Ancient Magic and the Supernatural in the Modern Visual and Performing Arts 9781472527837, 9781474219211, 9781472527387

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Ancient Magic and the Supernatural in the Modern Visual and Performing Arts

Bloomsbury Studies in Classical Reception Bloomsbury Studies in Classical Reception presents scholarly monographs offering new and innovative research and debate to students and scholars in the reception of Classical Studies. Each volume will explore the appropriation, reconceptualization and recontextualization of various aspects of the GraecoRoman world and its culture, looking at the impact of the ancient world on modernity. Research will also cover reception within antiquity, the theory and practice of translation, and reception theory. Imagining Xerxes, Emma Bridges Ovid’s Myth of Pygmalion on Screen, Paula James

Ancient Magic and the Supernatural in the Modern Visual and Performing Arts Edited by Filippo Carlà and Irene Berti

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

LON DON • OX F O R D • N E W YO R K • N E W D E L H I • SY DN EY

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square London WC1B 3DP UK

1385 Broadway New York NY 10018 USA

www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2015 Paperback edition first published 2016 © Filippo Carlà, Irene Berti and Contributors 2015 Filippo Carlà and Irene Berti have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editors of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN:

HB: 978–1–47252–783–7 PB: 978–1–35000–794–9 ePDF: 978–1–47252–738–7 ePub: 978–1–47253–221–3

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ancient magic and the supernatural in the modern visual and performing arts / edited by Filippo Carlà and Irene Berti. pages cm. – (Bloomsbury studies in classical reception) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4725-2783-7 (hardback) 1. Magic in art. 2. Supernatural in art 3. Art and mythology. 4. Art–Themes, motives. 5. Art, Modern–History. 6. Performing arts–History. 7. Art and society–History. 8. Art and religion–History. 9. Group identity–History. I. Carlà, Filippo. II. Berti, Irene. N8222.M3A53 2015 700’.47—dc23 2015005739 Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk Printed and bound in Great Britain

Contents List of Illustrations List of Contributors

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Magic and the Supernatural from the Ancient World: An Introduction  Irene Berti and Filippo Carlà

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1

Gods and Demons in Texts: Figures and Symbols of the Defixion Inscriptions of the Nymphaeum of Anna Perenna at Rome  Jürgen Blänsdorf

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Imaging Magic, Imaging Thinking: The Transmission of Greek Drama from Sophocles to Crimp  Lorna Hardwick

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Celtic Magic and Rituals in The War Lord (F. Schaffner, 1965)  Domitilla Campanile

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Witch, Sorceress, Enchantress: Magic and Women from the Ancient World to the Present  Giovanna Rocca and Martina Treu

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Circe Diva: The Reception of Circe in the Baroque Opera (seventeenth century)  Pepa Castillo Pascual

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Medea, a Greek Sorceress in Modern Opera and Ballet: From Barber to Reimann  Jesús Carruesco and Montserrat Reig

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Colchian Pharmaka: The Colours of Medea in Nineteenth-­century Painting in France and England  Adeline Grand-Clément and Charlotte Ribeyrol

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Canidia and Erichtho: Snapshots from their Postclassical Life  Christine Walde

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Contents

10 Project(ion) Wonder Woman: Metamorphoses of a Superheroine  Andreas Gietzen and Marion Gindhart

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11 Ancient Horrors: Cinematic Antiquity and the Undead  Martin Lindner

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12 The Phoenix, the Werewolf and the Centaur: The Reception of Mythical Beasts in the Harry Potter Novels and their Film Adaptations  Dagmar Hofmann

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13 Theoi Becoming Kami: Classical Mythology in the Anime World  Maria G. Castello and Carla Scilabra

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14 Everypony Has a Story: Revisions of Greco-Roman Mythology in My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic  Priscilla Hobbs

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15 The Depraved Devotion of Elagabalus: Images of the Priest-­emperor in the Visual and Performing Arts  Martijn Icks

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16 Women and Religion in Epic Films: The Fifties’ Advocate for Christian Conversion and Today’s Pillar of Paganism?  Anja Wieber

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Notes Bibliography Index

241 293 325

List of Illustrations 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 7.1 8.1 8.2 8.3 9.1 9.2 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 15.1 15.2 15.3 15.4 16.1 16.2 16.3 16.4

Abraxas with acronym of Jesus Christ. Abraxas inscription. Wax puppet of Petronius Cornigus. Defixion of Quirinus Pistor. Defixion of Sura. The imprisonment of Medea in Aribert Reimann’s Medea. Eugene Delacroix, Furious Medea or Medea About to Kill her Children (1838). Edward Burne-Jones, Hypsiphile and Medea (1864). Gustave Moreau, Jason and Medea (1865). Stage picture from Der Bürgerkrieg. Internet presences of Erichtho. Wonder Woman’s debut appearance in All Star Comics #8 (December/January 1941/42). WW Vol. 1, #178 (September 1968): front cover. Ms. Magazine #1 (July 1972): front cover. Lynda Carter alias Wonder Woman. A bloody animal sacrifice to Elagabal. Simeon Solomon, Heliogabalus, High Priest of the Sun (1866). Gustav Adolf-Mossa, Lui (1906). Louis Couperus caricatured as Elagabalus; cartoon from De Roskam (1915). Screenshot from the movie The Robe (1953). Scan of the advertisement for Lux soap in Woman’s Home Companion. Movie poster for the 1963 re-­release of The Robe. Spanish movie poster for Agora (2009).

24 26 28 31 32 98 104 112 115 128 129 136 144 146 148 214 218 219 223 229 232 234 239

List of Contributors Irene Berti studied ancient history, archaeology and classical philology in Rome, Athens and Heidelberg, where she obtained her PhD and has been a member of the teaching staff since 2007. She is currently postdoc researcher at the same university and is working on a project about the topography of Athenian inscriptions. She has been a member of the Imagines network for reception in the visual and performing arts since 2007 and co-­editor of the book Hellas on Screen: Cinematic Receptions of Ancient History, Literature and Myth (Stuttgart 2008). Her current research interests include, besides reception studies, Greek epigraphy, history of technology, religion and anthropology. Jürgen Blänsdorf is Professor Emeritus for Classical Philology at the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz. The main areas of his philological research are the Latin literature, language and metre from the third century bce up to the end of the ancient world, the Latin poetry of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. He recently published: Fragmenta poetarum Latinorum epicorum et lyricorum – praeter Enni annales et Ciceronis Germanicique Aratea, post W. Morel et K. Büchner editionem quartam auctam (Berlin 2011); Die wiedergefundene Bibliothek. Antike und mittelalterliche Autoren in Pergamentfragmenten der Mainzer Martinus-Bibliothek (Mainz 2012); Die Defixionum Tabellae des Mainzer Isis- und Mater Magna-Heiligtums (Defixionum Tabellae Mogontiacenses – DTM) (with Pierre-Yves Lambert und Marion Witteyer, Mainz 2012). The complete list of his publications and lectures is available at www.jueblaensdorf-­mainz.de. Domitilla Campanile has since 2001 been Professor for Roman History at the University of Pisa, where she acquired her PhD in 1992. She has taught courses on historical geography, Roman history and history of ancient historiography. Her main research areas include Republican political history, the economic and social history of Asia Minor, the imperial cult, cultural life during the Early Empire, the Second Sophistic and the reception of classics in film and popular culture. She is Advisory Editor for Studi Classici e Orientali. Her main publications are I Sacerdoti del koinòn d’Asia (I sec. a.C.–III sec. d.C.). Contributo allo studio della romanizzazione delle élites provinciali nell’Oriente greco (Pisa, 1994), ‘La vita

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cittadina nell’età ellenistica’, in I Greci. Storia, Cultura, Arte, Società. 2: Una Storia Greca. 3: Trasformazioni (Torino 1998), ‘La costruzione del sofista. Note sul bios di Polemone di Laodicea’, in Studi Ellenistici XII (Pisa – Roma 1999), and – in the field of classical receptions – ‘Film storici e critici troppo critici’, in SCO 2007, and ‘La forza della storia: Gladiator (R. Scott, 2000) e Ben-Hur (W. Wyler, 1959)’, in Dionysus ex Machina 2012. Filippo Carlà is Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History at the University of Exeter. After studying in Turin and Udine, he worked as a lecturer at the University of Heidelberg and as Assistant Professor for Cultural History of Antiquity at the University of Mainz. His main research areas are the social and economic history of late antiquity, the history of the Roman Republic, the cultural history of ancient Rome, with a particular attention to space concepts and the construction of space, and the reception of Antiquity in modern media. Since 2014 he leads together with F. Freitag (Mainz) the research project ‘Here You Leave Today: Time and Temporality in Theme Parks’. Among his publications on classical receptions are the articles ‘Pasolini, Aristotle and Freud: Filmed Drama between Psychanalysis and “Neoclassicism” ’ (in Hellas on Screen, Stuttgart 2008) and ‘Prostitute, Saint, Pin-Up, Revolutionary: The Reception of Theodora in Twentieth-Century Italy’ (in Seduction and Power, London – New York 2013). He edited Caesar, Attila & Co. Comics und die Antike (Darmstadt 2014). Jesús Carruesco is Lecturer in Classics at the University Rovira i Virgili (Tarragona, Spain). He is the co-editor of a three-­volume series on the conception of space in ancient Greece, published by the Catalan Institute of Classical Archaeology (Tarragona 2010–2012). He has written numerous contributions on Greek literature and classical reception, notably in A. Beltrametti, Studi e Materiali per le Baccanti di Euripide (Pavia 2007); F. Mestre and P. Gómez, Lucian of Samosata. Greek Writer and Roman Citizen (Barcelona 2010); X. Riu and J. Pòrtulas, Approaches to Archaic Greek Poetry (Messina 2012); S. Knippschild and M. García Morcillo, Seduction and Power: Antiquity in the Visual and Performing Arts (London 2013). He also pursues research on the modes of symbolic articulation of space in Greece at the Catalan Institute of Classical Archaeology (ICAC). Maria G. Castello is a Lecturer in Roman History at the University of Turin, Italy. At the same university she studied ancient history, graduating in 2003, and obtained her PhD in 2008 with a thesis concerning the recruiting of late Roman

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palatine officers, afterwards published as Le segrete stanze del potere. I comites consistoriani e l’imperatore tardoantico (Roma 2012). Her main fields of research are the evolution of Roman instutions and magistracies, religion and the impact of religious creeds over late Roman political history, and Roman law. Recently she grew an interest in the theme of the reception of classic culture in modern times. Among her publications are Questioni tardoantiche. Storia e mito della ‘svolta costantiniana’, written with F. Carlà (Roma 2010), and Evoluzioni e funzioni del magister officiorum. Rileggendo il De Magistratibus di Giovanni Lido, in Istituzioni, carismi ed esercizio del potere (IV-VI secolo d.C.) (Bari 2010). Pepa Castillo Pascual is Professor of Ancient History at the University of La Rioja and a co-­founder of Imagines. She specializes in Roman land-­surveying and is a collaborator on the international research project Topoi (Berlin), devoted to the study of space and its transformation in antiquity. She is co-­editor of the first Imagines volume (2008) and author of several works on the reception of antiquity in baroque opera, including a monograph in preparation. Andreas Gietzen received his government-­recognized exam in history and Latin at the Johannes-Gutenberg Universität Mainz in 2013 and is currently preparing to start his doctorate about the Byzantine presence in the cultural memory of the South Slavs. Therefore, aside from comics, his research interests focus on reception, social identity and the influence of beliefs about race, ethnicity, religious affiliation and nationalism in history, sparked, not solely but strongly, by his love for Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the ‘silliest stuff he has ever heard.’ Marion Gindhart studied classical philology, classical archaeology and ancient history at the University of Augsburg, where she was later lecturer in Latin, employee at the Institute for European Cultural History and scholar at the postgraduate school ‘Wissensfelder der Neuzeit’. She obtained her PhD in 2004 with a study on the different ways of interpreting comets in the early modern period (Das Kometenjahr 1618, Wiesbaden 2006). She was then lecturer in Latin at the University of Mainz, where she has since 2010 been Assistant Professor. Her studies focus on ancient cultures and their reception, in particular in the following fields: conceptualization of natural phenomena (since 2013 she has been a member of the board of directors of the postgraduate school ‘Frühe Konzepte von Mensch und Natur’), history and dynamics of early-­modern disputations (Disputatio 1200–1800, ed. with U. Kundert, Berlin 2010), early-­ modern translations of ancient texts and historical narratology. She cooperates

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with the Swiss Arbeitsstelle fÜr Kulturwissenschaftliche Forschungen, and has, since 2012, been a member of the network Humanistische Antikenübersetzung und frühneuzeitliche Poetik in Deutschland. Adeline Grand-Clément is Lecturer in Ancient Greek History at the University of Toulouse (UT2J), and member of the research team PLH-ERASME. Her main research concerns cultural, social and anthropological history, and her work has been particularly concerned with exploring cultural differences in perception, aesthetics and sensibilities, especially in the field of colours. She is also interested in the modern reception of Greek art and in the history of European archaeology. Her first book, La fabrique des couleurs. Histoire du paysage sensible des Grecs anciens (VIIIe-Ve s. av. n. è.), was published in 2011; she has written several articles on archaic sensitivity to colours and on ancient polychromy. Her future research will broaden to the religious experience engaging all the senses (sight, smell, touch, sound, taste), focusing on their interplay during rituals. Lorna Hardwick is Emeritus Professor of Classical Studies at the Open University, UK and director of the Reception of Classical Texts project (www2. open.ac.uk/ClassicalStudies/GreekPlays). Her main interests are in Homer, Greek tragedy and Athenian social and cultural history and its receptions. She is co-­series editor (with Professor James Porter) of the Oxford University Press series ‘Classical Presences’ and was the founding editor of the Classical Receptions Journal. Her publications include Translating Words, Translating Cultures (London 2000), New Surveys in the Classics: Reception Studies (Oxford 2003), Classics in Post-­colonial Worlds (edited with C. Gillespie, Oxford 2007), A Companion to Classical Receptions (edited with C. Stray, Oxford 2008), Classics in the Modern World: A ‘Democratic Turn’? (edited with S. Harrison, Oxford 2013) and many articles and book chapters on Greek tragedy, Greek historiography and translation theory and practice. Priscilla Hobbs earned her doctorate in mythological studies from the Pacifica Graduate Institute with the dissertation Towards a Happily Ever After: Disneyland and Imagineering the American Dream. Articles she has published or presented at conferences concentrate on popular culture as a modern, living mythological system, including: ‘The Tri-Wizard Cup: Alchemy and Transformation in Harry Potter’, ‘The Wizarding World of Harry Potter: From Book to Embodied Myth’, and ‘Rewriting Fairy Tales: Disney’s Silly Symphonies and the Great Depression’. She is constantly looking critically at the relationship between popular culture

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and cultural identity, with current research focusing on theme parks, Disney studies and American studies. Dagmar Hofmann is Lecturer in Ancient History at the University of Cologne, Germany. After studying in Heidelberg she received her PhD at Jena University in 2007, before joining the university staff, first in Jena and Heidelberg and now in Cologne, where she is teaching academic classes on Greek as well as on Roman history. Her research interests are anthropological approaches to history, historiography, and history of early Christianity and late antiquity. In 2007, her book on Suicide in Late Antiquity (Suizid in der Spätantike, Stuttgart) was published, in which she highlights the change of moral standards on suicide caused by the Christian impact in late antique literature. Currently she is working on a book about Justin’s Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus and the conception of world history in ancient historiography. Martijn Icks is Lecturer in Ancient History at Queen’s University Belfast. He obtained his PhD at the University of Nijmegen with a thesis that was subsequently published as The Crimes of Elagabalus: The Life and Legacy of Rome’s Decadent Boy Emperor (2011). From 2009 to 2011 he was a Marie Curie Fellow at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg. With Eric Shiraev, he published the edited volume Character Assassination Throughout the Ages (2014). His current research interests include reception studies, imperial representation and perception in late antiquity, and the art of defamation from antiquity to the present. Martin Lindner is Lecturer in Ancient History at the University of Göttingen. He specializes in imperial Roman history, cultural history and classical reception in modern popular culture. His PhD thesis, published in 2007 (Rom und seine Kaiser im Historienfilm, Frankfurt am Main), was devoted to the representation of Roman emperors in cinema. He is also the co-­editor of Drehbuch Geschichte (2005), Nationalismus und Antikenrezeption (2009), Tempelprostitution im Altertum (2009), Antikenrezeption 2013 n. Chr. (2013) and of the Rezeption der Antike series (Verlag Antike, Heidelberg). His current projects focus on ancient cannibalism, on Augustus in historical novels and on parodies of cinematic antiquity. Montserrat Reig teaches classics at the University of Barcelona. She is the co-­ editor and co-­author of the second and third volumes on the conception of space in Greece published by the Catalan Institute of Classical Archaeology

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(ICAC 2011 and 2013). She has written several contributions on Greek tragedy and classical reception, especially in A. Beltrametti, Studi e Materiali per le Baccanti di Euripide (Pavia 2007); H. Roisman, The Encyclopedia of Greek Tragedy (Chichester – Oxford 2013); S. Knippschild and M. García Morcillo, Power and Seduction: Antiquity in the Visual and Performing Arts (London 2013), and P. Pinotti and M. Stella, Edipo. Margini, confine, periferie (Pisa 2013). She is also the author of articles on the Greek novel and mythology. Charlotte Ribeyrol is Senior Lecturer at the Sorbonne University in Paris where she teaches nineteenth-­century English literature and art history. Her main field of research is the influence of ancient Greece on Victorian painting and literature, particularly in the works of A.C. Swinburne. She has published articles for the poet’s centenary in the Tombeau pour Swinburne (Paris 2010); A.C. Swinburne and the Singing Word (Ashgate 2010); and Swinburne: Unofficial Laureate (Manchester 2013). Her book on the Hellenism of Swinburne, Pater and Symonds entitled ‘Etrangeté, passion, couleur’, L’hellénisme de Swinburne, Pater et Symonds came out in July 2013. In connection with her interest in the chromatic reappraisal of the antique heritage in the nineteenth century, she has recently co-­edited a volume on the invention of Greek painting from the Renaissance to the twentieth century (Inventer la peinture grecque antique, 2012). She is currently working on a book project on the colours of the past in the Victorian age. Giovanna Rocca is Ordinary Professor for General and Historical Linguistics at the Libera Università di Lingue e Comunicazione IULM (Milan, Italy). She teaches principles of linguistics and theatrical spaces in the ancient world. She is Scientific Director of the Research Project ILA, Iscrizioni latine arcaiche: A Digital Corpus of the Latin Archaic Inscriptions, and member of the advisory board for the Digital Epigraphy and Archaeology project of the University of Florida. Her scientific activity is devoted to the study of some Indoeuropean languages, such as Armenian, Latin, Italic languages and Greek. Among her publications are Nuove iscrizioni da Selinunte (Alessandria 2009), ‘I libri di Numa’, in Corollari. Scritti di antichità etrusche e italiche in omaggio all’opera di Giovanni Colonna (Pisa – Roma 2011), and ‘The Lapis Satricanus as evidence of an Italic writing context in the Latium vetus?’, in Lasciamo parlare i testi (Milano 2014). Carla Scilabra is a classical archaeologist. After graduating, she attended the Specialization School in Archaeology, and then she received her PhD from the Università degli Studi di Torino in 2013. Her main field of research is the

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archaeology of identity, namely the archaeology of childhood; she is also interested in the study of ancient material culture, especially Greek and Roman pottery, and the reception of the classical heritage in modern media, mainly Japanese comics and animated productions. Among her publications are ‘Ceramiche apule nella Collezione Porielli di Castellazzo Bormida’, in Quaderni della Soprintendenza archeologica del Piemonte 2009, ‘Veneri pupa negata. Giocattoli in tomba: casi di studio dall’Occidente Greco’, in L’enfant et la mort dans l’Antiquité. III, Le matériel associé aux tombes d’enfants (Paris 2012),‘Riflessioni sull’identità sociale dei defunti immaturi in età arcaica e classica. Note in margine ad alcune tendenze nelle necropoli magnogreche e siceliote’, in Orizzonti. Rassegna di archeologia 2013. Martina Treu is Researcher in Greek Language and Literature at the IULM University in Milan (Italy). She is a member of the Imagines project and of other international research groups. From 2000, she has been a founder and member of the CRIMTA (Research Centre in Ancient Drama) at the University of Pavia (crimta.unipv.it). She has been Visiting Assistant Professor of Ancient Drama at the University of Venice and at the Catholic University, Brescia. She has worked in European theatres and cooperated as a Dramaturg to a few adaptations of classics for the stage. Her main works concern: Aristophanes’ chorus and satire in performance, adaptation and reception of Greek drama and Greek mythology in theatre and literature. Among her recent publications are: ‘Never too late. Antigone in Italy’, in Antigone on the Contemporary World Stage (Oxford 2011); Back to the demos. ‘An anti-­classical approach to Classics?’, in Classics in the Modern World: a ‘Democratic Turn’? (Oxford 2013); ‘Who’s Afraid of Aristophanes? The Troubled Life of Ancient Comedy in 20th-­century Italy’, in Ancient Comedy and Reception (Berlin 2013). Christine Walde is Ordinary Professor for Classical Philology and Latin Philology at the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Germany. She is author, among many other works, of Hercules labor. Studien zum Pseudo-Senecanischen Hercules Oetaeus (Frankfurt am Main – Berne – New York – Paris 1992), and Die Traumdarstellungen in der griechisch-­römischen Dichtung (Munich – Lepizig 2001). She has edited various volumes, among which two are on Lucan, the more recent being Lucan’s Bellum Civile. Studien zum Spektrum seiner Rezeption von der Antike bis ins 19. Jahrhundert (Trier 2009), and the seventh supplement volume to Der Neue Pauly, Die Rezeption der antiken Literatur. Kulturhistorisches Werklexikon (Stuttgart 2010). Her current research subjects are still Lucan, along with – now in an interdisciplinary approach – dreams and sleep.

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Anja Wieber is an independent scholar, after having been a Lecturer in the Department of Ancient History at the Universities of Bochum and of Essen (1991–2003). Her research interests are women’s history, slavery, history of education and reception studies. Among her publications are Zwischen Polemik und Panegyrik – Frauen des Kaiserhauses und Herrscherinnen des Ostens in den Res gestae des Ammianus Marcellinus (Trier 1999), ‘Leben im Schatten der Planwagen? Zur Darstellung der Hunninnen im Film’, in Frauen und Geschlechter. Bilder – Rollen – Realitäten in den Texten antiker Autoren der römischen Kaiserzeit (Wien – Köln – Weimar 2006), ‘Antike am laufenden Meter – mehr als ein Jahrhundert Filmgeschichte’, in Antike und Mittelalter im Film. Konstruktion – Dokumentation – Projektion (Köln – Weimar – Wien 2007), ‘Celluloid Alexander(s): A Hero from the Past as Role Model for the Present?’, in Hellas on Screen. Cinematic receptions of Ancient History, Literature and Myth (Stuttgart 2008).

1

Magic and the Supernatural from the Ancient World: An Introduction Irene Berti and Filippo Carlà

Since its foundation in 2007, the international research group ‘Imagines: Antiquity in the Visual and Performing Arts’ has dedicated itself to studying the reception of classical antiquity in the visual and performing arts, from a multiplicity of approaches and points of view, in different epochs and various media. Among the initiatives of the group, a particular relevance has been assumed by the international conferences, which take place every two years. After a first meeting in Logroño in 2007 and a second in Bristol in 2010,1 the third international Imagines conference took place in Mainz in September 2012. This volume comprises mostly the proceedings of that meeting. Since the meeting in Bristol, every conference of the group has been dedicated to the reception in the modern visual and performing arts of a specific topic or cultural phenomenon, in order to investigate in depth how specific themes and aspects of the classical cultures have been received in post-­antique periods, thus making evident how different forms of reception influence each other and how the reception of antiquity never constitutes a one-­to-­one relationship between a ‘model’ and a ‘recipient’, but an unbroken chain of translations, adaptions and influences.2 While the Bristol conference had been dedicated to the topic of ‘Seduction and Power’ in classical receptions, the third Imagines meeting in Mainz had as a theme ‘Magic and the Supernatural from the Ancient World’. This was for many different reasons, two of which in particular are worth mentioning. First of all, Mainz is in itself a city which is deeply connected to ancient magic, at least since the discovery, in 1999, of the Roman sanctuary of Isis and Magna Mater, with its content of thirty-­four tabellae defixionis, whose publication appeared exactly in the same months of the conference.3 Second, and even more pertinently, the aim was to investigate what kind of role is played in classical receptions by what could

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Ancient Magic and the Supernatural

be generally defined as the ‘supernatural’, ‘trans-­human’, or ‘transcendent’. Leaving aside for once the reception of historical events, as they could be represented in films or in paintings, we wanted to draw attention to the fact that post-­antique, and above all modern and postmodern, images of classical antiquity are full of elements which do not belong to our daily experience of ‘physical reality’. Gods, demigods, heroes, special powers, magical objects, spells and curses, divine interventions, mysterious gods and goddesses, chthonic rites, are constitutive elements of the widespread image of Greek and Roman antiquity, next to and in contrast with the idealized image of an antiquity composed of marble and philosophy, which dominated the humanistic Bildung for centuries. This volume is therefore dedicated to the reception in the visual and performing arts both of ‘supernatural’ figures (the gods, the heroes, the witches), as they appear in the collective imagination (for instance in narrative structures, as the myth) and of ritual practices (magical rituals, curses), or historical events and issues (conflicts between old and new religions, as between religious communities and state). Choosing as a topic the ‘magic’ and the ‘supernatural’, we did not intend the two terms to appear as alternative or even opposed to each other. The ‘and’ has to be understood not as a juxtaposition, but as a strong connection. Magic, since it activates and controls forces which should not be, according to physical rules, bridled and subject to human volition, is intrinsically ‘supernatural’, and part of a perception of the world in which transcendental forces are present and active, which in turn is an important feature of religion. This therefore implies asking whether magic can be considered to be a part of the religious experience, or how the two fields generally overlap, in the ancient world as well as in the epochs of reception, in order to understand the structural differences which can influence the transformations and adaptations implicit in any reception phenomenon. It is a complicated issue, since the boundaries are notoriously slippery.4 Many cultures, including the Greek and Roman, did, at least from a certain time and in certain intellectual circles, distinguish between magic and religion. Our word ‘magic’ comes from the Greek mageia, a derivative of magos, originally a priest of the Zoroastrian religion. Heraclitus uses the terms to indicate some dubious activities performed by strangers.5 In Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus Oedipus insults Tiresias as a magos, a fraudulent and greedy charlatan, accusing him of being a wandering begging priest (agyrtes).6 Plato, although not explicitly mentioning mageia, describes some ritual commonly associated with magic in a despising tone and defines the agyrtai as sellers of incantations (epoidai) and curses (katadesmoi), who claim the ability to

An Introduction

3

manipulate divine powers and prey on the riches of the credulous.7 The Hippocratic treatise On the Sacred Disease (written around 400 bce) attacks magoi, kathartai (purifiers) and agyrtai for offering fraudulent cures for epilepsy by magical means and for their false piety towards the gods. The author of this treatise seems to be very concerned about magic: his book offers the first instance of magic regarded as misguided religion, confirming that by the end of the fifth century bce in some intellectual circles magic was considered as a dangerous, fraudulent and deviant religious practice. At the same time, though, Plato or the pseudo-Hippocrates surely do not represent what the average Greek of the fourth century believed and practised, and we must wonder whether the concern of these intellectuals to provide a clear distinction of magic (not approved) and religion (approved) is actually evidence that the two practices were in reality not so strongly opposed, the boundaries were more unstable and ‘magic’ was extensively practised even in the frame of common religious practices. Taking as an example the Greek binding curses, or defixiones, Faraone argues that a distinction between magic and religion in their analysis is pointless, since they should generally be contextualized in the frame of the agonistic ethos of Greek society, regardless of whether the contests in which they were employed were international, civic or personal.8 The archaeological evidence shows that matters were indeed much more complicated than the philosophers wished to believe: defixiones are not only ‘realized’ by illiterate people, and they are not only concerned with private problems; during the classical and Hellenistic period judicial and commercial curses are the predominant category, whereas amatory and athletic curses become widespread much later (after the second century ce).9 Even among the ‘intellectuals’ not everybody was ready to condemn the magoi. Herodotus and Xenophon speak of them in neutral terms;10 the Derveni papyrus – a difficult text, indeed – compares the rituals of the Greek mystai to the ones of the magoi, thus underlining a strong connection between the ‘magic’ and the religious world, in this case that of initiation rites.11 Furthermore, many ‘magical’ practices were commonly used by doctors and were indicated even by Plato as a traditional medical method;12 harai (maledictions) were a traditional ending to many official international treaties and curses played an important role in oath rituals.13 This evidence clearly shows that ‘magical’ practices were embedded in traditional religion, and inconsistencies in dealing with the subject are frequent in many cultural contexts, and even in the same author. It is the specific context that defines what is acceptable or not, and the same ritual practices may be quietly tolerated, violently opposed or vigorously defended on

4

Ancient Magic and the Supernatural

the basis of different and constantly renegotiated grounds. As Fowler wisely put it: ‘one man’s magic is another man’s religion’.14 The Roman world is not very different. It is true that the terminology of magic (magus, magia, magicus) first appears in late Republican texts, and, as a clear Greek import, it pertains to the erudite language of Cicero and Catullus more than to real practice. But legislation against harmful ‘incantations’ (malum carmen, incantare) is found in the Twelve Tables;15 there again, Cato describes some rites to cure a luxation with a cane, an iron and a cantio which we would surely describe as magic, but he does not seem to perceive them as such. Once again, the Roman Republican approach underlines the importance of intention. This seems to be what makes some ritual incantations acceptable and others not: there is a ‘bad’ and a ‘good’ magic; the first is condemned as deviant practice, but the second is perfectly compatible with traditional religiosity.16 In general it does not seem that the Roman world knew a category of ‘magic’ as separated from, or opposed to, the one of religion before the Late Republic and the Augustan period; at this time the poets created the first strong literary images of witches (significantly, usually strangers).17 Judicial magic was known in the time of Cicero, who, in his Brutus, tells the story of a C. Scribonius Curio (famous for his bad memory), who spoke against him for the prosecution of a certain Titinia and went speechless and stammering just when he was going to bring forward the final blow in the accusation strategy.18 Ashamed, he explained that he had been bewitched by spells. Cicero (and probably the majority of the public) did not believe a word, but the case clearly shows that magic made an easy excuse for such a failure and, in order not to appear ridiculous, it had to be based on some real belief in contemporary society. The imperial period developed a tendency to condemn magic altogether, rather than just the negative aspects of some rituals. The most famous charge against magic is the one moved against Apuleius in the second century ce. In his defence, preserved as the De magia, Apuleius does not claim the existence of a ‘positive’ magic, but rather carefully distinguishes magic from true philosophy and from medicine to say that he does not perform the first one. This is relevant, since it demonstrates that both Apuleius and his accusers – and presumably the judges and the public – considered the category of magic as independent and identifiable, and neatly separated from that of religion. Apuleius’ text seems to reveal that the widespread idea in his time was one of a separation of the fields, even if some intellectual and philosophic groups, and in particular Neoplatonists, still tried to integrate magical rites into their esoteric religious life, especially in the form of theurgy.19

An Introduction

5

Meanwhile, Christianity proceeded to make the distinction between magic and religion more clear-­cut. In the Roman principate, the early Christians did not try to understand pagan rites at all, and when, with the fourth century ce, the imperial court was Christianized and Christianity started playing an important role in the definition of normative values and in legislation, the entire sphere of pagan rites was simply defined as idolatry or sorcery. The distinction seems therefore to be much easier now: only Christianity is ‘religion’, all other cult practices are ‘magic’, and thus undoubtedly negative. What Christian authors actually did – followed by all subsequent phases of Western culture – was to define in a stronger way the boundaries of the sphere of magic, separating it from the sphere of ‘supernatural’ and of religion. The wonders performed by Christian saints were not ‘magic’, but were an effect of their supernatural powers; thus the world of magic, i.e. the world of requests, ritual practices to enforce something from the divine sphere, the world of potions and chants, was condemned to belong to superstition and paganism and was therefore to be eradicated. The path was smoothed for Christian authors by the long tradition, established in classical philosophy, of ‘rationalizing’ myth and rejecting magic. If Xenophanes could in the sixth century bce criticize the Homeric traditions, and Plato could present myths as a rational invention of politics to educate people, it was easy for Tertullian and Augustine, who aimed at throwing the entire ‘pagan’ world in a single box and not recognizing its internal differences and varieties, to use such texts to discredit the ‘pagan’ supernatural.20 This ‘misunderstanding’ influenced the forms of reception of the ancient supernatural sphere in medieval, modern and postmodern culture – and this is the reason why this volume concentrates on the reception of what for us are two separate worlds – the one of ‘the supernatural’ – gods, demigods, and heroes – and the one of ‘magic’ as practice. The difficulties in negotiating the boundary between magic and religion continued throughout the medieval and modern periods.21 The first scholarly attempts to find a stable transcultural definition of magic (in modern anthropology) quickly proved to be inadequate, clearly deriving from a colonialist perspective which equated magic with the ‘inferior’ religion of the so-­called primitive cultures. The implicit evolutionism of this approach culminates in James Frazer’s The Golden Bough (first edition 1890), which saw magic as erroneous religion and religion as imperfect science.22 This otherwise very enjoyable book – and its immense reception – strongly shaped the research and the approach to the supernatural in the ancient world. Even if the notion that magic and religion are successive steps of human evolution has been widely

6

Ancient Magic and the Supernatural

overcome, the tendency to distinguish and to contrast the two fields still casts a shadow over swathes of scholarly research. The problem of defining and distinguishing magic and religion is, quite understandably, particularly strong in etic approaches to the subject, which often require precise definitions in order to proceed to comparative analysis. So Durkheim’s school based for instance its classification on the social acceptance of the different practices in a given society – ‘religion’ is what is socially acceptable, ‘magic’ what is not. This approach surely has the advantage of contextualizing the categories in a precise social and temporal dimension, avoiding cross-­ cultural and cross-­temporal generalizations, but implies the existence of ‘monolithic’ societies, in which everyone would share the same categories of ‘acceptable’ and ‘unacceptable’. This ends up in denying the role of individuals and eventually independent choices – something particularly problematic in societies which, in their religious life, did not know any form of orthodoxy or dogmatism. Another widely accepted etic approach consists in distinguishing religion and magic through their goals: while religion is more generally concerned with the existential questions of human beings (justice and ethics, afterlife, origin of man and of the world, etc.), magic is more ‘finalized’, and used to obtain something (the love of a man, the health of a horse, the death of an enemy, etc.). But such a distinction does not, in the end, clarify. When today, for instance, a Christian asks in her prayers for very concrete things, and eventually dedicates ex voto after obtaining them, are we in the field of magic or of religion? Versnel tentatively introduced, in order to explain this, the further category of ‘supplicative negotiation’ – this belongs to ‘religion’ since, in spite of its being finalized, it has no manipulative nature.23 It is clear that at stake once again is the perspective of the writer, and her personal approach to faith and religious practice: a Greek of the fifth century bce would not have understood a word of this debate. For him, to ask the gods for something concrete was the basic form of religious practice and existential questions were the object of philosophy, rather than of religion.24 If on the one side, therefore, an etic model shows its limits very quickly, a purely emic one, which would allow understanding of the mentality of other cultures through their own categories, is impossible to apply to the ancient world, because the available literary and material sources simply do not allow a complete perspective on mental structures, definitions and personal beliefs. It seems therefore necessary to find a middle way which, starting from an emic approach, refers, in order not only to fill the gaps of the sources, but also to be able to communicate with the rest of the scientific community, to ‘modern’

An Introduction

7

interpretative categories.25 An alternative would be the extreme position which not only abolishes every distinction between magic and religion, but also the term ‘magic’ in itself.26 Following this radical position some have suggested that the word ‘religion’ should also be avoided.27 But while it is necessary to be always aware that a terminology in use today is mostly conventional and risks being biased and not completely suitable, abolishing it completely means risking not being able to discuss it at all, and in particular destroying any possibility of comparative and intercultural studies. This cannot be acceptable in a volume like this, which does not concentrate on ancient cults and magical practices in themselves, but on their reception, and which is therefore inter- and transcultural in its very nature; the shift in the meaning of concepts, words and mentalities, and the consequent transformations, adaptions and ‘misunderstandings’ are thus the very object of this book. It is exactly these shifting paradigms that are the focus of the Imagines research group and it is on this complexity that our approach would like – using some concrete case studies – to throw some light. We are indeed convinced that understanding the mechanisms (and this means also the short-­circuits, false connections made by reading from one culture to another, conceptual mistranslations and misreceptions) through which the modern world and the modern arts approach the ancient supernatural world is an important contribution to a better understanding of it. Starting from the evidence of the visual and performing arts one can acquire a better awareness of the origin of long-­lasting ‘misunderstandings’ – even the scholarly ones, since any scholar is a child of his own time. This can therefore constitute a first step for further research. It is indeed clear that the reception of ancient magic and the supernatural is quite independent from the ancient concepts connected to them, and is a product of the visions of the receiving culture. In this sense, the reception of the ancient supernatural in modern culture is clearly embedded in the general, ‘ambiguous’ reception of classical antiquity. If on the one side the Greek and Roman world provided, across the centuries, a model of splendour, of great intellectual production, of political, social and moral values, which were for a very long time still recognized as normative by Western cultures, it is also true that, at the same time, the classical world was also always representing a ‘dark Other’, which was contrasted and opposed to the Christian values of the Middle Ages, or to the high intellectual achievements of the Renaissance and of the modern period. So came to life the image, for example, of a violent and of a hypersexualized antiquity, and particularly a Roman world of orgies and blood, of bloodthirsty

8

Ancient Magic and the Supernatural

gladiators and their spectators, of luxury and decadence. The world of magic belonged also to this category: on the basis of the already defined Christian influence, modern reception applied to antiquity a strong division between magic and religion, putting next to the white-­clad Vestals climbing the Capitol dark witches performing horrible rituals. The supernatural of the ancient world was indeed always perceived as something completely different, and from many points of view scarier, than ‘our’ supernatural forms – i.e. the Christian Western monotheistic ones. It is not a chance that representations of alternative, deviant forms of magic, considered to be dangerous and disruptive, are generally full of references to the classical world and to pagan religion. This is so strongly rooted that even forms of self-­representation of alternative magic or transcendental powers assume generally a clear reference to the classical pagan culture – as can for example clearly be seen in the development of the Wicca cult. The already mentioned defixiones – probably the best-­known example of ancient magic, generally inscribed on lead tablets and addressed to gods such as Hekate, Persephone or Hades – were surely a form of ‘negative’ ritual, but still a religious ritual, performed (mostly) privately.28 To throw better light on this, we have included at the beginning of this volume an article not directly dealing with reception, but with the ancient praxis itself. Jürgen Blänsdorf, one of the leading experts in the field, who edited many such tablets found in Mainz and in Rome,29 reports here on the examples found in the sanctuary of Anna Perenna in Rome, casting new light on their great variety, on their diffusion among different social groups and, in a particularly important way, on the strong connection of text, material and drawings which characterized them. It will be easy to compare this with famous examples of elaborations of this motif in modern times – as in the scene in the HBO series Rome in which Caesar’s mistress Servilia produces such a tablet against Octavian’s mother Atia. The following chapter, by Lorna Hardwick, has a dual focus, insisting on the necessity of recognizing the existence of a double axis in the reception of ancient magic. The first, horizontal, axis is needed to situate magic as embedded in broader cultural phenomena, and therefore in behavioural, psychological and intellectual norms. The second, vertical, axis investigates how the subsequent receptions of the images of ‘magic’ have been integrated in different historical and cultural contexts. She demonstrates the methodology and the possible results of such an approach in a case study, the one of Heracles’ poisoned robe, as represented in Sophocles’ Trachiniae and in subsequent reception, most notably in Martin Crimp’s Cruel and Tender (2004).

An Introduction

9

Indeed, as always happens, reception is a form of translation, which requires an adaptation and an integration of the materials deriving from classical cultures in changed social, cultural and political contexts. The conflict between an ‘old’ and a ‘new’ form of religious practice, and also of a changed relationship between magic and religion, therefore, is not only a topic for research and intellectual discussion but one of reception itself. Such a conflict is thus central in the chapter by Domitilla Campanile, who examines a nearly forgotten film (The War Lord, F. Schaffner, 1965) which portrays the complex relations between Normans, Celts and Frisians in the French Middle Ages. The conflict between the pagan rituals of the Celts and the Christian religion of the Norman conquerors is central in shaping this political conflict as a clash between two worlds: the orderly and hierarchic world of the Normans and the more ‘natural’ and egalitarian one of the Celts. The natural religion of the conquered is perceived as ‘heresy’ by the conquerors. The healing practices of Bronwyr, the female protagonist, are misunderstood as witchcraft and she is accused by the Normans of being a demonic reincarnation of some pagan divinity. The film thus acts unwittingly as a powerful representation of the misunderstandings dominating the research on, and the reception of, ancient religious and magic practices – in a context that was dominated by the debates on postcolonialism. The process of reinforcing the boundaries of magic and religion is quite well represented by the transformation of the mythical figure of Circe, who is, in Homer, a terrifying but benevolent goddess; but her transformation through Ovid, which was the expression of a ‘worldly’ society, had transformed her into a dangerous magician and femme fatale. This is of course the interpretation which would pass to later centuries and dominate modern and contemporary reception.30 This is clearly shown in the present volume by Maria Josefa Castillo Pascual’s contribution on the representation of Circe in two Spanish baroque operas. Circe is not a casual example, since the representation of magic in modernity, but also of what we defined ‘manipulative rituals’ in antiquity, was not gender-­ neutral. On the contrary, if the praxis of the defixiones involved both men and women, such rituals are, in their literary representations, and even more in their post-­antique re-­elaborations, both in higher culture and in popular knowledge, generally performed by women – the witch is clearly a stronger figure than the magician, while the reasons for this and their eventual connection to ancient – in fact mostly Greek – ideas of women as ‘irrational’ beings should still be very thoroughly investigated.31 Giovanna Rocca and Martina Treu draw a powerful synthesis of the role played by women both in ‘magic’ rituals in the ancient world and in their

10

Ancient Magic and the Supernatural

reception. In particular, they underline the stereotyped interconnections between women, magical rites and the classical instruments of magic (belts and crowns, combs and needles), that happen to be also the typical instruments of female beauty in European popular traditions, and in their Nachleben, down to modern cartoons. This article opens a section dedicated to gender issues in the representation of magic, and in particular to the ‘power of the sorceress’. Ancient mythological magicians (always women!) had often not only a successful, but also an ‘autonomous’ career in post-­antique reception, thus corroborating the idea (which is again much more a product of modern reception than a reality of the ancient world), that magic is a special realm of women. They know how to perform it and use it for their purposes (to eliminate an adversary, to gain the love of a man, to obtain revenge) in a usually destructive and dangerous way.32 Adeline Grand-Clément and Charlotte Ribeyrol follow the transformations of Medea in nineteenth-­century painting and argue for a special affinity of Medea with colours, demonstrating the important role that colour played in the ancient myth of Medea. The authors highlight how the use of colour in modern painting accompanies and underlines a shifting reception of the mythical figure from a bad, wicked and demonic femme fatale to a suffering woman and a heroine of early feminist movements. This alternative interpretation of the myth requires a shift from black to white magic and a new chromatic characterization: from the predominance of red, dark blue and black to gold and white. A further development can be observed through the performing arts, and in particular in opera and in the ballet of the twentieth and twenty-­first centuries, as revealed by the study by Jesús Carruesco and Monserrat Reig. Psychological interpretations, predominant since the twentieth century, place the source of Medea’s destructive power in her mind, transforming her from a sorceress into a kind of psychiatric sufferer. In Martha Graham’s ballet ‘Cave of the Heart’ (1946), the myth is radically reduced to a story of jealousy and revenge and the protagonist becomes a timeless symbol of the impulses of the human psyche. However, this was bound to change in the second half of the twentieth century, in a new social and political context. Here Medea is not a sorceress any more33 – an idea and a development anticipated by Corrado Alvaro’s La lunga notte di Medea (1949), which appears also in Pasolini’s Medea (1969). She, a stranger, is believed to be such by the society into which she migrates and into which she cannot integrate; Medea becomes a symbol of rejection and marginalization, and magic a topos of discrimination – again a magic which is a powerful symbol of danger and alterity. In opera this is very visible in Reimann’s

An Introduction

11

Medea, where the title character represents the immigrant’s struggles for acceptance and recognition. The lack of understanding, the diffidence and hostility she has to suffer finally transform her into the murderess witch that the others from the beginning had declared that she was. The magic powers of Medea become, in Reimann’s interpretation, the instrument of his reflection on the effects of power and discrimination in our contemporary society. If Medea and Circe are known to almost everybody, it is not so with other ancient literary witches and sorceresses, as with Canidia and Erichtho – unforgettable characters for all readers of Horace and Lucan. Even if they are less ‘popular’, nonetheless, even these two witches enjoy a varied reception history, which shows once again the strength of ancient motifs among persons who refer to magic – and at the same time to pagan antiquity! – as a form of ‘rebellious alterity’ compared to the normative – and Christian – society of the Western world, as Christine Walde demonstrates at the close of the section. The sorceress may be a powerful figure in the reception of classical antiquity, and the construction of ‘modern witches’, through the use of (neo-)pagan elements, still full of references to the Greco-Roman world; yet she is far from being the only element of the field of magic and the supernatural which has a long reception history. We have also included in our concept of the supernatural another very problematic concept: myth.34 We were guided not only by the consideration that myth was deeply embedded in ancient religiosity, but also by the conviction that ancient people believed in their myths and that these were therefore an important part of the collective consciousness of the supernatural.35 As in the case of magic, it is extremely difficult to provide a definition of myth which could be useful in a transcultural perspective for all different periods and societies. Perhaps one of the most acceptable ones is from W. Burkert, who described myth as a ‘traditional tale with secondary, partial reference to something of collective importance’.36 Still, this definition fails fully to represent the function of myth in the period after classical antiquity, when we find myths without cult in ‘entertaining’ narratives such as Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Nonnus’ Dionysiaka, and it does not explain its gigantic reception after the end of antiquity. As Zanker rightly points out of the Roman imperial period, ancient people – in spite of the elements of intellectual/philosophical criticism, which have already been underlined – lived with and experienced myth, just like magic, in their daily reality. Myth was everywhere: in cult, in the theatre, in public feasts as well as in private life, and offered, with its many examples of character, vicissitude, suffering and figures to identify with, guidance and comfort in the difficulties of life.37 In this process of appropriation and enactment, myths

12

Ancient Magic and the Supernatural

transform themselves and change from situation to situation, according to the function they have to fulfil, or the culture of the persons using them: a certain myth can, on the one hand, be told to a child as a bedtime story with a fine educative moral and, on the other, be used as a decoration for a funeral chamber; however, the choice of the elements to retell, as well as the presentation of the story, will be different. Myth is therefore a very lively and dynamic part of the spiritual world of the ancients. After the rise of Christianity, ancient myths lost their religious foundation, but still preserved their moral, as well as their aesthetic, value, almost assuming the role of a ‘status symbol’ of the higher, educated classes.38 It is exactly in this function as exempla that myths would be rediscovered in the courts of the Renaissance, when ancient mythology, together with stories from the Bible, were ubiquitous motifs of interior design.39 Even today, it is quite obvious that classical myth dominates the reception of antiquity, and in Western culture the stories of Odysseus, Theseus and the other heroes are widely known as early as childhood. There may be many reasons for this overwhelming role of mythology, not only in the reception of ancient religions, but in the reception of the Greek world as a whole: the fact that many mythical traditions are very well known; that they enjoy meanwhile an already long, elaborated and popular chain of reception; that they are narrative structures full of action; that they have been understood, thanks to the psychoanalytic school, to be archetypes of human needs and behaviours, etc.40 The dominance of myth – and particularly of Homer’s subject matter – in the reception of the Greek world has again generated a sort of ambiguity in the popular reception of, specifically, Greek antiquity. Next to the image of the white marble poleis representing the cradle of civilization, the Greek world (more than the Roman one) appears often as a world in which human beings live next to and interact with deities, heroes or different forms of supernatural figures. It is a world in which, to stress once again our main point, the alterity given by antiquity implies a nearness to the divine, often also to nature or to ‘primordial forces’, which makes nearer and more visible the presence of magic and the divine. The model is of course Homer, with the gods fighting next to humans and talking to them, but also the general structure of Greek and Roman myth. Homer is also the first source of many well-­worn and cherished narrative devices – for example, when human beings interact with a divine or supernatural being in disguise, whose real nature is revealed afterwards.41 It is therefore necessary, in order to understand the modern reception of ancient ‘magic and the supernatural’

An Introduction

13

also to deal with the presence in the reception of classical mythology of these interactions between humans and super-­humans or ‘non-­humans’. This topic is of course too big to be treated exhaustively here; this volume concentrates therefore on some case studies, investigating particular areas of reception which have been neglected until now. The model of the ‘supernatural in disguise’, which is, as underlined, extremely popular in many fields, is at the centre of the contribution by Andreas Gietzen and Marion Gindhart, who analyse here the fascinating story of Wonder Woman through the decades. The famous US-heroine, who is here presented as an important symbol and even a sort of barometer of the changing position of women in American society, does indeed have very strong ancient roots, and not only in this conception of the supernatural being in disguise, but in her very origin, since she belongs to the ancient mythical race of the Amazons. The contribution by Martin Lindner analyses the interaction of humans and non-­humans from a particular angle: those horror movies with an ancient topic, in which this confrontation with the supernatural is presented in its scary, even creepy, aspects. It is no novelty: mummies and ghosts of different kinds were already present in silent movies – even if in this sense Egypt, rather than Greece and Rome, played a major role – and conversely zombies, vampires and characters from ‘modern horror’ seem to feel perfectly at home in mythological films, combining very well with more authentic ancient creatures like sphinxes and chimeras, as for example in Jason and the Argonauts (1963), while the representation of single ancient mythical characters owes often much to modern horror visualization (one need only to think of, for example, Medusa in The Clash of the Titans, 1981).42 The model can be found in classical antiquity itself, since necromancy constituted an important aspect of ancient magic, and is widely represented in classical literary sources, as in papyri reflecting ‘daily’ practices.43 But this particular filmic genre, argues the author, is also growing in popularity and becoming more and more relevant in classical reception, something which is surely connected to the postmodern destruction of the barrier between ‘high’ and ‘popular’ culture. Furthermore, and not accidentally, this is a clear consequence of the progressive ‘desacralization’ of the classical world and of the ongoing trend, already mentioned, towards a diminishing importance of the cities of marble and gold, of the antiquity considered as a paradigmatic model of order and culture and as a depository of universal values. It is enough to think, once again, of the disruptive role in the popular perception of ancient Rome played by the HBO series Rome and its successors such as Spartacus: Blood and

14

Ancient Magic and the Supernatural

Sand, which clearly replaced in the minds of a big public the idea of white-­clad senators and marble temples with the image – surely more realistic, but also more apt to our culture – of a dirty, chaotic city, full of noises, colours and smells. The strength of classical models in modern culture also becomes evident in the construction of figures of legendary and mythological creatures; these are often deeply indebted to ancient literature and culture, even when the modern cultural products are not directly forms of classical reception. This is clearly demonstrated by Dagmar Hofmann, who investigates the presence of such mythical beings in the Harry Potter saga, concentrating in particular on the classical influence on the genesis of the figures of werewolves, centaurs and of the phoenix, and in the forms of their visualization in the moment of the translation of the novels into movies. Even the fantasy genre, despite the unavoidable mixture of invention, medieval traditions such as the bestiaria, and its own conventional elements shows a clear root in classical antiquity and in its mythology. In consideration of the predominance of myth in the popular knowledge of the classical world, it is no surprise that this aspect is also dominant in classical receptions outside the Western world (in Asia, but also in Africa and Oceania), which treat Greco-Roman antiquity not as a part of cultural heritage and cultural memory, but as something ‘exotic’ and ‘alien’. This is a field of studies which has been until now very neglected, with few exceptions,44 and which, even if first steps have been taken,45 still requires a much deeper, and interdisciplinary, engagement. A contribution in this sense is here provided by Maria G. Castello and Carla Scilabra, who investigate the presence of Greek myth in Japanese anime, underlining how Greek myth is, in Japan, a relevant part of a sort of ‘monolithic’ conception of the ‘West’, which coexists with Christianity, the Middle Ages and the modern period in the construction of an ‘exotic Other’ – which, not surprisingly, interacts and overlaps with the receiving culture and its polytheism. Yet even here the dominating figures are deities, or superhuman beings with special powers, and the dominant plots deal with their interactions with the human world. The presence of classical myths in cartoons is also the topic of the contribution by Priscilla Hobbs, who investigates, starting from some examples of Greek mythical figures adapted and transferred to the popular series My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, not only the techniques and forms of ‘mythic revisioning’, but also the pervasiveness of myth in our culture. The last central issue this volume addresses – and reveals the many short-­ circuits between ancient mentality and modern receptions of it – is the

An Introduction

15

relationship between religion and state, religion and public life. While the concepts of ‘state religion’ and ‘theocracy’ are rather out of context when describing ancient religions,46 the modern separation of religion and state and the definition of religion as a ‘private choice’, influencing and determining individual choices and values, but preferably not connected to law-­giving and state institutions, is exactly as wrong, being substantially a product of the Enlightenment. Public and political life were in the ancient world deeply characterized by religious elements, and in particular by participation in religious rites, which marked the calendar, important occasions and any political decision (the Roman auspicia suffice as an example). It has been suggested that this deep interconnection of political life and religion was one of the reasons for the limited conversion to Christianity of the senatorial and curial classes up to the fourth century, since it would have meant a necessary rejection of a political career.47 But the modern world sees it in another way, and the connections of religion with power are looked upon with suspicion if not open criticism, and the characteristic ‘embeddedness’ of these two spheres which was typical of classical antiquity is therefore presented in reception in a way which is strongly functionalized according to the receiving context. To this topic, of ‘religion and power’, are dedicated the last two chapters of this volume. Martijn Icks investigates a particular case, the one of Elagabalus, which was considered deviant even in the ancient world. The young emperor of the Severan dynasty adopted forms of self-­representation which were substantially influenced by his role as priest of the god Baal. While through his identification with one particular deity he was following the line of many previous emperors (e.g. Domitian with Minerva) and opening the way to the emperors who, in the second half of the third century, would so strongly insist on their particular connection with the sun,48 his choice of an Eastern god, whose cult was looked on with suspicion by the senatorial aristocracy, was largely responsible for the very negative traditions about him in the ancient sources, which insist on his femininity, sexual excesses and weird rites. Elagabalus had already placed himself substantially outside of those traditions of Roman religion in which it was expected that the emperor, as pontifex maximus, should have been widely expert. This ‘awkwardness’ passed into his reception: Elagabalus as model of decadence, of the loss of traditional Roman virtues, of the ‘orientalization’ of the Roman Empire under the Severan dynasty, of the immorality of paganism (from the Christian perspective), of sexual disorder (or of perfect androgyny). Elagabalus’ rich reception history (of which Antonin Artaud’s Héliogabale ou

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Ancient Magic and the Supernatural

l’anarchiste couronné, 1934, is only the most famous example), strongly insists on a religious element, on the dark rites performed at court, on the adoption – often ‘translated’ into the forms of a weird ‘state religion’ – of cruel and bloody Eastern cults which could easily be stereotyped along all the canons of orientalism, as Icks makes perfectly clear. Exotic forms of religiosity are, then as now, not only presented as deviant, but as socially and politically dangerous, as they menace the existing order, the structures of identity and recognized values. The reception of the early Christians, the diffusion of the Christian religion and the problematic relationship between Christianity and the Roman Empire is, as ought to be expected, completely different. In a wide-­ranging article, Anja Wieber investigates how movies dealing with early Christianity changed through the decades, thus reflecting the shifting roles of the Christian Churches in Western societies and Western perceptions of the Christian religion and its public role. She does this with a clear emphasis on gender issues, analysing thoroughly the role attributed to women in such movies. She reveals how the pious Christian heroines of the 1950s (analysed in particular is The Robe, 1953), responsible for the diffusion of Christianity in society, and ready for martyrdom, were replaced over time by ‘pillars of paganism’, most notably in Agora (A. Amenábar, 2009), fighting for tolerance and reason against religious fundamentalisms. These shifting representations are connected, as demonstrated in the article, not only to the changing role of Christianity in the modern world, but also to the changing status and social position of women in general – from rather passive recipients, acting mostly through their mildness and submissiveness, to intellectuals active in society and shaping thought and action – so in Amenábar’s representation of Hypatia. Ranging across myth, magic (real and mythical), pagan religion and Christianity, the collection of papers in this volume aims to show the innumerable transformations that religious ideals and practices undergo, when ‘travelling’ through time and space. Additionally, it shows what relevance classical antiquity still has to our imagination of the transcendental, the superhuman and the supernatural. This is, we believe, particularly important in a rapidly changing world, in which religions continue to be a central issue in political discussion, in the politics of identity, in debates and – unluckily – also in wars. To show how a really big part of our ideas and ‘pictures’ of magic and the supernatural derives from an elaboration, a translation and sometimes a misunderstanding of practices, beliefs and narratives developed by other cultures may be, we hope, a useful contribution in this context.

An Introduction

17

Acknowledgements The organization of the conference in Mainz and the publication of this volume would not have been possible without the support and help of institutions, colleagues and friends. Funding for the conference was granted by the DFG – German Research Foundation, the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, the Universidad de la Rioja and the Institute of Classical Studies (London). To all of them go our special thanks. We would like as well to thank all the members of the Imagines group and the people who took part in the conference, either with papers which are not present as articles in the volume, or as chairs, as student assistants or simply as attendants. In particular, we would like to thank Thomas Blank, Jovita Dikmoniene, Adriana Freire Nogueira, Florian Freitag, Marta García Morcillo, Andreas Goltz, Doris Prechel and Franziska Weise.

2

Gods and Demons in Texts: Figures and Symbols of the Defixion Inscriptions of the Nymphaeum of Anna Perenna at Rome Jürgen Blänsdorf

The topic of the congress is defined by two aspects: the title of the series Imagines and the actual theme ‘Magic and Supernatural from the Ancient World’. Therefore I shall try to exemplify the methods of ancient magic and its components and the coordination of images, symbols and texts with a special case, the curse texts of the nymphaeum of Anna Perenna at Rome. The scientific knowledge of ancient magic has been largely enriched, as well as modified, by two recent excavations, made almost at the same time, between 1998 and 2001, at Rome and at Mainz, where a combined temple of Isis and Mater Magna was found.1 The curse texts of the sanctuary of Anna Perenna and their importance for the practice of ancient magic, which I am going to illustrate, were found by mere chance. In 1999 at the Piazza Euclide, which is situated outside the ancient walls in an area where up to that time hardly any ancient remains had been found, the ground was dug out for building the foundations of an underground car-­park. Marina Piranomonte (direttore archeologo coordinatore, Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di Roma) discovered a sanctuary which according to three inscriptions was dedicated to Anna Perenna and her nymphs, with a cistern constructed around a spring. The archaeological finds show that the cult was present from the beginning of Roman history up to the end of the Roman Empire (fourth century bce to sixth century ce). But in Republican times it was certainly not a place of magic rites. Anna Perenna is the goddess of vegetation and spring whose birthday (festum geniale) was celebrated on 15 March, the beginning of spring, by joyous assemblies of Roman folk who venerated the goddess by drinking and singing boisterously all day. Two of the inscriptions, one of which was dated 5 April 156,

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tell that in the early Empire competitions of an unknown genre took place during this festival. But the cult and the festival Ovid describes in his calendar poem (Fasti) did not give any hint of the new functions of the place, which developed in late antiquity with changes in popular religion and beliefs.2 Magic practices, and especially curse rituals, were performed in the sanctuary at least from the end of the third century ce. But as far as we can guess from the objects found in the spring, it was not Anna Perenna herself who had become a demon that could be invoked for helping in curse activities, but oriental gods and demons who had found their cult place in this sanctuary situated outside the walls of the city of Rome. It is certainly not by mere chance that in the remarkable amount of figures and texts found in her sanctuary, Anna Perenna herself is not mentioned at all. The connection between the Roman and the oriental cults are the nymphs who were present in both of them and which, as chthonic forces, could be invoked in magic rites. Ancient magic, and especially black magic, was intended to maliciously influence the life, health and fortune of other people with the help of supernatural powers. Therefore, magic was forbidden from the era of the Law of the Twelve Tables down to the Codex of Justinian, and was a criminal offence to be punished by exile or even death. Despite this, ‘magic’, as conducted by private individuals and at best by professional magicians or priests, was widespread. Hence, Roman magic and the objects and texts connected with it, found in all regions of the Empire, testify many details of private lives and the mentality of nearly all levels of Roman society. The objects found all over the ancient world, from Egypt and Asia Minor and the Black Sea to Greece and the Roman world, including the African, Gallic, Hispanic and German provinces up to ancient Britain, can be dated from the sixth century bce to the sixth century ce, and magic did not even stop in Christian times. The languages in which the curse texts were written are Coptic, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Oscan, Etruscan and Celtic. Research on more than 1,500 texts, mainly written on lead sheets, requires the use of semiotic methods more than literary texts to discover some details about magic. For in spite of their huge numbers they were only a small part of the difficult and lengthy practices exercised during rituals and curse activities. The most information about the rituals practised during a curse-­action we find in Coptic and Greek papyrus texts discovered in Egypt. They give exact instructions about what had to be done to ban a beloved person, or keep illness away, or prevent counter-­magic and determine the best times of day, the

Gods and Demons in Texts

21

secret places suitable for the ritual, the gods and demons to be invoked, and the offerings to be brought. The defigens also learned various magic actions such as the correct way to stand or kneel and the maltreatment and the killing of the animal to be offered during the ritual. Finally, it was most important to know the long and difficult curse-­formulas, to pronounce or to mumble them in order not to be heard by other people. One of the formulas went as follows: Ἀβλαναθαναλβα Ακραμαχαμαρι φνεμενουνι (‘Ruler of the netherworld’) ιαια ΙΑΩ Σαβαω πανχουχι (‘Ruler of the shadows’) θασσου Σεσενγενβαρφαρανγης Σεμεσειλαμ (probably from Hebrew ‘eternal sun’ or Aramaic ‘my name is peace’)3 οζθωυθος.4 For such formulas, the defigentes had to consult special priests or handbooks of magic, or the professional knowledge of scribes who used to prefabricate the curse texts leaving only a space for the actual names. Finally, instructions had to be consulted to discover how to produce the magic objects and accomplish the rites in a secret way and then to deposit those objects in places open to the infernal gods, in the basements of the house of the defixi, or in the amphitheatre or stadium in order to paralyse the charioteers and their horses. The types of magic object produced and employed in ancient civilizations were complex. In many places coins, ceramic vessels and oil-­lamps containing curse texts and curse puppets have been found. The curse texts, the so-­called defixionum tabellae, were written on papyrus, bark and wood, or metal tablets. But outside Egypt only the curses written on metal have survived. Only amulets serving good aims, such as protection against illness, were made of gems or sheets of silver or gold. The relics of these rites attested by archaeological finds have mostly been discovered in wells and springs, rivers, graves or, as at Rome, in cultural caves where the objects were ritually deposited in order to prevent profane use and other people noticing them. In order to ensure the correct transmission to the infernal gods, the relics were rolled up or folded, often put into vessels and deposited in secret places open to infernal deities. At Mainz they were dropped into the fire of the altar in order to make them melt, to produce the same effect on the victims of the curse and also to keep them secret. We should keep in mind that these objects are only a small part of magic practices and are incomplete in regard to the semiotic aspect. By their different forms and contents they give detailed insight into the methods of cursing and the general techniques of ancient magic.5 The easiest method of defixion consisted in writing the name of the cursed person on papyrus, wood, lead or copper. But sometimes other magical material

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Ancient Magic and the Supernatural

was added. The curse puppets made of clay or wax or other organic materials are of special interest because they represent men or women with shackled arms and legs and are pierced by several needles symbolizing the banning or killing of the cursed person. The first example of these – still unpublished – curse tablets (inv. 475565) consists of three small pieces of heavily corroded lead of about 4.2 to 2.8 cm. On it we find the name of the victim and that of his mother written in clumsy letters: ‘Victor quem peperit Pria[. . .]ralluia.’ Naming the mother, not the father, is certainly a mark of the absurdity of the magic world, but at the same time the identification of the person is more exact, because, as everybody knew, mater semper certa est.6 Around these names and on the reverse side we read several times the letters ΝΧΩ decorated with circles, crosses and horizontal lines which serve to give the letters magic power without having a literal meaning. Having written the words and designed the magic symbols the curser rolled the tablets up and squeezed them into an oil-­lamp which he finally threw into the basin of the nymphaeum. This was the way to finally initiate magic power. So we see that complex magic rites consisted of several difficult acts of words and gestures, the characteristics of which are only generally known from the magical papyri and the writing tablet, which is the only object to be found in archaeological excavations. In particular the magic objects of the fountain of Anna Perenna show that the majority of rituals were never written down and so are lost to our knowledge. Only a few defixion texts contain allusions to spoken magical formulas and other non-­verbal acts of magic. A peculiar group of findings at the Anna Perenna sanctuary, of which no parallel has been found, are the twenty-­seven leaden beakers, 6 to 16 cm high and 5 to 9 cm in diameter. Every three of them was assembled to build a set, which was closed with one or two conic or curved lids and carefully sealed with resin. We may certainly suppose that the intention of this technique was to protect the magic texts against other people’s eyes as well as to preserve the magic message intact to reach the god invoked in it. The outer beaker – with the exception of only one of them – never bears any symbols or inscriptions, so nobody could guess what the purpose of the object was. Only the middle and innermost beakers bear the signs of magic and reveal the oriental origin of the defixion rituals. Four of these beakers show engravings of cocks with long snake-­like tails and hands instead of wings, bearing a whip or a lance. This strange figure certainly represents the oriental demon Abrasax

Gods and Demons in Texts

23

(with his Greek name) or Abraxas (with his Latin name) who was well known by numerous magic gems. Such gems were collected by many connoisseurs of ancient art, and J.W. von Goethe speaks of such gems bearing Abraxas’ image in the West-Östlicher Divan (Buch des Sängers: Segenspfänder): Doch Abraxas bring ich selten! Hier soll meist das Fratzenhafte, Das ein düstrer Wahnsinn schaffte, Für das Allerhöchste gelten. Sag ich euch absurde Dinge, Denkt, daß ich Abraxas bringe.7

Irenaeus of Lyon (Adv. Haeres. 1.24.3–7) writes that Abraxas was thought of as sovereign of the whole cosmos and all time, because the letters of his name taken as numerals were equivalent to the 365 days of the year, and the seven letters of his name were interpreted as symbolizing the seven spheres of the planets. So he was also a potent force for all aspects of ancient magic. Moreover, the Early Fathers Irenaeus, Tertullian and Hieronymus tell us about another heresy linked to this oriental demon, which is now testified by archaeological findings for the first time. On four of the beakers the picture of Abraxas bears a series of letters engraved on his round belly (see Figure  2.1) which remained unexplained for a long time: ‘ΙΧΝΟΥ ΧΝΚΘΘΘ’. But when György Németh, an expert in ancient history and religion at the University of Budapest, heard that I had found the name of Christ on one of the tablets (inv. 475563), he had the idea that the letters are an acronym of Jesus Christ: ‘ Ἰησοûς Χριστός Ναζωραîος ὁ ὑιός, Χριστός Ναζωραîος καì θεòς θεòς θεός’. His interpretation might seem too fantastic and even blasphemous if the Early Fathers had not attested that Basileides, an Alexandrian theologian of the second century ce, had proclaimed the idea that Christ was not the son of God, but of Abraxas. The heresy was so successful that during the following centuries it spread from Egypt to Spain – and certainly to Italy and especially to Rome. The combination of Abraxas and Christ and the XP-Christogram is equally found on numerous magic gems. Next to the picture of Abraxas we read Αβλαναθαναλβα, a magic word of palindromic form that does not mean the name of a demon but is a formula by which a divine force was implored for help. It is indeed attested by numerous other magic texts. The picture and the invocation formula used to be repeated on the innermost beakers. But on the beaker inv. 475554 neither the name of the god or that of the demon invoked, nor that of the cursed person or the aim of the

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Ancient Magic and the Supernatural

Figure 2.1  Inv. 475547. Abraxas with acronym of Jesus Christ. Courtesy of the Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di Roma (Museo delle Terme di Diocleziano).

curse has been written down. As we learn, however, from the magic papyri, they were certainly pronounced orally, because the god invoked had to be informed exactly what to do. So the magic object is only an incomplete symbol of the multiple parts of the ritual act of cursing. It underlines the wish for magic power without explicitly naming the specific details. The other example of religious syncretism is the small copper tablet inv. 475563 bearing the now fragmentary inscription that somebody wants ‘to implore tomorrow your goddesses as well as our Christ’ and hopes that the people who now are exulting will be in fear. The wording reminds us of NT Luc. 6.25: Vae vobis, qui ridetis nunc, quia lugebitis et flebitis.

Gods and Demons in Texts

1. i donatas suas. person[as]. ill . 2. et uaticolo m. l. erio [ 3. filio et quisquis. cr m[ . . . roga-] 4. mus cras et deas uest[ra]s. [. 5. et cristum [n]ostr[um . . . Qui 6. gaudent, timi[a]nt t[e 7. eu(m) uincam i. [. .] c. [ 8. . . . suc. ui [

25

[ oder: ida. natas

Translation: 1. that his persons have been donated [ 2. and the worshipper (or: the little priest . . .) [ 3. the son and whoever . . . [ 4. tomorrow we appeal as well to your goddesses [ . . . 5. as to our Christ[ . . . Those who,] 6. now are exulting, shall be in fear [ . . . 7. I shall defeat him . . . [ 8. . . . [

The author was obviously a Christian who, however, did not hesitate to visit a pagan temple and to continue exercising the pagan rites of curse. Using the text of another tablet, we can guess that it was not Anna Perenna, being the local deity of the nymphaeum, but rather Abraxas, who was thought of as the authority giving special cultic power. The small copper leaf inv. 475564 (see Figure 2.2) shows that he was thought of as giving the commands for doing harm to the victim of the curse. The tablet now consists of four fragments, but because the lines of the words and the magic symbols (as is especially obvious in lines 3, 7 and 9) can be rearranged, a considerable part of the text can be read and interpreted. The letters are written in the late Roman cursive script with elegantly curved strokes, but the text is interspersed with several magic words and signs arranged in whole lines or even interrupting the text lines. So we can assume that the writer intended to combine the text and the magic signs to form a powerful entity. Internal side: Fr. III and Frg. II Fr. IV Frg. I. ]nta. [---]in[c]umbite u[m 1. c[o]ndo[ ]i .[p]enuar[. ]. ut p(er)eat in die[2. in foco[ 3. -bus uir[   ] (Signa magica) [ ]. imp(er)at uobis Abrax[as e]um sau[cies   ]  IACBEBRARUM SOLOMON 4. exi e[

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Ancient Magic and the Supernatural

5. (Signa magica) ](Signa magica) ] (Signa magica) 6. (Signa magica) ] u imperat tibi 7. ABL[ATANABLA] (Signa magica) ]ia[ ]dep(r{a}e)cor uestra(m) uirtu[8. -tem[   ]ut eum[pe]ssime p(er)datis iam iam 9. cit[o cito ] (Signa magica) [ ] (leer) Translation: 1. I hide him (?) --- put him 2. into the fire --- the head of the supply, in order he may die 3. within [. . .] days --- Abraxas gives you the command 4. go out --- in order you shall hurt him . . . IACBEBRARUM SOLOMON 5. (Signa magica) 6. (Signa magica) --- he commands you 7. Abla[tanabla] --- I implore your virtue 8. --- to destroy him badly, soon, soon 9. quickly [quickly]

The starting point of the text is the malediction of the victim whose name, however, is lost in a lacuna of the tablet. His punishment should be death by fire

Figure 2.2  Inv. 475564. Abraxas inscription. Courtesy of the Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di Roma (Museo delle Terme di Diocleziano).

Gods and Demons in Texts

27

within few days. After the magic signs of line 3, a new part of the text begins with the words: imperat vobis Abraxas. From this we may conclude that either the author of the curse or a priest commissioned by him – because a priest was considered to have special power – acts as a transmitter of Abraxas’ orders to some divine beings who can certainly be identified with the nymphs of the sanctuary. Up to now we did not know any other defixion text in which the author transfers the order ‘kill the victim’ from a higher divine power to minor demons who have to obey him.8 This order is repeated in line 6 of this text, but because there only one person is addressed, it might well be Anna Perenna herself, the local deity, but, as in all the other texts found here, her name is lacking. After thorough research of all the inscriptions of this place it seems that she was indeed not the addressee of the magic actions, but the oriental gods and demons for whom this hidden place was founded. What Abraxas orders the nymphs to do is certainly some injury, which was specified in the following words. The letters ]um sau[ lead to no other conjecture than ut e]um sau[cietis ‘in order you shall hurt him’. So we may assume that the nymphs were ordered to hurt the victim via a bloody wound. The following words are magic formulas often repeated in the same or slightly differing form. They do not have any literal meaning, but rather only serve to reinforce the magic power of the defixion text. The series of magic signs filling line 5 and the first part of line 6 announce the beginning of the third part of this defixion text. Now the addressee of the command is only a single person (line 6 tibi) who, within the context of the sanctuary was supposed to be only Anna Perenna herself. But the next word at the beginning of line 7 abla[tanabla (as in inv. 475555) is a holy formula in which only oriental gods are invoked. So the subject of the clause is not Anna, but Abraxas, who indeed in the final sentence implores the power (uirtutem) of the nymphs to destroy the victim as early as possible. The end of the text is signalled by another magic sign. Now let’s turn to another object of the materia magica found in the bottom of the basin. In the innermost beakers of seven of the nine sets, magic puppets were found, made of clay or white beeswax or other organic substances. Most of them are formed around a small bone that serves as a sort of skeleton for the fragile material. Such puppets were already well known from literary sources like Theocrit (Id. 2 Φαρμακεύτριαι ‘The poisoners’) and Horace (Epod. 17.77; Sat. 1.8.41–45). But the piece found in the nymphaeum of Anna Perenna (inv. 475542, see Figure 2.3) is the only one made of wax that has been found outside Egypt. It is a human figure of about 7.3 cm in height, formed roughly of white wax, and

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Ancient Magic and the Supernatural

very well preserved within the beaker. Only the arms are broken, and the surface of the wax is coloured black by the oxidation of the surrounding lead. The head, with its eyes, nose and mouth, the arms, the belly, the legs, the back and the buttocks are distinctly formed and engraved. This figure certainly symbolizes the

Figure 2.3  Inv. 475542. Wax puppet of Petronius Cornigus. Courtesy of the Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di Roma (Museo delle Terme di Diocleziano).

Gods and Demons in Texts

29

cursed person, because his name is written beneath the neck and on the chest in cursive letters about 3 mm high: Petronius Cornigus. The cognomen ‘Cornigus’ is repeated on the left side of the body. But the other letters engraved on the belly and the legs are only partially intelligible. Some of them look like Greek letters, and if my reading δ. ειξω εγω is right, they would mean that the author of the text says that he is going to denounce the person Cornigus, but in the context of a defixion we would rather expect a word meaning the banning or binding of the victim (e.g. καταδέω). The remaining six to eight letters written on the legs are magic letters without literal meaning. Names, words and magic letters are certainly important elements of the defixion, but they are completed by a series of strokes, like crosses with ring-­shaped endings, and figures like chandeliers. So this figure, which is only one part of a magic ensemble, presents itself as a collection of graphic instruments of magic. Another figure, found in the beaker set inv. 475549, shows even more elements of magic. It is a female figure, made of an organic material, which lies backwards on an oblong leaden shell. On the body of the woman a snake-­like monster is biting the face of the victim. Both figures are pierced by two nails fixing them both on the leaden shell, which means the symbolic manifestation of the defixion rite. I think this is the most awful symbol of ancient magic. It is, however, only the central part of the leaden beaker set which shows the complete devices of magic including the invocation of the helpful demon. The exterior beaker was in no way engraved by letters, signs or symbols; covered by a flat lid and sealed with resin, it served only to protect the magic message against other people’s eyes. Only the innermost beaker shows the design of a human figure as well as three short texts. The male figure bears a sort of cap or helmet. On the upper part of his body some curved lines are engraved, which cannot be identified with certainty as his ribs or as rings of a cuirass, but despite this the figure got the nickname ‘gladiator’. But because the cursed person represented by the puppet is a woman, the figure could only be the god invoked for the defixion, i.e. the Egyptian god Seth mentioned in the text on the left side of the figure: 1. SETE 2. MNU 3. Σ 4. Θ

SETE is the vocative form of his name, MNU is one of the ceremonial names of himself or his brother Osiris, and the letters ΣΘ probably mean the same name,

Ancient Magic and the Supernatural

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Seth, written without vowels. The two lines on the right side of the figure give us the name of the cursed person, but in the plural form: 5. DECEN 6. TIAS

We shall see that in the next text (inv. 475539) two women of the same name, but different cognates, are banned. The analysis of the components of the curse inscriptions shows that there were also graphic elements such as human or divine figures, magic letters and other symbols, along with literal ones such as the name of the victim and of the divine force invoked, various invocation formulas for the punishment the victim should suffer and the wish for quick execution. But the series of the components is not always complete, and the elements vary considerably in length and form. The beaker set inv. 475539 contains an almost complete series of components: a magic drawing, magic letters and formulas and an explicit curse text. It is of special interest because of the order of these components. Obviously it represents a process developing from merely graphic signs to general magic expressions and reaches its summit in a literally explicit text. The exterior beaker of this set, which was covered by a conic lid crowned by a ball, does not bear any graphic signs. On the outer side of the middle beaker we find only magic ring-­letters serving to initiate the magic process, but not yet containing any individual information or wishes. So ancient magic uses written signs without loading them with literal meaning, but adding special graphic elements, such as the ring-­ shaped endings which change them from regular letters to magic instruments. Finally, on the side of the innermost beaker the magic force is initiated by a drawing and a magic formula. The figure of a cock signifies the mighty oriental demon Abraxas, and the mysterious formula ΑΒΛΑΝΑΘΑΝΑΛΒΑ written in Greek letters is an invocation of his magic power. But the picture of the god invoked and his magic formula are only the beginning of the special curse text which is nearly hidden on the round bottom of this beaker (diameter 5.4 cm). The inscription is engraved in circular form, beginning on the border and proceeding just to the centre of it (see Figure 2.4). Circular inscriptions were one of the many graphic methods of ancient magic. The letters are carefully written in later Roman cursive script of about the end of the third or the beginning of the fourth century ce, which contains majuscule letters as well as minuscule ones and a lot of ligatures. On the border of the bottom we read: ‘Quirinus Pistor, Auctulus Quirius, qui natus est de equi[ . . . De]centia Seberi’. From the beginning of the second line down to the centre of the bottom we read: ‘Decentia [C]omeronis ues[ --- ]

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Figure 2.4  Inv. 475539. Defixion of Quirinus Pistor. Courtesy of the Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di Roma (Museo delle Terme di Diocleziano).

sa[ --- ]tam nocturnas quam diernas. iam iam, cito cito, modo modo’. The translation is: ‘Quirinus Pistor, Auctulus Quirius, the son of Equi[ . . . De]centia, the wife (or daughter) of Severus, Decentia, the daughter of [C]omero, [shall suffer fever] by night as well as by day. Soon, soon, quick, quick, now, now.’ It was difficult to decipher the text because the alloy of about a quarter of the bottom was resistant to carving the letters. But where they are plainly legible we find three or four male names, the second of them with that of the mother, as usual in the textual world of magic. Two of them are called Decentia, one of them with a male name added, either that of her father or of her husband or lover. The two or three victims of the curse are to suffer a disease by night and day, which probably means a heavy fever as in other defixion texts,9 and the author of the curse adds three pairs of adverbs underlining the immediate effectiveness of the curse. So the text identifies the targets of the curse and the means of the punishment and expresses the wish for quick fulfilment of the defixion, but it does not explain the reason for the writer’s anger nor give his name, because by being present in the sanctuary during the ceremony, the helpful demon could know precisely who spoke or wrote down the wish – in this case I do not think he suppressed his name for fear of being punished himself, because the place of the inscription was

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sufficiently hidden inside the beaker set. But we also have to note that in this text the name of the demon implored is missing, probably because it was named in the oral parts of the defixion ceremony. Obviously there was no ritual formulary necessary for every petitioner – or should we suppose the practitioners of curses were not bound to follow the instructions of omniscient priests or sorcerers or even of professional scribes? Even if the lead beakers were produced by skilled craftsmen, the petitioners seem to have been free to formulate their own wishes and to write them down by themselves. All components, however, belonging to the defixion rituals are found on the extraordinarily well preserved tablet inv. 475567 (see Figure 2.5). Although its dimensions are very small, measuring 7 to 7.5 cm with letters only 1 or 1.5 mm

Figure 2.5  Inv. 475567. Defixion of Sura. Courtesy of the Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di Roma (Museo delle Terme di Diocleziano).

