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Two textual notes on Ps.-Sen. Octavia (458; 747)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Extract
At the peak of this heated confrontation between Nero and Seneca, in which the latter exhorts the emperor to seek the people's love and trust rather than their hatred, Nero retorts that it is meet for the people to fear their prince (457–8). This is unsurprising and represents Nero as merely the latest in a long line of tragic tyrants (in the wake of Atreus' oderint dum metuant in Accius [203–4 R.]). In the exchange that follows, however, is the slightly puzzling (458): ‘metuant necesse est’:: ‘quicquid exprimitur graue est’. It is not only that Nero simply reiterates a concept already asserted in the line before (’decet timeri Caesarem’) which had prompted Seneca's ‘at plus diligi’. More than that, Seneca's exprimitur (‘all which is extorted is disliked’) is a non sequitur after ‘metuant necesse est’. exprimere is to ‘squeeze out’, ‘to extort’, ‘to elicit’, but in Latin metus is hardly ever ‘extorted’, exprimere, on the other hand, is commonly said of sincere or pretended assent, applause, jubilation, or forced admission. The verb occurs again at 494 ‘humiles … uoces exprimit nostri metus’; 581 ‘exprimere ius est, ferre quod nequeunt preces?’; elsewhere in Sen. Oed. 529 ‘ulline poena uocis expressae fuit’; Clem. 1.1.7 ‘omnibus … nunc ciuibus tuis … haec confessio exprimitur esse felices’; Plin. Pan. 2.2 ‘uoces illas quas metus exprimebat’.
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References
1 The passages transmitting this famous quote are collected in J. Dangel's edition of Accius for the Collection Budé (Paris, 1995), 118. On its fortune in the characterization of tyrants by later authors see also Leigh, M., ‘Varius Rufus, Thyestes and the appetites of Anthony', PCPhS 42 (1996), 187.Google Scholar
2 Nero's reply ‘iussisque nostris pareant’ comes as no help to clarify the sense of exprimere, since Nero disregards Seneca's interruption altogether with his ‘and obey they must our orders’, but interruptions with suspended syntax are normal in antilabai and a parallel case for continuity of syntax can be observed at Oct. 195–6 (NUT. ‘iam metuit eadem …’ ocr. ‘nempe praelatam sibi.’ NUT. ‘subiecta et humilis atque monumenta exstruit’).
3 In a similar case, Wellesley (CR 12 [1962], 119) proposed to emend Tac. Ann. 15.67.2 ‘oderam te’ in ‘amaueram te’.
4 Wissowa, G., in Roscher, Ausführliches Lexicon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie 2.2 (Leipzig, 1894–7), s.v. ‘lares’, coll. 1876–9Google Scholar, and ibid., 3.2 (1902–9), s.v. ‘penates’, 1881–3; De Sanctis, G., Storia dei Romani (Firenze, 1953), 4.2.1, 237–8.Google Scholar
5 Cf. e.g. Liv. 1.29.4 ‘larem ac penates tectaque relinquentes'; Virg. Aen. 8.543 ‘hesternumque larem paruosque penates laetus adit'; Aen. 9.258–9; Cic. De re publ. 5.5.7 ‘ad uitam autem usumque uiuendi ea discripta ratio est iustis nuptiis, legitimis liberis, sanctis Penatium deorum Larumque familiarium sedibus, ut omnes et communibus commodis et suis uterentur’.
6 Cf. O. Gross, ‘De metonymiis sermonis Latini a deorum nominibus petitis’, Diss. Phil. Hal. 19.4 (1911), 390–2; S. Weinstock, in RE XIX. 1 (1937), s.v. ‘penates’, col. 423. For the metonymic sense of lares alone cf. Nisbet-Hubbard, ad Hor. Carm. 2.7.4, quoting among others Cat. Carm. 31.9 ‘uenimus larem ad nostrum’; add Sen. Agam. 6 ‘uideo paternos, immo fraternos lares’, where the sense is primarily ‘the house’, lar for ‘house’ is often paired with penates or other words of similar meaning: cf. Prop. 2.30.21–3 ‘spargere et alterna communes caede penates et ferre ad patrios praemia dira lares!’; Germ. 124 ‘nulliusque larem, nullos adit ilia penates’; Apul. Met. 5.7.6 ‘tectum et larem nostrum … succedite’.
7 In addition, scribes might have been misled by the concentration of lines beginning with the word inter in this passage: cf. 716 ‘inter Neronis uincta complexus mei’; 721 ‘inter tubarum saepe terribilem sonum’; 732 ‘intra … tecta’, for which most MSS have inter. A slightly more problematic case is Oct. 606–7, where Zwierlein reads ‘sacros intra penates spiritum efTudi grauem’ but the tradition is divided between δ inter (abbreviated as ĩt’) and β intra (~t~). On first impression, however, a pathetic inter would yield a good sense ‘I breathed my last amidst the house's protective deities’. Slaughter in a sacred place is a highly sacrilegious act (compare the death of Priamus in Virg. Aen. 2.550–1 ‘altaria ad ipsa trementem traxit’; and also Aen. 2.515–17 ‘Hecuba et natae nequiquam altaria circum … diuom amplexae simulacra tenebant‘). The confusion interlintra is commonly found in all authors, and at times a doubt remains: cf. Hor. Ep. 2.2.114 ‘inter penetralia Vestae’, where early editors printed intra, and Virg. Aen. 11.882 ‘inter (intra MR) tuta domorum’. In the Horace passage, however, the verb uersentur (‘et uersentur adhuc inter penetralia Vestae’) renders inter preferable (compare, by way of contrast, ‘planxerunt’ in Oct. 746); similarly in [Quint.] Decl. 255, 46.17–18 Ritt. ‘uersantur inter domos nostras, inter templa, inter muros’. The only other instances of inter penatesl inter lares I have been able to find are cases in which the inclusion of a new god is mentioned: cf. Ov. Met. 15.864 ‘inter … penates sacrata’; Suet. Aug. 7.1 ‘inter cubiculi Lares colitur’; Vit. 2.5 ‘inter Lares coluit’.
8 The last editior of note to read intra without comment is F. H. Bothe (L. A. Seneacae, Tragoediae ([Leipsiae, 1819]).