Song and Solitude in the <i>Octavia</i>

Not long before we see the title character of the Octavia for the last time, she delivers herself of a monody which includes an extraordinary statement (914-24): she wishes had been given the wings of a nightingale (aedon), which she would use to fly away from humanity (coetus hominum), then perch in a lonely forest to sing her sad song. This paper first shows how this passage can be read, with the help of its antecedents in Cicero and Horace, as a startlingly fundamental rejection of Roman and indeed human society. The paper then analyzes the passage in conjunction with Sophocles’ Electra, the Octavia’s major tragic intertext (Herington 1961), to show how Octavia’s antisocial sentiments issue in a vindication of song as an end in itself. Octavia’s words recall Cicero’s famous definition of the res publica: it is not just any “assemblage of people” (hominum coetus) but one “joined by common law and mutual advantage” (Rep. 1.39). Whether or not we detect in this definition the beginnings of a distinction between between state and society (Wood 1988), it can help us see that Octavia’s rejection of humanity is comprehensive, and not restricted to the unpleasant (Neronian) circumstances in which she finds herself. She wants no part of human society, regardless of whether or how it is organized politically. This point becomes clearer by contrast with another text evoked by Octavia’s song, Horace’s sixteenth epode. Both Octavia and the speaker of Horace’s poem wish to set themselves at an impossible remove from a Rome they regard as irredeemable. The two futures envisioned in these fantasies of permanent flight diverge sharply from one another, though. Horace’s speaker will be accompanied by the “better part” (pars melior) of the Romans. As far as Octavia is concerned there is no better part, despite the remarkable agitation on her behalf by the populus (Kragelund 1982). Unlike Horace’s poem, Octavia’s song does not even at the level of wistful imagining balance its total rejection of Rome with a picture of a renewed society in the place of refuge. Instead, her new life would be given over to a single activity, the singing of her grief. Our passage of the Octavia, when contrasted with Electra’s own comparison of herself to a nightingale in Sophocles’ play, signals the central differences between the way each character imagines herself in relation to the social and political world she inhabits. Octavia will sing “alone in an empty forest” (sola in uacuo nemore), a setting which is “slightly counterintuitive (why should the nightingale’s song be set in a deserted forest?)” (Ferri 2003). Electra, on the other hand, announces (El. 107-9) that she will not desist from singing like a nightingale (ἀηδὼν) “in front of [her] father’s door” (τῶνδε πατρῴων / πρὸ θυρῶν) to everyone (πᾶσι). Even if we are meant to imagine Electra’s song as non-verbal, the venue she envisions for it suggests that its function is communicative. Recent scholarship has emphasized the role of the polis in supplying the values that guide Electra’s actions and in terms of which she articulates her motives (MacLeod 2001 and, with reservations, Finglass 2005). Her aim in her ceaseless singing would be to compel the citizens of Mycenae to bear witness to her misery, if not take outraged action against its agents. Octavia’s song, by contrast, shows how far she is from placing even this vestigial hope in her fellow Romans. The value her song holds for her has to located somewhere other than in any possible significance for others. The songs of birds made frequent appearances in Greek and especially Roman attempts to naturalize music and poetry (Habinek 2005). The Octavia pushes this metaphorical scheme to its limit: Octavia wants to sing like a bird, complete with the lack of reference to any human audience that characterizes the songs of birds. In her turning away from human society, she makes a claim for song as having a value that is absolute, rather than socially contingent. Works Cited: Ferri, R. (ed.). 2003. Octavia. Cambridge. Finglass, P. 2005. “Is There a Polis is Sophocles’ Electra?”. Phoenix 59: 199-209. Habinek, T. 2005. The World of Roman Song. Baltimore. Herington, C. J. 1961. “Octavia Praetexta: A Survey”. CQ 11: 18-30. Kragelund, P. 1982. Prophecy, Populism, and Propaganda in the ‘Octavia’. Copenhagen. MacLeod, L. 2001. Dolos and Dike in Sophokles’ Elektra. Leiden. Wood, N. 1988. Cicero’s Social and Political Thought. Berkeley.