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high, the text is perfectly legible in all parts – or at least for those using a binocular microscope with focused light! But the drawings as well as the text itself present a series of problems in their interpretation, which only recently have been resolved. The disposition of the graphic and textual components shows that the writer at first designed the central lozenge with the human figure, a head with four upstanding hairs or rays, the eyes wide open and a violin-­shaped body without arms and legs. For a long time nobody could tell what this enigmatic figure meant. Marina Piranomonte at first proposed the suggestive identification with Anna Perenna, the local deity, and found some parallels in other defixion tablets showing Osiris or his wicked brother Seth, or other infernal demons surrounded by square or rectangular frames.10 The figure with bristled hair might be compared to the Egyptian demon Bes, represented in one of the Greek magic papyri.11 However, E. Gradvohl, a Hungarian gynaecologist and wife of the historian György Németh, found a new interpretation by comparing numerous magic gems which show engravings of the uterus. So the figure means a foetus just leaving the uterus, and the lozenge represents the vulva. We shall see that this interpretation finds a direct connection to the defixion text. But let us look at the other drawings. On both sides of the lozenge two snake-­ like figures with big eyes and round tails form something like an oval. Two of them look upwards, turning their mouths or beaks to each other; only the left one bears something like a brush on its back and the letters X and Q on its body. The heads of the other two snakes are turned downwards. Bearing curved lines on their bodies which may indicate scales, they are characterized as snakes in the same way as on some other tablets found at the same and other locations in Rome. It is by their figures and by their ornamental arrangement that the animals are to be understood as magic symbols for the demonic powers of the netherworld. The third component of the magic formula are the big ‘holy letters’ (ἅγιοι χαρακτῆρες), five of which are drawn on top and seven at the bottom of the tablet. These drawings look like letters or letter-­like forms, but due to the little rings at the endings of the strokes they can be interpreted not as regular letters and words, but as symbols meaning only the reinforcement of the magic power of the defixion object. The last component is the curse text itself, which the writer inserted only with difficulty between the vertical strokes. The alphabet is the late Roman cursive with its typical ligatures of the letters e with r or s. The shape of the s is a narrow vertical hook; the r has nearly the same shape, differing from the s only by a small hook at the upper end of the second line. The letter a mostly shows an open

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curve and can sometimes be mistaken for the u. At the end of a line or section of the text the writer likes to lengthen the end of the a with a certain swing, thus revealing his competence in writing. The late Roman cursive, especially when written in tiny letters 1 to 1.5 mm high, surely is the alphabet of those who wrote on a regular basis and possessed considerable literacy. The text starts at the upper margin of the tablet with two long lines, followed by three shorter lines at the right side of the four magic ring-­letters. The following four short lines were obviously squeezed in between the magic drawings and the vertical strokes. The letters of the last line of the block were spread in order to signal the end of this part of the text. The next block of text consisting of the last seven lines is placed beneath the lozenge. The whole text runs as follows:   1. sacras san(c)tas ku(m) supteris et angilis a[. . .] quod   2. rogo et peto magnam uirtutem uestram:   3. tollatis pertolla{e}tis   4. oculus siue dextrum et   5. sinestru(m) Surae, qui nat(us)   6. maledicta modo e de uulua.   7. fiat rogo et peto   8. magnam uirtu  9. tem uestra(m). 10. tollite oculus 11. dextru(m) sinestru(m), 12. ne possit dura13. re uirtus arbitri 14. Surae, qui natu(s) 15. est de uulua 16. maledicta. Translation: The sacred and holy (nymphs) with the infernal gods and the messengers: what I wish and demand from your great virtue: take the eyes and take them completely away, the right or the left one, of Sura, who lately was born from a cursed vulva. I wish and demand from your great virtue it shall happen: take the eyes, the right and the left one, in order that the virtue of Sura the judge may not persist, who was born from a cursed vulva.

At the beginning of the text some female deities are invoked in a ceremonial process. Most likely, they are the nymphs of the sanctuary, because two of the

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inscriptions of the nymphaeum are also dedicated to them with the formulas: sacratis nymphis and sanctas nymphas. They certainly also include Anna Perenna, but, as noted, she is nowhere invoked by her name. As inhabitants of the spring, the nymphs belonged to the netherworld and therefore were regarded with awe. The angili invoked together with them are not the angels of the Christian religion but holy messengers conveying messages and commands between the celestial and the infernal gods and even between them and human petitioners, as certainly in this case and in other Roman defixion tablets where they are also invoked together with the nymphs. The form of the malediction resembles those of religious prayers with the reduplication of the terms of demanding, the invocation of the divine force and the reduplication of the aim, the taking away of the eyes of the victim and the exact indication of the right and the left one, and finally the name of the victim and that of his mother. There are some other maledictions of eyes in defixion tablets, but only within longer catalogues of parts of the body to be cursed. Only here we find a malediction directed exclusively against the eyes. And in this case this was vital for the author, since he repeated it in the second section of the text and by the words dextru and sinestru written above the round figures which fill the space between the four animals and the vertical strokes and also seem to symbolize eyes. But there are two other enigmatic words written beneath the two roughly scratched round figures – which will be explained later on. The rest of the text and its relation to the drawings will finally explain the reason for the ‘ban’ of the eyes. Sura, the name of the victim, is common in inscriptions of the late Republic and the early Principate, and as in other curse formulas it is linked to the name of his mother, but here twice in an extremely vulgar way: ‘who lately was born from a cursed vulva’. The first part of the curse ends with the demand fiat rogo and the repetition of the invocation of the divine force of the nymphs. But then, beneath the lozenge, the curse is repeated with an important supplement revealing its reason and aim (ll. 9–11): tollite oculus (=oculos) dextru sinestru, ne possit durare virtus arbitri Surae, qui natus est de vulva maledicta. The reason for this crude, as well as obscene, term can be found in the term arbiter which described his profession and cannot be part of his name. Arbiter is a juridical term, meaning not the extra judicial arbitrator chosen by both parties of a legal contest, but the assistant to the judge, charged with the technical preparation of the process, the inquisition of the facts of the case and the execution of the judgement.12 Therefore the reason for the ‘ban’ of his eyes may have been that Sura, acting as an examining magistrate, had probably seen something unfavourable or even dangerous for

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one of the parties. So the punishment for his disadvantageous eagerness should be to be blinded by the nymphs. If this interpretation is correct, the ‘ban’ belongs to the genre of defixion texts called tabulae iudiciariae by Audollent and the sub-­ genre of the prayers for justice described by H. Versnel13 – even if some of its essentials are missing here: the name of the petitioner, the wish for justice and the justification of the ‘ban’. Therefore we should also take into consideration that the text contains a so-­called ‘pre-­emptive strike’ formulated to prevent an investigation by Sura. Finally, we turn to the two enigmatic words engraved beneath the symbols of the eyes: blobes and irilesus. Though they cannot be interpreted as Greek or Latin words, they certainly had a magic meaning. Among the hundreds of magic words and formulas documented by the Papyri Graecae Magicae, the Papyri Demoticae and the so-­called Sethianic tablets found at Rome, there is nothing to be compared to these words. So I asked three experts of Egyptology and Coptology, Ursula Verhoeven-­van Elsbergen (Mainz), Sebastian Richter (Leipzig) and Heinz J. Thissen (Köln), who in spite of being very sceptical about the possibility of interpreting magic formulas, agreed that blobes is Coptic and means either ‘the great eye of Bes’ or ‘Baal [and] Bes’. In Egyptian religion an ugly demon, called Bes or Besas, was worshipped as a beneficent or prophetic power.14 In our case, he is certainly invoked as an assistant of the defixion. Irilesus, the three experts proposed, is an Egyptian word composed of the two roots for ‘eye’ and ‘tongue’. Again the link between the word and the contents of the text is obvious: the eye is cursed in order to see nothing, so that Sura will not to be able to tell anything to the court. Now we see that all the components of the curse tablet are coherent parts of the defixion: the drawings and the two sections of the text and the single words aiming a fatal blow on Sura, who because of his youth and eagerness is mocked as a lately-­born baby. So the tablet bears a sophisticated composition of text, drawings, signs and magic words of foreign origin: a complex magic entity rarely found on other lead tablets. The aim of this paper was to illustrate the complex components of ancient magic covering oral and non-­oral actions, objects and graphic documents. But only the offerings consisting of non-perishable material and the components engraved in lead are preserved. The analysis of the materia magica which was found in the nymphaeum of Anna Perenna shows that the graphic and textual methods of the defixiones were various and that they did not follow fixed schemes. Their components are pictures or symbols of demons and of the targets of the curse, magic signs and letters, magic formulas, and finally the defixion

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texts, which also contain highly variable patterns: the invocations of demonic forces, the reasons of the ‘ban’, and the way of revenge. These components are either separated from each other or juxtaposed or interspersed. In the more complex objects they follow a development starting with graphic signs of an unspecified magic meaning and gradually proceed to individual details of the defixion. The authors and the scribes – often being the same people – did not only belong to the lower strata of society with limited skills for composing texts and writing letters, but were also men and women of a certain education who could compose complex texts and write them down fluently and with a certain elegance of letter form. This is the reason why most of the texts are written with individual phrases and do not show fixed forms of drawings, or turns of phrase.

3

Imaging Magic, Imaging Thinking: The Transmission of Greek Drama from Sophocles to Crimp Lorna Hardwick

This discussion is framed by two axes in the representation and hermeneutics of magic.1 The first is a ‘horizontal’ axis, in which magic and its cognates figure at a range of points along the spectrum of knowledge, science (including both physical and mental processes), emotions, agency and ethics. The relationship between those can be examined through examples drawn from text, ideas and visual culture. The shaping aspects may reconfigure in different contexts of creation and reception, and I suggest that these also need to be situated in relation to behavioural, psychological and intellectual norms. This kind of investigation draws out ways in which visual and verbal (including ekphrasis) is embedded in the processes of communication, association, reasoning and affective response. The examples on which I focus highlight the key role of magic in providing a bridge between material and metaphorical ways of representing and exploring human relationships with the wider environment. The second, or vertical, axis to the paper examines how the subsequent receptions of such images of magic and their variations have been enmeshed in the sometimes contentious relationships between aesthetic energy and historical and cultural contexts. Such relationships have frequently obscured or repressed the importance of images of magic in the construction of ancient conceptions of epistemology, agency and ethics. I suggest that re-­examination of the ancient aesthetics and contexts can offer valuable critical perspectives on later receptions and on the shifts in transmission patterns that underlie them, as well as on the associated patterns of thought. At the end of the essay I comment briefly on how these aspects of classical texts are being related to therapy and ‘alternative’ sources of insight in modern theatrical and therapeutic practices in relation to the ancient world.

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To probe the full potential of these issues would require a substantial study drawing on a range of examples. However, to give sufficient indication in a short paper of the ways in which ‘imaging magic’ is an important strand when texts are transplanted from one context to another requires a balance between the detailed treatment possible in a case study and the need to provide a framework that enables further questions to be investigated. Here, the aim is for the discussion of particular texts and performances to contribute to comparative analysis, especially in transhistorical and cross-­cultural spheres, with the theatrical, epistemological and ethical roles of magic as the hub. This discussion focuses initially on Sophocles’ Trachiniae in the hope that some of the points will be transferable to other contexts and so provide a stimulus for debate. I have chosen this example not just because it relates myth, art and drama within antiquity but also because it throws out hints about the hermeneutics of reception, including the subtle processes involved in repression and in making prominent. The aspect I shall focus on is the (in Sophocles, inadvertently) poisoned robe sent to Heracles as a love-­charm by Deianeira, in order to win him back. The visual and the verbal images associated with this mythical narrative have become iconic. The visual and the verbal share elements of ambivalence and fluidity that make them a fertile subject for remaking in various kinds of artistic and performance reception. A good example of this can be seen in a red figure vase, currently in the British Museum (Vase E 370). This is an Attic red-­figured pelike dating from c. 430 bce, height 14.6 cm, and excavated in Nola. The nude Heracles is seen receiving the poisoned robe from a figure that is probably Lichas. Also portrayed is a figure dressed in the same manner as Lichas but with long hair looped up and held with a fillet wound round it. This may be Deianeira. Nevertheless, opinions vary on the reading of the scene. Carpenter, for example, captions the figure handing over the robe as Deianeira.2 This has implications for the attribution of agency and responsibility. I do not, however, suggest that the image is directly related to a fifth-­century production of Sophocles’ play. The date of the play is, in any case, problematic. It is possibly among Sophocles’ earlier plays, along with Ajax and Antigone, and may date from the earlier part of the period between 457 and 430.3 Furthermore, as Oliver Taplin has argued, in common with many examples of visual art, it is hard to link the scenes on painted pottery directly with performances of individual plays.4 Nevertheless, the image contributes to the establishment of some important points. Firstly, the dynamics of the myth were well known in the fifth century bce as a subject for artistic representation. That the myth and this particular topos were culturally well embedded over a substantial period of

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time is also shown by the many literary references that can also be identified from pre-­fifth century and post-­fifth century bce texts (for example Hes., Cat. Mul. fr. 25; Bacch., Od. 16, and subsequently Diod. Sic. 4.38; Apollod. 2.7.5–8; Ov., Met. 9.101–133, Her. 9; Sen., Herc. Oeet.). Secondly, the evidence from painted pottery shows that in the fifth century bce the poisoned robe had a significant association with Heracles that enabled it to be shown alongside the lionskin, the emblem of his warrior status.5 Interestingly in the scene depicted on the Attic red-­figure pelike, in order to take the robe, he has had to drop the club, the emblem of physical strength and violence with which he is usually depicted as having killed the centaur Nessos who was trying to rape Deianeira (Nessos was, of course, the source of the potion; Sophocles has Heracles killing Nessos with an arrow). The vase scene thus has a transactional focus in a design that is both physical and metaphorical in its hermeneutic and creative resonances. It establishes a very early basis for the importance of the visual representation of the accoutrements associated with the myth (the club, the robe) and the way in which their presence, absence or marginalization can shift the emphasis in interpretation, not just of the sequence of events in the myth but also, significantly, of the attributes and agency of particular characters. The (poisoned) robe is set in opposition to the violence and power of Heracles’ exploits and weapons. This is also the case when the play or its adaptation is presented on stage. Those resonances inform the second part of my paper which turns to Sophocles’ play and will focus on the nature of the poison, the reasons for its importance in the dramatic structure and ethical dimension of the play, and the effects on how the complexities of the myth and its perspectives on agency might be understood. That in turn will provide a framework for the third section of the paper in which I will look at how these aspects are treated in a modern adaptation.

Sophocles’ Trachiniae In her commentary on Sophocles’ play, Pat Easterling has commented on how: For the modern producer Trachiniae presents a particular challenge. Deianeira is one of the most sympathetic characters in Greek tragedy and one of the easiest to render in the modern naturalistic manner, Heracles is perhaps the most baffling. The Exodos can all too easily seem a tasteless anti-­ climax to a moving private tragedy; but the text demands that Heracles be presented as a highly significant public person and any production that seeks to do justice to the text must somehow bring this out.6

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The dramatist’s deployment of the formal conventions of the play and its structural unity are key aspects in bringing about this impression of the public significance, not only of Heracles’ actions but also of the problematic causes and manner of his downfall. One of the most significant features is that messenger-­ function narratives are given by several different characters and each relates to a different structural feature of the play and thus to the build-­up of multiple perspectives on Heracles’ situation. For example, Lichas (e.g. at ll. 248–290) fills in the background to Heracles’ successful military campaign and his enslavement of the women of the conquered city. Captives are a visible proof of victory and a convention of warfare in antiquity. However, Lichas’ speech also shows some unease about the justice of Heracles’ attack on the city and introduces a degree of ambiguity between Heracles’ supposed and actual motivations. This is amplified later, at ll. 351–358, when it is the messenger who says that Eros alone of the gods bewitched Heracles. Most important of all, however, is the underlying blame that is attributed to the gods (whether the unspecific Zeus or Eros) for Heracles’ actions. The effect of this, as Felix Budelmann points out, is to exculpate Heracles.7 However, as Budelmann’s further exploration of the issue makes clear, allusion to Zeus is itself problematic because Zeus has so many different aspects and personae that he can be cited in a general way in almost any situation – as the father of Heracles, as ruler of the gods, as Zeus xenios. Budelmann comments that he finds this unattractive for two reasons: ‘not only because it is a denial of human responsibility but also because it is a refusal to look for precise explanations’.8 This problem intensifies for spectators, directors and adapters of modern performances where issues of responsibility in tragedy have to be addressed in a framework that no longer assumes that the gods represented in myth and tragedy are central agents in the religious, ethical and psychological world-­view. In tragedy agon scenes, legal language and references to divine agency are all part of the exploration of issues of responsibility.9 These have their own historic specificity but their formulation in the narratives and structures also contributes to the transhistorical force and challenges presented in and through the plays and to problems of interpretation and of performance on the modern stage. In Sophocles, Deianeira’s role bridges the ‘naturalistic’ representation of emotions identified by Easterling and the move to the extra-­natural means of dealing with them. Deianeira’s speech to the Chorus, at ll. 531–587, testifies to her attitude to the captive girl: ‘For I have taken in the maiden – but I think she is no maiden but taken by him – as a captain takes on a cargo, a merchandise that does outrage to my feelings.’10 She then describes how she will use the potion that

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Nessus gave her: ‘it shall be a charm for the mind of Heracles, so that he shall never more see and love another woman instead of you’. She wants to overcome by spells and charms the influence that she thinks the girl exerts on Heracles; that is the reason why Lichas is to take care that no one else puts on the robe or even sees it. The robe is given a religious significance, for Heracles is to appear to the gods as a new sacrificer, wearing a new robe. Only gradually, in ll. 672–720, are doubts articulated. They creep in through an image of material but mysterious effects when Deianeira describes the robe’s destructive impact on the wool with which she rubbed it. Once those doubts are insinuated, her motives and her moral position begin, like those of Heracles, to be questioned and contaminated. Hyllus at ll. 749–806 provides the narrative and emotional testimony on his father’s suffering, caused by the poisoned robe, and on his insistence on being brought home. When Hyllus not only provides this information but also interprets it, telling his mother that she has killed his father, this leads to her suicide – what Goldhill describes as ‘a family’s killing words’.11 Then a further messenger-­figure, the Nurse, gives the news of Deianeira’s suicide (ll. 900–942); she has killed herself not by means normally associated with women such as hanging with a cord, but with the phallic emblem the sword, an ironic twist on the motivation for her gift of the robe to Heracles, which signified an effort to charm him to return to their relationship.12 All these messenger-­figures speak at key points of development in successive phases in the move from a supposed lusis (release) from the constrained narrative situations in which they find themselves. However, the move instead takes them further towards disaster, a failure of human control and understanding.13 Thus readers and spectators learn to distrust the surface interpretations of these messages. Finally – and this is one aspect of Easterling’s point about Heracles as a public figure – the procession in the exodus refines Heracles’ painful return home. Easterling points out how ‘this is very different from the kind of procession we were encouraged to expect earlier in the play (e.g. ll. 181–186, 640–646). The triumphal homecoming is replaced by a silent and solemn entry (ll. 965–967); Heracles must be either dead already or asleep, exhausted by the agonies of torture he has been suffering in the poisoned robe’.14 The processions with which the exodus begins and ends enact images of the transformation of Heracles. At the end of the play he is awake, goes to his death in a specially prescribed ceremony on the pyre on Mount Oeta and displays heroic endurance.15 In the context of the fifth century bce, there is a possible link with the origins of a contemporary cult which would, as Easterling suggests, have formed a link between the world of the drama and that of the audience.16 The relationship

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between the internal and external worlds of the performance is shaped by the interaction between the formal and verbal triggers set in place by the dramatist, the specificities of performance created by the actors and Chorus (including music, movement and costume, set and setting) and the lived experience, insights and emotions contributed by the spectators. All of these are shaped by contingencies and underlie the ephemerality of performance and the difficulties in speculating about its effects.17 Whether the ancient audiences would have made a further link between contemporary cult and Heracles’ apotheosis would doubtless depend on their religious orientation and on the intensity generated by the performance.18 The end of the play comes to be dominated by the brutal but ultimately exalted figure of Heracles, and the contrast between the contested models of human aspirations and actions represented by Heracles and Deianeira hangs over the play and over its subsequent adaptations.19 The question of the apotheosis of Heracles in Sophocles’ play has been much disputed, especially in its relationship to the myth tradition and to the provisionality of the play’s outcome and readers’ and spectators’ responses to it.20 If Heracles’ apotheosis rather than his death is accepted, this would resolve to some degree the problems associated with his status as a responsible moral agent because it would reassimilate him to the divine sphere, taking him across the unstable margin that separates his human and his divine affiliations. Nevertheless, the bulk of the play has presented a rather different contrast, between Heracles’ association with, on the one hand, the mythical world of multiform river gods and centaurs and, on the other hand, the oikos sphere of private sensibilities and relationships to which Deianeira aspires.21 The play has also laid bare Heracles’ refusal of introspection; his lack of concern with knowledge and motivation underlies the rage and brutality of his killing of Lichas, in which he pays no attention to whether Lichas was culpable.22 If Heracles’ status as a public figure continues to be accepted, then his pre- and post-exodos statuses continue to be closely related and in the ethical and civic spheres of both Athenian and postAthenian cultures cannot simply be resolved by an apotheosis. In both the ancient play and its modern realizations there is a tension in the world of the play between how Heracles behaves and how he is regarded. As Michael Silk has put it: ‘In his brutality, the Sophoclean Heracles embodies a model of life which, by any human standard, must seem repellent; yet the devotion he inspires in his son and wife, who are the chief victims of his repellent behaviour, seems to place him in some kind of ideal, supra-­human plane beyond judgement’.23 It is the oath imposed by Heracles on Hyllus, who invokes Zeus as witness (ll. 1181– 1190), that carries the force that overcomes the young man’s revulsion at Heracles’

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commands to carry him to the mountain and heal his body by setting it alight.24 Just as we cannot be sure that the anticipated apotheosis does come, so the question of how and on what grounds Heracles might be judged is left open. He is a figure of greatness who resists integration into the ‘civilized’ society that his Labours have helped to create. Yet in the play those achievements are subordinate to other actions that depict him in a violent and cruel light. His downfall, and paradoxically his liberation, are brought about by his wife’s attempt to resolve those tensions through magic.

Martin Crimp’s Cruel and Tender (2004) I now look at how the author of a new play based on the Sophocles dealt with these imperatives of form and structure, how Heracles’ status as a public figure was delineated and problematized, and how issues of agency and responsibility were addressed in a very different cultural context. This modern adaptation is Martin Crimp’s Cruel and Tender, which is based on Sophocles’ Trachiniae and was directed by Luc Bondy. In the subsequent German language production the title was inverted to Sanft und Grausam. The London production in June 2004 perhaps marked the tail-­end of a period when (as the theatre critic Michael Billington put it) ‘everyone involved in the current Greek revivals sees the plays as topical works rather than cultural artefacts. Martin Crimp’s Cruel and Tender is set in a world where cities are pulverised, liberators turn aggressors and violence is expediently justified . . .’25 Billington was quite specific on the resonances for Western audiences, ‘where does theatre instinctively turn in times of crisis? Not to Shakespeare or Shaw but to the Greeks . . . what these revivals all have in common is that they are a direct response to the Iraq war’. As a partial challenge to this claim, I will suggest that it is actually possible to ‘read’ this adaptation in different ways. Its different levels of communication and engagement, not just with Sophocles’ text but also with the modern contexts of staging, language and audience reception suggest to me that Crimp’s play sits on the cusp between the use of Greek drama to work out modern crises and the use of modern drama to connect with the transhistorical questions posed by the Greek. The means and manner in which Crimp responds to and reworks the role and nature of magic in the Sophocles play is central to this crux. A textual analysis by Pat Easterling considered how closely Crimp’s text, which was subtitled ‘after Sophocles’ Trachiniae’, related to the Sophocles.26 She found a high level of textual correspondences and many direct allusions, even in the freer

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passages. Easterling identified two particularly difficult challenges in moving the play transhistorically and transculturally: how to deal with the poisoned blood of Nessos and how to deal with Heracles’ relationship with Zeus.27 Formally, Crimp’s adaptation kept most of the ‘messenger’ techniques of Sophocles and this puts a different gloss on the apparently anachronistic elements associated with the modern setting. Thus the anachronisms were not necessarily un-Sophoclean in their genesis and in their effects. Here are a few of the most important:

The ambiguities of terror Amelia: [sc. the Deianeira figure] Because my husband [sc. the General] is sent out On one operation after another With the aim – the apparent aim – Of eradicating terror: not understanding That the more he fights terror The more he creates terror – and even invites terror – who has no eyelids – Into his own bed. And now those operations are over Instead of being respected for having risked his life Time and time and time again He is accused of war crimes.28

Gods and politicians In Crimp’s play, the ‘General’ (the Heracles figure) is represented as, in part, a tool of politicians (not of the gods). There are twentieth-­century resonances in his claim that a plea that he was following orders allows him to deny responsibility for atrocities. There are many twentieth-­century examples of such appeals, most notably in the defence cases put forward by some of the accused in the postWorld War II Nuremberg trials of members of the Nazi regime and more recently by participants on all sides in conflicts in the Balkans, Iraq, Ireland and Israel. General: And I will explain into the microphones that my labours are at an end that what I have done is what I was instructed to do and what I was instructed to do was to extract terror like a tooth from its own stinking gums.

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I will explain from my own carefully prepared notes and meticulous diaries.29

Magic and science In Crimp’s play Nessos was represented as a scientific nerd, working on chemical weapons. Amelia (Deianeira) recounts how at the research ‘facility’ he gave her a glass tube the size of a pen-­top. Amelia thinks that Nessos’ potion is a peace charm (as opposed to the love charm in Sophocles). This is an important conjunction as it makes explicit her understanding that violence must cease if he is to return to her (cf. the iconography of the Attic RF pelike discussed above). In Crimp, the potion is in a test-­tube, referred to by Nessos as ‘my baby’ (a play on the associations between test-­tube babies and modern medical science). This culturally-­specific image also digs behind the Sophocles text to draw out the link between modern associations and the Greek myth which Sophocles adapted. The sperm forms part of the myth but is not alluded to in Sophocles so there is a triangular relationship between the myth, Sophocles’ play and Crimp’s adaptation. Amelia says that Nessos told her: that this chemical his baby took the will to fight out of a soldier by making the soldier yearn for a safe place making him feel the need for a safe place an absolute need for the love and the reassurance of the person he was closest to.30

There is a dramatic irony in the words, an irony derived from the Greek play in which Heracles compels Hyllus to have him carried to refuge on the mountain that is sacred to Zeus, his own father, where his body is to be burned. There is also paradox in both plays in Deianeira/Amelia’s attempts to use magic to pin down Heracles and produce a more certain future in the face of uncertainty and unpredictability.

The General’s exodos In the Crimp play the General’s exodos is not a triumphant progress towards apotheosis but rather a journey to his trial for war crimes – a trial that is inevitable

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once he has been dumped by the politicians, as the government minister Jonathan puts it: a man, as I’ve explained to you, whose independent – and I stress this – whose completely independent actions have placed my government in a very delicate position. There were moments when I even started to believe that indiscriminate murder – General – had been my own policy . . . Crimes against humanity.31

The exodos sequence in Crimp follows the dynamics of the Sophocles in that it leaves a question mark over the fate of the General. Was he going to face trial or be operated on for his medical condition? His son, James, was heard off stage ‘They’re cutting into him’, resonating with the General’s claim that ‘I am not the criminal but the sacrifice’.32 The aporia at the end of the play also raises questions about agency, moral responsibility and about who would have the knowledge and the authority to pass judgement, both within the world of the play itself and in the world of the performance and its spectators.

The Chorus as commentator At the end of Sophocles’ play the Chorus has the last (and in tragedy often platitudinous) word. The Chorus leader is warned about the effect of the terrible events they have witnessed and the suffering is attributed to the agency of Zeus (line 1278). Although allusion to Zeus as the controller of human affairs was traditional, the name of Zeus is particularly prominent in the play.33 However, in Crimp’s adaptation, the Chorus’ group identity is broken up into individual roles for a housekeeper, a physiotherapist and a beautician, plus recordings of Billie Holiday songs. Crimp is on record as believing that contemporary audiences find the Greek Chorus a difficult concept: ‘I do think there is an issue about choruses. And I think it is to do with the society we live in, because I think we live in a society of individual units . . . because of the psychological, cultural change that is taking place, I am just saying that a chorus is quite hard to energise now.”34 Crimp’s strategy was to domesticate the function of the Chorus, both in the characterization of individual members and in their contribution to the reflective aspects of the play. However, that strategy eventually proved inadequate. Thus at the end of the play, he had to introduce Laela (the Iole figure) and present her as reading haltingly but aloud from the book she had been trying to master earlier in the play. The passages she reads are about generational relationships and the destruction of people and cities. She declines the suggestion from the other

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women that she should help them clear up the mess, responding – ‘That is your job’.35 That comment presents an ironic comment on the atomized society implied by the break-­up of the Chorus into the activities represented by the three women.

Audience response It is not only the cultural knowledge but also the life experiences that spectators bring to the play that shape their responses to and interpretation of the ‘triggers’ embedded by the authors to vitalize their engagement with the performance. A graphic recent example of the variation in responses by different audiences to the ‘same’ production occurred during the production’s international tour in 2004. The London audiences had been captivated by the dynamics of the production and especially the performance of Joe Dixon as the General (Heracles was not named). He somehow conveyed to them the tragedy of a man who set out to cleanse the world of war and terror and ended up accused of war crimes, sacrificed as a scapegoat to save the politicians and dying from a debilitating illness. Although in many respects Crimp’s published text follows the pattern and themes of the Sophocles closely, the differences are significant in their effects. Luc Bondy’s production concept deployed these important changes from the Sophocles to change the register and provoke spectator response. In Trachiniae, Iole, the captive brought back by Heracles, never speaks. Her equivalent in Crimp’s play, Laela, is given a scene in which she develops a role that is far from regal and far from what might be expected of a victim of war. She renounces her family for taking food from the people, yet is represented as herself out to get what she can, luxuriating in the same beauty treatments as does Amelia (Deianeira), immersed in women’s magazines, wanting the General to buy her dresses and claiming status as a second wife (‘a man can have two wives under one blanket’).36 The ironic, even comic, aspects of this were maximized by the performance style and the spectators at the Young Vic theatre in London laughed heartily, only momentarily silenced by Laela’s insistence that the child must have guns (‘Boys must kill – must learn to kill’). The ways in which Laela’s suffering was marginalized served to promote the audience’s empathy for the General and the resulting transfer of blame away from the military and onto the politicians seemed a sentiment in accord with the response of liberals in Western Europe to the impact of the invasion of Iraq.

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However, when the production toured to the theatre festival in Zagreb in Croatia (part of the former Yugoslavia, viciously war-­torn in the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s), there was a very different reaction to this aspect of the play from some of the spectators. The academic and theatre critic Sanja Nikcevic responded vigorously: she [sc. Iole/Laela] as a victim does not appear to suffer even though the General killed not only her father but her whole town – he destroyed her whole world and she even doesn’t think about that. I do not want to enter into the psychology of rape and sexual relationships, but even if she was fascinated by the General, he destroyed her world, yet now she is represented as thinking about a dress from a catalogue. So we have here a representation of a victim as stupid, one that is fascinated by the destroyer and happy to get out from her world because in another world you can buy a dress from a catalogue. And this is not criticism of a consumers’ society, this is showing that the victim is consumer and not human . . . This kind of writing makes me angry. The worst is that Bondy and Crimp present themselves as if they are writing in favour of the victims and against conquerors, as if they are socially aware. But what they are actually showing is that victims are stupid and bestial, without feelings . . . to present issues like this is perfidy, wrapped in their social awareness and big festival productions and working almost on a subconscious level . . . And then the superficial journalists say that this is a response to a war situation . . .37

These contrasting responses to the production, and especially the implications for the transfer of the status of ‘victim’ from Laela to the General, point to a problematic relationship between theatrical and social experience. Nikcevic was not reacting to the differences between the Sophocles and Crimp texts (although she was well aware of those) but rather to the way in which the Laela scene was scripted and played for laughs. On the director’s and actors’ part this might of course have been a subtle exercise in prompting self-­reflection among the spectators (rather like comedians’ claims that their misogynistic jokes are ‘ironic’). However, whether or not that is the case, the interesting point is the different responses from the spectators in the different venues. This suggests that it is important to distinguish between different aspects of the cultural knowledge and lived experience that spectators bring to a production. These aspects in turn influence the ways in which performance can activate cultural or community memory. In the Balkan situation, Nikcevic might equally well have responded critically to the suggestion that ‘following orders’ could be used as a plea against

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taking responsibility for atrocities, a highlighting of the tension between individual responsibility and divine intervention that is crucial in the Sophocles. In the Crimp version it is precisely the presentation of the General as a ‘man of action’, manipulated by politicians, that result in his self-­image in his incantatory chant in the exodus ‘I will explain from my own carefully prepared notes/and meticulous diaries/o yes/o yes/ I am not the criminal but the sacrifice/ not the criminal but the sacrifice’.38 Easterling’s analysis of the ancient and modern texts compares this to the Sophoclean image of Heracles as the sacrificer who becomes the sacrifice (Tr. 608–613; 750–762; 1192–1202). The handcuffs placed on the General in Cruel and Tender39 may resonate with Heracles’ cry at Trachiniae 1260–1262, ‘O my stubborn soul give me a steel curb, like a clamp for stones, to suppress my cry’, but the advantage of hindsight also enables us to relate the image and the self-­ justification to the trials of Balkan war criminals at The Hague. The difficulties of coming to terms with the images of Heracles and the General as both heroes and victims is complicated by the fact that the modern adaptation leaves no place to the gods, whether as causes or as purifiers in Heracles’ problematic apotheosis. Their modern counterparts, the politicians in Crimp, provide some correspondences on the first count but not on the second since they are not held in the awe and respect that the ancient world largely had for the gods and they do not cauterize moral culpability, or even misfortune. The performance of Joe Dixon as the General in Cruel and Tender was so nuanced and stunning that sympathy for him as a virtually tragic figure was a dominant spectator response in the London run. In the closing sequence of the play he became a figure of dignity and of pathos, ravaged by psychological and physical suffering, linked up to tubes and catheters that were a visual reminder of the destructive force of Nessos’ scientific experiments. As the reviewer Nicholas de Jongh put it: ‘The evening is only saved by the late arrival of the marvellous Joe Dixon. His performance as the dying, bloodied General, possessed by rage, confusion and mania, lets the play take a high emotional wing. The ancient Greeks world and our own come to seem magically conjoined in the nemesis of the General’s last exit.’40

Conclusion In conclusion, I want to suggest that the metamorphosis of Crimp’s General into a kind of tragic hero represented in the 2004 play provides a strand in an

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embryonic shift in attitudes to the military that has been gathering momentum since. In spite of the public opposition to the invasion of Iraq (and to the mistreatment of civilians in occupied countries, whether Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan) there has also been a growing acceptance that troops in the field are brave people who are ‘carrying out orders’ and that the errors of judgement and the moral and war crimes are the responsibility of the politicians. The mental and physical injuries suffered by soldiers have led to a number of veterans’ programmes that draw on classical material, especially in the United States, where for example the Philoctetes project and Peter Meineck’s extensively publicly-­funded ‘Ancient Greeks/Modern Lives’ have had a national and international impact. Some of these programmes associated with Greek plays and with Homer are designed to be therapeutic for the veterans who participate. Others have more public outreach, with an emphasis on making American audiences ‘war literate’, in their understanding of war and its consequences, post-­ traumatic stress disorder and rehabilitation. Meineck’s project involves presentations and readings in many US cities, notably in public libraries.41 They use excerpts from the Iliad and tragedies to work with audiences of military veterans, their families and friends and other interested people, and adapt the philosophy of Augusto Boal to ‘create theatre that affects its audience, initiates debate and starts a spirited public conversation’. Meineck asks ‘Did Athenian drama originally function in the same way and provide a means of restoring citizen warriors to society by presenting themes that would resonate with the actual experiences of fighting men?”42 The title of Meineck’s 2009 Arion article ‘These Are Men Whose Minds the Dead Have Ravished’ adopts a metaphor more usually associated with the fate of the Women of Troy.43 The next phase of the project involves Herakles, a play on combat trauma and the community. These community programmes are complemented by an increasing scholarly interest in the capacity of Athenian war-­writing to communicate across the centuries – for example, Sara Monoson’s current work on ancient battle trauma includes an analysis of Socrates’ experiences and his daemon, while in a public lecture in Bristol in 2012 on the topic of the reception of Thucydides (June 2013), Professor Hunter J. Rawlings III spoke movingly of the effects on US senior officers (including his own son) who were on a staff officers’ training course during which they read Thucydides’ account of the sufferings of the Athenians in Sicily after the failure of the Sicilian expedition (Thuc., Books 6 and 7). Any fellow human being would welcome ways of enabling those traumatized by war to come to terms with their experiences. However, I do have some

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questions, questions which research over the next few years will need to address. What are the implications of the dramatist’s treatment of Heracles’ progress towards a possible apotheosis in Sophocles’ Trachiniae? Does its adaption by Crimp to expose the consequences of Deianeira’s (Amelia’s) peace aspirations and the virtual martyrdom of the General as he is dragged off to trial point to a cultural shift in attitudes to the military and the masculinities embodied in it? To what extent does the development in Crimp form a paradigmatic prelude to the activities of Meineck’s project and other programmes aimed at veterans?44 In helping us to frame that kind of question and develop responses to it, the cocktail of charms, potions, poisons, chemicals and the associated ambiguities of notions of gift and reciprocity, motivation and responsibility, both in the ancient play Trachiniae and its modern adaptation, are crucial. Furthermore, what happens if we accept Erika Fischer-Lichte’s argument that theatre performances are transformative for spectators as well as practitioners and that for transformation to occur liminality is an essential pre-­condition?45 In both Sophocles and Crimp, it is the visibly and audibly devastated body and mind of Heracles/the General that is physically and metaphorically the site on which transformation is contested and possibly achieved. The transition from Sophocles to Crimp is accompanied by a disruption of the textual body of the text. Are the processes and effects of those transformations – as de Jongh claims – themselves ‘magical’? How willing are we to face up to those challenges and to the implications for the ancient plays and for our own societies? Will the communities created in the place and space marked by theatre be able to extend outside it and communicated with one another? Paul Kottmann has suggested that Phrynichos’ play The Fall of Miletos was the first known example of ‘presentism’ as a defining force in spectator response. Herodotus (6.21) described the effect of the performance on the Athenian spectators and how their tears were provoked by the memory of the recent catastrophe. Kottmann argues that this response was not part of the play’s design nor anticipated by the author (who, after all, would not have wished to be fined) but rather that the lamentation was the result of  ‘a shared recollection of suffering that was their own – oikeia kaka . . . the play reminded them (anamnesanta) of what they already remembered’.46 Kottmann points out that Herodotus’ account of The Fall of Miletos does not describe or analyse the formal features of the play but focuses on its unique impact, activated by the spectator’s memories. There is a contrast here between, on the one hand, concepts of cultural memory as something that is constructed over time through nostalgia, representing longing for a particular view of a past that is problematic and can never be completely

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reconstructed and, on the other hand, a shared semi-­autobiographical memory that is realized through active affirmation and is activated rather than mediated by cultural forms. This kind of shared recollection is limited by time and place and the contingencies of the composition of particular spectator groups (which may well differ, as was the case on London and Zagreb). Such processes represent a particular kind of theatrical dynamics and as such are not only a useful pointer to the different kinds of spectator ‘participation’ in the construction of meaning but also provides an alternative way of characterizing the relationship between the experiences of ancient and modern spectators. Magic in Sophocles’ play and science in Crimp’s shade into one another. Both are used by human agents in attempts to shape human conduct and to secure a future that seems uncertain; to control and to know go together. However, the dynamics of the myth and of theatre result in uncertain endings to the plays and thus leave the way open for uncertain responses from the audiences. Both plays can be read and performed in terms of their historical contexts and beliefs but they are also open to transhistorical understanding because of their probing of causality and human vulnerability in ways that seem equally urgent to the Athenians of the fifth century bce and to audiences in post-­classical modernity. Magic provides a material and metaphorical nexus to that transformation.

4

Celtic Magic and Rituals in The War Lord (F. Schaffner, 1965) Domitilla Campanile

In the opening sequences of The War Lord, the audience is shown a small contingent of Norman knights hailing from afar as they make their way across a marsh, and then into a forest.1 Outlined against the horizon, a tower dominates the countryside. Many trees are sculpted in human form and from the oaks threatening figurines hang, along with multi-­coloured fluttering ribbons:2 all these elements reveal the pagan nature of the forest and identify it as a sacred and arcane place. The environment provokes a sensation of fear and unease in the visitors, and the knights immediately give voice to their impressions (at 3 mins 39 secs): ‘Queer, moody place’, and (at 5 mins 5 secs): ‘This place has the dimensions of heresy’. There will be no let-­up for the Normans from the sensation of unease and defamiliarization in a hostile environment: for the duration of events they are accompanied by feelings of discontent and boredom, which they attribute to a sort of bewitching power that the place appears to possess. The forest that we see at the beginning is the same one we see at the end; the same feeling of alarm we pick up on at the beginning will also be present at the end, just as the marsh symbolizes a negative emblem of inertia, and passivity is the first and last image shown to the viewer. Choosing to conclude the story in a circular fashion, and with a far gloomier tone compared to the beginning, is not only a successful rhetorical instance of ring composition, but also serves to show that in the universe (of the film) nothing changes, nothing can change, and that every attempt to change the power set-­up, or change the life associated with it, can only lead to tragedy. The effort on the part of those holding power to use it in a humane and rational manner is destined to fail, to damage both conquerors and conquered, just as the opposite type of behaviour – violent and crudely realistic – will not produce results that are any better. There are no solutions and even the prospect of happiness may show itself

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in the end to be an ill-­omened deception. The reason for this hopeless situation is made clear from the beginning: the invariable element of the equation is constituted by the fact of living in a cruel, feudal society that is rigidly structured and divided into blow-­in conquerors and downtrodden natives. If this fact cannot be altered, every effort to achieve a different kind of life will prove to be useless and counterproductive. Such a pessimistic and conflictive view of existence is expressed through a narrative and visual form that is original and gripping; the conflict between two religions – two ways of interpreting morality and the manner of worship – occupies a central place in the tale and it is precisely this aspect that makes the film deserving of attention. First of all, it is necessary to briefly outline the story. The film is based on Leslie Stevens’ play The Lovers, which opened at the Martin Beck Theatre in New York on 10 May 1956. However, the link between the two productions is slight. The film version presents a strong reworking, which impacts on the storyline. The film, directed by Franklin Schaffner, came out in American cinemas on 10 November 1965.3 Here is a summary of it.4 In the eleventh century, Chrysagon de la Crux (Charlton Heston), a warlord under the Duke of Normandy, his brother Draco (Guy Stockwell) and his companion Bors (Richard Boone) drive away the invading Frisians from a coastal town. Chrysagon, who is in charge of keeping order in the village, meets and becomes attracted to Bronwyn (Rosemary Forsyth), a young woman promised to Marc, the son of the village leader, Odins. Chrysagon takes advantage of his right to have wedding night privileges with the bride, and the two fall in love. When they refuse to part at dawn, Marc seeks revenge. He calls on the Frisians and informs them that the son of their king is being held prisoner in the tower. While the Frisians prepare for the attack, Draco rides for reinforcements and returns with the news that he is taking over his brother’s position. Realizing that he will not be able to maintain the support of the Normans as long as Chrysagon is still alive, Draco arranges a duel with his brother, but Draco himself is killed. Chrysagon then returns the young prince to the Frisians who agree to give sanctuary to Bronwyn, so that Chrysagon can go to the duke and ask for forgiveness. Suddenly Marc attacks the warlord and the film ends with the melancholy sight of the wounded Chrysagon and Bors heading off on horseback. It is essential to note here that the worship and health practices followed by the Celts – the population conquered by the new Norman conquerors – come in the form of a level of attention and degree of description that is much greater than anything reserved for the Christian religion of the Normans. The story also succeeds in avoiding any kind of facile opposition between Hugo de Bouillion,

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the Christian priest, and Odins, the village elder. If the Celtic religion and its rites are presented at the beginning as unsettling and alien to anyone who does not know them, it is also true that the more bloodthirsty and frightening aspects of the cult have been omitted. Aspects that could have been evoked or even filmed more directly as, for example, was done in The Wicker Man (R. Hardy, 1973); opportunely, they do not appear here.5 On the other hand, the choice of showing the knights when they are timorous and all too ready to see signs of satanic and heretical goings-­on in every pre-Christian ritual is a good one and the effect it creates is efficacious.6 However, the antagonism is in place right from the beginning and runs along two vectors: within the group of Normans, between the protagonist Chrysagon and his brother Draco; and without, again between Chrysagon and Odins. Odins is much more than the village elder, he is a druid who knows the legal formulae, he is an expert in medicine and plants, and as a leader and guide of his people he does not feel himself to be inferior to the new seigneur, to whom he makes his position quite clear, and with no sense of fear. After Chrysagon appears (having just saved them all from the Frisian invaders), the young Celts express their admiration for the new Norman seigneur, but Odins remarks that Chrysagon may well be the new Norman seigneur, but he does not possess power or dominion over stone or tree (at 11 mins 52 secs): ‘Our Lord, perhaps, but not our master. Nor master of stone, nor the tree.’ Knowledge and dominion over nature and hidden forces is reserved for him, Odins, and definitely not the conquerors. Immediately before this, when cross-­ examined by Chrysagon, Odins shows neither humility nor deference; he shows antagonism by assuming an aggressive tone and exhibiting a calculated level of reticence. The contrast between the two worlds, the more recent one of the Normans and the older one of the Celts, is not interpreted here only as a religious conflict, but rather as a clash between powers, social structures and different visions of the world. The Norman world is characterized by a rigid sense of order and strict hierarchies, unlike the more undifferentiated and egalitarian world of the Celts. In this regard, the characterization of Hugo de Bouillion, the Catholic priest, stands out. He is a transitional figure: the first time he appears is immediately after Odins, the village elder. However, instead of leading men who have fought, the priest protects and guides women and the old. When faced with the accusations by the Normans that the religion observed by the Celts is in actuality a diabolical cult, the priest immediately moves to defend them, by opposing the scorn the Normans show towards the natives. The fact that his flock continues to follow a pagan cult

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does not disturb the priest, who shows himself to be fatherly and understanding. The figure of this priest, one of the most humane and rational of the film, is really well put together; his name reveals him to be Norman, of the same line as the conquerors, but faith makes him closer to the inhabitants of the village that he guides and, in the end, he behaves with kind humanity towards Bronwyn. Furthermore, it should be noted that this character emerges by means of the reworking of the principal character in the play, The Lovers, on which the film is based. In the play, Grigoris is the brave monk who, at his own risk, investigates the reasons that led to the death of Chrysagon, Douane (Bronwyn in the film: many characters’ names were altered in the transition from stage to screen)7 and Marc. Despite being reduced in the film, the character of the priest retains its original features of humanity and understanding. A little after the first meeting, this time in the tower, faced with the dead body of the previous seigneur, the priest denies that the woman who died with this seigneur was a witch, while the Normans have immediately become caught up with fears and obsessions with witchcraft. We notice that the word ‘devil’ recurs obsessively throughout the film: the word ‘devil/devils’ is repeated twelve times; ‘witch/bewitched’, nine times; ‘spell’ three times. Chrysagon condemns the previous seigneur’s behaviour and is scornful of his actions,8 but in fact the fate of the dead lord of the castle presages his own end, since the despotic approach he adopts towards the villagers is not so dissimilar to that of his predecessor. Indeed the dead lord in the bed with the girl seems like an anticipatory vision of Chrysagon’s destiny; in this way a representation of the incompatibility of the Normans and the Celts is enacted in the most explicit manner: in a world marked by inequality, mutual attraction can only lead to destruction. Unlike the conventional representation of priests in so many films, Hugo de Bouillion is neither lascivious (like the bishop in Ladyhawke by R. Donner, 1985, another film with a wealth of magic and fairy tales) nor cowardly, underhand, scheming or an accomplice of the powerful. He is aware of his own and other people’s weaknesses, he tries to help without judging and he is sufficiently brave to stand up to the powerful and intercede on behalf of the Celts accused of poaching in a trial overseen by Chrysagon. This trial also provides a frame whereby the difference, and indeed antagonism, between the two brothers can emerge. While Chrysagon endeavours to be clement towards the locals, Draco is clearly scornful of them. Throughout the scene there are unsettling elements such as the tragically ironic exchange between Chrysagon and Draco when the

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former reacts to the latter with a phrase, the real and sinister meaning of which will only become clear later on.9 The only time the priest reacts with hostility towards the ancient customs happens when the Normans ask for an explanation of the practice and implementation of ius primae noctis. He knows what this practice is, but he rejects it indignantly and states that such a practice is not allowed by the Church, which condemns it as a heresy.10 Above all, when he fears that the knights want to commit sacrilege by claiming the girl during the ceremony in the church, he stands up to them and threatens them with excommunication. This constitutes the kernel of the film, a crucial narrative element and not, as in other films, a mere means for advancing the plotline. We are dealing here with the so-­called ius primae noctis, but it should be immediately clarified that this right never actually existed in the Middle Ages. It has been the subject of a powerful historiographical myth, whose fortune was, right from the beginning, due to the strongly polemical use that was made of it. During the second half of the nineteenth century, particularly in France, the debate on this right, and the Church’s perceived support of it, took on an extremely strong political connotation – pro- or anti-­religious – which was essential in the positive or negative representation of the Middle Ages.11 Without getting involved in the debate, it must be noted how this practice continues to dominate the reception of the Middle Ages, and is still perceived by broad groups as a historical fact and contributes to promulgating the series of images, ideas and conceptions we commonly have of the Middle Ages.12 With regard to its impact, the ius primae noctis has always been a powerful theme and greatly exploited in books, theatre, opera and the cinema13 for many reasons, not least because of the scope it gives for narrative development and the dynamic it provides for social, political and religious themes: the struggle against ius primae noctis can be metaphorically assimilated to that for liberty, individual rights, and even national independence or class struggle.14 However, this part of the plot undergoes a radical transformation in the transposition from stage to screen. In the film The War Lord, ius primae noctis is not introduced – unlike in the play – as a form of legalized rape, guaranteed by a feudal law. This law is completely unknown to the Norman conquerors, while the priest, even though he is aware of it, right from the outset is clearly against this practice, as I have just pointed out. Instead, in this place ius primae noctis is allowed and approved of by the Celtic religion and ancient pagan customs. Therefore, we are being presented here with an extremely interesting reconfiguration of the theme, because this alleged right is connected to the

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ancient religion and not to medieval feudal reality; it is explained by those who adopt it as a simplification and mitigation of sacrificial agrarian rites carried out to bring fertility to the fields. It is worth mentioning Odins’ lines (at 54 mins 31 secs): ‘Long before the Norman came, with his church and his tower, we worshipped at the stone and tree. And in the fields, we planted holy seeds. Then, as now, a virgin sacrifice was made for the fertility of our earth and the enrichment of our tribe.’ The choice of attributing ius primae noctis not to feudal uses, but to a previous pagan culture that predated not only the arrival of the Normans but also the Roman invasion carried out by Julius Caesar, therefore projecting the phenomenon into a remote Celtic past, is remarkable. The sense of interest increases when we remember that, while nothing substantiates the practice of ius primae noctis in the Celtic world, it is known that the Celts carried out human sacrifices and fertility rites in ancient times.15 This is a remarkable reinterpretation not only in terms of the plot of the film, but also in terms of cinematographic tradition concerning films set in the Middle Ages. The opposition between conquerors and conquered is played out here not only through a strong ethnic difference but also a religious one. The Normans are Christian: they pray, they make the sign of the Cross and they respect the priest. They seem untouched by anything different from the past,16 while the Celts, who are proud of their past independence, reverently and spiritedly conserve their traditions, continuing to worship in the ancient way because they believe the prosperity of the fields and the fortune of the tribe depend on it. While the split between Normans and Celts is expressed by means of the difference in beliefs, it must also be noted that the Christian religion and its rites seem – with the exception of the priest – to go only skin-­deep. Norman adherence to Christianity is linked more to a fear of the devil and hell than is the case with the Celtic religion. The difference in religion does not spur the Normans into taking repressive action; it does, however, encourage them to view the Celts as inferior, as ‘primitive subjects’, as little more than animals. I shall return on these themes at the end. The weakness of belief in the Christian faith becomes clear when the protagonist realizes that it is worth his while to use religion to achieve his aims; this occurs when his brother opens up the possibility of exploiting the rites to one’s own advantage. In an evocative sequence, choreographed in an extremely effective manner, we see the celebration of the pagan part of Bronwyn and Marc’s wedding. Immediately after this comes a frenzy of dances, with the participants wearing animal masks. Celebrating special occasions with feasts and processions

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made up of men and women wearing deer, fawn and bull masks and carrying out ritual dances was indeed a tradition in Celtic society.17 The aim of the sequence is to show the archaic playfulness of the ceremony and the Pan-­like joy of those taking part, while at the same time generating a sense of defamiliarization due to the strangeness of what is revealed through the frenzy of the ritual, which – to modern eyes – would be unusual in a wedding ceremony. The opposition between the two cultures and their mutual lack of understanding is underlined by the playful chaos and its brusque interruption caused by the Normans arriving to claim the girl and ius primae noctis on behalf of the Norman seigneur. This contrast is accentuated by the different colours of the two groups’ clothing, as well as the military rigidity of one group when compared to the disarray of the other. Odins accedes to the Norman seigneur’s request and seems satisfied with it, because in this way the Christian Normans have had to seek his permission and will have to grant a number of requests connected to the concession of ius primae noctis. In this way they have implicitly acknowledged the value of the ancient religion and its rituals. This, at least, is what Odins believes, because the ritual is twisted and trodden on as soon as Chrysagon, who has fallen in love with the girl, refuses to hand her back and reneges on the promise he made to Odins. In this way he has perverted the sacrificial sense of the practice and its overwhelmingly ritualistic character. The fact that, in the modern viewer’s eyes, the act of keeping the young girl, giving her his father’s ring, and considering her as a wife redeems the protagonist and puts him back in a positive light, only serves to underline the distance between modern sensibility and the representation of a pagan religion founded on respect due to precise sacred norms, which, if they are not observed, will destroy the social fabric. Neither is Chrysagon’s behaviour acceptable from a Christian point of view: his feelings for the girl lead him to violate, more or less voluntarily, almost all the Ten Commandments. His initial infatuation for the girl is explained by Bors by means of a sort of elementary demonological exegesis: the old gods have not completely disappeared, not all of them have wound up in hell; some continue to wander the earth disguised as young women in order to torment men and lead them to madness.18 This idea, that the hold Bronwyn has over Chrysagon depends on a love spell, and that the Norman seigneur has been bewitched by the girl, reappears several times and contributes to alienating Draco from his brother. It must also be said, however, that the whole film is permeated by the suggestion of arcane powers and the possibility that Odins and Bronwyn, who is

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his foster-­child and disciple in the sciences of nature, possess a different type of power. Already in the first encounter between Chrysagon and Bronwyn, the young girl appears before Chrysagon, emerging from the waters of the lake like a nymph, or a sort of Aphrodite. An alchemical equation is immediately established: Bronwyn is being linked to the element of water and the moon, while Chrysagon is clearly a solar being who enjoys the protection of the element of fire, as the symbol of the shining sun adorning his shield shows; this is particularly important since it is the first image we see of the protagonist at the beginning of the film. In the same way, towards the end (at 1 hr 35 mins), in a frenetic scene of fighting inside the castle, Chrysagon fights against his adversary within fire, but without injury; and at a crucial moment during the defence of the castle (1 hr 28 mins) when an anchor has to be retrieved from the moat, it is Bors who wades into the water, not Chrysagon. Moreover, the right of ius primae noctis is strictly limited to the time of a moon, i.e. at night, and the rising of the sun will be the signal of the end.19 Their union, which in an alchemical sense neutralizes the opposition fire/water and sun/moon, however, generates a heterogeneous amalgam and ends up by provoking the destruction of one of the elements in the combination. The alchemical features are underlined by means of a specific choice concerning the lighting of the scenes set in the chamber after the night spent together, giving rise to almost psychedelic-­like shades. The power that Bronwyn possesses to control animals appears in another key scene of the film: while the young girl is intent on gathering the herbs that Odins will use to heal his people, she is surprised by Chrysagon, who has followed her on horseback. The scene becomes an eloquent means of presenting the young girl as a vulnerable victim of the stronger male. She is stopped and questioned by Chrysagon, who wants to know what she is doing. He immediately accuses her of witchcraft, because Bronwyn has gathered poppies (Papaver somniferum) and purple foxglove (Digitalis purpurea),20 which are useful herbs for healing; she is also wearing mistletoe around her upper arm, and she states that the oak is a tree that is sacred to the gods. Chrysagon is struck once again by her beauty and attempts to assault her right under an oak tree but a flock of birds that had made their nest in the oak suddenly takes flight, frightening the knight. The viewer gets the distinct feeling that the birds have been summoned by Bronwyn in a trance-­like state in order to ward off Chrysagon’s assault. The scene serves to present another deliberate juxtaposition between the two worlds: that of the Celts and the Normans, and their different approaches to healing. A painful therapy, such as cauterization, has just been applied by Bors to Chrysagon in order to heal an infected wound on his shoulder. Cauterization is a process

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that the Normans have adopted, while the gathering and application of healing plants typical of the Celts seems to be a therapeutic approach that is more closely linked to nature, and therefore gentler and less invasive. The plants that Bronwyn gathers may indeed heal; but in high doses they can also lead to death. It is also true that the whole process is linked and guaranteed by faith, not in God, but in the gods, and everything is carried out under the protection of mistletoe and the oak.21 Once again the viewer finds himself having to take the possibility into account that the Normans’ fears may actually have some basis in reality: the life of these Celts may indeed be full of magic and arcane rituals, and the young girl, even against her own will, may have bound the knight to herself by means of bewitching powers. It may be that the region is an enchanted one, from which it is impossible to escape: the pagan past entraps anyone who enters it and an enchantment alters behaviour, bringing latent hatreds and repressed passions to the surface. The doubt remains for the viewer to decide whether Chrysagon contributed or not to his own downfall by exploiting the beliefs of the ancient religion through a betrayal of its precepts, or whether he has even been affected by the village’s curses.22 Furthermore, Bronwyn’s change in loyalty, the proof that she chooses to remain with Chrysagon in the tower and is not held there against her will, is symbolized by the elegant manner in which her hair is arranged and her new style of clothes: an eye-­catching low-­cut red gown, which is the colour of the Normans, but also a symbol of violence, passion and, naturally, adultery. An elderly woman in the village summoned to fetch her some food notices all this and silently expresses her scorn. Her own people, therefore, immediately perceive Bronwyn’s behaviour as a betrayal and the reaction is swift. In the forest, wedding images of Marc and Bronwyn hanging from the branches of the oak trees are replaced by a different, terrible doll-­like figure of Bronwyn pierced with pins. The return to a sense of otherness and barbarity in the unfolding of events therefore occurs also by means of the insertion of the theme of black magic and voodoo. The viewer is just as terrified as the protagonist when faced with this image; its purpose here is to underline the otherness of the pagan world and the inherent threat looming over anyone who betrays his origins. It must be remembered, however, that on a factual level – as opposed to the level of cinematographic creation – the practice of making cursed doll-­figurines was common in every age, and in particular in the classical world. Among the many cases, the first one that should be mentioned is that of Mainz (sanctuary of Isis and Mater Magna),23 and the recent discovery in Rome near the fountain

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of Anna Perenna (Piazza Euclide). Among the various magical artefacts conserved in a lead container was a waxen figurine with a nail through its abdomen.24 On an artistic level, however, I feel it is important to note that in stage or films the connection between voodoo and Celtic areas in the Middle Ages is not a new solution. Take, for instance, the significant sequence in Orson Welles’ film Macbeth (1948), where the three weird sisters are presented as druidic priestesses while fashioning a sort of voodoo doll for the purposes of witchcraft (at the very beginning: 1 min 15 secs).25 Here, then, I suggest some concluding observations. The film leaves its mark on account of its strongly anti-­conventional character, which is evident on a number of levels. The representation of the Christian religion and paganism is extremely original, as is the portrayal of the rituals and magic aspects of the Celtic religion. The characters also challenge the conventions and customs of their respective groups, as the plot suggests a tale set in a poverty-­stricken Middle Ages, bleak and violent, and therefore very different to the other cinematographic representations of the time; these portrayed the Middle Ages as adventurous, romantic and carefree. The lighting and the settings are also deliberately different to any previous productions. The point of view is less stable than one might think and often veers towards unsettling or disorientating effects, such as in the cauterizing scene previously mentioned, where the protagonist, who has been portrayed in a masculine position of dominance until that moment, is here shown to be passive and stripped of the attributes of his rank. Chrysagon then behaves like an antagonist: he is the victim of impulses that he cannot master, and puts passion before duty. Indeed, right from the beginning we are introduced to the intrinsic ambiguity of the story through a telltale use of colour: the fact that the protagonist mounts a black horse is a sign of this ambiguity, whether within the story, or whether within the character himself. Furthermore, the classic settings of medieval films are here lacking, when not actually reversed; there are no knightly tournaments, and any noble jousting is replaced by painful and mortal combat between the two brothers.26 The conventions and stereotypes that are typical of the genre are put on display, only to be immediately contradicted and overturned. The damsel in distress (who is not really such) is not saved by the knight in shining armour; actually, it is precisely the knight who represents the threat. And the help that arrives at the end, led by Draco, in fact constitutes a mortal danger for the protagonist.

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The plot therefore elaborates dynamics also focusing on ethnic differences between the two groups and the consequent cultural and religious differences. Above all, however, what emerges from this is the impossibility for the members of the two groups to have any kind of officially-­sanctioned stable love relationships. I feel that it is possible in this way to advance the idea that the state of the relationship between the black and white populations in the USA at the beginning of the 1960s represents a further backdrop to this film. It is well known that these problems are frequently evoked indirectly in Western cinema,27 but they are, I believe, also present in The War Lord. As well as the aforementioned dynamics, some interesting lines should be considered, such as the first contemptuous remark made by Chrysagon on seeing the Celts (at 13 mins): ‘They all look much alike to me’, or the outraged tone of his brother Draco, who exclaims (at 1hr 10 secs): ‘You cannot be a slave of a slave!’ when Chrysagon declares that he will not hand Bronwyn over because he is in love with her. Wounded by his father Odin’s accomodating behaviour when he tells him to ‘Bear it my son!’, Mark also replies: ‘Slaves have no sons!’ (at 1 hr 3 secs). Other lines can also be quoted, but it seems more useful to add that one of the most powerful themes of the film, the question of mixed marriages, still represented an explosive problem in the USA during the years when The War Lord was made. The famous court case Loving v. Virginia 388 was in fact taking place at this time. Only on 12 June 1967 did the Supreme Court of the USA hand down a sentence and, with a unanimous verdict, declare unconstitutional the laws of the State of Virginia against mixed marriages. In this way, an end was brought to any kind of limitation to marriage on a racial basis in the US.28 Among the various themes, therefore, those concerned with racial issues also play a part in the construction of the story, and are recognizable in the fabric of The War Lord. A few years after this, the same director and leading actor would tackle the same theme in an even more obvious way. In Planet of the Apes (1968), inequality, discrimination and racial inferiority are dealt with in a story that is no longer set in the past, but this time projected into a terrifying future.29 Finally, it is time to conclude in the hope that my article might be a spur to watching and appreciating The War Lord, a noteworthy and multi-­layered film.30

5

Witch, Sorceress, Enchantress: Magic and Women from the Ancient World to the Present Giovanna Rocca and Martina Treu

Introduction This paper has a dual focus: one, on the interconnections between the role of women in magical practice and the use of recurrent ‘magical instruments’;1 two, on some recurrent figurative expressions, like the metaphor of ‘binding’ in the ancient, medieval and modern European tradition. As a starting point, we take a look at the languages and archaeological remains of ancient defixiones. First of all, we will focus our attention on the theme of dualism of the symbols ‘magic thread’ and ‘writing activity’, and the connection between them.2 Our research will thus start from the texts, and in particular from those inscriptions and objects in which the threads, although thin, are the starting points. We will then turn to mythology, where women use those ‘magic threads’ in order to influence or manipulate people’s fates. We will conclude with a connection to folklore, with particular reference to the Grimm brothers’ fairy tales that play an important role in this process of reworking mythological and popular tales. As a final point, after having followed the ‘magical threads’ throughout the European Märchen tradition we will analyse the reception of these motifs in the film and animation industry.3

Women and magic threads As to the epigraphic dimension, I (GR) will take into consideration a class of inscriptions that gives us much information, i.e. the defixiones, curses inscribed on tablets of lead – although other materials are also possible – that respond to a difficult moment or a crisis, caused by a rival or an opponent.4 The inscribers

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of these objects sought to defigere, in Latin, or καταδέω (from which derives the Greek καταδεσμός) or καταγράφω, in Greek, that is ‘to nail, to tie or to curse’ their enemies to the infernal divinities’ will. The inscriptions that go back to the late imperial period are particularly significant because, thanks to their formulae, their characteres and their rules, together with the information we get from the magical papyri, they also offer us a glimpse of the verbal and factual ways in which everyday activities could have been approached: for instance, the legal, agonistic or amatory spheres. The verbs such as defigere, καταδέω or καταγράφω were used at the beginning of the formula and were at its heart: they imply the idea of ‘immobilizing’, ‘tying down’, or ‘chaining’ the opponent. They therefore do not mean ‘to destroy a rival’, at least at the beginning, but ‘to upturn’ or ‘to manipulate’ his fate by ‘knocking out’ his physical or psychological power for some time. One of the most common aims of the curse consists of keeping ineffective both the power of the word – with a particular reference to the tongue for legal activities – and the heart, respiratory and abdominal apparatuses as far as erotic activities are concerned, disarming the defictum for the benefit of the defigens (who considers himself to have been wronged by the defictum). In magical language, particularly in the Greek world, there is a considerable convergence of two verbs: on the one side the verb καταδέω ‘to immobilize’, ‘to tie strongly’ and on the other side the verb καταγράφω ‘to put down in writing’. The first verb represents the manual ritual of the ‘ligature’ inflicted on the target of the defixio, whereas the second one represents the concrete action of the ‘ligature’ in the symbolic act of writing. In the defixiones, the meanings of these two verbs can overlap in the written redaction of the text to indicate the action of ‘casting a spell on someone’. This also implies the knowledge that the magical praxis and ‘writing activity’ were interconnected.5 A magical text in the Gaulish language, carved in cursive Latin script on lead and discovered in Larzac, gives us the representation of a female world expressed by a congregation of witches and priestesses.6 This difficult text, probably a judicial defixio, seems to refer to a magical counter-­act directed to avert the spell made by an association of witches. Someone – we do not know whether a man or a woman – believes him- or herself to be the victim of a conspiracy plotted by a group of women. The victim puts the curse tablet in a tomb and addresses it to a goddess, Adsagona, hurling back to the women the evil deeds that were aimed against him or her. Another woman, Severa Tertionicna, is defined as a ‘writer’ (lidsati) and as a ‘binding woman’ (liciati-); she is also described as a sorceress and soothsayer (uidluias) and the women who have cast a spell (brictom) are named as ‘bewitched’ (brictas). The mentioned women are also referred to as

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matir ‘mother’, duxtir ‘daughter’ and dona (perhaps wet-­nurse?).7 M. Lejeune proposed to interpret these as special words related to a group where the ‘mother’ could be seen as the ‘teacher’ and the ‘daughter’ as the ‘pupil’.8 Some terms are quite interesting: licia-, epithet of Severa, is linked to the Latin licium (whose etymology is still uncertain), thanks to the analysis of a passage of the Fasti in which Ovid describes a scene of magic: ‘then she binds enchanted threads together with dark lead’.9 The word licia as synonym of ‘thread’ has two meanings: a real sense (the thread used for the magic ritual) and a metaphorical sense (the threads of destiny) and it constitutes a coupling with the magic activity of writing – that alludes to the process of carving on the lead foil – in the other epithet of Severa, Lidsatia. Licia is also attested in some passages dealing with magical rites in Virgil: ‘three threads here I first tie round thee marked with three different hues’,10 and in Ovid: ‘she knows well what the herb can do, what the thread set in motion by the whirling magic wheel’.11 It is also relevant to notice that the word licium is often used by the poets to describe the thread of the Parcae. In ancient Roman religion and myth, the Parcae were the female personifications of Destiny, who controlled the thread of life of every mortal or immortal from birth to death. Other defixiones bear, beside the actual curse, signs and symbols, or rough portraits of, or figurines representing the ‘cursed’ person. These so-­called ‘voodoo dolls’12 are anthropomorphic figurines representing the enemies transfixed with nails, with their limbs in an unnatural position, with or without sexual connotations. It is thus necessary, studying this class of materials, to consider the whole range of artefacts and archaeological sources and not just the epigraphic texts.13 The use of these artefacts is explained by the contemporary magical papyri: ‘Take a lead tablet, engrave on it the same formula, declaim it and tie this lamina to two figurines through a thread loom-­woven with 365 knots.’14 The figurines and the defixiones were used in the same magical rituals. The magic ceremony was characterized by a particular process in which the targets of the defixio were tied; sometimes there was a thread that tied their images, as can be seen in the drawing that adorns the text on the Sethianorum Tabellae where three ‘charioteers’, each one with their name, are represented with their feet and arms tightly tied.15 The magical rituals of the ligature are a constant theme in the classical world. This connection is stressed by the idea of magic technique as an art capable of closing or unbinding bonds.16 An Attic figurine presents upper and lower limbs tied with strips and other anepigraphic exemplars (dated to the fifth century bcE) were found in Athens and other places.17 An ensemble bought

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by the Louvre’s department of ‘Antiquités égyptiennes’, comprising a figurine with her arms tied behind her back, a leaden defixio and a container for both, closely mirrors the prescription reported on the papyrus mentioned above.18 Unfortunately, the figures found in the sanctuary of Isis and Magna Mater in Mainz have deteriorated but they can be associated with some defixiones and compared with the other discoveries in the fountain of Piazza Euclide in Rome, Anna Perenna’s place of worship.19 Many of the diverse objects that were found there can be linked to magical liturgies, and the most noteworthy are the eighteen lead and three earthenware jars. Six of the eighteen canisters contain crude figurines made of organic material like wax, flour and liquid substances such as milk; there are also two inscribed figures.20 The analyses performed on some fingerprints have shown a probable feminine provenance.21 Threads and weaving activities that intersect with human fate play a significant role in many literary traditions, and as West points out ‘these beliefs go back to the deepest level of Indo-European tradition’.22 The seiðr of the Germanic world is etymologically linked to some words which express the sense of the verb ‘to tie’: OE. sāda (rope), OHG. seita (rope, trap, string, snare), skt. sētu (link), Latv. saĩte from IE. *sē(i)- ‘to bind’.23 On a Hittite wooden board, two divinities, Isdustayas and Papayas, are described by an eagle questioned by the king in the following terms: ‘one keeps a distaff and both keep the spindles and the spinning of the king’s years’.24 According to West, while there are no spinster Fate-­goddesses in the Vedas, there are certain passages in which the continuity of human life is conceived as a drawn-­out thread or lengthening strip of fabric, as in ‘Who set the seed in him and said,/Still be the thread of life spun out?’.25 According to Germanic mythology, the Norns are present when ‘Borghild gave birth to Helgi, the magnanimous leader in the Bralund Caste’ in order to weave his fate: ‘Night fell on the place, the Norns came, Those who were to shape fate for the prince; They said the prince should be most famous, And that he’d be thought the best of the warriors. They twisted very strongly the strands of fate, . . . They prepared the golden thread and fastened it in the middle of the moon’s hall’.26

In the Ulster Cycle of Irish mythology, the prophetess Fedelm, whose name contains the root of the verb ‘to see’, declares while revealing her name: ‘and I weave the four provinces of Ireland together for the foray into Ulster’.27 Another Irish hero, Finn (protagonist of the Fenian Cycle), meets, together with two adventure mates, the Fate in the form of three spinning hags:

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moving about on the hill, they came upon the mouth of a great cavern, before which sat three hags of evil and revolting aspect. On three crooked sticks of holly they had twisted left-­handwise hanks of yarn, and were spinning with these when Finn and his followers arrived. To view them more closely the warriors drew near, when they found themselves suddenly entangled in strands of the yarn which the hags had spun about the place like the web of a spider, and deadly faintness and trembling came over them’.28

Also in Beowulf, the metaphor of the weaving of human fate left some traces, although with a Christianized tone: ‘But the Lord gave them a web of victory’.29 The most famous examples on the ‘thread of life’ in classic mythology are represented by the Moirae (Greek mythology) and the Parcae (Roman mythology). Homer, speaking of Odysseus, states: ‘But later he will suffer whatever Fate [αἶσα κατὰ Κλῶθές τε βαρεῖαι] spun for him with her thread at his birth, when his mother bore him’ and interrogating the shadow of Teiresias, Odysseus says: ‘Teiresias, of all this the gods [θεοί] themselves must have spun the thread’.30 In the Iliad the same expression is used: ‘Fate [Aἶ σα] spun for him at his birth, when his mother bore him’ or ‘On this wise for him did mighty Fate [Μοῖ ρα] spin with her thread at his birth’.31 Hesiod writes about ‘Clotho and Lachesis and Atropos, who give to mortal human beings both good and evil to have’ and who were imagined to be spinners.32 Ovid mentions ‘the Parcae, who spun the fatal thread, twice ordained for you, at your double birth’33 and Petronius ‘three Parcae, spinning their golden threads’.34 An overview on the symbolic meanings of spinning, the material for spinning and the results of this activity in the light of European, Slavic, Latvian and Lithuanian folklore shows us a spread of similar figures.35 Mencej argues that: in European traditional folk conceptions, spinning, and the material and products associated with it, refer to basic aspects of human existence, birth, fate and death. While unspun wool is related to the other world, spinning and thread refer to the world of the living, link this world and the otherworld, and allow the transition between the world of the living and that of the dead.36

The Grimm brothers,37 great experts in Germanic mythology, found in fairy tales some relics of this mythological symbolism. They reused it in a somewhat different context, but consistently within the mainstream of tradition. In the famous fable Die drei Spinnerinnen (nr. 14), it is impossible not to recognize the

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three Moirae’s work symbolized by emphasizing the parts of the body assigned to this activity: ‘these three women appear in the room: one has a grotesquely swollen foot; the second, a pendulous lip; the third, an overgrown thumb . . . the first Moira drew the thread and pressed the wheel, the second one dampened it and the third one bent it and beat with her finger on the table’. In Dornröschen (nr. 50), better known as ‘The Sleeping Beauty’, a spindle is the key element that will trigger a significant change in the fate of the king’s daughter, who was destined to a blissful life until a certain point: ‘in her fifteenth year, the princess shall prick herself with a spindle and shall fall down’. In Spindel, Weberschiffchen und Nadel (nr. 188), a girl whose parents had died, was raised by her godmother, who also died, leaving her the house and a spindle, a shuttle and a needle to earn her living. She did quite well at it. One day, a king’s son came looking for a bride. He wanted one who was at once the richest and the poorest. In this village, they pointed out the richest girl, and then the orphan girl. He rode by the richest girl, who bowed to him, but he rode on. He rode by the poorest girl, who was spinning. When she saw he was looking at her, she blushed and closed her eyes. He rode by. Then she remembered rhymes her godmother had used: Spindel, Spindel, geh du aus, bring den Freier in mein Haus. She set the spindle to guide the prince back by its golden thread, the shuttle to weave a path to her hut, and the needle to adorn the hut. When the prince returned, he said she was both the richest and the poorest, and married her. The spindle, shuttle and needle, that were instruments of the love conquest and responsible for changing the destiny of a poor girl into a queen, were kept in the royal treasury. In ‘Rumpelstilzchen’ (nr. 55) we find the same connection between fate and weaving activity, while in ‘Die faule Spinnerin’ (nr. 128) the moral is obvious: the woman who does not want to wire and deceive her husband is considered to be a really wicked witch.

