Lytham St Annes CA

Classics Ambassador Esmé Goodson offers a reading of the elusive Roman tragedy Octavia focusing on its subtly subversive depiction of one of Rome’s most infamous emperors.

Much about the Roman tragedy Octavia remains unknown, including its author and date. Previously thought to have been the work of Seneca the Younger and probably written in the late first century CE, this historical play recounts Octavia’s life married to Nero following the death of his mother Agrippina, ending with (spoilers!) her exile from Rome. In this article, I will illustrate how Octavia utilises allusions to other texts to cast a negative light on Nero. My focus will be on the first appearance of Seneca as a character in the play and the speech he gives recounting the so-called Golden Age. Although this speech plays into a long literary history of descriptions of the Golden Age, I will concentrate on its connection to the account in Book 8 of the Aeneid. I will demonstrate how this, in addition to the previous literary tradition of the Golden Age, highlights Nero’s depravity and the decline of his reign, reinforcing these ideas by highlighting other details both in the speech and across the whole play.

Double herm of Socrates and Seneca the Younger, early third century CE (Sergey Sosnovskiy via Wikimedia Commons)

Seneca begins his speech as soon as he enters onto the stage. Within the speech he harks back to the time when the god Saturn ruled the kingdom of heaven. During this time, Seneca claims, there was peace, and the earth happily and voluntarily gave the fruits of her fertility to mankind. Seneca then claims that the following generations were increasingly less gentle. He describes the fourth generation as restless, daring to pursue wild animals, to hunt and to fish. They began to plough the earth, causing her to hide her fruit within her sacred womb; Seneca describes how these base ‘sons’ defiled their ‘mother’s’ body while searching for iron and gold. These people then built their own societies and cities and began to fight one another to defend their neighbours’ property. Men’s hands were polluted by blood, and across the world the rage of war and greed for gold increased. Finally, Seneca recounts the crimes which Lust drives men to commit. As soon as he concludes his speech, he immediately remarks that Nero has arrived, noting his angry and agitated step.

Head of Nero, post CE 64

The speech plays into the tradition of the Golden Age and the progressively worse metal-based ages which follow, an idea which can be traced back to Hesiod’s didactic poem Works and Days, composed in the late eighth or early seventh century BCE. By reflecting on the Golden Age and detailing the decline which followed, the playwright of the Octavia is making a comment on Nero’s reign. It is important to note that this is an account of the Golden Age under Saturn: Saturn is typically associated with this early stage in human history, but in particular he is key to the account of the Golden Age given by Evander to Aeneas in Aeneid 8.

Evander describes how Saturn, when ousted from Olympus by Jupiter, fled to the lands where they are currently standing and united the people who lived there, making laws and bringing about a time of great prosperity. He then states that over time these people underwent a decline, with war and greed arising among them. Following this account, Evander gives Aeneas a tour of this land, which will eventually become Rome, with Virgil referencing familiar Roman landmarks throughout. This passage of the Aeneid utilises the literary tradition of the Golden Age and associates it with Rome in order to illustrate Augustus’ role in bringing about a new iteration of this age; this plays a crucial part in Virgil’s wider promotion of Augustus’ reign throughout the Aeneid.

Robert Willemsz de Baudous’ representation of the Golden Age, 1958 (Ante Vranković via Wikipedia)

But what does this have to do with Seneca’s account of the Golden Age? The account in the Aeneid is spoken by Evander, an old man; likewise, Seneca is an elderly figure. Seneca is also known for having been Nero’s tutor, and his role as instructor provides another parallel with Evander, who instructs Aeneas on the history of his proto-Roman kingdom. The fact that both references to the Golden Age are focalised through parallel figures hints at a connection between the two texts. Due to the prominence and popularity of the Aeneid, the reference to Saturn here in the Octavia would likely have made Virgil’s epic a primary intertext in the minds of the audience.

How does this add to our understanding of the speech in Octavia? The account in the Aeneid introduces the idea of cyclical time by suggesting that Augustus is bringing about a new Golden Age which will repeat that of Saturn. A key feature of each account of the Myth of Ages is the impermanence of each age and a progressive inferiority to previous ages. Therefore, one of the negative undertones of Virgil’s seemingly propagandistic account of the Golden Age is that Augustus’ reign will inevitably be followed by decline and fall. This is significant for our reading of Octavia because the play is set in the reign of Nero, around half a century after the death of Augustus. The Golden Age model provided by Virgil suggests that the quality of the decades and emperors after Augustus will gradually deteriorate. On the model provided in Octavia, then, Nero’s reign is associated with the base ages of war and depravity described as following on from the age of Saturn.

Both Seneca’s speech and the rest of the play develop this sense of depravity further. Seneca refers to the people of the baser ages exploiting the womb of their mother – i.e. the earth – in their desire for precious metals. Here, one cannot help but think of Nero’s matricide: the personification of the earth as having a womb recalls the chorus’ account of Agrippina’s dying words, in which she claimed that her womb bore a monster. This parallel is made stronger by intertextual links between this scene in Octavia and other descriptions of Agrippina’s death: both Tacitus and Cassius Dio depict Agrippina instructing the assassins sent by Nero to strike her womb. These examples complement the use of wombs and female anatomy elsewhere when authors depict acts of incest and matricide. For instance, in Seneca’s Oedipus, Jocasta, who has unknowingly committed incest with her son, remarks that her womb has borne both her husband and her children. In Euripides’ Electra, Orestes describes how his mother Clytemnestra bore her breasts as he killed her. A focus on female anatomy, then, emerges as a recurring trope of texts describing such horrific subject matter as this. Significantly, Nero was accused of both incest with his mother and matricide, so the reference to the earth’s womb and its exploitation, through textual allusion, recalls Nero’s heinous deeds. Since in Seneca’s speech it is men from the baser age who commit this act, Nero is linked with these men and their depravity, and especially their lust.

Sardonyx cameo of a Julio-Claudian couple, possibly Nero and Octavia, mid-first century CE

Throughout the play, Nero is also compared multiple times to Jupiter, and Octavia to Juno, the spurned wife. This association is significant considering Seneca’s speech. Both Jupiter and Juno were the offspring and successors of Saturn, so on the Myth of Ages model of decline, they ruled over an inferior age. Furthermore, Nero and Octavia were stepsiblings, making their relationship parallel to the marriage between Jupiter and Juno. By drawing these parallels between Nero and Jupiter, the playwright of Octavia is highlighting that Nero is ruling in an age subsequent to a Saturnian Golden Age, again conveying that Neronian Rome has declined from its Augustan greatness.

Overall, Octavia is a tapestry of textual allusion. Not only this, but these allusions and intertextual references have been carefully crafted to paint a particular image of the emperor Nero and his reign. While these messages may not be overt, they are nevertheless present and reliant on a knowledge of ancient literature. This reading of Octavia reminds us that literature, along with other forms of art, is influenced by both historical context and its own history as an art form. This is not something unique to the classical world but is true of all creative works across all cultures and time periods.

©EsméGoodson

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