Life, Love and Death in Latin Poetry 9783110596182, 9783110587760

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Life, Love and Death in Latin Poetry

Trends in Classics – Supplementary Volumes

Edited by Franco Montanari and Antonios Rengakos Associate Editors Evangelos Karakasis · Fausto Montana · Lara Pagani Serena Perrone · Evina Sistakou · Christos Tsagalis Scientific Committee Alberto Bernabé · Margarethe Billerbeck Claude Calame · Jonas Grethlein · Philip R. Hardie Stephen J. Harrison · Richard Hunter · Christina Kraus Giuseppe Mastromarco · Gregory Nagy Theodore D. Papanghelis · Giusto Picone Tim Whitmarsh · Bernhard Zimmermann

Volume 61

Life, Love and Death in Latin Poetry Edited by Stavros Frangoulidis and Stephen Harrison

Studies in Honor of Theodore D. Papanghelis

ISBN 978-3-11-058776-0 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-059618-2 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-059363-1 ISSN 1868-4785 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Editorial Office: Alessia Ferreccio and Katerina Zianna Logo: Christopher Schneider, Laufen Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck ♾ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com

� VERTERE QVI CALLES AVT ENARRARE POETAS, SEV GRAIOS SEV TE MVSA LATINA CITAT, HOC VTINAM GRATVM TIBI SIT THEODORE VOLVMEN: SIC POTERIS MERITIS LAVDIBUS VSQUE FRVI. (Professor E.J. Kenney)

Prologue The present volume is a tribute to Theodore D. Papanghelis, a prominent Latinist, Professor of Latin in the Department of Classics at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, and Fellow of the Academy of Athens, on the occasion of his 65th birthday. Acting on the initiative of Antonios Rengakos, friends and colleagues have with great enthusiasm prepared the present collection of essays in deep appreciation for Theodore Papanghelis both as classical scholar and teacher of Classics. Theodore D. Papanghelis has gained renown for his wide-ranging expertise in both Classics and literary theory. He graduated with distinction from the School of Philosophy at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 1975. As recipient of the Benefactors’ Scholarship and then of the National State Scholarship Award, he pursued graduate studies at St. John’s College, Cambridge. In 1985 he gained his PhD, successfully defending a dissertation supervised by Professor E.J. Kenney on Propertius: A Hellenistic Poet on Love and Death. The same year he began teaching Latin in the Department of Classics at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. In 1995 he was promoted to the rank of Professor of Latin, and in 2013 was elected Fellow of the Academy of Athens, currently serving as the President of the Second Order, for Letters and Fine Arts, in the same Foundation. Theodore Papanghelis is a very widely published scholar. He has authored six books (all of which have appeared in several editions) and published numerous scholarly articles. As a bi-weekly contributor to the Sunday edition of the prestigious Athenian newspaper To Vima over the last twenty years he has also written a large number of essays on the history of ideas, educational and cultural policies and classical civilization with a view to popularizing Classics in Greece. His academic work suitably combines the more traditional explicatio textus with theory. Well read, master of several European and non-European languages and with a cosmopolitan range of reference, Papanghelis offers readings of various authors from Homer through to modern European literature characterized by intellectual subtlety and verbal sophistication. As translator he has brought to the attention of a wider Greek public a number of mainly Latin poetic texts – a significant accomplishment in a country where, for obvious reasons, Latin culture and literature play second fiddle to classical Greek. As readers of his book on Propertius will know, he can manage a highly literary and sophisticated English style; yet his fierce determination to write some of his most important work on the Roman Neoteroi, Virgil’s Eclogues and Ovid’s Metamorphoses in his native idiom is due to his lifelong wish to establish a modern and refreshing scholarly style for the benefit of Greek students of Classics. True, for most of his non-Greek

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colleagues Graeca sunt non leguntur, yet, as he often remarks, there is something to be said for having gained on swings what has been lost on roundabouts. A full list of publications by Theodore Papanghelis appears at the end of this volume. Here we would like to present only the major ones. Greek titles are translated into English for English-speaking readers. Starting from his books, in the highly acclaimed Propertius: A Hellenistic Poet on Love and Death (1987), arising from his doctoral dissertation, Papanghelis makes the Liebestod theme the basis for addressing a number of textual as well as interpretative issues. The study contextualizes the love-and-death complex within the Hellenistic tradition while also reading it against the background of modern European literary trends (Aestheticism, Decadence, fin de siècle, Absolute Dichtung, Symbolism, the Pre-Raphaelites). The book’s seven chapters admirably illuminate the literary background, the structural unity and the modernsounding sensibility of a number of elegies, especially in Propertius’ second book. The final chapter on 4.7 is a fine specimen of Papanghelis’ flair for broader perspectives, which in this case challenges E. Auerbach’s view that ancient realism always serves comic purposes. The influential monograph H Ποιητική των Ρωμαίων Nεωτέρων [The Poetics of the Roman Neoteroi] (1994) fills a gap in scholarship, offering a panoramic view of ‘Alexandrianism’ and its reception in Rome from the first generation Neoteric poets up to Ausonius and Claudian. Callimachus’ ‘Slender Muse’ is studied not only as an innovative spirit in Roman poetic practice but also as an agent of ideological and socio-political re-orientation. Pursuing his interests in broader contextualizations, Papanghelis suggests seeing the pronounced formalism of Callimacheanism in the light of later European literary movements, such as Parnassianism, Symbolism and poésie pure. The heritage of Hellenistic modernism is then traced through the poets of the Neronian and Flavian age up to its more or less decorative presence in Ausonius, Prudentius and Claudian. Papanghelis’ Από τη βουκολική ευτοπία στην πολιτική ουτοπία: μια μελέτη των Εκλογών του Βιργιλίου [From Pastoral Eutopia to Political Utopia: A Study on Vergil’s Eclogues] (1995) follows up and complements his earlier monograph on The Poetics of the Roman Neoteroi. This is a detailed study of Vergil’s Callimachean-Neoteric outlook in the Eclogues as a tool for producing textual meaning. Papanghelis offers an overall reading of the Eclogues book, showing how poetological issues working in tandem with politico-historical ones cast light on individual poems as well as on the collection as a whole. Οβιδίου Ερωτική Τέχνη: Μετάφραση και ένα δοκίμιο για Λατίνους εραστές [Ovid’s Art of Love: A Translation and an Essay for Latin Lovers] (2000) translates Ovid’s Ars Amatoria into Modern Greek rhymed lines, accompanied by an

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introduction and interpretative essay on the world of elegy. The ‘Introduction’, written with deep knowledge of erotic literature, including the Kama Sutra, and sparkling humour explores gender roles, Greek and Roman views on sexuality, the role of women in Greece and Rome and the notion of sexuality as a political metaphor. A further book, Η Ρώμη και ο κόσμος της [Rome and Her World] (2005), explores aspects of social, political and cultural life in Rome from the early republic up to the demise of the Roman Empire in the fifth century CE. The presentation of Roman cultural history is arranged in fifteen chapters under beguiling titles and subtitles, all of which allude to Hollywood movies, Broadway musicals, Greek popular movies and well-known songs. It is no exaggeration to say that this, Papanghelis’ best-selling book designed for the general reader, has made ancient Rome familiar to more Greeks than any more scholarly endeavour could ever hope to. His most recent book, Τα σώματα που άλλαξαν τη θωριά τους: Διαδρομές στις Μεταμορφώσεις του Οβιδίου [Bodies that Changed their Forms: Reading Transformation in Ovid’s Metamorphoses] (2009), translates twenty of the most popular stories from Ovid’s mythological epic and offers a running commentary on each one of them. The twenty highly original essays that accompany the translated stories range widely from literary history and aesthetics to Ovidian Nachleben. Papanghelis has also edited two Companions, on Apollonius (Companion to Apollonius) with Antonios Rengakos (2001) and on pastoral (Companion to Greek and Roman Pastoral) with Marco Fantuzzi (2006). Both include papers on various aspects of the authors concerned written by distinguished specialists, offering the most up-to-date scholarship addressed to students and scholars alike. Both Companions have been revised and reissued in enlarged versions, a fact which further attests to the visibility of the works and their importance as scholarly tools. The honorand is also the editor of a Trends in Classics volume on Generic Interfaces in Latin Literature (with Stephen Harrison and Stavros Frangoulidis) (2013), examining the ways genre operates with a view to decoding textual meaning. He is currently co-editing a further Trends in Classics volume, this time on Intratextuality in Latin Literature, which deals with the theory and practice of intratextuality. Just as with his books, Papanghelis’ articles display an impressive variety of subjects and research interests, ranging from the poetry of the archaic age up to modern European literature. An overview of the most influential contributions offers a glimpse of his diverse approaches and perspectives: while some are philological in nature, dealing with textual criticism, the overwhelming majority of them revolve around hermeneutics, literary history and interpretation.

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His article on ‘The Hellenistic Centuries: Language and Literature’ (2007) sheds new light on the cultural and political conditions influencing the formation of genres in the Hellenistic period, and explains why the genus grande insists on the use of erudite language, whereas historiography, philosophy and scientific literature lean towards the use of the Hellenistic koine. Short pieces (such as ‘Catullus and Callimachus on Large Women: A Reconsideration of c.86’ (1991) and ‘Hoary Ladies: Catullus 64.305ff. and Apollonius of Rhodes’ (1994)) take up points of Hellenistic technique and doctrina, while others (‘De tergore partem exiguam: The Case for a Programmatic Metaphor in Ovid Met. 8.469-50’ (1996), ‘Relegens errata litora: Vergil’s reflexive Odyssey’ (1999), ‘Aeneid 5.362–484: Time, Epic, and the Analeptic Gauntlets’ (2009), ‘Winning on Points: About the Singingmatch in Vergil’s Seventh Eclogue’ (1997), ‘Eros Pastoral and Profane: Love in Vergil’s Eclogues’ (1999), ‘Friends, Foes, Frames, Fragments: Τextuality in Virgil’s Eclogues’ (2006), ‘Too Much Semiotics will Spoil the Genre: The Pastoral Inscription in Vergil, Ecl. 10.53–54’ (2013)) offer valuable insights into questions of intertextuality, narrative technique, style, diction, Dichtersprache, semiotics and generic relations. Cultural, aesthetic and philosophical trends from the early Archaic period up to the Christian era constitute, yet another, easily recognizable area of Papanghelis’ research interests. One paper in particular (‘What did the Human Body Look Like in Antiquity?’ (2007)) looks at the social, political and philosophical parameters which shape the meaning of such notions as ‘ethical responsibility’ or ‘individuality’. These parameters, as lucidly argued by the author, remained unaltered over the broad time span from the archaic age to late imperial times, unlike the factors which determine the meaning of ‘human self’ in Christian theology. A similarly important contribution entitled ‘Οικουμενικότητα και ανορθολογικός πειρασμός: μια παλιά ιστορία’ [‘Ecumenism and the Temptation of Irrationalism: An Old Story’] (2005), inspired by David Hurst’s Westernism (2003), argues that the decline of the city-state and the expansion of the Hellenistic world to an oecoumene, in the wake of Alexander’s conquests, sets up the conditions for the co-existence of irrationalism and scientific pragmatism. His ‘Η πολυπολιτισμικότητα στη Ρώμη: όροι, όρια, ορισμοί’ [‘Multiculturalism in Rome: Terms, Limits, Definitions’] (2013) offers clear proof of intellectual alertness as to the dangers of essentialism and reification in using terms such as ‘multiculturalism’ when referring to classical antiquity. Papanghelis’ wide-ranging interests in cultural history and the history of ideas allow him to approach with fresh and enabling ideas questions rarely touched upon by mainstream classical scholarship, such as the ‘Birth Deficit in Ancient Rome’ (2001), where he discusses the notion of ‘motherhood’ as an independent value in Antiquity. Branching out once

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again, he takes on Montesquieu on Rome in a long essay titled ‘Η Ιστορία του ρωμαϊκού μαθήματος και το μάθημα της ρωμαϊκής ιστορίας – Προλογικό δοκίμιο στον Μοντεσκιέ’ [‘Teaching Roman History and Deriving Lessons Therefrom – A Prefatory Essay on Montesquieu’] (2009). Papanghelis’ profound familiarity with modern European literature, especially of the late 19th century, is evidenced by articles which bring together Propertius, Baudelaire and Cavafy or Callimachus and Walter Pater (‘Spiritus in toto corpore surgit: A Function of the Erotic Body in Propertius, Baudelaire and Cavafy’ (1986), ‘The post-philological Moment: Callimachus and Walter Pater’ (1997)). Further, in his ‘The Aesthetic Image: Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice and Cavafy’ (1989), following up a lead from Frank Kermode’s famous study of the ‘Romantic Image’, he offers a reading of Mann’s narrative and of several poems by Cavafy in the light of the post-Romantic aesthetics. In ‘Good Night, Mr. Hale! Το πρόβλημα της μετά-βρασης’ [‘Good Night, Mr. Hale! The Problem of “Mistranslation” ’] (2002-3) he assesses the literary qualities of Ezra Pound’s ‘translations’ from Propertius with reference to the ‘aesthetics of intensity’ as expounded by Paul Veyne. Papanghelis’ long-standing interest in modern Greek literature bears fruit in studies such as ‘Περί γραμματικής, Αφιέρωμα στον Οδυσσέα Ελύτη’ [‘On Grammar: A Tribute to Odysseus Elytis’] (1993), ‘Σημειώσεις πάνω στη Δεύτερη και Τρίτη ιστορία στο Άξιον Εστί του Οδυσσέα Ελύτη’ [‘Notes on the Second and Third History in The Axion Esti by Odysseus Elytis’] (2001), ‘Γράφοντας έρχεται η Ιστορία: η “εθνική” ποίηση του Οδυσσέα Ελύτη’ [‘History Comes with Writing: The “National” Poetry of Odysseus Elytis’] (2012), ‘Η σκοτεινή ρίζα της σαφήνειας. Ο Ανάπλους και η Ποιητική του Θανάση Βαλτινού’ [‘The Dark Root of Clarity. Anaplous and the Poetics of Thanassis Valtinos’] (2013), ‘Η Γνώση και η Αίσθηση της Ιστορίας: Συμπληρωματικές σημειώσεις για την Ποιητική του Θανάση Βαλτινού’ [‘The Knowledge and the Sense of History: Supplementary Notes on the Poetics of Thanassis Valtinos’] (2014), ‘The Fullness of Incompleteness: An Aspect of Valtinos’ Myth’ (2017). Teaching has always been close to Theodore Papanghelis’ heart and he has always been generous and unstinting in devoting time to both undergraduate and postgraduate students. As academic teacher he firmly believes that professional practitioners in classical literature today have a duty to both uphold the demands of the traditional philological training and to familiarize themselves and their students with whatever they find useful and revitalizing in the manifold manifestations of theory after New Criticism and in the course of the last fifty years or so. A believer in intelligent eclecticism, he advocates striking a balance between being undertheorized and overtheorized as the best method a teacher

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can adopt to guide their students towards a future where Classics will be neither sequestered pedantry nor just another ingredient in the all-embracing and everexpanding cuisine of Cultural Studies. However, Papanghelis’ concern for education extends beyond university: through public lectures and combative newspaper articles he has taken strong exception to successive educational reforms which have invariably tended to diminish the place and role of the humanities in the school curriculum; and especially in defending the little ground Latin still holds therein; in his gracefully ironical vein he quips that Greek Latinists are entitled to the same protection as all other minorities. Papanghelis is on the editorial board of a number of established academic journals and supplementary-volume series. He has been invited to conduct seminars and present papers by major academic institutions and cultural foundations in Greece and abroad; moreover, as a widely recognized stylist in modern Greek and an expert on literary theory he has taught in postgraduate seminars on Creative Writing in the University of Western Macedonia. A charismatic polymath and an enchanting teacher, Papanghelis can boast packed amphitheatres, lecture halls and seminar rooms; yet the most precious feather in his academic cap is the large number of undergraduates who decide to pursue further studies under his supervision and all those former students of his who currently hold key university posts both in Greece and abroad. Etched on the memory of them all is the subtle humour and gentle humanity of a teacher-performer which led many others to deface borrowed library books by writing ‘I hate Latin but I love Papanghelis’. And all of them are looking forward to enjoying a new verse translation of the Aeneid on which he has been strenuously working over the last five years and which is about to appear in the next couple of months. In view of all the above, the least his friends and colleagues could do for an exceptional scholar and absolutely inspiring teacher on the occasion of his 65th birthday was to prepare this volume of collected essays. We do hope that he will accept it as a humble token of a gratiarum actio for all he has effusively offered to classical studies and the humanities in general. The present collection brings together seventeen essays by the honorand’s former students, colleagues and friends, focusing on narratives of life, love and death, in major Latin authors down the centuries, in Proust and in contemporary English poetry. On account of the multifaceted character of the approaches adopted by the authors in the volume, editorial standardization was limited to formatting the papers in accordance with the general Trends in Classics style. Therefore, the authors were free to choose the textual and translation reference system they

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thought more suitable for the elaboration of their argument; what is more, they were allowed to use US or UK spelling. We would like to warmly thank all authors for eagerly accepting our invitation to participate in this initiative and offer their invaluable contributions (in alphabetical order): William W. Batstone, Jacqueline Fabre-Serris, Andrew Feldherr, Roy Gibson, Stephen Heyworth, Alison Keith, David Konstan, Andrew Laird, Gesine Manuwald, Anastasia-Erasmia Peponi, Alison Sharrock, Niall W. Slater, Efrossini Spentzou, Gareth Williams, and David Wray. Antonios Rengakos is to be most cordially thanked for coming up with the idea of this Festschrift. What is more, his invaluable comments on an earlier draft of both the preliminary pages and throughout the volume reduced the labor of the editors and saved us from several infelicities. A special word of thanks further goes to both Franco Montanari and Antonios Rengakos, General Editors of Trends in Classics, for their constant support and encouragement, as well as for their kindness in including the present collection of essays in the Trends in Classics – Supplementary Volumes series. Last but not least, we would like to thank everyone at De Gruyter, and especially Marco Michele Acquafredda, project editor, and Katerina Zianna, in charge of typesetting, for their meticulous editorial work at various stages of the publication process. Stavros Frangoulidis and Stephen Harrison Thessaloniki and Oxford

Contents Introduction � 1

Part I:

Roman Elegy 

Roy Gibson Propertius and the Unstructured Self � 13 Jacqueline Fabre-Serris Love and Death in Propertius 1.10, 1.13 and 2.15: Poetic and Polemical Games with Lucretius, Gallus and Virgil � 37 Gareth Williams From Grave to Rave: Reading ‘Reality’ in Propertius 4.7 and 4.8 � 51 S.J. Heyworth Place and Meaning in Tibullus, Lygdamus, Sulpicia � 69 William W. Batstone Sulpicia and the Speech of Men � 85 Stephen Harrison Ovid’s Literary Entrance: Propertian and Horatian Traces? � 111

Part II: Augustan and Neronian Epic  Alison Sharrock Till Death do us Part … or Join: Love beyond Death in Ovid’s Metamorphoses � 125 David Konstan Death and Life in Lucan � 137

Part III: Historiography-Lyric Poetry, Erotic Epistolography and Epigram  Andrew M. Feldherr The Music of Time: Sallust’s Sempronia (Cat. 25) and Horace’s Lyce (Odes 4.13) � 151

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Anastasia-Erasmia Peponi Against Aesthetic Distance: Ovid, Proust and the Hedonic Impulse � 167 Alison Keith Epicurean Philosophical Perspectives in (and on) [Vergil] Catalepton 5 � 189

Part IV: Roman Drama and Novel  Stavros Frangoulidis Aphrodisia and the Poenulus of Plautus: The Case of Agorastocles � 207 David Wray Stoic Moral Perfectionism and the Queer Art of Failure: Toward a Theory of Senecan Tragedy � 221 Niall W. Slater Resurrection Woman: Love, Death and (After)Life in Petronius’s Widow of Ephesus � 237

Part V: Reception  Andrew Laird Love and Death in Renaissance Latin Bucolic: The Chronis and its Origins (Bibliotheca Nacional de México Ms. 1631) � 251 Gesine Manuwald The Pope as Arsonist and Christian Salvation: Peter Causton’s Londini Conflagratio: Carmen � 275 Efrossini Spentzou Many Un/happy Returns from Eurydice � 295 Publications by Theodore D. Papanghelis � 313 Contributors � 317 General Index � 321 Index Locorum � 325

Introduction: Life, Love and Death in Latin Poetry The title of our volume, specifically chosen to honour the author of Propertius: A Hellenistic Poet of Love and Death, covers areas of key importance in the study of Latin poetry. When that book was published in 1987, love and death were particularly prominent topics in the discussion of the Augustan Latin poets. In 1980 R.O.A.M. (Oliver) Lyne had produced his influential The Latin Love Poets on the love-elegists, focusing on the presentation of love-relationships, while in 1985 Jasper Griffin included a chapter on ‘Love and Death’ in his important Latin Poets and Roman Life. Both Lyne and Griffin were concerned to stress the proximity of poetry to real life at Rome, Lyne in terms of emotional realism, Griffin in terms of historical and cultural context, though both were conscious of the fictional and distancing role of poetic strategies. In his book Theodore Papanghelis insisted on the literary aspects of love and death and their interdependence, both elements which remain central to the analysis of Propertius and the elegists a generation later (the book remains available in paperback from CUP in late 2017); the centrality of death in the presentation of the lover’s elegiac passion has been endorsed and taken further by many scholars and has become an accepted part of the analytical landscape. Inspired by Theodore Papanghelis’ Liebestod theme, contributions to the present volume focus mainly ―though by no means exclusively― on the different ways in which Latin authors and some of their modern readers created narratives of life, love and death. Through a fruitful combination of largely theoretical modern critical approaches to classics with traditional explicatio textus, the papers offer readings of major Latin texts over many centuries, examined in a variety of genres and from multiple perspectives: poetics and authorial self-fashioning; intertextuality; fiction and ‘reality’; gender and queer studies; narratological readings; temporality and aesthetics; genre and meta-genre; structures of the narrative and transgression of boundaries on the ideological and the formalistic level; reception; meta-dramatic and feminist accounts ―the female voice. The insights gained yield important conclusions on Roman literary history. The essays have been grouped together on the basis of genre, according to the main focus of their analysis, and all tie in with the overarching theme of life, love and death. The first group in this volume (‘Part 1: Roman Elegy’) brings together papers mainly on elegiac poetry, focusing on the fashioning of the poetic ‘self’ (Roy Gibson); Propertius’ literary engagement with Lucretius, Vergil and Gallus (Jacqueline Fabre-Serris); representations of ‘reality’, fiction and the twilight possibility in Propertius’ elegies (Gareth Williams); topographical allusions and fantasies of places in Tibullus, Lygdamus and Sulpicia in relation to the elegiac space (S.J.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110596182-001

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Heyworth); the different generic tropes adopted by Sulpicia and the poet of the Garland (William W. Batstone); and the awareness of the newly emerging Ovid in the poetry of Propertius and Horace (Stephen Harrison). Roy Gibson, ‘Propertius and the Unstructured Self’, takes a leaf out of Papanghelis’ monograph Propertius: A Hellenistic Poet on Love and Death and views the poetic persona of Propertius as serious; unlike Papanghelis, Gibson focuses on the psyche, endeavoring to bring to the fore some existential issues, raised by the poet’s self-presentation and his poetics. Gibson asks whether Platonic-Aristotelian ideas about the psyche, aimed at framing and comprehending degrees of instability, or the Epicurean-Stoic framework, which emphasizes incoherence in all except the wise, provide an appropriate hermeneutics for evaluating the Propertian ‘self’. A detailed examination of the elegies suggests that they do facilitate a reading of the ‘self’ as found in the philosophical schools, but not in a dogmatic or very systematic way. Sometimes the text even appears to actively resist or challenge extant philosophical categories and modes of thought. Nevertheless, a reader committed to Epicurean-Stoic ideas would find Propertius less intractable than one committed to Platonic-Aristotelian theories of the psyche. Like Dido in the Aeneid, Propertius comes close to resembling the unstructured state that is characteristic of Stoic-Epicurean depictions of error and passion. In ‘Love and Death in Propertius 1.10, 1.13 and 2.15: Poetic and Polemical Games with Lucretius, Gallus and Virgil’, Jacqueline Fabre-Serris argues that the three poems in question engage closely with elements of the passion of love as presented in earlier work by Lucretius, Gallus and Virgil, following those who hold that the addressee of Propertius 1.10 and 1.13 is the elegist Gallus. Propertius, it is suggested, picks up vocabulary and ideas from all three poets, developing a lively debate about key features of the passion of love. Building on Theodore Papanghelis’ comprehensive reading of Propertius 4.7 and 4.8, Gareth Williams, ‘From Grave to Rave: Reading ‘Reality’ in Propertius 4.7 and 4.8’, explores the two poems’ conjoined function as a ‘form of commentary on the problem of discerning, decoding, and deciding between the levels of ‘reality’, fiction, and twilight possibility’ that so complicate the Cynthia-Propertius poetic discourse in general. Further, Williams argues that elegies 4.7 and 4.8 offer a retroactive summation of the interpretational fallacia that is, after all, fundamental to the fallax opus that constitutes the overall Propertian elegiac narrative (cf. 4.1.135). In his approach, Williams focuses on the opposing versions of ‘reality’ that are projected first in 4.7 and then in 4.8, and which intensify Cynthia’s enigmatic status as a fixture of Propertian poetics, but a figure who is ghost-like in consistently defying the reader’s efforts to grasp her textual meaning and identity.

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In ‘Place and Meaning in Tibullus, Lygdamus, Sulpicia’, S.J. Heyworth first defines the literary spaces of elegy as those of the doorway, bedroom, symposium, and Rome. He then explores how the three poets of the Corpus Tibullianum contrast these with their mention of different places as a means of expressing the complexity of their own erotic emotions. Tibullus repeatedly speaks of the countryside, fantasizing about living with Delia in the rus, although his wish is never realized. Lydgamus repeatedly situates himself in his own bed, lying sleepless, dreaming of Apollo or being sick, perhaps love-sick, while imagining his friends swimming in the Tiber. Unlike Tibullus, Sulpicia finds no attraction whatsoever in the cool weather of the countryside, but prefers the heat of love, expressing her joy in staying in Rome, where her lover Cerinthus is. William W. Batstone, ‘Sulpicia and the Speech of Men’, focuses on the six poems by Sulpicia (3.13–18) in the Corpus Tibullianum, preceded by the so-called Garland poems (3.8–12), with a view to examining ‘subjectivity’ and ‘language’ as inseparable from context and the discourse of response. Batstone offers a thorough examination of both the Sulpician epigrams and the Garland poems. His exhaustive analysis of the epigrams from the perspective of fama, social status, exchange and body parts finds a poet who struggles with and against her subaltern position, both in terms of the speech and silence of the men in her life and in terms of the elegiac genre’s norms. She protests about her lack of standing, imagines an intimate dignity, demands responsible care, and addresses the ways desire is always couched in the desire of the other. In response, the Garland poet returns her values to the norms of an androcentric world and genre. The wit and male privilege of the elegiac world, as convincingly claimed by Batstone, is reaffirmed at the expense of a voice that imagined alternatives. The Garland Poet’s reworking of Sulpicia’s interests and tropes, it is argued, constitutes the first reception of the Sulpician poems; the second form of reception is to be seen in the order in which the editor places the poems in Tibullus Book 3. In ‘Ovid’s Literary Entrance: Propertian and Horatian Traces?’, Stephen Harrison challenges certain traditional ideas of Roman literary history which suggest that Propertius and Horace come before Ovid and belong to a different literary generation, a view encouraged by Ovid’s own effective characterisation of them as his predecessors in Tristia 4.10. By contrast, Harrison argues that Propertius 4.1 and Horace Odes 4.1 can be read as reactions to the newly emerging presence of the young Ovid in Roman poetry. Ovid’s entrance as a fresh voice on the Latin literary scene would thus stimulate established poets to engage with some of his innovations. The second part in this collection (‘Part II: Augustan and Neronian Epic’) includes papers on the aetiological narrative of Ovid and Lucan’s historical epic,

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investigating the theme of love beyond death (Alison Sharrock), or that of death and the ascent of the soul to heaven and its transmigration into different individuals on earth, respectively (David Konstan). From a narratological perspective, Alison Sharrock, ‘Till Death do us Part … or Join: Love beyond Death in Ovid’s Metamorphoses’, thoroughly examines two instances of love beyond death in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which involve a split in the narrative between the lower and the upper world: namely, the deaths of Orpheus and Narcissus. What is unusual about both narratives is that they become ‘fragmented’ at the moment of the hero’s demise: specifically, split between the Underworld and the quotidian. Sharrock first focuses on the bifurcation of the Ovidian account of Orpheus at the end of his life: the head and the lyre are detached from the being of Orpheus while his umbra returns to the Underworld. Orpheus’ search for Eurydice in the world of Dis intertextually recalls Aeneas’ katabasis involving the Virgilian hero’s meeting with Dido; Ovid however replaces Virgil’s Elysian fields with one which has room for women and love. Then Sharrock tackles the divided end-of-life narrative about Narcissus: his body turns into a flower while in the Underworld he engages in his well-known games of mirroring due to his excessive closeness to his beloved-himself. While Orpheus realizes the lessons of his mortal failings and reunites with Eurydice, Narcissus has learnt nothing, whereas Echo, notwithstanding her function as simply voice, is still heard to lament for Narcissus, remaining divided from him as ever. Following Mark Allen Thorne, David Konstan, ‘Death and Life in Lucan’, points out that Lucanian scholarship falls into two broad categories: 1) those who are of the view that the poem conveys a fragmented meaning and is an exercise in absurdity and 2) those who resist deconstructing the poem and take Lucan’s narrative at face value. After revisiting these contrasting views in several recent articles and dissertations, Konstan rightly points out that Lucan’s text continues to pose a problem of reading and, what is more, that this problem is due to both Lucan’s style and interpretations of his political views, according to which his linguistic excess is read as a response to the chaos and loss of meaning to which he was exposed during the Neronian regime. Konstan focuses on one such dichotomy which seems to provide an axis of value in De Bello Civili and serves as an organizing principle of the poem, and shows that it is subject to reversal and collapse: up versus down. At the end of book 8 Pompey’s humble tomb is mentioned; but the opening of Book 9 presents the opposite image of the ascent of Pompey’s soul to heaven. In turn, however, the suggestion of Pompey’s elevation is shattered by Lucan’s claim that the general’s soul in fact underwent transmigration, and came to reside in the hearts of Brutus and above all Cato. That Pompey’s soul remains on earth in another’s guise, doomed to repeat the mistakes it

Introduction: Life, Love and Death in Latin Poetry � 5

committed, reveals, according to Konstan, the tragic quality of the man and by extension of Lucan’s epic as a whole. The third group of papers in this collection (Part III: Historiography/Lyric Poetry, Erotic Epistolography and Epigram), by Andrew M. Feldherr, AnastasiaErasmia Peponi, and Alison Keith, address the following themes: the temporality of love in Historiography (Sallust) and Lyric poetry (Horace); an aesthetic appreciation of Ovid, Heroides 15; and the use of love metaphor in the Epigram ([Vergil] Catalepton 5). Based upon the recurrence of the collocation docta psallere, Andrew M. Feldherr, ‘The Music of Time: Sallust’s Sempronia (Cat. 25) and Horace’s Lyce (Odes 4.13)’, advances a response-based intertextual reading as a prompt for comparison of notions of temporality in relation to literary production in each text. Feldherr convincingly shows how the author’s invective against female targets in each text functions as a potential discordant voice challenging that text’s claim to transcend the immediate context of its performance. In Sallust, temporality is expressed in the presentation of Sempronia as a figure concerned with luxuria and the accumulation of wealth, in direct contrast to the lasting glory won for (male) achievements; for Horace, on the other hand, ephemerality is observed in Lyce’s association with the sympotic life. This interplay between the inset female subjects of the passages as representatives of Greek poetics and culture and the author’s controlling Roman voice, as Feldherr suggests, may further be seen as a reflection of the difference between Greek litterae and the reality of Roman literary art. Taking her point of departure from Bullough, who claimed that the proximity and bodily connection of the lower senses (especially taste and touch) obstruct proper aesthetic appreciation, Anastasia-Erasmia Peponi, ‘Against Aesthetic Distance: Ovid, Proust and the Hedonic Impulse’, focuses on Ovid Heroides 15 (the letter presented as sent by Sappho to her lover Phaon) in order to explore the often opposing philosophical views on the role of the senses in aesthetic experience. The article first explores how Sappho’s fantasy of singing her poetry and of her lover’s erotic response to it fits in with, but also differs from, similar representations in Roman poetry. It next examines Plato’s cautiousness concerning the musical arts as inherently affiliated with impulses. As Peponi convincingly demonstrates, Ovid’s portrayal of Sappho and the erotic reaction evoked by her performance more closely resembles the ideas of Epicurus, who seems to have defended mousike and the pleasures associated with it in a pointedly anti-Platonic stance. Such a view summons up an interesting moment in Proust, who presents music as stirring the lover’s unrestrained impulse for touch, in a way that, according to Peponi, strongly evokes the Ovidian text.

6 � Introduction: Life, Love and Death in Latin Poetry

In ‘Epicurean Philosophical Perspectives in (and on) [Vergil] Catalepton 5’, Alison Keith argues for a clear Epicurean flavour in the Catalepton collection transmitted in the Appendix Vergiliana, particularly Catalepton 5, addressed to the philosopher Siro and ostensibly referring to the poet’s education. She stresses the links between this poem and the works of the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus, especially given recent improvements in our knowledge of the latter through the publication of papyrus fragments from Herculaneum, and suggests affinities in this respect with the first book of Horace’s Satires; she also shows that Catalepton 5 alludes in detail to the extant works of Epicurus himself, as well as to relevant passages of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura. Her final conclusion is that ‘careful attention to the language and precepts on display in Catalepton 5 thus reveals a poetic idiom steeped in the lexicon, theory, and practice of Epicurean philosophy’. The fourth category in this volume (Part IV: Roman Drama and Novel) brings together essays on diverse issues in Roman comedy and tragedy and Petronius’ Satyrica. Stavros Frangoulidis highlights the way in which comic love is realized in Plautus’ Poenulus; David Wray examines the representation of Oedipus as a character in Seneca’s Oedipus, availing himself of the modes of Halberstam’s queer art of failure; and Niall W. Slater analyses the transgression of a variety of boundaries by the Ephesian Widow in Petronius’ Satyrica, while also addressing the maid’s famous (mis-)quoting of Vergil. In ‘Aphrodisia and the Poenulus of Plautus: The Case of Agorastocles’, Stavros Frangoulidis attempts to show how the Aphrodisia festival, normally signalling the beginning of life as a courtesan, here marks the recovery of the two girls’ status as free daughters, thanks to the meta-dramatic endeavors of Milphio, servant of Agorastocles. Frangoulidis first shows how the sisters are prepared for their ritual initiation, given the fact that Agorastocles is unable to purchase the freedom of the older sister, with whom he is madly in love. The opposite direction, marking a movement towards manumission, coincides with the dramatic time of the initiation ceremony: as poeta comicus/vates, the slave devises two subterfuges, corresponding to a pair of inset comedies, which unfold while the puellae take part in the festival and then return home. The slave employs the first ruse to secure the girls’ liberation from the pimp, and the second to restore the courtesans to free status. Seen in this way, the Aphrodisia festival seems to function as the background, highlighting bi-directional movement to and from courtesan status. The eventual recognitio of the girls as freeborn enables Agorastocles and the older sister to marry, lending romance a truly happy dénouement. David Wray, ‘Stoic Moral Perfectionism and the Queer Art of Failure: Toward a Theory of Senecan Tragedy’, advances an aesthetic evaluation of Senecan

Introduction: Life, Love and Death in Latin Poetry � 7

tragedies by drawing on the Stoic notion of moral perfection in combination with the notion of failure as art advanced by queer theorist Judith Halberstam. The author focuses on Oedipus, whose fear-stricken title character displays all the hallmarks of flamboyant, self-deprecatory failure. The cartoonish degradation and horror so prominent in the world of Seneca’s tragedies, which have hitherto largely been attributed to the historical circumstances at the time they were written, turn out to be explainable as a dramatization of what every Stoic philosopher said about human life: namely that we (non-sages) are all bound to fail spectacularly, as there is no such thing as near success; yet as Wray also persuasively argues, Seneca is not so much in the business of preaching Stoicism as in achieving an aesthetically pleasing result, i.e. producing true poetry. Filled as they are with characters and situations embodying hyperbole, regression, loss, failure and even foolishness, Seneca’s plays exhibit the modes of Halberstam’s queer art of failure in a way similar to that of modern animation, bombarding viewers with the unexpected and generically subversive. Niall W. Slater, ‘Resurrection Woman: Love, Death and (After)Life in Petronius’s Widow of Ephesus’, brings to the fore the transgression of the variety of boundaries by the Ephesian Widow in the inset Milesian tale of the Widow of Ephesus, told by Eumolpus to achieve tranquility and restore peace on board Lichas’ ship (Satyrica 111–12). The first boundary transgressed is evidenced by the crossing from life to death as the Widow conducts the wake of her dead husband and laments him in his tomb, determined to starve herself to death. The countermovement from the world of the dead to the living is suggested by the arrival of a miles, watching over the hanged bodies of crucified criminals, who tries to persuade the Widow to abandon her grief and eat. The yielding of the Widow to the miles’ proposal leads to the crossing of another boundary, that of pudicitia, having intercourse with the soldier in the tomb. As the couple remain in the tomb for several days the family of one of the criminals snatches the body from the cross. The Widow’s mark of power over death is indicated by the fact that she dissuades the soldier from committing suicide by suggesting that her dead husband should take the place of the crucified criminal. The astonishment felt by the populace at the new body on the cross when eventually recognizing the dead husband but not sharing this information with the Roman authorities is an indication of how the Widow is in control. This winning over of the Ephesian populace is a mirror of the hilaritas of the internal audience prevailing on board Lichas’ ship at the end of Eumolpus’ story. The spirit of merriness finally secures the complicity of both the internal audience and the readers in the Widow’s transgression. The final part of the collection (Part IV: Reception) includes papers on the topic of love and death in Renaissance bucolic poetry (Andrew Laird); Peter

8 � Introduction: Life, Love and Death in Latin Poetry

Causton’s Fire of London, composed in 1666 (Gesine Manuwald); and the presence of Eurydice from Ibycus to contemporary poetry in English (Ephrossini Spenzou). In ‘Love and Death in Renaissance Latin Bucolic: The Chronis and its Origins’, Andrew Laird presents a text and translation of the Chronis, an anonymous and little known humanist Latin eclogue from the 1500s. Laird proposes in his introduction that the poem’s erotic pastoral framework serves as a vehicle for Christian doctrines about life after death. After some opening remarks on the transmission of the work in Mexico and its possible Italian origin, the literary qualities of the Chronis are explored through an analysis of its structure and treatment of the poem's major literary reminiscences – of Catullus, Ovid, Silius Italicus, and Virgil in particular. The survey then turns to Chronis’ name, which resembles that of Chromis (a figure in Homeric and Virgilian epic as well as in Theocritus and Virgil’s sixth Eclogue), but the name may also be related to terms in classical and patristic Greek. That observation leads to a closing examination of the Christian subtext of the dialogue between Sylvanus and Echo. This suggestive overview of the Chronis is then followed by the text and prose translation of the poem, with notes on its Latin sources. In ‘The Pope as Arsonist and Christian Salvation: Peter Causton’s Londini Conflagratio: Carmen’, Gesine Manuwald concentrates on a little known and hitherto untranslated poem on the Fire of London, composed in 1666 by the merchant Peter Causton. Manuwald first presents the thorny political and religious situation, including the Anglo-Dutch Wars and the tensions between Protestants and Roman Catholics. One group suspected as responsible for the fire were the Dutch and the allied French, another were the Roman Catholics (‘Papists’) and the Jesuits. Manuwald then offers an illuminating commentary on the poem, pointing out the appearance of canonical classical imagery, alluding to Vergil and Horace, the narrative’s dramatization, the use of names of classical gods, etc. The poem, as Manuwald claims, is unique for adopting a Nonconformist perspective: the fire is caused and then not stopped by actions taken by the Pope and the Jesuits as well as the inactivity of the Mayor, whereas the destruction comes to an end because of the prayers by the other Christians and the intervention of the King. This Nonconformist perspective, in Manuwald’s view, perhaps explains the poem’s late publication date, about 13 years after its composition. What is more, the composition serves as testimony of both the intellectual culture and the political and religious situation in seventeenth-century Britain. In ‘Many Un/happy Returns from Eurydice’, Efrossini Spentzou surveys a series of appearances by Eurydice in literature from classical Greece to recent poetry in English. In most classical sources she plays a subordinate role to the

Introduction: Life, Love and Death in Latin Poetry � 9

musician and cult-figure Orpheus, for example in the famous narrative of Orpheus’ katabasis in Virgil, Georgics 4 or its imitation in Ovid, Metamorphoses 10; in both she is more or less silenced in favour of the male artist. In twentieth-century receptions the gender balance changes: in Rilke’s ‘Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes’ (1904), Orpheus is more willing to leave Eurydice behind, while she is more accepting of abandonment. In Margaret Atwood’s version of the story (1984), Eurydice is given more of a voice and portrayed as weary, while Orpheus is fundamentally self-interested; this influences Carol Ann Duffy’s well-known treatment in ‘Mrs. Orpheus’ in The World’s Wife (1999), where death is a feminist haven in a misogynistic universe of masculinist triumphalism. In Vita Nova (1999), Louise Glück, writing allegorically about her own divorce, presents Eurydice as a survivor, sharing Duffy’s confidence about uncertainty and stress on the positive productivity of the world of the dead. In covering a range of genres and employing multiple approaches, the contributors to this collection explore the different ways in which Latin authors and some of their modern readers created narratives of life, love and death. Overall, the papers offer fresh insights into the handling and development of these narratives from Plautus up to modern English poetry; from this perspective, the volume aims at illuminating the ongoing discussion of an area of great interest to Theodore Papanghelis and many others, while also opening up new avenues for research. Stavros Frangoulidis and Stephen Harrison

� Part I: Roman Elegy

Roy Gibson

Propertius and the Unstructured Self1 Propertius: A Hellenistic Poet on Love and Death was published by Cambridge University Press in 1987. Professor Papanghelis’s powerful first monograph urges us to take the Roman poet seriously: Propertius is resolute in his purpose to communicate his sensuous experience of ‘love’ as ‘death’. Fundamental to the development of the argument is a consistent focus on the artistic sensibility of Propertius, and a concern with the poet’s ‘temperament’ and ‘imaginative disposition’. The book is a study, ultimately, of the poet’s ‘character’. Yet clear limits are recognized for any investigation of Propertius in this mode: ‘Poets whose main strength lies in their sensuousness should perhaps not be expected to excel in the serio-problematic treatment of moral, social and existential issues’.2 Like Professor Papanghelis, I wish to take the poetic ‘person’ of Propertius seriously. I trust he will grant me license if I nevertheless shift focus from character to psyche and attempt to draw out some of those existential issues –at least as raised by the elegist’s presentation of his poetic self.

� The Structured Self Christopher Gill’s recent monograph, The Structured Self in Hellenistic and Roman Thought, deals with ancient conceptions of the self and emotion and reason, and concentrates on the radically different analyses of the self offered by Stoic and Epicurean thought on the one hand, and Platonic-Aristotelian sources on the other. The Structured Self raises a question about Propertius, at least potentially: within which philosophical framework, if any, are the self and the psychological processes portrayed in the poet best analysed and understood? Is the elegist most productively interpreted within a Stoic-Epicurean or a Platonic-Aristotelian framework? Or both? Or neither?3 �� 1 Earlier versions of this paper were given to seminars in Oxford and Exeter. I must thank the audiences for stimulating observations, esp. Ruth Caston, Christopher Gill and Donncha O’Rourke. Grateful acknowledgement is made of translations of Plutarch’s Antony by Waterfield 1999 (with adaptations from Pelling 1988) and of Propertius by Goold 1990 and Lee 1994. Text of Propertius is from Goold 1990. 2 Papanghelis 1987, 4. 3 The present chapter should be read alongside O’Rourke 2016, which highlights further StoicEpicurean and Peripatetic elements in the elegies of Propertius and sets them, ultimately, in a

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110596182-002

14 � Roy Gibson

Why such questions should be asked at all is perhaps best understood by offering a brief overview of Gill’s book and outlining some of the interpretative gains that it offers for contextualizing manifestations of the self in Latin poetry. The monograph is ‘concerned with ancient thought about what is important about us as human beings or psychophysical wholes or as instantiations of psyche, rather than about what it is to be a (uniquely) particular person or to be me’.4 One key question concerns the novelty and distinctiveness of Stoic and Epicurean ideas about the psyche as compared with older Platonic and Aristotelian notions. In Platonic-Aristotelian thought, the development of the self takes place in two stages, a ‘habituative phase, often closely tied to involvement with family or communal values’, and a rational phase, explicitly theoretical in character, ‘centred on the dialectical analysis of ideas of value’, where the phasing in two parts is ‘explicitly linked with the division of the psyche into rational and irrational (or non-rational) parts’.5 In other words, Platonic-Aristotelian thought posits a partbased psyche, where the rational part must develop and learn to control the less rational parts over time. This pattern is rejected in both Epicurean and Stoic thought. Epicureans sought to erase the idea that ‘a human life has a natural shape or narrative, centered on the evolving stages of youth, maturity, and old age’, and instead aimed ‘to create a unified life, consisting in a continuous state of freedom from distress (ataraxia)’.6 The Stoics rejected Platonic-Aristotelian thought on a different ground:7 the rational stage of development is not conceived as a distinct, reflective or dialectical one, superimposed on the basis of a habituated set of attitudes and beliefs. Rationality is expressed in the form of ‘selection’, a practical activity, directed at obtaining the primary natural goods …

Both Stoics and Epicureans had to produce some sort of explanation for the difference between youth and maturity. They appear to have done so, at least in the case of Stoics, by positing a ‘sharp and radical distinction’ around the age of fourteen between childhood and the fully rational state of adulthood.8 From this point

�� more thoroughly political context. Hardie 2016 surveys the larger context for the present chapter: Augustan poetry’s sustained engagement with the ‘irrational’. 4 Gill 2006, xiv. 5 Gill 2006, 134. 6 Gill 2006, 106. 7 Gill 2006, 138. 8 Gill 2006, 141.

Propertius and the Unstructured Self � 15

on a ‘holistic’ view is taken of adult character and rationality that is in clear contrast with Platonic-Aristotelian ideas of psychological processes: 9 [In the Platonic-Aristotelian picture] the non-rational, or less rational, parts represent continuing dimensions in the psychological life of adult humans; hence, they need to be shaped (or ‘harmonized’) by habituation in the first phase, to provide a foundation for the development of the distinct part, reason, in the second phase. … In the Stoic pattern, reason is not a ‘part’ in this sense, but – at least – a set of structured capabilities which shape the whole of the adult’s psychological life, that is, her impressions, assents, and impulses. … emotions, whether good are bad, are fundamentally rational responses (impulses) and not functions of a distinct or quasi-distinct part of the psyche. They are also conceived holistically, in so far as they are seen as expressing the totality of a person’s belief-set at the relevant time.

There is one importance consequence of this contrast between 1) a Platonic-Aristotelian ‘part-based’ approach, where ethical virtue is a matter of reason’s control over the emotions; and 2) the Stoic-Epicurean preference for a ‘holistic’ model which denies the existence of distinct psychic ‘parts’. In Platonic-Aristotelian thought ‘there can be stable, though defective, states of character as regards emotion and desire’.10 For example, in Aristotle, akrasia (‘weakness of will’) is a seriously defective condition characterized by inconsistency and internal conflict, to be distinguished from potentially more stable states such as akolasia (‘intemperance’). In Stoic-Epicurean thought, by contrast, ‘stress is laid on the idea that only the normative wise person is coherent and stable, and that the character and lives of non-wise people are marked by inconsistency and inner conflict’.11 In fact, for Stoics, ‘all states of passion are conceived as being, in effect, ‘akratic’ ones, a point linked with the belief that all human beings are constitutively capable of achieving full wisdom’.12 These, in sum, are the main differences between the two schools: a partbased approach to the self, with varying degrees of ethical coherence and stability admitted; versus a holistic model that distinguishes the ethical coherence of the elite ‘wise’ from the chaos and instability of the majority of the ‘non-wise’.

�� 9 Gill 2006, 144. 10 Gill 2006, 232. 11 Gill 2006, 232. 12 Gill 2006, 232. (In reality, Stoic thought was not greatly interested in ‘akratic’ as a category, and preferred to think of wrong judgements, i.e. endorsing the wrong universal.)

�� � Roy Gibson

� The Structured Self in Vergil, Seneca and Plutarch In a final chapter of The Structured Self, Gill seeks to trace the influence of these two very different approaches to the self, reason and emotion in texts beyond those of the philosophical schools, including the Lives of Plutarch, the Tragedies of Seneca and Vergil’s Aeneid. He establishes, as might be anticipated, a broadly Platonic-Aristotelian mode of thinking in Plutarch’s Lives and a more thoroughly Stoic mode in Seneca.13 As for the Aeneid, Gill argues for a sophisticated ‘layered’ model: the epic allows both Platonic-Aristotelian and Stoic-Epicurean readings of the behaviour of Dido and Aeneas, but ultimately the Stoic-Epicurean approach explains more about the ethical lapses of the characters as Vergil portrays them. In Plutarch’s Lives, for example, we routinely encounter a ‘part-based psychological model and the assumption that ethical development depends on a combination of inborn nature, habituation and reason’, where the subject’s ‘character (and happiness or misery) is [also] viewed in relation to the unfolding narrative’ of that subject’s life.14 On this model, sudden lapses or late-revealed inconsistency in character require careful explanation: once character is formed by habituation and reason, it ought in theory to remain relatively unchanged. Plutarch has various types of explanation, all of them perhaps related to one another. An overarching explanation may be that the subject in fact failed over time to ‘develop – or to develop fully - the stability and coherence of character that depend on virtue’. Included within this broad explanation may be instances where a previously stable character breaks down under the pressure of exceptional events or circumstances, so that ‘reason’ now loses control over the psychologically distinct ‘anger’ or ‘spirit’.15 Also perhaps included are instances where qualities or faults that were previously covered up or unrecognized are belatedly revealed. These explanations are compatible with the Platonic-Aristotelian psychological model to which Plutarch elsewhere expresses commitment.16

�� 13 For a recent argument that in fact Plutarch ‘left behind more traditional forms of Platonism and adopted a literary style more congenial to Roman Stoicism’, see Niehoff 2012 (quotation from Niehoff 2012, 390), drawing on Sorabji 2006, 172–80. 14 Gill 2006, 411. 15 Gill 2006, 416-19; cf. 420, 439. 16 For Plutarch’s commitment to middle Platonism, see Dillon 2014; cf. Gibson 2018.

Propertius and the Unstructured Self � 17

Lapses in character receive a rather different explanation in Stoic-Epicurean thought: they are the symptoms of the incoherence and instability from which only the wise are exempt.17 Gill brings out the difference by contrasting Seneca’s Phaedra with her Eurpidean forerunner. The Phaedra of Euripides conceptualizes herself as a principled individual making an effort to conceal or control a passionate love (eros or Kupris) that has invaded her psyche. Seneca’s Phaedra ‘engages herself more fully with her passion and acts on it, while still being conscious of its wrongfulness. As a result, ambivalence enters more deeply into Phaedra’s motivation and agency in Seneca’s play than in Euripides’ [play]’.18 The ethical model shaping Seneca’s portrait includes not only the idea that all nonwise people are relatively incoherent, but also the thought that all humans, whatever their current mental state, retain the potential to develop towards wisdom. According to Gill:19 this is combined with a holistic psychological model in which emotions, though (normatively) ‘irrational’, are seen as states of the whole person which embody rational judgements, including those expressing the person’s latent or imperfect understanding of goodness. It is the presence of judgements reflecting this partial understanding that generates the conflict with the primary (‘irrational’) passionate judgement that it is ‘appropriate’ to feel anger or grieve or love in this situation.

Hence Seneca’s distinctive portrait of a Phaedra who is entangled in a lengthy private conflict which shapes the full range of her emotional and ethical responses.20 Gill argues that the Aeneid ultimately reflects Stoic-Epicurean ideas. One indication is the text’s characteristic opposition between virtue and madness (furor) rather than between virtue and vice or between reason on the one hand and emotion or desire on the other. A second is the description at significant moments in the poem ‘of exceptional firmness and cohesion on the one hand and of chaotic violence on the other’. Both evoke the strong differentiation in Stoic-Epicurean thinking ‘between (stable, unified) wisdom and (unstable, incoherent) folly, rather than the more graded Platonic-Aristotelian contrasts between degrees of largely stable virtue and vice’.21 This is not to say that Platonic-Aristotelian ideas have no explanatory value for the Aeneid. Dido exemplifies the Plutarchan

�� 17 Gill 2006, 439. 18 Gill 2006, 428. 19 Gill 2006, 429–30. 20 Gill 2006, 425–8 on (e.g.) Sen. Phaedr. 250–73, 711–12, 891–7, 1184–9. 21 Gill 2006, 440.

�� � Roy Gibson

pattern of a virtuous person who experiences change or a lapse in character, late in life, under the impact of exceptional events. Overall, nevertheless, the StoicEpicurean framework is a better fit for her story. As in Senecan drama, a protracted state of emotional instability is the outcome of a surrender to passion, involving a sort of ‘madness’, and self-blame, internal conflict, and irrational reasoning.22 Particularly revealing is Dido’s confession of her love for Aeneas to her sister Anna, where Dido implies that her passion is ‘akratic’, i.e. against her better judgement (Aen. 4.15–19). Dido also displays a broad tendency to see her love as source of blame or as somehow a fault (Aen. 4.54–5). In Gill’s words, ‘This presentation of passion as involving inner conflict, because of the person’s continuing rational awareness of going wrong, is one of the features of Virgil’s description of Dido that most strongly evokes the kind of Stoic thinking that seems to underlie Seneca’s presentation of Phaedra and Medea’.23 Ultimately Dido perhaps exemplifies better the un-structured state that is characteristic of Stoic-Epicurean depictions of error or passion.24 Gill’s analysis of the Aeneid displays notable sophistication in arguing that the Aeneid also supports Platonic-Aristotelian readings, but that such readings are only one layer in a complex situation where Stoic-Epicurean readings form another layer.

� Propertius, Plutarch and Mark Antony Does the Propertian concept of the self – if there is one –respond better to Platonic-Aristotelian readings, to Stoic-Epicurean readings, or to both, in the layered manner of the Aeneid? Or to neither? To help answer this question, I propose to look at Plutarch’s biography of Mark Antony. The ultimate purpose is to compare Plutarch’s Platonic-Aristotelian analysis of Antony’s struggle with the passions to Propertius’ own account of his psychological processes under the assault of amor. The close parallels between Antony and Propertius are well known. Jasper Griffin, in a classic article first published in 1977, drew attention to the ways in which the literary persona created by the elegist strikingly recalls the triumvir's career.25 The obvious similarities include the rather similar fondness of Propertius �� 22 Gill 2006, 442. 23 Gill 2006, 445. 24 Gill 2006, 440. 25 Griffin 1985, 32–47, an amended version of Griffin 1977: I refer throughout to the 1985 version. The model is endorsed, with some qualifications, by (e.g.) Wyke 2002, 171, 195–6. Parallels

Propertius and the Unstructured Self � 19

and Mark Antony for the life of nox, amor, and uinum;26 the parallel between elegy’s fixation with death and dying ― the very subject of Propertius: A Hellenistic Poet on Love and Death ― and Plutarch’s romanticised report of the final days of Antony and Cleopatra;27 and Cleopatra’s Cynthia-like inspiration of murderous and suicidal impulses in Antony (Plut. Ant. 76.3–4). Some broader connections between Antony and love-elegy in general have also been confirmed by Christopher Pelling’s study of Plutarch’s Life. He points out, for example, that the charges against Antony, reportedly levelled by contemporaries in connection with Cleopatra (Ant. 58.9–11), are ‘reminiscent of Roman elegy ... the domina (11, κυρίαν), the seruitium (10), the abandoning of public affairs (11), the gifts, the eager reading of the tablets’.28 Plutarch, of course, bases his account of character on the Platonic-Aristotelian pattern, according to which ‘the development of virtue depends on the combination of nature (phusis), habit [or character] (ethos), and reason (logos)’.29 But there are qualifications to be made. First, a general one: in the Lives, Plutarch does not necessarily use his terms consistently, so as to main a firm distinction between physis (inborn nature) and ethos (developed adult character). Sometimes, it appears, physis is used to refer to the durable adult character, rather than inborn nature. Secondly, in the Life of Antony, it is not clear that Plutarch delivers a completely coherent account of Antony’s ethical demise.30 As will become

�� between Propertius and Antony are also the subject of Gibson 2007, 55–68; 2009, 281–4; 2011. The phrasing and documentation in this paragraph are taken from Gibson 2007, 55. 26 Cf. Plut. Ant. 9.5 ‘… his general way of life meant that he did not find favour with the upright and moral members of society, as Cicero says. In fact, they intensely disliked him, and were disgusted by his ill-timed bouts of drunkenness, his oppressive extravagance, his cavorting with women, and the way he spent his days asleep or wandering around in a daze with a hangover, and the nights at parties and shows, and amusing himself at the weddings of actors and clowns’. Propertius’ drunken behaviour likewise attracts the criticism of οἱ χρηστοὶ καὶ σώφρονες; cf. 2.30.13 ista senes licet accusent conuiuia duri 27 See Griffin 1985, 45–46, and compare Prop. 1.17.19–24, 1.19, 2.20.15–18, 2.24.35–38, 2.28.39– 40, 4.7.93–4, with Plut. Ant. 58.8 (Antony’s provision for burial beside Cleopatra), Ant. 71.1 (the formation of the ‘Society of Partners in Death’), Ant. 76.5 (Antony’s reaction to the false report that Cleopatra is dead), Ant. 77 (his death in her arms), Ant. 82.2 (Cleopatra’s burial of Antony), Ant. 84.7 (her final plea to Antony over his coffin). 28 Pelling 1988, 261. It does not appear likely that Plutarch knew or was influenced by Roman elegy; rather it is a question of confluence and a shared background in New Comedy; see Pelling 1988, 35 n. 109. 29 Gill 2006, 231. 30 Nevertheless, for the broad movement in the Antony from initial crude moralizing to deepening psychological interest, see Pelling 1988, 10–16.

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evident, this biography has a series of apparent endings which turn out to be not quite final. Plutarch appears to have little information on Antony’s formal education: rather a loss given the importance of education in developing the rational faculty and forming character through habituation.31 Plutarch makes up for this lack with an ingenious use of some material to suggest ways in which Antony was less formally educated and habituated (Ant. 2.4–5): Ἀντωνίῳ δὲ λαμπρῷ καθ' ὥραν γενομένῳ τὴν Κουρίωνος φιλίαν καὶ συνήθειαν ὥσπερ τινὰ κῆρα προσπεσεῖν λέγουσιν, αὐτοῦ τε περὶ τὰς ἡδονὰς ἀπαιδεύτου γενομένου, καὶ τὸν Ἀντώνιον ὡς μᾶλλον εἴη χειροήθης εἰς πότους καὶ γύναια καὶ δαπάνας πολυτελεῖς καὶ ἀκολάστους ἐμβαλόντος. Antony had developed into a remarkable young man, they say, when he was smitten, as if by a pestilential disease, by his friendship and intimacy with Curio, an uneducated hedonist who, in order to increase his hold over Antony, introduced him to drinking-sessions, women, and all kinds of extravagant and immoderate expenses.

Curio’s effect on Antony establishes a pattern that Plutarch sees as crucial to Antony’s life and development: Antony as ‘brilliant but passive, the susceptible victim of others’ wiles: first Fulvia … then Cl[eopatra]’ and her flatterers.32 The influences on Antony’s life are not all bad. During Caesar’s dictatorship, Plutarch tells us, ‘Caesar eradicated most of Antony’s inane and dissolute habits, by letting it be known that his offences had not gone unnoticed’ (Ant. 10.4). Antony’s solution to his ethical problems is marriage. In Plutarch’s view, this ultimately made things worse in the long term. His new wife Fulvia ‘… wanted to rule a ruler and command a commander – and consequently Cleopatra owed Fulvia the fee for teaching Antony to submit to a woman, since she took him over after he had been trained and tamed from the outset to obey women’ (Ant. 10.5–6). Antony’s ‘education’ habituates him towards a submissiveness that will lead eventually to disaster and to a complete collapse in character. But if Antony’s education is corrupting, he still has something else to rely on. On the occasion of the flight from Mutina, Plutarch insists (Ant. 17.4–5):

�� 31 For these reasons, Plutarch normally likes to spend time on education - ‘particularly where his subjects have important flaws (e.g. Cor. 1, Mar. 2, Fab. 1)’ (Pelling 1988, 118 ad loc.). For the absence of education as a marker of crisis in Plutarchan biography, see Pelling 2002, 13–14. 32 Pelling 1988, 118.

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ἀλλὰ φύσει παρὰ τὰς κακοπραγίας ἐγίνετο βέλτιστος ἑαυτοῦ, καὶ δυστυχῶν ὁμοιότατος ἦν ἀγαθῷ, κοινοῦ μὲν ὄντος τοῦ αἰσθάνεσθαι τῆς ἀρετῆς τοῖς δι’ ἀπορίαν τινὰ σφαλλομένοις, οὐ μὴν ἁπάντων ἃ ζηλοῦσι μιμεῖσθαι καὶ φεύγειν ἃ δυσχεραίνουσιν ἐρρωμένων ἐν ταῖς μεταβολαῖς, ἀλλὰ καὶ μᾶλλον ἐνίων τοῖς ἔθεσιν ἐνδιδόντων ὑπ’ ἀσθενείας καὶ θραυομένων τὸν λογισμόν. ὁ δ’ οὖν Ἀντώνιος τότε θαυμαστὸν ἦν παράδειγμα τοῖς στρατιώταις ... … it was [Antony’s] nature to excel in difficult situations, and he never got closer to being a good man than when his fortune was against him. It is true that it is normal for people to recognize true virtue when difficulties have brought them low, but not everyone is strong enough at these times of reversal to emulate what they admire and avoid behaviour they would condemn; in fact, some are so weakened that they give in to their accustomed ways all the more readily at such times and cannot keep their rationality / resolve intact. On the occasion in question, however, Antony was an incredible example to his men …

Physis here need not signify ‘inborn nature’: Plutarch is not necessarily signalling the fact that, whatever corrupting habits he acquired, Antony could still rely on his home-grown immutable physis to see him through.33 physis might instead signify ‘developed and durable adult character’ ― although we might ask Plutarch how Antony acquired such a character, given the emphasis laid so far on the corruptness of his other habits. What we do find here is a Platonic-Aristotelian analysis of how people weaker than Antony give in to their ‘accustomed ways’ (ethe) and cannot keep their logismos, their reasoning or reasoning power, intact. A part-based view of the psyche is in operation here, with the rational faculty for the moment acting as a restraint on ethos. What we do not find is the more typically Stoic polarity between the virtue of the wise and the instability and incoherence of the non-wise. Plutarch has carefully prepared the ground to allow us to see both Antony’s flaws and his virtues. So far that compound has not proven seriously unstable. Things are about to change. Without the fortifications of adversity, Antony is back to his old ways, and shortly after the foundation of the second triumvirate ‘devotes himself once again to his old life of unrestrained [akolaston] hedonism’ (Ant. 21.2). Worse follows, when Antony meets Cleopatra at the river Cydnus: ‘For a man such as Antony, then, there could be nothing worse than the onset of his love for Cleopatra. It awoke a number of feelings that had previously been dormant and stable within him, stirred them up into a frenzy, and obliterated and destroyed the least vestiges of goodness, the final redeeming features that were still holding out in his nature’ (Ant. 25.1–2). Plutarch appeals to the idea that

�� 33 See Gill 1983, esp. 480–1 for the denial of just such a view in Plutarch’s Life of Sertorius. (For a critique of that paper as a whole and its later development in Gill 1996, see Pelling 1990, 213– 44, with postscript at Pelling 2002, 321–9.)

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faults previously covered up or unrecognized might be belatedly revealed. Unlike in the episode of the retreat from Mutina, Antony’s rational faculty does not intervene to save the day. The inner conflict that Stoic-Epicurean thought associated with surrender by the non-wise to passion is noteworthy by its absence. Nor does Plutarch at any point suggest that Antony was constitutively capable of achieving full wisdom. In keeping with Plutarch’s Platonic-Aristotelian leanings, there are occasional flashes of hope that some form of stability, but not perfection, might be achieved or restored to Antony’s life. In the context of a suggested marriage to Octavia, we learn that Antony ‘refused to call Cleopatra his wife. In this matter of description, he was at least struggling against his love for the Egyptian’ (Ant. 31.3).34 The rational part of Antony’s psyche then becomes a more explicit subject of discussion, when he departs for the East after the conference of Tarentum (Ant. 36.1–2): εὕδουσα δ’ ἡ δεινὴ συμφορὰ χρόνον πολύν, ὁ Κλεοπάτρας ἔρως, δοκῶν κατευνάσθαι καὶ κατακεκηλῆσθαι τοῖς βελτίοσι λογισμοῖς, αὖθις ἀνέλαμπε καὶ ἀνεθάρρει Συρίᾳ πλησιάζοντος αὐτοῦ. καὶ τέλος, ὥσπερ φησὶν ὁ Πλάτων ὸ δυσπειθὲς καὶ ἀκόλαστον τῆς ψυχῆς ὑποζύγιον, ἀπολακτίσας τὰ καλὰ καὶ σωτήρια πάντα … But the awful calamity which had been dormant for a long time, his love for Cleopatra, which seemed to have been lulled and charmed to sleep by better notions, began to flare up and regain its confidence the nearer he got to Syria. Eventually, in the manner of the disobedient, intemperate member of the mind’s chariot team in Plato’s book, he kicked out of the way everything admirable, everything that might have saved him …

Plutarch again uses the idea of dormant or latent flaws. Explicit reference is also made to Plato’s classic expression of a part-based view of the psyche in the Phaedrus. Here, famously, the psyche is compared to a chariot team: reason is the charioteer; one of the horses represents rational or moral impulses; and the other horse represents irrational passions. Specifically, at Phaedrus 254a, Plato describes the reaction of the chariot team when the soul catches sight of the beloved: an apposite passage for Plutarch to allude to in this context. In terms of the Platonic metaphor, Antony’s reason and rational impulses have lost out to his irrational passions, i.e. his love for Cleopatra. The deadly effect of this moral calamity becomes clear when his love for Cleopatra soon affects Antony even on the battlefield – the place where Antony had previously been immune to the results of corrupt habituation or the assaults of passion. His �� 34 logos is to be here translated as ‘in this matter of description’ rather than ‘with his reason’: so Pelling 1988, 202 ad loc.

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invasion of Armenia-Parthia goes badly wrong: ‘He was in such a hurry to spend the winter with her that he launched his attack prematurely and conducted the whole affair in a haphazard fashion. He was not in his right mind [λογισμῶν], but was constantly gazing in her direction as if he had been drugged or bewitched, and he was more concerned with returning quickly than with defeating the enemy’ (Ant. 37.6). But Antony has not yet undergone complete ethical collapse, and heavy pressure must be applied to him, during the run-up to Actium, to choose Cleopatra over Octavia: a choice he appears to make with a heavy heart (Ant. 53.5–9).35 At Actium, however, the precedent set during the invasion of Armenia returns to ensure a final and fatal move for Antony (Ant. 66.7–8): ἔνθα δὴ φανερὸν αὑτὸν Ἀντώνιος ἐποίησεν οὔτ' ἄρχοντος οὔτ' ἀνδρὸς οὔθ’ ὅλως ἰδίοις λογισμοῖς διοικούμενον, ἀλλ’ – ὅπερ τις παίζων εἶπε τὴν ψυχὴν τοῦ ἐρῶντος ἐν ἀλλοτρίῳ σώματι ζῆν – ἑλκόμενος ὑπὸ τῆς γυναικὸς ὥσπερ συμπεφυκὼς καὶ συμμεταφερόμενος. οὐ γὰρ ἔφθη τὴν ἐκείνης ἰδὼν ναῦν ἀποπλέουσαν ... This was the point at which Antony showed beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was not governed by the considerations proper to a ruler or to a true man – in fact he was not governed by his own mind at all. Someone once said as a joke that a lover’s soul lives in someone else’s body, and by the same token Antony was pulled away by Cleopatra as if he were grafted on to her and had to go wherever she went. As soon as he spotted her ship sailing away …

This analysis of Antony’s psyche and the failure of his rational faculty (logismos) to govern him builds on some aspects of the ‘charioteer’ passage in Plato’s Phaedrus. Once again, a part-based analysis of the self controls Plutarch’s portrait of Antony’s fatal moral lapse. We do not encounter a Stoic polarity between moments of exceptional firmness and cohesion and moments of chaotic violence and inner conflict. A graded and more richly motivated approach is taken.36

�� 35 See Pelling 1988, 13. 36 The collapse is not permanent, since Antony does stage a momentary but significant recovery – in the insurmountable adversity of death – with a speech which restores his dignity as a man and as a Roman: αὐτὸν δὲ μὴ θρηνεῖν ἐπὶ ταῖς ὑστάταις μεταβολαῖς, ἀλλὰ μακαρίζειν ὧν ἔτυχε καλῶν, ἐπιφανέστατος ἀνθρώπων γενόμενος καὶ πλεῖστον ἰσχύσας, καὶ νῦν οὐκ ἀγεννῶς Ῥωμαῖος ὑπὸ Ῥωμαίου κρατηθείς, ‘[he begged her] not to mourn his final misfortune, but to think of all the good luck he had enjoyed and count him happy; supreme fame and fortune had been his, and as a Roman he had now been honourably defeated by a Roman’ (Ant. 77.7). However, the Synkrisis of the paired lives of Antony and Demetrius (6.2) condemns Antony’s suicide as ignoble; see Murgatroyd 2012 for comment.

�� � Roy Gibson

In Plutarch’s account, in summary, Curio provides Antony with poor ethical habituation (Ant. 2.4–5), but Antony forsakes his dissolute habits under Caesar (Ant. 10.4), only for Fulvia to furnish Antony with poor ethical education through encouraging submissiveness to women (Ant. 10.5–6). Meeting Cleopatra at the river Cydnus awakes feelings in Antony that had been previously dormant, and destroys his good or redeeming features (Ant. 25.1–2); yet Antony later resists his love for Cleopatra and declines to call her his wife (Ant. 31.3). On return from Tarentum, the charioteer of Antony’s psyche cannot control the intemperate member of the team of horses: Antony’s dormant feelings for Cleopatra are awakened (Ant. 36.1–2) and even his behaviour on the battlefield is affected (Ant. 37.6). Nevertheless, Antony chooses Cleopatra over Octavia only after the application of strong pressure by her flatterers (Ant. 53.5–9). At the battle of Actium, Antony is not governed by his logismoi: his psyche is with Cleopatra, and he abandons his men (Ant. 66.7–8). Nevertheless, at the moment of his death, Antony speaks as a Roman honourably defeated by a Roman (Ant. 77.7).

� Plutarchan elegies: a counterfactual Propertius Before comparing Plutarch’s Platonic-Aristotelian Antony more directly with Propertius, I want to offer a thought experiment. What would the ‘life’ of Propertius, such as we have it in the elegies, look like if we re-arranged its data to conform more closely to Plutarch’s narrative analysis of Antony? What would Propertius need to look like in order to offer a full and satisfying subject of PlatonicAristotelian analysis? This experiment is designed to give us some clue to how well the actual Propertian self responds to this particular type of analysis. In an alternative universe, Platonic-Aristotelian reason has imposed itself on the otherwise irrational transmission process of the elegist’s text. The Stoic-Epicurean chaos and conflict of the manuscript tradition we currently possess are absent, and we have five books of elegies, instead of four, which give us the story of Propertius’ affair with Cynthia, now all set within a Platonic-Aristotelian framework of the part-based psyche.37 The new framework manifests a chronological re-ordering of the narrative supply of Propertian biographical data: a reordering marked below by the retention of Propertius’ original book and poem numbers.

�� 37 For the connection between the Propertian irrational and debates over how to handle the chaotic textus receptus of the poet, see O’Rourke 2016, 215–17.

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In the first counterfactual book of Propertian elegies we learn of the poet’s birth and childhood in Umbria (1.22.9–10, 4.1.121–6), his education (4.1.133–4), and the early loss of his father and ancestral lands (4.1.127–30). At the moment ‘when the restraint of boyhood clothing [is] removed from me’ (3.15.3 ut mihi praetexti pudor est releuatus amictus) ― when Propertius dons the toga of maturity ― the thoughts of the elegist turn at last to adult activities. For Propertius this means ‘not politics or war, but sex’:38 data libertas noscere amoris iter (3.15.4 ‘freedom was given to learn the way of love’). He becomes involved with a girl called Lycinna, a Greek ‘she-wolf’. She treats Propertius kindly: illa rudis animos per noctes conscia primas | imbuit, heu nullis capta Lycinna datis (3.15.5–6 ‘my accomplice on those first nights, who initiated my untried heart, was Lycinna, won, ah me, by no gifts of mine’). A dangerous precedent has been set for this young man who prefers sex and poetry over public duty. In Book 2, when Propertius meets in Rome a woman who calls herself Cynthia, this woman awakes a number of feelings that had previously been stable within Propertius, stirs them up to a frenzy, and destroys any good habits of behaviour that Propertius may have acquired in the years of his education or boyhood (1.1). Propertius will not call this ‘irregular’ his wife, although he glories in his refusal to get married, and parades Cynthia as an alternative to that dreary institution (2.7). All is not lost. A well-connected friend, Tullus (1.14), manages to persuade Propertius to accompany himself and his uncle, L. Volcacius Tullus, on a proconsular mission to Asia (1.6). In Book 3, Propertius gradually forsakes the dangerous habits to which he had become accustomed in Rome: the elegist’s reason begins to reassert itself over the irrational parts of his psyche. As Propertius had predicted, a tour of Asia is not quite as rugged as Tullus had been implying (1.6.19– 22, 31–4). In fact ‘soft Ionia’ (1.6.31 mollis … Ionia) has a quantity of distractions. Propertius writes to an old friend: scis here mi multas pariter placuisse puellas; | scis mihi, Demophoon, multa uenire mala (2.22a.1–2 ‘You know of late many girls all charmed me equally, you know that thence for me spring a host of woes’). The distractions include actresses and female members of the audience in a local theatre (2.22a.3–10).39 Propertius even stoops to passing liaisons with streetwalkers �� 38 Heyworth-Morwood 2011, 257. 39 2.22a.3–10 nulla meis frustra lustrantur compita plantis; | o nimis exitio nata theatra meo, | siue aliqua in molli diducit candida gestu | bracchia, seu uarios incinit ore modos! | interea nostri quaerunt sibi uulnus ocelli, | candida non tecto pectore si qua sedet, | siue uagi crines puris in frontibus errant, | Indica quos medio uertice gemma tenet (‘My feet pace no street in vain. Alas, the theatre was created all too much for my destruction, whether an actress spreads her white arms in a melting gesture or pours from her lips a tuneful air; all the while my eyes are looking for their

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and common prostitutes (2.23):40 this is something the elegist would never have considered in the early days of his affair with Cynthia in Rome. Propertius seems in a more stable condition, even if the continued affairs with prostitutes point to some persisting defects.41 He is in better shape than his friend Tullus, whose ‘youth never had any time for love’ (1.6.21 nam tua non aetas umquam cessauit amori) in Rome, but who has now clearly succumbed to the delights of Asia. Tullus extends his gap year in Asia to a quinquennium, shifts base to Cyzicus in the Propontis, and settles down to the expatriate life of devotion to self rather than to public career and country (3.22).42 Propertius, more dutifully, begins the journey back to Rome in Book 4. It is now that those persisting defects of character, as evidenced in the affairs with prostitutes and actresses, expose Propertius to serious danger. His love for Cynthia, which seemed to have been charmed to sleep by better notions, begins to flare up and regain its confidence the nearer he gets to Rome (2.25).43 Eventually, in the manner of the intemperate member of the soul’s chariot team in the Phaedrus, Propertius kicks out of the way everything that might have saved him and reasserts his devotion to Cynthia, who has taken up a rival in his absence (2.34).44

�� own hurt, if some beauty sits with her bosom uncovered or gadding locks wander over a smooth forehead, clasped at the crown by a jewel of India.’) 40 2.23.13–16 contra, reiecto quae libera uadit amictu, | custodum et nullo saepta timore, placet. | cui saepe immundo Sacra conteritur Via socco, | nec sinit esse moram, si quis adire uelit. (‘Rather my fancy is taken by her who comes forth free and unveiled, and is not inhibited by any fear of guardians; who oft treads the Sacred Way in shabby sandals; and brooks no delay, if anyone wishes to date her.’) 41 In the ‘real’ Book 2, Propertius resorts to other women (including prostitutes) both as a relief from Cynthia and as an attempt to shock her into more compliant behaviour; see Gibson 2013, 215–16. 42 Propertius urges a return to Italy for duty’s sake (3.22.39–40): haec tibi, Tulle, parens, haec est pulcherrima sedes, | hic tibi pro digna gente petendus honos (‘This, Tullus, is the land that gave you birth, this your fairest home; here you should seek the high office to match your noble birth’). 43 In 2.25 Propertius does actually acknowledge the attractions of other women, including Greek women and streetwalkers (2.25.39–46), but pledges himself once more to Cynthia and to love of a single woman (2.25.1–4, 47–8). For 2.22–25 as tightly controlled narrative of a journey from promiscuity to renewed fidelity to Cynthia, see Gibson 2013, 215–16. 44 2.34.13–18 tu mihi uel ferro pectus uel perde ueneno: | a domina tantum te modo tolle mea. | te dominum uitae, te corporis esse licebit, | te socium admitto rebus, amice, meis: | lecto te solum, lecto te deprecor uno: | riualem possum non ego ferre Iouem (‘Take away my life with sword or poison: only remove yourself from my mistress. You may be lord over me, body and soul; I make you, friend, a partner in my wealth. Only from my bed, from my bed alone I beg you to abstain: not even Jupiter can I bear as a rival.’)

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The elegist was not someone who was ever likely to develop the complete wisdom that the Stoics hold up as an ideal; but there were reasonable hopes that he might continue in the stable, if defective, condition established in Asia. The rational part of his psyche had shown itself capable of regaining control over the erotic impulses to which he was subject. But the sight of Cynthia again is too much: Cynthia quin uiuet uersu laudata Properti (2.34.93, ‘Yes, Cynthia glorified in the pages of Propertius shall live’). There is an ethically happy ending to this story. Propertius has not forgotten the fate of Mark Antony, and draws inspiration from Antony’s ability to think rationally about the consequences of abandoning his wife Octavia, even after throwing his lot in with Cleopatra. Gradually, as the long Book 4 progresses, Propertius mentions Cynthia less and less, and at one point writes a poem where he looks forward to a first night of love with an unnamed woman, and emphasizes the drawing up of a contract for this ‘new love’ (3.20.13, 15–16).45 Can he be thinking of getting married? By the end of the book, Propertius has come to his senses, and the rational part of his psyche has re-asserted control over his passions. He dedicates himself to Mens Bona (3.24.19) and vows henceforth to maintain greater ethical stability.46 In this alternative universe Propertius’ fifth book of elegies is identical to our actual fourth book. This closing book accurately reflects the stable if partially defective nature of Propertius’ psyche. It is largely made up of poems which reflect a new concern with public affairs and Roman history, where the elegist’s rational part is evidently well in control. It also includes two poems involving Cynthia. In one, she returns from the dead to berate him (4.7), apparently having died in the interval after Book 4. In a second, we hear an amusing tale from the old days, when Cynthia found Propertius with two prostitutes (4.8).47 Whatever Cynthia is or was, she no longer has the power to upset his ethical equilibrium.

�� 45 3.20.13, 15–16 nox mihi prima uenit! primae da tempora nocti! || foedera sunt ponenda prius signandaque iura | et scribenda mihi lex in amore nouo (‘My first night of love is coming! [O Moon,] add time to my first night; || First must the terms be made, the oath sealed, and the contract written for this new love of mine’). For the gradual disappearance of Cynthia from the actual third book of Propertius, see Gibson 2013, 216–17. 46 See Prop. 3.24.9–20 quoted below. 47 On the place of 4.7 and 4.8 in the narrative economy of Propertius’ elegies, see Gibson 2013, 218.

�� � Roy Gibson

� The real Propertius This ‘counterfactual’ Propertius, modeled on Plutarch’s Antony and using ‘biographical’ data from the elegies, is not meant to be an exercise in frivolity. Behind it lies a serious point. The Platonic-Aristotelian conception of self is time-dependent: it needs a subject whose character develops over time and experiences challenges. The self undergoes lengthy habituation. Events reinforce strengths in the psyche or gradually expose weaknesses in the ability of the rational part of the soul to exercise control over the rest. By contrast, the Stoic-Epicurean framework needs only evidence of internal discord and incoherence - something in itself more suited to the anxiety and fragmentation that permeate Propertian elegy as we have it. In fact, as Gill suggests in relation to Plutarch, it is not difficult so see that an adherence to the Platonic-Aristotelian understanding of the self might actually predispose someone to the writing of biography, understood as the story of a developing life, with its vicissitudes, phases, and achievements.48 What then might Stoic-Epicurean biography look like? Perhaps something like the letters of Seneca, where the ‘framework is set by the Stoic theory of ethical development as “appropriation” (oikeiosis), rather than the unfolding narrative and specific events of Lucilius’ life’. Or one could imagine ‘a Stoic-Epicurean biography as being one in which the main figure makes a series of salient decisions which show how he or she comes at any one time to the stability and coherence of perfect wisdom’.49 Book 1 of the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius exemplifies this pattern to a significant degree.50 Propertius is not greatly concerned with the ‘specific events’ of his own life: he focuses instead on a series of ‘salient decisions’ in love (e.g. 1.4-1.8),51 where the direction of ethical travel is, at first, away from stability and coherence. The Platonic-Aristotelian model needs a self that develops over time; while the StoicEpicurean framework focuses on instability and inherent ethical chaos. Propertian love elegy provides plenty of evidence of the latter and only vestiges of the former. To understand whether the Stoic-Epicurean framework might be a better fit for understanding Propertius than its Platonic-Aristotelian rival, we return to our �� 48 Gill 2006, 414. 49 Gill 2006, 414. 50 See Gill’s 2013 edition of the Meditations. 51 In 1.4–8 the elegist faces a series of challenges to love (male rivals, other women, epic poetry) and makes decisions in response to those challenges.

Propertius and the Unstructured Self � 29

counterfactual Plutarchan elegist. The most revealing difference between this elegist and the actual Propertius can be found by focusing on where the latter begins his story. Propertius starts not with Lycinna or in his boyhood home in Umbria: both of these things are reserved for retrospective ‘narration’ in poems in Books 3 and 4, although some meagre details about his Umbrian home do appear at the end of Book 1.52 Rather he begins with Cynthia (1.1.1–8): Cynthia prima suis miserum me cepit ocellis, contactum nullis ante Cupidinibus. tum mihi constantis deiecit lumina fastus et caput impositis pressit Amor pedibus, donec me docuit castas odisse puellas improbus, et nullo uiuere consilio. ei mihi, iam toto furor hic non deficit anno, cum tamen adversos cogor habere deos. Cynthia first, with her eyes, caught wretched me, smitten before by no desires. Then, lowering my stare of steady arrogance, with feet imposed Love pressed my head, until he taught me hatred of chaste girls - the villain – and living aimlessly. And now for a whole year this mania has not left me, though I am forced to suffer adverse Gods.

The first thing that we learn about Propertius is that he who had previously been uncontaminated by love now finds himself trapped, crushed, made to live an aimless life which is characterized by madness, and a hatred of castae puellae. Without a back-story of any kind, we meet a character whose encounter with love immediately induces furor and a divided self: someone who is fully engaged with their passion but somehow knows that it is wrong or at least deeply unhealthy. It is as if Plutarch, without introduction or preamble of any kind, had begun his biography of Antony at the river Cydnus, at the moment when Antony first meets Cleopatra. To resemble Propertius fully as narrator, Plutarch would also have to erase his comments about latent defects in Antony and the manner in which the unleashed feelings destroyed the good elements that were still holding out in Antony. Propertius delivers a strongly polarized picture that contrasts a state of before (untouched by no desires) and after (madness, hatred, self-division). It is clear, that at least on his own account, the elegist is shaping himself up to be more ‘readable’ in Stoic-Epicurean terms than in Platonic-Aristotelian terms.53

�� 52 See earlier on the ‘counterfactual Propertius’. 53 Propertius, however, gives no sign of accepting the need for a cure; see Caston 2012, 35–6. For other Stoic elements in 1.1 which point to a rejection of Aristotelian views, see O’Rourke 2016, 203–4.

30 � Roy Gibson

The impression of chaos, fear and incoherence created by the opening lines of Propertius 1.1 is sustained to a large extent across the remainder of Book 1.54 Here we find a lexicon of such characteristically unrestrained emotions as madness, insanity and anger: furor, insanus and demens, and ira and cognates appear frequently.55 Even more prominent is the language of crying, grief and lament (appropriately for elegy), including lacrima, fletus and fleo, dolor and doleo, and queror.56 Alongside such terms is found the language of (usually uncontrolled) fear (timeo, timor, metuo), of aggressive threats (minor, minae), emotional savagery (saeuus, saeuitia), and of contempt (fastus).57 Such language in the aggregate builds up a picture of a lapse into the unstructured state that, in Stoic-Epicurean thinking, follows a surrender to passion. The unstructured state is most fully exemplified in the emotional and physical wreckage that Propertius predicts for his friend Gallus in 1.5: Gallus is already branded insanus ‘mad’ in the opening words of the poem.58 Within a Platonic-Aristotelian framework, we might expect at least an allusion to reason and its (failed) attempts to control emotion or desire; but Propertius rarely – if ever – mentions reason as a faculty in Book 1.59 A Stoic-Epicurean reading of Propertius as lover appears to be invited at the other end of the corpus, when Propertius declares his intention finally to leave Cynthia (3.24.9–20):

�� 54 Phrasing and data in this paragraph are taken from Gibson 2007, 44. 55 Attestations in book 1: furor (5), insanus (4), demens (2), and ira and cognates (6). 56 Attestations in book 1: lacrima (10), fleo and fletus (10), dolor and doleo (15), and querela and queror (12). 57 Attestations in book 1: timeo and timor (6), metuo (2), minor and minae (5), saeuus and saeuitia (6), fastus (4). Given that such vocabulary permeates the book, it is perhaps not surprising that references to sickly complexions are prominent: pallor, palleo and pallesco at 1.1.22, 1.5.21, 1.9.17, 1.13.7, 1.15.39. Overall there is a slight decline in the use of all these terms over the course of Books 2 and 3, but their overall prominence is not in doubt. 58 1.5.3, 15–18 quid tibi uis, insane? meae sentire furores? || et tremulus maestis orietur fletibus horror, | et timor informem ducet in ore notam, | et quaecumque uoles fugient tibi uerba querenti, | nec poteris, qui sis aut ubi, nosse miser! (What are you after, lunatic? To feel my sweetheart’s fury? || trembling and shuddering will come over you with unhappy tears, and fear will trace unsightly lines upon your face, and any words you are groping for will die on your lips as you complain, nor in your distress will you succeed in knowing who or where you are!) See Caston 2012, 32–4 for this portrait of Gallus as an advance on the symptoms of love derided by both Lucretius and Cicero (in the Tusculan Disputations). 59 ratio, for example, is not found in this sense in Book 1 (or indeed anywhere in the corpus); but nullo … consilio at 1.1.6 (quoted earlier) is perhaps meant to allude to a rational faculty. Propertius blames outside forces for his predicament in 1.6, rather than taking responsibility for his own predicament: a deeply un-philosophical view of emotion; see Caston 2012, 25.

Propertius and the Unstructured Self � 31

quod mihi non patrii poterant auertere amici, eluere aut uasto Thessala saga mari, hoc ego non ferro, non igne coactus, at ipsa naufragus Aegaea (uera fatebor) aqua. correptus saeuo Veneris torrebar aeno; uinctus eram uersas in mea terga manus. ecce coronatae portum tetigere carinae, traiectae Syrtes, ancora iacta mihi est. nunc demum uasto fessi resipiscimus aestu, uulneraque ad sanum nunc coiere mea. Mens Bona, si qua dea es, tua me in sacraria dono! exciderunt surdo tot mea uota Ioui. The infatuation that neither family friends could rid me of or witches of Thessaly wash away in ocean, this I have effected myself, not brought thereto by the knife or cautery, but (I will tell you the truth) after being shipwrecked in a very Aegean sea of passion. Venus seized me and roasted me in her cruel cauldron: I was a prisoner with hands bound behind my back. But, look, my garlanded ship has reached harbour, the sandbanks are passed, my anchor dropped. Now at last, weary from the wild surge, I have recovered my sanity, and my wounds have now closed up and healed. Good Sense, if goddess indeed you are, I dedicate myself to your shrine! So many vows of mine have been lost on the deafness of Jupiter.

This passage does not use the language of reason’s restoration to proper control over the emotions or desires; nor is there any hint of rebalancing and greater stability within the soul. Rather the passage deals in a series of actual or implied polarities: torture vs. freedom from pain; danger vs. safety; imprisonment vs. freedom; sickness vs. good health; and insanity vs. Good Sense. This implied either / or analysis is more suited to a Stoic-Epicurean approach, which tends to contrast the ethical coherence and stability of the wise with the chaos and selfconflict of the non-wise. Nevertheless, as Ruth Caston has pointed out, Propertius’ cure in this poem is of a distinctly dubious sort, apparently achieved by ‘drowning in his own passion’ and in his own love poetry. This approach seems more likely to prolong rather than diminish pain.60 That is, no doubt, the point. Between the beginning of love in 1.1 and its end in 3.24, Propertius’ elegies are more resistant to a straightforward philosophical understanding in the StoicEpicurean mode. Earlier, I referred to Christopher Gill’s analysis of Seneca’s Stoic portrayal of Phaedra, where the heroine is caught in a prolonged internal conflict that informs all her ethical and emotional responses. On the face of it, this sounds rather like the elegist’s agonized experience of love. But does it capture the full story? Propertius does begin like a character in Senecan drama (shamed, self-

�� 60 Caston 2012, 43–4; cf. Caston 2006, 290–4.

32 � Roy Gibson

divided, chaotic and unstable), and he apparently achieves and sustains a version of the ‘cure’ which eluded Phaedra (largely through having Cynthia die in between Books 3 and 4). But in between 1.1 and 3.24, Propertius appears to aspire to the paradoxical state of ‘stability’ in chaos. Propertius can state with calm conviction that love alone is resistant to medicine for body or soul: omnis humanos sanat medicina dolores: | solus amor morbi non amat artificem (2.1.57–8, ‘medicine can cure all human pains: only love loves not a doctor of its disease’). Propertius comprehends his own malady but cannot – or rather, will not –take action. In the analysis of Ruth Caston: ‘The philosophers’ diagnosis [of love as an illness] is predicated on the assumption that it is possible to be free of love, at least damaging love. But for the elegiac narrators, if we are human, we can only learn to cope with love or limit its harm. How to cope is precisely what the elegiac lovers are struggling to discover’.61 Through demonstrating that a lover can cope with the emotional chaos which philosophers and moralists predict, the elegies of Propertius are both open to and simultaneously resist the Stoic-Epicurean diagnostic polarity of cohesion vs. incoherence. Propertius clearly does ‘cope’: his life is far from unproductive in issuing volume after volume of significant poetry (underlined already at 2.13.25– 6). Nor is Cynthia, at least in Propertius’ estimation, entirely unworthy either of his feelings or of his desire to conduct a life-long relationship of mutual fidelity (2.20).62 In Book 3 of the elegies, a ‘layered’ approach perhaps emerges, similar to that uncovered by Gill in the Aeneid. On the one hand, as I have argued in detail elsewhere, a sequence of poems at the heart of Book 3 executes a series of striking pendulum swings between the traditional behaviour of a libertine and the expression of sentiments that would not be out of place in the mouth of a traditional moralist (3.7–14).63 Such behaviour could be understood as typical of the behaviour of the self-divided non-wise person, who fully retains their rational faculty even while acting irrationally. On the other hand, as hinted earlier through the ‘counterfactual’ Propertius, Book 3 allows or suggests a story of a gradual regaining of stability and rationality. Propertius does not even name Cynthia until near the end of the book. In Book 1, by contrast, Cynthia’s name occurs c. 27 times, while in our Book 2 her name is found 21 or 22 times. In Book 3, Cynthia is named

�� 61 Caston 2012, 29. 62 Caston 2006, 23; cf. 2006, 34 (on elegists as advocates for the patient rather than doctors seeking a cure), 39 (elegiac therapy as more accepting of our humanity), 45–6 (further thoughts on coping). 63 Gibson 2007, 50–3.

