil war, the various words that define these virtues seem themselves to be under attack and to be redefined by the civil-war state: it becomes impossible to distinguish between good and bad, virtuous and criminal, patriotic and treasonous, etc. Until one side wins the war and establishes its ideology and its memory of events as canonical, these ethical distinctions have no meaning.21 A related phenomenon is the idea that ambition or greed—sometimes dangerously combined with a predilection for deceit—causes civil war by breaking down traditional Roman values in the name of acquiring power. In particular, phrases such as “desire for power” (cupido regendi, vel sim) appear often in texts that explore the origins of civil strife in Roman culture and history.22 Certain geographical locations, especially Egypt and the locations
19 The locus classicus is Anchises’ description of Caesar and Pompey (V. Aen.6.826-35). Juno echoes these lines when she drives the Trojans and Latins into proto-civil war (V. Aen .7.317). See also Livy’s description of the Rape of the Sabines (Liv. 1.13), one of Rome’s early proto-civil wars, and Servius Tullius’ murder and the subsequent revolution (Liv. 1.49). Lucan unsurprisingly revels in paradoxical inversions of family ties (e.g. Luc. 1.118, 1.289-90, 7.53, 7.701), on which see further Bartsch (1998) 48- 72. On the effect of Discordia on the Roman family, see generally Breed, Damon, and Rossi (2010) 4-5.
20 The locus classicus for this idea is Thucydides’ account of the revolt at Corcyra (Thuc. 3.82-4). Although the source for the trope is ultimately Greek, Roman authors adopt it frequently to describe the effects of civil war on their own society. The above discussion is not to suggest what is absent from civil-war narratives from other cultures, but rather to highlight what is omnipresent in Roman civil-war narratives. For Sallust’s redeployment of this Thucydidean motif, see esp. Sall. Cat.10.6, 12.1, and 36.5. For a recent reading of Sallust’s reception of the Thucydidean idea, see Batstone (2010). For Thucydides’ influence on Greek historians of Roman civil-war narratives, see Pelling (2010). For the way in which Lucan makes concrete the generalizations found in Thucydides’ account, see Martindale (1976) 48. For a more general discussion of the inversion of ethics and ethical terminology which civil war causes, see Roller (2001) 28ff and Bartsch (1998) 50-58. While the focus of both Roller and Bartsch in these passages is ultimately also Lucan, they nevertheless discuss the backdrop of civil-war narrative techniques against which Lucan wrote.
21 Cf. the address of Lucan’s Caesar to his troops (haec, fato quae teste probet, quis iustius arma/ sumpserit; haec acies uictum factura nocentem est, Luc. 7.259-60).
22 Trickery and greed/ambition are the preconditions for stasis as described in Thucydides (3.82.3) and Sallust (Cat. 10.3). They also appear frequently in the strife-ridden narratives of Livy’s early history:
103 of important battles like Pharsalia and Philippi, are described as if “theatres of never- ending bloodshed” due to repeated use as a stage for Roman civil war.23 These same locations as well as the city of Rome itself tend to be described as described as “wet with civil bloodshed” or “enriched with citizen blood.”24 The city of Rome is often characterized as if a typical captured city (urbs capta), a motif from Roman historiography and epic that is turned on its head to underscore the horror of sacking one’s own native city.25 This combination of different motifs, although not necessarily sharing an easily categorized or standardized vocabulary, nevertheless becomes ubiquitous in Roman narratives of civil war from the late Republic through the early empire, and, consequently, when it appears in the Octavia alongside the programmatic language of civil war, it brings to the text these implications.
intervenit deinde his cogitationibus avitum malum, regni cupido (Liv. 1.6); patrum interim animos certamen regni ac cupido versabat (Liv. 1.17); ego me, illum acerrimum regum hostem, ipsum cupiditatis regni crimen subiturum timerem (Liv. 2.7). Cf. also: flagransque cupidine regni (Luc. 7.240). For the role of trickery and greed/ambition in Roman civil-war narratives, see especially Batstone (2010); Wiseman (2010) 32-39; Keitel (1984).
23 For the phrasing, see Ferri (2003) ad 521-2. E.g. concurrere…Romanas acies iterum videre Philippi…bis sanguine nostro Emathiam…pinguescere (V. Georg.1.489-92); Emathiaque iterum madefient caede Philippi (Ov. Met.15.824, also noted by Ferri [2003] ad 516-7).
24 Vergil twice characterizes his proto-civil war Italian landscape thus (atro tepefacta cruore/ terra torique madent, V. Aen.9.333-4; disiecta per agmina Turnus/ sic urbis ruit ad muros, ubi plurima fuso/ sanguine terra madet, V. Aen.12.689-91). Vergil had already similarly described the aftermath of Caesar’s death and the late Republican civil wars in the Georgics (nec tempore eodem… manare cruor cessauit, V. Georg.1.483-5). Horace had appealed to the same trope (quis non Latino sanguine pinguior/ campus sepulchris impia proelia/ testatur…? H. Carm.2.1.29-3). Ovid describes Philippi in similar language (Emathiique iterum madefient caede Philippi, Ov. Met.15.824). He had already spoken similarly about the Age of Iron when Astraea left an earth soaked in impious blood, an age filled with reminiscences of civil strife (victa iacet pietas, et virgo caede madentis/ ultima caelestum terras Astraea reliquit, Ov. Met.1.149- 50). Martial will go on to echo similar language in his epigram on Cicero and Catiline (maestaque civili caede maderet humus, Mart. 9.70.4), suggesting that even in the Flavian period and beyond such images remained ubiquitously connected to narratives of civil war. Fantham (2010, 215-6) suggests that the image of Roman soil wet with citizen blood originates with the proscriptions and later turns into a more overarching image of Roman civil war due to the horror of this experience.
25 On the urbs capta motif, see Paul (1982). For previous examinations of the motif in in civil-war narratives, see Roche (2009) ad Luc. 1.486-504; Pollmann (2004) ad Stat. Theb.12.107; Baines (2003) on Juvenal; Keitel (1984) on Tacitus.
104
The Octavia and Generic Markers of Civil War:
We have already seen Nero appeal to much of this programmatic language when he describes the civil wars of his ancestors in the passages examined in Chapter 2 (Oct. 492-
529). Nero uses the traditional vocabulary of civil war as a sacrilegious crime (nefas, scelus) to describe how Julius Caesar died from the unspeakable crime of his own citizens (Caesar nefando civium scelere occidit, Oct. 502). He stresses the inherent impiety of civil war when he narrates the end of Augustus’ war with Antony and recalls simultaneously Caesar’s impious war with Pompey (impie gestum diu civile bellum, Oct.
523-4). Nero continually emphasizes that these crimes were committed by Roman citizens against Roman citizens (civium; civile)—the ultimate sin of civil war. That Nero uses programmatic civil-war language to describe a period of civil war should not surprise us. It is significant, however, because it establishes a baseline for how the
Octavia poet narrates a “straight” civil-war episode, and how he follows the narrative conventions of his predecessors like Lucan. When this language and these conventions then reappear elsewhere in the text to describe the events of 62 CE, we can be guided in our interpretation not only by the Octavia’s intertextual echoes of civil-war literature but also by its own intratextual redeployment of these generic conventions.
Before Nero ever appears on stage, Seneca tells us how to read Neronian Rome: a place full of strife-ridden vice where impiety reigns supreme (collecta vitia per tot aetates diu/ in nos redundant: saeculo premimur gravi,/ quo scelera regnant, saevit
105 impietas furens, Oct. 429-31).26 Seneca’s use of scelera, furor, saevire and impietas— language ubiquitous in Roman civil-war narratives—tells us right away what sort of story will follow, allowing Nero’s description of triumviral Rome to solidify our reading. This language appears throughout the text when Julio-Claudian kills Julio-Claudian,27 and the language of madness (furor) also characterizes the members of the imperial family in their relationships with one another.28
Given that the criminal focus of the work tends to be on murders within the Julio-
Claudian family, and all references to external foes indicate that, outside of Rome, the
Roman empire is enjoying peace and prosperity (e.g. Oct. 482-491; 626-628; 752-753;
834-836), it is interesting how frequently the term hostis occurs.29 Though the term hostis primarily refers to an external foe in Latin literature, within the Octavia 7 of its 12 uses clearly describe one member of the Julio-Claudian household’s perception of another as an enemy.30 Of the 5 remaining uses, Octavia refers to Clytemnestra as a hostis to her children (Oct. 63) in the context of reading her own experience through that of Electra’s
26 “An overt indictment of the viciousness of Nero’s Rome, which is the more powerful in its historical context because of the contemporary public imaging of Nero’s Rome as itself a ‘golden age’” (Boyle [2008] ad loc).
27 Most notable are the deaths of Agrippina (e.g. Oct. 130; 166; 309-10; 363-5; 605; 630-5) and Brittanicus (e.g. Oct. 178; 226-7). Other intrafamilial crimes are also described as nefas and scelus, such as Octavia’s future murder (Oct. 55-6), Claudius’ murder (e.g. Oct. 102), Messalina’s execution (e.g. Oct. 266), and the murders that first brought Nero to power (e.g. Oct. 153; 158-9; 661-2).
28 E.g. animi..,furentis (Oct. 98) of Octavia; furens (Oct. 163) of Agrippina; furit (Oct. 189), furit (Oct. 361), and furor (Oct. 633) of Nero; furore (Oct. 269) and furoris (Oct. 272) of Messalina; furor (Oct. 465) of Plautus and Sulla.
29 The author of the Octavia uses the word hostis more times per line than Vergil does in the Aeneid, an epic dealing with multiple significant wars and extended battle descriptions throughout its 12 books. The word hostis appears the Aeneid on average of once every 95 lines, whereas hostis occurs on average once every 82 lines in the Octavia. This is not to say that Vergil was not interested in the redeployment of the term hostis, but rather to show that the Octavia poet, perhaps surprisingly, is very interested in it.
30 e.g. of Nero (Oct. 110, 121, 150); of Agrippina (Oct. 22); of Octavia (Oct. 443, 469, 864). For the particularized use of hostis in narratives of civil strife, see above Chapter 1 n. 10.
106 (Oct. 57-71); thus this usage becomes part of Octavia’s metaliterary comment on the actions within the Julio-Claudian household.31 Similarly, the reference to Nero as “enemy of the gods” (hic hostis deum, Oct. 240) alludes to his destruction of the temple of
Claudius in addition to general sacrilege; this too may be seen as an allusion to strife within a family whose relatives have the power to murder a predecessor and then make him a god (stulte verebor, ipse cum faciam, deos, Oct. 449).32
Somewhat vaguely, Poppaea asks that her terror be visited on her enemies
(terrorque in hostes redeat attonitus meos, Oct. 759), and Agrippina asks that Nero atone for his crimes to his enemies (iugulum hostibus desertus ac destructus et cunctis egens,
Oct. 630). These could be seen as generic uses of hostis in its regular sense: external enemy. The established pattern of use, however, suggests that Poppaea, now married into the Julio-Claudian family, wishes terror on her enemies within the household, namely
Octavia and her faction. Poppaea’s fear (tremor, Oct. 735) echoes Octavia’s earlier nightmare (tremor ingens, Oct. 123), and the intratextual connection between the two doomed imperial women is perhaps meant to foreshadow the new empress’ death at her hostis-husband’s hands. Agrippina similarly wishes upon Nero the suffering that she experienced at his hands (veniet dies tempusque quo reddat suis/…iugulum hostibus, Oct.
629-30): namely that his family turn on him and destroy him, as he destroyed her, a wish ultimately fulfilled in his suicide as the last Julio-Claudian left standing.
31 The ability to refer to a woman as hostis is a particularly Julio-Claudian development as the women of their family rose in power (Flower [2006] 161).
32 For current thinking on this historical allusion, see Ferri (2003) ad 241. The temple was later prominently restored by the Flavians in homage to Claudius’ memory and against the memory of the impius Nero. Nero here also echoes Lucan’s description of Caesar as a man whose men only fear him because they themselves may him fearful (usque adeo times quem tu facis ipse timendum? Luc. 4.185).
107 Finally, when the character Seneca interprets Augustus’ civil war as a son’s pursuit of his father’s hostes (Oct. 477ff), Nero suggests that in his own actions he is following Augustus’ example (Oct. 503ff). As Augustus had brutally murdered all hostes that stood in his way to secure his throne, so too Nero will root out all enemies—fellow
Romans connected to him by blood (hostes, Oct. 468-9)—and thus ensure his divine legacy (Oct. 530-532).33 The term hostis had been used to describe factions in civil war previously in late Republican literature as well as in Lucan’s Bellum Civile, and thus already carried with the associations of civil-war literature when used to describe strife between Romans.34 Nevertheless, the author of the Octavia pushes further that nuance by taking the language of foreign foes and applying it to factions not among Roman cives but among warring members of the Julio-Claudian household who view each other as internal constant threats in their struggle for power, even in a time of national peace.
Not only are the Julio-Claudians represented as hostes throughout the play, but their struggles are further described in terms of the typical socer-gener struggles of civil- war literature. Octavia’s Nurse in particular seems eager to cast her catalogue of imperial crimes in prototypical civil-war terms:
hinc orta series facinorum: caedes, doli, regni cupido, sanguinis diri sitis; mactata soceri concidit thalamis gener 145 victima, tuis ne fieret hymenaeis potens. pro facinus ingens! feminae est munus datus Silanus et cruore foedavit suo patrios penates, criminis ficti reus. intravit hostis, ei mihi, captam domum 150 dolis novercae, principis factus gener idemque natus, iuvenis infandi ingeni…
33 It is tempting to read capita caesorum (510) as Nero’s punning legitimization of killing his Caesarian relatives. See also Chapter 2 n. 26.
34 In the Octavia, much as in Lucan (e.g. Luc. 1.203, 2.440, 6.156, 6.171-73, 7.274-6, 7.319, 7.365, etc), various characters on both sides use hostis to describe those on the opposing side of a domestic battle.
108 quis tot referre facinorum formas potest et spes nefandas feminae et blandos dolos regnum petentis per gradus scelerum omnium? tunc sancta Pietas extulit trepidos gradus (Oct. 143-60)
And here began a series of crimes: murder, treachery, lust for power, thirst for vile blood. Son-in-law fell victim to the bed of his father-in-law, lest he become too powerful by wedding you. Oh monstrous crime! Silanus was a gift to a woman and polluted with his own blood his own Penates, accused of a false crime. The enemy entered—curse the day!—a house captured by a stepmother’s deceit, now the emperor’s son-in-law and son—a boy of unspeakable character…who can recount the many forms of crime, the woman’s wicked hopes and smooth tricks, as she sought the throne though the steps of every crime? At that point, holy Piety withdrew her trembling steps.
As she catalogues the recent horrors of the Julio-Claudian house, the Nurse specifically emphasizes the murder of son-in-law by father-in-law (mactata soceri concidit thalamis gener/ victima, Oct. 145-6), bringing to mind the typical oppositions found in Roman civil-war narrative.35 She goes on to describe how Nero—simultaneously son-in-law and besieging enemy—invaded the palace and soon put an end to his father-in-law’s power
(invadit hostis…gener, Oct. 150-1). Thus the Nurse describes how the Julio-Claudians themselves play out their strife in terms of traditional socer-gener warfare, where son-in- law and enemy are not mutually exclusive terms.36 Deceit and lust for power, the two precursors to stasis as emphasized by Sallust and others, recur frequently throughout her narrative (doli, regni cupido, Oct. 143-4; dolis novercae, Oct. 151; regnum petentis, Oct.
159; blandos dolos, Oct. 158).37 Furthermore, her insistence that Nero and Agrippina besiege the imperial palace as if attacking a foreign city-state (intravit hostis, ei mihi,
35 “Roman writers were especially fond of underscoring paradoxical family relationships, the most famous being that between Pompey, the ‘son in law’, gener, and Julius Caesar, the ‘father in law’, socer” (Boyle [2008] ad loc). Boyle does not note strongly enough, however, how the Nurse in a sense is twisting history here in order to make this paradox fit the socer-gener mold.
36 In Roman civil-war literature, authors focus on the family as a microcosm of the state and the breakdown of traditional values on a family level. This trope is here magnified and inverted as the state has become one massively dysfunctional family whose strife implicates the entire state in a civil-war narrative that it need not otherwise have experienced.
37 See above, n. 22.
109 captam domum/ dolis novercae, Oct. 150-1), brings into her narrative of imperial succession the rhetorical trope of the urbs capta.38
As she comes to the end of her narrative of Nero’s rise to power, the Nurse pauses to ask who could possibly narrate all the forms of crime following the young prince’s hostile invasion (quis tot referre facinorum formas potest, Oct. 157). Her rhetoric activates what Ellen O’Gorman has termed a “catalogue of crisis,” language often found in Roman civil-war literature.39 While a generic appeal is likely, the Nurse’s language is also reminiscent of a specific “catalogue of crisis” from earlier Roman literature: her language seems borrowed from Vergil’s Sibyl at the moment where the Sibyl had introduced her catalogue of Roman citizens who rose up against their own state (non, mihi si linguae centum sint oraque centum,/ ferrea vox, omnis scelerum comprendere formas… possim, V. Aen.6.625-7ff).40 Through this intertextual association the machinations of Nero and his mother become tantamount to the crimes that former
Roman statesmen committed against their own fatherland and for which they pay the eternal punishment in Vergil’s underworld. The Nurse ends her catalogue appropriately by describing how Piety—that virtue whose opposite in many ways defines civil war—
38 The idea of the imperial palace as an urbs capta appears elsewhere in the play. Octavia declares her home under attack by a cruel tyrant and herself an enslaved hostage (servitque domus/ cum prole tua capta tyranno, Oct. 32-3). Her Nurse similarly describes the once powerful home as now overturned and leveled to the ground by an enemy (modo praepotentem cernat eversam domum, Oct. 37). Agrippina’s death as narrated by the chorus (to be in examined in greater detail in Chapter 4) echoes typical urbs capta scenes. As her ship collapses, female laments fill the heavens (tollitur ingens clamor ad astra/ cum femineo mixtus planctu, Oct. 319-20). Lamentation, especially expressed in such hyperbolic terms, is typical of fallen city scenes (e.g. the suicide of Dido ad V. Aen.4.663). That it is never made clear who these lamenting women are or where they came from suggests further a scene borrowed from the epic or historiographical tradition (Ferri [2003] ad loc.). We will examine in more detail the more extensive engagement with the urbs capta trope that happens between Nero and his citizens at the end of this chapter.
39 O’Gorman (1995) 119.
40 Ferri (2003) ad loc. By aligning herself with Vergil’s Sibyl, the Nurse here becomes a sort of “poet- figure”—an implication I will return to later in this chapter with reference to the messenger scene. For this topos and Vergil’s deployment of it, see most recently Gowers (2005).
110 departed from imperial Rome (Oct. 159-60), a description which also corresponds directly to Seneca’s assertion that Impiety reigns supreme (Oct. 429-31). Thus by having
Octavia’s Nurse weave into her introductory narrative of imperial crime the standard rhetorical elements of Roman civil-war narratives, the Octavia poet asks us to read
Nero’s rise to power in terms of just such a narrative.
This is more than just typical Silver Age interest in the gruesome; likewise it is more than the reception of poets like Lucan for reception’s sake. Instead, through the
Octavia’s extensive redeployment of the building-blocks of Roman civil-war narrative, the playwright makes manifest the predilection for civil war that Nero implicitly displays in his description of Augustus’ rise to power. Nero is not operating under the assumption that peace and other imperial virtues will hold the principate for him; instead he sees that only in the vices of civil war are the keys to power found. The private struggle within the walls of the imperial palace between Nero and his relatives thus becomes larger than a family squabble. Instead, the playwright puts it in dialogue previous instances of civil war in Roman history that were engendered by the same passion and driven by the same motivations. The imperial family, in a sense, is shown to be waging civil war on itself.
The madness of civil war, however, is not limited to the play’s leading family. Instead, civil war and its associated passions lurk throughout the city like a disease, ready to infect the Roman people and lead the city once more into full-fledged chaos, and it is to this outbreak—the riot of 62 CE—that we now turn for the rest of this chapter.
The more generalized interaction with civil-war material throughout the play lays the foundation its characters to engage more specific models in order to further read the political crisis of 62 CE against the backdrop of the prior tradition of political strife at
111 Rome. Thus throughout the episode of the riot, the Octavia’s various characters create larger intertextual units through which they engage—at times almost self-consciously and metapoetically—with the idea of civil-war narrative and with their own role in generating this type of narrative anew via their poetic voices in the play. In this way, through the riot of 62 CE, the Octavia poet not only stages the historical event in terms of civil war, but also variously stages on a metapoetic level various receptions of civil-war literature and various approaches to creating that literature in the first place.
Furor armat ministros: The Seditious Nature of Nero’s Citizens
One of the most famous depictions of civil strife in Roman literature comes from the first book of Vergil’s Aeneid at the end of the tale of Aeolus, king of the winds, who in a moment of weakness allowed strife to explode across his realm. Aeolus is one of the first king-figures that the reader meets in the Aeneid, and thus a significant touchstone for one of the epic’s major themes—namely, kingly power and its deployment.41 Additionally significant is that the simile which compares his violent winds to a seditious mob is the first simile in the epic, and also the first explicit point of contact between the epic’s mythological time and the historical backdrop of the late Republic’s and early empire’s strife-ridden politics. This episode, therefore, is of great significance to any reading of the
Aeneid and consequently becomes a locus classicus for the imagery of Roman civil strife for later authors.42 To the long history of its reception, I would add the Octavia’s varied
41 Cf. Neptune V. Aen.1.124-156, Aeneas V. Aen.1.170-209, Jupiter V. Aen.1.223ff, Augustus V. Aen.1.286-96, Dido V. Aen.1.494ff
42 On this simile and its thematic importance to the Aeneid as a whole, see Harrison (1988b); Hine (1987)
112 engagement with this episode as a lens through which to read the riot of 62 CE.
Throughout the riot, the larger episode and especially the simile becomes an often- activated echo through which various characters, including Nero himself, frame his relationship with the seditious Roman people. In order to trace this engagement fully, we will begin back with the dialogue between Seneca and Nero that the previous two chapters have explored. This time, however, our focus will be on Nero himself, rather than on the violent exploits of his great-great-grandfather.
The Octavia poet, as I argue in Chapter 1, has his Seneca weave into his analysis of the Augustan principate many echoes of Vergil’s poetry to reinforce his memory of
Augustus as a peaceful king and also to describe Nero’s own accession in terms that recall the popularity of his great-great-grandfather. Throughout his Augustan-centered reading of imperial history, however, other models of rule lurk in the background, suggesting models of the relationship between ruler and ruled that render our reading of
Nero more complicated. At crucial moments during his speech, Seneca’s language suggests Aeneas as a foil for Augustus’ kingship. As he turns to Nero’s accession, however, his language evokes another of the Aeneid’s infamous kings whose power and political difficulties more closely resemble Nero’s own.
Nero, according to Seneca, had the chance to be an even better ruler than
Augustus because he did not need to kill for his throne (Oct. 482-491). Nero’s power is based not on bloody civil-war victory but on the blind and universal devotion of his
177; Lyne (1987) 28; Hardie (1986) 90-110; Putnam (1965) 8ff ; Pöschl (1962) 13-24. Cf. Cairns (1989, 24-25, 93-5) on the influence of Hellenistic models on Aeolus and other king figures in the Aeneid, and on the theme of concord and discord in this episode. See also Galinsky (1996, 20-24) on the issues of auctoritas found in this episode. For winds in general as a symbol of civil discord from Vergil through Lucan and elsewhere, see Fantham (2010) 211-14. On the metapoetic elements of this simile that may further influence the Octavia’s reception of it, see Harrison (1988b).
113 people and the sanction of the gods who called the young man to imperial glory and freely bestowed upon him universal power, trusting that he could deploy it well:
tibi numen incruenta summisit suum et dedit habenas imperi facili manu nutuque terras maria subiecit tuo; invidia tristis, victa consensu pio, cessit; senatus, equitis accensus favor; plebisque votis atque iudicio patrum tu pacis auctor, generis humani arbiter electus orbem spiritu sacro regis patriae parens: quod nomen ut serves petit suosque cives Roma commendat tibi. (Oct. 482-91)
To you Rome bloodlessly submitted her divine power and gave the reigns of empire with easy hand and subjected the lands and seas to your nod. Grim ill-will yielded, conquered by pious consensus; the favor of the equestrians, of the senate burns; chosen by the prayers of the populace and by the judgment of the senators as author of peace, arbiter of the human race, father of the fatherland you rule the world with your divine spirit: which title Rome asks that you protect and she entrusts her own citizens to your protection.
All is right with the world, as Nero piously rules a great people by god-given right. And yet here too Vergilian echoes color Seneca’s language, and their implications are not quite so complimentary. For a reader primed for Vergilian echoes as we have been by
Seneca’s earlier intertexts, Seneca’s description of Nero’s accession and imperial power would remind us not of Aeneas—who does, in the end, need to kill for his throne—but rather of Vergil’s Aeolus, king of the winds:
… celsa sedet Aeolus arce sceptra tenens, mollitque animos et temperat iras. Ni faciat, maria ac terras caelumque profundum quippe ferant rapidi secum verrantque per auras. Sed pater omnipotens speluncis abdidit atris, hoc metuens, molemque et montis insuper altos imposuit, regemque dedit, qui foedere certo et premere et laxas sciret dare iussus habenas. (V. Aen.1.56-63)
Aeolus sits in his lofty citadel holding his scepter, he both sooths spirits and tempers wraths. If he should not, surely [the winds] quickly would carry off with themselves seas and lands and vast sky and sweep them through the breezes. But the omnipotent father hid them away in black caves, fearing this, and put above them a mass and high mountains, and gave them a king who would know by certain compact both to hold back and to give loose reins when ordered.
114 When we first meet Aeolus, he seems to be playing the role of divinely ordained king well. He rules over his subjects controlling them on land and sea (maria ac terras,
V. Aen.1.58), knowing when to use the reins of empire to control them and when to rule with an easy hand (regemque dedit…dare habenas, V. Aen.1.62-3). Seneca’s language recalls Vergil’s when he describes how Rome herself gave Nero the reins of empire
(dedit habenas, Oct. 83) to use with easy hand on land and sea (terras maria, Oct. 84)— words appearing in identical form and usage here—to ensure peace amongst all her citizens.43 Thus Seneca’s words connect Nero and his principate to the meditations on good kingship found in his dynasty’s foundational epic, much as they had also linked
Augustus with these themes earlier. Upon his accession, Nero appears the ideal Roman ruler just as Aeolus appeared so when the reader first met him. Once again, however, the
Octavia poet has his Seneca edit Vergil’s narratives of tension and conflict to make a more peaceful and straightforward narrative. This time, he omits the violent nature of
Aeolus’ subjects and their underlying potential for destruction (V. Aen.1.57-9 and esp. iras); his more glaring omission, however, is any indication of what happens next in the
Aeolus story, and it is our memory of this Vergilian aftermath that ultimately challenges
Seneca’s positive reading of Neronian Rome, before Nero ever utters one contradictory word.
Within twenty lines of Vergil’s positive introduction to Aeolus’ rule, we see the king abuse his power and his people in exchange for possessing a beautiful woman who will bear him celestial offspring (V. Aen.1.75), letting loose a violent and seditious force
43 The phrasing here is admittedly generic, but Seneca’s previous engagement with Vergil’s opening book and Nero’s later more marked echo of this same episode suggest that the intertext should be felt here, at least on re-reading.
115 upon the world in the process. Seneca, of course, only activates the language of good kingship in his speech, giving no indication of what happened next in the original text.
Given, however, Nero’s obsession with Poppaea—the goddess-faced woman and future mother of his own “celestial” offspring (Oct. 530-46)—perhaps we are to hear the dangerous echoes that implicitly characterize Nero on the model of a man who betrayed his subjects for personal lust-driven gain. We, the audience—steeped in Vergil and primed throughout this Julio-Claudian drama for engagement with his Aeneid—are able to fill in the gaps in the story where Seneca’s language leaves off. In the end, Aeolus lost all ability to control his subjects and, like a riotous Roman mob, they threaten to destroy everything in their path (V. Aen.1.81-91, cf. esp. velut agmine facto). It takes a particular type of ruler to calm them, and in the end Aeolus is not it. This is hardly a positive model for Nero, and in fact further undercuts Seneca’s own protestations about the peaceful nature of Neronian Rome and its people. If Nero is anything like Aeolus, then Neronian
Rome is far from a Golden Age of concordia.
Nero’s language also connects his rule with that of Aeolus, although, as we shall see, his echo evokes quite a different reading of the episode and its significance by focusing less on the idea of proper-rule and more on the strife that plagues the ruler. The entire conversation between Seneca and Nero arose because of the perceived threat that
Plautus and Sulla pose to Nero’s reign. While Seneca advocates his typical universal clemency, Nero believes that only the elimination of all rivals will bring security to his principate:
An patiar ultra sanguinem nostrum peti, inultus et contemptus ut subito opprimar? exilia non fregere summotos procul Plautum atque Sullam, pertinax quorum furor armat ministros sceleris in caedem meam,
116 absentium cum maneat etiam ingens favor in urbe nostra, qui fovet spes exulum. tollantur hostes ense suspecti mihi. (Oct. 462-469)
Should I then keep allowing my own blood to be sought, and as a result be suddenly overwhelmed without vengeance and despised? Exile did not break those men sent far away, Plautus and Sulla, men whose madness keeps arming ministers of crime for my murder, since even absent a native faction remains for them in my city, a faction which fosters their ambition, although exiles. Let my suspected enemies fall by the sword.
In order to underscore the threat that his exiled rivals cause, the Octavia poet has Nero borrow further language from Vergil’s Aeolus episode. Once Aeolus had lost control of his subjects, Neptune had had to calm the unruly winds. Vergil described the scene through a simile that compared Neptune’s calming effect on the winds to that of a good
Roman statesman on a mob overwhelmed by the disease of sedition:
Ac veluti magno in populo cum saepe coorta est seditio, saevitque animis ignobile volgus, iamque faces et saxa volant—furor arma ministrat; tum, pietate gravem ac meritis si forte virum quem conspexere, silent, arrectisque auribus adstant; ille regit dictis animos, et pectora mulcet,— sic cunctus pelagi cecidit fragor, aequora postquam prospiciens genitor caeloque invectus aperto flectit equos, curruque volans dat lora secundo. (V. Aen.1.148-156)
And just as when in a great people civil strife has arisen, which often happens, and the base crowd rages in their minds, and now already torches and rocks fly—their madness supplies their weapons; then if by chance they have seen a man marked by piety and merit, they fall silent, and they stand with their ears ready to listen; he rules their minds with his words and sooths their breasts—just so all the chaos on the sea subsided, and afterwards looking out over the sea and carried into the open sky, the father turns his horses, and flying gives rein to his following chariot.
Although Plautus and Sulla are nowhere near Rome itself, nevertheless Nero views them as an ever-present catalyst for sedition within his capital city (maneat etiam ingens favor/ in urbe nostra, Oct. 467-8), just as such a catalyst appeared omnipresent in Vergil’s
“great people.” In Vergil’s simile, the spirit of sedition first raged in the people’s mind, until finally the spirit of rebellion gave arms to the reckless mob, threatening universal
117 chaos (furor arma ministrat, V. Aen.1.150).44 Nero similarly describes how the madness of his rivals infects his people and drives them to rebel against him (furor/ armat ministros sceleris, Oct. 465-6).45 Thus we see that Nero’s language also encourages us to read Julio-Claudian politics through Vergil’s Aeolus episode, but suggests that the point of such comparison is less between Nero and Vergil’s questionable king, and more between Nero’s subjects and Vergil’s unruly mob of winds.46
Nero’s language continues to recall this passage throughout his dialogue with
Seneca, and especially at the dialogue’s end:
SEN.Maiora populus semper a summo exigit. NER.Libet experiri, viribus fractus meis ancedat animis temere conceptus furor. SEN Obsequere potius civibus placidus tuis. NER.Male imperatur, cum regit vulgus duces. (Oct. 575-79)
SEN. People always demand greater things from one on high. NER. It will please me to test whether this madness rashly conceived in their minds will yield once it has been broken by my power. SEN. You should instead obey your citizens in a way that is pleasing. NER. That is a badly run government, when the crowd rules their leaders.
In this passage, Seneca suggests that Nero bend his will to that of his people and thereby set a good example. Nero, however, replies that doing so would be an inversion of the
44 Kragelund (1988, 504-6) has made much of the distinction between Nero’s terminology for the Roman people (vulgus, turba: cf. Oct. 455, 579, 835, 851) and that of Seneca and the Prefect (populus). He infers from this terminological distinction that the playwright shows the Roman people in a positive light due to Galba’s populist propaganda. While the playwright’s interest in the experience and emotions of the populus Romanus might well have implications for dating, it should be noted that Vergil’s “base rabble” (ignobile vulgus) is introduced as a “great people” (magnus populus), and thus the terminilogical distinction posited by Kragelund is somewhat challenged by the Aeneid intertext which Nero, Seneca, and later the anonymous Prefect activate. For the role of the people in the Octavia generally, see Chapter 5.
45 Of course the concept of “furor infecting the people” and the various expressions for it predated Vergil (cf. quaeritur consul qui dicendo non numquam comprimat tribunicios furores, qui concitatum populum flectat, qui largitioni resistat, Cic. Mur.24).
46 Note here how once more the Octavia poet has Seneca and Nero use a single intertextual model to different effect. Seneca uses Vergil’s Aeolus episode to paint Nero and his Rome in an idealized, peaceful light. Nero, however, appeals to the same episode to show the dangers confronting his less-than-ideal rule.
118 natural hierarchy between ruler and ruled, leading to chaos rather than peace.47 To underscore this point, his language recalls the words with which Vergil had characterized the seeds of sedition as cited above (saevitque animis…volgus…furor arma ministrat, V.
Aen.1.149-50). Passion that seizes the mind of the mob quickly turns to the frenzy that drives civil war. Similar madness too first seizes the minds of Nero’s people (animis temere conceptus furor, Oct. 577), and the emperor fears that soon this mental madness will erupt into physical violence.
Vergil’s statesman had ultimately been able to rule the riotous people (ille regit…animos, Oct. 1.153) and restore order to the inflamed mob (ignobile volgus, V.
Aen.1.149). Nero may or may not be able to fill the statesman’s shoes, but his language nevertheless recalls the man’s power in order to underscore the danger inherent in
Seneca’s suggestion of mob rule (regit vulgus duces, Oct. 579). Seneca, in his attempt to guide Nero, has inverted the proper way a Roman statesman rules his people; his advice, when read through Nero’s intertext, would lead only to further chaos. Thus Nero is proven correct intertextually when he asserts that such a government would be poorly run indeed (male imperatur, Oct. 579).48 From Nero’s point of view, at least, the Roman people cannot be trusted to make sound decisions lest in their frenzy they plunge the state once more irreparably into civil strife.
47 Cf. Cicero’s similar point about ruler and ruled: Quae vero addidisti, non modo senatum servire posse populo, sed etiam debere, quis hoc philosophus tam mollis, tam languidus, tam enervatus, tam omnia ad voluptatem corporis doloremque referens probare posset, senatum servire populo, cui populus ipse moderandi et regendi sui potestatem quasi quasdam habenas tradidisset? (Cic. De Or.1.225-6).
48 Vergil’s description of Neptune’s departure intratextually recalled the image of the overwhelmed statesman carried off hopelessly into civil strife by the forces of impious Mars from the Georgics (V. Georg.1.510-14, cf. Putnam [1965] 11 n. 10). Thus the Vergilian episode already carried additional resonance from its intratextual engagement with other civil-war narratives throughout the Vergilian corpus.
119 By twice activating this Vergilian simile—both at the beginning of the dialogue with Seneca and at its end—the Octavia poet has his Nero create through Vergil’s seditious Romans a frame through which to view the citizens of the principate. This intertext gives us crucial insight into how Nero reads his relationship with the Roman people—a relationship which will dominate much of the play’s second half. Nero’s fear seems rooted less in the actual personages of his imperial rivals and more in what these rivals as figureheads can inspire the Roman people en masse to do. By characterizing his subjects through Vergil’s mob, Nero betrays that he views his principate through the lens of civil strife and imagines himself to be ruling a state which at any time could erupt into the same type of civil wars out of which his dynasty had emerged and which they claimed to have suppressed. In the eyes of Nero, civil war and empire seem one and the same, the former always lurking behind the latter ready to erupt, just as Furor remained—perhaps only momentarily imprisoned—behind the doors of the Temple of Janus (V. Aen.1.292-
96) that Augustus and Nero had closed. Just as Nero previously showed us how little peace characterized his ancestor’s reign, so here he seems to suggest that in his reign too pretentions to peace are nothing but window dressing.49
Unfortunately both for Nero and for his Roman citizens, no Julio-Claudian appears able to fulfill the Vergilian role of a leader “marked by his piety and merit”
(pietate gravem ac meritis si forte virum, V. Aen.1.151-2) who can restore order to seditious frenzy. Pietas is nowhere seen in a family (tunc sancta pietas extulit trepidos gradus, Oct. 160) where impietas rules every action and relationship (saevit impietas
49 In the Aeneid also, Jupiter’s prophesy about the closing of the temple of Janus amounts to a somewhat unconvincing denial of civil war as a part of Roman identity when he imagines how Romulus and Remus together will give laws (Remo cum fratre Quirinus/ iura dabunt, V. Aen.1.292-3). Cf. Reed (2007) 147. On the various literary representations of the closure of the temple from Augustus’ Res Gestae to Ovid, see DeBrohun (2007).
120 furens, Oct. 431), language further reminiscent of the madness that raged throughout
Vergil’s Roman people (saevitque animis ignobile volgus…furor V. Aen.1.149-50).
Consequently, the eruption of a civil war that is unable to be checked seems inevitable given the nature of Nero’s people and their model. The Octavia poet will return to the idea of Vergil’s statesman when Nero next appears on stage, after the outbreak of the strife predicted here. In the meantime, however, I examine the development of the riot and its intertextual associations from the point of view of the Octavia’s minor characters.
Furor populi imminet: Civil War and Civil-War Poets
Nero makes clear to us through his echoes of Vergil’s Aeneid that he views the Roman people as a madness-driven mob that could erupt into civil war at any time. When we next hear about the Roman people, this is exactly what has happened:
Quicumque tectis excubat miles ducis, defendat aulam, cui furor populi imminet. trepidi cohortes ecce praefecti trahunt praesidia ad urbis, victa nec cedit metu concepta rabies temere, sed vires capit. (Oct. 780-84)
Whatever soldier keeps watch in the house of the emperor must defend the palace—the madness of the people threatens it. Look, the fearful prefects drag the cohorts out to protect the city, nor does that frenzy that is conceived rashly in their minds yield, conquered by fear, but rather gains strength.
A messenger runs onstage to tell the chorus about the madness of the other Roman citizens (furor populi, Oct. 781) and the contagious frenzy (nec cedit…concepta rabies temere sed vires capit, Oct. 783-4) that drives them to attack the city itself. What follows is a quick exchange between the messenger and chorus about the nature of the revolt, its causes, and its significance. The messenger’s opening lines already evoke the programmatic terminology of the societal disease that fosters civil war (furor and rabies)
121 and asserts that this disease is spreading through the city with alarming speed, and the brief dialogue with the chorus will continue to activate such important terminology. We have seen this language in Nero’s speech above (cedat animis temere conceptus furor,
Oct. 577), which had in turn echoed Vergil’s description of the Roman mob. Thus the messenger’s speech reaffirms Nero’s view of his people and underscores the validity of the fear he had felt concerning the Roman citizens’ propensity for civil strife even in an era of nominal peace. The messenger’s language, however, does more than echo Nero, but instead suggests additional literary models and at times seems almost to engage in a meta-dialogue on the idea of writing civil-war poetry.
As the messenger begins to speak, he immediately activates a host of intertextual associations with prior civil-war literature, and especially with Lucan’s Bellum Civile.
Furthermore, he also engages with a number of figures often referred to as “poet-figures” in scholarship—figures who strike a rhetorical stance similar to a poet and who, in some sense, can be read as standing in for the poet’s voice within a larger work. In my analysis of the Octavia’s engagement with “poet-figures” from previous literature, I follow two complementary understandings of the conceit from two genres of ancient poetry with which the Octavia is often in dialogue: epic and tragedy. In epic poetry, the poet-figures are often prophets of some sort whose speeches are endowed with divine authority, much as the poet’s own larger poem is grounded in the authority of Apollo or the Muses. This association between prophets and poets is further suggested by the dual meaning that vates took on in the Augustan period and following as both prophet and poet.50 In tragedy, however, poet-figures are typically messengers or heralds who narrate (often at
50 For vates in Roman poetry, see Jocelyn (1995) and Newman (1967). For vates-figures in Lucan specifically, see below. See also Lovatt (2007) on the post-Augustan vates in Statius’ Silvae.
122 some length) actions that occur off stage.51 Their status as men who bear true tidings privileges their words over and above other characters within the play, offering the poet’s voice a vehicle within a genre which otherwise denies it. It is in this latter sense that the
Octavia’s messenger should primarily be understood as would-be poet-figure in his own right. At the same time, however, he engages not only with the horizons of expectation created by the tragic convention of messenger speeches, but he also recalls specific poet- prophets from Roman epic, and especially from Lucan’s Bellum Civile. By combining these two metapoetical conventions of “poet-figures” from epic and tragedy, the messenger’s speech becomes not only a speech about a riot that may look like a civil war; it also enacts for us a metapoetic critical discourse on writing civil-war poetry.52
When the Octavia’s messenger describes the people’s madness as looming and threatening (furor populi imminet…rabies, Oct. 781-4), his language and imagery recalls the speech of Nigidius Figulus from the opening book of Lucan’s Bellum Civile (imminet armorum rabies…hic furor, Luc. 1.666-9).53 Nigidius Figulus is one of many poet- prophet figures in the Bellum Civile through whom Lucan draws metapoetical connections, suggests the future of Roman civil war beyond the scope of his poem, and
51 The best recent treatment of the poet-figure in tragedy is Barrett (2002). Barrett also notes that messengers and heralds are also important poet-figures in Pindar (Nash [1990] 45-63).
52 In this I am indebted Schiesaro’s analysis of such moments in the Thyestes: “at several critical junctures, the actions of certain characters embody a reflection of the text on itself and offer important insight into its poetics…After Virgil, poetry appears increasingly unable to resist the compulsion to mirror in its own body the process of composition and the narrative mechanisms that make it possible; …[certain characters] transcend their role as characters in the play and go on to assume, implicitly but clearly, some of the functions that other forms of poetry assign to internal narrators,” (Schiesaro [2003] 13-15). Much as Medea and Atreus consciously “create and represent a tragedy” (Schiesaro [2003] 17), so too the messenger and the chorus create and represent a civil-war narrative.
53 Boyle (2008) notes that the playwright may have in mind Vergil’s Furor enchained (V. Aen.1.294-6).
123 prophesies the eventual disastrous rise of the Caesars.54 The various speeches of Lucan’s poet figures become themselves part of a larger meditation on civil war and civil-war literature that runs throughout the entire epic. Much as Seneca’s echo of Vergil’s Aeolus and the simile of the statesman had brought into the Octavia Vergil’s wider theme of proper leadership, so the messenger’s echo of the prophetic speech of Nigidius Figulus can bring with it Lucan’s wider meditations narrating civil-war. In his opening words, the
Octavia’s messenger positions himself, in a sense, as the next in a long line of Lucan- style civil-war poet-figures and therefore suggests implicitly that his account of the riot be read in dialogue with prior civil-war literature from the start.
The messenger’s description of the people’s contagious frenzy that will not yield even in the face of certain destruction (victa nec cedit metu/ concepta rabies temere, sed vires capit, Oct. 783-4) recalls the frenzy of the seditious Egyptians who continue to drive civil strife even after their leader dies in Lucan’s final book (sed non auctore furoris/ sublato cecidit rabies; nam rursus in arma, Luc. 10.529-30).55 Lucan had used the civil war in the Egyptian palace as a foil for his own tale of Roman civil war, a fact which he makes clear just prior to the lines above, when he foreshadows Caesar’s death at Roman hands and Magnus’ eventual vengeance.56 Lucan’s lines also come within
54 For Figulus as one of the many prophet-poet figures in Lucan, see Dick (1963) esp. 38-41. See also more recently the analysis of Figulus’ speech in terms of Lucan’s poetic program throughout Masters (1992, 65, 146, 185, 252). For vates figures in Lucan generally, see O’Higgins (1988), See also Leigh (1997) 16-9; Masters (1992) 138-9 and 205-6. Roche (2009, 15) notes how the beginning of Bellum Civile 2 intratextually activates both the theme and content of Figulus’ speech, further aligning astrologer and poet. He notes further (ad Luc. 1.2) how the themes of the proem are repeated by Figulus in a ring-composition that binds the first book together.
