Oktawia

by Seneca

The historical tragedy Octavia focuses on Nero's divorce from the princess Octavia, Claudius' daughter by Valeria Messalina, and on the emperor's subsequent marriage to Poppaea Sabina. This book includes a full-length introduction, a new edition of the text based on a fresh examination of the manuscripts, and a detailed commentary dealing with textual, linguistic, and literary points. Spanning three days in June AD 62, the tragic action of the play ends with Octavia's deportation to the island of Pandateria, where she would be executed shortly afterwards.

Genres: Classics, Plays, Ancient, Drama, Roman, Historical Fiction, European Literature

107 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 65

About the author

Lucius Annaeus Seneca (often known simply as Seneca or Seneca the Younger); ca. 4 BC – 65 AD) was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist of the Silver Age of Latin literature. He was tutor and later advisor to emperor Nero, who later forced him to commit suicide for alleged complicity in the Pisonian conspiracy to have him assassinated.

Reviews

[Hend]

Octavia is a Roman tragedy that focuses on three days in the year 62 AD during which the Emperor Nero divorced and exiled his wife Claudia Octavia and married another Poppaea. The play also deals with the her lonely isolation ,and Nero' s refusal to take the advises of the philosopher Seneca to Rein in Justice .....

Nero poisoned Octavia's full brother Britannicus in order to earn the throne. from this moment Octavia became very miserable, but learned to hide her affections and feelings around her husband .....

she was admired as Empress by the Roman citizens , Octavia was an aristocratic and virtuous wife ,BUT Nero hated her and grew bored with her....

after Nero and Poppaea banished her the citizens of Rome protested loudly, openly through the streets and calling for her return, but instead Nero signed her death ....

[Nada Khaled]

مسرحية قصيرة عن الامبراطور الروماني نيرون وزوجته أوكتافيا،
كان نيرون طاغية ظالم جبار،
وكانت هي نقية كارهة لجبروته،
كان كافر بالآلهة،
وكانت أكثر الناس مقتناً لإلحاده،
كان هو الامبراطور،
وكانت هي ابنة الملك وصاحب القصر الذي أوصله لهذا المُلك،
فكان جزاؤها أن تزوج عليها وحكم عليها بالنفي والإعدام..
إنها تراجيدية تاريخية جميلة :)

[J]

Read not so much as a Seneca play but as another theater history stepping stone as most plays up to this point were single day stories and this introduced multi-day storylines. Potentially the first such innovation in theater up to that point.

[Faye 🫀]

Men, I hate them

[CivilWar]

An interesting play, attributed to Seneca but obviously not written by him, which is interesting largely due to how difference it is from all ancient tragedy: unlike Seneca's other surviving plays and all of the Greek ones, this is not a mythological play, but a historical one, being maybe the earliest step in what we'd now call historical drama. Likewise, a step towards plays with a structure that allow for events that take place in a time-span of longer than one day. It is possible of course that such things were far more abundant and this play was wholly unremarkable and it just happened to be saved as opposed to the other ones - survivor's bias. But it is what we have to go off of.

As for its own merits, it's okay, it's alright. It doesn't suffer from the worst of Seneca's writing sins which was refreshing after his Hercules on Eta, a truly hideous play where he indulges all his worst sins, but I mean, come on, is this anything else besides a repeat of the already rather tired and now timely and quaint Lucretia myth? What's most interesting about it is that Nero's argument against Seneca himself, who shows up in a play to try and advise him, paints a far more realistic-to-history picture of ancient Roman politics than does Seneca, which, likely unintentionally, gives him some extra depth.

[Ahmad El-Saeed]

اوكتافيا هي زوجة نيرون التي تم التخلص منها وتعرضت لظلم زوجها المجنون، نيرون القيصر المجنون.

القصة والمسرحية ليست أفضل ما قرأت ولكنها تبقى جيدة

[Paulina Ona]

Man sudėtinga vertinti tokius kūrinius.

[Dmk]

I think it didn't give me any new view on the age or situation described. Due to the structure of the play you need to have historical knowledge before reading. So the play itself gives you no new knowledge of history. Instead it looks like a neveredning sequence of people re-telling things you've read in introduction. So as a historical peice uninformative.

And as a drama it is quite boring. Yes, there were good parts. I enjoyed dialoque between Seneca and Nero and beginging of the play but then it became to repetative.

[Aleksandra]

I never realized it was such an interesting play. The story of the unfortunate Octavia, daughter of the emperor Claudius and the infamous Messalina, herself a young wife of the emperor Nero, who is hated by her spouse, wrecked with guilt because she has no strength to avenge her murdered father and brother and ultimately doomed to be replaced by the wicked Sabina Poppaea and cruelly murdered, is told in a poetic, highly emotional manner, with learned allusions to classical drama and its characters. Well worth reading, even though the Polish translation is uneven at some moment.

[عبدالرحمن حافظ]

قصة المسرحية رائعة رائعة رائعة
الوطن والثورة والمرأة
برغم أن الثورة هنا تأتي ضد الحاكم من أجل أحقية ملكية الوطن للوريث الشرعي للبلاد

من أقوال نيرون

نيرون :بدمهم لن تقتنع روما
من ذا الذي يستطيع أن يتحمل شعباً كهذا؟
لكن تباً لهذه المرأة التي خرج الشعب من أجلها

نيرون : يجب عليك أن تهدئ روح الشعب أولاً

مسرحية صوتية
ترجمة : ألفت النقراشي
إخراج : صلاح عز الدين
https://soundcloud.com/dekkaradio/sen...

[Tamtam MaTaR]

يالله ع كم الالم ..
:(

[David Massey]

It improved as it went along. It started as empty posturing.