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only at the moment when Propertius announces his intention to leave her (3.21.9– 10), and only twice thereafter. The responsibility for assuming that the unnamed puella who features as the object of Propertius’ interest in many poems in Book 3 is passed on to the reader. In the same book Propertius also reveals that there was Lycinna before Cynthia (3.15): Cynthia is prima no longer. In poem 3.20 Propertius looks forward to a first night of love with an unnamed woman (3.20.13), and emphasizes the drawing up of a contract in this ‘new love’ (3.20.15–16), before the celebration of the ‘rites of marriage’ (3.20.25–6).64 The very next poem after 3.20 marks the first explicit move in the direction of a cure from desire for Cynthia, albeit a cure that is reserved for the future and in faraway Athens (3.21.1–2, 25–30):65 magnum iter ad doctas proficisci cogor Athenas ut me longa graui soluat amore uia. illic vel stadiis animum emendare Platonis incipiam aut hortis, docte Epicure, tuis; persequar aut studium linguae, Demosthenis arma, libaboque tuos, munde Menandre, sales; aut certe tabulae capient mea lumina pictae, siue ebore exactae seu magis aere manus. I am constrained to embark on distant travel to learned Athens, that the long journey may free me from oppressive love … There I will begin to free my mind from faults in the porticos of Plato or in the garden of sage Epicurus. Or I will pursue the study of language, the weapon of Demosthenes, and savour your wit, refined Menander. Or at least painted panels will ensnare my eyes, or works of art wrought in ivory, or, better, bronze.

An initial determination to study philosophy soon dwindles to looking at pictures. It is also doubtful that reading Menander will produce a cure for love, although studying Demosthenes might be an effective bromide (one with a long pedigree in Europe). Nevertheless, a ‘layer’ more susceptible to Platonic-Aristotelian analysis can be detected here, since Propertius gradually sheds his obsession with Cynthia across Book 3, before recognizing the need for a cure. It might even be argued that Propertius is aware of the layering of the Stoic-Epicurean and Platonic-Aristotelian approaches in Book 3, since in 3.21 he seems to be open to a cure either in the porticoes of Plato or in the gardens of Epicurus.

�� 64 Cf. Gibson 2013, 216–17 and see the quotation from Prop. 3.20 above. 65 Note also the reference in 3.21.29 capient mea lumina back to 1.1.1 suis … cepit ocellis.

�� � Roy Gibson

� Conclusion Does Propertius the writer consciously offer a philosophical framework within which he invites interpretation of the lover’s ‘self’ and emotions? Or is it rather that a philosophically committed reader could produce from the elegies an account of the Propertian ‘self’ coherent enough to satisfy the tenets of his or her school? On the evidence of the present paper, it might be said that the elegies allow a reading of the Propertian self of the sort found in the philosophical schools, but not in a dogmatic or very systematic way. Sometimes the text even appears actively to resist or challenge available philosophical categories and modes of thought. In this sense, philosophical approaches to the self are perhaps less a model for Propertius, and more of a foil. Yet it can be regarded as certain that a good proportion of the young elite men (and some women) who read Propertius during the first two centuries of his reception will have had a good grounding in Stoic-Epicurean or Platonic-Aristotelian philosophy. If we shift focus from text to reader, and ask questions about how a young, philosophically committed audience would understand the text, a more positive conclusion can be reached. A Stoic or Epicurean reader would make much easier progress with analyzing the text than would a Platonist or Aristotelian. A young person educated by Musonius Rufus or Epictetus would find Propertius’ text less intractable than someone educated by Plutarch. Some flesh might be put on this bone by returning to the Dido of Vergil’s Aeneid. The Aeneid was unfinished at the time of the author’s death in 19 BCE, and postdates Books 1–3 of Propertius as well as Book 1 of Tibullus and the whole of Gallus. It has often been remarked that the Vergilian Dido embodies, at some level, a reaction to or a reading of Roman love elegy.66 If this is correct, then it is relevant that Dido herself best exemplifies the un-structured state that is characteristic of Stoic-Epicurean depictions of error and passion. One could argue that through Dido Vergil reads elegy philosophically, and in order to perform that reading he has chosen the Stoic-Epicurean lens as the one providing the sharpest view of the elegist’s self-destructive behavior.67

�� 66 See (e.g.) Cairns 1989, 129–50. 67 For ‘Dido the Epicurean’, see also Dyson 1996 and Gordon 1998. In Book 4, Propertius reverses the direction of reading, and trains his sights on the Aeneid; see O’Rourke 2011.

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Bibliography Cairns, F. (1989), Virgil’s Augustan Epic, Cambridge. Caston, R.R. (2006), ‘Love as Illness: Poets and Philosophers in Romantic Love’, Classical Journal 101, 271–98. ―― (2012), The Elegiac Passion: Jealousy in Roman Love Elegy, Oxford. Dillon, J. (2014), ‘Plutarch and Platonism’, in: M. Beck (ed.), A Companion to Plutarch, Malden, MA/Oxford, 61–72. Dyson, J.T. (1996), ‘Dido the Epicurean’, Classical Antiquity 15, 203–21. Gibson, R.K. (2007), Excess and Restraint: Propertius, Horace and Ovid’s Ars Amatoria, London. ―― (2009), ‘The Success and Failure of Roman Love Elegy as an Instrument of Subversion’, in: G. Urso (ed.), Ordine e sovversione nel mondo greco e romano, Fondazione Niccolo Cannusio, Pisa, 279–99. ―― (2011), ‘Aristocrats, Equestrians and the Strange Temper of Propertian Love Elegy’, in: P. Millett/S.P. Oakley/R.J.E. Thompson (eds.), Ratio et res ipsa, Cambridge: Cambridge Classical Journal Supplements, 97–113. ―― (2013), ‘Loves and Elegy’, in: T.S. Thorsen (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Roman Love Elegy, Cambridge, 209–23. ―― (2018), ‘Pliny and Plutarch’s Practical Ethics: A Newly Rediscovered Dialogue’, in: A. König/C.L. Whitton (eds.), Roman Literature under Nerva, Trajan and Hadrian, Cambridge, 402–21. Gill, C. (1983), ‘The Question of Character Development: Plutarch and Tacitus’, Classical Quarterly 33, 469–87. ―― (1996), Personality in Greek Epic, Tragedy and Philosophy: The Self in Dialogue, Oxford. ―― (2006), The Structured Self in Hellenistic and Roman Thought, Oxford. ―― (2013), Marcus Aurelius: Meditations, Books 1–6, Oxford. Goold, G.P. (1990), Propertius: Elegies, Loeb Classical Library 18, Cambridge, MA/London. Gordon, P. (1998), ‘Phaeacian Dido: Lost Pleasures of an Epicurean Intertext’, Classical Antiquity 17, 188–211. Griffin, J. (1977), ‘Propertius and Antony’, Journal of Roman Studies 67, 17–26. ―― (1985), Latin poets and Roman life, London. Hardie, P. (2016), ‘Introduction: Augustan Poetry and the Irrational’, in: P. Hardie (ed.), Augustan Poetry and the Irrational, Oxford, 1–34. Heyworth, S.J./J.H.W. Morwood (2011), A Commentary on Propertius Book 3, Oxford. Lee, A.G. (1994), Propertius: The Poems, Oxford. Murgatroyd, P. (2012), ‘Plutarch’s Death of Antony’, Symbolae Osloenses 86, 178–81. Niehoff, M.R. (2012), ‘Philo and Plutarch as Biographers: Parallel Responses to Roman Stoicism’, Greek Roman and Byzantine Studies 52, 361–92. O’Rourke, D. (2011), ‘ “Eastern” Elegy and “Western” Epic: Reading “Orientalism” in Propertius 4 and Virgil’s Aeneid’, Dictynna 8. ―― (2016), ‘The Madness of Elegy: Rationalizing Propertius’: in P. Hardie (ed.), Augustan Poetry and the Irrational, Oxford, 199–218. Papanghelis, T. (1987), Propertius: A Hellenistic Poet on Love and Death, Cambridge. Pelling, C.B.R. (1988), Plutarch: Life of Antony, Cambridge. ―― (1990), ‘Childhood and Personality in Greek Biography’, in: C.B.R. Pelling (ed.), Characterization and Individuality in Greek Literature, Oxford, 213–44. ―― (2002), Plutarch and History, Swansea.

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Sorabji, R. (2006), Self: Ancient and Modern Insights about Individuality, Life and Death, Oxford. Waterfield, R. (1999), Plutarch: Roman Lives, Oxford. Wyke, M. (2002), The Roman Mistress, Oxford.

Jacqueline Fabre-Serris

Love and Death in Propertius 1.10, 1.13 and 2.15: Poetic and Polemical Games with Lucretius, Gallus and Virgil As Papanghelis has observed,1 ‘against the expediency of uulgiuaga Venus’, recommended by Lucretius, ‘Propertius sets perseverance in one love’, when in elegy 2.1 he claims: Laus in amore mori: laus altera si datur uno/ posse frui: fruar o solus amore meo (To die in love is glory, and glory yet again to be granted to enjoy a single love: O may I alone enjoy the love that is mine, 47–8). Papanghelis asserts that the reader should find ‘sufficient delight in the incongruity that arises when a love poet operating with the conceit of amorous passion “corrects” a philosopher-poet bent on rationalizing love out of existence’.2 He adds in a note that ‘Propertius’ position vis-à-vis Lucretius’, not only in 2.1 and 2.4, but also in other elegies as well, ‘is a very interesting subject which perhaps demands a study to itself’.3 Without taking up this challenge, I would like to support his assumption that ‘Propertius’ redefinition of love’s essence is targeted against Lucretian “reductionism”’,4 by arguing that Propertius’ position vis-à-vis Lucretius should be seen in the wider framework of his position vis-à-vis C. Cornelius Gallus, the founder of the elegiac genre at Rome, because the latter had used and re-interpreted Lucretian descriptions of the effects of love. One may infer that Propertius engages also in dialogue with Gallus, in, for example, lines 57–8 of 2.1: Omnis humanos sanat medicina dolores: / solus amor morbi non amat artificem (Medicine heals all human sufferings. Love’s disease alone loves not its own maker). Love as an incurable disease is found in Lucretius (4.1068–72). Tränkle5 has identified the use of the word medicina in Gallan contexts at Virgil, Eclogues 10.60 (tamquam haec sit nostri medicina furoris!, as if this were a medicine for my frenzy!) and Propertius 1.5.28 (cum mihi nulla mei sit medicina mali, since I have no medicine for my own malady) as referring to Gallus’ Amores. The context in which Gallus was using medicina, apparently a negative one, is unclear; we don’t know how he was referring to Lucretius’ interpretation. It is likely that, in 2.1.57–8, while alluding �� 1 Papanghelis 1987, 45. 2 Papanghelis 1987, 47. 3 Papanghelis 1987, 47 n. 76. 4 Papanghelis 1987, 45. 5 Tränkle 1960, 22–3; Ross 1975, 67–8, 91; Cairns 1996, 100–1; Fabre-Serris 2008, 56–8.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110596182-003

38 � Jacqueline Fabre-Serris

both to Gallus with the word medicina and to Lucretius’ thoughts concerning love as an incurable disease, Propertius takes a distinctive position of his own in claiming that Love has no desire to be cured. As a lover, he prefers to suffer but continue to be in love, even if he risks death, as acknowledged by the final epitaph: ‘huic misero fatum dura puella fuit’ (A harsh girl was the fate of this poor man, 76–8). My paper focuses on elegies 1.10 and 1.13, both addressed to Gallus, where the latter is described as ‘dying of love’ during a night with his beloved. The portrait of the lover dying of love is associated with Gallus by Virgil, in Eclogue 10.10: … indigno cum Gallus amore peribat (When Gallus was perishing from an unworthy love) and in Propertius 2.34.91–2: Et modo formosa quam multa Lycoride Gallus / mortuus inferna uulnera lauit aqua! (And how many wounds has Gallus, dead for love of beautiful Lycoris, bathed in the water of the underworld!). Commentators on lines 91–2 cite as a parallel Euphorion’s Hyacinthus (fr. 43 P.) on Adonis: Κώκυτòς ‹τοι› μοῦνος ἀφ’ ἕλκεα νίψεν Ἄδωνιν (Only the Cocytus bathed Adonis’ wounds).6 Knox has argued that Gallus could have alluded to Euphorion’s verses when he was describing his own ‘metaphorical’ death because of his wounds of love. According to Cairns, Gallus could also have modelled his own line on an imitation of Euphorion by Parthenius.7 How has Propertius treated this Gallan concept in elegies 1.10 and 13, both addressed to his friend?8 To be sure, as is customary in Roman poetry, Propertius has conceived his poem as a way of paying tribute to his addressee while introducing some individual variations on Gallan expressions and motifs.9 I will try to show that this operation involves two other poets. To my mind, Propertius is engaging at the same time in dialogue with Lucretius and with Virgil, who, when describing Gallus as dying of love in Eclogue 10, uses Lucretius’ theory to call into question Gallus’ conception of love. I also want to show that Propertius pursues this dialogue in elegy 2.15 where he celebrates his own night of love.

�� 6 Knox 1986, 14–15. 7 Cairns 1981, n. 56; 144–5. According to Cairns (2006, 81), in 1.10, Propertius is alluding to the recent suicide of Gallus by blurring its political nature ‘with the false suggestion that Gallus died in, or because of love, for Lycoris’. I am not convinced by this suggestion for two reasons. It seems to me first, that it would have been very inappropriate, as a Gallus’ friend, to transform his political real suicide in amatory metaphorical suicide, and then that the ongoing dialog is more relevant if Gallus was alive at this time. 8 On the debate on the identity of Propertius’ Gallus, see Pincus 2004, 168–72. 9 On the homosocial interpretation of this poetical relations, see Keith 2008, 115–38.

Love and Death in Propertius 1.10, 1.13 and 2.15 � ��

� Intertextual markers referring to Gallus and Lucretius in Propertius 1.10 O iucunda quies, primo cum testis amori affueram uestris conscius in lacrimis! O noctem meminisse mihi iucunda uoluptas, o quotiens uotis illa uocanda meis, cum te complexa morientem, Galle, puella uidimus et longa ducere uerba mora! O delightful repose, when I was present amidst your tears, as a witting accomplice to your first love. O delightful pleasure for me to remember that night, a night how often to be invoked in my prayers, when I saw you, Gallus, swooning in your girlfriend’s embrace and drawing out your words in a long delay. (1–6)

An earlier generation of critics was scandalized as a result of taking this description literally, and regarding Propertius as a voyeur and Gallus as an exhibitionist. As Cairns emphasizes, however, a claim to have been a witness (testis) or to have seen (uidimus) someone or something is now considered a standard literary motif.10 These words are intended to signal that the author is referring to another text. Cairns provides, as an example, quem uidimus ipsi at Eclogue 10.26: Pan deus Arcadiae uenit, quem uidimus ipsi (Pan, god of Arcadia, came whom I saw myself), where the phrase functions as Virgil’s claim to have read about Pan (and Arcadia) in Gallus’ Amores.11 I argue that, in elegy 1.10, addressed to Gallus, there represented as ‘dying of love’ (morientem), uidimus is an intertextual marker pointing out that Propertius’ verses include some references to both Gallus’ Amores and Virgil’s Eclogue 10. Virgil’s poem indeed shares three common features with Propertius’ 1.10: it is addressed to Gallus, this latter is portrayed as dying of love and Virgil uses the word uidimus. In elegy 1.10, to what details in the Amores does uidimus refer? Without pursuing this question now, we should notice that the phrase is employed about Gallus’ passionate embraces (te complexa … puella), during which the poet is ‘dying’ of pleasure and after a long delay uttering a few words. The second word I would view as to be taken non-literally is memini. To whom does memini refer? I suggest that the phrase iucunda uoluptas is itself a Lucretian quotation. In De rerum natura 2, Lucretius explains that we find it sweet �� 10 Cairns 2006, 117. 11 Fabre-Serris 2008, 64–9.

40 � Jacqueline Fabre-Serris

(suaue, 1) to look at the sufferings of others during a storm at sea, not because we enjoy watching someone suffer in dangerous situations (non quia uexari quemquamst iucunda uoluptas, not because any man’s troubles are a delectable pleasure, 3), but as long as it is sweet (suaue, 4) to see misfortunes we are escaping. This storm is to be understood in the metaphorical sense of emotional sufferings and to refer to the effects of human passions, such as social rivalries, and greed for wealth or power (11–13). Lucretius’ ‘happy’ viewers are in the position of ‘uncommitted’ witnesses looking out from edita doctrina sapientum templa serena (the serene temples built up by the doctrine of the wise, 8). In 1.10, Propertius uses iucunda uoluptas to qualify the delightful feeling experienced by another ‘witness’ (testis) of human passions: himself when he is gazing at two lovers tightly embraced. Propertius is a ‘committed’ witness, as indicated in verse 12 by the expression commissae laetitiae (joy entrusted). The expression describing Gallus’ and his puella’s position: te complexa … puella, scarcely used in Roman poetry, refers to Lucretius 4.1192–4, where the philosopher depicts a couple making love in the same position: Nec mulier semper ficto suspirat amore, quae complexa uiri corpus cum corpore iungit, et tenet adsuctis umectans oscula labris. The woman is not always sighing from a simulated love when, having embraced her lover she joins body to body and holds him by moistening with her kisses his lips by sucking them.

In the following lines, Lucretius reflects on how to qualify the feeling experienced by these lovers by noting that often the woman is sincerely pursuing shared enjoyments (communia quaerens gaudia, 1195–6) and by citing various examples of identical behaviour in female animals. Although, according to Lucretius, during mating, animals tightly bound by the pursuit of pleasure are experiencing extreme torture (excrucientur, 1202), he concludes that they are finally taking shared pleasure (communis uoluptas, 1207). However, in other passages of De rerum natura 4, Lucretius is not so positive. In lines 1055–120, he distinguishes between Venus, defined as the ‘natural’ need for the man to find someone, male or female, in order to ejaculate, and amor, defined as a mental obsessive construction depicted as caused by a wound (ulcus, 1068) which has no remedies. He argues that a man who avoids love (qui uitat amorem, 1073) is in fact not deprived ‘of Venus’ rewards’ (Veneris fructu), meaning by that physical sexual pleasure. He adds that this ‘pleasure is more pure’ for them that ‘for those unfortunate individuals’ who are caught by amor: Nam certe purast sanis magis inde uoluptas / quam miseris … (1075–6). When he describes passionate partners making love,

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Lucretius focuses on the pains they are experiencing, inasmuch as each of them is furiously trying and failing to penetrate and incorporate the body of her/his beloved (1076–120). To return to elegy 1.10, Propertius is therefore deliberately provocative when he uses the Lucretian phrase iucunda uoluptas to describe his own delight at remembering the first night of love experienced by his friend, Gallus, when, tightly embraced by his beloved (te complexa … puella), he was reaching the peak of erotic pleasure. We know that Gallus borrowed such Lucretian expressions as furor and digna carmina. He could have used also the participle complexa via Catullus, who, according to Frank, may have had read a copy of the De rerum natura given by Lucretius to Memmius.12 Catullus uses complexa in carmen 11 when delineating the numerous love affairs of his unfaithful mistress: cum suis uiuat ualeatque moechis / quos simul conplexa tenet trecentos (Let her spend her life happy and in good health with her three hundred paramours, whom she holds together in her embrace, 17–18). It is even more likely that Catullus was here referring to Lucretius, since he has inserted tenet, another word present in Lucretius 4.1193–4: quae complexa uiri corpus cum corpore iungit / et tenet adsuctis umectans oscula labris. Ovid uses the same two words about two nights of love, first in Amores 1.13.39–40: At si, quem mauis, Cephalum conplexa teneres, / clamares: ‘lente currite, Noctis equi!’ (But if you hold in embrace the one you prefer, Cephalus, you would cry: ‘run slowly, horses of the night’), then in Amores 3.11.11–12 by alluding in the same time to his seruitium amoris, a Gallan motif: Ergo ego nescio cui, quem tu conplexa tenebas, / excubui clausam, seruus ut, ante domum? (For the benefit of someone you held in your embrace, I have stood guard, like a slave, before your tight-closed home). Considering the Gallan contexts of Propertius 1.10 and Ovid’s Amores 1.13, I suggest that both elegists have ‘seen’ the word complexa, used by Lucretius and Catullus, also in Gallus’ Amores. I have omitted the word testis13 in line 1. I argue that, as an intertextual marker, testis is probably referring, like uidimus, to Gallus. Testis is indeed employed by Propertius 1.18 and by Ovid in his Tristia, in Gallan contexts. In 1.18, Propertius alludes, with testes, to the Callimachean story of Acontius, who carved the name of his beloved on tree-bark, more precisely on beeches: Vos eritis testes, si quos habet arbor amores, / fagus et Arcadio pinus amica deo (You trees will be my witnesses, if a tree has any knowledge of love, beech and pine, beloved of the Arcadian god, 19–20). There are many reasons for thinking that Gallus used

�� 12 Frank 1933, 253. 13 On the meaning of testis as ‘testicle’, see Oliensis 1997, 160.

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Acontius’ story as an exemplum.14 As in Eclogue 10.53–4 (… tenerisque meos incidere Amores / arboribus, carve my loves on the tender trees), in Propertius’ 1.18, the word amores probably refers to the title of Gallus’ books of elegies. Fagus is a detail derived from Callimachean Acontius’ story. Arcadio pinus amica deo refers to Pan and Arcadia respectively as Gallan character and Gallan location, like Virgil in Eclogue 10. In Ovid, Tristia 4.9.21–2: Ibit ad occasum quicquid dicemus ab ortu, / testis et Hesperiae uocis Eous erit (Whatever I say shall pass from sunrise to sunset, and the star of the morning shall bear witness to the voice of Hesperia), testis is associated with the ‘East/West-morning/evening star’ topos, in which East and West are taken as equivalent to the entire world. As noted by Cairns, this topos is not originally Gallan, but we may suppose from the various texts and particularly from Amores 1.15.29–30 in which Ovid associates it explicitly with Gallus, that this motif had stimulated his imagination.15 If testis is an intertextual signal notifying the use of a Gallan citation, what can we infer from its presence in 1.10.1? Cairns has argued that the polysyllabic pentameter endings in Propertius could ‘reflect and signal his imitation of earlier elegists, and especially of Cornelius Gallus’.16 It could be the case with lacrimis,17 the word connected with testis in line 1. If testis, memini and uidimus are intertextual markers, with the first and the third referring to Gallus and the second to Lucretius, since elegy 1.10 is addressed to Gallus, one may suppose that, as usual in Roman allusive poetry, Propertius has paid homage to his friend by referring to some of his poems, but has also taken into account how Gallus had read and evoked Lucretius. Elegy 1.10 is thus to be read as a testimony both to verbal, metrical and thematic Gallan features and to Lucretius’ influence on Gallus. But, as I want to argue, Propertius’ poem is also an answer to his predecessors, inasmuch as he is challenging and ‘correcting’ both Lucretius’ and Gallus’ choices and points of view.

� Propertius 1.10 After having inserted three intertextual markers in his description of Gallus’ first night of love, Propertius adds another indication as a guide for the reader (9–12): �� 14 See Ross 1975, 71–4, 89; Rosen and Farrell 1986; Kennedy 1987, 51–2, Fabre-Serris 2008, 74, 83, 87. 15 Cairns 2006, 97. 16 Cairns 2006, 158. 17 Cairns 2006, 188.

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Non tamen a uestro potui secedere lusu: tantus in alternis uocibus ardor erat. Sed quoniam non es ueritus concredere nobis, accipe commissae munera laetitiae. Nevertheless I could not turn away from your love-making: such passion was there in your alternating words. But since you did not fear to trust me, receive in exchange my gifts for the joy you let me share.

As noted by Benjamin, a uestro lusu could allude to Catullus’ poetic experimentation with Calvus, described in carmen 50.2 (multum lusimus in meis tabellis).18 Sharrock has ingeniously suggested that the phrase in alternis uocibus, instead of referring to amoebaean verse, could mean ‘ “in your elegiac verses” ’.19 The last line, accipe commissae munera laetitiae, makes more explicit the relationship between Gallus and Propertius by presenting Propertius’ poem as produced by literary gift exchanges. While confirming that elegy 1.10 is an elegiac response to Gallus’ Amores, these verses introduce a second section of elegy 1.10. Here Propertius describes himself as able to offer to his friend a new ars amatoria that will allow him to be finally happy in love (15–18): Possum ego diuersos iterum coniungere amantes, et dominae tardas possum aperire fores, et possum alterius curas sanare recentis, nec leuis in uerbis est medicina meis. I can unite separated lovers again; I can open a mistress’s reluctant door; I can cure another’s fresh love cares and the healing power of my words is not slight.

In lines 15–16, Propertius seems to allude to the situation that in Eclogue 10 causes Gallus’ sufferings and is leading him to death: Gallus and his mistress are separated and Lycoris is unwilling to renew her relationship with the poet. Propertius’ claim that he can reunite separated lovers and re-open the mistress’s door is a way of answering both to Gallus and to Virgil. In lines 17–18, while using Gallan words such as medicina and cura,20 Propertius states that he is able to cure love’s suffering. This statement challenges the admission of erotic failure attributed by Virgil to Gallus in Eclogue 10.60: tamquam haec sit nostri medicina furoris. At the same time, with the expression curas sanare recentis, Propertius responds to Lucretius’ advice about the only way to cure love’s suffering: si non �� 18 Benjamin 1965, 178; Keith 2008, 121. 19 Sharrock 1990, 570. 20 Cairns 2006, 115–6.

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prima nouis conturbes uolnera plagis / uolgiuagaque uagus Venere ante recentia cures (if you don’t confuse the first wounds by new blows, and cure them in time while fresh by wandering with crowd-wandering Venus, 4.1070–1). According to Propertius, there are some ways to not be unhappy in love. His advice concerns the strategic use of the words in seruitium amoris (slavery of love), Gallus’ famous technique for overcoming the resistance of a harsh (dura) mistress. Propertius explains that Gallus has to avoid both superba uerba and long periods of silence (22), and that he must be careful not to hurt his beloved’s pride (23–6) by refusing what she asks for. He presents this ars amandi as the result of Cynthia’s teaching by using the Lucretian verb docuit (Cynthia docuit, Cynthia has taught me …, 19). Propertius concludes that, if Gallus remains humilis and subiectus amori (subservient to love, 27), he will be rewarded: Is poterit felix una remanere puella, / qui numquam uacuo pectore liber erit (He will be able to remain happy with one girlfriend the man who will be never free with an empty heart, 29–30). Propertius not only provides good advice to Gallus, in the second part of his elegy, by boasting of his own erotic and poetic experience. If we look back to the first lines of his poem, he had already begun to help his friend by offering him a new version of the (Gallan) motif of the ‘poet dying of love’, where he furnishes the word morientem with an erotic meaning. At the same time Propertius is challenging Virgil’s position in Eclogue 10. After having described Gallus as ‘dying of an unworthy love’, Virgil had suggested that, in order to find remedies for his unhappy love, Gallus should change his poetic genre, and imitate him by writing bucolic poetry, which would result in a renuntiatio amoris. As we will see, in elegy 1.13, where he again depicts Gallus as dying of love, Propertius shows more clearly how his own erotic version of this motif is a response to Virgil’s using and promoting Lucretius’ advice to find remedies for love, by suggesting a change of literary genre.

� Propertius 1.13 In elegy 1.13, addressed also to Gallus, Propertius illustrates his erotic and poetic rivalry with his predecessor by proposing different variations on the same verbal and thematic features as in elegy 1.10. In elegy 1.13, he presents Gallus as an inveterate seducer: dum tibi deceptis augetur fama puellis (While your reputation is increased by the girls you have deceived, 5). As noted by critics, this depiction is inconsistent with the (usual) portrait of Gallus as the constant lover of Lycoris in Virgil’s Eclogue 10, Propertius 2.34 and Ovid. Lycoris has been identified with a freedwoman of P. Volumnius Eutrapelus, called Volumnia, whose stage name as a mime actress was Cytheris. It may be assumed from Horace Epode 11, Propertius

Love and Death in Propertius 1.10, 1.13 and 2.15 � 45

1.20 and Tibullus’ elegies for Marathus that Gallus wrote love poems for others than Lycoris, among them a boy.21 In elegy 1.13, the way Propertius misrepresents Gallus seems to be related to the polemical position he adopts in the Monobiblos where he expresses both his admiration for his famous predecessor and his rivalry with Gallus in love and love elegy. His description of Gallus as a former seducer who has repented allows him to present as unusual the fact that Gallus is now in love with one new girl. What is more, Propertius indirectly suggests that this girl is modelled on Cynthia, the unique object of his furor. He re-uses the same Gallan markers as in elegy 1.10, uidi and testis (13–18): Haec ego non rumore malo, non augure doctus : uidi ego: me quaeso teste negare potes? Vidi ego te toto uinctum languescere collo Et flere inectis, Galle, diu manibus, et cupere optatis animam deponere labris, et quae deinde meus celat, amice, pudor. I have learned these things not from a spiteful rumor nor from an augur: I myself saw them; dare you deny it when I was a witness? I myself saw you languish, Gallus, your neck tightly fastened in her embrace, and with your arms about her weep a long while, and wish to breathe out your last on those desirable lips, and then what happened, friend, my sense of shame conceals.

If we compare these lines with elegy 1.10, Propertius has, so to speak, replaced te complexa … puella by toto uinctum collo, lacrimis by flere and morientem by languescere22 and animam deponere, by offering again to Gallus his own (erotic) interpretation of the ‘poet dying of love’. He responds once more both to Virgil and to Lucretius, who is Virgil’s model. To repeat the felicitous expression used by Papanghelis,23 optatis animam deponere labris is ‘the elegiac, “idealized” version of the orgasmic moment, described by Lucretius with uninhibited realism in DRN 4.1106–9)’. As in elegy 1.10.9–10, Propertius describes his own reaction as a testis by using the expressions non potui, complexus (as equivalent to complexa), and tantus erat: non ego complexus potui diducere uestros: / tantus erat demens inter utrosque furor (I couldn’t separate your embraces: so great was the mad passion between you two, 19–20). But the circumstances have changed. Propertius �� 22 Languescere is used four times by Lucretius (3.595; 3.1040; 4.930; 5.769), once by Ovid in an erotic context (Am. 2.10.29). Languor is used by Horace in Epode 11.9, a poem referring to elegiac words and themes, considered as Gallan, inasmuch as the Amores were the only elegiac poems published at this time. 23 Papanghelis 1987, 88.

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is now alone, abandoned by his beloved, like Gallus in Eclogue 10: quod abrepto solus amore uacem24 (… because I am alone now that my love has been stolen from me, 2). In this ‘classic’ elegiac situation of the abandoned male lover, unlike Gallus in Eclogue 10, whom Virgil tries to help, Propertius cannot rely on his friend’ s sympathy: Tu quod saepe soles, nostro laetabere casu / Galle … (You, Gallus, will exult in my misfortune, as you do often, 1–2). However, Propertius claims that he refuses to retaliate and, as in elegy 1.10, he gives some advice to Gallus on how to succeed in love making and in elegiac poetry writing.25 Again Propertius reworks the Gallan motif of the poet dying of love by using the Gallan adjective dignus26 in a positive sense (29, 33–4): nec mirum cum sit Ioue dignae proxima Ledae … Tu uero quoniam semel es periturus amore, utere : non alio limine dignus eras. No wonder, since she is the near-equal of Leda, who was worthy of Jove (…) But since you are about to die once and for all from love, enjoy! You were worthy of no other threshold.

Unlike in Eclogue 10, where Gallus is dying for indignus amor, both lovers are here presented as worthy of one other. This couplet is a response not only to Virgil but also to Gallus himself. Since thanks to Propertius, the unhappy lover of Lycoris has finally found a puella worthy of him, he can now be happy and … put into execution his claim that he is dying of love, by taking it in the metaphorical sense of ‘die of pleasure by making love’, proposed by Propertius in lines 15–18: Qui tibi sit felix, quoniam nouus indicit, error; / et quotcumque uoles, una sit ista tibi (Since this is a new foolish love which has befallen you, may it prove propitious; and however many girls you desire, may she be yours alone, 35–6). To describe the new experience of love offered to his predecessor, he uses the Gallan word error while recalling, through felix and una, the final couplet of elegy 1.10, where his good advice culminated in valuing the capacity to ‘remain happy with one girlfriend’ (felix una remanere puella, 1.10.29). If Propertius is correcting Gallus’ famous motif of the poet dying of love, it is, as Papanghelis has convincingly

�� 24 uacem is echoing to uacuo pectore in elegy 1.10.30. 25 As noted by Keith (2008, 123), Propertius becomes ‘Gallus’ mentor in love and love-elegy, by suggesting that the new woman will end his rival’s amatory dilettantism and, by implication, refine his elegiac elegy’. 26 In the papyrus of P. Qasr Ibrîm, dignus is used in the iunctura digna carmina, borrowed from Lucretius, but Gallus has probably also associated dignus to other words than carmina, as we may assume from the various elegiac variations including this adjective.

Love and Death in Propertius 1.10, 1.13 and 2.15 � ��

demonstrated, because the question of the relation between love and death is at the heart of his own elegiac poetry. Regarding his interpretation of the lover’s physical state resulting from erotic pleasure as a kind of death, it is no coincidence if Propertius has pursued his thoughts about this topic in Book 2. As noted by Oliensis, ‘the ecstatic tone’ of his description in elegy 1.10 ‘anticipates the opening of 2.15 (o me felicem! O nox mihi candida, etc.), where Propertius celebrates his own sexual felicity’.27

� Propertius 2.15: another response to Lucretius’ conception of love? Happiness and pleasure are the first major features of the erotic scene described in detail in elegy 2.15: O me felicem! O nox mihi candida! Et o tu / lectule deliciis facte beate meis! (Happy me! O night that shone for me! And you, darling bed, made blessed by my delight!, 1–2). Lucretius had depicted the night of love as a close combat, in which the two partners were engaged in a never-ending battle where they are desperately trying to not only tightly embrace, but to form one single body (4.1110–14): Nequiquam, quoniam nihil inde abradere possunt, nec penetrare et abire in corpus corpore toto. Nam facere interdum uelle et certare uidentur, usque adeo cupide in Veneris compagibus haerent, membra uoluptatis dum ui labefacta liquescunt. In vain since they cannot scrape anything away from it, neither penetrate it nor go into this body with their body. Sometimes they appear to want to do this and fight, so passionately they are attached in the bonds of Venus whereas their limbs are liquefying shaken through the power of pleasure.

To describe lovers’ close embrace Propertius uses several terms borrowed from Lucretius: amplexu (2.15.9) / complexa (DRN. 4.1193), oscula (2.15.10, DRN. 4.1081), labris (2.15.10, DRN. 4.1194), haerentis (2.15.25) / haerent (DRN. 4.1113), uincire (2.15.25) / uinxit (DRN. 4.1202) / uinctos (DRN. 4.1206). He compares lovers to two fighters (rixa fuit, est luctata) … in pursuit of pleasure, but this pleasure is positively presented as shared and constantly renewed (3-6, 9–10):

�� 27 Oliensis 1997, 160.

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Quam multa apposita narramus uerba lucerna, quantaque sublato lumine rixa fuit! Nam modo nudatis mecum est luctata papillis, interdum tunica duxit operta moram (...) Quam uario amplexu mutamus bracchia ! Quantum oscula sunt labris nostra morata tuis! How many words we exchanged with the lamp beside us, and how we wrestled when the light was put out! For now she fought me with breasts bared and sometimes she covered herself with her tunic and teased me with delay (…) How we shifted our arms in a variety of embraces! How long my kisses lingered on your lips!

In lines 29–30, Propertius’ statement that ‘he errs who seeks to put a limit to the madness of love; true love knows no bounds’ (Errat, qui finem uesani quaerit amoris / uerus amor nullum nouit habere modum) seems directed against both Lucretius and Virgil. The two Epicureans had faulted love as a passion which knows no limits. Modus is indeed the key concept used by Virgil to condemn Gallus’ behavior in Eclogue 10.28: ‘Ecquis erit modus?’ (‘Would you restrain yourself?’, 28), says Pan to the poet dying of love. Virgil borrows the notion of limit from Lucretius, who uses it to define the uera uoluptas in Book 5: nimirum quia non cognouit quae sit habendi / finis et omnino quoad crescat uera uoluptas (certainly because it (mankind) doesn’t know what the limit of possession is and how far it is ever possible for real pleasure to grow, 5.1432–3). When inserting the words finis, uerus, nouit and habere in lines 29–30, Propertius is both alluding to and challenging this definition of the uera uoluptas. This passage concludes four lines (23–6) where he has also challenged Lucretius’ point of view by proposing another philosophical interpretation of the lovers’ close embrace: Dum nos fata sinunt, oculos satiemur amore: nox tibi longa uenit, nec reditura dies. Atque utinam haerentis sic nos uincire catena uelles, ut numquam solueret ulla dies ! While fate permits, let us feast our eyes with love: a long night is coming for you and day will not return. And would that you might so bind us with a chain as we embrace that no day might ever part us!

We find indeed the same theme in Sulpicia’s elegy 3.11. Inasmuch as she uses catena in the same metrical position, soluisse and nulla: sed potius ualida teneamur uterque catena, / nulla queat posthac quam soluisse dies (But let us both be bound with a chain that no day might after part us!, 15–16), we may suppose that Sulpicia and Propertius have a common source, most likely their predecessor and model, Gallus. Propertius presents the endless night of love not only as the

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greatest wish of the lovers but also as the only solution to put an end forever to war (41–6): Qualem si cuncti cuperent decurrere uitam et pressi multo membra iacere mero, non ferrum crudele neque esset bellica nauis, nec nostra Actiacum uerteret ossa mare, nec totiens propriis circum oppugnata triumphis lassa foret crines soluere Roma suos. If all men wished to spend a life like mine and lie with limbs weighed down with deep draughts of wine, there would be no cruel weapons or ships of war, not would our bones be tossed on Actium’s waves, nor would Rome, so oft beset on every hand by her own conquests, be weary of letting loose her hair in grief.

In a previous paper,28 I have suggested that this way of promoting elegiac love could refer to the Empedoclean theory about the cosmological principles of love (φιλία) and Strife (νεῖκος) by alluding to the victory of the first over the second. I was relying on Sedley’s analysis.29 He has argued that Lucretius’ proem was modelled on the proem of the Περὶ Φύσεως. According to him, the erotic scene where Venus is embracing the god of war and asking peace for the Romans, could be inspired by an Empedoclean passage where ‘Aphrodite as Love was asked to propitiate Ares as Strife’.30 Lucretius would have adapted and corrected his predecessor in an Epicurean sense: ‘Venus’ hoped-for propitiation of Mars represents no more than people’s return to the one true conception of the divine nature as tranquil and detached instead of angry and warlike’.31 This assumption perfectly matches Propertius’ claim in lines 39–40, except that he delivers a provocative point of view by describing this state as caused by intense and extended pleasure: Si dabit multas, fiam immortalis in illis: / nocte una quiuis uel deus esse potest (If she further gives me many [nights such as this], I will grow immortal in them: a single night might make any man a god). I return in conclusion to Propertius’ eulogy of lovers’ close embrace as the only way to definitively end war. In my earlier paper, I have argued that Empedocles’ reception in Roman elegy started with Gallus and his close reading of Lucretius’ erotic scene between Mars and Venus. Since Virgil, as is documented by critics,32 had himself integrated

�� 28 Fabre-Serris 2013, par. 33–6. 29 Sedley 2007. 30 Sedley 2007, 79. 31 Sedley 2007, 79. 32 Hardie 1986; Nelis 2001.

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Empedocles’ theory into his epic poem, we may see the final allusion to Actium in elegy 2.15 also as a response to Virgil’s understanding of how to establish an eternal peace for Rome. In Aeneid 8, he had celebrated Roman peace as definitively ensured by Actium’s battle (671–713) by referring to Empedocles’ theory. The battle is led by Discord, scissa gaudens … palla (702) and Mars (700), while Love fights on the side of Augustus in the form of Venus (699). According to Propertius, Actium was mainly a very bloody and bitter victory that would have been avoided if Roman people had opted, as the elegists did, for spending their life, tightly linked by Venus’ bonds.

Bibliography Arnold, P.J. (1997), ‘A Note on Propertius 1.10.3: iucunda voluptas’, CQ. N. S. 47 (2), 597–8. Benjamin, A. (1965), ‘A Note on Propertius 1.10: O iucunda quies’, CP 60, 178. Cairns, F. (1983), ‘Propertius 1.4 and 1.5 and the “Gallus” of the Monobiblos’, PLLS 4, 63–103. ―― (2006), Sextus Propertius. The Augustan Elegist, Cambridge. Fabre-Serris, J. (2008), Rome, l’Arcadie et la mer des Argonautes, Lille. ―― (2014), ‘La réception d’Empédocle dans la poésie latine: Virgile (Buc.6), Gallus et les élégiaques’, Dictynna 11 (https://dictynna.revues.org/1034) Flaschenriem, B. (1997), ‘Loss, Desire, and Writing in Propertius 1.19 and 2.15’, ClAnt 16 (2), 259–77. Frank, T. (1933), ‘The Mutual Borrowings of Catullus and Lucretius, and What They Imply’, CP 28, 249–56. Hardie, P (1986), Virgil’s Aeneid: Cosmos and Imperium, Oxford. Heyworth, S. (2007), Sexti Propertii Elegos, Oxford. Keith, A. (2008), Propertius, Poet of Love and Leisure, London. Kenney, D. (1987), ‘Arcades ambo: Virgil, Gallus and Arcadia’, Hermathena 143, 47–50. Knox, P.E. (1986), Ovid’s Metamorphoses and the Traditions of Augustan Poetry, Cambridge. Nelis, D. (2001), Vergil’s Aeneid and the Argonautica of Apollonios Rhodius, Leeds. Oliensis, E. (1997), ‘The Erotics of Amicitia: Readings in Tibullus, Propertius and Horace’, in: J.P. Hallett/M.B. Skinner (eds.), Roman Sexualities, Princeton, 151–71. Papanghelis, T. (1987), Propertius: A Hellenistic Poet on Love and Death, Cambridge. Pincus, M. (2004), ‘Propertius’s Gallus and the Erotics of Influence’, Arethusa 37, 165–96. Rosen, R.M./J. Farrell (1986), ‘Acontius, Milanion, and Gallus: Vergil Ecl. 10.52–61’, TAPA 116, 241–54. Ross, D.O. (1975), Backgrounds to the Augustan Poetry: Gallus, Elegy and Rome, Cambridge. Rudd, N. (1982), ‘Theme and Imagery in Propertius 2.15’, CQ 32, 152–5. Sedley, D. (2007) ‘The Empedoclean Opening’, in: M. Gale (ed.), Lucretius, 48–87. Sharrock, A. (1990), ‘Alternae Voces – Again’, CQ 40, 570–1. Tränkle, H. (1960), Die Sprachkunst des Properz und die Tradition der lateinischen Dichtersprache, Hermes Einzelschriften 15, Wiesbaden.

Gareth Williams

From Grave to Rave: Reading ‘Reality’ in Propertius 4.7 and 4.8 The storyline is of course well known.1 In the somnolent dreamscape of Propertius 4.72 the ghost of the apparently deceased Cynthia returns from beyond the grave to berate him for his disloyalty and cruel neglect since her passing, and to affirm her own fidelity to him during their affair. But then, in 4.8,3 she is suddenly brought back to life, and she is on her travels; but her ostensible reason for heading to Lanuvium – to witness a virginity-testing ritual there – is apparently countered by the ugly ‘truth’. Careering down the Via Appia with a louche lover for an out-of-town tryst, she causes Propertius to retaliate by staging a raucous party graced by a certain Phyllis and Teïa at his home-base on the Roman Esquiline. But then disaster: in a travesty of Odysseus’ revenge on Penelope’s suitors in Odyssey 22,4 Cynthia unexpectedly returns, she swiftly dispatches her new love rivals, and she imperiously lays down the law by which Propertius is henceforth to abide; the peace-terms are ratified in bed. At the end of Book 3 the affair had appeared to be over, and Propertius over his infatuation (3.24–25).5 How, then, to explain Cynthia’s sudden reappearance in 4.7 and 4.8, and, secondarily, the incongruity of finding her dead in the former poem but very much revived in the latter? Biographical improvisation may contrive a convenient but purely hypothetical way of explaining such inconcinnities.6 We might conjecture, for example, that 4.8 is an earlier composition that is positioned out of chronological order after 4.7; or that the ghost of 4.7 is a mirage, Cynthia still living, and that the poem is satirically charged, her protestations of fidelity shown up by the hypocritical ‘reality’ that is exposed in 4.8. Biographical importation aside, however, and if we forgo all speculation about the relationship (if such it ever truly was) between

�� 1 The text followed below is that of Heyworth 2007a; textual problems impinging on my line of interpretation are duly noticed along the way. 2 Bibliography: Heyworth 2007b, 463, and now Fedeli et al. 2015, 904. 3 Bibliography: Heyworth 2007b, 473, and now Fedeli et al. 2015, 1007–8. 4 On this Homeric presence, see esp. Evans 1971; Currie 1973; Hubbard 1974, 152–6; Dee 1978, 49; Dalzell 1980, 34; Komp 1988, 122–8; now Hutchinson 2006, 198–9 on 43–4, 53–4 with Fedeli et al. 2015, 1012, 1064 on 43–8, 1065 on 43–4, 1073–4 on 53–4, etc. 5 Printed as one poem by Heyworth 2007a, 144–6 after Fedeli 1984 and Goold 1999; see further Fedeli 211 in app. ad 3.24.21 (= 3.25.1) with Heyworth 2007b, 412 on ‘xxiv 19–xxv 2’. 6 For such improvisation sampled, see Warden 1980, 80–1 and 1996, 118 with Papanghelis 1987, 196 and n. 123.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110596182-004

52 � Gareth Williams

the real Propertius and any real Cynthia (if she ever truly existed), how are 4.7 and 4.8 to be (i) reconciled with each other, and (ii) viewed in relation to the larger narrative of the affair as recounted in Books 1 to 3? This paper aims to build on the strong foundation of existing scholarship on 4.7 and 4.8 by exploring the two poems’ combined function as a form of commentary not so much on the affair per se as portrayed in Books 1 to 3, but on the problem of discerning, decoding, and deciding between the levels of ‘reality’, fiction, and twilight possibility that so complicate the Cynthia-centered narrative of those books. In particular, I argue that, in combination, 4.7 and 4.8 offer a retrospective summation – a crowning if confounding demonstration – of the forces of interpretational fallacia that have persistently dogged our tracking of the Cynthia saga in the fallax opus that is, after all, Propertian elegy in general (cf. 4.1.135). The ghost that eludes Propertius’ grasp at the end of 4.7 – inter complexus excidit umbra meos (96: ‘the shade slipped away amidst my embraces’) – fittingly symbolizes, I propose, the elusive shades of meaning that haunt both this poem and 4.8, so that what she ultimately escapes is our mental grasp of her (cf. OLD complexus 4), however hard we try to come to grips with her chameleon-like textual/tonal presence in this dyad of poems: true to the evanescent vision7 that stands over Propertius’ couch in 4.7, ‘there’ but not really there, she will not be drawn from her natural habitat in the elegiac ambivalence and evasiveness that prevail throughout the Propertian corpus. The burnt-out shade who appears before us in lines 7–12 has in any case already been anticipated by her shade-like alter ego in Books 1 to 3, at least in the sense that Cynthia is textually real in those books but never consistently true as Propertius’ lover; she is a free spirit who is ever present to him but always evades final capture as a truly known quantity, erotic or otherwise. Paradoxically, then, we might even infer that the shade of 4.7 is in a sense a true reflection or instantiation of the spectral figure who was apparently written out of the Propertian story in 3.24–25. At the very least, however, I argue that the ghost acts as a semaphore for the interpretational enigma that Cynthia has persistently represented long before she returns from the dead in 4.7. The approach to 4.7 taken below owes much to the stimulus provided by Theodore Papanghelis’ rich reading of that poem in his Propertius: A Hellenistic Poet on Love and Death (Cambridge, 1987). Rejecting biographically inflected approaches that take Cynthia’s death at face-value as an extra poetical fact and then interpret the poem as Propertius’ response to that loss, Papanghelis nevertheless prioritizes in his analysis a different mode of reality: in the ‘surge of realism’ that

�� 7 See on this apparition Dimundo 1990, 44–53 (‘Sogno o visione?’).

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he associates with the ‘mature style’ of Propertius’ ‘late manner’ in Book 4,8 he finds in 4.7 an antithetical mixture of the serious and the ironical, the heroic-epic (especially in the evocations of Patroclus’ reproachful visitation to the sleeping Achilles at Iliad 23.54–107) and the contemporary-everyday, the comic-realistic and the unheroic.9 This ‘will for realistic particularisation’10 is nowhere more apparent than in the sordid details with which Cynthia recalls night-time escapades in the lowly Subura, stealing out of windows and climbing down by rope into Propertius’ arms, and even lovemaking in public (15–20); her account of his noninvolvement in her chaotically organized funeral is in the same key (23–34), as is her fixation with the macabre punishments to be visited on those slaves who (she all-knowingly pronounces) administered the poison that killed her (35–8). In keeping with his agenda of highlighting Propertius’ larger Hellenistic credentials, Papanghelis relates this ‘low’, ‘stark’ and ‘domestic’ realism11 to the Alexandrian tendency in this same direction exemplified (pp. 194–5) by Callimachus. But Propertius’ cultivation of this realism is distinguished from its Callimachean precedent by what Papanghelis presents as the Propertian eye for fascination for its own sake – a technique applied to outstanding effect in 4.7, to which Propertius ‘has brought … a new sense of presentational realism often running into the grotesque’.12 If this evocation of the everyday constitutes one mode of ‘reality’ as projected in 4.7 (a mode pointedly reinforced through juxtaposition with the elevated, the heroic-epic, the serious), my focus in what follows is on the further versions of ‘reality’ that the text may simultaneously generate when its storyline is read from the shifting perspectives, and according to the different agendas, of the Propertian narrator on the one hand, his Cynthia on the other. We shall see that in both 4.7 and 4.8 the competing visions of the ‘reality’ that he and she perceive or try to project are each, in their idiosyncratic ways, as tendentious as they are self-serving, and that there is no easy way out of this haze of projections as we confront the different semblances of ‘reality’ that hover simultaneously before us. In this quasi-aporia, the fickleness so often attributed to the elegiac puella is compounded, even matched, by our inability to control, let alone ‘fix’, our interpretation of her story as it unfolds in the Propertian text. In developing this line of enquiry, we begin in section 1 below by separating out at least three different

�� 8 1987, 8. 9 1987, 146. 10 1987, 147. 11 1987, 147, 165, 185. 12 1987, 194.

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readings of the ghost’s story in 4.7, each of them vying for consideration in the half-light of Propertius’ crepuscular dream-state, and none of them unequivocally ‘truer’ than any other. Experience of this destabilizing effect in 4.7 will then sensitize our approach, in section 2, to the yet further challenges of storyline decipherment that are carried over, as if a haunting effect of the ghost story, into 4.8; we shall see that 4.7 sets the coordinates for how, and how warily, the truthvalue of Cynthia’s trip to Lanuvium is to be evaluated early in 4.8, and that the uncertainties generated by that opening tableau are only intensified as that sphinx-like poem progresses.

� The ghost story (4.7) Perfide (4.7.13): with her first word Cynthia’s ghost instantly inscribes herself into the hallowed tradition of the deserted Ariadne (Cat. 64.132–3) and Dido (Aen. 4.305, 366), with Propertius squarely cast as the villain of the piece.13 At last the truth is out: for all Propertius’ aspersions of Cynthia as perfida (cf. 2.5.3, 9.28, 18.19), she now sets the record straight, ‘correcting’ her profligate image as propagated in Books 1 to 3 by pledging her fidelity (51–3)14 and rounding on his ungrateful failure to remember her benefacta to him and to pay her due honor in death (cf. ingrate, 31). True, when she recalls their risqué escapades in better times (15–20), the details of her botched funeral (23–34), and the machinations against her that warrant harsh punishment for the slaves Lygdamus and Nomas (35–8), the evocations of Roman comedy and mime15 hardly enhance her seriousness of demeanor and purpose; the far-fetched improbability of their sexual shenanigans and her suspicion that she was willfully poisoned by Lygdamus and Nomas (35–8) stretch our credulity;16 and in comparison with Patroclus’ visitation to Achilles in Iliad 23, ‘the very semblance of the man himself in stature and fair eyes and in voice, and clad in like clothes’ (23.66–7), the flame-ravaged Cynthia

�� 13 But for the notable sub-presence of Catullus 30, Fedeli et al. 2015, 930 on 13–14. 14 Here with a gravitas enhanced by resemblance to funerary epigram: Yardley 1977, 83. 15 See on the comedic aspect Yardley 1972. Specifically on mime: Papanghelis 1987, 158, 169– 70 with Fabre-Serris 2011, 65 and n. 1 and Knox 2004, esp. 159–69. 16 After all (Knox 2004, 162–3), if Cynthia in 4.7 views her relationship with Propertius as ‘some kind of legitimate union’, her belief that she was murdered to make way for another (cf. 39–40, 71–2) becomes hard to explain: since at Rome adultery by the male ‘was not considered a crime’ (p. 162), why murder her to replace her? Revelation of a murder is in any case a suspiciously stock aspect of the characterization of ancient ghosts: Yardley 1977, 84.

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is a distorted reflection not just of her former self (7–12), but also of the true-tolifeness of the Homeric shade.17 These humorous touches may verge on the ridiculous, gently deflating her case against Propertius – unless, that is, despite her overwrought appearance and eye for hyperbole, and in a twist of ironic humor, this unlikely figure has the last laugh in exposing the lie perpetrated in Books 1 to 3. Cynthia speaks on four occasions in those books,18 the first of them an angry flash of rebuke after Propertius wakes her on returning from a night of carousing (1.3.35–46); when the lights are lowered in 2.15, she coyly rouses him to action with ‘This is how you lie here, you sluggard?’ (8); in 2.29B he recounts a morning visit that he made to her to see if she had slept alone, only to find her not just innocent of any wrongdoing but also spikily indignant in response to his prying (31–8); and when, in 3.6, Propertius anxiously interrogates his slave Lygdamus about Cynthia’s (?)19 state of mind after the lovers have apparently quarreled and the slave has returned from visiting her household, her complaints are directly reported in lines 19–34, with Propertius accused of cavorting with another woman (21–2) – a charge he (too?) strenuously denies (35–42). Apart from the seductive allure of 2.15.8, when Cynthia speaks in each of these three other cases she does so with an unimpeachable innocence or righteous anger – a track record that implies that, for all her seeming hyperbole in 4.7, her claim to fidelity there is no barefaced lie. What, then, of the formidable dossier of evidence arrayed against her in Books 1 to 3? Captivated by her in 1.1, already by 1.8A Propertius has to contemplate losing her, that faithless one (periura, 17), to overseas travel with another lover. She will ultimately stay on this occasion (cf. 1.8B.27–8),20 but by 1.12 Propertius is alone, his love snatched away in 1.13.1–2. Fickleness (levitas) hardens into betrayal (perfidia) in 1.15.1–2; in 1.18 the poet speaks in soliloquy in a place (and mindset) of raw desolation (1–4), lamenting the painful alienation caused by Cynthia’s scorn (cf. 5–6); and, in an all-too-ironic foreshadowing of the opposite scenario in 4.7, he fears that, at his death, she ‘may spurn his tomb and cruel love tear you away from my ashes’ (1.19.21–2). Is it true, he asks in 2.5, that at Rome she is a byword for wantonness (nequitia, 2)? For all his intervening �� 17 On the Homeric presence in 4.7, Hubbard 1974, 149–52; Muecke 1974, esp. 125–7; Dalzell 1980, 33; Warden 1980, 14–15, 18–19; Komp 1988, 33–48; Dimundo 1990, 27–39; now Fedeli et al. 2015, 907–8, 912 on 1–2, 946 on 31–2, 948 on 33–4, etc. 18 See Butrica 1996, 149 with Hutchinson 2006, 171. 19 She is not explicitly named in 3.6. Since the beginning of Lygdamus’ report is unmarked in the transmitted text, it is not certain that her quoted words are to be ascribed to him rather than to the speculating Propertian narrator: see Heyworth 2007b, 304–5. 20 Tentatively accepting hic erit in 27: Heyworth 2007b, 39.

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moments of rapture, this litany of woe continues steadily in Books 1 to 3 as a whole; but what if Cynthia is seen to call his bluff in 4.7 by at last telling her side of what has so far been almost exclusively (her vocal intrusions apart) an outrageously one-sided story? On this approach the post mortem poetics of 4.7 also function as an arresting postscript that, in Micaela Janan’s formulation, ‘ambushes the elegy-reading audience by revealing that “everything you know is wrong” ’.21 In subversive reaction to the male-dominated tropes of suffering within Roman elegy (e.g., the shut-out lover, the slavery and soldiery of love, the wounds of love, etc.), Cynthia’s ghost reveals that, as Maria Wyke puts it, ‘the Roman amatory world is constituted instead by male dominance, female economic dependence, and the literal torture of domestic slaves’;22 hence Cynthia ‘constructs a rival elegiac world of female constancy and male betrayal, male negligence and female poverty’23 – a counter-vision that leads her to demand that Propertius correct the distortion by ‘burn[ing] for me whatever verses you have written in my name: cease to have praise that belongs to me’ (77–8).24 As if dictating to him a replacement script of her own (‘Here, on the middle of a pillar, inscribe a poem worthy of me’, 83),25 she composes an epigrammatic epitaph to herself (85–6) that confidently forecasts the renown that she will bring her place of rest (‘Glory is now added to your bank, Anio’, 86), but which conspicuously makes no allusion to any male lover, Propertius or otherwise; after he wrote her out of his storyline in 3.24–25, does she retaliate in kind though this dismissive gesture? And in a further elaboration of her counter-poetics, her distinctive elegiac sensibility has perhaps already expressed itself in her depiction (55–70) of the two locales of the Underworld, the one the hellish destination for faithless wives such as Pasiphae and Clytaemestra, the other the Elysian bliss that awaits such seemingly innocent

�� 21 2001, 107. 22 2002, 185. 23 2002, 185. Cf. already Flaschenriem 1998, esp. 63 (the Cynthia of 4.7 ‘signif[ying] the existence of an autonomous, though largely unrepresented, female point of view’). 24 For the ambiguity of laudes desine habere meas in 78 (habere also ‘celebrate’), see Hutchinson 2006, 185 ad loc. with Heyworth 2007b, 600 (rendering the phrase ‘cease to keep your praises of me [or a source of praise that is rightly mine]’; now Coutelle 2015, 798–9 ad loc. 25 carmen … dignum me possibly echoing Gallus’ c[ar]mina … domina … digna mea (Courtney 1993, 263 fr. 2.6–7 = Hollis 2007, 224 fr. 145.6–7), with an ironic reversal in the Propertian domina, not a male hand, now authoring ‘the worthy poem’; further, Hinds 1983, 46–7 (after Barchiesi 1981, 155) with Fabre-Serris 2009, 162 and 2011, 62.

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and guileless lovers as Andromeda and Hypermestra.26 Cynthia identifies with the latter two, who ‘recount their own stories’ (narrant historias … suas, 64): we know that Andromeda will ultimately be rescued by Perseus, but in lines 65–6 Cynthia focuses on the dramatic moment when the princess is exposed to the sea monster sent by Poseidon in retribution for the vainglorious boasting of her mother, Cassiope.27 In lines 67–8 Hypermestra tells of her inability to murder her husband on her wedding night – the only one of Danaus’ fifty daughters who went against his murderous instructions.28 In identifying with such blameless types (‘So with the tears of death we hallow [sancimus] the loves of life’, 69),29 Cynthia parades her virtue in a sensuous, flowery (cf. rosas, 60) and as if highly romanticized sequence of black-and-white moral arbitration: an elegiac rhetoric of innocence and sentimentality, as it were, that now supplants the raunchier, more turbulent adventurism of the Propertian erotic mode. On this first version of ‘reality’ in 4.7, then, Cynthia transforms the narrative trajectory of Propertian elegy by exposing the cruel misrepresentations of her in Books 1 to 3. A variation on this first version, however, and one not incompatible with the first, is that the narrator’s conscience speaks through Cynthia’s ghost in self-recrimination for his past abuses of her. After all, despite his many accusations against her in Books 1 to 3, his own track record is hardly flawless. In 2.20, for example, he ardently protests his fidelity (3–4), but in 2.21 those suspicions still linger (1–2: Panthus has been penning poisonous allegations), only for his insistence on his own fidelity (cf. 2.21.19–20) to be instantly compromised by his seemingly frank admission of his roving eye and promiscuous appetite in 2.22A

�� 26 A further rewriting of ‘male’ poetics if Cynthia is seen to draw on the comparable division made by Tibullus at 1.3.57–82, albeit the Tibullan ordering (Elysium for lovers, hell for sinners) is reversed by Cynthia, who also modifies the Tibullan balance in a telling, romantically biased direction by giving one couplet to sinners (57–8; cf. Tib. 1.3.67–82), then five to Elysium (59–68; cf. Tib. 1.3.57–66); on the relation to Tibullus here, Cairns 1979, 53–4 with Coutelle 2015, 785 and Fedeli et al. 2015, 963. 27 Background: Apollod. 2.4.3 with Frazer 1926, 1.158 n. 3; Hutchinson 2006, 183 on 63–70. 28 Hypermestra nicely balancing Clytaemestra (57: Hutchinson 2006, 183 on 63–70); her Elysian presence here is also in counterpoise to her sisters’ place in hell in Tib. 1.3.79–80. Reading sine fraude marita in 63 (marita Heinsius for MSS -ae) neatly circumvents an awkward implication if -ae is read: by not killing her new husband Hypermestra counts as ‘a wife without treachery’ (albeit see further p. 59 below), but ‘Andromeda’s marriage to Perseus on the other hand meant the abandonment of her engagement to Phineus and so did involve an element of fraus’ (Heyworth 2007b, 470). 29 As rendered by Heyworth 2007b, 599, but the text remains problematic. sancimus Rossberg for MSS sanamus, but Hutchinson 2006, 46 reads sanamus amara (amara Markland for MSS amores). See now for discussion Fedeli et al. 2015, 980 (reading sancimus amores on p. 903).

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and B. Such moments hardly banish the cloud of suspicion that has hung over him ever since he stumbled home in 1.3, as if programmatically intoxicated there with love and wine (13–14). On this approach, the ‘fact’ of Cynthia’s death in 4.7 vies with the figurative death of the affair with Propertius: for all her sanctimony, paranoia and exaggeration, the phantom that haunts the narrator is his own voice of adventures recalled (their erotic escapades, 15–20), of pained regret (projected through his neglect of her funeral, 23–34), of guilt at real, imagined or wishful subterfuges (was she poisoned so as to make way for another, 35–40?), and even of nostalgic idealization (Cynthia in Elysium, 59–70). Cynthia may have been written out of the collection at the end of Book 3, but on this second version of the ‘reality’ projected by 4.7 – her visitation as guilt-trip – the dream is perhaps to be viewed as something more than a one-time, ephemeral vision: when she warns that ‘I alone will soon possess you, you will be with me’ (93–4), the lasting hold over him that she promises to exert in death suggestively extends the permanent hold that she already exercises over his conscience. But then a third version of ‘reality’ in 4.7 replaces a guilty conscience with good riddance: as Theodore Papanghelis puts it, ‘Cynthia is alive and kicking, her posthumous performance only proving the immortality of her cantankerousness and, therefore, vindicating the decision of her long-suffering lover to cast her off at the end of Book 3’.30 Well before Cynthia crashes into Propertius’ party in 4.8, catching him in flagrante delicto with Phyllis and Teïa (49–52), she already forces her way back into his poetry though her visitation in 4.7, where ‘her return from death to invade his sleep is an effective metaphor for her intrusion into his consciousness against his will.’31 Disfigured by the funeral pyre, she nevertheless remains true to the harsher aspects of her characterization in Books 1 to 3. ‘Her speech in 4.7 has usually been interpreted in a predominantly sympathetic and sentimental way,’ writes James Butrica, ‘though a few dissenters have detected humorous elements; in fact the entire speech is, no less than 4.8, a comic tour de force and raises to new heights of sublime absurdity Cynthia’s selfish and vindictive bitchiness.’32 The certainty Butrica expresses with ‘in fact’ continues with: Surely we are not meant to sentimentalize a woman who with her first words unjustly accuses Propertius of faithlessness (even though we see him sleeping alone and dreaming only of her), then declares him incapable of behaving otherwise with any woman (13 perfide, nec cuiquam melior sperande puellae) …; who is capable of saying, after 36 lines of carping and complaining, ‘But I’m not attacking you, Propertius’ (49 non tamen insector),

�� 30 1987, 146. 31 Butrica 1996, 149. 32 1996, 150.

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then gives the knife one more twist by adding quamuis mereare, ‘even though you deserve it’ …33

The first two interpretations of the ghost-story reviewed earlier in this section, both of them more sympathetic to Cynthia, directly collide with Butrica’s vision of her as snidely vindictive; and the alternative ‘reality’ exposed by this harsher reading may also find that her vision of Elysian innocence in lines 59–70 is not all that it seemed when we first surveyed it above.34 For all the opprobrium that she heaps on Clytaemestra and Pasiphae (57–8), her portrayal of Andromeda and Hypermestra appears oddly ill-fitting, in that (i) the fact that Andromeda hardly merited her fate (until Perseus rescued her from it) of being devoured by Poseidon’s monster (65–6) is surely irrelevant to the kind of wife she was destined to become to her rescuer;35 and (ii) the hint of loss-of-nerve in Hypermestra’s claim that she could not bring herself to carry out the murder enjoined by her father (in scelus hoc animum non valuisse suum, 68) is hardly a ringing endorsement of principled wifely devotion.36 No: if we endorse Butrica’s pejorative reading of Cynthia, such missteps in point of emphasis betray the fragility of her rhetoric as she projects a highly artificial vision of Elysian bliss; and if we find much of the rest of her speech to be riddled with wild accusations and paranoid suspicion, how sure can we be that her picture of her own place in Elysium is anything more than yet another self-serving fiction in the first place? As we sort through these competing readings of Cynthia’s speech, the delicate shifts of perspective that vary the weight of her words and project different ‘realities’ prove to be as insubstantial and elusive as the shade that escapes the burnt-out pyre in line 2 (exstinctos effugit umbra rogos).37 Hence the ghostliness

�� 33 1996, 150. 34 Pp. 56–7. See further Warden 1980, 45 and esp. Janan 2001, 110–11 on the various anomalies in lines 59–70 that suggest ‘another logic at work here, one that undermines the moral program ostensibly governing the Underworld’ (Janan 110). 35 Cf. also n. 28 above for the hint of fraus in Andromeda abandoning her engagement to Phineus. Warden 1980 acknowledges the inconcinnity of her case in 65–6 (p. 45: ‘If amores [69] is to mean “griefs resulting from love”, what has this to do with Andromed[a] whose suffering preceded her love for Perseus and was in fact brought to an end by him?’), but he nevertheless proposes that her story’s visual associations vindicate her presence here: Propertius showcases ‘a clearly pictured scene of helpless innocence, delicately sensuous both in the maiden’s predicament and in the knowledge that Perseus is waiting in the wings’ (p. 46). 36 Loss of nerve: Janan 2001, 110, also noting that ‘being “without deceit” [sine fraude] to her husband entailed deceiving her sisters’. 37 For Passerat’s exstinctos, Heyworth 2007b, 464, albeit (Hutchinson 2006, 172 ad loc., himself reading exstructos) ‘exstinctos … oddly specifies escape after the pyre is put out’.

�� � Gareth Williams

of Cynthia’s appearance at the poem’s opening evolves into an internalized quality or essence of her speech: if the shade is ‘true’ but not real, what she says may or may not be (received as) true according to how it is interpreted, and by whom (consider the very different readings offered above by Micaela Janan and Maria Wyke on the one hand, James Butrica on the other). And when we look back on the poem’s first words, Sunt aliquid manes, this flexibility of response should now perhaps cause us to suspect something in aliquid. Yes, on one reading ‘sunt is emphatic’:38 ‘the dead do exist’.39 But as soon as we find that Cynthia’s words are susceptible to different planes of interpretation, the emphasis may shift to the indefinite pronoun: just as ‘the dead are something’ (but what thing?), so our task as readers is to grasp at the aliquid of unfixed direction and message in Cynthia’s speech; in hovering between different layers of ‘reality’, her words match her inbetween being by themselves amounting to an indeterminate something of floating, multi-perspectival meaning.

� The sorry story (4.8) From aliquid to quid: what caused the disturbance that is Propertius’ startingpoint in 4.8, Disce quid Esquilias hac nocte fugarit aquosas (‘Learn what put the watery Esquiline to flight last night’)?40 Our curiosity is piqued; but before the cause is revealed, the scene suddenly shifts in lines 3–14 from the Esquiline to the town of Lanuvium, some twenty miles southeast of Rome, and to the snake ritual that was there associated with Juno Sospita:41 as Propertius has it, the ritual amounts to a test of maidenhood, the snake rejecting the morsels offered to it by a non-virgin hand. But after deviating from the aetiological promise of the opening couplet, he compounds that first surprise by offering no aetiology of the Lanuvium ritual itself, but rather of Cynthia’s motivation for going there: ‘Juno

�� 38 Hutchinson 2006, 172 ad loc. 39 But cf. Fedeli et al. 2015, 911 for the phrase conveying ‘senza sbavature patetiche una constatazione oggettiva, scaturita dall’esperienza diretta’ (my emphasis), and reading like ‘una vera e propria sententia’. 40 Disce ‘mock-didactic’ in tone (Dee 1978, 41), but for its legal overtones as well, see Noonan 1983, 45 (the term ‘actually intended to continue the parody of legal language begun in the previous poem’). 41 On the ritual, Hutchinson 2006, 191–2 with bibliography, and now Walin 2009–10, 139 and n. 10 with Fedeli et al. 2015, 1018–20.

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was the cause (causa), but Venus still more so’ (16),42 as she apparently speeds down the Via Appia with her foppish lover (17–26). How, if at all, is Propertius’ excursus on the ritual to be reconciled with the comedy of errors that ensues later in the poem when his tit-for-tat strategy of revenge for that iniuria (27) goes disastrously wrong and the proceedings descend into mock heroic farce as the Odysseus-like Cynthia crashes in on his antics with Phyllis and Teïa?43 Even if the excursus is seen loosely to meet Propertius’ mandate to sing in Book 4 ‘of rites and gods (sacra deosque) and the ancient names of places’ (4.1.69),44 what thematic linkages might integrate it within 4.8 itself? One answer is that the virginity test of the snake ritual magnifies by lily-white contrast the cheating ways of our two main protagonists. Hence the sexual allegory that has been read into the setting for the rite, with the male genitalia represented by the snake, the female genitalia by the cavern where it dwells;45 virginal ‘penetration’ of that recess (qua penetrat virgo, 6) is then ironically contrasted with (we imagine) Cynthia’s very different mode of penetration in Lanuvium. If the forlorn narrator is seen to view Lanuvium through this sexualizing prism, the excursus can be read as ‘spoofing his anxiety’ about what she may have been up to with her lover.46 Given Propertius’ impotence when he lounges with Phyllis and Teïa (47–8), however, and given that Cynthia returned to Rome unexpectedly early (the tryst a disappointment?), Micaela Janan associates ‘[t]he idea of sexuality-as-ordeal summarized by the Lanuvium snake-rite’ with ‘the dismally failed eroticism most everyone in the poem suffers’.47 Alternatively, or in addition, the maidens who turn pale (pallent, 9) and quiver as they tender their offerings to the snake (cf. 12: ‘the very baskets tremble in the virgin’s hands’) offer a tempting comparandum for Propertius’s own loosened grip (‘the cup fell from between my fingers’, 53) and his terrified pallor (palluerunt … labra, 54) when Cynthia bursts in; and she for her part is

�� 42 For the play on causa – Juno as pretext (OLD 5), Venus as the real motive and purpose (7a, b), Shackleton Bailey 1956, 254. 43 Phyllis ‘leafy’ by name, and hence linked to the Chloris who has supplanted Cynthia at 4.7.72 – ‘a rival C. will be less able to oust’ (Hutchinson 2006, 195 on 29); this worldly Phyllis is far removed from the country namesake conjured by Virgil’s Gallus at Ecl. 10.37, 41 (cf. also 3.76, 78, 5.10, 7.59), and, amusingly, Propertius suitably distances her from the virginal Diana at the opposite end of 4.8.29. Teïa’s name evokes Anacreon of Teos, and hence bibulous erotic/sympotic poetics (see Ingleheart 2010, 295–6 on Ov. Tr. 2.363–4). 44 Walin 2009–10, 137 with Fabre-Serris 2011, 53. 45 See Janan 2001, 116, building on Turpin 1973 and Noonan 1983, 46. 46 Janan 2001, 116. 47 2001, 116.

62 � Gareth Williams

formidably snake-like48 in putting his chastity to the test and in the punishment she exacts for his guilt, plunging her nails into Phyllis’ face (ungues, 57, with a tempting play on anguis)49 and drawing blood when she bites Propertius (morsuque cruentat [sc. collum], 65;50 cf. anguino … ore, 10). For present purposes, the Lanuvium excursus plays a key role in explaining the cause of the disturbance on the Esquiline, but the factors that integrate it within the larger body of the poem go beyond those reviewed just above. Already in 2.32 Propertius is uneasy about Cynthia’s excursions from Rome, suspecting that she uses them as a cover for her erotic adventures (17–18), and Lanuvium is one of the places that draw suspicion: ‘Why does the Appian Way so often bring you to Lanuvium?’ (6). As the poem progresses, however, he appears resigned to such conduct as a reflection of the times: such behavior is nothing in comparison with the liberties taken by gods and mortals in ages past (25–40), and is in any case sanctioned by the standards that have come to apply in Rome itself (41–8). Against this background, and if we allow the narrator in 4.8 not to have forgotten the suspicions that surfaced in 2.32, Cynthia’s latest trip to Lanuvium is automatically provocative: has she really gone to witness the snake ritual there, or does she have an ulterior motive for going? Which version of ‘reality’ are we to believe in line 16, that ‘Juno was the cause’, or that ‘Venus was still more so’? If the snake ritual offers an uncomplicated test of virginal purity, with the simple acceptance or rejection of the offering apparently decisive, the situational ambiguities of the poem pose a much sterner test as we try to discern the ‘truth’ of the matter: is Cynthia’s tryst real, does the narrator merely imagine it, or does the task of adjudication operate uncertainly within and between these possibilities, with the tantalized reader left to stretch for a verdict that is always beyond reach? Our response to this challenge will in turn condition how we answer the question with which we started: the elusive quid of line 1, ‘Learn what (quid) put the watery Esquiline to flight last night’, could be interpreted as the commotion caused when (i) the faithless Cynthia catches the narrator red-handed with Phyllis and Teïa and reacts with hypocritical jealousy; or (ii) the loyal Cynthia whose probity is reflected in her visit to witness the snake ritual at Lanuvium is outraged by his betrayal; or (iii) whether or not faithful herself, Cynthia disrupts a sultry soirée that the rakish narrator justifies by choosing to imagine that she has gone to Lanuvium with a lover in yet another alleged wrong (iniuria) that she has done to

�� 48 For fine analysis of this analogy, Walin 2009–10, esp. 141–7. 49 Walin 2009–10, 144. 50 ‘[S]avagery replaces love-bites’ (Hutchinson 2006, 201 on 65); for the neck-bite as ‘a typical feature of lovers’ quarrels’, Dee 1978, 50.

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their affair (27); after all, the details of the clandestine gathering as described in lines 35–42 – the shady Lygdamus ladling fine Methymnian wine into cups of relatively luxurious51 glass, an Egyptian aulos-player, a castanet dancer, the midget Bigboy52 moving his arms in time to the music – might suggest that the occasion was pre-arranged, or at least that the stage was set for hasty improvisation as and when Cynthia’s absence allowed. As the party progresses, the narrative hardly goes according to plan: just as Propertius aims for a lucky ‘Venus’ in his dicing (45) but sees his game go to the dogs (canes, 46),53 so his hopes of ‘renewing his amorous adventures with a new taste of love (Venere ignota, 34)’ are thwarted even before Cynthia storms in: despite the attentions of Phyllis and Teïa, he is ‘entirely (totus) at the gates of Lanuvium’ (48).54 This divided condition – his self-removal to Lanuvium even as the party is in full swing there on the Esquiline – has at least two important ramifications for 4.8 more generally. First, is it jealous suspicion that draws him imaginatively to Lanuvium, or is it guilt at his own impropriety when (the penitent thought goes) Cynthia may indeed have made her own trip to the snake ritual in good faith? On either approach, this capacity for imaginative travel has already manifested itself well before he is transported to Lanuvium in line 48. The spectacle of Cynthia speeding down the Appian Way is pictured in lurid but highly improbable detail in lines 15–26: how, one wonders, was the narrator ‘there’ to witness her on the autobahn, and to watch her so closely, ‘a sight worth seeing herself, leaning forward from her seat at the furthest end of the yoke-pole, daringly plying the reins, with filthy jokes (per impuros … iocos)’ (23–4)?55 Then her lover is all too suspiciously pictured as a perfect storm of ruination, embodying as he does all the cliché signs – effeminate grooming (23), luxury trappings (24), wastrel ways (25–6)56 – of corrupted Roman manhood. For Gregory Hutchinson,

�� 51 Hutchinson 2006, 197 on 37. 52 Heyworth 2007b, 601. 53 For the ‘Venus’ (a combination of throws in which each of four dice falls with a different number upmost), see Hutchinson 2006, 198 on 45 with Wardle 2006, 161–2 on Cic. Div. 1.23 (asserting for the ‘Venus’ ‘an actual probability of about 1/26’). For the canis as the lowest throw, OLD 4 with Ingleheart 2010, 360–1 on Ov. Tr. 2.473–4. Given her game-ending, show-stopping entrance at 4.8.49–52, Cynthia’s own appetite for gaming (cf. 2.33B.26) is nicely ironic. 54 MSS solus would enhance the linkage with Gallus as already glimpsed above (cf. nn. 25, 43) in this ‘urban reworking’ of Virg. Ecl. 10.37–49 (Hutchinson 2006, 198 on 48; cf. Ecl. 10.48 sola [sc. Lycoris]), but for Kuypers’ totus robustly affirmed, see Goold 1967, 60. 55 iocos for locos: Heyworth 2007b, 477 (‘amidst or despite ribald comments’). 56 For the damning details, Hutchinson 2006, 194–5 on 23–4, 25, 26 with Dee 1978, 46 and Coutelle 2015, 829–31.

64 � Gareth Williams

the call to the Via Appia to reveal what it saw (17–18) ‘raises the question whether the narrator is a witness himself, or is creating the scene from his imagination. At the most he has only seen her leave’.57 But the episode surely becomes far more compelling when it is seen to be created only from the imagination, with the narrator graphically picturing with his mind’s eye all the sordid details of character and action that his chosen interpretation of events demands: as soon as Cynthia’s excursion is suspected of being a lovers’ tryst (cf. 16), that ‘reality’ dictates every damning detail of her scandalous journey in lines 15–26. Secondly, however, the alternative ‘reality’: what if Juno was indeed the cause of Cynthia’s trip (cf. 16)? As the party warms up and Phyllis and Teïa begin to assert their charms, the control that the narrator has thus far imposed on the storyline – Cynthia as disloyal, his high jinks as retaliation for that outrage – seems to loosen, his grasp of the ‘facts’ no firmer than that of his cup as it drops from his fingers (53). When he first envisaged Cynthia on the road to Lanuvium (15–26), he saw only her infidelity; but when we find him ‘mentally waiting (as if excluded) at the gates of Lanuvium’ in line 48,58 has he had second thoughts, as if heeding the ominous signs (lamps flickering and a table upset in 43–4) and beginning to see events (even to re-interrogate his own text) in a potentially new light? On this revisionist reading, Janan’s ‘everything you know is wrong’ bears repeating.59 The narrator’s retaliatory justification for the party evaporates, and when Cynthia bursts in on the scene (51–2), she takes control of a narrative that has lost its way and needs re-direction: she instantly imposes a new discipline in this, her last appearance in the Propertian corpus; she literally overtakes his poetics by speaking in her own voice in lines 73–80, by laying down the law (indixit leges, 81) and forcing him to accept the new terms of engagement (cf. legibus utar, 81), and finally by purifying his sullied household (83–6) before they confirm their new compact in bed (87–8). Through this ‘correction’ of the storyline via Cynthia’s intervention, then, the narratival ‘truth’ is seemingly settled once and for all, with Juno winning out over Venus as Cynthia’s motivating deity for her trip to Lanuvium, and her commitment to fidelity underscored by the vehemence with which she punishes Propertius. But then, perhaps, a sting in the tail: in the final analysis, can we be certain that the narrator’s suspicions were entirely misguided, that Cynthia had no tryst in Lanuvium, and that she is incapable of acting with breathtaking hypocrisy in punishing Propertius for his fumblings with Phyllis and Teïa? If we allow this last

�� 57 2006, 193 on 17. 58 Hutchinson 2006, 198 ad loc. 59 Cf. p. 56 above.

From Grave to Rave: Reading ‘Reality’ in Propertius 4.7 and 4.8 � 65

possibility at least to linger (and what is there in the text definitively to rule it out?), the Lanuvium excursus plays a crucial role in setting up the neutral starting-position from which the competing versions of ‘reality’ begin to take shape, thereby problematizing how we assess the true motivation for her excursion. On this approach, Cynthia undergoes her own form of chastity test in 4.8, but not at Lanuvium: the test is posed by the tonal uncertainties that destabilize narratival meaning as the poem progresses. She appears to pass it with flying colors, exulting in her victory (cf. Cynthia gaudet in exuviis victrixque recurrit, 63);60 but for all her imperiousness as she dictates the way of things to come (73–80), in the final analysis can we really be so sure about what happened on the way to Lanuvium?

After Cynthia’s ghost haunts Propertius in 4.7, her sudden return to life in 4.8 is disconcerting enough; after her professions of fidelity in 4.7, however, the prospect of her enjoying a tryst in Lanuvium is still more jolting – until, that is, all suspicion of her infidelity is banished (or is it?) when she breaks in upon his revelries and turns him into a ghost in 4.8 (cf. palluerunt … labra, 54). Through their non sequitur movement from death to life, and through the elusive characterization of Cynthia in particular (dead but alive, insistently faithful but shadily suspect), the two poems in combination add a further layer to the complications of narratival consistency and projected ‘reality’ that are endemic to each of them individually. It goes far beyond the scope of this paper to address these complexities with the fullness they deserve, or to rise adequately to the further challenges of explicating not just the relationship of 4.7 and 4.8 to each other, but also their shared place and function within the structural plan of Book Four as a whole. My more modest goal has instead been to argue that 4.7 and 4.8 bring final closure to the Cynthia saga by shrouding her in a last veil of narratological mystery; after Books 1 to 3, they amount to a retrospective re-capturing of the conceptual problem that Cynthia has long presented as one who defies full and final capture in the poetic word. Theodore Papanghelis summed up his own approach to 4.7 and 4.8 as follows: I should, then, think that their juxtaposition reflects the artistic will of an increasingly learned elegist, bent on poikilia, anxious to broaden the scope of his chosen genre, and

�� 60 With a strong epic resonance (see Fedeli et al. 2015, 1081 on 63–6), but the implication of Cynthia-as-snake (cf. pp. 61–2 and n. 48 above) also lurks in exuviis given that ‘exuviae is also the vox propria for a snake’s shed skin’ (Walin 2009–10, 142; now also Coutelle 2015, 852 on 63).

�� � Gareth Williams

eager, at this stage of his poetic ambition, to present his reader with a diptych which demonstrates what he can now do (a) with a dead Cynthia, (b) with a Cynthia live and kicking.61

It is in the spirit of this elegant summation that the above reading of 4.7 and 4.8 is offered, with Papanghelis’ (a) and (b) options now tentatively supplemented by (c): a Cynthia ever only elusively visible in the narratological mist, and typically evasive in 4.7 and 4.8.

Bibliography Barchiesi, A. (1981), ‘Notizie sul “Nuovo Gallo”’, Atene e Roma 26, 153–66. Butrica, J.L. (1996), ‘The Amores of Propertius: Unity and Structure in Books 2-4’, Illinois Classical Studies 21, 87–158. Cairns, F. (1979), Tibullus: A Hellenistic Poet at Rome, Cambridge. Courtney, E. (ed.) (1993), The Fragmentary Latin Poets, Oxford. Coutelle, E. (ed.) (2015), Properce, Élégies, livre IV, Collection Latomus 348, Brussels. Currie, H.M. (1973), ‘Propertius 4.8 – A Reading’, Latomus 32.3, 616–22. Dalzell, A. (1980), ‘Homeric Themes in Propertius’, Hermathena 129, 29–36. Dee, J.H. (1978), ‘Elegy 4.8: A Propertian Comedy’, Transactions of the American Philological Association 108, 41–53. Dimundo, R. (1990), Properzio 4,7: Dalla variante di un modello letterario alla costante di una unità tematica, Bari. Evans, S. (1971), ‘Odyssean Echoes in Propertius IV.8’, Greece & Rome 18.1, 51–3. Fabre-Serris, J. (2009), ‘Explorations génériques au livre IV de Properce. Des voix nouvelles dans l’élégie: quelques réflexions sur les poèmes 7 et 9’, in: D. van Mal-Maeder/A. Burnier/L. Núñez (eds.), Jeux de voix: énonciation, intertextualité et intentionnalité dans la littérature antique, Bern, 157–73. ―― (2011), ‘Élégie érotique et discours satirique. Sur trois expérimentations propertiennes: les élégies 4,7; 4,8 et 4,9’, Materiali e discussioni per l’analisi dei testi classici 67, 51–77. Fedeli, P. (ed.) (1984), Sexti Properti Elegiarum Libri IV, Stuttgart. Fedeli, P./Dimundo, R./Ciccarelli, I. (2015), Properzio: Elegie, Libro IV, Studia Classica et Mediaevalia 7 (2 vols.), Nordhausen. Flaschenriem, B.L. (1998), ‘Speaking of Women: “Female Voice” in Propertius’, Helios 25.1, 49– 64. Frazer, J.G. (ed.) (1926–29), Apollodorus: The Library (2 vols.), Cambridge, Mass./London. Goold, G. (1967), ‘Noctes Propertianae’, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 71, 59–106. ―― (ed.) (1999), Propertius, Elegies (rev. edn.), Cambridge, Mass./London. Heyworth, S.J. (ed.) (2007a), Sexti Properti Elegi, Oxford. ―― (2007b), Cynthia: A Companion to the Text of Propertius, Oxford. Hinds, S.E. (1983), ‘Carmina digna: Gallus, P. Qaşr Ibrîm 6-7 Metamorphosed’, Papers of the Liverpool Latin Seminar 4, 43–54. Hollis, A.S. (ed.) (2007), Fragments of Roman Poetry c. 60 BC-AD 20, Oxford.

�� 61 1987, 197.

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Hubbard, M. (1974), Propertius, London. Hutchinson, G. (ed.) (2006), Propertius: Elegies, Book IV, Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics, Cambridge. Ingleheart, J. (2010), A Commentary on Ovid, Tristia, Book 2, Oxford. Janan, M. (2001), The Politics of Desire: Propertius IV, Berkeley/Los Angeles/London. Knox, P.E. (2004), ‘Cynthia’s Ghosts in Propertius 4.7’, Ordia Prima 3, 153–69. Komp, M. (1988), Absage an Cynthia: Das Liebesthema beim späten Properz, Frankfurt am Main. Muecke, F. (1974), ‘Nobilis historia? Incongruity in Propertius 4.7’, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 21, 124–32. Noonan, J.D. (1983), ‘Sacra canam: Ritual in the Love-Elegies of Propertius 4’, Classical Bulletin 59, 43–7. Papanghelis, T.D. (1987), Propertius: A Hellenistic Poet on Love and Death, Cambridge. Shackleton Bailey, D.R. (1956), Propertiana, Cambridge. Turpin, J. (1973), ‘Cynthia et le dragon de Lanuvium: Une élégie cryptique (Properce, IV,8)’, Revue des Études Latines 51, 159–71. Walin, D. (2009-10), ‘Cynthia serpens: A Reading of Propertius 4.8’, Classical Journal 105.2, 137–51. Warden, J. (1980), Fallax opus: Poet and Reader in the Elegies of Propertius, Toronto/Buffalo/London. ―― (1996), ‘The Dead and the Quick: Structural Correspondences and Thematic Relationships in Propertius 4.7 and 4.8’, Phoenix 50.2, 118–29. Wardle, D. (ed.) (2006), Cicero: On Divination, Book 1, Oxford. Wyke, M. (2002), The Roman Mistress: Ancient and Modern Representations, Oxford. Yardley, J.C. (1972), ‘Comic Influences in Propertius’, Phoenix 26.2, 134–9. ―― (1977), ‘Cynthia’s Ghost: Propertius 4.7 Again’, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 24, 83–7.

S.J. Heyworth

Place and Meaning in Tibullus, Lygdamus, Sulpicia The iconic places of elegy Love elegy is most characteristically set on the urban doorstep: the poet is at the limen of his beloved, outside a locked door on a street in Rome. Even though this situation is not dominant in many poems,1 references to the door and its physical attributes quickly evolve as a shorthand to describe the commitment, separation and pain endemic in elegiac love. So for example2 early in the paraclausithyron at Tibullus 1.2.5–10: nam posita est nostrae custodia saeua puellae, clauditur et dura ianua firma sera. ianua dissimilis dominae3, te uerberet imber, te Iouis imperio fulmina missa petant. ianua, iam pateas uni mihi, uicta querelis, neu furtim uerso cardine aperta sones.4

and more fleetingly and evocatively at 1.1.56, at the conclusion of a four-line priamel that sets Tibullus against his patron Messalla: te bellare decet terra, Messalla, marique, ut domus hostiles praeferat exuuias;

�� 1 Tib. 1.2, Am. 1.6; even in Propertius 1.16 it is distanced by attributing the account of the miserable lover to the door itself. 2 And e.g. Tib. 1.5.67–74; Prop. 1.3.36; 1.9.28 nec uigilare alio limine; Ovid, Am. 1.9.19; Ars 3.71– 2; Fast. 5.339 ebrius ad durum formosae limen amicae | cantat. 3 dissimilis dominae is an exempli gratia substitution for the much amended difficilis domini of the paradosis: the domina is not herself dura and firma but, the poet hopes, mollis. 4 ‘A savage watch has been placed on my girl, and the sturdy door is closed with a tough bar. Door unlike your mistress, may the rain beat you, may thunderbolts attack you, sent by Jupiter’s command. Door, may you be conquered by my complaints and accessible in future to me alone, and make no sound, opened on a secretly turning hinge.’

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110596182-005

70 � S.J. Heyworth me retinent uinctum formosae uincla puellae, et sedeo duras ianitor ante fores.5

55

In verse 55 it is tempting to print retinet … cura (‘love holds me back’), which Broukhusius claimed to have found in a manuscript; the retinent … uincla of the main tradition renders uinctum (an obvious source of the supposed corruption) superfluous: Tibullus likes repetition, but this seems inelegant — unless the point is to contribute a vivid detail to the ianitor of the pentameter: he is not just bound to his mistress, but actually in shackles (cf. 1.6.38 detrecto non ego uincla pedum, ‘I do not object to shackles on my feet’; and Ovid’s address to the chains of the door-keeper at Am. 1.6.47 in me durae transite catenae, ‘transfer to me, harsh chains’). So entrenched is Tibullus at the girl’s door that he can cast himself as a metaphorical doorkeeper, effectively chained in position, a slave in a demeaning position at the doorway, and thus doubly contrasted with Messalla. The patron travels land and sea with military might, equivalent to Caesar in the similar antithesis between dynast and poet at the end of the Georgics (4.559–66). But whereas Caesar’s glory will lead him to Olympus (uiamque adfectat Olympo, 562), Messalla brings his spoils home, and uses them to aggrandise his house in Rome. Not only does the Tibullus of this poem not travel, but the home to which he is attached is not his own property: Messalla’s house casts an impressive shadow over the doors that Tibullus guards. The other parts of the domus that regularly signify the elegiac life are the triclinium and the bedroom. Thus Tibullus 1.2.19–24 follows the hopeful sententia ‘Venus herself aids the brave’ (fortes adiuuat ipsa Venus, 1.2.16) with the sequence: door, bedroom, and (implicitly) symposium: illa fauet, seu quis iuuenis noua limina temptat, seu reserat fixo dente puella fores; illa docet molli furtim derepere lecto, illa pedem nullo ponere posse sono, illa uiro coram nutus conferre loquaces blandaque compositis abdere uerba notis.6

�� 5 ‘You it suits, Messalla, to fight wars by land and sea, so your house may display enemy spoils; I am held back, bound by the bonds of a beautiful girl, and I sit as a doorkeeper in front of her hard doors.’ 6 ‘She favours any youth who tries an unfamiliar doorway, any girl who fits in a spike and unbars the door; she teaches how to creep away unnoticed from a soft bed, how to be able to tread without a sound, how to exchange meaningful nods in a husband’s presence, and to hide suggestive words in coded signs.’

Place and Meaning in Tibullus, Lygdamus, Sulpicia � ��

However, in accounts of the symposium it is never the room but rather the social interactions that the elegists mention (as here),7 or the wine, garlands, and perfumes, and occasionally the furniture (the table or couch).8 Not surprisingly the bed is often a highly significant feature of erotic relationships, sometimes set in antithesis to the doorway, as at Propertius 1.3.34–6: sic ait in molli fixa toro cubitum: tandem te nostro referens iniuria lecto alterius clausis expulit e foribus?9

And very pointedly at Propertius 2.16.3–4: horum ego sum uates, quotiens desertus amaras expleui noctes, fractus utroque toro.10

where fractus utroque toro refers to the pain the lover feels, physically from the hardness of the doorstep or street, and emotionally from knowing that someone else is in the bed of the puella.