Women’s tools and magic images from ancient theatre to cartoons We will now focus on the magic threads, images, crafts and objects which frequently appear in ancient cultures, as well as in the Indo-European myths and folk tales.38 In Greek theatre, as well as in its reception, we often encounter the patterns detected by Giovanna Rocca in the first part of this article: particularly those formulae – and the related acts – which may grant a woman revenge, benefits or

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other positive effects such as the seduction of a man, the recovery of an old love or the reconciliation of friends. As for gender, in all ancient literature, not only are professional witches more common than male magicians, but even the occasional use of magic in everyday life seems more frequently associated with women, rather than with men (this also happens in other symbolic domains such as dreams, which are basically a female affair since Homer’s Odyssey).39 Among tragic heroines who act in ‘magical’ ways, I (MT) start with Clytemnestra in Aeschylus’ Oresteia: certainly, there is some magic in how she plans her husband’s death, from the fire alarm system, to the red carpet, to the mysterious tool she uses to tie Agamemnon and kill him. This last object is mentioned many times by Orestes in Libation Bearers (980–1017), but in such ambiguous terms that it cannot be identified exactly: is it a web? Or a mantle?40 Moreover, after the double murder in Agamemnon, Clytemnestra defines herself a ‘Demon of Revenge’ (alàstor: Ag. 1501); she also evokes the Erinyes against her son, and she appears as a ghost in Eumenides, 94–116. Finally, the Erinyes, personifications of her curses, chase and bind Orestes with the spell of their words (Eum. 244–396).41 Some of these elements can be found, thereafter, in other revenge stories that also focus on ‘professional’ witches, as on women occasionally dealing with magic devices such as poisons, curses, ghosts and demons. Above all, magic is associated with sex and death. A sorceress may steal somebody else’s husband or man, and his wife may become a witch to get him back. In such cases, not only is the man normally excluded from magic in ancient myths, but he is usually the victim of the woman’s magic (a younger woman may also be concerned, as a rival). This archetype42 has indeed had a long life, from ancient myths to folk tales, and it survives in modern stories including those portrayed in movies and cartoons. Here, a sorceress or enchantress either comes from another land, or she lives far away on distant islands or coasts, where sailors are cast away, caught or trapped. She is dangerous, deadly and most of all ambiguous. She may be a hybrid herself or she may be able to change her shape: this last feature is shared by many witches of modern tales and cartoons, from Maleficent (Sleeping Beauty), to Madam Mim (Disney’s The Sword in the Stone, 1963), to Ursula the Witch (Disney’s The Little Mermaid, 1989): the mermaid herself is clearly a hybrid like ancient sirens (who are, in turn, dangerous enchantresses whose ‘magical’ songs capture sailors).43 In other cases, a sorceress may change someone else’s shape: the signs and the nature of this change may be somehow related to

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the victim’s personality. Metamorphosis and magic are not connected only to women, but also more generally to any stranger or outsider who may bring seduction, exotic fascination or mystery, be they a human or a god:44 these strangers belong to the same category of ‘otherness’ as women. Perhaps the most notorious example of a stranger in whose myth hybrid nature and magic play an important role is the enchantress Circe. She welcomes strangers to her luxurious island and turns them into beasts.45 And yet Circe helps Odysseus on many occasions, and she may even have acted as a wife. In fact, ambivalence is the key word for all these ancient myths: as Martin Winkler pointed out, in the Italian movie Ulysses by Camerini (1954), Circe is played by Silvana Mangano, the same actress who plays Penelope.46 The identification is also explicit in dramas such as Capitano Ulisse by Alberto Savinio (1925). The double woman Circe/Penelope is a good example of how ancient models may be employed in different ways. Sometimes ‘enchantress’ and ‘wife’ define themselves in mutual opposition, sometimes the distinction is not so clear, and wives are not at all as harmless as they may seem. The good wife Penelope has ambivalent wishes, if we judge by her most famous dream in Od. 19.535–572, in which her husband kills the rivals in the form of geese, and she cries.47 Another wife, Deianeira, in Sophocles’ tragedy Women of Trachis, longs for her husband and suffers for his absence and betrayal: she is comprehensibly jealous when he sends home a young lover as a booty of war.48 It is hard to believe that Deianeira simply makes a mistake when she sends her husband the shirt that will kill him. She has kept under her bed the blood of a monster that once tried to rape her, and which was therefore killed by her husband. Does she pretend it is a love philter? Or does she know in her heart that it is poison? In doubt, she uses it to taint her husband’s shirt: she will either get back her husband’s love, or she will have her revenge. (Personally, I believe that she wants her husband back and she wants him dead. Ambivalence is the key element, here, in my opinion.) However, apart from Deianeira’s thoughts, the interesting feature is that poisoned textiles are a relevant symbolic weapon in many myths and folk tales. As for their use, Deianeira is an ‘amateur’ compared to the professional witch-­wife, Medea.49 Medea plans her revenge carefully and she chooses her victims: first her rival, and secondly her husband. Jason, in fact, must live longer, in order to witness her revenge. Medea is the most complex representation of the ancient witch, whose features will recur many times afterwards in various forms. First of all, she is the niece of Circe, and she was herself a ‘foreign sorceress’ in her youth. In Colchis she is a priestess, and she practises magic for her people’s sake. Then, she falls in

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love with a stranger who wants to steal the family treasure (no wonder her father disapproves of their marriage). And yet she helps Jason with her magic weapons, otherwise he would have no chance of succeeding in the theft.50 In fact, Medea from now on will keep helping him, on the way back home and in their exile.51 A brilliant witch-­wife and a mediocre husband: a successful couple that survives still in our days. In modern times it is very easy to find examples of parallels. For example, in Bewitched, a TV sitcom that ran from 1964–1972 (and a movie by Nora Ephron, 2005), it would seem that the leading character Samantha is the most dangerous type of witch – one who brings magic into her own house and family. But, actually, the potentially dangerous ‘dark side’ of a witch-­wife is here neutralized: nobody knows that she is a witch, except her husband Darrin. He is a mediocre clerk: his life would be very dull indeed, and on many occasions he is at risk of losing his job, but for the help of his wife. Comfortingly, Samantha is not only a witch, but also a perfect housewife. Moreover, any possible wife/husband conflict is transferred to Samantha’s powerful mother, the witch Endora (not by chance, her role in both versions of Bewitched is played by a star: Agnes Moorhead in the sitcom, Shirley McLaine in the movie). She cannot understand why her daughter fell in love with such a husband, and cannot adjust to it. She frequently visits them, with other relatives, and she makes a perfect pair with Samantha as antagonist.52 Despite her presence, however, Darrin is happily married to a witch and he is the father of a little witch too; whereas in Greek myth, Jason is not so faithful, nor indeed so lucky. And yet he is the reason why Medea uses her magic resources and assembles a long list of victims: her brother Absyrtus, the king, Pelias, Jason’s young bride Glauce, and finally her own children, whom she kills as a final revenge against her husband.53 Changing the relationship between husband and wife seems to change the role of the witch, who, in modern versions, in complete opposition to the ancient model, is made ‘family friendly’. The relationship between witch and child is also an important one: we well know how many mothers or stepmothers harm, imprison or try to kill their children/stepchildren in all kinds of stories, from the Queen of the Night in Mozart’s Magic Flute (1791) to the female villains of ancient myths and modern folk tales. Among them, we may focus on the Witch-Queen in Snow White (1812) and similar tales (all classified as AT 709 in the Aarne Thompson Classification System).54 In the Grimms’ first printed version, the Queen is Snow White’s real mother. And in a previous version, she takes her daughter to pick flowers in the woods and abandons her there (later versions introduce a huntsman or servant who is supposed to kill the child). So, if Medea kills her young rival and her

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children, this mother kills her daughter who is also her rival. Other details of this folk tale may be compared to the ancient myths: for example the Queen’s motives – jealousy and revenge – and the magic weapons she uses against Snow White. Before the most famous of them, the apple of biblical memory, there are others: a bodice lace, which she pulls so tight that the girl can’t breathe (again the binding, so frequent in defixiones too) and a poisoned comb (it reminds us of the coronet which Medea sends as a deadly gift to Glauce).55 But one important detail is changed: the men’s role is marginal compared to that which they play in the ancient myths. The magic is not used by a woman to seduce a stranger, or to punish an unfaithful husband, nor even to kill his new wife or children. The magic is used here for a conflict between two women: mother and daughter. This motif is incredibly successful in reception. Websites dedicated to Snow White show a huge number of occurrences in all media: dramas (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, play produced by Winthrop Ames, Broadway 1912), silent films ( USA 1916), movies and videogames, cartoons and comics.56 Among the oldest versions, we may cite a cartoon starring Betty Boop (1933) and the more famous Disney animated movie (1937) featuring a very German queen, Grimhilde (prototypes for her include actresses such as Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich, and the statue of Uta von Ballenstedt at Naumburg Cathedral).57 On screen, the queen is very appealing at the present time and, like many other witches, offers a great role for actresses. In two separate movies (both 2012) she is played respectively by Julia Roberts and Charlize Theron, in both cases eclipsing the young Snow White.58 Another example is a TV show, Once Upon a Time (2011), where folk tales are mixed with modern stories, old and new characters interact, and past and present twist together: here, Snow White is supported by a daughter in order to counterbalance their antagonist, the evil queen, who clearly plays a leading role. In all these cases, the main goal of screenwriters and directors seems to be to play with the folk tale stereotypes, so that the queen appears more and more fascinating or funny, and the princess is not simply singing and doing housework like Disney’s Snow White. These changes are part of an evolution in the reception of the ancient motifs reflecting improvements in women’s conditions at work and in everyday life. In other words, the changes visible in the representation of witches – traditionally ambiguous and dangerous figures – may be seen as a testament to a new appreciation of women’s roles in family and in society. This can be observed in all media, but animated movies seem to me to be particularly significant. In 2010, Disney produced another movie after a Grimm tale, Rapunzel (1812), titled Tangled. Here the witch Mother Gothel steals a baby princess from her

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parents and sucks up her beauty in order to stay forever young and pretty. I find it very significant that she pretends to be her mother and to keep her safe from the outside world, for her own sake, by locking her alone in a tower to do housework. Rapunzel escapes to the real world, with the aid of a marginal man who is not the classic prince. Her story seems to me to be representative of women’s emancipation in current society, and particularly in the animation world. Here, female characters have long been stereotyped into two main categories, wicked witches and good girls, whose main dreams are marriage and family.59 The slow evolution of such stereotypes began with ‘cartoon ladies’ such as Ariel (The Little Mermaid, 1989), Mulan (Mulan, 1998), Fiona (Shrek, 2001), E.V.E. (Wall-­e, 2008) and Merida (Brave, 2012). The latter was the first movie released by Pixar with a female leading role; moreover, it was produced by a woman, Katherine Sarafian, and co-­written by two women, Irene Mecchi and Brenda Chapman.60 Brave received many awards, including the Academy Award, Bafta and Golden Globe for Best Animated Film, and other specific awards for the female characters, granted by organizations such as the Women Film Critics Circle or the Alliance of Women Film Journalists. In Brave, we can see some effects of the process we suggested above, which brought interesting changes to the ancient models: the figure of the old witch, separated from the queen/mother, becomes here a funny and clumsy helper of the leading character; second, the young princess repeatedly argues with parents about her own role and about the marriage they arranged for her; third, in a key scene, the mother ties her daughter up with a corset and a too-­tight dress (this is binding again) and covers Merida’s red curly hair with a white cap, which symbolizes constraint (and yet, a red curl will finally escape, on her forehead). After mother and daughter are reconciled, in the final scene of the movie, the former’s hair will be significantly loose, as she rides with Merida, without any prince or husband on screen. Unlike Circe or Medea, the girl of Brave does not meet any ‘tall, dark stranger’. She does not help any Odysseus, nor Jason, to go home. This time, there is no great man in front of a great woman, be it witch or princess: there are just two women, mother and daughter. Once the role of women changed, the image of the witch changed too: a free woman (like Merida in Brave) does not need to bewitch anybody.

6

Circe Diva: The Reception of Circe in the Baroque Opera (seventeenth century) Pepa Castillo Pascual

In the seventeenth century, opera and theatre taken from classical mythology, from the novels of knights and fairy tales, was very popular, stories where the magical and the fantastic played an important role. In this context, Homer, Aeschylus, Euripides, Ovid or Virgil offered stories which were very much in keeping with the taste of the time, littered as they were with fabulous creatures and terrifying apparitions in a fantastic environment: components very appropriate in designing a dazzling baroque scenography. Furthermore, myths such as Orpheus, the sorceresses Medea and Circe, the heroes Hercules and Theseus, Iphigenia or Orestes pursued by the Erinyes, survived because they served to express the new moral and political concepts of the baroque.1 This was the fate of Circe, ‘the fearful goddess with a human voice’,2 who lived on the island of Aeaea surrounded by docile lions and wolves. The animals were men which she had transformed by using her powers of sorcery. She was the daughter of Helios and the nymph Perse;3 she was the sister of Pasiphae and Aeëtes, the king of Colchis and therefore the aunt of Medea, who was another great Greek sorceress. The aim of this contribution is to reinterpretate Circe’s role on the baroque stage in the seventeenth century. To achieve this purpose, I have chosen two plays performed in honour of Philip IV of Spain (1605–1665): a semi-­opera or a ‘mythological play with music’ written by Pedro Calderón de la Barca, El mayor encanto, amor (Love, the Greatest Enchantment), which was performed in Madrid in the summer of 1635; and the first Italian opera, Ulisse all’isola di Circe (Odysseus on Circe’s Island), which was premiered in Brussels in 1650. First of all, I will discuss the role of Circe in classical sources, in order to establish what type of Circe the playwrights and librettists of the seventeenth century inherited.

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Circe in the Greco-Latin sources Homer, Virgil and Ovid are the three poets of antiquity who offer the best and most detailed image of Circe, and are the quarry from which writers and artists extracted the plots for their work. In the tenth book of the Odyssey, Homer tells us how Odysseus and his men reach Aeaea, the island ruled by Circe, after escaping from the land of the Laestrygonians.4 Once there and after having rested and eaten, Odysseus gathers his men together and organizes them into two groups to explore the island, because, from a vantage point on a hill, he has seen smoke far off in the distance. Fate determines that the group which is under Eurylochus’ control is the first to undertake the journey. In a forest clearing, they find Circe’s palace surrounded by docile lions and wolves, which are men formerly bewitched by the sorceress. The beasts do no not attack them, but rather they gather round them wagging their long tails. Then, the group of men hear the sweet voice of Circe singing inside the palace as she works before her loom. They all start shouting, calling her, so she comes out and invites them to enter her palace. Eurylochus is the only one who stays outside because he thinks it is a trick. The sorceress is very kind to her guests: she offers them a drink made with cheese, barley meal and yellow honey stirred into Pramnian wine containing a drug which will make them lose all memories of home. Once they have drunk the potion, she takes her magic wand and strikes each man, transforming him into a pig. She then pens them in pigsties. Eurylochus returns quickly to the ship and tells the others what has happened at Circe’s palace. Then Odysseus takes his sword and his bow and makes his way to the sorceress’s palace. On the way, he meets Hermes who provides him with a remedial potion against Circe’s magic and some valuable advice. Thanks to the messenger of the gods, Odysseus defeats Circe and frees his companions. However, they do not go back home, but remain with her on the island for one year. After this time, Odysseus’ companions want to return to Ithaca, so the Greek hero reminds Circe of her promise that she would help him return home. The goddess is not opposed to his desires, indeed she announces another adventure in his journey home: the journey to the western edge of the world to summon the spirit of Tiresias who will advise him on how to appease the gods in order to return to his homeland. Circe gives Odysseus exact instructions of what has to be done and the animals which they must sacrifice to summon the dead. Even now, Circe’s help is not over: when Odysseus and his companions return from this meeting with the dead, they stop again at her island and the

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goddess brings them food supplies onto the ship. There, she tells Odysseus how to defend himself from the singing of the sirens and from the dangers of Scylla and Charybdis, which are the following stages of his journey home.5 Homer’s Circe is neither a sorceress nor a witch, but ‘a fearful goddess with a human voice’6 who lives in a palace ‘built of polished stone’, where she sings, weaves and entertains her guests as a perfect hostess.7 However, she is a dual goddess because in addition to this human behaviour, Circe is a part of wild nature: she dominates the magical arts with which she can transform men into animals, and she is a ‘Lady of the Beasts’ capable of showing a lustful sensuality which is almost savage. She is also an ambiguous goddess. On the one hand, she is cruel because she converts Odysseus’ men into animals and tries to do the same to him.8 On the other hand, she is friendly and helpful because it is thanks to her that Odysseus returns to Ithaca. In Homer, Circe is a ‘goddess between the goddesses’ who takes pity on the hardships suffered by the Greek hero. Furthermore, she is not opposed to Odysseus returning to Ithaca, as she does not want him to stay in her palace against his will.9 In Virgil’s work, Circe appears in the seventh book of the Aeneid, when, after having buried his nursemaid Cajeta, Aeneas sails along the cost of Italy. Then, he navigates near Circe’s island and from the ship he can hear ‘the roars of lions that refuse the chain, the grunts of bristled boars, and groans of bears, and herds of howling wolves’ all of whom were the men that the dreadful Circe had enchanted with her foul potions.10 So that Aeneas and his men do not ‘anchor there on that destroying shore’, Neptune ‘filled their sails with winds of power, and sped them on in safety past the perils of that sea’.11 Later, Virgil tells us how Circe, mad with jealousy, uses her golden wand and a potent poison to transform Picus into a bird with dappled wings.12 Virgil’s Circe, as in Homer’s, has some traits of humanity, for example she floods the forest with her singing, burns fragrant branches of cedar in her palace and weaves delicate fabrics. Nevertheless, she is also the sinister Lady of the Beasts who, with her poisons, transforms men into animals thus stultifying them. In Virgil, the friendly and helpful goddess who helps Odysseus to return to Ithaca has disappeared. In Ovid, the cruel character of Circe is more defined. The poet narrates three episodes in which the protagonist is Circe. The first one is the history of Glaucus who asks Circe for a potion to make Scylla fall in love with him. However, the daughter of Helios falls in love with him instead and tries to convince him to despise the one that has despised him and stay with her. Glaucus rejects Circe and in revenge she poisons the pool where Scylla is bathing, transforming her

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into a terrible monster with twelve feet and six heads.13 Further, the poet relates the story of Macareus, who is an old travelling companion of Odysseus. The story is about his transformation into a pig and how he recovers his human form later on thanks to the divine help which Odysseus receives.14 Macareus himself also recounts the story of Picus.15 In the Ovidian narration, Circe is beautiful, richly clad and lives in a sumptuous palace of marble halls yet she is also a fearful sorceress who is both vindictive and jealous. From her throne, she watches how Nereids and Nymphs select and arrange herbs into baskets, herbs whose ‘natural use and combinations of their virtues’ only Circe knows.16 She is a real witch who prepares potions with the leaves that she gathers in the forest; who casts verbal spells with her ‘magic lips’ while pouring the magical potion.17 She is no longer the goddess who weaves in her palace; her songs are now magic words which do and undo enchantments. The features of humanity displayed by Homer’s Circe, which are seen in that of Virgil, have disappeared in Ovid. The goddess is now a capricious and vindictive witch, a femme fatale who dominates the beasts and all nature, who causes the ruin of those who do not agree with her desires.18 This devilish image of Circe is the one which was transmitted to the Middle Ages, owing to the great influence of St Augustine and Boethius:19 the former compares the enchantress with a demon and the transformation of man into beast takes place because he is subject to the servitude of sin;20 the latter follows the same line of thinking, and in De consolatione philosophiae, he states that vices transform men into beasts. Moreover, he mentions some beasts, such as pigs, as the animals into which those who have submitted to an immeasurable lust turn. In this context, he narrates Odysseus’ adventure on Circe’s island.21 This allegoric and moral interpretation of the pagan myths, which were adapted to Christianity through necessity, dominated among the mythographers of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, such as Boccaccio, Alciato and obviously, in the Ovides moralisés which were published in the Late Middle Ages and throughout the entire sixteenth century.22 In these works, which were a basic source for artists and writers, the goddess Circe is the most obvious allegory of the lustful female sensuality who threatens virtue and reason.23

El mayor encanto, amor (Calderón de la Barca, 1635) This is not an opera, but rather a mythological play in which music is used as a means to enhance dramatic effect, to provide the correct setting for the

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characters’ actions, announce entrances and exits on the stage, or as a prelude to supernatural events. By means of these mythological plays with music, which were all written for the enjoyment of the court, the Spanish genius nationalized the Italian opera and took his first steps towards the Spanish zarzuela. It was on the whole a new form of theatre which summarized features of comedy, court plays and Italian opera,24 and in which the spoken text predominated over the music, the dance and the props. Thanks to this, to the skill of Lope de Vega (1562–1635) and Calderón de la Barca (1600–1681), and to the patronage of Philip IV, the mythological play became the most exciting and innovative theatrical genre of the second half of the seventeenth century.

Plot In El mayor encanto, amor, Calderón follows Homer’s story,25 but he introduces new characters who are very appropriate to the fashions of the time, such as the pair of buffoons Clarín and Lebrel, the giant Brutamonte, the lovers Flérida and Lísidas, or Arsidas, with whom he constructs the love triangle typical of these kinds of comedies (Arsidas-Circe-Odysseus). The play begins with a terrible storm which takes Odysseus’ ship to Trinacria, an exotic and magical place which corresponds with Sicily, and which had already appeared in other plays by Calderón.26 This is the usual setting for myths, legends and popular tales, which is described by the crew of the Greek ship as an uninhabited place, bathed by creeks of turbid water which resemble the Lethe. It is a place in which the laments of the beasts are heard, in which nocturnal birds of bad omen with their hunting trophies can be seen roosting in the trees. This is, in short, a hostile place in which all is harshness, horror, amazement and enchantment.27 As they go deeper into the place, their amazement increases. First, they stumble upon two speaking trees. Those trees are the lovers Lísidas and Flérida, who were enchanted by Circe’s magic. Later on, Odysseus and Clarín see a squadron of beasts whose king, a lion, indicates through song that they must return to the beach and leave the island. However, it is already too late: Antistes, Homer’s Eurylochos, comes and tells Odysseus what has happened to his companions in Circe’s palace. Now the duty of the ‘invincible Greek’ is to rescue his crew, and for this, he commends himself to Juno. At this very moment, Iris, the winged nymph who is Juno’s messenger, appears and provides Odysseus with a magical bouquet of flowers from the goddess, with which to face Circe’s charms. However, the bouquet is useless against the love spell which will instead have to

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be overcome by Odysseus himself.28 The Greek hero, who is self-­confident and arrogant, is sure he can defeat Circe’s charms and liberate his crew, and that is what happens later. Nevertheless, Circe’s suggestive invitation to stay a few days in her palace, in order to rest from his eventful journey, the flattering words of the sorceress and the fact that Odysseus shows an excess of hubris drives him to stay for the purpose of liberating ‘a cuantos aquí cautivos tiene el encanto’ and to become ‘de aquesta Esfinge el Edipo’29 Circe, in turn, has other plans: she intends to achieve with her beauty what she did not obtain by her magic.30 The second act is dominated by a game of fake love: Circe and Odysseus must pretend to love each other, at the same time having to hide the true love between them; Flérida, at Circe’s request, must pretend to be in love with Odysseus and hide her feelings for Lísidas; Antistes, who is in love with Circe, must hide his love according to the wishes of the enchantress. This game ends up causing both Antistes’ justified and Lísidas’ unjustified jealousy on the one hand, and on the other hand, Odysseus’ internal conflict; lamenting his overconfidence, he cannot forget the enchantress but he cannot love her either.31 At the end of this act, everyone’s feelings are revealed, appearance triumphs, and it is difficult to distinguish true from false. At the beginning of the third act, everyone’s feelings are already very clear: Arsidas has left the scene and Odysseus has completely surrendered to the charms of Circe, who has also yielded to love.32 Circe’s love has separated Odysseus from his fate. The hero lives in Circe’s arms, assisted by her maids, between banquets and dances, in a daydream that has made him forget himself, his homeland and his obligations as a hero and a warrior. This is when Antistes and his companions try to wake him up, so that he remembers his honour and fame.33 First, they make sounds of war and shout ‘Guerra, guerra!’, but they are unable to wake up him because Circe orders the personification of Music to sing ‘Amor, amor!’ to counteract the war cries of the Greeks.34 Later, Antistes, takes advantage of Circe’s having left Odysseus alone and places at his feet ‘el grabado arnés ilustre de Aquiles’ so that he sees it when he wakes up.35 However, Achilles’ weapons, to which Odysseus considers himself to be the heir,36 do not bring him out of this lethargy either, which is, as he says, ‘ni bien vida, ni bien sueño,/sino letal pesadumbre/de los sentidos, que torpes,/ ni descansan ni discurren (. . .)’.37 Finally, Achilles’ ghost rises out of the ground and with his words he manages to bring Odysseus to his senses.38 Odysseus has overcome his passion for Circe, and he therefore embraces his true nature as a warrior and king of Ithaca. All of this is possible thanks to self-­knowledge and reason. The Greek hero has been a Theseus of the sorceress’ labyrinths, and an

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Oedipus of his sphinx, because, as he himself says in his last speech, ‘Del mayor encanto, amor, la razón me sacó libre’.39 Odysseus and his crew leave Trinacria, but Circe’s rage is so great that she orders the sea to throw forth fire to sink his ship. Then, the goddess Galatea appears in a chariot, which is drawn by two sirens and surrounded by tritons and sirens, and calms the sea. Since Circe cannot take revenge on Odysseus, she decides to kill herself and destroy the island. In place of the island, a volcano, which burns the moon and whose smoke eclipses the sun, emerges.40 This is a tremendous ending to celebrate Midsummer’s Eve. Besides, this type of apocalyptic ending was very much in keeping with the baroque stage design and, surely, it aroused the admiratio of all spectators.41

Calderón’s Circe The Calderónian Circe, who describes herself as a beast and a monster who succumbs to vices,42 brags about her lineage and her knowledge in front of Odysseus; she proudly declares that in her youth, she and her cousin Medea received tuition from a great magician,43 so that they learned mathematics, philosophy, astrology and many diverse divination techniques (ornithomancy, quiromancy, pyromancy, necromancy, etc.).44 The Greek sorceress readily expresses her ‘feminist’ ideas when she asserts that women are by nature superior to men in the arts as well as in weapon-­handling, and for that reason men forbade them the access to both and pushed them into the background, dominating them.45 However, this is not the case of Circe, who is proud of being a woman and who has also developed an encyclopedic range of knowledge; she is the queen of Trinacria, she commands an army of women, and during sex she plays the male role.46 She also boasts of her immense powers: she takes control of the free will of men by stripping them of their human form to transform them into beasts or trees; she has control over the sun, the moon, the stars and the sky, and she presents as reality that which is only an image over the whole natural world which explains why on her island nothing is what it seems. All of those who know her emphasize her beauty and her ingenuity,47 which is why Antistes, Odysseus and Lísidas call her the sphinx, and not because she is a demon of destruction and bad luck with a woman’s face and a lion’s body:48 she is the sphinx to which Odysseus wants to be the Oedipus, and the beast from which he wants to free Trinacria.49 Nevertheless, as the Greek hero yields to love, his attitude towards the sorceress changes and he starts to admire her wisdom

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and beauty.50 For Clarín, Circe is ‘una fiera, nigromante, encantadora, energúmena, hechicera, súcuba, íncuba; y en fin es por acabar el tema, con los demonios demonia, como con los duendes duenda’.51 Lebrel says that she is a vindictive woman, since she listened to Clarín speaking badly of her and it did not take her long to avenge herself on him.52 For her maidens she is an insensitive and strict woman, a prodigy of the mountains and the seas which she dominates.53 As queen of Trinacria, she is tyrannical and cruel, and she governs according to her own interests. Besides, her weapons are none other than her magical skills and beauty. Calderón’s Circe is doubly dangerous: first, she is a sorceress who practises a bloody magic; and second, she is not a submissive woman, she is a transgressor who combines beauty and intelligence. She is more attractive than the Ovidian Circe, who was known to Calderón and the writers of the Golden Age through the first Spanish manual of classical mythology, the Philosophia secreta of Juan Pérez Moya (1585).54

Circe – Odysseus and Olivares – Philip IV El mayor encanto, amor was performed for the first time under the reign of Philip IV and in the years the Count-Duke Olivares was his valido. This period was not only the golden age of the arts and humanities in Castile but also the period of the decadence of the monarchy. This was a decadence which would have probably been avoided if the valido of the king had been able to carry out his reform plan, the aim of which was to modernize the country and achieve a more rational organization of resources and institutions.55 However, the privileges of some groups, conflicts of interest and the misfortunes of foreign policy prevented the accomplishment of the reform plan. It is in this context of cultural splendour, political instability and war with France that we must interpret Calderón’s first mythological play. Most Hispanists have explained this work in terms of political criticism.56 The idea, already rejected some time ago, of a valido longing for power who plans entertainment for a frivolous and pleasure-­seeking king so as to keep him out of his governmental tasks led many of these Hispanists to state that the Buen Retiro Palace was Circe’ island, where Olivares, the new Circe, entertained Philip IV, the new Odysseus. Nevertheless, thanks to the efforts of Antistes, an arbitrista, and Achilles’ spectre, Philip II’s ghost, Odysseus triumphed over Circe and her false paradise.57 Even though this is a very attractive interpretation, I do not agree with it for the following reasons.

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The first reason has to do with the very nature of the mythological plays. These plays were performances of poetry, music, dance and set design whose plots came from classical mythology. In addition, they were written because the king or a personage strongly linked to him, such as his valido, wanted to celebrate important events of the royal family or the country. They were always performed in a court environment and therefore they required a strict ceremonial in which the entrance and exit of the monarchs were also acts of the play. There was an elegant curtain on which symbols of gods and classical myths were interwoven with symbols of the Spanish monarchy, and also a prologue with which the performance began and whose purpose was to glorify the triumphs of the royal family.58 Mythological plays were, therefore, pure instruments to praise the image of the king inside and outside the country, in order for the king to win the admiratio of the court and the spectators who attended the performance – among others, ambassadors and senior foreign dignitaries. So, if someone wanted to criticize the king or his valido, they would do it in secret rather than in court performances.59 Second, the circumstances of the performance. Originally, El mayor encanto, amor was going to be performed at the pond of the Buen Retiro Palace on Midsummer’s Eve in the year 1635, but it had to be cancelled because Spain had begun the war with France. It was staged later, on 29 July.60 Therefore, a play was entrusted to Calderón for Midsummer’s Eve; an occasion in which the CountDuke of Olivares, his wife, his son-­in-­law or a few of the wealthy nobles of his political circle would pay the costs of the performance. It means that Olivares himself or someone he trusted completely would review every detail of the text and of the performance, not only to calculate the cost, but also to ensure that the work would be a laudatio of the monarch and his absolute authority. A man for whom obedience, discipline and authority were watchwords of his government could not behave otherwise: in 1627, he promulgated some censorship laws to avoid placards against him; in 1634, he organized a special meeting to impose obedience;61 in 1635, he put into practice rigorous censorship in literary life. So it is not possible to interpret this mythological play as a political critique of the monarch and his valido. And third, nobody insulted the king and his valido in a performance in the palace and lived to tell the tale. If El mayor encanto, amor had been a critique of Olivares and Philip IV, the following facts would be inexplicable: that the author was designated as the director of the court performances in 1635; that one year later, he was made a knight of the order of Santiago by Philip IV; that he had gained considerable favour in the court; and that in 1642, he was awarded a

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special military lifelong income in recognition of his heroic deeds on the battlefield. In short, Calderón was a court poet who always had the favour of the monarch and of his valido, and who never risked this position of privilege by using his works to criticize his patrons’ politics,62 especially seeing as though his contemporary Quevedo did exactly that. It is not correct, therefore, to interpret El mayor encanto, amor as a political updating of the myth of Odysseus and Circe. This statement leads me to propose my own interpretation. Mythological comedies, apart from being an instrument of propaganda for the Crown, were part of the king’s pastimes, which had to be both decorous and useful. Furthermore, as well as being entertaining, they had to be educational, so that the monarch would draw from them lessons and examples to imitate.63 To achieve this aim, it was necessary to establish a relationship between the main character and the monarch. In fact, it happens when in the first act, Odysseus says to Circe that in his nature, sword and quill come together. Henceforth, there is no doubt that Odysseus is Philip IV, the monarch and patron of the arts who was responsible for the Golden Age of theatre reaching its full maturity. Taking into account that El mayor encanto, amor had an educational purpose, perhaps encouraged by Olivares himself, which was not only addressed to the monarch, but also to all of those who attended the performance, this educational purpose is very well demonstrated by the moral interpretation of the classical myths which Calderón, a representative of the Catholic orthodoxy, followed. In this way, the beautiful sorceress Circe is the personification of dishonest love which transforms the wisest man into a beast; Odysseus represents the wise and prudent man who falls under Circe’s spell and is released from it because of his self-­knowledge and reason. The sorceress’ defeat means the destruction of vice and carnal temptation; the destruction of the transgressor woman who refuses to stay in the background and be submissive; finally, the destruction of tyranny in the exercise of power. On the contrary, Odysseus’ victory symbolizes the victory of masculinity; the victory of the hero, his inner struggle between passion and reason;64 the victory of self-­knowledge and reason, the only weapons which can destroy Circe’s world of appearances. In short, the history of Circe and Odysseus celebrates the triumph of reason and self-­knowledge over hubris. And this is precisely what the Count-Duke Olivares wanted to teach to a monarch who came to the throne at the age of sixteen, and whom he had to initiate into his duties and encourage to take an active part in government. Some years later and at a critical moment for the

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Spanish monarchy, the valido continued fulfilling this principal duty: to teach the prince to carry out the obligations of a monarch and to avoid the capricious and tyrannical behaviour in which he might have indulged.65 Olivares demonstrated this when the king expressed his desire to participate in the war against France,66 in a moment in which a military failure could have further damaged the already battered royal reputation. On this occasion, Olivares had his own way, and thus Philip IV had to stay in Madrid like Odysseus did in Circe’s palace.67 To teach this lesson to a monarch to whom Olivares felt a great devotion, he counted on Calderón’s help, a dramatist for whom the education of the perfect prince should be based on the four cardinal virtues: prudence, justice, temperance and fortitude.68 Olivares could not have made a better choice if he wanted to show his king, God’s representative on earth, how the perfect monarch should behave: in a way that is fair and prudential, guided by reason; ensuring firmness in difficulties; letting reason destroy uncontrollable desires; finally, being impartial with regard to his subjects and the common good. Thanks to these four virtues, understanding and will act according to the judgement of reason, a reason illuminated by faith. In this lesson, Circe is not Olivares, as some have asserted, but a queen whose behaviour is dominated by hubris, and not by the four cardinal virtues. So she and her world of appearances disappear, and in its place, a volcano which throws fire emerges. This final fire does not symbolize the public resentment against the valido and the Buen Retiro Palace, as some have proposed.69 On the contrary, it is the perfect end to a play which was planned to be performed on Midsummer’s Eve, an occasion in which fire has a meaning which, as we will see next, was in line with Olivares’ reformism. When the valido came to power, Spain had lost its ancient moral values, internal disunity ruled, there were no strong political leaders, the administration was corrupt and inefficient, and on the top of that, the monarchy was weak. One of his priorities was to save Spain, and for him this was possible if a programme of fiscal, institutional and moral reforms was put into practice, which, like the fire of Midsummer’s Eve, would generate destruction, purification and a new birth. His other priority was to reinforce the image of Philip IV in order to make him a powerful monarch, like his ancestors (Ferdinand the Catholic, Charles I and Philip II). Again, the end of El mayor encanto, amor fits perfectly with this purpose because the fire on Midsummer’s Eve also served to renew the sun’s energy, which was becoming weaker as the winter solstice approached.

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Ulisse all’isola di Circe (Brussels, 1650)70 Fifteen years later, Circe’s myth was the scenario of Ulisse all′isola di Circe (Odysseus on Circe’s Island),71 an opera commissioned by the Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria (1614–1662), the governor of the Spanish Netherlands, to celebrate the wedding of his niece Mariana of Austria (1634–1696) to Philip IV.72 Once again, the Spanish monarch became the centre of a performance whose main characters are Odysseus and Circe. This demonstrates that El mayor encanto, amor did not contain any political criticism, and that the Spanish court and its monarch liked it very much.73 In Ulisse all’isola di Circe the gods play a greater role, not only in the ballets which were interspersed throughout the opera, but also in the three acts of which it consisted. In the prologue, Neptune appears on the stage, the sea no longer obeying him, because Jupiter has decided that the god of the sea must give his sceptre and his empire to Philip IV. Neptune accepts the decision of the king of the gods and transfers his power to the Spanish monarch, a monarch who should govern not only a kingdom but also many others using his own merits and courage.74 Mercury, Odysseus’s protector, also appears on the stage, and in the first act he tells him how to overcome Circe’s enchantments and provides him with the antidote against the sorceress’ potion. In the third act, Mercury reminds him of his military glory and that he is not a lover, but a warrior. In addition to this, he gets Odysseus to overcome the enchantment of love which has deprived him of reason. Finally, another important divine figure is Venus, who caused Odysseus to fall into Circe’s arms. Venus’ role in this opera is clear: it is necessary to show that nobody, even a very virtuous person, can escape from the enchantment of beauty and love. But Odysseus overcomes the enchantment of Circe’s beauty, not only because he has the protection of a god, but also thanks to his reflection on himself, to the love for his country, wife and son, and also to the interests of his kingdom. Because of all of this, he leaves Circe, to which she reacts, in accordance with tradition, as a furious and vengeful woman who cannot do anything against the Greek hero. Both in the mythological play and in the opera, Circe is a terrible character who must be overcome; in contrast, we find the character of Odysseus, a Greek hero who succumbs to love’s enchantment, but who later shows his greatness when he escapes and leaves the island. Circe’s myth has been at the service of the absolute monarchy; it has been re-­semanticized to show a great picture of the monarch. We must not forget that plays at this time were celebrations

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of submission in which the playwright and the librettist had to take into account the audience, the occasion on which it was staged, and, what is more important, the guidelines of political propaganda which prevailed in the court, a court whose monarch was always the focus of the performance.

7

Medea, a Greek Sorceress in Modern Opera and Ballet: From Barber to Reimann Jesús Carruesco and Montserrat Reig

The character and actions of Medea, by their extreme nature, destined her to have a prominent role in the history of opera, with at least three masterworks in different periods, the Medeas by Charpentier (1693), Cherubini (1797) and Mayr (1813). After an equally brilliant traversal of the twentieth century, from Milhaud (1938) to Dusapin (1992), the beginning of the twenty-­first has already given us an important work on the subject: the Medea by Aribert Reimann. The premiere was given at the Wiener Staatsoper in 2010, and commercial recordings on DVD and CD have already been released, far from a matter of course for a contemporary opera.1 It is not our aim in this paper to pursue a detailed analysis of this work. We will focus our attention on the significance of Medea’s characterization, and especially her control of magic, and on contrasting Reimann’s Medea, a witch malgré elle and an instrument of power, with two previous musical renderings of the myth, Martha Graham’s ballet Cave of the Heart of 1946, with music composed by Samuel Barber, and Pascal Dusapin’s opera of 1992, based on the play Medeamaterial by Heiner Müller (1982), two works in which the magic powers of the main character are basically a symbol of the destructive force of her passions. In our opinion, in the history of reception two main ways of interpreting Medea’s magical knowledge can be distinguished: a psychological line, predominant in the twentieth century, which places the source of its destructive power in the interior of Medea’s mind, and what we could call a political-­sociological approach, in which the magic motif functions as an element of characterization of the stranger or the barbarian in conflict with so-­ called civilization.2 In many cases, of course, both elements are present, but the distinction can still be useful, since the predominance of one or the other usually determines the work’s approach to the subject and eventually reveals the author’s

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thematic or ideological agendas. To that extent, Reimann’s work, following Franz Grillparzer’s Medea (1820), the primary source for the libretto, can safely be ascribed to the second type.3 Reimann’s social and political interpretation of Medea’s magical abilities allows him to reflect on the violence of the power that fears and distrusts – but at the same time needs – the unknown, the foreigner. Medea, the immigrant and exile who struggles in vain to adapt and integrate into the new culture, even to the point of self-­denial, is utilized by the established power in that culture as an instrument for itself to consolidate and increase. But the power’s unquenchable ambition and greed in the end brings about its own destruction and devastation all around it. Medea, a barbarian according to the civilized Greeks, is willing to change her ways, learn the new customs and adapt to her new situation. However, the lack of understanding, diffidence and hatred raised against her, together with the power’s dependence on the object that only she can give, the Golden Fleece, make the barbaric finally happen and Medea ends up becoming the murderous witch that the others had from the beginning declared her to be.4 Civilization feeds itself from the fear of the other, but at the same time needs the other as a tool to perpetuate itself. This tension is dangerous and finally provokes the apparition of the abominable in the very midst of society: the murderer, the terrorist, the witch, engendered and fuelled by so-­called civilization and civilized power. The Golden Fleece and Medea’s use of her magic powers are, in Reimann’s work, the central symbols of his reflection on the functioning and effects of power in our contemporary society, whereas, in the two selected works of the twentieth century, both the Fleece and the supernatural elements of the myth are rather symbolic expressions of an uncontrollable force within Medea herself, to the extreme that in Dusapin’s Medeamaterial their presence as narrative motifs is unnecessary, because the magic that produced the poison is now the very body and psyche of Medea. Reimann is a composer who usually bases his operas on classic literary works.5 Some examples of this are Lear (1978), Troades (1986) or Das Schloss (1992). His Medea is similarly based on the homonymous play by Grillparzer, which it follows very closely. The plot is as follows: Jason and Medea arrive at Corinth seeking refuge from their exile. Medea decides to renounce magic and everything that reminds her of her homeland, to the dismay of her nurse Gora, who informs her that Jason does not love her any more and that the Greeks fear and despise the foreigner from Kolchis. She tries to become a friend of the princess Creusa and to learn Greek usages from her, but she fails. Jason obtains Creon’s protection, but a herald arrives from Delphi accusing them of Pelias’

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death. In order to protect Jason, Creon announces his marriage with Creusa and banishes Medea as solely guilty of Pelias’ death. Jason accepts this. As for their two children, Medea is allowed to take one, but they are afraid and refuse to accompany their mother into exile. When Medea has already resigned herself to death, Creon arrives to ask her to give him the Golden Fleece and in compensation he lets her get back a magical object that she had previously buried. By doing this, he reawakens in Medea her true identity and her desire for vengeance: a magic box brought by the nurse as a gift brings Creusa a death by fire; Medea kills her children; Jason and Medea are banished from Corinth; Medea abandons Jason forever and decides to take the Golden Fleece to the sanctuary of Delphi, where it rightfully belongs. The text of the libretto maintains the letter of Grillparzer’s original text, with numerous cuts but very few modifications. How then does Reimann’s adaptation work and which are the changes of emphasis that allow him to develop a personal view on the work? Two main strategies are used in order to concentrate the action still further around Medea and her vain attempts to be accepted, turning her into a simple instrument of the self-­destructive violence and greed of the established power that ultimately reveals the falseness of the ‘barbaric’ vs ‘civilized’ opposition. The first of these strategies is to shorten the text, cancelling out all the elements from the past except the Fleece and the death of Pelias; thus, Medea’s betrayal of her father and brother, a recurring motif in Grillparzer’s work, is only alluded to in a short scene in which she has a vision of infernal vengeance, the only instance in which we find a text unique to Reimann. What also disappear are the comparisons between Medea and Althaea, Meleagrus’ mother, and between Jason’s fate and that of his fellow Argonauts, which were typical tragic devices important in Grillparzer’s text. Of course this narrative concentration relates to the disappearance of Grillparzer’s trilogy, which situated Medea’s story within the Argonauts saga, thus emphasizing by contrast Reimann’s interest in retaining the centrality of the Fleece, the only remaining element from the previous episodes of the saga, and in reinforcing the deep link between Medea’s magic knowledge and this extraordinary object, buried and recovered alongside the rest of her magical tools. The second strategy used by Reimann is the simultaneous presentation of conversations that in Grillparzer’s work happened at different moments, between Medea and Creusa, and between Jason and Creon. The effect of this simultaneity is to create a dédoublement of the space of the stage, which takes on a new and important symbolic dimension, as it can thus express visually the opposition between Medea’s marginalized space and Creon’s central, Greek palace.

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Medea’s knowledge of magic has been an essential feature of her character since antiquity. Together with her status as woman and foreigner, Medea’s identity is defined by this wisdom that provokes apprehension and distrust, even fear, wherever she goes, even among those who, like Jason, have taken profit from it. Reimann uses multiple devices – textual, visual and musical – in order to show this traditional aspect of Medea, while transforming the meaning it had in previous versions of the myth. Let us consider some of these devices, especially those that tend to redefine Medea’s use of magic in the story. The first aspect to be considered concerns Creusa’s role in the drama. Creusa’s role was greatly enlarged by Grillparzer so that Medea could have someone in whom to mirror herself. Grillparzer’s Creusa is good, sweet, sympathetic to those who suffer and, as a result, willing to help Medea to learn the Greek way of life in order to please Jason. In her efforts to adapt to her new situation, Medea tries to emulate her, recognizing in Creusa, beyond the cultural difference, a princess like she was, each one beloved and admired by her father and her people. Creusa’s death, then, like the babies’, is an abominable crime, because they are completely innocent creatures. The main responsibility of the crime falls in this play on Jason and Creon, the true agents of the destruction of innocence. In Reimann’s version there are no innocents. The contrast between Medea and Creusa is total and unbridgeable, even if Medea at first thinks otherwise. Superficial and stupid, spoilt by her father, Reimann’s Creusa attaches no importance to Medea’s sufferings and prefers to laugh with Jason, careless of everything else. This modification of the original play is achieved textually by omitting a great number of Creusa’s speeches and reducing her presence on stage to an almost senseless chattering. At the musical level, there is a marked contrast in the treatment of Medea’s and Creusa’s voices, despite both being coloratura sopranos. Medea sings mainly in jagged lines, brusquely jumping up and down a very wide range of notes in often contrasting registers, conferring upon her character a certain hysteria and despair, an agitation that goes beyond her singing and pervades her whole body. Creusa sings instead a mellifluous melodic line, insistent and repetitive, reminding of bel canto virtuosity, more precious than passionate. Medea’s tragic intensity is thus set out against Creusa’s shallowness.6 Visually, the stage setting, due to Marco Antonio Marelli, uses the colours of the costumes to characterize the space of each of these two contrasting women.7 Creusa dresses in white, whereas Medea is clad in red throughout the opera, except for two significant moments: she also dresses in white when she is trying to adapt to Greek culture, and in the last scene she is wearing the Golden Fleece over a dark blue dress. The other characters also show their belonging to one world or the

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other through the colour of their garments. Jason’s costume becomes white when he abandons Medea and decides to forget their common past.8 The babies, still clad in red when led by Medea before the new protectors of the family, Creon and Creusa, appear in the following scene wearing white and separated from their mother. Medea herself takes off the most exotic part of her red costume, a mark of the barbarian, and tries to hide the rest under the white jacket given to her by Creusa. The utter failure of her attempts at integration will later lead her to return to her red dress. At the end of the first act, the stage is divided into two spatial levels, where parallel conversations take place simultaneously: Medea and Creusa in the lower space, Jason and Creon in the upper level. In this scene, the symbolic separation of the two worlds, Kolchis and Greece, Medea and Creusa, becomes clear through three simultaneous dédoublements: the play with the costume and the music already mentioned; the double space where the characters place themselves; and the two simultaneous conversations on Medea’s knowledge and practices, which reveal to the audience a fundamental contradiction not only between the powerful magician of former times and the helpless woman of now, but also between the image that the distrustful Greeks have of her and the one that we can perceive. We can observe the importance of this dédoublement of space into two contrasting zones: one is a desolate and amorphous place, a kind of dimly lit lunar landscape, where Medea lives as an exile; the other zone is defined by a platform and a stair communicating with an upper floor, Creon’s palace, flooded with light. The impossibility for Medea to gain access to the platform, and in this way to attain the new identity she craves, is visually underlined in the highly ritualized scene of the curse solemnly pronounced by the herald sent from Delphi on Pelias’ murderer at the end of the second act. A group of soldiers armed with spears arrives escorting the herald. He tells the story of Pelias’ death and accuses Medea and Jason of murder. As he is giving orders for them to be cast out of the land, he plants the spears one by one in the earth (see Figure 7.1). The spears fixed on the ground imprison Medea and bind her to this terrestrial space, while Jason, in total and cruel silence (and this is a departure from Grillparzer’s much more prolix text), abandons her to flee from their former life by means of his marriage to Creusa. The two spaces irretrievably move away from each other as the platform slowly lifts Jason up in the company of the Corinthians, while Medea vainly tries to cling to him by grasping his leg. However, Medea’s deep identity is not essentially determined by her barbarian costume or by the desolate space in which she is forced to dwell, both of them to some extent accidental, but by her magical powers. The extreme feeling of

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Figure 7.1  The imprisonment of Medea in Aribert Reimann’s Medea. Courtesy of the Wiener Staatsoper. Photo: Axel Zeininger.

self-­denial to which she arrives in her love of Jason is strongly marked at the beginning of the work by her decision, on their arrival to Corinth, to bury her magical objects and the Fleece, the prize obtained through her control of magic. During her stay at Corinth she willingly renounces these instruments she knows and controls so well in order to learn to use a new instrument that belongs to Creusa and her world: the harp. This object appears in the second act on the platform that can lift Medea up and introduce her into the palace, provided she successfully completes the initiation into the new identity. As Medea proves to be unable to master this instrument in order to retain Jason at her side, she breaks the harp and states in her own words that the death of the harp means Medea’s return to life. The famous words Medea nunc sum uttered by Seneca’s heroine10 as she accomplishes her terrible vengeance are retained both by Grillparzer and Reimann in a very meaningful moment. Having said in her utmost despair: ‘Wär’ ich noch Medea, doch ich bin’s nicht mehr!’ (v. 1861 in Grillparzer’s text), she exclaims ‘Medea bin ich wieder’ (v. 1953), ‘I am Medea again’, when she finds her magical objects back in her hands, such as the flask that will kill Creon’s daughter, and above all the Golden Fleece, which causes Creon, in his greed to secure this

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power-­conferring object, to forget his previous distrust of Medea’s magical knowledge and to accept her conditions of letting her retain her magical objects, which will unleash death and destruction. It is not the despised barbarian woman who goes actively to get them back in order to avenge herself and recover her lost name and identity; it is Creon who, having banished Medea and denied her every chance of changing her status, in his blind ambition puts in the hands of the foreigner a power of total destruction. The epilogue of the opera, having a similar function to the deus ex machina of Greek tragedy, offers a way out from the seemingly unsolvable conflict. In order to do that, the dichotomy of costumes and spaces must be resolved, and a new relationship with the Fleece must be defined. Reimann’s opera, following Grillparzer’s play, ends with Medea vowing to return the Golden Fleece to its rightful place, Apollo’s sanctuary at Delphi. The staging highlights the identification of Medea with the Fleece by having her wear it like a garment, thus presenting her as in some way victorious over the exiled Jason, who is now clad in rags. Echoes of the closing of Götterdämmerung could perhaps be perceived here, as this golden Medea recalls the fully armed Brünnhilde at the moment of her self-­sacrifice as she returns the Rheingold to its rightful owners, and thus closes the whole tetralogy, just as Medea’s devolution of the Fleece closed Grillparzer’s trilogy. But this iconic last image can also be, interestingly, compared to the one at the end of Martha Graham’s celebrated ballet on the Medea story, Cave of the Heart, premiered in 1946.11 There, Medea wore an elaborate costume made of wires, created by Isamu Noguchi, which, among other things, represented the Golden Fleece. In Graham’s work, the myth is radically reduced to a story of jealousy and revenge, in an avowed intention to convey a timeless symbol of a passionate impulse of the human psyche.12 Medea’s killing of her sons is therefore totally omitted, and the action of this brief ballet (under half an hour) focuses on the triangle of Jason, Creusa and Medea, with an important addition, however: a female dancer clad in red who can be viewed either as an embodiment of passion or as a representation of Medea’s emotional soul, thus redoubling her character (and sometimes seemingly disagreeing with or contrasting the ‘real’ Medea). Thus, the exclusively psychological focus of this work is paired not with a naturalist treatment of the narrative material, but with an emphasis on the symbolic, the essentialized and the ritualistic. This can be seen as much in the revolutionary choreographic language developed by Martha Graham, as in the breathtaking staging designed by Isamu Noguchi. The hollow, peplum-­like presentation of Jason as a ridiculous Maciste (and, in a more subdued manner, of

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Creusa), contrasts with the beautifully stylized Medea and her double, clad in black and red, respectively. Adding to that, and more important for us here, three objects are used by Medea at different moments of the ballet to express her use of her magical knowledge to achieve vengeance. First, the crown she gives to Creusa and with which she provokes her death by burning, in a marked contrast to the symbolic stylization of the other elements of the staging, is deliberately naive in its literality, belonging to the world of pâpier-­maché, stereotyped Greek legend in which Jason and Creusa live. Second, a red ribbon that Medea draws from her bosom and spits from her mouth, and with which she dances in serpentine movements, suggesting in a symbolic way that Medea the Avenger is also the Woman as Snake, that she is herself the venom, and therefore that the magic she uses to kill Creusa is nothing more than a metaphor of her hatred and outrage.13 Lastly, there is the wonderful golden wire structure, mentioned above,14 vaguely recalling a tree in the first part of the ballet, when it is set up on a snake-­shaped stone (probably alluding to the tree from which the Golden Fleece was hung, guarded by a dragon-­like snake in classical images), only to become a garment worn by Medea at the moment of her vengeance, when she stabs the fallen Jason and Creusa with its golden needles or thorns, and just afterwards, at the very end of the work, when she strikes a pose of victory wearing it over a red background. Unlike the other two, this amazing object is polysemic: it can represent a tree, the Golden Fleece, and the sun, Medea’s grandfather, with its golden needles standing for branches, the hairs of the Fleece, or the rays of the sun. Beyond and above these identifications, this object epitomizes Medea’s command of magic and her status as a magician, with the last image rejoining the end of Euripides’ play in showing an epiphanic Medea triumphantly leaving Corinth in her chariot of snakes as Helios’ granddaughter.15 This is at the same time similar and utterly different to the golden Medea of Reimann’s ending: here it is a purely symbolic image of the triumph of Medea’s vengeance as the victory of Medea’s passion, that is, of the psychological impulse of which Medea in Graham’s view is the embodiment. In Reimann, the Fleece worn by Medea is also, in a way, as we have seen, a mark of victory, but of a victory that is a reintegration of lost rights, of the cosmic, natural or cultural equilibrium that was disturbed by heroic, male ambition and greed. This theme, which Reimann has declared in an interview to be also one of his interests,16 accounts for the retaining of the ‘devolution of the Fleece’ motif at the end of the play, which in Grillparzer’s work derived its sense from it being the close of the whole trilogy, which began with the robbing of the Fleece from Delphi by Phrixos.

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The robbing of the Fleece as an expression of man’s abuse of earth and nature was also conveyed in Heiner Müller’s Desolate Shore, the first part of his trilogy on the Argonauts saga. As a result, Medea’s revenge in the second part, Medeamaterial, could be viewed as earth’s striking back against that abuse. However, in selecting only this part as the libretto for his opera of the same title, Pascal Dusapin cancels this reading, since the code or key to this interpretation was offered in Müller’s first play of the trilogy, which is not retained here, while Reimann retains the final scene of Grillparzer’s Medea, which, being the last part of that trilogy, explicitly restated a similar theme. In Dusapin’s version, the text seems instead to focus exclusively on the disturbed psychology of Medea and its manifestations or effects on her own body and the bodies of those around her. Thus, Medea’s schizophrenic character is rendered by her voice being redoubled into a quintet of soloists which turn her words of lament and rage into a sort of polyphony. This vocal feature is expressed visually in a later performance with ballet accompaniment, in which members of Sasha Waltz’s company dance to the words of Medea and her quintuple vocal counterpart.17 In this brief work, as in Martha Graham’s ballet, the action is extremely concentrated and almost the whole text is a monologue by Medea. This allows Dusapin to inscribe the work in the tradition of the baroque lament, like Monteverdi’s Lamento di Arianna, or the dramatic cantata, like Clérambault’s Médée, and these baroque referents acquire their full sense if we bear in mind that Medeamaterial was commissioned by the Théâtre de la Monnaie as a pendant or follow-­up to a performance of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, which ends with the celebrated lament of Dido. On the other hand, the concentration of the action means, again as in Graham’s ballet, that many elements of the story have been left out or greatly reduced, and among these is the motif of magic.18 We find here no references to Medea the magician, or to the magic objects used to carry out her vengeance. Only two essentialized, almost abstract motifs remain to remind us of her magic powers, the poison and the fire it provokes in the body, burning it. Indeed, references to physical processes or parts of the body are ubiquitous: blood, blood vessels, excrement, sperm, entrails, wombs, hands, wounds, scars, dismembering, biting, etc. The function of the motifs of poison and fire is to establish a link between Medea’s disturbed psychology and its physical symptoms, whether in her body or in those of Jason, his lover, or his sons.19 Magic becomes in this way a psychosomatic theme, instead of an expression of earth’s violent reaction against man’s previous alteration and corruption of nature, as in Müller’s work. In keeping with a long tradition of versions of the Medea story, of which Graham’s ballet was a similar example in the performing

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arts, Dusapin’s Medeamaterial interprets Medea’s magic in a predominantly psychological key. As we observed at the beginning of this paper, Reimann, following Müller, uses instead the motif of Medea’s magic knowledge to raise a broader issue, mainly sociopolitical in its scope: the cosmic unbalance that human actions provoke through man’s ambition and greed. In this way, he resumes and reformulates some of the central concerns of ancient Greek tragedy.

8

Colchian Pharmaka: The Colours of Medea in Nineteenth-­century Painting in France and England Adeline Grand-Clément and Charlotte Ribeyrol

The tragic story of the good and evil deeds of the Colchian sorceress Medea inspired many French and English painters of the nineteenth century, including two major romantic colourists, Eugène Delacroix and J.M.W. Turner. In his Furious Medea (Médée furieuse), also entitled Medea About to Kill her Children, a painting admired by most critics when it was presented at the Salon of 1838, Delacroix’s striking chromatic composition highlights the strength of the emotions at stake in the ancient myth: passion and jealousy, anger and desire for revenge, grief and maternal love. The darkness of the cave, the deep blue of Medea’s garment and the blackness of her hair contrast sharply with the paleness of her skin and of her children. The colour red, chosen for the hem of her dress, alludes to her anger and prefigures the blood about to be shed. The shadow cast upon Medea’s face further reinforces the dramatic intensity of the scene. The art critic Prosper Haussard commented enthusiastically on this use of colours: How bold, candid and fortunate the colour is: inspiring on the face of Medea, rich and fluid on her body, dazzling and truthful for the fair child, severe and ideal for the other little innocent creature whose frightened eye pierces through his dark hair! One must see this drama through the prism of suave and robust colour, both expressive and transparent!1

This critical acclaim encouraged Delacroix to create at least three more versions of his Medea: one in 1859 and two in 1862, for which he used a special varnish to soften the light, thus creating a much more mysterious and magical atmosphere (see Figure 8.1). In the decentred and dream-­like composition of Turner’s Vision of Medea2 (1828, oil on canvas, Tate), an even clearer emphasis is placed on colourful

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Figure 8.1  Eugene Delacroix, Furious Medea or Medea About to Kill her Children, oil on canvas, 76 × 165 cm, Lille, Musée des Beaux-Arts (1838). Photo © Heritage Image Partnership Ltd/Alamy.

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exuberance which the painter even extended to the frame, made up of a rope, which he covered in yellow ochre to match the tones of his work. When the painting was presented to an English audience in 1831 (on the artist’s return from Rome), several critics were surprised by the chromatic excesses of this Vision of Medea. A critic from the Athenaeum interpreted its ‘jaundiced sky’ as a sign of Turner’s ‘yellow insanity’.3 The Literary Gazette was more favourably inclined: ‘Colour! colour! colour! . . . Still there is something so enchanting in the prismatic effect which Mr. Turner has produced, that we soon lose sight of the extravagance, in contemplating the magical results of his combinations’.4 Both comments reveal an intriguing collusion between the artist’s formal treatment of the subject and the subject itself – as if the magic and folly of Medea were best illustrated and conveyed by the medium of colour, described by these contemporary critics as either an aesthetic ‘enchantment’ or an expression of the painter’s own ‘insanity’. But why did the figure of Medea catch the eye of these two romantic painters? Our contention is that it is precisely because of her special affinities with colours.5 The ambiguous heroine certainly offered Delacroix and Turner an appealing alternative to the more placid and masculine marmoreal antiquity celebrated by neo-­classicism.6 This paper therefore proposes to focus on the complex and crucial role which colour played in the myth of Medea – a topic which has been strangely overlooked by both classicists and art historians – by analysing paintings of some lesser-­known artists from both sides of the Channel, in the second half of the nineteenth century. We will try to show that these painters developed the articulation between magic and the chromatic found in the ancient story of the Colchian sorceress, thus revealing a reappraisal of the reviled heroine. In order to understand the various ways of depicting Medea in nineteenth-­ century painting, we will, first of all, explore the ancient sources that may have inspired modern artists. We will start with a brief overview of the texts and images from antiquity, which were known during the nineteenth century and in which the collusion of Medean magic and colour is strongly suggested. Then, we will move on to an analysis of how contemporary painters chose to place an emphasis on Medea’s seductive powers, by creating what could be called ‘chromatic glamour’. Finally, we will try to show how an alternative reading of the myth, in the wake of early feminist movements, required a significant shift from black to white magic, and a draining of these tempting colours.

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Medea polypharmaka: chromatic powers in antiquity In ancient Greek texts, the supernatural powers of the Colchian princess are suggested by the use of a cluster of words, especially the noun pharmakon and the adjective polypharmakos: this epithet was used for example by Apollonius in his Argonautica, one of the main literary sources evoking the myth and which was widely read during the nineteenth century.7 We find it for the first time in the Odyssey, where it is attributed not to Medea, but to Circe,8 her aunt or her sister, according to different versions of their genealogy.9 It literally means ‘someone who knows and uses many pharmaka’, i.e. drugs.10 The Greeks called pharmaka all the kinds of efficient substances (plants, liquids, ointments, objects) which can serve to heal or to kill: these could be either poisonous or medicinal, depending on the way they were handled and to what end. This ambivalence is hinted at, for instance, in the Odyssey, when Helen pours some beneficent drugs, against grief, sorrow and anger (nepenthès, akholon) into the wine of the guests.11 She was given these useful (esthla) and cunning (metioenta) pharmaka by Polydamna, the wife of an Egyptian king. Indeed, as M. Carastro points out, pharmaka are often linked to deceit, metis and foreign/oriental know-­how in Greek myths.12 The word pharmakon establishes a link between ‘magical’ powers and colour. Indeed, it can be used for pigments and dyes. Thus, it is not an exact equivalent of the basic word chrôma, ‘colour’: the term pharmakon emphasizes the materiality of colour and its effect upon the viewer, as it can transform appearances.13 For example, in one of his plays, Aristophanes mentions a pharmakon used by Lysicrates to blacken his hair: here, the word designates a special kind of cosmetic, a colouring agent supposed to conceal the signs of ageing, that is to say, the whitening of the hair.14 By evoking a male, an Athenian citizen, ‘cooking’ a pharmakon in a cauldron, Aristophanes probably expected to make his audience laugh, since pharmakeia was generally thought to be a rather feminine activity. Similarly, Pliny claims that common people are used to thinking that the science of ‘charms and magical herbs’ (veneficiis et herbis) is a ‘feminine science’ (feminarum scientiam).15 The Greek and Roman male citizens therefore established a clear affinity between some ‘traditional’ occupations associated with women such as cooking, ornamentation and face-­painting, and also the preparation of secret ointments and potions.16 This was especially true of love magic, in which colours played an important seductive role.17 The Greek word pharmakon and its main Latin equivalent, medicamen,18 are mentioned many times in ancient sources relating to Medea. What did these

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‘drugs’ she collected, prepared and carefully hid in a small box,19 look like? What were their origins and their effects? Were they associated with specific colours? In the version of the myth developed by Euripides, Apollonius and Ovid, Medea uses a wide range of pharmaka, for various purposes. Most of her charms are potions or ointments prepared from special herbs or natural products.20 For example, the pharmakon she gives to Jason in order to enable him to succeed in one of the tasks imposed by Aeetes (ploughing a field with brazen-­footed oxen) is made from a flower carefully described by Apollonius.21 This flower has the colour of the crocus, which is violet, and a black juice flows from its dark root. The dark hues associated with the plant, which may recall the moly used in the Odyssey as an antidote to Circe’s charms,22 can be related to its name: it was called Prometheion pharmakon, because the plant was supposed to have originated in the divine blood (ichôr) the god shed on the ground.23 This pharmakon acted as a magical cream: applied on the body of Jason, it protected his skin against every kind of wound more efficiently than any armour could do, and helped him plough the field without being attacked by the bronze bulls. The pharmaka employed in order to make the snake guardian of the Fleece fall asleep are of a different kind. Apollonius explains that their narcotic powers become efficient by the means of aspersion and must be associated with spells and incantations: Medea, ‘with a newly cut spray of juniper, dipping and drawing untempered charms from her mystic brew (kykeôn), sprinkled the eyes of the snake, while she chanted her song’.24 The scene is depicted on some red-­figured ceramics produced in southern Italy during the fourth century: these vases feature a very active Medea, giving the white-­spotted snake some pharmaka to taste or smell, while Jason is stealing the Golden Fleece.25 The sorceress can easily be identified by the cup or the box she has in her hands and by the fact she is dressed in spotted-­sleeved garments and has an oriental cap: here, the poikilia of her clothes recalls the costumes of tragic actors but also those of oriental barbarians, especially the Persians.26 In Euripides’ play, Medea does not make an excessive use of magical drugs. Her jealousy and desire for revenge lead her to employ more ‘conventional’ weapons. First, she offers a multicoloured veil and a golden tiara to Creusa for her future wedding. The light and the play of colours on the fabric contribute to the efficiency of the subterfuge as they elicit Creusa’s desire. Both gifts apparently have nothing to do with magic: they are typically feminine, especially the garment, since weaving was one of the main activities assigned to women in the oikos in ancient Greece. In the Homeric poems, queens like Helen, Andromache and Penelope create luxurious purple coats, skilfully adorned with poikilia. But

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in the case of Medea, the finery she has woven is tainted with poison,27 so that the peplos poikilos gnaws at the skin of Creusa, and the metal of the tiara burns.28 Euripides does not specify the name and the origin of the pharmaka employed, but one may think of the story of the harmful tunic Dejanira gave to Herakles which was stained with a mixture made from blood and sperm.29 After this first deed, Medea plans to punish Jason by killing the children they had together: she chooses for them a bloody end, using a dagger. No more pharmakon here, she opts for a more phallic and therefore masculine means of action, which bears no relation to her magical powers. Blood red thus appears as the dominant colour at the end of the play, as if to echo the burning fire of her passion for Jason and her desire for revenge. The Euripidean tragedy was so popular that it inspired Greek vase-painters, especially in southern Italy during the fourth century bce: many vases depict Medea killing her children or fleeing on her chariot after the murder.30 The influence of Euripides was passed on to Rome by Seneca, who wrote a Medea which contributed to popularizing the myth during the Middle Ages. Therefore, many representations of Medea’s story can be found on Roman reliefs and wall-­ paintings.31 Again, we find the same insistence on the infanticide. More precisely, what these artists show is the moment just before the murder, as in the Delacroix paintings. This may be a reference to the long monologue in the Euripidean tragedy, a famous passage which was frequently commented on in antiquity.32 Two frescoes found in Herculaneum and Pompeii show a Medea meditans, with a dagger in her hand, probably hesitating between maternal love and her desire for revenge. We assume that they were made after a famous painting by Timomachus, which, as Pliny tells us, was bought by Caesar and transferred to the temple of Venus Genetrix – thus acquiring a very political dimension.33 These images, in which Medea is not presented as a magician, were known to nineteenth-­century artists well-­acquainted with the archaeological discoveries in the Vesuvian cities. For instance, Gustave Moreau saw them when he travelled to Italy, in 1857–1859, as he made a copy of the Herculanean panel.34 An interesting testimony to the reception of these ancient representations of Medea can also be found in two paintings by Lawrence Alma-Tadema. In The Collector of Pictures in the Time of Augustus (1867, oil on wood, private collection) and The Picture Gallery (1874, oil on canvas, Towneley Hall Art Gallery), which both present a gallery viewing in an antique setting, the fresco discovered in Herculaneum is shown hanging in the background next to several other panels. In the first painting, Medea is dressed in dark garments and hidden away, whereas in the 1874 version she appears more luminous and clad in a virginal

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white dress, as if the painter wished to draw the attention of the spectator to his invention of a new Medea.35 In both works, Alma-Tadema features his own vision of Medea, distinct from the Herculaneum version, as the colours he uses do not match the exact shades of the Roman original (in which Medea wears yellow and purple garments). If nineteenth-­century painters were well-­ acquainted with ancient sources, this example clearly shows that they experimented quite freely with classical iconography and with the link between colours and Medean magic.

Medea as femme fatale: chromatic glamour The Medea depicted by the Pre-Raphaelite artist Frederick Sandys (volume cover) is more strikingly colourful than Alma-Tadema’s versions after the antique. In 1868 Sandys was forced to renounce oil painting36 after having spent all his money on the colours of his sorceress, which was also one of his favourite works. In a letter to his patron James Anderson Rose dated November 1866, Sandys quite significantly asked for fifteen guineas for a study of the hands and head of Medea or the payment of his bill at Winsor’s, his colourman. In this Medea, a few, key vivid colours are used to draw the viewer’s attention to the sorceress’ magical mischief. Her white dress seems to serve as a contrastive backdrop to some colourful and telling details, such as her two necklaces which are strategically placed at the very centre of the painting. One is made of bone and blue Egyptian faience beads and the other of bright red coral. This, of course, has been noted by art historians, including Betty Elzea and Elizabeth Prettejohn37 in their insightful interpretations of the work. However, the choice of colours for these feminine adornments has failed to draw their critical attention, in spite of the fact that the two necklaces clearly introduce meaningful chromatic echoes within the pictorial space: on the one hand the blue necklace recalls the blue bracelet and the blue flames coming out of the small brazier, but also the Egyptian blue faience figurine of the goddess Sekhmet on the left of the marble parapet, which is a clear hint at Medea’s dangerous oriental origins – also suggested by the Far Eastern golden frieze in the background and by the dark unbound hair of Sandys’ model, the gipsy girl Keomi Gray. Keomi was the painter’s mistress whom he abandoned after this work in a strange mise en abyme of the Medean myth. On the other hand, the many-­stranded coral necklace repeats the binding motif of the crimson threads woven around the brazier and the abalone shell which is also filled with a mysterious red liquid – either blood or wine. Although most of the

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magical elements introduced by Sandys in this representation of Medea were chosen for their seductive shapes and volumes rather than as references to specific antique sources related to the myth, the idea of the crimson thread might have come from Theocritus’ Idyll 2:38 in the poem entitled ‘The Sorceresses’ (Pharmakeutriai), Simaetha invokes Hecate, the moon goddess, while preparing philtra in order to make her lover, Delphis, return. She wants her pharmaka to be even more efficient than Circe’s and Medea’s, and begins her magical ritual by wreathing a brazen bowl with crimson fillets of lamb’s wool,39 in a sort of demonic subversion of the feminine activities of cooking and colour-­weaving.40 These threads and the coral necklace draw a sort of magic circle, a motif also taken up by John William Waterhouse for the dress of the sorceress in his Jason and Medea (1907).41 The coral necklace similarly reappears in several other paintings by Sandys (such as Judith, c. 1860, oil on board) and La belle Isolde (1862, oil on canvas) as well as in his close friend Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Venetian portrait Monna Vanna (1866, oil on canvas) – a title which the painter contemplated changing to Belcolore. In all these works, the red necklace emphasizes and encapsulates the powerful charms of a sensual femme fatale about to ensnare the masculine viewer thanks to her binding spells. Medea’s coral necklace may indeed be read as the metonymical sign of her ensorcering glamour. A glamour was originally ‘a spell cast by a witch to deceive eyes’,42 a way of ‘altering the true appearance of things, ontologically on the side of seeming, . . . counterfeiters, and cosmetics’.43 In that sense, colour – in particular face-­painting – and witchcraft were often intertwined as ‘the attempt to deceive the eyes with paint or potions participated in an ancient fear of female power’44 – which was already the case in ancient Greece, as we have seen. Similarly, in Sandys’ painting, it is a specifically feminine and colourful ornament (the red or blue necklace) that points to the cunning pharmaka devised by Medea. The circular shape of the jewel also recalls the curling form of a snake, warning the viewer that such Medusean women45 are dangerous temptresses. But contrary to Rossetti in Monna Vanna or Lady Lilith (1868, oil) – another ‘witch’46 with a red ribbon – Sandys does not choose to match the red necklace with Medea’s lips which appear ominously blanched and bloodless as she probably utters curses against Jason and his fated bride, Creusa. Although Sandys’ Medea certainly differs from more languid and sensual Pre-Raphaelite femmes fatales in that she is active and almost masculine in her magical endeavours, she nonetheless appears as the archetypal dangerous woman resorting to wiles, deceit and magical tricks to destructive ends. Many Pre-Raphaelite artists were drawn to such representations of threatening

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femininity which they thought more alluring and titillating than Coventry Patmore’s unobtrusive ‘Angel in the House’ defining the ideal of Victorian womanhood.47 If some of Rossetti’s sensual depictions of women were stigmatized as obscene because of their sexual suggestiveness, representations of evil women were not necessarily frowned upon as they comforted the traditional whore/saint dichotomy in which Victorian women were entrapped. Thus, when Sandys’ Medea was first turned down by the Royal Academy in 1868 (it was accepted the following year), most critics were quite surprised – the only shocking detail in the painting being a pair of copulating toads. Indeed, Sandys’ representation of Medea as the archetypal evil sorceress was perfectly in line with some post-Euripidean antique sources, which deliberately downplayed Medea’s positive role as ‘helper-­maiden’,48 resorting to white magic and beneficent pharmaka to save Jason from the dragon.

Rehabilitating Medea: from black to white magic During the 1860s, however many artists started to challenge and question the traditional iconography of the dangerous femme fatale in order to take into account the ambiguity of Medea’s pharmaka. The numerous references to Medea in painting, drama or political pamphlets49 during that period indeed reveal a change in the perception of the Colchian sorceress and more generally of supposedly ‘evil’ women, in the wake of the first feminist movements and the battles against sexual discrimination led by Maria Deraisme in France and by Josephine Butler in England. The attempt of some artists and political thinkers to shed a different light on the story of Medea in the 1860s and 1870s may also reflect a desire to break down the stifling dichotomy between the pale and radiant Angel in the House on the one hand and the tempting witch in her cave on the other. By focusing on the early stages of Medea’s story, and the assistance she offered Jason, some of these authors and artists were able to stress two important points: firstly that the sorceress was not completely evil, and secondly that she had been led astray not by her own depraved nature but by the cruelty of Jason. This rehabilitation of Medea, thanks to a shift of emphasis from black to white magic as well as to her status as victim of Jason, is well illustrated by the works of Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris. Morris, a proto-­socialist who believed in the education and emancipation of women, was a pioneer figure in the emergence of the Arts and Crafts Movement in England. Following the aesthetic principles of John Ruskin, who was also very sensitive to the condition of women,

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he founded in 1861 the firm Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. with the collaboration of Burne-Jones and other artist friends, including Rossetti. The firm, modelled on a medieval guild, brought together ‘fine arts workmen’ with the aim of creating beautiful crafts accessible to all. Among their early projects was the illustration in various media of the Legend of Good Women, written around 1385 by Geoffrey Chaucer, who was one of Morris’ favourite authors (see figure 8.2). In his favourably biased account of the story of Medea, Chaucer ‘censored (according to one critic) . . . all the details which make Medea’s story interesting or even worth telling – there is almost nothing about her extensive powers, nothing about the procedures she devised to win the Golden Fleece, nothing about her revenge, to mention a few of the features that authors usually commented upon’.50 Following Chaucer’s version, itself strongly indebted to Ovid’s Heroides, Morris and Burne-Jones designed in 1862 a series of tiles

Figure 8.2  Chaucer’s ‘Legend of Good Women’ – Hypsiphile and Medea, by Sir Edward Burne-Jones, Brown ink and wash over pencil (1864). © Birmingham Museums Trust.

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representing the ‘martyrdom’ of Philomela or Medea for the house of the painter John Roddam Spencer-Stanhope.51 These designs were then modified for a series of embroideries intended to adorn John Ruskin’s house in the Wye Valley. These tapestries were worked on by the girls of Winnington Hall School, Cheshire, in whose education Ruskin took a keen interest.52 Linda Parry has reported that Burne-Jones wrote to Ruskin humorously describing how ‘damozels such as these at Winnington can’t see how Cleopatra and Medea can be good women’.53 This, however, became a very popular series that the firm repeated throughout the 1860s in different media, including stained-­glass (see figure 8.2).54 Morris’ work illustrating Chaucer’s text also certainly influenced his own poetic output and his Life and Death of Jason (1867), which Sandys read when he was painting his Medea. The initial title for the first draft of this long narrative poem was ‘The Deeds of Jason’ which Florence Boos analysed as a significant ‘shift of focus from heroic “feats” to their antiheroic undoing’55 with the aim of criminalizing Jason rather than Medea. In the poem, for instance, it is Jason, not Medea, who decides to kill Absyrtus, contrary to Apollonius’ version in the Argonautica.56 This led Morris’ daughter May to claim: ‘that [her] father’s sympathies were with Medea – not Medea the sorceress, but the woman weak in the very strength of her love’.57 But even as a sorceress, Medea is not portrayed in an unfavourable light as shown in Book XIII by her encounter with Circe, who is rather sympathetically addressed as ‘The God-­begotten wonder, . . . framer of delights’.58 Moreover, in his poetic portrayal of Medea, the colours are but few, which is rather surprising for a colourist like William Morris.59 Contrary to Sandys’ sorceress, she is indeed described as ‘lovely’ and ‘golden’-haired,60 as if her rehabilitation somehow required a draining of her seductive colours. It is only her love for Jason, her ‘sweet new shame’ which causes her ‘fair face’ to ‘redden’.61 In the design for the tiles and/or stained-­glass series of the Legend of Good Women, her diaphanous paleness and golden hair are similarly emphasized in connection, as it were, with her white magic. Her pairing with the meek Hypsipyle, Jason’s first innocent victim whose woes are related in Ovid62 and Chaucer, equally reveals Morris’ and Burne-Jones’ sympathy. The motif of flower-­ picking chosen by the two artists was equally associated at the time with positive images of womanhood, as was already the case in antiquity. The French historian Jules Michelet, whose writings on love and women had a huge readership in England, thus encouraged women to dwell with flowers. In La Femme (1859) he explains: ‘Her thoughts grow calmer in such discreet society, for they are not inquisitive – they smile, but they are silent. At least they speak so low, these flowers, that we can hardly hear them. They are the earth’s silent children’.63

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Similarly, Ruskin (who admired the ‘wisdom’ of Burne-Jones’ Medea)64 claimed that ‘the path of a good woman is always strewn with flowers; but they rise behind her steps, not before them’.65 In a word, Burne-Jones’ and Morris’ representations of Medea succeeded in blurring Victorian gender categories and in turning the mythical figure into an Angel in the House led astray under the dangerous influence of a deceitful man, a ‘cunning devourer’ whom Chaucer after Ovid denounced as the sole sorcerer of the tale: ‘you made a lure and an attractive wile/For ladies of your false nobility’.66 A very similar kind of rehabilitation, through a renewal of Medean colours, can be found in Gustave Moreau’s Jason and Medea, exhibited at the Salon of 1865 (see Figure 8.3). The French symbolist painter indeed wished to break away from the model of Delacroix’s Medea. He also knew the Herculaneum fresco depicting the queen as she plans to murder her child. However, in his 1865 painting, he preferred to place the emphasis on the very moment of the glory and triumph of love: the conquest of the Golden Fleece. As a result, he offers a very unusual representation of the young princess, almost virginal and Edenic in her nudity. Moreau enhances the beauty of the two protagonists by evoking the image of the prelapserian couple, Adam and Eve.67 Both are fair-­haired, in keeping with some antique source.69 The light falling on their white limbs and the soft sfumato subtly blur the distinction between their bodies, as if they were twins or formed a single being – possibly a prefiguration of their future wedding. The main difference between them comes from the floral garlands adorning Medea’s radiant flesh.69 According to many art historians, the iconographical model for these lovers was the couple formed by two young men in the Wedding of Alexander and Roxane (1514) by Renaissance artist Il Sodoma, whose work Moreau had seen and copied in the Villa Farnesina in Rome.70 But in Moreau’s painting, the two figures are less colourful and their faces rather inexpressive, which also contrasts with Delacroix’s romantic depiction. In fact, this diaphanous androgyny of the two figures in Moreau’s version is reminiscent of some of the works of BurneJones (such as Phyllis and Demophoon71), an artist whom Moreau deeply admired. It seems as if Moreau wanted to shed a more positive light on the heroine, in the same way as he tried to rehabilitate the controversial Helen of Troy – whom he never depicted as a ‘femme fatale’, but rather glorified as the incarnation of eternal beauty.72 Nonetheless, Medea’s attitude towards Jason is quite equivocal: although she stands behind him, like a protective angel, she dominates him and puts her hand on his shoulder, as if to remind the viewer that it is thanks to her that Jason has won the fleece73 – hence the flask in her hand which indicates her ability to handle pharmaka. Her foreign magical knowledge is also referred to in

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Figure 8.3  Gustave Moreau, Jason and Medea, oil on canvas, 204 × 121.5 cm, Paris, Musée d’Orsay (1865). Photo © The Art Archive/Musée d’Orsay Paris/Mondadori Portfolio/Electa.

