Strategies of Ambiguity in Ancient Literature 9783110715811, 9783110715415

Citation preview

Strategies of Ambiguity in Ancient Literature

Trends in Classics – Supplementary Volumes

Edited by Franco Montanari and Antonios Rengakos Associate Editors Stavros Frangoulidis · 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 · Stephen Hinds · Richard Hunter Christina Kraus · Giuseppe Mastromarco Gregory Nagy · Theodore D. Papanghelis Giusto Picone · Tim Whitmarsh Bernhard Zimmermann

Volume 114

Strategies of Ambiguity in Ancient Literature Edited by Martin Vöhler, Therese Fuhrer and Stavros Frangoulidis

ISBN 978-3-11-071541-5 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-071581-1 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-071584-2 ISSN 1868-4785 Library of Congress Control Number: 2020950018 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. © 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Editorial Office: Alessia Ferreccio and Katerina Zianna Logo: Christopher Schneider, Laufen Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com

Preface This volume comprises twenty-five revised and edited papers given at the conference on “Intended Ambiguity”, which was held at the “Stephanos Dragoumis” Auditorium in the Museum of Byzantine Culture, Thessaloniki, from May 23–26, 2019. The event was co-organized by the Department of Classics, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich and the Department of Classics-School of Philology at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. On account of the wide variety of approaches adopted by the authors, editorial standardization focused on editing and formatting papers in accordance with the general Trends in Classics style. Authors were free to choose the textual and translation reference system they considered most appropriate for the elaboration of their argument, using either US or UK spelling, and full or abbreviated first names or initials in the bibliography. All contributions have undergone a rigorous interactive and colloborative peer-review process. We would like to thank all invited speakers, chairpersons and participants for a stimulating conference, which raised many fascinating issues and generated lively discussions. A special word of thanks must go to our undergraduate and graduate students for their invaluable help in organizational matters, and especially to Arsenia Koukopoulou, Anastasios Tarenidis and Comninos Michailidis. We are particularly indebted to Mrs Anastasia Pantazopoulou, ABD at the University of Florida, Gainesville, for updating conference news on social media before and during the event. Mrs. Agathoniki Tsistipakou, Director of the Museum of Byzantine Culture, embraced the conference from the outset and arranged for all conference participants to view Museum exhibits free of charge. The Museum Personnel are also to be thanked for offering invaluable support and technical assistance. Many thanks also go to our sponsors and supporters for getting our endeavor off the ground: The University Studio Press; The Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki; The Museum of Byzantine Culture; The School of Philology at the Aristotle University; The Aristotle University-Research Committee; His Excellency Walter Stechel, deutscher Generalkonsul in Thessaloniki; and The Stavros Niarchos Cultural Foundation. Ms. Eleni Agouridi, Senior Program Office of the Foundation, outdid herself in ensuring that assistance reached us in due time. We are also indebted to the Welfare Foundation for Social and Cultural Affairs (KIKPE) for sponsoring this event as part of its ongoing support for the

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110715811-202

VI  Preface Trends in Classics conference series over the past several years. Through this partnership KIKPE has had a significant hand in facilitating research via the annual Trends in Classics conference series in Thessaloniki. The arduous task of compiling the Indices was undertaken by our former and current graduate students Maria Leventi (University of California, Santa Barbara) and Dimitra Karamitsou (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki). Maria Leventi generously offered her expertise in proof-reading. Both graduate students mentioned above are to be warmly thanked. We sincerely thank Angela Zerbe, who was responsible for proofreading and language editing of all the chapters included in the volume. We would also like to register our gratitude to Franco Montanari and Antonios Rengakos, General Editors of Trends in Classics, for their support and encouragement in including the present collection of essays in the Trends in Classics – Supplementary Volumes series. Finally, we wish to thank everyone at Walter de Gruyter and especially Marco Michele Acquafredda, Project Editor, for his editorial advice and Katerina Zianna, Copy Editor, for her care in typesetting and overseeing all stages of the production process. Martin Vöhler, Therese Fuhrer and Stavros Frangoulidis Thessaloniki and Munich, in the summer 2020

Contents Preface  V List of Figures  XI

Part I: Concepts and Aesthetics of Ambiguity Martin Vöhler Modern and Ancient Concepts of Ambiguity  3 Pantelis Golitsis Aristotle on Ambiguity  11 Chloe Balla Intended Ambiguity in Plato’s Phaedo  29 Susanne Reichlin The Ambiguity of the Unambiguous: Figures of Death in Late Medieval Literature  43 Michael Lüthy The Modern Perspective: Ambiguity, Artistic Self-Reference, and the Autonomy of Art  61

Part II: Playing with Linguistic Ambiguity Jenny Strauss Clay Traversing No-Man’s Land  81 John T. Hamilton The Ambiguity of Wisdom: Mētis in the Odyssey  91 Evina Sistakou Borges in Alexandria? Modes of Ambiguity in Hellenistic Poetry  101 Anna Lamari Sympotic Sexuality: The Ambiguity of Seafood in Middle Comedy (Nausicrates fr. 1 K.-A.)  123

VIII  Contents Antje Wessels Liber esto – Wordplay and Ambiguity in Petronius’ Satyrica  141

Part III: Ambiguous Narratives Robert Kirstein Half Heroes? Ambiguity in Ovid’s Metamorphoses  157 Stella Alekou Underneath the Arachnean and Minervan Veil of Ambiguity: Cultural and Political Simulatio in Ovidian Ecphrasis  175 Jacqueline Fabre-Serris Ambigua Verba, Hidden Desire and Auctorial Intentionality in Some Ovidian Speeches (Met. 3.279–92; 7.810–23, 10.364–6; 440–1)  193 Stavros Frangoulidis The Pleasures of Ambiguity: Aristomenes’ Tale of Socrates in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses  207 Marco Formisano Legens. Ambiguity, Syllepsis and Allegory in Claudian’s De Raptu Proserpinae  219

Part IV: Ambiguity as Argument Irmgard Männlein-Robert Between Conversion and Madness: Sophisticated Ambiguity in Lucian’s Nigrinus  237 Richard F. Thomas Catullan Ambiguity  251 Stephen Harrison Prophetic, Poetic and Political Ambiguity in Vergil Eclogue 4  273 Janja Soldo Vitae aut vocis ambigua: Seneca the Younger and Ambiguity  285

Contents  IX

Lisa Cordes Who speaks? – Ambiguity and Vagueness in the Design of Cicero’s Dialogue Speakers  297 Therese Fuhrer Unsettling Effects and Disconcertment − Strategies of Enacting Interpretations in Tacitusʼ Annals  315 Bram van der Velden The Latin Commentary Tradition on ‘Inclusive’ Intended Ambiguity  331

Part V: Ambiguous Receptions Florian Mehltretter Ambivalent Allegories: Giovan Battista Marino’s Adone (1623) between Censorship and Hermeneutic Freedom  351 Michalis Chryssanthopoulos Multipliers of Ambiguity: The Use of Quotations in Cavafy’s Poems Concerning the Emperor Julian  365 Joachim Knape Seven Perspectives of Ambiguity and the Problem of Intentionality  381 List of Contributors  405 General Index  411 Index of Passages  417

List of Figures Fig. 1:

Fig. 2: Fig. 3:

Fig. 4: Fig. 5: Fig. 6: Fig. 7: Fig. 8: Fig. 9: Fig. 10: Fig. 11: Fig. 12: Fig. 13:

Fig. 14:

Johann Kurtz, Ich gfall mir billich wol; single-leaf woodcut, hand-colored [S.l. ca. 1510/20]; 23.58cm x 38.51cm; Munich, BSB Xylogr. 57 © Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München.  57 Johann Kurtz, Ich gfall mir billich wol; single-leaf woodcut, hand-colored [S.l. ca. 1510/20]; Munich BSB Xylogr. 57 © Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München.  58 Johann Kurtz, EIN GVT SLIG NEVIAR …; single-leaf woodcut, partly hand-colored [S.l. ca. 1510/20]; 29.9cm x 42.33cm; London, British Museum: 1895,0122.28. © The Trustees of the British Museum.  59 Pompeii, Casa dei Vettii, Triclinium, West wall (Detail), 1st Century AD.  64 Apollonius, Belvedere Torso, 2nd/1st Century BC, Museo Pio Clementino, Musei Vaticani, Roma.  65 Stabiae, Villa di Arianna, so-called Flora, 1st Century AD, Museo Archeologico Nationale, Napoli.  66 Mary Cassatt, Self-Portrait, 1879, National Portrait Gallery, Washington. DC.  67 Auguste Rodin, Walking Man (L’homme qui marche), 1877/1900, Von der Heydt-Museum, Wuppertal.  68 Yves Klein, IKB 270, 1959, Private Collection, Marburg.  69 Marcel Duchamp, Bottle Rack, 1964, edition of 8+2 replicas of the lost original from 1914.  71 Joseph Beuys, 7000 Oaks (7000 Eichen. Stadtverwaldung statt Stadtverwaltung), 1982–87, Kassel.  74 Vito Acconci, Following Piece, Performance, October 3–25, 1969, various locations in New York City.  75 Miniature from a 15th century French codex, depicting the dialogue setting of De senectute: Cato speaks to Scipio, Laelius and Atticus (Chantilly, MS 0282 (0491), fol. 214), courtesy of Musée Condé, Chantilly, France.  312 Frontispiece of Angelo Mai’s editio princeps of De re publica (Rome, 1822), depicting the dialogue’s setting, courtesy of the University Library of the Freie Universität Berlin.  312

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110715811-204



Part I: Concepts and Aesthetics of Ambiguity

Martin Vöhler

Modern and Ancient Concepts of Ambiguity Abstract: Ambiguity in the sense of two or more possible meanings is considered to be a distinctive feature of modern art and literature. It characterizes the ‘open work of art’ (Eco) and is generated by strategies to engender uncertainty. While ambiguity is seen as the preferred domain of modernity, there is skepticism regarding its use in the pre-modern era. Older studies were dominated by the conviction that there was a lack of ambiguity in pre-modernity because, according to the rules of the ‘old rhetoric’, ambiguity was seen as an avoidable error (vitium) and a violation of the dictate of perspicuity. Is it not possible to find in antiquity clear examples of deliberately employed (intended) ambiguity? Stanford was the first to re-examine the putative ‘absence of ambiguity’ in the pre-modern era. His approach serves as a starting point for the following studies. Keywords: ambiguity (amphibolía), Aristoteles, connection (sýnthesis), form of expression (schéma tes léxeos), homonymity (homonymía), individual word (léxis), ‘open work of art’ (Eco), perspicuity (saphéneia), separation (diaíresis), stress (prosodía)

Ambiguity in the sense of two or more meanings is regarded as a significant characteristic of modern art and literature. Christoph Bode describes it (in the context of his comprehensive study of 1988) as a “paradigm of modernity”.1 In view of the increasing use of the term, however, a certain skepticism can be perceived. With the “suspicion that ‘somehow’ almost everything in our (post)modern times could be described as ambiguous and ambivalent”, literary and art scholars as well as the art world, where the term is “ubiquitous”, 2 are calling for a critical revision of the term ambiguous. 3 A study of ancient concepts of ambiguity, however, contributes only indirectly to the current discussion, to the extent that it deals with the question of the ambiguity of pre-modernism, which has hardly been explored in literary and art studies.4 It makes sense to look at the historical dimension of the concept and to examine its scope. Is ambiguity really the preferred domain of modernity? What about its use in pre-modern literature? Can  1 Bode 1988, 2. 2 Berndt/Kammer 2009, 10. 3 Krieger/Mader 2010, 9. 4 In the introduction to their research report, Auge/Witthöft 2016, 1–18 share this view. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110715811-001

  Martin Vöhler strategies of intended ambiguity already be recognized here, or are they inadmissible ‘retrospective projections’ when the term is applied to a pre-modern work? 5 How is the concept used? Are there any specific differences regarding its use in modernity? These questions are the focus of the contributions collected in this volume. Based on the current discussion, pre-modernity will be examined. In Umberto Eco’s 1962 study Opera Aperta, 6 which is fundamental to the establishment of the term, the author examines the openness of interpretation of works of art. He starts from the assumption that an artwork (as a carrier of meaning) always comprises several meanings.7 It is not aimed at clarity and unambiguity, but at ambiguity and indeterminacy, even the inexhaustibility of interpretations. We might add that clarity and explicitness lead to a suspicion of kitsch or propaganda, for they deprive the work of art of its aesthetic value. According to Eco, the work of art as such has the characteristic of multiple meanings. To express this trait, he chooses the term ambiguity. He states that openness (in the sense of a fundamental ambiguity) is constitutive for the works of art of all epochs. 8 Irrespective of this basic assumption, however, he observes specific forms of ambiguity that distinguish modern art. His study begins with compositions of the ‘New Music’. The scores by Stockhausen, Berio and Posseur offer the performer great freedom and a broad spectrum of possibilities; in a sense, they form an “explicit invitation to exercise choice”.9 Eco recognizes in the spaces provided here the basic features of a “poetics of the open work” 10 of art that differs from traditional poetics. The compositions of the ‘New Music’ “reject the definitive, concluded message and multiply the formal possibilities of the distribution of their elements. They appeal to the initiative of the individual performer, and hence they offer themselves not as finite works which prescribe specific repetition along given structural coordinates but as ‘open’ works, which are brought to their conclusion by the performer at the same time as he experiences them on an aesthetic

 5 Krieger expresses this suspicion 2007, 89. 6 Eco 1962/32006. 7 Eco 1962/32006, 98: “l’opera d’arte è un messaggio fondamentalmente ambiguo, una pluralità di significati che convivono in un solo significante.” 8 Compare Eco 1962/32006, 106: “La nozione di ‘opera aperta’ non ha rilievo assiologico. Il senso di questi saggi non è (qualcuno li ha intesi cosí; poi ha virtuosamente sostenuto l’inattendibilità della tesi) di dividere le opere d’arte in opere valide (‘aperte’) e opere non valide, sorpassate, brutte (‘chiuse’); si è sostenuto abbastanza, crediamo, che l’apertura, intesa come ambiguità fondamentale del messaggio artistico, è una costante di ogni opera in ogni tempo.” 9 Eco 1989, 1. 10 This is the title of his first essay in the collection, Eco 1989, 1–23.

Modern and Ancient Concepts of Ambiguity  

plane.” 11 Eco sees the tendency observed in the ‘New Music’ towards the “open”, i.e. ambiguous, work of art also in the visual arts of the present 12 as well as in contemporary literature.13 Bode confirms and deepens this approach in his study on “The Function and Meaning of Ambiguity in Modern Literature”, which he programmatically places under the title “The Aesthetics of Ambiguity”. 14 The concept of ambiguity is “synonymous with two or more meanings”. 15 In order to emphasize the new aspects of contemporary aesthetics, Bode draws the following conclusion by implication. While modernist literature is characterized by its ambiguity, older literature is distinguished by its avoidance of ambiguity. He postulates a fundamental “distance from ambiguity” for all ancient art and literature. 16 Is this reasoning correct? It undoubtedly applies to ancient rhetoric, because in its framework the use of ambiguous stylistic devices appears to be a violation of the imperative of clarity and perspicuity (σαφήνεια, perspicuitas). These promote the trust and credibility that the speaker wants to gain from his listeners. 17 Ambiguity, on the other hand, leads to a lack of clarity (ἀσάφεια) and damages prestige and authority: its use is considered dubious or unwise. The entire rhetorical tradition adheres to this precept of avoiding ambiguity. 18 The avoidance of ambiguity applies to rhetoric, but not to ancient art and literature. This is the conclusion of Stanford’s fundamental study (Ambiguity in Greek Literature) of 1939, 19 the first part of which deals with ancient rhetoric and the second with poetry. The study is based on the Aristotelian writings, especially the Sophistical Refutations and Rhetoric, which sum up the philosophical critique practiced by Socrates and Plato on the Sophist Enlightenment. 20 Aristotle system-

 11 Eco 1989, 4. 12 Eco 1989, 84–104. 13 Literary ambiguity is explored in illustrative analyses of the works of James Joyce, cf. Eco 1977, 295–441. 14 Bode 1988. 15 Bode 1988, 2. 16 Bode 1988, 279: “The art of antiquity would be accordingly […] distant from ambiguity.” 17 Cf. Arist. Po. XXII 1458a18f.; Arist. Rh. III,2 1404b2. For the text linguistic principle of ambiguity avoidance and the rhetoric tradition, cf. Bauer/Knape/Koch/Winkler 2010, 16f. 18 Cf. Fabian 1971, 202: “In all eras ambiguity is considered reprehensible and avoidable.” See also Bernecker/Steinfeld 1992, 436–439. 19 Stanford 1939/21972. 20 Arist. SE IV 165b23–166b27; Arist. Rh. II,24 1400b34–1402a28.

  Martin Vöhler atizes this critique and, in the Sophistical Refutations, a small script that represents an appendix to the Topics, he treats the various possibilities of deception, presenting a total of thirteen strategies.21 What are the linguistic deceptions based on and what means are used? Aristotle distinguishes five types of ambiguity; he describes them as 1. homonymity (ὁμωνυμία), 2. ambiguity (ἀμφιβολία), 3. connection (σύνθεσις) and separation (διαίρεσις), 4. stress (προσῳδία) and 5. form of expression (σχῆμα τῆς λέξεως). These five types describe the entire rhetorical application spectrum of ambiguity, which fulfils the following functions: 1. Homonymity (ὁμωνυμία) leads to ambiguity when the word in question has two or more meanings. Ambiguity becomes in this way effective within the range of the individual word (λέξις). Ambiguity (ἀμφιβολία) refers to turns of phrase that include several successive words, but whose possible references remain ambiguous, as, for example, in the context of the discussion of the Aristotelian definition of catharsis,22 the concept of the genitive of “the passions” is highly controversial in interpretations since the Renaissance. 23 The type ‘connection and separation’ refers to the belonging together of letters, words or phrases. The question is about the connection of the separated (σύνθεσις) or the separation of the connected (διαίρεσις). This type of liminal ambiguity arises from uncertainty about the delimitation of letters, words or phrases. 24 4. The stress (προσῳδία) of a word can also produce ambiguity: if the accent shifts, then the sense of a word can shift fundamentally (for instance from νόμος to νομός). Pronunciation or accentuation thus produces prosodic ambiguity. 25 5. The form of an expression (σχῆμα τῆς λέξεως) is ambiguous if it permits different grammatical interpretations (for instance indicative and imperative or singular and plural) and can thereby cause confusion. Grammatical analysis is required to determine morphological ambiguity. 26 The composition of the five types of ambiguity clarifies the breadth and flexibility of this linguistic means: it can occur in the range of the single word (as lexical ambiguity), word addition (as syntactic ambiguity), word separation (as liminal ambiguity), accentuation  21 Dorion 1995, 69–91. 22 Arist. Po. VI 1449b24–8. 23 Cf. Mittenzwei 2001, 245–271; Luserke 1991. 24 Cf. Stanford 1939/21972, 8: “ambiguities of conjunction, based on either of two things: either uncertainties in the proper division between letters or words […] or else uncertainties in punctuation”; Lausberg 1960/21973, §222 gives examples for the ambiguity of connection and separation: ingenua ‘freeborn’ vs. in genua ‘on the knee’; for the ambiguity of sentence construction: Lachetem audivi percussisse Demean (who struck whom?). 25 Cf. Stanford 1939/21972, 9: “ambiguity of pronunciation, or of accent”. 26 Cf. Stanford 1939/21972, 9: “ambiguity based on apparent analogy of grammatical form”.

Modern and Ancient Concepts of Ambiguity  

(as prosodic ambiguity) and word form (as morphological ambiguity). Uncertainty is always generated as to how the ambiguous expression is to be interpreted. 27 Ambiguity itself can be defined both narrowly and broadly. In its strict form it encompasses two meanings that exclude each other, so that ‘ambiguity’ arises in the sense of opposition. The school tradition gives examples of this: in culto loco (‘on built-up ground’) and inculto loco (‘on undeveloped ground’):28 between the two meanings there is an exclusion relationship (aut/aut). More broadly, however, the ambiguous expression contains several meanings. Homonyms in particular tend towards ambiguity; the school tradition gives the following examples: lat. gallus equally stands for ‘cock’, ‘gaul’ or ‘eunuch’, while lat. cernere means ‘sever’, ‘perceive’ or ‘inherit’. 29 The assumption of one of the listed meanings is left up to subjective choice. The offer of possible alternatives (vel/vel) must be reviewed. Ambiguity can thus be used concisely or variably (open to different meanings); accordingly, the disjunction appears hard or soft. Two views have emerged within modern literary studies. While Empson, Eco and Bode had advocated a broad concept of ambiguity, 30 Bernd and Kammer called for a concentration on “antagonistic-simultaneous ambiguity”. 31 Ambiguity is thus favored either in the broad (vel/vel) or in the narrow (aut/aut) sense. Against the background of the rhetorical tradition and its systematization by Aristotle, both views appear equally justified. But what about the literary practice of antiquity? Is the use of ambiguity dispensed with here, as in rhetoric, perhaps even under its lasting influence? Stanford was the first to address this question and oriented his investigation to literary

 27 In the case of homonymity (ὁμωνυμία) and syntactic ambiguity (ἀμφιβολία) the question arises as to the semantic meaning. A formal definition becomes necessary regarding separation and connection or stress. Finally, the grammatical construction must be clarified when the ambiguous expression makes several interpretations possible. Stanford 1939/21972, 9, explains this differentiation as follows: homonymity (ὁμωνυμία) and syntactic ambiguity (ἀμφιβολία) lead to “semantic uncertainty”; connection (σύνθεσις), separation (διαίρεσις), and accentuation (προσῳδία) on the other hand can generate “formal uncertainty”; “morphological uncertainty” is based on the form of the expression (σχῆμα τῆς λέξεως). 28 Lausberg 1960/21973, §222. 29 Lausberg 1960/21973, §222, cf. also §1068. 30 Cf. Empson 1949, 5f.; Eco 1962/32006, 98; Bode 1988, 2. 31 Bernd/Kammer 2009, 10: “Structural ambiguity is the name we [i.e. Bernd/Kammer] give — as will be shown, for good historical reasons — a matrix generating an antagonistic-simultaneous ambiguity.”

  Martin Vöhler genres, starting from Aristotelian typology.32 While in the Iliad only sporadic, and therefore unspectacular forms of ambiguity 33 are employed, the Odyssey shifts to “more subtle uses”.34 The meeting of Odysseus and Polyphemus is a highlight. Odysseus owes his life to his cunning appearance as Nobody (Οὖτις and οὔ τις);35 the tension of the entire episode is based on this ambiguity and it is used to dramatize the narrative. A second ‘variety’ of ambiguity appears, according to Stanford’s portrayal, with Heraclitus: 36 his language (lógos) is not clear and comprehensible, but rather deliberately dark. It is oriented towards the oracles of Apollo, who “neither speaks nor remains silent, but gives signs”. 37 The ambiguity which also characterizes the fragments of Heraclitus is due to brevity and gnomic condensation: the ambiguous expression with its inherent resistance is meant to encourage reflection. A further form of ambiguity, in Stanford’s view, relies on the choice of words, which in the interplay of associations unfolds a special, powerful effect. The verb αἰθύσσω used by Pindar serves as an example. It combines movement and light, trembling and glitter. Here, the ambiguity of perceptions unfolds an evocative force that goes beyond Aristotelian terms and requires an in-depth semasiological analysis, such as Empson presented in his study of modern literature. 38 Finally, Stanford’s literary analysis focuses on Greek drama, from which he examines Agamemnon, King Oedipus and the Bacchae. 39 All three tragedies derive their force from the “ambiguity of deception” 40 that emerges from an “intricate situation”41 in which the differences in knowledge between gods, spectators, and heroes contribute significantly to the dramatic tension. Ambiguity is used here — as it is in the Odyssey — to increase the suspense.  32 Stanford 1939/21972, 132: “[…] except for occasional references to associative meaning and vagueness, we have concentrated our attention on ambiguities in the strictest sense, namely words or phrases in which two or more distinct meanings are possible, these meanings being mutually exclusive as well as distinct.” 33 Stanford 1939/21972, 113, cf. his analysis of the Iliad, 98–102. 34 Stanford 1939/21972, 104. 35 On the ambiguity of ‘Nobody’ (Οὖτις) which Odysseus uses to deceive Polyphemus (Od. 9,364 and 401), see Stanford 1939/21972, 104f. 36 Cf. Stanford 1939/21972, 115–128. 37 Diels 1903/61985, Vol. 1, 172: ὁ ἄναξ, οὗ τὸ μαντεῖόν ἐστι τὸ ἐν Δελφοῖς, οὔτε λέγει οὔτε κρύπτει ἀλλὰ σημαίνει. (Heraklit., fr. 93) 38 Cf. Empson 1963. 39 Stanford 1939/21972, 136–179. 40 Stanford 1939/21972, 137. 41 Stanford 1939/21972, 117.

Modern and Ancient Concepts of Ambiguity  

According to Stanford, none of the literary genres forgoes the stylistic device of ambiguity. 42 Rather, ambiguity appears in the forms of dramatic tension, condensation, and associative ambiguity. Although Stanford developed a promising approach with his research, so far only a few studies have followed up.43 The following contributions address this desideratum by combining work on the concept of ambiguity with exemplary analyses of its use. The analyses will include scholars from various philologies, and combine a recourse to theoretical concepts of intended ambiguity (in rhetoric, philosophy and aesthetics) with exemplary analyses from the field of pre-modern art and literature. They are intended to expand the corpus of reference texts and, it is to be hoped, inspire scholars to more precisely determine the structures of ambiguous texts in pre-modern times.

Bibliography Texts and Translations Aristoteles, De Arte Poetica liber, ed. Rudolf Kassel, Oxford 1965. Aristoteles, Ars Rhetorica, ed. William D. Ross, Oxford 1959. Aristoteles, Topica et Sophistici Elenchi, ed. William D. Ross, Oxford 1958. Diels, Hermann (ed.) (1903/61985), Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, ed. Walther Kranz, Zürich/ Hildesheim.

Books and Articles Auge, Oliver/Witthöft, Christiane (eds.) (2016), Ambiguität im Mittelalter: Formen zeitgenössischer Reflexion und interdisziplinärer Rezeption, Berlin/Boston. Baar, Mechthild (2007), “Duplices tabellae - triplex renuntiatio. Zur Ambiguität und zur intraund intertextuellen Einbindung von Properz 3,23”, Gymnasium 114, 37–50. Battezzato, Luigi (2014), “Ambiguity”, in: Hanna M. Roisman (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Greek Tragedy, Vol. 1, A–F, Malden, MA, 96–8. Bauer, Matthias/Knape, Joachim/Koch, Peter/Winkler, Susanne (2010), “Dimensionen der Ambiguität”, Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik 40, 7–75. Baumbach, Manuel (2006), “Ambiguität als Stilprinzip: Vorformen literarischer Phantastik in narrativen Texten der Antike”, in: Nicola Hömke/Manuel Baumbach (eds.), Fremde Wirklichkeiten. Literarische Phantastik und antike Literatur, Heidelberg, 73–108.

 42 Stanford 1939/21972, 181. 43 Cf. Baar 2007, 37–50; Battezzato 2018, 96–98; Baumbach 2006, 73–108; Enenkel 2003, 155– 171; Kerbrat-Orecchioni 2005, 13–36; Ossa-Richardson 2019; Otterspeer 2018; Wimmel 1994.

  Martin Vöhler Bernecker, Roland/Steinfeld, Thomas (1992), “Amphibolie, Ambiguität”, in: Gert Ueding (ed.), Historisches Wörterbuch der Rhetorik, Vol. 1, A–Bib, Tübingen, 436–444. Berndt, Frauke/Kammer, Stephan (eds.) (2009), Amphibolie - Ambiguität - Ambivalenz, Würzburg. Bode, Christoph (1988), Ästhetik der Ambiguität. Zu Funktion und Bedeutung von Mehrdeutigkeit in der Literatur der Moderne, Tübingen. Christol, Alain (2007), “Du latin ambiguus à l’ambiguïté des linguistes”, in: Claude Moussy/ Anna Orlandini/Alain Christol/Alessandro Garcea (eds.), L’ambiguité en Grèce et à Rome. Approche linguistique, Paris, 9–22. Dorion, Louis-André (1995), Aristote. Les réfutations sophistiques, Paris. Eco, Umberto (1962/32006), Opera aperta. Forma e indeterminazione nelle poetiche contemporanee, Milano. Eco, Umberto (1977), Das offene Kunstwerk, übersetzt von Günter Memmert, Frankfurt am Main. Eco, Umberto (1989), The Open Work, transl. by Anna Cancogni, introduction by David Robey, Cambridge/MA. Empson, William (1949/31963), Seven Types of Ambiguity, London. Enenkel, Karl A.E. (2003), “Biographisches Werten und biographische Ambiguität. Ein Vergleich von Suetons Augustus-Vita und Pliniusʼ Panegyricus”, Wiener Studien 116, 155–171. Fabian, Rainer (1971), “Ambiguität (Amphibolie)”, in: Joachim Ritter (ed.), Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, Vol. 1, A–C, Basel, 202–204. Kerbrat-Orecchioni, Catherine (2005), “L’ambiguïté: définition, typologie”, in: Louis Basset/ Frédérique Biville (eds.), Les jeux et les ruses de l’ambiguïté volontaire dans les textes grecs et latins. Actes de la Table Ronde organisée à la Faculté des Lettres de l’Université Lumière-Lyon 2 (23–24 novembre 2000), Lyon, 13–36. Krieger, Verena (2007), “Ambiguität”, Kritische Berichte 3, 85–89. Krieger, Verena/Mader, Rachel (eds.) (2010), Ambiguität in der Kunst. Typen und Funktionen eines ästhetischen Paradigmas, Köln/Weimar/Wien. Lausberg, Heinrich (1960/21973), Handbuch der literarischen Rhetorik. Eine Grundlegung der Literaturwissenschaft, 2 vols., München. Luserke, Matthias (ed.) (1991), Die Aristotelische Katharsis. Dokumente ihrer Deutung im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, Hildesheim/Zürich/New York. Mittenzwei, Werner (2001), “Katharsis”, in: Karlheinz Barck/Martin Fontius/Dieter Schlenstedt/Burkhart Steinwachs/Friedrich Wolfzettel (eds.), Ästhetische Grundbegriffe, vol. 3, Harmonie–Material, Stuttgart/Weimar, 245–271. Ossa-Richardson, Anthony (2019), A History of Ambiguity, Princeton. Otterspeer, Willem (2018), In Praise of Ambiguity, Erasmus, Huizinga and the Seriousness of Play, Leiden. Stanford, William Bedell (1939/21972), Ambiguity in Greek Literature, Oxford. Wimmel, Walter (1994), Sprachliche Ambiguität bei Horaz, München.

Pantelis Golitsis

Aristotle on Ambiguity Abstract: Aristotle addresses ambiguity proper (παρὰ τὸ διττόν) chiefly in the field of his dialectics, that is, in the Topics and the Sophistical Refutations, but also in the Rhetoric. Ambiguity is seen therein as a sophistical device with which both the dialectician and the philosophically trained rhetorician should be acquainted, so as to rebuke it or to avoid it. At the same time, the notion of ‘said-intwo-senses’ (τὸ διττῶς or διχῶς λεγόμενον) plays a crucial role in Aristotle’s metaphysics without being directly associated with a vice of language or reason. The present paper aims at relating both concepts and at providing the background to their use in Aristotle’s writings. Keywords: Aristotle, Sophistical Refutations, Dialectic, Rhetoric, said-in-twosenses

Ambiguity, what Aristotle properly calls τὸ διττόν or τὸ διχῶς λεγόμενον, can be tackled in his work chiefly at two levels.1 First, ambiguity is formally a vice of language, consciously practised by an arguer or an orator, who thus commits a fallacy. As a vice of language, which is responsible for fallacies committed παρὰ τὴν λέξιν (in dictione), ambiguity is distinguished from the vices of reason, which are responsible for fallacies committed ἔξω τῆς λέξεως (extra dictionem), that is, independently of the linguistic enunciation. The paradigm case with which Aris-

 1 I leave aside a third level which does not relate to the content of his philosophy but to the style of his own philosophical writing, at least according to the reception of his treatises (the so-called acroamatic treatises published by Andronicus of Rhodes in the first century B.C.) in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Indeed, seen more broadly as a mark of obscurity (τὸ σκοτεινόν), ambiguity seemed to pertain to Aristotle’s very writing style. Late ancient and Byzantine philosophers and commentators saw the Stagirite as standing on the side of Heraclitus, the ‘obscure’ philosopher par excellence, in deliberately producing an enigmatic philosophical discourse; one of the κεφάλαια to be treated in late antique introductions to Aristotle’s philosophy was “why did Aristotle deliberately practise unclarity?” (διὰ τί ἀσάφειαν ἐπετήδευσεν ὁ Ἀριστοτέλης;). Now, if Aristotle battled against the ἐριστικοί and the sophists by writing a treatise, i.e. the Sophistical Refutations, in which the fallacies of both language and reason are explained and solved, why did he apply a writing style that made several of his readers think that he was an obscure philosopher, who himself succumbed to the vice of unclarity and ambiguity? The answer to this question, which does not actually pertain to Aristotle himself but to the way his work was published and read in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, must be the object of a different paper. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110715811-002

  Pantelis Golitsis totle is concerned is the positive practice of fallacies in dictione by the philosophers whom he calls the ἐριστικοί, i.e. the disputatious questioners in dialectical debates by question-and-answer, or by the sophists when it comes to continuous rhetorical discourses. Aristotle insists in the Topics that we, as answerers, ought not to assent with a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to a questioner who uses his terms “obscurely, that is, in several senses” (ἀσαφῶς καὶ πλεοναχῶς); on the contrary, the trained dialectician should foresee the ambiguity (τὸ ἀμφίβολον) and respond appropriately. 2 Aristotle deals with the fallacies in dictione (and extra dictionem) exhaustively in his Sophistical Refutations but the distinctions he makes there are also operative in his Rhetoric. Secondly, and on a less formal level, ambiguity negatively haunts immature philosophical discourse, that is, a discourse that, ignorant of the “power of names”, remains trapped within language with disastrous consequences for the understanding of things. Several philosophers before him, Aristotle contends, philosophised λογικῶς, that is, “verbally”; this means that they unconsciously considered language as self-contained and as denoting concepts which were naively taken for granted and to which reality had to conform.3 Aristotle opposes λογικῶς to πραγματικῶς, the way things really are, and consistently shows that his predecessors were unable to distinguish between the two ways (διχῶς) in which a thing can be said. This philosophical device, which can be seen most characteristically in the Aristotelian distinctions between things said per se (καθ᾽ ἑαυτό) and things said per accidens (κατὰ συμβεβηκός) and between things said δυνάμει and things said ἐνεργείᾳ, is operative in the entire corpus but is most consequentially applied in Aristotle’s theoretical treatises, such as the treatise On the Soul, the Physics and the Metaphysics. Aristotle solves, for instance, the old ‘logical’ problem of the impossibility of the generation of being, with all its disastrous consequences for our understanding of the world, 4 through such a disambiguation of the way we speak of being and non-being. 5

 2 Cf. Top. VIII 7.160a 17−34. 3 On Aristotle as operating against such ‘immanentist’ theories of language see Aubenque 1962, 94−134. For a recent (and different) interpretation of λογικῶς see Peramatzis 2017. 4 Roughly expressed: being can come to be either from being or from non-being; but from nonbeing nothing can come to be; then, being must come from being; but if it comes from being it already is (being). 5 Nothing comes from non-being per se, i.e. privation, but being comes from non-being per accidens, i.e. matter. And to be the matter of X is to be potentially X. Cf. Arist. Ph. I 8−9.191a 24−192a 14.