Tibullus Tibullus 1.1 begins indirectly (Diuitias alius), and when he turns to himself in verse 4, it leads to a long passage full of visions of the countryside: though this is a place where another may own vast acreage (verse 2), the elegist himself looks only to enjoy a modest but pleasant rural life (1.1.1–48).11 From verse 7 to verse 44 virtually every couplet has diction directly evocative of the countryside or the activities of farmers or herdsmen: uites, 7; rusticus, 8; frugum, 9; musta, 10; agris, 11; pomum, 12; agricolae, 14; rure, 15; spicea, 16; hortis, 17; agri, 19; soli, 22; rustica, 23; messes … uina, 24; umbra, 27; bidentem, 29; boues, 30; agnam … capellae, 31; pecori, 33; grege, 34; pastorem, 35; Palem, 36; agrestis, 39; fructus, 41; messis, 42; seges, 43. Tibullus thus associates himself emphatically with the countryside

�� 7 Also e.g. Lygdamus in [Tib.] 3.6. 8 E.g. Tib. 1.6.17–20; Prop. 2.34.57–9, 4.8.35–46. 9 ‘This is what she said, her elbow firmly planted on the soft bed: “Has wrongdoing expelled you from another's closed door and brought you back to our bed? …” ’ 10 ‘I am a poet of these subjects as often as I have spent bitter nights abandoned, broken by both beds.’ 11 On the political and poetical aspects of rura for Tibullus, see Solmsen 1962, 297–312.

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from the first. And yet this extended opening self-identification with the rus is not a statement of fact: though there are present indicatives in 11–14 (and perhaps in 15–18, if the conjectures fit and donatur are correct for sit and ponatur), the passage begins with futures and subjunctives, and continues with imperatives, futures and subjunctives, save where he is stressing his existing piety or building the contrast between present poverty and past wealth. Even when he turns to his desire for rest in a soft bed at 43, the couplet begins parua seges satis est: the embrace of his mistress in 45–6 is thus predicated on satisfaction with his life as a farmer. Modern interpretation has rightly spotted the implicit disconnect: thus Boyd cites Guy Lee’s nice formulation, ‘women of Delia’s kind … do not live buried lives in country towns or country houses’; and then continues, ‘thus, in poetic terms, when Tibullus shifts his attention to Delia he implicitly abandons his farm’.12 Others13 have seen the similarity to Horace’s Second Epode, where the praises of life in the country that occupy the first 66 lines turn out in 67–70 to be spoken by Alfius, a moneylender, who never fulfils his wish to move out of the city. Like the opening Diuitias alius this initial identification with the rus proves to be misdirection. The next two poems begin with Tibullus far from the agricultural world: in 1.2 he is engaged in a komos and addresses the door of his mistress in verses 7–14; in 1.3 (despite the claims about commitment to Delia in 1.1) he has followed his patron Messalla out of Italy, and lies sick in Phaeacia, a Ulysses in epic territory. In both poems he speaks wistfully of country life, in 1.3 describing the idyllic Golden Age, when men lived under Saturn, before they started to travel and wage war (1.3.41–6). In 1.2.73–6 he fantasizes about living with Delia in the country, linking the pleasures of agriculture and of life with her even more tightly than in 1: ipse boues mea si tecum modo Delia possim iungere et in solito pascere monte pecus, et, te dum liceat teneris retinere lacertis, mollis et inculta sit mihi somnus humo.14

�� 12 Boyd 1984, 277, citing Lee 1974, 103. 13 See e.g. Jacoby 1961, 136–8; Cairns 1975; Murgatroyd 1980, 49. 14 ‘… if only along with Delia I may myself yoke oxen and pasture a flock on the familiar mountainside; and, provided I could hold you with loving arms, sleep would seem soft to me on rough ground.’

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The theme is reprised in 1.5.19–34, but here the vision is marked both at start and end, not just as a fantasy,15 but as unrealized and unrealizable: at mihi felicem uitam, si salua fuisses, fingebam demens, sed renuente deo. ‘rura colam, frugumque aderit mea Delia custos, area dum messes sole calente teret, aut mihi seruabit plenis in lintribus uuas pressaque ueloci candida musta pede; consuescet numerare pecus, consuescet amantis garrulus in dominae ludere uerna sinu. …16

20

25

huc ueniet Messalla meus; cui dulcia poma Delia selectis detrahat arboribus, et tantum uenerata uirum, nunc17 sedula curet, nunc18 paret atque epulas ipsa ministra gerat.’ haec mihi fingebam, quae nunc Eurusque Notusque iactat odoratos uota per Armenios.19

Agricultural themes are broached again in 1.7, but it is not Tibullus himself who is set in the country. The celebration of Messalla’s birthday leads to consideration of places his travels have taken him, ultimately the Nile, and thus to Osiris and the invention of agriculture and viticulture, then wine and partying in 27–48. In 1.10 verses 15–26 describe rustic ritual, and we keep returning to the countryside, with the family’s enjoyment of a traditional drunken festival; but when the poet

�� 15 So e.g. Lee-Stecum 1998, 165–6; Miller 1999, 187. 16 ‘I was foolishly imagining a happy life for myself, if you survived, but the god refused. “I shall cultivate the countryside, and my Delia shall be there to protect the crops till the harvest be threshed in the hot sun, or else she shall keep an eye on the grapes in full vats and the foaming must pressed by swift-treading feet; she shall get used to counting the flock, and the chattering slaveboy to playing in the lap of a loving mistress …” ’ 17 nunc Wölfenbüttel Gud. 392, Hamburg Univ. scr. 139: hunc A, codd. plerique: tunc Vienna 243. hunc leaves an unparalleled hiatus after uirum. I draw on Luck 1988 for information about variants and conjectures. 18 nunc Wölfenbüttel Gud. 392: huic A, codd. plerique. 19 ‘ “Here my friend Messalla will come; let Delia pluck sweet fruit for him from choice trees, and having greeted so great a man, let her now refresh him, now prepare and bring in a feast, herself acting as waitress.” This is what I was imagining, but now the East Wind and the South are tossing these prayers among the perfumed Armenians.’ Armenia is known for its tigers in poetry, not perfume (but Jacoby 1918 compares Pliny, Nat. 12.49), and it is possible Tibullus wrote Arabios or Assyrios (cf. Smith 1913 ad loc. ‘Armenios for the usual Assyrios (1.3.7 n.) apparently because Armenia is itself high and windy’: not a plausible explanation given the epithet odoratos).

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is introduced himself, he is again only fantasized as potentially present, e.g. in 41–4: ipse suas sectatur oves, at filius agnos, et calidam fesso comparat uxor aquam. sic ego sim, liceatque caput candescere canis, temporis et prisci facta referre senem.20

And at the poem’s end, he is absorbed into a generic nobis, and the scene is one of Augustan peace, without a hint of Delia, Marathus, or anything erotic (1.10.67– 8):21 at nobis, Pax alma, ueni spicamque teneto, perfluat et pomis candidus ante sinus.22

There are further variants in the truncated book 2.23 The opening poem is emphatically rural, a visualization of an agricultural festival, a lustration of the estate in honour of Bacchus and Ceres (2.1.1–4): rura cano rurisque deos (‘I sing the countryside and its gods’) he announces in verse 37. In 31–6 Messalla returns from book 1; but not Delia, the passage on Amor (born among the herds in the countryside, but now plying his art more widely: 67–72) is expressed in general terms, aside from the exclamation ei mihi that conveys the poet’s hurt.24 After the birthday poem for Cornutus (2.2), the countryside returns forcefully in 2.3 Rura meam, Cornute, tenent uillaeque puellam (‘My girl is at a country house’): the puella is eventually named (51),25 but as Nemesis, not Delia. Unlike her predecessor she is actually in the countryside;26 but Tibullus still is not. He has two fantasies, first

�� 20 ‘He follows the ewes, his son the lambs, and as he tires his wife prepares a warm bath. So may I be, and my head shine with white hair, and as an old man let me tell tales of time past.’ 21 Wifstrand Schiebe 1981, 92 notes the echo of Dike, catasterized as Parthenos (= Virgo) and holding an ear of corn in her hand at Aratus, Phaen. 97: despite alma, Pax is thus pictured as a virginal figure. 22 ‘Come to us, nurturing Peace, holding an ear of corn, and may your lap overflow in front with fruit’. 23 On the premature ending of the book, see Reeve 1984. 24 The expression of the countryside in 2.1 is explored at length by Ross 1986. He brings out the element of fantasy and wishful thinking. 25 Cf. 1.1.57 for the delayed identification. 26 Bright 1978, chapter 7, discusses Nemesis as an anti-Delia, and a commentary through inversion on earlier experience; note in particular ‘Tibullus had dreamed so hard of getting Delia to the country, and now the Nemesis series begins with the lady in the country, but all is worse than ever’ (192).

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that he had wealth, so that Nemesis might parade through the city displaying the gifts he had given (per urbem | incedat donis conspicienda meis, 51–2); and then, on realising that his rival, an ex-slave, is now in charge (59–60), he wishes to return to pre-agricultural days, so that there would be no need for life in the country. In the final couplet he promises to head for the fields and to submit there to his mistress’s commands. Scenes of country life are prominent again in 2.5, but again the poet himself is either absent (as in the account of the pre-Romulean site of Rome in 25–38) or merely foreseeing a wishful future (83–100). The intervening elegy, 2.4, abandons the countryside, and sets Tibullus outside Nemesis’ unreceptive house (22; cf. 31–2); and in the final surviving poem too he is once more on the doorstep (2.6.13–14, 47–8), and all that takes him to the world of the farmer, the fowler, the fisherman, is a disquisition on the deceptive nature of hope (19–24).27

Lygdamus (3.1–6) Lygdamus, the ‘I’-figure of Corpus Tibullianum 3.1–6, upsets the norms of elegy by seeking marriage. His collection opens with the celebration of the Matronalia in 3.1: he imagines gifts passing along the streets of the city and around the houses (perque uias urbis munera perque domos, 3.1.4); the Muses are sent to Neaera’s domus to present her with his libellus (ite domum cultumque illi donate libellum, 3.1.17). Neaera’s family home appears again at 3.4.91, where her lover desperately asserts that she was born not in the wilder parts of the natural world or from some monster such as Cerberus or Scylla: she is the child of kindly parents and a civilized house, not one to be inhabited by the harsh and unfeeling (culta et duris non habitanda domus). Elsewhere we hear of Lygdamus’ pyre and his tomb (rogum, 3.2.12; in marmorea … domo, 3.2.22), we see him lying sleepless and then dreaming of Apollo in his own bed in 3.4 (n.b. 24 nostra sede),28 drinking at a symposium in 3.6. At the start of poem 3, he expresses the conventional elegist’s desire for love rather than wealth.29 Even in aspiration he identifies himself neither with a grand house in the city (3–4) nor a large estate in the countryside (5–6): what matters is

�� 27 Contrast the (slightly) more hopeful nec Spes destituat at 1.1.9. 28 For the lectus as symbolic of sickness, see e.g. Prop. 2.4.11, 2.9.27; Ovid, Ep. 21. 29 Cf. Tib. 1.1, Prop. 1.14, 3.5, e.g.

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growing old with Neaera (7–8). The point is then reprised as the poem continues, at 3.3.11–16: nam graue quid prodest pondus mihi diuitis auri, aruaque si findant pinguia mille boues? quidue domus prodest Phrygiis innixa columnis, Taenare siue tuis, siue Caryste tuis, et nemora in domibus sacros imitantia lucos aurataeque trabes marmoreumque solum?30

15

The rejected notion of wealth is again associated with ploughed fields (12; cf. 5), while the costly materials of which the rich man’s domus might be built are given greater specificity — possible sources are listed for the marble, now used explicitly for columns and floors — the roof beams are gilded, and the gardens are planted with trees that recall the uncut groves which mark out religious sanctuaries — but all this is not what Lygdamus wants from life or where he expects to be. However, in the short corpus of six poems that have reached the modern world, the most interesting use of place comes in 3.5, a poem in which he depicts himself as sick — perhaps love-sick, for it is spring and not the fever-bringing Dog-days of late summer (verses 2–4): Vos tenet Etruscis manat quae fontibus unda, unda sub aestiuum non adeunda Canem, nunc autem sacris Baiarum proxima lymphis, cum se purpureo uere remittit humus. at mihi Persephone nigram denuntiat horam: inmerito iuueni parce nocere, dea.31

5

He is so ill, he claims, that he is likely to die, and thus prays to Persephone. Lygdamus himself is presumably at home, in his sickbed, but it is the location of his

�� 30 ‘What is the use to me of a heavy weight of gold, and if a thousand oxen were to plough my fields? Or what use a house built on Phrygian columns, or made of your rock, Taenarus, or yours, Carystos, and of woods inside the house imitating sacred groves, and gilded beams and a marble floor?’ 31 ‘The stream that flows from Etruscan springs is your location, the stream that is not to be approached under the heat of the Dog-Star, but which now, when the earth is relaxing in the brightness of spring, is second only to the sacred waters of Baiae. But for me Persephone has pronounced a dark hour: do not harm an innocent young man, goddess.’ The underlined words will be discussed later, in connexion with Propertius 1.11.

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friends that begins the poem and matters here, swimming in the Tiber, where he pictures them once again at 29–30: at uobis Tuscae celebrantur numina lymphae, et facilis lenta pellitur unda manu.32

The Tiber is a place where youths swim in Horace’s Odes: Sybaris at 1.8.8, Enipeus at 3.7.27–8, Ligurinus (and Horace himself in his dreams) at 4.1.40. But the combination of Baiae and swimming in the Tiber rather recalls Cicero’s pro Caelio. The prosopopoeia of Clodius addressing his sister has him telling her not to be so bothered about Caelius (Cic. Cael. 36): Habes hortos ad Tiberim ac diligenter eo loco paratos quo omnis iuuentus natandi causa uenit; hinc licet condiciones cotidie legas; cur huic qui te spernit molesta es?33

The pro Caelio has five references to Baiae, which is named in none of the other extant speeches. Three times it appears alongside the infamous gardens: si fas est defendi a me eum qui nullum conuiuium renuerit, qui in hortis fuerit, qui unguenta sumpserit, qui Baias uiderit (‘if it is right for me to defend a man who has turned down no party invitation, who has been in gardens, who has used perfume, who has set eyes on Baiae’, 27); cuius in hortos, domum, Baias iure suo libidines omnium commearent (‘into gardens, house, and place at Baiae the lusts of all freely came’, 38); and finally in chapter 49, a climax in Cicero’s account of the life of love: Si quae non nupta mulier domum suam patefecerit omnium cupiditati palamque sese in meretricia uita conlocarit, uirorum alienissimorum conuiuiis uti instituerit, si hoc in urbe, si in hortis, si in Baiarum illa celebritate faciat, …, cum hac si qui adulescens forte fuerit, utrum hic tibi, L. Herenni, adulter an amator, expugnare pudicitiam an explere libidinem uoluisse uideatur?34

�� 32 ‘You are celebrating the divinities of the Etruscan river and the yielding water is driven back by the leisurely movements of your hand.’ For Tuscus and Etruscus referring to the Tiber when applied to water, cf. e.g. Horace, Carm. 1.2.14, Ovid, Met. 14.615, Fast. 1.500, 5.628, 6.714, Ibis 138. Navarro Antolín 1996 is misled by his concentration on Martial as a source for Lygdamus, and thinks the reference is to a spa. 33 ‘You have gardens by the Tiber carefully placed where all the young men go to swim; so you can set up an affair any day — why are you troubling one who rejects you?’ 34 ‘If an unmarried woman has opened her house to the lusts of all and shown herself openly to be living the life of a prostitute, and started holding parties with men with whom she has no family connexion, if she does this in the city, in her gardens, in the famous hotspot at Baiae …,

�� � S.J. Heyworth

The evocation of the pro Caelio through these two significant places seems to mark an acknowledgement that Cicero’s depiction of Clodia’s world is foundational for the elegiac lover, but one from which Lygdamus himself is excluded. A further point is that his two descriptions of swimming recall a couplet from Propertius’ poem about Baiae, 1.11.11–12: atque utinam mage te remis confisa minutis paruula Lucrina cumba moretur aqua, aut teneat clausam tenui Teuthrantis in unda alternae facilis cedere lympha manu, quam uacet alterius blandos audire susurros molliter in tacito litore compositam.35

10

Propertius there pictures Cynthia’s possible activities when staying at the resort, so when Lygdamus calls the water of the Tiber sacris Baiarum proxima lymphis he nicely positions his imitation (as I take it to be) within the elegiac sequence.

Sulpicia (3.8–18) Sulpicia is the central figure of poems 3.8–18 in the Tibullian corpus, in company with a beloved called Cerinthus. She is usually treated as the author of the shorter poems 13–18, with the more elegiac 8–12 regarded as the work of an amicus or imitator. But she is the ‘I’ figure in 9 and 11, and might easily be taken as the writer of 10, 12, and perhaps even 8, though there her beauty is praised in a way that is hard to read as self-observation. Here I shall simply treat the sequence as a group to be read together. As Lygdamus upsets elegy’s conventions by supposing a lover who wishes to be a husband, so Sulpicia inverts the norms by making the expressive lover female. Sulpicia is implicitly set in the city in 3.8, on the occasion of the Matronalia (like Lygdamus in 3.1); and her presence in the city is essential to the argument of 3.9, where she regrets that Cerinthus is absent in the countryside hunting, fantasizes about joining him, and curses any girl who sets out to seduce him in

�� if some young man has spent time with her, do you think him an adulterer or a lover, Lucius Herennius, that he has tried to lay siege to chastity or just to assuage his desire?’ 35 ‘Would that you (i.e. Cynthia) might rather be occupied with a dinky little boat trusting in tiny oars on the Lucrine lake, or that you be held enclosed by the fine water of Teuthras yielding easily to one arm, then the other, than that elegantly resting on the silent shore you have the time to listen to the charming whispers of another man.’

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Sulpicia’s absence: this plays effectively with patterns set up in separation poems such as Propertius 1.11 (where Cynthia is in Baiae, as we have seen) and 2.19 (when she is in the country, where he heads too, with the intention of hunting for a few days before he joins her). In 3.10 Sulpicia is ill, in an unspecified place, but with access to a temple of Phoebus when she recovers; similarly in 3.12 she is heading to a temple of Juno to celebrate her birthday. Such scenes apparently imply presence in Rome. The most striking use of place in the Sulpicia sequence comes in the pair 3.14 and 3.15: in the first she recounts with dread how her relative, Messalla, is dragging her to the country for her birthday: Inuisus natalis adest, qui rure molesto et sine Cerintho tristis agendus erit. dulcius urbe quid est? an uilla sit apta puellae atque Arretino frigidus amnis agro? iam, nimium Messalla mei studiose, quiescas; non36 tempestiuae saepe, propinque, uiae. hic animum sensusque meos abducta relinquo arbitrio quam uis non sinit37 esse meo.38

5

Unfortunately the text of these poems is rather corrupt: the version above is that found in Postgate’s generally sensible OCT. He accepts two readings not in the oldest MS A. In 6 neu tempestiuae is transmitted: a negative is needed (Sulpicia does not think the journey ‘timely’), but neither a connexive nor a jussive are appropriate. tempestiuus occurs 9 times in Augustan poetry, never negated; intempestiuus appears 8 times in Ovid. We might therefore prefer intempestiuae (tentatively suggested in Lenz’s apparatus) over non tempestiuae. And in 8 quam uis … sinit is Statius’ conjecture for the transmitted quamuis … sinis; although quamuis cannot be right — there is nothing concessive in the sense of this line — Messalla looks a far more natural subject than the conjectured uis: Sulpicia is subject to the authority of the paterfamilias rather than ‘force’. I suggest that a better conjecture would be quam tu … sinis (‘I whom you do not allow to be under my own control’): this gives the accusative the sentence lacks as subject of esse, and tu,

�� 36 non recc.: neu A. 37 quamuis A: quam uis Statius: quoniam G; sinit Statius: sinis A. 38 ‘A hateful birthday is imminent, which will have to be spent in the troubling countryside and without Cerinthus. What is sweeter than the city? Is a villa suitable for a girl, and the chill river in the territory of Arezzo? Please relax now, Messalla, too concerned for my own good: journeys are often not timely, uncle. If I am led away I leave behind here my mind and consciousness, whom force does not allow to be under my own control.’

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in its contrast with quam and meo, helps bring out Messalla’s role in showing Sulpicia how little is the control that she has over her own life. In 4 Heinsius’ Arnus for amnis is tempting: sequences of minims are regularly confused and names of rivers glossed by amnis in annotated MSS. In 6 the vague truism ‘journeys are untimely’ looks out of place, especially when generalized further by saepe; Unger’s saeue gets rid of that problem, but only at the cost of creating an excessively aggressive address to Messalla, particularly odd after the more understanding mei studiose in 5. I conjecture intempestiua est ista … uia (‘this journey of yours is not timely’), supposing that false word division produced the plural tempestiuae and led to further corruption. My alternative text would thus read as follows: Inuisus natalis adest, qui rure molesto et sine Cerintho tristis agendus erit. dulcius urbe quid est? an uilla sit apta puellae atque Arretino frigidus Arnus agro? iam, nimium Messalla mei studiose, quiescas: intempestiua est ista, propinque, uia. hic animum sensusque meos abducta relinquo arbitrio quam tu non sinis esse meo.

5

The opening couplet (like 3.9) alludes to Propertius 2.19, notably the opening couplet of that poem: Etsi me inuito discedis, Cynthia, Roma, laetor quod sine me deuia rura coles.39

Here it is not only the male lover who is discomfited by the absence of the puella in the countryside: Sulpicia is herself unwilling to go. sine Cerintho matches sine me (also used by Propertius at 1.8.32, of another potential departure, to be discussed below). As we have seen, rural life plays a major part in Tibullian elegy; here it is summarily rejected. Contrasts with Ovid, Amores 2.16.33–40 effectively bring out the unorthodox viewpoint adopted by Sulpicia: at sine te, quamuis operosi uitibus agri me teneant, quamuis amnibus arua natent, et uocet in riuos currentem rusticus undam, frigidaque arboreas mulceat aura comas, non ego Paelignos uideor celebrare salubres,

33

�� 39 ‘Although you leave Rome against my will, Cynthia, I am glad it is the out-of-the-way countryside that you will frequent without me’.

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non ego natalem, rura paterna, locum – sed Scythiam Cilicasque feros uiridesque Britannos, quaeque Prometheo saxa cruore rubent.40

40

Ovid presents the cool climate of Sulmo as potentially delightful; so too Horace, at Epistles 1.15.9 speaks of frigida rura — the context is about the search for a healthy location. Verses 3–4 of Sulpicia’s poem imply that Messalla (or other members of the family) have been doing the same for the villa near Arezzo. But as the surrounding poems confirm, Sulpicia is non frigida uirgo (Ovid, Am. 2.1.5); understandably she finds no attraction in cool weather when what she feels and enjoys is the heat of desire, as described by Ovid in another couplet of 2.16 (11– 12): at meus ignis abest — uerbo peccauimus uno: quae mouet ardores est procul; ardor adest.41

The following poem, 3.15, moves the story on: Scis iter ex animo sublatum triste puellae?42 natali Romae iam licet43 esse suo.44

�� 40 ‘But as I’m not with you, though I am amid farms busy with vines, though the fields swim with streams, and the countryman summons running water into the channels, and a chill breeze soothes the leaves in the trees, I do not seem to be living in the healthy climate of the Paeligni, nor in my birthplace, the country of my forefathers, but Scythia, among the fierce Cilicians and green-painted Britons, and the rocks red with the blood of Prometheus’. 41 ‘My fire is absent — I made a mistake over a single word: what causes the heat is absent; the heat itself is here’. More generally for frigidity set in contrast to the erotic, cf. Ovid, Ars 3.70 frigida deserta nocte iacebis anus, Ep. 19.69 cur ego tot uiduas exegi frigida noctes?; Horace, Carm. 1.1.25–6. 42 It is not immediately clear whether to punctuate with a question mark or not. Editors do so at Ovid, Amores 1.8.23 scis here te, mea lux, iuueni placuisse beato? (at the start of the lena’s speech); but not elsewhere when sequences begin with Scis, including Prop. 2.22.1–2. However, if we keep necopinanti nunc tibi forte uenit in 4, that implies uncertainty about the state of Cerinthus’s information; I therefore retain the usual question mark. 43 iam licet F: non sinet A. 44 suo recc.: tuo AF, which removes the connexion with 3.14 (where verse 2 works if the reference is to Sulpicia’s birthday, but not for Cerinthus’s). Alternative possibilities are meo (Huschke) and tuae (recc.).

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omnibus ille dies nobis natalis agatur, qui necopinanti nunc tibi forte venit.45

Again in this quatrain there are a number of linguistic or textual difficulties. In verse 1 ex animo, literally ‘from the mind/spirit’, also has the idiomatic sense ‘sincerely’.46 Lyne (2007, 357) compares Plautus, Casina 23 eicite ex animo curam atque alienum aes (‘cast anxiety and debt from your heart’), but curam (to which aes alienum is attached by zeugma) works far more naturally with ex animo, and there is no equivalent to puellae, which without ex animo would function as a dative of (dis)advantage. I therefore suspect that ex animo has replaced an epithet for puellae; the most obvious substitute would be exanimi (or exanimae). For this epithet of the emotionally distraught see Ovid, Amores 1.7.35 exanimis artus et membra trementia uidi (‘I saw her body lifeless and her limbs trembling’; Vergil, Aen. 4.672 (Anna) audiit exanimis; they refer to a moment, not a continuing state, but the hyperbole would effectively echo Sulpicia’s phrasing at 3.14.7 animum sensusque meos abducta relinquo. Such revisiting of the language and themes of the previous poem can be seen also in iter … triste, which picks up on tristis (3.14.2) and uia(e) (6). In omnibus … nobis (3), the relevance of ‘all’ has puzzled critics, but no one seems to have suggested the obvious substitution utrique (‘each’). For the prosody, cf. Ov. Am. 3.1.64 uos ūtramque rogamus, Ars 2.683 ūtrumque and frequently ūtrăque (e.g. Prop. 2.25.44 ūtrăque forma rapit, 4.11.32); for ūtrique itself Statius, Theb. 7.468, 11.150. The word is elided at Vergil, Geo. 3.33; Prop. 3.9.53; [Tib.] 3.7.176 utroque idem. The apposition, though it might have seemed odd enough to provoke the gloss or interpolation omnibus, is found elsewhere in elegy: Tibullus 1.6.86 nos, Delia, amoris / exemplum cana simus uterque coma (‘may we each be a white-haired example of love’), Ovid, Amores 3.1.61 per uos utramque. After natali in 2 and ille dies, natalis is superfluous, and pointlessly so when we need something to express how the day is to be spent. Baehrens’ tam laetus is one possible reading; Tränkle 1990 accepts genialis (‘joyful’, but hinting at the visit of the genius or Iuno). The conjecture appears in the 1481 Vincenza edition (as well as some late MSS); its author presumably drew on Juvenal 4.66–7 genialis agatur / iste dies (‘let this day [on which the turbot is presented] be marked by a party’), which nicely illustrates the use of an adverbial adjective in such a phrase.

�� 45 ‘Do you know that the grim journey has been taken from your girl’s heart? Now it is possible for her to be in Rome on her birthday. Let that natal day be passed by us all, which now perhaps comes to you against your expectations’. 46 Tränkle 1990, 310–11 ineffectually explores this possibility.

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The final verse offers an unorthodox usage of forte, which is frequent in the elegists after si and ne, and regular in past narrative, but hard to fit into this context. However, it is no more attractive to write necopinata … forte (‘by unexpected chance’; though Tränkle 1990 prints this, elegy does not use oblique cases of fors as a functional noun), nor Heyne’s necopinata … sorte (‘by unexpected circumstance’), partly because of the significant allusion to Tibullus 1.9.43 (of his efforts bringing Pholoe to Marathus) saepe insperanti uenit tibi munere nostro (‘often through our help she came to you when you didn’t expect it’): for Sulpicia the birthday encounter depends on chance, not another’s gift. In 3.14 the combination of rus (1) and uilla (3) evokes Tibullus 2.3.1: Rura meam, Cornute, tenent uillaeque puellam (‘The countryside and a villa have received my girl, Cornutus’).47 In 3.14.3 dulcius urbe quid est? (‘what is more pleasant than the city?’) reprises Propertius 1.8.31–2, where Cynthia too has rejected travel without Propertius: illi carus ego et per me carissima Roma dicitur, et sine me dulcia regna negat.48

Once again Sulpicia’s sine Cerintho recalls a model. The relationship between 3.14, in which a journey is threatened, and 3.15, in which the idea is abandoned, precisely reprises that between Propertius 1.8A and 1.8B. Though sine and dulcius are found in the first of the imitative pair, the name of Rome is saved for the second poem, and Sulpicia’s expression of the joy of staying in the city. For her, as for the male elegists, this is her proper home.49

�� 47 The rustic tone of uilla is also shown by usages at Ecl. 1.82 (only here in Vergil), Met. 8.684 Baucis and Philemon (only otherwise in the Met. at 1.295, during the Flood) and Fasti (only at 4.695 of the rustic house at Carseoli ‘held up by a prop’). Something grander is implied, however, at times in Horace (e.g. Epod. 1.29–30), and at Ovid, ex Ponto 1.8.70. Most suggestive among the poetic uillae is Catullus 44 O funde noster, whose uilla (7) he uses to throw off the cold (gravedo frigida, 13; frigus, 20) acquired through reading Sestius’ frigid speech against Antius. 48 ‘To her I am dear, and thanks to me Rome is said to be the dearest place in the world, and she says that without me no kingdom would be pleasant.’ 49 My interest in Lygdamus and Sulpicia was re-awakened by Laurel Fulkerson’s presence in Oxford in 2014–15, working towards Fulkerson 2017, and the seminar that we organized together. A first version of this paper was delivered at the meeting of the Augustan Poetry Réseau in Florence, in November 2016: I am grateful to the organizers (Mario Citroni, Mario Labate, Gianpiero Rosati), and to the participants generally, especially Melanie Möller, who spoke on Tibullus 2 (deliberately given little attention here).

�� � S.J. Heyworth

Bibliography Boyd, B. (1984), ‘Parva seges satis est: The Landscape of Tibullan Elegy in 1.1 and 1.10’, TAPhA 114, 273–80. Bright, D.F. (1978), Haec mihi fingebam: Tibullus in his World, Leiden. Cairns, F. (1975), ‘Horace, Epode 2, Tibullus 1.1 and the Rhetorical Praise of the Countryside’, MPhL 1, 79–91. Fulkerson, L. (2017), A Literary Commentary on the Elegies of the Appendix Tibulliana, Oxford. Jacoby, F. (1961), ‘Tibulls erste Elegie’, in: F. Jacoby, Kleine philologischen Schriften, Berlin, 2.122–205. Jacoby, K. (1918), Anthologie aus den Elegikern der Römer für den Schulgebrauch: zweites Heft: Tibull, Berlin (3rd edn.). Lee, A.G. (1974), ‘Otium cum indignitate: Tibullus 1.1’, in: A.J. Woodman/D.A. West (eds.), Quality and Pleasure in Latin Poetry, Cambridge, 94–114. Lee-Stecum, P. (1998), Powerplay in Tibullus, Cambridge. Lenz, F.W./Galinsky, G.K. (1971), Albii Tibulli aliorumque carminum libri tres, Leiden (3rd edn.). Luck, G. (1988), Albii Tibulli aliorumque carmina, Stuttgart. Lyne, R.O.A.M. (2007), ‘[Tibullus] Book 3 and Sulpicia’, in: Collected Papers on Latin Poetry, Oxford, 341–67. Miller, P.A. (1999), ‘The Tibullan Dream Text’, TAPhA 129, 181–224. Murgatroyd, P. (1980), Tibullus 1: A Commentary on the First Book of the Elegies of Albius Tibullus, Pietermaritzburg. Navarro Antolín, F. (1996), Corpus Tibullianum III.1-6: Lygdami Elegiarum Liber. Edition and Commentary, Leiden. Postgate, J.P. (1915), Tibulli aliorumque carminum libri tres, Oxford (2nd edn.). Reeve, M.D. (1984), ‘Tibullus 2.6’, Phoenix 38, 235–9. Ross, D.O. (1986), ‘Tibullus and the Country’, in: Atti del convegno internazionale di studi su Albio Tibullo, Roma, 251–65. Smith, K.F. (1913), The Elegies of Albius Tibullus: The Corpus Tibullianum, New York. Solmsen, F. (1962), ‘Tibullus as an Augustan Poet’, Hermes 90, 295–325. Tränkle, H. (1990), Appendix Tibulliana, Berlin. Wifstrand Schiebe, M. (1981), Das ideale Dasein bei Tibull und die Goldzeitkonzeption Vergils, Uppsala.

William W. Batstone

Sulpicia and the Speech of Men This paper began life as a talk about Sulpicia’s concern with the language and speech of men (APA 1994, CA 1997, Bristol 19971), how she has used that language and how it has responded to her. It came about at a time when the effort to recover and re-evaluate Sulpicia’s voice seemed to have ended in our not being able to hear it. Hinds (1987) had tentatively suggested (and tentatively rejected) the possibility that she was a male poet in drag and Parker’s (1994) argument that Sulpicia wrote 3.9 and 3.11 was already blurring the line between the shorter poems generally assigned to her and the longer elegiac poems assigned to the so-called amicus. Today the situation remains much the same. In more recent years critics have focused on two general topics: her voice as a female subject writing in a male genre (Flaschenreim 1999; Milnor 2002) and her gender, including the issue of what poems were written by the poet (Hallett 2002; Hubbard 2004/5; Parker 2006; Kletke 2016). Scholars interested in Sulpicia’s voice (Flaschenreim 1999; Milnor 2002) focus primarily on the poems 3.13– 18, emphasizing 3.13, 16 and 18. Their working assumption was that the shorter poems were by Sulpicia and the preceding longer ‘elegies’ were by another poet responding to or inspired by the shorter poems. Other scholars interested in determining or contesting Sulpicia’s gender (Hallett 2002; Hubbard 2004/5; Parker 2006; Kletke 2016) have tended to focus on themes (supported by ‘intertextual’ resonances) and social context. Those scholars are generally concerned with the relationship between the short poems and the longer poems. They fall into two opposed camps: all the poems concerned with Sulpicia were written by a male poet (Hinds 1987 first raised the possibility; Hubbard 2004/5 argues that the shorter poems were a fescinnine wedding gift for Sulpicia; Holzberg 1998/9 claims a male poet for all of Tibullus 3, perhaps the young Tibullus; Farrell 20012 sees the questioning of Sulpicia’s gender as an outcome of the awareness of her abilities) or all were written by Sulpicia (Parker 1994 saw no reason to deny that Sulpicia wrote 3.9 and 3.11; Hallett 2002 expanded the argument to include all 11 poems). Today, it is fair to say that there is no consensus: Keith (2006) in a review of critical trends is very dismissive of male authorship for 3.13–18; Parker (2006) in a clever and witty spoof of the debate seems to ally himself with Sulpician �� 1 Since then, the paper has been given at Cambridge (1999), U.C. Irvine (2007), Bristol (2011) and Yale (2014). 2 ‘[I]t is worth asking again whether we can believe implicitly that Sulpicia's poetry is in fact the work of a Roman woman’ (2001, 57).

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110596182-006

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authorship of all 11 poems; Maltby (2009) claimed that based on the evidence we cannot know the gender of the poet; Kletke (2016) offers a thorough and careful review (with a clear inclination to accept male authorship) and calls for a reassessment of the gender issue. The issue of female subjectivity and voice in an androcentric genre and the gender of the writer are, of course, inextricable. Has a man ventriloquized Sulpicia or does she speak from a female perspective? It seems clear that no evidence will settle the matter. Externalities can be summoned on both sides; intertextual resonances (see, e.g., Keith 1997) can be reinterpreted or denied; no words or phrases belong to one gender and not another. Style is notoriously unreliable and can always be imitated. Every textual gesture can always be repeated by both men and women. We are left with interpretation. But that is a good thing because it relates poem, genre, gender and voice to the world and to meaning, and that is, I think, what we are really after. Interpretation, however, is not proof. It is a matter of intuiting a working assumption and then seeing if details confirm or trouble that assumption. And there is always the danger of confirmation bias. So, here is the background to my assumptions: Almost forty years ago, the self-consciousness that Santirocco (1979) called our attention to and the complex syntactical constructions that Lowe (1988) had so carefully discussed seemed to be part of a specific position in the world. But when I read the so-called amicus poems, I heard a different voice, with a different relationship to the world and the genre. I thought it worthwhile trying to hear what is at stake in 3.13–18, what the poet’s values are and what threatens those values. In the course of those initial attempts, I love to You: Sketch of a Possible Felicity in History by Luce Irigaray (1995) became available. About the same time, Ventriloquized Voices: Feminist Theory and English Renaissance Texts by Elizabeth D. Harvey (1992) came into my hands. My understanding was then and remains deeply influenced by these works. Finally, it was Gayatri Spivak’s essay (1988) ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ that helped me find a position (the subaltern position) from which it was credible that a man could speak of ‘a woman speaking in a male genre’ without just ventriloquizing her. Today, that project seems still relevant. While it is ultimately about differences between 3.8–12 and 3.13–18, it still begins with what I take to be the Sulpicia poems and the way they confront and struggle with the male genre of elegy and the world outside that genre, a world of (male) readers and male dominance. Here I will not be primarily interested in themes and generic sophistication. That work has been done (e.g., Currie 1983; Merriam 1990; Tschiedel 1992). I am interested in the way meaning is embodied in her language and how that language blocks a unified expression of desire by speaking against her, over her, or beyond

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her. To speak through and despite those forces, to speak with parody, protest, exposure and double talk is a form of resistance on the one hand, and a powerful confrontation with those forces. These poems are self-conscious sites of a contest for subjectivity and standing in an obstinately male genre, in an obstinately androcentric world. The subject may be always alienated in language (i.e., even my desires are shaped by words and come to me from outside), but certain forms of alienation are specific to the subaltern position, and shared by race, class and gender. To make these forms accessible through performance, that is to say, to repeat or parody them from a position outside power, denies the totalizing dominance of the norm, without pretending that there is a place of security outside the reality of subordination. For example, it is a complex and moving moment when the reader hears Messalla’s iam licet in Sulpicia’s news to Cerinthus. Exposing the cost of one’s position entails a certain independence. The subaltern does speak, but by indirections points directions out. I would like to propose a reading of Sulpicia’s poetry and its relationship to Roman elegy that values her struggle without losing sight of the context and powers aligned against that struggle. The discourse that underwrites the master, the one that always defeats opposition, is everywhere an illusion of power and dominance; and I think that this is neither an illusion to which Sulpicia is subject nor one that serves our understanding of language or of her language. She speaks as a subject, AND her subjectivity is threatened and inhabited by language and the world around her. In other words, where other critics have found her strength in ‘an authoritative elegiac rhetoric’3 (Flaschenreim 1999, 53–4; cp. Milnor 2002), I find her success in the negative capability of her knotted language to imagine or suggest values that oppose elegiac values while struggling with the language and genre that threatens those values. This story, I believe, makes better sense of Sulpicia’s language and poetic effects, of the Garland4 poet’s response (and even his desire to respond), and of the force of gender in elegy than stories of poetic authority and either a masculine Sulpicia or a feminine Garland poet. Interpretive stories, however, are their own hermeneutic circle, prone to anachronism and ideological displacement. So, let me outline the basic assumptions that I find confirmed in this story of gender and genre. First, I believe that the basic structure of male - female relationships in the West has remained

�� 3 In fact, I have no idea what that would be. Writing helps us imagine worlds, sometimes our own, sometimes another’s or an imaginary world. That succeeds precisely because there is no authority saying, ‘no, not that’ etc. The death of the author is the birth of the reader. 4 This refers to the poems 3.8–12, generally taken as a response to the Sulpicia poems.

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fundamentally the same over the past two millennia. It is a structure whose purpose has been to cultivate and protect male authority and privilege, especially in areas of paternity and citizenship. It imposes dichotomies, like public and private, victor and victim, noble and unknown, even subject and object, which privilege the world where men compete and earn their prizes and which underwrite the speech of men. Since women are often among these prizes, they are typically objectified, neither spoken to nor allowed to speak. Hence, the familiar dichotomy between man as voice, woman as image. Hence, also, the paucity of female texts in the archive. In elegy, this position appears as the puella, a figure covered in discourse: she does not (typically) speak (though she may snarl), she is the screen on which the lover’s fantasies, his fears and desires, shine with insubstantial radiance (candida puella). According to the familiar feminist critique, represented by Irigaray et al., the phallocentric structure of society, like le nom-du-père, underwrites citizenship and law, as well as cultural products like Roman elegy. In the world of civil authority, with which elegy is complicit, the masculine project dissolves particular people into the abstracts of their duty, their virtus or ‘manliness’, into the signs of their role as entities of state, togas and stolas, and into the names and monuments of the elite. In Roman elegy the same phallocentric dynamic gives scope and play to tropes like servitium amoris (a trope available only to men, since with reference to women it is arguably not a trope but an analysis of power and subjugation) and militia amoris (another trope available only to the ‘counter-cultural’ male who builds his new freedoms on the prestige of old duties), and to the competitive poetics of Propertius and Ovid. Within this context, language as a public phenomenon refers to and enacts the world of men, their rights, prizes and privileges. For example, Roman naming conventions: Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Maior, a name rich in family and in achievement; his wife was Tertia Aemilia, the third daughter in the male line of Aemilii. Or fama, the very thing that Scipio’s name is rich in: Aemilia was known for the propriety of her dress and the decorations of her carriage.5 While a man’s fama depends upon achievements, a woman’s fama depends upon her chastity and how she is talked about and seen. How then is a woman to speak of her fama (a word whose root means ‘to speak,’ *fa-) without taking a significant detour through the world of men? Or, how is she to speak of pudor or, worse, sexual desire, without losing the fama and the voice that she claims? For a female Roman poet, then, reference inevitably extends outward to the world of men where her power and freedom are a problem, and those problems extend inward �� 5 Polybius xxxi, 26; Val. Max. vi. 7.1.

Sulpicia and the Speech of Men � ��

to her language and her figures. Reference to her world, to her dignitas, for instance, or to her pudor, is blocked or distorted by a detour through the surveillance of men. And, in the case of Sulpicia, I will argue that resistance to this detour takes the form of those syntactic complexities and ambiguities that are the verbal traces of a complex encounter which claims subjectivity in the way it engages or attempts to engage and address the world, even in the way it can reveal that the language a woman uses to express her experience turns out to be inextricable from her repression. This does not mean that Sulpicia is merely a victim; it means that, alienated within language, her performance of a wavering subjectivity is both more accurate as a reflection of how she is within language and more subjective as it grapples with its own subjection. This is not a story of subjectivity achieved after subjection. The struggle with its successes and potential failures are there from beginning to end. In what follows I will first explore what Sulpicia’s engagement with this knotted linguistic reality creates. I will then turn to the Garland poet and consider his response and re-writing of Sulpicia’s subjectivity.

Poem 3.13: The Displaced Subject The tension between language and world which I have outlined above is reflected fairly explicitly in Sulpicia’s first poem. Here, the report of others is the central issue: she begins and ends her poem with fama, and in ten lines speaks of the power of her poetry (exorata meis … Camenis), the narration of her pleasures (mea gaudia narret), the report of others (dicetur), the words she has committed to her writing tablets (mandare tabellis), what others may read, and how she will be represented in the future. Hinds (1987, 43–4) read this move ‘out of the private and into the public sphere’ as an attempt to control fama. But Sulpicia is not just coping with or controlling a problem. The situation is more complex. It might be fairly said that the desire to control or refine fama is what motivates Propertius, ‘This is how I waste my life; this is my fama’ (1.7.5–10), or Ovid, ‘I am that famous Naso, poet of my own worthlessness’ (Am. 2.1.2). These poets may adopt their bad new counter-cultural poses, but good old fama was a rich and positive resource.6 And one that could be deployed against the puella in �� 6 For Propertius, it was the object of his poetic activity (2.34.94; 3.1.9), the name of his servitium (1.7.9), the reputation which would not be sullied by consorting with whores (2.23.34). It was also the prestige of Cornelia’s ancestors (4.11.12, 29; see also 3.20.8) and it could be the abstract report of Roman history (3.22.20).

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poetry. Cynthia’s contempt for fama is just what will destroy her, because Propertius’ verse controls her fama: ‘Believe me, though you have contempt for … fama, this very verse, Cynthia, is going to flush your face’ (2.5.29).7 Fama serves the dominant structure and the structure of dominance because it belongs to men. When it belongs to a woman, it loses its defiant edge: Evadne’s fama pudicitiae meant suicide at her husband’s tomb (Prop. 1.15.22). It could also be the report of a wife’s extramarital affair (Am. 2.2.50) or the errors (peccare) of Ovid’s girl (3.14.1). And when fama is not telling on women, it is the lustre of her hair (1.14.50). Fama is never what a girl declares – it is the force that objectifies her in the mouths of men. This is the context to which Sulpicia responds and in which a contest for fama is embedded in a thorough-going ambivalence about fama. It is desired, at the beginning: sit mihi fama (2), and it is tedium at the end: famae taedet (9–10). But even in line 2, the subjunctive holds something in reserve: usually read as jussive, but why not a potential subjunctive? ‘It could be my fama that ….’ Sulpicia’s fama entails the rejection of appearances, of making up your face and hiding your tablets, while it is composed in the traditional language of a girl’s pudicitia: pudori … sit mihi fama. Pudor, of course, is just what should concern a girl’s fama, but Sulpicia’s pudor (shame) rejects covering or modesty and values nakedness, that is, the full disclosure of the very erotic activity that ruins a girl’s fama (Prop. 1.16.11–12; Ov. Am. 3.14.36). The language in which Sulpicia asserts herself (the language of fama and pudor) is the very language that binds and displaces the feminine subject: it is the words of men about her body. It is this bondage and displacement that trouble and enhance the poem. Thus, when she tries to replace the covered pudor of a proper girl with her defiant exposure, it is troped in terms of nakedness, nudasse. In male elegy nudasse is assimilated as much to voyeuristic revelations8 as to the exposure of infidelity, both violations of pudor. Ovid helps us get our bearings. In Amores 2.5, his girl’s infidelity is named peccasse (3) and his exposure of those errors is nudare (5). And then, after a detailed account, he says she destroys his joys (mea gaudia differs, 29) and he threatens to lay his sovereign hands upon his rights (30). The erotic-elegiac value of nudare is underwritten by the property rights of mea gaudia and the moral investments of peccasse – all terms that recur in Sulpicia.

�� 7 hic tibi pallori, Cynthia, versus erit; cp. 2.18d.37 and 2.32.21. 8 Put this way we avoid the claim that elegiac nudity is the sign of ‘realism’ (Milnor 2002); it is an invitation that plays on multiple levels.

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Fame, shame, nakedness: this is the complex Sulpicia’s language challenges. In fact, at the end of the poem she refers to both her act of self-disclosure and the act she discloses with an oxymoron that recalls and challenges Ovid’s language: sed peccasse iuvat (9). But this is more than a challenge to traditional pudor. Peccasse is focalized through the accusing language of fama: ‘Oh, she likes to get into trouble.’ The surveillance and speech of others about her love has crept into a poem that celebrates and values that love – but it has not just crept in. When she tropes her act as error and nakedness, she invites the voyeurism she defies, challenges the surveillance that objectifies her, and confronts fama with its own words and values. The attempt to reveal her amor and enter the world of male elegy reveals the workings of a public and generic language that threaten her erotic standing. Thus, as she rewrites and parodies the conventions that would silence and cover the girl of elegy, those very judgments recur in her writing as echoes of the displacement she challenges. Real fama, even counter-cultural fama, belongs to men, to their poetry and monuments – except, briefly and embattled, here. It is this problematic that accounts for the poem’s own silences. She claims to prize full disclosure but at same time alludes to a prior context of desire and distance, of promises and poems we do not have. She speaks of tablets that are not sealed against the prying eyes of others – but the scene is merely potential: ‘I would not want to commit to tablets’. She speaks of disclosing her love, but his name isn’t spoken in this poem, and, when it does appear in poem 2, it is a covered name, a pseudonym. Despite the value placed on nudasse amorem, she offers an intimacy that is more intimated than uncovered, her words act more as a veil than as a disclosure, they entice rather than reveal – a role played by women in and out of elegy, the veil of seduction, so much more seductive than mere exposure. But here, what the reader is invited to see but is not shown, is a moment of value, despite its violations. Behind and within the veil of her stylistic complexities and multiple references she imagines a positive re-alignment of the forces aligned against her. In the second couplet, Venus brings love and makes a deposit in her lap: attulit in nostrum deposuitque sinum (4) – the language joins Greek and Roman (Cytherea Camenis), prayer and deposit, the erotic and the fiduciary, the intimate and the public (afferre in is an idiom familiar only for bringing a matter into the Senate or the Comitium). The interpenetration of public and private creates a new space where divine erotic response and intimate joy are given the authority of official action and fiduciary responsibility. Then, in a remarkable rewriting of Propertius’ competitive poetics and Ovid’s possessive pleasures (mea gaudia differs, he said), she imagines her joys as the

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shared story of the loveless: mea gaudia narret. When the Propertian lover falls in love, he warns his reader: ‘… shun this evil, ... [if you don’t,] alas, with what pain you will repeat my words’ (1.1.35 and 38).9 Sulpicia’s words, on the other hand, undo both Propertius’ competitive fantasy and its masochistic servitium amoris: her love is a joy to be (partly) exposed and (partly) shared, a compensatory narration for those who have no joys. For her, erotic and linguistic joys inhabit each other. But something else happens in these lines which reaches beyond the confining and gendered perspective of elegy. Sulpicia says ‘si quis’: What is the gender of si quis?10 The elegiac audience is male. Does Sulpicia imagine that a man, like Ponticus, might recall her feminine joys? Is that deposit of love in the folds of blouse and bosom the same for men and for women? Either the poem flagrantly appeals to a female audience or it lays claim to the value and worth of intimate experience by refusing to generate a gendered version of this joy. Perhaps this is why she avoids particular names: it never was about names, dates, places – the things that concern rumor and gossip. But the same gesture that denies the claim of property opens her story to a dangerous appropriation: the voyeur’s nudasse; the moralist’s peccasse; any slippery reading of deposuit in nostrum sinum. But just when the words seem slipperiest, the ‘fold’ you imagine for Sulpicia is your fold too (in nostrum sinum), the words challenge readers to make them their own while not taking them from Sulpicia.11 The problem, then, is not just fama, but who is speaking (and someone else always speaks in language) and who is listening. This contest for subjectivity cannot be won in its own terms. Take the surveillance and talk of others in the opening lines: she would be ‘more ashamed to be talked about as not having talked than to be talked about as having talked’. But just as evaluation is contested in the term pudori, so the syntax offers two alternatives: pudori as predicative to texisse (it was a shame to cover love) or predicative to fama (it would be for me a shame that they say I covered love). In other words, the language traces a contest between pudor as the predicate of her action and pudor as the predicate of what others say (fama). This contest is a version of who gets to wield pudor. Contests

�� 9 See also Ponticus’ prophesized silence, 1.7.21. 10 Flaschenreim 1999, 41 takes it as ambiguous; Milnor 2002, 274 n. 53, without argument, claims it is masculine. 11 Just as amor is inhabited by the politics of subjectivity and possession, so reading is inhabited by the problematics of appropriation and interpretation, which includes gendered issues of similarity and difference. Cp. the reductionist approach to meaning in Hubbard 2004/5, 177–8.

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like this are waged within the poem and cannot be escaped or controlled by the poem – whose strength and insight lies in representing the problem. In the final couplet, the instability of reference and the struggle between word, world and speaker again entices the reader to see something beyond the words, to see something that the struggle itself with and within language points to. Almost every term is problematic: First, there is the movement from peccasse to dignitas: peccasse can only be worthy if it is not peccasse. Hence, its focalization (the words of surveillance slip into the poem). Second, there is the proud assertion of cum digno digna fuisse ferar. The clause’s alliterative permanence is resonant with the diction of monuments,12 but here both intimate and public values appear on her monument. And yet, in her words there is also an uncanny but expressive gap: dignus of what? She omits the epexegetical expressions always found or implied with dignus. In the world of men dignitas expresses their right to their prizes – both when Caesar crosses the Rubicon and when elegiac poets write poems worthy of triumph or of tears. But what prize is this moment worthy of? Who says or thinks ‘worthy’? Outside the world of competitive dignitas, Sulpicia has captured that monumental moment when lovers gaze upon each other and each thinks, ‘I am worthy’ and each finds the beloved worthy as well – a desire and value reflecting and mirroring a desire and value that confirms the sense of self-worth that underwrites the desire. The intimacy of this scene is both deepened and challenged by the idiom cum aliquo esse, which could be a euphemism for sexual intercourse. If so, the idiom also removes dignitas from its physical and competitive referents in the world of men, at the very moment that she suggests its location in intimate and bodily intercourse. Brilliant, but dangerous. The lack of an epexegetical expression provokes and entices. Imagine Cicero at the games: just how was she with him? ‘Yeah, you’re worthy to be with this!’ And so on. But we should not lose sight of the fact that we know of this idiom from Varro,13 and he makes it clear that it takes the place of literal expression for reasons of modesty: as with the name of the beloved, so finally nakedness yields to modesty. The poem points to values that cannot quite be embodied in its language. Two other ambiguities of syntax reflect this struggle between her imagined values and her position and the world. cum digno digna fuisse can mean ‘that we have met, each �� 12 See Ennius’ literary epitaph volito vivos per ora virum (var. 18). 13 Varr. LL 6.80: aeque eadem modestia potius cum muliere fuisse quam concubuisse dicebant. Critics who cite the idiom seem to conveniently ignore eadem modestia; it is covered speech. See e.g. Milnor (2002), who emphasizes Sulpicia’s body, which is only delicately present. Consider, also, Cic. ad Fam 16.21.3, inviting his wife and daughter to Formiae: ut et multum mecum esse … possitis; 16.21.1, the younger Cicero to Tiro about studying with Cratippus: sum totos dies cum eo noctisque saepe numero partem; or Verr. 2.4.137: Syracusis cum civibus Romanis eram.

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worthy of the other’ or ‘that I was worthy to have been with one worthy [of me].’ Likewise, her final word, ferar, wavers between defiant disclosure, ‘Let me be said,’ and proud assertion, ‘I will be said,’ and passive, cautious potential: ‘I could be said’. Ferar is the right word for this monument: with it stability, permanence, and self-determination are always about to be carried away, displaced, borne off. It is wrong, I think, to hear one voice here; in asking the reader to negotiate the claims, s/he is at stake. But that’s always the case. The issue here is the way these words detour through and around the mouths of men. By my reading, Sulpicia tries to clear an imagined space in which the public action of publication can partake of and complement the more intimate pleasures and values of bodily discourse, where the intimacies of love seem to reflect and make their claims on the world of public value and its surveilling speech. But this is simultaneously a celebration and a crisis, a monument and a slippage. Between the tedium of fama and the desire to be valued, between public nakedness and private dignitas, the words are tangled in the possibilities and the impossibilities of the world, in elusive speech and in an intimacy which is shared but not told. This struggle for subjectivity is fierce and intractable; it is the way this subaltern speaks.14

Poems 3.14 and 15: Permission and Standing Sulpicia’s second and third poems are a pair ostensibly concerned with her birthday. In Poem Two, her uncle Messalla has determined to go to the country on her birthday. She complains that she does not want to go: the country is troublesome (molestum) and her birthday without Cerinthus will be sad and hateful. Her uncle’s solicitude, she says, has left her in a slave’s condition, divided body from soul, and her uncle’s ‘reasonable’ expectation that his niece will accompany him is figured, if not explicitly as a rape, certainly as an abduction: abducta. She describes herself as one to whom violence does not allow arbitrium, a technical term for ‘standing’ or ‘presence’.15 As Sulpicia struggles with her predicament, her language redefines Messalla’s avuncular solicitude as something which is destructive of Sulpicia’s pleasure, and this move, retroping the Tibullan fantasy of a country life with a country girl into something molestum and so her birthday into

�� 14 Spivak (1988). 15 The text in the last couplet is troubled. I read: arbitrio quam vis non sinit esse meo.

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something invisus – reveals the emptiness of this elegiac trope without male privilege and fantasy, without a willing puella. The unhappy birthday and the rejected countryside are more than literary finesse, more than inverted themes. They reflect Sulpicia’s place in the world, and a fundamental feature of that position is that she is not addressed. We hear this silence in the questions, explicit and implicit, and the silences that fill her poems. In fact, questions are far more frequent in Sulpicia’s poetry than in the poems of any other elegiac poet, and her questions are not addressed to the world, or Cupid, or the Reader – they try to engage an actual addressee. Here, in the second poem, they are part of a silence which will echo through the rest of the sequence. ‘What’s nicer than the city?’ she asks, getting back to fundamentals. What did Messalla think he was doing? ‘You worry too much about me,’ she says. Did he think she was bored and would like a trip to the country? ‘It’s bad timing,’ she says – did he forget about her birthday? Or was he just thoughtless: ‘Do you think the country is suitable for a girl?’ Perhaps he was restless: ‘Relax’, she says. Or maybe he was just acting like a guardian. No account of Messalla’s actions is offered because no account was given. After all, you don’t need to be always explaining yourself to your niece. And so Sulpicia positions her voice in a poem where she gets to ask and answer with questions, to protest and name her condition is a pun. The third poem is the so-called celebration poem. Messalla’s journey has been called off, and Sulpicia’s four-line response is described by some critics as a victory of rhetoric and a burst of joy (Santirocco 1979, 232). But all she says is, ‘let the birthday be done’, using the passive jussive – hardly joyous, with no sign of the Propertian vicimus, a word that celebrates both poetic power and the poet’s masculine standing. In fact, Sulpicia says either ‘by an unexpected chance’ or ‘for you not expecting it’. The former hardly marks her rhetoric as authoritative or victorious; the later hardly marks her lover as confident of her powers. Did he even know she would protest? What was he expecting? Something is left out. But we do hear the words from Messalla that were unexpected: iam licet – ‘it’s now allowed’ – a phrase which reflects his authority and his casual permission.16 The idiom is never personal in the elegists; it reflects a more general (masculine) authority – of the marriage ritual, of self-determined suffering, of the workings of love.17 Just as paternalistic studium in poem 2 had created conditions of slavery

�� 16 The ms. reading tuo, usually rejected, if accepted, is usually taken as a reference to Cerinthus’ birthday. This, of course, clashes with natalis invisus of the prior poem. It could, however, be a continuation of the focalized iam licet. In any case, arbitrium is missing. 17 Respectively Cat. 61.184; Prop. 2.27.13; Ovid Rem. 534.

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and abduction, so paternalistic permission in poem 3 dispenses and sullies the joy of staying in Rome. She does not fit into Messalla’s country villa; she does not speak in iam licet. Let’s do the birthday. It is important, I think, to see this performance as an exposure (nudasse), which is to say that there is a note of sarcasm and protest involved. The elegiac birthday poem is in the background while the foreground erases all of its celebratory privileges, and makes a very clear charge: there is a lack of standing here, just as there is a lack of joy, only surprise, for Cerinthus, nec opinanti … tibi.18 We are transitioning to the brilliant poem which begins Gratum est, a predicate that drips with sarcasm and rage.

Poem 3.16: Language and Cura Securi This is ‘the most difficult and characteristically feminine of Sulpicia’s letters’, according to Smith (1913). Lowe wonders if ‘the thought is too compacted, the frenetic intellectual agility too self-defeating, for the result to be judged “successful”.’ (Lowe 1988, 202). Apparently Cerinthus has been unfaithful and has taken up with a quasillaria. In the space of six lines Sulpicia moves couplet by couplet from bitter irony and sarcasm, to pretend indifference, to her final hauteur. This range of emotions and the instability they reveal create a voice as fierce as it is wavering. Without her own place to stand in the world, Sulpicia’s position as subject is never secure, and so never unguarded by irony, sarcasm and distance. A simple paraphrase is difficult and will not meet with universal agreement. This is in itself a symptom worth considering. But, first, to get our bearings, here’s a relatively literal rendering: ‘How pleasing that in your security you grant yourself much concerning me, lest stupidly I take a sudden fall’, I take this to mean: ‘I am angry that your sense of security allows you such self-indulgence irrespective of me, with the unbelievable (sarcasm) purpose that you are preventing me, the poor little fool, from a sudden fall’. Other readings, as we shall see, are possible. At first she turns on Cerinthus’ careless security. Securus may be positive or negative: secure self-assurance or lack of care for another. In male-female relationships it is typical to find both valences active. It is security about Sulpicia (securus de me) that is the reason for Cerinthus’ carelessness about Sulpicia (multum permittis de me). What should be a good thing, confidence in the beloved,

�� 18 The other reading, opinata … tibi forte, does not change this observation.

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has become the reason for infidelity, lack of care about the beloved. This may be common enough in life, but it is still a betrayal, and Sulpicia goes for the throat of this betrayal. How to understand such betrayal? It must be (sarcasm) that the result of his actions, her anger and distance, is his purpose: his self-indulgent infidelity will prevent her (‘poor fool’, male inepta) from making the mistake (male inepta) of falling (in love?). Of course, the sarcasm reveals that she has already fallen – in love, out of favor, and into error. And behind the sarcasm there is blame, but blame is not as easy as sarcasm and anger, and so there is within her words a wandering blame, a mockery that attaches itself now to Cerinthus securus, and to her as the cause of his security, now to her own error, male inepta, ‘utter fool that I am’, and now to Cerinthus’ own condescending judgment, ‘poor fool’, male inepta (he must have thought something like that to have acted as he did). This splayed blame reflects a common uncertainty about where blame really lies for a disappointed and abandoned lover, but it does so in part because of real uncertainty about Cerinthus. Sulpicia assigns an intention because that is what she needs to understand; but she assigns an ironic intention, where carelessness masquerades as solicitude (securus ... ne ...), because there is no clear understanding. Sarcasm marks the gap where Sulpicia has been displaced: where there was silence, there is now a quasillaria. As a result, language of the displaced subject is particularly slippery. Gratum est = ‘It is pleasing to you’, or ‘(ironic) yeah, it pleases me’: the sentence makes sense both ways. Securus = ‘you have nothing to worry about’, ‘you do not demonstrate real cura’. De me ‘concerning me’ or ‘at my expense’. And finally the ne clause, which may be the purpose of multum permittis (‘you take liberties lest I fall’) or a prevention clause with securus (‘with no care that I might fall’). If Sulpicia had no standing in Cerinthus’ heart, she has no understanding of his actions and she has many places to fall. The language rewrites militia amoris, not as the stuff of tear-drenched thresholds and self-pitying midnight vigils, but as an emotional and personal defeat: securus ... ne cadam. The next couplet, however, changes the tactic. Now, she puts on an air of indifference, as she tries to compose herself and to stand where Cerinthus securus seems to stand. But her indifference, like the pleasure of gratum est, is sarcastic, and this couplet, like the last one, pulls in opposite directions. ‘Go on and care for your toga and a whore weighed down with a basket more than for Sulpicia, daughter of Servius!’ Is this a challenge? The emphasis on family pride and the effort to transform a personal affront into an insult against aristocratic standing has been broadly appreciated, and would certainly mock Cerinthus’ ambitions. However, the moment of her professed indifference, the moment that she takes her stand in the shelter of her family’s position, is the moment the language

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betrays the difficulties of that position. Like Tertia Aemilia she is named first of all for the men who control her life: the daughter of Servius in the line of the male Sulpicii; and, then, her name is indistinguishable from the status of a scortum or quasillaria: servi filia. She offers her signature at the moment of failure and humiliation, but it signs her and her position as the possession of others. We are back to abducta, and the feeling of being separated soul from body, of being a body, not a soul. The internal antagonism of her position is also reflected in her dismissal of Cerinthus. ‘Go ahead and care for your toga!’, she tells him. But the toga was both the symbol of male citizenship and the customary dress of a prostitute. In fact, these different usages cohere around the rights of the male citizen – the right to bestow the sign of the toga and the right to pleasures without attachment or obligation. The toga is the mark of security, and the prostitute is a mark of virtue: macte | virtute esto: ‘blessings upon you in your manly virtue’, said divine Cato, when he saw a young man leaving a whore house; so says Horace (Serm. 1.31–4). Those who bestow the sign control its meaning. Cura togae, ‘care/concern for the toga’, then, is exactly what Cerinthus prefers. He enjoys his position as a Roman male (cura togae), which protects both his right to enjoy a scortum (cura togae), and his indifference (securus). By this reading then, cura togae in both of its senses is what damages Sulpicia’s interests. In the world to which she refers, between Cerinthus se-curus de me and his cura togae, she has no standing. But it is this world and its struggles that her verse makes accessible and vivid and condemns from the position of the daughter of the Sulpicii. It can be imagined that the final stanza vaunts her family pride and friends.19 ‘Others are concerned for us, those for whom this is a special cause of pain, that I should not yield to an unknown bed’. But what is the concern of these solliciti, their maxima causa dolori? First, it is for the prerogatives of aristocracy, nobiles, those who have a name and do not consort with the unknown and unnamed, the ignoti. In other words, they do not care for Sulpicia's cura; they care for cura togae. They, too, are securi. They care if she yields in any of the areas where aristocrats compete for a name (ne cedam ignoto [= ‘lest I yield to an unknown’]). The issue is, again, dignitas,20 and the veiled militia amoris of Sulpicia’s ‘fall’ in line two is re-inscribed within the competition to be primus, summus, optimus,

�� 19 Smith (1913), ad loc., ‘she had plenty of admirers who appreciated her worth’; see also Flaschenreim, 48: ‘simultaneously disguised in male garb, and clothed in the provocative attire of the elegiac puella’. 20 A. Palmore points out that the dignus of 3.13.10 turns out to be ignotus here, confirming my sense that the worth is intimate, outside male dignitas.

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maximus and to marry into dynastically useful beds. Individuals in this masculine world are displaced into their various functions: one is a causa, the other a torum – a muscular bulge, a couch, a consort. Poem Four is not what the critics say it is. Flaschenreim (1999) does best with the fluid identities of the speaker here, but in the end takes comfort in the signing (sphragis) and the communal dolor of the closure. But there is no comfort or closure. There is a fierce cura: Sulpicia does care and she cares for Cerinthus as well as for herself. It is those around her who do not care, at least not for her: they care for the toga. The parallelism of ne cadam and ne cedam marks their mutual interests. This language imagines and makes accessible a resisting subject who has no place to stand amid the security, the indifference, and the cares of the men around her – except, of course, to reveal this state in the entanglements of her verse. Since the protection and care she finally seeks is as indifferent to her as the carelessness of her lover, her poetry becomes a sarcastic refuge. This affirmation is itself a way of thwarting the indifference of her subordination. And so, while success here is not a form of artistic detachment, or of closure and authoritative rhetoric, so her failure is not in being ‘too complicated’ or ‘frenetic’ (feminine vices, it seems). Outside success and failure, her strength lies in the ability to turn this betrayal into a six-line jewelled rage that flashes with sarcasm and never pretends to settle for security. And that is important: with Servi filia, read as a pun, and the final word, toro, read with Ciceronian malice, she does not acquiesce to the system within which she is subjected and from which she speaks.

Poems 3.17 and 18: Pia Cura and the Interpenetration of Desire The positive value, cura, whose absence in Cerinthus securus motivates poem four, returns in poem 5 as the pia cura, ‘the pious / responsible / familial care’ that Sulpicia desires. She begins, ‘Don’t you feel any responsible care …?’ She then claims that her desire to get well (optarim, ‘I would pray’) is conditioned on [what she believes about] her beloved’s desire (si te quoque velle putem, ‘if I should think that you also wanted’). She ends with an aporetic question: quid prosit, ‘what advantage to me would there be in prevailing over my illness if you are able to endure our troubles with an unmoved heart?’ Another poem surrounded by silence: why doesn’t she know whether Cerinthus cares about her health? One might say that the poem’s occasion is, in fact, Cerinthus’ silence, not

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her illness. This explains tristes morbos – sad like that sad birthday when her desires were also forgotten. Critics interested in her generic dexterity have seen this sickness as participating in the trope (and cliché) of (male elegy’s) ‘love’s sickness’ (Santirocco 1979, 233; Keith 1997, 302–6). But Sulpicia does not suggest that she will die of unrequited love, nor is her ‘illness’ the inattention of her lover. She even imagines getting well without any interest from Cerinthus: ‘What good will it do me?’ she asks. In Catullus, indifference causes sickness; in Propertius, love is itself the sickness and for it there is no cure (2.1.58). Tibullus loves his (love)sickness: Et faveo morbo, cum iuvat ipse dolor (‘I like my sickness, since the pain itself is a pleasure’, 2.5.110). In Sulpicia, however, the calor is physical. In fact, it echoes another physical sickness in Tibullus: his prayers rescued her when she was sick: cum tristi morbo defessa iaceres 1.5.9; he himself cared for her: ipse procuravi, 1.5.13. When Sulpicia asks for pia cura, the poems are clearly in dialogue. But with a difference: Tibullus turned to magic rites, sulphur and an old witch. Sulpicia asks for attentive care: corpora fessa, tristes morbos. The elegiac body is absent. Further, what is directly affected by the beloved’s response is not the fever, but desire: non aliter optarim quam si te quoque velle putem: ‘I would not wish unless I thought you also wanted’. This is a desire for health that depends upon a healthy amor, and the mark of that amor is the pia cura that addresses the fessa corpora and assures the beloved with non lento pectore (the idiom is not elegiac). The poem begins and ends with a question, awaiting an answer. The underlying issues of poem 3.17 are the lack of responsible speech, which is figured as the absent answer to the poet’s questions, and the interpenetration of desire, which appears when Sulpicia imagines her own desire to prevail over her illness as conditioned upon the desire of Cerinthus. These issues motivate the final poem of the collection as well. Here, Sulpicia wishes that Cerinthus’ passion be diminished if ever she did anything as foolish as she did last night when she left him alone out of a desire to dissemble her passion. Flaschenreim claims that here Sulpicia ‘lays claim to her own desire’ and ‘develops an authoritative elegiac rhetoric’ (1999, 51, 52); Milnor sees more complexity and claims that it is not about concealment, but ‘it is about revelation’ (2002, 277). My reading finds something different. The poem, on its surface, takes the place of both an apology for what she did not say and did not reveal (nudasse) and a straightforward protestation of love. That is possible because its logic depends on the very principle articulated in the preceding poem: the interpenetration of desire. May you no longer love me, she says, if I don’t regret dissembling my love for you. She regrets dissembling because she assumes that Cerinthus’ desire (his fevered care) will be affected by

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what he imagines to be her desire (her ardor). So, why doesn’t she just say: ‘I desire you and I did last night’?21 She offers a bargain because her regret stands as proof of her desire: ‘Let love cool if I don’t regret (hiding my desire)’. Furthermore, bargains like this secure a claim by praying for something understood to be a terrible outcome (cooling cura) if the claim is not true. In this case, that terrible outcome, cooling off of Cerinthus’ fervida cura, is also the very thing that motivates the poem: may your love be less, if I don’t regret (doing what made me doubt your love). She offers regret because she fears a loss of his cura, and she proves her regret by praying for that very loss if she does not regret. For Cerinthus, this only works if she is not just saying, ‘may your love cool if I don’t regret,’ but she is more importantly saying, ‘may your love not cool,’ or, trying to put the two together, ‘may I lose your love if I don’t regret … jeopardizing your love’. She is willing to gamble with the very thing she wants (cura) in order to secure that cura because the poem is ultimately about how much she wants his fervida cura and how much she regrets her dissembling. If Cerinthus can see how much she regrets dissembling, then perhaps he can care for that regret, and that care would already be a restoration of fervida cura. Cerinthus is being asked to renew love by caring for her regret, and doing so by imagining how terrible it is for Sulpicia to lose his fervida cura. It is this entanglement of feelings, each affecting the other, that makes this poem so rich in insight. But reduced like this, the claim seems more secure and confident than it is. In fact, this bargain is couched in language that shows other concerns. She places Cerinthus’ cura in its context: ‘as fervid a care as I seem to have been a few days before’. There is a lack present in videor; it is that uncertainty that I have called silence in other poems. Was Cerinthus also less than forthcoming? And there is something insecure in those few days. And she does not just say that she feels regret; she says ‘if I have ever in my whole youth done anything, that I would claim to have regretted more’. The whole bargain depends upon good faith, trust: how he seemed to feel, the regret she claims to feel. It only works if he accepts the profession of regret and if the fervid care that seemed to be there was real. The alternative is: If (you don’t believe that) I deeply regret, then may your love cool off (from what it seemed to be). As the sequence returns to the power of speech (fama, fatear), it also recalls the fiduciary world of the deposit in 3.13. Sulpicia is engaged with the ways subjectivity and language are inextricable from context and response. The poem is about regret and desire, and it explores

�� 21 Flaschenreim (1999) 52: she claims a poetic voice; Milnor (2002) 277: she speaks a truth she cannot speak in person (i.e., embodied; i.e., only in the body of the text).

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from within her desire the problems of disclosure according to her own principle of the interpenetration of desire. The blockage of last night not only blocks her ardor today with regret, but makes the full expression of that ardor subject to Cerinthus’ affections, which may have changed because of her silence, to his capacity to care for her regret, and to his trust in her speech. For this reason, her ardor cannot be expressed in authoritative rhetoric: it exists in the mutual space between the lovers seeming, claiming, regretting, caring. This is a figure for how her verse creates a value that it cannot merely assert. We began with what was in part public fama, but we end with private declaration fatear. Sulpicia’s brief sequence moves from the claim that silence about her love would shame her more than disclosure to an apology for failed disclosure. Within this frame she faces and explores the language that traps her, the language in which she is displaced and ignored, the relationships that do not speak or do not listen. But she also creates the language and the silences that imagine and value an intimate and responsible responsiveness. cum digno digna fuisse ferar. Authoritative statement is not the only thing we should be looking for in poetry.

The Garland The so-called Garland for Sulpicia consists of five longer elegiac poems that, in the Tibullan collection, precede Sulpicia’s six epigrams. These poems speak in two alternating voices: the voice of a third-person observer of the relationship between Sulpicia and Cerinthus, sometimes called the amicus, and the voice of Sulpicia herself. It has often been suggested that the Garland poet not only picks up and expands on themes adumbrated by Sulpicia, but that he found his role prescribed by Sulpicia: ‘Let him tell the tale of my joys, if he is said to have none of his own’ (Hinds 1987, 42). In the discussion that follows I will be interested in how these poems respond to the values, language and desires of the Sulpician epigrams. There are two issues: the third person response to Sulpicia and the ventriloquism of Sulpicia’s voice. ‘Sulpicia is decorated for you, Great Mars; it is your kalends. Come yourself from the sky to gaze, if you are wise’. So the Garland poet begins. One notices first of all his easy style and breezy clichés, his relatively lengthy elaborations of parallel or derivative scenes. His voice contrasts with Sulpicia’s epigrammatic density. We are back in the world of elegy, even an easy untroubled elegy, and while the Garland poet’s ease of expression, his elegiac tropes and mannerisms, and his fictional world all reflect his different position with regard to language, power, and genre, they do more than reflect this difference; they practice it.

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Sulpicia est tibi culta, Magne Mars. The collection begins ‘Sulpicia’ and, according to the ancient convention of taking a collection’s opening words as the name of the collection, we are reading the ‘Sulpicia’. Not only does the Garland poet speak for her and about her within the collection, but he speaks as her in the collection as a whole. Here begins the ‘Sulpicia’. And the first thing the Garland poet does is to dress her up: ‘Sulpicia is dressed for you, Great Mars’. The scripta puella is a culta puella. Decor secretly ‘composes’ her movements and she is concerned with her appearance: crines, capillis, comis, palla, nivea candida veste. One remembers the wife of Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Maior. She was known for the propriety of her dress and the decorations of her carriage. It was her fama. But this, we will remember, rewrites and re-envisions the poet who said that it was tedious to compose her face because of what people say and for whom coverings were a shame. If we look to Sulpicia’s epigrams we find no mention of body parts, no specific objectification in the eyes of men; we find instead a world of intimate worth, the mirroring world of cum digno digna. But at the same time that the Garland poet is fixing her hair and arranging her dress, his language, especially the term culta, suggests a reference to literary style as well. The verse enacts an appropriation of Sulpicia more than a response to her text. The Garland poet seems to say: ‘Now that Sulpicia is written into my elegies, she cares about how she is dressed, how she appears and appeals to the Roman god of war and boundaries, and she cares about the clichés and tropes of elegy; now, she is finally cultivated like good poetry should be’.22 There is no ‘frenetic intellectual agility’ here. Instead, we have intimations of the docta puella and soon Sulpicia will be quoting from Bion’s Adonis as she asks to go hunting with Cerinthus. Sulpicia’s difficulties, as I understand them, are within language and power, they are difficulties in standing, and they produce a voice that reveals, contests, even challenges, but is also affected by her position. As the Garland poet takes away her symbolic concerns, he insists on her status as image, as the object of the gaze of others: spectatum veni: Come, Great Mars, and look, he says. This is poetic one-upmanship. Sulpicia’s concern for intimacy and the deposit of amor in her bosom is trumped by the generic indecorum of Mars Magne: the elegiac puella has been transferred to the god of war. In doing this, the Garland poet rewrites militia amoris back into her world, and it effaces Sulpicia’s own

�� 22 Hinds 1987 is overall the best reading of the ‘amicus poems’. He emphasizes generic indecorum and the rules of the elegiac game, rather than the meaning of what is said in the context of Sulpicia’s poems. To attend to meaning, however, is not a form of naïve biographical reading. Personas in poetry, as in life, engage issues in the world. Cerinthus does not have to exist (any more than Lesbia) for the poetry to be about emotions, voice, subjectivity, and so on.

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concern with erotic failure by troping her as the victor. The tangled fall of poem 3.16, ne male inepta cadam, becomes the harmless falling of Mars’ weapons, arma cadant, a parody of the vanquished Propertian lover. Further, the violence that in poem 3.14 robbed Sulpicia of arbitrium (arbitrio quam vis non sinit esse meo, 3.14.8) is retroped as Mars violens, the violence she now will please, simply by being gazed upon. The scene that begins the Garland poet’s Sulpicia is one that reclaims the territory the poet Sulpicia had entered and challenged. And, of course, Mars, Roman god of war, was also the Roman god of boundaries: Sulpicia stepped over the line. Now, her decorous adornment establishes her economic value and makes her the recipient of gifts, which reflect her worth, digna (15). Beautiful and rich, finely dressed, she is now a venerable goddess herself, and Sulpicia’s concern with a private and intimate dignitas is resituated in a public festival where she is surrounded by and worthy of the poems of men: dignior est vestro nulla puella choro, ‘no girl is more worthy of your chorus’ (24). As the Garland poet’s ‘Sulpicia’ speaks for and about Sulpicia, he re-enacts the scene Irigaray describes as a girl’s introduction to discourse: ‘The little girl, who in speech and in the relation with the other prefers the act of dialogue, of being or doing together, is evicted from her position as communicating subject’ (1995, 75–6) – and we will see just how thoroughly the Garland poet lays claim to his property rights as he replays that scene. The poem that follows this programmatic appeal to a new and improved ‘Sulpicia’ is the first ventriloquism of Sulpicia. It is worth remembering that ‘giving someone words’ is the Roman idiom for tricking them and stealing their identity. Beginning with Parker (1994), some have felt that ‘Sulpicia’ speaking in 3.9 and 3.11 marks the poems as hers. The problem is that the voice is not hers: not only are the hypotaxis, subjunctives, questions, and negative constructions missing, but she has been ventriloquized to say what the good elegiac puella should say. This action is not essentially a different mode from writing her up (the third-person poems). Together they enact the masculine position: to objectify and to speak for the female without ever addressing her. Cerinthus is in the country and she now prays for his safety. In her own epigrams, she had rejected Messalla’s trip to the country, considering it a form of abduction; she displayed complex feelings about the avuncular permission (iam licet) that allowed her to stay in Rome. But the country was a favorite place for Tibullus’ fantasies of peace, love, and the attentions of his girl, Delia. Thus, if Sulpicia’s rejection of the country (3.14) can be read as a rejection of the Tibullan fantasy, we find a return of that fantasy here. This time Delia has taken Cerinthus to the country, and not only taken him there, but abducted him: sed procul abducit Delia (3.9.5). This Delia, of course, is the goddess Diana, but that only reflects

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the same kind of competitive poetics which is at work with Mars magne: Tibullus enjoys the country with the elegiac pseudonym Delia, but Cerinthus is taken away by a real goddess. Then, when the Garland poet presents Cerinthus’ hunting trip as an abduction, he takes the sting out of Sulpicia’s abducta. He normalizes it: see, men get abducted too. The problem is that Cerinthus is abducted to where he wants to be, while Sulpicia is abducted elsewhere; the problem is standing. And now, the improved Sulpicia asks permission to go with him: ut tecum liceat, she says, recalling Messalla’s iam licet. She is becoming Aphrodite to Cerinthus’ Adonis, a Hellenistic reference to Bion’s Lament for Adonis, and one that serves to celebrate the beauty of Adonis, it should be remembered. She offers to serve him, to carry his nets, to track the deer. This, she says, would make the forests pleasing: tunc placeant silvae (3.9.15), and so the Garland poet imagines a sardonic answer to Sulpicia’s questions about why a girl would want to go to the country: to carry nets, of course. Finally, Sulpicia’s nudasse amorem is retroped as the new Sulpicia’s desire to be publicly caught in flagrante delicto before her lover’s hunting nets, and not just to be caught making love, but to be accused, arguar: the word returns her to the speech and surveillance of men at the same time that it deprives her of poetic standing. Sulpicia’s celebration of the fragile dignity of the intimate space has been written over with a male voyeuristic fantasy, one which first dresses her up and then undresses her, one in which even the wild boar is voyeur to ‘the joys of her excited desire’, her veneris cupidae gaudia, a perverse sharing of her joys. The boar can watch, but can anyone else? The Garland poet is more interested in possession and competition. His Sulpicia says: ‘If anyone secretly sneaks in to my place of love, let her fall among savage beasts and be torn apart’ and ‘Without me, let there be no loving’. Finally, she demands that Cerinthus rush to her bosom (et celer in nostros ipse recurre sinus, 24). We are far from Sulpicia’s deposit of amor and her desire to share the story of her joy. The next poem (3.10) is a response to Sulpicia’s poem on her illness: a prayer to Phoebus with words that recall Sulpicia’s epigram only to challenge Sulpicia’s values. She had used the occasion of her fever to question and ask for pia cura, a move that undoes the trope of ‘lovesickness’ and brings into focus the interpenetration of desire and the basic problem of one’s relationship to oneself which is created by the absence and silence of the beloved. The Garland poet simply erases the problem of Cerinthus' silence. Not only does Cerinthus pray for his lover (votaque pro domina vix numeranda facit, a version of pia cura?) but like a good elegiac lover, his anger leads him to utter impious words as well: in aeternos aspera verba deos (12–14). Now, this universalized pietas of prayer and blame is more than one-upmanship: it makes Cerinthus the center of attention, for now,

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and, although Sulpicia is sick, Cerinthus must be consoled: pone metum, Cerinthe, ‘put aside your fear, Cerinthus’ (15), and he is consoled with the cliché that, since the gods won’t harm lovers, he won’t need to worry. But Sulpicia is sick; Cerinthus is not the one who will be hurt. From what perspective do these words come? We are ineluctably in the world of the male elegist, as was no doubt obvious from the opening reference to his girl as a physical body, a tenera puella (1). And the physicality of Sulpicia as an object of the male gaze is brutal. Sulpicia’s concern in her sickness poem had been with her physical malady (nostra mala, 3.17.6) and the sadness (tristes ... morbos, 3.17.3) occasioned by Cerinthus’ indifference. Cerinthus in the Garland poems is also concerned with a malady, malum, and a sadness, triste, in line 5. But he’s worried about blotches, macies (5) and informis color (6). You know how a fever can deform the lovely skin of a candida puella and destroy the poet’s pleasure in her image. ‘Sadness’ occurs one other time in this poem. When the Garland poet consoles Cerinthus regarding these fears, he warns that Cerinthus will need to save his tears for the day when the puella really pitches a bitch: When she’s angry (tristior, he says), then you’ll need to cry (21–22). The worried speaker with a sad fever in poem 3.17 is now the fantasized dominatrix of elegy, and one might almost forget to notice that as the Garland poet prays to Phoebus Apollo, consoles and advises Cerinthus, and offers his poem to the pia turba deorum, the ‘pious crowd of gods’, he never once addresses the sick Sulpicia, he never shows the pia cura she had asked for. Similar cooptations, reductions, and perversions of Sulpicia’s speech take place in the birthday poems which follow. In 3.11 the Garland poet ventriloquizes Sulpicia again. It’s Cerinthus’ birthday and she is at the altars. The fever of Sulpicia’s sickness poem is now a competitive and erotic fire: uror ego ante alias (5); and it would be a delight si tibi de nobis mutuus ignis adest (6). She wants him to burn (calet) when he thinks of her (10). Mutuality here is nothing like the pia cura and the cum digno digna of the Sulpicia poems, mainly because the clichés of elegy are so easy and satisfactory. The pia cura is refracted into a world of public ritual and offerings for divine favor. In this more public and brighter world the Garland poet enjoys having his Sulpicia invert the elegiac trope of servitium amoris. Because of Cerinthus’ birth, he has her say, a new form of slavery has been invented for girls (novum servitium 3–4). The phrase could refer to the generic novelty (novus = ‘unheard of’) of a male dominating a female in elegy, or to this latest re-instantiation (novus = recens) of male domination. Either way, the Garland poet recycles Sulpicia’s obstinate reality, Servi filia Sulpicia, back into the conventional desires of elegy by making Sulpicia herself desire slavery for both

Sulpicia and the Speech of Men � ���

the male and female lover: vel serviat aeque | vinctus uterque, 13–14. Formally, this trope is a revision of the mutual dignitas of Sulpicia’s first poem. Finally, in the Garland poet ‘Sulpicia’ not only accepts Cerinthus’ silence, but even articulates the principle by which Cerinthus’ speech is not needed. It is a principle that recycles Sulpicia’s sense that it would be a shame to cover her love: ‘he wants the same thing we want, but his hopes are ‘covered’ (tectius); he is ‘ashamed’ (pudet) to speak his words aloud’ (17–18) – you know how men are embarrassed to show their feelings; it is, ironically, their pudor.23 The final erasure of Sulpicia’s concerns occurs in the new ‘Sulpicia’s’ indifference to Cerinthus’ silence; it is the last line of the poem: quid refert, clamne palamne roget? (20). To Sulpicia, it makes all the difference in the world. The last poem in the Garland sequence celebrates ‘Sulpicia’s’ birthday, but it has little in common with Sulpicia’s poems. Here, she stands, with delicate hands, tenera … manu, bathed and dressed, hair combed, again a sight to behold (conspicienda, 4). Now her desires are secret (occulte, 6) and now she and her man deserve each other (dignior, 10) under the name of servitium (9–10). At last she will be well composed: sic bene compones (9). There is here no obstacle to self-determination and the day is a day of celebration. In place of Messalla’s overzealous intrusions (nimium studiose), we find ‘Sulpicia’ safe in a world of women surrounded by women and talking with her mother. They perform a sacrifice, and the mater studiosa (15), the eager Mother, prescribes what should be prayed for, while ‘Sulpicia’, now a docta puella (2), silently (tacita, 16) wishes for something else. An uncle’s expectations have been replaced by a mother’s harmless parental zeal, and familial conflict is normalized as the typical and predictable conflict between mother and child. ‘Sulpicia’ is now the silent lover and the Garland poet describes her as iam sua, finally her own woman, she is now grata, no longer displaced, but replaced, without words or standing: ‘Let this same love, now already of long standing, be still unchanged when next year comes’ (3.12.19–20).

Coda: Receptions The first reception of the Sulpicia poems that we can witness is the Garland poet’s rewriting of her concerns and tropes. The second reception would have to be the �� 23 See Propertius 2.24.4: aut pudor ingenuus aut reticendus amor; Ov. A.A. 1.275–6: utque viro furtiva Venus, sic grata puellae; | vir male dissimulat, tectius illa cupit. Hinds 1987, 40–41 reads the Ovid as generic orthodoxy and the Garland poet as inversion. The relationship of this silence to Sulpicia’s poems is overlooked.

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order in which they appear in Tibullus Book 3. The book shows the hand of an editor keeping together poem groups: Lygdamus, the panegyric, the ‘Garland’, the Sulpicia poems and a final two. Coming after the longer, easier, and clever Garland poems, the epigrams can easily seem smaller, perhaps feminine, less accomplished. And, in fact, for years they did. But the last two poems also assert the genre’s firm masculine authority. The first is a 24-line poem that converts a girl’s tears to her male lover’s gain; refashions feminine beauty as a male possession – lovely to the lover, displeasing to others; justifies his silence in public as no need for the envy of others; imagines taking his girl off to the forests; realizes that he has said too much (garrula lingua). Most important, however, is the fact that the poem begins: ‘No woman will take your lectum from me’. Couch? or reading? On the one hand a clever reversal of ‘no woman will take me from your couch’, but, on the other hand, the assertion of loving fidelity is also an assertion of authoritarian reading: no woman will take from me how I read you. The poem then ends with the clichéd figure of the lover’s servitium, as he is bound to the altar of Venus. The simultaneous familiarity of elegiac postures and the authority of the poet’s reading recalls the Garland poet. The final epigram turns again to the concerns of Sulpicia’s first poem: rumor and peccare. Rather than wish that the rumor were untrue, the poet wishes that he had not heard it.24 The final word is tace. This paper has been an effort to listen more closely to Sulpicia’s voice, her concerns in her poems and in the world around them to which her poems refer. If it were only a verbal or generic game, it would make no difference who was writing. But it is never only that.

Bibliography Currie, H. MacL. (1983), ‘The Poems of Sulpicia’, Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II 30.3, 1751–64. Farrell, J. (2001), Latin Language and Latin Culture: From Ancient to Modern Times, Cambridge. Flaschenreim, B.L. (1999), ‘Sulpicia and the Rhetoric of Disclosure’, Classical Philology 94, 36– 54. Hallett, J.P. (2002), ‘The Eleven Elegies of the Augustan Poet Sulpicia’, in: L.J. Churchill/P.R. Brown/J.E. Jeffrey (eds.), Women Writing Latin: From Roman Antiquity to Early Modern Europe, New York/London, Volume 1, 45–65. Harvey, E.D. (1992), Ventriloquized Voices: Feminist Theory and English Renaissance Texts, London.

�� 24 See Ovid Am. 3.14.

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Hinds, S. (1987), ‘The Poetess and the Reader: Further Steps Towards Sulpicia’, Hermathena 143, 29–46. Holzberg, N. (1998/9), ‘Four Poets and a Poetess or a Portrait of the Poet as a Young Man? Thoughts on Book 3 of the Corpus Tibullianum’, The Classical Journal 94, no. 2, 169–91. Hubbard, T.K. (2004/5), ‘The Invention of Sulpicia’, The Classical Journal 100, no. 2, 177–94. Irigaray, L. (1995), I love to You: Sketch of a Possible Felicity in History, Alison Martin, trans., Routledge. Keith, A. (2006), ‘Critical Trends in Interpreting Sulpicia’, Classical World 100, no. 1, 3–10. ―― (1997), ‘Tandem venit amor: A Roman Woman Speaks of Love’, in: J.P. Hallett/M.B. Skinner (eds.), Roman Sexualities, Princeton, N.J., 295–310. Kletke, S. (2016), ‘Why Is Sulpicia a Woman?’, Mouseion 13, no.3, 624–53. Lowe, N.J. (1988), ‘Sulpicia’s Syntax’, The Classical Quarterly 38, no. 1, 193–205. Maltby, R. (2009), ‘The Unity of Corpus Tibullianum Book 3: Some Stylistic and Metrical Considerations’, Papers of the Langford Latin Seminars 14, 319–40. Merriam, C.U. (1990), ‘Some Notes on the Sulpicia Elegies’, Latomus 49, 95–98. Milnor, K. (2002), ‘Sulpicia’s (Corpo)reality: Elegy, Authorship, and the Body in [Tibullus] 3.13’, Classical Antiquity 21, no. 2, 259–82. Parker, H.N. (2006), ‘Catullus and the Amicus Catulli: The Text of a Learned Talk’, Classical World 100, no. 1, 17–29. ―― (1994), ‘Sulpicia, the auctor de Sulpicia, and the Authorship of 3.9 and 3.11 of the Corpus Tibullianum’, Helios 21, no. 1, 39–62. Santirocco, M. (1979), ‘Sulpicia Reconsidered’, The Classical Journal 74, no 3, 229–39. Smith, K.F. (1913), The Elegies of Albius Tibullus: The Corpus Tibullianum, New York. Spivak, G.C. (1988), ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’, in: C. Nelson/L. Grossberg (eds.), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, Urbana/Chicago, 271–313. Tschiedel, H.J. (1992), ‘Die Gedichte der Sulpicia (Tib. 3.13-18) – Frauenlyrik?’ Gräzer Beiträge 18, 87–102.