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the final stanza of José Maria de Heredia’s ekphrastic poem, composed after he saw Moreau’s work: Love smiled at them, but the fated Bride Carried away her jealous fury, Her Asian philters, her father and the Gods.74

So which ancient sources did Moreau draw upon to compose his work? The subtitle given to the painting for the Salon, and the Latin text written on the phylactery wrapping the column where the Fleece lies, both point to Ovid’s Metamorphoses. At the top of the phylactery, a couple of lines quoted from the poet refer to Medea’s confident passion for Jason: ‘Nay, holding that which I love, and resting in Jason’s arms, I shall fare over the long reaches of the sea; in his safe embrace I shall fear nothing’ (Nempe tenens quod amo gremioque in Iasonis haerens/Per freta longa ferar; nihil illum amplexa timebo).75 And at the bottom, the quotation alludes to another aspect of the victory of Jason, who will return to his homeland with the fleece: heros Aesonius potitur spolioque superbus/ muneris auctorem secum, spolia altera, portans.76 Such literary references do not really match the perspective adopted in the painting: Moreau depicts a very dominant Medea, whereas Ovid enhances the glorious deeds achieved by Jason. Moreover, Peter Cooke has shown that the Latin quotations were suggested by Moreau’s friend, Alexandre Destouches, only after the artist had started to paint his work.77 Therefore, the main source of inspiration might be found elsewhere – probably in Apollonius. Indeed, the peaceful radiance of Moreau’s painting recalls a passage from the Argonautica, describing the very moment of victory, when the hero seizes the Fleece, while Medea is still using incantations, fumigations and ointments to overpower the snake: And as a maiden catches on her finely wrought robe the gleam of the moon at the full, as it rises above her high-­roofed chamber, and her heart rejoices as she beholds the fair ray; so at that time did Jason uplift the mighty fleece in his hands; and from the shimmering of the flocks of wool there settled on his fair cheeks and brow a red flush like a flame.78

Apollonius and his tale of a Medea overwhelmed by a love magic devised by Aphrodite is also the main source for a play by Ernest Legouvé (1807–1903) entitled Medea (1856). The play was performed throughout the 1860s, both in France and the rest of Europe, with Adelaide Ristori in the leading role.79 Legouvé knew Moreau personally, thanks to a common acquaintance, Georges Desvallières, who was Moreau’s friend and Legouvé’s son-­in-law. As in Moreau’s painting,

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Legouvé neither describes Medea as a mad mother nor as a dangerous foreign sorceress, but rather as a woman unfairly abandoned by her cruel husband.80 In the preface to his play, Legouvé explains the reason for this striking change of perspective. For him, Medea was not only a mythological heroine, she was also a contemporary figure, as her tale recounted ‘the worst chapter in the history of seduction’.81 However, the temptation is no longer due to feminine deceit but rather to the evil cunning of a male seducer as in Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women: What do I hear? O hardened and perverse heart! It is you, you who blames her for her crime! . . . She was pure, beautiful, happy and her face Was full of modesty, force and courage! You came and corrupted her with your passion!82

The playwright, who wrote A Moral History of Women in 184883 and was one of the first male thinkers to promote the rights of women in France,84 certainly hoped his Medea would serve as a warning against the tragic plight of many foreign or provincial young women, seduced and abandoned by Parisian men, shortly after their arrival in the city.85 These ‘fallen’ women often ended up as prostitutes, in jail or in mental institutions.

Epilogue. Medea as allegory: politicizing Medea’s colours? The works of Burne-Jones, Morris, Moreau and Legouvé reveal a very politicized change in the perception of Medea in the 1860s, as she lost her seductive and magical colours to become a devoted lover led astray in a dangerous male-­ dominated world. This rehabilitation of Medea certainly echoes the more lenient portrayal of witches in Jules Michelet’s equally proto-­feminist essay La Sorcière, published in 1862, which provided a provocative sociological explanation for the appearance of witches: ‘At what date, then, did the Witch first appear? I say unfalteringly, “In the age of despair” ’,86 reminding his reader that, originally: The only physician of the people for a thousand years was the Witch. . . . The bulk of people in every state, the world as it might well be called, consulted none but the Saga, or wise-­woman. When she could not cure them, she was insulted, was called a Witch. But generally, from a respect not unmixed with fear, she was called good lady or fair lady (belle dame – bella donna), the very name we give to the fairies. Soon there came upon her the lot which still

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befalls her favourite plant, belladonna, and some other wholesome poisons which she employed as antidotes to the great plagues of the Middle Ages. Children and ignorant passers-­by would curse those dismal flowers before they knew them. Affrighted by their questionable hues, they shrink back, keep far aloof from them. And yet among them are the comforters (Solaneæ) which, when discreetly employed, have cured so many, have lulled so many sufferings to sleepoon’.87

The ‘questionable hues’ (couleurs douteuses) of the sorceress’ emblematic flower and pharmaka reflect the ambiguity of her status, as both healer and destroyer, depending on the way the ‘ignorant’ perceived her. In order to show that ‘Medea is more than a Sorceress’,88 this questionable chromatic presence had to be circumscribed and almost erased. This was a political as well as an artistic gesture, which then enabled new Medean figures to come to the fore. And yet some equally committed painters nonetheless chose to reintroduce some colours into their Medeas, as in the eponymous painting by Armand Cambon, Ingres’ friend and pupil,89 exhibited in 1868. Contrary to Delacroix’s Furious Medea, which may be considered as an anti-Liberty Guiding the People, Cambon’s Revenge of Medea90 tends to re-­politicize Medea’s deeds. As the title of the painting suggests, the artist chose to illustrate the moment just after the murder of the children. Medea stands with the dagger still in her hand, the corpses of her innocent victims lying at her feet. The viewer can see a powerless Jason behind her, in shadow. The manly heroine is clad in a white tunic covered with a red garment, of the same colour as the Phrygian cap which crowns her head. Cambon’s Medea differs from the peaceful and enthroned Republic, dressed in white, he depicted for a national competition in 1848,91 and yet she is no longer presented as a witch, nor as an oriental woman. Although the artist’s political intentions remain unclear, this work may even be seen as a powerful allegory of the Revolution:92 Medea’s Phrygian cap serves as a direct reference to the Sans-­culottes, and the redness of her clothes as a vivid chromatic sign reminiscent of the violence of revolutionary upheaval and of the blood shed by the people in 1789, 1830 and 1848. In a word, this 1868 painting gives a new meaning to the sorceress’ colours and somehow turns her story, which had served for so many centuries as a misogynistic parable of feminine deceit and dangerous witchcraft, into a signifier of change and female empowerment – be it feared or desired.

9

Canidia and Erichtho: Snapshots from their Postclassical Life Christine Walde

The general question To start with a confession: the search for traces of a visual reception and transformation of the two slightly ‘camp’ witches Canidia and Erichtho has not been as fruitful as I imagined: I thought that I just would have to expand on the limited number of pictures already known to me and that a search in the works of certain artists known for their inclination to magic and the supernatural (e.g. Salvator Rosa, Fuseli, Goya, etc.) would lead to quick results. But Canidia and Erichtho were eluding me again and again. Though modelled on mythological figures, they are not themselves mythological characters; therefore, they do not have entries in the relevant books on ancient mythology and its reception. In fact, the odd couple does not fit in any category, as they are not historical figures either. Neither a consultation of encyclopedias of art history nor of specialist works of reference such as the Enciclopedia Oraziana1 yielded a result concerning the visual reception of Canidia and Erichtho. In order to find their blurred traces, the search parameters had to be broadened significantly to magic in classical antiquity and its visual reception through the ages in general. Sometimes we seem to get a glimpse of the two witches in pictures, with titles not connected to them specifically, such as Römischer Liebeszauber (1848) by the German painter Johann Erdmann Hummel, now in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nürnberg. In this pseudo-­reconstruction of ancient Rome, Hummel could have been inspired by Horace. But this night-­ scenery with witches, cypresses and tombs very much smells of the sanitizing decorative evocation of antiquity and Italy as a sentimental landscape in accordance with the art market dominated by the German Bildungsbürgertum of the time.

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This oath of manifestation could be the beginning and the end of my article. But it is exactly this non-­result that I would like to take as a starting point for analysing the conditions that are necessary for the reception and transformation of a literary figure in other media beyond its original context. It can be shown that even if favourable conditions were missing over the centuries, we now find appropriations on the internet. The exact nature of such processes of transformation and adaptation, and the parameters of their evaluation, are still to be defined, as these internet adaptations might not be an Antikenezeption (reception of classical antiquity) in the strict sense. In concordance with these aims my paper has three parts: although it is primarily concerned with visual representation, I will start with a short contrasting characterization of Canidia and Erichtho, both creatures born from poetry, in their natural habitat. This leads to several hypotheses about the conditions and requirements for a vital visual reception, and the third part will analyse some contemporary traces I have found on the web and elsewhere and draw some conclusions. Due to the volatile nature of the web, these conclusions can only be preliminary.

Canidia and Erichtho – their characteristics Canidia and Erichtho share certain characteristics: they appear in Roman poetry of the first century bce virtually from nowhere and are closely tied to their creators and the literary contexts in which they are born. In the first place they are materializations of their creators’ erudition, as both Horace and Lucan connect two separate, yet intertwining, traditions of describing female magicians. On the one hand, the models of the great mythical witches – Medea, Circe – are intertextually present in Canidia and Erichtho.2 On the other hand, they fit neatly in what I call the secondary3 tradition of ancient witches, namely the Thessalian witches. Because the Thessalian witches are that group of witches behind which a real historical background seems to be hidden, they have the advantage in that they can be easily integrated into new contexts without the burden of former literary and visual discourses which necessarily follow prominent and controversial figures like Medea. To their recipients, Canidia and Erichtho, too, appear in a seemingly ‘historicized’ guise: Canidia and her colleagues Veia, Folia and Sagana hunt the nights of ancient Rome, while Erichtho is present at the decisive battle of

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the civil war between Caesar and Pompey at Thessalian Pharsalos. Regardless of their unmistakably literary origin and their intertextual consanguinity (no Erichtho without Canidia!), in many studies of secondary literature they are taken as proofs for the existence of real historical witches. Because both Horace and Lucan describe the witches’ magical rites and practices in great detail, their texts received and continue to receive a lot of attention, not only from scholars of classical philology, but also from other disciplines concerned with magic, such as history of religions and ethnology. Yet this is a fallacy, as we find neither ingredients nor magical rites that are not mentioned in other literary narratives of magic.4 Certainly, the works of Lucan and Horace cannot be taken for descriptions of a historical reality. In spite of their generic quality, their texts fascinate because of their seemingly encyclopedic nature. This holds true especially for Lucan’s aretalogy of the Thessalian witches, among whom Erichtho is an outsider – and a far more professional one. In addition to these characteristics shared by Canidia and Erichtho, we have to take into consideration their contexts respectively.

Canidia Canidia is described by her creator Horace in three poems that differ in genre and content: Epodes 3 and 5, and Sermones 1.8. These three poems do not offer a consistent picture of either Canidia’s biography nor of her appearance. One is tempted to surmise that the irritation provoked by this heterogeneity was the intention of the poet. Despite this, Canidia was seen in older scholarship as the prototype of a real Roman witch, though more recent studies claim that she should rather be interpreted as an example of Horace’s interpretatio Romana (or better Horatiana) of Greek literary motifs and genres. In particular, the quasi-­cineastic description of Canidia’s ‘dark magic’ in Epode 3 leaves a long-­lasting impression, but perhaps only because we recognize some elements associated with magic and its popular representation today: darkness, churchyard, gruesome rites. The Horatian Canidia is a malicious, ageing woman intending to take revenge on a man who spurned her. On a dark and creepy night on the Roman Esquiline, in a secret place that seems to be a former burial ground, she prepares the ingredients of a ghastly love charm. Because the liver of someone starved to death is a very potent ingredient, she buries a kidnapped boy

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up to his neck in the ground with food nearby that he cannot reach. Although this ritual is performed only for her own benefit, she is aided by her friends Veia, Folia and Sagana Canidia in sisterly solidarity. While the ritual acts are described in full detail (yet generically), the outward appearance of the women is not, as Horace takes recourse to stereotypes of old, ugly, malicious women with pale, livid faces.5 But this does not allow a recognizable and transferable visualization. It is important that Horace’s description of Canidia and her rites, especially the love charm seen from the male perspective, has a strong sexual tinge/ gender component resulting in the partly burlesque-­misogynistic tone of the poems. Certainly, Sermones 1.8, where the god Priapus watches the women and chases them off by farting, has to be seen in the generic frame of iambos and satire, which is generally marked by transgressions of decency and manners. Therefore, it does not necessarily reflect the author’s personal attitude towards (the) women. There can be no doubt that these ‘original’ characteristics have provided the frame for the future reception of Canidia: the secondary literature on the Horatian witch is a rather sad but instructive example for scientific (= male) misogyny, as, in more cases than not, the scholars outdo Horace in their negative descriptions of women. Earlier scholars tried to solve the question of whether historical Roman women were ‘hidden’ behind Canidia. They felt themselves entitled to this limited interpretation because the late antiquity annotator Porphyrius (ad Iam. 3.7) had mentioned that with his three poems, the Augustan poet more likely than not had ridiculed a Grat(t)idia, a woman from Naples, using a pseudonym with the same number of syllables as the real name, as did Virgil with Cytheris/Lycoris. Modern scholars, still clinging to a biographical interpretation, thought that Horace might have developed Canidia to discredit one or more prominent women (e.g. Cleopatra) who were connected in one way or another with magic. Apart from these thematically narrow scholarly works or the odd revival in satirical misogynistic texts aiming at discrediting real contemporary women or in treatises concerning magic,6 Canidia has not enjoyed a remarkable literary or visual reception. And even these re-­uses are marginal in contrast to her authoritative literary reception in Lucan’s Bellum Civile. This, in turn, leads us to Erichtho, who appears almost one hundred years after Canidia, but is of a completely different calibre, as we will see. Perhaps it would not be wrong to say that with his masterstroke, Lucan eclipsed/conquered Canidia who, in future reception, would now merge forever with his Thessalian witch Erichtho.

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Erichtho The epic poet Lucan takes advantage of the fact that Pharsalus, where Caesar and Pompey fought the decisive battle of their civil war in 48 bce, is located in Thessaly. He combines two traditions, the historical and the mythical-­ mythological, since Thessaly traditionally is a literary landscape haunted by the most powerful witches in the world. In this respect, his depiction is arranged in a climax, from a bird’s-­eye view on Thessaly with its yet unfinished history of geological formation and its witches in general, to an up-­close and personal view on Erichtho: the unstable and eluding landscape of Thessaly, having emerged simultaneously with its towns and gruesome people from toxic mud in a time not so far away, is the perfect geographical stage for the destabilizing Roman civil war. The extremely powerful Thessalian witches, created directly from primeval mud, live and act in a collective. Lucan’s aretalogy of the striges – intertextually linked to the Horatian Canidia – paints their powers and arcane knowledge in vivid colours. They include the usual adynata of magic: drawing down the moon, reversing the course of rivers, changing the seasons and all kinds of love magic (Luc. 6.635). Among these already incredibly powerful witches, Erichtho (Luc. 6.507–569) is incomparably more powerful. Being an outsider to the Thessalian witch collective, she is a sort of super-­professional who, having devoted her entire life to magic, has utter contempt for love charms and other magical trivia. Instead she concentrates on necromancy, which can be defined as the fine art of suspending or even overcoming death. By ever inventing new spells, she contributes to magic’s advancement (509). She is not only feared by her co-­ witches, but also by the gods themselves. Although Lucan did not refrain from giving Erichtho grotesque features, he did not indulge in the rather shallow misogyny found in Horace, which he outbalances with her exceptional position and her quasi-­metapoetical function.7 Starting off with the usual stereotypes, the epic poet describes Erichtho as pale, ugly, emaciated, but her long hair is braided with snakes, and she has an inclination toward garish, eccentric clothing (Luc. 6.654–6). This choice of clothes is not just a shifting of parameters of stereotyped female vanity but is strictly subordinated to her professionalism: she chooses her clothes according to the magical rite she has to perform, as we see in her reanimation of a dead soldier. This leads us to the concrete position of the Erichtho episode in Book 6 of the Bellum Civile that describes the events on the eve of the decisive battle of Pharsalus. In the first 332 verses, we are witnesses to how Caesar, with the help of his centurion Scaeva, very narrowly escapes a defeat against Pompey and his

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troops. The remainder of the book deals with Thessaly, Erichtho and Sextus Pompey (Luc. 6.413–834). Because this son of Pompey, unworthy of the father,8 is worried about the battle’s outcome, he consults the famous Erichtho: he asks her not only to tell him the name of the conqueror, but also, if necessary, to avert an unfavourable outcome of the battle. While categorically refusing the latter request, as a change of the great fata is not in her power, she stages a necromantic ritual for the purpose of divination. The reanimated anonymous soldier not only predicts the future of the leaders, but also reports that the shades of the dead in the Underworld have started a kind of civil war, too. One of the major differences between Canidia and Erichtho is that the Thessalian witch is connected to an important historical protagonist, to Sextus Pompey, who, in turn, has a very unstable and ambivalent reputation. As a result, her later reception is often a variable of the reception of the younger Pompey, who survived the civil war between his father and Caesar and later on took over the role of intermediator in subsequent political and military conflicts, only to be killed during the Second Triumvirate. From our perspective, Lucan is the only poet to revive Sextus Pompey as a literary character, thus making his Bellum Civile unique in more than one respect.9 Accordingly, Erichtho appears in visual reception in images primarily focused on Sextus Pompey, but even those are rare. For the most part, they are illustrations of editions of the Bellum Civile. Here Erichtho is depicted as an old, but not particularly terrifying, woman. In these visual transformations, neither the grotesque potential of the literary character nor the spectacular necromancy (if depicted at all) are played out to maximum effect. For example, as we see in an illustration for the Dutch edition of Le Faits des Romains (1479), the witch and the Roman nobleman are ‘neutralized’ by their clothing, which is adapted to the fashion of the engravers’ time and thus is only vaguely recognizable as belonging to classical antiquity. The necromancy is present in the charming little devils, which needs are missing in pre-Christian Lucan: Erichtho is perceived in the frame of the contemporary witch concept and is therefore enriched and reduced at the same time. In the engraving by John Hamilton (1776) titled ‘Sextus (the son of Pompey) applying to Erichtho, to know the fate of the battle of Pharsalus’, Sextus is depicted in a gesture of horror vis-à-vis the revitalized soldier, whereas a rather pathetic Erichtho is averted, holding some silly snakes in her hand. Obviously, Lucan’s confusing narrative technique did not contribute to visualizing Erichtho as a three-­dimensional character in spite, or even exactly because, of the richness of detail. One might say that as far as her literary and

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visual reception is concerned, she is too individual a character to be recognizable without an in-­depth knowledge of Lucan’s text. But in addition to her being linked to a specific historical situation and personality, Erichtho’s epic patina with some specific features made her reception a bit more distinctive than that of Canidia: her learning, her high standards of professionalism, and her necromancy, hence her close link to death as well as her wide horizon of historical experience.10 Accordingly, she sometimes appears in other contexts as an alien element and, in contrast to Lucan, in an ennobled way, which in turn was not conducive to her future visual reception, as it robbed her of her gruesome elements. For example, in Dante’s Commedia (early fourteenth century), Erichtho is the dark spirit in the background of the Inferno narrative. When Dante asks how his guide Virgil acquired such intimate knowledge of the Underworld’s topography, the dead epic poet tells him that it was the witch Erichtho who had initiated him into the mysteries of Hades by being his ‘Cicerone’ just as he is now to Dante.11 Some hundred years later, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe has Erichtho appear in the Klassische Walpurgisnacht of his Faust II (publ. 1832) whose scenery is just the battlefield of Pharsalus. The magician is characterized as a purified wise woman commenting on the history-­changing impact of Caesar’s victory over Pompey. Furthermore, she puts the strange actions of mankind in general in their proper perspective. Analysing scenes from individual rehearsals of Faust II, however, would not be profitable in this context, since this would only tell us something about the stage directors’ interpretation of Goethe’s Erichtho, whose characterization is already far removed from Lucan’s version. Even Goethe’s genuine literary reception of the Bellum Civile will only be discernible to readers/spectators with a background of a very good classical education.

Intermediary results What can be learnt so far from the observations in regard to changes and conditions of reception? There are some factors which – in retrospect – seem to have had a negative impact on the (future) visual and literary reception of Canidia and Erichtho. Owing to their extremely close adherence to their original contexts that, at the same time, are the only literary renditions of classical antiquity in contrast to canonical witches like Medea and Circe, they have neither developed an easily recognizable literary iconography nor a biography

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with different stages of life. Whereas the Horatian Canidia fluctuates between ‘mature’ and ‘old’, Lucan’s Erichtho is a creature existing since the dawn of time and is therefore even more unspecific than Canidia. In spite of the fact that both witches are transferred occasionally into other literary contexts, their vitae do not show the characteristically Hellenistic production of narrative branches distinguishing the literary life of other mythical women. There seems to have been no interest nor demand for fabricating their individual biographies. As the literary and visual reception of Canidia and Erichtho is dependent on the texts written by Horace and Lucan, it is limited to supporting illustrations in later editions and translations, which from the standpoint of artistic innovation – at least in this case – are rather secondary. As far as I can see, no famous artist has ever taken up the challenge of this subject. Consequently, even the special, but common, form of reception of someone who is fascinated by a picture and goes looking for the inspirational source of the artist is excluded. In the case of the two Roman witches, the path of reception is a rather narrow one, and is even more narrowed down in post-­antiquity for which we have to take into account, among other factors, the different educational systems that vary due to geographical areas. In this scenario, I will pick out the contemporary and rather unpredictable forms of reception.

Contemporary forms of reception Up to World War I, basic knowledge of Greco-Roman antiquity was a prerequisite for certain social classes, owing to the importance of classical languages in education. Today, such knowledge is more dependent on a person’s individual curriculum.12 But even for someone studying Latin, the chances of encountering Canidia or Erichtho are fairly remote. Furthermore, the works of the expanded canon of world literature such as Dante’s Commedia and Goethe’s Faust II, in which Erichtho plays a prominent role, are not part of the courses that are routinely taught at schools or universities. The only modern staging of Lucan’s Bellum Civile is an acclaimed SwissGerman co-­production dating only from the season 2013–2014 at the theatres of Chur, Mülheim/Ruhr and Berne (8 January to 22 March 2014). The Swiss director Achim Lenz, who has an MA in Classics and Ancient History from the University of Basel, is a good example of how a Classics education can be transformed into another professional area. With wars and civil wars now

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sprouting all over the world, he felt that Lucan’s poetic account of an escalation and excess of human violence was of unparalleled actuality. Using the first seven books of Dietrich Ebener’s translation (1978) staged in a chorus-­theatre with female actors only, he refrained from transforming Lucan’s text into a pseudo-­ historical or mock-­classical play. Even though all of the six actresses, with individual and timeless costumes, were assigned to the single historical characters, they mainly spoke in a well-­modulated chorus. Yet, spectators soon learnt to differentiate the voices and characters. As Lucan’s text was in the centre of the play in an uncompromising, even relentless way, they followed the development of the civil war and even participated in it with sympathy and repulsion (with Caesar winning the day, I am afraid). It was an interesting effect that the actresses acted the male parts so well, that when they spoke the rare female parts (Iulia, Cornelia) a sort of irritation arose among the spectators. Even though I was part of the team as professional adviser and therefore followed the staging over more than two years from the first plans to realization, I was stunned at how well Erichtho’s text ‘worked’ with the spectators in terms of their being non-­specialists. This was also my first (and very moving) experience of the Bellum Civile as a spoken and enacted text. Whereas all six actresses were on the stage moving and interacting constantly in all other episodes, the Erichtho scene was the only exception to this. As there was no possibility of changing the dresses (there was no intermission during the ninety-­ minute play) nor of adding temporarily supporting props or scenery, the drama was all in the word. Erichtho, played by Sarah Speiser, not only spoke the part of the Thessalian witch, but also the prophecy of the revitalized soldier (see Figure 9.1). Even without the paraphernalia of a magical landscape, the effect was creepy and credibly depressing. This effect is hard to explain, but it might be an indicator that the Erichtho episode is indeed extremely dependent on the description of the civil war in general and is not just a removable extra scene. The isolation of the episode leads to quasi total deprivation of a deeper meaning. It also points to the image-­generating quality of Lucan’s poetry that, while urging readers and listeners to an uncontrollable production of associations and images not necessarily connected to the contents of the Bellum Civile, does not call for a visual transformation and adaptation. Apart from this solitary, though stunning, theatre production, most recipients – scholars and not – will encounter Erichtho and Canidia through translations of their original literary texts, but even in this respect a special motivation of the individual reader is necessary. Yet, in the ongoing age of the internet, new contextualizations of all kinds are facilitated, not least owed to chance and

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Figure 9.1  Stage picture from Der Bürgerkrieg (director A. Lenz), premiere, Chur, 8 January 2014. Photo: Achim Lenz, courtesy of Theater Chur.

certain algorithms. Who starts an internet search for Canidia and Erichtho, and for what reason? Why and in which contexts are their images created and used? In order to find questions to these answers one has to enter the magic labyrinth that is the search engine. In combination with traditional methods of enquiry and including theatre, comic books/graphic novels, advertisements and miscellaneous forms of online presence, I made some illuminating discoveries.13 Even though the great number of hits/finds and their volatility does not allow for a comprehensive analysis, the following tendencies, perhaps also valid for former periods, can be discerned. The first two types of ‘use’ (I hesitate to call them ‘reception’ as to my mind this would imply some link to/knowledge of the former context) show a very low grade of connection to the original context.

1. In some cases, only the names of Canidia and Erichtho are used with or without specific meaning, possibly even only because they are melodious. For example, a species of nocturnal moths is named after Canidia (and Erichtho), which seems somehow appropriate. 2. As with the traditional ways of reception (i.e. before the web), we also find the utilization of the names with or without corresponding images with all shades of meaningfulness or meaninglessness in the general context of magic in all its dimensions.

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In many cases, it is hard to evaluate the seriousness of the websites: scholarly treatises on the history of magic stand side by side with (serious? Ingenious or ingenuous?) practical advice on the everyday use of magic (especially on web forums). Erichtho is also present as a figure in role-­playing games (see Figure 9.2).

Figure 9.2  Internet presences of Erichtho. Graphics by Michaela Hellmich.

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But Erichtho and Canidia are also used as pseudonyms in social media, in blogs on magic, or self-­help groups, partly in connection with (seemingly) everyday photographs, some of which are posed.14 In most cases, it is, of course, impossible to find out why someone chose the name of either of the two witches for this particular manner of self-­portrayal. It is equally hard to determine whether the person in question has any personal affinity to magic or classical antiquity. Sometimes one can guess that we are dealing with a sort of recycled/secondary use of acquired knowledge (Bildungszweitverwertung) in a private context, for instance if a female scientist calls herself Erichtho venefica. The reasons behind this self-­portrayal could only be revealed in personal conversations, but such an investigation in general would fall into the responsibility of media specialists or even psychologists. Apparently, the reception of Canidia and Erichtho is somehow connected with the popularization of pagan magic via the internet. This revival is based on the assumption that ancient magic was an integrative ‘art of existence/of the self ’ (sensu, Foucault) and an archive of knowledge that was lost due to a misogynistically biased transmission facilitated by Christian condemnation of magic and even witch-­hunts. On the basis of very limited evidence, some people are trying to excavate the ‘true’ history of the ancient witches. Even in ‘serious’ literature on the subject in print and online,15 for which a lucrative market seems to exist, Erichtho and Canidia are, of course, perceived as real, historical magicians. The fact that their original context was a literary one is totally disregarded, and the outstanding poems of Horace and Lucan are reduced to the rank of a mere carrier medium. As these attempts are rather an illumination of certain (modern) perceptions of gender than of ancient magic, in this context the boundary between scholarly reconstructions of ancient magic and lay approaches is blurred. The most popular discourses – websites on magic with brief historical outlines and practical advice, often in the form of a personal blog – seem to be largely dominated by female protagonists and targeted at a female audience. In a process not limited to Canidia and Erichtho, the literary accounts are stripped of all potentially misogynistic elements: now the ancient sorceresses emerge as powerful women who were discredited by men exactly because of that power. However, this process of reappropriation is almost exclusively focused on the outward appearance, turning Canidia and Erichtho into beautiful, mysterious women. Certainly, the visual dimension of websites of this kind is designed to be more of a kind of kitsch and sentimentality than aiming at high art or rendering the original literary origin of the two witches. Some of the pictures were probably taken from other contexts and just renamed.

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Evaluating the artistic merit of these images is not of importance in our context, but the similarity between the posed pictures from Facebook and the illustrations of websites concerned with magic is significant. These visual presentations have little or nothing in common with the literary descriptions, but move in a totally peripheral field of associations. At first glance, they seem to be an inversion of the ugly women of the Roman poems with a complete levelling of Lucan’s variant of an intellectual witch. The common denominator of these modern depictions is the figure of the mysterious woman asserting herself against the dominance of men by means of supranatural powers. At best, the social marginality and deviance of the two characters of Roman poetic imagination is reactivated as the choice of a pseudo-­feministic lifestyle. What remains is the shallow idealization of a sham women’s liberation, which, in turn, reveals itself as an uninspiring variation of contemporary commercially induced ideals of beauty. The vague reference to Greco-Roman antiquity is used to sanitize a self-­portrayal that only aims at a narcissistic parade of one’s outward appearance enhanced either by cosmetics or photoediting programs, or both. These contemporary self-­images and new visions of the ancient witches oscillate between two extremes: a solemn beauty of an unhistorical and commercial type, suited to opera settings and pseudo-­witches of Middle Age events, standing opposite a trashy creature like Erichtho. Indeed, the Thessalian witch is a relatively common motif of amateur artwork, such as that on view and on sale on the website deviantart.com. The rather unimaginative revisions recalling associations with death and the Underworld that dominate this website can also be found in other contexts: Erichtho gives the title to a heavy metal record by a band named Occultus, and she is also the patron of a perfume named ‘Freshly Dug Grave’, in the advertising of which Lucan’s Bellum Civile is mentioned explicitly:16 ‘A tribute to the necromancer Erictho from the Latin poem Bellum Civile. This fragrance will surely awaken your senses; containing a balmy mixture of loamy clay, sodden soil, decomposing leaves, and then tapped with the earthy smell of roots and grass. A must have for fans of the undead!’ One wonders about the perfume’s intended target group, if this is not, as I hope, just a witty parody of contemporary perfume advertisements. In all these contexts a multiple marginalization can be observed: these are the residues of a reception beyond the canonical tradition, but not in the sense of criticizing the discourse of power and devoid of a potential for criticism or of creating new and sustainable meaning. The connection to the original contexts of Canidia and Erichtho is cut, as these pictures hint only from a very remote

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distance at a transmission and practice of ancient magic that was hidden from the humanistic tradition of education. Styling Erichtho into a trashy figure will hardly lead to reading – or critical re-­reading – of Lucan’s epic, even though this trashiness or campness corresponds with some scholarly assessments: W.R. Johnson declares Erichtho one of the most funny witches of world literature (passim) and Lucan’s epic in general as a ancient counterpart and forerunner to the black and white Donald Duck comic series. This familiarizing of Lucan and defamiliarizing of Walt Disney was a well-­targeted scholarly provocation, albeit without impact on the average Mickey Mouse reader.17 But Johnson has a point: Lucan might be the perfect author for the modern art form of a black and white graphic novel, which – as far as I know – does not exist. But there is some hope. In retrospect, the temporarily amusing search for visual representations of Canidia and Erichtho would have been utterly and pointlessly boring if I had not encountered a modern sister of Erichtho, if not Erichtho herself, in a remarkable graphic novel. Indeed, Lucan’s witch has been revived in an exciting fashion in The Thessaliad (2002), a spin-­off of Neil Gaiman’s famous Sandman series, which is very heavily laden with erudition in a rather Hellenistic manner and – not only for this reason – should be seen as a ‘legitimate’ genre and art form next to modern literature. In A Game of You (The Sandman, vol. 5) and The Kindly Ones (The Sandman, vol. 9), a congenial transformation of Aeschylus’ Oresteia, the witch Thessaly/Larissa has her first appearances as a minor character without a proper biographical background. The readers get no information apart from the fact that she is the last and most powerful of all Thessalian witches. In The Thessaliad (2002) and Thessaly – A Witch for Hire (2004), written and illustrated by Bill Willingham and Shawn McManus, with Thessaly as the central character, this blank is filled. Both volumes, especially the first one of this sub-­serial (The Thessaliad, comprising the first eight stories of the cycle) is closely linked to ancient literature, filled with many explicit and implied references to learning and ‘higher’ culture. This is typical of Bildungszweitverwertung, which often lacks creative profundity, but in this case can satisfy even higher standards. Indeed, the intertextuality with epic and tragedy is obvious and well-­placed. Not only does the title, The Thessaliad, conform to the formation of titles of ancient epics in their Anglicized version (cf. The Aeneid, The Laviniad), but this intertextuality also operates at the level of content. The graphic novel metapoetically reflects the restrictions and chances of telling (literary) stories. The Sphinx episode18 especially illustrates the demands and restrictions imposed on the protagonist of a myth who cannot escape the course of the traditional

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narrative and is constrained to react in always the same manner. The Sphinx is irritated that Thessaly knows in advance her riddle, but she performs her role in the same manner as ‘always’. She is not able to come up with a new riddle and is cheated by Thessaly. The witch in turn explains this ‘stupidity’ in terms of the writers’ laziness – they failed to invent alternative narratives. Because Thessaly herself is aware of the constraints of traditional narratives, she is free to follow or change them. In a dangerous situation, her companion Fetch asks her what she intends to do and suggests explicitly the traditional powers of her Thessalian sisters (change of weather, drawing down the moon, etc.). But she just shrugs her shoulders: ‘We will see.’19 Readers are left in the dark as to why the modern witch calls herself Thessaly or Larissa. Maybe these names serve as pseudonyms for Erichtho, whose name perhaps was deemed too complicated and too difficult to memorize. Nonetheless both Thessalian witches share some recognizable traits: Larissa/Thessaly has been alive since the dawn of time. Like her nameless sisters, she is a member of the Thessalian witch collective, but she is distinguished by her high level of professionalism and her will to survive. Therefore she has always lived alone, and, as a feminist, she disdains close relationships. She is extremely powerful, always continuing to improve her skills and collecting rare ingredients for her magic spells even in the most dangerous situations. She is feared by the gods, especially those of the Underworld. Just as in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potterheptalogy,20 in The Thessaliad we are confronted with a strange multitheistic (and therefore rather classical) parallel cosmos,21 where the readers meet gods and magic creatures of all times and cultures, but there is no reference to Christianity or Christian condemnation of magic. Thessaly’s specialities are death and necromancy. She usually works for an employer, either directly or indirectly, but if in extreme danger she turns into a killer for her own sake. Though not bad looking, she is not depicted as hyper-­ sexualized. Her natural habitat being universities and libraries, she focuses on learning and intellectual abilities. Even if due to the narrative aims and restrictions of the graphic novel, the complex art of Greco-Roman magic is present in a rather simplified form, readers get an idea that there is more to magic than just muttering some spells or waving a wand. Here real professionals win the day. Due to Thessaly’s characteristic traits, the revitalization of the Thessalian witches in general, and of Erichtho in particular, is quite unmistakable to an expert in ancient literature (and its reception). But they are only recognizable because of the generic mixture of scripture and images in comics. Without the

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texts, the images would not be enough to evoke associations to Lucan or even just the ancient tradition of Thessalian witches. This enjoyable transformation of Erichtho serves to show that an ancient pattern of narration can be revived, but the original context in Lucan is not explicitly mentioned. Thessaly mentions a lot of ancient guys. Why not Lucan? The Thessaliad does not provoke, nor necessarily require, a productive re-­lecture or even first-­hand knowledge of Lucan’s Bellum Civile. Yet, knowing the intertext might add to the classics-­educated reader’s additional, albeit temporary, enjoyment. In the end, Thessaly is a kind of magical Superwoman and therefore a child of our times. To come to a conclusion: at any rate, my haphazard internet finds prove the survival of a less obvious and secondary tradition of minor witches beyond the great mythical sorceresses Circe and Medea. Precisely because they are not loaded with the multiple stories and multifarious connotations of their more famous counterparts, they are more suited to individual adaptations and transformations. Erichtho – and this applies to Canidia, too, though to a lesser degree – is the prototypical fill-­in of the Thessalian witches, this fantastical race of wise women and evil sorceresses. But in the end, a convincing and innovative revitalization is rare, as we have seen, and may be restricted to the staging of Lucan’s Bellum Civile (which is a direct reception of Lucan) or the graphic novels starring the witch Thessaly. Both of these are receptions in the traditional sense, as they show an explicit or, in the case of the graphic novel, a still obvious link to the classical tradition, even if these might be receptions a second or even third or fourth degree remote from the ‘original’ context. Yet, the internet, with its fragmented thoughts and images, has increased the chance of a reception solely based on the melodiousness of both the witches’ names, with no visible first-­ hand knowledge, loading them with web-­created associations which, from the point of view of the discourses of erudition, are rather simplified. It still has to be determined whether this kind of reception really signifies ‘alienating them from the original context’, as this would imply some knowledge and deconstruction. It rather seems to be based on a very stereotyped notion of antiquity and magic. To date, this kind of not-­really-imaginative thought- and image-­production still lacks the adequate terminology and analytical instrumentation for a proper scholarly approach. Still, the specific value of such an investigation would be debatable for the field of classics, since this constant and contextless reuse and recycling of motifs, characters plots, etc. can be observed in regard to all forms of art and all times and cultures (e.g. Middle Ages, Renaissance, Egypt, etc.).

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Project(ion) Wonder Woman: Metamorphoses of a Superheroine Andreas Gietzen and Marion Gindhart

‘Beautiful as Aphrodite, wise as Athena, strong as Hercules, and swifter than Mercury’: it is with these attributes that the Amazon princess Diana, alias Wonder Woman, has been fighting since the 1940s as a (proto-)feminist superheroine on the side of the USA against Nazis, dinosaurs and invaders from outer space. The manner in which she acts, her outward appearance, even her character and her origins, inspired by ancient mythology, interact with the constantly changing values, fashions and expectations of the public and her creators: from her inventor William Moulton Marston, who stylizes her in the context of his utopian matriarchal society as ‘America’s Woman of tomorrow’,1 to subsequent authors and artists, who project their own interpretations and ideas on her; and from the hysteria of the McCarthy era to which she falls victim, to the requirements of an ever more commercialized comic industry to which she has to respond. The Amazon undergoes continual metamorphosis, with each change removing her to a greater or lesser extent from the original intentions of her creator, and it is these metamorphoses, from her invention in 1941 to the late 1970s, that are the subject of this study.

The first superheroine: ‘psychological propaganda for the new type of woman’2 Wonder Woman (see Figure 10.1) made her debut appearance as a feature in All Star Comics #8,3 in which she had to share the limelight with other superheroes, as was customary at that time. The history of the Amazons, and of their presence on Paradise Island, where they have lived concealed for aeons from the eyes of the

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Figure 10.1  Wonder Woman’s debut appearance in All Star Comics #8 (December/ January 1941/42) TM and © DC Comics. Source: Daniels 2000: 30.

outside world, is presented to the reader on no more than a single page. Within the principal plot concerning US pilot Steve Trevor’s crash on the island, and the posting of Wonder Woman as ambassador of the Amazons to the USA, we are told that in their beginnings, Amazons, ‘proud and beautiful women, stronger than men, ruled Amazonia and worshipped ardently the immortal

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Aphrodite, goddess of Love and Beauty’.4 This peaceful way of life was disturbed when Hercules entered this matriarchal society and stole the Amazon Queen Hippolyta’s magic girdle, which gave her superhuman powers, under the pretence of false affection after failing to defeat her in one-­on-one combat. For this, she was led from her home into slavery together with her people. Aphrodite was angered that the queen had allowed herself to be ensnared by the warrior, and the Amazons had to beseech her for a long time before she agreed to free them from their affliction. She finally granted them refuge on an island – Paradise Island – where they were to re-­establish a purely female society of their own, shielded from the effects of time and without contact with the ‘chaotic world of men’.5 This fictitious tale reflects the characteristics of the social utopia that induced the psychologist Marston to create Wonder Woman in the first place.6 He was convinced that an end to all gender-­specific and warlike conflict is only possible if man, who is inherently prone to violence, voluntarily submits to a woman who dominates him with a gentle influence and erotic love. In the year of her ‘birth’, Wonder Woman was the necessary and logical creation for her inventor; by her example, she was to empower a new type of woman to bring about the peaceful world domination by women that he hoped for. The psychologist based his special notion of world peace on the DISC theory of society that he had developed.7 The basic premise of this theory is that individuals within a society are led by the four primary emotions Dominance, Inducement, Submission and Compliance and interact on the basis of them. In 1941, in his capacity as psychological consultant at Allstar Comics, Marston started working on the first female superhero, having realized that comic strips had the potential, through their plots, to carry his theoretical utopia to millions of readers throughout the USA. Designed to be a counterpart to Superman, who had epitomized strength and masculinity since his inception ten years earlier, Wonder Woman was the prototype of ‘America’s Woman of tomorrow’,8 combining the familiar superhuman strength of an ‘average’ superhero with beauty, femininity and proto-­feminist attitudes and ideals. These generally manifested themselves in healthy self-­assurance regarding her physique and confidence in her own strength and independence, but also in a pronounced social compassion for oppressed and importuned women, as well as in moral instruction (and proselytism) of the adversary, whose misdeeds now no longer served merely as an excuse for exaggerated displays of force and violence. Furthermore, elements of Marston’s immediate social environment also influenced the conception of Wonder Woman. With regard to her willpower and

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autonomy, these were demonstrably modelled on those of his wife Elizabeth Holloway Marston, who was always the greatest supporter of his ideas – including financially. In the 1930s, for example, when he was more or less successfully trying to market a precursor to the lie detector that he had invented, she went out to work as an insurance representative to earn a living for the family despite holding degrees in both law and psychology.9 Wonder Woman’s appearance, however, was based on that of a different woman: Diana’s stature, hair colour, eye colour and even her famous bulletproof bracelets were those of the journalist Olive Byrne, whom Marston often addressed, significantly, as ‘my Wonder Woman’.10 To the end of her life, Byrne lived as the psychologist’s mistress under the same roof as the married couple and looked after the four growing children – half of which were indeed hers – while Mrs Marston brought home the bacon and Mr Marston wrote stories for comics. Whether, and to what extent, this symbiotic form of cohabitation was based on the primary emotions of the DISC theory is a question that must unfortunately remain open.

The Amazon princess: a pop icon and its ancient roots However, alongside the biographical and sociopsychological elements, it is the Amazon myths of ancient Greece and Rome that form the backdrop for the origins and conception of Wonder Woman. According to his wife, Marston had already shown a keen interest in Greek and Roman mythology back in his high school days.11 The psychologist must therefore already have been familiar with the subject matter of the Amazons, and the choice of an Amazon context as a setting for his heroine was thus more than obvious given the matriarchal form of government he was propagating. A more detailed observation reveals, however, that Marston allowed himself to take more than ‘some liberties’ with the ‘mythological business of the Amazon’.12 In fact, he went so far as to invert one of the leading motifs of ancient Amazon images. The ancient Greek concept of the Amazons was that of a foreign people on the fringe of the known world with a matriarchal society that was thus the very opposite of the Greek social structure. They were portrayed as mighty opponents, dangerous warriors, but ultimately – and necessarily – conquerable. It was, after all, the hard-­won victory – achieved by outstanding Greek heroes – that consolidated and lent legitimacy to their positive understanding of their own patriarchal culture.13 In the comic, it is now the task of the Amazons, formed from clay by Aphrodite long before Diana’s birth, to put the men back in their

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place after they have been waging war under Ares and enslaving women. They achieve this, under the command of their Queen Hippolyta, until Hercules, at the instigation of Ares, manages to enslave them. At the level of the deities we thus have the female goddess of love, appearing in this context as a Promethean creatress,14 in opposition to the male god of war, whose power is fed by battles and the atrocities of war.15 What we essentially have here, then, is a didactic reduction of the Greek pantheon of twelve major deities to just these two deities, for the obvious purpose of developing them as the two opposite poles in the battle of the sexes, conveniently overlooking the mythological romantic attachment between them.16 At a human level, the Aphrodite/Ares antagonism is reproduced in the persons of the Amazon Queen Hippolyta and the Greek hero Hercules. Here, Hippolyta, created by Aphrodite, remains the sole queen of the all-­female nation, while in ancient mythology, according to Diodorus, it was not until ‘many generations later’17 that she succeeded the actual first ruler who significantly identified herself as the ‘daughter of Ares’.18 Hyginus went so far as to call her ‘the daughter of Mars and Queen Otrera’,19 and thus a direct descendant of the god of war. It would indeed appear more logical for the queen of a nation of female warriors to be the daughter of Ares than a descendant of the goddess of love. While the ancient world had many different versions and evaluations of the story of the conflict between the Amazon queen and Hercules for the girdle,20 Marston portrays a one-­dimensional Hercules who could hardly be further from the ancient interpretations of him as a culture hero. Nothing remains of the received view of him as a destroyer of unlawful rule21 and ‘benefactor of all mankind’.22 Instead, he and the other followers of Ares are depicted as members of a repressive patriarchal culture, characterized by violence against women, in which, the comic implies, there can be no place as equals for the Amazons – with their diametrically opposed ideals of sisterhood, love and compassion – or for the reader. With no consideration, then, for its positive achievements in the fields of literature and politics, the patriarchal culture of ancient Greece and Rome is recast as the ‘unequivocal enemy’.23 Marston thus revises the Amazon myth, and not only with regard to a self-­contained origin story. By reinterpreting both cultural concepts, he manages to embed Wonder Woman in a context that endows her from the outset with the values she needs to have as the archetypal new woman in order to fulfil her function as a role model. Within the setting of Wonder Woman, the revised Amazon myth is understood as an ancient origo gentis; the superheroine, on the other hand – the statue of a small child formed by Hippolyta from her own

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blood and from clay (thus establishing a link to both the Creator God of the Old Testament and to mythological creators such as Prometheus, as stated above, and emphasizing reproductive autarchy),24 and brought to life by divine power – is very much part of the modern world. The chronology of her ‘birth’, childhood and youth – in which she undergoes tough Amazon training, thereby acquiring the mental and physical powers which, together with her subsequent equipment and potent insignia, enable her to become a superheroine – is such that she has just reached the age of majority when the narrative arrives in Marston’s time, i.e. 1941, with Wonder Woman being sent to the USA as an Amazon emissary. This was the year that the USA entered World War II and comics, due to their suggestive images and broad, heterogeneous readership, were soon integrated into the propaganda effort. Superheroes no longer fought against randomly selected adversaries, but were mobilized for the ‘war effort’.25 Wonder Woman was no exception here, helping US soldiers to conquer Japanese islands or facing Nazi arch-­villains alone. Unlike other superheroes, who soon became interchangeable Nazi-­hunting global policemen, the Amazon never lost her identity: the introduction of patriotic motives and American ideals followed the basic feminist-­pacifist structure of the comic, so that Wonder Woman always defeated her enemies, with the aid of the gadgets and persuasive techniques that Marston had provided her with, but never killed them.

Early criticism: the lasso of truth as embodiment of DISC and BDSM The manner in which she achieved this was soon to become a problem in its own right, however. The non-­lethal implementation of the DISC theory is manifested most clearly in the properties of the superheroine’s principal weapon: her unbreakable lasso of truth is able to force the will of the Amazon on those bound by it, compelling them to answer her questions truthfully. It is therefore much more than a mere incarnation of the lie detector in the comic. It is the very embodiment of the primary DISC emotions, dominance and submission, which served to enable a graphic portrayal of the binding of the opponent.26 According to Marston, the binding scenes in the comic were essential components ‘of an ingenuous and passionately held vision for female emancipation’.27 Of course, there was a not inconsiderable erotic element to these sequences, triggered by the obvious associations with bondage and supported by Marston’s theories:

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‘Giving to others, being controlled by them, submitting to other people cannot possibly be enjoyable without a strong erotic element – enjoyment of submission to others.’28 On top of this were numerous scenes in which secondary characters – mostly female – were bound in some way and had to be rescued by Wonder Woman. Just as often, however, it was the Amazon warrior herself who found herself bound and gagged in all manner of ways, either lying on the floor or hanging from the wall or ceiling. What the critics failed to notice here, however, was the fact that Wonder Woman always managed to break her bonds by herself, thereby thwarting the bondage motif.29 There was lively public discussion about the ‘right’ degree of bondage to include in the comic; apart from the erotic motif, this discussion centred largely on the absence of a role model function with regard to the sociopolitical ideals of the USA:30 ‘It is just such submission that he [i.e. Marston] claims he wants to develop that makes dictator dominance possible. From the standpoint of social ideals, what we want in America and in the world is cooperation not submission.’31 Following Marston’s death in 1947, the heroine proved to be no longer immune to this criticism that was growing ever louder. This was reinforced by an unprecedented change in American society that began with the end of World War II and saw an increasing public revival of the confinement of women to ‘female’ careers and to their marital, maternal and household ‘duties’.32 This development was all the more surprising for the fact that women appeared to have long overcome such constraints by taking over ‘male’ tasks and occupations as far back as World War I. Men returning from the war displaced women from their jobs, leaving Marston’s vision of imminent female autonomy and domination, which he had talked about in an interview with Olive Byrne in 1942,33 even further away than it had been before the war.

The Kanigher era: between marriage, monsters and McCarthyism In 1948, Robert Kanigher became the new author and editor-­in-chief of ‘Wonder Woman’; his credentials for this post were provided first and foremost by the fact that he, too, had recently created a female comic figure: Black Canary.34 It was under Kanigher, who would be responsible for shaping the Amazon’s storylines and physical form for the next twenty years, that Wonder Woman started to undergo a number of ‘metamorphoses’. Kanigher projected a traditionalist

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female image onto Wonder Woman, in particular by modifying her attitudes towards marriage and conflicts. This not only corresponded to his own views of a non-­violent and thus ‘less male’ Wonder Woman, but also catered for a readership that had developed a great interest in so-­called ‘love romances’ in the postwar years.35 In these clichéd comic variants, the plots were all centred on the ups and downs of relationships, weddings and extra-­marital affairs. Diana’s attitudes towards weddings and matrimony accordingly became increasingly positive, and allusion to a possible marriage to Steve Trevor soon became a popular ongoing theme of the comic.36 Furthermore, conflicts began to be resolved more often by means of a sporting challenge or a convincing display of her superhuman powers on inanimate objects than by means of direct combat with the adversary – for example, through lifting a train or the car of the delinquent.37 The first metamorphosis of Wonder Woman was thus not so much a physical transformation as a social one, partly based on a reactionary concept of femininity and partly a response to the shifting interests of the readership. Despite these changes, criticism of the superheroine continued to grow and was no longer limited to specific individual aspects of the Amazon, but began to question the very concept of superheroes and their function as role models. The 1954 book Seduction of the Innocent by Fredric Wertham constituted the high point of general criticism of comic books; embedded in the hysteria of the McCarthy era, this criticism sought to place responsibility for all manner of social ills, from rebellion against parents to youth crime and even underage prostitution, firmly on the shoulders of illustrated magazines.38 In this work, in which Wertham failed to differentiate between individual superheroines, he proclaimed that their physical superiority and the portrayal of tortured and dominated men was ‘an undesirable ideal for girls’ and ‘the exact opposite of what girls are supposed to be’.39 In response to this, and in order to pre-­empt the threat of state sanctions, the comic industry decided to withdraw all titles that even came close to presenting the characteristics that Wertham had criticized. Additionally, the so-­called ‘Comics Code’ was passed as a preventive measure; this introduced self-­regulation by the comic publishers, severely restricting their creative freedom with regard to comic figures and storylines.40 Only the ‘big three’ remained: Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman; the latter owed her continued existence not so much to Kanigher’s influence as to the fact that her comic, together with those of the other two heroes, constituted the group with the largest circulation. Restricted by the requirements of the Comics Code, however, the adventures of the Amazon quickly became more monotonous and sales figures dropped. Kanigher responded by further adapting the figure to appeal to conservative

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readers. In Issue #105, released in the spring of 1959, he modified her background so that she became the biological child of Hippolyta and an unnamed, but human, father. Both the Promethean act of creation by Aphrodite and her divine dispute with Ares were fully eliminated. Furthermore, the abilities of the Amazon princess were no longer the result of years of training on Paradise Island; instead, she was endowed with them by the ancient gods shortly after birth.41 This also rendered the discussion of gender at a human level obsolete, as she now received her physical strength from Hercules, the very hero that Marston had portrayed as the archetype of violent masculinity and contemptuous of women. As if this were not enough, a new team of illustrators removed the last traces of muscles from the superheroine, and thus all indication that her superhuman strength had originally been acquired as a result of training. Wonder Woman thus now underwent a physical metamorphosis, graphically removing her from her warrior heritage and subjecting her entirely to the ‘gender stereotype balancing act’42 that determines the accepted gender concepts in US comics (and other media) to this very day: ‘. . . if women are too “masculine” (e.g. strong) then they must be “feminine” (e.g. sexy) to “balance out” the gender stereotype’.43 The Amazon thus had to compensate (by having her new slight, delicate build overemphasized) for those characteristics that were generally considered by society to be more masculine in order to pre-­empt criticism for not being feminine enough.44 To top it all, Kanigher also drafted younger versions of the Amazon, so that the adult Diana soon had to share her place in the magazine with her more harmless teenage self and the toddler variant Wonder Tot. As a teenager, Wonder Girl spent far less time fighting off dinosaurs, considered a dangerous adversary at the time, and far more time fighting off advances, not just from friends, such as the young Steve Trevor, but also from such bizarre admirers as ‘Glob, the gooey monster’.45 The message to young women could not have been clearer: ‘What was being sold off, in this case, wasn’t only a more interesting story, but the imaginative scope of American girls.’46 In the 1960s, an increasingly broad fan base was mobilized against this redesign with the result that in 1966 Kanigher literally (and figuratively) discarded the figures that he had invented in the comic and hazarded a complete relaunch of Marston’s Wonder Woman.47 However, this return to the roots, which was positively received by the fans, soon turned out to be a transient episode: in the course of the takeover of DC Comics by what would later become the Time Warner Group, Kanigher was replaced in 1968 by a younger author who was tasked with tailoring Wonder Woman still further to a young female readership in order to boost sales figures.

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The new Wonder Woman This adapted format was a massive turning point, one of the most drastic metamorphoses in the history of our heroine.48 As such, it was also prominently self-­referenced on the covers (see Figure  10.2): ‘Forget the old . . . The new

Figure 10.2  WW Vol.  1, #178 (September 1968): front cover TM and © DC Comics. Source: Daniels 2000: 125.

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Wonder Woman is here!’ was the title of the first new issue in September 1968. This cover depicts a Wonder Woman who is no longer recognizable, consigning her former incarnations on the poster in the background to history with a performative act – on the left: Wonder Woman with her famous attributes, on the right: disguised as her alias, an inconspicuous office worker (reminiscent of Clark Kent, alias Superman). Wonder Woman is now a ‘normal’ modern woman who has dispensed with her Amazon origins, insignia and superhuman powers, whose hairdo and clothing conform to the latest fashion, and is thus someone that young female readers should be able to identify with to a greater extent. Her ability to put up a fight now comes from a different source: namely from Asian martial arts in which she is trained – significantly – by a male master and mentor by the name of I Ching.49 One prominent model for this new draft, incidentally, was an icon of contemporary pop culture: Diana Rigg in her role as Agent Emma Peel in the British television series The Avengers. From her stature and clothing right down to her career profile, our comic heroine was closely aligned with this character – in some cases very closely indeed: Emma’s close-­fitting catsuit, the so-­called ‘Emmapeeler’, was the fashion trend in the 1960s, and this trendy garment also found its way into the wardrobe of the new Wonder Woman.50 Her antagonists were frequently also women in body-­hugging outfits, whose opposition to Wonder Woman was enflamed by her appearance and her abundance of male admirers. This new creation was, of course, as far away as the character had ever been from Marston’s draft of a proto-­feminist Amazon fighting for global peace in a world that was better for being run by a sisterhood in accordance with female principles.

Sisterhood rules: Wonder Woman and the Ms. Magazine This was soon to change, however. In 1972, women’s rights activist Gloria Steinem launched a remarkable campaign to have the original Wonder Woman reinstated.51 While on the lookout for a cover story for the first issue of the feminist Ms. Magazine, she hit upon the ‘sad state’52 of Wonder Woman, the heroine of her childhood, outlined above. The decision was taken to rescue her from this deplorable state, and so Wonder Woman reappeared, with all her ‘old’ iconography and Amazonian powers restored, as the imposing figurehead of women’s liberation on the cover (see Figure 10.3). As an eye-­catcher – ‘Wonder Woman for President’ – she illustrated an article written by Steinem about the

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Figure 10.3  Ms. Magazine #1 (July 1972): front cover. Wonder Woman is TM and © DC Comics. Source: Daniels 2000: 130.

electoral habits of women and stood side by side with the ‘new feminist’ Simone de Beauvoir. Joanne Edgar, one of the co-­founders of the magazine, dedicated a brief essay to her, with the title ‘Wonder Woman Revisited’,53 in which she declared her ‘degeneration’ from an autonomous Amazon to a fashion victim to be an act of perfidious male intrigue. The essay ended with the announcement that the original Wonder Woman would be returning to DC, complete with her Amazonian background, the following year.

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That same year, in order to fill the gap while waiting (and no doubt also to put DC under pressure), Steinem published a bound, programmatically selected collection of thirteen old magazines, written primarily by Marston, with the title Wonder Woman, a Ms. Book and containing an introduction in which she traced the stylization of the Amazon as an icon of the feminist movement.54 In January 1973, in response to the positive feedback and the perseverance of the Ms. editorial team, DC did indeed herald an era of ‘New adventures of the original Wonder Woman’55 – under the aegis of none other than Robert Kanigher.56 Once again we see the Amazon with her original equipment, but nonetheless clearly influenced aesthetically by the more recent figures. The return of the Amazon was acclaimed as a major success for the feminist movement in general and Ms. Magazine in particular, but this raises the following question: while the new adventures may indeed have emphasized female strength, independence and solidarity, one wonders to what extent sexualized depictions of the heroine – such as that of her with her legs apart and tied to a phallus-­shaped bomb57 – can be reconciled with the objectives of women’s liberation.

Wonder Woman hits the screen: from flop to top! Our superheroine underwent a media metamorphosis in 1974 (following a brief five-­minute parody in 1967 that was never broadcast).58 Long after Superman and Batman,59 she made her non-­animated television debut. However, the film with the title Wonder Woman was a resounding flop. It half-­heartedly revisited the old espionage theme, which had meanwhile been discarded in the comic, and for some unknown reason cast a blonde actress in the title role – Cathy Lee Crosby – with no superhuman powers, only a passing resemblance to her original costume, even less reference to her Amazonian origins and virtually no charisma to speak of. The ABC television network responded to this inevitable failure a year later with a pilot episode whose paradoxical title The New Original Wonder Woman aimed to distance it from the flop of the previous year. The choice of actress for the title role set the benchmark that applies to this very day.60 Producer Douglas S. Cramer hit the jackpot by casting Lynda Carter (see Figure 10.4), former Miss World USA and newcomer to the world of acting. She epitomized Wonder Woman with a remarkable presence, natural authenticity and sharp-­witted charm. Quite unlike the blonde Lee Crosby, Carter bore a striking resemblance

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Figure 10.4  Lynda Carter alias Wonder Woman. © Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy.

to the original comic character; furthermore, the plot and the way the scenes were filmed – with a strong emphasis on the Amazonian background – closely followed Marston’s episodes. The introduction is a congenial montage of diverse genres and media. After a rapid-­fire sequence of black and white scenes, with commentary, from World

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War II,61 the final scene – an excerpt from Franklin D. Roosevelt’s declaration of war on Japan with a voice-­over of the text ‘The only hope for freedom and democracy is . . .’ – is interrupted by a firework display of colourful stars and continues as follows:62 the text ‘Wonder Woman’ shoots up from the bottom right-­hand corner of the frame, as the theme tune simultaneously starts up, repeatedly proclaiming the name of the heroine.63 This is followed by a depiction of a comic-­style double page containing a number of panels. These show Wonder Woman in various situations and each break down into multiple animated scenes, one after the other, as the camera zooms in on the first panel. At the end of this sequence, the figures of the two main protagonists, Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor, transform into the actors of the live-­action film – Lynda Carter and Lyle Waggoner – with their names in speech bubbles.64 The pilot episode is set after the entry of the USA into World War II. Following an air battle, the severely injured male hero, Major Steve Trevor, crashes into the hitherto unknown Amazon realm on Paradise Island in Devil’s Triangle (Bermuda Triangle), and is discovered by our Amazon princess Diana, who calls out in surprise ‘It’s a man!’65 He is nursed back to health on the island, the name of which is more than justified. As Queen Hippolyta explains, it is a blissful refuge in which, free from male influences, values such as peace, liberty, equality, freedom from material need, honesty, reliability, love and justice can be – and indeed are – cultivated: ‘I named this island Paradise for an excellent reason: there are no men on it. Thus it is free of their wars, their greed, their hostilities, their barbaric, masculine behavior.’66 As soon as Steve is able to be transported, he is to be accompanied back to the USA by the Amazon who triumphs in a multi-­event tournament. The winner, of course, is Diana who – having undergone the best possible training since childhood – had entered the tournament incognito despite her mother’s prohibition. As the champion, she receives powerful insignia, a special costume and the name ‘Wonder Woman’. Her mission is now to return Steve from Paradise Island to Washington in an invisible plane and to fight for world peace and gender equality. This, of course, is to be achieved not by destroying her opponents, but by persuasive means, including limited force if this cannot be avoided (i.e. fully in line with Marston’s concept of ‘love control backed by force’).67 All this is to take place, of course, under a certain flag. Her two-­part outfit displays an ineluctable symbolism (‘The colors were chosen to show your allegiance to freedom and democracy’):68 the short pants feature white stars on a blue background, while the expansive bustier is formed by the spread golden wings of the bald eagle.69

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Once Diana, alias Wonder Woman, has safely landed and delivered Steve to a hospital, she launches into the second part of her mission – making the world a better place by preventing a bank robbery in her own special way – and is astonished by American bureaucracy. She subsequently foils a Nazi attack against the USA, unmasks Steve’s secretary as a Nazi spy and successfully applies for the job as her replacement – disguised as an inconspicuous, bespectacled office worker by the name of Diana Prince. Steve appreciates his new colleague, without having the least suspicion that the perfect disguise actually conceals Wonder Woman, into whom Diana secretly transforms as required.70 The series was a major success. This notwithstanding, ABC only produced one season. CBS then adopted the format, shifting the setting for the action from the 1940s to the 1970s and making both Wonder Woman and Lynda Carter icons of American pop culture.71 All subsequent attempts at live-­action remakes have been doomed to failure, due to Carter’s overpowering presence. Even the most recent project, a series planned for NBC starring Adrianne Palicki, never made it beyond a pilot episode in 2011 (that was never aired) and a trailer. The entire project, including the actress and her outfit, were panned by the fan community. Improvements were made to the costume, but the project was already dead in the water.

Conclusions The objective of our brief review of the first four decades of Wonder Woman was to illustrate the extent to which a comic figure with its ancient hypotext can, indeed must, be open to change in order to ensure its ‘survival’. She has been constantly reinvented as an icon, rediscovered and given new meaning. In both the comic and the live-­action film, she has had a uniquely widespread impact and been able to convey certain ideas to a highly heterogeneous audience. She thus serves as a screen onto which both feminist ideals and erotic fantasies can be projected; as a superheroine in a men’s world, she offers female readers a role model with which they can identify; she is overtaken by conservative developments and subjected to contemporary fashions by the dictates of higher sales figures. Incidentally, Lynda Carter attributed the overwhelming success of the television version of Wonder Woman to the fact that, as an Amazon, she personified the ‘ultimate female archetype – strong, smart, capable, kind, and beautiful as Aphrodite’.72

11

Ancient Horrors: Cinematic Antiquity and the Undead Martin Lindner

Antiquity has blessed us with a rich tradition of the most ghastly undead creatures,1 be it cursed werewolves, child-­eating ghosts or resurrected corpses.2 Sometimes related to this, although more often independent from it, there exists an even richer tradition of vampires, werecreatures, mummies – and all the other undead or unnaturally alive – in cinematic antiquity. The big breakthrough for the undead in classical epic films came in the wake of the 1950s and 1960s ‘monster movies’,3 and they have stayed with us ever since. Understanding the films’ mechanisms for presenting the undead is not an end in itself. Rather, it can, in contrast, sharpen our view for other mechanisms of cinematic antiquity. But it is also the key to successful interpretations of several modern epic films, as well as for the avoidance of embarrassing mistakes resulting from reading a film without knowing its (artistic) language. The following pages begin with a short guide to the most common types of undead in cinematic antiquity, without claiming completeness. Next will be an outline of the major traditions and mechanisms of their appearance. The third section can be understood as a kind of paradox: an introduction to ancient epics about undead creatures without undead creatures. My observations are based on over sixty productions from the last six decades and various countries, chosen without regard to their aesthetic quality, or lack thereof. Wherever possible, TV series have been included, but the majority of evidence stems from films produced for cinema or ‘direct to DVD’ viewing. All film passages are cited by minutes elapsed from the start of the film; for the versions used, the Global Trade Item Number (GTIN) is always stated for identification at first mention. All films are accounted for with their original titles. Should there exist more established titles with the same names, the final year of production is also given.4

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The undead – and how to recognize them As usual, the first step is the most difficult: What do we mean by using the term ‘the undead’? This problem has been discussed particularly in studies on horror literature, but more often has been taken for granted. The next sections will use a simplified version of the ‘teratological approach’5 and include all monsters that fall into one of the following three categories:

a. creatures that have not completely died, ranging from the full physical existence of most vampires to the ephemeral one of haunting shadows or ghosts; b. creatures that were brought to an artificial life through reanimation, like zombies, or animation, like golems or the mechanical monsters discussed below; c. creatures that are alive outside the ‘normal rules of life’ and can survive usually deadly actions, as most werecreatures do. It is not difficult to spot the danger of entering grey territory with this working definition: if a vampire was already born as a vampire, can he really be called ‘undead’, even though he never died in the first place? Fortunately, this idea can only be found in literature. The vampires of classical epic films apparently do not reproduce through sexual reproduction. Strictly speaking, some of the examples mentioned later show the change merely as a death of the human soul, while the body is transformed without going through a state of complete lifelessness. Should some types of ghosts not better be called ‘apparitions’ instead, because they have no proper physical existence that would make them ‘undead creatures’? As long as they can be seen, heard or otherwise interact with the living, the option to touch or be touched is not considered essential for the purposes of the working definition. Anyway, most ghosts in classical epic films neither attempt to give nor receive physical contact. Whether they could not have even done so if they wanted, does not appear to be a very helpful discussion. Is it not wrong to include werecreatures that are depicted as supernaturally alive and even fighting other creatures such as vampires due to their undead nature? There is a certain logic here, but nevertheless, most werecreatures share a system of strengths and weaknesses similar to that of undead creatures as discussed in the third section of this paper. Also, most of them are presented as humans by birth, whose existence was later reshaped when they became infected with a kind of lycanthropy virus. This basically makes them mutants

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and former humans. As long as their depiction adapts the same strength and weakness mechanisms as mentioned below, they qualify as ‘undead’ under the working definition, even though ‘unnaturally alive cases of transspecies polymorphism (in a non-­molecular biological sense)’ would have been the more precise term.6 Others will have to be excluded on principle: gods, angels or demons may be immortal (not necessarily true in the last case), but they are, above all, otherworldly creatures. Dead in the Underworld, on the other side, are by definition not ‘undead’. The same is true for dead restored to full human existence or turned into otherworldly creatures such as demons. Good examples for both can be found in the TV series Hercules – The Legendary Journeys.7 Another strange oddity is the Roman Emperor Nero reborn in Riverworld, along with American astronauts, Neanderthals and aliens. Mutants will be included as described, as will all sorts of robots if they have a lifelike existence independent of mere mechanical instruments. As with all undead, these categories do not require a humanoid body. There are androids in Il mondo di Yor and Hephaestus’ ‘mechanical companion’ in Young Hercules. The Persian robot army in the Samurai Jack episode ‘Jack and the Spartans’ shows at least some human characteristics. However, this type of ‘engineered undead existence’ also extends to Bubo, the mechanical owl in Clash of the Titans (1981) and Clash of the Titans (2010), or the mechanical bull of Jason and the Argonauts (2000).8 A second general distinction has to be drawn based on the context, rather than the nature, of the depiction. The less frequent option are undead creatures included in and interacting with cinematic antiquity such as the resurrected legionaries of Roma contro Roma.9 More often, we find undead transferred from cinematic antiquity into a different context. In this sense, The Mummy (1932) is the archetype of ‘mummy films’: a mummified Egyptian body is discovered by modern scientists and revived by death magic, resulting in chaos, death and a twisted love story including attempted human sacrifice. The story has been retold in countless B-movies like Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb (with a female mummy), Dawn of the Mummy (with models triggering the resurrection during a photo shoot), and even blockbuster movies such as The Mummy (1999) or The Mummy Returns. Ancient Egyptian mummies can meet reanimated dinosaurs in twentieth-­century France in Les aventures extraordinaires d’Adèle Blanc-Sec or fight against the retired Elvis Presley in an American retirement home in Bubba Ho-Tep. They have even entered children’s programmes from Mummies Alive to Mummy Nanny, with or without elements of science fiction.10 In rare cases, they

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can even be transferred into modern settings and at the same time used for a cross-­over narration. One only has to look at the alternative title of Picking up the Pieces (1991) to understand the full extent of the principle: Bloodsucking Pharaohs in Pittsburgh. Some the most successful films of the last years were those from the Twilight saga based on Stephanie Meyer’s series of books. Both films and books include the characters Amun and Kebi, vampires from ancient Egypt that still exist in our world. In Queen of the Damned, loosely based on a book by Anne Rice, a bored vampire awakens the ancient vampire empress Akasha. Even porn movies appear to be fond of ancient Egyptian vampires in modern contexts, as can be seen in Private Pyramid III. While mummies and vampires seem to be transferred easily to modern settings, this is less so with other types of undead. We do have Gladiator Cop with the undead Parmenion, as, roughly speaking, an evil parallel of the Immortals from the Highlander films.11 The Gorgo in the horror film The Gorgon (1964) from Hammer Studios is some sort of undead ancient monster in early twentieth-­century Europe. Michael Raven’s Virtuoso turns the story of a classical female statue coming alive into a modern porn movie.12 Sinbad and the Minotaur combines undead ancient monsters (with zombie vampire mutants) and medieval fantasy into a horror action film.13 Even so, this is a small minority compared to dozens of resurrected bandaged pharaohs and immortal vampires. The alternative – presenting undead within cinematic antiquity – shows a larger variety of types. Most examples, hardly surprisingly, stem from mythological films. There are the legendary skeletons in Jason and the Argonauts (1963), the shadow warriors and zombies in the first two Ator films, the golden zombie ghosts of Il conquistatore di Atlantide, and many more.14 Even more noteworthy is the variety found in a single TV series: Hercules – The Legendary Journeys. The eponymous hero fights a mummy, a spider-­vampire chimera, a zombie, animated statues and even meets the ‘Dacian’ prince Vlad Dracul.15 One might extend this list to the spin-­off series Xena – Warrior Princess, which, for example, includes a whole episode on the curse of vampirism.16 Only a few types of undead such as ghouls never became part of cinematic antiquity.17 Those that did are usually integrated into the mythological narration and function as variations to the (all too) familiar encounters. This is precisely the reason why Ercole al centro della terra can include a villain out for Deianira’s blood, but also demons and gods. When several foreign dubbings of the film include ‘vampire’ in the title, this points to another mechanism of undead monster movies: the potential to infer the plot from a few early details, such as

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scientists opening an Egyptian sarcophagus in mummy films. In this case, the crucial hint was the casting of Christopher Lee as the bloodthirsty villain, and it apparently worked, although his character is not even a proper vampire to start with. The undead within mythological films are mostly restricted to Greek contexts like the spirits of the dead summoned up by Circe in Ulisse.18 This emphasis is hardly surprising, seeing that there are very few movies on Roman mythology at all. Still, one has to take into account the tendency towards ‘syncretism’ in mythological films. Hercules and Heracles are often used as synonymous, so a Roman demigod can interact with a Greek father of the gods – and in some dubbings even switch from a Latin to a Greek name and back within a single scene. In historical scenarios, the dominance of Roman themes seems hardly worth mentioning. The tendency towards positivistic historical narratives gives less space for the undead, but they do nevertheless exist. Ghosts and spirits seem to be acceptable in Julius Caesar (1953),19 but then again Brutus’ encounter with the dead Julius Caesar is lifted directly from Shakespeare’s venerable text.20 Another type of ghost, or possibly zombie, may be found in Roma contro Roma, even including an awakening from the grave worthy of Dracula.21 Hikayat Merong Mahawangsa sees legionaries fighting a kind of zombie warrior, but my grasp of Eastern Asian languages was not good enough to judge whether they were turned into real zombies or are just human warriors enhanced by death magic.22 In the TV series Roar, Celtic tribesmen have to deal with a troublesome ghost possessing one of the warriors. Yet their main opponents are Roman soldiers invading Ireland in the fifth century ce with the help of Longinus, the centurion cursed with eternal life for stabbing Christ on the Cross.23 Often it becomes difficult or impossible to draw a line between the ‘normal’ monsters and the ‘real’ undead. The best examples are four minotaurs from new classical epic films: the first one, from Minotaur, is clearly depicted as a demigod, including conception, birth and youth up to the first sacrifices.24 The second, in Sinbad and the Minotaur, with its army of mutants, looks and behaves like a zombie creature at first, but later on turns out to be some sort demigod after all.25 The third, in Wrath of the Titans, appears to have more in common with a demon,26 while the fourth, in Immortals, might just be a human in a bull-­shaped wicker mask.27 Alas, most films do not bother to clarify the nature of their monsters’ existence, so these minotaurs may or may not be undead in the sense of our working definition – but more on that in the following section. Some types of undead only occur in a handful of movies, like animated statues and

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werewolves sometimes do. Altogether, the undead in classical epic films are a small group by comparison with giants, cyclopses, wild or mutated animals and all the other ‘classical monster encounters’. But even the more popular vampires and mummies usually become more than that only outside the context of cinematic antiquity. An undead horror classical epic film apparently is rather difficult to imagine, let alone make. Why this is the case and how such a result may look like, will have to be answered in the following two sections.

Traditions, mechanisms and adaptations In these last pages, a couple of mechanisms for the depiction of the undead have already been mentioned. Most easily to identify are the central cases of undead transferred from cinematic antiquity into a modern context. Mummification is, for example, not an exclusively Egyptian phenomenon. The ancient horror in the relevant films, however, is almost always an Egyptian mummy seeking revenge by draining the life force of its victims, often the excavators or robbers who disturbed the grave in the first place. Here we find a direct line from Howard Carter and the legendary ‘curse of the mummy’ to horror literature and film. On the other hand, many vampire characters are also said to stem from an ancient Egyptian background, while, say, Athenian origin is quite rare. While it would go too far here to ask the question, it might be interesting to look at the role ancient Egypt plays in modern popular reception as the dark and mysterious ‘first civilization’ – which would explain a certain fondness for Egyptian vampires as ‘those who have always been there’.28 When presented as part of cinematic antiquity, the undead are usually excluded from the civilized world in a very literal sense. They are the monsters in the dungeons, ruins, wilderness or Underworld as described above for the mythological films. In addition, cinematic antiquity is not overly concerned about the origin of undead creatures. While a narrative like Queen of the Damned has to explain how a millennia-­old vampire queen can still exist in modern times, the undead as monsters in cinematic antiquity just exist. Accordingly, there are very few attempts to use ‘being undead’ as a central topic or metaphor as happens in Interview with the Vampire or the Twilight saga. There are also fewer gender stereotypes, if only for the reason that most films use the undead as asexual monsters. Consequently, the undead rarely become main characters in narratives set within cinematic antiquity. Ercole contro Molock may discuss the nature of the beast, but said beast turns out to be more human than werewolf.

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We have to go back to Hercules – The Legendary Journeys again to find an example including all the elements in question. The episode ‘We’ll Always Have Cyprus’ depicts the murder of a young couple shortly before their marriage. The slaughtered bride rises from her grave to take revenge, until Hercules helps her tormented soul find peace.29 One of the reasons for this lack of background story for most undead encounters may be the ‘conservativism’ of classical epic films. These tend towards very stable selections and presentations of topics which, for example, made Julius Caesar one of the most featured characters.30 When the undead creatures arrived in the 1950s and 1960s, they had to deal with these stable traditions and what little space they left them. Strong traditions in the selection and presentation of characters and stories make it harder to include the undead ‘newcomers’, turning them into just another sort of encounter for most of the last few decades. This also explains some of the difficulties of our working definition: the various types of minotaur, werecreature or mutant seldom rise above the level of interchangeable opponents for the hero to fight. From the films’ point of view, a certain amount of vagueness is actually a good thing. Establishing a new character reduces the amount of time available for the main narrative and threatens to slow down the plot. Therefore, it may be more convenient to give the audience a ‘generic monster’ instead. Some visual hints towards an undead nature can help with the creature’s main purpose, which is to be rightfully killed due to being an evil monster. Any lengthy explanations on its origin could reduce the effectiveness and also force the film to change an established mode of presentation. For the sake of completeness, one addition has to be made at this point: the richest single source for classical epic films is, without doubt, the Bible, especially the life of the Messiah. One might now look at the specific nature of the risen Jesus Christ and find out that not all films grant him elevation to godly status – which would technically make him some sort of zombie. There are, however, only few and rather recent entries working along those lines. Zombie Jesus! sees him lead an army of undead monsters, in Ultrachrist he at least adopts a role as immortal superhero, but does not to appear to be undead in the strict sense. The same is true for Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter, depicting Jesus as an immortal kung fu monk. These are extreme exceptions proving the ‘newcomer rule’. If, however, undead encounters are established as parts of cinematic antiquity, they show a remarkable persistency. Jason and the Argonauts (2000) manages to explain other supernatural aspects by a rationalized background story with, for example,

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the fire-­breathing bull as a clever piece of engineering. But the undead warriors springing up from the dragon’s teeth are still one central and quite real encounter. The only concession to the rationalized narrative is turning them from the skeleton warriors of Jason and the Argonauts (1963) to skeleton-­like plant warriors – appropriate, as they have been sown into the ground.31 This is just one example to illustrate the variety of these films in adopting and adapting certain traditions and mechanisms. It would be too simplistic to just link the depiction to the modern setting. Indeed, undead transferred from cinematic antiquity into a modern context usually follow the set of rules – regarding their motivation, powers and weaknesses – that exists in horror film and literature. Mummies do not rise by themselves, but have to be awakened and will take revenge on the culprit responsible for the disturbance. They are susceptible to fire and usually also beheading, while stabbing or shooting slows them down at best. In other words: these undead follow the ‘monster rules’ already established in horror film and literature. And it is exactly this set of rules which allows us to guess the plot as soon as the archaeologist on screen starts deciphering the inscription ‘whoever disturbs this grave . . .’ Much more interesting is the phenomenon of adaptation in films located within cinematic antiquity. There are a few vampire-­like creatures in classical antiquity,32 but no strong tradition of vampirism as it exists in modern popular culture. ‘Our’ vampires can be traced back to ideas of the early eighteenth century and to later adaptors such as Bram Stoker.33 So when films started integrating the vampires of modern popular culture into cinematic antiquity, the standard rules, strengths and weaknesses were transferred as well. It is a modern concept that vampires usually wear black and die when exposed to sunlight – which is why they do so in Ercole al centro della terra.34 In the episode ‘Darkness Visible’ from Hercules – The Legendary Journeys the heroes travel to Dacia and enter a setting which could otherwise have been used for a vampire movie in early modern Europe. The villain is Vlad Dracul who turns other Dacians/ Romanians into vampires with his bite. The undead creatures reside in a dark keep, apparently sleep during the day, have no reflection in a mirror, can only be killed by sunlight or a stake through the heart, etc.35 Such adaptations even work up to a point of ridicule, as in the porn spoof Labia – Warrior Princess, where the ancient vampires can be killed with wooden sex toys.36 The important question is how far this integration into cinematic antiquity can go. I will argue in the following section that it even allows a classical epic film to be produced according to the rules of an undead monster movie without showing any undead monsters during the whole process: Centurion from 2009.