Aristotle on Ambiguity  

These two levels of ambiguity are interrelated. Since ambiguity is inherent in common and in unreflected (i.e. previous to philosophical consideration) language, those who ignore this natural characteristic of language have to be dismissed as bad philosophers and those who exploit it for its own sake have to be dismissed as sophists. For Aristotle, it is precisely the task of the true philosopher to “cure”, as he says, differently those who consciously or unconsciously succumb to ambiguous language. In a crucial passage of the Metaphysics, where those who deny the principle of all demonstration, i.e. the principle of non-contradiction, are defied, Aristotle distinguishes between the different means that have to be used against the conscious practice of the vices of language on the one side, and against the ignorance of those vices on the other: The same method of discussion must not be used with all opponents; for some need persuasion, and others compulsion. Those who have been driven to this position by difficulties in their thinking can easily be cured of their ignorance; for it is not their expressed argument but their thought that one has to meet. 6 But those who argue for the sake of argument (λόγου χάριν) can be cured only [through compulsion] by refuting the argument as expressed in speech and in words. 7 (Translation by Ross 1908.)

Aristotle produced a theory about fallacies — that is, the content of the Sophistical Refutations — precisely because he wished to compel those who consciously committed fallacies to self-refute. The very title “Sophistical Refutations” may recall to our mind the so-called sophists of the first generation, like Protagoras, Prodicus, Hippias or Gorgias, but Aristotle is actually concerned in this treatise, as already said, with those sophists or questioners (ἐρωτῶντες) whom he calls precisely the ἐριστικοί. 8 The ἐριστικοί were the members of the Megarian School, whose founder, namely Euclid of Megara, a pupil of Socrates, wished to perpetuate the dialectical spirit of his master by practising and teaching a dialectic that aimed at gaining a victory at any price.9 It seems that for the Megarians the correct

 6 The difference between language (λόγος) and thought (διάνοια) is crucial for understanding Aristotle’s argument. 7 Metaph. IV 5.1009a 16−22: ἔστι δ’ οὐχ ὁ αὐτὸς τρόπος πρὸς ἅπαντας τῆς ἐντεύξεως· οἱ μὲν γὰρ πειθοῦς δέονται οἱ δὲ βίας. ὅσοι μὲν γὰρ ἐκ τοῦ ἀπορῆσαι ὑπέλαβον οὕτως, τούτων εὐΐατος ἡ ἄγνοια (οὐ γὰρ πρὸς τὸν λόγον ἀλλὰ πρὸς τὴν διάνοιαν ἡ ἀπάντησις αὐτῶν)· ὅσοι δὲ λόγου χάριν λέγουσι, τούτων δ’ ἔλεγχος ἴασις τοῦ ἐν τῇ φωνῇ λόγου καὶ τοῦ ἐν τοῖς ὀνόμασιν. 8 See Dorion 1995, 47–53. 9 On the Megarian School see Döring 1989 and Ebert 2008.

  Pantelis Golitsis theory of dialectics was the theory that teaches how to confute the opponent regardless of the topic debated; 10 the good dialectician is like the orator, who is good when he succeeds in persuading his audience. Aristotle wished to oppose this view by teaching his students how to refute the purported refutations, the ἔλεγχοι, of pseudo-dialecticians, as he took them to be, like the Megarians. Two passages from the Sophistical Refutations and the Rhetoric illustrate Aristotle’s view on that matter: [...] there exist both reasoning and refutation which appear to be genuine but are not really so. But since in the eyes of some people [i.e. the Megarians or the sophists] it is more profitable to seem to be wise than to be wise without seeming to be so (for the sophistic art consists in apparent and not real wisdom, and the sophist is one who makes money from apparent and not real wisdom), it is clear that for these people it is essential to seem to perform the function of a wise man rather than actually to perform it without seeming to do so. But, to compare the one thing [done by the sophist] with the one thing done by the man who is knowledgeable about any subject [i.e. the sophos], it is the task of the latter to refrain from fallacious arguments about the subjects of his knowledge and to be able to expose the former, who uses them. 11 (Translation by Forster 1955, modified.) Also, we need to be capable of being persuasive about opposite things, exactly as in the case of syllogisms [i.e. dialectics], not in order that we might act on both (since one ought not to be persuasive about corrupt things), but so that the way things are might not go unnoticed, and in order that, if someone else uses arguments unjustly, we ourselves might have the means to refute them. 12 (Translation by Sachs 2009, slightly modified.)

As the opposing expressions “the task of the man who is knowledgeable” (ἔργον ... τοῦ εἰδότος) and “[to] use arguments unjustly” (χρωμένου τοῖς λόγοις μὴ δικαίως) reveal, next to Aristotle’s actual (for us, historical) concern about the Megarians there was another reason for his interest in fallacies, a reason which is more important from a philosophical point of view. Aristotle is a philosopher  10 The equation of actuality and potentiality, for instance, discussed and refuted by Aristotle in Metaphysics IX 3, was probably one of the devices used by the Megarians to assure dialectical victory. 11 SE 1.165a 17−26: διὰ μὲν οὖν ταύτην τὴν αἰτίαν καὶ τὰς λεχθησομένας ἔστι καὶ συλλογισμὸς καὶ ἔλεγχος φαινόμενος οὐκ ὢν δέ. ἐπεὶ δ’ ἐστί τισι μᾶλλον πρὸ ἔργου τὸ δοκεῖν εἶναι σοφοῖς ἢ τὸ εἶναι καὶ μὴ δοκεῖν (ἔστι γὰρ ἡ σοφιστικὴ φαινομένη σοφία οὖσα δ’ οὔ, καὶ ὁ σοφιστὴς χρηματιστὴς ἀπὸ φαινομένης σοφίας ἀλλ’ οὐκ οὔσης), δῆλον ὅτι ἀναγκαῖον τούτοις καὶ τοῦ σοφοῦ ἔργον δοκεῖν ποιεῖν, μᾶλλον ἢ ποιεῖν καὶ μὴ δοκεῖν. ἔστι δ’ ὡς ἓν πρὸς ἓν εἰπεῖν ἔργον περὶ ἕκαστον τοῦ εἰδότος ἀψευδεῖν μὲν αὐτὸν περὶ ὧν οἶδε, τὸν δὲ ψευδόμενον ἐμφανίζειν δύνασθαι. 12 Rh. Ι 1.1355a 29−33: ἔτι δὲ τἀναντία δεῖ δύνασθαι πείθειν, καθάπερ καὶ ἐν τοῖς συλλογισμοῖς, οὐχ ὅπως ἀμφότερα πράττωμεν (οὐ γὰρ δεῖ τὰ φαῦλα πείθειν), ἀλλ’ ἵνα μὴ λανθάνῃ πῶς ἔχει, καὶ ὅπως ἄλλου χρωμένου τοῖς λόγοις μὴ δικαίως αὐτοὶ λύειν ἔχωμεν.

Aristotle on Ambiguity  

who believes, in the vein of Plato, that some things are truer (ἀληθέστερα) than other things and that some things are truest (ἀληθέστατα) in the sense that they always obtain and thus provide the most secure knowledge. 13 As Aristotle says in the Metaphysics, ἀληθέσταται are the principles of the eternal celestial beings,14 in other words, the immaterial first principles that think themselves (whereas the souls of the celestial beings think them) are eternally true (οὐ γάρ ποτε ἀληθεῖς) in the sense that they are always and only known as the principles of the celestial beings and, through them, of the sublunary nature; therefore, they are known by the man who is knowledgeable in first philosophy (that is, metaphysics) as the causes of everything that is and can be known. Thus, the truest things are by nature the things most known, that is, known absolutely as universal causes, things that never change what they are and what they do and thus always obtain. Knowledge, of course, may come in various degrees, since there are things in the world that sometimes obtain and sometimes do not and, therefore, are more or less true; in all cases, however, genuine knowledge must relate to what is true. To put it simply, knowledge by nature and definition is knowledge of what is true; and what is true, provided that it is perceived as such, cannot but compel the assent of the interlocutor or listener. It is in this sense that Aristotle affirms in the Rhetoric: Rhetoric is useful because things that are true and things that are just are by nature stronger than their opposites. 15 Things that are true and things that are by nature better are always easier to reason to and [...] more persuasive. 16

Aristotle means that rhetoric as a poetic science or art will teach us how to persuade with our speeches by constructing enthymemes 17 that comply with truth  13 Cf., for instance, Pl. Rep. VI.508d 4−6: ὅταν μὲν οὗ καταλάμπει ἀλήθειά τε καὶ τὸ ὄν, εἰς τοῦτο ἀπερείσηται, ἐνόησέν τε καὶ ἔγνω αὐτὸ [sc. ἡ ψυχὴ] καὶ νοῦν ἔχειν φαίνεται. 14 Cf. Metaph. II 1.993b 28−30: διὸ τὰς τῶν ἀεὶ ὄντων ἀρχὰς ἀναγκαῖον ἀεὶ εἶναι ἀληθεστάτας· οὐ γάρ ποτε ἀληθεῖς, οὐδ’ ἐκείναις αἴτιόν τί ἐστι τοῦ εἶναι, ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖναι τοῖς ἄλλοις. Cf. Pl. Rep. VI.509b 6−8: καὶ τοῖς γιγνωσκομένοις τοίνυν μὴ μόνον τὸ γιγνώσκεσθαι φάναι ὑπὸ τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ παρεῖναι, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸ εἶναί τε καὶ τὴν οὐσίαν ὑπ’ ἐκείνου αὐτοῖς προσεῖναι. The (Idea of the) Good provides to what is known not only its being known but also its being. 15 Rh. I 1.1355a 21−2: χρήσιμος δέ ἐστιν ἡ ῥητορικὴ διά τε τὸ φύσει εἶναι κρείττω τἀληθῆ καὶ τὰ δίκαια τῶν ἐναντίων. 16 Rh. I 1.1355a 36−8: τὰ μέντοι ὑποκείμενα πράγματα οὐχ ὁμοίως ἔχει, ἀλλ’ ἀεὶ τἀληθῆ καὶ τὰ βελτίω τῇ φύσει εὐσυλλογιστότερα καὶ πιθανώτερα, ὡς ἁπλῶς εἰπεῖν. 17 That is, rhetorical syllogisms constructed out of contingent premises (and not out of necessary ones, as happens in dialectic). On enthymemes (ἐνθυμήματα) see Burnyeat 1994.

  Pantelis Golitsis and nature. A rhetoric that does not make a difference between true and untrue by nature, just and unjust by nature, would be useless, since it would be deprived of a safe criterion of persuasiveness. And with an eye on the genuine dialectic, Aristotle says in the Sophistical Refutations: The σοφοί [as distinguished from the sophists] speak according to nature and according to truth. 18

Unlike the rhetoricians, the genuine dialecticians do not speak in order to persuade; they speak in order to point to the truth, which by its very nature compels our assent. The Megarians, as well as other philosophers of similar calibre, for instance Zeno the Eleatic, aim at appearing to confute their interlocutors (or, as it comes about with Zeno’s paradoxes, at leading them to perplexity), not caring at all whether they confute them in truth; and by not caring for the truth they are ultimately vulnerable to “the one who is knowledgeable”, the true dialectician.19 Someone can choose to be a sophist, by subordinating his perverted dialectic art to a pre-established aim (but the pre-established aim pertains to the rhetorician), that is, by seeking refutation for the sake of refutation, but someone is a dialectician only by virtue of his capacity to speak free from the vices of language and reason and thus to comply with the necessary truths that govern the art of dialectic. In the beginning of the Rhetoric, Aristotle distinguishes dialectic from eristic, in other words philosophy from sophistry, on the basis of προαίρεσις, that is, of intention or purpose: Besides these things, it is clear that it belongs to the same power [i.e. the art of rhetoric] to see what is persuasive and also what appears to be persuasive, just as it belongs to dialectic to see what is a syllogism and what appears to be a syllogism. For sophistry is present not in the power [i.e. what an art does by definition] but in the intention [of the person who

 18 SE 12.173a 29−30: οἱ δὲ σοφοὶ κατὰ φύσιν καὶ κατ’ ἀλήθειαν λέγουσιν. 19 By ‘true dialectician’ I refer here to the person whom Aristotle would call a ‘philosopher’. It is true that Aristotle distinguishes between ‘the philosopher’ and ‘the dialectician’ in Top. VIII 1.151b 8−10: μέχρι μὲν οὖν τοῦ εὑρεῖν τὸν τόπον ὁμοίως τοῦ φιλοσόφου καὶ τοῦ διαλεκτικοῦ ἡ σκέψις, τὸ δ᾽ ἤδη ταῦτα τάττειν καὶ ἐρωτηματίζειν ἴδιον τοῦ διαλεκτικοῦ. But this is only a distinction between a generic term (‘the philosopher’) and a specific term (‘the dialectician’). The difference that makes the specific term consists in the practice of discussion, which involves a strategy of ordering the questions in a way that will not allow the (malicious) answerer to foresee what will follow if he grants the questions, so as to try to bypass them. It is often said that the Sophistical Refutations are an appendix to the Topics; this is truer for the last book of the Topics, i.e. book VIII, than it is for the entire treatise. For a more nuanced view of sophistic and dialectic in Aristotle see Basakos 1983.

Aristotle on Ambiguity  

exercises it], 20 except that in rhetoric one person will be a rhetorician on the basis of knowledge and another on the basis of intention, while in dialectic someone is a sophist on the basis of intention and a dialectician not on the basis of intention but on the basis of [having the] power [of that art]. 21 (Translation by Sachs 2009, slightly modified.)

In contrast to the other arts, rhetoric and dialectic, because they are concerned with opposites, may be applied to a purpose that is contrary to truth and nature.22 A medical doctor who uses his knowledge about health to make a healthy person unhealthy does not act in accordance with the principles and rules of medicine, whose essence is to aim at preserving or restoring health; this person will not even seem to be a doctor because what he does is contrary to the very essence of the art of medicine. By contrast, by the very nature of rhetoric, a rhetorician may argue pro or contra something in accordance with his intention. However, to call a dialectician a person who can equally argue pro and contra and who asks questions with the intention to confute à tout prix his interlocutor is only a misuse of language. The Megarians may style themselves philosophers and dialecticians, but they really are sophists, pseudo-philosophers whose deeds are based on a wisdom that is only apparent because it succumbs to the power of genuine dialectic. By virtue of the very possession of this art or science, the dialectician will know the difference between a true and an apparent syllogism23 and will therefore be able to refute the apparent ἔλεγχοι of the sophists. Aristotle insists on providing a complete theory of dialectical syllogisms, both true and apparent, which he actually does through the Topics and the Sophistical Refutations. Otherwise, his dialectician would be like a doctor who can tell who the healthy person is but cannot tell who the unhealthy one is. We may say, therefore, that there was an actual antagonistic reason, i.e. the sophistry or pseudo-dialectics of the

 20 ‘Intention’ means here what we would call the conscious intention, which is to be distinguished from the unconscious intention that characterises immature philosophers such as Heraclitus and Empedocles; see infra. 21 Rh. Ι 1.1355b 15−21: πρὸς δὲ τούτοις ὅτι τῆς αὐτῆς τό τε πιθανὸν καὶ τὸ φαινόμενον ἰδεῖν πιθανόν, ὥσπερ καὶ ἐπὶ τῆς διαλεκτικῆς συλλογισμόν τε καὶ φαινόμενον συλλογισμόν· ἡ γὰρ σοφιστικὴ οὐκ ἐν τῇ δυνάμει ἀλλ’ ἐν τῇ προαιρέσει· πλὴν ἐνταῦθα μὲν ἔσται ὁ μὲν κατὰ τὴν ἐπιστήμην ὁ δὲ κατὰ τὴν προαίρεσιν ῥήτωρ, ἐκεῖ δὲ σοφιστὴς μὲν κατὰ τὴν προαίρεσιν, διαλεκτικὸς δὲ οὐ κατὰ τὴν προαίρεσιν ἀλλὰ κατὰ τὴν δύναμιν. 22 Cf. Rh. Ι 1.1355a 33−6: τῶν μὲν οὖν ἄλλων τεχνῶν οὐδεμία τἀναντία συλλογίζεται, ἡ δὲ διαλεκτικὴ καὶ ἡ ῥητορικὴ μόναι τοῦτο ποιοῦσιν· ὁμοίως γάρ εἰσιν ἀμφότεραι τῶν ἐναντίων. 23 As the philosophically trained rhetorician will know the difference between a true and an apparent enthymeme (φαινόμενον ἐνθύμημα), i.e. an “enthymeme” that wrongly takes what is reasonable with regard to something else or in some respect (τὶ εἰκός) as being reasonable in itself (ἁπλῶς εἰκός); cf. Rh. II 24.1402a 3−28.

  Pantelis Golitsis Megarian School, and a perennial philosophical reason, i.e. the defence of philosophy as a science of truth, for which Aristotle was interested in uncovering the vices of language and reason that are operative in fallacies; ambiguity, as already said, is among these vices. Ambiguity proper (τὸ διττόν), that is, ambiguity as a genus that has species,24 covers three out of six vices of language that give birth to the apparent refutations of the sophistic questioners: (1) homonymy (ὁμωνυμία), (2) amphiboly (ἀμφιβολία), and (3) figure of word (σχῆμα τῆς λέξεως).25 Homonymy involves ambiguity of meaning in single words, as in the sophistic argument, which Aristotle draws from Plato’s Euthydemus, 26 that “those who know learn [μανθάνουσιν, but they are not supposed to learn because they already know] because those who know their letters [the γραμματικοί, who are thus ἐπιστάμενοι] ‘learn’ (μανθάνουσιν) what is recited to them”. 27 This argument relies on the ambiguous meaning of μανθάνω, which may mean both “acquire knowledge” (λαμβάνειν ἐπιστήμην) and “understand by using one’s knowledge” (ξυνιέναι χρώμενον τῇ ἐπιστήμῃ). Thus, by failing to reflect upon the word μανθάνω, a respondent in a dialectical debate is refuted in his self-evident thesis that you cannot learn what you already know. Amphiboly involves ambiguity of phrase depending on uncertain syntactic relations, as in the phrase βούλεσθαι λαβεῖν με τοὺς πολεμίους, 28 which may mean both “I wish to capture the enemies” and “I wish that the enemies capture me” according to whether με and τοὺς πολεμίους are subject or object of λαβεῖν. Figure of word involves an ambiguity based on an apparent analogy of grammatical form, as happens for instance with the word ὑγιαίνειν, which properly means ‘to be healthy’ but may also be fallaciously used in an argument to convey the meaning ‘to cure someone’ because the suffix –ειν normally belongs to verbs of action. 29 Now, in all six cases of vice of language, the source of the fallacy is the linguistic enunciation in itself, that is, the signifier, so that, at first glance, one

 24 Interpreters of Aristotle usually render indifferently as ‘ambiguity’ terms that are only species of ambiguity, such as τὸ ὁμώνυμον and τὸ ἀμφίβολον. I am here specifically interested in the genus, which Aristotle precisely calls τὸ διττόν. 25 Cf. SE 6.167a 23−8: τῶν μὲν γὰρ ἐν τῇ λέξει οἱ μέν εἰσι παρὰ τὸ διττόν, οἷον ἥ τε ὁμωνυμία καὶ ὁ λόγος [= ἡ ἀμφιβολία] καὶ ἡ ὁμοιοσχημοσύνη (σύνηθες γὰρ τὸ πάντα ὡς τόδε τι σημαίνειν), ἡ δὲ σύνθεσις καὶ διαίρεσις καὶ προσῳδία τῷ μὴ τὸν αὐτὸν εἶναι τὸν λόγον ἢ τὸ ὄνομα τὸ διαφέρον. 26 Cf. Pl. Euthd. 277e−278a. Note that Euthydemus was an ἐριστικός. 27 Cf. SE 4.165b 31−4: οἷον ὅτι μανθάνουσιν οἱ ἐπιστάμενοι, τὰ γὰρ ἀποστοματιζόμενα μανθάνουσιν οἱ γραμματικοί· τὸ γὰρ μανθάνειν ὁμώνυμον, τό τε ξυνιέναι χρώμενον τῇ ἐπιστήμῃ καὶ τὸ λαμβάνειν ἐπιστήμην. 28 SE 4.166a 6−7. 29 Cf. SE 4.166b 15−9.

Aristotle on Ambiguity  

does not understand why, in Aristotle’s view, τὸ διττόν, i.e. ambiguity, does not also concern the remaining three vices of language, that is, (4) prosody (προσῳδία), which involves ambiguity of pronunciation or accent, and (5) combination (σύνθεσις) or (6) disjunction (διαίρεσις), which involve ambiguities of conjunction based on uncertainties in the division between letters or words. 30 To answer this, one has to know that Aristotle classifies some of the vices of language under ambiguity only if they satisfy the criterion of identity of word (ὄνομα) or phrase (λόγος). 31 This is surely not satisfied by the sophism of prosody since, for instance, the ΟΥ in the phrases οὗ καταλύεις (“where you lodge”) and οὐ καταλύεις (“you do not lodge”)32 is not identical, that is, it is not the same word.33 Scholars are puzzled, however, why the sophism of combination and disjunction does not satisfy the same criterion. 34 Take, for instance, the example given by Aristotle ἐγὼ σ᾽ ἔθηκα δοῦλον ὄντ᾽ ἐλεύθερον,35 where the meaning changes according to whether one combines or separates δοῦλον and ὄντα: “I made you a free man while you were a slave” (combination) and “I made you a slave while you were a free man” (disjunction). In what sense is the logos not the same in these two cases? Either one links or separates δοῦλον and ὄντα, but is not the phrase itself (ἐγὼ σ᾽ ἔθηκα δοῦλον ὄντ᾽ ἐλεύθερον) one and the same? To answer this question, we have to understand that by λόγος, in this context, Aristotle means the utterance, i.e. the enunciated speech. For otherwise, given that Aristotle theorizes in an age without marks of accentuation, even the sophism of prosody would qualify for being classified under ambiguity: οὗ καταλύεις (“where you lodge”) and οὐ καταλύεις (“you do not lodge”) have no difference indeed, if taken in their written form; but they do differ if they are uttered. Similarly, the phrase ἐγὼ σ᾽ ἔθηκα δοῦλον ὄντ᾽ ἐλεύθερον is pronounced differently, with a slight but audible pause before or after δοῦλον, whether one links or separates δοῦλον and ὄντα. More generally, in order to understand why Aristotle dismisses ambiguity, and all other linguistic vices from dialectics and from rhetoric (as well as from poetry), we now have to turn to Aristotle’s conception of virtue and of how virtue, in itself a theoretical entity, conditions the poetic sciences or arts. The word ἀρετή  30 See the still useful summary of fallacies in dictione provided by Stanford 1939, 7–9. 31 Cf. SE 4.165b 29−30: ὅτι τοσαυταχῶς ἂν τοῖς αὐτοῖς ὀνόμασι καὶ λόγοις μὴ ταὐτὸ δηλώσαιμεν. 32 I draw the example from SE 21.177b 37−178a 2. 33 Notice that οὐ καταλύεις may also mean “you do not depose”, say, the tyrant, but this does not involve the sophism of prosody but the sophism of homonymy, since in this case there is an ambiguity of meaning in καταλύω. 34 See Dorion 1995, 78–80. 35 SE 4.166a 36−7.

  Pantelis Golitsis is, of course, semantically larger than the English word ‘virtue’: it is applied not only to ensouled entities but also to inanimate objects which have a function and which exhibit their ἀρετή or “virtue” precisely when they perform this function well. The virtue of the eye is to see acutely and the virtue of a knife is to cut flawlessly. Now, the λόγος too, either as a syllogism or as an enthymeme, has a virtue: σαφήνεια, i.e. clarity or univocity. This means that if a λόγος is not clear, it cannot perform its function well. To put it simply, an ambiguous dialectic or rhetorical argument can neither compel nor convince: Let, then, those things be observed and let us [now] define the virtue of style, which is to be clear, as is shown by the fact that speech which fails to convey a plain meaning will fail to do just what speech has to do. It must also be appropriate, avoiding both meanness and undue elevation; poetical style is certainly free from meanness, but it is not appropriate to prose. 36 (Translation by Rhys Roberts 1924, modified.)

Aristotle says later in the Rhetoric that avoidance of amphibolies, probably meant in the same technical sense that the word ἀμφιβολία has in the Sophistical Refutations, is an indispensable element of ἑλληνίζειν, that is, of clear Greek, which is the principle of style (ἀρχὴ τῆς λέξεως).37 As a principle, τὸ ἑλληνίζειν is the rule to which every λόγος, either oral or written, should conform. The Aristotelian maxim μὴ ἀμφιβόλοις38 — “speak [or write, λέγειν] with no amphibolies” — should also be applied to philosophical language. It is telling that Aristotle quotes Empedoclean poetry as an example of amphibolic discourse: The third [head of ἑλληνίζειν] is to avoid amphibolies; unless, indeed, you definitely desire to be ambiguous, as those do who have nothing to say but are pretending to mean something. Such people put that sort of thing into verse. Empedocles, for instance, by his long circumlocutions imposes on his hearers; these are affected in the same way as most people are when they listen to diviners, whose ambiguous utterances are received with nods of

 36 Rh. III 2.1404b 1−5: Ἔστω οὖν ἐκεῖνα τεθεωρημένα καὶ ὡρίσθω λέξεως ἀρετὴ σαφῆ εἶναι (σημεῖον γὰρ ὅτι ὁ λόγος [codd. plur.: γάρ τι ὁ λόγος ὤν Richards Ross], ἐὰν μὴ δηλοῖ οὐ ποιήσει τὸ ἑαυτοῦ ἔργον), καὶ μήτε ταπεινὴν μήτε ὑπὲρ τὸ ἀξίωμα, ἀλλὰ πρέπουσαν· ἡ γὰρ ποιητικὴ ἴσως οὐ ταπεινή, ἀλλ’ οὐ πρέπουσα λόγῳ. Cf. also Arist. Poet. 22, 1458a 18: λέξεως δὲ ἀρετὴ σαφῆ καὶ μὴ ταπεινὴν εἶναι. Aristotle was obviously observing that ambiguity was abundantly used in (bad) poetry, which is one of the reasons for which he also criticises Empedocles’ philosophical discourse. A passage from the Rhetoric (see infra, n. 41) implies that a good poet should have recourse to synonyms. 37 Rh. III 5.1407a 19−20: ἔστι δ’ ἀρχὴ τῆς λέξεως τὸ ἑλληνίζειν. 38 Cf. also the pseudo-Aristotelian, probably the work of Anaximenes of Lampsacus, a determined opponent of Isocrates, Rhetoric to Alexander, 25.1: πρῶτον μὲν ὀνόμαζε τοῖς οἰκείοις ὀνόμασιν διαφεύγων τὸ ἀμφίβολον.

Aristotle on Ambiguity  

acquiescence: “Croesus by crossing the Halys will ruin a mighty realm (ἀρχήν)”. Diviners use the genera of the matter in hand [e.g. ἀρχή, which may refer to various sovereignties, including its own] because their predictions are thus, as a rule, less likely to be falsified. We are more likely to be right, in the game of ‘odd and even’, if we simply guess ‘even’ or ‘odd’ than if we guess at the actual [even or odd] number; and the oracle-monger is more likely to be right if he simply says that a thing will happen than if he says when it will happen, and therefore he refuses to add a definite date. All these [ambiguities] are similar and are to be avoided unless we have some such objective as that [that is, unless we want to sound like oracle-mongers]. 39 (Translation by Rhys Roberts 1924, modified.)

Empedocles’ similarity to the diviners does not so much lie in the fact that they both have recourse to ἀμφίβολα (at any rate, the oracle of Delphi quoted by Aristotle does not involve an ambiguity of phrase based on uncertain syntactic relations) but in the fact that Empedocles conceals his ignorance about being, just as the diviners conceal their ignorance about future events. The bottom line is that Empedocles cheats his hearers or readers through poetic discourse and ambiguous syntax, just as the diviners cheat their hearers through ambiguous oracles. I take it that Parmenides, who also expressed his philosophy in verse, would fall under the same reprehension. But to illustrate the general rule of ἑλληνίζειν, Aristotle interestingly refers to a philosopher who wrote in prose, namely Heraclitus: As a general rule written composition should be easy to read, and easy to phrase, which is the same thing. Passages containing many connecting particles, and writings hard to punctuate like those of Heraclitus lack this. For it is hard work to punctuate Heraclitus’ writings because it is unclear whether a word goes with the preceding or following. Thus, in the beginning of his treatise he says “τοῦ λόγου τοῦδ’ ἐόντος ἀεὶ ἀξύνετοι ἄνθρωποι γίγνονται”, where it is not clear with which of the two words [sc. ἐόντος or ἀξύνετοι] the word ἀεί should be joined by the punctuation. 40 (Translation by Stanford 1939, modified)

 39 Rh. III 5.1407a 33−b 6: τρίτον μὴ ἀμφιβόλοις. τοῦτο δ’ ἂν μὴ τἀναντία προαιρῆται, ὅπερ ποιοῦσιν ὅταν μηδὲν μὲν ἔχωσι λέγειν, προσποιῶνται δέ τι λέγειν· οἱ γὰρ τοιοῦτοι ἐν ποιήσει λέγουσιν ταῦτα, οἷον Ἐμπεδοκλῆς· φενακίζει γὰρ τὸ κύκλῳ πολὺ ὄν, καὶ πάσχουσιν οἱ ἀκροαταὶ ὅπερ οἱ πολλοὶ παρὰ τοῖς μάντεσιν· ὅταν γὰρ λέγωσιν ἀμφίβολα, συμπαρανεύουσιν — Κροῖσος Ἅλυν διαβὰς μεγάλην ἀρχὴν καταλύσει — καὶ διὰ τὸ ὅλως ἔλαττον εἶναι ἁμάρτημα διὰ τῶν γενῶν τοῦ πράγματος λέγουσιν οἱ μάντεις· τύχοι γὰρ ἄν τις μᾶλλον ἐν τοῖς ἀρτιασμοῖς ἄρτια ἢ περισσὰ εἰπὼν μᾶλλον ἢ πόσα ἔχει, καὶ τὸ ὅτι ἔσται ἢ τὸ πότε, διὸ οἱ χρησμολόγοι οὐ προσορίζονται τὸ πότε. ἅπαντα δὴ ταῦτα ὅμοια, ὥστ’ ἂν μὴ τοιούτου τινὸς ἕνεκα, φευκτέον. 40 Rh. III 5.1407b 11−8: ὅλως δὲ δεῖ εὐανάγνωστον εἶναι τὸ γεγραμμένον καὶ εὔφραστον (ἔστιν δὲ τὸ αὐτό)· ὅπερ οἱ πολλοὶ σύνδεσμοι οὐκ ἔχουσιν, οὐδ’ ἃ μὴ ῥᾴδιον διαστίξαι, ὥσπερ τὰ Ἡρακλείτου. τὰ γὰρ Ἡρακλείτου διαστίξαι ἔργον διὰ τὸ ἄδηλον εἶναι ποτέρῳ πρόσκειται, τῷ ὕστερον

  Pantelis Golitsis As with Empedocles and the sophism of amphiboly in the previous example, Heraclitus appears here to have committed the sophism of combination and disjunction and to have done so deliberately, as many would think in antiquity and even nowadays. Indeed, when it comes to explaining in the Sophistical Refutations how the fallacies work, Aristotle employs the expression ἀπάτη γίγνεται, which means that discussants such as the Megarians deliberately 41 deceive their interlocutors by exploiting the ignorance or neglect of the latter: In [fallacies connected with] homonymy and amphiboly the deception arises from the inability to distinguish the various meanings of a term or phrase (for there are some which it is not easy to distinguish, for example, the meanings of ‘unity’, ‘being’ and ‘identity’). 42 In fallacies connected with combination and disjunction the deception is due to the supposition that it makes no difference whether the term is combined or disjoined, as indeed is generally the case. So, too, in those connected with prosody; for it does not seem ever, or seems very seldom, to alter the significance of the word whether it is pronounced with a lower or a higher pitch. In fallacies connected with the form the deception is due to similarity of words; for it is difficult to distinguish what sort of things belong to the same and what to different categories; 43 for he who can do this very nearly approaches a vision of truth and knows best whether to assent. 44 (Translation by Forster 1955, modified.)

 ἢ τῷ πρότερον, οἷον ἐν τῇ ἀρχῇ αὐτῇ τοῦ συγγράμματος· φησὶ γὰρ “τοῦ λόγου τοῦδ’ ἐόντος ἀεὶ ἀξύνετοι ἄνθρωποι γίγνονται”· ἄδηλον γὰρ τὸ “ἀεί” πρὸς ποτέρῳ διαστίξαι. 41 This is also evident in the word κακουργεῖ used by Aristotle in Rh. III 2.1404b 37−9: τῶν δ’ ὀνομάτων τῷ μὲν σοφιστῇ ὁμωνυμίαι χρήσιμοι (παρὰ ταύτας γὰρ κακουργεῖ), τῷ ποιητῇ δὲ συνωνυμίαι. (“Words of ambiguous meaning are chiefly useful to enable the sophist to mislead his hearers. Synonyms are useful to the poet”; translation by Rhys Roberts 1924.) 42 The meanings of these three terms are distinguished in Metaphysics V 6, 7 and 9 respectively. Notice that the failure to distinguish between the different meanings of ‘unity’, ‘being’ and ‘identity’ applies to Parmenides (and, to a lesser extent, to the Platonists). In Eudemian Ethics, Ι 8.1217b 25−1218a 1, Aristotle specifies further that “good” is said in as many senses as “being”; this is a criticism of Plato’s aspiration to a “Science of the Good”. See Menn 1992. 43 Category confusion is the chief cause of metaphysical mistakes; hence Aristotle’s following statement that he who can master the categories “approaches a vision of truth”, that is, he sets the path towards discovering the truth. 44 SE 7.169a 22−7: Ἡ δ’ ἀπάτη γίνεται τῶν μὲν παρὰ τὴν ὁμωνυμίαν καὶ τὸν λόγον τῷ μὴ δύνασθαι διαιρεῖν τὸ πολλαχῶς λεγόμενον (ἔνια γὰρ οὐκ εὔπορον διελεῖν, οἷον τὸ ἓν καὶ τὸ ὂν καὶ τὸ ταὐτόν), τῶν δὲ παρὰ σύνθεσιν καὶ διαίρεσιν τῷ μηδὲν οἴεσθαι διαφέρειν συντιθέμενον ἢ διαιρούμενον τὸν λόγον, καθάπερ ἐπὶ τῶν πλείστων. ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ τῶν παρὰ τὴν προσῳδίαν· οὐ γὰρ ἄλλο δοκεῖ σημαίνειν ἀνιέμενος καὶ ἐπιτεινόμενος ὁ λόγος, ἐπ’ οὐδενὸς ἢ οὐκ ἐπὶ πολλῶν. τῶν δὲ παρὰ τὸ σχῆμα διὰ τὴν ὁμοιότητα τῆς λέξεως. χαλεπὸν γὰρ διελεῖν ποῖα ὡσαύτως καὶ ποῖα ὡς ἑτέρως λέγεται· σχεδὸν γὰρ ὁ τοῦτο δυνάμενος ποιεῖν ἐγγύς ἐστι τοῦ θεωρεῖν τἀληθές, μάλιστα δ’ ἐπίσταται συνεπινεύειν.