Stephen Harrison

Ovid’s Literary Entrance: Propertian and Horatian Traces?1 � Introduction Traditional ideas of Roman literary history suggest that Propertius and Horace come before Ovid and belong to a different literary generation; this view is encouraged by Ovid’s own effective characterisation of them as his predecessors in Tristia 4.10. In this paper I want to suggest that this model can be questioned, and in particular that some of the later work of Propertius and Horace can be read as reaction to the newly emerging presence of the young Ovid in Roman poetry. Ovid’s entrance as a fresh voice on the Latin literary scene would thus stimulate established poets to engage with some of his innovations.

� Ovid’s early career In Tristia 4.10, his autobiographical elegy written from Black Sea exile in 10–11 CE, Ovid (born 20 March 43 BCE: Tristia 4.10.5–6) looks back in his fifties to the Roman poets of his youth (41–54):2 temporis illius colui fovique poetas, quotque aderant vates, rebar adesse deos. saepe suas volucres legit mihi grandior aevo, quaeque necet serpens, quae iuvet herba, Macer. saepe suos solitus recitare Propertius ignes iure sodalicii, quo mihi iunctus erat. Ponticus heroo, Bassus quoque clarus iambis dulcia convictus membra fuere mei. et tenuit nostras numerosus Horatius aures, dum ferit Ausonia carmina culta lyra. Vergilium vidi tantum, nec avara Tibullo

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�� 1 I am delighted to dedicate this piece to my old friend Theodoros Papanghelis, who himself has made such distinguished contributions to the study of the poets examined here. 2 These lines refer to the period before 16 BCE, the death of Macer, perhaps going back to Ovid’s teenage years pre-20 BCE; see Luisi 2006, 143.

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tempus amicitiae fata dedere meae. successor fuit hic tibi, Galle, Propertius illi; quartus ab his serie temporis ipse fui. I cultivated and cherished the poets of that time, And all the bards that were there I considered divine presences. Macer, greater in age, often read his birds to me, And his harmful serpents and helpful herbs: Propertius was often used to recite his passions to me By the right of the fellowship that joined us. Ponticus famed for epic, Bassus likewise for iambics Were sweet members of my companionship. And Horace, master of metre, held my ears As he struck his polished songs on the Italian lyre. Vergil I only saw, nor did the greedy fates Give time to Tibullus for friendship with me. He was successor to you, Gallus, Propertius to him, And I myself was fourth of them in sequence of time.

Interaction between the young Ovid, Horace and Propertius is clear from this passage, as also is the chronological sequence of love-elegists Gallus, Tibullus, Propertius, Ovid. Ovid’s links with Propertius are presented as close given their shared character as elegiac poets; sodalicii seems to refer to this association as well as that of friendship. The review of Horace is cooler, praised for his metrical virtuosity and verbal polish but with little sign of affection or intimacy. Ovid describes Propertius as the poet of passion, presumably pointing to the books centering on love for Cynthia which we call Propertius 1–3, and Horace as lyricist, suggesting the collection of Odes 1–3; all these are poems of the 20s BCE, with Odes 1–3 emerging c. 23 BCE, and Propertius 3 probably soon after that (Propertius 3.2.19– 26 famously reacts to Horace Odes 3.30).3 Though Ovid does not mention his own early poetry in this passage, it is clear that he was already composing: in 4.10.19–26 he refers to writing poems as a boy, and in the lines immediately preceding (4.10.39–40) he says that the Muses were already urging him to the life of a poet. It seems likely that Ovid’s earliest extant poems emerged in the mid-20s BCE: at 4.10.57–8 he claims that he himself started reciting poetry in Rome as a young man whose beard had only been cut a few times, i.e. some time in his teenage years.4 These first poems are likely to have been some of the Amores and Heroides. Though Amores 1–3 as we have them are

�� 3 See e.g. Nethercut 1970. 4 See McKeown 1987, 75.

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clearly a second edition which postdates 16 BCE,5 some of the poems included in the first edition may well go back some years before this date to the mid-20s BCE;6 and though at least Dido’s epistle to Aeneas (Heroides 7) certainly postdates the Aeneid,7 there is no reason why some of the early Heroides (notoriously difficult to date given their mythological settings) could not be earlier than the Aeneid and belong to the 20s too. In what follows I want to argue that for both Propertius and Horace the emergence of Ovid as a new poetic voice at Rome in the late 20s and early teens BCE was a significant event which marked their subsequent work, especially the fourth book of Propertius’ elegies and Horace’s fourth book of Odes. This adds a new dimension to the criticism of both collections, and reminds us that poetic influence can be two-way, since there is no doubt that Ovid imitates both Horace and Propertius in the Amores and elsewhere.8

� Propertius 4 and Ovid’s early work In a passage of the Ars Amatoria focussed on his own future fame, Ovid points proudly to the innovation of the Heroides (3.341–6): Atque aliquis dicet ‘nostri lege culta magistri Carmina, quis partes instruit ille duas: Deve tener libris titulus quos signat Amorum, Elige, quod docili molliter ore legas: Vel tibi composita cantetur epistola voce:

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Ignotum hoc aliis ille novavit opus.’ And someone will say ‘read the polished poems Of our master, in which he has set out two parts: And choose from the books marked with the seductive title Amores Something to read softly with practised lips: Or let an Epistle be recited by you with studied voice: This work, unknown to others, was his innovation.’

�� 5 See McKeown 1987, 78–9 6 So e.g. McKeown 1987, 75–6. 7 See e.g. Piazzi 2007, 13–35. 8 See McKeown 1987, 85.

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What is the innovation pointed to here in the Heroides? Two key possibilities present themselves. First, as stressed in epistola, it is formally a collection of elegiac letters: as far as we know, this is the first of its kind in Latin or Greek literature, though some epistolary elegies in the poems of Catullus (65 and 68) provide a limited precedent.9 Second, the single Heroides (1–15) have an equally revolutionary aspect in their fictional first-person authors, who are all female and (given the complete epistolary framework of their poems) speak whole poems in their own woman’s voice. This characteristic is highly appropriate to the erotodidactic context of Ars 3, where the poet is in effect advising puellae what to read to their lovers. It is also a characteristic which is strikingly present and new in Propertius 4. In Propertius’ earlier books, though her views are often paraphrased, the puella Cynthia speaks very few words in her own voice: her accusation of infidelity to the poet at 1.3.35–46 and her similar rebuke to him at 2.29.31–8 are the only direct speeches she is presented as making. Nor is any other female figure presented as speaking. In Book 4, by contrast, not only is Cynthia presented as a character speaking at length, whether for most of a poem as a ghost from beyond the grave (4.7.23–94) or in a briefer command to her lover not to be unfaithful (4.8.73–80), but we also find a number of other female characters who speak at length: Arethusa, who speaks the whole of 4.3 in the form of a letter to her husband Lycotas, the lena Acanthis who speaks most of 4.5 (21–62), and the matron Cornelia who speaks the whole of 4.11 as a ghost. What if these lengthy female-voiced poems in Propertius 4 are in fact reacting to Ovid’s lengthy new revolutionary femalevoiced poems in the Heroides? This is especially relevant, of course, for the epistolary elegy 4.3 which matches Ovid’s innovatory new format: here too we find a poem completely framed as the letter of a woman to her absent lover. Scholars since the seventeenth century have periodically suggested that Propertius 4.3 follows the Heroides rather than the other way round, and this possibility is left open by recent commentators, who have pointed out a number of ways in which Arethusa resembles Ovid’s abandoned heroines.10 Like the Penelope of Heroides 1, Arethusa awaits the return of her husband from war after years of absence and weaves to pass the time (4.3.17–18, 33–4 ~ 1.9–10); her letter is smeared with tears like that of Briseis in Heroides 3 (4.3.3-4 ~ 3.1–3), she laments that her marriage was ill-starred like Hypsipyle in Heroides 6 (4.3.11–16 ~ 6.39–46), she wonders about her husband’s possible infidelity like Penelope again (4.3.25–6, 69–70 ~

�� 9 See e.g. Gibson 2003, 269. 10 See especially Hutchinson 2006.

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1.75–6), and like several of Ovid’s heroines starts her letter with a version of an initial epistolary formula, pairing her name with that of her beloved addressee in a single line (4.3.1 ~ 1.1, 2.1, 4.2),11 while her final promise of a votive offering for her husband’s safe return (4.3.71–2) recalls the similar vow of Hypsipyle in Heroides 6.73–8. One element of difference between the two texts is the status of the characters: those of the Heroides all belong to myth or literary history, while Propertius’ pair are vaguely located in the contemporary Roman world, with Greek pseudonyms which in Horatian manner seem to conceal the identities of a Roman married couple;12 similarly, Lycotas’ campaigns are imagined as taking place on appropriate if optimistic borders of the contemporary Augustan empire, in Parthia, Scythia, Britain and India.13 This quasi-realism could be seen as a more realistic reaction in Propertius’ Rome-centered book to Ovid’s purely mythological story-worlds. Propertius 4 may thus react to the Heroides; but it may also react to the Amores. Scholars generally agree that the lena-poem 4.5 is closely related to Amores 1.8: both present lenae (older women acting as erotic intermediaries) who in direct speech try to persuade the puella to take another lover, both characterise their lena with an appropriately punning Greek name (Propertius’ ‘spiky’ Acanthis, cf. 4.5.1)14 and Ovid’s drunken Dipsas, cf. 1.8.3–4), and both end with the poet’s curse on the older woman, amid other thematic and verbal parallels. Recent commentators have left the possibility open that Propertius is picking up Ovid here,15 though the most detailed analysis argues the other way.16 One key point perhaps needs more emphasis in the debate. This poem is Propertius’ first lena-poem after more than eighty love elegies, and the figure of the lena does not occur in his previous work, though it is common enough in the work of Tibullus:17 is the sudden appearance of Acanthis a reaction to Ovid’s recent Dipsas, or is Ovid picking up on Propertius’ first use of the term? This is a similar dilemma to that of the use of the epistolary framework in 4.3 raised above, and as in that case I would suggest that a reaction to the newcomer is at least as probable as an independent innovation.

�� 11 Similar openings naming the correspondents are transmitted in some later MSS of Heroides 5–12 and are usually thought to be inauthentic. 12 We may compare the Asterie and Gyges of Odes 3.7, who seem similarly to be Roman citizens with Greek names. 13 Hutchinson 2006, 104–5. 14 Hutchinson 2006, 139. 15 Hutchinson 2006, 101. 16 Myers 1996, 2. 17 See Myers 1996.

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The possible impact of Ovid’s early poetry on Propertius Book 4 is thus a tantalising thought with a number of consequences for Roman literary history. And this would not be the only way in this particular poetic book reacts to other recent poetic publications at Rome: scholars agree that one of its key elements is an engagement with the Aeneid, and especially with Book 8 of the Aeneid with its focus on the site of Rome, a natural affinity for Propertius’ programme of Roman aetiology and consequent concern with the city’s topography.18 That particular Vergilian book lies behind Propertius’ opening allusion to Aeneas and Evander on the primitive Palatine which reflects the meeting of the two in Vergil (4.1.1–4 ~ 8.97–369), the poem on Palatine Apollo and its version of the battle of Actium which reflects the description of that conflict on the shield of Aeneas (4.6 ~ 8), and the poem presenting Hercules’ violent behaviour at the site of Rome as an explanation of a feature of the cult of the Bona Dea (4.9) which reflects his struggle with Cacus as an explanation of the celebration of the Ara Maxima (8.184– 275). Evocation of the emerging Ovid alongside allusion to the recently dead master Vergil would make Propertius 4 a true barometer of recent Roman literary developments.

� Horace Odes 4.1 and Ovid Amores 1.1 I now turn to the fourth book of Horace’s Odes with a similar argument about a potential reaction to the appearance of the young Ovid on the Roman literary scene. Odes 4.1 marks Horace’s return to lyric after a decade or so since Odes 1–3 by characterising it as a return to erotic poetry: Intermissa, Venus, diu rursus bella moves? Parce precor, precor. Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cinarae. Desine, dulcium mater saeva Cupidinum, circa lustra decem flectere mollibus iam durum imperiis: abi, quo blandae iuvenum te revocant preces. Tempestiuius in domum Paulli purpureis ales oloribus comissabere Maximi, si torrere iecur quaeris idoneum;

�� 18 On this aspect of the book, see Welch 2005.

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namque et nobilis et decens et pro sollicitis non tacitus reis et centum puer artium late signa feret militiae tuae, et, quandoque potentior largi muneribus riserit aemuli, Albanos prope te lacus ponet marmoream sub trabe citrea. Illic plurima naribus duces tura, lyraque et Berecyntia delectabere tibia mixtis carminibus non sine fistula; illic bis pueri die numen cum teneris virginibus tuum laudantes pede candido in morem Salium ter quatient humum. Me nec femina nec puer iam nec spes animi credula mutui nec certare iuvat mero nec vincire novis tempora floribus. Sed cur heu, Ligurine, cur manat rara meas lacrima per genas? Cur facunda parvum decoro inter verba cadit lingua silentio? Nocturnis ego somniis iam captum teneo, iam volucrem sequor te per gramina Martii campi, te per aquas, dure, volubilis.

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Are you, Venus, rousing a war Long intermitted? Spare me, I pray, I pray: I am not the man I was under the sway Of the goodly Cinara. Cease, Cruel mother of the sweet Cupids, To steer at fifty years of age One who is now hardened to your soft commands: Go off to where young men’s seductive prayers call you. Your revelling will be more in season Going to the house of Paullus Maximus, Flying with your crimson swans, If you seek to torch a suitable heart: For he is noble and handsome And far from quiet in defence of worried clients: This boy of a hundred talents Will carry your war-standard far and wide, And, when he gets to come out on top And laugh at the vain gifts of his extravagant rival,

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He will set you in marble form under a citrus-wood roof By the shores of the Alban lake. There you will breathe in welters of incense With your nostrils, and be pleasured By the lyre and Trojan pipe With their songs mixed in with the pan-pipe: There twice a day boys with tender girls In praise of your godhead Will beat the ground in triple time In the manner of the Salii. No woman or boy, nor credulous hope Of mutual affection gives me pleasure, Or to join in the contest of wine Or to bind my temples with fresh flowers. But why, Ligurinus, why Does an occasional tear flow down my cheeks? Why does my usually eloquent tongue, Fall into unfitting silence as I speak? In my dreams at night Now I hold you fast, now I follow your flight Through the grass of the Campus Martius, Cruel one, though the rolling waters.

This equation of love and lyric seems problematic: while love was an important element in Odes 1–3, it was by no means the only element and stood alongside many political, philosophical and symposiastic themes, especially in Books 2 and 3. But this emphasis can be well explained if we take Odes 4.1 to be a reaction to the recent emergence of a new wave of love-elegy in Ovid’s Amores, and in particular to be an engagement with Amores 1.1, very likely available before the terminus ante quem of Odes 4 in 13 BCE: Arma gravi numero violentaque bella parabam edere, materia conveniente modis. par erat inferior versus—risisse Cupido dicitur atque unum surripuisse pedem. ‘Quis tibi, saeve puer, dedit hoc in carmina iuris? Pieridum vates, non tua turba sumus. quid, si praeripiat flavae Venus arma Minervae, ventilet accensas flava Minerva faces? quis probet in silvis Cererem regnare iugosis, lege pharetratae Virginis arva coli? crinibus insignem quis acuta cuspide Phoebum instruat, Aoniam Marte movente lyram? sunt tibi magna, puer, nimiumque potentia regna; cur opus adfectas, ambitiose, novum?

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an, quod ubique, tuum est? tua sunt Heliconia tempe? vix etiam Phoebo iam lyra tuta sua est? cum bene surrexit versu nova pagina primo, attenuat nervos proximus ille meos; nec mihi materia est numeris levioribus apta, aut puer aut longas compta puella comas.’ Questus eram, pharetra cum protinus ille soluta’ legit in exitium spicula facta meum, lunavitque genu sinuosum fortiter arcum, ‘quod’ que ‘canas, vates, accipe’ dixit ‘opus!’ Me miserum! certas habuit puer ille sagittas. uror, et in vacuo pectore regnat Amor. Sex mihi surgat opus numeris, in quinque residat: ferrea cum vestris bella valete modis! cingere litorea flaventia tempora myrto, Musa, per undenos emodulanda pedes!

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I was preparing to speak of arms and violent war in heavy metre With my subject matching my measures. The second line was the same length – they say Cupid laughed and stole a single foot. ‘Who gave you, cruel boy, this control over my poems? We bards belong to the Muses – we’re not your crowd. What would happen if Venus stole her weapons from blonde Minerva, Or if blone Minerva were to wave blazing torches? Who would be for Ceres’ rule in mountainous woods, Or for fields to be farmed under the law of the maiden with the quiver? Who would fit fine-haired Apollo with a sharp spear, While Mars struck the Aonian lyre? You, boy, have realms which are great and already too powerful: Why do you seek after a new enterprise in your ambition? Is it because everywhere needs to be yours? Are Helicon’s vales yours? Is even Apollo’s lyre barely safe in his control? When my new page has risen up well with its first line, The next one makes my force reduced: And I have no topic fit for lighter measures No boy or girl with smart long hair.’ I’d finished my complaint; straightaway he loosed his quiver, Chose arrows made for my destruction, And bent with his knee’s force his curving bow, Saying ‘receive a work to sing, bard’. Poor me! That boy has sure arrows: I am on fire, and Love reigns in my empty heart. Let my work rise in six measures, and sink in five: Farewell, cruel wars, with your metre! Gird your blonde temples with sea-shore myrtle, Muse to be measured in eleven feet!

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The resemblances between the two poems are striking, and I would argue best explained by conscious interaction. Both poems are programmatic introductions which ironically imply that the book in hand is the result of a poetic diversion caused by the intervention of gods and boys of cruelty and/or beauty: Horace represents himself as forced back to lyric by Venus and by love for the unresponsive boy Ligurinus, while Ovid suggests that the ‘cruel boy’ Cupid (5) has turned him from Vergilian epic (the initial arma surely picks up the first word of the Aeneid) to love-elegy. Both poems also begin with the idea of writing about war: Odes 4.1 starts from the re-introduction of the metaphorical war of love (4.1.2 bella), the elegiac topos of militia amoris (cf. 4.1.16 militiae … tuae), while Amores 1.1 starts from the temporary adoption of the literary war of epic which is finally dispensed with through Cupid’s intervention (1.1.28 bella). Another striking common element is that of love-objects of both sexes: in Amores 1.1 the poet complains he has no youthful beloved of either gender (20 aut puer aut longas compta puella comas), a point which is echoed in very similar terms by the poet of Odes 4.1 (28 nec femina nec puer). In both cases, this lack of a love-object is remedied, in Horace in the same poem in the person of Ligurinus, in Amores 1 in poem 1.3 where a girl eventually emerges. In both poems, too, the poet represents himself as suffering from the pains of love: in Amores 1.1 we find the exclamation me miserum! (25), while in Odes 4.1 we find the poet weeping for his unrequited passion (33 manat rara meas lacrima per genas); in both cases this grief is clearly metaphorical, representing the lamentation thought to be typical of elegiac poetry, the genre of Amores 1.1 and the genre which (I would argue) Horace’s poem is here confronting. The possibility of reacting to a new wave of love-elegy in the form of Ovid’s earliest Amores provides a nice ambiguity in the interpretation of 4.1.7–8 abi, / quo blandae iuvenum te revocant preces, ‘Go off to where young men’s seductive prayers call you’. The poet’s instructions to Venus, on the surface merely redirecting her to the youthful Paullus Fabius Maximus, more suitable for love than the fifty-something poet, could also be read as telling her to return to the pages of elegy and to the poems of the youthful Ovid in particular. Each of the three elements of blandae iuuenum … preces can be paralleled in the opening sequence of the Amores: blanditiae, seductive words, are twice evoked there as key tools for the love-elegist (1.2.35, 1.4.66), iuvenes are seen as the captives of Cupid and in effect the audience of Ovid’s poems (1.2.17), while erotic preces are key themes in 1.3 (1,4) and 1.4 (2,51). The presence of Paullus Fabius Maximus as addressee of Odes 4.1 is another reason for supposing that Horace’s poem might react to Ovid’s emergence. In the period of Odes 4, the mid-teens BCE, Maximus was a rising star in his twenties,

Ovid’s Literary Entrance: Propertian and Horatian Traces? � ���

marrying Augustus’ cousin Marcia and becoming consul in 11 BCE; his later career involved the key proconsulate of Asia and the close personal friendship of Augustus.19 He famously forms one of a group of young nobiles connected with the imperial house addressed by Horace in Odes 4, matching Antony’s son Iullus Antonius in 4.2 and Livia’s sons Tiberius and Drusus in 4.4 and 4.14.20 But it is also clear from Ovid’s exile poetry that Maximus, much his own age, was a significant early patron of the younger poet at very much the time of Horace’s poem. In Ex Ponto 1.2, addressed to Maximus, Ovid claims that he was Maximus’ client and wrote a poem for his wedding to Marcia (1.2.129–32). It would thus be particularly appropriate for Horace to echo the young Ovid in a poem addressed to Maximus, already a patron of the new emerging poetic star. As in the case of Propertius, poetic interaction between Horace and Ovid works the other way too. It has been well argued that Tristia 2 is Ovid’s edgy version of Horace’s Epistle to Augustus (Ep.2.1),21 while the title of Ovid’s Ars Amatoria might similarly point to that of Horace’s Ars Poetica, likely to have emerged in the same decade, subversively echoing a hexameter didactic work on poetry for young Roman nobiles in the title of a daring erotodidactic elegiac poem directed to young Roman lovers;22 the content of Ovid’s Ars with its rhetoric of excess has also been plausibly seen as a reaction to the rhetoric of moderation in Horace’s hexameter epistles more generally.23

� Conclusion The traditional assumption that Ovid always comes after and reacts to Propertius and Horace can easily be challenged. For Propertius 4 and Horace Odes 4, the appearance of the early works of the young Ovid, both Heroides and Amores, may well have matched the appearance of the Aeneid (and the disappearance of its author) as an important literary stimulus for Rome’s senior poets in their new collections. The possibility of two-way rather than one-way interactions between

�� 19 See Syme 1986, 403–16. 20 See Syme 1986, 382–402. 21 Barchiesi 2001, 79–104. 22 Whether or not the title Ars Poetica was authorial or this poem was originally planned as part of Epistles 2 (see further Harrison 2008), the title was in use as early as Quintilian (Ep.Tryph.2, Inst. 8.3.60): see Brink 1963, 233; Horsfall 1981, 105. For the play between the two titles, see e.g. Sharrock 2005, 61–2. 23 See Gibson 2007.

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some of its most important figures thus yields some intriguing results for Roman literary history which are worth more than casual consideration.

Bibliography Barchiesi, A. (2001), Speaking Volumes: Narrative and Intertext in Ovid and other Latin Poets, London. Brink, C.O. (1963), Horace On Poetry I: Prolegomena to the Literary Epistles, Cambridge. Gibson, R.K. (2003), Ovid Ars Amatoria Book 3, Cambridge. ―― (2007), Excess and Restraint: Properius, Horace and Ovid’s Ars Amatoria, London. Harrison, S.J. (2008), ‘Horace Epistles 2: The Last Horatian Book of Sermones’, Proceedings of the Langford Latin Seminar 13, 173–86. Horsfall, N. (1981), ‘Some Problems of Titulature in Roman Literary History’, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 28, 103–14. Hutchinson, G.O. (2006), Propertius Elegies Book IV, Cambridge. Luisi, A. (2006), Lettera ai Posteri: Ovidio, Tristia 4,10, Bari. McKeown, J.C. (1987), Ovid Amores: Volume I, Liverpool. Myers, K.S. (1996), ‘The Poet and the Procuress: The Lena in Latin Love Elegy’, The Journal of Roman Studies 86, 1–21. Nethercut, W.R. (1970), ‘The Ironic Priest’, The American Journal of Philology 91, 385–407. Piazzi, L. (2007), P. Ovidii Nasonis Heroidum Epistula VII, Dido Aeneae, Florence. Sharrock, A.R. (2005), ‘Ars amatoria - Ars poetica’, in: L. Landolfi/P. Monella (eds.), ‘Arte perennat amor: riflessioni sull'intertestualità ovidiana: l'Ars amatoria’, Bologna, 57–77. Syme, R. (1986), The Augustan Aristocracy, Oxford. Welch, T.S. (2005), The Elegiac Cityscape. Propertius and the Meaning of Roman Monuments, Columbus.

� Part II: Augustan and Neronian Epic

Alison Sharrock

Till Death do us Part … or Join: Love beyond Death in Ovid’s Metamorphoses There are many stories in Ovid’s Metamorphoses which encapsulate in some way the romantic desire for union in death which has played such a strong role in the history of Western love and sex. A graphic manifestation of the more violent and sexual end of the Eros-Thanatos configuration comes in the mutual suicides of the youthful Pyramus and Thisbe, with its notorious quasi-consummation in the spurting blood of Pyramus (Met. 4.121–4),1 while the imagery of orgasmic death gains extreme, perhaps even darkly comic, expression in Semele’s desire to feel the full force of Jupiter’s divine virility (Met. 3.307–9). More comfortably, we can, with Lelex, point to the embracing trees that are Baucis and Philemon, whose long life of ideal(ised) concordia culminates in their mutual transformation into trees (Met. 8. 620–724). While I shall argue in a later paper that metamorphosis is most often not a form of death but of changed life,2 in the case of this golden couple, whose transformation comes at the natural end of their long lives together and in response to their request that neither should outlive the other, it seems to me appropriate to regard the change as a kind of idealised, almost prelapsarian death. Another case of married love which outlives the moment of metamorphosis ― and indeed a kind of death in the shipwreck ― is that of Ceyx and Alcyone, who, as transbirds, have the unusual distinction of maintaining their relationship after metamorphosis and even producing offspring (Met. 11.739–48).3 There are, however, two cases in the poem of love beyond death which are remarkable also from a narratological point of view, in that they involve a split in the narrative between the lower and upper worlds: Narcissus and Orpheus. The idea that there should be narrative diversions in the form of ‘roads not taken’ in the Metamorphoses is by no means rare.4 What is unusual about these two characters is that the narrative line associated with them splits at the moment

�� 1 See Perraud 1983; Segal 1985. 2 See Fantham 2004, 15–16. 3 Lesser-known examples of mutual transformation as a form of death include Olenus and Lethaea, who appear at Met.10.68–71, as a simile for Orpheus’ shock at the second loss of Eurydice. Lethaea was turned to stone in punishment for boasting of her beauty and her husband Olenus chose to share her metamorphosis. Heath 1996 argues that the simile reflects unfavourably on Orpheus. Transformation into stone tends to be rather more fatal than into the animal or vegetable kingdoms - or indeed into water. 4 See Tarrant 2005; Barchiesi 2002; Tissol 1997, chapter 2.

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of the death into an underworld element and one which continues in the quotidian. In both cases, the duality is central to the concerns of the poem, being integrally involved both in metamorphosis and in love, or, as we might say, in ‘metAMORphosis’. At the beginning of Book 11, as Orpheus, mourning the double loss of Eurydice, rejects female love and sings to the surrounding natural world, an angry crowd of Thracian women attacks him with inanimate objects that nevertheless respond to the bard’s voice by falling short of their target, with apologies for any inconvenience caused (Met. 11.12–13). Although Orpheus is so remarkably at one with nature, it seems as if already he inhabits a different world from his attackers. They belong to a world in which a widowed man should find new life among the young women of his environment.5 His mental world appears to be anywhere but where theirs is: with boys, theoretically (Met. 10.82–5), although there is no sign of this in the narrative about him; with the trees, animals, and stones, certainly (Met. 11.1–2); and, we must presume, psychologically already with Eurydice in the underworld. This chronotopographical disjunction may perhaps be hinted at in the rather surprising simile which describes the attack.6 ac primum attonitas etiamnum uoce canentis innumeras uolucres anguesque agmenque ferarum Maenades Orphei titulum rapuere theatri; inde cruentatis uertuntur in Orphea dextris et coeunt, ut aues, si quando luce uagantem noctis auem cernunt, structoque utrimque theatro ceu matutina ceruus periturus harena praeda canum est; uatemque petunt et fronde uirentes coniciunt thyrsos non haec in munera factos. Met. 11.20–8

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And first the Maenads seized the innumerable birds who were astonished even now at the voice of the singer, and the snakes and the hosts of wild animals, the honorific crowd at the Orphic theatre; then they turn on Orpheus with their bloodied hands and gather together, like birds do if ever they see a bird of the night wandering in the daylight, or as if a stag about to perish on the morning sands in the theatre built up on all sides is the plunder of dogs; and they attack the bard and throw at him thyrsi green with leaves, not made for such purposes.

�� 5 As Reed 2013, 305 points out, Ovid’s replacement of Virgil’s Ciconum matres (Georg. 4.520) with nurus Ciconum (Met. 11.3) makes the attacking women into people of marriageable age. 6 All quotations from the Metamorphoses are from the OCT edition of Tarrant 2004. All translations are my own.

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The women, now explicitly called Maenads so that we do not forget the connection either with Bacchus7 or with Pentheus, first make an attack on Orpheus’ audience, above all on the remarkably attentive birds; then in the metamorphic suggestion of simile they become (like) birds themselves, who flock together to attack a common enemy. The surprising part, however, is that Orpheus in the simile takes the part of a bird of the night, an owl, who is out of place, uncomfortable in the daylight, and easy prey for the day-birds. So Orpheus is taking on the role of a bird of ill omen, one associated with the night, and also with death. It is almost as if his narrative has bifurcated already. As Reed points out (2013, 308), there is probably an intratextual trace here of Nyctimene, who was also described as a bird of the night (noctis auem, Met. 2.564) by the resentful narrating crow, who complains that the owl is honoured by Minerva despite receiving her avian form in punishment for incest with her father – a subtle hint at connection with one of Orpheus’ most famous and disturbing stories (Myrrha, Met. 10.300–513). The stag who is about to perish (also in daylight, though early morning) is less obviously problematic for Orpheus, but is again another being out of place with his environment, in that this is not a wild hunt but one taking place in the Roman arena. It too, of course, hides, rather less subtly, an intratextual link to Actaeon. When the noise finally overpowers Orpheus’ magical voice and he is killed, his anima is breathed out through that remarkable mouth which had been heard by stones and understood by wild animals - but apparently not human women (Met. 11.38–44). If the bard is already out of place before his death, at this point his being and its narrative is scattered even more widely through the cosmos and the poem. membra iacent diuersa locis; caput, Hebre, lyramque excipis, et (mirum!) medio dum labitur amne, flebile nescioquid queritur lyra, flebile lingua murmurat exanimis, respondent flebile ripae. iamque mare inuectae flumen populare relinquunt et Methymnaeae potiuntur litore Lesbi. Met. 11.50–5

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his limbs lie scattered over the countryside; the head and the lyre you receive, river Hebrus, and (marvel!) while it is gliding in the middle of the stream, the lyre complains something weeping, the lifeless tongue murmurs weeping, the banks respond weeping. And now borne on the sea they leave the native river and reach the shore of Methymnaean Lesbos.

�� 7 On which, see Graf 1987, 86.

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Orpheus’ body is now in multiple places, his lyre and head together being the parts followed by the narrative as they float down the river, still singing and echoing Virgil’s version of the story, with the threefold repetition of the name of Eurydice (at Georg. 4.523–7) replaced by (the elegiac) flebile.8 After the head lands at its traditional burying place of Lesbos, Ovid brings in a non-traditional snake to attack the severed remnant of the bard, thus, as Reed notes, creating a nice intratextual ring with the snake which attacked Eurydice and caused the trouble/story in the first place (Met. 10.10).9 Such sacrilegious violence is forestalled, however, when Apollo turns the snake to stone, thus providing a ‘token metamorphosis’ such as Ovid sometimes outrageously uses to ‘justify’ (as if it were needed) the inclusion of long stories with no formal story of transformation.10 hic ferus expositum peregrinis anguis harenis os petit et sparsos stillanti rore capillos. tandem Phoebus adest morsusque inferre parantem [arcet et in lapidem rictus serpentis apertos] congelat et patulos, ut erant, indurat hiatus. Met. 11.56–60

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Here a wild snake attacks the face exposed on the foreign stands and the hair scattered with dripping water. Finally, Phoebus is present [and keeps it off by changing the open gape of the snake into stone] and freezes it as it is preparing to bite and hardens the gaping jaws, just as they were.

The element in this ‘token’ metamorphosis that interests me particularly is the extent to which the lithification of the snake is markedly displaced from any direct connection with the Thracian bard. Ovid might want to round off the long Orpheus cycle with a metamorphosis, but he chooses not to develop stories about the catasterisation of the lyre,11 or about the burial place of the head being responsible for the remarkable musical ability of Lesbos, or the head acting as an oracle,

�� 8 Wills 1996, 359–61 suggests that this intertextual nexus may also involve the elegiac poet Gallus. If so, the adjective flebile, one of a group of ‘crying’ words that allude to the etymology of the genre in e e legein (‘to cry woe’), would be a hint in that direction. On the relationship between Virgil’s and Ovid’s Orpheuses, see especially Segal 1989, chapter 4. 9 See Reed 2013, 312–13, including for some textual difficulties in this passage, which do not significantly affect the present reading. 10 A well-known example is Phaethon’s disastrous and extended flight in the chariot of his father the Sun, topped off with his sisters, the Heliades, being turned into trees. 11 On which, see Graf 2014, 85.

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or it being the head itself which is turned into a snake.12 Orpheus’ narrative is bifurcated at life-end: the head and the lyre, which might have been subjects of metamorphosis, maintain the Orphic production of song, and the intertextual replays, but they seem now considerably detached from the being that is Orpheus. That being seems to be more firmly located in the umbra which makes a return trip to the underworld. Umbra subit terras et quae loca uiderat ante cuncta recognoscit quaerensque per arua piorum inuenit Eurydicen cupidisque amplectitur ulnis. hic modo coniunctis spatiantur passibus ambo, nunc praecedentem sequitur, nunc praeuius anteit Eurydicenque suam iam tuto respicit Orpheus. Met. 11.61–6

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The shade goes down under the earth and recognises again all the places which he/it had seen earlier and seeking through the fields of the good finds Eurydice and embraces her with desiring arms. Here they both walk now side-by-side, now he follows her as she precedes him, now he goes in front and Orpheus now safely looks back at his Eurydice.

Butler repeats some virulently negative responses to this scene, calling it schmaltzy, before suggesting that in fact this final safe backward glance, worked out in the positions of (male) subject at the end of the line reviewing (female) object at the beginning of the line, encapsulates the moment of completion in the poetic process, when it changes from poesis to product, when the writer looks back at what he has made and becomes a reader (the gendered parentheses are mine).13 I would like to push a little harder the human relationship under the poetological metaphor.

�� 12 See Graf 2014, 92–5. Lowe 2010 discusses the transformation of the snake and the relationship between the metamorphosis and the Orpheus story in toto. He suggests that Ovid did not have the head itself turning into a snake, as occurs in a later work exhibited to Plutarch, in order to allow Orpheus to join Eurydice in the underworld, rather than continuing alive in the upper world. That would not quite work, however, because Orpheus is already dead and this is only his severed head. Metamorphosed characters with continued lives are almost always changed while alive, the only exceptions I can think of being those divinised, such as Acis and Hippolytus. Lowe develops the insight of Rimell 2006, 33, that Orpheus’ head should be connected with that of Medusa, especially in the moment when Perseus lays his weapon of mass destruction carefully on the beach and thus invents coral. Lowe argues for a number of correspondences between Orpheus and Medusa, in addition to the ‘killing gaze’, making Orpheus ‘a second and equally sympathetic Medusa’. 13 Butler 2009, esp. 70–1.

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Orpheus looks for Eurydice specifically in the arua piorum. If he had been descending into the dominant intertextual underworld, that of Aen. 6, he would have needed to look for his wife somewhere else, of which the best guess would have been where Aeneas found Dido, in the Lugentes campi (Aen. 6.441) which appear to be the only place open to women in Virgil’s underworld. Here he would have found those whom durus amor destroyed, among the myrtle trees which speak of Venus, and their curae (erotic sufferings) do not leave them even in death. Included in the group are women of greater or lesser degrees of criminality, which themselves have greater or lesser direct erotic connection: Phaedra, Procris, Eriphyle, Evadne, Pasiphae, Laodamia, and (most bizarrely) the sexchanging Caenis, though only named in his male version Caeneus. And of course Dido. Of these, some committed or planned sexual crimes (Phaedra, Pasiphae), some committed crimes that were not particularly related to erotic love (Procris, Eriphyle), at least one was a rape victim (Caenis/Caeneus), and at least one was simply a lover whose husband had died (Laodamia). And of course – again – Dido. Although this is not the place to explore in more detail the significance of the group, I suggest that Orpheus’ meetings with Eurydice recall this list and the encounter between Aeneas and Dido which it introduces. On Orpheus’ first, catabatic, visit, after his song (whatever we might think of it) so moves the rulers of Hell that they call for Eurydice, she was among the recent shades and incessit passu de uulnere tardo (‘walked with gait slowed from her wound’, Met. 10.49). As such, especially given the ubiquitous imagery of love as wound, she seems to bear some comparison with Virgil’s list. But the Ovidian Orpheus rightly looks for his wife in what is clearly Elysium, Virgil’s version of which has plenty of room for poets,14 but no space for women. Orpheus would therefore not find Eurydice in Virgil’s sedes beatae (Aen. 6.639), but he would have found a version of himself. nec non Threicius longa cum ueste sacerdos obloquitur numeris septem discrimina uocum, iamque eadem digitis, iam pectine pulsat eburno. Aen. 6.645–7 And also the Thracian priest with his long robe accompanies their songs with the seven distinct tones (lit. interrupts their measures with the seven distinctions of voices), beating them now with his fingers, now with an ivory plectrum.

�� 14 See Horsfall 2010.

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Orpheus and his lyre are accompanying the masculine pursuits of the Blessed, in their gymnastic and choral varieties. By contrast, the Ovidian Orpheus achieves a blessed post-vital existence looking at his wife from any direction he chooses, or she chooses. Not only that, but also he is apparently silenced and lyreless. His happy outcome is indeed, as Lowe notes, facilitated by the forked-off narrative of the head and lyre. Some of his lucky position may well be to do with Orphic notions of post-mortem salvation, but I think there is more to it. Orpheus in this underworld has ceased to be a poet, has stopped constructing Eurydice as his artistic work, stopped destroying her by his consuming unidirectional vision, and has achieved a degree of mutuality which was previously impossible. Ovid replaces Virgil’s underworld with one that has room for women and for love. There is only one other case in the Metamorphoses15 where the narrative splits at the moment of death into two separate lines - the story of Narcissus. Scholars have been tempted by potential connections between Orpheus and Narcissus, especially with the intermediary Pygmalion,16 but as regards their bifurcated endof-life narratives they are opposites as well as partners. Where Orpheus learns the lessons of his mortal failings and develops a functional relationship in the underworld, Narcissus has gained nothing, except perhaps an ironic instantiation of an answer to his prayer (uotum in amante nouum, ‘an unusual prayer for a lover’, Met. 3.468) for separation from his beloved, but from which he learns nothing. As is well-known, Narcissus’ problem is excessive closeness to his beloved – himself. When he finally realises that the beautiful boy reflected in the pool is nothing other than an image of himself, and that he is the living epitomisation of Tiresias’ Delphic warning about not knowing himself (Met. 3.346–8), instead of getting over himself he continues with the games of mirroring, echoes, inversions and balances as if nothing had happened.17 His claim that nec me mea fallit imago (‘my

�� 15 Of related interest is the case of Hippolytus/Virbius. In an absurd piece of attempted consolation of the bereaved Egeria, Hippolytus tells the story of his own death, which takes place in accordance with Euripidean expectations (Met. 15.531–4). What is more surprising is that his and the poem’s narrative line continues as he tells us about how he went down to the underworld, where he is cured (he got better!) by Aesculapius and turned into a minor deity by his patron (and quasi-lover?) Diana, who hides him away and changes more or less everything about him, including the name. So this is someone whose narrative continues after his death, but not one that is split into two forks. 16 See Butler 2009; Hardie 2002, 192. 17 On Narcissus, as well as the interaction between Narcissus and Pygmalion, Rosati 1983 is still key; see especially 27–42. See also Hardie 2002, 146–63, especially 161.

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image does not deceive me’, Met. 3.463) continues to be spectacularly untrue. At this point, he wishes he could divide himself (or be divided) into two Narcissuses. quid faciam? roger anne rogem? quid deinde rogabo? quod cupio mecum est; inopem me copia fecit. o utinam a nostro secedere corpore possem! uotum in amante nouum: uellem, quod amamus, abesset. iamque dolor uires adimit nec tempora uitae longa meae superant primoque exstinguor in aeuo. nec mihi mors grauis est posituro morte dolores; hic qui diligitur uellem diuturnior esset. nunc duo concordes anima moriemur in una. Met. 3.465–73

465

470

What should I do? Should I be asked or should I ask? What then will I ask? What I desire is with me. Abundance has made me poor. Oh, if only I could secede from my (our) body! An unusual prayer for a lover, I wish that what I love (we love) were absent. And now pain takes away my strength, the long times of my life are not surviving, and I am being extinguished in my prime. And death is not grievous to me as I shall put aside my pains through death; but I wish that he who is loved could be longer-lived. Now as two hearts in union we die in one soul.

The delicious ironies of this passage are well known. What has not, I think, been noticed previously is the extent to which not only does Narcissus not surprisingly not put aside his pains in death (like all those women in Virgil’s underworld), but more importantly he becomes the ‘two’ he desired to be by the split narrative of a shade in the underworld and a metamorphosis in the upper world – but it is no use to him at all. Like Orpheus, he is united in the underworld with his beloved when he stares at himself in the Styx, but unlike Orpheus for Narcissus nothing has changed and the separation from his body which he so ardently sought (3.467) does him no good. Let us look more closely at the moment of Narcissus’ death. ille caput uiridi fessum submisit in herba; lumina mors clausit domini mirantia formam. Met. 3.502–3 He put down his tired head on the lush grass. Death closed the eyes as they admired the form of their master.

It is explicitly death that closes Narcissus’ eyes, rather than the herba on which he has lain his head. The language here tempts us with a metamorphosis, intertwining the caput … fessum and the uiridi … herba, and with the subject appearing to send himself down into (submisit) the plant in the way that Myrrha more

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dynamically subsedit mersitque herself in the tree which she is becoming. But this is not what is happening and Narcissus is not turning into grass. Rather, he is straightforwardly dead. The storyline then follows Narcissus into the underworld, where he continues to stare at his beloved image in the Styx. (tum quoque se, postquam est inferna sede receptus, in Stygia spectabat aqua.) Met. 3.504–5 Then also, after he was received in the infernal seat, he kept on looking at himself in the Stygian waters.

Meanwhile, back in the upper world, the nymphs grieve for the dead Narcissus and Echo echoes their laments. When the storyline returns to the upper world and those mourning for Narcissus, the eponymous flower is found in place of a body. planxere sorores Naiades et sectos fratri posuere capillos, planxerunt Dryades; plangentibus adsonat Echo. iamque rogum quassasque faces feretrumque parabant: nusquam corpus erat; croceum pro corpore florem inueniunt foliis medium cingentibus albis. Met. 3.508–10 The sister Naiads grieved and put aside their hair, cut for their brother, the Dryads grieved, while Echo resounded to their grief. And now they were preparing the pyre and the shaken torches and the bier: nowhere was there a body; in place of the body they find a flower which is yellow in the middle with white petals around it.

The actual metamorphosis is eclipsed (perhaps this is a case of cetera quis nescit?), but the eponymous flower is Narcissus (pro corpore) in a way that the flower that Venus creates from the blood of Adonis (Met. 10.728–9) is not, nor is that which commemorates Hyacinthus (Met. 10.210–13) and Ajax (Met. 13.395). I dwell on this very well-known passage, because it is an unusual piece of narrative bifurcation in accounts of transformation in the Metamorphoses. While we might quite often see a scene from different contemporaneous points of view, as we do through the eyes of the transformed Actaeon and his companions, there are very few stories which follow in different directions the consciousness, soul, or essence of the subject and his/her transformed shape. The bifurcation of the narrative here has the effect that there end up being in some sense two Narcissuses, one in the underworld and the other in the form of a flower in the upper world – a nice irony given his difficulty in being sufficiently separate from his beloved.

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This undermines the small consolation that has been noted for Narcissus in dying ‘two souls in one’ with his beloved. Although he has become two (the flower above and the shade below), he still stares at the reflection which he wrongly thinks is his other self. What about Echo – does she die? It is not quite so clear. attenuant uigiles corpus miserabile curae adducitque cutem macies et in aera sucus corporis omnis abit. uox tantum atque ossa supersunt: uox manet; ossa ferunt lapidis traxisse figuram. [inde latet siluis nulloque in monte uidetur, 400 omnibus auditur; sonus est, qui uiuit in illa.] Met. 3.396–401 Wakeful cares reduce her miserable body and thinness draws up her skin and all the juice of her body goes out into the air. Only her voice and bones survive: the voice remains; the bones are said to have drawn out the shape of a stone. [Thence she is hidden in the woods and is seen on no mountain, but is heard by all. There is sound which lives in her.]

She gets very thin, down to just voice and bone, then voice, with something that is just hearsay about her bones, until she is not seen but still heard and there is sound which lives in her. The last two lines of the quotation (400–1) were excised by Heinsius, but even if we wipe them from our memories Echo still returns to the scene 90 lines later, with all her love and grief intact.18 quae tamen ut uidit, quamuis irata memorque, indoluit, quotiensque puer miserabilis ‘eheu!’ 495 dixerat, haec resonis iterabat uocibus ‘eheu!’ cumque suos manibus percusserat ille lacertos, haec quoque reddebat sonitum plangoris eundem. ultima uox solitam fuit haec spectantis in undam: ‘heu frustra dilecte puer!’ totidemque remisit 500 uerba locus, dictoque ‘uale’ ‘uale’ inquit et Echo. Met. 3.493–501 When she saw this, although angry and remembering, she grieved, and as often as the miserable boy said ‘alas’, she repeated ‘alas’ with echoing voices. And when he battered his arms with his hands, she also returned the same sound of lamentation. This was the final

�� 18 See Barchiesi/Rosati 2007, 190. The excellent note on the previous page regarding the demise of Echo draws out the metamorphic hints in sucus (plants) and lapidis (stone) as well as the paradoxical continuity and discontinuity in the person of Echo.

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voice of the one looking into the accustomed water: ‘alas boy loved in vain!’ and so often did the place return the words, and when ‘farewell’ was said, ‘farewell’ said Echo also.

Finally, as noted above, she joins in the grieving for the death of Narcissus. This all seems to me to suggest that Echo is alive at the end of the story in a sense that Narcissus is not. Hers of course is an aetiological metamorphosis, which requires continuing presence, but one might say that so too is the origin of the flower. Echo is sufficiently alive to grieve for Narcissus.19 She also remains as much divided from him as ever. While Narcissus becomes, in some sense, two beings – a body-flower and a double shade – Echo lacks all corporeality, even such as is maintained in shady form by the ghosts in the underworld. She may perhaps be separated from her bones (so they say) but there is no chance for her to be reunited with her beloved after death, even as a sound echoing on the banks of the Styx.

Bibliography Barchiesi A. (2002), ‘Narrative Technique and Narratology in the Metamorphoses’, in: R.P. Hardie (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Ovid, Cambridge, 180–99. Barchiesi A./G. Rosati (2007), Ovidio Metamorfosi Volume II: Libri III-IV, Fondazione Lorenzo Valla. Butler, S. (2009), ‘The Backward Glance’, Arion 17, n. 2, 60–78. Fantham, E. (2004), Ovid Metamorphoses, Oxford. Graf, F. (2014), ‘Orpheus: A Poet Among Men’, in: J. Bremmer (ed.), Interpretations of Greek Mythology, London (originally published 1987), 80–106. Hardie, P.R. (2002), Ovid’s Poetics of Illusion, Cambridge. Heath, J. (1996), ‘The Stupor of Orpheus: Ovid’s Metamorphoses 10.64-71’, The Classical Journal 91: 353–70. Horsfall, N. (2010), ‘Bees in Elysium’, Vergilius 56, 39–45. Lowe, D. (2010), ‘Snakes on the Beach: Ovid’s Orpheus and Medusa’, Materiali e discussioni per l'analisi dei testi classici 65, 183–6. Perraud, L. (1983), ‘Amatores exclusi: Apostrophe and Separation in the Pyramus and Thisbe Episode’, The Classical Journal 79, 135–9. Reed, J.D. (2013), Ovidio Metamorfosi Volume V: Libri X-XII, Fondazione Lorenzo Valla. Rimell, V. (2006), Ovid’s Lovers: Desire, Difference and the Poetic Imagination, Cambridge. Rosati, G. (1983), Narciso e Pigmalione: illusione e spettacolo nelle Metamorfosi di Ovidio, Florence. Segal, C. (1985), ‘Pyramus and Thisbe: Liebestod, Monument and Metamorphosis in Ovid, Beroul, Shakespeare and Some Others’, in: Hommage à Jean Granarolo: Philologie,

�� 19 Rosati 1983, 36 says that Echo ought to be dead, so her role at the end is just a case of Ovid being impatient of verisimilitude, but I suggest that the difference between life and death is more interpretable than that.

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Littératures et Histoire Anciennes, Publications de la Faculté des lettres et sciences humaines de Nice, Paris, 387–99. ―― (1989), Orpheus: The Myth of the Poet, Baltimore. Tarrant, R.J. (2004), P. Ovidii Nasonis Metamorphoses, Oxford. ―― (2005), ‘Roads Not Taken: Untold Stories in Ovid’s Metamorphoses’, Materiali e discussioni per l'analisi dei testi classici 54, 65–89. Tissol, G. (1997), The Face of Nature: Wit, Narrative, and Cosmic Origins in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Princeton. Will, J. (1996), Repetition in Latin Poetry: Figures of Allusion, Oxford.

David Konstan

Death and Life in Lucan The opposition between life and death is one of the crucial symbolic axes by which we organize our experience, and a transgression or blurring of the boundary generates a tension that threatens to undermine narrative coherence. We see such an effect in the return of Cynthia as a ghost toward the end of the final book of Propertius’ elegies (4.7),1 and still more troublingly in Lucan’s toying with readerly expectations in his dazzling and elusive epic, De bello civili. Lucan’s poem has proved a puzzle for modern criticism. In part, the problem is a matter of taste. We no longer enjoy the fulsome style that appealed to a more rhetorical age, when Christopher Marlowe, predecessor and near equal of Shakespeare, found inspiration for his tragedies in Lucan’s fustian and translated the first book into resounding pentameters: Wars worse then civill on Thessalian playnes, And outrage strangling law and people strong, We sing, whose conquering swords their own breasts launcht, Armies alied, the kingdoms league uprooted, Th’affrighted worlds force bent on publique spoile, Trumpets and drums, like deadly, threatning other, Eagles alike displaide, darts answering darts.

Today, when the excitement in movies derives from visual pyrotechnics much more than verbal effects, such language not only seems bombastic but virtually incomprehensible.2 One reaches for explanations not so much of Lucan’s meaning or intention as for the impression the poem leaves of having left sense behind, as though the chaos that seems to reign in the epic, to which Lucan explicitly refers in line 74 of the first book, reflects a world so unintelligible that normal language can no longer capture it. Again, let me hand the floor to Marlowe, who is unabashed in his rendering: Roome was so great it could not beare it selfe: So when this worlds compounded union breakes, Time ends and to old Chaos all things turne; Confused stars shal meete, celestiall fire Fleete on the flouds, the earth shoulder the sea, Affording it no shoare, and Phoebe’s waine

�� 1 On Propertius’ 4.7 see Papanghelis (1987) and Gareth Williams in the present volume. 2 Fratantuono (2012, xviii) calls the poem ‘the first horror film script’.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110596182-009

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Chace Phoebus and inrag’d affect his place, And strive to shine by day, and ful of strife Disolve the engins of the broken world.

To speak of such a disjointed universe, which echoes the Stoic idea of the final destruction or ekpyrosis of the universe, transcends language, and the poet is obliged to distort and decompose his own speech in order to convey, not a meaning, but at best an effect. There is something of an analogy in Lucan’s sheer excess, his apparent confounding of boundaries at all levels and subversion of coherence, to some of the experiments in post-modern literature and art that likewise seemed to reflect a world gone awry. This sensibility responded in large measure to the historical experience of what is called the Holocaust, that deliberate, almost mechanical extermination of races, above all Jews and Gypsies but also Slavs and others who were perceived as polluted and sub-human. Such a policy, carried out by what was regarded as in many ways the most civilized and cultivated nation in the west, undid all notions of progress and rationality and invited in turn a strand of criticism that refused to find a deeper meaning in a world that now seemed to transcend the bounds of intelligibility. It is in this vein that George Steiner wrote his landmark study, In Bluebeard’s Castle: Some Notes Towards the Redefinition of Culture, published in 1971, with its dark vision of our times, in the wake of the grand optimism of the Enlightenment and its millenarian confidence in endless progress: ‘The apotheosis at the close of Faust II, Hegelian historicism, with its doctrine of the self-realization of Spirit, the positivism of Auguste Comte, the philosophic scientism of Claude Bernard, are expressions of the same dynamic serenity, of a trust in the unfolding excellence of fact. We look back on these now with bewildered irony. But other ages have made their boast. The image we carry of a lost coherence, of a center that held, has authority greater than historical truth. Facts can refute but not remove it ... This appears to be an almost organic, recursive process. Men of the Roman Empire’, Steiner continued, ‘looked back similarly on utopias of republican virtue; those who had known the ancien regime felt that their later years had fallen on an iron age’ (pp. 8–9). Steiner’s sense that the Holocaust had evacuated language of all significance is captured in a pungent allusion: ‘The Viennese ironist Karl Kraus remarked that “on the matter of Hitler” nothing occurred to him – “es fällt mir nichts ein” ’ (p. 29). Berel Lang, in his book, Post-Holocaust: Interpretation, Misinterpretation, and the Claims of History, observes: “‘After Auschwitz” also now designates a metonymic line of (chronological) demarcation – a transformative moment in moral and social and religious history’. Lang then issues a challenge to this view, which forms the substance of his argument: ‘This line of reasoning underscores the need to assess the historical

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basis for the meta-historical conclusion that regards the Holocaust as having broken the traditional instruments of moral measurement’ (p. 35). That there has been a profound transformation in the nature of modern art and literature, sometimes designated by the label ‘post-modern’, has been claimed independently of an association with the horrors associated with 20thcentury regimes and politics. Arthur C. Danto, in his book, After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History, observes: ‘In the eighties [of the 20th century], certain radical theorists had taken up the theme of the death of painting and had based their judgment on the claim that advanced painting seemed to show all the signs of internal exhaustion, or at least marked limits beyond which it was not possible to press’ (p. 4). Danto himself did not adopt so negative a posture: art, he affirms, could continue to be entirely vigorous. He notes that he did not in fact claim that art as such had died, although a text of his ‘happens to have appeared as the target article in a volume under the title The Death of Art. That title was not mine’, Danto continues (his chapter was in fact called ‘The End of Art’), ‘for I was writing about a certain narrative that had, I thought, been objectively realized in the history of art, and it was that narrative, it seemed to me, that had come to an end. A story was over. It was not my view that there would be no more art’ (ibid.). As it happens, I myself contributed a chapter to that volume on The Death of Art, responding to Danto’s manifesto, with the title, ‘The Ends of Art’, and so I have a certain stake in the discussion.3 In a similar vein, Angus Fletcher, in his article, ‘Music and the Code of the Ineffable: Visconti’s Death in Venice’, saw in the film a turning point in representation, in which ‘thought approaches the absurdities of life in the twentieth century’ as language ‘forces upon the intellect something close to an obligation to accept the ambiguous’ (p. 229). Something seemed to be happening in the late 20th century that threatened to strip language and even thought of their presumed coherence. I have begun with this preamble on modern preoccupations with radical turning points in art and history because it seems to correspond to a similar moment in the history of Rome under the first emperors, and more particularly to Lucan’s response to that moral, political, and artistic crisis, at least as it has been interpreted by critics who lived through and absorbed the vision associated with the post-modern challenge to Enlightenment rationality and the disorientation of moral thought ‘after Auschwitz’. As Mark Allen Thorne writes in his University of Iowa dissertation, Lucan’s Cato, the Defeat of Victory, the Triumph of Memory: ‘A dramatic new direction in Lucan scholarship ... appeared in 1987 with the

�� 3 For a fine survey of the issues involved by a practicing contemporary artist, see Pulie 2016, esp. Chapter 3, ‘Contemporary Art as the End of Art’, pp. 75–100.

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publication of Ralph Johnson’s Momentary Monsters and John Henderson’s “Lucan: The Word at War”. Moving beyond the old debates over political messages, Johnson and Henderson argued, each in their separate ways (Johnson with a more formalist, close-reading approach and Henderson with his full-blown deconstructive reading) that the whole epic – much like an actual civil war – was a literary exercise in irony, in horrific absurdity’ (p. 20). Henderson, for example, affirms that Lucan’s opening phrase, bella ... plus quam ciuilia ‘dares you to name this excess, this plus quam - the code of (social) “kinship” with Caesar - Pompey as socer - gener (affinal relatives); the paradox of a Roman civil war fought out in alien Thessaly; the sheer scale of world civil war; or whatever’ (Henderson 1998, 187). In her 2011 dissertation at the University of Tasmania, Lucan’s Bellum Ciuile and the Epic Genre, Fran Alexis observes that ‘Lucan’s Bellum Ciuile is obsessed with excess’ (p. 68); she interprets the wrestling match between Hercules and Antaeus, like other episodes in the poem, as ‘an example of a mise en abyme, reflecting the focus of Lucan’s poem, the idea that civil war degrades both sides equally’, in which ‘participants in combat become similar and assume corresponding characteristics’ (p. iii). Laura Zientek, in turn, in her dissertation, Lucan’s Natural Questions: Landscape and Geography in the Bellum Civile (University of Washington, 2014), suggests that ‘the Ovidian flood, which like many creation stories focuses on the definition of boundaries and the establishment of a knowable world, provides Lucan the opportunity to deconstruct the archetypal creation myth’ (Zientek 2014, 130–1). Most recently, Hans-Peter Nill, in his dissertation at the University of Tübingen under the title, Gewalt/Unmaking in Lucans Bellum Civile (2017), observes: ‘Das Fragmentarische, Offenheit, Ambivalenz, Möglichkeit und Pluralität bilden Leitmotive, die sich im dekonstruierenden Prozess des Unmaking, einem wesentlichen Charakteristikum Lucanischer Gewalt, verdichten. Es wird also zugrunde gelegt, dass Gesichtspunkte und Erkenntnisse, die durch die Postmoderne-Diskussion in der zweiten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts in das moderne Bewusstsein gedrungen sind, auch einen neuen Zugang zu älteren Texten ermöglichen und das interdisziplinäre Möglichkeitsspektrum erweitern’ (pp. 4–5). Nill provides detailed analyses of five selected episodes in Lucan’s poem, employing a variety of critical approaches; in his treatment of the match between Hercules and Antaeus, for example, Nill concludes that ‘Im Vollzug des Kampfes und der gleichzeitigen räumlichen Annäherung begeben sich Hercules und Antaeus in eine desintegrierende Grenzzone, in der sich semantische und lexikalische Ambivalenzen nachweisen lassen, sodass die beiden Kontrahenten scheinbar die Grenzen ihrer Körper überschreiten und ineinander diffundieren’ (p. 272).

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Thorne himself resists this radical critical tendency. Focusing on the representation of Cato, he situates his approach in the mold of Emmanuele Narducci, ‘who has repeatedly pushed back against what he terms (1999) the “decostruzionistica” tendencies in certain dominant trends of scholarship (which he associates with the Anglo-speaking world)’, defending rather the older view that ‘Lucan did not intend any kind of ironic reading on Cato (or the epic as a whole) and that any attempt to do so is a fundamental misreading of the poem’ (Thorne, p. 23). Thorne notes that ‘This more optimistic view of Cato also happens to be shared by the three major commentaries on Book 9 – all in German – that have appeared in the last decade’, which interpret ‘Cato as an authentic model of Virtus’ (Thorne, p. 24, citing Raschle 2001, Wick 2004, and Seewald 2008). Nevertheless, as Thorne states, ‘Lucan scholarship – particularly so with respect to Cato – at the end of the first decade of the 21st century is roughly split into two camps: those who think the poem is driven (to one degree or other) by fragmentation of meaning, absurdity, or even meaninglessness, and those who more traditionally take Lucan’s narrative at face value and read Cato in a more sincere, optimistic light’ (pp. 27–8). Even allowing that ‘Lucan’s narrative style does reward a limited deconstructionist reading’, Thorne objects that ‘these approaches can often proceed so far in that direction that it becomes difficult to argue that Lucan actually means anything other than the frustration of meaning ... To be blunt, when I read Lucan, I read someone who is mad as hell and desperately wants to get his audience to pay attention so that he can tell them something’, and he concludes that ‘this something has something to do with the power of memory’ (p. 29). I have rehearsed the contrasting views of Lucan in several recent dissertations in order to indicate that Lucan’s text continues to pose a problem of reading, and also to show that this problem resides both in Lucan’s style and in interpretations of his political views, according to which the excesses of his language are conceived of as a response to the chaos and loss of meaning he is presumed to have experienced under the new order of the Roman Empire. Lucan seems to give with one hand and take away with the other. It is not that praise for figures like Cato is muted or ambiguous; rather, on closer examination each positive representation seems to be undercut and as a result no clear model emerges, not even one as complex as Virgil’s Aeneas. There are in the poem evident oppositions between better and worse, positive and negative values and character; but such contraries serve as the necessary precondition for deconstruction, inasmuch as a text must exhibit distinctions in the very act of blurring them. Or, as Jonathan Culler puts it, a literary work ‘is made possible by the very existence of the genre, which the writer can write against, certainly, whose conventions he may attempt to subvert, but which is none the less the context within which his activity takes

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place, as surely as the failure to keep a promise is made possible by the institution of promising’ (1975: 116). I wish here to call attention to one such opposition which seems to provide an axis of value in the poem, only to be undone even as it is articulated. It is one that scholars have not, to my knowledge, singled out as a pervasive structuring principle running through the epic. To be sure, it is subject to reversal and collapse; that is just how Lucan works to dismantle the very meanings he insinuates. Yet it does constitute a coherent thread, and I wish simply to point to it and illustrate a few moments in which it becomes manifest, even if it is ultimately subverted. The organizing element to which I refer is, very simply, up versus down. The finale of Book 8 describes the humble tomb in which Pompey’s remains are interred: Nam quis ad exustam Cancro torrente Syenen Ibit et imbrifera siccas sub Pliade Thebas Spectator Nili, quis rubri stagna profundi Aut Arabum portus mercis mutator Eoae, Magne, petet, quem non tumuli venerabile saxum Et cinis in summis forsan turbatus harenis Avertet manesque tuos placare iubebit Et Casio praeferre lovi? (8.851–8) Even now, if any man travels to Syene, parched by flaming Cancer, and to Thebes, unwetted even under the rain-bearing Pleiads, in order to behold the Nile; if any man seeks the quiet waters of the Red Sea or the ports of Arabia to traffic in Eastern Wares – that gravestone, and those ashes, perhaps disturbed and lying on the surface of the sand, will call him aside to worship, and bid him appease the spirit of Magnus, and give it the preference over Casian Jupiter.

Pompey’s remains are merged with the soil. But the opening of Book 9 offers a contrary image of the ascent of Pompey’s soul to heaven: At non in Pharia manes iacuere favilla, Nec cinis exiguus tantam conpescuit umbrara: Prosiluit busto semustaque membra relinquens Degeneremque rogum sequitur convexa Tonantis. Qua niger astriferis conectitur axibus aer Quodque patet terras inter lunaeque meatus, Semidei manes habitant, quos ignea virtus Innocuos vita patientes aetheris imi Fecit, et aeternos animam collegit in orbes (9.1–9)

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But the spirit of Pompey did not linger down in Egypt among the embers, nor did that handful of ashes prison his mighty ghost. Soaring up from the burning-place, it left the charred limbs and unworthy pyre behind, and sought the dome of the Thunderer. Where our dark atmosphere – the intervening space between earth and the moon’s orbit – joins on to the starry spheres, there after death dwell heroes, whose fiery quality has fitted them, after guiltless lives, to endure the lower limit of ether, and has brought their souls from all parts to the eternal spheres.

The imagery is Stoic, as in the finale of Seneca’s Consolation ad Marciam (26), where Aulus Cremutius Cordus is described as looking down from the heavens, even though his soul will, like all else in the universe, be dissolved at the final conflagration. Indeed, in Epistula ad Lucilium 57.8, Seneca seems to go so far as to suggest that the soul is in fact immortal. But Lucan’s description is also indebted to Ovid’s accounts of a series of apotheoses. Thus, Jupiter declares as Hercules is about to be burnt on the pyre: omnia qui vicit, vincet, quos cernitis, ignes; nec nisi materna Vulcanum parte potentem sentiet. aeternum est a me quod traxit, et expers atque inmune necis, nullaque domabile flamma. idque ego defunctum terra caelestibus oris accipiam (Met. 9.250–5) He, who has defeated all things, will defeat the fires you see, nor will he feel Vulcan’s power, except in the mortal part that he owes to his mother, Alcmene. What he has from me is immortal, deathless and eternal: and that, no flame can destroy. When it is done with the earth, I will accept it into the celestial regions (trans. Kline).

This being Ovid, Jupiter himself raises a doubt about Juno’s willingness to accept the arrangement, but in the end, Jupiter’s will prevails. So too, Romulus is snatched up to heaven, where he is converted into the god Quirinus (Met. 14.816– 28).4 Again, Venus ‘ordered the river-god to cleanse Aeneas, of whatever was subject to death, and bear it away, in his silent course, into the depths of the ocean. The horned god executed Venus’s orders, and purged Aeneas of whatever was mortal, and dispersed it on the water: what was best in him remained’ (Met. 14.600–4). Venus once more ‘took up the newly freed spirit of her Caesar from his body, and preventing it from vanishing into the air, carried it towards the glorious stars. As she carried it, she felt it glow and take fire, and loosed it from her breast:

�� 4 For a political interpretation of Romulus’ deification, see Gosling 2002, 51–69.

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it climbed higher than the moon, and drawing behind it a fiery tail, shone as a star’ (Met. 15.845–50). But if the reader imagined that Lucan was prepared to elevate Pompey’s ultimate destiny above the petty concerns of mortal life to a plane from which the hero could gaze down in sublime tranquility at an earth reduced by distance to a mere speck in the universe, like Scipio’s perch in Cicero’s conclusion to his Republic, that expectation was shattered at once by Lucan’s claim that Pompey’s soul in fact suffered a transmigration, and remained earthbound as it entered the hearts of Brutus and above all of Cato, whose adventures and misadventures in Africa would form the substance of the rest of Book 9: hinc super Emathiae campos et signa cruenti Caesaris ac sparsas volitavit in aequore classes, et scelerum vindex in sancto pectore Bruti sedit et invicti posuit se mente Catonis (9.15–18) Then his spirit flew above the field of Pharsalia, the standards of bloodthirsty Caesar, and the ships scattered over the sea, till it settled, as the avenger of guilt, in the righteous breast of Brutus, and took up its abode in the heart of unconquerable Cato.

Martin Seewald writes in his Göttingen dissertation, Lucan 9,1–604: ein Kommentar (2002, 8), without, however, referring to Ovid: ‘Lucan läßt die Seele des Pompeius nicht auf Dauer unter den Sternen verweilen, sondern beschreibt ihr Eingehen in Brutus und Cato. Der Dichter unterstreicht damit seinen Anspruch, ein historisches Epos zu schreiben. Das aus Seneca entlehnte metaphysische Theorem dient nur zu einem Teil einem konsolatorischen, das irdische Geschehen relativierenden Zweck, den es bei Seneca innehatte; wichtiger ist, daß Lucan auf diese Weise die mit Pompeius’ Tod zum Erliegen gekommene Handlung wieder in Bewegung setzt, historische Kontinuität, den fortgesetzten Kampf gegen Caesar, aufzeigt und zusätzlich einem aufgrund des Wechsels der Hauptperson drohenden Auseinanderfallen des Epos vorbaut’ (cf. Seewald 2008: 8). But history is a mixed business, and if Cato is a hero of sorts, he is also a disastrous general who bears the responsibility for having led his troops through the desert, which spawns all sorts of poisonous creatures and parches the men with thirst. The problem is not just Libya, which is, to be sure, dangerous enough; as Dustan Lowe (2010, 119) writes, ‘Libya, and places like it, are filled with mythical and supernatural associations which assault the historicity of the narrative’, and is a

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kind of breeding ground for the enemies of Italy and Europe.5 It is rather the vengeance of the earth as such, in contrast to the heavenly sphere, and if Pompey’s ghost has settled here rather than soared upward to the heavens, it is just the sign that he never transcended the mundane world. It is in this connection, I believe, that we may read the story of Hercules and Antaeus, which Lucan introduces with a look back to the early cosmological formation: ‘Even after the birth of the Giants Earth was not past bearing, and she conceived a fearsome offspring in the caves of Libya’ (nondum post genitos Tellus effeta gigantas / terribilem Libycis partum concepit in antris, 4.593–4). Antaeus is a more terrible foe that the earth-born Typhon, Tityos and Briareus, and, Lucan’s narrator affirms, it was lucky for the gods that he was not present at the battle on the Phlegraean fields. To be sure, the scene is set in Libya, but it is the Earth that is the antagonist of the Olympians and provides Antaeus with the strength to fight the son of Jupiter.6 Again, the necromancy in Book 6, located in what Lucan calls the damnata fatis tellure (6.413), pits the ground and what is beneath it against the upper world. Thanks to the Thessalian witches, the heavens stop rotating and Jupiter himself is struck with wonder (464–5). As Erichtho herself confesses, Fortune is more powerful than any witchcraft (6.615), but foreknowledge can be provided by all the lower elements, beginning with Earth herself (tellus nobis aetherque chaosque / aequoraque et campi Rhodopaeaque saxa loquentur, 617–18). Even in the breach, it is Jupiter and the upper realms that stand for order and righteousness; as Lucan exclaims in his own voice: Sunt nobis nulla profecto Numina: cum caeco rapiantur saecula casu, Mentimur regnare Iovem. Spectabit ab alto Aethere Thessalicas, teneat cum fulmina, caedes? (7.445–8) In very truth there are no gods who govern mankind: though we say falsely that Jupiter reigns, blind chance sweeps the world along. Shall Jupiter, though he grasps the thunderbolt, look on idly from high heaven at the slaughter of Pharsalia?

When Caesar refuses a pyre to the dead at Pharsalia, Lucan avers: Hos, Caesar, populos si nunc non usserit ignis, Uret cum terris, uret cum gurgite ponti.

�� 5 For a recent overview of Lucan’s ambiguous account of Pompey, see Pypłacz 2014. 6 Cf. Asso 2010, 221: ‘Libya/Africa is a signifier of anti-Roman hostility and epitomizes the historical forces and processes that brought Rome to fight wars on African soil’.

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Communis mundo superest rogus ossibus astra Mixturus. Quocumque tuam fortuna vocabit, 816 Hae quoque sunt animae : non altius ibis in auras, Non meliore loco Stygia sub nocte iacebis (7.812–17) If fire does not consume this host now, it will consume them hereafter, together with the earth and the waters of the sea; there remains a conflagration which will destroy all the world and bring the stars and dead men’s bones together. Whithersoever destiny summons your spirit, Caesar, there the spirits of these men are also: you will not soar higher than they, you will not find any better place, if you lie in Stygian darkness.

Caesar’s fate is no better than Pompey’s: both are doomed to stay on this earth and not soar, like Ovid’s heroes, to the upper world. Even the long excursus on the sources of the Nile in Book 10 may be read as revealing Caesar’s interest in worldly matters rather than the heavens. The one positive representation of an ascension to the empyrean is, of course, the panegyric to Nero at the beginning of the epic: te, cum statione peracta astra petes serus, praelati regia caeli excipiet gaudente polo; seu sceptra tenere, seu te flammigeros Phoebi conscendere currus, telluremque nihil mutato sole timentem igne vago lustrare iuvet, tibi numine ab omni cedetur, iurisque tui natura relinquet, quis deus esse velis, ubi regnum ponere mundi. sed neque in arctoo sedem tibi legeris orbe, nec polus aversi calidus qua vergitur austri, unde tuam videas obliquo sidere Romam. aetheris inmensi partem si presseris unam, sentiet axis onus. Librati pondera caeli orbe tene medio (1.45–58) When your watch on earth is over and you seek the stars at last, the celestial palace you prefer will welcome you, and the sky will be glad. Whether you choose to wield Jove's sceptre, or to mount the fiery chariot of Phoebus and circle earth with your moving flame—earth unterrified by the transference of the sun; every god will give place to you, and Nature will leave it to you to determine what deity you wish to be, and where to establish your universal throne. But choose not your seat either in the Northern region or where the sultry sky of the opposing South sinks down: from these quarters your light would look aslant at your city of Rome. If you lean on any one part of boundless space, the axle of the sphere will be weighed down; maintain therefore the equipoise of heaven by remaining at the centre of the system.

Death and Life in Lucan � ���

I have not found it profitable to seek irony here, and prefer to view it as a set piece, which Lucan’s readers would have recognized as an insert, detachable and yet part and parcel of the poem;7 they would have been prepared to see a clash with other elements and indeed were invited to recognize such tensions, which did not detract from their appreciation of the epic. We can see the opening, then, as setting up the ideal opposition between the superlunary and the mundane, in which the souls of great individuals are transported into the heavenly realm. One might have expected this to be the case with Pompey too, to the extent that Lucan regarded him as a figure comparable to Hercules or Romulus, or, more dubiously, to Julius Caesar, at least as Ovid chose to represent him. That Pompey’s soul in fact did not attain such a transcendent status but instead remained in this world, to repeat in another guise the mistakes and failures it had endured when incarnated as Pompey himself, captures the tragic quality of the man and, I would say, of Lucan’s epic as a whole.

Bibliography Alexis, F. (2011), Lucan’s Bellum Ciuile and the Epic Genre, PhD Diss., University of Tasmania. Asso, P. (2010), A Commentary on Lucan, De Bello Civili IV: Introduction, Edition, and Translation, Berlin. Culler, J. (1975), Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics, and the Study of Literature, Ithaca NY. Danto, A.C. (1984), ‘The End of Art’, in: B. Lang (ed.), The Death of Art, New York, 3–19. —— (2014) (orig. 1995), After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History (updated edn., with a new foreword by Lydia Goehr), Princeton. Fletcher, A. (1991), ‘Music and the Code of the Ineffable: Visconti’s Death in Venice’, reprinted in Colors of the Mind: Conjectures on Thinking in Literature, Cambridge MA, 212–29. Fratantuono, L. (2012), Madness Triumphant: A Reading of Lucan’s Pharsalia, Lanham MD. Gosling, A. (2002), ‘Sending up the Founder: Ovid and the Apotheosis of Romulus’, Acta Classica 45, 51–69. Henderson, J. (1987), ‘Lucan: The Word at War’, Ramus 16, 122–64, reprinted in: C. Tesoriero (ed.), Oxford Readings in Classical Studies: Lucan, Oxford 2010, 433–92. Johnson, R. (1987), Momentary Monsters: Lucan and His Heroes, Ithaca NY. Konstan, D. (1984), ‘The Ends of Art’, in: Berel Lang (ed.), The Death of Art, New York, 77–94. —— (forthcoming), ‘Praise and Flattery in the Latin Epic: A Case of Intratextuality’, in: T. Papanghelis/S. Harrison/S. Frangoulidis (eds.), Intratextuality and Roman Literature, Berlin. Lang, B. (2005), Post-Holocaust: Interpretation, Misinterpretation, and the Claims of History, Bloomington IN. Lowe, D. (2010), ‘Medusa, Antaeus, and Caesar Lybicus’, in: N. Hömke/C. Reitz (eds.), Lucan’s Bellum Civile: Between Epic Tradition and Aesthetic Innovation, Berlin, 119–34.

�� 7 See Konstan forthcoming.

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Narducci, E. (1999), ‘Deconstructing Lucan’, in: P. Esposito/L. Nicastri, (eds.), Interpretare Lucano: Miscallanea di Studi, Naples, 39–83. Nill, H.-P. (2017), Gewalt/Unmaking in Lucans Bellum Civile, PhD Diss., University of Tübingen. Papanghelis, T.D. (1987), Propertius: A Hellenistic Poet on Love and Death, Cambridge. Pulie, E. (2016), The End of Art and Contemporary Practice, PhD Diss., The University of Sydney. Pypłacz, J. (2014), ‘Famae petitor: Lucan’s Portrayal of Pompey’, Symbolae Philologorum Posnaniensium Graecae et Latinae 24, 97–118. Raschle, C.R. (2001), Pestes Harenae: Die Schlangenepisode in Lucans Pharsalia (IX 587-949). Einleitung, Text, Übersetzung und Kommentar, Frankfurt am Main. Seewald, M. (2002), Lucan 9,1–604: ein Kommentar, PhD Diss., Göttingen University. —— (2008), Studien zum 9. Buch von Lucans Bellum Civile: Mit einem Kommentar zu den Versen 1–733, Berlin. Steiner, G. (1971), In Bluebeard’s Castle: Some Notes Towards the Redefinition of Culture, New Haven. Thorne, M.A. (2010), Lucan’s Cato, the Defeat of Victory, the Triumph of Memory, PhD Diss., University of Iowa. Wick, C. (2004), M. Annaeus Lucanus Bellum civile Liber IX: Einleitung, Text und Übersetzung, 2 vols., Munich. Zientek, L. (2014), Lucan’s Natural Questions: Landscape and Geography in the Bellum Civile, PhD Diss., University of Washington.

� Part III: Historiography-Lyric Poetry, Erotic Epistolography and Epigram

Andrew M. Feldherr

The Music of Time: Sallust’s Sempronia (Cat. 25) and Horace’s Lyce (Odes 4.13) The precise collocation docta psallere occurs only twice in extant Latin literature: once in Sallust’s famous portrayal of the Catilinarian conspirator Sempronia (litteris Graecis et Latinis docta, psallere saltare elegantius quam necesse est probae, Cat. 25.2), and once in the ante-penultimate ode of Horace’s last collection (ille virentis et / doctae psallere Chiae / pulchris excubat in genis, 4.13.6–8), written some thirty years later. These are also the first appearances of psallo as a Latin verb, together with Horace’s roughly contemporaneous Epistle to Augustus (2.1.33). And indeed it is used only fourteen times in classical Latin, though it seems to enjoy something of a vogue in archaizing periods and features in the opening line of the second book of Odes by the Neronian Caesius Bassus (fr. 1 FLP). Despite this rarity, the echo has never been treated as a conscious allusion on Horace’s part back to Sallust’s description. Thomas, in his recent commentary, who notes the parallel as others do not, interprets it cautiously and limits its potential significance to the represented world within the poem. Chia, Lyce’s rival, is ‘a little like’ Sallust’s Sempronia (2011, 240). And as the punctuation of the Sallustian citation reveals, there is an important difference in the construction of the two sentences. Horace’s psallere clearly depends on docta as an epexegetical infinitive, but docta in Sallust closes a clause that makes it most natural to take it as modified exclusively by the ablatives of respect that precede it. Although it is hard not to translate psallere with docta, to do so is a striking syntactic asymmetry.1 Indeed it may be that the harshness of the Sallustian seam is implicitly refined in Horace’s more straightforward formulation. On the other hand, its verisimilitude might make the coincidence appear less remarkable. Psallere is a learned way of describing an acquired skill, and indeed most of its uses possess some explicit reference to knowledge or learning.2 My argument in the following

�� 1 McGushin 1977, ad loc. describes psallere as a descriptive infinitive not dependent on docta; Vretska 1976, by contrast, as an example of conscious inconcinnity as Sallust moves from the more familiar construction with the ablative to the poetic one with the infinitive. 2 psallimus … doctius, Hor., Epist. 2.1.33; psallendi musicaeque omnis multo doctissimus, Apul., Flor. 15; ratio psallendi, Apul., De deo Soc. 21; scitissimos utriusque sexus, qui canerent uoce et qui psallerent, Gell., NA 19.9.4; ut qui cantaret et psalleret iucunde scienterque, Suet., Tit. 3.2; psallendi et cantandi scientiam, SHA, Hadr. 14.9. An ironic emphasis in light of Powers’ suggestion (2007, 198–9) that the Greek verb actually refers to an unsophisticated technique of ‘plucking’ rather than striking the strings with the plectrum.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110596182-010

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paper, however, does not rely on a hardcore view of intentional reference. Rather I will adopt a purely response-based approach and use the verbal similarity, even if coincidental, simply as a prompt for comparison. By allowing Sallust’s characterization of Sempronia and Horace’s invective/admonition of Lyce to sound (psallere) together we gain a new perspective on the treatment of temporality in each text. Each female subject of the passages becomes at once a figure and a foil for its author and provokes reflection on the artistic media Sallust and Horace each use to represent their place in time. Sallust’s character sketch of the female Catilinarian Sempronia used to count as a black mark against his compositional skills, for the elaborate treatment she receives seems disproportionate to the tiny role she plays in the course of events, making her husband’s house available for a meeting of the conspirators (40.5).3 Boyd (1987), however, has demonstrated how the passage develops earlier strains of the historian’s depiction of luxuria. As luxury effeminizes the male body and soul (11.3), so the manly boldness of this female Catiline overturns expected gender roles within the polluted world of the conspiracy. This role also locates Sempronia in a long historiographic tradition of using their association with transgressively prominent women to stress the otherness of figures that threaten the state from outside, especially representatives of the decadent East. Sempronia thus does for Catiline, as Boyd suggests, what Artemisia did for Xerxes and so helps recast another descendant of a noble Roman family as a foreign invader from the East, a symbol of the invasion of luxuria itself. Here I want to build on Boyd’s treatment of Sempronia not as a figure within the conspiracy but as a figure for it by focusing on a different aspect of luxuria. In addition to its foreignness, luxury is also connected to a particular perception of time. Sallust’s preface proclaims that the glory of forma and riches passes away, but virtus is held bright and eternal (nam divitiarum et formae gloria fluxa atque fragilis est, virtus clara aeternaque habetur, 1.4). Sempronia typifies a class of women who connote the transience of bodily goods in that their lives are measured out in stages: ‘at first they had supported their extravagance by disgracing their bodies; later, when age had placed a limit only on their means and not on their luxuriousness, they had accumulated great debt’ (24.3). She herself complicates the picture by recalling several of the conceptual dichotomies developed in the preface. The many facinora she performs suggest the brilliant deeds that define true living, as opposed to the living death of those who use their bodies for

�� 3 See the examples of this charge collected by Boyd 1987, 184–5, and especially McGushin 1977, 302–3, who concludes by referring to the sketch as ‘a grave structural flaw, indeed far the worst fault in a generally clumsy work’.

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pleasure (25.1~2.9). So too the repetition of the root vir provides an echo of the virtus that transcends the flux of corporeal existence. Yet the fame that differentiates accomplishments from mere criminality she does not concern herself with. Indeed her neglect obliterates precisely the distinctions the preface emphasizes: fame and wealth are equally matters of lesser importance to her. As fortune mixes all things (10.1), so her blessings (fortunata) combine the relatively lasting attributes that come from her place in the continuity of a family with forma. In addition to its definitive transience, forma makes an effective foil to virtus because in Sallust’s work it belongs exclusively to women: Sempronia, here, and Catiline’s infatuation Aurelia Orestilla (15.2). In sum, the depiction of Sempronia and the class she represents recalls two particular aspects of luxury that involve temporality: the women of this category figure the ephemerality characteristic of goods of the body, as opposed to the glory won for (male) achievements, and the disruptive impact on Roman history of fortuna, which not only deflects the attentions of the Romans themselves towards the processes of luxury, but introduces a semantic confusion that makes it harder to see the difference between good arts and bad arts. This emphasis reveals a new point of comparison between Sallust’s description of Sempronia and Odes 4.13. Beyond the documentary resemblance of these two similarly skilled practitioners of the arts of the demimonde,4 their depictions both serve an ethical purpose connected to perceptions of time. Odes 4.13 injects into the retrospective closing movement of Horace’s last book of lyric a disconcerting blast from his iambic past.5 Yet while the aging witch Canidia who concludes the Epodes ends in a position of strength over Horace, figuring the powers of women as dogstars to waste men through their unnatural, magic arts, her lupine avatar Lyce has been transplanted to a more lyric context. The poem appears as a sequel as well to odes like the one to Leuconoe (1.11), and in doing so validates Horace’s claim to didactic wisdom. From being a hideous embodiment of female desire, Lyce comes to possess a more complex narrative of her own. The central word of the central line of the poem is tempora, and its occurrence suggests an earlier time when the repulsive Lyce of the present was desired by Horace. This puts her in the position of the young lyric addressee exhorted to give in to the poet’s desire with a reminder of the passage of time. Within the poem, the two ages of Lyce are made present with the contrasting figure of Chia, whose knowledge of playing the lyre goes together with her flourishing youth. If we are prepared to hear an echo of the Sallustian Sempronia in Horace, the poet has thus �� 4 For this aspect of Sallust’s Sempronia, see especially the material in Paul 1985, 15–16. 5 See especially the remarks of Johnson 2004, 169.

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relocated this sympotic figure in the generic context in which she is most at home, and where the cautionary significance of her fate as a reminder of temporality emerges more clearly. And he has done so in a way that draws attention precisely to intertextuality as a model for the transience of time itself. Not only has the phrase ‘docta psallere’ been passed from Sallust to Horace, but the poet highlights its transferability by using it not of Lyce herself, but of the now young woman who has taken her place. To look back at Sallust again from this perspective further reveals how the very cultural environment within which the Horatian admonition is framed has already been historicized and contextualized within his text. In addition to her penchant for the sympotic arts of singing and dancing, Sempronia herself is a poet (versus facere, 25.5). And indeed the description of her own speech introduces a vocabulary that is almost entirely anomalous in Sallust but strongly recalls the contemporary poetic discourse of Catullus. While mollis, as in Sallust, is as much a moral as a stylistic term in his work, facetiae, lepos, and iocus all recall the programmatic characterization of his own poetry, and the words occur nowhere else in the Sallustian corpus.6 And in the Catullan context, the places where jokes, witticisms, and poetic contests occur are above all sympotic. From one perspective, this pattern of associations reveals a ‘sympotic’ cast to the Catilinarian conspiracy, highlighting a resemblance between the protocols of Catullan sociability and the constitution of their criminal band, which takes its origin from passing around libations of human blood mixed with wine (22.1). Though the Catullan aesthetic itself rejects excess, Sallust’s use of Catullan language here adds specificity and color to his characterization of the conspirators by associating them with another contemporary milieu where imported skills and goods are showcased. But at the same time, by introducing the distinctive language through which Catullus describes his own poetic performance, he opens up the possibility of a new, competing voice within his narrative giving an alternative construction to events. This kind of dialogicity is a much-recognized technique of Sallust’s treatise, which has by far the highest proportion of reported speech of any Greek or Roman historiographic text, and whose embedded rhetorical performances may be read as triggering a competition with the controlling historiographic narrative. For

�� 6 Krostenko 2001 describes the evolution of this vocabulary of ‘aesthetic performance’ and how Catullus transforms its use by Cicero to describe ornaments of elite behavior into an essential characterization of a new mode of social action, epitomized by his poetry. See esp. pp. 70–1 on Sallust’s description and its connection to Cato, ORF 8.115, and pp. 246–68 on Catullus’ application of this vocabulary to his own poetics.

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example, while Sallust’s rendition of Catiline’s first speech to the conspirators highlights certain aspects of the historian’s previous portrayal of his aims and his appeal to his fellows (particularly in its emphasis on the material rewards of empire), his critiques of the ruling elite so echo Sallust’s own as to raise the possibility of a ‘Catilinarian’ reading of the entire work, or at the very least suggest parallels between the author’s own lack of success and his protagonist’s.7 In a similar way, a Sempronian echo emerges in the very language that Sallust uses to condemn her, and this echo turns the tables on Sallust by exposing a similarity between his literary techniques and hers. Central to the condemnation of Sempronia, and her symbolic evocation of luxury, is her privileging desire over decorum. As a well-married matrona endowed with offspring, she has enough (satis), but she wants more. Appropriately the adjective multa brackets her portrait. We first learn that ‘she commits many (multa) deeds (facinora) of male audacity’, and this multiplicity sounds in the final notice of her abundant (multae) witticisms (facetiae). But beyond the contents of Sallust’s description, its very form reveals the appetite for multiplication. Not only does the narrative linger over the catalogue of her qualities, but it wants these qualities to suggest even more. The rhetorical figure that best characterizes Sallust’s invective here is synecdoche. Each detail stands for more than it represents. Sempronia herself is an exemplary figure meant to stand in for the ‘very many’ (plurimos, 24.3) whom Catiline recruited (cf. sed in iis erat Sempronia, 25.1). And her specific skills of playing and dancing are themselves symbols of ‘many’, specifically ‘the many other things which are the tools of luxury’ (25.2). Indeed we can posit a kind of tension between form and content here. What Sallust says about Sempronia makes her a figure for a recognizable and deplorable historical reality, the corruption of luxuria, yet to the extent that his own rhetoric seems implicitly to demonstrate the same appetites, in its aspiration to a full picture of her accomplishments and the tendency to exaggerate that comes from making each detail evoke more, that rhetoric can seem equally symptomatic. If the Sempronian voice seems to stand very near the linguistic surface of Sallust’s text, this may recall a specifically Horatian technique of wordplay. As I suggested before, Lyce is potentially located within the larger trajectory of Horace’s poetic development by the way her name seems to recall predecessors in his oeuvre, specifically ‘Canidia’ and ‘Leuconoe’ (and this of course complements the way that Horace himself compares her to another of his lost loves, Cinara, and to her earlier self from Odes 3.10). In describing the luxurious acceleration from someone who ‘performed many deeds often’ (multa saepe) to a woman to whom �� 7 See especially Batstone 2010.

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‘all things were always dearer than decus and pudicitia’ (semper omnia), Sallust renames Sempronia to signify luxury.8 Within the main Sallustian frame of invective and denunciation, this pun makes a telling point, closely related to the contrasting temporal perspectives that define the place of luxury in history. Sempronia’s real name is of course simply a gentilic nomen. It names only her family as a diachronic presence, and indeed by stripping Sempronia of any specific identifying markers, even the genitive of her husband’s name, takes her out of time by letting her represent any female Sempronia. However as ‘semper omnia’ this transhistorical commemorative function has been translated into a signification of the synchronic phenomenon in the present that threatens to change and obscure history, luxuria. The paronomasia thus activates the ‘eternal’ sameness embedded in the name SEMPRonia by juxtaposing it with a usage where ‘semper’ implies the opposite; what persists is only the transformative desire for more. But, again, Sallust’s efforts to write down Sempronia as a symbol of contemporary corruption simultaneously make clear that he is speaking her language. For he relies on just the kind of facetiae that define her own ingenium and that we have already met as a similar verbal inversion of facinora. As indignation reads as wit, so we might imagine a Sempronia who, far from being shamed by these indications of her wealth and skill at wielding the instruments of luxury, would advertise them as a sign of her individual prominence in the present. Thus, the charms of the historian’s wordplay import the tastes and judgments of the present into the interpretation of his words. And this ventriloquism as well conforms to the particular quality of Sempronia’s talents, for she can use a speech ‘now modest, now luxurious, now bold’. And all these qualities represent different ways of spinning her portrayal in Sallust’s text: the ‘moderation’ in her speech would seem a direct falsification of Sallust’s description, since he makes her typify those for whom the passage of time ‘had placed a limit on their income but not on their luxury’ (aetas tantummodo quaestui neque luxuriae modum fecerat, 24.3). Mollis makes hers the voice of luxury itself, while procacitas translates audacia virilis from a social transgression to a sympotic attraction. As a woman, Sempronia may have abandoned her decus, but as an artist she demonstrates perfect understanding of decorum theory, finding a fitting style for every substance. The possibility of imagining Sempronia as author of the very witticisms which over the longue durée of history strive to condemn her brings into focus

�� 8 I must confess, to my great regret, that I owe the observation of this pun to someone else. Emily Gowers reported to me that her son Richard had noticed it on his GCSE Latin exam and pointed it out as an example of Sallust’s playful use of language. It may have cost him some points.