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When is a wolf not just a wolf? Recent years have seen a remarkable increase in the number of films set in ancient Britannia. In no particular order, King Arthur, The Last Legion, Boudica, Gladiatress, The Eagle or Asterix: God Save Britannia have told, retold or ridiculed stories about the ancient Britons and their Roman, Gallic or Germanic counterparts. Unlike those films, Centurion’s main intertextual reference is no legend, novel or comic, but the modern horror movie Dog Soldiers from 2002. Both films are mainly the work of Neil Marshall, a British director, writer, producer and editor. Marshall specializes in action and horror movies such as Killing Time, The Descent or Doomsday,37 so it was an obvious choice to use the language of horror movies when narrating his first classical epic film.38 Dog Soldiers, as well as Centurion, is more or less restricted to the forests of Hadrian’s Wall Country and the Scottish Highlands, including only a few settlements and a single hut as a temporary shelter. Both films use dark colours to set the mood and some identical sound effects for the slasher scenes. Both films open with a nocturnal assault in the wilderness and the death of the unsuspecting victims – campers in a tent in Dog Soldiers, legionaries at the remote fortress of Inchtuthil in Centurion.39 Both films continue to tell the story of a group of soldiers, cut off behind enemy lines, trapped and annihilated. In Dog Soldiers the catastrophe starts as a manoeuvre of special forces and other military. In Centurion we watch the end of the famous Ninth Legion on their march against Pictish rebels. Both films introduce a scout as a main female character, and in both cases the scout delivers the soldiers into the hands of the enemy. Megan in Dog Soldiers is a real werewolf, but Etain in Centurion possesses similar qualities. She is a natural hunter, always clad in wolf skin and even named ‘the she-­wolf’ by other characters.40 Due to a punishment, she even lost her tongue and can now only utter animal-­like sounds. Both films focus on a group of seven survivors. Both include a traitor among the soldiers – Captain Ryan and Thax – who later on unsuccessfully attempts to kill the main hero. Both films follow the horror film structure of an accelerating rhythm of deaths. At about the same running time, both kill their last three victims within six to seven minutes, leaving the hero standing as the sole survivor.41 Some of these adaptations are visible at first glance; others become apparent only when playing the two films simultaneously. While the second approach is probably not everyone’s favourite mode of reception, Centurion delivers other direct references and comments on them. One of the survivors is actually hunted down and killed by a pack of wolves.42 The others have to deal with different kind of beasts, in the words of Centurio Quintus Dias:43

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When the Picts come after you, they never stop. They can run for hours, ride for days. They barely eat and rarely sleep. Etain, like the wolf, has learned to hunt from birth. It is part sense, part instinct. She can read the terrain, search for signs of passing, run her quarry to the ground and close in for the kill. Now she hunts Romans. Now we are the prey.

Under these circumstances, it seems fitting that the Picts choose the rising of the full moon to put on their body paintings and turn into relentless hunters.44 This is a familiar structure, but it is familiar through horror film and literature, which for centuries has shaped exactly this set of rules for werecreatures.45 The parallels and references could be taken further, and admittedly the element of vulnerability to silver is missing, but again it is missing in both films. Dog Soldiers and Centurion obviously vary from each other in many aspects, such as costumes or military equipment. In addition, other traditions can be traced like references to film noir and Platoon in Quintus Dias’ pessimistic monologue.46 But when it comes to mood, plot structure, constellation of characters, music, colour, sound effects, camera techniques, general setting and narration, Dog Soldiers and Centurion speak the same language. It is the one of the undead monster movie, and it can be understood as such even in the absence of the undead monsters themselves. This is not to say that Centurion should be considered the first crossover between horror and classical epic film, as the first two sections tried to illustrate.47 Yet Centurion can be considered one of the first movies to adopt the traditions and mechanisms without transferring the supposedly essential creatures. Another consequence of these adaptations is a certain approach to violence and the opponents participating in it. On a simple level, this means shots of severed, bleeding heads presented as war trophies.48 But there is more to it than merely the gory imagery. A lot of classical epic films since and including Gladiator have brought us scenes of increasingly detailed brutality, and Centurion is not even an extreme case among them. Also, as the film adapts the rules of a horror, not a slasher movie, this is not violence for violence’s sake. There is a recognizable rhythm to the shock-­effects creating an atmosphere of ever-­present, latent danger characteristic of horror films. There is no safety, neither in the Roman forts, nor in the Pictish settlements. The violence follows the rules of reaction and response, leading to drastic losses on both sides. The Romans bring doom upon themselves by invading the Pictish territory and murdering a child. The Picts escalate the conflict, and even the slaughtered boy had already participated in the torture of a prisoner.49

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So far, some of these points could be compared to narratives of modern war movies as well, yet this is not primarily a film about (anti-)imperialism or the terrible logic of warfare. Centurion gives only vague explanations and no solutions, with temporary escape being the only ‘hope’. In the end, the hero Quintus Dias gets away, but heavily wounded and with more fearsome hunters ready to pick up the trail again. He is not an innocent victim or morally superior, just alive for the moment in an endangered shelter.50 In King Arthur, the survivors unite, connecting a story of war and death to the glorious future that is the eponymous English legend.51 Even Gladiator offers a glimpse of a happy ending with indications towards a return to republican government.52 Centurion uses the same soliloquy twice, opening and closing with the sentence: ‘this is neither the beginning nor the end of my story’.53 This is a horror film’s ‘solution’, the temporary escape, so perfectly ridiculed in Roman Polanski’s The Fearless Vampire Killers.54

Conclusion Film as a medium is prone to all kinds of influences. Without the necessary knowledge, we fail to understand the way in which it adapts, adopts and constantly changes. One might interpret Centurion along the lines of imperialism versus anti-­imperialism or civilization versus barbarism, but to reduce the film to these aspects would be missing the crucial point of the narrative. Also, the treacherous scout Etain is a woman rendered speechless by a male-­dominated society and resorts to extreme violence, but Centurion is not a feminist revenge movie. Most participants of the production are from the United Kingdom, yet Centurion is not a nationalistic narrative about the Britons and the British. Analysing films can be difficult enough, and in this case it is impossible without an understanding of the wider cinematic references. Future years will probably bring us even more of these amalgamations. Hikayat Merong Mahawangsa combines elements from classical epic films, wuxia pian,55 swashbuckler and Bollywood movies. The Last Eve mixes elements of time travel, biblical epic and martial arts, while 300 is a much more complex movie than most reviewers think, and not only due to the numerous references to fantasy, science fiction and zombie films. Odysseus and the Isle of Mists is basically a vampire horror movie, even though the monsters are called ‘Harpies’: they turn others into undead creatures with their bite, they crumble to dust when killed with a wooden stake, and you have to destroy the ‘vampire queen’ to

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get rid of her children. Even so, one of the harpy-­vampires will (a standard horror convention)56 escape, thus keeping the legendary evil alive.57 I agree with the studies cited above58 that modern monster horror films can be treated as a genre. ‘The’ classical epic film, as I have elaborated elsewhere,59 should probably better be considered a category, because it lacks the consistency of a genre on various levels. However, this lack of consistency may be the very reason for the occurrence of said amalgamations. These films are not simply crossovers between two genres. Instead, they have started to implement effective elements of a familiar genre into a less consistent category of narratives. If we think along the old lines, we fail to grasp the important part, often because it is so easy to dismiss modern popular culture on aesthetic grounds. It is entirely possible to interpret the brutality in the Spartacus – Blood and Sand series as an attempt at outdoing the graphic violence of Rome. But if one does so, it might be a good idea to recognize also, for example, the self-­mockery in the exaggerated fight of Spartacus and Crixus against Theokoles that forms the climax of the first season. The confrontation plays out along the lines of a zombie encounter: Theokoles, nicknamed ‘the Shadow of Death’, already looks dead to begin with, but (analogous to a zombie’s strengths and weaknesses) he is also immune to pain, not hampered by wounds and can rise again and again until he finally gets decapitated.60 Spartacus – Blood and Sand is hardly high-­ brow entertainment, but this was never the point. Such examples are indications that cinematic antiquity is changing, and we would do well to learn the new rules – because from now on, here there be monsters.

12

The Phoenix, the Werewolf and the Centaur: The Reception of Mythical Beasts in the Harry Potter Novels and their Film Adaptations1 Dagmar Hofmann

Fantasy novels and their film adaptations seem to be more popular than ever before. With new cinematic techniques, it is possible to create certain kinds of beasts and beings and to develop sceneries that were considered ‘unfilmable’ for a long time – a good example being Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, directed by Peter Jackson. J.K. Rowling’s seven novels of the Harry Potter series have also received extensive and expensive film versions. The novels tell the story of the young wizard Harry Potter, his adventures at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and his confrontation with the dark magician Lord Voldemort. Apart from the central topic, the fight between good and evil, the books perform a coming-­of-age function as the reader follows Harry Potter through all of the demands of his years from an eleven-­year-old boy to a seventeen-­year-old teenager.2 The immense success of the Harry Potter novels, which have fascinated millions of readers all over the world, in many different cultures and languages, cannot be explained by clever marketing and intermediation alone.3 Mythology plays an important role in the composition of the novels; many characters, names, motifs and topics have their roots in the world of myths, fables, legends and fairy tales. When asked about the amount of mythology in her work, J.K. Rowling answered that she considers two-­thirds of it her own invention while about one third was ‘stuff that people genuinely used to believe in Britain’.4 She has created a detailed wizard’s world that connects cultural, literary and religious traditions with characteristics of the modern world, which obviously appeals with a certain zeitgeist that hardly anyone can evade. The Harry Potter phenomenon arises out of this coincidence of modern imagination and reception of myth.5 Examining the mythical beasts, this paper is going to show three examples of the cooperation between ancient myths and modern thought in the Harry Potter

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series. Rowling has paid much attention to constructing a magical fauna and altogether we can find more than eighty species of magical animals in the series.6 About a quarter of these species takes a significant role within the novels or is described in detail. Many of the creatures constitute a conglomerate of different traditions with impacts of Celtic, Germanic and oriental legends, as well as Greek and Roman mythology. Ancient myths and fables are presented throughout the series; many beasts have ancient appellations like the basilisk, the griffin, the phoenix or the centaurs.7 Others show references to ancient myths by their appearance or attitude, for example Fluffy, the three-­headed dog, guards the entrance to the hiding place of the Philosopher’s Stone8 like the mythical Cerberus watched over the entrance to Hades. It is worth considering the visualization of these ancient ideas, not only in Rowling’s books but also in the films. The film versions of the novels are based on a close cooperation between Rowling herself with the screenwriter, Steve Kloves, on the one hand, and the directors of the films on the other.9 Here the imagination and creation of the author meets with the technical opportunities of the medium of film. In this paper I am going to focus on the werewolves, the centaurs and the phoenix because these examples seem to be revealing regarding the reception of ancient ideas in Rowling’s novels, and because they play central roles in both the books and the films. We will look at these examples from three perspectives: a) the description in Rowling’s books and its visualization in film; b) the ancient descriptions and depictions; and c) the reception of the ancient accounts in the Harry Potter series.

The victim of social marginalization: the werewolf Traditionally the werewolf is the incorporation of evil, of the warrior-­man and of the mystical. Particularly in the genre of films, the werewolf has reached such popularity that one might believe its myth was invented only in times of film-­ making.10 In the Harry Potter series there are two werewolves known by name, the first being Fenrir Greyback, whose name is taken from the monstrous wolf of the Nordic legend.11 He is described as a very bloodthirsty beast that has completely a wolf ’s nature and even outside of his metamorphosis goes on hunting for human beings. The contrast to the cruel nature of Fenrir is embodied by the teacher Remus Lupin, a name whose allusion to Roman mythology and to the two founders of Rome (raised by a wolf) contains a

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positive aspect of the wolf ’s symbolism, although it is remarkable that Rowling chose Remus instead of Romulus, thus the inferior one of the twins who was killed by his brother.12 Remus Lupin first appears in the third book of the series when he shares a compartment with Harry Potter and his friends on the train to Hogwarts: ‘The stranger was wearing an extremely shabby set of wizard’s robes which had been darned in several places. He looked ill and exhausted. Though quite young, his light-­brown hair was flecked with grey.’13 Until the end of the book the students do not know about the ‘dark side’ of Lupin, but recognize him as a good and convincing teacher of ‘Defence Against the Dark Arts’. It is interesting that Rowling describes the shape of a werewolf only vaguely, but rather seems to concentrate on his character and identity. Only at the end of the third book does Lupin himself tell the story of his life and of his sufferings, just before he transforms into a werewolf in front of Harry and his friends.14 As a part of this step-­by-step discovery, Rowling describes a lesson of ‘Defence Against the Dark Arts’: Severus Snape substitutes for Lupin (who is absent in the week of full moon) and deals with the topic of ‘werewolves’. He discusses the typical characteristics: ‘ “Which of you can tell me how we distinguish between the werewolf and the true wolf?” said Snape. . . . “Anyone?” . . . “Are you telling me that Professor Lupin hasn’t even taught you the basic distinction between–” . . . “Well, well, well, I never thought I’d meet a third-­year class who wouldn’t even recognize a werewolf when they saw one.” ’15 This scene, which is crucial in the revealing of Lupin’s nature, has some differences in the film version, as in the latter we get much more information about the nature of werewolves: Hermione explains the differences between werewolves and real wolves, while Snape in the background is showing slides with ancient depictions of the creatures.16 First is a prehistoric cave painting depicting a human body on two legs with a tail and a head of an animal, and then we see the Egyptian god Anubis with the head of a dog. A Greek vase pictures a wolf standing on two legs, having captured a Greek soldier and there is also the lactation of two babies by a wolf that may remind us of the Roman lupa with Romulus and Remus. Zoomed in, we are shown Da Vinci’s ‘Vitruvian Man’ completed with a wolf ’s head. None of the images shown in the film sequence really exist, but each of them could very well do; there are indeed prehistoric paintings of man-­wolves, Egyptian depictions of the god Anubis with a dog’s head are well-­known,17 and the lactation of Romulus and Remus was a famous motif, not only in Roman times.18 Though the Greek vase has no parallel, its design is close to Attic red-­figure paintings. Nevertheless, none of the slides shown by Snape are taken from a historical original. Concerning

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Greek and Roman mythology, we simply do not have any ancient pictures as we would expect on coins, vases or sculptures. Although ancient depictions of werewolves are rare, the myth and symbolism was well known in antiquity; Herodotus reported the belief of the Scythes that the nomad people of the Nueri morphed into wolves for some days each year,19 Pausanias records the story of the Arcadian King Lycaon who was transformed by Zeus after having sacrificed a human baby (a detailed account of this legend we find later in Ovid’s Metamorphoses)20 and Pliny the Elder criticizes the Greek writers for their legend-­tales about wolf transformations.21 Petronius describes a horrible transformation of a soldier into a werewolf in the Satyricon:22 He was a soldier, and as brave as Hell. So we trotted off about cockcrow; the moon shone like high noon. We got among the tombstones: my man went aside to look at the epitaphs, I sat down with my heart full of song and began to count the graves. Then when I looked round at my friend, he stripped himself and put all his clothes by the roadside. My heart was in my mouth, but I stood like a dead man. He made a ring of water round his clothes and suddenly turned into a wolf. . . . But when I reached home, my soldier was lying in bed like an ox, with a doctor looking after his neck. I realized that he was a werewolf (versipellis), and I never could sit down to a meal with him afterwards, not if you had killed me first.23

This episode provides the main characteristics which form both the classical tradition and the later reception; the reference to a warrior (here in the character of the soldier), the transformation with the moon, the aggressive and bloodthirsty nature of the transformed creature (Petronius’ soldier attacks sheep instead of human beings) and the re-­transformation the following morning. The myth of the werewolf has become important in Baltic and Slavic traditions, where it is closely connected to the vampire legend, and in Germanic myth, whose gods are shown with wolf-­like attributes or as capable of transforming themselves.24 In Christian times the tradition survived, but the negative aspects of the wolf stood out while the warrior metaphor was repelled. Soon Satan himself appeared in the shape of a wolf, which became the basic allegorical interpretation of the devil.25 Lycanthropy has been seen as diabolical possession since the times of the Renaissance and Reformation, and during the great witch-­hunts of the early modern era there were spectacular trials against supposed werewolves.26 Although Rowling has clearly drawn from the ancient wolf and werewolf characteristics, her concept seems to be greatly influenced by

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later literature as well.27 With the beast-­like Fenrir and the suffering Lupin she portrays the two opposite interpretations of the werewolf topic in medieval and modern art and literature. The long and exceptional development of the werewolf tradition explains the popularity of the motif in film, too. In the film version of the third Harry Potter book there is a great deal of time spent on the transformation and attacks of Lupin. The scene of his transformation alone takes more than one and a half minutes, and together with the attacks of the transformed Lupin we have altogether nearly four minutes.28 That seems to be substantial in comparison with the original as Rowling’s description is limited to five sentences: ‘There was a terrible snarling noise. Lupin’s head was lengthening. So was his body. His shoulders were hunching. Hair was sprouting visibly on his face and hands, which were curling into clawed paws.’29 The werewolf ’s fight with Sirius Black (in the form of a dog) and werewolf-Lupin’s attack against Harry and Hermione, both scenes shown at length in the film version, are completely missing in Rowling’s novel. This is, of course, due to the genre; thanks to modern technologies of film media it is possible to picture the transformation vividly and realistically, while the written form of literature can leave this to the imagination of the reader. What seems more crucial is that there is little place left in the film version for the character of Lupin and for the story of his life; this account, which comprises almost four pages in the book, is completely left out in the film version.30 It seems that the film concentrates only on the figurative portrayal. According to their own statements, the director, Alfonso Cuarón, and the concept artist, Rob Bliss, tried to challenge the concept of the werewolf that had had visual examples in many films before. Close to his characterization in the book, they say they designed the Lupin-­werewolf as pathetic and sad, and therefore they created it not as a hairy wolf but as a hairless and tailless being that is capable of moving human-­like on two legs.31 Rowling herself, impressed by werewolf models such as in An American Werewolf in London (1981), said she was scared seeing this Lupin-­werewolf for the first time: ‘This was scarier because it looks human, it looks human gone wrong.’32 In contrast to this human-­like Lupin-­werewolf, Fenrir is much more animalistic. Whether this visualization of Lupin’s character was successful is up to the audience. At least it seems obvious that a special detail of Lupin’s character that Rowling pointed out in the mentioned interview is not to be found in the film version: ‘He’s afflicted by his past and he’s very vulnerable to public opinion.’33 In the book series Lupin suffers from his disease and the associated social condemnation, and in this way his character, along with other beings and

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creatures of the series, represents an example of those who are ‘different’ with which Rowling pictures a magical society that is far from perfect. In a copyright trial against RDR-books in 2008 Rowling explained: I know that I’ve said publicly that Remus Lupin was supposed to be on the H.I.V. metaphor. It was someone who had been infected young, who suffered stigma, who had a fear of infecting others, who was terrified he would pass on his condition to his son. And it was a way of examining prejudice, unwarranted prejudice towards a group of people. And also, examining why people might become embittered when they’re treated that unfairly.34

Social marginalization, and its overcoming by friendship and love, is a central topic in the novels.35 It is not only present in werewolves but also in ‘house-­elves’, who suffer a slave status, in ‘half-­bloods’ and ‘half-­breeds’ who are discriminated against and persecuted, and even in ‘Muggles’, non-­magical beings who do not belong to the wizard’s world. The only way out of this social grievance Rowling provides by accentuating individual freedom of decision: Harry’s father and his best friend Sirius Black ignore Lupin’s stigma and become his friends, and later Lupin himself, after years of doubt, gives up his embittered position and even starts a family.36 Nevertheless, under the regime of Voldemort the discrimination against Muggles, half-­bloods and half-­breeds by the Ministry of Magic turns into racism; an obvious parallel to the ideology of the Nazi regime that was consciously chosen by Rowling, as she claimed in an interview.37 In the fifth novel she describes the ‘fountain of magical brethrens’ placed at the Atrium of the Ministry of Magic that shows statues of a wizard surrounded by a centaur, a goblin and a house-­elf.38 It symbolizes the harmonic and ideal relationship between wizards and other magical creatures, but is destroyed during the fight in the Ministry and replaced under the regime of Voldemort by a monument picturing the suppression of Muggles by ‘pure-­bloods’ and, significantly, engraved with the words ‘Magic is might’.39

Fighters against oppression: the centaurs ‘And into the clearing came – was it a man, or a horse? To the waist, a man, with red hair and beard, but below that was a horse’s gleaming chestnut body with a long, reddish tail.’40 The centaurs are another group of creatures in the Harry Potter series that is marginalized and excluded by the wizard community. Being

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intelligent and capable of speech, centaurs are (despite their double-­nature) not any kind of ‘half-­breed’ but constitute their own species.41 The discussion about the classification of centaurs, or rather the question of whether they are beasts or humans, already existed in antiquity with the character and form of these mythical beings often being described and depicted.42 The main characteristic of centaurs in ancient descriptions is the aggressive and fierce attitude by which they challenge both mythical heroes (like Heracles or Peleus) and humans. Most common and central are the battles of centaurs, the Kentaurides or Kentauromachia, that are always provoked by the centaurs and result in their defeat and expulsion.43 In Greek and Roman art, various depictions are to be found on vases, coins, statues and reliefs on which the most characterizing motifs are the fighting and raping centaurs.44 While the main characteristics of centaurs are savagery, bellicosity, lechery and a craving for wine, two of them stand out, Chiron and Pholos, described as humane and charitable.45 Chiron appears in ancient descriptions as wise and friendly. He trains Achilles, Jason and other heroes in the arts of hunting, healing and astronomy. After being incurably wounded by a poisoned arrow from Heracles, Chiron exchanges his immortal life for that of Prometheus and dies.46 Zeus gives him a place amongst the stars that by celestial legend is identified with the constellation of centaurus or sagittarius.47 Constellations and weapons depictions of centaurs were very common in medieval times.48 The extensive tradition and iconographical depiction in antiquity provides the basis for the reception in Rowling’s series. Rowling singles out special characteristics of the centaurs, expands them with further elements, and in this way forms a new kind of being in a ‘modern’ magical world. As seen with the werewolf, the centaurs again fulfil a certain role or function within the novel’s plot. Like their ancient paradigms, Rowling’s centaurs live in the forests and ‘are reputed to be well versed in magical healing, divination, archery and astronomy’.49 The central characteristic of the ancient centaurs, who are associated with drunkenness and physical, especially sexual, violence, is reduced by Rowling in favour of a very high intelligence. Their special ability in the novels is that they read the future in the constellations, but that they are intelligent enough to keep this talent to themselves. By reflecting the constellation of Centaurus or Sagittarius, Rowling seems to emphasize the element of divination in order to express their intelligent superiority and at the same time their isolation in the magical world: ‘ “Never,” said Hagrid irritably, “try an’ get a straight answer out of a centaur. Ruddy star gazers. Not interested in anythin’ closer’n the moon. . . . Keep themselves to themselves mostly . . . They’re deep, mind, centaurs . . . they know things . . . jus’ don’ let on much.” ’50

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Although, according to Scamander,51 centaurs are not aggressive, we can find this ancient element also in the novel – their loathing of human beings is already implied in the first book when Harry is saved from an attack by Voldemort by a centaur named Firenze, who is reprimanded for that by his fellows Ronan and Bane: ‘ “What are you doing? You have a human on your back! Have you no shame? Are you a common mule?” ’52 This distrust even rises later in the fifth book when, after Firenze has been attacked and banned from the herd because of his favour for humans, the centaurs proclaim that they will kill every human being (except ‘foals’ – children) who enters the Forbidden Forest.53 The gamekeeper of Hogwarts, Rubeus Hagrid, even fears an uprising.54 In the end, there is the capture of Dolores Umbridge who, as a member of the Ministry of Magic, considers centaurs to be ‘filthy half-­breeds’ and becomes a perfect target for the furious beasts.55 Their aggressive, reserved and stubborn attitude towards human wizards and their vow not to involve themselves in things to come seems to be the reason they hesitate to take part in the final war. Only after having seen Harry supposedly dead, and Voldemort taunting the last defenders, do they enter the ‘Battle of Hogwarts’ against the Death Eaters.56 In the film version there are only two scenes displaying centaurs; Firenze saving Harry in the first year and the ‘capture’ of Umbridge in the fifth year.57 It is striking that both scenes are crucial for the progress of the story, while those episodes from the book that enlighten the characters of single centaurs or explain their manner and attitudes are left out in the films.58 In contrast to the werewolf, there were not as many films featuring centaurs prior to 2001, when Firenze appeared in the first film of the Harry Potter series.59 On the creation of the animated centaurs, the concept designer, Adam Brockbank, commented: ‘So we looked, as always, to the principle of naturalism. This couldn’t be just a man dumped on top of a horse . . . Instead of anthropomorphizing a horse, it made more sense to animalize a human.’60 Therefore the centaurs were given faces with horse-­like features.61 But, as we have seen with Lupin, even the most elaborate design is not capable of showing the central characteristics as long as crucial scenes from the books are missing. David Barron (producer of the last two films) admits: ‘The centaurs in the books are imbued with such wisdom . . . but we kind of struggled with the representation of them on screen.’62 Having in mind the reception of ancient myths, it is worth looking at the characters of two particular centaurs. In contrast to others of the colony, Firenze is characterized as very humane, and even Ronan, who mistrusts wizards and stays with the herd, seems more peaceful than his fellows for he tries to defend Harry and Hermione against the attacking centaurs.63 By characterizing Firenze

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and Ronan, Rowling reflects the two peaceful and human-­friendly centaurs of ancient mythology, Chiron and Pholos. Particularly the interpretation of Firenze as a Rowling-­version of the mythical Chiron seems to be obvious; like his ancient paradigm Firenze is wise and friendly, by becoming a teacher of Divination at Hogwarts he is disposed to pass his knowledge on to humans, and, finally, he is wounded in the Battle of Hogwarts (although he does not die like the immortal Chiron after having been wounded by Heracles).64 In a similar way to the werewolves, the centaurs in the Harry Potter series serve to display the results of discrimination and isolation by wizard society and moreover, again like Lupin, who is disrupted by the contrast between his character and his nature, Firenze represents a special figure of his species who falls between the chairs of wizards and centaurs because of his character. Again, there seems to be a way out of the double bind by means of personal decision, as in the end the centaurs join the wizards in the final battle against the Death Eaters and, following a later comment of Rowling, readmit Firenze into the herd.65 With regard to the reception of Chiron and the centaurs, it is important to point out another reference: in the Inferno of his Divine Comedy Dante, together with Virgil, meets the centaurs Chiron, Nessos and Pholos in the seventh circle of Hell, and they help them to pass the river of boiling blood and fire. They are described with all the ancient attributes of appearance, nature and functions.66 Considering the name of Rowling’s centaur, Firenze, we probably should not only think of a literary reception of Dante’s Inferno, but have in mind as well the political life of Dante in Florence who was fighting with the Florentine Guelphs against the Ghibellines of Arezzo and who afterwards participated in the city’s council. During the fights between black and white Guelphs in Florence he was exiled in 1302. Though amnesty was granted in 1315, Dante refused to return.67 It seems that with the figure of Firenze Rowling has created a ‘Chiron-Dante’ who combines historical biography with literary art and mythical legends to bring out a new literary character within the plot of her novel.68

The overcoming of death: the phoenix In the headmaster’s office Harry Potter witnesses a bird bursting into flames. In the following passage Dumbledore tells the shocked boy about the nature of the creature: ‘ “Fawkes is a phoenix, Harry. Phoenixes burst into flame when it is time for them to die and are reborn from the ashes . . . He’s really very handsome most of the time: wonderful red and gold plumage. Fascinating creatures, phoenixes.

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They can carry immensely heavy loads, their tears have healing powers and they make highly faithful pets.” ’69 In antiquity the myth of the phoenix had a long development, in which different traditions coexisted and were expanded by additional influences. The earliest depictions from Egypt show the bird benu in connection with the god Helios and his cult in Heliopolis.70 In Greek literature, this mostly blue-­painted Egyptian bird has been connected with the phoenix legend from Asia. Herodotus describes it as a sacred bird that he himself had only seen in pictures, which showed it with a plumage partly golden and partly red and most like an eagle in shape and size.71 In Roman times the outward appearance was largely retained. Pliny the Elder describes the phoenix with similar characteristics: ‘. . . it is as large as an eagle, and has a gleam of gold round its neck and all the rest of it is purple, but the tail blue picked out with rose-­ coloured feathers and the throat picked out with tufts, and a feathered crest adorning its head’.72 Tacitus reports in the Annals that a phoenix had been seen in Egypt in the year ce 34,73 and Ovid gives a detailed account in the Metamorphoses,74 which has probably become the main basis for the late antique and medieval reception. Summarizing the innumerable ancient descriptions we can detect the following main criteria: the bird’s striking appearance in size and a blaze of colour; its characterization as symbol of the sun that stresses its uniqueness;75 its link to a tree, the ‘palm of phoenix’;76 its long life cycle;77 its singing;78 and, last but not least, its ability to transform and (self-) renew.79 Each of these characteristics is modified in several traditions and times. The uniqueness of the phoenix explains its many depictions in antiquity: Roman emperors present themselves on coins with the phoenix to express the constancy of their worldwide rule.80 Magical amulets show the bird with a nimbus or aureole,81 and in funeral art the phoenix appears because of its immortal character.82 The adaption of the phoenix’s rebirth in Christian literature and art opens the way to see the bird not only as a sign of immortality and eternal renewal, but also as a symbol of resurrection and eternal life. The transformation of the phoenix into a Christian symbol is manifest in the late antique poem De ave Phoenice that is ascribed to the Church father Lactantius.83 A Christian interpretation of the poem seems obvious: the homeland of the phoenix is depicted as the Garden of Eden, its beautiful appearance is taken as an allegory of the purified soul after resurrection and immortalitas is replaced by the phrase aeterna vita.84 The early Christian interpretation that refers to resurrection, eternity and paradise had much influence, not only on late antique, but also on the medieval depiction.85 Furthermore, the development of the outward appearance of the bird is interesting. Although Herodotus has described it as an eagle, ancient depictions

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show a number of different kinds of birds that allow us, perhaps, to think of a heron, a peacock or a dove. Medieval sculptures are the earliest where we find the phoenix in the shape of an eagle.86 Some of the illustrations in the Harry Potter books also depict Fawkes in the shape of an eagle, and it seems as if they were inspired both by classical descriptions and medieval depictions.87 In the film version, Fawkes appears as a mixture of an eagle and a vulture. ‘The size and length of Fawkes’s wings and wingspan are based on a combination of a sea eagle and a vulture,’ said Adam Brockbank, the concept artist.88 He explains that he drew his inspiration from depictions in classical mythology, together with observations of real birds. The colouration of the bird in red and gold, Brockbank says, was inspired by the colour of fire,89 but he obviously also follows – like Rowling herself in the book – the ancient descriptions given by Herodotus or Pliny. For the scene in Dumbledore’s office, Nick Dudman (the creature effects supervisor) and Chris Barton (the Chief Fawkes operator) created an animatronic puppet that had to be ‘driven’ by ten controllers and which could even cry ‘real’ tears. Richard Harris (the actor playing Dumbledore) coming to the set one day was amazed at how well the bird was trained, for he took the puppet to be a real bird.90 Chris Colombus, the director of the second film, commented: ‘He [Richard Harris] believed that Fawkes was real. And I thought, well, we’ve done a good job, if our actor who’s standing two inches away from this thing believes that it’s real.’91 Thus it seems that the main criterion for the visualization of the phoenix, as of most of the other creatures in the films, is its authentic design and its true-­ to-life representation. In the case of the phoenix (and in contrast to the werewolf) this visualization is based on Rowling’s description in her books and is a result, at last, of her own reception. In Rowling’s reception of the phoenix, we recover the main characteristics of the ancient bird; its blaze of colour and largeness, its song, its long life cycle and, of course, its ability to self-­renew. However, there are also some extensions: Fawkes is pictured as a faithful companion of Dumbledore who not only ‘decorates’ the headmaster’s office but even comes to his aid in dangerous situations. At the end of the fifth book there is a critical duel between Dumbledore and Lord Voldemort in the Atrium at the Ministry of Magic. The phoenix saves Dumbledore from a ‘Killing Curse’ by diving into the path of the spell.92 In the second book, Fawkes becomes the life-­saver of Harry by healing him from the effect of the basilisk’s poison with the power of his tears.93 The healing power of tears has never been a characteristic of the phoenix in its long development of reception and it is obviously a modern or even ‘Rowlingian’ invention. The

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life-­saving ability of Fawkes is expressed in the interpretation of the phoenix’s chant – in the first meeting with Voldemort Harry hears the singing of the phoenix which strengthens him in life-­threatening situations, and after the death of Dumbledore Fawkes intones a long and consoling lament.94 The reception of the mythical phoenix in the figure of Fawkes plays an important role in the thematic conception of the whole Harry Potter series. Although he only emerges a few times in the plot, all of these scenes are connected to the main subject of ‘life and death’, or rather protection from death and eternal life. Fawkes is (apart from perhaps only the main characters Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort) the only creature in the series that is able to overcome death. The contrast to the dark wizard Voldemort is clear; his attempt to acquire immortality by splitting his soul into seven parts, as well as his desire to gain power over life and death, arises from his fear of death. There we can find the reason and the meaning of this (obviously Christian) reception of the phoenix in Rowling’s books: a solitary and sorrowful death that leads to nothing beyond, which is so much feared by Voldemort, is overcome by rebirth and resurrection that is symbolized by the phoenix.95 The power of the phoenix’s symbolism gained from its ancient and Christian tradition is expanded in Rowling’s novel by the motif of its healing and life-­saving power. With his symbolism Fawkes reflects the main topic of the novel; the confrontation with, and the overcoming of, death.96 And again the naming of the creature is significant in this way. The reference to Guy Fawkes (one of the ringleaders of the ‘Gunpowder Plot’ in the Houses of Parliament in 1605)97 alludes to the British celebration of Bonfire Night where every year on 5 November an effigy of Fawkes is burnt. This allusion was meant as a joke by Rowling for ‘Fawkes periodically explodes and then is reborn from the ashes’.98 In this way the Fawkes-­phoenix can also serve as the eponymous symbol of the ‘Order of the Phoenix’, that is constituted by those wizards who resist the regime of the Dark Lord.

Conclusion The world created by J.K. Rowling is, in contrast with the technical parallel world of Muggles, an antiquated world; there is no electricity, there are no cars and no computers, but there are magic potions, brooms and Owl Post. The presentation of this old-­fashioned world is based on the literary integration of myths and legends from different cultures and traditions. Rowling plays with the symbolism of magical beasts and adds new elements to the well-­known traditions to help

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the reader understand the complex world of wizards. To Harry Potter, who has grown up in the world of Muggles, most of the beings and creatures are unknown, and therefore by following Harry’s way through the magical world, a young reader can comprehend traditional, as well as invented, characteristics of the beasts without any previous knowledge. Nevertheless, many of the ancient characters of the magical beasts are kept and, by referring to their particular symbolism, connected with modern phenomena and themes. In this way the phoenix resurrects with both traditionally known and new characteristics, and with its symbolism displays the central topic of the novel. In the same way the traditional development of the wolf ’s myth is placed in relation to the social marginalization of people who suffer incurable diseases, and the centaurs represent the fight of the oppressed against a superior community. Characters’ names provide hints to the their ancient tradition, be it Roman heroes (Remus Lupin), medieval poets like Dante (Firenze) or a figure of British history (Fawkes). The portrayals of the mythical beasts, both in their descriptions in the books and the visualization in the movies, are inspired by ancient models and images as well as by medieval and modern interpretations. However, the results in each medium can be different due to technical conditions and artistic attitudes; in the books Rowling seeks to evolve the characters by composing their detailed life-­stories, while the film versions are concentrated on the outward appearance and the true-­to-life nature of the beasts. In the Harry Potter series the dependence on ancient mythology is intentional and, by connecting ancient models with early Christian and medieval extensions and with references to modern conditions, mythical creatures are transmitted into a modern fantasy world. Thus, in both the books and the films, we can follow the development of the reception of ancient images and find the result of this development as it is displayed in modern culture.

13

Theoi Becoming Kami: Classical Mythology in the Anime World Maria G. Castello and Carla Scilabra

This paper deals with the reception of classics into a specific modern medium, Japanese animation.1 This type of cartoon – called anime – constitutes a very important cultural phenomenon that has spread across Japan and latterly the Western world over the latest decades. Anime production, and consumption, is now a pillar of Japanese pop culture, and it is becoming more and more a worldwide trend: such a broad media and social phenomenon knows almost no comparison as far as the depth and breadth of its diffusion is concerned.2 Japanese animation is not just a kind of entertainment intended for ‘kids’: there are different productions, aimed at various audiences, from little children (kodomo) to adults (seinen and josei), and dealing with themes better suited either for males (shounen for boys, and seinen for men) or females (shoujo for girl and josei for women).3 We are aware that this is not the first review of Greco-Roman elements in Japanese animation,4 but we firmly believe that our approach can meaningfully contribute to understanding the process of perception and appropriation of classical heritage in Japanese pop culture. Research conducted so far has mostly focused on a classically-­centred view. Even leaving aside the tacit assumption of cultural superiority that this approach implies (a strategy rarely leading to balanced studies), such a conceit could prove to be too narrow in perspective for a full enquiry into this subject. Indeed, this approach led to some really trenchant comments on this type of production. For example, Salvatore Settis, in a recent essay about the future of classical culture, questioned Miyazaki’s decision to name one of his heroines Nausicaa;5 or worse, the phenomenon has been dealt with as a process of ‘declassicizing the classics’, implying that a non-European culture could not fully metabolize our ancient heritage, and would just randomly or whimsically pick some exotic elements out of it.6

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This is not our standpoint, as we believe that such a presumptuous approach could be very misleading. With this study we aim to expand current knowledge on the topic and to provide new perspectives. We do not restrict our research to a mere list of Greco-Roman elements found in anime productions; rather, we investigate their origin and, more generally, how the classical heritage is perceived by anime creators and filtered by Japanese pop culture. Moreover, we believe that the anime world – thanks to its wide success – could be an advantageous observatory to analyse the actual reception of the classics in Japanese mass culture. Of course, a study of the circulation of such themes in academic fields or other cultural enclaves could be enlightening in its own way, but the analysis of the output of pop culture can explain better how the classics are perceived by a mass audience and how they reach it. This prospect may lead to some really interesting surprises, since it might reveal how the ‘pop reception’ perhaps travelled along completely different routes from the academic one and could be, for a good part, independent from it.

Classical mythology in 70s anime: the golden era of Osamu Tezuka Even though born shortly after World War II anime production in Japan really flourished in the 1960s, thanks especially to the work of Osamu Tezuka. Tezuka, who was already a productive manga author in the 1950s, founded Mushi Production in 1962 and created the so-­called anime. These thirty-­minute animated episodes, regularly aired on television, quickly became the standard Japanese cartoons and played a major role in exporting Japanese animation to the West. The influence of Western culture on Tezuka’s work was already evident in his manga and became even more so in his anime productions: those physical features of the characters – large eyes, blonde or unlikely-­coloured hair and anthropomorphized animals – that later became trademarks of Japanese anime production, but also themes, traditions and leitmotifs typical of Western culture. Tezuka indeed drew inspiration not only from traditional Japanese culture, but also from the American comics which literally invaded Japan at the end of World War II. He learned about Marvel heroes and DC comics, and both affected his work; above all he was fascinated by the output of Disney, which was much more meaningful than its Marvel and DC counterparts at that time. These Western models affected both the graphic and narrative aspects of Tezuka’s work: among

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his first anime there are remakes of Disney classics, such as Bambi. Tezuka did not limit his exploration and revision of Western culture to American comics only: he also showed a great interest in European culture, traditions, myths and divinities.7 The fusion between these diverse sources of inspiration – which influenced generations of mangaka, scriptwriters and character designers – is very evident in the first era of Japanese anime production, which is characterized by references to Western myths and traditions. Besides, Osamu Tezuka is not only the first author who imported Western elements in Japanese animation, but also the first who influenced Western productions with his work (The Lion King, a famous Disney blockbuster, 1994 is essentially a remake of Jungle Taitei, The Jungle Emperor, 1965–1966 by Tezuka).8 The first anime revolving around classical mythology was Umi no Triton (Triton of the Sea) by Tezuka, broadcast in 1972 and inspired by the homonymous manga series published in the years 1969–1971. The anime, a shonen, tells the story of the young Triton, a boy growing up in a village of fishermen who finds out that he belongs to the sea family of the Tritons: he is in fact the son of the king and the queen of Atlantis, overthrown and killed by the god Poseidon. After he finds out the truth he wages war against Poseidon in order to avenge his parents and claim back the throne of Atlantis. Despite the not very original plot, Umi no Triton contains many of the typical elements of Western culture that will be used from this moment onwards in manga and anime productions, first of all the recurring fusion of Japanese elements with Western ones, all framed in a fluid narrative structure. The merging process follows a precise schema. The Western classical tradition essentially constitutes the background of the anime: it is referenced in the names of the main characters, Poseidon, Atlantis, Tritons, mermaids and sea monsters. However, the way the same characters and their modus agendi is represented is instead drawn from the Japanese tradition. For example, Poseidon, the Tritons and the nymphs are far from similar to their original Greek counterparts. Poseidon resembles an oni, a Japanese demon; the mermaids look like humans while the nymphs are half-­fish and half-­women. Moreover, many of the sea monsters sent by the god of the sea to fight Triton are large dinosaurs similar to Godzilla (Gojira). The latter, according to Japanese collective imagination, represents the archetype of the sea monster. The sea itself seems to be alive, rather than controlled by Poseidon. Following Japanese tradition, the sea is shown to be a positive character at times – a source of nourishment and a saviour – and a mighty adversary and destroyer at others – incarnating the ancestral and unfortunately current fear of tsunami, the great wave.

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More generally Umi no Triton presents for the first time what can be defined as a ‘monolithic reception of the Western world’: an ideal perception of the Western world as a whole, lacking that spatial and temporal contextualization the knowledge of which is a result of a direct experience. This homogeneous view is most likely the result of the way Japan learned about the Western world: an indirect acquisition of information filtered by Western media: television, comics, cinema and animation. This aspect would always be present in every anime dealing with classical elements. It should be no surprise then that Triton, as soon as he finds out he is the son of the sovereigns of Atlantis, abandons his clothes to wear the traditional Greek attire: a tunic with a red chlamis (which will become the uniform of Athena’s knights in the 1980s classic Saint Seiya); similarly, it should come as no surprise that Atlantis and the sea empire show many similarities with the kingdom of Namor9 in the (Western) Marvel universe, well known and appreciated by Osamu Tezuka. In conclusion, we would like to point out a detail that is symptomatic of how the reception of classics in this oeuvre is a progressively evolving process: starting with Umi no Triton, all anime characters related to the marine world and connected to the Western world are characterized by green or blue hair, following the trend started by Tezuka: the hair of Sailor Neptune is green, and that of Sailor Mercury (warrior of the waters) is blue in the Sailor Moon series; Andromeda’s hair is green in Saint Seiya – both the mythological princess’ and the knight’s – while the hair of I. of Scilla, general of Poseidon’s army, is blue. Another work connected to mythology is Kuroi Kumo to Shiroi Hane (Black Cloud, White Feather), an animated film – again by Osamu Tezuka – broadcast in 1979. It tells the story of Unico, a young unicorn who was originally Psyche’s pet, who is doomed by the evil Venus to an endless peregrination. Unico uses his magical powers to bring happiness to the people met during his travels. The anime was fairly successful, and a spin-­off was realized at the beginning of 1980s.10 In Kuroi Kumo to Shiroi Hane it is possible to find again the elements mentioned above, shared by all the animated productions of the same genre in that period: the fusion between Eastern and Western elements, even between elements from different Western traditions. The narrative structure is typically Western, more reminiscent of a tale by the Grimm brothers (extremely popular at that time in Japan)11 than of classical myth. The graphic style, although congruent with Japanese standards, is influenced by the Disney universe. Once more we can find the monolithic reception of the Western world: it seems as if, while the anime is clearly characterized by a strong mythological setting, when it comes to princesses, queens and talking animals, Grimm and Disney productions

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are clearly seen as paradigms. Aside from the setting and the graphic rendering, the Disney universe has a strong influence on this work even when it comes to the emotional features of both humans and animals. Moreover, Venus, the main antagonist of the tale, shows many personality traits typical of the evil stepmothers of German folklore. From a graphical perspective, she resembles Grimhilde from the Disney production Snow White (1937). The anime is characterized by the presence of many aspects typical of Japanese culture which might not easily be understood by a Western audience. The most striking of them is the special attention given to air pollution, an issue extremely relevant in Japan at that time and present in several animated productions of the same period: in Kuroi Kumo to Shiroi Hane the ecological threat – that Unico defeats with his magic – is represented by the noxious fumes generated by a factory. Others tried to follow Tezuka’s footsteps but no production ever achieved similar quality or success. Such was the case of Hoshi no Orpheus (Orpheus of the Stars), broadcast in 1979, the same year as Kuroi Kumo to Shiroi Hane. This anime clearly shows the great differences in terms of culture and art between the Japanese and American worlds in the 1970s and 1980s. According to the original project, developed by a joint Japanese-American team, Orpheus should have been similarly constructed to Fantasia by Disney (1940): a series of animated episodes accompanied by music. The subjects chosen were some myths drawn from Ovid’s Metamorphoses.12 The final outcome was five episodes with mythological plots, for which the Japanese team took care of the graphic part while the Americans dealt with the musical elements. Despite the huge amount of resources employed, and the effort of the Japanese team to appeal to a Western audience, the anime was not very successful in the US. Even though the animation techniques are reminiscent of Disney standards – especially Fantasia – and the myths are accurately represented, unlike Tezuka’s anime, nonetheless the Western audience – mostly American – did not like the production, mainly because of two factors: the human character features – too homogeneous and then perceived as too typically Japanese – and the plot, considered too difficult to follow. In order not to waste the work done, the anime was re-­produced with the title Winds of Change, with some heavy modifications: the introduction of dialogue and most importantly a voice-­over (by Peter Ustinov) explaining the plot and the reasons why the characters were so similar to each other. Obviously the new version completely distorted the original aim of the project. It was abundantly clear that the Western audience was not ready to accept a Japanese product overstepping the boundaries to which American and European prejudice had

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confined it. In fact, the latter was perceived, not without bias, as inferior to the Disney production: in the 1970s it was unacceptable for a cartoon claiming to be ‘the new Fantasia’ to be produced according to the standards typical of an ‘inferior’ production. This bias had its root in the inability of a Western audience to understand the intrinsic characteristics of Japanese anime. This prejudice would be overcome later in the 1990s thanks to Hayao Miyazaki, whose works would be granted great acclaim in the West. It is also the case that Miyazaki established a branch of his production house, Ghibli Studio, in the US and recently Disney has signed a deal with Ghibli’s parent company, Tokuma Shoten, for exclusive worldwide distribution rights to many Ghibli films.13

Getting into the industry wheels: the 80s revolution Starting with the 1980s, something begins to change in anime productions that include classical themes. What we have now, even if at a first glance it may not seem so different from the 1970s productions, is a completely new approach to the subject, that involves a different perception of the market and, above all, of the method of production. The new series broadcast at the beginning of the decade represent, in a way, the follow-­up of the great lesson of Tezuka; yet, at the same time, they set a clear break with the previous productions: anime dealing with the classical heritage are no longer either a whim or the brilliant intuition of a genius, nor an ambitious project aiming at reproducing Disney’s successes. Greco-Roman topics are now ready to enter the anime industry officially and they have to conform to the same rules as any other production: perhaps these works didn’t aim at excellence, as we have seen that some of the works from the previous period did, and were more like a mass-­market product; yet they were welcomed by their audience. Perhaps Hoshi no Orpheus taught a good lesson to Japanese producers: as a matter of fact, in this period of adjustment, they concentrated their efforts on what was worldwide supposed to be the field in which they could reach – if not perfection – at least a very good result, namely the long series. The process began in 1981, with the release of a new series, Uchuu Densetsu Ulysses 3114 (Space Legend Ulysses 31). The new series can be considered an experiment in terms of the concrete usability of classical themes in the animated market. Set in the thirty-­first century, this anime is a Franco-Japanese co-­ production that offers a reinterpretation of the Odyssey, set among the stars. Of course, Japan is not setting aside its culture and merely putting on stage a myth

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by broadcasting this anime. The choice of shifting the setting from the sea to outer space fits flawlessly with the most common tendencies of contemporary production: the airing of this series coincides with the full bloom of the great robot era and the development of the most famous space sagas.15 Even the graphic rendering perfectly reflects the bond between Western tradition and Japanese creativity: the choice fell upon Shingo Araki16 who decided to draw the mythological characters and took inspiration from classical sculptures in order to create a product that would better satisfy Western audiences. In all, this anime is an accurate, yet not stilted, blend of classical elements and modern sci-­fi: Ulysses, while travelling on a space ship, meets characters taken from the Odyssey – like Circe, Calypso, the Laestrygonians, Scylla and Charybdis – yet his sole companions, along with his son Telemachus, are two young aliens, Yumi and Yumaiosu. This anime was a great success, between the 1980s and the 1990s, in both Japan and Europe, but also in America, Oceania and Asia, proving that serving a Western heritage in soy sauce could bring about a winning product, fitting any kind of audience. In a way, this can be considered the start of the great era of the classical-­related anime productions. The same bond between classics and Japan can be found in an almost contemporary anime that, at a first glance, could seem totally different from Ulysses 31: Ochamegami no Monogatari: Korokoro Poron17 (The Tale of the Little Goddess: Korokoro Poron), inspired by a manga written by Azuma Hideo18 and aired in Japan for the first time in 1982. The setting of this story – which takes place on Mount Olympus, where Poron, Apollo’s daughter, lives with her family, all the Greek gods and goddesses – doesn’t drag the characters out of their original location, yet the narration manages to bring in several external elements, with which the main characters have to deal daily. The construction of this anime is quite peculiar, and shows how different tendencies can coexist at the same time, even in the same product: namely, classics and Japanese elements, as well as clear signs of what we defined as the monolithic reception of the Western heritage; all these trends, furthermore, coexist with the requirements imposed by the specific anime genre – it is a kodomo, a series meant for kids – which calls at the same time for a clear and straightforward plot, funny elements and the absence of potentially traumatic themes. Especially the latter point has great influence on the storytelling: for once, most of the cruelties that show through the original stories – like Prometheus’ punishment – are softened and transformed into mild and hilarious incidents; furthermore, some myths – like Arachne’s and Orpheus’ legends – were

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changed in order to grant a happy ending. Aside from the adjustments required by the needs of the main audience, the storytelling seems nonetheless to be quite accurate and faithful to the original legends; moreover, the myth plays a didactic role, providing the opportunity to pass social and ethical teachings to the young audience, as if Poron’s creators set themselves and their work as successors to the greatest storytellers of the past, teaching while entertaining, from Aesop to La Fontaine. In any case, even if the tales usually unfold according to the original myths, this does not mean that this anime can be considered a result of a passive reception process; rather, this series represents an interweaving of different suggestions, kept together by the classical plot, but constantly mingling with each other. Above anything else, it is full of Japanese references that, even if a bit subtle for a Western audience, are clear and immediate in the eyes of local spectators. The omnipresence of Japan occurs on different levels. First of all, some creatures taken from Japanese folklore might make their appearance among the Greek deities, interacting undisturbed with them: hence, for example, the ponds are usually inhabited by Kappas, Japanese water spirits, the rain is ruled by a Dragon God, and the thunder deities are Oni, Japanese demons. Even the Greek gods and goddesses, who live in a quasi-­classical environment, wear clothes that resemble pepla or kitoniskoi, drink ambrosia and live in temples, aren’t exempt from a strong Japanization, especially when it comes to daily habits or even their very own powers: for instance, Apollo sleeps on a futon, and frequently eats a bento – a Japanese boxed lunch – with chopsticks; similarly, when they are about to perform a miracle, the deities often use a Shinto wand, or Buddhist prayer beads, or even a voodoo bamboo doll. The strength of Eastern heritage manages to reach even the storyline of the myth; it is an isolated case, but in one episode we can witness the blending of legends coming from the two worlds: when Apollo realizes that his love for Daphne is fruitless, he shuts himself in a cave, depriving the world of sunlight, just as Amaterasu, the Japanese goddess of light, did after suffering an offence.19 Likewise, there is a diffuse presence of a phenomenon that was already noted with regard to Tezuka’s production, which we defined as the monolithic perception of the Western heritage: beside people getting married in a church, the plot is sometimes an echo of biblical episodes, or European tradition and literature, often mediated through previous Western media. So, whilst Poron makes an ark to save the animals during the Flood, the Minotaur uses a giant cake – almost like the Grimm brothers’ witch from Hansel and Gretel – in order to lure in children; more to the point, Chimera’s story is based on Beauty and the

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Beast, and Pyramus and Thisbe’s story becomes essentially a retelling of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, as if that were the one and only paradigm for unfortunate love coming from the West. The most symptomatic hint of the liberty with which classical heritage is dealt is, in fact, the role given to the personification of Hope, a mere daimon in Greek mythology, who becomes Megami no naka no Megami, the ‘Goddess of the Goddesses’, a central figure in the pantheon, a bit of a Virgin Mary and a lot of a Grimms’ – or better Disney’s – fairy godmother: just as Disney taught to whole generations that a young, lovely and brave heroine on a quest to reach her goal and untangle her future must have a fairy godmother, in a work directed toward children this role could not fall better than upon Elpis. By the second half of the decade, things start to change again. The new creative process will appear clearly in later series, but some early hints can be found in the next title that we are about to analyse: Arion. This anime, as we will see, is a somewhat innovative product; however the mythological narration still holds a central role in the construction of the whole work, and this trait makes it still closer to the model recognizable in the series aired in the first half of the decade. Arion is an animated movie dating to 1986, based on a manga by Yasuhiko Yoshizaku,20 an ambitious project that offers a revision of the Hesiodean cosmogony in a fantasy perspective, in which the gods’ ruling system is perceived as a cyclic scheme that ends with Apollo murdering Zeus. In this anime the Greek Olympus mainly works as a setting where a cruel battle takes place and where the hero must prove his value in order to obtain his place in the world. Such a topos is particularly recurrent in the shonen genre and appears equally in series set in any age or scenario, from historical to post-­ apocalyptic: the ‘lone samurai’ fighting against the system, be it for revenge, to defend his values or to protect his loved ones. This is a figure that emanates strength and moral integrity which has undying appeal to Japanese youth and can be found in manga and anime dating from any period, from Kurenai Sanshiro21 (1969), passing by Hokuto no Ken22 (1984), until the relatively recent Gintama23 (2006), to name just a few examples. Furthermore, Greek myths are approached in a double perspective. On one side there is an almost exuberant show of erudition that shines through the choice of some ‘minor’ figures of Greek heritage: Arion himself and the Erinyes – judging from previous productions – aren’t among the classical characters that gained a prominent position in Japanese imagery. On the other side the original storyline of myths is freely modified: Arion, the divine horse born from Poseidon and Demeter, is represented here as a boy. On top of that, he

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is in love with his supposed twin sister, Lesphina, which stands for Despoina; besides, he happens actually to be the adoptive son of Demeter, who raised him on behalf of his real parents, Prometheus and Pandora. Also, Arion ends up being kidnapped by Hades who brings him to his kingdom, just as happened in the Greek myth to Demeter’s daughter, Persephone. Although (unlike what we have seen so far) there is no particular trace of contamination with other Western traditions, Japan’s culture still shows itself openly on multiple occasions throughout the unfolding of the story. The most astonishing element is the identity of one of Arion’s companions: Geedo, a monster that the hero defeated and tamed on his journey to Hades, is indeed an oni, a Japanese demon. However, above all, Japan can be found in the use of several clichés that are typical of contemporary animated production and suggest that putting on stage the classical heritage was nothing more than an excuse to create an epic show. First of all, the source of Zeus’ power is the Thunder Tube, a fire machine made by Prometheus that allows him to overcome all his enemies and thus maintain his power through terror; the idea that a restricted elite can control the mass of the population thanks to their exclusive access to a secret and superior technology is quite common in Japanese fiction; such an idea also constitutes the basis of a peculiar genre, the ‘steam production’, with which this anime also shares a preference for dark atmospheres. In addition, the second companion escorting Arion on his journey, a little youngster called Seneca – significantly a random classical name, as if Greek and Roman culture were one and the same – is actually a girl disguised as a boy: the fighting girl who hides her real gender is a recurring theme in the 1970s and the 1980s, which found its higher expression in earlier masterpieces like Ribbon no Kishi24 (1967) and Versailles no Bara25 (1979). Arion, though being still partially bound to an older view of the interaction with the classical, shows that the time was ripe for a new revolution: such a transformation will be set in motion in those very same years, with the creation of some stunning successes, the fame of which will literally cross the world.

The 80s–90s revolution: the resurrection of Japanese pride In the late 1980s and the early 1990s, the worldwide success obtained by several series brought new attention to genres otherwise languishing in obscurity: the warrior shounen and majokko – little sorceresses. Both genres benefitted from newly-­introduced features: co-­protagonists – characters other than the main

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one equally defined and well-­characterized – and, from the perspective of a Japanese audience, an exotic setting. Such choice for the setting was a ‘bait’ for new generations of Japanese customers, to whom the series appealed superficially by the look of the Western world.26 The plot, on the other hand, is in pure Japanese style: traditional quests carried out by young protagonists, bound by friendship and loyalty, who must continuously fight enemies whose strength increases in each episode. Similar plots had already been presented in Bruce Lee’s movies27 and are strongly reminiscent of Samurai brotherhood, an essential part of Japanese epics. In these anime productions, the Western world is reduced to a mere backdrop and is still represented according to the monolithic reception model discussed above. The real protagonist is Japanese heritage, with numerous references to traditional myths, lifestyles and other social and cultural phenomena. The great emphasis given to the Eastern world is a sign of the great pride which invested Japan in those years:28 technological superiority, which characterized Japan in the 1980s, brought it back to a leadership role, marking its greatest importance since it was defeated at the end of World War II.29 The anime Saint Seiya and Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon, respectively broadcast since 1986 and 1992, initiated the change discussed above. They achieved an extraordinary success, which attracted the attention of sociologists and psychologists; in Europe the diffusion of these works even generated great controversies regarding, for example, the homosexuality of some of the protagonists, and the supposed influence that such a topic could have on the development of a pre-­adolescent audience: such polemics, which we will not scrutinize any further, are a clear hint of the inability of Western people to comprehend behavioural models different from their own.30 In Saint Seiya the protagonists are the young knights serving a Japanese girl, who is the present-­day incarnation of the goddess Athena. They fight against warriors serving other Olympians – Hades, Apollo and Poseidon – in order to bring peace, hope and justice to the Earth. The anime achieved outstanding success and was highly appreciated by a female audience, thanks to the appeal of its characters. Greek mythology seems to dominate every aspect of the anime from the intro to the names, features and powers of every protagonist (each of whom incarnates a mythological character).31 A careful analysis, though, shows how each Western element is stereotypical, recalling the monolithic representation of the Western world typical of the anime of the previous decade. For example, in the chapter dedicated to the war between Athena and Hades, hell is depicted as in Dante’s Comedy rather than resembling the otherworld described by Virgil or

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Homer. Even though it lacks the typical pyramidal structure, Dante’s model, with its circles, prisons and punishments for the seven Christian capital sins, was more familiar to the Japanese audience. On top of that, the writing shown on the gate leading to hell is another example of Western potpourri: Dante’s phrase ‘Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’entrate’ is written in modern Greek on a Roman-­looking arch! Athena does not really recall the Greek goddess of wisdom. Incarnated in a teenager’s body, she resembles the charismatic, renowned women of the Western tradition, like the Virgin Mary, Joan of Arc, Elizabeth I and Morgana from the Arthurian saga. She is not a warrior-­goddess but rather, according to the Japanese tradition, a goddess of peace, justice and, above all, hope. Her knights, characterized by ascetic traits, present many similarities with Christian Templars. In conclusion, to reiterate the concept of monolithic reception of the Western world by the Japanese, it is worth highlighting some references to ancient Egypt – embodied by the knight Pharaoh, who is depicted with the traditional Egyptian hairstyle and a snake on his helmet – and to the Arthurian saga, extremely relevant for an anime dealing with knights devoted to the Virgin Mary. In fact, the knight of Capricorn, one of the characters, is given a holy sword by a woman: not Viviane, as in the original version, but Athena. This work can be considered a typical example of ‘pop-­reception’: single shreds of Western culture, coming from different traditions, are received and collected one by one and then rearranged among the different characters without any apparent philological thread. Far more emphasized, in terms of the storytelling aspects, are the continuous references to the Japanese world and Japanese culture. As discussed before, the plot is an evident trademark of Japanese productions and more specifically of the shounen genre: a quest carried out by very young and usually orphan protagonists.32 Also, there is a massive presence of boushido, the warrior path: a severe code disciplining samurai training since the twelfth century. In this anime, the boushido code shows through in the frequent references to one of the main characters of Japanese tradition: Yamato Takeru, a legendary Japanese hero, probably based on a historical character who lived between the fourth and fifth centuries ce. He is the protagonist of many sagas revolving around his epic adventures,33 which are all very similar to the ones lived by Athena’s Saints. Moreover, Yamato Takeru received a wondrous sword from a deity:34 the above-­ mentioned episode, where Capricorn is given Excalibur by Athena, thus acquires a new level of significance with a direct reference to Japanese myths. Typical Japanese elements include recurring mentions of traditional myths and tales, for example the story of the hare who sacrificed itself to feed a

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traveller;35 or even the ideal of masculine beauty suggested: an androgynous and feminine man, very popular in Japan.36 Finally, it is worth mentioning the peaceful coexistence between different faiths and religious beliefs and their reciprocal integration which generates peculiar syntheses. Beyond the already mentioned Christian elements the anime is pervaded by references to other religious beliefs: Buddhism is embodied by the knight of Virgo, Shaka, who was Buddha’s disciple; Hinduism by Krisaore, a general of Poseidon’s army. Each of them wears armour and weapons associated with their beliefs. If the sporadic addition of Shinto elements is also taken into account, the anime reflects a situation of religious syncretism and interfaith coexistence still present in Japan today. All the elements discussed so far are present in Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon as well. The anime, first broadcast in 1992, achieved worldwide success. It presents a smooth and harmonized coexistence of Western and Eastern cultural elements. The story is filled with the battles fought by nine warrior-­girls (the senshi mentioned in the title) belonging to the ancient Moon realm. Their names derive from the planets of the solar system and the Greek divinities associated with them, whom the young girls embody. Although it might look like a war story, Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon is a shoujo about the love between Serenity/Selene (goddess/queen of the Moon) and Endymion, reincarnated respectively in Tsukino Usagi and Mamoru Chiba. Moon mythology is also referenced in the names of Usagi’s cats: Luna, Artemis and Diana.37 As seen already in Saint Seiya, in Sailor Moon classical mythology deviates much from the original: it is once more employed as an exotic element to attract the attention of a Japanese audience. Endymion, unlike the Greek original, is neither a hunter nor a king; instead he is a commander of the Moon army. Sailor Mercury is not associated, as one would expect, with fire or with a harbinger role, a classical feature of the Greek Hermes or the Roman Mercury: she is linked instead to the aquatic element. In the same way, Sailor Pluto is not associated with the otherworld, wealth and fortune: the distinctive trait of this warrior – time control – reminds us instead of Chronos. Besides the revisions of the myth, the anime shows the usual monolithic reception of Western models by featuring characters perceived by Japanese as archetypes of the Western world. To provide just one example, Endymion, in his first appearance as masked hero – Tuxedo Kamen (tuxedo knight) – pulls his weapons out of a top hat, recalling Mandrake the Magician, whose iconographical similarity with our character is striking. Moreover, the Snow Princess – Kaguya

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Hime – one of the most popular figure of the Japanese mythological universe, strongly resembles Grimhilde from Snow White, an extremely popular character in Japan, who represents the archetype of evil stepmothers and witches, as already suggested by her early presence in works dating to the 1970, such as the already mentioned Unico.38 Much more emphasized and better appreciated by the Eastern audience are traditional Japanese elements, which range from everyday scenarios to ancient cultural traditions. The most striking example belonging to everyday life is the sailor school uniform, also referenced in the title. As for the second topic, we witness a major distortion in the classical myth, which is strongly influenced by elements coming from Japanese heritage. However, unlike the previous productions, Japanese elements take on a dominant role, being much more emphasized than their Western counterparts. Sailor Mars, for example, is associated with the element of fire, as expected from the link she has with Mars/ Ares. However, such an association appears to be a mere coincidence. She is, in fact, depicted as a Shinto priestess specializing in exorcisms achieved through the purifying power of fire, usually in the form of fiery arrows or sutra (religious formulae able to set demons on fire). Another example is the recurring reference to the lunar myth, which names like Selene, Endymion, Diana and Artemis link to the Western tradition. Nonetheless, as the plot develops, the Japanese interpretation of the myth outshines the Western one. The legend of the Moon rabbit, whose profile is visible on the Moon’s surface, is recalled in the name of the main character – Tsukino Usagi, or Tsuki no Usagi in the original version – which literally means ‘rabbit from the Moon’;39 it is no coincidence that she is associated with many stylized rabbit images. The elaborate and syncretistic work just described clearly reflects the cultural change happening in Japan in those years. Anime, as well as other media, are important records of such cultural transformation.

The new frontier: interacting with the classics at the turn of the millennium After the impressive success of the anime whose diffusion spread over the late 1980s and the early 1990s, the fortune of animated productions involving the classical heritage seemed to fade somehow. The last years of the last millennium were actually an incubation period, during which the metabolizing process that

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took place when the great seasons of classics-­related series were aired, started to bear fruit, materializing in a widespread diffusion of Greco-Roman themes, characters and topics through different media.40 Although the references to classics spread widely, productions solely or at least mainly dedicated to this heritage became rarer and rarer, especially in the animation industry. This does not mean that the classical figures and subjects were simply relegated to the role of incidental characters or frame themes; on the contrary, they were the object of a process of appropriation and started to be felt as part of a shared knowledge which was now barely felt as Otherness. A quite interesting exception to this trend can be found in Sousei no Aquarion (The Genesis of Aquarion), broadcast in 2005, an anime that narrates the battles fought by a group of adolescent robot-­pilots against enemies called Shadow Angels. This work represents the latest generation of Japanese animation dealing with classical themes and can be considered the final result of the evolution that we have followed through the ages. This series is undeniably influenced by the lesson taught by the masterpieces aired in the previous decade. In this anime we can find, indeed, a strong mix of classical and Japanese elements; at the same time it is clear how the Western world is perceived as a monolithic universe. In any case, what appears more strongly is that the heritage from classical mythology offers no more than an excuse to set part of the story in a somehow distant past, which allows epic battles and a magic touch to feature in the plot. The storyline follows one of the most abused clichés of Japanese fictional works: the reincarnation of two past lovers, especially two unlucky ones, who are fated to meet each other again and have a new chance to bind their fates.41 The main characters, Apollo and Silvia, are indeed the reincarnation of the ill-­fated Selenia, a human, and Apollonius – or Taiyou no Tsubasa, meaning ‘Wings of the Sun’ – an angel with features reminiscent of a Sun deity, just as his name would suggest. This anime combines memories from the classical past – the protagonists, whose forbidden love met with a tragic epilogue, are clearly inspired by Apollo and Selene; moreover, their original world, Atlantia, blessed with a superior technology that was lost after its destruction, is an echo of the Atlantis myth – and elements taken from the biblical and Christian world: the enemies of mankind are angels, and their soldiers, meaningfully called Cherubim, kidnap children in order to feed their Tree of Life, the only tool able to keep their world alive and running. Meanwhile, the character of Apollonius, though sharing with the Greek god Apollo his connection with sunlight, more resembles Prometheus and his favour for mankind, even at the cost of getting punished by his peers; furthermore, the young supernal being, by betraying the other angels and getting

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punished by losing his wings, appears somehow closer to Lucifer than to any Greek deity. Lastly, there are several elements typical of the mecha genre – a definition under which all the series concerning robots falls – that transcend any kind of location and time setting: aside from the fact that the main characters are orphans, a trait that is widely spread through different subgenres of the shounen production, all the robot-­pilots are young boys and girls who are given the mission to save the world, a cause in which they believe at the cost of their own lives.

The twenty-­first century, going beyond anime: myth as a teaching tool As we have seen, since the beginning of twenty-­first century, works mainly referring to the Western world in Japanese productions dropped drastically (with the exclusion of the new series of Athena’s Saints, which is not an original production, and of the already mentioned Aquarion). Even though it could be a case of a ‘physiological’ regression after the abundance of Western references in the works of the previous decades, the main reason is likely to be different: in this century Japan has become culturally more and more independent from the Western world.42 Whatever the reason – yet to be determined – the only production with classical references which has made it to Japanese home screens, in recent years, is the live show (not even an anime) Zettai Yareru Greece Shinwa (Absolute Greek Mythology). A 2008 production, the show includes animations where myth is presented as a refined and exotic seduction strategy. The target was the mature audience (it was in fact a late-­night show) that clearly influenced the decision of which myths were to be presented: the ones dealing with love, seduction or rape were preferred. An element of novelty, which distinguishes this production from the works of previous decades, is the accurate representation of myth. The lack of any distortion of the original plots recalls the old Hoshi no Orpheus. On top of that, Zettai Yareru presents a faint aetiological intent in the way that myth is employed: as back in ancient times, even though within a different frame, myth explains the origin of contemporary phenomena such as the Olympic Games. Zettai Yareru clearly shows how, even if they are not taken as reference models any more (as they used to be in the 1970s and 1980s), myth and, more generally, Western culture still fascinate the Japanese world. Moreover, this particular work

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indicates that animation is still the preferred media with which to present Western classics to a Japanese audience.

Conclusions This brief overview of anime dealing with classical myths allows the drawing of a few conclusions about the historical evolution of the reception of Western cultural heritage in Japan. First, it is evident how traditional Japanese elements, ancient and modern, are continuously referenced throughout anime productions. Cultural and narrative Japanese topoi are often presented: young protagonists are always orphans (as in Toriton, Saint Seiya, Aquarion or in the robot-­themed production by Go Nagai); the boushido code is always present in shounen anime (Saint Seiya, Ulysses, Arion and, in some ways, Sailor Moon). Amongst the elements coming from daily life it is common to find references to circumstances or objects such as chopsticks or futons (Poron). Japanese sensibility is particularly evident when it comes to religious tolerance: Poron, Sailor Moon and Saint Seiya all show a religious syncretism inconceivable in Western society where different faiths are strictly separated and often in conflict. Regarding myth, its use (and abuse) and its alteration depend on the anime genre and on the plot, as in the kodomo Poron or in the shounen Sant Seiya and Arion; myth is accurately reported only when it is not the cornerstone of the anime, as in Zettai Yareru, or, opposingly, when its narration constitutes the main intent, as in Hoshi no Orpheus. Japanese animated productions show how the Western world is perceived as a monolithic entity: a potpourri made of colosseums, Walt Disney, the Marvel universe, the Grimm brothers and Christianity, where everything is taken out of its context and merged together. Moreover, the topics discussed allow us to draw a few conclusions about social and historical nature, as well. Japanese animation was born between the end of the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s, when Japan was still recovering from the post-­war crisis. Several reasons made the Western world a reference model to look up to, media production included: that explains why characters show some Western elements and why myth, when present, is accurately described, as in Hoshi no Orpheus and in Poron. From the mid-1980s, the trend changed: Japan was at its economic peak and was once more proud of its cultural identity. References to the Western world

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and its myths became less frequent and, when present, a mere frame of the animated production (Arion, Sailor Moon, Saint Seiya). During the same years, authors like Rumiko Takahashi (Urusei yatsura, Ranma 1/2) and Akira Toriyama (Dragonball), who focused on Japanese traditional culture, achieved great success. From the late 1990s, the situation started to move in another direction again. The new frontier of Japanese animation concerning classical themes was the creation of a completely new language. Greco-Roman figures had become part of a shared popular culture that included elements from both Western and Japanese heritage. In the last two decades we have witnessed the birth of a new pop-koine made up of syntactical minimal unities coming from different traditions, shaping a new, shared knowledge. The result is a symbolic language that expresses itself through metaphors, understood and acknowledged by the audience. In this process, the mention of a specific character – whatever his cultural origin – rings a precise bell in the ears of the spectator: thus, saying Apollo is no different from saying Yamato Nadeshiko,43 in the same way that the name Alice44 became equally reminiscent of the name Hijikata Toshizo.45 In the development of this language, the classical mythological figures were marked and became iconic of specific characters, not necessarily linked to their real personae. For example, Apollo became the eternal and perfect beauty; Zeus the symbol of an old womanizer and Eros a mischievous child who plays with people’s feelings. This shared language allowed anime creators to use a certain archetype – Japanese as well as Western – or just to assign a name to one of the characters in order to convey to the audience a specific image. Is this really ‘declassicizing’? Perhaps, but it is only the first part of the process: what really occurred was a profound integration, where fragments of the classical past became avatars of human behavioural traits. In other words, we are now witnessing a cultural innovation: it took almost forty years and educational works like Poron, but it is now implemented in many manga and anime. This is just the beginning of twenty-­first century: what can we expect from the postFukushima generation?

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  List of anime dealing with classics cited in the chapter Title (Japanese/English) Umi no Triton Triton of the Sea

Tanpen Unico: Kuroi Kumo to Shiroi Hane

Authors Yoshiyuki Tomino (director)

Production studio

Year Episodes Genre

Animation Staff Room

1972 26 Shounen

Osamu Tezuka (original story) Toshio Hirata (director)

Tezuka Production

Unico: Black Clouds White Osamu Tezuka Feathers (original story) Hoshi no Orpheus Orpheus of the Stars Winds of Change (version II)

Takashi Yanase (director)

Shounen Sanrio

1979 1 Shounen

Publius Ovidius Naso (original story)

Uchuu Densetsu Ulysses 31 Bernard Deyries Kazuo Terada Ulysses 31 Kyosuke Mikuriya Tadao Nagahama (directors)

1979 1

Tokyo Movie Shinsha

1981 26 Sci-­fi Shounen

Shingo Araki (animation director) Ochamegami Monogatari Korokoro Poron

Takao Yotsuji (director)

Little Pollon

Hideo Azuma (original story)

Arion

YoshikazuYasuhiko (director and original story)

Saint Seiya Saint Seiya – Hades

Kazuhito Kikuchi (director)

Knights of the Zodiac

Masami Kurumada (original story)

Kokusai Eigasha

1982 46 Kodomo Shoujo

Sunrise

1986 1 Fantasy Seinen

Toei Animation

1986 2003 114 + 26 Shounen

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Title (Japanese/English) Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon

Authors Naoko Takeuchi (original story)

Production studio

Year Episodes Genre

Toei Animation

1992–1997 200

Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon

(5 TV Series) Shoujo

Sousei no Aquarion Aquarion

Shoji Kawamori (director and original story)

Zettai Yareru Grécia Shinwa

Ken Ushikusa (director)

Absolutely Greek Mythology

Satelight

2005 26 Mecha Shounen

Hoichoi Productions

2008 13 (TV show)

14

Everypony Has a Story: Revisions of Greco-Roman Mythology in My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Priscilla Hobbs

The television show My Little Pony (MLP) was launched in 1984 in support of a popular toy line targeted specifically at girls. Although the toys were popular, the show itself was received with mixed response; nonetheless, the continued link with the toys gave the ponies a ‘mythos’, a term Aristotle used to describe the plot of a play that ties together events and characters in a specific way as to induce specific emotion, to convey specific messages and to facilitate a communal experience with the story. The medium of television allows for the construction of a mythos that can grow and adjust with the changing tides of audience interest. In recent years, fan culture has concentrated around television shows, forming communitas through show references, fan art and fiction, or ‘cosplay’ at conventions or fan events. In 2010, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (hereafter, MLP:FIM, or FIM), the fourth incarnation of this product line, launched in the USA on the Hub network, owned in part by toy company Hasbro, owner of the My Little Pony copyright. Quickly, the show developed a fan base that extended beyond the target audience of children. Adult fans of MLP:FIM, known as ‘Bronies’ or ‘Pegasisters’, began appearing at conventions. The positive messages of friendship, tolerance and overcoming obstacles is immediately attractive to an audience immersed in a media of collaborative heroes from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, to Harry Potter, to Marvel’s The Avengers. Part of the show’s success lies not only in its messages, but in the fact that it also makes reference to familiar plots and images from classical and contemporary mythology and popular culture. Indeed, pop culture references are sprinkled throughout the series, suggesting that the production team is aware of its audience. For example, in the episode ‘The Cutie Pox’ (season 2) a group of young

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ponies known as the Cutie Mark Crusaders almost pin a bowling ball on Jeff Letrowski, inspired by The Big Lebowski’s Dude and his friends. Similarly, a pony that resembles the television character Doctor Who, alternatively named Time Turner or Doctor Whooves, appears in the background of several episodes, and the show’s main ponies help A.K. Yearling finish the next instalment of her Daring-Do novel series in ‘Daring Don’t’ (season 4) in a clear nod to Harry Potter and Indiana Jones. More notably, the show is riddled with classical mythological references, many of which would be readily familiar to a viewer with an elementary education in mythological stories or a familiarity with common tropes in fantasy literature and video games. In this essay, I have chosen three examples from the first four seasons that significantly demonstrate this relationship between MLP:FIM and mythology: the character Discord, seen in several episodes; tributes to the Theseus legend as seen in ‘Putting Your Hoof Down’ (season 2) and ‘Twilight’s Kingdom, Parts 1 & 2’ (season 4); and Medusa and comic superheroes in ‘Power Ponies’ (season 4). Demonstrated in this analysis is both the pervasiveness of familiar mythological themes and tropes to connect with contemporary viewers, as well as the genius of revisiting myth – seen frequently throughout contemporary young adult and fantasy media – to turn talking ponies in a fictional land into role models and best friends, and transcend the realm of toys.

