Augustan Poetry and the Irrational 9780198724728, 0198724721

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Introduction: Augustan Poetry and the Irrational*

Augustan Poetry and the Irrational Philip Hardie

Print publication date: 2016 Print ISBN-13: 9780198724728 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2015 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198724728.001.0001

Introduction: Augustan Poetry and the Irrational* Philip Hardie

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198724728.003.0001

Abstract and Keywords The chapter surveys manifestations of the irrational in the poetry produced in the time of Augustus. This is a period sometimes thought of as obeying a classicizing and rationalist aesthetic, in keeping with the peace and order established by the first emperor after the violence and irrationality of civil war. The following topics are discussed: the representation of furor, ‘madness’, above all in Virgil’s poetry; erotic irrationality, with reference to both love elegy and other genres; Dionysus and the Dionysiac, in the contexts of politics and poetics; rationality and irrationality in didactic poetry; female figures of unreason. Previous literature on the subject is surveyed. The ‘Introduction’ also shows how the remaining chapters fit into the larger picture. Keywords:   Augustan, classical, irrational, madness, erotic, Dionysiac, didactic

As a topic for a conference, ‘Augustan poetry and the irrational’ was prompted by the wish to test a popular preconception of Augustan literature and art as a period of classicism, whose artistic products display a balance and order—a rationality indeed—achieved out of late Republican experiments with various Greek genres and forms, and to be followed by the breaking of a harmonious classical equilibrium in the virtuoso works of Ovid and of the first-century AD successors to the Augustan poets.1 More broadly the label Augustan is then (Oxford English Dictionary 2) ‘applied to the period of highest purity and refinement of any national literature’, and in particular the literature and culture of later seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England, a period (or at least the Page 1 of 29

 

Introduction: Augustan Poetry and the Irrational* eighteenth century) which has also been labelled the Age of Reason, or identified as a period of Enlightenment, or, more specifically, the ‘English Enlightenment’.2 In a recent essay on ‘The concept of the classical and the canons of model authors in Roman literature’ Mario Citroni emphasizes the (p.2) link between the idea of the classical and rationality: ‘in certain periods of the European cultural tradition the greatest prestige has been given to works that were more or less arbitrarily attributed characteristics of composition marked by an intrinsic rationality’; Citroni concludes by pointing to ‘the great value of the texts [of the Augustan period] admitted into the new Latin canon, in concurring to give posterity an idea of classicism that unites canonical prestige and typological qualities connected with the ideals of measure, rationality, and organic structure’. But Citroni also notes the partial and tendentious nature of the construction of a classical canon: ‘In the case of [Greek and Roman] literature, the reduction of the texts of Homer, Sophocles, or Virgil to emblems of a rational, measured, balanced art meant making a largely arbitrary selection of certain characteristics of these authors.’3 Equally familiar is the idea that what is claimed as the aesthetic balance and restraint of Augustan literature and art is the expression of an overcoming of the irrational and disorderly in the political and ideological spheres, as the new Augustan order finally draws a line under the madness of the civil wars. Paul Zanker’s account, in The power of images in the age of Augustus, of a correspondence between an ideology of political orderliness and the style and imagery of Augustan art continues to be very influential more than a quarter of a century after its publication, and its underlying thesis still commands support, despite criticism and qualification over the years. Very—perhaps too— memorable, for example, is Zanker’s contrastive characterization of an imagery of Dionysiac excess associated with Mark Antony, and the classicizing, and also stiffly archaizing, style associated with the new princeps who takes Apollo as his presiding god.4 As a title for a conference and a volume ‘Augustan poetry and the irrational’ is also a provocative nod in the direction of the title of E. R. Dodds’ famous study of The Greeks and the irrational (1951). Provocative, because we do not automatically associate the Romans with the rational in the way that did the young man whom, according to the opening anecdote of his Sather Lectures, Dodds met looking at the Parthenon sculptures in the British Museum ‘some years ago’. The young man confessed to Dodds that ‘this Greek stuff doesn’t (p. 3) move me one bit’. When asked to define the reasons for his lack of response, he replied, ‘Well, it’s all so terribly rational, if you know what I mean.’ And so, Dodds tells us, he set off on his intellectual journey into the deeper and darker regions of the Greek psyche. If we find the Romans uncongenial it is not because they are as rational as Dr Spock, but because they are eminently ‘practical’, or Page 2 of 29

 

Introduction: Augustan Poetry and the Irrational* perhaps because we associate them with deeply unattractive kinds of unreasoning behaviour, such as an addiction to the gladiatorial arena. As Elena Giusti acutely points out in this volume, the fact that we do not have a book on The Romans and the irrational may reflect a prejudice that the Romans are a shallow race, whose depth psychology cannot begin to match in interest that of the Greeks. We do however have a growing number of studies that have productively applied psychoanalytic theory to Latin poetry, and Augustan poetry in particular.5 If we still lack a general study of The Romans and the irrational, it is not quite true that we lack a book on Rationality in Roman thought. If it is the case that intellectual and cultural historians do not typically identify the age of Augustus as an age of scientific, philosophical or religious enlightenment, Claudia Moatti has given us La Raison de Rome. Naissance de l’esprit critique à la fin de la République (1997), in which she argues for an intellectual revolution in the name of Reason—but in the last century of the Republic.6 Andrew Wallace-Hadrill’s definition (in an essay published in the same year) of an ‘Augustan cultural revolution’ would extend into the Augustan period the period of what he refers to an ‘an inevitable adoption of superior civilisation and rationality’ (p. 12), but he sees this process as coinciding with a revolutionary shift in authority, as academic experts take over from the Republican ruling class as the controllers of knowledge, with the further appropriation of intellectual authority by Augustus, who ‘reads, respects, employs, and exploits antiquarians’ (p. 14), absorbs legal experts into his consilium and who continues his predecessor Julius Caesar’s rationalization of time through the reform of the calendar.7 Ovid’s Fasti is a translation into a major (p.4) work of poetry of the new and rational order of imperial time, although it is both much more than that, as Ovid weaves his own orderings—and disorderings—into the framework of the official Fasti, and less than that, in that the reader is left with only half of the newly regulated year, through what many suspect to be a deliberate tease on the part of a poet who has been rendered unable or unwilling by exile to offer the princeps the ‘Julian’ months of July and August. The Fasti is one of the rather numerous didactic or quasi-didactic poetic projects of the Augustan period, ‘poetry of knowledge’ which, taken together, may reasonably be understood as a response to and continuation of the systematic and encyclopaedic ordering of knowledge of the later Republican and Augustan periods. But Augustan didactic poems are anything but straightforward versifications of that systematization, and many of them display what can only be called a failure of reason. To these I shall return.

1 Fvror: Virgilian Beginnings and Endings The image of a uniformly calm and balanced classicism is no doubt always an over-simplification (if not a caricature), except perhaps in the case of certain periods of architecture: the other visual arts and the verbal arts never eschew Page 3 of 29

 

Introduction: Augustan Poetry and the Irrational* the representation of human passions. But what is perhaps not so expected in the Augustan poets is that we find not just celebration of the mastery of irrationality, of the passions, of disorder and chaos, but something of an obsession with the danger that passion and irrationality once suppressed will burst out once more. Furor is the key term here, haunting the early years of Augustan Rome as a spectre of the disorder of the previous decades. Furor is consistently associated with political violence and popularis unrest by Cicero, who attributes it to Clodius, Catiline, and Mark Antony, and furor is also associated with the extreme form of political dissension that is civil war, for example in Horace Epode 7, 13–14 furorne caecus, an rapit uis acrior, | an culpa? ‘Is it blind madness or some deadlier force that carries you away? Some ancient guilt?’8 The (p.5) archetypal episode of an outbreak of furor suppressed, what might even be called the basic Augustan plot, is the storm scene that opens the Aeneid.9 The further consequences of the storm are pursued in the following scene between Venus and Jupiter, which concludes with Jupiter’s prophecy of the chaining of Furor at the end of Roman history: chaining, not annihilation, and the last four words of Jupiter’s speech (Aen. 1.296), fremet horridus ore cruento ‘will roar wildly with bloody mouth’, leave us with a vivid and disturbing image.10 The future fremet is the last of Jupiter’s prophetic future tenses, but this is also a future from the point of view of Virgil’s Augustan readers, for whom the Gates of War will have been closed (claudentur), but for whom Furor will continue to roar into an indefinite future (fremet). Even more disturbing, and notorious, is the final image of the Aeneid as a whole, the sudden killing of Turnus by an infuriated Aeneas. From the many commentaries on this scene, I select Debra Hershkowitz’s account in her book on The madness of epic: ‘As the Aeneid is drawn to a close we hear again, in the beating of the Dira’s wings and in the screeching of Aeneas’ spear, the menacing growls of Furor from behind the Belli portae, the clamour of the internal barbarians at the gates of our minds. Furor can be subdued but not destroyed; it is a force which may, at times, lie latent but is and always will be able to surge again, since it is stronger than any bond or any trope which imprisons it. Such madness is itself not a potential condition, but rather represents the potential for any action in the universe of the Aeneid.’11 When furor runs out of steam it is time for the Augustan poet to stop writing poetry, and it is with flat negatives that Horace signs off on his lyric project in the last poem of Odes 4,15.17–20 custode rerum Caesare non furor | ciuilis aut uis exiget otium, | non (p.6) ira, quae procudit ensis | et miseras inimicat urbis ‘While Caesar is guardian of the state, neither civil madness or violence will drive out peace, nor will anger, which beats out swords and sets city against unhappy city.’12 Stefano Rebeggiani in this volume presents an original argument that in the Aeneid Virgil repeatedly alludes to the madness, furor, of a vengeful Orestes in order to legitimate the violence of Octavian in pursuit of vengeance for his

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Introduction: Augustan Poetry and the Irrational* murdered father Julius Caesar: in the end the furor of civil war is directed by Jupiter and Fate to the establishment of Augustan stability. Opening and closing moments of unreason are also found in Virgil’s first two works. The book of Eclogues ends with Gallus’ acceptance of the omnipotence of Amor, an irrational furor for which there is no medicina, tamquam haec sit nostri medicina furoris ‘As if this [hunting in Arcadia] could be a remedy for my madness’ (60).13 It is the first of Gallus’ divine visitors, Apollo god of moderation and reason, who asks the reason for Gallus’ madness, 22 ‘Galle, quid insanis?’, a condition for which as god of medicine he has no cure. The god Pan then teaches the lesson about Love’s lack of measure or mean, 28 ‘ecquis erit modus?’ inquit. ‘Amor non talia curat’ ‘“What limit will there be?” he said. “Love has no care for such things”.’ Love is a boundless force which cannot be restrained within the limits of a classicizing aesthetic of moderation, such as Virgil shows his own art to be when he elegantly concludes the Eclogues book in a seven-line epilogue introduced by (10.70–1) Haec sat erit, diuae, uestrum cecinisse poetam, | dum sedet et gracili fiscellam texit hibisco ‘This will be enough for your poet to have sung, goddesses, while he sits and weaves his basket out of slender mallow.’ Basket-weaving, the figure for the Eclogues poet’s own textual activity, is a measured craft that produces well-proportioned and well-wrought containers, but here at the end of the Eclogues book it will provide no therapy for Gallus, even if near the beginning of the book Gallus’ alter ego as an immoderate lover, the Corydon of Eclogue 2, envisages such activity as a realistic alternative to the immoderate (p.7) power of love: 2.68–72 me tamen urit amor: quis enim modus adsit amori? | a, Corydon, Corydon, quae te dementia cepit?…quin tu aliquid saltem potius, quorum indiget usus, | uiminibus mollique paras detexere iunco? ‘But love burns me: what limit indeed could there be to love?…Why don’t you rather set about at least weaving something for practical use out of switches and soft rushes?’—but with what degree of self-delusion? It is not so often noticed that the Eclogues begin with moments of failure of reason or of intelligence. Meliboeus, the shepherd on his way into exile from the pastoral landscape, is the first to criticize himself for a mental blindness to the signs that might have alerted him to approaching disaster, 1.16–17 saepe malum hoc nobis, si mens non laeua fuisset, | de caelo tactas memini praedicere quercus ‘I remember that lightning-struck oaks often forewarned of this disaster, if my mind had not been so obtuse.’ But it is too late to correct it now. By contrast Tityrus reprimands himself for a stupidity that he was in time to correct, 19–23 urbem quam dicunt Romam, Meliboee, putaui | stultus ego hic nostrae similem…sic canibus catulos similis, sic matribus haedos | noram, sic paruis componere magna solebam ‘In my stupidity, Meliboeus, I thought that the city they call Rome, was like our city here—that was how I knew about puppies being like dogs, and kids like their mothers, that was how I used to compare great things to small.’ The vast size of Rome renders meaningless the ratios of conventional pastoral comparison. Incommensurability, that which exceeds the Page 5 of 29

 

Introduction: Augustan Poetry and the Irrational* limits of a previous conceptual frame (noram): here at the beginning of the Eclogues we have a first hint of the Augustan sublime, to which increasing attention has been paid recently by students of Augustan (as well as postAugustan) poetry. The sublime is the result of the human mind’s attempt to come to terms with that which exceeds comprehension. Kant identifies the sublime as the moment where the incomprehensible is mastered by reason: as Philip Shaw sums it up, ‘In the case of the mathematical sublime, it is the ability of the mind to submit formlessness, such as the random excessive movements of a storm, or the imperceptible contours of a vast cathedral to the rational idea of totality.’14 But the experience of sublime objects is always liable to a surplus of that which cannot be explained or controlled by reason, to an untameable (p.8) frisson of terror. Elsewhere I have argued that Virgil’s personification of Fama (on whom see also below), the monstrous, irrational,—and, importantly, female—, producer of uncontrollable words is, among other things, a figure for the Virgilian sublime.15 Hardie in this volume discusses an episode in the afterlife of Fama in an epic on the sublime of the New World discoveries of early modernity. What Tityrus, in Eclogue 1, sees in the unimaginably vast Rome oversteps another limit in a way that might be thought to be irrational. He identifies the human youth who acts as his saviour as, literally, a god, to whom he will offer formal sacrifice in future (42–3). Tityrus is an impressionable country bumpkin who doesn’t know any better, and Virgil distances himself and his sophisticated readers from the identification. But the approximation, even equation, of human ruler and god runs through Augustan literature and art. If we believe that the iuuenis is Octavian, the first Eclogue introduces us to a recurrent source of the irrational in Augustan poetry, the impossibility of making sense of the princeps within the accepted categories of divine and human. The iuuenis deus of Eclogue 1 restores order within Tityrus’ world, a more amenable god than the pitiless divine boy at the end of the tenth Eclogue, Amor, an unteachable and implacable god, against whom, as we have seen, a rational practice of medicina will have no effect. Like the iuuenis deus of the first Eclogue, Amor is a god who cannot be contained within the world of pastoral woods, siluae (10.63 ipsae rursus concedite siluae ‘you woods, give way again’, followed by 69 et nos cedamus Amori ‘let us too yield to Love’). The iuuenis deus, in contrast, does know how to be pliant towards suffering humans, at least selectively: he exercises his power to allow Tityrus to return to the siluae, but in the case of Meliboeus he either abstains from exercising that power or uses his power negatively, with the result that Meliboeus is not redeemed from the effects of the madness that is civil war, Ecl. 1.71 discordia, the first occurrence in Virgil of the keyword for political madness. Unlike Tityrus, Meliboeus is as inexorably exiled from the green cabinet in Eclogue 1 as is Gallus in Eclogue 10. Book 1 of the Georgics begins by returning to the question of the teachability of the god-to-be, Octavian, 41–2…ignarosque uiae mecum miseratus agrestis | ingredere et iam nunc adsuesce uocari (p.9) ‘Taking pity with me on the Page 6 of 29

 

Introduction: Augustan Poetry and the Irrational* countryfolk ignorant of the way, enter on your path and accustom yourself already to being addressed in prayer.’ Octavian is here the addressee for what is, in formal terms, the first bit of ‘didactic’ address in the poem, as the second person singular of invocation slides into the second person singular of didactic. Octavian is firstly instructed to collaborate with the poet in the conveyance of instruction to ignarosque uiae…agrestes; and secondly, in the first example in the poem of education through habituation, asked to accustom himself to the role of god-man (that irrational hybrid).16 But once granted as possible the impossibility of an immortal mortal, Caesar, in his choice of future sphere of divinity is warned off making an irrational choice, 36–7 nam te nec sperant Tartara regem, | nec tibi regnandi ueniat tam dira cupido ‘For Tartarus is not expecting you as its king; may so terrible a desire for kingship not come upon you.’ dira cupido, a collocation applied by Lucretius to the irrational insatiability of sexual desire (4.1090 ardescit dira cuppedine pectus ‘the breast burns with dread desire’),17 recurs in the Aeneid with reference to excessive desire (6.373 (Palinurus), 9.185 (Nisus)). In the context of a possible desire to inhabit the Underworld, the adjective dira hints at the mythological Dira ‘Fury’, one of the hellish creatures of dark unreason who, literally or figuratively, infest much Augustan poetry. One big difference between the proem to Georgics 1 and one of its major intertexts, the Lucretian Hymn to Venus, is that Virgil expands the Lucretian vision of the three major world-divisions, earth, sea and sky, to include the Homeric fourth division of the underworld, invisible in the De rerum natura for the simple reason that it does not exist in the Epicurean scheme of things. Virgil’s apotropaic glance at Tartarus here will not succeed in keeping the darker forces of the underworld out of the poem; the third Book reaches a terrifying climax with the eruption of the plague-fury Tisiphone from Stygian darkness into the world of light (3.551–3).18 (p.10) Looking to the end of the Georgics: Book 4 has two endings, the first a failed attempt to escape from the gravitational pull of the underworld, in the tragic second death of Eurydice, the result of Orpheus’ erotic furor, 4.494–5 ‘quis et me…miseram et perdidit, Orpheu, | quis tantus furor?’ ‘What great madness, Orpheus, has destroyed both me, alas, and yourself?’; and the second the regeneration of Aristaeus’ bees through the miracle of the bugonia. The concluding georgic image of the swarm of bees weighing down a tree like full bunches of grapes (4.555–8) scarcely contains the alarming and threatening aspects of the miracle. Virgil describes the bees ‘boiling out’ of the ruptured sides of the oxen (556 efferuere)—like the chariots of civil war that pour out of the starting-gates in the simile at the end of Georgics 1 (512 sese effudere), or like the Fury shot forth from the world of the dead in the plague at the end of Book 3 (551 emissa).19 Unlike Orpheus, Aristaeus has not let himself get carried away, and has level-headedly carried out his mother’s instructions, but a hint of furor lingers in the bees’ noisy eruption from the putrefying carcasses of the cattle. Page 7 of 29

 

Introduction: Augustan Poetry and the Irrational* 2 Erotic Irrationality I focus now on the particular furor of love. This is discussed briefly by E. R. Dodds in Greeks and the irrational with reference to ‘Plato’s fourth type of “divine madness”, the madness of Eros’.20 Virgil’s obsession with the disruptive and destructive power of love in all three major works is notorious, and for some readers even has a touch of the pathological about it. But it is an obsession that Virgil shares with other Augustan poets, notably the love elegists, and an obsession which Horace registers with his advocacy of a more easy-going—a saner, one might say—attitude to sex and love. Making due allowance for the accidents of survival, and granting that in antiquity love is often seen as a madness,21 one might well ask, in what other period of antiquity is so much emphasis placed on the uncontrollable and irrational power of love? Powerful precedents are, of course, not lacking. There are the love-maddened heroines of Greek tragedy (p.11) like Medea and Phaedra. Equally if not more important are the two major surviving poets of the previous generation, Lucretius and Catullus, who both elevate the power of love in ways decisive for the Augustan poets. Lucretius makes of erotic desire an overwhelming and irrational force from which mankind can be rescued by Epicurean reason. O’Rourke in this volume explores Propertius’ testing of the efficacy of the philosophical therapies of Lucretian Epicureanism, and of other philosophical schools, against the force of his own erotic furor. Before Propertius, Catullus acknowledges the destructive irrationality of love but has no remedy against it, any more than does the Gallus of Eclogue 10 (or any more than the gallus, ‘castrated priest of Cybele’, into whom the Attis of Catullus 63 transforms himself, can resist the furor that overtakes him). Catullus 85 is an epigram that throws up its hands at the irrationality and unaccountability of erotic obsession: odi et amo. quare id faciam, fortasse requiris. | nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior ‘I hate and I love. Perhaps you ask why I do that. I do not know, but I feel it to be the case, and I am crucified by it.’ I use the word ‘unaccountability’ with a purpose, because elsewhere Catullus does apply the language of counting and accounting to the experience of love, as in poem 5, Viuamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus, in which Catullus proposes to throw into confusion the accounts of his kiss-counting, to put them beyond the control of the ‘puritan greybeards’ (senum seueriorum): 11 conturbabimus illa, ne sciamus. Here abdication of knowledge works in the poet’s favour, unlike in poem 85.22 The Latin for ‘give an account of, give an explanation of’, rationem reddere, is in origin an accounting term.23 A stereotypical view of Roman reason is that of the rationality of a hard-headed, practical race, interested in material gain; Horace already deals in the stereotype when he contrasts the Greeks’ exclusive desire for praise in the field of the Muses with Roman education’s staple of mental arithmetic, Ars poetica 325–6 Romani pueri longis rationem assem | discunt in partis centum diducere ‘Roman boys learn by long computation to subdivide a pound into an hundred parts’, antithetical to carmina Page 8 of 29

 

Introduction: Augustan Poetry and the Irrational* fingere ‘composing poems’. But Catullus shows how to use the language of counting and accounting and to write poetry at the (p.12) same time. In this volume, Jürgen Schwindt develops a subtle analysis of the ‘mad’ lover Catullus’ ‘cantatoric’ use of counting and accounting in poems 5 and 7 in order to assert control of the world of love against the envy of the outside world, and contrasts this with Horace’s use in the carpe diem ode, Odes 1.11, of the measures of poetry in order to outmanoeuvre the envy of time (inuida aetas).24 What is probably our first surviving book of Latin love elegy, Propertius 1, programmatically introduces love as a madness, a furor, 1.1.7 ei mihi, iam toto furor hic non deficit anno ‘Alas, it is now a whole year that this madness has raged in me.’25 Taking this together with Gallus’ description in Eclogue 10 as a furor (60), one has the impression that the new genre of love elegy is inspired by the madness of love. Is this the first time that a genre has been forged by irrationality? In 3.24, which forms a ring with 1.1, Propertius concludes his elegiac plot of madness and irrationality with a celebration of his return to health and escape from the storm of love, dedicating himself to the goddess of sanity: 19 Mens Bona, si qua dea es, tua me in sacraria dono ‘Good Sense, if you are a goddess, I dedicate myself to your shrine.’ Propertius’ conclusion is the starting-point for Ovid as elegiac lover, in the Triumph of Amor in Amores 1.2: 31–2 Mens Bona ducetur manibus post terga retortis | et Pudor et castris quicquid Amoris obest ‘Good Sense will be led [in triumph] with hands bound behind her back, together with Modesty and whatever stands against the camp of Love’; 35–6 Blanditiae comites tibi erunt Errorque Furorque, | assidue partes turba secuta tuas ‘Endearments, Wandering and Madness will be your companions, a constant crowd of your followers.’ Ovid combines (p.13) allusion to his elegiac predecessor with allusion to more public forms of art, pageant and literature. The Augustan triumph, which seals the victory of the princeps over the forces of unreason and disorder, is now turned upside down, celebrating the empire of erotic unreason.26 The scene is a perversion of Apelles’ painting of a victory parade of Alexander the Great, in which Furor was bound in chains, set up in the Forum of Augustus (Pliny, Nat. 35.36.93–4; Serv. Dan. on Aen. 1.294); Ovid doubtless relies on his reader’s awareness of Virgil’s allusion to this painting at Aeneid 1.294–6. Furor is first personified in Roman poetry by Virgil in that passage and by Ovid here. Virgil’s Furor has his arms chained behind his back; Ovid’s hands are tied behind his back (as were Propertius’ before his escape from love) because Furor is roaming free as Cupid’s companion.27 The political aspect of the Ovidian triumph of Love is made unambiguous in the closing couplet of Amores 1.2, 51–2 aspice cognati felicia Caesaris arma: | qua uicit, uictos protegit ille manu ‘Look at the successful warfare of your relative Caesar Augustus. Where he conquers, his might protects the conquered.’ This is a retrospective comment on the analogy between the Propertian erotic furor and Page 9 of 29

 

Introduction: Augustan Poetry and the Irrational* the forces of furor that oppose the Augustan order of things, an analogy whose implications are subtly pursued by O’Rourke in this volume. The lost love elegy of Gallus is probably one of Virgil’s many sources for the depiction of Dido’s erotic furor.28 But neither that, nor the manifest use of tragic models for the maddened heroine, is sufficient to explain the massive presence of erotic madness as a motivating force in Virgil’s epic poem. Love for women is central to the plots of the Homeric epics, but neither the Iliad nor the Odyssey dwells on a depiction of irresistible and irrational desire To be sure, Apollonius of Rhodes’ Medea is the main model for a detailed analysis within an epic of the conflict between erotic passion and other attachments and duties, but neither is that adequate as an explanation for the place given to Dido’s passion in an epic on the foundation of Rome. The memory of Cleopatra’s sexual allures also (p. 14) plays a part, but even so I think that we are so familiar with Virgil’s Dido and Aeneas story that we rarely stop to reflect just how striking a decision it was on Virgil’s part to use love madness to motivate the catastrophic rift between the Carthaginian and Trojan leaders, with its world-shaking historical consequences. Both Dido and Turnus are motivated by extreme emotions that blind them to a more rational course of action, and in the last quarter of the poem, Aeneas himself is subject to two overpowering fits of furious anger. Aeneas is impelled by a furor born of affect-laden pietas and of amor patriae; Dido by the furor of love and then of hatred and despair; Turnus by a furor fuelled by self-regard, superbia, and, once more, amor. Again we perhaps rarely stop to think how unusual it is for all the major characters in an epic to be afflicted by an intensity of emotion that verges on, or spills over into, madness. In the Iliad, for example, the anger and grief of Achilles is marked out as in excess of that of the other leading characters. Dido and Turnus wear their hearts on their sleeves in a way that Aeneas does not for much of the poem. The taciturnity and frigidity of Aeneas as a character might be understood as a necessary defence against uncontrollable emotions that might otherwise swamp him as well, but which he keeps under control (for the most part) through a willed repression of emotion. Programmatic in this respect are lines 208–9 of Book 1 (after the storm-tossed landing on the shore of Carthage), talia uoce refert curisque ingentibus aeger | spem uultu simulat, premit altum corde dolorem ‘These were his words, but he was sick with his great cares; he showed the appearance of hope on his face, and pressed down his grief deep in his heart.’ Repression is a recurrent response in Augustan poetry to the problem of the irrational, but the repressed has a way of returning.29

3 The Dionysiac In The Greeks and the irrational E. R. Dodds has some discussion of Dionysus in the chapter on ‘The blessings of madness’, and an (p.15) appendix on Page 10 of 29

 

Introduction: Augustan Poetry and the Irrational* ‘Maenadism’.30 But it is in his earlier commentary on the Bacchae that Dodds most fully explores the irrationalism of Dionysiac religion.31 In the ‘Introduction’ to his commentary Dodds introduces the reader to Dionysiac religion as Euripides dramatizes it in the Bacchae through a contrast with later images of Bacchus (a passage quoted by Elena Giusti in this volume): ‘It was the Alexandrines, and above all the Romans—with their tidy functionalism and their cheerful obtuseness in all matters of the spirit—who departmentalized Dionysus as “jolly Bacchus” the wine-god with his riotous crew of nymphs and satyrs. As such he was taken over from the Romans by Renaissance painters and poets; and it was they in turn who shaped the image in which the modern world pictures him.’32 Dionysus sanitized—made more reasonable. The Dionysiac is everywhere in Augustan poetry and art: Ariadne and Bacchus, maenads and satyrs, who do indeed riot through the decorative arts in an invigoratingly ornamental way.33 When it comes to poetry, Nisbet and Hubbard are dismissive of the possibility that Horace Odes 2.19, on a vision of Bacchus teaching song, has anything profound or serious to say: ‘The craftsman who moulded the Ode to Bacchus was an Apollonian not a Dionysiac, a Gray not a Schiller; his controlled ecstasy implied no commitment but was contrived with calculating deliberation; unlike the fasting Bacchae, when he shouted “Euhoe” he was well fed (Juv. 7.62) and in his right mind.’34 Nisbet and Rudd opine that ‘by the Augustan period Maenadism in Italy seems no more than a literary topic that appealed to poets’ taste for the exotic and bizarre (as did the continuing rites of Cybele)’.35 However in their detailed reading of Odes 3.25 itself they are more open to Horace’s use of the Dionysiac as a way of examining abnormal states of mind: ‘What one takes away…is some sense of the mysterious phenomenon of poetic possession.’36 Recent studies have deepened our understanding of the serious uses to which Bacchus and the Dionysiac are put in the Augustan (p.16) period, in the spheres of politics and ideology, of poetics, and more generally in the expression of abnormal states of consciousness.37 In a recent Oxford thesis, Fiachra Mac Góráin makes the case for the pervasive presence of the myth of Dionysus as a narrative model for the plot of the Aeneid, and for the central opposition of the Apolline and Dionysiac in the Aeneid’s ongoing struggle with irrationality and furor.38 In this volume, Jane Burkowski looks at what happens when Apollo the god of Augustan order and reason finds himself in the irrational world of Latin love-elegy, and loses his self-control. Ovid will dramatize the fall of a sovereign and controlling Apollo into the grip of an unreasoning erotic obsession in the story of Apollo and Daphne in Metamorphoses 1; a direct connection with love elegy is forged both by Ovid’s reworking in this episode of his own worsting at the hands of Amor in Amores 1.1, and by the god of medicine’s complaint that he has no remedy for the disease of love (Met. 1.521–3), alluding to the elegiac

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Introduction: Augustan Poetry and the Irrational* topos of medicina amoris employed by the Gallus of Eclogue 10 and the later elegists. An opposition between Apolline rationality and Dionysiac irrationality has been read by various modern interpreters into the Augustan visual arts and literature. There is always the danger of the anachronistic imposition of a post-Nietzschean polarity, and the further difficulty of interpreting the polarity, if it is present, particularly in the less controllable interpretation of the visual arts. For example, where Gilles Sauron sees in the presence of both laurel and ivy on the floral friezes of the Ara Pacis a symbol of the struggle between Octavian-Apollo and Antony-Dionysus,39 David Castriota argues for a post-Actian reconciliation of Dionysus and Apollo in Augustan iconography as a numen mixtum.40 Recently Andrea Cucchiarelli detects a similar, pre-Actian, ‘binomio dionisiaco-apollineo’ in the Eclogues, in Eclogue 4 as a reflection of Pollio’s policy of political equilibrium and peace between east and west.41 In the (p.17) post-Actian Aeneid, Cucchiarelli points to the balanced pairing of, on the one hand, Hercules and Bacchus, man-gods both formerly associated with Antony, as models for Augustus’ imperial expansionism in the Speech of Anchises at the end of Book 6, and, on the other hand, of Apollo at the end of Book 8, Apollo before whose temple Octavian-Augustus is seated as he reviews the peoples of the world paraded in his triple triumph. Castriota had earlier made the good point that in the scene of the Battle of Actium on the Shield of Aeneas, Dionysus is (pointedly) not seen fighting on the side of Antony and Cleopatra.42 On the other hand, Cucchiarelli would see a political subtext in two unexpected outbursts of a Dionysiac furor in the Georgics. Firstly, the uituperatio uitis at 2.455–7, which comes surprisingly in a book that has celebrated the gifts of Bacchus, and in which the god has been domesticated in an antiquarian account of Trojan-Roman ritual drama (2.385–96). But the same Bacchus, the poet tells us, brought death to tame the raging Centaurs (furentis Centauros) in their wine-soaked battle with the Lapiths. The very next lines introduce the makarismos of the fortunate farmers who enjoy the just earth’s bounty procul discordibus armis ‘far from the weapons of civil strife’, the civil wars whose latest instalment had been the war with the drunken Antony and Cleopatra. At Actium Antony’s ships bore figureheads of rock-throwing Centaurs, according to Propertius 4.6.49, and Antony’s flagship has plausibly been identified in the ship with a Centaur figurehead in the scene of Actium on the Medinaceli-Budapest ‘Actium reliefs’, the cycle reunited for the first time since its discovery in the sixteenth century in Eugenio La Rocca’s Augustus exhibition in the Scuderie del Quirinale and the Grand Palais in Paris.43 Cucchiarelli suggests that we see another civil-war moment in the strange detail in the description of the plague in Georgics of the destructive effect of the wine given as medicine to the dying horses, which revives them only to a frenzied self-sparagmos, 3.509–14… furiisque refecti | ardebant…discissos nudis laniabant dentibus artus ‘They

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Introduction: Augustan Poetry and the Irrational* burned with renewed frenzy…and tearing apart their own limbs mangled them with teeth bared.’ (p.18) Emily Gowers in this volume diagnoses a ‘disturbed and wayward’ Bacchic intoxication in Georgics 2, if of a less destructive kind, in a book characterized by ‘derailment, double vision, transformation and plentiful language’. Elena Giusti shows that a Dionysiac dissolution of boundaries undoes the work done by the Aeneid to establish clear demarcations between Trojan/ Roman, Carthaginian, and Greek, as the spectre of civil-war violence of like against like continues to haunt the first decade of the Augustan settlement. Taming and domestication are not the only ways to bring Dionysus within the Augustan fold. There is a place for madness (dulce est desipere in loco, as Horace concludes his symposiastic Odes 4.12 to an addressee named Vergilius, advising him to ‘mix a little foolishness with your plans’, 4.12.27 misce stultitiam consiliis breuem).44 But it may not always be so easy to keep things within reason. Dionysus bursts the bounds of the Horatian modus in the Bacchic odes 2.19 and 3.25, and already in the Cleopatra ode, 1.37. Here the wine-crazed Cleopatra is brought round from her furor (12 furorem) to the cold light of reality by the harsh truth of defeat (15 ueros timores). Cleopatra’s madness (6–8 Capitolio | regina dementis ruinas…parabat ‘the queen was planning mad ruin for the Capitol’)45 is then celebrated by dithyrambic intoxication and licence at Rome, Nunc est bibendum, nunc pede libero…Richard Hunter traces Horace’s debts to the Bacchae in Odes 1.37 and brings out the double vision that Horace brings from the Euripidean play: both Cleopatra and Octavian embody aspects of both Dionysus and his enemy Pentheus. Hunter concludes: ‘the Dionysiac has proved impossible to confine’.46 Roman triumph justifies the—temporary— outburst of Dionysiac excess to celebrate the overcoming of the Dionysiac irrationality of Cleopatra and Antony, but the next ode, the concluding poem in Odes 1, shows a Horace making doubly sure that this moment of dithyrambic intoxication is not continued, in a poetic gesture of what one might be tempted to call ‘repression’. Odes 1.38, Persicos odi… (p.19) apparatus ‘I hate Persian trappings’, turns away both from the extravagant triumphal celebration of a victory over an eastern enemy compared implicitly to the Athenian defeat of the Persians, and from an orientalizing stylistic excess, an Asianism opposed to a Callimachean Atticism.47 The final image of Odes 1.38, and the final image of the book, is of Horace sub arta | uite bibentem ‘drinking in the dense/confined shade of the vine’ (7–8), where the vine itself hems in the poet as he drinks, confining the possibility of another Dionysiac explosion.48 But, as Andrea Cucchiarelli notes, this exercise in moderation does not last long, and the calm simplicity of 1.38 is followed by the return to the disturbing and visionary poetry of civil war in the next ode, 2.1 (Motum…ciuicum).

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Introduction: Augustan Poetry and the Irrational* Horace is less uninhibited in abandoning himself to Dionysiac altered states of mind in the two ‘Bacchic odes’, 2.19 and 3.25. In the first, a Dionysiac thrill and terror are the effect of a waking vision of ‘Bacchus teaching songs among the lonely crags’. credite posteri ‘Posterity, believe me’, a challenge that only reinforces the readers’ resistance. The eminently reasonable Horace is surely being most unreasonable if he expects us to believe this. In the next ode, 2.20, the last in the book, Horace does the opposite of what he does at the end of Book 1. So far from closing down Dionysiac ravings, 2.20 launches the poet on a fantasy of metamorphosis and flight as he turns into a swan taking wing on a flight-path of worldwide poetic immortality. Horace’s abandonment to Dionysiac fantasies is the more marked when one takes into account allusions in Odes 2.19 to Lucretius, both the use of Dionysiac imagery in Lucretius’ account of his possession by a love of the Muses in the description of his poetic wanderings over pathless ways at De rerum natura 1.921 ff., and Lucretius’ disenchantment of a countryside imagined full of divine presences in the discussion of the delusions created by echoes in Book 4.49 Lucretius uses the language of inspiration and supernatural vision in the service of his own ‘religion of rationality’, as one might call it. But Lucretius’ own overpowering confidence in the ratio of the (p.20) Epicurean philosophy sets the bar at a height beyond the reach of his Augustan successors. The failure of rationality that is found repeatedly in Augustan poets has a variety of determinants, not least of which is the impossible model of Lucretius. Lucretian visions also feed in to Horace’s comparison in Odes 3.25 of his own Dionysian rapture to a Maenad’s amazed vision of a remote and snowy Thracian landscape. Here the poet’s sublime enthusiasm is directly linked to what might be called the ‘imperial sublime’. In his Bacchic rapture, Horace asks (3–6), ‘In what caves shall I be heard practising to set the deathless praise of glorious Caesar among the stars and in the council of Jupiter?’—whither he will follow in the footsteps of the god who ‘fills’ the poet, Bacchus. Alessandro Schiesaro, among others, asks why a Bacchic-inspired frenzy is needed to authorize praise of Caesar, and gives an answer primarily in poetic terms, with reference to poetic freedom and the fulfilment of Horace’s evolution as poet.50 Nisbet and Rudd (p. 299) comment ‘although the celebration of Augustus is the avowed purpose of the ode, that is not its most striking feature; indeed a Maenad’s ecstasy makes an odd analogy for political commitment, however fervid. What one takes away, rather, is some sense of the mysterious phenomenon of poetic possession.’ My suggestion is that a Dionysiac excess is called forth not just by triumphal celebration of the princeps’ victories, but by the paradox of the mangod who is the object of the poet’s praise (a common reading sees Odes 3.25 as reflecting in particular on the sustained praise of Augustus in the Roman Odes). This could be described as the irrationality of the charismatic leader. Max Weber defines charisma as opposed to the rational: ‘in a revolutionary and sovereign manner, charismatic domination transforms all values and breaks all traditional Page 14 of 29

 

Introduction: Augustan Poetry and the Irrational* and rational norms’; ‘since it is “extra-ordinary”, charismatic authority is sharply opposed to rational and particularly bureaucratic authority, and to traditional authority’.51 Augustus, might one say, is an insult to rationality: the mortal who will sup with the gods, the king who has restored the republic, the revolutionary who stands for mos maiorum, the ruthless avenger and the paragon of clementia. Respectable scholars have defended the present tense bibit at Odes 3.3.11–12 quos inter Augustus recumbens (p.21) | purpureo bibit/bibet ore nectar ‘Reclining among them [Pollux and Hercules], Augustus is drinking/will drink nectar with his purple lips.’52 ‘To suggest that Augustus is already drinking in such company is absurd,’ say Nisbet and Rudd, but absurdity in itself is not a sufficient criterion by which to judge what an Augustan poet can or cannot write (although I think myself that Horace probably wrote bibet). One might imagine, for example, that Horace has in mind a work of art in which the princeps is depicted in the company of gods. In this volume, Stephen Heyworth draws attention to the irrational in panegyric in Augustan poetry, and finds much that is ‘absurd’. Heyworth emphasizes the fact that the poets ‘draw attention to the lack of reason in their laudations: they parade their contradictions, they are cautious with their tenses, they attribute their wildest excesses to others, such as gods and ghosts, and they set them in contexts that question the reasonableness of what is said’. The implication is that the poets distance themselves from their hyperbolical and patently untrue panegyric. Of Odes 3.25, Heyworth says: ‘It seems to me that one of the purposes of these two expressions of Bacchic influence in 2.19 and 3.25 is to mark the poet as beyond reason in what he says in the accompanying panegyric; and this is particularly marked in the arrangement of 3.25, where the artistic rehearsal implied by aeternum meditans decus is overwhelmed by the context’s evocations of Dionysiac lack of control.’ So for Heyworth the poets self-consciously signal that they are insulted by the abdication of rationality called for by the need to praise Augustus. That is one way of reading such passages; another, as I suggest above, is to accept (at some level) that the charismatic ruler transcends the law of noncontradiction, and that contradiction, irrationality, absurdity even, are the only adequate responses to the ‘imperial sublime’. The fact that the forms of panegyric elaborated by the Augustan poets have appealed to so many autocratic rulers in later centuries, and presumably found no shortage of viewers and readers willing to suspend their disbelief (were they all laughing into their sleeves?), is evidence that there is more than one way of responding to this kind of thing. Other scholars have drawn attention to the rootedness of contradiction at the heart of the Augustan project, and in the person of (p.22) Augustus himself. Thomas Cole in an unpublished paper on ‘Greek rhetoric at Rome: Cicero and the included middle’,53 understands the repeated disregard for the law of contradiction in poets like Virgil and Horace as a literary homologue to Page 15 of 29

 

Introduction: Augustan Poetry and the Irrational* Augustus’ attempt to square the political circle, with a historical precedent in a Ciceronian rhetoric geared to cope with a self-contradictory political programme.54 Many modern readers have used the perceived contradictions in the Aeneid and the Metamorphoses to prise apart the surface Augustanism of Virgil’s and Ovid’s epics from a deeper (and more sincere) opposition to Augustus. Karl Galinsky sees these contradictions as, rather, a reflection of the rich complexity of Augustan culture, and of the person of Augustus himself.55 A more negative view is possible: in a discussion of the deeply conflicted and inconsistent persona of the lover-elegist Propertius, Roy Gibson provocatively suggests ‘that Propertius, rather than resembling Antony, may stand closer to Augustus’.56 The quality of being a creature of paradox is not the only feature that links the abject elegist to the supreme ruler in Rome, for the elegist too aspires to one-man rule in the empire of love, but must at the same time acknowledge the supremacy of the human goddess that is his diuina puella. In this volume, Elena Giusti explores other contradictions in Augustan Rome’s construction of itself through an analysis of the collapsing polarities of national identity in the Aeneid.

4 Didactic Reason and Unreason The first of Horace’s Dionysiac odes, 2.19, opens on a scene of instruction, Bacchum in remotis carmina rupibus | uidi docentem…| Nymphasque discentis ‘I have seen Bacchus teaching songs in the (p.23) remote crags…and the Nymphs learning them…’,57 before the poet himself registers his own Dionysiac possession and mental perturbation. Horace’s own large-scale exercise in ‘teaching poetry’ is the Ars poetica. Mario Citroni, in the essay on classicism and the canon to which I referred above, notes that ‘The Ars poetica, a work with a substantially Aristotelian character, appears to us as a manifesto of the principles of measure and rationality in art.’58 The fact that the Ars poetica is the only surviving dedicated Augustan text on poetics exerts its own pressure on readers to find in it a manifesto for Augustan classicism. In a famous passage towards the end of the Ars poetica, Horace even claims for poetry the honour of being the origin of civilization and ordered society, in an allegorization of the magical powers of Orpheus to calm wild beasts and of Amphion to move stones to form city walls (AP 391–401) Horace here works within a tradition going back to the fifth century BC of claiming that civilization was the ‘invention’ of a particular τέχνη or ars.59 A related exercise is Cicero’s account in the De inventione 1.1–4 of the role of rhetoric in the foundation of civilization. According to Cicero, it was a great and wise man who first realized primitive mankind’s potential to be educated, and who through his eloquence transformed his fellows human beings from a bestial lifestyle ruled not by reason (ratio), but by blind desire (caeca…cupiditas), to a settled and civilized life. Initially resistant, the savages then gave the great man a more eager hearing (studiosius audientes) on account of his wisdom and eloquence (propter rationem atque orationem). This image of the rational orator bears some resemblance to the Page 16 of 29

 

Introduction: Augustan Poetry and the Irrational* orator in the famous statesman simile at the beginning of the Aeneid, but whose power to calm the furor of the mob, and figuratively of the raging storm-winds, is over-optimistic in the light of the failures of rhetoric and reason in the later course of Virgil’s epic.60 The Aeneid ends not with images of the victory of reason and civilization, but with the killing of Turnus by an infuriated Aeneas, maddened by grief for Pallas. The Ars poetica ends with the description of the mad (472 furit) poet, as selfdestructive as Empedocles (p.24) leaping into Etna. Elsewhere I have discussed this passage in the context of a failed reaching for the sublime,61 and I have already in this paper drawn out some of the threads that link the sublime to the irrational. Here I want to focus more narrowly on the failure of reason. The Ars poetica concludes not with an example of the successful poet as demonstration of the efficacy of the lessons taught in the didactic poem (as the Georgics end with the narrative of Aristaeus’ successful implementation of his mother’s instructions on the regeneration of his bees), but with the picture of a disastrous failure to get the right balance of ars and ingenium. Nor can one simply take the mad poet and Empedocles as negative exempla of a poetic vice to be avoided, given the strong suspicion (which I flesh out elsewhere)62 that the mountain-climbing Empedocles who seeks a posthumous divine immortality is a satire on Horace’s own aspirations to an Empedoclean-Lucretian sublime and to poetic immortality. ‘Physician, heal thyself’, as one might also say to Apollo, god of medicine, at a loss for a remedy for his own unreasoning infatuation with Daphne in Metamorphoses 1. Furthermore there is something paradoxical about a didactic poem which ends by imputing madness to the philosopher-poet Empedocles who is one of the founding-fathers for the Latin tradition of didactic poetry.63 In the late Republic Lucretius follows and improves on Empedocles, mastering an Empedoclean sublime to his own ends, and successfully bringing to a conclusion a programme of Epicurean ratio that supersedes the failed fourelement theory of Empedocles. Lucretius sets a standard of didactic rationality to which Virgil and Horace fail to live up. At the end of Georgics 2 Virgil registers doubt as to his own ability, as didactic poet, to follow a very Lucretian path to understanding the mysteries of the natural world with a piece of Empedoclean physiology, 2.483–4 sin has ne possim naturae accedere partis | frigidus obstiterit circum praecordia sanguis ‘but if cold blood blocks my vital organs, so that I am unable to reach these parts of nature’—‘a philosophic reason for his possible inaptitude for (p.25) philosophy’, as Conington puts it. More generally, much of the later twentieth-century criticism of the Georgics focussed on the contradictions and ambivalences of the poem, which for example juxtaposes golden-age and iron-age visions of the farmer’s world, unmediated and unresolved. In a book entitled The poet’s truth (1989), Christine Perkell sees an opposition between a ‘rational and material’ path to knowledge, the farmer’s way, and an ‘intuitive and imagistic’ path, the poet’s way, and she concludes, Page 17 of 29

 

Introduction: Augustan Poetry and the Irrational* ‘The poem privileges mystery, not solution; complexity and ambiguity, not certainty.’ Hers may be a one-sided view, but many other readers have felt that the path of instruction on which the poet sets out with Octavian (Geo. 1.41–2) is not a straightforward path of simple and orderly method and reason. In this volume, Christian Haß looks at the fault-lines in the Georgics between the semiotic systems of cosmology, mythology, and poetology, as the monolithic certainties of Lucretius fracture. Emily Gowers reads Georgics 2 as ‘summoning up a lost ideal of exemplary Aristotelian comprehensiveness [in the matter of cataloguing plants] and then rejecting it decisively in favour of poetic selectivity’. The Ars poetica is Horace’s single, if peculiar, exercise in the genre of didactic poetry, but there are strong didactic elements in both the Satires and in book 1 of the Epistles, and in both works the presence of the Lucretian model is strongly felt. In both, a programme of the moral improvement of self and others is complicated by indirection and blindness. In Satires 1, as Emily Gowers comments, ‘Gradually, H. comes into focus not just as the sanctimonious preceptor but as the foolish target of his own admonitions’;64 there is Socratic irony in this, for sure, but that is not a sufficient explanation for the contradictions and irrationalities of Horace the satirist. In his classic 1980 article on the structure of Satires 1, Jim Zetzel drew attention to ‘the contradictory structures of the book, its creation of a unified sense of disorder, of a speaker who is consistent only in his lack of logic and consistency’.65 In Satires 2.3, the newly converted Stoic Damasippus’ diatribe on the Stoic proposition that all save the wise man are mad is itself the object of satire, but that does not entirely remove the sting from Damasippus’ concluding charge-list of the ways in which Horace himself is insane. In this poem, as elsewhere, Horace engages critically with a rigid and doctrinaire Stoic view of what constitutes (p.26) sanity, but his own attempts to define a more moderate path to mental hygiene are equally the target of his satire. In this volume, Mario Citroni approaches the apparent irrationality and inconsistencies of Horace the moralist from the perspective of philosophical debates on the relationship between reason and pleasure. With reference to the blessings of poetic madness, Citroni concludes that the anecdote of the man of Argos in Horace Epistles 2.2 serves both to ridicule, but also to suggest that ‘the dimension of art possesses a space of its own that is irremediably separated from normality and common reason’. In the sphragis to Epistles 1, 1.20, Horace offers a thumbnail self-portrait in which he confesses to the fault of irascibility, 25 irasci celerem, tamen ut placabilis essem ‘quick to anger, but such that I could be calmed down’. This is a complacent admission to a kind of irrationality that Horace touches on in a list of vices to avoid early on in the book, 1.2.62–3 ira furor breuis est. animum rege, qui nisi paret, | imperat; hunc frenis, hunc tu compesce catena ‘Anger is a brief madness. Rule your spirit: unless it is obedient, it takes command. Restrain it Page 18 of 29

 

Introduction: Augustan Poetry and the Irrational* with a bridle, restrain it with chains.’ In Epistles 1.2 there may be some irony in using the epithet ‘brief’ of the passion of anger, given that in the first part of the poem, Horace has given a moralizing reading of the Iliad and of the anger of Achilles and Agamemnon, the motor force of a very long epic. By the time of writing of Epistles 1 Horace will have become very familiar with another long epic, the Aeneid, whose motive force is the unforgetting anger of Juno, an ‘eternal wound’ (1.36 aeternum…uulnus), the very opposite of ‘brief’, and an epic which, as we have seen, seems pessimistic about the chances of ever successfully binding and bridling furor. Horace’s own brand of—non-epic—irascible madness may be unusually shortlived. The poet should perhaps be more concerned by the fact that in Epistles 1.20 he has failed to achieve the self-mastery and moral sovereignty which are central to the programme of the book as a whole, in which the poet-moralist advocates retreat from the wider world in order to achieve the self-sufficiency of ‘living for oneself’. In 1.20, the poet addresses his own book personified as a pretty slave-boy eager to run away to find a large readership. The young slave is, of course, a projection of the ageing Horace’s own craving for poetic fame. This is not just a flight from the Callimachean readership of the fit but few, but a failure, at the end of the book, to realize the moral-philosophical programme of self-liberation from (p.27) the chains that bind one to the expectations and plaudits of society. Horace warns the slave-boy/book that he may end up in chains again, 13 aut fugies Vticam aut uinctus mitteris Ilerdam ‘Either you will run away to Utica or you will be sent in bonds to Ilerda’: uinctus, ‘tied up’ as a parcel of goods, as a book, as a slave-boy ‘put in chains’.66 Virgil’s Georgics and Horace’s Satires, Epistles, and Ars poetica all form part of the larger Augustan didactic project, which I have suggested that we see as a continuation of the late Republican project of the systematization of knowledge. Ovid’s Fasti is also part of the Augustan didactic project in this wider sense, as are the framing books of the Metamorphoses, 1 and 15, which both give extended lessons de rerum natura, in Book 15 through the vehicle of the Speech of Pythagoras, a lengthy exercise in an Empedoclean-Lucretian-Callimachean form of didactic. But the philosophy and science of the Speech of Pythagoras are at odds with the ‘laws (or perhaps better, “anti-laws”) of nature’ as they operate in the greater part of the Metamorphoses. The orderly scientific account of cosmogony in Book 1 is quickly interrupted by disorderly and irrational events and processes. As James O’Hara puts it, ‘The rational god of philosophy who presides over Ovid’s creation…soon disappears from view, to be replaced…by a particularly disorderly, unphilosophical, emotional, lustful version of the mythological gods.’67 Leaving aside the late-Augustan/Tiberian didactic poem of Manilius on astronomy and astrology the Astronomica, like Lucretius’ De rerum natura in outline a systematic treatment of natural philosophy, but Stoic rather than Page 19 of 29

 

Introduction: Augustan Poetry and the Irrational* Epicurean, the only Augustan didactic poems that approximate to the Lucretian model of consistent method and reason are Ovid’s verse treatises on how to master the furor of love. At the beginning of the Remedia amoris, which offers the kind of treatment that Apollo, god of medicine, is unable to offer himself in Metamorphoses 1, Ovid sums up the project of the preceding Ars amatoria, the reduction of emotional impulse to ratio, through a systematic ars, Rem. 9–10 quin etiam docui qua possis arte parari, | (p.28) et, quod nunc ratio est, impetus ante fuit ‘Besides I taught the art by which you [Cupid] could be won, and what was once impulse is now science.’ Roy Gibson has elegantly analysed Ovid’s careful steering through the Ars amatoria of a middle way, imposing on the inconsistencies and contradictions that typify the Propertian model of erotic furor, with its total lack of modus, the Horatian ideals of the mean and of moderation; Ovid is also indebted to the Ciceronian instruction in the matters of moderation and decorum in the De officiis.68 In this volume, Jacqueline FabreSerris argues that Ovid applies another of the rational arts, the ars rhetorica, of which Ovid himself had been such a master in the schools of declamation, as a remedium for the erotic furor of women, both for the benefit of women themselves and to the profit of their male lovers.

5 Female Figures of Unreason Horace’s self-representation at the end of Epistles 1 as a slave-boy unable to control a misguided desire creates a sharp contrast between the free-born poet with a good higher education and a non-citizen with an imperfect claim to rationality. Elsewhere Horace, and other male Augustan poets, engage in antagonistic relationships with female figures of a more demonic irrationality, who may stand as dark doubles for the poets themselves.69 These inventive and furious women are like the mythological Furies, who are often associated with raging Maenads—so closing the circle with the Augustan poets’ fascination with the Dionysiac. These powerful and dangerous females are found across a range of genres high and low: Canidia and her familiar Sagana in Horace’s iambic Epodes and pedestrian Satires, the witch-like lena ‘procuress’ of love elegy—and indeed the elegiac puella herself, as O’Rourke in this volume shows in his discussion of Cynthia’s irrationality and fury. Then there are the mythological monsters of Virgil’s epic: Allecto in Aeneid 7, who literally is a Fury and who drives one of her victims, queen Amata, into a quasi-Maenadic madness, is closely related to Fama in Aeneid 4 (p.29) (see above), a personification of wildfire rumour but also a distorted image of the power and ambitions of the epic poet himself. One can only wonder what Ovid did with the murderous frenzy and incantations of the heroine of his lost tragedy, the Medea.70 The thumbnail of Medea at Metamorphoses 7.10–11 encapsulates the archetypal tragic conflict between reason and furor: postquam ratione furorem | uincere non poterat ‘When she was powerless to overcome madness with reason’ (the almost identical formulation at Met. 14.701–2, introducing the hyper-elegiac story of

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Introduction: Augustan Poetry and the Irrational* Iphis and Anaxarete, encapsulates the archetypal elegiac conflict between ratio and furor: postquam ratione furorem | uincere non potuit). In many cases, the male poet attempts to repress the power of these females, a repression that can be directed both to a historical past best forgotten and to forces that continue to well up within the poet himself. A standard reading of Horace Satires 1.8 sees in Priapus’ rude discomfiture of the night-witch Canidia’s return to the New Gardens, built by Maecenas over an old graveyard, some kind of an allegory for the suppression and sanitization of a republican past of civil-war disorder and slaughter.71 Mario Labate in this volume discusses the resonances of late republican history in the ‘night of reason’ depicted in the scenes with Canidia in Satires 1.8 and Epode 5, and also draws attention to the echoes of the infuriated women of tragedy, chief amongst whom Medea, in the low-class witch Canidia in Epode 5. But this is the Canidia whose venomous music in the Epodes is uncomfortably close to the iambic poetry of Horace himself.72 In the Aeneid, the activity of the Fury Allecto can be read in both metapoetic and historical terms. Metapoetically, she is enlisted by Juno to the end of scripting an alternative epic plot to that of the male poet, one that would trumpet the fame of Juno’s defeat of the Trojans.73 Historically, the war whose seeds are sown by Allecto, a close relative of Ennius’ war-demon Discordia as well as of Virgil’s own Fama, is a foreshadowing of the civil wars of the late Republic. One might think, if not of a civil war, of a divided personality at the core of the Augustan poet’s awareness of himself, a division that is an intensification of the clichéd ars/ingenium dichotomy into a gendered (p.30) contrast between a poetics of rational technique and a poetics of irrational inspiration.74 This was brilliantly analysed by Don Fowler in one of his last essays, ‘Masculinity under threat? The poetics and politics of inspiration in Latin poetry.’75 Fowler discusses the use by Virgil, followed by Lucan, of Sibyls as female vessels for the invasion of an Apolline-Dionysian poetic furor (Aen. 6.77–80; Lucan 5.190–7), and suggests that Horace’s comparison of himself to a Maenad in Odes 3.25 has the effect of feminizing the poet as an act of submission to the top male Augustus. Fowler concludes: ‘But suppose that…the control of the Roman male is bought at too high a price: then the poets, open to penetration by the forces around them, prepared to accept emotion [for “emotion” read perhaps “irrationality”] and its consequences, may have the last laugh on the grimly smiling statues that fill our museums.’76 If ars versus ingenium is one opposition with which to think about the poles of reason and unreason in Augustan poetry, another is the two Varronian etymologies for the word uates, that privileged term for ‘poet’ in the Augustan poets’ lexicon, the first a uersibus uiendis, the craft of ‘weaving’ poetry, the second a ui mentis, a forcible and overpowering mental impulse.77 This might be

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Introduction: Augustan Poetry and the Irrational* the contrast between Virgil the careful basket-weaving poet of the Eclogues and the elegiac poet Gallus to whose furor there is no limit. Ovid experiments with another kind of self-feminization in the Heroides, impersonating the voices of women at the end of their tether, and granting what could be seen as an autonomous space to a female emotionality and irrationality that are framed within male structures in genres such as epic and tragedy. Feminist critics are divided over the degree to which Ovid really adopts a female point of view in the Heroides; Effie Spentzou reads the Heroides for a feminine voice that escapes the control of the male poet, examples of Hélène Cixous’ écriture féminine, ‘transgressive, rule-transcending, intoxicated’,78 characterized by an ‘intense despair and flowing excess’.79 William Fitzgerald in this volume looks at the reception in Alexander Pope’s heroic epistle Eloisa to Abelard of Augustan exercises in (p.31) writing letters with masculine and feminine pens, opening up a contrast between ‘the philosophical, companionable, male world’ of Horace’s Epistles and ‘the solitary, passionate female world’ of Ovid’s Heroides. This early work by the most famous poet of the English ‘Augustan age’ anticipates the fashion for the ‘Gothic’ in the later eighteenth century that precedes the onset of Romanticism.

6 Conclusions Far from being unproblematically a literature of aesthetic balance and harmony, a classicism that, while it acknowledges and registers the unreason of history and of the individual psyche, celebrates its defeat and control, Augustan poetry is largely energized by disruptive forces which the poets sometimes seek to repress, but to which they just as frequently give free rein. The end of this essay is a point at which to look backward and forward in the history of Roman poetry. The names of the two surviving major poets from the previous generation, Lucretius and Catullus, have come up often in my discussions. A significant part of a history of rationality and irrationality in Augustan poetry might indeed be written through an account of the reception of these two late-Republican poets. Catullus, we have seen, is an important starting-point for the Augustan elegists’ exploration of the irrationality of obsessive love. Catullus 63 and 64, which between them account for the majority of Catullus’ uses of furor and cognates, contain powerful descriptions of erotic (Ariadne’s love) and religious (the ecstatic cults of Bacchus and the Magna Mater) forms of madness, which imprinted themselves deeply on Virgil’s poetic imagination, as did also the savagely satirical pictures in Lucretius’ De rerum natura of the irrational and crazed behaviour of the unenlightened. The instances of furor words in Catullus 64 forge links between spheres that are also conjoined in Augustan poetry: the furor of love (Cat. 64.54, 94, 124, 197), of Bacchic ecstasy (254), and of politico-social chaos, in the poem’s closing description of a state of social breakdown that is often taken to refer to the conditions of the decade preceding full-blown civil war at Rome (405 omnia Page 22 of 29

 

Introduction: Augustan Poetry and the Irrational* fanda nefanda malo permixta furore ‘everything lawful and lawless confused by an evil madness’). Jilted Dido’s love turns into Maenadic frenzy; (p.32) Propertius’ very private erotic furor mirrors the madness of Mark Antony, and the Furor Unbound of Ovid’s triumph of Cupid (Am. 1.2.35) unleashes the global Furor of the speech of the Virgilian Jupiter, but within a far more confined space. Lucretius’ didactic poem of Epicurean reason, ratio, the De rerum natura, presents a challenge which the Augustan poets are unable to meet: this is true both of the failed or at best partially successful programmes of instruction in Augustan didactic poetry and related genres, and of Virgil’s construction of a foundation myth for Rome and its people in the Aeneid, an epic whose continuous engagement with Lucretius’ didactic fails to subordinate the energies of unreason and madness to the goals of reason. Lucretius also offers notably vivid images of disorder and delusion against which it is the job of the Epicurean teacher to fortify his reader by leading them to the heights of philosophical reason—for example the disturbing but gripping account of the impossible aims of sexual desire in Book 4, or the depiction at the very end of the poem of the breakdown of human society as a result of plague. We tend these days not to see such passages as signs of an ‘anti-Lucretius’ in Lucretius, the side of the poet struggling inconclusively with his inner demons, but these are demons—or furies —that are let off the leash in the Augustan poets, energized by the powerful writing of Lucretius. Looking forward, the irrational energies of Augustan poetry continue to fuel the poetry of the Neronian and Flavian periods. What have often been perceived as the psychological, narrative and dramatic excesses of this body of literature are in many cases the continuation and intensification of what is already central to Augustan poetry. Much of this later literature might be described as a ‘baroque classicism’, defining its own exploration of unreason and absurdity through constant engagement with what had established themselves as the canonical classics of Augustan literature. A couple of examples to close. In Book 2 of Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica, the furor of the Lemnian women in the night when they slaughter their menfolk is inspired by a Venus who appears in the guise of a Fury. This terrifying epiphany can be read as a commentary on the connections that already exist within the Aeneid between the actions of Venus and the actions of the real Fury Allecto.80 Secondly, the (p.33) Thyestes of Seneca, one of the most extreme of Neronian texts and one profound in its dramatization of the darkest parts of the human psyche, a work of great sublimity and Dionysiac in its poetic afflatus, is at the same time intensively intertextual with the Augustan poets, Virgil, Horace, and Ovid above all, as Alessandro Schiesaro amply demonstrates in the best recent discussion of the passions in play in the Thyestes.81 (p.34)

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Introduction: Augustan Poetry and the Irrational* Notes:

(*) A lecture based on this ‘Introduction’ was given at the British School in Rome in October 2014, as one in a series of lectures organized by the British School in Rome and the Institute of Classical Studies in London. I am grateful to the Director of the British School. Prof. Christopher Smith, for the invitation, and to the audience for their comments. (1) On Augustan classicism see (e.g.) La Rocca 2004; Elsner 2006; ‘Classicism in Roman art’, in Porter 2006: 270–97; on wider issues relating to the use of the term ‘classical’ with reference to the visual arts in Rome see Hölscher 2004. (2) See especially studies by Roy Porter (1990, 2000). (3) Citroni 2006: 227, 234, 228 respectively. (4) Zanker 1988: 57–65 ‘Antony betrayed by his own image’. For qualification see for example the review article by Wallace-Hadrill 1989. (5) See e.g. Oliensis 2001, 2009; Schiesaro 2008; Janan 1994, 2001, 2009. (6) Moatti follows in the footsteps of Elizabeth Rawson’s very different Intellectual life in the late Roman Republic (1985). (7) Wallace-Hadrill 1997: 12, 14; on calendar reform see Feeney 2007: chs. 5, 6. On the importance of knowledge for the late Republican and Augustan political project see also Wallace-Hadrill 2008: Part III ‘Knowledge and power’: ch. 5 ‘Knowing the ancestors’; ch. 6 ‘Knowing the city’. (8) For a detailed survey of the uses of furor, cognates of furor, and other words for madness and irrationality see Alessi 1974. On furor in Cicero see Taldone 1993; Weische 1966. On furor and civil war see Franchet d’Espèrey 2003; Roche 2009 on Lucan 1.8 quis furor, o ciues. (9) See Adler 2003: ch. 6 ‘Furor’, placing (as others have done) the storm at the centre of the symbolism of the Aeneid; ibid. 92: ‘The Aeolian cave of the winds is the ruling symbol of the Aeneid: it symbolizes the problem of the role of Furor in the cosmos, in political communities, and in men’s souls.’ (10) Hershkowitz 1998: 106 n. 124: ‘The figure of Furor is conquered but not silent, and it is the image of Furor, restrained but not destroyed, that ends the prophecy, not one of peace.’ Oliensis 2001: 42 speaks of ‘repressed Furor’ (42) at the end of the Speech of Jupiter. The appearance of Furor personified there culminates a sequence of fur- words running through the storm scene: 1.41 furias Aiacis Oilei; 51 furentibus Austris; 107 furit aestus harenis; 150 furor arma minstrat; 294 Furor impius intus. (11) Hershkowitz 1998: 124. Page 24 of 29

 

Introduction: Augustan Poetry and the Irrational* (12) See Thomas 2011 on C. 4.15.17–20: ‘It is notable that furor and ira are qualities still in play at the end of the Aeneid, a fact that further intensifies H.’s rewriting of that poem.’ (13) Gallus uses furor earlier, of a love-object, at 37–8 certe siue mihi Phyllis siue esset Amyntas | seu quicumque furor. (14) Shaw 2006: 82. (15) Hardie 2009a: ch. 3. (16) See Hardie 2004: 92 (habituation in education), 108 (Octavian as didactic addressee). (17) See also Schiesaro 1989 on Lucr. 4.1046 dira libido. (18) Adler 2003: 91 makes the point, with reference to the Aeneid, about Virgil’s embrace of the Underworld as the fourth division of the universe, the source of destructive and furious powers, where Lucretius restricts himself to the three divisions. On the relationship between the Lucretian Hymn to Venus and the proem to Georgics 1 see Gale 2000: 24–32. (19) See Hardie 2009a: 52. (20) Dodds 1951: 218–19. (21) See e.g. the references at Syndikus 1984–90: vol. 2, 143 n. 172. (22) Cf. also Cat. 7.9–12 tam te basia multa basiare | uesano satis et super Catullo est, | quae nec pernumerare curiosi | possint nec mala fascinare lingua. (23) Moatti 1997: 204–14 ‘Rendre raison: transparence et responsabilité’. (24) On Catullus and counting see also Henderson 1999. (25) On furor in Propertius 1 see Alessi 1989, Cairns 1974: 102–7 ‘The furor metaphor’ (reading 1.1 as unified by metaphor of love as furor). For a range of passages showing madness as typical of the elegiac poet and elegiac poetry see Cucchiarelli 2012 on Ecl. 10.22: e.g. Prop. 2.14.18 scilicet insano nemo in amore uidet; 2.34.25 Lynceus ipse meus seros insanit amores; 3.17.3 tu potes insanae Veneris compescere flatus; Tib. 2.6.18 [acer Amor] cogis et insana mente nefanda loqui; Ov. Ars 1.372 insano iuret amore mori; 2.563 Mars pater insano Veneris turbatus amore; Her. 12.193 redde torum, pro quo tot res insana reliqui. Roman elegists of course have no monopoly on the madness and irrationality of love: on Hellenistic epigram see Garrison 1978. Note e.g. Meleager AP 12.23 Ἠγρεύθην ὁ πρόσθεν ἐγώ ποτε τοῖς δυσέρωσι | κώμοις ἠιθέων πολλάκις ἐγγελάσας· | καί μ’ ἐπὶ σοῖς ὁ πτανὸς Ἔρως προθύροισι, Μυΐσκε, | στῆσεν

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Introduction: Augustan Poetry and the Irrational* ἐπιγράψας· ‘Σκῦλ’ ἀπὸ Σωφροσύνης.’; AP 12.117.3 τί δ᾽Ἔρωτι λογισμός; (GowPage ad loc. ‘a common motif’). (26) For the following details see McKeown 1989 on Am. 1.2.31–6. (27) Aen. 1.295–6 centum uinctus aënis | post tergum nodis; Prop. 3.24.14 uinctus eram uersas in me terga manus. On Ovid’s allusion to Aen. 1.291–6 see Labate 1971. Am. 1.2.36 assidue partes turba secuta tuas contains another Propertian allusion, to Prop. 3.1.12 scriptorumque meas turba secuta rotas, but there Propertius uses the triumph as a positive image of his power as a poet. (28) On amor and furor in the Aeneid see Bocciolini Palagi 2011. (29) For psychoanalytical approaches to repression and the return of the repressed in Latin poetry see Schiesaro 2003, 2008; for a set of essays on psychoanalysis and Latin poetry see Oliensis 2009. (30) Reprinting part of an article in HTR 33 (1940). (31) His interest in Dionysus and the irrational goes back at least to his 1929 article on ‘Euripides the irrationalist’. (32) Dodds 1944: p. xii. (33) See Bruhl 1953: ch. 3 ‘Bacchus dans l’art décoratif de Pompéi et de Rome’. (34) Nisbet and Hubbard 1978: 317. (35) Nisbet and Rudd 2004: 297, on C. 3.25. (36) Nisbet and Rudd 2004: 299. (37) Hunter 2006: ch. 2 ‘In the grip of the god’ (Bacchus). On Virgil: Hershkowitz 1998: 35–48 madness of Bacchants; 48–61 madness of Furies; Bocciolini Palagi 2001, 2003, 2007; Weber 2002; Mac Góráin 2009, 2012–13. On Horace: Oksala 1973; Krasser 1995; Feldherr 2010; Schiesaro 2009. On Ovid: Keith 2010. (38) Mac Góráin 2009. (39) Sauron 1988. (40) Castriota 1995: ch. 3 ‘Dionysos, Apollo, and Augustus’; 106–23 ‘Dionysos and Apollo—the numen mixtum’. (41) See Cucchiarelli 2011a, 2011b (substantially an English version of the first part of 2011a). See also Smith 2007.

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Introduction: Augustan Poetry and the Irrational* (42) Castriota 1995: 93–4. Batinski 1990–1 argues for a dynamic balance and tension between Bacchus and Apollo in Odes 1–3, spanning the distance from the Bacchic 1.1 to the Apolline 3.30; Batinski reads C. 3.25 as Horace’s Augustan appropriation of Mark Antony’s Bacchus. (43) See Auguste 2014: 292–5. (44) With desipere in loco cf. C. 2.7.26–8 non ego sanius | bacchabor Edonis; recepto | dulce mihi furere est amico. (45) Nisbet and Hubbard 1970 ad loc.: ‘one expects [Horace] to say ‘To think that one can destroy Rome is a sign of madness’; if that is what he means, the transference of dementis to ruinas is irrational’ (my emphasis). (46) Hunter 2006: 48–50. Odes 1.37 as dithyramb: Hardie 1976. Feldherr 2010 explores Dionyisac ambiguities about self and others in Odes 1.37, with reference to the civil wars. (47) Summarizing the argument of Hardie 2007: 139–41. (48) Nisbet and Hubbard translate ‘my shady pergola’, but note (to reject) that ‘Others think that the epithet means “narrow” and reinforces the affectation of ἀφέλεια’. But in context, it is difficult to exclude the literal meaning of artus ‘narrow, confined, brief’. See also the trenchant observations on the Dionysiac sequence of C. 1.36–8 in Cucchiarelli 2011b: 263–5. (49) See Hardie 2009a: 218–19. (50) Schiesaro 2009. (51) Weber 1978: 1115, 244. (52) E.g. Bentley 1711 ad loc.: ‘Recte Graevianus noster, Reginensis, Battelianus, cum Bodleianis duobus BIBIT: Jam tunc enim praesens deus erat Augustus, ut, recte alii monuerunt.’ Wickham 1874–91 ad loc. mounts a lengthy argument in favour of bibit. (53) Delivered at a conference on the ‘Roman cultural revolution’ at Princeton in 1993. (54) See Hardie 2009b: 110. (55) Galinsky 1996: 370–5 ‘Contradictions’; 371: ‘Contradiction then is simply part of the multifaceted character of the culture and, as always, becomes a matter of definition and perception.’ (56) Gibson 2007: 63. See also Gibson 2006: 140–1. On the paradoxes and contradictions inherent in pre-Ovidian elegy as a whole see Labate 1984: 37–43. Page 27 of 29

 

Introduction: Augustan Poetry and the Irrational* (57) Commentaries say that Bacchus as teacher is depicted more specifically as a χοροδιδάσκαλος (so Nisbet and Hubbard ad loc.), although this does not seem self-evident. (58) Citroni 2006: 232–3. (59) See Brink 1971 on Horace Ars poetica 391–407. (60) See Spence 1988: ch. 1 ‘Vergil’s orator’; see also Spence 2002. (61) Hardie 2009a: 198, 212–13. (62) See Hardie forthcoming on ‘Horace and the Empedoclean sublime’. (63) But Horace also alludes to a tradition that Empedocles was inspired by a poetic furor: Cic. Acad. 2.5.14 isti physici…exclamant quasi mente incitati— Empedocles quidem ut interdum mihi furere uideatur—abstrusa esse omnia, nihil nos sentire. For a recent set of essays exploring the complexities and obscurities of the Ars poetica see Ferenczi and Hardie 2014. (64) Gowers 2012: 16. (65) Zetzel 1980; these ideas are developed further in Freudenburg 1993. (66) On the ironic relationship of 1.20 to Horace’s proclamation of poetic independence in 1.19, and on the Lucretian background to the theme of libertas in both poems see Hardie 2009a: 53–6. (67) O’Hara 2007: ch. 5 ‘Inconsistency and authority in Ovid’s Metamorphoses’; quotation at 108. O’Hara’s discussion of the contradiction between the rational design of the opening cosmogony in Met. 1 and the riotous disorder that follows draws on McKim 1985 and Wheeler 1999: 30–3. (68) Gibson 2007, further developed in Gibson 2006. (69) Hardie 2012: 387–92 for demonic female figures of poetry; 101–2 on Fama and Allecto; 102–3 on Fama and the Sibyl. (70) On attempts to reconstruct the lost play see Heinze 1997: 223–8. (71) See the skilful summary in Gowers 2012: 263–5. (72) Oliensis 1991; Barchiesi 1994. (73) On Juno’s plots see Farrell forthcoming. (74) Cicero repeatedly uses furor (for Greek μανία) of poetic inspiration: e.g. De or. 2.194; Div. 1.80 (compared to one of the forms of divination sine ratione: Div.

