Staging Memory, Staging Strife: Empire and Civil War in the "Octavia." by Lauren Donovan Ginsberg (review)

On 8 June 43 b.c.e. Asinius Pollio wrote to Cicero on his reaction to a praetexta (first known use of the term) that he during ludi in distant Cadiz had seen performed (Cic. Fam. 10.32.2–5). Its theme was taken from the recent civil war between Pompey and Caesar, and its protagonist was Balbus, who financed the show. This lost drama celebrated Balbus' extreme daring in sneaking in and out of the Pompeian camp in an attempt to make some of the more prestigious adversaries change sides. At the "memory of these exploits" (memoria rerum gestarum), Balbus himself had been moved to tears (Pollio snidely adds).

Memory and civil war—the central elements of the title of Ginsberg's study are already there. And they stayed with the genre until its last known appearance, the Cato by Curiatius Maternus, whose portrayal of Caesar's forever controversial opponent was deemed so provocative that during one of Domitian's purges it cost the dramatist his life—according to a commonly overlooked report in Zonaras (11.19 p. 59 [Dindorf] with P. Kragelund, Roman Historical Drama. The Octavia in Antiquity and Beyond [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015], 114–20).

However, rather than this long view of a genre not infrequently dealing with civil war, Ginsberg is from the outset focused on the genre's sole surviving specimen, the Octavia. In her approach Ginsberg is in clear and avowed continuity with the excellent Oxford commentary by A. J. Boyle (Octavia. Attributed to Seneca [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008]), but the development of Boyle's sensitive handling of the scripts' "multi-allusivity" is here combined with an emphasis on cultural memory and on civil war issues that takes the reading in entirely new directions.

The study has five chapters framed by an Introduction and Epilogue. A copious and multilingual list of works cited is supplemented by indexes of passages cited as well as of issues and persons mentioned.

The Introduction is valuably clear in surveying previous studies and stating the aims of the book. Ginsberg feels that the "ghost of Seneca" (9) has for too long been allowed to dominate approaches: his is, she writes in one of a series of striking formulations, but "one ghost among many." Then follows a brief but circumspect outline of "cultural memory" theories, an approach which Ginsberg intends to merge with a focus on intertextuality. The opening chapter is successful in providing new insights on the way descriptions of the death of Pompey have influenced the dramatist's depiction of the endangered situation of Octavia and the murder of Agrippina. The approach also pays handsome dividends when looking at echoes of vatic pronouncements in Virgil and Lucan as well as on the way the dramatist cancels the "optimism" of Virgilian cosmology.

Rather than in sync with the script (i.e., from one scene to the next), the book's approach is thematic, moving briskly back and forth in order to bring out the overall relevance of its findings. In a dramatist prone to duplicate and triplicate motifs, this is an understandable choice, but for newcomers this structure may represent a challenge. However, all texts are fully quoted and translated so as to provide contexts; all translations are by Ginsberg herself.

The following chapters focus on the pivotal Seneca-Nero scenes. It pays off handsomely to examine the dialogue from two split angles: first Seneca's, then Nero's. What one loses in terms of dramatic structure and immediacy (on which there already are signal contributions on offer), one gains in a clear case for direct dependence on the Res gestae (a point also made by others) and much else besides.

Ginsberg's approach to intertextuality is not uniform. At points one gets a clear statement of the type that apart from here this is the only other occurrence (cf. 34 n. 27), at others the reader...