Aristotle on Ambiguity  

Does all this imply that Aristotle, when referring to Empedocles and Heraclitus in the Rhetoric, takes them to be akin to the ἐριστικοί, that is, pretentious philosophers who wished to deceive their hearers or readers? This would surely be an exaggeration, given that neither of these philosophers engaged in dialectical debates. Still, it is significant that, to make his point about ἑλληνίζειν or clarity of language, Aristotle does not refer to sophists but to (inadequate) philosophers. At first glance, the implication seems to be that, had Heraclitus and Empedocles known the rules of ἑλληνίζειν, they would have expressed their thoughts properly, that is, they would have made their words and phrases speak their thoughts; by not doing that, they too deceive those who deal with them. But this is not enough philosophically. Avoidance of ambiguousness is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for speaking the truth. For even if Heraclitus’ and Empedocles’ words and phrases spoke their thoughts, their thoughts would still not be true, at least not absolutely. To put it differently, univocal discourse, either uttered or residing in the mind, 45 is for Aristotle a normative criterion of truth but does not reveal it. When Aristotle deals, in the first book of the Metaphysics, with his predecessors’ investigation of the first principles as causes, he frequently distinguishes between what previous philosophers intended to say and what they actually said. 46 Contrary to what one might think, Aristotle’s distinction between ‘intention’ and actual saying does not reflect the inadequacy of language to express thought, as if those philosophers had a conscious intention of saying something that they did not have the linguistic means to say. On the contrary, such an intention remained in the ‘unconsciousness’ of those philosophers; it is Aristotle who, operating from the vantage point of his philosophy, brings it forth. 47 When, for instance, Empedocles speaks of Love and Strife as first principles, he inappropriately uses words of quality to describe, without knowing it, efficient causes that should be signified by words of substance. When Anaxagoras posits as first

 45 The first case pertains to the ‘dialectician’ (as specific term) and the second to the ‘philosopher’ (as generic term); see n. 19. 46 Cf. Metaph. I 4.985a 4−5: εἰ γάρ τις ἀκολουθοίη καὶ λαμβάνοι πρὸς τὴν διάνοιαν καὶ μὴ πρὸς ἃ ψελλίζεται λέγων ὁ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς; I 8.989b 4−5: εἴ τις ἀκολουθήσειε συνδιαρθρῶν ἃ βούλεται λέγειν (sc. ὁ Ἀναξαγόρας), ἴσως ἂν φανείη καινοπρεπεστέρως λέγων. Cf. also I 5.986b 4−6; I 8.989b 19−21; III 6.1002b 27−8. 47 See Aubenque 1962, 77−81. Cf. Metaph. I 4.985a 13−7: ἀμυδρῶς μέντοι καὶ οὐθὲν σαφῶς ἀλλ’ οἷον ἐν ταῖς μάχαις οἱ ἀγύμναστοι ποιοῦσιν· καὶ γὰρ ἐκεῖνοι περιφερόμενοι τύπτουσι πολλάκις καλὰς πληγάς, ἀλλ’ οὔτε ἐκεῖνοι ἀπὸ ἐπιστήμης οὔτε οὗτοι ἐοίκασιν εἰδέναι ὅ τι λέγουσιν. The last phrase (“these thinkers too do not seem to know what they say”) relates to what I here call ‘unconsciousness’.

  Pantelis Golitsis principles nous and the mixture, he actually fails to signify the formal and the material causes, which the Platonists would later describe more appropriately as the One and the Unlimited. 48 When the Platonists say that the One, which they posit as first principle, is good, they do so without having previously reflected upon that which is said per se and that which is said per accidens; thus, they fail to see that they use the good as a cause per accidens, whereas they should be using it as a cause per se or absolutely, that is, as that for the sake of which everything else is or becomes. 49 Had the Platonists been aware of this distinction, they would probably have arrived at a conception of the first principle as final cause, which is what Aristotle’s Metaphysics aspires to. Therefore, it is not language that is inadequate to express thought; rather, it is the lack of reflection on the nature of language that conditions inadequate philosophical thought. Seen in this perspective, the ἀπάτη of all kinds of philosophers and sophists, which Aristotle denounces in his treatises concerning the poetic sciences (dialectics, rhetoric, poetry) and with which he does away in his theoretical treatises, does not only consist in deceiving one’s interlocutor or audience; it is also deceiving oneself because of ignorance of the nature of language and how it should be used to grasp reality. Regardless of any factual assessment of the philosophy of his predecessors (which Aristotle actually makes in his theoretical treatises), Aristotle’s point in the third book of the Rhetoric (and in the philosophical examples quoted in the Sophistical Refutations) is that the philosophers before him had not adequately reflected upon the nature of language. In the beginning of the Sophistical Refutations, he speaks about “the power of names” (ἡ δύναμις τῶν ὀνομάτων). Names do not have a one-to-one correspondence with things but dominate over a number of things which are variously different in themselves; their apparent identity with things gives rise to the inadequate concepts of the philosophers and the distorted discussions of the sophists: Since it is impossible to argue by introducing the actual things under discussion, but we use names as symbols in the place of the things, we think that what happens in the case of the names happens also in the case of the things, 50 just as people who are counting think in the case of their counters. But the cases are not really similar; for names and a quantity of terms are finite, whereas things are infinite in number; and so the same expression and the single name must necessarily signify a number of things. As, therefore, in the above illustration, those who are not clever at managing the counters are deceived by the experts,

 48 Cf. Metaph. I 8.989b 16−9. 49 Cf. Metaph. I 7.988b 11−6. 50 This is confusing λογικῶς with πραγματικῶς; see also supra, n. 3.

Aristotle on Ambiguity  

in the same way in arguments also those who are unacquainted with the power of names are the victims of false reasoning both when they are themselves arguing and when they are listening to others. 51 (Translation by Forster 1955)

Failure to get hold of the power of names applies equally to the interlocutors of the sophists and to unconscious “sophists”, such as Heraclitus and Empedocles. The Megarians, of course, could retort that philosophy is dependent on the medium through which or, rather, in which the concepts of human beings are conceived and expressed, i.e. language. But this is precisely the tradition against which Aristotle battles. Despite his extensive treatment of dialectics, he contends on last analysis that the most skilful philosopher will inquire into reality not through discussion with others but by himself and by the sole means of reason (as different from language).52 Aristotle’s theory of language rests upon his belief in an objective world that exists independently of the language and reason of the human soul. As happens with the objects of perception that fashion the sensitive faculties of the soul, theoretical entities too are independent of our intellection of them. Nonetheless, several vices of reason and language (and ambiguity is a vice inherent to language) distort our conception of them, as the vices present in our sensory organs distort our perception of the sensibles. That philosophy should not take actual names as a starting point for its investigations is a point that Plato had already made in the Cratylus.53 But Aristotle’s commitment is to lift the traps set by common language, to adjust language to the rigour and height of θεωρία. Indeed, by making the distinctions between things said per se and things said per  51 SE 1.165a 6−17: ἐπεὶ γὰρ οὐκ ἔστιν αὐτὰ τὰ πράγματα διαλέγεσθαι φέροντας, ἀλλὰ τοῖς ὀνόμασιν ἀντὶ τῶν πραγμάτων χρώμεθα ὡς συμβόλοις, τὸ συμβαῖνον ἐπὶ τῶν ὀνομάτων καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν πραγμάτων ἡγούμεθα συμβαίνειν, καθάπερ ἐπὶ τῶν ψήφων τοῖς λογιζομένοις. τὸ δ’ οὐκ ἔστιν ὅμοιον· τὰ μὲν γὰρ ὀνόματα πεπέρανται καὶ τὸ τῶν λόγων πλῆθος, τὰ δὲ πράγματα τὸν ἀριθμὸν ἄπειρά ἐστιν. ἀναγκαῖον οὖν πλείω τὸν αὐτὸν λόγον καὶ τοὔνομα τὸ ἓν σημαίνειν. ὥσπερ οὖν κἀκεῖ οἱ μὴ δεινοὶ τὰς ψήφους φέρειν ὑπὸ τῶν ἐπιστημόνων παρακρούονται, τὸν αὐτὸν τρόπον καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν λόγων οἱ τῶν ὀνομάτων τῆς δυνάμεως ἄπειροι παραλογίζονται καὶ αὐτοὶ διαλεγόμενοι καὶ ἄλλων ἀκούοντες. 52 Cf. SE 7.169a 37−b 1: μᾶλλον ἡ ἀπάτη γίνεται μετ’ ἄλλων σκοπουμένοις ἢ καθ’ αὑτούς (ἡ μὲν γὰρ μετ’ ἄλλου σκέψις διὰ λόγων, ἡ δὲ καθ’ αὑτὸν οὐχ ἧττον δι’ αὐτοῦ τοῦ πράγματος)· εἶτα καὶ καθ’ αὑτὸν ἀπατᾶσθαι συμβαίνει, ὅταν ἐπὶ τοῦ λόγου ποιῆται τὴν σκέψιν. [“The deception occurs more commonly when we are inquiring with others than by ourselves (for an inquiry with someone else is carried on by means of words, whereas in our own minds it is carried on quite as much by means of the thing itself); secondly, because, even in solitary inquiry, a man is apt to be deceived when he carries on his inquiry by means of words”; translation by Forster 1955.] This means, of course, that a philosopher is able to carry on his solitary inquiry not by means of words but by means of reason. 53 See Barney 2001.

  Pantelis Golitsis accidens and, more significantly, between the modes of being δυνάμει and of being ἐνεργείᾳ, to which the different kinds of explanations — material, formal, efficient and final — are intrinsically related,54 Aristotle meant from the very beginning to give language the clarity it needs to properly grasp the nature of reality.55 And it is barely an exaggeration to say that Aristotle’s philosophy is founded precisely on these distinctions between modes of being and kinds of explanations.56

Bibliography Texts and Translations Forster, Edward Seymour (1955), Aristotle. On Sophistical Refutations, Loeb Classical Library, London. Rhys Roberts, William (1924), “Rhetorica”, in: William D. Ross (ed.), The Works of Aristotle Translated into English, vol. XI, Oxford. Ross, William D. (ed.) (1908), The Works of Aristotle, Oxford. Sachs, Joe (2009), Plato Gorgias and Aristotle Rhetoric. Translation, Glossary, and Introductory Essay, Indianapolis.

Books and Articles Aubenque, Pierre (1962), Le problème de l’être chez Aristote. Essai sur la problématique aristotélicienne, Paris. Barney, Rachel (2001), Names and Nature in Plato’s “Cratylus”, New York. Basakos, Pantelis (1981), “La place de la sophistique dans la dialectique d’Aristote. Remarques sur les Topiques et les Réfutations Sophistiques”, Deukalion 36, 389–403.

 54 When we assign the material cause of X we name something that is potentially X; when we assign the formal cause of X we name something that is actually X; and formal, efficient and final causality come to one in the case of natural beings. See Menn 1994. 55 Take, for instance, the following passage from as early a work as the Protrepticus (B 79 Düring): “The word ‘live’ is manifestly used in two senses (φαίνεται διττῶς λέγεσθαι τὸ ζῆν), one implying a potentiality, the other an actuality (τὸ μὲν κατὰ δύναμιν τὸ δὲ κατ’ ἐνέργειαν); for we describe as ‘seeing’ both those animals which have sight and are born capable of seeing, even if they happen to have their eyes shut, and those which are using this faculty and looking at something. Similarly with knowing and cognition; we sometimes mean by it the use of the faculty and actual thinking, sometimes the possession of the faculty and having knowledge.” (Translation by Düring 1961, slightly modified.) 56 I warmly thank Pantelis Basakos for his critical comments on my paper.

Aristotle on Ambiguity  

Burnyeat, Myles Fredric (1994), “Enthymeme: Aristotle on the Logic of Persuasion”, in: David S. Furley/Alexander Nehamas (eds.), Aristotle’s Rhetoric. Philosophical Essays, Princeton, 3– 55. Dorion, Louis-André (1995), Les Réfutations Sophistiques. Introduction, traduction et commentaire, Paris. Döring, Klaus (1989), “Gab es eine Dialektische Schule?”, Phronesis 34, 293–310. Düring, Ingemar (1961), Aristotle’s Protrepticus. An Attempt at Reconstruction, Gothenburg. Ebert, Theodor (2008), “In Defence of the Dialectical School”, in: Francesca Alesse et al. (eds.), Anthropine Sophia, Naples, 275–293. Menn, Stephen (1992), “Aristotle and Plato on God as Nous and as the Good”, The Review of Metaphysics 45, 543–573. Menn, Stephen (1994), “The Origins of Aristotle’s Concept of Ἐνέργεια: Ἐνέργεια and Δύναμις”, Ancient Philosophy 14, 73–114. Peramatzis, Michael (2017), “Aristotleʼs ‘Logical’ Level of Metaphysical Investigation”, in: Börje Bydén/Christina Thomsen Thörnqvist (eds.), The Aristotelian Tradition: Aristotle’s Works on Logic and Metaphysics and Their Reception in the Middle Ages, Turnhout, 81–130. Stanford, William B. (1939), Ambiguity in Greek Literature. Studies in Theory and Practice, Oxford.

Chloe Balla

Intended Ambiguity in Plato’s Phaedo Abstract: In this paper I draw attention to five cases in which ambiguity in the Phaedo is used as a tool in the author’s narrative strategy. I offer a brief presentation of the first four cases. A discussion of ambiguity in three interrelated notions, namely death, phármakon, and health, allows us to tolerate and appreciate ambiguity in one particular statement, that is Socrates’ last words concerning a debt to Asclepius, which forms my fourth case of ambiguity. I then turn to, and focus on, a fifth case. I argue that in the Phaedo Plato intends his readers to think of Socrates as an ambiguous figure, a charismatic man who shared attributes with the professional teachers that Plato considered as sophists but at the same time paved the way to the unprecedented conception of philosophy that his student Plato was going to introduce. I propose to discuss Plato’s representation of Socrates in the Phaedo, a dialogue in which — as a growing number of scholars point out — the author uses the occasion of Socrates’ death to present his own philosophical agenda. In doing so, Plato intends to claim his Socratic heritage as a ‘branding’ for his own enterprise. At the same time, he wishes to draw a line between his debt to his teacher and his own philosophical contribution. I argue that intended ambiguity plays an important role in Plato’s representation of Socrates, with regard to (a) argumentation and the quest for truth, and (b) the criticism of traditional religion by Plato’s philosophical theology. Keywords: Socrates, Socratic apologetics, logos, death, health, divination

Since the last decades of the 20th century, an increasing interest in Plato’s art of philosophical writing has given rise to a number of studies on a range of related topics which include characterization, narrative techniques, dramatic dates and digressions. Once we think of Plato as an author of dramatic fiction, the use of ambiguity — otherwise considered a vice in philosophical writing — can be seen as a legitimate part of his work, while identifying it and appreciating its use in the context of a particular dialogue becomes a challenge for scholarly interpretation. In what follows, I propose to contribute to our understanding of Plato’s use of ambiguity with some remarks on the Phaedo. I will draw attention to five cases in which, as I propose to argue, ambiguity is used as a tool in the author’s narrative strategy. Identifying this strategy, which in turn presupposes an interpretation of Plato’s philosophical agenda, is what allows us to describe ambiguity as

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110715811-003

  Chloe Balla intended. I shall confine myself to a very brief presentation of four of these cases and focus on the fifth. The first case of intended ambiguity in the Phaedo that I shall consider concerns the very meaning of death. That the soul can be separated from the body, and that biological death is the paradigm case of this separation (λύσις) is probably the most dominant idea of the entire dialogue. But this idea is ambiguous. Early in the text (64a4−5), Socrates describes the “sole pursuit of those who correctly engage in philosophy”1 as dying and being dead, an idea that ties in with the asceticism philosophers are expected to advocate in this dialogue. To an important extent, philosophers are able to simulate, and hence to achieve, the separation of the soul from the body that strictly speaking is supposed to be the outcome of biological death. Seen thus, death is a procedure, a practice to which philosophers are committed throughout their life;2 and that is why philosophy in this text is described as a preparation, practice, or rehearsal, for death (67d). But, of course, death is also what laypeople understand as death, namely biological death. And seen thus, death allows those who have devoted their lives to philosophy to complete the separation of their soul from their body. This more trivial and familiar sense of death, which concerns biological death and hence the physical separation of the soul from the body — seen from the philosopher’s point of view as a climax to, rather than the end of, life; as a telos, an end, in its double sense of ‘end’ or ‘goal’ — is the vehicle that allows Plato to convey the idea of a putative separation that philosophical practice secures throughout ‘embodied life’. The ambiguous sense of death in the Phaedo allows the author to bring together two distinct, yet interconnected, themes of the dialogue: dualism and philosophical life. Τhe second case of ambiguity in the Phaedo to which I would like to draw attention concerns the notion of phármakon (drug). The word phármakon appears in the first sentence of the dialogue (57a1−2): Were you with Socrates yourself, Phaedo, on the day he drank the poison in prison, or did you hear about it from someone else?

“Poison” may well be the relevant meaning in the opening line of the text: prima facie, the reference is to hemlock, the plant that was used for the execution of convicts in classical Athens. But the term phármakon, just like the English term ‘drug’, is ambiguous. In his Helen, Gorgias turned on this ambiguity to discuss  1 The translation of the Phaedo I am using is by Long in Sedley/Long 2010. 2 Pace Rowe 1993, ad loc, who understands ἀποθνήσκειν and τεθνάναι to refer to the event of death and the state that ensues upon its occurence.

Intended Ambiguity in Plato’s Phaedo  

the function of speech. 3 It is interesting to note that, unlike Gorgias, Plato in the Phaedo refrains from the obvious choice of exploiting the ambiguity of the term phármakon in an explicit way. 4 And yet the audience, familiar with the ambiguity of the term, can reflect on the benefits death brings to the philosopher, to the extent that it provides him with the paradigm case of separation of the soul from his body (64a−69e). The idea of death as salvation of the soul from the condition of incarnated life is connected to my third case of intended ambiguity, which concerns the meaning of the adjective ὑγιής or sound. Just as in English, so also in ancient Greek, the term ὑγιής can be used to describe physical health but also soundness in mind, in anticipation of its use in the sense of logical soundness. 5 The double meaning of the term ὑγιής may provide the key to the interpretation of the notoriously cryptic last words Plato attributes to Socrates in the Phaedo: “O Crito, we owe a cock to Asclepius” (Phaedo 118a7−8). According to the traditional interpretation of this phrase, the debt for which the cock is due concerns healing from the disease of incarnated life.6 But, since the last decades of the previous century, various scholars have offered a number of alternative readings, and thus challenged the standard view. Two of these suggestions are of particular relevance to my present argument. The first takes the allusion to health and disease at face value and connects the debt to Asclepius with Plato, who, in the beginning pages of the dialogue, was reported as sick on the day of Socrates’ death and hence was absent from the death scene (59b10). According to Glenn Most, the debt of a cock to Asclepius is connected to the healing of Plato, the student who will continue to cultivate philosophy after his teacher’s passing. I argue that Most’s suggestion becomes more attractive if we entertain the idea that Plato intended his reader to understand Socrates’ phrase as ambiguous. It is possible that Plato is here playing with the idea of health at different levels, which correspond to multiple layers of interpretation of the phrase. The standard view connects the sacrifice (to Asclepius) with the idea that death purifies and thus liberates the soul from the body; the allusion to Plato’s sickness early in the text — and presumably also to  3 Gorgias, Hel. 14: “The power of speech (λόγος) has the same relation (λόγος) with the arrangement of the soul as the arrangement of drugs (φαρμάκων) has with the nature of bodies. For just as some drugs draw some fluids out of the body, and others other ones, and some stop an illness and others stop life, in the same way some speeches (λόγοι) cause pain, others pleasure, others drug and bewitch the soul by some evil persuasion” (trans. Laks/Most 2016). 4 A similar strategy in the Phaedrus is the topic of Derrida 1968. 5 Cf. LSJ II.4: logically sound, τὸ ὑγιὲς συνημμένον S.E.M. 8.118; ὑγιὴς ἀπόδειξις Id. P. 1.116, cf. 6 Arr. Epict. 2.1.4. 6 For the currency of this interpretation in the history of the dialogue’s reception see Most 1993.

  Chloe Balla his recovery — as a possible key to our understanding of the reference to the debt to Asclepius need not be treated as incompatible with the standard view. For it is thanks to Plato’s philosophical rigorousness that the separation of the soul from the body is now for the first time clearly and consistently formulated. 7 The dialogue that has been developed in the meantime substantiates how that may be the case. As I have already suggested, Plato invites us to understand this separation under two rubrics: physical, biological death can be seen as the illustration or the fulfilment of a different kind of ‘death’, which philosophers obtain as they practice their art throughout their embodied life.8 So the second relatively recent interpretation of Socrates’ last words that I would like to consider is one that ties in with death as a separation of the soul from bodily desires. This interpretation gained currency independently in the French and the Anglo-American world through Michel Foucault — who draws on an idea of George Dumézil — and J. Crooks respectively, 9 and suggests that the cure for which the debt to Asclepius is due concerns the disease of hatred of arguments, which is described by Socrates earlier in the text as misology, a danger from which Socratic dialectic has, presumably in the meantime, rescued his companions. 10 The ambiguity of the term ὑγιής that is used in connection with the condition of misology provides the key to this interpretation. Up to this point I have drawn attention to ambiguous terms (θάνατος or death, φάρμακον οr drug) or individual phrases (Socrates’ last words) in Plato’s Phaedo, and I have tried to show how ambiguity in these cases allows Plato to bring together, or interweave, three different and equally important threads of his text: ‘mind’-body dualism, philosophical method, and also Plato’s claim to qualify as Socrates’ successor. I shall now move to a different kind of ambiguity, my fifth and main case, which does not concern a word or a phrase, but rather a character: the persona of Socrates in the Phaedo. I would argue that Plato uses ambiguity in his characterization of Socrates in order to alert his audience to cer-

 7 A considerable part of the dialogue is devoted to criticism of rival ‘philosophical pursuits’, such as Pythagoreanism. For discussion of this aspect of the Phaedo, see, among others, Horky 2013, Notomi 2013, and Palmer 2014. Sedley 1995 sheds light on the related topic of the characterization of the two interlocutors, Simmias and Cebes; cf. Peterson 2011, 166−171. 8 See further Thanassas 2017. 9 Foucault 2011; Dumézil 1984; Crooks 1998. For Foucault’s reading of Plato, cf. most recently Lawlor 2019. 10 It has been suggested that this mission is illustrated by means of the reference to the ship of Theseus at the beginning of the dialogue. On this idea, see, most recently, Gonzalez 2018.

Intended Ambiguity in Plato’s Phaedo  

tain traits of his teacher that pointed toward, but did not quite deliver, the philosophical program Plato himself was later going to implement. I propose to treat Plato’s agenda regarding Socrates’ ambiguous characterization in the Phaedo under two headings, piety and education, which respectively correspond to the two charges that led to Socrates’ conviction: impiety and corruption of the young. 11 I will start with a passage near the end of the Phaedo. Socrates asks the man who is about to administer the hemlock (117b6−7): What would you say about pouring a libation from this drink in someone’s honour? Is it allowed or not?

Socrates’ playful suggestion must be a reference to the scene of the death of Theramenes, an Athenian politician and general who was condemned to death five years before Socrates’ execution. According to Xenophon (Hell. 2.3.56), before drinking the poison Theramenes too had proposed to dash it out — the same word is used: ἀποκοτταβίζειν, as if he was playing kottabos. An upper-class game played at the symposia, kottabos had been criticized by Critias, the man who had pursued Theramenes’ death, and whom Theramenes, according to the same source, designated as the recipient of his ‘toast’. 12 Both Critias and Theramenes were of course members of the Thirty Tyrants; Socrates’ association with the former must have been among the reasons that led to his trial in 399. The reference to the story of Theramenes serves as an invitation to the audience of the Phaedo to think of the parallel between two contentious figures who were condemned to death, and possibly also serves as a reminder of Socrates’ association with Critias, who was a member of the Socratic circle. It seems likely that this association was among the concerns that led Socrates’ accusers to press the charges of impiety against him, since any political allegations were forbidden because of the political amnesty that had been enacted after the reestablishment of democracy. 13 One might have thought that Plato, committed to an agenda of ‘Socratic apologetics’ would have chosen to avoid a reference that would invoke an association with Critias. But the author opted for a different plan. He used this reference to audacity and provocation as a sign of an inverted kind of piety that characterized his teacher. 14  11 Xen. Mem. 1.1.1. 12 Critias DK 88 B1, 2. Cf. Thomas 2018, 618. 13 For a concise recent discussion of the relevant evidence see Emlyn-Jones and Preddy 2017. 14 The combination of audacity and piety in the persona of Socrates is foreshadowed in the story of the Delphic oracle as Plato relates it in the Apology. Morgan 2010, 65−66 has described this narrative as “foundational for the interpretation of the Socratic elenchus”: the practice of

  Chloe Balla Pouring a libation or earnestly taking the oracle at its word are normally acts of piety, but Plato shows us how, in the case of Socrates, they can also qualify as acts of impiety or at least as challenges to traditional religious norms. In this regard, Socrates’ behaviour is ambiguous: it is pious — insofar as it draws on traditional religious ideas — but also revisionary, and hence, for many of his fellowAthenians, impious — insofar as it challenges the authority of the divine by means of human reason.15 Plato invites his readers to think of Socrates as a Janus, a single figure that gazes at one and the same time to religious values and to rational investigation. This ambiguity is of critical importance within the framework of Plato’s agenda, not only with respect to Socratic apologetics, but also with respect to his preoccupation with branding his own philosophy — as philosophy proper — claiming himself as his master’s privileged heir. Allusions to Socrates’ power of divination, 16 that is, to his ability to recognize and interpret godsent signs, and to seek the truth through experiences that are beyond the reach of ordinary mortals, allow Plato to mark the distance between, on the one hand, his master as a kind of seer, whose ability to communicate with the divine was based on a special ‘charisma’, and, on the other hand, a newly established art, namely philosophy, that relied on commitment to human reasoning — and at the same time to mark the debt of the latter to the former. We find an example of this strategy near the beginning of Phaedo’s narrative. Socrates explains how a persistent dream led him during his custody to experiment for the first time with poetry. “For it seemed safer not to depart before I had honoured my sacred obligation by composing poems in obedience to the dream”. The dream was not new; it had often visited Socrates in his past life (61a8−b7), appearing in different guises at different times, but saying the same things. “Socrates”, it said, “compose music and work at it”.

But, whereas in the past Socrates had interpreted this dream as an exhortation to practise philosophy, during the period of his custody he opted for a more straightforward or traditional interpretation. And accordingly, he composed a hymn to Apollo, but since he was no story-teller, he

 the ‘Socratic elenchus’ was a reaction to Pythia’s claim that no one was wiser than Socrates (Apology 21a4−7). Acting piously Socrates took the oracle seriously, and embarked on the Socratic refutation, the elenchus. He started questioning all those who were regarded as wise, to see if there was anyone wiser than him. 15 Morgan 2010; Zafiropoulos 2015, 62−63, with further references. 16 On the importance of divination in classical Greek culture (including Socrates’ commitment to it) see Flower 2008.

Intended Ambiguity in Plato’s Phaedo  

took the stories [he] already had in hand and knew, those of Aesop, and made compositions out of the ones that first came to mind (61b5−7).

So, shortly before his death, Socrates the philosopher, the man who had taken his dream to be an exhortation to practise philosophy, and who thought that philosophy is the greatest kind of music, continued to worry about the real meaning of the dream, about the sacred obligation that it entailed. Drawing attention to this incident, Plato reminds us of the distance that separates the charismatic teacher who remained attached to various traditional religious ideas — which he nevertheless revisited and refashioned — from the student, that is Plato himself, who transforms the religious paradigm represented by his master into the discipline of philosophy.17 Socratic divination involved the ‘charisma’, the gift of prophecy revealed through the presence of the daimonion. To this religious ideal Plato juxtaposes a secular art of philosophy — the substance that is left behind once the charismatic master passes away. So far I have considered some examples of Plato’s implementation of ambiguity with regard to the religious aspects of Socrates’ characterization in the Phaedo. I shall now move to the aspect of Socrates’ characterization that is related to the second part of his indictment, namely his role as an educator. I would like to suggest that here again the use of ambiguity allows Plato to draw a fine line between, on the one hand, the educational vision of his teacher — which involved his criticism of, and departure from, the flaws that characterized earlier natural scientists and ‘sophists’ — and, on the other, the philosophical application of that vision. Once more, this movement marks the departure from the individual charismatic teacher to the establishment of a discipline and an ‘academic community’. In the Phaedo Plato shows that Socrates, very shortly before his death, and possibly along the lines of a recognizably Socratic religious — as opposed to scientific — agenda, worried about natural science, especially about the failure of contemporary physicists to account for the role of intelligence in nature. 18 Toward the end of a passage that is usually described as his intellectual autobiography (96a6−99d2) Socrates explicitly states his hope that someone might be able to remedy the flaws of contemporary natural science and put his finger on the real  17 Cf. Morgan 2010, 67: “[The dialogue] moves programmatically from ordinary music and divination to their philosophical counterparts.” 18 On this distinction see Sedley 2007, 78−79. The reconstruction of a Socratic religious agenda relies on evidence from Xenophon concerning Socrates’ disenchantment with contemporary inquiry into nature. For further discussion see Sedley 2007, 78−86, with references to Viano 2001 and McPherran 1996, 272−291.

  Chloe Balla cause of natural phenomena (Phaedo 99c6−9: “Now I would gladly become anyone’s pupil to learn just what the truth is about that sort of cause”). This is exactly the task that Plato takes up in the Timaeus, where Socrates becomes the addressee of an account that makes nous responsible for the workings of nature. Plato presents Socrates as a unique, charismatic leader, a partisan of divine providence, who would have endorsed but never developed the philosophical armoury that was needed to transform his intuition, or ‘faith’, into the kind of systematic account that Plato was able to develop. Plato’s persona of Socrates in the Phaedo combines religious practice (the piety of the individual that is exemplified by Socrates) with the seeds of rational theology and a new vision of natural science (a vision that is anticipated in the Phaedo, announced in the Timaeus and presumably practised in Plato’s Academy). Plato intentionally avoids presenting Socrates as a mouthpiece for a new, teleological account of nature. By doing so, he alerts his audience to the authorship of this account, and he stresses that its aims had been laid down and endorsed by Socrates. To return to the theme of ambiguity, I would like to suggest that, while Plato leaves open the possibility that Socrates had developed a philosophical argument concerning creationism, he also wants his readers to think that his interest in the subject is triggered by religious considerations. Depending on the rubric under which we understand Socrates’ criticism of his contemporary physicists, we can think of his contribution either as a contribution to religion or to what is often described as ‘rational theology’. One might object that the dividing line between religion and rational theology in the case of Socrates is blurred or that the distinction itself in this context is anachronistic. This objection may be valid in the case of Socrates; but Plato, who ‘tolerates’ the blur of the two categories in the case of his teacher, is able to draw the distinction. In fact, he capitalizes on this distinction in order to highlight his own contribution and at the same time — given Socrates’ interest in creationism, albeit ‘religious’ — lay claim to the ‘brand-name’ of his teacher. 19 We can see Socrates’ commitment to this idea as the springboard for the account Plato was later going to attribute to Timaeus, presumably a Pythagorean,20 downgrading Socrates to the role of an addressee. As a preamble to that account, in the Phaedo Plato pays tribute to Socrates as his teacher, who raised — without however answering — the questions that shaped Plato’s philosophy.

 19 Sedley 2007 has used the term “anti-scientific creationism” to describe Socrates’ religious commitment to a creator god. 20 See Macris 2018.

Intended Ambiguity in Plato’s Phaedo  

So far I have shown how Plato in the Phaedo uses intended ambiguity in connection with the charge against Socrates of impiety. I will now trace a similar move with regard to Plato’s allusions to Socratic pedagogy, an issue that corresponds to the second part of the charge that was pressed against Socrates. Here once more Plato marks, besides his debt to his teacher, his own contribution in covering the distance between, on the one hand, what he (Plato) would describe as antilogic and sophistry and, on the other, philosophy proper. I continue to focus on the text of the Phaedo; by way of preamble, however, I want to draw attention to a definition of the sophist in the Sophist, which many scholars have regarded as a subtle reference to Socrates. 21 According to this definition, the sophist of noble lineage (γένει γενναία σοφιστική) practises the highest form of purification, removing from the soul wrong opinions through the technique of refutation (elenchus). Assuming that the similarity to Socratic practice here is not merely accidental, Plato seems to invite his audience to think of Socrates as a sophist, albeit of noble descent, but also, drawing once more on the religious sphere, as a ‘purifier’. 22 One might think that insofar as the (noble) sophist can use λόγος qua reason, he can come closer to philosophy, which, I think is exactly the idea that Plato wants to advance in connection with Socrates: someone who appeared like a sophist but who was also quite different. This difference was subtle, and presumably missed by those who condemned Socrates. What is interesting in the present context is that Plato’s defence of his teacher does not consist in an effort to present him as a philosopher, but rather as a hybrid, a sui generis or unique man, whose teaching could pave the way to philosophy, but didn’t quite get there. The author underlines Socrates’ double descriptive attributes, on the one hand as a sophist and on the other as a philosopher. 23 Just as in the previous case of contrasting religion with rational theology, here also, thinking of Socrates under the double capacity of philosopher and sophist may be to assume a distinction — at the time Plato wrote the Phaedo —

 21 Plat. Soph. 231b3−8. See, among others, Taylor 2006; Nehamas 1998, 157−168; Bernabé 2013. 22 Placed in the context of the Sophist the reference to the practice of purification is again ambiguous. It may be taken to imply the kind of fraud that Plato elsewhere associates with the practice of ‘vagabonds and priests’ (Rep. 364b5). But purification is also a term that Plato uses in the Phaedo in connection with the practice of philosophy. Plato is alluding to religious practices whose connotations may have been more transparent to his — or Socrates’ — contemporaries than they are for us now. Orphism, the Eleusinian mysteries, the intellectual circle of the Derveni Papyrus, and the character of Euthyphro are among the issues that a more thorough examination of my topic would need to address, taking into account Plato’s use of ambiguity in the language of the mysteries. For rich material on this topic see Bernabé 2016. 23 See also Taylor 2006.

  Chloe Balla between the categories of philosophy and sophistry that did not yet exist, and which was in fact introduced by Plato as part of his agenda of Socratic apologetics. In this connection, it is instructive to consider the portrait of Socrates in Aristophanes’ Clouds. It is unlikely that Aristophanes expected his audience to be aware of a distinction between philosophy and sophistry. It seems safer to assume that he used the persona of Socrates as an epitome of a professional late 5th-century intellectual, who challenged traditional values and offered classes on a range of topics that included physics, measurement, and also logos, in the sense of ‘grammar’ and disputation. To what extent the Aristophanic persona corresponded to the historical Socrates is of little relevance in the present context. What is more relevant is that the Aristophanic persona of Socrates was probably more familiar to Plato’s audience than the historical Socrates.24 Socrates was presented as the teacher of a student who, after his training at the ‘Thinkery’, which involved a debate of opposing speeches — usually associated with Protagoras — 25 was described as ἐξαρνητικός and ἀντιλογικός (Clouds 1172−3). Plato was prepared to tolerate Socrates’ association with the ‘sophists’, along the lines of the strategy that I have described above, and to meet its challenge. So just as with regard to Socrates’ piety and religiosity Plato shows how philosophy transforms divination into rational argumentation, so also, with regard to Socrates’ practice of argumentation, Plato can show how the open-ended nature of Socratic inquiry — the futility of which was noted by his interlocutors (such as Callicles or Thrasymachus, but also Meno)26 — can be transformed into a serious philosophical quest for truth. Thus, instead of trying to completely dissociate Socrates from the practitioners of disputation, Plato invites his audience to reflect on a certain similarity between his master and the sophists, but also to appreciate that, without the philosophical fire-power that Plato would go on to develop (the method of hypothesis, the theory of recollection, the Forms), Socratic investigation could continue to look very similar to sophistic practice. 27 Plato’s intention to show the importance of this philosophical armoury is particularly striking in the Meno, where the method of recollection is advanced as a remedy for the kind of attitude that irritated people who encountered Socrates. Plato attributes to Meno a statement that reflects that reputation (79e7−80a6; trans. Sedley/Long):

 24 Cf. Apol. 18b4−c8. 25 See Corradi 2013; Corradi 2017. 26 Gorg. 481b10−c4; Rep. 336b1−d4; Meno 79e7−80a6, cited below. 27 See Nehamas 1999.

Intended Ambiguity in Plato’s Phaedo  

Before I even met you I used to hear that all you do is get puzzled yourself and make others puzzled. And now, it seems to me, you are bewitching me, drugging me and simply overwhelming me with enchantment, so that I have been filled with puzzlement. If a little humour is in order, what you comprehensively remind me of, both in appearance and in other respects, is that marine creature, the electric ray.