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Introduction: Augustan Poetry and the Irrational* 1.4 furoris diuinationem Sibyllinis maxime uersibus contineri); see Alessi 1974: 196–200, 207. (75) Fowler 2002. On the Virgilian Sibyl see also Gowers 2005. (76) Fowler 2002: 159. (77) Hardie 1986: 16–22. (78) Barry 2002: 128. (79) Spentzou 2003: 109. (80) See Hardie 1993: 43–4; Elm von der Osten 2007 (a study of Venus in Valerius Flaccus under the title Liebe als Wahnsinn). (81) Schiesaro 2003.

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My Enemy’s Enemy is My Enemy

Augustan Poetry and the Irrational Philip Hardie

Print publication date: 2016 Print ISBN-13: 9780198724728 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2015 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198724728.001.0001

My Enemy’s Enemy is My Enemy Virgil’s Illogical Use of metus hostilis Elena Giusti

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198724728.003.0002

Abstract and Keywords Carthage in Virgil’s Aeneid simultaneously telescopes alterity and sameness: its barbaric and orientalizing traits, highlighted by allusions to Euripides’ Medea and Bacchae and Aeschylus’ Persae, are counterbalanced by the presentation of Dido and her city as a mirroring image of Aeneas and Rome. This chapter argues that the barbaric traits of Carthage create continuity between the Persian Wars, the Punic Wars, and Augustus’ proposed wars against the Parthians, warding off the danger of further civil wars through the evocation of metus hostilis. At the same time, however, the analogies between Carthage and Rome and the irrational riddle of identities that Virgil stages between Trojans, Carthaginians, and Greeks provides a new, illogical phrasing to the famous proverb, ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’, which exemplifies Sallust’s theorem of negative association. Keywords:   Carthage, Virgil, Dido, Sallust, metus hostilis, negative association, Persians, Aeschylus, Euripides, Dodds

Anyone willing to undertake a quick bibliographical search for ‘Rationality in Greek and Roman thought’ will hit upon a thoroughly unsurprising result. There is, of course, no volume such as Rationality in Roman Thought,1 nor do we find a Rationalism in Roman Philosophy.2 It is true that we could not possibly expect to see an Entdeckung des Geistes (‘The Discovery of the Mind’) applied to Rome, but there is not even an Entwicklung des Geistes (‘The Development of the Mind’) to act as a sequel to Bruno Snell’s fundamental 1946 monograph.3 The Page 1 of 18

 

My Enemy’s Enemy is My Enemy searcher not trained in Classics might then logically imagine the Romans to be fairly irrational in comparison to the Greeks. But Classicists know all too well that this is not entirely accurate. In actual fact, Latin scholarship has produced no Romans and the Irrational to match Dodds’ famous lectures.4 The superiority of Greece in philosophical as well as in scientific matters is accompanied by the recognition of the Greeks’ far deeper understanding of the inexplicable and dark regions of the human mind. The Romans, it would seem, are not rational enough to match Greek philosophy, but also not irrational enough to compete with Greek poetry and religion. The shallowness of their understanding of irrational matters equals the superficiality and ignorance with which authors such as Vitruvius and Pliny seem to approach the overtly complicated subjects treated (p.38) by the Hellenistic Forgotten Revolution.5 Such a view is wonderfully epitomized by Dodds himself, in a statement which cannot but strongly discourage Latin scholars from the study of the Dionysiac irrational in Rome: It was the Alexandrines, and above all the Romans—with their tidy functionalism and their cheerful obtuseness in all matters of the spirit— who departmentalized Dionysus as ‘jolly Bacchus’ the wine-god with his riotous crew of nymphs and satyrs… (Dodds 1944: x) This is just a small example of how the curse of the Latin inferiority complex6 towards Greece has been transferred to the whole discipline of Classics and never properly worked through. One obvious way to overcome this situation would be to emphasize the Romans’ original contribution to both rational and irrational themes. This is a just and necessary approach, but it is nonetheless destined to fail from the start if the goal is to prove the Romans’ superiority in these matters. As regards Virgil, for instance, notwithstanding Heinze’s enormous contribution to the understanding and the evaluation of the more emotional sides of his poetry, the Romantic belief in the supremacy of Homer’s genius still remains quite deep-rooted.7 Despite Dodds’ lapidary statement on the obtuseness of Latin poetry, I am convinced that there is actually room to discuss both rationality and irrationality in Virgil’s Aeneid precisely with the hermeneutical tools employed by Dodds himself.8 However, this is not the path followed by this chapter. For once, I would like to pretend to endorse Dodds’ verdict and suggest a different way of addressing the matter, which could be no less fruitful in detecting continuity and difference from Greek thought, and perhaps even more gratifying for those Latinists whose aim is to alleviate the Romans from their Greek cultural burden. We have seen that the Romans are neither thought of as profound philosophers, nor do they apparently offer fascinating ground for anthropological or psychoanalytical studies on the irrational sides of the human mind. In fact, Page 2 of 18

 

My Enemy’s Enemy is My Enemy comparative anthropology seems to have left out the Roman world quite intentionally in comparison to the Greek one. The ‘tidy functionalism’ and ‘obtuseness in all matters of (p.39) the spirit’ to which Dodds is referring remind readers of the popular view, still current of the Romans, as rough and coarse warriors. This is a stereotype of course, but stereotypes can hide important truths. Rome was indeed what Max Weber defined ‘a guild of warriors’.9 It was an army, and the only field in which it undoubtedly excelled was the military. We could say, to make it more appealing, that Rome excelled in the art of war. To accept this stereotypical image of Rome means to turn our attention to its historical superiority in military strategy. And, since war requires politics, such superiority also pertains to the more sophisticated fields of law and political theory. In view of the topic of this chapter—Carthage in Virgil’s Aeneid—the claim that the specific characteristic of Augustan literature is an ongoing concern with the political naturally brings to mind the identification of the political with a friendenemy distinction. Already Hegel, in his Philosophy of Right, claimed that ‘the state is an individual, and negation is an essential component of individuality. Thus, even if a number of states join together as a family, this league, in its individuality, must generate opposition and create an enemy.’10 Following in Hegel’s footsteps, Carl Schmitt in 1932 went as far as to affirm that the distinction between friend and enemy is ‘the specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced’, and the sketch he drew of ‘The Enemy’ is thoroughly based on negative terms in contrast to the specific individuality of the subject.11 According to Schmitt, the Enemy implies the Political, and the Political implies the State. The reflection on the Enemy must necessarily accompany any reflection on collective identity. The principle on which Schmitt is drawing here, like Machiavelli, Bodin, Hegel, and Hobbes before him, is that of ‘negative association’, also commonly known as metus hostilis or ‘Sallust’s Theorem’.12 The theorem goes back to Sallust’s view, expressed in all his extant works, that Carthage’s destruction in 146 BC caused the disappearance of that ‘fear of the enemy’ which is a necessary element of national cohesion, and thus brought about the crisis of the Roman Republic, which (p.40) ultimately resulted in the shedding of brotherly rather than foreign blood.13 A corollary of this implies that the Punic Wars not only led to the abolition of Rome’s archenemy, but also triggered the civil conflict that resulted from that very abolition, a consequence that Scipio Nasica had apparently predicted when he advised that, against Cato’s judgment, Carthago seruanda esset.14 Metus hostilis, although traceable back to Greek historical thought, is one of Rome’s greatest contributions to political theory. It is true that it opens Thucydides’ account of the Peloponnesian War, that it is commonly recognized as the basis of the creation of a Hellenic identity against the danger of the Persian enemy, that it is present in Xenophon, Plato, and Aristotle, and was perhaps introduced in Rome by Posidonius,15 but it is nonetheless still Page 3 of 18

 

My Enemy’s Enemy is My Enemy known in political theory as metus hostilis rather than ἔξωθεν φόβος, as ‘Sallust’s theorem’, rather than Thucydides’ or Posidonius’. Negative association appears like a specifically Roman legacy which begins with Sallust’s reflections on Rome’s decline after Carthage’s destruction and reaches the political situation of the Cold War, or the aftermath of 9/11. Both in Sallust’s Rome and in twentieth- and twenty-first-century USA, the identification of the Enemy proved essential for constructing and bolstering a common feeling of national identity. If one wants to examine Virgil’s Carthage from a properly Roman perspective, metus hostilis is the obvious way to go for it. In this chapter I shall thus attempt to give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s in reading the Bacchic features of Dido in Aeneid 4 (the comparison between Dido and a maddened Maenad at Aen. 4.300–3 and her dream of being Pentheus at Aen. 4.469–70)16 from a purely political point of view. My aim is not to investigate the religious, ritual or psychoanalytical implications of the Dionysian in Aeneid 4, but rather to stress the equation of Carthaginians and Bacchic Phoenicians, an (p.41) equation which initially seems to emphasize Virgil’s presentation of Carthage as a barbarian enemy, and sheds light on, to quote Edith Hall’s famous phrase The Invention of the Barbarian,17 the Augustan (re-)invention of the Carthaginian. The first section of this chapter will thus analyse the portrait of Virgil’s Carthaginians as Persian barbarians, focussing on the Aeneid’s reception of Aeschylus’ Persae and on Atossa as a possible model for Dido. However, the second section will be dedicated to the deconstruction of the barbarian polarizations that I have previously set up, and will investigate the dissolution of the West vs East polarization in the Aeneid, where both Carthaginians and Romans are simultaneously represented as Greeks and Barbarians, and are also equated to each other. On the one hand, I shall stress the traditional traits of such an equation, emphasizing Virgil’s debt to Euripides’ Bacchae as a text that had already staged the dissolution of the Greek vs Barbarian polarity. On the other hand, I shall be careful not to underestimate the specific resonance of this collapse of the polarity in the Augustan age, in which analogies between Carthaginians and Romans are also to be linked with that traumatic loss of a national and cultural identity that had been recently experienced in the friends/ enemies confusion that ensued after the civil wars.

1 Persian Carthaginians Persians are present, paradigmatically speaking, from the very beginning of the Aeneid’s narrative. At Aen. 1.13–14 (Karthago, Italiam contra Tiberinaque longe/ ostia), the archenmity and military opposition between Carthage and Rome is concealed in the form of a geographic observation, which is uncannily similar to that which describes the Persian expedition against Europe at the beginning of Aeschylus’ Persae, ‘the neighbouring land on the opposite side of the strait’ (Pers. 66 εἰς ἀντίπορον γείτονα χώραν18), and seems to associate Punic Wars and Persian Wars through the image of a huge clash of continents, which are on the opposite side of one another (contra),19 (p.42) but at a significant Page 4 of 18

 

My Enemy’s Enemy is My Enemy geographical and ideological distance (longe). In addition, the deceitful application of antiquity (1.12 urbs antiqua fuit) to a city whose name actually means ‘new city’20 drags Carthage close to Western representations of the East, first of all Troy, the ancient city par excellence21 and one which is ‘no more’ at the time of the narrative,22 but also ‘the ancient ramparts of Kissia’ (Pers. 17 τὸ παλαιὸν Κίσσιον ρκος), a detail that contributes to emphasize the antiquity of the Persian empire in the parodos of Persae.23 Carthage is occupied by eastern coloni (1.12 Tyrii tenuere coloni), whose origin from Tyre makes it an antiRoman construction which is a double for the anti-Athenian Thebes, founded by Tyrian (or Sidonian) Cadmus24 and the customary locus for tragedy, otherness, and barbarism in terms that are made, by Euripides, strongly reminiscent of the Persian Wars.25 The following epigrammatic description of the city (1.14 diues opum studiisque asperrima belli) matches directly the barbarian pairing of luxury and military aggressiveness found in Xerxes’ ‘golden army’ from the beginning of Persae: πολυχρύσου στρατιᾶς (Pers. 9). The importance of the adjective πολύχρυσος is emphasized by its constant repetition in the parodos (3–4 ἀφνεῶν καὶ πολυχρύσων/ἑδράνων, 45 πολύχρυσοι Σάρδεις, 52–3 Βαβυλὼν δ᾽/ἡ πολύχρυσος, noticeably the only instances of the term in Aeschylus’ work). The Persian empire is wealthy, and gold is the material symbol of this wealth, which ‘glitters even in the ancestry of Xerxes’26 (80 χρυσογόνου27 γενεᾶς) through the figure of Perseus, born from Danae and Zeus-as-golden-shower. Xerxes’ royal status is emphasized from the parodos (5 ἄναξ Ξέρξης βασιλεὺς, 24 βασιλῆς βασιλέως ὕ (p.43) ποχοι μεγάλου) and repeatedly recalled throughout a play whose main aim is to set up a polarization between Greek democracy and barbarian tyranny.28 As a corollary to this emphasis on eastern luxury, Edith Hall has emphasized how Aeschylus’ Persae strongly contributes to display ‘the feminisation of Asia in the Greek imagination’ and ‘the metaphorical means by which Athenian thought conceptualised its victory over the Persians as an analogue of the male domination of women’,29 not only through the decision to make Atossa the protagonist of the play, allowing ‘defeated, distant Asia to speak in a female voice’,30 but also through the repeated lamentation on Susa’s kenandria, ‘emptiness of men’31 (Pers. 118, 166, 289, 730; see also 298, 349, 920–1). Such polarizations of the Greek vs Barbarian ideology—democracy vs tyranny, andreia vs femininity, sobriety vs luxury (χλιδή, ἁβρότης)—which aim at providing natural, genetic reasons32 for the victory of Greece in the Persian Wars, are simultaneously counterbalanced by the apparently opposite attitude of elevating the enemy and its dangerousness in order to extol the victory of the West: hence the long and threatening overview of the Persian army at the opening of Aeschylus’ play (1–64). Here, accompanied by the rhythm of marching anapaests, which contribute to create the effect of a real military expedition on stage, the contingents and commanders who followed Xerxes’ expedition are presented with constant emphasis on the fear that they inspire: Page 5 of 18

 

My Enemy’s Enemy is My Enemy they are ‘terrifying to look upon and formidable in battle’ (27 φοβεροὶ μὲν ἰδεῖν, δεινοὶ δὲ μάχην), ‘a fearsome incalculable horde’ (40 δεινοὶ πλῆθός τ᾽ ἀνάριθμοι), ‘a terrifying sight to behold’ (48 φοβερὰν ὄψιν προσιδέσθαι); their nature as ‘annihilators of cities’ is even inscribed in their name (65–6 περσέπτολις…βασίλειος στρατὸς33). This same blend of passive luxurious amenability and male military aggressiveness is also found in the two symbols with which Carthage is associated at Aeneas’ arrival. The bee simile of Aen. 1.430–6, also possibly reminiscent of the first of only three similes (p.44) in Persae, where we find the feminized Persians-μέλισσαι under their king-bee ὄρχαμος, Xerxes (Pers. 126–9), hides some ominous military references, one in particular reminiscent of Aeolus’ winds (1.434 agmine facto taking up 1.82 ac uenti uelut agmine facto) in an overall erotic and alluring atmosphere.34 The next image of the horse (Aen. 1.441–5), a recurrent animal in Aeschylus’ play,35 seems to realign readers with the commonly warlike nature of this soil. Horses, however, as Atossa also knows in her dreams,36 can be subjugated.37 Therefore, the possible ambiguity of the phrase facilem uictu applied to the Carthaginian soil: ‘rich in substance’, for sure, but also maybe ‘easy to conquer’.38 In the presentation of Carthage, the feminization of a city subjected to an Asiatic queen is already hinted at in its presentation under the domain of a female goddess, Juno, who is first of all regina (9 regina deum, 46 diuum…regina, 443 regia Iuno), and only then soror and coniunx (47) of her Trojan-supporter male counterpart, Jupiter. Dido’s royal status is continuously stressed throughout Book 1,39 and several times explicitly emphasized in its luxury,40 making her (p. 45) a double not only of Cleopatra41 but also of Atossa, a ‘paradigmatic’ Asiatic queen. Atossa, as protagonist of Persae, embodies the figure of the woman ‘yoked alone and left behind’ (Pers. 137 λείπεται μονόζυξ) which is representative of entire Persia: death separates her from her husband, and the encounter with her son will never be staged. The prologue to Dido’s tragedy (Aen. 1.335–71), where Venus tells the story of the murder of Sychaeus, is reminiscent of the murderous intrigues of ancient royal houses such as those in which Atossa featured, especially the gruesome deeds of Cambyses II. Even though the venal motivation of Pygmalion’s action is explicitly clear, the story’s emphasis on love (344 amore, 350 amorum, 352 amantem) alongside gold (343 auri,42 359 auri, 363 auro), and their reunion in the motive of the crime (349 auri…amore) seems to suggest that Pygmalion’s tragic action might have been set in motion by more than one impulse: he kills Sychaeus ‘indifferent of his sister’s loves’43 (350–1 securus amorum/germanae), but he is also ‘confident’44 of them—or that, at least, they will be more than one, and that the ‘yoking to’45 (345 iugarat) Sychaeus was just ‘the first’ (345–6 primis…ominibus).

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My Enemy’s Enemy is My Enemy This eastern palace tragedy matches closely the nightmares that Atossa suffered through. Like the Persian queen, Dido will later understand, trapped in her nightmares, that she is also a woman ‘yoked alone’ and abandoned in her empty, κένανδρον, Asiatic land (4.466–8 semperque relinqui/sola sibi, semper longam incomitata uidetur/ire uiam et Tyrios deserta quaerere terra), and not even the ghost of her dead husband, recalled through rituals at his tomb like Darius by Atossa, will suffice to console her (cf. Aen. 4.457–61 and Pers. 598–851). The nightmares that trouble her sleep follow the recognition of Aeneas’ preference for her sister Anna (420–3): an acknowledgement that surely involves feelings similar to those of Atossa, whose sister, Artystone, was ‘the wife that Darius loved most’ (Hdt. 7.69). Dido’s story presents itself as a variation of explicitly incestuous murder tales such as those in which Atossa (p.46) featured: Atossa’s first husband and brother, Cambyses II, had killed their brother Smerdis for fear that he would replace him in kingship (Hdt. 3.30) and married both their sisters (Hdt. 3.31), one of whom was later murdered for remembering the dead brother to him (Hdt. 3.32). Like Dido, Atossa seems to have been deceived for a while about the death of Smerdis, since she was married to a man, ‘the fake Smerdis’, who pretended to be him—although, since she ‘surely knew her own brother’ (Hdt. 3.68), she was probably privy to the truth. As the wife of Darius, Atossa was already a woman turned into a dux by the vicissitudes of life, but she was also to become a second Helen,46 ready to carry the aition of the outbreak of the Persian Wars (Hdt. 3.134). Both Atossa’s and Dido’s assimilation to Helen47 point to the recognition of their stories as aetiological fabulae for the outbreak of international conflicts which are envisaged in the form of a huge clash of continents, and represent these women as the pivot around which myth, history, and politics rotate. The connections established with Carthaginians and Persians, Atossa and Dido, situate Dido in direct continuity with the ‘Helen Model’, and suggest that the ideology of the Punic Wars might have developed in continuity with the Athenian ideology of the Persian Wars. In the Augustan age, however, the Persian features of Dido and Carthage, as well as the echoes of Euripides’ Bacchae—a play which, according to Plutarch (Crass. 33), the Parthians had staged after the battle of Carrhae using Crassus’ severed head as the severed head of Pentheus—also bring the Parthians into the picture, reminding us of the wars that Augustus should wage against foreign enemies and warding off the danger of further civil war through the evocation of metus hostilis. Thus, the Persian–Carthaginian parallel bolsters a sense of Roman national identity in continuity with the Greeks, not without a certain recognition of the Romans’ superior military achievements, because the Romans have managed to conquer and destroy Carthage, and must eventually conquer and destroy the new Persians, the Parthians.

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My Enemy’s Enemy is My Enemy (p.47) 2 Trojan/Roman-Greek Carthaginians ‘Mere difference is uninteresting; what is interesting is difference disguised as sameness.’ Jay Reed 2007: 3 I have so far shown how Virgil seems to make use of negative association in keeping with Sallust’s theorem and with the Greek Invention of the Barbarian. However, this apparently rational handling of negative association betrays an inherent illogicality which lies at the basis of the whole Aeneid and reproduces the paradoxes of an Augustan/Imperial ‘Republic’. In fact, no matter how far we manage to stress their barbaric features, Virgil’s portrait of the Carthaginians is never as polarized as we might expect it to be. This is arguably not a specific characteristic of the Carthaginian enemy, since even the portrait of Aeschylus’ Persians is after all ‘not as negative as we might have expected’,48 and the mirroring between Persians and Greeks in the play is best exemplified by the notion that the two women who embody Greece and Persia in Atossa’s dream are explicitly ‘sisters of the same stock’ (Pers. 185–6 κασιγνήτα γένους/ταὐτοῦ), since the Persians descend from Perseus, a Greek hero (Pers. 73–80) or, alternatively, from Medus, son of Medea and Aegeus.49 Thus, Aeschylus’ Persian Wars are not only a πόλεμος but surprisingly a στάσις, an ‘internal strife’ (Pers. 188). It is true that a degree of mirroring is found in any presentation of ‘The Enemy’, as an object that can be defined as other from the self only in relation to the previous definition of the self.50 However, the case of Rome’s creation of the Carthaginian enemy is peculiar within this usual pattern, specifically because of the intrusion of Greece into the picture: a sort of ‘cultural other’ which competes with the ‘military other’ embodied by Carthage. So far, I have analysed how Virgil seems to borrow the ‘strategies of polarisation’ from Greece in order to construct a stereotyped portrait of the Carthaginians in cultural continuity with that of the Persians in fifth-century Athens. Yet the modelling is nowhere near so simple, since the Roman process of (p.48) assimilation of Greek culture clearly coexists with an opposite process of differentiation from that same culture that the Romans were struggling to emulate: thus, as is well known, the Greeks rather than the Carthaginians figure the luxurious, lascivious, soft, and effeminized easterners in comparison to the rough military prowess of Roman Republican culture. It is such a ‘desire to be part of the Greek world and yet simultaneously distinct’51 that plausibly pushed the Romans to assume a Trojan rather than a Greek identity, by picking Aeneas rather than Odysseus as their mythical ancestor.52 The fact that Rome fastened on the Trojans as their national ancestors, precisely the symbol of the defeated Persians in fifth-century Athenian discourse, indicates a strong degree of discontinuity and differentiation from that culture which they also apparently struggled to emulate. In simple terms, the Romans accepted the status of ‘barbarians of the West’ that Pyrrhus Page 8 of 18

 

My Enemy’s Enemy is My Enemy among other Greeks had assigned to them, a status that Rome had to share with the equally sophisticated and equally barbarian polis of Carthage. In the Greek imagination, assimilation between the two cities was already operative: Timaeus had synchronized the respective dates of their foundations in 814/13 BC,53 and Eratosthenes had juxtaposed and compared their two political systems.54 The Aeneid is one of the many Latin texts to endorse this assimilation between Carthage and Rome. At its first apparition (1.418–29), Dido’s city betrays uncanny signs of similarity to Rome and to the Augustan recolonization of Carthage, Colonia Iulia Concordia Carthago.55 In addition, the specification that the temple of Juno in Carthage was founded where a horse’s head had been dug up (1.441–5) invites a direct link with the temple of Jupiter in Rome,56 which was also founded at the slope of a hill where a human head had (p.49) been dug up, the caput humanum, which gave the Capitoline hill its hallowed name.57 Also the similarities between Dido and Aeneas are famously explicit.58 As Dido herself notices (1.628–9), her exile story is a direct match for Aeneas’, since they are both duces of their people (1.364 dux femina facti) who have been forced, under different circumstances, to depart from the East in order to found a western colony destined to outlast its mother-city. The mirroring similes of Dido–Diana at 1.498–504 and of Aeneas–Apollo at 4.143–50 invite readers, already in DServius’ view, to register these two characters as twin siblings, thus emphasizing the impossibility of their marriage.59 Their meeting in the cave, at 4.165–6 (speluncam Dido dux et Troianus eandem/deueniunt), where dux initially consorts with Dido before finding correct assignment to Aeneas, finally renders, with a ‘linguistic double-take’, ‘this allusive merging into one of the two individuals’.60 The riddle of identities created by this mirroring is well reflected in Virgil’s handling of the Romans’ and Carthaginians’ relationship to the Greeks. If, on the one hand, Carthaginians are inevitably treated as barbarians, the sense of their belonging to the same party of the hostile Greeks is explicitly stressed after Aeneas’ arrival at the city. Juno is their supporting goddess, in whose honour they have erected a temple which evidently celebrates the Achaeans’ success over eastern foes in terms very closely reminiscent of fifth-century Athenian propaganda, with the Phrygians symbolizing the defeated Persians.61 From this perspective, it is noteworthy that one of the few plausible verbal reminiscences of Aeschylus’ Persae in the Aeneid is related to the Trojan War. In Aeneas’ words, the island to which the Greeks sail off before the finding of the Horse may ominously recall Psyttaleia (cf. Aen. 2.21–3 Est in conspectu Tenedos, notissima fama/insula…nunc tantum sinus et statio male fida carinis and Pers. 447–8 νῆσός τις ἔστι πρόσθε Σαλαμῖνος τόπων,/βαιά, δύσορμος ναυσίν).62 Aeneas, aligning himself with the Persian messenger,63 seems to be aware of the link (p.50) between the Trojan and Persian Wars as famously expressed by the Persians themselves at the beginning of Herodotus’ narrative (Hdt. 1.5). Noticeably, the same orientalistic connotation of wealth that was applied to Carthage at the Page 9 of 18

 

My Enemy’s Enemy is My Enemy beginning of the previous book (1.14 diues opum) has now been transferred to Priam’s kingdom (2.22 diues opum), partly in response to the already established equation of Carthage and Troy, partly in transferral of barbaric traits to these orientalized pre-Romans. As a common thread in this transfer of barbarian traits, the ‘barbaric gold’ of the doors of Priam’s palace (2.504 barbarico postes auro), reminiscent of Ennius’ Andromacha (94 J ope barbarica), will appear again, this time in its Ennian phrasing, in the description of Antony’s forces at 8.685 (ope barbarica), symbol of the civil wars’ inseparable blending of West and East, Romans and Barbarians.64 Within this intricate triangle of Trojans, Carthaginians, and Greeks, it is Telamonian Ajax, Salamis’ hero,65 who supplies a privileged viewpoint to explore the intersections and similarities between Carthaginians and Trojans. Not only is Ajax an intertextual model for both Dido and Aeneas in the course of the poem,66 but it is actually his half-brother Teucer, the founder of Cypriot Salamis,67 who provides the mythical point of contact between Troy and Sidon, since it is thanks to him that Dido is informed of the Trojans’ misfortunes (Aen. 1.619–22). If Carthaginians and Romans are both pulled on to the Greek side by Ajax’s model, the figure of Teucer can be singled out as embodying this continuous shift of eastern paradigms. Indeed, the mediator between Carthaginians and Romans is emphatically a character who, as son of Telamon and of Priam’s sister Hesione, is both Greek and Trojan. Teucer was inside the wooden horse, but his expulsion from Salamis pointed to his responsibility for the death of Salamis’ hero; he is connected to Athens’ expansionist propaganda, (p.51) though at the same time the founder of an eastern city, a bulwark of Phoenicia; furthermore, his homonymy with another Teucer, the legendary ancestor of the Trojan kings, previously mentioned by Venus (1.235), who will be the cause of the Trojans’ misunderstanding of their western origins in Book 3, must reinforce this eastern–western ambiguity.68 In terms of oriental identities, Dido’s proximity to the Greek hero of the Persian Wars, together with the ‘invention’69 that her father had helped Teucer in founding a second Salamis, would seem to dismantle the barbarian orientalizing theatre that had been set up for Carthage, revealing instead the similarities between Greeks and Carthaginians—eastern foes of the Romans, or western foes of the Trojans. However, the identification of Aeneas with Odysseus in Aeneid 6 (needless to say, an identification which runs throughout the poem) and, even more telling, with Ajax in Aeneid 12,70 should put into question even this model. In addition, as regards the use of the Ajax model in the Augustan age, it may be telling that Ajax was after all the victim of a sort of internal conflict. Unfortunately, we are unable to assess whether Virgil also had in mind Ennius’ Ajax or Pacuvius’ Armorum Iudicium when using Ajax for the representation of his Dido, but an interesting anecdote preserved by Suetonius might prompt further investigation of the political and Roman use of Ajax in the Aeneid. Suetonius claims that a line of Pacuvius’ Armorum Iudicium

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My Enemy’s Enemy is My Enemy was sung at the funeral games of Julius Caesar ‘to rouse pity and indignation at his death’ (ad miserationem et inuidiam caedis eius): ‘Men seruasse, ut essent qui me perderent?’ (Suet. Iul. 84.2 = Pacuv. Armorum Iudicium fr. XV Klotz) ‘Saved I these men so that they could murder me?’

This line, probably taken from Aeschylus’ Ὅπλων κρίσις, was delivered by Ajax against Ulixes71 in a line of reasoning strikingly similar to Dido’s complaints to Aeneas, when she reminds him of his ingratitude in return for her saving the fleet (Aen. 4.373–8). Even (p.52) though it is impossible to trace the political significance of Ajax in early Roman theatre (supposing he had any), the model of the Ajax–Odysseus dispute as a strife between compatriots was evidently central to the reception of its myth in view of the treacherous murder of Caesar. Paradoxically, even in the Greek myth, the hero of the wars against barbarians was one whose death had been caused by an internal conflict.

3 Bacchic Conclusions Therefore, it is from the point of view of the dissolution of the strict polarities set up when equating Carthaginians and Persians that the intertext of Euripides’ Bacchae in Aeneid 4 should be analysed. On the one hand, Carthage is presented as the home of the Dionysian as early as Aeneas’ arrival: the Nymphs sitting in the harbour’s antrum (1.168) and the Oreades of the Dido–Diana simile (1.500) look forward to those who will witness Aeneas’ and Dido’s union in the cave with ritual howling (4.168 ulularunt uertice Nymphae). These latter Nymphs are assimilated to the Maenads of Dionysiac all-nighters72 to which Dido and the women of the city (4.667 femineo ululatu) will be later more explicitly compared (4.300–3). On the other hand, however, as Clifford Weber has convincingly shown, the strong similarities between Aeneas and Bacchus in the Aeneas– Apollo simile (4.143–50) and the parallels between the hunting scene of Book 4 and Pentheus’ mountain hunt in Euripides’ Bacchae point to the recognition of Aeneas as ‘the Virgilian counterpart of Euripides’ Dionysus, as both the hunter who survives the hunt and a stranger newly arrived from Asia. His advent, like that of Dionysus, leads to the death of the reigning monarch. Dido corresponds to one of Euripides’ Maenads…even more salient, however, are the affinities between Dido and Pentheus.’73 Dido’s anguished dream of actually being Pentheus (4.469–70 Eumenidum ueluti demens uidet agmina Pentheus/et solem geminum et duplices se ostendere Thebas) would (p.53) therefore point to the recognition of Aeneas as the foreign eastern deity come to destroy her realm. As recently examined by Mac Góráin, the profusion of Dionysiac references in the second half of the Aeneid, and particularly in Book 7,74 can be interpreted in terms of a structuring of Aeneid 7–12 after the plot of Euripides’ Bacchae, which creates a parallel between Dionysus’ return to his own land in the form of a xenos and Aeneas’ arrival at the land of his ancestors.75 Euripides’ Bacchae would then provide ‘the most important tragic model for the Aeneid’s Page 11 of 18

 

My Enemy’s Enemy is My Enemy substratum of civil war thematics in the context of the foundation of a city… which reflects on recent and contemporary history’.76 The fact that the same tragic model also structures the plot of the Carthaginian episode serves to emphasize not only the strong thematic correspondences between the two halves of the poem, but also the presentation of Carthage as one of Aeneas’ possible homes, a ‘paradoxically foreign “motherland”’77 which is intratextually equated both to Troy and to the site of future Rome, and intertextually reminiscent of Ithaca by use of the harbour of Phorcys (Od. 13.96–112) as the ecphrastic model for the Carthaginian, a harbour that noticeably also featured a cave of Nymphs (cf. Aen. 1.166–8 and Od. 13.103–4 ἀγχόθι δ᾽ αὐτῆς ἄντρον ἐπήρατον ἠεροειδές,/ἱρὸν νυμφάων αἳ νηϊάδες καλέονται). The interactions with Ithaca that are exploited in the Carthaginian harbour, if analysed together with the Dionysiac features of Aeneas in Carthage, set up the frame of a nostos which is not only strongly suggested by the similarities between Aeneas and Dido, but is even craved by the queen herself, whose agony lies at the edge between her desire to play a second Penelope and the sensation of acting as a second Pentheus instead. But there is also another famously recognized model, which is similarly at work in the construction and dissolution of polarities: if Aeneas’ acting as Dionysus could strengthen Dido’s confidence that he has come to rescue her from her perilous neighbours as Dionysus came to rescue Ariadne, it will soon be clear that he is also no less a veritable Theseus. Treacherous, cruel, cold-blooded perhaps, and an Athenian hero—the Greek national slayer of monsters and barbarians alike. (p.54) In the Aeneid, it is significant that the primary model for the Carthaginian episode is that of the Phaeacians, whose striking similarity to the Phoenicians goes far beyond a merely phonetic assonance, to the point that an identification between the two has often been proposed in the past.78 But what is peculiar about the Carthaginian land is that, whereas in Homer there is no direct hint at an identification between Phoenicians and Phaeacians, these people are authentic Tyrians only disguised as Phaeacians. The atmosphere of a wonderland and fantasy realm that the Carthaginians retain from the Greek model is undermined by the construction of a city which, as a Phoenician colony in the West, is inevitably compared to Thebes, and was also called Καδμεία.79 The activation of the tragic model of Thebes, ‘the obverse side of Athens’,80 drags Aeneas into a world of ‘ill-defined boundaries, incestuous tensions, blurred gender identities, a household (and a land) ambigua’.81 Thebes, and especially Euripides’ Thebes, is the theatrical site where the Greek vs Barbarian polarizations eventually collapse. Like Teucer’s new Salamis, like Carthage, and like Rome, it is a city that layers of myth and history have gradually built up as a hybrid, belonging neither to East nor West: if its national deity, Dionysus, ‘is equally “at home” among Greeks and Barbarians, it is because he belongs to both worlds’.82

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My Enemy’s Enemy is My Enemy The mirrorings between Carthage and Rome, when analysed together with the polarization of Carthage as a barbarian city, create a blurring of boundaries and identities that is particularly suitable not only to the tragic genre,83 but also to the Dionysiac elements inherent in Virgil’s Carthage, which are echoed through the conspicuous intertext of Thebes and Euripides’ Bacchae.84 If the tragedy of Pentheus is a prominent model for Dido, this is not only because their cities share the same Phoenician ancestry: as with Euripides’ Bacchae, one can see the Carthaginian episode ‘simultaneously telescoping polarity and identity’,85 marking ‘the abolition of the frontier (p.55) that normally separates the Greek[/ Roman] man from the effeminate Barbarian’.86 However, unlike the Bacchae, the assimilation of Western and Barbarian in the Aeneid is made even more cogent and inevitably puzzling by the fact that we are no longer dealing with a two-fold relationship: a Greek identity is inserted between Carthaginians and Romans, counting simultaneously as West and East, foreigner and ancestor, continuously shifting between opposites according to the perspective one adopts on the Trojans—whether they should be considered Phrygians or western Dardanians. It is perhaps no surprise, then, that in an epic poem whose protagonist can be Trojan and Greek, Dionysus and Theseus at the very same time, the antagonistic city must be envisaged as a second Thebes in a whirlwind of shifting western– eastern paradigms. The safe and rationalizing principle of metus hostilis, a principle which is, or has become, properly Roman, ends up collapsing under the burden of Virgil’s exploitation of the tragic genre. This fall opens up a crack in Rome’s security of a strong national identity, which is filled by the nightmare of Rome’s being its own barbarian enemy, the threatening ghost of the recent civil wars. This irrational riddle of identities, the interactions between Trojans/ Romans, Phoenicians/Carthaginians, and Greeks, cannot but give a new, irrational—or at least illogical—phrasing to the proverb that exemplified the principle of negative association: no more is ‘the Enemy of my Enemy my Friend’, but the Enemy of my Enemy has now become…my Enemy. Notes:

(1) Cf. Frede and Striker 1996. (2) Cf. Boas 1961. (3) Snell 1953. (4) Dodds 1951. (5) See Russo 2004. (6) Or ‘cultural cringe’, with Burton 2013: 111. (7) See Conte 2007 on Heinze 1993.

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My Enemy’s Enemy is My Enemy (8) See Mac Góráin 2012–13. (9) M. Weber 1978: 1359 referring to the poleis. (10) Hegel 1991: 324, my emphasis. (11) See Schmitt 1996: 26–7: ‘The political enemy…is…the other, the stranger; and it is sufficient for his nature that he is, in a specifically intense way, existentially something different and alien…’ (12) On negative association in modern political theory see Wood 1995 and Evrigenis 2008. (13) Sall. BC 10.1–2, BJ 41.2, Hist. fr. 1.11 McGushin. The theorem was thought by some to have been derived from Posidonius, but was actually something of a commonplace among ancient historians: see Earl 1961: 41–59, McGushin 1992: 77–9, Wood 1995, Evrigenis 2008, Jacobs 2010. (14) Diod. 34/35.33.4–6, Plut. Cato Maior 27, Flor. 1.31.5, App. Pun. 69. The debate between Scipio Nasica and Cato must have occupied a long section of Livy 49, according to its Periocha: see Mineo 2011: 123. (15) For a survey of the instances of metus hostilis in authors other than Sallust see Wood 1995 and Evrigenis 2008. (16) On which see especially Krummen 2004. (17) Hall 1989. (18) Cf. Eur. Med. 210 Ἑλλάδ᾽ ἐς ἀντίπορον. (19) This encapsulates archenmity (see already DServius ad 1.13) but the conviction that Rome geographically faced Carthage should not be underestimated: see Korenjak 2004. (20) Phoenician Kart hadašt, an etymology hinted at at 1.298 and 366 nouae Karthaginis (see Servius ad 1.366 = Liv. fr. 6 W-M). (21) See Aen. 1.375 Troia antiqua, 1.626 antiqua Teucrorum a stirpe, 2.137 patriam antiquam. (22) Cf. Aen. 1.12 and 2.363 urbs antiqua ruit, 3.11 campos ubi Troia fuit, 4.311– 12 si…Troia antiqua maneret. (23) Cf. the reference to Egyptian Thebes (37–8 ὠγυγίους Θήβας), with Garvie 2009: 45. According to Herodotus (Hdt. 3.91.4, 5.49.7), Kissia is not a city, but a region of Susiana within which Susa was situated. Aeschylus might here refer to

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My Enemy’s Enemy is My Enemy Susa itself (according to Strabo 15.3.2, he described Kissia as the founder of Susa), but see contra Hall 1996: 108 and Garvie 2009: 55. (24) See Hardie 1990: 228–9. (25) See Saïd 2002: 96–7, especially on Cadmus sharing the gigantomachic traits of Aeschylus’ Xerxes. (26) Saïd 2007: 74. (27) u.l. χρυσονόμου. (28) See Podlecki 1986: 78–9, Goldhill 1988, Hall 1989: 2, 16, 97, T. Harrison 2000: 76–91. (29) Hall 1993: 109–10. (30) Hall 1993: 121. (31) Hall 1993: 117–18, T. Harrison 2000: 66–75. (32) Cf. Aristotle (Politics 1327b29–32) or Hippocrates (Airs Waters Places ch.16) with Cartledge 1993: 39–40. (33) The pun on πέρθω (‘to sack’) and Πέρσαι is recommended by Aristotle (Rhetoric 3.1412b2). (34) On the military and threatening connotations of the bee simile see Giusti 2014. (35) Horses are constantly present in the parodos of Persae (14, 18, 26, 29, 32, 105, 126) and implicit in the yoke metaphor, the first (50) and ‘dominant metaphor of the play’ (Garvie 2009: 66), which finds its concreteness in Atossa’s narration of her dream of the two women/horses (181–99). Horses also connect to the defining role of Darius’ horse in his election to the kingship (Hdt. 3.84–8) and to the Persians’ worship of the Sun, with the Horse as its sacred animal (see Just. 1.10.5). (36) While one of the two women/horses rebels to the yoke (Pers. 194–6), the first one ‘keeps her jaw submissively to the bit’ (Pers. 193–4). The symbol of the horse, with which the Persian army is associated in the parodos for its aggressive and warlike nature, and which is there supposed to bolster their confidence in the success of the expedition, is here used—paradoxically—to represent the slavish nature that is at the root of their failure. (37) Legend had it (Servius ad loc., Justinus 18.5.15–6, Eust. ad Dion. Per. 195) that the Tyrians first dug up the head of an ox, symbolizing the fertility of the land but also subjugation, and therefore decided to dig somewhere else, until Page 15 of 18

 

My Enemy’s Enemy is My Enemy they found a horse’s head, a positive sign, since ‘this animal, even though it can be subjugated, is nonetheless warlike’ (Serv. ad loc: ‘hoc animal licet subiugetur, bellicosum tamen est’). (38) The ambiguity of the phrase facilem uictu (445) has been read by Kraggerud 1963 as an indirect hint at Carthage’s ultimate military failure (taking uictu as passive supine of uincere rather than ablative of uictus): see Egan 1998 and contra E. L. Harrison 1984: 134. (39) 303 regina, 340 regit, 389 reginae, 454 reginam, 496 regina, 522 regina, 594 reginam, 631–2 regia…tecta, 660 reginam, 674 reginam, 686 regalis…mensas, 697 regina, 717 reginam, 728 regina. (40) 1.496–7, 697–8, 728–9. (41) See Bertman 2000, Syed 2005: 184–93, Hardie 2006, 2014: 55–7. (42) u.l. agri. (43) securus recurs in a similar sense at 10.326; see Austin 1971: 128–9. (44) OLD s.u. securus 3. (45) The verb is so metaphorically exploited in Latin Literature only from Catullus 64.21 onwards. (46) Asheri 1990: 344. (47) Hinted at in the Diana simile through the mention of the Eurotas (Aen. 1.498), on whose shores Helen was kidnapped, and made explicit by Iarbas in his identification of Aeneas with Paris (4.215); see Krummen 2004: 33–42. (48) Griffith 2007: 101. Cf. Gruen 2011: 10–11. (49) See Garvie 2009: 117, Gruen 2011: 19–20. (50) See especially Hartog 1988; on the ‘Mirror of the Enemy’ in Renaissance Italian literature see Moudarres 2011. (51) Erskine 2001: 145; cf. Gruen 1992: 23–31. (52) On alternative traditions, see Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 1.72.2 and 1.72.5. One of the first attestations of Rome’s Trojan origins is attributed to Greek rather than Roman propaganda: see Gruen 1992: 44 on Pyrrhus in Paus. 1.12.1. The episode of the Segestans’ plea for help from Rome during the first Punic War on the basis of their common Trojan origin attests the conjunction and concomitance of the first military conflict against Rome’s yet-to-be national enemy with the

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My Enemy’s Enemy is My Enemy simultaneous shaping of a national identity (Zon. 8.9.12; Cic. Verr. 2.4.72; 2.5.83, 125; Diod. 23.5; Plut. Nic. 1.3): see Gruen 1992: 45, Erskine 2001: 31, 40. (53) Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 1.74.1 = FGrH 566 F 60. See Feeney 2007: 53–4. (54) Strabo 1.4.9. (55) See especially E. L. Harrison 1984. (56) On the parallel between the Carthaginian grove and Romulus’ asylum see Giusti 2014: 44 n. 31. (57) Liv. 1.55.5, Plin. NH 28.15, Serv. ad A. 8.345. See Giusti 2014: 44 n. 31. (58) See especially Van Nortwick 1992: 89–124, Hardie 2006, Reed 2007: 73–100. (59) DServ. ad A. 4.144 ‘quomodo germanorum nuptiae esse non possunt’, see Hardie 2006. (60) Hardie 2006: 29. (61) See Horsfall 1973–4. (62) The similarities are noted by Austin 1964: 39, but are nonetheless very slight. (63) For other points of contact between Aeneas and the messenger in Persae see Rossi 2004: 52. (64) See Wigodsky 1972: 78, Bowie 1990: 480 n. 79. (65) On Salamis as ‘Ajax’s island’ (νῆσος Αἴαντος), see Pers. 307, 368, 596. (66) For Dido in Aeneid 4 and 6 (the encounter between Dido and Aeneas in the underworld being modelled on Od. 11.543–67) and for Aeneas in 12. See Lefèvre 1978, Lyne 1987: 9–12, Barchiesi 1999a: 324, Panoussi 2002, 2009: 177–217. (67) The myth of Teucer, who founded another Salamis in Cyprus after being repudiated by his father Telamon on the grounds that he had not avenged Ajax’s death, was probably created as part of the propaganda of Athenian expansion in the East right after the Persian Wars (Nilsson 1951: 64–5), and it is presented as such both in Pindar’s fourth Nemean (Nem. 4.46) and in Aeschylus’ Persae (895); see Garvie 2009: 335. (68) See Barchiesi 1999a: 337. (69) Austin 1971: 191.

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My Enemy’s Enemy is My Enemy (70) See Aen. 12.435–40 with Tarrant 2012: 202–3; on Aeneas as Ajax, see Lyne 1987: 8–12, 113–14, Panoussi 2009: 214–16, Barchiesi 1999a: 324. It may be significant that Aeneas’ identification with the Greek hero becomes explicit towards the end of a poem that can also be considered as a journey to shake off the burden of his oriental Trojan identity: see Schmitz 2013: 100–2. (71) See the Scholia in Suetonii Vitas Caesarum. (72) Cf. Eur. Bacch. 689 ἡ σὴ δὲ μήτηρ ὠλόλυξεν and 1133 αἱ δ᾽ ὠλόλυζον; Aen. 4.168 is also strongly reminiscent of Hecate’s apparition to Jason in Apollonius’ Argonautica 3.1218–9 αἱ δ᾽ ὀλόλυξαν/Νύμφαι. Cf. Bocciolini Palagi 2007: 35 n. 70. (73) C. Weber 2002: 334. (74) On which see Bocciolini Palagi 2007. (75) See Mac Góráin 2009 and 2013. (76) Mac Góráin 2009: 80. (77) Oliensis 2001: 49. (78) See Leask 1888, Winter 1995, Dougherty 2001: 102–21. On Phaeacia and Virgil’s Carthage, see Giusti 2014. (79) Steph. Byz. s.u. Καρχηδών. On Carthage and Thebes see Svenbro—Scheid 1985, Hardie 1990. (80) Zeitlin 1986: 117. (81) Schiesaro 2008: 97. (82) Saïd 2002: 98. (83) See Segal 1986: 38–41. (84) For a similar Dionysiac blurring in relation to Carthage, Rome, and civil war, see my reading of Horace’s Epode 9: Giusti (forthcoming, 2016). (85) Segal 1986: 38. (86) Saïd 2002: 67.

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Orestes, Aeneas, and Augustus

Augustan Poetry and the Irrational Philip Hardie

Print publication date: 2016 Print ISBN-13: 9780198724728 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2015 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198724728.001.0001

Orestes, Aeneas, and Augustus Madness and Tragedy in Virgil’s Aeneid Stefano Rebeggiani

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198724728.003.0003

Abstract and Keywords This chapter provides a new reading of the role of Orestes in Virgil’s Aeneid. It starts by examining Octavian’s use of the story of Orestes at the beginning of his political career. The myth of Orestes seems to have been harnessed in order to massage popular perception of some of Octavian’s actions during the 40s and 30s. A new reading of the Orestes passage in Aeneid 3 demonstrates its connection with earlier and later scenes in the poem, especially with the final duel of Aeneas and Turnus. The article provides an interpretation of Virgil’s main innovation in his treatment of Orestes, namely the fact that he assigns the murder of Pyrrhus to the mad phase of the hero’s story. This transformation of the Orestes myth is functional to Virgil’s interaction with Octavian’s presentation of his civil war years and aims to introduce tragic madness as a motivation for Octavian’s deeds. Keywords:   Virgil, Aeneid, Orestes, madness, Pyrrhus, irrational, Octavian, Augustus, tragedy

According to Pliny, Caesar encouraged the practice of publicly displaying Greek works of art by dedicating two famous paintings, one representing Medea and the other Ajax, in front of the temple of Venus Genetrix, which he had vowed on the eve of the battle of Pharsalus.1 In a recent contribution, Alessandra Bravi links the selection of this subject with the conflict with Pompey.2 In this reading, Pompey would be alluded to in the figure of Ajax, the hero who, obsessed with his own glory, went mad at the instigation of Athena.3 If this interpretation is correct, the display of Ajax by Caesar implies a use of madness as a weapon for Page 1 of 17

 

Orestes, Aeneas, and Augustus propaganda. This is one of the possible uses of mythical madness within political sloganeering, but there are others. Much later, the emperor Nero compared himself to the mad Hercules. This time the comparison was meant to excuse the emperor, not to condemn him: he associated himself with a mad hero in order to mitigate the people’s reaction to his killing of Poppaea.4 In this paper, I will be concerned with what seems to me to be a comparable use of the topic of madness, this time by Virgil. I shall draw attention to Virgil’s adaptation of the story of Orestes in the Aeneid, and will try to demonstrate that a similar apologetic use of the story, with regard to Octavian’s civil war years, might be implied. (p.57) I shall begin with a discussion of Octavian’s propaganda strategies in the 40s and 30s BCE, concentrating in particular on his use of mythical figures. The comparison with Achilles, which Octavian is said to have encouraged, I read as having an apologetic function: it helped to frame in a more favourable light Octavian’s gruesome revenge against the tyrannicides. I will then discuss a second myth which plays a role in Octavian’s self-representation in these years, that of Orestes. This story too seems to have been evoked in order to massage the perception of Octavian’s vendetta. I shall then discuss Virgil’s handling of Orestes in the Aeneid. A number of peculiarities in the Orestes passage in Book 3 seem to betray Virgil’s interaction with propagandistic uses of the Orestes story. In the Aeneid, Orestes is closely linked to Aeneas, and is deeply connected to the topic of revenge. In fact, a number of significant analogies link the Orestes passage to later and earlier episodes in the poem. In particular, I shall argue that Orestes’ murder of Pyrrhus anticipates the final duel of Turnus and Aeneas. This strong connection between Aeneas and Orestes, and the emphasis on revenge, I suggest, would have recalled Octavian’s use of the Orestes story to frame his own vendetta in his early years. In this context, I provide an interpretation of Virgil’s main innovation in his treatment of Orestes, namely the fact that he assigns the murder of Pyrrhus to the mad phase of the hero’s story. My analysis will add, I hope, to our understanding of the uses of the irrational in Virgil’s Aeneid and in Augustan culture at large. The way in which Virgil transforms the Orestes story is indicative of his own attitude towards the irrational. The radical way in which Virgil recasts the history of Rome as tragedy, the space that he allows for irrational factors not just governing the individual experience, but playing a role in the progression of history, introduces a remarkably original element in the culture of the early principate.

1 Orestes and Octavian’s Vendetta In the De Clementia, Seneca distinguishes two phases in the career of the emperor Augustus: a first phase marked by cruelty and a second one endowed with mercy (clementia). Augustus, Seneca stresses, had only of late learned clementia. Before, he had been quick-tempered, prone to anger, and had done many things from which he turned his (p.58) eyes later on. Seneca refers in Page 2 of 17

 

Orestes, Aeneas, and Augustus particular to the triumviral years, with the peaks of cruelty marked by the proscriptions and the events at Perusia (the infamous episode in which Octavian allegedly sacrificed three hundred prisoners to the shade of Julius Caesar).5 Octavian himself was aware of the problematic nature of much of what he had done in his early years and of the discredit he had earned through those actions. We see him busy at an early date in devising strategies to defend his behaviour, especially by trying to provide a version of events which would make his case less controversial. Mythical comparisons play an important role in this context, to an extent which has not yet been exhaustively examined. The 40s and 30s see Octavian suggesting his similarity to certain mythical characters. These operations are not simply aimed at increasing the commander’s prestige, but they betray an attempt at providing mitigating factors for Octavian’s actions. One example is Octavian’s evocation of the myth of Achilles.6 In 44 BCE the young Octavian faces the most difficult decision of his life, whether to accept Caesar’s inheritance and enter the political struggle or remain outside the political stage. According to Appian, Octavian used Achilles’ words to explain to his parents his decision to accept Caesar’s legacy. He quoted a famous sentence by Achilles in the Iliad (‘would I might die this hour, who failed to save my comrade slain!’). After saying this he added that ‘these words of Achilles, and especially the deed that followed, had of all things given him immortal renown’.7 Achilles of course was a popular model for generals, especially for military enfant prodiges, an obvious example being Alexander. Yet Octavian’s use of Achilles in this passage is more specific. Octavian selects a specific phase in the hero’s life, the one following Patroclus’ death, and a distinct text—the Iliad. For Octavian Achilles is a model of revenge, and of a particularly cruel revenge. The section of the Iliad the young Octavian has in mind features the most brutal and morally objectionable deeds by Achilles, including the human sacrifice of the Trojans prisoners, the slaying of suppliants, and the pitiless treatment of Hector’s body. This use of Achilles makes sense in the context of Octavian’s ideology after 44 BCE. Octavian made revenge a key motivation for (p.59) his actions after the death of Caesar.8 The topic was useful for a number of reasons: on the one hand it stressed Octavian’s legitimacy by increasing the link with his father, on the other it could be used to excuse certain excesses. The cruelty of revenge is motivated by the strength of the bond between the dead and the avenger, and by the latter’s emotional reaction. Octavian and his supporters used the topic quite loosely: we find it applied to events which have little connection to the death of Caesar.9 This ‘apologetic’ use of revenge lies behind Octavian’s evocation of the story of Achilles too. Achilles’ actions, no matter how cruel, could be partly excused as the excessive reaction of a youth who immensely loved his friend. By linking himself to Achilles, Octavian claimed the same mitigating factors: he too Page 3 of 17

 

Orestes, Aeneas, and Augustus had acted out of immense love. With Achilles, Octavian selects a story which does not deny his cruelty, but where cruelty is embedded in a context which makes it more acceptable. Let us now consider a second mythical paradigm adopted by Octavian in the same period, that of Orestes. The evidence for this comparison, however fragmentary, seems to me to be convincing. In describing the temple of Hera in Argos, Pausanias mentions the story that a statue, which the inscription identified as a statue of the emperor Augustus, was actually a statue of Orestes.10 The passage is discussed in a short paper by Tonio Hölscher, who thoroughly explores the case for Octavian’s exploitation of the Argive hero.11 Hölscher documents the revival of interest in the figure of Orestes in the visual arts of the Augustan period. He also draws attention to the Roman tradition, recorded by Servius, according to which Orestes died in Aricia.12 The hero’s bones were later transferred to Rome and buried before the temple of Saturn. Servius gives no idea of the date of this transferral, but Hölscher endorses the hypothesis of Fittschen and Pensabene that the prime mover was Augustus himself, who had (p.60) the bones buried in their new place on the occasion of the temple restoration by Munatius Plancus around 29 BCE.13 Servius also tells us that the ashes of Orestes were considered one of the seven guarantees (pignora) of Rome’s hold on Empire.14 The comparison has left some trace in the literary record too. Dewar identifies an allusion to a famous passage of the Oresteia in the final lines of Virgil’s first Georgic: Virgil’s simile of the charioteer losing control of his chariot. Unaware of the external evidence linking Orestes and Octavian, Dewar argued that the simile echoed the passage near the end of Aeschylus’ Libation Bearers describing the onset of Orestes’ madness, where the hero sees himself as a charioteer losing control of his chariot.15 We know from Suetonius that passages from the Electra of Atilius, a Latin adaptation of Sophocles’ Electra, were read at the funeral of Caesar.16 The similarity of Orestes and Octavian is later implied in a passage by Claudian.17 As for the function of this myth within Octavian’s ideology, scholars correctly link it to Octavian’s exploitation of the topic of revenge after 44 BCE. Orestes was the mythical prototype of revenge, specifically revenge of the father. He had avenged his father by killing his mother (Clytaemnestra) and her lover (Aegisthus). In a similar way, Octavian had avenged his father Caesar; he had also killed his father’s lover (Cleopatra) and her partner (Antony).18 In this view, Octavian’s use of Orestes is endowed with the same apologetic function we observed in the story of Achilles. The myth provides a legitimating context for Octavian’s vendetta. Octavian may have ‘killed relatives’ (the idea of civil war as fratricide is common to Roman authors of this period), but that killing should be seen as a dutiful revenge of his father’s blood, motivated by pietas and commissioned by the gods.

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Orestes, Aeneas, and Augustus It is important to remark that, while Orestes is the mad hero par excellence, madness is not the point of Octavian’s exploitation of this figure. The part of the Orestes saga implied by these comparisons is (p.61) Orestes’ revenge of Agamemnon. Now Orestes was not mad when he killed his mother. His madness appeared later on, as the result of the intervention of the Erinyes. This point is of great importance for my argument, for it represents the major innovation by Virgil in his use of the Orestes story. In what follows, I will examine Virgil’s use of Orestes in the Aeneid. I will try to prove that Virgil too is interested in Orestes as an image of revenge, and he encourages his readers to explore the connections of Orestes and Octavian. However, Virgil selects a later stage of the Orestes story, and changes the tradition about the hero by having him kill Pyrrhus under the influence of madness.

2 Orestes in the Aeneid In the third Book of the Aeneid Andromache recounts to Aeneas that part of the kingdom of Epirus was entrusted to the Trojan Helenus, now her husband, after Pyrrhus’ death. The latter was killed by Orestes: ast illum ereptae magno flammatus amore coniugis et scelerum Furiis agitatus Orestes excipit incautum patriasque obtruncat ad aras

Aen. 3.330–2 But [Pyrrhus] Orestes, fired with strong desire for his stolen bride, and goaded by the Furies of his crimes, catches unawares and slays at his father’s altar.19 There are three remarkable elements in Virgil’s treatment. The first is the place: where does the murder happen? There is an old scholarly controversy about this point which is worth summarizing.20 Virgil only says that the killing happened ad patrias aras, ‘at the paternal altars’.21 The pre-Virgilian tradition is however uniform in placing the murder in Delphi.22 Then what is the meaning of ad patrias aras? (p.62) How can the notion that this murder happens at the ‘paternal altars’ be reconciled with its happening in Delphi? The problem is as old as Servius, who tries to find a solution by positing the existence of an altar to Achilles in Delphi, built by Neoptolemus, whose presence is nowhere else attested.23 Modern scholars are still divided between those who try to reconcile Virgil’s sentence with the tradition about the murder happening in Delphi, and those who believe that Virgil shifted the story to some other location.24 Importantly, it has long been noted that the idea of a murder ad patrias aras, though geographically vague, has the effect of creating a symmetry with the murder of Priam in Book 2.25 Pyrrhus kills Priam at the altar of Jupiter in Priam’s palace in Troy, and Aeneas’ words in recounting the fact are clearly echoed in the Orestes Page 5 of 17

 

Orestes, Aeneas, and Augustus account here: Aen. 2.662–3 iamque aderit multo Priami de sanguine Pyrrhus | natum ante ora patris, patrem qui obtruncat ad aras ‘soon will come Pyrrhus, steeped in the blood of Priam—Pyrrhus who butchers the son before the father’s eyes, the father at the altars’.26 And yet, as Horsfall rightly notes, the words ad patrias aras must mean something intelligible in the context of Book 3. Horsfall takes patrius here to mean ‘national’, and attempts to reconcile Virgil’s sentence with the traditional version by arguing that Delphi can be regarded as the ‘national’ shrine of Greece.27 I am not entirely convinced by this solution. If, for instance, an Argive is said to have done something ad patrias aras it was natural for a Roman to think of something happening in Argos rather than in (p.63) a Panhellenic sanctuary: the sense of the Homeric heroes’ belonging to their individual cities and kingdoms is too strong to allow the reader not to feel a contradiction between the phrase ad patrias aras and the version of the story where the murder happens in Delphi. Moreover, we should have to suppose that all of Virgil’s readers knew the geographical details of Pyrrhus’ murder for this explanation to work, which is far from assured. For the general reader with no notion of the Greek tradition and/or no intention to press Virgil’s text to make it fit its Greek antecedents the clause ad patrias aras, said with reference to an Epirote king, would hardly have suggested Delphi: the notion of Pyrrhus’ homeland shrine, supported by the literal meaning of the text, would have prevailed.28 Virgil clearly invites readers to read the passage in Book 3 through their knowledge of the Priam scene in Book 2. Thus, a solution which strengthens the analogy of the two episodes is preferable. The idea of the murder happening in Delphi would hardly strengthen the parallel with Priam’s death. In the one case, we have Priam killed by a foreigner at his homeland shrine—a shrine to Jupiter— in the other, we have Pyrrhus traveling to a distant sanctuary (to Apollo) and being killed there by another visitor to the shrine. In my view, it was more natural for readers wanting to press the similarity between Book 2 and Book 3 to think that Pyrrhus, like Priam, had been killed at the altar of his homeland shrine, that is in Epirus, not in Delphi.29 Virgil is aware of the Greek tradition of presenting the murder of Pyrrhus as a reversal of the death of Priam, but he goes one better than his Greek predecessors by making it happen in the hero’s homeland shrine in both cases. This solution increases the parallelism with the Priam scene of Book 2 in yet another detail. Which temple could be considered in the eyes of a Roman the ‘homeland’ shrine of Epirus? Certainly the Zeus sanctuary at Dodona. This oracular shrine, already known to Homer, received a temple around the end of the fifth century and a sacred precinct in the fourth century BCE and was later turned into the religious heart of Epirus by Pyrrhus.30 Priam was slaughtered at an altar to Zeus, in the shrine of Zeus Herkeios, the (p.64) religious centre of Troy. Accordingly, Pyrrhus is murdered at the altar of Zeus’s shrine in Dodona.31 Page 6 of 17

 

Orestes, Aeneas, and Augustus That this may be the right solution is suggested by a later allusion in Virgil’s text. In Book 3, the poet mentions gifts received by Aeneas from Helenus before departing. All of these gifts belonged to Pyrrhus. Among them are Dodonaeos lebetas (cauldrons of Dodona).32 The presence of treasures from Dodona underscores the connection between Pyrrhus and Dodona, and reinforces the idea, natural for the Romans, that this was the temple alluded to by Virgil when he refers to the ‘homeland’ altars of Epirus.33 True, this solution would imply a deviation from the mainstream version of the Orestes story. Though some would find this unacceptable, I wonder how surprised should we be. After all, Virgil is writing at a time when Augustus, if Hölscher’s hypothesis is correct, has Orestes’ bones buried before the temple of Saturn, thus endorsing the tradition, certainly a Roman invention, that Orestes ended his life in Italy—at a time, that is, when the Orestes story is the object of restyling directed at making it fit Roman imperial concerns. The idea that the murder happened in Epirus also fits another important strategy that Virgil pursues in this book. Book 3 is key to Virgil’s interaction with a major topic of Roman history, that of the Roman conquest of Greece. The central passage in this context is Jupiter’s prophecy in Book 1 of the Aeneid, where the supreme god announces a time when the Trojans, qua Romans, will avenge their defeat at Troy by conquering Greece.34 The topic is picked up more extensively in Book 6, where among the great Romans of the past Aeneas encounters the Roman generals responsible for the conquest of Greece, namely Aemilius Paullus and Lucius Mummius. In this passage, Paullus is said to have triumphed over an Aeacides and ‘Agamemnonian Mycenae’: his victory is thus presented as a reversal of the defeat at Troy.35 (p.65) The pertinence of the Pyrrhus passage to this dynamic has been demonstrated by David Quint, who draws attention to the symbolic relevance of Aeneas’ receipt of Pyrrhus’ arms. By receiving Pyrrhus’ spoils Aeneas performs a symbolic victory over Pyrrhus and all his successors, including Pyrrhus of Epirus, thus anticipating Rome’s final victory over the blood of Achilles.36 Aeneas’ symbolic gifts, in other words, connect the mythical past (destruction of Troy) to the historical future (the conquest of Greece). Orestes’ murder of Pyrrhus avenges the death of Priam, while Aeneas’ reception of Pyrrhus’ spoils prefigures the victory over Greece, which is itself a revenge for the destruction of Troy. This is why in Virgil Aeneas receives, among other things, gifts in ivory (Aen. 3. 464: secto elephanto, carved ivory): one cannot but think of Pyrrhus and his elephants. True, Rome never did achieve a definitive victory over Pyrrhus, but his territory was later conquered by Aemilius Paullus, who sacked the sanctuary of Dodona.37 So when we see Aeneas’ ships loaded with ingens aurum, ivory, and the sacred furniture of the Dodona temple (Dodonaeos lebetas) it is hard not to think of the famous ship of Aemilius Paullus, which, loaded with the gold of Greece, sailed up the Tiber, just as Aeneas’ ship will do in Book 8. The idea that Pyrrhus’ murder happens in Epirus—possibly at Dodona itself, given Page 7 of 17

 

Orestes, Aeneas, and Augustus that a sacred place is suggested—would fit into this strategy. By placing the murder of Neoptolemus in Epirus, Virgil can link it to Rome’s fight with Pyrrhus of Epirus and the eventual conquest of Epirus by Aemilius Paullus. Let us now return to the Orestes passage in the Aeneid. A second remarkable aspect of this episode is its connection with the topic of revenge. On one hand, Orestes avenges on Pyrrhus the injustice he suffered in being deprived of Hermione. But there is also a less direct, more subtle connection to the theme of revenge. As we saw, Orestes’ killing of Pyrrhus is staged as a reversal of the death of Priam. This allows Virgil to present it as a sort of vicarious revenge for the death of the king of Troy, a revenge which should have been taken by a Trojan but is instead carried out by a Greek. Aeneas witnesses the murder of Priam ad aras in Book 2. He cannot intervene and flees the (p.66) country, leaving his king unavenged. When he gets to Epirus, he finds out that someone has done what he should have done: he has killed Pyrrhus in the same way that Pyrrhus killed Priam. The death of Orestes has thus a twofold connection with revenge. It is both Orestes’ vendetta on the one who has stolen his promised wife, and a surrogate vendetta for the death of Priam. The third singular aspect of the Orestes story in the Aeneid has to do with the special circumstances in which the murder takes place. When Orestes kills Pyrrhus he is, apparently, under the influence of furiae (madness). To the best of my knowledge, this is not paralleled in any account of the Orestes story. The death of Neoptolemus belongs to a later stage of the Orestes myth, to the period which ensues Orestes’ purification and his delivery from the Erinyes.38 The implication of Virgil passage is instead that the murder occurs in the turbulent period of the hero’s life, between the killing of Clytaemnestra and the hero’s purification.39 So far, I have shown that the Orestes story, far from being incidental, is deeply linked to some key concerns of Virgil’s poem, such as the theme of revenge, and the idea of a future conquest of Greece. I have also highlighted a number of connections with Priam’s death in Book 2, and have drawn attention to Virgil’s remarkable innovation in making the Pyrrhus murder happen while Orestes is under the influence of the Furies. Let us now move on to look at the presence of Orestes in the rest of the Aeneid.40 In Book 3, Andromache gives two reasons for Orestes’ homicide: the hero was under the influence of Furiae and he was burning with love for his stolen wife (ereptae magno flammatus amore coniugis). The story went that Menelaus (or (p.67) Tyndareus according to an alternative version) promised Hermione, daughter of Helen and Menelaus, to Orestes, but later changed his mind and gave her to Pyrrhus. Such a narrative pattern has striking similarities with the events in the second part of the Aeneid. There too we encounter two heroes fighting for a woman, and there too there is an aged father who changes his mind as to who shall become his son in law. And this fight too will culminate in a ritual murder by a frenzied hero. Now there is a Page 8 of 17

 

Orestes, Aeneas, and Augustus certain ambiguity in Virgil as regards the question of Latinus’ promises and what exactly they entail, which allows the reader to think of both Aeneas and Turnus as potential Orestes figures. We shall return to this in a while. For the time being let me just say that Virgil employs, in his use of the Orestes paradigm, a technique which is typical of his use of mythical patterns. This technique consists in suggesting the proximity of a certain character to a mythical figure and then in progressively reversing the identification. An example is Virgil’s use of Achilles. In Book 6, Aeneas receives a prophecy by the Sybil that a new Achilles (Turnus) is awaiting him in Latium.41 During the second half of the poem, however, the reader sees Aeneas progressively appropriating the role of Achilles. It is Aeneas who avenges his companion Pallas as Achilles avenged Patroclus, and it is he who, in his final victory over Turnus, repeats Achilles’ victory over Hector.42 The Orestes story follows a similar pattern. Initially, Turnus seems to be the best candidate to play the Orestes role. Indeed, the reader does not have to wait for long until he sees him maddened by a Fury in Book 7. At her encounter with Turnus, Allecto, disguised as an old woman, begins by reminding the hero of Latinus’ intention to give Lavinia to another man, which is the same reason for Orestes’ furor in Book 3. She then reveals herself and proceeds to infect Turnus with madness, thus achieving the same effect as the Furies who persecute Orestes.43 The association of madness, the Furies and the idea of a stolen wife is distinctively remindful of the Orestes passage, and the suggestion is made stronger by Virgil’s indebtedness to tragic models for this scene.44 (p.68) At first sight, then, the Orestes episode in Book 3 can be taken as a gloomy prefiguration of the events in Latium. Not only does a new Achilles await Aeneas in Latium, there is also a new Orestes: a mad hero ready to kill his rival at the instigation of the Furies. But, as always with Virgil, things are not as simple as they look. For there are earlier indications in the poem that the Orestes part could be played by Aeneas too. After Book 3, the next time we encounter a reference to Orestes and his madness is in the dream of Dido in Book 4.45 In this passage, the Carthaginian queen sees herself in the guise of Orestes, pursued by the Furies. Now, as Debra Hershkowitz has rightly remarked, there is a subtle ambivalence in the images of Dido’s dream. For Dido is Orestes but she will also very soon turn into a Fury who haunts her ‘murderer’ Aeneas; she is compared to Pentheus but she will soon turn into Agave, the maddened Bacchant who raves through the city.46 This reading would somehow cast Aeneas in the role of Orestes, an exile haunted by a ‘Fury’ who journeys in search of purification. Allusions to the Orestes story surface again in Book 12, where Virgil continues the ambiguity about who will play the role of the Argive hero. At the beginning of the book Latinus makes a desperate attempt to stop Turnus from facing Aeneas. His speech reveals a new perspective on the events surrounding Page 9 of 17

 

Orestes, Aeneas, and Augustus Lavinia’s marriage. For now the aged king presents his decision of marrying Lavinia to Aeneas as a change of mind from his previous resolution. He reveals that Lavinia had already been marked out for marriage to a foreigner. It was only love for Turnus which convinced Latinus to change his mind.47 This passage is dense with tragic irony if we read it in light of the Orestes passage in Book 3, for in Latinus’ words it is now Aeneas who has seen his promissa assigned to someone else. Turnus should be wary of the anger of this man. In spite of these hints, the following scene reinforces Turnus’ connection with Orestes. While preparing for the duel with Aeneas Turnus is said once again to be driven by furiae (agitur furiis), very much like Furiis agitatus Orestes of Book 3.48 Later in the same book he has another quintessential Orestean experience when he (p.69) encounters the messenger Saces. Saces informs Turnus of the desperate status of the battle and adds that Latinus is uncertain as to which pacts he should observe and whom he should call his son-in-law (12.658), a sentence which recalls the problematic inherent in Orestes’ murder of Book 3 and the ambivalence about the old man’s promises which we have observed above. Particularly important for us is Turnus’ reaction: obstipuit uaria confusus imagine rerum Turnus et obtutu tacito stetit; aestuat ingens uno in corde pudor mixtoque insania luctu et furiis agitatus amor et conscia uirtus. ut primum discussae umbrae et lux reddita menti, ardentis oculorum orbis ad moenia torsit turbidus eque rotis magnam respexit ad urbem.

