2025 Conference Objects and Essays

Soror Augusti, non uxor ero: Octavia Minor and Shifting Centre and Periphery in the Pseudo-Senecan Octavia

Van Geel, Lien

In this article, I demonstrate that Octavia Minor, the sister of emperor Augustus, plays a role as Claudia Octavia’s literary model in the eponymous Pseudo-Senecan praetexta. The women’s overlapping names—Octavia Minor and Claudia Octavia—trigger an initial comparison between them and encourage a reading of the Octavia Minor figure as one of the play’s implicit subtexts based on the two Octavias’ literary representations. Octavia Minor functions as a model for her (partial) namesake and descendant in the Octavia. A glance at the ever so complicated Julio-Claudian family tree shows how the Augustan Octavia at the beginning of the dynasty and the Neronian Octavia at its end are connected. I will demonstrate various similarities between the two Octavias that make intertextual readings of their literary appearances possible. In doing so, the Octavia challenges the confines of centre and periphery as it negotiates its place within Latin drama.