55 As Ahl (1985) has noted in his studies of sound-play in Ovid, Roman poets often play on words that, although not directly related, sound similar. Thus, although cedere and cadere are different verbs, the potential for an echo still exists.
56 For Lucan’s Egypt as a doublet for Rome, see Spencer (2006).
124 twenty lines of the epic’s end—at least as we have it—and as such become even more programmatically important for a post-Lucanean author who engages with the themes of the poem as a whole. Consequently, the Octavia poet has his messenger do more than simply activate a memory of strife in the Egyptian palace as a foil for his own tale of strife in Rome. Rather, he has him borrow the language with which Lucan had looked towards future Roman civil war at the end of his epic; he then uses that intertext to create a place for the riot and for himself in the tradition of civil-war poetry. Both Lucanean reminiscences in the messenger’s opening lines are more than single lines selected from ten books of gruesome material; rather, each serves a greater programmatic purpose in the original poem—one from the beginning and one from the end—through which the
Octavia’s messenger can set the stage for his own rival account of Rome’s most recent
(and currently unfolding) civil war.
The second chorus is primed for just such an interpretation of events and matches the messenger intertext for programmatic intertext as they learn what strife their fellow
Romans have engendered in the streets of their own city:57
CHO. Quis iste mentes agitat attonitus furor? NUN. Octaviae favore percussa agmina et efferata per nefas ingens ruunt. CHO. Quid ausa facere quove consilio doce. (Oct. 785-88)
CHO: What insane madness has so struck their minds? NUN: Battle lines driven by frenzy for Octavia rush uncontrollably through great crime. CHO: Tell us what they dare to do or what plan they have!
After the messenger describes the military chaos that the Roman people have caused, the chorus asks about the nature of the madness that has shaken their minds (quis…furor,
57 The description of civil war erupting is further underscored by the sudden and unexpected appearance of a second chorus of Roman citizens—unknown until now—and thus the Roman people enact on stage the civil rebellion that Nero and the messenger prepares us to see. The two choruses, their political fractioning, and their individual odes are the subject of Chapter 5.
125 Oct. 785). Lucan too had notoriously asked this same question at the opening of his epic
(quis furor, o cives, quae tanta licentia ferri? Luc. 1.8).58 This question, in turn, subsequently became a refrain through which Lucan and his various poet-prophet figures emphasized the irrationality of civil war at key points throughout the epic.59 At the end of
Bellum Civile 1 the prophetic matron called Apollo to her aid to see the future, and echoed Lucan’s opening question (quis furor hic, o Phoebe, doce, Luc.1.681). In doing so, she aligned her own role within the poem with that of the epic poet and through this repeated language created a programmatic ring of disgusted questioning around Lucan’s first book.60 Lucan himself returned to this question at the outset of the battle Pharsalia, another programmatic moment within the poem. At that point, he turned to his Roman subjects and asked in disbelief what madness led them to this point (quis furor, o caeci, scelerum? Luc. 7.95). The answer to this oft-repeated question is, of course, the madness that drives the epic itself and its gruesome depictions of furor’s work.
Lucan is not the originator of this question; rather, he seems to have selected it because of its previous strife-ridden associations. Vergil’s Laocoon had asked his fellow
Trojans what madness led them to believe the Greeks and give themselves over to ruin (o miseri, quae tanta insania, cives, V. Aen.2.42). In Aeneid 5, Ascanius similarly asks the
Trojan women what madness drove them to burn their own ships and thus turn against their fellow Trojans. (‘quis furor iste novus? quo nunc, quo tenditis’ inquit ‘heu miserae
58 The metapoetic aspects of furor in post-Vergilian literature are well studied. For its use in Senecan drama see, for example, Littlewood (2004, 10-11) and more extensively Schiesaro (2003, 26-36 and 85ff). In addition, Littlewood (2004, 103) notes that literary reminiscences of this kind “whether observed by the dramatic character or not, draw attention to the construction of the poem.” See also below n. 77.
59 There may be something to the fact that the chorus postpones furor—and the activation of the intertext— for the end of the line.
60 For the matron as a vates figure, see Roche (2009) ad loc.
126 cives? non hostem inimicaque castra Argivum, vestras spes uritis’. V. Aen.5.670-2).61 He here underscores the overtones of civil strife inherent in the type of madness that would drive citizens to attack the ships of fellow citizens rather than their enemies. Ovid, in his account of civil war at Thebes—often seen as an anti-Aeneid calque for the strife-ridden
Roman origin legend, had Pentheus ask a similar question of his citizens (quis furor, anguigenae, proles Mavortia, vestras/ attonuit mentes? Ov. Met.3.531-2).62 Even
Tibullus had questioned the sanity of those who prefer war to peace (quis furor est atram bellis accersere mortem? Tib. 1.10.33).63 The phrase likewise appeared in Petronius’ parody of civil-war poetry (quis furor, exclamat, pacem convertit in arma? Pet.
Sat.108.14), a usage that underscores most explicitly how linked this indignant question became with narratives of civil strife by the time of the Octavia’s composition.64
It is therefore not strictly necessary that we see in the opening question of
Octavia’s chorus a direct echo of Lucan’s language, although its juxtaposition with the chorus’ subsequent rare use of doce further suggests it (quid ausa facere quove consilio doce , Oct. 788).65 Already before Lucan the phrase had marked associations with civil
61 Ferri (2003, ad loc) notes the parallel phrasing between this passage and the Octavia.
62 For Ovid’s Thebes as an anti-Aeneid, see Hardie (1990). Hardie (1990, 224 n.9) notes that Lucan’s phrasing at the opening of his epic echoes Ovid’s in many ways and Wheeler (2002) has argued that Ovid’s line is Lucan’s primary intertext. On this scene, and especially its intertextual engagement with Vergil and its later appeal to Lucan, see McNamara (2010).
63 Tibullus’ question seems to be an indictment of warfare generally from the point of view of a pastoral poet, but given the intense focus throughout his poetry on the Italian landscape and the political background against which he is writing, it is not unreasonable to suggest that he intended to indict civil-strife specifically through his redeployment of this marked language.
64 If critics are correct to see a criticism of Lucan within these passages, then the language quis furor seems even more linked with Lucanean poetics. Nevertheless, the lines clearly suggest the civil-war overtones of the phrasing, and we need not necessarily see in a direct reference to Lucan for my point here.
65 Ferri (2003, ad 788) notes that “there are no parallels in Senecan tragedy for this use of the imperative of docere when a chorus or speaking character interrogates a messenger…this mode of expression has parallels, however, in epic. Cf. Luc. Bell.Civ.1.681-2 (a matron prophesying the horror of the civil wars).”
127 strife which its redeployment here would activate. Nevertheless, the way in which Lucan and his poet figures use the phrase to punctuate programmatic and metapoetic moments in his epic, as well as the many other Lucanean echoes within this same passage point to
Lucan as a key link in the intertextual chain whose significance must be understood in order to read the passage correctly. Much as the messenger above, the chorus too recalls not only Lucan’s text, but also the epic’s underlying poetics and its many poet figures, and thus engages the messenger in his metapoetic critical dialogue over creating civil-war poetry out of the riot of 62 CE. In doing so, the Roman people suggest implicitly that they too read the events of 62 CE as a civil war worthy of being immortalized by civil- war poets and of being added to the canon of civil-war literature. Furthermore, they create through their dialogue the appropriate space in which to create a new poem of civil war, a space so marked by the generic poetics of strife that the audience expects nothing but the most gruesome of messenger speeches to follow.
As the messenger responds to the chorus’ intertextually charged questions, he continues to weave his description out of civil-war language. The crowd—no longer a peaceful citizen body but now a full-fledged and frenzied army (percussa agmina et efferata, Oct. 786)—is driven by its intense partisanship for Octavia to rush through immense crime (per nefas ingens ruunt, Oct. 786-7). Lucan had used similar phrasing in his apostrophe to Caesar in Bellum Civile 5 to draw attention to the vast consequences which Caesar’s actions would bring to the Roman world (ipse per omne/ fasque nefasque rues? Luc. 5.312-3).66 Lucan had also used variations on this phrasing earlier in his epic to similar ends (itur in omne nefas, Luc. 4.243; imus in omne nefas, Luc. 5.272). It should
66 Ferri (2003) ad loc.
128 thus come as no surprise that in this quick interchange between messenger and chorus
Lucan continues to play a large role; given how both the messenger and the chorus describe the events of contemporary Neronian Rome as an instance of civil war, who better to look to than the Neronian epicist who had memorialized the civil wars that brought Nero’s ancestor to power? Nevertheless, Lucan is not the only civil-war poet recalled through this language: Horace, perhaps the paradigmatic civil-war poet of
Augustan Rome, looms just as large behind the Octavia’s language of civil strife.
Horace Ode 1.3, the poem from which Lucan and the Octavia’s messenger seem to have taken this language of frenzied rushing, has been subject to various scholarly interpretations over the years.67 It is clear enough that the poem took the form of a propempticon for Vergil, who either sets out for Greece or sets out to write the Aeneid (or both). Over the course of the poem, Horace touched on the folly of human boldness that leads as often to glory as it does to destruction. At the outset of his poem, Horace described hubristic mortals who dare to fight the laws of the gods (ruit per vetitum nefas,
H. Carm.1.3.26) in language that he subsequently recycles at his poem’s end when describing contemporary Rome (per nostrum…scelus, H. Carm.1.3.39). The contemporary allusion to Horace’s own day (nostrum) at the end of the poem especially urged his audience to read the mythological nefas and scelus throughout the poem as political allegories, or at least as immediately relevant to Horace’s experience of late
Republican and early Imperial Rome. That Horace here used the language which
67 For the echo of Horace in this line of the Octavia, see Boyle (2008) and Ferri (2003) ad loc. Both the politics of Horace’s poem and Vergil’s role in it have provoked heated responses. See, e.g. Elder’s (1952) review of the bibliography up until 1952; for more recent readings, see Pucci (2005 and 1992); Clark (2004); Carrubba (1984); Basto (1982). For our purposes, however, it will suffice to discuss its basic themes and also to note that, as with many of the passages activated in this dialogue, the Octavia has once more engaged with a poem implicitly about the act of writing poetry.
129 elsewhere he had applied to civil strife (nefas and scelus) further suggested to his audience that contemporary political upheaval lay behind the poem.68 Lucan’s reception of the poem, and especially of this line, is additionally suggestive of its wider reception in early Imperial poetry. Lucan borrowed from this poem the language of bold folly and redeployed it variously throughout his epic of civil war, suggesting that this is the context in which he read the original. Thus, by the time Horace’s phrase reaches the Octavia, it had been filtered through Lucan’s own civil-war narrative and thus carries with it more overt connotations of strife-ridden madness. Just as Horace’s mankind rushed headlong into forbidden crime and Lucan’s Caesar plunged Roman citizens into civil war, so the citizens of Neronian Rome now rush into monstrous revolution.69
Perhaps more indicative of Horatian poetics of civil war is the end of the messenger’s brief dialogue with the chorus, at which point he breaks off to emphasize how important it is for Nero to hear of the riotous outbreak from his own voice (ut noscat ipse civium motus mea voce, Oct. 804). Not only do these lines underscore the messenger’s underlying suggestion of his own status as a civil-war poet by explicitly and for the first time referring to the riot as a civil war (civium motus) and to his own voice as endowed with significant communicative power; they also do so through an echo of the
68 For nefas and scelus as terms of civil war in Horace, see above n. 12. Horace had already used similarly strife-ridden language in Epode 7, perhaps his most famous treatment of civil war and its associated damage (quo, quo scelesti ruitis? H. Epod.7.1). Horace found an implicit connection between civil war (nefas and scelus) and wild rushing (ruere) as indicative of passionate actions devoid of reason.
69 The messenger goes on to describe the actions of the seditious populace whose burning partisanship for Octavia drives them headlong rashly into further madness (hinc urit animos pertinax nimium favor/ et in furorem temere praecipites agit, Oct. 792-3). Horace had used similar language in Epode 7 to describe how harsh fate and the crime of fratricide drove his Romans similarly into civil war (acerba fata Romanos agunt/ scelusque fraternae necis, H. Epod.7.17-18). The natural completion of Horace’s “Romanos agunt” is the phrase “in furorem” as can be seen in many parallels (e.g. Aiacem in mortem egit furor, in furorem ira, Sen. Ira.36; Populum Romanum egit in furorem praetexta C. Caesaris praelata in funere cruenta, Quint. Inst. 6.1.31). See also Carrubba (1966) who understands “in furorem” as the obvious supplement to Horace’s otherwise unfinished thought.
130 opening of one of the most famous early imperial metapoetic meditations on the process of writing civil-war literature: Horace Ode 2.1.70 Horace had dedicated this poem to one of the earliest civil-war authors, Asinius Pollio, and to his Histories, the writing of which is the poem’s nominal impetus. Pollio’s Histories covered, among other things, the civil wars between Caesar and Pompey, that between the second triumvirate and the
“Liberators” and ultimately the civil war between Octavian and Antony.71 His work also influenced the accounts of the wars found in Suetonius, Appian, Plutarch, and Dio; allusions in the works of Horace and Vergil suggest that he influenced them as well.72
Pollio himself experienced the civil wars as a participant—first on the side of Caesar and then eventually on the side of Antony—before he retired from battle and asserted his neutrality prior to Actium. Pollio seems to have stressed his status as an eye witness to many of the episodes he recounted and this authorial stance, as well as his status as the first author to narrate these events in full, solidified his influence on the later literature.
Thus the loss of his Histories remains one of the greatest losses in the corpus of Roman civil-war literature, and we are left to piece together what we can from those whose works preserve his spirit, if not always his precise narrative.
Horace’s poem to Pollio began with a description of the topics Pollio was covering and the inherent danger of his work:
motum ex Metello consule civicum
70 The bibliography on Horace’s Pollio Ode is similarly large. For recent treatments that focus on the poem’s metaliterary qualities, see Woodman (2003) and Henderson (1998a) 108-64.
71 For the life and literary output of Asinius Pollio and his significance to the historical tradition of the late Republic, see most recently Morgan (2000). See also Nisbet and Hubbard (1978) ad H. Carm.2.1.
72 The search for echoes of Asinius Pollio in later authors was once a popular subject of inquiry. See for example Gabba’s (1956) analysis of Pollio’s influence on Arrian, but see also the caution expressed about such work by Badian in his review (1958). Regarding Pollio’s relationship with Vergil slightly more can be said as he was the dedicatee of Eclogue 4 and 8. Cf. also Tac. Dial. 1.21-7.
131 bellique causas et vitia et modos ludumque fortunae gravesque principium amicitias et arma
nondum expiatis uncta cruoribus, periculosae plenum opus aleae, tractas et incedis per ignes suppositos cineri doloso. (H. Carm.2.1.1-8)
You treat the civil strife that began with Metellus’ consulship, the causes of the war, its sins, its periods, the sport of fortune and the grave friendships of the leaders, the arms soaked in blood not yet expiated, a work full of dangerous hazard, and you tread through fires still lurking sneakily under ash.
Horace’s description of civil war as an “upheaval of citizens” (motum…civicum, Hor.
Carm.2.1.1) at the opening of this poem may actually preserve Pollio’s own language and may thus constitute and allusion to the historian’s own “poetics.”73 Thus Horace encompassed both Pollio’s subject matter and his language within his own opening line.
The apparent fame of Pollio’s use of motus to describe civil strife, as well as its appearance in the programmatic first poem of Horace’s second book of Odes, makes it all the more likely that the messenger’s words (civium motus, Oct. 804) at the end of his dialogue with the chorus echo the language of Rome’s first civil-war author, Pollio, as well as to the poet, Horace, whose nuanced treatment of civil wars throughout his corpus seems to have made him exceedingly popular with post-Augustan authors. There is perhaps even further metapoetic significance, however, to be gleaned from the rest of
Horace’s poem.
Throughout Ode 2.1, Horace had underscored the danger of Pollio’s project, referring to the fiery ashes not yet extinguished (incedis per ignes/ suppositos cineri
73 For the intertextual potential of motus, see O’Gorman (1995) 121. See also Nisbet and Hubbard (1978) ad loc. O’Gorman’s analysis of the way in which Horace alludes not only to Pollio’s subject matter but also to his poetics has influenced my analysis throughout this chapter. Vergil himself may echo Pollio’s influential Histories when he begins the second half of his epic—the half in which proto-civil war will take center stage—with a desire to move into a greater work/theme (maius opus moveo, V. Aen.7.45). Cf. O’Gorman (1995) 121 n.14. The Octavia’s prefect later characterizes the riot similarly as an “impious movement” (cecidere motus impii ferro duces, Oct. 850).
132 doloso, H. Carm.2.1.7-8). A safer path, according to Horace, would be a return to tragedy and to the stage. This contemplation of Pollio’s return to the tragic genre leads Horace’s lyric train of thought through an extensive quasi-praeteritio of the highlights and thematic currents of Pollio’s Histories and ultimately to a fervent request that his friend return to writing his less dangerous stage dramas (paulum severae Musa tragoediae/ desit theatris, H. Carm.2.1.9-10). Turning back to the Octavia and its staging, we never get a full-scale messenger speech about the civil strife to which the messenger alludes. While he gives the chorus a taste of the chaos by describing the damnatio memoriae carried out against Poppaea’s statues (Oct. 794-800), and the people’s subsequent vague threats against the imperial palace (Oct. 801), we nowhere see the extended descriptions of violence and carnage that prior civil-war literature, traditional messenger scenes from
Roman drama, or the messenger’s own build-up leads us to expect.74 This narrative, it seems, Nero alone will hear offstage and we are left to imagine what such a messenger speech would have included. I suggest, however, that this is no accident.
By recalling in the messenger’s final lines a poem which had both treated Pollio’s
Histories and also urged him back to the genre of tragedy, the Octavia’s messenger— and, by implication, the playwright of this historical tragedy—is playing a metaliterary and intertextual game. He lays all the groundwork for an extended and detailed narrative by including the programmatic language of civil war (furor, nefas, rabies) and also by recalling some of the most famous opening lines of civil-war poetry and poems about
74 See, for example, Appian’s description of Actium, or any number of battle descriptions in Lucan’s Bellum Civile, or the gruesome messenger speeches in Senecan Tragedy (e.g. Sen. Tr.1068-1164, esp. regarding the death of Astyanax). Even Nero’s account of Octavian’s rise to power resembles more closely the type of speech we would expect the messenger to deliver.
133 writing such poetry (Lucan, Horace, Pollio).75 Instead of giving us what he has driven us to expect, however, he breaks off, allowing his programmatic intertexts to speak for him and forcing us to imagine—and to reconstruct through our memory of prior Roman civil- war literature—the sorts of descriptions, images, and events that he will narrate to Nero offstage.76 The messenger combines Pollio’s two literary predilections—civil-war literature and drama—and yet denies us the satisfaction that either genre would normally provide: an extended messenger speech or a catalogue of grisly civil-war crimes.
Through his echoes he activates the tradition of civil-war poetry, but allows our familiarity to tell his story for him, perhaps through our own recent memory of Nero’s gruesome Augustan narrative (Oct. 503-29). Activating the literary tradition stands in for narrating the events.77
This is metatheater and metaliterary play taken to an extreme, but one with wider artistic ramifications for the play than mere literary pyrotechnics. Nero suggests in his dialogue with Seneca that his citizens were prone to civil strife. The messenger and the
75 Cf. Littlewood (2004, 143-4) on how the Thyestes’ intertextual engagement with Horation poetry on the writing process reinforces the metaliterary aspects of the scene.
76 Within this same scene, the chorus will do something similar when it intertextually activates the beginning of Aeneid 2 and Aeneas’ narrative of his own suffering (Oct. 819-20) as it ponders the fall of Troy, and then breaks off suddenly unable to narrate the story in full. Our prior knowledge of Vergil’s epic, however, allows us to fill in the gaps. I will analyze this episode in more detail in Chapter 5.
77 The metapoetic aspects of this passage can be further understood when they are read against the idea of furor and similar passions as agents of creating poetry. The connection between furor and poetic composition can be traced back to Greek models (Democritus and Plato), but the historical Seneca discussed the idea in De Tranquilitate Animi (esp. 17). The mind of the inspired poet is excited by supernatural forces, and moved in a frenzy towards ideas greater than itself. It is this language of enthusiastic poetic expression that finds itself reflected in the dialogue between the chorus and messenger. The revolutionary chorus is struck in their minds with furor, a furor that is described as “inspired” (quis iste mentes agitat attonitus furor, Oct. 785)—all language that finds itself connected with the idea of frenzied poetic inspiration in Seneca and other similar texts. Similarly, when the messenger responds that they are “struck” (percussa, Oct. 786) with favor and carried off (efferata, Oct. 787) in their madness, he too invokes similar metapoetic passages. In this way, as the messenger and chorus engage in a dialogue about the revolution, they do so in such as way as to suggest that the revolutionary citizens are in fact agents of a type of poetry—civil-war poetry—and have thus inspired this type of poetry in those who describe them. I owe much to Schiesaro’s analysis of the poetics of furor (Schiesaro [2003] 22-5 and 51-5).
134 chorus—both by intratextually engaging with Nero’s previous speech and also by intertextually engaging with previous civil-war literature—demonstrate that Nero’s belief in a seditious riot is not part and parcel of a tyrant’s irrational paranoia, but is in fact reflective of an awareness of the true character of the Roman people. This understanding is borne out by the play’s subsequent events such that civil war and sedition seem omnipresent in Neronian Rome, despite the historical Nero’s public avowal of ruling over a Golden age of peace and prosperity. In this way, the messenger’s brief dialogue with the chorus further sets the stage for how we read the rest of the play, and also most explicitly conveys the playwright’s underlying interest in positioning his narrative in line with Horace and Lucan, as a new type of civil-war poem for a new Imperial age.
Adesse cerno rara quem pietas virum: Nero’s Prefect and the Suppression of the Riot
In his first appearance on stage and throughout his dialogue with Seneca, Nero shows a keen understanding of the seditious nature of his citizens. Nevertheless, their discussion was primarily theoretical, full of “what if” statements regarding how a king ought to react to various as-of-yet unrealized situations. Seneca underscores the underlying peaceful character of the Roman people; Nero understands them differently. When Nero appears in the play for the second and final time, it is in a scene whose structure deliberately recalls the Seneca-Nero debate from the drama’s first half, showing Nero before and after the outbreak of sedition.78 Although we never hear the intervening messenger’s full
78 On the importance of doubling to the structure of the Octavia and in particular the parallelism between the Seneca-Nero scene and the scene here between Nero and his prefect, see Boyle (2008) lx-lxi. See also the extended discussion of the Octavia’s symmetry in Smith (2003) 403-5 and Sutton (1983) 9-22.
135 account, Nero’s reaction to it further emphasizes what the brief dialogue between the messenger and the chorus made manifest: namely that potential sedition has turned into full-fledged civil strife that threatens the stability of the state. Nero consequently becomes, it seems, a military general on active duty in a civil war against his own people:
O lenta nimium militis nostri manus et ira patiens post nefas tantum mea, quod non cruor civilis accensas faces extinguit in nos, caede nec populi madet funerea Roma, quae viros tales tulit! Admissa sed iam morte puniri parum est, graviora meruit impium plebis scelus. en illa, cui me civium subicit furor, suspecta coniunx et soror semper mihi, tandem dolori spiritum reddat meo iramque nostram sanguine extinguat suo. (Oct. 820-30)
Alas for the excessively slow hand of my soldiers and my anger too indulgent after such madness, because civil blood has not yet snuffed out the torches they lit against me, nor does funereal Rome yet drip with the blood of her people, Rome who bore such men! But already to be punished with allowed death is too little punishment, the impious crime of the mob has earned more severe punishment. Behold she who subjected me to the madness of my citizens, that wife and sister always suspect to me, finally let her repay my grief with her life and snuff out my anger with her blood.
As elsewhere in the play, echoes of civil-war literature continue to hover beneath the surface of Nero’s vengeful monologue as he returns to the stage. He laments that his praetorians have been too slow to avenge him and that Rome is not yet dripping with the blood of its citizens (caede nec populi madet/ funerea Roma, Oct. 823-4), activating the commonplace image of civil-war landscapes wet with blood and perhaps even intratextually recalling Nero’s earlier interest in the proscriptions. With this language,
Nero in effect wishes his city to become the prototypical civil-war landscape; anything less is not doing justice to his cause. Similarly, when he rages about the madness of his citizens (civium…furor, Oct. 827), his commonplace language puts his own experience of the revolution in dialogue with a wider nexus of Roman literature which had asked similar questions. In fact, these particular images and their associated language are the
136 types of images through which early Imperial authors had contrasted “then” and “now,” the civil strife of the late Republic versus the restored Golden age of peace and prosperity founded by Augustus and continued by his successors.79 That Nero here applies to his own reign the language with which Imperial authors had differentiated the empire from the strife-ridden age before the rise of the Julio-Claudians is suggestive: with these words
Nero seems implicitly to challenge his family’s claim to peaceful rule, much as he had more explicitly challenged Augustus’ peaceful propaganda when describing Octavian’s rise to power. His Rome and his citizens suggest direct continuity, rather than contrast, between the “then” of the strife-ridden late Republic and the “now” of Imperial Rome.80
Beyond these programmatic words and phrases, however, Nero’s monologue and subsequent dialogue with his praetorian prefect suggest another prominent trope from late
Republican invective and historiographical civil-war narrative used throughout the play to characterize Nero’s relationship with his people: the image of Rome as the quintessential city under siege (urbs capta). In an influential article, Elizabeth Keitel persuasively demonstrates how Tacitus shaped his account of the Julio-Claudian dynasty so as to suggest that Rome’s imperial family had not put an end to the civil wars of the late republic.81 Instead, suggests Tacitus on Keitel’s reading, the emperors waged
79 Perhaps most famously, Horace had championed the Augustan age as one in which civil madness was finally kept at bay: custode rerum Caesare non furor/ civilis aut vis exiget otium/ non ira, qua procudit enses/ et miseras inimicat urbes (H. Carm.4.15.17-20). Seneca the Elder had similarly contrasted the citizen madness of then with the peace of now in the preface to the first book of his Controversiae: bellorum civilium furor, qui tunc orbem totum pervagabatur…(Sen. Cont.1.Praef.11).
80 Nero’s obsession with his citizens’ blood (cruor civium or caedes civium) also has roots in the literary tradition of civil strife (Ferri [2003] ad 822-3). Cicero made use of the trope in his speeches against revolutionary citizens, most notably Catiline (Cic. Cat. 3.14) and Antony (Cic. Phil. 3.6; 11.5; 11.6; 13.1; 13.8). Men who spill the blood of fellow citizens—or, at least, who are likely to—are the precursors to full- fledged civil war.
81 Keitel (1984). The family itself had championed this claim in their own propaganda and it became one of the founding legends of the dynasty to which each new ruler made appeal in order to legitimize his own
137 continual war against their people in peacetime; there was no break between the wars at the end of the Republic, but rather the principate itself had become a new mode of waging civil war against Roman citizens.82 The Octavia poet employs this language to similar rhetorical effect, turning Julio-Claudian Rome into a city under siege by its own people and its own emperor.
Throughout the scenes immediately following the outbreak of the riot, Nero and his associates make extensive use of military language to vilify the violence of the
Roman people and to describe the actions needed to restore order. We are now well familiar with Nero’s belief that imperial power and imperial virtue stem from the violence of military conflict, and here that belief is put into practice.83 Nero envisions himself as a general (dux) surrounded by an invading and frenzied enemy, describing the
Roman people as hostes, or enemies of the state. The messenger too already appealed to this language as he burst onto the stage with the first news of the popular insurrection, panicking as if a great army were attacking Rome and as if the city were not currently enjoying a long-standing period of Imperial peace.
Quicumque tectis excubat miles ducis, defendat aulam, cui furor populi imminet. trepidi cohortes ecce praefecti trahunt
rule. More recently, Damon (2010b) has pushed Keitel’s arguments further, studying the use of civil-war exempla in Tacitus’ Annals and positing that, especially in Nero’s reign, Tacitus shows how the politics of civil war still guide the actions of the princeps.
82 As Keitel (1984, esp. 310-312) notes, the perversion of the urbs capta motif in which Rome comes under attack from her own citizens as if by an invading army became a common invective topos at the end of the Republic through which to accuse one’s opponent of plotting against the state and arousing civil war; it typically also included the rhetorical positioning of one’s political opponent as hostis, a rhetoric which we have seen extensively deployed throughout the Octavia.
83 E.g. extinguere hostem maxima est virtus ducis (Oct. 443); ferrum tuetur principem (Oct. 456); destrictus ensis faciet (Oct. 461); furor armat ministros (Oct. 465-6); tollantur hostes ense (Oct. 469); saevo prior ense occuparo quidquid infestum est mihi (Oct. 531); male imperatur, cum regit vulgus duces (Oct. 579).
138 praesidia ad urbis, victa nec cedit metu concepta rabies temere, sed vires capit. (Oct. 780-85)
Messenger: Whatever soldier keeps watch in the house of the emperor must defend the palace—the madness of the people threatens it. Look, the fearful prefects drag the cohorts out to protect the city, nor does that frenzy that is conceived rashly in their minds yield, conquered by fear, but rather gains strength.
We examined above how this passage describes the psychological preconditions of civil strife (furor populi; concepta rabies temere, Oct. 783-4). The military imagery here, however, is equally important. The messenger casts Nero in the role of general (dux, Oct.
780) whose praetorian guard has become a cohort of active soldiers (miles, Oct. 780; cohortes praefecti, Oct. 782) who must protect the palace and the city under siege. The people are now described as rival battle lines bent on destruction (agmina et efferata per nefas ingens ruunt, Oct. 786-7). The people’s anger drives them from the destruction of
Poppaea’s statues to a siege of the palace (saepire flammis principis sedem parant/ populi irae, Oct. 801-2). Thus within a matter of lines, we have the Roman people turned into an army besieging their city, and the imperial armies rising against them; the city’s safety seems at risk on what had, until this moment, been a day of peaceful wedding celebration.
With this imagery, the messenger sets the stage for Nero’s return as a dux prepared to eradicate the enemy and defend his realm from attack.
Nero, however, sees the situation differently. In the time that it takes for the messenger to alert Nero to the crisis off-stage, the imperial forces have gained control over the revolution and now have the upper hand in the fight. Thus, in Nero’s mind, he need not play the defensive role of besieged, but rather becomes himself the invading besieger, the general who marches on Rome and its people just as Sulla, Caesar, and
Octavian had done to assert their power before him:
O lenta nimium militis nostri manus et ira patiens post nefas tantum mea,
139 quod non cruor civilis accensas faces extinguit in nos, caede nec populi madet funerea Roma, quae viros tales tulit! Admissa sed iam morte puniri parum est, graviora meruit impium plebis scelus. en illa, cui me civium subicit furor, suspecta coniunx et soror semper mihi, tandem dolori spiritum reddat meo iramque nostram sanguine extinguat suo. (Oct. 820-30)
Alas for the excessively slow hand of my soldiers and my anger too indulgent after such madness, because civil blood has not yet snuffed out the torches they lit against me, nor does funereal Rome yet drip with the blood of her people, Rome who bore such men! But already to be punished with allowed death is too little punishment, the impious crime of the mob has earned more severe punishment. Behold she who subjected me to the madness of my citizens, that wife and sister always suspect to me, finally let her repay my grief with her life and snuff out my anger with her blood.
No longer are the forces of nefas and ira exclusively used to characterize the Roman people, as they had been both in Nero’s earlier dialogue with Seneca and in the messenger’s recent dialogue with the chorus. The passions of civil war have been awakened in Nero now as well. His men too have become an army who turn against their own city and its people (militis nostri manus, Oct. 820). The citizens of Rome may have torches—a frequent weapon of choice for besieged citizens84—but Nero makes clear that he intends to bring down on Rome and her citizens all the siege tactics of Roman warfare.
Soon the city walls will fall to his flames (mox tecta flammis concidant urbis meis, Oct. 831). Fire, mass destruction, base poverty, and grief-filled famine will bend the criminal people to his will (ignes, ruinae noxium populum premant/ turpisque egestas, saeva cum luctu fames, Oct. 832-3). Besides an obvious allusion to the fire of 64
CE, the language of these lines instantly reminds us of the typical Roman siege narrative, from the pitiful weapons of the besieged to the tactics and manipulations of the Roman
84 See for example Livy’s account of the siege of Fidenae where torches play a key role (Liv. 4.33). Much as in the Octavia passage, Livy’s Romans also desire to turn the besieged enemy torches back on the enemy as punishment for not submitting peacefully to Roman power. Torches also played a disastrous role in the siege of Veii (Liv. 5.7).
140 aggressors.85 The significance here, of course, is that Roman citizens make up both sides.
Nero takes great pleasure in visualizing how, at last, the wicked population will be forced under his yoke, the ultimate symbol of their military defeat (gravi…iugo premenda/ ne quid simile temptare audeat, Oct. 839-40).86 Broken by his siege, the people will learn to obey their Roman master (fracta per poenas metu/ parere discet principis nutu sui, Oct.
842-3) just as foreign populations had always learned to reconcile themselves to their new Roman overlords. With these words, Nero takes the military language and image of the urbs capta from his messenger’s speech, but significantly reverses it, appropriating the besiegers’ persona for himself as he brings his defiant people back to order, just as his ancestors Caesar and Octavian had done when they seized power by marching on Rome.
The Roman people in their madness give Nero the catalyst to become the besieging general that he had, in a sense, always admired in his ancestors; they also give him the opportunity to dispense with the empty rhetoric of clementia and peace that Nero thinks never served a ruler well.87 Through their civil insurrection, the Roman people awaken in Nero a similar passion for strife that had long been buried just beneath the surface, a passion that turns one brief revolution into a civil war that threatens to swallow
Rome whole if left uncontained. Unfortunately for Nero and the Roman people, Nero is not a man on the model of Vergil’s statesman endowed with the ability to calm the angry mob’s passions (or indeed his own) and thus it seems likely that the current strife—so
85 For reading this line as an allusion to the fire of 64 CE, see Boyle (2008) and Ferri (2003) ad loc. In Livy’s AUC, Appius declared famine and need to be two of the greatest strengths of Roman siege warfare, suggesting that with time a city otherwise unable to be reduced to ruin will submit because of them. (Liv. 5.6). Famine and disease likewise play a great role in Livy’s account of the Gallic sack (Liv. 5.48).
86 For the yoke as a symbol of military defeat, see e.g. Liv. 1.26; 2.34; 3.23; 3.28; 3.67; 4.10.
87 Exultat ingens saeculi nostri bonis/ corrupta turba nec capit clementiam/ ingrata nostram, ferre nec pacem potest,/ sed inquieta rapitur hinc audacia,/ hinc temeritate fertur in praeceps sua (Oct. 834-8).
141 often anticipated earlier in the play through reminiscences of Vergil’s simile—will continue indefinitely. And yet Rome may not be completely without hope, for a man such as Vergil described does soon appear on stage.
As Nero reaches a fever pitch in his rant, he sees in the distance one of his prefects approaching and stops for a moment, eager to listen to the man’s words (sed adesse cerno rara quem pietas virum, Oct. 844-5).88 Not only is this one of the few illustrations of pietas in the play, but Nero’s language here also further recalls Vergil’s description of the great statesman (tum pietate gravem ac meritis si forte virum quem/ conspexere, V. Aen.1.151-2). The language of sight is the focus of both passages (cerno; conspexere): as Vergil’s mob had paused in their frenzy at the sight of the man, so too in a sense does Nero. The piety of each man marks him out as special (pietas; pietate gravem), the difference being that in Neronian Rome the only piety that has value is loyalty to the emperor, and thus the term has been stripped of its wider Vergilian implications. Also much like Vergil’s statesman, Nero’s prefect remains unnamed.89 The prefect in this scene forms a doublet for Seneca, but shows himself to be much more in tune with the political realities of strife-ridden Rome than his philosophical counterpart
88 Ferri (2003, ad loc) notes that “Nero’s praise of the prefect’s fides and pietas is an intrusion from the ethical world of the Octavia poet…probably the poet, in giving pietas and fides such prominence in the presentation of this character, meant to make him recognizable as the good, but weak, commander of the praetorians ultimately unable to bring Nero down.”
89 The anonymity of the prefect in this scene has been the subject of intense debate. Kragelund sees an attempt to rehabilitate Tigellinus, Nero’s notorious praetorian prefect (Kragelund 1988) and many have followed him. He then uses this ‘rehabilitation’ to date the play to Galba’s reign when the decision to spare or execute Tigellinus became intensely controversial. On the significance of the anonymity of the prefect, see also Barnes (1982) and Flower (2006, 202-3) who read significance into the fact that the praetorians had declared for Galba against Nero. That the earlier prefect and both Nurses are also unnamed, however, may speak against seeking a specific historical figure behind the prefect’s anonymity. Attempts to fix a name to Vergil’s statesman—from Augustus to Cicero to Cato the Younger—similarly do not increase our intellectual appreciation for the passage or its interpretive significance, and this should be kept in mind for those who read into the Octavia’s anonymous characters historical identities not grounded in the text.
142 had been and as such forms a more apt intertextual subject for Vergil’s simile. He attempts to sooth Nero’s anger with his words, and to restore order to the chaos of Rome.
As he wonders aloud what type of person could rule the maddened crowd (quis regere dementes valet, Oct. 866), he recalls the skills that characterize his Vergilian model (ille regit dictis animos, V. Aen.1.153). The repetition of the verb regere is further reinforced by the substitution of the substantive “crazy” (dementes) or, more literally, “out of their mind” for the original Vergilian animos. The prefect also suggests that Nero’s anger will temper the people (tua temperet nos ira, non noster timor, Oct. 858), recalling with his language Vergil’s initial description of Aeolus as an ideal statesman who tempers the inherent rage in his people (mollitque animos et temperat iras, V. Aen.1.57). Thus this nameless prefect reminds us of Vergil’s anonymous statesman in a situation that resembles Vergil’s seditious riot to a striking degree.
What prevents such a man from carrying out the actions that Vergil’s Aeneid has declared him capable of performing and from saving the state from plunging further into civil strife? Nero and, more broadly, the Julio-Claudian imperial system.90 The prefect has no freedom to respond to the crisis as he sees fit, but instead must loyally carry out
Nero’s own vengeful orders. In a world of Julio-Claudian dynasty where bloodlines, not statesmanship, entitle a man to supreme power, there is no room for a statesman such as
90 There is an important metapoetic moment in this dialogue as well. As the messenger asks Nero if his grief will really inflict punishment on his people (poenam dolor constituet in cives tuos? Oct. 856), Nero responds that it will bring such punishment as no age will ever forget it (constituet, aetas nulla quam famae eximet, Oct. 857). In this response, Nero borrows language from one of Vergil’s most explicit metapoetic and self-conscious moments: the death of Nisus and Euryales (nulla dies umquam memori vos eximet aevo, V. Aen.9.447). Statius too had alluded to this passage in order to make a statement about the futility of loss in civil strife (Cf. McNelis [2007] 148). Whether we read this as Nero’s self-conscious citation of Vergil as a rival master-poet of his own family’s history, or simply as the Octavia poet’s use of Vergil to further his own metapoetic ends, the line forms a striking comment on the role of poetry in preserving memory—and a particular memory, at that—for the ages.
143 Vergil described. The principate, at least in its Julio-Claudian incarnation, seems to have rendered him obsolete. Nevertheless, his existence should perhaps provide hope that in the future a man of this character might gain power and bring Rome back from the brink of civil war once again. The world will have to wait for such a time, as ultimately this prefect’s loyalty towards Nero forces him to spill further civilian blood.
Conclusion
Throughout this chapter, I have variously approached the question that Nero implicitly posed to us at the end of his narrative of the triumviral period: how and under what circumstances do civil-war politics inform imperial practice? I argued that the Octavia in many ways positions itself as a civil-war narrative by redeploying the stock language, motifs, and images of such literature throughout its account of Neronian Rome. I also examined how various characters within the play recall certain programmatic passages of civil-war literature in order to bring their own experiences into intertextual dialogue with the literature that had come before. So the playwright uses Nero and Seneca to offer conflicting readings of the Aeolus episode from Aeneid 1 and its description of civil strife. The Octavia poet returns to this simile at the riot’s end when he has Nero’s anonymous prefect recall Vergil’s great statesman, but paints him as unable in the end to control imperial furor or Nero’s desire to lay siege to his own city in revenge for the civil war they mounted against him.
I also examined the brief dialogue between the messenger and chorus, and how the messenger almost self-consciously describes the riot occurring offstage in terms that
144 recall narratives of civil-war from Lucan to Horace. This dialogue, however brief, is also one of the most explicitly metapoetical moments in the play, as the messenger and chorus not only engage with civil-war literature, but engage specifically with poet-figures or narrator-figures from within that literature as they set up our generic expectation for the extended monologue that we assume will follow. Furthermore, they also engage with poems on the process of writing about civil-war and about being a civil-war poet. Thus at the heart of the play’s description of the riot—the turning point after which nothing is the same for Neronian Rome—we have a moment at which the playwright uses his characters to articulate the process by which civil-war literature is written, a moment that draws attention to the rhetorical practices through which the Octavia poet scripts a new civil war and a new civil-war poem.
The Octavia poet could have selected any moment in Neronian history through which to dramatize the turmoil of Neronian Rome. Octavia’s demise was perhaps an attractive narrative through which to foreshadow Nero’s fall due to the syncretism later created through which Nero’s own suicide occurred on the same day that his erstwhile wife was executed.91 Nevertheless, the play does not take its account of history so far as her death, but rather ends with the aftermath of the riot and the foreshadowing of history to come. Thus it seems that the riot demands our focus. And yet few have recognized
91 In the post-Neronian period, a tradition developed that Nero died on the very anniversary of Octavia’s execution, creating a narrative of vengeance and retribution around her death. The Octavia either reflects this emerging tradition or itself is one of the forerunners. Suetonius highlights the coincidence of date and further connects the idea of the liberation of the plebs with Octavia’s demise (Obiit tricensimo et secundo aetatis anno, die quo quondam Octaviam interemerat, tantumque gaudium publice praebuit, ut plebs pilleata tota urbe discurreret, Suet. Ner.56.1).
145 how the play’s description of the revolution of 62 CE makes concrete and stage-able the play’s wider thematic engagement with civil war and its narrative tradition.92
By filtering all of Nero’s reign (and, in a sense, all of Julio-Claudian history) through this one documented revolution in a period otherwise marked by peace and concordia, the Octavia poet can rewrite the period in terms of civil strife, turning
Neronian history into one continual period of civil war waged between the emperor and his people. No other episode from Neronian history was so rife with potential for reading continuity between the strife-ridden Republic and its imperial counterpart, or for representing Nero and his people in the prototypical rhetoric of civil-war narratives. And this, I suggest, is the reason behind the poet’s choice of such a historical moment and behind his consistent and widespread redeployment of the narrative tropes of civil-war literature from his description of the bloody triumviral period to his representation of
Nero’s imperial politics. Within his play, bellum civile et princeps are two inseparable terms. The implications of this new reading of imperial history and its political ideology become even more clear as we turn to examine the play’s other protagonists and how they too view their experience of imperial Rome in decidedly strife-ridden terms.
92 Similarly, O’Gorman (2000, 23-45) notes, as have others before her, that Tacitus’ uses the mutinies in Annals 1 to collapse the boundary between principate and civil war and to suggest continuity between the two. The Octavia, however, locates its own reflection of civil war in the very city itself, adding an emotional register that is important to the play and links it with previous civil bloodshed in the city.
146
CHAPTER 4: STAGING STRIFE IN THE DOMUS AUGUSTA
It is not an exaggeration to say that many ghosts haunt the Octavia. Octavia summons the ghosts of her father and mother (e.g. Oct. 10-3; 134-6), and remains haunted by ghostly dreams of her brother (e.g. umbra germani, Oct. 115-24); she wishes for much of the play to become a ghost herself (e.g. Oct. 181-2). Agrippina’s ghost appears in propria persona in the middle of the play (Oct. 593-645), haunting the newly wedded Poppaea and Nero, and her ghost is itself haunted by the vengeful ghost of the husband she killed for her son’s ambition (Oct. 614-18). The Octavia often seems to take place in the underworld itself. That the play was written when all its characters were dead would make the audience feel all the more that the dead had risen and were walking the boards again.
