OCTAVIA OCTAVIA Attributed to Seneca Edited with Introduction, Translation, and Commentary by A. J. BOYLE 1 1 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © A. J. Boyle 2008 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Reprinted 2013 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover And you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available ISBN978-0-19-928784-0 FOR HELEN MORALES Only singing are we just and true— for then we are at once the axe, the bough and the sweet and ripening danger in between. DonPaterson,‘TheHour’,fromOrpheus(2006) Preface Octaviaisaworkofexceptionalhistoricalanddramaticinterest.Itisa uniquecompleteexampleoftheRomanhistoricaldramaknownasthe fabulapraetexta;itdealswitheventsatthecourtofNerointhedecisive year 62 ce, for which it is the earliest extant literary source; its main themesaresex,murder,politics,power;itdramatizestheperceptions of history. The play appealed to the Renaissance and influenced Re- naissance drama and seventeenth- and eighteenth-century historical opera. Neglected throughout most of the twentieth century, this ‘pseudo-Senecan’ drama has begun to receive appropriate attention. AmongthecriticalandscholarlyworkonOctaviaofthelastdecadeare twojournalspecialnumbers,one‘companion’,sixeditions,including two in English, and the editio princeps of Nicholas Trevet’s medieval commentaryontheplay.Onethinghasbeenmissing:acriticaledition of Octavia, with verse translation and commentary, which aims to elucidate the text dramatically as well as philologically, and to locate itfirmlyinitshistoricalandtheatricalcontext. Thepresent bookattempts to fill that gap and topresent Octavia to as wide a readership as possible, offering a substantial introduc- tion,anewLatintext(with41differentreadingsfromtheZwierlein Oxford text of 1986), an English verse translation designed for both performance and serious study, and a detailed commentary ontheplaywhichisnotonlyexegetic,butanalyticandinterpretative. The resulting book should prove useful to drama students, to Latin students at every stage of the language, to professional scholars of Classics (including Roman history), Drama, and Comparative Literature—and to anyone interested in the dynamic interplay be- tweentheatreandhistory. Like all new editions of classical texts the present one is deeply indebtedtopreviouseditions—farmoreindebtedthanthenecessarily jejune citation of them would suggest. I am especially indebted to the2003CambridgeeditionofRolandoFerridespitemydisagreement withiton innumerable issues,largeand small. I benefited, too, from the critical advice of the following friends and scholars, who read viii Preface earlier versions of this book: Elaine Fantham (Princeton University), JohnHenderson(King’sCollege,Cambridge),GesineManuwald(Uni- versity College, London), Joseph Smith (SDSU), and Peter Wiseman (Exeter University). George Harrison (Concordia University) most kindlyallowedmetoviewthetypescriptofhisCompaniontoPs.Seneca Octavia in advance of its publication. I learned much from Amanda Caraway’s intelligent staging of an early version of my translation of OctaviainSanDiegoduringApril2006.Atthebook’sproofstageLisl Walsh(USC)providedexceptionalassistance.Isincerelythankallthe above,andattachtheusualdisclaimerthatresponsibilityforerrorsof factorjudgementwhichthebookcontainsrestswithme.Ishouldalso liketothankRoutledgeforpermissiontousesomerewrittenmaterial from my Tragic Seneca (London 1997) and Roman Tragedy (London 2006) and Francis Cairns Publications for permission to reuse some materialfrommySeneca’sTroades(Leeds1994)invariouspartsofthe book. The citation from Don Paterson’s Orpheus on the dedication pageisbypermissionofFaberandFaber. I am once more obligated to two great educational institutions: CambridgeUniversity, whose libraries I have used withprofit, most especially the library of the Classics Faculty; and the University of SouthernCalifornia,whosemanyyearsofinstitutionalandcollegial support(includingonthisoccasionastudyleaveinthefallof2006) have assisted greatly. The debt which cannot be described is to the book’sdedicatee. A.J.B. USC,LosAngeles SummerSolstice,2007 Contents INTRODUCTION xi I. TheHistoricalContext xiii II. TheRomanTheatre xxv III. TheFabulaPraetexta xlii IV. TheDivorceandDeathofOctavia lvi V. ThePlay lviii VI. OctaviaandRenaissanceDrama lxxv VII. Metre lxxxvii VIII. TheTranslation lxxxix TEXTANDTRANSLATION 1 SelectiveCriticalApparatus 78 Differencesfromthe1986OxfordClassicalText 82 COMMENTARY 85 SelectBibliography 295 Indexes: I. LatinWords 315 II. PassagesfromOtherPlaysoftheSenecanTragicCorpus 317 III. GeneralIndex 326