Aen.12.665–71 Aghast and bewildered by the changing picture of disaster, Turnus stood mutely gazing; within that single heart surges mighty shame, and madness mingled with grief, and love stung by fury, and the consciousness of worth. As soon as the shadows scattered and light dawned afresh on his mind, he turned his blazing eyes wrathfully upon the walls and from his chariot looked back upon the spacious city. The effect of Saces’ words on Turnus is that of leaving him in a state of stupor, while their immediate consequence is that of producing a black-out in Turnus’ mind: a momentary folly which annihilates his rationality. Stupor and silence are the customary reactions of those who experience an epiphany, and the imagery of light and darkness to describe the mind’s falling into madness and its return to normality is borrowed from tragedy. There are significant echoes of Orestes’ and Heracles’ hallucinatory fits of madness here.49 More significantly, the passage closes with a clear allusion to the Orestes passage in Book 3: furiis

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Orestes, Aeneas, and Augustus agitatus amor (12.668), which condenses in a sentence the two motivations of Orestes’ madness from Book 3: furiae and amor. This chain of Orestean allusions culminates in the poem’s final scene. There are important parallels between this scene and the Orestes episode in Book 3. The first is the presence of the Furies. The duel is marked by the second, and final, intervention of the (p.70) Furies against Turnus.50 In addition, Aeneas’ killing of Turnus, very much like the deaths of Priam and Pyrrhus, is presented as a sacrifice (12.949 immolat) performed by a man who is under the influence of furor (madness). Aeneas is said to be furiis accensus et ira | terribilis ‘ablaze with fury and terrible in his wrath’, Aen. 12.946–7. He kills Turnus in a fit of mad rage, not unlike Orestes in Book 3. Here too, madness and vengeance are linked: it is the sight of Pallas’ balteus which ignites Aeneas’ fury, and the death of Turnus is emphatically presented by Aeneas as vengeance for Pallas (12.948–9). Thus, while previous allusions have particularly encouraged the idea of Turnus as a new Orestes, at the end of the poem, the imagery is reversed. It is Aeneas who repeats Orestes’ murder of Pyrrhus in his killing of Turnus. Very much like the Achilles paradigm, the Orestes story turns out to be a prefiguration of Aeneas’, not Turnus’, destiny. Let us recapitulate. We started with an analysis of the Orestes passage in Book 3, where we emphasized its connection with Priam’s murder in Book 2, and its relevance for Virgil’s handling of the topic of revenge. We then explored the possible implications of reading the events in the rest of the poem, especially in its second part, through the Orestes paradigm. Orestean allusions climax in the final duel, which is particularly linked to the Orestes scene in Book 3. It now appears that the poem comprises three sacrifices (Priam, Pyrrhus, and Turnus) which are performed, as it were, under the auspices of Jupiter: if my reading of the Book 3 passage is correct, we have ‘human sacrifices’ at an altar of Jupiter in Books 2 and 3 matching the final sacrifice of Turnus at the instigation of Jupiter in Book 12. The second and the third ‘sacrifice’ also connect vengeance and madness: mad Orestes avenges Priam and himself, while furens Aeneas avenges Pallas. These ‘sacrifices’ also have to do with the poem’s handling of Roman historical dynamics. The death of Pyrrhus, descendant of Achilles, foreshadows the imminent reversal of the outcome of the Trojan war. This reversal is made visible by Aeneas’ final triumph over the new Achilles, but it is also anticipated by the allusions to the future victory over Greece by Roman generals. What is the point of this strategy? Why is Virgil interested in reading the story of Aeneas’ arrival in Italy and his fight with Turnus through the paradigm of Orestes? I think the answer can (p.71) only be found in the Aeneid’s complex interactions with Octavian’s ideology and with the trauma of civil war. On one hand, Orestes provided a direct connection with Octavian’s propaganda in the 40s and 30s BCE. The story of Orestes, as we have seen, was exploited by Octavian’s entourage as a mythical parallel for the future emperor’s revenge of Page 11 of 17

 

Orestes, Aeneas, and Augustus the tyrannicides and his involvement in civil war. Correspondingly, the story of Orestes is inextricably linked to the topic of revenge in the Aeneid, both through its connections with Book 2 and in its prefiguring Aeneas’ final vendetta of Book 12. I believe that Virgil was sensitive to the potential for political allusion inherent in the Orestes story: the suggestion that Aeneas’ acts are like Orestes’ invites this sort of reading, given Aeneas’ obvious viability as a symbol both of Rome and of Octavian. By establishing a parallelism between Aeneas’ and Orestes’ actions, the poem invites the reader, if not directly to link Orestes and Octavian, at least to look at Orestes as a symbol of Roman vendettas, as an image of the dynamics through which Roman power annihilated its enemies, both internal and external, through an action which the text insist on presenting as revenge. The poem’s multiplication and repetition of these ‘revenge-sacrifice’ scenes supports this strategy. It is as if Aeneas’ final murder contained all the ritual vendettas performed by Rome against its enemies, starting with the revenge of Priam by Orestes and ending with Octavian’s murder of the tyrannicides, and encompassing such actions as the victory over Pyrrhus of Epirus and the conquest of Greece.51 Importantly, Virgil’s handling of the Orestes myth implies a peculiar reading of Roman acts of revenge, especially as far as Octavian’s vendetta is concerned. For unlike Octavian’s supporters, Virgil links Octavian’s revenge not to his killing of Clytaemnestra, but to his murder of Pyrrhus, which he describes as happening within the mad phase of Orestes’ story. The agent of his vendetta is a mad hero, a blinded Orestes, and a furious Aeneas, whose madness is confusingly similar to those of his enemies. This very Roman act of revenge is performed under the influence of madness. Through the Orestes paradigm Virgil invites readers to see the civil war period as a (p.72) succession of actions regulated by the tragic dynamics of furor. The reader sees Octavian and his enemies as tragic characters whose actions are directed by higher divine forces through the inspiration of madness. Obviously, I do not think that Virgil meant to convince Roman readers that Octavian was really mad at the time of his vengeance. Rather, the poet is aiming at the complex emotional effect which stems from establishing a web of connections between a mythical narrative and a certain historical event. The effect of this strategy is that the response produced by the literary text is transferred to the interpretation of the historical events to which the text is tied. Readers look at the civil war period and they see Octavian not as a blood-thirsty tyrant, but as a tragic hero who acts under the influence of furor. The transposition of the Orestes model from Turnus to Aeneas, which we have observed above, parallels another transition whose centrality for the meaning of the Aeneid has been underscored by numerous scholars. Until this point in the poem the forces of furor, madness, have been at the service of Juno and her attempt to subvert fata, the destiny which Jupiter tries to ensure. In this final scene, furor becomes an instrument of Jupiter’s fata. This transformation Page 12 of 17

 

Orestes, Aeneas, and Augustus parallels Aeneas’ reception of Orestes as the model of an hero whose actions are guided by furor, but at the end of the poem this furor becomes the instrument of a greater design. It has been Philip Hardie’s intuition that this final transformation of the role of furor reflects Virgil’s reception of the great fifth century Athenian model of the Oresteia, where the final reception of the Erinyes into Athens and their transformation into city goddesses follows a pattern which is comparable to the transformation of the Furies into instruments of Jupiter at the end of the Aeneid.52 The introduction of a mad Aeneas, modelled on the mad Orestes of Book 3, is functional to this strategy. The Aeneid can be seen as developing an idea already present in the Georgics. If Dewar is right in detecting an allusion to the Oresteia at the end of Georgics 1, that poem too suggested the connection of vengeance, madness, and civil war through the figure of Orestes. This peculiar tragic reading of Octavian’s vendetta through the paradigm of Orestes is certainly problematic (opponents could easily (p.73) turn it against the Emperor’s teeth), yet it can also be read as a radicalization of Octavian’s apologetic use of Orestes. In Octavian’s use, we only see an attempt to legitimate the killing of fellow citizens as a divinely sanctioned revenge. In Virgil’s reading, Octavian’s actions are perceived as the result of a temporary fit of madness, a suspension of the character’s rationality inspired by divine forces. Virgil’s reading thus introduces madness as a mitigating factor in the Orestes/ Octavian relationship. One can see the apologetic potential of such an idea. Octavian’s vendetta had been particularly cruel. It had involved massacres and expropriations, and even the ritual killing of enemies at an altar. The story of the Arae Perusinae may or may not be true, but its circulation proves that there were people who believed it possible that Octavian had perpetrated actions not unlike those of Orestes in Book 3. And yet all this cruelty was the result of furor. Octavian had acted as if blinded by the Furies, his excesses could be ascribed to his mad condition. This apologetic use is parallel to Octavian’s use of the Achilles story as a model for his vendetta. There is no attempt at denying the charges against Octavian, rather there is an attempt at casting Octavian’s actions into a mythical mould which provides a partial justification for them. This is why it is important that Aeneas’ final furor is the instrument of Jupiter’s fata. The Aeneid seems to express the impossible desire that Octavian’s furor in destroying his enemies, whose terrifying aspects Virgil does not attempt to diminish, was at least directed towards a fated outcome. Aeneas’ furor, like the furor of Hercules and Orestes, though condemnable in itself, is necessary to further the destiny of Rome. The Aeneid foreshadows the moment in which furor will be shut within the temple of Janus.53 In the new Augustan regime, madness will no longer play a role as a driving force of human actions. But at the time of Octavian’s vendetta, madness had loomed large, and directed the actions of both Octavian and his enemies. But unlike the madness of Augustus’ enemies, Virgil hopes, Octavian’s tragic furor became an instrument of Jupiter’s will, for it

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Orestes, Aeneas, and Augustus contributed to establishing peace and driving Rome towards her fated destiny of world dominion. Notes:

(1) Pliny NH 35.26; 136; 7.126. (2) See Bravi 2012: 79–80. (3) Pompey is compared to Ajax by Plut. Pomp. 72 and Appian. Civ. 2.11.81. (4) Champlin 2003b: 106–7. (5) Sen. Clem.1.11.1; cf also 1.9.1–3. (6) See Galinsky 2013: 30–2. (7) Appian Civ. 3.2.13. The Iliad passage is 18.98–9. (8) The vowing of the temple of Mars Ultor (‘Mars the Avenger’) during the battle of Philippi is but one instance of this strategy. (9) An example is the Perusine war. According to Suetonius, after the conflict Octavian slaughtered three hundred prisoners at an altar to his father Julius Caesar (Suet. Aug. 15; cf. also Dio 48.14.4). Now, the Italian farmers who fought at Perusia against the distribution of land to Octavian’s veterans had little to do with the death of Caesar. It is only very indirectly that they could be seen as ‘enemies of Caesar’, because of their standing in the way of Caesar’s avenger and his troops. (10) Paus. 2.17.3. The importance of this passage for the Orestes/Octavian comparison has been noticed by Cecioni 1993: 506. (11) Hölscher 1991. (12) Serv. A. 2.116. (13) Hölscher 1991: 165–7. (14) DServ. A. 7.188. (15) Dewar 1988: 563–5. (16) Suet. Iul. 84.2; noted by Tilg 2008: 369–70, who also draws attention to the fact that in Tristia 2 Augustus is presented as a reader of the story of Orestes (Ov. Tr. 2.395–6). (17) Claudian De sexto consulatu Honorii 113–18. See Dewar 1990: 581.

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Orestes, Aeneas, and Augustus (18) Champlin 2003a: 310; Hölscher 1991: 165–7; Dewar 1988: 564. Dewar 1990: 581–2 suggests that the comparison of Octavian and Orestes may have originated with Octavian’s opponents. (19) All translations of the Aeneid are taken from Goold-Fairclough (1998–9). (20) See Horsfall 2006: 262–3 with full references. (21) ‘Paternal’ is the basic meaning of patrius, which can be taken literally (of one’s father) or metaphorically as meaning ‘ancestral’ or ‘national’ (i.e. of one’s fatherland). Both meanings are well attested, cf. ThlL 10.1.757.55ff. (22) Cf. RE s.v. Neoptolemus 16.2454–9 (K. Ziegler). (23) Serv. A. 3.332. This looks like an ad hoc invention to reconcile Virgil with the traditional version of the story, in spite of the fact that Servius begins his account with legitur in historia (‘it is read in the history’); cf. RE s.v. Neoptolemus 16.2458–9 (K. Ziegler). On other ancient explanations, all rather unlikely, see EV 4.123 (G. Annibaldis). (24) The idea of a different location is advanced by Preller and Robert 1923: 1467; Delcourt 1923; D’Anna 1965: 63. Ziegler too (RE 16: 2458) believes Virgil’s specification ad patrias aras to be irreconcilable with the tradition of the murder in Delphi. (25) Cf. e.g. Barchiesi 1984: 37 n. 47; Horsfall 2006: 262–3; D’Anna 1965: 63; Quint 2010: 136–7. (26) The idea that Pyrrhus should suffer a death that is identical to the one he inflicted on Priam is no invention of Virgil: it goes back to the Greek tradition of the Νεοπτολέμειος (or Πριάμου) τίσις (the expression became proverbial: cf. Pausanias 4.17.4), already attested in Pindar Paean 6.105–20 (see RE s.v. Neoptolemus 16.2454). (27) Horsfall 2006: 263. (28) Throughout his account Virgil follows the tradition according to which Pyrrhus established his kingdom in Epirus at his return from Troy; cf. Aen. 3.294–7; 332–6. (29) Thus already Delcourt 1923: 689. (30) Hammond 1967: 508–9. Pyrrhus fortified the city of Dodona, restored and enlarged the precinct, built additional temples and a theatre: Hammond 1967: 582–4.

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Orestes, Aeneas, and Augustus (31) This explanation fits another important strategy which I see in place in this passage, on which I shall return shortly, namely Virgil’s attempt to link the Orestes scene with the death of Turnus in Book 12. In my reading, Pyrrhus’ murder is styled as a sacrifice to Jupiter: this provides a further connection with the poem’s final scene, the ‘ritual’ murder of Turnus at Jupiter’s instigation. (32) Aen. 3.466. That the sacred vessels come from the Jupiter shrine of Dodona is already suggested by DServ. A. 3.466. (33) Neoptolemus’ association with Dodona already in Pind. Nem. 4.51–53. (34) Aen. 1.283–85. (35) Aen. 6.836–40. See Quint 2010; Rebeggiani 2013. (36) Aen. 3.467–9; Quint 2010: 135–8. (37) On the Roman invasion of Epirus see Hammond 1967: 634–5, with full references to ancient sources. On the Roman sack of Dodona cf. Hammond 1967: 667; 685. (38) See EV 3.880–82 (F. Caviglia); RE s.v. Neoptolemus 16: 2440–62 (K. Ziegler); RE s.v. Orestes 17.966–1010 (A. Lesky); LIMC 7.1.68–70 (H. Sarian). Even if this version appeared in some lost account, Virgil’s decision to retain it is striking, and needs to be explained. (39) The idea of exploring events between Orestes’ murder of Clytaemnestra and his purification, that is during the mad phase of the hero’s story, ultimately goes back to Euripides (Orestes and Iphigenia in Tauris). But in Euripides (cf. Andr. 879–1288 and Or. 1643–57) it is clear that the death of Pyrrhus happens after Orestes has been delivered from his madness. (40) My analysis will not be exhaustive. I will limit myself to a few passages which shed light on Virgil’s use of Orestes and its interactions with Octavian’s propaganda. I hope to be able to return to this topic more extensively in a forthcoming contribution. For Orestes in the Aeneid see EV 3.880–82 (F. Caviglia). On tragedy and the Aeneid see most recently Panoussi 2009. (41) Aen. 6.88–90. (42) See most recently Tarrant 2012: 318. (43) Aen. 7.415–66. (44) Cf. e.g. Horsfall 2000: xvii; 224–5 and passim; Hershkowitz 1998: 48–9 (with further references at p. 49 n. 200); Hardie 1991: 38–42; Feeney 1991: 163. (45) Aen. 4.471–3. Page 16 of 17

 

Orestes, Aeneas, and Augustus (46) Hershkowitz 1998: 27. (47) Aen. 12.19–44. Cf. in part. 12.31 promissam eripui genero, arma impia sumpsi (I snatched the betrothed from her promised husband, and drew the unholy sword). (48) Aen. 12.101–2. The symptomatology is that of madness. (49) Hershkowitz 1998: 69–72. (50) Aen 12.843–68; Hershkowitz 1998: 89 with further references. (51) This reading is I think confirmed by the fact that the final section of the poem, Aeneas’ revenge of Pallas, is also accompanied by Virgil’s exploitation of the Achilles paradigm, with special reference to Achilles’ actions after the death of Patroclus. This myth too, as we saw, was exploited by Octavian as a model for his vengeance. (52) Hardie 1991. (53) Aen. 1.293–6.

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The Night of Reason

Augustan Poetry and the Irrational Philip Hardie

Print publication date: 2016 Print ISBN-13: 9780198724728 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2015 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198724728.001.0001

The Night of Reason The Esquiline and Witches in Horace Mario Labate

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198724728.003.0004

Abstract and Keywords The city is the framework of Horace’s moral quest: the satirist depicts Rome as a place where this project can be carried out. This substantially favourable image of the urban environment is also linked with the majestic project that, right after the civil wars, was meant to create a bright and reassuring environment for secular and religious life. Maecenas participated in this process in an original way, mainly through the building of his own villa and of the horti Maecenatiani. The aim of this chapter is to analyse the symbolic value of the Esquiline theme in Horace: the urban regeneration is concerned with preserving the memory of the past, connecting the Esquiline to gloomy impressions of disorder and violence and making out of the renewal of one of the most squalid settings of Rome a powerful emblem of escape from that night of reason represented by the witches. Keywords:   Roman Horti, urban topography, publica magnificentia, memory, Civil Wars, witches, disorder, violence, urban regeneration

The city is the setting in which the poet of the satire realizes his project of moral research, pursues and recognizes a positive model of life through the comically observed (and perhaps deformed) representation of the errors, false opinions, and various follies that draw citizens away from a positive balance in life, which envisages the satisfaction of needs and desires, without, however, delivering up the individual to the unhappiness of infinite desire and society to moral (and hence political) disorder and the conflicts deriving from it. The first book of Page 1 of 21

 

The Night of Reason Horace’s Satires presents the city as a place which, if not propitious, is at least not incompatible with the achievement of this design.1 And not just any city, it should be noted, but the capital of the empire, the natural seed bed of those uitia (luxury, ambition, dependence on fortune, uncontrolled explosion of passions) in which various Hellenistic philosophies had identified the root of human unhappiness. The presupposition of this pattern of the satirical genre is that the urban context within which the satire unfolds, though admittedly different and in many ways at odds with the values defended by the satirist and by the circle of which he proposes himself as a representative, is not irreducibly extraneous and hostile to the satirist himself, and above all does not threaten his equilibrium, exposing him to contagion, nor does it substantially endanger his (p.75) capacity to exert rational control over life and human relations. The city is a place into which the satirist can venture, confident of being able to observe and criticize others without going astray, indeed continually rediscovering the guiding thread of his identity. This basically positive, almost reassuring, image of the urban space emerges clearly in the poet’s account of his Roman day. The moral choice that prompted him to forego the great stage of politics enables him to experience the city as a place of informal freedom, in which he can stroll freely after lunch in order to satisfy small curiosities of everyday life (the price of pulses and of spelt, foods suited to the simplicity of the wise person), or to take an almost amused interest in the con tricks of the many small-time characters who populate the spaces of the metropolis, once the men of politics and business have retired: quacumque libido est, incedo solus, percontor quanti holus ac far, fallacem circum uespertinumque pererro saepe forum, adsisto diuinis.

(Hor. Sat. 1.6.111–14) I step out wherever I fancy, on my own; I enquire the price of vegetables and meal; I often wander through the trickster-thronged Circus and the Forum as evening descends; I stand next to the fortune-tellers.2 Horace’s day, which ends in the half-light that charlatans and tricksters try to exploit as darkness falls, did not begin at dawn, as it did for those forced, in order to perform their financial or judicial obligations, to undergo the unpleasantness of human relations that seems to be reflected in the haggard features of the ‘Marsyas’. At a much more leisurely hour, after remaining in bed until late, writing or reading, he rambles once more without a fixed destination, enjoys some moderate physical exercise with the ball game in the Campus, before bathing and returning home for lunch and for domestic otium: ad quartam iaceo; post hanc uagor aut ego lecto Page 2 of 21

 

The Night of Reason aut scripto quod me tacitum iuuet unguor olivo, non quo fraudatis inmundus Natta lucernis. ast ubi me fessum sol acrior ire lauatum (p.76) admonuit, fugio campum lusumque trigonem. pransus non auide, quantum interpellet inani uentre diem durare, domesticus otior.

(Hor. Sat. 1.6.122–8) I lie in bed till ten, and then take a stroll; or, after reading or writing for my own private enjoyment, I have oil applied, though not the sort that dirty fellow Natta uses, robbing his lamps. But when the sun is fiercer and persuades me to go exhausted to the baths, I abandon the Plain and the game of ball. After a light lunch, enough to stop me having to last the day on an empty stomach, I idle about at home. Admittedly, satire 1.9 depicts a much less pleasant day in the streets of the centre of Rome. The satirist faces them with his customary attitude (sicut est meus mos), as a space for strolling freely, for reflection and for poetic compositions, but this familiar scenario proves to be a habitat for less innocuous creatures, for aggressive, deceitful characters. It is the bright environment of civic life, business, courts, and recreation, between the via Sacra and the Forum with the temple of Vesta, the urban beauties admired by citizens from which the bothersome nuisance draws inspiration for his verbal siege (1.9.12–13 cum quidlibet ille garriret, uicos, urbem laudaret); and, beyond the Tiber, the Gardens of Caesar, the park on the southern slopes of the Janiculum, which the dictator had left by testament to the people of Rome,3 heralding the start of the great urban planning policy designed to enhance wellbeing, comfort and the pleasures of otium, leisure and entertainment: the grandiose project which in the space of a few decades would lead to Rome outdoing the magnificence of the Hellenistic capitals and would attract the admiration of Greek visitors (the Campus Martius could be described as a large, splendid villa available to the people).4 Maecenas made an original contribution to this process of urban transformation, according to a cultural-symbolic model well illustrated by Andrew WallaceHadrill.5 From as early as the end of the second century BC. the Roman aristocracy, drawing on the paradigm of the Hellenistic-Oriental pleasuregarden, had transformed the Catonian hortus with its the eminently agricultural purpose into a (p.77) ‘pleasure park’, possibly accompanied by a palace. The horti Romani gradually lost their primarily productive functions, associated with the ideals of simplicity and autarkeia (the dapes inemptae still celebrated by the Virgil of the Georgics in the senex Corycius episode), and became, more broadly, symbols of the luxurious and pleasurable lifestyle of those who combined the advantages of a city residence with those of a uilla, drawing from the hedonistic model associated with the name and ideals of Epicurus that practice of Page 3 of 21

 

The Night of Reason ‘experiencing the countryside in the city’ which the moralist Pliny regarded as one of the degenerations of modern deliciae.6 Surveying the principal figures whose names were linked to the most celebrated gardens of the late republican and Augustan age, Wallace-Hadrill highlighted a relatively compact group (Lucullus, Maecenas, Sallust) for whom owning horti was not just a matter of displaying their status as members of a powerful and affluent elite. A more precise model was being proposed, consistent with what Tacitus (Ann. 16.17) would call praepostera ambitio—that is, a political ambition different from that cultivated in the magistracies and in a senatorial career, suited above all to the rich equestrian who preferred to exert considerable influence and effective power while remaining on the fringes of political life, through a personal and privileged relationship with the princeps who held supreme power, a role for which the acknowledged archetype was of course Maecenas: ‘The garden in the city is symbol of withdrawal from politics in the middle of the polis.’7 The location and the very shape of the urban and suburban horti, situated some distance, but not too far, from the forum and from the centres of public life, and the never entirely erased ideological association with the productive function of horticulture, oriented their ideology in a different direction to that of the regal, Hellenistic antecedents of this fashion of the Roman ruling orders (as has been stressed above all by Eugenio La Rocca).8 In the specific case of the hortus as a place functional to the ideology of figures such as Maecenas, this marginality has an even more evident significance. The author of the Elegiae in Maecenatem (p.78) clearly underscores the connection between the decision to abstain from public life and the horti as a place of retreat: maius erat potuisse tamen nec uelle triumphos, maior res magnis abstinuisse fuit. maluit umbrosam quercum nymphasque cadentes paucaque pomosi iugera certa soli; Pieridas Phoebumque colens in mollibus hortis sederat argutas garrulus inter aues.

(Eleg. in Maecen. 1.31–6) Greater it was to have had the power, yet not to wish for triumphs: a greater thing it was to refrain from mighty deeds. He chose rather the shady oak, the falling waters, the few sure acres of fruit-bearing soil. Honouring the Muses and Apollo in luxurious gardens, he reclined, babbling verse, among the tuneful birds.9

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The Night of Reason But the same author started from the premise that the relaxed nature— discinctus—of the model of life chosen by Maecenas in no way diminished the efficacy of his role as custos urbis and plenipotentiary of Octavian:10 liuide, quid tandem tunicae nocuere solutae aut tibi uentosi quid nocuere sinus? num minus Vrbis erat custos et Caesaris obses, num tibi non tutas fecit in Vrbe uias? nocte sub obscura quis te spoliauit amantem, quis tetigit ferro durior ipse latus?

(Eleg. in Maecen. 1.25–30) Backbiter, say what harm his loosened tunic did you, or dress through which the air would play? Was he a whit less guardian of the city, and less an hostage for our absent emperor? Did he make the streets of Rome unsafe for you? ’Neath the murk of night who could rob you in an amour, or who in excess of heartlessness drive steel into your side? The model of the horti Maecenatiani is therefore closely connected to the model —not without Epicurean overtones—of an existence that does not become embroiled in the woes and ambitions of political life, but it does not coincide strictly speaking with the Epicurean abstention from the management of power and an interest in the fortunes of (p.79) the state. Maecenas’ house was the tall and sumptuous palace in which Horace was impatient to celebrate the victory of Caesar and the liberation of the res publica from a mortal danger: Quando repostum Caecubum ad festas dapes uictore laetus Caesare tecum sub alta—sic Ioui gratum—domo, beate Maecenas, bibam…?

(Hor. Epod. 9.1–4) When, happy Maecenas, shall I drink with you, in joy at Caesar’s victory, in your high house (for that’s what the god intends) the Caecuban that has been laid by for a banquet of celebration…11 If the park, with its varied alternation of meadows, orchards, shady trees, and water effects, corresponds to a conventional locus amoenus designed for otium, the turris Maecenatiana, a distinctive feature of the architectural complex, had a more complex function. The view from the top stretched towards Tivoli and the Alban Hills (expressing a more marked desire for the countryside and for otium), but the observatory from which Nero would watch the terrible and enthralling scene of Rome burning12 also offered a sweeping all-round view of the capital’s pulsating and opulent life. eripe te morae, Page 5 of 21

 

The Night of Reason ne semper udum Tibur et Aefulae decliue contempleris aruum et Telegoni iuga parricidae. fastidiosam desere copiam et molem propinquam nubibus arduis: omitte mirari beatae fumum et opes strepitumque Romae.

(Hor. Carm. 3.29.5–12) Delay no longer. Do not be for ever contemplating watery Tibur, the sloping fields of Aefula, and the ridges of Telegonus the parricide. Give up your fastidiousness and luxury and your huge pile whose neighbours are the soaring clouds. Stop admiring the splendour of Rome, its smoke, its wealth, and its noise.13 (p.80) The intertextual relationship between this ode by Horace and Martial’s epigram (4.64) describing the villa on the Janiculum of Julius Martialis (well analysed by Delphina Fabbrini)14 effectively confirms the ‘countryside in the city’ ideology underlying the project of the horti and palace of Maecenas. While Wallace-Hadrill’s interpretation has the merit of situating the symbolic value of the horti Maecenatiani within the ideology of abstention from a specifically political commitment, it runs the risk, however, of muting another symbolic value that is by no means secondary in the definition of the character of Maecenas himself and of his role in the Augustan ethical-political and cultural system. It is precisely this symbolic value which lies at the heart of Horace’s satire 1.8. This is the first time the satirist surrenders his own control of the satirical voice,15 yielding it to what we might call (according to a habitual practice in aetiological poetry, with which this poem is in some way related) a divine informer. The speaker is Priapus, a rustic and ithyphallic god, whose role as a promoter of fertility and protector from every kind of negative force (the evil eye, thieves, harmful animals) is exercised above all in the sphere of gardens and horticulture. Developing around this function is a literary genre that we know best from the Latin collection of the Priapea: brief poems, often comic and playful, rooted in the Hellenistic fondness for the idyllic rustic landscape, its inhabitants, and its deities. In this type of composition, the protagonist is the god, who threatens anyone posing a danger to his small kingdom with the arms available to him—a sickle, which he brandishes in his right hand, and above all the huge phallus, stained with minium, which protrudes from his groin: in both cases with devastating consequences for delicate parts of the hapless victim.16 Birds fare better: they are frightened away by the sound of the wind produced by shaking the cane Page 6 of 21

 

The Night of Reason reeds fixed to the head of the divine scarecrow. In any case he is a powerful, effective, threatening, confident god: (p.81) deus inde ego, furum auiumque maxima formido; nam fures dextra coercet obscaenoque ruber porrectus ab inguine palus, ast inportunas uolucres in uertice harundo terret fixa uetatque nouis considere in hortis.

(Hor. Sat. 1.8.3–7) So god I am, inspiring utter terror in thieves and birds; thieves are kept off by my right hand and the red stake sticking out indecently from my loins, while the pesky birds are scared by the reed attached to my head, which stops them settling in the new gardens. According to the formula that E. Fraenkel linked with a type of Hellenistic epigram,17 the Priapus of satire 1.8 talks about a metamorphosis, an aetiology of his current state: a piece of useless wood, an undecided craftsman, and finally the decision to make a Priapus instead of a stool. The irony lies not only in the hesitation, rather unflattering for the god himself, but also in the particular shape of the primary material, which must have had a branch not much thinner than the trunk, given that it would have been suitable for one of the legs of the stool: it is easy to imagine that, once the decision was taken, this branch became the porrectus ab inguine palus. The most important transformation Priapus tells us about does not, however, concern the god himself, but the place where his image is situated and over which it is to exercise its protective and defensive function. The horti are noui horti, a recently laid-out garden, a garden that was not formerly a garden. However Horace’s expression is interpreted (an entirely new garden or, less likely, a new part, outside the walls, added to a pre-existing one),18 what is interesting first of all is the very fact that the information is sufficient for readers to understand what is being referred to, without the need for further specification.19 Everyone knows who had wanted and realized that new garden, and the novelty it represented. (p.82) Priapus actually makes no effort to describe and celebrate the domain entrusted to him, dedicating to it just a very brief marginal comment: the newly salubrious nature of the place (the Esquiline, rich in springs and supplied by many aqueducts, is in a high position, safe from the flood waters of the Tiber and the negative aspects of marshy areas),20 and the view offered by the garden to those who can now agreeably stroll on the rampart of the Servian walls. But this brief positive remark is primarily by way of the contrast foregrounded by Priapus.21 Everyone remembers and must remember what the place was like before Maecenas, before the initiative that inaugurated and paved the way for Page 7 of 21

 

The Night of Reason an important aspect of the urban renewal programme conducted by the Augustan elite, the programme which the princeps would boast of in the celebrated expression about turning a city of bricks into a city of marble.22 The zone outside the porta Esquilina was occupied by an ancient necropolis, partly brought to light in archaeological digs conducted at the end of the nineteenth century:23 funerary monuments of important figures would have flanked the roads branching out from there towards the Alban Hills (uia Tiburtina, uia Praenestina, uia Labicana), but the cemetery area contained humbler graves of plebs, lowly people and even slaves. Priapus-Horace speaks of it as a commune sepulcrum for the misera plebs, ironically described with a wording suitable for a family tomb of considerable dimensions, complete with a formula declaring its inalienability: hoc miserae plebi stabat commune sepulcrum; Pantolabo scurrae Nomentanoque nepoti: mille pedes in fronte, trecentos cippus in agrum hic dabat, heredes monumentum ne sequeretur.

(Hor. Sat. 1.8.10–13) This used to serve as a communal grave for the depressed masses, for Pantolabus the jester and for Nomentanus the wastrel, here a pillar allotted a frontage of a thousand feet, a depth of three hundred: ‘The monument not to descend to the heirs.’ (p.83) It was probably an area for disposing of the remains of people who were admitted neither to private tombs nor to columbaria jointly owned by the collegia.24 We know from other sources that there also existed an even more squalid and desolate area, the so-called puticuli, a kind of rubbish dump where the corpses of the condemned, of slaves and of the poor were left promiscuously to rot, together with the carcasses of animals and other foul rubbish:25 Outside the towns there are puticuli ‘little pits’, named from putei ‘pits’, because there the people used to be buried in putei ‘pits’; unless rather, as Aelius writes, the puticuli are so called because the corpses which had be thrown out putescebant ‘used to rot’ there, in the public burial place which is beyond the Esquiline.26 (Varro Ling. 5.25) Unlike the prevailing trend in later Augustan building and urban planning policy, Maecenas’ project on the Esquiline Hill can be classified as private luxury, albeit kept within the limits of moderation (pauca iugera) and good taste: the regality of the great Etruscan lord required, close to the centre, a salubrious, pleasant, Page 8 of 21

 

The Night of Reason relaxing, sophisticated residence equipped with all the comforts for the body (Maecenas was the first to have a swimming pool built for himself) and the mind (the dwellings of Virgil, Horace and Propertius in the complex of the horti would constitute a kind of Museum attached to the Palace).27 Yet the only thing Priapus emphasizes about his master’s creation does not concern Maecenas himself, or his circle of conuictores. The Esquiline was previously uninhabitable, and now it can be lived in. Before, it was unhealthy and now it has been reclaimed: Maecenas in (p.84) effect opens up the way for a series of elite figures who, in the space of a few decades, would make it a much sought-after residential area by building their own luxurious gardens and homes there. But what is foregrounded above all else is the strictly ‘public’ effect of Maecenas’ reclamation.28 The squalid necropolis was probably buried, and the Agger of the Servian walls levelled: the bastions now become a promenade where strollers can take the sun and enjoy a pleasant view, while previously all that was to be seen were sinister whitened bones poking out from the ground. Nonetheless, the rediscovered beauty and serenity of the place seem in some way linked to the sunlight illuminating and warming the bastions, and pleasantly pervading the site. Sunset, dusk, and above all the ensuing night do not have, in Maecenas’ horti, the same peaceful pleasantness of the daytime. Priapus himself undergoes a further metamorphosis: a powerful, threatening god by day, a bulwark against thieves and harmful animals, he is much more uncertain when faced by their nocturnal counterpart,29 and, above all, confesses his impotence in the face of disturbing and malicious characters, ‘the women who, with spells and magic potions, upset the human mind’: cum mihi non tantum furesque feraeque suetae hunc uexare locum curae sunt atque labori quantum carminibus quae uersant atque uenenis humanos animos.

(Hor. Sat. 1.8.17–20) While in my case the thieves and wild creatures which haunt this place don’t give me as much trouble and anxiety as the women who bend human minds with spells and potions. Though the nocturnal landscape had seemed to begin along the lines of the daytime one, with a beautiful moon standing out in the sky, it suddenly changes with the eruption on to the scene of two protagonists of the Epodes, the witch Canidia and her fitting associate Sagana: (p.85) has nullo perdere possum nec prohibere modo, simul ac uaga luna decorum protulit os, quin ossa legant herbasque nocentis. Page 9 of 21

 

The Night of Reason uidi egomet nigra succinctam uadere palla Canidiam pedibus nudis passoque capillo, cum Sagana maiore ululantem: pallor utrasque fecerat horrendas adspectu.

(Hor. Sat. 1.8.20–6) There’s no way I can foil them or stop them, once the vagrant Moon has displayed her comely face, from collecting bones and noxious herbs. With my own eyes I’ve seen Canidia roaming abroad, with her black cloak girt up, her feet bare and her hair undone, uttering shrieks along with the elder Sagana: pallor had rendered each dreadful to behold. The Esquiline undergoes a reverse metamorphosis, back to being a squalid cemetery, a boundless source of magic ingredients, the site of disturbing rituals and scenes of necromancy, even of dark crimes. The reader of Epode 5 knows well what it is all about. From the threatening looks silently directed at him, the gaze of a nouerca, of a mother who is not a mother, cruel and murderous, the puer realizes he is the defenceless victim of a macabre ritual. Canidia wants to use the power of spells to win back her lover, who dallies with other women in the low life of Rome. Buried alive, the boy must die of hunger so that his desiccated marrow and liver can become more effective ingredients of an erotic philtre. The geographic coordinates of the places and peoples associated with the actions of Canidia and of the other protagonists of the witches’ sabbath range from Thrace to Thessaly, Caucasian Iberia to Colchis. Only at the end, in the curses with which the victim threatens to pursue his assassins from the dead, transformed in turn into a demon of revenge, do we understand that the terrible scene is not to be imagined in Colchis, or in the Caucasus, or in other remote and barbaric countries, but in Rome, in a place like the Esquiline, not far from the centre of the capital’s civil and political life: ‘uos turba uicatim hinc et hinc saxis petens contundet obscaenas anus. post insepulta membra different lupi et Esquilinae alites neque hoc parentes, heu mihi superstites, effugerit spectaculum.’

(Hor. Epod. 5.97–102) (p.86) ‘In every street, from every side, the crowd will pelt you with stones until they have battered you to death, you filthy hags. Then the wolves and

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The Night of Reason vultures of the Esquiline will scatter your unburied limbs, and my parents, who will, alas, outlive me, will not fail to relish that sight.’ The world of the Epodes is marked by experiences, feelings, and ideas associated with a long and painful period—of conflicts, excesses, uncontrolled passions, moral and civil disorder, crime and tragedy. Furor, which Virgil would show chained and impotent in the temple of war, still appears free to sow, in public and private, ruinous effects in the cities of Italy, and in the streets of Rome. Collective imagination and cultural memory are familiar—from historiography and oratory if nothing else—with women and men who, in the unleashing of passions completely ungoverned by rational control, dared to engage in unheard-of practices, wanted everything and stopped at nothing. Remaining in an area involving young men or the relationship between children and mothers/ stepmothers or fathers/stepfathers, one need only recall the dark provincial intrigue set in Larinum, distinguished by the unscrupulousness of Sassia, the mother of Cluentius, towards her daughter and son-in-law, and her implacably murderous plans for her son (Cic. Cluent. 199 uxor generi, nouerca fili, filiae paelex); or the cold cynicism with which Catiline got rid of his son to facilitate his marriage with Aurelia Orestilla:30 There was suddenly aroused the outrageous passion of an unnatural woman, involving not only dishonour, but crime. For Sassia, mother of my client Habitus—yes, as a mother I must refer to her throughout this case— his mother, I say, although she behaves towards him with the hatred and the cruelty of an enemy: nor shall the recital of her monstrous crimes ever deprive her of the name which nature has bestowed upon her; for the more of love and tenderness the very name of mother suggests, the greater will be the detestation which you will hold to befit this, the unheard of outrage of that mother who, at this very moment, as for many years past, is longing for the destruction of her son.31 (Cic. Cluent. 12) Now to begin with, as a youth Catiline had committed many shameful debaucheries—with a maiden of noble rank, with a priestess of Vesta—and other unlawful and impious acts of this sort. Finally, having been (p.87) seized with love for Aurelia Orestilla, in whom no decent person ever commended anything except her beauty, because she hesitated to marry him out of fear for a grown-up stepson, Catiline is believed without a doubt to have made an empty house for his wicked marriage by the murder of his son.32 (Sall. Cat. 15.1–3)

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The Night of Reason ‘What then? When lately you had made room in your home for a new marriage by murdering your former wife, did you not add to this crime another incredible crime?’33 (Cic. Cat. 1.14) The Epodes look to tragedy and at times seem on the point of crossing the threshold into it. Sticking with the witches’ sabbath, it is not hard to see specific tragic modules at work in the text. If the Clodia of Pro Caelio was a Palatina Medea (as Ennius puts it, Medea animo aegro, amore saeuo saucia: Cic. Cael. 18.16), Canidia is presented as a kind of Esquilina Medea, not only when she is amazed at the ineffectiveness of her potions, explicitly associated with those that had made deadly the gift to the daughter of Creon:34 quid accidit? cur dira barbarae minus uenena Medeae ualent, quibus superbam fugit ulta paelicem, magni Creontis filiam, cum palla, tabo munus inbutum, nouam incendio nuptam abstulit?

(Hor. Epod. 5.61–6) What has gone wrong? Why are the dreadful drugs of the savage Medea failing to work? Those were the drugs with which before her flight she took vengeance on her arrogant rival, great Creon’s daughter, when the cloak impregnated with poison, which she had given her as a gift, carried off the young bride in flames. Already at the beginning of the epode the puer sensed the threatening nouerca-like looks from the witches, and in particular, from Canidia, a mother who perhaps was not a mother and from whom no special (p.88) concern could certainly be expected—in particular in the face of the unleashing of passions by a Fury—for the tender age of a young boy: quid iste fert tumultus? aut quid omnium uoltus in unum me truces? per liberos te, si uocata partubus Lucina ueris adfuit, per hoc inane purpurae decus precor, per inprobaturum haec Iouem, quid ut nouerca me intueris aut uti petita ferro belua?

(Hor. Epod. 5.3–10)

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The Night of Reason What does this uproar mean, and the fierce looks that all of you direct just at me? I beg you by your children (if Lucina when summoned was present at a genuine birth), by the useless decoration of this purple robe, by Jove himself who will condemn what you are doing, why do you glare at me like a stepmother or a beast wounded with a spear? This motif seems to echo the glare of the murderous eyes of Euripides’ Medea, from whom the wet nurse tries in vain to shelter the sons. {Τρ.} ἴτ’, εὖ γὰρ ἔσται, δωμάτων ἔσω, τέκνα. σὺ δ’ ὡς μάλιστα τούσδ’ ἐρημώσας ἔχε καὶ μὴ πέλαζε μητρὶ δυσθυμουμένηι. ἤδη γὰρ εἶδον ὄμμα νιν ταυρουμένην τοῖσδ’, ὥς τι δρασείουσαν· οὐδὲ παύσεται χόλου, σάφ’ οἶδα, πρὶν κατασκῆψαί τινι.

(Eur. Med. 89–94) Go into the house, children, all will be well! And you keep them as far away as you can and do not bring them near their mother in her distress. I have seen her turn a savage glance at them, as if she meant to do something to them. She will not let go of her anger, I am sure, before she brings it down on someone’s head.35 σπεύδετε θᾶσσον δώματος εἴσω καὶ μὴ πελάσητ’ ὄμματος ἐγγὺς μηδὲ προσέλθητ’, ἀλλὰ φυλάσσεσθ’ ἄγριον ἦθος στυγεράν τε φύσιν φρενὸς αὐθαδοῦς.

(Eur. Med. 100–4) (p.89) Go quickly into the house, and do not come into her sight or approach her, but beware of her fierce nature and the hatefulness of her wilful temper! Perfectly in keeping with the tragic character of Medea is the escalation of the evil action of the witch who, when the first spell proves ineffective, does not resign herself to being impotent, but plans a ‘greater’ nefas: maius parabo, maius infundam tibi fastidienti poculum.36

(Hor. Epod. 5.77–8) I shall prepare something stronger; I shall brew something stronger to deal with your scorn.

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The Night of Reason As Federica Bessone has aptly observed (developing ideas of Alessandro Barchiesi),37 the end of Ovid’s Medea epistle announces a shift towards something greater, also in a meta-literary sense, namely, an elevation to the tragic genre.38 Moreover, Bessone effectively assembles substantial proof of the tragic status of the expression and idea. The already Euripidean motif of the wait for something greater (cf. the words of the wet nurse, Eur. Med. 106–8 δῆλον ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς ἐξαιρόμενον/νέφος οἰμωγῆς ὡς τάχ’ ἀνάψει/μείζονι θυμῶι), would become a leitmotif in the Medea of Seneca,39 in keeping with ‘that tension towards “an undefined/something (more) great and confusedly foreseen that characterizes many Senecan characters”’, especially protagonists of the bleak tragedy of tyranny.40 In the topography of Rome, the Esquiline, where Maecenas, descendent of Etruscan kings, had now established his residence and reclaimed it from the foul traces of the past, from murky presences, (p.90) from the moral and civil disorder of which Canidia, as Ellen Oliensis has clearly stressed, is a powerful symbol,41 seems to have a particular propensity for dark memories of violence and death, against the backdrop of the power struggle and the explosion of passions of which the witches feared by Priapus are threatening agents (1.8.19– 20 carminibus quae uersant atque uenenis/humanos animos). The city had been extended in that direction by Servius Tullius, who chose to live there to lend prestige to the site. He was also credited with having built the walls and Agger outside of which the noui horti of Maecenas now stretched: To meet the wants of this population it was apparent that the City must expand, and so the king added two hills, the Quirinal and the Viminal, after which he proceeded to enlarge the Esquiline, going there to live himself, that the place might obtain a good reputation. He surrounded the City with a rampart, trenches, and a wall, and so extended the ‘pomerium’.42 (Livy 1.44.3) But the Esquiline had been the theatre for the darkest of tragedies, the one that prompted Livy to explicitly assimilate the vicissitudes of the Roman royal palace to those of Greek tragic theatre, set in the royal palace of Mycenae or Thebes: For the royal house of Rome produced an example of tragic guilt (sceleris tragici exemplum), as others had done, in order that loathing of kings might hasten the coming of liberty, and that the end of reigning might come in that reign which was the fruit of crime. (Livy 1.46.3–4) A Lady Macbeth ahead of her time, the younger daughter of Servius Tullius induced Lucius Tarquinius to commit an ever more wicked series of crimes to satisfy an insatiable thirst for power: first the sister- and brother-in-law got rid Page 14 of 21

 

The Night of Reason of their respective spouses (Arruns, the brother of Lucius, and the elder Tullia, the sister of Tullia Minor); then, ‘when through an almost continuous series of deaths they had emptied their houses for a new wedding, they were joined in marriage’ (Livy 1.46.9). Next came the supreme crime, according to the tragic versions of Livy and Ovid: instigated once again by Tullia, (p.91) Tarquinius occupied the royal palace and abused and set upon Servius Tullius, who, wounded, was then overtaken and killed by assassins as he returned towards the Esquiline. While Tullia, after hailing her husband as king, was in turn on her way back home, the most atrocious scene took place, again in the area of the Esquiline, which retains a memory of it in the place name Vicus Sceleratus: On her way home she had got to the top of the Vicus Cyprius, where the shrine of Diana recently stood, and was bidding her driver turn to the right into the Clivus Urbius, to take her to the Esquiline Hill, when the man gave a start of terror, and pulling up the reins pointed out to his mistress the prostrate form of the murdered Servius. Horrible and inhuman was the crime that is said to have ensued, which the place commemorates—men call it the Street of Crime—for there, crazed by the avenging spirits of her sister and her former husband (agitantibus furiis sororis ac uiri), they say that Tullia drove her carriage over her father’s corpse, and, herself contaminated and defiled, carried away on her vehicle some of her murdered father’s blood to her own and her husband’s penates, whose anger was the cause that the evil beginning of this reign was, at no long date, followed by a similar end. (Livy 1.48.6–7) ipse sub Esquiliis, ubi erat sua regia, caesus concidit in dura sanguinulentus humo. filia carpento, patrios initura penates, ibat per medias alta feroxque uias. corpus ut aspexit, lacrimis auriga profusis restitit; hunc tali corripit illa sono: ‘uadis, an exspectas pretium pietatis amarum? duc, inquam, inuitas ipsa per ora rotas.’ certa fides facti: dictus Sceleratus ab illa uicus, et aeterna res ea pressa nota.

(Ov. Fast. 6.601–10) Servius himself, at the foot of the Esquiline hill, where was his palace, fell murdered and bleeding on the hard ground. Driving in a coach to her father’s home, his daughter passed along the middle of the streets, erect and haughty. When he saw her father’s corpse, the driver burst into tears and drew up. She rebuked him in these terms: ‘Will you go on, or do you wait to reap the bitter fruit of this your loyalty? Drive, I say, the reluctant Page 15 of 21

 

The Night of Reason wheels across his very face!’ A sure proof of the deed is the name of the street called Wicked after her; the event is branded with eternal infamy.43 (p.92) From the point of view of recent history, Servius Tullius could have been seen as the ‘figure’ of the great Etruscan lord Maecenas, who in some way completed the initiative, making the Esquiline an elegant and sought-after residential area: a figural interpretation, it should be noted, does not necessarily entail support for the hyper-critical interpretation of those who, on this basis, place no trust in the information about Servius Tullius and the Esquiline, considering it a projection in the past of recent urban planning policy.44 But account must also be taken of the shadows cast by those old stories on the present, shadows dispelled by sunlight, dissolved in the bright days on the ramparts of the Agger, but which gathered again when darkness fell, when the night-time seemed to obscure the luminous control of reason and to generate, or rather regenerate, its ghosts and monsters. The past had experienced many turbulent nights of violence and bloodshed, which filled and sometimes obsessed the Roman imagination: mixed up together were passionate impulses (many of which were sexual), political and social troubles, and disturbing rituals of religion and magic. Women were often imagined as active participants in this wild, violent excess, and sometimes as dangerous protagonists. One of the archetypes of these spectres haunting the Roman imagination had been the scandal of the Bacchanalia, with its nocturna sacra, its acts of depravation and sequences of crimes: There was not one form of vice alone, the promiscuous matings of free men and women, but perjured witnesses, forged seals and wills and evidence, all issued from this same workshop: likewise poisonings and secret murders, so that at times not even the bodies were found for burial. Much was ventured by craft, more by violence. This violence was concealed because amid the howlings and the crash of drums and cymbals no cry of the sufferers could be heard as the debauchery and murders proceeded. The destructive power of this evil spread from Etruria to Rome like the contagion of a pestilence.45 (Livy 39.8.7–9.1) Sassia, the wicked mother of pro Cluentio, kept at a distance, in her journey towards Rome, by honest citizens and scrupulous hosts who feared the contagion of her sight alone, ‘entrusted herself to the night and to solitude, rather than to any city or welcoming host’ (Cic. (p.93) Cluent. 193). In the dark shadows, Sassia practises nocturnal sacrifices to involve the gods in her evil plans: And of her present intentions, designs, and daily plottings, which of us does she imagine to be ignorant? We are well aware whom she has Page 16 of 21

 

The Night of Reason approached, to whom she has promised money, whose loyalty she has tried to undermine with a bribe: nay more, we have found out about her midnight sacrifices which she thinks so secret, her infamous prayers, and her unholy vows by which she calls even Almighty God to witness her crime; not realizing that the favour of Heaven may be gained by duty done to God and man, and by righteous prayers, not by base superstition and victims offered for the success of crime. (Cic. Cluent. 194) Maecenas’ reclamation of the Esquiline had a strong symbolic value. It meant that the past had been overcome, even though it was not to be totally supressed or forgotten: remembering was probably an antidote to ensure the monsters did not return. Elegance and good taste perhaps cannot eliminate the horrors of the irrational from the world, but they can contain them, drive them back within the boundaries of the night, where, as a result of human weakness, they may reappear and for a moment regain the upper hand. The poet of wisdom knows that the ability to laugh at ghosts and monsters is the result only of the perfect self-control that the sapiens manages, with considerable effort, to achieve: somnia, terrores magicos, miracula, sagas, nocturnos lemures portentaque Thessala rides?

(Hor. Epist. 2.2.208–9) Dreams, visitations, bogeys, witches, ghosts, enchantments, can you laugh at all of them?46 For the poet of the satire, fear of the night and of the ghosts of the past can be exorcised by a comic deus ex machina, capable of transforming, with the robust coarseness of an apotropaic gesture,47 the disquiet and disgust of the Epodes into a grotesque spectacle to be acted (p.94) out for the enjoyment of the same public which, by day, admires the light-filled gardens: nam, displosa sonat quantum uesica, pepedi diffissa nate ficus; at illae currere in urbem. Canidiae dentis, altum Saganae caliendrum excidere atque herbas atque incantata lacertis uincula cum magno risuque iocoque uideres.

(Hor. Sat. 1.8.46–50) With the noise of a balloon bursting, I farted and split my fig-wood buttocks asunder: the witches ran off to the city. The sight of Canidia losing her false teeth, Sagana’s tall wig falling off, and the herbs and

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The Night of Reason enchanted love-knots tumbling from their arms would have made you burst with laughter. (p.95) Notes:

(1) See now Courtney 2013, a reading of Book 1 as ‘a developing sequence with a central concern about living contentedly in an urban society’. (2) All the translations of Hor. Sat. 1 are by P. M. Brown. (3) See Papi 1996 (with bibliography). (4) Cf. Strab. 5.3.8: Zanker 1988: 135–43. (5) Wallace-Hadrill 1998. (6) Plin. HN 19.50–1 iam quidem hortorum nomine in ipsa urbe ad delicias agros uillasque possident. primus hoc instituit Athenis Epicurus otii magister; usque ad eum moris non fuerat in oppidis habitari rura. (7) Wallace-Hadrill 1998: 4. (8) La Rocca 1986. (9) Transl. by J. Wight Duff, A. M. Duff. (10) Cf. La Penna 1976, Labate 2012. (11) All the translations of Horace’s Epodes are by Niall Rudd. (12) Suet. Ner. 38.2. (13) Transl. D. West. (14) Fabbrini 2007: 1–57. (15) Cf. Habash 1999: 285–6, in whose opinion ‘this anomaly may suggest that in this satire the poet is cleverly and comically disguised as the god’ (cf. also Anderson 1972: 12). (16) Buchheit 1962: 87–8; Parker 1988: 42. (17) Fraenkel 1957: 121–2. (18) Grimal 1984: 146–7 (the so-called Auditorium Maecenatis, which almost certainly belonged to the Horti, was built across the line of Servian Walls); Parker 1988: 15. Cf. Häuber 1996: 72. Various other possibilities are mentioned

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The Night of Reason by Porphirio and ps.-Acro on Hor. Sat. 1.8.7: some connect nouis…hortis to the scarecrow function of Priapus (cf. e.g. Edmunds 2009: 125–6). (19) Cf. Wiseman 1998. (20) Marroni 2010: 2. (21) Anderson 1972: 6. (22) Suet. Aug. 28.3 Vrbem neque pro maiestate imperii ornatam et inundationibus incendiisque obnoxiam excoluit adeo, ut iure sit gloriatus marmoream se relinquere, quam latericiam accepisset. (23) Lanciani 1888: 64–7; Lanciani 1897: 409–12; Marroni 2010: 14–23. (24) On this problem in the late Republic cf. Bodel 1994: 38–54. (25) Lanciani announced the discovery, in the cutting of via Napoleone III, in the area north of the Esquiline gate, of seventy five such pits, ‘some containing a uniform mass of black, viscid, pestilent, unctuous matter, whilst in others the bones could in a measure be singled out and identified’ (Lanciani 1897: 410). Lanciani’s identification of these pits with Varro’s puticuli and with the area of the paupers graveyard obliterated by Maecenas was frequently called into question. A careful reconsideration of archaeological and epigraphical evidence (Häuber 1990, Bodel 1994) leads us to think that the boundaries of the Horti Maecenatiani did not include the area north of the Esquiline gate and that ‘Horace’s albis informis ossibus ager lay outside the Servian rampart south of the Esquilian gate in the neighborhood of the “Auditorium” of Maecenas’ (Bodel 1994: 54). (26) Transl. R. G. Kent. (27) Häuber 1990: 93; Häuber 1996: 73. (28) This does not mean that the new park was ‘given to the Roman people for their recreation’ with ‘a gesture…typical of a philanthropic plutocrat’, comparable to the bequest of the Horti Caesaris to the Roman people (Gowers 2012: 269). Porph. ad loc. gives no useful information. (29) Cf. Schlegel 2005: 91. (30) Cf. Ogilvie 1965 ad Livy 1, 46, 9. A specific tragic source (Skard 1956: 57– 60) is not necessary. (31) All the translations of Cic. Cluent. are by H. Grose Hodge. (32) Transl. by J. C. Rolfe, rev. by J. T. Ramsey.

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The Night of Reason (33) Transl. by L. E. Lord. (34) I see now that some points of my argument coincide with Degl’Innocenti Pierini 2013, who deals fully with the relationship between Horace’s Canidia and the tragic character of Medea. (35) Transl. by D. Kovacs. (36) Cf. Ov. Her. 12.211–12 uiderit ista deus, qui nunc mea pectora uersat!/nescio quid certe mens mea maius agit. (37) Barchiesi 1993. (38) Bessone 1997: 32–41; 282–4. (39) E.g. Sen. Med. 673–5 uidi furentem saepe et aggressam deos,/caelum trahentem: maius his, maius parat/Medea monstrum. (40) Cf. Atreus (Sen. Thy. 252–4 non satis magno meum/ardet furore pectus, impleri iuuat/maiore monstro; 267–75 nescioquid animus maius et solito amplius/supraque fines moris humani tumet/instatque pigris manibus—haud quid sit scio,/sed grande quiddam est. ita sit. hoc, anime, occupa/(dignum est Thyeste facinus et dignum Atreo,/quod uterque faciat): uidit infandas domus/ Odrysia mensas—fateor, immane est scelus,/sed occupatum: maius hoc aliquid dolor/inueniat.), cf. Acc. Atreus 200 R.3 maior mihi moles, maius miscendumst malum; Clytemnestra (Sen. Ag. 124 te decet maius nefas). (41) Oliensis 1998: 64–90. (42) All the translations of Livy 1 are by B. O. Foster. (43) Transl. J. G. Frazer. (44) Cf. Ampolo 1996. (45) Transl. by E. T. Sage. (46) Transl. by C. MacLeod. (47) It was indeed a kind of ironic contrappasso for a threatening ithyphallic god that the solution could be found thanks to such an unexpected body part (diffissa nate): Anderson 1972: 10–12 suggests interesting poetological implications (cf. also, with some overstatement, Habash 1999: 295–6). Further, rather farfetched, suggestions of a sexual innuendo (ficus as an anal affection would reveal a ‘pathic’ Priapus) in Hallet 1981; cf. Gowers 2012: 279.

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The Night of Reason

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Beyond ‘Cosmos’ and ‘Logos’

Augustan Poetry and the Irrational Philip Hardie

Print publication date: 2016 Print ISBN-13: 9780198724728 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2015 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198724728.001.0001

Beyond ‘Cosmos’ and ‘Logos’ An Irrational Cosmology in Virgil, Georgics 1.231–58? Christian D. Haß

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198724728.003.0005

Abstract and Keywords This chapter shows that Virgil’s Georgics participate in the ‘Augustan discourse’ performing a political, religious, and social rationalization, harmonization or unification, and analyses how it deals with the irrational residuum left behind by this process. By examining the paradoxical situation of the underworld (as the space beyond rational conceivability or didactic communicability) in Georg. 1.231–58, it can be shown how Virgil creates a specific poetology by combining scientific cosmology with narrative mythology and thus aims at conceiving the irrational epistemologically, representing it semiotically, and conveying it didactically. In this respect, the Georgics differ sharply from the epistemology of Lucretius’ De rerum natura: While Lucretius denies the existence of the irrational, Virgil averts its threat precisely by affirming its presence in the world. The Georgics perform an epistemological strategy typical for early Augustanism: it makes the rationalizing operations it performs explicit and reflects on the constant threat of possible reversion. Keywords:   Virgil, Georgics, epistemology, poetology, didactic, semiotics, cosmology, mythology, Augustus, Lucretius

1 Introduction: The Function of ‘the Rational’ in the (Augustan) World Augustan culture is traditionally said to prefer (political) order to chaos (civil war), ‘Apollonian’ self-government (Octavian) to ‘Dionysian’ luxuria (Antonius),2 (political) unity and concordia to fragmented discordia (the last years of the republic)—in short: the Augustan culture is taken as a process by which Page 1 of 19

 

Beyond ‘Cosmos’ and ‘Logos’ ‘rational’ order overcomes ‘irrational’ chaos. This very process of ‘rationalization’ contains an irreducible residuum of the vanquished ‘Irrational’, with which it has to deal in one or another way; that the process of rationalization and its irrational counterpart remain constantly in tension was shown by examining ‘the Irrational’ implied in the field of the Paradox and the Marvellous.3 The central question of a conference on the wider phenomenon of The Irrational in Augustan Literature and Culture is to show how the ‘triumph of rationality over the Irrational’—if it is one at all—is effected. In what follows, I will examine the mode of rationalization within a conceptual framework saturated by the notions of order and (p.98) rationality, the Virgilian ‘Cosmo-Logy’ in G. 1.231–58.4 By doing so, I hope to describe the strategy of rationalization as well as its ‘irrational’ residuum, at a place where the affirmation of the rational is the most tangible. By the term ‘rationality’, I mean the result of an ordering epistemic act of definition which operates by exclusion/ inclusion;5 in the case of the cosmology, this definition is made by the Virgilian speaker as a recipient of the (semiotically ordered) world and of different intertexts and contexts. Perhaps the most easy, yet anachronistic answer to localize ‘the Irrational’, which would be the ‘naive’ mythos as opposed to the ‘scientific’ logos, is excluded by the German philosopher Hans Blumenberg who denies any hierarchical relation between the two modes of world appropriation.6 The questions asked will rather be: a) How does the Virgilian cosmology rationalize the world? b) How does the Virgilian mythology rationalize the world? c) How is the Virgilian poetology reflected as a praxis mediating between the former two ‘rationalizing’ strategies? This Virgilian poetology (here taken as any reflection upon the possibilities and functions of poetry in the world) surely has political implications: as one ‘actor’ within the Augustan discourse(s), tending to unification, self-government and rationalization, it has also ‘something to say’ about the central problems of its time—and the question will be: how it does so?7 Within my reading, these contextual perspectives will be mentioned where it is convenient, but not explored: proceeding from the text, I hope to contribute a complementary approach to the many and fruitful recent studies based on the context.

(p.99) 2 ‘The Irrational’: A Definition? In itself the result of a definitional procedure—both morphologically and conceptually—, ‘the Irrational’ is a term that eludes an exact definition. By labelling something as ‘irrational’, nothing referential is being said about it, but only something relational: ‘the Irrational’ is the ‘not rational’; it is the product of exclusion, which is left behind after defining the rational; it is the negative result of a differentiating process, by means of which the rational has been generated. This is why in philosophical encyclopaedias, ‘the Irrational’ is always defined on the bases of the concept of the rational.8 Since no precise definition of ‘the Irrational’ existed in Augustan times,9 it seems adequate to approximate ‘the Page 2 of 19

 

Beyond ‘Cosmos’ and ‘Logos’ Irrational’ proceeding from the definition of the rational. The arbitrariness and contextual relativity of this definition is pointed out by the relevant literature.10 From the perspective of cultural history, Silvio Vietta distinguishes three types of the production of ‘the Irrational’:11 first, as the aforementioned ‘non-rational’; second as a mythical phase of consciousness, thought to be overcome—as the ‘pre-rational’; and third, inherent in the rationalizing process itself, as the asymptotic approximation to the limes of rationality. As mentioned above, labelling the mythical phase of consciousness as the ‘pre-rational’ is inherently problematic:12 by ‘substituting…the unexplainable with explanations, and the unnameable with names’, mythos too accomplishes a narrative organization of the world. This organization can itself be called rational as it tames the threatening ‘absolutism of reality’—the mythology is not pre- or irrational, it is a narrative form of grasping the world and therefore taking part in rationality as an epistemological human strategy.

(p.100) 3 Methodology Examining ‘the Irrational’ in the Virgilian cosmology thus implies a twofold aporia: (1.) How can a concept be examined if the cultural context in question did not have a comprehensive terminology? (2.) How can anything be described at all if, as a result of a definitory process, it does not have ontological status? There are several ways of reacting to this aporia: on the one hand, ‘the Irrational’ can be examined by describing single phenomena on a thematic level.13 On the other hand, given the didactic genre of the Georgics, the underlying epistemological concept can be studied systematically.14 And finally, the very textual process which generates the concept of ‘the Irrational’ can be reconstructed and described if it is assumed that any ‘thematical’ concept is in the first instance in need of an elementary spatio-temporal system of organization, out of which it can be configured each time depending on the context. This method of ‘radical philological reading’ will be pursued in the following.15 I would like to emphasize the paradoxical in the well-established term ‘didactic poetry’. In this respect, the cosmology of Georgics 1 proves to be most illustrative as this passage generates two (sometimes) conflicting systems of organization: the textual representation of the cosmic order (in the mode of didaxis) on the one hand, and the generation of an intrinsic textual order (in the mode of poiesis) on the other.16 In this context, two observations made by Alain Deremetz become significant: first, that there is a sense of paradox in the wellknown laudes Italiae (2.136–76) which lies in the fact that the mythical aurea aetas is connected with events of the contemporary history; second, that the programmatic recusatio of the carmen fictum (2.39–46) only operates on the didactic surface of the Georgics and is undermined by its implicit poetics. These

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Beyond ‘Cosmos’ and ‘Logos’ observations clearly (p.101) indicate the tension between ‘didactics and poetry’—both of them different, yet interacting semiotic systems.17 In order to identify those spaces within which ‘the Irrational’ can be located, I shall examine G. 1.231–58 focussing on two places in the respective systems: (1.) What is defined as ‘non-rational’ as being located outside what can be represented in rational terms and can therefore be taught? (2.) Where are the functional places on these definitory delimitations within the respective system, which, though still lying within the province of the representable, all the same signify a transgression of these delimitations? ‘Definition’ is to be understood as the procedure of positing an exclusive difference between two spheres that is constitutive for the configuration of semiotic systems;18 by ‘transgression’ I mean, with Georges Bataille, a violation of a boundary by which the boundary itself becomes visible in the first place and that therefore both constitutes and suspends the definitional differentiation of the spheres at the same time.19

4 Crossing Boundaries: Cosmos, Logos, and Mythos in Virgil’s Cosmology (G. 1.231–58) Idcirco certis dimensum partibus orbem per duodena regit mundi sol aureus astra. quinque tenent caelum zonae: quarum una corusco semper sole rubens et torrida semper ab igni; quam circum extremae dextra laeuaque trahuntur 235 caeruleae, glacie concretae atque imbribus atris; has inter mediamque duae mortalibus aegris munere concessae diuum, et uia secta per ambas, obliquus qua se signorum uerteret ordo. mundus, ut ad Scythiam Riphaeasque arduus arces 240 consurgit, premitur Libyae deuexus in Austros. (p.102) hic uertex nobis semper sublimis; at illum sub pedibus Styx atra uidet Manesque profundi. maximus hic flexu sinuoso elabitur Anguis circum perque duas in morem fluminis Arctos, 245 Arctos Oceani metuentis aequore tingi. illic, ut perhibent, aut intempesta silet nox semper et obtenta densentur nocte tenebrae; aut redit a nobis Aurora diemque reducit, nosque ubi primus equis Oriens adflauit anhelis 250 illic sera rubens accendit lumina Vesper. hinc tempestates dubio praediscere caelo possumus, hinc messisque diem tempusque serendi, et quando infidum remis impellere marmor conueniat, quando armatas deducere classis, 255 aut tempestiuam siluis euertere pinum; nec frustra signorum obitus speculamur et ortus temporibusque parem diuersis quattuor annum.20 This is the reason why the golden Sun Page 4 of 19

 

Beyond ‘Cosmos’ and ‘Logos’ Marks through the twelve Signs of the Zodiac Fixed measures of the orbit-course he steers. 232 Five zones comprise the sky. One’s ever ruddy With blazing sun and ever scorched with fire. Round this to right and left at either pole Stretch blue ones, ice-bound, fraught with gloomy storm-clouds. But in between two zones by heavenly grace Are granted to frail mortals; and a path Is cut through both obliquely for those Signs To wheel their ordered way. The universe Rises towards Scythia and the Rhipēän heights Steeply, and sinks towards Libya and the South. 241 Above our heads the zenith ever towers, Beneath our feet dark Styx and the nether ghosts Behold the nadir. Here the huge Serpent glides with sinuous coil Around, and like a river parts the Bears, ‘The Bears that fear to dip themselves in the Ocean.’ There either, so men say, Night, dead of Night, Keeps silence, with a pall of thickest shadow, Or Dawn returns from us and brings back day, (p.103) And when the orient Sun with panting horses 250 First breathes us, for them in the red of evening Late Vesper lights his lamp. Thus can we forecast weather though the sky Be doubtful, thus the time to reap or sow, When best to impel the treacherous sea with oars And launch armadas, when to fell the pine-tree. For not in vain we watch the constellations, Their risings and their settings, not in vain The fourfold seasons of the balanced year.

This passage offers a comprehensive description of the cosmos, i.e. essentially of an infinite and therefore not immediately comprehensible space. Hence, the cosmology operates within the area of tension between the poetic definition of spaces and their transgression. To begin with, in vv.231–2, the sun going through the twelve signs of the zodiac and its orbit are mentioned, as it were, as the constitutive frame for what follows. The universal claim of the space defined by the solar orbit corresponds to the central role of the sol aureus, which is marked by the hyperbaton idcirco…orbem.21 Embedded in this definitional framework, the object of the cosmology, mundus, is mentioned for the first time in v.232; the definitory character is emphasized by the hyperbaton per duodena…astra, which has mundus located in its centre. The syntactic ambiguity of mundi, however, suggests a tendency of transgression at the same time: if, along with sol aureus mundi regit orbem per duodena astra, the possible meaning of sol aureus regit orbem per duodena astra mundi is allowed for, the sun is paradoxically

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Beyond ‘Cosmos’ and ‘Logos’ designated as both the frame and an immanent part of the space that is defined by itself.22 A similar case can be observed in vv.233–9. Here, the space created by orbis solis at the beginning of the passage at first merely contains the sphere of caelum; only in v.240 is mundus significantly defined as the terrestrial sphere by the chiastic juxtaposition of the extremities of the horizon of the known world. Mundus simultaneously refers, however, back to the aforementioned celestial mundi of v.232—yet this time in specifically earthly semantics. The object of the cosmological description becomes ambiguous not only syntactically, but (p.104) also semantically,23 which transgresses the concise definition of the earthly mundus in v.240 by referring back to the celestial mundus of v.232.24 The latter, as we have seen, can in turn be read itself as transgressive due to its syntactic ambiguity. By means of this poetic procedure, which causes the ambiguity inherent in the lexis of mundus to emerge, the semantics of ‘universe’ are not put into the text by definition, but produced by the text by transgression.25 The confines of the precisely defined cosmic space thus are blurred, underlining the literally universal character of the cosmological description and also making visible the ‘trans-rational’ limites of the didactic representation of the world, of the cosmo-logics, i.e. the rational conceivability of the cosmos. The extension of mundus, first in vv.242–3 across the celestial sphere to its poles and then in Styx atra…Manesque profundi in v.243 is also transgressive in this sense. Here, however, not only the cosmic spheres inter se are exceeded: the North Pole as the ‘liminal’ space of human rational conception is opposed to a South Pole (sub-limis versus sub pedibus), which transgresses the visible cosmos towards a conception of the invisible ‘beyond’ by placing the modes of ‘narrative mytho-logy’ and ‘scientific cosmo-logy’ side by side. Once again transgressing and defining elements coexist: the symmetrical structure of the world in vv.240– 1 is transposed onto the celestial poles in vv.242–51 and emphasized by the recurrent deictic references (hic-illum; hic-illic; nos-illic). In this way, a scientific description of the North Pole is coordinated with mythological speculations about the nature of the South Pole: not only do scientific and mythological conceptions of the world coexist,26 they even pervade each other; the universality of the cosmic space constructed in the text comprises its otherworldly and transcendental aspects—along with their character, which is speculative qua natura. By referring back to idcirco in v.231, hinc in v.252 stresses the teleological connection between the celestial and terrestrial spheres. By the coordination of agriculture, navy, (p.105) warfare27 and logging in vv.252–6, this connection is confirmed by way of a conclusion in vv. 257–8: peasant, sailor, emperor, and the instances of speaker and addressee implicit in the collective speculamur are analogous to each other in their observation of the signa, i.e. in the semiotic reception of the world.28

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Beyond ‘Cosmos’ and ‘Logos’ In addition to the rationally conceivable, consistent cosmology, the text simultaneously produces an inconceivable, speculative mythology. The combination of these two modes of world explanation effects on the one hand a ‘dissemination’, an opening of the empirical scientia towards the unknown; on the other hand it provides the mythology with a certain structure, which allows the expression of this ‘unknown’. In this way, the ‘trans-rational’ limites of the cosmological episteme are pointed out in a literally didactic manner; likewise the mythological episteme is configured as a narrative, but still rational,29 semiotic world appropriation in a literally poietic manner. ‘The Irrational’ would find its place at the limes of the empirically conceivable, and not outside of it, where different, mythological-narrative, procedures of a semiotic configuration of order operate.

5 Drawing a Distinction: Rationality as the Product of Semiotic Processes We have seen how two different systems are configured by cosmological didaxis and mythological narration. These systems have in common that they both perform conceptualizations of the rationally intangible and are thus procedures of a rational world appropriation. They thereby transform the ‘frightening and chaotic primary perception of the world…, the absolutism of reality’,30 into a semiotic order. This conflict between the semiotic order-to-be and the archaic resistance of the world finds its textual articulation in a tension between a postulated rationally ordered cosmology and a seemingly irrational combination of cosmology and mythology. The concise formulation of this tension can be found in vv.257–8, which round off the cosmology: here, in a chiastic juxtaposition of two antithetical (p.106) terms, the year is described as par by means of the very dissimilarity of the seasons (diuersis temporibus). At this point, the structure of the year appears to be both a consequence and an evident proof of the ordered rationality of the world (vv.231–9): the solar orbit thus functions as framework and fixed point of reference for the description of the zones, and is characterized as the organizing centre in vv.231, 239 and finally 257; the signs of the zodiac housed within it function as a semiotic connection between the celestial and the terrestrial spheres and refer to a ‘higher’ system of order, which, on earth, becomes manifest in the reliability of these signs.31 The annus par diuersis temporibus reflects therefore, as the perceptible result of the course of the sun, the teleological organization of a world whose complex structure can, behind its apparent plurality, only be recognized by observing and interpreting those signs that bear witness to this order:32 the mode in which this rational cosmological didaxis presents itself is that of semiotic didaxis. This teleological conception of a world based on a coherent unity could simply be attributed to the influence of Stoic philosophy on Virgil.33 Virgilian cosmology, however, is precisely not content with the mere affirmation of a universal sympatheia that is understood as a priori. In the Georgics, the signa, by which the world is arranged in its chaotic plurality and likewise semiotically tamed, are only subsequently configured as signs: whereas in vv.204–5, the stars Page 7 of 19

 

Beyond ‘Cosmos’ and ‘Logos’ are still called sidera (Praeterea tam sunt Arcturi sidera nobis/Haedorumque dies seruandi et lucidus Anguis…, ‘Now for the stars. The phases of Arcturus,/ The Kids, the gleaming Snake, must be observed/By us…’), in v.229 we read sidus mittit signa (haud obscura cadens mittet tibi signa Bootes, ‘Sure sign will be the setting of Boötes’). In the course of the cosmology, the successive configuration of the sidera into signa comes to an end, and eventually we no longer contemplate astra, as in v.232, but signa (v.257: nec frustra signorum obitus speculamur et ortus). These signs remain present in the climactic repetition of the formula certa signa throughout the book.34 This process of (p. 107) understanding the ‘cosmic semiotics’ is textually performed in the mode of poiesis; this raises questions about the origin of signs within semiotically configured forms of rational world appropriation.35 Within the cosmos, ‘the Irrational’ configured at the limes of rationality is thus rationalized semiotically by using signs which refer to a teleological cosmology. This procedure is, however, only valid for the cosmological passages vv.231–41 and vv.252–8. In vv.242–51, by contrast, the plurality of different models of world explanation causes a few discrepancies based on the coexistence of two intertexts, which are not explicitly marked: the Φαινόμενα by Aratus, as well as the Ἑρμῆς by Eratosthenes. In the two texts, entirely different conceptions of the world are exhibited:36 in Aratus, the earth figures as a level plane fixed by the axis of the celestial sphere, in Eratosthenes as a globe attached to the middle of the world axis and thus resembling a smaller version of its surrounding celestial sphere. The blatant contradiction in the description of the South Pole, which is both identified with the underworld37 as well as located above the summit of a southern hemisphere,38 is based on the incompatibility of the main intertexts. In vv.247–51, this intertextual tension, which generates a certain epistemological uncertainty, is extended by another dimension: it is the question of the existence of human beings in the southern hemisphere. At this point, a reference to Eratosthenes’ Antipodes could be expected, which seems implied in vv.249–51. While in vv.247–8, the existence of human life seems to be ruled out, an allusion to Homer evokes the people of the Cimmerians.39 This plurality constituted by intertextual conflation not only emerges from the often cited juxtaposition of empirical/scientific and mythological/poetic modes of world appropriation,40 but it also has an effect within the mythological/literary episteme itself. The poetica licentia41 (p.108) becomes manifest in this very plurality, providing the text with a certain polysemy42 which goes beyond mere didacticism and effects an opening of the cosmological scientia that points towards mythological/literary narration.43 Beyond the space of immediate evidence works another semiotic system of world appropriation; while hic, the teleological order of the world offers itself to us (nobis) as signorum obitus…et ortus (v.257), illic, it is only possible to refer to the plurality of narrative patterns whose poeticity is explicitly marked vv.247–51: ut perhibent aut…aut. In order to interpret this passage, it seems more plausible to Page 8 of 19

 

Beyond ‘Cosmos’ and ‘Logos’ understand this plurality within a poetic/literary system than within a scientific or political one;44 the plurality of narrative patterns of world explanation is configured as a specifically poietic order and distinguished explicitly from the teleological cosmology revealed by semiotic didaxis. Hence, the ‘scientific cosmology’ is based on a teleological concept of unity, on a par diuersis, whose uniformity functions both as condicio and consequentia at the same time; it is thought as being a priori and as being didactically conveyable. The ‘implicit poetology’, on the other hand, is based on a plurality of cosmologico-scientific as much as mythologico-narrative forms of organization, on a par diuersis, whose uniformity emerges only successively by dealing poietically with the given plurality.45 The controversy whether Virgil performs a ‘re-mythologicalization’,46 or ‘explicitly distances himself from mythological/fictional poetry’,47 can be solved by bringing to synthesis the structural difference of both systems of organization and their coexistence based on equal justification:48 epistemologically speaking this proves Virgil’s nuanced (p.109) position between Stoic determinism and Epicurean rationalism;49 poetologically, it points at the polysemous limes between didactically re-produced (represented) cosmology and poietically produced (performed) mythology. What does this mean for the boundaries, the de-finition of the rational? Hic, the sidera in the night sky refer as signa to the teleological, rational construction of the cosmos; though this cosmos is not in its entirety comprehensible by means of immediate evidence, it certainly is by deciphering the semiotic code instituted by Iuppiter. At the limites of empirical world appropriation, the stars thus stand as the signifiants of the signs, which refer to the cosmological unity, conceived as being a priori, lying beyond the space of empiricism.50 This unity is recognized by rational world appropriation qua semiotic abstraction: nec frustra signorum obitus speculamur et ortus.51 Illic, the perception of the world is not only denied empirical evidence, but even semiotic evidence is not possible to the same extent since no liminal signs are located nobis…sublimis, but beyond our field of vision, sub pedibus. Within this space situated outside the realm of evidence, rationally conceivable semiotics can only be realized narratively—as a consequence, their concrete expressions are of an immense plurality and arbitrariness in their respective origin: illic, ut perhiberent aut…aut…

6 Cosmology, Mythology, Poetology: How to Posit an Origin The point of origin within the different semiotic systems—cosmology, mythology and the poetology working within their interspace—is the very point that eludes rational understanding. As for the cosmology, Jupiter is mentioned as the auctor of the semiotic system in vv.351–3: Atque haec ut certis possemus discere signis/ …/ipse pater statuit quid menstrua luna moneret (‘And that we might be able by sure signs/…/…the Father himself/Ordained the monthly (p.110) warnings of the moon’).52 Alessandro Schiesaro speaks of a ‘new beginning, under the Page 9 of 19

 

Beyond ‘Cosmos’ and ‘Logos’ double aegis of Iuppiter and Hesiod as “fathers” in their respective domains’ and thus exposes a central aspect of the mutual pervasion of cosmology, mythology and poetology.53 The seeming coherence of the cosmology is, however, already suspended to a certain extent when the origin of culture as initiated by Iuppiter is described as a first action of organization in vv.125–8, by evoking a time ante Iouem, and therefore not as a factum a priori: ante Iouem nulli subigebant arua coloni/ne signare quidem aut partiri limite campum/fas erat…(‘Before Jove’s reign no tenants mastered holdings,/Even to mark the land with private bounds/ Was wrong…’). Signare and partiri limite also work as organizing procedures defining the infinitum to make conceivable the inconceivable and find an expression for it.54 Therefore, the semiotic readability of the cosmos is not ontological, but arises from a definitory act performed by Iuppiter, without which the condition of possible meaning(s) would not be given.55 In contrast, the narrative semiotic system of mythology, which serves to rationalize what is located beyond the perceptible, seems to emerge ad arbitrium perhibentis. The configuration of contrary conceptions of space, time and the world in toto is shown in its arbitrariness in vv.247–8 and vv.249–51 and clearly marks the literal poeticity of the myth: in the first case, a narratively developed space is configured as the maximum of condensed darkness, absolute silence and uniformly static timelessness;56 in the second case, it is sequenced temporally in dynamic cyclicality.57 The poeticity of the myth thus refers to the respective perhibens as the auctor of the corresponding mythological episteme. According to Ika Willis, who understands (p.111) aequor in vv.50–3 as any plain expanse without the possibility of differentiation, this aequor can be interpreted as the status preceding the ambiguous point of origin of cosmos, myth and poetry:58 ac prius ignotum ferro quam scindimus aequor,/uentos et uarium caeli praediscere morem/cura sit…(‘But with untried land, before we cleave it with iron,/We must con its varying moods of wind and sky/With care…’). Understanding dubium caelum in v.252 and infidum marmor in v.254 as corresponding to ignotum aequor in v.50, the aspect of positing an initial difference comes to the fore, which is necessary for a system to be created.59 Just like Jupiter instituting the ferrea aetas, the peasant aequor scindens and the sailor marmor impellens mark the starting point of culture by way of differentiation and signification. Following Philip Hardie’s invitation to read ignotum aequor poetologically as ‘land “unknown” to the readers…beginning their journey through the poem’,60 it now becomes clear that also the poetology has a central function: it is the speaker himself who is the perhibens at issue; it is he who narratively generates a semiotic system, by means of which he establishes an order where there are no divine signa allowing man to gain orientation by looking at the dubium caelum and sailing on the infidum marmor, i.e. allowing them to conceive of the inconceivable semiotically.61 The poetology of the Georgics as well portrays a way of a rational world appropriation, which works in the modes of didaxis and Page 10 of 19

 

Beyond ‘Cosmos’ and ‘Logos’ poiesis; with respect to the boundaries of rational world conception, the following can be noted.

