Octavia : A Play Attributed to Seneca (review)

Here we have a most welcome and lasting contribution to Senecan studies, a fitting addition to an admired series. Octavia has long been relegated with Hercules Oetaeus to the Niemandsland of Pseudo-Seneca—the Latin Rhesus. Its author can never be known, and it has been dated as late as A.D. 1420, while A. S. Pease (CJ 15 [1919–1920] 402) argued for a posthumous apologia by Seneca himself. A date can be no more precise than "after the death of Nero." Ferri prefers the late Flavian period. Why not? The text deserves attention. It is the only extant fabula praetexta. It is our earliest commentary on Thyestes. Atreus and the Satellite are revealingly replaced by Nero and Seneca. A solid introduction begins the book. The genre, historical background, and date of the play are discussed. We then have a chapter on "Octavia and the Senecan corpus" concerned with precise problems of language and style, word positions, metrics, prosody, anapaest colometry, composition, and a comparison with the disputed Hercules Oetaeus. Less satisfactory discussions of the structure and dramatic technique and the politics of Octavia follow. An authoritative essay on textual transmission and editorial history ends the introduction. I regret that the author leans toward recitatio for Octavia and indeed the Senecan tragedies. Insufficient notice is taken that private performance in a palace or villa to an audience of friends is quite different from performance before 16,000 spectators at the Theater of Dionysos. Nor are there legal restrictions to three actors or a chorus of fifteen, better three and as many actors as there were slaves or friends to take on roles.

We have a text that will long be authoritative. Proof of independent thinking is that Ferri differs in thirty-six places from Zwierlein's OCT, often with a policy of ad codices proficiscendum. The bulk of the book is an extensive and careful commentary confined almost entirely to matters of language, orthography, syntax, meter, and MS variants. Typical is the note on the comet of a.d. 60. We have (ad 231–232) a careful discussion of whether cometen or cometan is to be preferred, but no reference to the standard discussion of the comet and its testimonia: see Gundel, RE 11. 21 (1921) 1188. I regret the paucity of translations for ambiguous passages. They are the ultimate commitment. Is frater (46) my (Miller), his, or hers? For sidus orbis (168) I should note the Christian stella maris. I suggest that Nero's emphatic terminal senem (445) puns on his interlocutor Seneca. I should capitalize Amor (553) who is the god Eros. Surely udis . . . genis (666) is easier Ovid's "tearstained cheeks" rather than "weepy eyes." sed iam spes est nulla salutis (906) recalls Verg. Aen. 2.354: una salus victis nullam sperare salutem.

The bibliography (417–35) is welcome and comprehensive, but unexpectedly a bit careless. Add "2 volumes" to the entries Leo, KS,and Nock, Essays. "5 volumes" to Housman ad Man. Astr. The invaluable Gary E. Schwarz and Richard L. Wertis, Index Locorum zu Kühner-Stegmann 'Satzlehre' (Darmstadt 1980) is omitted. Atze J. Keulen, "L. Annaeus Seneca. Troades. Introduction, Text and Commentary," Mnemosyne Supplementum 212 (Leiden 2001) is superior to Fantham and deserves notice. And I miss Johanna Schmidt, "Octavia," RE 17 (1937) 1788–99, and Edward Conner Chickering, An Introduction to Octavia Praetexta (New York 1910). But these are details. The book will earn only admiration, if not envy, and deserves purchase by all seriously concerned with imperial literature and history.