Meno’s remarks concerning Socrates’ reputation support the idea that people thought of him as a man who confused or even alienated his audience. In the Phaedo Socrates criticizes a group of unnamed antilogikoi, practitioners of disputation, for tolerating the idea that reality itself is in constant flux, like the tide of Euripus, thereby confusing those who follow their discourse (Phaedo 90b9−c6). This imagery of the world in a state of flux is reminiscent of a passage in the Euthyphro. There Socrates likens the logoi (in the sense of words, speeches, or arguments) that his dialogue with his interlocutor creates to the statues of Daedalus, which, because of their plasticity, appeared as if to be constantly running away. Plato seems to exploit two different images to describe the same idea, i.e. flux: the straits of Euripus; the statues of Daedalus. The first of these images alludes to the unnamed antilogikoi, and the second to Socratic discourse. By separating these two images he allows his audience to appreciate the similarity between, but also to reflect on the distance that separates, Socrates and the antilogikoi. I think that Plato finds it important to show that this distance is not related to the actual method or to the content of the practice as implemented by Socrates and the antilogikoi respectively, but that it is rather a matter of a different disposition toward that practice, which prevents his teacher from abusing the power of logos. The antilogikoi in the Phaedo believe themselves (90b9−c6) to have become very wise and that they alone have understood that there is no soundness or reliability in any object or in any argument (οὐδὲν τῶν λόγων), but that all that exists simply fluctuates up and down as if it were in the Euripus and does not remain in the same place for any time at all.

By contrast, Plato describes Socrates’ frustration with the confusion that his logoi bring about (Euthyphro 11d6−e1; trans. Fowler): the most exquisite thing about my art is that I am clever against my will; for I would rather have my words (λόγους) stay fixed and stable than possess the wisdom of Daedalus and the wealth of Tantalus besides.

Of course, Plato had the option to present Socrates in a more clear-cut way, or, foreshadowing Aristotle, to suggest that a more careful practice of dialectic com-

  Chloe Balla bined with proper disposition secured his teacher’s supremacy vis-à-vis the antilogikoi. 28 But he did not opt for either of these approaches, and I believe that the reason was that he wished his audience to be aware of the importance of his own contribution. This is clear in the Meno, where Plato invokes again the imagery of the statues of Daedalus. This time, however, he is able to provide a remedy to the incessant movement that had been identified as a problem of logoi in the Euthyphro (Meno 97e2−98a5): Owning one of his [i.e. Daedalus’] products isn’t of much value if it’s untied, like a runaway, because it doesn’t stay with one. But it is worth a lot if it is tied down. For his works are very beautiful. So what is my point? It’s about true opinions. For true opinions are also a thing of beauty, as long as they stay with one, and all their consequences are good. But they’re not prepared to stay with one for long. Instead they run away from the person’s soul. As a result they are not worth very much until someone ties them down by reasoning out the cause. And this, Meno, my friend, is recollection, as we have earlier agreed.

Written probably after the Euthyphro and before the Phaedo, the Meno — the dialogue in which Plato introduces the theory of recollection — allows the author to show that without the Forms and recollection, logoi would continue to behave like runaways. To draw the threads together and to conclude: I have discussed a number of cases in which the use of ambiguity allows the author Plato to convey his ideas. I started with some remarks on the vocabulary of health, disease and death. On the basis of these remarks I suggested that Socrates’ last words (‘O Crito, we owe a cock to Asclepius’) are also open to multiple layers of interpretation, which tie in with the dialogue’s various themes. I then moved from an examination of words to a different case of ambiguity, which concerns the persona of Socrates. I sought to show how the ambiguous characterization of this persona in the Phaedo serves the dialogue’s broader agenda, by leading its audience to wonder: was Socrates a practitioner of divination and of rational philosophy? Was his commitment to divine providence part of his religious apparatus or could it also be the basis of a rational theology and science (that someone like Plato was able to develop)? Was he a sophist? Could his logoi stop moving up and down, like the tides, without the philosophical armoury that Plato would go on to develop? Can philosophy itself achieve this result? Or is its difference from sophistry only a matter of disposition? I have suggested that Plato wants his readers to think about and appre-

 28 Cf. Arist. Rhet. 1355a23−28; b25−31.

Intended Ambiguity in Plato’s Phaedo  

ciate the distance that separates his master from his own contribution to philosophy, but also the continuity in ideas that allows him to claim for himself the status of Socrates’ most privileged heir.

Bibliography Texts and Translations Laks, André/Most, Glenn W. (2016), Early Greek Philosophy, vol. VIII, Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge, MA/London. Rowe, Christopher J. (1993), Plato, Phaedo, Cambridge. Sedley, David/Long, Alex (2010), Plato, Meno and Phaedo, ed. David Sedley, transl. Alex Long, Cambridge.

Books and Articles Bernabé, Alberto (2013), “The Sixth Definition (Sophist 226a−231c): Transposition of Religious Language”, in: Beatriz Bossi/Thomas M. Robinson (eds.), Plato’s ‘Sophist’ Revisited, Berlin/Boston, 41−56. Bernabé, Alberto (2016), “Fedón, 69c: por qué los βάκχοι son los verdaderos filósofos?”, Archai, n. 16, jan. − apr., 77−93. Corradi, Michele (2013), “Tὸν ἥττω λόγον κρείττω ποιεῖν: Aristotle, Plato, and the ἐπάγγελμα of Protagoras”, in: Johannes M. van Ophuijsen/Marlein van Raalte/Peter Stork (eds.), Protagoras of Abdera: The Man, His Measure, Leiden/Boston, 69−86. Corradi, Michele (2017), “Protagorean Socrates, Socratic Protagoras: A Narrative Strategy from Aristophanes to Plato”, in: Alessandro Stavru/Christopher Moore (eds.), Socrates and the Socratic Dialogue, Leiden/New York, 84−104. Crooks, James (1998), “Socrates’ Last Words. Another Look at an Ancient Riddle”, CQ 48, 117−125. Derrida, Jacques (1968), La pharmacie de Platon, Paris. Dumézil, Georges (1984), Le Moyne noir en gris dedans Varennes, Paris. Emlyn-Jones, Christopher/Preddy, William (2017), “Introduction”, in: Plato Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge MA/London, 86−105. Flower, Michael (2008), The Seer in Ancient Greece, Berkeley/Los Angeles/London. Foucault, Michel (2011), The Courage of the Truth (The Government of Self and Others II). Lectures at the Collège de France 1983−1984, ed. Frédéric Gros, trans. Graham Burchell, New York. Gonzalez, Francisco G. (2018), “Why the Minotaur is Misology”, in: Gabriele Cornelli/Thomas M. Robinson/Francisco Bravo (eds.), Plato’s Phaedo. Selected Papers from the Eleventh Symposium Platonicum, Baden-Baden, 90−95. Horky, Phillip S. (2013), Plato and Pythagoreanism, Oxford.

  Chloe Balla Lawlor, Leonard (2019), “‘Sacrifice a Cock to Asclepius’: The Reception of Socrates in Foucault’s Final Writings”, in: Christopher Moore (ed.), Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Socrates, Leiden/Boston, 928−949. Macris, Constantinos (2018), “Timée de Locres + ‘Pseudo-Timée’”, in: Richard Goulet (ed.), Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques, vol. VII, Paris, 987−1009. McPherran, Mark L. (1996), The Religion of Socrates, University Park, PA. Morgan, Kathryn A. (2010), “The Voice of Authority: Divination and Plato’s Phaedo”, CQ 60.1, 63−81. Most, Glenn W. (1993), “A Cock for Asclepius”, CQ 43, 96−111. Nehamas, Alexander (1998), The Art of Living. Socratic Reflections from Plato to Foucault, Berkeley/Los Angeles/London. Nehamas, Alexander (1999), “Eristic, Antilogic, Sophistic, Dialectic: Plato’s Demarcation of Philosophy from Sophistry”, Virtues of Authenticity, Princeton, NJ, 108−122. Notomi, Noboru (2013), “Socrates in the Phaedo”, in: George Boys-Stones/Dimitri El Murr/ Christopher Gill (eds.), The Platonic Art of Philosophy, Cambridge, 51−69. Palmer, John (2014), “The Pythagoreans and Plato”, in: Carl A. Huffman (ed.), A History of Pythagoreanism, Cambridge, 204−226. Peterson, Sandra (2011), Socrates and Philosophy in the Dialogues of Plato, Cambridge. Sedley, David (1995), “The Dramatis Personae of Plato’s Phaedo”, Proceedings of the British Academy 83, 3−26. Sedley, David (2007), Creationism and its Critics in Antiquity, Berkeley/Los Angeles/London. Taylor, Charles C.W. (2006), “Socrates the Sophist”, in: Lindsay Judson/Vassilis Karasmanis (eds.), Remembering Socrates, Oxford, 157−168. Thanassas, Panagiotis (2017), “What Kind of Death? On the Phaedo’s Double Topic”, Rhizomata 5, 113−147. Thomas, David (2018), “The Enemies of Hunting in Xenophon’s Cynegeticus”, in: Gabriel Danzig/David M. Johnson/Donald R. Morrison (eds.), Plato and Xenophon, Leiden/Boston, 612−639. Viano, Cristina (2001), “La cosmologie de Socrate dans les Mémorables de Xénophon”, in: Gilbert Romeyer Dherbey/Jean-Baptiste Gourinat (eds.), Socrate et les Socratiques, Paris, 97–119. Zafiropoulos, Christos A. (2015), Socrates and Aesop. A Comparative Study of the Introduction of Plato’s Phaedo, Sankt Augustin.

Susanne Reichlin

The Ambiguity of the Unambiguous: Figures of Death in Late Medieval Literature Abstract: This article investigates different forms and media of ambiguity in a memento mori woodcut with a flap and in the short story “The encounter of the dead and the living”. I will argue that aesthetically interesting ambiguity is rarely that of a single sign in which two meanings are mutually exclusive and equally important. Instead, it is a performed ambiguity — an ambiguity that unfolds in a process of perception, in which meanings change and the nuances of meaning are given different weight. Keywords: ambiguity, woodcut, The Three Living and the Three Dead, death, Media-History

In late medieval religious poems, dialogues, and plays, dead persons and figures of death are omnipresent. They confront the living with their own mortality. On the one hand, death is represented as a final fact, one which is inevitable and clearly unambiguous. Death reaches everybody and does not distinguish between his victims. On the other hand, the dead and the figures of death deceive the living with their impermanent and protean nature. This ambiguity of death is usually only a preliminary one. It is used didactically, i.e. it should be resolved by the viewers or readers into a higher truth, which leads to a truly Christian way of life. But not always can ambiguous structures be easily resolved into a clear Christian doctrine. 1 In this article I would like to examine how the ambiguity of death is used in late medieval texts and images, and how, when, and with what surplus the conflicting meanings are resolved into a higher truth. In doing so, I will pay special attention to the different ways of dealing with ambiguity in different media. To introduce the concept of ambiguity, literary scholars like to refer to puzzle-pictures (like ‘Rubinʼs vase’ or ‘duck or rabbit’). 2 However, the different ways of presenting ambiguity in different media are seldom given further

 1 In any case it would be simplistic to deny ambiguities in pre-modern or Christian texts in general. Cf. Bode 2007, 68. See for the historical dimension of the use of ambiguity: Auge/Witthöft 2016, 4−7 and below. 2 Rimmon 1977, ix–xi; Furniss/Bath 2007, 216. See Bauer et al. 2010, 21, who stress that there is little research on visual ambiguity. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110715811-004

  Susanne Reichlin thought. 3 Therefore, I would like to examine a woodcut and a short story and ask how they use and resolve the ambiguity of death differently.

 Performed Ambiguity I begin with a hand-colored single-leaf woodcut from around 1510/1520 by a Bavarian author, Johannes Kurtz. 4 Figure 1 shows a sheet from the State Library of Munich. Here we see a beautiful, attractive woman, looking into a mirror — a clear sign of superbia. Behind the woman are some strophic verses in the first person: Jch gfall mir billich wol drüm bÿn ich hoffart vol Offt mich im spiegel schaw Yeder ÿecz mich an blickt dann ich byn schōne fraw B[G]ar billich ich mich Im spiegel an sich dann auf diser erd Bÿn ich wol ghalten vn allen [lieb] vnd wert. 5

When you look closely at the text and the neck of the woman, you see that this woodcut has two layers. The middle part of the text is part of a flap, which you can lift. 6 If the observer lifts the flap (Figure 2), they see a naked skull, with a fly sitting on it. The text has changed as well:

 3 A convincing exception is the article by Michael Lüthy in this volume. 4 See for information about the author: Bertram 1931; Schanze 1985, 463−468. We find his name on the hem of the dress of the woman on the woodcut (see Figure 1). See for more information about the woodcut: Schreiber 1926−1930, Nr. 11893; Dodgson 1903, Nr. A 127, S. 117–118; Pieske 1960, 128−129; Kiepe 1984, 244–246; Griese 2011, 94−96. 5 Cf. the slightly different transcriptions by Dodgson 1903, 118; Bertram 1931, 87f.; Griese 2011, 94−96. What is controversial is how to read ‘schāt’ (as ‘schaut’ or — as I propose — ‘schamt’). Translation by the author: “I like myself and therefore I’m full of pride. I often look into the mirror. Everybody is now looking at me, because I’m a beautiful woman. I rightly look at myself in the mirror, because on this earth I am well preserved and appreciated by everyone.” 6 The German term for these images is ‘Klappbild’. Our sheet is one of the oldest examples; see for other examples of and research on ‘Klappbilder’: Münkner 2007; Münkner 2008, 88−94; Münkner 2012; Pieske 1960, 127.

The Ambiguity of the Unambiguous: Figures of Death in Late Medieval Literature  

Jch gfall mir nit mer wol drüm bÿn ich trauren vol Offt mich im spiegel schamt Yeder ÿecz ab mir schrickt, dann ich byn todt ergroͤut. Jch arme, jch mich nÿmmer mer an sich, jch lig in der erd, bÿn v̈ bel ghalten, nÿmant lieb vnd werd. 7

The dead and ugly woman appears underneath the beautiful, proud and living woman. Thus, the flap works like a time machine; it shows the young womanʼs near future. Her current statements are transformed into future statements (or her past statements and status are transformed into her present state of death). In any case, the “ÿecz” in the phrase “Yeder ÿecz mich an blickt” is telling. The beauty of the young woman is short-lived. Thus, the woodcut stands in the tradition of the memento mori and functions as a reminder of the viewer’s own mortality. If we define ambiguity not in the broad sense as several types of multiple meaning,8 but in a narrow sense as a “collision of two meanings”, 9 or as two “mutually exclusive meanings” coexisting in a context or expression that “calls for a choice between its alternative meanings, but […] provides no ground for making the choice”, 10 then the woodcut is an unusual but instructive illustrative material. Two mutually exclusive meanings are represented by the two layers of the woodcut. We can call them vitality and mortality, beauty and transience or, on the level of virtues, vanity and humility. 11 In contrast to a word or a sentence that evokes

 7 “I donʼt like myself anymore, so I’m full of grief. Often I feel ashamed when I look in the mirror, everyone is scared of me because I am dead, turned grey. Poor me, I donʼt look at myself anymore. I lie in the earth and am not well preserved, not appreciated by anyone.” 8 Empson 1970; Bode 1988; Bode 2007; Auge/Witthöft 2016; Witthöft 2016. 9 Weimar 2009, 55: “Kollision zweier Bedeutungen”. He also stresses that one meaning becomes transparent for another, opposite meaning; ibid. 56. Therefore, he understands “ambiguity” also as “modifizierte Eindeutigkeit” (modified unambiguity); ibid, 59. 10 Rimmon 1977, 17; Furniss/Bath 2007, 211; Berndt/Kammer 2009, 10, define ambiguity as “antagonistisch-gleichzeitige Zweiwertigkeit” (antagonistic-simultaneous bivalence). For further discussion of this definition see below. 11 The London sheet of the woodcut (see below, Figure 3) names the opposing meanings: on the upper edge the word “Leben” (life) is repeated three times, on the lower edge the word “Todt” (death).

  Susanne Reichlin two opposing meanings at the same time, the woodcut consists of two layers with mutually exclusive meanings. These two opposing meanings are not (as with verbal ambiguity) indissolubly condensed into one another, but they overlap mechanically. It remains open how this overlapping is to be interpreted. One can read it as a temporal process: the beautiful woman will grow old, die and her formerly beautiful body will rot. However, this does not yet fully capture the wit of the woodcut, as the woodcut does not depict a temporal development, but the overlapping of two meanings that are simultaneously valid. As in a puzzle-picture, the opposites are part of a single phenomenon: in beauty and in life are transience and mortality to be perceived — or does the woodcut show us life in death? Since the 15th century, the fly has often been depicted on corpses and skulls as a symbol of transience,12 but in contrast to the skull the fly is alive. And more importantly, the theme of resurrection stands in the background of this Christian woodcut, and by folding down the flap, the pictorial resurrection of the dead woman is performed. Unlike or more intense than in the puzzle-picture, the relationship between the two layers is unstable, since the flap can be used in both directions. The two opposing meanings can be combined at a higher level in two opposing ways: one can see not only death in life, but also life in death. The memento mori tradition suggests one interpretation (death or transience in life), but the image’s mechanics enable and encourage multiple openings and closings (see below for further evidence). Moreover, one detail puzzles the viewer. The mirror is a traditional symbol of superbia, self-knowledge and memento mori. 13 But while in other woodcuts of the time the beautiful woman sees the skull in the mirror, 14 in our woodcut both layers show the same image in the mirror: the skull as well as the young woman see a living woman in the mirror. 15 Thus the second layer shows the contrast between death and life not only one after the other, but also side by side. How the two layers are to be linked is thus even more unclear. I therefore propose the ambiguity of the woodcut lies not as much in the two layers ‘death’ and ‘life’, which overlap and are part of one single phenomenon. Rather, it lies in the fact that the flap can be used in both directions, so that the

 12 Kemp 1997, III.A.7. 13 Holl 1972, 189. 14 Kiepe 1984, 243–244. 15 In the first layer, the woman in the mirror seems not quite as seductive as the one who looks at herself in the mirror; see Griese 2011, 95. But this may be due to the limited possibilities of the artist.

The Ambiguity of the Unambiguous: Figures of Death in Late Medieval Literature  

two layers and concepts can be linked in opposite directions. Moreover, the example of the woodcut with two material layers of meaning is instructive methodologically, because it shows that the two conflicting meanings can be combined in different ways. Especially when we examine forms other than term-based ambiguity, it is often not enough to identify two mutually exclusive meanings; it is also necessary to ask how they relate to each other (in temporal, logical relations, etc.). Another sheet of the woodcut, which is held in London at the British Museum (Figure 3), presumably shows a secondary use of the model — probably without a flap.16 At the top of the woodcut we find a wish for a happy new year (“EIN GVT SELIG NEVIAR BVSCH ICH EVCH ”). Thus, the London woodcut is a New Year’s greeting card. This is reinforced by the image of the Infant Jesus, which formed part of the classical iconography for contemporary New Year’s greeting cards. 17 It may be surprising at first glance that this figure of death appears on a New Year’s card. But the New Year symbolizes the passing of time and the process of aging. Around the mirror we find a short text on both sheets: “ZIT BRINGT ALE DING” — which may be translated as: “In time, everything becomes apparent”. Like the New Year theme, this saying also underlines the passing of time. Both emphasize the vagueness (not ambiguity)18 and openness of the future. On the London sheet (on a scroll in the upper half of the image) we read very similarly − but from the perspective of the beautiful woman, who (in this sheet) is only visible in the mirror: “Jch bin jung schön hübsch wolgestalt • Wie aber wenn ich wird alt”. 19 The question of what is to come thus arises at the level of the time span of an individual life and at the level of the cyclical course of the year. However, by  16 Kiepe 1984, 246, n. 35, argues that it can be seen clearly in the London sheet: it never had been a flap. In contrast, Schanze 1985, 468 and Griese 2011, 95, assume that the Munich woodcut was trimmed and that the London sheet has merely lost its flap (unfortunately I was unable to see the London sheet for myself). But as Dodgson (1903, 117) and Pieske (1960, 129) point out, the London sheet is “printed from eleven different blocks”, which are quite disparate (e.g. two upright borders on either side of the woman with the text of the Siemann-theme). Presumably, the blocks of the Munich sheet were enlarged and extended with other blocks (which were available at the time). If you take a close look at the Munich print, you see no traces that the woodcut was trimmed. However, on the London sheet we find the invitation to the viewers: “So wend das bletlin offt herum • Vnd luog was vnden herfürkum” (translation in note 20). This refers to a flap. So maybe there is a lost intermediate copy which had the frame with the New Year’s wish and a flap as well. 17 Schilling 1990, 151; Holtorf 1973, 153–155; Schreyl 1979, 12–17. 18 Here the vagueness or indistinctness can be distinguished from ambiguity in the narrow sense of two mutually exclusive meanings. 19 “I’m young, pretty and beautiful, but what, when I get older?”

  Susanne Reichlin looking at the skull, the many possibilities of the future and the different conceptions of time are limited to a single certainty: everyone will die, and with the passing of time one gets closer to the time of death. In the Munich sheet (with a flap), we had the contrast of life and death one after the other; they were brought into relation with each other by the flap and the intervention of the viewer. In the London sheet, we have the contrast of life and death, beauty and mortality in one image, side by side. The skull sees the beautiful, living young woman in the mirror. In the text, in turn, the living young woman speaks and asks herself what her future will bring. The pairs of opposites are thus in text and image related to each other chiastically. But the woman’s speech begun above is continued in the scroll below the picture. Wie aber wenn ich wird sterben So wend das bletlin offt herum Dich offt in dem spiegel besich

Von wirmen in erd verderben Vnd lůg was vnden herfürkum Ye mer diemütigest du dich 20

The woman’s speech concerning her own future suddenly becomes a speech addressed to the viewers of the woodcut. The question about the woman’s future functions as a means to arouse the curiosity of the audience and to encourage them to act, i.e. to turn their gaze from the woman in the mirror and towards the skull or — if we assume a flap21 — to lift the flap. The viewers are not promised a glimpse of the future, but of what lies beneath the surface. 22 The double use of the word ‘often’ (“offt”) is striking. The viewer should contrast the beautiful woman in the mirror with the skull (or use the flap) not only once, but several times. Likewise, the observers should look at themselves in the mirror several times. “The more you look at yourself in the mirror, the more you humble yourself.” The mentioned mirror is neither the mirror present in the image nor a real mirror in which one can see one’s own beauty, but rather the woodcut itself. It is a ‘mirror’ or speculum in the sense of the late medieval genre term 23 (mirrors for princes, ‘Sachsenspiegel’, speculum noviciorum). These are texts that create ideal or normative images of reality that should be imitated. In this sense, the woodcut also wants

 20 “But when I die, when I’m rotting in the earth, eaten by worms? Turn the leaflet often and see what you find underneath. The more you look at yourself in the mirror, the more you humble yourself.” 21 See above note 16. 22 The spatial relation surface/depth (hidden truth) now appears to be more dominant than the temporal relation present/future. 23 Kiepe 1984, 241−251; Störmer-Caysa 2007.

The Ambiguity of the Unambiguous: Figures of Death in Late Medieval Literature  

to instruct its viewers. By reminding the living of their mortality, it shows them a higher, invisible truth that devalues transient values like beauty, wealth, honor. The more often they realize this, the more they practice humility. This is why the word “offt” is repeated, and why — at least in the sheet of Munich — not only lifting the flap is so important, but also closing it and lifting it again. Thereby, the viewers practice humility and the devaluation of transient values. Thus there is an ambiguity concerning the mirror, or more precisely, the word ‘mirror’: on the one hand it is a sign of superbia, on the other hand it is a didactic tool, a didactic text or image. This verbal ambiguity functions differently than the material ambiguity of the folding woodblock print. Here we have an ambiguous word that stands for two fundamentally different things: a hand mirror and a woodcut. But again, it is important how the two mutually exclusive meanings are linked — namely here in a relation of supersession: while the hand mirror shows a superficial truth, the woodblock print aspires to represent a higher truth.24 To conclude the discussion of this woodcut, I would like to mention a third form of ambiguity25 regarding the effects the woodcut wants to produce. As in other contemporary depictions of death, our woodblock plays with contradictory reactions of the audience.26 It wants to scare the viewers, but also to lead them to self-knowledge and conversion. On the one hand, it provokes a shiver and a fright when the audience suddenly sees, for example, the skull with the fly. On the other hand, it makes the audience think about the double meaning of the word ‘mirror’ and leads them to a Christian way of life. Are these two effects mutually exclusive? At first sight they seem to be, but as we have seen, the woodcut aims at a multiple viewing and a repeated operation of the flap. In this way, the woodcut tries to combine the two opposing reactions and use them didactically. However, there remains the danger that the shiver and the fright will become an end in itself, i.e. that the fright will be enjoyed without a contemplative effect.

 24 See below for discussion of whether the two mutually exclusive meanings must be equally important or not and whether the contradiction between them is indissoluble or not. 25 Rimmon 1977, 18f., distinguishes between ambiguity, which “is a result of a quality […] in the object”, and ambivalence: “ambivalence is the coexistence of contrasting emotions or attitudes toward the object.” But this distinction is complicated by the fact that an object like our woodcut can evoke “contrasting emotions”. 26 Kiening 2003.

  Susanne Reichlin

 Forms of Narrative Ambiguity Supporters of a narrow definition of ambiguity, in the sense of ‘two mutually exclusive meanings, which provide no ground for a choice between them’, regard their narrow definition as the more productive one, because it allows a clear demarcation between ambiguity and other forms of multiple meaning. 27 This has the disadvantage, however, that it considerably limits the scope of the phenomenon, especially if one is interested in forms of ambiguity that go beyond the mere word and beyond modern literature. Narrative ambiguity would then be limited to a few novels or short stories (Robbe-Grillet, Henry James). Pre-modern narratives would not be considered, as they often work with hierarchical layers of meaning (allegory, multiple senses of scripture). 28 In contrast to the first group of scholars, Bauer et al. assume that the choice of a narrow or a broad definition depends on “weltanschaulichen Prämissen”, 29 i.e. it depends on the interest in dual structures or in the wealth of connotations, whether a literary critic defines ambiguity in the narrow sense as two mutually exclusive meanings or as multiple meanings, that are not necessarily contradictory. This is an important observation which suggests that the broad definition should not simply be abandoned. I would like to draw attention to another problem of narrow definition. For Rimmon, for example, ambiguity is only present if the text “provides no ground for making the choice” between the two meanings and if there is no hierarchical order or reconciliation of the two conflicting meanings “in a larger unit” (as in allegory or irony). 30 But as Weimar emphasizes, it depends on the reading practice, i.e. the reader’s knowledge and the purposes of reading, whether the oscillation of conflicting meanings is perceived and tolerated or not. 31 A decision is always possible, and through a comprehensive interpretation and with the necessary argumentative skill, almost all contradictions contained in an ambiguous sign or expression can be resolved “in a larger unit”. 32 It is therefore important to observe how different or contradictory meanings interact with each other, how they become transparent to each other, or whether their conflict is reconciled or resolved hierarchically. In the following, I would like to show how the relationship between the conflicting meanings changes in the course of a narrative.  27 Rimmon 1977, 3−76; Furniss/Bath 2007, 206−229; Berndt/Kammer 2009. 28 Bode 2007, 68; cf. Auge/Witthöft 2016, 4−6; Witthöft 2016. 29 Bauer et al. 2010, 27. 30 Rimmon 1977, 17, 24f.; see Furniss/Bath 2007, 211. 31 Weimar 2009, 59. 32 Furniss/Bath 2007, 5; Bauer et al. 2010, 27.

The Ambiguity of the Unambiguous: Figures of Death in Late Medieval Literature  

I have chosen a short didactic story, “The Three Living and the Three Dead”, which we find for the first time in the 13th Century in northern France.33 At the end of the 14th Century we find the first German versions.34 Most of the German manuscripts originate from the Rhein-Maas area and therefore are written in low German. This area is closely associated with transmitting Romanic literary traditions to the German-speaking area. The narrative — I quote the manuscript Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, mgf 1027 35 (G) — begins with a description of nature in the springtime; a signal we know from courtly literature: May is the month of courtly festivities, a time when society and nature are in harmony. We are told that three noble men are going hunting with a large entourage. “Sy waren gudes ende moedes ryke” (v. 7). 36 They have everything one could wish for, land and cities, a good reputation and beautiful wives. The hunt begins and the dogs quickly pick up the scent of a deer, but they somehow fail to catch it. The three masters lose contact with most of their entourage. They get lost and are alone in the forest when it starts to get dark. One servant (“kneht”), who is still with them, climbs a tree and sees a fire, which they all head to. Arriving at the fire, they see three dead persons. Their bodies have already decomposed, snakes crawl out of their ears, and worms and lizards are in their stomachs. As the living moan and lament, the dead begin to address the living. In all versions of the story, the core of their speech consists of an inscription or epitaph which was widespread in medieval Europe from the ninth century onwards: 37 Wy waren drie heren, als gy nv sijt. […] Dat wy sijn, dat moet y werden, want gy moet weder toe der erden (v. 156−159). 38

 33 It is a motif that has been handed down in texts and pictures since around 1250. Contrary to what older research assumes, it is not directly linked to the tradition of the Dance of Death. Storck 1910; Rotzler 1961; Rotzler 1955; Tervooren/Spicker 2011, 9−34. 34 Wimmer 1979; Tervooren/Spicker 2011, 35−43. 35 The paper manuscript is ambiguously dated 1406 and 1436; it contains catechetical texts, sermons, legends, visionary literature and spiritual poetry; the manuscript belonged to the Augustinian Convent of Guelders, but the manuscript probably originated northeast of Guelders; see Costard 2011, 546−553; Tervooren/Spicker 2011, 35−39. I quote the edition of Tervooren/ Spicker 2011, 50−69. 36 “They were rich in goods and had good spirits.” Translations are based on the modern German translation in Tervooren/Spicker 2011, 71−78. 37 An overview of the sources handed down is provided by Storck 1911; Stammler 1948, 20−22. 38 “We were three noble men, as you are now. What we are — you must become, for you must turn into earth.”

  Susanne Reichlin In addition, the three dead men tell the living about their former life, how they were rich and noble. They also lament about the torments that they now suffer, since they are dead.39 After the three dead men have ended their speech, the living pray for them, whereupon dawn suddenly arrives. The three noble men say goodbye, and find their way out of the forest. They decide to found a monastery and to dedicate their lives to God. The narrative begins with unambiguous signs (spring, hunting, noblemen) which stand for a courtly world. But in the course of the narrative these signs take on a different meaning. In the night, the hunt and its target lose their meaning. Later, when the three men have left the forest and the daylight has returned, they know what to do. They give away their earthly goods and go into the monastery. They set their eyes on another target: God. This is of course an intertextual reference to the legend of St. Eustachius, in which the hunter also finds God thanks to a deer. So we can read the hunt allegorically as the search for God. But beyond this, we see here too how the multiple meanings depend on the perspective. The hunt and the other symbols of a courtly world (spring, blossoming of flowers) are, seen from the beginning of the short-story and from the perspective of the protagonists, clear and desirable signs of courtliness. Seen from the end of the short-story, they stand for the pursuit of transient values that distract from the search for God. In the middle of the narrative their meaning is dubious. The story unfolds its didactic effect precisely because the reader wavers back and forth between more than one meaning in the middle section of the narrative. In the end, the reader should decide in favor of the Christian meaning. But he should also attribute these different meanings to different world views and different systems of signification (one Christian and one courtly). This is only possible if there is a period in the narrative in which the reader oscillates between the two systems of signification. We can call this oscillation (caused by the text) ambiguity — not so much in the narrow sense (mentioned above), but in the broader sense of a “double or dubious signification”. 40 Representatives of a narrow definition of ambiguity (as two mutually exclusive meanings between which there is no choice) assume too strongly that ambiguity is completely anchored “in the object”, 41 i.e. in language. They overlook the

 39 Furthermore, they inform them about death in general, making use of the personification trope. “Death spares nobody” (v. 175). “The rich and the poor are all the same to him” (v. 184), and “he chokes everything without a rope” (v. 180). 40 See OED “ambiguity”, Nr. 3a: “double or dubious signification”; https://www-oed-com.emedien.ub.uni-muenchen.de/view/Entry/6144?redirectedFrom=ambiguity#eid [20.2.2020]. 41 Rimmon 1977, 18 and passim.

The Ambiguity of the Unambiguous: Figures of Death in Late Medieval Literature  

fact that the perception of the double meaning and whether or not the conflicting meanings are seen as equally valid always depends on the knowledge and purpose of the reader. 42 Moreover, a narrative generates several perspectives on a sign as well as on the question if and how to decide between the different meanings. In the course of narration, it is possible to play with these different perspectives on one sign. One meaning is transferred into another or becomes transparent for another. Thus, as in our narrative, a process of dissolution and reassignment of meaning can take place. 43 In our narrative, the forest and the darkness stand (allegorically) for the dissolution of a meaning that before seemed clear and unambiguous. So, the process of dissolving (and reassigning) meaning is assigned to a place and a time of the day (night) in the narrated world. The three noble men are lost and helpless in the dark; their servant is now the one who acts and decides. His decision to climb the tree in the first place was the result of a prophetic dream, where he had seen a fire with three dead people around it. Moreover, when the nobles and their servant come closer to the fire, the horses become anxious, and everyone appears desperate. It is not until the servant prays to St. Oswald, the saint of dreams, that they see the three dead bodies. Thus, the dream seems to come true, the social roles are turned upside down, and the fire acts as both rescue and danger. In this way, the text creates an unreal atmosphere: is the encounter a dream, an illusion, a vision or reality? The encounter takes place in a liminal zone, in which the usual oppositions of reality or illusion, dream or wakefulness do not apply. Our narrative creates a section of the narrated world in which not only social roles and ordinary values are inverted, but in which the usual oppositions lose their validity. This zone of ambiguity — ambiguity again in the broad sense of “double and dubious signification” — is not only spatial, but also temporal. The analogies between the living and the dead emphasize that the three living men are meeting their future selves. But when does this encounter take place, in the present or in the future? Neither. Rather, the laws of linear time have been suspended. The ambiguity also extends to the temporal conditions of the encounter. We have thus observed how initially unambiguous signs carrying a courtly meaning become ambiguous and dubious in the course of narration. In the end, the protagonists recognize the true, Christian meaning, and the reader is expected to do the same. Nevertheless in between there is an intended zone of ambiguity, in which meanings are multiple and doubtful. But not only meanings, but also spatial, social and temporal structures lose their validity. They no longer  42 Weimar 2009, 56; Bauer et al. 2010, 8, 25 and passim. 43 Bode 2007, 67; Auge/Witthöft 2016, 3.

  Susanne Reichlin offer orientation, nor are they capable of producing contradictions. The protagonists perceive the new and second meaning when these structures change. At the same time, readers become aware that the new meaning is linked to a changed world view, which is accompanied by a different system of signification. It is to be assumed that this can claim validity far beyond this short story. The condition for perceiving ambiguity is to recognize different systems of signification. Narrative ambiguity would then not only mean that a section of the narrative is ambiguous, or that an “information gap” can be filled by “two (or more) mutually exclusive systems” of explanation,44 but also that the relationship between the conflicting meanings or systems of signification changes in the course of the narration and that the conditions of this change are addressed and reflected upon. Both the woodcut with the flap and our short story perform ambiguity, in the sense that they relate, combine and dissolve contradictory meanings. In the woodcut, the flap can be handled in two directions, and therefore the viewer can observe death in life, but also life in death. In the short story, meanings are dissolved and reassigned in the course of narration. Ambiguity should therefore not be understood as mere simultaneity (of two opposing meanings); rather the temporal and logical relationship of the different meanings should always be examined. These opposing meanings are related differently in the two media. In the woodcut, they are related through the flap and the intervention of the viewer; in the short story, through the process of narration and the reevaluation of meanings. In both, however, it is precisely this ‘performed ambiguity’ that is interesting. Thus, the question of Rimmon et al., whether the conflict between the two meanings is resolvable has to be altered to the question of how the conflicting meanings are related to each other. The woodcut as well as the short-story represent an unambiguous fact ambiguously, namely, that everyone has to die. Using these two examples, we were able to investigate different forms of ambiguity: material and verbal ambiguity as well as ambiguous effects in the woodcut, narrative ambiguity in the short story. Material ambiguity was described as two material layers of meaning that can be related to each other in two contradictory ways (death in life or life in death). In the case of verbal ambiguity, it was a word (‘mirror’) that could be interpreted as a genre or as a hand mirror. The woodcut played with making one meaning and one object transparent to the other. We described narrative ambiguity as opposing meanings of a sign or opposing explanations of an information gap. We have observed how these conflicting meanings were related in different ways in the

 44 Rimmon 1977, 27−58, here 51; Bauer et al. 2010, 27−39.

The Ambiguity of the Unambiguous: Figures of Death in Late Medieval Literature  

course of narration. This change in meaning was due to and reflected as a change in the system of signification. Both examples made clear that aesthetically interesting ambiguity is rarely that of a single sign in which two meanings are mutually exclusive and equally important. Instead, it is a performed ambiguity — an ambiguity that unfolds in a process of perception, in which meanings change and the nuances of meaning are given different weight. In this way, however, it can also be used didactically: to admonish recipients and remind them of their own mortality.