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two larger ways in which her presence in the text draws attention to Sallust’s own performance as auctor. First, we may note that the phrase in which Sempronia’s talent is described, haud absurdum, is exactly the same as Sallust had used to define speaking well as opposed to acting well for the republic (3.1), and these are its only two appearances in the Sallustian corpus. In that passage, the orator forms an ambiguous transition in an argument comparing the historian himself to the historical actor. If the earlier description of Sempronia seemed to measure her against the beginning of the preface by making her pursue precisely the things that do not last, here her qualities, in whatever sphere, recall Sallust’s later argument that it is the pursuit of excellence not the particular direction in which it is exercised that matters: ‘nature shows different paths to different people’ (2.9). In that earlier passage, recognition of the reputation of the public speaker seems at once to prepare the way for the value of historiography, as one stage further removed from action, but also to act as its foil, since history, unlike rhetoric, has a special link to facta, and the distinction between scriptor and auctor appears blurred. Here too the voice of an alternative ‘speaker’ provides an unstable parallel for the historian’s own utterance. And significantly it is precisely the question of temporal perspectives that helps police the distinctiveness of historiography. Recognition of the historian’s worth, the key to his own gloria, depends on isolating his work from partial and immediate judgments on the part of his readers, who in turn would project them on the historian himself (3.2). The audience will judge his work by their own standards of moral accomplishments: when he blames people, as he blames Sempronia here, they will assume that he speaks from malevolence and jealousy.9 In addition to the intimation that Sallust’s account of her originates more from his own enmity than the lasting moral truth of his claims, there is also perhaps the possibility that his writing, precisely through the wit it displays, here aims simply to impress at Sempronia’s level of purely verbal artistry. In this connection, another important opposition from the preface also reemerges. The historian is a scriptor, but by contrast Sempronia’s arts seem not just to live in the evanescent moment but, arguably, to privilege the aural as opposed to the written. Yes, she knows letters, but her own performances, playing and dancing, are transient, and the written artifacts for which she is praised

�� 9 And indeed it is worth noting that Sallust’s singling out of Sempronia here has been used as evidence of his partisan aims: he was assumed, most notably by Schwartz 1987, 570, to have chosen her because her son, Decimus Brutus, was one of Caesar’s assassins. For the scholarly history of this charge, see McGushin 1977, 302; for the fullest discussion of proposed identifications of Sempronia, see Cadoux 1980, who himself concludes that her historical identity is not relevant to an appreciation of her literary function within the work.

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(facere versus) not only recall the vicissitudes of fortune that mixes all things, but are also coupled with performances like jokes and a speech (sermo) which is itself changeable and determined by occasion. The word absurdum itself plays to this sonic facility, since its fundamental meaning (discordant, out of tune) recalls her skill at the lyre. Playing is of the instant, and through the echo of her notes she becomes most fully a Pseudo-Psallust. Sempronia resembles Catiline not only because of the ambivalence and mixture that define her character, where ambition and lack of restraint co-exist with ingenium and the capacity for great deeds: her poetics recall both the specific vices introduced after the fall of Carthage and the strategies Catiline uses to forge his conspiracy. In the first case, avarice ‘overturns faith, probity, and the other good arts’ (namque avaritia fidem probitatem ceterasque artis bonas subvortit, 10.4), while ambitio promotes changeability, ‘to have one thing closed in the breast and another ready on the tongue’ (10.5). Catiline’s own seduction of the youth depended on a similar adaptability: ‘the minds [of the youths] being soft (molles) and unstable were easily filled up with his treacheries. For as the passions of each flared up because of his youth, so Catiline would offer whores to some and buy dogs and horses for others …’ (14.5–6). If history should always reveal what is always true, Sempronia’s verse, like Catiline’s enticement, by contrast always fits itself to its circumstances and audience. Notably, the account of her poetic accomplishments follows just after the statement that she has renounced fides and credibility (fidem prodiderat, creditum abiuraverat, 25.4), the properties that mark out good history, and which in Sallust’s own case are placed in doubt by his work’s contemporary reception (3.2). The way the versus of this fortunata recall the reversals wrought by fortune provides a link back to Horace. At almost the same time Sallust published the Catiline, Horace was beginning a book of Sermones10 with the rhetorical question ‘ridentem dicere verum/quid vetat?’ (1.1.24–5). While the moral of that poem is precisely the folly of changing status, he simultaneously highlights the rhetorical versatility of his own speech. The result is to bring together in unstable union the literary aims that Sallust seems to polarize, truth and wit. Correspondingly Horace’s career would stand out among all his Augustan peers precisely for its formal multiplicity, as well as the explicit attention he pays to the theory of decorum and the relationship between poetic performance and changing social roles. If the language in which Sallust categorizes Sempronia’s verse looks back to the programmatic vocabulary of Catullus, the emphases in his portrayal anticipate the

�� 10 On the title, see Horsfall 1981, 108.

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practices of a rising generation who depended precisely on the flexibility of the Roman social order to establish their authority. There is no more striking reminder of the changes wrought in Horace’s poetic persona than Odes 4.13. As we have seen, the poem combines personal and poetic autobiography. Flashbacks to earlier erotic attachments go together with allusions to his first work of iambic poetry. And within the immediate context, the initial pronouncement that ‘the gods have heard my prayers’ recalls the apogee of Horace’s public career, the composition of the Carmen Saeculare. If that was a prayer for the fertility and stability of the res publica, here the poet’s prayers effect age and decline and result from a resurgence of very personal resentments. As that last echo reminds us, the contrast between the lasting and the ephemeral forms as explicit a theme in Horace’s ode as I have tried to demonstrate it does in Sallust’s vignette.11 But holding that earlier text in mind can help pinpoint two aspects of the antithesis’ development in the poem. The first involves the way that allusions to larger public discourses help articulate the space of lyric concerns as comparatively ephemeral. For Sallust, cupido/cupiditas is a characteristically ambivalent term. Catiline is notably described as ardens in cupiditatibus (5.4), and within the summary he offers of Roman history, cupido measures the difference (and hints at the similarity) between the earliest times of the republic, when the desire for glory drove the expansion of the state (7.4), and the turning point after which, chiastically, ‘first grew the desire for wealth and then for empire, and this was the fuel for all evils’ (10.3). Within Horace’s poem it is precisely desire that provides the clearest proof of the passage of time and the ephemerality of sympotic life. And indeed cupido appears in this role just at the moment of the poet’s verbal ‘reminiscence’ of Sallust: ‘Cupid keeps his watch in the lovely cheeks of Chia, blooming and skilled at playing the cithara’. Sallust would relegate such concerns to the realm of the fluxa et fragilis, while Horace, from within such a milieu, makes a similar point. If the struggle between a Sallustian reading of Sempronia and a Sempronian voice within Sallust energizes the moral exposition of his character sketch, that Sempronian poetic language re-emerges in Horace, but to enforce a moral similar to the historian’s. From an exposure of the embeddedness of Sallust’s discourse in the present of its composition and reception, lyric has come to appropriate a central moral lesson of history. In addition to the implied contrast to the prayers for civic rebirth at another hinge moment in the history of Rome, this generic opposition re-emerges later in the poem when Horace reminds Lyce that all her care for her own form, such as Coan purples (a �� 11 See especially the discussion of the thematic relation between temporality and desire in the poem in Ancona 1994, 95–103.

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hint perhaps as much at signs of office as meretricious fineries) and precious gems, cannot bring back past times ‘when once the flitting day has buried them in the records of the past’ (tempora quae semel notis condita fastis inclusit volucris dies, 4.13.13–5).12 Second, as in Sallust, the temporal contrast plays out on a formal as well as a generic or discursive level. In Sallust, I suggested, the audible Sempronia makes us hear Sallust’s written text in the moment. In Horace, Lyce’s presence will reveal a corresponding challenge for Horace’s authoritative utterance to transcend its specific context. Sallust of course never directly engages with the character of Sempronia, he merely describes her, albeit with a vividness and specificity that have suggested to some critics a personal motive. Horace, though, begins the poem with an address that can suggest Lyce’s presence in an actual sympotic exchange. An imagined sympotic performance of the poem could easily blur into a reenactment of that conversation. Interestingly, critical responses to the poem have often divided between those who implicitly keep the real poet within the drama, and generally dislike the work as a cruel manifestation of thwarted machismo, and those who, like Quinn, Lyne, and Putnam, see the speaker as achieving a reflective distance that allows him to recognize his own subjection to the laws of time—a soliloquy instead of the enactment of a sympotic encounter.13 And as my use of ‘speaker’ in the previous sentence suggests, such an interpretation could also result from a separation between the author and the voice within the poem, from focusing on the words as a product of a distanced poetic intelligence rather than a vengeful former lover. In fact we could interpret the poem as performing specifically that transition from an elegiac cum epodic character to a lyric author. The iuvenes whose laughter in the final lines reveals the workings of fate at once recall the epodic pose at the poem’s opening but also point out, to the audience whether or not to the speaker, that he is no longer young. Our ability to accept the moral about time’s irreparability ‘enclosed’ (cf. inclusit) at the poem’s center is threatened not only by the suggestion that this is just another nasty thing to say to Lyce, but also by the worry that, even if it does

�� 12 See esp. Johnson 2004, 177–8. Putnam 1986, 233–5 suggests an analogy between Lyce and Rome herself based on recollections of the imagery of Odes 4.4. This would, of course, make further sense of her lupine name. 13 On the imagined dramatic setting at a symposium, see Johnson 2004, 170: ‘Horace does not fix the exact dramatic setting for c.13, although the love games and lyre playing suggest a drinking party’. It is interesting, if I understand his reading correctly, that he seems to assume that Lyce is not taken to be directly addressed even in the poem’s fictive performance. So too Lyne 1980, 210–11 and Quinn 1963, 99 make the poem explicitly a soliloquy on the basis of the shift in person at line 22, but see Johnson 2004, 171.

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not escape the poet himself, it may not provide a truly universal truth but the sort of thing that only seems true once life’s pleasures have passed. The alternatives between the ephemeral, dramatic interpretation of the poem and an emphasis on its lasting message about transience are accentuated by another feature of the ode that also recalls Sallust, the attention it gives to aural effects and wordplay through partial verbal echoes.14 The poem’s first word, audivere, highlights the auditory faculty, and while it may attempt to evoke an act of hearing in the past to which neither the addressee nor the audience would have had any other access (Lyce does not know the gods have heard such prayers until Horace confronts her with the realities of her aging), echoes and repetitions within the poem highlight its own heard reality, especially in the way Horace conjures a divine presence (di) from the second syllable of the verb by anaphoric repetition. A similar play on words helps establish the authority of the speaker over his victim. He reminds Lyce that what you want (vis) can only be an ironic echo of what you have really become (fis).15 In relation to the language Sallust used of Sempronia, perhaps, Lyce appears literally absurd: her wishes are out of tune with reality, as her song has been denatured by the aged tremulousness of her voice (cantu tremulo, 4.13.5). No poeta, she is merely a drunken old woman (pota). While the intimation of her own poetic capacity makes her an aesthetic as well as erotic rival, and perhaps encourages us to hear Lyce’s riposte to Horace’s jokes, so far his own mastery of sound gives him the upper hand. He can evoke the sound of her voice to prove her absence of self-awareness, the aural equivalent of her impudentia. But the tables are turned by the recurrence of word play at the poem’s end. As Commager 1962, 302 observes, the ‘unusual’ use of the syncopated surPUERrat (4.13.20) to describe the effect of Lyce’s former self on the young Horace summons up the boy he no longer is. And another echo in the poem’s final lines subjects Horace’s language to further jesting transformations. The youths mocking Lyce may at first seem to cooperate with the speaker, proving his point about her repulsiveness and perhaps even suggesting his own youth poetically reborn, as the younger Chia emphatically does not do for Lyce. But they also reveal what a younger generation may make of his erotic reminiscences. Where he had recalled Cinara and Lyce’s own lost facies, what the young see, perhaps as opposed to what Horace would want them to hear, makes as much of a mockery of Horace’s evocations of the invisible past, as he had of Lyce’s

�� 14 Cf. Putnam 1986, 226 on the Horatian speaker: ‘he is fascinated by speech and sound, of Lyce and Chia’s music …’. See also Johnson 2004, 173–4 on the sonic reproduction of the curse. 15 The assonantial pattern, well interpreted by Putnam 1986, 221, continues through the rest of the sentence with videri and the second person verbs of line 4.

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appearance. Cinara, in a way more true than the poet’s own lament might suggest, has become ash (cineres),16 and when extinguished desire (facem) replaces the nota et gratarum artium facies, that desire, in light especially of the zombie presence of Cinara, is not only Lyce’s shameless lust, nor the squelched erotic interest of the boys themselves in the face of the presence of age, but Horace’s dying flame. In the case of Sallust, the vocal presence of Sempronia, especially the way that she seemed to become the inspiration for Sallust’s own use of wordplay to record her viciousness, made her a rival figure for the historian within the text. Such a figure helped to expose Sallust’s history as itself a literary performance, one embedded in precisely the rivalries from which the ideal historian’s animus should be free. It may also hint at an affection for literary form as an avenue of glory that suggests a kinship with the work’s embedded rhetorical performances. In the case of Horace too, poetic rivalry with Lyce invites scrutiny of the literary artifice that conveys it. The poet’s imperfect control over the final stanza, revealed when the youths’ deformation of his own words echoes his early appropriation of Lyce’s voice, does more than abet a sympathetic reading of the work dependent on Horace’s recognition of his own transience. It also erodes the earlier antithesis between the timeless truth of metrically regular lyric and the ephemeral song of aging poetesses, and poets, between her forma and what we call the poem’s form.17 Even the Horatian lyrics, which may seem to transcend time by their own awareness of its effects, are always performed in time. The youths playing Horace are no longer the trained chorus of the Carmen Saeculare, reproducing the precise formulae of their teacher. They represent the actual instabilities that affect even the most ideally wrought poem when its immortality depends on later enactments in time. One wonders whether the young men who casually incinerate Cinara really believe that they will one day become old. I would like to end by suggesting that the uncertainties both of these passages expose at the points where the discourses of their respective authors appear most triumphantly controlling, in addition to everything else, reflect a larger Roman anxiety about literary art itself. To do so, I want briefly to mention a characteristic of both Lyce and Sempronia that has not received much attention so far �� 16 Thomas 2011, 244. 17 It is not at all clear whether such a pun was available in Latin. The evidence of the TLL (s.v. IA1bβ) suggests that Varro (Men. 398) connected the etymology of ‘poem’ with the (physical?) quality that words possessed when joined together. Equally interesting is the distinction made by Isidore, who claims that forma was precisely not used of artistic creations, by contrast with figura (figura artis est, forma naturae, Isid., diff. 1. 239). In that case perhaps the forma that bears witness to Lyce’s aging would suggest a semantic distinction from the poem as a wrought object.

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in the discussion, their connection to Greek culture. Lyce has a Greek name, and its Greekness is reinforced by pairing it with the similar toponym of her rival Chia. Sempronia knows both Greek and Latin letters. And of course in both cases the word that sounds their poetic presences is the Greek verb psallere. Sallust’s own attitudes towards his Greek historiographic predecessors is deeply ambivalent. Their skill as writers has led to a distortion of reality, which must be very concerning to a historian above all: they make us think that Greek accomplishments were greater than they were, and this is another effect of fortune, anticipating the similar ambiguity she accomplishes in actual history after the fall of Carthage (8.1~10.1). But by contrast Roman deeds are diminished by the absence of such talent, and Sallust makes it obvious, not least through his borrowing of a Greek topos at this very moment (cf. Thucydides’ comparison of Sparta and Athens at 1.10, which in turn recalls Herodotus 1.5), that his narrative will finally show them as they really are, but only by availing himself of what he has learned from the Greeks. In Horace’s case, we should turn to another passage from his work that echoes in Odes 4.13 and contains his only other use of psallere. In the Epistle to Augustus, Horace describes the false comparisons made between Greek and Roman authors. While Horace’s opponents impose the paradigm of Greek literature to praise archaic writers and denigrate contemporary ones, Horace sharply underlines Roman difference by a very contemporary view of Greek culture that allows them superiority only in the most trivial arts: venimus ad summum fortunae: pingimus atque psallimus et luctamur Achivis doctius unctis. (Epist. 2.1.32–3) ‘we have now reached the pinnacle of fortune: we dabble and pluck and wrestle more learnedly than the anointed Achaeans.’

In his interpretation of this Epistle, Denis Feeney argues that Horace’s claims to having achieved poetic eminence are balanced by the recognition that ‘at Rome, by contrast [to Greece], poetry is always being written, as it were, against the grain, at odds with the national character …’18 In his note on that comment (2002, 250n.101), he observes of the lines just quoted, ‘it is very poignant to see a Roman lyricist including the playing of the cithara as one of the things one cannot imagine a Roman doing properly.’ My reading of Odes 4.13 suggests a complementary take on the issue. As is well known, the image of Horace actually playing his lyre, as opposed simply to evoking a generically appropriate performance context, has

�� 18 Feeney 2002, 187.

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been long debated. Lowrie 2009, 62–97 uses the entire controversy as a way of demonstrating that the distinction between approaching an ode as a lasting aesthetic object, whose performance is metaphorical even if it is actually performed, and the ‘seductive’ (97) illusion of its performance now is central to the aesthetic effect of the poetry. For Sallust the connection between Sempronia and the arts that elide the difference between Greek litterae and Roman reality can function at once to highlight the complicating presence of the historian’s own artistry, or to excise it. So in the case of Horace, the drunken old woman whose words are sung but not heard can embody all the effeminized19 and limiting perspectives that emerge when we hear poetry simply as its performance now, but her performance also predicts the inescapability of hearing his own poem in precisely that way.

Bibliography Ancona, R. (1994), Time and the Erotic in Horace’s Odes, Durham, N.C. Batstone, W.W. (2010), ‘The Speeches of Catiline’, in: D. Berry/A. Erskine (eds.), Form and Function in Roman Oratory, Cambridge, 227–46. Boyd, B.W. (1987), ‘Virtus effeminata and Sallust’s Sempronia’, TAPhA 117, 183–201. Cadoux, T.J. (1980), ‘Sallust and Sempronia’, in: B. Marshall (ed.), Vindex Humanitatis: Essays in Honour of John Huntly Bishop, Armidale, 93–122. Commager, S. (1962), The Odes of Horace: A Critical Study, New Haven. Feeney, D. (2002), ‘Una cum scriptore meo: Poetry, Principate and the Traditions of Literary History in the Epistle to Augustus’, in: T. Woodman/D. Feeney (eds.), Traditions and Contexts in the Poetry of Horace, Cambridge, 172–87. Hinds, S. (1998), Allusion and Intertext: Dynamics of Appropriation in Roman Poetry, Cambridge. Heinze, R. (1938), Vom Geist des Römertums, Leipzig (= [1923], ‘Die Horazische Ode’, NJA 51, 153–168). Horsfall, N. (1981), ‘Some Problems of Titulature in Roman Literary History’, BICS 28, 103–14. Johnson, T.S. (2004), A Symposion of Praise: Horace Returns to Lyric in Odes IV, Madison, Wisc. Krostenko, B.A. (2001), Cicero, Catullus, and the Language of Social Performance, Chicago. Lowrie, M. (2009), Writing, Performance, and Authority in Augustan Rome, Oxford. Lyne, R.O.A.M. (1980), The Latin Love Poets from Catullus to Horace, Oxford. McGushin, P. (1977), C. Sallustius Crispus, Bellum Catilinae, Leiden (=Mnemosyne Supplement 45). Powers, T. (2007), ‘Ion of Chios and the Politics of Polychordia’, in: V. Jennings/A. Katsaros (eds.), The World of Ion of Chios, Leiden, 179–205.

�� 19 For the idea that lyre playing was an exclusively female act at Rome, see Heinze 1938, 208, who indeed uses Sallust’s Sempronia as evidence. Lowrie 2009, 81 discusses the idea and (n.71) includes references to those who have disputed the claim.

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Paul, G.M. (1985), ‘Sallust’s Sempronia: The Portrait of a Lady’, PLLS 5, 9–22. Putnam, M.C.J. (1986), Artifices of Eternity: Horace’s Fourth Book of Odes, Ithaca, N.Y. Quinn, K. (1963), Latin Explorations, London. Schwartz, E. (1897), ‘Die Berichte über die catilinarische Verschwörung’, Hermes 32, 554–608. Syme, R. (1964), Sallust, Berkeley. Thomas, R. (2011), Horace: Odes Book IV and Carmen Saeculare, Cambridge. Vretska, K. (1976), C. Sallustius Crispus, De Catilinae coniuratione, Heidelberg.

Anastasia-Erasmia Peponi

Against Aesthetic Distance: Ovid, Proust, and the Hedonic Impulse � Distance ‘It is undoubtedly very difficult to reach an aesthetic appreciation through the lower senses, because the materialness of their action, their proximity and bodily connection are great obstacles to their distancing’.1 This cautionary statement regarding the disadvantages that the senses of taste, smell, and touch present to aesthetic experience is encountered in an influential article by Edward Bullough, first published in the British Journal of Psychology in 1912. ‘It has been an old problem why the “arts of the eye and the ear” should have reached the practically exclusive predominance over arts of other senses,’ Bullough writes in a previous section of the same article, adding that ‘apart from other excellent reasons of a partly psycho-physical, partly technical nature, the actual spatial distance separating objects of sight and hearing from the subject has contributed strongly to the development of this monopoly’.2 Certainly, the priority of Bullough’s article, the full title of which was ‘Psychical distance’ as a factor in art and an aesthetic principle, was to discuss someone’s overall psychical –and not physical– stance towards an aesthetic object. Still, his brief but unambiguous references to the actual, physical, distance supposed to separate an aesthetic stimulus from its aesthetic receiver are key to his argument. Such references to the physical prerequisites of aesthetic attitudes are indicative of much broader, most often implicit, and long-lasting tendencies towards the aesthetic. For instance, although the name of Immanuel Kant hardly ever appears in Bullough’s article, his views are deeply imbued in Kant’s aesthetic philosophy.3 This becomes clearer when Bullough announces one of his main goals: to promote the concept of psychical distance as an instrumental tool that would help one separate effectively the agreeable from the beautiful.4 Although Kant’s name is not explicitly mentioned in this case either, these two fundamental and �� 1 Bullough 1912, 109. 2 Bullough 1912, 96. Italics are his. See Dickie 1961 for an interesting reaction to Bullough’s views, yet not engaging with his differentiation between ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ senses. 3 See Bullough 1912, 99 for the hapax appearance of Kant’s name in his article. 4 Bullough 1912, 90 and 108–11.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110596182-011

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opposed concepts bear the unmistakable signature of Kant’s theory of aesthetic judgment. ‘Agreeable is what the senses like in sensation’ Kant says in his Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, further clarifying that it is associated with gratification, and thus ‘with a delight pathologically conditioned by stimuli’.5 On the contrary, the judgment of taste, which is what he associates with the beautiful, is ‘merely contemplative’ and as such it represents the only appropriate condition for purer forms of aesthetic appreciation to take place.6 It is important to note that, apart from their underlying Kantian ramifications, Bullough’s views captured concisely a sensory prerequisite in the realm of aesthetics that had been noted at least as early as the fourth century BC. Aristotle, for instance, had addressed the issue in a passage of his Eudemian Ethics, where he had clearly separated the aesthetic capacity of the senses of sight and hearing primarily (with smell in third place) from those of taste and touch.7 Aristotle’s discussion comes in the context of specific questions regarding human temperance but its importance for the long tradition of segregating the senses according to their aesthetic modalities is evident. The temperate man, Aristotle claims, is judged not by his visual response to a beautiful statue or horse or human nor by his aural attention to somebody singing. For simply contemplating beautiful things or enjoying beautiful sounds does not make one intemperate, provided that seeing or listening does not arouse desire for food, drink, or sex. It is the two senses of taste and touch alone that are associated with profligacy. Animals, being sensitive exclusively to these two senses, are otherwise insensitive to listening to harmonious sounds or looking at beautiful spectacles. Clearly, the criterion of physical proximity with, or distance from, the sensory stimulus is key here. In Aristotle’s taxonomies of the senses, taste is paired with touch precisely because its activation requires physical contact with the object being tasted. Taste is more precise than smell, Aristotle says in the De Anima, ‘being itself a form of touch’.8 In Eudemian Ethics the visual contemplation of beauty and the aural enjoyment of harmonious sounds are set apart precisely because they are experienced in actual, physical, distance. In addition, an aesthetic decorum (albeit ethically tinted) underlies its language. That is to say, Aristotle seems to hint at the existence of proper ways of attending to beautiful spectacles

�� 5 Kant 1987, 47 (§3) and 51 (§5). 6 Kant 1987, 51–52 (§5). 7 Arist. EE 1230b. On this passage in relation to Greek aesthetics, see also Peponi 2012, 71–3. On a similar approach, see Destrée 2015, 473–4. 8 Arist. de An. 421a19–20: ἀλλ’ ἀκριβεστέραν ἔχομεν τὴν γεῦσιν διὰ τὸ εἶναι αὐτὴν ἁφήν τινα, ταύτην δ’ ἔχειν τὴν αἴσθησιν τὸν ἄνθρωπον ἀκριβεστάτην.

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and sounds, on the condition that their sensory purity is guaranteed. We are indeed remarkably close to the prerequisite explicitly addressed many centuries later in Bullough’s aesthetic doctrine.

� Aesthetic intimacy With the background of such explicit or implicit tendencies to purify the aesthetic from the carnal, in largely distinct yet occasionally converging ancient and modern approaches, one may more thoroughly enjoy a section of the Epistula Sapphus, an elegiac poem classified as the fifteenth epistle in the modern editions of Ovid’s Heroides or Epistulae Heroidum.9 As is well known, the authenticity of this Epistle has been debated.10 Although the authorship of a poet as preeminent as Ovid adds to the authority and value of the views ingrained in this epistolary poem, the present reading stands in either case, whether the poem was indeed written by Ovid or by ‘Ovid’, i.e. a very compelling Ovidian imitator.11 Nonetheless, with the caveat of this open question regarding an authentic or duplicate Ovid, I will be referring to the author of the Epistle simply as Ovid from now on. The Epistle, purporting to be a letter written by Sappho to a (young) man called Phaon, is an interesting first-person quasi-biographical narrative –probably a medley of ancient sources fantasizing about the poet’s life with some of her actual poems– that revolves around Sappho’s unrelenting desire for her addressee, the man who, as we learn in the poem, abandoned her.12 The poem, which ends with the implication that Sappho is about to leap from the rock of Leukas into the waves should Phaon not respond to her love, has firmly shaped the mindset through which the Lesbian poet was re-imagined and re-interpreted

�� 9 Since Daniel Heinsius’ edition of the Heroides in 1629; Knox 1995, 36. 10 On the transmission of the text of the Heroides and the problem of the authenticity of the Epistula Sapphus, see Dörrie 1971, 287–90; Baca 1971; Jacobson 1974, esp. 277–8; Tarrant 1981; Knox 1995, 34–7; Rosati 1996; Farrell 1998, 332; Fulkerson 2005, 152–8; Rimell 2006; Thorsen 2014, 96–122. 11 See esp. Rosati 1996, 216 on how convincing the Ovidian ‘imitator’ is (especially with regard to the internal structure and conception of the poem) implying it would make more sense to consider it an authentic Ovidian work. For an earlier similar approach Jacobson 1974, 277–8 and, more recently, Rimell 2006, 126 and passim. 12 On the mythological background of the poem, not to be discussed here, and especially on the figure of Phaon, see Nagy 1990, 223–62. On the rich literary background of the Epistula Sapphus, see Verducci 1985, esp. 156–57; Lindheim 2003, 136–55; Thorsen 2014, 49–66.

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for centuries.13 Undeniably, in the long history of Sappho’s reception from the Renaissance to modern times the Epistula Sapphus has proved to be a most (if not the most) influential piece of writing. For instance, although Sappho’s alleged death for the love of Phaon is not explicitly mentioned in Boccaccio’s brief rendering of her life, several details referring to this unhappy love indicate his (direct or indirect) knowledge of at least parts of the Epistle.14 The Epistula Sapphus, then, is part of the wide-ranging ancient literature that juxtaposes (and often ironizes) desire and death as mutually complementary themes. In this case, Sappho’s looming death in the waters of Leukas, at the end of the poem, strikes one as the other, dark, side of the poet’s overall powerful erotic impulses, as these are displayed in the Epistle’s preceding narrative.15 It is on the bright side of Sappho’s impulses and on a titillating moment of desire’s stimulation and fulfillment that I will focus hereafter (vv. 31–50). si mihi difficilis formam natura negavit, ingenio formae damna repende meae. sum brevis. at nomen, quod terras impleat omnes, est mihi: mensuram nominis ipsa fero. candida si non sum, placuit Cepheia Perseo Andromede patriae fusca colore suae. et variis albae iunguntur saepe columbae et niger a viridi turtur amatur ave. si nisi quae facie poterit te digna videri, nulla futura tua est, nulla futura tua est! At mea cum legerem, sat iam formosa videbar: unam iurabas usque decere loqui. cantabam, memini (meminerunt omnia amantes) oscula cantanti tu mihi rapta dabas. hoc quoque laudabas, omni tibi parte placebam sed tunc praecipue, cum fit Amoris opus. tunc te plus solito lascivia nostra iuvabat crebraque mobilitas aptaque verba ioco et quod, ubi amborum fuerat confusa voluptas, plurimus in lasso corpore languor erat.

31

40

50

�� 13 See Rosati 1996, 210–12, according to whom Sappho’s death is just one possible scenario among others in this Epistle. On this issue, see also Rimell 2006, 153–4. 14 Boccaccio 2001, 192–5. See Boccaccio’s skepticism about the story of Sappho’s unreciprocated love in his expression ‘si danda fides est’ (Boccaccio 2001, 193). 15 See [Ov.] Ep. Sapph. 219–20 for the implication of death and [Ov.] Ep. Sapph. 123–34 for her overtly expressed erotic impulses.

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If unkind nature had denied me good looks, offset that lack by taking my talent into account. I may be small, but I have a reputation that fills every land on earth; I’m as big as my reputation. I am not fair-skinned, but Perseus found Cepheus’ Andromeda attractive, and she was dark (from darkest Ethiopia); and white doves often have mates of a different colour, and black turtle-doves are loved by green parrots. If nobody can be your girl unless you think her beauty worthy of yours, nobody will be your girl. When I read you my poems, you thought me good-looking enough then; you always swore my words made me supremely attractive. I’d sing them, I remember (lovers remember everything), And while I sang them, you ’d give me stolen kisses. You praised my kisses too, and I pleased you in every way, but especially when we made love. Then you particularly liked my sensuality and my constant liveliness in bed and my sexy talk and, after we’d reached a climax together, the deep, deep languor of our exhausted bodies. Tr. P. Murgatroyd, B. Reeves, and S. Parker16

At first we are made to believe that beauty’s deficit may be negotiable. For if our poet lacks physical beauty, her brains make up for the shortfall; and though her body’s stature is too short, her name’s stature elevates her over the entire world; and if her complexion is too dark, Perseus fell in love with dark Andromeda; besides, birds of different colors do mate. And yet, for all the compelling rhetoric, nature’s shortfall is hard to negotiate. Phaon’s handsomeness deserves a match of equal beauty, otherwise no one will be his. In other words, our poet’s flawed looks cannot be just made up for; sex appeal has to somehow be wholly restored. It is at this point that the Epistle becomes particularly intriguing. For we finally do hear the formulaic adjective signaling the beauty of Roman elegy’s puella, namely formosa, now attributed to Sappho herself. Yet here it is through poetry or, rather, by way of its performance, that beauty is achieved at last. ‘When I read you my poems’, Sappho says, ‘you thought me good-looking enough then’.17 From now on, any physical distance between the performer and her �� 16 Murgatroyd, Reeves, Parker 2017, 174–5. 17 The text (and the translation) I follow here adopts Housman’s emendation sat iam instead of etiam in l. 41. On this issue, see Knox 1995, ad loc. I also adopt Wakker’s emendation legerem instead of legeres and, consequently, the variant mea (namely, my poems). Although the meaning of the line has caused some hesitancy, there are similar scenes in Roman elegy (as for

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listener will eventually collapse. ‘I was singing’, Sappho says, ‘and you were giving me stolen kisses’ (oscula rapta). Certainly, kissing is a most favorite topic in the erotics of Roman poetry. Catullus’ famous plea that Lesbia give him ‘a thousand kisses, then another hundred, then another thousand …’ is typical of the many ways in which kissing is glorified in Latin verse, sometimes with remarkable inventiveness in the merging of the two senses of taste and touch through the lovers’ joining lips.18 But, unlike Catullus’ uncomplicated immediacy in his call for Lesbia’s never-ending kisses, Phaon’s and Sappho’s kisses in the Ovidian Epistle are the result of a remarkable process whereby the stimulant turns out to be nothing but poetry itself. As Sappho’s performance of her poems reinstitutes her missing sex appeal, fully-fledged intercourse is soon to follow. I will comment on the brief yet bold love-making vignette involving performer and listener in the subsequent lines of the Epistle, but before doing so it is worth turning to Propertius 2.13, a poem that presents interesting affinities with the Ovidian lines under consideration. NON tot Achaemeniis armantur Susa sagittis spicula quot nostro pectore fixit Amor. hic me tam gracilis vetuit contemnere Musas, iussit et Ascraeum sic habitare nemus, non ut Pieriae quercus mea verba sequantur, aut possim Ismaria ducere valle feras, sed magis ut nostro stupefiat Cynthia versu: tunc ego sim Inachio notior arte Lino. non ego sum formae tantum mirator honestae, nec si qua illustris femina iactat avos: me iuvet in gremio doctae legisse puellae, auribus et puris scripta probasse mea. haec ubi contigerint, populi confusa valeto fabula: nam domina iudice tutus ero. quae si forte bonas ad pacem verterit auris, possum inimicitias tunc ego ferre Iovis.

5

10

15

Not with so many Persian shafts is Susa armed as the darts which Love has fixed in my heart. He suffered me not to scorn these delicate muses, but

�� instance in Propertius 2.13 that I briefly discuss in this paper), where a poet represents himself as reciting his poems in the intimate company of the beloved. I understand the juxtaposition of recitation (legerem l.41) and singing (cantabam l.43) as a variation created by the usage of an unmarked term for performance of poetry in Roman culture (lego) with a marked one (canto). On reading, and reading aloud, Latin poetry (and further relevant bibliography), see Parker 2009. 18 Catul. 5.7–13. For an instance of playful inventiveness on this theme, see Ov. Am. 1.4.31–2.

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commanded me to dwell, as I do, in Ascra’s grove; not that Pierian oaks should follow my words or I be able to draw wild beasts along in the valley of Ismarus, but rather that Cynthia be held spellbound by my verse: then would my skill bring me greater fame than Linus of Argos. I am not just an admirer of comely beauty or of any woman who boasts illustrious ancestors: be it my delight to recite my verses in the lap of a scholar girl and have them approved by the pure taste of her ear. When such a success falls to my lot, then good-bye to the confused babble of the people : for I shall be secure in the judgment of my sweetheart. If only she turns on me a kindly ear and grants a truce, then I can endure Jove’s enmity … Tr. G.P. Goold

Physical intimacy between performer and listener is celebrated here as well: Propertius’ poetry thrives in the lap of Cynthia, we learn. Yet, despite this unquestionable similarity between the Propertian mise-en-scène and the Ovidian one, there are notable divergences.19 For one thing, in the Ovidian fantasy the figure of the docta puella ceases to be the eternal replica of a Sapphoesque female listener in its many variants; quite simply, she becomes Sappho, the poet in her propria persona.20 But there are other significant differences as well. In Propertius’ aesthetic eutopia the learned girl’s close bodily contact provides the ideal environment for poetry to be performed and judged without deflecting its auditory reception. Quite the opposite, the emphasis is indeed on the pure and attentive ear of the knowledgeable and fond listener of poetry, Cynthia, whose judgment and taste are venerated. In the Ovidian Epistle, however, precisely because listening to Sappho’s poetry operates as an erotic stimulant, poem and body eventually merge, thus destabilizing (or, rather, altering) the process of listening. Phaon’s stealing kisses from her as she performs (v. 44) brings up in Sappho’s memory associations of an erotic crescendo involving a fully-fledged sexual encounter that concludes with mutual orgasm and subsequent lethargy (vv. 49–50). While the intercourse is

�� 19 Though I am not necessarily suggesting a conscious allusion of the one poet to the other, it is worth noting that if Ovid is indeed the author of the Epistula Sapphus, his poem (possibly written between 12 and 8 BC) chronologically follows Propertius’. For the various suggestions regarding the date of Ovid’s Heroides 1–15, see Jacobson 1974, 300–18 and esp. 312–17. On the still debated issue of the date of the Heroides (partly in relation to Propertius’ work), see also Lindheim 2003, 197 n.74; Thorsen 2014, 9–26. 20 Of the many references to the Sapphoesque docta puella in Roman poetry, Catullus’ 35.16–17 stands out as archetypal. On the figure of the docta puella in Roman love poetry, see for instance James 2003, esp. 21–8 and passim.

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described as still proceeding, the lover is said to delight in Sappho’s lascivia, her erotic playfulness, soon to be further defined as crebra mobilitas and apta verba ioco (vv. 47–8). Poetic art and straightforward parole seem to have already coalesced in the beginning of this lively episode, when we first hear that, after Sappho starts reading ‘her work’ (mea v. 41), Phaon swears that she alone is made graceful by speech (v. 42).21 In other words, Sappho’s poems seem to reach Phaon’s ears as an integral part of her speaking style, her parole. In a similar manner, her words that befit sex (apta verba ioco v. 48), also sound like part of her generically undifferentiated verbal behavior. Even the crebra mobilitas in the same line (v. 48) is more ambiguous than usually acknowledged, as it blurs the mobility of her learned erotic body with that of her quick-witted erotic tongue. In brief, for Sappho’s listener-and-lover, language and body, poem and parole, all merge. Listening to Sappho’s poems, that is to say, initiates one into an utterly exciting erotic adventure. Compared to this extraordinarily sensational event, Propertius’ fantasy of Cynthia listening to his poems while holding him in her cozy lap may strike one as evoking the restrained comfort of an ordinary domestic routine. If, however, the reader of the Epistula Sapphus returns to Propertius’ elegy and reads a section of the subsequent description of the poet’s own funeral (vv. 25– 30) through the lens of Ovid’s erotic scene, things change. In this case, the lines referring to Cynthia’s participation in the funeral procession (v. 25), with her naked breast torn (v. 27), tirelessly calling on his name (v. 28), and pressing the final kisses on his frozen lips (v. 29), might indeed sound like an ill-timed erotic act, infinitely melancholic in its impotence, one that the reader swayed by the Epistula Sapphus might have sought in the lines describing Propertius’ aesthetic eutopia. Or, perhaps, not so melancholic? For, after all, as Theodore Papanghelis wrote, ‘far from being overpowered by death, Propertius is deftly manipulating its pictorial equivalents to orchestrate a luscious ritual impregnated with eros; death affords him an erotic triumph’.22 Be that as it may, Ovid’s Sappho fires the body of her handsome lover solely with her perfect mind. Those other skills of hers, those of her sexual repertoire, though not insignificant, are not the primary incentive for sensational love-making – or so we learn. But, no matter how anarchic erotic fantasies may seem, they are nourished and shaped within specific cultural environments. In this case,

�� 21 On the variant mea instead of me, see n.17. On these lines, see also Dörrie 1975, 100–101; Verducci 1985, 164; Thorsen 2014, 143–46. 22 Papanghelis 1987, 78–9. For a fascinating reading of this poem along with a defense of its unity, see Papanghelis 1987, 50–79.

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there should be no question that the cultural genotype of the Ovidian Sappho is the Greek (particularly the Athenian) hetaera– the woman par excellence skilled in both the workings of mousikê and those of love. The male cultural institution of the symposium provided the intimate environment within which erotic poetry, including Sapphic verse, would be performed by well-trained hetaerae, occasionally available to also perform sex, whether or not in situ. The deplorably fragmentary evidence we have from the rich fourth-century BC production of comedies elaborating on the figure of Sappho hints precisely at this direction. Sappho seems to appear in comedy and in Hellenistic poetry, most probably influenced by comedy, as the hetaera-like lover of multiple male poets, such as Alcaeus, Anacreon, Archilochus and Hipponax, in a context that can effortlessly be identified as sympotic.23 Although the two surviving explicit references to two Sapphos, a poet Sappho and a hetaera Sappho, come from the Imperial period, the habitual performance of Sapphic poetry by hetaerae must have played a decisive role in that ‘confusion’ in earlier centuries.24 In other words, it is highly imaginable that some of these hetaerae had either established themselves, or been jokingly identified, as impersonations of the illustrious poet.25 It is plausible, then, that the playful melding of Sappho the poet and Sappho the hetaera, elaborated in fourth-century comedy and, in general, encouraged by sympotic culture, inspired further amalgamations of Sapphic erotic song with erotic parole, poem with body, sexual pleasure with aesthetic. An extraordinary fusion of ‘Sappho’s soft kisses and soft entwining of her snowy body-parts’ with her ‘soft melê’ –the latter to be understood as a pun referring to both her limbs and her lyric songs– comes as late as the 6th c. AD, in an epigram by Paulus Silentiarius.26 If comparable conceptual blends, lost to us, were circulating in earlier times, they would have contributed to the inspiration of Ovid’s outstanding erotic scene in the Epistula Sapphus.

�� 23 On this subject, including Hermesianax’s lines about Alcaeus and Anacreon as rivals for Sappho’s love (Athen. 13.598bc), see Peponi 2002, 28–31. On Sappho in comedy, see also Dörrie 1975, 14–18; Hall 2000, 412–13; Gosetti-Murrayjohn 2006, 54–5; Yatromanolakis 2007, esp. 293–312. 24 Sen. Epist. 88.37 and Ael. VH 12.19. Yet Seneca refers to the grammarian Didymus (second half of 1st c. BC) as his source. 25 On this issue, see also Peponi 2002, 28–9; Peponi 2012, 128–35. For a different approach, suggesting that Sappho’s circles on Lesbos consisted of actual hetaerae, see Schlesier 2013. 26 A.P. 5.246.1–2: Μαλθακὰ μὲν Σαπφοῦς τὰ φιλήματα, μαλθακὰ γυίων //πλέγματα χιονέων, μαλθακὰ πάντα μέλη. On the epigram, see Gosetti-Murrayjohn 2006. See also Verducci 1985, 162– 3.

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� Yielding to the hedonic impulse: an Epicurean aesthetics? We have now shed light on the scene of Sappho’s and Phaon’s love-making in the Epistula Sapphus, which in the narrative sequence of the poem is introduced and, apparently, elicited, by Sappho’s memory of Phaon’s physical response to her reading and singing of her poems. We saw how this particular scene fits in, but also differs from, similar representations of the relationship between the amator and the puella in Roman poetry. Above all, nowhere else does the performance of one’s own poems in intimate proximity to the lover bring up associations of mutual orgasmic climax. This extraordinary juxtaposition of poetry reading and love-making led us to explore the cultural circumstances within which such fantasies may have thrived in antiquity. Symposium culture, with the performances of the musically-and-erotically skilled hetaerae, must have provided the perfect environment in which Sappho might have been thus imagined. In other words, in the historical and cultural background of ‘Sappho’ as an archetypal docta puella in Roman erotic poetry there is a substantial layer of ‘Sappho’ as a hetaera, a plausible way to understand how ‘Sappho’s’ erotic body and ‘Sappho’s’ erotic song could have eventually become fused both in the Ovidian text specifically and in the long history of Sappho’s re-interpretations in general. The above suggestions may illuminate some aspects of the literary and cultural background behind Ovid’s fantasy in this striking section of the Epistle, yet it is important to further explore the specific aesthetic premises of the scene. The idea that mousike, namely the area of ancient performance arts (poetry, instrumental music, and occasionally dance) may have a forceful impact on its potential audiences that far exceeds the boundaries of art itself, has been repeatedly and variously articulated by Plato. Here is not the place to address, once again, the frequently discussed ethical and political ramifications of Plato’s views on this matter.27 Yet it is crucial to recall that Plato persistently linked mousike to desire. For it is he who extensively discussed poetry in its relationship to appetite, while explicitly associating it with the desire for sex.28 Thus, one can easily sense the Platonic underpinnings of the otherwise strange and almost parenthetical

�� 27 From the vast literature on this issue, see for instance Nehamas 1988; Ferrari 1989; Janaway 1995; Burnyeat 1999; Halliwell 2011, 155–207. Also Destrée/Hermann 2011 (with further bibliography). 28 See esp. Pl. R. 606d1–7. On these issues, see Lorenz 2006, esp. 63–70. For an extensive analysis of the relevant diction used in the Republic, see Peponi 2012, 128–53.

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Aristotelian caveat in the passage of the Eudemian Ethics discussed earlier in this paper. As we saw, in that passage Aristotle claims that simply contemplating beautiful things or enjoying beautiful sounds does not make one intemperate, provided that seeing or listening does not arouse desire for food, drink, or sex. It is the two senses of taste and touch alone that are associated with profligacy, he adds. In other words, Aristotle seems to both evoke and differentiate himself from Plato in this case. Whereas Plato maintained that arts, and especially those in the realm of mousike, are intrinsically and constitutionally associated with mechanisms of desire, Aristotle claims that, unless they happen to provoke such desires, both auditory and visual arts are generally enjoyed in pure contemplation. To put it differently, unlike Aristotle’s quite relaxed views on the matter, for Plato the entire area of mousike is conceptualized as a deep-seated psychical and physical struggle. In order to achieve a purely musical (i.e. aesthetic) mode of contemplating, one has to constantly modulate, or rather annul, impulse –primarily sexual impulse– the very moment it is generated. Thus the beauty of mousike has to be experienced with firm resistance to the impulses it generates. The Platonic principle of mousikôs eran, carefully articulated in the third book of the Republic, represents precisely this equilibrium hard to achieve and maintain, between acknowledging such impulses and resisting them at the same time.29 Without doubt, the striking erotic scene in the Epistula Sapphus represents a very different, indeed opposite, approach to aesthetic attitude. I am inclined to read these lines as taking an anti-Platonic aesthetic stance and wonder if one could reasonably suspect an Epicurean substratum underneath them. To be sure, the rendition of the couple’s orgasmic climaxing cannot but recall the remarkably straightforward way in which Lucretius describes sexual intercourse and climaxing in the fourth book of De Rerum Natura.30 But, apart from this, I wonder if the aesthetic attitude pictured in the Ovidian lines echoes a broadly conceived Epicurean stance towards art, only bits and pieces of which are ever mentioned by ancient authors. Over the last years scholarship on ancient aesthetics has focused on materialist approaches to art in antiquity and especially on the production and sensory �� 29 Pl. R. 402a–403c. For an extensive analysis of the Platonic mousikôs eran and its aesthetic ramifications, see Peponi 2012, 144–53. For slightly different views on this Platonic passage, not focused on aesthetics, see more recently Prauscello 2014, 40–5. 30 Lucr. 4.1192–207, esp. 1192–200. See also the detailed description of love-making and climaxing in Ov. Ars 2.715–32, where the phrase apta verba joco (v. 724) is used in a context very similar to that of Ep. Sapph. 48. On Ovid’s intellectual background with a few references to Epicurus and Epicureanism, see Schiesaro 2002. On Epicureanism in the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire respectively, see Sedley 2009 and Erler 2009.

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appreciation of the primary material of poetry, namely sound. To what extent such approaches in the Greco-Roman world might have developed modes of thinking about poetry that were in part inspired, directly or indirectly, by an Epicurean interest in matter and sensation is a question.31 Nevertheless, my interest in tracing an Epicurean underlayer in the section of the Ovidian text under discussion lies beyond such issues. The question I ask is whether one can detect Epicurean approaches to aesthetic attitude as a whole. In other words, was there a distinctively Epicurean mode of attending to art and, if yes, how would this relate to one’s entire psychosomatic composure and, even further, to one’s lived experience in general? Two specific instances from the sources referring to Epicurus’ philosophy seem to be particularly relevant to this question. The first is encountered in Plutarch’s That Epicurus actually makes a pleasant life impossible.32 Καίτοι τὰ ἄλλα μὲν ὡς ἡμῖν ἐπῆλθεν εἴρηται, μουσικὴν δ’ ὅσας ἡδονὰς καὶ χάριτας οἵας φέρουσαν ἀπoστρέφονται καὶ φεύγουσι, βουλόμενος οὐκ ἄν τις ἐκλάθοιτο, δι’ ἀτοπίαν ὧν Ἐπίκουρος λέγει, φιλοθέωρον μὲν ἀποφαίνων τὸν σοφὸν ἐν ταῖς Διαπορίαις καὶ χαίροντα παρ’ ὁντινοῦν ἕτερον ἀκροάμασι καὶ θεάμασι Διονυσιακοῖς, προβλήμασι δὲ μουσικοῖς καὶ κριτικῶν φιλολόγοις ζητήμασιν οὐδὲ παρὰ πότον διδοὺς χώραν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῖς φιλομούσοις τῶν βασιλέων παραινῶν στρατιωτικὰ διηγήματα καὶ φορτικὰς βωμολοχίας ὑπομένειν μᾶλλον ἐν τοῖς συμποσίοις ἢ λόγους περὶ μουσικῶν καὶ ποιητικῶν προβλημάτων περαινομένους. So far I have mentioned their views just as they happened to occur to me, but no one could forget even if he wished their rejection and avoidance of music with the great pleasures and exquisite delight it brings; the absurd discrepancy of Epicurus’ statements sees to that. On the one hand he says in Disputed Questions that the sage is a lover of spectacles and yields to none in the enjoyment of theatrical recitals (akroamata) and shows (theamata); but on the other he allows no place, even over the wine, for questions about music and the enquiries of critics and scholars and actually advises a cultivated monarch to put up with recitals of stratagems and with vulgar buffoneries at his drinking parties sooner than with the discussion of problems in music and poetry. Tr. B. Einarson and P. De Lacy

Despite the initial accusation that Epicureans despise mousike and its pleasures in Plutarch’s text, it eventually becomes clear that things are in fact quite different. According to Plutarch’s account, Epicurus maintained that the wise man is

�� 31 On the broader area of ancient euphonics and aesthetic materialism, see esp. Porter 2010, passim and 357–64, 494–509. On Epicurean views on language, see Atherton 2009. More specifically on Philodemus, see Porter (1995) esp. 133–42. 32 Plu. Mor. 1095c–d.

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philotheôros (a lover of spectacles), and that, more than anybody else, he delights in listening to and watching spectacles in the theater. At the same time, the Epicurean wise man has no time for theoretical inquiries on music or for relevant philological chat. War narratives and vulgar mockery are better at symposia than conversing about poetry and music. It is somewhat surprising that Plutarch’s account detects an odd contradiction in what may otherwise strike one as a candid and quite straightforward Epicurean approach to mousike.33 According to what Plutarch attributes to Epicurus, mousike is celebrated by the latter as an utterly pleasing experience to be enjoyed even (or especially) by the wise, a pleasure that appears to be totally exempted from any typically Platonic or Platonizing guilt. There are several instances in the diction of this passage that indicate a strong allusion to, and at the same time an Epicurean criticism of, a section of the Fifth Book of the Republic, where Socrates and Glaucon discuss the definition of the term philosophos. Promptly responding to Socrates’ proposition according to which the philosophos is the one ‘who is willing to sample all kinds of learning and who approaches his studies with pleasure and cannot get enough of them’, Glaucon suggests that there are many people like this; ‘for example’, he says, ‘all those who love spectacles (philotheamones) are as they are because they delight in learning things’.34 Interestingly, Glaucon’s initial inclusion of the philo-theamones in the broader category of philo-sophoi is immediately followed by an exclusion of the phil-êkooi (the lovers of listening) who, as he says in a derogatory manner, ‘rush off to every festival of Dionysus whether in towns or in villages without fail, just as if they have hired out their ears to listen to every chorus’.35 Clearly, then, Epicurus’ statement in his Disputed Questions (as this is reported in Plutarch’s text), picks up on the marked Platonic terminology of this passage of the Fifth Book of the Republic. Not only the term philotheôros, which appears to be a variation of the Platonic philotheamôn, but also Epicurus’ focus on the sophos, which picks up on the philosophos of the Platonic passage, as well as his reference to the sounds and sights of the Dionysian festivals in particular, create an evident nexus of allusions and, at the same time, of controversy.36 For soon in the same book of the Republic we will hear from Socrates that both the lovers of sounds and those of spectacles (philêkooi and philotheamones) ‘pursue beautiful sounds and colors and shapes and everything made up of such things,

�� 33 On this issue, see Asmis’ illuminating analysis in Asmis 1995 esp. 19–21. 34 Pl. R. 475c–d. 35 Pl. R. 475d. 36 On the Platonic underpinnings of this passage, see also Asmis 1995, 20.

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but their minds are incapable of seeing and pursuing the nature of beauty itself’.37 What we have here is a typical Platonic deprecation of the realm of the sensory by way of an outright excretion of the performance-arts enthusiasts from philosophy. In stark opposition to Plato’s philosophos, then, Epicurus’ sophos is presented as a most devoted fan of all sounds and spectacles performed in the venues of the Dionysian festivals. In other words, according to Plutarch’s testimony, Epicurus seems to have fully restored and redeemed both mousike (in the broadest sense of the term) and the pleasures deriving from it in a quite pointed antiPlatonic spirit. The contradiction attributed to Epicurus comes from the latter’s alleged contempt for any kind of musical theory or literary criticism exchanged in sympotic settings. Given the Greek intellectual habitus for such conversations in sympotic contexts, well represented in Plutarch’s own Table-Talk, Plutarch’s animosity against such an anti-intellectual stance is not too surprising. Yet what Plutarch’s account sees as contradictory in Epicurus’ approach is precisely what makes Epicurus’ views entirely consistent with his overall emphasis on the importance of the sensory. For Epicurus, it seems, the realm of mousike is conceived as a significant source of enriching the senses. It is not hard to see how the type of musical and literary theory and criticism performed in sympotic settings could have been perceived by him as undermining the full growth of one’s aesthesis by suspending it in favor of contentious theoretical rationalizations.38 It is plausible that privileging a holistic approach to the workings of aesthesis would have favored a more welcoming consideration of one’s sensorium as an unbroken continuum, whereby sensation and, in general, perception of artistic stimuli would be viewed as harmoniously co-habiting with other stimuli in one’s lived experience.39 Despite the very fragmentary condition of Philodemus’ fourth �� 37 Pl. R. 476b. 38 In a subsequent section of the same work (Plu. Mor. 1095e) Plutarch says: ‘What’s this Epicurus? To hear singers to the cithara and performers on the flute you go to the theater at an early hour, but when at a banquet Theophrastus holds forth on concords, Aristoxenus on modulations, and Aristotle on Homer, you will clap your hands over your ears in annoyance and disgust?’ (Tr. B. Einarson and P. De Lacy). This revealing anecdotal reference to Epicurus’ strong cultural drives further establishes him as a zealot of mousike in its broadest Greek sense (kitharôdia being a most popular solo performance combining poetry and music) and a combatant of musical and poetic theory. 39 The much debated Epicurean reference to Odyssey 9.5–11, where Odysseus claims that the finest delight in life is when banqueters listen to the performing bard while also enjoying food and drink, is of much relevance here, as it points to the Epicurean appreciation of mousikê as an integral part of lived experience. On the interesting debate regarding Epicurus’ reference to these Homeric lines, see Asmis 1995, 16–18. See also Sider 1995, 38–9, whose suggestion that these

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book of On Music, one can sense the Epicurean origins of his views in several sections, including the way he understands music as a good naturally and spontaneously sought after by all, straightforwardly pleasurable to them, with no need for any kind of instruction as to how to enjoy it.40 Yet how Epicurus’ generally anti-Platonic stance might have addressed more specifically the relationship between the pleasure of mousike, on the one hand, and other human bodily desires, on the other, remains an open question. As we saw, the pleasure elicited by poetry and, in general, by mousike is treated by Plato as inherently linked to the pleasures of the lower parts of the soul, such as drink, food, and sex, and therefore denounced. Given this quite distinctive Platonic view and its footprint in other philosophers, a typical instance of which we detected in the passage of Aristotle discussed earlier, one cannot but be intrigued by some sentences encountered in Diogenes Laertius’ Life of Epicurus:41 ἔν τε τῷ Περὶ τέλους γράφειν οὕτως· Οὐ γὰρ ἔγωγε ἔχω τί νοήσω τἀγαθόν, ἀφαιρῶν μὲν τὰς διὰ χυλῶν ἡδονάς, ἀφαιρῶν δὲ τὰς δι’ ἀφροδισίων καὶ τὰς δι’ ἀκροαμάτων καὶ τὰς διὰ μορφῆς. In his treatise On the End he writes thus: I do not know how to conceive the good, apart from the pleasures of food, apart from those of sex, and those of sounds, and those of form.

One is left thinking about the remarkable juxtaposition of the types of pleasures mentioned in this passage. What placed food and sex next to the pleasures of sounds and those of form? As it came down to us, at least, the passage may indeed suggest both a Platonic allusion and its rejection. In other words, no matter what the line may be that separates delight in food and sex from delight in acoustic and visual arts, in the final analysis they are all essential ingredients in the amalgam of joys that make life worth living.42 If understood this way, the passage, far from degrading the arts by juxtaposing them with food and sex, actually �� Homeric lines may have served as a model for banquets in Epicurus’ Garden strikes me as a very attractive one though I diverge from his idea that ‘poetry is thus reduced by Epicurus to Tafelmusik, to which we should pay no more attention than the music that comes over the phone when we are put on hold’: Sider 1995, 39. 40 See esp. Phld. Mus. 4 col. xvii 8–12. 41 D.L.10.6. For a slightly expanded version of Epicurus’ statement (that does not affect the present discussion), see Athen. 12.546e and Cic. Tusc. 3.41. 42 In this context, the Epicurean type of delight in the visual and auditory arts would be akin to kinetic pleasures. On the problems concerning the differentiation between kinetic and static pleasures, see D.L. 10.127–31 but also D.L.10.136; Gosling and Taylor 1982, 348–64 and 365–96; Long 19862, 65–9; Cooper 1999, 485–514; Woolf 2009, 158–78.

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emphasizes their absolute vitality, their biological connection to one’s life. Because of this deep connection, sustained theoretical precautions (variations of which we see both in Plato and in modern aesthetic thought) that sought to insulate ‘art’ from the impulses in which it is occasionally embedded would have most likely been quite alien, if not hostile, to Epicurean thought. Our extant Epicurean evidence points to a congenial compatibility of aesthetic enjoyment with the broader realm of human impulse.43 If so, the striking juxtaposition of poetry reading and love-making in the Epistula Sapphus seems to playfully elaborate on a broadly conceived Epicureanism, or perhaps on the allure surrounding its approaches.

� Une pluie de baisers: an Ovidian moment in Proust One of the reasons why impulse seems to be so central to both ancient and modern inquiries into the aesthetic, is that it brings up questions concerning the place of the aesthetic in the entire spectrum of one’s actual, lived, experience. The more the aesthetic is considered an insulated area of human experience, the more it has to strive to define its (otherwise questionable) boundaries and to attach itself to a constant chase for purity. The principle of distance, concisely coined by Edward Bullough early in the twentieth century is, as we saw, an important moment in a very long history of heterogeneous but nonetheless converging dispositions towards this idealized and puristic model of aesthetic attitude. Skepticism towards such a model does not entail that it has no place in aesthetic experience or in aesthetic philosophy. It suggests, however, that purer psychical or physical states of aesthetic attendance represent only aspects of a much wider range of responses, some of which may come across as disparate or impure. I maintain that such instances of aesthetic impurity and dissidence are the most fruitful to think with when exploring the ways in which cultures have conceptualized the function, potential, and boundaries of the aesthetic. The playful lines of the Epistula Sapphus, which have been the main focus of this paper, apart from their overall intriguing position in the history of ancient literature, are among those instances of aesthetic impurity and dissidence that prompt one to rethink the essence of the aesthetic. Interestingly, similar instances representing

�� 43 For a quite different approach to this broader issue, see the recent stimulating account by Celkyte 2016.

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the critical intersection of the aesthetic with human impulse are to be found in modern thought. Marcel Proust is one of the modern thinkers who seem to have developed a profound and consistent interest in the status of the aesthetic in actual life, to be traced and enjoyed throughout his expansive modernist novel, In Search of Lost Time. Although far from identical to ancient modes of thinking, his aesthetics may indeed come across as very compatible with them. This remarkable compatibility of some of Proust’s aesthetic approaches with ancient thought has been occasionally noticed. Martha Nussbaum, for instance, has claimed that ‘Proust is in many respects a follower of Plato’ as he sets himself within a tradition that she calls ‘the contemplative ascent’.44 As Nussbaum sees it, ‘the idea behind this ascent pattern is that the cure for the vulnerability of passion is the passion for understanding.’45 The ascent of love is made possible by art, she adds, ‘to some extent by the self-scrutinizing work of the reader of fiction, to a far greater extent by the task of writing one’s own life story’.46 Nussbaum’s goal is certainly not to discuss Proust’s overall understanding of the aesthetic but to illuminate an aspect of it, yet one encounters similar approaches to his work in other scholarship as well.47 Proust’s creative ways of contemplating the aesthetic and, more specifically, of representing aesthetic attitude, are far too complex and too eclectic to all fit with one particular theory. With regard to Proust’s Platonism, for instance, one may want to take into account considerably diverging aspects of his views, some of which can be seen as counter-balancing the Platonic notion of ‘ascent’. In this respect, I detect at least two of his strategies. First, more often than not Proust immerses the aesthetic in what I should like to call the mundane. That is, he explores the way in which beauty, often (but not exclusively) artistic beauty, can be spotted and stained by its exposure to the triviality of one’s private or public life. And, second, as a consequence of its mundaneness, Proust’s aesthetic not only intersects with, but is also proliferated and enriched by the erotic, thus calling into question any strict separation between the reflective and the sensual, or between contemplation and gratification. �� 44 Nussbaum 2005, 227. This is a version of Nussbaum’s chapter on ‘Contemplative Creativity: Plato, Spinoza, Proust’ in: Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions, published two years earlier. I refer to the 2005 version because, as the author explains, ‘the focus on Proust gives the argument a different shape and character’ (Nussbaum 2005, 223). 45 Nussbaum 2005, 227. 46 Nussbaum 2005, 231. 47 See for instance Meyers 1972, 377, who states that ‘aesthetic analogies, or comparisons to works of art, can “heighten” and intensify ordinary life and increase and “elevate” the significance of the commonplace’. For Plato in Proust, see Meyers 1972, 379.

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These Proustian inclinations can be observed throughout In Search of Lost Time and are usually exemplified in the way certain characters respond to the visual arts, especially painting, or to song and music.48 It is with the latter that I would like to conclude this paper, mainly because I consider it absolutely relevant to the Ovidian lines I have focused on. This is the much celebrated sonata for violin and piano, a key component in the section of Proust’s novel called Swann in Love, a musical piece eventually attributed to a fictional composer called Vinteuil. It is, of course, impossible to analyze here in detail the long sections of Proust’s narrative that refer to Swann’s reflection upon this sonata.49 I highlight two key aspects. First, the sonata is not only heard but, initially at least, it is also appreciated aesthetically and reflected upon in the environment of lively parties, especially those parties given by the socialites Monsieur and Madame Verdurin. Multiple instances of small-talk among the Verdurins, Swann, and their other guests vis-à-vis the sonata are indicative of Proust’s interest in exploring aesthetic experience as part of the complexities and trivialities of the mundane, while at the same time enriching —not diminishing— its contemplative potency.50 The second aspect of Proust’s aesthetic approach to the sonata is its decisive intersection with impulse and more specifically with erotic desire. Here, the employment of metaphors, whereby Swann’s deeply contemplative engagement with this musical piece is likened to the desire for a woman, plays a key role. The sonata ‘was so peculiarly itself, it had so individual, so irreplaceable charm, that Swann felt as though he had met, in a friend’s drawing room, a woman whom he had seen and admired in the street and had despaired of ever seeing it again’.51 Eventually, longing for the sonata and longing for one particular woman, Odette, become inextricably linked in Proust’s narrative, the one intensifying the desire for the other. In other words, Swann’s immersion in aesthetic contemplation, instead of being a force of gradual ‘elevation’ towards a series of disembodied abstractions, brings him closer to the physical qualities that this particular body, that of Odette, can offer. Platonically speaking, this is nothing but a descent. Yet, despite the fact that Swann’s contemplation leads him closer to that single body, reflection upon its beauty is inextricably intertwined with his reflection upon beauty in general (including artistic beauty) and vice versa. That is, in Proust desire and aesthetic apprehension freely intersect and nourish one another. Unlike the

�� 48 For a brief account of the fine arts in Proust, see Bales 2001. 49 For an updated bibliography on music in Proust, see Larkin 2014. 50 Proust 1992, esp. I.249–58. 51 Proust 1992, I.254.

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Platonic aesthetic decorum, under which bodily impulse has to be annulled the very moment it ignites, Proust seems to have been interested in the sensory (and sensual) potential that not only surrounds but also pervades aesthetic contemplation. For when, later in his narrative, Odette is asked by Swann to play on the piano the Vinteuil sonata, in the intimate environment of her own place, we read that:52 He would make Odette play it over to him again and again, ten, twenty times on end, insisting that, as she did so, she must never stop kissing him. Every kiss provokes another. Ah, in those earliest days of love how naturally the kisses spring into life! So closely, in their profusion, do they crowd together that lovers would find it as hard to count the kisses exchanged in an hour as to count the flowers in a meadow in May. Then she would pretend to stop, saying: “How do you expect me to play when you keep on holding me? I can’t do everything at once. Make up your mind what you want: am I to play the phrase or play with you?”, and he would get angry, and she would burst out laughing, a laugh that was soon transformed and descended upon him in a shower of kisses.

Classicists will be right to feel the light breath of the youthful Catullus in this Proustian passage, asking his Lesbia to give him ‘a thousand kisses, then a hundred, then another thousand, then a second hundred, then yet another thousand, then a hundred’, until the counting is confused and the reckoning impossible. Yet once we sense the subtle and lighthearted presence of Roman erotic poetry in this Proustian passage, it will be hard not to also realize that, in this particular description, Swann and Odette look very much like a creative transformation of Sappho and Phaon, with Sappho and Odette playing or, perhaps, embodying the music that stirs their lovers’ unrestrained impulse for touch. We will probably never know if Proust ever read the lines of the Epistula Sapphus I have been discussing here. But, no matter whether he did or not, the question both Ovid and Proust tackle in an intriguingly similar and playful manner is: Can kissing and aesthetic attitude co-exist? Not only Edward Bullough, with whom we started this exploration, but also Plato and Kant, along with most philosophers, would of course answer this question in a most negative way. My own suspicion is that Epicurus, Ovid, and Proust would be much happier to leave this question open.

�� 52 Proust 1992, I.286.

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Bibliography Asmis, E. (1995), ‘Epicurean Poetics’, in: D. Obbink (ed.), Philodemus and Poetry: Poetic Theory and Practice in Lucretius, Philodemus, and Horace, Oxford, 15–34. Atherton, C. (2009), ‘Epicurean Philosophy of Language’, in: J. Warren (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Epicureanism, Cambridge, 197–215. Baca, A. (1971), ‘Ovid’s Epistle from Sappho to Phaon (Heroides 15)’, TAPhA 102, 29–38. Bales, R. (2001), ‘Proust and the Fine Arts’, in: R. Bales (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Proust, Cambridge, 183–99. Boccaccio, G. (2001), Famous Women, translated by V. Brown, Cambridge, Mass. Bullough, E. (1912), ‘Psychical Distance as a Factor in Art and an Aesthetic Principle’, British Journal of Psychology 5.2, 87–118. Burnyeat, M. (1999), ‘Culture and Society in Plato’s Republic’, in: G. Peterson (ed.), The Tanner Lectures on Human Values 20, Salt Lake City, 215–324. Celkyte, A. (2016), ‘Epicurus and Aesthetic Disinterestedness’, Mare Nostrum 7, 56–74. Cooper, (1999), Reason and Emotion: Essays on Ancient Moral Psychology and Ethical Theory, Princeton. Destrée P./Herrmann F. (2011), Plato and the Poets, Leiden. Destrée, P. (2015) ‘Pleasure’, in: P. Destrée/P. Murray (eds.), A Companion to Ancient Aesthetics, Malden, MA, 472–85. Dickie, G. (1961), ‘Bullough and the Concept of Psychical Distance’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 22.2, 233–38. Dörrie, H. (1971), P. Ovidii Nasonis Epistulae Heroidum, Berlin. —— (1975), P.Ovidius Naso: Der Brief der Sappho an Phaon, Munich. Erler, M. (2009), ‘Epicureanism in the Roman Empire’, in: J. Warren (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Epicureanism, Cambridge, 46–64. Farrell, J. (1998), ‘Reading and Writing the Heroides’, HSCP 98, 307–38. Ferrari, G. (1989), ‘Plato and Poetry’, in: G. Kennedy (ed.), The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, Vol. I, Cambridge, 92–148. Fulkerson, L. (2005), The Ovidian Heroine as Author, Cambridge. Gosetti-Murrayjohn, A. (2006), ‘Sappho’s Kisses: Biographical Tradition and Intertextuality in AP 5.246 and 5.236’, CJ 102.1, 41–59. Gosling, J.C.B/Taylor C.C.W (1982), The Greeks on Pleasure, Oxford. Hall, E. (2000), ‘Female Figures and Meta-poetry in Old Comedy’, in: D. Harvey/J. Wilkins (eds.), The Rivals of Aristophanes: Studies in Athenian Old Comedy, London, 407–18. Halliwell, S. (2011), Between Ecstasy and Truth: Interpretations of Greek Poetics from Homer to Longinus, Oxford. Jacobson, H. (1974), Ovid’s Heroides, Princeton. James, S. (2003), Learned Girls and Male Persuasion: Gender and Reading in Roman Love Elegy, Berkeley. Janaway, C. (1995), Images of Excellence: Plato’s Critique of the Arts, Oxford. Kant, I. (1987), Critique of Judgment: Translated with an Introduction by W.S. Pluhar, Indianapolis, (originally published in 1790). Knox, P. (1995), Ovid: Heroides, Cambridge. Larkin, A. (2014), ‘Introductory Note’, in: A. Larkin/C. Launchbury (eds.), Unsettling Scores: Proust and Music, Romance Studies 32.2, 71–74.

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Lindheim, S. (2003), Mail and Female: Epistolary Narrative and Desire in Ovid’s Heroides, Madison, WI. Long, A. (19862), Hellenistic Philosophy: Stoics, Epicureans, Sceptics, Berkeley. Lorenz, H. (2006), The Brute Within: Appetitive Desire in Plato and Aristotle, Oxford. Meyers, J. (1972), ‘Proust’s Aesthetic Analogies: Character and Painting in Swann’s Way’, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 30.3, 377–88. Murgatroyd, P./Reeves, B./Parker, S. (2017), Ovid’s Heroides: New Translation and Critical Essays, London. Nagy, G. (1990), Greek Mythology and Poetics, Ithaca and London. Nehamas, A. (1988), ‘Plato and Mass Media’, The Monist 71, 214–34. Nussbaum, M. (2005), ‘People as Fictions: Proust and the Ladder of Love’, in: S. Bartsch/T. Bartscherer (eds.), Erotikon: Essays on Eros, Ancient and Modern, Chicago, 223–40. Papanghelis, T. (1987), Propertius: A Hellenistic Poet on Love and Death, Cambridge. Parker, H. (2009), ‘Books and Reading Latin Poetry’, in: W. Johnson/H. Parker (eds.), Ancient Literacies: The Culture of Reading in Greece and Rome, Oxford, 186–229. Peponi, A.-E. (2002), ‘Fantasizing Lyric: Horace, Epistles 1.19’, in: M. Paschalis (ed.), Horace and Greek Lyric Poetry, Rethymnon, 19–45. ―― (2012), Frontiers of Pleasure: Models of Aesthetic Response in Archaic and Classical Greek Thought, Oxford. Porter, J. (1995), ‘Content and Form in Philodemus: The History of an Evasion’, in: D. Obbink (ed.), Philodemus and Poetry: Poetic Theory and Practice in Lucretius, Philodemus, and Horace, Oxford, 97–147. ―― (2010), The Origins of Aesthetic Thought: Matter, Sensation and Experience, Cambridge. Prauscello, L. (2014), Performing Citizenship in Plato’s Laws, Cambridge. Proust, M. (1992), In Search of Lost Time, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and T. Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, London. Rimell, V. (2006), Ovid’s Lovers: Desire, Difference, and the Poetic Imagination, Cambridge. Rosati, G. (1996), ‘Sabinus, the Heroides, and the Poet-Nightingale. Some Observations on the Authenticity of the Epistula Sapphus’, CQ 46, 207–16. Schiesaro, A. (2002), ‘Ovid and the Professional Discourses of Scholarship, Religion, Rhetoric’, in: P. Hardie (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Ovid, Cambridge, 62–75. Schlesier, R. (2013), ‘Atthis, Gyrinno, and other Hetairai: Female Personal Names in Sappho’s Poetry’, Philologus 157.2, 199–222. Sedley, D. (2009), ‘Epicureanism in the Roman Republic’, in: J. Warren (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Epicureanism, Cambridge, 29–45. Sider, D. (1995), ‘Epicurean Poetics: Response and Dialogue’, in: D. Obbink (ed.), Philodemus and Poetry: Poetic Theory and Practice in Lucretius, Philodemus, and Horace, Oxford, 35– 41. Tarrant, R.J. (1981), ‘The Authenticity of the Letter of Sappho to Phaon (Heroides XV)’, HSCP 85,133–53. Thorsen, T.S. (2014), Ovid’s Early Poetry: From his Single Heroides to his Remedia Amoris, Cambridge. Verducci, F. (1985), Ovid’s Toyshop of the Heart: Epistulae Heroidum, Princeton. Woolf, R. (2009), ‘Pleasure and Desire’, in: J. Warren (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Epicureanism, Cambridge, 158–78. Yatromanolakis, D. (2007), Sappho in the Making: The Early Reception, Washington, DC.

Alison Keith

Epicurean Philosophical Perspectives in (and on) [Vergil] Catalepton 51 The Appendix Vergiliana, a collection of varied poetic works attributed to Vergil over the course of 1500 or more years, was so named by Joseph Justus Scaliger in 1572 on the basis of the widespread habit of publishing Vergil’s juvenilia together at the end of editions containing the Bucolics, Georgics, and Aeneid. Of all the titles collected in the Appendix Vergiliana, however, only the Catalepton and the Culex were already attached to Vergil’s name in the first century CE, as we can tell, for the former, from Quintilian’s quotation of Catalepton 2 at Institutio Oratoria 8.3.27–92 and, for the latter, from the testimony of Lucan (Vita Lucani), Statius (Silv. 1 pr.), and Martial (Epigr. 8.55.20, 14.185).3 The title Catalepton is a Latin �� 1 I am honoured to offer this opusculum to Dr. Theodore Papanghelis, conlegae eruditissimo studiossimoque, on the occasion of his 65th birthday, with gratitude for his seminal scholarship on Propertius, Vergil and Catullus. 2 Quaedam tamen adhuc uetera uetustate ipsa gratius intent, quaedam et necessario interim sumuntur, ut ‘nuncupare’ et ‘fari’: multa alia etiam audentius inseri possunt, sed ita demum si non appareat adfectatio, in quam mirifice Vergilius: ‘Corinthiorum amator iste uerborum, Thucydides Britannus, Atticae febres, tau Gallicum, min et sphin †et male illisit† ita omnia ista uerba miscuit fratri.’ [Cat. 2] Cimber hic fuit a quo fratrem necatum hoc Ciceronis dicto notatum est: ‘Germanum Cimber occidit.’ Nevertheless, there are still some old words that shine brighter with age, while there are others which are sometimes necessary for our purposes, like nuncupare and fari. Others again may be adopted, if you are bold enough, but only if there is no sign of that affectation which Vergil attacks so marvellously [in Catalepton 2]: That lover of Corinthian words, British Thucydides—the Attic fevers, Min, sphin, the Gallic tau—and ill betide him!— He so mixed all the words to dose his brother. This was Cimber, whose murder of his brother is remarked on by Cicero in the words ‘Cimber has killed his brother German’. (Tr. Russell, adapted) 3 Cf. Chambert 2004.

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transliteration of the Greek phrase Κατὰ λεπτόν, ‘a few at a time’ or ‘small collection’ or ‘trifles’, all possible translations which highlight the Alexandrian, not to say Callimachean and Catullan, or neoteric, aesthetic principles that pervade the individual specimens in the collection, short poems in a variety of lyric metres. Catullus’ influence on the poems of the Catalepton has often been noted,4 but there is equally compelling evidence for the impact of Lucretius, and Epicurean tenets more broadly, on the collection. This study explores the Epicurean context of Vergil’s early career and its reflection in the text of Catalepton 5. A generation ago, Catalepton 5 and 8, if not the whole of the collection, were generally held to be authentically Vergilian in authorship, and as recently as 2004 a collection of scholarly papers devoted to Vergil, Philodemus and the Augustans reiterated that critical stance,5 and with good reason. For there is a growing body of external evidence that lends credence to their details of an Epicurean commitment on Vergil’s part, certainly in his youth ([V.] Cat. 5): Ite hinc, inanes, ite, rhetorum ampullae inflata rhoezo non Achaico verba; et vos, Selique Tarquitique Varroque, scholasticorum natio madens pingui, ite hinc, inane cymbalon iuventutis; tuque, o mearum cura, Sexte, curarum, vale, Sabine; iam valete, formosi. Nos ad beatos vela mittimus portus magni petentes docta dicta Sironis, vitamque ab omni vindicabimus cura. ite hinc, Camenae, vos quoque ite iam sane, dulces Camenae (nam fatebimur verum, dulces fuistis), et tamen meas chartas revisitote, sed pudenter et raro.

5

10

Go away, empty bombast of rhetoricians, go away, words swollen but not with Achaean impetus! And you— Selius, Tarquitius and Varro—set of pedants dripping with grease, go away, empty noise-makers of our youth. Even you Sextus Sabinus, care of my cares, farewell; now farewell, beautiful youths. We set sail for blessed havens, seeking great Siro’s learned words, and we shall redeem our life from every care. Go away, Muses, yes you too

�� 4 For Catullan influence see, e.g., Holzberg 2004; and cf. Westendorp Boerma passim. 5 Richmond (1984) articulates the then communis opinio, in favour of authenticity; cf. the chapters by Clay and Longo Auricchio in Armstrong et al. 2004. Chambert 2004, arguing for the authenticity not only of the Catalepton but also of the other works in the Appendix, especially Culex, has not won wide acceptance. Holzberg 2004 and Peirano 2012, 74–116 offer the most recent statements of scepticism of the authenticity of Catalepton.

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now go away, sweet Muses (for we shall confess the truth, you were sweet); and yet, return to my pages, but chastely and seldom! (Tr. Fairclough, adapted)

For one thing, the Epicurean master Siro named at Catalepton 5.9 (and 8.1) is a comparatively obscure figure, known to us only from these two poems in the Appendix Vergiliana, a papyrus fragment from Herculaneum (P. Herc. 312, col. I.4),6 and some references in the works of Lucretius’ contemporary Cicero,7 including his famous description of his Epicurean friends at the conclusion of the second book of De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum (Cic. Fin. 2.119): ‘Habeo,’ inquit Torquatus, ‘ad quos ista referam, et, quamquam aliquid ipse poteram, tamen invenire mala paratiores.’ ‘Familiares nostros, credo, Sironem dicis et Philodemum, cum optimos viros, tum homines doctissimos.’ ‘Recte,’ inquit, ‘intellegis.’ ‘I am at no loss for authorities’, said Torquatus, ‘to whom to refer your arguments. I might be able to do some execution myself, but I prefer to find better-equipped champions’. ‘No doubt you allude to our excellent and learned friends Siro and Philodemus’. ‘You are right’, he replied. (Tr. Rackham)

Here, Cicero reports that the Epicurean speaker Torquatus yields to the authority of the Epicurean masters Siro and Philodemos, ‘both excellent fellows and very learned men’.8 We are much better informed about Siro’s friend and associate mentioned by Cicero here and elsewhere, Philodemos, who seems to have been the leader of an

�� 6

… ἐδ]όκει δ᾽ ἐπ|ανελθεῖν] μεθ᾽ ἡμῶν εἰς τὴν Νεά]πολιν πρὸς τὸν φίλτατο]ν Σίρωνα [κ]αὶ τὴν κατ᾽ αὐ]τὸν ἐκεῖ δίαιταν καὶ τὰς φι]λοσόφους ἐνεργ[ῆσαι ὁμι]λίας Ἡρκλ[ανέωι τε μεθ᾽ ἑ]τέ[ρων συζητῆσαι.

He decided to return with us to Naples and to dearest Siro and his way of life there and to engage in active philosophical discourse in Herculaneum and to live with others. (P.Herc. 312, col. I.4, 5–13, ed. Gigante; tr. Sider)

7 Cic. Acad. 2.106; ad Fam. 6.11.2; cf. De Fin. 1.65. The Vergilian Vitae also preserve the name: Don. Vita Verg. 79; Phocas, Vita Verg. Line 87; Schol. Veron. Buc. 6.10; Serv. ad Buc. 6.13, and ad Aen. 6.264. 8 On Siro, see Kroll 1927; Westendorp Boerma 1949, I.99–100; and Gigante 1990.

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Epicurean community near Naples, at Herculaneum,9 where he lived in the patronage of L. Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus (Caesar’s father-in-law), from approximately the late 70s to the late 40s or early 30s BCE when he is thought to have died. Although we know comparatively little about his early life, we are well informed about his philosophical activity in Italy, because over the last two hundred and fifty years and more, ongoing excavations at the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum – a town buried by Vesuvius along with Pompeii in 79 CE – have yielded about 1500 charred papyrus rolls, of which Philodemus is the author of the greatest number.10 Three papyrus fragments are of particular interest to students of Vergil, because they document him as one of the four addressees of Philodemos’ work Περὶ Κολακείας (‘On Flattery’), part of his major work On Vices and their Corresponding Virtues dated to the middle of the first century BCE.11 Particularly important is a still extant papyrus with a fragment naming Philodemos’ four Roman addressees as Plotius, Varius, Vergil, and Quintilius (P. Herc. Paris. 2): ὦ Πλώτιε καὶ Οὐα- | ρ[ι]ε καὶ Οὐεργ[ί]λιε καὶ Κοιντ[ί | λιε. (‘O Plotius and Varius and Vergilius and Quintilius’.)12 For Vergil is here addressed in the company of the very Epicurean comrades with whom the Proban Life reports (10–12 Hardie) that ‘he lived for many years in gentlemanly leisure, and followed the philosophical sect of Epicurus, in outstanding harmony and friendship’. (Vixit pluribus annis ... liberali in

otio secutus Epicuri sectam, insigni concordia et familiaritate usus Quintili, Tuccae et Vari.) Both the ancient biographers and contemporary anecdotes confirm the importance of these friends, not only in Vergil’s Epicurean community but also for his literary career. Donatus identifies Varius and Plotius as Vergil’s literary executors, in his report of our poet’s death on 21 September 19 BCE (VV 37, 39–41): Heredes fecit ex dimidia parte Valerium Proculum fratrem alio patre, ex quarto Augustum, ex duodecima Maecenatem, ex reliqua L. Varium et Plotium Tuccam, qui eius Aeneida post obitum iussu Caesaris emendaverunt ... egerat cum Vario, priusquam Italia decederet, ut siquid sibi accidisset, Aeneida combureret; at is facturum se pernegarat; Igitur in extrema valetudine assidue scrinia desideravit, crematurus ipse; verum nemine offerente nihil

�� 9 In addition to De Fin. 2.119, see Cic. Pis. 68–72, 74; Or. Post Red. in Sen. 14–15. Sider 1997: 227– 34 collects the testimonia; in general on Philodemos, see Sider 1997. 10 On the discovery of the villa during the Napoleonic excavations of Herculaneum, see Parslow 1995; brief discussion in Sider 2005, 3–4. The villa’s ground plan supplied the model for the layout of the Getty Villa in Malibu, on which see: Sider 2005, 4, with 9 Figure 6. 11 Cavallo 1983, 41 and 54–5; cf. Capasso 1989, 175–6. 12 Cf. P. Herc. 1082, also from Peri Kolakeias (col. xi), on which Vergil’s name has been supplemented in a lacuna between those of Varius and Quintilius: see Sider 1997, 19.

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quidem nominatim de ea cavit. ceterum eidem Vario ac simul Tuccae scripta sua sub ea condicione legavit, ne quid ederent, quod non a se editum esset. edidit autem auctore Augusto Varius, sed summatim emendata, ut qui versus etiam inperfectos sicut erant reliquerit. He named as his heirs Valerius Proculus, his half-brother, to half of his estate, Augustus to a quarter, Maecenas to a twelfth; the rest he left to Lucius Varius and Plotius Tucca, who revised the Aeneid after his death on the order of Augustus Caesar …. He had arranged with Varius, before he left Italy, that if anything happened to him, Varius would burn the Aeneid; but Varius vehemently denied he would do any such thing; and so in his final illness he constantly called for his boxes of scrolls, to burn the poem himself; but when no one brought them to him, he made no specific request about the poem. He left his writings to this same Varius and along with him Tucca, on the condition that they publish nothing that he himself would not have. However, Varius published the Aeneid on the authority of Augustus, making only a few slight corrections and even leaving the incomplete lines just as they were. (Tr. Rolfe, adapted)

Varius is of particular interest as the literary executor who took the lead in editing Vergil’s unfinished Aeneid. He is commonly agreed to be L. Varius Rufus, the author of an epic poem De Morte (‘On Death’), written between 44 and 39 BCE, on a subject treated not only by Philodemos in his treatise ‘On Death’ (Περὶ Θανάτου) but also by Lucretius in the third book of his De Rerum Natura.13 The poet Horace, Vergil’s friend and contemporary, lauds Varius as the foremost exponent of Latin epic (Sat. 1.10.43–5) in the mid-30s BCE, while Vergil himself praises Varius in his ninth eclogue, together with Catullus’ friend C. Helvius Cinna (d. 44 BCE),14 the poet and politician (Buc. 9.35–6): nam neque adhuc Vario uideor nec dicere

Cinna | digna (‘for neither do I yet seem to compose poems worthy of Varius or Cinna’).15 Horace’s first book of Satires (put into circulation as a collection in 35 BCE, but containing poems composed somewhat earlier in the decade) is a rich source of evidence for Vergil’s life during the early 30s.16 In Satires 1.10 Horace mentions Vergil alongside Plotius, Varius, and Maecenas in a passage listing the discriminating critics to whom he entrusts his verse (Sat. 1.10.81–3): Plotius et Varius,

�� 13 On Varius, see Cova 1989; Courtney 1993, 271–5; Hollis 1996 and 2007, 253–81. 14 On Cinna, see Wiseman 1974, 44–58; Courtney 1993, 212–27; and Hollis 2007, 11–48; all with further bibliography. 15 All quotations of the text of Vergil are from the Oxford Classical Edition of Mynors 1969; translations are my own unless otherwise indicated. 16 On the impact of Horace’s portrait of Vergil on the latter’s biographical tradition, see Peirano 2012, 97 n. 86, with further bibliography.

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Maecenas Vergiliusque, | Valgius et probet haec Octavius optimus atque | Fuscus … (‘May Plotius and Varius, Maecenas and Vergil, Valgius and Octavius approve these poems, and excellent Fuscus …’.) Vergil, Varius and Plotius also appear together in Satires 1.5, which describes a trip to Brindisi with their patron Maecenas on a diplomatic mission in 38 or 37 BCE. Horace recalls that, while travelling with Maecenas, he met these friends at Sinuessa (Sat. 1.5.39–44): postera lux oritur multo gratissima; namque Plotius et Varius Sinuessae Vergiliusque occurrunt, animae, qualis neque candidiores terra tulit neque quis me sit devinctior alter. o qui conplexus et gaudia quanta fuerunt. nil ego contulerim iucundo sanus amico.

40

The next day rose much the most agreeable; for Plotius, Varius, and Vergil met us at Sinuessa – such souls as the earth has not born brighter nor to whom any other should be more attached than I. O what embraces there were and how great our transports! As long as I am of sound mind, there is nothing I would compare to an agreeable friend.

Sinuessa lay on the Gulf of Caieta, just north of the Bay of Naples where the Epicurean communities of Siro and Philodemus were located in the 40s BCE and where we may assume Vergil and his Epicurean intimates continued to live in the 30s. Horace’s reference to his close relationship with the three friends, moreover, is couched in specifically Epicurean terms, recalling Torquatus’ translation of Epicurus’ teaching of the bliss of friendship (KD 27: ὧν ἡ σοφία παρασκευάζεται εἰς τὴν τοῦ ὅλου βίου μακαριότητα, πολὺ μέγιστόν ἐστιν ἡ τῆς φιλίας κτῆσις, ‘Of the things which wisdom prepares for the blessedness of one’s whole life, much the greatest is the possession of friendship’, tr. Inwood and Gerson) in Cicero’s De Finibus (1.65):17 de qua Epicurus quidem ita dicit, omnium rerum quas ad beate vivendum sapientia comparaverit nihil esse maius amicitia, nihil uberius, nihil iucundius. (‘Indeed, Epicurus said that of all the things which wisdom had prepared for living happily, nothing was greater than friendship, nothing richer, nothing more agreeable’, tr. Rackham.) Whatever the authorship of Catalepton 5, it is clear that our poem is informed by Epicurean principle and precept throughout. Right from the start, for example, the introductory characterization of rhetoric as empty (inanes rhetorum ampullae, 5.1)18 falls squarely in line with Epicurus’ explicit dismissal of traditional paideia

�� 17 On the allusion to Epicurus via Cicero, see Gowers 2012, 198, ad Hor. Sat. 1.5.44. 18 The diminutive ampulla (from amphora: see Westendorp Boerma 1949, 1.106 ad loc.) is a Catullan mannerism, while the association of rhetorical delivery with the hollow sound of speaking

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in his letter to Pythocles (DL 10.6): ἔν τε τῇ πρὸς Πυθοκλέα ἐπιστολῇ γράφειν ῾παιδείαν δὲ πᾶσαν, μακάριε, φεῦγε τἀκατίδιον ἀράμενος᾽. (‘In his letter to Pythocles, he writes “flee all culture, blessed boy, hoisting sail”,’ tr. Inwood and Gerson.) This is the advice implicit as well in the letter’s conclusion (Ep. ad Pyth., DL 10.116): ταῦτα δὴ πάντα, Πυθόκλεις, μνημόνευσον· κατὰ πολύ τε γὰρ τοῦ μύθου ἐκβήσῃ καὶ τὰ ὁμογενῆ τούτοις συνορᾶν δυνήσῃ· μάλιστα δὲ σεαυτὸν ἀπόδος εἰς τὴν τῶν ἀρχῶν καὶ ἀπειρίας καὶ τῶν συγγενῶν τούτοις θεωρίαν, ἔτι τε κριτηρίων καὶ παθῶν καὶ οὗ ἕνεκεν ταῦτα ἐκλογιζόμεθα. Ταῦτα γὰρ μάλιστα συνθεωρούμενα ῥᾳδίως τὰς περὶ τῶν κατὰ μέρος αἰτίας συνορᾶν ποιήσει. Οἱ δὲ ταῦτα μὴ καταγαπήσαντες ᾗ μάλιστα οὔτ᾽ αὐτὰ ταῦτα καλῶς συνθεωρήσαιεν οὔτε οὗ ἕνεκεν δεῖ θεωρεῖν ταῦτα περιεποιήσαντο. Commit all of this to memory, Pythocles; for you will leave myth (ed. Dorandi) far behind you and will be able to see [the causes of phenomena] similar to these. Most important, devote yourself to the contemplation of the basic principles [i.e., atoms] and the unlimited [i.e., void] and things related to them, and again [the contemplation] of the criteria and the feelings and the [goal] for sake of which we reason these things out. For if these things above all are contemplated together, they will make it easy for you to see the explanations of the detailed phenomena. For those who have not accepted these [ideas] with complete contentment could not do a good job of contemplating these things themselves, nor could they acquire the [goal] for the sake of which these things should be contemplated. (Tr. Inwood and Gerson)

The speaker of Catalepton 5 insists on the emptiness of rhetorical training (cf. Cat. 5.1–2, 4–5) in the insulting description of its principles as ‘jars for cosmetics’ (ampullae, 5.1);19 ‘words swollen with a rush which does not belong to Achaean diction’ (inflata rhoezo non Achaico verba, 5.2), i.e., turgid Asian rhetorical style in reference to the opposition between the exponents of Asian bombast and Attic purity;20 ‘youth’s empty cymbals’ (inane cymbalon iuventutis, 5.5);21 and its practitioners – Selius, Tarquitius, and Varro – as ‘a tribe of rhetoric teachers dripping with grease’ (scholasticorum natio madens pingui, 5.4).

�� into an empty vessel is Callimachean: see Westendorp Boerma 1949, 1.106 ad loc., citing Schol. ad Hephaest. pg. 122, 24. 19 Westendorp Boerma 1949, 1.112 ad Cat. 5.4 madens pingui, reminds us that the ampulla was, properly speaking, a container for oils and perfumes. 20 On the rhetorical distinction between Atticists and Asianists mobilized here, see Westendorp Boerma 1949, 1.107–8, ad loc. On the lectio ‘rhoezo’, see Westendorp Boerma 1949, 1.108–11 ad loc. 21 For the insult, see Westendorp Boerma 1949, 1.114 ad loc.