7 Didaxis and poiesis: Poetic Strategies of Rationalizing the World In poetological terms, it is again—just like in cosmological and mythological terms—the point of origin of the semiotic system, the ‘auctorial function’, which evades rational perception and therefore semiotic representation. The triad of semiotic systems present in the (p.112) text will now be examined with respect to the limits of semiotic representation in Virgil’s Georgics: 1. The cosmic system is organized rationally in its teleology; at its limites, the sidera refer as ‘trans-rational’ divine signa to the semiotic point of origin, which is the initial differentiating act performed by Jupiter when instituting the ferrea aetas and thus the possibility of signification. In this way, even the future becomes prognostically accessible to man, i.e. rationalizable (prae-discere, v. 252)62—the world becomes conceivable in semiotic terms and allows a rational organization of different cultural practices.63 The point of origin of this semiotic system itself remains to some extent ir-rationalizable, and in vv.125–8, it is therefore only representable ex negativo as the absence of any ordering structure: Ante Iouem nulli subigebant arua coloni/ne signare quidem aut partiri limite campum/fas erat…64 2. The mythological system is configured as a system of semiotic-cum-rational world appropriation complementary to the cosmology and of equal epistemological status. In contrast to the cosmic system, however, the point of origin is not a specific, or singular one; rather, the instance which renders the world conceivable in semiotic terms, is the specific perhibens. As a consequence of the plurality of points of origin, the mythological semiotic system itself is not homogeneous but polysemous; beside the point of origin, which cannot be rationalized, there is a further uncertainty consisting of the problem of semiotics without a fixed centre65 and its resulting epistemic plurality (vv.247–51). Cosmological and mythological epistemal also repeatedly pervade each other. The mutual contamination of both systems may enhance the myth as a narrative form of a rational understanding of the world, but at the same time, it suspends the self-aware cosmological attitude of epistemological certainty, as it is, for instance, constitutive for Lucretius’ De rerum natura. This becomes explicit in the famous recusatio of such a model of recognition in G. 2.490–2—which is (p. 113) especially notable with respect to the ir-rationalizable point of origin:66 felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas 490 atque metus omnis et inexorabile fatum subiecit pedibus strepitumque Acherontis auari. Blessed is he whose mind had power to probe The causes of things and trample underfoot All terrors and inexorable fate Page 11 of 19

 

Beyond ‘Cosmos’ and ‘Logos’ And the clamour of devouring Acheron.

3. With respect to its own poetology, i.e. the question of the place and the function of poetry in the (political) world, the mutual transgression of scientific cosmology and narrative mythology implies two things. a) The necessity for poetry to refer mimetically to the world is emphasized; the poet can only conceive the epistemic plurality of the cosmology by observing and interpreting the cosmic signs and conveying them in the mode of didaxis—this is universal didactics as semiotic didactics. Nec frustra signorum obitus speculamur et ortus therefore suggests an implicit poetological imperative, obedience to which keeps the reader from getting lost in the ignotum aequor and losing the referential connection to the world by carmine ficto.67 b) The function of poiesis to constitute the world is emphasized; the myth has a literal poeticity, which can be revealed as referring to a perhibens, and takes part in the semiotic configuration of the world: nosque ubi primus equis Oriens adflauit anhelis/illic sera rubens accendit lumina Vesper. In the area of tension between the modes of didaxis and poiesis, the implicit poetology articulates the presence of the world in poetry—the mimetic function of poetry—as well as the presence of poetry in the world—the performative potential of poetry.68 In conclusion, how can the relation of such a poietic/didactic poetology (the poetology of a didactic poem) to ‘the Irrational’ be described? In Virgil’s cosmology, epistemological blanks are pointed out by a poetology that puts pressure on scientific cosmology and narrative mythology as two concepts of rational world perception. The narrative mode of world conception is, however, characterized as (p.114) an anthropologically necessary, poietic process, which attempts to compensate for the uncertainty about the ontological state of the world. By pointing out the epistemological blanks, they are ‘removed from their unfamiliarity by metaphor’.69 Poetry thus configures itself as a language warding off ‘the Irrational’, whose presence it articulates, or even evokes in the first place. Such poetry is the very linguistic mode that works as a vehicle to express ‘the Irrational’. As a ‘language of the Irrational’, it constantly puts its own meaningfulness at risk as is shown by the epistemological plurality of the Virgilian cosmology; as a form of language, it is at the same time a vehicle of semiotic world rationalization. Based on Georges Bataille, this paradoxical poetology can be described as follows: ‘it is up to “prose” to assimilate the expressions of the impossible and to transform them into signs; “poetry”, by contrast, is devoted to the impossible, which as a reward grants it the gift of making possible the expression of the impossible—not its meaning, which remains inaccessible, but its presence’.70 In the poetology of the Georgics, Bataille’s categories of ‘prose’ and ‘poetry’ work in combination: as modes of rationalizing didaxis and ‘enchanting’71 poiesis.

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Beyond ‘Cosmos’ and ‘Logos’ Considering again the recusatio in G. 2.490–2, we could say that it proves paradigmatic for this ‘apotropaic poetics of the Irrational’: felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas/atque metus omnis et inexorabile fatum/subiecit pedibus strepitumque Acherontis auari. Virgil, too, subjugates the underworld sub pedibus (v.243), yet—as pointed out—in a significantly different way. As Philip Hardie has shown, Hades and its state of invisibility (ἀ-ιδής) can also be read as a substitute for the in-conceivable as such.72 In contrast to Lucretius, who attempts to remove such an ‘Irrational’ from the world scientifically by means of negation, its presence in the world is here affirmed and it is spellbound by its being named. This affirmation of ‘the Irrational’ even goes to the point that in vv. 242–3, the river Styx is given the ability of visual perception: hic uertex nobis semper sublimis, at illum/sub pedibus Styx atra uidet Manesque profundi. This inversion may give the obscure river the uncanny presence of an (p.115) ‘invisible eye’; yet, as an anthropomorphic observer of the celestial South Pole, the ‘Invisible’ becomes at least semiotically nameable and can thus be dealt with in an apotropaic/cultic manner.73 This poetological treatment of ‘the Irrational’, i.e. of the ‘ir-rationalizable Other’ in the Virgilian cosmology corresponds to the double epistemological imperative of the ‘rational’ sidera serua and the ‘transrational’ uenerare deos examined by Alessandro Schiesaro ad G. 1.335–9.74

8 Conclusion: The Function of Poetry in the (Augustan) World As we have seen, the rational ordering of the world is a central topic to Virgil, with reference not only to the political and religious context, but also to the function of his own poetry within the Augustan discourse. I have deliberately held in suspense the old and odd controversy as to whether this function is ‘affirmative’ or rather ‘subversive’;75 in the words of Michel Foucault, the literary discourse takes part in the overarching system of power, yet in a special position, eager to change the rules of the given system, but necessarily as a constructive part of it.76 Hence the discursive relationship between literature and politics is both a ‘constructive/affirmative’ as well as a ‘subversive’ one, so that labelling the Georgics exclusively ‘Augustan’ or ‘Anti-Augustan’ would be equally reductive.77 Virgil, for sure, is an ‘Augustan poet’ insofar as his poetics reflects upon its own function within a context dominated by Caesar Octavian.78 In the context of literary history, a specific difference from Lucretian as well as from Neoteric poetics can be found. With respect to Lucretius, the Georgics is ‘both more sceptical and more authoritarian (p.116) about knowledge’79—and, we could add, also more self-reflexive concerning its own possibilities and boundaries within the (political) world. With respect to the Neoteric poetry, my analysis appears to corroborate the thesis of Jürgen Paul Schwindt that whereas Neoteric poetry follows a ‘poetics of occlusion and immanence’, Augustan poetry seems to ‘transcend this occlusion’ by formulating a poetics of both immanence and transcendence, partly symbiotic and partly conflicting;80 if we consider one particular aspect of this tendency to transcend the neoteric ‘poetics of immanence’, we can see that the growing poetic self-reflexivity urges the poet to Page 13 of 19

 

Beyond ‘Cosmos’ and ‘Logos’ engage (in one way or another) with the political context: the Georgics is poésie engagée in as much as it reflects not only the own (textual and intertextual) constitution, but also its relation to the world. But this aspect of the ‘Georgics as a political text’81 is revealed in the cosmology without any explicitly political reference—as we have seen. Here, the question of ‘poet and princeps’ or ‘poetry and politics’ is dealt with in more general terms as the question of ‘poetry and world’. As mentioned above, the rational ordering of the world is a central topic in Virgil: both the didactic representation of the ordering of a world given in the text, as well as the poietic performance of the ordering of a world figured by the text. The mode of poiesis, as operating at the very limits of what is rationally conceivable, provides an illustrative expression of a (maybe typically contemporary) desire for rational order that is fully conscious of its own precarious status. Notes:

(1) I would like to thank Maximilian Haas and Jan Munstermann for the translation. (2) Cf. Mac Góráin 2012–13. (3) Cf. for the Georgics Deremetz 2009. (4) LSJ, s.v. λόγος: ‘I. reckoning…II. relation…, proportion…III. explanation’. Cf. also the Etymological Dictionary of Greek, s.v. κόσμος for a probable reconstruction ‘*ḱoNs-mo-, [whose] original meaning was probably to put in order (by speaking)’. The notions of ‘ratio’, ‘order’ and ‘language’ are thus condensed conceptually as well as etymologically within the term of ‘cosmology’. (5) Following Luhmann 2004; for a political reading of these epistemological operations cf. E. Giusti’s contribution in this volume. (6) Cf. Blumenberg 1979: 9–39 (‘After the Absolutism of Reality’); 40–67 (‘The Name falling into the Chaos of the Unnamed’). (7) For the term ‘discourse’, understood as describing the interrelations between ‘texts’ and (textual and non-textual) ‘contexts’, cf. Foucault 1972: 229. (8) Rücker 1976: 583: ‘“[I]rrational” [bezeichnet] einen der menschlichen Vernunft bzw. dem menschlichen Verstand nicht zugänglichen Bereich der Erkenntnis’ (my emphasis). (9) Cf. ibid. for the late origin of the term.

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Beyond ‘Cosmos’ and ‘Logos’ (10) Cf. Kible 1992: 37–8, who describes the concept of ratio as an arbitrary normative positing. For the related term of ‘order’ explicitly Kuhn 1973: 1037: ‘[D]as Definiendum [wird] in den Definitionen…vorweggenommen’. (11) Cf. Vietta 2012: 9–16; 51–2. (12) Cf. Blumenberg 1979: 9–67, who shows that there is not an absolute, but only a gradual difference in ‘rationality’ between the narrative/mythological mode and the conceptional/scientific mode of perceiving the unknown. I will heed this caveat without following Blumenberg’s ‘literary anthropology’ in general. (13) For the genesis of ‘themes’ cf. Schwindt 2009. (14) Cf. Schiesaro 1997. (15) Cf. Schwindt 2006: 1141–2; 1149–50; Schwindt 2009: 158–60. (16) Didaxis and poiesis both belong to the area of mimesis and are therefore related to the political sphere. By taking a perspective that is text-immanent, I don’t want to claim ‘higher relevance’ or ‘deeper insights’; I rather try to add a further perspective to an intensively tilled field of research; cf. e.g. Nappa 2005; Powell 2008; Nelis 2010; Thibodeau 2011. I aim at describing how the textcontext-relation figures within in the text (cf. Lowrie 2009: 142–74), instead of taking a stance in the discussion on ‘poet and princeps’ (cf. e.g. Gale 2003; Hardie 2004). (17) Cf. Deremetz 2009: 117–21. For the discussion on ‘poetry and didactics’ since ancient times, cf. Doodey 2007. (18) Luhmann 2004: 66: ‘Ein System ist die Differenz zwischen System und Umwelt.’ (19) Bataille 1957: 30: ‘La poésie mène au même point que…l’érotisme, à l’indistinction…des objets distincts.’ (my emphasis) I will use the term ‘transgression’ according to Bataille, without following his poetology or erotology in general. (20) The text of Virgil is that of Mynors 1969, with the translation of Wilkinson 1982. (21) Regere orbem could hint at Augustus’ claims for power over the orbis terrarum. For Sol and Caesar, cf. Nelis 2010; for orbis, urbs, uruum, cf. Willis 2011: 22–3. (22) Cf. Scholia Bernensia ad v.232.

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Beyond ‘Cosmos’ and ‘Logos’ (23) Servius ad v.240: ‘Sane aliqui mundum pro coelo accipiunt hoc loco’; Scholia Bernensia ad v.240: ‘Mundus, pro coelo’. (24) Servius ad loc.: ‘Translatiue, nam proprie Zonae in terris, sed pro parallelis, i.e. circulis posuit’; cf. Erren 2003: 145–6; Conington/Nettleship 1988 ad loc.; Thomas 1988a ad loc.; Williams 1979 ad loc. (25) OLD, s.v. ‘mundus’: ‘1…b (in wider sense) the universe’. This ‘wider sense’ is figured in vv.231–2 by the transgressive blurring of its definitions (‘1 The heavens’; ‘2 The world, the earth’). (26) Cf. Richter 1957 ad loc. (27) Cf. Thomas 1988a ad loc. (28) For a semiotic study of the Georgics, cf. Perkell 1989. (29) Cf. Blumenberg 1979: 9–11. (30) Cf. Blumenberg 1979: 9–11; 41. (31) On the final limitation of this semiotic reliability cf. Schiesaro 1997: 68–80. (32) Cf. Richter 1957: 151. (33) Cf. esp. Dion 1995; on the Epicurean influence mediated by Lucretius, cf. esp. Gale 2000. (34) G. 1.351, 1.354, 1.394, 1.439, 1.463, 1.471. For a political reading of the certa signa culminating in the political and semiotic catastrophe of Caesar’s death, cf. Schiesaro 1997: 76; Thibodeau 2011: 185; McKay Wilhelm 1982; Nelis 2010. (35) Cf. the following chapter and, more extensively, Haß 2015a. (36) The following according to Erren 2003: 143–6. (37) Vv.242–3: Hic uertex nobis semper sublimis; at illum/sub pedibus Styx atra uidet…Following the Aratean model of the world, it seems logical to understand ‘sub pedibus [sc. nostris]’(Erren 2003; Mynors 1969; Thomas 1988a: ad loc.) and not ‘sub pedibus [sc. Stygiis]’ (Conington/Nettleship 1988: ad loc.). (38) Only by this means is the cyclical alternation of day and night (vv.249–51) imaginable for the space of illic. (39) Cf. Farrell 1991: 225–32.

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Beyond ‘Cosmos’ and ‘Logos’ (40) Servius ad v.243: ‘Et sicut variae philosophorum opiniones sunt: ita et hic varie loquitur’; cf. Williams 1979 ad vv.231–58; Richter 1957 ad v.243; Cumont 1942: 57. (41) Servius ad loc. (42) I will take no stance on whether the elements of harmony and those of polysemy are in some way hierarchized within the semiotics of the Georgics (cf. e.g. Thomas 2000). On the one hand, the existence of a tension between an ultimate concordia discors or discordia concors is unanimously acknowledged, on the other hand, I think that any final solution underestimates the relevance of the opposite pole. Cf. recently Kania 2012, even though he eventually opts for a hierarchy in favour of a concordia discors. (43) Cf. Cumont 1942: 55: ‘…une sorte de mythologie, qu’il [Virgil] utilise librement dans un but littéraire…une imprécision qu’il jugeait poétique’. (44) Thus contra Erren 2003: 144–5. (45) On teleological cosmology as opposed to differentialistic systems theory cf. Luhmann 2004: 67. (46) Gale 2000: 116–17; cf. Perkell 1989: 152. (47) von Albrecht 2006: 93. (48) Cf. Gale 2000: 83. (49) Cf. Schiesaro 1997: 72–5. (50) Cf. the semiotic approach in Perkell 1989: 153–66. (51) The ultimate limitedness of this way of semiotic/rational world appropriation is acknowledged by Perkell as much as by Schiesaro (cf. Schiesaro 1997: 76–80; 86–9). (52) For the connection between vv.351–5, vv.121–35, and vv.328–34 cf. Fowler 2000: 230–4; for the connection with vv.50–3 cf. Willis 2011: 21–5; for an extensive semiotic reading of the first book cf. Haß 2015a. (53) Schiesaro 1997: 68. (54) Cf. Blumenberg 1979: 40–4. (55) Cf. Willis 2011: 21–35: ‘…the Saturnian earth is a medium in which there can be no marking…, no signification…The possibility of mark-making…opens up the space…of writing.’ On aequor scindere as a metaphor for writing, cf. also Harrison 2007b; Nelis 2010. Page 17 of 19

 

Beyond ‘Cosmos’ and ‘Logos’ (56) By semantic over-marking and dense syntax (…silet nox/semper et obtenta densentur nocte tenebrae), by the emphatic repetition of semper, and also by the morphology of in-tempesta. (57) By the semantics of red-it and re-ducit; by the antithesis of nosque…primus… Oriens adflauit…/…sera…accendit lumina Vesper. (58) Cf. Willis 2011: 21–3. (59) Cf. Luhmann 2004: 66. (60) Hardie 2009a: 43. (61) For the practical use of celestial signs by farmers and sailors cf. Hermann 2005. (62) On prognostics and divination cf. Hogrebe 2005; Zwierlein 2005. (63) The emphatic conueniat (v.255) refers back to the fact that cultural practices are organized by stellar semiotics (vv.1–3: quo sidere terram/uertere…/ conueniat); cf. Haß 2015a. (64) Significantly, and in difference to the main intertexts, the pre-Jovian age is here not defined by the name of Saturn: a state that denies any semiotics also denies designation by naming (ne…quidem…/fas erat; my emphasis). (65) Cf. Derrida 1967. (66) With Schiesaro 1997: 81 contra Thomas 1988a: ad loc. (67) Cf. Harrison 2007b; Berti/Haß/Krüger/Ott 2015. (68) Cf. Lowrie 2009: 142–74. (69) Blumenberg 1979: 12; also 41: ‘Alles Weltvertrauen fängt an mit den Namen, zu denen sich Geschichten erzählen lassen.’ (70) Cf. Leuwers 1985: 62–3. (71) Cf. J. P. Schwindt’s contribution in this volume. (72) Hardie 2009b: 157. (73) Cf. Blumenberg 1979: 11: ‘[Die Rationalisierung der Angst zur Furcht] geschieht…durch…Supposition des Vertrauten für das Unvertraute…, um das Ungegenwärtige zum Gegenstand der abwehrenden…Handlung zu machen.’ (74) Cf. Schiesaro 1997: 68–9; 85; Fowler 2000: 230–4.

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Beyond ‘Cosmos’ and ‘Logos’ (75) Cf. e.g. Thomas 2001; Powell 2008. (76) Cf. Foucault 2000: 173–4. (77) Cf. Haß 2015b. (78) Nappa 2005: 3: ‘…one of the ways in which Vergil reveals the inevitable multiplicity…of our meanings is to hold up to scrutiny different potential versions of Octavian’. (79) Fowler 2000: 231; cf. Schiesaro 1997: 86–9. (80) Cf. Schwindt 2005: 1–2. (81) Nappa 2005: 2.

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The Magic of Counting

Augustan Poetry and the Irrational Philip Hardie

Print publication date: 2016 Print ISBN-13: 9780198724728 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2015 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198724728.001.0001

The Magic of Counting On the Cantatoric Status of Poetry (Catullus 5 and 7; Horace Odes 1.11) Jürgen Paul Schwindt

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198724728.003.0006

Abstract and Keywords It is no chance that bucolics, georgics, epigrams, elegies, epodes, and lyrical songs, the most prominent genres which arose during the revolutionary time span between late republican and Augustan Rome, archaized, primitivized, and simplified the scenarios and sometimes even the media of their speech. They gave prominence to their most substantial themes through striking and memorable structural formulae. Hence, measurements are normally taken where things seem straightforward. However, something very strange happens with these simple and straightforward forms: steadily cultivated and frequently called upon, they very obviously become symbols of an elementary order (i.e. one providing structure), which may then incur quasi-idolatrous worship. Traces of irrationality appear in Augustan poetry where least expected: in numbers, the elementary configuration of rationality. The calculations (rationes) and numbers games (numeri) in some of Catullus’ and Horace’s famous poems enable an insight into how irrationality constitutes itself on the basis of rational components. Keywords:   Catullus, Horace, irrationality, counting, structure, magic

Modern interpreters have long had a devilishly hard time accounting for the irrational in Roman literature and culture. It could not be denied that the testimonials which come down to us from antiquity bear witness to the creative class’s distinctive will to order: already the development of literature and its refined language of form seemed to follow an intrinsic plan resolutely Page 1 of 17

 

The Magic of Counting encompassing nearly all genres of Greek literature, thus leading them, one after the other, from the foundations of the inherited traditions to a new, Roman magnitude. Frequently, literary historiography of the early and middle Roman imperial age has done its part in ascribing intrinsic evolutions of their lives and works to individual outstanding writers. A case in point is Virgil, who, after puerile beginnings in ‘light’ epigrammatic poetry, is supposed to have gathered pace while composing the Bucolics, and then dealt with the Georgics under full sail, only to land at the mythopoetic Hauptstaatsaktionentheater of the ‘Aeneid’: Suetonius’ formula ‘pascua, rura, duces’ (‘pastures, countrysides, leaders’) puts in a nutshell what the poet did to achieve perfection.1 If we also consider the ‘pre-history’ of the classical time of ‘maturation’, in particular Lucretius and Catullus, the course of things, according to such an evolutionist, rational view, could have been (p.118) the following. The Roman classical era is supposed to have come of age in quite the same manner Goethe and Schiller emancipated themselves from the Sturm und Drang period, leaving behind their sentimental, baroque-neoteric beginnings and departing from the tumultuous condicio of the late-Republican fever of decadence, to eventually bring about a new type of refined and domesticated language of form, freed of any rank growth of unrestrained powers of imagination. It is this thesis that some of our colleagues have evolved rather naively in voluminous, but marketable historical narratives up until the 1970s. It sounds too good to be true. Examining randomly chosen passages quickly brings it to light: neither did Lucretius and Catullus fight against demons of darkness, nor are the Augustan texts guided by Apollonian measure throughout.2 I am afraid it will be altogether difficult to make sensible or at least plausible decisions whether something should be taken as ‘rational’ or ‘irrational’. From time to time, it is a good idea to consult mathematicians, who have made their own experience in distinguishing the rational from the irrational. One knows the story of how irrational numbers were discovered. The Pythagorean Hippasus of Metapontum is said to have discovered this quantity,3 which cannot be expressed by the ratio of whole numbers (‘integers’), thus bringing about the first fundamental crisis of ancient Greek mathematics.4 The subsequent public announcement of his discovery was, according to unwritten Pythagorean laws, a serious breach of secrecy.5 When Hippasus drowned in the sea later on, this was seen as divine punishment. It is not easy to think of a comparable case in which the discovery of mere numbers could lead to similar irrational events. Non-relational rationes breaking into a mathematical worldview which, to put it crudely, projected the purity laws of Pythagorean diatetics (abstine fabis ‘abstain from beans’) on to the realm of numbers must have affected the pre-Socratic holistic thinkers seriously. If one could no longer do arithmetics with whole

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The Magic of Counting numbers only, how should the foundations of ethics not also be shaken in most unpleasant ways? (p.119) It does not seem all too surprising to us if numbers and figures all of a sudden ceased to be called upon as key witnesses for the world’s reasoning. In counting, one introduces an elementary structure into the world of things around himself or present in his mind. But of what type is this structure? Is it rational? Everyone will count the things around him in a different way; each one will start and end with different things respectively and arrive at different sets of numbers; each one will consider one thing countable and worth of being counted, another uncountable. What, however, does counting do to the things? First, it brings them into an imaginary, voluntarily or involuntarily constructed sequence. The former will be a matter for the philosopher or pedagogue, the latter for the artist. The psychologist is interested in both, the mathematician in none of them. Linking heads and chairs and pencils randomly by means of numbers and sequences is not really a question of genres. At those points, however, at which counting begins to bother about genres and genre limitations, first-degree orders are at once created, ontobiological dual-cellular organisms, so to speak, for which counting is linked to the action of ordering. In its extreme form, counting can become a political act: if enough is enough, the one number is complete, and any surplus is not taken into account. Is thus anything that is not considered for inclusion into the one number, i.e. the surplus, the irrational? Is the irrational what does not count, does not pay off, the surplus, the supernumerary number? Sometimes, the refined poetry of the Neoterics and Augustans acts as if it were nothing else but plainly woven folk-poetry. At such moments, it contemplates the measure of its own speaking and singing: the grammatical number and the number of its syllables and feet, verses and stanzas. In such moments, it is listening to the intrinsic regularity of language. Not everything we read in our old handbooks, which have been criticized again and again, is wrong. SchanzHosius, for instance, make numerous conjectures on the way poetry has once constituted itself, or, rather, come into being.6 There were the sailors chanting in time to their oars striking the water, the reapers singing in the vineyards, the ploughboys singing in the barns or on threshing floors while threshing corn. (p. 120) Such reconstructions can be supported by the self-conceptions, the disguised literary histories which the classical age tell us about. Let us also take into consideration the wet-nurse’s cradle song, which accompanies the regular rocking of the baby, and the sayings and formulae on the lips of people who are marvelling at something, be it positive or negative. This is not meant as a plea for a return to Romantic attitudes. Rather, it is the attempt to describe a trace of memory which now and then comes up all of a Page 3 of 17

 

The Magic of Counting sudden in some elaborate texts of Modernist poetry. The commentaries then comment on these passages in the following terms: ‘the tone of the song is popular’, the expression is ‘plain’, ‘natural’, ‘casual’, and the like. What is it, then, that distinguishes the poet’s trace of memory from these ‘popular’ contexts? Not only elegiac poetry, but all Roman poetry of the literary phase that is of interest for present purposes is wooing of a very pronounced kind, because it is always obliged to make sure of its place in society, even if it is only the place of holding the mirror up to it. From time to time, however, poetry likes to see itself in the mirror of these big old narratives of the beginnings, these constitutive actions of society, puts on a gesture of being close to the folk, and reminisces about a time in which the culture of writing, urbanity and the subtle mechanisms of a professionalized world were still far away. It is not by chance that the Bucolics and Georgics, the epigrams and elegies, the epodes and lyrical songs, i.e. the most prominent genres of that time of radical change, archaized and made less complex the scenarios and sometimes also the media of their speech. In doing so, they gave prominence to their most substantial concerns by means of striking and memorable structural formulae. Hence, measurements are normally taken where things seem surveyable. Something very strange happens, however, with these surveyable and plain forms: steadily cultivated and frequently called upon, they obviously become symbols of an elementary order (i.e. one providing structure), which may now be incurring quasi-idolatrous worship. In the first numbers, the fundamental things of life can be recognized and worshipped. According to the Pythagoreans, they are not just similar to, but are the most fundamental things. Numbers assume an authority that is no longer dependent on the paratactic connection of the numerical sequence. They know neither extension nor reduction. Thus, numbers turn from relational into absolute quantities. Social routine does not hinder simple numbers (p.121) from remaining in place in common language as remnants of a primitive-magical life long thought to have been overcome.7 If one examines the corpus of Augustan poetry and Catullus’ poems with respect to their stocks of numbers, it becomes evident that open-ended counting does not normally occur in poetry. In fact, the poeta numerans usually has recourse to the simplest numerical sequences. Such statements as ‘In the front of the restaurant he met twenty-seven girls, and thirteen silver ornaments decorated the long table’ will not be found in our texts, apart from decidedly chronological historical narratives. The mention of eight potential litter bearers in Catullus 10 is, just as the mad promise of bliss to ‘visit’ the beloved nine times (novem continuas fututiones, c.32.8 ‘nine consecutive copulations’8), a faux pas that is due to the mimesis of everyday boasting: authenticity is meant to be guaranteed by means of numbers, which do not at first sight satisfy the all too trivial expectation.

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The Magic of Counting In addition to these small numbers from one to twelve, we also have considerably big groups of bogus numbers that stand for the infinite number, such as sescenti, milia, and others. In some poems, they appear in close vicinity. Let us look at Catullus 5. At the beginning, we have the verdict on the excessively stern old people; the speaker says about them: omnes unius aestimemus assis. Let the gossip of the others only mean one farthing to us—because, if at some time the brief light shining for us goes out, one never-ending night will await us.9 While the first half of the poem only provides examples of restricted numbers, i.e. the ‘only one!’ of the here and now, the second half initiates the number play with kisses to be kissed a hundred, a (p.122) thousand times over. These numbers, then, do not create order, but confusion—a confusion, however, that the wildly kissing man knows how to make use of: conturbabimus10 illa, ne sciamus/aut ne quis malus invidere possit,/cum tantum sciat esse basiorum (vv.11–13 ‘we will confuse our counting, that we may not know the reckoning, nor any malicious person blight them with evil eye, when he knows that our kisses are so many’). Knowledge of the number of kisses is supposed to lead into disaster,11 according to the speaker’s defensive thinking, since it would allow for control in a field that is decidedly not meant to be subject to the rules of counting and calculation. Nevertheless, the poet is counting and calculating—why is that?12 Why does he make use of the bourgeois slide rule if the opinions of the narrow-minded calculators do not mean anything to him?13 Omnes unius aestimemus assis! Why does he summarize the horror of the night of death in one plain number?14 Why does he conceptualize his immeasurable desire via a catalogue of calculations of hundreds and thousands of kisses?15 Why does he, a conscientious economist of his desires, accumulate the kisses to a major cumulus (cum multa milia fecerimus, v.10 ‘when we have made up many thousands’)16 if he is determined to let no one (p.123) survey the exact number of his kisses? And why, finally, does he, at the end of his poem, all the same show consideration for the philistines, whose like-minded brothers he had already cursed and chased away at the beginning? We are dealing here with an extraordinary contempt of numbers,17 which, in the end, still fails to escape from the narrow frame of counting. Or, rather, it is the point of this song that someone, by calculating and weighing things up, proves the alleged logic of the calculating people wrong18 and pays them back in their own coin.19 In their own coin? Perhaps one should rather say ‘in their own coin, but used in an inflationary way’. This way, one invalidates the calculating people’s money. Not to mention the material currency. Kisses are the capital of the high-spirited lovers—a capital, of course, whose exact numerical measure is only to be revealed to the kissing couple themselves: it is not a currency any more. And that is why they would probably betray the knowledge of the number of their kisses (…ne sciamus/aut ne…), and mislay the key, i.e. the access, to the Page 5 of 17

 

The Magic of Counting treasure of their felicitous barter. Where one neither supplies a security of money nor leaves commodities, but accumulates the symbolic and virtual capital of a love overexerting in insouciance, numbers become ciphers of an experience which, amidst the banal world of exchange, creates the image of a zone that can never be lost and is immunized against any jinx from outside. The Catullan magic of counting is ambivalent: in a cantatoric gesture it conjures up the power of numbers, which cannot be lost, without being captivated by it.20 What we have here is a song against the corrupting power of numbers—a power that is even more (p.124) corrupting if it falls into the wrong hands. The magic of counting is fighting against the disenchantment of this inner fictional world.21 He confronts the poor coin in the collection bag of the disapproving bourgeoisie with the forceful image on the other side of his weighing up: the one night to be slept. On the other hand, he takes the liberties to stretch the sum of manageable numbers to infinity—in a currency that is well and truly inadequate to purchase, buy, or exchange anything in this world. Yet, even here the miserable detractors are granted their entry; first, to guess the number of the given kisses, then, to make their attempt at jinxing them with their jealous gaze. The magic of the Catullan numbers in c.5 can be found in the connection between the restricted usage of the (Pythagorean) non-number ‘one’ with the gigantic number of given kisses introduced as if in a frenzy. The grey uniformity of the ‘(only) one’ in vulgar opinion and of death is confronted with the harlequinesque numbers of kisses, which, being only momentary intuitions, in turn evade any magical fixation.22 Only two poems later, it has become evident that the ‘bourgeois’ number can never be adequate to grasp what is of importance for the speaker. The answer to the beloved’s question,…quot mihi basiationes/tuae…sint satis superque (c.7.1–2 ‘how many kissings of you…are enough for me and more than enough’), is no longer phrased using numbers, but with images which are meant to demonstrate the infinity of kissing. In the two pieces of the answer, the poet always gives more information than would have been enough to answer the question sufficiently, thus marking a breaking point in thinking: the quanta of a mere numerical thinking are translated into the tanta of intensity—a mode of speaking that can be grasped by the intellectual no better than by the most simple person.23 In both of its (p.125) parts, the answer opens up a vista to far-away places, first to the Libyan deserts, then to the stars of the night.24 The lack of spatial precision that is natural if one compares something with a desert is compensated for by a curious indication of a place and distance,25 which provides further clarification on at least three levels: 1) temporally: as a first target we have the oracle of Zeus, as a second the tomb of old Battos; 2) through distinguishing between profane and sacral space: Cyrene, the country of tradeable silphium, is identified through two places of myth-historical relevance, the oracle of Zeus and the tomb of Battos; 3) qualitatively: through emphasis on Page 6 of 17

 

The Magic of Counting the heat of the country, still further stressed by the transferred adjective aestuosi.26 In c.7, the poet breaks the contract of numbers and lures the questioner into a geographical area that cannot be measured in plain numbers, but rather reveals the sheer impossibility of any satisfactory reply through combining the smallest thing, the poetic cipher known since Homer27 as standing for the uncountable— sand—with the biggest—the vastness of the desert. Its borders mark this area as one that has preserved the traces of its time-honoured sacredness since time immemorial.28 In the second part of the reply, a markedly unpretentious image corresponds with this blatant exoticism: aut quam sidera multa, cum tacet nox,/furtivos hominum vident amores (vv.7–8 ‘or as many as are the stars, when night is silent, that see the stolen loves of men’). Let us not underestimate the potential of speaking in simple images:29 the poet does not offer us a reduced ‘there are many stars in the sky’, but depicts, not without a distinct allusion to the gestures of child-like wonder, a world in motion: stars that are not just there, but see; a night that is not just there, but keeps silent; and love affairs that one not just has, but that are ‘stolen’ and are familiar to the stars, the (p.126) night, and innocence betrayed.30 How insignificant a thing a number must appear then! No curiosity-seeker will be able to re-count the myriad of kisses here translated into speaking images of the other and the secretly familiar (quae nec pernumerare curiosi/possint, vv.11–12 ‘which neither curious eyes shall count up’), nor will any evil tongue be able to jinx them (nec mala fascinare lingua, v.12 ‘nor an evil tongue bewitch’). In order not to be jinxed, one either needs to have access to the uncountable number (c.5) or to employ an exquisite, but proven method: let us, for the sake of simplicity, call this the enchantment of the world. The enchantment of the world appears to be the antidote by means of which the lovers are able to prohibit others from accessing their luck. How completely the Catullus of c.7 has already fallen prey to a certain ‘madness’ is indicated in the attribution vesanus (v.10). Magic calls for counter-magic. In fact, any poetry—any good poetry—is counter-magic in a way. One takes a piece of the world, transforms it into language and sets it up in and against this very world, not necessarily as a denial or a corrective, often as a snapshot or a memory picture, perhaps even more often as an attempt to maintain some partial power of control over that piece of the world which shows itself to us, and to set an idion, the signature of something personal, in the middle of all the fleeting phenomena. This fundamental ‘enchantment’ is mere assimilation of an interior or exterior thing, is transformation and metamorphosis of interesting objects.

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The Magic of Counting The Catullan magic of numbers, on the other hand, does not shrink from facing the mechanisms of power and claims to power. It does so by immediately adopting the very sovereignty of interpretation over the numbers and supposed instruments of power of the others, at the same time carrying it away into infinity, or rather, replacing it by poetic images that are meant to force back the detrimental influence of banal magic. In their singing against those interpretational claims from outside, Catullus’ epigrams acquire their cantatoric structure, which identifies them on the level of content as quasi-magical practices, and on the formal level as documents of the innermost motivations of poetry. (p.127) Counting, these verses are empowering themselves to be of such a condition that they appear as closed entities sui iuris. Let us record the fact that, at least as far as the two Catullan number plays under scrutiny here are concerned, the vital point is not the size of the numbers, but the power of controlling them. Even where the number of kisses extends into infinity, the lovers still have the final word. They decide for themselves whether they want to know the number or to kiss ‘to numbers’ at all. Despite all dissolution of boundaries, there must remain this final way of control!31 The paragon of a calculation doing (almost) without numbers is provided by Horace: tu ne quaesieris, scire nefas, quem mihi, quem tibi/finem di dederint, Leuconoe (Odes 1.11.1–2 ‘do not inquire (we are not allowed to know) what end the gods have assigned to you and what to me, Leuconoe’).32 It seems evident that scire nefas reproduces the gesture of Catullus 5 and 7. The defensive attitude is no longer concerned with the exterior, i.e. some evil-minded odd people, but with the question that constitutes the poem itself. This question is not wittily directed at a high number of kisses any more, but at the measure and the limits the gods might have set up for the speaker and ‘his’ Leuconoe (‘pureminded’).33 Thus, the ‘You ask’ of the seventh epigram has turned into Horace’s ‘Don’t ask’ with which his poem begins. Those who presume to know the limits of their lives on earth, thus using the ‘Babylonian numbers’, are offending against divine law. Where Catullus is trying to evade the envious listeners through uncontrolled accumulation of the luck of kissing, Horace casts general suspicion on all witty number plays of oriental astrology.34 In the same way that we cannot make the sands of the Cyrenaic (p.128) desert accessible for our calculation, it does also not befit us to know when the end of our days will come. This does not exhaust all the points of contact between the two poems. We can find them not only along the lines of convergence, but also contrapuntally: the glowing desert sand invoked in Catullus 5, for instance, corresponds to the winter image in Hor. Odes 1.11. In both images, the notion of a season of the year is not merely developed as a season: Catullus’ summer is semantically merged into Jupiter’s peculiar attribution of being ‘hot’,35 Horace’s winter first Page 8 of 17

 

The Magic of Counting stands metonymically for the whole year and takes its full specific effect only in the attributive clause ([hiems] quae nunc oppositis debilitat pumicibus mare | Tyrrhenum vv.5–6 ‘[a winter] that now wears out the Etruscan Sea against cliffs of pumice’).36 In both images, a Zeus is sitting enthroned—here Jupiter, the weather god, there Cyrenaic Jupiter Ammon. The latter has taken residence in the desert oracle, the former also assigns people their lots: seu pluris hiemes seu tribuit Iuppiter ultimam (v.4 ‘whether Jupiter has granted us more winters, or this is the last’).37 In both images, the view of a very concrete conception opens up; be it in the heat-glimmering desert or on the roaring sea, life is always latently present: here, in Horace, rocks that are imagined as tufa-like make their stand against the surging Mediterranean Sea, whipped up by storm, there, in Catullus, we are reminded of the fertility of a silphium-bearing land and of the noble history of a city (Cyrene founded by Battos).38 While Catullus promises to offer an image of a dissolution of boundaries, Horace creates a space of immanence, however turbulent. Not only does Catullus’ territory lead us to the southern borders of the empire (while Horace only invokes the western Mediterranean, otherwise just called mare nostrum), he also abstains from directly linking the exotic south to the imagination of his Roman readers. Horace, on the other hand, involves his readers immediately in the (p. 129) familiar experience of winter and brings his conception of time up to date by means of emphatic nunc (v.5). That is to say, while Horace’s image is at all times linked to the memoria of his contemporaries, Catullus decouples his space and depicts a dissolution of boundaries. Horace’s image, by comparison, is configured close to the world of its addressees. It does not aim at a dissolution of boundaries. Rather, it aims— and in this it is closely related to the gesture of Odes 1.9, for instance—at an inward retreat. The expression vina liques clearly points in the direction so many other of Horace’s songs also recommend. Ultimately, there is the manageable zone of domesticity and, connected with it, frugal life. But we are going too fast. Things are put on the track one word before: sapias (v. 6). This key word of Horatian ‘doctrine of wisdom’ is endowed with unaccustomed sharpness and new contours if we read it together with its Catullan counterpart, c.7.10: vesano satis et super Catullo est (‘[to kiss you with so many kisses] is enough and more than enough for your mad Catullus’). Here madness and frenzy, which can only come to a rest in an abundance of tenderness, there the call for prudent moderation. If this moderation, though, is articulated in an expression which in turn proceeds from physical senses (‘to taste’) and always remains based on them (vina liques) the connection to the frank sensualism of a ‘Catullus’ who completely relies on his physicalness, in the end even sacrificing his ‘sanity’, becomes even more clear.

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The Magic of Counting Thus, it is only logical that the instruction arising from the admonition (sapias) is directed at the here and now. Of all the steps in the multitude of steps that need to be taken in order to produce good wine, the process of straining is singled out: vina liques. Should we remember what Catullus recommends to ‘his’ beloved and ‘himself’ at the end of the kissing in c.5? Dein, cum milia multa fecerimus/conturbabimus illa…It seems to me as if conturbare was the exact opposite of Horace’s advice to ‘his’ Leuconoe. I am not suggesting that Horace intended to rework the famous Catullan poems through a series of one-to-one oppositions. This can be ruled out since what we have here is a peculiar, but justified double reception and review. I am rather inclined to think that the treatment of the same subject-matter made two very different writers bring out different accentuations in their own characteristic ways. Thus, a type of intertextuality emerges that is not necessarily the result of deliberate imitation or distancing, but has its roots simply in the attraction of a problem that seems to (p.130) worry the contemporaries of two generations alike. Zeitgeist, however, is definitely something to which we would readily like to concede even enhanced power, but which we would rather not associate with precise rhetorical and literary form. Is it just coincidence that Catullus’ songs on kissing and Horace’s ode ‘carpe diem’ correspond to each other in such a contrapuntal manner? We do not know. What we can see, however, is that the series of correspondences is not yet exhausted. In Catullus 5 and Horace Odes 1.11, the instruction that is put in the centre (da mi basia mille…‘Give me a thousand kisses’ and sapias: vina liques ‘take my advice: strain the wine’) is linked to an experimental set-up that is of particular interest respectively: the Catullan instructions are completely contra opinionem since treasures are accumulated not to maintain, but to confuse them (cum milia multa fecerimus,/conturbabimus illa…); ‘Horace’ advises Leuconoe to ‘cut back’ her spes longa at all times only a little bit.39 In both cases, we are surprised at the instrumental view40 of events that elude human intrusion by their own nature. Neither can kisses be confused, nor can a time perspective (spes longa) be cut back. What little influence we have on ‘our’ time immediately becomes clear from the ode itself when the speaker states: dum loquimur, fugerit invida/aetas (vv.7–8 ‘as we talk grudging time will have run on’). Here, we probably touch on the most striking aspect of the encounter of two variations of the same theme. It seems as if the speaker realizes that he has been speaking for too long. Already time is fleeing from him (and his addressee). Two things are startling here. C.1.11 ranks among the shortest odes of Horace. Of all the other odes, it distinguishes itself remarkably through the choice of metre, which forces the writer to press his thoughts in very short cola. Hardly any other ode comprises so many succinct short phrases and thoughts in so small a space, starting with the ‘Don’t ask’ and the ‘It’s sin’ and quidquid erit pati through to vina liques and carpe diem in the end, to name but the most striking ones. The urged breathlessness of the (p. Page 10 of 17

 

The Magic of Counting 131) erotodidactic speech is depicted in a metrical scheme that seems to be tailor-made for illustrating the unquiet which originates in the flight of time. If the poet nevertheless, with all due respect to the economy of his speech, reminds one that with every single word ‘he’ uses time is trickling away and that the lovers might be lacking it later on, the form of his speech gains a status which, eventually, will decide the fate of the figures involved. What possesses the power to decide what will come or will not come is not any Babylonian arithmetic, but the poet’s disciplined command of metre. For Horace, the magic of counting already begins on the basic level of choosing a metre which frames the choriambic ‘swing’ in the middle of the verse with two double short syllables, thus creating the impression that the phrase in the centre echoes the preceding part and is itself echoed in the third double short syllable. In counting thus, we get an astonishing emphasis on the middle of the verse, which Horace in at least five of his eight verses uses in a remarkable way: scire nefas, Leuconoe, vina liques, dum loquimur, quam minimum all carry main accents in their verses. This mode of speech, constructed with calculated prosodic precision, beats the time in which the main points of the poem can accelerate. The style of the poem is cantatoric because its very prosodic foundation suggests the captivating thought of the fundamental need of concentration. The number plays of ancient Babylon and the contingent acts of providence brought about by the weather god are supposed to be banished by the rushed and at the same time ordered staccato of the sententiae. Just as Catullus developed his antidote to the imminent danger of being jinxed from a banal outside, Horace refers us to the intrinsic crisis of our awareness of time, which we can only flee if we devise a technique or a practice of living the only time we probably really ‘have’ and of savouring the only fruit we have at our command—albeit only for the present moment.41 The interior-exterior-conflict of Catullus, whose amator-persona only had to evade the inquisitive outsiders, is radicalized in Horace. He shows us the necessity of a turn to ourselves. The very time that constitutes and rules our being (aetas) will, if we risk wasting it away (p.132) through our empty talking —and that is the second startling thing that this simple phrase expresses— enviously turn against us. Have we not already come across envy in Catullus? Ne quis malus invidere possit…(c.5.12). Was the treatment of envy there not linked to an explicit ‘speech act’, too? Lingua was the last word of the second poem on kisses, describing and at the same time sealing the magic of counting!42 And yet: how comparatively easy the situation could be managed there! Countering magic with proper counter-magic only seemed to be a matter of the relevant knowledge Page 11 of 17

 

The Magic of Counting and power of control over the numbers. In Horace Odes 1.11, our own life turns against us if we risk it recklessly in the confidence that every day will be followed by another one (credula postero, v.8 ‘trusting in tomorrow’). There is no need of ‘evil tongues’ any more if our life is fading away while we are speaking (dum loquimur). The impression we have from earlier research on immanent and transcendental strategies of late Republican and Augustan poetry can now be complemented.43 Against the image of man overexerting himself while counting, just barely being able to return to discipline in Catullus 5 and 7, we can now set Horace’s pointed minimalism. Numbers or even large numbers are of no importance any more. The Chaldean numeri have become as irrelevant as the answer to the question whether we will see many more winters or only this one winter. Man’s measure is the day. Let us not forget that Catullus, too, started from exactly the same knowledge (nobis cum semel occidit brevis lux,/nox est perpetua una dormienda, vv.5–6 ‘for us, when the short light has once set, remains to be slept the sleep of one unbroken night’).44 While this awareness of the finiteness of life is tied to the call for a dissolution of boundaries, Horatian speech generates a new measure: the measure of complete congruency of man and his fate available to him at a (p.133) given time. Catullus’ lover makes his escape from the uniformity of predestined death through his explosive use of numbers,45 Horace breaks down the multitude—in reverse, contrapuntal movement—to the one present day. It seems as if the Catullan ‘Catullus’ stepped out of his never-ending night and developed the incandescent image of a ‘summer of love’ while the Horatian man, facing the tempestuous sea in winter, is forced to live on the frugal harvest of his day. What, then, is the difference between the ‘magic of counting’ here and there? Obviously, the discrepancy is not to be found in the philosophical models chosen. Both soberly envisage the finiteness of all earthly pursuit. While the elder poet makes his bear dance in chains, the younger embeds his figures in prudent approbations of the things that are. Catullus offers his lovers the opiate of the dissolution of boundaries to allow for the free play of imagination.46 Horace transforms the realization of the necessary into the guiding principle for his poetry and versification. Catullus’ magic speaking about numbers attempts to ward off the demons from outside, Horace uses the Babylonian chaos of numbers to distil the numerical concentrate of his one single day. ‘It’s really magic’, but the Augustan poet’s ‘minimal music’ was capable of breaking down the irrational fears and hopes of an era to one, rational formula: carpe diem.* Notes:

(1) Suet.-Don., vita Verg. 36. Page 12 of 17

 

The Magic of Counting (2) See the introduction of Hardie 2009c: 1–18. (3) See e.g. Fritz 1945: 242–64. (4) See e.g. Brunschvicq 1937: 21–3, and the critical remarks in Burkert 1962: 431–40. (5) See again Burkert 1962: esp. 433–40 for a critical assessment of the tradition, and van der Waerden 1979: 71–3. (6) Schanz/Hosius 19274: 13–15 (with references). (7) There are plenty of studies treating the history and significance of ancient magic; they also consider literary texts. It is, however, not surprising that their focus is usually on the ‘real’ remains of the epoch, such as curse tablets, and, on the other hand, on the stock of characters of the literary texts, i.e. witches and magicians. The less obvious forms and practices of magical thinking (and—why not?—magical modes of writing poetry) have remained largely outside the focus of scholarly interest. Thus, I will not provide a long catalogue of the monographs and edited volumes on ‘witches, ghosts and demons’. (8) The translation of Catullus’ poems here and in the following by F. W. Cornish (in the Loeb edition). (9) If we follow a trace to which T. P. Wiseman has first drawn attention, we see that the logic of calculating, of weighing up and trading might already have begun earlier: Varro Men. 346B vive meque ama mutuiter is taken from a satire entitled ‘On Coins’ (Wiseman 1985: 139, n. 37). (10) Conturbare is, just as facere in line 10, a technical term of financial business, meaning ‘to go bankrupt’. See the comments of Kroll, 31959 and Fordyce 1961: ad loc., and cf. now Baier 2010, who understands Lucr. 4.1058–72 in the light of the Catullan passage: ‘Catull geht es mit seinem conturbare…darum, durch Verwirrung/Bankerott jede Einflußnahme von außen abzuwehren. Lukrez dagegen verwirrt den Affekt selbst, setzt diesen durch inflationäre Liebesbeziehungen bankerott. Während Catull abergläubisch die Liebe vor böser Magie retten will, entlarvt Lukrez diese ihrerseits als eine Art Aberglauben’. (11) Dickie 1993: esp. 14–15, involuntarily demonstrates how little we know about the role and function of the magic of numbers at Catullus’ time. (12) Pratt 1956 fittingly dubbed our poem ‘The numerical Catullus’ and interpreted the talk about numbers as the structural device of the poem. (13) Far be it from me to revive the discussion about the abacus, a debate that, after Levy 1941, dominated the philological journals for thirty years. For a doxographical overview see Fredericksmeyer 1970: esp. 434. Page 13 of 17

 

The Magic of Counting (14) And again, in the ‘one’! On the opposition between ‘one’ and the uncountable that cannot be surveyed, the dichotomy that constitutes the poem and is only hinted at in the oxymoron of omnes unius (v.3), Commager 1964: esp. 362 has the best comments. (15) Évrard-Gillis 1976: esp. 174–6 examined the accumulation of terms in Catullus and demonstrated 18 cases only for the polymetric poems. (16) ‘Fecerimus, a seemingly noncommital word, is also a technical term from accounting’, Ferguson 1985: 22. In a similar vein, Wiseman 1985: 104 (making an interesting link to other articulations of Catullus’ ‘financial attitudes’). (17) In a way completely different from e.g. the examples transmitted via the A.P., following a remarkable tradition of the epigramma arithmetikon (14, 1–4, 6–7, 11–13, 48–51, 116–47), where ‘real’ number questions can really be answered. On this see Cairns 1973: esp. 15–17. (18) See the very subtle symbolism of number and sign gestures at Ferguson 1985: 22–3 (and the older contribution by Pack 1956: 47–51). (19) See Quinn 1959: 109, n. 21, and Commager 1964: 362. (20) Apart from Segal 1968, Rankin 1972: esp. 747 has advanced furthest in the field that is of interest here: his brief analyses of Catullus 5 and 7 were decisive in correcting the understanding of the poems as established by older scholarship. He describes c.5 as ‘a poem of anxiety’ and goes on to say that ‘[i]ts obsessive repetitive phrases about the number of kisses have something primitive and spell-like in them, as if the passionately repeated words would influence reality and make an insecure love secure’. (21) The remark in Cairns 1973 that links the Catullan fascinatio with the baskanía of the prologue of the Callimachean Aitia is very helpful. Discerning observations on the language and form of the catalogue in c.5.7–9 can be found in Segal 1968: esp. 287–8. Commenting on lines 5, 7–11, the author writes about ‘the almost incantatory magic of his [sc. Catullus’] passion: da mi basia mille, deinde centum…’ (297). (22) Cf. the further-reaching interpretation of Schmidt 1985: ‘Und diese Liebe… kann als unersättliche Leidenschaft nicht dargestellt werden durch Liebesvereinigung als ihre Krönung, weil diese als ein Ende auch Tod und Nacht vergegenwärtigt, wie Horaz, c.3, 28 zeigt. Daher die Küsse und ihre großen Zahlen und das Zählen, spielerische “Quantifizierung” der Liebe in Intensität und Dauer.’ (23) This is a differentiation that might go unnoticed in a mere stylistic analysis (see e.g. Évrard-Gillis 1976: 118). Schmidt 1973: esp. 94, by contrast, gets it right in his contribution. Page 14 of 17

 

The Magic of Counting (24) See Segal 1968: 293. (25) In an analysis comparing Baudelaire’s Lesbos poem and Catullus 7, Jacquier 2010: 74 observed how in the latter the ‘Kontrollzwang der Außenwelt’ is translated into ‘die genaue Eingrenzung eines Landstrichs (V.5f.…)’. (26) But cf. below, n. 38. (27) Merrill 1893: ad loc. rightly also mentions Gen. 13.16. (28) This is not the place to talk about the evident reference to Callimachus here; for this I refer to Cairns 1973: 17–20, and Arkins 1979: esp. 632. (29) I would like to bring to mind Fitzgerald ’s insight that ‘[h]idden learning is substituted for sexual secrets’ (1995: 55). (30) Cf. Segal 1968: 296: ‘The stars not only see men’s loves, but provide a commentary—in the context, an almost pathetic commentary—on their futile efforts at concealment’ (cf. also the remarks on page 299). (31) Cf. Commager 1965: 84–6: ‘The poem is not a lover’s cry. It is intended to control the feelings that it expresses, and to control them by the very form in which it expresses them’ (the formulation is similar to the one of the cognate article published one year earlier [as n. 15], 363). Also cf. Ferguson 1985: 28. (32) The translation of Horace’s poems here and in the following by N. Rudd (2004).—Already Schmidt 1985 noted that ‘beide Kußgedichte vereint…den besten Verständnishintergrund für Horaz c.1, 11 (bilden)’ (112). Cf. also Citroni 1995: 353, n. 26. (33) Cf. the semantic analysis of the name in Lee 1964: 117–24, esp. 120. Lee, however, favours the meaning ‘white mind’ and pointedly connects the name with the sphere of death. The link meditated by Nisbet/Hubbard ad loc. between Horace’s use and the name of a Minyad evidenced in Ps. Lact. Plac. (fab. Ov. 4.12) (with reference to Ov. met. 4.168, where the name is supposed to have replaced the corrupt Leucothoe) must also remain speculation. (34) Cf. Bollók 1993: 11–19. (35) I agree with Arkins’ observation (1979), which, in turn, is based on an observation made by Moorhouse 1963: 418, that the attribute is likely to allude to the god’s reputation as a lover, but I doubt his conclusion that ‘[t]he kisses then become those which would be appropriate from a divine being who enjoys love…To the human qualities of the docta puella are added the divine’ (632). (36) See the attractive discussion of the passage by Dehon 1993: 149–51.

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The Magic of Counting (37) On the co-presence of linear-teleological and cyclical conceptions of time see Davis 1991: 159. (38) Cf. also above, nn. 26 and 29. (39) But cf. Hulton 1958, and Grimm 1963: esp. 316, n. 14. (40) D. A. West 1967: 59–64 is right in pointing to the consistent imagery in the concluding lines of the ode. Reseces and carpe once again bear witness to ‘Horace’s interest in the technical minutiae of arboriculture’. But cf. Lowrie 1997: 8: ‘It is hard to determine whether the image of the vine…is more a feature of the meaning of these words or of their close position. If the latter, does the image redound to the author or to the superadded capacity of words to resonate in proximity to one another?’ (41) This can be corroborated by the linguistic and stylistic observations made by Traina 1973 and Bardon 1973: esp. 57. (42) In an innovative reading, Wray 2010: 143–60, links the kissing poems with regard to the topic of the abominated bewitching with Catullus 6. In an older study, Bertman 1978 already demonstrated the prominence of images of speech and speaking in Catullus 7 (or rather, the linguistic connotations of the images and similes used there). (43) I refer to an earlier paper delivered to the réseau ‘La poésie augustéenne’: Schwindt 2005. (44) The seventh poem also has, as Segal 1968: 295 has shown, a reference to the background presence of death: ‘(Death) is hinted at only obliquely in Battus’ sacrum sepulcrum (6) and in the phrase, cum tacet nox (7).’ (45) Commager 1964 and id, 1965 seems to have been the first to venture this interpretation; Schmidt 1985 followed him. (46) One has to concede, however, that the image of a vesanus Catullus (7.10) could be linked to other concepts; cf. e.g. the fascinating observations that occur to Segal 1968: 300 in his philological analysis of the passage: ‘But his vesano… Catullo perhaps implies a momentary insight into the truth: the danger lies also within and he is already subject to a magical fascinum even more powerful, a magic that has transformed him from Catullus to vesanus Catullus’ (see also the short discussion of c.8 on page 301). (*) A more comprehensive version of this paper, originally written for the colloquium of the réseau in Cambridge, has in the meantime been published as ‘Die Magie des Zählens. Zur cantatorischen Statur der Dichtung’ in a Festschrift on the occasion of Walter Wimmel’s 90th birthday (Dunsch/Prokoph 2013: 15–

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The Magic of Counting 35).—I would like cordially to thank my young research assistants Tobias Allendorf, Maximilian Haas and Lavinia Jungheim for translating my text.

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Under the Influence

Augustan Poetry and the Irrational Philip Hardie

Print publication date: 2016 Print ISBN-13: 9780198724728 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2015 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198724728.001.0001

Under the Influence Maecenas and Bacchus in Georgics 2 Emily Gowers

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198724728.003.0007

Abstract and Keywords Virgil’s second Georgic, with its lists of trees and vines, offers a test case for how to organize a substantial body of information in poetic form. This paper takes ‘rational’ and ‘irrational’ in a different sense from most other contributions to this volume, concentrating on technical rather than psychological aspects, above all the sense of an ordered or logical account embedded in the Latin word ratio. Although Virgil inherited a long scholarly tradition of botanical systematization, typified by Theophrastus’ natural history writing, he repeatedly recoils from the daunting prospect of an ordered or all-inclusive account, torn not so much between epic and smaller-scale writing as between comprehensiveness and skimming. Two figures in the background license the poet to depart from the discipline of the scientific tradition: the tutelary wine-god Bacchus and the earthly patron Maecenas. Together, they oversee a poetic experiment that is consciously steeped in Bacchic frenzy. Keywords:   Virgil, Georgics, trees, vines, Theophrastus, Bacchus, Maecenas, botanical writing, ratio, frenzy

This foray into the Augustan irrational has a relatively unlikely starting point, Virgil’s second Georgic, which succeeds the first, in L. P. Wilkinson’s words, ‘like waking up from a nightmare on a fine morning’.1 Virgil leaves behind the killingfields of civil war and marks the boundary cleanly enough at the start of the book: hactenus…nunc, ‘that was then…this is now’. A more instinctive—indeed, a more rational—search for irrationality in the Georgics might have been launched Page 1 of 19

 

Under the Influence with Book 1 (civil war frenzy) or Book 3 (mares on heat and the plague) or Book 4 (with its drastic derailment). Surely the book of trees, with its neat avenues (quincunxes, even!), its catalogues of soil types and its discussions of the fine operations of pruning and grafting, comes as close as this poem ever gets to rational writing? Here, however, I will be understanding the word ‘irrational’ in a flexible sense, technical as much as psychological, and bearing in mind the sense of an ordered, logical or numerical account embedded in the Latin word ratio.2 Readers of Georgics 2 will notice how often Virgil gestures to principles of organization and enumeration, inherited from his predecessors in arboricultural writing—and yet how positively allergic he seems to be to the idea of the ordered (p.135) account. It is in this sense, then, that I will be considering him, as a selfconsciously irrational writer. William Batstone, in one of the most intellectually honest discussions of the un-interpretability of the Georgics, goes nowhere near Book 2.3 But many of his other conclusions—about the hopelessness of all models (the commonwealth of bees is not quite like human society), the failure of didaxis (there is too much overload to learn anything) and the fantasy of allegory (the correspondences never quite work)—should help us to be cautious in approaching this book, with its deceptively straightforward parallels between trees and human society.4 My claim here, that Georgics 2 is a piece of writing as disturbed and wayward as anything in Virgil, goes against the grain of several recent readings which identify Book 2 with a relatively controlled version of poetic fertility, one that goes hand in hand with creating an environment conducive to post-war restoration politics.5 It also runs counter to traditional interpretations of the Augustan age. Zanker 1988, Galinsky 1996, and Miller 2009 have all reinforced the position of Apollo, god of rationality, as figurehead for the Augustan regime and Augustan poetry. In recent years, however, Bacchic tendrils have been pushing their way back into the centre of the picture. Both Schiesaro 2009 (on Bacchic poetics in Horace) and Mac Góráin 2009 (on Bacchic personae in the Aeneid) have done much to move the discussion away from a kneejerk identification of Bacchus as a disruptive intruder, sometimes aligned with drunken Antony—and more towards a less comfortable but more authentic acceptance of Bacchus as spirit of the irrational on the inside of Augustan poetry, as model for emperor, Trojan ancestor and poets alike.6 From the start, Virgil’s progress through the dense thicket of trees (17 densissima silua) is strikingly uneven. Digressions recur; (p.136) panoramas and catalogues open up and close down; step-by-step instructions are relatively thin on the ground. One of the oddest features is the poet’s evident defeatism about the subject in his grasp (45 in manibus): enthusiastic sallies are routinely followed by hand-wringing collapse. At 42–4, he says he will not list all the trees, not even if he had a hundred mouths and an iron voice. At 103–8, there is a Page 2 of 19

 

Under the Influence further cry for help: ‘It is not my brief to cover all the species and names of vines; there are as many types as grains of sand on the shore or waves in the sea.’7 Such openly paraded admissions of failure are puzzling—yet the poet has his reasons. He does not go off the track alone but appeals for licence from two significant figures on the sidelines, and they will be the focus of my readings here. The first is Bacchus, not just the book’s opening sentinel but also its principle of deranged behaviour throughout, right down to the final hoedown of drunken farmers. What is ostensibly a book of trees may be just an excuse, then, for a book of intoxicating vines.8 The invocation of this god alone suggests a mandate to write a book steeped from beginning to end in Bacchic frenzy. The other tutelary figure, barely visible behind the scenes but summoned up throughout the Georgics, is Virgil’s ideal reader, his patron-friend Maecenas. A case of divided loyalties, it might seem, but the two figures have much in common in their respective spheres and are to some extent interchangeable in their significance to the poet. The superficial similarities come to the fore in a later, pseudo-Virgilian poem, the first of the Elegiae in Maecenatem, where Bacchus, deus biformis, military hero and carouser in turn, provides the author with a precedent for Maecenas’ notorious split life of business and leisure.9 Meanwhile, Maecenas’ pretensions to Lydian descent fitted him out in a fancy-dress uniform of mitra (turban) and flowing robes that also happens to be the regalia of Lydian Bacchus.10 But the connections for Virgil go beyond mere outfits and career choices. In the implied hierarchy of authority figures in the Georgics, human and divine, Maecenas and Bacchus are virtual equivalents. Neither is the boss, like Caesar and (p.137) Jupiter; instead, each plays pacemaker, enabler, mediator, and boon companion, the reinforcing tu to the poetic ego. Maecenas’ connections with the irrational here are less easy to pinpoint than those of Bacchus. But where poetic accounting, in the sense of itemization or categorization, is concerned, Virgil uses his patron for much the same purpose: to liberate himself from the duty of completeness. The poet sets out promising to embrace the variety of his topics according to type and category: 9 principio arboribus uaria est natura creandis, ‘In the first place, trees grow naturally in different ways’, 35 generatim discite cultus, ‘learn cultivation, type by type’, 73 nec modus inserere atque oculos imponere simplex, ‘nor is the method of grafting or budding one and the same’, 83 genus haud unum, ‘not just one type’, 109 nec uero terrae ferre omnes omnia possunt, ‘different soils bear different fruits’. But his actual practice speaks of wilful resistance to the encyclopaedic tradition. Theophrastus’ Historia Plantarum, for example, one of Virgil’s most important sources, comprised a full nine books about plant anatomy, propagation, wild trees, exotic trees, timber and its uses, shrubs, sub-shrubs, herbaceous plants, cereals, and plant juices, divided into local and exotic, wild and cultivated, simple and complex, natural and artificial, and subdivided within these categories by ever more minute distinctions—necessarily followed by a Page 3 of 19

 

Under the Influence sequel, the De Causis Plantarum, with a further splintering of plant types and behaviours.11 Like a good student of Aristotle, Theophrastus starts with relationships between ‘parts’ and ‘wholes’. He finds correspondences between plant parts and animal parts (heart, marrow, limbs, veins, muscles, hair, male and female, parent and child—Virgil’s anthropomorphizing does not come from nowhere), puzzles over what makes a tree a tree and separate from other plants and shows an interest in the marvellous and the portentous in plant development. Virgil owes much to Theophrastus in the way he organizes his material. But his lists are shorter, and the emphases are different in the two catalogues at 2.9–34 (natural and artificial propagation) and 2.47–82 (the same summarized and expanded), where both times he puts the miracle of grafting last.12 What Virgil seems to be intent on doing in Georgics 2 is summoning up a lost ideal of exemplary (p.138) Aristotelian comprehensiveness and then rejecting it decisively in favour of poetic selectivity.13 Maecenas is there to endorse that decision. When the two tutelary figures first appear, it is in close succession, in the dedicatory opening of Georgics 1. Maecenas and the heavenly stars are followed immediately by Bacchus and Ceres: Quid faciat laetas segetes, quo sidere terram uertere, Maecenas, ulmisque adiungere uitis conueniat, quae cura boum, qui cultus habendo sit pecori, apibus quanta experientia parcis,
 hinc canere incipiam. uos, o clarissima mundi 5 lumina, labentem caelo quae ducitis annum; Liber et alma Ceres, uestro si munere tellus Chaoniam pingui glandem mutauit arista, poculaque inuentis Acheloia miscuit uuis.

(Geo. 1.1–9) What makes the cornfields happy, under what constellation it’s best to turn the soil, Maecenas, and train the vine on the elm; the care of cattle, the management of flocks, the knowledge you need for keeping frugal bees: all this I’ll now begin to relate. You brightest luminaries of the world, who head the year’s parade across heaven’s face: Wine-god and kindly Harvestgoddess, if by your gift Earth has exchanged the acorn for the rich ear of corn and learned to lace spring water with her discovered wine.14 This telling juxtaposition is soon forgotten in the long build-up of deities that culminates in ‘Caesar’ (25), but it helps to suggest subtly that Maecenas’ role might go beyond that of mere editor or para-textual bookend.15 Indeed—to push the syntax very hard—parenthetical ‘Maecenas’ in the opening prospectus might almost be taken as the implied (p.139) answer to Virgil’s questions. What makes the crops joyous, under what star, and so on? Answer: it is you, Page 4 of 19

 

Under the Influence Maecenas, thanks to your encouragement and bounty.16 As Bacchus and Ceres enrich the harvest, so the sleek Etruscan patron is a kind of ‘fertilizing agent’, the bestower of cura and cultus who makes a farm flourish and poetry grow at the same time.17 This inaugural moment in Georgics 1, where both figures are enlisted in short succession, is split apart at the start of Georgics 2. Bacchus is invoked first, and separately, in a passage worth dwelling on briefly, not just because the divine presence being invoked is famously ambivalent but also because Virgil’s words can be unsealed to reveal the workings of a small Dionysiac miracle: Hactenus aruorum cultus et sidera caeli; nunc te, Bacche, canam, nec non siluestria tecum uirgulta et prolem tarde crescentis oliuae. huc, pater o Lenaee: tuis hic omnia plena muneribus, tibi pampineo grauidus autumno 5 floret ager, spumat plenis uindemia labris; huc, pater o Lenaee, ueni, nudataque musto tinge nouo mecum dereptis crura coturnis.

(Geo. 2.1–8) So far I have sung of the tillage of the earth, the lore of heaven: now it’s the turn of wine, and with it the trees that crowd in woody copse, and the produce of the gradual-growing olive. Come, Lord of the wine-press— everything here is lavish thanks to your largesse, for you the field’s blooming and laden with autumnal vines, the vintage foams in vats overflowing—come then, Lord of the wine-press, pull off your boots and paddle bare-legged with me and dye your shins purple in the grape juice! Virgil turns his back on the nightmare of civil war and calls on a god for inspiration. Not Silvanus, Pomona, Vertumnus or any normal tree god, not even Minerva, patron of the olive, or Jupiter, patron of the (p.140) oak. He chooses the god of the grapevine as his partner in the coverage of trees, with the rest of the forest (woody thicket and late-growing olive) lagging behind. Bacchus is urged to come and join in the vintage, in a style reminiscent of an invitation to some urban master to visit his villa at the high point of the year (as in Daphnis and Chloe, for example, where Lord Dionysophanes bestows his presence in the form of an earthly epiphany of Dionysus); he is urged to rip off his boots (cothurni) and get down and dirty treading the grapes.18 Bacchus is cast in the role of patron or visitor to a country estate, and in that sense his image is already being overlaid on that of Maecenas. What transition does the change of dress describe? Is it war to peace or tragedy to comedy? Bacchus is often characterized as a conquering hero who lays down his weapons to carouse with his celebrants, a farouche god whose lurking Page 5 of 19

 

Under the Influence malevolence can be dispelled by a gentle welcome.19 Virgil’s greeting is, then, ‘partly…apotropaic’.20 As for his ambivalent poetic role, with pater o Lenaee Virgil appears to hail Bacchus as Dionysus Lenaeus, lord of the comic festival Lenaea, traditionally etymologized from Greek ληνός ‘wine press’. But how sure can we be that those casually tossed off boots, cothurni, signify rejected tragedy? Richard Thomas is confident that Virgil is saying, ‘Remove the buskins [of tragedy], Bacchus, and join me in soaking your naked legs in the new must [of Virgilian poetry]’ (square brackets original).21 But he is not very precise here about what this new poetry is—partly because he does not exactly want a comic Virgil and partly because it is hard to prove that Virgil is being as Callimachean as he might like him to be. High boots are a traditional metonym for tragedy, but that is because they are already the Lydian regalia of Bacchus.22 Attempting to ‘rehabilitate’ Bacchus, Alden Smith maps this scene conveniently onto a political contrast between war and peace in the book as a whole, with Antonian Dionysiac frenzy, the civil war ending of Book 1, dispelled or (p.141) domesticated into controlled Augustan fertility.23 Again, the first state (war) is thought to give way decisively to the second (peace). My sense is that we are dealing with more of a simultaneously double vision here—tragedy and comedy, war and peace, high and low, exuberance and taming—one that remembers the god’s roles in each sphere at once. Bacchus is not just the presiding god of wine: he is also the god of freedom, epiphany, excess and metamorphosis.24 He is not here to be toned down in line with moderate poetry; he is here to keep the level ambitious and plentiful (with all the dangers that entails—witness the caution against heavy drinking later).25 The opening appeal to the god is short but notably luscious—grauidus with long ū in the final syllable,26 the self-reflexive pleonasm of plena…plenis and a particularly leisurely line about the late-growing olive. There is also many a slippery pun. For example, lābris (6) is a prose word for wine-vats, but with tinge (8) these are transformed into dyeing vats, while also hinting at the full lips (lăbra) that will be similarly stained by the end-product. In other words, something fluid is already happening here, which goes against the grain of ordered versifying and forcing everything into furrows (61–2 omnes | cogendae in sulcum). This is, in short, the first of Book 2’s tales of the unexpected, which will include the ripped-off tunics of injected trees at 75, the wonders of the Indian banyan at 122–4, farmers’ naked wrestling at 531 and above all the identity crisis of the tree in 82, which looks with disbelief at its adopted fruit, non sua poma. The local miracles start here. Bacchus sheds one kind of high boots, his traditional buskins, only to acquire another. Knee-deep in the purple juice, he and the grape-treaders will look down at their bare legs and (p.142) what will they see: non sua crura, their shins stained with purple juicy boots where the old ones used to be.