Bibliography Auge, Oliver/Witthöft, Christiane (2016), “Einführung”, in: Oliver Auge/Christiane Witthöft (eds.), Ambiguität im Mittelalter Formen zeitgenössischer Reflexion und interdisziplinärer Rezeption, Berlin, 1−19. Bauer, Matthias/Knape, Joachim/Koch, Peter/Winkler, Susanne (2010), “Dimensionen der Ambiguität”, Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik 40, 7−75. Berndt, Frauke/Kammer, Stephan (2009), “Amphibolie − Ambiguität − Ambivalenz. Die Struktur antagonistisch-gleichzeitiger Zweiwertigkeit”, in: Frauke Berndt/Stephan Kammer (eds.), Amphibolie − Ambiguität − Ambivalenz, Würzburg, 7−32. Bertram, Karl (1931), Johannes Kurtz. Ein Beitrag zur Literaturgeschichte des Spätmittelalters, Greifswald. Bode, Christoph (1988), Aesthetik der Ambiguität. Zu Funktion und Bedeutung von Mehrdeutigkeit in der Literatur der Moderne, Tübingen. Bode, Christoph (2007), “Ambiguität”, Reallexikon der deutschen Literaturwissenschaft, Bd. 1, 67−70. Costard, Monika (2011), Spätmittelalterliche Frauenfrömmigkeit am Niederrhein. Geschichte, Spiritualität und Handschriften der Schwesternhäuser in Geldern und Sonsbeck, Tübingen. Empson, William (1970), Seven Types of Ambiguity, 3rd Edition, London. Furniss, Tom/Bath, Michael (2007), Reading Poetry. An Introduction, Harlow. Griese, Sabine (2011), Text-Bilder und ihre Kontexte. Medialität und Materialität von EinblattHolz- und -Metallschnitten des 15. Jahrhunderts, Zürich. Holl, Oskar (1972), “Spiegel”, Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie, Bd. 4, 188−190. Holtorf, Arne (1973), Neujahrswünsche im Liebesliede des ausgehenden Mittelalters. Zugleich ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des mittelalterlichen Neujahrsbrauchtums in Deutschland, München. Kemp, Cornelia (1997), “Fliege”, Reallexikon zur Deutschen Kunstgeschichte, Bd. IX, 1196−1221, in: RDK Labor, URL: [22.02.2020]. Kiening, Christian (2003), Das andere Selbst. Figuren des Todes an der Schwelle zur Neuzeit, München. Kiepe, Hansjürgen (1984), Die Nürnberger Priameldichtung. Untersuchungen zu Hans Rosenplüt und zum Schreib- und Druckwesen im 15 Jh., München.

  Susanne Reichlin Münkner, Jörn (2007), “Tote Li/ebende − li/ebende Tote. Blicke unter Röcke und in Schädel”, L’art macabre. Jahrbuch der europäischen Totentanz-Vereinigung 8, Bamberg, 161−176. Münkner, Jörn (2008), Eingreifen und Begreifen. Handhabungen und Visualisierungen in Flugblättern der frühen Neuzeit, Berlin. Münkner, Jörn (2012), “Eingreifen, um zu begreifen. Vanitas und Moribundi in der barocken Bildpublizistik”, in: Stephanie Knöll (ed.), Lebenslust und Todesfurcht. Druckgraphik aus der Zeit des Barock, Düsseldorf, 94−118. Pieske, Christa (1960), “Memento-Mori Klappbilder”, Philobiblion IV, 127−145. Rimmon, Shlomith (1977), The Concept of Ambiguity − The Example of James, Chicago. Rotzler, Willy (1955), “Drei Lebende und drei Tote”, Reallexikon zur Deutschen Kunstgeschichte, Bd. IV, 512−524, in: RDK Labor, URL: [22.02.2020]. Rotzler, Willy (1961), Die Begegnung der drei Lebenden und der drei Toten. Ein Beitrag zur Forschung über die mittelalterlichen Vergänglichkeitsdarstellungen, Winterthur. Schanze, Frieder (1985), “Kurtz, Johann”, Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters, Verfasserlexikon, Bd. 5, 463−468. Schilling, Michael (1990), Bildpublizistik der frühen Neuzeit. Aufgaben und Leistungen des illustrierten Flugblatts in Deutschland bis um 1700, Tübingen. Schreiber, Wilhelm Ludwig (1926−1930), Handbuch der Holz- und Metallschnitte des XV. Jahrhunderts. Stark vermehrte und bis zu den neusten Funden ergänzte Umarbeitung des Manuel de lʼamateur de la gravure sur bois et sur métal au XVe siècle, 8 Bde., Leipzig. Schreyl, Karl Heinz (1979), Der graphische Neujahrsgruss aus Nürnberg, Nürnberg. Stammler, Wolfgang (1948), Der Totentanz. Entstehung und Deutung, München. Storck, Willy F. (1910), Die Legende von den drei Lebenden und von den drei Toten, Tübingen. Storck, Willy F. (1911), “Der Spruch der Toten an die Lebenden”, Zeitschrift des Vereins für Volkskunde 21, 53−63; 89−91. Störmer-Caysa, Uta (2007), “Spiegel”, Reallexikon der deutschen Literaturwissenschaft, Bd. 3, 467−469. Tervooren, Helmut/Spicker, Johannes (eds.) (2011), Die Begegnung der drei Lebenden und der drei Toten. Eine Edition nach der maasländischen und ripuarischen Überlieferung, Berlin. Weimar, Klaus (2009), “Modifikation der Eindeutigkeit. Eine Miszelle”, in: Frauke Berndt/ Stephan Kammer (eds.), Amphibolie − Ambiguität − Ambivalenz, Würzburg, 53−59. Wimmer, Erich (1979), “Die drei Lebenden und die drei Toten”, Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters, Verfasserlexikon, Bd. 2, 226−228. Witthöft, Christiane (2016), “Sinnbilder der Ambiguität in der Literatur des Mittelalters. Der Paradiesstein in der Alexandertradition und die Personifikation der Frau Welt”, in: Oliver Auge/Christiane Witthöft (eds.), Ambiguität im Mittelalter Formen zeitgenössischer Reflexion und interdisziplinärer Rezeption, Berlin, 179−202.

The Ambiguity of the Unambiguous: Figures of Death in Late Medieval Literature  

Figures

Fig. 1: Johann Kurtz, Ich gfall mir billich wol; single-leaf woodcut, hand-colored [S.l. ca. 1510/20]; 23.58cm x 38.51cm; Munich, BSB Xylogr. 57 © Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München.

  Susanne Reichlin

Fig. 2: Johann Kurtz, Ich gfall mir billich wol; single-leaf woodcut, hand-colored [S.l. ca. 1510/20]; Munich BSB Xylogr. 57 © Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München.

The Ambiguity of the Unambiguous: Figures of Death in Late Medieval Literature  

Fig. 3: Johann Kurtz, EIN GVT SLIG NEVIAR …; single-leaf woodcut, partly hand-colored [S.l. ca. 1510/20]; 29.9cm x 42.33cm; London, British Museum: 1895,0122.28. © The Trustees of the British Museum.

Michael Lüthy

The Modern Perspective: Ambiguity, Artistic Self-Reference, and the Autonomy of Art Abstract: If intended ambiguity occurs in artistic productions of all epochs, the question arises as to whether the same types of ambiguity are involved in the respective epochs. My essay argues that the difference between pre-Modern and Modern art is not found in whether ambiguity occurs or not; the epochal difference is to be found in other manifestations of artistic ambiguity. Consequently, the essay attempts to direct the attention to some specific manifestations, which would not have been possible in pre-Modern times. In a second step, the essay discusses the framework conditions under which such new types of ambiguity could develop — in particular the concept of artistic autonomy and the explicitness of artistic self-reference. Keywords: autonomy (artistic), medium-specificity (artistic), Modernity, periodization, self-reference (artistic), visual arts

 Ambiguity in the Fine Arts Since aesthetics was established as a philosophical discipline in the 18th century, ambiguity — that means here indeterminacy, openness, or a multiplicity of meanings — has become an essential characteristic of the aesthetic. Given the ambiguity between the sensory and the conceptual, so the idea goes, aesthetic phenomena have their own epistemological value, which is distinct from the possibilities of logical thought, and productively so. In the context of this volume, however, the point is not the fundamental ambiguity of aesthetic phenomena between the sensory and the conceptual per se, but rather — as its title says — the issue of “intended ambiguity.” Here, we shift towards the field of aesthetic practices — and furthermore, the practice of art. Artworks exploit the ambiguity of the aesthetic for various purposes, and they do so to achieve a special kind of effect. These effects, in turn, are essential for the way in which artworks unfold their meaning. If we want to understand more precisely the ways in which these effects are produced through “intended ambiguity”, we must especially consider the respective medium-specific properties of each art form. Each art form mobilizes the potentials of ambiguity through the respective properties of the medium used. In https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110715811-005

  Michael Lüthy the fine arts, which is my focus as an art historian, these medial ambiguities consist, for example, in the way an image exploits an ambivalence between flatness and the illusion of depth. Or with sculptures, to give another example, this can manifest as an oscillation between the lifelessness of the materials — stone, bronze etc. — and the way they are brought to life by artistic workmanship. Every artwork demonstrates how these potential ambiguities of the medium can be productively exploited in order to produce very specific aesthetic effects. Having this medium-specificity of artistic artifacts and their production of ambiguity in mind, the subject of my essay must therefore be clearly distinguished from that of the other contributions in this volume. Almost all of the other studies gathered here address literary artifacts. However, their ambiguity, whether intended or not, is of a completely different nature than that of visual artifacts. Linguistic ambiguity manifests itself on the level of the individual words (e.g. if it is a homonym), at the sentence level (such as in the case of an ambiguous oracular saying), or at the level of the text as a whole (for instance when a narrative can be understood in opposite ways). The lexical, structural and semantic expressions of linguistic ambiguity flow smoothly into one another, and overall they are based on the ambiguous relationship between the terms on the one hand and the things, facts or phenomena they mean on the other hand. This term-based ambiguity of linguistic artifacts — which is of course only rudimentarily defined here 1 — contrasts with the ambiguity of visual artifacts. Visual ambiguity does not arise due to the tension between different word, sentence or text meanings, but rather because of the tension between the being and the appearance of a given thing or between the contradictory appearance of the visible. To take up the previously mentioned cases again: if a picture is at the same time flat and deep — without being able to be both at the same time — the flat being of the object and the imaginary depth of its appearance enter into an ambiguous relationship. The same can be said of the stone of a sculpture — as the object’s being — when it contrasts with the aesthetic liveliness of the human body appearing in the sculpture. Visual ambiguity can also be caused by the contradictory appearance of the object shown. Let us imagine a double portrait, in which the eyes of the portrayed point in different directions while the heads are tilting towards each other. It

 1 Ambiguity research focuses mainly on the investigation of linguistic and literary ambiguity, which is why the scientific literature is as diverse as it is rich. Consequently, I will limit myself here to referring to the introductory remarks to this volume by Martin Vöhler.

The Modern Perspective: Ambiguity, Artistic Self-Reference, and the Autonomy of Art  

would be a double portrait which we could understand both in terms of the connectedness and in terms of the separation of the two portrayed. The ambiguity of the picture would consist in the diverging appearance of the relationship between the portrayed, which — with good reasons in each case — could be interpreted in this or in that way. Linguistic and visual ambiguity — as ambiguity of meaning versus ambiguity of appearance — cannot be mutually reduced to or translated into one another. If we express the ambiguity of a visual work of art in words, for example with the statements: “The image is flat and deep at the same time” or “The stone seems to be alive”, the ambiguity of the corresponding artifacts is in no way reflected in these linguistic statements, neither lexically, nor structurally, nor even on a semantic level. The respective facts are expressed in a totally clear way. Conversely, the ambiguity of an oracle saying — for example the prophecy to Croesus that if he crossed the Halys he would destroy a great empire — cannot be represented visually, for example in a genre painting showing how Pythia phrased the oracle’s saying. This translation difficulty recurs in more recent media history whenever someone tries to film literature and is faced with the challenge of transforming the literary portrayal of an ambiguous character in the novel into a convincing cinematic embodiment.

 Modernity-Specific Ambiguity The topic of my essay, however, is not a discussion of such overarching generalities. Rather, I would like to introduce some specificities, particularly from a historical perspective. My aim is to assess the possibilities to construct a profile of a Modernity-specific ambiguity, or, in other words, an ambiguity that is historically specific to Modern art. Historical demarcations aimed at a clear distinction between before and after are always dangerous. We often set the boundary in the wrong place — with the consequence that we suddenly encounter an earlier example that already demonstrates the features which were supposed to be distinctive of a later period. One such false periodization would be to argue that Modern art was the first to be characterized by ambiguity; and indeed, this volume with its focus on antiquity rightly disproves such an idea. In fact, already a Pompeian wall fresco (fig. 4) plays with the perceptual ambiguity between flatness and the illusion of depth; and already the Belvedere Torso (fig. 5) plays with the contrast between the coldness of stone and the

  Michael Lüthy warmth of its aesthetic animation, which Rainer Maria Rilke so emphatically described. Here we find ourselves dealing with aesthetic universals, which — as I have suggested — can be found in every epoch.

Fig. 4: Pompeii, Casa dei Vettii, Triclinium, West wall (Detail), 1st Century AD.

A more subtle way to set the caesura would be to claim that aesthetic ambiguity undergoes a radicalization in Modernity, to the point that indeterminacy, openness and a multiplicity of meanings has become the actual content of art. To observe a quantitative increase in ambiguity would not be wrong. But the epochal specificity of Modernity — the thing that we are actually looking for — cannot simply consist in “more ambiguity”. And conversely, the specificity of pre-Modern epochs cannot simply be “less ambiguity”. The consequence of such an argument would be a hopelessly misguided debate — for example about whether the style of Pompeian fresco painting is not already as open as a 19th century Impressionist painting, such as a painting by the American, Paris-based painter Mary Cassatt (fig. 6 and 7); or about whether the Belvedere Torso already demonstrates the ambivalent surfaces that would come to characterize Auguste Rodin’s sculptures (fig. 8) centuries later.

The Modern Perspective: Ambiguity, Artistic Self-Reference, and the Autonomy of Art  

Fig. 5: Apollonius, Belvedere Torso, 2nd/1st Century BC, Museo Pio Clementino, Musei Vaticani, Roma.

  Michael Lüthy

Fig. 6: Stabiae, Villa di Arianna, so-called Flora, 1st Century AD, Museo Archeologico Nationale, Napoli.

The Modern Perspective: Ambiguity, Artistic Self-Reference, and the Autonomy of Art  

Fig. 7: Mary Cassatt, Self-Portrait, 1879, National Portrait Gallery, Washington. DC.

  Michael Lüthy

Fig. 8: Auguste Rodin, Walking Man (L’homme qui marche), 1877/1900, Von der Heydt-Museum, Wuppertal.

If these epochal differences are to be meaningful, they can only be defined qualitatively, and not quantitatively. It can not simply be about determining varying degrees of ambiguity, rather we must be able to identify different kinds of ambiguity. Not everything is possible at all times. It is therefore crucial to distinguish between ambiguities in two ways. There are manifestations of ambiguity that apply to art and aesthetic phenomena in general, which have been exploited by artists to varying degrees in different epochs. There are also different types that only appear in Modernity — so, in fact, the argument of this essay goes.

The Modern Perspective: Ambiguity, Artistic Self-Reference, and the Autonomy of Art  

Consequently, I will try to identify such Modernity-specific types. To be clear, I do not claim that every artwork in Modernity corresponds to this or that type. Rather, I would like to direct our attention to some specific manifestations, which I argue would not have been possible in pre-Modern times. Subsequently, toward the end of my essay, I will discuss a few reasons why they became possible and which conditions of Modernity enabled them.

 Image and Non-Image, Art and Non-Art: The Examples of Klein and Duchamp This brings me to my first decidedly modern example. Think of a monochrome painting, perhaps one of Yves Klein’s ultramarine-blue monochromes, which he started making from 1955 onwards (fig. 9).

Fig. 9: Yves Klein, IKB 270, 1959, Private Collection, Marburg.

  Michael Lüthy A monochrome is a limit case of the image. Art historian and philosopher Gottfried Boehm defined an image as a contrast between what an image is materially, namely a limited surface easily viewed in its entirety, and what becomes visible within it, namely the entirety of its internal relations. According to him, this contrast makes the object of perception into an image. 2 In the case of a monochrome, however, this contrast is minimal. What the viewer sees here is a uniformly textured, powdery-matte surface with a single, unmodulated, and deeply luminous hue. The syntactical wealth that a conventional image would generate through its more or less complex composition here approaches the limit of null. Given that Klein’s monochrome abstains from any kind of internal compositional differentiation, there are only two perspectives we can approach the canvas from. Either one sees it as a pure color field, or you see it as a “total space” — as art critic and art theorist Clement Greenberg named it. 3 The artist’s intentions were actually more along Greenberg’s lines. He claims that he made his first, and largest, artwork as he was lying on the beach in Nice and signed the blue sky. 4 So we have two completely divergent ways of viewing the same object: either as simply a flat object, or as the “total space” of the sky. This is precisely the turning point that Yves Klein’s image-aesthetics hinged on; this turning point is the “intended ambiguity” of his art. The feat accomplished in his paintings is hardly the product of representational finesse, a complex composition, or subtle coloristic details. The feat consists in making a monochrome into an image as such — in other words, into an object which is not just itself, but also shows something not identical to itself, in this case the “total space” of the sky. The artistic success of Yves Klein paintings lies not in an optimized how in terms of artistic workmanship, but rather in a sheer that: that these objects are images at all. A second example — of a very different kind but structurally related to the ambiguity-type of Yves Klein’s monochromes — can be found in Marcel Duchamp’s Readymades. I refer to the everyday objects like a bottle rack, a urinal or a comb that Duchamp began declaring as artworks — with little to no modification — from 1913 onwards (fig. 10).

 2 Boehm 1994, 30. Boehm calls this basic contrast the “iconic difference” (“ikonische Differenz”). 3 Greenberg 1961, 173. Actually, “total space” is a shortening on my part; Greenberg literally writes: “[…] the picture plane as a total object represents space as a total object.” 4 Stich 1994, 28.

The Modern Perspective: Ambiguity, Artistic Self-Reference, and the Autonomy of Art  

Fig. 10: Marcel Duchamp, Bottle Rack, 1964, edition of 8+2 replicas of the lost original from 1914.

  Michael Lüthy The challenge posed by these works lies in the fact that they are indistinguishable from everyday objects in terms of their aesthetic properties. This means that the objects’ status as artworks can not be grounded in their aesthetic features. This was the goal of the question that Duchamp formulated shortly before he made the first Readymade, namely whether it was possible to make works that weren’t works ‘of art’.5 We can reformulate Duchamp’s question and subsequently ask if it's possible to make artworks completely devoid of artistic workmanship. Duchamp puts exactly this question to work in his Readymades. As a result, the Readymades demonstrate a double ambiguity. On one hand, as ambiguity of poíesis, the concept of “making” becomes ambiguous — as it can refer to two things: to the making of the object, or to the making of the artwork by Duchamp’s declaration of the selected object as art. On the other hand, as ambiguity of poíema, the status of the object itself is ambiguous. The Readymades are simultaneously artworks and non-artworks — depending on which definition of art we use. These examples allow us to approach a manifestation of aesthetic ambiguity that is specific to Modernity. It does not relate to anything in the artwork as such — a characterization of figures open to multiple interpretations, a recursive narrative, an indeterminable form, an ambiguous expression, or so on. Rather, it relates to the object’s status altogether: is Klein’s rectangular surface an image or just a flat thing? Is Duchamp’s bottle rack a sculpture or just some everyday object? Since the ambiguity does not relate to anything within the work, but rather to the object as such, it acquires here a dimension constitutive of the artwork. I’m not trying to say that the presence of ambiguity is enough to qualify something as an artwork. The ambiguity, rather, consists in a sense of uncertainty about whether the object in question is an artwork at all and if its creator can legitimately be called an artist. The artwork, according to writer and art critic Harold Rosenberg, becomes an “anxious object”.6 Even when we decide to regard Yves Klein’s monochromes and Marcel Duchamp’s Readymades as artworks, and, by consequence, their creators as artists, it remains obvious that the objects and the way they were created contradict this judgement in several important respects.  5 “Peut-on faire des œuvres qui ne soient pas ‘d’art’?” One of the Notes — from 1913 — in Duchamp’s À l’ininitif (La boîte blanche), 1966, in: Sanouillet/Matisse 2008, 111. 6 “Painting, sculpture, drama, music, have been undergoing a process of de-definition. The nature of art has become uncertain. At least, it is ambiguous. No one can say with assurance what a work of art is — or, more important, what is not a work of art. Where an art object is still present […] it is what I have called an anxious object: it does not know whether it is a masterpiece or junk. It may […] be literally both.” Rosenberg 1972, 12.

The Modern Perspective: Ambiguity, Artistic Self-Reference, and the Autonomy of Art  

The traditional question of aesthetics, which was still foundational for Immanuel Kant, was the question: “Is it beautiful?” In the aesthetics of Modern art, it is replaced by the question: “Is it art?” It is no longer the verdict of “beautiful”, but rather the verdict of “art” that makes an object into an artwork. 7 Thus, over the course of Modernity, the production of artworks has gone hand-in-hand with a reworking of the concept of art. Both Yves Klein’s monochromes and Marcel Duchamp’s Readymades are artworks which propose a new definition of images or sculptures, and thus a new definition of art altogether. In summary and condensed, my argument is as follows: modernity sees the development of a new form of ambiguity whereby “intended ambiguity” does not refer to something within the object, but rather to the object itself in terms of its status as art. But once again, it is necessary to be a bit more precise here. I do not want to claim that the oscillation between art and non-art is equivalent to the meaning of the work in question. This oscillation is merely a precondition under which the meaning of the respective work emerges. Whether a luminous ultramarine pigment is transfigured into the immateriality of a blue sky or an industrially manufactured everyday object like a bottle rack is made to seem like a sculptural form is hardly the same thing — with the consequence that the hermeneutic of each work must work out the respective meanings in detail. This also applies to all other cases which play with the ambiguity between art and non-art such as, to give just two more examples, when Joseph Beuys declared planting trees an artistic act with the action 7000 Oaks from 1982–87 in Kassel (fig. 11), or when — in Vito Acconci’s Following Piece from 1969 — the act of following another person in New York City’s public space until he or she moved to a private interior became a piece of performance art (fig. 12). What all these works or actions have in common is only the fact that they take non-artistic objects or non-artistic activities as a starting point. But the respective meaning of these works, which are completely different in intention, realization and result, depends on exactly what non-artistic object or activity is presented as art.

 7 This is the central argument in de Duve 1996.

  Michael Lüthy

Fig. 11: Joseph Beuys, 7000 Oaks (7000 Eichen. Stadtverwaldung statt Stadtverwaltung), 1982– 87, Kassel.

The Modern Perspective: Ambiguity, Artistic Self-Reference, and the Autonomy of Art  

Fig. 12: Vito Acconci, Following Piece, Performance, October 3–25, 1969, various locations in New York City.

 Context and Conditions: Artistic Self-Reference and the Autonomy of Art At this point, I would like to shift our attention away from the analysis of individual works, and towards the question of which conditions of possibility were necessary for the emergence of this new type of ambiguity which concerns the status of a given object as art. My answer is that it was only possible against the horizon of the modern and interrelated concepts of artistic self-reference and the autonomy of art.

  Michael Lüthy Accepting considerable reductions and simplifications, let me summarize what I mean by that. 8 During the course of Western art history, the conception of artistic activity has changed considerably over the centuries. In the earliest phase of Modernity during the late 18th century, there was a revolution whose effects we are still feeling today. The social and cultural framework for art was completely broken apart in the course of the broader upheavals of the time. The benchmarks which had been prevalent until then — for example, the principle of mimesis and the hierarchical distinctions between genres — began to lose their normative force. At the same time, the contractual relations between artist and client, which often bound artistic practice in a diffuse field between art and craft, began to fade away. Parallel to these practical changes in the professional field, the “metaphysical” framework for art was also collapsing — for example the complex idea of representation which, according to Hegel, gave artworks the power to make the universal visible in the particular and the extrasensory visible in the sensory. 9 Under these completely transformed conditions of Modernity, artists began shifting their focus: freed of their traditional tasks, they began searching for a form of artistic productivity which wasn’t reducible to or founded on anything outside of the field of art. This forced them towards an entirely new practice of art that was able to afford art a new identity and legitimacy. The watchword of this new practice was “autonomy” — a concept in which aesthetic freedom, a form of production specific to art, and the social marginality of artists merge. These transformations on the production side corresponded to transformations on the reception side, namely the musealization of art which fundamentally transformed its public perception. Bringing objects into the museum, as happened, for example, in the early 19th century with religious art from the secularized churches and monasteries, removed them from their previous practical context and redefined them as objects of pure aesthetic experience. The emphatic conception of the artwork in Modernity essentially developed as the result of this literal “reframing” of art. This reorientation in the production and reception of art came at a price. Everything was suddenly centered around the concept of art. It now had to develop its social, functional, and semantic potential only in reference to itself. This is the double-meaning that comes with the autonomy of art: the freedom to establish

 8 For the following, see in particular the field-theoretical and system-theoretical sociological studies of Bourdieu 1992 and Luhmann 1997. 9 Hegel 1986, vol. 1, passim, esp. 21–25, 231, 253–255.

The Modern Perspective: Ambiguity, Artistic Self-Reference, and the Autonomy of Art  

one’s own aesthetic laws, but at the same time the compulsion to realize them only with one’s own resources. If the fundamental distinction for the period between the Renaissance and the 18th century was one between art and craft, now the fundamental distinction became the one between art and the entire field of non-art. This fundamental distinction not only affected the art system, with all of its institutions and theoretical discourses that keep watch over this distinction, but also the individual artworks themselves. Drawing on a concept by German sociologist and system theorist Niklas Luhmann, we can describe this recursivity as a “re-entry” of the system/environment distinction into the system. 10 This re-entry is clearly manifested in artworks like Klein’s monochromes or Duchamp’s Readymades. Here, the distinction between art and non-art that enables an autonomous art system and keeps it running, reappears within the system on the level of the work’s form: in the form of the artwork as an “anxious object” ambiguously oscillating between being art and not being art. The closure of the art system that came with the aesthetics of autonomy has a second aspect, equally essential to the development of the modern type of artistic ambiguity I’m discussing here. The idea and practical organization of an autonomous art system frames and protects the uncertainty of the resulting artifacts. Only a solid autonomy-aesthetic framework with all its institutions — galleries, museums, biennials, etc. — and with its specialist discourses enables the artworks to so radically question their own status, as happens in the cases of Duchamp, Klein, Beuys or Acconci. The institutional and discursive framework guarantees that these objects or events, which may have otherwise remained unnoticed given their ambiguous status, are nonetheless perceived and reflected on — especially in terms of their precarious status as art. Only under these conditions can artworks cancel themselves while still being certain of their reception as objects of aesthetic reflection. The autonomy of art manifests itself most clearly in the fact that art survives its own negation. And it survives the negation of art

 10 The most concise definition of this central argument for Luhmann’s system theory — and also for his system theory of art — can be found in the analysis of another social subsystem, the educational system: “Einerseits kann ein System sich nur reproduzieren, wenn es dabei eine Differenz zur Umwelt erzeugt, also Grenzen zieht, also ‘Umwelt’ entstehen läßt. Andererseits kann das System diese Differenz beobachten, es kann sich selbst von seiner Umwelt unterscheiden und sich an diesem Unterschied orientieren. Formal gesehen ist dies ein Fall von ‘re-entry’ im Sinne von Spencer Brown, nämlich ein Wiedereintritt der Form in die Form, der Unterscheidung von System und Umwelt ins System.” Luhmann 2002, 113.

  Michael Lüthy as art. In this paradox, the Modern type of intended ambiguity in the fine arts finds its most striking expression.

Bibliography Boehm, Gottfried (1994), “Die Wiederkehr der Bilder”, in: Gottfried Boehm (ed.), Was ist ein Bild?, München, 11–38. Bourdieu, Pierre (1992), Les règles de l’art. Genèse et structure du champ littéraire, Paris. Duve, Thierry de (1996), Kant after Duchamp, Cambridge MA. Greenberg, Clement (1961), “On the Role of Nature in Modernist Painting”, in: Clement Greenberg (ed.), Art and Culture, Boston, 171–4. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1986), Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik, 3 vols (Werke, vol. 13– 15), Frankfurt M. Luhmann, Niklas (2002), Das Erziehungssystem der Gesellschaft, Frankfurt M. Luhmann, Niklas (1997), Die Kunst der Gesellschaft, Frankfurt M. Rosenberg, Harold (1972), “On the De-definition of Art”, in: Harold Rosenberg (ed.), The De-definition of Art. Action Art to Pop to Earthworks, New York, 11–14. Sanouillet, Michel/Matisse, Paul (eds.) (2008), Marcel Duchamp. Duchamp du signe, suivi de Notes, Paris. Stich, Sidra (1994), Yves Klein, London.



Part II: Playing with Linguistic Ambiguity

Jenny Strauss Clay

Traversing No-Man’s Land Abstract: The ambiguous character of the Odyssey’s hero finds its expression in the multiple ambiguities of his name, its double etymology as well as its suppression and illumination of Odysseus’ identity throughout the poem. This paper reveals that the play on outis/mētis in the Odyssey is not confined to the name trick Odysseus exploits in the Cyclops’ cave nor even the explicit mentions of mētis elsewhere in the poem. It is in fact pervasive, hiding in plain sight, especially at critical moments in the plot or moments of high tension. Like a will-o’-the-wisp, Outis, a trickster and a seducer, alternately hides and reveals — and charms. Keywords: Odysseus, name, identity, Outis, Mētis

We all know that the hero of the Odyssey is an ambiguous figure, trickster, a teller of great yarns, a devious manipulator, a master of disguises, but clearly also a lady’s man. But our subject in this volume is intentional ambiguity; and although that could also involve visual ambiguity (trompe l’oeil, disguise), touch (I think of the story of Esau and Isaac), or other senses (I can’t think of one involving smell right off), here we are mainly concerned with verbal ambiguity. And I am mainly concerned here with the name of the Odyssey’s hero. Admittedly, the Odyssey poet did not invent his hero nor the traditions about him, or even his name. But I think it’s fair to say that what he does with that name, the way he exploits it in the epic, can be called intentional ambiguity. Now the name of Odysseus has been much discussed; I think first and foremost of Dimock’s article, and Peradotto’s book — as well as my own.1 So I am not going to rehash that discussion, but only draw your attention to a few passages that can with confidence be labeled intentional ambiguity. First and foremost, the absence of the hero’s name in the proem. The sheer oddity (excuse the pun) of this move by the poet has, I think, not been sufficiently appreciated. Our protagonist disappears behind the generic andra; his identity is suppressed, while simultaneously revealed, through the polymorphic description that follows. Moreover, in the very first scene of the poem, the poet draws attention to the hero’s name by punning on it — and for the Greeks paranomasia, especially in the case of gods and heroes, reveals their nature. (e.g. Apollo, Cassandra’s destroyer,  1 Dimock 1956, Peradotto 1990, Strauss Clay 1983, 59–68; also Stanford 1952; recently Kanavou 2015, 90–106. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110715811-006

  Jenny Strauss Clay Aesch. Ag. 1072–1087; Aphrodite, the Foam-born, Hes. Th. 188–198; Hekate, the goddess by whose will prayers are received or rejected, Hes. Th. 411–452). In the divine assembly that opens the Odyssey, Athena bemoans Odysseus’ lot and berates Zeus: “Why now do you odysseus him so much? (τί νύ οἱ τόσον ὠδύσαο; 1.62). This accusation is especially ironic in light of Zeus’s opening complaint that men blame the gods for their troubles, whereas Zeus’s own daughter accuses her father of doing just that! The implied derivation of our hero’s name from odysasthai recurs at several important junctures of the poem (5.340, 423, 19.275); the verb means “to be wroth with” and is used exclusively — with one exception — of divine anger, which thus makes it the verbal equivalent of the noun mēnis, the subject of the Iliad. To be sure, the most important episode concerning Odysseus’ name occurs in the christening scene in Book 19, which in turn is embedded in the famous foot-washing incident, and forms its core. The whole sequence is unified by its focus on the issue of identity: who and what is Odysseus? There Eurycleia not so subtly hints at an appropriate name for the baby, a first-born and only son: Polyaretus, “Much-Prayed-For”. Perhaps the old nurse does not realize its possible ambiguity from ἀρή, both “prayer” and “curse”. Thereupon, his crusty old grandfather Autolycus christens the child Odysseus, because, as he says, “I have come here, having odysseused, or having been odysseused — “having hated” or “arousing the hatred” — by many men and women over the fertile earth” (19.407). The syntax here is intentionally ambiguous: the trickster Autolycus has both provoked and incurred wrath. And his grandson will live up to his grandfather’s reputation. 2 There are indications that the name of Odysseus is itself ill-omened or somehow taboo, since characters in the epic seem to avoid using his name. Eumaeus is quite explicit (14.145–146): τὸν μὲν ἐγών, ὦ ξεῖνε, καὶ οὐ παρεόντ' ὀνομάζειν αἰδέομαι. Stranger, even though he is not present, I am ashamed to name him.

The irony of course is that Odysseus is present. Telemachus also seems to shy away from naming his father throughout his dialogue with Athena/Mentes in Book 1. His avoidance is most striking when he notoriously expresses doubts as to the identity of his father (Od. 1.216−220): μήτηρ μέν τέ μέ φησι τοῦ ἔμμεναι, αὐτὰρ ἐγώ γε οὐκ οἶδ’·οὐ γάρ πώ τις ἑὸν γόνον αὐτὸς ἀνέγνω.

 2 Cf. Cook 1999.

Traversing No-Man’s Land  

ὡς δὴ ἐγώ γ’ ὄφελον μάκαρός νύ τευ ἔμμεναι υἱὸς ἀνέρος, ὃν κτεάτεσσιν ἑοῖσ’ ἔπι γῆρας ἔτετμε. νῦν δ’ ὃς ἀποτμότατος γένετο θνητῶν ἀνθρώπων, τοῦ μ’ ἔκ φασι γενέσθαι, ἐπεὶ σύ με τοῦτ’ ἐρεείνεις. My mother says I am sprung from that man, but I for my part Don’t know. For No One ever himself knows his begetter. Thus, indeed I should have been the son of some prosperous Man, upon whom old age came amid his possessions. But now, he is the most ill fated of all mortal men: That’s the one of whom they say I was begotten, since you ask.