The pervasiveness of myth in popular culture In the Post-Enlightenment years of the Romantic 1800s, authors travelled across Europe collecting folk stories and fairy tales, turning an oral tradition into a literary one. At the same time, as science explained more of the natural world and as industry made life easier, classical mythology, along with fairy tales, became ‘relegated to the nursery’.1 Once, reading and memorizing passages from Homer’s Odyssey was a staple of education, yet now many children may have only a limited exposure to such myths and tales as this segment of literature is removed from the curriculum. This is especially clear in American education, in which mythology may comprise a few weeks in a foundational English course, and nothing more. Yet, despite this exposure, children are still exposed to the symbolism and tales of myth – in particular, Greco-Roman myth – through facets of popular culture. The recent novel series, Percy Jackson and its sequel series The Heroes of Olympus, both by Rick Riordan, overtly play

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with mythic stories, as do a number of epic films from Hollywood, from Clash of the Titans to Troy. A discussion of when and why these themes recur throughout popular culture is beyond the scope of this present study, but it should nonetheless be noted that this reveals that classical mythology still holds meaning for us. Mythological stories and motifs are also reimagined into newer forms, still communicating the stories but encased in a new symbolic package. These appearances of myth become the conversations of scholars and the delight of children and fans. For example, many scholars have commented on the mythic symbolism of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series and Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series.2 In this category, the symbols and motifs are still the same, but their use and execution differ, sometimes greatly, from the original context. This revisioning of myth also applies to non-Greco-Roman myths, with a recent trend favouring Norse, Celtic and Daoist mythologies. Mythic motifs also appear in video games, role-­playing games, comic books and other commodities. The power of myth lies in its ability to transcend culture and time. Although the specific stories and imagery of any mythology are designed by and for a specific culture, the significance of the stories and their underlying meaning can transcend the boundaries. For this reason, Joseph Campbell posited a new approach to mythology, inspired in part by psychologist C.G. Jung and the philosophy of Plato, that recognized the subject matter as being significant to a higher, spiritual experience, transcending the literal understanding of mythology as the ancient tales of a lost culture in a bygone era. In this regard, mythology is elevated to a divine level, in which the archetypes mirror Platonic forms. As in Plato’s cave, Campbell suggests, unenlightened humanity sees the shadows on the wall, but once one embraces the higher order of mythology – once one leaves the cave – then, and only then, can one find the experience and satisfaction of an imaginal life. It is through the study of myth, then, that one truly understands what it means to be human.3 Invoking Campbell and Jung is not without controversy, as neither is a classics scholar in the strictest sense. Their approach to mythology extends from interest, out of which their theories developed. Perhaps their inclusion of mythology in their studies is also an example of why myth is pervasive. Does it, in fact, hold the meaning these two men suggest? Or is it simply just interesting? To what extent can we actually place these works on a literary pedestal as something different, or even superior, to other forms of story? Campbell would suggest that all stories are myths in their own right, perhaps devoid of the theophanies that permeate classical mythology.

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The ‘Mane Six’ and the elements of harmony In formulating his theories on mythology, Campbell adopted a comparative approach. By reading a cross-­section of mythology, including Greco-Roman classics, Western and Eastern religious texts and James Joyce, he noticed correlations between the stories. They possessed similar motifs, even though, in accordance with current anthropological theory, there was no evidence that these disparate cultures ever had interactions with each other. How then, the question begged, could these stories have the same elements? A similar question was asked by Jung, whose psychological theory equated dreams with myths. He called these similar motifs archetypes, or ‘primordial images’, defining them as ‘those psychic contents which have not yet been submitted to conscious elaboration and are therefore an immediate datum of psychic experience’.4 One example of an archetype that appears throughout world myth is that of the hero. When Campbell codified the hero in The Hero With a Thousand Faces (1949), he encapsulated the hero into a single protagonist who relies on magical helpers during the course of his journey. Indeed, this solitary character has carried a significant place throughout literature, giving credence to Campbell’s understanding of it. Additionally, he also outlined a ‘hero’s journey’, which he then dubbed the ‘monomyth’, believing it to be the unifying principle common to all culture, providing a literary roadmap toward enlightenment. This monomyth has since become the story outline used by screenwriters for constructing film and television narratives. With the rise of postmodernism, however, a single-­faced hero has proven insufficient. For example, in laying out his archetypal theory, psychologist James Hillman, a student of Jung, proposed a shift from a single, ‘monotheistic psychology’ to one enmeshed in polytheism, giving preference to the pantheon of the ancient Greeks. He equates the significance of the polytheistic pantheon of the Greeks to the healthy imaginal life: The images of polytheistic mythology . . . give place to the soul’s variety and conflict. We can imagine tensions when we have an orientation in the first place that acknowledges many different directions in the psyche. A bias towards monotheism shudders to find many tendencies in tension and aims toward a unified resolution. A polytheistic position holds tension so that all parties concerned find a way to coexist.5

Since Hillman first made his observations in the 1960s, the idea of a multi-­faced hero (or several, equal protagonists) has slowly crept into literature and visual

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media, notably that aimed at children, teenagers and young adults. One notable example is the Harry Potter series. Though Harry stands out as the central hero, his quest is more than simply aided by magical friends – his very existence is contingent upon them. In a similar vein, television series such as Doctor Who, Lost, Once Upon a Time, and the Kingdom Keepers book series (to give a very short list of examples) all showcase heroes with, literally, multiple faces. MLP:FIM is also such a structure, demonstrating that the magic of friendship – the show’s central theme – is essential for overcoming any challenge, including those against an external enemy and those dealing with an internal struggle. The central pony in MLP:FIM is Twilight Sparkle, who is sent to Ponyville by her mentor, Princess Celestia, for two reasons: to oversee the preparations for a royal event and to learn about the meaning of friendship. The latter task becomes a larger life study/experience, and the four seasons that have aired by the time of writing reflect how friendship has helped all of Twilight’s friends grow; most significantly, friendship helps Twilight unlock her magical abilities, turning her from a unicorn to an alicorn (a unicorn-­pegasus hybrid) and thus elevating her to the ranks of princess. In the fan canon, Twilight and her five friends are called the ‘Mane Six’. Twilight and her friends control the Elements of Harmony, magical gems that, when used together, can command the most powerful magic – enough to tame and contain the embodiments of chaos. Each element is tied to each pony’s Cutie Mark, or symbol on her flank that reveals her true self (see the chart below). When held together by magic, these elements create harmony equated to the power of friendship. ‘Magic’, though often used throughout the show to cause the physically impossible, also refers to the mysteries that bring every pony together, connecting them in ways unseen. ‘Magic’, then, is not simply a tool, as seen in Harry Potter and other fantasy outlets; it is also, more importantly, a The Mane Six and their Elements of Harmony Pony

Cutie Mark

Element of Harmony

Twilight Sparkle

Star

Magic

Pinkie Pie

Balloon

Laughter

Applejack

Apple

Honesty

Fluttershy

Butterfly

Kindness

Rainbow Dash

Lightning Bolt

Loyalty

Rarity

Gem

Generosity

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numinous glue, a spiritual yarn, that which is unexplainable yet knowable. To say that ‘Friendship is Magic’ is to say that friendship is also the key to the mysteries that bring us together.

Discord and harmony One of the most recognizable and famous events involving Discord is when Eris, the goddess of discord, rolls a golden apple among the three goddesses, Aphrodite, Athena and Hera, promising that it belonged to the most beautiful. According to Apollodorus: Some time later Alexander abducted Helen, in accordance with a plan of Zeus, as some say, to make his daughter famous for having brought Europe and Asia together in a war, or as other told, to extol the race of the demigods. For one of these reasons [Discord] tossed an apple to Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite, in recognition of their beauty, and Zeus bade Hermes escort them to Alexander on Ida, to be judged by him. They offered Alexander gifts: Hera said if she were chosen fairest of all women, she would make him king of all men; Athena promised him victory in war; and Aphrodite promised him Helene in marriage. So he chose Aphrodite . . .6

The debate was settled, but the price was the Trojan War. This illustrates two levels of discord: the microcosmic that can disturb and destabilize friendships and families, and the macrocosmic affecting entire groups of people. In the latter case, the common image is war. In MLP:FIM, Discord is a draconequus, a chimera-­like beast described in the show as having ‘the head of a pony, and a body made up of all sorts of things’ (‘The Return of Harmony, Part 1’). In developing Discord, show creator and writer Lauren Faust comments that, ‘I was looking at Greek mythological characters like chimera and manticores, and I wanted all of his body parts to be from a different animal so that he’s not harmonious.’7 Being an embodiment of discord, nothing is symmetrical on Discord’s body. He is a trickster in the truest sense. As Lewis Hyde describes: In short, trickster is a boundary-­crosser. Every group has its edge, its sense of in and out, and trickster is always there, at the gates of the city and the gates of life, making sure there is commerce. He also attends the internal boundaries by which groups articulate their social life. We constantly

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distinguish – right and wrong, sacred and profane, clean and dirty, male and female, young and old, living and dead – and in every case trickster will cross the line and confuse the distinction. . . . Where someone’s sense of honorable behavior has left him unable to act, trickster will appear to suggest an amoral action, something right/wrong that will get life going again. Trickster is the mythic embodiment of ambiguity and ambivalence, doubleness and duplicity, contradiction and paradox.8

We eventually learn that Discord and Harmony need to coexist (‘Twilight’s Kingdom’), indicating a doctrine of balance akin to Aristotle’s Golden Mean (cf. Aristotle’s The Nicomachean Ethics). At the beginning of the series, we learn the origin story of Nightmare Moon, the fabled Mare in the Moon, revealing an early incarnation of Equestria’s balance. Equestria was ruled by two sisters (who together discovered the Tree of Harmony, its Elements of Harmony, and first defeated Discord). Princess Celestia controlled the sun, while her sister, Princess Luna, controlled the moon. This dichotomy models a familiar mythic motif, captured perfectly by the Chinese yin and yang – the balance between equal yet opposite forces. By maintaining their harmony, the world and cosmos may function. However, Princess Luna is jealous of her sister, who is revered and celebrated during the day, but, because ponies are asleep at night, Princess Luna is not. Her jealousy becomes rage and she refuses to let the sun rise which, then, turns her into Nightmare Moon who promises to bring eternal night to Equestria. Celestia is forced to banish her sister for 1,000 moons (years in the ponyverse) and assume control over both day and night. On the eve of the 1,000th Summer Sun Celebration, a festival marking the occasion of Luna’s banishment, Nightmare Moon returns, prompting Twilight Sparkle and her friends to use the Elements of Harmony and restore balance to the kingdom by returning Princess Luna to her sister (‘Friendship is Magic, Parts 1 and 2’). This destabilization between the rulers of Equestria happened only after their encounter with Discord, when they wielded the Elements of Harmony to turn him into stone and restore order from the chaos he created, but nonetheless, his influence had planted the seeds of discord in Equestria.9 In the Greek pantheon, Eris (Discord) is the opposite of Harmony, and we can see from this story a clear connection between discord and Princess Luna. As Hesiod describes, ‘The one supports evil war and contention: [Discord] is cruel; no mortal is fond of her, but by necessity they honor the heavy Strife according to the plans of the deathless ones’.10 In the story of Nightmare Moon, then, Princess Luna, though she and her sister defeated Discord, is possessed by the nature of discord.

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One of the recurring themes throughout the show is the unity of harmony. Plato describes discord as a great evil, while elevating the bond of unity (harmony) as the greatest good.11 During the Mane Six’s first encounter with Discord, they have to be reminded of this, learning Plato’s lesson from the Symposium that ‘to speak of a harmony as being in disagreement with itself, or as existing when it is composed of elements still in disagreement, is quite absurd’.12 Though the ponies are angry with each other because of Discord’s tomfoolery, they discover that they cannot invoke the power of the Elements of Harmony unless they too are in a state of harmony. In the season 3 episode, ‘Keep Calm and Flutter On’, Princess Celestia tasks the ponies with reforming Discord, as she is convinced that he can use his magic for good. By welcoming Discord into their lives as a friend, a lesson that is reinforced at the end of season 4, they teach him that chaos is a lonely state of being: ‘Who cares? I can do whatever I want, whenever I want, I’m Discord! The master of chaos! You think you can boss Discord around? You think I’ll change all this back, because you say so! Because if I don’t, I’ll lose the one friend I ever had? [suddenly pauses] Huh . . . Oh . . . Well played, Fluttershy . . . Well played.’ After this episode, he is allowed to roam free in Equestria. He no longer commits cataclysmic acts of chaos, but, rather, relatively minor jokes, providing him with a container for his antics. This subdued Discord is a far cry from the Greek Eris, who, according to Homer, is the sister and consort of Ares, the god of war.13 One reason for this change is that the MLP:FIM mythos speaks to a generation who has spent a significant portion of its life in a state of war and chaos. The image of controlling chaos, then, brings hope and optimism that a restoration of real world harmony is possible.

Theseus Unlike previous incarnations of MLP:FIM does not – or, rather, has not yet – included interactions between the ponies and humans, likely because the interaction between humans and ponies was one of the complaints against the first incarnation of the show. The closest they have come is the Equestria Girls film, in which the human world is an alternate dimension reached through a magic mirror. Non-­ponies are treated as questionable creatures bordering on villains. Some, like Discord, are converted into allies, others are taught a valuable lesson, and others still are vanquished. Some notable mythological beasts that appear in MLP:FIM are the Iron Will (‘Putting Your Hoof Down’, season 2), a minotaur and Tirek (‘Twilight’s Kingdom, Parts 1 & 2’, season 4), a centaur.

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The myth of the minotaur is less about the minotaur than it is about Theseus’ defeat of the half-­man, half-­bull beast. In order to contain the minotaur, King Minos of Crete has him enclosed in a labyrinth, into which are fed Athenian tributes every few years. Theseus, with the help of the king’s daughter, Ariadne, enters the labyrinth, trailing a string behind him, hunts down the minotaur, kills him, then heroically sails off into the sunset with Ariadne at his side.14 The significant imagery is of the labyrinth and of the minotaur as a vicious, flesh-­eating abomination of nature. In the second season episode of FIM, ‘Putting Your Hoof Down’, a minotaur, and his labyrinth, visit Ponyville. In a departure from traditional depictions of the minotaur, Iron Will is portrayed with a bull’s head on a cloven-­hoofed, muscular body with anthropomorphic hands and blue fur. In this characterization, the minotaur is turned from a man-­eating beast into a self-­help guru whose speciality is assertiveness training. The focus of the episode is on Fluttershy, the shyest of the Mane Six, who is so afraid of making other ponies unhappy or angry that she is easily pushed around. The self-­help seminar – ‘Iron Will is so confident that you will be one hundred percent satisfied with Iron Will’s assertiveness techniques, that if you are not one hundred percent satisfied, you pay nothing’ – takes place in the centre of Iron Will’s labyrinth, with an elaborate stage, music and goat assistants, following the touring self-­help seminars popular in the USA. In a flourish, the minotaur comes on stage, but no pony is frightened, because they are there to learn from him (and trust him not to eat them). The Greek minotaur symbolizes humanity’s control over sin and the unnatural, but MLP’s minotaur adopts a more Jungian interpretation – that the minotaur represents the juxtaposition of the rational and irrational human moments. In this interpretation, Theseus’ defeat of the minotaur represents the psychic conquering of the animalistic aspect that Freud describes as the id. When the assertiveness training unleashes a bully ‘New Fluttershy’, the minotaur here has awakened this aspect within Fluttershy that she is ill-­ equipped to contain. She becomes the monster. When Iron Will shows up at her door to collect his fee, Fluttershy has decided that she was not satisfied with his teaching, because she is not happy with the pony she has become. Being the first pony to refuse to pay Iron Will, she metaphorically slays the minotaur with his own weapons. He walks away doubting himself and rethinking his business model. The labyrinth motif appears in another episode, ‘The Return of Harmony, Part 1’ (season 2) as an intentional means of disorientation as part of Discord’s

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challenge to the ponies. Believing the stolen Elements of Harmony can be found at the labyrinth’s centre, the Mane Six line up at the entrance to find them together, but Discord magically restructures the labyrinth separating them. They have to proceed to the centre on their own with three rules: no magic, no flying and every pony has to play or the game ends. Effectively, Discord has disabled these ponies, making it possible to plant the seeds of discord among them and challenge their friendship. The first challenge is Applejack’s. In a clearing, she encounters taunting apples who identify themselves as ‘the keepers of the grove of truth’, granting her one question, past, present, or future, that they will answer truthfully. Clearly invoking Homer’s apple of discord, coupled with the contemporary association with Applejack as an apple farmer and the controller of the Element of Truth, the apples show her a future where her friends have gone their separate ways and are no longer friends. This is just one truth of what the future could hold, and is meant to be the future Discord intends Applejack to see to discourage her in this mission. One by one, Discord visits each pony, affecting her by the Element she controls, disabling the Mane Six from being able to turn him into stone. The episode in the labyrinth is followed by a return to Ponyville, which Discord has declared he would turn into a discord capital. As Pinkie Pie observes, ‘Evil comes with chocolate rain, you guys. Chocolate Rain!’ (‘The Return of Harmony, Part 1’). Another hybrid villain is Tirek, whom we meet in the season 4 episodes ‘Twilight’s Kingdom, Parts 1 & 2’, stealing the magic from ponies and gaining strength. His backstory merits a lengthy quote from Part 1: Princess Celestia: Tirek and his brother Scorpan came here from a distant land, intent on stealing Equestrian magic. But Scorpan soon came to appreciate the ways of Equestria, even befriending a young unicorn wizard. Princess Luna: Scorpan urged his brother to abandon their plans. When Tirek refused, Scorpan alerted us to Tirek’s intentions. Princess Celestia: Scorpan returned to his own land, and Tirek was sent to Tartaros for his crimes. But it appears he has found a way to escape. Princess Luna: We believe it happened when Cerberus left his post at the gates. Twilight Sparkle: But that was a long time ago. Why is he just now starting to steal magic? Princess Celestia: His time in Tartarus left him very weak. He has just now gained enough strength to use his dark powers. Princess Luna: But with each passing moment, he grows stronger still.

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Tirek is a centaur. In keeping with the lack of humanness in the show, rather than being a half-­horse, half-­man, the man half is, instead, a red-­skinned baboon. Though this paper’s focus is primarily on Greco-Roman mythology, it should be noted that within Egyptian mythology the god Thoth is depicted with the head of a baboon. Thoth, the hermetic god of knowledge, writing and arbitration, and typically a positive-­neutral character in mythology, is nonetheless a fitting invocation for Tirek’s greedy hunger for Equestria’s magic. By absorbing magic, Tirek is effectively absorbing knowledge, and becoming in essence a giant among the ponies, possessing all the magic (knowledge) to dominate Equestria. His knowledge, however, is used for power, not for the responsible maintenance of the natural balance of the pony world, and, thus, he needs to be stopped. And again the Mane Six become Theseus. As described by Ovid, Theseus attends the wedding feast of his friend, Pirithous. Also in attendance are a bunch of centaurs. One of the centaurs, Eurytus, ‘the wildest of wild centaurs’, gets drunk and attempts to rape the bride, and the other centaurs, also drunk, follow his lead. Theseus goes into a rage and attacks Eurytus and the wedding feast degrades into a riot.15 Drunk on power, Tirek commits a symbolic rape against the ponies when he steals their magic (and the strength from earth ponies and flight from pegasus ponies). Ovid describes the centauromachy in vivid detail, describing the centaurs and their injuries inflicted by Theseus in a state of rage. The centaurs who were not killed were banished – by some accounts to wander the earth, and in others to Tartaros, which is where Tirek is sent, restoring balance in Equestria. Tartaros is the prison of the Titans, the chthonic deities who preceded the Olympians. The Titans represent the natural, primal forces of the observable universe, whereas the Olympians represent the forces of civilization – physical, social, and emotional. That Tirek would be imprisoned here suggests that he, too, represents a primal force.

Medusa The final myth explored in this essay is that of Medusa and Perseus. The snake-­ headed Gorgon has the ability to turn her victims into stone, and Perseus is tasked with beheading her by Polydectes so the latter can offer her head for the hand of Danae.16 In the season 4 episode,‘Power Ponies’, the Mane Six and their dragon sidekick, Spike, are sucked into a comic book and the only way they can return to Equestria

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is to defeat Mane-­iac. Though the Mane Six are turned into a DC superhero team, the Justice League (except Fluttershy, whose comic book version is Marvel’s Hulk, one of the Avengers), and though Mane-­iac is clearly a spin on the Joker from the Batman mythos, she is nonetheless given Medusa qualities. Like Batman’s Joker, she fell into a vat of green liquid in the haircare product factory she owned, making her insane, and giving her mane special abilities. When the Power Ponies meet her, she freezes them with her Hairspray Ray of Doom and concentrates her efforts on a diabolical plan to amplify the power of her mane with a supersonic powered doomsday blowdryer that will cause every pony’s mane to go wild, bringing certain chaos to the citizens of fictional Maretropolis. Spike rescues the ponies from the Hairspray Ray of Doom and they battle Mane-­ iac’s henchmen to try to prevent activation of the doomsday device. Perseus confronts the Gorgon on a pegasus, so it is fitting that a pegasus pony, Fluttershy, would be the pony primarily responsible for her downfall. Fluttershy’s comic power, like the Hulk, is to turn into a big monster when she gets angry – recalling the previous minotaur episode. Throughout the adventure, she is unable to get angry enough to become the monster, and it takes Mane-­iac swatting a fly before she can do so. Once she does, she becomes immune to Mane-­iac’s doomsday device. When Mane-­iac fires the blowdryer at Fluttershy, the beam bounces off, like Perseus’ reflective shield, and hits Mane-­iac instead, causing her own mane to go even more wild, ultimately engulfing her. The invocation of Perseus in this story adds a dimension to the comic scenario that equates the superheroes not only with their ability to incite the imagination with their supernatural powers and heroic deeds, but also with mythological characters. There has been some scholarly discussion about comic books as modern mythology and comic book heroes as a pantheon of characters with god-­like abilities and saviour-­qualities. These heroes are a specific type of hero, born during World War II, carrying the USA through the Cold War, and, like the heroes, legends and gods of classical mythology, lend themselves to revisioning, revising and updating as the needs of people and culture demand it.17

Conclusion The time and culture that gives birth to a mythology is essential to understanding the full meaning of the stories, but the stories possess another meaning: an archetypal reality that is able to transcend time and place. Indeed, a close study of Greco-Roman myths helps unlock an ancient past that has influenced the

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development of Western civilization for the past millennia, but the influence of the stories on the arts and humanities reveals that the myths are not simply narratives tied to a particular time and place, leading some scholars to surmise about an archetypal significance that transcends the boundaries of culture and time. The heroes and stories of modern mythologies likewise reach diverse audiences, creating a community of fans who share a love and enthusiasm for the mythos. Contemporary popular culture has benefited from the fan communities brought together by the internet. By receiving immediate feedback from fans, media producers can make changes or additions to their stories. The added audience response functions in popular media much like the audience for an oral storyteller, though the forms of delivery have changed greatly from those of Homer. The inclusion of classical motifs, characters and plots in popular culture reveals just how embedded mythology has become in Western civilization. MLP:FIM is just one example of the fusion between antiquity and the contemporary. The inclusion of classical myths – and modern pop culture ‘easter eggs’ – into the show, invoking their narrative familiarity, helps reinforce the mythos, communicating to fans on a visceral level that may or may not be readily overt. This essay has concentrated on a few of the more obvious examples of classical myth in the show. A discerning eye can find many more – some overt, some latent. Weaving the narratives of past and present keeps the stories relevant and alive, proving that no myth or legend is just an ‘old mare’s tale’.

15

The Depraved Devotion of Elagabalus: Images of the Priest-­emperor in the Visual and Performing Arts Martijn Icks

During the short but eventful reign of Elagabalus (ce 218–222), sinister rites were performed in Rome. According to the anonymous author of the Historia Augusta, imperial servants scouted Italy in search of children of noble birth and great beauty whose father and mother were still alive. The unfortunate victims were brought to the capital, where they were ritually tortured and finally sacrificed to Sol Invictus Elagabal, the emperor’s personal Sun god. Afterwards, Elagabalus cut open their bodies to read his future in their entrails.1 The contemporary historian Cassius Dio records a similar story, mentioning ‘the secret sacrifices that [the emperor] offered to [the god], slaying boys and using charms’. He also makes scathing reference to the ‘barbaric chants’ that Elagabalus chanted to Elagabal, the ‘innumerable amulets’ that he wore and the ‘unholy rites’ that he performed in honour of the god, including ‘actually shutting up alive in the god’s temple a lion, a monkey, and a snake, and throwing in among them human genitals’.2 The meaning of this ritual is unclear; the throwing in of genitals could be a reference to the galli,3 but Dio offers no explanation for the presence of the animals – probably because he did not seek to explain the ins and outs of the Elagabal cult at all, but merely wanted to emphasize its nonsensical weirdness. The Historia Augusta does not provide all the same details as the indignant senator, but records that Elagabalus ‘kept about him every kind of magician’. Likewise, the late fifth-­century author, Zosimus, claims that Elagabalus spent his time with ‘mages and charlatans’.4 In all likelihood, very few of these stories are actually true. Cassius Dio and the author of the Historia Augusta were not interested in giving an accurate portrayal of Elagabalus’ religious activities. Rather, their emphasis on the cruel and secretive acts performed by the emperor serve to underline the sinister

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character of the Elagabal cult, which, in their vision, seems more akin to black magic than to any proper religion.5 This negative attitude towards Elagabalus and his god is certainly not atypical. In fact, ancient authors are universally hostile to the devout ruler, who gained the Roman throne at the tender age of fourteen, as a result of a civil war. Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, as the young emperor was officially called, had been living in Emesa (modern-­day Homs) in Syria before his rise to power. He performed ritual dances as the high priest of Elagabal, the local Sun god, who was worshipped in the form of a conical black stone.6 Rather than giving up his religious duties once he had become emperor, Elagabalus – nicknamed after his favourite deity – decided to take Elagabal with him to Rome. There, he announced that the Syrian Sun god would henceforth be at the head of the Roman pantheon, usurping Jupiter’s supreme position, while he himself married the high priestess of the Vestal Virgins, apparently to forge a personal union between the cult of Elagabal and traditional Roman religion.7 Needless to say, the Roman elite and the Praetorian Guard were not pleased by these measures. In ce 222, after a reign of just four years, Elagabalus was killed in a revolt by the praetorians. The senate officially condemned his memory, firing the starting shot for the slanderous tradition that would determine the posthumous reputation of the ‘priest-­emperor’. Due to the many colourful stories concerning religious, sexual and luxurious excesses that have sprouted around Elagabalus in ancient works, he has become the subject of a modest, but surprisingly varied Nachleben in art and literature from the Renaissance onwards. The visual and performing arts are amply represented in this fictional afterlife, which includes (as far as I have been able to determine) a dozen plays, two operas, one ballet, several paintings, as well as movies and comic books.8 The alleged cruelties of the Elagabal cult are frequently referenced in these works. In this article, I will first focus on the most extreme of these cruelties, namely the conduct of human sacrifices in honour of the Sun god. Since this practice was taboo in imperial Rome as well as in later Western cultures,9 the accusations expressed by the ancient sources were picked up by several authors and artists in the emperor’s Nachleben. A second point of interest will be the portrayal of the Elagabal cult as a striving for a blessed androgynous state – a notion that is conspicuously absent from the ancient sources, yet came into vogue in the early nineteenth century. Finally, I will discuss how some artistic works have portrayed the worship of Elagabal as an emphatically ‘oriental’ phenomenon. Our record of the priest-­emperor’s appearances in the visual and performing arts is quite haphazard, especially for the early modern period, so that there are sometimes large chronological gaps between works featuring Elagabalus in a

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major role. Therefore, my analysis will inevitably contain some major leaps between different time periods and genres. I should emphasize that it is not my aim to define continuous trends in the emperor’s Nachleben from the Renaissance to the present, but rather to highlight the different ways in which authors and artists from the visual and performing arts employed notions of magic and the supernatural to create their own images of Elagabalus.

Human sacrifices As far as we can tell, one of the earliest extant performative pieces starring Elagabalus was never actually put on stage. It is the play Bassianus Varius Heliogabalus, of de uitterste proef der standvastige liefde (Bassianus Varius Heliogabalus, or the Ultimate Test of Persistent Love) (1720) by the eighteenth-­ century Dutch playwright Gysbert Tysens. This piece, which portrays the last days of the tyrant Heliogabalus – another variant of the emperor’s nickname – consists of endless monologues, recorded in drab, uninspired rhyme, while all the action takes place offstage.10 It was probably due to its bad quality that the play was rejected by Amsterdam’s Schouwburg, although it may still have been performed at village fairs.11 Elagabalus’ devotion to the Sun is not one of its primary concerns, yet the emperor’s priestly activities are mentioned on several occasions – and always in a negative manner. For instance, Alexander, Elagabalus’ virtuous cousin and the hero of the play, cannot stand the reign of terror to which Rome has succumbed, which prompts him to beg Jupiter to interfere and throw a bolt of lightning at the tyrant, ‘Who spares neither Temple nor Altar,/And during his hateful sacrifice/Pours rasping human blood’.12 The soldiers agree, scorning an emperor who, ‘being less a Priest than a cruel Murderer,/Sacrifices the precious blood of Rome’s most beautiful children’.13 Elagabalus’ devotion is hence presented as a perverted affair, defined by the slaughter of Roman sons and daughters. However, like everything else of interest in Tysens’ play, the human sacrifices are never shown onstage, but are merely referenced in the text. Things become much more exciting in the 2002 Canadian play Heliogabalus, a Love Story by Sky Gilbert, which presents us with a more sympathetic, but still bloodthirsty incarnation of the emperor. As ominous music starts to play, Heliogabalus turns directly towards the audience, telling them that he will pick out the youngest and most handsome boy among them as a sacrifice for Elagabal. He casts his eye on a young actor who has been planted among the spectators, and who is now dragged to the front of the stage by the imperial guards. The boy’s

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sobbing pleas seem in vain. Only at the last moment does Heliogabalus decide to spare his life, making him a member of his harem instead.14 The emperor’s victims do not catch such a break in Neil Gaiman’s amusing comic Being an Account of the Life and Death of the Emperor Heliogabolus [sic] (1991–1992). ‘He would read their entrails himself ’, the author tells us, referencing the Historia Augusta. In the accompanying picture,‘Heliogabolus’ – whose face has been reduced to a diabolical grin and a pair of evil eyes – holds a piece of dripping intestine in his hands.15 The works discussed so far are only marginally concerned with human sacrifices, mentioning them once or twice in the course of the narrative to establish the emperor’s cruel devotion to a cruel god. The gruesome offerings play a more important role in Gilles Chaillet’s five-­volume comic series La Dernière Prophétie (2002–2012). The second and third volumes of this series – which has a framing story set in the time of Theodosius, but contains extensive flashbacks to the Severan age – are concerned with the rise and the reign of Elagabalus, who is depicted as a religious fanatic set on imposing his god on the whole world. As the high priest of Elagabal, he regards himself as the servant and living incarnation of the Sun. When he first claims the name Héliogabale, this is shown in a round picture in the middle of the page, with the bars between surrounding pictures extending outwards from the central image like the rays of the Sun – a clear visual parallel to the boy’s triumphant declaration in the text.16 The bloodthirstiness of the god Elagabal – called ‘Ba’al in the series – is shown through graphic depictions of the numerous animals that are slaughtered in his honour (see Figure 15.1). However, the blood of mere cattle does not appear to satisfy the cruel deity. The Roman centurion Caïus Sylvius discovers that more and more children are disappearing from Emesa. When he comments on the unfamiliar nature of the intestines burnt on the god’s altar, a priest replies that

Figure 15.1  A bloody animal sacrifice to Elagabal. Image from Chaillet’s La Dernière Prophétie, Vol. 3. Thanks are due to the publisher Glénat for permitting me to reproduce this image.

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‘Ba’al is a gourmet god . . . who requires the most delicate meats.’17 This lends the depictions of animal slaughter an ominous quality, since it hints that the blood of children may flow in the same abundant quantities. Once the narrative shifts from Emesa to Rome, Sylvius’ worst suspicions are confirmed. The emperor does not only sacrifice children, but also adults to Elagabal. In one scene, he climbs a tower and throws gifts to the people, but rather than limiting himself to food or costly objects, he showers them with horses, stags and camels, crushing many of them to death. ‘Ah, the blood! All the blood!’ the tyrant exclaims joyfully, looking at the heap of dead citizens. The bizarre episode is inspired by a story from the third-­century historian Herodian, who records that Elagabalus threw gold, silver, clothing and tame animals to the mob, resulting in a scramble in which many got trampled or were impaled on the spears of the soldiers.18 However, Herodian never presented these deaths as intentional sacrifices to Elagabal, as Chaillet does in his comic. In another scene, a magician foretells that the emperor will die a violent death. Presumably, the intestines he examines to read the future are those of children, as in the Historia Augusta anecdote.19 But Chaillet takes his narrative one step further. At the end of the third volume, Elagabalus reveals to Sylvius: ‘You do not understand the pain of my quest. Life springs only from blood. Only through this terrible sacrifice can I regenerate. You are going to die, Caïus, that is the price demanded by Ba’al!’20 Priest and god seem to converge in this quote, with sacrifices to the one benefiting the other. The identification of the emperor with his deity goes back to antiquity, as the nicknames Elagabalus and Heliogabalus attest. However, the regeneration through the spilling of human blood is a new element that cannot be traced to the ancient sources.21 Chaillet does not make it clear whether Elagabalus is truly aligned with supernatural forces, although the emperor’s brutal murder at the end of the third volume seems to speak against any divine connection. One way or the other, the author does not appear to have been overly concerned with the question. Rather than exploring the figure of Héliogabale as a priest who has forged some sort of devil’s pact, Chaillet presents him first and foremost as a bloodthirsty religious fanatic.

The striving for androgyny Magic and supernatural forces, then, play only a limited role in depictions of human sacrifices to Elagabal in the visual and performing arts. Just like the ancient historians and biographers, most playwrights and comic book authors

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prefer to focus on the cruelty and barbarism of the priest-­emperor’s religion, neglecting its metaphysical side. However, in the nineteenth century, another perceived aspect of the Elagabal cult caught the attention of writers and artists. At this time, esoteric circles became increasingly interested in the figure of the androgyne, a superior creature which harmoniously blends male and female characteristics.22 The French mystic Joséphin Péladan, for instance, preached that Adam had originally been androgynous, but had been split into a male and female part by God, so that he could desire and love himself. In Péladan’s view, it was man’s ultimate quest to regain this original, androgynous state. Other mystics expressed similar ideas.23 Not surprisingly, Elagabalus was often interpreted as an androgynous figure. After all, ancient authors put great stress on the emperor’s effeminacy, claiming that he liked to wear female dress and make-­up, referred to himself as ‘empress’ and even wished to have a vagina implanted in his body.24 We can assume that these stories were no more than slurs to portray the emperor as the stereotypical ‘effeminate oriental’. They are not connected to the cult of Elagabal and certainly do not credit Elagabalus with the desire to reach a transcendent androgynous state. Yet this did not stop nineteenth- and twentieth-­century writers and artists from imagining the androgyne ideal as the central tenet of Elagabal-­worship.25 In Auguste Villeroy’s 1902 play Héliogabale, the people of Rome mock the emperor: ‘What is your sex? Are you priestess, empress?’26 Throughout the play, Héliogabale is looking for someone he can love, and who will love him in return. Having been turned down by a potential spouse, he exclaims: ‘And all are happier than Caesar! They all love! They are loved! Yes, all!’27 In his anger, the young ruler declares war on Eros himself. Proclaiming himself ‘ungendered’, he hails a new order, in which love has no place: ‘Slaves of Venus, the Universe is dead! Room/ For the Androgyne, for the Hermaphrodite, for the race/Which shall not know Love.’28 Here, Elagabalus’ striving for androgyny is not presented as a positive ideal, but as an expression of his frustration and impotence at finding a woman to love. He burns the temple of Venus to show everyone he is done with her, but that only leads the soldiers and people of Rome to turn against him. In the fifth and final act, the emperor has been abandoned by all his associates and desperately begs the Sun to have mercy on him, but to no avail. His ‘war on Venus’ does not bring him any closer to the desired androgynous state, but results in his murder at the hands of his furious subjects. In 1866, the British painter Simeon Solomon painted the watercolour Heliogabalus, High Priest of the Sun, which shows the emperor in lavish priestly dress, wearing a solar amulet and holding a thurible (see Figure  15.2).29 The

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Figure 15.2  Simeon Solomon, Heliogabalus, High Priest of the Sun (1866). Private Collection/Photo © Christie’s Images/Bridgeman Images.

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figure’s body is concealed, but his face definitely has androgynous traits. Since the painting presents Elagabalus as a Sun priest, Solomon appears to be hinting at a connection between the emperor’s androgyny and his priesthood. Elizabeth Prettejohn has pointed out that Heliogabalus’ leaning posture and crossed feet allude to Roman copies of the Pothos (Desire), a lost statue by the Greek sculptor Scopas showing a beautiful male nude. On one level, the emperor is thus clearly presented as desirable. However, Prettejohn also points out that Solomon’s contemporaries considered Elagabalus as a paradigm for decadence and depravity.30 The figure’s listless disposition seems to reflect this. He stares at nothing with a lacklustre expression, firmly in the grip of ennui. This melancholy state of mind was considered typical for people whose senses had been numbed by their voracious indulgence in all sorts of extravagances.31 Another painting which shows Elagabalus as an androgynous figure is Lui (1906) by the Symbolist French painter Gustav Adolf-Mossa (see Figure 15.3).32 The emperor is wearing make-­up and female dress, holding a mirror and a powder brush in his hands. In the background, an expectant crowd – all men, wearing modern evening dress – appears to be waiting for him. It seems likely that the presence of this crowd is a reference to a passage in Herodian, who records that both the natives and Roman soldiers stationed nearby flocked to the temple at Emesa to see Elagabalus perform ritual dances for his god, since they were aware that he belonged to the imperial family and ‘his youthful beauty attracted the eyes of all’.33 Like Solomon, then, Mossa portrays Elagabalus in the role of a priest, even though the religious connotation of the image is not immediately clear. The counterpart of Lui is Elle, a painting showing a gigantic naked woman on a heap of naked male bodies. The effeminate man is thus contrasted with a voracious femme fatale. Although both Solomon and Mossa appear to place Elagabalus’ androgynous nature in a religious context, they are clearly not evoking the blessed, transcendent androgyne superseding the sexes envisioned by Péladan and other mystics. Yet androgyny could also have negative connotations. According to the famous Austro-German psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing and many others in the medical world, it was the physical manifestation of a pathological condition, namely homosexuality. The figure of the androgyne gained an increasingly negative reputation during the fin de siècle, when it was often associated with moral ambiguity, mental exhaustion, narcissicism and perversity.34 These are the qualities Solomon and Mossa seem to be hinting at in their paintings. A very different take on the androgynous ideal can be found in a play from a more recent era, Martin Duberman’s Elagabalus (1973).35 Like several other

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Figure 15.3  Gustav Adolf-Mossa, Lui (1906). Thanks are due to the Musée des BeauxArts, Nice, for allowing the reproduction of this image.

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items in the emperor’s Nachleben from the sixties onwards, it provides a more positive interpretation of Elagabalus, suggesting that he was a misunderstood, but well-­meaning soul. The devout ruler does not appear in the flesh, but is represented by Adrian, a young gay man living in contemporary New York. Adrian acts out the role of Elagabalus, worshipping his onyx ring as Baal, nicknaming his boyfriend Hierocles, after the emperor’s male lover, and often speaking in anachronisms and non-­sequiturs. The reason that he has chosen Elagabalus as his role model is that both Adrian and the emperor are imagined as androgynous men who have shed their ‘male armor’. In his description of the protagonist, Duberman stresses that Adrian is ‘strikingly beautiful, but has no trace in voice or gesture of what is called “effeminacy” ’.36 He is meant to represent a new sort of man, one who ‘may seem to choose and alternate his personae with greater freedom and from a far wider repertory than most people imagine is available to them’.37 Once again, then, androgyny has become a positive trait in this piece, rather than a sign of perversion and degeneration. However, Duberman does not so much link this androgyny to the worship of Elagabal, but seems to regard it as an innate trait of the emperor himself. In Elagabalus, the desire to find a balance between the sexes in one’s body and mind is no longer a metaphysical, but a social, ideal: the only thing that Adrian is striving to transcend is conventional morality.

The ‘oriental’ priest Finally, I want to discuss a third aspect of Elagabalus’ priestly role in the visual and performing arts, namely his representation as a member of an emphatically foreign, ‘oriental’ cult that is defined by Western stereotypes of the ‘East’. Like the human sacrifices to Sol Invictus Elagabal, this is a notion that goes straight back to the ancient sources. Both the Romans and the Greeks had many stereotypes about the people living in the ‘East’ – an area which did not only include the Persian or Parthian Empire, but Syria, as well. While Romans (or Greeks) were supposed to be strong and manly, ‘orientals’ were allegedly weak, servile and effeminate. They indulged in extravagant luxuries that were at odds with the Greco-Roman ideals of simplicity and moderation.38 Applying such stereotypes to Elagabalus proved all too easy. Although the emperor’s father had held several important posts in the imperial administration and his mother’s family had possessed Roman citizenship for 200 years,39 Herodian in particular does not tire of stressing that the young ruler was a

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Syrian, an outsider who had little understanding of Roman culture and traditions. In his account, he goes into great detail about Elagabalus’ priestly costume, comparing it to the garbs of the Phoenicians and the Medes. ‘Any Roman or Greek dress he loathed because, he claimed, it was made out of wool, which is a cheap material. Only Chinese silk was good enough for him.’40 The point is hammered home even further when Herodian records that Elagabalus refused to wear a Roman toga on first entering the capital. Instead, the emperor chose to send a portrait of himself ahead, so the citizens could get used to his outlandish appearance.41 In early modern works, Elagabalus’ ‘oriental’ background seemed largely forgotten. The seventeenth-­century Venetian opera Eliogabalo contains only a couple of lines that even hint at the Syrian roots of the eponymous main character. The same is true for Tysens’ play Bassianus Varius Heliogabalus. Although the playwright puts much emphasis on Heliogabalus’ disrespect for Roman religion, we learn nothing of the god he worships himself. The name Elagabal is never mentioned, nor is it made clear that he is a Syrian god. In other words, the play establishes Heliogabalus as an enemy of Rome and Roman religion, but hardly as an ‘oriental’. Only twice does Tysens explicitly oppose Rome to the ‘East’. At one instance, Alexander remarks how Heliogabalus has ‘cravenly betrayed’ Roman bravery with his ‘effeminate dress and Asian splendour/of purple, gold and silk, and other adornments’.42 At another instance, Alexander says that the emperor ‘with effeminate dress smudges the Roman name,/and violates Numa’s law in Assyrian clothes’.43 In neither case, these accusations are explicitly connected to the cult of Elagabal. Edward Said has famously argued that the ‘East’ should be regarded as a product of Western imagination that bears little or no resemblance to reality, coining the term ‘orientalism’ for the West’s construction of prejudiced, static images of the ‘East’. As he points out, eighteenth-­century European scholars and artists increasingly began to think in terms of different ‘types’ of people, characterized by distinct, innate traits. In opposition to ‘the European’, there was ‘the Asian’.44 This change is reflected in the Nachleben of Elagabalus. A good example is the 1836 Polish play Irydjon, by Zygmunt Krasiński. When the emperor first enters the stage, the instructions in the script state that he wears ‘the robes of a high priest’. A gigantic statue of Mithras – not Elagabal, interestingly – is standing in the background, while music is gradually fading and ‘priests and soothsayers’ are passing out of the room.45 In one scene, the play’s hero, Iridion, urges Elagabalus to found a new empire in Syria, where he will ‘pass sweet days, enveloped by the smoke of aloes and myrrh, and lulled by

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the notes of zither and flute’, adding that nobody ‘will dare deride thy Chaldaean mitre or mock at the flowing sleeves of thine oriental mantle!’46 Solomon’s painting likewise places Elagabalus’ priesthood in a clearly ‘oriental’ context, depicting him in exotic dress and wearing a luxuriant golden cap. This ties in well with the emperor’s representation as a listless, effeminate figure, since these qualities were often associated with the ‘East’ in nineteenth-­century thinking. One and a half centuries later, Chaillet also applied ‘oriental’ stereotypes to define the cult of Elagabal. In his comic, he presents us with a vivid depiction of a ritual dance in honour of the Sun god. The artist is clearly channelling Herodian, who records that the emperor performed ‘orgiastic and ecstatic’ rites for his god involving cymbals, drums and dancing women.47 However, Herodian did not mention that these women were (half-)naked, as Chaillet chooses to depict them. The emperor himself is drawn wearing ‘oriental’ dress during his ritual dances, but in the scene where he is first introduced, he is also shown dancing naked. Again, Herodian mentions nothing of the sort, nor does any other ancient source. Yet the introduction of these details by Chaillet is hardly coincidental. They tie in with Western notions of ‘oriental’ depravity and temple prostitution, adding to the impression of the Elagabal cult as an outlandish, unrestrained celebration of sexuality and excess.

Conclusion When he ruled the Roman world, Elagabalus had claimed an intimate bond with a supernatural being, presenting himself as the ‘invincible priest-­emperor’ of Sol Invictus Elagabal.48 The writers and artists who made him the subject of their plays, paintings and comic books expressed little interest in this positive image. Following in the footsteps of the ancient authors, most of them have derided the emperor’s solar worship, envisioning him as a bloodthirsty barbarian revelling in human sacrifice, a weird ‘oriental’ exulting in the worship of a foreign god, and/or – in a twist on the ancient topos of effeminacy – as a depraved boy living by a misguided creed of androgyny. Hence, the emperor’s devotion to Elagabal has repeatedly been used as a vehicle to place him outside the bounds of conventional morality and gender, as well as outside Western culture. Notions of magic and the supernatural play only a very minor role in these representations. Obviously, any artistic work focusing on the Elagabal cult is automatically concerned with the supernatural, in the sense that any god or religion is tied to the realms beyond our earthly existence; this naturally includes

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Figure 15.4  Louis Couperus caricatured as Elagabalus; cartoon from De Roskam (1915). Source: N. Maas (1990), ‘Diversités du passé’, Maatstaf 38, 11: 2.

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the Invincible Sun from Emesa, or whichever guise the god is presented in. At the same time, however, Elagabal never makes a direct appearance in any of the discussed works. There appears to be no play, painting, opera or comic in which the deity descends from the heavens to reveal himself to the awed spectators, or in which he directly interferes in human affairs. Likewise, not a single work from the visual or performing arts seems to credit Elagabalus himself with a genuine link to the supernatural. Nowhere is the priest-­emperor imagined as a figure blessed with divine powers, or as a sorcerer in league with demonic forces. Rather, his devotion is presented as something absurd and grotesque, as a delusion not shared by the viewer. Those offering a more positive perspective have often met with little sympathy. In his novel De berg van licht (The Mountain of Light), published in three volumes in 1905–1906, the Dutch author Louis Couperus presented the young Elagabalus as the last paragon of ‘Ancient Piety’ who may even be the long-­sought ‘Chosen Soul’, since he is ‘Not too feminine, not too masculine, both sexes in balance, fused together in harmony . . .’49 Many critics took issue with the novel’s positive portrayal of such a scandalous figure, suspecting that Couperus idealized the emperor because of his own secret homosexual desires. In 1915, a cartoon was printed in the satirical journal De Roskam, showing the author as high priest in female dress, with an aureole above his head and prostrated worshippers at his feet (see Figure 15.4). The text heaps further scorn on the victim, denouncing him as ‘Holland’s miracle’ and ‘our charming Couperus’.50 Evidently, accusations of depraved devotion were not limited to the priest-­emperor himself. His admirers could be painted with the same brush.

16

Women and Religion in Epic Films: The Fifties’ Advocate for Christian Conversion and Today’s Pillar of Paganism? Anja Wieber

In a historical novel from 1905 by Adam Josef Cüppers, a Catholic schoolteacher and writer, we learn that after a troublesome life Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, finally found peace on her deathbed.1 But why? The answer lies in her conversion, and above all in that her son Waballath, a recently ordained priest, had baptized her: Da antwortet die Königin: Ich bin bereit! Mit einem Jubelruf umschlang der Sohn die Mutter. Sie legte das Glaubensbekenntnis in seine Hand ab, und er taufte sie unter dem Beistande des Papstes auf den Namen der Gottesmutter. . . . Dann sank sie zurück, Heliodora tat einen Schrei, und Miriam stand wie versteinert. Die Königin von Palmyra hatte den Frieden gefunden. ENDE.2

The driving force behind the conversion of all the people involved (including a daughter of Zenobia) is actually Zenobia’s confidante and personal slave Miriam – a plot quite typical for nineteenth-­century historical novels set in ancient times. This type of novel, using this model of conversion, even transitioned from the era of silent movies into the 1950s. In this article, I will examine some of the 1950s movies, focusing on The Robe, by looking at how they relate women of ancient times to religion – and especially to the controversy of Christianity against paganism – at the level of the plot as well as in their visual elements. I will also look at why that model worked in those days. Examples from recent films, such as Agora, will eventually be used for comparison in order to examine whether new epic movies deviated from their ‘script’ of women and religion.

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From books to the screen . . . Many nineteenth-­century historical novels are set in ancient times and places, one reason being that their authors are steeped in the classics (so-­called Professorenroman). Also, the more distant the epoch, the better it could carry critical subtexts or encoded messages, for example, the Zenobia novel cited has to be understood against the background of tensions between the Catholic Church and Protestant monarchy in Germany. Considering the Anglo-American culture in the nineteenth century, Callum G. Brown, a historian of religion, speaks of ‘the feminisation of piety’, at the same time assuming that ‘evangelicalism pietised feminity’.3 As a result, women became important for the well-­being of society as a whole, as its moral backbone so to speak. Women confined to their homes and secluded from worldly sins had to make their husbands better men and to raise their children in the right faith. Many evangelical journals and novels of the time present the heroine who, with all her kindness, self-­deliverance and other altruistic traits, saves the male sinner. Thus she becomes an agent of conversion. In novels about ancient times, this plot makes perfect sense, for Christianity – the new religion – needed powerful advocates in a pagan world, in which women actually used to play an important role as agents of ‘matronage’ or brokers of patronage.4 Reader response to novels about the past, however, does not depend on historical accuracy, but rather on the mode of identification they offer. Women as readers could bond with the heroine, while the family as a whole liked the colourful settings and often dramatic story-­plot. Finally, the ‘sin that was Rome’5 allowed a voyeuristic glimpse of ‘sex and crime’ a long time ago. Some of those novels shaped the way antiquity in general was thought of. In the USA for example, and especially in the Bible Belt, Ben Hur was widely read in different editions, some of which were actually textbook versions for schools.6 Early film-­ making relied heavily on this type of novel, partly because many of them were widely known through paintings, toga plays or pyrodrama (e.g. Ben Hur, Quo Vadis, The Last Days of Pompeii).7

Women’s role and cinema culture in the aftermath of two wars – nothing new on the ancient front? World War I, and in many countries the decade following it, changed the situation for women insofar as they gained the vote as well as more financial

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independence. At least for women of the middle class that is: just as working-­ class women had always worked outside their homes, for the first time middle-­ class women could do the same. Now that they could leave their seclusion for growing job opportunities, they took part in outdoor activities and sports; they developed a new feeling for their bodies. Nonetheless, in many rural communities the traditional gender roles prevailed, and indeed in the cities female professional independence was often no more than a transitional stage before marriage. Although World War II made another huge impact on gender roles, in the postwar era people in the USA and in Western Europe felt the need for a reversion to traditional values, albeit for different reasons: in nearly all belligerent countries there was a need to generate new jobs for men coming home, who were also sought-­after husbands as so many of their comrades had been killed. Beyond that, in Western Germany the inability to cope with National Socialist atrocities led to people refraining from looking back to the social developments of the 1920s. As a result, the countries of the Western hemisphere again preferred women in their role as traditional homemakers.8 In this climate, the Hollywood film industry had to keep up with the emerging world of television.9 New technical developments (Technicolor and wide screen), movie palaces and spectacular stories that could attract viewers and at the same time withstand censorship, defined the new parameters. Directors tended to cite other films because the epic movies had had an established tradition in the era of the silent movie and because the old plots from 1900 answered the demand for old-­fashioned stories and were beyond suspicion in the tense climate of the McCarthy era, with blacklisted authors, directors and actors, accused of communist conspiracy by the House of Un-American Activities Committee.10 So the 1950s were the second heyday of epic movies about ancient times.11

The Robe (1) – Women are like saints! In 1953 The Robe was the first full-­length movie shot in Cinemascope to be shown to the public. Consequently, one of the taglines reads ‘The First Picture on the New Miracle Curved Screen!’ and the main themes are given: ‘The Greatest Story of Love, Faith, and Overwhelming Spectacle!’12 The film is based on a bestseller from 1942 by Lloyd Cassell Douglas (1877–1951), respectively a Lutheran then a Congregationalist13 minister and author, whose historical novels were written in the tradition of Lew Wallace and Henryk Sienkiewicz14 and

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under the influence of World War II. Albert Maltz worked with others on the script, but was not mentioned in the original credits as he was one of the blacklisted ‘Hollywood 10’.15 The film tells the story of the Roman military tribune Marcellus Gallio who is in charge of the crucifixion of Jesus and who wins his robe in a game of dice. From that time on Marcellus is haunted by nightmares, feeling pain whenever he touches the robe. Meanwhile, it turns out that Marcellus’ slave Demetrius has become Christian and, defying his master, runs away with the precious cloth. Back in Rome, the emperor, Tiberius, gives Marcellus the order to investigate the Christians and take possession of the robe, which is endowed with magic powers. He therefore returns to Galilee and the quest for the cloth soon becomes a quest for the right faith. To cut a long story short, by the end of the movie Marcellus resists the new – obviously mad – emperor Caligula and is ready to die for his faith together with his love Diana, not before she gives the holy cloth to a Christian servant, so that he can hand it over to Peter, the fisherman. Along with the conversion message, this story element guarantees a sequel to the film, i.e. Demetrius and the Gladiators. At first sight, one of the genre-­typical formulae16 seems to be missing. Similar to the religious novel in general, gender and religion are usually connected in the following way: pagan (mostly Roman) boy meets Christian girl and she wins him over to Christianity, against all odds, and they live happily ever after. That is part of the story of Quo Vadis (various versions), some of the Pompeii films (The Last Days of Pompeii, 1913 and 1959), The Silver Chalice (1955) and it even works in the family of Ben Hur – his future wife, his mother and sister make the Jew prefer Christianity, especially its concept of forgiveness. The Sign of the Cross (1932) presents the couple unified in their shared belief and death. But in The Robe, Marcellus converts Diana to Christianity. Nonetheless the female leading character goes very well with the ideal woman of the 1950s and acts in many ways as a proto-Christian.17 The film starts with the ‘Voice of Rome’. The leading character Marcellus speaks to the viewer in the first person plural about Roman power, its slave system (‘We have reached the point where there are more slaves in Rome than citizens’) and pagan beliefs which are quite the opposite – so the subtext – to modern Western civilization and Christianity. When Marcellus meets Diana for the first time after many years (0:06), she looks like a Madonna, clad in light pink and with a decent head covering. Her behaviour is very gentle and sweet. In quite a number of following film scenes her costumes’ colours are reminiscent of a bridesmaid (pink and yellow).18

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Figure 16.1  Screenshot from the movie The Robe (1953).

As Marcellus opposed him, Caligula, the emperor-­to-­be, sent him on a mission to Jerusalem as a punishment. Marriage vows made between Diana and Marcellus in childhood have proved to be serious for Diana, and so she comes to say goodbye and to let Marcellus know that she will intercede for him with the emperor. Now he admits his love and makes her promise to wait for him (in fact it is a bit more complicated than that – she should make the emperor promise not to marry her to his son Caligula!) (0:19–21). Again Diana is a second Mary (now with her typical blue cloak that stands for heaven, hope and harmony) and at the same time the faithful girl waiting for the soldier to come home – a common theme in the aftermath of World War II (see Figure 16.1).19 Later, when Marcellus comes home and is obviously mentally ill, she shows her self-­sacrificing devotion. In a meeting with the emperor we get to know the following (0:55–56): Emperor Tiberius: For your sake I interfered, when my wife wanted to give you to Caligula. For your sake I brought your tribune back from Palestine. For your sake, I now free you from him. Diana: Sire, I have no wish to be free. Emperor Tiberius: Have you gone mad too?

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Diana: He had everything then. He could have had me too. I wanted him, but I wasn’t sure that I loved him. Now I am sure. Emperor Tiberius: I think it my duty to forbid you to see him again. As a child you were wise, now you reason like a woman – foolishly.

Astonishingly, Emperor Tiberius’ subsequent explanation for Christian troublemakers, man’s wish to be free (0:57), does not apply to women; instead they have to be (or should I say they choose to be?) obedient companions to a free man. So it comes as no surprise that Diana, despite some doubts about the new God, is converted by Marcellus in the end and chooses marriage in death after a confrontation with the new emperor. She is dressed like a bride and Marcellus leads her to the ‘altar’ (2:05–2:08): Diana: [Marcellus has just been sentenced to execution; Diana leaves the podium to stand at his side] Sire, Marcellus is my chosen husband. I ask to go with him. Caligula: Stand back! You’re not on trial! There’s no evidence against you! Diana: Then if it please you, Sire, I’ll provide evidence. I have no wish to live another hour in an empire ruled by you! You dare to call yourself a Caesar. Once the Caesars of Rome were noble, but in you, noble blood has turned to poison. You corrupt Rome with your spite and malice. Caligula: Stop! Stop it! Diana: That you should be Caesar, vicious, treacherous, drunk with power, an evil, insane monster posing as emperor. Caligula: STOP IT! Diana: As for me, I have found another king. I want to go with my husband into his kingdom. Caligula: Then, by the gods, you shall! Go, both of you, into your kingdom!

Apart from Diana there is another leading lady in this film who deeply impresses Marcellus: Miriam. Together with some other Christian people, among them Peter the fisherman, she is responsible for Marcellus’ conversion. Before she met Jesus she was filled with bitterness about being a cripple with no marriage in sight. Now she is singing the story of Jesus’ resurrection, continually helping other people. Clearly she is meant to be a role model for less happy women who learn that by their right faith they can also lead such a productive life, symbolized in the film by Miriam’s happily basket-­weaving.20

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The Robe (2) – No sex, please, we’re in the fifties and this is a family movie21 Good Christian girls can be pretty, but should not be too sexy. Betta St John, in the role of Miriam, has Madonna-­like looks, but is very attractive. However, cinema-­goers at that time would have known her from the comedy the Dream Wife (release date only a few weeks before The Robe) in which she plays the racy princess of the (fictional) Arab country of Bukistan, an incarnation of harem fantasies. Besides, a certain ambiguity was typical in that time for actresses who were cast as good girls (and certainly for the bad girls), one of the reasons being that they had to be attractive as fashion icons, even in period films. Jean Simmons, as Diana, had that certain something as well, and had also played harem roles and seductresses.22 From an American point of view, one way to downplay sexiness was to cast female characters by accent: Britishness was thought to express aloofness.23 Jean Simmons was English and her accent was absolutely perfect for the role, whereas Betta St John, who was American, but had a slight British accent having lived in England for some time, was asked to switch to an American accent because all the good Christians in the film should sound so.24 Obviously, in her role as a crippled woman her sex appeal was sufficiently confined, no need for a British accent. That the film industry successfully shaped and subdued their leading stars’ sexuality may also be seen from the promotional campaigns. In 1953, Lux soap ran an advertisement with Jean Simmons in the role from The Robe (see Figure 16.2) – could there be a better example of ‘clean’ sex-­appeal? Another way of taming dangerous sexuality was, of course, marriage. Elsewhere, I showed why portraying good Christian marriages in contrast to barbarian polygamy formed an important part of the agenda of ancient epic movies during the Cold War.25 Consequently, the good Christian heroine marries the hero in the Roman/Christian epic, because the family they would form was then understood as a paragon for modern times when family had to be a bulwark of freedom against the ‘Red Scare’ of communism.26 Elaine Tyler May has convincingly proved that the Cold War era, with its tense political situation and public fear, produced a discourse about the dangers of sexual chaos and promiscuity as the possible outcome of an atomic war: a bomb explosion would cause not only civil disorder but all kinds of licentiousness between the sexes.27 Early marriage should save society from moral decline, and women, for their part, were supposed to make a contribution to national security by learning home nursing, keeping house and pantry ready for the nuclear war. Most

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Figure 16.2  Scan of the advertisement for Lux soap in Woman’s Home Companion (September 1953), reproduced with the kind permission of Unilever.

important of all, homemaking should be their career and they should stick to religious and patriotic values. In The Robe Diana’s behaviour to stand by her chosen ‘husband’ perfectly concurs with such an ideal woman. In fact during the whole Cold War era there was an intermingling of misled female sexuality and the threat of the atomic bomb. Not only was a very attractive woman called a

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‘bombshell’, but a civil defence pamphlet from 1972 still uses sexy girls as a metaphor for radioactive rays!28 In 1963, when The Robe was re-­released, new movie posters were made which conveyed a perfect illustration of how the film was understood in the times of Cold War. German scholars usually understand the so-­called ‘long 1950s’ as the time span from 1949 to 1966, and therefore the film’s re-­release is still interesting for this study. Whereas the original movie poster was aimed more at technical sensation,29 the specimens of the 1960s tended to emphasize the cloth in the signal colour red.30 The tagline written on the cloth of Jesus or above it shares the new focus (‘The Greatest Story of Love and Faith the World has Ever Known!’) – no more mention of the new cinematic sensation, but instead religion and the couple. The vertical version of the poster is actually reminiscent of a Virgin of Mercy (Mantelmadonna) who has given cover to the couple (see Figure 16.3). In fact, from the early 1950s onwards there was a great fear of the atomic bomb, and educational material like the film Duck and Cover was broadcast all over the country (by the Alert America Convoy, in theatres and on TV).31 Part of the message of the duck-­and-­cover drills was that a blanket or a newspaper could offer protection against the bomb.32 In August 1953, only some weeks before the original release of The Robe on 16 September, the USSR had tested the hydrogen bomb and in 1963 the climate was still very tense, as the Cuba crisis had only been settled a few months earlier.33 So The Robe could also be interpreted as a cover against the danger of an atomic war, metaphorically speaking the religion is a shelter for the couple. At the same time the married couple forms a protective barrier against communism – the horizontal poster makes them look like a married couple in bed. In the book as well as in the movie, the robe is referred to as homespun, which is in itself an American myth of the days of the Founding Fathers34 and makes it a fabric that ties people together, i.e. believers or members of the family as the smallest entity of society. Summing up, one can say that The Robe tells a tale of ancient Christianity35 in order to shape gender roles of the present time. The fictitious character Diana was only one of the helping hands in the story of the handing down of the Holy Coat, which in legends of the Middle Ages was actually built around the late antique empress Helena, who was believed to have brought the coat to Trier.36 In general, late antique empresses played an important role in the cult of the relics,37 but those powerful ladies would not have concurred with the agenda of the 1950s. The main ancient heroine should instead be kept in memory as part of a pair. Therefore, quite an ahistorical epitaph for Marcellus and Diana is presented at the

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Figure 16.3  Movie poster for the 1963 re-­release of The Robe, © AF Archive/Alamy.

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beginning (0:08) of the film’s sequel Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954) mentioning, Marcellus  ✠ Diana GALLIO thereby making Gallio the modern family name of a decent married couple.

A new millennium – everything new on the ancient front? With the new millennium everything seems to have changed, hasn’t it? Actually, there are a lot of pagan heroines in today’s cinema and on TV. Whereas the mean Roman or Byzantine empress and the barbarian queen had always been key figures in period movies, cast as the anti-­heroines, nowadays pagan leading ladies can also be understood as role models. From 1995 on to 2001, Xena: Warrior Princess was praised by fans and critics as an icon of feminism in the pseudo-­ ancient fantasy TV series.38 In 2003, two episodes of the educational TV documentary Metropolis – Die Macht der Städte – to name another example – show in their re-­enactment scenes female protagonists: as a young woman Agnotike comes to the megalopolis Alexandria to study medicine, and the hetaera Phryne and her fate make part of Athen’s story. In some mini-­series the so-­called voice of God that introduces the plot can now be a female, for example, Varinia’s voice in Spartacus (TV 2004) and Julia’s voice in Imperium: Augustus (TV 2003). But how do these heroines relate to religion? A fan writes about Xena that she ‘does, after all, meet with them, [i.e. the gods] on an almost daily basis. She is continually fighting with them or against them, and she is even rumored to have been fathered by one of them’.39 Nonetheless, she does – literally speaking – undergo a crucial transformation process during the different episodes.40 Her first conversion takes place when she turns from a bloodthirsty warrior queen to a saviour for people in distress. For all her regular contact with the pagan gods she does not pray to them or advertise ancient Greek religious beliefs. But parts of the story show her involvement with other different religions: Judaism, Christianity, Eastern mysticism (Hinduism, Taoism and Shintu). At one point she and her companion Gabrielle become a sort of pre-Jesus and are crucified by the end of season 4, and then go through resurrection by the beginning of season 5. In the last episode, Xena dies, presumably to enter a Shinto afterlife. It is

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exactly this sort of religious amalgam that makes Xena a perfect screen onto which viewers from different cultural backgrounds can project their fantasies. The hero’s journey has become part of female self-­discovery. Esotericism and the discourse of female friendship are vital to that process. In the TV series Rome, women are closely connected to ancient religion and cults. The series shows them making offerings to house gods (Niobe), using cursing tablets (Servilia), performing mourning rituals and spells (Servilia in season 2), praying to and talking of the gods of a distant homeland (Eirene) and making a bloody sacrifice to Magna Mater (Atia). J. Mira Seo has shown that the representation of religious practice is assigned a gender in the series. Whereas male religious behaviour is shaped as civic, political, cynical, institutional, female behaviour bears the connotation of marginal/domestic, personal, emotional, magic/mystery cult.41 Seo argues that the strong leading ladies of the series, and especially the staging of the Magna Mater cult as feminine (albeit in its character as an important state cult),42 are filmic devices to enhance Roman women’s importance for the sake of modern female viewers. Years ago, the dichotomy mentioned before was analysed by Karen Hausen as the Paradigma der Geschlechtscharaktere43 (gender characteristics of the sexes), a fundamental figure of nineteenth-­century thought, clearly based on a strict separation of private and public space. Recent studies, however, have proved that in ancient societies the private and public domains were intertwined and the equation ‘female’ = ‘private’ and ‘male’ = ‘public’ does not always work.44 I believe that the TV series draws (perhaps unintentionally) on nineteenth- and early twentieth-­century ideas, quite usual for film adaptions of antiquity, and here and there adds spicy exoticism, for example, in the scene where Atia bathes in the blood of a dying bull.45 Lately, we have learned from studies such as that by Celia E. Schultz that Roman cults were less gender-­segregated than previous scholars have imagined them to be, and that Roman women often participated in public religious rites.46 But to tell that story would not have been spectacular enough. In 1986 the famous historian Sir Ronald Syme wrote that ‘Ladies of rank under the first imperial dynasty are a seductive topic. In the first place, betrothal and marriage, adultery and divorce. Next, licence and luxury, kinship and discord . . .’47 It is that seductive topos that is exploited by the series, with the depiction of religion as with other historical dimensions.

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I believe in philosophy In her review of Alejandro Amenábar’s movie Agora, Dolores Martín Moruno, currently working on ‘images of gender in the history of science’, writes: ‘the story of Hypatia, an icon of modernity and feminism against the corrupt powers of religion, had never been adapted in cinema’.48 Reviewers mostly read the film interpretation of the long-­told story so that the Alexandrian philosopher and scientist becomes, especially with her violent death, a victim of fourth-­century Christianity and its triumph over pagan sciences, education and culture. Her death is seen as the historical turning point which signals an end to antiquity; I cannot comment on this in detail, although I do not agree with this scenario.49 In the Cold War era, however, such a topic with a pagan heroine as the embodiment of reason would not have been acceptable for mainstream cinema. Amenábar’s version of the Hypatia legend dates back to the ideas of the Enlightenment (e.g. Gibbon)50 and is emphasized in this movie by modern subtexts referring to all forms of fanaticism. A sort of colour coding is to be found in costumes and mises-­en-­scène: as a result the colour black refers to fanatic Christians as well as to German National Socialists and the modern Taliban.51 Of course, white is the colour of the good pagans (and of the nearly-­ good Bishop Synesius) and often, if not always, of Hypatia. When the Christian mob threatens to kill the Jews of Alexandria, Hypatia appears in the city council and demands that the city prefect Orestes take action against the savagery of Bishop Cyril, who is the mastermind of that riot. In her opinion, not to act would lead to an end ‘until there is no one left in this city, no people for this government to govern’ (1:16). Interviews52 with the director, other members of the cast and especially with Rachel Weisz, who plays Hypatia (and has a comparable family history, her parents being Jewish refugee children from the Holocaust), make us understand that her alias Hypatia’s reasoning against religious fanaticism can be read as an allusion to the famous quotation by Pastor Martin Niemöller.53 During another meeting of the city council (1:23–24) Hypatia argues with one of the members and thereby we learn about her beliefs: Heladius Dignitary: The majority of us here beginning with our prefect have accepted Christ. Why not the rest of you? It’s only a matter of time and you know it. Hypatia: Really? It is just a matter of time? Well, excuse me, honoured member, but as far as I am aware, your God has not yet proved himself to be

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more just or more merciful than his predecessors. Is it really just a question of time before I accept your faith? Heladius Dignitary: Why then should this assembly accept the council of someone who admittedly believes in absolutely nothing? Hypatia: I believe in philosophy. Heladius Dignitary: Philosophy – just what we need in times like these.

Immediately after Hypatia has left the scene we hear her speaking from the dark and then watch her in an intimate meeting with Orestes: Hypatia: All these years, I’ve been studying – with absolutely no life of my own. And I wonder, what was the point? Orestes: No, forget about what was said today. Hypatia: It this all life holds for me? Orestes: What else? I doubt anyone could see you as a devoted wife and mother . . .

So, Hypatia is characterized as an atheist, and claims to be a follower of philosophy. In the film, her conflict with Bishop Cyril originates in the clash between her atheism and his Christian orthodoxy. Scholars have proved that the historical situation was different on some points. Not only did the historical Hypatia have many Christian students (as portrayed in the film), she also intervened on their behalf.54 She was not the type of Neoplatonic philosopher who fought for pagan rites and beliefs, and she was certainly not hostile towards Christianity. In fact, Hypatia’s murder had less to do with religion than with a local power struggle in which Hypatia, as an important key figure of Alexandria, was involved.55 To do the film justice, this political side of the story was more present in some of the deleted scenes.

Let’s go East! By the way Agora puts emphasis on certain aspects of the story, ancient politics have obviously been left out to make a statement about modern religious problems.56 As a consequence, Hypatia’s acting is depoliticized. In a way she is aligned with some ancient heroines of the 1950s, also being an attractive (now thirty-­something) martyr,57 instead of being portrayed as the mature and mighty benefactress and source of matronage in her early sixties.58 For her commitment to science, Hypatia has first to sacrifice her life by denying herself marriage and

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Figure 16.4  Spanish movie poster for Agora (2009). Courtesy of Canal + Espana / The Kobal collection.

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children, and in the end she literally has to pay with her life. Interestingly, although she has to cope with all that, her shoulders are – completely in contrast to gender concepts of the 1950s – the ones the city prefect Orestes needs to lean on, as he begs her to give in to Cyril so that he can rely on her in his struggle against the bishop. Strength seems to be quite important for contemporary ancient heroines, and this can also mean physical toughness and aggressiveness, as we learn from Xena or as we can see in the role of the Amazon-­like wonder woman with the meaningful name Mira in The Last Legion (2007). Mira helps the disillusioned commander Aurelius and the wise Ambrosinus (aka Merlin) to escort the young Emperor Romulus through lands in turmoil. Their voyage turns out to be a flight to the Empire’s outpost Britannia. Mira is literally presented as the front woman of this risky adventure as the movie poster clearly shows, and with her faith in the mission she gives life to a myth: Romulus will be the father of King Arthur.59 Where do these women turn to get their strength? Some of them turn to the East, so Xena’s faith could be understood as a sort of New Age Eastern mysticism,60 and although not practising any religion in the film, Mira is the embodiment of the East: she is played by the famous Bollywood actress Aishwarya Rai and the film plot makes her a member of a warrior family from Kerala, India.61 Astonishingly, even Hypatia is seen in a pose that refers to her astronomical interests as well as to meditation (see Figure 16.4). Summing up, one can say that women’s acting in epic movies about ancient times is shaped by religious parameters which reflect changes in so-­called Western civilization, mainly secularization and globalization: instead of Christian messages to be conveyed by the good woman in the 1950s, heroines now relate to different belief systems. In many of the cases discussed, ancient religion is staged to discuss modern phenomena. Nonetheless, it is astonishing how close many of those recent heroines come in their sacrifices to some of the main characters from the old movies, and how the political becomes a private matter.62

Notes 1  Magic and the Supernatural from the Ancient World: An Introduction 1 Proceedings published as Castillo, Knippschild, García Morcillo and Herreros 2008 and Knippschild and García Morcillo 2013. 2 See Carlà 2015. 3 Blänsdorf 2012b. 4 For a good introduction to magic in the ancient world and a survey of the modern debate on religion vs. magic, see Graf 1997b; ThesCRA III: 283–301; see also Nock 1972 and Trzcionka 2007: 5–14. 5 Herakl. VS 22 B 14, ca 500 v. Chr. 6 Soph., Od. tyr. 387–389. 7 Plato, Pol. 364b (where Plato in any case inconsistenly associates to the agyrtai also the manteis, who operate in the frame of ‘official’ religion and are surely socially well accepted); see also Pol. 572e; Nom. 909b. 8 Faraone 1991: 3–32. 9 Faraone 1991: 10–11. 10 Her. 1.140; Xen., Cyr. 8.1.23–24. 11 For an interpretation of this obscure text and a contextualization in ancient religious belief, see Edmonds 2008. 12 Plat., Charm. 155e. 13 Berti 2006. 14 FOWLER 2000: 341. On inconsistences in ancient polytheism, see Versnel 2011. 15 In Sen., Nat. Quaest. 4.7.2. See also Nock 1972: 316–317. See also Dickie 2001: 144–145. 16 Cat., Agr. 160; see also Pl., Nat. Hist. 28.21 for similar medical treatments. 17 Here are just some examples: Verg., Aen. 7.10–24, 189–191; Ecl. 8.66–84, 95–99; Ov., Met. 14, 267–270; 355–370. For Canidia and Erichtho, see the article by WALDE in this volume. 18 Cic., Br. 60.217; Graf 1997c: 105. 19 On theurgy see Johnston 1997: 165–194. 20 It is important to underline that the concept of ‘pagan religion’ itself is rather a Christian creation, since ‘pagan religion’ consisted of a complex of cult practices and

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did not know any doctrine or orthodoxy – it even lacked a precise term or definition: see, among others, Lane Fox 1986: 30–39. 21 For a good overview of the subject, see Bremmer and Veenstra 2002. 22 For reasons of brevity, we will not examine in depth the history of the debate about magic and religion. For a good summary see Versnel 1991b: 177–197; Fowler 2000: 317–343 (with good bibliography and further reading suggestions at the end of the book); TheSCRA III: 283–288. 23 See Versnel 1991b: 178–179, 189–190, 192. 24 Berti 2014. 25 An interesting tentative (but only partly successful) attempt to combine an emic and etic approach can be found in Versnel 2009. 26 So for instance Gager 1992: 24–25. 27 See Versnel 1991b: 180 with references. 28 That secrecy is always one of the main feature of curse tablets has recently been questioned, with good arguments: see for instance Kirnan 2003 and Chaniotis 2009, especially 63–66. 29 Blänsdorf 2010a; 2010b; 2012a; 2012b; 2012c. 30 See Berti 2015. 31 On gender-­oriented reception of Graeco-Roman magic see Graf 1997b: 95–96. 32 In a very famous contribution, Veyne 1978: 45, explains the success of the figure of the sorceresses in the Latin literature of the first century bce and ce as a consequence of the misogyny developed by Roman culture in that period, and contextualizes this in the evolution of sexual morality. 33 See Carlà 2008. 34 It is impossible to summarize the immense bibliography on the subject here. For a good overview, see Phillips 2000: 344–358 (with suggestions for further reading at the end of the volume). 35 On this topic, still see Veyne 1983. 36 Burkert 1979: 23. 37 Zanker 2004: 37–39. See also Griffin 1986: 17. 38 See Brown 2012: 204–207. 39 On this subject see Lorandi 1996; Capodieci and Ford 2011. See also Marini 2012, on ancient myths and historical exempla on Italian majolica of the Renaissance. 40 See Carlà and Freitag forthcoming. 41 So for instance in Il. 3.386–389, where Aphrodite speeks to Helen disguised as an old woman or in Od. 13.221–223, where Odysseus, back to Ithaka, meets Athena, disguised as a young shepherd. 42 On the presence of the horror genre and on ‘horror interferences’ in classical reception, see also Carlà and Freitag 2014. 43 On ancient necromancy, see Ogden 2001.

Notes to pp. 14–33

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44 E.g. Hernández Reyes 2008. 45 See e.g. the conference ‘The Reception of Greek and Roman Culture in East Asia: Texts and Artefacts, Institutions and Practices’ (FU Berlin, 4–6 July 2013), whose proceedings are now forthcoming (the programme of the conference can be found at www.geschkult.fu-­berlin.de/e/grea/program/grea_flyer.pdf?1372709563 (last accessed 9 July 2014). 46 On the concept of theocracy and its possible application in a transhistorical and transcultural perspective see Trampedach and Pečar 2013. Here, in the introduction to the volume, theocracy is defined not as an institutional form, as monarchy or democracy, but as a way of understanding and applying norms, deriving from the idea of God as active ruler – a concept inherent to monotheistic religions. In this sense its application to the ancient world seems useful to describe Jewish culture and the late antique Christian Empire. On the contrary, as demonstrated in the volume in two contributions by Flaig and Trampedach, Greek culture could be understood as the ‘opposite’ of a theocracy, and the Roman misunderstanding of this cultural issue can be considered one of the causes of Rome’s ‘failure’ in administering Judaea. 47 See e.g. Eck 1971. 48 More generally, on the development of the figure of the ‘divine companion’ in late antiquity, which was strongly used also in imperial propaganda, see Brown 1978.

2  Gods and Demons in Texts: Figures and Symbols of the Defixion Inscriptions of the Nymphaeum of Anna Perenna at Rome 1 2 3 4

Blänsdorf 2010a; 2010b; 2012a; 2012b; 2012c; Piranomonte 2010a; 2010b; 2012. Ov., Fast. 3.523–542; Bömer 1958: 179–192. Brashear 1995: 3427. Maltomini 2006: 103–108 (a golden amulet from Cividale, on which Arsamon, i.e. Horus, son of Ammon, is invoked). 5 Best introduction into the magic of the defixiones and their formulas: Kropp 2008. 6 D 2.4.5. 7 ‘But seldom I bring you Abraxas. In him the grimace, created by gloomy madness, shall be taken for highest nature. When I tell you absurdities, imagine that I bring you Abraxas.’ 8 This formula is more than the well-­known type of ‘letters to the netherworld’, see Kropp 2008: 197. 9 E.g. Audollent 1904: 140. 10 Wünsch 1898: 85–86.

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11 Preisendanz 1928–1931: II, 177, n. XXXIX – Preisendanz 1926 thinks the hair represents the nails of the defixion. 12 Kaser 1966: 41–42, 256–258, 329, 439–440; Thomas 1976: 85, see 95 und 116. 13 Versnel 1991a: 60–106; 2010: 275–354. 14 Preisendanz 1926: 44–45; Betz 333; Preisendanz 1928–1931: VIII, 65; Wünsch 1898: n. 16, ll. 27–30: . . . καὶ ἅγιοι πάρεδροι οἳ ἐν δεξιῷ καὶ ἀριστέρῳ.