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The speaker of Catalepton 5 further underlines his rejection of paideia in the repetition of the adjective inanis (inanes ampullae, 5.1; inane cymbalon, 5.5), an adjective that belongs to the Latin lexicon of Epicureanism. In the letter to Menoeceus, Epicurus explains that some desires are natural, others groundless (Ep. ad Men. apud DL 10.127): Ἀναλογιστέον δὲ ὡς τῶν ἐπιθυμιῶν αἱ μέν εἰσι φυσικαί, αἱ δὲ κεναί. (‘One must reckon that, of desires, some are natural but some are empty’, tr. Inwood and Gerson.) Lucretius illustrates the emptiness of desires spurred by envy, in contrast with the Epicurean goal of true pleasure, in a passage at the end of the fifth book of De Rerum Natura (Lucr. DRN 5.1430–3): ergo hominum genus incassum frustraque laborat 1430 semper et curis consumit inanibus aevum nimirum quia non cognovit quae sit habendi finis et omnino quoad crescat vera voluptas. And so human beings never cease to labour vainly and fruitlessly, consuming their lives in empty cares, evidently because they have not learned the proper limit to possession, and the extent to which real pleasure can increase. (Tr. Smith)

The passage recuperates the telling phrase curae inanes, deployed already in the third book (Lucr. DRN 3.112–16): praeterea molli cum somno dedita membra effusumque iacet sine sensu corpus onustum, est aliud tamen in nobis quod tempore in illo multimodis agitator et omnis accipit in se laetitiae motus et curas cordis inanis.

115

Moreover, even when we have resigned our limbs to gentle slumber and our sprawling body lies heavy and insensible, there is something within us that at that time is stirred by many kinds of emotion, experiencing all the movements of pleasure and the heart’s empty anxieties. (Tr. Smith)

The first half of Catalepton 5 thus emphasises the study of rhetoric as an empty concern, in no way redeemed, apparently, by the experience of friendship

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implied in lines 6–7, though friendship was identified by Epicurus himself as an ideal (if self-interested) pleasure.22 Why then does our poet bid farewell not only to his rhetorical studies but also to his dearest friend, Sextus Sabinus, whom he addresses as cura curarum? Here too, I suspect, he is using the Latin lexicon of Lucretian Epicureanism, for Lucretius employs the word cura to describe not friendship (amicitia) but passionate love (amor) and its debilitating effects (Lucr. DRN 4.1052–67): sic igitur Veneris qui telis accipit ictus, sive puer membris muliebribus hunc iaculatur seu mulier toto iactans e corpore amorem, unde feritur, eo tendit gestitque coire et iacere umorem in corpus de corpore ductum. namque voluptatem praesagit muta cupido. Haec Venus est nobis; hinc autemst nomen amoris, hinc illaec primum Veneris dulcedinis in cor stillavit gutta et successit frigida cura. nam si abest quod ames, praesto simulacra tamen sunt illius et nomen dulce obversatur ad auris. sed fugitare decet simulacra et pabula amoris absterrere sibi atque alio convertere mentem et iacere umorem collectum in corpora quaeque nec retinere, semel conversum unius amore, et servare sibi curam certumque dolorem.

1055

1060

1065

The same is true of the man who is wounded by the darts of Venus: whether they are launched by a boy with womanly limbs or by a woman whose whole body radiates love, he moves toward the source of the blow, yearning to copulate and ejaculate the accumulated fluid from body to body; for his speechless desire augurs the pleasure to come. This is what we call Venus. This is also what gives us our name for love; this is the source of that honeyed drop of Venus’ sweetness that is first distilled into our heart, to be followed by chilling care. For even if your loved one is absent, images of her are with you and the darling name keeps ringing in your ears. It is advisable to shun such images, to abstain from all that feeds your love, and to turn your attention elsewhere: you should ejaculate the accumulated fluid into any woman’s body rather than reserve it for a single lover who monopolizes you and thus involve yourself in inevitable anxiety and anguish. (Tr. Smith)

At the end of this passage, Lucretius glosses cura with the phrase certum dolorem (4.1067) and he hints at the derivation for the noun, which Smith translates in our �� 22 On the central importance of friendship in Epicureanism, see Rist 1972, 127–39, and 1980; Mitsis 1987; and Brown 2002.

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passage as both ‘care’ (4.1060) and ‘anguish’ (4.1067), from cupido (‘desire)’ and cor (‘heart’). Both cupido and cor, like cura, stand at line-end of their verses (4.1057, 1059, and 1060 respectively), in a pattern of vertical juxtaposition which James J. O’Hara, in True Names (1996), has shown to be characteristic of etymological wordplay in learned Alexandrian poetry, both in Greece and Rome.23 Moreover, the noun amoris, in the line (4.1058) intervening between cupido (4.1057) and cor (4.1059), falls squarely within the set of words that are to be connected etymologically.24 Less than ten years after Lucretius composed his Epicurean poem, moreover, the polymath Varro was at work on his treatise on the Latin language (47–45 BCE), in which he derives cura precisely from cor urat (LL 6.46):25 Curare a cura dictum. Cura, quod cor urat … (Curare ‘to care for, look after’ is said from cura ‘care, attention, because it burns the heart’ …) Two decades later, Vergil draws very precisely on this etymology in his characterization of Dido’s passion for Aeneas at the beginning of Aeneid 4 (Aen. 4.1–2): At regina graui iamdudum saucia cura | uulnus alit uenis et caeco carpitur igni. (‘But the queen, long since wounded with a grievous passion, nourishes the wound in her veins and is consumed by an unseen fire’.) Vergil’s etymologizing here has long been recognized; indeed, Servius drew attention to it in his commentary on the line.26 In the light of both the contemporary Epicurean philosophical and Latin etymological association of cura with the empty desire of erotic passion, it is not surprising that the author of Catalepton 5 renounces his dearest care, Sextus Sabinus. The first half of Catalepton 5, then, characterizes Epicurean philosophical study as a renunciation – of rhetoric (i.e., a public career), of poetry and age-mates (i.e., conventional elite schooling), and of cares (perhaps not only his love for Sextus Sabinus but also the continuing civil wars). In the second half of the poem, we find the Epicurean community represented as a happy haven presided over by the learned precepts of the great master Siro (Cat. 5.8–10). Lucretius offers a

�� 23 O’Hara 1996, 60, his item 2.9, discussed at 86–8. 24 Westendorp Boerma 1949, 1.114–15 ad loc., reaches the same conclusion (that cura here = deliciae, citing TLL 14.1466.57) though without reference to the extensive contemporary Epicurean discussion of cura. 25 See also Maltby (1991, 166 s.v. cura), who collects all the ancient discussions of the etymology. 26 In fact, Servius discusses the etymology ad Aen. 1.208 and 4.1. O’Hara 1996, 87–8, discusses Vergil’s deployment of the etymology at Aen. 4.1 in connection with the passage in Lucretius, though he does not extend his observations beyond DRN 4.1059–60.

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parallel for our author’s embrace of Siro’s ‘learned precepts’ (docta dicta, Cat. 5.9) in his own espousal of Epicurus’ ‘golden precepts’ (DRN 3.9–13):27 tu pater es, rerum inventor, tu patria nobis suppeditas praecepta, tuisque ex, inclute, chartis, floriferis ut apes in saltibus omnia libant, omnia nos itidem depascimur aurea dicta, aurea, perpetua semper dignissima vita.

10

You are our father and the discoverer of truth; you supply us with fatherly precepts; and from your pages, illustrious master, like the bees which in flowerful vales sip each bloom, we feed on each golden saying—golden and ever most worthy of eternal life. (Tr. Smith)

A similarly suggestive correspondence can be seen in the image in Catalepton 5 of ‘setting sail for the blessed harbours’ of Epicurean philosophy and Epicurus’ invitation to Pythocles to ‘spread [his] sails and flee all forms of culture’ (D.L. 10.6, quoted above).28 The sailing imagery recurs in Vatican Saying 17: It is not the young man who is to be congratulated for his blessedness, but the old man who has lived well. For the young man at the full peak of his powers wanders senselessly, owing to chance. But the old man has let down anchor in old age as though in a harbour, since he has secured the goods about which he was previously not confident by means of his secure sense of gratitude. (Tr. Inwood and Gerson)

Cicero repeatedly draws on this imagery in his characterization of philosophy as a refuge from political unrest (Cic. Fam. 7.30.2, Tusc. 5.25), often in language that betrays his (unacknowledged and disavowed) debt to Epicurean tenets.29

�� 27 See Westendorp Boerma 1949, 1.118 ad loc., who also compares the end of the proem to the fifth book of the DRN, Lucr. 5.52–4, and Lucr. 6.24. 28 On Vergil’s allusion to Epicurus’ letter to Pythocles in Catalepton 5, see Clay 2004, who notes Epicurus’ allusion in his letter to the flight of the Homeric Odysseus from the Sirens in Odyssey 12. 29 Cf., e.g., Tusc. 5.2.5: ad te [sc. philosphia] confugimus, a te opem petimus, tibi nos … nunc penitus totosque tradimus … cuius igitur potius opibus utamur quam tuis, quae et uitae tranquilitatem largita nobis es et terrorem mortis sustulisti? (‘We flee to you, Lady Philosophy, we seek aid from you, to you we now hand ourselves over wholly and completely … Therefore, whose resources should we rather use than yours, since you have bestowed on us serenity of life and have removed from us the fear of death?’) On Cicero’s sustained opposition to Epicureanism, see Hanchey 2013.

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Catalepton 5 thus presents the community of Epicureans led by Siro in Naples as having turned its back on the political upheavals of triumviral Italy, and personal upheavals of passionate desire, in order to seek the blessed tranquillity (Greek ἀταραξία [ataraxia]; Latin quies or otium) and philosophical insight promised by Epicurus’ teaching, as summed up in his Key Doctrine 14 (D.L. 10.143): τῆς ἀσφαλείας τῆς ἐξ ἀνθρώπων γενομένης μέχρι τινὸς δυνάμει τε ἐξερειστικῇ καὶ εὐπορίᾳ, εἰλικρινεστάτη γίνεται ἡ ἐκ τῆς ἡσυχίας καὶ ἐκχωρήσεως τῶν πολλῶν ἀσφάλεια. The purest security is that which comes from a quiet life and withdrawal from the many, although a certain degree of security arising from other men does come by means of the power to repel [attacks] and by means of prosperity. (Tr. Roskam)

Similarly, the author of Catalepton 5 frames his Epicurean retreat as the redemption of his life from all care, including, presumably, that of his erotic passion for Sextus Sabinus. Lucretius had likewise characterized the goal of Epicurean philosophy as removal from care and fear, in language adapted in line 10 of Catalepton 5 (Lucr. DRN 2.16–19): degitur (hoc aevi quodcumquest!) nonne videre nil aliud sibi naturam latrare, nisi … utqui corpore seiunctus dolor absit, mensque fruatur iucundo sensu cura semota metuque? To think that you should fail to see that nature importunately demands only that the body may be rid of pain, and that the mind, divorced from anxiety and fear, may enjoy a feeling of contentment! (Tr. Smith)

Westendorp Boerma (1949, 1.118 ad loc.) notes that this expression was peculiar to the Epicureans in antiquity, and Lucretius avails himself of a similar idea in the proem to the next book (DRN 3.14–17): nam simul ac ratio tua coepit vociferari naturam rerum, divina mente coorta diffugiunt animi terrores, moenia mundi discedunt, totum video per inane geri res.

15

As soon as your philosophy begins to proclaim the true nature of things revealed by your divine mind, the terrors of the mind are dispelled, the walls of the world disport, and I see what happens throughout the whole void. (Tr. Smith)

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The younger Seneca confirms that the formulation was Epicurean in provenance (Epist. 66.45): apud Epicurum duo bona sunt ex quibus summum illud beatumque componitur, ut corpus sine dolore sit, animus sine perturbatione. (‘In Epicurus there are two goods from which that highest blessing is achieved, namely that the body be without pain and the mind without disturbance’.)30 The close correspondence in the speaker’s explicit embrace of Siro’s teaching in Catalepton 5 with Epicurus’ characterization of the tranquil life and Lucretius’ characterization of the Epicurean philosophical project adumbrate the Epicurean character of the philosophical choice the speaker has made in Catalepton 5. Even the concluding lines of the poem, with their valediction to the Italian Muses, are consistent with the expression of Epicurean principle throughout the poem. Epicurus’ disdain for poetry, though well known, is belied by the vogue for poetic composition by eminent Epicureans living in Italy at the end of the republic and well into the triumviral period: we may recall not only Lucretius and Philodemus, but also Varius, Horace, and, of course, Vergil himself. The confession of the pleasure the speaker takes in the Camenae, in particular the repetition of the adjective dulces, is expressly Epicurean both in diction and in precept. Lucretius refers to the ‘sweetness of Venus’ with the cognate substantive dulcedo (Veneris dulcedinis, DRN 4.1059), and he affirms the Epicurean principle that mental pleasure is the goal of the good life in the phrase iucundo sensu (DRN 2.19). Moreover, Vergil’s invitation to the sweet Camenae31 to return to his pages – albeit chastely and infrequently – is reminiscent of the spirit of Epicurean askesis (DL 10.130–1): καὶ τὴν αὐτάρκειαν δὲ ἀγαθὸν μέγα νομίζομεν, οὐχ ἵνα πάντως τοῖς ὀλίγοις χρώμεθα, ἀλλ᾽ ὅπως ἐὰν μὴ ἔχωμεν τὰ πολλά, τοῖς ὀλίγοις χρώμεθα, πεπεισμένοι γνησίως ὅτι ἥδιστα πολυτελείας ἀπολαύουσιν οἱ ἥκιστα ταύτης δεόμενοι, καὶ ὅτι τὸ μὲν φυσικὸν πᾶν εὐπόριστόν ἐστι, τὸ δὲ κενὸν δυσπόριστον. οἵ τε λιτοὶ χυλοὶ ἴσην πολυτελεῖ διαίτῃ τὴν ἡδονὴν ἐπιφέρουσιν ὅταν ἅπαν τὸ ἀλγοῦν κατ᾽ ἔνδειαν ἐξαιρεθῇ· [131] καὶ μᾶζα καὶ ὕδωρ τὴν ἀκροτάτην ἀποδίδωσιν ἡδονήν, ἐπειδὰν ἐνδέων τις αὐτὰ προσενέγκηται. τὸ συνεθίζειν οὖν ἐν ταῖς ἁπλαῖς καὶ οὐ πολυτελέσι διαίταις καῖ ὑγιείας ἐστὶ συμπληρωτικὸν καὶ πρὸς τὰς ἀναγκαίας τοῦ βίου χρήσεις ἄοκνον ποιεῖ τὸν ἄνθρωπον καὶ τοῖς πολυτελέσιν ἐκ διαλειμμάτων προσερχομένους κρεῖττον ἡμᾶς διατίθησι καὶ πρὸς τὴν τύχην ἀφόβους παρασκευάζει.

�� 30 Cic. Fin. 1.49 similarly adapts Epicurean phrasing: ista sequimur ut sine cura metuque uiuamus. (‘We follow these precepts of yours, in order to live without anxiety and fear’). 31 Vergil names the Camenae only once in his extant poetry, at Buc. 3.59; for the phrase dulces Camenae, cf. Hor. Epist. 1.19.5, in an Epicurean context. Vergil applies the adjective dulces to the Muses at Geo. 2.475.

��� � Alison Keith

And we believe that self-sufficiency is a great good, not in order that we might make do with few things under all circumstances, but so that if we do not have a lot we can make do with few, being genuinely convinced that those who least need extravagance enjoy it most; and that everything natural is easy to obtain and whatever is groundless is hard to obtain; and that simple flavours provide a pleasure equal to that of an extravagant life-style when all pain from want is removed, [131] and barley cakes and water provide the highest pleasure when someone in want takes them. Therefore, becoming accustomed to simple, not extravagant, ways of life makes one completely healthy, makes man unhesitant in the face of life’s necessary duties, puts us in a better condition for the times of extravagance which occasionally come along, and makes us fearless in the face of chance. (Tr. Inwood and Gerson)

In his correspondence, Epicurus recommends infrequent indulgence of bodily pleasures, but he does not forbid them altogether, as we may see in Diogenes Laertius’ quotation of another letter (DL 10.11): αὐτός τέ φησιν ἐν ταῖς ἐπιστολαῖς, ὕδατι μόνον ἀρκεῖσθαι καῖ ἄρτῳ λιτῷ. Καί, ῾πέμψον μοι τυροῦ,᾽ φησί, ῾κυθρίδιον, ἵν᾽ ὅταν βούλωμαι πολυτελεύσασθαι δύνωμαι.᾽ τοιοῦτος ἦν ὁ τὴν ἡδονὴν εἶναι τέλος δογματίζων ... (‘He himself says in his correspondence that he was content with plain bread and water. And he says, ‘Send me a little pot of cheese, that, when I like, I may fare sumptuously’. Such was the man who laid down that pleasure was the goal of life …’ Tr. Inwood and Gerson). The concluding movement of Catalepton 5 evokes just such a picture of rare indulgence, mutatis mutandis, in the pleasure of poetic composition. Careful attention to the language and precepts on display in Catalepton 5 thus reveals a poetic idiom steeped in the lexicon, theory, and practice of Epicurean philosophy as we know it not only from Epicurus’ day in 4th century BCE Athens but also from Philodemus’ day in first century BCE Italy. The poem is informed by Epicurean diction and ethical principles that can be paralleled both in Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura and in the extant maxims and letters of Epicurus studied. Finally, the poem coheres closely with the evidence of the Herculaneum papyri and Horace’s early poetry for the young Vergil’s interest in Epicureanism.

Bibliography Armstrong, D./Fish, J./Johnston, P.A./Skinner, M.B. (eds.) (2004), Vergil, Philodemus, and the Augustans, Austin TX. Brown, E. (2002), ‘Epicurus on the Value of Friendship (“Sententia Vaticana 23”)’, CP 97, 68– 80. Brown, R.D. (1987), Lucretius on Love and Sex, Leiden. Cavallo, G. (1983), Libri scritture scribi a Ercolano: Introduzione allo studio dei materiali greci, Primo Supplemento Cronache ercolanesi 13, Naples. Chambert, R. (2004), ‘Vergil’s Epicureanism in his Early Poems’, in: Armstrong et al., 43–60.

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Clay, D. (2004), ‘Vergil’s Farewell to Education (Catalepton 5) and Epicurus’ Letter to Pythocles’, in: Armstrong et al., 25–36. Courtney, E. (ed.) (1993), The Fragmentary Latin Poets, Oxford. Cova, P.V. (1989), Il poeta Vario, Milan. Dorandi, T. (ed.) (2013), Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Cambridge. Fairclough, H.R. (ed.) (1999), Virgil, Appendix Vergiliana, rev. G.P. Goold, Cambridge MA. Gigante, M. (1990), ‘I frammenti di Sirone’, Paedeia 45, 175–98. Gigante, M./M. Capasso (1989), ‘Il ritorno a Ercolano’, SIFC 82, 3–6. Gowers, E. (ed.) (2012), Horace, Satires Book I, Cambridge. Hanchey, D. (2013), ‘Cicero, Exchange, and the Epicureans’, Phoenix 67, 119–34. Hardie, C. (ed.) (1966), Vitae Vergilianae Antiquae, Oxford. Hollis, A.S. (1996), ‘Virgil’s Friend Varius Rufus’, PVS 22, 19–33. ―― (ed.) (2007), Fragments of Roman Poetry c. 60 bc – ad 20, Oxford. Holzberg, N. (2004), ‘Impersonating Young Vergil: The Author of the Catalepton and his libellus’, MD 52, 29–40. Inwood, B./Gerson, L.P. (1994), The Epicurus Reader, Indianapolis. Kent, R.G. (ed.) (1938), Varro, De Lingua Latina, 2 vols., Cambridge MA. Longo Auricchio, F. (2004), ‘Philosophy’s Harbor’, in: Armstrong et al., 37–42. Maltby, R. (1991), A Lexicon of Ancient Latin Etymologies, Leeds. Mitsis, P. (1987), ‘Epicurus on Friendship and Altruism’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 5, 127–53. Mynors, R.A.B. (ed.) (1969), P. Vergili Maronis Opera, Oxford. O’Hara, J.J. (1996), True Names, Ann Arbor. Parslow, C. (1995), Rediscovering Antiquity: Karl Weber and the Excavation of Herculaneum, Pompeii, and Stabiae, Cambridge. Peirano, I. (2012), The Rhetoric of the Roman Fake: Latin Pseudepigrapha in Context, Cambridge. Rackham, H. (1914), Cicero: On Ends, Cambridge, Mass. Richmond, J.A. (1981),‘Recent work on the Appendix Vergiliana (1950–1975)’, Aufstieg und Niedergang des römischen Welt II.31.2, 1112–54. ―― (1984), ‘The Catalepton and its Background’, in: Atti del Convegno mondiale scientifico di studi su Virgilio, Vol. 1, 50–65, Milano. Rist, J. (1972), Epicurus: An Introduction, London. —— (1980), ‘Epicurus on Friendship’, Classical Philology 75, 121–9. Rolfe, J.C. (1914), Suetonius: Volume II, Cambridge, Mass. Roskam, G. (2007), ‘Live unnoticed’ (Λάθε βιώσας): On the Vicissitudes of an Epicurean Doctrine, Leiden. Russell, D.A. (2002), The Orator’s Education, Vol. III: Books 6–8, Cambridge, Mass. Sider, D. (ed.) (1997), The Epigrams of Philodemos. Introduction, Text, and Commentary, Oxford. —— (2005), The Library of the Villa dei Papiri at Herculaneum, Los Angeles. Smith, M.F. (2001), Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, Indianapolis. von Arnim, H./Kroll, W. (1927) ‘Siro’, RE 2.3, 353–4. Westendorp Boerma, R.E.H. (ed.) (1949), P. Vergili Maronis Catalepton, 2 vols, Assen. Wiseman, T.P. (1974), Cinna the Poet, and other Roman Essays, Leicester.

� Part IV: Roman Drama and Novel

Stavros Frangoulidis

Aphrodisia and the Poenulus of Plautus: The Case of Agorastocles1 The Plautine comedy Poenulus revolves around Adelphasium and Anterastilis, two sisters of noble birth who have been abducted from Carthage and are being held in Calydon by a procurer named Lycus. The play takes place on the day of the Aphrodisia festival, at which the girls are to be initiated as professional courtesans. Almost simultaneously with the festival, however, conditions develop for the sisters to be elevated in status from slaves to free women. This is facilitated by Milphio, servant of the young Agorastocles, who performs a meta-dramatic role as poeta comicus. Milphio devises two subterfuges corresponding to a pair of inset comedies, which unfold while the puellae take part in the Aphrodisia ceremony and return home from it. The first ruse is employed to secure the girls’ freedom from the procurer, and the second to restore them from courtesans to free daughters, the ultimate aim being to assist Agorastocles in winning the hand of Adelphasium, with whom he is madly in love. While the Aphrodisia festival normally signalled the transition to life as a courtesan, in the subversive world of Roman comedy it serves as the meta-dramatic means for the manumission of Adelphasium and Anterastilis, who emerge at a higher social status than before rather than a lower one. In the course of the ritual they cease to belong to the leno, and on returning from it are shown to be of aristocratic Carthaginian birth. In this sense the Aphrodisia festival seems to provide the religious background for a bidirectional transition to and from the status of courtesan. This becomes possible as Venus is the patron-goddess of both courtesans and free girls, including those of noble families. In his excellent study of the prologue to Poenulus, Niall W. Slater discusses the meta-theatrical features primarily located in the prologue itself, though also found secondarily in the remainder of the work, which render it one of the most meta-dramatic Plautine plays.2 In addition, in her meta-theatrical analysis of the cunning slave, Lisa Maurice concludes that control of the plot passes from Milphio to Hanno, who assumes one role after another.3 Lastly, Rip Cohen offers

�� 1 All Latin quotations and translations of the play are from the latest Loeb edition by de Melo (2012). I would like to express my warmest thanks to David Konstan, Niall W. Slater, Stephen Harrison, and Katerina Philippides for most valuable responses to an earlier version of this work. 2 Slater 2000, 149–62. 3 Maurice 2004, 269–78.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110596182-013

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a comparable examination from a speech-act perspective, focusing on the scene where Agorastocles assigns his servant the task of mending his relationship with Adelphasium, which has been dented by his failure to free her from the procurer.4 The link between the Aphrodisia and the servant’s entirely successful role as poeta comicus remains little researched. This paper aims to show how, thanks to the meta-theatrical endeavours of a wily slave, a ritual normally signalling the beginning of life as a courtesan here marks the recovery of the two girls’ status as free daughters. This can in turn be viewed as a divine reward for their father’s pietas. Elevation in status enables the elder of the two daughters to marry Agorastocles, thus lending the comedy a stock happy ending in compliance with generic norms. The Aphrodisia festival is attested in several Greek cities, and often served as the religious backdrop against which New Comedy was acted out, e.g. in Menander’s Kolax or Aphrodisia in honour of Aphrodite Pandemos.5 That being said, no historical evidence of any kind points to an Aphrodisia festival at Calydon.6 Unlike the situation in Greece,7 we do know that Plautine Rome had two feasts in honour of Aphrodite. The first was the courtesans’ festival on April 23rd, in honour of Venus Erycina, at which the celebrants offered incense and flower garlands in supplication for beauty, charms and the protection of rich lovers; the second was on April 1st, when noble married women and girls beseeched Venus Verticordia to lead them away from licentiousness and towards purity, granting them a moral life and a good reputation.8 Both feasts involved taking baths of purification.9 In the play, the Aphrodisia festival narrative begins with the appearance on stage of Adelphasium and Anterastilis, who are discussing preparations for the ceremony.10 As often occurs in comedy, the exchange serves to highlight differences between the two characters.11 In this case Adelphasium emerges as more mature and self-assured than her younger sister, who views the ceremony as

�� 4 Cohen 1994, 193–9. 5 Fantham 2004, 240-1, following Leo 1912. 6 Fantham 2004, 241. 7 For the different faces of Aphrodite and Eros and the different contexts in which their powers are manifested in the various Greek communities, see Pirenne-Delforge 2007, 311–23. 8 Fantham 2004, 241–2. 9 Leach 1974, 925–6. 10 For an analysis of the exchange between the two sisters as reflecting heated issues debated at the time of the play’s production, see Johnson 1980, 143–59. 11 E.g. the exchange between Philematium and Scapha in Plautus’ Mostellaria.

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something of a beauty contest, and is keen to surpass the other courtesans.12 The contrasting stances seen here may help to explain why the older sister attracts the interest of the adulescens Agorastocles, a Carthaginian from a rich family, while the younger one is pursued by a grotesque soldier character.13 In criticizing the excessive attention paid to bathing, Adelphasium compares looking after women to the maintenance of ships, pointing to the presence of water and the high costs involved in both cases (210–32). Anterastilis claims that this is necessitated by the courtesans’ urge to find lovers potentially capable of securing their freedom as mistresses (233–6), but Adelphasium advocates moderation (238). These lines of argument highlight the limited perspective available to the sisters, unaware as they are of other background events. Though hidden from sight, Agorastocles and Milphio are present on stage and are listening to the dialogue between the girls; the servant has already been tasked with devising a ruse to liberate his master’s beloved from Lycus the procurer (161–2). Adelphasium’s maturity is also evident from her interest in the religious aspect of the festivities, when she asks whether anything is lacking in the preparations (254). The sense of difference between the two girls is further heightened when Anterastilis expresses concern that they will be late for the ceremony, betraying her anxiety to be initiated as meretrix (263). Adelphasium rejoins that there is no reason to mingle with the courtesans jostling in the temple, whom she clearly regards as their inferiors (264–70). As for any anxiety that being less well dressed may be to their disadvantage (283–4), Adelphasium argues that they are properly dressed as befits their income and that of their master (285). As the dialogue progresses, further differences between the two sisters emerge. Adelphasium exudes a sense of confidence that their moderate dress, their good character and their modesty will more than compensate for any finery (300–7), in contrast to the insecure Anterastilis, who obsesses over the importance of appearance in outdoing other courtesans and attracting potential lovers to secure her manumission (298–9). Her concern about not arriving at the temple before sunrise (321) is again dismissed by her older sister, who comically argues that only ugly supplicants need arrive before the light of dawn in case their looks force the goddess to flee from the shrine, implying that both she and Anterastilis are attractive (320–3). In dramatic terms, Adelphasium can here be

�� 12 Rosivach 1998, 83. 13 For an illuminating discussion of important differences between the two sisters, especially with regard to their future beyond the immediate time frame of the work, see Manuwald 2004, 215–33.

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seen to account for the delay in leaving for the temple and, by extension, for the fact that she and her sister remain on stage. From a ritual perspective, references to bathing, toilet and dress are linked to the girls stepping into their role as prospective initiates. In this case all such preparations are associated with participation in the Aphrodisia ceremony, just as taking part in the festivals of Venus Erycina and Verticordia involved baths of purification.14 Although on a metaphorical level the references may symbolize rebirth as courtesans, here the renaissance actually concerns the sisters’ elevation from slaves and courtesans to free daughters, who even turn out to be of noble descent. Just as the two girls are about to depart, Agorastocles and Milphio step out in front of them. Adelphasium cold-shoulders her suitor, suggesting that he show greater ingenuity, by which she implies that he should see to freeing her from Lycus and uniting them for good (351): si sapias, curam hanc facere compendi potest (‘if you are wise, you can spare yourself this worry’). In Poenulus and Roman comedy more generally, manumission is not achieved by payment, as in real life, but via machinations aimed at securing the erotic bliss of the adulescens. From this meta-dramatic perspective, Adelphasium’s coldness could be read as criticism of the adulescens for failing to come up with a plot to secure her release. However, in an ironic turn, Agorastocles takes Adelphasium’s answer as a hint that she may wish to end the relationship between them (352): quid? ego non te curem? (‘what? I shouldn’t worry about you now?’). Perturbed at this development, the lovesick adulescens assumes the role of plot instigator and assigns his slave the meta-dramatic task of mollifying his beloved.15 Adelphasium turns to Agorastocles and explains that her grievance arises from the constant unfulfilled promises he has made to set her free, and the absence of any initiative that may lead to her liberation from the pimp (360–3).16 In retrospect, this concern with gaining manumission accounts for the preparations the sisters have made as prospective initiates in the festival. The meta-dramatic reading may continue even further. As architectus doli Milphio intervenes and assures Adelphasium he will see to it that Agorastocles does indeed liberate her (371-2): ego faxo, si non irata es, ninnium, pro te dabit / ac te faciet ut sis civis Attica atque libera (‘if you’re not angry, my little doll, I’ll make sure that he’ll pay for you and that he’ll make you a free citizen of Athens’).

�� 14 Leach 1974, 925–6. 15 Cohen 1994, 193–9 offers an excellent discussion of the scene from the perspective of speech acts. 16 In her complaint Adelphasium behaves in terms completely at odds with the puella in elegiac poetry, who is rarely if ever willing to give in to the advances of her lover.

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The audience is aware from the play’s opening act that Agorastocles is keen to portray himself as madly in love; only the previous day Milphio claims his master wore out three ox-hide whips on his back (138–9): heri in tergo meo / tris facile corios contribuisti bubulos; he thus directs attention to the fact that he has borne the brunt of Agorastocles’ frustration at being unable to get the girl. Milphio views this obsession as tantamount to death, putting himself in his master’s position to illuminate the erratic behavior of a man deeply in love (142–3): em, nunc amore pereo. sine te verberem, / item ut tu mihi fecisti, ob nullam noxiam (‘There, now I’m the one dying from love. Let me beat you the way you beat me for no offence at all’). The interconnection between love and death receives much prominence in subsequent Latin poetry, as Papanghelis has admirably demonstrated in his seminal study on Propertius.17 The audience becomes further aware from the same act that at Agorastocles’ instigation the slave has concocted the ruse with the slave Collybiscus to free both girls from Lycus. As architectus doli, then, the slave’s reference to Adelphasium concerning the money Agorastocles will pay upon her manumission is motivated by the need to maintain the illusion of his meta-plot (371): pro te dabit. What is more, trickster slaves in comedy do not usually divulge their plan to the girl, unless she is actively involved in the ruse. However, Adelphasium has no means of knowing the slave’s meta-dramatic initiative, and so ironically regards Milphio as being just as hypocritical as his master (376): abscede hinc sis, sycophanta par ero (‘go away, will you, you impostor equal to your master’). In the course of performing his role, Milphio deliberately misreads his master’s orders and attempts to win over Adelphasium by means of flattery and caresses (380). This infuriates Agorastocles, who lays into his slave for making advances to his sweetheart (381–4). A second attempt to calm Adelphasium is more successful, though not because Milphio is now carrying out orders (392–9). This time Adelphasium forgives Agorastocles, because Anterastilis points out that it is the only way of ensuring they will arrive at the Aphrodisia ritual on time (401–2). Only once they have been initiated will the girls be able to find a lover willing to buy their freedom. The movement away from the status of courtesan coincides with the dramatic time of preparations for the festival, just before the sisters appear on stage (I.1).18 The procurer denies Agorastocles access to Adelphasium in order to drive up the eventual sale price for her, as he has realised that the young man is deeply in love

�� 17 Papanghelis 1987. 18 For a similar countermovement, albeit from the world of the dead to that of the living, see the discussion by Niall Slater in this volume.

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with her (100–3). As mentioned above, Milphio has already hatched the plot involving Collybiscus, another of Agorastocles’ slaves, which will enable him to liberate the girls (161–95). This plot acts as an inset comedy, in the sense that it requires role-play:19 Collybiscus is to appear as a miles seeking paid entertainment at the procurer’s house. The pimp will then stand accused in the case Agorastocles brings against him for receiving another man’s slave in his quarters without permission. As Lycus will be unable to pay damages to Agorastocles, he will turn to his bond slave to pay off his creditor, so as not to forfeit his civil rights.20 The ruse involving liberation of the girls undergoes refinement following their departure to attend the initiation ceremony at Venus’ shrine. Agorastocles begs Milphio to keep the promise he has made to punish the procurer (I.1), and even offers to release him in reward, as if to stress, yet again, that in comedy freedom is attained not by pecuniary means but by assisting in uniting the adulescens with his lover (429): —ut non ego te hodie— … —emittam manu— (‘If today I don’t … set you free’). Milphio orders Agorastocles to fetch the advocati who will undertake to introduce the miles to the pimp and will then testify as witnesses in the case Agorastocles brings against Lycus (424–6). As the performance of the meta-plot unfolds, Lycus’ willingness to offer Collybiscus services will get him in trouble with the law, since it is illegal to offer asylum to fugitive slaves or accept any money from them without their master’s permission (III.3–5). The revelation that Collybiscus is owned by Agorastocles creates the conditions that enable the latter to sue the procurer. Since Lycus will be unable to pay the compensation set by the praetor, all of his property including the two sisters will then be awarded to the plaintiff (185–6): ubi in ius venerit, / addicet praetor familiam totam tibi. Yet while the successful performance of the ruse allows Agorastocles to secure his sweetheart’s freedom without paying a fee, in accordance with comic conventions, it does not bring about any change in her social status. If the court case were to go ahead, Adelphasium would merely become Agorastocles’ mistress. This would fail to put the relationship on a permanent footing, since only free girls are legally entitled to marry. In the subversive world of comedy, however, the necessary conditions now arise for a radical change in the social status of the girls. This development will allow the adulescens to marry Adelphasium, lending a truly happy denouement to the play.

�� 19 Maurice 2004, 269–78 provides an excellent discussion of the first intrigue from a meta-theatrical perspective. 20 On this see Muecke 1987, 28.

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The turning point is reached when Milphio meets Syncerastus, the procurer’s slave, who wishes to take revenge on his master and gain his freedom, but is afraid of doing so (865):21 ni mihi metuam. From a meta-theatrical perspective Syncerastus is in a position to assume the role of poeta comicus, but lacks the necessary nerve to carry the comic action forward as he is afraid of his master. By contrast, in arranging and performing the first ruse, Milphio has already proved that he is more than up to the task, and so asks Syncerastus to tell him how to carry it out (878): crede audacter meo periculo (‘trust me boldly at my own risk’). He eventually learns that the sisters were born to free parents, and that the procurer has broken the law against buying free individuals, as he was fully aware of their status when he acquired them and their nurse (894-900). Armed with this information, Milphio can, yet again, assume the role of poeta comicus and hatch a new plot against Lycus. Rather than simply securing the conditions for the girls’ release from the procurer, as a servus fallax he can now help them regain their lost social status and thus assist his master yet further. Milphio promises to secure Syncerastus’ freedom in reward for this valuable information and, by extension, for his assistance in furthering the action (910): hercle qui meus collibertus faxo eris, si di volent (‘seriously, I’ll make sure that you’re a freedman together with me if the gods wish it’). Here is yet another instance of how, in the subversive world of Plautine comedy, a slave achieves manumission not by conventional self-purchase, but by contributing to the evolution of the plot and the recognitio of the girls as freeborn, and thus to the happiness of the love-struck youth at the heart of the play. Hanno, the girls’ father, has come to Calydon in search of his lost niece and daughters, and very soon recognizes Agorastocles as his nephew. He arrives just as the girls are about to return from their initiation as courtesans. In the second ruse, Milphio first turns to Agorastocles and asks him to claim that Adelphasium and her sister are freeborn. The young man’s refusal to do so is understandable, given the absence of witnesses, and the significance he previously accorded to the presence of the advocati in the first ruse (972): si ad eam rem testis habeam, faciam quod iubes (‘if I had witnesses for this, I’d do what you tell me’). Milphio is thus forced to turn to Hanno, and ask him to step into the role, claiming that the girls are his abducted daughters from Carthage (1100–3). Hanno reveals himself as devoted to comic ideals. In the prologue to the play he is portrayed as being on the trail of his kidnapped daughters. In the cities he visits, his astute strategy involves establishing where the prostitutes live; he then hires them for the night

�� 21 For a fascinating discussion of Syncerastus as an example of a slave devoted to ethics, see Slater 2004, 291–8.

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and questions them in the hope of locating his lost daughters (105–11). He is more than happy to play along with the slave’s trick and assume such a role, having arrived in Calydon on the latest leg of his search. Finding the girls will also enable him to assist his nephew, who is head over heels in love with the older of the two. The fact that Hanno is then recognized by Giddenis, the girls’ aged nurse, foreshadows the recognitio scene involving Adelphasium and Anterastilis. Hanno’s arrival at the very moment the girls are due to change their names following initiation is seen by the nurse as a sign of divine recompense for his piety (1137): tua pietas nobis plane auxilio fuit (‘your piety has clearly helped us’). From that point onwards, the comic meta-plot masterminded by Milphio blends seamlessly with the principal plot line. It is no coincidence that this is the slave’s final appearance on stage: Hanno orders him to take his retinue and the nurse to Agorastocles’ house, as the meta-play has reached completion (1147– 8):22 tu abduc hosce intro et una nutricem simul / iube hanc abire hinc ad te (‘You, take these people inside and at the same time have this nurse go over to you’). From then on Hanno abandons his meta-dramatic guise as alleged father of the sisters in Milphio’s second ruse (1100–3) in favour of his actual role as pater familias and biological father of the girls.23 It is only when the sisters return from the temple that Hanno gets his first chance to meet and talk to them (V.4). The dialogue between the two girls on the way home is a continuation of the earlier conversation about the preparations, and thus acquires the dramatic status of an intratextual duplicate (I.2). The parallel is all the more striking for the fact that Agorastocles and his uncle listen in on the girls’ dialogue and comment on it without being seen, just as the young man and his slave did in the first instance. All the same, there is one significant difference: unlike in the scene prior to the ceremony, the girls have now been initiated as courtesans and can behave accordingly. Once again, the second dialogue bears out Adelphasium’s greater maturity when compared to her sister, who appears more coquettish. In dramatic terms this reminds us of why Anterastilis has attracted the attention of Antamynides, a gross soldier of the type encountered elsewhere in Plautine comedy, e.g. the braggart soldier in Miles Gloriosus, whereas Adelphasium has captivated the more refined figure of Agorastocles. As occurs in the first conversation prior to the Aphrodisia, on their return from Venus’ temple Adelphasium is primarily preoccupied with the religious

�� 22 Pace Maurice 2004, 283, who thinks that Milphio is not in control of the situation. 23 Pace Maurice 2004, 283–4, who argues that Hanno replaces Milphio in the role as servus callidus, repeating role after role.

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aspect of the ceremony, and focuses on the abundance of offerings to the goddess (1174–81). On the other hand, Anterastilis refers to their own superiority over the other courtesans, as borne out by the fact they were not ridiculed (1181a–3b); it is plain that she continues to regard the festivities as a kind of pageant.24 Adelphasium’s superiority is further seen in her argument that genuine beauty derives from being of free descent rather than from external appearance, even if they are currently owned by the procurer (1194–5). In her view, it is wrong to see coquetry as more important than being truly attractive to men (1203–4). A similar exchange of ideas is observed in Terence’s Heauton timoroumenos, where the courtesan Bacchis praises Antiphila for her devotion to a single man, unlike others who take care to be attractive to men in the short term, but run the risk of being left alone when their beauty fades away (389–91). The comment on being born to free parents ties in with Anterastilis’ reference to the words of a priest, who prophesied at the initiation ritual that they would soon be released against their master’s wishes (1207–8): quod haruspex de ambabus dixit — / … —nos fore invito domino nostro diebus paucis liberas (‘what the soothsayer said about both of us — / that we’d be free against our master’s will within a few days’). In contrast to the sisters, the spectators are well positioned to foresee that this will indeed occur, since they know that Hanno is present on stage together with Agorastocles. The countermovement towards Adelphasium and Anterastilis’ elevation in status from slaves to free daughters of noble descent culminates in lines 1211–79. On meeting the girls, Hanno puts them to the test.25 He begins by introducing himself to his daughters as an amicus, a lover and patron, who wishes to act in their interest (1213):26 qui bene volt vobis facere (‘someone who wants to do you a good turn’). His ingenious approach here is entirely in line with the technique he has employed so far in the search for his daughters, as outlined above (104-13). Having just been initiated as courtesans, the sisters respond positively to Hanno’s proposal, viewing him as an elderly lover keen to set them free (1218): istoc pretio tuas nos facile feceris (‘for that price you’ll easily makes us yours’). As they are unaware of key plot developments, the girls see this as an ideal opportunity to secure their freedom on their own initiative; prior to the initiation ceremony Adelphasium has rebuked Agorastocles for repeatedly breaking his promise to liberate her (360–3).

�� 24 Rosivach 1998, 83. 25 Cf. Maurice 2004, 283–4, who thinks that as servus callidus Hanno is engaged in the performance of various roles. 26 Franko 1996, 439 reads Hanno as abandoning his pietas and behaving both as senex lepidus and servus callidus.

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Hanno then takes a completely different tack, pretending to summon the sisters to court, then intending to sue them, as if they had citizens’ rights, for stealing his free daughters away from him and depriving him of them (1225, 1229). In a sense Hanno’s stance is not entirely unreasonable, as he has indeed been deprived of his daughters’ company, even if they are not to blame.27 This new tactic leaves the girls entirely flustered. In the recognitio scene, Hanno’s behaviour has been correctly interpreted in terms of the Odyssean literary motif whereby a hero returning after a long absence tests those closest to him by concealing his true identity, possibly so as to restore the equilibrium that has been upset by prolonged lack of contact.28 One important difference here is that Hanno has wandered all over Mediterranean in search of his nephew and daughters, and eventually recognizes them in a foreign city, at Calydon, rather than upon his homecoming. A similar comic parallel appears in Menaechmi, where Menaechmus of Syracuse arrives in Epidamnus and is reunited with his identical twin, also named Menaechmus, who was abducted as a child at Tarentum by an Epidamnian merchant. From a different perspective, Hanno’s stance could be also interpreted as a contrivance to bridge the gap separating his daughters from him, and thus smooth their restoration as free daughters of noble descent. Agorastocles delays the recognitio with meaningless interruptions and attempts to steal kisses from his sweetheart (1228; 1235; 1242).29 His stance here is a counterpoint to his earlier inability to approach Adelphasium while she remained in the possession of the procurer (98), and thus highlights the changes brought about by the slave’s metadramatic endeavours within the play; after a long interval, the girls are once again in the jurisdiction of the pater familias. Agorastocles has already secured permission from his uncle to marry Adelphasium; but she rejects his advances (1243), in an ironic display of displeasure at his failure to obtain her release, despite his repeated promises: there is no way of her knowing what has actually happened while she participated in the ceremony. Once the test is over, the father brings the suspense to an end and reveals his true identity to his daughters and Agorastocles (1256–7).30 At this point in the �� 27 Fantham 2004, 248. Franko (1996, 439–40) discusses Hanno’s legal ruse against his daughters and the effects gained. 28 As Starks 2000, 176 points out, this becomes clear in a series of examples where characters conceal their identities as a means of testing their loved ones: Hom. Od. 24 280 ff.; Soph. El. 1118 ff.; Gen. 43–5. Also Moodie 2015, 188. 29 Rosivach 1998, 84; Maurice 2004, 285. 30 Hanno’s exposure of his identity confirms that he is not acting as servus callidus who never exposes his fallacia.

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dramatic action Milphio’s meta-play links up with the main plot.31 Hanno is shown to be father to the girls, but the core plot broadens the perspective of the meta-play: the Carthaginian’s role as supposed father in the second ruse turns out to tally with the fictional reality in the play, as the sisters are shown to be his kidnapped daughters. This development is further testimony of the slave’s ingenuity as poeta comicus within the play. Seen from a generic perspective, his actions amount to an inset play aimed at securing erotic bliss for the adulescens. In constructing the two ruses that amount to inset comedies, Milphio can thus be credited with elevating the sisters from Lycus’ slaves to free daughters of aristocratic origin. The performance of the slave’s stratagems thus amount to a rite de passage equivalent to the Aphrodisia festival at which the girls are initiated as courtesans. The ruses and the ceremony coincide, and in both cases, roles are assigned and performed: just as dressing and grooming are directly linked to initiation and imminent rebirth as courtesans, so the slave’s two plots necessitate the adoption and performance of meta-dramatic roles aimed at liberating the sisters from Lycus and restoring them to their true place in society. In his capacity as poeta / vates the slave then assumes a position equivalent to that of Venus’ vates / haruspex in the initiation ceremony, bringing to fulfilment the prophecy given to the sisters that they will soon be freed against their master’s will (1206– 8).32 The Aphrodisia festival appears to provide the religious framework suggestive of a two-way dramatic movement to and from courtesan status. This correspondence between the Aphrodisia festival and the performance of the slave’s two meta-plots is eventually rendered possible thanks to the fact that Venus is the patroness both of courtesans and free girls / matronae of well to do families. The performance of Milphio’s two tricks as inset plays in the Aphrodisia festival further points both to the origins of drama in the ancient world and the genesis of dramatic literature in Rome, capitalizing on the religious environment within which both Greek and Roman theatre was born. The various yearly religious festivals, the ludi, provided the occasion for the staging of plays. What is more, the slave’s inset plays comply with the dramatic rule according to which the scenic action takes place in the course of a single day, in this case coinciding with the Aphrodisia festival in Venus’ honour.

�� 31 See also the near similar formation in Sharrock 2009, 162, who points out that ‘Milphio’s plot was so realistic that it actually turned out to be real. “Reality” is not normally what is required for drama, where only the realistic will do’. 32 In freeing the girls from the possession of the procurer and then restoring them to their true social status in society, Milphio also fulfils the prophecy given to Lycus that he will suffer great trouble and loss (464-5; 748–9).

��� � Stavros Frangoulidis

The above development opens up the prospect of Agorastocles marrying Adelphasium, enabling the prospect of a more permanent relationship. As a comic soldier, however, Antamynides does not have this option open to him: in the generic conventions of New Comedy plots, the only choice available for him is to have an affair with a meretrix, whereas Anterastilis is discovered to be free born. What is more, Anterastilis is younger than her sister; her marriage lies at some as yet unknown point in the future.33 From the above discussion it is clear that the Aphrodisia festival ostensibly marks the beginning of a new life for the sisters as courtesans. Yet in the subversive world of comedy, the ceremony actually signals the end of their time as slaves and restoration to their true social status as freeborn daughters of noble Carthaginian extraction. The transition is facilitated via the meta-dramatic role played by Milphio the slave as poeta comicus. In turn, this enables Agorastocles to marry Adelphasium, lending the comedy in question a happy denouement that is fully in compliance with generic norms.

Bibliography Cohen, R. (1994), ‘Speech Act Theory and the Plays of Plautus’, in: Irene J.F. de Jong/J.P. Sullivan, Modern Critical Theory and the Classical Literature, Leiden, 171–205. de Melo, W. (ed.) (2012), Plautus IV: The Little Carthaginian; Pseudolus; The Rope, Loeb Classical Library 260, Cambridge, MA/London. Dutsch, D. (2004), ‘Female Furniture: A Reading of Plautus’ Poenulus 1141–46’, CQ 54, 625–30. —— (2008), Feminine Discourse in Roman Comedy. On Echoes and Voices, Oxford. Fantham, E. (2004), ‘Maidens in Other-Land or Broads Abroad: Plautus’ Poenulae’, in: T. Baier (ed.), Studien zu Plautus’ Poenulus, Tübingen, 235–51. Franko, G.F. (1993), The Poenulus of Plautus and the Portrayal of Roman Enemies in Early Latin Literature, PhD Diss., Columbia University. —— (1994), ‘The Use of Poenus & Carthaginiensis in Early Latin Literature’, CP 89, 153–83. —— (1995), ‘Incest & Ridicule in the Poenulus of Plautus’, CQ 45.1, 250–2. —— (1996), ‘The Characterization of Hanno in Plautus’ Poenulus’, AJP 117, 425–52. Friderich, W.H. (1973), ‘Poenulus’, in: E. Lefèvre (ed.), Die römische Komödie: Plautus und Terenz, Darmstadt. Gilula, D. (1993), ‘The Crier’s Routine’, Athenaeum 81, 283–7. Gratwick, A.S. (1971), ‘Hanno’s Punic Speech in the Poenulus of Plautus’, Hermes 99, 25–45. Henderson, J. (1999), ‘Hanno’s Punic Heirs: Der Poenulus-Neid des Plautus’, in: Writing Down Rome, New York, 3–37. Johnston, P.A. (1980), ‘Poenulus 1.2 and Roman Women’, TAPA 110, 143–59. Leach, E.W. 1974, ‘Plautus’ Rudens: Venus Born from a Shell’, Texas Studies in Literature and Language 15, 915–32.

�� 33 See Manuwald (2004).

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Manuwald, G. (2004), ‘Die ungleichen Schwestern in Plautus’ Poenulus’, in: T. Baier (ed.), Studien zu Plautus’ Poenulus, Tübingen, 215–33. Maurach, G. (1988), Der Poenulus des Plautus, Heidelberg. Maurice, L. (2004), ‘The Punic, the Crafty Slave and the Actor: Deception and Metatheatricality in the Poenulus’, in: T. Baier (ed.), Studien zu Plautus’ Poenulus, Tübingen, 267–90. Moodie, E.K. (2015), Plautus’ Poenulus. A Student Commentary, Ann Arbor. Muecke, F. (1987), Plautus Menaechmi: A Companion to the Brothers of Menaechmus, from Plautus, Bristol. Papanghelis, T.D. (1987), Propertius: A Hellenistic Poet on Love and Death, Cambridge. Pirenne-Delforge, V. (2007), ‘ “Something to do with Aphrodite”: Ta Aphrodisia and the Sacred’, in: Daniel Ogden (ed.), A Companion to Greek Religion, Malden, MA, 311–23. Rosivach, V.J. (1998), When a Young Man falls in Love, London/New York. Slater, N.W. (1992), ‘Plautine Negotiations: The Poenulus Prologue Unpacked’, YCIS 29, 131–46 [=2000, Plautus in Performance: The Theatre of the Mind. 2nd edn., Amsterdam, 149–62]. —— (2000), Plautus in Performance: The Theatre of the Mind, 2nd edn, Amsterdam. ―― (2004), Slavery, Authority and Loyalty: The Case of Syncerastus’, in: T. Baier (ed.), Studien zu Plautus’ Poenulus, Tübingen, 291–8. Sharrock, A. (2009), Reading Roman Comedy. Poetics and Playfulness in Plautus and Terence, Cambridge. Starks, J.H. (2000), ‘Nullus me est hodie Poenus Poenior: Balanced Ethnic Humor in Plautus’, Helios 27, 163–86. Starks, J.H., Jr. et al. (1997), Latin Laughs: A Production of Plautus’ Poenulus, Wauconda, IL. Welsh, J.T. (2007), ‘Plautus, Poenulus 16’, Hermes 135, 109–11. ―― (2009), ‘The Balli(o)starium: Plautus, Poenulus 200–2’, Mnemosyne 62, 94–9.

David Wray

Stoic Moral Perfectionism and the Queer Art of Failure: Toward a Theory of Senecan Tragedy aequalis astris gradior et cunctos super altum superbo uertice attingens polum. nunc decora regni teneo, nunc solium patris. dimitto superos; summa uotorum attigi. bene est, abunde est, iam sat est etiam mihi. (Thy. 885–9) Up at the level of the stars, far above all, I stride, touching the sky’s high pole with my head’s proud peak. Now I possess the trappings of kingship and the throne of my father. I dismiss the gods; I have attained the sum of my prayers. This is good. It’s really good. This is enough now, even for me. Atreus (on feeding his nephews to his brother) in Seneca, Thyestes

This isn’t flying, this is falling with style. Buzz Lightyear in John Lasseter, Toy Story If at first you don’t succeed, failure may be your style. Quentin Crisp, The Naked Civil Servant (quoted in Judith Halberstam, The Queer Art of Failure)1 Queer failure … is more nearly about escape and a certain virtuosity. José Muñoz, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (quoted in Halberstam) Disney’s cartoon world is a world of impoverished experience, sadism and violence. That is to say, it is our world Esther Leslie, Hollywood Flatlands: Animation, Critical Theory, and the Avant-Garde (on Walter Benjamin on Mickey Mouse, quoted in Halberstam)

�� 1 Halberstam 2011.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110596182-014

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That last quote fairly characterizes the world most readers have found represented in Seneca’s tragedies. The writer whose poetic imagination wrought that grim world was also a lifelong adherent and producer of Stoic philosophy, a system of thought and practice grounded in the belief that humans can achieve happiness in life only through ethical virtue, which Stoics equated to the perfection of reason. The now familiar problem of how to conceive the relationship between Seneca’s tragedies and his Stoic philosophy continues to intrigue. It is a problem that classical scholars have tended to locate in Seneca himself, whether that signifier is taken to refer to a human subjectivity or the intersection of a set of historical, political, social, and cultural discourses. Here, the problem of how to read Seneca’s dramatic poems while knowing that their author was also an adherent of Stoic philosophy is taken instead as just that: a reading problem, located at a reader’s point of reception. One way of describing this essay, then, is as an attempt at aesthetic criticism of Seneca’s tragedies. But the aesthetic experience of dramatic art always further entails a measure of the kind of evaluative thinking we call ethical, because what drama dramatizes is a set of ways of being in the world, ways of living. And the ways of living that Senecan tragedies dramatize are, to put it mildly, truly bizarre. It feels like wild understatement to call Seneca’s characters ‘over the top’, as many readers still do, or to say they go ‘too far’, as Emily Wilson says in the introduction to her translations.2 Seneca’s major characters themselves generally seem to think that, on the contrary, they haven’t gone far enough. They seem to believe themselves to be always undershooting a top that recedes into sublime infinity, and they explicitly command their spirits to go further still in whatever direction their passionate responses to their opinions about their situations motivate them to rush. Accordingly, any aesthetic account of Senecan tragedy must offer some account of the ethical weirdness of the world these poems dramatize and inhabit, as well as the pleasures residing precisely in that weirdness. In attempting this, I seek aid from the two sources referenced in my title. The first is Stoicism itself, Seneca’s philosophy, especially the part of it that, in modern terms, might be called moral perfectionism. The second is a now classic work of queer theory by Judith Halberstam called The Queer Art of Failure, a book whose title already highlights its aptness to the hermeneutic task at hand. What Halberstam means by the queer art of failure is well enough encapsulated in my opening epigraphs. It just nails something about Seneca’s protagonists, I find, to describe them as fabulous divas who achieve their fabulousness precisely through ‘falling with style’: failing at life with tragic grandeur. Here I �� 2 Wilson 2010, vii.

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suggest that the queer notion of failure as a way of doing life as art can light up aspects of Stoic ethics that, while seldom discussed in connection with the tragedies, might serve as reference points for a new way of understanding the potential of a specifically Stoic version of tragedy and the tragic. Dropping onto the ground of the dramas themselves, I next briefly read Oedipus as an instance of a Senecan tragedy whose title character possesses the queer art of failure, the art of falling with style, in a high degree. Seneca’s tragedy resembles Sophocles’ in its plot, but with a very different kind of protagonist. Through the first four acts, up to the moment of simultaneous recognition and reversal of fortune, the play reads like a character study in the passion of fear.3 And like all of Seneca’s passion-beset characters, this Oedipus is hell bent on expressing his passion’s swell through a series of escalating declamatory zingers, each more exorbitantly pointed than the one before. Once the first five lines of his opening speech to Jocasta has set the scene— sunrise over plague-ridden Thebes—his next words immediately shift the focus to himself. We quickly learn that this is an Oedipus who is already experiencing, through fear, all the bitterness of the fate he is about to discover he has fallen upon by running away from it. Quisquamne regno gaudet? (6)—‘Does anyone ever get joy from kingship?’—he asks, adding that he did well to escape the kingship of Polybus his father and wants the gods and heaven to know that the kingship he now possesses is one he never went after: in regnum incidi (14)—‘I fell into kingship’. He lives in fear, he says, that the Delphic oracle’s prophecy may yet come true, that he may kill his father one day and, worse, wed his mother. His fear has regressed him into narcissism and obsession: cuncta expavesco (27), he says: ‘I’m terrified of everything’. Not only does he think the plague is all about him, what scares him the most about the plague is its apparent refusal to kill him. This, he is sure, can only be a sign that he is marked for a fate worse than death. His reasoning here is wildly grandiose, extravagantly paranoid—and, of course, soon to be confirmed in every particular: iam iam aliquid in nos fata moliri parant. nam quid rear quod ista Cadmeae lues infesta genti strage tam late edita mihi parcit uni? cui reseruamur malo? (28–31)

�� 3 Braund 2015, 37.

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Already and right now the fates are plotting something against me. For what am I to think, given that this pestilence, attacking the people of Cadmus with carnage spread so far and wide, is sparing only me? For what bad thing am I being preserved?

As the tragedy progresses, its first four acts show us an Oedipus just as fear-obsessed and fear-driven as he was in his opening speech. When Creon returns from the oracle in Act Two, Oedipus’ first response is horrore quatior, fata quo uergant timens (206): ‘I quake with horror, for fear of which way the fates are tending’. When Creon returns again in Act Three, from necromantic converse with Laius, Oedipus presses Creon to deliver a message that turns out to pin the dead king’s murder on his successor. Once he has heard this, Oedipus begins his response by again naming the physiological symptoms of his passionate fear: et ossa et artus gelidus inuasit tremor (659)—‘chill trembling has beset my bones and limbs alike’. As Oedipus proceeds to attack Creon, he openly avows that the real basis of his accusation is, in fact, his own fear (699–700). Act Four opens with Oedipus standing on the brink of learning the truth, and we find him once again both wrestling his fears and driven by them: curas reuoluit animus et repetit metus (764)—‘My mind turns over its cares and revisits its fears’. But once Oedipus has experienced the simultaneous autoanagnorisis and peripeteia that define him, which is to say once the status of his life as a failure has come fully into focus, his talk changes completely. What takes the place of his fear is something both new and hard to characterize. We could call it ironized self-disgust and self-loathing, and I suppose we wouldn’t be wrong. But what Oedipus so markedly presents, on the surface, and seems to invite us to share, is a sheer delight in the utter wreck of his existence. He takes a pleasure in failure itself, a pleasure that is aesthetic, ethical, sensual, exuberant, and, to the degree that we cast off squeamishness, more than a little infectious. It takes him a few moments to work up to it, and Seneca lets us see the process happening in language. The first words from Oedipus’ mouth on learning he is Jocasta’s son are dehisce, tellus (868): ‘Gape open, earth’. From the idea of being swallowed up by the earth and snatched down into the underworld, he passes to calling on the citizens of Thebes to kill him in several ways, and only then settles on the plan of action that suits him, he finds, and fills him with sublimely grim glee: nunc aliquid aude sceleribus dignum tuis. i, perge, propero regiam gressu pete: gratari matri liberis auctam domum! (879–81)

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Now dare something that’s worthy of your crimes. Go on, head for the palace with speeding steps. Tell mother congratulations on increasing the house with children!

When Oedipus comes back on stage after a messenger has recounted his selfblinding, the celebratory and savoring tone of his words, wherever we locate it on the irony scale, seems only to have gathered momentum: bene habet, peractum est: iusta persolui patri. iuuant tenebrae … … uultus Oedipodam hic decet. (998 –9, 1003) Well done. It is completed. I’ve paid my father his last rites. The darkness is delightful … … This face is a look that suits an Oedipus.

What seems hard to reduce to mere ironized self-condemnation and self-disgust is the appreciative pleasure Oedipus seems to be taking in his new status and condition. His expression of delight in darkness, iuuant tenebrae, would in a neutral context read most naturally as referencing a sensual enjoyment in the relief of light-weary eyes. The last phrase of his speech, uultus Oedipodam hic decet, aims at more than the things that recent Senecan scholarship has made familiar: metatheatrical intertextuality, the already-writtenness and belatedness of these plays that Wilamowitz nailed a century ago when he quipped that Seneca’s Medea had obviously already read the Medea of Euripides.4 All that is there, to be sure. But here, in these lines, Oedipus is owning something more than self-recognition based on foreknowledge. He holds up his own self-blinded countenance as a source of pleasure to be enjoyed both from the inside, as a brute sensory experience of welcome darkness, but also from the outside, as the object and source of an aesthetic experience that he relishes imaginatively and invites his onlookers to share. The word decet in Latin denotes aesthetic as well as ethical appropriateness.5 The set of items of which decet can be said includes cultus, things like clothes and hairstyles, which is to say that the knowledge of what decet and what doesn’t includes the kind of aesthetic connoisseurship we now call fashion sense. Set aside the horror and the irony, then, and this is an Oedipus striking a pose on the runway, looking fabulous and knowing it, and knowing

�� 4 Wilamowitz-Moellendorff 1911, 3,162. 5 Oxford Latin Dictionary, s.v. 3.

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that you know it too: an Oedipus richly deserving to be called a practitioner of the queer art of failure. Seneca’s Oedipus has the last word in his tragedy as well as the first. After Jocasta’s onstage suicide, Oedipus concludes the play with a series of increasingly hyperbolic and self-outdoing apostrophes, to Phoebus Apollo, to himself, to the citizens of Thebes, and to the plague itself. The second of these ends on what has to be, and seems clearly to want to be, a contender for tragic drama’s best bad gag ever. As Oedipus is exhorting himself to hurry away, the bloody slipperiness he feels under his feet suddenly moves him to a different consideration: ingredere praeceps, lubricos ponens gradus: i, profuge uade—siste, ne in matrem incidas. (1050–1) Make headlong haste, putting down your slippery steps. Go on, flee into exile—Stop! Make sure you don’t fall on your mother.

The only way to make a bad joke even worse is of course by explaining it. Falling on your mother, in matrem incidere, signifies on three distinct levels. Call these figurative, intermediate, and literal. Figuratively, it describes the unintentional way Oedipus just happened to wind up married to a woman who just happened to turn out to be his mother. In this sense, the phrase matches the way that Oedipus just happened to become the king of Thebes, by solving the riddle of the Sphinx. It also makes a ring composition with Oedipus’ opening speech, where he swears to the gods that he ‘fell upon’ or ‘happened upon’ (14) this kingdom (his native land) and this kingship (to which he is heir by birth). The second sense in which Oedipus has fallen on his mother is partly literal, since it did involve being physically on her, but also partly figurative, because it references something more than mere falling on, namely sexual intercourse. And finally, the third and most immediate sense of the phrase points to the fact that Oedipus has nearly missed slipping and falling on stage, a cartoonish bit of physical comedy that, in contexts where laughter is expected, never fails to raise it. With its triple-layer meaning system, this sublimely gruesome and vicious act of self-bullying on Oedipus’ part—as though he is pretending to warn himself not to take yet another tumble onto the maternal body, a so-called accident to which he finds himself so prone as to make it look suspiciously like a bad habit—also gestures toward an ethical issue at this tragedy’s core. Namely, Oedipus’ is a life in which the interrelations of intention, action, and consequence seem fully as garbled and confounded as those of parents, spouses, and children. The words just now analyzed leave decorum choking on its own puke. They exude the savagery of a superego introject more hostile than the chain-rattling

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ghost of any dead father. They have stopped Oedipus dead in his tracks, and it is hard to imagine just what kind of sentiment could serve as a closing shot to top a show-stopper like that. But Seneca’s declamatory instincts are endlessly keen and cunning—this is his genius, if the word may be permitted, as a dramatic poet—and he is never at a loss for a stunning new way to milk a myth for expressions of psychic suffering. What outbids Oedipus’ mother joke is a cosmically dark reflection on the experience of being his city’s plague-relieving scapegoat. His speech next apostrophizes his fellow Thebans on a soteriological tone that makes him sound for a moment like Jesus or the Statue of Liberty: quicumque fessi pectore et morbo graues semianima trahitis corpora, en fugio, exeo: releuate colla, mitior caeli status post terga sequitur. quisquis exilem iacens animam retentat, uiuidos haustus leuis concipiat. ite, ferte depositis opem: mortifera mecum uitia terrarum extraho. (1052–8) All you who, heart-fatigued and weighed down with disease, drag forward bodies only half alive: behold! I am leaving, going into exile. Lift up your necks. A kindlier cast of sky comes trailing in behind me. Whoever lies on a sickbed holding their feeble breath, let them drink deep the life-giving air and know relief. Go now, bring aid to those you left to die: I am drawing out earth’s deadly abnormalities with me.

As he announces his exit into exile and transformation into an agent of salvation, it is as if Oedipus suddenly overhears himself and, recognizing the improvisatory potential of the word mecum (iconically flanked by mortifera uitia), seizes upon it as a means to shut the play down by blowing it out, like a guitar-smashing rockstar. Here at the tragedy’s end, Oedipus cries out in sublime exultation to all the diseased energies he is extracting from the city like a medicinal leech: uiolenta fata et horridus morbi tremor, maciesque et atra pestis et rabidus dolor, mecum ite, mecum. ducibus his uti libet. (1059–61) You violence-dealing fates, you bristling death rattle, emaciation, pitch-black plague, fever-raving pain, come with me now—with me! I love it that these are the guides I have.

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Just as in his opening monologue, here Oedipus’ empathic imagining of his citizens’ suffering breaks off abruptly into what just might be called narcissistic selfexecration, if only its grinning sublimity were not such high-powered fun. The repetition of mecum, highlighting the thought of disease as guides and companions, makes this closing utterance into a kind of sick joke that is also psychologically spot on, as if to say ‘You know what’s great about being an abominated scapegoat? It’s this: I’ll always have my cloud of pestilence for an entourage, so I know I’ll never walk alone’. His and the play’s final word libet, the root of ad lib and libido, leaves us with the picture of an Oedipus staring all the way down into the terribleness of being Oedipus and loving it, getting into it—and of course flaunting it and working it. Oedipus is special in that the wreck of his life comes to fulfillment through self-knowledge. But the delight in degradation, the invitation to find beauty and take pleasure in failure, that Seneca makes his tragedy exemplify and encode is something that, on my own reading, pervades the entire surviving corpus of his plays. Of the two major ways of explaining why Senecan tragedy is the way it is, the historicizing explanation is still the better seller. It makes for juicier reading, and only partly because it involves rehearsing lurid episodes from Tacitus and Dio Cassius. While the established chronology of the plays plus external confirmation of the date of the Hercules impose the conclusion that only the Thyestes and the unfinished Phoenissae were written during Nero’s reign, it still remains tempting to read Senecan theater as a symptomatic correlate and conversion of some really bad things that were going down in its (as we like to say) context.6 On this view, as Emily Wilson puts it in the introduction to her translation of six of the tragedies, it is hard not to attribute the intensity of these texts to the fact that they were written in some seriously intense times.7 The other principal way of explaining Senecan tragedy is by recourse to Stoicism, the Hellenistic philosophical school to which Seneca adhered. Here our current understanding owes a huge debt to the last several decades of important work done by English-speaking, analytically trained academic philosophers— scholars like A. A. Long, Julia Annas, Brad Inwood, and Tad Brennan—who have made it possible to see Stoic ethics as a system to a degree that direct study of the primary texts simply does not afford.8 And the better we understand Stoicism, the less likely we are to be satisfied with the simpler and more obvious ways of

�� 6 Fitch 1981, 289–307. 7 Wilson 2010, vii. 8 E.g. Long 2001; Inwood 1985; Annas 1995; Brennan 2005.

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construing Senecan tragedy’s relation to it, as a set of either moralizing cautionary tales or debunking parodies.9 The tragedies can hardly be preaching Stoicism or, as Berthe Marti argued long ago, offering a guide to moral progress under the veil of dramatic allegory.10 Even the search for ‘Stoic mouthpieces’ in the plays seems vain. Attendants and nurses, when trying to calm their royal charges’ passions and talk them out of crazy decisions, do say things that resemble the kinds of advice Seneca as a philosopher recommends giving in such cases. But these pieces of advice also resemble what people just tend to say in such situations, without benefit of philosophical training. Nor, frankly, do these texts offer much purchase to the view that they are enacting the quarrel between poetry and philosophy or—what Blake thought Milton’s Satan was doing—voicing a set of unconscious or concealed reservations about Stoicism on Seneca’s part or mutely gesturing toward a contradictory rift or unspeakable traumatic kernel at the heart of either Stoicism or Seneca as a Stoic. Shadi Bartsch and Alessandro Schiesaro point to something crucially important when they note that Medea and Thyestes sound a lot like Stoic proficientes in the way they each go about plotting their dreadful revenge, but I see something different from drama parodying philosophy or wickedness parodying virtue here.11 I take it that Seneca’s version of Stoic ethics is both orthodox and, as he often says, oriented toward the practical art of living rather than the abstrusely ingenious syllogisms of earlier Stoics, which Seneca often mocks. Four core propositions that Seneca takes as defining Stoic adherence in ethical theory are: (1) sola virtus eudaimonism, the claim that virtue (character excellence) alone is both necessary and sufficient for humans’ attainment of their highest (beneficial) good, defined as ‘happiness’ and taken as both the starting point of ethical theorizing and the structuring aim of human life—all of which amounts to positing full synonymy between the (beneficial) good (bonum / ἀγαθόν) and the (ethically) commendable (honestum / καλόν); (2) intellectualism, the claim that virtue resides solely in the rational faculty and is learnable; (3) ‘all-or-nothing’ moral perfectionism, the claim that only perfect virtue counts as virtue and all non-virtue counts as total vice; and (4) ἀπάθεια, the claim that passion is incompatible with happiness and must therefore be extirpated for the achievement of a happy life. Seneca tends to take all four of these propositions as established. His philosophical prose often amalgamates them breezily in a single surge of essayistic rhetoric, as in this example:

�� 9 Staley 2010, 26–36. 10 Marti 1945, 216–45. 11 Bartsch 2006, 255–82; Schiesaro 2003, 176 and passim.

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ergo in homine quoque nihil ad rem pertinet quantum aret, quantum faeneret, a quam multis salutetur, … sed quam bonus sit. bonus autem est si ratio eius explicita et recta est et ad naturae suae uoluntatem accommodata. haec uocatur uirtus, hoc est honestum et unicum hominis bonum. nam cum sola ratio perficiat hominem, sola ratio perfecta beatum facit; hoc autem unum bonum est quo uno beatus efficitur. (Ep. 75.15–16) Therefore in the case of a human being it does not matter how much farmland or revenue or how many clients he has … but how good he is. And a human being is good if his reason is untangled (by passion) and right and fitted to what his own nature wants. This is what is called virtue, the fine, the sole good for a human being. For since reason alone perfects a human being, only perfected reason makes one happy. This, then, is the only good, since it is the only way a human being is made happy. (virtue = perfect reason = the fine = the good = what makes a human being happy)

What I am calling moral perfectionism (the term has other philosophical meanings in modern usage) was an nondetachable component of the Stoic ethical system and, among Romans, had already been recognized as such by Cicero. His brief work, Paradoxa Stoicorum, explicates the Stoic doctrine that all states of virtue, and all of vice, are equal.12 In De Finibus he makes Cato explain the concept with a striking image probably inherited from Greek Stoics.13 Imagine two people drowning in the sea, Cato says, one a full fathom down, the other just beneath the surface. Which one is drowning more than the other? The obvious answer is that both are equally doomed unless they get air. There are no degrees of drowning: you’re either drowning or not. This analogy describes the life condition of human beings when we fail at being perfectly virtuous, Stoics say, because perfect virtue is the only kind of virtue there is, and falling short of it by the slightest distance means being miserable instead of happy. Only someone with perfected reason, someone whose decision-making faculty infallibly chooses in accord with the fine, only the sapiens, as Stoics called such a person for obvious (intellectualist) reasons, is happy, sane, and free. The rest of us—and that’s all of us, it seems—are miserable, mad, and enslaved. Even Socrates, Seneca implies, was a slave to his passions and therefore no sage but utterly miserable and crazy like us.14 Stoic ethical teaching is optimistic about human potential, the universal attainability of sagehood, but thoroughly pessimistic about human reality. And for protreptic reasons it talks a lot more about our happy potential than our

�� 12 Cicero, Paradoxa Stoicorum 20–26. 13 Cicero, De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum 3.14. 14 Seneca, De Ira 1.15.

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miserable reality. Seneca, on this point, is a rigorously orthodox Stoic. When he gets around to talking about what we humans are like in real life, he is, to put it mildly, no Pangloss: omnes inconsulti et improuidi sumus, omnes incerti, queruli, ambitiosi,—quid lenioribus uerbis ulcus publicum abscondo?—omnes mali sumus. Quidquid itaque in alio reprenditur, id unusquisque in sinu suo inueniet. (De Ira 3.26.4) We are all thoughtless and short-sighted, all unreliable, whiny, vain,—but why hide a universal sore with overly gentle words?—we are all bad. Whatever thing is reproached in someone else, every single person will find that same thing in their own interior.

This is neither moralizing indignation on Seneca’s part nor social commentary on the bad times he lived in. It is a conclusion following rigorously from Stoicism’s all-or-nothing moral perfectionism. Everything that is reproached in someone else—including, for example, what is reproached in tragic protagonists like Atreus and Medea—is inside you and me, Stoicism says, because vice is vice, and vice is in us all. For all its encouraging talk about the possibility of progress—and remember that Seneca near the end of his life wrote the words parum … profeci (Ep. 87.5): ‘I have made insufficient progress’—for all the success-oriented talk of sunshine Stoicism, it remains that, if we are talking brute ethical reality, Stoicism says that my level of non-virtuousness is maximal, and presumably so is yours. The good news of Stoicism, bluntly put, is that your life sucks because you suck, and for no other reason. I speak thus to highlight a point about the sense in which Seneca thinks we are all mali, ‘bad’. The moral categories and terms of ordinary English speech bear the imprint of Christianity, and the words omnes mali sumus tend therefore to land on Anglophone ears like a statement about some innate depravity, some reified ‘evil’ in us that can only be remedied by salvation achieved through religious conversion. Seneca does mean that we are evil in the sense that we are morally rotten and have bad characters, but there is no ontology of evil and no economy of salvation in Stoicism. One of the many things that twentieth century virtue ethics has helped us understand about Greco-Roman philosophy after Aristotle is that getting to virtue, making moral progress, resembles human activities like learning to play a sport or a musical instrument.15 It takes lifelong practice. Doing it excellently requires not just technical competence but an improvisatory virtuosity that cannot be reduced to a set of rules.

�� 15 See e.g. Burnyeat 1980, 69–92.

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What would a theory of tragedy look like if we took Aristotle’s model from the Poetics and substituted Stoic ethics for Aristotelian ethics? Aristotle’s tragic protagonist, we recall, is for the most part σπουδαῖος, basically a stand up kind of person, except for that one little flaw or mistake that by all rights shouldn’t mess everything up but does, and this is what makes tragedy tragic.16 But in Stoicism, as we have just seen, there is no such thing as being basically admirable except for one little shortfall. In Stoicism, everybody is utterly crazy, stupid, and in a word bad, because their passions lead to cognitive mistakes that consist in predicating good and bad of things that lie outside themselves, things that are other than virtue and vice. This is what Stoics say happens in life, and it is precisely how the Stoic philosopher Epictetus describes what happens in tragedy: τί γάρ εἰσιν ἄλλο τραγῳδίαι ἢ ἀνθρώπων πάθη τεθαυμακότων τὰ ἐκτὸς διὰ μέτρου τοιοῦδ᾽ ἐπιδεικνύμενα; (Epictetus, Discourses 1.4.26) What are tragedies but metrical representations of the sufferings/passions of people who are mystified by external things?

This aggressively buttonholing rhetorical question comes from a discourse on progress. The point of the reference to tragedy is that Epictetus is encouraging his listeners to learn, through practice, to eliminate from our lives all the whining and indignation that we all engage in, just like those kings who strut the tragic stage, because we all make the cognitive mistake of predicating good and bad of things that lie out of our control and are other than virtue or vice. Epictetus’ Stoic model of tragedy resonates with my epigraph quote of Esther Leslie’s account of Walter Benjamin’s view of early Mickey Mouse cartoons: ‘a world of impoverished experience, sadism, and violence’. Seneca no doubt shared Epictetus’ ethical take on tragedy, and the imagined worlds of his plays do fit that description. In Seneca’s case, however, this simply cannot have been the end of the story, for the simple reason that Seneca, unlike Epictetus and unlike other Stoic philosophers, was someone who took poetry and poetic experience seriously, and clearly had a measure of poetic ambition himself. Throughout his philosophical writing he quotes poets like Virgil, Ovid, and early Roman tragedians, and talks about poetry in the way that only those who care about it do. He was enough of a pure poet, and seems to have been so regarded, that he engaged in French Academy style debates on fine points of tragic diction with

�� 16 Aristotle, Poetics 1453a.

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leading poets of his day like Caecilius Secundus, as Quintilian attests.17 Poetic pleasure, the dulce of Horace’s formulation, is a category and concept that Seneca seems to have regarded as obvious and given, when for example he observed, that Vergilius noster … [non] agricolas docere uoluit sed legentes delectare (Ep. 85.15): ‘Our Virgil (in writing the Georgics) wanted not to teach farmers but to delight readers’. I have suggested here that, in the ethical realm, the cartoonish degradation and horror that populates the imagined world of Seneca’s tragedies, a set of qualities that many readers attribute to the plays’ historical conditions of production, turns out to be explainable to a surprising degree as a dramatization of what every Stoic philosopher, Seneca included, said about human life as it is actually lived: namely that it is a thoroughgoing failure. Returning to the example of the character of Oedipus in his Senecan tragedy, we can now see a specifically Stoic way in which Oedipus is speaking for us, all of us, when he ends the play on that terrible and wonderful word libet, expressing his delight in having the diseases that beset human bodies and minds for an entourage. If you accept the Stoic teaching that all states of vice are equal, if you agree with Seneca that we are all bad, and if you agree with him that all it takes to become a sapiens is to want it (uelle), then it follows that we, like Oedipus, are walking through life in a maximally abominable state of vice and, like Oedipus, finding it beautiful and getting off on it.18 At the same time, again, it must be insisted that, in his work as a dramatic poet, Seneca was neither doing philosophy by other means nor plumping for Stoicism. His aims as a tragedian were principally aesthetic, which is to say he was, or meant himself to be, a maker of linguistic delivery systems of delight—a poet— and not just at the level of diction. This means that Seneca’s tragic depictions of the sufferings of humans whose lives suck because they themselves suck are at the same time beckoning us to read them as objects of aesthetic contemplation and sources of aesthetic pleasure: what poems do. And once we frame things in those terms, it becomes both easy to say how Seneca’s fabulous tragic characters disresemble ordinary people (despite the badness we share with them), and also easy to say how Seneca’s dramatic poems embody and enact, precisely here, that set of aesthetic qualities that Greco-Roman antiquity posited as essential to tragedy and that the Latin language conveyed succinctly with the adjective grande. And what tragic grandeur entails, its Senecan version at least, includes a

�� 17 Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria 8.3.31. 18 Seneca, Epistulae Morales 80.4: Quid tibi opus est ut bonus sis? Velle. (‘What do you need in order to be good? To want it.’)

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sovereign highness of manner, a tumescent exaltation of spirit, that in modern culture (in its American version at least) is always at least partly situated in the social performance realm of the queer, in the sense of that term given to it by theorists like Halberstam. By staking out thought space for a queer art of failure through study of low artifacts like children’s animation films, Halberstam wants to enable access to modes of subjugated knowledge, beauty, and pleasure that success-oriented normativity brands as mere failure: modes like hyperbole, regression, loss, and silliness.19 Halberstam is especially keen on those beauties and pleasures of failure as an artful way of living that are named by words like fabulousness and style. Elegance is a quality that matters a lot to Seneca—he actually says in the letters that the human being is by nature an elegant animal— and I doubt I need argue hard to persuade readers of Seneca’s tragedy that they are filled with characters and situations embodying hyperbole, regression, loss, failure, and yes, silliness.20 Question: How is a human being as viewed by Stoicism like Buzz Lightyear, the space ranger hero action figure toy in John Lasseter’s animated film Toy Story?21 Answer: Buzz is a toy that comes with these really cool wings but doesn’t fly, and human beings come into the world equipped with a volitionally activatable potential for excellence but so far seem to be batting zero at achieving it. Another question: How are Seneca’s Atreus, Medea, Oedipus, and his other tragic heroes like Buzz? Answer: If ‘flying’ stands for succeeding at life, then none of them ever flies, not Atreus when he says he’s up with the stars, not Medea when she actually does make an aerial escape in her dragon chariot, and definitely not Oedipus, who in a way has more self-knowledge than those other two. But what Buzz Lightyear first hears as a mocking insult, and later admits and owns about himself, is true of what Seneca’s protagonists do: it isn’t flying, it’s falling with style. To add a comparison from outside Halberstam’s archive, Senecan tragic action figures are like Florence Foster Jenkins, the amateur opera diva who couldn’t carry a tune, had no rhythm, and gave a recital at Carnegie Hall.22 Most of us poor miserable amateur musicians fail at music by being mediocre and inconsistent, and this is how Seneca says we humans fail at the art of life. But Florence Foster Jenkins showed the world that you can be a diva without being a singer, that it’s

�� 19 Halberstam 2011, 29–52. 20 Seneca, Epistulae Morales 92.12. 21 Lasseter 1995. 22 Bullock 2016; Frears 2016.

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possible to achieve a weird, silly, but somehow irresistible artistic virtuosity without possessing the art of music. And this is one of the things Seneca’s tragic heroes show in regard to the art of life: the possibility of virtuosic failure of such a kind that its dramatic representation in metered poetic utterance gives aesthetic pleasure.

Bibliography Annas, J. (1995), The Morality of Happiness, Oxford. Bartsch, S. (2006), The Mirror of the Self: Sexuality, Self-Knowledge, and the Gaze in the Early Roman Empire, 255–82. Braund, S. (2015), Seneca: Oedipus, London. Brennan, T. (2005), The Stoic Life: Emotions, Duties, and Fate, Oxford. Bullock, D. (2016), Florence! Foster!! Jenkins!!!: The Life of the World’s Worst Opera Singer, New York. Burnyeat, M. (1980), ‘Aristotle on Learning to be Good’, in: A. Rorty (ed.), Essays on Aristotle’s Ethics, Berkeley, 69–92. Fitch, J. (1981), ‘Sense-Pauses and Relative Dating in Seneca, Sophocles and Shakespeare’, American Journal of Philology 102, 289–307. Frears, S. (2016), Florence Foster Jenkins, Hollywood (DVD). Halberstam, J. (2011), The Queer Art of Failure, Durham. Inwood, B. (1985), Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism, Oxford. Lasseter, J. (1995), Toy Story, Burbank (DVD). Long, A. (2001), Stoic Studies, Berkeley. Marti, B. (1945), ‘Seneca’s Tragedies: A New Interpretation’, Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 76, 216–45. Schiesaro, A. (2003), The Passions in Play: Thyestes and the Dynamics of Senecan Drama, Cambridge. Staley, G. (2010), Seneca and the Idea of Tragedy, Oxford. Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U. von (1911), Griechische Tragödien, Berlin. Wilson, E. (2010), Seneca: Six Tragedies, Oxford.

Niall W. Slater

Resurrection Woman: Love, Death and (After)Life in Petronius’s Widow of Ephesus The story of the Widow of Ephesus is a tale of bodies in motion—in which the matrona herself is the primum mobile. This inset Milesian tale is one of the most familiar episodes in Petronius’s Satyrica. The poet Eumolpus relates the story in order to calm feelings and restore harmony on Lichas’s ship, presumably after some outbreak of jealousies among our central characters.1 The unnamed central character remains a controversial figure, for some a traditional if egregious embodiment of Graeco-Roman misogyny, for others a life force triumphant over both a novel and a world saturated with death.2 My hope here is that a study of the trope of motion, the moved and moving matrona, may offer some new light on her relations to her multiple internal audiences as well as her later readers. While her designation as the ‘Widow’ is traditional, it is worth noting that the first-time reader does not have that orientation to know where this story is going at its very outset (and indeed she will never explicitly be termed a widow3). Eumolpus introduces her as a matrona and as a mover of other women in the very first sentence of his tale: matrona quaedam Ephesi tam notae erat pudicitiae, ut vicinarum quoque gentium feminas ad spectaculum sui evocaret.4 (111.1)

�� 1 Most editors note a lacuna after 110.5, so the immediate cause that Eumolpus’s stories are intended to smooth over is not preserved. Sullivan 1968, 234 reads backward from the results to suggest that the story ‘is maliciously introduced by Eumolpus to twit Tryphaena and pique Lichas’, but this seems improbable. 2 On the life-affirming side, see for example Arrowsmith 1966, esp. 328–9; Segal 1973, 92; Müller 1980, 110, on the ‘paradoxes Symbol des Siegs des Lebens über den Tod’; and Bakhtin 1981, 221– 4, who speaks of ‘the resurrection of the widow from her helpless grief and from the grave-like gloom of death into new life and love’ (222); on the side of misogyny and satire, see for example Zeitlin 1971, 658; Richlin 2009, 89; and Conte 1996, who suggests that in the Widow’s story ‘the graph of values plunges under the pressure of the vital forces of food and sex, and after dropping to zero it finds a new low to reach’ (107). For Rimmel 2002, 123–39, the Widow’s tale functions as a microcosm of how the Satyrica devours other literature. 3 A point made by Courtney 2001, 166 n. 11. 4 The text is quoted from Mueller 1995 unless otherwise noted.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110596182-015

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There was a married woman at Ephesus whose chastity was so striking that the women of the neighboring cities used to come and gaze at her in wonder. (trans. Ruden)5

Encolpius has already introduced the notion of movement in the way he summarized Eumolpus’s proposed theme: nullamque esse feminam tam pudicam, quae non peregrina libidine usque ad furorem averteretur. (110.7) No woman was so chaste, he stated, that she wouldn’t under the right circumstances become insanely infatuated with a total stranger.

Eumolpus suggests women are the victims of peregrina libido, turned aside to madness by alien6 forces they cannot control (even as his own—penetrative?— story seduces the eyes and ears of his audience, conversis igitur omnium in se vultibus auribusque, 110.8). Yet the very beginning of his story contradicts his fundamental premise, as the chastity of the matrona is what draws women from other countries to come and gaze at her.7 It is the second sentence of the story that transforms the matrona into the familiar Widow, even as she sets herself into virtuous motion, following the corpse of her husband: haec ergo cum virum extulisset, non contenta vulgari more funus passis prosequi crinibus aut nudatum pectus in conspectu frequentiae plangere, in conditorium etiam prosecuta est defunctum, positumque in hypogaeo Graeco more (111.2)

�� 5 Translations are from Ruden 2000, unless otherwise noted. 6 It is possible that peregrina is set simply in opposition to the bonds of marriage (cf. Encolpius on Giton’s betrayal of their ‘marriage’ by yielding to another’s love, peregrini amoris concessio, 91.6), but Vannini 2010, 233 sees also an allusion to the foreign loves in ‘old tragedies’ (tragoedias veteres, 110.8) that Eumolpus earlier rejected as a theme, perhaps even an allusion to the story of Dido and Aeneas (cf. Perutelli 1990). More specifically however, peregrina here anticipates the arrival of the Roman soldier, who is not of the same ethnicity as the Ephesian matrona. Moreover, the interment of the husband’s body rather than its cremation is also marked out as foreign: positumque in hypogaeo Graeco more corpus (111.2). [Fraenkel wished to delete this phrase, but it has otherwise been accepted: see Warmington’s note in Heseltine 1969, 268 ad loc.] Pecere 1975, 51–4 suggests a staging motive as well: the body seems to be laid out on a slab, allowing the soldier both to grasp the situation at first sight and later to move the body without having to lift a sarcophagus lid. 7 While Langlands 2006, 227 is right to point out any absence of any explicit moral depth in this spectatorship that ‘transforms moral standing into entertainment’, the spectacle of the matrona is nonetheless quite literally ‘moving’.

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She was so pure that when her husband happened to die, she was not happy to walk in the funeral procession with disheveled hair or to beat her breast in public—after all, anybody could do those things. She actually followed her husband’s corpse down into the tomb (which was a Greek-style underground affair).

Her motion is unidirectional, as she sends out the body (extulisset) from the space of the home and follows it in procession (prosequi) and into the tomb itself (prosecuta est). No one is able to divert her (abducere, 111.3) from the pursuit of death (mortem inedia persequentem), and all the other living eventually depart from her (abierunt)—with one exception. She drags out her underground existence for four more days (quintum iam diem sine alimento trahebat).8 The exception is her faithful maid, who sits weeping with her, refilling the lamp (lumen renovabat) so that light does not fail. There are no further verbs of motion, or more precisely of changing place, until the soldier, posted to guard the bodies of crucified criminals, joins the story, and he is there to prevent motion: miles, qui cruces asservabat ne quis ad sepulturam corpus detraheret ... (111.6) A soldier remained on guard at the crosses to prevent relatives from taking down the bodies and burying them.

The verb detraheret echoes the way the Widow’s existence drags on, but it also anticipates the attraction of curiosity that makes him descend into the tomb: notasset sibi lumen inter monumenta clarius fulgens et gemitum lugentis audisset (111.6) This man noticed a light shining among the tombs and heard groans of agony.

The light in the darkness of the tomb plays an intriguing role in the story. The maid remains to keep the lamp filled (lumen renovabat) in the tomb and the Widow’s example of chastity and love shines forth from the same place: illud affulsisse9 verum pudicitiae amorisque exemplum (111.5) This … was the most shining example of love and chastity

�� 8 Is the time limit picked to assure us that the husband is ‘really most sincerely dead’? Three days of formal mourning was the norm, and five certainly exceptional: see Vannini 2010, 240. 9 Vannini 2010, 242 notes that affulsi first appears in Horace, Carm. 4.5.7 describing the epiphany of the divine Romulus and generally is used of stars, divinities, or abstracts.

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It is thus light10 and sound (the groans) from underground that draw the soldier to their source. Then his motion stops at the ambiguous sight of the woman: descendit igitur in conditorium, visaque pulcherrima muliere primo quasi quodam monstro infernisque imaginibus turbatus substitit. (111.7) He found his way down into the tomb and stopped short in horror when he saw a lovely woman; he thought she was a ghost or some other creature of the underworld.

His reasoning takes over (ratus scilicet id quod erat, 111.8) as he spots the corpse, and while the text does not specify, he must have ascended again, because his next action is to bring (attulit, 111.8) his dinner into the tomb, presumably in an attempt to share it with the Widow. His futile attempts at consolation, reported indirectly, point in the wrong direction, for his assertion that ‘all have the same exit’ (omnium eundem esse exitum) is not suited to diverting the Widow from her chosen exit path. Although the Widow pays no attention and continues her laments, the soldier refuses to retreat (non recessit, 111.10) and continues to tempt her with food. As is well known, the maid yields first, but notice that this is the first countermovement from the world of the dead to the world of the living: donec ancilla vini [certum ab eo] odore corrupta primum ipsa porrexit ad humanitatem invitantis victam manum (111.10) Finally, the maid succumbed to the smell of the wine and held out her hand in defeat to the kind stranger.

�� 10 Schmeling 2011, 433 ad 112.4, cites the evidence that prostitutes practiced in cemeteries (Martial 1.34.8, abscondunt spurcas et monumenta lupas, and 3.93.15, inter bustuarias moechas; cf. also Juvenal 6. O16, flava ruinosi lupa degustare sepulchri). That low-class prostitutes practiced among the tombs therefore seems likely, though the comment of Courtney 1980 ad Juvenal 6. O16 may be rather more speculative: ‘a prostitute with a tomb in good order to shelter her would be even more vehement in rejection’. Schmeling’s more sweeping conclusion that prostitutes ‘practiced their profession in cemeteries: the lighted lamp a signal that the doors are open and the woman is unoccupied’ may go a bit beyond the evidence, at least as a standard part of the reader’s repertoire of experience here. How many tombs with properly working doors would have been available (without survivors to care for the tombs and object) for this to be a regular feature? In the version of the Widow’s story in Phaedrus, App. 15, the soldier asks the maid for water and ‘happens’ (forte) to see the Widow going to bed: it is not clear whether he happens to accost the maid as she returns to the tomb or already knows of the Widow’s underground vigil and goes there to request help.

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Moreover, the maid is the first one in the entire story to speak in direct discourse, initially in her own words, then famously (mis-)quoting11 Vergil: id cinerem aut manes credis sentire sepultos? cf. Aen. 4. 34: id cinerem aut manes credis curare sepultos? What think you? Do the dead man’s ashes feel your sacrifice? What think you? Do the dead man’s ashes care for your sacrifice?

