Laudator Temporis Acti

Dear Mike,

An exhaustively annotated edition of Swinburne’s letter might include some of the following information on the allusion made to Octavia and Queen Caroline.

Sir Joseph Arnould, Life of Thomas, First Lord Denman, Formerly Lord Chief Justice of England (Boston: Estes & Lauriat, 1874), vol. 1, pp. 133-134:

"While we were calling our witnesses, and I was at Holland House on Sundays and at home in the evenings, anxiously sifting the minutes of evidence, Dr. Parr was my frequent correspondent, pointing out illustrations of many parts of our case from history and classical literature. He earnestly besought me to look into Bayle, and weave into my summing-up allusions to Judith, Julia, and Octavia. The two first seemed to me inapplicable; the third flashed upon me like lightning. In a moment I resolved to make the unhappy wife of Nero my heroine, and indeed, the parallel was perfect. I was deeply smitten, too, with the honest chambermaid's Greek, but, trembling as to the effect it might produce, I wrote back to ask Parr whether I could venture to bring it forward. He, in reply, at first suggested a method of periphrasis, but, at length, recurring to it in the postscript to a long letter, he burst out, ‘Oh dear, Mr. Denman, I am for the word itself — don't be squeamish.’

My speech was as successful with a view to my own reputation as my friends could desire. I hope, too, that it was of some use to the Queen, though the unfortunate turn that was, not quite unjustly, given to the parable of the woman taken in adultery has given me some of the bitterest moments of my life. Not that the subject was unfit to be touched, for it could not fail to have some effect on persons possessing religious feelings; but it ought not to have formed the concluding sentence, and might have been more guardedly introduced, and more dexterously softened off."

Arnould’s footnote 1 (p. 135):

Bayle, article ‘Octavia,’ cites the parallel passages from Tacitus and Xiphilin; Tacitus Ann. xiv., c. 60, Xiphilin p. 176; and see also Dion lii. 13. Neither the Latin nor the Greek can be quoted with decency. Tigellinus was presiding at the examination in which the female attendants of Octavia were being tortured to prove their mistress guilty of adultery with a slave. The imputation cast upon Tigellinus by the ‘honest chambermaid’ was of a nameless impurity, which made him peculiar for infamy even in the infamous court of Nero.

The word itself in the honest chambermaid’s Greek that could not be quoted with decency was ‘αἰδοῖον’; in the honest chambermaid’s Latin, ‘muliebria’, squeamishly rendered, – or ‘dextrously softened off’ – by translators Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb (1876) as ‘person’.

Dio Cassius, Roman History 62b.13.4 (tr. Earnest Cary):

ἐπεὶ γὰρ τῶν περὶ τὴν Ὀκταουίαν ὄντων οἱ ἄλλοι πάντες πλὴν Πυθιάδος συνεπέθεντο μετὰ τῆς Σαβίνης αὐτῇ, τῆς μέν, ὅτι ἐδυστύχει, καταφρονήσαντες, τὴν δέ, ὅτι ἴσχυε, κολακεύοντες, μόνη ἡ Πυθιὰς οὔτε τι κατεψεύσατο αὐτῆς, καίπερ πικρότατα βασανισθεῖσα, καὶ τέλος ὡς ὁ Τιγελλῖνος ἐνέκειτο αὐτῇ, προσέπτυσέ τε αὐτῷ καὶ εἶπε: ‘καθαρώτερον, ὦ Τιγελλῖνε, τὸ αἰδοῖον ἡ δέσποινά μου τοῦ σοῦ στόματος ἔχει.’

When all the other attendants of Octavia, with the exception of Pythias, had taken sides with Sabina in her attack upon the empress, despising Octavia because she was in misfortune and toadying to Sabina because she had great influence, Pythias alone had refused, though cruelly tortured, to utter lies against her mistress, and finally, as Tigellinus continued to urge her, she spat in his face, saying: "My mistress's privy parts are cleaner, Tigellinus, than your mouth."

Tacitus, Annals 14.60 (tr. Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb):

Actae ob id de ancillis quaestiones et vi tormentorum victis quibusdam ut falsa adnuerent, plures perstitere sanctitatem dominae tueri; ex quibus una instanti Tigellino castiora esse muliebria Octaviae respondit quam os eius.

As a consequence, her slave-girls were examined under torture, and though some were forced by the intensity of agony into admitting falsehoods, most of them persisted in upholding the virtue of their mistress. One of them said, in answer to the furious menaces of Tigellinus, that Octavia's person was purer than his mouth.

Best wishes,
Eric [Thomson]