Other ghosts too populate the text, but they do so indirectly, not as underworld specters but rather as literary-historical allusions through which the Octavia’s characters are represented and on which their actions and their suffering is modeled.1 As a play about recent history that foreshadows the brutal deaths of all its ghostly protagonists, the
Octavia is also a play about losers: those who lose their families, ancestral homes, power, and their lives. Even Nero—the most powerful character in the play—seems always aware of his own looming demise, and this fear of loss continually drives his actions.
Given the play’s focus on exploring the experience of Roman political turmoil and its
1 I borrow this metaphor of intertexts as ghosts from Littlewood (2004, 5-6) who was in turn noting Segal’s use of the term (1986, 2003).
147 associated traumas, it should come as no surprise that the Octavia’s historical victims are further characterized through the greatest losers of the Roman historical tradition, and the literature which had immortalized their suffering.
I have previously argued in Chapters 1 and 2 that at the heart of the Octavia is a philosophical and political debate about kingship built around conflicting memories of
Augustus and his civil wars (Oct. 437-552). The civil wars of Octavian, however, are not the only memories of civil strife to haunt the Octavia’s characters. In fact, the action of the play is in many ways determined by how its various characters read their experiences through the tradition of Roman civil war, and how they adapt this tradition of Republican war to their own struggles within the imperial palace. In Chapter 3, I argued that the
Octavia uses the generic conventions of civil-war narrative to stage the revolution over
Octavia as a form of civil war that brings Neronian Rome into direct contact with the civil wars out of which the Julio-Claudian dynasty was born and into which it ultimately descended after Nero’s fall. The concluding premise of this chapter was that riot of 62 CE becomes a new instantiation of civil war through its narrative construction in the Octavia.
This chapter begins from that premise and takes it a step further by turning away from the strife occurring in the streets of Rome to the personal and political rivalries within the imperial palace that engendered and fostered that strife. I explore how, as the
Octavia replays a moment in Rome’s recent history and the struggle to see which Caesar would be the last to remain standing, its characters simultaneously replay struggles made famous in Roman history and legend. These historical models—activated by the play’s various intertexts—recast the Octavia’s characters into legendary adversaries and their domestic and imperial struggle into a battlefield within the palace walls. Thus Octavia
148 and Nero clash not as man and wife, but as Pompey and Caesar, or Aeneas and Turnus.
The playwright similarly asks us to read Agrippina not as an imperial mother or wife, but as a rival general who lost her bid for power to a Caesar, and lost her life in the process.
According to the Octavia, the imperial system had not quelled Rome’s urge to pit Roman against Roman to the city’s own destruction. The old passions, rivalries, bitter hate, and ethical contradictions remain, especially within Rome’s leading citizens who are now exclusively from one ruling house; the stakes are just as high for Rome and its people.
The Julio-Claudian dynasty localized civil war’s passions and its bloody struggles within the palace walls, offering its leading roles to members of the imperial family and especially to its women, inserting into the narrative of Roman strife-ridden power- struggles a striking feminine voice.
Pompey the Great and Narratives of Loss
Octavia, the play’s eponymous heroine, has clear ideas about which roles she will play and which she will not, despite the numerous times at which the play’s various characters try to cast her in the role of a passive woman from Rome’s past. When Octavia describes
Poppaea as a woman who demands Octavia’s head as the price for her “whoring”
(pretium stupri/ iustae maritum coniugis poscit caput, Oct. 132-3), commentators have noted that her language recalls Propertius’ similar description of Cleopatra (coniugii obsceni pretium Romana poposcit/ moenia, Prop. 3.11.31-2).2 The offensive union to which Propertius refers is of course that between Cleopatra and Antony, and Octavia
2 Cf. Boyle (2008) ad loc: “the figuring of Poppaea as a kind of Cleopatra would add historical irony to Octavia’s complaints.”
149 borrows the elegist’s insult to Cleopatra and the men she seduced to condemn her husband’s paramour in similar terms. Poppaea becomes a second Cleopatra to Antony’s
(and Caesar’s) descendent, demanding Octavia, heir to the Roman empire
(coniugis…caput), instead of Rome as the price for her favors (coniugii obsceni). That
Octavia shares the name of the last Julio-Claudian woman whose husband preferred
Cleopatra’s charms to her own is surely also significant.3
More interesting, however, is the emphasis on a shift from a center of power that was Rome to a center of power that is now the imperial bloodlines within the imperial palace; Octavia stands in for and, in a sense, has become Rome for the imperial age as her family lineage is now the closest power source that Poppaea can demand.4 Cleopatra had demanded an entire city, while Poppaea need only demand the head of one woman to achieve similar universal power. Thus we see right away that the battle for Roman power—Romanitas itself—will be waged within the palace itself, and largely between women. Nevertheless, the playwright does not pursue this parallel further, seemingly uninterested in reading Octavia through the traditional and expected lens of a wounded yet dutiful Roman matron. The battle occurring within the palace walls is not best represented as fight between two women for Nero’s affections; it is a battle for imperial
3 Wiseman (2001, 14 with n.17) uses this fortuitous name play in his arguments suggesting the Theater of Marcellus as an appropriate stage for the Octavia. In his reading, Nero’s Octavia would only gain sympathy as the audience recalled the suffering of her similarly named ancestress whose porticus lay just adjacent to the theater. Given Octavia’s clear association with Pompey the Great as a literary-historical model, however, the Theater of Pompey seems an equally promising location, especially given the historical Nero’s own preference for performing on that stage (Flower [2006] 203 with n.19). When Suetonius describes how Octavia’s shade haunted Nero after death, he notes also how simultaneously Nero saw himself besieged by statues dedicated at Pompey’s Theater (terrebatur ad hoc evidentibus portentibus somniorum et auspiciorum et omnium, cum veteribus tum novis. Numquam antea somniare solitus occisa demum matre vidit per quietem navem sibi regenti extortum gubernaculum trahique se ab Octavia uxore in artissimas tenebras et modo pinnatarum formicarum multitudine oppleri, modo a simulacris gentium ad Pompei theatrum dedicatarum circumiri acerique progressu, Suet. Ner.46.1).
4 Cf. Ovid’s claim from exile: res est publica Caesar (Ov. Tr. 4.4.15).
150 power between two power-hungry Julio-Claudian adversaries. Thus Octavia requires a more formidable model through which to battle Caesar’s heir.
Within the play’s opening scene, Octavia explicitly compares her situation with that of vengeful Electra (Oct. 57-71), and scholars have thoroughly traced this parallel throughout the play, often to the exclusion of other potential models.5 Within this same passage, however, Octavia also implicitly suggests another literary model for herself that remains just as pervasive throughout the rest of the play in an equally metaliterary and metahistorical manner. When she ends her monologue by describing herself as the shadow of a great name (magni resto nominis umbra), critics have long recognized the echo of Lucan’s description of Pompey the Great (stat magni nominis umbra, Luc.
1.135). More recently A. J. Boyle has variously noted in his commentary that throughout the tragedy, Octavia is often intertextually connected with Pompey.6 Given how prominently Octavia echoes one of Lucan’s most celebrated lines and thereby aligns herself with Lucan’s doomed hero, the parallel Boyle suggests ought to be investigated
5 Sophocles’ Electra seems to play a particularly significant role in the Octavia’s reworking of Greek tragic models. See Harrison (forthcoming); Bellandi (1997); Herington (1961); Ladek (1909). Harrison notes (and Boyle follows him) that the Octavia’s engagement with Greek tragedy often generates meaning from pitting two tragic models against one another in tension. Octavia thinks that she is an Electra, but in reality she is an Iphegenia who was sacrificed by her father for imperial ambitions. This sort of plurality of models carries over to the play’s engagement with the Roman literary-historical tradition and is of prime importance to the play’s artistic program. Such intertextual networks are often triggered by one “obvious” intertextual marker (such as Octavia calling herself Electra, or “the shadow of a great name”) that then invites us to search for additional (perhaps more subtle) lexical and contextual parallels elsewhere. Regarding the priority given to intertextual models from Greek drama, I borrow Littlewood’s assessment of the historical Seneca’s debt to Euripides: “if the ghost of Euripides haunts every line of this play it is as one ghost among many,” (Littlewood [2004] 260).
6 Boyle (2008) ad 71. My analysis of Octavia-as-Pompey is indebted to the suggestions in Boyle’s commentary, as will be noted throughout.
151 more comprehensively, beginning with this line and what Octavia’s redeployment of it can tell us about her own representation.7
Lucan had described Pompey as the “shadow of a great name” in the context of comparing him to Caesar (Luc. 1.120-58). The two great men were once united by a familial blood-bond when Caesar’s daughter Julia wed Pompey and soon became pregnant with his child (Luc. 1.98ff). The untimely death of Julia and her child irreparably broke this bond and plunged the two men into bitter rivalry (Luc. 1.111-20).
Pompey trusted in his fortune, in the love of the people, and in his past deeds, actively seeking no means of increasing his dwindling power (Luc. 1.121-3; 129-43). Thus he stood the shadow of a great name, the shadow of his former self and his former significance to Rome. Caesar, on the other hand, had no name yet and was also more than a name (sed non in Caesare tantum/ nomen erat nec fama ducis, Luc. 1.143-4), relying on lightning speed and military expertise to bring men to his side (Luc. 1.143-57).
Throughout the epic, the two forces clash until the defeated Pompey boards a ship for
Egypt where he loses his head at the hands of those who want to please victorious Caesar.
Once the initial echo is recognized, several thematic and contextual parallels between the experiences of Octavia and Pompey become increasingly suggestive.
Octavia, like Pompey, is beloved of the people and revels in this love and her memories of a celebrated—yet quickly faded—past (e.g. Oct. 183-5, 646-8; cf. Luc. 1.129-43, 7.7-
44). Unlike Pompey, of course, Octavia has no military prowess or past glory of her own to rely on. Nevertheless, she revels in the military achievement of her father and
7 For the role of this line in characterizing Pompey throughout Lucan’s epic, see Rossi (2000); Feeney (1986); Ahl (1976). Ahl ([1976] 50-3) suggests that through this description of Pompey, the reader is later asked to understand Rome itself as the shadow of a great name. This interpretation squares well with Octavia’s (and the chorus’) understanding of herself as a symbol for Rome (cf. above pp. 149-50 and Chapter 5 208-9ff.).
152 describes his victories in language reminiscent of Pompey, appropriating his historical victories into the fashioning of her own identity. When Octavia describes how the whole world obeyed her father (cui totus paruit orbis, Oct. 25-6), she borrows language from
Ovid who had similarly praised Pompey’s military might (cuique viro totus terrarum paruit orbis, Ov. Pont.4.3.43).8 Ovid had written his poetic epistle to a faithless friend who mocked Ovid’s misfortune. Ovid points out, however, that fortune is fickle and can quickly turn on those who least expect it: so it turned on Magnus who had ruled the known world before losing his head to a lowly client (Ov. Pont.4.3.41-3). Thus Ovid uses
Pompey’s great success as a means of increasing the pathos of his own exemplary fall, creating a warning for future Romans. Octavia too views her father’s military victories in pathetic contrast to his untimely and treacherous death (Oct. 23-30), and thus she not only echoes Ovid’s praise of Pompey, but also echoes the underlying moral of his redeployment of Pompey’s story. By characterizing her father in language that other poets had used to characterize Pompey the Great and his defeat, Octavia’s language prepares us to read the struggles of her family through the lens of Pompey’s fall.9 Octavia
8 Cf. Boyle (2008) ad loc.
9 Once these more prominent textual and contextual parallels are recognized, a host of otherwise commonplace-sounding echoes further strengthen the parallel. This is a prime example of how the Octavia poet will activate a parallel with a more obvious appeal to a programmatic passage that then authorizes us to hunt for further parallels, expanding the intertext’s resonance from our memory of different texts on similar themes. When Octavia goes on to emphasize Claudius’s victory over the Britanni (ducibus nostris ante ignoti iurisque sui, Oct. 29-30), she echoes language from Lucan who had similarly described Pompey’s wide dominion in a programmatic passage just before his catastrophic defeat at Pharsalia (undique gentes iuris…sui, Luc. 7.54-5). Cf. Ferri (2003) ad loc. When Octavia calls forth her brutally murdered mother from the underworld (si quis remanet sensus in umbris, Oct. 13), her language is similar to Lucan’s description of the burial of Pompey the Great (siquid sensus post fata relictumst, Luc. 8. 749). Similarly, Octavia describes the consequences of her mother’s death (prodidit lapsam domum, Oct. 269) in language that echoes Pompey’s anxiety about the Roman world after his death (sollicitat nostrum, quem nondum prodidit, orbem, Luc. 8.511). Finally, when Octavia describes how the Fates broke her mother’s life-thread (rupisset stamina Clotho, Oct. 15)—the action which allowed Nero’s rise in power and created her current crisis—the words echo Julia’s similar description of her own untimely death and, by extension, the civil war(s) it led to (rumpentis stamina Parcas, Luc. 3.19).
153 activates Pompey as a model of loss, eerily foreshadowing her future fate in Julio-
Claudian “wars more-than-civil” (bella plus quam civilia, Luc. 1.1).
Octavia’s Nurse similarly echoes this intertextual undercurrent when she too activates Octavia’s Ovidian language with reference to Claudius’ former glory (cuius imperio fuit/ subiectus orbis, paruit liber diu, Oct. 38-9). She then goes on to describe
Claudius’ victory over the Britanni (tantis classibus texit freta inter gentes barbaras, Oct.
42-3) in language reminiscent of how Lucan’s catalogue had described the unsurpassed might of Pompey’s troops (aequora… tantis percussit classibus…tam variae cultu gentes, tam dissona volgi, Luc.3.287-9).10 It is within this nexus of echoes of Pompey that
Octavia declares herself the shadow of a great (Magnus) name, and thus it is important to note that when Octavia says these words, the playwright not only suggests that her plight be read through Pompey’s fate but also that the plight of her family be read this way. It is as if Octavia herself metaliterarily reads the Claudian side of her family as an echo of the domus Pompeiana that hovers throughout Lucan’s text as a rival dynasty whose dreams of empire never came to fruition.11 Thus the playwright uses the model of Pompey’s war against Caesar to stage his own current war between Octavia, the last member of the
10 For the linguistic parallel, see Hosius (1922) ad loc. The Lucanean intertext however, brings Octavia back to Electra and her father Agamemnon, the mythological theme with which Octavia begins her monologue. According to Lucan in this passage, not even Agamemnon commanded such a fleet as Pompey (and thus, by extension, as Claudius in the Nurse’s reading); thus the reader of Lucan would also have Agamemnon intertextually in mind when Octavia immediately shifts to comparing her father’s death with that of Electra’s father. The historical Pompey had often modeled himself on Agamemnon (Champlin [2003b] 297-303), and thus Octavia’s allusion to the house of Atreus is not merely an allusive form of tragic self-positioning, but also looks to how previous figures from Rome’s own history had used the house of Atreus in their own self-representation. This becomes increasingly significant to note when we remember that Nero himself played Orestes on stage (Champlin [2003b] 310-15), further blurring the lines between lived reality and mythological tragedy.
11 For Lucan’s allusions to the domus Pompeiana cf. Luc. 6.819. Much as Tacitus had created an alternative Pisonian dynasty (cf. O’Gorman 2006), so Lucan suggests the same of Pompey and his sons. Cf. also Rudich (1997, 183). Note also that, throughout the play, much like Pompey Octavia cannot tolerate a rival—either Poppaea or Nero.
154 Claudian line, and Nero, the last Julian.12 Nevertheless, he applies to this intradynastic political jostling the recognizable model of civil war, and a particular civil war at that: the one that forever changed Rome by removing entirely one of its great rival generals and his family by putting his enemy and his enemy’s descendents permanently in power.
Through this intertextual game, Octavia indicates that the stakes are just as high. This is not simply a matter of a woman’s bruised ego in the face of rejection, or even a
Claudian’s disappointment at not producing the next Julio-Claudian heir; rather, from
Octavia’s perspective, 62 CE becomes as pivotal a moment for imperial history as
Pharsalia and its aftermath had been for the Republic.
As Octavia’s story continues, we come to see how similarly she and Lucan’s
Pompey understand their situations. Both view themselves as the final obstacle in the way of a Caesar’s illegitimate tyranny. Nevertheless, each ultimately sees that her/his opposition will fail and slowly comes to accept fate. The Nurse eerily foreshadows
Octavia’s Pompeian end when she urges Octavia to submit to fate (sed cede fatis, Oct.
253).13 The Nurse, of course, is not yet aware of Octavia’s eventual demise, and so uses these words to urge her mistress to submit to her husband and so restore herself to his favor. In this way alone, suggests the Nurse, Octavia will find safety and may even— through the birth of an heir—gain vengeance and happiness in time to come. Octavia will not follow the Nurse’s advice, but will ironically follow the advice implicit in her language by preparing herself mentally for death. For her Nurse’s language had echoed
12 Such rivalries between the Julian and Claudian branches indelibly left their mark on the historical tradition that grew out of this period. They can most clearly be seen, however, in the dynasty’s visual imagery, especially in terms of how the beloved Germanicus was portrayed: his styling very much depended on which half of the family was currently in ascendency (Rose [1997] 52).
13 For the echo, cf. Boyle (2008) and Ferri (2003) ad loc. “Ironically, Lucan uses it of Pompey as he makes the fateful decision that leads to his decapitation; and Octavia is a kind of Pompey” (Boyle [2008] ad loc).
155 Lucan’s description of Pompey as he consciously decided to board the small raft where he would die at the hands of men loyal to Caesar (sed cedit fatis classemque relinquere iussus/ obsequitur, Luc.8.575). Both phrases occur at line beginning and thus the Nurse even echoes aspects of Lucan’s hexameter, further connecting the two passages. The
Nurse also continually advises Octavia to obey (obsequium 84; 177; 213) her Caesar rather than fight him, and in this language too she echoes the same crucial point at which
Lucan’s Pompey decided to give up his own fight against his own Caesarean opponent
(obsequitur).14 Of course, the Nurse intends her advice to be taken in practical, not fatal terms, but the play’s refiguring of Octavia as a Julio-Claudian Pompey-figure as well as her suicidal tone cause us to hear the sinister undertone to this language and to understand its role in foreshadowing the empress’ demise; beneath the Nurse’s obsessive optimism lies the suggestion of the historical tragedy that we know is to come. Thus by the end of the play’s first scene, Octavia’s fate is already scripted along Pompeian lines and she herself anticipates almost eagerly the death that awaits her. When she declares herself the “shadow of a Great name,” we hear her declare herself the leader of the losing side in the wars that ended the Republic, foreshadowing how, by the end of the drama, she will be the figurehead for the losing side in the strife that leads to the end of the Julio-
Claudian dynasty.15 The difference between the two historical figures and their demise seems not so large in the end.
14 Much like Nero, Lucan’s Caesar expects the obedience of the entire world (omne deorum/ obsequium speres…Caesar, Luc. 5.293-4), a wish fulfilled—however unpleasantly—by Pompey’s death (obsequitur).
15 The question of whether civil wars ended the Republic or were a parallel phenomenon is a complex one. Cf. most recently Flower (2010). For our purposes, however, what is relevant is that Octavia’s characters seem to understand that civil war leads to changes in government (cf. Oct, 300-8), rather than acting separately but in tandem.
156 Octavia’s final destination has been subject to much scholarly scrutiny and emendation. The manuscripts unanimously report that Octavia believes she is boarding a ship bound for Pharian shores (petat puppis rector/ Phariae litora terrae, Oct. 970-1).
Given, however, Tacitus’ account of Octavia’s end as well as historical evidence for where Julio-Claudians sent their exiles, critics have been quick to emend Phariae to
Pandatariae, even though the emendation is unmetrical.16 I follow Boyle who most recently restores the manuscript reading and who cites as evidence the echoes of Pompey throughout the play. If one recognizes the intertexts—and especially the prominent redeployment of Lucan’s “shadow of a Great name”—it makes sense to leave Octavia imagining that she is sailing to the shores where Pompey had lost his head to Caesar’s would-be supporters.17 Whether the historical Octavia went to Pandataria matters little; at the end of her tragedy in the manuscript tradition, Octavia imagines that she will fulfill the literary-historical parallel suggested at its opening.18
16 Critics have long been puzzled by the universal reading of Phariae in the manuscripts—especially given that Tacitus himself indicates that Pandataria was Octavia’s final destination. Lipsius (1588) first suggested the emendation Pandatariae and he is followed by Bothe (1819), Leo (1878-9), Pedroli (1954), Viansino (1965), Zwierlein (1986), Ferri (2003), Fitch (2004) and others. Efforts to “prove” historically that Egypt was also a place of exile in the early Imperial period have not largely convinced those who favor the emendation. Giardina (1966), Ballaira (1974), Whitman (1978), and Barbera (2000) retain the manuscript reading and have recently been joined by Boyle (2008) who suggests that, whether or not Phariae is historically accurate, it is nevertheless intertextually accurate in that it corresponds to Octavia’s self- posturing as Pompey and to the emphasis on Egypt throughout the play. For a thorough discussion of the issue of emendation on both sides, see Boyle (2008) and Ferri (2003) ad loc. Smith (2003, 429) also argues for retaining the manuscript reading.
17 Such a reading would also explain Octavia’s fear of decapitation throughout the play (e.g. Oct. 133), a death which—although factually accurate—was not the death planned for her and thus is not likely to have been anticipated by either Octavia herself or those around her. For the prolonged and various attempts to execute Octavia, cf. Tac. Ann.14.60-4. Murgatroyd (2008) offers a thorough and nuanced analysis of Tacitus’s account of Octavia’s death, but deliberately excludes the Octavia from his discussion. For an interesting analysis of Pompey’s decapitation and its resonance in another Flavian historical poem, Silius’ Punica, see Marks (2008). In general, the idea of political suicide caught on as a topos in later literature, especially in the wake of Lucan (cf. Macguire 1997).
18 The return of Octavia’s ashes becomes a cause célèbre after Nero’s fall (cf. Kragelund 1998), much as Pompey’s ashes had been after the death of Caesar (cf. Plut. Pomp.79-80). This further underscores the suitability of the parallel between the two doomed Caesarean opponents for a post-Neronian audience.
157 That the Octavia reads the empress’ tragedy through Pompey the Great is significant for our interpretation on multiple fronts. At the most basic level, it represents
Octavia as the losing figure in a civil war, and therefore suggests that we are to read her experience with Nero—at least metaphorically—in terms of civil war rather than as a dynastic struggle or domestic squabble. Nevertheless, the parallel between Octavia and
Pompey is made more complicated by the differences in their positions vis-à-vis their
Caesarean nemesis. In his introduction to Pompey and Caesar, as we saw above, Lucan had drawn attention to the difference between the famous name of Pompey and the not yet significant name of Caesar; Octavia and Nero, however, are both heirs to Caesar’s legacy and thus when she asserts that she, like Pompey, is the shadow of a great name, we must pause to consider what name she means. Some commentators suggest that she means the name of Claudius, an interpretation perhaps suggested by the fact that throughout the play many characters refer to her as Claudia.19 Nevertheless, this interpretation glosses over the fact that at the thematic heart of the play is a struggle over the name Caesar itself and the imperial power it bestows.
In Lucan’s epic, Pompey had the now ghostly nomen, and Caesar as of yet had no name to speak of. Of course at the time Lucan was writing, the name “Caesar” itself had become synonymous with princeps and the Julio-Claudian heirs to the throne. Thus the assertion that Caesar lacked a name at all would have been heavily ironic in its original context. In the context of the Octavia, however—a play that stages the final years of the
Julio-Claudians and looks to their fall—the name ‘Caesar’ appears to have become, like
Pompey, a ghostly shadow without individualized force. Through the success of Caesar’s
19 Cf. Boyle (2008) ad loc.
158 heirs, his name became paradoxically stripped of its particular and individualized significance as it became the generic title for the ruler of the Roman world. Every ruler became a “Caesar,” regardless of whether or not he had any Julian blood at all.20 The name had become permanently disassociated from the specific achievements of the individual, and had become a title increasingly devoid of particularized significance, especially as the family itself fell from power. By the time of 69 CE, the decision to adopt or reject the name of “Caesar” and its associated implications was a live issue among all four emperors who rose to the throne.21 The result of this controversy was that the name stuck, but it became further divorced from the family line it once delineated— thus quite unlike “Pompey,” the name “Caesar” remained great (magnus), even after its family’s fall. Caesar himself became the shadow of a name greater than its original bearer, a name that would outlive him and his heirs.
Additional factors further enhance and yet complicate this parallel. Although
Pompey and Caesar had been united by a marriage-bond, Octavia the would-be-Pompey is an imperial princess married to her Caesarian nemesis, a man who is also her brother
(cf. Oct. 46, 220, 284, 658, 828), and thus the bonds that bind them are even stronger than the socer-gener bond traditionally emphasized in civil-war narratives.22 Here is a sister and wife turned against her brother and husband, a female symbol of what civil strife
20 Claudius is the earliest Roman emperor to consciously adopt the name Caesar (Levick [1990] 42).
21 Galba took the title “Augustus” and then “Caesar” (cf. Flower [2006] 198 n. 3) and also passed the title “Caesar” to his adoptive heir, Piso. Otho may not have initially adopted the title “Caesar,” although he was at times referred to as “Nero Otho” by the populace if Tacitus is to be trusted. Vitellius initially declined the title “Caesar” and styled himself and his son and heir “Germanicus” (cf. Tac. Hist.1.62; 2.62). As he fell from power, Suetonius records that then he asked to be called “Caesar” (Suet. Vitel.11). Vespasian adopted the title and also added it to his Titus’ name. For the legacy of Caesar’s name, especially in this period, see Levick (2009) 218ff; Flower (2006) 198-9.
22 Octavia may have been adopted into another gens to prevent negative reactions to her marriage to Nero (Dio. Hist. Rom. 60.33.2). If this is true, the play ignores it and instead highlights the incestuous marriage.
159 does to the core values of the Roman family.23 The battles fought within the palace walls are even more “wars more than civil” (bella plus quam civilia, Luc. 1.1) than Lucan’s had been.24 Lucan had emphasized the death of Julia as the breaking point that turned father- in-law and son-in-law inevitably towards civil war. While she had lived, the Roman world had hope that the two men would be forever bound by the birth of the child who would unite their blood and create a shared Caesarean-Pompeian legacy (pignora iuncti sanguinis, Luc. 1.111-2). Throughout the Octavia, characters outside the imperial family similarly confide their hope that the two Caesars can be reconciled and produce a child to unite them forever in a Julio-Claudian shared legacy (e.g. pignora pacis, Oct. 279)—a point to which we shall return. The devastating consequences of this barren marriage for the Roman people are made all the more prominent by the echo of Pompey’s doomed marriage, his unborn child, and the resulting civil war.25
Thus while the Octavia poet suggests from the outset that we read Octavia’s domestic troubles in light of the civil war which led her ancestor to power, he also highlights the complications that arise from replaying the war between Caesar and
23 Schiesaro (2003, 35) similarly notes that within the strife between brothers in the Thyestes, Seneca “condenses the horrors of civil strife in the polarized contrast between two brothers.” Octavia’s gender, however, renders the Octavia’s microcosm of civil war even more pointed than Seneca’s.
24 In her work on lament in Lucan’s Bellum Civile, Suter notes that the wives of Pompey similarly domesticate the passions of civil war in their implicit rivalry: “Cornelia’s jibe at Julia (Luc. 8.102-105) recasts the murderous confrontation of Roman strong men in a civil war over the spoils of empire as a catfight between two women competing for Pompey’s marital attention. Her words recall Julia’s apparition as a ghost to Pompey at the opening of book 3, when she predicts disaster at the start of his voyage (Luc. 3.20-3) and calls his new wife a sexual rival (paelex [3.23])” (Suter [2008] 241). The Octavia poet, however, makes this domestication of civil strife explicit and centers his drama around it.
25 Cf. also the description of Julia as concordiae pignus at Velleius 2.47.2. This phraseology seems to have become part of her literary afterlife. “The post-Neronian author of the Octavia would have experienced—if the work is to be dated to the early Flavian period—the civil wars which followed Nero’s death and the absence of a successor, and would have been aware of the political strength which accrued to Vespasian because of his two adult sons” (Boyle [2008] ad loc). The potential Lucanean echo, although not noted by Boyle, reinforces his interpretation.
160 Pompey through two of Caesar’s descendents. What had been a struggle that shook the entire world is now played out within the walls of the palace, and yet the consequences of the struggle are no less devastating for the Roman people. The parallel also trivializes to some extent the epic struggle between the great men of the Republic: what had in
Lucan’s epic been a struggle over which man—Pompey or Caesar—would become master of the world and thus whose name would have lasting power, in the Octavia becomes a struggle in effect over which Caesar will maintain the empty familial designation in a play that already anticipates a time when Caesar’s family will no longer rule, denying significance or any lasting value to the winning side. They fight simultaneously over the Roman empire and yet over nothing. If the name of Caesar has become the name of Pompey, as Octavia’s language suggests, there is nothing more worth fighting for; all that is left is for one to die, and the other to quickly follow.
Octavia, however, does not actually die in the play itself, and thus the playwright turns to the fate of another Neronian woman in order to incorporate fully within the drama the entire story of Pompey’s tragic fall.
As the chorus of Roman people remembers Agrippina’s gruesome death, it weaves into its narrative echoes of Lucan’s Pompey, suggesting that we read the final conflict between mother and son in the grand tradition of Roman civil war. Once more the thematic parallels between the two opponents of a Caesar—opponents who both died gruesomely at the hands of a minion after a fatal voyage to what they thought would be safety—are reinforced by more specific verbal echoes. Lucan’s Pompey had recognized that certain death was upon him and chose to give himself over to fate (sed cedit fatis,
Luc. 8.575), and we have seen this language used to describe Octavia’s fate in the play’s
161 first scene.26 Thus the intertext would already be active and available in our minds when it appeared again, slightly altered, only 100 lines later to describe another Julio-Claudian woman’s similar resignation at the end of her fatal voyage (pellit palmis cogente metu/ fata, sed cedit fessa labori, Oct. 348-9).27 Furthermore, in his self-aware narrative of how he desired to be remembered, Pompey too called his hardships a labor (saecula Romanos numquam tacitura labores attendunt, Luc. 8.622-3).
As Pompey stepped off his ship, he was met by Ptolemy’s minion—a fellow-
Roman sent to murder him in cold blood (Septimius, qui, pro superum pudor, arma satelles/ regia gestabat, Luc.8.597-8). So too Rome’s own tyrant sends his satellite to kill
Agrippina as she emerges from her ship of death (missus peragit iussa satelles, Oct. 366).
The term satelles is common in Roman disdainful descriptions of Eastern monarchy, but the contextual parallels between the actions of these two specific minions—sent to end the life of an enemy of Caesar as soon as the opponent had left his or her respective
26 Additional intratextual language binds the two women. The phrase “hope of safety” (spes salutis) acts as a refrain throughout the play that binds the two women’s experiences together (e.g. of Octavia at Oct. 130; of Agrippina at Oct. 330; and of both at Oct. 906). Cicero’s Pro Marcello (17-18) used similar language when discussing Rome’s fear that the victors of civil war would be full of wrath and violence; the Roman people should thank the gods that instead Caesar was a victor full of clemency on whom the state’s entire “hope of safety” now depended (omnem spem salutis ad clementiam victoris et sapientiam contulisse, Cic. Marc.18). Given Ferri’s suggestion (ad Oct. 472ff) that the Pro Marcello’s praise of Caesar was an active model for the Octavia’s Seneca, the echo might further reappear here to show how far Nero had fallen in the lessons of clemency provided by his ancestors. In his frenzied madness during the fall of Troy, Aeneas spoke similarly, telling his men that the one safety for the conquered is to hope for no safety (una salus victis nullam sperare salutem, V. Aen.2.345). The phrase seems to have become common in narratives of Roman political turmoil and panic, as it recurs frequently in Lucan (e.g. Luc. 2.113 and 5.636).
27 Cf. above when Octavia and her nurse both echo the same Ovidian description of Pompey, but slightly alter the language, allowing the two intertexts to mutually reinforce each other. Similarly, as I have argued in Chapter 3, Seneca and Nero engage throughout their scene with the Aeolus episode from Vergil, and their cumulative intertexts—some more blatant than others—reinforce the sustained engagement. Several editors have tried to emend A’s reading of fata to freta, following Buecheler (1872) (cf. Zwierlein [1986] and Ferri [2003]). Barbera (2000), followed by Boyle (2008), retains fata (see Boyle [2008] ad loc). The intertextual reminiscence of Pompey would add strength to the manuscript reading, but is not noted by any of the commentators in this regard. A. J. Boyle, who so astutely noted Octavia’s engagement with Pompey, does not note the echoes of Pompey elsewhere in the text in relation to other characters. That Agrippina and Octavia share their intertextual models is of prime importance to the interpretation of Julio-Claudian women within the text.
162 ship—may be more than contextual and lexical coincidence. In fact, the chorus elides completely any lapse of time that occurred between Nero’s failed attempt at matricide via shipwreck and his second successful attempt at executing her, a period of time described in great length in the historical tradition surrounding Agrippina’s death.28 Given that the playwright allows her death to be narrated twice within the brief scope of his play, a lack of space to devote to the issue does not seem a probable reason for the temporal elision.
The chorus goes out of its way to emphasize the immediacy with which Agrippina was killed as she reached shore (patiturque moram sceleris nullam, Oct. 365), a detail that makes more sense if we understand that Agrippina’s death is filtered through that of another literary-historical figure: Lucan’s Pompey.29
Once these wider parallels are recognized, further echoes of this passage from
Lucan hover elsewhere throughout the choral ode, mutually reinforcing the literary model.30 The chorus calls Agrippina’s death a monstrous crime that posterity will
28 Cf. Tac. Ann.14.1-8 where the near-fatal voyage gets one chapter (14.5), and the events afterwards take up the rest of the space clearly separating the failed assassination from the eventual execution. Similarly in Tacitus’ account, several men are sent to assassinate Agrippina in her own home, nor are these men described as “satellites” or in similarly Eastern terms at any point. The marked shift in narrative details, the suppression of some aspects of the story and the confusion as to where in space and time Agrippina actually dies, is reminiscent of how Vergil created a Pompey out of his Priam when he casts Priam’s headless corpse onto the shore, an historical allusion which then Lucan puts back into its historical context in this passage (cf. Bowie 1990). So the Octavia’s chorus creates out of Agrippina’s death a tragedy reminiscent of Pompey’s through a shift in narrative details and verbal echoes of Lucan’s now famous death scene.
29 Agrippina also recalls in this scene another Pompey-figure: Vergil’s Priam. As Priam had died, he asked the gods to repay Pyrrhus just rewards for the crimes he had perpetrated (‘at tibi pro scelere,’ exclamat, ‘pro talibus ausis…praemia reddant,’ V. Aen.2.535-7). As Agrippina rhetorically questions what she has done to deserve such a death, she echoes Priam’s curses (‘haec,’ exclamat, 'mihi pro tanto/ munere reddis praemia, nate?' Oct. 332-3). At the same time however, her language damns her own actions as much as it does Nero’s, her latter-day Pyrrhus. For the intertextual conflation of Pompey and Priam in the post- Vergilian tradition, see Marks (2008).
30 These sorts of thematic and linguistic parallels become part of Lucan’s Pompey’s intertextual legacy in later silver epic (cf. Marks 2008). As Agrippina curses Nero, she recalls how she had been the one to give him ultimate power and the name of Caesar (imperium nomenque dedi/ Caesaris amens, Oct.336-7). The emphasis she puts on the significance of Caesar’s name reminds us of Octavia’s declaration that she is but the shadow of a great name. The Great name of course is no longer Pompeius Magnus, but Lucan’s
163 scarcely believe (cuius facinus vix posteritas/ tarde semper saecula cedent, Oct. 359-
60).31 Lucan similarly described the effect of Pompey’s death as a tale which will maintain its infamy for all time (heu, facinus civile … qua posteritas in saecula mittet/
Septimium fama, Luc. 8.604-9).32 Furthermore, both passages use the same three near synonyms to describe the crime, as if one alone could not convey the horror (facinus, nefas, scelus: Oct. 359, 363-5; Luc. 8.604, 609-10). Each victim is described as “cursed’ or “doomed” as they go to their death (infelix: Oct. 369; Luc. 8.524). Both Caesarean agents of the satellite’s crime are described as impious (impius: Oct. 363, Luc.8.783) as they commit gruesome crimes against fellow-Romans for a Caesar’s benefit. While
Pompey’s assassin buried his sword into Pompey’s side, the general thought his final words silently to himself (perfodit, nullo gemitu consensit ad ictum/ respexitque nefas…moriens, Luc. 8.619-21). In similar language, but far more vocal, Agrippina loudly demands that the men bury their sword into her womb, uttering her final death groan defiantly (moriens…‘hic est fodiendus’ ait…post hanc vocem cum supremo mixtam gemitu, Oct. 368-74). Although participles of dying and final groans are ubiquitous in death scenes, Agrippina’s choice of verb (fodiendus) additionally recalls Lucan’s description of Pompey’s murder (perfodit).33 While Pompey died silently and Agrippina spoke last words, both die in control of their emotions and prepared to meet their fate.34
phraseology continues to haunt the text just as his doomed protagonist does.
31 Ferri (2003, ad loc) notes the parallel in phrasing, but uses it to make a philological point.
32 The idea that posterity will not be able to believe the atrocities committed during civil war is a ubiquitous trope that extends back at least to Horace (Romanus eheu—posteri negabitis, H. Epod. 9.11). Nevertheless, the similarity in context and in phrasing between the Octavia passage and Lucan’s adaptation of the Horatian theme reinforces the intertext.
33 This verb choice is all the more striking if we think of the parallel death scene in Seneca’s Oedipus, a passage to which some would like to see the Octavia indebted (cf. Boyle [2008] ad loc and also Hind
164 Other more commonplace echoes of civil-strife narratives also pepper the choral ode, adding to the overall flavor of civil war throughout the death scene. The chorus opens its excursus on her death by declaring that its age too had seen unspeakable crimes
(haec quoque nati videre nefas saecula magnum, Oct. 309).35 Readers of Horace would hear in the chorus’ language an echo of one of Horace’s meditations on the dangers of civil war.36 In Epode 16, Horace lamented that a second generation of Romans was grinding itself to dust and destroying the city which no foreign army had yet destroyed. If such strife continued, according to Horace, Rome would once again see what is forbidden to be seen (nefas videre, H. Epod.16.14): its own general turning against fellow citizens.
The Roman people—the addressees of Horace’s public lament—must change their ways
(and their home) before it is too late. The Octavia’s chorus also addresses the Roman people as a whole (with whom the chorus members identify) and seeks to change its ways before it is too late. Although nefas is used differently in each poem, as emotive exclamation in Horace and as object in the Octavia, nevertheless the similarity of
[1972]). There Jocasta also asked for her womb to be struck with the sword, but the verb used to indicate the violent act is completely different (hunc, dextra, hunc pete/ uterum capacem, qui virum et natos tulit, Sen. Oed.1038-9). Tacitus also records the anecdote, and he too uses a different verb of striking (iam in mortem centurioni ferrum destringenti protendens uterum ‘ventrem feri’ exclamavit multisque vulneribus confecta est, Tac. Ann.14.8). Cf. also Cass. Dio Hist. Rom.61.13.
34 Agrippina also recalls another famous victim of civil strife: Remus. In Fasti 5, Ovid had described Remus’ death in similar language (crudelem animam per volnera reddas, Ov. Fast.5.469).
35 For the verbal echo, see Hosius (1922) ad loc. It is tempting to read a Great crime (magnum nefas) as a pun on Pompey Magnus left for those who pick up on the Pompeian echoes of the later part of this scene, as the pun was already active from Octavia’s earlier intertext and will be redeployed in connection with Agrippina’s ancestors at her next appearance (nominis magni viros, Oct. 641).
36 This ode has a clear intertextual relationship with Vergil’s 4th Eclogue and critics have often questioned to which poem priority should be given. Given the way in which Horace’s altera aetas (H. Epod.16.1) reworks Vergil’s ultima aetas (V. Ecl.4.5), Horace’s poem seems to have been composed in answer to Vergil’s, putting “prophesies of doom” in place of Vergil’s cautious optimism (cf. Feeney [2007] 132-34; Watson [2003] 486-8; Griffin [1993] 21-2; Mankin (1995) ad loc). For interpretations of the poem as a whole, see the bibliographies compiled by Cavarzere (1992) and Setaioli (1981).
165 language brings out these parallels in theme and circumstance. Thus the chorus suggests already that it remembers Agrippina’s murder and its consequences in terms of how
Horace had remembered civil war and its destructive power.37
When the chorus goes on to describe Agrippina’s near-death sea voyage
(Tyrrhenum…in aequor), it once again borrows language from Horace’s civil-war poems.38 This time the language comes from one of Horace’s odes to Augustus (H.
Carm.4.15) in which the poet celebrated the princeps as the one who rescued the state from civil war (furor civilis, H. Carm.4.15.17-8).39 Horace had opened this poem in a recusatio stance, asserting that Apollo forbade him to enter Tyrrhenian waters with his proposed song of civil war (ne parva Tyrrhenum per aequor vela darem, H. Carm.4.15.3-
4), and urged him instead to celebrate Augustus’ age of peaceful bounty.40 Agrippina, however, gets no such warning from the Julio-Claudians’ patron god, and thus blithely sets sail on the strife-ridden voyage that would lead to destruction. Unlike Horace’s
Augustus, the Octavia’s Caesar does not restore Rome to harmony from the brink of civil war, but instead actively plunges the city into strife beginning with his own mother. As
37 In this poem, Horace suggested that the Romans ought to imitate the Phoenicians and sail off to a happier place, abandoning their cursed city (cf. Mankin [1995] ad loc). Unlike the voyage which Horace urges Romans to take, Agrippina’s voyage will not lead to a happy future. Epode 16 also locates the guilt of civil war within the Roman people as a whole (impia aetas, H. Epod.16.9)—a common motif in Horace to which we shall return—and not with Caesar in particular; the chorus, however, has no doubt as to its own Caesar’s guilt (impius, Oct. 363). For other echoes of Horace’s language, cf. Ov. Met.11.70; Sen. Oed.442; Stat. Theb.8.451.
38 Ferri (2003, ad loc) notes the parallel.
39 The poem may reflect Augustus’ celebrated closure of the temple of Janus in 11 BCE (Nisbet [2010] 20), making further ironic the chorus’ implicit critique of Nero who had also publically closed the doors of the same temple in imitation of his ancestor. Horace’s poem also self-consciously asserts itself as the ultimate interpreter of the “Augustan age” (Cf. Breed 2004), a point to which the Octavia’s chorus responds when it declares that its age had seen nothing but crime.
40 Similar phrasing also occurs when Juno describes how a race hostile to her is sailing for Italy (gens inimica mihi Tyrrhenum navigat aequor, V. Aen.1.67).
166 the chorus sends Agrippina into her own Tyrrhenian voyage, so her story is contextually and intertextually framed by the civil-war narrative that Horace’s Apollo will not let him sing, condemning Nero for failing to follow the peaceful model of his ancestor.
As the chorus moves into its narrative of the shipwreck proper, it turns for inspiration to Lucan’s climactic finale of the naval battle at Massilia, one of the most gruesome literary accounts of (civil) war naval battle in extant Latin literature.41 Lucan’s losing soldiers had clung to the wreckage of their ship lest they be submerged (hi, ne mergantur, tabulis ardentibus haerent, Luc. 3.688). In the end, however, they only met further slaughter once they reached what they thought was safety (Luc. 3.681-751), becoming the cause of female lamentation from women looking on from the shore
(quanti matrum per litora planctus, Luc. 3. 757).42 So too Agrippina’s women cling to the wreckage of their ship, fill the air with lamentation (tollitur ingens clamor ad astra/ cum femineo mixtus planctu, Oct. 319-20) and yet sink anyway (alii lacerae puppis tabulis/ haerent nudi fluctusque secant/…multos mergunt fata profundo, Oct. 323-26).43
The chorus’ rhetorical stance, with its emphasis on violence, chaos, and vision (videre,
306), further echoes Lucan’s narrator as he describes the bloody chaos of the sea-battle.
41 Scholars have often sought programmatic messages in the Massilian episode. See for example Rowland (1969) and Opelt (1957). Rowland in particular sees Massilia as a doublet for Rome and the damage that Roman citizens do to their own city—and their own identity—during civil war, an idea that often recurs in more recent scholarship. See also the extensive discussion of Massilia in Masters (1992, 11-42) in terms of Lucan’s poetics and narrative techniques vis-à-vis his “sources,” and also Leigh’s (1997, 246-58) discussion of Massilia in terms of its Vergilian model and in terms of the emphasis on voyeurism—both elements prominent in the Octavia passage. The episode is the earliest extant sea-battle to survive in Latin literature, but is probably modeled to a large extent on narratives of Actium (Masters [1992] 11).