3  Imaging Magic, Imaging Thinking: The Transmission of Greek Drama from Sophocles to Crimp 1 I would like to thank the organizers and participants in the Imagines conference held in Mainz for their comments on the first version of this paper and also the editors for their constructive suggestions and work in bringing the volume to publication. 2 Carpenter 1991: fig. 228 3 See Easterling 1982: 19–23, at 23. 4 Taplin 2007: 89. 5 Easterling 1982: 15 for comments on the artistic prevalence of the myth. 6 Easterling 1982: 14 (emphasis added). 7 Budelmann 2000: 163. 8 Budelmann 2000: 164. 9 See further Vernant and Vidal Naquet 1988. 10 Tr. Lloyd-Jones 1994, ad loc. 11 Goldhill 2012: 15. 12 See further Loraux 1987. 13 Goldhill 2012: 15. 14 Easterling 1982: 8. 15 Easterling 1982: 8. 16 Easterling 1982:10. 17 On the ephemerality of performance and the transformative potential within and through performance, see Fischer-Lichte 2010. Fischer-Lichte’s theoretical framework is based on the power of the bodily co-­presence of actors and spectators and this makes problematic any construction of relationship between ancient and modern spectators. However, the transmission and adaptation of the performance text and the degree of persistence of Greek theatrical conventions provides an element of commonality between the two groups. 18 For discussion of the theatrical skills that might be attributed to the ancient audiences and the relationship with their cultural horizons, see Revermann 2006 and Hardwick 2013.

Notes to pp. 44–52

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19 Hopman 2013 explores in detail the ways in which mythical figures combine different attributes, the balance of which shifts in different narratives and over time (her study is organized on the intersections between myth, metaphor and paradox). 20 For discussion of provisionality of outcome in relation to Sophocles’ plays in general, see Roberts 1988: 90. 21 For discussion of the opposition of these worlds, with bibliography, see Lawrence 2013: 119–134. 22 Lawrence 2013: 121. 23 Silk 1993: 124. 24 Easterling 1982: 221–2. 25 See www.theguardian.com/stage/2004/jun/19/theatre.iraq (last accessed 17 October 2014). 26 Published on the Reception of Classical Texts website, www2.open.ac.uk/ ClassStudies/GreekPlays under the entry for Cruel and Tender, no. 2740. 27 Sources: published text, Crimp 2004; M. Billington, The Guardian, 19 June 2004; S. Nikcevic, ‘A Review of the Performance at the Zagreb Festival of World Theatre’, in L. Hardwick (ed.), Classical Receptions In Late Twentieth Century Drama And Poetry In English project database, id. no. 2740, ed. (www2.open.ac.uk/ ClassicalStudies/GreekPlays/Projectsite/welcome.html). P.E. Easterling, ‘Comparison between the Sophocles and Crimp Texts’, in L. Hardwick (ed.), Classical Receptions, www2.open.ac.uk/ClassicalStudies/GreekPlays/Projectsite/ welcome.html (last accessed 29 Jaunuary 2015). 28 Crimp 2004: 2. 29 Crimp 2004: 67. 30 Crimp 2004: 30. 31 Crimp 2004: 63–4. 32 Crimp 2004: 68–9. 33 Easterling 1982: 233. 34 Crimp in Laera 2011: 222, reproduced in Laera 2013: 61. 35 Crimp 2004: 70. 36 Crimp 2004: 27. 37 S. Nikcevic, ‘A Review of the Performance at the Zagreb Festival of World Theatre’, in L. Hardwick (ed.), Classical Receptions In Late Twentieth Century Drama And Poetry In English project database, id. no. 2740 (www2.open.ac.uk/ classicalreceptions). Hardwick 2013 expands on this example in a discussion comparing ancient and modern audiences. 38 Crimp 2004: 68. 39 Crimp 2004: 65, 67. 40 Evening Standard 14 May 2004, emphasis added.

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41 See Meineck 2009. 42 Meineck 2009: 177. 43 See, for example, Taplin 2012. 44 It is worth noting that under US regulations military veterans are enabled to enrol for further and higher education and many university campuses include students who are veterans. 45 See Fischer-Lichte 2010: 29–42 and 2014: 78, and on the dismembering of the textual body, 2014: 112. 46 See further Kottman 2008: 120–24.

4  Celtic Magic and Rituals in The War Lord (F. Schaffner, 1965) 1 It is a pleasure for me to express my gratitude to my colleagues and friends who invited me to the conference ‘Magic and the Supernatural from the Ancient World’, as well as to the institutions behind them, which so kindly supported their project. This contribution is complementary to the article by Campanile 2011, where the reader can find in-­depth research regarding the themes that make up the plot of this film, along with an analysis of the principal characteristics of the protagonist and the narrative structure. 2 See de Vries 1963: 191–194 (the cult of stones) and 195–199 (the cult of trees); Chevallier 1975: 1012; Deyts 1983; 1992; Brunaux 1993: 57–65; Cazanove 1993: 111–126; Webster 1995: 445–464; Fumagalli 2001: 39; Tommasi Moreschini 2002: 181–219. 3 For the bibliography see Campanile 2011, but it is essential here to cite at least Richards 1977: 109–114; Heston 1978: 137–138, 142, 145, 160–162, 164, 167, 168–169, 170, 171, 172; 173, 174, 175, 177, 181, 182, 183; 186, 187, 195, 199, 206; 207, 208–230; Elley 1984: 155–156; Kim 1985: 192–207; 440; Bretèque 2004: 460–464, 1047–1048, 1094. 4 From (slightly modified) www.afi.com/members/catalog/AbbrView. aspx?s=&Movie=22478 (last accessed 15 January 2014). 5 For an introduction to Celtic religion, see de Vries 1963; Dillon and Chadwick 1966; Kruta 1991; Campanile 1994; Green 1995. 6 Eliade 1975 is still relevant. 7 It is possible, in my opinion, to explain the change from ‘Douane’ to ‘Bronwyn’ by bearing in mind Schaffner’s desire to make the girl’s name obviously Celtic; the choice of the name Bronwyn may also be seen in the light of the extremely high regard the director had towards John Ford’s film, How Green Was My Valley (1941): set in Wales, in this film the protagonist’s sister-­in-­law is called Bronwyn. Cf. Campanile 2011: 403.

Notes to pp. 58–61

247

8 Chrysagon (at 18 mins 53 secs): “ ‘Keep their good will,” the Duke told me. Him before me, this rapacious bastard. Small loss when the Frisians killed him.’ 9 At 42 mins Draco: ‘Beware Milord, another time, your compassion might be mistaken for weakness.’ Chrysagon: ‘There will not be another time!’ There will indeed be no further occasion for Chrysagon to judge the locals, since events take an unexpected, destructive turn for almost everyone. 10 At 48 mins 20 secs from the start of the film, the priest, cross-­examined ‘on the right of the seigneur to take a virgin bride on her wedding night’ states determinedly: ‘The Church does not admit it. It is pagan law.’ And again (at 48 mins 46 secs): Draco: ‘You hear that? It’s known in Rome.’ Priest: ‘And damned as heresy.’ 11 Mackrell 1973; Boureau 1998; Wettlaufer 1999; 2007. 12 Utz 2005 is worthy of note. 13 For example, Florine, la fleur du Valois (E.B. Donatien, 1926); Ademaï au Moyen Âge (J. de Marguenat, 1935); Braveheart (M. Gibson, 1995). See Bretèque 2004: 457–464. It is important to mention the play La Folle Journée, ou Le Mariage de Figaro (1784), a comedy in five acts, written by Pierre Beaumarchais. This play was the basis for the opera buffa Le nozze di Figaro, ossia la folle giornata (libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte, music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart). See also Palermo Litvack 1984. 14 Bretèque 2004: 457–464, is very useful. Elliott 2011: 166–167. There is a reading in terms of class struggle in Brass 2000: 219 and 236. See Campanile 2011: 410–412. 15 It is fundamental to mention at least Hofeneder 2005: nr. 23 T16; 2008: nr. 48 T11. See Letta 1984; Davidson 1988: 36–68, 119–122, 131–133; Rafferty 1991; Campanile 1993; 1994; Marco-Simón 1999; Aldhouse-Green 2001. With regard to human sacrifice and the fertility rites connected to them, see Marco-Simón 2007. 16 With regard to the reality of the Norman conversion to Christianity, see Musset 1967: 263–325 (now in Musset 1997: 3–50). Useful: I Normanni e la loro espansione in Europa. Concerning the continuity of pagan practice and cults, these studies are essential: Boyer 1986; Fuglesang 1999; Price 2002: 76=n89; Raudvere 2002; Mitchell 2011. The confrontation between different states or tribes for religious motives was, however, and continues to be, a recurring theme in films on the Middle Ages. 17 For ritual dances documented even in the Middle Ages and for the processions performed with zoomorphic masks and effigies of deer and bulls see de Vries 1963: 181 and Hatt 1965: 117–119; Green 1992; 1995: 481; Lecco 1999. On matrimonial customs see again Dillon and Chadwick 1966: 181–184. 18 At 28 mins 30 secs Bors: ‘Sire, all men have heard how when the Lord Christ came, the old Gods, demons, and spirits with snaky hair were cast down into hell.’ Draco: ‘Good riddance!’ Bors: ‘But some say they still linger, prowling the dark corners and

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unblessed places of the earth, changed to beggar men and goose girls.’ Draco: ‘Bors, you surprise me. You’ve produced a thought.’ Bors: ‘God help the man who meets one. The blood in his heart changes.’ The demonization of pagan divinities in medieval Europe by the Catholic hierarchy is a well-­known phenomenon that finds support in scriptural passages such as Ps. 95.5: Quoniam omnes dii gentium daemonia. With regard to the tension between the new Christian religion and the remnants of ancient uses and concepts see Manselli 1977: 363–378; Flint 1999: 277–348. Discussion and bibliography in Campanile 2011: 412–413. 19 At 55 mins Odins: ‘As the moon rises, the virgin bride shall be brought to you. But hold! At the rising of the sun, I will reclaim her.’ Chrysagon: ‘So be it.’ 20 Meid 1996 is important on therapeutic practices among the Celts. The studies collected in the volume by Scarborough 2010; Stannard 1999a and 1999b are useful. 21 Bretèque 2010 presents interesting considerations on the couple witch-­knight. See also Vogel 1974; Motta 1997; Scheinfeigel 2000; Delaurenti 2012; also Dickie 2000. On magical uses of herbs, plants and flowers see Tomei 1996. 22 At the end of the night spent together, Bronwyn is certain that there can be no other solution than her return to the village: Chrysagon (at 1 hr 8 mins): ‘What are you doing?’ Bronwyn: ‘Milord, it’s dawn.’ Chrysagon: ‘They won’t take you. Not the Duke, nor the devil, nor all . . .’ Bronwyn: ‘It could never, never be.’ Chrysagon will also break the vow made to his dying father to remain loyal to the duke, protect his younger brother, and regain the lost properties; on this see Campanile 2011: 417–418. 23 Witteyer 2005; see the whole section of this issue (5) of the journal (pp. 5–123) dedicated to the publication of the conference acts held in the American Academy in Rome, 12 November 2004: Professional Sorcerers and their Wares in Imperial Rome. An Archaeology of Magical Practices. 24 See Piranomonte 2009; 2010a; Faraone 2010; Gordon and Marco-Simón 2010. Issue 76.1 of the journal Studi e Materiali di Storia delle Religioni dedicated to Magia e tecnica grafica is extremely important. Regarding the theme of the so-­called voodoo dolls, this study, along with its catalogue, is crucial: Faraone 1991, where at p. 166 note 4 the meaning and use of the term is clarified, which does not imply any link with religious practices of the Afro-Carribbean peoples of Haiti or elsewhere. See also Faraone 1993, and Faraone and Obbink 1991. See Ward 1980; Gager 1992; Graf 1997b (with an important discussion by S.I. Johnston, J.G. Gager, M. Himmelfarb, M. Meyer, B. Schmidt and Graf himself in Numen 46, 1999: 291–325); Poccetti 2005; Graf 2005; Ogden 1999: 71–79; Kropp 2008; Vallarino 2010: 55–58; Blänsdorf 2012b; Pachoumi 2013. A bibliography in Gordon 2002. See also the article by Blänsdorf in the present volume. 25 In general see Naremore 1978: 165; Davies 1988; Mason 2007: 188-193. 26 I discuss these aspects at length in Campanile 2011. 27 Further bibliography in Campanile 2011.

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28 Loving v. Virginia 388 US 1. See http://supreme.justia.com/us/388/1/case.html (last accessed 15 January 2014). 29 Planet of the Apes (F. Schaffner, 1968). In fact, along with director (Franklin Schaffner) and leading actor (Charlton Heston), Maurice Evans also took part in both The War Lord (Hugo de Bouillion, the priest) and Planet of the Apes (Dr Zaius). 30 See Williams 1990: 17: ‘Still the result, if it is an epic at all, is an intimate epic, and deserves to be better known.’ See also Wilson 1966; Aberth 2003: 302; Airlie 2003: 171; Thomas 2010.

5  Witch, Sorceress, Enchantress: Magic and Women from the Ancient World to the Present 1 We would like to thank Filippo, Irene, the Imagines project, the University of Mainz and all other institutions who supported this conference. 2 Rocca forthcoming. 3 Giovanna Rocca wrote the section ‘Women and magic threads’, Martina Treu ‘Women’s Tools and Magic Images from Ancient Theatre to Cartoons’. 4 I (GR) would like to thank my student Matteo Trapasso for translating this paper into English. 5 Poccetti 2002: 11–60. In a defixio from Köln there is a clear comparison between the evil spirit’s action and the way of writing: Perverse agas, comodo hoc / perverse scriptu(m) est. For the edition and commentary, see Blänsdorf 2010b: 169, nr. 3. 6 The curse tablet was discovered in 1983 in La Vayssière (Hospitalet du Larzac, a Gallo-Roman area in the canton of Nant, 15 km south of La Graufesenque). It dates to around 100 ce. 7 There is no agreement on this word. It could also be simply a native term. 8 Lejeune et al. 1985; Lambert 2003. 9 Ov., Fast. 2.575: cantata ligat cum fusco licia plumbo. 10 Verg., Ecl. 8.74: terna tibi haec primum triplici diversa colore licia circumdo. 11 Ov., Am. 1.8.8: scit bene quid valeat, quid gramen, quid torto concita rhombo licia. 12 For the terminology and its problematic, see Gordon and Simón 2010: 4, fn.18. 13 Gordon and Simón 2010: 46 14 PGM IV, 297–332, Egypt, fourth century bce. 15 Wünsch 1898: 159; 167. 16 Faraone 1991: 204 contextualized this phenomenon in a widespread defensive ritual, exemplified by the images of the divinities tied in order to block their destructive power. Among the presented materials there are thirty-­eight figurines that go back to the seventh century bce. 17 Faraone 1991: 165.

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18 Du Bourguet 1975: 255. See PGM IV, 297–332. 19 Blänsdorf 2010c; see also Blänsdorf ’s contribution in this volume. 20 Piranomonte 2010b: 206. 21 ‘The forensic technicians who were asked to analyse the fingerprints preserved on the resins used to seal one of the containers inclined to think they were a woman’s prints on grounds of their small size’ (Piranomonte 2010b: 205). 22 West 2007: 380. 23 ‘Odin had an exclusive art that came from a big power that is to say the seið ’ (Ynglinga Saga. 7). 24 KUB XXIX 1 II 2–8; Marazzi 1982: 152. 25 Atharva Veda 10.2.17; West 2007: 380. 26 The First Poem of Helgi Hundingsbani 2–3, The Poetic Edda; West 2007: 382. For other testimonies, see Chiesa Isnardi 1991: 314. 27 Rolleston 1995 (2nd edition): 206. 28 Rolleston 1995 (2nd edition): 277. 29 Beowulf 10.696–697. 30 Od. 7.197–198; 11.139. 31 Il. 20.126–128; 24.209. 32 Hes., Th. 904–906. 33 Ov., Tr. 5.3.25. 34 Petron. 29.6. 35 Mencej 2011. 36 Mencej 2011: 55. 37 Jakob Ludwig Karl (1785–1863) and Wilhelm Carl (1786–1859) Grimm published in 1812 their first volume of Kinder- und Hausmärchen, followed by a second volume three years later, and a third volume in 1822, with a huge personal comment by Wilhelm. This collection was revisited several times and the seventh and last publication of the two volumes of fairy tales appeared in 1857. 38 See above, 70–72. 39 See Treu 2006. 40 Whatever it is, its functions and implications seem surprisingly close to those cited above about magic rituals and tied figures (see the first part of this article: ‘Women and magic threads’). 41 On the Hymn of Erinyes with his hypnotic rhythm see Negri 2009. On Furies and their modern reception, particularly in TV series, see Potter 2009. 42 For the meaning of archetype see Treu 2013: 75. 43 See Bell, Haas and Sells 1995. 44 See also, in Euripides’ Bacchae, the appearance of Dionysus as a bull and the homoerotic fascination he exercises on Pentheus (which has many heirs from The Rocky Horror Show to Pasolini’s Teorema).

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45 As for comics, see for instance the Marvel Odyssey 2012, written by Roy Thomas, drawn by Greg Tocchini: here all women and goddesses are sexy pin-­ups, but Circe is the only one who is red-­haired, a perfect femme fatale in the style of Rita Hayworth and similar cartoon ladies such as Red by Tex Avery (Red Hot Riding Hood, 1943) or Jessica Rabbit: for their images, very popular on the web, see for instance http://pf-­minsk.blog.tut.by/tag/dzhaz-­sinema/ (latest access, 22 November 2013). 46 Oral communication of Martin Winkler, discussing Circe during the Imagines conference in Bristol. See also Winkler 2013: 133–153. On Circe see also Castillo’s contribution in this volume. 47 On Penelope’s behaviour see also Winkler 2013: 138–139. 48 Jealousy is a powerful motive for resorting to magic, as well as envy, in defixiones as in ancient myths. 49 On Medea’s reception see also Grand-Clément and Ribeyrol and Carruesco and Reig in this volume. 50 As she remarks in Eur., Med. 475–501. 51 Magic plays a large part in modern reception of Medea’s myth: for instance on Pasolini’s movie see Carlà 2008: 89–115; on Lars Von Trier’s Medea see Rubino and Degregori 2000 and Iacopino 2011; see also Graf 1997a. 52 Bewitched is a ‘feminist’ sitcom compared to the other TV sitcom of that period with a witch theme: I Dream of Jeannie (1965–1970) where a young blonde actress plays the helpful and cheerful ‘genius’ reassuringly and totally devoted to her ‘Master’. For other TV sitcoms of today starring young, independent, self-­confident witches, for instance Charmed, see Potter 2009. 53 A similar scheme may be found in Euripides’ Ion (possibly 414 bce) which can be seen, in a way, as a Medea revisited by Euripides about fifteen years later: here, again, a wife plans to use a magic poison (a drop of Gorgon’s blood) as a revenge against her husband; but she does not succeed, unlike Medea, and the truth comes out, with a happy ending as in other tragedies of those years. 54 See Ashliman 1987 and http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/sevendwarfs/other. html (last accessed 22 November 2013). 55 Medea’s gifts (a poisoned coronet and a magic dress) are magic objects which could be found in many folk tales and myths: they are first mentioned by Medea and by the Chorus, as a deadly menace. Later, the Messenger accurately describes their horrible effects not only on Jason’s new bride, but also on her father Kreon, as he tries to help his daughter (see respectively Eur., Med. 946–989; 1065–66; 1156–1222). 56 See for instance the online review Engramma n. 108, July/August 2013 ‘Sleeping Beauty. Biancaneve, la Bella Addormentata e le altre’ (www.engramma.it/eOS2/index. php?id_articolo=1371; last accessed 22 November 2013) and the website http://de.

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wikipedia.org/wiki/Schneewittchen (last accessed 22 November 2013). There are also many parodies and porn versions, quite surprisingly, such as the cult comic books Biancaneve by the Italian artist Leone Frollo. 57 For her image see for instance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uta_von_Ballenstedt (last accessed 22 November 2013). 58 Besides Julia Roberts in Mirror Mirror by Tarsem Singh and Charlize Theron in Snow White and the Huntsman by Rupert Sanders (with Kristen Stewart as Snow White, the lover of a vampire in the Twilight saga, not by chance) we may cite in previous movies the Turkish actress Suna Selen (La meravigliosa favola di Biancaneve, by Ertem Göreç, 1970), or Sigourney Weaver in Snow White: A Tale of Terror, by Michael Cohn (1997) (online at http://goo.gl/CvQ2B; latest access 22 November 2013). Witches have always been very popular on screen: if one types ‘witches’, the IMDb website lists ninety-­seven records, from the movie The Witches of Eastwick to many TV series. Angelina Jolie plays the witch Maleficent, from Sleeping Beauty, in the movie Maleficent (2014). Moreover, the good and bad witches from The Wizard of Oz have recently gained a leading role in new adaptations, both on TV (The Witches of Oz, 2011) and on the big screen (Dorothy and the Witches of Oz, 2012 and Oz, the great and powerful, 2013, where the three witches are by far the most interesting characters). 59 See Nagel 2008; Davis 2009; Zancato 2012: 11; 108. As a matter of fact, magic is very present in the Disney world (see the significant title of Leonard Maltin, Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoon: Maltin 1980) and all women – not just witches – are among the best characters ever seen on screen. Therefore, it is even more surprising how real women in productions have long been discriminated against at Disney Studios; for eighty years, the whole Disney animation section counted just one woman (Mary Blair) and women are still very few among artists and directors (17.3 per cent in 2006). Moreover, the audience and targets of cartoons are more males than females, according to the Geena Davis Institute of Gender Medias (Annennberg communication) which studied the US child programming from 1999 to 2006. 60 The latter is also co-­director of Brave after having a successful career as a screenwriter, from The Lion King onwards, and she was the first woman to direct a US animated movie: The Prince of Egypt (Dreamworks, 1998).

6  Circe Diva: The Reception of Circe in the Baroque Opera (seventeenth century) 1 Regarding this subject, see Buch 2008: 9–41. 2 Od. 10.136.

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3 Od. 10.137–139; Hes. Th. 956–957, 1011; Apollon., Arg. 590–591. In Diodorus Siculus (4.45) she is the Aeëtes’ daughter; in the Vatican Mythographers she is Apollo’s daughter (Myth. Vat. 1.240). 4 Od. 10.135–574. 5 Od. 12.1–141. 6 Od. 10.136. 7 Od. 10.252–257. 8 Od. 10.318–320. 9 Od. 10.487–489. 10 Virg., Aen. 7.10–20. 11 Virg., Aen. 7.21–24. 12 Virg., Aen. 7.170–191. 13 Ov., Met. 14.1–74. 14 Ov., Met. 14.242–307. 15 Ov., Met. 14.320–415. 16 Ov., Met. 14.242–270. 17 Ov., Met. 14.56–58. 18 This negative image also appears in other Latin authors: Cicero asks himself whether Circe and Calypso should really be called women (Cic., Off. 1.113); Horace recognizes her power (Hor., Epod. 17.15–18); Martial used epithets to allude to her power of seduction (Mart. 14.20). However, Pliny talks about her beauty (Plin., Nat. Hist. 25.5). 19 For the reception channels of Ovid’s Metamorphoses in Spanish literature, see Cristobal López 1997: 125–154. 20 August., Civ. 18.17. 21 Boethius, Cons. Phil. 4.3–4. 22 About the Christian interpretation of Greek myths, see Rahner 1990. 23 This is clear in De mulieribus claris of Giovanni Boccaccio (no. 38. De Circe Solis filia), in Emblematum liber of Alciato (Emblema no. 76) and in Ovidius moralizatus of Pierre Bersuiere (26.62–66). 24 See Simson 2000: 227. 25 His other sources were Ovid’s Metamorphoses and some plays of the seventeenth century in which Circe represented a principal or a supporting role, namely: El Polifemo of Góngora (1613), La navegación de Circe of Alçeo (1621), La Circe of Lope de Vega (1624) and Polifemo y Circe of Mira de Amescua, Montalbán and Calderón himself (1630). 26 Trinacria is the island where the magical prison of Anajarte is, the forge of Vulcan and the cave of the Fates in La fiera, el rayo y la piedra (1652); where the enchantress Megera on a flying dragon causes the eruption of the volcano Etna in Hado y divisa de Leonido y Marfisa (1680).

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27 ‘Polidoro.- Pues no nuestras desdichas han cesado; que el monte donde ahora has arribado,/no parece habitable/en lo inculto, intricado y formidable./Antistes.- En él las más pequeñas/ruinas, de gente humana no dan señas./Arquelao.- Solo se ve de arroyos mil surcado,/cuyo turbio cristal desentonado/parece, a lo que creo,/ desperdiciado aborto de Leteo./Lebrel- Que hacemos dado temo/en otro mayor mal que Polifemo./Floro.- Quejas son lastimosas y severas,/cuantas se escuchan, de robustas fieras./Timantes.- Y si las copas rústicas miramos/de estos funestos ramos,/no pájaros suaves/vemos, nocturnas sí, agoreras aves./Arquelao- Y entre sus ramos rotos y quebrados/Trofeos de guerra y caza están colgados./PolidoroTodo el sitio es rigor./Floro.- Todo es espanto./Antistes.- Todo horror./ Arquelao.- Todo asombro./Timantes.- Todo encanto’ (Act. I, vv. 57–78, in Valbuena Briones 1969: 1511). 28 ‘Iris.- Este ramo que te traigo,/de varias flores cubierto,/hoy contra Circe será/ triaca de sus venenos./Toca con él sus hechizos,/desvaneceránse luego/ como al amor no te rindas (. . .)’ (Act. I, vv. 303–309, in Valbuena Briones 1969: 1513). 29 Act. I, vv. 762–767, in Valbuena Briones 1969: 1518. 30 ‘Circe.- Vencérale mi hermosura,/pues mi ciencia no ha podido’ (Act. I, vv. 947–948, in Valbuena Briones 1969: 1520). 31 ‘Ulises.- Temeroso vengo, ¡ay triste!/a ver a Circe, si es fuerza/que como sabia la admire,/y la admire como bella./¡Quién no se hubiera fiado/ tanto de sí! ¡Quién no hubiera/ hecho cautela el quedarse!/Pues ya contra su cautela/es imposible olvidarla/y es imposible quererla’ (Act. II, vv. 239–248, in Valbuena Briones 1969: 1522). 32 ‘Circe- (. . .) Llegaste tú, y queriendo tú homicida/ser, burlaste mis ciencias: con espanto,/queriéndote vencer, quedé vencida./Sí, mi encanto al mirar asombro tanto/ al encanto de amor, rindió mi vida: luego el amor es el mayor encanto’ (Act. III, vv. 253–258, in Valbuena Briones 1969: 1536). 33 ‘Antistes: (. . .) Ulises, pues, sin recelo/solo de sus gustos trata,/siempre en los brazos de Circe,/y asistido de sus damas,/en academias de amores,/saraos, festines y danzas./Yo, pues, viéndonos perdidos, hoy he pensado una traza/con que a su olvido le acuerde/de su honor y de su fama (. . .)’ (Act. III, vv. 61–70, in Valbuena Briones 1969: 1534). 34 Act. III, vv. 319/322, in Valbuena Briones 1969: 1537. In the Calderón work the music was an important structural element, it had a great influence on the man and his environment, it was the voice of God and of the fate, but also the voice of the seduction of Satan; for the music in Calderón, see Querol Gavaldá 2000: 415–441. 35 Act. III, vv. 699–702, in Valbuena Briones 1969: 1541. 36 ‘Ulises: (. . .) Heredero de las armas/de Aquiles fui, porque logren,/si dueño no tan valiente,/dueño a los menos tan noble (. . .)’ (Act. I, vv. 484–487, in Valbuena Briones 1969: 1515).

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37 Act. III, vv. 721–724, in Valbuena Briones 1969: 1541. 38 ‘Aquiles.- (. . .) A cobrar vengo mis armas,/porque el amor no las juzgue/ya de su templo despojo,/torpe, olvidado e inútil;/porque no quieren los dioses/que otro dueño las injurie,/sino que en mi sepultura/a par de los siglos duren./Y tú, afeminado griego,/que entre las delicias dulces/del amor, de negras sombras/tantos esplendores cubres;/no entre amorosos encantos/las tengas ni las deslustres;/sin rompiendo de amor/las mágicas inquietudes,/sal de Trinacria (. . .)’ (Act. III, vv. 793–809, in Valbuena briones 1969: 1542). This scene is a replica of one of the Aeneid in which the spectre of Hector appears to Aeneas and advises him to flee from Troy with the Penates (Virg., A. 2.268–297). 39 Act. III, vv. 916–920, in Valbuena Briones 1969: 1543. 40 ‘Circe.- (. . .) ¿Más qué me quejo a los cielos?/¿No soy la mágica Circe?/¿No puedo tomar venganza/en quien me ofende y me rinde?/Alterados estos mares,/a ser pedazos aspiren/de los cielos; que si lleva,/porque de encantos se libre,/el ramillete de Juno,/que trajo del cielo Iris,/no de tormentas del mar/le librarán sus matices./ Llamas las ondas arrojen,/fuego las aguas espiren./Arda el azul pavimento,/y sus campañas turquíes/mieses de rayos parezcan,/que cañas de fuegos vibren,/a ver si hay deidad que tanta/tormenta le facilite (. . .). Circe.- [to Galatea] Si deidad eres del mar,/cuando en él mis fuerzas quites/no en la tierra; y si no puedo/vengarme en quien huye libre/en mí podré. Estos palacios,/que mágico el arte finge,/desvanecidos en polvo/sola una voz los derribe./Su hermosa fábrica caiga/ deshecha, rota y humilde:/sean páramo de nieve/sus montes y sus jardines./Un Mongibelo suceda/ en su lugar, que vomite/fuego, que a la luna abrase,/entre humo que al sol eclipse’ (Act. III, vv. 969–988/1035–1050, in Valbuena Briones 1969: 1544). 41 Regarding the scenography of Lotti and the changes introduced by Calderón, see Hernández Araico 1993: 309–319. 42 ‘Circe.- (. . .) porque aunque yo fiera y monstruo/tan dada soy a los vicios,/solos delitos de amor/fueron para mí delitos’ (Act. I, vv. 798–801, in Valbuena Briones 1518). 43 According to the classical sources Circe is the aunt of Medea (Od. 10.137–139; Hes., Th. 956–957; Apollon., Arg. 590–591) or they are sisters (Diod. Sic. 4.45; Solin. 2.38, quoting Caelius Antipater), but in El mayor encanto, amor the two sorceresses are cousins. 44 ‘Circe.- Y para que sepas cuánto/asombro es el que has vencido/darte relación de mí/este instante solicito./(. . .)/Prima nací de Medea/en Tesalia, donde fuimos/ asombro de sus estudios/y de sus ciencias prodigio;/porque enseñadas las dos/de un gran mágico, nos hizo/docto escándalo del mundo,/sabio portento del siglo;/(. . .)/ No te digo que estudié/con generoso motivo/matemáticas, de quien/la filosofía principio/fue; no te digo que al cielo/los dos movimientos mido/(. . .)/no te digo que del sol/ los veloces cursos sigo,/(. . .)/no te digo que los astros,/bien errantes o bien

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fijos,/en ese papel azul/son mis letras;(. . .)/el canto entiendo de las aves/y a las fieras los bramidos,/siendo para mí patentes/agüeros o vaticinios./Cuantos pájaros al aire/ vuelan, (. . .)/renglones son para mí/ni señalados ni escritos./(. . .)/Por las rayas de la mano/la quiromancia examino,/cuando en ajadas arrugas/de la piel, el fin admiro/ del hombre; la geomancia/en la tierra, cuando escrito/mis caracteres en ella;/y en ella también consigo/la piromancia, cuando/de su centro, de su abismo,/hago abrirse las entrañas,/y abortar a mis gemidos/los difuntos, que responden,/de mi conjuro oprimidos’ (Act. I, vv. 592–675, in Valbuena Briones 1969: 1516–1517). 45 ‘Circe.- (. . .) que en fin las mujeres, cuando/tal vez aplicar se han visto/a las letras o a las armas,/los hombres han excedido./Y así ellos envidiosos,/viendo nuestro ánimo invicto,/viendo agudo nuestro ingenio;/porque no fuera el dominio/todo nuestro, nos vedaron/las espadas y los libros’ (Act. I, vv. 612–621, in Valbuena Briones 1969: 1516). 46 Regarding this subject, see Matas Caballero 2002: 135–136. These are the characteristic features of the Lope de Vega’s Amazons, his predecessor in the court of Philip IV. About this subject, see García Fernández 2006: 100; Cabrero Aramburo 2012, 61–69. 47 ‘Antistes.- Detrás de todas venía,/bien como el dorado Febo,/acompañado de estrellas/y cercado de luceros,/una mujer tan hermosa,/que nos persuadimos ciegos/ que era, la envidia de Diana,/la diosa de estos desiertos/(. . .)Pero ¿dónde podrá el cielo/librarnos de una mujer/con belleza y con ingenio?’ (Act. I, vv. 177–184/ 248–250, in Valbuena Briones 1969: 1512–1513). 48 ‘Antistes.- Esto, en fin, me ha sucedido,/y vengo a avisarte de esto,/porque de esta esfinge huyamos’ (Act. I, vv. 245–247, in Valbuena Briones 1969: 1513). 49 ‘Ulises.- No fuera Ulises, si ya/que a estos montes he venido,/la libertad no trajera/a cuantos aquí cautivos/tiene el encanto. Hoy seré/de aquesta Esfinge el Edipo’ (Act. I, vv. 763–767, in Valbuena Briones 1969: 1518); ‘Ulises.- Libraré de aquesta fiera/a Trinacria, si amor finjo’ (Act. I, vv. 949–950, in Valbuena Briones 1969: 1520). 50 ‘Ulises.- Temeroso vengo, ¡ay triste!,/a ver a Circe, si es fuerza/que como sabía la admire,/y la admire como bella’ (Act. I, vv. 239–242, in Valbuena Briones 1969: 1522). 51 Act. II, vv. 188–195, in Valbuena Briones 1969: 1522. 52 ‘Lebrel.- Porque Circe sabe/mejor lo que aquí se habla,/que nosotros. Y podrá/ tomar de todos venganza,/escarmentad en Claría,/que habló mal de ella, y airada/se vengó, pues no sabemos/que hay de él, ni por donde anda’ (Act. III, vv. 101–108, in Valbuena Briones 1969: 1534). 53 ‘Flérida.- Y viva Circe, prodigio/de estos montes y estos mares’ (Act. III, vv. 543–545, in Valbuena Briones 1539). 54 In this piece of work, Circe is a beautiful woman who has a great knowledge of poisons and potions; she personifies lust and is capable of transforming the wisest

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man into a beast, she is ‘aquella pasión natural que llaman amor deshonesto, que las más veces transforma a los más sabios y de mayor juicio en animales fierísimos y llenos de furor, y algunas veces los vuelve más insensibles que piedras’ (Philosophia secreta 4.46, www.revistaazogue.com/libero_fr.htm; last accessed 3 August 2014). Regarding the Philosophia secreta of Juan Pérez Moya as source of inspiration for Calderón’s Circe, see Chapman 1984: 56–57. 55 Regarding his reform programme, see Elliot 1990; 1999: 165–179; Carrasco 2009: 125–141. 56 For the various interpretations of Calderón’s court plays, see Neumeister 1998: 233–244; Sabik 2000: 187–202. 57 Along these lines, we find Armas 1986; 2011: 117–144; Blue 1989; Greer 1990: 145–165; 2000: 649–692; Hernández Araico 1993: 307–322; Wilks 1994: 40; Brown and Elliot 2003: 207; Cotello 2008: 98. 58 Regarding this ceremonial, see Greer 2000: 661–665. 59 Trambaioli 1997: 273. 60 See Shergold 1958: 24–27. 61 Francisco de Quevedo (1580–1645) was one of his victims. 62 For the position of Calderón in the court, see Fernández Mosquera 2008: 211–214. 63 Concerning the doctrinal and political manuals of the Golden Age about when and for what purpose the entertainment of kings is permissible, see Bouza 2005: 27–44. 64 See Haverbeck 1973: 90. 65 The Tratado del Privado Perfecto (1622) of Mateo Renzi, dedicated to Count-Duke Olivares, is about this, see Stradling 1988: 44. 66 Also Odysseus shows his appetite for military glory when he decides to stay in Trinacria to free all those who have been charmed by Circe and to defeat the sorceress (see above). 67 For Margaret Rich Greer (Greer 2000: 672–673) the Count-Duke is Circe: one of her arguments is that the sorceress, like the valido, wanted to avoid at all costs that Ulysses intervenes in the strike of Arsidas on the island (Circe: ‘¡Calla, calla, no prosigas,/ni lleguen ecos marciales/a los oídos de Ulises!/Aquí tengo de dejarle/ sepultado en blando sueño,/porque el belicoso alarde/no pueda de mi amor nunca/ divertirle ni olvidarle; que yo con vosotras solas,/saldré a vencer al arrogante’, Act. III, vv. 497–506, in Valbuena Briones 1969: 1539); another of his arguments is about the accusations of witchcraft Olivares faces, but Greer does not take into account that such accusations were common among those who wanted to bring down a political opponent. About these accusations, see Marañón 1953 (8th edition: 140–143). 68 The importance of the four cardinal virtues in the education of the perfect prince, that is the Christian prince, is a heritage of his Jesuit education. About this subject, see Trambaioli 1997: 280–284; Strosetzki 2008: 541–547. 69 This is the case of Hernández-Araico 1993: 318.

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70 The librettist was Ascanio Amalteo (mid-seventeenth century) and the composer Giuseppe Zamponi (1619–1662). 71 Ulisse all’ isola di Circe. Dramma musicale, in applauso alle nozze augustissime delle Maestà di Filippo re di Spagna et Maria Anna d′Austria. Rappresentato nella sala Regia di Brusselles, l’anno 1650, Brusselles 1650. 72 Regarding the musical knowledge of Leopold Wilhelm of Habsburg and his patronage of the opera, see Kory 1995: 11–25. 73 It is possible that the librettist Ascanio Amalteo knew Calderón’s play, since in the third act of the opera, Mercury calls Odysseus ‘effeminate’ (Act. III, Sc. III, p. 38) just like Achilles’ spectre does in El mayor encanto, amor: ‘Dunque ancora si teme/ Effeminato Ulisse?’ (Act. III, v. 801, in Valbuena Briones 1969: 1542). 74 ‘2. Trit. [Neptune] Troppo tenti sapere,/O Duce, non piu Duce,/Cedi lo scettro pur, cedi l′impero,/A piú di te Dominator possente;/Fatto è dal sommo Giove/Sommo Rettore dell′ondoso Regno,/Nume di te piú degno. Nett. Qual alto Nume, ò Dio,/ Osarà triunfar col scettro mio?/Qual Deitate, ò potenza/Osarà al valor mio far resistenza? (. . .) 2. Trit. Raffrena lo sdegno/Magnanimo Sire,/Del umido Rego,/ Pomposa,/La sposa,/Del Monarca, Ibero,/Dell′onda,/Faconda/Regge hor l′impero./I suo merti, e valor, sono ben degni/Non già d′un Regno sol ma de piú Regni’ (Prologue, p. 6).

7  Medea, a Greek Sorceress in Modern Opera and Ballet: From Barber to Reimann 1 Medea has been recorded and commercially released by ArtHaus Musik on DVD in the production of the Wiener Staatsoper, staged by M.A. Marelli and conducted by Michael Boder. There is an alternative version, conducted by Erik Nielsen and released on CD format by Oehms Classics, which corresponds to a production for the Frankfurt Opera House, also with Marelli’s staging. At the moment of writing, these are, to our knowledge, the only productions of the opera. 2 For the study of Medea in classical reception, see Hall, Macintosh and Taplin 2000; Rubino and Degregori 2000; López and Pociña 2002; Pociña and López 2007 on twentieth-­century Medeas, and especially McDonald 1997 and 2000 on opera. Theodorakis’ play on Medea has also been analysed by Holst-Warhaft 1980. 3 A good instance of this political-­sociological approach in twentieth-­century drama is Corrado Alvaro’s Lunga notte di Medea (1949). Alvaro’s statement on this work, representative of this group, could equally be applied to Reimann’s work: ‘Medea mi è apparsa un’antenata di tante donne che hanno subito persecuzione razziale e di tante che, respinte dalla loro patria, vagano senza passaporto da nazione a nazione, popolano i campi di concentramento e i campi di profughi’ (in Il Mondo, 11 March

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1950). Pasolini’s film Medea (1969) can also be assigned to this group, though only partially, since the anthropological reflection on the sacred and the gulf separating ancient and modern cultures is also a major concern in Pasolini’s work. Thanks are due to the editors of this volume for calling our attention to Alvaro’s work. 4 The ambiguity between ‘barbaric’ and ‘civilized’ is already a main concern in Grillparzer’s work; see Winkler 2009. 5 There are some interesting studies about Reimann’s work and its relationship with literature, especially on the Lieder and the opera Lear: Maehder 1992; Marker and Marker 1983; Graeme 2001. 6 Thus, for instance, Medea moves around the stage convulsively and hysterically, whereas Creusa tiptoes onto the stage, jumping around as a carefree little girl. 7 For an analysis of dichotomies and ambivalences in Marelli’s staging, see Wagner 2012. 8 Jason changes his costume on stage during his conversation with Medea in the first act. 9 It is worth noting that these conversations are not simultaneous in Grillparzer’s work (I, 364–580). 10 Sen., Med. 910. 11 At the time of writing, there is no commercially available version of this ballet (unlike Graham’s other choreographies, such as Night Journey, on the Oedipus story, or Appalachian Spring, with Aaron Copland’s famous score), but extended fragments can be found online. A version in VHS format exists, from the series Dance in America: Martha Graham Dance Company. Diversion of Angels / Lamentation / Frontier / Adorations / Cave of the Heart (1998). 12 On Graham and her use of myths: Yaari 2003. 13 Foley 2012: 94. 14 We must not forget that Noguchi is one of the most important sculptors of the twentieth century. For the creative collaborations between Graham and Noguchi, see Ashton 1992, especially 45–62 and 223–240. 15 See LIMC s.v. Medeia 36. 16 Interview conducted by Thomas Meyer on 11 April 2011 in Berlin (available at www. evs-­musikstiftung.ch). 17 Medeamaterial by Dusapin (1992) is recorded by Harmonia Mundi, conducted by Ph. Herreweghe. 18 In Müller’s text there is a brief allusion to magic in the last line of the first part of the trilogy: ‘Die Kennerin der Gifte’. 19 ‘Wunden und Narben geben gutes Gift/Und Feuer speit die Asche die mein Herz war’ (‘Wounds and scars give a good poison/And fire spits the ashes that were my heart’).

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8  Colchian Pharmaka: The Colours of Medea in Nineteenth-­century Painting in France and England 1 Prosper Haussard, Le Temps, 22 March 1838, quoted in Bernast, BobetMezzasalma and Sérullaz 2001: 84 (transl. C. Ribeyrol). 2 For the image, see www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-­vision-of-­medea-n00513 (last accessed 18 May 2014). 3 Butlin and Joll 1984: 172. 4 Butlin and Joll 1984: 172. 5 In his ‘Salon de 1846’, the poet Charles Baudelaire, who was the champion of Delacroix, explained that colour is what differentiates the modern school of romanticism from former movements in art. Baudelaire 1961: 876. 6 On the Western invention of a ‘white Greece’, see Jockey 2013. 7 See for instance Apollon. 3.27, and also 3.529–530 where Medea is described as a maiden ‘whom the goddess Hecate taught to handle with exceeding skill all the pharmaka that the land and the flowing waters produce’. 8 Od. 10.276. 9 Her aunt: Hes., Th. 956–962; her sister: Diod. Sic. 4.45.2–3. See Bracke 2006, 1: 42–46. 10 This is according to the definition provided by the LSJ. Pindarus also uses the adjective pampharmakos (Pyth. 4.233). 11 Od. 4.220–232. 12 Carastro 2006: 36. 13 On the link between pharmakon and colour, see Grand-Clément 2011: 42–50. 14 Aristoph., Ec. 735. 15 Plin., Nat. Hist. 25.10. In the sentence following this assertion, Pliny mentions the name of Medea as the emblematic figure of the sorceress. In Euripides’ play, it is Medea herself who claims that women are particularly experts (sophoi) in pharmaka (Eur., Med. 482). On the link between magical powers and women, see Carastro 2006: 156–157 and Dickie 2001: 175–176. 16 Cosmetics may be considered as special kinds of pharmaka, since they are intended to enhance beauty, but also to transform faces and bodies in order to deceive men; hence the strong condemnation of female face-­painting and adornments by Plato and Christian authors. 17 When Apollonius stresses that Medea, falling in love with Jason, is herself victim of ‘love magic’ brought about by Aphrodite, he employs the verb pharmassein: Apollon. 3.478. Here we see that the mortal ‘magician’ can be overwhelmed by a more powerful charm than her own pharmaka: the erotic desire brought about by a goddess. See also Ov., Her. 12.165–166 (Medea is complaining: ‘I, who could beat back fierce fire with wise drugs, have not the power to escape the flames of my own passion’).

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18 For instance, Ov., Her. 12.97. 19 Apollon. 3.802–803. 20 In a lost play called Rhizotomai, Sophocles featured a nude Medea cutting roots in order to keep them in boxes (cistai) and later preparing herbal decoctions with their white juice. 21 Apollon. 3.845–866. 22 Od. 10.290–292. 23 Also in Sen., Med. 707–709. 24 Apollon. 4.156–161 (see also Ov., Her. 12.107). 25 See for instance a red-­figured Paestan crater from Kyme, c. 310 bce, in Naples, National Archaeological Museum, H3248. 26 We could also mention a third type of pharmakon used by the sorceress: the potion cooked in a cauldron and used to rejuvenate Aeson or Jason himself, in archaic poetry (Nostoi, fr. 6 Kinkel/Davies; Simon. Fr. 548 PMG; see also Ov., Met. 7.275–296). In this case, it is not to be applied upon the skin, as a cosmetic, nor diffused by the means of ‘aspersion’ or ‘fumigation’, like incense, but injected into the body and mixed with the blood. 27 Eur., Med. 789: ‘with these pharmaka I will anoint my gifts’. 28 Eur., Med. 1168–1175. 29 Greek mythology provides many examples of dangerous and powerful textiles, but Medea’s gift is the most famous: Forntisi-Ducroux 2012. 30 Pouzadoux 2007 points out that before 431, representations of Medea show her as a beneficent magician helping the Argonauts. 31 An overview of the Greek and Roman iconography related to Medea can be found in LIMC, s.v. Medeia. 32 Eur., Med. 1019–1080. This passage was debated by Stoicians, who interpreted it as a struggle between reason and passion. 33 Prioux 2007: 42. 34 Watercolour, 1859, Paris, Museum Gustave Moreau, Des 4312: www.culture.gouv.fr/ Wave/image/joconde/0004/m504101_97ce15496_p.jpg (last accessed 3 August 2014). 35 Compare the two images: www.pubhist.com/w7801 and http://commons.wikimedia. org/wiki/File:Lawrence_Alma-Tadema_A_Picture_Gallery.jpg (last accessed 18 May 2014). 36 See Elzea 2001: 184–185. 37 Prettejohn 2010. 38 Prettejohn 2010: 104. The idea of a crimson thread is also present in Morris’ 1867 poem ‘The Life and Death of Jason’ which Sandys was reading when he painted his Medea. 39 Theocr. 2.1.6: ‘Where are my bay-­leaves? Come, Thestylis; where are my love-­charms (philtra)? Come crown me the bowl with the crimson flower o’ wool (phoinikeô

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aôtô); I would fain have the fire-­spell to my cruel dear that for twelve days hath not so much as come anigh me, the wretch, nor knows not whether I be alive or dead, nay nor even hath knocked upon my door, implacable man’ (transl. J.M. Edmonds). 40 On the link between women and colour-­weaving in antiquity, see Wagner-Hasel 2002. Bate Richards’ little-­known ekphrastic poem on Sandys’ painting also plays on this association. Bate Richards 1869: 36: ‘Witch! Thou hast sold/Heart, body, mind, for aye. Below, above/Remorseless fingers have the texture spun/Which thou must colour, must fill up with thread/Of thine existence.’ 41 Waterhouse’s Magic Circle (1886) shows a sorceress drawing a protective circle on the ground. In Jason and Medea, the painter also illustrates the passage from the myth where the sorceress devises her pharmaka to help and protect Jason. 42 Wygant 2007: 17. The word ‘glamour’ probably comes from the Indo-European root *ghel, referring to a dazzling light but Wygant also suggests another etymological interpretation: the term may derive from the French grimoire, meaning a handbook of black magic. 43 Wygant 2007: 19. 44 Wygant 2007: 21. 45 It is tempting to establish an etymological link between ‘Medusa’ and ‘Medea’, but philologists are sceptical about their derivation from a common root. However, in ancient iconographical representations of Medea, the sorceress is often identified by the presence of snakes. 46 The word ‘witch’ is used in Rossetti’s ekphrastic poem ‘Body’s Beauty’ (1866) which is the poetic pendant to Lady Lilith, Wilmer 1991: 37: ‘Of Adam’s first wife, Lilith, it is told/(The witch he loved before the gift of Eve,)/That, ere the snake’s, her/sweet tongue could deceive,/And her enchanted hair was the first gold.’ 47 Coventry Patmore’s poem ‘The Angel in the House’ was first published in 1854 but revised and expanded until 1862. It is a praise of Patmore’s first wife Emily whom he believed to be a paragon of domestic virtue. 48 Clauss and Johnston 1997: 5–6. 49 On the multifarious political reinterpretations of the Medean myth, Bartel and Simon 2010, in particular I. Kvistad’s essay. 50 Percival 1998: 210. 51 John Roddam Spencer-Stanhope was Evelyn de Morgan’s uncle and mentor. When her very Botticelli-­like painting of Medea was first exhibited at the New Gallery in 1890, it was accompanied by a quotation from Morris’s ‘Life and Death of Jason’ stressing the suffering of Medea as a cause of her evil deeds. See Lawton Smith 2002. 52 Parry 1996: 129.

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53 Burne-Jones quoted in Parry 1996: 129. 54 See e.g. the Hypsipyle and Medea realized for the series ‘Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women’: www.preraphaelites.org/the-­collection/1904p521/chaucers-­legend-of-­ good-women-­hypsiphile-and-­medea/ (last accessed 14 September 2014). 55 Boos: http://morrisedition.lib.uiowa.edu/headnote.html#medea (last accessed 28 July 2012). See also Boos 2007: 43–60. 56 Boos 2007: 47. 57 May Morris quoted in Boos: http://morrisedition.lib.uiowa.edu/jasonsupp20thcent. html (last accessed 29 July 2012]. 58 Morris 1895: XIII, 181. 59 Ribeyrol 2012: 53–64. 60 Morris 1895: VII, 100. 61 Morris 1895: VII, 101. 62 Hypsipyle was the queen of Lemnos and the lover of Jason for two years until his flight with Medea and the Golden Fleece. In his Heroides, Ovid has her write a letter to Jason describing her ill-­fated encounter with the hero: ‘neither Juno, nor Hymen, but gloomy Erinys, stained with blood, carried before me the unhallowed torch’, Ov., Her. 6.73. 63 Michelet quoted in Dijkstra 1986: 16. La Femme (1859) was translated into English as early as 1860. 64 In linking Medea with Hypsipyle, Burne-Jones had, according to Ruskin, ‘endeavoured to express together these two ideas of gentleness and wisdom, but the last, in the power of it and the authority, dark and inexorable’. Ruskin quoted in Banham and Harris 1984: 202. 65 Ruskin 1889: 129–130. 66 Chaucer 1987: 108. 67 G. Moreau reinterpreted Pagan myths in a Christian way according to T. Gautier, who analysed his ‘gothic hellenism’ (hellénisme gothique). This enabled him to renew the academic tradition of historical painting. See Cooke 2003. 68 See for instance Apollon. 3.829 and 1017. 69 Some critics have identified one of the plants as the hellebore, which was believed to prevent madness. Here again, flowers and circles are closely associated with Medea, so as to present her as a mistress of binding spells. 70 See Cooke 2003. The couple is usually identified as Hephaestion, Alexander’s beloved, and Hymenaeus, the god of weddings. 71 E. Burne-Jones, Phyllis and Demophoon (1870), watercolour and body colour, Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery: www.bmagic.org.uk/objects/1916P37/ images/138037 (last accessed 3 August 2014). The story of Phyllis is also related in Ov., Her. 2. 72 Pinchon 2000: 237–251.

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73 We may add that the paleness of Jason’s skin reinforces this effect, since it tends to unman the hero. 74 José Maria de Heredia, ‘Jason et Médée. A Gustave Moreau’, Les Trophées (1893). Transl. C. Ribeyrol. 75 Ov., Met. 7.66–67. 76 Ov., Met. 7.156–157: ‘and the heroic son of Aeson gained the (Golden) fleece. Proud of this spoil and bearing with him the giver of his prize, (. . .)’. The following line alludes to another spoil Jason managed to win: Medea. 77 Cooke 2003: 118. 78 Apollon. 4.166–173 (transl. R. C. Seaton). One may notice the absence of reddish tints on Moreau’s painting: it may be a deliberate choice, linked to the will of enhancing whiteness and Edenic light. 79 Ristori was given the role after the famous actress Rachel (for whom Legouvé had written the play) had turned it down. 80 This change in perspective was perceived by many nineteenth-­century authors: see for instance Planche, who associated this rehabilitation of the heroine with a reappraisal of antique sources, based on Apollonius rather than on Euripides or Seneca (‘Pour comprendre ce personnage, qui a si souvent exercé le génie antique, il ne faut pas interroger seulement Sénèque et Euripide; il faut consulter aussi Apollonius de Rhodes, car c’est dans ce dernier poète que se trouve la peinture la plus frappante de la passion de Médée pour Jason’, Planche 1855: 215). 81 Legouvé 1873: 7 (transl. C. Ribeyrol). 82 Legouvé 1873: I, ii, 17–18. 83 Legouvé 1849: 1–14. In the introduction to this essay (translated into English in 1860), Legouvé denounces the plight and misery of women throughout the ages and particularly their legal submission to their fathers and husbands. 84 Offen 1986: 452–484. 85 Legouvé 1873: 8–9. 86 Michelet 1863: 9. 87 Michelet 1863: 4–5. 88 Ruskin is here commenting upon Burne-Jones’ cartoon from the ‘Legend of Good Women’. He also connects Medea with Pallas/Minerva: ‘Her name means Counsellor, Designer as the name of Jason means the healer; she is, in fact, the Pallas or Minerva of the lower phases of human art, and her terror is that of Wisdom forsaken or despised, corresponding to the snake-­fringed aegis of Pallas herself ’ (Ruskin 1905: 208). Such collusion probably existed in antiquity – on the powerful and dangerous eyes of Medea, see for instance Eur., Med. 92. 89 Cambon was much less known than his master, Ingres, who contributed to the rediscovery of Greek painting and promoted a more colourful vision of antiquity (Grand-Clément 2012).

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90 For the image, see www.culture.gouv.fr/public/mistral/joconde_fr (last accessed August 2014). The painting (oil on canvas) is held in the Ingres Museum of Montauban (MI.885.11.5).3 91 Georgel 1998: 44. See www.histoire-­image.org/site/zoom/zoom.php?i=97&oe_ zoom=195 (last accessed 18 May 2014). The painting is also held in the Ingres Museum of Montauban. 92 On the modern uses of Medea as a revolutionary symbol, becoming the prototype of the freedom fighter against oppression, see McDonald 1997.

9  Canidia and Erichtho: Snapshots from their Postclassical Life 1 The article on Canidia by Cavarzere 1996 serves as a good introduction into the scholarship up to 1996, though it does not mention non-­scholarly reception of Horace. 2 On Erichtho see the commentary by Korenjak 1996 passim, on Canidia see Prince 2013. 3 ‘Secondary’ in contrast to single-­standing mythical woman such as Medea. 4 See the commentary by Korenjak 1996. 5 See Cavarzere 1996: 669 for a synopsis of the three poems. 6 For example, she reappears in an orientalized context as an expert in love-­charms in the Jacobean tragedy The Wonder of Women or Sophonisba (1606) by the satirist John Marston. Canidia gives the title to the anonymously published pamphlet Anti-Canidia, or superstition detected and exposed. In a confutation of the vulgar opinion concerning witches, spirits, demons; magick, divination [. . .] (1762) which criticizes harshly any kind of belief in parapsychological phenomena. 7 See Finiello 2005 on Erichtho as alter-­ego of the poet. 8 Luc. 6.420 and 589. 9 On Sextus Pompeius, see Dingel 2004, and especially Powell and Welch 2002. 10 Erichtho served as a model for the depiction of other, even male, magicians. For a specimen of a reception study on Erichtho, see Finiello 2009 on the Spanish literature of the Golden Age. 11 On Lucan and Dante, see Walde 2010a. 12 See my reflections in Walde 2010b. 13 I thank Alexander Blesius and especially Michaela Hellmich for lending me a helping hand in this search. 14 I have not included the URL of the websites/Facebook sites in question, as I could not find out whether this affects privacy rights. But my readers are free to start an internet search. I last found the entries on 7 July 2014.

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15 E.g. the manual of necromancy by Day 2011 (on Erichtho: 101–105, on Canidia: 105–106) or the website www.mitiemisteri.it/misteri_d_italia/streghe_stregoneria_ in_italia.html (last accessed 7 July 2014) where certainly Erichtho and Canidia are taken as prototypes of a successful witch. 16 Perfume by Morbid Mists (www.morbidmists.com/products, last access 7 July, 2014). Heavy metal band Occultus (http://sonichits.com/artist/Occultus, last accessed 7 July 2014). She also was a character in an American theatre production called The Ghost Game – A Tale of 13 Witches, which – if we believe the advertising and articles on the web – due to audience participation was more of a role-­play. Every episode was accompanied by some dessert manufactured by a famous confectionary company (information: www.brownpapertickets.com/event/40931, last accessed 7 July 2014). 17 I could understand Johnson’s associations perfectly well, because being an avid Mickey Mouse reader from earliest childhood I had stopped reading comics after the age of fifteen and sort of missed the new developments. At least one of my students, Michaela Hellmich, designed two comics on Caesar (2012, black and white) and on Ovid’s Metamorphoses (2014), alas only for use in secondary school teaching. 18 In The Thessaliad (2002). In the German version, published under the title Thessaly – Die Hexe lässt das Morden nicht (2009, Panini-Verlag), one finds the episode on pp. 36–39. 19 In the German version (2009) of The Thessaliad (2002), on p. 65. 20 On the re-­use of classical traditions in Harry Potter, see Walde forthcoming and Hofmann in this volume. 21 In the German version (2009) of The Thessaliad (2002), e.g. on pp. 59ff.

10  Project(ion) Wonder Woman: Metamorphoses of a Superheroine 1 Daniels 2000: 22. 2 Daniels 2000: 22. 3 All Star Comics #8 (Dec./Jan. 1941/42), see http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/All-Star_ Comics/Covers (last accessed 22 July 2013). Following this introduction, the superheroine appeared in a larger feature just a short time later in Sensation Comics Vol. 1, #1 (Jan. 1942), see http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Sensation_Comics/Covers (last accessed 22 July 2013). She had her own magazine dedicated to her in August 1942. Here, little further background information about the superheroine was provided by Marston, who, for the rest of his life, retained primary responsibility for all text contents. The following is the final version that appeared in WW Vol. 1, #1 (Aug.

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1942). All Wonder Woman covers can be found online, with information about the individual issues, at http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Wonder_Woman/Covers (last accessed 22 July 2013). 4 WW Vol. 1, #1 (Aug. 1942); Robinson 2004: 27. 5 This is also made explicit in the later film version Wonder Woman 2009: TC: 00:07:05–00:07:07. 6 Lamb 2001. 7 Marston 1928; Bunn 1997. 8 Daniels 2000: 22. 9 Daniels 2000: 18. 10 Byrne 1942. 11 See Daniels 2000: 22. 12 Daniels 2000: 22. 13 A new work that investigates images of the Amazons in Greek literature is Taube 2013. For the origins of the Amazon myth and its significance to the discourse of the political identity of the Attic society of the fifth and fourth centuries bce, see Wagner-Hasel 2010. Particularly in the German-­speaking world, there has been an intense revival of interest, in recent years, in the ancient Amazon myths and their reception. This has not only led to numerous publications, but also to a number of impressive and successful exhibitions and theatre performances. See Franke-Penski and Preusser 2010; Historisches Museum der Pfalz Speyer 2010; Schubert and Weiss 2013. 14 For a comparison of Marston’s Aphrodite with the Creator God of the Old Testament, see Robinson 2004: 29–30. 15 Robinson 2004: 27–28. 16 According to Hesiod’s Theogony, Aphrodite arose from the sea foam as Kythereia, the daughter of Uranus, and gave birth to three children fathered by Ares: Phobos, Deimos and Harmonia (see Theog. 926–930), whereas for Homer she is the daughter of Zeus, and the exposure of her affair with Ares was the cause of the proverbial ‘Homeric laughter’ (see Od. 8.267–366). 17 Diod. 2.45. 18 Diod. 2.46. 19 Hyg., Fab. 30.10. See also: Eitrem 1913: 1863–1864; Drexler 1890: 2679–2681. 20 The Bibliotheca of Apollodorus, for example, portrays the fight as a victorious defensive action on the part of the Greek heroes against the Amazons who had been incited by Hera, see Apollod., Bibl. 2.9. 21 See Kray and Oettermann 1994: 41. 22 Diod. 3.55. 23 Robinson 2004: 30.

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24 See above and note 14. Marston extends the previous Aphrodite/Ares dualism to add Athena, who guides Hippolyta during the act of creation, see Daniels 2000: 37; Robinson 2004: 31. In recent times, this ‘birth’ of Marston’s original Wonder Woman has been taken up once again with impressive images in the film adaptation of the comic referred to in note 5, only this time Hera takes the place of Aphrodite in bringing the clay figure to life, see Wonder Woman 2009: TC: 00:07:25–00:08:15. 25 Wright 2003: 43–54. 26 This motif is materialized in a further item of the superheroine’s equipment: using her bracelets of submission, which serve primarily as a reminder of the enslavement of the Amazons by Hercules, she is able to deflect any form of missile, bullet or even laser beams. At the same time, however, these bracelets have a Kryptonite-­like effect on Wonder Woman: if she is bound by them by a man, she loses all her superhuman powers, see Sensation Comics Vol. 1, #1 (Jan. 1942). 27 Bunn 1997: 95. 28 According to Marston in 1942, see Daniels 2000: 68. 29 See Wonder Women! 2012: TC: 00:11:05–00:11:28. 30 See Daniels 2000: 59–73. 31 Daniels 2000: 64. 32 See Friedan 1963; in contrast Catalano 2002. 33 Byrne 1942. 34 Daniels 2000: 101. 35 Following the end of the war, these now supported a new type of propaganda: ‘Romance comic books encouraged women to marry young and grow up quickly from schoolgirl to devoted housewife’ (Wright 2003: 130). 36 For example, the cover of the first issue following the relaunch of Sensation Comics depicted the Amazon being carried in Steve Trevor’s arms, see Sensation Comics Vol. 1, #94 (Nov./Dec. 1949). 37 As the themes of the actual comic storylines changed, so too did the other sections of the magazine: reports about real-­life women who had been successful in their careers or in the field of sport (‘Wonder Women of History’) now made way for reports about wedding fashions from around the world (‘Marriage à la Mode’), see Daniels 2000: 40, 102. 38 Wright 2003: 154–179. 39 Wertham 1954: 34. 40 For the full content of the Comics Code see www.lostsoti.org/TheComicsCode1954. htm (last accessed 22 July 2013); also see Nyberg 1998. 41 WW Vol. 1, #105 (Apr. 1959). 42 Tate 2008: 148. 43 Tate 2008: 155–156.

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44 In this context, an investigation of Wonder Woman and her alter ego Diana Prince, similar to that of Mr Incredible and Elastigirl conducted by Johnson, Lurye and Freeman in 2008, would be interesting: they were able to demonstrate that the physical proportions of both superheroes stood out greatly not only from those of the average human, but also from the dimensions of the everyday characters. 45 WW Vol. 1, #151 (Jan. 1965). Her adult self had to endure a comparable story in WW Vol. 1, #125 (Oct. 1961). 46 Robinson 2004: 80. In some stories, all variants of the Amazon even appear together. In such cases she is often accompanied by her mother Hippolyta so that the entire Wonder Family is complete, see WW Vol. 1, #124 (Aug. 1961). 47 WW Vol. 1, #158 (Nov. 1965). 48 For basic information on what follows, see Daniels 2000: 123–129. 49 I Ching makes his first appearance in WW Vol. 1, #179 (Nov. 1968). Wonder Woman appears in corresponding combat poses on the title pages of WW Vol. 1, #181 (Mar. 1969) and #201 (Aug. 1972). 50 Wonder Woman wears the tight-­fitting catsuits on a whole series of covers, starting with WW Vol. 1, #180 (Jan. 1969). 51 See Daniels 2000: 129–131 and Steinem 1995, who stresses in her article the inherent potential that the Wonder Woman comics under Marston offered for female readers to identify with the character, and who explains how the concept of the heroine changed after Marston’s death, and how she herself rediscovered and reinstated Wonder Woman in 1972. See also Wonder Women! 2012 with interviews and additional documentary material. 52 Steinem 1995: 15. 53 Edgar 1972. See also Daniels 2000: 131–132. 54 See Daniels 2000: 132. 55 See the cover WW Vol. 1, #204 (Jan. 1973). 56 See Daniels 2000: 132–133. 57 See the cover WW Vol. 1, #205 (Apr. 1973). 58 See Daniels 2000: 136–137. 59 Superman and Batman each appeared as live-­action figures in a black and white serial of fifteen episodes in the 1940s: Batman 1943, Superman 1948. The TV series started in 1952 (Superman) and 1966 (Batman), see www.imdb.com (last accessed 22 July 2013). 60 For information about the pilot episode and the first season produced by ABC, see Daniels 2000: 137–145. The episodes are available on DVD (Wonder Woman 2004) with a joint commentary of the pilot episode by Lynda Carter and Douglas S. Cramer (Disc 1) and a retrospective documentary with interviews (Disc 3). The documentary film referred to above (Wonder Women! 2012) gives a number of those

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people who were involved with Wonder Woman, such as Lynda Carter, Gloria Steinem and Lillian Robinson, another chance to review the heroine. 61 Wonder Woman 2004, Disc 1: TC: 00:00:00–00:00:47. 62 Wonder Woman 2004, Disc 1: TC: 00:00:48–00:02:22. 63 The catchy song, composed by Charles Fox, refers to all the central characteristics of the superheroine. Using the special means at her disposal, she fights successfully for world peace and a better humanity (‘Make a hawk a dove,/Stop a war with love,/ Make a liar tell the truth’ and ‘Stop a bullet cold,/Make the Axis fold,/Change their minds and change the world’). Her combination of power and femininity, which is underscored by her outfit makes her an advocate for human rights in the service of the USA (‘In your satin tights,/Fighting for your rights,/ And the old red, white and blue’), see www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_blOQEu 9ws (last accessed 22 July 2013). 64 Text boxes, a typical stylistic feature of the comic, appear often in the live-­action film, particularly for identifying settings. 65 Wonder Woman 2004, Disc 1: TC: 00:10:40–00:13:59. 66 Wonder Woman 2004, Disc 1: TC: 00:16:51–00:17:09. 67 Quoted from Bunn 1997: 109. 68 Wonder Woman 2004, Disc 1: TC: 00:29:53–00:29:58. 69 For the investiture and subsequent journey with the invisible plane, see Wonder Woman 2004, Disc 1: TC 00:29:53–00:32:14. 70 The famous magical spin transformation sequence (that first appears in Wonder Woman 2004, Disc 1: TC: 00:55:11–00:55:27) was suggested by Carter and accepted by Cramer, but soon replaced by a less complicated (and cheaper) animation technique – a flash of light. 71 Both seasons produced by CBS (see Daniels 2000: 145–148) were also brought out on DVD by Warner Home Video in 2005. 72 Quotation from Carter in the Foreword to Daniels 2000: 9.

11  Ancient Horrors: Cinematic Antiquity and the Undead 1 I thank my colleagues and students in Göttingen, Oldenburg and Mainz for the active discussions and good suggestions, as well as Penelope Goodman (Leeds) for the help with the English version of the text. 2 Werewolves in (among many others) Ov., Met. 1.216–243, Paus. 8.2.3–6, Plat., Rep. 8.565d–566a, Plin., Nat. 8.80–82 (34); child-­eating ghost in Phleg., Mir. 2; for the Erichtho and her death magic see the contribution by Christine Walde in this volume. 3 Hendershot 1999: 1 traces the boom of monster movies back to ‘a cultural paranoia largely triggered by the discovery and use of nuclear weapons during

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World War II’. While this may be true for the majority of these films from the 1950s and 1960s, several of them are at least partly indebted to older traditions of horror literature and film, as will be hinted at below. Unfortunately, the otherwise very readable analysis of the ‘mythological evolution of the fantastic beast’ by Joseph D. Andriano omits the undead ancient monsters (Andriano 1999). 4 The basics of this procedure are explained in Lindner 2007: 22–27. Of the films discussed below, only 300 – Rise of an Empire, Attila (2013), Centurion, Clash of Empires, Clash of the Titans (2010), Gladiator, Hellhounds, Percy Jackson – Sea of Monsters, Sinbad and the Minotaur and Wrath of the Titans as well as the first season of Spartacus – Blood and Sand were available to me on Blu-­ray discs, so that the shifting effect of a PAL-acceleration has to be taken into account for the minute count. 5 ‘Monster studies’, see esp. Brittnacher 1994, Waller 2010 and the contributions to Picart and Browning 2012; the concise overview of Vasbinder 1985 only focuses on undead humans or humanoids: see also Hunt, Lockyer and Williamson 2014. 6 See also Bloom 2010: 179–190 on the modern transformations of traditional elements of horror fiction (including werewolves). 7 Hercules – The Legendary Journeys, season 5, episode 22 (‘Revelations’) showing the character of Iolaos restored to life by the archangel Michael, and season 6, episode 1 (‘Be Deviled’) including an executed criminal turned demon; for the same reason, examples like Hellhounds 53 (GTIN: 4041658294256) with Demetria’s restoration to life – or Michael Raven’s Underworld 78–80 (GTIN: 5060021153340) with Eurydike’s/T.C.s – have been excluded. Atlantis, season one, episode 9 (‘Pandora’s Box’, GTIN: 5051561002465) 27–31 makes things even more difficult: Should the dead summoned by Kampe in Tartaros be called ‘undead’? 8 Il mondo di Yor e.g. 61–65 and 73–82 (GTIN: 4032614901264); Samuari Jack, season 2, episode 25; Young Hercules, episode 11 (‘Cyrano de Hercules’) 7–20 (GTIN: 4020628923358, 4020628917661); Clash of the Titans (1981) 62–62 (GTIN: 7321921651373) and Clash of the Titans (2010) 28 (GTIN: 5051890017635); Jason and the Argonauts (2000) 94–99 (GTIN: 685738681525). 9 Roma contro Roma 36–38 and 64–75 (GTIN: 5013037037098). 10 See also the German TV series Hexe Lilli, season 1, episode 6 (‘Lilli und die geheimnisvolle Mumie’). On mummy films as a sub-category, see Koebner 2005. 11 The film also includes a reborn Alexander the Great (see esp. Gladiator Cop 73–76, GTIN: 5034377011043); see also Attila (2013), with the resurrection of the Hunnish king and his son as bloodthirsty zombies. 12 See also Riddles of the Sphinx 6–8 (GTIN: 4041658254533); for ancient ghosts in a modern setting see e.g. Legend of the Lost Tomb 57, 74 and 85 (GTIN: 4010884726374). Manticore combines a war movie (American troopes fighting Islamist terrorists in post-Hussein Iraq) with a horror film, including a resurrected Babylonian monster hunting humans.

272

Notes to pp. 154–158

13 Hercules (2004) should probably be treated as a case in its own right: the severed head of a harpy resurrected by a blood sacrifice (93–94, GTIN: 5030305103392). In the second Percy Jackson movie the titular hero encounters the undead Oracle of Delphi as well as zombie sailors on a warship (Percy Jackson – Sea of Monsters 23–25 and 67–74; GTIN: 4010232060587) – yet it remains unclear whether they have existed as zombies since antiquity or were revived only recently. 14 Jason and the Argonauts (1963) 94–99 (GTIN: 4030521100374); Ator l’invincibile 72–73 (also including zombies in 58–60); Ator l’invincibile II 8 (both under GTIN: 4009750238516); Il conquistatore di Atlantide 42–52, 57–59, 65–71, 73–74 and 78–88 (GTIN: 4020974153898); see also the ‘golden dagger ghosts’ in Il trionfo di Ercole 16–18, 40–43 and 67–69 (GTIN: 4020974154048) the skeleton warriors in Atlantis, season one, episode twelve (‘Touched By The Gods: Part 1’) 35–37, or the flying skeleton in Young Hercules, episode 20 (‘Fame’) 14. 15 Hercules – The Legendary Journeys, season 3, episode 4 (‘Mummy Dearest’); season 4, episode 4 (‘Web of Desire’, spider-­vampire chimera); season 4, episode 9 (‘If I Had A Hammer . . .’, animated statue); season 5, episode 14 (‘Just Passing Through’, animated statue); season 5, episode 16 (‘We’ll Always Have Cyprus’, see section 2); season 6, episode 4 (‘Darkness Visible’, Vlad Dracul, see section 2); season 6, episode 6 (‘City of the Dead’, animated statues). See also Young Hercules, episode 2 (‘The Treasure of Zeus – Part 1’, animated armor) 1–2 and episode 4 (‘The Treasure of Zeus – Part 3’, animated statues) 15–18. 16 Xena – Warrior Princess, season 2, episode 4 (‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’). 17 Hercules – The Legendary Journeys, season 5, episode 2 (‘Descent’) 22–26 (GTIN: 9120027344374) includes flesh-­eating creatures, but the context seems to suggest zombies not ghouls, as does the title description on the soundtrack CD. 18 Ulisse 78–81 (restored uncut version, GTIN: 4042564119664). 19 Julius Caesar (1953) 99–100 (GTIN: 7321925003888); see also the Christianized version in The Robe 45 (GTIN: 4010232009371). 20 William Shakespeare: Julius Caesar, act 4, scene 3. 21 Roma contro Roma 36–37. 22 Hikayat Merong Mahawangsa 91–106 (GTIN: 7613059402010). The title of this 2011 Indian-Malayan movie is usually translated as either Clash of Empires, Battle for Asia or The Malay Chronicles: Bloodlines. Actually, it refers to the adventures of the mythical hero Raja Merong Mahawangsa, see Maier 1988, but combining them with historical elements: the embassy sent to Sri Lanka in the reign of the emperor Claudius (Plin. Nat. 6.84–88) and the one in the times of Marcus Aurelius, described by Fan Ye in the Hou Hanshou as having taken a route via Vietnam to China. Unlike in Hikayat Merong Mahawangsa, however, the historical Romans did not leave a positive impression, thus ‘raising suspecions [among the Chinese] that the accounts of Rome might have been exaggerated’ (Hou Hanshou 88.12, transl. J.E. Hill).

Notes to pp. 158–162

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23 Roar, episode 9 (‘Tash’, ghost) and episodes 1–12 (immortal Longinus). 24 Minotaur 1–4 (GTIN: 4041658221696). 25 Sinbad and the Minotaur e. g. 6–7 and 38–39 (GTIN: 9120027346330). 26 Wrath of the Titans 59–61 (GTIN: 5051890109019). 27 Immortals 50–53 (GTIN: 4011976320685). In contrast, Atlantis goes to great length to explain the minotaur as a cursed man who, in death, even transforms back into his human shape (season one, episode one (‘The Earth Bull’) 40–42). 28 See the examples given in the first section. 29 Hercules – The Legendary Journeys, season 5, episode 16. 30 Lindner 2007: 112–113; see also Wyke 2006 and Wyke 2012. 31 Jason and the Argonauts (2000) 100–102; see also the mechanical ‘Colchis Bull’ in Percy Jackson – Sea of Monsters 14–19. 32 The most famous example is probably the strix, a bird-­like creature that preys on human infants in the night. They are ‘said to rend the flesh of sucklings with their beaks, and their throats are full of the blood which they have drunk.’ (Ov., Fast. 6.137–138 (transl. J.G. Frazer): carpere dicuntur lactentia viscera rostris, | et plenum poto sanguine guttur habent.) However, Plaut., Pseud. 819–821, Petron., Sat. 63 and others put emphasis on the eating of the entrails, making the strix less akin to a vampire and instead evoking the picture of a carnivorous beast. 33 Lucendo 2009. 34 Ercole al centro della terra 78 (GTIN: 4006680038971); see also Ercole alla conquista di Atlantide 96–99 (GTIN: 4260170270344), in which the ‘Stone of Evil’ at the heart of Atlantis is destroyed by sunlight. 35 Hercules – The Legendary Journeys, season 6, episode 4 (‘Darkness Visible’). 36 Labia – Warrior Princess, episode 5 (‘You’re So Vein’) 34–35 (GTIN: 5060085360678). 37 See Jacob 2011, relying heavily on the gender-­studies approach of Carol J. Clover (1992). 38 Some of the following aspects (esp. the setting) will be treated in more detail in Lindner (forthcoming). 39 Dog Soldiers 2–3 (GTIN: 8287656009966); Centurion 4–7 (GTIN: 5060002836750). 40 E.g. Centurion 43, but also 14 (‘I swear she’s part wolf ’). 41 Dog Soldiers 29, 59, 71, 91, 96, 98; Centurion 57, 61, 64, 84, 89, 89–90. 42 Centurion 63–64. 43 Centurion 48. 44 Centurion 50–51. 45 On werewolves in modern popular culture see the paper of Dagmar Hofmann in this volume. One of the few other examples are the werecreatures in Atlantis. They transform into wolf-like shape after sundown, react to silver etc. However, they turn out to be ‘the Stygian Hounds, the Kynikoi that guard Hekate’ (season one, episode nine (‘Hunger Pangs’) 19).

274

Notes to pp. 162–164

46 E.g. Centurion 4–6, 75 or 94. 47 In addition, one might point out the numerous amalgamations with science fiction (e.g. the animated TV series Skeleton Warriors and Ulysses 31 or even the Star Wars movies) and Western (see Winkler 2001; Burkard 2002; Verreth 2008 et al.). 48 Centurion 26. The gathering of war trophies from the enemies’ corpses is a standard part in the description of savage Celtic tribes, e.g. Polyb. 3.67.1–3, Diod. Sic. 5.29.4–5 and 14.115.5 or Strabo 4.4.5 (198C = Poseidonios F274 Kidd / F34 Theiler). 49 Centurion 36–37 (torture) and 39–41 (murder). 50 Centurion 93–94. 51 King Arthur 110–114 (GTIN: 4011846018766). 52 Gladiator 147–148 (GTIN: 5050582894066). 53 Centurion 4 and 94. 54 The Fearless Vampire Killers 102–103 (GTIN: 7321921651465). 55 Roughly speaking: Chinese martial arts film; for more context see Teo 2009. 56 The sixth ‘Law of the Dead’, according to the rather sketchy list by Benjamin Moldenhauer et al. (evil can only be contained, but never eliminated – Moldenhauer, Spehr and Windszus 2008: 11–12), see Waller 2010: 331–360 and Cohen 2012. 57 Odysseus and the Isle of Mists 8–10, 45–46, 79–82 and 85–86 (GTIN: 4041658254526). The same mechanism is at work in episodes 19 to 21 of Young Hercules with the Bacchae presented as vampires (including fangs, blood bond, the ability to transfer their nature to victims of their bite, etc.) 58 See footnote 3 above and passim. 59 Lindner 2007: 190–221. 60 Spartacus – Blood and Sand, season 1, episode 5 (‘Shadow Games’) 45–52 (GTIN: 4010232057419). One might also think of the zombies/ogres on the Persian ships in 300 – Rise of an Empire (e.g. 59 and 62; GTIN: 5051890226891).