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Under the Influence Propertius, for one, understood what was going on here. In his own hymn to Bacchus, he paraphrases and unpacks what Virgil locks into riddling form (Prop. 3.17.17–18): dum modo purpureo spument mihi dolia musto, | et noua pressantis inquinet uua pedes ‘as long as my vats foam with purple must and new grapes stain the feet that tread them’. His noua…uua ‘new grape(s)’ makes a good parallel for Virgil’s nouo…musto.27 But if either poet’s purple-staining juice has metapoetic meaning, it does not necessarily stand for Callimachean restraint. The colour of the god’s old cothurni is not specified, but other high boots in Virgil’s poetry are qualified as purple, by virtue of being Tyrian-dyed: Ecl. 7.32 puniceo…cothurno (of Diana) and Aen. 1.337 purpureoque…cothurno (of Venus). Virgil may here be giving us an alternative aetiology of how they came to be that colour. Like Bacchus’ victims, these boots can be tied up (Ecl. 7.32 euincta, Aen. 1.337 uincire) or loosened (just as wine can both loosen one’s tongue and tie it up again: 2.94 uincturaque linguam).28 As for nouo musto ‘new must’, it is almost ‘new mystery’, as celebrated by μυστικός Διόνυσος ‘mystic Dionysus’.29 Written under the sign of Bacchus, Virgil is saying, Book 2 will be transformative, it will defamiliarize the familiar. For him, arboriculture is not taming: it is Promethean daring—with civilization, education, and discipline produced out of violence and torture. Grafting takes place impune, ‘unchecked’ (32), as though it might invite punishment; the pruner haud dubitat, ‘barely hesitates’ (29), as though he might have second thoughts. But he who dares wins. Immediately following this gorgeous opening splurge, Virgil sobers up for Lucretian didactic: 9 principio, ‘in the first place’ (compare 83 (p.143) praeterea, ‘moreover’). The change of tone is exaggerated and sudden. What it reinforces is that the book is not prepared to make a flat choice between highflown and plain: it is experimenting with both at once. There are choices available, Virgil is saying, in how to handle trees: one can describe them the sublime alchemical way or one can describe them the plodding prosy way (Lucretius had done both). Soon after, he divides his attention between two correspondingly different kinds of addressee. First, Virgil tells the stolid agricolae to get moving, along with their terrain: 35–7 quare agite o proprios generatim discite cultus, | agricolae…| neu segnes iaceant terrae, ‘get to, learn agriculture, category by category…don’t let the soil lie idle’. Then he turns to Maecenas and offers him a bizarre extravaganza of poetic apprehensiveness: tuque ades inceptumque una decurre, o decus, o famae merito pars maxima nostrae, 40 Maecenas, pelagoque uolans da uela patenti. non ego cuncta meis amplecti uersibus opto, non, mihi si linguae centum sint oraque centum, ferrea uox. ades et primi lege litoris oram;
 in manibus terrae. non hic te carmine ficto 45 atque per ambages et longa exorsa tenebo.

(Geo. 2.39–46) Page 7 of 19

 

Under the Influence And you, be at hand, and help me complete the task I’ve begun— Maecenas, my pride, who rightfully possesses the chief part of my fame, and unfurl your flying sails for the sea lies open. I cannot hope to embrace everything in my poem, no, not if I’d a hundred tongues, a hundred mouths and a voice like iron. But come and skim the shore: dry land is near. I’ll not detain you with poetic fiction or with long preambles and digressions. Although Maecenas has a scant ‘physical’ presence’ in the Georgics (one named appearance in each book), his importance as foil to Virgil’s farmers should not be minimized.30 One way to understand his role is by returning to Hesiodic precedent. If the farmers, recipients of practical didactic advice, are equivalent to Hesiod’s stolid brother Perses, then regal Maecenas could be said to function similarly to Hesiod’s kings, the ones ‘with deeper understanding’, (p.144) the ones who understand high-level allegory—in effect, who understand poetics.31 Maecenas appears in the Georgics whenever Virgil is talking about how his poem is coming into being.32 In general, he is particularly useful to Roman poets when they are performing recusatio—because in real life he made a career of it and lost nothing.33 As a shadowy ideal reader, he is there to be the sounding board for Virgil’s questions and to bless his errant ‘deficiencies’. Unlike the farmers, the patron does not need full or straightforward accounts. He is there to drink in poetic description appreciatively, for its own sake. Lines 39–46 are a messy patchwork of poetic indirection, which is why the disavowal of carmen fictum and ambages—‘digressions’ (Thomas) or ‘riddling’ (Nappa)—is so egregious. Virgil is waving the full panoply of tropes from the epic and anti-epic tradition for poetic range and retreat, in particular when gearing up for a catalogue: many mouths, armoured voices, flying at full sail into the open sea or bringing a task to shore. This is poetic overkill: Farrell 1991: 233 concludes that Virgil must be being ‘broadly humorous’ here, in appealing for a hundred mouths and an iron voice to equip him for nothing scarier than the various branches of arboriculture. As Thomas rightly notes, the word opto turns the usual protest of incapacity (‘I can’t do it’) into one of choice (‘I won’t do it’).34 But this is not so much a choice between tasteful Callimachean restraint and epic ambition as one between comprehensiveness and skimming; primi lege litoris oram, ‘skim the edge of the shore’ means not ‘keep to your small orbit’ but ‘skirt the very edge of the subject’. So Venus, she of the purple boots in Aeneid 1, promises to cut a long story short with her pocket tragedy of Dido (Aen. 1.341–2): longa est iniuria, longae | ambages; sed summa sequar fastigia rerum. ‘It is a long tale of wrong, with many windings; but I will trace the main headings of the story.’ The epic goddess and the georgic poet share an instinct for compendiousness. (p.145) All the while, Virgil’s stockpile of epic clichés and mixed metaphors looks like a joke about avoiding the most appropriate metaphor of all: not seeing

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Under the Influence the wood for the trees. Horace had already written of the hopelessness of bringing Roman wood to the vast forest of Greek literature: in siluam non ligna feras insanius ac si magnas Graecorum malis inplere cateruas.

(Sat. 1.10.34–5) Carrying timber to a forest would be no crazier than your choosing to swell the packed ranks of the Greeks. And Theocritus, despairing about where to begin praising Ptolemy Philadelphus, had used the image of a woodcutter confronted by an embarrassment of trees on Mount Ida: Ἴδαν ἐς πολύδενδρον ἀνὴρ ὑλατόμος ἐλθών παπταίνει, παρεόντος ἄδην, πόθεν ἄρξεται ἔργου. τί πρῶτον καταλέξω ἐπεὶ πάρα μυρία εἰπεῖν οἷσι θεοὶ τὸν ἄριστον ἐτίμησαν βασιλήων.

(Id. 17.9–12) When the woodcutter goes to richly forested Ida, he looks round to see where to start his task in the midst of such plenty; what shall I first record, for inexpressibly many are the honours that the gods have bestowed upon the best of kings? This would have been the obvious trope to describe cutting a path through a densissima silua. Yet Virgil does not seem to want to cut a straight path. There is in fact something perversely lyrical, specifically Pindaric, in the self-consciously irrational swerving here, not to mention in Virgil’s use of nautical metaphors for the idea of digression:35 ἐμοὶ δὲ θαυμάσαι θεῶν τελεσάντων οὐδέν ποτε φαίνεται ἔμμεν ἄπιστον. κώπαν σχάσον, ταχὺ δ᾽ ἄγκυραν ἔρεισον χθονὶ πρῴραθε, χοιράδος ἄλκαρ πέτρας. ἐγκωμίων γὰρ ἄωτος ὕμνων ἐπ᾽ ἄλλοτ᾽ ἄλλον ὥτε μέλισσα θύνει λόγον.

(Pind. Pyth. 10.49–55) (p.146) To me nothing that the gods accomplish ever appears unbelievable, however miraculous. Hold the oar! Quick, let the anchor down from the prow to touch the bottom, to protect us from the rocky reef. The choicest hymn of praise flits from theme to theme, like a bee. ἦρ᾽, ὦ φίλοι, κατ᾽ ἀμευσιπόρον τριόδον ἐδινάθην, Page 9 of 19

 

Under the Influence ὀρθὰν κέλευθον ἰὼν τὸ πρίν· ἤ μέ τις ἄνεμος ἔξω πλόου ἔβαλεν, ὡς ὅτ᾽ ἄκατον ἐνναλίαν; Μοῖσα, τὸ δὲ τεόν, εἰ μισθοῖο συνέθευ παρέχειν φωνὰν ὑπάργυρον, ἄλλοτ᾽ ἄλλᾳ ταρασσέμεν

(Pind. Pyth. 11.38–43) Can it be, my friends, that, I was whirled off the track at a shifting fork in the road, although I had been travelling on a straight path before? Or did some wind throw me off course, like a skiff on the sea? Muse, it is your task, if you undertook to lend your voice for silver, to let it flit now this way, now that… Not taking the straight path (Pindar’s ὀρθὰν κέλευθον), but flitting hither and thither (ἄλλοτ᾽ ἄλλᾳ), bee-fashion—or Bacchante-style. As with the hymn to a split-level Bacchus (4–8), so with the address to Maecenas: decisive directions, stylistic or thematic, are purposely hard to extract.36 Returning to the world of plants, in line 47 Virgil turns to spontaneously seeded ones. The opening phrase, sponte sua, immediately looks back to 10–11 namque aliae nullis hominum cogentibus ipsae |
sponte sua, ‘other plants, spontaneously, with no one forcing them’. But it is also asking to be read in direct parallel with the poetic liberty Maecenas has supposedly just granted: like poets, plants can choose to do their own sweet thing. From this point on, in fact, there appear to be three levels of narrative, or meta-narrative, operating at once: plant life, the poet’s career and the history of civilization through agriculture.37 The problem is, they are none too consistent. (p.147) Sometimes, Virgil is nostalgic for self-seeded plants, the floppy poplars and willows of 12–13 or the wild plants of 51–2. Sometimes, he prefers instant gardening: haud dubitat (29), haud tarda (52), nec longum tempus (80). Then again, he warns us that speedy plants die young and hard graft is preferable. Civilization, too, is conceived as two different processes. Either it is the softening of what is hard (36 fructusque feros mollite colendo, ‘soften wild fruits by cultivating them’ is lifted from Lucretius 5.1368–9: fructusque feros mansuescere terra | cernebant indulgendo blandeque colendo, ‘they saw how wild fruits grew tame in their soil thanks to kind treatment and gentle cultivation’.38 Or it is the hardening off of what is soft: hardy hazels (65 edurae coryli), for example, or plants disciplined by the hard regime (369 dura…imperia) of the farmer. As for Virgil’s song of himself, it plays in two registers, too—no surprise when the Georgics is his transitional poem, the chrysalis between pastoral and epic that does not quite know what phase it is in but takes pleasure in watching its texture come into being along with the plants (the descriptions here abound in Lucretian process verbs: inolescere, rubescere, incanescere, trudere). Virgil knows that he needs to harden off the mollitia of the Eclogues.39 He must shake Page 10 of 19

 

Under the Influence off the siluestris animus ‘woodland spirit’ (51) of his pastoral persona and be fast-tracked into the new artes required, through persistent cultivation (cultu… frequenti). But while Virgil sticks to the main headings, we find him still going his own way. Like the plants, he seems to be fighting two different impulses: be spontaneous or be forced. It is hard to tell which way he is blowing, or whether the whole point is to be inconsistent and torn. Beyond this, any system breaks down. Take the subsequent list of grape-types (89–102), a short attempt at a ‘catalogue raisonné’—or raisin-y catalogue—one that fans out into a microcosm of shapes, textures and savours, from pinguis to leuis, shrivelled to bosomy, but soon collapses into aporia at 103–8. It is virtually impossible to extract either system or definitive meta-poetics (p.148) here, especially when pinguis ‘rich’, a quality distanced in the Eclogues but positive in the Georgics, is every bit as ‘good’ in a grapey context as tenuis or rarus ‘fine’.40 What this aborted catalogue really tells us is that under the aegis of Maecenas, connoisseur of grapes and literature alike, didactic is licensed to be purple, selective, and allusive.41 Servius tells us that some subtle playing off of Cato’s tastes against Catullus’ and Calvus’ is going on in the discussion of wine (95–6), recherché details that only Maecenas would understand.42 Or take the description of exotic trees of the East at 114–35. Despite the laudes Italiae to come, Italy clearly is not world enough for Maecenas or for the poet. Stephen Harrison has suggested that this catalogue, taken wholesale, embodies negative metapoetics: Virgil is pushing away the Orient, identifying Alexander the Great, the muddy Ganges, Medea’s poison and so on with anti-Callimachean pomposity—listing, as it happens, all the same tribes that will be routed on the shield in Aeneid 8.43 But this rejection, if that is what it really is, involves orientalizing with huge relish, as Virgil lingers on the precious by-products— ebony, silk, cotton, balsam—that find their way to Roman dressing-tables. In particular, the rhetorical question at 118–19, quid tibi odorato referam sudantia ligno | balsama…? ‘Why should I mention balsam to you, sweating through its scented bark?’, looks like a meaningful aside to the pampered patron. The author of Eleg. in Maec. 1 thought it fit to bring balsam and other Eastern spices to Maecenas’ tomb: 131–2 hic tibi Corycium, casias hic donat olentis,
| hic e palmiferis balsama missa iugis, ‘one brings you saffron, one scented cinnamon, another balsams sent from palm-bearing ridges’. All the time that these gestures are being made to the orientalizing, split, and deviant Maecenas, the hymn to Bacchus that started Book 2 and seemed to fade out is still humming below the surface. Book 2 is of course framed by wine festivals at beginning and end, while ‘Bacchus’ is a metonym throughout for the vine at the different stages of its life. But the book is also full of hidden epiphanies, with the god’s birth, childhood, journeys, and worship all commemorated through the rhythms of the vintage. The East-West progress that Page 11 of 19

 

Under the Influence is or is not (p.149) being made by exotic trees, for example, looks ahead to one of the most famous Bacchic moments in the Aeneid, in the parade of heroes in Book 6, where Virgil fantasizes that Augustus is returning in triumph from India and Persia (Aen. 6.801–5). As he implies, this is exactly the route traditionally taken by Bacchus himself. But this is not the only hidden trace of the wine-god. As the products of the East are brought closer to home, so domestic plants are conversely becoming more exotic. The most controversial element of Virgil’s instructions is the list of socalled ‘impossible’ grafts at 2.69–82. Many scholars have converged on this passage, sensing that there must be a reason why Virgil would put into didactic poetry what appear to be plain ‘lies’.44 These botanical impossibilities contravene the basic principle that plants only take to each other if they are from the same genus (which makes only two of Virgil’s six grafts botanically plausible and makes nonsense of his interest in genera). The bewildered tree staring at its grafted offspring is, Thomas says, a ‘chilling characterization of man’s distortion of the natural world’.45 However, Dunstan Lowe has recently demonstrated that, while Virgil may have inspired poetic grafters after him to describe ever more fantastical transplants, there is no evidence that before his time grafting presented any kind of serious moral or religious problem. Lowe concludes that it was ‘at best a blessing and at worst a curiosity’.46 Whatever it means (arbori)culturally speaking, Virgil’s grafting is clearly highlighted as something special and miraculous—genetic engineering as science fiction, like the fantastical multi-coloured sheep of Eclogue 4. The earlier disavowal of carmen fictum and ambages implicitly invites us to allegorize the technique. Nappa 2005: 73 reads grafting as a model both for intertextuality and for Roman cultural hybridity in general. Clément-Tarantino 2006b and Henkel 2009: 240–53 have independently concluded that it is the master emblem for Virgilian poetics: the perfect amalgam of nature and art, which takes Greek material, softens it, educates it, masters it and strips it down into an ideal form, dealing with poetic belatedness (p.150) through technical innovation.47 Henkel 2009: 245 also makes the attractive suggestion that teaching a bud to ‘take’ in wet bark (77 udo…libro) tells us something about implanting didactic in bookform, an impression helped by Lucretian word-blending, as includunt soaks through udo into inolescere: nam qua se medio trudunt de cortice gemmae et tenuis rumpunt tunicas, angustus in ipso fit nodo sinus; huc aliena ex arbore germen includunt udoque docent inolescere libro.

(Geo. 2.74–7)

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Under the Influence Where the buds push out from the bark and burst their delicate sheaths, you should make a narrow slit in the actual knot; it’s here that you enclose a bud from another tree and train it to grow in the sappy rind. The same metaphor operates in reverse when Horace describes his adolescent formation as being ‘hardened off’, learning to swim without the training cork (or outer bark, cortex): ‘simul ac durauerit aetas membra animumque tuum, nabis sine cortice.’ sic me formabat puerum dictis.

(Sat. 1.4.119–21) ‘As soon as the years have hardened your body and mind, you’ll swim without a cork.’ With these words [my father] shaped me in my boyhood. Meanwhile, Ovid uses interchangeable images of grafting and adolescence in his twisted account of the blending of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus:48 nam mixta duorum corpora iunguntur, faciesque inducitur illis una, uelut, si quis conducat cortice ramos, crescendo iungi pariterque adolescere cernit

(Ov. Met. 4.373–6) For the twin bodies are mixed together and one face supplies them both, as when a man who grafts branches into bark sees them joined in growth and maturing together. (p.151) Close observation of Virgil’s botanical details makes it hard not to conclude that Virgil’s poetic grafting is about both poetry and acculturation and the violent transformations they involve. And yet the fit is never quite perfect. I would like to add a further suggestion, one that returns us to the mysteries of Bacchus. The image of ripping infant slips (76 germen can also mean ‘embryo’) from their mothers’ bodies and inserting them into another plant (23–4 hic plantas tenero abscindens de corpore matrum
| deposuit sulcis) would seem to draw on the violence of a unique but very familiar myth of procreation—the double birth of the infant god, ripped from his mother’s dead body, then stitched into his father’s thigh like a part-gestated kangaroo: imperfectus adhuc infans genetricis ab aluo eripitur patrioque tener (si credere dignum est) insuitur femori maternaque tempora complet.

(Ov. Met. 3.310–12)

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Under the Influence The still unfinished child was snatched from his mother’s womb and, if it can be believed, stitched still soft into his father’s thigh and there completed his gestation. With this in mind, the vineyard fire described at 303–14 may even recall Semele’s combustion. As Book 2 nears its end, Virgil’s Bacchic messages continue to unsettle. The socalled vituperatio vitis, a four-line antidote (454–7) to the god’s grapey bounty, does not just displace drunkenness onto barbarians: it reminds us again starkly of the god’s destructive power. Rather than dissipating in a moment, this looks like the beginning of a heightened Bacchic spell that continues right to the end of the book. Why are Conington and Nettleship (1898: 274) moved, for example, to say that Virgil is ‘carried away’ at 454 into alleging that wild plants have more to offer than the vine? Or why, after the famous recusatio at 475–89, in which Virgil defers his ambition to write a scientific or cosmological poem, does he hurl himself off into an imaginary far-off glade that bears little relation to Italian farm landscape, casting himself as a wayward maenad struck by divine inspiration (476 ingenti percussus amore, ‘struck by outsize passion’): 486–8 o ubi campi | Spercheosque et uirginibus bacchata Lacaenis | Taygeta! ‘O for the plains of Spercheus and Mount Taÿgeta, where Spartan girls run mad’. This Bacchic imagery is recognizably imported from the Lucretian thyrsus-waving passage that had come to exemplify inspired poetic digression: Lucr. 1.922–3 sed acri | percussit thyrso laudis spes magna meum cor, ‘but a (p.152) great longing has struck my heart with a sharp thyrsus’.49 Virgil is not so much de-rationalizing Lucretius here as pointing to the coexistence of rational and irrational aspects in his predecessor.50 All this frenzied imagery signals that Virgil is propelling himself into a final Bacchic lift-off. Although the end of the book looks like a harvest home-coming that roots celebration of the vine in safe and traditional country practices while warding off urban temptation and corruption, it is written as one vast paragraph in drunken style, teeming with overflow words: ubera, fusos, perfusi, exuberet. Virgil advocates leaving the city behind for pure rusticity but remains focussed on the urban debauchees who are effectively suspended in a Bacchic trance: 508 stupet attonitus…hiantem. The poet himself is in the grip of enthousiasmos, manifested in a soaring purple digression that eventually comes down to earth through the self-imposed release of the final line: 542 et iam tempus equum fumantia soluere colla, ‘already it is time to release the steaming necks of my horses’. Traces of Bacchus will reappear in later books: the drunken, selflacerating horses in Book 3, for example, and the sparagmos of Orpheus by crazed maenads in Book 4.51 But Book 2, above all, is (in) his possession. Derailment, double vision, transformation, binding and loosening and above all plentiful language: these are all ways in which, to steal a phrase from Hardie

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Under the Influence 2002: 171, the mysterious presence of Bacchus ‘seeps out unpredictably’ in Georgics 2. (p.153) Notes:

(1) Wilkinson 1969: 85. This paper had its origins in a reading of the start of Georgics 2 for the literary seminar in the Faculty of Classics, Cambridge in 2007. (2) OLD s.v. 1, 2. (3) Batstone 1997. (4) A fatal confusion for disbeliever Lycurgus, king of Thrace, who in a Bacchic frenzy killed his own son (or cut off his own foot: Serv. ad Aen. 3.14), thinking he was cutting down a vine-stock. Virgil relentlessly anthropomorphizes his vines, most dramatically at 367: tum stringe comas, tum bracchia tonde, ‘then tug their hair, then clip their arms’. (5) E.g. Smith 2007, Nappa 2005. Cf. Schiesaro 1997: 89: Virgil’s georgic knowledge ‘is authorized and backed by a close and compelling political structure, and carefully mixes rationalism with arguments from authority’. (6) Schiesaro 2009, Mac Góráin 2009, Mac Góráin 2013. I have also learned much from Mac Góráin’s forthcoming discussion of Georgics 2 but have a different focus here. (7) Cf. Geo. 3.284–5, 4.116–48. (8) The olive, heralded at 2.3, is subsequently accorded only six lines (420–5). (9) Eleg. in Maec. 57–69. (10) Prop. 4.2.31 (Bacchus) mitra…Iacchi; Sen. Ep. 114.4 (Maecenas) solutis tunicis and head-wrapping; Eleg. in Maec. 1.25 (Maecenas) = 59 (Bacchus) tunicae…solutae. See Wyler 2013 on Bacchic iconography in the horti of Maecenas. (11) Varro’s Agrius (Rust. 1.5.2) complains about the ‘innumerable subdivisions’ (partes…innumerabiles) of agriculture in Theophrastus’ books. (12) See Thomas 1987 on Virgil’s adaptation of Theophrastus. (13) As Muecke 1979: 92 sagely remarks, ‘While it would be typical of the allusive style to use an epic formula to decline to write epic, that…is less the point here than a disclaimer of universality of treatment in the didactic poem.’ Thibodeau 2011: 116–51 suggests intellectual reasons for Virgil’s selectivity: to increase the prestige of what he does include, to pique the reader’s curiosity and to elevate agronomy among the liberal arts. But see also Ford 1992: 67–89 on the incomplete poetic catalogue, especially in epic, as traditional superstitious Page 15 of 19

 

Under the Influence defence against sublime totality. Plin. HN 14.7 is famously wistful about Virgil’s self-exemption from encyclopaedic comprehensiveness. (14) Translations of longer passages in the Georgics are from Day Lewis (1999) with slight modifications. (15) A formulation Carolyn Macdonald once suggested to me. (16) Just as ‘Maecenas’ is in some sense the (negative) answer to Horace’s opening questions at Sat. 1.1.1–2: most people in the world are restless—apart from me—because of you. (17) Thanks to Dan-el Peralta Padilla for discussion of this point. Cf. the ‘sleek’ Etruscan’ (pinguis…Tyrrhenus) at 2.193, almost an outcrop of his rich native soil; see Macfarlane 1996; Diod. Sic. 5.40. For the tradition of representing patronage as fertility, see e.g. Bowditch 2001: 116–60, 210–46 (Horace and Virgil), Sharlet 2011: 182 (Arabic and Persian poetry); Tib. 1.7 presents Messalla as a triumphant Osiris/Bacchus fertility god. (18) Mynors 1990: 101: ‘V.’s propertied readers would leave Rome in the heats of autumn and go down to their estates at vintage-time, like the younger Pliny (ep. 9.20.2).’ (19) Eur. Bacch. 861 ‘most terrible to mortals and most gentle’; Eleg. in Maec. l. 57–69; Hor. Carm. 2.19.27–8 sed idem | pacis eras mediusque belli, ‘yet you took part in war as well as peace’. (20) Mac Góráin 2013: 145. (21) Thomas 1988a: vol. 1, 156. (22) Fraenkel 1957: 204 simply attributes the detail to a traditional hymnic focus on a god’s footwear. (23) Smith 2007. (24) See e.g. Henrichs 1993:17, Spineto 1998 on Bacchic epiphany. Gale 2000: 74 argues that rampant Bacchic abundance in Book 2 is consistently pruned and reined in: ‘As a god of wildness and excess, Bacchus symbolizes the chaotic forces of nature which the farmer must strive to control.’ But she also recognizes that the god presides over ‘anarchic and unpredictable…poetic inspiration’. See Michelini 1978 on the origins of hubris as a metaphor from overgrown plants. (25) Nisbet and Hubbard’s identification of Bacchus with ‘lighter genres’ (1970: 13) is rightly qualified by Batinski 1990–1, who writes (373) of his weightier influence on the poet in Hor. Carm. 3.25: ‘Bacchus and his control over the Page 16 of 19

 

Under the Influence poet’s ingenium lead Horace into perilous terrain.’ Compare the continued emphasis on fullness in Virgil’s description of the vintage at G. 2.390–1: hinc omnis largo pubescit uinea fetu | complentur uallesque, ‘now every vineyard grows big with plentiful offspring and the valleys teem’. (26) Mynors 1990: 101 calls this a metrical ‘liberty’. (27) Thomas 1988a: vol. 1, 156 cites only watery parallels (Lucr. 1.927–8, Prop. 3.3.5), arguing that wine is a variant inspired by the Bacchic tinge of this book. Heyworth and Morwood 2011: 277 naturalize the Propertian miracle: ‘Foaming vats of fermenting purple grape-juice (“must”) and the stained feet of those treading the grapes are frequent in old representations of the vintage and may still be seen in traditional port-producers in the Douro valley.’ But they also comment: ‘The staining of the feet here may evoke Bacchus’ effect on P.’s poetry: cf. the “dyer’s hand” in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 111.’ (28) Cf. Hymn. Hom. Bacch. 7.12–13. (29) Cf. 1.166 mystica uannus Iacchi, ‘the mystical winnowing-basket of Bacchus’. On mystery cults and the Georgics, see Johnston 2009. (30) As it is by Thomas 1988a: vol. 1, 69: ‘He seems otherwise to have little to do with the poem’; rightly challenged by Volk 2002: 130–9. (31) Op. 202; cf. Theog. 80–103, with Stoddard 2003 on Hesiod’s kings and singers as sharing Muse-given judgment and eloquence. Contra Serv. Praef. ad Geo. 1, who regards Maecenas in persona discipuli, like Perses and Memmius; cf. Thibodeau 2011: 8: Maecenas ‘occup[ies] the position of student, like Hesiod’s brother Perses’. See Schiesaro 1993: 133–5 and Volk 2002: 122–39 for more nuanced discussion of addressees in the Georgics. (32) Volk 2002: 136. (33) Zetzel 1982. (34) 1988a: vol. 1, 163–4. (35) Farrell 1991: 246 n. 85. (36) Maecenas himself was fond of mixing the spheres of sea and shore. Seneca describes fragments such as alueum lintribus arent uersoque uado remittant hortos, ‘they plough the seabed with boats and, upturning the waves, leave gardens behind’ as ‘the eloquence of a drunkard—twisted, wayward and full of licence’ (Ep. 114.4), and uses Virgil’s own metaphors to label a man stylistically too far out: hic te exitus manet, nisi iam contrahes uela, nisi, quod ille sero

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Under the Influence uoluit, terram leges, ‘this end awaits you, unless you shorten your sails and hug the shore—as [Maecenas] refused to do until it was too late’ (Ep. 19.9). (37) Thomas 1988a: vol. 1, 166: ‘[T]rees, like man at the end of the Saturnian age, shed their spontaneous and natural attributes and become part of the world of cultus and the artes.’ (38) Excellent discussion in Gale 2000: 209–20, who argues that Virgil takes his cue in Book 2 from the rationalizing Lucretius but invests his own account with the added dimension of wonder. (39) ‘Soft’ or ‘delicate’ plants, e.g. 2.12 molle siler, have been symbolically plucked from Virgil’s bucolic plant gallery: cf. Ecl. 6.53 molli…hyacintho, Ecl. 2.50 mollia…uaccinia, Ecl. 5.38 molli uiola. Horace had characterized the bucolic Virgil as ‘soft’ at Sat. 1.10.44. (40) Thomas 1988a: vol. 1, 70 notes, perhaps reluctantly, that pinguis is ‘an important adjective’ which occurs over twenty times in the Georgics. (41) See Plin. HN 14.67 for wines named after Maecenas. (42) Serv. ad Geo. 2.95. (43) Harrison 2007a: 137–48. (44) Ross 1980, Ross 1987, Thomas 1988b. (45) Thomas 1988a: vol. 1, 271. Coo 2007 shows ingeniously how Virgil reuses the techniques of crown-grafting (obtruncatio) for a horror story, the monstrous grafting of bleeding plant spears into Polydorus’ flesh at the start of Aeneid 3. (46) Lowe 2010: 467. See Thibodeau 2011: 144–50 on the grafting passage as a ‘wonder script’; cf. Deremetz 2009. (47) See also Pucci 1998: 102–6. (48) Cf. Ovid’s vignette of a fragile new implant at Ars Am. 2.649: dum nouus in uiridi coalescit cortice ramus, ‘while a new branch gels in green bark’. (49) Poet as bacchante: Hor. Carm. 3.25.12–14; Schiesaro 2009. (50) Gale 2000: 74: ‘[T]he language of ecstatic possession arguably conflicts with Lucretius’ avowed purpose of freeing his reader from the tyranny of passion and irrationality.’ Compare the expression of wilful poetic licence Virgil addresses specifically to Maecenas at Geo. 3.41–4, a tally-ho to Bacchic haunts far removed from both panegyric and farm enclosures: interea Dryadum siluas saltusque sequamur…uocat ingenti clamore Cithaeron | Taygetique canes domitrix Epidaurus equorum, ‘Meanwhile, let us pursue the groves and woods of the Page 18 of 19

 

Under the Influence Dryads…Cithaeron calls us with a booming shout, and hounds from Taÿgetus and Epidaurus tamer of horses’. (51) Cucchiarelli 2011a; see also Morgan 1999: 153–5.

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Apollo in Tibullus 2.3 and 2.5

Augustan Poetry and the Irrational Philip Hardie

Print publication date: 2016 Print ISBN-13: 9780198724728 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2015 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198724728.001.0001

Apollo in Tibullus 2.3 and 2.5 Jane Burkowski

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198724728.003.0008

Abstract and Keywords This chapter examines the contradictory depictions of Apollo in Tibullus 2.3 and 2.5, as symbol of irrationality in the former, and of divine order in the latter. In 2.3, Apollo, as the pathetic lover of Admetus, is held up as an analogue for the speaker, providing a precedent for his unconventional behaviour and attitudes. When, in 2.5, Apollo returns in his more characteristic, rational guise, as patron of poetry and of Augustan reform, the already uneasy equivalence between god and poet that was created in 2.3 is upset further. Taken together, the two elegies create a complex picture of the position in which the elegiac speaker (as poet and lover) stands in relation to Apollo (and thus to rationality itself). In the elegies’ Augustan context, this implies a more lively engagement with current politics than is generally attributed to Tibullus. Keywords:   Latin elegy, love elegy, Tibullus, Apollo, Palatine Apollo, Admetus, Amor

The figure of Apollo, traditionally the embodiment of all that is rational, features centrally in two elegies in the second book of Tibullus, 2.3 and 2.5. As patron of verse, Apollo makes frequent enough appearances in elegy, sometimes as a direct source of poetic inspiration, and sometimes as a foil for the speaker’s alternative source of inspiration, whether this is his mistress, or Venus and Amor;1 his roles in Tib. 2.3 and 2.5, though, are rather different. In the first, he appears in an uncharacteristically long mythic digression, as an exemplum for the speaker’s attitude to his relationship with his mistress rather than his attitude to his poetry, and in 2.5 he is invoked as the inspiration of laudatory rather than amatory elegy. What makes these two images of Apollo particularly striking, though, is the contrast between them: in 2.3, Apollo is depicted as the Page 1 of 15

 

Apollo in Tibullus 2.3 and 2.5 pathetic lover and servant of Admetus, and a distinctly irrational figure, whereas, in 2.5, Apollo appears in his more usual, rational guise, as the inspiration of poetry and prophecy, symbol of order and of the health of the state. The proximity of 2.3 and 2.5, together with the prominence of Apollo in each, puts special emphasis on the contrasts between the opposed depictions, resulting in a complex interplay. Their Augustan context, meanwhile, gives these contrasts further impact and topical significance, as Apollo gained particular prominence and symbolic importance in the literature of the period.2 (p.156) Augustus adopted Apollo as a sort of personal patron and as a symbol of the order imposed by the new regime, and Tibullus, along with the other poets of the period, responded;3 by juxtaposing, combining, or contrasting this image with the traditional (and especially Hellenistic) image of Apollo as god of poetry, prophecy, medicine, and of rationality and order in general, they were able to explore a wide variety of ideas about poetry, contemporary society and politics, and the relationship between them. Tibullus’ two different depictions of Apollo in 2.3 and 2.5, then, especially when read side by side, have as important a bearing on Tibullus’ conception of his own role as poet, and of his persona’s role as lover, as the more directly programmatic images of Apollo presented by Propertius and Ovid do on theirs.4 By manipulating the idea of Apollo as embodiment of the rational, coming at the issue from opposite directions in the two poems, Tibullus develops and examines the relative irrationality of the attitudes and priorities expressed by his own persona and, further, suggests something of the place that he feels that persona occupies in his social and literary context, both as lover and as poet. In 2.3, Apollo appears in a long mythical exemplum (2.3.11–32), which gains prominence from the rarity of such exempla in Tibullus.5 To explain and justify his own professed willingness to undertake humiliating manual labour if it means he can be near his beloved Nemesis (who has followed a richer lover to a countryside villa), the speaker cites the precedent of Apollo’s service as the cowherd of Admetus. In the earliest known versions of the story, Apollo’s service to Admetus is depicted as a punishment imposed by Zeus for Apollo’s having killed the Cyclopes,6 but in the version Tibullus recounts it is undertaken willingly, for love of Admetus. In recasting the story in erotic terms, he is drawing on a Hellenistic interpretation of the myth, seen, for example, in Callimachus’ Hymn to Apollo.7 But Tibullus (p.157) makes a further contribution of his own, depicting Apollo as changed and degraded rather than glorified by his new rustic role.8 In Callimachus, Apollo’s presence in the countryside blesses it and grants its flocks fertility (Hymn 2.50–4). In Tibullus, Apollo is instead altered by the countryside, and not for the better: pauit et Admeti tauros formosus Apollo, nec cithara intonsae profueruntue comae, nec potuit curas sanare salubribus herbis: quidquid erat medicae uicerat artis amor. Page 2 of 15

 

Apollo in Tibullus 2.3 and 2.5 … o quotiens illo uitulum gestante per agros dicitur occurrens erubuisse soror! o quotiens ausae, caneret dum ualle sub alta, rumpere mugitu carmina docta boues! saepe duces trepidis petiere oracula rebus, uenit et a templis inrita turba domum: saepe horrere sacros doluit Latona capillos, quos admirata est ipsa nouerca prius. quisquis inornatumque caput crinesque solutos aspiceret, Phoebi quaereret ille comam. Delos ubi nunc, Phoebe, tua est, ubi Delphica Pytho? nempe Amor in parua te iubet esse casa.

(Tib. 2.3.11–14, 17–28) Even beautiful Apollo pastured the cattle of Admetus, and neither his lyre nor his unshorn locks did him any good, nor was he able to heal himself of love with health-giving herbs; love conquered all his medical arts… Ah, how often, they say, his sister blushed, meeting him as he carried a calf through the fields! Ah, how often did the cattle, as he sang in the deep valley, dare to break into his learned songs with their mooing! Often leaders in fearful situations sought oracles, and went home from the temples disappointed, in droves. Often Latona grieved to see his sacred locks dishevelled, which formerly even his stepmother herself had admired. Whoever looked upon his unadorned head and his loose hair looked [in vain] for the hair of Phoebus. Where is your Delos now, (p.158) Phoebus? Where the Delphic Python? Clearly Love compels you to stay in a tiny cottage.9 None of Apollo’s usual attributes can help him win Admetus—his lyre, his beauty, his medical powers and his prophetic role are all useless—and so all are cast aside and subordinated to his hopeless love (2.3.11–14, 21–2). In a particularly humiliating touch, his divine song is even interrupted by the lowing of Admetus’ cattle (2.3.19–20). The most prominent change in him in visual terms, meanwhile, is that his long and beautiful hair becomes dishevelled, making him unrecognizable (2.3.23–6). All this is, of course, funny—Apollo has become an entertainingly pathetic spectacle—but the particular imagery used also bears more serious symbolic significance. Both Apollo’s song and his hair are symbols of divine order and the rational principle: this concept of order and rationality is the abstract idea that binds together Apollo’s various spheres of influence, over which he has now lost control. In willingly seeing both his song and his hair ruined, Apollo has given up his defining characteristic—his identity as embodiment of order—in favour of the irrational pursuit of an unachievable goal (and one that is, by traditional Roman standards, frivolous in any case). The Page 3 of 15

 

Apollo in Tibullus 2.3 and 2.5 story as a whole is presented in a light-hearted and almost parodic manner, and Apollo is ostensibly presented as a positive exemplum, justifying Tibullus’ own desperation and willingness to abase himself, on the grounds that, if it was good enough for a god, it is good enough for him. But the god’s wilful rejection of his own identity, disregard for his status and transformation into a laughing-stock are also ominous. Apollo’s shameful reversal foreshadows the direction that the poem will take later, as the speaker begins to reject values central to his conception of himself as we know it, favouring wealth and luxury over rural simplicity, seeing that Nemesis responds only to gifts (2.3.49–58), and cursing agriculture itself, since the countryside has taken her from him (2.3.61–6). By the end of the poem we see that, as it had done for Apollo in the exemplum, hopeless love has changed Tibullus. But the speaker’s attitudes and behaviour in 2.3 are not only humiliating according to the standards of respectable Roman manhood, as we (p.159) might expect any committed elegiac lover’s to be.10 He is also unrecognizable as the speaker whom we had come to know in Book 1; in this second book, it seems, his irrationality has deepened and become more ambiguous in its moral value. His love for Delia in Book 1 had inspired him to long for unattainable ideals in place of the usual achievements valued by society. His even more irrational love for Nemesis has made him willing to throw over not only society’s values and priorities, but his own.11 This poem is our introduction to Nemesis, and the first elegy in Book 2 to focus on Tibullus’ own love-affairs. The depiction of Apollo’s loss of identity and selfrespect, early on in the poem, thus acts as a pre-emptive explanation of the nature of Tibullus’ slavery to his new mistress, guiding our reaction to the new position of Tibullus’ speaker before we encounter it. The image of Apollo being compelled by Amor to forsake his cult centres and live ‘in a tiny cottage’ (in parua…casa, 2.3.28), for example, recalls an idea that recurs throughout Tibullus’ elegies, but which is illustrated by darker and more violent imagery in Book 2: that of the speaker’s degrading enslavement to Venus and/or Amor.12 Given the traditional depiction of Amor as childishly wilful and unpredictable, to be his slave would be a precarious position for anyone, but to put Apollo in this position is to underscore the nature of Tibullus’ own parallel enslavement, showing it to be tantamount to the rejection and suppression of his better judgement. The equation of Tibullus’ position to Apollo’s defines not only the nature of the speaker’s predicament, but his attitude to it. Though his description of his own desperation is necessarily pained and despondent, his light-hearted account of its divine precedent demonstrates that he can, from an objective standpoint, see the funny side to his own pathetic state—or can at least see that it will appear ridiculous to others.13 But it also plants the idea (p.160) that pathetic and even ridiculous subjugation in the name of love, when seen in a certain light, has its admirable side. Consider the moral that Tibullus attaches to the story: felices olim, Veneri cum fertur aperte Page 4 of 15

 

Apollo in Tibullus 2.3 and 2.5 seruire aeternos non puduisse deos. fabula nunc ille est: sed cui sua cura puella est, fabula sit mauult quam sine amore deus.

(Tib. 2.3.29–32) Those were happy times when, as the story goes, even the immortal gods were not ashamed to serve Venus openly. Now he [i.e. Apollo as servant of Admetus] is only a story; but anyone who is in love with a girl would rather be the object of talk than be a god without love. The train of thought is compressed,14 but Tibullus seems to be suggesting that, if the intense level of his devotion is shameful and makes him a laughing-stock, it is only because love is no longer given proper honour—in other words, his pathetic state is in a sense not his fault, but society’s. Like Apollo in the Admetus story, he feels that the exchange of identity, honour and the respect of his peers for service of his beloved is a fair one, even if it yields no tangible benefits, and this puts him on the moral high ground. This is, at least, what he tries to tell himself; the desperate tone into which he descends in his own pleas to Nemesis belies his apparent confidence. In short, the exemplum, its moral, and Tibullus’ own somewhat skewed reflection of Apollo’s behaviour come together to establish the speaker’s mixed feelings about his all-consuming love for Nemesis. Viewed in its different aspects, it fills him with both shame and pride, and though he may attempt to explain his conduct in rational terms, through comparison to its divine precedent, his feelings are too confused and irrational to justify unequivocally. Tibullus’ treatment of the image of Apollo in 2.5 could scarcely be more different from that in 2.3. In 2.5, Apollo is invoked directly, and with apparent seriousness, in his capacity as patron of poetry and prophecy. He is called upon to oversee the installation of Messalinus (son of Tibullus’ patron, Messalla) as keeper of the Sibylline books, and to inspire Tibullus in his poetic commemoration of the event: (p.161) Phoebe, faue: nouus ingreditur tua templa sacerdos: huc age cum cithara carminibusque ueni. nunc te uocales impellere pollice chordas, nunc precor ad laudes flectere uerba meas. ipse triumphali deuinctus tempora lauro, dum cumulant aras, ad tua sacra ueni. sed nitidus pulcherque ueni: nunc indue uestem sepositam, longas nunc bene pecte comas, qualem te memorant Saturno rege fugato uictori laudes concinuisse Ioui.

(Tib. 2.5.1–10)

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Apollo in Tibullus 2.3 and 2.5 Phoebus, show favour: a new priest is entering your temple. Come to this place, and come with lyre and with song. Now strum the singing strings with your thumb; now I pray that you may shape your words to my song of praise. Come to your shrine, your brows bound with triumphal laurel, while the altars are heaped up. But come shining and beautiful: now dress in special robes, now comb your long locks well, as you famously did when you sang the praises of victorious Jupiter, when king Saturn was put to flight. Apollo is here a dignified presence—very much the symbol of divine order and rationality that we are more used to seeing—and, significantly, he is asked to comb his hair as he prepares to perform his inspirational role (2.5.7–8). This is not in itself an unusual request in such a context, given the symbolic value of Apollo’s hair; we can, again, compare Callimachus’ Hymn to Apollo, in which the oil dripping from the god’s hair grants peace and order to cities: αἱ δὲ κόμαι θυόεντα πέδῳ λείβουσιν ἔλαια: οὐ λίπος Ἀπόλλωνος ἀποστάζουσιν ἔθειραι, ἀλλ᾽ αὐτὴν πανάκειαν: ἐν ἄστεϊ δ᾽ ᾧ κεν ἐκεῖναι πρῶκες ἔραζε πέσωσιν ἀκήρια πάντ᾽ ἐγένοντο.

(Callim. Hymn 2.38–41) His locks pour fragrant oil onto the ground; the hair of Apollo drips not fat, but panacea itself, and in whichever city those dews fall to earth, all is safe. In Tib. 2.3, as we have seen, great stress was placed on the image of Apollo as a dishevelled embarrassment, whose own mother could scarcely recognize him; so soon after, in 2.5, emphasis on Apollo’s hair must recall the earlier poem, and with it, its theme of the lover’s willing acceptance of degradation and alienation.15 If Apollo is now (p.162) asked to clean himself up and assume his usual public role (or perhaps to resume it, after his lapse into seruitium amoris in 2.3), are we to imagine that the poet sees himself, or at least his lover-poet persona, as doing the same? The speaker appears to be setting aside the personal, unconventional, elegiac Apollo with whom he had identified himself in 2.3, and thus, in a sense, to be setting aside subjective poetry and his under-dog lover persona in favour of official poetry, a traditional, state-sanctioned Apollo and mainstream values. But is this borne out by the rest of the poem? And is Tibullus presenting this kind of shift as a good thing? The relative value of the rationality of society at large and the irrationality of the lover was left in an uncomfortably unresolved state in 2.3, but the reader, at this point, has yet to see if it is to be made any clearer in 2.5.

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Apollo in Tibullus 2.3 and 2.5 The issue is immediately complicated by the simile attached to the speaker’s request that Apollo comb his hair (2.5.9–10): he is to look just as he did when he celebrated the victory of Jupiter over Saturn. We have here an image of Apollo as the divine poet, celebrating a divine victory, and this performance is itself imagined as the subject of celebratory song (note te memorant, ‘they tell of you’, 2.5.9); Tibullus, then, does seem to be requesting the inspiration to take on a similar ‘poet laureate’ role.16 As critics have pointed out, the image of Apollo singing of Jupiter’s triumph is suggestive of the cult statue in the Temple of Apollo on the Palatine.17 This was the temple to which Augustus transferred the Sibylline books, and is perhaps to be imagined as the ‘setting’ of the poem.18 This picture of Apollo thus evokes the image of Augustus, his victory at Actium and his ushering in of peace at the end of an extended period of civil war: concepts that were alluded to in the sculptural decoration of the temple.19 But the idea of the end of the reign of Saturn is not an unambiguously positive (p. 163) one, especially for Tibullus. It signals the end of the Golden Age and of the pre-agricultural simplicity that he elsewhere imagines as a lost ideal, not least in 2.3 itself: glans alat et prisco more bibantur aquae. glans aluit ueteres, et passim semper amarunt: quid nocuit sulcos non habuisse satos? tunc, quibus aspirabat Amor, praebebat aperte mitis in umbrosa gaudia ualle Venus.

(Tib. 2.3.67–71) Let the acorn nourish us, and let us drink water in ancient style. The acorn nourished our ancestors, and they made love all over: what harm did it do, that there were no sown furrows? To anyone who came under Amor’s influence, gentle Venus then openly offered her joys in the shady valleys.20 As a result of these allusions and their interactions, the speaker’s precise tone in the opening passage of 2.5 is left unclear, as is the character of his invocation of Apollo. This uncertainty of tone continues through the long account of the Sibyl’s prophecy to Aeneas that dominates the middle section of the poem (2.5.19–66). She predicts the replacement of a rural idyll with urbanization and a cycle of warfare and, in her prophecy and Tibullus’ introduction to it, emphasis is placed on some of the more troubling and morally ambiguous elements of Rome’s foundation story, such as the deaths of Turnus (2.5.47–8) and of Remus (2.5.23– 4), and Ilia’s (here, apparently willing) abandonment of the shrine of Vesta (2.5.51–4).21 To a reader who has seen Tibullus consistently contrast rural peace with the evils of war, and contrast the blessings of the simple life with greed and the destructive expansionism it inspires,22 some of the images of Rome’s growth that he goes on to evoke also (p.164) take on at least an uncomfortable subtext, if not an actively ironic one. Consider, for example, the image of Rome taking over every field that Ceres looks down upon (Roma, tuum nomen terris Page 7 of 15

 

Apollo in Tibullus 2.3 and 2.5 fatale regendis,/qua sua de caelo prospicit arua Ceres, 2.5.57–8). In its prophetic context, the main force of fatale here is presumably that Rome is ‘fated’ to be an imperial power, but the other ambiguities and equivocations in the passage suggest that we may also be justified in seeing the name of Rome as ‘fatal’ to the lands it is destined to rule.23 As phrases and images like these build up through the first half of the poem, they increasingly suggest a sense of unease on the part of the speaker. The nature of this unease is partly explained (but also further complicated) when Tibullus addresses Apollo again, asking him to replace the prophecies of war and destruction that preceded the recent cycle of civil wars with prophecies of peace and plenty for the future: haec fuerant olim: sed tu iam mitis, Apollo, prodigia indomitis merge sub aequoribus, et succensa sacris crepitet bene laurea flammis, omine quo felix et sacer annus erit.

(Tib. 2.5.79–82) These things happened in the past: but may you, Apollo, now gentle, sink such prodigies in the untameable sea, and may the laurel crackle nicely, burned in the sacred flames; by this omen, the year will be happy and blessed. At this point, given the overall context, and the evocation of the Temple of Apollo on the Palatine at the beginning of the poem, we might expect a shift into praise of the benefits to be conferred by Augustus’ principate, as contrasted with the disastrous results of the sins of the past. And we are indeed presented with an extended prediction of fertility, rural piety, cosy family values and the replacement of actual battles with lovers’ trivial disagreements (2.5.83–104). These are images and ideas that Tibullus typically contrasts with war and the greed and moral failings of contemporary society, and which he aligns with his own elegiac values (1.1; 1.10; 2.1). In this case, though, the lover-poet is presented as excluded from the benefits of the peaceful future he foresees. The idea of war and disorder being replaced by peace and order is frequently symbolized by Apollo’s (p.165) setting aside his bow to take up his lyre.24 Here, the speaker hints at that image, but rather than developing it fully, he skips straight on to a related one: Apollo can bring peace and order to the community at large by setting aside both his own arrows and those of battling armies, but Tibullus’ own personal peace and happiness depend on another archer god, Amor, joining in the general disarmament: pace tua pereant arcus pereantque sagittae, Phoebe, modo in terris erret inermis Amor. ars bona: sed postquam sumpsit sibi tela Cupido, Page 8 of 15

 

Apollo in Tibullus 2.3 and 2.5 heu heu quam multis ars dedit ista malum! et mihi praecipue, iaceo cum saucius annum et faueo morbo cum iuuat ipse dolor.

(Tib. 2.5.105–10) By your leave [or, In the peace you bring], Phoebus, may bows and arrows perish, if it means Amor can wander the earth unarmed. [Archery] is a fine skill; but since Cupid took up weapons, alas, alas, how many that skill of yours has done wrong! And me especially: I have lain wounded for a year, and cherish my sickness, since the very pain gives pleasure. Following on the idea of Apollo (and, by implication, Augustus) as healer of the state and of society,25 then, we see the image of Tibullus lying in his sickbed, unable and even unwilling to be cured. As it turns out, despite the suggestion at the beginning of the poem of his rehabilitation, the speaker remains as alienated from the concerns and values of the rest of society as he was in 2.3, just as helpless in the face of love, and just as wracked by conflicting feelings about his own subjugation. By uniting the common tropes of love’s arrows and love as a sickness, and laying heavy stress on the fact that archery is Apollo’s own invention, Tibullus also evokes the idea of Apollo’s arrows as bringers of pestilence, but emphatically transfers this attribute to Amor.26 The implication that Apollo, at least as far as his (p.166) influence over the speaker is concerned, has been superseded by Amor, taken together with the idea of love as an incurable disease (cf. 2.3.13–14), strengthens the reminiscence of 2.3 that has already been hinted at as a subtext in Apollo’s previous appearances in 2.5; this reawakens the concept, central to the exemplum in 2.3, of the powerlessness of Apollo and the rationality that he embodies, as compared with the irresistible influence of Amor. The idea implied in 2.5.105–10, that Amor has greater and more direct power over Tibullus’ speaker than Apollo does, is made explicit in the next lines: as things stand, he cannot write a word of poetry without Nemesis’ inspiration, so he will need her to be kinder to him if he is ever to praise Messalinus properly: usque cano Nemesim, sine qua uersus mihi nullus uerba potest iustos aut reperire pedes. at tu, nam diuum seruat tutela poetas, praemoneo, uati parce, puella, sacro, ut Messalinum celebrem, cum praemia belli ante suos currus oppida uicta feret.

(Tib. 2.5.111–16) I sing of Nemesis continually; without her, no verse of mine can find words or metre. But you—for divine protection keeps poets safe—I warn you, girl,

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Apollo in Tibullus 2.3 and 2.5 spare this holy uates, so that I may celebrate Messalinus as he bears conquered towns, the rewards of war, before his chariot. This presents a difficulty. If Tibullus cannot write a word without Nemesis, as long as she is cruel to him, is she or Apollo to be imagined as having inspired the poem we are reading? And Nemesis is, of course, perpetually cruel; Tibullus’ request is, then, paradoxical in practical terms. She must spare him, once he is a uates; but he has just implied that he cannot fulfil that role properly until she spares him.27 So, is he a uates yet, or not? At this rate, can he ever be one? Just what kind of poet is the speaker, and what kind of poem is this? Some tentative answers, or at least fruitful ways of looking at these questions, can be suggested by comparison with 2.3—and, as we have seen, such a comparison is encouraged by numerous images and concepts linking the two poems. In the earlier poem, Tibullus likens himself to Apollo in that his hopeless love for Nemesis has made him (p.167) irrational, and forced him to prioritize the goal of securing her favour above any system of values, societal or elegiac. In 2.5, we see Tibullus expressing uncharacteristic views again—an appreciation for progress beyond rural simplicity and approval for military expansion—but he hints at the incongruity of these attitudes, and at his own discomfort with what he is saying.28 Tibullus’ speaker, in other words, is not much more his ‘usual’ self here than he is when he embraces wealth or curses the countryside in 2.3. His poses in the earlier poem (of rustic servitude, or of the embrace of wealth) are desperate and impractical ploys intended to soften Nemesis’ temperament, rather than representative of his natural inclinations and his own ideals; they are themselves symptoms of his irrational love. Read in a certain light, lines 2.5.111–16 reveal his poses in 2.5 (of vatic authority and approval of the moral progress of contemporary society) to be similarly desperate and irrational attempts to pursue the same goal. The poem would then have two main turns. First, the assumption of the mask: Tibullus’ lover-poet persona appears to be cleaning himself up and ignoring his own troubles long enough to praise Messalinus’ achievements and those of the regime, as suggested by the image of Apollo doing the same. And second, the dropping of the mask: he lets slip that his personal (and primary?) motivation in doing so is the hope that taking a turn as a divinely inspired uates might win him Apollo’s favour (which he begs for at the start of the poem (2.5.4, 17–18), but is never explicitly granted), and thus allow him to impress Nemesis.29 The result of the carefully handled progression of these ideas is that Tibullus, as poet, can please his patron by nominally praising his and his son’s achievements, and those of the regime generally, but does not need to ‘sell out’ or strike a false note by depicting his lover-poet persona as genuinely on board with the mainstream values he has so far been rejecting in favour of his hopeless love.

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Apollo in Tibullus 2.3 and 2.5 In the end, though 2.3 and 2.5 are, on the surface, very different poems, and centre around two very different images of Apollo, they are two sides of the same coin, in terms of the relationship that they establish between Apollo, as personification of order, and Tibullus’ speaker, in all his irrationality and confusion. In the former poem, Tibullus likens his own irrational concerns and priorities to those of (p.168) Apollo as servant of Admetus, in order to explain something of the inner conflict created by the mixed shame and pride he feels in his pathetic devotion to Nemesis. This strategy is practicable only because, in the story Tibullus relates, Apollo is not at all himself. But that is the whole point: Tibullus’ speaker is conscious of the fact that he is not himself either, and that this is one of the defining features of the effect Nemesis has on him. In comparing his conduct to that of a god, Tibullus appears at first to be attempting to justify his attitudes and behaviour, but doing so via an exemplum depicting that god in a ridiculous and profoundly uncharacteristic situation undermines that process, and only reinforces the irrationality of the speaker’s thought pattern. The exemplum, then, is inserted more to allow Tibullus-as-lover to attempt to explain himself than genuinely to justify himself. In 2.5, Tibullus makes no such direct comparison between himself and the figure of Apollo, but in the context of the earlier poem, the reader is sensitized to the idea of there being a relationship between their respective characterizations. Apollo is now very much himself again, and at first, Tibullus suggests that his speaker may be undergoing a similar rehabilitation: that in his more lucid moments, he is a good, upstanding supporter of contemporary values, traditionally laudable achievements and the successes and plans of the new regime. Eventually, though, we realize that this is not the ‘real’ Tibullus either, and that his speaker’s more obvious irrationality in 2.3 has simply been replaced by one that masquerades as rationality.30 Tellingly, by the end of the poem, he no longer identifies himself with Apollo, even by implication; instead, now that the god once again represents the rational principle, Tibullus approaches him as a suppliant, and as one unlikely to receive his request. Note the tentativeness with which he suggests that the bow and arrow might be abandoned (2.5.105–8), introducing his prayer (p.169) with a cautious pace tua (‘by your leave’) and taking care to praise the inherent value of the god’s invention before explaining the personal harm it has done him. The two are no longer presented as equals, as they had been in 2.3. In 2.5, Tibullus even puts Apollo in direct opposition to Nemesis and Amor, with the suggestion that the latter pair, in all their capriciousness and cruelty, are a more natural source of inspiration for his verse than Apollo is. At 2.5.113–14, the at tu (‘but you…’) that opens the couplet appears as though it might introduce an address to Apollo—another prayer for poetic inspiration, perhaps. Not until the pentameter is it made clear that he has turned to apostrophize Nemesis—that his ability to write even encomiastic poetry depends on her alone.31 In sum, though one might think that Apollo, as patron of poetry, would be a natural analogue for the poet, Tibullus in neither poem emphasizes the similarities and affinities between the traditional figure of Page 11 of 15

 

Apollo in Tibullus 2.3 and 2.5 Apollo and the elegiac speaker. On the contrary, he actively highlights the central difference between the two, depicting Apollo’s natural state as one of rationality and the elegiac speaker’s as one of irrationality. In the case of 2.5 especially, in its full political and literary context, this is not a bland restatement of the proverbial madness of lovers, but has broader implications about the poetic independence of the elegist and the political independence of his loverpoet persona. These are ideas that are more often associated with Propertius and Ovid, as they express them more directly, in contexts that are more obviously programmatic, but they can, I think, equally enrich our understanding of Tibullus and of his more subtly expressed poetic aims.32 Notes:

(1) See Prop. 1.8.41–2, 2.1.1–16, 2.3.9–10, 3.3, 4.1.71–4; Tib. 2.4.13–20; Ov. Am. 1.1, 1.15.35–6, 3.12.15–18, Ars am. 1.17–30, 2.493–510 (a parodic take on the trope). (2) See Kellum 1982; Gosling 1987, 1992; Wickkiser 2005; Miller 2006, 2009; Armstrong 2004: 528–30. (3) See for example Verg. Aen. 8.704–6, 720–2; Prop. 2.31, 3.11.69–72, 4.6; Hor. Carm. 4.5–6, Carm. saec. (4) On the poetological and programmatic significance of the Apollo and Daphne episode of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (1.450–567), for example, see Otis 1970: 101– 4, Knox 1986: 14–17, Mader 2008. Armstrong (2004: 534–6) and Gärtner (2007: 247–9) describe the ways in which Tibullus’ depiction of Apollo in 2.3 was an important influence on Ovid’s Apollo. See also the passages from Propertius and Ovid cited above, n. 1. (5) Maltby 2002 ad 2.3.11–36. (6) See Hes. fr. 54 M-W; Eur. Alc. 1–7; Apollod. Bibl. 3.10.4. (7) Callim. Hymn 2.47–9; see Williams 1978 ad 2.49. (8) On the relationship of 2.3.11–22 to Hellenistic versions of the story of Apollo and Admetus, see Copley 1947: 285–8, 292–4; Solimani 1970; Cairns 1979: 120– 1; Whitaker 1979: 132–3; Foulon 1980: 254–60. For other post-Hellenistic references to the erotic version of the myth, see Anth. Pal. 9.241 (Antipater); [Tib.] 3.4.65–72; Ov. Ars am. 2.239–41; Nonnus, Dion. 10.322–5. (9) Quotations from Tibullus are taken from Postgate’s 1905 edition. Translations are my own, unless otherwise stated. (10) On the elegists’ engagement with Roman ideals of masculinity, see Sauvage 1983; Wyke 1994a, especially 116–21; Williams 1999: 154–5.

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Apollo in Tibullus 2.3 and 2.5 (11) Lyne describes the difference succinctly: ‘it had been Delia’s privilege to be the crown of [Tibullus’ great] dream but by being that crown to render the dream impossible. Nemesis has the power to make Tibullus simply and completely renounce it’ (1980: 169). See also Bright 1978: 195; Lee-Stecum 2000: 188–92; Armstrong 2004: 534 n. 38; and Murgatroyd (1994: 84–5), who describes 2.3 as a dark reflection of the themes and content of 1.1, boding ill for the rest of Book 2. (12) Tib. 1.1.55–6; 1.5.5–6, 61–6; 1.6.37–8, 69–72; 1.8.3–6; 2.3.5–10, 79–80; 2.4.1–6; 2.6.25–8. (13) See Gotoff 1974: 239–40. (14) My translation reflects the majority interpretation of these lines, summarized by Murgatroyd (1994: ad loc.; he also lists several alternative interpretations). (15) See Arena 2005: 375 on Apollo’s hair in 2.5. (16) Consider the ambiguity (noted, e.g., by Miller 2009: 235, 241), attached to the identity of the sacerdos of the first line; though it soon becomes clear that this is Messalinus, the reader cannot at first be sure whether Tibullus is referring to himself. (17) See Merklin 1970: 302–3, Gosling 1987: 335, Miller 2009: 234–6. (18) Dio gives the date of the transfer of the Sibylline books as 18 BC (54.17.2); the apparent allusion to the Temple of Apollo as the site of the books in Tib. 2.5, which celebrates events taking place around 20 BC, may be evidence for an earlier date (the poem is, for example, cited for this purpose at Miller 2009: 240, n.118); the lack of external evidence, however, places interpretations of the poem that lay too much stress on this earlier date in danger of becoming circular. (19) See Kellum 1982; Wickkiser 2005: 274–80; Miller 2009: 185–96. (20) See also 1.3.35–48. On the negative subtext suggested in 2.5 by reference to the end of the reign of Saturn, see Merklin 1970: 303; Arena 2005: 362–3; Miller 2009: 237–8. (21) See Merklin 1970: 304–7; Arena 2005: 364–9. The last especially (the ambiguous depiction of Ilia’s encounter with Mars as an elegiac tryst rather than a rape) has ominous implications for the health of the empire that is to be founded as a result; on the Vestals’ chastity as essential to the health of the state, see Staples 1998: 129–56.

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Apollo in Tibullus 2.3 and 2.5 (22) See Tib. 1.1, 1.2.65–74, 1.3.35–82, 1.10, 2.1. The hymn to Osiris embedded in 1.7 is a partial exception, but see Moore 1989, Johnson 1990: 107–9 and Lambert 2003 on the ambiguities attached to Tibullus’ apparent enthusiasm for Messalla’s campaigns in that poem. (23) OLD, s.v. fatalis 2 and 4b. (24) See Miller 2006. For examples, see Hor. Carm. 2.10.18–20; Prop. 4.6.67–70; Eleg. Maec. 1.51–6. See also Callim. Aet. fr. 114, in which a statue of Apollo explains why he carries a bow in one hand and the figure of Charites in the other (probably, to punish the sinful and reward the good; see Harder 2012: ad loc.). (25) On this association as communicated by Augustan propaganda, see Wickkiser 2005. (26) The most famous instance of Apollo’s arrows bringing plague is Hom. Il. 1.43–56. Tibullus’ emphasis on Amor’s arrows also recalls Tib. 2.1.67–82, an extended reflection on Cupid’s power to cause either pain or joy, which is bracketed by references to his arrows; see also 2.6.15–16. The image of Amor superceding Apollo as archer-god is taken up by Ovid at Met. 1.452–65; see Mader 2008: 23–4. (27) See Miller 2009: 245–7. (28) On Tibullus’ use of a similar ploy in 1.7, see the sources cited above, n. 22. (29) See Lee-Stecum 2000: 207–9. (30) Ball (1981) interprets Tibullus’ conspicuous failure to mention Augustus or Actium explicitly in a poem whose themes so clearly relate to both as a sign of clear contempt; Ross (1975: 153–62), on the other hand, finds 2.5 ‘in manner and matter thoroughly Augustan’. The possibility of finding support in 2.5 for either view suggests that the reality is somewhere in between, and that the ambiguity is intentional; Johnson (1990: 107–9) eloquently expresses the resulting characterization of Tibullus’ speaker, who ‘proffers to Messalla and the world sentiments he tries to share with them, but which, at his heart’s core, he rejects’ (107 n.13): he is conscious of his own irrationality, but unable to reconcile himself to a more mainstream worldview, and so is left in a sort of limbo. (31) See Lee-Stecum 2000: 209–11, Miller 2009: 246. (32) I would like to express my gratitude to Prof. Philip Hardie, both for editing this volume and for organizing the conference from which it grew; to Dr Stephen Heyworth, who read an early version of the talk on which this paper is based; to

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Apollo in Tibullus 2.3 and 2.5 all those who offered comments and ideas when I presented it in Cambridge; and to OUP’s anonymous readers, for their helpful advice and suggestions.

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The ars rhetorica

Augustan Poetry and the Irrational Philip Hardie

Print publication date: 2016 Print ISBN-13: 9780198724728 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2015 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198724728.001.0001

The ars rhetorica An Ovidian remedium for Female furor? Jacqueline Fabre-Serris

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198724728.003.0009

Abstract and Keywords In Ars amatoria 1, Ovid claims that women have a stronger tendency to yield to furor because, unlike men, they are unable to regulate their libido. This text shares many features with Propertius 3.19, and Vergil, Ecl. 6, and many hints of Gallus let us suppose that all three poets are responding to Gallus’ Amores. This chapter argues that Ovid considers that the ars rhetorica could be a remedium for the female furor. The expression dare uerba (Her. 21) refers well to what Ovid has planned to do. Considering the intentions of men who dant uerba, it has the meaning of ‘to deceive’. It is literally that Ovid dat uerba to women. He puts into their mouths words with which puellae can decode the artes used by men, analyse their own passion, and try to make men fall or remain in love with them, or…get over their furor. Keywords:   Ovid, Propertius, Vergil, Gallus, ars rhetorica, women, libido, furor, remedium amoris, artes

In a recent book Julia Nelson Hawkins seeks to chart the emergence of a new use of medical science in Augustan Epic to which she gives the name of therapeutics because it allows the poet to position himself ‘as a healer and his poetry as healthy’.1 She explains this use of medicine as a result of Roman imperialism. Rome conquered during the first century BCE the most important Hellenistic courts in which literature and science had formerly flourished. The campaigns of Sulla and Pompey in Pontus were a turning point in Roman intellectual life as many refugee scholars went from the East to Rome and contributed to a progressive change in the landscape of philosophy, rhetoric, Page 1 of 15

 

The ars rhetorica science, religion and (Hawkins builds on an observation of Elizabeth Rawson2) medicine. At the end of Republic, ‘health’ and ‘disease’ became entangled in a complex of political metaphors that attempt to describe the state of affairs during the civil wars. If Pompey and Caesar are important players in the rise of medicine, Hawkins argues that its full ideological potential was activated by Augustus after Actium when he acquired an image as a ‘healer of the state’ after the ‘plague’ of the civil war. Without denying the specific features of literary practices analysed by Hawkins, I would like to stress that in a general way Roman poets tried to give a social role to literature during all the first century BCE in response to the politic, moral and ideological (p.171) crisis that occurred after the conquests. One of the issues intensely discussed by them attests to the importance given to the medical point of view, as relayed by Hellenistic philosophers: does poetry have a therapeutic influence on passion, like philosophy that aims to ensure the health of the soul and help to regain selfcontrol? In the Eclogues, Virgil entered a polemical dialogue on the question ‘is there any remedy for sufferings in love?’ with Gallus, who by writing the Amores had just created a new literary genre, elegy.3 The answer of the elegiac poet, who was referring to Philetas and Callimachus,4 from whom he borrowed the Acontius and Cydippe aetion, was: ‘no, there are none…, except love’; if he is spurned, a passionate lover will end up dying of love.5 The answer of Virgil, with reference to Theocritus read in the light of the Epicurean views on passion,6 was: ‘Yes, if someone writes pastoral poetry.’ By describing and praising pastoral life, in other words, a kind of life in harmony with nature, this poet will be able to give up love and succeed in renuntiatio amoris ‘the renunciation of love’, the goal praised by philosophy. Years later Ovid joined in this debate by modifying the question slightly and by asking ‘how to avoid suffering from the passion… without giving up loving?’ Ovid is the elegiac poet who was most concerned with the issue ‘how to cure the sufferings of love?’, as is evidenced by the fact that he wrote a book on this exact subject, the Remedia amoris, but also another work on how to keep control in love, the Ars amatoria. In this chapter, I argue that he found a new remedy for love sufferings in rhetoric, and that he proposed this remedy in particular to women, who represented the most important part of his readership or in any case a greater part than for the other poets.7 I shall try to show how in (p.172) the Heroides first, then in the Ars amatoria and in the Metamorphoses, he explains to women how they could use the ars rhetorica in order to be successful in love as well as to get rid of passion.

1 Women’s furor: A Gallan Motive? In Ars amatoria 1.279–350, Ovid evokes women’s inability to control their passion and find a cure for their sufferings. This is a significant passage because the poet is here positioning himself in an earlier debate, initiated by Virgil. We indeed find two texts on this subject in Virgil and in Propertius, who both probably were reacting to a poem of Gallus’ Amores. According to Ovid, in women furor reaches a higher degree than in men because, unlike men, women Page 2 of 15

 

The ars rhetorica do not regulate their sexual desire by imposing on it the limits set by the laws (281–2): parcior in nobis nec tam furiosa libido; | legitimum finem flamma uirilis habet ‘In us desire is weaker and not so furious (as in women); the manly flame knows a bound in accordance with the laws.’ He gives several examples of female furor: Byblis, Myrrha, Pasiphae, Merope, Scylla, Clytemnestra, Medea, the wife of Amyntor (unnamed), Phaedra and the second wife of Phineus (unnamed too). He dedicates to each of them two lines in which he evokes the object of their desire and the effects of their furor on themselves, their lover, theirs rivals or their children. He concludes (341–2): omnia feminea sunt ista libidine mota; | acrior est nostra plusque furoris habet (‘all those things were prompted by women’s lust; it is stronger and more furious than ours’). In my opinion, this passage originates from the Amores of Gallus, via Virgil and Propertius. The list provided by Ovid shares indeed some elements with the series of mythological examples of furor included in Eclogue 6 and in Propertius 3.19. In the middle of the song attributed to Silenus in Eclogue 6, Virgil both pays tribute to Gallus and through the voice of Linus gives his friend the advice to (p.173) stop writing elegiac poetry and to prefer instead aetiological poetry. If we take into account this homage and advice, it can be assumed that Virgil conceived the entire song as a response to one or several poems of Amores.8 After having described the formation of the world, Silenus evokes, dedicating two verses to each of them, the stories of Hylas, Pasiphae, Atalanta (unnamed), Heliades (unnamed too), Scylla, and Tereus and Philomela. He doesn’t distinguish between expressions of furor in women and in men, but his list is mostly feminine. Two of these examples are shared with Ovid: that of Scylla and that of Pasiphae. Both poets expatiate on the same example, the story of Pasiphae. In Virgil and in Ovid, the way in which it is developed provides the key for reading the whole passage. In Eclogue 6, Virgil tells the story of Pasiphae by imitating Gallus’ style. Furor leads Pasiphae to wander into the mountains in pursuit of her beloved whom she is looking for in order to bring him back to the cowsheds of Gortyn. The poet personally speaks twice to the young woman. He shows pity for her misfortune by repeating an expression borrowed from Calvus, one of Gallus’ neoteric models: a, uirgo infelix9 (47 and 48). He emphasizes the fact that she has yielded to madness: quae te dementia cepit! (47), tu in montibus erras (52). The wandering (erras) is a Gallan motif.10 It is the sign of erotic furor, a major element of elegiac poetics, as is pointed in the line 64, where errantem qualifies Gallus tormented by passion on the banks of Permessus. Between lines 47 and 52, Virgil compares Pasiphae with the daughters of Proetus who were convinced that they had changed into cows, observing that nevertheless they were not so insane as to desire a shameful kind of intercourse. It is no coincidence that Virgil repeats the expression quae te dementia cepit ‘what madness has gripped you?’ in Georgics 4.448 to explain the behaviour of another Gallan character, Orpheus, who is also tormented by erotic furor (…cum subita incautum dementia cepit amantem).

