This slim volume celebrates the 90th birthday of the Genoese scholar Paolo Frassinetti. L. Di Salvo (F.'s collaborator on critical editions of Sallust and the satirists Persius and Juvenal) re-publishes part of F.'s La pretesta “Ottavia” (1973), along with a bibliography of F.'s published works. The latter reflects an impressively varied lifetime's work, which starts with a still indispensable study of Atellan farce, ranges from Pindar to Demetrius Cydones, encompasses republican, imperial and late Latin texts, and includes critical editions of Ennius, Lucretius, Apuleius and Tertullian. F. is particularly interested in fragments and the reconstruction of lost texts, in questions of authorship and authenticity, and in textual criticism, particularly of ‘minor’ texts.
It is then fitting, as Di Salvo points out, to reprint F.'s now hard-to-find “Ottavia”. Selecting this work as particularly representative of his interpretative methods, Di Salvo republishes pp. 101–59 of the original volume. These chapters tackle the relationship of the fabula praetexta with Tacitus; the author's fusion of literary and historical models; anachronisms and allusions to historical events; Octavia's Senecan allusive flavour, as well as divergences from Senecan philosophical thought; remarks on Octavia's language, style and metre. Concluding remarks sum up the thrust of the previous chapters – the Octavia is clearly not by Seneca – and flesh out this position, rehearsing arguments about possible authorship and dating. F. argues in the end for composition in the period immediately following Nero's death, written by an author, who if not Curiatus Maternus, at least shares the same kind of ideological sensibility. To this work Di Salvo adds a brief postscript incorporating the results of later work from F. on Octavia, and pointing to major work on these issues since 1973.