12  The Phoenix, the Werewolf and the Centaur: The Reception of Mythical Beasts in the Harry Potter Novels and their Film Adaptations 1 I would like to thank Rachael Pearce for her help with the English version of this paper. 2 On the central topics of the HP series in general see Bürvenich 2001: 109–125, and in reference to the use of ancient mythology see Noren 2007: 42–67. 3 See Fenske 2008: 1–9. 4 J.K. Rowling on The Diane Rehm Show, WAMU Radio Washington, DC, 20 October 1999: ‘I do a certain amount of research, and folklore is quite important in the books,

Notes to pp. 164–167

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so where I’m mentioning a creature or a spell that people used to believe genuinely worked – of course it didn’t – but, you know, it’s still a very picturesque and a very comical world in some ways – then I will find out exactly what the words were, and I will find out exactly what the characteristics of that creature or ghost were supposed to be . . . I would say – a rough proportion – about a third of the stuff that crops up is stuff that people genuinely used to believe in Britain. Two thirds of it, though, is my invention’, see http://www.accio-­quote.org/articles/1999/1299-wamu-­rehm.htm (last accessed 8 December 2014). 5 The significant role of ancient mythology and traditions for the conception of the Harry Potter novels has already been examined from several points of view, see e.g. Pharr 2002; Grimes 2002; Hall 2006; Noren 2007; Kolbuch 2010. On medieval elements in the series see Arden and Lorenz 2003. 6 As described in the ‘schoolbook’ of the fictitious author Newt Scamander, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Rowling 2001. An incomplete list is given by Fenske 2008: 408–410. 7 For the use of Latin names in the Harry Potter novels see Schreiner 2007: 71–81. See also Randall 2001: 3–7. On the reception of Greek and Roman myths in Rowling’s novels Noren 2007; on the use of names Noren 2007: 12–26. 8 See Rowling 1997: 119–120 (Ch. 9). 9 See the interview with David Heyman, Steve Kloves, Mark Radcliffe, Alfonso Cuaron and J.K. Rowling, on The Prisoner of Azkaban DVD ‘extra’, 23 November 2004: www.accio-­quote.org/articles/2004/1104-poadvd.htm (last accessed 8 December 2014) and The Chamber of Secrets DVD interview with Steve Kloves and J.K. Rowling in February 2003: www.accio-­quote.org/articles/2003/0302-newsround-­ mzimba.htm (last accessed 8 December 2014). 10 See Cheilik 1987: 265. A list of numerous films is given by Wikipedia: http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_werewolf_fiction (last accessed 8 December 2014). 11 See Lindow 2001: 111–114. 12 Noren 2007: 55 sees the reason for Rowling’s choice of the name Remus in ‘his gentler nature and his tragic story’. In Rowling 2007: 357–358 (Ch. 22) Lupin uses ‘Romulus’ as a code-­name during his operation in the underground against the Dark Lord. 13 Rowling 1999: 59 (Ch. 5). 14 Rowling 1999: 258–262 (Ch. 18): Lupin reporting his life’s story; 279 (Ch. 20): Lupin’s transformation. 15 Rowling 1999: 128–129 (Ch. 9). 16 See Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban 2004: 50:22–51:09. 17 As for example in the famous wall painting of the tomb of Sennedjem. 18 The ‘slide’ shown in the film seems to be more similar to medieval and modern imagination, like the mosaic in the cathedral of Siena (1373) or the famous depiction by Rubens (1616).

276

Notes to pp. 167–169

19 Hdt. 4.105. On the Greek tradition see Buxton 1987; Kunstler 1991. 20 Paus. 8.2–3 and Ov, Met. 1.209–239, see Noren 2007: 52–54. 21 Plin, Nat. 8.34 (80): Homines in lupos verti rursus que restitui sibi falsum esse confidenter existimare debemus aut credere omnia quae fabulosa tot saeculis conperimus. . . . 22 Petron. 61–62. 23 Petron. 62.3–13, transl. Heseltine 1913 (Loeb). 24 See Stolberg 2001: 243–246; see also Cheilik 1987: 269f. 25 See Cheilik 1987: 270. On correlations of later interpretations with ancient Greek traditions see Buxton 1987. 26 Buxton 1987; Stolberg 2001: 244. 27 See the detailed overview of possible influences by Noren 2007: 58–63. 28 Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban 2004: 1:35:10–37:48; 1:53:08–54:59. 29 Rowling 1999: 279 (Ch. 20). 30 Rowling 1999: 258–261 (Ch. 18). For a comparison of the contents in the book and the film see Duttler 2007: 197–248, who unfortunately does not mention this important difference. 31 Creating the World of Harry Potter, Part 3: Magical Creatures 2010: 43:18ff. (available on the DVD ultimate edition of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban 2004). Henceforth cited as Creating the World. For the concept art of Lupin see McCabe 2011: 469. 32 Creating the World 2010: 45:09. 33 Creating the World 2010: 42:48. See her comment on Lupin in an interview with Stephen Fry at the Royal Albert Hall, 26 June, 2003: ‘Lupin’s failing is he likes to be liked. That’s where he slips up – he’s been disliked so often he’s always pleased to have friends so cuts them an awful lot of slack’, www.accio-­quote.org/articles/2003/0626alberthall-­fry.htm (last accessed 8 December 2014). 34 Transcript: The Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, http:// cyberlaw.stanford.edu/files/blogs/Trial%20Transcript%20Day%201.txt (last accessed 8 December 2014). See Noren 2007: 57. 35 See Noren 2007: 48; Fenske 2008: 278–288. 36 On the moral choices in the Harry Potter novels see Wolosky 2010: 144–149 and from a Christian point of view see Cherret 2003, 36–48. 37 Rowling at the Carnegie Hall, 19 October 2007: ‘It was conscious. I think that if you’re, I think most of us if you were asked to name a very evil regime we would think Nazi Germany. There were parallels in the ideology . . . So yeah that follows a parallel’, www.the-­leaky-cauldron.org/2007/10/20/j-­k-rowling-­at-carnegie-­hallreveals-­dumbledore-is-­gay-neville-­marries-hannah-­abbott-and-­scores-more (last accessed 8 December 2014). 38 Rowling 2003: 117 (Ch.7): ‘A group of golden statues, larger than life-­size, stood in the middle of a circular pool. Tallest of them all was a noble-­looking wizard with his

Notes to pp. 169–171

277

wand pointing straight up in the air. Grouped around him were a beautiful witch, a centaur, a goblin, and a house-­elf. The last three were all looking adoringly up at the witch and wizard.’ 39 Rowling 2007: 198 (Ch. 12). 40 Rowling 1997: 184 (Ch. 15). 41 The centaurs, by their own request, are classified in the ‘Beast Division’ instead of the ‘Being Division’ in the British Ministry of Magic archives, see Rowling 2001: xix, xxiii, 11. 42 See Hom, Od. 21,303. Pind. fr. 166 (Maehler) signifies them as animals despite their human elements. Diod. 4.69–70 opposes human-­shaped centaurs with the so-­called hippocentaurs. For short introductions see Bethe 1921: 172–178; Kirk 1970: 152–162; Leventopoulou 1997: 671ff.; Walde 1999: 413ff. with further bibliography. On the origins and the long development of the different traditions see e.g. Kollmann 1987: 225–239 with bibliography; Leuker 2008: 388–390. For centaurs in Early Greek Art see Padgett 2003. 43 Most famous is the battle with the Lapiths: Hom. Il. 1.267–268, 2.742–744; Od, 21.295–303; Hes., Sc. 178–190; Ov., Met. 12.210–535; Diod. 4.70; see Leventopoulou 1997: 671ff. 44 Kentauromachie or fighting centaurs: Leventopoulou 1997: 684–691. 711–715, No. 154–234. 386–436; rape in Greek art: Leventopoulou 1997: 683–684, No. 137–153; in Roman art: Leventopoulou 1997: 711, No. 383–385. On the centaur’s habit of rape see Apollod., Epit. 1.21; Diod. 4.70.3. 45 Hom., Il. 11.832, Pind., Pyth. 3.5; Bethe 1921: 172–178; Gisler-Huwiler 1986: 237–248; Kirk 1970: 159. 46 Hom., Il. 11.832f. Apollod., Bibl. 2.5.4; Apollod., Epit. 1.21; Ov., Fast., 5.299–414. 47 Eratosth., Katasterismoi 40; Hyg., Astr. 2.38; see Ov., Fast. 5.379–414. 48 Kollmann 1987: 233. 49 Rowling 2001: 12. 50 Rowling 1997: 185 (Ch. 15). 51 Rowling 2001: 60. 52 Rowling 1997: 187 (Ch. 15). 53 Rowling 2003: 530 (Ch. 27). 605. 615ff. (Ch. 30). 54 Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix 2007: 1:25:00: ‘ “I’ve never seen the centaurs so riled. And they are even dangerous at the best of times. The Ministry restricts their territory much more, they gonna have a full uprising on their hands.” ’ This remark is not to be found in the book; in the film it is needed to explain the following capture of Umbridge. 55 Rowling 2003: 656–666 (Ch. 33). 56 Rowling 2003: 583 (Ch. 36). 57 Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone 2001: 1:42:56; Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix 2007: 1:38:28.

278

Notes to pp. 171–173

58 Missing scenes in the films are e.g.: Harry and his friends meet Ronan, Rowling 1997: 184ff. (Ch. 15); Firenze is reprimanded by Ronan and Bane, Rowling 1997: 187f.; Firenze teaching at Hogwarts, Rowling 2003: 528–533 (Ch. 27); Hagrid’s discussion with Ronan and Bane, Rowling 2003: 615f. (Ch. 30). Harry and Hermione attacked by centaurs, Rowling 2003: 666–668 (Ch. 33). 59 There are of course animated films, e.g. The Centaurs (1921) or Walt Disney’s Fantasia (1940). 60 McCabe 2011: 453. Later film characters like Oreius (Patrick Kake) in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005) or Chiron (Pierce Brosnan) in Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (2007) seem to have been inspired by Harry Potter, though Pierce Brosnan as Chiron looks more human-­like than the centaurs in Narnia. 61 Chris Columbus commenting in Creating the World (2010: 35:38). For early centaur concepts and the representation in film see McCabe 2011: 452–455. 62 Creating the World 2010: 36:47. 63 Rowling 2003, 666ff. (Ch. 33). 64 Rowling 2007, 530 (Ch. 33). 65 Asked if Firenze was welcomed back into the herd Rowling answered: ‘Yes, the rest of the herd was forced to acknowledge that Firenze’s pro-­human leanings were not shameful, but honourable.’ See web chat transcript from 30 2007: www.the-­leakycauldron.org/2007/7/30/j-­k-rowling-­web-chat-­transcript (last accessed 8 December 2014). 66 Dante, Inferno 12.55–138. See Leuker 2008: 389. 67 On Dante’s political life see Scott 1996: 1–35. 68 This explanation of Rowling’s choice of the name ‘Firenze’ seems to be much more likely than the reference to Galileo Galilei given at http://harrypotter.wikia.com/ wiki/Firenze (last accessed 8 December 2014). 69 Rowling 1998: 155 (Ch. 12). 70 See Van den Broek 1972: 14–32. 71 Hdt. 2.73.2–3. 72 Plin., Nat. 10.2.3: Aquilae narratur magnitudine, auri fulgore circa colla, cetero purpureus, caeruleam roseis caudam pinnis distinguentibus, cristis fauces caput que plumeo apice honestante. Transl. by Heinemann 1940 (Loeb). 73 Tac., Ann. 6.28.1–2. 74 Ov., Met. 15.391–407. 75 See Van den Broek 1972: 233–304. 76 Ov., Met. 15.396–397; Lact., De ave phoenice 65–70. See Van den Broek 1972: 52–57; 183. 77 Ancient descriptions have differed in the length of life as Tac., Ann. 6.28 has already recorded. See Van den Broek 1972: 67–112.

Notes to pp. 173–177

279

78 This motif appears only in the later empire: Claud., Carm. 27 (44).45–47; Philostr., Ap. 3.49; Greg. Tur., De cursu stellarum ratio 12. See Van den Broek 1972: 200–202; 282–284 79 Plin., Nat. 10.2.4; Ov., Met. 15.398–402. 80 For many examples see van den Broek 1972: 427–437 (plates VI–VIII). The phoenix is used on coins of Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius and as well the Christian emperors. 81 Van den Broek 1972: 437–442 (plates IX–XI). 82 As for example on a tombstone from S. Agnese fuori le Mura, Rome (second half of the third century): CIL VI 22075; Van den Broek 1972: 443 (with plate XIV). 83 See Richter 1993: 62–90, esp. 74; for the text with translation see Harris 1978 (with commentary). 84 Lact., De ave phoenice 170; see Greg. Tur., De cursu stellarum ratio 12. Richter 1993: 71; Van den Broek 1972: 182–186, 281–287. 85 E.g. the apsidal mosaic in S. Giovanni in Laterano, Rome, see Van den Broek 1972: 445 (plate XX) and many further examples. 86 Van den Broek 1972: 231ff. and 457 (plates XXXVIII 1–2). 87 See esp. the cover art of the adult edition of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Bloomsbury 2004). 88 McCabe 2011: 423. 89 See McCabe 2011 with illustrations. 90 McCabe 2011: 425. See Creating the World 2010: 26:46 91 Creating the World 2010: 27:13. 92 Rowling 2003: 719 (Ch. 36). Although the duel plays a larger part in the film version, this little scene is absent. Nevertheless, the role of the phoenix is pointed out in the film, as well when Fawkes helps Dumbledore to escape and to avoid being arrested by the Ministry, see Rowling 2003, 548 (Ch. 27); Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix 2007: 1:21:30. 93 Rowling 1998: 236 (Ch. 17). 94 The phoenix song during the fight: Rowling 2000: 576 (Ch. 34); the phoenix lament after Dumbledore’s death: Rowling 2005: 573ff. (Ch. 27). 95 On the theme of moral regeneration through death in the Harry Potter series see Taliaferro 2010 who also points out the role of the phoenix. 96 Rowling herself pointed out the significance of this topic in her novels: ‘But it’s a strong central theme – dealing with death, yeah, and facing up to death’, interview with CBCNewsWorld: Hot Type, 13 July 2000, www.accio-­quote.org/ articles/2000/0700-hottype-­solomon.htm (last accessed 8 December 2014). See Herzog 2002: 213–245 who examines in detail the theme of death in the Harry Potter novels. 97 See e.g. Fraser 1996.

280

Notes to pp. 177–181

98 Transcript of the copyright trial against RDR (14 April 2008): http://cyberlaw. stanford.edu/files/blogs/Trial%20Transcript%20Day%201.txt (last accessed 8 December 2014). In a live interview on Scholastic.com, 16 October 2000 she commented on Bonfire Night: ‘We celebrate November 5th in Britain every year. There was a plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament. The ringleader of the plot was called Guy Fawkes (spot any Harry Potter connection?!), and we burn him in effigy and set off fireworks to celebrate not losing our government’, www.accio-­quote.org/ articles/2000/1000-scholastic-­chat.htm (last accessed 6 April 2013).

13  Theoi Becoming Kami: Classical Mythology in the Anime World 1 M.G. Castello authored the sections ‘Classical Mythology in the 70s’, ‘The 80s, 90s Revolution’ and ‘The Twenty-First Century’. All other sections have been composed by C. Scilabra, except for the conclusions, written jointly by both authors. 2 Mouer and Norris 2009: 361–365; Ito 2012: xi. 3 For a survey of the different genres and their main targets see Norris 2009: 238–240; Brice and Davis 2010: 34–61. 4 The reception of classics in the Japanese production of manga and anime has already caught researchers’ attention on several occasions: for general reviews see mainly Amato 2006; Hernández Reyes 2008. A specific study about Osamu Tezuka’s comics production, primarily focused on the manga Apollo no Uta, can be found in a recent work by Nicholas A. Theisen, which in any case offers also some deeper considerations about the complexity of this phenomenon (Theisen 2011: 59–60, 62, 67); a roundabout approach, targeting the works that stage classical figures in a modern setting, is presented in Scilabra forthcoming. 5 Settis 2004: 6–7. Miyazaki’s choice must have really stricken Settis, since he opens the back cover note of his book with a direct question about it: ‘Come mai l’eroina di un famoso manga giapponese si chiama Nausicaa?’ About the genesis of Kaze no Tani no Naushika (Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind), that portraits a princess who recalls at the same time Homer’s Nausicaa and the ‘Princess that loved insects’ from Japanese folklore, see Hairston 2010: 175–176. 6 Theisen 2011: 62. 7 On Tezuka’s life and works see Power 2009 8 Clements and McCarthy 2006, s.v. Kimba. The White Lion: 338–339. 9 Namor McKenzie is a character created in 1939 by Bill Everett: his stories were originally published by Timeline Comics, while now they are being licensed under the Marvel Comics label. He was born from a human man and Fen, Atlantis’ princess, and he will become Atlantis’ king; most of his series takes place during his reign.

Notes to pp. 182–187

281

10 Clements and McCarthy 2006, s.v. Unico: 690. 11 Even restricting the research field to animated production – which, in any case, usually follows closely the trends recognizable in the manga market – the popularity of Grimms’ fairy tales and, more generally, of the stories coming from the European folk tradition, is confirmed by the large number of anime more or less freely inspired by them. In 1976 a series was released, Manga Sekai Mukashi Banashi (Clements and McCarthy 2006, s.v. Manga World Fairy Tales: 152), which is an animated transposition of the most popular European fairy tales in Japan. Among them, the greatest share went to the Grimm brothers’ tales, even though Perrault’s and Andersen’s were fairly represented. (Andersen’s fairy tales had already been transposed in an anime series in 1968, with Andersen Monogatari; Clements and McCarthy 2006, s.v. Tales of Hans Christian Andersen: 641.) Besides, in 1981 another freely reworked version of some of the Grimms’ fairytales was broadcast: Bremen 4: Jigoku no Naka no Tenshitachi (Clements and McCarthy 2006, s.v. Bremen Four: 76). The central role of Grimms’ work is attested – to the present day – by a series revolving around Snow White (Shiroyuki-­hime no Oensetsue; Clements and McCarthy 2006, s.v. Snow White: 593) and by two works exclusively dedicated to their novels: Grimm Dowa, aired in 1987 (Clements and McCarthy 2006, s.v. Grimms’ Fairy Tales: 253) e Otono no Dowa, broadcast in 1999 (Clements and McCarthy 2006, s.v. Adult Fairy Tales: 6). 12 The stories put on stage in this anime are the myths of Actaeon, Orpheus and Eurydice, Herse and Aglauros, Perseus and Medusa, and Phaeton. 13 As reported by Anime News Network, www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/ company.php?id=60 (last accessed 4 August 2014). 14 On the reception of classics in this anime see also Hernández Reyes 2008: 638–639. 15 The golden age of the great Japanese robots dates exactly to this period: let us remember Go Nagai’s rich production (Gilson 1998: 368; Di Fratta 2000: 132–143; Pellitteri 2009: 276); at the same time, a great success was also granted to manga and anime that revolved around space journeys, the most famous of which can be identified in Leji Matsumoto’s sagas (Di Fratta 2000: 143–148; Ashbaugh 2010: 328–329). 16 Shingo Araki (1939–2011) was one of the pillars of Japanese character design (for a short biography see Clements and McCarthy 2006: 28). 17 For a short analysis of the presence of classics in this work see Hernández Reyes 2008: 639–640. 18 The manga, Olympus no Polon (2 volumes), was serialized starting in 1977 in the magazine Princess (Akita Shoten). 19 Kinsley 1989: 73–76. On the representation of Amaterasu’s myth in manga and anime see Drazen 2011: 145–146.

282

Notes to pp. 187–192

20 The manga was serialized starting 1979 in the magazine Comic Ryu (Tokuma Shoten) and then reprinted in a series of five volumes. It is significant that Yasuhiko Yoshizaku’s production includes several titles that revolve around historical themes, taken both from the Asiatic tradition and from the classical heritage (including a manga featuring Alexander the Great and one narrating the fate of Anton). 21 Clements and McCarthy 2006, s.v. Scarlet Sanshiro: 566. 22 Clements and McCarthy 2006, s.v. Fist of the Northern Star: 198. 23 Kinsella 2000: 166–169. 24 Clements and McCarthy 2006, s.v. Princess Knight: 509–510; Power 2009: 111–127. 25 Clements and McCarthy 2006, s.v. The Rose of Versailles: 544–545. 26 Amato 2006: 276. 27 See for example Death Game (1981). 28 The economic boom that Japan experienced during the 1980s was greeted by the Japanese people as proof of the value and specific characteristics of their society; it was at precisely this time that the neologism Nihonjinron – literally ‘Japanese character uniqueness’ – was forged. See Tipton 2002: 191–210 29 World War II is an obvious leitmotif in the manga and anime productions; for a perspective on its early reception see Nakar 2003: 57–76. But this remains a recurring theme, as is shown by Fumiyo Kono’s Yunagi no Machi, Sakurano Kuni, published in 2004. See also Inouye 2009: 19–37. 30 For example, in 1997, the psychologist Vera Slepoj made some harsh criticisms against Sailor Moon – which at that time had reached its fifth and last series – in an article that was published in the Corriere della Sera, one of the most important Italian newspapers: ‘Sailor Moon può determinare devianze nel comportamento sessuale dei bambini. Sailor Moon propone una giovane eroina e si sono riscontrati casi di bambini di sesso maschile che, seguendo quotidianamente il cartoon, hanno finito con l’identificare in questo personaggio forte, vincente, potente, un modello di comportamento, femminilizzando il loro modo di vivere, le relazioni con i coetanei e chiedendo di poter vestire come la loro eroina’, http://archiviostorico.corriere.it/1997/ aprile/08/Sailor_Moon_pericolosa_per_ragazzini_co_0_9704084403.shtml; http:// www1.adnkronos.com/Archivio/AdnAgenzia/1997/04/07/Spettacolo/SAILORMOON-SLEPOJ-DISTURBA-LO-SVILUPPO-SESSUALE_172000.php (last accessed 4 August 2014). 31 On Saint Seiya and its reception of the classical world see Hernández Reyes 2008: 641–644. 32 Drumond-Mathews 2010: 62–76. 33 Morris 1975: 1–14. 34 Littleton 1983: 73–75; 1995: 259–274. 35 The tale, which is very popular in Japan, refers to the Buddhist heritage and it is

Notes to pp. 194–208

283

reported by Jātaka-­mālā, a collection of thirty-­four tales about Buddha’s previous incarnations; Keown 2004: 125. 36 For a clue of the ideal of male beauty see McLelland 2010: 76–91. 37 About Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon and its reception of the classical world see Hernández Reyes 2008: 640–641. 38 On the popularity of characters taken from the Snow White fairytale and more generally from the Western folkloric tradition, see above, note 10. 39 The legend of the Moon rabbit (or Moon hare) is narrated in the Jātaka-­mālā and it is at the conclusion of the tale that the hare (or rabbit) sacrificed itself in order to feed a human (see n. 29; Sasa-Jakata 317). Kawasaki and Kawasaki 2010: II, 486–489. 40 Starting with the 1990s, classical characters grew out of their historical and cultural frame, creating new icons: the process that somehow started with Miyazaki’s Nausicaa is now widely spread and affects a constantly growing number of manga and anime which are not concerned with classical themes but openly refer to Greco-Roman character names to send a specific message. It is impossible to list them all here, but we would like to at least remember some particularly meaningful examples such as Fuyumi Souryo’s Mars (serialized in Bessatsu Friends – Kodansha – since 1996) and Yuki Kodama’s Sakamichi no Apollon, published by Flowers, Shogakukan, since 2007. 41 On the use of classical characters in series that involve the protagonists’ reincarnation see Scilabra forthcoming. 42 We can see the same trend in the field of the study of Roman law: Xu 2002: §4; Montanari 2005: 202–205; Castello 2014. 43 Yamato Nadeshiko, the perfect spouse who summarizes all the traits of the ideal traditional Japanese woman (Sugihara and Katsurada 1999: 645; Endo 2012: 299–300), appears often, both in a sincere and in an ironic way, in manga and anime. 44 This is just an example that could apply in the same way to many other figures taken from the modern Western literature and folklore. Quotes from Alice in Wonderland appear in countless series, from 1983’s Fushigina Kuni no Alice (Clements and McCarthy 2006, s.v. Alice in Wonderland: 15) – which refers to both Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass – through the acclaimed CLAMP’s Fushigi no kuni no Miyuki-­chan (Clements and McCarthy 2006, s.v. Miyuki-­chan in Wonderland: 421), up to the recent success Pandora Hearts, based on a still ongoing manga by Jun Mochizuki, serialized in the magazine GFantasy by Square Enix since 2006. On the modalities of the reception of Carrol’s Alice in Japan see Somers 2009: 199–200. 45 On the stereotypes in the representation of the Shinsengumi and its members in manga and anime see Lee 2011: 174–180.

284

Notes to pp. 211–215

14  Everypony Has a Story: Revisions of Greco-Roman Mythology in My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Tolkien 1947: 11. See e.g. the articles by Hofmann and Walde in this volume. Campbell 2008. Jung 1981: 6. Hillman 1990: 37. Apollod. 3.1–3; transl. K. Aldrich. Bronies, 1:03.54–1:03.22. Hyde 2010: 7. Literally, as we learn that the Tree of Harmony has been slowly poisoned by plunder seeds he had planted beneath its roots (‘Princess Twilight Sparkle, Parts 1 & 2’). 10 Hes., Erg. 14–16; transl. D. Tandy and W.C. Neale. 11 Plat., Rep. 4.444b. 12 Plat., Symp. 187a; transl. M.C. Howatson. 13 Il. 4.440–442. 14 Apollod. 1.7–9. 15 Ov., Met. 12.405–413. 16 Apollod. 2.36–42. 17 See the article by Gietzen and Gindhart in this volume.

15  The Depraved Devotion of Elagabalus: Images of the Priest-­emperor in the Visual and Performing Arts 1 Hist.Aug., Elag. 8.1–2. 2 Dio 80.11. All English translations of Cassius Dio and the Historia Augusta are taken from the Loeb editions. 3 The galli, priests of Magna Mater, were infamous for their practice of self-­castration; see Beard 1994: 164–165. For more on the cult of Magna Mater, see Vermaseren 1977; Roller 1999. 4 Hist.Aug., Elag. 8.2: Omne (. . .) magorum genus aderat; Zos. 1.11.1: μάγοις τε και ἀγύρταις. 5 The distinction between magic and religion is notoriously hard to make. Aune 1980: 1515 suggests that ‘magic is universally regarded as a form of deviant behavior’ and that ‘goals sought within the context of religious deviance are magical when attained through the management of supernatural powers in such a way that results are virtually guaranteed’. 6 For more on the Elagabal cult, see Frey 1989: 9–71; Icks 2011: 48–52.

Notes to pp. 215–220

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7 For more on Elagabalus’ religious reforms, see Frey 1989: 73–106; Icks 2006; 2011: 25–37. 8 A short overview of Elagabalus’ Nachleben, with references, as well as an extensive and detailed analysis, can be found in Icks 2011: 123–213, 219–223. 9 For the Roman taboo on human sacrifice, see Rives 1995; Schultz 2010. 10 Tysens 1720. For more on this playwright, see Zijde 1996. 11 In fact, there is no record of any of Tysens’ plays ever being performed in Amsterdam; see Worp 1920. It is possible that most of his pieces were intended to be read. We know, however, that Tysens envisioned a theatrical performance of Bassianus Varius Heliogabalus because he complained about its rejection by the Schouwburg in the foreword of his tragedy Klearchus, dwingeland van Heraklea (1727). 12 Tysens 1720: l. 397–399: ‘Die Tempel nog Altaar ontziet,/En by zyn hátelyke offerhande/Het reut’lend menssen bloed vergiet.’ All English translations of Tysens’ texts are by my own hand. 13 Tysens 1720: l. 946–947: ‘Min Priester zynde, als wel een wrede Moordenaar,/ Opofferd ’t duurbaar bloed der schoonste roomse kind’ren.’ 14 Gilbert 2002. 15 Gaiman 1991–1992: 15. 16 Chaillet 2002–2012, Vol. II: 5, 26. 17 Slaughter of cattle: Chaillet 2002–2012, Vol. II: 23; Vol. III: 24–26. Intestines: Vol. II: 35. All the English translations of Chaillet’s texts are by my own hand. 18 Chaillet 2002–2012, Vol. III: 33–34; Herod. 5.6.9–10. 19 Chaillet 2002–2012, Vol. III: 29. 20 Chaillet 2002–2012, Vol. III: 44. The violent death prediction stems from Hist.Aug., Elag. 33.2. 21 Recently, the Caligula comics by David Lapham and Germán Nobile (2012–2013) have presented the notorious emperor as a supernatural being that thrives on human blood. I do not know whether Chaillet’s depiction of Elagabalus has served as a source of inspiration for their work. 22 Emont 1990: 38–49; Monneyron 1996: 129–160. 23 For more on Péladan and his ideas on androgyny, see Pincus-Witten 1976; Birkett 1986: 131–157; Emont 1990: 45–48; Breton 1999. 24 For Elagabalus’ construction as an ‘effeminate’ emperor, see Icks 2008: 484–485. 25 The most famous example of such an interpretation is Antonin Artaud’s 1934 biographical essay Héliogabale ou l’anarchiste couronné, which has even influenced some scholarly works on the priest-­emperor, such as Gualerzi 2005: 74–75. 26 Villeroy 1902: 92. Like Tysens’ piece, this play was never actually performed. 27 Villeroy 1902: 110. 28 Villeroy 1902: 118.

286

Notes to pp. 220–226

29 The painting is currently in a private collection. 30 Prettejohn 1999: 168–169. 31 As Marie France-David has noted, decadent writers and artists often imagined Elagabalus as a ‘héros melancolique souffrant d’un incurable ennui’ (David 1996: 153). 32 The painting can be seen at the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nice. For a brief analysis, see Westenholz 2005. 33 Hdn. 5.3.8–9. All English translations of Herodian are by E.C. Echols. 34 Rado 2000: 1–25. For more on the ‘crisis of masculinity’ in the fin de ­siècle, see Busst 1967: 39–75; Mosse 1996: 77–106. 35 The play has been published in Duberman 1975: 279–351, although it was originally performed in a different, unpublished version. My analysis necessarily refers to the second version. 36 Duberman 1975: 281. 37 Duberman 1975: xiii. 38 Isaac 2004: 257–323, 335–351. See also Balsdon 1979: 60–64 (Roman stereotypes of ‘orientals’); Edwards 1993: 92–97 (the discourse of moral decline in Rome due to contacts with the ‘soft’ cultures of Greece and the Near East). For the invention of ‘oriental’ stereotypes of the Persians in ancient Greece, see Hall 1989; Georges 1994. 39 Several women in the family – Domna, Maesa, Soaemias, Mammaea – bore the name Julia, which indicates that the family had probably received Roman citizenship before the reign of Claudius; Icks 2011: 54. The family may well have been descended from the Emesene kings of the first centuries bcE and CE, but there is no conclusive proof for this; see Sullivan 1977; Birley 1988: 69–72; Icks 2011: 46–48, 54–55. 40 Herod. 5.5.3–4. 41 Herod. 5.5.5–7. 42 Tysens 1720, l. 950–952: ‘Die met verwyfd Gewaad en Asiaanse pragt/Van Purper, goud en zyde, en verd’re praalsieráden,/De roomse dapperheid lafhartig heeft verráden.’ 43 Tysens 1720: l. 1661–1662: ‘Die met verwyfd gewaad den roomsen Naam besmet,/ En in ’t Assiries kleed schent Vader Numa’s wet.’ 44 Said 1995: 91, 113–123. 45 Krasiński 1927: 60. Mithras may have been chosen because this god was probably more familiar to Krasiński’s audience than Sol Invictus Elagabal. Informed readers may have known the Mithras cult as an alternative / competitor to early Christianity. My thanks to the editors for this suggestion. 46 Krasiński 1927: 95. 47 Herod. 5.7.2: βακχείαις καὶ ὀργίοις τοῖς τε θείοις ἔργοις; 5.8–10.

Notes to pp. 226–229

287

48 Icks 2006; Icks 2011: 72–79. See for instance BMC V, Elagabalus, nos. 209–213, 330, 350, 368. 49 Couperus 1993: 422: ‘Antieke Vroomheid’; 30: ‘Uitverkoren Ziel’; 31: ‘Niet te vrouwelijk, niet te mannelijk, de beide seksen in evenwicht versmolten tot een harmonie . . .’ Once again, the English translation is by my own hand. 50 For the reception of De berg van licht by the Dutch press, see Lukkenaer 1989: 74–79; Bastet 1989: 326. The cartoon has been reproduced in Maas 1990: 2.

16  Women and Religion in Epic Films: The Fifties’ Advocate for Christian Conversion and Today’s Pillar of Paganism? 1 My thanks go to the following for their help in the preparation of this paper: Johannes Deißler, Darja Šterbenc Erker, Wanda Klee, Theodor Lindken and Stefan Sandführ. Special thanks again to Judith Rhodes and Shaun Worth for grappling with my English language. 2 ‘Thereupon the queen answered: “I am prepared.” With a cry of joy, the son embraced his mother. She made the profession of faith in his presence, and with the Pope’s blessing he baptized her in the name of the Mother of God. Then, she sank back. Heliodora cried and Miriam was turned to stone. The queen of Palmyra had found her peace. The end’ (Cüppers 1905: 393–394; translation Wieber). 3 For similar developments in USA/GB/Western Europe see Brown 2009: 58–59. 4 For the concept of ‘matronage’ see Wieber 2013; female patrons Hemelrijk 2010; 2012. Whether women in antiquity were the driving force behind Christianization is still a much debated question, which would need more details regarding time and place as well as social class (for a general overview and a critical outcome concerning aristocratic women of the West in the fourth century and their role in conversion see the chapter by Salzman 2002: 134–177); nineteenth-­century novelists, however, repeated arguments from contemporary theologians and historians, who like Adolf von Harnack believed women to be in the centre of conversion. 5 The original quote by Edgar Allan Poe reads: ‘To the glory that was Greece, and the grandeur that was Rome’ and plays an important part in the reception of the classics (Laird 2010: 359); for the righteous indignation paired with pleasure when contemporaries of the nineteenth century have a focus on ancient mores, see Kittstein 2005: 94–96 and Anonymus 1899. 6 James 2001: 44–45; Solomon 2008a; 2008b; Matijević 2011. 7 Dunant 1994; Wyke 1997; Glücklich 2008: 48–92. 8 The reference literature for those developments is now abundant; for a first orientation from different national angles see the essays in Thébaud 1995, esp. Higonnet.

288

Notes to pp. 230–233

9 Wyke 1997: 28–29; by contrast Russell 2007: 26 argues that the cinema industry was into TV business and that there was no real competitive struggle between the TV and film industries but that a change of marketing strategies in the 1950s caused fewer movies to be produced and the companies to maximize their output via releases in special theatres with events, intermission, music etc. (see s.v. roadshow http://filmlexikon.uni-­kiel.de/index.php?action=lexikon&tag=det&id=2415, last accessed 21 August 2014). 10 For McCarthyism resp. Cold War and film industry see Wieber 2005: 60–63. 11 Forty per cent of the movie plots then were historical (Russell 2007: 24). 12 www.imdb.com/title/tt0046247/taglines (last accessed 21 August 2014). 13 Hale 2009: 93–94. 14 He also wrote modern novels (www.kirjasto.sci.fi/lcdougla.htm, last accessed 21 August 2014). 15 www.imdb.com/title/tt0046247/fullcredits#writers (last accessed 21 August 2014). 16 Babington and Evans 1993: 177–205; Glücklich 2008: 72–85. 17 For her proto-Marian looks see also her costume and pose in Spartacus (http:// virtualiaomanifesto.blogspot.de/2010/01/spartacus.html; cinema blog of the Brazilian author J. Lee-Meddi, last accessed 21 August 2014). 18 For Diana in the opening scene see www.movieactors.com/actors/jeansimmons.htm (last accessed 21 August 2014). 19 For the colour blue see Riedel 1983: 48–68; for the topos of waiting woman and homecoming soldier in the ancient epic Sign of the Pagan, see Wieber 2005: 91–92. 20 The story of Miriam can be found in Luke 13.10–17 where Jesus heals a crippled woman; Cyrino 2005: 57–58, provides a modern subtext, so that Miriam’s illness stands for the epidemic outbreak of polio in the USA by the time the film was shot. 21 For families as target audience of epics, the educational values those movies were said to have in publicity campaigns and the youth of more than 50 per cent of the viewers, see Russell 2007: 29, 42–44; in the partly autobiographical film Roma Fellini depicts his youth recollection of the forties when whole families went to movies. 22 Her roles include: Kanchi in Black Narcissus 1947; Cleopatra in Caesar and Cleopatra 1945; Diane Tremayne in Angel face 1952; for photos see http://filmstarpostcards. blogspot.de/search?q=Jean+Simmons; http://p2.la-­img.com/930/20822/7144590_ 1_l.jpg (last accessed 21 August 2014). The film critic David Thomson calls her saucy (www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2010/jan/27/jean-­simmons-­david-­thomson, last accessed 21 August 2014). 23 Babington and Evans 1993: 188–189. 24 Weaver 2009: 250; Betta St John in Dream Wife, http://images2.fanpop.com/images/ quiz/263000/263927_1248475978365_304_380.jpg (last accessed 21 August 2014). 25 Wieber 2005; 2006; marriage and ancient epics in general Wieber 2010.

Notes to pp. 233–237

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26 For the film industry’s claim to significance and (political) commentary in the case of historical epics see Russell 2007: 40–41; for the debate about the equation of religious identity and political belief see Russell 2007: 35; for the entanglement of the Cold War and the nuclear bomb threat with social anxieties see Hawes 2009: 19–20. 27 May 1989. 28 May 1989: 164 (Figure 8.1), see also http://projects.ecfs.org/fieldston57/us45/ Readings/DomesticContainDBQ.pdf (last accessed 21 August 2014). 29 www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/88469/The-Robe/notes.html; for the different re-release posters see the vertical (Figure 16.3) and the horizontal version (www. movieposterdb.com/poster/82a790b3; www.movieposterdb.com/poster/be5515fb; last accessed 21 August 2014). 30 In the novel it is actually a brown cloth, but to show it in red is due to Technicolor and is meant as a counterpart to the Roman military cloak (Babington and Evans 1993: 214) and perhaps goes back to the novel’s illustrator, Dean Cornwell, called Dean of Illustrators; my version, Douglas 1948: between 492–493, shows a cloth of a colour between brown and purple, whereas it says ‘rumpled brown mantle’ (99). 31 Trucks with educational material toured the country to teach people to beat the bomb (Oakes 1994: 82–83); see www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe50s/ life_04.html (last accessed 21 August 2014). 32 Duck and Cover can be viewed at http://archive.org/details/gov.ntis.ava11109vnb1 (last accessed 21 August 2014); for the film’s history see www.conelrad.com/ duckandcover/cover.php?turtle=01; illustrations of the hero Bert the Turtle who has his cover always with him: www.stopliberallies.com/study-­calls-­for-­sheltering-­in-­ place-­in-­the-­event-­of-­nuclear-­attack-1632.html (last accessed 21 August 2014). 33 Steininger 2004: 72–90; 103–111. 34 Ulrich 2001: 11–40; for Jesus’ robe as ‘homespun’ see Douglas 1948: 111, 128, 143, 147, 158, 224. 35 John 19.23–24 tells what happened to Jesus’ clothing after his crucifixion. 36 Pohlsander 1996. 37 Holum 1982: 56–58, 103, 107–109, 136–137, 185–186, 196; Weber 2000: 404–405, 416; Sivan 2011: 111–113. 38 Futrell 2003; Caudill 2003; Kennedy 2003; Stuller 2010: 70–73, 87–104; for the impact on fans see Stafford 2002. 39 Yellin 2000. 40 Fillingim 2009. 41 Seo 2008: 173. 42 Kunst 2010; admittedly, as castrati, the Cybele priests transgressed ancient gender concepts. 43 Hausen 1976.

290

Notes to pp. 237–238

44 Foxhall and Neher 2013; see also Wieber 2013, 130–131. 45 For a screenshot of that ceremony, the Taurobolium: www.celtiberia.net/articulo. asp?id=2865 (last accessed 21 August 2014). 46 Schultz 2006; Takács 2008; Šterbenc Erker 2013, 37–41 and passim. 47 Syme 1989: 168. 48 Moruno 2009. 49 See an exemplary entry in a forum: ‘The movie is not that historical accurate, but it captured sign of the times. i.e. a woman scientist surrounded by religious fanaticism, the brutal, corrupt and irrational nature of religious belief, the underlining misogyny and unrelenting ignorance that defined Christianity (and still does), the end of scientific endeavour for a thousand years (for Christians not for Muslims) and the beginning of the Dark Ages’. (sic!) (www. selectsmart.com/DISCUSS/read.php?33,880476, last accessed 21 August 2014). In his panegyric educational video (0:08:43), a presentation with text, illustrations and music, Yannis Yalamas sums up: ‘Hypatia and her father Theon played a pivotal role in human history. Together they fought to stop the world from descending into the Dark Ages. . . . She is the pure embodiment of the eternal quest for truth and the freedom of thought against the forces of dogmatism, fanaticism and religious intolerance’ (www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbskP9utQ0M, last accessed 21 August 2014). 50 For the impact of the eighteenth and nineteenth century on Hypatia’s reception see Dzielska 2002: 1–13. 51 Agora 0:33–36; Amenábar about the costume designer Gabriella Pescucci and her combining the world of the Taliban with the ancient Parabolani: www.wissen.de/ ein-­kapitel-­der-­geschichte-­das-­noch-­nie-­im-­kino-­erzaehlt-­wurde; see also Moschini 2011: 31. 52 Agora, making of, www.artechock.de/film/text/interview/a/amenabar_2010.html; http://scottholleran.com/writings/interview-­alejandro-­amenabar-­on-­agora/; http:// msmagazine.com/blog/2010/05/28/rachel-­weisz-­star-­of-­agora-­on-­hypatia-­religion-­ and-­politics/; for Rachel Weisz’s parents see the entry in the German-Jewish newspaper from 2008, www.j-­zeit.de/archiv/artikel.1059.html (last accessed 21 August 2014). 53 ‘Als die Nazis die Kommunisten holten,/habe ich geschwiegen,/ich war ja kein Kommunist. Als sie die Sozialdemokraten einsperrten,/habe ich geschwiegen /ich war ja kein Sozialdemokrat. Als sie die Gewerkschafter holten,/habe ich geschwiegen,/ich war ja kein Gewerkschafter. Als sie mich holten,/gab es keinen mehr,/der protestieren konnte,’ www.martin-­niemoeller-­stiftung.de/4/daszitat/a31 (last accessed 21 August 2014):

Notes to pp. 238–240

291

‘First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Socialists, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me’, www.martin-­niemoeller-­stiftung.de/4/daszitat/a46; for the different versions of Niemöller’s quotation, sometimes including a reference to Jews instead of the socialists, see Harold Marcuse’s research page http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/ marcuse/niem.htm (last accessed 21 August 2014). 54 Dzielska 2002: 41–42. 55 Klein 1999; Dzielska 2002: 83–100; Hahn 2004: 110–120; Lotz 2010; the vocabulary Damascius uses in his Vita Isidori (Harich-Schwarzbauer 2000: Q 72 = frg. 102 Zintzen) is charged with political significance: her epithets are ἔμφρονα and πολιτικήν; the city adores her and the dignitaries pay her official visits; interestingly the predicates are presented in the iterative Aktionsart (ἠσπάζετο / προσεκύνει / ἐφοίτων) and one of the verbs is actually referring to the ceremony of proskynesis. 56 Some critics interpret the film’s content as an ‘ancient clash of civilization’ (Hilka Sinning; www.3sat.de/page/?source=/kulturzeit/tips/142731/index.html, last accessed 21 August 2014). 57 “‘Fundamentally, this is a very Christian film about the life of a martyr”, Mr. Amenábar said’, www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/movies/23agora.html (last accessed 21 August 2014); Yannis Yalamas (see fn. 49): ‘This video is a tribute to Hypatia, a brilliant woman, symbol of a Free Thinking Martyr. Let her be the Torch of Freedom to all of us who are defending our freedom of thought.’ 58 For her estimated age (*355, death in 415) see Dzielska 2002: 67–68 and Penella 1984; for a comment on eroticizing Hypatia see Moschini 2011: 33; for her matronage see Klein 1999: 76–77. 59 For the poster see www.imdb.com/media/rm2940375808/tt0462396 (last accessed 21 August 2014). 60 Xena uses the Chakram, which in Hindu mythology is a throwing weapon connected to the God Vishnu (Zeiler 2012: 232). 61 For the tradition of women warriors from Asia in Ancient times see Jones 2005: 42; for the nineteenth and twentieth century, http://old.iias.asia/article/women-­ warriors-­asia (last accessed 21 August 2014). 62 For a critical reading of TV heroines and their non-­feministic agenda see Magoulick 2006.

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Index Abrasax/Abraxas 22–27, 30, 243 note 7 Absyrtus 75, 113 Achilles 84, 86, 169, 258 note 73 Adam 114, 170, 173, 216, 225, 262 note 46 Adrian (character of Martin Duberman’s Elagabalus, 1973) 220 Adsagona 68 Aeetes/Aeëtes 79, 107, 252 note 3 Aeneas 81, 101, 255 note 38 Aeschylus 73, 79, 132 Aeson 116, 261 note 26 Aesopus 184 Agamemnon 73 Agnotike 235 Akasha (vampire empress) 154 Alçeo (La navegation de Circe, 1621) 253 note 25 Alciato, Andrea (1492–1550, Humanist) 82, 253 note 23 Alexander (Paris) 202, 221 Alexander Severus 213, 221 Alexander the Great 114, 263 note 70, 271 note 11, 282 note 20 Alice in wonderland 194, 283 note 44 Alma-Tadema, Lawrence (1836–1912) 108–109, 261 note 35 Althaea 95 Alvaro, Corrado (1895–1965, Italian writer) 10, 258 note 3, 259 note 3 Amalteo, Ascanio (librettist, mid. 17. Cent.) 258 note 70, Amaterasu (Shinto Sun-goddess) 184, 282 note 19 Abrosinus/Merlin 240 Amelia 46–47, 49, 53 Amenábar, Alejandro 16, 237, 290 note 51–52, 291 note 57 Ammon 243 note 4 Amor (El mayor encanto, amor) 79, 82–90, 254 note 32, 255 note 43, 258 note 73 Amun (Egyptian vampire) 154

Andersen, Hans Christian (1805–1875) 281 note 11 Anderson Rose, James (1819–1890) 109 Andromache 107 Andromeda 180 Anna Perenna 8, 19–20, 22, 25, 27, 33, 35–36, 64, 70 Antistes (El mayor encanto, amor) 83–86, 253 note 27 Antoninus Pius 279 note 80 Antoninus, Marcus Aurelius 212 Anubis 165 Aphrodite 62, 116, 135, 137–139, 143, 150, 202, 216, 242 note 41, 260 note 17, 267 note 14, 16, 268 note 24 Apollo 99, 183–185, 187, 191, 194, 252 note 3 Apollodorus 202, 267 note 20 Apollonius 106–107, 113, 116, 191, 260 note 17, 264 note 80 Applejack 201, 206 Apuleius 4 Arachne 183 Araki, Shingo (1939–2011, Japanese animation artist) 183, 195, 281 note 16 Ares 139, 143, 190, 204, 267 note 16, 268 note 24 Argonauts 13, 95, 101, 153–154, 157–158, 261 note 30, 271 note 8, 272 note 14, 273 note 11 Ariadne 205 Ariel (The little mermaid, 1989) 77 Arion 52, 185–186, 193–195 Aristophanes 106 Aristotle 197, 203 Arquelao (El mayor encanto, amor) 253 note 27 Arsamon (= Horus, Son of Ammon) 243 note 4 Arsidas (El mayor encanto, amor) 83–83, 257 note 67

326

Index

Artaud, Antonin (1896–1948, French playwright, actor and poet) 15, 286 note 25 Arthur, King 159, 161, 240, 274 note 51 Athena 135, 180, 187–188, 192, 202, 242 note 41, 268 note 24 Atia 8, 236–237 Atropos 71 Auctulus Quirius (cursed person in a defixio) 30–31 Augustine 5, 82 Aurelius 240 Azuma, Hideo (manga artist) 183, 195 Baal/ ‘Ba ’al 15, 36, 220 Bambi 179 Bane (Centaur) 170, 278 note 58 Barber, Samuel (1910–1981, American composer) 93 Basileides (2nd c. CE, Alexandrian theologian) 23 Batman 142, 147, 208, 269 note 59 Beauty (and the Beast) 184 Bersuiere, Pierre (1290–1362, Author of Ovidus moralizatus) 253 note 23 Bes (Egyptian demon) 33, 36 Betty Boop (1933) 76 Black Canary (comic’s superhero) 141 Black, Sirius 167–168 Blair, Mary (1911–1978, American animation artist) 252 note 59 Bliss, Rob (concept artist of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban 2004) 167 Boal, Augusto (philosopher) 52 Boccaccio, Giovanni (1313–1375) 82, 253 note 23 Boder, Michael (German music director) 258 note 1 Boethius 82, 253 note 21 Bondy, Luc (producer of Cruel and Tender) 45, 49–50 Borghild (in Norse mythology, mother of Helgi) 70 Bors 56, 61–62, 247 note 18 Brockbank, Adam (concept disegner Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban 2004) 170, 173 Bronwyn 56, 58, 60–63, 65, 246 note 7, 248 note 22

Brosnan, Pierce 278 note 60 Brünnhilde 99 Brutamonte (El mayor encanto, amor) 83 Brutus 4, 155 Bubo 153 Buddha 189, 283 note 35 Burne–Jones, Edward (1833–1898) 111–114, 117, 263 note 53, 64, 71, 264 note 88 Butler, Josephine (1828–1906, British feminist) 111 Byrne, Olive 138, 141 Caesar, Iulius 8, 60, 108, 121, 123–125, 127, 155, 157, 216, 272 note 19–20, 289 note 22 Caius Sylvius 214 Cajeta 81 Calderon de la Barca, Pedro(1600–1681) 79, 82–83, 86–89, 253 note 25, 254 note 34, 255 note 41, 257 note 54, 56, 62, note 258 note 73 Caligula 228–230, 285 note 21 Calpurnia 8 Calypso 183, 253 note 18 Cambon, Armand (1819–1885) 118, 264 note 89 Camerini, Mario (1895–1981, film director) 74 Campbell, Joseph (1904–1987, American writer and mythologist) 199–200 Canidia 11, 119–128, 130–132, 134, 241 note 17, 265 note 1–2, 6, 266 note 15 Captain Ryan (Dog Soldiers) 159 Carter, Lynda 147–150, 269 note 60, 270 note 60, 70, 72 Cassius Dio 211, 284 note 2 Cato 4 Catullus 4 Cerberus 164, 206 Chaillet, Gilles (comic writer) 214–215, 222, 285 note 21 Chapman, Brenda (animation director and writer) 77 Charles I (1600–1649) 89 Charpentier, Marc-Antoine (1643–1704, French composer) 93 Charybdis 81, 183 Chaucer, Geoffrey (1343–1400, English writer) 112–114, 117, 263 note 54

Index Cherubim 191 Cherubini, Luigi (1760–1842, Italian composer) 93 Chimera 13, 154, 183, 202, 272 note 15 Chiron 169, 171, 278 note 60 Chronos 189 Chrysagon 56–58, 61–65, 246 note 8, 247 note 9, 248 note 19, 22 Cicero 4, 253 note 18 Circe 9, 11, 74, 77, 79–86, 88–90, 106–107, 110, 113, 120, 125, 134, 155, 183, 250 note 45, 251 note 46, 253 note 18, 25, 254 note 28, 30–33, 255 note 40, 42–44, 256 note 45, 50, 52–54, 257 note 66–67, 258 note 71 Clarin (El mayor encanto, amor) 83, 86 Claudius 272 note 22, 286 note 39 Cleopatra 113, 122, 289 note 22 Clérambault, Louis Nicolas (1676–1749, French composer) 101 Clotho 71 Clytemnestra 73 Cohn, Michael (film director) 252 note 58 Columbus, Chris (director of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, 2002) 278 note 61 Cornelia 127 Couperus, Louis (1863–1923, Dutch author) 223–224, 287 note 49 Cramer, Douglas S. (American television producer) 147, 269 note 60, 270 note 70 Creon 94–99 Creusa 94–100, 107–108, 110, 259 note 6 Crimp, Martin (author of Cruel and Tender) 8, 45–51, 53–54, 245 note 27 Crixus 162 Cuarón, Alfonso (director of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban 2004) 167, 275 note 9 Cüppers, Adam Josef (1850–1936, Catholic schoolteacher and writer) 225 Cybele 290 note 42 Cyril (bishop) 237–238, 240 Cytheris 122 Da Ponte, Lorenzo (1749–1838, Venetian librettist) 247 note 13 Da Vinci, Leonardo 165

327

Damascius 291 note 55 Danae 207 Dante 110 Daphne 125–126, 171, 175, 187–188, 265 note 11 Daring Do (character of My Little Pony) 198 Darrin (TV–serie Bewitch) 75 De Beauvoir, Simone 146 [ ... De]centia (cursed person in a defixio) 30–31 De Bouillion, Hugo 56–58, 249 note 29 De Heredia, José Maria (1842–1905, French poet) 116, 264 note 74 De Quevedo, Francisco (1580–1645, poet and satirist) 257 note 61 Deianeira 40–44, 46–47, 49, 53, 74 Deimos 267 note 16 Delacroix, Eugène (1798–1863, painter) 103–104, 108, 114, 118, 260 note 5 Delphis 110 Demeter 185–186 Demetrius 228, 235 Deraismes, Maria (1828–1894, French author and feminist) 111 Despoina 186 Destouches, Alexandre (friend of G. Moreau) 116 Desvallières, Georges (1861–1950, painter) 116 Diana 135, 138, 142–143, 149–150, 189–190, 228–233, 235, 269 note 44, 288 note 18 Dietrich, Marlene 76 Diodorus 139, 252 note 3 Dionysus 250 note 44 Discord 198, 202–206 Disney, Walt 132, 193, 278 note 59 Dixon, Joe (actor) 49, 51 Doctor Who 198, 201 Doctor Whooves 198 Domitian 15 Domna, Julia 286 note 39 Donald Duck 132 Donner, Richard (comic book writer and film director) 58 Douane 58, 246 note 7 Douglas, Lloyd Cassel (1877–1951, Lutheran minister) 227 Draco 56–58, 61, 64–65, 247 note 9–10, 18

328

Index

Dracula/Vlad Dracul 154–55, 158, 272 note 15 Dragon God 184 Duberman, Martin (American teacher and author) 217, 220 Dumbledore, Albus 171, 173–174, 279 note 92, 94 Durkheim, Émile (1858–1917, French sociologist) 6 Dusapin, Pascal (contemporary French composer) 93–94, 101–102, 259 note 17 E.V.E (Wall-e, 2008) 77 Edgar, Joanne 146 Eirene 236 Elagabalus/Heliogabalus/Héliogabale 15, 211–217, 220–224, 285 note 7–8, 11, 21, 286 note 24, 31, 287 note 48 Elizabeth I (1533–1603, queen of England) 188 Elpis 185 Elvis Presley 153 Endora (TV-serie Bewitch) 75 Endymion 189–190 Erichtho 11, 119–134, 241 note 17, 265 note 2, 7, 10, 15, 271 note 2 Erinyes/Erinys 73, 79, 185, 250 note 41, 263 note 62 Eris 202–204 Eros 42, 194, 216 Etain 159–161 Euripides 79, 100, 107–108, 250 note 44, 251 note 53, 260 note 15, 264 note 80 Eurylochus 80 Eurytus 207 Eve 87, 89, 161 Fate-goddesses 70–71, 80, 253 note 26 Faust, Lauren (animator, creator of My Little Pony) 202 Fawkes (phoenix) 171, 173–175, 279 note 92 Fawkes, Guy (1570–1606) 174, 280 note 98 Febo 256 note 47 Fedelm (prophetess of Irish mythology) 70 Fellini, Federico (1920–1993) 288 note 21 Fenrir Greyback 164, 167 Ferdinand II the Catholic of Aragona (1452–1516) 89

Fetch 133 Finn (Irish hero protagonist of the Fenian Cycle) 70–71 Fiona (Shrek, 2001), 77 Firenze (Centaur) 170–171, 175, 278 note 58, 65, 68 Flérida (El mayor encanto, amor) 83–84, 256 note 53 Floro (El mayor encanto, amor) 254 note 27 Fluffy 164 Fluttershy 201, 204–205, 208 Folia 120, 122 Ford, John (film director) 246 note 7 Foucault, Michel 130 Fox, Charles (1940–, American composer for film and television) 270 note 63 Frazer, James (1854–1941) 5 Freud, Sigmund 205 Frollo, Leone (comic writer) 251 note 56 Fuseli, Johan Heinrich (1741–1825, Swiss–English painter) 119 Gabrielle 235 Gaiman, Neil (English author of novels and comics) 132, 199, 214 Galatea 85, 255 note 40 Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) 278 note 68 Gallio, Marcellus 228, 235 Garbo, Greta (1905–1990) 70 Geedo 186 Gibson, Mel 247 note 13 Gilbert, Sky (Canadian playwriter) 213 Glauce 75–76 Glaucus 81 Glob 143 God (christian) 140, 159, 235, 237, 243 note 46, 247 note 18, 254 note 34, 267 note 14 Godzilla 179 Goethe, Johan Wolfgang von 23, 125–126 Góngora, Luis de (1561–1627, Spanish dramatist) 253 note 25 Gora (Medea’s nurse in Grillparzer’s Medea) 95 Göreç, Ertem (Turkish film director and writer) 252 note 58 Gorgo 154 Gorgon 154, 207–208, 251 note 53 Goya , Francisco (1746–1828, Spanish painter) 119

Index Graham, Martha (1894–1991, modern dancer and choreographer) 10, 93, 99–101, 259 note 11–12, 14 Grat(t)idia 122 Gretel 184 Grigoris 58 Grillparzer, Franz (1791–1872, Austrian dramatist) 94–101, 259 note 4, 9 Grimhilde 76, 181, 190 Grimm, Jakob Ludwig Karl (1785–1863) 250 note 37 Grimm, Wilhelm Carl (1786–1859) 250 note 37 Grimm, Brothers 67, 71, 75–76, 180, 184–185, 193, 281 note 11 Hades 8, 125, 164, 186–187, 195 Hadrian 159, 279 note 80 Hagrid, Rubeus 169–170, 278 note 58 Hamilton, John (1740–1779, British painter and printmaker) 124 Hansel 184 Hardy, Robin (film director) 57 Harmonia 267 note 16 Harmony 201–206, 284 note 9 Harpy 161–162, 272 note 13 Harris, Richard (actor) 173 Harry Potter 14, 133, 163–165, 167–168, 170–171, 173–175, 197–199, 201, 266 note 20, 275 note 5, 7, 16, 276 note 28, 31, 36, 54, 278 note 57, 60, 279 note 87, 92, 95, 280 note 98 Haussard, Prosper (art critic) 103, 260 note 1 Hayworth, Rita (1918–1987) 251 note 45 Hecate 110, 260 note 7 Hector 255 note 38 Heladius (dignitary) 237–238 Helen of Troy 106–107, 114, 202, 242 note 41 Helena (late antique empress) 233 Helgi (german mythological figure) 70, 250 note 26 Heliodora 225, 287 note 2 Helios 79, 81, 100, 172 Hephaestion 263 note 70 Hephaestus 153 Hera 202, 268 note 24, 267 note 20 Heraclitus 2

329

Hercules/Heracles 8, 40–47, 49, 51, 53, 79, 135, 137, 139, 143, 153–155, 157–158, 268 note 26, 271 note 7–8, 272 note 13–15, 17, 273 note 29, 35, 274 note 57 Hermes 80, 189, 202 Hermione 165, 167, 170, 278 note 58 Herodian 215, 217, 220–222, 286 note 33 Herodotus 3, 53, 166, 172–173 Hesiod 71, 203, Hierocles (character of Martin Duberman’s Elagabalus, 1973) 220 Hieronymus 23 Hijikata Toshizo (1835–1869, Japanese military leader) 194 Hillman, James (1926–2011, psychologist) 200 Hippocrates 3 Hippolyta 137, 139, 143, 149, 268 note 24, 269 note 46 Holiday, Billie 48 Homer 9, 12, 52, 71, 73, 79–83, 188, 198, 204, 206, 209, 267 note 16, 280 note 5 Horace 11, 27, 119–123, 126, 130, 253 note 18, 265 note 1 Horus 243 note 4 Hulk 208 Hummel, Johan Erdmann (1769–1852, German painter) 119 Hyginus 139 Hyllus 43–44, 47 Hymen 263 note 62 Hymenaeus 263 note 70 Hypatia 16, 237–238, 240, 290 note 49–50, 52, 291 note 57–58 Hypsipyle 113, 263 note 54, 62, 64 I Ching 145, 269 note 49 Il Sodoma 114 Ingres, Jean Auguste Dominique (1780–1867, French painter) 118, 264 note 89, 265 note 90–91 Iole 48–50 Ion 251 note 53 Iphigenia 79 Irenaeus of Lyon 23 Iridion (character of the play Irydion) 221 Iris 83, 254 note 28, 255 note 40 Iron Will 204–205 Isdustayas (goddess of Fate, Hittite) 70

330

Index

Isis 1, 19, 63, 70 Iulia 127 Jackson, Peter 163 James (Son of the General in Cruel and Tender) 48 Jason 13, 74–75, 77, 94–101, 107–108, 110–111, 113–116, 118, 153–154, 157–158, 169, 251 note 55, 259 note 8, 260 note 17, 261 note 26, 38, 262 note 41, 51, 263 note 62, 264 note 73, 76, 80, 88, 271 note 8, 272 note 14, 273 note 31 Jessica Rabbit 251 note 45 Jesus Christ 23–24, 157, 228, 230, 233, 288 note 20, 289 note 34–35 Joan of Arc 188 Joker 208 Jolie, Angelina 252 note 58 Jones, Indiana 198 Joyce, James 200 Juliet 185 Jung, Carl Gustav (1875–1961) 199–200 Juno 83, 255 note 40, 263 note 62 Jupiter 90, 212–213 Justinian 20 Kake, Patrick (actor) 278 note 60 Kanigher, Robert (1915–2002, comic book writer) 141–143, 147 Kebi (Egyptian vampire) 154 Kent, Clark 145 Keomi Gray (Sandy’s gipsy model) 109 Kira of Scilla (Saint Seiya) 180, 187, 189, 193–195, 283 note 31 Kloves, Steve (screenwriter of Harry Potter) 164, 275 note 9 Knight of the Capricorn 188 Kodama, Yuki (manga artist) 283 note 40 Krasiński, Zygmunt (Polish playwright) 221, 287 note 45 Kreon 252 note 55 Krisaore 189 Kythereia 267 note 16 Lachesis 71 Lactantius 172 Laela 48–50 La Fontaine, Jean de (1621–1695) 184 Lapham, David (comic writer) 285 note 21

Lebrel (El mayor encanto, amor) 83, 86, 254 note 27, 256 note 52 Lee Crosby, Cathy (actress) 147 Lee, Bruce 187 Lee, Christopher 155 Legouvé, Ernest 116–117, 264 note 79, 83 Lenz, Achim 126, 128 Leopold Whilelm of Austria (1614–1662) 90, 258 note 72 Lesphina 186 Letrowski, Jeff (character of My Little Pony) 198 Lichas 40, 42–44 Licia 69, 249 note 9, 11 Lidsatia 69 Lilith 110, 262 note 46 Lísidas (El mayor encanto, amor) 83, 84, 85 Longinus 155, 273 note 23 Lope de Vega, Félix Arturo (1562–1635, Spanish poet) 83, 253 note 25, 256 note 46 Lotti, Cosimo (17. Cent., Florentine engineer and theatrical designer) 255 note 41 Lucan 11, 120–127, 130–132, 134, 265 note 11 Lucifer 192 Luna 189, 203, 206 Lupin, Remus, 164–165, 167–168, 170–171, 175, 275 note 12, 14, 276 note 31, 33 Lycaon 166 Lycoris 122 Lysicrates 106 Macareus 82 Maciste 99 Madam Mim (The Sword in the Stone, 1963) 73 Maesa, Julia 286 note 39 Magna Mater 70, 236, 284 note 3 Maleficent (Sleeping Beauty) 73, 252 note 38 Maltz, Albert (1908–1985, American screenwriter) 228 Mammaea, Julia 286 note 39 Mamoru Chiba (Sailor Moon) 189 Mandrake the Magician 189 Mane–iac (character of My Little Pony) 208 Mangano, Silvana (1930–1989, actress) 74 Marc 56, 58, 60, 63

Index Marc Aurel 212, 272 note 22, 279 note 80 Marelli, Marco Arturo (stage director) 96, 258 note 1, 254 note 7 Mariana of Austria (1634–1696) 90 Mars 139, 190, 283 note 40 Marshall, Neil (film director and screenwriter) 159 Marston Holloway, Elizabeth 138 Marston, John (1795–1885, English playwright and satirist) 256 note 6 Marston, William Moulton 135, 137–141, 143, 145, 147–149, 266 note 3, 267 note 14, 268 note 24, 28, 269 note 51 Martial 253 note 18 Mary 185, 188, 229 Matsumoto, Leji (author of Manga and Anime series) 281 note 15 Mayr, Johann Sim on (1763–1845, German composer) 93 McLaine, Shirley 75 McManus, Shawn (American comic book artist) 132 Mecchi, Irene (writer for television) 77 Medea 10–11, 74–77, 79, 85, 93–118, 120, 125, 134, 251 note 49, 51, 53, 55, 255 note 43–44, 258 note 1–3, 259 note 6, 8, 17, 260 note 2, 7, 15, 17, 261 note 20, 29–31, 38, 262 note 41, 45, 49, 51, 263 note 54, 62, 64, 69, 264 note 76, 86, 265 note 92, 3 Medusa 13, 198, 207–208, 262 note 45, 281 note 12 Megan (Dog Soldiers) 159 Megera (enchantress) 253 note 26 Meineck, Peter 52–53 Meleagrus 95 Mercury 90, 135, 180, 189, 258 note 73 Merida (Brave 2012) 77 Mermaids 179 Meyer, Stephenie (Author of Twilight, writer) 154 Michelet, Jules (1798–1874, French historian) 113, 117, 263 note 63 Mickey Mouse 132, 266 note 17 Milhaud, Darius (1892–1974, French composer) 93 Minerva 15, 264 note 88 Minos 205 Minotaur 154–155, 157, 184, 204–205, 208, 271 note 4, 273 note 24, 25, 27

331

Mira 240 Mira de Amescua, Antonio (1578? – 1636?, Spanish dramatist) 253 note 25 Miriam 225, 230–231, 287 note 2, 288 note 20 Mithras 221, 287 note 45 Miyazaki, Hayao (Japanese film director and Manga artist) 177, 182, 280 note 5, 283 note 40 Moirae 71–72 Montalbán, Juan Pérez de (1602–1638, Spanish dramatist) 253 note 25 Monteverdi, Claudio (1567–1643, Italian componist) 101 Moorhead, Agnes (1900–1974, actress) 75 Moreau, Gustave (1826–1898) 108, 114–117, 261 note 34, 263 note 67, 264 note 74, 78 Morgana 188 Morris, William 111–114, 117, 261 note 38, 262 note 51, 263 note 57 Mossa, Gustav Adolf (1883–1971 French Symbolist painter) 217, 219 Mother Gothel (Rapunzel, 2010) 76 Moya, Juan Pérez (16. Cent., Spanish author) 86, 257 note 54 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus (1756–1791) 75, 247 note 13 Mulan (Mulan, 1998) 77 Müller, Heiner (1929–1995, formerly East German dramatist) 93, 101–102, 259 note 18 Music (El mayor encanto, amor) 84 Nadeshiko, Yamato (ideal of the perfect Japanese woman) 194, 283 note 43 Nagai, Go (Manga artist) 193, 181 note 15 Namor (Marvel Comics superhero) 180, 281 note 9 Nausicaa 177, 280 note 5, 283 note 40 Neptune 81–90, 180, 258 note 74 Nero 153 Nessus 43 Nielsen, Erik (conductor) 258 note 1 Niemöller, Martin (1892–1984, German Lutheran pastor) 237, 291 note 53 Niobe 236 Nobile, Germán (comic writer) 285 note 21 Noguchi, Isamu (1904–1988, Japan– american designer) 99, 299 note 14

332

Index

Nonnus 11 Norns (female supernatural creatures of German mythology) 70 Numa 221, 287 note 43 Octavian 8 Odin 56–57, 60–62, 65, 248 note 19, 250 note 23 Odysseus 12, 71, 74, 77, 80–86, 88–90, 161, 242 note 41, 257 note 66, 258 note 73, 274 note 57 Oedipus 2, 85, 259 note 11 Olivares, Gaspar de Guzmán (1587–1645, Spanish statesman) 86–89, 257 note 65, 67 Olympians 187, 207, 278 note 60 Oreius 278 note 60 Orestes 73, 79 Orestes (city prefect) 237–238, 240 Orpheus 79, 181–183, 192–193, 195, 281 note 12 Osiris 29, 33 Otrera 139 Ovid 9, 11, 20, 69, 71, 79–82, 107, 112–114, 116, 166, 172, 181, 195, 207, 253 note 19, 23, 25, 263 note 62, 266 note 17 Palicki, Adrianne (actress) 150 Pallas 264 note 88 Pandora 186, 271 note 7, 283 note 44 Papaya (goddess of Fate, Hittite) 70 Parcae 69, 71 Parmenion 154 Pasiphae 79 Pasolini, Pier Paolo (1922–1975) 10, 250 note 44, 251 note 51, 254 note 3 Patmore, Coventry (1823–1896, poet) 111, 262 note 47 Pausanias 166 Peel, Emma 145 Pegasus 201, 207–208 Péladan, Joséphin (French novelist and occultist) 216–217, 286 note 23 Peleus 169 Pelias 75, 94–95, 97 Penelope 74, 107, 251 note 47 Pentheus 250 note 44 Perse 79 Persephone 8, 186 Perseus 207–208, 281 note 12

Pescucci, Gabriella (costum designer of Agora, 2010) 290 note 51 Peter, the fisherman 228, 230 Petronius 71, 166 Petronius Cornigus (cursed person in a defixio) 28–29 Pharaoh (knight of Saint Seiya) 188 Philip II (Spanish king, 1527–1598) 86, 89 Philip IV (of Spain, 1605–1665) 79, 83, 86–90, 256 note 46 Philomela 113 Phobos 267 note 16 Pholos 169, 171 Phrixos 100 Phryne 235 Phrynichos 53 Phyllis 114, 263 note 71 Picus 81–82 Pinkie Pie 201, 206 Pirithous 207 Plato 2–3, 5, 199, 204, 2241 note 7, 260 note 16 Pliny 106, 108, 166, 172–173, 253 note 18, 260 note 15 Poe, Edgar Allan 288 note 5 Polanski, Roman 161 Polidoro (El mayor encanto, amor) 253 note 27 Polydamna 106 Polydectes 207 Pompey 121, 123–125 Poron (little Pollon) 183–184, 193–195 Porphyrius 122 Poseidon 179–180, 185, 187, 189 Pothos 217 Priapus 122 Prince, Diana 150, 269 note 44 Princess Celestia 201, 203–204, 206 Princess Luna 203, 206 Prometheus 140, 169, 183, 186, 191 Psyche 180 Purcell, Henry (1659–1695, English componist) 101 Pyramus 185 Queen of the Night (Mozart, Zauberflöte) 75 Quintus Dias 159–161 Quirinus Pistor (cursed person in a defixio) 30–31

Index Rachel (1821–1858, actress) 264 note 79 Rai, Aishwarya, (actress) 240 Raja Merong Mahawangsa (legendary Malaysian warrior) 272 note 22 Rapunzel 76–77 Reimann, Aribert (contemporary German composer) 10–11, 93–96, 98–102, 258 note 3, 259 note 4 Remus 165, 275 note 12 Renzi, Mateo (author of the Tratado del Privado Perfecto, 1622) 257 note 65 Rice, Anne (author of The Vampire Chronicles) 154 Rigg, Diana 145 Riordan, Rick (author) 198 Ristori, Adelaide (1822–1906, Italian actress) 116, 264 note 79 Roberts, Julia 76, 252 note 58 Robinson, Lillian (1941–2006, American feminist and writer) 270 note 60 Romeo 185 Romulus (last roman emperor) 240 Romulus (roman myth and code name of Remus Lupin) 165, 275 note 12 Ronan (Centaurs) 170–171, 278 note 58 Roosevelt, Franklin D. 149 Rosa, Salvator (1615–1673, painter) 119 Rossetti, Dante Gabriel (1828–1882) 110–112, 262 note 46 Rowling, Joanne K., 133, 163–169, 171, 173–175, 199, 274 note 4, 275 note 7, 9, 12, 276 note 37, 278 note 65, 68, 279 note 96 Ruskin, John (1819–1900, art critic and philanthropist) 111, 113–114, 263 note 64, 264 note 88 Sagana 120, 122 Said, Edward (1935–2003) 221 Sailor Mars 190 Sailor Mercury 180, 184 Sailor Moon 180, 187, 189, 193–194, 196, 282 note 30, 283 note 37 Sailor Neptune 180 Sailor Pluto 189 Samantha (TV–serie Bewitch) 75 Sanders, Rupert (film director) 252 note 58 Sandman 132, 194 Sandys, Frederick (1829–1904) 109–111, 113, 261 note 38, 262 note 40

333

Sarafian, Katherine (film producer) 77 Satan 166, 254 note 33 Savinio, Alberto (1891–1952, Italian writer and painter) 74 Scaeva 123 Scamander, Newt 170, 275 note 6 Schaffner, Franklin (Film director) 56, 249 note 29 Scopas 217 Scorpan 206 Scribonius Curio 4 Scylla 81, 183 Sekhmet 109 Selen, Suna 252 note 58 Selenia 191 Seneca 98, 108, 186, 264 note 80 Serenity/Selene 189–191 Servilia 236 Seth 29–30, 33 Severa Tertionicna 68 Sextus Pompeius 124, 265 note 9 Shaka (ca 1787–1828, Zulu king) 189 Shakespeare, William (1564–1616) 45, 155, 185, 272 note 20 Shaw, George Bernard (1856–1950) 45 Sienkiewicz, Henryk (1846–1916, Polish novelist) 227 Silvia 191 Simaetha 110 Simmons, Jean (actress) 231 Singh, Tarsem 252 note 58 Sirens 73, 81, 85 Snape, Severus 165 Snow White 75–76, 181, 190, 252 note 58, 281 note 11, 283 note 38 Soaemias, Julia 286 note 39 Sol Invictus Elagabal 211, 220, 222, 287 note 45 Solomon, Simeon (British painter) 216–218, 222 Sophocles 2, 8, 39–42, 44–51, 53–54, 74, 245 note 19, 27, 261 note 20 Sophonisba 265 note 6 Souryo, Fuyumi (manga artist) 283 note 40 Spartacus 13, 162, 235, 271 note 4, 274 note 60, 288 note 17 Speiser, Sarah (actress) 127 Spencer–Stanhope, John Roddam (1829–1908, English artist) 113, 262 note 51

334

Index

Sphinx 85–86, 132–133, 271 note 12 Spike 207–208 St John, Betta (actress) 231, 289 note 24 Steinem, Gloria 145, 147, 270 note 60 Stevens, Leslie (author) 56 Stewart, Kristen 252 note 58 Stoker, Bram (1847–1912) 158 Sun 191, 211–214, 216–218, 222, 224 Superman 137, 142, 145, 147, 269 note 59 Sura (cursed person in a defixio) 32, 34–36 Synesius (bishop) 237 Tacitus 172 Takahashi, Rumiko (Manga artist) 194 Teiresias 71 Telemachus 183 Tertullian 5, 23 Tex Avery (1908–1980, American cartoonist) 251 note 45 Tezuka, Osamu (1928–1989, Japanese cartoonist and film producer) 178–182, 184, 195, 280 note 4, 7 Thax 159 The General (protagonist of Cruel and Tender) 46–51, 53 Theocritus 110 Theodorakis, Mikis (Greek composer) 258 note 2 Theodosius 214 Theokoles 162 Theron, Charlize 76, 252 note 58 Theseus 12, 79, 84, 198, 205, 207 Thessaly/Larissa 132–134, 266 note 18 Thestylis 262 note 39 Thisbe 185 Thomas, Roy (American comic book writer and editor) 250 note 45 Thoth (Egyptian god) 207 Thucydides 52 Tiberius 228–230 Timantes (El mayor encanto, amor) 254 note 27 Time Turner 198 Timomachus 108 Tirek 204, 206–207 Tiresias 2, 80 Titans 13, 153, 155, 199, 207, 271 note 4, 8, 273 note 26 Titinia 4

Tocchini, Greg (illustrator and cover artist) 250 note 45 Tolkien, John Ronald Reuel (1892–1973) 163 Toriyama, Akira (Manga artist) 194 Trevor, Steve 136, 142–143, 149, 268 note 36 Triton 179–180, 195 Tsukino Usagi (Sailor Moon) 189–190 Turner, J.M. William (1775–1851) 103, 105 Twilight Sparkle 201, 203, 206, 284 note 9 Tysens, Gysbert (Dutch playwright, 17th. Cent.) 213, 221, 285 note 11, 12, 286 note 26 Umbridge, Dolores (member of the Ministry of Magic) 170, 277 note 54 Unico (unicorn of Kuroi Kumo Shiroi Hane) 180–181, 190, 195, 281 note 10 Uranus 267 note 16 Ursula the Witch (Disney’s The Little Mermaid, 1989) 73 Varinia 235 Veia 120, 122 Venus 90, 108, 180–181, 216 Venus Genetrix 108 Villeroy, Auguste (playwright) 216 Virgil 69, 79–82, 122, 125, 171, 187 Virgin of Mercy 233 Virgo 189 Viviane 188 Voldemort/Dark Lord 163, 168, 170, 173–174, 275 note 12 von Ballenstedt, Uta 76 Von Krafft–Ebing, Richard (psychiatrist) 217 Von Trier’s, Lars 251 note 51 Vulcan 253 note 26 Waballath 225 Waggoner, Lyle (actor) 149 Wallace, Lew 227 Waltz, Sasha (German choreographer and dancer) 101 Waterhouse, John William (1849–1917) 110, 262 note 41 Weaver, Sigourney 252 note 58 Weisz, Rachel 237, 290 note 52

Index Welles, Orson (film director) 64 Wertham, Frederic (1895–1981, psychiatrist) 142 Willingham, Bill (comic writer and illustrator) 132 Wonder Girl 143 Wonder Woman 13, 135–143, 145–150, 267 note 3, 5, 268 note 24, 26, 269 note 44, 49–51, 60 Xena 154, 235–236, 240, 272 note 16, 292 note 60 Xenophanes 5 Xenophon 3

335

Yamato Takeru (legendary Japanese hero) 188, 194 Yearling, A.K. (character of My Little Pony) 198 Yoshizaku, Yasuhiko (anima and manga artist) 185, 282 note 20 Yumaiosu 183 Yumi 183 Zamponi, Giuseppe (1619–1662, composer) 258 note 70 Zenobia 225–226 Zeus 42, 46–48, 166, 169, 185–186, 194, 202, 267 note 16, 272 note 15 Zosimus 211