But there are further ambiguities involving Odysseus’ name. Oliver Passmore has recently studied the use of keinos, the distal deictic, “the one not here,” “the one absent,” in reference to Odysseus. 3 As Passmore points out, in the second half of the Odyssey, when the hero is in fact present, while disguised, the use of keinos in references to him plays on the tension between presence and absence, with many delicious ironies, especially when the disguised Odysseus refers to himself as keinos. Again, the question of the hero’s identity arises: not only his whereabouts, but also, more fundamentally, his identity, and whether a person can be both present and absent. As Passmore says: “it is worth considering whether there is something more at stake in the obliqueness of the pronoun κεῖνος in these contexts — that is, its capacity both to suggest an identity and to deny one, playing on the physical presence of the man to whom the pronoun refers and yet eluding that identification.” 4 And this leads me to another aspect of intentional (as I would argue) verbal ambiguity involving Odysseus, his name, and his identity, which in a way is the most obvious of all, but which deserves further exploration.5 The Cyclops episode can be thought of as the most “Odyssean” of all the adventures. It culminates in the name trick, which, as has frequently been pointed out, resembles a common folk motif. But as has likewise been noted, the parallels for this widespread folk-

 3 Passmore 2018; cf. Austin 1972, Olson 1992. 4 Passmore 2018, 149; cf. Nünlist 2015, 15−17: “His [Eumaeus’] specific wording conjures up the ominous picture of an Odysseus who is physically absent, but mentally very much present. It has the feel of “You-Know-Who” or “He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named”, which may not exactly match the Odyssey’s register but nicely catches the sinister tone on the verge to superstition” (p. 16). 5 Cf. Hamilton, this volume, who explores both the physical and metaphysical aspect of the name trick; Austin 1972, Goldhill 1991, 24–36; Olson 1992. Basset 1980 reveals some grammatical subtleties in the Cyclopes’ response to Polyphemus’ cries.

  Jenny Strauss Clay tale has the ogre usually tricked by the use of the name “Myself.” 6 The Outis/ mētis stratagem only works in Greek, and may or may not be the invention of the Odyssey poet.7 At any rate, the episode is, as Casevitz has put it “un festival de jeux de mots et de calembours” 8 that is repeatedly exploited throughout the poem in ways that are playful, but simultaneously engage with the ambiguous character of Odysseus. My first example comes from Book 8: Odysseus has managed to maintain his incognito for two books after his arrival at Phaeacia. When the stranger has burst into tears a second time after the bard’s reciting of episodes from the Trojan War, Alcinous finally asks him point blank what his name is (Od. 8.550−554): εἴπ’ ὄνομ’, ὅττι σε κεῖθι κάλεον μήτηρ τε πατήρ τε, ἄλλοι θ’ οἳ κατὰ ἄστυ καὶ οἳ περιναιετάουσιν. οὐ μὲν γάρ τις πάμπαν ἀνώνυμός ἐστ’ ἀνθρώπων, οὐ κακὸς οὐδὲ μὲν ἐσθλός, ἐπὴν τὰ πρῶτα γένηται … ἀλλ’ ἐπὶ πᾶσι τίθενται, ἐπεί κε τέκωσι, τοκῆες. Tell me your name, what your mother and father call you there, And the others in the city and those that live round about. For no one among men is altogether nameless, Neither a base, nor a noble man, when first he is born, But parents, when they give birth, set a name upon all.

This passage is extremely interesting for various reasons, but here I only draw attention to line 552: “No one (ou tis) among men is altogether nameless.” Ironically, the man in front of the Phaeacian king is precisely the one who has — at least for a while — been the exception to this universal rule. I note: that for this irony to work the Odyssey’s audience must already know how Odysseus escaped from the Cyclops’ cave. But this is not surprising: right from the beginning the Odyssey itself calls attention to its own reshaping of the hero’s nostos when the Muse is invited to begin her account “from somewhere” (10, τῶν ἁμόθεν γε). This suggests that other versions began from where we would expect them to begin: from Troy. That is, of course, where Odysseus himself begins his story for the Phaeacians: Iliothen, 9.39. The audience would thus be primed to “get” the outis

 6 Hackman 1904 collected the 221 variants of the folk motif and found only one, which was probably influenced by the Odyssey, where “No Man” occurred: “Der homerische Name ‘Niemand’ findet sich nur in einer einzigen unzweifelhaft echten volkstümlichen Variante” (p. 204). 7 Cf. Simpson 1972 who sees a symmetrical design in the deployment of outis/mētis in the episode. 8 Casevitz 2019, 40, who detects further humorous wordplays throughout the scene (p. 40–43).

Traversing No-Man’s Land  

trick right from the start. Indeed, such knowledge is also implied in another passage, this time from Book 3, when Nestor reminisces about Odysseus at Troy and their likemindedness (Od. 3.120–122): ἔνθ’ οὔ τίς ποτε μῆτιν ὁμοιωθήμεναι ἄντην ἤθελ’, ἐπεὶ μάλα πολλὸν ἐνίκα δῖος Ὀδυσσεὺς παντοίοισι δόλοισι … There no one was ever willing openly to match wits (mētis) [with us], Since by far godlike Odysseus trounced them In all variety of tricks …

Here, to be sure, the king of Pylos is unaware of his evocation of the outis/mētis stratagem, but it has an unmistakable resonance for the Odyssey’s audience.9 Back on Phaeacia, Alcinous, perhaps not the brightest light in discerning what kind of man he has been entertaining in his court with his yarns, remarks (Od. 11.363−366): ὦ Ὀδυσεῦ, τὸ μὲν οὔ τί σ’ ἐΐσκομεν εἰσορόωντες ἠπεροπῆά τ’ ἔμεν καὶ ἐπίκλοπον, οἷά τε πολλοὺς βόσκει γαῖα μέλαινα πολυσπερέας ἀνθρώπους ψεύδεά τ’ ἀρτύνοντας, ὅθεν κέ τις οὐδὲ ἴδοιτο. Odysseus, looking at you in no way do we liken you To be a deceiver or a thief, such as the many Scattered men the dark earth pastures, Who fabricate lies such that no one can make them out …

Now, depending on one’s interpretation of the previous Apologoi, or even of the so-called Intermezzo that just precedes this passage, one might be a bit skeptical of Alcinous’ judgment. Odysseus has just wangled himself into the affections of the Phaeacian Queen, who pronounces him “my xenos”, and suggests that his spell-binding tales merit substantial gifts. He might well be considered an ἠπεροπῆα, a label used of Paris, and hence perhaps with overtones of seduction. Has the charming stranger seduced Arete? That might indeed explain the awkwardness that ensues after her warm declaration of her guest’s many excellences (11.336−338). There is a suggestion that she has overstepped propriety, and Alcinous is pushed to assert his own control of the situation. One can’t help thinking that Alcinous, like many others before him, has been taken in by Outis.

 9 Hamilton, this volume, has detected another cunning mētis at Od. 5.356.

  Jenny Strauss Clay But, as they say on TV: “there’s more!” And, as one might expect, outis comes thick and fast in the second part of the poem, where on Ithaca, the hero is indeed perforce No One, until, slowly but surely, he is revealed to be Odysseus. In a short dialogue between Odysseus and his faithful swineherd that is filled with word play on alethen and alethea, 10 outis pops up again at 14.119–127: Ζεὺς γάρ που τό γε οἶδε καὶ ἀθάνατοι θεοὶ ἄλλοι, εἴ κέ μιν ἀγγείλαιμι ἰδών·ἐπὶ πολλὰ δ’ ἀλήθην. τὸν δ’ ἠμείβετ’ ἔπειτα συβώτης, ὄρχαμος ἀνδρῶν· ὦ γέρον, οὔ τις κεῖνον ἀνὴρ ἀλαλήμενος ἐλθὼν ἀγγέλλων πείσειε γυναῖκά τε καὶ φίλον υἱόν, ἀλλ’ ἄλλως, κομιδῆς κεχρημένοι, ἄνδρες ἀλῆται ψεύδοντ’ οὐδ’ ἐθέλουσιν ἀληθέα μυθήσασθαι. ὃς δέ κ’ ἀλητεύων Ἰθάκης ἐς δῆμον ἵκηται, ἐλθὼν ἐς δέσποιναν ἐμὴν ἀπατήλια βάζει.

The disguised beggar begins: For somehow Zeus and the rest of the immortal gods know If I might have seen and bring news of him, since I have wandered much. The swineherd bulwark of men answered him: Old man, no one coming in his wanderings and announcing That man would persuade his wife and dear son, But all in vain: wandering men lacking sustenance Lie and are unwilling to say the truth, Whoever comes to Ithaca in his wanderings.

The punning on “wandering” and “truth” is unmistakable, but the play on outis is equally telling. For having finally arrived on Ithaca in his wanderings, Outis will have a difficult time convincing his wife and son that he is not a No Body, but Odysseus himself. In Book 16, Athena has carefully prepared for the reunion of Telemachus and Odysseus at Eumaeus’s hut. Things do not go as planned. Once the goddess has rejuvenated the hero, his son refuses to believe that the man who moments before was an old beggar in rags could possibly be Odysseus. To be sure, Telemachus has no memory of his father who left for Troy twenty years before when he was a babe in arms; nevertheless, he cannot believe that the old man suddenly transformed before him is anything but a god. Odysseus has a hard time persuading his son otherwise, and finally in exasperation says (16.187):

 10 Cf. Goldhill 1991, 37–38.

Traversing No-Man’s Land  

οὔ τίς τοι θεός 11 εἰμι·τί μ’ ἀθανάτοισιν ἐΐσκεις;

The famous scene of Eurycleia’s recognition of Odysseus unfolds like a series of Chinese boxes or an onion where each layer peels off to reveal yet another facet of the identity of the hero. It is preceded by a lengthy conversation between Penelope and the disguised beggar that is characterized by lies, veiled truths, and ambiguities as the stranger both reveals and hides himself. In response to the Queen’s formulaic inquiry as to his origins, city, and parents, he responds with one of his Cretan tales, but first flatters his interlocutor (19.107–108): ὦ γύναι, οὐκ ἄν τίς σε βροτῶν ἐπ’ ἀπείρονα γαῖαν νεικέοι·ἦ γάρ σευ κλέος οὐρανὸν εὐρὺν ἱκάνει … Lady, No One of mortals on the boundless earth Would find fault with you; for your fame has reached the wide heaven …

Indeed. Odysseus has already observed his wife in action in the previous book, when she coaxed gifts from the suitors (18.281−283) and found no fault in her. At another climactic juncture, OUTIS suddenly appears at a tense moment before the bow contest. The stranger has demanded a chance to string Odysseus’ bow, and the suitors have reacted in their usual polite fashion (21.285−310). Penelope intervenes by reassuring them that there is no chance that the beggar will string the bow and win her hand in marriage. Eurymachus then chimes in to declare (21.321−324): 12 κούρη Ἰκαρίοιο, περίφρων Πηνελόπεια, οὔ τί σε τόνδ’ ἄξεσθαι ὀϊόμεθ’, οὐδὲ ἔοικεν, ἀλλ’ αἰσχυνόμενοι φάτιν ἀνδρῶν ἠδὲ γυναικῶν, μή ποτέ τις εἴπῃσι κακώτερος ἄλλος Ἀχαιῶν. Daughter of Ikarios, prudent Penelope, In no way (OUTIS) do we think that guy will marry you, nor is it proper, But the gossip of men and women would shame us Lest someone (MȆTIS) of the baser sort of the Achaians ever should say it.

Finally, at the critical moment, when Penelope acknowledges to the stranger, who has already won her heart, her fears of being deceived by a handsome stranger, she confesses (23.215−217):  11 If θεός is pronounced close to τήος, the phrase could be understood as “I am OUTIS, such as I am.” 12 Cf. also 21.309 ἔνθεν δ’ οὔ τι σαώσεαι, 318 μηδέ τις …

  Jenny Strauss Clay αἰεὶ γάρ μοι θυμὸς ἐνὶ στήθεσσι φίλοισιν ἐρρίγει, μή τίς με βροτῶν ἀπάφοιτ' ἐπέεσσιν ἐλθών πολλοὶ γὰρ κακὰ κέρδεα βουλεύουσιν. For always the heart in my breast Trembled, lest someone (MȆTIS) of mortals should seduce me with words Coming: for many men plot evil gains.

The play on outis/mētis in the Odyssey is thus not confined to the name trick Odysseus exploits in the Cyclops’ cave, nor even to the explicit mentions of mētis elsewhere in the poem. It is in fact pervasive, hiding in plain sight, especially at critical moments in the plot or moments of high tension. Like a will-o’-the-wisp, Outis, a trickster and seducer, alternately appears and disappears, hides and reveals — and charms. As I was working on this paper, I tried — unsuccessfully — to put out of my mind a poem from my childhood:13 Yesterday, upon the stair, I met a man who wasn’t there He wasn't there again today I wish, I wish he’d go away ... When I came home last night at three The man was waiting there for me But when I looked around the hall I couldn't see him there at all! Go away, go away, don’t you come back any more! Go away, go away, and please don’t slam the door ... (slam!) Last night I saw upon the stair A little man who wasn’t there He wasn’t there again today Oh, how I wish he’d go away ...

 13 Antigonish, by Hughes Mearns.

Traversing No-Man’s Land  

Bibliography Austin, J. Norman H. (1972), “Name Μagic in the Odyssey”, ClAnt 5, 1−19. Basset, Louis (1980), “L’Emplois des négations dans l’épisode homérique des Cyclopes ou Les ‘Non-Noms’ d’Ulysse”, Lalies 1, 59–61. Casevitz, Michael (2019), “L’humour d’Homère. Ulysse et Polyphème au chant 9 de l’Odyssée, in: Mots Croisés. Littérature & Philologie Grecques, Paris. Clay, Jenny S. (1983), The Wrath of Athena. Gods and Men in the Odyssey, Princeton. Cook, Erwin (1999), “‘Active’ and ‘Passive’ Heroics in the Odyssey”, CW 93, 149–167. Dimock, George E. (1956), “The Name of Odysseus”, Hudson Review 9.1, 52–70. Reprinted in: G. Steiner/R. Fagles (eds.), Homer: A Collection of Critical Essays, Englewood Cliffs N.J. 1962, 106–121. Goldhill, Simon (1991), The Poet’s Voice. Essays on Poetics and Greek Literature, Cambridge, 1– 68. Hackman, Oskar (1904), Die Polyphemsage in der Volksüberlieferung, Helsingfors. Kanavou, Nikoletta (2015), The Names of Homeric Heroes: Problems and Interpretations, Berlin. Nünlist, René. (2015), “‘If in Truth You are Odysseus’ — Distrust and Persuasion in the Odyssey”, SO 89, 2–24. Olson, S. Douglas (1992), “‘Name-Magic’ and the Threat of Lying Strangers in Homer’s Odyssey”, ICS 17, 1−8. Reprinted in Blood and Iron: Stories and Storytelling in Homer’s Odyssey, Leiden/Boston 1995. Passmore, Oliver (2018), “From ΚΕΙΝΟΣ to ΟΔΕ: Deixis and Identity in the Odyssey”, CCJ 64, 139–165. Peradotto, John (1990), Man in the Middle Voice. Name and Narration in the Odyssey, Princeton. Simpson, Michael (1972), “Odyssey 9: Symmetry and Paradox in Outis”, CJ 68, 22–25. Stanford, William B. (1952), “The Homeric Etymology of the Name Odysseus”, CP 47, 209–213.

John T. Hamilton

The Ambiguity of Wisdom: Mētis in the Odyssey Abstract: A re-reading of the Polyphemus episode in the Odyssey emphasizes the perfect homonymity between “non-identity” (mē tis) and “wisdom, craftiness, counsel” (mētis) in order to test the limits and expand the scope of Aristotle’s discussion of homonymy, synonymy, and paronymy in the opening chapter of his Categories and subsequently in his Metaphysics. The reading not only demonstrates how Aristotle’s conceptions oscillate uneasily between logical and metaphysical considerations, but also shows to what extent the Homeric example undermines the very distinction between a purely linguistic and a decidedly metaphysical account of intended ambiguity. Keywords: Cunning, homonymy, synonymy, referentiality, duplicity

Those who deceive others are ostensibly more suspicious about others deceiving them. Homer’s Odysseus, notorious for being a man of much cunning (πολύμητις), has invented enough fabrications in the past for him to remain on high alert, in fear that he himself may become the victim of another’s scheme. In Book Five of the Odyssey, having finally left the alluring charms of Calypso behind, the hero floats upon the open sea with the raft he has made for himself, heading homeward, when the four winds suddenly stir up a violent, threatening storm. Witnessing the poor man’s plight, the sea-goddess Ino emerges from the waves and advises Odysseus to remove his heavy cloak, put on a magically protective veil, and let his raft perish, so that he may swim to the nearby shore of the Phaeacians who are fated to assist him. Yet Odysseus has his concerns. In addition to the justified fear of abandoning his raft — the one thing that has kept him afloat so far — Odysseus perhaps recognizes Ino, who has, of course, a reputation for vile deception. Homer’s audience may recall how Ino once plotted to have her detested stepson Phrixus sacrificed. At any rate, having already doubted Calypso’s motives (Od. 5.173–179), Odysseus now hesitates to trust Ino’s advice (5.356–357): ὤ μοι ἐγώ, μή τίς μοι ὑφαίνῃσιν δόλον αὖτε / ἀθανάτων, “Woe is me,

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110715811-007

  John T. Hamilton lest one [μή τις] of the immortals will once again weave a snare for me.” 1 Uncertain of Ino’s intentions, Odysseus clings to his raft until Poseidon smashes it to pieces, compelling him to swim, whether he trusts the goddess or not. It is not only deep-seated misgivings that cause Odysseus to balk at Ino’s recommendation. Rather, the possible ambiguity of her intentions — whether she means to help or deceive the hero — is underscored by the very language of Odysseus’s exclamation. The fear clause construction, introduced by the negating particle μή, here combines with the indefinite pronoun τις, which can also evoke the noun of cunning intelligence (μῆτις), either by grammatical accident or by poetic design. Although in this passage, the verb ὑφαίνω takes the noun δόλος (“snare”) as a direct object, elsewhere in the epic, the phrase consistently employs μῆτις — μῆτιν ὑφαίνειν, “to weave a scheme.” 2 With Odysseus’s response, anxiety over a possible divine plot against him rhymes with the grammatical collation of μή and τις, as if the hero’s fears were somehow confirmed by the lexical form of his exclamation. Of course, the syntactic event, whereby μή τις conjures the presence of cunning μῆτις, already occurred in Odysseus’s adventure with the Cyclops Polyphemus, which he will subsequently recount to the Phaeacians in Book 9 of the epic. The pun that allowed Odysseus and his comrades to escape Polyphemus’s cave is very well known and has been analyzed at length. 3 Goaded by the hungry giant to reveal his identity, Odysseus gave his name as Οὖτις, which many ancient grammarians recommend reading as a compound, distinguished from the syntagm οὔ τις (“no one”) only by accent.4 Ambiguities naturally result from confusing the syntactic unit and the pseudonym. Thus, when Polyphemus, upon being blinded by a smoldering olive stalk, screams for help, the other Cyclopes, in approaching the cave from the outside, fail to hear the proper name that Polyphemus intends. Subjective articulation conflicts with communicated meaning. Presuming that Polyphemus is alone as is his custom, the Cyclopes pose two questions (9.405–406):  1 All literal translations are my own. 2 For example, the suitors are said to be plotting against Telemachus (4.678): οἱ δ᾽ ἔνδοθι μῆτιν ὕφαινον (“at home they were weaving a mētis”); just as Athena hatches a plan with Odysseus against them (13.303–4): ἵνα τοι σὺν μῆτιν ὑφήνω / χρήματά τε κρύψω (“in order that I might weave a mētis with you / and conceal the affair”). Likewise, before initiating his revenge, Odysseus encourages himself (13.386): ἀλλ᾽ ἄγε μῆτιν ὕφηνον, ὅπως ἀποτίσομαι αὐτούς (“But come, weave some mētis, so that I may repay them”). 3 See, e.g., Podlecki 1961, Schein 1970, Simpson 1972, Basset 1980, and Olson 1992. 4 On the significance of the Polyphemus episode in relation to the ambiguities of Odysseus’s name, see Strauss Clay in this volume.

The Ambiguity of Wisdom: Mētis in the Odyssey  

ἦ μή τίς σευ μῆλα βροτῶν ἀέκοντος ἐλαύνει; ἦ μή τίς σ᾽αὐτὸν κτείνει δόλῳ ἠὲ βίηφιν; Surely, it is not that some mortal is driving away your sheep against your will? Surely, it is not that someone is killing you by guile or by force?

In formulating these questions with ἦ μή, the Cyclopes anticipate a negative answer. But Polyphemus, in his severe suffering, wants to turn the expected negative urgently into an affirmative reply. In his attempt to confirm a real threat, he inadvertently dismisses it: ὦ φίλοι, Οὖτίς με κτείνει δόλῳ οὐδὲ βίηφιν (9.408). What Polyphemus intends to say is: “Friends, a man named Outis is killing me by guile, but not by force.” The Cyclopes, however, misapprehend the articulation, ignoring the shift in accent and thereby hearing instead: “No one is killing me by guile or by force.” That is to say, the Cyclopes divide the pseudonym into component parts, taking the particle οὐ as negating the subject. Hence, they conclude, now in a conditional sentence (9.410–411): “Well, if no one [μή τις] is harming you, since you are in fact alone, it is impossible to avoid a sickness from mighty Zeus” (εἰ μὲν δὴ μή τίς σε βιάζεται οἶον ἐόντα, / νοῦσον γ᾽οὔ πως ἔστι Διὸς μεγάλου ἀλέασθαι). For this reason, before returning to their own caves, they suggest that Polyphemus appeal to another god (9.412): ἀλλὰ σύ γ᾽εὔχεο πατρὶ Ποσειδάωνι ἄνακτι (“Rather, you must pray to our father, lord Poseidon”). As in the Ino episode, the paronomasia that links non-identity and cunning triggers the ambiguity. For example, one is invited to misapprehend the anaphoric questions and the response articulated by the Cyclopes — namely, by understanding that it is cunning mind, μῆτις itself or herself, who is harming Polyphemus, that his own mind is playing tricks on him, a punishment from mighty Zeus, impossible to escape. The fact that the condition expressed by the Cyclopes is the only instance in the Homeric corpus where an indicative is negated by μή in the protasis underscores the intended ambiguity. 5 Just as the Cyclopes mistook Polyphemus’s expression of a proper noun for a syntactic phrase, so can the Cyclopes’ own syntactic construction be mistaken for a common noun. The implication, that a mental entity can exert physical harm, would not have been lost on Odysseus, who has been listening in on the entire affair. Hiding in a dark corner, the hero laughs at how his “impeccable cunning” (μῆτις ἀμύμων) deceived the powerful brutes (9.414). It is a victory, moreover, that, together with the Cyclopes’ advice to appeal to Poseidon, should be ascribed to a consistent theme throughout the Odyssey, namely, the superiority of guileful and resourceful intelligence over brute power. Poseidon, the sea-god and earth-shaker,  5 Stanford, ed. 1959, vol. 1, ad 9.410.

  John T. Hamilton represents precisely the brute power that aims to obstruct Odysseus, the “man of much cunning” (πολύμητις). In believing that Polyphemus, the son of Poseidon, has been defeated by a mental disease sent by Zeus, the Cyclopean neighbors unconsciously reiterate the main battle of the epic poem. 6 Cunning Odysseus, aided by Athena, the daughter of Zeus and the goddess Mētis, has proved once again his capacity to outwit sheer physical force. His deceitfulness grants him the winning edge, even though the odds are against him. 7 As Odysseus explains to his Phaeacian audience (9.422–423): πάντας δὲ δόλους καὶ μῆτιν ὕφαινον / ὥς τε περὶ ψυχῆς: μέγα γὰρ κακὸν ἐγγύθεν ἦεν (“All manners of treachery and cunning I was weaving / As happens when one’s life is at stake: for a great evil was close by”). Tellingly, here, the verb ὑφαίνω now takes two accusative objects, δόλος and μῆτις. The thematic relevance of the paronomasia suggests that the mere homonymy of μή τις and μῆτις may actually reflect synonymy. In the opening chapter of his Categories, Aristotle makes the basic distinction, which lies in the relationship between a name and its referent: “Homonyms are said of things that have only a name in common, while the account of being corresponding to the name is different” (1a1: ὁμώνυμα λέγεται ὧν ὄνομα μόνον κοινόν, ὁ δὲ κατὰ τοὔνομα λόγος τῆς οὐσίας ἕτερος). Aristotle’s example is the word “animal” (ζῷον), which may refer to a “human being” (ἄνθρωπος) or to a “drawing” (γεγραμμένον) of an animal. Here, the same name, ζῷον, can denote two utterly distinct entities — a man is not a drawing. Ιn contrast, “Synonyms are said of things that have a name in common and the account of being corresponding to the name is the same” (1a6: συνώνυμα δὲ λέγεται ὧν τό τε ὄνομα κοινὸν καὶ ὁ κατὰ τοὔνομα λόγος τῆς οὐσίας ὁ αὐτός). Aristotle employs the same example, the word ζῷον, which may refer to a “human being” (ἄνθρωπος) or an “ox” (βοῦς). Here, of course, the same name, ζῷον, denotes two types of the same genus — that is, a living being. This distinction between homonymy and synonymy consistently plays a crucial role in Aristotle’s reflections, for example in the opening book of the Topics, where testing for equivocity enables the philosopher to detect and resolve ambiguities in dialectical arguments, both in terms of logical considerations (what is said of a thing) and metaphysical considerations (what is “in” a thing). 8 By attending to homonymy and synonymy, philosophy can regulate, so to speak, the relationship between words and entities, between “names” (ὀνόματα) and “accounts of being” (λόγοι τῆς οὐσίας).  6 Cf. Schein 1970, 79–80. 7 On this recurrent characteristic of mētis, see Detienne/Vernant 1978, 18–21. 8 For a comprehensive analysis, see Ward 2008.

The Ambiguity of Wisdom: Mētis in the Odyssey  

The distinction between homonymy and synonymy, as well as the question of relation — how the “name” relates to an “account of being” — rests on an important presupposition. According to ancient commentaries, unlike previous thinkers like Speusippus, Aristotle presumes that the referent of any word is not simply another word but rather a non-verbal entity. 9 The names ζῷον and ζῷον are synonyms, not when they refer to the words ἄνθρωπος and βοῦς, but rather when they refer to the entities that are called by those names. This ontological grounding of language is precisely what leads Aristotle to define homonyms negatively vis-à-vis synonyms: homonyms lack the connection between name and ontological referent — a connection that is maintained in the case of synonyms. With homonymy, logical considerations fail to correspond to metaphysical considerations. In applying Aristotle’s precepts, the question whether μή τις and μῆτις are synonymous rests on the possible identification of non-identity and cunning, that cunning intelligence is somehow ontologically anonymous or nameless. In Aristotelian terms, this would have to mean that namelessness can be predicated of cunning. Yet it is precisely here that another problem comes to light. For according to Aristotle’s logical principles, a negatively formulated subject like “non-identity” or “the nameless” can never function properly in any proposition. It cannot function propositionally because a nameless name — like the name Οὖτις or Μῆτις — has, by definition, no referent. The name refers to no one. 10 This lexical problem already crops up when Alcinous, the Phaeacian king, noticed his guest’s tears and asked him to reveal his identity, qualifying his request with an explicative clause: “for there is no one among human beings who is entirely nameless” (8.552: οὐ μὲν γάρ τις πάμπαν ἀνώνυμός ἐστ᾽ ἀνθρώπων). The king’s proposition will eventually break down, inasmuch as his explanation will show itself to be both true and false. On the one hand, the statement is true — there is no one without a name, every man has a name — while on the other hand, the statement turns out to be false: for at least one man was once nameless, namely the man now sitting before the Phaeacian court, who once bore a name while remaining perfectly anonymous. 11 Here, it would seem that philosophical  9 Cf. Ward 2008, 12. 10 See, e.g., Aristot., interpr. 16a30–3: Τὸ δ᾿ οὐκ ἄνθρωπος οὐκ ὄνομα. οὐ μὴν οὐδὲ κεῖται ὄνομα ὅ τι δεῖ καλεῖν αὐτό· οὔτε γὰρ λόγος οὔτε ἀπόφασίς ἐστιν. ἀλλ᾿ ἔστω ὄνομα ἀόριστον, ὅτι ὁμοίως ἐφ᾿ ὁτουοῦν ὑπάρχει καὶ ὄντος καὶ μὴ ὄντος. (“‘Not-man’ and the like are not nouns, and I know of no recognized names we can give such expressions as these, which are neither denials nor sentences. Call them (for want of a better) by the name of indefinite nouns, since we use them of all kinds of things, non-existent as well as existing”). 11 Cf. Heller-Roazen 2017, 9.

  John T. Hamilton logic cannot escape the snare of poetic contradiction. Nor can any clearcut distinction between homonymy and synonymy abide the deceitful pressure of anonymity and pseudonymity. Alcinous bases his proposition on empirical evidence (8.552–554): “there is no one among human beings who is entirely nameless […], when once he comes into being, parents rather bestow names on all when they give birth” (οὐ μὲν γάρ τις πάμπαν ἀνώνυμός ἐστ’ ἀνθρώπων / […], ἐπὴν τὰ πρῶτα γένηται, / ἀλλ᾽ ἐπὶ πᾶσι τίθενται, ἐπεί κε τέκωσι, τοκῆες). Needless to say, the king’s reasoning can readily be extended: before one comes into being, before one is born, one is in fact nameless, because one does not yet exist. This line of thinking has led some scholars to interpret the Cyclops’ cave as an allegory of the womb, insofar as Odysseus asserts his true name and lineage only once he has emerged. Until that moment, he is as nameless as someone not yet born. The pointed stalk that the hero uses to blind the monster may even be seen as a particularly violent phallic intervention. George Dimock supports this conjecture by citing the verse that depicts the anguished travails of the wounded victim (9.415): Κύκλωψ δὲ στενάχων τε καὶ ὠδίνων ὀδύνῃσι (“The Cyclops [was] groaning and travailing with pains”). As Dimock points out, the verb ὠδίνω generally denotes being in labor of childbirth, while the noun ὀδύνη may even allude to the proper name of the erstwhile anonymous hero.12 In extrapolating from this figure of childbearing and name-giving, Barbara Clayton interprets the Cyclops episode as narrating a shift from a maternal to a paternal realm, a shift that rests on issues of signification. The incontestability of maternity — the physically evident link between a newborn and its mother — contrasts with the questionability of paternity; if the mother is certissima, the father is always incertus. Hence, whereas maternity represents a model of signification without any gap between a word and its referent, paternity opens language up to uncertainty and possible ambiguity. “Maternity is incontestable; it embodies its own truth. There is no signifying gap between maternal body and maternity. Paternity, by contrast, is always uncertain and open to question.” 13 In Clayton’s view, the maternal paradigm of an ideal language, whereby words perfectly reflect the world of entities without confusion, corresponds to the opening description of Cyclopean society as a golden age, in which there is neither plowing nor sowing, neither shipbuilding nor commerce nor communal interaction. That is to say, here there are no needs and therefore no gaps between want and satisfaction.  12 Dimock 1956, 56–57. On the Cyclops’ cave as a figure of the womb, see also Schein 1970, 82– 83; and van Nortwick 2008, 53. 13 Clayton 2011, 256.

The Ambiguity of Wisdom: Mētis in the Odyssey  

Clayton thus draws out the consequence: “paternity is by nature a potential generator of many stories, whereas the certainty of maternity precludes all stories but one.” 14 In this regard, it is important to note that the blinding of Polyphemus is identified as the direct cause of the hero’s extensive wanderings, as the poem explicitly states in the opening book (1.68–75): ἀλλὰ Ποσειδάων γαιήοχος ἀσκελὲς αἰεὶ Κύκλωπος κεχόλωται, ὃν ὀφθαλμοῦ ἀλάωσεν, ἀντίθεον Πολύφημον, ὅου κράτος ἐστὶ μέγιστον πᾶσιν Κυκλώπεσσι: Θόωσα δέ μιν τέκε νύμφη, Φόρκυνος θυγάτηρ ἁλὸς ἀτρυγέτοιο μέδοντος, ἐν σπέσσι γλαφυροῖσι Ποσειδάωνι μιγεῖσα. ἐκ τοῦ δὴ Ὀδυσῆα Ποσειδάων ἐνοσίχθων οὔ τι κατακτείνει, πλάζει δ᾽ ἀπὸ πατρίδος αἴης. Rather, Poseidon the earth-mover, is forever stubbornly angry because of the Cyclops, whom he [sc. Odysseus] blinded of an eye, godlike Polyphemus, whose might is greatest among all the Cyclopes: Thoosa the nymph bore him, daughter of Phorkys who rules over the barren sea, in the hollow caves she lay with Poseidon. Since then, Poseidon the earth-shaker does not in fact kill Odysseus, but causes him to wander from his native land.

As the adjective polyphēmus already suggests — “abounding in songs and legends” (LSJ) — the multitude of stories that constitute the epic have mainly been engendered by the hero’s violent act, the act that destroys monological certainty and causes the narrative to expand upon the waves of ambiguity. In semiotic terms, one could say that, before Odysseus’ intrusion, Cyclopean society was based on a perfect unity or oneness, a oneness vividly symbolized by the creatures’ single eye. Ambiguity or duplicity cannot subsist in such a realm of monologic closure. Once determined, referential certainty leaves nothing more to be said. Indeed, in such an environment, words and referents are so closely bound together that the concept of reference itself — a concept that typically requires the double articulation of a signifier and a signified, the referral of meaningful component to meaning itself — may not even be applicable. In choosing the name Outis, Odysseus would seem to adapt to this perfect realm in which the work of reference is not necessary. Accordingly, Polyphemus sees no reason not to take the man at his word. There is no reason for the Cyclops

 14 Clayton 2011, 256.

  John T. Hamilton to doubt the foreigner’s sincerity, since the very idea of duplicity has never occurred to him. Yet the hero, of course, is a stranger to this island, a two-eyed human interloper who ultimately blinds his impolite host and thereby introduces loss and need into this strange paradise. It is in this new, post-lapsarian state of deficiency that Polyphemus calls out to his neighbors, with whom he previously had little interaction. When the Cyclops now must appeal for help, he finds himself in the novel position of having to use language to get what he needs. The consequent gap between words and referents opens onto the possibility of frustrating ambiguity and misunderstanding. Two-eyed Mētis has infected the idyllic landscape with duplicity. Reference has become necessary; and with it a means to escape the closed-circuit of certain death. Thus, the hero is able to escape, hidden beneath a ram in the same way as he masked himself within language. Only upon liberating himself from this fatal realm, does he boldly reveal his “renowned name,” his ὄνομα κλυτόν, that he is indeed “Odysseus, son of Laertes” (9.364). To be sure, the name Odysseus is renowned, if not notorious, for deception. The hero himself began his narrative before the Phaeacian court not only by proclaiming his name in a similar fashion, but also by linking it explicitly and essentially to his talent for duplicity (9.19–20): εἴμ᾽ Ὀδυσεὺς Λαερτιάδης, ὅς πᾶσι δόλοισιν / ἀνθρώποισι μέλω (“I am Odysseus, son of Laertes, who by all kinds of ruses am known among men”). If deceitfulness does indeed constitute the hero’s identity, then how can any assertion of his identity be taken at face value? 15 The adjective πᾶσι in the relative clause is already ambiguous: Is he known by all kinds of ruses among men? Or is he known by all men for his ruses? The patronymic alone reminds us that we are in the uncertain realm of paternity. Hence, returning to the Cyclops episode, after mētis has entered the scene, after words must now grapple with the problem of reference, including self-reference, Polyphemus prays to his own father for revenge, but not without some degree of uneasiness (9.528–529): κλῦθι, Ποσείδαον γαιήοχε κυανοχαῖτα, / εἰ ἐτεόν γε σός εἰμι, πατὴρ δ᾽ ἐμὸς εὔχεαι εἶναι (“Hear, Poseidon, dark-haired earthshaker, / if indeed truly I am yours, and you profess to be my father”). As Aristotle might point out, πατήρ and πατήρ might be synonymous, consolidating the identity of the progenitor and the one who claims paternity; but precisely because the words might be synonymous, they might also be merely homonymous, producing a zone of ambiguity that would require a dialectician’s skill to resolve. Since the field of referents will always outnumber the available repertoire of names, this lexical problem cannot be overlooked. As Aristotle acknowledges in  15 See Vernant 1999, 9–10.

