Staging memory, staging strife : empire and civil war in the Octavia / Lauren Donovan Ginsberg.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ginsberg, Lauren Donovan, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Seneca, Lucius Annaeus, approximately 4 B.C.-65 A.D.

Seneca, Lucius Annaeus.

Octavia (Praetextaa).

Rome--History--Julio-Claudians, 30 B.C.-68 A.D.

Rome.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xii, 229 pages)

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2016.

Summary:

This work offers a new reading of the Octavia as a staging ground in the memory wars surrounding Nero's fall. Through an innovative combination of cultural memory theory and intertextual analysis, Ginsberg argues that the play reimagines the imperial family as waging war on itself and its people, challenging their claim that with empire came peace.

Contents:

Literary memory and literary memory: history and intertext in the Octavia

Staging Octavia?

Overview of chapters

Outline of the Octavia

Models of strife in the Domus Augusta

Pompeian tragedy in Neronian Rome

Nero's Caesarean fears

Rereading the Aeneid's narratives of loss in Octavia's Rome

Seneca's Augustan narrative

Lessons in imperial virtue

The origins of Neronian peace

Seneca's age of iron

Remembering Octavian in Neronian Rome

Lessons in family history

Fighting for Rome?

The legacy of Actium: how you end a civil war

Populus, princeps and the poetics of Roman revolution in the Octavia

Vergilian seditio in Neronian Rome

The Octavia's messenger and the poetics of civil war

A city under siege

Citizens of discord

Ode 1: the danger of forgetting

Ode 2: a call to arms

Ode 3: Rome's Trojan future

Ode 4: the danger of popular favor

Ode 5: the tragic history of rome

The end of the Octavia

Epilogue: remembering the Julio-Claudians after 69 CE.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

0-19-064903-8

0-19-027597-9

0-19-027596-0