42 Within this passage, Lucan also briefly narrates the death of one Tyrrhenus—even giving him his own last words in direct speech. Thus the Octavia’s Tyrrhenian seas might also look to this Lucanean turn.
43 Cf. Ferri (2003) ad loc for several of these parallels. The extended focus on the experience of women and their laments in the Octavia taps into a well-studied phenomenon in regards to epic poetry in which female lamentation threatens the traditional masculine sphere heroic glory by emphasizing the community’s suffering (cf. Suter [2008] 241; Murnaghan [1999]; Nugent [1992]).
167 Through the cumulative weight of all these various echoes, any combination of which could have stood out to different audiences at different times, the chorus’ narrative is textured by Horatian and Lucanean civil-war poetry, urging us to understand the woman’s death in terms of a Roman civil-war narrative. These echoes build to an account of Agrippina’s death that is ultimately modeled on the death of Pompey, and thus Nero's mother too becomes one more shadow of a “Great” name within the text. Agrippina herself says as much when she appears at the play’s center in the guise of an avenging
Fury to forecast Nero’s fall; at the close of her wistful yet vengeful monologue, she wishes that Nero had died inside her womb, had descended to the underworld, and had seen his ghostly ancestors, “men of great name” (nominis magni viros, Oct. 641), the family line which Agrippina failed to live up to by bearing such a monstrous Caesar. In the end, Agrippina’s biological potential as a mother—the potential that many celebrate in Octavia—becomes her undoing as she bore the Caesar who would one day destroy her.
The use of Pompey the Great as a model for Julio-Claudians who die in the process of opposing a Caesar is thematically significant for multiple reasons. Particularly striking is that here, for the first time in the play, we see two Julio-Claudian characters sharing the same literary model. While the language of the Octavia’s Seneca and Nero recall the Aeneid and the Res Gestae to read Augustus as a model for Nero’s reign, each character activates a different reading of these texts, incorporating additionally diverging models, and thus come to different conclusions about Augustus’ role in the Neronian principate. Octavia and Agrippina, however, seem to activate the same reading of
Pompey, and especially Lucan’s Pompey. Octavia echoes the end of Pompey’s life as he moves closer to his final defeat, while Agrippina completes the narrative by reenacting
168 Pompey’s death. Together, the two Julio-Claudian victims of Nero become Pompey for the next imperial generation. We will see that these overlapping literary models continue throughout the play as Octavia, the currently doomed empress, and Agrippina, the former empress and imperial mother, suggest an eerily similar reading of their roles in history.
Perhaps even more significant for our interpretation of the play is how the two
Pompeys in the various stages of Nero Caesar’s civil war are not only his relatives, but also imperial women. Thus the play imbues into its reading of Rome’s strife-ridden past the tension created by the dominant femme fatales of Julio-Claudian history, whether that tension be familial, sexual, or even a disturbing blend of the two. Civil war is no longer strictly the purview of Roman men whose women sit nervously at home taking care of the household. Under the Julio-Claudians, women begin to play a more active role in the traditionally male arenas of politics and warfare, accompanying their husbands on campaigns and taking a strikingly public place in the dominant imagery of the period.44
In the historical tradition of Julio-Claudian Rome, these women also have an active role behind the scenes, scheming over the succession and maneuvering to have female rivals displaced from power.45 The Octavia in a sense combines these two strands of representation of Julio-Claudian women—the public powerful persona and the private schemer—into one model and imbues this model with the strife-ridden narratives of
Roman civil war. The Republican general par excellence must now wage his civil wars
44 Cf. Ginsburg’s (2006) study of Agrippina’s imagery and the historical tradition that grew up around her. See also Rose’s (1997) study of Julio-Claudian dynastic imagery. Antonia and Agrippina the Elder both accompanied their husbands on campaign (Tac. Ann.1.41; Levick [1993] 11).
45 Cf. Tacitus’ portrayal of the rivalry between Agrippina the Elder and Livilla, between Messalina and various court women, and Agrippina’s attempt to control her son’s female companions. This tradition, however, far predates Tacitus and is likely a response to the public prominence of women in the Julio- Claudian period (cf. Ginsburg 2006).
169 within the domestic space of the imperial palace with women and even as a woman. The
Octavia thus introduces women as active players in Roman civil-war narratives, underscoring further that while the form of civil war has changed, its inherent passions and significance remains the same.
And yet neither of these facets address one crucial question: why Pompey? On the most basic level, the Octavia uses echoes of Pompey to rescript the final years of Julio-
Claudian history into an imperial-age reflection of the civil war that—in Lucanean retrospect—first brought the dynasty to power. Such a reading, however, could have been accomplished through allusions to the civil war between Octavian and Antony which looms large in Nero’s memory of Augustus’ legacy. The battle between Caesar and
Pompey, however, offers something that Octavian and Antony as models do not: the potential to look towards the violent deaths of both generals, given that Caesar followed
Pompey in violent death within only a few years. Both Agrippina and Octavia, as they follow Pompey’s tragic fate, also foreshadows Nero Caesar’s own looming destruction.
Thus as we read their loss in terms of Pompey’s, we understand that Nero is implicitly condemned to the fate that quickly followed for Caesar.
Nero, Collective Guilt, and Caesar’s Assassination
Given the Octavia’s intertextual positioning of its eponymous heroine as imperial
Rome’s new Pompey, it is hardly surprising that in Octavia’s speeches, Nero Caesar is connected to Pompey’s enemy. A particularly notable passage in this respect is Octavia’s prayer that Nero die a gruesome death at the hands of Jupiter:
170 utinam nefandi principis dirum caput obruere flammis caelitum rector paret, qui saepe terras fulmine infesto quatit mentesque nostras ignibus terret sacris nouisque monstris; uidimus caelo iubar ardens cometen pandere infaustam facem, qua plaustra tardus noctis alterna vice regit Bootes, frigore Arctoo rigens: en ipse diro spiritu saevi ducis polluitur aether, gentibus clades novas minantur astra, quas regit dux impius. (Oct. 227-37)
Would that heaven’s lord strike with fire the monstrous head of this unspeakable emperor! Jove often makes the lands quake with his threatening thunder and terrifies our minds with ominous fires and new prodigies. We saw blazing through the sky a comet open its unlucky torch, where slow Bootes, rigid with Arctic frost, drives his wagon through alternate night. See, our savage leader’s dire breath pollutes the upper air! The stars threaten new disasters for the races which this impious leader rules.
Although she seems to know that her wish is fruitless (utinam), Octavia nevertheless finds hope in the fiery portent that Rome had recently witnessed. In 60 CE, a comet appeared in the sky that lasted up to six months according to the historical Seneca (Sen.
N.Q. 7.17.2, 7.21.3-4, and 7.29.3; cf. also Plin. HN.2.92; Suet. Ner. 36; Tac. Ann.
14.22.1). Given the traditional associations of the dire portent with a change in rule, this particular comet became cemented in the later Neronian tradition as one of the earliest signs that Nero’s reign was coming to an end.46 There is a striking emphasis on sight within her account of the portent, on how she herself and Rome saw these things, and on how they are thus in a position to interpret the portent’s significance. In other words,
Octavia here puts herself in an authoritative position as an interpreter of what these signs should mean for Roman history. Nevertheless, the language of sight (vidimus) in this precise form and context has wider literary-interpretive significance that connects
46 This interpretation, however, is of course retrospective. Little evidence exists that the comet was interpreted in such a way during Nero’s reign, but rather came to be interpreted thus after his fall. For comets signaling the end of a reign, especially in the Flavian literary tradition (of which the Octavia may well be an early exemplar), see V.F. Arg.6.608, Stat. Theb.1.708, and Sil. Pun.8.636-7. The Julio-Claudian dynasty had, in a sense, begun with the sidus Iulium and Caesar’s deification and had then ended with a much-noted comet which foretold Nero’s fall. The dynasty thus offered recent tangible proof of the significance of such portents for the post-Julio-Claudian age.
171 Octavia with previous Romans who had themselves seen portents surrounding the death of a Caesar.
Ancient authors knew well that the appearance of a comet foretold dire events on the horizon, and particularly foreshadowed a change in rulers. Thus at first, it may seem as if Octavia were invoking a mere commonplace topos which she then applies to her specific situation. Nevertheless, this reading does not account for the other prodigies on her list, nor her emphasis on divine wrath involved in the portent. There is, however, in
Julio-Claudian history a parallel event seared into the cultural memory of the Roman people which appears—at least in the textual tradition—much like the events for which
Octavia prays. The assassination of Julius Caesar and the dramatic portents associated with this period—at times occurring before, during, or after the assassination itself— earned a large literary tradition around them.47 In particular, the comet(s) that occurred
(and were later read as proof of Caesar’s apotheosis) and the civil wars that his death reawakened became fundamentally intertwined in grisly catalogues of the chaotic period.
Two literary treatments from the Augustan age in particular seem to have been especially intertextually significant for later poets: the end of Vergil’s Georgics 1 and Horace’s Ode
1.2.48 Even more significant for our passage is that these two texts are themselves interdependent.
Critics have long recognized that Horace’s Ode 1.2 looks back to and reworks
Vergil’s account of the death of Julius Caesar at the end of Georgics 1.49 Both passages
47 The most extensive recent study of Caesar’s comet in terms of the event itself and the tradition around it is Ramsey and Licht (1997).
48 For a similar intertextual conflation of Horatian and Vergilian material in the Thyestes, see Schiesaro (2003) 116.
49 Cf. Thomas (1988) ad V. Georg.501-2; Nisbet and Hubbard ad H. Carm.1.2.13.
172 looked to Caesar’s death, the divine displeasure variously manifested as a result, and the chaotic era of civil wars the followed. More specifically, both passages included an extended description of the portents signaling divine displeasure and connected them thematically with the guilt of civil war. Of crucial importance, however, both to Vergil’s reception of Horace and to the Octavia’s engagement with both passages is Horace’s repetition of Rome’s status as a witness to these dire events (vidimus, V. Georg.1.472).
Vergil’s catalogue had repeatedly emphasized gruesome sights and the collective witness that Rome became to images it could not unsee, beginning with his striking first person plural use of vidimus at the opening of his catalogue. Horace’s Ode returns to the themes and content of Vergil’s catalogue in a noticeable way, but it is the lyric poet’s redeployment of Vergil’s verb for sight in the same form and in the same position
(vidimus, H. Carm.1.13) that fully activates his intertextual reworking of Vergil’s
Georgics. Thus when Horace explains how Rome has seen such gruesome portents before, he not only looks back historically to the moments surrounding Caesar’s death and the civil war, but also looks back to Vergil’s account of these same portents, creating out of his repetition of otherwise unremarkable language an Alexandrian footnote: not only did Romans themselves see these portents, they have seen a prior literary treatment of these portents as well.50 Thus when Octavia uses the same verb in the same form as both Vergil and Horace, she not only puts herself in the tradition of Romans who have seen strife-ridden portents in the past, but also redeploys the exact marker through which
50 Ovid seems also to look back to Horace and Vergil when, at the end of his Metamorphoses, he describes how comets were often seen in the time around Caesar’s death. The form of the verb has changed, but the emphasis on Roman witnesses remains (saepe faces visae mediis ardere, Ov. Met.15.787).
173 Horace had looked to Vergil. Both passages become important for Octavia’s vengeful prayer, each adding an additional layer to her hopes for Nero’s demise.
The most striking parallel between Octavia’s prayer and Vergil’s original passage is of course her appropriation of Vergil’s vidimus, bringing into Neronian Rome the collective witnesses of Caesar’s assassination and its aftermath from Vergil’s narrative
(quotiens Cyclopum efferuere in agros/ vidimus undantem ruptis fornacibus Aetnam,/ flammarumque globos liquefactaque voluere saxa, V. Georg.1.471-3).51 It is from this highly marked lexical echo that further thematic and linguistic parallels emerge. Both
Vergil’s retrospective narrative and Octavia’s future wish reflect on the death of a Caesar, and each notes the significance of comets in predicting such political upheaval (vidimus caelo iubar/ ardens cometen pandere infaustam facem, Oct. 31-2; non alias caelo ceciderunt plura sereno/ fulgura nec diri totiens arsere cometae, V. Georg.1.488-9).52
The extended focus on divine fire’s destruction (e.g. flammis, Oct. 228; flammarum, V.
Georg.1.173) further links the passages lexically and thematically. Octavia’s emphasis on how often Jupiter is able to vent his wrath (saepe), further picks up on Vergil’s use of quotiens and totiens at this point in the poem and also works, in a sense, as a further intertextual marker that links the language of Octavia’s prayer to the literary passages that hover in the background.53 Vergil’s lines became one of the most influential passages on Caesar’s death and the subsequent civil war for the later poetic tradition and this too
51 Cf. Boyle (2008, ad loc) on the similarity of the introductions with vidimus.
52 These comets do not seem to have much relation to the sidus Iulium of Augustan public imagery, as they foretell instead dire civil war without a hint of optimism (Gurval [1997] 27). This fact, however, only highlights their suitability for Octavia as she certainly does not wish apotheosis for Nero.
53 Quotiens appears only here in the poem and, as Thomas suggests, Vergil uses it to emphasize further “the frequency and pervasiveness” of the portents surrounding Caesar’s death (Thomas [1988] ad 471). I return to the idea of saepe as an intertextual marker below with reference to Horace’s Ode 1.2.
174 makes Octavia’s echoes more prominent;54 the comets that burned at Caesar’s death give
Octavia hope by their reappearance that Caesar’s heir might meet a similar fate.
Horace’s passage too lies behind much of Octavia’s language here, and the shift in focus from Vergil’s narrative of chaos to Horace’s narrative of collective guilt is further significant for our reading of the Octavia passage. Much like Vergil’s, Horace’s passage also focuses on the prodigies surrounding Caesar’s death and the civil wars that follow. Unlike his Vergilian model, however, Horace focuses on the divine wrath of
Jupiter and on how the Romans perceive this wrath as their own punishment for some criminal guilt. Horace’s Jupiter hurls hail at the earth from his thunder-wielding hand and terrifies its people (iam satis terris nivis atque dirae/ grandinis misit Pater et rubente/ dextera sacras iaculatus arces/ terruit urbem, / terruit gentis, H. Carm.1.2.1-5), striking their sacred citadels with lightening. So too, Octavia wishes that the king of heaven would destroy Nero, as she remembers how often Rome has experienced the god’s wrath before. Her Jupiter often hurls his fiery weapons at the land (qui saepe terras fulmine infesto quatit, Oct. 229) and terrifies its people with sacred fire and new terrors
(mentesque nostras ignibus terret sacris/ novisque monstris, Oct. 230-1). Horace’s
Romans too had feared a coming apocalypse marked by new terrors (nova monstra, H.
Carm. 1.2.6), terrors which Octavia remembers Jove imposing on Rome in times gone by
(vidimus, Oct. 231; vidimus, H. Carm.1.2.13). Octavia later wonders why, if Jove is capable of such destruction, he refuses to aim his terrifying right hand against Nero (in tam nocentem dextra cur cessat tua, Oct. 247), recalling the emphasis placed on Jove’s
54 For the pervasive influence of the Vergilian lines, cf. the opening lines of Lucan’s Bellum Civile (w. Roche [2009] 20-23 and ad loc). Lucan uses Vergil’s own civil war excursus at the end of Georgics 1 to contaminate intertextual echoes of the Aeneid and to create out of this conflict his own poetics (Roche 22- 3). See also the use of Horace 1.2 and Horatian posturing in Lucan’s first book (Roche ad Luc. 1.33-8).
175 baleful right hand at the opening of Horace’s poem. In fact, as suggested above,
Octavia’s use of saepe here seems now even more an intertextual marker that not only brings Octavia’s language into contact with a common trope of Jupiter’s wrath, but brings it into dialogue with Horace’s (and Vergil’s) literary reactions to Caesar’s death.
One striking difference, however, remains between Horace’s reworking of
Vergilian material and Vergil’s original poem that is significant for our reading of the two models behind the Octavia passage. Instead of dwelling on the violent chaos and the role of the portents in creating this chaos, Horace focused instead on how the collective guilt of the Roman people needed expiation and on how Augustus delivered the state from chaos to begin the expiation process. In fact, this is one of the primary poems to which scholars make reference when they discuss the concept of civil war as a hereditary
Roman curse, and Horace himself seems to have been the origin of such a trope.55 It is this understanding of human guilt and the need for its expiation—not as prominent in the
Vergilian passage—that attracts the Octavia poet to Horace. Vergil had not emphasized
Jupiter’s role in the terror that the Romans experienced in the wake of Caesar’s death.
Both the Horatian ode and Octavia’s curse, however, open with an image of vengeful
Jupiter who strikes terror into the earthly mortals. The targets of Jupiter’s wrath in both passages are fundamentally guilty in the eyes of Octavia and Horace, and will thus suffer
Jove’s punishment until that guilt is expiated. Theirs are no random acts of heaven’s chaos, but rather the targeted vengeance of the king of the gods.
Octavia blends Vergil’s programmatic narrative on the portents of civil war and a
Caesar’s death—and especially his reference to comets—into Horace’s image of Jovian
55 “The sense that the Roman people were living out a self-defining ancestral curse does not appear until Horace (H. Epod. 7.17-20)” (Batstone [2010] 53). See also Mankin (1995) ad loc; Carrubba (1966).
176 vengeance upon human failing. She thus weaves together—starting with the use of vidimus—two extremely influential and interrelated passages of Augustan literature on the aftermath of Caesar’s death into one extended wish for Jove to once more vent his wrath. Octavia’s redeployment of Vergilian and Horatian material, however, does more than generically connect her wish for Nero’s future with Julius Caesar’s past. Rather, she uses Horace’s notion of guilt to condemn Nero by association. The warnings Jupiter sent to the strife-ridden Roman people in Horace’s poem and the fiery portents affecting the same people in Vergil’s passage are here directed at one man only: Caesar’s heir. In
Horace and Vergil, civil war had belonged to and was continued by the people; for
Octavia, the people have been replaced by Nero. Nero is not the new Augustus that
Rome—and especially Seneca—had wanted him to be, prepared to deliver the city from chaos and provide peaceful security. Instead Nero is the embodiment of Horatian collective guilt. From Octavia’s point of view, the hereditary civil-war guilt of the Roman people rests in Nero and with his destruction, order may return. Nevertheless, as Horace noted in his poem, the process of restoring order takes time and leaves a number of casualties in its strife-ridden wake.
An additional Caesarean passage also seems relevant to Octavia’s language here, and brings further Lucanean echoes into her characterization. As Caesar crossed the
Rubicon in Lucan’s Bellum Civile, a series of portents occurred which undoubtedly looked forward chronologically to the portents that historically surrounded his death and back to the treatment of these portents by his literary predecessors Horace and Vergil.56
56 For the significance of Vergil’s Georgics to this passage in Lucan, see Roche (2009) ad loc. Roche also underscores the significance of Ovid’s account of Caesar’s death at Met. 15.783-98 – a passage which will be very much on Nero’s mind below. Roche reads the transposition of the prodigies from Caesar’s death to his invasion of Italy as polemical: “the destruction of the dictator is replaced by the destruction of the
177 The two Augustan poets had described portents following Caesar’s death; Lucan retrojected them back to the Rubicon and to the moment when the Roman national guilt of civil war came to be embodied by Julius Caesar: fiery portents, the gods showing their anger by hurling lightening, and—most significantly for our present passage—a comet flashing across the sky portending the death of a monarch:57
…superique minaces prodigiis terras inplerunt, aethera, pontum. ignota obscurae viderunt sidera noctes ardentemque polum flammis caeloque volantes obliquas per inane faces crinemque timendi sideris et terris mutantem regna cometen. fulgura fallaci micuerunt crebra sereno, et varias ignis denso dedit aere formas, nunc iaculum longo, nunc sparso lumine lampas. (Luc. 1.525-532).
The menacing gods filled the earth with portents, filled the air and the sea with them. Dark nights saw stars previously unknown, the sky blazing with fires and from the sky flew torches shooting diagonally through heaven’s void, and the hair of the star that must be feared: the comet which foretells a change in king. Frequent lightning flashed across a sky that pretended to be serene, and the fire produced various shapes in the thick air, now flaring far like a javelin, and now like a torch with a scattered tail.
To Lucan, Caesar’s guilt in crossing the Rubicon had led to the chaos of civil strife both in his life and after his death as described by Vergil and Horace; through her Lucanean echoes, Octavia attaches to Nero the inexpiable guilt Lucan attached to his Caesar at the
Rubicon and throughout the rest of his epic.58 Once again the passages have much in common. Each passage emphasizes the language of vision, inspired by Vergil and Horace
(vidimus; viderunt). Similarly, both Octavia and Lucan emphasize the fear that hostile gods inspire in earthly humans (caelitum rector…qui saepe terras…terret…minantur
republic and the implication is clearly that the greater perversion of natural order was Caesar’s invasion of is fatherland rather than his assassination.” Cf. also Martindale (1976, 52).
57 “The word [sidus] is also used frequently in reference to the sidus Iulium, a context with obvious relevance here, as the outset of the civil war by which Caesar will attain unequalled supremacy and later apotheosis” (Roche [2009] ad loc).
58 Cf. the Massilian grove scene in Lucan where Caesar wishes all the guilt to become his alone: credite me fecisse nefas (Luc. 3.437).
178 astra, Oct. 227-37; superique minaces…terras implerunt…timendi). Their heavens are angry. It is as if the humans on earth can see the king of heaven hurling vengeance, an image perhaps borrowed from Horace in both places.59 The Octavia poet weaves into
Octavia’s speech Lucan’s four different terms for heavenly and vengeful fire (flammi… ignibus… ardens… facem; ardentem… flammis… faces… ignis), further endowing her with Lucan’s language and authorial stance. Perhaps most significantly, Lucan’s account of Caesar at the Rubicon is the only one of the passages activated here that explicity noted how comets bode ill for those in power, an important aspect of Octavia’s curse.60
As Octavia looks back to Vergil’s and Horace’s accounts of the aftermath of Caesar’s death, she also recalls Lucan’s account of Caesar’s guilty rise to power. She thus emphasizes both her wish that Nero will die and the reasons why he deserves to die as
Caesar did. Nero is guilty of harming his own family, his own people, and his own country—much as Lucan’s Caesar had been.61
Octavia is not the only Julio-Claudian whose language suggests that Nero will follow in Julius Caesar’s footsteps. Nero also seems to read his situation this way, and this fear dictates his actions throughout much of the play. Although Nero’s dialogue with
59 For the general influence of Horace’s Ode 1.2 on Lucan, see, e.g., Roche (2009) ad Luc. 1.33-8.
60 No one seems to read Lucan’s comment on how comets foretell a ruler’s fall in terms of the famous comets during Nero’s reign. Even if Lucan himself were not thinking of the comets of 60 CE when writing the first book of his Bellum Civile, it seems likely that the passage would be read in this way by readers with knowledge of Nero’s fall.
61 Octavia’s intertextual focus on Caesar’s guilt and eventual assassination is not terribly surprising given her wish to see Nero struck down. Nevertheless, however one reads the intertexts that lie behind her wish, the future seems equally bleak. The comets that appeared to Lucan’s Caesar ominously foretold not only his own death but the civil wars and the death of countless Romans in the intervening years; the prodigies seen by Vergil and Horace led Rome into an even more brutal period of civil war than that which Caesar had initiated, bringing about the return of the proscriptions and countless more Roman deaths. Thus these portents seem not only to suggest the death of a ruler and the transition of power, but also to be deeply connected to disastrous periods of Roman civil war. However we are to read Octavia’s intertexts—whether through Lucan’s guilty Caesar, or Horace and Vergil’s analysis of his death—Octavia’s wish not only looks to the death of Nero, but also inextricably condemns the Roman people to gruesome civil strife in its wake.
179 Seneca had focused to a large degree on conflicting memories of Augustus, the memory of Julius Caesar also plays a large role in Nero’s characterization throughout the play and especially in his demonstrable unease regarding his current situation.62 While on the one hand he had read Octavian’s triumphs largely through the lens of Lucan’s unapologetically victorious Caesar, Nero also focuses on Caesar’s assassination. Caesar’s death at the height of his power and at the hands of his own people terrifies Nero, teaching him that Caesar’s clemency was a weak policy that led only to further civil strife
(Oct. 495-502). Why should Nero follow Seneca’s advice and spare those who had rallied against him (Plautus, Sulla, and even Octavia) when Brutus himself had led the attack against Caesar? As Brutus had armed his hands against the man who had spared him
(Brutus in caedem ducis,/ a quo salutem tulerat, armavit manus, Oct. 498-9), so Plautus and Sulla arm men against Nero and would continue to do so as long as Nero lets them live (armat ministros sceleris in caedem meam, Oct. 466).63 To Nero, only fear and violence, such as that which Octavian brought upon his people, can control the mob (Oct.
503ff). This obsession with the death of Caesar and the desire to avoid his ancestor’s fate haunts Nero throughout the rest of the play, and significantly guides his actions, even in passages that on the surface seem to have little to do with Caesar at all.
62 Augustus too seems to have been plagued by conspiracies, real and imagined. Cf. Levick (2010) 173-79.
63 So too Britannicus’ ghost arms his hands against Nero (armat infirmas manus, Oct. 118). The language becomes a motif throughout the play for those who attack the Caesar in power. Similarly, the Julio- Claudian protagonists are obsessed with those who plot “to slaughter” them (cf. caedem in nefandam, Oct. 266). Such intratextual echoes link the various imperial protagonists within a dialogue of paranoia, violence, and fear that extends back to the assassination of their ancestor Julius Caesar. All Julio-Claudians wish such a fate on their enemy while seeking to avoid Julius Caesar’s fate themselves. Thus just as Caesar fell from the crime of the people (Caesar nefando civium scelere occidit, Oct. 502), so Octavia’s nurse recalls how Claudius fell from similarly phrased dynastic conspiracy (scelere occidit, Oct. 44), and Agrippina recalls her own sinister murder (scelere occidit, Oct. 635). The memory of Caesar’s murder haunts them all, but none so much as Nero who, at the time of the play, has the most to lose at the height of his power just as Claudius and Agrippina had been before him.
180 The immediate threat of assassination looms large for Nero as revolution breaks out across Rome in the wake of his marriage to Poppaea. As he returns to stage, this time inflamed with vengeful anger, Nero curses his own leniency, the sluggish response of his soldiers, and imagines the civil-war landscape his wrath will realize across Rome:
O lenta nimium militis nostri manus et ira patiens post nefas tantum mea, quod non cruor civilis accensas faces extinguit in nos, caede nec populi madet funerea Roma, quae viros tales tulit! Admissa sed iam morte puniri parum est, graviora meruit impium plebis scelus. en illa, cui me civium subicit furor, suspecta coniunx et soror semper mihi, tandem dolori spiritum reddat meo iramque nostram sanguine extinguat suo. (Oct. 820-30)
Alas for the excessively slow hand of my soldiers and my anger too indulgent after such madness, because civil blood has not yet snuffed out the torches they lit against me, nor does funereal Rome yet drip with the blood of her people, Rome who bore such men! But already to be punished with allowed death is too little punishment, the impious crime of the mob has earned more severe punishment. Behold she who subjected me to the madness of my citizens, that wife and sister always suspect to me, finally let her repay my grief with her life and snuff out my anger with her blood.
Not only does this passage redeploy the generic markers of civil war while also nodding to the urbs capta motif familiar from such narratives, it also recalls a more specific moment of strife and bloodshed from earlier Julio-Claudian history. Ovid had similarly described earth wet with blood during the chaos that followed Caesar’s assassination
(Emathiique iterum madefient caede Philippi, Ov. Met.15.824). While in Ovid’s passage blood covers not Italian but Emathian soil, the significance is that the blood is Roman, and that it is spilled repeatedly in civil war: in the wake of Caesar’s murder the soil upon which he had his greatest civil-war victory (Pharsalia) ran once more with civil bloodshed. Of course, Ovid had stressed, there was a reason why Roman civil strife broke out again: certain Romans had raised their sinful swords against Julius Caesar, murdering in cold blood the man known for his clemency (Ov. Met.15.776ff). Ovid’s treatment of
181 the death of Caesar and its aftermath seems especially present beneath the surface of
Nero’s rant, suggesting that the reason for his vitriolic reaction is in fact rooted in his fear of sharing Caesar’s fate.64
Ovid’s Venus had foreseen and lamented how the wicked Roman people would extinguish the flames of Vesta with the blood of her own priest Julius Caesar:
…en acui sceleratos cernitis enses. quos prohibete, precor, facinusque repellite neve caede sacerdotis flammas exstinguite Vestae! (Ov. Met.15.776-8).
Look! You see those wicked swords being sharpened. I pray, stop them! Ward off this crime and do not let the flames of Vesta be extinguished with the bloodshed of her priest!
Nero echoes Venus’ horror when he laments the fact that the impious citizens—who threatened the life of their own Caesar and his wife—had not yet extinguished with their own blood the torches they raised against him (quod non cruor civilis accensas faces/ exstinguit in nos, caede nec populi madet/ funerea Roma, Oct. 822-4). The fires of Vesta have become the torches raised against Nero, while the murder of Caesar has become the current threat against Nero’s life. Nero reinforces this intertext by repeating his threats in similar language just a few lines later (iramque nostram sanguine exstinguat suo, Oct.
830). The Octavia’s Nero, it seems, has learned from the fate of Ovid’s Caesar and will not make the mistake of offering clemency to his violent and ungrateful people (corrupta turba nec capit clementiam/ ingrata nostram, Oct. 835-6). Instead they will suffer
Caesar’s fate and, in Ovidian language, extinguish Nero’s fear of civil insurrection,
64 There also may be echoes of Marius throughout Nero’s struggle with his relatives. When Marius had entered the city of Rome, as recalled by the nameless Roman in Lucan’s Bellum Civile 2, he left similar carnage in his wake (stat cruor in templis multaque rubentia caede/ lubrica saxa madent), language that probably looked back to Ovid. Nero’s predilection for interpreting Roman history through a Lucanean lens as well as his fondness for this section of the Bellum Civile further suggests the reminiscence. The implied connection between Nero and Marius seems clear enough. Both passages focus on a dictator who vents his rage on the city itself and on its citizens by whom the dictator feels he has been treacherously wronged. Each man is ultimately driven to lay siege to his own city in order to restore order. That Nero’s first words on stage demand the head of a “Sulla” additionally reinforces his Marian pretentions.
182 conspiracy, and assassination by shedding their own blood.65 As the play’s language encourages us to read Nero through Julius Caesar, we see how eager he is to escape the trap into which his ancestor—and literary model—fell. Nero will win his civil war and will not suffer for holding perpetual tyrannical power in its wake. At least not yet.
Part III: The Aeneid Undone
As I have argued, Octavia and Agrippina’s experiences are often read through the tragedy of Pompey the Great, and especially Lucan’s Pompey. Nevertheless, they each also evoke models of suffering and loss from elsewhere in Julio-Claudian epic, particularly from
Vergil’s Aeneid. Aeneas, Turnus, and even Dido become literary models against which we are invited to read and evaluate the loss experienced by Octavia and Agrippina. The
Aeneid was already, in many ways, a landscape of civil strife that prefigured Rome’s future struggles within and against itself, and it is this thematic grounding upon which
Lucan builds his epic.66 The Octavia further taps into this undercurrent of civil war throughout the Aeneid as it borrows Vergil’s dueling enemies and models its own protagonists upon them, filtering its engagement with Vergil through its more dominant
Lucanean mode and therefore turning the Aeneid into a text that reinforces strife and its
65 In his earlier description of Caesar’s murder (Oct. 498-502) and in his intertextual engagement with Ovid’s Caesar, Nero elides the distinction historically seen between the Roman people’s great love of Caesar and the wicked actions of the senators typically seen in the Julio-Claudian literary-historical tradition. Nero retrojects onto Caesar’s murder his own current situation in which, at least from his point of view, the Roman people and the Senate are lumped into one broad category of those against him. This conflation of the senatorial and popular reactions to Nero is of course itself a product of the period after his fall when the tradition of “Nero the Monster” gained ground. During his lifetime, Nero was a favorite of the people and they mourned his death for quite some time. Cf. Flower (2006) 198-9.
66 On civil war in the Aeneid, see Chapter 1 n. 29; on Lucan’s relationship with Vergil, see Chapter 2 n.12.
183 cost to the Roman people. Gone from the Octavia’s reception of Vergil is any suggestion of Roman glory, any sincere celebration of Aeneas, and any optimistic understanding of the future. Within the Octavia, at least, Vergil’s epic becomes a narrative of exile, pain, and death that is absent of teleological progress.67
After Nero finally weds Poppaea and casts Octavia out of her ruined home, the former empress comforts herself and her partisans as she leaves the imperial palace for the last time, an exile from her city, which she watches fall to ruin around her:
non hoc primum pectora vulnus mea senserunt: graviora tuli; dabit hic nostris finem curis vel morte dies. (Oct. 650-53)
Not for the first time does my breast feel such a wound. I have suffered graver things than this. This day will grant an end to my cares, even if through death.
Octavia’s language here is strikingly reminiscent of the words with which Aeneas had comforted his exiled companions in Book 1 of Vergil’s Aeneid:
O socii—neque enim ignari sumus ante malorum— O passi graviora, dabit deus his quoque finem. (V. Aen.198-9)
Oh companions—for we have not been ignorant of misfortunes even before, Oh you who have suffered greater things than this, a god will grant an end to these also.
Both Aeneas and Octavia are able to put their own emotions aside during times of extreme stress to comfort their followers and promise them a better future.68 Octavia’s words of comfort, however, are more ominous than Aeneas’ vague prophesies of future fortune. While a divine presence protects Aeneas and his men (deus), no gods look after
67 Certain characters, of course, seem to interpret the Aeneid “optimistically,” but these characters are repeatedly shown to be misreading their situations and perhaps also their literary model.
68 “In this pose of grim resolution Octavia’s words are made to echo and to fuse those of the mythical ancestor of the Julian gens, Aeneas, as he comforts his shipwrecked comrades” (Boyle [2008] ad 651). Cf. also Ferri (2003) ad loc.
184 Octavia, a fact indicated by her striking substitution of dies for deus, and her focus on the hour of her death rather than on a hope for future happiness.69
Beyond her sense that the gods have abandoned her, Octavia also feels isolated from fellow Romans, an isolation further underscored in comparison with Aeneas.70
Despite the isolation Vergil’s hero experienced as the leader of Trojan exiles, his men suffered as a collective group, drawing strength from each other to continue on, while
Octavia suffers alone and has no one to accompany her as she leaves her fallen home.
The end Aeneas promised his people is the rise of a new home in the quiet seats of
Latium (sedes…quietas, V. Aen. 1.203).71 The end Octavia envisions is more specific: it is her own death, a focus that taps into Aeneas’ own immediately preceding wish that he had died at Troy and avoided this suffering. The only quiet seats that remain for the Julio-
Claudians within the play are those offered by the underworld (quieta…sede, Oct. 640),
Octavia’s final destination—a far remove from the peaceful seats Aeneas hoped to find in
Latium.72 Rome has indeed become the new Troy—and in Neronian Rome, the spectacle of Troy was the greatest show on earth. In the Octavia, however, this new Troy seems a
69 Octavia also distances herself and the Julio-Claudians from their legendary ancestress when she asserts that Venus—the goddess who protects Aeneas throughout his journey—is the hostile force responsible for her family’s destruction (e.g. Oct. 257-9). Venus appears by name over seven times in Aeneid 1, looking out for her son and his legacy. In the Octavia, however, Venus is a curse on the Julio-Claudian house. That her name often appears in near proximity to the word genetrix (e.g. Oct. 697), her cult title as Julian ancestor, further underscores her shifted role from the dynasty’s origins to its fall. The divine forces that aid Aeneas have forsaken the family and turned them towards the path of destruction.
70 McNelis (2007, 10) notes that part of Statius’ reception of Vergil is an interest in the individual which “counters—or at least deflates—the Aeneid’s emphasis upon collective gain at the expense of individual loss.” This interest in individual suffering seems also marked in the Octavia, and is perhaps an aspect of how Flavian literature in general responded to its Augustan predecessors.
71 Per varios casus, per tot discrimina rerum/ tendimus in Latium; sedes ubi fata quietas/ ostendunt; illic fas regna resurgere Troiae (V. Aen. 1.204-6)
72 Semper quieta cerneres sede inferum/ proavos patremque, nominis magni viros (Oct. 640-1). This line is spoken by Agrippina, but its proximity to Octavia’s extended engagement with the same speech of Aeneas implicates it in the playwright’s intertextual patterns.
185 living underworld, a Troy on the eve of its fall, populated with figures who are already ghosts, without the hope of a new Rome on the horizon. At the end of Julio-Claudian
Rome, at least from the point of view of the dynasty’s heir Octavia, the cautious hope of
Vergil’s epic has been replaced with foreboding and death.
When trying to comfort the princess, Octavia’s Nurse also recalls Aeneas’ consolatory words (dabit afflictae meliora deus/ tempora mitis, Oct. 83-4); As we shall see, however, her application of Vergil’s words to Octavia’s situation is quite different.
Unlike Octavia, the Nurse retains Aeneas’ deus, and even changes Aeneas’ comparative graviora into a more optimistic meliora.73 As Aeneas promised his companions, so the
Nurse believes that a god will one day grant her mistress a glorious future to make up for her suffering. In borrowing Aeneas’ words, the Nurse also reveals her belief in the teleological promise of imperial destiny that Vergil’s Aeneid had made to Aeneas’ descendents, and thus once again we see a non-Julio-Claudian “adviser figure” urging a patriotic reading of the epic. When she later advises Octavia to repress her grief
(pressusque dolor, Oct. 214), she continues to use the model of Aeneas whose future success is granted by fate and thus whose grief—while rooted in painful experiences— can ultimately be put aside in hopes of a better day (talia voce refert, curisque ingentibus aeger/ spem voltu simulat, premit altum corde dolorem, V. Aen. 1.209.74 Octavia, however, like her fellow-Julio-Claudian Nero, has not bought into these patriotic and
73 Cf. Boyle (2008, ad loc) notes that the historical Seneca had used similar language in his Troades where Helen lies to Polyxena about what lies ahead (melior afflictos deus/ respicere coepit, Sen. Tr.872-3). Boyle, however, suggests that the Nurse here is lying. I think she is rather overly optimistic and out of touch with reality, much as all supporting figures will be throughout the play. That she and Octavia can intertextually activate the same speech of Aeneas and put it to such different ends underscores their diverging readings of Neronian Rome. Ferri (2003) ad loc also notes the echo.
74 Ironically, she advises her to be a model “Juno,” Aeneas’ epic adversary. Octavia will be a Juno, alright, but she will not play the passive Juno of the Aeneid’s end. Cf. Boyle (2008) and Ferri (2003) ad loc.
186 peaceful readings of her family’s foundational epic, and instead understands from the beginning that their story is not an epic, but a tragedy.75 Thus when the playwright suggests Aeneas as a model for her exile, we are asked to see the differences in the way their experiences will unfold: Octavia—and her bloodlines—will die alone without hope of fortune rising again.76 And this reading, as the audience of the drama would know, was correct in the end.
At the end of the play, as Octavia’s people watch her sail off to certain death, they too return to the image of Octavia as an Aeneas figure. Aeneas, in the same speech we have been examining above, had explained to his men that they wandered through various misfortunes for the sake of their ultimate goal (per varios casus, V. Aen.1.204).
Aeneas’ words had echoed the epic’s opening where Vergil described his protagonist as a man whom fate and the wrath of the gods had driven to roll through many misfortunes
(tot volvere casus, V. Aen.1.9). In the Octavia’s final scene, the chorus echoes both descriptions of Aeneas’ mission—Vergil’s epic opening and Aeneas’ own words—as it describes Octavia’s fall and its message for the play’s audience. Fate, says the chorus, rules human experience and prevents anyone from achieving a secure course of life; the day of death rolls each man through various misfortunes (per quem casus voluit varios/ semper nobis metuenda dies, Oct. 927-8).77 Thus in the face of their loss and defeat, like
75 Note the parallel here between Octavia and her Nurse and Nero and Seneca. Both Seneca and the nurse intertextually champion the teleological promise of the Aeneid. Octavia and Nero, however, prefer to focus their readings of the dynasty’s most famous epic on its darker aspects such as Aeneas’ suffering and rage. Not only does the Octavia continually pit opposing interpretations of the Aeneid against one another, but it also puts the negative interpretations of the Aeneid—the interpretations that most deny the epic’s grounding in Augustan glory—in the mouths of Augustus’ descendents. As Nero and Octavia share their predilection for Lucan, so too they enjoy the Aeneid’s darker dimensions.
76 This model—and this reading of the Aeneid—was anticipated by Octavia’s intertextual engagement with Lucan’s Pompey, a character in many ways modeled on Aeneas the exile (Ahl 1976; Rossi 2000).
77 Boyle (2008) and Ferri (2003) note the echo ad loc, but neither press its significance, nor relate it to
187 Octavia’s, their language echoes Aeneas’; furthermore, their language too has been stripped of its teleological overtones, emphasizing the helplessness and haplessness of
Octavia’s experience and thus the hollowness of the promises that the Aeneid implicitly made to Augustus and his heirs about their imperial glory.78
If Octavia is Aeneas, then we would expect echoes of Turnus also to populate the text, and we are not disappointed.79 I have argued in Chapter 2 (pp. 89-91) that when
Nero describes Octavian’s final victory in civil war, he does so in language that recalls the death of Turnus at the end of the Aeneid:
Illic sepultum est impie gestum diu civile bellum. condidit tandem suos iam fessus enses victor hebetatos feris vulneribus, et continuit imperium metus. (Oct. 523-6)
In that place is buried civil war, impiously waged for so long. Finally the victor, long weary, buried his swords that now were completely blunt from dealing so many gruesome wounds, and he contained his empire with fear.
His use of the verb condere, especially when juxtaposed with the enjambed civile bellum in a climactic passage about a man’s final victory, was particularly significant for activating the strife-ridden Vergilian intertext (ferrum aduerso sub pectore condit/
Octavia’s sustained engagement with Aeneas throughout the drama.
78 McNelis (2007, 15) has noted that Statius’ intertextual engagement with Vergil “results in a dialogue…about literary versions of history and about the legitimacy of these historical accounts.” The Octavia’s reworking of the Aeneid through its eponymous heroine creates a similar dialogue with earlier poetic accounts of Julio-Claudian history and ideology.
79 Appropriately enough, when Octavia first describes her rival Poppaea she does so by describing her in terms more appropriate to a victorious warrior than a woman who has stolen her husband’s affections (nostrae domus/ spoliis nitentem, Oct. 125-6). Critics have been hard pressed to identify a specific intertext behind Octavia’s language; nevertheless, the language seems to recall, at least in general terms, Aeneas’ description of Turnus wearing the spoils of Pallas at the end of the Aeneid just before Aeneas kills his epic foe (spoliis indute meorum, V. Aen.12.947). Thus Octavia reads her coming struggle with Poppaea in epic military terms. Nevetheless, Octavia too is, in a sense, Turnus. In Vergil’s epic, when Allecto infects the sleeping Turnus with a lust for war, it is his sudden great fear that wakes him from sleep (somnum ingens rumpit pavor, V. Aen.7.458) and spurs him on to his own destruction in the war that will decide whose children Lavinia will bear and what people will arise from this union. That Octavia’s own nightmare about the annihilation of her bloodlines (ingens excutit somnos pavor, Oct. 123) echoes Turnus’ similarly foreboding dream is perhaps no accident.
188 feruidus). Critics of Vergil have long studied the way in which the Aeneid’s final scene forces the reader to wonder at what cost the Roman empire was founded, and the way
Aeneas’ final rage-fueled action might color an interpretation of Augustus’ victories in the civil wars of the late Republic.80 By having his Nero borrow Vergil’s language to describe Augustus’ final victory, the Octavia poet makes explicit how Vergil’s Aeneid, and especially its final scene, can be read in terms of Julio-Claudian civil war. Thus, when the verb condere appears elsewhere in the context of intradynastic murder, it carries with it the implications of civil war as filtered through the end of Vergil’s epic.