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The ars rhetorica The fact that, unlike Virgil, Ovid distinguishes between expressions of furor in women and in men can be explained by the existence of an intermediate text: Propertius 3.19. In this poem, Propertius replies to (p.174) Cynthia’s complaint that men are enslaved to their libido (1–2): obicitur totiens a te mihi nostra libido: | crede mihi, uobis imperat ista magis ‘You are constantly reproaching me with our lust; believe me, lust overcomes you more.’ He explains that, when their mind is possessed by love and once the limits imposed by pudor are broken, women are unable to keep control (3–4): uos, ubi contempti rupistis frena pudoris, | nescitis captae mentis habere modum ‘When you scorn decency and have burst its bonds, you are not able to keep control of your mind that is possessed.’ He then gives a list of mythological examples: Pasiphae, the daughter of Salmoneus (unnamed), Myrrha, Medea, Clytemnestra and Scylla. Propertius summarizes each of their stories in two lines, except the last one that he relates in eight lines. The structure of his mythological anthology is thus the same as that of Virgil (and Ovid). Propertius also addresses the heroine of his most developed story (21–2): ‘tuque, o Minoa uenumdata, Scylla, figura | tondes purpurea regna paterna coma’ ‘And you, O Scylla, shear away in the purple lock your father’s realm, which you sold for Minos’ beauty.’ If we compare the three passages, Virgil, Propertius, and Ovid have in common two heroines, Pasiphae and Scylla, which points to a common origin. As Virgil addresses Gallus in the middle of Silenus’ song, and insofar as Propertius and Ovid are elegiac poets, it is tempting to suppose that they are all referring to Gallus’ Amores. Furthermore, Ovid and Propertius share the stories of Myrrha, Medea, and Clytemnestra. Unlike Virgil, the two elegiac poets speak only of female furor and, although they consider it to be stronger than male furor, they do not condemn it. If we look at the way they tell the story of Pasiphae, the comparison between Virgil and Ovid is very significant. Like Virgil, Ovid describes in detail the wandering of Pasiphae in the woods and pastures of Ida and he stresses her jealousy toward some cows that appeal to the bull. The motif of jealousy toward a rival is also a Gallan one,11 as is the word employed inuidus (296): inuida formosas oderat illa boues ‘jealous she hated the beautiful cows’. Indeed we find the adjective inuidus at the beginning of Propertius 1.5, addressed to Gallus.12 The sentence 311–12 in nemus (p.175) et saltus thalamo regina relicto | fertur (‘the queen, leaving her room is carried away (by passion) to the woods and pastures’) combines differently some words we find at the beginning of the Culex, a poem that several times refers to Gallus13 (23–4): aerios nemorum cultus siluasque uirentes | te cultrice uagus saltus feror inter et antra. Like Virgil and Propertius, Ovid addresses the heroine whose story is told at greatest length, Pasiphae. Like Propertius he does not condemn her but tries to reason with her by showing the futility of her different attempts to seduce a bull (such as the choice of expensive clothing or hairstyle changes), as long as her beloved is not suitable to appreciate them. Therefore he calls Pasiphae not an insane, but a stupid woman (inepta, 206), pointing out that her behaviour is Page 4 of 15

 

The ars rhetorica simply ill-judged. He explains to her—looking at things from a pragmatic point of view—that she has only two options: either she is faithful to her husband or she betrays him, but with another man (309–10): siue placet Minos, nullus quaeretur adulter; | siue uirum mauis fallere, falle uiro ‘If you are attracted to Minos, don’t look for a lover; if you prefer to betray your husband, betray him with a man.’ She has to take into account not morality but nature (i.e. the differences in the species). This passage is typical of the way Ovid both considers lust and speaks to women. He tries to see things from their point of view by analysing their feelings and then gives them alternative advice. Like Propertius he thinks that women are more powerless than men when they are faced with passion. He comes back to this issue in Ars amatoria 3.29–30 by claiming: femina nec flammas nec saeuos discutit arcus; | parcius haec uideo tela nocere uiris ‘Woman averts neither fires nor savage bows: I see that these weapons are less harmful to men.’ He adds that infidelity and perfidy are rather male practices (31–2): saepe uiri fallunt, tenerae non saepe puellae | paucaque, si quaeras, crimina fraudis habent ‘Men are often unfaithful; tender maids rarely and if we inquire, they can be accused of few perfidious acts.’ All the women he names as having suffered from male fraus, Medea, Ariadne, Phyllis, and Dido, are letter writers in the Heroides. Ovid concludes the passage with this observation (41–2): quid uos perdiderit, discam; nescistis amare; | defuit ars uobis; arte perennat amor ‘What led you to ruin, I will tell you: you did not know how to love. You lacked art. Art sustains love.’ Virgil and Propertius described and condemned female (p.176) furor. The former speaks of dementia; the latter considers that female passion results from the transgression of limits imposed by pudor. Ovid advances an explanation that plays down the situation. Love has ruined the life of many women making them destructive and harmful to themselves and their family for only one reason: they did not know ars amandi, in other words, they were not in the same position as men! He dramatizes the role he wants to play with women at the beginning of Ars amatoria 3 where Venus is supposed to address an injunction to him: after having introduced himself as the praeceptor amoris par excellence in Ars amatoria 1, he has to serve also as adviser to women (haec quoque pars monitis erudienda tuis ‘this part (of humanity) also must be instructed by your counsels’, 48). As we have seen, it was (already) exactly the role that he played in Ars amatoria 1 with Pasiphae. But what is the ars amandi, he conceived first for men about? It consisted essentially of applying the ars rhetorica to love, that is to say, putting in practice (in different erotic situations) the set of techniques of analysis developed by rhetoricians and the right way of using certain words, images, and figures of speech taught by them. I believe that Ovid saw in the ars rhetorica he learned to use for writing controuersiae and suasoriae14 in his youth, a double remedium for female furor: on the one hand for the benefit of women and on the other hand for the advantage of men. By reading Ovid, women will indeed learn to understand what is going on in the games of seduction used by men, and Page 5 of 15

 

The ars rhetorica therefore they will not be instantly defeated. As a result, they will no longer give way to strong feelings that could lead them to commit excesses and cause terrible damage to their partners or families. That will be a real advantage for men: a woman educated by Ovid will never be possessed by furor and so will never be a danger to her partner. To support this argument I shall take different examples of the way in which Ovid describes and analyses female passion in the Heroides, showing that every time he is using techniques and motifs developed in the rhetorical schools.

(p.177) 2 The Heroides, or How to Teach Women to Use the ars rhetorica I begin with Phyllis who belongs to the list of mythological heroines we found in Ars amatoria 3. She is probably also a Gallan heroine.15 Ovid evokes her story on several occasions. He uses it in Ars amatoria 2.353–4 to illustrate the impact of absence on desire, and in Ars amatoria 3.459–60 male perfidy. In Remedia amoris 581–698, he relates in detail the last moments of the girl before she commits suicide in order to illustrate the idea that loneliness is harmful and has to be avoided by unhappy lovers. I focus on Heroides 2 because Ovid gives voice to the young woman. In her letter, Phyllis looks back on her love affair with Theseus’ son, Demophoon. Now she is able to understand what happened when she met Demophoon.16 She was once an inexperienced girl and so she was deceived because she knew nothing about the artes some men are accustomed to apply when they decide to seduce a woman: credidimus blandis, quorum tibi copia, uerbis, credidimus generi nominibusque tuis, credidimus lacrimis; an et hae simulare docentur hae quoque habent artes quaque iubentur eunt? dis quoque credidimus… fallere credentem non est operosa puellam gloria; simplicitas digna fauore fuit. sum decepta tuis et amans et femina uerbis.

(Her. 2.49–53; 63–5) I had faith in the caressing words you used in abundance, I had faith in your lineage and in your titles, I had faith in your tears; can these also be taught to feign? Do the tears have their own tricks? And are these ready to flow where bidden? I had faith too in gods…it is not difficult to gain fame by deceiving a credulous maiden; my simplicity would have deserved a favour. I was deceived by your speech, I who loved and was a woman. The same idea is developed at Heroides 12 written by a woman who belongs also to the list given at the beginning of Ars amatoria 3: (p.178) Medea. She too sees herself in the light of experience as a naive girl, deceived by the words chosen by a seducer who added to his speech other proven techniques: haec animum (et quota pars haec sunt?) mouere puellae Page 6 of 15

 

The ars rhetorica simplicis et dextrae dextera iuncta meae. uidi etiam lacrimas17 (an et ars est fraudis in illis?18) sic cito cum uerbis capta puella tuis.

(Her. 12.89–92) These words (and how slight a part of them is here!) moved the heart of a simple maid and your right hand joined to mine. I saw also your tears (is there an art of using them to deceive?). Thus quickly was a girl taken by your words. In naming this kind of fraus, Ovid chooses an interesting phrase, dare uerba, literally ‘give words’, but, if we consider the intention of whoever does it (these words are told to appeal and seduce), with a second meaning, ‘deceive’. We find this phrase in the last two Heroides, written by Acontius and Cydippe, in which Ovid proposes, as Alessandro Barchiesi emphasizes, ‘a re-reading and final conclusion of Roman elegy’.19 How did Acontius manage to seduce Cydippe? By giving her some words20 so that she will repeat them. So doing she was deceived because she was committed by a pledge without knowing it, as she notes herself in her letter (21.123–4): uerba quid exultas tua si mihi uerba dederunt | sumque parum prudens capta puella dolis? ‘Why exult if your words deceived me and if I, a not wise enough girl, was taken by your tricks?’ It is no coincidence if in Ars amatoria 1.453–6 her story is used as an example of the impact that the first letter of love should have on a puella: ergo eat et blandis peraretur littera uerbis exploretque animos primaque temptet iter; littera Cydippen pomo perlata fefellit, insciaque est uerbis capta puella suis.

(p.179) Let then a letter speed, traced with caressing words, explore her feelings and be the first to try the path. A letter carried in an apple deceived Cydippe and the maid was taken unawares by her own words. The story of Cydippe allows Ovid to play on the literal meaning of the expression dare uerba that reflects exactly the seduction process. Lovers give to puellae the words, they do not have in order to describe feelings (of love) they don’t yet know and that they themselves want to instil in these girls. Lovers are successful because they know how to perform the art of saying words at the right time and in the most effective way, and by adding some bodily actions (such as tears) supposed to convince women of their good faith and sincerity. Like Phyllis and Medea Cydippe underlines her simplicity: she was a very easy prey (106): uisaque simplicitas est mea posse capi ‘and it seemed that my simplicity could be taken in’.

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The ars rhetorica Before going on, I shall focus on this art of saying words, and more broadly on the use of artes in love. Apparently this matter was discussed among the elegists. In 1.1.17–18, Propertius describes himself as the only lover-poet who has failed to use artes: in me tardus Amor non ullas cogitat artes | nec meminit notas, ut prius, ire uias ‘In my case Love appears to be slow-witted; he does not remember any of his techniques and forgets to take as before known paths.’ Apparently it is a point on which he wants to distinguish himself from Gallus. This passage follows indeed a few verses on the seruitium amoris of Milanion that was one of the most famous Gallan examples. Propertius concludes (15–16): ergo uelocem potuit domuisse puellam: | tantum in amore preces et benefacta ualent ‘He was thus able to tame the swift girl: such power have prayers and benefits in love.’ The difference with Tibullus is also striking. In 1.4, the latter theorizes seruitium amoris by listing all the artes likely to lead a lover to be successful in love with a puer. I argued in a previous paper that Tibullus was systematizing here (but limiting it to homoerotic love) a part of Gallan poetics.21 In 1.6.15–22, Tibullus lists different female techniques for deceiving their husbands and in 1.9.65–70 he stresses the ways in which they are able to make their bodies more attractive, noting in a married woman a non solita ars ‘an unaccustomed skill’ (66) that should have alerted her husband. I stress that none of these artes implicates rhetoric. The last elegist, Ovid follows Gallus and (p. 180) Tibullus. He wrote treatises on three fields to which it was possible to apply the artes of love: the conquest of a beloved (female or male) in the Ars amatoria, the ways of increasing or making the seduction of the body last in the Medicamina faciei femineae and the techniques used to cure passion in the Remedia amoris. To come back to the Heroïdes, it is literally the case that Ovid dat uerba to women, since he puts words in their mouth so that they can tell what happened when they fell in love and what they are expecting now from their lovers. From this point of view, Heroides 2 is a little masterpiece of rhetoric. As Andreas Michalopoulos emphasizes: ‘although she is supposed to be a naive and unsophisticated Thracian princess, with Ovid’s help, Phyllis becomes an eloquent and stylish epistolographer’.22 He shows, by analysing this letter in detail, that Phyllis is using the division into four parts of the rhetorical speech: exordium, narratio, argumentatio, and peroratio.23 I agree that it is paradoxical that Phyllis argues she was deceived by the words and other techniques of seduction employed by Demophoon, while at the same time building an elaborate argument and displaying an impressive rhetorical ability to convince her addressee. As usual, when a text is attributed by the author to a narrator playing a role in the story, we have to take into account the effects induced by the existence of two kinds of readers: one fictitious (here Demophoon to whom Phyllis’ letter is addressed) and one real: the readership of the main narrator, Ovid. In my opinion, the use of the ars rhetorica, in which Phyllis shows herself so skillful without ever being educated, is to be considered as a key offered by Page 8 of 15

 

The ars rhetorica Ovid to his female readership.24 He (p.181) provides a rational explanation for female passion that was caused, according to him, by women’s simplicitas, in other terms, by their ignorance: they did not know the ars rhetorica used by their seducer. Combining accounts of the events and introspection Ovid describes the rise and development of their current furor, which has the effect of deleting a part of its irrationality. His Phyllis explains her situation in a rational way now that she sees through Demophoon’s game, even though the emotions provoked by this situation continue to be strong and are leading her to suicide. At the same time, in the Heroides Ovid shows women how to use the ars rhetorica in their turn. The letter writers, who are all seeking to convince their lover to come back, are indeed implicitly proposed as models to his female readership. From this point of view, Ovid’s purpose is (already) to give to women different means to fight men on equal terms, as he will claim in the Ars amatoria when he includes women in the readership targeted by the elegists, each of them, even Propertius, pretending to be the praeceptor amoris of Roman youth. If we consider the fact that the last of the elegists always aims to keep under control feelings and passions, words, acts, and body, it is tempting to conclude that he has made a precious present to women by empowering them not to be victims of self-destructive feelings; but that he has found at the same time a means of controlling what was de facto out of his reach, namely the way in which women feel love that men perceive as dangerous because it is excessive.

3 Female furor and Rhetorical Debates in the Metamorphoses In the last part of my chapter, I shall support my argument by analysing how, in the Metamorphoses, Ovid makes Atalanta, Byblis, and Myrrha talk about their passion. I have selected these figures because they belong to the list of examples that Ovid shares with (p.182) Virgil and Propertius. In elegiac poetry, the Arcadian huntress, Atalanta, is the heroine of a famous Gallan exemplum: the seruitium amoris of Milanion. In Eclogue 6, Virgil evokes another Atalanta, the one from Boeotia. This Atalanta forced men who wanted to marry her to compete in a race resulting in death if they failed to beat her. In Metamorphoses 10, Venus tells Adonis how she helped Hippomenes to defeat this dangerous girl. As in the letters written by Phyllis and Medea, Ovid aims to show that Atalanta was in fact an ignorant and naive uirgo who yielded to love and was finally victim of her passion. In order to enable the reader to understand her psychological evolution, Ovid makes Atalanta speak to Hippomenes, who wanted to challenge her after having first seen races that were fatal for the girl’s opponents. As in the suasoriae, Atalanta debates with herself. She wonders whether she prefers to be defeated or victorious (10.610):…dubitat superari an uincere malit. Using a narrative technique similar to what we call ‘interior monologue’, Ovid lets the reader know the thoughts passing through the minds of Atalanta. The speech he relates is indeed not totally spoken out loud. It reveals that the young Page 9 of 15

 

The ars rhetorica girl is becoming aware of a strong emotion whose causes she looks for by listing a series of ‘objective’ reasons (as taught by rhetoricians). Hippomenes is beautiful (nec forma tangor (poteram tamen hac quoque tangi) ‘I am not touched by his beauty; however it could touch me as well’ 614); he is young (sed quod adhuc puer est; non me mouet ipse, sed aetas, ‘but because he is still a boy: it is not he himself who moves me, but his youth’ 615); he is courageous (quid, quod inest uirtus et mens interrita leti? ‘And what about his courage and his mind not afraid of death?’ 616); he is noble (quid, quod ab aequorea numeratur origine quartus? ‘What about the fact that he is by birth the fourth from the god of the seas’ 617) He loves her and his love leads him to attempt this crazy race (quid quod amat tantique putat conubia nostra | ut pereat, si me fors illi dura negarit? ‘What about the fact that he loves me and counts marriage with me of so great worth that he would perish if cruel fate denies me to him’ 618–19). Atalanta also speaks to the young man in order to discourage him: dum licet, hospes, abi thalamosque relinque cruentos. | coniugium crudele meum est; tibi nubere nulla | nolet et optari potes a sapiente puella ‘While still you may, stranger, go away and renounce a bloody wedding. Marriage with me is cruel: no maid will refuse to marry you and you may be desired as husband by a tasteful (or (p.183) welladvised) girl’ 620–2). Ovid comes back then to another interior monologue. Atalanta is wondering again about the origin of her agitation (623): cur tamen est mihi cura tui, tot iam ante peremptis? ‘Why however this care for you, since so many already perished?’ Her emotion results in a series of questions and answers that are contradictory and she ends with this confession (633–5):…quod si felicior essem | nec mihi coniugium fata inportuna negarent, | unus eras cum quo sociare cubilia uellem ‘If I were happier and if the harsh fates did not deny me marriage, you would be the only with whom I should want to share my couch.’ For speaking thus, Venus, the narrator of this story, calls (636) Atalanta rudis primoque Cupidine tacta (‘inexperienced and wounded for the first time by Cupido’) and explains (635): quid facit ignorans, amat et non sentit amorem (‘ignorant of what she does, she loves and is not aware of her love’). By putting this commentary into the mouth of Venus, Ovid gives to his male and female readership the correct interpretation of the words and thoughts he has attributed to Atalanta in order to describe the birth of an emotion, usual at the beginning of love, but that nobody would have expected from this girl apparently insensitive to the death of so many pretenders. The other lesson to keep in mind is that Atalanta, although she is not able to recognize in her emotions an effect of love, as she is on this subject rudis, is trying nevertheless to elucidate them rationally, by listing different motifs that could have provoked them and by attempting to see things clearly in order to make the right decision. It is also this attitude that Ovid attributes to two other girls, Byblis and Myrrha, whom he quotes in the Ars amatoria as examples of female furor and to whom he gives uerba in the Metamorphoses, in order to analyse and understand their feelings. Byblis writes a letter to her brother with the intent of persuading him Page 10 of 15

 

The ars rhetorica to share her passion and become her lover. She announces her plans from her first words (9.530–1): quam nisi tu dederis, non est habitura salutem, | hanc tibi mittit amans…‘A greeting/health, which if you give it not to her, she will not have, one who loves you sends to you.’ What is the aim of her letter? Byblis hopes to get a salus from her brother, Caunus, in return for her own. This is a clever way of playing with words ‘by saying without saying’ in order that the addressee continues his reading. I shall not analyse in detail the rhetorical skill that Byblis demonstrates here. It is significant that she states she would like to ‘argue her case’ (532–3 uellem | (p.184) posset agi mea causa) without giving her name25 (532–3): sine nomine…| meo. The young girl describes in detail the signs through which Love was expressed in her body (pallor, thinness, tears, and sighs) and the gestures it has inspired in her: hugs and kisses that could not be felt (sentiri) by Caunus as those of a sister (539). At the beginning of his narration Ovid explains in detail how Byblis’ desire for her brother (cupidine fratris, 455) changed her feelings and behaviour, but underlines also that she had no idea what was going on until the erotic content of some dreams made her finally aware of the nature of her new feelings. It is striking that in the letter sent to Caunus she tries to convince him that taking action would be normal (577) by asking (354): quid liceat (‘what is allowed?’) and by answering the question (551–2): is it nefas or fas? (‘is it criminal or not?’) with a nescimus adhuc (‘we do not yet know’, 554). She adds in support an argument well-known in rhetoric: the boldness of the young who believe that anything is possible following the example of the gods (554–5 et cuncta licere | credimus et sequimur magnorum exempla deorum). If the law does not stop a woman in love, as Ovid notes in Ars amatoria 3, it is clear from this passage that Byblis is fully aware that her lust will be judged by Caunus as ‘forbidden’ (uetitae libidinis, 577). Her letter is entirely designed to remove this condemnation. In this sense, her point of view is dynamic: she wants to persuade her brother that the only problem in their case is how to keep a love affair secret. In an interior monologue again (secum…inquit 10, 320), another incestuous girl, Myrrha debates the same question with herself. She would like to act but she also is wondering if love for her father is, or is not, a nefas ‘sin’ and a scelus ‘crime’ (322). Myrrha does not have the same perspective as Byblis: she is not trying to persuade her beloved, but attempting to make the right decision. This is another aim of the ars rhetorica and one that requires a more detailed examination. However the series of arguments successively drawn from nature and from the laws in use among men (laws are different from one country to another) will not allow her to decide. What ultimately prevails is a sense of guilt, evidence that the law can be a barrier also (p.185) for women, which is then confirmed by her suicide attempt. Insofar as Myrrha acts as a rhetor debating a general issue, ‘is incest a nefas?’, in the context of a particular story, where the love of a daughter for her father is condemned by the laws of her country (this makes her case similar to those discussed in controuersiae), can we still speak of Page 11 of 15

 

The ars rhetorica furor? It is her nurse who allows her to realize a project that she can neither give up nor decide to implement.

4 Conclusion I come back to the Ars amatoria in which Ovid claimed that his intention was to help women. The ‘weapons’ that he want to give them are those already used by men, trained in the artes of conquest and of the seruitium amoris ‘slavery of love’ by all elegiac poets, even Propertius. Insofar as men try to seduce women essentially with words, rhetoric is the spearhead of this teaching. Women are not supposed however to play the same role as men. Even if there is, on some points, a reversal of gender relations in the elegiac universe, where the puella is called domina, generally women are not leading the assault. What help can they expect from rhetoric? The answer will be found in the passages in which Propertius and Ovid emphasize the excess of female furor, and also in all the texts in which Ovid gives women their own voice. If they know the ars rhetorica which does not just consist in learning techniques of expression but also serves to analyse situations and feelings, they will be able to understand how their love is born from the words used by men. After learning to decipher the artes employed by men to seduce and deceive them (dare uerba), they will be able to use them in their interest in order to persuade men to respond to their desire. One effect of women’s use of rhetoric will be to reduce the part of furor and increase the role of ratio in their behaviour. Overall the result will be beneficial to men who will suffer less from the effects of female passion. One last issue remains. What personal benefit was gained by the man who gave himself this role of praeceptor among women? I believe that his main advantage was precisely to have among them this outstanding position. By giving them words to understand and express their feelings, Ovid has ensured a readership that no poet (p.186) before him had sought or acquired. But this is hardly surprising coming from a poet who in his youth was a regular visitor of the circle of Messalla where he met a poetess, Sulpicia, of whom he was, I believe, in some way ‘a disciple’ or at least from whom he learned a great deal about female elegiac furor. Notes:

(1) Hawkins 2015: 29. (2) Hawkins 2015: 320; Rawson 1985: 14. (3) On the controversy that Virgil instituted with Gallus, see Fabre-Serris 2008: 57–87. (4) On Gallus and Philetas, see Cairns 2006: 124, 127–8; Fabre-Serris 2008: 68, 78 n. 73, 84–6, 93.

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The ars rhetorica (5) This debate between Virgil and Gallus is staged in Eclogue 10. See FabreSerris 2008: 62–7; 72–5. (6) The way in which Virgil has adapted some Idylls of Theocritus shows that he reads these texts by projecting the point of view of Lucretius on passion. See Fabre-Serris 2008: 52–69; 72–87. (7) In my opinion, the readership of Ovid was composed of men and women from highest social (senatorial and equestrian) social classes. Unlike Farrell (1998: 313) who speaks of meretrices (AA. 1.435), of women of libertine status (AA. 3.57–8, 615–16) and ‘thus probably of foreign descent or even born foreignborn’, I think that we cannot take at face value the statements of Ovid about his female readership (certainly not the matronae, AA 1.31–4; 3.57–58). Not only the more a denial is repeated, the more it becomes suspicious; but why would educated women in the elite classes have abstained from reading erotic poetry? Before becoming a poetess, as is evidenced through different intertextual allusions in her poems, Sulpicia, the daughter of Servius Sulpicius Rufus (consul in 51 BC) was a reader. See Ovid himself (Trist. 2.307–8): nec tamen est facinus uersus euoluere molles,/multa licet castae non facienda legant, ‘It is not a crime to read sweet (erotic) verses, chaste women can read a lot of things that they should not do.’ (8) Fabre-Serris 2014: paragr. 9–11. (9) According to Servius Calvus wrote a, uirgo infelix, herbis pasceris amaris (ad Buc. 6.47). For the suggestion that Gallus also treated Io, see Cairns 1993: 112– 14. (10) See Cairns 2006: 80, 137, 227–8, 330; Fabre-Serris 1995: 133–4; forthcoming: paragr. 11. (11) Apparently Gallus deployed the figure of the (rich) rival inherited from Hellenistic and Neoteric poetry. See Du Quesnay 1979: 60–1, Cairns 2006: 34, 113–14, 117. (12) Prop. 1.5.1 inuide, tu tandem uoces compesce molestas, ‘envious man, curb now at least your tiresome speech’. (13) See Fabre-Serris 2013a. (14) According to Seneca the Elder (Contr. 2.2.12) Ovid appears to have preferred the suasoriae to the controuersiae. (15) See Fabre-Serris 2013b.

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The ars rhetorica (16) Knox (1995: 112–13) observes that ‘Ovid’s heroine makes little attempt to persuade Demophoon to come back’. Her letter is ‘an exploration of the process of despair that led to act’. I want to add, it is also an exploration of the way Phyllis reacted to the ars amandi used by Theseus’son to seduce her. (17) In Ars amatoria 1.657–60 Ovid recommends explicitly men to use tears. (18) On the different lessons proposed for this passage, see Bessone 1997: 155, who prefers an pars est fraudis in illis?. (19) Barchiesi 1999b: 55. (20) We find the expression in an incipit of Heroides 21, considered as an addition to the original text: accipe, Cydippe, despecti nomen Aconti/illius in pomo qui tibi uerba dedit. But the choice of this expression to characterize the behaviour of Acontius is nevertheless significant. (21) Fabre-Serris 2004. (22) Michalopoulos 2008: 206. (23) According to Michalopoulos (2008: 190–1, the plan of the letter is: exordium (1–10), narratio I (11–22), argumentatio (23–90), narratio II (91–102), argumentatio II (103–16), narratio III (117–30), peroratio (131–48). The most important difference between this letter and a rhetorical speech ‘is that the narrative as a whole does not precede the argumentation, but rather argumentative sections alternate with the narrative depending on Phyllis’ strategy at the moment’ (191). (24) In a stimulating book, Spentzou (2003: 6) argues that Ovid is ‘thinking that there is a distinctive “women’s discourse” on which he wanted to experiment by creating these exclusively feminine narratives’. Without denying that the speeches attributed by Ovid to women in the Heroides have some referents in real life, I believe that this point of view has to be balanced by the awareness of the ‘intention of the author’, who seeks to provide a personal contribution to these female speeches as we can see it in Ars amatoria 3 where he presents himself as a praeceptor amoris for women. So doing he is theorizing his own practice in the Heroides in which women recognize they were ‘ignorant and naïve before’, in other terms, before having written these letters. I believe we can not overlook the fact that the Heroides were written by a man, who on the pretext of giving to women a voice, i.e., of giving them his own voice, provides them some advice to interpret their situations and express their desire and will. (25) Ovid repeats here lines 1–2 of Heroides 4: Quam nisi tu dederis, caritura est ipsa salutem | mittit Amazonio Cressa puella uiro ‘with wishes for the welfare

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The ars rhetorica which she herself, unless you give it her, will ever lack, the Cretan maid greets the hero whose mother was an Amazon’.

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Augustan Gothic

Augustan Poetry and the Irrational Philip Hardie

Print publication date: 2016 Print ISBN-13: 9780198724728 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2015 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198724728.001.0001

Augustan Gothic Alexander Pope Reads Ovid William Fitzgerald

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198724728.003.0010

Abstract and Keywords This chapter considers Alexander Pope’s verse letter ‘Eloisa to Abelard’ in relation to Ovid’s Heroides and Horace’s Epistles. Eloisa’s allusion to a line from Horace’ Epistles 1.11 (oblitusque meorum, obliuiscendus et illis, 9) gives a very different tinge to Horace’s rejection of the lyric impulse. Similarly, her proud claim that she has not yet forgot herself to stone revises the statement of Ariadne in the Heroides (10.49–50) that she is more stone than the rock on which she sits. The chapter argues that the Gothic elements of Pope’s poem take the Ovidian symbiosis of landscape and psychology to a new level, and that Pope’s later turn from Ovidian to Horatian epistles involves an occlusion of what the heroic epistle reveals. Furthermore, Ovid’s interest in the overlap between acceptable and unacceptable love in the Metamorphoses encourage us to read Eloisa’s confusion of erotic love with the love of God as a cultural rather than a merely psychological matter. Keywords:   Pope, Ovid, Horace, heroic epistle, Gothic, reception

English literature has its Augustan age too. It is not the Golden Age—that honour belongs to Shakespeare and the Elizabethans—but the first half of the eighteenth century, the age of Dryden and Pope. The designation was cemented by Oliver Goldsmith in an essay in The Bee (1759), but contemporary gestures, such as Pope’s Letter to Augustus (George II), written in imitation of Horace, had already claimed the connection.1 Opinions differ as to how the figure of Augustus was evaluated in this period, and what its application to George II Page 1 of 12

 

Augustan Gothic might have implied; the picture is certainly not straightforward, but it is not my purpose to consider the politics of this connection.2 The same period is also sometimes referred to under the broader rubric of ‘The Age of Reason’, and Pope’s imitations of Horace, the genial poet of mediocrity who, in Pope’s own words, ‘talks us into sense’ (Essay on Criticism, 654), fit neatly under either designations. (p.188) The verse letter was a dominant genre of the period, but Horace’s Epistles were not the only Augustan model for this form.3 The other model, Ovid’s Heroides, is less amenable to our image of the Age of Reason. The Heroides are in every way the opposite of Horace’s Epistles: instead of man speaking to man, addressing shared ethical concerns under the umbrella of friendship, we have the lament of the abandoned woman, delivering, without hope of mutuality, a tirade of recriminations to her absent lover. Extremity is the place from which she speaks. The Heroic Epistle had flourished in the Elizabethan period and continued to be written through the seventeenth century.4 Pope’s Eloisa to Abelard, written early in his career (1717, when Pope was twenty nine), was the culmination of this tradition.5 But it is a poem that looks forward as well as backward, for it is often hailed as a precursor of the Gothic sensibility that was to dominate the literary scene after Pope’s death (1746).6 Perhaps the most striking aspect of this anticipation is that it takes the Ovidian symbiosis of landscape and psychology to a new and exciting place.7 (p.189) Eloisa, immured in a convent after being forcibly separated from her lover, Abelard, whom her brothers have castrated, addresses a tormented monologue to her lover in which she struggles with her inability to resign the love of man, or a man, for God.8 In these deep solitudes and awful cells Where heavenly-pensive contemplation dwells, And ever-musing melancholy reigns, What means this tumult in a vestal’s veins?

(Eloisa, 1–4) In these opening words Eloisa is drawn up sharply by a sudden shock. As her eye pans over this gloomy scene she is startled to come across—her palpitating self. In her hands is a letter from Abelard, to whom she addresses an outpouring of love and memories, while she carries on an argument with herself over whether she can, or should, resign herself to the condition of a ‘vestal’. The tone of this opening is recognisably Gothic, but how are we to understand Pope’s progression from the Ovidian anticipation of Gothic in Eloisa to the Horatian epistles of his maturity? William Dowling argues that the premise of Eloisa to Abelard is that the isolation and anxiety of the Heroic Epistle represent not a condition universal to human consciousness, but merely and contingently Page 2 of 12

 

Augustan Gothic the cultural predicament of women. This allows Pope to dwell in his later Horatian poetry within a male world of public concern.9 Then, after Pope’s death, in mid-century, Joseph Warton (1762, vol. 1: 334–5) hails Eloisa as one of Pope’s greatest poems, its sublimity the essence of true poetry. Solipsism no longer implies the terrible separation of man from man and God, but appears instead as a pleasing mysterious aura glimmering round the physical landscape and answering to mysterious depths in the consciousness of the beholder.10 Dowling offers us two alternative perspectives on the verse epistle’s duality (Horatian/Ovidian; male-social/female-solipsistic). In its original Roman context, we have a synchronous balance or positive tension—both are ‘Augustan’, composed roughly at the same time. In the English context, as Dowling interprets it, the ascendant (p.190) form of the Heroic Epistle, monological, solipsistic and lyric/tragic, is consigned to the category of women’s experience to make way for the sociable, sane dialogue between men (Pope’s Imitations of Horace), but only to be resuscitated by mid-century, with the rise of the Gothic, and reinterpreted as speaking to the universal subject, deep rather than perverse. By mid-century, Augustanism comes at last to rest ‘in that solitude of mind in the denial of which it had begun’.11 Dowling offers no evidence that Pope consigns solipsism to the contingencies of women’s condition in Eloisa, but certainly the distinction between the outgoing, varied life of men and the monotonous, confined life of women, left alone to brood on their love, had become a topos of the Heroic Epistle by the time of Pope. It would culminate in Byron’s famous lines from Julia’s letter to Don Juan, ‘Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart, / ’Tis woman’s whole experience’ (Don Juan, Canto 1, st. 194, 1–2). In Heroides 19, Ovid’s Hero had contrasted the varied pursuits of men (hunting, farming, wrestling, riding, fishing) with the confined monotony of the woman’s life, for whom nothing remains but to love (superest praeter amare nihil, Heroides 19.16).12 Accordingly Hero loves with a love that Leander could never return (plus quoque quam reddi quod mihi possit amo, 18). True mutuality is impossible. But the lover to whom Eloisa writes is castrated, and Pope gives the tradition a twist when Eloisa casts an envious glance at the blankness of her lover’s experience: For thee the fates, severely kind, ordain A cool suspense from pleasure and from pain; Thy life a long, dead calm of fix’d repose; No pulse that riots, and no blood that glows. Still as the sea, ere winds were taught to blow, Or moving spirit bad the waters flow; Soft as the slumbers of a saint forgiv’n, And mild as opening gleams of promis’d heaven.

(Eloisa, 249–56)

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Augustan Gothic Eloisa situates the tumult of her emotions between, on the one side, the neutered calm of her lover, and on the other the serenity of her fellow nuns, which she cannot share. Describing the latter, she borrows a line from an epistle of Horace: (p.191) How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot! The world forgetting, by the world forgot. Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!

(Eloisa, 207–9) Into Pope’s heroic epistle has intruded a famous passage from Horace’s Epistle to Bullatius, a fantasy of retirement in the deserted town of Lebedus:13 scis Lebedus, quid sit. Gabiis desertior atque Fidenis uicus: tamen illic uiuere uellem, oblitusque meorum, obliuiscendus et illis, Neptunum procul e terra spectare furentem.

(Ep. 1.11.7–10) You know how Lebedus is. A more deserted spot than Gabii or Fidenae. Still, that’s where I’d like to live, forgetting my friends and forgotten by them, safe on land, watching the raging of the sea in the distance.

This lyric reverie, spoken either by Horace or Bullatius, interrupts Horace’s quizzing of his friend about his recent tour of Greece.14 It conjures up in turn the beginning of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura, Book 2, which describes the philosophic mind, detached from the fury of human striving: Suaue mari magno turbantibus aequora uentis e terra magnum alterius spectare laborem.

(DRN 2.1–2) It is pleasant, when the winds stir up the great ocean’s water, to watch from firm land the difficulties of another. The raging of Neptune may be the opposite of Eloisa’s ‘eternal sunshine of the spotless mind’, but in both passages we feel that the observer recognizes the sublimity of the prospect before him/her. Horace’s epistle becomes an exorcism of this moment of lyric sublimity, arguing that fanciful desires generated by momentary dissatisfactions are not to be indulged, and that they form no basis for a sane life. He concludes that what you want is here before you, if you’re in your right mind (quod petis hic est…animus si te non deficit aequus, Ep. 1.11.29–30). But this is precisely Eloisa’s problem: what (p.192) she wants

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Augustan Gothic (Abelard) is wherever she looks, which destroys her equanimity.15 Neptune raging in the sea would be a projection of her mind, not a prospect out there. Against Horace’s Lucretian image of the detached observer of the scenery we might place the gesture of Ovid’s Ariadne, which will become canonical for the Heroic Epistle: aut mare prospiciens in saxo frigida sedi, quamque lapis sedes, tam lapis ipsa fui.

(Heroides, 10.49–50) Or, looking out to sea I sat, cold, on the stone, and was as stony as the seat itself. Eloisa makes a crucial amendment: Ye rugged rocks! Which holy knees have worn; Ye grots and caverns shagg’d with horrid thorn! Shrines! Where their vigils pale-eye virgins keep, And pitying saints, whose statues learn to weep! Though cold like you, unmov’d and silent grown I have not yet forgot myself to stone.

(Eloisa, 19–24)16 Eloisa dwells in the ‘not yet’ of many an Ovidian heroine, deprived of reciprocity but still tormented by consciousness and memory, resolved to die but not yet dead.17 For her to be as stone as the rock she sits on, like Ariadne, would be a merciful release from memory. But she is proud that, unlike her fellow vestals (‘the world forgetting, by the world forgot’), she has not been able to forget. And who indeed could find rest among those ‘grots and caverns shagg’d with holy thorn’? Here Pope has Gothicized a line from Sappho’s letter to (p.193) Phaon (Heroides 15), a poem which he himself had translated in his youth. Sappho looks on the scenes of her former lovemaking: antra uident oculi scabro pendentia tofo, quae mihi Mygdonii marmoris instar erant.

(Heroides, 15.141–2) My eyes see caves hung with rough rock, which before were like Phrygian marble. For Sappho, the caves are now just caves, and nature, deserted by human activity, is disenchanted. Ovid’s scabro pendentia tofo becomes ‘shagg’d with horrid thorn’, making Eloisa into a Jesus figure undergoing the Calvary of consciousness. She has not yet worn the rock smooth with her knees. Pope’s ‘horrid thorn’ makes a nice transition from the Latin (horridus, bristling) to the Page 5 of 12

 

Augustan Gothic Gothic (shuddersome), bringing out what is potentially uncanny in Sappho’s image of a deserted nature.18 Heroides 15 is Pope’s closest model in Eloisa; it was a poem that he himself had translated.19 In Ovid, Sappho’s erotic dream of intercourse with Phaon dissolves at the break of day and she revisits the scenes of her lovemaking, including the antra mentioned above.20 A Naiad then appears and tells her to throw herself off the Leucadian rock to cure herself of her love. Eloisa too has an erotic dream (225–34), which dissolves into a vision of herself and Abelard wandering in a gloomy landscape, and the poem draws to a close when Eloisa hears the voice of a dead nun calling to her to find rest in death (cf. Dido’s Sychaeus, who calls from the grave Elissa ueni, [Heroides 7.102]). Eloisa imagines herself dying under the eyes of Abelard and prays that Abelard may ascend to heaven after his own death. The (p.194) poem ends with a fantasy of some future poet, moved by the similitude of his own separation from a beloved to the fate of Eloisa, who will tell the story of Eloisa and Abelard.21 Dream and nature are two places where Ovid’s Sappho re-finds her absent lover. She visits the caves and forests because they were witnesses (conscia) to her love: antra nemusque peto, tamquam nemus antraque prosint: conscia deliciis illa fuere meis.

(Heroides, 15.137–8) I make for the caves and the grove, as though the caves and the grove could help: they were privy to my lovemaking. Ovid’s conscia becomes ‘conscience’ and ‘conscious’ in Eloisa’s erotic dream: When at the close of each sad, sorrowing day, Fancy restores what vengeance snatch’d away, Then conscience sleeps, and leaving nature free, All my loose soul unbounded springs to thee. Oh curs’d, dear horrors of all-conscious night! How glowing guilt exalts the keen delight.

(Eloisa, 225–30) It has been pointed out that Ovid’s heroines share none of the sexual guilt that the heroines of the English Heroic Epistle undergo.22 Recrimination is more their concern. Here, Eloisa’s mention of her guilt introduces the paradox that governs her condition. Guilt only intensifies the delight of recollection and imagining. Is this a function of Eloisa’s perverse psychology? Notice that guilt is ‘glowing’, a characteristic of shame, certainly, but also of passion. So Eloisa’s perversity has some authority in language. If we adapt the terms of Dowling’s Page 6 of 12

 

Augustan Gothic distinction between the Heroic Epistle as symptomatic of the distinctive condition of women or as a universal aspect of subjectivity, we might ask whether moments like this, and there are many, reveal something about Eloisa’s psychology or about the overlapping and mutual interference of certain (p.195) aspects of culture and language. In other words, what is the locus of irrationality, personal or cultural? At the personal end of the spectrum we might put the following passage of nature description imbued with a distinctly erotic tinge: The wand’ring streams that shine between the hills, The grots that echo to the tinkling rills, The dying gales that pant upon the trees, The lakes that quiver to the curling breeze; No more these scenes my meditation aid, Or lull to rest the visionary maid.

(Eloisa, 157–62) And why would they? Sappho’s landscape was conscia to her lovemaking; Eloisa’s is complicit in a different sense, one that derives from her own conscience/consciousness. As Eloisa puts it, ‘Ev’n here, where chastity retires,/ Love finds an altar for forbidden fires’ (181–2). Her consciousness projects itself onto the scene. But the question Eloisa asks at the beginning of her letter is more open-ended, ‘What means this tumult in a vestal's veins?’ We might give a more equivocal answer to the question of what this tumult means if we consider Eloisa’s orgasmic description of the Catholic Mass: When from the censer clouds of incense roll, And swelling organs lift the rising soul, One thought of thee puts all the pomp to flight, Priests, tapers, temples swim before my sight; In seas of flame my plunging soul is drown’d, While altars blaze, and angels tremble round.

(Eloisa, 271–6) Damnation has its advantages!23 Small wonder that some contemporary readers objected to this poem on the grounds that it transgressed the bounds of decency: one thinks of Bernini’s sculpture of the Ecstasy of St Teresa, created some sixty years before. The important point here is that the religious scene which the thought of Abelard is supposed to put to flight is already eroticized, and the subsequent drowning of the soul simply brings on the orgasm. (p.196) Trembling is ubiquitous in Pope’s poem, and covers a spectrum of emotions and experiences from fear, through repentance and prayer to quivering

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Augustan Gothic sexual pleasure. See how it appears on both sides of Eloisa’s very Ovidian argument with herself, in which she calls for Abelard to attend her death: Thou, Abelard! the last sad office pay And smooth my passage to the realms of day See my lips tremble, and my eyeballs roll. Suck my last breath, and catch my flying soul! Ah no—in sacred vestment may’st though stand, The hallow’d taper trembling in thy hand…

(Eloisa, 321–6) Is that taper as hallowed as it seems? If not, is that a function of Eloisa’s erotic obsession or a fact about Catholic religiosity?24 Perhaps Eloisa has come to the wrong place to repent her love: the spouse of God, after all, is still a spouse. Is the meaning of this tumult to be sought in individual psychology (she cannot, or will not, repent), or in a cultural confusion between eros and religion? Perhaps the nearest we come to the guilty Eloisa in Ovid’s Heroides is Canace’s regret that her brother loved her more than a brother should, and that she was to him what a sister should not be (11.21ff.). Her description of the inception of love for her brother is masterful: ipsa quoque incalui, qualemque audire solebam, nescioquem sensi corde tepente deum

(Heroides, 11.25–6) I too grew warm, and sensed in my glowing heart some god, just as I had heard tell. When Eloisa describes the emergence of her love, the emphasis is more on the guile with which love approached her ‘under Friendship's name’ (Eloisa, 60): Guiltless I gaz’d; heav’n listened while you sung; And truths divine came mended from that tongue. From lips like those what precept failed to move? Too soon they taught me ’twas no sin to love.

(Eloisa, 65–8) (p.197) This seamless transition from a guiltless friendship to a forbidden love is something that interests Ovid too, but more in the Metamorphoses than in the Heroides.25 Byblis, like Canace, loved her brother. But at first she was unaware of love’s fire (nullos intellegit ignes, Met. 9.457) and had no notion of sin when she kissed and embraced him. For a long time she was ‘deceived by the lying semblance of pietas’ (mendacique diu pietatis fallitur umbra, 9.460) but

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Augustan Gothic gradually love deviated into the erotic and incestuous (paulatim declinat amor, 9.461). More disturbing than this transition is the possibility of overlap between the sanctioned, or required, and the forbidden. For this we must turn to another of Ovid’s damned lovers in the Metamorphoses, namely Myrrha. To hate your father is a crime, but does that mean you should love him? That depends on what you mean by love. Myrrha feels the stirrings of love for her father Cinyras. Is it a crime? What exactly does pietas comprehend? When Myrrha’s father kisses her and asks her what sort of husband she would want, she enjoys the kisses too much (nimium gaudet, Met. 10.363). But her reply, ‘One such as you’ (364), elicits praise for her pietas.26 And what sort of girl might Cinyras fancy? When his wife is away, it is natural for him to seek solace in the arms of another, and Myrrha’s nurse mentions to him that she knows of a girl who desires him. ‘How old is she’, he asks. ‘About Myrrha’s age’, says the nurse (par, ait, est Myrrhae, 10.441). ‘Bring her on!’ Maybe, Ovid speculates, during their lovemaking he called her ‘daughter’ and she called him ‘father’ (467–8). Behind this scene of perverted lust lie some awkward truths about the relation between one kind of love and another, and the same goes for Eloisa’s fusion of eros and religion. So there is reason to suppose that Eloisa’s opening question ‘What means this tumult in a vestal’s veins?’ is not a rhetorical question. There is, also, some justification in Dowling’s contention that in order (p.198) to write the Horatian epistles Pope had to make it rhetorical. Consider these lines from his Horatian Epistle to a Lady: Woman and fool are two hard things to hit, For true no-meaning puzzles more than wit.27

(Epistle to a Lady, 113–14) Are the two kinds of epistle, Ovidian and Horatian, then, incompatible? In the line from Horace’s Epistle to Bullatius adopted by Eloisa (oblitusque meorum obliuiscendus et illis, Ep. 1.11), we find a pre-echo of Pope, and the very different ways that Eloisa and Horace work to reject it is a good index of the difference between the kinds of epistle. For Horace, you cannot build a sane life about the lyric impulse or moment of sublimity: momentary dissatisfactions are no basis for the formulation of ideals. For Eloisa, to achieve ‘The eternal sunshine of the spotless mind’, and even to be merely a spectator (spectare) of Neptune’s raging, is a cop-out. Pope will disavow the meaning he has discovered in Eloisa’s tumultuous veins, but the history of taste will embrace it, and take Ovid’s landscapes of the mind to their logical conclusion. And Rome will supply the convents.

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Augustan Gothic Notes:

(1) Goldsmith’s essay is titled ‘The Augustan Age of England’, and identifies the age of Queen Anne (1702–1714) as the period when ‘language and learning arrived at its highest perfection’ in England, rendering it worthy of the appellation ‘Augustan Age’ (Goldsmith 1854, Vol. 3: 125–33). (2) Weinbrot 1978 stresses the fact that Augustus was often regarded as a tyrant, while Erskine-Hill 1983 sees the figure of Augustus in this period as open to differing interpretations. For an excellent account of Pope’s complex use of Horace Epistles 2.1, with its association between Augustus and George II, see Stack 1985: 150–97. (3) On the verse epistle in the English Augustan age, see Overton 2007 (especially 133–67 on the Heroic and Amatory epistle), Dowling 1991: 3, and Trickett 1988. (4) On the history of the heroic epistle, see Dörrie 1968 and, more succinctly, Beer 1982: 126–32, who locates Pope’s poem within the history of the genre. (5) Brower 1959: 74–84 is a sensitive reading of the extent and limits of Pope’s Ovidianism in Eloisa to Abelard. Broader in scope, and taking in the reputation of Ovid in the time of Pope, is Ferguson 1986: 1–31, who emphasizes ‘Ovid’s strength in exploring, not simply dominant moods, but the transition from one state of mind to another’ (11). Trowbridge 1973: 13–17 considers the reputation of Ovid in the age of Dryden and Pope, and concludes that ‘Ovid was read as a dramatist of the emotions, depicting disordered or conflicting passions through the speeches and actions of feigned persons in moments of intense feeling’ (14). In this connection, one might cite the lines: Ere such a soul regains its peaceful state, How often must it love, how often hate! How often hope, despair, resent, regret, Conceal, disdain, do all things but forget. (Eloisa, 197–200) (6) See particularly Beer 1982, who compares the atmosphere and setting of Pope’s poem to ‘the landscape of enclosure, melancholy and silence’ in Ann Radcliffe’s Gothic novel The Italian, much of which is set in a convent (125–6). Sequestered heroines are, as she points out, common to the Gothic novel and the Heroic Epistle (136–7). See also Rumbold 1989: 95–6, who points out that Eloisa is a literally ‘Gothic’ (i.e. medieval) figure, and Ferguson 1986: 26, who cites the influence of Milton’s Comus and ‘Il Penseroso’ on the Gothic strain in Eloisa. (7) This symbiosis is particularly striking in Heroides 10 (Ariadne).

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Augustan Gothic (8) Pope’s source for the letter is the free adaptation by John Hughes of a free translation of some of the Latin letters of Abelard and Heloise by Roger de Rabutin, Comte de Bussy. For a succinct account of the descent, see Tillotson 1962: 297–8. Tillotson’s commentary shows Pope making abundant use of Hughes. (9) Dowling 1991: 28. (10) Dowling 1991: 67–8. (11) Dowling 1991: 172. (12) Compare Remedia Amoris 143–210 on the idleness of love and the efficacy of pursuits like hunting to cure love. (13) On the literary affiliations of this imaginative projection in the English context, see Ferguson 1986: 16–17. (14) On the speaker, see Mayer 1994: 191, who plumps for Horace. (15) Beer 1982: 126 sees the permeability of experience to the external world as characteristic of Gothic experience: ‘The heroine’s identity, always in tumult, finds itself beset equally by the intransigence and malleability of the objective world: intransigent in its resistance to her desires and needs; malleable in the speed with which objects succumb to symbol and become vagrant elements in her own imaginative ordering, according too closely to offer any stability or any issue out from the self.’ (16) Hughes has ‘Though I have lost my lover I still preserve my love. O vows! O convent! I have not lost my humanity under your inexorable discipline! You have not turned me to marble by changing my habit; my heart is not hardened by my imprisonment; I am still sensible to what has touched me, though, alas! I ought not to be!’ Quoted Radice 1974: 52. Pope is also remembering Milton’s ‘Il Penseroso’ (42), ‘forget thyself to marble’. (17) Beer 1982: 129: ‘the heroic Epistle has the obduracy of hope and passion at their final stretch before despair’. (18) Compare ‘And breathes [sc. Melancholy] a browner horror on the woods’ (Eloisa, 170), though Tillotson 1962 ad loc. finds the phrase ‘brown horror’ in Dryden’s translation of the Aeneid (7.41). (19) Pope’s Sapho to Phaon was written c.1707, but published in 1712, as part of the eighth edition of Ovid’s Epistles, translated by several hands. On Pope’s translation (Sapho to Phaon) in relation to Eloisa, see Ferguson 1986: 12–17. Like Eloisa, Heroides 15 is, uniquely, written by a real person, which may have had something to do with the separate transmission of this poem and Page 11 of 12

 

Augustan Gothic consequent doubts about its authorship: see Rimell 2006: 125, n.7, citing Tarrant. (20) Sappho’s erotic dream in Ovid is notable for one of the few explicitly sexual references in Roman elegy (Her. 15.133–4). Pope glosses over this in his translation (153–4), but he turns Sappho’s dream into a fantasy: ‘O night, more pleasing than the brightest day / When Fancy gives what absence takes away’ (145–6). Compare Eloisa: ‘When at the close of each sad, sorrowing day, / Fancy restores what vengeance snatch’d away’ (225–6). (21) The reference is usually taken to be to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s absence from England in 1717. See Tillotson 1962: 311–13. (22) ‘And in Ovid, at least, the language also sustains a sense of the wonderful, of jouissance, and of the joyousness in love. Few of his heroines, in contrast to those of Drayton or to Pope’s Eloisa, are entrammelled by sexual guilt’ (Beer 1982: 130). (23) Eloisa’s ecstasy bears some resemblances to the climax of Sappho’s erotic dream in Pope’s translation of Heroides 15: Till all dissolving in the Trance we lay, And in tumultuous Raptures dy’d away. (61–2) (24) See Ferguson 1986: 28–9 on counter-reformation Catholicism and other religious influences in Eloisa. (25) Pope knew the Metamorphoses and had translated from it the stories of Dryope, Acis and Galatea, and Pomona and Vertumnus. (26) In the Heroides, Phaedra sees an advantage in the fact that it is quite appropriate for stepmothers to kiss their stepsons, indeed it is a sign that she is a fida nouerca (Her. 4.140). (27) See Manning 1993: 245–6 on the implications of these lines for the Heroic Epistle.

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The Value of Self-deception

Augustan Poetry and the Irrational Philip Hardie

Print publication date: 2016 Print ISBN-13: 9780198724728 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2015 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198724728.001.0001

The Value of Self-deception Horace, Aristippus, Heraclides Ponticus, and the Pleasures of the Fool (and of the Poet) Mario Citroni

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198724728.003.0012

Abstract and Keywords For Horace, the achievement of happiness presupposes a rational selection of pleasures. Those who aim to find happiness in the unrestrained enjoyment of every pleasure are described as fool or mad. But sometimes Horace seems to suggest that the fool may find a happiness of his own in the enjoyment of a pleasure whose vanity he does not understand. In Epistles 1.15, he confesses that luxury gives him pleasure, and provocatively proposes its enjoyment as true sapientia: the pleasure of luxury is an obvious truth, but, if theoretically admitted, it overturns the rational construction of ancient moral philosophy, and Horace here suggests the disturbing force of this point of view. In Epistles 2.2, the anecdote of a man who, while hallucinating, could experience pleasures (of aesthetic kind) more intense than those based on real experiences, proves that Horace’s ideas, and doubts, on pleasure, depend on Greek philosophical debates. Keywords:   Horace, Epistles, Horace and philosophy, Aristippus, Heraclides Ponticus, Theophrastus, pleasure, Plato, Philebus, ancient satire

Horace’s moral discourse is based on a solid rationalistic principle, which dominates the whole tradition of ancient moralism: the presupposition of correct behaviour is a rational analysis of the nature of the real, genuine good, and of the consistency of every choice with this end. The impulses of desire, need or feeling are not to be satisfied unthinkingly, in order to achieve results that will Page 1 of 18

 

The Value of Self-deception not offer the pleasure misguidedly expected, or to obtain immediate pleasures that may subsequently lead to greater suffering than that of the present sacrifice. The idea that, to achieve happiness, it is necessary to carry out a rigorous rational selection of pleasures is not only typical of philosophical schools that point to virtue, the realization of the rational nature of man and the contemplation of the divine as the supreme good: I am referring to Stoicism, Cynicism, the Academy, the Peripatetics. The main ancient hedonistic philosophy, Epicureanism, also places at the top of its scale of values a pleasure which is the absence of anxiety, and can thus be obtained only by means of a drastic limitation of pleasures, on the basis of a rational analysis of the real necessity of desires, and of their correspondence to what nature requires.1 Rational calculation in (p.222) the choice of pleasures, designed to identify those which carry the fewest risks of suffering, also of a spiritual nature, and which ensure more long-term enjoyment, is a commonly affirmed or presupposed element in the hedonistic positions adopted by ancient philosophers.2 Aristippus himself and the Cyrenaic school, who, from their marginal position in ancient philosophical debate, attributed a substantially positive value to immediate pleasure, first required the attainment, through rigorous self-control, of a full spiritual independence from pleasure itself. The enjoyment of pleasure must not be compromised by the fear of seeing it end. Man must dominate pleasure and not be dominated by it. He must therefore always be willing both to enjoy luxury, riches and sexual pleasures when available, and to be content with little, or very little, in situations of hardship.3 In Horace, as generally in diatribe ethics, those who seek happiness in an unrestrained enjoyment of the pleasures of food, sex, wealth, or power, and make this their continual goal, thus becoming slaves to (p.223) pleasure, are regularly described as stupid, irrational, mad. The good man is the rational man who knows that nature is satisfied with very little, and indeed, if desire, possession and pleasure are not prudently limited, they may bring about disappointments, frustrations, and even risks for one’s physical safety. And even when the enjoyment of these pleasures does not result in disappointment, frustration, sickness or punishment, the awareness of their precarious nature, and the risks they entail, compromises their enjoyment. This concept is succinctly formulated in Epistles 1.16.65–6 qui cupiet, metuet quoque; porro / qui metuens uiuet, liber mihi non erit umquam, ‘he who desires at the same time fears, and he who lives in fear can never be considered a free man’, and developed at greater length in Epistles 1.6.9–14. The diatribe satires of Book I (1, 2 and 3) reveal a Horace who is firmly attached to the ideas described above, and these convictions remain in Book II, although now the persona of the poet is inclined to recognize his hesitations and inconsistencies. In the Epistles, as we know, Horace expresses a more acute need to find happiness by means of philosophy, but also a discouraging sense that this aim may not be feasible, and a greater understanding for different Page 2 of 18

 

The Value of Self-deception choices. This more open, doubtful ethical attitude also includes, in the Epistles, a declared attraction for (though not acceptance of) the hedonism of Aristippus, who attributed value also to the pleasures of luxury, provided they were enjoyed with a serene readiness to forego them: also in these more advanced concessions that Horace makes to hedonism, the pre-condition of pleasure is rational self-control. In the prefatory epistle (Epist. 1.1), Horace declares that he wishes to leave the door open to the most disparate schools of moral philosophy (15 quo me cumque rapit tempestas deferor hospes), and indicates the two positions that represent the extremes between which, from time to time, he situates himself:4 the rigorous safeguarding of uirtus, in compliance with the Stoic system, and the hedonism of Aristippus (13–19). When his position is closer to Aristippus, this is presented by Horace as an almost unnoticed (furtim, which is also understood as (p.224) ‘avoiding the notice of others’) falling back on a more readily sustainable line (18 nunc in Aristippi furtim praecepta relabor…) by a person who does not have the strength to stick constantly to strict Stoic principles.5 Yet here Horace does not recall the opportunistic hedonism of Aristippus, but precisely his capacity to rationally control and to dominate the world surrounding us, through the attainment of a full spiritual autonomy with respect to the pleasure which, on one occasion or another, we are in a condition to enjoy (19…et mihi res non me rebus subiungere conor).6 Something similar happens in the case of the anecdote about the dialogue between Aristippus and the Cynic Diogenes on which Horace comments in Epistles 1.17.11–32: the reason Horace gives for the superiority of Aristippus’ opinion is his ability to be comfortable in every kind of situation, be it one of abundance or of privation (23–4 omnis Aristippum decuit color et status et res…fere praesentibus aequum), by virtue of a shrewd adaptability which, by contrast, makes those forced always to wear the same ‘mask’ (29 persona, where Aristippus is capable of changing his persona) appear unreasonable (32 ineptus). In the face of the ineptus (p. 225) behaviour of Diogenes, Aristippus indicates the possibility of a way of enjoying, with rational awareness, even those pleasures of luxury which ancient moral philosophy, and that of Horace, considers to be false, valued only by the stulti, ‘fools’, in their miserable self-deception. Furthermore the genuinely hedonistic theme of carpe diem is, in Horace, closely bound up with rational awareness: sapere. It is the rational awareness of the precariousness of life and the uncertainty of the future which must convince us to enjoy the present moment: see Odes 1.11.6–8…sapias…carpe diem…7 In Horace sapere is, moreover, intrinsically connected with the limiting of ambitions, desires and pleasures themselves: see, among many examples, in the same ode 6–7, spatio breui spem longam reseces.8 No serious consideration is given, then, either in ancient moralism in general or in Horace, to the idea that he who does not exercise rational control over his desires, a rational selection of pleasures or a rational criticism of choices, and does not bother to question the validity and soundness of the things from which Page 3 of 18

 

The Value of Self-deception he seeks pleasure, might ever find—in his own subjective experience—pleasure and happiness. Indeed, a pleasure and happiness all the more complete because they are undisturbed by the doubts and fears connected with the rational criticism of choices and desires imposed by philosophy. This idea represents the common sense which moral philosophy, from Socrates onwards, opposes precisely insofar as it is philosophy, insofar as it is rational criticism of common sense.9 (p.226) In Horace’s representation of the stulti dominated by their passion, there are only a few cases where we might be tempted to see a real achievement of pleasure, and it is clear that an interpretation like this would be forced. When Horace uses stupere, or torpere, to represent the spiritual attitude of a person contemplating the objects of his desire, he clearly intends to communicate the negative idea of a blurry haze, a dulling of the intellectual faculties, overcome by a false, fatuous passion, and we would betray the intentions of the text if we interpreted this as the positive recognition of the ecstasy of a pleasure achieved, even if this is the meaning that these words actually convey. In Satires 1.4.28 stupere stands beside insanire ‘to be mad’ and capi ‘to be conquered’, verbs which all refer to the loss of rational control over oneself in the face of objects of desire: the person loved or the luxurious tableware. In Satires 1.6.17, stupere refers to people, described as stultus, ineptus and ‘subjected’ (qui seruit) to false values represented by an unreliable fama, by tituli and by the imagines (masks of ancestors) of the noble households. In Satires 2.2.5, stupere is used of sight, ‘dazzled’ by the splendours of a luxurious dinner-service: splendours defined as unhealthy, insani, literally because they ‘exceed every reasonable measure’ (as Kiessling and Heinze interpret it), but at the same time with a clear reference to the lack of rational control over desires on the part of the subject who inclines towards false pleasures and rejects those of authentic value. torpere ‘to be stupefied’ is used in Sat. 2.7.95 by the interlocutor Davus, in relation to Horace himself when he admires, spellbound, a fine painting: Kiessling and Heinze (on Sat. 1.4.28) observe that torpere is ‘even stronger’ than stupere, and (on Sat. 2.7.95) cite Cic. Parad. 5, 37, in which stupidus (derived from stupere) refers to the same situation for which Horace uses torpere, which confirms the very close affinity of meaning of the two verbs in the Horatian passages in question (Sat. 2.2.5 and 2.7.95). The meaning of torpere in Epistles 1.6.14 is more complex; here it refers to the dulling created both by a (false) joy and by a (false) disappointment. Davus himself, in Satires 2.7.97, miratur ‘marvels at’ the boards representing the gladiators of the spectacles on the programme. In Epistle 1.6, which opens with the exhortation to nihil admirari, ‘marvel at nothing’, as the only condition that ensures a lasting happiness, mirari appears twice with this significance (lines 9 and 18), and in the latter case mirari is in the same sentence as suspicere (‘admire’, close in sense to stupere) and a highly explicit gaudere ‘take pleasure’ (p.227) (17–19): but we must conclude that these are merely illusory, deceptive gratifications without Page 4 of 18

 

The Value of Self-deception any basis. The same can be said for the use of miror in Epistles 1.1.47 (stulte miraris) and 1.10.31. It is clear that this terminology identifies, each time, negative models of behaviour, and the language employed by Horace in relation to these figures confirms that their illusory pleasure stems from the clouding of rationality. We may also observe that at a certain point, the happiness of the town mouse, in Satire 2.6, appears to the reader to be truly complete. The mouse, as a good Epicurean, knows that life is ephemeral, and that it is necessary to try to enjoy the pleasures given to us today. With a spirit which I would say is more Aristippean than Epicurean, he also enjoys the pleasures of luxury, which genuine Epicureanism rejects, and does not allow the awareness of the fact that this state of grace is destined to finish to compromise his current happiness (96 dum licet, in rebus iucundis uiue beatus). Thus he experiences a substantial enjoyment, but this depends on what the poet-moralist clearly invites us to judge as a lack of rationality, which exposes those who unthinkingly embrace an immediate pleasure to the most serious risks, as the final outcome of the story shows. The reader might also think that, should fate save him from catastrophe, the pleasure-seeker unaware of the risks he runs can achieve full happiness. But it is obvious that, in this case too, we are in the presence of a negative model, and that the prudent rationality of the country mouse offers instead the guarantee of a much more substantial and lasting happiness. In other cases, albeit in a discourse intended as a whole to communicate this same idea of the need for a rational control over desires, Horace himself explicitly suggests to the reader that the fool, the man who deceives himself about what is truly good for him, may, however, find a happiness of his own in the enjoyment of a pleasure whose vanity, or ephemeral nature, he does not, subjectively, as a stultus, understand.10 (p.228) The most open formulation can be found in Epistle 1.15, where, however, the ironic playfulness, with its paradoxical implications, makes it difficult to grasp the real intentions of the text. Horace writes to a friend to obtain assurances about the quality of the hospitality in a place where he is planning to spend a holiday: the climate, the environment, the road network, the water supply, and above all, the quality of the food (1–25). Joking about his desire to enjoy himself (24 pinguis ut inde domum possim Phaeaxque reuerti, ‘I want to come back home as fat and content as a Phaeacian’), Horace provocatively declares that he identifies with a character already present, since at least the time of Lucilius, among the repertoire of bizarre city types, exploited by moralistic literature as negative models. Maenius, Horace reminds us here, was a spendthrift and a glutton, who, after managing to squander two whole legacies—his father’s and his mother’s—, had gained a fine reputation as a scurra (26–8), and demanded to be paid for his malignant witticisms, which, Page 5 of 18

 

The Value of Self-deception depending on the case, made him either amusing or a person to be feared. He then used all his money to buy rich food, for which his appetite was insatiable (31–2). When he was unable to find anything special, he resigned himself to stuffing himself with the most common kinds of food, hurling abuse at bons viveurs and prodigals (33–7). When he succeeded in gorging himself on delicacies, spending all his money on them, he announced that such pleasures were a good reason to use up one’s patrimony (37–41). I am like that, too, says Horace: when my means are limited, I readily celebrate moderation (42–3 nimirum hic ego sum: nam tuta et paruola laudo, / cum res deficiunt, satis inter uilia fortis): but when I am able to find something better (44 uerum ubi quid melius contingit et unctius), then I proclaim that the only form of wisdom, the only real happiness, are those based on the magnificence and grandeur of villas (45–6 uos sapere et solos aio bene uiuere quorum / conspicitur nitidis fundata pecunia uillis). With his ability to find satisfaction in any situation, Maenius might seem to be an instinctive, unconscious, follower of that Aristippean hedonism for which Horace, as we saw in section 1, explicitly declares some sympathy in this book of the Epistles, both in the prefatory epistle and in Epistle 17. As we said above, Aristippus proposed a rational path to the enjoyment of the immediate pleasures of the body, and also those of luxury, which moral philosophy regarded as being appreciated only by the stulti. Now the principle that inspires the behaviour of Maenius seems to be well expressed in Horace’s (p.229) characterization of Aristippus in 17.23–4 omnis Aristippum decuit color et status et res / temptantem maiora, fere praesentibus aequum. In Epistle 17, Aristippus is referred to in connection with Horace’s justification of the young Scaeva’s decision to devote himself to gaining advantages from relationships with powerful people (Epistle 18, to Lollius, presents a similar theme). In a certain sense, this is the same choice made by Horace as well, of which the behaviour of Maenius represents the most degraded form.11 There is thus something true in this playful selfidentification with Maenius: we recognize the self-criticism of his own inconstancy, and the doubtful consistency between his moralistic proclamations and his choices of lifestyle already seen in Book 2 of the Satires, and also to be found elsewhere in the Epistles. But the affinity with Maenius that Horace claims is not limited to the choice of a lifestyle, but is mainly based on the ‘philosophy’ that goes with it. In the prodigal Maenius, who hurls abuse at prodigality when he is forced to place drastic limits on his pleasures, we may recognize, as Horace invites us to do, a playful caricature of Horace the moralist, who, as he says here of himself, praises moderate pleasures because he does not possess the means to procure greater ones. On the contrary, in the Maenius who expresses total understanding, while enjoying the most expensive titbits, for those who squander a legacy to satisfy their gluttony, we cannot find any correspondence, as Horace likewise asks us to see, with the moral discourse of Horace’s poetry: the choice of the verb sapere (45 uos sapere et solos aio bene Page 6 of 18

 

The Value of Self-deception uiuere…), which, on the contrary, is constantly connected in Horace’s works with the concept of the limitation of desires and pleasures,12 seems to confirm that the poet’s desire (p.230) here was to push his self-caricature playfully beyond the limits of similarity. In the course of this book of the Epistles, where he reveals a willingness to acknowledge many of his defects and inconsistencies with respect to a genuine sapientia, Horace comes to the point of openly confessing the evident truth, imposed by common sense, that he too takes pleasure in luxury. And he goes so far as to propose the rationalization of luxury as true sapientia. This—theoretical —position cannot seriously reflect his moral viewpoint, but we must admit that in this startling ending of Epistle 15, under the cover of irony, Horace suggests to the reader an ethical perspective that overturns the whole rational construction of ethics on which his discourse has always been founded. If it is undeniably a clear empirical fact that luxury affords pleasure, as Horace himself confirms here on the basis of his own experience, then there may be a basis for the common-sense position against which philosophy, from Socrates onwards, and Horace’s own philosophy, continually fought: the point of view of those who do not judge pleasures rationally, and do not select them on the basis of a rational criterion, and even identify indiscriminate enjoyment as a criterion of sapere. Here Horace gives expression to this point of view, pretending to adopt it, and suggesting to the reader, with expressive energy, its disturbing force, which may challenge the whole rational construction of his moral discourse. Avarice is the most typical example, in ancient and modern moralism, of an irrational distortion of desire. The miser sacrifices his life in a continual effort to accumulate riches, which, however, he does not enjoy, living like a pauper. The common sense view is to disapprove of his stinginess, while at the same time admiring (and envying) his wealth. In Satire 1.1, pressed by the arguments of the poet, who demonstrates the pointlessness of accumulating resources that are completely out of proportion to his real needs, the miser abandons his reasoned approach, which he had initially (43) accepted as a basis for confrontation, and seeks refuge in a consideration that defies rational objections: (51) ‘Taking from a vast abundance gives pleasure (suaue est)’. The counter-objections of the satirist cannot really make any inroads into this assertion of fact, which the miser reaffirms, varying only the image: ‘I prefer to draw the same quantity of water from a vast river than from a small fountain’ (55–6). At this point, adopting a line of reasoning that is not perfectly consequential, the satirist can (p.231) only argue that this behaviour may put his personal safety at risk (56–8). But the reader is left with the impression that the miser, subjectively, finds an irreducible source of pleasure in his own irrational behaviour. And this impression is confirmed in the following lines. Horace admits that in his yearning to accumulate, the miser is backed up by the consensus of the majority (bona pars hominum), who deceive themselves about the nature of pleasure (61 decepta cupidine falso) and believe that the value of a person is measured by the Page 7 of 18

 

The Value of Self-deception size of his estate (62). At this point, Horace (63–4) declares outright that it is impossible to convince a person with this idea that he is deluded: quid facias illi? iubeas miserum esse, libenter / quatenus id facit (‘What can you do to a person like that? Leave him alone in his unhappiness, seeing that that’s what he prefers’). Heinze (ad loc.) observed that iubeas miserum esse is modelled on the customary formulas for greetings iubeo saluere or iubeo ualere. We could say that it represents a paradoxical overturning of it: those formulas were used to take one’s leave from a person, wishing him health and well-being. If a person deceives himself about his own good in this way, all one can do is to wish him the evil desired: because—the satirist has to admit—it is here that he finds his pleasure, albeit illusory (libenter id facit). The condition of miserum esse is his ualere, his salus. At this point, Horace introduces the anecdote of a wealthy, stingy man who aroused everyone’s hatred (64–7). But he did not care, saying (66–7) populus me sibilat, at mihi plaudo / ipse domi, simul ac nummos contemplor in arca, ‘Let them hiss at me, if they want; when I’m at home, I’ll give myself a round of applause, gazing at my coins in the safe.’ Horace follows this up with a further condemnation of the absurdity, the anxieties and the dangers of avarice, which is developed, eloquently and passionately, for about 50 lines. The passage opens (68–72) with the objection that spending one’s nights keeping watch and gaping over one’s money bags, never to be exploited, or enjoyed, is a torment of Tantalus. But Horace is also forced to admit that the miser experiences this as a pleasure, a pleasure that absorbs him entirely: inhians (71) recalls in a certain sense the stupere, torpere, mirari that we have already considered at the beginning of section 2. Horace has to concede that in this pleasure the miser finds his happiness, at least until the dangers that Horace prophesies come true. And which, the reader could think here, as in the case of the city mouse, might never even come about. And, we may add, it is this irrationality and inconsistency, due to the absence (p.232) of concrete enjoyment of the wealth accumulated, that gives this pleasure a paradoxically ascetic and contemplative dignity. contemplari is the verb that Horace has the miser use (67), and Horace himself associates his pleasure with the gaudere received from the observation of paintings (72 cogeris…pictis tamquam gaudere tabellis): Horace wants to tell us that it is absurd to watch money instead of spending it, but at the same time, he qualifies the miser’s experience as the gaudere of an aesthetic, albeit deceptive, nature. The anecdote of the miser applauding himself at home is set in Athens, and is introduced (64 ut quidam memoratur Athenis…) in such a way as to suggest, as Kiessling and Heinze (ad loc.) observed, that Horace took it from Greek texts of popular philosophy. Horace is probably alluding here, then, to philosophical debates about the possibility of experiencing pleasure from forms of behaviour contrary to those required by the rational criticism of desires. This probability becomes a certainty in the case of another anecdote, introduced in a very similar manner, which deals with the same issue. Page 8 of 18

 

The Value of Self-deception In Epistle 2.2 Horace complains about the sufferings that another kind of sapere procures for him: the artistic kind, which, however, should not be considered as separate from the intellectual and ethical kind. His aesthetic consciousness causes him continual torment in the search for the best literary form. ‘Instead of racking my brains so much as a result of my sapere,’ he says, ‘I would prefer to be considered a delirious poet, devoid of any art (scriptor delirus inersque), provided that my defects seemed to be virtues to me, or at least that I didn’t realize that they are defects (dum me fallant)’ (126–8). Horace speaks paradoxically here, as in a similar passage of the Ars poetica (295–303), where he calls himself unthinking, because he adopts a self-imposed diet to save himself from mental derangement, in order to be a better poet, whereas, accepting the principle of Democritus, which is followed by the majority of contemporary poets, according to which the poet should be insanus, if he ignored the diet, he would immediately become the best of poets. For Horace, a sober, rigorous artist, the figure of the mad demoniac poet, devoid of any art, but who believes himself to be great and wants to impose his presumed genius on everyone, making himself unbearable and ridiculous, is the surest negative reference point, and the mad poet has the privilege of seeing the grand finale of the Ars poetica (p.233) (453–76) dedicated to him. While we may doubt Horace’s faith in the possibility of consistently following a rational philosophical ethics, and of achieving happiness with it, and we may therefore believe that sometimes he wants to suggest, albeit under the veil of irony, that happiness not supported by reason has good, or even better, reasons in its favour, it is, however, quite certain that he never doubts that only a rigorous selection of expressive tools can yield genuine artistic quality. In the Odes, at times, Horace expresses a state of exaltation deriving from a poetic inspiration which he regards as divine, which in Odes. 3.4.5ff. is described as amabilis insania, a pleasurable deception of folly (auditis? an me ludit amabilis / insania? audire et uideor pios / errare per lucos…):13 but this ‘folly’, in Horace’s view, is definitely not in contrast, but is rather integrated, with the patient diligence, the plurimus labor, symbolized by the bee in Odes. 4.2.27–32 (ego apis Matinae / more modoque / grata carpentis thyma per laborem / plurimum…operosa paruos / carmina fingo). On several occasions Horace stresses that the artless poet who believes himself great, enjoys this vain illusion: he is described by terms like beatus (Sat. 1.4.21; Epist. 2.2.108), iuuat (Sat. 1.4.77 and see 76 suaue), gaudent (Epist. 2.2.107). And Catullus (22) had already said of the poetaster Suffenus that he is never so happy (beatus) as when he composes his terrible poems, from which he derives an intense, intimate pleasure (tam gaudet in se). Like the pervert or the miser, the bad poet also finds pleasure in his lamentable error of judgement, in his irrational self-deception.