The Ambiguity of Wisdom: Mētis in the Odyssey  

his treatise on Sophistical Refutations (165a13–14), “on the one hand, names and the quantity of words are limited, while on the other hand, things are infinite in number; it is therefore necessary that the same word and the single name signify more” (τὰ μὲν γὰρ ὀνόματα πεπέρανται καὶ τὸ τῶν λόγων πλῆθος, τὰ δὲ πράγματα τὸν ἀριθμὸν ἄπειρά ἐστιν. ἀναγκαῖον οὖν πλείω τὸν αὐτὸν λόγον καὶ τοὔνομα τὸ ἓν σημαίνειν). The duplicity of Odysseus, his cunning identification with nonidentity, not only reflects the hero’s deceitful nature, but also unveils a potential conflict of meanings. Whereas philosophy must strive to determine a single, unambiguous truth, whereas logic must work towards establishing one perfect account, poetry thrives on irreconcilable differences, the capacity to see otherwise and thus the compulsion to see more. Whereas the absolute certainty of truth results in conviction and closes the case, ambiguity keeps the trial open, with always something more to be presented and considered. The lack of a definitive referent cunningly maintains the possibility of imperishable renown, ἄφθιτον κλέος, an unlimited zone that may remain as polyvalent as the name Polyphemus itself.

Bibliography Basset, Louis (1980), “L’emploi des négations dans l’épisode homérique des Cyclopes ou Les ‘non-noms’ d’Ulysse”, Lalies 1, 59–61. Clayton, Barbara (2011), “Polyphemus and Odysseus in the Nursery: Mother’s Milk in the Cyclopeia”, Arethusa 44, 255–277. Detienne, Marcel/Vernant, Jean-Pierre (1978), Les ruses de l’intelligence: La métis des Grecs, Paris. Dimock, George E. (1956), “The Name of Odysseus”, The Hudson Review 9, 52–70. Heller-Roazen, Daniel (2017), No One’s Ways: An Essay on Infinite Naming, Cambridge, MA. Nortwick, Thomas van (2008), The Unknown Odysseus: Alternate Worlds in Homer’s Odyssey, Ann Arbor. Olson, S. Douglas (1992), “‘Name-Magic’ and the Threat of Lying Strangers in Homer’s Odyssey”, ICS 17, 1–8. Podlecki, Anthony J. (1961), “Guest-Gifts and Nobodies in Odyssey 9”, Phoenix 15, 125–133. Schein, Seth (1970), “Odysseus and Polyphemus in the Odyssey”, GRBS 11, 73–83. Simpson, Michael (1972), “Odyssey 9: Symmetry and Paradox in Outis”, CJ 68, 22–25. Stanford, William B. (ed.) (1959), The Odyssey of Homer, 2 vols. (2nd edition: London). Ward, Julie K. (2008), Aristotle on Homonymy: Dialectic and Science, Cambridge. Vernant, Jean-Pierre (1999), “Odysseus in Person”, trans. James Ker, Representations 67, 1–26.

Evina Sistakou

Borges in Alexandria? Modes of Ambiguity in Hellenistic Poetry Abstract: Ambiguity, i.e. the concept of ‘double or uncertain meaning’, is a vital part of Alexandrian aesthetics. This chapter discusses ambiguity in Hellenistic poetry by dividing it into modes, depending on whether it operates on the level of language, narrative or text. In the final part it demonstrates that Callimachus’ Aetia shares common ground with modern conceptions of ambiguity, by drawing a parallel between Callimachus’ aitiological poem and the epistemological and ontological questions posed by the master of (post)modern ambiguity, Jorge Luis Borges. Keywords: ambiguity, Hellenistic poetry, Alexandrian aesthetics, Callimachus’ Aetia, postmodernism, Borges

 Introduction: Explaining Ambiguity In the historical Oxford English Dictionary ‘ambiguous’ is defined as “doubtful, questionable; indistinct, obscure, not clearly defined” or “admitting more than one interpretation, or explanation; of double meaning, or of several possible meanings; equivocal” and ‘ambiguity’ as either “hesitation, doubt, uncertainty” or the “capability of being understood in two or more ways.” Hence, it can denote either anything having more than one interpretation or that which is of uncertain interpretation. Being in itself an ambiguously defined word, 1 this term has all the shortcomings a theoretical concept can possibly have: it is broad, vague, fluctuating, clichéd, both timeless and historically specific, an umbrella term applied from linguistics to philosophy and semiotics, used indiscriminately to describe words, ideas, narratives or artistic genres. To these we might add that, although  I am deeply indebted to Martin Vöhler for his scholarly guidance on matters of literary ambiguity. Heartfelt thanks go to Theodore Papanghelis, Michalis Chrysanthopoulos, Stavros Frangoulidis, Robert Kirstein and Antje Wessels for their enlightening comments.  1 A ‘fun fact’ pointed out by Sennet 2016, who observes that the term “has been the source of much frustration, bemusement, and amusement for philosophers, lexicographers, linguists, cognitive scientists, literary theorists and critics, authors, poets, orators and just about everyone who considers the interpretation(s) of linguistic signs.” https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110715811-008

  Evina Sistakou it is overused in the philological jargon and widespread in bibliography, it is hard to find a defining study dedicated specifically to this concept in literature and art. 2 What follows gives an overview of its development in literary theory. Ambiguity was officially introduced into literary criticism when William Empson published his study Seven Types of Ambiguity in 1930, which placed emphasis on the linguistic aspects of the literary text and the multiple interpretive possibilities open to its readers. A decade later, William Stanford (Ambiguity in Greek Literature, 1939) examined the rhetorical theories on verbal ambiguity in antiquity and then applied this concept to Homer, Pindar and Greek tragedy. Building on the premise of the poetic/symbolic function of language and its multiple meanings, and thereby stressing the active role of the reader in its deciphering, theorists have developed new approaches to ambiguity. Philip Wheelwright (On the Semantics of Poetry, 1940) coined the term ‘plurisignation’ to describe the transcendence of the sole literal meaning through the connotations of poetic language, a concept further developed by Roland Barthes into the notion of the ‘infinite plurality’ of the literary text and its codes produced by the reader (S/Z, 1970; From Work to Text, 1971). Umberto Eco represents a break with the linguisticallyoriented tradition by introducing the notion of the ‘open work’ (Opera aperta, 1962). 3 Taking the musical works of Stockhausen as a point of departure, Eco discusses the multiplicity of interpretation that is built in a ‘work in progress’ or a ‘work in movement’ and calls for the contribution of the performer, the viewer or, in the case of literature, the reader to be completed; ambiguity derives from the ‘openness’ of the artwork to its possible performances or readings, to the process of its realization through the plurality of its receptions. A radically different approach is expressed by Shlomith Rimmon (The Concept of Ambiguity. The Example of James, 1977), who makes a distinction between plurality of meaning and the mutually exclusive versions of an ambiguous narrative. More recently, Christoph Bode, in his voluminous monograph Ästhetik der Ambiguität (1988), recasts ambiguity as an aesthetic category of modernism in art and literature; his test cases include atonal music and the works of James Joyce and Samuel Beckett. With the exception of the now outdated study by Stanford, classical scholarship has ignored this theoretical background. However, both the general terms ‘ambiguous’/‘ambiguity’ as well as the notion of ‘double or uncertain meaning’ as a means of understanding pre-modern poetics have been broadly applied to

 2 With the exception of the study by Ossa-Richardson 2019 who reconstructs the archaeology of the idea of ambiguity from antiquity until the twentieth century in Western thought. 3 Cf. also Eco’s collection of essays The Role of the Reader, 1984.

Borges in Alexandria? Modes of Ambiguity in Hellenistic Poetry  

the study of Graeco-Roman poetry. 4 Hellenistic scholars have meticulously examined double meanings and readings in the major works of the Hellenistic poets; in several cases, they have established uncertainty of meaning and the notorious notion of ‘obscurity’ as essential features of Alexandrian aesthetics. The latter is the case in the collective volume Lycophron: éclats d’obscurité, which discusses the linguistic and generic ambiguities inherent in Lycophron’s Alexandra.5 Riddles and puns based on wordplay are a special type of ambiguous discourse in Hellenistic poetry, which apart from Lycophron’s poem include epigrams and technopaegnia. 6 Another area where ambiguity is brought into play is the act of narration, first associated with the notions of framing and polyphony by Simon Goldhill with his 1991 monograph The Poet’s Voice. 7 Andrew Morrison has argued that there is an ambiguity in the personal and the choral voice in Callimachus’ mimetic hymns and in the function of the narrators and their viewpoints in several idylls of Theocritus. 8 A number of scholars have further elaborated on this concept in various genres of Hellenistic poetry: Marco Fantuzzi, who has pointed out numerous cases of ambiguity in Hellenistic epigrams; Michael Tueller, who has also discussed ambiguity in regard to voice in Callimachus’ epigrams; Benjamin Acosta-Hughes, who has seen Hipponax in Iamb 1 as an ambiguous persona of the author; and Ruth Scodel, in her exploration of Callimachean fables as a vehicle for ambiguity. 9 The gender ambiguity of the honored goddess Athena and the speaker in Hymn 5 and the instability of gender in The Lock of Berenice demonstrate Callimachus’ penchant for this literary device. 10 Building on the wordplay and thematic ambiguity in Callimachus’ hymns as explored by Kenneth J. McKay in the 1960s, Claude Meillier has argued that Callimachus is the poet of ambiguity par excellence.11 Given the intrinsic unpredictability of sea voyages, even a more conventional narrative such as the Argonautica of Apollonius has been seen as conveying an overall sense of ambiguity to the reader through its language, imagery and motifs. 12

 4 It was also known to ancient linguistics and rhetorical theory, especially that of the Stoics, see Atherton 1993. 5 Cusset/Prioux 2009. 6 Kwapisz et al. 2013. 7 Goldhill 1991, 223–272. 8 Morrison 2007, 105–178 and 239–270. 9 Fantuzzi/Hunter 2002, 291–349 and Tueller 2004; Acosta-Hughes 2002, 36–59; Scodel 2011. 10 Morrison 2005 and Acosta-Hughes 2010, 63–78. 11 Meillier 1965. 12 Clare 2002.

  Evina Sistakou It is impossible to map the routes taken by the scholars investigating Hellenistic ambiguity, which, as shown by this brief outline, is not virgin territory. Yet it is critical to note that they mostly use ambiguity as defined by dictionaries rather than as explored by twentieth-century literary theory. My aim is to study ambiguity in Hellenistic poetry by dividing it into modes, depending on whether it operates on the level of language, narrative or text. My classification does not aspire to be exhaustive or definitive — on the contrary, it acknowledges that poetry resists clear-cut categorizations; it rather resembles a compass showing the directions researchers and readers can follow in their quest for Hellenistic ambiguity. Ultimately, I argue that Alexandrian aesthetics shares common ground with modern conceptions of ambiguity; more surprisingly, there is one work, Callimachus’ Aetia, that transcends historical boundaries and appears as a striking paradigm of postmodern ambiguity.

 Modes of Ambiguity in Hellenistic Poetry . Ambiguities of Language The ancient equivalent for ambiguity is ἀμφιβολία, denoting a word with multiple meanings, used in this sense first by Aristotle (Rhet. 1375b, 1407a; Poet. 1461a). The sole ancient definition is owed to the Stoics, who understood ambiguity as “an utterance signifying two or even more ‘signified things’, linguistically, strictly, and in the same usage, so that the several ‘signified things’ are understood simultaneously in relation to this utterance” (Diog. Laert. 7.62: ἀμφιβολία δέ ἐστι λέξις δύο ἢ καὶ πλείονα πράγματα σημαίνουσα λεκτικῶς καὶ κυρίως καὶ κατὰ τὸ αὐτὸ ἔθος, ὥσθ᾽ ἅμα τὰ πλείονα ἐκδέξασθαι κατὰ ταύτην τὴν λέξιν). 13 During the twentieth century and following the boom in linguistics, semiotic studies and structuralism, and, of course, Empson’s influential study, lexical ambiguity became key to the understanding of poetic language. It encompasses polysemy and homonymy, any grammatical or syntactical phenomenon deriving from the contextual relations of the poetic words which result in the multiplying or the ambivalence of meaning, but also highly subjective features such as the connotative and affective meaning of the poetic word.14

 13 The translation of the passage is by Catherine Atherton; for a thorough analysis of this definition, see Atherton 1993, 131–174. 14 For a theoretical study of this concept, see Su 1994, esp. 18–42.

Borges in Alexandria? Modes of Ambiguity in Hellenistic Poetry  

The Alexandrian poetae docti recognized early on that words gathered from all areas of knowledge and the literary corpus of the Greek past represented a tremendous force in the making of poetic texts. Their task as scholars was to disambiguate obscure words in glossaries, lexica and commentaries, but as poets they exploited the ambiguities of the lexical thesaurus to enrich their poetic discourse. 15 That the glóssai created ample opportunities for steering the meaning to different, even opposing, directions hardly needs any documentation. Apollonius, Callimachus and Lycophron play with the exegetical variations of rare Homeric words and then call upon the learned reader to decide which meaning is correct in a given context.16 Any type of word can generate ambiguity. Names, for example, can be (dis)orientating in regard to their referent. Callimachus exploits their potential ambiguity to the full: Does he defend the Arcadian or the Cretan origin of Zeus by repeating the name Θεναί, an ambiguously located toponym, in Hymn 1 (42–43)? Is Ἀχελῷος the name of the narrator’s lover or just a metonymy for water during a drinking party in Epigram 29 Pf.? Does the phrase Φρυγίῃ ὑπὸ δρυὶ γυῖα θεωθείς on the death of Heracles (Hymn 3.159) denote the region of Phrygia, an unknown toponym in Thessaly where the hero was burnt, or simply the pyre by allusion to the verb φρύγω? Why does ὠγυγίην Κόων Μεροπηΐδα νῆσον, a learned periphrasis for Cos, also evoke Calypso’s island, the Homeric Ogygia (Hymn 4.160)? In the concise form of the epigram, an ambiguous word can enhance wordplay, create a pun, add a witty twist or highlight the final pointe. 17 Epigram 11 Pf. by Callimachus illustrates how a single key-word can generate conflicting readings: Σύντομος ἦν ὁ ξεῖνος, ὃ καὶ στίχος οὐ μακρὰ λέξων ‘Θῆρις Ἀρισταίου Κρής’ ἐπ᾽ ἐμοὶ δολιχός. The visitor was short, his epitaph will be also: ‘Theris son of Aristaios, of Crete’ is all I’ve room for. (Transl. F. Nisetich)

There are at least two explanations of σύντομος here: the dead man, a Cretan named Theris, was “of limited size” or “concise in language”, implying either that

 15 Meillier 1965, 325 was the first to declare that “le goût de l’ambiguïté est proprement hellénistique” because, in an era in which the grammarians researched and studied rare words, the poets exploited them to play with their meanings. 16 For a plethora of paradigms see esp. Rengakos 1992, 1994a and 1994b. 17 For an illuminating distinction between ambiguity proper and a set of cognate phenomena (indeterminacy, vagueness, obscurity and pun), see Su 1994, 107–132.

  Evina Sistakou the dead was short in stature, therefore his undersized gravestone could not accommodate his long name, or that a lengthy epitaph was inappropriate to his laconic way of speaking while he was alive. 18 Both readings have an undercurrent of humor, but what if σύντομος has also the connotation of short-lived, thus suggesting that the foreigner’s life was cut short by untimely death? Would not this reading cast a shadow of tragedy upon the epitaph? Therefore, should the epigram be interpreted as a lament for the short-lived or as a joke about the size of a tomb? It depends on the reader to decide whether Callimachus aims at arousing emotion or is playing an intellectual game here — or if he is doing both. Another Callimachean epigram on a dedication by Eudemus is a tour de force of sophisticated ambiguity (Ep. 47 Pf.): Τὴν ἁλίην Εὔδημος, ἐφ᾽ ἧς ἅλα λιτὸν ἐπέσθων χειμῶνας μεγάλους ἐξέφυγεν δανέων, θῆκε θεοῖς Σαμόθρῃξι λέγων, ὅτι τήνδε κατ᾽ εὐχήν, ὦ ἅλιοι, σωθεὶς ἐξ ἁλὸς ὧδε θέτο. Eudemos to the gods of Samothrace: the salt-tub on which he rode out the great storms of his debts a sprinkle at a time. Here it is, O citizens: the votive of a man who survived on salt. (Transl. F. Nisetich)

Richard Bentley noted that “the epigram is very ingenious, and the humor of it lies in the double meaning of ἁλίην and ἅλα and ἁλός, and the likeness of ἐπέσθων to ἐπελθών and of δανέων to ἀνέμων.” 19 Playing with the double meaning of ἅλς = salt/the sea and ἁλίη = salt cellar/ship, Callimachus invites at least two different readings: the bankrupt Eudemos survived the storms of his debts by resorting to a very poor diet (i.e. by feeding on plain salt) or by setting out on a new career as a seafarer. The second couplet conflates the different exegeses of σωθεὶς ἐξ ἁλὸς: is his dedication to the Cabiri due to salt, the product of the sea, to his salvation on account of his activity at sea or because he survived a shipwreck? After all, how paradoxical is the possibility of being saved by the sea while sinking into a sea of debts? In the epigrammatic genre ambiguity has many faces, since it originates from the double entendres of erotic and pederastic epigrams, the euphemisms and metaphors of death in epitaphs, and the puns and riddles  18 Gow/Page 1965, 2.192–193. Another explanation of δόλιχος suggesting the long course in racing would make Theris a long distance athlete, but one who failed to live long enough (cf. Planudes who classifies the poem under epigrams Εἰς ἀγωνιστάς). 19 Quoted after Gow/Page 1965, 2.185–186, where several other interpretations of the epigram are discussed.

Borges in Alexandria? Modes of Ambiguity in Hellenistic Poetry  

in sophisticated and satirical epigrams; it also includes games with word order, syntax, and even punctuation, a set of lexical and formal devices, all of which lead to variegated readings of the same poem. It depends on the reader to decode the lexical ambiguities of the epigrams and choose one of the several interpretations open to him/her in order to create a personal ‘meaning’. 20 Beyond the level of the word, interpretational ambiguities derive from the simultaneous presence of a literal and a metaphorical meaning in the same linguistic code. Hellenistic poetry offers a striking paradigm of such a codification: the bucolic discourse of Theocritus. Theocritus uses language to textually link two worlds incompatible on a pragmatic level, namely that of the herdsmen and that of the poets. Even if an allegorical reading of the pastoral is a feature developed in post-Theocritean bucolic, nevertheless the sense that there is a secondlevel meaning, a sophisticated message conveyed by the naive, primitive parlance of the herdsmen, pervades the bucolic idylls. 21 Language in the bucolic idylls operates on a double level: it recreates the everyday life of the herdsmen thus generating a reality effect, but it also has a metaliterary dimension thus accentuating the fictionality of the poetic universe. The double meaning is inherent in the semiotic system of the bucolic genre. Βουκόλος and ποιμήν apparently denote the cowherd and the shepherd respectively, but at the same time cover a broad semantic spectrum based on the analogy between someone who tends animals with any other leader of archaic society: a king, a warrior or a priest, and on the other hand an intellectual figure such as the philosopher and the poet.22 Βουκολικὴ ἀοιδή, a recurrent term in the refrain of Theocritus’ Idyll 1, corresponds to “a song about the cowherd”, that is Daphnis; but if the phrase is understood programmatically, it carries the connotations of “a song about any cowherd”, “a song performed by cowherds” or “the song labelled as part of the collection of bucolic poems.” In the opening verses of the same idyll, the term ἡδύς refers to the sounds of nature and the music produced by the herdsmen in the storyworld, but it also carries the metaliterary connotations of ἡδύς ‘sweet’ as an inherent quality of all bucolic poetry. 23 Thus, it depends on the reader to decide which of the two textual worlds is recreated by these signs. Similarly, the highly symbolic  20 On the active role of the reader in Hellenistic epigram, see Meyer 1993 and Bing 1995. 21 Rosenmeyer 1969, 267–282 has shown that the allegorisation of the bucolic world is postTheocritean; that pastoral may be a vehicle for another ‘meaning’ (political, theological etc.) has been brilliantly demonstrated by Patterson 1987. Gutzwiller 1991 has argued that Theocritus’ ‘bucolic’ poetry can be seen as a metaphor or an analogy. 22 For the semantic analogy of the herdsman in ancient Greek thought, see Gutzwiller 1991, 23– 79 and 2006. 23 On the metaliterary connotations of this term, see Sistakou forthcoming.

  Evina Sistakou language of Idyll 7 blurs the boundaries between the pastoral plot and pastoral poetics. The intrusion of the ‘outsider’ Simichidas into the bucolic universe and his encounter with the goatherd Lycidas, in effect the ambiguous status of the narrative world they inhabit, is reflected in their equally ambiguous rhetoric. When Lycidas declares (35–36): ἀλλ᾽ ἄγε δή, ξυνὰ γὰρ ὁδὸς ξυνὰ δὲ καὶ ἀώς, / βουκολιασδώμεσθα (“but come, since we are travelling the same road at the same time, let’s perform bucolic songs”, transl. N. Hopkinson), the reader is conscious that the road, the day and the musical contest are signifiers both of the Coan narrative within the plot of the idyll and of the metatextual universe of bucolic poetics. The duality inherent in the bucolic code engenders ambiguity in the reader’s mind.

. Ambiguities of Narrative Beyond the lexical and semiotic mode, ambiguity can be more complex in cases where the author leaves his narrative open to conflicting versions, thus posing interpretive dilemmas. But unlike the freedom modern authors enjoy in setting up an invented story and configuring it into an original narrative, ancient Greek poets were subject to the restrictions of myth. Thus, when Apollonius deals with the myth of Jason and Medea in the Argonautica, there is little room for narrative invention. Ambiguity shifts from the main line of the plot to other components of the narrative, including the alternative perspectives on the epic quest, the conflicting motivations of the characters, the divine vs. the human forces at work, the opposition between heroism and cunning underlying the Argonautic enterprise. 24 The Argonautica reader is conscious that, in subtly breaking down the narrative into its components, even a well-known story with a clear-cut outcome can point towards two opposing poles of ‘meaning’. 25 Yet the ability of the author to intervene in a long-established story and alter it, thus creating a modern sense of ambiguity (either A or B is true), is limited, and his means of conveying it to the reader indirect.

 24 Clare 2002 captures the ambiguity of Apollonius’ Argonautica, e.g. when he argues (pp. 9– 32) that already in the proem Apollonius highlights the tensions and contradictions of the epic journey and the disjunction between the purpose of the Argonauts and that of Pelias, thus emphasizing that the development of the quest will be ambiguous. The plot is further complicated by the interventions of a narrator in crisis, on which see Morrison 2007, 271–311. 25 For this conception of narrative ambiguity, I follow Rimmon 1977, 3–26.

Borges in Alexandria? Modes of Ambiguity in Hellenistic Poetry  

However, this process is facilitated when the poet resorts either to lesserknown narratives, such as the recondite aitiological stories of Callimachus, Apollonius and Euphorion, or, even better, to pure fiction. Theocritus is mostly associated with the latter category; he might even be credited as the inventor of fiction in pre-modern poetry. 26 He also ‘invented’ ambiguous storytelling which calls for divergent readings. In Idyll 1 the story of Daphnis reads almost as an enigma narrative, since the motives of the main characters are obscure (why are the Nymphs absent? why do Hermes and Priapus visit Daphnis?), the relationship between Aphrodite and the boukólos incomprehensible (why is the goddess laughing? does she sympathize with Daphnis’ suffering? why is Daphnis hostile to her?), the cause of Daphnis’ sorrow is mysterious (what is the object of his desire? is he a victim or a punisher of Eros?) and so is his physical extinction at the end (does Daphnis drown in the river or does he assume a new existence through water?).27 Elsewhere, it is the open-endedness that creates ambiguity (Idyll 2 leaves the reader wondering whether the magic spells will be effective, and whether Delphis will eventually return to Simaitha) or the fluctuation of tonality and emotion (does the anonymous goatherd of Idyll 3 address Amaryllis in terms of páthos or comedy? What is the meaning of Simichidas’ laughter in Idyll 7?). The fictions of Theocritus, replete with these and similar questions, programmatically resist certainty and promote inconclusiveness. One special case that offers an insight into the modern conception of narrative ambiguity is Theocritus’ Idyll 11, which consists of a frame (the narrator addressing Nicias) and an inset song (performed by a character, Polyphemus). The relationship between the two components is one of ambiguity, hinging upon the meaning of the word φάρμακον. Φάρμακον (17) in the double meaning of ‘a palliative’ and ‘a remedy’, in conjunction with the ambiguous ἐποίμαινεν τὸν ἔρωτα (80), that is “he shepherded his love”, suggests that the loving subject can either be permanently cured by the magic of song or temporarily alleviate his suffering by recourse to singing. The idyll is open to both possibilities, and the question as to whether art can cure love remains unanswered. Polyphemus’ song itself oscillates between two opposite poles, two narrative worlds where it can be set; the first we may call ‘fabula’, the other ‘imagination’. Communicated through a first-

 26 A thesis brilliantly developed by Payne 2007. 27 In enigma narratives the author raises a series of questions that call for the resolution by the reader and may or may not be resolved at the end of the narrative: for an analysis of the concept in the context of ambiguity and its application in Henry James, see Rimmon 1977, 43–45, 95–115. Cf. Barthes (1974), 18–20, who calls the same principle the “hermeneutic code” of a narrative.

  Evina Sistakou person, naive and probably unreliable narrator, this narrative in which the Cyclops recounts his love affair with Galateia constantly poses a question to the reader: is this affair, partly or in its entirety, an event existing in the storyworld or an imaginary one taking place in his mind? Certain factors of the narrative are ‘true’ to the storyworld and create a reality effect, such as the pastoral activities of the shepherd Polyphemus and his bucolic surroundings, animals and products (34–41). But is the eutopic description of his cave a realistic setting or an idealized rendition of it as a love nest (42–53)? The song repeatedly alternates between factuality and imagination. Polyphemus is realistically aware of his monstrous appearance (30–33), but when he addresses Galateia he employs a set of generic metaphors to highlight her “whiteness” and her other bucolic graces (19–21). The very existence of the nymph is open to doubt, since Polyphemus, on the one hand, claims to have met with her on his island in the past (25–29), but, on the other hand, he admits that she only appears during his sleep in the present (22– 24). Similar to other idealized mistresses of the idylls, the one mysteriously associated with Daphnis or the phantom nymph Amaryllis, Galateia may only be a fantasy in Polyphemus’ mind (72–75). In addition, one of Polyphemus’ central concerns is his physical inability to cross the boundaries between land and sea which divide him from his beloved, thus suggesting that an encounter between them is not feasible in terms of the storyworld’s reality (54–55, 60–64). Hence the song of Polyphemus reads either as an account of an accomplished love story or as daydreaming transformed into artistic creation. 28 Furthermore, ambiguity can operate on more than one level when it originates from a combination of lexical and narrative strategies. A unique example illustrating this type of multilayered ambiguity is Lycophron’s Alexandra. In this idiosyncratic poem the author employs the riddle as a mechanism to create a heightened sense of uncertainty on both a narrative and a metanarrative level.29 In the storyworld of the Alexandra, a royal guard acting as a messenger reports the prophetic monologue of Cassandra to King Priam on the day Paris sails for Sparta, i.e. long before the outbreak of the Trojan War. At the beginning of the poem the messenger provides a definition of ambiguity (1–12): Λέξω τὰ πάντα νητρεκῶς, ἅ μ᾽ ἱστορεῖς, ἀρχῆς ἀπ᾽ ἄκρας· ἢν δὲ μηκυνθῇ λόγος, σύγγνωθι, δέσποτ᾽· οὐ γὰρ ἥσυχος κόρη  28 For various approaches to the ambiguity of Idyll 11, see Fantuzzi/Hunter 2002, 164–167; Payne 2007, 67–82; Kyriakou 2018, 96–111. 29 Lycophron’s riddles hinge upon the absence of the common proper names of all the mythological characters: for the ambiguity stemming from this strategy, see Sistakou 2009.

Borges in Alexandria? Modes of Ambiguity in Hellenistic Poetry  

ἔλυσε χρησμῶν, ὡς πρίν, αἰόλον στόμα· ἀλλ᾽ ἄσπετον χέασα παμμιγῆ βοὴν δαφνηφάγων φοίβαζεν ἐκ λαιμῶν ὄπα, Σφιγγὸς κελαινῆς γῆρυν ἐκμιμουμένη. τῶν ἅσσα θυμῷ καὶ διὰ μνήμης ἔχω, κλύοις ἄν, ὦναξ, κἀναπεμπάζων φρενὶ πυκνῇ διοίχνει δυσφάτους αἰνιγμάτων οἴμας τυλίσσων, ᾗπερ εὐμαθὴς τρίβος ὀρθῇ κελεύθῳ τἀν σκότῳ ποδηγετεῖ. I shall tell you accurately everything you ask, from the very beginning. And if the telling is long, forgive me, master. For the maiden did not calmly, as before, let loose the varied utterance of her oracles, but she poured out a vast and confused cry, and uttered a prophetic voice from her laurel-eating throat, in imitation of the speech of the cruel Sphinx. Listen, O king, to what I retain both in my heart and through my memory; turn it over in your shrewd brain, and pursue and unravel the dark paths of her riddles, where a clear track leads by a straight road through the things in darkness. (Transl. S. Hornblower)

The passage highlights different types of ambiguous utterances, such as oracles (χρησμῶν, δαφνηφάγων φοίβαζεν ἐκ λαιμῶν ὄπα), riddles (Σφιγγὸς γῆρυν, δυσφάτους αἰνιγμάτων οἴμας) and obscure words (τἀν σκότῳ). This opening programmatically advertises the poem’s epistemic indefiniteness for the recipients of the story both inside and outside the storyworld. 30 As already known, within the storyworld Priam will be unable to solve the reported riddles and therefore the outbreak of the Trojan War will prove inevitable; the appeal to the king’s shrewdness (φρενὶ πυκνῇ) can only sound ironic in this context. However, the Alexandra, an enigmatic poem consisting of hundreds of micro-narratives in the form of riddles requires the active cooperation of the reader. It is through his/her ability to solve the riddles and identify the referents of the narrative that the story may be eventually reconstructed and communicated. 31 Successful deciphering of the narratives’ hermeneutic code depends solely on the reader, who thus becomes a co-creator of the Alexandra.32

 30 On the ambiguities of the Alexandra prologue, see Kossaifi 2009. 31 Looijenga 2009 argues that the prologue to the Alexandra addresses the reader by providing “reading instructions” that will allow him/her to understand the poetry of riddles. 32 From the aspect of the reader who through the interpretative process becomes also the creator of an artistic work, the Alexandra might be viewed as the closest ancient parallel to the ‘open work’ as conceptualized by Umberto Eco (see Eco 1989, 1–23).

  Evina Sistakou

. Ambiguities of Text Under this rubric I classify those ambiguities that pertain to the factors and functions of the text, which include its narrator, genre and referentiality. My test case is a set of highly ambiguous poems, namely the hymns of Callimachus. The first level of ambiguity concerns the narrator with his various personae and voices. It is a commonplace of research that in all the major works, the Callimachean narrator is a destabilizing element within the text. The proem of Hymn 1 offers a striking example (1–9): Ζηνὸς ἔοι τί κεν ἄλλο παρὰ σπονδῇσιν ἀείδειν λώϊον ἢ θεὸν αὐτόν, ἀεὶ μέγαν, αἰὲν ἄνακτα, Πηλαγόνων ἐλατῆρα, δικασπόλον Οὐρανίδῃσι; πῶς καί νιν, Δικταῖον ἀείσομεν ἠὲ Λυκαῖον; ἐν δοιῇ μάλα θυμός, ἐπεὶ γένος ἀμφήριστον. Ζεῦ, σὲ μὲν Ἰδαίοισιν ἐν οὔρεσί φασι γενέσθαι, Ζεῦ, σὲ δ᾽ ἐν Ἀρκαδίῃ· πότεροι, πάτερ, ἐψεύσαντο; “Κρῆτες ἀεὶ ψεῦσται”· καὶ γὰρ τάφον, ὦ ἄνα, σεῖο Κρῆτες ἐτεκτήναντο· σὺ δ᾽ οὐ θάνες, ἐσσὶ γὰρ αἰεί. Would anything else be better to hymn at libations of Zeus than the god himself, ever great, ever lord, router of the Titans, dispenser of justice for the sons of Uranus? But how shall we hymn him, as Dictaean or Lycaean? My heart is in doubt, for the birth is contested. Zeus, some say you were born in the Idaean mountains; Zeus, others say in Arcadia. Which of them is telling falsehoods, father? ‘Cretans always lie.’ And indeed, Lord, the Cretans built a tomb for you; but you are not dead, you live forever. (Transl. S. Stephens)

This proem may be compared with the opening of the Alexandra; both focus on the conflicting ‘meanings’ that are available to the readers of an open narrative. But the Callimachean text goes a step further in highlighting the simulated confusion of the dramatized first-person narrator who declares his intention to tell of Zeus’ birth, but, in not possessing the one and only truth, lacks the authority of a conventional epic narrator. 33 The narrator admits that the two accounts of Zeus’ birthplace (Crete and Arcadia) have an equal share of credibility, are equally true though mutually exclusive. The factual ambiguity (5 ἐπεὶ γένος ἀμφήριστον) splits his mind in half (5 ἐν δοιῇ μάλα θυμός), and this divided mind is reflected in a similarly divided narrative. From this point on the narrator merges both versions into a single narrative, by exploiting a series of ambiguous toponyms that  33 According to Hopkinson 1984, Callimachus plays here with the topos about the truth of the poets and challenges the belief that there is a ‘real meaning’ in poetry. We might call this the epistemic ambiguity of poetry.