The verb and the intertextual and intratextual associations it activates are echoed throughout the tragedy when Julio-Claudian kills Julio-Claudian. When the chorus narrates the death of Agrippina, it describes how she asked the Neronian minion to stab his sword into her womb (utero dirum condat ut ensem, Oct. 370). Her language here anticipates both the verb of killing and the weapon which Nero will have Augustus use in the next scene when describing Augustus’ murder of his modern Turnus(es). Agrippina’s final words also echo Turnus’ last words in the Aeneid: both go to their deaths admitting that they deserve to die for past actions (en, ut merui, ferar ad manes/ inhumata, Oct.
342-3; equidem merui nec deprecor, V. Aen.12.931). Turnus begged Aeneas in vain to return his dead body for burial. Agrippina harbors no delusions about how her victor will treat hers: she has learned from her family’s history and from the end of the Aeneid what to expect from one’s enemies. Recent critics have even seen in the description of her soul departing for the underworld ([Agrippina] cum supremo/ mixtam gemitu/ animam tandem per fera tristem/ vulnera reddit, Oct. 373-6) an echo of Turnus’ soul making the same
80 On the question of civil war in the Aeneid, see Chapter 1 n. 29.
189 journey (vitaque cum gemitu fugit indignata sub umbras, V. Aen.12.952).81 Agrippina thus becomes one more sacrifice in the wake of Julio-Claudian imperial destiny.
When Poppaea dreams of her own death and the death of Nero (ensemque iugulo condidit saevum Nero, Oct. 733), her use of the verb condere in the context of Nero’s suicide activates a host of intertextual and intratextual associations, from Agrippina’s death to Augustus’ questionable victory.82 Her Nurse goes on to interpret this nightmare in positive terms, suggesting that a dream of Nero’s suicide indicates conversely that he will wage no wars and will found with his sword an era of peace (iugulo quod ensem condidit princeps tuus/ bella haud movebit, pace sed ferrum teget, Oct. 752-3).83 The
Nurse uses the identical form of condere and the same terminology of weaponry used by her mistress a few lines above, by Nero in his description of Octavian’s victory, and by the chorus in its description of Agrippina’s murder, activating a nexus of violent intratexts around her rather questionably positive outlook. The Nurse’s interpretation of the dream is absurd, but she nevertheless looks back intratextually to Nero’s speech and also to the end of the Aeneid, which her language once more asks us to read as a narrative of Roman glory. When Nero had suggested that Augustus founded (condere) and contained his empire with violence, fear, and the final elimination of his rival, he
81 Cf. Boyle (2008) and Ferri (2003) ad loc.
82 This passage poses great interpretive difficulties in that it is not entirely clear whether Nero kills himself or kills Poppaea’s former husband Crispinus. For our purposes, however, the verb condere is more significant than the person Nero is directing his rage at, although the use of condere throughout the Octavia could be used in support of the suicidal interpretation. For interpretations of this scene and its issues, see Boyle (2008) and Ferri (2003) ad loc. See also Kragelund (1982) 9-36 and Carbone (1977).
83 Of course even while the events of the play show the Nurse’s peaceful reading of the Neronian principate to be false, she is technically also correct when we remember Nero’s closure of the temple of Janus. The Nurse, it seems, has bought into the public ideology of the Neronian principate, much as Seneca bought into the coinage and monumental inscriptions of Augustan Rome. To the Octavia’s audience, however, Nero’s declaration of world peace and its associated glorious reflection across Neronian visual culture would seem patently absurd in retrospect.
190 simultaneously offered us his reading of the end of the Aeneid where Aeneas fulfils his mission by burying his sword into the suppliant Turnus, and Nero glories in this violence.
No teleological narratives for Nero—his Rome was founded through blood and might.
The Nurse too reads the end of the Aeneid as foreshadowing the power of the
Roman empire, but strips away the episode’s inherent violence: after the king buries his sword once and for all, a Golden age of peace can begin.84 In her final interpretation she substitutes ferrum for ensem—perhaps more than mere variatio from a poet who often repeats key words—and thus uses the same word and the same form as Vergil had used in his epic’s finale. Thus while both the Nurse and Nero suggest the reverberations of
Aeneas’ actions throughout Roman history, the Nurse offers a much more sanitized reading of the Aeneid’s end. Her version completely lacks a Turnus through whose death empire and peace are established;85 in her reading, peace seems to generate spontaneously. While recalling the end of Vergil’s epic, she glosses over the more problematic interpretive issues surrounding the death of Turnus. Furthermore, her non- violent use of the verb condere flies in the face of all other uses of the verb in the drama.
Both the end of Vergil’s epic and the verb’s use throughout the rest of the play show the inherent flaw in the Nurse’s interpretation of Neronian Rome: acts of condere are never
84 Once again the non-Julio-Claudians in the narrative activate patriotic readings of the Aeneid while advising their respective Julio-Claudians.
85 The Nurse reads Poppaea’s dream of Nero’s suicide to herald an absence of war, with no one to fulfill the role of Turnus. Agrippina, however, in her monologue just prior to this scene had already intertextually suggested who Turnus would be in this scenario: Nero himself. Ferri has noted that Agrippina’s final lament as she thinks about her son is modeled on that of Juturna as she must leave her brother to die (cf. Ferro [2003] ad loc).
191 acts of peace, but always of war. The death of Turnus is multiplied and reflected across the text to connect intradynastic murder with victory in civil strife.86
Despite their suitability as models on which to build a narrative of Julio-Claudian strife, Turnus and Aeneas are not the only Vergilian characters whose suffering intertextually haunts the text. In a play so demonstrably concerned with the experience and emotions of royal women, it is no surprise that Dido too hovers behind many characters.87 Vergil’s queen was abandoned so that Aeneas could found Rome and a family with another legendary lady, and thus her most obvious parallel would be the play’s own eponymous heroine. In fact, Octavia seems to claim this identity, much as her language had also recalled Aeneas and Pompey earlier.
Beginning with her grief-filled opening monologue, Octavia—a queen abandoned by her faithless Julian husband—recalls Dido’s impassioned speeches from Aeneid 4. She laments that she has been overburdened with sorrow in her life from the moment when she first saw her mother’s blood-spattered face, an event which led the princess to the marriage which has now fatally cursed her (age, tot tantis onerata malis, Oct. 5). She goes on to blame both her mother’s promiscuity and her father’s remarriage for her own troubles (Oct. 100-136). Her initial self-characterization as one loaded with troubles recalls Dido’s lament to her sister and Nurse-figure (tu prima furentem/ his, germana, malis oneras atque obicis hosti, V. Aen.4.548-9), an echo further enacted by Octavia’s use of “repeat” and “accustomed” as intertextual markers at the opening of this passage
86 The authentic Senecan dramas show a similar obsession with the end of Aeneid 12. Cf. Putnam (1995).
87 Much of the following has been influenced by Fantham’s (1975) exploration of Dido’s influence on Senecan heroines.
192 (repete assuetos iam tibi questus, Oct. 6) as she too talks to her Nurse.88 When Octavia declares her mother’s murder to be the first cause of her evils (prima meorum causa malorum, Oct. 11), she similarly echoes Vergil’s cave-scene where the poet declared that
Dido’s loss of pudor was to cause her death (ille dies primus leti primusque malorum/ causa fuit, V.Aen.4.169-70). Octavia’s logic here links her mother’s unchastity—and perhaps thus her mother’s own Dido-like behavior—to the day on which she became prey to Nero’s advances, a marriage that ultimately ends in her death, and thus the day on which her mother’s unchastity forced Octavia to take up Dido’s role.89 By activating our memory of Dido’s fate, we anticipate Octavia’s own train of thought as she explains the catastrophe that her mother’s affair brought onto the city of Rome.90 Playing Dido, it seems, is in the blood of Roman imperial women.
Octavia’s Nurse also activates Vergil’s Dido when comforting the empress, taking up the Anna role herself. Nevertheless, she continues to suggest optimistically that even here Vergilian tragedy need not repeat itself in the Julio-Claudian palace. She sees her mistress filled with the violent emotions which characterized Dido throughout Aeneid 4
(e.g. dolor, ira, furor, etc.) but hopes to help Octavia control these passions and win back her husband. She urges Octavia to restore her falling house by giving Nero an heir and uniting their bond more permanently (labentem ut domum/ genitoris olim subole restituas tua, Oct. 179-80). In this advice, she echoes Dido’s own pathetic plea to Aeneas to pity
88 “The metaphoric ‘the weight of my griefs’ in onerata combines Sophocles’ Electra…with the language of Verg. Aen.4.549” (Ferri [2003] ad loc).
89 Note how here part of Octavia’s intertextual engagement with Dido as a model also involves her mother playing the same role, much as earlier Octavia’s engagement with Pompey read a similar engagement back onto her father’s military exploits and tragic fall. Thus Octavia not only looks to her intertextual models, but finds patterns within these models that play themselves out in her own family history.
90 In a sense, Octavia also brings Dido back to the tragic stage from which Vergil drew her character.
193 her collapsing house and not to abandon her to destruction (miserere domus labentis, V.
Aen. 4.318). Octavia’s Nurse takes Dido’s vain pleading and turns it into a positive course of action for Octavia: if she were only to bear Nero a child, she could restore her house before it were utterly destroyed by enemy forces. Dido too in this same speech had thought about what could have been if she had borne Aeneas a son (saltem si qua…suboles…non equidem omnino capta ac deserta viderer, V. Aen. 4.327-30). What for Dido had been impossible contrafactual wishes remain genuine possibilities for
Octavia; she could have what Dido could not and thus could rescue herself from her own tragic model—at least on the Nurse’s reading.
Octavia, however, has no use for the love struck Dido of early Aeneid 4 who was devoted to her Julian husband and desired to bear his child. Instead, Octavia recalls the suicidal, vengeful, Dido of the epic’s end. She indicates as much when she declares that her house fell long ago when her mother’s adultery first forced her to share power with an ungrateful and treacherous would-be husband (prodidit lapsam domum, Oct. 269).91 To counter her Nurse’s optimistic attitude, Octavia echoes her Nurse’s language (labentem… domum, Oct. 179), but changes the participle from present to past, falling to fallen, underscoring the impossibility of repairing her situation. Octavia, it seems, understands what fate awaits her: Dido may think that her palace only just began to slip when she learned that Aeneas planned to leave her, but her fate and the fate of her kingdom was sealed the moment she gave him a share of power, just as Octavia’s march towards death begins the moment she was forced into Nero’s ambitious arms.
91 Boyle (2008, ad loc) notes the importance of the shift in participial tense, but neither he nor Ferri note the echo of Vergil’s Dido behind this intratextual sparring of words between Octavia and her Nurse.
194 Some critics have also seen in Octavia’s description of her dead mother (oraque foedo sparsa cruore, Oct.17) an echo of Dido’s murdered husband (miseri post fata
Sychaei/ coniugis et sparsos fraterna caede penatis, V. Aen. 4.20-21), an intertext made more plausible by the intermediary influence of Ovid who, in his Heroides, looks back to
Vergil in language that more closely resembles Octavia’s (manus impia poscit/ respergi nostro sparsa cruore viri, Ov. Her.7.127-8).92 Thematic similarities between the tragedies of the two women further reinforce these lexical parallels. As Octavia is haunted by nightmares of her brother’s ghost, so she recalls Dido’s dreams of her murdered husband—and in fact both men, Britannicus and Sychaeus, were murdered brutally by a power-hungry brother who had no concern for his sister’s feelings. Once
Dido’s dreams turn to nightmares she too, like Octavia, saw a vengeful figure armed with torches (modo facibus atris armat infirmas manus, Oct. 118; armatam facibus matrem, V.
Aen. 4.472).93 At the end of her tragedy, Octavia further completes her Dido parallel by wondering aloud why she delays her death (quid iam frustra miseranda moror? Oct.
959), echoing Dido’s own suicidal and resigned question when she finally understands her fall from power (quid moror? V. Aen.4.325).94
The full force of Octavia’s anger is seen through echoes of Dido’s curse that had foretold Hannibal’s vengeful rising. Octavia’s Nurse suggests that she follow the model of submissive Juno who tolerates her husband’s indiscretions and remains in favor as a result. Octavia responds by launching into an extensive curse on Nero (Oct. 222-251).
92 Cf. Ferri (2003) ad loc.
93 Ferri (2003) ad loc.
94 Dido’s strongest legacy in later imperial literature seems to be this suicidal aspect. For the idea of suicide and the ambitiosa mors in Latin literature, see most recently Hill (2004) esp. 105-20 (on Vergil’s Dido).
195 The Caesarean models for this curse have already been explored above, but an additional model can be found in Dido’s curse. Dido had called upon Sol who watches over the heavens (Sol, qui terrarum flammis opera omnia lustras, V. Aen.4.607) and Juno
(conscia Iuno, V. Aen.4.608) to pile vengeance onto Aeneas’ cursed head (infandum caput, V. Aen.4.613). Octavia similarly, having just been told to play Juno to her Jove, invokes the heavens (flammis caelitum rector paret qui saepe terras fulmine infesto quatit, Oct. 228-9) to strike at the cursed head of Nero, Aeneas’ implicit descendent
(nefandi principis dirum caput, Oct. 227).95 Octavia, much like Dido, goes down fighting.96 By bringing back to the stage Vergil’s tragic queen, the Octavia poet further emphasizes a tragic rather than epic reading of the Aeneid and his heroine’s future.97
Octavia is not the only Dido-figure in the play, however, and it is through
Agrippina that the more emotionally distraught aspects of Dido work their way into the text.98 Although the chorus’ earlier ode primarily evoked the deaths of Pompey and
95 A potentially more specific parallel comes at the play’s end just after Octavia wonders aloud why she delays her destiny. As Octavia prepares to sail off to her own death, she orders those around her to arm the ship and make ready the sails (armate ratem, date vela fretis! Oct. 969), language which echoes Dido’s orders to her men as Aeneas sets sail (date tela, impellite remos V. Aen.4.594). In fact, several Vergilian manuscripts contain the ancient variant date vela instead of the commonly accepted date tela, and thus the Octavia poet might be thinking of just that variant as he crafted Octavia’s final speech. Cf. Ferri (2003) ad loc: “perhaps reminiscent of Dido’s angry [words]…where date vela was the commonly accepted reading before Wagner (an ancient variant of which this would be very early testimony).” Ancient authors often engage in such scholarly arguments through their own intertexts. Cf. Apollonius’ engagement with Homeric variants in his Argonautica (Rengakos 2001).
96 Given the parallels between the two women created throughout the drama, perhaps we should be thinking of the later historical figure who would rise to power in the east and avenge Octavia just as Hannibal will rise from Carthage to avenge his Dido: Vespasian. Agrippina’s prediction of a vindex manus (Oct. 596) serves much the same function and echoes the substance of Dido’s final curse.
97 Littlewood (2004, 168) notes how the historical Seneca’s Medea re-stages the conflicts of the Aeneid as “the fury of Juno and Dido, reborn in Medea and now victorious, punishes the imperial Argonauts.” The Octavia’s engagement with Dido, however, is different. Dido still loses, but this time it is a loss for Rome.
98 My discussion of Agrippina as Dido owes much to Ginna Closs’s presentation at the 2009 LatinFest on the Octavia at NYU. Ginna, however, focused only on Agrippina’s lament and thus neither took into account the significance of Agrippina’s multiple intertextual models nor that she shares Octavia’s models.
196 Turnus as models for Agrippina’s murder, when her ghost appears on stage to tell her own story, Dido becomes the prime model. Hers is a story of tragic love turned to bitter hate (infelix amor, Oct. 613), and her phrasing picks up on the thematic language at the heart of the Dido episode of the Aeneid (e.g. infelix Dido, longumque bibebat amorem, V.
Aen. 1.749, 4.68, 4.450, 4.529, 4.596). Agrippina’s status as a cursed woman had already been anticipated in some ways by the chorus who described her thus at her death
(moriens…rogat infelix, Oct. 368-9). When her ghost appears on stage, however, infelix becomes a far stronger term of self-characterization until she retreats back to the underworld to dwell with her husband (Oct. 645).
Like Dido, Agrippina regrets too late the power she has given to a man who would lead her to her death and the tragic love that drove her to do so.99 Agrippina goes on to imagine the day when Nero would lie exposed to his enemies, cast out, deserted, in need of everything (hostibus/ desertus ac destructus et cunctis egens, Oct. 630-1). As she looks to the future and her prophesy of Nero’s doom, her language recalls Aeneas’ status when he reached Dido’s kingdom, an exile in need whom Dido could have piteously crushed but instead chose fatefully to save (omnium egenos, V. Aen.1.599; eiectum litore, egentem/ excepi et regni demens in parte locavi, V. Aen.4.373-4).100 Dido later laments how foolish she was to help the needy Julian-ancestor. Agrippina too hopes that Nero will pay for his abuse of her love, and that no one else will be foolish enough to give him a share of power, as she did. She will not have to wait long (tempus haud longum peto,
99 E.g. totum per orbem, quem dedit in poenam meam/ puero regendum noster infelix amor (Oct. 612-3); infelix Dido, nunc te facta impia tangunt?/ tum decuit, cum sceptra dabas (V. Aen. 4.596-7).
100 Critics who discredit Agrippina’s prophesy as inaccurate given that Nero died with four attendants around him are missing the point, and once again the intertext clarifies a point in the text that critics have been quick to see as the signs of poetic clumsiness.
197 Oct. 618), she asserts as her ghostly husband calls her back to Hades. In similar language
Dido had pled for time to let her anger abate (tempus inane peto, V. Aen.4.433) as Aeneas left her to die and to return to her former husband in the underworld.
Perhaps the strongest reminiscence of Dido in Agrippina’s speech is when she thinks back to Nero’s birth. As much as Dido had wished that she had had a child by
Aeneas to keep her from feeling so destroyed (si quis mihi parvulus aula/luderet…
Aeneas, V. Aen.4.327-30), with just as much vehemence Agrippina wishes that Nero had died in her womb (utinam, antequam te parvulum in lucem edidi… Oct. 636ff). Each woman uses the diminutive (parvulus) to underscore the emotional undercurrent of her wish.101 For Dido, to wish for a remnant of Aeneas’ affection forced her to confront the fact that her lover was gone for good and to confront the consequences that his departure had for her life and her kingdom; for Agrippina, to wish that her son had died in the womb conversely forces her to confront the suffering that his life brought both to her and to the Roman world. In each case, the child becomes a locus for the woman’s perceived failings, both political and personal, a symbol for what they wish they could alter about their life’s course. Vergil’s queen was doomed, at least in her own mind, because of her lack of child, while the Octavia’s queen is doomed by the child’s birth. The potential to bear a descendent of Aeneas, it seems, is never easy, especially for women who quickly turn into those who must be eliminated in the name of imperial progress.
By modeling his play’s eponymous heroine and Nero’s murdered mother on
Vergil’s foreign Carthaginian queen, the Octavia poet further breaks down Vergil’s own delicate tension between “Roman” and “Other” from his Dido episode to create within
101 Cf. Boyle (2008) and Ferri (2003) ad loc.
198 Roman history a woman whose Roman identity and Julio-Claudian heritage should have promised her limitless power, but whose tragic marriage in the end sealed her own doom and that of her Roman people. No longer is Dido’s tragedy peripheral to Roman history, an alternative story echoed throughout Vergil’s Aeneid as a foil for Roman destiny.
Instead, in his reception of Vergil’s queen, the Octavia poet brings this alternative and foreign tragedy into the heart of Roman imperial history, and weaves around it his tale of the dynasty’s demise from the point of view of its leading lady. Rome—and particularly the Roman imperial family—has become the empire’s own worst enemy.
Conclusion
Throughout the play, the Octavia’s characters and their suffering are modeled on overlapping—and at times conflicting—literary-historical exempla of grief and loss. This
“plurality” or blending of literary models has often been disparaged or ignored in the scholarship on the play. For those who would deny the poet much in the way of artistic skill, this incorporation of various models and the difficulties created by them are proof- positive of the poet’s inferior talent, requiring no further analysis.102 For scholars who do analyze the play’s artistic engagement with the Greco-Roman literary tradition, certain models have found near exclusive favor over others; thus Octavia-as-Electra occupies a large space in the history of scholarship on the play. More recently as noted above, A. J.
Boyle has emphasized Octavia’s engagement with Pompey, but has done so to the exclusion of other equally prominent models (e.g. Aeneas or Dido) and has also
102 See most recently Ferri (2003) 58, ad Oct. 1, ad 140, and ad 340).
199 underestimated the echoes of Pompey found in connection with other characters (e.g.
Agrippina). What I hope to have shown in this chapter is that the play’s simultaneous engagement with a plurality of models, or its use of various literary-historical figures in order to characterize its protagonists, is a key means of generating meaning throughout the text. Octavia is not just a Pompey, or an Aeneas, or a Dido. She is all three, and by blending these three programmatic figures from the Roman epic and historical tradition, the poet of the Octavia creates a new heroine with new interpretive potential and ethical conflicts out of old material. Far from creating meaningless confusion, this mode of intertextuality crucially informs our interpretation of the play.
Further of interest is the overlapping of models—and even of sets of models— across several characters within the drama. By modeling both Octavia and Agrippina on similar conglomerations of literary-historical exempla, the Octavia creates oppositions within the text that transcend the simple dichotomy of Nero vs. Octavia or even of Julians vs. Claudians. Rather, the play uses these characters to articulate battle narratives throughout Julio-Claudian history that generate and repeat themselves in iterative cycles from which the dynasty cannot escape. Pompeys and Caesars lurk throughout the text, implicitly condemning the Julio-Claudians to replay semper idem the civil wars of the late Republic within the walls of their own palace. At the same time, the diverse reflections of Aeneas, Turnus, and Dido throughout the text call into question the teleological promise of Vergil’s Aeneid to the dynasty and instead plunge Aeneas’ descendents into the meaningless suffering and eternal strife that always threatened to derail Vergil’s epic.103 Neronian Rome and the history that led to Nero’s rise to power are
103 Cf. Littlewood (2004, 7) on the well-known tragic models through which Vergil created an opposition between tragedy and epic, representing “Roman destiny as the goal of an epic narrative.” The historical
200 permanently divorced from Augustan narratives of destiny and peace, and instead become permanently attached to narratives of Roman strife.
One key difference remains, however, between the narratives of legendary and historical civil war and the struggles occurring within the walls of the Julio-Claudian imperial palaces: the newly central role of women in the strife-ridden historical narrative.
Octavia and Agrippina control the stage and the action as much as Nero does, and their central presence throughout the play weaves a level of emotional complication into the play’s engagement with Roman civil-war narratives.104 Lucan had in some senses begun the process with his Julia, Marcia, and Cornelia—themselves much engaged with
Vergil’s Dido. The Octavia, however, takes this powerful female voice latent in the historical texts of Vergil and Lucan and places it front and center for the entirety of the play.105 The playwright brings into his text the dominant female figures of Julio-Claudian history and weaves a new type of civil-war narrative around them out of previous texts that had focused on public battles between men.106 In this way, the Octavia crucially
Seneca had implicitly reacted to Vergil’s tragic models; the Octavia, however, by virtue of being a historical drama confronts also Vergil’s historical narrative and reinserts Vergil’s Roman destiny into a tragic narrative.
104 O’Gorman (2000, 122-143) argues strongly that, in Tacitus’ Annals, the voice of imperial women subverted the master narrative of the imperial family as established by Augustus and his heirs, and created a powerful counter-voice and counter-memory, and it would be interesting to trace further this idea of “counter-voice” in the literary tradition around Julio-Claudian women from the Octavia forward.
105 I do not mean to suggest that Latin literature prior to the Octavia had a dearth of powerful or vocal women. One need only think of Ovid’s Metamorphoses or Seneca’s Tragedies to see that this is not the case. My point is that Roman historical narratives—at least as they survive to us—tended not to feature politically powerful women, and when they did, these women tended to be “Others” in some sense, or to behave exceptionally beyond their sex under exceptional circumstances. The Octavia—indebted to Lucan in many ways—puts Roman women and their passionate and influential voices back into Roman historical narratives in a way that neither “Others” the women nor denies their influence. Lucan’s Julia in particular must have been a strong influence (cf. Chiu 2010).
106 As Seneca’s Thyestes becomes a “showcase for, and a commentary on, a type of tragedy that no longer exists and is no longer viable,” (Schiesaro [2003] 65), so too, in a sense, the Octavia poet showcases previous civil-war narratives in order to showcase how both the means of waging wars and the means of
201 anticipates the historical tradition which would develop out of the Julio-Claudian period, and especially the representation of women and civil war in Tacitus’ later Annals.
In this extended analysis of the models of strife activated throughout the Octavia, one collective voice still remains unheard despite its central role in the play. Until now I have focused largely on the play’s protagonists and their advisers, analyzing how these leading characters interpret their world, and the influence that their language has on how we understand the text. In my next and final chapter, however, I will turn to the chorus(es) of Roman citizens, to their perception of Rome’s strife-ridden past and present, and to the influence of their words on how we interpret the play.
writing about these wars has shifted under the empire to embrace new forms.
202
CHAPTER 5: THE ROMAN PEOPLE’S EXEMPLARY STRIFE (Part I)
“Rome revels in its citizens’ blood” (civis gaudet Roma cruore, Oct. 982). The Octavia’s chorus of Roman people speaks this final line of the Octavia and so looks back on the play as a whole: at their civil revolution, at their fellow citizens who opposed their seditious plan, at Nero’s gruesome revenge, and at their own guilt in bringing about
Octavia’s death. The Octavia’s final line also, in a sense, reflects back on the play’s thematic engagement with civil war and the chorus’ particular contribution to this theme.
The chorus’ final assertion about their city’s collective character is not the first time in the play that we see the citizens of Rome articulating civil war as a constitutive part of their collective identity. Rather, civil strife has been at the heart of their identity and actions throughout the drama.
The following two chapters form a complementary pair that explore the chorus(es)’ thematic engagement with civil strife through a sequential reading of their odes. My analysis will pursue several interrelated aspects of this thematic engagement.
On the most basic level, I confront the fact that the Octavia has two choruses to begin with, both sharing the collective identity of Roman citizens, and thus how the playwright has written civil strife into the scenography of his drama. I also analyze the choruses’ pervasive appeals to exempla of strife from Roman history and legend, and the implications of these models as modes of reading and reflecting on the political strife of
203 62 CE. Throughout my analysis runs a close reading of the choruses’ self-conscious reflections on Roman identity, the role of strife in constituting this identity, and the
Roman people’s desire, at least in part, to reawaken “true” Roman identity through strife in Neronian Rome.
Part and parcel of this analysis is a close reading of the chorus’ language with an eye towards its intertextual and intratextual echoes. In my previous two chapters, I have explored how the Octavia’s various characters read each other through various literary models of strife from Rome’s history as part of the play’s wider thematic engagement with civil strife. Such echoes are similarly evident in the choral odes, but take on a secondary role in generating meaning by supporting the comparisons primarily suggested by their exempla.1 Intratextual echoes, however, remain crucially significant for my interpretation of the odes and how they form a unified—if also varied—reflection on the role of civil-strife in Rome’s history. Through repeated language, we will see how certain ideas and images of strife are reflected across the play, at times celebrated and at others condemned, in order to create a fractured intellectual response to civil strife within the
Octavia’s divided Roman people who variously witness, engender, and suffer the consequences of the strife of 62 CE.
1 Although intertextuality and exempla may seem to be conflicting (or at least not entirely compatible) modes of enacting a comparison between past and present, nevertheless at a special seminar on “Intertextuality and Historiography” at the 2011 American Philological Association annual meeting in San Antonio, TX and in a recent article that developed from this talk, John Marincola (2010) argued for the complementary modes of exempla and intrtextuality in ancient historical works, suggesting that both can be operative within the same text to similar ends. While his focus was on prose history, his observations have implications for the study of intertextuality and exempla in historical poetry as well. My study of the Octavia’s chorus, its exempla and the relation of these exempla to the wider intertextual program of the play as a whole forms something of a case study, although it did not originate as such. Ben Tipping’s (2010) recent monograph on exemplarity in Silius’ Punica also emphasizes the complementary functions played by exempla and intertextuality in constructing Silius’ poetic vision of the past.
204 Through these complementary modes of analysis, I progress through the odes in order such that we experience for ourselves how the chorus’ thematic engagement with civil strife develops and shifts throughout the play. In this way, I hope to show how the idea of civil strife and its significance to Roman history becomes a theme that unites the choruses’ various odes into a larger comment on the Roman people’s experience of civil war as an element of constitutive significance in Roman identity and cultural memory.
The Problems of the Octavia’s Chorus
Any study of the Octavia’s chorus must also confront the larger interpretive problems surrounding the chorus(es) that dominate the scholarly literature.2 That the Octavia’s chorus functions in a way distinctly different from the choruses in authentic Senecan drama needs no lengthy demonstration. Despite lingering disagreements over whether we ought to read Senecan choruses as disembodied philosophical meditations on the themes of his tragedies, or whether these choruses do in fact have particularized identities significant to the action of each play, no such confusion exists regarding the role of the chorus in our drama.3 The Octavia’s chorus is clearly and consistently identified as the
2 What follows is a brief introduction to a rather fraught topic; the problems associated with individual odes will be discussed at the appropriate points throughout the chapter.
3 For the most famous analysis of Senecan choruses as “impersonal,” see Tarrant (1978) 221-8 and Leo (1897) 510-13. For the most recent systematic study on the role of the chorus in Senecan drama, see Davis (1993) who argues against previous interpreters that the choruses of Senecan tragedy are particularized characters with roles in the drama, and are not disengaged reflective entities as if soundtracks to their respective tragedies. See also Rozelaar (1976) 561-63. Davis (1993, 125-83) also thoughtfully confronts the issue of a widespread “stoic message” in Senecan choruses, opting for a more nuanced understanding of the role of philosophical reflection in the drama. See also Hill (2000) who returns to the argument that Seneca’s choruses have no fixed identities within plays and do, in fact, function as disengaged characters who reflect on the themes of the dramas in between acts. E.g. Hill (2000, 572): “like so many of Seneca’s choruses, it lacks the intensity of personal involvement. This gives the audience time and a philosophical framework within which to come to terms with their own reactions to the passionate scene just ended.” On
205 populus Romanus (e.g. civium, Oct. 804, vel sim). More striking, however, is the active role that they take in the action of the play, from reflecting on its events as they unfold to staging a riot that decisively contributes to the culmination of the dramatic plot.4 The
Octavia’s chorus is as fundamental a part of its action as any other character on stage, and thus deserves similar analysis.
The main issues arise largely from confusion over the presence of two choruses.
The manuscripts indicate one chorus, and yet critics are nearly unanimous in understanding that the choral ode in which one chorus wonders aloud why their fellow citizens stage a revolution (Oct. 762-819) cannot be spoken by the same group that ran off stage ready to burn down the palace less than one hundred lines before (Oct. 669-89).5
The use of two choruses is not unprecedented in ancient Greek and Roman tragedy, and it is the identities of these two choruses, rather than their existence at all, that has engendered scholarly controversy.6 It seems clear enough that the same group of citizens sings odes 1 and 2, and that this group is the same group that riots for Octavia in the latter
the idea of Senecan choruses as a collective character, see Picone (1976) 64 and Grimal (1975) 265. On Senecan choruses in general, see further the annotated bibliography of Hiltbrunner (1985) 989-91. Finally, Schiesaro (2003, 163-76) offers a cogent refutation of the idea that the moral center of Seneca’s Thyestes is to be found in his chorus—an idea championed by Tarrant (1985)—but rather shows the chorus’ equal complicity in the tragic guilt that is staged.
4 The active role played by a chorus of Roman citizens may have been a generic marker of the praetexta genre, but was certainly absent from authentic Senecan tragedy. Cf. Wiseman (1998) 57; Kragelund (2002) 45; Ferri (2003) 317.
5 pace Sutton (1983, 14-16) who argued for only one chorus. While I agree with Sutton’s arguments concerning the unnecessary relegation of the play’s third ode to a chorus of insignificant courtiers, the fact still remains that this second group of people seems oblivious of the riot that the other chorus undertook— suggesting the presence of two groups. Lucas (1921) also argued for one chorus. Neither Vürtheim (1909) nor Herzog-Hauser (1934) indicate the presence of a second chorus in their texts.
6 For dramas with two choruses, see, e.g., Seneca’s Agamemnon; ps. Seneca’s Hercules Oetaeus; Aeschylus’ Suppliants; Euripides’ Hippolytus.
206 half of the play.7 It is also fairly certain that a different group sings ode 3 and it is the identity of this second group that is largely at issue.
Many scholars assign to this second group the identity of “courtiers” and attribute to its brief appearance little significance to the odes as a whole, the rest of which they assign to the play’s “primary” chorus of Roman citizens.8 Despite this overwhelming tendency to deny to them the predominant identity of Roman citizens which the
“primary” chorus claims, there is nothing in the text itself that suggests a separate identity for these people, and in fact there is much to recommend that they too are Roman citizens who hold an opposing political interpretation to their revolutionary counterparts.9
Hostility to this idea seems generally to stem from the a priori assumption that the existence of two choruses that share an identity as the populus Romanus would make nonsense of the play’s action and its message.10 Nevertheless, before we put aside what
7 The correspondences between these odes and their narrative progression will be discussed in detail below.
8 For the second chorus as made up of “courtiers” who play a less significant role in the drama than the “primary” chorus, see Boyle (2008) ad 762; Fitch (2004); Ferri (2003). Harrison (forthcoming) identifies this chorus as a group of Poppaea’s female attendants, as does Pedroli (1954) ad loc and Fitch (2004) 585 n.43. Schubert (1998, 265-78) suggests that this second chorus might be Praetorians, but still views them as secondary in importance and relevance to the “primary” chorus. The difficulty in assigning the final odes of the play to either chorus as a result of these interpretations will be discussed in detail below.
9 Smith (2003, 419) has forcefully argued for two groups of Roman citizens, and that this division is essential for our interpretation of the play: “what perplexes the modern reader is that this second chorus shares corporate identity with the first. Whether the audience is to understand that the citizens of the chorus have been bifurcated into semi-factions or that a separate pro-Poppaean assemblage gathers…the chorus continues to represent Roman citizens.” See also Manuwald (2001, 292-96, 323-32) who also sees two groups of Roman citizens, as did Ballaira (ad 273ff).
10 Cf. Wiseman (2002) in response to Manuwald (2001): “I think it makes nonsense of the action to have two choruses with opposing viewpoints both representing the people (323-31): Poppaea's supporters must be courtiers, and they sing only twice, at lines 762-79 and 806-19.” Boyle (2008, ad 762) argues similarly that “‘Courtiers’ are preferable, too, to ‘Roman citizens’ favourable to Poppaea, which would suggest a split in the Roman populace between pro-Octavia and pro-Poppaea factions absent from the historical sources and serving no dramatic purpose.” An additional issue arises out of the idea that the revolutionary chorus somehow reflects the imperial ideology of Galban Rome, in which the populus Romanus had figured prominently (Flower [2006] 203; Wiseman [2001]; Kragelund [1988, 1998, 2000, 2002, 2005]; Ramage [1983]). Such arguments, however, are inevitably circular: the Roman people play a large role in the play and echo certain Galban slogans, ergo it must belong to Galba’s reign, and because Galba
207 the play itself seems to indicate—that two (at times indistinguishable) groups of Roman citizens appear on stage—we ought to consider carefully what we gain from reading the text as it stands. Throughout this chapter I will argue that when the play and its choral odes are read with an eye towards the drama’s pervasive thematic engagement with civil strife, the presence of two bodies of opposing citizens does not make nonsense of the text, but rather becomes an additional and significant artistic means through which the playwright can weave civil strife further into his drama. By creating a fractured community within his own chorus(es) of Roman people, the playwright once more underscores Rome’s predilection for civil strife.
Over Her Dead Body: Ode 1
An unsubstantiated rumor first brings the Octavia’s chorus of Roman citizens to the stage. According to palace gossip, their beloved princess Octavia is soon to be replaced in
Nero’s affections and, more importantly, in his bed:
Quae fama modo venit ad aures? utinam falso credita perdat, frustra totiens iactata fidem, nec nova coniunx nostri thalamus principis intret, teneatque suos nupta penates Claudia proles edat partu pignora pacis qua tranquillus gaudeat orbis servetque decus Roma aeternum…
championed the people, ergo the populus Romanus in the play must be read positively. Not all, however, would agree with a universally positive reading of the chorus. Sullivan (1985, 72) notes that “the author of the Octavia is presumably aware of the possibility that claimants of the purple would represent themselves as champions of the people, but the argument that the Octavia is pro-Galba per se on this basis is undercut by the gloomy reflections on the caprice of popular favor that befall the people’s champions (vv. 877ff).” I too have trouble reading the chorus positively, especially when it comes to understanding how its hymn to fickle favor and its final bloody line fits into such a reading.
208 sancta quid illi prodest pietas? divusque pater? Quid virginitas castusque pudor? (Oct. 273-88)
What rumor came to our ears just now? Would that it lost credibility, falsely believed, chatted about so often in vain, and may a new wife not enter the bedroom of our emperor, but let the Claudian daughter retain her own household as his bride and may she produce in birth pledges of peace through which the peaceful world may rejoice and Rome may protect her eternal glory…what benefit does she get from her holy piety? From her divine father? From her virginity and pure chastity?
Their concern, however, is rooted less in personal affection for the woman herself and more in what they perceive to be an attack against Roman ideology and identity. Their
Octavia is a pious and chaste Roman daughter and wife whose children would play a key role in maintaining Roman power. In other words, the chorus describes Octavia in terms of the ideal Roman woman who fulfils the ideal role required of her to perpetuate Roman society. Octavia resembles less an individual with particularized significance and more a generalized political allegory or symbol of Roman virtue that must be protected.
We must also note, however, that already at their first appearance, these are citizens ready for a fight against the forces that threaten this symbol of Roman virtue:
Nos quoque nostri sumus immemores Post fata ducis, cuius stirpem Prodimus aevo suadente metum. Vera priorum virtus quondam Romana fuit verumque genus Martis in illis sanguinisque viris. (Oct. 288-93)
We also are forgetful of ourselves after the fate of our general, whose child we betray while our age urges fear. True Roman virtue once existed in our ancestors; the true line and the blood of Mars existed in those men.
They speak as if a disbanded army (post fata ducis, Oct. 289) who has forgotten their ancestral duty to defend Roman honor on the battlefield and seek a catalyst to reawaken their former selves.11 Of primary thematic importance throughout this ode is the chorus’
11 Ferri’s (2003, ad loc) discussion of dux as a general imperial title seems to miss the military flavor of the ode; Boyle’s (2008, ad loc) discussion of Claudius’ military exploits hits closer to the point. The chorus is not appealing thoughtlessly to generalized language; rather it frames its current crisis in the language of Rome’s military identity.
209 implicit desire to reactivate “true Roman virtue.” The chorus locates this “true” Roman identity in the past and intertwines it inescapably, although perhaps unsurprisingly, within Rome’s military identity. The defining virtue of Roman glory is virtus, or courage and manliness, and their defining genealogy is rooted in the legend of Mars, the god of war, as the ancestor whose blood flowed in the veins of true Romans. To be Roman is to be soldiers at war who defend Roman identity from threats against it. Thus, as these citizens seek to remember their former selves, they seek also a new battleground on which to reawaken and test their identity.
The chorus’ meditation on Roman military virtue and even its language taps into a wider topos from Roman literature. Definitions and redefinitions of “true” Roman collective character ubiquitously appear in military contexts in which Rome confronts the anti-Roman threat of a foreign foe, and needs to reassert virtus in a military context to reset the proper balance of Roman identity.12 The Octavia’s most notable poetic predecessor in such lyric meditations was Horace. In Ode 3.5, Regulus had criticized his fellow Romans for their indolence and passivity in the face of foreign threat, suggesting that once true military virtue had been lost, it can never return to the degenerate breasts which had allowed it to be destroyed (nec vera virtus, cum semel excidit, curat reponi deterioribus, H. Carm.3.5.29-30).13 In other words, ingrained passivity threatens Rome
12 E.g. Plaut. Cist.198, Cas. 88 (with McDonnell [2006] 19-21); Liv. 4.31, 9.6, 9.14, 9.31, 22.58, 24.14, 28.17, 32.33, 34.22, 36.44, 38.17, 42.47; Val. Max. 3.2, 7.4. Vera virtus seems to have been a stock alliterative phrase in such contexts. Cf. Nisbet and Hubbard (ad H. Carm. 3.5.29-30) who cite several other examples. For a systematic study of virtus and Roman manliness in the Republic, its various representations and shifts in significance, see McDonnell (2006), esp. 12-71 and 241-292.
13 Prior to these lines, Horace comments on the danger of Romans forgetting their identity and their eternal glory (anciliorum et nominis et togae oblitus aeternae Vestae, H. Carm.3.5.10-11), language and themes also prominent in this Octavia passage. Regulus fears that the Roman captives will be useless to Rome because they fearfully surrendered to begin with, an idea also echoed in the chorus’ focus on how their present age urges them with fear (aevo suadente metum, Oct. 285). The collocation of these ideas and anxieties, however, seems to have been common (cf. Nisbet and Hubbard ad loc), and there is no need to
210 with a permanent and dangerous change of character. As every Roman knew, Regulus made the ultimate sacrifice for his people and his extraordinary bravery brought Romans collectively back to their senses spurring them to victory over the enemy. Thus when the
Octavia’s chorus defines its current identity crisis in these programmatic terms, it implicitly suggests that only through military action can this impending crisis be averted and can the Roman people be restored to their former glory.
Even at this early stage in the Octavia’s first choral ode, something is unsettling about the chorus’ zealous enthusiasm for military combat and its appeal to these topoi.
The threat that the Octavia’s Roman citizens feel towards Roman identity stems not from a foreign enemy or some sort of external attack, but instead stems from a crisis at the heart of the Roman imperial household. The chorus makes manifest this distinction when they geographically articulate the city of Rome as the landscape in which they plan to test their military virtue (hac…urbe, Oct. 298-9). Whatever battle lies ahead, it will be waged on the streets of Rome. This is a different type of military virtue than that which Plautus,
Horace, , Livy, and other Roman authors had had in mind when they celebrated exempla of Roman heroism in terms of “true virtue.”14 While the chorus borrows the language of
posit a precise intertextual relationship between the two passages. I rather argue that the citizens here tap into a common group of topoi, perhaps best or most famously expressed in this ode of Horace, to their own situation and anxieties, to put themselves in dialogue famous meditations on Roman identity and identity- crises of the past. The choruses throughout tend to speak in topoi and exempla first, and in intertextuality second. For the philosophical underpinnings to the idea of vera virtus and its illustration in Ode 3.5, see Arieti (1990); Harrison (1986); Nisbet and Hubbard ad loc.
14 The language of “true Roman virtue” almost never appears in Roman civil-war narratives, despite the penchant of such narratives for articulating true Roman identity against its perversions. The closest instance seems to be the speech of Lucan’s Pompey in which he tests his troops. Even here, however, the language is applied to Romans engaged in a in foreign war in contrast to Roman civil war: o scelerum ultores melioraque signa secuti/ o vere Romana manus, quibus arma senatus/ non privata dedit, votis deposcite pugnam/ ardent Hesperii saevis populatibus agri/ Gallica per gelidas rabies ecfunditur Alpes/ iam tetigit sanguis pollutos Caesaris enses (Luc. 2.531-36). To take another example, in the extant portions of Livy’s history, this particular phraseology (vera/Romana virtus) does not appear until the end of the first pentad
211 Roman virtue from the storied past of Roman imperialistic expansion and heroic dominance, the war they intend to wage is inherently civil, creating an uncomfortable blend between two different types of Roman military narrative.
The Octavia’s citizens already anticipate in their language the civil war that they will wage on Roman soil when they first declare their wish to see Octavia bear Nero a child. Such a child, argues the chorus, would be a token of peace that would guarantee
Rome’s eternal glory (teneatque suos nupta penates/ Claudia proles/ edat partu pignora pacis/ qua tranquillus gaudeat orbis/ servetque decus Roma aeternum, Oct. 278-82).
Children are often described as tokens or pledges in Latin literature and the term pignus frequently appears with a term for love or affection in the genitive (pignus amoris, etc.), defining children as the legal products of a loving Roman marriage.15 By defining
Octavia’s potential offspring as a pledge of peace, however, the chorus taps into a more specific usage of this commonplace language. In military contexts, “tokens of peace” often refer to hostages—especially children—who are exchanged in order to ensure peaceful negotiations between Rome and a foreign foe, becoming guarantees of appropriate behavior on both sides.16 In civil war contexts—in which the warring parties are members of the same society and often represented as part of the same family— children can become even more marked as guarantees of peace and of a cessation from
and from then on is used in the context of foreign wars exclusively (cf. the examples cited above). That the historian does not use the language of “true Roman virtue” during the proto-civil wars of his early books may even suggest that he did not use it in his narration of the civil wars of the late Republic. The language of “true Roman identity/virtue” seems particularly marked with reference to foreign conquest.