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The Value of Self-deception In Epistles 2.2, in spite of the clearly paradoxical and false nature of the desire expressed for identification with the mad poet who deceives himself and is gratified by non-existent merits, achieved without any hard work, Horace continues to dwell on the idea of the pleasure of self-deception in the following lines. He relates (128–40) the anecdote of a man at Argos, who spent his time sitting in an empty theatre, imagining that he was watching productions of tragedies performed by marvellously skilled actors. When his family succeeded in freeing him, with appropriate medical treatment, from this disease (morbus), he said: ‘You haven’t saved my life, you’ve destroyed it, tearing me (p.234) away from my pleasure (uoluptas), forcing me to give up a deception (mentis error) that was so dear to me (gratissimus)’ (138–40). This anecdote confirms that in a state of illusion, hallucination or folly, it is possible to experience intense, albeit groundless pleasures, even more intense that those based on real experiences. The same anecdote, schematically formulated, and set in Abydos instead of in Argos, crops up in section 31 of the Mirabiles auscultationes, a pseudoAristotelian work that appears to be a compilation of material derived chiefly from Theophrastus.14 Here, we find the anecdote isolated from any context. But we are helped in the task of speculating about its original contextualization by a similar anecdote, related by Athenaeus, who took it from Περὶ ἡδονῆς by Heraclides Ponticus, and which is recounted also by Aelian (Var. hist. 4.25). Geffcken had already pointed out the affinity between the story summarized in the Mirabiles auscultationes and elaborated by Horace, and the story of Athenaeus and Aelian deriving from Heraclides Ponticus.15 In the commentary of Kiessling and Heinze, and also in the more recent ones of Niall Rudd and Paolo Fedeli, the story deriving from Heraclides Ponticus is not mentioned, almost as if it were an insignificant comparison. Only Brink cites it, though without any further comment about its relationship with Horace’s text. In reality, it is precisely this comparison that offers us the key to understanding the meaning of the anecdote. This is the story of a man who was convinced that all the ships putting in at the Piraeus were his own, and he kept inventory accounts of them, taking great pleasure in this. He did not care about the ships that never returned, but rejoiced over those that did, considering them his patrimony. One of his brothers got a doctor to cure him from this folly, but afterwards he said he had never experienced such great pleasure in all his life. Various fragments of Heraclides’ Περὶ ἡδονῆς are extant:16 it is clear that there was a confrontation between (at least) one advocate of the positive value of pleasure, and (at least) one who sustained its vanity, and the priority of wisdom and virtue. We thus learn that (p.235) anecdotes about pleasures enjoyed by demented people, like the one related by Horace, were used in the intense debate about the nature and value of pleasure which developed in the schools of Page 10 of 18

 

The Value of Self-deception Plato and Aristotle. Plato had addressed the issue of pleasure in various dialogues, assuming different positions. The fullest treatment had been in the Philebus, a late dialogue that certainly already reflects the discussions going on in the school. Aristotle dealt with it in two distinct sections of the Nicomachean Ethics (Books 7 and 10), also in a polemic with members of the Academy such as Eudoxus and Speusippus, with the former sustaining that pleasure is the highest good, and the latter denying it should be considered one at all. Treatises devoted specifically to pleasure are known to have been written, apart from by Heraclides Ponticus, Eudoxus and Speusippus, also by Aristotle himself, Strato, Xenocrates, Theophrastus, and probably by Chamaeleon. Indeed, Theophrastus had written two or perhaps three works on pleasure,17 one of which was entitled ‘On false pleasure’: the anecdote of the Mirabiles auscultationes, a work which, as we have said, certainly brings together Theophrastean material, may therefore derive from one of these works.18 One important, and very delicate question, discussed with great insight by Plato in the Philebus (36c–51a), and which must have come up in these debates—as the Theophrastean title ‘On false pleasure’ precisely confirms—is whether it is possible to distinguish between false pleasures (and pains) and true pleasures (and pains), just as we do between opinions, or whether pleasure (and pain), as emotions experienced as such by the subject, are in any case true; this seems to be required by common sense, to which Protarchus, Socrates’ interlocutor, refers in the Philebus.19 Instead, Socrates wants to demonstrate that there exist pleasures which can be said to be false: these are (p.236) pleasures which, though perceived as such by the subject (he seems to have to concede this: see Phil. 37b; 38b; 40d), are however only apparent, lacking real foundation and substance (see Phil. 51a ἡδονὰς εἶναι δοκοῦσας, οὔσας δ᾽οὐδαμῶς).20 This difficult thesis is supported with a complex and convoluted argumentation, the interpretation of which has been the subject of lengthy and continuing debate: the central point of the discussion is understanding in what way, according to Plato, a pleasure can be said to be false.21 We know that, in the ancient debate, Theophrastus took an opposite position to that of Plato, denying that a pleasure can be said to be false.22 The question was an important one, because admitting that all pleasures are true, insofar as they are experienced as such by the subject, lent weight to the argument that happiness can also be achieved by means of a life rich in those pleasures that moral philosophy, based on the rational criticism of desires, considered false. In the context of this extremely delicate debate, where the whole construction of an ethics based on rationality is at stake, the existence of pleasure in hallucination and in folly could represent an important topic of discussion. The idea that pleasure can only be called such in the presence of the rational awareness of the subject experiencing this pleasure is a shared principle, confirmed several times by Plato and by Aristotle. According to this integrally rationalistic moral approach, therefore, no pleasure can be termed such, strictly Page 11 of 18

 

The Value of Self-deception speaking, in the unconscious, sleeping, drunken or demented person.23 In the Philebus, a dialogue wholly designed to demonstrate the inseparability of reason and pleasure, Socrates seems willing to concede that a sensation of pleasure can be experienced even in sleep and in folly, but only in order to demonstrate that there are pleasures which can clearly be said to be false and insubstantial.24 In the Protrepticus (98–9 Düring), (p.237) Aristotle affirms that no one would want to enjoy power and wealth in a state of folly, not even if he were to feel intense pleasure, as sometimes happens to the crazy.25 By contrast, the anecdotes we are discussing were evidently intended to demonstrate that, on the grounds of completely false premises, and even in a condition of complete alienation from reason, it is possible to achieve an absolute fullness of pleasure. Both in the story by Heraclides Ponticus, and in the extremely concise one of the Mirabiles auscultationes, the character declares, at the end of his experience, that the pleasure he felt in his folly had been the most intense of all his life, and Athenaeus introduces the story by Heraclides Ponticus by stating that it proves how the most intense pleasure is to be experienced in folly (ἐν μανίᾳ δὲ τρυφὴν ἡδίστην γενομένην). It would have been natural, I believe, to make the further deduction that if a person labouring under a hallucination can gain from his insubstantial visions a full and authentic experience of pleasure, so too, or even more so, can enjoyment be had by that stultus, that ineptus, that furens (these are the terms that Horace and diatribe moralists use to describe the pervert) whose folly consists of the false illusion that the pleasures of the body, possession and power are ‘real’ pleasures. And so I feel sure that the anecdote in Heraclides should be attributed to the advocate of the value of pleasure,26 who brings, as confirmation, an extreme case. The probable hypothesis that the analogous anecdote, then picked up by Horace, recurred in Theophrastus, the supporter of the inexistence of false experiences, corroborates this interpretation. Horace, who had studied philosophy at the Academy (Epist. 2.2.43–5), must have been familiar with these debates about pleasure. Only rarely does he allude to the fact that enjoyment, perhaps even stronger and certainly more readily attainable, can be experienced by those who do not exercise a severe rational criticism of their behaviour, in life as in poetry. And above all, when he does, he is always semi-serious and paradoxical. His aim is only to suggest provocatively (p.238) that besides the positions pertaining to philosophical reason that he sustains with conviction, there is another side of the coin that must be taken into consideration. But these allusions are themselves consciously based on a complex and very delicate philosophical debate: and the fact that the anecdote we have dwelt on has a correspondence in a similar anecdote narrated in the Περὶ ἡδονῆς of Heraclides Ponticus, and coincides with an anecdote probably narrated by Theophrastus, the author of treatises ‘On pleasure’ and ‘On false pleasure’, bears witness to this.

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The Value of Self-deception Why does Horace dwell so long on this anecdote? Nobody appears to have observed that it contains an important difference compared with the stories from Greek sources: they speak directly of the ‘folly’ of the character, whereas in Horace, most of the tale (131–5) is dedicated, on the contrary, to showing the absolute ‘normality’ of the character in every other aspect of his daily life. Horace, too, speaks of a morbus, a morbus that is cured with hellebore (137 expulit elleboro morbum): thus it is undoubtedly folly. But he limits the morbus of his character only to this obsession, and the whole story is built up around the contrast between this special, limited folly, and the character’s absolute normality in every other respect. The tragedies that he watches do not exist. Thus he creates them himself. And they are magnificent. Therefore, in his own way, he is a poet.27 He weaves upon himself the illusory spell that Horace himself, in a passage of his letter to Augustus, recognizes as the most amazing ability of the tragic poet, the magical gift that identifies him: ‘the poet who inaniter (without any basis in reality, and therefore only through illusion) tortures my mind with anguish, rouses it, sooths it, fills it with unreal terrors like a magician, and takes me now to Thebes, now to Athens’ (Epist. 2.1.211–13): …poeta meum qui pectus inaniter angit, inritat, mulcet, falsis terroribus inplet, ut magus, et modo me Thebis, modo ponit Athenis.

(p.239) The poet, like the character of the anecdote, and like Horace, lives among men like an ordinary man, except for the fact that he has a special mania of his own: in an earlier part of the same epistle to Augustus (Epist. 2.1.118–25), Horace, speaking also about himself, defines the writing of poetry precisely as an error ‘derangement’ and a leuis insania ‘slight madness’ (118), stressing, however, that it is an entirely innocuous folly which, as for the mad person at Argos, does not prevent the poet from being a totally normal and a very good person in all other aspects of his life. Indeed, the poet is less exposed than other men to the vices stemming from greed and ambition, feelings which are alien to him. Horace emphasizes, for five whole verses (119–24), the positive qualities that compensate for and render acceptable his leuis insania, just as he emphasizes, for the same number of verses, the normality of the man of Argos in every aspect of his life, except for the particular hallucination that makes him hear the voices of tragic actors in the empty theatre. Horace’s leuis insania is therefore an innocuous mania, which, together with the cunning craftsmanship in words, is indispensable if one is to be a poet. It is the same vein of inspiration which, on one occasion in the Odes, as we have mentioned, he represents as an acoustic hallucination, like that of the man at Argos, and calls it amabilis insania (Odes 3.4.5–6): an insania that gives pleasure.

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The Value of Self-deception The same anecdote, drawn from the philosophical treatise writing on the nature of pleasure, which Horace uses in Epistles 2.2.128–40 to ridicule the detested figure of the scriptor delirus inersque (126), may also suggest, at the same time, that the dimension of art possesses a space of its own that is irremediably separated from normality and common reason: a space in which, also through illusion, enchantment and self-deception, values and pleasures are transmitted and received. It is perhaps also for this reason that Horace chose to linger on the anecdote of the man of Argos. Yet it is only for a moment. The anecdote had arisen as a semiparadoxical digression from the profession of his own adherence to sapere. And it is to a pressing warning to pursue sapere that the poet immediately returns, as soon as the story is finished: 141 nimirum sapere est abiectis utile nugis ‘of course it is expedient to cast aside trifles and acquire wisdom’. Notes:

(1) See Epic. Ep. Men. 132: not bodily pleasures, but only a ‘sober calculation’ (νήφων λογισμός) of every choice in life, which enables us to reject false opinions, can give us a life of pleasure (ἡδὺς βίος). (2) The theme of the rational calculation of pleasures and of the choice of longterm ones in ancient hedonism receives great attention in Gosling and Taylor 1982. The search for long-term pleasure, as is known, may lead to a life of rigorous self-discipline, and a substantial renunciation of pleasure (as this is commonly understood), being privileged as the most greatly pleasurable and as generating happiness. An important in-depth examination of hedonism and the selection of pleasures in Socratic thought can be found in Tarrant 1994. See also note 2. (3) Giannantoni 1958: 23 sums up this essential point very well: for Aristippus the necessary condition for enjoyment lies in the capacity to forego enjoyment itself. The theme of rational calculation in the choice of pleasures (see notes 1 and 2) could not be absent in the Cyrenaics either: this is implied in their affirmation that bodily pleasures are superior to those of the soul (see Diog. Laert. 2.90), but also in the space granted in any case to the latter in competition with the former (see id. 2.89–90, 93 and Anecd. Gr. 1.36 Boiss. [fr. 71B Mannebach]), especially by the followers of Aristippus (Döring 1988: 50–3); it is also implied in the rejection of power, insofar as this entails more suffering than joy (see Xen. Mem. 2.1). But it must have had marginal importance, seeing that the distinguishing and original feature of the Cyrenaics was, on the contrary, the attribution of the maximum value to momentary pleasure, leading to the semi-paradoxical affirmation that ‘no difference exists between pleasures’ (Diog. Laert. 2.87): see Giannantoni 1958: 109–11, 124–7; Döring 1988: 37–44. The connection between this radical hedonism and the strict, rational exercising of self-controlled detachment from the very pleasure being Page 14 of 18

 

The Value of Self-deception enjoyed appears however to be problematic, and does not seem to me to have been adequately analysed. Döring 1988: 46–7 and 53–5 sees an irreducible contradiction in it. Tarrant 1994: 124 and 126, relates Aristippus’ detachment from pleasures to the intention to avoid those that might have unpleasant consequences, and therefore to the calculated choice of pleasures. Highly debatable is the position of Tsouna McKirahan 1994, who, on the basis of the principle of independence from pleasures, goes so far as to deny a true hedonism in Aristippus. (4) This point is well grasped by Heinze (Kiessling and Heinze 1914 ad l.15) and, for example, by McGann 1969: 44; 72f.; Dilke 1981: 1847; Kilpatrick 1986: 3. Others (for example, Moles 2002: 143) talk of an opposition between two contrasting choices, not of the freedom also to move towards the variety of intermediate positions. Johnson 1993: 85f. and 100, tries to reconcile these two different readings. (5) According to McGann 1969: 44; Mayer 1985: 34; 1986: 63; 1994: 92; Traina 2009 (1991): 295–8, with furtim relabor, Horace indicates that the Aristippean choice is the only one congenial to him, and to which he therefore returns naturally. For Mayer 1994: 218, Horace is here declaring himself to be ‘a natural follower of Aristippus’; for Traina he is ‘an Aristippean who is subject to episodic bouts of Stoic fancy’. But Horace is not here professing his adherence to any school, but rather his freedom, and his inconstancy, in moving between the extremes, of which one is more difficult to achieve and maintain, the other easier and more attractive (see also note 6): and so it is easy to ‘fall back’ into this. It is remarkable, however, that Horace depicts the Aristippean position not as a passive abandoning of oneself to pleasure (as Moles 1985: 38 makes out), but as an active commitment (19 conor) to achieving a result. Giannantoni 1958: 49–50 observes that this activistic underlining does not appear in other sources on Aristippus. But consideration should also be given to the parallel with the way in which Horace presents (lines 16f.) the Stoic choice: in this passage he wishes to represent himself, with self-irony, as a particularly zealous follower of the philosophical choice adopted each time: this is noted by Sack 1965: 90. In fact, being capable of drawing pleasure also from situations of privation requires great strength of spirit, and epistles 17 and 18 show, albeit with irony, how opportunistic hedonism can be difficult to exercise well. (6) Mayer 1985: 34 and 1986: 64 maintains that Horace preferred to mention the hedonism of Aristippus in order to avoid identifying himself with what for him was the overly systematic one of Epicurus. According to Traina, the antithesis here is not between Stoic virtue and Aristippean pleasure, but between Stoic ethical rigidity and Aristippean flexibility: but here Aristippus represents one of the schools with which Horace sometimes aligns himself (nunc…nunc), not the very freedom to align himself as a hospes to the different schools, as Traina

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The Value of Self-deception thinks, and the reference to pleasure should in any case be considered implicit in the reference to Aristippus. (7) The carpe diem motif is pre-philosophical, and can already be found in archaic Greek lyric verse. In Horace it has evident Epicurean overtones, although not everyone is in agreement on this: see Rudd 1993: 67–9, denying precise philosophical links. It has also been observed that the foregoing of pleasures deriving from hope in the future would seem to correspond better to the Aristippean valorization of momentary pleasure, whereas Epicurus admits that the wise man can find pleasure in the hope of future pleasures: Gigon 1977: 450–5 and 475f.; Traina 2009 (1991). But the recommendation not to rely on the future is also Epicurean (see Epic. Ep. Men. 127; Sent. Vat. 14; fr. 490 Us.). (8) See also Carm. 2.10.22–4; 3.28.4; 4.9.48; Epist.1.6.15f.; 1.10. 44; Ars 396ff. (9) Cf. the radical hedonism of the positions initially held by some interlocutors of Socrates in Platonic dialogues, such as Callicles in the Gorgias (esp. 491e– 494c) and Philebus and Protarchus in the Philebus. See also Poliarchos’ speech in Aristoxenus fr. 50 Wehrli (Athen. 12.545a–546b) and Arist. EN. 1095b14–22. (10) In this essay I have deliberately omitted an entirely different aspect of Horace’s ethics, in which a positive value is openly attributed to self-deception. Plato, Resp. 474d–5a and Lucretius, 4.1153–69 mock the self-deception of the lover who, victim to a dulling of his rational capacities, interprets the defects of his beloved as qualities. Horace, in Sat. 1.3, draws on the same motif (38–40), but gives it a positive twist: he likens it to the self-deception of an affectionate father who plays down and interprets the defects of his child as qualities (43–8), and makes it the model for an understanding and indulgent attitude towards friends and, in general, one’s neighbour (41–2; 49–54). (11) The affinity of the figure of Maenius, with whom Horace identifies here, with Aristippus as represented by Horace in Epist. 1.1.18–19 and 17.23–4 is briefly signalled by Maguinness 1938: 41; McGann 1969: 72–3; Préaux 1977: 400; Rudd 2009, 242. It is only given due attention in La Penna 1993: 256–9; 374, who rightly interprets Maenius as a vulgar Aristippus, a caricature of the pliant morality with which Horace aligns himself, referring to Aristippus, in his personal reflection on the relationship with the powerful. For Mayer 1994: 218, the whole of Epistle 1.15 is a lesson in Aristippeanism. Traina 2009 (1991), though sustaining that the Horace of the Epistles is basically aligned with Aristippus, especially as a model for the position to adopt with regard to the powerful, does not consider the figure of Maenius and his Aristippean character. (12) See above, note 8. Also remarkable, in this passage, is the ‘Socratic’ identification, paradoxically deformed, between sapere and bene uiuere.

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The Value of Self-deception (13) In this case it is the inspiration of the Muses. The irrational element in poetic inspiration is admitted in the Odes also in the more intense form of Dionysiac exaltation, which is instead the specific object of sarcasm in the Ars: see Carm. 2.19; 3.25 and La Penna 1993 325–33; Nisbet-Rudd 2004: 296–300; Schiesaro 2009. (14) Joachim 1892: 13–25; Geffcken 1892: 83–90; Regenbogen 1940: 1406–7. (15) Geffcken 1892: 88. (16) See the editions of Voss 1896; Wehrli 1969: 21–4; Schütrumpf 2008: 108–17. Useful treatments can be found in Wehrli 1969: 77–81; Gottschalk 1980: 88–92; Schütrumpf 2009. (17) See Fortenbaugh 2011: 207–12 (209, 643–5, 650 on Chamaeleon). The edition of the fragments is in Fortenbaugh 1992, II 374–81; commentary in Fortenbaugh 2011: 637–60. (18) As already maintained by Geffcken, 1892: 88, on the basis of the position of the similar anecdote in Heraclides Ponticus in a treatise ‘On Pleasure’. Fortenbaugh 2011: 660 thinks in terms of a derivation from ‘On false pleasure’ or from ‘On false and true’ by Theophrastus himself; Joachim 1892: 15 and Regenbogen 1940: 1406 thought in terms of a derivation from his Περὶ παραφροσύνης (On folly). (19) See Phil. 36c–38a. It should be remembered that in the sensualistic gnoseology of the hedonist Aristippus, the only certain knowledge is that which results from the direct experience of our affections (πάθη), which in the first place are pleasure and pain (see fr. 210–18 Mannebach). (20) On ‘false’ pleasure, see also Plato, Resp. 583b–588a; Arist. EN 1152b31f. (21) Here I will just refer to a few studies that I consider most useful, and which also permit a reconstruction of the whole debate: Gosling 1975: 106–21, 214–20; Brandt 1977; Gosling and Taylor 1982: 429–53; Frede 1997: 242–95; Delcomminette 2006: 349–448. (22) Fr. 556 Fort. (Fortenbaugh 1992, II 380f.) and see Fortenbaugh 2011, 639 and 657–60. Arist. EN 1152b31–3 seems to adopt, on the point, a position close to that of Plato. (23) In Plato, Phileb. 21a-d there is a demonstration that the enjoyment of pleasure requires the involvement of the intellectual faculty (νοῦς, μνήμη, ἐπιστήμη, and δόξα). See also, for example, Resp. 583b.

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The Value of Self-deception (24) Plato, Phil. 36e. On this passage, and on the interpretation of the reaction of Socrates’ interlocutor, see Gosling 1961: 44–5; Gosling 1975: 106–7; Frede 1997: 244–5; Delcomminette 2006: 351–2. (25) See also Arist. Protr. 101 Düring: ‘even granted that the sleeper enjoys all the pleasures, sleeping is very pleasant but not desirable because the representations of sleep are false.’ (26) As argued by Voss 1896: 38; Wehrli 1969: 79; Bringmann 1972: 527. The opposite opinion is sustained by Bignone 1936, I 281, Gottschalk 1980: 91. Bringmann’s hypothesis that in Phil. 44b–51a Plato is alluding to the Περὶ ἡδονῆς of Heraclides Ponticus is rightly confuted by Gottschalk 1980: 92. (27) The idea is in some way implicit in the title that Brink 1982: 348 gives to this section of the epistle (126–40): ‘Creative illusion’. A likening of the man of Argos to the poet figure is also suggested by Kilpatrick 1990: 23, who, however, does not grasp the meaning of the anecdote.

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Irrational Panegyric in Augustan Poetry

Augustan Poetry and the Irrational Philip Hardie

Print publication date: 2016 Print ISBN-13: 9780198724728 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2015 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198724728.001.0001

Irrational Panegyric in Augustan Poetry S. J. Heyworth

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198724728.003.0013

Abstract and Keywords In offering praise the Augustan poets exaggerate, fantasize and lie; but they describe themselves as inspired and beyond reason—like the Sibyl in Aeneid 6 (affected by Apollo, but n.b. bacchatur uates). The chapter touches on the physicality of the divine emperor, irrationality in geography and astronomy, and moments of incompetence and sarcasm, before ending with the mix of Bacchic ecstasy and Apolline command to be found in panegyrical Odes. It encourages reading that does not diminish the oddity of these exhibitions of irrationality: the poets draw attention to their lack of reason, they attribute their wildest excesses to gods and ghosts, and they set them in contexts that question the reasonableness of what is said. Keywords:   irrational, mad, panegyric, praise, Bacchus, Vergil, Horace, Ovid, Propertius, Messalla

1 Irrational Physiology Gods cannot cry.1 That we know from Ovid’s description of Ceres’ emotions at Fasti 4.521, for example: dixit, et ut lacrimae (neque enim lacrimare deorum est) decidit in tepidos lucida gutta sinus.2 Yet Propertius has his Cornelia say of Augustus (4.11.59–60): ille sua nata dignam uixisse sororem increpat, et lacrimas uidimus ire deo.3

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Irrational Panegyric in Augustan Poetry This does not add up. There is a basic incompatibility between believing Augustus a god and imagining him as weeping over the death of his erstwhile step-daughter. Ovid is of course having fun in defining the drops that fell from Ceres’ eyes as only like tears, but necessarily not in fact tears. But so already is Propertius: he wants his Cornelia to claim that her death was a source of national mourning, and in that age who but Augustus can symbolize national mourning? And yet mourning (p.241) without tears is superficial, so the pressures of panegyric produce an irrational combination. We know that the princeps is a man of pietas and so require him to grieve over the death of a member of his family; but we know too that he is divine, and gods do not cry. Paradox is inevitable, and the lack of reason is manifest to any reader not caught up in the expectations of imperial praise. Exposure of the irrationality is in my view Propertius’ aim: awareness of Augustus’ divine identity forces him into further absurdity, which he states baldly to let its unreason show: lacrimas uidimus ire deo. That view comes from a reading of Propertius as a whole, and not from the use of paradox in itself. It is an important truth promoted by modern discussions of Roman religion that individuals are not necessarily discommoded by the presence in their minds of incompatible beliefs;4 and it would be possible to see 4.11.60 as the start of a redefinition of divinity, just as Fasti 4.521–2 serves as a redefinition of tears (‘drops of water that fall from the eyes of any creature bar a deity’). Attention to the physicality of deity is present also in Horace, the poet who in Odes 2.20 lauds himself by describing his own metamorphosis into a swan. The Roman Ode5 moves from discussing the virtues that win glory to the process of deification itself in 3.3.9–12: hac arte Pollux et uagus Hercules enisus arces attigit igneas, quos inter Augustus recumbens purpureo bibet ore nectar.6

This is a very physical imagining of Augustus, not only lying between his fellow demi-gods, but drinking nectar, and with a mouth, or face, rendered red or bright by his new status (or the nectar). We can speculate as to how such an image may have come to mind: Theocritus’ seventeenth idyll has Alexander sitting next to Zeus and opposite Heracles, with a place adjacent ready for Ptolemy (Idyll 17.16–25). The feasting is predicated of Heracles, however, though there is reference in verse 24 to (p.242) the physical transformation of Alexander and his successors: ‘Zeus removed old age from their limbs.’ Suetonius reports a mock banquet of the twelve gods attended by the future Augustus in the guise of Apollo,7 while commentators on Vergil and Horace mention statues of the same god made with the features of the princeps;8 and according to Pliny, the face of Jupiter’s statue had regularly been coloured with cinnabar in the Republic, and so too the bodies of triumphators.9 Yet, whatever Page 2 of 20

 

Irrational Panegyric in Augustan Poetry explanation we may come up with, as a statement about the future of Caesar, Horace’s lines remain an irrational fantasy, and one that the physicality of the picture emphasizes strongly.

2 Irrational Geography and Astronomy In the epilogue to the Georgics Vergil contrasts his own peaceful existence with the magnificent achievements of Caesar in war (4.560–2): Caesar dum magnus ad altum fulminat Euphraten bello uictorque uolentis per populos dat iura uiamque adfectat Olympo.10

We have no reason to think Caesar threw thunderbolts or went anywhere near the Euphrates (and the notion that the peoples were willing to receive imperial commands may also raise a sceptic’s eyebrow). Again, we can treat fulminat as a metaphor, and find an explanation for the poet’s saying ‘Euphrates’ rather than ‘Nile’. Both words constitute subtle allusions to aesthetically engaged sections of Callimachus: Zeus thunders in the Aetia prologue (fr. 1.20) and the end of the Hymn to Apollo is the major source of Roman poets’ use of (p.243) sea, river and spring imagery.11 But my point is that such explanations do not remove the absurdity from the assertion about Caesar’s deed. Propertius repeatedly plays with such geographical irrationality, mentioning the Euphrates as part of the empire at 2.10.13–14 and 3.4.4.12 Both passages extend the fantasy by having Caesar also attack India: 3.4 begins Arma deus Caesar dites meditatur ad Indos (‘War is being planned by the divine Caesar against the rich Indians’); 2.10.15– 18 includes Arabia too, and the rest of the world.13 In the long passages of panegyric in the proems of Books 1 and 3 of the Georgics the fiction is softened by the use of the subjunctive and the future. In the third book, Vergil makes irrational predictions about his own activities (Geo. 3.12–18): primus Idumaeas referam tibi, Mantua, palmas, et uiridi in campo templum de marmore ponam propter aquam, tardis ingens ubi flexibus errat Mincius et tenera praetexit harundine ripas. 15 in medio mihi Caesar erit templumque tenebit: illi uictor ego et Tyrio conspectus in ostro centum quadriiugos agitabo ad flumina currus.14

In 13–16, he foresees building a marble temple for Caesar on the banks of the Mincius at Mantua; in 17–18, he casts himself as a triumphator, and drives a hundred four-horsed chariots. We may read this as a sequence of metaphors for the poetry he will write, but the fantasy is elaborated beyond any precise equivalences, and we should not miss the sensation of enthusiasm, in its strict sense, that is to be found here.15 In Georgics 1.24–40 Vergil caps his initial (p. 244) reworking of Varro’s twelve rustic deities with as many lines given over to Caesar, and a bizarre discussion of the future role of the god-to-be: he wonders Page 3 of 20

 

Irrational Panegyric in Augustan Poetry whether he will join the council on Olympus, as patron of cities, lands or crops (25–8), or serve among the gods of the sea (29–31), or whether he will appear as a new constellation between Virgo and Libra, the claws of Scorpio (32–5)— there’s no real expectation that he might join the powers of the underworld (36– 9). Again there is a Hellenistic model for the arrival in the heavens of a new constellation, as narrated in Callimachus’ Coma Berenices, but unlike Callimachus Vergil concentrates on the change in the sky, identifying the space that will be filled, and presenting the scorpion as already withdrawing his claws. It is irrational to make claims that are so manifestly untrue.

3 Enthusiastic Insight Vergil also claims knowledge of the wishes of the underworld: te nec sperant Tartara regem (‘nor does Tartarus expect you as its king’, Geo. 1.36). Insight into divine minds is most frequently found in Ovid, during his encounters with gods.16 At times he draws attention to the fiction involved in such epiphanies, as Callimachus had in the Aetia when setting his conversation with the Muses in a dream. At the start of Fasti 6 we find a defence of his claim facta canam (3): Hic quoque mensis habet dubias in nomine causas; quae placeat, positis omnibus ipse leges. facta canam; sed erunt qui me finxisse loquantur, nullaque mortali numina uisa putent. est deus in nobis; agitante calescimus illo; 5 impetus hic sacrae semina mentis habet. fas mihi praecipue uultus uidisse deorum, uel quia sum uates, uel quia sacra cano. est nemus arboribus densum, secretus ab omni (p.245) uoce locus, si non obstreperetur aquis; 10 hic ego quaerebam coepti quae mensis origo esset, et in cura nominis huius eram. ecce deas uidi…17

facta is immediately countered by finxisse, and in 6 one of the explanations for Ovid’s ability to see the faces of gods is that he is a uates, an inspired poet.18 The sceptics are of course the rational ones here. Imperial panegyric is sometimes present in the utterances of Ovid’s divine interlocutors, e.g. at the end of the conversation with Janus at 1.281–2: pace fores obdo, ne qua discedere possit; Caesareoque diu numine clausus ero.19

But it is not a major part of what he uses these colloquies for, which is rather authoritative and varied aetiology in the Fasti or reflection on genre and poetics there and in other collections. Vergil in the Aeneid, however, does attribute the major passages of panegyric to those with divine insight; he continues too to employ the future tenses that he has found so useful in the Georgics, even though here the prophecies refer to events that for Vergil are past. Thus it is Page 4 of 20

 

Irrational Panegyric in Augustan Poetry Jupiter who at Aeneid 1.286–90 announces as fated the triumph and apotheosis of Caesar, and then the closing of the Gates of War, with rather improbable pictures, in 292–3 of Romulus and Remus governing together, and in 294–5 of Furor imprisoned within the Belli portae. It is Vulcan who depicts the battle of Actium and Augustus’ triple triumph, the latter with some exaggeration, but not much apparent fantasy; here a (p.246) sequence of imperfect and preterite verbs promotes the sense of valid historical narrative, but the description of artistic creation re-establishes the gap between word and reality, as is brought out by the presence of finxerat at 726. And it is the dead Anchises, with his quasi-divine insight into the future of his people, who makes the most irrational claims about members of his family. Think of the absurdity of 6.875–81, the lines on Marcellus: uniquely moral and invincible in war. The truth of these assertions is left helpfully untested by his early death.20 Or consider the lines on Augustus, at Aen. 6.791–7: hic uir, hic est tibi quem promitti saepius audis, Augustus Caesar, diui genus, aurea condet saecula qui rursus Latio regnata per arua Saturno quondam, super et Garamantas et Indos proferet imperium—iacet extra sidera tellus, 795 extra anni solisque uias, ubi caelifer Atlas axem umero torquet stellis ardentibus aptum.21

Rational analysis is hardly possible for the prophecy in 792–4 that he will reestablish the golden era in the territory once ruled by Saturn in hiding, nor is the introduction of a land beyond the stars in 795–7 linked to any activity (though the implication seems to be that the Roman Empire will extend so far), but the words of 794–5 super et Garamantas et Indos proferet imperium are precise and they are nonsense: Augustus will not extend his control into the depths of Africa or further east than India. Verses 798–800 imitate Theocritus 16.76–7 in expressing the fear that alien races feel before the threatening might of the praised monarch: ἤδη νῦν Φοίνικες ὑπ᾽ ἠελίῳ δύνοντι οἰκεῦντες Λιβύας ἄκρον σφυρόν ἐρρίγασιν.22

(p.247) But whereas Theocritus gives us hopeful exaggeration, Anchises puts the fear centuries before the life of the monarch in question, the vivid ἤδη νῦν turned to absurdity in the allusive iam nunc: huius in aduentum iam nunc et Caspia regna responsis horrent diuum et Maeotia tellus, et septemgemini turbant trepida ostia Nili. 800 nec uero Alcides tantum telluris obiuit, fixerit aeripedem ceruam licet, aut Erymanthi pacarit nemora et Lernam tremefecerit arcu; nec qui pampineis uictor iuga flectit habenis Page 5 of 20

 

Irrational Panegyric in Augustan Poetry Liber, agens celso Nysae de uertice tigris.23805

Nor is there much rationality in 801–5, where Vergil sets the extent of Augustan conquest against the fictional travels of apotheosed heroes, and finds Hercules and Dionysus wanting in comparison with Anchises’ adoptive descendant. Both Augustus and Marcellus are shades of the dead, who have lost their past identity and replaced it with a fated future. In the case of Marcellus, that fated death, foretold of a shade already dead, brings out the underlying irrationality of the whole episode, especially in a poet so influenced by Lucretius and the Epicurean school. But Vergil does mark out this absurd part of his fiction. First, he uses a ghost to express his greatest fantasies. Propertius of course has the same alibi when he attributes the observation about Caesar’s tears to the ghost of Cornelia (4.11), the culmination of a book notable for its irrationalities: speaking statues, ghostly voices, and the coming back to life of the dead. And Vergil too uses the broader shape of his book: the underworld begins with the vestibule and its empty monsters (6.273–94)24 and ends when Aeneas goes through the Gates of Ivory, through which false dreams pass; even before the descent (p.248) we meet the Sibyl, and a classic depiction of inspiration and madness (Aen. 6.78–83, 98–101):25 At Phoebi nondum patiens immanis in antro bacchatur uates, magnum si pectore possit excussisse deum; tanto magis ille fatigat os rabidum, fera corda domans, fingitque premendo. 80 ostia iamque domus patuere ingentia centum sponte sua uatisque ferunt responsa per auras: … talibus ex adyto dictis Cumaea Sibylla horrendas canit ambages antroque remugit, obscuris uera inuoluens: ea frena furenti 100 concutit et stimulos sub pectore uertit Apollo.26

Though the source of the madness is the orderly Apollo (78, 101), Vergil uses bacchatur (79), the verb that best describes her uncontrolled frenzy. He heaps up words of madness (rabidum, fera, furenti, stimulos), but in this paradoxical situation he combines these with diction of restraint: domans, premendo, frena. Another striking usage is fingit in 81, once again employed to mark the fiction that will follow; and in verse 100 he sums up the paradox of his lying poem’s relationship with truth: obscuris uera inuoluens.27

4 Panegyric and Irrationality Let me sum up my argument at this central point of the paper. There are three things I want to bring out. Firstly, a significant proportion of what is said by way of praise in Augustan poetry (though not only (p.249) there, of course) is contradictory, inaccurate, hyperbolic, false. That may be obvious, and poets, you might say, exaggerate—it is their mode. They have a licence; they are inspired— Page 6 of 20

 

Irrational Panegyric in Augustan Poetry just like the Sibyl in Aeneid 6 they are beyond reason. But my second point is to encourage reading that doesn’t diminish the oddity of these exhibitions of irrationality. If we think of the Sibyl, we do not think only of her wise guidance of Aeneas through the darkness of his night in the Underworld; we remember her moments of madness too. And so it should be with the poets. When we are confronted by a metaphor the contradiction of reality forces us to adjust our interpretation, and yet we notice and appreciate the metaphor itself. Exaggerated or inaccurate praise also encourages the reader to interpret in such a way as to soften the contradiction of reality; and yet it should also make us think of the context, the pressure to praise Augustus and his regime, and the unchallengeable lies they perpetrate. We can thus find reason in the poets’ irrationality, but only by exposing the deeper irrationality that lies behind it. All the more so, I would argue for my third point, because they draw attention to the lack of reason in their laudations, as we have seen. More than once an account of past praise is accompanied by direct reference to madness: so for example Horace describes as insane the man who praises a large mullet (Serm. 2.2.33–4 laudas, insane, trilibrem /mullum), and at 1.9.47 attonita laudes tibi mente canebam Tibullus remembers his praise of Marathus as offered when he was out of his mind. In other places, the poets parade their contradictions, they are cautious with their tenses, they attribute their wildest excesses to others, such as gods and ghosts,28 and they set them in contexts that question the reasonableness of what is said. This use of context I shall continue to explore in what follows.

5 Incompetence and Sarcasm There is a poet of the era who should not have been given a licence: the author of the Panegyric for Messalla. He repeatedly makes laughable claims, and unlike the better poets he does nothing to (p.250) acknowledge the unreason of his lies. So in verses 5–6 Messalla is the only author who could properly weave together a text on his own great achievements ([Tib.] 3.7.5–6): nec tua praeter te chartis intexere quisquam facta queat, dictis ut non maiora supersint.29

At 39 the poet cannot imagine anyone performing greater deeds than Messalla on campaign or in the forum; at 82 he is the most skilled practitioner of warfare. And later on, at 121–31: nam modo fulgentem Tyrio subtegmine uestem indueras oriente die duce fertilis anni, splendidior liquidis cum Sol caput extulit undis et fera discordes tenuerunt flamina uenti, curua nec adsuetos egerunt flumina cursus; 125 quin rapidum30 placidis etiam mare constitit undis, ulla nec aerias uolucris perlabitur auras nec quadrupes densas depascitur aspera siluas Page 7 of 20

 

Irrational Panegyric in Augustan Poetry quin largita tuis sit muta31 silentia uotis. Iuppiter ipse leui uectus per inania curru 130 adfuit et caelo uicinum liquit Olympum…32

the poet describes the universal calm that accompanied Messalla’s prayers at the start of his consulship in 31, and the presence of Jupiter himself, carried through the void in his chariot. This is all expressed of the present and the past, without any complexity of context, any use of divine voices or other distancing devices: all in all it is a masterly display of irrationality. For real mastery of the irrational mode we may look at Ovid. First, in the light of Vergil on Marcellus, let us think about his praise of a young member of the imperial family. In Ars amatoria 1, he (p.251) introduces his advice that triumphs are good opportunities for meeting girls by looking ahead to an apparently imminent triumph: Caesar is preparing to conquer the East, and Parthia will pay the price at last for the killing of Crassus and the long retention of Roman standards. The passage commences with quasi-ecstatic vocatives and futures. But then a surprise: though an avenger is on his way (ultor adest, 181), it is not the princeps himself, it is the boy Gaius, professing himself a leader despite his youth: Parthe, dabis poenas: Crassi, gaudete, sepulti signaque barbaricas non bene passa manus. 180 ultor adest, primisque ducem profitetur in annis, bellaque non puero tractat agenda puer. parcite natales timidi numerare deorum: Caesaribus uirtus contigit ante diem.33

The pentameter 182 will prove only too true, when Gaius dies of wounds inflicted on campaign (and apparently due to his naïveté: Dio 55.10a.6). What Ovid goes on to say about the early maturity of Caesars is classic material of panegyric,34 as is phrasing such as pulcherrime rerum (213) in the fantasized triumph. But the erotic context, and the blind faith in the success of one entrusted with such responsibilities so young, make the irrationality here seem comic; the historical context and our knowledge of Gaius’ failure and death make it grimly real. The decisions of a princeps may be irrational too. Or consider the apotheosis of Julius Caesar, elevated not by his triumphs, or his domestic reforms, but by his having fathered his son. We are told this three times in Metamorphoses 15, before in 760–1 the climactic, and arguably true, observation that Julius had to be made a god so that his adopted son would be Diui filius (15.746–51, 760–1): Caesar in urbe sua deus est; quem Marte togaque praecipuum non bella magis finita triumphis resque domi gestae properataque gloria rerum in sidus uertere nouum stellamque comantem, Page 8 of 20

 

Irrational Panegyric in Augustan Poetry quam sua progenies; neque enim de Caesaris actis 750 (p.252) ullum maius opus quam quod pater exstitit huius.… ne foret hic igitur mortali semine cretus, 760 ille deus faciendus erat.35

The repetition, compounded by scilicet in 752,36 provides a sarcastic context for the sequence of genetic words describing a relationship that was actually not genetic: progenies, pater, genuisse (758),37 semine cretus. Ovid’s exile poetry is also full of irrational panegyric. In this case, the whole context undoes the validity of the grand claims for Augustan greatness. If you have been exiled to the Black Sea without criminal offence or trial, you cannot rationally praise your persecutor for his moderation, as Ovid does at Tristia 2.39–42, for example: tu quoque, cum patriae rector dicare paterque, utere more dei nomen habentis idem. idque facis, nec te quisquam moderatius umquam imperii potuit frena tenere sui.38

Nor is it reasonable for Ovid to claim at Tristia 2.161–4 that without Livia there would be no one whom Augustus could marry, when he has been married twice previously and had a daughter by one of those wives. Ovid also makes fantastic assertions about the nature of his earlier books, which do not have the name of Augustus in thousands of places (Tristia 2.61–2), not even the Ars Amatoria; the Metamorphoses hardly heralds the name (63–6): Augustus appears twice in book 1 and twice in Book 15, and not at all in between. One can see that the effect of distant exile might be to make one irrational—or fantastically sarcastic.

(p.253) 6 Horatian Panegyric: Bacchic Ecstasy and Apolline Orders Like the Georgics most of Horace’s panegyric has its irrationality softened by the use of conditionals, subjunctives and futures. So for example the culminating equation of Mercury and Caesar at the end of Odes 1.2: siue mutata iuuenem figura ales in terris imitaris almae filius Maiae patiens uocari Caesaris ultor, serus in caelum redeas diuque 45 laetus intersis populo Quirini, neue te nostris uitiis iniquum ocior aura tollat: hic magnos potius triumphos, hic ames dici pater atque princeps, 50 neu sinas Medos equitare inultos te duce, Caesar.39

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Irrational Panegyric in Augustan Poetry Similar in this respect are 1.12.49–57, 1.35.29–32, and at 2.9.17–24, he distances the fanciful encomium even further by placing it in a prospective song: desine mollium tandem querellarum et potius noua cantemus Augusti tropaea Caesaris et rigidum Niphaten…40

When we read Herculis ritu at 3.14.1 we may wonder how like the arrival of Hercules in Rome is that of Augustus, returning from campaigns and supposedly life-threatening illness in Spain, but not coming overland nor accompanied by the cattle of Geryon. But again dictus softens the hyperbole. (p.254) At the end of Epistles 1.12 Horace gives a quick summary of recent news to his addressee Iccius (Ep. 1.12.27–9): ius imperiumque Phraates Caesaris accepit genibus minor; aurea fruges Italiae pleno defudit Copia cornu.41

As an account of facts the sentences are clearly exaggerated, though we can imagine the images from which the kneeling Parthian and the overflowing Cornucopia derive (the Prima Porta breastplate, and other imperial sculptures and coins depicting the Horn of Plenty). But we also find striking moments of realism in the Epistles, e.g. at 1.16.25–9: siquis bella tibi terra pugnata marique 25 dicat et his uerbis uacuas permulceat auris: ‘tene magis saluum populus uelit an populum tu, seruet in ambiguo qui consulit et tibi et urbi Iuppiter’, Augusti laudes agnoscere possis.42

Encomium has become very hackneyed. Porphyrio attributes the quoted words to a famous panegyric of Augustus, pseudo-Acro explicitly to Varius;43 but the way in which Horace introduces them makes the verses look more like invention than quotation. At any rate Horace can write with mild satire on accounts of wars that evoke the start of the Odyssey and the Aeneid (bella…terra pugnata marique) and praise of Augustus that epigrammatically plays on his and the Roman people’s mutual affection, as well as his close relationship with Jupiter (something Horace himself has of course sung, in Odes 1.12 and the Roman Ode). One of the things that is remarkable about Odes 3 is the extent to which its political poetry deals in policy rather than praise. Both the Roman Ode and 3.24 discuss the need to curb luxury, both the search for wealth and extravagant building, especially when they transgress natural boundaries; the importance of rigorous education; and the (p.255) restraint of vice, especially among women. Page 10 of 20

 

Irrational Panegyric in Augustan Poetry Yet both 1–6 and 24–5 contain reflections on the immortal glory of Augustus too, both generalized and particular; and the connected sequences share also expressions of anxiety about excessive sublimity, and assertions of Bacchic inspiration. In the case of the Roman Ode, these come at the junction of 3.3 and 3.4 (n.b. 3.4.5–6 amabilis insania, ‘delightful madness’). Already at the end of Book 2 Horace first sees Bacchus teaching carmina in the wilderness (2.19) and then finds himself turning into a swan (2.20)—a prelude to the vatic utterances of 3.1–6, as Schiesaro (2009) shows. Horace’s signing off from Juno’s elevated speech at 3.3.70 (quo, Musa, tendis? ‘Where are you headed, Muse?’) is echoed in the move from the policy of 3.24 to the glorification of Caesar in 3.25: quo me, Bacche, rapis tui plenum? quae nemora aut quos agor in specus uelox mente noua?44

The formal echo is combined with another claim to Bacchic inspiration, more precise this time, and one that is backed up by the simile of the Maenad looking over Thrace in 3.25.8ff. Like Horace off-track and about to complete his threebook project, the Maenad surveys land she has traversed (lustratam, 12): non secus in iugis exsomnis stupet Euhias Hebrum prospiciens et niue candidam 10 Thracen et pede barbaro lustratam Rhodopen ac mihi deuio rupes45 et uacuum nemus mirari libet.46

One of the purposes of these two expressions of Bacchic influence in 2.19 and 3.25 is to mark the poet as beyond reason in what he says in (p.256) the accompanying panegyric; and this is particularly marked in the arrangement of 3.25, where the artistic rehearsal implied by aeternum meditans decus (5) is overwhelmed by the context’s evocations of Dionysiac lack of control, to be seen in the references to the wilderness (as at 2.19.1), and in the words I have italicized in verses 1–3 and 9–11.47 In Book 4 of the Odes he is less restrained in offering assertive hyperbole. For example, though we may note the distancing concines at 4.2.33 and 41, between them48 stands a gross piece of irrational flattery: concines maiore poeta plectro Caesarem, quandoque trahet ferocis per sacrum cliuum merita decorus 35 fronde Sygambros, quo nihil maius meliusue terris fata donauere bonique diui nec dabunt,49 quamuis redeant in aurum Page 11 of 20

 

Irrational Panegyric in Augustan Poetry tempora priscum; 40 concines laetosque dies et urbis publicum ludum super impetrato fortis Augusti reditu forumque litibus orbum.50

In his final Ode (4.14–15), Horace is as excessive as anywhere in the corpus; again he marks out the irrationality of what he is writing, but takes a different tack in doing so this time. In the first forty lines of 4.14, he celebrates the military victories of Drusus and, at greater length, Tiberius, with similes comparing him to the South Wind and (p.257) the river Aufidus. All this is presented as achievements owed to Augustus himself, and he is the te of 4.14.41: te Cantaber non ante domabilis Medusque et Indus, te profugus Scythes miratur, o tutela praesens Italiae dominaeque Romae. te fontium qui celat origines 45 Nilusque et Hister, te rapidus Tigris, te beluosus qui remotis obstrepit Oceanus Britannis, te non pauentis funera Galliae duraeque tellus audit Hiberiae, 50 te caede gaudentes Sygambri compositis uenerantur armis.51

We can rationalize 41–4: though the previously unconquered inhabitant of Spain, the Mede, the Indian and the Scythian may not actually admire Caesar, there is evidence52 that such people sent embassies, and embassies bring gifts, do obeisance and show signs of respect to power. But there is absurdity when in 45–50 rivers, lands and even the Ocean are represented as behaving in a similar way.53 We may even see the distance from reality marked by the emphasis on what is beyond knowledge (45) and the evocative adjective beluosus: ‘here be dragons’.54 In the poem we know as Odes 4.15, but which given the continuity of metre and addressee55, we should see as the conclusion of 4.14, we have more explicit expressions of distant acceptance of Roman power: verses 21–4 claim that the Julian Laws will not be broken by those who drink the Danube, nor the Getae, Chinese, (p.258) Persians or Scythians. In the Loeb Rudd (2004) notes, on Seres (23), ‘Chinese silk was imported by the Romans, but the idea of political submission is fanciful hyperbole’—that nicely encapsulates what this paper has treated as irrational panegyric. In 4.15.4 there begins a list of Caesar’s accomplishments: he has restored fertility to the fields (presumably by ending strife in Italy, settling veterans, sponsoring the Georgics); he has brought back the lost standards from Parthia, closed the gates of Janus, restrained licence, and revived the arts that created

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Irrational Panegyric in Augustan Poetry the empire. To be fair to Horace, he does not claim this: he makes tua aetas56 the subject of all the verbs (Odes 4.15.4–16): tua, Caesar, aetas fruges et agris rettulit uberes 5 et signa nostro restituit Ioui derepta Parthorum superbis postibus57 et uacuum duellis Ianum Quirini clausit et ordinem rectum euaganti frena licentiae 10 iniecit emouitque culpas et ueteres reuocauit artes, per quas Latinum nomen et Italae creuere uires famaque et imperi porrecta maiestas ad ortus 15 solis ab Hesperio cubili.58

Even so, there are some extravagant assertions here: derepta in 7 hardly matches the negotiated return of the standards; frena in 10 is inaccurate description for laws attempting to influence behaviour; and the claim that culpae have been removed is preposterous in any age. (p.259) More disturbing in my view is the untruth that underlies the whole sequence. Horace is willingly talking of battles and conquest, until Phoebus warns him off in 1–2: Phoebus uolentem proelia me loqui uictas et urbis increpuit lyra, ne parua Tyrrhenum per aequor uela darem.59

Small sails cannot cope with the Etruscan sea. However, verses 4ff. seem to imply another explanation: the Augustan era is an age of peace, so war poems are unsuitable. But what then are the ancient arts60 (12–16) through which the glory of Rome, the might and majesty of Italy grew? Caesar may be a custodian of order (17), keeping civil furor and uis at bay, but what then are the wars that Drusus and Tiberius have been fighting? Were they not caused by the anger that pounds out swords and sets unhappy cities in opposition (19–20)? custode rerum Caesare non furor ciuilis aut uis exiget otium, non ira, quae procudit ensis et miseras inimicat urbis.61 20

Just like the settled peace that Aeneas’ Trojans find in a Latium that proudly displays the spoils of war and seethes with rivalries about to burst into conflict, the Augustan peace is self-contradictory myth.

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Irrational Panegyric in Augustan Poetry Here Horace acknowledges his madness not with reference to a Bacchic epiphany or Maenadic frenzy, but by using Apollo, the god symbolic of Augustan order, to warn him off. He wants to reflect reality by talking of battles; but that is forbidden (4.15.1–4). When Bacchus is mentioned, it is as purveyor of wine and jests at the nightly family meal (26): little room for wandering off track here. Apollo has set the limits within which the poet must operate; all one can do is (p.260) submerge the poetic identity in a collective celebration62 and sing endless Aeneids: nosque et profestis lucibus et sacris 25 inter iocosi munera Liberi cum prole matronisque nostris rite deos prius adprecati uirtute functos more patrum duces Lydis remixto carmine tibiis 30 Troiamque et Anchisen et almae progeniem Veneris canemus.63

And so he stops.64 (p.261) Notes:

(1) There are of course passages of ancient literature where gods cry, as Richard Rutherford reminds me, e.g. Thetis repeatedly in the Iliad, Artemis at Il. 21.493– 6; Venus at Vergil, Aen. 1.228. But Propertius 4.11.60 is based on implying the truth of this assertion, and exploits its incompatibility with the observed fact of Caesar’s tears. (2) ‘She finished speaking, and like tears (for it is not the nature of gods to weep) a shining drop fell onto her warm breast.’ Similar is Met. 2.621–2; the truism is found already at Euripides, Hipp. 1396. (3) ‘He cries out that a sister worthy of his daughter is no more, and we have seen tears flow from a god.’ (4) See Feeney 1998: 14–21, Rüpke 2007: 124–5, each with further references. (5) For the singular as the appropriate way to describe Odes 3.1–6 (and likewise all the other runs united by metre, including 3.24–5 and 4.14–15), see Heyworth 1995, at 140–5; and Griffiths 2002. (6) ‘In this way Pollux and adventurous Hercules toiled to reach the fiery heights of heaven, between whom Augustus will recline and drink nectar with bright red (or shining) face (or mouth).’ See Nisbet and Rudd 2004 for references and discussion of the final line.

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Irrational Panegyric in Augustan Poetry (7) Aug. 70.1 (citing letters of Antony and anonymous verses): cena quoque eius secretior in fabulis fuit, quae uulgo δωδεκάθεος uocabatur; in qua deorum dearumque habitu discubuisse conuiuas et ipsum pro Apolline ornatum. (8) Servius ad Ecl. 4.10 Augustum, cui simulacrum factum est cum Apollinis cunctis imaginibus; pseudo-Acro ad Hor. Ep. 1.3.17 Caesar in bibliotheca statuam sibi posuerat habitu ac statu Apollinis. (9) Pliny, H.N. 33.111 on the use of cinnabar (read with due caution by Beard 2007: 231–2). (10) ‘While mighty Caesar thunders in war by the deep Euphrates and as victor issues laws to willing races and strives for a road to Olympus.’ (11) Scodel and Thomas 1984 observe that in Vergil each occurrence of the name Euphrates occurs, like Callimachus’ Ἀσσυρίου ποταμοίο (H. 2.108), six lines from the end of a poem or book (Geo. 1.509, 4.561; Aen. 8.726). See also Jenkyns 1993. (12) And again (in the mouth of another singer) at 4.6.84, after the settlement negotiated with Phraates IV in 20 B.C. (13) In 16 tremit matches Vergil’s horrent at Aen. 6.794, in a passage that also mentions India as a place of conquest. Both look back to Idyll 16.76–7 (cited below, 246). (14) ‘I shall be the first to bring back Idumaean palms to you, Mantua, and to place a temple of marble in the green meadow beside the water, where the large Mincius wanders, meandering slowly, and has covered its banks with youthful rush. I shall have Caesar in the middle, and he will inhabit the temple; for him I as victor and conspicuous in Tyrian purple (i.e. dressed as a triumphator) will drive a hundred chariots to the streams.’ (15) The centrality of the temple creates a sense of divine engagement, and Vergil will strengthen this by reprising a number of incidental details when Aeneas meets the Sibyl, notably ingens (strikingly odd of the Mincius) at Aen. 6.42, 81; and centum at 6.43, 81 (cited below, 248). (16) Mostly in the Fasti, but Cupid appears already in Amores 1.1, then at Rem. 555–76, and in Ex Pont. 3.3; the nymphs Elegia and Tragoedia in Amores 3.1; Apollo at Ars 2.493–510; Venus at Ars 3.43–56. (17) ‘This month too has uncertain explanations in its name: you will choose for yourself which one you like when all have been laid out. I shall sing of events that happened; but there will be those who say I have invented them and who think no divinity has been seen by a mortal. There is a god in us and we grow warm through his activity: this urge contains the seeds of inspiration. I have a Page 15 of 20

 

Irrational Panegyric in Augustan Poetry particular right to see the faces of the gods, whether because I am a poet or because I write on matters sacred. There is a grove dense with trees, a place secluded from all speech, if it did not resound with the babbling of water; here I was wondering what might be the origin of the month just beginning, and was concerned with its name. Suddenly I saw goddesses…’ (18) Cf. the stress on dreaming at Rem. 555–6, 575–6, and Ex Pont. 3.3.94, and the parenthetic uates ille uidendus adit explaining how Apollo comes to be manifest to Ovid at Ars 2.493–6 (the clause, often misunderstood, is to be taken as ‘he approaches poets visible’: see Tränkle 1972: 397 and Janka 1997: 368). (19) ‘In time of peace I bar the doors so that the people cannot depart (i.e. to war), and under the divine power of the Caesars I shall long be closed.’ (20) Additionally, as Jennifer Ingleheart points out, inuicta bello dextera may be seen as rendered true by the death. (21) ‘This is the man, he it is whom you repeatedly hear promised: Augustus Caesar, son of a god, who will establish again a golden era across the fields once ruled by Saturn in Latium, and will extend the empire over the Garamantes and the Indians—a land lies beyond the stars, beyond the paths of the sun through the year where heaven-bearing Atlas turns the pole studded with burning stars on his shoulder.’ (22) ‘Already now the Carthaginians who dwell on the utmost coast of Libya beneath the setting sun have shivered with fear.’ (23) ‘It is at his approach that already now the Caspian realms and the Maeotian land shudder at the oracular responses of the gods, and the mouths of the sevenfold Nile are in fearful turmoil. Neither did Hercules cover so much ground, though he shot the bronze-footed deer or brought peace to the woods of Erymanthus and made Lerna tremble with his bow; nor Bacchus, who in triumph turned his chariot with reins of vine, as he drove his tigers down from the summit of Mount Nysa.’ (24) A point I owe (along with other references and much of the general approach of the paper) to Bryn Harris: see especially Harris 2011: 152–7. (25) Cf. Seneca, Ep. 28.3: Talem nunc esse habitum tuum cogita qualem Vergilius noster uatis inducit iam concitatae et instigatae multumque habentis in se spiritus non sui: bacchatur uates etc. (26) ‘In the cave, not yet tolerating the monstrous weight of Apollo, the priestess rages like a bacchant, seeing if she could shake the great god from her breast; all the more does he tire her maddened mouth, taming her resistant heart, and moulds her with his restraint. Now a hundred great doors of the building opened unaided and carry the responses of the priestess through the air.…In such words Page 16 of 20

 

Irrational Panegyric in Augustan Poetry does the Cumaean Sibyl sing fearsome oracles from the inner sanctuary and bellow in the cave, wrapping truth in obscurity: such reins does Apollo shake over her in her frenzy and plies spurs beneath her flank.’ (27) On the Odyssean model (19.203), and other reflections of it, see Laird 2007: 295–6. (28) Phil Hardie draws my attention to a sermon of Augustine (105.10) where Vergil defends his promise about imperium sine fine by attributing it to Jupiter: discussed by G. Wills in Farrell and Putnam 2010: 130. On the irrationality of speaking ghosts, see Cicero, Tusc. 1.36–7. (29) ‘Nor could anyone besides you weave your achievements together on paper so that more is not omitted than what is said.’ (30) rabidum Guyetus: rapidum codd. (31) sit Huschke: sunt AGVX+; muta G2: multa AGVX+. (32) ‘Recently as the day was rising that leads in the fertile year you had put on a gown gleaming with purple thread, when the sun raised his head brighter from the clear waters and the quarrelling winds withheld their fierce blasts, nor did meandering rivers take their usual courses. Even the mad sea stood with calm waters; and no bird flew through the airy breezes, nor did a savage beast pasture on thick woodland without bestowing mute silence on your prayers. Jupiter himself came, carried though the void on a light chariot, and abandoned Olympus that stands next to the heavens.’ (33) ‘Parthian, you will pay the price: rejoice, buried Crassi, father and son, and standards that have ignobly endured barbarian hands. An avenger is at hand; he professes himself a leader in his early years, and deals with wars not to be handled by a boy. Don’t fearfully count the birthdays of gods: Caesars gain manhood before their time.’ (34) E.g. Callimachus, Hymn to Zeus 55–7, Prop. 3.18.14, Stat. Silu. 2.1.39–40, 2.6.49. (35) ‘Caesar is a god in his own city: though distinguished by Mars and in the toga, he was turned into a new star, a comet, not so much by the wars finished in triumphs, his achievements on the home front, and the hastened glory of his deeds, as by his offspring; for of the acts of Caesar no other achievement is greater than that he became that man’s father.…So the father had to be made a god, lest the son be born from mortal seed.’ (36) Hinds 1987, esp. 23–9. Similar is Hor. Carm. Saec. 50 clarus Anchisae Venerisque sanguis.

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Irrational Panegyric in Augustan Poetry (37) For the point here cf. e.g. Sallust, B.J. 10.8 meliores liberos sumpsisse… quam genuisse. (38) ‘Since you are named ruler and father of the homeland, you also should use the practice of the god who has the same title. And in fact you do this, nor could anyone ever have held the reins of his power more moderately than you.’ (39) ‘Or if you, the winged son of kindly Maia, change your shape and imitate a youth on earth, letting yourself be called the avenger of Caesar, late may you return to heaven, and long may you rejoice to be among the people of Quirinus, and may not too swift a breeze carry you away prejudiced against our faults: here rather may you enjoy great triumphs, here being called “father” and “first of citizens”, and may you not allow the Medes to ride unpunished during your leadership, Caesar.’ (40) ‘Cease at last from your elegiac complaints and let us rather sing the recent successes of Augustus Caesar, including rocky mount Niphates…’ (41) ‘Phraates has fallen to his knees and accepted the rule and empire of Caesar; golden plenty has poured out harvests for Italy from a full horn.’ (42) ‘If anyone were to tell you of wars fought by land and sea and to flatter your relaxing ears with these words “whether the people wish you to prosper more or you the people, Jupiter keeps in uncertainty, the god who looks after both you and the city”, you could recognize the praise of Augustus.’ (43) The attribution to Varius may derive from what Horace has to say about Varius as encomiast in Odes 1.6, but might be an indication that there was a panegyrical poem on Augustus attributed to him: see Courtney 1993: 275, and Hollis 2007: 273–5. (44) ‘Where are you snatching me off to, Bacchus, full of you? To what groves or caves am I swiftly driven by my changed state of mind?’ (45) 11 et ed. Gesner.: ac codd.; 12 ac ϛ: ut codd.; 13 rupes Muretus: ripas codd. I follow Nisbet and Rudd 2004. (46) ‘Just as a sleepless Maenad is stupefied on the ridges, looking out on the Hebrus and Thrace white with snow and Rhodope traversed by barbarian foot, so it pleases me to wonder at the rocks and deserted wood as I wander off track.’ (47) On 3.25 see Troxler-Keller 1964: 48–56 (stressing the use of passives, as well as the landscape); Oliensis 1998: 129–31. Horace also links Bacchus and madness at Ep. 1.19.3–4 male sanos/adscripsit Liber Satyris Faunisque poetas. (48) Fedeli and Ciccarelli 2008 are good on the shaping here. Page 18 of 20

 

Irrational Panegyric in Augustan Poetry (49) Very similar is Ep. 2.1.17 nil oriturum alias, nil ortum tale fatentes. (50) ‘As a poet with a larger plectrum you shall sing Caesar, whenever adorned with well-deserved foliage he drags the fierce Sygambri up the slope of the Via Sacra; than him the fates and generous gods have granted nothing bigger nor better to the earth, nor will they do so in future, though the ages return to the ancient gold; you shall sing of the days of rejoicing and the public games in the city to celebrate the granting of brave Augustus’ return and the forum deprived of lawsuits.’ (51) ‘You are wondered at by the previously invincible Cantabrian, the Mede and the Indian, the nomadic Scythian, you who protect with your presence Italy and dominant Rome. Your voice is heard by the Nile, who hides his source, the Danube, the rapid Tigris, your voice by the monster-filled Ocean which roars at the distant Britons. You the land of Gaul reveres that fears not death and so does stubborn Spain; the Sygambri who rejoice in slaughter revere you and have laid down their arms.’ (52) Res Gestae 26–33; Suetonius, Aug. 21. (53) Of course images of such geographical entities appeared on the streets of Rome during triumphs, and in the iconography of Roman art. (54) Cf. the belua Lernae, accompanying the other monsters that mark the entry into the fabulous underworld: Aen. 6.287. (55) Heyworth 1995: 141–4; cf. Thomas 2011: 261: ‘the opening of the poem… seals up what immediately preceded, the praise of battles and captured cities at 14.33–52…the opening of 4.15 is also the close of 4.14’. (56) On this phrase see Breed 2004. (57) Putnam 1986: 275 notes that the enjambed phrase superbis/postibus is drawn from Aen. 8.721–2, and re-applied from the temple of Palatine Apollo to the Parthians. (58) ‘Your era, Caesar, has brought back rich harvests to the fields, and restored to our Jupiter standards snatched from the proud doorposts of the Parthians, and has closed the temple of Quirinus’ Janus, empty of wars, and has put curbs on unrestrained behaviour that was wandering beyond the proper order, and has removed crime and recalled the ancient crafts through which the Latin name and Italian strength grew, together with the glory and majesty of empire stretched to the rising of the sun from his western bed.’ (59) ‘When I was keen to sing of battles and the conquering of cities, Phoebus reproved me with his lyre, to make sure I did not set my little sails to cross the Tyrrhenian Sea.’ Page 19 of 20

 

Irrational Panegyric in Augustan Poetry (60) Cf. Quirinus’ unambiguous phrasing at Ovid, Fasti 2.508 patrias artes militiamque. (61) ‘While Caesar guards the state, not civil uproar or violence shall drive out peace, not the anger which hammers out swords and makes unhappy cities into enemies.’ (62) As brought out by Putnam 1986: 274. (63) ‘And on low days and holidays amidst the gifts of joke-inspiring Liber, having first prayed to the gods in due form, together with our children and wives, we shall sing like our ancestors in a song accompanied by Lydian pipes of leaders who displayed courage, of Troy and Anchises and the offspring of nurturing Venus.’ (64) Similarly Oliensis 1998: 150–3, and Thomas 2011 ad loc. Schiesaro 2009 does not touch on 4.15; but my closing paragraphs respond to some aspects of his ‘Odes 4.2: Bacchic and Apollonian poetics’ (73–5), and the following pages on ‘Freedom and repression’.

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Caderent omnes a crinibus hydri

Augustan Poetry and the Irrational Philip Hardie

Print publication date: 2016 Print ISBN-13: 9780198724728 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2015 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198724728.001.0001

Caderent omnes a crinibus hydri The Problems of the Irrational in the Juno and Allecto Episode in Aeneid 7 Séverine Clément-Tarantino

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198724728.003.0014

Abstract and Keywords The episode leading to the outbreak of war in Latium is the Aeneid’s episode of furor par excellence, both in Juno’s plotting of it, and, above all, in the person of the Fury summoned by Juno to ignite the flames of war and with whom the epic poet would seem to identify. The poetic expression itself of this furor defies comprehension in certain respects, for example the description of the snake of Allecto which possesses Amata, which doesn’t seem to be addressed (only) to the reader’s reason. This chapter focuses on the third part of Allecto’s intervention (Ascanius and Silvia’s stag) and on its reception in the tradition of Virgilian commentary, with particular reference to Heyne and Tiberius Donatus. Keywords:   furor, Fury, Allecto, Juno, Virgilian commentaries, Heyne, La Cerda, Tiberius Claudius Donatus

In his seventh Satire, deploring the disregard in which writers and especially poets are held—and above all the financial consequences it means for them— Juvenal underlines (53–71), that genius is not compatible with everyday preoccupations: the most outstanding poets did not have to care about their mere subsistence; otherwise they would never have persisted, and Horace and Virgil would never have reached the heights of their ‘inspiration’. These heights are, in both cases, linked to a figure of furor: the Maenads’ cry in the case of lyric Horace (Euhoe, Odes 2.5.7); and the double mention (first direct, then indirect) of the Fury Allecto in the case of Virgil, poet of the Aeneid. Juvenal has in mind specifically the Iliadic Aeneid, introduced by Virgil himself as his ‘major Page 1 of 17

 

Caderent omnes a crinibus hydri work’ (maius opus, Aen. 7.45, an expression for which Juvenal perhaps suggests an explanation at line 66, magnae mentis opus, ‘work of a (really) great mind’): it is characterized generally by chariots, horses, and the appearances of gods, and by the more specific mention of the Erinys, or Fury, ‘as she overwhelms the Rutulian’ (qualis Rutulum confundat Erinys, Aen. 7.68). Then Juvenal goes a stage further (Sat. 7.69–71): Nam si Vergilio puer et tolerabile desset hospitium, caderent omnes a crinibus hydri, surda nihil gemeret graue bucina. (p.264) If Virgil had lacked a slave-boy and decent lodgings / All the snakes would have slid from the Fury’s hair / There’d have been no fierce blast from her war-trumpet. (transl. A. S. Kline)

Here the Fury has become something more than one ingredient of the epic amongst others, even more than the protagonist of one, remarkable, sequence of the poem: she now represents the epic itself. Furthermore, the lines hint at an identification of Allecto with the poet himself, as the crines of line 70 could be those of Virgil, who has just been named, as well as those of the Fury (Erinys) at the end of line 69. Incidentally, Lewis and Short s.v. hydrus gloss lines 69–70 thus: ‘all his [scil. Virgil’s] poetic fire would have come to naught’. The satirist links the Fury with a kind of sublime inspiration and perhaps also with certain ‘hyperbolical’ developments of the epic genre in the wake of Virgil’s maius opus, which Juvenal could also have in mind in writing these verses.1 The probable echo of maius opus in magnae mentis opus reinforces the idea that Juvenal read the Allecto episode as an instantiation of the superlative grandeur of the Aeneid’s second part. As for the idea of a Fury-like poet, there had been several notable precedents in the literary tradition, and Virgil himself had already given a first illustration of it in the person of the Sibyl in Book 6.2 Now, as he formally opens the Aeneid’s second half, the epic narrator does not present himself in the likeness of the Sibyl possessed by Apollo.3 But in what follows he does not immediately launch on the narrative of horrida bella announced at Aen. 7.41. The opening moves of the narrative in Book 7 in fact lead up to the announcement of peace between Trojans and Latins, as Aeneas’ envoys return from Latinus, pacemque reportant (7.285 ‘and bring back peace’), the concluding words of the first section of the book. To enable the epic of horrida bella to begin, the narrator does not call amentia (‘madness’) directly upon himself (as does the Statian narrator at Thebaid 10.828–930); but he has the poet-like (p.265) Juno evoking Allecto in a manner that resembles certain of Virgil’s invocations to the Muses, not least his own recent invocation to the antithetical Muse of Love, Erato.4 Even if Juvenal did not interpret the function of Allecto exactly in this way, it seems that he came close to conceiving the

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Caderent omnes a crinibus hydri Aeneid, at least at the beginning of the narrative of war proper in its second part, as ‘moved’ by a furious poet.5 I will return briefly at the end of this paper to the testimony of Juvenal’s seventh Satire. Now, rather than re-examining the remarkable representation of Virgilian epic ‘inspiration’ in the Juno and Allecto scenes, I will concentrate on the problems raised by Allecto in terms of the irrational in this very well-known part of Aeneid 7. I will set forth the results of a study of some major commentaries of Virgil’s epic from antiquity (Servius, Tiberius Donatus) to 2000 (Nicholas Horsfall). We shall see in particular that, in terms of irrational, the most criticized section of the episode has not always been the one that we would first think of today, and we will look more closely at the interpretations developed by some commentators in order to correct the Virgilian weakness they had detected. For today’s commentators and critics, two major quaestiones are attached to the figure of Allecto in Aeneid 7. The first question is whether the intervention of a Fury is really necessary in the case of characters, Amata and Turnus, who are predisposed both by their nature (as a woman6 and as a iuuenis audax ‘bold youth’), and by recent events in Latium, to behave irrationally, in a state of furor. Readers generally accept, for different reasons, the mythological machinery employed by Virgil, but there is still room for discussion as to the extent to which the Fury ‘really’ acts (p.266) upon the characters she has chosen as targets: to what degree was Amata already mad and to what degree was Turnus, once rejected in favour of a Trojan husband for Lavinia, already angry, before Allecto’s attacks on them? The idea of two complementary motivations for the furor which overwhelms the characters (Oliver Lyne’s concept of ‘working with’7) is questioned by Nicholas Horsfall, except in the case of Amata. Yet Horsfall stresses that, until her flight into the woods and the extravagant Bacchanal she leads there with her daughter and the Latin matres at her side, Amata has pursued a ‘domestic fight’ with her husband, about the wedding of their daughter, which is ‘long, obsessive, but not fundamentally irrational’.8 More recently, in a work which is not a commentary but a novel (Lavinia), Ursula Le Guin9 has shown how it was possible, in an account based on Virgil, to present a completely (i.e. ‘naturally’) irrational Amata. The novelist achieves this result without sacrificing any sense of dramatic progression: only at the end of the episode corresponding to this scene in the Aeneid does Lavinia reveal the truth about her mother (‘She’s been mad for thirteen years!’, 122). A similar version can certainly be written—and may have been written—about the two following scenes.10 But it could be irrelevant for modern commentators of the Aeneid inasmuch as the most discussable element of the episode is less Allecto’s ‘existence’ than the psychology of the human characters she visits and the room it allows for ‘natural’ furor.