She urges the Widow to cast off womanish error (discusso muliebri errore) and to seek the light again.12 The Widow suffers her persistence to be broken (passa est frangi pertinaciam suam) and eats, but no verbs of motion are attributed to her. The next move, physically and metaphorically, is made by the soldier—against that virtue for which she was famous, with visual temptation abetting the gustatory: isdem etiam pudicitiam eius aggressus est. nec deformis aut infacundus iuvenis castae videbatur (112.1 –2) The soldier made war against the woman’s chastity with the same arguments he had used to make her abandon suicide. As the virtuous lady listened, the young man began to seem nice looking as well as eloquent.

In yielding herself, the Widow gives up her role as the bride of death in order to undertake what is explicitly designated a wedding (nuptias fecerunt, 112.3) in the tomb. The story remains very much focalized through the Widow and now the soldier, for the next verb of motion is only potential, since they do not know what others may be doing outside the tomb:13

�� 11 Schmeling 2011, 431–2 ad loc. suggests that the substitution of sentire for Vergil’s curare gives the line a more Epicurean coloring: not only do the dead not feel emotion, they have no perception and do not exist; cf. Pecere 1975, 95–9. There is certainly further irony in the fact that the original speaker of the line in the Aeneid is Anna, advising Dido to forsake her devotion to her dead husband Sychaeus—bad advice to Dido, but not to the Widow (see further Slater 1990, 169– 70 and n. 20). 12 On a historical note, Hope 2009, 146, even suggests that the story may ‘also be tapping into current debates about how one should mourn in public, and the differences between elite and popular expectations for the bereaved’. 13 Feelings about the Widow and her actions often tempt misunderstandings and firm conclusions where even Eumolpus does not draw them. Langlands 2006, 229 decides that ‘she [the Widow] ... takes care to close the doors of the tomb so that anyone on the outside will only take

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praeclusis videlicet conditorii foribus, ut quisquis ex notis ignotisque ad monumentum venisset, putaret expirasse super corpus viri pudicissimam uxorem. (112.3) The doors of the tomb must have been closed, so that visitors – her friends as well as tourists – thought that the gloriously chaste woman had expired over the corpse of her husband.

During the next three days the soldier does leave the tomb to buy supplies,14 but the Widow remains immobile. The result, however, is that the previously potential movement (ne quis ad sepulturam corpus detraheret, 111.6) that the soldier was set to prevent becomes actual, as a bereaved family seizes its chance: itaque unius cruciarii parentes ut viderunt laxatam custodiam, detraxere nocte pendentem supremoque mandaverunt officio. (112.5) But then the parents of one of the crucified criminals saw that the watch was not being carefully kept any longer. They took down the body of their son and disposed of it with the customary ceremonies.

When the soldier realizes he has failed in his primary duty, he despairs and informs the Widow of his plans to kill himself, rather than wait for his punishment. His speech is all reported indirectly, but it is clear that he first draws a parallel between himself and the Widow’s deceased first husband: commodaret modo illa perituro locum et fatale conditorium familiari ac viro faceret. (112.6) The same tomb would do for both her husband and her new friend.

The lovely interlaced alliteration powerfully points his appeal: commodaret ... conditorium (if commune is correctly restored) and fatale ... familiari ... faceret.15 Nor should we forget the underlying sense of motion in his use of the

�� this as a sign of her exceptional pudicitia’. Ruden’s translation by contrast accurately captures both the passive participle and the videlicet, leaving any conclusion in the minds of the spectators rather than the intentions of the Widow and soldier. Branham and Kinney 1996, 109 n. suggest the possibility of ‘an ironic inversion’ of the scene in Homer, Odyssey 23.133–51, where Odysseus orders music played over the slaughter of the suitors so that passersby will think they are hearing the sounds of the wedding banquet. 14 Note the imperfect ferebat, echoing his initial action of bringing his lunch to share with the Widow (attulit in monumentum cenulam, 111.8). 15 Alternatively, one could regard the alliteration as a source of a possible corruption. Vannini 2010, 261 proposes sacraret for faceret, and that certainly makes an appealing standard funerary formula.

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standard euphemism for dying, perituro: where he passes on to from here is very much the question. The structure of the narrative has kept the Widow virtuously silent until this point; no word of direct or indirect discourse is attributable to her. The soldier’s plan, however, finally prompts her to speech: mulier non minus misericors quam pudica ‘nec istud’ inquit ‘dii sinant, ut eodem tempore duorum mihi carissimorum hominum duo funera spectem. malo mortuum impendere quam vivum occidere’. (112.7) Our lady’s heart, however, was no less tender than pure. ‘God forbid’, she cried, ‘that I should have to see at one and the same time the dead bodies of the only two men I have ever loved. No, far better, I say, to hang the dead than kill the living’. (trans. Arrowsmith16)

The exchange here may echo and invert both literary and historic models. Courtney intriguingly suggests that the Widow’s ‘duorum … duo funera spectem’ may remind a hearer of a passage from an unknown play of Accius: video sepulchra duo duorum corporum (‘I see, of corpses two, two sepulchres’, trans. fr. 33 Warmington = fr. 655 Ribbeck).17 The passage is preserved as part of a punctilious discussion of genitives in Cicero’s Orator and is immediately followed by another unplaced Accian phrase, mulier una duum virorum (‘Of husbands two, one woman’, trans. fr. 34 Warmington = fr. 656 Ribbeck). It is a reasonable though by no means certain inference that both fragments come from the same play, and Warmington speculates (ad loc.) that this might be either Aegisthus or Clytaemnestra. While neither line would then be spoken by Clytemnestra, the first and likely the second would come from an observer of her handiwork in the Accian play. If Petronius expects a reader may know the phrase duorum … duo funera as much from Cicero’s Orator as directly from Accius, he may also hope to cast the Widow as a mulier una duum virorum in an entirely new light: not a two-time murderess but a resolute woman exchanging a dead husband for a live one. Her action of turning attempted suicide into marriage may seem a profoundly parodic reversal of historical suicides of Stoic couples. The archetype is the story

�� 16 Arrowsmith 1959, 120. Beck 1979, 251 n. 47 makes the important point that the meaning of impendere is really closer to ‘expend’ rather than ‘hang’ (which works so much better in English usage). The financial connotation of impendere, however, comes from the hanging scales. Is there possibly a distant echo of the weighing fates in Aeschylus’s Psychostasia or elsewhere? The Widow weighs her husband’s corpse against the live soldier—and expends the corpse. 17 Courtney 2001, 172 n. 23 (Cicero, Orator 156).

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of Caecina Paetus and Arria recorded in Pliny the Younger.18 As Paetus hesitates on the brink, his wife takes the knife, stabs herself, and hands it back to him with the words, ‘Non dolet, Paete’. The Widow’s concluding sentence requires three more words than Arria, but they make an equally memorable epigram. Eumolpus rightly labels the Widow’s speech an oratio (112.8) before explicating it: she orders that her (first) husband’s body be taken up (tolli) and put on the cross in place of the missing criminal’s. The final line of the story is worth pondering in detail: posteroque die populus miratus est qua ratione mortuus isset in crucem. (112.8) The next day the townspeople marveled to see that the dead man had somehow climbed up onto the cross.

Bakhtin claims that in the Widow’s story ‘not a single element is exploited as a metaphor’,19 but in the apparently simple verb of motion here is an echo that comes very close. Beck and Plaza have both heard in isset in crucem a variation on the popular curse, i in malam crucem,20 as the husband’s corpse comes to an even stickier end. The populace at large evidently understands the real situation: they recognize the body on the cross as the dead husband (mortuus),21 even with decomposition at least a week advanced (four days of mourning by the Widow, followed by three nights with the soldier). On the other hand, nothing suggests that anyone feels like sharing this information with the Roman authorities. Lichas’s angry reaction therefore illustrates how fully he has missed the point: at non Lichas risit, sed iratum commovens caput ‘si iustus’ inquit ‘imperator fuisset, debuit patris familiae corpus in monumentum referre, mulierem affigere cruci’. (113.2)

�� 18 Ep. 3.16. Cf. Dio 60.16, in a more general account of forced suicides under Claudius. Paetus and his son are both seriously ill while the father is under condemnation, and when the boy dies, Arria at first keeps it from Paetus. These parents who go to join their son may indeed be particular antitypes to the Widow and her (first) husband. 19 Bakhtin 1981, 223. 20 Beck 1979, 251 n. 48; Plaza 2000, 185. Courtney 2001, 173, however, insists this is entirely literal and ‘refers to the fact that the victim had to lie down on the cross before it was erected’. 21 Langlands 2006, 230 is therefore quite wrong to conclude that ‘Those who come off worst in this story, however, are the gullible townspeople who revere the women for self-destructive grief and are unable to see below the surface of woman or tomb’. In fact, they seem to realize, as Langlands herself rather surprisingly admits, that ‘[the Widow] may be understood in some novel way to remain pudica to the end’ (230).

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But Lichas didn’t laugh. He shook his head angrily and said, ‘If the governor had had any sense of what was right, he would have put that poor gentleman’s body back in the tomb and nailed the wife to the cross’.

The fact that no one in the story has a name22 may have obscured the lack of explicit ethnicity for anyone but the soldier. The Widow lives at Ephesus: are she and her husband not then likely Ephesians rather than Roman citizens?23 If so, the deceased was not a pater familias, and the Widow, despite her spectacular and apparently unexampled pudicitia, was not really a Roman univira either. How much beyond the edge of the story frame are we encouraged or even entitled to look? The story ends with the punch line: the dead man has somehow moved up onto the cross. If not now, then very soon the tomb will be entirely empty: neither the corpse that belonged there nor the Widow and others who did not belong will remain. We will not ask how much longer the soldier needs to stay on guard to fulfill his duty nor how long the Widow must remain out of sight, but we feel confident their story goes on. There are implicitly at least two audiences internal to Eumolpus’s story as well as at least three internal to Encolpius’s remembrance of its telling. The Ephesian populus knows about the substitute corpse, but the local Roman authorities seem to be in ignorance, else the story would have the ending Lichas wanted. Or do the authorities choose to ignore any evidence of irregularity (in the absence of an explicit denunciation) and prefer to let sleeping corpses lie?24 On shipboard Eumolpus’s narrative succeeds on the whole, although there are two dissident audiences. Remember that he embarked on his theme of women’s faults ne sileret sine fabulis hilaritas (110.8). Tryphaena blushes at the story and Lichas is enraged, but the story succeeds with the sailors, who all laugh (risu excepere fabulam nautae, 113.1). While Encolpius never gives his own reaction, the majority carries the day:

�� 22 When noted, the anonymity has been read through starkly different ideological lenses: as ‘a sketch about anonymous people whose characterization is very schematic’ (Conte 1996, 107) or as ‘one splendid and economical real-life narrative’ (Bakhtin 1981, 221). Cf. the view of Beck 1979, 249 that the story ‘though we cannot take at face value the claim that its events had happened sua memoria, for all its sensationalism deals here-and-now and with people realistically drawn’. 23 The point that underground burial is a Greek custom (hypogaeo Graeco more, 111.2) has been discussed for the accuracy of a Neronian date (Rose 1971, 29, with earlier bibliography), but the likelihood that neither the matrona nor her husband are Romans seems unremarked. 24 Charles Pazdernik (pers. comm.) has suggested this intriguing possibility to me, on the analogy of the emperor’s advice to the Younger Pliny not to seek denunciations and trouble where none are brought forward (Pliny, Ep. 10. 97, conquirendi non sunt).

��� � Niall W. Slater

nec hilaritas, quae occupaverat mentes, dabat iracundiae locum. (113.4) as the good mood we shared left no room for rancor (trans. Branham/Kinney)

No adjective modifies mentes, but an ‘our’ or ‘all’ seems strongly implied. Tryphaena and Lichas are submerged by the wave of laughter, and the narrative rolls on. The Widow’s decisions carry her across the boundary between life and death—and back again. She leads the way across many other categorical divides as well, eventually claiming speech, agency, and power over life and death for others by the narrative’s end. Just as her ruse wins over the Ephesian populace, triumphing over Roman authority, so too hilaritas eventually consolidates the internal audience’s complicity, as well as ours as readers, to endorse the Widow’s power to transcend boundaries.

Bibliography Arrowsmith, W., trans. (1959), The Satyricon of Petronius, Michigan. ―― (1966), ‘Luxury and Death in the Satyricon’, Arion 5, 304–31. Bakhtin, M.M. (1981), The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, trans. Michael Holquist, Austin. Beck, R. (1979), ‘Eumolpus Poeta, Eumolpus Fabulator: A Study of Characterization in the Satyricon’, Phoenix 33, 239–53. Branham, R.B./D. Kinney (trans.) (1996), Satyrica: Petronius, Berkeley, CA. Conte, G.B. (1996), The Hidden Author: An Interpretation of Petronius’ Satyricon, Berkeley, CA. Courtney, E. (2001), A Companion to Petronius, Oxford. Heseltine, M., (trans.) (1969), Petronius, revised by E.H. Warmington, Loeb Classical Library 15, Cambridge, MA. Hope, Valerie M. (2009), ‘At Home with the Dead: Roman Funeral traditions and Trimalchio’s Tomb’, in: J. Prag/I. Repath (eds.), Petronius: A Handbook, Chichester, 140–60. Mueller, K. (1995), Petronii Arbitri Satyricon, 4th edn., Stuttgart [corrected reprint, Munich, 2003]. Müller, C.W. (1980), ‘Die Witwe von Ephesus—Petrons Novelle und die Milesiaka des Aristeides’, Antike und Abendland 26, 103–21. Langlands, R. (2006), Sexual Morality in Ancient Rome, Cambridge. Pecere, O. (1975), Petronio, la novella della matrona de Efeso, Padua. Perutelli, A. (1990), ‘Il narratore nel Satyricon’, MD 25, 9–25. Plaza, M. (2000), Laughter and Derision in Petronius’ Satyrica: A Literary Study, Stockholm. Richlin, A. (2009), ‘Sex in the Satyrica: Outlaws in Literatureland’, in: J. Prag/I. Repath (eds.), Petronius: A Handbook, Chichester, 82–100. Rimmel, V. (2002), Petronius and the Anatomy of Fiction, Cambridge. Rose, K.F.C. (1971), The Date and Author of the Satyricon, Leiden. Ruden, S. (trans.) (2000), Petronius: Satyricon, with Notes and Topical Commentaries, Indianapolis/Cambridge.

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Schmeling, G. (2011), A Commentary on the Satyrica of Petronius, with the collaboration of A. Setaioli, Oxford. Segal, E. (1973), ‘Laughter in the House’, Horizon 15, 90–3. Slater, N.W. (1990), Reading Petronius, Baltimore, MD. Sullivan, J.P. (1968), The Satyricon of Petronius: A Literary Study, Indianapolis. Vannini, G. (2010), Petronii Arbitri Satyricon 100–115: Edizione critica e commento, BzA 281, Göttingen. Zeitlin, F.I. (1971), ‘Petronius as Paradox: Anarchy and Artistic Integrity’, TAPA 102, 631–84 [reprinted in: S.J. Harrison (ed.) (1999), Oxford Readings in the Roman Novel, Oxford, 1–49].

� Part V: Reception

Andrew Laird

Love and Death in Renaissance Latin Bucolic: The Chronis and its Origins (Biblioteca Nacional de México Ms. 1631) The realisation that poetic fantasies of death can convey the depth of love provides a basis for interpreting the Chronis, an ambitious humanist Latin eclogue in which the eponymous shepherd is mourned by his devoted companion.1 The models for the composition are primarily classical – epic, epigram and funereal elegy are incorporated into a pastoral framework – but its stylised and dramatic exploration of bereavement is offset by intimations of Christian dogma about the immortality of the soul. This brief introduction to the text and translation below reviews the poem’s provenance, structure and some principal sources, offering a tentative reflection on its subject. The Chronidis Ecloga is preserved only in a single undated manuscript (Ms. 1631) held in the National Library of Mexico. The contents of the lengthy document suggest that it was copied in a Jesuit institutional setting, very probably the prestigious Colegio Máximo de San Pedro y San Pablo in Mexico City.2 The Chronis is the second in a series of twelve poems, eleven of which are in bucolic style. Ten of the twelve were produced in colonial Mexico over the course of the late 1500s and early 1600s, as their contents or the names of the authors reveal.3 Ignacio Osorio Romero who discovered these poems, assumed that they all originated in New Spain and accorded them a collective identity: ‘they are distinguished not

�� 1 Papanghelis 1987, 1. 2 Biblioteca Nacional de México, Ms. 1631, 109r-120r. The manuscript (described in Yhmoff Cabrera 1975, 197-8; compare Osorio Romero 1983 and Quiñones Melgoza 2007) contains other religious and ceremonial poems and rhetorical texts from New Spain, as well as a Tragedia Judittae by Stephanus Tucius (Esteban Tucio) and Aldus Manutius’ commentary on Cicero’s Pro Archia. 3 Titles with authors’ names where given in brackets are as follows: Ecloga in obitu (anon.); Chronidis Eccloga [sic] (anon); Ecoglae [sic] factae ad Consilium Mexicanum, Ecogla I (Larios), Ecogla II (Larios), Ecogla III (Larios); Eclogae de foelicissimi B.P. Azebedi et Sociorum Martyrio, Ecloga I (Bernardino Llanos), Ecloga II Inter Lusitaniam et Brasilicon (Juan Laurencio), Ecloga III, De eadem re (anon.); Pro Domino Ludovico de Velasco Novae Hispaniae Prorege contra Marchiones 1590 (Larios); Ecloga de adventu Proregis Ludovici de Velasco (Peña); Protheus Ecloga Vaticinium de progressu in litteris mexicanae juventutis (Luis Peña); Ecloga de eadem re (Luis Peña).

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110596182-016

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only by their position in the manuscript, but also because their subject matter differs from the predominantly religious content of the others’.4 But the Chronis is one of the two anonymous pieces to begin this group which contain nothing to indicate that either of them were composed in the New World. In fact the initial poem, entitled Ecloga in obitu in the manuscript, precisely reproduced the opening 28 of the 154 lines of the Alcon, written in Italy by the courtier and humanist Baldassare Castiglione in 1507.5 Marcela Suárez has been the first to observe this, remarking that a ‘culture of the fragment’ was engendered by the common Renaissance practice of writing poetry by fusing passages of other authors’ work.6 She also noted that the change made to Castiglione’s title in the Biblioteca Nacional manuscript – from Alcon to Ecloga in obitu, ‘Eclogue on [the occasion of a] death’, reflects the role Latin bucolic had acquired in the early modern period as a form of epicedium or funeral poetry. The alteration further suggests that a text once designed to commemorate a specific person was supplying a model for new potential compositions. The text of the Chronis, on the other hand, looks complete, but its position in the manuscript directly after the excerpt from Castiglione could be a signal that it did not originate in New Spain either.7 Its subject – sorrow for the death of a beloved young man – is similar to that of the Alcon, although there are no specific echoes of the preceding poem. Both the Alcon and Chronis display the ‘baroque pathos’ characteristic of Latin pastorale maccheronico in sixteenth-century Italy; and the Chronis also has some resemblances to the now largely forgotten bucolic laments of Lucio Pietro or ‘Basilio’ Zanchi of Bergamo (1501–1558).8 Such resemblances merit future exploration and give grounds for suspecting that the Chronis too may be of Italian origin.9 Moreover, had it been the work of an author in the �� 4 Osorio Romero 1983, 173 [my translation]. 5 Lokaj 2015 shows that Castiglione’s Alcon commemorated the death of his friend, Domizio Falcone, and presents the text of the poem with an English translation. 6 Suárez 2011. 7 Contrast Ruiz Camacho 2007, 445: ‘de autor anónimo – socio o alumno de la Compañía de Jesús en Nueva España’ and Quiñones Mendoza 2012, ix: ‘La Égloga de Cronis … es obra de algún jesuita mexicano’. 8 Zabughin 1923, 2: 127–40. Zanchi 1747 does not collect all the poems in Zanchi 1550 and 1560?: the pastoral laments for Latin poets include Melesius or Amilcon (for Giovanni Pontano), Myrtilus (Andrea Navagero), Damon (Baldassare Castiglione), and another Alcon (Lorenzo Gambara). Other early modern Latin bucolic texts, such as those surveyed in Mustard and Grant 1965 and Marsh 2014, may provide clues about the authorship of the Chronis. 9 The Hispanism propio (148) and the confusion, characteristic of Spanish writers, of v with b in hervis (96) and herviforo (172) of the manuscript give no grounds for assuming the actual author was a Spaniard, as errors found in a copy cannot reveal anything certain about the original.

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New World, the copyist would probably have called attention to this: Spanish Americans, not least Jesuits, took pride in literary endeavours by any of their number. But as there is no record of the Chronis outside Mexico, its transmission alone is a testament to the value of New Spain’s humanist tradition. The poem comprises a lengthy opening narrative, a scene in recitative and two soliloquies. The structure is reminiscent of an Italian baroque cantata:10 I II III IV V VI

Lycidas’ narrative 1–77 Dialogue between Sylvanus and Echo 78–103 Sylvanus’ first monologue: Response to confirmation of Chronis’ death 103–48 Lycidas’ explanatory interjection: Sylvanus replaces his festive crown with one of cypress leaves 149–51 Sylvanus’ second monologue: Lament and refrain 152–221 Close of Lycidas’ narrative 221–5

The centonic nature of the Chronis is clear from the very beginning, which is drawn from a cluster of literary sources.11 Lycidas’ opening description of night, as a time when all living things are asleep while Sylvanus alone remains awake (4–9), purloins a phrasal sequence from Ovid, but the vignette is largely taken verbatim from Silius Italicus’ description of Hannibal’s insomnia in Punica Book 8.12 Lycidas’ narrative in fact makes more use of epic than pastoral poetry and Ovid’s Metamorphoses 3.380–92 is the obvious technical precedent for the ensuing dialogue between Sylvanus and Echo (78–103).13

�� 10 Tovey 1956, 4: ‘a favourite form of Italian chamber music was the cantata for one or two solo voices … It consisted at first of a declamatory narrative or scene in recitative, held together by a primitive aria repeated at intervals’. 11 Notes indicating some of the poem’s classical and humanist sources follow the Latin text and translation below. 12 Ov., Met. 7.185–6; Sil., Pun. 8.282–7. In identifying Aen. 4.522–32 as a principal object of imitatio for Chronis 1–14, Ruiz Camacho 2005 does not consider Silius; Ruiz Camacho 2012, lxxxi notes that Chronis 4–5 reproduces Pun. 7.283–4 (numbered as 284–5), but overlooks the context and continuation of the furtum: Chronis 6–8 reproduces Pun. 7.285–7 (substituting pastorem for Sidonium in 6); Chronis 3 recalls Pun. 7.282. 13 Osorio Romero 1983, 174: ‘this is the first time that the echo-device is employed before its finest hour [in New Spain], in the dialogue between the nymph Eco and Human Nature which Sor Juana inserts in her auto sacramental, El divino Narciso (1690)’ [my translation]. Despite the religious tenor of her dialogue, it should not be inferred that the Chronis was known to Sor Juana

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Nonetheless the presence of Virgil’s Eclogues remains dominant: specific verses from the collection are recalled throughout the Chronis. Corydon’s forlorn expression of love for Alexis in Eclogue 2 and the laments for the dead Daphnis in Eclogue 5 are evident influences: both poems were the customary models for pastoral obituaries in the Renaissance. Eclogue 8, which has two songs by Damon (8.17–61) and Alphesiboeus (8.64–108) offers a structural precedent for the diptych of monologues by Sylvanus. Both songs have a refrain of one dactylic hexameter, opening with an imperative, in which verses or songs are themselves invoked. Damon’s refrain: Incipe Maenalios mecum, mea tibia versus,

and that of Alphesiboeus: ducite ab urbe domum, mea carmina, ducite Daphnin,

each repeated nine times, are obvious inspirations for the dactylic hexameter repeated six times in the Chronis where on each occasion it marks the finale of a ‘stanza’ in Sylvanus’ second lament. Querellas poignantly takes the place of Damon’s versus or of Alphesiboeus’ carmina: suggere funereas, amore o viduate, querellas.

Catullus too uses the device of the refrain in his wedding poem 62 and in poem 64, for the grim song of the Fates at the marriage of Peleus and Thetis: the legacy of the dynamic analogy between hymenaeal and funereal song in humanist Latin bucolic remains to be investigated.14 This Chronis may have been composed to honour a celebrated poet or someone personally known to the author – but without knowledge of that author’s identity, it remains impossible to determine whether the character of Chronis is a cypher for any historical individual. His name resembles that of Chromis who is mentioned as a contestant in a singing competition in Theocritus’ first Idyll; and another Chromis, with Mnasyllus, elicited Silenus’ song in Virgil’s sixth Eclogue.15 The name also appears in heroic epic, where it is frequently attached to

�� Inés de la Cruz: leaving aside Ovid, Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s renowned Eco y Narciso (1661) was a more immediate and far better known vernacular precedent. 14 Numerous examples from classical literature are discussed in Papanghelis 1987, 50–79. 15 Theoc. Id. 1.24; Virg., Ecl. 6.13–14: Chromis et Mnasylus in antro/Silenum pueri somno videre iacentem. Servius ad loc. identified the two figures as Varus and Virgil.

Love and Death in Renaissance Latin Bucolic: The Chronis and its Origins � 255

characters who are killed in combat.16 Just as the short ‘o’ of Chromis in Greek became long in the name’s Latin form, Chronis might correspondingly lengthen an omicron. In that case it could evoke χρόνιος, which in classical literature means ‘late’ or ‘tardy’, prompting a possible wordplay at verse 25: Chronidis ergo morae impatiens Sylvanus So because Sylvanus could not bear Chronis’ delay.

In patristic Greek, which was more commonly known in the 1500s than classical Greek, χρόνιος instead has the sense of ‘fleeting’, ‘temporary’.17 If the name Chronis carries this connotation, the poem can be viewed as an elaborate complaint about the transient quality of love or human life. Humanist poetry rarely employed allegory in a systematic manner, but the exchange of dialogue between Sylvanus and Echo has an underlying Christian message. The shepherd asks: ecquis in hac sylva non Chronidis inscius errat?

[80]

Is there one who knows Chronis, who in this wood is erring?

Echo’s response to this, and to Sylvanus’ next question, suggest that the person he is asking about might turn out to be Sylvanus himself: EC. Errat. SYL. Olorinum qui quando Chronida novit? EC. Novit.

[81–2]

EC: He is erring [indeed]. SYL: And swan-like Chronis once he did know? EC: He did know [him].

The last two syllables of Sylvanus’ avowal [84] that Chronis’ looks could outshine stars in flight (comaetas) are repeated by Echo to form the word aetas, time or span of life. This introduces a theological proposition from the shepherd: EC. Aetas. SYL. Cui semper vitae Deus alma supellex

[85]

EC: Time SYL: … of life, for which God is always generous in the provision.

�� 16 Chromis is despatched by Camilla in Aen. 11.675: compare Hom., Il. 2.858; Ov., Met. 5.103; Stat., Theb. 2.613–628, 6.346, 7.714, 8.476, 9.252. 17 Lampe 1961, 1582.

��� � Andrew Laird There are further Christian conceits in the questions Sylvanus poses, as well as in the responses he receives: when he asks why Chronis has perished [88], Echo’s reprise of perire as ire turns ‘dying’ into ‘going’, so that Sylvanus then seeks to know if Chronis’s spirit has departed to the ‘garden’, hortum [89] – a word which had come to evoke the idea of Paradise.18 The rhyming ortum [90] elicited from Echo hints at a notion of resurrection, conveyed more firmly by her next words to the effect that Chronis ‘lives’ and ‘drinks heavenly drafts’ [92–3], although Sylvanus’ reaction Non equidem credam nisi detegis ora

[93]

I will surely not believe unless you reveal your face.

recalls the doubting Apostle Thomas’ demand for evidence (John 20: 5). What is more, Echo’s repetition, ora [94], signifies the imperative of orare, ‘Pray!’, as much as it reiterates ora, ‘face’. Yet this omen [95] and other hints [96–101] are lost on the shepherd. Once Echo’s subsequent utterances appear to confirm that Chronis lies in death [103], Sylvanus abandons himself to unrelenting grief in the two monologues which take up the greater part of the poem.19

Bibliography D’Ancona, L. (1989), ‘L’Hortus conclusus nel Medioevo e nel Rinascimento’, Miniatura 2, 121– 29. Jones, F. (2013), Virgil’s Garden: The Nature of Bucolic Space, London. Lampe, G.W.H. (1961), A Patristic Greek Lexicon, Oxford. Lokaj, R. (2015), Two Renaissance Friends: Baldassare Castiglione, Domizio Falcone, and their Neo-Latin Poetry, Tempe, Arizona. Luzzi, P. (2007), ‘Giardini tra Oriente e Occidente: un confronto possibile. Il giardino come percorso interiore’, Bollettino della Accademia degli Euteleti della città di San Miniato 74, 495–516.

�� 18 That evocation, first prompted by the Vulgate Song of Songs 4:12, was strengthened by the emblematic and iconographic tradition of the Hortus conclusus: D’Ancona 1989, Luzzi 2007. Greco-Roman sources such as those surveyed in Jones 2013, 137–8 may have played a part in the association. 19 I am very grateful to Jay Reed, and especially to Jaspreet Singh Boparai and Petra Šoštarić for many helpful suggestions. Though very different in style and approach, Juan Patrick Soto’s work on the Chronis (for my 2016 class in Brown on humanist Latin texts) was a valuable impetus for the present study.

Love and Death in Renaissance Latin Bucolic: The Chronis and its Origins � ���

Marsh, D. (2014), ‘Pastoral Poetry’, in: P. Ford/J. Bloemendal/C. Fantazzi (eds.) Encyclopedia of the Neo-Latin World, Leiden/Boston, 425–36. Mustard, W.P./W.L. Grant (eds.) (1965), Neo-Latin Literature and the Pastoral, Chapel Hill. Osorio Romero, I. (1983), ‘Doce poemas latinos de fines del siglo XVI novohispano’, Nova Tellus 1, 171–203. Papanghelis, T. (1987), Propertius: A Hellenistic Poet on Love and Death, Cambridge. Quiñones Melgoza, J. (2007), ‘El manuscrito 1631 de la Biblioteca Nacional de México’, Pensamiento Novohispano 8, 145–52. ―― (ed.) (2012), Hispana seges nova (Tres documentos neolatinos novohispanos del siglo XVI), Mexico City. Ruiz Camacho, O. (2005), ‘El arte de la imitación: El bucolismo de Virgilio en la Ecloga Cronidis del siglo XVI novohispano’, in: A. Sánchez Flores (ed.), Memoria 18, Encuentro de Investigadores del Pensamiento Novohispano, San Luis Potosí, 445–51. ―― (2005), ‘Introducción’, in: Quiñones Melgoza (2012), lxxiii-lxxxiv. Suárez, M.A. (2011), ‘El seudoanonimato de la Ecloga in obitu en el manuscrito 1631 (Biblioteca Nacional de México)’, Circe de clásicos y modernos 15.1, 43–52. Tovey, D.F. (1957), The Forms of Music, London. Yhmoff Cabrera, J. (1975), Catálogo de obras manuscritas en latín de la Biblioteca Nacional de México, Mexico City. Zabughin, V. (1923), Vergilio nel rinascimento italiano da Dante a Torquato Tasso (2 vols.), Bologna. Zanchi, Lucio Pietro [Basilio] (1550), Basilii Zanchii poematum editio copiosior, Rome. ―― (1560?), Lucii Petrei Zanchi Bergomatis Poemata Varia, Vienna (?). ―― (1747), Basilii Zanchii Bergomatis Poemata Quae Extant Omnia, Bergamo.

Text and translation The text below is based on the transcription of Osorio Romero 1983, 186–93, with corrections in the light of a subsequent edition in Quiñones Melgoza 2012, 1–10. The spelling and punctuation have not been generally modernised in order to retain poetic effects or baroque conceits which otherwise might be lost: the spelling of Eccho and Eccloga in the title, for instance, may have implied an association between the two terms. Where changes have been made (apart from substitution of v for the consonantal u), the words in the manuscript are given in footnotes to the text. The translation is in prose, with each English line corresponding as far as possible to each line of Latin.

258 � Andrew Laird

CHRONIDIS ECCLOGA Licidas/Sylvanus/Eccho20 LI. Sydereis devecta rotis radiabat Olimpi culmine pulchra soror Phoebi, sua lumina mundo sol quod in hesperio mersus caput orbe negarat; omnia per terras homines volucresque ferasque solverat alta quies positoque labore dierum pacem nocte datam mortalibus orbis agebat. At non pastorem curis flagrantia corda Sylvanum vigilesque metus haurire sinebant dona soporiferae noctis, sed saucius igne Chronidis absentis, tectas populante medulas, mentis inops animum nunc huc nunc impiger illuc dividit, et vario curarum fluctuat aestu pectora, maeror edax vorat irrequieta, dolores Innumeri feriunt, variis miser horret ab armis. Nec mirum si tantus amor pia Chronidis urget viscera synceri, viridis nam gloria ruris inclyta Chronis erat, formoso pulchrior agro pastorumque decus, pastor pastoribus unus charior et charos solitus peramare sodales. qui licet innumeris Chronis gratissimus esset innumeros Sylvanus agri superabat alumnos Chronida qui roseum placido si corde fovebat Sylvanus pastor pastorum Chronis amabat et commune pari pensabat munere munus. Chronidis ergo morae impatiens Sylvanus amoris aeger, arenosi celeri petit aequora cursu gurgitis, undisono qua murmurat unda susurro posset ut ignivomos lymphis relevare calores, depopulatrices mentisque extinguere flammas. Ast ubi pervenit nectit qua gratus amictu rivus arundineo muscoso gramine vallem, saepe frequentatam calido sibi pectore vallem herbiferam nimium vallem, quam veris honore undique frondenti munitus arundine ditat hortus, utrumque latus, celsi cui21 frondibus altis exornant gemini montes ubi turba coronas alituum per collam modos effundit in auras aedificatque domos densa sub fronde quotannis queis teneram nutrire queat servareque prolem

�� 20 BNM Ms. 1631: licidas 21 cuj

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Love and Death in Renaissance Latin Bucolic: The Chronis and its Origins � 259

ECLOGUE OF CHRONIS LYCIDAS/SYLVANUS/ECHO Borne down from the summit of Olympus on a starry carriage, shone Phoebus’ beautiful sister, the moon, giving the world the light which the sun had denied it, after sinking his head into the Land of the West. Everything on earth – men, birds, and beasts – had relaxed into a deep sleep, and, now that the day’s toils were set aside, 5 the world brought the peace which night granted to mortals. But not for a shepherd whose heart was on fire with suffering: anxious insomnia did not allow Sylvanus to help himself to the gifts of sleep which the night brings. Instead he was hurt by his passion for the absent Chronis, which ravaged him inside, to the bone. 10 Deprived of reason, he had conflicting thoughts in his mind, constantly changing it, and he wavered on a shifting tide of preoccupations. His breast was devoured by consuming sadness; agonies beyond count savaged him, the poor wretch shrank from multiple onslaughts. No wonder so great a love for Chronis afflicted 15 his innocent soul: the verdant countryside’s famed glory was Chronis. He was more beautiful than the lovely meadow; and he was the shepherds’ pride and joy – the one shepherd who to them all was dearest, being disposed to love his fellows deeply. Although Chronis was especially delightful to countless people, 20 Sylvanus himself surpassed countless inhabitants of the fields. If rosy Chronis was cherished in the calm heart of Sylvanus the shepherd, the shepherds’ Chronis loved him in return and shared the favour, matching it with an equal gift of his own. So because Sylvanus could not bear Chronis’ delay, he grew lovesick. 25 and quickly made for the waters of the stream by the sandy shore, where the rushing waves resounded with the noise of the current, so that he could ease his fiery ardour in its waters, and put out the flames that ravaged his mind. But when he came to the place where a delightful stream binds 30 the valley with a cloak of grass and moss, the valley he often frequented with his heart on fire – a valley lush with grass, endowed by the virtue of spring with a garden surrounded on every border with green reeds, and adorned on either side by the tall foliage from 35 a pair of lofty mountains, where, in formation, flocks of birds pour melodies from their throats into the breezes and build nests in the dense leaves each year, in which they can feed and protect their young,

260 � Andrew Laird

frigora cum primum fugat igneus horrida Titan miteque succedit tempus fortunaque laeto mitior intuitu voluit blandissima dextrae / spargere dona manus, surgens ubi nobilis arbor frondibus ut velo phoebaeos amovet ignes dum calor immodicus fragrantia dequoquit arva, hic gravis umbrifero vitabat tegmine solem Sylvanus medios sol cum conscenderet axes et radiis virides ferventibus ureret herbas, hic sedet et tristis cernens loca tristibus apta nam neque de supero fundit sol lumina caelo avia nec resonant avibus virgulta canoris muta quiescit avis, nidis pendentibus arvi turba silet taciti faciuntque silentia montes; heu quos non gemitus, quas non dedit ore loquellas? quae non ex imo traxit suspiria corde incomptas22 inter sylvas et maesta cupresi brachia, Sylvano quoties occurrit amicus solvitur in lachrimas, lachrimis violentior exit rivus et immenso ruit implacabilis imbre, hic inter gemitus et maesti verba doloris queis rigidas pelagi cautes et saxa moveret labitur in somnum, fessum in gramine corpus paulatim laxat, non bene lumine somnum concipit infelix pastor, cum protinus aures vox inopina cavas tristi resonabilis Eccho concutit abreptum nuper quae Chronida fato ingemit indigno, subito caput ille sinistrum allevat incubitum, cupidasque ad singula tendit aures cumque sui23 crudelia fata sodalis audit et effuso24 pallentia sanguine membra concidit exanimis, mox et calor ossa reliquit funereusque color25 languentia contegit ora non secus ac quisquis percussus fulmine ruit26 inscius et vitae similis morientibus alget inde ubi condensam dolor hanc de pectore nubem tristitiae repulit longo post tempore maerens haec singultanti tandem sic incipit ore: SYL. Vnde mihi superas vox haec modo missa per auras?

�� 22 in comptas 23 suj 24 efusso 25 calor 26 ruuet

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Love and Death in Renaissance Latin Bucolic: The Chronis and its Origins � 261

until the fiery Titan chases away the frightful cold and gentle weather takes over. Then Fortune is gentler too: with her joyous glance she has sought to scatter the sweetest of gifts from her right hand, where the tree, rising to an eminent height, averts the fires of Phoebus with its canopy of leaves, as extreme heat parches the baking fields. Here, in the leafy shade with a heavy heart, Sylvanus avoided the sun as it climbed to the middle of its arc and burned the green plants with its scorching rays. Here he sat, sadly surveying a place suited to that sadness since the sun from high in heaven can shed no light there, and the pathless thickets do not resound with the song of birds. The birds, in their overhanging nests are quiet, as is the throng in the silent countryside, and the mountains add to the silence. But, alas, to what cries, to what words did Sylvanus not give voice? What sighs did he not draw from deep in his heart? In the midst of the wild forest and the cypress boughs, every time his companion came to his mind, he was reduced to tears: more violent than tears flowed this stream and it poured without relent, in an endless shower. Here, between his cries and sorrowful expressions of grief with which he might move the hard cliffs and rocks by the sea, Sylvanus fell asleep; his weary body on the grass gradually relaxed, although sleep was not welcome in the eyes of the cheerless shepherd: when suddenly in the empty ears of the poor man the unexpected call of resounding Echo came as a shock: Chronis had just been taken by a death he did not deserve, she cried. Right away Sylvanus raised his head after reclining on his left side, and strained to hear everything with keen ears, and when he heard of his companion’s cruel end, his limbs went pale and were drained of blood, he fell lifeless, the warmth soon leaving his bones, and a deathly colour came over his languishing face just as some one struck by lightning falls down unconscious, with no sign of life, and appears as cold as the dead. Then once the pain drove from his heart the dense cloud caused by sadness, after grieving for a long period of time, at last, between sobs, he started to mouth these words: SYL: Where did this call sent to me through the air above come from?

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262 � Andrew Laird

Quae mea laethiferis transfixit corda sagittis ecquis in hac sylva non Chronidis inscius errat? 27 EC. Errat. SYL. Olorinum qui quando Chronida novit? EC. Novit. SYL. In herbifero fuerat gloria rure? EC. Rure. SYL. Gravi solitus pectus relevare dolore? EC. Ore. SYL. Coruscante devincens luce comaetas EC. Aetas. SYL. Cui28 semper vitae Deus alma supellex EC. Lex. SYL. Facili fuerat roseus qui fronte modestus EC. Aestus. SYL. Qui cunctos uno peramabat amore. EC. More. SYL. Quid hic igitur potuit male morte perire? EC. Ire. SYL. Mens numquid discessit Chronidis ad hortum? / EC. Ortum. SYL. Posthabuit fugiens amor arva severus. EC. Verus. SYL. et hic tandem Chronis mea gaudia vivit. EC. Vivit. SYL. et aethereos haustus modo vividus haurit EC. Haurit. SYL. non equidem credam nisi detegis ora. EC. Ora. SYL. heus suppliciter posco vis dicere nomen. EC. Omen. SYL. quid quem te memoras responsa remittens? EC. Mittens. SYL. deludor penitus latet error in herbis. 29 nec vivus modo Chronis adest. EC. Est. SYL. uror et istud quali sit ignoro: referas rogo iam mihi nomen. quo te nimpha vocem? EC. Vocem. SYL. Quae perculit aures dira meas nuper; num vox fuit illa loquentis? EC. Entis. SYL. Et ille meum defunctum Chronida vidit EC. Vidit. SYL. Avernali pallentia corpora morte EC. Morte. SYL. Heu morte iacet. EC. iacet. SYL. heu dolor intime mentis pande fores, resonent percussaque sydera caeli vocibus immensis, perfunde et fletibus ora. O mea perpetuos demittite lumina rivos, fundite, vos oculi, lachrimas sine fine fluentes, rumpe moras Sylvane, gravis compressa relaxet fraena dolor lachrimis calidum dissolvar in amnem. O mors dira nimis quid iam mors linquis inhausum aut queis saeva manus non icis30 ipsa rapaces tu teneris matres haedis, tu matribus agnos, dura iuventutem rapis et truculenta senectam, nec parcis senio, nec parcis saeva iuventae sic ah, sic nostri campi popularis honores, sic ductore greges, sic heu pastore capellas, praeside sic haedos, sic heu31 nos Chronide privas,

�� 27 no Chronidis inscius herrat 28 cuj 29 herror in hervis 30 ijcis 31 Eu

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Love and Death in Renaissance Latin Bucolic: The Chronis and its Origins � 263

The call which has pierced my heart with lethal arrows? Is there one who knows Chronis, who in this wood is erring? 80 EC: He is erring. SYL: And swan-like Chronis once he did know? EC: He did know. SYL: Chronis who was the glory of the lush countryside EC: Countryside. SYL: And he used to lighten a heart heavy with depression. EC: With an expression. SYL: … when it flashed he outshone stars in flight. EC: Time. SYL: … of life for which God is always generous in the provision. 85 EC: The condition. SYL: For one good-natured, with youthful looks and mildness EC: Wildness. SYL: Who loved everyone alike with a single passion. EC: In this fashion. SYL: Why then could death make him sadly pass away? EC: Away. SYL: Has Chronis’ spirit then departed to paradise? EC: To arise. SYL: The love that fled to neglect these fields was severe. 90 EC: Sincere. SYL: And now at last, Chronis, my joy, he lives? EC: He lives. SYL: And, as he is living, are they heavenly draughts he drinks? EC: He drinks. SYL: I will surely not believe unless you reveal your face. EC: Face? Pray. SYL: Ah, I humbly beg you: will you state your cognomen? EC: Omen. SYL: What? Are you stating who you are in the replies you return? 95 EC: Turn. SYL: I am deceived: error is lurking deep in the grass And now Chronis is not alive or here, is he? EC: It is he. SYL: I am burning, but with what I don’t know: will you please now tell me the name, I should use, nymph, for you to be called? EC: Call. SYL: That dreadful call which struck my ears earlier: was it not from someone speaking? 100 EC: Someone being. SYL: And was my dead Chronis what that someone saw? EC: He saw. SYL: … a body pale with infernal death EC: Death. SYL: Alas in death he lies. EC: He lies. SYL: Alas, heartfelt grief! Open the doors, let them and the stricken stars of heaven resound with boundless cries, flood my face with weeping! 105 O cast down perpetual streams in my sight, and you, my eyes, pour out tears flowing without end. Break all stays, Sylvanus, let weighty grief loosen the restraints with tears, may I dissolve into a warm river. O death too dreadful! Death, what do you not leave drained 110 or on whom, in your cruelty, do you not hurl your grasping hands? You take mothers from tender kids, lambs from their mothers. You harshly snatch at youth, and brutally seize old age you spare neither the elderly, nor the young in your savagery. This, this is how you plunder the glories of our countryside. 115 So you take cattle from the herdsmen, so, alas, goats from the shepherd, kids from their guardian, and so, alas, you deprive us of Chronis,

264 � Andrew Laird

Chronide cuius amor secus haud mihi crescit in horas Vere novo viridans ac sese subjicit alnus, Chronide vita mihi sine quo procul exulat omnis, quo sine vita gravis vel mors caruisse suprema, Chronide nos privas crudelis, cuius ab ore dulcior hyblaeo manabat melle loquella Chronide qui crebro nostris ah nuper in arvis altisona dulces effudit arundine cantus albus o Corinas quales prope fluminis undas cygnus ab ore (sibi fato properante) remittit. O vos si miseri dolor intimus immae, lugete o mecum valles, lugete cavernae, lugete o montes, sylvae lugete virentes, lugete extinctum crudeli Chronida fato, lugeboque meo defunctum corde dolorem nam mea tabescit maioribus anxia curis inque dies vitae mens et medicaminis expers intus alit flammas et longum nutrit amorem Chronidis, et quamvis32 cupiam pervertere curas / rursus amor mentem cruciat, rursusque recurrit. tantus amor miserum stimulis male torquet amantem; ergo quid hic faciam? quonam mea lumina vertam? Vnde remordenti quaeram medicamen amori? Chroni mei33 cordis potior pars, gaudia Chroni nunc tamen afflicti dolor, heu dolor intime mentis Chroni iaces oculosque sopor ligat improbus altos amplius ipse tuos potero nec cernere vultus, formosos nimium vultus nec clara serenae sydera frontis, equos longe superantia Phoebi me miserum valeam quod cernere talia vivus et talem proprio34 cernam sine funere mortem. LIC. Haec ait et festam repulit de fronte coronam et nova de tristi sibi nexit serta cupresso fletibus et maestam vocem impedientibus35 infit. SYL. laeta decent laetos me tristia serta fatebor et tristes habitus tristesque decere loquellas Iam laeti valeant cantus, valeantque choreae, iam valeant festi ludi versusque iocosi, tecum Chroni sales, tecum periere lepores quae tecum fuerunt, perierunt gaudia tecum,

�� 32 quanvis 33 mej 34 propio 35 impedientis

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Love and Death in Renaissance Latin Bucolic: The Chronis and its Origins � 265

Chronis, for whom my love grows hour by hour, no less than an alder in leaf shoots up with the onset of spring; Chronis, without whom my whole life is a distant exile, and that burdensome life or the finality of death is incomplete. You are cruel to take Chronis away from us: from his mouth flowed speech which was sweeter than Hyblaean honey, Chronis who often – ah – not long ago in our fields brought out sweet songs on his sublime flute, like those to which, o Corinas, a white swan by the river waters gave voice in return, as his end was rapidly approaching. Oh if the heartfelt grief of one so sad touches you, mourn with me, you valleys below; mourn you caves; mourn, you mountains, mourn you leafy forests, Mourn for Chronis, deprived of life by fate’s cruelty. I will mourn his passing with grief in my heart, as my distraught mind collapses under ever greater pressure for each day of my life and, without any antidote, it feeds the flames and sustains this enduring love for Chronis, and though I yearn to stifle my preoccupations, love once again racks my brain, and again rushes back. So great a love torments this lover with sharp pains: what am I to do from now on? Where can I cast my eyes? Where will I find the cure for a love that stings and stings again? Chronis, ruler of my own heart, Chronis, you are my joy, but now you cause grief in a mind afflicted, alas, a heartfelt grief. Chronis you lie dead and an evil sleep seals closed your noble eyes. No more will I be able to look upon your face, your all too beautiful features, or to see the bright constellation of your cheerful countenance, far outshining Phoebus’ steeds. How wretched I am to live, to be able to witness all this, and to witness such a death without the appropriate rites. LYC: He said these words and pushed a festive garland from his brow and wove a new wreath of leaves from the sad cypress. Then, hampered by sobbing, he made this sorrowful speech: SYL: Joyful things suit joyful people, but I affirm that sad garlands, sad garments and sad speeches are what suit me. Farewell now to joyful songs, farewell to dances, Farewell now to festive games, and to funny verses. Along with you, Chronis, have perished the wit and humour you brought with you, the joy you brought has perished.

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nil superest nisi flere, mihi flere una voluptas, unus amor, flendoque meos, aequare dolores Chronidis et crebro repetens pia nomina vulnus vulneribus refricare novis tua dulcis imago pallida, nam nostros sitientes ocupat orbes saepeque florigeri repeto solatia ruris mortua dilectum nimium mihi Chronida pulchrum vulneror ipse meis telis et saucius esse laetor amoque meum ferientem cuspide pectus Nerea pertimeo, medias et mergor in undas est mihi dulce tuam meditari mente figuram percutiar quamvis laethalibus intima telis36 res mihi dura tuam deponere mente figuram. Absentem deflet vitulum mugitibus altis mater et herbiferos37 resonis miseranda querellis implet agros, vehit omne nemus vallesque lacusque. omnes illa dolens lucos saltusque peragrat crebra gemens, crebra et montem stabulumque revisit heu desiderio vituli percusa, doloris vulnera, nec solatium frondes nec gramina rore sparsa levant, non quae viridi vaga flumina ripa perspicuam placido deducunt38 murmure lympham et non ipse tuo peream miserandus amore? subsequar et chari rapidissima fata sodalis? O lux dira nimis o morte ferocior ipsa vita gravis crudele necis genus, improba votis annue nympha onus lachesis, iam pensa refringe; / mors inopina, cur nunc optata recedis? mors igitur rigidas quando mihi denegat aures nec licet aethereos pastoris visere manus Chronidis ipse gravi solabor arundine mentem suggere funereas, amor o viduate, querellas. Iam non purpureis pingat ver floribus arva Chronide prata nimis quondam radiantia vivo nec nova pampineis ditetur vitibus aestas nigra per infaustos surgant quin lilia campos lilia pastoris nuper superata colore iam pro candenti nigrum det terra ligustrum; suggere funereas, amor o viduate, querellas. Advolet umbriferis tranquilla per aequora pennis grandine concretas quatiens notus imbrifer alas

�� 36 quanvis laethalibus intima telus 37 herviferos 38 deducit

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Nothing is left but to weep: to weep is my one pleasure, my one love, and by weeping, to match my grief for you, Chronis, and, often repeating your good name, to irritate my wound with new wounds, now your sweet image is deathly pale and takes hold of my thirsting eyes. And often I seek again the comforts of the flowery countryside which are as dead as the handsome Chronis whom I loved too much. I am hurt by my very own missiles but in my injury I rejoice, and I take pleasure in baring my breast to the spike. Of Nereus I am deeply afraid: but as I plunge into the midst of the sea, it is a comfort to keep my mind reflecting on your appearance. Though I may be struck by deathly missiles, it is arduous and difficult for me to take my mind off your appearance. For her missing calf, a mother laments with deep lowing and in her unhappiness she fills with her resounding complaints the lush pastures: the sound carries in the woods, valleys and lakes. In her grief she wanders through all the groves and passes, repeatedly sobbing, again and again she revisits mountain and stable, devastated by the loss of her calf. For the wounds of her grief the leafy branches provide no comfort and the meadow grass sprinkled with dew offers no relief: nor the streams coursing by the verdant bank, which bear clear water with a pleasant noise. Will I not also meet a pitiful end through my love for you? Will I follow the abrupt fate of my dear friend? O light of day too grim, harder to face than death itself, a life so burdensome is a cruel form of murder. You always resist prayers, but assent to your job, Lachesis: now snap your threads again. Unexpected death, why draw away now that you’re wanted? So when death refuses to give me his inflexible ear, and permission to see the shepherd Chronis’s heavenly form is denied, I will console myself by playing on a solemn pipe: O widowed love of mine, pile up a heap of funeral laments. No longer may the spring paint the fields with purple flowers, the meadows once so radiant when Chronis was alive, nor may a new summer be enriched with trailing vines. Rather let black lilies grow over the luckless plains: lilies not long ago outshone by the shepherd’s fair complexion. Now the ground should put forth black privet instead of white: O widowed love of mine, pile up a heap of funeral laments. May the rainy North Wind fly down to the quiet waters with cloudy plumage, as he tosses his wings frozen with hail;

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unda gemat, gemat unda gravi percussa dolore clara tenebroso velentur sydera velo nec Cythiso pascantur apes, nec rore cicadae florida, nec symiae tondant virgulta capellae; suggere funereas, amor o viduate, querellas. Sistite iam rivi rapidos iam sistite cursus flumina, et lachrimas subito properate fluentes tuque meis recinens responde o questibus Eccho maestaque per raucos gemina suspiria valles; suggere funereas, amor o viduate, querellas Quo, quo Chroni comes? Quonam mea vita moraris quae te nunc regio, teque vel terra retardat? Quid mihi te quis te rapuit dulcissime Chroni? Chroni meae quondam requies spesque unica vitae nunc dolor aeternique imo sub pectore quaestus; suggere funereas, amor o viduate, querellas. Denique felicis quondam solatia ruris et non infausti pastoris magna voluptas lugete o mecum pecudes, lugete capellae et vos heu solitae cantus iactare sonoros discite iam gemitus, pictasque relinquite plumas et subito nigris remeate per aera pennis suggere funereas, amor o viduate, querellas. LIC. Haec ait et subito fessos sopor aggravat artus vocis adhuc modulos calamo fundente, remissis paulatim digitis, caput in cervice reclinat et tacitus rapidum tandem finivit amorem. /

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let the tide of the ocean groan, smitten with heavy grief, and the bright stars be covered by curtain of darkness. May bees no longer graze on clover, or the cicadas on dewy flowers, nor snub-nosed goats nibble at the brush: O widowed love of mine, pile up a heap of funeral laments. Streams stop now your rapid flow, stop now you rivers, and right away hasten a flow of tears. And you Echo, singing back to me, respond – o! – to my laments, and reduplicate my sad sighing over the hollow valleys: O widowed love of mine, pile up a heap of funeral laments. Wherever are you, Chronis, my companion? Where, dear life, do you remain? What realm holds you now, what land is detaining you? Who has taken you, taken you from me, loveliest Chronis? Chronis, once my only hope and respite in life, now you are the grief and weeping that are forever deep in my heart: O widowed love of mine, pile up a heap of funeral laments. Finally, you comforts of the fortunate countryside, indeed the great delight of the rather lucky shepherd, mourn! And mourn with me you herds and goats. And you too – alas –as you usually burst into resounding song: Now learn to cry, discard your colourful plumes and straight away take flight through the air in black feathers. O widowed love of mine, pile up a heap of funeral laments. LYC: He said this and suddenly sleep weighed down his limbs; his flute still produced the musical notes for these words as his fingers gradually relaxed, his head reclined, and in silence he at last put an end to his relentless love.

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��� � Andrew Laird

Sources recalled in the Latin text 1 Sydereis devecta rotis radiabat Olimpi Virg., Aen. 12.77: Puniceis invecta rotis Aurora rubebit Ov., Met. 3.149-50: … altera lucem cum croceis invecta rotis Aurora reducet 1-12 Virg., Aen. 4.522–32: Nox erat et placidum carpebant fessa soporem corpora per terras, silvaeque et saeva quierant aequora, cum medio volvuntur sidera lapsu, cum tacet omnis ager, pecudes pictaeque volucres, quaeque lacus late liquidos quaeque aspera dumis rura tenent, somno positae sub nocte silenti. [lenibant curas et corda oblita laborum.] at non infelix animi Phoenissa, neque umquam solvitur in somnos oculisve aut pectore noctem accipit: ingeminant curae rursusque resurgens saevit amor magnoque irarum fluctuat aestu. 1-5; 5 solverat alta quies positoque labore dierum Claudius Marius Victor, Alethia 1.134–9: Iam bis terna dies claro radiabat Olympo tertia post calidi genitalia munera solis, iamque tepens tellus gravidos laxaverat artus, cum maiore agitans iussit deus edere terram omne animal, ratio vegetat quod sola movendi, cui servire datum quo rerum postulat usus 2 culmine pulchra soror Phoebi, sua lumina mundo Virg., Aen. 4.6: postera Phoebea lustrabat lampade terras 4-5 omnia per terras homines volucresque ferasque solverat alta quies positoque labore dierum Ov., Met. 7.185–7 … homines volucresque ferasque solverat alta quies, nullo cum murmure saepes, inmotaeque silent frondes, silet umidus aer 4-9 omnia per terras homines volucresque ferasque solverat alta quies positoque labore dierum pacem nocte datam mortalibus orbis agebat. At non pastorem curis flagrantia corda Sylvanum vigilesque metus haurire sinebant dona soporiferae noctis, sed saucius igne Sil., Pun. 7.282-7: Cuncta per et terras et lati stagna profundi condiderat somnus, positoque labore dierum pacem nocte datam mortalibus orbis agebat.

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At non Sidonium curis flagrantia corda ductorem vigilesque metus haurire sinebant dona soporiferae noctis 9 dona soporiferae noctis, sed saucius igne Ov., Her. 5.152: Virg., Aen. 4.1–2:

e nostro saucius igne fuit At regina gravi iamdudum saucia cura vulnus alit venis et caeco carpitur igni.

10 Chronidis absentis, tectas populante medulas Francesco Di Natale, Carm. 5.35: Haec magis et multo socio populante medullas 11-12 mentis inops animum nunc huc nunc impiger illuc dividit, et vario curarum fluctuat aestu Virg., Aen. 8.19-20: cuncta fidens magno curarum fluctuat aestu atque animum nunc huc celerem nunc dividit illuc 16 viscera synceri, viridis nam gloria ruris Virg., G. 1.168:

si te digna manet divini gloria ruris.

25–8 Chronidis ergo morae impatiens Sylvanus amoris aeger, arenosi celeri petit aequora cursu gurgitis, undisono qua murmurat unda susurro posset ut ignivomos lymphis relevare calores Vida, Christias 6.351-6: Namque morae impatiens atque acri saucia amore dum virgo sedet ac miratur inane sepulcrum artificumque manus, videt ipso in marmore fictum littus arenosum, porrectum in littore piscem, fluctivomum, ingentem; nant aequore qualia in alto mole nova ignaros nautas terrentia cete. 27 gurgitis, undisono qua murmurat unda susurro Corippus, Laus Iustini 3.173: per quas blanda fluens rauco sonat unda susurro 43 spargere dona manus, surgens ubi nobilis arbor Sil., Pun. 3.310: spectati castris, quos suco nobilis arbor 44 frondibus ut velo phoebaeos amovet ignes Ov., Met. 5.389: frondibus ut velo Phoebeos summovet ignes 46 hic gravis umbrifero vitabat tegmine solem Ov., Am. 3.5.7: ipse sub arboreis vitabam frondibus aestum

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51 avia nec resonant avibus virgulta canoris Virg., G. 2.328: avia tum resonant avibus virgulta canoris 58 solvitur in lachrimas, lachrimis violentior exit Fabrizio Milano Genesio, Elegies, 1.6: Solvitur in lachrymas saepius illa meas. 65 vox inopina cavas tristi resonabilis Eccho Ov., Met. 3.358: nec prior ipsa loqui didicit, resonabilis Echo 67-8 ingemit indigno, subito caput ille sinistrum allevat incubitum, cupidasque ad singula tendit Ov., Met. 7.343: ille cruore fluens, cubito tamen adlevat artus 71 concidit exanimis, mox et calor ossa reliquit Virg., Aen. 3.308: Deriguit visu in medio, calor ossa reliquit 92 [SYL] et aethereos haustus modo vividus haurit Virg., G. 4.220–1: esse apibus partem divinae mentis et haustus aetherios dixere 93 [SYL] non equidem credam nisi detegis ora John 20: 25: ille autem dixit eis nisi videro in manibus eius figuram clavorum et mittam digitum meum in locum clavorum et mittam manum meam in latus eius non credam. 96 [SYL] Deludor penitus latet error in herbis Virg., Aen. 2.48: Aut aliquis latet error: equo ne credite, Teucri 97 [SYL] nec vivus modo Chronis adest. [EC] Est. Ov., Met. 3.380: dixerat: ‘ecquis adest?’ et ‘adest’ responderat Echo. 108 rumpe moras Sylvane, gravis compressa relaxet Virg. G. 3.43: rumpe moras; vocat ingenti clamore Cithaeron Virg. Aen. 4.569: heia age, rumpe moras. varium et mutabile semper 118-19 Chronide cuius amor secus haud mihi crescit in horas vere novo viridans ac sese subjicit alnus Virg., Ecl. 10.73–74: Gallo cuius amor tantum mihi crescit in horas Quantum vere novo viridis se subicit alnus. 123 dulcior hyblaeo manabat melle loquella Virg., Ecl. 7.37: Nerine Galatea, thymo mihi dulcior Hyblae

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128–31 O vos si miseri dolor intimus immae, lugete o mecum valles, lugete cavernae, lugete o montes, sylvae lugete virentes, Catull. 3.1: Lugete, o veneres cupidinesque Zanchi, Amilcon 15–18: Vos mecum virides saltus, vos flumina, et umbrae altorum nemorum suspiria iungite, et acres singultus, mecum valles, Meliseon et agri triste fleant Meliseum, atque antra impulsa querantur 135 intus alit flammas et longum nutrit amorem Virg., Aen. 4.2: vulnus alit venis Virg., Aen. 6.726: spiritus intus alit 136 Chronidis, et quamvis cupiam pervertere curas Virg. Aen. 4.393–4: At pius Aeneas, quamquam lenire dolentem Solando cupit et dictis avertere curas 138 tantus amor miserum stimulis male torquet amantem Filelfo, Satyrae 5.3.15: Una, sacerdotes, stimulis male torquet amaris 149–50 Haec ait et festam repulit de fronte coronam et nova de tristi sibi nexit serta cupresso Ov., Tr. 1.7.2–4: deme meis hederas, Bacchica serta, comis. ista decent laetos felicia signa poetas: temporibus non est apta corona meis. Ov., Tr. 3.13.21–2: Funeris ara mihi, ferali cincta cupresso, convenit et structis flamma parata rogis. 171–8 Absentem deflet vitulum mugitibus altis mater et herbiferos resonis miseranda querellis implet agros, vehit omne nemus vallesque lacusque. omnes illa dolens lucos saltusque peragrat crebra gemens, crebra et montem stabulumque revisit heu desiderio vituli percusa, doloris vulnera, nec solatium frondes nec gramina rore sparsa levant, non quae viridi vaga flumina ripa Ov., Fast. 4.481-2: Quacumque ingreditur, miseris loca cuncta querellis implet, ut amissum cum gemit ales Ityn Virg., Aen. 4.73: … illa fuga silvas saltusque peragrat Lucr. 2.357–63:

omnia convisens oculis loca, si queat usquam conspicere amissum fetum, completque querellis frondiferum nemus adsistens et crebra revisit ad stabulum desiderio perfixa iuvenci, nec tenerae salices atque herbae rore vigentes

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fluminaque ulla queunt summis labentia ripis oblectare animum subitamque avertere curam Virg., Ecl. 8.85–8: Talis amor Daphnim, qualis cum fessa iuvencum per nemora atque altos quaerendo bucula lucos, propter aquae rivum, viridi procumbit in ulva perdita 184 annue nympha onus lachesis, iam pensa refringe Mart. 4.54.9: nil adicit penso Lachesis 189 [196, 203, 208, 214, 221] suggere funereas, amor o viduate, querellas Auson., Parentalia 16.9 (Veria Liceria, uxor Arborii): Accipe funereas neptis defleta querelas Virg., Ecl. 8.21 [28a, 31, 36, 41, 46, 51, 57]: Incipe Maenalios mecum, mea tibia, versus Virg., Ecl. 8.68 [72, 79, 84, 90, 94. 100, 104]: ducite ab urbe domum, mea carmina, ducite Daphnin 201 nec Cythiso pascantur apes, rore cicadae Virg., Ecl. 10.30: nec cytiso saturantur apes nec fronde capellae 202 florida, nec symiae tondant virgulta capellae Virg., Ecl. 10.7: dum tenerae attondent simiae virgulta capellae 210 quae te nunc regio, teque vel terra retardat? Virg., Aen. 6.670: Quae regio Anchisen, quis habet locus?

Gesine Manuwald

The Pope as Arsonist and Christian Salvation: Peter Causton’s Londini Conflagratio: Carmen 2016 saw the 350th anniversary of the so-called Fire of London in 1666, which destroyed much of the city centre during a major conflagration from 2 to 6 September 1666.1 Although according to official records the loss of life was minimal (rather surprising in view of a fire of that scale),2 there was initially a great risk to life; the destruction of buildings was enormous, and this essentially wiped out medieval London. Particularly because the Fire was such a serious incident, investigations into its causes were launched not long afterwards, and various theories began to appear. The modern view, which can already be found in letters and diary entries of contemporary eyewitnesses,3 is that the Fire started in the bakery of Thomas Farrinor in Pudding Lane (near London Bridge); presumably the fire in the oven had not been fully extinguished overnight, though the baker denied that. At any rate, the blaming of scapegoats soon started, especially in the context of a difficult political and religious situation, including the Anglo-Dutch Wars (the second of which was only concluded by the Treaty of Breda in 1667) and continuous tensions between Protestants and Roman Catholics.4 Thus, one

�� 1 An account of the Fire is provided e.g. in Porter 1996; a more narrative description is offered by Weiss 2012. A collection of extracts from contemporaries, illustrating the spread of the Fire, reactions to it and the stages of the rebuilding of the city, can be found in Milne 1986; an overview and discussion of how the space of London is presented in a variety of documents dealing with the destruction and rebuilding is given in Wall 1998. 2 According to official records only four people lost their lives. But John Evelyn (1620–1706) mentions ‘the stench that came from some poor creatures’ bodies’ in his Diary (7 September 1666). – See also Jeremiah Wells, On the Rebuilding of London, ll. 9–12: ‘What were the Trophies of triumphant Fate / By frequent Tombs in the Ch:yards was shown: / But all those thick-set Monu’ments which so late / Were Other’s Sepulchers are now their Own.’ (Aubin 1943, 123). 3 See Samuel Pepys (1633–1703), Diary (2 September 1666): ‘So down, with my heart full of trouble, to the Lieutenant of the Tower, who tells me that it began this morning in the King’s baker’s’ house in Pudding-lane, …’ (http://www.pepys.info/1666/1666sep.html); Letter by Thomas Smith (13 September 1666): ‘The fire began in a Baker’s House below London Bridge on Saturday night, & ceased upon Wednesday night.’ (http://collections.museumoflondon.org.uk/online/object/486146.html). 4 On the different ‘explanations’ for the Fire, the relationship between evidence and rumour and the development in the public imagination see Dolan 2001; Harris 2005, 79–80, 150–1 (on providence seen as responsible for the Fire, see Kingsley 1999).

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110596182-017

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group suspected of being responsible were the Dutch and the allied French.5 Another group held to be behind the Fire were Roman Catholics (‘Papists’), especially Jesuits;6 this can be seen, for instance, from evidence such as the 1667 publication Pyrotechnica Loyolana, Ignatian Fire-works7 as well as a commemorative inscription set up on the site of the bakery in Pudding Lane in 1681 (removed later)8 and part of an inscription added to the Monument, erected in London in 1671–7 to commemorate the Fire, in 1681 (removed in 1830, after the Roman Catholic Relief Act of 1829)9 and even a declaration of the House of Commons in 1681, that ‘it is the opinion of this House that the City of London was burnt in the year 1666 by the Papists; designing thereby to introduce arbitrary power and popery into this Kingdom’.10

�� 5 See Samuel Pepys (1633–1703), Diary (5 September 1666): ‘There, when I come, I find the gates shut, but no guard kept at all, which troubled me, because of discourse now begun, that there is plot in it, and that the French had done it. … And I lay down and slept a good night about midnight, though when I rose I heard that there had been a great alarme of French and Dutch being risen, which proved, nothing.’ (http://www.pepys.info/1666/1666sep.html); John Evelyn (1620– 1706), Diary (7 September 1666): ‘In the midst of all this calamity and confusion, there was, I know not how, an alarm begun that the French and Dutch, with whom we were now in hostility were not only landed, but even entering the city. There was, in truth, some days before, great suspicion of those two nations joining; and now that they had been the occasion of firing the town. This report did so terrify, that on a sudden there was such an uproar and tumult that they ran from their goods, and, taking what weapons they could come at, they could not be stopped from falling on some of those nations whom they casually met, without sense or reason.’ – See also John Crouch, Londinenses Lacrymæ, ll. 49–50: ‘This dreadful Fire first seiz’d a narrow Lane, / As if the Dutch or French had laid a Train.’ (Aubin 1943, 48); The Londoners Lamentation, ll. 91– 6: Of French and Dutch many were took; / (upon suspition of a Plot, / That they this ruine should provoke / with Fire-works) which will all be brought / Unto their tryal, but I fear, / Our sinful hearts more guilty are.’ (Aubin 1943, 87–8). 6 See Porter 1996, 170–4. 7 Pyrotechnica Loyolana, Ignatian Fire-works. Or, the Fiery Jesuits Temper and Behaviour. Being an Historical Compendium of the Rise, Increase, Doctrines, and Deeds of the Jesuits. Exposed to the Publick view for the sake of London. By a Catholick-Christian. London 1667 (available via Early English Books Online). – Among other illustrations, the frontispiece shows the pope, sitting on a throne and wearing a tiara, as he operates bellows to strengthen the fire in London. 8 See http://collections.museumoflondon.org.uk/online/object/119401.html. 9 See http://www.themonument.info/history/inscriptions.html; see also Dolan 2001, 395–401. 10 See Porter 1996, 173 (after Commons’ Journal, vol. 9, p. 703). – Immediately after the event, the Parliamentary committee investigating the Fire merely compiled evidence (Porter 1996, 86); the investigation by the Privy Council concluded: ‘Nothing yet hath been found to argue it to have been other than the hand of God upon us, a great wind, and the season so dry’ (quoted from Weiss 2012, 103).

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Of the vast array of reactions to the Fire of London, some take the form of poetic treatments.11 Among these the hardly known (and hitherto untranslated) Latin poem by Peter Causton is of particular interest since it may have been composed soon after the Fire and presents a specific interpretation of the event.12 Peter Causton’s poem was allegedly written as a new year’s gift for ‘R. V.’ (addressed as ‘Ralph’ in the poem) on 1 January 166713 and was published towards the end of 1689 in a collection of the author’s Tria carmina.14 Peter Causton is identified as ‘Merc. Lond.’ on the collection’s title page and in the headings of the other poems and was apparently a timber merchant in London;15 he was probably the brother �� 11 The most famous item is probably John Dryden’s (1631–1700) Annus mirabilis of 1667 (available e.g. at: http://name.umdl.umich.edu/A36598.0001.001). – A selection of poems in English is provided in Aubin 1943. 12 For other poems in Latin see Simon Ford, Conflagratio Londinensis Poetice Depicta (1667), Londini quod reliquum (1667), Actio in Londini incendiarios (1667) and Londini renascentis imago poetica (1668), collected in: Poemata Londinensia, Jam tandem consummata, et In unum Volumen redacta, London 1668 [available on Early English Books Online and held at the Museum of London: ID no. 42.39/80; for English versions of his poems see Aubin 1943, 3–19, 93–105, 134–50]; William Smith, De urbis Londini incendio elegia (1667) [available on Early English Books Online and held at the Museum of London: ID no. 42.39/55a]; [Jeremiah Wells], In Londini incendium, in his Poems upon Divers Occasions (1667, pp. 46–9) [available on Early English Books Online; see also an English poem, reprinted in Aubin 1943, 122–33]; In tristissimum immanissimumque urbis Londinensis nonas circiter Sept. – LXVI incendium. Carmen lugubre [available on Early English Books Online]; Joshua Barnes (1654–1712), Upon the Fire of London, and the Plague, a Latin Poem, in Heroic Verse (1679). – As Latin poems on the Fire of London Aubin (1943, xv n. 24) lists the pieces given in this note (but not the poem by Peter Causton). He adds another item, but this seems to be a poem in praise of London and not specifically connected with the Fire: Londinum, Heroico Carmine Perluſtratum, Per Johannem Adamum Transylvanum, Dedicatumq; Literarum, Peregrinoum, virtutumq; Patronis. The Renovvned City of London, Surveyed and Illustrated, In a Latine Poem, By J. Adamus a Tranſylvanian. And tranſlated into Engliſh By W.F. of Grays-Inn J.C. Dedicated To the Patrons of Strangers, Learning, and ingenuity. London, Printed by J.R. for the Author. 1670 [available on Early English Books Online]. 13 The poem is dated to the Calends of January in 1666/7: this way of indicating the date takes account of the fact that in Britain the New Year still officially started in March at that time, while it was common to use double dating to acknowledge different starting dates of the year in different calendar systems. 14 Copies of the work are now held in the British Library and the Museum of London (ID no. 42.39/87). The British Library copy is accessible via Early English Books Online. – I am grateful to staff and volunteers at the Museum of London, especially Meriel Jeater, for providing a transcription of the text in their copy. – The Latin text given in the appendix has been taken from Early English Books Online and reproduces the presentation of the poem in this edition as closely as possible. An English translation follows the Latin text. 15 See a record at the National Archives (ADM 106/332/63) in Kew in southwest London (http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C12700251).

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of John Causton, a citizen and weaver of London. Peter Causton died on 25 November 1700; his will dates from 19 July 1699 and was proved on 3 January 1700.16 He wrote at least the three poems included in the collection (De Conflagratione Londini; In Laudem Holandiæ; Tunbrigalia, Editio Tertia). The dedicatee of the piece on the Fire of London is presumably Ralph Venning (c. 1622–1674), a clergyman who had studied at Cambridge and was later active in London, preaching and publishing sermons and devotional works; under the Act of Uniformity in 1662 he, as a Nonconformist, was ejected.17 Thus, this remarkable piece of NeoLatin poetry was written by a merchant (fluent in Latin) and addressed to a learned and persecuted church official; accordingly, it is also a document of contemporary religious conflicts. The collection of Peter Causton’s Tria carmina opens with an Epiſtola Dedicatoria, entitled P. Causton Philo-Musis Anglo-Britannis salutem. Thus, although towards the end the writer speaks of the tenuitas of his poems in mock-modesty, this opening suggests that he is aiming for a learned national audience. Moreover, he adds, with a Horatian tag, that the effort of writing the poems is worth it if they educate or please (cf. Hor. Ars P. 333–4; 343–4). For the poem on the Fire of London Peter Causton hopes, again in mock-modesty, that it will contribute to preserving the memory of the city’s calamity among posterity. About the genesis of the piece he says that it had been written some time ago and that he is only publishing it now upon the request of friends, since he had hesitated for fear of offending anyone.18 Accordingly, he insists that he merely identifies the authors of the Fire in agreement with the official view of King, Parliament and the general population and that he has taken all facts from his own autopsy or from assured and trustworthy sources. Yet, he continues, he should be excused for adding some poetic flavour in the manner of Vergil and Horace, quoting ficta voluptatis �� 16 The probate will of Peter Causton dating to 1701 is held at the London Metropolitan Archives (ACC/2914/001) in the City of London (http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/rd/9c0fee3b-6aaa-4e17-ab4f-42d22392e2fe). 17 See S. Wright, ‘Venning, Ralph’, ODNB online. – The Act of Uniformity of 1662, an element of the so-called Clarendon Code, required all clergymen to follow the liturgy of the established Church of England. Those who did not comply were expelled from the Church of England. The Five Mile Act of 1665 forbade clergymen from living within five miles of a parish from which they had been expelled, so as to ensure conformity of the established Church of England (see e.g. Harris 2005, 52–3). 18 There is no external evidence to corroborate or falsify what the author says about the poem’s publication history. At any rate there does not seem to be any noticeable influence from other poems on the Fire of London. If the dates are accepted, there is still the question of whether the poem printed in 1689 is the original version or whether any changes to the text may have been made since the poem was first written.

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causâ ſint proxima veris from Horace’s Ars poetica (338). So, Peter Causton makes it clear from the start that this piece will be a ‘factual’ description in poetic format and also indicates that the presentation might be controversial, which he seeks to justify in advance. Indeed, in contrast to other poems on the Fire, the piece by Peter Causton is an analysis combined with a sketch of the developments during the Fire rather than a detailed chronological description focusing on the plight of individuals. At the same time it uses standard classical imagery, such as similes of ships, metonymical references to pagan gods or metaphorical descriptions of days and of sunrise or sunset. Still, the character of the presentation as a whole is more ‘factual’ than poetic. That is a result of the aspects selected for emphasis (e.g. the inclusion of practical details of fire-fighting) as well as of the fact that there are fewer reminiscences of Vergil than one might expect, no obvious comparison with the fate of Troy or Roman history (as is common in other poems on this incident), few emotional exclamations by the poet and no praise of the city, its institutions or its inhabitants. Yet the choice of the metre of the hexameter, the employment of metaphors, the dramatization by means of direct speech and the use of names of classical gods still serve to create an epic atmosphere. As a poem written in place of a New Year’s gift,19 the piece is an example of Neo-Latin occasional poetry, although there are no further references to the occasion or to the personal relationship between author and addressee after the introduction. The long poem starts with a short introduction to the dedicatee Ralph (1–8) and a brief reference to the poet’s earlier poem about the Netherlands (9– 10), which follows in the collection. After stating the theme and his sadness at the destruction of the city (10–15), the poet turns to the Muse in classical fashion and asks her to reveal the person responsible for the fire (16–18). The poem then does not continue with the identification of an individual, but describes with ancient metonymic imagery how Vulcan first attacked Pudding Lane (19–21). Still, the fire could have been extinguished, it is added, if action had been taken immediately (21–3). It is noted that the ‘consul’ and ‘praetors’ (i.e. the Mayor and aldermen) were present, but that the gods and the fates were opposed, that nocturnal Iacchus had darkened their minds and wise Minerva had fled the city (23–30). Indeed, the Lord Mayor, Sir Thomas Bloodworth (1620–1682; Lord Mayor of London from Oct. 1665 to Oct. 1666), hesitated to destroy houses in

�� 19 Precedents for offering pieces of writing as New Year’s gifts exist: for instance, in 1546 the young Queen Elizabeth I produced gift books for New Year, composed of her own translations of Prayers or Meditations (published in 1545) by Katherine Parr (1512–1548) into Latin, French and Italian.

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the path of the flames to prevent the fire from spreading. The poem carries on with the metaphorical description, presenting Aeolus, Jupiter and Mulciber (Vulcan) as responsible for igniting the fire further, while Mulciber even has words put into his mouth as he addresses the goddess Thetis, representing the Thames (31–44). The destructive impact is visualized by a simile (45–50) and by the presentation of London as a human being (51–2). With a new start the poem goes on to suggest that the pope in Rome, Alexander VII (1655–1667), was unhappy with the heresy in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom and sent followers of Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556), who was born in the Basque Country and founded the Society of Jesus, to destroy the city of London (53–71). They enlist Vulcan, who, in the guise of the ‘Gaul’ (78), throws the first torches;20 then they spread the fire everywhere (72–82).21 The devastation in the city is described (83–94), with inventive Latin paraphrases of English street and place names; the situation is illustrated by the simile of a ship (95–104). This leads up climactically to a vivid sketch of the destruction of buildings and life across the city and the inability of the poet to voice his sadness adequately (105–18). At this stage, shortly before the turning point of the narrative, the author expresses the total ruin of the population with words inspired by tantum nomen (111), though with the appropriate caution: he (112–13) alludes to the words by which, according to the report of Vergil’s Aeneas, Panthus describes the devastation of Troy by fire after the Greeks had entered the city by means of the Wooden Horse.22 A poetic sketch of three sunrises indicates that the fire lasted for three days without abating, followed by an indication of areas destroyed or almost affected (119–38). That the fire did not demolish also the well-protected Tower, the seat of Mars Britannicus, is explained by ‘God’ (137), who must be the Christian god, eventually having pity and providing help: it is reported (with the cautious introduction fama eſt) that there had been an initiative of some Christians, who had been banished from the city and, despite their miserable state caused by their banishment from London, had turned to God with emphatic prayers: they appealed to him to pardon the sinners, arguing that it was enough for the Ignatian

�� 20 This is presumably an allusion to the alleged arsonist, the French watchmaker Robert Hubert, who (falsely) confessed that he started the Fire and was then executed. 21 The example of a vetusta urbs destroyed by fire and the wish that God should exercise his old anger (73–6) could be an allusion to the punishment and destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. 22 Cf. Verg. Aen. 2.324–7: venit summa dies et ineluctabile tempus / Dardaniae. fuimus Troes, fuit Ilium et ingens / gloria Teucrorum; ferus omnia Iuppiter Argos / transtulit; incensa Danai dominantur in urbe.

The Pope as Arsonist and Christian Salvation � 281

fathers to have destroyed a single ‘city’ (139–60).23 It is added that the entire population, under the clergy’s leadership, flocked to the churches to pray for a halt to the flames (161–4). According to the poem, God listens to the prayers and returns confidence to the king and the people. Since it is not specified which prayers God reacts to, but only the activities of the Nonconformists have been described in detail and as effective, the poem’s addressee, belonging to the expelled Nonconformists, can read this explanation of the change in God’s attitude as a confirmation of this Christian doctrine. The piece goes on to relate that the king (Charles II, who, in contrast to Parliament, was still tolerant towards other Christian denominations) takes action and gives instructions to contain the fire by destroying houses through blowing them up with nitrate powder and drenching everything in water. So, finally, the fire abates on the fourth day, after having consumed all the houses it had previously affected (165–94). The poem concludes on the happy note that God has snatched ‘us’ from the flames and will bring back happy times, being milder to a reborn city (195–7). Thus the poetic narrative combines a rather precise description of the spread of the fire and the measures to fight it with an analysis of the responsibility for the fire and for the salvation. The description of responsibility is rather complex: the Pope is described as having wanted and ordered the fire and therefore having sent the Jesuits to Britain; the alleged French arsonist, who pleaded guilty and was executed, is obliquely presented as an instrument of the divine intervention; those who have ejected the Nonconformist Christians also share responsibility. For, although the author mentions the prayers of the entire population, salvation is essentially obtained through the intervention of those Nonconformists, which God listens to and acts upon (139–64). On a human level rescue is provided by the king (168–87), through destruction leading to salvation, since the Mayor had been useless (23–6). Parliament, as having passed the Acts on religious conformity, is not mentioned. The emphasis in this poem on the connection between the Fire and the religious troubles is supported by the way in which it is laid out: it is surrounded by a number of notes in the margin, linked to the respective places in the text by signs or numbers starting afresh on each page.24 These notes mainly provide the standard English names for streets, buildings and areas in London described in

�� 23 This is a reference to the areas of London known as the City of London and the City of Westminster. 24 The notes are reproduced in the margin of the Latin text in the appendix and have been incorporated in square brackets into the attached English translation.

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Latin paraphrases in the poem. Only a single note (at 140) is in Latin (n. 6 on the page) and marked as a note by an initial ‘N.’; this note spells out what the poem implies or presupposes: that ‘Roman’ priests were responsible for expelling the Nonconformists. It is uncertain whether the notes (also found attached to the poem about the Netherlands) go back to the author or whether all or some of them may have been added by the printer. Perhaps the Latin note was provided by the author and marked as a note in the manuscript, whereas the sequential numbering and the clarification of factual items in English could have been provided by the printer. With its strong focus on religious conflicts as the reason for the incident, this poem recalls the situation of the Gunpowder Plot, when a group of Catholics planned to blow up the Houses of Parliament on 5 November 1605.25 This context is reflected in poems on the Gunpowder Plot: for instance, the poetic description of the incident by John Milton (1608–1674), allegedly composed when he was seventeen years old, In Quintum Novembris, indicates at the end that God saved the Britons from the attacks of the ‘Papists’.26 Other poems on the Fire of London mention the helpful intervention of the king and the fact that blowing up houses in its way eventually contained the Fire,27 but they do not create such an explicit link to the religious situation. Peter Causton’s poem ends in gratitude to God and hope for better times in a re-born city (195–7). When it is said that God saved ‘us’, the reference is unclear since the group of Christians the author seems to sympathize with had been ejected from the city before the Fire, but he may be thinking of the impact for the country, any measures of retaliation or a hope of reconciliation. This New Year’s poem thus turns out to be a rather specific interpretation of the events; it both displays personal features and demonstrates a prototypical reaction to the catastrophe. The piece is a mixture of an attempt at poetry with a

�� 25 For the link between the two events in the popular imagination, see Porter 1996, 171: ‘Indeed, regardless of the findings of the enquiries into the causes of the Great Fire, that disaster quickly took its place with the Marian persecutions and the Gunpowder Plot as palpable evidence of a real and dangerous Catholic threat’. 26 John Milton, In Quintum Novembris 201–3 (God speaking to Fama): Fama, siles? An te latet impia Papistarum / Coniurata cohors in meque meosque Britannos, / Et nova sceptigero caedes meditata Iacobo.; 220–2 (about God): Attamen interea populi miserescit ab alto / Aethereus pater, et crudelibus obstitit ausis / Papicolum, capti poenas raptantur ad acres. – A Latin text and an English translation of the poem are available e.g. at: http://philological.bham.ac.uk/milton/ (D.F. Sutton 1999 / 2013). 27 See e.g. John Dryden, Annus mirabilis (see n. 11 above); Simon Ford, The Conflagration of London Poetically Delineated (see n. 12 above).

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historical description and a strong political and religious statement. Any human tragedies caused by the Fire are not of interest; technical details of the spread of the Fire and its containment take centre stage. A major factor therein is the blame for the incident, recalling what happened after the fire of Rome under the emperor Nero (Tac. Ann. 15.44.2–3): the text presents the Fire of London as a threat to life and property, engineered by religious opponents, and reassures the audience that God’s understanding and intervention eventually saved the inhabitants. The fact that a particular group of people is blamed as being responsible for the Fire is the reason for the cautious remarks in the dedication; by the time the poem was published, this view had been accepted officially, as the author notes.28 The version in the poem, however, is unique in the way in which it combines the different alleged reasons and motivations: according to this account the Fire was caused and then not halted because of measures taken by the Pope and the Jesuits as instigators as well as the inactivity of the Mayor in fighting the Fire. By contrast, the Fire was extinguished because of prayers of the expelled Christians and the intervention of the king, who was still religiously tolerant at the time. The respective proportions and the relations between these aspects are not made absolutely clear; overall the impression emerges that God listens to the badly treated expelled Christians. This Nonconformist element may explain the poem’s publication date and its allegedly delayed publication: while blaming the ‘Papists’ for the Fire became a widespread attitude, the view that they might pit different groups of Christians against each other and that the Nonconformists were instrumental in initiating the containment of the Fire is more idiosyncratic. It may have been easier to voice such a reading after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and particularly after the Toleration Act of May 1689, which gave some freedom to Nonconformists: the volume’s Imprimatur is dated to 17 September 1689.

�� 28 Thomas Vincent (1634–1678), a Nonconformist minister, for instance, explicitly attributed the Plague and the Fire of London to the Clarendon Code (see n. 17 above): God’s Terrible Voice in the City. Wherein you have I. The sound of the Voice, in the History of the Two late Dreadful Judgments of Plague and Fire in London. II. The Interpretation of the Voice in a Discovery of the Cause and Design of these Judgments. The Fifth Edition, corrected. By T. Vincent, sometime Minister of Maudlins, Milk-street, London. Printed for George Calvert 1667 (available on Google Books), pp. 25–6: ‘1. Concerning the judgments themselves. Here I might speak of the judgment executed, August 24, 1662, when so many ministers were put out of their places; and the judgments executed, March 24, 1665, when so many ministers were banished five miles from corporations; the former by way of introduction to the plague which some time after did spread in the land, but chiefly raged in the city; the latter by way of introduction to the fire, which quickly after did burn down London the greatest corporation in England’.

��� � Gesine Manuwald

Thus this poem stands out by its combination of aspects and the pronounced Nonconformist perspective. That a London merchant presents such an analysis in a Latin poem is indicative of the intellectual culture in London at the time. Equally, the piece is a hitherto hardly recognized document for the political and religious situation in seventeenth-century Britain.29

Bibliography Aubin, R.A. (ed.) (1943), London in Flames, London in Glory: Poems on the Fire and Rebuilding of London, 1666–1709, New Brunswick. Dolan, F.E. (2001), ‘Ashes and “The Archive”: The London Fire of 1666, Partisanship, and Proof’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 31.2, 379–408. Harris, T. (2005), Restoration: Charles II and his Kingdoms, 1660–1685, London. Kingsley, M. (1999), ‘Interpreting Providence: The Politics of Jeremiad in Restoration Polemic’, in: P.G. Platt (ed.), Wonders, Marvels, and Monsters in Early Modern Culture, Newark/London, 251–67. Milne, G. (1986), The Great Fire of London, New Barnet. Porter, S. (1996), The Great Fire of London, Thrupp, Stroud, Gloucestershire. Wall, C. (1998), The Literary and Cultural Spaces of Restoration London, Cambridge. Weiss, D.A. (2012), The Great Fire of London, Third Edition, Bloomington (IN).

�� 29 I am grateful to Luke Houghton and Victoria Moul for helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.

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Appendix: Latin text and English translation LONDINI Conflagratio CARMEN Strenæ loco Miſſum ad R. V. Calendis Januarii, Anni 1666/7.

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LÆta dies rediit qua ſol feliciter orbe Annuus emenſo, nova reddere ſecula mundo Geſtit, & elapſum reparare benignior annum; Hac me Muſa die rerum proſcribere curas Cogitq; & ſtudiis jubet inſervire ſolutum: Hac te Ralphe die mea parvula carmina juſſi Ire ſalutatum, veniamq; precarier auſis Si fortè offendant animo divina parantem. Londini Conflagratio Bataviæ quondam terræq; & gentis honores Exili plectro luſi, at nunc triſtia fata Lugeo, deletamq; infeſtis ignibus urbem Quà Tameſis præceps fertur, vaſtâq; feroces Pontis mole dolet ſubter juga cogier undas, Ædeſq; impoſitas ſuper ipſum fluminis alveum Verticibus (viſu mirabile) vincere nubes. Dic mihi Muſa quibus ducibus, quibus artibus altæ Creverunt flammæ, quis ferrea pectore corda Condens, fatales accenſerit, auxerit ignes. Viculus eſt vulgo farti * cognomine notus, Hîc primùm ſua tela jacit Vulcanus, & unis Ædibus infenſum ſimulat, facilèq; repelli Poſſe videbatur, ſi primum cura furorem Provida tentaſſet compeſcere. More vetuſto Conſul prætoreſq; adſunt, ſed fata reſiſtunt, Iratiq; Dii; fertur nocturnus Iacchus Illorum obcæcaſſe animos, prudenſq; Minerva Deſeruiſſe urbem, tum cum lex dura miniſtros Chriſti omnes, ſacris qui permiſcere negârant Ambiguos ritus, juſſit ſecedere, vota, Tot juſtûmq; preces ne numina ſumma piarent; Æolus inflârat ventos, & Juppiter æſtu Inſolito miſeram flammis devoverat urbem: Sola Thetis, ſummâ, triſtis conſederat arce, Lignea * quæ mediis exſtructa in fluctibus undas Sursum ferre ſolet, rapidèq; referre deorſum In medios urbis vicos; hanc Mulciber irâ

*Pudding-lane.

* The Waterwork by the Bridge.