15 For this sense of pignus, cf. TLL s.v. pignus 2125.33ff (metonymice de ipsis…foederibus).
16 Cf. TLL s.v. pignus 2122.69ff. The etymology of pignus connects it to battle contexts, and thus the usage of children, themselves pignora in the metaphorical sphere, as pignora in a more literal military sphere allows for a level of punning when children appear described in such terms in either context.
212 civil strife if they unite two warring families. Thus in the Aeneid, Latinus’ daughter
Lavinia and her reproductive potential are seen by the Latins as the only means of securing peace with Aeneas and ending the proto-civil war (pacis solum inviolabile pignus, V. Aen.11.363). In Ovid’s Fasti, the Sabine women restore peace by literally placing their newborn children as pledges of peace between their warring husbands and fathers on the battlefield of Rome’s first civil war (cum raptae veniunt inter patresque virosque,/ inque sinu natos, pignora cara, tenent, Ov. Fast.3.217-8).
Sometimes it is the absence of such a child that dooms Rome inevitably to civil war, such as when Lucan describes the catastrophic consequences of the death of Julia’s child at the opening of his Bellum Civile (nam pignora iuncti/ sanguinis et diro ferales omine taedas/ abstulit ad manes Parcarum Iulia saeva/ intercepta manu, Luc. 1.111-
14).17 Thus both in a literal and in a metaphoric way, children are seen as a means of ending civil strife and political turmoil as their existence becomes a flesh and blood treaty between two warring sides. The absence of such a “treaty” can be catastrophic, as Lucan repeatedly emphasizes. In 62 CE, the imperial palace has begun to resemble a war zone and only through a child that would unite permanently the two warring Julio-Claudians could strife be averted. The Imperial house has, in a sense, become a microcosm of civil war, and thus the chorus’ hope for such a pignus almost literalizes the often-repeated metaphor of a child’s role in stopping strife. In this new way of waging civil war, a child
17 For Lucan’s rhetorical redeployment of the idea of a child as a pignus that guarantees the state’s safety in such contexts, see Roche (2009) ad loc. See also above Chapter 3 159-60 w n.25. Lucan repeatedly returns to the image of the broken bond between Julia and Pompey, and thus between Pompey and Caesar, in these terms. Cf. Julia’s final words to Pompey: numquam tibi, Magne, per umbras/ perque meos manes genero non esse licebit;/ abscidis frustra ferro tua pignora: bellum/ te faciet civile meum (Luc. 3.31-4). Ferri (2003 ad loc) notes that the Octavia’s focus on children as the tokens of peace probably dates to the rhetoric of 69 CE and following, and to panegyric praise of Vespasian who had two such tokens with him as he came to power, ensuring that Rome would not descend once more into civil war due to the lack of an heir.
213 could quite literally stop the war between the two imperial heirs while it only metaphorically could in the past. In the eyes of the Roman people, Octavia’s inability to bear such a token of peace and Nero’s decision to permanently deny Rome this opportunity condemns the city inescapably to a form of civil war: if it is true that only through Octavia’s children could Rome’s future peace be guaranteed, it seems nothing
18 but civil war will follow from their barren marriage.
As the chorus rouses itself to the paradoxical notion of acquiring military glory through seditious revolution, it seeks in Rome’s past a model for a type of strife that can be celebrated. And indeed Roman history does provide two clear exempla for the revolt that the chorus is eager to stage, and even a patriotic justification for this brand of civil violence: the tragic martyrs Lucretia and Verginia, to whom the chorus now turns:
Illi reges hac expulerant urbe superbos ultique tuos sunt bene manes virgo dextra caesa parentis ne servitium paterere grave et improba ferret praemia victrix dira libido. Te quoque bellum triste secutum est, mactata tua, miseranda, manu, nata Lucreti, stuprum saevi passa tyranni. (Oct. 293-303)
Those men had expelled the proud kings from this city, and avenged well your shades, o virgin slaughtered by the right hand of her father, lest you suffer heavy servitude and lest conquering, dire lust carry off her wicked victory trophies. You also grim war followed, o miserable woman slaughtered by her own hand, daughter of Lucretius, who suffered sexual violation at the hands of a savage tyrant.
Roman history has taught the chorus that, when a true and virtuous Roman woman is under threat, anything goes. Lucretia and Verginia often find themselves paired in Roman
18 By “Octavia’s inability to bear children” I do not suggest that the chorus—or any character in the play— views Octavia as infertile. This rumor is never once raised, despite Tacitus’ focus on it as the grounds for her divorce. In the chorus’ eyes, Nero’s remarriage causes Octavia’s inability to bear children.
214 exemplary contexts.19 Each woman suffered at the hands of a tyrant-figure and as a result of this suffering became a catalyst for widespread political strife that led in turn to governmental change. More significantly for the chorus’ appeal to history is that the
Roman people played a key role in these changes by revolting against the oppressive force of tyranny and demanding the restoration of libertas.20 Thus as the Octavia’s
Roman citizens contemplate their unfairly wounded heroine and their own revolutionary urges, the stories of the suicidal matron and her virginal counterpart leap instantly to mind as exempla through which their military drive towards civil war can become, paradoxically, a just war that restages two revolutions of constitutive significance in
Roman historical memory. The people’s revolution for Octavia, in the eyes of her devoted citizens, can become an iteration of a known pattern of events. The exempla of
Lucretia and Verginia provide the guidebook through which the Roman people can bring about their desired ends, and celebrate themselves as true Romans in the process.
As we read the choral ode more closely, it becomes apparent that the chorus recalls a particular model that furthers its interpretative aims. The citizens begin their narrative of Rome’s early history with the expulsion of the kings (Illi reges hac expulerant/ urbe superbos, Oct. 293-4). That they quickly follow such an introduction with Verginia’s tragedy and not Lucretia’s has long confused scholars, causing some to rearrange the lines and others to condemn Verginia as an unnecessary and repetitious
19 Boyle (2008, ad loc) cites Cic. Fin 2.66; Val Max. 6.1.1-2; Sen. Cont. 1.5.3. Cf. also Sil. Pun.13.820-36, noted by Ferri (2003) ad loc.
20 Sullivan (1985, 64) notes that “the staunchly Republican sentiments and examples are surely not introduced by the author without a purpose and they must be taken into account by any interpreter of the play. It is worth observing, however, that this stress on the quondam merits and power of the populace differs from [the historical] Seneca’s views on the desirability of a moderate and law-abiding monarchy (Sen. Ben.6.15.4; Sen. Clem.1.3.3).”
215 interpolation by a later hand.21 The chorus, however, borrows its language here from
Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita and the reflective syncrisis through which the historian had introduced Verginia’s tragedy to his narrative:
Sequitur aliud in urbe nefas, ab libidine ortum, haud minus foedo eventu quam quod per stuprum caedemque Lucretiae urbe regnoque Tarquinios expulerat, ut non finis solum idem decemviris qui regibus sed causa etiam eadem imperii amittendi esset. (Liv. 3.44)
There arose in the city another atrocity, born from lust, with no less foul an outcome than how, through the sexual violation and slaughter of Lucretia, the people had expelled the Tarquins from the city and from the kingdom, such that not only did the same end happen to the Decemvirs as to the kings, but also the same reason for losing power occurred.
The chorus not only borrows Livy’s verb of expulsion (expellere) but also redeploys it in the same pluperfect tense.22 In an interesting variation on Livy’s language, the chorus maintains the syntactical role of Tarquinios, but substitutes an adjectival periphrasis that itself contains the nickname of Rome’s final tyrant (superbus) and also incorporates
Livy’s condemnation of the Decemviri as would-be kings from the above passage. Thus the transition from the expulsion of the kings to Verginia’s story is not so surprising as it may first appear, given how the chorus’ language is mediated through Livy’s.23
21 Cf. Ferri (2003, ad loc) on Richter’s (1892, 4) belief that the lines were interpolated, and Zwierlein’s (1986) restoration of the lines into the text. Zwierlein (1986), following Baehrens (1878, 119), moves the description of Verginia after the apostrophe to Lucretia to maintain chronological order. I follow Ferri (2003) and Boyle (2008) in retaining the manuscript order. The intertextual engagement with Livy’s comparison should also be adduced as evidence for this order of the lines, as that passage looked from Verginia back to Lucretia as the chorus does here.
22 For the complex intertextual engagement with Livy’s narrative throughout this ode, see Ferri (2003) ad loc and Degli Innocenti Pierini (2001). I focus not on the intertexts themselves, but on how the chorus’ engagement with Livy in particular furthers their exemplary rhetorical strategy and characterization.
23 The significance of Lucretia and Verginia to Livy’s history and Roman culture has been well studied. Of particular significance for the chorus’ ode is the influential article of Joshel (1992) who reads the story as a meditation on the need to keep public and private separate, so that an individual’s private failings do not endanger the state. The conflation of public and private into a single ruling family is exactly the issue confronting Neronian Rome, and thus while Lucretia and Verginia stood as metaphors for the state in Livy’s history—a microcosm of the health of the state as a whole—Octavia has become a much more literal embodiment of the state due to her prominence in Roman political life and the imperial family. Cf. further Feldherr’s (1998, 187-210) analysis of the spectacular, dramatic, and sacrifical elements of Livy’s rape of Lucretia and his death of Verginia, all elements that recur in the Octavia’s appropriation of Livian
216 Nevertheless, this is more than mere adherence to the language of canonical
Roman history. This particular passage in Livy is also of programmatic significance to the pattern of exempla that the chorus wishes to pursue. In Livy’s narrative, Lucretia had declared at her suicide that she refused to play the role of exemplum to future unfaithful women, implicitly suggesting that her death was the exemplum she wished to leave to posterity.24 This wish reaches fulfillment when Livy’s reader reaches Verginia, as this is the first time that Lucretia’s exemplary story becomes more than a singular tragedy of
Rome’s early history, but rather becomes an historical pattern with wider intratextual and cultural significance. Only through Verginia’s reflection of Lucretia and the revolution that the later woman engendered did Lucretia’s story gain wider influence as part of a larger narrative in Roman history of how wronged women are avenged by the people for
Rome’s benefit. Thus, when the chorus borrows Livy’s language, it also recalls the moment in Livy’s narrative in which the historian almost provides instructions for how to avenge virtuous Roman women by highlighting an established pattern of justification for widespread civil revolution in similar circumstances (non finis solum idem… sed causa etiam eadem, Liv. 3.44). Thus in the chorus’ introduction to its two chosen exempla, their language points immediately to the significance of these exempla both to Livy’s history and also to the Roman people’s own present circumstances. The women themselves are less important than the pattern of just revolution their exemplary nature engendered.
The chorus’ engagement with Livy continues throughout its brief account of the two women’s tragedies as it continues to repurpose Livy’s language to its own narrative
material. See also more generally Deacy and Peirce (1997); Claassen (1998); Hemker (1985).
24 “Vos” inquit “videritis quid illi debeatur: ego me etsi peccato absolvo, supplicio non libero; nec ulla deinde impudica Lucretiae exemplo vivet,” (Liv. 1.58).
217 ends. The violent and malevolent lust that had become a leitmotif throughout Livy’s account (mala libido Liv. 1.57; victrix libido Liv. 1.58; nefas ab libidine ortum, Liv.
3.44) continues to plague the Octavia’s legendary heroines (victrix libido, Oct. 299-300).
The condemnation of stuprum (Oct. 304) seems similarly borrowed from Livy (e.g. Liv.
1.57, 3.44, 3.47, 3.50, 3.57), although the word is also frequent in other accounts of these exempla.25 The chorus’ emphasis on Verginia’s sexual slavery owes much to Livy (Liv.
3.44, 3.47. 3.56, 3.57, 3.61). Finally, the chorus’ introduction to its brief narrative of
Verginia (ultique tuos sunt bene manes, Oct. 295) recalls how Livy too had ended his extended account of the same event with a focus on the sated shades of the slain virgin
(manesque Verginiae…tandem quieverunt, Liv. 3.58). Thus, although the playwright condenses events narrated by Livy at great length over several books into a matter of ten lines, the chorus nevertheless recalls Livy’s introduction, conclusion, major motifs and thematic language, as well as the point at which the historian had underscored the didactic significance of such exempla for future Romans. In other words, within the span of only ten lines, the chorus activates our memory of Livy’s entire account, bringing the historian’s extended narrative into its own. The playwright has no need to retell the story at length, but instead activates our prior knowledge of these stories told elsewhere in
Roman literature as he highlights the particular didactic significance of Livy’s exempla for the characters of his own play.26 Like the chorus, we too are familiar with the didactic
25 Cf. Val Max. 6.1.1-2.
26 Cf. my analysis of when the messenger and the second chorus activate our idea of a civil-war narrative through their language, but do not go on to give one (Chapter 3 pp. 132-5). Similarly, as I will argue below, the second chorus activates our memory of Aeneas’ speech from Aeneid 2 by borrowing language from Aeneas’ introduction to that narrative. The Octavia’s various characters activate our memory of purple passages from Roman literature and thereby the playwright has no need to narrate these passages or ideas again in full. Gaisser (2009, 134-5) notes a similar phenomenon with Catullus 70 and its intertextual relationship with Callimachus 11. Even though Catullus leaves out Callimachus’ final two lines in his
218 lessons of Livy’s history and thus by activating our memory of Livy’s history, the chorus seeks to make us complicit in their reading of that history and their application of that reading to Neronian Rome.
Given the brief scope afforded to these two stories, we would expect that the narrative details highlighted by the chorus would be those details that most connected
Rome’s legendary heroines to their latter-day incarnation Octavia. Like Lucretia and
Verginia, Octavia is an idealized Roman woman whose virtues transform her from individual to state symbol (cf. above Oct. 273-88). Moreover, Octavia too suffers at the hands of an abusive powerful man whom she is powerless to refuse.27 The citizens of early Rome had risen up to avenge their wronged women and as a result rid Rome of its tyrannical oppressors and restored freedom to its people, much as the Roman citizens that make up the Octavia’s chorus might seem to wish to do.28 I have argued above that this ode significantly engages with the didactic lessons implicit in Livy’s paired exempla, and that this focus guides the playwright in selecting his language. Similarly the chorus
adaptation, the intertextual relationship is so strong that the reader hears them through what she calls a “shadow presence” of the intertextual model.
27 Cf. Octavia’s description of herself and her house as captives of a tyrant (servitque domus/ cum prole tua capta tyranno, Oct. 32-3), or her abhorrence of seeing and kissing Nero (poena nam gravior nece est/ videre tumidos et truces miserae mihi/ vultus tyranni, iungere atque hosti oscula, Oct. 108-10).
28 Scholars are nearly unanimous in citing this ode as evidence that the playwright presents his audience with an unusually positive portrayal of the populus Romanus. See, e.g. Kragelund (1988, 504-5): “far from subscribing to the usual panem et circenses image, he evokes the glory of [the people’s] Republican ancestors (291ff; 676ff). Where Tacitus belittles, the dramatist exalts their loyal but futile attempt to safeguard Octavia’s position. To enhance the significance of the episode, Nero is cast in the role of Tarquin and Appius Claudius, Octavia in that of Lucretia and Verginia. The choice of parallels is instructive: retribution would ensue, the oppressed be vindicated and the populus liberated.” Sentiments like these are often repeated. And yet even here, Kragelund slips between his praise of the chorus’ desire to safeguard Octavia’s position to his suggestion that it casts her in the role of Lucretia or Verginia—a role that requires her death and in no way “safeguards” her position. How can both of these be the goals of the chorus? I explore in detail below this paradox, and suggest that this ode—so often read as the proof positive of the Roman people’s glorious portrayal—becomes less clearly celebratory as the play progresses. In their eagerness to read the chorus positively, scholars often gloss over the difficulties involved in the chorus’ invocations of these exempla and the significance of these difficulties for their characterization.
219 emphasizes the common theme of popular revolt engendered by each woman (bellum triste) in language which itself recalls at least one somewhat programmatic civil-war narrative.29 One detail, however, marks Octavia as uncomfortably different from the exempla on which the chorus wish to model her suffering, and it is this detail that causes the exempla to falter even as they are activated.
The revolutions engendered by Lucretia and Verginia occurred over their dead bodies, while Octavia is very much alive. This is more than a simple shift in narrative detail: the deaths of the earlier Roman women—not merely the threats to their sexual purity—had acted as the crucial catalyst for Roman revolution. While Octavia lives, she provides no such direct catalyst. The chorus implicitly suggests this when they fixate on the deaths of their two exemplary figures in somewhat gruesome detail (above, lines 296 and 301).30 It is as if the chorus recognizes that, on some level, Octavia is useless to them as a figurehead for this type of civil strife so long as she remains alive, and this implicit understanding remains strikingly at odds with their earlier wish to see her reinstated in
Nero’s bed to produce more Julio-Claudian children (above, Oct. 273-87). If one traces fully the implications of using Verginia and Lucretia as models, the chorus’ earnest desire to see Octavia made a mother seems to be a wish to see her permanently tied to her
29 The proto-civil wars that Allecto begins at Latium are called tristia bella (Verg. Aen.7.325). Ferri (2003, ad loc) takes issue with the use of triste bellum with reference either to the revolution following Verginia or Lucretia, but attributes this factual slip to the playwright’s “inadequacy.” I suggest instead that for an audience who paused to ponder the validity of referring to these episodes as “grim war,” the chorus’ growing obsession with civil war and its desire to find appropriate exempla at any cost would become all the more apparent. The playwright does not mindlessly invoke Livy, rather he uses Livy and bends Livy to suit his war-mongering Roman people whose manipulation of exempla will continue throughout the play.
30 Furthermore, when the chorus describes Verginia as one slaughtered by her father’s hand, they intratextually activate a host of Julio-Claudian murders from across the text (e.g. Messalina ad 102; Plautus and Sulla ad 438; Julia ad 946). Similarly the description of Lucretia as one sacrificed by her own hand finds Julio-Claudian parallels throughout the text (e.g. Silanus ad 145). Thus the deaths of these two women are intratextually linked with a number of imperial martyrs throughout the text—a fact that does not bode well for Octavia, the implicit doublet for the legendary exempla.
220 Sextus Tarquin or Appius Claudius, a reductio ad absurdum created for the audience who thoroughly works through the chorus’ exemplary implications. Conversely, by its reasoning, the chorus should want to see Nero expelled from Rome, and yet this never seems to be its desire, at least not at this point in the play. What the Roman people want is a happy reconciliation between husband and wife, and the threat of another woman removed permanently (Oct. 273-87). In the end, it seems, the exempla of Lucretia and
Verginia are at best an uncomfortable fit with Neronian Rome, and should arouse our unease regarding the chorus’ use of history to justify its own ends.
Their chosen exempla seem even more uncomfortable when the deaths of the two women are read in greater detail. Lucretia is never named, but instead becomes the
“daughter of Lucretius” (nata Lucreti, Oct. 302) who died by her own hand, a descriptive periphrasis designed to remind us of the role her father played in avenging her suffering.
Similarly, Verginia becomes the “virgin slaughtered by the hand of her father” (virgo dextra caesa parentis, Oct. 396), alluding to the culmination of her story in which her father had killed her before she could be defiled. Both women had been defended or avenged by their fathers and the emphasis that the chorus’ places on the father-daughter relationship sits oddly against Octavia’s own experience of her father who had wed her permanently to the tyrant at whose hands she now suffers.31
The Roman people’s focus on Octavia’s purity, her traditional Roman virtues, her suffering, and their own desire to rally around her initially cause us to take the Lucretia and Verginia exempla at face value. Nevertheless, upon closer reading we see the cracks
31 Cf. the Nurse’s hostility to Claudius (qui nato suo praeferre potuit sanguine alieno satum, Oct. 138-40).
221 in their parallels.32 The chorus has no dead woman around whom to rally—a key part of the revolutionary aftermath of the tragedies of Lucretia and Verginia. Furthermore, the chorus’ intended revolution seems to have no particular aim to speak of. They do not wish to dethrone Nero nor reinstate the Republic in any sense. That they quickly transition from the grim wars of Lucretia and Verginia to Tullia’s violent parricide and an extended account of Agrippina’s death filled with civil-war undertones (cf. Chapter 4 pp.
161-70) suggests that, in the end, the individual exempla and personages of Neronian
Rome matter less than the chorus’ insatiable drive towards revolution.
One thematic thread ties the disparate parts of this ode together: the Roman people’s drive to reassert their identity through military display. To this end they recall through topoi and programmatic language Rome’s previous exploits against a foreign foe; to this end they also activate our memory of (Livy’s) Lucretia and Verginia, exempla that seem more practical given that these are Romans without a foreign enemy to face who watch a domestic crisis revolving around a wronged woman. That the chorus can move so swiftly from a desire to see Octavia reinstated as empress and wife of Nero to a series of exempla that do nothing but foreshadow her death suggests to us that the Roman people are not terribly concerned with Octavia’s safety, or Octavia’s individual significance. Instead, their confused jumble of exempla and programmatic language suggest that their goal is primarily to reawaken their own true nature, their true violent identity; Octavia is merely the catalyst that gives them the opportunity to act. Whether
Octavia lives or dies, strife becomes the Roman people’s inescapable future. Strife will also become the dominant theme of the choral odes throughout the play, as the Roman
32 Schiesaro’s (2003, 19) analysis of holds here as well: “stirred by passion, [they] instigate a drama, but one which [they] cannot control and which will eventually turn against [them].”
222 people search Rome’s past for exempla to justify revolution within the city walls and war against fellow Romans. That they initially choose a revolutionary model that can only succeed with the death of their beloved princess leaves us feeling unsettled about the motivation and rationale that lies behind the citizens’ strife-ridden tendencies.33
Roman Identity and the “Crush, Kill, Destroy” Mentality: Ode 2
The chorus’ next appearance does little to dismiss our mounting discomfort over the citizens’ impending revolution, its goals, and its likely outcome, but rather continues to evoke and problematize the Roman people’s earlier self-righteous posturing about just wars that reawaken Rome’s glorious identity. This ode seems in many ways designed to respond to and continue its predecessor, and thus the two ought to be read together as we delve further into the chorus’ desire for war. Once more a rumor regarding Octavia’s divorce brings the chorus to stage:
En illuxit suspecta diu fama totiens iactata dies: cessit thalamis Claudia diri pulsa Neronis, quos iam victrix Poppaea tenet. (Oct. 669-73)
Behold that day long suspected dawns, so often chattered about in rumor. Claudia has yielded the bedchamber of dire Nero, driven out from it, which Poppaea the conqueror now possesses.
Even the language of rumor is repeated practically verbatim with slight variation in syntax, tying the two passages intratextually together (quae fama…totiens iactata fidem,
33 While some might blame the poet for these inconsistencies and ill-devised parallels, the chorus’ hallmark attributes throughout the play remain its fickleness and its drive towards strife—two aspects of the people’s character that are foreshadowed here implicitly, and will only become more manifest as the play develops. It is not that the playwright was incapable of writing a chorus of sympathetic Romans who use exempla to productive ends; he wrote this chorus of Roman citizens—including their leaps in logic, twisting of exempla, and fickleness—in this way for a reason: to emphasize strife as a fundamental and inescapable aspect of Roman character, no matter how it is dressed up or justified.
223 Oct. 273-5; fama totiens iactata dies, Oct. 670). Their frenzied question as to why their precious Claudia was driven from the bed of her brother and her paternal home
(Claudia… fratris thalamis sortita tenet… cur a patria pellitur aula, Oct. 278-85) has now become a point of fact (cessit thalamis Claudia…pulsa, Oct. 671-2) as the present indicative verb (pellitur) has been transformed into a perfect passive participle (pulsa) and combined with a verb of resigned defeat (cessit).
Once again the Roman people turn their distress inward, blaming current events on their own indolence and questioning what became of their former collective character:
cessat pietas dum nostra gravi compressa metu segnisque dolor. Ubi Romani vis est populi, fregit claros quae saepe duces, dedit invictae leges patriae, fasces dignis civibus olim, iussit bellum pacemque, feras gentes domuit, captos reges carcere clausit? (Oct. 674-82)
Our piety and sluggish grief yields, repressed by heavy fear. Where is the might of the Roman people, which broke proud kings often in the past and gave laws to an unconquered fatherland, which once gave fasces to worthy citizens, which once ordered war and peace alike, and tamed wild peoples, and closed captive kings within a prison?
The language of self-flagellation in this passage conjures images of Rome’s legendary commanders crushing foreign enemies and spreading Roman glory across the globe, once again grounding Roman collective identity in military might and violent displays. Vis, or military power, made Rome what she was, according to the chorus, and so only vis will restore its identity. Characteristic of true Romans are laws, reason, control, a sense of self-worth and an unconquered nation—all benefits bestowed on Rome as the result of her military might. Thus the chorus easily measures itself on the glorious citizens of
Rome’s past, finds itself wanting, and seeks to live up to its ancestors’ model. In another context, these lines would seem to make a traditional comment on the glory of Rome’s
224 past in comparison with the degeneracy of its present, a fitting exhortation to recapture the Republican spirit of old. In his recent commentary, Ferri notes ad loc how “ the lament for the loss of early Republican virtues is a commonplace of imperial literature, and is to be expected in a praetexta.” Both Ferri and Boyle similarly note the potential historical allusions deployed in each line, from Pyrrhus and Hannibal as “famous leaders”
(claros duces), to Jugurtha or Vercingetorix as “captive kings” (captos reges), and indeed these celebrated historical events would likely come to mind as the audience absorbed the chorus’ patriotic meditation on Roman glory.
And yet we must remember that, unlike the Romans from the historical allusions that the chorus vaguely activates to legitimize its actions, these Roman people do not aim their might at any foreign foe.34 There will be no foreign kings to lead proudly in triumph as a result of their military exploits, for the war they plan to wage is decidedly civil in nature, a war within and against their own city. No one, to my knowledge, has noted the logical gap between the type of military memory that the chorus activates and the actual present situation of their riot against other Roman citizens. Perhaps Nero’s tyrannical personality has rendered him deserving of such hostility, but even so the language the chorus uses to justify and celebrate its planned insurrection is logically inappropriate to the situation, as it suggests that civil war and foreign conquest are two sides of the same coin, rather than ideologically separate in Roman thought. The chorus’ language may be
34 Sullivan (1985, 67) notes that “this section might be interpreted as expressing the hope that some new emperor, perhaps Galba, could bring back the power and the honorable spirit of the people as they were displayed in the early days of the Republic, but any such hopes fostered by the chorus will be undercut by its pessimism at vv. 877ff).” What Sullivan does not note in support of this undercutting is that the chorus here inappropriately applies the ideology of foreign conquest to a conflict that is by its very nature civil, similar to the civil wars that will break out under Galba and his successors.
225 generic and unremarkable, but the context in which this language is here deployed certainly merits further inquiry.
Their own language anticipates this logical slip between the ideology of foreign conquest and the shame of civil strife due to its echo of one of Rome’s most celebrated meditations on the decline of Roman character. In the extended preface to his monograph on the Catilinarian conspiracy, Sallust compared Rome’s prior glory to its current strife- ridden degeneration by suggesting that once Rome had eliminated its foreign enemies, there was nowhere left to turn but against its own self:35
Sed ubi labore atque iustitia res publica crevit, reges magni bello domiti, nationes ferae et populi ingentes vi subacti, Carthago, aemula imperi Romani, ab stirpe interiit, cuncta maria terraeque patebant, saevire fortuna ac miscere omnia coepit. (Sall. Cat.10).
But when the Republic had grown through labor and justice, great kings were tamed in war, fierce nations and mighty peoples were subdued by force, Carthage, the rival of Roman imperialism, utterly perished, all the seas and lands gaped open, then at that time fortune began to rage and mix up everything.
The chorus’ generalizing description of the Roman people’s glory days echoes quite closely the language and themes of Sallust’s description. Great kings and wild peoples feature in both passages (feras gentes domuit, captos reges, Oct. 680-1; reges magni bello, nationes ferae et populi ingentes vi subacti, Sall. Cat.10). The vocabulary of taming these peoples (domuit, Oct. 680; domiti, Sall. Cat.10) is the same, as is the focus in each passage on Rome’s former might (vis, Oct. 676; vi, Sall. Cat.10). Beyond these lexical parallels, however, lies a wider thematic parallel that imagines Rome measuring herself against her past and being found wanting.
35 Sallust’s political thought on this matter is more explicitly articulated at Sall. Jug.41.2 where Sallust explains the utility of a metus hostilis on keeping strife at bay, and the danger for a state when such a foreign threat is ultimately removed. The bibliography on Sallust’s political thought is immense. See Wiedemann (1993) 48-57; Levick (1982) 53-62; Conley (1981) 379-382; Vretska (1976) 200-206; Heinz (1975) 45-48; Lintott (1972) 626-638. The theory of the metus hostilis, however, predates Sallust (cf. Polybius 6.18 and 6.57.5).
226 Further of interest is how the echo of Sallust throws into stark relief a crucially important difference between the past that the Octavia’s chorus venerates and its present opportunities. Sallust’s passage described a turning point after which Rome was turned towards the path of decline and never-ending strife: once Carthage—the epitome of the foreign foe implied by the chorus’ celebratory language—fell from power and was no longer a threat to Rome, Roman character suffered as a result and turned against itself, allowing figures like Catiline the opportunity to seize power and engender strife. The
Octavia’s chorus of Roman citizens eagerly looks to their past for a means of reactivating their lost identity, and yet their language underscores that this past is fundamentally closed to them. In other words, the chorus is attempting to apply to their civil insurrection the ideology and rhetoric of foreign conquest, to deny the break that Sallust (and other authors) had seen between the Rome of then and the Rome of now. That their language echoes this turning point between foreign conquest and civil strife in Sallust’s Bellum
Catilinae further underscores how far the Octavia’s Romans are from the models they seek. In essence through their zealous appeal to a model no longer available to them, they activate before our eyes one of civil war’s greatest paradoxes: in civil war, traditional virtues become vices, the enemy becomes one’s own fellow citizen, and the traditional paths to glory become nothing but paths to further depravity.36 Once more the chorus
36 This language also appears in (Lucan’s) Lentulus’ speech to Pompey the Great in which he reminds him of his past foreign success in order to convince him to keep fighting the civil war (te, quem Romana regentem/ horruit auditu, quem captos ducere reges, Luc. 8.341-2). The ironic use of language typically reserved for Roman foreign conquest in the context of civil war is one of the hallmarks of Lucan’s epic and has undoubtedly influenced the playwright in these passages. A further text in the ideological (if not specifically intertextual) background would be Caesar’s own De Bello Civili. Kurt Raaflaub (2010, 167-8) recently argued that in his Spanish speech Caesar paints civil war as antithetical to true Roman virtue, and that those who incited, perpetuated, or otherwise participated in such strife were disloyal to Roman identity.
227 tries to make something glorious out of their desire for strife, and once more their exempla and their intertextuality speaks against them.
This paradox is reinforced intratextually as the chorus’ descriptions of Rome’s legendary foreign enemies echo language used elsewhere in the play. The famous kings
(claros reges) that the chorus remembers from Rome’s past would remind the play’s audience of Nero’s hatred for his Roman rivals (odit genitos sanguine claro, Oct. 88; servare cives principi et patriae graves, /claro tumentes genere quae dementia est, Oct.
495-6), Poppaea’s growing fame (clarum nomen, Oct. 749; claro marmore effigies, Oct.
794), and Troy’s tragic fall and the repetition of this fall in Neronian Rome (claras… urbes, Oct. 816-7).37 It also anticipates the chorus’ own later appeal to the Gracchi and
Livius Drusus as famous men (claros, Oct. 885), endowed with fasces and Roman virtue
(Oct. 889), but who fell to the strife of their own city, betrayed by fellow citizens.
Similarly the language of Roman force (vis) and of breaking (fregit) become ubiquitous in various characters’ assessments of the strife that soon breaks out across Rome (e.g. sed malis vires capit, Oct. 54; sed vires capit, Oct. 784; sed aegras frangeret vires timor, Oct.
874) and plunges Rome once more into a form of civil war.
The ferocity that the chorus here emphasizes in Rome’s foreign foe (feras gentes) likewise taps into the thematic significance of this word (ferus) throughout the play (e.g.
Oct. 87, 609, 959), including their own later ferocious actions (Oct. 799, 806). It also
37 Several editors over time have wished to emend claros to diros, despite no manuscript evidence that supports it. In defense of this justification, they suggest that the grimmer adjective would better provide a more legitimate justification for removing Nero. Cf. Zwierlein (1986) following Müller (1911). I follow Boyle (2008) and Ferri (2003) who print claros and who emphasize that Rome was perfectly capable of celebrating conquests over famous leaders without needing to render them diros. I would add, however, in support of this reading that claros intratextually activates a number of significant echoes across the text that are important for our understanding of this passage. I would also add against diros that even at this point, the chorus has not made explicitly clear that it wishes to remove Nero. Poppaea is the target of its ire, not necessarily the emperor even if he is implicitly blamed.
228 crucially looks back to the savage wounds that Augustus dealt his enemies in civil war
(Oct. 525-6). Thus although the chorus’ language on the surface reads as a generic and expected championing of lost Roman virtue, through a host of intratextual echoes these images are reflected back in time on Rome’s previous experiences of strife (the Gracchi,
Livius Drusus, Augustus, and even Troy) and also anticipate the similarly disastrous strife that is to come by the play’s end. This disassociation between what the chorus seems to say and the intratextual associations of its language underscores all the more how inappropriately the chorus applies the ideology of foreign conquest to its own strife- ridden desires, and the consequences of this desire to legitimize civil war through the celebratory rhetoric of Rome’s former glory. No glory awaits these citizens, only destruction and a reawakening of a different, more dangerous aspect of Roman identity.
Behind these platitudes on Roman identity lays an inherent violence awaiting its catalyst.
Given the chorus’ self-posturing as defenders of Rome against foreign enemies and tyrannical, sexually-abusive king-figures, it is perhaps surprising that the catalyst that finally sends the chorus over the edge is a glittering statue of Poppaea, Nero’s new bride:
Gravis en oculis undique nostris iam Poppaeae fulget imago iuncta Neroni! affligat humo violenta manus similes nimium vultus dominae ipsamque toris detrahat altis, petat infestis mox et flammis telisque feri principis aulam. (Oct. 682-89)
Behold, everywhere before our eyes the grievous image of Poppaea joined to Nero now gleams! Let our violent hand smash to the ground the excessively realistic faces of our new mistress, let us tear the woman herself from her high couches, soon let us seek with hostile flames and weapons the very palace of this savage emperor!
229 Suddenly these statues are subject to the same destructive passion that throughout the play has characterized revolution and bloodshed.38 The people’s rage against these visual symbols quickly mounts to a desire to kill the woman herself and to attack the royal palace with torches, the unmistakable language of siege.39 Despite all their protestations about foreign enemies and anti-Roman forces of oppression, when the chorus finds a target, it is a Roman woman who would also one day be a victim of Nero like Octavia.
When Poppaea finally appears on stage in the scene immediately following this choral ode (Oct. 690-761), she confides her fears to her Nurse (Oct. 712-39), she is haunted by dreams of loved-ones whom Nero will kill (Oct. 728-33), and she seems to foresee her own death at Nero’s hands (Oct. 719-26. In other words, the woman against whom the chorus rages murderously is a reflection of its own beloved Octavia, who opened the play with a list of parallel experiences (Oct. 1-272).40 In fact, the extreme lengths to which the playwright goes to show Octavia and Poppaea as reflections of one another renders further suspect the justification for the chorus’ revolutionary motivations despite how positively its words might sound on the surface. The chorus’ riotous defense of the one and its murderous rage against the other seems fickle at best, as it has
38 Cf. Tullia’s massacre of her father (violenta, Oct. 308); Nero’s rage (e.g. violentus, Oct. 122; violenti, Oct. 254); Cupid’s power to level cities (vis immitis violenta dei, Oct. 819).
39 The chorus’ language here may be particularly reminiscent of (Lucan’s) Caesar’s exhortation to his troops before Pharsalus, an additional civil war echo that would influence our reading of the passage if it were felt (haec acies victum factura nocentem est. /si pro me patriam ferro flammisque petistis,/ nunc pugnate truces gladioque exsolvite culpam:/ nulla manus, belli mutato iudice, pura est, Luc. 7.260-3).
40 On the obsessive parallelism between different scenes in the play—including Poppaea’s reflection of Octavia’s opening lament—see Smith (2003) 403-5. See also Carbone (1977) on the two empresses’ dreams. The symmetry of the play has long been recognized as important for its interpretation, but no one to my knowledge has connected the symmetry between the two empresses’ experiences to suggest that the chorus’ favor of one and hatred of the other seems arbitrary at best. For the sympathetic and unconventional portrayal of Poppaea as a tragic victim, see Poe (1989) 455-7.
230 arbitrarily fixated on one woman as a symbol of virtue in need of defense, and on the other as everything that is wrong with the world and in need of annihilation.
Historically speaking, statues of Poppaea and Octavia played a significant role in the riot of 62 CE and thus this passage occasions little comment beyond frequent comparisons with similar passages.41 In Tacitus’ account, the riot is neither excessively violent nor particularly threatening and is suppressed quite easily.42 That the Octavia’s chorus views its riot as an imperial reflection of Rome’s past political revolutions and views this battle as the key to reawakening Rome’s former triumphal military identity is both unexpected and also unparalleled in the surviving sources on Neronian Rome. It thus seems less likely that the Octavia unintentionally preserves a strand of the tradition in which the riots for Octavia posed an actual threat to Nero. It seems more likely that the
Octavia artistically distorts the significance of these riots by explicitly reading them against the civil strife and military escapades of Rome’s past.43 The chorus’ persistent attempts to find models for their imperial present in Rome’s violent past and to glean from them a means of reasserting the people’s significance in the narrative of Roman history becomes a defining marker of its characterization throughout the play. In fact, this self-conscious reading of the present through the great military clashes of Rome’s history
41 For the Octavia’s potential influence on Tacitus, especially in the description of the riot and Octavia’s subsequent banishment, see most recently Billot (2003) and Ferri (1998).
42 Cf. Tac. Ann.14.60-2. Suetonius notes that the people did not approve of the divorce (sed improbante divortium populo, Suet. Ner.35.2), but does not describe a riot on the scale of the Octavia’s. The epitome of Dio is similarly uninterested in this moment of history (Hist. Rom.62.13.1). Cf. Flower (2006, 206) notes that “it is interesting that the fire of 64 does not play a larger role in the drama, and that the playwright thought that the situation in 62, with flashbacks to the murder of Agrippina in 59, would be most compelling and damaging for Nero.” She posits (2006, 205-6) that the playwright took one of the only memorable moments of opposition to Nero by the Roman people and centers his play around it to teach them how horrible Nero had been and how they themselves had been against him all along.
43 Sullivan (1985, 68) also noticed that “the minor disturbances in favor of Octavia in Campania are duly exaggerated into a mass revolt.”
231 unites the chorus with the Octavia’s protagonists who, as I argued in Chapter 4, are similarly depicted as replaying in the imperial palace the struggles of Rome’s strife- ridden past. What Octavia, Nero, and Agrippina suggested through intertexts and emotional monologues, the Octavia’s chorus makes manifest through its exempla and its actions. Civil strife and Roman revolution remain paramount throughout.
As the Roman people rush off in their murderous empress-killing rage to besiege the imperial palace, we are left with a sense of unease about their revolution and its motivation. On the one hand, the chorus continues to couch its actions in the stock language of Roman glory and military identity through which it urges us to believe that this revolution is the only means of recapturing the glorious past of the Roman people.
When questions over Roman virtue and strength appear in Roman literature, they seem designed to elicit one response: a universal quest to reawaken these lost virtues of Roman collective character.44 In the Octavia’s opening odes, such chastisements are further reinforced by the chorus’ generalized appeals to Roman glory such as the crushing of glorious leaders, the fasces won by worth, and the waging of wars (Oct. 674-82).
Furthermore, the specific exempla of virtue in action—exempla which on the surface suggest similarities with the present situation—seem to demand only one proper Roman response. A true Roman, when provided with evidence of a lapse in virtue through exempla that remind him both of the standards from which he has fallen and the actions demanded by present circumstances, would do everything in his power to live up to the standards of his ancestors. When its present circumstances are framed in such terms, what
44 For the reproachful implications of the ubi sunt collocation, see Ferri (2003) ad loc and OLD s.v. ubi 2a-b (a. in questions, usually rhetorical, implying the absence, ineffectiveness, etc. of some quality, action, or the like. b. In exclamations of regret, or sim). Cf. Cato. Orat.66; Cic. Phil.8.23; Liv. 4.42.5; Liv. 5.43.7; Val. Fl. Arg. 4.4.69; Stat. Theb. 3.698.
232 else could the chorus do? Or how could we, its audience, possibly question its motives or fail to be anything but complicit in its revolutionary drive?
And yet we have seen that the Octavia’s Roman people do not plan to wage foreign wars, and thus they uncomfortably apply the language, rhetoric, and underlying ideology of Roman military glory to their own mounting civil revolution. This tension between their generic sounding words and the radical application of these words to a civil-war context starkly underscores the paradox inherent in the chorus’ desire to wage a civil war that can be celebrated in traditional Roman terms.45 These Romans seek justifications for their sedition in traditional narratives of Roman glory that in the end only highlight further the distance between their appeal to traditionalism and their violent drive towards civil strife at any cost. There will be no glory in their siege of the royal palace and its Roman imperial family members; only destruction and further strife awaits them. Although these first two odes are often read as embodying the play’s “true” message, they do not—when read closely and against the odes that follow—cast the
Roman people in a particularly positive light. At best, these are people driven by wishful thinking instead of reality; at worst, they are a violent, factioning, and strife-ridden people. Only the rest of the play can help us decide.
45 The chorus’ misapplication of traditional Roman virtue to a civil-war context is reminiscent in theme of Lucan’s narrative of the battle at Ilerda where the two armies mingle, renewing the bonds of piety, only to be forced into a subsequent bloody battle that highlights once more how paradoxically civil war reverses everything glorious in foreign campaigns (Luc. 4.155ff). By appropriating the language of traditional military glory and redeploying it implicitly in the context of civil strife, the Octavia’s chorus blindly stages many of Lucan’s most paradoxical episodes.
233
CHAPTER 6: THE ROMAN PEOPLE’S EXEMPLARY STRIFE (Part II)
The chorus’ next appearance seems designed to confuse us. Out of this confusion, however, arises a crucial alternative viewpoint on the thematic focus on civil strife that brings to the surface our discomfort with the Roman people’s impending revolution:
Si vera loquax fama Tonantis furta et gratos narrat amores (quem modo Ledae pressisse sinum tectum plumis pennisque ferunt, modo per fluctus raptam Europen taurum tergo portasse trucem), quae regit et nunc deseret astra, petet amplexus, Poppaea, tuos, quos et Ledae praeferre potest et tibi, quondam cui miranti fulvo, Danae, fluxit in auro. (Oct. 762-72)
If chatty rumor narrates true thefts of Jupiter and pleasing love-affairs (he whom they say at one time, covered in feathers and wings, pressed the breast of Leda, now through the waves as a grim bull carried on his back stolen Europa), he will desert the stars he rules and will now seek your embraces, Poppaea, embraces which he can prefer to Leda’s and to yours, Danae, to whom once he flowed down in yellow gold as you wondered at him.
For the third time in a row, the chorus’ entrance seems motivated by rumor (si vera loquax fama, Oct. 762).1 It quickly becomes clear, however, that this rumor has nothing to do with Octavia’s divorce and this group of Roman citizens is not the same as those who, in their last appearance, were gathering weapons and preparing to assault the palace.
Instead, the rumor that motivates this chorus to enter the stage refers not to current affairs, but to the mythological tradition of Jupiter’s many leading ladies.2 As the chorus
1 On the use of these words to baffle our expectation, see Smith (2003) 418-9.
2 On the artful use of mythology throughout the Octavia, and its significance as a means of remembering
234 moves through its narratives of seduction and praise of the beauty of Leda and Europa, we finally come to understand that Poppaea is the referent and that in fact we are witnessing a choral panegyric to her beauty.3
This seemingly fulsome praise has caused many critics to read this group as merely pro-Poppaean (and a priori anti-Octavian) “courtiers” whose appearance and impact on the play’s action is virtually non-existent and limited largely to this scene.4 The argument is often repeated that the presence of the “courtiers” and the content of their ode emphasizes the sycophancy of those at court, ever ready to shift allegiance to new centers of power.5 That they appeal to mythology rather than Roman history marks them as base Romans—ever susceptible to the theatricality of Neronian Rome—who revel in vain mythological paradigms. According to many, we are supposed to read them as irrelevant, a satire of Neronian court life, and a sad shadow of the “true” chorus of
Roman people who are universally loyal to Octavia and to their Roman identity, and who provide us with the play’s actual moral compass.