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Caderent omnes a crinibus hydri Nonetheless, Allecto does still pose a second problem for the moderns. This problem concerns the precise, concrete manner in which the Fury is supposed to affect the characters or in which the (p.267) furor she embodies is supposed to penetrate them. Here again, Amata provides the most interesting and complex illustration. Denis Feeney stressed this point in his Gods in epic: when one reads the eleven lines between the introduction of Amata and the speech with which she tries to persuade Latinus (Aen. 7.346–56), it is truly difficult to say precisely what happens, how furor overcomes the queen—what exactly does the snake hurled at her by Allecto do? Huic dea caeruleis unum de crinibus anguem conicit, inque sinum praecordia ad intima subdit, quo furibunda domum monstro permisceat omnem. Ille inter uestis et leuia pectora lapsus uoluitur attactu nullo, fallitque furentem 350 uipeream aspirans animam; fit tortile collo aurum ingens coluber, fit longae taenia uittae innectitque comas et membris lubricus errat. Ac dum prima lues udo sublapsa ueneno pertemptat sensus atque ossibus implicat ignem 355 necdum animus toto percepit pectore flammam Taking one of the snakes from her dark hair, the goddess Allecto threw it on Amata’s breast to enter deep into her heart, a horror driving her to frenzy and bringing down her whole house in ruin. It glided between her dress and her smooth breasts and she felt no touch of its coils. Without her knowing it, it breathed its viper’s breath into her and made her mad. The serpent became a great necklace of twisted gold round her neck. It became the trailing end of a long ribbon twined round her hair. It slithered all over her body. While the first infection of the liquid venom was still oozing through all her senses and winding the fire about her bones, before her mind in her breast had wholly consumed the fever of it. (transl. D. West)

Feeney comments:11 What is happening in these lines? And why, beyond the evocation of horror and disgust, are we being told it? We are forced to concentrate on the supernatural physicality of the snake, and on the process it is performing, to the extent that it becomes extremely difficult to disentangle what is ‘happening’. The lines present an irresolvable tension between the minutely particularized description of the event and the impossibility of the event. The honest difficulties of the modern commentators are the clearest indicator of the irreconcilable plays which Vergil is establishing. (p.268) Feeney then gives several examples of perplexed, and contradictory, reactions from commentators: Fordyce (1977) comments on the poison Page 4 of 17

 

Caderent omnes a crinibus hydri mentioned in line 354: ‘to modern ears, the “clammy poison”, mysteriously conveyed without contact, enhances the incongruity of the physical description’; while Conington (1871) notes of udo: ‘udo is another attempt to make the thing physically credible’.12 In what follows Feeney floats the idea that, in order to grasp the emergence of the irrational and to enable his readers to perceive something of it, Virgil took the chance of presenting the event in an almost incomprehensible way, using descriptions which themselves are, as it were, irrational.13 In the commentaries that I have consulted (especially those of Servius, Tiberius Donatus, La Cerda, Heyne, Horsfall), the most substantial discussions relate to the first of the two problems that I have just raised. Two of these commentaries (Heyne and Tiberius Donatus) are noteworthy because they concentrate on the part of the episode to which less attention is normally given in discussions of furor in the Juno-Allecto scenes: this is the third ‘act’ of Allecto’s script, the deer hunt and its immediate consequences (Aen. 7.483–510). Heyne14 twice addresses the question of how far the process of the characters becoming prey to furor is a ‘natural’ one, on the two (p.269) occasions on which he expresses his own judgment about the two Virgilian inventions at stake in the Allecto sequence: the use of the Fury on the one hand, and the conception of the deer episode as a casus belli on the other. Responding to criticisms that for us (as for Heyne) are first aired by Macrobius (sparguntur angues uelut in scaena parturientes furorem ‘snakes are flung about to create a frenzy—like some theatrical turn’, Sat. 5.17.3), Heyne gives a positive appreciation of Virgil’s invention of the Allecto episode. In his view, however, no particular effort of imagination was needed to entrust a Fury with the task of making the war break out, ‘once the circumstances themselves had elicited hatred and hostility’ (odiis et inimicitiis ex ipsa re natis, ad 7.323ff.).15 Heyne is pleased that instead of introducing mere allegorical personifications, Virgil resorts to the truly mythological person of a Fury. But when he comes to the third scene of the episode—the deer hunt and its consequences—Heyne’s judgement is radically different. Not only does he agree with those who, following Macrobius (Sat. 5.17.2), did not find Virgil’s invention here at all happy (on the contrary it is considered as unworthy of the epic and of the war for which it is supposed to serve as a beginning, if not as its cause), he also vigorously condemns the use of the Fury in this case, because it further increases the sense of improbability in the passage. Here is his critical note on Aen. 7.475ff.: The beginning of the war between Latins and Trojans is the killing of the deer in the hunt. This was already criticized by Macrobius, Sat. 5.17, and then by many others, as something slight and devoid of epic power (tenue et ui epica destitutum). This whole passage about the causes of the war aroused against the Trojans does not please much. I would rather that these causes had been derived from great passions such as wrath and Page 5 of 17

 

Caderent omnes a crinibus hydri hatred, rather than from the arts of Strife (Discordia) or a Fury. Once the poet presents marvellous happenings instead of natural causes, it is, in my opinion, pointless to look for them in an allegorical character, at any rate (Si semel poëta rerum miracula pro causis naturalibus affert, ab allegorica certe persona frustra ea peti puto). But the deer is not truly the cause of the war here: it is only an occasion and a beginning. (p.270) The penultimate sentence is crucial: in this last act of her intervention, Allecto is not supposed to embody the emergence of furor in characters, because initially there is no question of it. Ascanius’ hounds are the exception insofar as —a reminder of the Greek tragedy to which the Fury’s character is so indebted— Allecto injects rage (rabies) into them,16 it is said, and then puts them on the deer’s track (Aen. 7.475–82). But according to Heyne—who, in principle, as we have seen, does approve of the recourse to Allecto—the Fury is superfluous. The scene is not based on the violent emotions of which the irrational is composed (magnis animorum motibis, iris et odiis; cf. also Heyne ad 323ff.) and yet it remains haunted by this figure of irrational par excellence: the Fury. This is not the only problem indicated by the commentator: with the expression rerum miracula, he criticizes the incredible chain of unexpected events formed by Virgil—another sort of irrational, bordering on the unlikely, which reminds us of all these passages about which Servius points out that something ‘does not work’, non procedit, in Virgil’s text as it is usually understood. Heyne certainly has in mind here the root of Macrobius’ criticism: ceruum fortuito saucium fecit causam tumultus (‘he made the cause of the hostilities of a deer that had been wounded by chance’, Sat. 5.17.2). The scholar does not seem to believe much in the rule according to which catastrophes often come out of minor accidents, even if it has been very precisely documented by La Cerda to whom he does refer.17 Moreover, in Macrobius’ text, the implausibility was not really due to the discrepancy between the trivial and ‘childish’ event presented as the triggering factor and the gravity of the event thus caused, i.e. war: the discrepancy is more precisely between the trivial events and the scale of the countrymen’s resentment. Dolorem auxit agrestium ut impetus eorum sufficeret ad bellum, says Macrobius: ‘Virgil has exaggerated the resentment of the countrymen so that their impetus should be sufficient to provoke war.’ François Richard, in the edition of Macrobius for Les Classiques Garnier translates: ‘il a exagéré le ressentiment des paysans pour donner à (p.271) leur fureur guerrière une cause satisfaisante’. The notion of furor (‘fureur’) is an addition, that can serve both as an attenuation for ‘war’ and as a minimization of the problem addressed by the ancient commentator. Now there is one commentator who uses the word furor in a rather remarkable way, with reference to the agrestes who are the protagonists of this third part of Allecto’s intervention: Tiberius Claudius Donatus (henceforth ‘Donatus’). The interpretation he gives of the passage could be read as an amplification of Page 6 of 17

 

Caderent omnes a crinibus hydri Macrobius’ remarks, an amplification combined with a correction prompted by the aim of the Interpretationes Vergilianae to praise Virgil and to defend him wherever necessary (and it would have been necessary at this point).18 This reading of the passage has sometimes been mentioned by commentators and scholars but most often as a (somewhat risible) curiosity.19 Now I would like to show the coherence and interest of Donatus’ remarks here. In my view Donatus is trying to ‘interpret’ (that is, basically, to reformulate, or even to rewrite) Virgil’s text in order to rescue it from a negative form of the irrational—the improbability of the miracula rerum pointed out by Heyne—and to credit it with a ‘better’, praiseworthy form of irrational, one that we might expect in the context of a war’s beginning and that is perhaps lacking at this particular point of Virgil’s epic: the countrymen’s furor. In fact, for Donatus, this ‘other’ sort of irrational is not really absent from Virgil’s text, but it has to be made clear; and it is this clarification that he, qua commentator loquax, will offer once again.20 Donatus intervenes as soon as the countrymen are mentioned, or rather these (p.272) ‘rustic minds’ that, Virgil says, will be inflamed by the deer’s murder, when he introduces Allecto’s third intervention (I.V. 2.72.6–11): BELLOQVE ANIMOS ACCENDIT AGRESTIS [Aen. 7.482]: non inaniter posuit ‘animos agrestis’, hoc est asperos et imperitos animos, primum excitatos in bellum; nullus enim sapiens sic moueri potuisset ut illi excitati sunt, ut propter uilissimi animalis iniuriam leuem, quae imprudentia pueri uenantis defendi potuerat, proprium sanguinem daret. It is not without point that he has put animos agrestis, that is ‘fierce and ignorant minds’, which are first incited to war. No wise person could have been moved as they were excited, to the point of sacrificing one’s own blood for a negligible injury to the most worthless of beasts, which could have been excused on the grounds of the lack of premeditation of a boy out hunting. Virgil chose to resort to agrestes, who could be violently moved because they are the opposite to sapientes and prudentes. Actually, they become even worse in the course of the commentary on the passage (I.V. 2.77.3–9): Ecce ad excitandum leui ex causa bellum datur etiam puellae persona, quae pro sexu et aetate putaret magnum scelus admissum, quia moriturus fuerat ex causa uulneris ceruus: in auxilium repetendae ultionis homines uocabat agrestis, inperitos et duros hoc est animo feros et ratione expertis atque ad certamen robore corporis competenter aptissimos. See, in order to excite war from a trivial motive he introduces the person of a girl, who in accordance with her sex and age would consider that a great crime had been committed, because the deer was going to die because of its injuries; Page 7 of 17

 

Caderent omnes a crinibus hydri to help her in seeking revenge, she called on countryfolk, ignorant and harsh, that is fierce of spirit and lacking in reason and through strength of body perfectly fitted for the struggle. Donatus’ strategy does not consist only in blackening the portrait of the countrymen, in order to make their furor bellicus more ‘natural’, as we shall see. The commentator implicitly moves towards revaluing them in two ways: first, he justifies the importance Virgil gave to as worthless a being as a deer by declaring that the animal’s description—which Donatus rhetorically identifies as a laus—is focalized through the farmers.21 Secondly, he moves towards increasing (p.273) the iniuria suffered by the countrymen by detecting, in this deer’s laus, a celebration of the merits of Tyrrhus22 with regard to whom the animal’s murder could be seen as an act of contempt.23 The agrestes’ natural ignorance leads Donatus to present the fact that they get inflamed as ‘just, as it were’ (uelut iuste).24 The restriction in uelut is probably important: if Donatus had to designate a person responsible for the breaking out of war, he would certainly indicate the countrymen. But it must be observed that he shows a moderate partiality here. Later he will find some signs of a laus of the Trojans which involves an indictment of the agrestes, but his opinion is not as firmly held as in other cases25 (one can think, for example, of what he says about Juno and her hatred in Book 126). This relative moderation may be due to the awareness that Ascanius did commit some crime, even unintentionally, by hurting the deer (a wild animal which had the habit of returning home to someone who, juridically, could then be considered as its owner).27 Given that he cannot deny this objective responsibility on the part of the Trojans, he does not resort to simply accusing the opposing camp. Characteristic of Donatus’ style and approach is the passage where he summarizes the defence that Ascanius might have submitted if he had been taken to court—a defence that would have been accepted without any problem by reasonable men. The commentary concerns the participle uenantis (Aen. 7.493), in which Virgil, according to Donatus, has located this imaginary defence. These lines are also noteworthy for the use (p. 274) made of the Fury, unusually in this part of the commentary (I.V. 2.75.24– 76.1): Et ‘uenantis’ quod dixit, illic constituit omnem defensionem Ascani. Si enim super eo apud prudentis ageret, diceret: agrestem putaui, nesciui mansuetum utpote extra domos degentem nec ipsius causa uenatum processi, sed ferarum capiendarum studio, quae in siluis et in ripis fluminum reperiri consueuerunt. Haec quia iuste dici potuerunt apud aequos iudices, data est opera labore Furiae, ut tales repente in iram consurgerent quibus aequa ratio reddi non posset, agrestium scilicet infinita turba, saeuorum quoque et imperitorum.

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Caderent omnes a crinibus hydri And in saying ‘hunting’, he has set up the whole of Ascanius’ defence. For if he pleaded about the matter in front of wise men, he would say: ‘I thought he was wild, I did not know that it was tame, since it was roaming outside the settlement, and I did not set out on the hunt because of the deer itself, but because I enjoy catching wild animals, which one usually finds in the woods and on the riverbanks.’ Because these words could have been spoken justly in front of fair judges, Virgil took pains that, through the operation of a Fury, men of a kind to whom a fair explanation could not have been given should rise up in a sudden outburst of anger, namely a numberless crowd of rustics, savage and ignorant to boot. Elsewhere indeed, once he has emphasized the effect of Allecto on Ascanius’ hounds,28 Donatus describes and heightens (cf. Macrobius’ auxit) the countrymen’s furor—re-injecting thus some more irrationality into the episode— and simultaneously makes the figure of Allecto disappear. I would rather say that he forgets her, because if he does not mention Allecto where one expects it most, it is probably because he is too busy reworking the plausibility of the scene, first of all by making more natural and understandable the countrymen’s reaction. And if Allecto reappears where we have just seen her, it is because Donatus aims at preserving the consistency of Virgil’s text despite everything; or maybe he wants to avoid the inconsistency in Macrobius, who dissociates the problems caused by the deer and the problems caused by the Fury herself, in such a way that he does not seem to link her to the last scene of the episode.29 In fact, the role (p.275) played by Allecto in this scene may have constituted a quaestio dividing the poet’s commentators, made all the easier as the poet himself has laid the ground for a quaestio in these verses. The most relevant passages are Aen. 7.498, referring to a deus who guides Ascanius’ shot to its target, and Aen. 7.505, referring to a pestis aspera hidden in the woods. If the identity of the deus is in doubt,30 readers rarely hesitate to identify the pestis as the Fury who stirs up the rustics in response to young Silvia’s desperate cries (in Donatus’ words: ut tales repente in iram consurgerent). Now it is precisely here that Donatus’ most curious interpretation occurs. Without lingering over it, he identifies the pestis aspera in line 505 with the countrymen themselves, ‘naturally cruel and of a wildness matching the harshness of their environment’.31 And it is in this connection that Donatus uses the word furor of the rustics. Their ‘madness’ (furor) and ‘sudden commotion’ (repentina commotio) of mind are not unexpected or inappropriate, resting as they do on their resentment and anger, understandable given these characters’ identity and nature. Above all it appears as the outcome of a nature according to which the countrymen are not warriors at heart,32 but which predisposes them to maddened violence. Donatus rarely takes into account the relationship between the Aeneid and other texts, even Virgil’s other poems. However it is with a reference to the Georgics that Juan Luis de la Cerda will adopt the remarkable interpretation of his ancient predecessor, but in such a way that he turns it to the countrymen’s advantage. Page 9 of 17

 

Caderent omnes a crinibus hydri In La Cerda’s view, the pestis (sc. belli) refers to the ‘pastores’, but these (p. 276) (whom he also more generally calls the ‘rustici’) are characterized by uirtus and thus are perfectly able to make war (and, as it happens, to set war in motion—with all due respect to Macrobius).33 It is also through a reference to the Georgics (3.416–1934) that we can recognize Allecto in the pestis mentioned at line 505, by focussing on the snakes which she deploys in the Amata and Turnus scenes. And it is to the problems raised by these reptiles that I would like to come back in the last part of this chapter. Except in isolated cases—as in the questioning of her role in the last scene of the episode—Allecto herself is not called into question by the commentators. But, as Macrobius’ comment on sparguntur angues suggests, and as line 70 in Juvenal’s Seventh Satire might already have suggested, they would have preferred to relieve her of her snakes, or to read a version in which Virgil would not have used them as he did. In fact, the very gesture of Allecto throwing a snake at Amata regularly prompts an allegorical explanation, as in Servius’ and Tiberius Donatus’ remarks: ‘anguem’ autem iniecit partem sui, id est furoris. (Servius ad Aen. 7.346) The ‘snake’ she hurled as a part of herself, that is, of madness. Nos tamen Amatae non anguem sed commotionem mentis immensam debemus accipere ut composita Latini uoluntate perturbarentur. Itaque licet haec ita sint, exponamus secundum poetam quae dicta sunt. (Tiberius Donatus, I.V. 2.56.17–20) However we have to understand that Amata did not have a snake, but a deep disturbance of her mind, so that what had been planned according to Latinus’ will would be turned upside down. Thus even if this is the real state of things, let us expound what the poet has said. (p.277) Per hunc anguem intellige aliquam mentis affectionem, puta errorem, deceptionem, insaniam. Sed Poëta poëtice. (La Cerda, Explicatio § c, p. 60) Understand that through this snake some trouble of the mind is meant— error, deceit, insanity. But the poet expressed it poetically. Tiberius Donatus, on whom I have focussed my attention, is himself originally embarrassed by the figure of Allecto for a moral reason: he cannot accept that the Aeneid, which consists for him in a long epideictic speech, contains, in Juno’s first address to Allecto, the praise of such a great evil (tantum malum, I.V. Page 10 of 17

 

Caderent omnes a crinibus hydri 2.53.11–12). He resolves this problem by privileging the poet’s voice over Juno’s, through which he expresses himself in the lines in question: thus, what we read is a laus, but it is in the context of a manifest uituperatio (ibid., line 5: incipit dici laus in aperta uituperatione).35 But let us come back to the snakes. Before Conington,36 it is difficult to find any theoretical formulation of the question they raise, and, in particular, of ‘Amata’s snake’. But we do find an obsessive quaestio, which continues from commentary to commentary and which is all the more fascinating as its precise object can change: scholars repeatedly raise the question of the snakes, but not always with reference to the same snakes. Servius, for example, seems to be embarrassed by the unnecessary precision in geminos…anguis (Aen. 7.450): why just two?37 The most surprising remark that I have (p.278) found is from Heyne again, who no longer hides his exasperation when the time has come for Allecto to return to the Underworld (ad lines 561–71): when we thought that we might have done with the reptiles, Virgil says that the Fury raises ‘her wings, in which snakes whistle’ (Aen. 7.561, stridentis anguibus alas). Now before suggesting a more natural explanation (the Fury is flying and the wind makes the snakes in her hair whistle between her beating wings), Heyne writes: Noua Furiae species, quod non modo alata est (ut sup. 476), uerum quod pro alarum pennis serpentes, saltem alis implicitos. A new type of Fury: not only is she winged, but in place of feathers, she has snakes on her wings, or at least they are entangled in them. The quaestio (or the set of quaestiones) that concern ‘Amata’s snake’ has been revitalized in Nicholas Horsfall’s commentary: in question is the initial gesture expressed by conicit in line 347. N. Horsfall appeals to the artistic tradition about the Furies to make the claim that Allecto, like her fellow creatures in vasepainting, holds the snake out to Amata rather than throwing it. Instead of enumerating more ancient examples,38 I would like to quote, in conclusion, an extract from a work which is not a commentary properly speaking, even if it has much in common with the commentaries and is probably nourished by some of them. The Virgile travesti composed by Scarron (1648–53) contains one of the most pungent, and also the most amusing, criticisms of Amata’s snake after Macrobius. Not only does Scarron dwell on the most embarrassing parts of the passage, (p.279) but he also raises a further point: if the snake got into the queen’s body, how did it get out (lines 1213–42)? Elle [Aimée] était dans cette pensée Terriblement embarrassée, Alors qu’Alecton lui lâcha Un gros serpent, qui se cacha Sous une jupe de ratine Qui couvrait sa peau de la Chine. Page 11 of 17

 

Caderent omnes a crinibus hydri Il se promena, le larron, Sur son sein et sur son giron, Et, par je ne sais quelle voie, La pénétra jusques au foie, Inspirant une âme d’aspic A son corps malade du tic. Ce serpent, aussi noir qu’un merle, Tantôt était collier de perle, Et tantôt la guirlande était De la dame qu’il empestait, Tantôt vu, tantôt invisible: Sans doute l’animal terrible Etait quelque serpent sorcier, Et des meilleurs de son métier. Ayant bien la reine gâtée Et duement enserpentée Par tous les endroits de son corps, Tant du dedans que du dehors, Je ne sais par quelle manière Il retourna dans la crinière D’Alecton, ni ce qu’il devint, Ni si chez la reine il se tint: Virgile ne dit pas la chose, Et je n’en sais pas bien la cause.

In this thought she was terribly discomforted, when Allecto let loose a huge serpent, which hid itself under her skirt of ratteen which covered a skin like porcelain. The thieving créature went for a walk over her breast and bosom, and, I know not by what route, penetrated her right to her liver, breathing a viper’s soul into her body, afflicted with a twitch. This serpent, black as a blackbird, sometimes took the form of a pearl necklace, and sometimes of the garland of the lady that it plagued, sometimes visible and sometimes invisible. Doubtless the terrible creature was some sorcerer-serpent, and one of the best in the profession. After well and truly ruining the queen, and (p.280) properly en-serpenting her in every part of her body, both inside and outside, I don’t know by what means it returned to Allecto’s mop of hair, nor what became of it, nor whether it stayed with the queen. Virgil is silent on the matter, and I couldn’t really say why.39 Notes:

(1) See in particular pseudo-Longinus On the Sublime 15, where it is maintained (§2) that Euripides had himself seen the Erinyes in order to be able to produce his vivid pictures them; cf. Statius’ Thebaid 11.97–101 for a designation of an epic orchestrated by the Furies as a grande opus (100). (2) See especially Aeneid 6.77–102. For the similarities between the Sibyl and the epic poet see Gowers 2005. Page 12 of 17

 

Caderent omnes a crinibus hydri (3) Cf. Hershkowitz 1998: 66. Estèves 2010: 80 underlines the stylistic opposition between the Sibyl’s prophecy and the poet’s announcement in the second proem. (4) Clément-Tarantino 2006a: 435–50. (5) One might think of the topos according to which a poet usually does what he sings of: see Lieberg 1982. Juvenal may also have seen the importance of tragic models for the beginning of Virgil’s maius opus (on this aspect of the superlative greatness claimed by the epic poet, see Clément-Tarantino 2006a: 450–68): the first example of failure the satirist gives after the lines about Virgil is that of Rubrenus Lappa who, because of poverty, could not ‘equal the antique buskin’. (6) Today’s reader might rather empathize with Amata’s previous story. But older commentaries regularly draw attention to women’s passionate nature, for example Landino 1502, who, after glossing maximae as a synonym for femineae, notes, on line 345 (femineae ardentem curaeque iraeque coquebant): nam femineus sexus propter imbecillitatem impatientior est in omnibus perturbationibus. Then he underlines, as many critics have done recently, the fact that Ascanius’ dogs (canes) are female. (7) Lyne 1987: 66–71. (8) Horsfall 2000: 237. (9) Le Guin 2008. (10) Ursula Le Guin skirts the scene with Turnus and in its place she adds a visit that Drances is supposed to have made to Aeneas just after the first fights between the Trojans and the farmers. This addition answers the question raised by Lavinia, in one of the numerous discussions she has with Aeneas, now her husband: why didn’t he do anything to pacify the situation after the hunting incident, by going and meeting himself Latinus? The answer is that Drances put him off from doing this, when he announced that (Aeneas quotes Drances’ words) ‘Turnus was using the quarrel with the farmers to raise the whole country against us’ (Le Guin 2008: 125). Nonetheless, it is surely no accident that the author introduces precisely at this point a discussion about the murderous madness of the hero at war: tormented by the murder of Turnus whom he praises, Aeneas describes furor as a vice (ibid: 127–8). As for the agrestes’ reaction, it is presented as resulting naturally from Silvia’s despair and from the intimate links between herself, her brothers and Tyrrhus. To the latter is ascribed an enraged reaction that arises from his own nature (‘Tyrrhus went into a blind rage, the way he does’, ibid. 123). (11) Feeney 1991: 165.

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Caderent omnes a crinibus hydri (12) Cf. Conington on Aen. 7.349: ‘“Leuia” gives the reason of “uoluitur attactu nullo”, as “furentem” does of fallit. And throughout the passage there is an effort of ingenuity to sustain the physical probability [my emphasis]. The serpent takes the form of the serpentine “torquis” and “taenia” and it infuses its venom by the breath, not with the tooth.’ (13) Cf. Horsfall 2000 on line 341 (addressing the problem raised by infecta uenenis): ‘The Fury is in some way herself poisoned by the snakes (themselves of course poisonous) in her hair; Conington and Heyne are rather too concerned to impose sense and logic upon Virgil’s studied and sinister imprecision [my emphasis]’ (239). (14) Christian Gottlob Heyne is one of the commentators cited (via Fordyce) by Feeney in the pages to which I have referred; he is quoted precisely for his judgment that the lines describing the action of Allecto’s snake upon Amata are of an Ovidian, rather than Virgilian, ingenium. In fact, this judgment concerns lines 351–3 in particular: ‘illa fit tortile collo’, etc. nescio, an pro epica dignitate nimis ingeniosa sint. Ouidio forte ea condones. Is tamen, cum superiora fere ad uerbum expressisset (Met. IV, 485. 489–99) haec intacta reliquit. In fact, Ovid is much more explicit when he describes the action (Met. 4.497–9) of the snakes on Athamas and Ino (they do touch their body but do not harm them and affect only their minds); in his rationalizing remake of the scene, he avoids the detail of the snake’s transformation in objects, necklace and ribbon, but he has perhaps transferred it to the Erinys herself, when she uses a snake as a belt (Met. 4.483). (15) Heyne thus makes an important point: Virgil’s narrative could have proceeded without the Juno-Allecto episode. Indeed it is possible to observe that, even if the first hundred lines of the seventh book move towards the conclusion of a peace, everything has been put in place so that this peace turns into war in a likely way. (16) Allecto thus reminds us of Lyssa in Greek tragedy, especially as she was used in Euripides’ Bacchae and in Aeschylus’ Toxotides: see Clément-Tarantino 2006a: 451–61. (17) See the second volume of La Cerda’s commentary on the Aeneid: my references are to the edition of 1617 (H. Cardon, Lyon), in the present case, to the Nota 1, p. 81. (18) On Tiberius Claudius Donatus, see the indispensable studies of Squillante Saccone 1985, Starr 1992a, Gioseffi 2000 and Pirovano 2006. Squillante Saccone 1985: 50–2 considers some analogous remarks in the Saturnalia and in the Interpretationes Vergilianae, but thinks that they only illustrate the fact that the two works were conceived in a similar cultural milieu.

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Caderent omnes a crinibus hydri (19) N. Horsfall, who regularly appeals to the Interpretationes Vergilianae in his commentaries, speaks only, in his note ad Aen. 7.507 (Horsfall 2000), of ‘curious explanations’ and he refers to the entry ‘pestis’ of the Enciclopedia Vergiliana, in which Fabio Stok reports this interpretation. (20) In his prooemium, Donatus asserts a claim for loquacitas, considered as the best way to explain fully and clearly Virgil’s words to his son: I.V. 1.4.14–23. The text of the Interpretationes Vergilianae is cited by volume, page, and line from Georgii’s edition (Teubner, 1905–6). (21) ‘ex aliis prosequitur laudem’: I.V. 2.72.12–13 (for the full sentence, see note 23 below). (22) This passage could also form an answer to criticisms of which Macrobius also gives evidence in matter of decet: Sat. 5.17.2 (slaves should have not begun a war against men of divine origins). (23) I.V. 2.73.8–14: Commendatus est ceruus retenta interim parte laudis, quam post demonstrata Tyrrhi merita posuit. Debuit enim ipse ostendi uel maxime in quo apud regem Latinum merito fuisset, qui uidebatur in cerui uulneratione contemptus. Dignus, inquit, inuentus est cui rex armenta sua camposque committeret. Quanti igitur meriti fuit procurator regis! (24) I.V. 2.72.11–14: Huius cerui quoniam nouerat poeta nullum meritum fuisse uel pretium, ex aliis prosequitur laudem, ut ipsi quoque agrestes pro naturali imperitia uelut iuste exarsisse uideantur. (25) See I.V. 2.79.29–80.1 (the praise of Virgil defending the Trojans as they rush to Ascanius’ rescue leads to the transfer of an improbitatis crimen from the Trojans to the agrestes!). (26) See, e.g., I.V. 1.9.16–28. (27) For a discussion of the passage in terms of Roman law, see Starr 1992b. In his commentary, J. Luis de La Cerda (p. 85, Nota 5) quotes Justinian’s Institutes and concludes: itaque furtum fuit ceruum occidere… (28) I.V. 2.71. 29–72. 3; 2.75.7–9 (hoc igitur, ut dictum est, faciebant canes, cum ad uim naturae accessisset et rabies inmissa per Furiam…). (29) Cf. Setaioli 1998: 122–5. Macrobius condemns the first part (Amata) and the third part of the episode (Silvia’s stag) for opposite reasons (Setaioli 1998: 124) and does not question the second part (Turnus). It seems to me that already in Juvenal (Sat. 7.66–71), there is a distinction between the lofty scene mentioned first (Turnus), with essential motifs of martial epic (currus, equos), and the scenes which could have turned into a catastrophe, perhaps for opposite reasons (the grandiloquence attached to the tragic Fury would have fallen flat, and as a Page 15 of 17

 

Caderent omnes a crinibus hydri conclusion of her action around Ascanius and the stag, she would not have succeeded in making the herdsmen’s horn sound ‘gravely’). (30) See Ziogas 2010: 164 for the identification of the deus with Cupid (in a context that deeply encourages this idea and in a poem where Cupid has already disguised himself as Ascanius). (31) I.V. 2.77.9–17. ILLI (PESTIS ENIM TACITIS LATET ASPERA SILVIS) IMPROVISI ADSVNT: quoniam natura saeui et pro locorum asperitate truces oblatam puellae sumpserant uocem, uenerunt repente. ‘Improuisi’ sunt qui subito apparent nec uidentur dum ueniunt. Describitur in armis ipsis hominum furor et repentina commotio: ruebant, inquit, in hominum perniciem properantes, non hastis armati uel gladiis; agrestes quippe non usum habuerunt pugnandi, sed inferendae uiolentiae. (32) See the last sentence in the quotation above. (33) La Cerda, Nota 7, p. 85: PESTIS.] Interpretes Furiam capiunt. Displicet uehementer: ego pastores intelligo, qui statim ad Syluiae clamores. Ducit me in hanc mentem tum contextus ipse, tum asperitas quae ut fatue de Furia, ita praeclare de rusticis, qui duri et asperi. Itaque dicit Poeta belli pestem latere in syluis propter uirtutem rusticorum : tales enim existimati rustici. Vide quae iam ego late lib. 2. Georg. ad illud, ‘Hanc olim ueteres uitam coluere Sabini’. La Cerda’s interpretation is discussed by Feo 1968: 90n.2. The translation of agrestes by ‘villani’ at line 774 of Annibal Caro’s translation of the Aeneid is the main object of this influential study; in this footnote, Feo discusses line 775 and the ‘error’ made by both La Cerda and Annibal Caro concerning the identification of pestis. (34) saepe sub immotis praesepibus aut mala tactu/uipera delituit…/aut tecto assuetus coluber succedere et umbrae/(pestis acerba boum)…Cf. also Ecl. 3.93: …latet anguis in herba. (35) Thus the poet happens to be identified with Juno, but without being mad or without any consideration of madness! (36) See the notes of his commentary quoted supra. (37) Servius ad Aen. 7.450: GEMINOS EREXIT CRINIBVS ANGVES similes: nam omnes eam dicit erexisse, non duos. See La Cerda’s answer in the paragraph d of his Explicatio on the passage: Atque in illum angues duos expulit (sic capio), ‘insonuit uerbera’, locuta est cum rabie. Such a detail probably seemed inappropriate to the ancient commentator. In the Amata scene, unum is used about the snake and it elicits a reaction from Tiberius Donatus—one snake was enough, he says in essence, and this remark is taken over by Landino. Implicitly, through a rhetorical question which usually indicates that he is responding to Page 16 of 17

 

Caderent omnes a crinibus hydri some criticism, Donatus allows us to glimpse a figure of emphasis (see, e.g., Quint. I.O. 8.3. 83): by assigning to his Fury a whole hair made of snakes—even if only one was needed at that moment—Virgil was suggesting the possibility of impressive uses of this terrific hairy weapon (Quando unum ad perditionem quietarum rerum arbitrata est posse sufficere, quid in euersionibus poterat quam tot etiam funerei angues armabant? I.V. 2.56.24–26). But geminos at line 450 does not constitute a problem for Donatus, who explains rapidly: [they were those] quos habuit in illa serpentium turba potiores (I.V. 2.67.26–28). Recently, N. Horsfall has considered important the mention of numbers and the change of number from one scene to the other. (38) One year after the publication of Horsfall’s commentary, L. Bocciolini Palagi suggested a connection between way in which Allecto fills Amata with furor and ‘la fase culminante della cerimonia d’iniziazione ai misteri dionisiaci dei cultori di Sabazio’ (Bocciolini Palagi 2001: 570, and, on line 347 in particular, 573; a golden snake was placed on the breast of the person, which glided down the body; a kind of symbolic union was thus achieved with the god). It is striking to find this comparison already made, with caution and a reference to Arnobius, in the commentary of La Cerda, Nota 7, p. 61, after the quotation of the ‘corresponding’ lines in Ovid’s Metamorphoses: sed uideor in utroque Poëta aliquid odorari; at hic tantum de Virgilio loquar. Facit postea Amatam bacchantem, datque illi notas omnes profanorum mysteriorum: nam it in syluas, simulat numen Bacchi et reliqua quae uidebis. Ad rem. Illis, qui his profanis mysteriis initiabantur, coniiciebatur in sinum coluber, ac tum sacrati, aut consecrati dicebantur. Audi Arnobium lib. 5…Quid ergo, si ad hunc morem aspirauit Virgilius, ut attingere Poëtas decet ? Non enim palam debent eruditionem profiteri, sed tantum insinuare… (39) I would like to thank Juliette Lormier warmly for helping me to translate the text of Scarron.

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Adamastor and the Epic Poet’s Dark Continent

Augustan Poetry and the Irrational Philip Hardie

Print publication date: 2016 Print ISBN-13: 9780198724728 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2015 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198724728.001.0001

Adamastor and the Epic Poet’s Dark Continent Philip Hardie

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198724728.003.0015

Abstract and Keywords This chapter examines the classical, above all Virgilian, models for Adamastor, the monstrous personification of the Cape of Good Hope who utters a curse against Vasco da Gama’s sailor in Camões’ Portuguese epic poem the Lusiads. Adamastor is the embodiment of the wild and dangerous geography and peoples of south Africa. He is also a double of the rash presumption of the Portuguese explorers. He is closely related to Virgil’s Fama, the female figure of uncontrollable rumour in the Aeneid, but also a dark double of the epic poet’s own ambitions and procedures. Adamastor, like the Virgilian Fama, is generated in part by the poet’s fascination with the irrational in the processes of making both history and poetry. Keywords:   Virgil, Aeneid, Camões, Lusiads, Adamastor, Fama, personification

This paper is by way of an afterthought to my Rumour and Renown: Representations of Fama in Western Literature,1 a further sally into the dark side of the epic poet’s desires and ambitions as bodied forth in the monstrous and wayward person of Fama (‘rumour’, ‘report’, ‘fame’). The irrationality of Fama can be approached from various angles: her inability to moderate and control her speech; her strong investment in an unbounded desire, both in terms of her urge to speak and to be spoken about, and in terms of the subject-matter of her words—love is one of Fama’s favourite themes; her failure to observe the proper boundaries between fact and fiction; and her close association with the hyperbolical and the sublime. These are topics that I have discussed in Rumour and Renown and, on the topic of Fama and the sublime, in Lucretian Receptions.2 Here I look at an early modern example of the reception of fama, with a view to Page 1 of 10

 

Adamastor and the Epic Poet’s Dark Continent the way in which a Renaissance writer of a national epic very much in the Virgilian manner draws on a primarily Virgilian discourse of fama to give shape to the dark desires of the epic poet and his heroes. The giant Adamastor is probably the most famous creation of Luís Vaz de Camões in The Lusiads (os Lusíadas), the figure by whom above all others the epic is remembered, so assuming the status almost of a personification of the poem. A large, early twentieth-century, statue of the monster is a tourist landmark on the banks of (p.282) the Tagus at Belém in Lisbon. The Lusiads is a ten-book epic on Vasco da Gama’s voyage to India in 1497–8; the poem was published in 1572, and it established itself as the Portuguese national epic. It sets the primary narrative of da Gama’s voyage within a framework of flashback narrative and prophecy that together form a larger panorama of Portuguese history and nationhood, on the model of the Aeneid’s framing of the primary narrative of the adventures of Aeneas within analepsis and prolepsis. In Book 5, as the Portuguese approach what was renamed the Cape of Good Hope by John II of Portugal after da Gama’s voyage, but first named the ‘Cape of Storms’, ‘Cabo das Tormentas’, by Bartolomeu Dias, the first European to reach it in 1488, the skies darken as if heralding a storm. A monstrous and deformed shape rises in the air, twice as large as the Colossus of Rhodes, with curly hair and a black mouth. It speaks with a voice that seems to come from the depths of the sea. It rebukes the sailors for their rash violation of untravelled waters in order to gaze on the hidden secrets of nature and the mysteries of the deep. The monster then foretells a series of disasters that will strike future Portuguese adventurers. In answer to da Gama’s question as to his identity, the giant replies that he is the hidden and mighty Cape, unknown to the geographers of antiquity. His name is Adamastor, a son of Earth and brother to Enceladus and Aegaeon. With his brothers he took part in the war of the Giants against Jupiter, and his particular goal was to conquer Neptune’s waves. His personal motivation was an erotic infatuation with the sea-goddess Thetis. Adamastor revealed his love to Thetis’ mother Doris, who reported it to Thetis. Thetis laughingly told her mother that she would agree to a tryst. At the appointed time Adamastor ran to meet Thetis, but found himself embracing, instead of the nymph, a hard mountain. He was struck dumb and motionless as if he himself were a rock. In his despair, Adamastor went off to seek out another world where no one could laugh at him. By this time, his brothers had been defeated by the gods and imprisoned under mountains. As for Adamastor, he felt himself being metamorphosed into the literal rock of the Cape. He is tortured by the perpetual tease of Thetis, whose watery flow encircles him. The episode of Adamastor is brilliantly discussed by David Quint in a chapter on ‘The Epic Curse’ in his 1993 Epic and Empire.3 The (p.283) giant Adamastor is obviously a close relative of Polyphemus, cursing Odysseus. The reach of Adamastor’s curse into a future beyond the lifetime of da Gama himself aligns it rather with Dido’s curse on Aeneas and his descendants in Aeneid 4 (Dido’s Page 2 of 10

 

Adamastor and the Epic Poet’s Dark Continent curse itself alludes to Polyphemus’ curse). Adamastor, metamorphosed in Camões’ fiction into the geographical feature of the Cape of Good Hope, can be viewed as a transformation of natural fact into poetic fiction. Quint also points out that Adamastor can be read as a mythologization of real-life perils encountered by the Portuguese earlier in the book, one natural and one human: a water-spout, a huge terrifying shape that materializes out of air; and a seemingly friendly Hottentot who turns hostile, and who on his first appearance is compared to Polyphemus (‘more savage than the brutish Polyphemus’ (5.28.4), an example of the frequent comparison in New World epic of native peoples, especially cannibalistic ones, to Cyclopes). But Quint also shows that Adamastor embodies aspects of the Portuguese themselves. He accuses them of a presumption analogous to that of the Giants’ assault on the gods, in which Adamastor himself took part. Camões exploits the ancient idea that the journey of the first ship was a rash infringement of natural boundaries, akin to the foolish desire to climb up to the sky.4 Earlier in the poem, the friendly Sultan of Malindi draws an explicit parallel between Gigantomachy and the attempt on the fury of the ocean (2.112); the next stanza, the last of the canto, 2.113, makes a link with fame, in an attempt to distinguish between good and bad paths to fame: A daring war the haughty giants made Upon Olympus permanent and pure: Rash Theseus and Pirithous did invade Grim Pluto’s kingdom horrid and obscure. If such high boys as these the world hath had, ’Tis not less hard, nor will less fame procure, Than the attempting Heaven and Hell by them, That others should attempt the watery realm. Diana’s temple built by Ctesiphon (Rare architect!) Herostratus burned down: To be talked of, though for a thing ill done, (p.284) And die defamed, rather than live unknown. If on so false, and vile foundation, The sweet desire deceives us of renown; How much more lawful is’t to seek a name By deeds deserving everlasting fame?5

A less friendly voice is heard at the end of Book 4, when da Gama, in his flashback narrative to the Sultan of Malindi, reports the words of an old man who inveighs against the Portuguese sailors as they are about to set sail from Belém, attacking (4.95) their ‘Glory of commanding!…vain thirst | Of that same empty nothing, we call fame.’ The Old Man of Belém ends with three stanzas that echo Horace Odes 1.3, cursing the inventor of the first ship, and identifying

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Adamastor and the Epic Poet’s Dark Continent ambition as the motivation for Prometheus’ theft of fire, and for the doomed flights of Phaethon and Daedalus. From one point of view, Adamastor is an uneasy double of the da Gama whom he curses (and we may remember that the cursing Dido’s own history has uncanny points of similarity to that of Aeneas). Adamastor also comes close to being a double for the audacity of the poet himself, in David Quint’s convincing analysis of the episode: ‘The figure of Adamastor can be read to be what it literally declares itself to be: the poet’s daring and aggrandizing figure of his own daring and greatness and that of his Portuguese heroes,’6 summing up Quint’s discussion of what he calls ‘the remarkable self-consciousness of the Adamastor episode’.7 Da Gama and Camões can be read as successful Giants, where Adamastor and his brethren failed. The monsoon that assails the Portuguese (but from which they are delivered) in the next book is compared to the levelling of the Tower of Babel (6.74), a biblical episode often paired with the pagan myth of Gigantomachy; four stanzas later (6.78), we hear that the gods did not hurl such thunderbolts against the rebellious Giants, nor in the Flood of Deucalion and Pyrrha. Enceladus, brother to Adamastor in Camões’ genealogy, is also brother to Virgil’s Fama, in another creative extension of mythological genealogy (Aen. 4.178–80). Here I want to tease out the connections between Adamastor and Fama. I shall also look beyond the Adamastor episode to wider connections within the Lusiads (p.285) pertaining to the themes of fame, desire, and the overstepping or observation of limits. If this paper is an afterthought to earlier work of my own, it is also an afterthought to David Quint’s discussion of Adamastor, joining up some of the dots. Virgil’s Fama reflects on the poet’s own task in complex ways. Among other things she is certainly, I would claim, ‘the poet’s daring and aggrandizing figure of his own daring and greatness’. This is an aspect of Fama that I developed particularly in my discussions of fama and the sublime in Lucretian Receptions. One of the key texts in my discussion of the Horatian and Virgilian sublime was Odes 1.3, which we have already seen entering Camões’ own discourse of fame. The Horatian poem compares sea-faring, as an image for Virgil’s daring launch on to the seas of epic, to other forbidden ventures, culminating in the last stanza in the provocation of Jupiter’s thunderbolts by the attempt to reach the sky, an allusion to gigantomachy. Fama, with her mixture of truths and falsehoods, also reflects on the epic poet’s mixture of fact and fiction, and on the combination of inherited tradition with invention. At the end of his narrative to the Sultan of Malindi (5.86–9) da Gama, speaking as a persona for the poet Camões, boasts that the wanderings that he narrates outdo those of Aeneas and Ulysses, and challenges Homer and Virgil to sing of their hyperbolical heroes, as they invent Circes, Polyphemuses, Sirens, Page 4 of 10

 

Adamastor and the Epic Poet’s Dark Continent and other fables, or rather dreams; ‘the naked and pure truth that I sing outdoes all their grandiloquent writing’. Quint sees this passage as being in significant tension with the Adamastor episode: ‘the burden of Camões’ episode – and the basis of its alleged superiority to classical epic – is to show how poetic inventions can be historical’.8 ‘Historical’ Quint seems to mean here in the sense that ‘the epic announces and points to its own act of creating a new myth out of the stuff of history’.9 A history that is ‘true’ to the ideology of encounters with new worlds and their inhabitants, and true also to the widely attested conceptualization of new worlds through the lens of classical myth and epic. The Fama episode in Aeneid 4 is also a place where the epic comes to an acute consciousness of its own dealings in fact and fiction, and in ideology. The obviously unreal person of Fama embodies any number of important truths about the poem that we are reading and about the poet’s goals and ambitions. She also (p.286) attempts to impose on her audience’s credulity a version of events happening on earth, to which our reason may or may not assent. Herself a demonization of the power of the word, born of her mother Earth’s anger against the gods, and infuriating in her effects, one effect of the words of Fama, as the words of the poet’s narrative unfold, will be to produce a demonized version of Dido, whose posthumous anger will pursue the Trojans like a Fury, and whose dying curse has the power to script a historical narrative in the future, although Dido’s own prophetic words constitute a partial and at points debatable version of those future events—in the manner of Fama. Adamastor is more directly a demonization of the geography, both sea and land, and of the human inhabitants of the new world.10 Camões, speaking in the persona of da Gama, boasts that he outdoes Homer and Virgil. But this journey into uncharted waters is also a voyage through very familiar territory. Apart from the Homeric and Virgilian models, Quint notes the Theocritean and Ovidian narratives of Polyphemus and Galatea as the model for Adamastor’s love for the sea-goddess Thetis: ‘for the poet an episode in the chronicles can suggest the story of Odysseus and Polyphemus and bring a whole literary tradition—Homer, Virgil, Theocritus, Ovid—into play.’11 The peculiarly dense allusiveness of the Adamastor episode is another point of contact with the Fama episode in Aeneid 4, whose vertiginously encyclopaedic allusiveness has been brought out in great detail by Séverine Clément-Tarantino.12 Virgil’s Fama is densely intratextual, as well as intertextual, and a number of the characters and objects within the Aeneid to which she is closely related may also be discerned in the person of Adamastor. Virgilian, rather than Homeric, is the merging of an anthropomorphic monster into a feature of the landscape, following the imagistic equation in Aeneid 3 of Polyphemus with the volcano Etna: the Sicilian giant is an intratextual relative of Virgil’s Fama,13 and the Sicilian volcano weighs down on Enceladus, brother of both Fama and Adamastor. The opening description of the dark cloud out of which Adamastor will materialize is like the black cloud which (p.287) bursts forth from Etna and obscures the stars when the Trojans first arrive in the land of the Cyclopes, Aen. Page 5 of 10

 

Adamastor and the Epic Poet’s Dark Continent 3.572 interdumque atram prorumpit ad aethera nubem ‘sometimes it shoots a black cloud to the sky’; 582 caelum subtexere fumo ‘wreathes the sky with smoke’: cf. Lusiads 5.37, 7–8 Uma nuvem que os ares escurece | Sobre nossas cabeças aparece ‘a cloud which darkens the air appears above our heads’. Adamastor’s name may be another Virgilian touch, since Achaemenides, the Greek who tells Aeneas of Ulysses’ encounter with Polyphemus, is the son of Adamastus.14 Quint points out that ‘[Camões] has also managed to capture something of Dido’s spurned love and irrationality in Adamastor, for Virgil’s queen is depicted as a kind of Cyclops in love.’15 There are further connections between Adamastor and Aeneid 4: as well as the allusion to Dido’s curse, this manmountain is also a near-relative of the anthropomorphic mount Atlas, metamorphosed from the giant of that name, on which Mercury alights on his descent to Carthage (Aen. 4.246–51). Within the economy of Aeneid 4, Atlas is closely related to Fama.16 Adamastor turns into a version of the brambly mountain that he embraces instead of Thetis (Lusiads 5.56); in response to Dido’s appeals, Aeneas is as unmovable as an Alpine oak (Aen. 4.441–8). The motif of Adamastor’s perpetually frustrated desire for Thetis is inverted, twice, in the continuing story of da Gama’s voyage, and in contexts that relate to his pursuit of epic ‘fame’, the other face of Fama.17 In Book 6, Bacchus, who plays the role of Juno as the blocking divinity in the Lusiads, and who is indignant that the Portuguese are trespassing on the East that he regards as his own, prompts Neptune and Aeolus to unleash a titanic storm that threatens to deprive da Gama of the realisation of his desire to reach India, and hence, by implication, of his desire for immortal fame (6.80.1–2 Vendo Vasco da Gama que tão perto
| Do fim de seu desejo se perdia, ‘Vasco da Gama, seeing his hopes crossed | Just at the butt and end of his desire’). The storm is calmed by da Gama’s divine protector Venus, who uses her sexy nymphs to bind the winds with (p.288) an erotic enchantment; Galatea herself exercises her charms on the South Wind, whereas Thetis had refused to bestow her charms on Adamastor. Furthermore, the storm turns out to have driven the fleet to within sight of their desired goal, Calicut in southern India. Secondly, da Gama and the Portuguese sailors are rewarded with the favours of the Nereids at the end of the poem, on a magic island that Venus has prepared for them. In order to make the sea-nymphs fall in love with the sailors, Cupid uses the services of a Fama who combines both negative and positive aspects of the Latin word (9.44–5): But we do want a certain necessary Woman, to broke between them Cupid said; Whom, though to him she had been oft contrary, Yet, of his side, he had as often made: Rash boaster, who both lies and truths doth carry, Page 6 of 10

 

Adamastor and the Epic Poet’s Dark Continent Sister to them that did the gods invade, Who with a thousand tongues spreads where she flies, That which she saw but with a hundred eyes. Her find they out, and make her go before: Who with a rattling trumpet doth proclaim The praises of the navigators more Than of all else she e’er vouchsafed to name. Now in the hollows of the rocks did roar, And the hoarse waves, the piercing voice of fame. Truth she relates, and truth esteemed to be, For with the goddess went Credulity.

Adamastor does embody certain truths about the natural and human world. He is the personification of a geographical feature, and he is a monstrous and demonized version of the Hottentots who live in those parts. He also has the power of prophecy, and foretells events in the history of Portuguese colonization, a partial account that focusses only on disasters. But at the same time Adamastor is a figure of unbounded forces in both the natural and human worlds, a figure for the unlimited and transgressive ambition of both da Gama and his epic poet, Camões. Adamastor is motivated by an unrequited and insatiable erotic passion. Venus’ magic island, on the other hand, is a place of full and true (and rational) knowledge. In a palace on a high mountain, a siren-nymph sings to da Gama a Portuguese version of the Virgilian Parade of Heroes, setting out the deeds of future Portuguese heroes. This (p.289) revelation of history is followed by the inspection of a divinely made sphere in which is shown a cosmological and geographical vision, the setting for future Portuguese voyages of discovery. The veracity of these revelations is guaranteed, in the case of cosmology and geography by the divine maker of the marvellous sphere, and in the case of the song of Portuguese history by the authority of Proteus, source of the prophecies. These visions are vouchsafed after the consummation and satisfaction of erotic desire. At the beginning of the last book the audience for the nymph-siren’s song are the nymphs and their lovers conformes e contentes ‘accordant and contented’ (10.2.1–3). But, the reader objects, the magic island and the couplings of sailors and nymphs are a patent fiction, contradicting da Gama’s/Camões’ claim at the beginning of Book 5 that the incredible travellers’ tales that he tells are the pure and naked truth. At the end of Book 9, Camões defends himself by pulling out the rug from under his seductive fiction. The island of Venus turns out to be nothing more than an allegory of the pursuit and rewards of fame (9.88–95), stanza 89: For these fair daughters of the Ocean, Thetis, and the angelic pencilled isle, Page 7 of 10

 

Adamastor and the Epic Poet’s Dark Continent Are nothing, but sweet honour, which these won; With whatsoever makes a life not vile. The privileges of the martial man, The palm, the laurelled triumph, the rich spoil; The admiration purchased by his sword; These are the joys, this island doth afford.

Here is a legitimate path to the heavens, achieving equality with the gods, not a gigantomachic assault on Jupiter. A path to sublimity that has a clearly defined end: 9.88.5–8 Porque dos feitos grandes, da ousadia | Forte e famosa, o mundo está guardando 
| O prémio lá no fim, bem merecido, | Com fama grande e nome alto e subido, ‘And thus the meed, to such high actions due | Of noble prowess; ev’n the world at last | Pays (in despite of Envy) with the sound | Of a great name; which time, nor place shall bound’; 9.90.6–8 Pelo trabalho imenso que se chama 
| Caminho da virtude, alto e fragoso, 
| Mas no fim doce, alegre e deleitoso, ‘through the boundless labour which goes by the name of the steep and rocky path of virtue, but is at the end sweet, joyful and delightful’. On the Island of Venus, erotic desire is satisfied, and the desire for fame is realized through legitimate paths that arrive at a final goal. The excess of fiction is also eliminated through the allegorical (p.290) reduction of the magical island to moral truths about the pursuit of honour and glory—although what sticks in the mind are the lubricious accounts of sexual chase and consummation in the preceding stanzas. The epic can now proceed to its calm and measured conclusion (10.143–4), as the Portuguese sailors embark on a tranquil, stormfree sea to return to their beloved fatherland, taking with them the nymphs ‘bound to them eternally | Longer than sunlight warms the earth and sea’, a figure for the wedding of Portugal to the sea. Entering the Tagus they hand over to their country and king the prize and the glory for which they had been sent, with some further titles to lend additional lustre.18 This is one version of the journey of Camões’ ship of poetry. But we remember, perhaps more vividly, that other figure for the ambition and sublimity of the poet towards the end of the first half of the Lusiads, the giant condemned to perpetual exile and perpetually unsatisfied desire. Parallels for these contrasting images of epic pretension and achievement may be found in Camões’ ancient models, and I end with two examples, in Virgil and Statius. In the Aeneid, the contrast to which I wish to point is that between the personification of Fama in Aeneid 4 and the scene between Aeneas and Anchises in the Underworld in Book 6. Fama, as both Séverine Clément-Tarantino and I have argued, may be read as a personification of the epic tradition itself. The sudden growth of Fama after the scene in the cave is in a way the birth of the Aeneid itself, viewed in certain lights, an epic that irresponsibly mixes fact and fiction, and which repeatedly unleashes violent and irrational emotions. In contrast to the hellish female monster Fama, in Book 6 we leave Tartarus to one Page 8 of 10

 

Adamastor and the Epic Poet’s Dark Continent side to arrive at the Elysian Fields where the Father, Anchises, delivers a mise en abyme of the epic tradition that is both a frame for, and the continuation to its conclusion of the Aeneid itself. The Speech of Anchises purports, at least, to deliver the ultimate truths about nature and history, through a mouthpiece of (p.291) unimpeachable authority. It is also a discourse of fame, summed up in the line (6.889) incenditque animum famae uenientis amore ‘he fires his spirit with love of the fame to come’, a love directed to positive and achievable goals, unlike the love which makes Fama burst on to the scene in Aeneid 4. My second example is Statius’ Thebaid, and the contrast between Capaneus in Book 10 and the envoi to the poem at the end of the last book. Matthew Leigh, in the footsteps of Fernand Delarue and John Dryden,19 reads the insatiable and gigantomachic ambitions of Capaneus as a figure for a Statian poetics of the sublime. Very different is the way in which Statius brings his epic into port at the end of Book 12, deferential both to Caesar and to the ‘divine Aeneid’, against which the Thebaid is advised not to launch a gigantomachic assault. Statius’ completed epic is, nevertheless, set on a path of fame, guided by a friendly and gradual version of Fama, 12.812–13 iam certe praesens tibi Fama benignum | strauit iter coepitque nouam monstrare futuris ‘Already, it is true, Fame has spread before you a kindly path and begun to show the new arrival to posterity.’ These are two incompatible models for reading the Thebaid, and recent Statian criticism is fully alert to the need to keep both perspectives in play. The Virgilian and post-Virgilian Latin epic tradition is fascinated by the irrational in the processes of making both history and poetry. This is a fascination to which Camões responds, and out of which he produces his most famous creation. (p. 292) Notes:

(1) Hardie 2012. (2) Hardie 2009a. (3) Quint 1993: 113–25. (4) Quint 1993: 385 n. 36 cites Stat. Silv. 3.2.61–6 for the comparison of the audacity of the first ship to the piling of Pelion on Ossa, in a propemptikon alluding to Hor. Odes 1.3. (5) Translated by Sir Richard Fanshawe (1655) (spelling modernized). (6) Quint 1993: 124. (7) Quint 1993: 123. (8) Quint 1993: 114.

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Adamastor and the Epic Poet’s Dark Continent (9) Quint 1993: 123. (10) Quint 1993: 117 ‘Adamastor…is a demonic composite of the natural and human foes faced by the Portuguese imperial enterprise.’ (11) Quint 1993: 117. On classical models for Adamastor see da Costa Ramalho 1975: 43–53. (12) Clément-Tarantino 2006a. (13) See Hardie 2012: 99–100. (14) Instead, or as well, Camões may have taken the name from that of a giant Damastor in Claud. Gigantom. (Carm. min. 53) 101, and Sidon. Apoll. Carm. 15.20, which appears in the form Adamastor in Renaissance dictionaries such as Ravisius Textor’s Officina: see da Costa Ramalho 1975: 33–40. (15) Quint 1993: 115. (16) Hardie 2012: 94. (17) Quint 1993: 118–19. (18) This leaves aside Camões’ own statements of unrealized desire and frustration in the authorial statements at the beginning (8–9) and end (145–56) of Book 10. At the close of his lengthy coda the poet offers King Sebastian an epic that will outdo Homer (with as hero a second Alexander who will not envy Achilles), if the king undertakes a North African campaign that will make Mount Atlas fear the sight of him more than Atlas feared the head of the Gorgon Medusa that turned the giant into a mountain of stone: this closing moment of panegyric also puts us in mind of Adamastor, Camões’ version of an Atlas turned to stone, in the middle of the poem. (19) Leigh 2006; Delarue 2000; see also Hardie 2009a: 205–6.

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Works Cited

Augustan Poetry and the Irrational Philip Hardie

Print publication date: 2016 Print ISBN-13: 9780198724728 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2015 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198724728.001.0001

(p.293) Works Cited Bibliography references: Adler, E. (2003) Vergil’s Empire. Political Thought in the Aeneid. Lanham etc. Alessi, P. T. (1974) A Study of Furor in Republican and Augustan Literature. PhD Univ. Missouri. Alessi, P. T. (1989) ‘Propertius. Furor, ingenium and Callimachus’, in Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History 5, ed. C. Deroux. Brussels: 216–32. Ampolo, C. (1996) ‘Livio 1. 44. 3: la casa di Servio Tullio, l’Esquilino, Mecenate’, PP 51: 27–32. Anderson, W. S. (1972) ‘The form, purpose, and position of Horace’s Satire I,8’ AJPh 93: 4–13. Arena, A. (2005) ‘Tibullo II,5: la celebrazione di Messalino?’, Latomus 64(2): 362–76. Arkins, B. (1979) ‘Catullus 7’, AC 48: 630–5. Armstrong, R. (2004) Retiring Apollo: Ovid on the politics and poetics of selfsufficiency’, CQ n. s. 54(2): 528–50. Arnold, P. J. (1997) ‘A note on Propertius 1.10.3: iucunda uoluptas’, CQ 47: 597–8. Asheri, D. (1990) Erodoto Le Storie Volume III Libro III: La Persia. Milano. Auguste (2014) (Rome, Scuderie del Quirinale, 18 octobre 2013–9 février 2014/ Paris, Grand Palais, Galeries nationales, 19 mars–13 juillet 2014). Paris.

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Index Locorum

Augustan Poetry and the Irrational Philip Hardie

Print publication date: 2016 Print ISBN-13: 9780198724728 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2015 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198724728.001.0001

(p.321) Index Locorum AELIAN Varia Historia 4.25: 234 PSEUDO-ARISTOTLE Mirabiles Auscultationes 31: 234 CATULLUS 5: 11, 12–14 7: 124–6 85: 11 CALLIMACHUS Hymn to Apollo 38–41: 161 CAMÕES, LUÍS VAZ DE Lusiads (transl. Sir Richard Fanshawe) 2.112–13: 283–4 9.44–5: 288 9.89: 289 CICERO De Inuentione 1.1–4: 23 In Catilinam 1.14: 87 Pro Cluentio 12: 86–7 194: 93 DONATUS, TIBERIUS CLAUDIUS Interpretationes Vergilianae (Georgii) 2.56.17–20: 276 2.72.6–11: 272 2.75.24–76.1: 274 Page 1 of 6

 

Index Locorum 2.77.3–9: 272–3 Elegiae in Maecenatem 1.25–30: 78 1.31–6: 78 EURIPIDES Medea 89–94: 88 100–4: 88–9 106–8: 89 HORACE Ars Poetica 295–303: 232 325–6: 11 Epistles 1.2.62–3: 26 1.7.11–33: 224–5 1.11.7–10: 191 1.12.27–9: 254 1.15: 228 1.16.25–9: 254 1.16.65–6: 223 1.17: 228–9 1.20: 26–7 1.20.25: 26 2.1.118–23: 239 2.1.211–13: 238 2.2.126–8: 232 2.2.128–40: 233–4, 238–9 2.2.208–9: 93 Epodes 5.3–10: 88 5.61–6: 87 5.77–8: 89 5.97–102: 85–6 7.13–14: 4 9.1–4: 79 Odes 1.2.41–52: 253 1.11: 127–33 1.37: 18 1.38: 18–19 2.9.17–24: 253 2.19: 15, 19 2.20: 19 3.3.9–12: 241 3.3.11–12: 20–1 3.4.5–7: 233 3.25: 15, 20, 255 3.29.5–12: 79 Page 2 of 6

 

Index Locorum 4.2.27–32: 233 4.2.33–44: 256 4.12.27: 18 4.14.41–52: 257 4.15: 257–60 4.15.17–20: 5–6 (p.322) Satires 1.1: 230–2 1.4.119–21: 150 1.6.111–14: 75 1.6.122–8: 75–6 1.8.3–7: 81 1.8.10–13: 82 1.8.17–20: 84 1.8.20–6: 85 1.8.46–50: 94 1.10.34–5: 145 2.3: 25 2.6: 227 JUVENAL 7.53–71: 263–4 LIVY 1.44.3: 90 1.46.3–4: 90 1.48.6–7: 91 39.8.7–39.9.1: 92 LUCRETIUS 2.1–2: 191 OVID Amores 1.2: 12–13 Ars Amatoria 1.179–84: 251 1.279–350: 172–5 1.453–6: 178–9 3.29–48: 175–6 Fasti 1.281–2: 245 1.521–2: 240 6.1–13: 244–5 6.601–10: 91 Heroides 2: 177–81 2.49–65: 177 10.49–50: 192 11.25–6: 196 12.89–92: 178 15.137–8: 194 15.141–2: 193 Page 3 of 6

 

Index Locorum Metamorphoses 3.310–12: 151 4.373–6: 150 7.10–11: 29 9.530–79: 183–4 10.609–37: 182–3 15.746–61: 251–2 Remedia Amoris 9–10: 27–8 Tristia 2.39–42: 252 PACUVIUS Armorum Iudicium fr. XV Klotz: 51 Panegyricus Messallae ([Tibullus]3.7) 5–6: 250 121–31: 250 PINDAR Pythians 10.49–55: 145–6 11.39–43: 146 PLATO Philebus 36c–51a: 235–6 POPE, ALEXANDER Eloisa to Abelard: ch. 10 passim 1–4: 189 19–24: 192 65–8: 196–7 157–62: 195 207–9: 191 225–30: 194 249–56: 190 271–6: 195 321–6: 196 Epistle to a Lady 113–14: 198 PROPERTIUS 1: 202–6 1.1: 12, 200, 203–4 1.1.15–18: 179 1.21–22: 206 2: 207–10 2.15: 208 2.16: 208 3.11: 208–9 3.15: 209 3.17.17–18: 142 3.19: 173–4, 209 Page 4 of 6

 

Index Locorum 3.21: 210 3.22: 212 3.23: 212 3.24: 12, 210–11 3.25: 211 4: 212–15 4.1: 212–13 4.4: 213 4.6: 214 (p.323) 4.7: 214 4.8: 214–15 4.11.59–60: 240 SALLUST Bellum Catilinae 15.1–3: 86–7 SCARRON, PAUL Virgile travesti 1213–42: 279–80 STATIUS Thebaid 12.812–13: 291 THEOCRITUS 16.76–7: 246 17.9–12: 145 17.16–25: 241–2 TIBULLUS 2.3: 156–60, 166–9 2.3.11–28: 157–8 2.3.67–71: 163 2.5: 160–9 2.5.1–10: 161 2.5.79–82: 164 2.5.105–10: 165 2.5.111–16: 166 VARRO De Lingua Latina 5.25: 83 VIRGIL Aeneid 1.208–9: 14 1.286–96: 245 1.296: 5 3.330–2: 61 6.78–101: 248 6.791–7: 246 6.798–805: 247 7.346–56: 267–8 12.665–71: 69 Eclogues Page 5 of 6

 

Index Locorum 1: 7–8 2.68–72: 7 10: 6 Georgics  1.1–9: 138–9 1.24–40: 243–4 1.36–42: 8–9 1.125–8: 110 1.231–58: 101–14 1.351–3: 109–10 2: ch. 7 passim 2.1–8: 139–42 2.39–46: 143–4 2.69–82: 149–51 2.89–102: 147–8 2.114–35: 148 2.455–7: 17 2.483–4: 24–5 2.490–2: 112–13,114–15 3.12–18: 243 3.509–14: 17 4.494–5: 10 4.555–8: 10 4.560–2: 242–3

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General Index

Augustan Poetry and the Irrational Philip Hardie

Print publication date: 2016 Print ISBN-13: 9780198724728 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2015 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198724728.001.0001

(p.324) General Index accounting 11, 122–3, 137 Achilles 58–9, 67, 207, 214 Acontius and Cydippe 178–9 acrasia 203–4, 213 Actium, Battle of 17, 162, 208, 214 Adamastor ch 15 passim Aeneas ch. 3 passim 14, 48–9 Aeschylus Oresteia 72 Persae 41–5, 47, 49–50 Age of Reason 187 Ajax 50–2, 56 Allecto ch. 14 passim 28, 29, 67 Amata 265–7 Amor (god of love) 165–6 anger 26, 207, 209 Antony, Mark 2, 17, 208 Apollo and Admetus 156–9 and Daphne 16, 24 as god of reason ch. 8 passim 16, 135, 259–60 Palatine Temple of 162 Ara Pacis 16 Aratus 107 Aristippus 223–5, 227, 228–9 Aristotle 202, 203 Nicomachean Ethics 235 Protrepticus 236–7 ars versus ingenium 29–30 artes, use of in love 179–80 Asianism 19 Page 1 of 7

 

General Index Atalanta 182–3 Atlas 287 Atossa 45–6 ‘Augustan Age’ (English) 187 Augustus ch. 13 passim 20–2 see also Octavian avarice 230–2 Bacchanalia 92 Bacchus see Dionysus and the Dionysiac Barchiesi, A. 178 Bataille, G. 101, 114 Batstone, W. 135 Bernini, Gianlorenzo 195 Bessone, F. 89 Blumenberg, H. 98 Bravi, A. 57 Byblis 183–4, 197 Byron, Lord 190 Callimachus 156–7, 161,242–3, 244 Calvus 173 Camões, Luís Vaz de Lusiads ch. 15 passim Canidia 29, 84–8 carpe diem 225 Carthage ch. 2 passim as double of Rome 48–50 Caston, R. 202 Castriota, D. 16 Catiline 86–7 Catullus 11, 31–2, 233 Cerda, J. L. de la 275–6, 277 charisma 20–1 Chrysippus 209 Cicero 4, 200, 202 Citroni, M. 1–2, 23 civil war ch. 3 passim 2, 17, 50, 206see also discordia Cixous, H. 30 classicism 1–2, 117–18 Clément-Tarantino, S. 149, 286 Cleopatra 18, 209 Cole, T. 22 Conington, J. 268 contradiction 21–2 cosmology ch. 5 passim 289 cothurnus ‘buskin’ 140, 142 counting ch. 6 passim Cucchiarelli, A. 16–17, 19 Cynthia ch. 11 passim Democritus 232 Deremetz, A. 100 Dewar, M. 60 Page 2 of 7

 

General Index didactic poetry ch. 5 passim 22–8 Dido ch. 2 passim 13–14, 68, 286, 287 (p.325) Dionysus and the Dionysiac ch. 7 passim 14–20, 52–5, 287 inspiration 19–20, 151–2, 248, 255–6 discordia (Discordia) 8, 29, 206 see also civil war Dodds, E. R. 2–3, 10, 14–15, 38 Dodona 63–4 Donatus, Tiberius Claudius 271–5,276–7 Dowling, W. 189 Eloisa and Abelard ch. 10 passim Empedocles 23–4 envy 132 Epicureanism 24, 78–9, 227 Eratosthenes 107 Esquiline 82–5, 89–93 Etna 286–7 Euripides Bacchae 15, 18, 41, 46, 52–5 exclusus amator ‘locked out lover’ 211 Fama 28–9, 281, 284–91 Farrell, J. 144 Feeney, D. 267–8 Fordyce, C. J. 268 Foucault, M. 115 Fowler, D. 30 Fraenkel, E. 81 furiae 66, 68–70 Furies 9, 32, 69–70, 72, 88 see also Allecto furor (Furor) ch. 14 passim 4–10, 13, 23–4, 31–2, 72–3, 245, 259 erotic 10–14, 203–6 female 28–30, 172–6, 183, 185 Galinsky, K. 22 Gallus 6, 171, 172–6, 205–6 Geffcken, J. 234 Gibson, R. 22, 28, 202 Gigantomachy 283–4, 291 Goold, G. P. 216 Gothic, the ch. 10 passim Gowers, E. 25, 215 grafting 149–51 Griffin, J. 207 Hall, E. 41, 43 Hardie, P. 72, 111, 114, 152 Harrison, S. 148 Hawkins, J. N. 170 Hegel 39 hellebore 238 Henkel, J. H. 149 Heraclides Ponticus 234–5, 237–8 Herodotus 45–6 Page 3 of 7

 

General Index Hershkowitz, D. 5, 68 Hesiod 143 Heyne, C. G. 268–70, 278 Heyworth, S. 201 Highet, G. 199–200, 201 Hippasus of Metapontum 118 Hölscher, T. 59 Horace ch. 12 passim 18–21 Ars Poetica 23–4 Epistles 26–7 Epodes 29 Satires 25–6, 74–6 Horsfall, N. M. 62, 266, 278 horti Romani 76–9 Hunter, R. 18 hyperbole 249 irrational, the 99 irrational numbers 118 Janan, M. 201 Julius Caesar 251–2 Juno 26, 44, 265 Jupiter 109–10 Juvenal 263–5 Katz, J. 217 kiss poems 121–6 Laing, R. D. 201 La Penna, A. 201 Le Guin, Ursula 266 Leigh, M. 291 Longley, M. 216–17 Lowe, D. 149 Lucretius 9, 11, 19–20, 24, 32, 115, 147, 200–1, 204–5, 210–12, 214 luxury 230, 254 Lyne, R. O. A. M. 266 Mac Góráin, F. 16, 53 Macrobius 269–70 mad poet 23–4, 232–3, 238–9 Maecenas ch. 7 passim 76–9, 82–4,92, 93 magic 123, 126, 133 Marcellus 246–7 Martial 80 Medea 29, 87–9, 178, 208 medical imagery 170–1, 200 (p.326) medicina amoris ‘medicine for love’ 16, 171, 204 Mens Bona ‘Good Sense’ 12, 211 Messalla 249–50 metus hostilis ‘fear of the enemy’ ch. 2 passim 39–40 Michalopoulos, A. 180 Miller, P. A. 201 Page 4 of 7

 

General Index Moatti, C. 3 mundus 103–4 Myrrha 184–5, 197 Nappa, C. 149 neoteric poetry 116 Nero 57, 79 Nisbet, R. G. M. N and Hubbard, M. 15 Nisbet, R. G. M. N. and Rudd, N. 20, 21 Nussbaum, M. 211 Octavian 57–61, 71–3 O’Hara, J. J. 27 Oliensis, E. 90 Orestes ch. 3 passim Orpheus 10, 23 Ovid Amores 12–13 Ars Amatoria 28 exile poetry 252 Fasti 3–4 Heroides ch. 10 passim 30–1,177–81, 188 Metamorphoses 27, 181–5 panegyric ch. 13 passim 21 Parthians 46 Perkell, C. 25 Persians 41–6 Phaeacians 54 Phyllis 177, 180 Pindar 145–6 Plato Philebus 235–6 Polyphemus 283, 286 Pope, Alexander ch. 10 passim Postgate, J. P. 199, 203, 216 Pound, Ezra 217 Priam 62–3 Priapea 80–1 Priapus 80–4, 215 Propertius ch. 11 passim 12–13, 142 and Lucretius 200–1, 204–5,210–12, 214 psychoanalytical criticism 14, 201, 216 Pyrrhus (Neoptolemus) 61–6 Pyrrhus, king of Epirus 65 Pythagoras 27 Pythagoreanism 118, 120 Quint, D. 65, 282–4, 285–7 rationalization ch. 5 passim revenge 58–9, 60, 65–6, 71–3 rhetoric ch. 9 passim 23 Rudd, N. 258 ruler, deification of ch. 13 passim 8–9, 20–1 Page 5 of 7

 

General Index sacrifice 70 ‘Sallust’s Theorem’ see metus hostilis Sauron, G. 16 Scarron Virgile travesti 278–80 Schanz–Hosius 119 Schiesaro, A. 20, 33, 110, 115 Schmitt, C. 39 Schwindt, J. P. 116 Seneca the Younger 32–3 De Clementia 57–8 Medea 89 Servius (Virgilian commentator) 270, 276 Servius Tullius 90–2 Shaw, P. 7 Sibyls 30, 248–9, 264 slavery of love (seruitium amoris) 159, 204 Smith, A. 140 Spentzou, E. 30 Statius Thebaid 291 Stoicism 25–6, 106, 203–4, 207 storm 5 sublime, the 7–8, 20, 189, 191, 264, 291 Sulpicia 186 Tarpeia 213 tears, divine 240–1 Teucer 50–1 Thebes 54 Theophrastus 137, 235, 236 Thomas, R. F. 140, 144, 149 Tibullus ch. 8 passim 179 tragedy ch. 3 passim triumph 12–13 Trojans, as ancestors of Romans 47–52 Tullia 90–1 Turnus 67–70 death of 5, 70 uates 30, 166–7, 245 (p.327) Valerius Flaccus 32 Vasco da Gama ch. 15 passim Vietta, S. 99 Virgil Eclogues 6–7 Georgics chs. 5, 7 passim 8–10, 17–18, 24–5 Wallace–Hadrill, A. 3, 76–7 Warton, Joseph 189 Weber, C. 52 Weber, M. 20, 39 Wilkinson, L. P. 134 Willis, I. 110–11 Page 6 of 7

 

General Index witches 84–5, 87 Zanker, P. 2 Zetzel, J. 25

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