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Percitus ut vidit, tu vana reſiſtere noſtris Fatorumq; audes conatibus? inquit; at hinc te Quin celeri rapias pede, nam mihi præda futura eſt Arx tua, vix tremulam ſe condidit arce relictà Undis, quum flammis glomerantibus undiq; preſſa Machina terribili ſonitu ruit; inde citato Ignea vis curſu, nullo remorante, vagatur Intrepidè, faciléq; ſolo quæq; obvia ſternit. Sic ubi montanis, campeſter, fluctibus, auctus Intumuit torrens, & ſuetas aggere rupto Tranſiliit ripas, vagus arripit obvia ſaxa, Præcipiteſq; trahit truncos, & gurgite lato Sternit humi quercus, hominumq; boumq; labores, Feſtinatq; ipſas evertere funditus urbes: Sic, ſic flamma furit, rapidèq; per intima fertur Viſcera Londini, crudeliſq; obruit ædes. Ille hominumq; Deiq; hoſtis, cervice revinctus Sacrilegâ, triplici diademate, templaq; Chriſti Sancta tenens, fallax ſimulator, & arte paternâ Inſultans animis, ſeptem qui collibus URBIS Aſtutè dominatur, & arbiter orbis haberi Geſtit, Chriſtiadas ſupplantans cæde doloq;, Fertur ſelectos miſiſſe per Anglica regna Ignatios Patres, Sanctum qui nomen Iëſu Arripuere ſibi, cædiſq; doliq; miniſtros, Sic fatus. Chari, nonne Anglica regna videtis Hæreticis famoſa novis? qui dogmata Petri Divina irrident, nobis vobiſq; ruinam Æternam meditantur, & altis mænibus Urbis Londini innixi jactant Babilona ruendum? Si vos relligio movet, aut Eccleſia mater Sacra Petri ſedes, propriæ ſi cura ſalutis, Aut ſi noſter honos, properantem avertite cladem, Et quâ nos terrent, iſtos delete ruinâ, Ite, agite, infeſtam ſubvertite funditus urbem. Accingunt operi celeres, & trans mare currunt, Audierant, olim, Vulcano ardente, vetuſtam Interiiſſe urbem; juvat ire, ac in ſua vota Attraxiſſe Deum, precibuſq; & ponderis auro Ingentis, veteres ut rurſum exerceat iras; Jurant ſe ſocios; victus Deus annuit auſis. Ergo ubi Vulcanus, diri ſub imagine Galli, Sulphureis primas telis invaſerat ædes, Loyolitarum circumvolat improba turba, Ceu præceps actus violento turbine ventus, Hac atq; hac flammam facibus flagrantibus augens. Jamq; igni creſcente, vorat flamma horrida montem

The Pope as Arsonist and Christian Salvation � 287

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Sacratum Cereri 1, vicos queis Gratia * nomen Lombarda 2 & Bombarda 3 dedit, Veneriſq; 4 diei Et Ligni 5, & Patris 6 notos cognomine noſtri, Quoſq; ingens olim Tameſiſq; 7 & Fleta 8 vetuſta Inſigniverunt, fora Portæ dicta 9 recentis, Vicum 10 quem vili pretio merx vendita clarum Reddidit, innumeroſq; alios; tua templa Joannes, Nec tu Laurenti, nec Paule, vel alma Diana, Nec Michael, nec tu veneranda Deipara Virgo Eripere huic monſtro poteras; non marmore ſtructæ Turres, ſaxifragæ valuêre reſiſtere flammæ; Sed veluti magnâ in navi, cum ſæva coorta eſt Tempeſtas, rauco funis ſtridore rudenſq; Frangitur, atq; illac nutans atque hac malè firmus Jamjam merſuram minitatur rumpere puppim Malus, ſollicitus crebrâ ferit ipſe bipenni Nauclerus truncum, cadit alto vulnere victus, Et tumido longè dat noxia corpora Ponto; Sic cum flamma vorax, trabibuſq; & poſte peruſto, Fundamenta cavat, labat alto pondere turris, Horrendùmq; fremens dat membra cadentia terræ. Quis ſtrages miſeras, nocteſq; dieſq; nefandos; Quiſnam templa Deûm, quis tecta flagrantia latè Explicet! horribilemq; fugam juvenumq;, virumq;, Infantumq; metus, & fœmineos ululatus! Non, mihi ſi ex oculis manaverit uber aquarum Rivus, ſat deflere queam tam nobilis Urbis Excidium, tanto ſi nomine dicere fas eſt: Londinum fuimus, fuimuſq; antiqua Britannûm Gloria, nunc cineres triſtes, urbiſq; cadaver: Hîc tecta, hîc turres, hîc templa jacentia fædè Cernitis, heu, paſſim, ſemuſtaq; membra virorum: Triſtis ubiq; pavor, triſtiſſima mortis ubiq; Horrendæ facies, quatit ardua ſydera clamor, Singultus, gemituſq;, & mixtus murmure planctus. Ter ſol luciferum gelidis caput extulit undis, Lucentemq; comam velatus nube rubenti Permixti flammis fumi, lugubria lugens Fata, exſpiranti dat lumina triſtior urbi; Qualia cum Phæbea ſoror terram inter & inter Fratrem ſe mediam convolvens ſydera texit. Necdum flamma iras ponit, non unius urbis Exuviis avido ſatiato gutture, at inſtat Abſorbere alias, aliaſq;, & jam imminet atrox Urbi quam decorant antiqua Monaſtica 1 fana Obverſa occiduo ſoli; jam tecta minatur Plurima quæ a reliquâ Tameſis 2 diviſerat urbe

1 Cornhil. * Gracechurch street. 2 Lombard-str. 3 Cannonstreet. 4 Friday-street. 5 Wood-street. 6 Paternoster Row. 7 Thamestreet. 8 Fleet-street. 9 Newgate-Market. 10 Cheapside. The several churches dedicated to the said Saints.

1 Westminster. 2 Southwark.

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Auſtrali ſubjecta auræ; nunc quæ vaga circùm Mænia 3 ſe attollunt; nunc quæ tu nauta per alti Fluminis extenſas ripas utrimq; 4 frequentas; Nunc quæ caſtra 5 tenet Mars ipſe Britannicus, ingens Quamvis tutetur flumen, vallum, invia foſſa; Et miſeranda forent victrici victima flammæ, Ni Deus auxilium tuleratq;, amimoſq;30 labantes Numine præſenti tandem firmaverat æquus. Fama eſt, Chriſtiadum haud paucos, quos æmula turba Pontificum 6, fictâ ſub imagine relligionis, Fecerat exilio damnarier, ullius Urbis Mænibus haud recipi dignos, neq; municipali Jure frui, clamans; hunc tandem Numinis alti Innocuum ſpretumq; gregem, cum nulla ſalutis Spes erat humanâ dextrâ, penetralibus imis Semotum, facie macilentum, & corpore fractum Carceribus, plagiſq;, & veſtes pulvere triſti Aſperſum, genibus curvatum altaria circùm Sacra Dei, obnixè his votis precibuſq; tremendi Iram contendiſſe Dei ſedare furentem. O Pater omnipotens irate, itidemq; benigne, Qui peccata odiſti, at peccatoribus uſq; Ignoſcis, ſi corde humili, ſi pectore fracto Ad te converſi ſcelerata piacula lugent; Tu quondam Iſacidum gentem, licet uſque rebellem, Non tamen implacidus voluiſti perdere, ne ſe Effreni efferrent hoſtes, Nomenq; Jehovæ Ludibrio foret; alme Deus miſerere tuorum; Nonne ſat Ignatiis conceſſum eſt patribus unam Interiiſſe urbem? ſiſte, o ſiſte optime flammas. Quinetiam Populi cuncta ætas, ſexus, & ordo Templa petunt mæſti, Cleroq; auctore, viciſſim Vota Deo, ritè, perculſo e pectore fundunt, Graſſantem ut placeat tandem compeſcere flammam. Annuit Omnipotens votis, animoſq; labantes Inſtaurat populi, procerumq; & ſceptra gerentis, Monſtravitq; viam quæ tuta repelleret ignem. Ergo, favente Deo, magnâ comitante catervâ Nobilium, plebiſq;, & fratre & milite multo, Sceptriger intrepidus circumvolat, undiq; flammæ Obvius, & ſacro volvens ſub pectore vulnus Illatum regnoq;, ſibiq;, & corde volutans Fatalem exſtinxiſſe ignem, dat juſſa ſecutis.

�� 30 Apparently a printing error.

3 The houses and suburbs about the Walls. 4 Wapping, Rotherhithe and other places on both sides along the River. 5 The Tower.

6 N. Romanorum, quibus clam incitantibus hæc lex lata fuit, ut reformati sese invicem lacerañtes paratior illis præda forent.

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Feſtinate viri, atq; opponite pectora flammæ, Ipſe favens aderit Deus, hæc hæc ſternite tecta, Ipſe viam oſtendam, vos fidi attendite dictis. Non vacat harpagone, ut quondam, non fune tenaci Detraxiſſe trabes lentas, heu, flamma volucris Improviſò aderit, lacerataq; tecta prehendens Contiguas ædes rapiet, ſed flamma repelli Per flammam debet, ſic regna furentis avernï In ſe verſa cadent, concuſſaq; flamma recedet. Pulveris, haud mora ſit, nitrati vaſcula centum Vos totidem tectis ſupponite, tædaq; lucens Accendat, dicto citius tollentur in altum, Et ſublata dabunt recidentia corpora terræ; Undiq; proſtratis immittite flumen aquarum. Nec mora, feſtinant alacres, & juſſa faceſſunt: Utq; urbs, hoſtili cum cingitur undiq; vallo, Deficiente cibo, perit intima viſcera rodens; Sic, cum proſtratis domibus circumdatur atrox Flamma, ut ad intactas nequeat perrumpere, tandem (Ut quartò rediens ſol ſtratam aſpexerat urbem) Deficit, abſorptis quas ante invaſerat ædes. Nos Deus eripuit flammis ferroq; ſacratos, Et jam ſole novo felicia tempora reddet, Inq; renaturam ſervabit mitior urbem.

The burning of London Poem Sent in place of a New Year’s gift To R. V. On the Calends of January, of the year 1666/7.

The bright day has returned on which the sun, having happily completed a yearly cycle, desires to bring back new centuries to the world and to restore the year gone by, being more kindly. On that day the Muse forced me to boycott my concerns for business [5] and ordered me to devote myself to studying, free from cares. On that day, Ralph, I ordered my little poem to go and greet you and to beg for pardon for this daring undertaking if, by any chance, it should offend you as you prepare divine matters in your mind.

290 � Gesine Manuwald

The burning of London In the past I have playfully written poetry about the beauties of the Batavian land and people [10] with a slender plectrum, but now I mourn the sad fate and the city destroyed by inimical fires, where the Thames quickly flows past and grieves that its wild waves are forced beneath the yoke by the vast mass of the bridge and the buildings placed above the very bed of the river [15] defeat the clouds by their rooftops (wonderful to see). Tell me, Muse, by what leaders, by what devices did the high flames grow, who, hiding an iron heart in his breast, kindled and enlarged the fatal fire. There is a neighbourhood, commonly known by the name of pudding [n. *: Pudding-lane]. [20] Here Vulcan first throws his missiles and pretends to be hostile to only a single house and seemed to be possible to be thrust back easily, if at the beginning attention marked by forethought had managed to hold in the fury. According to traditional custom a consul and praetors are present, but the fates [25] and the enraged gods resist; nocturnal Iacchus is said to have clouded their minds and wise Minerva to have left the city, at that time when a harsh law ordered all ministers of Christ who had refused to mix up doubtful rituals with sacred practices to withdraw, so that vows [30] and prayers of so many of the just might not propitiate the highest divinities. Aeolus had blown up the winds, and Jupiter had doomed the poor city to the flames amid unaccustomed heat. Thetis alone, in sadness, had sat herself down atop the wooden citadel [n. *: The Water-work by the Bridge], which, erected in the middle of the floods, was accustomed to let the waves [35] run upwards and bring them quickly downwards again in the middle of the boroughs of the city. As soon as Mulciber, moved by anger, saw her, he said: ‘Do you, in vain, dare to resist the attempts of ourselves and the fates? But why are you not moving yourself away with swift foot, for your citadel is my future booty.’ [40] Having left the citadel she, trembling, hardly covered herself beneath the waves when, pressed by the accumulating flames on all sides, the structure falls down with a terrible noise; then the force of the fire spreads in a hurried course with nothing stopping it, intrepidly and easily, and it crushes to the ground whatever is in its way. [45] Thus [it is], where a brook in the plain, enlarged by mountain floods, has swollen and gone over its usual banks with the dam broken, moving around, catches rocks in its way, carries with it tree trunks fallen headlong and, in its broad whirlpool, brings down to the ground oak trees and rushes to erase the labours of men and cattle [50] and even cities entirely. Thus, thus, the flame rages and is rapidly borne through the innermost parts of London and cruelly destroys houses. That enemy of men and God, girded at the sacrilegious neck with a three-tiered tiara, holding the sacred temples of Christ, [55] a deceitful pretender and trampling upon the minds with papal art, who cleverly reigns over the seven hills of the City [i.e. Rome] and aims to be regarded as the ruler of the world, causing Christendom to stumble with murder and ruse, is said to have sent selected [60] Ignatian Fathers through the English kingdom, who have usurped the sacred name of Jesus for themselves, the servants of murder and cunning. Thus he spoke: ‘My dear friends, don’t you see that the English kingdom is notorious for new heretics, who ridicule the

The Pope as Arsonist and Christian Salvation � 291

divine doctrines of Peter and [65] think of eternal ruin for us as well as for you and, leaning on the high walls of the City of London, brag that Babylon must fall? If religion moves you or the mother Ecclesia, the sacred seat of Peter, if concern for your own well-being or if our honour [moves you], ward off the destruction fast approaching. [70] And destroy those with the ruin by which they terrify us. Go, come on, overthrow the hostile city completely.’ They quickly get ready for the task and rush over the sea. They had heard that once an old city perished when Vulcan was burning; it is pleasing to go and [75] to have turned God to their vows by prayers and gold of immense weight, so that he once again may exercise the old anger; they swear that they will be companions; persuaded, God approves the daring plans. Thus where Vulcan, in the guise of the dreadful Gaul, had invaded the first houses with missiles of sulphur, [80] the impious crowd of the Loyolitae flies around, like an impetuous wind driven by a violent whirlwind, here and there increasing the flame with burning torches. And already, with the fire increasing, the horrible flame devours the mountain sacred to Ceres [n. 1: Cornhil], the neighbourhoods to whom Gratia [n. *: Grace-church street], [85] Lombarda [n. 3: Lombard-str.] and Bombarda [n. 4: Cannon-street] have given their names, and those known by the name of the day of Venus [n. 5: Friday-street] and of Wood [n. 6: Wood-street] and of our Father [n. 7: Pater-noster Row] and those that once the huge Thames [n. 8: Thame-street] and the old Fleta [n. 9: Fleet-street] made famous, markets named for a recent gate [n. 9: Newgate-Market], a neighbourhood that merchandise sold for a cheap price [90] has made known [n. 10: Cheapside] and innumerable others; neither you, John, nor you, Lawrence, nor you, Paul or nourishing Diana, nor you, Michael, nor you, God-bearing Virgin to be honoured [n.: The Several Churches dedicated to the said Saints], could snatch your temples away from this monster: not the towers erected from marble were able to resist the rock-breaking flame. [95] But just as in a large ship, when a wild tempest has arisen, the cable and the rope are broken with a harsh sound, and the mast, not sufficiently strong, nodding here and there, threatens to break the ship already about to be submerged, anxious, the ship’s captain himself strikes the wooden mast with frequent strokes of an axe, [100] it falls, overcome by a deep wound, and spreads harmful pieces over the sea swollen far and wide. Thus, when the greedy flame, after beams and the doorpost have been burned down, hollows out the foundations, the tower falls with its high weight and, horribly roaring, puts its falling limbs on the ground. [105] Who could describe the miserable devastation, the abominable nights and days, who the temples of the Gods, who the houses burning far and wide! The horrible flight of young people and men, the fears of small children and the wailing of women! Not, even if a river full of water flowed from my eyes, [110] could I sufficiently cry over the downfall of such a noble City, if it is allowed to say with such a great name: We were London, and we were the ancient glory of the Britons, now we are sad ashes and the corpse of a city. Here you see houses, here towers, here temples lying hideously, [115] woe!, everywhere, and half-burned limbs of men: everywhere sad fear, everywhere the most sad appearances of horrible death, crying strikes the high stars, sobbing and groaning and lamenting mixed with muttering.

292 � Gesine Manuwald

Three times has the sun raised its light-bringing head from the cold waves [120] and, having veiled its bright hair in a red cloud of smoke mixed with flames, mourning the sad fates, gives light rather sadly to the dying city, just as when Phoebus’ sister, circuiting in the middle between the earth and her brother, covers the heavenly body [of the sun]. [125] The flame does not yet lay its anger to rest, the greedy mouth not satisfied with the spoils of a single city, but it is eager to swallow up others and more, and already the frightful flame looms over the city that ancient monastic sacred buildings adorn, facing the setting sun [n. 1: Westminster]; already it threatens [130] very many houses that the Thames had separated from the rest of the city, exposed to southern winds [n. 2: Southwark]; now those that rise scattered around the walls [n. 3: The houses and suburbs about the Walls], now those that you, seaman, often visit along the extensive banks of the deep river on both sides [n. 4: Wapping, Rotherhithe and other places on both sides along the River], now the camps that the British Mars himself holds [n. 5: The Tower], [135] even though a huge river, a palisade and an impassable trench protect them; they too would have been pitiable victims of a victorious flame if God had not brought help and, being kind, strengthened the weak minds eventually with his divine presence. There is a rumour that not a few of the Christians, whom the rival crowd [140] of priests [n. 6: Note: Of Roman , on whose secret instigation this law was proposed that the ‘reformed Christians’, lacerating each other, would be readier prey for them.], under the made-up appearance of religion, had caused to be punished by exile, proclaiming them not worthy to be received within the walls of any City nor to enjoy citizen rights, [the rumour is] that this innocent and spurned flock of high Divinity eventually, when there was no hope of salvation [145] from a human hand, withdrawn in the innermost sanctuary, emaciated in their faces and broken in their bodies from the prison and strokes, sprinkled with sad dust on their clothes, bowed on their knees around the sacred altars of God, with these vows and prayers, strenuously [150] made an effort to settle the raging anger of the awe-inspiring God: ‘O almighty Father, angry and likewise benign, you who hate sins, but continuously pardon sinners if, with a humble heart and broken breast, they have turned to you and mourn their criminal sins: [155] once you did not wish to be implacable and destroy the Jewish people, though continuously rebellious, so that they would not raise themselves as headstrong enemies and the name of Jehovah would become an object of ridicule. Nurturing God, have pity on your people. Is it not sufficient that it has been granted to the Ignatian fathers [160] that a single city has perished? Stop, o, stop – most excellent one – the flames.’ Furthermore, all ages, sexes and classes of the populace approach the temples in sadness, and with the clergy as leader, in alternation duly pour forth vows to God, from their beaten breast, that it may please him finally to contain the roaming flame. [165] The Almighty accepts the vows and restores the tottering spirits of the people, the leaders and the sceptre-bearer [i.e. the king]; he has shown a way that safely wards off the fire. Thus, with God’s support, with a large group of noblemen and of the people accompanying, and his brother [i.e. brother of the king, later King James II and VII] and many soldiers, [170] the

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sceptre-bearer rushes around without fear, everywhere against the flame and turning over in his mind beneath the sacred breast the wound brought to the kingdom and himself and pondering in his heart how to extinguish the fatal fire, he gives orders to those who have followed him. ‘Hurry up, men, and set your bodies against the flames. [175] God himself will be there in support, tear down these, these houses, I myself will show the way, you listen loyally to my words. There is no time, as before, to tear down the tough beams with a hooked pole or a clinging rope, alas, the winged flame will be there unexpectedly, and gripping the damaged buildings [180] will snatch the adjoining houses, but the flame must be pushed back with a flame, thus the kingdom of the furious underworld will fall, turned against itself, and, weakened, the flame will recede. Without delay, put a hundred containers of nitrate powder under as many houses, and let a glowing torch [185] set them alight, and they will go up into the air faster than can be said, and, raised up, they will lay their body mass on the ground as it sinks. From everywhere send a river of water into those fallen down.’ And there was no delay, they hurry eagerly and carry out the orders. And as a city, when it is surrounded on all sides by an enemy palisade, [190] with food lacking, perishes, gnawing its innermost innards, thus, when the wild flame is surrounded by torn-down houses, so that it cannot reach the unharmed ones, eventually (when the sun, returning for a fourth time, had seen the levelled city) it dies, after having devoured the houses that it had previously entered into. [195] God has saved us, doomed to destruction by flames and the sword, and now, with a new sun, he will bring back happy times and will watch over her, milder towards the city to be reborn.

Efrossini Spentzou

Many Un/happy Returns from Eurydice Before Ovid Orpheus, son of the Thracian king Oaegrus and the muse Calliope, entered the world of Greek poetry already a famous man (‘ὀνοματοκλυτό[ς] Ὀρφεύ[ς]’, Ibycus fr. 10), a legendary poet, singer and flute player admired by many. Ancient Greek sources vie to heap praise on his lyre playing, while his singing could apparently charm nature’s creatures, rivers and even rocks. A number of religious hexameter poems were attributed to him and, as they were supposed to be recited in cultic environments, his reputation became entangled with Orphism, as well as with other local cults and ‘mysteries’. Some sources associated him with the Eleusinian mysteries in a syncretic move that finds him mirroring Tleptolemus.1 According to Pindar (Pythian 4.176–7) and Apollonius of Rhodes, Orpheus joined the Argonauts in their expedition to Colchis, and he famously saved the Argonauts from the Sirens by playing sweeter rhythms on his lyre as the ship was sailing past their coast (Argonautica 4.890–920).2 There seemed to be little space in these endeavours, and little available time in Orpheus’ busy life, for Eurydice. Attention in the Greek sources is focused on his many artistic gifts and qualities. Plato, however, knew that Orpheus undertook a trip to the underworld in relation to the untimely death of Eurydice; he made the trip a measure of Orpheus’ standing, even if, on this occasion, the venture was a failure: in the Symposium (179d), the poet is criticized for not dying for his beloved, as Alcestis had done for Admetus.3

�� 1 See here Heath 1994 who explores at length the focus of the Greek sources on Orpheus as the talented bard and on his power of persuasion rather at the expense of his relationship with Eurydice. On these earlier Greek versions, see also Graf 1988; Robins 1982, 3–23; Segal 1989, 14–20. 2 In fact it has been argued that Orpheus plays an even more integral role in the expedition, providing subtle solutions and resources in critical moments. For a comparison of his cultural/psychological input to that of an oikist in colonisation expeditions, see Karanika 2010. 3 Several other instances across the Platonic corpus engage with Orpheus’ followers and generally his standing as a leader of a cult. See e.g. Protagoras 315a, Republic 2.363c, Cratyllus 400b– c.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110596182-018

��� � Efrossini Spentzou

Though largely missing from earlier Greek sources,4 details about Eurydice and the doomed love affair do appear in a remarkable narrative twist within Virgil’s Georgics 4.453–527. The story of Orpheus and Eurydice, or – more precisely – the story of Orpheus’ grief over the loss of Eurydice, is offered by Proteus to farmer Aristaeus as an explanation for the persistent sickness of the latter’s bees.5 Scholarship has debated the contrast between Aristaeus’ uncontrollable, cunning, tenacious and unappealing achiever (ruler?) and Orpheus’ gentle, melancholy, sensitive, isolated thinker (poet?).6 Although Orpheus remains the focus, we do encounter Eurydice, ever so briefly, in this version: she is almost insubstantial, dissolving into the ether like a puff of smoke (ceu fumus in auras / commixtus tenuis 4.499–500). But she has time to express bitterness for her unhappy lot (4.494–98). Her wrath is not directed towards Orpheus, but towards the madness that turned his head (quis tantus furor? 4.495) and the cruel fate (crudelia fata 4.495–6) that called her back for a second time. The reader leaves the story with lingering feelings of sympathy for the plight of Orpheus, a lover caught in a careless moment (incautum dementia cepit amantem 4.488), hapless and distraught (quid faceret? Quo se rapta bis coniuge ferret? 4.504). We remember Orpheus as a nightingale singing dirges for the young s/he has lost, heartlessly snatched from the nest by a cruel farmer. But we are more likely to forget Eurydice, the thin smoke that leaves no traces.

Eurydice murmurs: Ovid’s Metamorphoses Eurydice returns more substantially in Book 10 of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. She stays ‘on stage’ for the first 85 lines and the tragedy that we witnessed in Virgil repeats itself.7 Aristaeus and the ritual of generating bees from the blood of slaughtered calf (bugonia) are missing and the story does not carry the cosmic

�� 4 Or, in the few occasions when present, at least given a happy-ending gloss: see here Euripides Alcestis 357–62; Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca Historica 4.25. 5 Eurydice was fleeing the unwanted advances of Aristaeus when she stepped on the snake hiding in the grass (Georgics 4.457–9). 6 Cf. here Perkell 1978 with ample bibliographical references. 7 One might argue that Orpheus fares better, though this is far from a straightforward judgement. He plays a continuous (though also hidden) role throughout Book 10 as the internal, but not often mentioned, narrator of many stories of tragic/unlucky/forbidden/doomed love. His death by dismemberment in the hands of the Maenads is recounted in the beginning of Book 11 (11.1–65).

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burdens that framed the Virgilian account. Ovid places the story within a more human(e) world. Taking a stroll in the fields with other young girls, newly-wed Eurydice finds her life cut short at its happiest moment by a lurking snake, one of the many menaces that await wandering maidens in the Metamorphoses. Consumed by grief (for a whole … two lines quam satis … deflevit vates 10.11–12), Orpheus rouses himself to make the descent to Hades in an attempt to convince Persephone and Pluto to restore his bride. This renewed sense of purpose hints at a shift from desolate lover to epic hero: ad Styga … est ausus descendere (10.13). Orpheus is ready for a task that will transmit his name to future generations, and he requests that Persephone and Pluto allow him to speak the truth (10.19–20). He feels confident of his ability to make even the gods listen to his worthy and upright story. In manufacturing the truth, Orpheus, ‘the poet from Rhodope’ (10.11–12), commands the scene. But there is never any story so straightforward and simple as to be labelled the plain truth, and certainly not when it comes from the mouth of the master poet. Ovid gives us a description of the beguiling effect of Orpheus’ speech on those who hear it. The pathos of Eurydice’s premature death is subsumed by this epic poeticrhetorical performance by Orpheus at the court of the gods. It is Orpheus’ art, not Eurydice’s tragedy, that brings a result and allows the two of them to take the uphill road back to the light.8 It is the telling of truth – not truth itself – that matters. But Orpheus turns his head and Eurydice is snatched back, irrevocably. So, the telling of truth produces Orpheus’ triumph, but his actions lead to failure. This momentous failure was not a moment of madness brought on by cruel fate (as it is in the Georgics). In the Metamorphoses, Ovid takes time to offer us a psychological explanation. Orpheus’ head is turned by fear lest Eurydice has disappeared (metuens ne deficeret 10.56), and also by greed (avidusque videndi 10.56). But these emotions hint at a deeper flaw: Orpheus’ inability to trust what he cannot see and his need to control his beloved. Eurydice does not complain that her husband failed her. A hardly audible farewell passes through her lips, her only word in the entire episode: vale (10.62). Gone is her Virgilian outburst at Orpheus’ madness and the cruelty of fate.9 The argument here is subtle. ‘About what could she complain, other than for having been loved?’ (quid enim nisi se quereretur amatam? 10.61). Twice silenced, as a shade and as a wife, Eurydice departs in near silence, with Ovid’s question reverberating as she sinks into the darkness. Might there be another answer to Ovid’s rhetorical aside?

�� 8 Cf. here Segal 1989, 54–94 with an upbeat approach to the artistic accomplishments of Ovidian Orpheus while for the artist’s (mostly emotional) limitations in Ovid, see Anderson 1989. 9 For a combined look at the Vergilian and Ovidian versions, see Anderson 1982.

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Eurydice responds: Rainer Maria Rilke The myth of Orpheus and Eurydice has been retold time and again since Ovid’s Metamorphoses. In the medieval period we find Orpheus inserted into moralising, allegorical, or political discourses and the figure continues to metamorphose throughout the Renaissance and into modern times.10 The diachronic European imaginary seems attracted to Orpheus as the talented bard encountering a persistent esoteric solitude, a sage ‘inner’ man in taut and lonely negotiations with nature.11 As importance is attached to the mission of the artist (the telling over and above the truth of the story), it is almost inevitable that Eurydice should be constrained within a subsidiary position, her fate of a secondary importance. In Maurice Blanchot’s mid-twentieth century reflection on Orpheus’ (in)famous gaze, the pursuit of inspiration at any cost is the only authentic mode of being for the great man and the artist: ‘… Everything happens as if, by disobeying the law, by looking at Eurydice, Orpheus was only yielding to the profound demands of the work, as though, through this inspired gesture, he really had carried the dark shade out of Hell.’12 The poetic masterpiece of bringing back the dead is achieved by breaking the law, and is achieved by the artist as a visionary beyond the law; but this achievement is also the making of the artist. Eurydice is subsumed, sacrificed even, to make a heroic man. Of what should she complain, indeed? If Blanchot would seem to represent a modern masculinist silencing of Eurydice, a couple of generations earlier, in the poetry of one intensely solitary man, self-absorbed and tormented by existential angst, Eurydice finds herself uttering a different answer to Ovid’s question. A recluse for most of his life,13 Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) turned to the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice several times in his poetic career,14 though here I will limit myself to one of his poems. It seems that

�� 10 See e.g. Miles 1999, 61–195. For a wide ranging study of the post-antique reception of Orpheus, see Warden 1992. 11 For a probing study of Orpheus’ profound solitude in 19th and 20th century literature, art, and thought, see Silverman 2009. 12 Blanchot 1981, 101. 13 For details of Rilke’s engagement with what she calls the ‘fellowship of solitary men’, see here Silverman 2009, 66–73. 14 ‘Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes’ (1904); ‘Requiem for a Friend’ (1908); Sonnets to Orpheus (1922).

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the myth inspired him to cope with physical and emotional loss, especially that pertaining to his complicated relationships with women.15 ‘Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes’ starts with a remarkable innovation, altering the trajectory of the couple’s relationship. The poem opens just after Orpheus’ unprecedented victory as the two of them begin the uphill journey from the Underworld. Except that they are no longer two. Orpheus is rushing ahead and it is Hermes who accompanies Eurydice:16 In front the slim man in the blue mantle, mute and impatient, gazing before him. His steps ate up the path in huge bites without chewing: his hands hung, clumsy and tight, from the falling folds, and no longer aware of the weightless lyre, grown into his left side, like a rose-graft on an olive branch. And his senses were as if divided: while his sight ran ahead like a dog, turned back, came and went again and again, and waited at the next turn, positioned there – his hearing was left behind like a scent.17

No words are spared in this description of Orpheus surging onwards. His steps eat up the path, as he proceeds with barely contained impatience – but for what? The poem does not grace us with direct answers so we look further down its body for illumination. Quick-tempered and impetuous, Orpheus is in no mood to acknowledge his music, impervious to the lyre at his side. The image of the bard’s ‘tight and clumsy’ hands is mystifying coming so soon after Orpheus’ seductive performance in front of Hades and Persephone. There is no comfort, no relief in this journey away from the dead: ‘There were cliffs and straggling woods’. Precariously extended ‘bridges over voids’. And ‘between meadows … one path, a pale strip, appeared, ... passing by like a long bleached thing’. And the trio has no option other than to follow this perilous, hazardous narrow trajectory to safety: ‘And down this path they came’.

�� 15 He stopped living with his wife, Clara, just a year into their marriage (though they later came together again); the untimely death of another close female friend, the painter Paula Becker, is immortalised in Requiem for a Friend. 16 It appears that Rilke might have drawn the inspiration that triggered the particular idea from a relief of Orpheus, Eurydice and Hermes he encountered around that time in one of his visits to the Archaeological Museum in Naples. Cf. here Rilke 1945, 389. 17 All translations of Rilke are by Stephen Mitchell in Rilke 1987.

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What is Orpheus struggling to escape from here? He abandons his hard-won partner to rush on, impatiently, a hero held back by his laggard wife and her companion god. His lyre is idle as he rushes towards the light. There is longing here, but not for Eurydice, whom he seems willing to leave behind: Then once more it was only the repeated sound of his climb and the breeze in his mantle behind him. But he told himself that they were still coming: said it aloud and heard it die away.

Orpheus is scaling the heights, the lonely climber, impatient at the others’ slowness, wrapped in artistic solitude. Eurydice and Hermes follow from a distance in silence. But Eurydice is enveloped in a new, and not unpleasant trance of her own. She was in herself, like a woman near term, and did not think of the man, going on ahead, or the path, climbing upwards towards life. She was in herself. And her being-dead filled her with abundance. As a fruit with sweetness and darkness, so she was full with her vast death, that was so new, she comprehended nothing.

Death is settling on Eurydice, but it is a death rich in life, carrying her away in a state of contented separateness. Eurydice is at peace with death, pregnant with it, in contrast to the impatient, troubled, desperate soul of the poet. Rilke/Orpheus cannot wait for Eurydice. There is an uneasy, desperate solitude embodied in this poet wondering who might follow, whereas Eurydice seems to be easing herself into a state of non-existence, losing track of the world in her incomprehension.18 The poet’s attempts to transcend death are undercut by Eurydice’s acceptance of it, her enjoyment of its richness and abundance. She is dragged from

�� 18 It is worth comparing here the other unlikely Orpheus in Rilke’s ‘Requiem for a Friend’ where the bard chastises the bride for returning so soon after her death: ‘I thought you were much further on. It disturbs me that you especially err and return … This enters so into my bones, and cuts like a saw. A reproach, which you might offer me, as a ghost, impose on me, when I withdraw at night’. For more on this committed solitude of the poet/Orpheus, see also Hass’s introduction to Rilke 1987.

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this state by his anxious will. And at this point, Orpheus turns; there is no tragedy in this turning and the moment for a different answer has arisen. It is a moment of brilliance and it comes without warning: And when suddenly the god stopped her and, with anguish in his cry, uttered the words: ‘He has turned round’ – she comprehended nothing and said softly: ‘Who?’

It would be difficult to make any kind of case for Rilke as a proto-feminist. He was a tormented man who caused no shortage of suffering to the various women in his life, appreciative of them, and separate from them in equal measure. And yet, as Rilke seeks to consign Eurydice to the Underworld, Eurydice answers Ovid’s rhetorical question with a denial of the identity of the poet-lover-husband-hero. She is free of him, whoever he was. Death here is a denial of the world and its claims, and a denial of poetry. In the underworld, Orpheus/Rilke morphs slowly, his lyre ‘grown into his left side, like a rose-graft on an olive branch’. He has become a poet-plant-flower-tree. His being does not belong in the realm of death. His fecundity is alien and in alien forms. His will as a poet appears to separate him off from death, though such a separation is ultimately impossible (it is the telling of it, not the truth itself, that performs the transcendence). The climb is a flight into abstraction, into a world that can only be maintained by a near super-human act of will. He must not turn to face the truth of death, the truth of poetic failure, of Eurydice and her fecundity. Figures, characters, personal contact, memories all fade in the course of the poem. We have been warned right from the beginning: That was the strange mine of souls. As secret ores of silver they passed like veins through its darkness. Between the roots blood welled, flowing onwards to Mankind.

Eurydice, Orpheus and Hermes begin their journey as strips of silver running inside the dirty earth, like veins just under the surface of its dark body. Everything is figurative in the poem and we suddenly come to understand the lack of pathos in what has been a highly poignant scene in earlier incarnations. Eurydice does not feel loss, abandonment, betrayal. She has no reaction to Orpheus’ failure to keep her safe on the way up to the world of the living; in Rilke’s fantasy, she loses her firm shape, abandons her human form. Divested of personality, ‘she was already loosened like long hair, given out like fallen rain, shared out like a

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hundredfold supply. She was already root.’ An amorphous Eurydice merges with the earth, becomes part of nature. And Orpheus and Eurydice are separate throughout: She was no longer that blonde woman, sometimes touched on in the poet’s songs, no longer the wide bed’s scent and island, and that man’s possession no longer.

Orpheus may have snatched her from the realm of the dead, but we do not get a single glimpse of the happiness of the lovers before her death, and no hint of anticipation for a joyful life regained. Orpheus is uninterested in tenderness or companionship.19 And so Eurydice exits the poem and returns to Hades ‘her steps confined by the long grave-cloths, uncertain, gentle, and without impatience’. She is uncertain, hesitant and limited by trailing tomb clothes, but unlike the poet she is curiously complete. The distance between them grows. She is freed, if uncertain; how long before she starts enjoying her freedom?

Eurydice reflects: Margaret Atwood In recent years, Eurydice has been revisited by some of the most acclaimed contemporary women writers in the Anglophone world.20 Imaginatively exploring the broader dynamics of power between men and women throughout her career,21 Margaret Atwood turned her attention to Orpheus and Eurydice with three

�� 19 A look at Rilke’s later Sonnets to Orpheus (1922), replete with abstract images of death flowering inside dark earth, gives us an idea of the mournful celebration that inspires Rilke’s poetry and which finds an early expression here in ‘Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes’. 20 Inevitably, for the scope of this study, many worthy voices/returns of Eurydice will be left out. I have limited myself to a cluster of living and near-peer group of poets, in order to explore what I see as a sense of urgency in the voice of contemporary Eurydice. But from those left behind, yet again, I single out Hilda Doolittle’s angry, fed up and incriminating ‘Eurydice’ from 1917. 21 For the intricate ways political and personal intersect in Atwood’s fiction, see e.g. Davies 2006; Somacarrera 2006; Tolan 2007.

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poems22 published in 1984.23 In ‘Orpheus (1)’, which opens with the two characters on the way up from the world of the dead, it is Eurydice who speaks and is the focal point of the poem. Atwood’s Eurydice reminds us of Rilke’s: ‘I was obedient, but / numb, like an arm / gone to sleep’ (3–5). But the numbness belongs to the past (she was numb). This Eurydice is a survivor. She speaks (from the dead) after the event. It is striking that this posthumous narrator reappears in all the contemporary versions I examine below. So Atwood’s Eurydice reflects back on the events, seeking motives, unearthing details, engaging in a forensic study of emotions, of things left unsaid or halfsaid. She becomes not just the narrator, but the fabricator of her own myth, the one who discovers what truth is in their story. One of the first things she remembers is Orpheus’ leash: … something stretched between us Like a whisper, like a rope: My former name, drawn tight You had your old leash With you, love you might call it, And your flesh voice. ‘Orpheus (1)’ 10–15

This Eurydice is under no illusions: ‘I was your hallucination, listening and floral’ (21–2). She feels the tether of his loving possessiveness reining her back but she is also vulnerable to his innermost feelings, the consequence of an intimacy that cannot be broken. ‘Though I knew how this failure / would hurt you, I had to / fold like a gray moth and let go’ (35–7), she says of the moment she had to turn back and take the downward path to the dead, and at that moment she even seems willing to share responsibility for returning to Hades a second time. She is probed on motives and emotions in ‘Eurydice’ by an interrogative persona (her conscience?) that urges her to relive the journey up to the world of living. The possibility that Orpheus will change his ways now that they can have a second chance is floated at the beginning: ‘a promise: / that things will be

�� 22 In Atwood 1987: ‘Orpheus 1’ (where Eurydice talks), ‘Eurydice’ (where a third person talks to Eurydice about Orpheus) and ‘Orpheus 2’. The second Orpheus poem is about Orpheus postEurydice and will not be part of our discussion here. 23 Twenty years before her major classical reception opus, the Penelopiad (2005) written from the point of view of a wise and long-deceased Penelope and her 12 maids that were hanged in Odyssey 24 (as one of the first three titles in the ambitious Canongate Myth Series, in which myths from a wide variety of cultures are (to be) re-viewed and rewritten by an international cast of contemporary authors).

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different up there / than they were last time.’ (5–6) But Eurydice knows (not least since Rilke) that Orpheus needs her, much more than he wants her, and the strange voice that does the talking puts it very succinctly: ‘He wants you to be what he calls real. He wants you to stop light’ (23–4). And then, in an uncanny resemblance to Rilke’s bard, this Orpheus also wants to sink into the earth. He wants to feel nature from the inside, to withdraw to a cosmic cocoon that has nothing to do with conjugal bliss, with physical or emotional affection. He wants to feel himself thickening Like a tree trunk or a haunch And see blood on his eyelids When he closes them, and the sun beating. ‘Eurydice’ 25–8

Suddenly, it all becomes clear; his love is for himself only, something he ‘does’ rather than gives. And yet she needs to be there: ‘This love of his is not something / he can do if you aren’t there’ (29–30). But Atwood’s Eurydice is weary, fully conscious of the invisible threads that both love and history have wrapped around her. The stranger’s voice has relayed the confession earlier on in the poem: You would rather have gone on feeling nothing Emptiness and silence; the stagnant peace Of the deepest sea, which is easier Than the noise and flesh of the surface. You are used to these blanched dim corridors, You are used to the king Who passes you without speaking. ‘Eurydice’ 7–13

Silence, anonymity, and non-encounters in ill-lit corridors: this Eurydice longs for a life stripped of feeling and self, of language in general. She comes across content, pleased with the king’s (Hades’) indifference. In anonymity, she might experience freedom, but the choice is still not hers. And the desire for anonymity is not a straightforward one. All the while sinking calmly into near-forgetfulness (‘the other one is different and you almost remember him’ 14–15), the leash pulls her back: ‘what you knew suddenly … was that you love him anywhere, / even in this land of no memory. / Even in this domain of hunger’ (31–35) says the unnamed interlocutor, and Eurydice knows it to be true. The poem finishes with a knowing yet resigned tone: ‘he wants to be fed again / by you … it is not through him / you will get your freedom’ (42–6). In that line we can see clearly the rival

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claims of Eurydice’s desire for freedom and death and her need to be needed. She cannot ultimately break free from the bonds of responsibility for Orpheus.

Eurydice laughs: Carol Ann Duffy A similar longing for freedom links Atwood’s Eurydice with Carol Ann Duffy’s. The latter’s innovative 1999 collection The World’s Wife features short, sharp poems that articulate with relish the voices of (sometimes imagined) female partners of famous men from myth and history. Born in Glasgow in 1955 and since 2009 the first female (Scottish and lesbian) Poet Laureate, Duffy bridges the high literary critical and the commercial worlds. In The World’s Wife the ‘classics’ and the classical myths sit alongside multiple other paradigmatic/masculine discourses eroding the boundaries erected to protect ‘high’ culture as a discourse belonging to the privileged.24 Her poems are innovative, immediately recognisable tales of gendered behaviour, putting forward the women’s voices with perspicacity, intelligence and (often) dark humour.25 Unlike Rilke’s and Atwood’s Eurydices, this Eurydice26 is not, and has never been, numb. Surrounded by a group of girls (fellow inhabitants of the Underworld) she enjoys rehearsing her own version of the story. A short introduction is followed by a description of Eurydice’s whereabouts with an echo of Atwood’s Underworld: It was a place where language stopped, Black full stop, a black hole Where words had to come to an end. And end they did there, last words,

�� 24 Eurydice sits in the company of Thetis, Medusa, Penelope, Demeter, but also Mrs Icarus, Mrs Sisyphus, Mrs Tiresias and they all mingle with Queen Herod, Mrs Darwin, Anne Hathaway (William Shakespeare’s wife), Frau Freud, alongside The Kray Sisters, Mrs Rip van Winkle, Elvis’ twin sister and even Myra Hindley (the Moors serial killer’s partner) makes an appearance. For an illuminating survey of the whole collection, see here Horner 2003, 105–17 who sees the sequence of poems as a progressive journey away from conventional attitudes to gender while also celebrating an emotional pluralism that subverts rigid gender roles. 25 Cf. here Wainwright 2003 for an overview of the satirical and knowing voices of the women in the collection as a whole, contrasting with the caricatures of their rather obtuse male partners/companions/relations. 26 Duffy 1999, 58–62.

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Famous or not. It suited me down to the ground.

Atwood’s understated fondness for the mute encounters in the blanched corridors of the underworld here becomes relief at the absence of (male) words. Rejoicing in the impotence of words in the world of the dead, Duffy gives us Orpheus, the irritating poet-lover: in the one place you’d think a girl would be safe from the kind of a man who follows her round writing poems, hovers about while she reads them …

When Orpheus knocks at Death’s door to reclaim his bride, Eurydice’s mind turns to the life they had shared. An aspect of the story that had been passed over by Rilke, and only hinted at as problematic by Atwood,27 is here met with scorn by Duffy’s Eurydice, who mocks: Big O was the boy. Legendary. The blurb on the back of his books claimed That animals, Aardvark to zebra, Flocked to his side when he sang … … Bollocks.

The poem startles with its irreverent tone, undermining the archetype of the revered classical poet. In ‘presenting [Orpheus] as an all-too-recognisable type of the contemporary career-poet, vain, fallible, and insecure’,28 Duffy also introduces us to her own experience of a world of insecure poets, brittle egos, and sexually discriminating publishing cliques.29 Cast in the auxiliary role of a secretary, though a writer herself (‘I’d done all the typing myself. I should know’),30 the girl/muse/author in the poem expresses candid views of the poet’s work: ‘[the �� 27 Though her Eurydice is lured back by a song that promises new circumstances that will not resemble the old ones (‘a promise that things will be different there than they were last time’ ‘Eurydice’ 4–5). 28 Wainwright 2003, 51. 29 On these personal experiences, see Viner 1999. 30 Note here the homage to a number of strong women, poets in their own right as well as supporting famous male poets, such as e.g. Dorothy Wordsworth or Sylvia Plath.

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poet] once sulked for a night and a day/because she remarked on his weakness for abstract nouns’. This outspoken Eurydice renders the established version of the myth a result of her own new-found agency: Girls, forget what you’ve read. It happened like this – I did everything in my power To make him look back.

Unable to get him to turn, she played on his egoism: ‘My voice shook when I spoke – Orpheus, your poem’s a masterpiece. I’d love to hear it again … / he was smiling modestly / when he turned / when he turned and he looked at me’. By now, we read and see with Eurydice; it is the mocked figure of a pseudo-modest poet, smiling sheepishly, that stays in our mind, as Eurydice returns to the land of the dead. Another answer is offered here to Ovid’s rhetorical question from the Metamorphoses: of what should she complain? Of a whole culture of misogyny, vanity, and masculinist myth-making. As Orpheus turns, Eurydice’s intellectual, artistic and psychological captivity ends, together with the poem: The dead are so talented. The living walk by the edge of a vast lake Near the wise, drowned silence of the dead.

Potency and a hint of tragedy co-exist in these lines. Dying from the world of (predominantly male) art gives birth to another subject and a deeper wisdom: ‘in these last lines there seems to be a more profound voice, defiant, somewhat wistful, perhaps lonely but self-contained, suggestive of a quite different interior mode of being that can have an element of death-longing.’31 In the last lines, Duffy’s Eurydice looks back to Rilke, capturing the anguish of the world and the desire to be apart from it. In death lies truth: in her death and in her friendships among the dead, there is the possibility of silence with wisdom and of an escape from the profound vanities of the world.

�� 31 Wainwright 2003, 52, who detects a similar mix of power and tragedy also in the poems by Mrs Sisyphus, Circe, Medusa, and the Bride of Pygmalion.

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Eurydice the survivor: Louise Glück Eurydice as a survivor is also central to the version offered by the contemporary American poet Louise Glück in Vita Nova (2000). Here the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice is implicated in a reflective and autobiographical 32 treatment of the author’s divorce.33 Set on a (poetic/personal) journey of self-awakening in the absence of a lover, Glück/Eurydice experiences conflict:34 ‘Transition / is difficult. / And moving between worlds / Especially so; / The tension is very great.’ (from ‘Eurydice’). But she is also ‘elated, at [her] age / hungry for life, utterly confident’ (from ‘Vita Nova’, eponymous opening poem of the collection). Death’s visit is not mournful, rather a premonition of hope in which the message of death brings a new existence, or at least the possibility thereof: Surely spring has been returned to me, this time, Not as a lover, but a messenger of death, yet It is still spring, it is still meant tenderly. From ‘Vita Nova’

The collection has space for both Orpheus and Eurydice as they agonise over the strained relationship that has just ended. ‘I have lost my Eurydice, I have lost my lover’ … ‘I am completely alone now’ (from ‘Orfeo’) cries the (abandoned?) poet, tormented by doubt: ‘who knows, perhaps the gods never spoke to me / in Dis / never singled me out’ (from ‘Orfeo’). But elsewhere in the same poem and in the previous one, we find Orpheus absorbed by the torment of poetic writing, in ways reminiscent of Rilke’s self-indulgent boy poet: ‘No one wants to be the muse; in the end everyone wants to be Orpheus’ (from ‘Lute Song’) announces the poet smugly, only to acknowledge a few lines on that he ‘made a harp of disaster to perpetuate the beauty of [his] last love’ (from ‘Lute Song’). But lest we think that his anguish is over Eurydice’s sad fate, he hastens to add: ‘yet my anguish, such as it is, / remains the struggle for form’. Poetry is above life: the telling of the story is more important than its truth. It is no wonder that Eurydice feels to him like an irritation, and he addresses her with frustration resonant of the ambient conjugal strain that provides the backdrop to the collection: ‘o Eurydice, you who married

�� 32 On the intense relation between Glück’s personal life and poetic work, see Morris 2006, 21– 35. 33 Meadowlands, Glück’s previous collection, traced the actual experience of the divorce itself, with Odyssey as its mythical backdrop. 34 The mingled co-existence of lament and re-birth – through – loss in the collection is the subject matter of Gilbert 2005.

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me for my singing, / Why do you turn on me, wanting human comfort?’ (from ‘Orfeo’). Not impervious to pain, Eurydice is not passive either. In that she is a kindred spirit to Dido, Queen of Carthage, who also features in the collection. Dido’s poem does not seek to alter the myth to spare the heroine from suffering. But her will is implicated in this suffering: ‘to be noticed by the Fates / is some distinction after all’ (from ‘the Queen of Carthage’). And as if this is not firm enough, Fate retreats from sight to give its place to hunger, as Dido takes over ownership of her ordeal: ‘one should say it is to have honoured hunger, since the Fates go by that name also’ (from ‘The Queen of Carthage’). Whereas Virgil’s Eurydice vented fury and frustration at the implacable will of the Fates, that cosmic order no human can withstand, Glück’s Dido adopts a self-affirming stance, projecting her own hunger, desires and passions, as the inescapable force which she owns, even if it destroys her.35 Glück’s narrator relishes this mature consciousness throughout Vita Nova36 and so her Eurydice joins Dido in reclaiming agency of her hungry fate. Though not immune to painful memories of a past life, she chooses the underworld: ‘but to live with human faithlessness / is another matter’ (from ‘Eurydice’).

Glancing backwards Glück’s divorcing Eurydice captures a sense of freedom and regret, of escape and return and of a deeper uncertainty about the world. But as with Duffy, this is a world she embraces with confidence. The bonds of the world, of social convention, are to be overthrown in favour of an unknown and darker place, but a place of possibility. As with Rilke, the moment of return to the Underworld is a moment of release, as it is when Atwood’s Orphic leash is released; in such freedom there is both renewal and loss. These reincarnated Eurydices have lost their voices, and any sense of their capacities to act as agents of their own fate, but at the turn of the head, agency is given back to them. These modern versions turn a Classical myth on its head. The modern women poets have exposed the strongly gendered nature of the story: the silence of Eurydice, and the self-insulation of the great poet, the talker who claims to speak truth, but for whom the mode of truth-telling is all-important. These modern versions show that there is another voice, another

�� 35 For hunger representing the desire driving Glück’s subjects, see here Morris 2006, 36–60. 36 For an astute study of Glück’s re-awakening conscience in Vita Nova with special references to Dido and Eurydice, see Diehl 2005.

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truth: looking through Eurydice’s eyes, we see the life she is offered, her subjection to the legacy and achievements of her spouse and her reduction to an artefact of his story. Her potential emergence into the world above is thus, paradoxically, a loss of self. Of what should she complain, other than being the object of (smothering) love? But these modern poets also offer us something darker. There is richness and fecundity in the gloomy realms of the dead, which can be seen as a form of peace. We are rendered suspicious that our modern Eurydices reach out in the dark for something more intriguing and elusive than their famous husband. The world may shout and preen itself and yearn for the perfect (literary) form, but in the unlit corridors of the past that does not need easy praise, in the silences of the long-dead, there is a more fulfilling knowledge. There is a hint of it in Ovid’s faint dissatisfaction with the heroic poet Orpheus, and in his wonder at the reticent, ‘mono-lexic’ Eurydice. Of what could she complain indeed? And so I offer this essay as a vote of thanks to a ‘poly-lexic’ thinker, one of whom Ovid would have given full approval. In a world easily won by big - even when empty – words, Papanghelis has always been interested in a tougher, more obscure sort of meaning, in taking the intellectual risk to see the story from the other perspective, in alerting himself to the least sonorous resonances of the past in the present. As Classicists we are all receivers of something lost, searching after truths among the deep and darkly dead. In our era of strutting leaders, more than ever before, we need Eurydice’s perspective.

Bibliography Andersen, W.S. (ed.) (1982), Ovid, Metamorphoses, Leipzig. ―― (1982), ‘The Orpheus of Virgil and Ovid: flebile nescio quid’, in: Warden (1982) 25–50. ―― (1989), ‘The Artist’s Limits in Ovid: Orpheus, Pygmalion, and Daedalus’, Syllecta Classica 1, 1–11. Atwood, M. (1987), Selected Poems II: Poems Selected and New 1976–1986, Boston. Blanchot, M. (1981), The Gaze of Orpheus and Other Literary Essays by Maurice Blanchot, translated by Lydia Davis, New York. Davies, M. (2006), ‘Margaret Atwood’s Female Bodies’, in: C.A. Howells (ed.), Cambridge Companion to Atwood, Cambridge, 58–71. Diehl, J.F. (2005), ‘From One World to another. Voice in Vita Nova’, in: J.F. Diehl (ed.), On Louise Glück: Change What you See, Ann Arbor, 151–64. Duffy, C.A. (1999), The World’s Wife, London. Gilbert, S. (2005), ‘The Lamentations of the New’, in: J.F. Diehl (ed.), On Louise Glück: Change What you See, Ann Arbor, 131–6. Glück, L. (2000), Vita Nova, Manchester. Graf, F. (1988), ‘Orpheus: A Poet among Men’, in: J. Bremmer (ed.), Interpretations of Greek Mythology, London, 80–106.

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Heath, J. (1994), ‘The Failure of Orpheus’, Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 124, 163–96. Horner, A. (2003), ‘“Small Female Skull”: Patriarchy and Philosophy in the Poetry of Carol Ann Duffy’, in: A. Michelis/A. Rowland (eds.), The Poetry of Carol Ann Duffy. ‘Choosing Tough Words’, Manchester, 99–120. Karanika, A. (2010), ‘Inside Orpheus’ Songs: Orpheus as an Argonaut in Apollonius Rhodius’ Argonautica’, Greek Roman and Byzantine Studies 50, 391–410. Miles, G. (1999), A Critical Anthology. Classical Mythology in English Literature, London/New York. Morris, D. (2006), The Poetry of Louise Glück, Columbia/London. Mynors, R.A.B. (ed.) (1969), Vergili Maronis Opera, Oxford. Perkell, C. (1978), ‘A Reading of Virgil’s 4th Georgic’, Phoenix 32, 211–21. Rilke, H.M. (1945), Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke; 1897-1910, translated by J. Bannard Greene and M.D. Herter Norton, New York. ―― (1987), The Selected Poetry of Heiner Maria Rilke, edited and translated by Stephen Mitchell, New York. Robbins, E. (1982), ‘Famous Orpheus’, in: Warden (1982) 3–23. Segal, C. (1989), Orpheus. The Myth of the Poet, Baltimore. Silverman, K. (2009), Flesh of my Flesh, Stanford. Somacarrera, P. (2006), ‘Power Politics: Power and Identity’, in: C.A. Howells (ed.), Cambridge Companion to Atwood, Cambridge, 43–57. Tolan, F. (2007), Margaret Atwood: Feminism and Fiction, Amsterdam/New York. Viner, K. (1999), ‘Metre maid’, The Guardian, 25 September 1999, https://www.theguardian.com/books/1999/sep/25/costabookaward.features Accessed: 6 July 2017 Wainwright, J. (2003), ‘Female Metamorphoses: Carol Ann Duffy’s Ovid’, in: A. Michelis/A. Rowland (eds.), The Poetry of Carol Ann Duffy. ‘Choosing Tough Words’, Manchester, 47–55. Warden, J. (ed.) (1982), Orpheus: Metamorphosis of a Myth, Toronto.

Publications by Theodore D. Papanghelis Books 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Propertius: A Hellenistic Poet on Love and Death, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1987, pp. 248; reprint 2009; e-book 2010. Η ποιητική των Ρωμαίων «Νεωτέρων»: προϋποθέσεις και προεκτάσεις, Athens: Μορφωτικό Ίδρυμα Εθνικής Τραπέζης 1994; multiple reprints, pp. 290. Aπό τη βουκολική ευτοπία στην πολιτική ουτοπία: Μια μελέτη των Εκλογών του Βιργιλίου, Athens: Μορφωτικό Ίδρυμα Εθνικής Τραπέζης 1995; reprint 2008, pp. 381. Oβιδίου Ερωτική Τέχνη: Μετάφραση και ένα δοκίμιο για Λατίνους εραστές, Athens: Εκδόσεις Καστανιώτη 2000; 4th edition 2007, pp. 175. Η Ρώμη και ο κόσμος της, Thessaloniki: Ινστιτούτο Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών-Ίδρυμα Μανόλη Τριανταφυλλίδη 2005; reprints 2006, and 2008, pp. 235. Σώματα που άλλαξαν τη θωριά τους: Διαδρομές στις Μεταμορφώσεις του Οβιδίου, Athens: Gutenberg 2009, pp. 294.

Edited Volumes 1. 2. 3.

4.

Brill’s Companion to Apollonius Rhodius (co-edited with Α. Rengakos), Leiden-BostonKöln: Brill 2001; 2nd revised edition 2008, pp. 479. Brill’s Companion to Greek and Latin Pastoral (co-edited with Marco Fantuzzi), LeidenBoston: Brill 2006; reprint 2011, pp. 654. Generic Interfaces: Encounters, Interactions and Transformations in Latin Literature (coedited with Stephen J. Harrison and Stavros Frangoulidis), Trends in Classics-Supplementary Volumes, Berlin-New York: Walter de Gruyter 2013, pp. 478. Intratextuality and Latin Literature (co-edited with Stephen J. Harrison and Stavros Frangoulidis), Trends in Classics-Supplementary volumes, Berlin-Boston: Walter de Gruyter (forthcoming).

Book Chapters and Articles (selected) 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

‘Κάτουλλος 83.3 (mule, nihil sentis?)’, ΕΕΦΣΘ 17 (1978) 263–72. ‘Lucretius 3.961-2 Οnce More’, Hellenika 31 (1979) 342–9. ‘Catullus 64.402’, Hellenika 32 (1980) 356–9. ‘Crux Catulliana (A Note on 25.5)’, Latomus 39 (1980) 409–11. ‘Lucretiana: Παρατηρήσεις στο 1.469, 1.177 και 2.623 του De Rerum Natura’, ΕΕΦΣΘ 20 (1981) 395–7. 6. ‘Lucubratiuncula Propertiana (3.5.39)’, Hellenika 33 (1981) 395–7. 7. ‘Α Note on Catullus 68.156–157’, Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica 11 (1982) 139–49. 8. ‘Propertius 2.32.5–6’, Hellenika 34 (1982-3) 223–4. 9. ‘Λουκρήτιος: Ατομικές όψεις και απόψεις’, Hellenika 36 (1985) 356–76. 10. ‘Spiritus in toto corpore surgit: Μια λειτουργία του ερωτικού σώματος στον Προπέρτιο, στον Μπωντλαίρ και στον Καβάφη’, Hellenika 37 (1986) 280–305. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110596182-019

314 � Publications by Theodore D. Papanghelis

11. ‘Some thoughts on Propertius 2.19.31’, Latomus 48 (1989) 601–3. 12. ‘Αbout the Hour of Noon: Ovid, Amores 1.5’, Mnemosyne 42 (1989) 54–61. 13. ‘Ρητορικά και Ερωτικά: Προπέρτιος 1.6’, in: Ρητορική τέχνη και ρητορική διάσταση στη Λατινική γραμματεία: Πρακτικά Γ’ Πανελληνίου Συμποσίου Λατινικών Σπουδών, Thessaloniki 1989, 299–310. 14. ‘Αισθητική Εικόνα: Ο Θάνατος στη Βενετία του Thomas Mann και ο Καβάφης’, Hellenika 39 (1989) 131–54. 15. ‘Catullus and Callimachus on Large Women (A Reconsideration of c. 86)’, Mnemosyne 44 (1991) 371–86. 16. ‘Η Θεωρία του E. Auerbach για τον ρεαλισμό στην κλασική λογοτεχνία και η ελεγεία 4.7 του Σέξτου Προπερτίου’, ΕΕΦΣΠΘ 1 (1991) 101–19. 17. ‘Α Note on Aeneid 8.514–517’, The Classical Quarterly n.s. 43 (1993) 339–41. 18. ‘Περί Γραμματικής’, Αφιέρωμα στον Οδυσσέα Ελύτη, Εντευκτήριο 23–24 (1993) 101–6. 19. ‘Hoary Ladies: Catullus 64.305 ff. and Apollonius of Rhodes’, Symbolae Osloenses 69 (1994) 41–6. 20. ‘Falso laudata femina: το φιλοσοφικό και ποιητικό χρονικό μιας ψευδαίσθησης’, in: Η γυναίκα στη λατινική γραμματεία: Δ’ Πανελλήνιο Συμπόσιο Λατινικών Σπουδών, Ρέθυμνο 2-4 Νοεμβρίου 1990, Rethymno 1994, 67–74. 21. ‘Από την ελληνική στη ρωμαϊκή ελεγεία’, ΕΕΦΣΠΘ 4 (1994) 137–72. 22. ‘Η κλασικότητα της αυγούστειας ποίησης’, ΕΕΦΣΠΘ 5 (1995) 45–56. 23. ‘Το νεοτερικό έπος του Απολλωνίου Ροδίου’, in: Γρηγόριος Γκιζέλης (επιμ.), Ρόδος: 24 αιώνες: Πρακτικά του Διεθνούς Επιστημονικού Συμποσίου, 1-5 Οκτωβρίου 1992, Athens: Ακαδημία Αθηνών 1996, 170–8. 24. ‘De tergore partem exiguam: The Case for a Programmatic Metaphor in Ovid Met. 8.46950’, Philologus 140 (1996) 277–84. 25. ‘Winning on Points: About the Singing-Match in Virgil’s Seventh Eclogue’, Collection Latomus: Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History VIII (1997) 144–57. 26. ‘Τhe Post-philological Moment: Callimachus and Walter Pater’, in: Πρακτικά Α’ Πανελληνίου και Διεθνούς Συνεδρίου Αρχαίας Ελληνικής Φιλολογίας (23–26 Μαΐου 1994), Athens: Εκδόσεις της Ελληνικής Ανθρωπιστικής Εταιρείας 1997, 557–65. 27. ‘Eros Pastoral and Profane: Love in Virgil’s Eclogues’, in: S. Braund and R.G. Mayer (eds.), Amor: Roma: Eleven Essays (And One Poem) by Former Research Students Presented to E.J. Kenney on his Seventy-Fifth Birthday, Cambridge Philological Society Supplementary Volume 22, Cambridge: Cambridge Philological Society 1999, 44–60. 28. ‘Relegens errata litora: Virgil’s Reflexive “Odyssey” ’, in: J. N. Kazazis and Antonios Rengakos (eds.), Εuphrosyne: Studies in Ancient epic and its Legacy in Honor of D.N. Maronitis, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner 1999, 275–90. 29. ‘Ελληνική και Λατινική’, in: Μ. Ζ. Κοπιδάκης (επιμ.), Ιστορία της Ελληνικής Γλώσσας, Αθήνα: Ελληνικό Λογοτεχνικό και Ιστορικό Αρχείο 1999, 104–5. 30. ‘Η διδασκαλία της λατινικής ποίησης: το χρονικό μιας προαναγγελθείσης μελαγχολίας’, Νέα Πορεία 45 (1999) 273–9. 31. ‘Ελληνική κλασική φιλολογία: ζητείται μέλλον’, in: Αντώνης Ρεγκάκος (επιμ.), Νεκρά γράμματα; Οι κλασικές σπουδές στον 21ο αιώνα, Athens: Εκδόσεις Πατάκη 2001, 225–31. 32. ‘Σημειώσεις πάνω στη Δεύτερη και Τρίτη ιστορία του Άξιον Εστί’, in: Δεκαέξι κείμενα για το Άξιον Εστί, Athens: Ίκαρος 2001, 118–32. 33. ‘Ο Κικέρων και το φιλελληνικό “λόμπι” ’, Ιστορικά «Ελευθεροτυπίας» 114 (Δεκέμβριος 2001) 24–9.

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34. ‘Υπογεννητικότητα στην Αρχαία Ρώμη’, in: Δ. Λώλης (επιμ.), Υπογεννητικότητα: Το σημαντικότερο πρόβλημα της ελληνικής κοινωνίας, Αθήνα: Παρισιάνος 2001, 1–8. 35. ‘Good Night, Mr Hale! Το πρόβλημα της μετά-βρασης’, ΕΕΦΣΠΘ 10 (2002-3) 528–33. 36. ‘Φιλολογία, πολιτισμικές αφηγήσεις, και τα δύο ή τίποτε; Τα Λατινικά στο πανεπιστήμιο’, in: Πρακτικά Διεθνούς Συνεδρίου: Η κλασική παιδεία σήμερα, πραγματικότητα και προοπτικές στην Ελλάδα του 21ου αιώνα (6-8/12/2002), Πλάτων, Παράρτημα 2 (2003) 257–64. 37. ‘Oικουμενικότητα και ανορθολογικός πειρασμός: μια παλιά ιστορία’, in: Όψεις του σύγχρονου ανορθολογισμού, Athens: Σχολή Μωραΐτη-Εταιρεία Σπουδών Νεοελληνικού Πολιτισμού και Γενικής Παιδείας 2005, 249–57. 38. ‘Για μια χούφτα σύμβολα: η περίπτωση της Ρώμης’, Αριάδνη 12 (2006) 229–40. 39. ‘Friends, Foes, Frames, Fragments: Τextuality in Virgil’s Eclogues’, in: Marco Fantuzzi and Theodore Papanghelis (eds.), Brill’s Companion to Greek and Latin Pastoral, Leiden-Boston: Brill 2006, 369–402. 40. ‘Τhe Hellenistic Centuries: Language and Literature’, in: A. F. Christidis (ed.), A History of Ancient Greek, from the Beginnings to Late Antiquity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2007, 1045–53. 41. ‘Είδος και Ιδεολογία στον πυγμαχικό αγώνα της Αινειάδας 5.362-484’, in: M. Paizi-Apostolopoulou, A. Rengakos and Ch. Tsagalis (eds.), Contests and Rewards in the Homeric Epics (Άθλα και έπαθλα στα ομηρικά έπη). Proceedings of the 10th International Symposium on the Odyssey (15–19 September 2004), Ithaca: Κέντρο Οδυσσειακών Σπουδών 2007, 381–8. 42. ‘What did the Human Person Look Like in Antiquity?’, in: Πρακτικά του Διεθνούς Συνεδρίου Science-Religion Interaction in the 21st century (European Research Network), September 20–22, 2007, Athens (forthcoming). 43. ‘Aeneid 5.362–484: Time, Epic and the Analeptic Gauntlets’, in: Jonas Grethlein and Antonios Rengakos (eds.), Νarratology and Interpretation, Trends in Classics-Supplementary Volumes, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter 2009, 321–34. 44. ‘Οι λατινικές διαδρομές της Αργώς: Τα Αργοναυτικά του Βαλέριου Φλάκκου’, in: Αργοναυτική εκστρατεία: Πρακτικά 1ου Διεθνούς Συνεδρίου Φιλίας των Κοινοβουλίων Ελλάδας-Γεωργίας, Βόλος, 12-13 Ιουνίου 2008, Athens: Βουλή των Ελλήνων 2009, 93–9. 45. ‘Η ιστορία του ρωμαϊκού μαθήματος και το μάθημα της ρωμαϊκής ιστορίας – Προλεγόμενα’, in: Μοντεσκιέ: Εκτιμήσεις για τα αίτια του μεγαλείου και της παρακμής των Ρωμαίων (μετάφρ. Θ. Σκάσσης), Athens: Πόλις 2009, 11–30. 46. ‘Τα του Δάφνιδος τω Καίσαρι και αντιστρόφως: το βιργιλιανό δοκίμιο ουτοπίας’, in: E. Karamalengou and Eugenia Makrygianni (eds.), Αντιφίλησις. Studies on Classical, Byzantine and Modern Greek Literature and Culture in Honour of John-Theophanis A. Papademetriou, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner 2009, 499–508. 47. ‘9 του έρωτα και 2 του θανάτου: μεταφραστικά παλίμψηστα από τον λυρικό Οράτιο’, in: Δ. Νικήτα (επιμ.), Laus et Gratia. In memoriam Κωνσταντίνου Γρόλλιου, Thessaloniki: University Studio Press 2012, 95–101. 48. ‘Γράφοντας έρχεται η Ιστορία: η “εθνική” ποίηση του Οδυσσέα Ελύτη’, Φλώρινα, Επετηρίδα 1 (Άνοιξη 2012) (forthcoming). 49. ‘Η πολυπολιτισμικότητα στη Ρώμη: όροι, όρια, ορισμοί’, in: Πολυπολιτισμικότητα στη Ρώμη: Κοινωνική και πνευματική ζωή. Πρακτικά του H’ Πανελληνίου Συμποσίου Λατινικών Σπουδών, Κομοτηνή, 2–5 Μαΐου 2007, Athens 2013, 17–21. 50. ‘Too Much Semiotics will Spoil the Genre: The Pastoral Unscription in Virgil, Ecl. 10.53– 54’, in: Theodore D. Papanghelis, Stephen J. Harrison and Stavros Frangoulidis (eds.),

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51. 52. 53. 54. 55.

Generic Interfaces in Latin Literature, Trends in Classics-Supplementary Volumes, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter 2013, 205–15. ‘Η σκοτεινή ρίζα της σαφήνειας. Ο Ανάπλους και η Ποιητική του Θανάση Βαλτινού’, Νέα Εστία 1858 (June 2013) 145–53. ‘Η Γνώση και η Αίσθηση της Ιστορίας. Συμπληρωματικές σημειώσεις για την Ποιητική του Θανάση Βαλτινού’, The Books’ Journal 45 (July 2014) 70–1. ‘Γράμματα από τη Σπάρτη: Ο Οβίδιος, οι Ηρωίδες και η μυστική αλληλογραφία Πάρη και Ελένης’, Ποιητική 19 (Spring-Summer 2017) 114–34. ‘Amor Latinus: το πάθος και το desideratum’, ΄Αρτος Ζωής (2017) (forthcoming). ‘The Fullness of Incompleteness: An Aspect of Valtinos’ Myth’, in: Miltos Pechlivanos (ed.), Hommage à Thanassis Valtinos, Berlin, 31–40 (forthcoming).

Other Publications 1.

Πανωστάφυλα: πάρεργα και εφήμερα μιας παρ’ ολίγον δεκαετίας, Athens: Νεφέλη 2008, pp. 321.

Edited Volumes (translations) 1.

2.

Μarco Fantuzzi & Richard Hunter, O Eλικώνας και το Μουσείο. Η ελληνιστική ποίηση από την εποχή του Μεγάλου Αλεξάνδρου έως την εποχή του Αυγούστου. Μετάφραση: Δ. Κουκουζίκα, Μαρία Νούσια, Athens: Εκδόσεις Πατάκη 2002 (co-edited with Αntonios Rengakos), pp. 696. Florence Dupont, Η αυτοκρατορία του ηθοποιού. Το θέατρο στην αρχαία Ρώμη. Μετάφραση: Σοφία Γεωργακοπούλου, Athens: Μορφωτικό Ίδρυμα Εθνικής Τραπέζης 2003, pp. 673.

Contributors William W. Batstone, Professor of Classics at The Ohio State University, focuses on Latin literature of the Republic and the triumviral period, with publications on Plautus, Cicero, Catullus, Caesar, Sallust, and Vergil, often with a theoretical concern. Major publications include: Sallust: Catiline’s Conspiracy, The Jugurthine War and The Histories, translation with notes and commentary (Oxford World’s Classics, 2010); Julius Caesar: The Civil War (Oxford 2006) with Cynthia Damon; Defining Genre and Gender in Roman Literature (Lang, 2005); Latin Lyric and Elegiac Poetry (Routledge 1994, second edition 2018). He is currently co-editing Oxford Readings in Sallust with Andrew Feldherr. Jacqueline Fabre-Serris is Professor of Latin Literature at the University of Lille. She has published on Classical Latin literature, especially on Gallus and Augustan poetry, on mythology and mythography. She has special interests in gender and genre, intertextuality, and reception of Antiquity. She is co-director of the electronic reviews Dictynna, Eugesta, and Polymnia, and of a series on mythography published by Les Presses universitaires du Septentrion. Andrew Feldherr received his doctorate from Berkeley and teaches at Princeton University. He is the author of Spectacle and Society in Livy’s History (Berkeley, 1998) and Playing Gods: Ovid’s Metamorphoses and the Politics of Fiction (Princeton, 2010) as well as articles on Vergil, Catullus, and Roman historiography. His current project, After the Past: Sallust on History and Writing History, treats the relationship between reading, writing, and political action in the aftermath of civil war. Stavros Frangoulidis is Professor of Latin at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He has written articles on Roman comedy, Senecan tragedy and the Latin novel; with Theodore Papanghelis and Stephen Harrison he has recently edited three volumes of conference proceedings on Latin literature. His books include: Handlung und Nebenhandlung: Theater, Metatheater und Gattungsbewusstein in der römischen Komödie (1997); Roles and Performances in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses (2001); and Witches, Isis and Narrative: Approaches to Magic in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses (2008). Roy Gibson is Professor of Latin at the University of Manchester and the author of a commentary on Ovid Ars Amatoria 3 (2003), of Excess and Restraint: Propertius, Horace and Ovid’s Ars Amatoria (2007), and with Ruth Morello, of Reading the Letters of Pliny the Younger: an Introduction (2012). He is currently finishing a biography of Pliny the Younger and working on a commentary on Book 6 of Pliny’s Epistles. Stephen Harrison is Fellow and Tutor in Classics at Corpus Christi College, Oxford and Professor of Latin Literature in the University of Oxford. He is author and/or editor of many books on Latin literature and its reception, most recently a commentary on Horace Odes 2 (CUP) and Victorian Horace: Classics and Class (Bloomsbury), both 2017. Stephen Heyworth studied at Trinity College, Cambridge from 1977 to 1983, overlapping with Theodore Papanghelis as a pupil of Ted Kenney. He has been Bowra Fellow and Tutor in

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110596182-020

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Classics at Wadham College, Oxford since 1988, and is Professor of Latin in the University. In 2007 he issued a new edition of Propertius in the Oxford Classical Texts series together with a detailed textual commentary entitled Cynthia. With James Morwood he has produced literary and grammatical commentaries on Propertius 3 (2011), and Aeneid 3 (2017). His main focus is now on Ovid’s Fasti. Alison Keith has written extensively about the intersection of gender and genre in Latin literature. She is the author of four books and the editor or co-editor of another 6. In the past she has served as Editor of Phoenix, Journal of the Classical Association of Canada (2002–2007), President of the Classical Association of Canada (2010–2012), and Chair of the Department of Classics (2007–2013; Acting Chair 2016–2017) at the University of Toronto; and she is currently Director of the Jackman Humanities Institute at the University of Toronto. Current projects include a book on Vergil for I.B. Tauris in the series Understanding Classics, a commentary on the fourth book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and a SSHRC-funded project on the reception of Ovid’s Metamorphoses in Flavian epic. David Konstan is Professor of Classics at New York University. Among his publications are Greek Comedy and Ideology (Oxford, 1995); Friendship in the Classical World (Cambridge, 1997); Pity Transformed (London, 2001); The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks: Studies in Aristotle and Classical Literature (Toronto, 2006); ‘A Life Worthy of the Gods’: The Materialist Psychology of Epicurus (Las Vegas, 2008); Before Forgiveness: The Origins of a Moral Idea (Cambridge, 2010); and Beauty: The Fortunes of an Ancient Greek Idea (Oxford, 2014). He is a past president of the American Philological Association (now the Society for Classical Studies), and a vice president of the Bristol Institute of Greece, Rome & the Classical Tradition. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and an honorary fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. Andrew Laird moved in 2016 from the United Kingdom to Brown University, Rhode Island, where he is the John Rowe Workman Distinguished Professor of Classics and Humanities. His publications include Powers of Expression, Expressions of Power (1999), Ancient Literary Criticism (2006), The Epic of America (2006) and the first comprehensive surveys of Latin writing from colonial Spanish America and Brazil for Brill’s Encyclopedia of the Neo-Latin World (2014) and for the Oxford Handbook of Neo-Latin (2016). His most recent work examines the role of Renaissance humanism in mediating indigenous legacies in sixteenth-century Mexico. Gesine Manuwald is Professor of Latin at University College London. Her research interests include Roman drama, Roman epic, Cicero’s speeches and Neo-Latin literature. She has published extensively on all these areas; in 2012 she co-edited the volume Neo-Latin Poetry in the British Isles. Anastasia-Erasmia Peponi is Professor of Classics at Stanford University. She writes on issues of aesthetic perception and judgment, ancient and modern lyric poetry, Plato, dance, and the relationship between the verbal and the visual. Among her publications are Frontiers of Pleasure: Models of Aesthetic Response in Archaic and Classical Greek Thought (Oxford University Press, 2012) and (ed.) Performance and Culture in Plato’s Laws (Cambridge University Press, 2013).

Contributors � ���

Alison Sharrock is Professor of Classics at the University of Manchester. She is the author of Seduction and Repetition in Ovid’s Ars Amatoria II (Oxford, 1994) and Reading Roman Comedy: Poetics and Playfulness in Plautus and Terence (Cambridge, 2009), as well as of edited books and articles across Latin verse literature from the Republic to the early Empire. She is particularly interested in theoretical approaches to classical literature, including feminism, genre theory, narratology, and the construction of meaning. Niall W. Slater (Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Latin and Greek, Emory University) focuses on the ancient theatre and its production conditions, prose fiction, and popular reception of classical literature. His books include Spectator Politics: Metatheatre and Performance in Aristophanes (University of Pennsylvania Press 2002); Reading Petronius (Johns Hopkins UP, 1990); and Plautus in Performance: The Theatre of the Mind (Princeton, 1985; 2nd ed. Harwood, 2000), as well as translations for The Birth of Comedy (ed. J. Rusten, Johns Hopkins UP, 2011) and the Bloomsbury Companion to Euripides' Alcestis (2013). He is currently working on the fragments of Roman Republican drama for a new Loeb Classical Library edition. Efrossini Spentzou is a Reader in Latin Literature and Classical Reception at Royal Holloway University of London. She has written monographs on Ovid’s Heroides (OUP), Subjectivity in Imperial Rome (Ohio UP), and Politics and Elegy in Augustan Rome (Bloomsbury). She has coedited with Don Fowler a volume on Power, Inspiration and Creativity in Classical literature (OUP) and has just finished co-editing with William Fitzgerald a volume on the Production of Space in Latin literature (OUP). Gareth Williams is Professor of Classics at Columbia University and has published mostly in the areas of Augustan poetry, Senecan philosophical prose, and Renaissance Latin. David Wray is Associate Professor in the Departments of Classics and Comparative Literature at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Catullus and the Poetics of Roman Manhood (Cambridge 2001), a coeditor of Seneca and the Self (Cambridge 2009), and has written on a wide range of ancient and modern poets including Homer, Apollonius of Rhodes, Tibullus, Ovid, Statius, Alexander Pope, Louis Zukofsky, David Jones, and Hugh MacDiarmid.

General Index aesthetic — attitude 167, 177–8, 182, 185

Bullough, Edward 167–9, 182, 185 Butrica, James 58–9

— experience 167, 177–80, 182, 184 — distance 167–8, 171–2

cantata 253

afterlife 125, 131, 135

Castiglione, Baldassare 252

agriculture 71–4

Cato 141, 144

allegory 255

Catullus 154, 158, 172–3, 185

androcentric

Causton, Peter 275–93

— genre 85–8, 92, 108

chastity 238–9, 241

Antaeus 140, 145

Cicero 189, 191, 194, 199

Antonius, Marcus

complexus 45

— Plutarch and 19–24

crucifixion 239, 242

— Propertius and 24–7

Culler, Jonathan 141–2

Aphrodisia festival — and Plautus’ Poenulus 207–18, passim

Danto, Arthur 139

— and relation to ludi 217

death 37–50, 125–35, 170, 174

— as rite de passage in Plautus’ Poenulus

deconstruction 141

217

desire 168–70, 176–7, 181, 184

— in Greece 208

Diogenes Laertius 181

— in Rome 208

domus 69–70, 75–6

Aphrodite Pandemos — in Menander 208 Appendix Vergiliana 189–91

Donatus — Vit. Verg. 191 Duffy, Carol Ann 305–7

— see also ‘[Vergil]’ Aristotle — the philosopher 168, 177, 181 — on tragedy 232

Echo — in Chronis 253, 255–6, 259, 261, 269, 272

Atwood, Margaret 302–4

— in Ovid’s Metamorphoses 133–5

audience(s) 237–8, 245–6

elegy 86–8, 90–2, 95, 100, 102–3, 106 Empedocles 49–50

Baiae 76–9

epic 251, 253–4

baroque 252–3, 257

epicedium

beauty contest 209 bed 70–2, 75–6 Blanchot, Maurice 298 boundaries 246 bucolic 251–74 https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110596182-021

— as funeral poetry 252 Epictetus — on tragedy 232 Epicureanism 196–7, 199, 202, 241

322 � General Index

Epicurus / Epicurean 177–82, 185, 192, 194, 196–7, 199–202

— the poet 151–5, 158–64, 193–4, 201–2 — Carmen Saeculare 159, 162

eros / erotic 170, 172–7, 183–5

humanism / humanist 251–6

eudaimonism 229

Hutchinson, Gregory 63–4

Eurydice 125–6, 128–31, 296–310 evil

iamb 153, 159

— and Stoic ethics 231

impulse 170, 176–7, 182–5

— see also ‘Stoic / Stoicism’

intertextuality 154

exanimus 82

Irigaray, Luce 86, 88, 104

Fabius Maximus, Paullus (cos. 11 BCE)

Janan, Micaela 56, 60–1, 64

120–1

Jesuits 253

facetiae 154–6 failure — and tragedy 221–8, 232–5

Kant, Immanuel 167–8, 185 kingship 223, 226, 232

fama 88-92, 94, 101–3 fear — in Seneca’s Oedipus 223–4 female

Lang, Berel 138–9 Lanuvium — snake ritual of 60–3

— voice 85–6, 88

lena 115

frigidity / cold 80–3

limen 69 London

Gallus 37–50

— Fire of 275–93

gender 85–7, 92, 152

love 37–50, 125–35

generic indecorum 103

Lucretius 37–49, 190–1, 193, 196–8, 200–2

genialis 82

luxury 152–3, 155–6

Gill, Christopher 13–18, 28–33

lyre playing 153, 158, 160, 163–4

Glück, Louise 307–9 Greeks — Roman views of 163

Marlowe, Christopher 137 marriage 238, 243 matrona 237–8, 245

Halberstam, Judith 221–2, 234

Matronalia 75, 78

Hercules 140, 143, 145, 147

memini 39, 42

hilaritas 245–6

Messalla 69–70, 72–4, 79–81

historiography 157

meta-play 214, 217

history

Milesian tale 237

— literary 111–22

militia amoris 88, 97–8, 103–4

Holocaust 138–9 Horace

narcissism 223, 229

General Index � 323

Andromeda and Hypermestra in 57,

Narcissus 125, 131–5

59

narrative 125–9, 131–3 New Spain (Mexico) 251–3, 257

Cynthia as snake-like 61, 65

Nonconformists 281–3

Cynthia’s ghost in 4.7 54–60, 65 Homeric allusion in 51, 55, 61 narratological ‘reality’ in 51–3, 57–

Orpheus 125–32, 296–310

60, 62, 64–5

Osorio Romero, Ignacio 251–3

and Tibullus 1.3 57

Ovid — the poet 169, 172–8, 182, 185, 253–4, 296–7 — Heroides 112–15, 121, 170–5 — Metamorphoses 125–35, 253

traces of comedy and mime in 54 Proust, Marcel 182–5 psyche — Platonic – Aristotelian concepts of and Plutarch 16, 19–24

Papanghelis, Theodore V, VII-XIII passim,

and Propertius 24–34

1, 13, 37, 45–6, 51–4, 58, 65–6, 174, 211, 251, 254, 310, 313–16

and Vergil 17–18, 32, 34 — Stoic – Epicurean concepts of

Papists 276, 282–3

and Propertius 24–34

paraclausithyron 69–70

and Seneca 16–18, 31

pastoral 251–4

and Vergil 16–19, 34

pastorale maccheronico 252

pudicitia 237, 239, 241–2, 245

Petronius

pudor 88–92, 107

— ‘Widow of Ephesus’ 237–46 Philodemus

queer theory 221–6, 234

— the Epicurean philosopher and poet 180–1, 191–3

‘recognitio’ scene 214, 216

— De adulatione 192

refrain 253–4

— De morte 193

Rilke, Rainer Maria 298–302

Plato / Platonic 176–7, 179–82, 183–5

Rome 69–70, 75, 78–80, 82–3

Plotius 192–4

rus 71–2, 80, 83

Plutarch 178–80

rustic

poeta comicus / vates 217

— house 83

poetry

— ritual 73

— Latin 111–22

— tone 83

Pompey 140, 142–7 post-modernism 138–9

Sallust 151–64

Propertius

Sappho 169–76

— the poet 37–50, 88–92, 95, 100, 104, 107, 172–4 — elegies 4.7, 4.8

senses / sensory 167–9, 172, 177, 180, 183, 185 sermo 158

324 � General Index

servitium amoris 70, 92, 106–8 Servius 198

uilla 74, 79–80, 83

silence 91–2, 95, 97, 99, 101–2, 105, 107–8

uterque 82

Silius Italicus 253 Siro 190–1, 194, 198–201

Varius — and the Epicurean company 192–4,

soul — ascension of the 142–3, 147 — see also ‘transmigration’

201 — as author of De morte 193

speech 85, 88, 91, 93–4, 100-2, 104–7

Venning, Ralph 277–8

standing

ventriloquism 86, 102, 104, 106

— (arbitrium) 91, 94–8, 103–5, 107

Venus

Steiner, George 138

— Erycina 208, 210

Stoic / Stoicism

— Verticordia 208, 210

— and Cremutius Cordus 143

— vates / haruspex of 217

— and ekpyrosis (conflagration) 138,

— as patroness of both courtesans and

143 — and moral perfectionism 222, 228–31 — see also ‘evil’ subaltern 86–7, 94 subjectivity 85–90, 92, 94, 97, 99, 101, 103–4 suicide 241, 243–4

free girls / matronae 217 Vergil — the poet 37–50, 189–90, 192–4, 198– 9, 201–2, 254, 296–7 — Eclogues 252, 254 — Aeneid 113, 116, 120–1 [Vergil]

Sulpicia 85–109

— Catalepton 189–91, 194–6, 198–202

swimming 77–8

— Culex 189–90

symposium 70–1, 75

— see also ‘Appendix Vergiliana’ vidimus 39, 41–2

temporality 152–4, 159

voluptas 39–41, 48

testis 39–42, 45 Thomas (Apostle) 256

wordplay 155–6, 161–2

Tiber 77–8

writing

Tibullus 85, 94, 100, 102, 104-5, 108 transformation 125, 128–9, 133

— (vs. orality) 157 Wyke, Maria 56, 60

transmigration — of the soul 144 — see also ‘soul’

Zanchi, Lucio Pietro (Basilio) 252, 273

Index Locorum The Index Locorum includes ancient sources. Fragmentary texts are cited by the number and name of modern editor only. The relevant editions of both ancient sources and fragmentary texts are to be found in the bibliography accompanying each article. Abbreviations for ancient works are those of LSJ and OLD. Accius

— Cael.

— fr. 33 Warmington = 655 Ribbeck 243

27 77

— fr. 34 Warmington = 656 Ribbeck 243

36 77 38 77

Aelian — VH 12.19 175

49 77 — Fam. 6.11.2 191 7.30.2 199

Anthologia Palatina 5.246.1–2 175

— Fin. 1.49 201 1.65 191, 194

Aristotle — de An. 421a19–20 168 — EE 1230b 168, 177

2.119 191–2 — Orat. 156 243 — Pis. 68–72 192 74 192

Athenaeus 12.546e 181

— Red. sen. 14–15 192 — Tusc.

Caesius Bassus

3.41 181

— fr. 1 Courtney 151

5.2.5 199

Cato — fr. 8.115 Malcovati 154 Catullus 5.7–13 172

Dio 60.16 244 Diogenes Laertius 10.6 181, 195, 199 10.11 202

Cicero

10.130–1 201

— Acad. 2.106 191

Donatus — Vit. Verg.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110596182-022

326 � Index Locorum

37 192 39–41 192

— Epod. 17 153 — Sat.

Epictetus

1.1.24–5 158

— Gnom.

1.5.39–44 194

1.4.26 232

1.10.43–5 193 1.10.81–3 193

Epicurus — apud Diog. Laert. KD 14 [DL 10.143] 200 KD 27 [DL 10.148] 194

Isidore — Diff. 1.239 162

— Ep. Men. [DL 10.127] 196 — Ep. Pyth.

Juvenal 6. O16 240

[DL 10.116] 195 — Sent. Vat. 17 199

Lucan 1.45–58 146–7 4.593–4 145

Herodotus 1.5 163

6.413–618 145 7.445–8 145 7.812–17 145-6

Homer

8.851–8 142

— Od.

9.1–9 142–3

23.133–51 241–2 Horace — Ars P.

9.15–18 144 Lucretius 2.16–19 200

333–4 278

3.9–13 199

338 279

3.14–17 200

343–4 278

3.112–16 196

— Carm.

4.1052–67 197

1.11 153

4.1192–207 177

3.10 155

5.52–4 199

4.1 116–21

5.1430–3 196

4.5.7 239

6.24 199

4.13 151, 153, 159–61, 163 — Epist.

Martial

1.19.5 201

1.34.8 240

2.1.32–3 163

3.93.15 240

Index Locorum � 327

8.55.20 189

113.2 244–5

8.14.185 189

113.4 245–6

Ovid

Phaedrus

— Am.

— App. 15 240

1.1 118–21 1.4.31–2 172

Philodemus

1.6.38 70

— Mus.

1.6.47 70

4 col. xvii 8–12 181

1.8.23 81 2.16.11–12 81

Phocas

2.16.33–40 80-1

— Vit. Verg.

— Ars am.

87 191

2.715–32 177 3.341–6 113-14 — Met.

Plato — Rep.

9.250–5 143

402a–403c 177

10.1–85 296–7

475c-d 179

14.600–4 143

476b 180

14.816–28 143

606d1–7 176

15.845–50 143–4 — Tr. 4.10.41–54 111–12

Plautus — Poen. 138–9 211

[Ovid]

142–3 211

— Ep. Sapph.

185–6 212

31–50 170–5

371–2 210

123–34 170

429 212

219–20 170

910 213 1137 214

P. Herc.

1147–8 214

312, col. I.4.5–13 191 1082 192

Pliny

Paris. 2 192

— Ep. 3.16 244

Petronius — Sat. 91.6 238

Plutarch — Ant.

110–12 237–47

2.4–5 20

113.1 245–6

17.4–5 20–1

328 � Index Locorum

36.1–2 22

1 152

66.7–8 23

2 157

77.7 23

3 157–8

— Mor.

5 159

1095c–d 178

10 153, 158–9

1095e 180

11 152 14 158

Probus

22 154

— Vit. Verg.

24 152, 155–6

10–12 Hardie 192

25 151, 153–5, 158 40 152

Propertius 1.1.1–8 29 1.3.34–6 71

Schol. Veron. ad Ecl. 6.10 191

1.5.3 30 1.5.15–18 30

Seneca the Younger

1.8.31–2 83

— De ira

1.11.11–12 78 2.13.1–16 172–3

3.26.4 231 — Ep.

2.13.25–30 174

66.45 201

2.16.3–4 71

75.15–16 230

2.19.1–2 80

85.15 233

2.22.1–2 81

87.5 231

2.22a.3–10 25 2.23.13–16 26

88.37 175 — Oedip.

2.34.13–18 26

6 223

3.20.13 27

14 223, 226

3.20.15–16 27

27 223

3.21.1–2 33

28–31 223–4

3.21.25–30 33

206 224

3.24.9–20 30–1

659 224

4.3 114–15

764 224

4.5 116

868 224 879–81 224–5

Quintilian

998–9 225

— Inst.

1003 225

8.3.27–9 189

1050–1 226–7 1052–8 227

Sallust — Cat.

1059–61 227–8

Index Locorum � 329

— Thyest. 885–9 221

[Tibullus]

Servius

3.1–6 (Lygdamus) 75–8

— ad Ecl.

3.3.1–16 75–6

6.13 191 — ad Aen. 6.264 191

3.5.1–6 76–7 3.5.29–30 77 3.8-18 (Sulpicia) 78–83 3.14 79–81

Statius

3.15 81–3

— Silv. 1 praefatio 189

Varro — Ling.

Tacitus — Ann. 15.44.2–3 283

6.46 198 — Sat. Men. 398 162

Terence

Vergil

— Haut.

— Ecl.

389–91 215

3.59 201 9.35–6 193

Thucydides 1.10 163

— G. 2.475 201 4.453–527 296–7

Tibullus 1.1.1–48 71–2

4.559–66 70 — Aen.

1.1.53–6 69–70

1.208 198

1.2.5–10 69

2.324–7 280

1.2.7–14 72

4.1–2 198

1.2.19–24 70

4.34 241

1.2.73–6 72 1.3 72

[Vergil]

1.5.19–34 73

— Catal.

1.7 73

5 190, 194–6, 198

1.10 73–4

5.9 191, 199

1.10.41–4 74

8.1.1 191

1.10.67–8 74 2 74-5, 83

Vita Lucani 189