Such assumptions about this second chorus, its role in the play, and the significance of its odes are nevertheless based on criteria that are not self-evidently true.
First of all, mythology and history are hardly as incompatible as scholars have made them
Neronian Rome, see Herington’s (1961, 19-23) now famous discussion.
3 Ferri (2003, 17-26) uses parallels between this ode and a similar wedding poem from Statius’ Silvae (Stat. Silv.1.2) to argue for a Domitianic dating of the Octavia. In this he followed earlier arguments of Helm (1934). For a persuasive refutation of this dating and the idea that the historical Poppaea may have represented herself in these terms, see Kragelund (2005, 78-86).
4 See above, n. 8
5 Cf. Wiseman (2001, 15) who describes them thus: “to the right are the courtiers in their sumptuous silks, gossiping and laughing in affected tones; they cluster around the right-hand door, from which in due course emerges Poppaea, haughty and glamorous, to receive their obsequious homage.”
235 to denigrate the significance of this chorus and its role in the play. We have seen, for example, how Octavia herself can be both Electra and Pompey, creating a fusion of
Greek tragic and Roman historical models of decisive significance for her characterization.
The play similarly problematizes the notion that words of praise and joy must be taken at face value. The Nurses of the play are often at pains to tell their respective empresses to repress their inner turmoil, to think happy thoughts, to appear always happy, and to utter compliant words.6 The appearance of compliance is what matters in
Neronian Rome; one’s inner feelings matter little. Nero himself champions this when he tells Seneca that fear drives his citizens to utter submissive and compliant words, and that this fear is at the heart of Julio-Claudian empire.7 Shadi Bartsch has examined in detail the phenomenon of citizens who act the part of happy compliant subjects to please the emperor, and the representation of this social construction in imperial literature.8 She has also analyzed the complementary idea of “doublespeak” in imperial Rome, a phenomenon in which people say something that on the surface sounds one way, but the subtext of which might convey a different meaning entirely.9 The idea of acting and of
6 Cf. the Nurse’s lament that Octavia cannot hide her dislike of Nero (nec graves luctus valet/…tegere, Oct. 47-8). Elsewhere, her Nurse begs Octavia to check her raging spirit and words lest she suffer further misfortune (animi retine verba furentis/ temere emissam comprime vocem, Oct. 98-9). Similarly, when Poppaea flees her marriage bed after a foreboding nightmare, her Nurse advises her to regain the appearance of happiness and calm (recollige animum, recipe laetitiam, precor, Oct. 754). Smith (2003, 418) notes that “the nurse is manic in her insistence that Poppaea have no fear.”
7 Munus deorum est, ipsa quod servit mihi/ Roma et senatus quodque ab invitis preces/ humilesque voces exprimit nostri metus (Oct. 492-4).
8 Bartsch (1994) focuses especially on the development of these ideas as a result of the age of Nero.
9 Especially enlightening in this regard is Bartsch (1994) 148-87 on Pliny’s Panegyricus and the anxiety that doublespeak can produce even in an author trying to sound sincere. Theatrical performances were frequently subject to audiences who read subversive interpretations into various lines, creating a new opportunity for “doublespeak” with each performance (cf. Cic. Sest. 118-22; Suet. Div. Iul. 84.2; Suet. Galb.13). For the audience’s role in creating a space for oppositional innuendo (no matter what the author
236 doublespeak becomes key to our interpretation of the words of this secondary chorus and their significance for our interpretation of the play as a whole. Far from the empty mythological and fantastical ramblings of little to no importance, this chorus’ words reflect the same anxiety and fear as its revolutionary counterparts.
As the chorus opens with praise of Leda and Europa, quickly moving to similar praise of Danae and Leda once more, they appropriate the standard mythological catalogues of elegiac poetry to praise Nero’s new bride (above, Oct. 762-72).10 Their words further echo the catalogue of Jovian lovers through which Octavia’s Nurse earlier encouraged the empress to play Juno to her Jove despite his adulterous liaisons.11
Already, however, a rupture occurs between the Nurse’s reading of mythology and that of the chorus: the point of the Nurse’s speech had been the unsuccessful and temporary attempts of these women to seduce Jove away from his proper bride; Juno, in the end, remained triumphant and happily enthroned in her heavenly power. In this choral ode, however, Jove’s lovers triumph over Juno, just as Poppaea has triumphed over Octavia and replaced her as Nero’s wife. Thus we see that mythology within the Octavia is not a static and fantastical mode through which Nero’s court sees the world, but in fact becomes a mode through which the Octavia’s many characters variously understand and
may or may not have intended), see Bartsch (1994) 63-97. Smith (2003, 419 n. 57) notes the thematic focus on suppression of words and actions throughout the Octavia.
10 Ferri (2003) and Boyle (2008) ad loc. Ferri (2003, 17-27) also notes at length the parallels between this encomium and a similar passage in Statius’ Silvae.
11 Passa est similes ipsa dolores/ regina deum,/ cum se formas vertit in omnes/ dominus caeli diuumque pater/ et modo pennas sumpsit oloris,/ modo Sidonii cornua tauri;/ aureus idem fluxit in imbri;/ fulgent caelo sidera Ledae,/ patrio residet Bacchus Olympo,/ deus Alcides possidet Heben/ nec Iunonis iam timet iras,/ cuius gener est qui fuit hostis./ Vicit sapiens tamen obsequium/ coniugis altae/ pressusque dolor:/ sola Tonantem tenet aetherio/ secura toro maxima Iuno,/ nec mortali captus forma/ deserit altam Iuppiter aulam./ Tu quoque, terris altera Iuno,/ soror Augusti coniunxque, graves/ vince Dolores (Oct. 201-21).
237 interpret their situation. That Poppaea—the Leda, Europa, and Danae of her day—has triumphed is no longer in doubt. The question remains, however, whether the chorus necessarily celebrates this triumph as sincerely as many have assumed.
As the chorus continues in its praise of Poppaea’s beauty, it slowly shifts in tone from the stock language of panegyric to language that suggests anything but optimism and joy in the new couple’s union. Having twice highlighted the seduction of Helen’s mother Leda—a striking repetition that has gone largely unnoted—the chorus turns to the product of that union: Helen of Troy, whose beauty Poppaea now surpasses. The danger of Poppaea’s beauty and newfound power becomes increasingly manifest, as does the chorus’ perception of this danger:
Formam Sparte iactet alumnae licet et Phrygius praemia pastor, vincet vultus haec Tyndaridos, qui moverunt horrida bella Phrygiaeque solo regna dedere. (Oct. 773-77)
Although Sparta boasts the beautiful shape of its child and the Trojan shepherd boasts his reward, nevertheless she [Poppaea] will surpasses the face of Helen—that face which moved horrible wars and leveled Trojan kingdoms to the ground.
Though Sparta boasted such a beauty, it was the Trojan shepherd who reaped the rewards of her desirability and destroyed his homeland in the process. Helen’s face incited dreadful wars that leveled Priam’s palace to the ground. This is a dangerous type of beauty indeed. Given this literary topos and also the chorus’ obvious understanding of the role great beauty can play in great destruction, it is difficult in the end to read this ode as a sincere expression of optimism, joy, or Neronian-Poppaean partisanship.12 The fall of
12 My reading of this ode, its engagement with the idea of Rome as Troy, and the foreboding of its tone has been much influenced by Smith (2003, 419-22). I disagree, however, that this reading suggests the chorus’ “pro-Poppaean” stance. Sullivann (1985, 68) notes the danger of Poppaea’s beauty, but reads it as dramatic irony on a level of which the chorus is not implicitly aware. This, I think, is to deny to the chorus an understanding of their own language which links in logical sequence Poppaea to Helen’s beauty, and Helen’s beauty to destruction. Similarly Kragelund (2005, 81) notes the sinister undertones of the language,
238 Troy colors this mythological excursus with fear—the exact emotion which, according to
Nero, lies behind his subjects’ praise. Their use of mythology renders their ode no less anxious or pessimistic than that of their revolutionary counterparts.13
In fact, it is difficult to see the great distinction that scholars draw between the
“primary” chorus’ predilection for historical exempla and this “secondary” chorus’ appeal to mythology. In Rome—and in Julio-Claudian Rome more specifically—the story of the fall of Troy had particularized Roman significance: out of Troy’s ashes rose the ancestor of the Julian dynasty and the founder of Rome.14 It is difficult to see how tales of Troy can be so neatly separated from Rome’s early history given the significance of Troy in
Rome’s own origin legends—legends which were as much a part of Roman historical consciousness as the expulsion of the Tarquins had been. To label this chorus’ content
“mythological” in opposition with the other chorus’ redeployment of “historical” exempla is in the end to deny this ode’s fundamental engagement with Rome’s strife-ridden pre- history, and to deny this chorus’ parallel preoccupation with narratives of strife from
Rome’s past that resonate with and reflect its imperial present. This chorus’ engagement with Roman strife becomes even clearer when its language is examined more closely.
The chorus does not merely appeal to the fall of Troy from a stock catalogue of
but still largely regards them as detached courtiers whose words contain little more than dramatic irony.
13 Sutton (1983, 14-6) notes the anxious pessimism of the ode, but takes this as evidence that there is but one chorus. Smith (2003, 419-22) analyzes with great insight the foreboding inherent in this ode, but goes on to suggest that this foreboding places history and mythology at odds with each other, and that through mythology the play looks towards impending disasters beyond its bounds. I view the use of mythology and history in more complementary—even collaborative—terms, as each reflects the strife that is to come.
14 Kragelund (2005, 85) notes that these lines would also inevitably remind the play’s post-Neronian audience of the fire of 64 and the rumor that Nero sang of the fall of Troy as Rome burned. Kragelund also notes that Nero’s identification as Rome’s new Paris throughout the play may owe something to the historical princeps’ own Troica which had heroized the Trojan shepherd. Given how the Octavia’s Seneca self-consciously borrows the language of his historical predecessor, argues Kragelund, it is not a priori unreasonable that Nero’s own (now lost) poetry might have similarly influenced the drama.
239 mythological exemplary narratives, but rather engages a specifically Roman account of the city’s fall and its significance.
The fall of Troy had played an especially large role in Vergil’s epic, both in terms of Aeneas’ extended account in Aeneid 2 and also through the way in which Troy’s fall was replayed on Latian soil in the epic’s second half. Both of these contexts become important for interpreting the chorus’ redeployment of the legend here. When Aeneas seeks knowledge of his future from the Sibyl in Aeneid 6, she warns him that although the Trojans will reach Italy as promised, they will wish they had not, for in Italy lies the
Trojan war risen again and an iterative cycle of strife and destruction:
…in regna Lavini Dardanidae venient (mitte hanc de pectore curam), sed non et venisse volent. bella, horrida bella, et Thybrim multo spumantem sanguine cerno. non Simois tibi nec Xanthus nec Dorica castra defuerint; alius Latio iam partus Achilles, natus et ipse dea; nec Teucris addita Iuno usquam aberit, cum tu supplex in rebus egenis quas gentis Italum aut quas non oraveris urbes! causa mali tanti coniunx iterum hospita Teucris externique iterum thalami. (V. Aen.6.84-94)
The Trojans will come to Lavinian kingdoms (dismiss this concern from your heart), but they will wish not to have come. I see wars, horrible wars, and the Thybris foaming with much blood. Neither the Simois, nor Xanthus, nor Doric camps will be lacking to you; another Achilles has been born in Latium, he also born from a goddess; nor will Juno ever be absent, added for the Trojans, when you as a suppliant in extreme need have not begged at what races of Italy or what kingdoms! The cause of such evil will again be a wife foreign to the Trojans and again foreign beds.
So a second (alius) Achilles would appear, more bloodshed (iterum) would follow, and a second Helen (iterum) would give rise to war once more. As Aeneas’ future replays his past, dreadful wars (bella, horrida bella, V. Aen.6.86) become his inescapably destiny.
The truth of the Sibyl’s prediction becomes only more manifest when, at the opening of
Book 7 in the epic’s celebrated second proem, Vergil himself announces that his subject
240 matter will now turn to dreadful wars (dicam horrida bella, V. Aen.7.41).15 The Octavia’s second chorus borrows Vergil’s language to describe how Tyndarius’ daughter caused dreadful wars through her legendary beauty (moverunt horrida bella), a destructive woman whose beauty Poppaea dangerously surpasses. Similarly, when the chorus describes Paris as a Trojan shepherd, it recalls Amata’s fears that Aeneas has come as a second Paris to steal Lavinia and ignite war once again (at non sic Phrygius penetrat
Lacedaemona pastor,/ Ledaeamque Helenam Troianas vexit ad urbes?).16
Not only does the chorus borrow Vergilian language to describe the fall of Troy.
The chorus also describes Troy’s fall in language specifically reminiscent of how Vergil had used iterative language to paint Aeneas’ arrival in Italy and subsequent strife in terms of Troy’s legendary fall. It is the iteration of Troy’s trauma that the chorus’ intertextual engagement highlights—how Troy’s fall and the subsequent reflection of this war in Italy became part of the Roman origin legend. Thus while the chorus characterizes Poppaea in terms of Helen, it also looks to Rome’s own history as Troy risen again, destined to repeat on Italian soil the bloody conflict of its parent civilization. If Poppaea really is a second Helen, then dreadful wars certainly loom on the horizon for Nero’s Rome. Once these lines are read in terms of the complex mythological mapping of Troy onto Julio-
Claudian Rome and in terms of an explicit engagement with Vergil’s narratives of Troy
15 So too Seneca places Aeneid 7 at crucial points in his tragedies to aknowledge “Virgil’s archetypal role as poet of furor,” (Schiesaro [2003] 35). With these wars, the Aeneid also structurally looks towards its wider engagement with the Iliad in books 7-12, as noted by Servius and others. Thus the chorus also warns us intertextually that a narrative of battle and loss is fast approaching.
16 Of further interest is this chorus’ choice of the Aeneid as its lens through which to read impending imperial strife, versus the first chorus’ use of Livy. In many ways, the early books of Livy’s AUC complement Vergil’s Aeneid and the two together formed a powerful meditation on Augustan Rome’s vision of its legendary past. By building his two choruses out of these two programmatic Augustan texts, the playwright further engages in an ideological reflection on Augustan Rome, its use of the past, and how these texts shift in meaning when read retrospectively after the dynasty’s fall. When read intertextually, the choruses are not terribly far apart at all.
241 within the Aeneid, the chorus’ praise of Poppaea no longer seems as blithely disengaged as some critics have made it out to be. In fact, this chorus seems as ready for narratives of war and destruction as their revolutionary counterparts are, even before the messenger enters with his narrative of the sedition and destruction waged by their fellow citizens:
CHO. Sed quis gressu ruit attonito aut quid portat pectore anhelo? NUN. Quicumque tectis excubat miles ducis, 780 defendat aulam, cui furor populi imminet. trepidi cohortes ecce praefecti trahunt praesidia ad urbis, victa nec cedit metu concepta rabies temere, sed vires capit. CHO. Quis iste mentes agitat attonitus furor? 785 NUN. Octaviae favore percussa agmina et efferata per nefas ingens ruunt. CHO. Quid ausa facere quoue consilio doce. NUN. Reddere penates Claudiae diri parant torosque fratris, debitam partem imperi. 790 CHO. Quos iam tenet Poppaea concordi fide? NUN. Hinc urit animos pertinax nimium favor et in furorem temere praecipites agit. (Oct. 778-93)
CHO. But who rushes in with thunderstruck step and what news does he bear, panting with breath? NUN. Whatever soldier keeps watch in the house of the emperor must defend the palace—the madness of the people threatens it. Look, the fearful prefects drag the cohorts out to protect the city, nor does that frenzy that is conceived rashly in their minds yield, conquered by fear, but rather gains strength. CHO: What insane madness has so struck their minds? NUN: Battle lines driven by frenzy for Octavia rush uncontrollably through great crime. CHO: Tell us what they dare to do or what plan they have!
We have seen previously that in its dialogue with the messenger, the chorus frequently appeals to the stock images, language, and larger poetics of civil war, encouraging us to read the riot for Octavia in terms of a civil-war narrative (cf. Chapter 3 pp. 121-35). In particular, when the people ask the messenger “what so great and thunderstruck madness disturbs their minds?” (quis iste mentes agitat attonitus furor?), they recall the thematic refrain “what madness” (quis furor) from throughout Lucan’s
Bellum Civile and other civil-war narratives. They also recall Ovid’s Pentheus who similarly questioned his people’s seditious revolution (Quis furor, anguigenae, proles
242 Mavortia, vestras, attonuit mentes? Ov. Met.3.531-2). Ovid’s language had inherently recalled Rome’s own strife-ridden past by its appeal to the Thebans as “scions of Mars,” an epithet that applies equally to Ovid’s Roman audience.17 The chorus redeploys Ovid’s language of frenzy and thunderstruck minds to question the motivation of their fellow citizens who actively revolt against Nero, and who had also primarily appealed to their own identity in terms of Mars (verumque genus/ Martis in illis sanguisque viris, Oct.
292-3). Thus in its dialogue with the messenger, the chorus indeed engages in the poetics of civil strife, but does so in decidedly mythological terms through its echo of Ovid’s mythological epic. It is through mythology that this chorus vents its obsessive focus on
Rome’s strife-ridden past and its anxiety for the future.
Crucial to this reading is the passage’s position in the progression of choral odes.
While we might have suspected that this chorus was not composed of the same citizens as the previous two choral odes had been, it is only when the messenger runs onto the stage and allows this chorus to reflect on the actions of its fellow-citizens that we, the audience, understand incontrovertibly that this group of Roman citizens is not the same as the group who ran off to besiege Rome. The chorus’ reaction to the news (quis…furor)—spoken in the prototypical language of civil strife—is the moment at which we see once and for all that two groups of citizens exist with different understandings of civil strife and its utility.
That this moment occurs within one of the play’s most striking and pronounced metapoetic moments is surely significant to any reading of the two choruses and their role in the drama. The point at which the playwright makes absolutely clear that there are two choruses—each sharing the collective identity of Roman citizens—is also the site of a
17 For Ovid’s Theban narrative as an anti-Aeneid, see Hardie (1990). See also McNamara (2010).
243 striking engagement with civil-war poetics from both a mythological and historical point of view. Thus strife is written into the fabric of the play from its scenography to its articulation of the chorus to its language, and it is within this scene—so often derided as unsuccessful or unimportant—that these overlapping means of engaging with the idea of strife stand out most clearly.
When the messenger leaves the stage, the chorus takes up once more its Trojan model, but no longer under any pretense of praising Poppaea or celebrating the marriage.
What was implicit in their exempla and intertextuality before now becomes more explicit:
Rome is Troy born again, but Troy brought back once more to the eve of its collapse by the rise of its new Helen and her destructive beauty. No longer can the Roman citizens conceal their fear for the city’s future in the wake of Nero’s marriage:
Quid fera frustra bella movetis? invicta gerit tela Cupido: flammis vestros obruet ignes quis extinxit fulmina saepe captumque Iovem caelo traxit. Laesi tristes dabitis poenas sanguine vestro; non est patiens fervidus irae facilisque regi: ille ferocem iussit Achillem pulsare lyram, fregit Danaos, fregit Atriden, regna evertit Priami, claras diruit urbes. et nunc animus quid ferat horret vis immitis violenta dei. (Oct. 806-19)
Why do they move vicious wars in vain? Cupid wages invincible weapons: he will overwhelm your fires with flames through which he often extinguished lightening and dragged Jove captive down from the sky. Wounded, you will pay grim punishment with your blood; the irascible god is not slow to anger nor easy to rule: he ordered fierce Achilles to play the lire, he broke the Greeks, he broke Agamemnon, he overturned the kingdoms of Priam, destroyed the famous cities. And now my mind shudders at what the violet might of the pitiless god may bring.
Just as they had foreseen that Rome’s new Helen would bring nothing but dreadful war onto their city (moverunt horrida bella, Oct. 776), so now they see that this fate has
244 already been set in motion by their own fellow citizens who tear apart Rome’s delicate peace (concordi fide) by waging wars that have no chance of success (quid fera frustra bella movetis?).18 Just as Cupid’s power levelled Troy to the ground by spreading passion’s destructive powers like wildfire throughout the city, so too Cupid’s presence in
Rome through Poppaea will soon reduce the city to ash due to the unquenchable thirst for strife of its people, doomed to repeat the strife of their past.19
Perhaps the clearest indication that the chorus engages not with the myth of Troy as seen generally throughout Greek and Latin literature, but specifically with Vergil’s account of its fall comes with their last line. When the citizens think about the future of their city, they shudder at recalling the god’s violent power (et nunc animus quid ferat horret/ vis immitis violenta dei). Through this gesture, the chorus aligns itself with the most famous narrator whose mind recoiled in horror from describing Troy’s fall (animus
18 The chorus’ appeal here to concordia is doubly marked, as the term designates both marital harmony and also the absence of strife on the level of the state. Cf. TLL s.v. concordia 83.68ff (de concordia civitatis) and 85.5ff (de coniugio). When the cause of civil war is matrimonial discord, both senses become important. As I noted above (Chapter 5 p. 228), the second chorus’ description of the destructive powers of Cupid and his role in destroying Troy echoes in many ways the revolutionary chorus’ description of Rome’s glorious military past (cf. fregit…fregit, Oct. 815 and fregit, Oct. 677; claras…urbes, Oct. 816-7 and claros…duces, Oct. 677; vis, Oct. 819 and vis, Oct. 676; violenta, Oct. 819 and violenta, Oct. 865). The cluster of language repeated from ode to ode—at one point in celebration by the revolutionary chorus, and at another in apocalyptic terms by the other group of citizens—reinforces intratextually the difference in ideology between the two groups.
19 As their mythological exempla once more place Rome into contact with Troy’s tragic fall, so too their language brings their narrative of Rome’s strife into contact with Vergil’s Aeneid. As the chorus asserts that its fellow citizens will atone with their own blood for the war they wage (laesi tristes dabitis poenas/ sanguine vestro), it borrows the language with which Vergil’s Aeneas had described how divine wrath demanded blood atonement from both the Trojans and victorious Greeks indeterminately (nec soli poenas dant sanguine Teucri, V. Aen.2.366). This intertext is further reinforced just a few lines later when the chorus describes how Cupid not only overturned Priam’s kingdom, but also broke Achilles, the Greeks en masse, and Agamemnon, linking the Trojans and Greeks—losers and winners—together in suffering. Even their description of Priam’s overturned kingdom (regna evertit Priami) further evokes similar phraseology from Aeneid 2 that links Troy’s fall to Helen’s culpability. E.g. non tibi Tyndaridis facies invisa Lacaenae/ culpatusve Paris, divum inclementia, divum/ has evertit opes sternitque a culmine Troiam (V. Aen. 2.601- 2); illa sibi infestos eversa ob Pergama Teucros/ et Danaum poenam et deserti coniugis iras/ praemetuens, Troiae et patriae communis Erinys (V. Aen. 2.570-3).
245 meminisse horret, V. Aen.2.12).20 By appropriating the language of Aeneas’ horror and authorial stance, the playwright has his citizens also suggest that Rome’s future—a future which they cannot bring themselves to continue to ponder—resembles in its narrative details Aeneas’ violent tale of Troy’s past. I have argued previously that the messenger in this scene has no need to describe in detail the civil strife which he witnesses across
Rome; his engagement with civil war poetics allows us to fill in the gaps for ourselves through the generic markers he activates. So too the chorus need not continue to speculate about the destruction Rome will experience as a result of Poppaea’s marriage; in its last line it reminds us of Aeneas’ similar tale, suggesting that Troy’s past is Rome’s future and to fill in the narrative from our literary memory of Vergil’s episode.21
This chorus uses the conflation of Troy and Julio-Claudian Rome that was popular throughout the dynasty’s reign in order to weave not a teleological narrative of
Troy-risen-again, but an account of Roman Troy on the eve of its collapse. Poppaea’s rise to power as a second Helen promises nothing but grim war and mass destruction for
Rome and her people, and the chorus’ implicit understanding of this impending disaster belies any attempt to assign to this chorus a strictly disengaged or pro-Poppaean stance.
As we have seen above, this chorus is just as apprehensive about what Poppaea’s marriage to Nero means for Rome as the revolutionary chorus had been, and they too
20 The phrase animus…horret is not limited to Vergil. Livy, for example, uses it throughout his narrative (cf. Liv. 2.37; Liv. 28.29). The redeployment of this phrase in combination with a Troy narrative, however, does mark it as particularly Vergilian. Cf. Pliny’s use of the same Vergilian passage when he describes the chaos after Vesuvius’ eruption (Plin. Epist.6.20.1).
21 Along similar lines, Harrison (2003, 122-3) notes that “the chorus had previously made ripostes signifying disbelief that the messenger intended to report to Nero the pro-Octavia sentiment of the populus. At his exit they used references to Achilles (814), Atrides (816), and Priam (817) which seem implicitly to equate this messenger with the messengers of plays of the Trojan War cycle and suggesting that to tell the truth was not in a messenger’s best interest.”
246 convey this anxiety through a blend of exempla and intertextuality. They too seek exempla from Rome’s legendary and strife-ridden past through which to understand their present situation and express their anxiety about the city’s future.
These dichotomies of history vs. mythology, Octavia vs. Poppaea, primary vs. secondary, and engaged vs. disengaged have proven of limited use in interpreting the choruses’ greater thematic purpose, especially in terms of deciding which chorus sings the remainder of the odes throughout the play. Interpretation of subsequent odes has hinged largely upon whether or not a scholar believes that they were sung by the “main” chorus or by the “secondary” chorus, and thus interpretation of this chorus—and of the choral factions as a whole—has been hindered by a priori assumptions about the “worth” of these passages to the thematic whole of the play.22 That the Octavia has two choruses that not only share one collective identity but also take an active role in moving history’s progress forward is surely significant to its interpretation. I suggest, however, that our interpretation should not focus on deciding which empress a faction may prefer or even on which types of exempla each faction might use to express its opinion. Instead, our interpretive focus should center on the fact that the Roman state is depicted in terms of two factions to begin with. Until this ode, we have been led to believe that the Roman people en masse are rioting in the streets against Nero’s new bride. We suddenly and unexpectedly learn, however, through the appearance of this chorus that the Roman citizens are not unanimous in their actions and that, instead, the citizen body of Rome has once again become a two-headed state.23
22 Debates over which chorus sings the following odes will be treated ad loc below as we come to each ode.
23 For the imagery associated with the “two-headed state” and its development as a mode of speaking about civil war, see Wiseman (2010).
247 The prime difference between the two choruses is in their respective attitudes towards revolution and its utility. “With what plan are they acting” (quove consilio, Oct.
788)? “Why do they wage wars in vain” (quid ferra frustra bella movetis, Oct. 806)?
These are the persistent questions that plague the second chorus of Roman citizens when they contemplate the actions of their fellow citizens: to what end are they fighting? What can they accomplish through civil strife? It is their attitude towards strife—one side viewing it as a necessary part of Roman identity, the other seeing it as nothing but vain destruction—that divides the citizens of Rome, not their political partisanship. The first chorus uses its memory of Rome’s strife-ridden past to engender civil strife anew on their own terms; this second chorus uses their knowledge of Rome’s equally strife-ridden origin to remind themselves of the importance of maintaining peace (concordia) to prevent this legendary catastrophe from repeating. The citizens of Rome are divided in their ideological positions towards the concept of civil strife and the role that it has played throughout Roman history and legend, seeking in past exempla a model for reading and explaining the purpose of strife and its ramifications for Neronian Rome.24
The Danger of Favorable Factions: Ode 4
When the Roman people next appear on stage, the revolution of one of the two factions has succeeded only in bringing about the execution order of its beloved Octavia. Nero
24 It is difficult to say from the text as it stands whether these two factions—one pro-revolution and the other pro-status-quo—always existed as separate entities within the play or whether at any point the chorus visibly broke into two collective units. And in some senses, it does not much matter. However we are to read the split, by the time that the second chorus hymns Troy’s fall, it seems necessary from what follows to assume that two factions have developed within the citizen body around the issue of revolution and its utility in imperial Rome.
248 and his prefects have quelled the strife and brought order back to Rome by capturing the figurehead of the city’s dangerous faction and by preparing to send her to exile. As Nero had predicted just a few lines above, fear ultimately broke their passion (frangeret vires timor, Oct. 871). It is thus with a tone of foreboding and despair that the chorus begins the Octavia’s final scene, looking back on the role that its factions and partisanship played in Octavia’s ultimate demise.25 Once more, exempla become the primary means through which the Roman people understand their experience, and once more they seek in Rome’s strife-ridden past a pattern into which they might fit their current situation:
O funestus multis populi dirusque favor, qui cum flatu vela secundo ratis implevit vexitque procul, languidus idem deserit alto 880 saevoque mari. Flevit Gracchos miseranda parens, perdidit ingens quos plebis amor nimiusque favor, genere illustres, pietate fide lingua claros, 885 pectore fortes, legibus acres. Te quoque, Livi, simili leto fortuna dedit, quem neque fasces texere, suae nec tecta domus. 890 Plura referre prohibet praesens exempla dolor. modo cui patriam reddere cives aulam et fratris voluere toros, nunc ad poenam letumque trahi flentem miseram cernere possunt. 895 Bene paupertas humili tecto contenta latet: quatiunt altas saepe procellae aut evertit fortuna domos. (Oct. 877-899)
O deadly favor of the people, a malevolent force against many, which fills a ship’s sails with a favorable breeze and carries it far out to sea, and then languid deserts it on the high and savage sea. Their wretched mother wept for the Gracchi, whom the great love and excessive partisanship of the people destroyed, the Gracchi illustrious in race, famous in piety, faithfulness, and tongue, brave in spirit, harsh in laws. You too, Livius, fortune gave to a similar death, you whom neither fasces protected nor the roof of your own
25 On the role of fortuna in this ode, and the one that follows, and the political associations of fortuna throughout the play, see Wilson (2003b) 67-70.
249 house. Present grief prevents us from relating more exempla. Now the one to whom the citizens desired to return her father’s palace and the couches of her brother they can watch her led, weeping and miserable, to punishment and now to her death. Contented poverty lurks well in a humble house: storms often shake high homes, and fortune overturns them.
There has been much debate about which chorus sings this ode and whether this chorus is the sole chorus on stage for the remainder of the play.26 Those who view the second chorus as implicitly insignificant and detached from reality read the emotional turmoil that the people here express (Plura referre/ prohibet praesens exempla dolor,
Oct. 891-2) and their appeal to historical exempla as better suited to the revolutionary chorus’ nature. And indeed the grief-fueled sympathy with Octavia that this chorus exhibits does seem to tie it emotionally with the people who so vigorously fought on her behalf.27 Against this reading, others cite the issue of dramatic continuity which would suggest that this chorus is the same as that to whom the messenger addressed his speech just fifty lines before, especially as this chorus breaks with the pattern of announcing its reason for returning to the stage, suggesting that they might not have left. This group of
Roman citizens also seems to describe from a detached point of view the actions of their revolutionary counterparts (modo cui patriam reddere cives….flentem miseram cernere possunt, Oct. 891-95). I would further add that the pessimistic tone of this ode,
26 For those who read this ode and those that follow as sung by the “primary” chorus (the same citizens who sang odes 1 and 2), see Boyle (2008) ad loc; Kragelund (2005) 110 n. 139; Wiseman (2002); La Penna (1991) 42; Ballaira (1974) ad loc; Zwierlein (1966). For those who read these odes as sung by the “secondary” chorus who sang the previous ode, see Ferri (2003) ad loc; Manuwald (2001) 292-331; Herington (1961) 22 n.5 and (1977) 278.
27 Not all who would have these lines sung by the “secondary” chorus view this chorus as a priori unsympathetic. Ferri (2003, ad loc) reads these lines and the odes that follow as incredibly sympathetic to Octavia despite being sung by the chorus who also sang of Troy. In fact, once we get rid of a priori assumptions about the second chorus’ devotion to Poppaea and hostility to Octavia—a line of argument that I have attempted to refute throughout my discussion of the previous ode—there no longer exists secure reason to assign the remaining lines exclusively to the “revolutionary” chorus. In other words, no secure grounds exist for positing that the second chorus is hostile to Octavia, and thus they could just as easily be part of the group who sings the play’s final odes, as dramatic continuity in this scene suggests they are.
250 characterizing the people’s love as vain and Roman history and human nature as an iterative cycle of failed revolutions and mutual destruction, fits just as well with the tone of the secondary chorus’ Trojan War ode as it does with the revolutionary chorus’ first two appearances. Once we remove the unnecessary interpretive dichotomies between the use of historical and mythological exempla and the idea that the second chorus is characterized primarily by its loyalty to Poppaea and its antipathy to Octavia, there are no certain grounds on which to assign these lines to one chorus or the other. The chorus’ tone, use of exempla, attitude towards Roman history and its predilection for civil war, as well as its philosophical musings on Roman identity and the relationship of the powerful to the weak could apply equally to the concerns of either group of citizens as they have been represented throughout the play. This chorus well represents the viewpoints of the
Octavia’s Roman people as a whole, no matter on which side of the revolution they fell.
Now that the revolution itself—the primary cause around which they split—has been removed, the perspectives of both choruses seems quite similar. Thus I follow
Joseph Smith and George Harrison who read this ode as spoken by a combined singular chorus both of those who paid the price for their revolution and those who questioned the revolution’s utility in the face of such impending disaster.28 The combination of mythological and historical exempla throughout the chorus’ remaining odes seems further to belie an interpretation that would insist upon the continued separation of the two factions of Roman people (e.g. historical exempla at 924-57 vs. mythological exempla at
28 “When the chorus appears again in the exodus, singing of the curse of the favor populi (Oct. 887-8), it is impossible to tell whether it is referring to its own favor or to the favor of the citizens who have attacked the palace…this indeterminacy strongly suggests that Nero’s campaign of fear effectively suppresses citizen opposition and that all fear him equally. However the choral factions are to be understood, by the end of the play there is but one chorus” (Smith [2003] 419). Harrison (2003, 120) notes that the Lysistrata also had a combined final chorus, and thus the idea has precedent in ancient drama.
251 972-82). In a sense, the interpretation of these odes and their significance for the play is the same regardless of which chorus speaks the lines, and thus the debate about assigning lines has hindered rather than aided our interpretation of their language and its significance for the play’s interpretation. As Smith so aptly states, “however the choral factions are to be understood, by the end of the play there is but one chorus.” Perhaps even more significantly, it is a chorus engaged to the last line with the tradition of civil strife and the reflection of this tradition in Julio-Claudian Rome.
If Nero’s bloodthirsty demands for swift vengeance in his dialogue with the prefect had not already prepared us for the revolution’s failure (Oct. 846-76, cf. Chapter 3 pp. 135-44), the chorus’ opening lines convey its loss (o funestus multis populi/ dirusque favor, Oct. 877-81). These lines represent a fundamental turning point for the Roman people who here, for the first time as a collective group, realize their own complicit guilt in engendering and sustaining civil strife, and thus their own role in Octavia’s demise.29 It is their favor—their factioning—that leads Rome time and again into civil strife and political turmoil, continuing the cycle of bloodshed in which they just played an active part. They here realize that it is not some overarching and celebratory Roman identity that connects them with the Roman people of the past. It is rather the basest of Roman vices that binds Roman history together: the Roman people’s predilection for strife and their own factioning nature.30
29 Sullivan (1985, 70) also notes that “the chorus at this point reverses its earlier admiration for the power of the people and reflects on the deadly changability of popular favor. The populist heroes, the Gracchi and Livius Drusus, were all victims of the fickleness of the masses. The sentiments here are hard to reconcile with the theory that a main part of the propaganda in the Octavia is for returning substantial power to the people. The masses need the strong guidance of men who are willing to take risks on their behalf without reckoning the consequences.”
30 “Octavia is simultaneously about…favor and furor” (Smith [2003] 418).
252 The power of the crowd’s favor to incite strife has been a building leitmotif throughout the play that here reaches its culmination. In the play’s opening act, Octavia’s
Nurse had urged her to take comfort in the people’s favor (confirmet animum civium tantus favor… vis magna populi est., Oct. 183-5) and the ability of that favor to bring her back into imperial power.31 Her incorrect understanding about the role of the people’s partisanship in protecting its favorites is made clear when Nero later explains to Seneca that the inherent devotion that the crowd feels for his Julio-Claudian rivals gives the princeps no choice but to order their deaths (absentium cum maneat etiam ingens favor/ in urbe nostra, qui fovet spes exulum, Oct. 467-8). As in English, the Latin favor has a variety of registers indicating anything from general goodwill or admiration to political support.32 When her Nurse first asks Octavia to revel in the people’s favor, it might seem that she uses the term to suggest the general affection that the crowd feels for Claudius’ daughter. Nero’s redeployment of the term with a more precise register, however, and its usage throughout the rest of the play suggests a more specific meaning behind the
Nurse’s assertion that places the word’s usage in dialogue with the themes of civil strife prevalent throughout the play. Favor in the Octavia is only ever connected to the favor of the people vis-à-vis various claimants to power and thus indicates exclusively the political rivalry and the zealous support given by political factions to those they select, and consequently the role of partisanship in engendering strife.33
31 Sullivan (1985, 63) notes how the Nurse here anticipates the thematic significance of “power to the people” in the play, a prominence only tenuously based on historical fact (Tac. Ann.14.59; Suet. Ner.35.2).
32 Cf. TLL s.v. favor. For political favor in particular, see TLL s.v. favor 385.5ff in which category Oct. 467, 648, and 786 are also cited.
33 For the use of favor in this sense, cf. Livy’s description of how—on the eve of the battle with the Tarquinii that brought Rome once more into civil war—the people turned dangerously against their consul out of their own fickleness (consuli deinde qui superfuerat, ut sunt mutabiles volgi animi, ex favore non
253 Seneca tries to counter Nero’s fear of the people’s partisanship by assuring him that the Roman people en masse had devoted themselves entirely to him upon his accession (accensus favor, Oct. 486). Nero knows, however, that only fear forces his people to bend to his will and that within his own kingdom exist political factions that threaten its stability (Oct. 492-4).34 Thus already in the play’s first half, we see the potential strife that the Roman people’s factioning will cause, and can thus anticipate the role of the people’s civil insurrection in condemning Octavia to death. Octavia too seems to anticipate this turn of events when she tells her Nurse that the people’s devotion consoles her, but cannot in the end solve her problems (solatur iste nostra, non relevat mala, Oct. 184). As she leaves her house and sees the people gathering around in support, she demonstrates a keen awareness of her future fate and the fate of the people whose partisanship and factioning will only further bring ruin on the state (ne tantus amor nostrique favor / principis acres suscitet iras, Oct. 648-9). Her words are further proven correct when, within a few lines, the Roman people learn that their revolutionary
invidia modo sed suspicio etiam cum atroci crimine orta, Liv. 2.7.5). Lucan too notes the role that political factioning played in the decline of the Roman Republic and its inevitable turn towards civil war (hinc leges et plebis scita coactae/ et cum consulibus turbantes iura tribuni;/ hinc rapti fasces pretio sectorque favoris/ ipse sui populus letalisque ambitus urbi/ annua venali referens certamina Campo, Luc. 1.176-80). The fickleness of the Roman people and the role of this fickleness in engendering and sustaining civil strife becomes something of a trope throughout Lucan’s narrative: nos, Cato, da veniam, Pompei duxit in arma,/ non belli civilis amor, partesque favore/ fecimus (Luc. 9.227-9); Latium sic scindere corpus/ dis placitum: non in soceri generique favorem/ discedunt populi (Luc. 10.16-8); Urbes Latii dubiae varioque favore/ ancipites, quamquam primo terrore ruentis/ cessurae belli; gnarus et irarum causas et summa favoris/ annona momenta trahi. namque adserit urbes/ sola fames, emiturque metus, cum segne potentes/ volgus alunt: nescit plebes ieiuna timere (Luc. 3.55-8); nunc tibi vera fides quaesiti, Magne, favoris/ contigit ac fructus: felix se nescit amari (Luc. 7.726-7).
34 It is difficult to say whether or not we are meant to read Seneca’s words as sincere when he describes the people’s devotion to Nero. The historical Seneca seems to have been when he praised Nero in similar terms in his De Clementia, but the Octavia’s Seneca comes from a much later point in the Neronian regime, and the character has earlier described Imperial Rome in less than favorable terms (Oct. 429-36). Nevertheless, his language (accensus favor, Oct. 486) is not terribly different in its register of emotional enthusiasm from the favor for Octavia that the Roman people later exhibit (favore percussa agmina, Oct. 786), and thus perhaps this is one more example of how fickle the Roman people are: as soon as Nero does something that they do not like (e.g. marry Poppaea and divorce Octavia) they turn bitterly against him.
254 counterparts have been driven by zealous partisanship to foment civil insurrection that will lead to their own destruction (Octaviae favore percussa agmina/ et efferata per nefas ingens runt; hinc urit animos pertinax nimium favor/ et in furorem temere praecipites agit). The redeployment of standard civil-war rhetoric in these lines further intertwines the themes of the people’s favor and civil war throughout the play as two halves of the same coin, one leading always to the other. The additional levels of wordplay that the messenger generates between favor and furor as related and somewhat interchangeable concepts further underscore the role that favor plays in engendering widespread political unrest. It is against this background of partisanship, strife, and death that the Roman people confront their own factioning nature and the power of their factions to change the course of history in their second to last ode of the play.
The fickleness of popular favor was a common theme in Roman literature.35
Nevertheless there are significant differences between the chorus’ description of itself as a fickle mob and the traditional formulation of the topos as seen in the works Horace and other authors. The underlying current of the topos in prior literature is the impotence of the Roman crowd; its favor amounts to little in the way of actual power and quickly dissipates, making those who pursue popular favor into nothing but wind chasers. The
35 Cf. Ferri (2003) ad loc for numerous parallels. The topos in general outline is found often in Horace’s poetry, although Greek precedents also exist. Horace had characterized the Roman mob as easily moved in their politics and thus subject to the influence of those seeking political power. Cf. si mobilium turba Quiritium/ certat tergeminis tollere honoribus (H. Carm.1.1.7-8). Horace had appealed to the same topos in Ode 3.2 where he defined virtue as that which does not take its cues from the fickle mob (virtus, repulsae nescia sordidae/ intaminatis fulget honoribus, nec sumit aut ponit secures/ arbitrio popularis aurae, H. Carm.3.2.17-20). He had also previously contrasted his own favor as a poet with that of a politician seeking votes from the changeable crowd (non ego ventosae plebos suffragia venor/ impensis cenarum et tritae munere vestis, H. Epist.1.19.37-8). The historical Seneca had written of the crowd’s empty favor in his Hercules Furens (illum populi favor attonitum/ fluctuque magnis mobile vulgus/ aura tumidum tollit inani, Sen. HF.169-71) and the similarity in language between the choral ode in Seneca’s tragedy and this Octavia passage suggests potential intertextual influence.
255 crowd is variously described as changeable, dirty, arbitrary like the winds, or frenzied like the waves. None of these are flattering descriptions, but nor are they universally threatening. The Octavia’s people are different. The Octavia’s Roman citzens use the same commonplace language of wind and seas as we have seen, especially in the passage from Seneca’s tragedy. And yet their popular favor is also deadly (funestus) and malevolent (dirus). Their power is far from impotent, but in fact significantly influences the strife-ridden trajectory of Neronian Rome. There is an underlying sinister threat to this brand of popular favor not present in the potential source passages or in the topos generally. These Romans do not flit about changing allegiances like the wind, thereby prolonging civil strife out of the arbitrariness of their favor. These Romans engender civil strife anew out of the passion of their partisanship and thereby bring about the death of the woman they had hoped to restore to power. The result of their power might be vain or contrary to their desires, but the influence of their power remains nonetheless.36 Not only does the chorus make more sinister the common topos of political favor and its danger, it also significantly implicates itself in the imagery of strife prevalent throughout the play and thus suggests its own partial culpability in strife’s most recent incarnation. The
Roman people as a whole are no more innocent than their ruling family in perpetuating iterative cycles of strife and civil bloodshed.
