Gli storici latini nel commento di Albertino Mussato all’Octavia pseudosenecana

Abstract

Sofia Brusa: Latin Historians in Albertino Mussato’s Commentary on the Pseudo-Senecan Octavia

The Paduan early humanist Albertino Mussato commented on Seneca’s tragedies, likely in order to provide an edition of the work with exegetic paratexts. His commentary, consisting of a Senecan biography, argumenta to the ten plays, and marginal glosses, was probably left unfin-ished and is preserved fragmentarily. The section on Octavia, the only play of Roman subject in the corpus, includes a relevant number of glosses (30 out of c. 130), a signal of Mussato’s interest in this tragedy, and stands out for the use of historical sources to elucidate the ancient drama. This paper focuses on the employment of Suetonius, publishing and discussing the four passages in which the Roman historian is explicitly mentioned. Particular attention is given to a gloss containing a spurious epigraph on Lucan and information gained from Eusebius-Hieronymus’ Chronicon. In spite of a solid knowledge of Suetonius, Mussato’s reconstruction of historical events reveals a number of slips and differences from his narration. This is tentatively explained with two reasons: on the one hand, the conviction that Octavia offered a peculiar account independent from the sources; on the other hand, a mnemonic use of the historian, causing several inaccuracies on the part of Mussato.