36 Beyond the thematic role of favor throughout the play and the significance of its final appearance here, this choral ode also develops further other programmatic themes and images from elsewhere in the play. Ships in particular play a sinister role throughout the play and are primarily associated during the play’s first half with Nero’s murder of his own mother (e.g. Oct. 127, 311, 316). After the people’s revolution, however, the imagery of ships and seafaring shifts from descriptions of Agrippina’s death to allusions to Octavia’s own imminent death voyage (e.g. Oct. 874, 907, 969). In fact, we have already seen Nero demand a ship to take his erstwhile wife far away (procul, Oct. 875) to a place where she might best be quietly assassinated. Images of the sea’s savagery also appear throughout the play in passages that describe either civil war or strife within the Julio-Claudian house (e.g. Oct. 128-9, 318, 356, 480, 516). Thus when the chorus suggests that its favor often leaves its favorites adrift and vulnerable far out on the savage seas, the audience would understand the specific implications of these seemingly generic platitudes on fickleness for Octavia and for the Roman people.
256 Things do not look up when we turn away from platitudes on crowd psychology to the specific historical exempla which the chorus adduces to place its revolution within a well-established pattern of strife and consequence throughout Rome’s history:
Flevit Gracchos miseranda parens, perdidit ingens quos plebis amor nimiusque favor, genere illustres, pietate fide lingua claros, 885 pectore fortes, legibus acres. Te quoque, Livi, simili leto fortuna dedit, quem neque fasces texere, suae nec tecta domus. (Oct. 881-90)
Their wretched mother wept for the Gracchi, whom the great love and excessive partisanship of the people destroyed, the Gracchi illustrious in race, famous in piety, faithfulness, and tongue, brave in spirit, harsh in laws. You too, Livius, fortune gave to a similar death, you whom neither fasces protected nor the roof of your own house.
Like Lucretia and Verginia, the Gracchi and Livius Drusus often appear together in exemplary catalogues.37 Each of the three men here named had been a tribune of the plebs who met a violent end as a result of the civil strife his popularity engendered. Thus as the Roman people contemplate their role in Octavia’s impending execution, these men become ideal exempla through which to express their sorrow, grief, and sense of guilt.
The chorus’ language demonstrates its implicit favor for these controversial figures from
Roman history, as it associates its partisanship for Octavia and its result with the devotion of the Roman people to the Gracchi and Drusus. This favorable treatment, however, diverges from the typical imperial represention of these tribunes as enemies of the state
37 The Cornelias—both the mother of the Gracchi and the mother of Livius Drusus—appear often in consolatory catalogues. Most significant for the Octavia’s chorus is likely their appearance in the historical Seneca’s consolation to Marcia where both appear in the same order as ideal grieving mothers (Sen. Marc.16.3-4). Once again, however, the potential Senecan source narrative serves more to underscore the difference between the uses of these exempla in this passage. The chorus is not consoling a mother on the loss of her child nor are they addressing any family member who will mourn for Octavia after she dies; rather, they are addressing themselves and thus the grief stricken mother of the Gracchi becomes a model for how to bear their own grief—a tantalizing conflation that is never fully explored in this passage (plura referre/ prohibet praesens exempla dolor, Oct. 91-2).
257 whose recourse to violence and mob rule brought Rome to the brink of destruction.38 In fact the passage to which this description is most intertextually indebted portrays the men in an extremely harsh light.
In Lucan’s Bellum Civile, all three men appear in the company of Marius and
Catiline in the catalogue of enemies of the state who are forever in Hades gleefully enjoying future Roman strife (vidi ego laetantis, popularia nomina, Drusos/ legibus inmodicos ausosque ingentia Gracchos, Luc. 6.795-6). Many commentators have noted the Lucanean parallel, but only recently has Boyle analyzed more fully the significance of the chorus’ language.39 As Boyle notes ad loc, the Octavia’s citzens have incorporated
Lucan’s description into their own. They borrow Lucan’s description of Drusus (legibus inmodicos), but apply it instead to the Gracchi (legibus acres, Oct. 886), substituting for
Lucan’s language of blame (inmodicus) an adjective more open to favorable interpretation (acer). Boyle also notes, however, that there is a double intertext in the chorus’ line as the adjective acer itself had been used by the historical Seneca to describe this same Drusus (vi acer et vehemens, Sen. Brev.6.1). Thus the chorus twice applies
Drusus’ epithets to the Gracchi. Instead of repeating Lucan’s description of men who dare monstrous things (ausosque ingentia), the chorus “transforms [Lucan’s description] from pejorative to ameliorative” by rendering the men instead as of brave character
(pectore fortes, Oct. 886), a periphrasis that conveys the same content, but strips it of the
38 Val. Max. 4.7.1, 6.3.1d, 9.5.2; Vell. 2.3.2, 2.6.2; Luc. 6.795-6. Cf. also, however, the more favorable account of Livius Drusus at Vell. 2.13-14. Gowing (2005, 36), following Rowe (2002) and Schmitzer (2000), suggests that this portrait of Drusus might originate in the Tiberian period due to Tiberius’ status as the man’s descendent. Velleius also stressed the successive inhabitants of Drusus’ house which included Cicero himself (Vell. 2.14.3), making even more sinister the chorus’ admission (suae/ nec tecta domus, Oct. 889-90) that Drusus’ house had not protected him (or those who came after him, by implication).
39 Boyle (2008) ad loc.
258 idea that the men had dared to do improperly excessive things. Boyle does not note, however, that the chorus retains the adjective ingens from Lucan’s text, but applies it instead to the love which the Roman people feel for the men, rather than to the actions of the tribunes, assimilating Lucan’s language of blame to itself. Men whom Lucan had classified as dangers to the Roman state, the Octavia’s revolutionary chorus worships and compares to its own Octavia as it mourns her demise.
The danger, according to the chorus, was not the men or their actions but rather the excessive love the people had for them and, therefore, the political factions that their popularity created. The plebs’ huge love and excessive partisanship condemned to death their beloved tribunes (perdidit ingens quos plebis amor/ nimiusque favor, Oct. 882-3), much as Octavia had worried for herself and her people when she saw their excessive grief on her behalf (ne tantus amor nostrique favor/ principis acres suscitet iras, Oct.
648-9). The chorus’ analysis of their ancestors’ devotion makes concrete its own initial suggestion that its favor was a deadly (funestus, Oct. 877) and dangerous (dirus, Oct.
877) element in Roman history. The illustrious family of the men (genere illustres, Oct.
884), their piety and loyalty (pietate fide, Oct. 884), their talent at public speaking (lingua claros, Oct. 885), their bravery (pectore fortes, Oct. 886), their legal reforms (legibus acres, Oct. 886), their public office (fasces, Oct. 889) nor even their wealth (tecta domus,
890) could protect these idolized Romans from certain death; so too the chorus could not protect Octavia, a woman it similarly views in idealized terms with equal passion.40
40 There is much debate over whether or not Livius Drusus can be thought to have had fasces. Cf. Boyle (2008) and Ferri (2003) ad loc for the relevant arguments. What has not been noted, however, is how the chorus’ focus on fasces here in the context of strife and death looks back to the chorus’ celebration of fasces earlier as an unconquered symbol of Roman identity (Oct. 979). As I noted before, this passage echoes in many ways language from the revolutionary chorus’ previous ode (Oct. 676-82), as both had focused on the significance of exemplary citizens, laws, and other stock images of Roman power. Intratextual echoes bind together the chorus’ understanding of the role of the people in history from the
259 The Romans who had tried to reinstate Octavia to power in the end had to watch her led to death (modo cui patriam reddere cives/ aulam…nunc ad poenam letumque trahi flentem miseram cernere possunt, Oct. 892-95), much as their past selves had watched the Gracchi and Livius Drusus die for similar popularity. The chorus had initially read Octavia as a victimized yet passive woman on the model of Verginia and
Lucretia whose deaths led to the (re)establishment of the Roman Republic. In the end, however, these exemplary yet passive women failed to capture both the political centrality of Octavia as a living imperial heir and the role of this centrality in engendering the rebellion to restore her to power. Octavia is no passive victim without voice whose body and purity of spirit must be avenged on Roman ideological principle; rather,
Octavia’s bloodlines render her a significant political opponent to the oppressive status- quo against which the Roman people revolt. Thus the chorus seeks more appropriate— and active—exempla from the past through which to read Neronian Rome and turns in the end not to the legendary women of Rome’s origins but to the political martyrs of the
Republic, the Gracchi and Livius Drusus.
It is unlikely that a playwright so interested in the different forms of civil strife throughout Rome’s history selected the Gracchi and Livius Drusus at random. Much as the tragedies of Lucretia and Verginia had become moments of constitutive significance for the Roman people, so too Roman historiography looked to the political murders of the
Gracchi and Livius Drusus as equally watershed moments. The difference is one of positive versus negative change: the stories of Lucretia and Verginia are tied in the
perspectives of before and after the riot. Through the careful recycling of language, image, and theme, the playwright shows us how partial, one-sided, and clouded the chorus’ understanding of its past used to be.
260 Roman imagination with narratives of freedom’s restoration and tyranny’s oppression, moments at which Roman identity reasserted itself and true Roman power was reborn.
These narratives were inherently suited to the revolutionary chorus’ blind optimism at the beginning of the play. The significance of the Gracchi and Livius Drusus, however, was less celebratory. T. P. Wiseman has recently argued that, in the Roman historiographical tradition, these men are irrefutably linked with the origin of civil strife at Rome.41
Whether the crucial turning point was the extreme measures that the men themselves proposed, or the extreme passion that drove their murderers, Republican and early
Imperial historiography seems to agree that with these men the crisis of civil war in the late Republic was born.42 Thus as the Octavia’s Roman people recall this watershed moment and the people’s associated guilt in it, they locate their own recent riot and its consequences within a pattern of strife and fickle favor from Rome’s past that would seem to inescapably condemn Rome once more to a series of destructive wars such as those that the Gracchi and Livius Drusus inaugurated with their deaths.43 Within the people of Neronian Rome, the seeds of civil strife have been reawakened, and the Roman people realize all too late the consequences of their actions.44
41 Wiseman (2001). He notes that this tradition predates the idea of civil strife as an inherited curse on the Romans, an idea that he dates to Horace’s poetry, and that in the imperial period, both ideas about the origin of civil war would have been alive and potent. “When Horace looked for an explanation of civil war, he sought it in the primeval past. He was right that it all began with a murder; but the blood that flowed with such deadly results had been shed only a hundred years before” (Wiseman [2010] 42).
42 Cf. Varro De vita fr. 114 (Riposati); Cic. Rep.1.31; Flor. 3.17.3; Dion.Hal. AR.2.11.2-3; Vell. 2.3.2-3 (all w. Wiseman 2010).
43 “The play’s exodus functions as a dirge for Octavia…but the dirge also includes lamentation for the fall of popular leaders of the last phase of the Republic…the moment signals not only the cosmic explanation for the coming end of Nero’s rule, but the underlying cause of the coming of civil wars in which Rome will once again see the spectacle of Roman killing Roman,” (Smith [2003] 42-32).
44 There is perhaps a more optimistic reading available to a post-Neronian audience. Although all three men died violently as a result of the people’s love, nevertheless, as Boyle (2008, ad loc) notes, their deaths in the long run brought about large-scale political changes both directly and indirectly. Thus even in its grief,
261
Exemplary Women: Ode 5
As the Roman people tearfully watch Octavia leave the imperial palace for the last time, they are moved once more to seek yet another body of exemplary material from the past into which they might fit their Octavia and the civil strife she engendered. As she departs, the former empress laments once more her brother’s death (Oct. 906-7), ponders Nero’s murder of his own mother (Oct. 908-9), and declares herself a sister that has been exiled from the marriage bed of her husband (Oct. 909-10). She goes on to compare her grief to that of Philomela and Procne, returning once more to the mythological exempla with which the play opened (Oct. 914-22; cf. Oct. 5-8).45 Thus as Octavia leaves the city of
Rome in front of the Roman people—a public spectacle of her people’s failed revolution and Nero’s imperial triumph—she emphatically locates herself and her tragedy once more within the Roman family. In this moment, Octavia seems less a figure of popular and public favor like the tribunes through whom the chorus reads her. Instead, she seems much a woman—a sister, daughter, and former wife—whose private and feminine tragedy has been forced into the public and masculine sphere by forces beyond her control. Thus when the chorus appeals once more to exempla through which to lighten its
the chorus may unknowingly foreshadow in its choice of exempla how its own failed insurrection and Octavia’s imminent death would in the long term become a moment of constitutive significance in the course of Roman history, and especially in the civil wars to come. In this sense, the Roman people’s actions may be read—and likely were read in the aftermath of Nero’s fall—as the precursors to the revolution which would dethrone Nero and the Julio-Claudian house, aided by the syncrisis later created in the historical record between the death’s of Octavia and Nero. I have trouble reading this comfort into the ode, however, given the deadly ramifications of popular favor on Galba and his immediate successors in imperial power, all of whom championed the people in their propaganda and many of whom died for it.
45 For this myth (and especially Ovid’s treatment of it) as the Ur-myth of strife for Roman literature, see Schiesaro (2003) 70ff.
262 own and Octavia’s suffering, it turns to the one body of material which can address both
Octavia’s private suffering and its public ramifications.
The catalogue of suffering Julio-Claudian women is often read in isolation, divorced from its position as the last of three odes that catalogue Roman historical martyrs.46 And yet only when these three odes are read as an artistic unit that build chronologically and thematically can the audience truly understand why it is that, at the play’s end, the chorus finally settles on this set of strife-ridden exempla through which to confront Octavia’s exile, execution, and its significance for Roman history. On the most basic level, the odes of historical exempla form a chronological progression from monarchy through Republic and into the principate, and throughout these eras the suffering of exemplary Roman citizens and the strife they engender appears constant.
Thus the Octavia’s chorus offers within its brief scope not only a series of test exempla through which to understand its own situation, but also, in a sense, a history of a particular type of exempla that are unified in political significance, but that shift slightly in character over the course of Roman history to suit the needs of the present. The Roman monarchy and its reflection in the Decemvirate needed passive women to play the role of victims over whose dead bodies Roman freedom could be (re)born. The Republic needed active men to rouse the people and to change the course of history. The empire, however, significantly and noticeably returns in ring composition to the idea of female martyrs of the chorus’ first ode. This brings us to our second narrative progression within and across these three odes: as Rome moves from monarchy to Republic and back to a form of
46 This is largely due to scholarly interest in comparing the ode to Tacitus (ad Ann.14.64). See most recently Billot (2003) and Ferri (1998). The playwright’s use of Sophocles’ Antigone for this final catalogue of positive and negative exempla has been noted (cf. Ballaira [1974] ad loc; Ferri 1998). Harrison (forthcoming) and Boyle (2008) also consider the final kommos of Aeschylus’ Persians a significant model.
263 monarchy, the type of exemplary martyr adduced in parallel shifts from women to men and back to women again, and thus within the Octavia a frame of female exempla is created around Roman history and around the most recent political figure who engendered Roman civil strife.
Nevertheless, the exemplary women of the monarchy and their role in Roman history are not identical to their imperial counterparts in action, character, or significance.
The primary difference may seem on the surface merely technical, but it remains significant to note that while Lucretia and Verginia only became exempla and catalysts of revolution after their deaths, the Julio-Claudian women adduced in parallel acquired enormous power and influence while alive before earning the status of martyrdom.
Through this political power and the problems that arise from it, the imperial women are connected more closely to the Gracchi and Drusus whose tragic deaths were precipitated by their extraordinary power and popularity. Their status as exempla owes as much to their exemplary lives as it does to their exemplary deaths. Thus the return to exemplary women in the empire is in fact mediated through the active political sphere typically reserved for men in the Republic, but brought under female purview as women rose to greater positions of authority and influence under the Julio-Claudian dynasty.
Neither Lucretia and Verginia nor the Gracchi and Drusus were perfect fits for
Octavia. The passive women of Rome’s early history existed strictly in the private sphere until their deaths made them public figures of significance, while the Gracchi and Drusus were men acting largely in the public sphere. Octavia is a combination of both of these things: a woman at the heart of a private domestic struggle, and yet simultaneously also a figure of public political significance whose popularity during her lifetime may have
264 posed a real threat to Nero’s world of masculine politics. It is only by progressing through the previous two odes of historical exempla that the audience sees the ways in which Rome’s previous exemplary models of strife both do and do not conform to
Octavia’s situation. In the end, the only appropriate models for a woman of Octavia’s prominence come from the Julio-Claudian period: never before had Roman women taken so consistently active a role in Roman public politics nor had a Roman woman previously been able to engender such strife within her own lifetime.47
Thus we see that the catalogue of Julio-Claudian martyrs is not so easily divorced from the chorus’ previous catalogues of exempla, but in fact its interpretation relies to a large degree on how it redeploys and adapts the issues of civil strife, its utility, and its influence on Roman history that are raised in the preceding odes. Nevertheless, one striking difference remains. All previous odes had had dual points of comparison: the martyr was implicitly read as a foil for Octavia, while the Roman people of the past reflected their current incarnations in Neronian Rome. Although the chorus shows a keen interest in the experiences of Verginia and Lucretia as tragic figures, it was within a frame of reading the citizens of Julio-Claudian Rome against the Romans of old who had revolted in vengeance over the death of innocent Roman women. The chorus’ subsequent pathos-filled account of the fall of the Gracchi and of Drusus similarly brought the parallel back to the experience of the Roman people whose factioning and excessive political favor brought its champions to death. In this final ode of historical exempla, the
47 In the Julio-Claudian period, women appear often as symbols of peace and governmental security. After the dynasty’s fall, however, this striking public prominence is reinterpreted, and the women themselves reread as figures of strife and discord. The literature on Julio-Claudian women and their various representations is extensive. Cf. in particular Ginsburg (2006) on Agrippina the Younger, and Flower (2006, 160-96) on the development of memory sanctions against Imperial women as a result of this new prominence. The Octavia is an early exemplar of this type of interpretive shift.
265 suffering of these legendary martyrs made prominent in the other two odes is still present, as is the revolutionary undercurrents of their actions and its public ramifications. The
Roman people, however, have been utterly written out of their own narrative of Roman history. Every other ode had focused to some degree on the role of the Roman people in making strife-ridden history, for better or worse. Nevertheless, here in the play’s final scene we see made manifest the chorus’ complaints in its first ode: although the citizens inhabit the same topographical environs as their revolutionary counterparts from Rome’s past had, imperial Rome seems to have made Roman revolution and the Roman people’s role in civil-strife narratives obsolete in the process.48
This does not mean that the chorus represents Julio-Claudian Rome as a glorious era of peace and security. Although the chorus weaves together the disparate lives and experiences of a series of Julio-Claudian women and focuses primarily on their personal falls from power, its previous interest in exempla as models of strife remains paramount.49 Within individual entries of the catalogue, further parallels and echoes exist that link these Julio-Claudian women intratextually to the greater themes of strife throughout the play. The chorus’ description of Agrippina the Elder and her tragic fall from power at first glance seems glowing and full of praise:
48 Cf. Boyle (2008) ad loc: “the catalogue might have seemed to some to provide another kind of epitaph: to the Roman Republic. This chorus began by lamenting its inability to remember/emulate the great moral exempla of the republic (Oct. 288-308); the final object of its memory (memoranda, Oct. 933) is a catalogue of prominent female victims of imperial rule.”
49 Ferri (1996) has noted that, like previous odes on historical exempla, this ode too takes its structural cues from the so-called “catalogues of the slain” of the epic tradition, and especially the epic tradition as reflected in the Aeneid. Generically speaking, then, the women’s deaths are placed within the tradition of strife-ridden battle scenes, underscoring both the epic grandeur of individual exemplary Romans in terms of their significance to Roman history and also the pathos of their suffering. This becomes especially apparent when its language is read closely for its intratextual engagement with the chorus’ previous odes and also the revolutionary chorus’ seditious role throughout the play.
266 Tu mihi primum tot natorum memoranda parens, nata Agrippae, nurus Augusti, Caesaris uxor, cuius nomen clarum toto fulsit in orbe, utero totiens enixa gravi pignora pacis. (Oct. 932-37)
You first must be remembered by me, parent of so many children, daughter of Agrippa, daughter-in-law of Augustus, wife of Caesar, whose famous name shone throughout the whole world, having so often produced tokens of peace from her heavy womb.
It is hard to believe from this description that such a woman could ever become herself a locus of strife or so unfairly meet such a violent end. The chorus’ own passion for this woman—and especially for her family connections and reproductive potential—is infectious and may even sway our interpretation of Agrippina the Elder’s life and role as a symbol of peace and dynastic security. Nevertheless within this paean to Julio-Claudian pietas and fertility, certain words, phrases, and ideas echo all too closely the causes of civil strife that we have witnessed throughout the rest of the play, and the role of women in engendering this type of strife.
When the chorus highlights how Agrippina the Elder’s famous name shone throughout the world (cuius nomen clarum toto/ fulsit in orbe, Oct. 935-6), the audience might remember how the famous name of another Agrippina had become a locus of strife so powerful that Nero sought to annihilate her name from Roman visual memory (saevit in nomen ferus…totum per orbem, Oct. 609-12).50 The name of that Agrippina—the daughter of the woman whose name is praised here—had also been used to foreshadow ironically the similarly dangerous power that Poppaea’s name would have as Nero’s wife
50 The Octavia poet seems to have stretched the truth in Agrippina’s description of the memory sanctions against her, as there is ample evidence to suggest that no such damnatio memoriae took place (cf. Flower [2006] 189-94). Out of her name and image the Octavia poet seems to have created an even stronger locus for and memory of strife than had actually existed in Neronian Rome.
267 and her tragic fate outside the play (fax illa, quam secuta es, Augustae manu/ praelata clarum nomen invidia tibi/ partum ominatur, Oct. 748-50).
We are further reminded of Poppaea and her role in engendering strife within the play when the chorus highlights the brilliance of Agrippina’s fame (toto fulsit in orbe,
Oct. 934-5). The only other times that the verb fulgere occurs with reference to a mortal within the play is in connection to Poppaea, and it is this literal brilliance and its ubiquitously offensive presence that so riles the Roman people against her (iam
Poppaeae fulget imago, Oct. 683; effigies…aere fulgens, ora Poppaeae gerens, Oct. 794-
5).51 The chorus’ praise of Agrippina the Elder intratextually echoes both Nero’s matricide and its wider political implications, and also more problematically the chorus’ own fickle revolution against a similarly exemplary woman. Furthermore, Agrippina’s fertility—a source of praise from the chorus—becomes a locus of anger for the chorus regarding Poppaea as she was not the imperial woman to whom they wished to entrust the future of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Thus we see the chorus’ fickleness in action as we try to sort out their criteria for praise and blame.
This intratextual connection between Agrippina’s celebrated fertility and the strife engendered by issues of dynastic continuity is further suggested by the chorus’ redeployment here of the language of children (pignora pacis) which they had previously reserved for their prayers regarding Octavia’s ability to conceive (pignora pacis, Oct.
51 Leda’s stars also gleam (fulgent, Oct. 208) but given the comparison between Poppaea and Leda twice made by the chorus, Poppaea is implicated in this gleaming. Even Poppaea’s wedding day is said to shine (refulsit, Oct. 694). The chorus’ condemnation of Poppaea and her gleaming images (Oct. 683) is also the first time in the play that Poppaea is named, and thus nomen is implicated in this offensive splendor. The chorus may also be angered by Poppaea’s very public and very significant pregnancy (gravis en oculis indiqui nostris, Oct. 682). This potential pun on gravis is further suggested by its use in the above catalogue to characterize Agrippina’s fertile womb (utero…gravi) in the line after fulsit, another intratextual echo binding the two women together. For this sense of gravis, see TLL s.v. gravis 2277.6ff
268 279; cf. also Chapter 4 pp. 159-60; Chapter 5 pp. 208-14). Fertility, it seems, only guarantees peace when it is the right woman who conceives the heir. The Roman people’s wish to see Octavia with child here is further problematized by her intratextual connection with Agrippina’s “tokens of peace.” The chorus does not elaborate on exactly how the production of multiple heirs would produce peace, and in fact the dynastic purges going on within the play suggest just the opposite: more heirs potentially produces more political strife. Furthermore, although the chorus seems not to be thinking of
Agrippina’s specific children, it is unlikely that its audience would forget that among these “tokens of peace” were Caligula who was not remembered as particularly peaceful and also Agrippina the Younger whose murderous machinations are repeatedly highlighted throughout the play.52
Through their redeployment of the language and terms for praise and blame from elsewhere in the play, the chorus renders their own catalogue of suffering women more difficult to interpret from an objective standpoint and in fact suggests that the exemplary figures may lend themselves to diverging and even contradictory memories, rendering the chorus’ belief in and recourse to the objective standards provided by exempla meaningless. Throughout this choral ode, we must remember its previous hymn: this is not an objective and philosophical chorus from whom the audience is to learn the standards of right and wrong that will guide our interpretation of the play. Rather, this is a fickle body of citizens whose ability to love is only matched by their ability to hate, and their ability to engender revolution out of these extreme passions.
52 Although, perhaps significantly, never by the chorus who seems to favor her.
269 When the chorus moves next to Livilla, the daughter-in-law of Tiberius whose treasonous involvement with Sejanus led to widespread political upheaval and eventually to her demise, further echoes from elsewhere in the play are woven together to characterize this notorious woman and her crimes against the family and the state. The chorus’ juxtaposition of her own name with that of her husband (Livia Drusi, Oct. 941) intratextually recalls the name and revolutionary actions of Livius Drusus from the preceding catalogue (Oct. 887-90). Critics are quick to suggest that the chorus (and thus also the poet) fumbles in combining into one catalogue both guilty and innocent Julio-
Claudian sufferers without any means of distinguishing between them.53 Guilt, however, does not seem to interest the chorus, and in fact, the reminder of Livius Drusus—a similarly controversial figure whom the Octavia’s Roman people nevertheless adore— suggests once more that this chorus of Roman people is not necessarily the most objective when it comes to criteria for praise or blame. The revolutionary overtones anticipated by this play on names is further confirmed when, in the next line, this Julio-
Claudian woman rushes headlong into crime and into her own demise (ruit in facinus/ poenamque suam, Oct. 942-3). Similar language had been used to characterize the
Roman people’s own revolutionary actions when the messenger had lamented their crime to his audience of their non-revolutionary counterparts (per nefas ingens ruunt, Oct. 787).
Thus Livilla’s crimes within the imperial household are implicitly likened to the public political crimes of the Roman people within the play and also to the wider tradition of civil strife narratives which such language would activate for the audience.54
53 Ferri (2003) ad loc notes the similarly curious blend of positive and negative exempla in the Antigone (Soph. Ant.944-87) to which he and others see the Octavia indebted.
54 Cf. quo, quo scelesti ruitis (H. Carm.7.1); ruit per vetitum nefas (H. Carm.1.3.26). Cf also Chapter 3 pp.
270 Similar comparisons between imperial women and the Roman people’s insurrection color their account of Messalina who ultimately fell victim to execution by the imperial guard (cecidit diri militis ense, Oct. 951). In similar language and under similar circumstances, the leaders of the Octavia’s recent insurrection had met their punishment for similar seditious crimes against the state (cecidere motus impii ferro duces, Oct. 850).55 Revolution and sedition against the ruling house is not a crime that the
Roman people of this play would inherently condemn, and thus critics may be too hasty in their assertion that the ode’s inherent issues are due to a lack of artistic coherence. On the contrary, the ode continues to characterize the Roman people as inconsistent sympathizers with figures of strife from all periods of Rome’s history.
Civil blood makes civil hands unclean: the end of the Octavia
It is against this background of civil strife that the collective chorus of Roman people utters the play’s final shocking line (civis gaudet Roma cruore, Oct. 981), a line that throws into stark relief the Roman people’s previous quest to reawaken their lost identity.56 Despite interpretations that seek to link this final indictment of Rome specifically to Nero’s own crimes within the play, the line seems neither a limited indictment of Nero, nor his Rome, nor even of the Julio-Claudian family alone. Instead it
128-30.
55 So too Agrippina had also died at the hands of her son (cecidit…mox scelere nati, Oct. 165-6).
56 No authentic Senecan drama gives the chorus the last word, and thus the Octavia’s chorus and its final assessment is even more marked by comparison.
271 suggests a timeless truth about the Roman people, their leaders, and the ubiquitous presence of strife—and desire (gaudet) for strife—throughout Roman history.57
Critics have long struggled with what to make of this line. Those who wish to see the play as looking victoriously to the reign of Galba or Vespasian offer little comment on how this line fits into their more positive reading.58 Those who read the play strictly as a dark condemnation of Nero whose one shining light is the positive characterization of the Roman people are simultaneously at a loss with the way in which the Roman people ultimately characterize their own nature. Critics are certainly correct in seeing the line as a striking contradiction of Seneca’s previous assertion that Rome commends its citizens to Nero for protection (suosque cives Roma commendat tibi, Oct. 491), the line with which he had ended his positivistic account of Julio-Claudian Rome, and a line that falls at the exact center of the play.59 The play’s final line also responds to Nero’s assertion that Octavian’s Rome saw more of her own blood than she ever had before (quantum cruoris Roma tum vidit sui, lacerata totiens, Oct. 503), connecting intratextually the
57 “It is the most startling line of the play. Octavia, the audience knows, will be made to sail west. And the foreshadowing of a new Trojan war, the audience also knows, is realized in the civil wars of 68-69 CE” (Smith [2003] 425). For the line as an historical allusion to 69 CE, see also Barnes (1982) 217.
58 Wiseman (2001, 22) suggests that, with this line, “we stand to applaud Galba as he leaves the theatre. Thanks to him, she got her vengeance in the end, and so did we.” His reading is predicated on the fact that the chorus is universally sympathetic and that the play’s last line only condemns Neronian injustice and similar tyrannical behaviors, rather than Rome as a whole. Similarly Kragelund (1988, 506 with n. 64) argues against reading this line as a reference to the coming civil wars, and suggests instead that the line myopically looks back to the drama of the play in which civies (the Roman people) became hostes in Nero’s warped perception, and were “scorned, oppressed, terrorized, and murdered—these, and not the ensuing wars, are presented as the essential evils of Nero’s tyranny.” While it would be foolish to suggest that the play’s final line does not reflect back on the violence Nero brought on his people, it seems equally shortsighted to deny this line’s relevance to the violence that characterizes Roman history throughout the choruses’ various odes and the retrospective narratives of many of its other characters, or to deny that it might anticipate the civil violence once more brought on Rome during the long year of 69 CE.
59 Cf. Wilson (2003b, 65-6) on the significant echo of Seneca’s line here. Wilson notes that the play’s final line also looks to Nero’s counter-image of a bloodthirsty Roma, but suggests that somehow Nero has enacted his earlier description into truth through his actions in the second half of the play. I read it rather that, at the play’s end, once more we are led (disturbingly) to see that Nero’s understanding of Rome’s true nature was correct all along.
272 bloody civil wars through which the Julio-Claudians came to power with the civil strife that occurs throughout their reign. Beyond the line’s intratextual engagement with the play’s wider language, it also activates a host of literary memories from previous Roman meditations on similar themes.60
The image of men who revel in bloodshed occurs throughout Latin literature as a topos for irrational, and often anti-Roman behavior (cf. Ov. Met.1.235; Ov. Tr. 4.4.61;
Sen. Ir.2.5). A further implication of this topos, however, develops through its application to Roman citizens and Roman strife. At the end of Book 2 of his Georgics, Vergil had written an extensive priamel about the dangers of strife-ridden urban life. Included is a condemnation of political strife, figured as discord between brothers (illum non populi fasces, non purpura regum/ flexit et infidos agitans discordia fratres, V. Georg.2.495-6).
This line and its thematic resonance is later picked up at the climax of Vergil’s description of urban corruption, creating a frame of fraternal strife around Vergil’s depiction of Roman political life:
hic stupet attonitus rostris, hunc plausus hiantem per cuneos geminatus enim plebisque patrumque corripuit; gaudent perfusi sanguine fratrum, exsilioque domos et dulcia limina mutant atque alio patriam quaerunt sub sole iacentem. (V. Georg.2.508-12)
This man stares thunderstruck at the rostra, this man, open-mouthed, is corrupted by the applause of the people and the senate that is echoed along the theater-seats. These men rejoice, soaked in the blood of their brothers, they changed their homes and sweet thresholds in exile, and they seek a fatherland lying under another sun.
Some critics have even seen in Vergil’s lines a specific condemnation of the leading figures of the Republic’s civil wars like Marius and Pompey, although I do not think it
60 Harrison (2003, 119) suggests a possible reminiscence of Lucan (o cives….cruorem, Luc. 1.8-9) who also apostrophizes Roma at line 21: “perhaps intended to infer the civil war which followed Nero’s many murders and eventually his own.” I think the below echoes are more likely and produce much the same interpretive effect, but the Octavia poet certainly has Lucan in mind often throughout his play.
273 necessary to read such precise condemnation of individuals into lines that clearly reflect the greater strife-ridden tendencies of Roman society at large.61
The thematic and metatheatrical implications of this intertext for the Octavia’s final lines are many. From the idea of the theater as an agent of (questionable) political power to the condemnation of exile as a solution to Rome’s problems, these lines resonate powerfully with the Octavia poet’s project as he closes his historical play and sends his eponymous heroine offstage to exile and execution. Nevertheless, it is with the play’s final image of Rome reveling in citizen blood that the chorus most closely adapts its Vergilian model. Vergil had used the image of brothers-at-strife as a metaphor for the political strife at Rome, tapping into a programmatic image from civil-war imagery
(gaudent perfusi sanguine fratrum, V. Georg.2.510). The Octavia’s chorus borrows
Vergil’s language and image, but shifts its focus from the microcosm of the Roman family back to the macrocosm of Rome herself (civis gaudet Roma cruore, Oct. 982). It is not individual corrupt citizens who revel in familial slaughter, although this is obviously an echo that the Octavia as a whole would support. It is now Rome herself—both the city and its tutelary deity—who relishes in slaughter; civis too acts as a collective noun that looks both to the specifics of Octavia’s individualized situation and also to the wider civil strife that the play has reminded us repeatedly colors Roman history.62 Thus as the
Octavia’s Roman people borrow from Vergil his condemnation on the city’s corrupting influence, they simultaneously repurpose his language to a wider, more self-conscious condemnation of Roman identity at its worst.
61 Cf. Thomas (1988) ad loc.
62 “As the subject of gaudet, Roma is personified (or, more precisely, deified) and attributed feelings of pleasure in civil bloodshed: a very vivid picture for spectactors familiar with representations of Roma on Roman coins and public monuments (she was depicted, for instance, on the Ara Pacis” (Wilson 2003b, 64).
274 Vergil had, in turn, likely borrowed his language from Lucretius’ similar condemnation of civil strife:
sanguine civili rem conflant divitiasque conduplicant avidi, caedem caede accumulantes, crudeles gaudent in tristi funere fratris et consanguineum mensas odere timentque. (Lucr. DRN.3.70-3)
They manufacture wealth from civil blood and greedily double their wealth, piling slaughter on top of slaughter, cruel men who rejoice in the grim death of a brother, they both hate and fear relatives’ tables.
Lucretius’ image of late-Republican corruption shares many similarities with the
Octavia’s themes and images, especially the intense focus on what political strife does to the family.63 Once again, however, it is the particular image of cruel brothers who rejoice in each other’s death (crudeles gaudent in tristi funere fratris, Lucr. DRN.3.72) that the
Octavia poet looks to and adapts in his final line (civis gaudet Roma cruore, Oct. 982), moving beyond the now commonplace trope of brothers-at-strife to the wider image of
Rome as a whole betraying her people viciously and repeatedly for sport. By activating both of these interrelated meditations on civil strife at Rome in his play’s final line, the
Octavia poet links his own narrative to these wider literary reflections on Roman history and Roman identity, creating a metaliterary comment on how the actions of his drama repeat and replay Rome’s strife-ridden past in new, yet equally paradoxical ways.
Thus in its final line, the chorus fundamentally rewrites its understanding of
Roman history and the role of Roman citizens in that history, moving from its celebratory opening odes to this final pessimistic statement about the Roman identity that it had reawakened. Not only is Roma itself—that timeless construct of Roman ideology—
63 “Nothing in the Civil Wars seared the Roman conscience more than their effect on the ties of family and kinship. It is a favourite theme of Horace’s (see Nisbet and Hubbard on H. Carm.1.35.34) and a century later was to obsess Lucan. Virgil clearly had the present passage in mind when he wrote Georgics 2.505- 12” (Kenney [1971] ad loc).
275 implicated in the iterations of civil strife, but an element of paradoxical pleasure in strife is added to the play in its final moments. Strife is something that Rome inherently enjoys—and perhaps something that we, the audience, have just enjoyed ourselves, watching strife unfold on stage as we sit, gaping and applauding like Vergil’s corrupt and useless citizens. We too are implicated in the chorus’ final lines as the chorus turns to address us, its fellow Roman citizens.64 We have been, at least in some sense, complicit in the enjoyment of civil strife—both as audience members who voluntarily engage with the play on an aesthetic level as a piece of theatrical literature, and perhaps even as citizens in Rome’s recent experience of civil war which once more brought civil strife into the streets of Rome.65 As the chorus speaks the play’s final lines, and reflects on the events that we have just witnessed, it also makes a wider statement about Roman character that transcends a pure condemnation of Nero, or Julio-Claudian Rome, but rather uses this particular political murder as a means of commenting philosophically on
Rome from a timeless and all-encompassing perspective. Civil strife and Rome are inextricably linked, regardless of the era, the circumstances, or the historical players.66
64 For the pleasures that poetry generates as dangerous to its audience, see Schiesaro (2003) 228-43.
65 Wiseman (2001, 16) and Flower (2006, 202-9) argue persuasively that we, the audience of the Octavia, are meant to identify with the chorus, its experiences, and its opinions throughout the play. Wiseman (2001, 16) notes that “we the audience are the Roman people, and these stories are the foundation legends of our libertas, told and retold on the Roman stage.” Wiseman was of course referring to the chorus’ first ode with its narratives of Lucretia and Verginia, but his analysis of the audience’s response to the Octavia’s chorus remains just as true in the play’s ghastly last line. “[through the equivalency created between Octavia, Lucretia, and Verginia] a popular mandate for justified revolution, figure-headed in Octavia, is enacted in the play. This would have made the drama of considerable interest to Romans who in fact had been participating in the repetitious civil wars of 68-69 CE” (Smith [2003] 426). This does not, however, insist upon a positive reading of the Roman people’s actions, especially when the rest of the play—and the choral odes—is taken into account. Cf. later in the same article: “if the play is about a popular mandate for justified revolution to restore the republic, then it is a play about the failure of the Roman people to act upon that mandate with any unified strength or success…it enacts the dissolution of the will of the Roman people, splintered into factions…and, ultimately, it enacts Rome as a place of barbarian custom, bathed in the blood of its own citizens” (Smith [2003] 430).
66 Petronius Eumolpus makes a similar point: “at times it might seem that the true fulfillment of Roman
276
Conclusion
One of the most dramatic devices that the playwright uses to stage Neronian Rome as an instantiation of civil strife is the use of two choruses, both of Roman citizens, who find themselves in opposition. That these two choruses throughout the play have become virtually indistinguishable in the manuscript tradition emphasizes by accident of transmission how successfully the poet wove into the fabric of his dramatic structure a visual representation of civil strife in which the enemy is a mirror of oneself. Beyond this large-scale dramatic effect, however, lies an equally pervasive engagement with strife at a thematic level. All the choral odes—no matter which chorus we imagine to sing them— engage with some aspect of strife throughout Roman history and legend. As the odes progress, we are taken from Roman revolution in the time of the kings and Decemvirs, back in time to the Trojan war, and forward to the Social Wars, only finally to end up in
Imperial Rome. Much as the Octavia’s other characters used intertexts to activate figures of strife from Rome’s past, so the chorus weaves into each period of history certain exempla of strife through which it makes sense of the strife of 62 CE.
Thus through its various odes, the chorus also implicitly reminds us of the plurality of models for civil strife and the plurality of ways of waging civil war throughout Rome’s long history, much as the play’s protagonists Nero, Octavia, and
Agrippina also activate various models of strife through their language. The chorus goes
destiny comes not, as Augustus might like to present it, with the closing of the gates of war, but when “on earth whatever Discord commanded was accomplished (factum est in terris quidquid Discordia iussit, Pet. 124.295),” (Breed, Damon, and Rossi [2010] 6).
277 further, however, in explicitly showing us this plurality; their exempla highlight how civil strife at Rome was never waged in just one way by just certain types of people for certain reasons. The means of waging civil war—and indeed of talking about civil war—are extremely varied, something that the choruses’ various odes make absolutely clear. One thing, however, remains constant: within every generation, civil strife will find a way to mark Roman history. The revolution of 62 CE, at least as scripted by the Octavia poet and read by his choruses, is just the most recent expression of Rome’s timeless truth: civis gaudet Roma cruore.
278
CONCLUSION
The Octavia is, on the face of it, one of the most bizarre documents which have reached us from antiquity. If the news of its discovery had been broken yesterday, there would certainly have been a sensation at the bare idea… Here we have a complete Roman historical play, unlike any other ancient play in structure, featuring Nero, Octavia, Poppaea, Seneca…Surely one would think, this ought to be an exciting document, from both the literary and historical point of view. So why is no one excited?
–John Herington (1961, 1)
Today, fifty years after Herington’s seminal survey of the Octavia’s intrinsic intellectual value, scholars are starting to get excited. Over the past decade, the Octavia has seen new commentaries and editions, an edited volume of essays, many thought-provoking articles, and at least two monographs in progress. Nevertheless, many of these scholars still largely focus on factors external to the text itself, asking questions such as: is it an example of the lost-Praetexta genre? Was it staged? Did Tacitus read it? What can it tell us about the reception of Seneca? Does it reflect populist slogans of Galba, and if so, to what effect? These are all valuable questions, but few read the Octavia from a literary point of view on its own merits, and even fewer investigate its demonstrable engagement with the memory of the Julio-Claudians. Likely written within a few years after Nero’s death in 68 CE, the Octavia is the earliest retrospective account of the Julio-Claudians to survive. It is therefore also the earliest post-Julio-Claudian response to the literature of the Julio-Claudian age, and the earliest text to reread that literature in light of the dynasty’s fall.
279
These are the questions that my dissertation pursues: namely, how the Octavia reinterprets Julio-Claudian literature and Julio-Claudian history for a Rome without Julio-
Claudians. When the play is approached in these terms, civil war emerges as a widespread thematic focus. From the play’s extended glimpses of Rome’s strife-ridden past under leading men from Tarquin to Augustus, to its engagement with the literature of civil strife written in the Julio-Claudian era, civil strife becomes an inescapable theme that touches every aspect of the play’s composition; even the play’s use of two choruses for the divided Roman people and its obsessive symmetry through which each character struggles as if against his or her own mirrored reflection further articulate this prevailing thematic motif.
The cumulative effect of this multifaceted thematic focus is a restaging of Julio-
Claudian history as a period of continual civil war through which the playwright challenges the dominant public imagery of peace promoted by the dynasty. Through this one brief moment of minor civil unrest under the last of the Julio-Claudians, the playwright implicates the span of Julio-Claudian history in a continuous narrative of strife from Rome’s pre-history to its present day. The point of contact between the imperial family and Rome’s past is no longer its restoration of a Golden age, but instead a continuation of the hereditary curse that drives Roman to kill Roman. Pax et princeps are fundamentally redefined into a form of bellum civile; the means of waging war may have changed with the rise of one family, but the passions that drive Romans to strife remain unchanged in their intensity and in their destructiveness. The play itself suggests this timeless truth in its final line: civis gaudet Roma cruore (Oct. 982).
280
This engagement with civil strife further necessitates the playwright’s engagement with the narrative tradition of civil strife at Rome that flourished in the late
Republic and early empire. As the Octavia poet refashions an age of peace into the image of civil war, he becomes himself a civil war poet self-consciously and agonistically turning old material to new and provocative uses. The drama’s echoes both of civil-war literature and also of literature on writing about civil war further contributes to the metapoetic and self-reflexive layers of its language. Thus the Octavia becomes a poem of civil war.
This dissertation examines how the anonymous historical drama, Octavia, combines literary and cultural memory into a powerful poetic statement on the Julio-
Claudians, their ideology, and their legacy. In doing so, I hope also to have demonstrated the intrinsic interest that this drama has for scholars of both literature and history, not because of what it can tell us about ideas external to itself, but on its own merits as a work of historical poetry. Its engagement with Julio-Claudian texts in a post-Julio-
Claudian age and has much in common with the now well-studied Flavian epicists, while its gruesome rendering of Rome’s recent, bloody history suggests important connections with Lucan, and with the Augustan poets before him. In the playwright’s hands, the world of Nero and his predecessors becomes a spectacle of its former self at a critical moment in the reception of both the Julio-Claudians and their literature.
281
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