Borges in Alexandria? Modes of Ambiguity in Hellenistic Poetry  

simultaneously refer to Crete and Arcadia. Additionally, the narrator’s pretended confusion increases when he realizes that one of his two sources, the Cretans, are liars — at least according to the poet Epimenides, who, ironically, was also a Cretan. 34 The narrator warns the reader that the ambiguities involving Zeus’ birth are not just a matter of pragmatics but also of perspective, thus challenging his/her ability to interpret the hymn unambiguously. 35 This is just one of the disruptive strategies used by the Callimachean narrator, different versions of which are amply testified in the other hymns too.36 Callimachus’ masterful manipulation of generic conventions can also lead to textual ambiguity. Thus, what was formerly termed the ‘crossing of genres’ but is known today as the ‘hybridization of genres’ further increases the indeterminacy of the generic configuration and hence the interpretation of a poetic text. In the hymns Callimachus not only confounds the generic expectations of his readers by questioning the boundaries of the epic and the lyric hymn, but also works stylistic and thematic features from other genres into the hymnic matrix. Two ostensibly hybrid hymns are the fifth and the sixth. In Hymn 5 the frame is an amalgam of archaic epic and Pindaric choral song (1–54, 137–142), whereas the narrative section (55–136), recounting how Tiresias was blinded when he accidentally watched Athena bathe naked in a spring, is reworked into a hybrid genre, since it incorporates modes from the idyll, the threnodic elegy and tragedy. 37 Hymn 6 is also framed as a choral song (1–21, 118–138), yet its narrative section on the story of Erysichthon, who is severely punished with insatiable hunger by Demeter, is turned into a comic play (22–117).38 Both hymns revolve around the ‘crime and  34 Clauss 1986 believes that the hymn is structured around two lies: the first section concerns the ‘lie’ about the birth of Zeus (4–54) and the second the ‘lie’ about Zeus’ accession to the throne (55–90). 35 To quote Stephens’ well-turned phrasing in regard to this point (Stephens 2015, 29): “There are frequent intrusions of other, sometimes ambiguous voices: in hZeus 8, for example, who utters the statement ‘Cretans always lie’? Is it the poet? Zeus himself? Or the ancient sage Epimenides to whom the line was attributed in antiquity? The heavy borrowing of specific language from Hesiod that leads up to the quotation of Th. 96 (ἐκ δὲ Διὸς βασιλῆες) at hZeus 79 makes it seem as if Hesiod has intruded into his successor’s poem.” See also Lüddecke 1998 for the ambiguity of voice in the same hymn. 36 On the narrators in Callimachus’ hymns see Morrison 2007, 105–178. 37 In Hymn 5 we may also observe the blurring of the boundaries between epic proper and epic hymn (the frame draws heavily on Hesiod and the cyclic epics), poetry and prose (among the sources are the mythographers Pherecydes and Dercylus): see Stephens 2015, 236–238. For the hymn’s ‘literary geography’, see Ambühl 2005, 99–160. 38 McKay 1962 is the first to have investigated the comic patterns of Hymn 6. He demonstrated that Callimachus turns a threnodic ode to burlesque and changes the thematics of the hymn from

  Evina Sistakou punishment’ story; both show the honored goddess, Athena and Demeter respectively, in an unfavorable light. It is through generic hybridity that the same story pattern is first presented as a tragedy (Hymn 5) and then as a comedy (Hymn 6).39 If the hymns are seen as complimentary in regard to their thematics but antithetical from a generic point of view, 40 then the reader is left with open questions: Should the wrath of the goddess and the punishment of a mortal be treated as a tragic or a comic theme? Is it possible to extract conflicting readings, one tragic and the other comic, from the same story pattern? And how do these readings conform to the basic convention of the hymn, which is nothing less than the praise of the god to which it is dedicated? On another level, the lyric frame reveals an even higher degree of ambiguity, which affects all other textual components. What Callimachus challenges here transcends epistemic certainty or generic purity and aims at destabilizing the text itself, its speaker and implied audience. Hymns 5 and 6 are described as ‘mimetic’, in the sense that they represent a hymnic performance that takes place at the lyric ‘here and now’.41 Both hymns convey the impression of a performance experienced ‘from within’. In these hymns the master of ceremonies, i.e. the speaker within the choral frame, assumes the persona of a female priestess; accordingly, the performance is addressed to a female audience. 42 Callimachus creates a world of make-believe and invites both the speaker and the reader to take on false identities and participate in a religious ritual. The illusion is so powerful that Hellenistic philology has not yet decided whether these were actual cultic hymns performed at festivals or scholarly reconstructions of such performances. In the latter case, the interpretation of the hymns’ main themes (the representation of the gods, the opposition between divine and human agency, the ‘crime and punishment’ story and its moral) would be detached, ungendered and cerebral rather than emotional or religious. Yet the fact that both aesthetic experiences and the ensuing conflicting interpretations are simultaneously available to the reader renders these hymns pre-modern paradigms of modern ambiguity.

 the ‘Sorrows of Demeter’ to her ‘Joys’, i.e. ironically the punishment of Erysichthon. For a reading of Hymn 6 against its tragic models, see Ambühl 2005, 160–204. 39 See Sistakou 2016, 92–98. 40 For Hymns 5 and 6 designed as a poetic diptych, see Ambühl 2005, 204–223. 41 Harder 1992 describes in detail the mimetic and diegetic aspects of Callimachus’ hymns. 42 For the sexual ambiguity of the speaker in Hymn 5 see the excellent analysis by Morrison 2005.

Borges in Alexandria? Modes of Ambiguity in Hellenistic Poetry  

 Postmodern Perspectives on Hellenistic Ambiguity By modernism we usually denote an aesthetic and philosophical movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century; likewise, postmodernism describes a set of aesthetic trends and ideologies that have revised the premises upon which modernism was founded from the mid twentieth century onwards. If seen outside their specific historical frame, both conceptions have connotations that may also apply to ancient literature and art, especially of the Hellenistic era, the revisionist and experimental quality of which can hardly be denied. Above all, Callimachean poetry can and should be read in the light of contemporary aesthetics. 43 This methodological anachronism provides an effective tool for interpreting Callimachus’ poetry in general, and, in the context of the present paper, for deciphering its ambiguities. In my view, his major work, the Aetia, a poem displaying all three modes of ambiguity analyzed above, is a primary example of postmodernism. 44 In what follows I will attempt to show that ambiguity in the Aetia has distinctive postmodernist qualities; in the end, I will draw a parallel with the master of (post)modern ambiguity, Jorge Luis Borges. The postmodern condition is marked by an epistemological crisis, emphasizing plurality and subjectivity of knowledge on the one hand and problematizing its sources and their hierarchies on the other. 45 Postmodernist literature invalidates the privileged discourse of the author and his epistemic certainties in a radical manner; ambiguity of meaning within the literary text derives from this assertion. It is a commonplace of research that the Aetia is essentially a poem of knowledge. 46 Not only its structuring around questions and answers that aim at

 43 The heuristic value of contemporary aesthetic terminology for the interpretation of Hellenistic poetry and art has been acknowledged for several decades now. In his Art in the Hellenistic Age, Pollitt 1986 makes systematic use of the historically specific terms baroque, rococo, realism and neoclassicism to describe Hellenistic art, a trend partly followed by Stewart 2014, who also speaks of baroque, (neo)classicism and verism. In literature, we may recall Bonelli’s comparative reading between ancient and modern decadence (Bonelli 1979) and Zanker’s rereading of Hellenistic poetry against the background of realism (Zanker 1987). 44 On the postmodernist character of the narrative in the Aetia, see also Sistakou 2019. 45 For the features of postmodernism I mostly follow McHale 1987, Hutcheon 1988 and Bertens 1995; the postmodern vocabulary in Bennett/Royle 2016, 325–334 is highly enlightening. It should be noted, however, that ‘postmodernism’ is an elusive concept applied to different cultural phenomena. 46 According to the reference article by Hutchinson 2003.

  Evina Sistakou bringing a well-documented ‘truth’ to light, but also its title, ‘the causes’, highlights the intention of the author to incorporate Aristotelian causality into poetic discourse. Beyond the seemingly positivistic belief that the explanation of the ‘causes’ warrants knowledge, Callimachus ironizes the means by which this knowledge is acquired. The conveyors of knowledge in the Aetia correspond to various degrees of epistemic authority: in the first two books the bearers of truth are the Muses, a conventional symbol of divine omniscience; in the later books, the informants include a stranger the narrator once met at a symposium (the Ician guest, fr. 178 H.), the dead poet Simonides (fr. 64 H.), animated objects such as the lock of Berenice (fr. 110 H.), the Pelasgian wall (fr. 97 H.) and the statue of the god Apollo (fr. 114 H.), and a plethora of written documents (the prime example is the history of Ceos by Xenomedes, fr. 75.53–55 H.). In addition to the lack of a hierarchical ordering between them, the first-person narrator, more precisely his autofictional persona, converses with these informants, mediates between them and the reader, and intervenes either by feigning ignorance or by articulating his own views. 47 Ambiguity emerges once the reader realizes that access to epistemic truth as advertised by the Aetia, a poem usually classified as didactic, is provided to him/her through different paths and multiple channels, and subsequently cannot be perceived as objective, absolute or ‘one’. It is not only the narrators in the Aetia that contribute to the making of an unstable and shifting textual universe; the generic transformations within the poem further disrupt meaning and engender ambiguity. What research has termed the ‘generic games’ in the Aetia are essentially a factor of indeterminacy in the quest for meaning. 48 A case in point is the most extensive of the surviving aitiological stories, that of Acontius and Cydippe (fr. 67–75e). It is evident from the outset that the narrative will unfold as a conventional love story, so typical of the romance genre that soon after Callimachus it will become the archetype of love elegy and prose novel. Well before its closure, at the point where the love story reaches its happily-ever-after ending and culminates with the wedding and birth of offspring (fr. 75.52 H.), the narrator reveals that the text underlying Acontius’ love story is in effect a historical account by Xenomedes (fr. 75.53–55 H.). Thence and until its conclusion it reads as a pseudo-historical document detailing the archaeology of Ceos (fr. 75.56–77 H.). In emphasizing intertextuality in its most literal sense, Callimachus highlights the fact that his poem is nothing more

 47 Morrison 2007, 178–199 argues that the autofictional persona gradually gains its autonomy from the Muses and the other sources in the poem. 48 On the generic fluidity of the Aetia, see Harder 2012, 1.23–36.

Borges in Alexandria? Modes of Ambiguity in Hellenistic Poetry  

than a postmodern bricolage, a palimpsest, composed of various genres and previous texts. Every story can be read in the light of ambiguity: the Lock of Berenice (fr. 110 H.) begins as an account by the astronomer Conon and evolves into a fantasy where romance and politics converge; the aition of the Argonauts (fr. 7c–21d H.) is seemingly a story of an epic sea voyage which develops into a geographical record; moreover, is the foundation of the Sicilian cities a local chronography written by Timaeus or a novelistic anecdote with moralizing intent (fr. 43 H.)? These conflicting generic readings are equally and simultaneously valid in the mind of the reader, since historical, scientific and literary discourses are conflated; to decide between them is not only impossible, but totally unnecessary from a postmodern viewpoint.49 Challenging knowledge and meaning through multiple narrators and generic bricolage reflects the avant-gardist strategies employed by Callimachus, yet leaves the main question still unanswered: What makes the Aetia a fundamentally postmodern poem? To put it differently, does the Aetia challenge our knowing and understanding of the represented world or rather its very existence? To shift the emphasis from epistemological to ontological questions is seen as the core of postmodernism.50 On the surface, the Aetia interprets the world of the present (the aitia) through recourse to the world of the past (the aitiological explanations). In effect, despite purporting to be a well-documented account of the world as it develops linearly through history, the Aetia offers a plethora of local stories, variously intersecting across time and space, through fragmented narratives and heterogeneous discourses. Instead of being a narrative, it is a metanarrative, a linguistic and textual palimpsest consisting of previous narratives.51 Taking Acontius and Cydippe as a test case once again, it is obvious that the narrator is recounting a story that has already been told, in including another book (the chronicle of Xenomedes) in his new book (the Aetia). This narrative is ambiguously placed between history and its narrativization. Within the intertextual world of the poem, it is impossible for the reader to distinguish between the verifiable truth (which is supported by documents and data) and the veritable truth (which appears real but is fictional). The Aetia retains ambiguity by professedly evoking an external reality, while in fact quoting and configuring only textual  49 For pastiche and undecidability as features of postmodernism, see Bennett/Royle 2016, 326 and 331–332. 50 According to the famous conceptualization of the postmodern by McHale 1987. 51 The Aetia may be characterized as ‘historiographic metafiction’, in the sense that it transcends the boundaries between history and fiction and explores both at the same level of discourse: on this postmodern conception, see Hutcheon 1988, 105–123. On the metahistorical character of the Aetia, see Goulas 2014.

  Evina Sistakou transformations of this reality. In which world can the lock of Berenice, the voice of a dead poet or a speaking statue become agents of historical reality? Is it possible to locate Timaeus’ Sicily, Xenomedes’ Naxos or the Argonauts’ colonies on an historical map? In which spatiotemporal universe do these aitiological narratives unfold? Ambiguity in the Aetia derives from the invention of an impossible ‘world’ which presents itself through its infinite textual manifestations. 52 Before concluding, I will briefly refer to a key figure of (post)modern ambiguity, the Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges. 53 In his prose writings, which fluctuate between philosophy and literature, Borges explores ambiguity, autoreferentiality, the paradox and a series of epistemological and ontological issues. By crossing the boundaries between reality and textuality, his idiosyncratic fictions promote uncertainty and plurality of meaning.54 But what makes Borgesian ambiguity crucial to the understanding of Callimachus and his controversial Aetia? As argued above, the Aetia does not explore a specific mode of ambiguity, but, by questioning the knowing subject and the nature of reality, it becomes a dynamic system of multiple ambiguities. To reflect the plurality of the world and of its textual manifestations, Borges introduced the images of the library (The Library of Babel, 1941), the mirror (cf. the poem Mirrors), the mask (e.g. The Mirror and the Mask, 1975) and the labyrinth (e.g. The Garden of Forking Paths, 1941). Although none of these metaphors is expressly mentioned in the Aetia, all four of them provide the key to its interpretation. The library is omnipresent in the documents, records and data used as sources for the aitiological reconstructions (cf. the much-quoted principle of Callimachus ἀμάρτυρον οὐδὲν ἀείδω, fr. 612 Pf.); the mirror is a symbol of the distorted reflections of the author and the historical reality in the text, while the mask signifies the multiple narrators and the author’s personae in the Aetia; finally, the labyrinth evokes the maze-like arrangement of the Greek world as it emerges through the arrangement of the aitiologies and the different paths available to the storyteller for their narrativization. The plurality of worlds and the impossibility of their existence outside the text permeates Borges’ writings, and the same premise underlies the imaginary Greek world whose realities are intertwined in past, present and future in the Aetia. Borges questions  52 For the construction of worlds within the text as a postmodern feature see McHale 1987. I find his concept of the Zone, denoting an impossible space within the written text which is constituted by fragments of historical spaces, especially relevant here. Harder 2014 has aptly described the bookish world of the Aetia as a ‘Greek Wide Web’, constructed to accommodate the poetic and political views of Callimachus in the context of third-century Alexandria. 53 Borges is usually seen as a forerunner of postmodenism or a transitional figure between modernism and postmodernism: see Frisch 2004. 54 For Borgesian ambiguity, see especially Frisch 2004, 49–74.

Borges in Alexandria? Modes of Ambiguity in Hellenistic Poetry  

the very essence of being in Borges and I (1960), a short story that blurs the boundaries between the author, the self and his work. Borges and I incorporates the ambiguous status of the author between his biographical existence and his literary self. The concluding phrase “I do not know which of us has written this page” could have been addressed by ‘Callimachus’ to his fictionalized persona in the Aetia. The so-called Borgesian conundrum, the question of ‘whether the writer writes the story or it writes him’, is the central ambiguity in the Aetia too. The numerous narrators, some of which are inanimate objects that tell their own aitia, and the texts that rewrite themselves, such as the chronicles of Xenomedes or the epic of the Argonauts, question the ability of the poet ‘Callimachus’ to create or even control his narrative. And when Borges asserts that “writing is nothing more than a guided dream,” 55 which work offers a more suitable parallel than the Aetia, a poem that was supposedly written when this fictionalized ‘Callimachus’ conversed with the Muses during a dream?

Bibliography Acosta-Hughes, Benjamin (2002), Polyeideia. The Iambi of Callimachus and the Archaic Iambic Tradition, Berkeley/Los Angeles/London. Acosta-Hughes, Benjamin (2010), Arion’s Lyre. Archaic Lyric into Hellenistic Poetry, Princeton/ Oxford. Ambühl, Annemarie (2005), Kinder und junge Helden. Innovative Aspekte des Umgangs mit der literarischen Tradition bei Kallimachos, Leuven/Paris/Dudley, MA. Atherton, Catherine (1993), The Stoics on Ambiguity, Cambridge. Barthes, Roland (1974), S/Z, transl. by Richard Miller, New York. Bennett, Andrew/Royle, Nicholas (2016), An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory, 5th ed., New York. Bertens, Hans (1995), The Idea of the Postmodern. A History, London/New York. Bing, Peter (1995), “‘Ergänzungsspiel’ in the Epigrams of Callimachus”, A&A 41, 115–131. Bonelli, Guido (1979), Decadentismo antico e moderno: un confronto fra l’estetismo alessandrino e l’esperienza poetica contemporanea, Torino. Clare, Ray J. (2002), The Path of the Argo, Cambridge. Clauss, James J. (1986), “Lies and Allusions: The Addressee and Date of Callimachus’ Hymn to Zeus”, CA 5, 155–170. Cusset, Christophe/Prioux, Évelyne (eds.) (2009), Lycophron: éclats d’obscurité, Saint-Étienne. Eco, Umberto (1989), The Open Work, transl. by A. Cancogni, Cambridge, MA. Fantuzzi, Marco/Hunter, Richard (2002), Tradition and Innovation in Hellenistic Poetry, Cambridge.

 55 In the Preface to the collection of short stories Dr. Brodie’s Report, 1970.

  Evina Sistakou Frisch, Mark (2004), You Might Be Able to Get There from Here: Reconsidering Borges and the Postmodern, Madison/Teaneck. Goldhill, Simon (1991), The Poet’s Voice, Cambridge. Goulas, Georgios (2014), History and Metahistory in the Work of Callimachus [in Modern Greek], Diss. Thessaloniki. Gow, Andrew S.F./Page, Denys L. (eds.) (1965), The Greek Anthology: Hellenistic Epigrams, Cambridge. Gutzwiller, Kathryn (1991), Pastoral Analogies. The Formation of a Genre, Madison, WIS. Gutzwiller, Kathryn (2006), “The Herdsman in Greek Thought”, in: Marco Fantuzzi/Theodore Papanghelis (eds.), Brill’s Companion to Greek and Latin Pastoral, Leiden/Boston, 1–23. Harder, Annette (1992), “Insubstantial Voices: Some Observations on the Hymns of Callimachus”, CQ 42, 384–394. Harder, Annette (2012), Callimachus Aetia, Oxford. Harder, Annette (2014), “Spiders in the Greek Wide Web?”, in: Richard Hunter/Antonios Rengakos/Evina Sistakou (eds.), Hellenistic Studies at a Crossroads. Exploring Texts, Contexts and Metatexts, Berlin/Boston, 259–272. Hopkinson, Neil (1984), “Callimachus’ Hymn to Zeus”, CQ 34, 139–148. Hutcheon, Linda (1988), A Poetics of Postmodernism. History, Theory, Fiction, New York/London. Hutchinson, Gregory (2003), “The Aetia: Callimachus’ Poem of Knowledge”, ZPE 14, 47–59. Kossaifi, Christine (2009), “Poétique messager. Quelques remarques sur l’incipit et l’épilogue de l’Alexandra de Lycophron”, in: Christophe Cusset/Évelyne Prioux (eds.), Lycophron: éclats d’obscurité, Saint-Étienne, 141–159. Kwapisz, Jan/Petrain, David/Szymański, Mikolaj (eds.) (2013), The Muse at Play: Riddles and Wordplay in Greek and Latin Poetry, Berlin/Boston. Kyriakou, Poulheria (2018), Theocritus and His Native Muse, Berlin/Boston. Looijenga, André (2009), “Unrolling the Alexandra: the Allusive Messenger-Speech of Lycophron’s Prologue and Epilogue”, in: Christophe Cusset/Évelyne Prioux (eds.), Lycophron: éclats d’obscurité, Saint-Étienne, 59–80. Lüddecke, Kathrin L.G. (1998), “Contextualizing the Voice in Callimachus’ Hymn to Zeus”, MD 41, 9–33. McHale, Brian (1987), Postmodernist Fiction, New York. McKay, Kenneth J. (1962), Erysichthon. A Callimachean Comedy, Leiden. Meillier, Claude (1965), “Callimaque poète de l’ambiguïté (Deux études de K.J. McKay)”, REG 78, 317–326. Meyer, Doris (1993), “Die Einbeziehung des Lesers in den Epigrammen des Kallimachos”, in: M. Annette Harder/Remco F. Regtuit/Gerry C. Wakker (eds.), Callimachus, Groningen, 161–175. Morrison, Andrew D. (2005), “Sexual Ambiguity and the Identity of the Narrator in Callimachus’ Hymn to Athena”, BICS 48, 27–46. Morrison, Andrew D. (2007), The Narrator in Archaic Greek and Hellenistic Poetry, Cambridge. Ossa-Richardson, Anthony (2019), History of Ambiguity, Princeton. Patterson, Annabel (1987), Pastoral and Ideology. Virgil to Valéry, Berkeley/Los Angeles. Payne, Mark (2007), Theocritus and the Invention of Fiction, Cambridge. Pollitt, Jerome J. (1986), Art in the Hellenistic Age, Cambridge. Rengakos, Antonios (1992), “Homerische Wörter bei Kallimachos”, ZPE 94, 21–47. Rengakos, Antonios (1994a), Apollonios Rhodios und die antike Homererklärung, München.

Borges in Alexandria? Modes of Ambiguity in Hellenistic Poetry  

Rengakos, Antonios (1994b), “Lykophron als Homererklärer”, ZPE 102, 111–130. Rimmon, Shlomith (1977), The Concept of Ambiguity. The Example of James, Chicago. Rosenmeyer, Thomas G. (1969), The Green Cabinet. Theocritus and the European Pastoral Lyric, Berkeley/Los Angeles. Scodel, Ruth (2011), “Callimachus and Fable”, in: Benjamin Acosta-Hughes/Luigi Lehnus/Susan Stephens (eds.), Brill’s Companion to Callimachus, Leiden/Boston, 368–383. Sennet, Adam (2016), “Ambiguity”, in: Edward N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2016 Edition), URL = https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2016/entries/ ambiguity/). Sistakou, Evina (2009), “Breaking the Name Codes in Lycophron’s Alexandra”, in: Christophe Cusset/Évelyne Prioux (eds.), Lycophron: éclats d’obscurité, Saint-Étienne, 237–257. Sistakou, Evina (2016), Tragic Failures. Alexandrian Responses to Tragedy and the Tragic, Berlin/Boston. Sistakou, Evina (2019), “Denarrating the Narratable in the Aetia: A Postmodern Take on Callimachean Aesthetic”, in: Jacqueline J. H. Klooster/M. Annette Harder / Remco F. Regtuit/ Gerry C. Wakker (eds.), Callimachus Revisited. New Perspectives in Callimachean Scholarship, Leuven, 329–350. Sistakou, Evina (forthcoming), “The Sweet Pleasures of Theocritus’ Idylls: A Study in the Aesthetics of ἁδύτης”, in: Poulheria Kyriakou/Antonios Rengakos/Evina Sistakou (eds.), Brill’s Companion to Theocritus, Leiden/Boston. Stephens, Susan A. (2015), Callimachus: The Hymns, Oxford. Stewart, Andrew (2014), Art in the Hellenistic World: An Introduction, Cambridge. Su, Soon Peng (1994), Lexical Ambiguity in Poetry, London. Tueller, Michael A. (2004), “The Origin of Voice and Identity Ambiguity in Callimachus’ Epigrams”, in: M. Annette Harder/Remco F. Regtuit/Gerry C. Wakker (eds.), Callimachus II, Leuven, 298–315. Wheelwright, Philip (1940), “On the Semantics of Poetry”, The Kenyon Review 2, No. 3, 263– 283. Zanker, Graham (1987), Realism in Alexandrian Poetry, Croom Helm.

Anna Lamari

Sympotic Sexuality: The Ambiguity of Seafood in Middle Comedy (Nausicrates fr. 1 K.-A.) Abstract: This paper examines Middle Comedy’s references to seafood as concealed allusions to sexual innuendoes. Using an enigmatic fragment by Middle Comedy poet Nausicrates (fr. 1 K.-A.) as a starting point, I attempt to show how comic discussions of seafood can create puns on the sexual act or sexual objects or even the nicknames of some hetairai. By an analysis of additional comic fragments, I put forth the double role of seafood language, which in comedy plays on sympotic, but also sexual connotations. Keywords: Middle Comedy, Comic Fragments, Nausicrates, Antiphanes, Alexis, seafood, sexuality

This chapter will explore Middle Comedy’s use of seafood as reference to obscenity and sexuality. Through a close examination of a number of comic fragments, my aim is to show how seafoods were desired and fetishized in a sexual way and how the comic references to seafood encompass allusions to the sexual act or sexual objects and aphrodisiacs, and even work as nicknames for a number of hetairai. Our discussion is structured around the examination of a highly enigmatic fragment of the play Naucleroi by the middle comedy poet Nausicrates. The single surviving fragment of the play allows for only limited speculation on the plot. The context, as indicated by the title and by fr. 1, is nautical and sympotic respectively. An obvious possibility is that the plot concerned events from the life of sailors, also alluded to by the reference to Hecate Triglia in line 9 (fr. 1.9) and to the ritual of offering fish to her, performed especially by seamen. Given the riddle-structure of fr. 1, as well as the fact that a common context for riddle-games was the symposion, the play may have included a banquet presented on stage, in which the guests amuse themselves with riddle-games. As we will come to realize, such a sympotic staging could also have included sexual connotations, such as those arising from the use of fish names as the answers to riddles and allusions to humans, some of whom were hetairai (note γλαῦκος, τρίγλη, and ῥόμβος in lines 5, 11 and 13). The passage runs as follows (fr. 1 K.-A.)

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110715811-009

  Anna Lamari ⏒ – ⏑ δύο μέν, φασίν, ἁπαλοὶ καὶ καλοί ⏒ – ⏑ – τοῦ ναυτίλοισι πολλάκις ἤδη φανέντος πελαγίοις ἐν ἀγκάλαις, ὃν καὶ τὰ θνητῶν φασιν ἀγγέλλειν πάθη. (Β.) Γλαῦκον λέγεις. (Α.) ἔγνωκας < > ⏒ – μετ᾽ αὐτῶν δ᾽ εἰσὶν ἐκπρεπεῖς φύσιν αἱ ξανθόχρωτες, ἃς κλύδων Αἰξωνικὸς πασῶν ἀρίστας ἐντόπους παιδεύεται˙ αἷς καὶ θεὰν τιμῶσι φωσφόρον κόρην, δείπνων ὅταν πέμπωσι δῶρα ναυτίλοι. (Β.) τρίγλας λέγεις < > (Α.) γαλακτόχρωτα Σικελὸς ὃν πήγνυσ᾽ ὄχλος (Β.) ῥόμβος

5

10

1 φασίν Α: φησίν ed. Aldina et ed. Casauboniana prima. Hoc verbum Athenaeo, non Nausicrati, attribuit Porson: φύσιν Jacobs 2 Porson: Dobree 5 γλαύκω Edmonds 5−6 Headlam: Edmonds 6 αὐτῶν ACE: αὐτὸν Meineke: μετὰ τούτων Edmonds ἐκπρεπεῖς ACE, sed εὐ supra ἐκ CE 7 ξανθοχρῶτες Kaibel αἰξωνϊκὸς Athen. 7.325e CE: ἐξωνικὸς Ath. 7.325e A, Ath. 7.330b: Αἰξωνικοῖς Kock 8 ἐντόπους Ath. 7.330b: ἐντόποις Ath. 7.325e ACE: ἐν τόποις Kock 11 om. Ath. 7.325e CE τρίγλας Ath. 7.325e Α: τρίγλαν Ath. 7.330b Α Headlam: Edmonds 12 χαλακτοχρῶτα A: corr. Musurus: γαλακτοχρῶτα Kaibel two, they say, tender and nice, < > of the one who has often appeared already in the sea’s embraces to sailors, and who they say foretells the misfortunes of mortals. (B.) You mean Glaucus. (A.) You’ve got it. < > < > along with them come those of exceptional nature, the fair-skinned, which the sea of Aixone brings up in there, best of all. With these sailors honor the goddess, the torch-bearing virgin, whenever they send her offerings of food. (B.) You mean mullets < > (A.) The one with the milk-coloured skin, which the Sicilians curdle (B.) A turbot

5

10

Athenaeus quotes the fragment three times: at 7.296a, 7.325e, 7.330b, each time citing different lines of the fragment (with a slight overlapping), and with each passage pertaining to the presentation of a particular species of fish. They all fall under a wider discussion of numerous kinds of fish and seafood that begins at 7.277b, where Athenaeus — as an external narrator — calls on Timocrates to report everything that the banqueters said about each of the fishes (ἀπομνημονεύσω δέ σοι ἃ περὶ ἑκάστου ἔλεξαν οἱ δειπνοσοφισταί). Fish names are mostly

Sympotic Sexuality: The Ambiguity of Seafood in Middle Comedy  

listed alphabetically as programmatically promised by Athenaeus in 7.277c (κατὰ στοιχεῖον τάξω τὰ ὀνόματα) in a lineup that is interrupted by an excursus on boasting cooks at 7.288c and resumes at 7.293f. The first five lines of the fragment belong to the discussion of γλαῦκος (which started before, in 7.295b), a fish that cannot be identified (Ath. 7.296a): Ναυσικράτης Ναυκλήροις·   Nausicrates in Naukleroi:  

The next 6 lines (6−11) are quoted in 7.325e, in a detailed discussion of the fish τρίγλη (mullet) (which began in 7.324c): Ναυσικράτης δ᾽ ὁ κωμωιδιοποιὸς ἐπαινεῖ τὰς Αἰξωνικὰς τρίγλας ἐν Ναυκλήροις λέγων οὕτως·   Nausicrates the comic poet praises the red mullets of Aixone in Naukleroi speaking as follows:  

The list of references contouring our fragment is long and heterogeneous, encompassing quotations from Aristotle, Epicharmus, Sophron, Diocles (the medical writer from Carystus, 4th c. BC), Plato comicus, Apollodorus, Melanthius (the historian, date unknown), Hegesander of Delphi (2nd c. BC), Charicleides, Terpsicles (author of the book On Sexual Pleasure, 3rd c. BC), Archestratus (from Gela, 4th c. BC), and Cratinus. The last section of the fragment (lines 7−12) is quoted a little bit later, at the end of a discussion of the fish ψῆττα (“sole” or “flounder”, Ath. 7.330b): (ψῆτται) Ῥωμαῖοι δὲ καλοῦσι τὴν ψῆτταν ῥόμβον, καί ἐστι τὸ ὄνομα Ἑλληνικόν. Ναυσικράτης ἐν Ναυκλήροις˙ προειπὼν δὲ περὶ γλαύκου τοῦ ἰχθύος ἐπιφέρει·   (Soles) The Romans call the sole (ψήττα) rhombus (=turbot) (ῥόμβον), and this is a Greek name. Nausicrates in Naucleroi, having spoken in advance about the fish glaukos (see Commentary), adds:  

Before Nausicrates, Athenaeus quotes Diocles, Speusippus, Aristotle, Dorion (a zoologist who wrote On Fishes, 1st c. AD), Epicharmus, Lynceus of Samos (comic poet, 4th−3rd c. BC), and Archestratus. The positioning of the three sections of the fragment in Athenaeus points towards its sympotic characteristics. The fragment is immersed in a scrumptious

  Anna Lamari list of seafood delicacies. A food-list is a comic topos,1 consisting of an enumeration of food that generates feelings of abundance and lavishness, 2 very common in Middle Comedy. Anaxandrides (fr. 42) 3 gives us the longest extant example, but food-lists are also found in Antiphanes, Euboulus, Ephippus, Alexis, and Mnesimachus, 4 even tracing back to Old Comedy, and certainly relate to the culture of lavish dining in the late Classical and late Hellenistic Greece,5 as reflected in the gastronomic epic parodies of Archestratus of Gela 6 and Matro of Pitane, 7 or the Banquet of Philoxenus of Cythera. However, the fragment also reclaims a deep ambiguous meaning, when we notice its riddle construction: a riddle sequence made up of three smaller riddlescenes (1–5, 6–11, 12–13)8 and distributed between two speakers: Tab. 1: Riddle Scenes in Nausicrates, fr. 1 K.-A. Nausicrates, fr.  K.-A.

Riddle Scenes

st scene

lines –

< > δύο μέν, φασίν, ἁπαλοὶ καὶ καλοί < > τοῦ ναυτίλοισι πολλάκις ἤδη φανέντος πελαγίοις ἐν ἀγκάλαις, ὃν καὶ τὰ θνητῶν φασιν ἀγγέλλειν πάθη. (Β.) Γλαῦκον λέγεις. (Α.) ἔγνωκας < >

nd scene

lines –

< > μετ᾽ αὐτῶν δ᾽ εἰσὶν ἐκπρεπεῖς φύσιν αἱ ξανθόχρωτες, ἃς κλύδων Αἰξωνικός πασῶν ἀρίστας ἐντόπους παιδεύεται˙ αἷς καὶ θεὰν τιμῶσι φωσφόρον κόρην, δείπνων ὅταν πέμπωσι δῶρα ναυτίλοι. (Β.) τρίγλας λέγεις < >

rd scene

lines –

(Α.) γαλακτόχρωτα Σικελὸς ὃν πήγνυσ᾽ ὄχλος (Β.) ῥόμβος

 1 Wilkins 2000, 44–47; Gilula 1995. 2 Papachrysostomou 2016, 114. 3 With Millis 2015, 209–210. 4 Antiph. frr. 130, 131; Eub. fr. 63; Ephipp. frr. 12, 13; Alex. fr. 167; Mnesim. fr. 4. 5 Olson/Sens 1999, 24–29. 6 Olson/Sens 2000. 7 Olson/Sens 1999. 8 As in Antiph. frr. 55, 192, and Eubulus fr. 106.

Sympotic Sexuality: The Ambiguity of Seafood in Middle Comedy  

The first two riddle-scenes exemplify a “riddle-tale”, namely a riddle constructed in the form of a brief story told in the third person. 9 Riddles have the tendency to accumulate, 10 as parts of riddle-games, 11 or in sympotic contexts. 12 And it is in this fashion that, in this very fragment, the one-riddle scene works as a bridge to the next. In addition, the fragment exploits the comic effect of double meanings as “broken allegories”. 13 The feature is often found in Old Comedy, when an allegory is “broken”14 or “comically confused”15 as soon as it is established. 16 “Broken allegories” work by combining references to two different narrative levels (the signifier and the signified), which are metaleptically 17 intertwined, thus creating a dynamic comic effect. A famous example consists of the confusion of narrative levels in the stichomythia between Xanthias and Bdelycleon in the Wasps (836– 843), where the double entendres comically exploit the allusions to Labes the dog (signifier) and Laches the general (signified). At a quick glance, the fragment begins with a lacuna which makes it difficult to pin down the allegory’s signifier. The adjectives ἁπαλοὶ καὶ καλοί at the end of l. 1 are referring to the missing word(s) of the fragment’s beginning, supplemented as παῖδες θεοῦ or ἐπώνυμοι. 18 By line 3, a single creature, either related to (παῖδες θεοῦ: Dobree 1833) or having the same name (ἐπώνυμοι: Porson 1812) as these “tender and nice” creatures of line 1, is said to appear in the sea, and could indeed be a fish, but as of line 4, it is someone who can foretell the fortune of men (ὅν καὶ τὰ θνητῶν φασιν ἀγγέλλειν πάθη). Then it must be a human, it might even be the seer Glaucus, says speaker B (in line 5), verified by speaker A. By line 7, however, the spectators hear that the allegorical allusion to the tragic  9 See Konstantakos 2000, 184–185. “Riddle-tale” is a type of “riddles proper”, a sort of riddlenarrative offering a description of an object by means of metaphor, paradox, or both (Konstantakos 2000, 166), as also noted by Aristotle (Poet. 1458a25–31). 10 As in the series of riddles at [Hes.] fr. 266a–c [The Wedding of Ceyx; posed by Hercules] or Antiph. fr. 194; also see Merkelbach/West 1965, 310. 11 See Certamen 72–175 Allen. 12 See Antiph. fr. 122, Ath. 10.457c–e, Plu. Mor. 673a, 717a. 13 Kidd 2014, 71. 14 Süss 1954, 116: “Durchbrechung der allegorischen Einkleidung”. 15 MacDowell 1995, 165. 16 Sommerstein 1981, 147 refers to the phenomenon as a “mixture of allegory and allegorized”. 17 A metalepsis is a transgression of boundaries between narrative levels. See Fludernik 2006, 156. 18 The supplements by Porson (ἐπώνυμοι) and Dobree (παῖδες θεοῦ), endorsed by Jacobs and Kaibel respectively, are both plausible, but in the absence of additional context no supplement here is certain.

  Anna Lamari seer is leading to another path: that of the sea of Aixone, which breeds the finest fish of this kind, the ones that sailors offer to Hecate (cf. line 9 φωσφόρον κόρην). This is the τρίγλη (“red mullet”, line 11), a fish-name which also plays vividly with the epithet τρίγληνος (“three-eyed”), an adjective commonly associated with Hecate. As soon as the audience is immersed in this sympotic food-related smalltalk, another signifier emerges (unfortunately obscured by another lacuna), which can be either a fish (ῥόμβος, line 13) or something that the people of Sicily curdle (γαλακτόχρωτα Σικελὸς ὃν πήγνυσ᾽ ὄχλος, line 12). Most likely another broken allegory, conflating a fish with something else, perhaps another kind of food, was here again involved. Nausicrates fr. 1 K.-A. could also bear strong sexual connotations, and we shall entertain the possibility that lines 5–13 are a long double entendre. In more specific terms, the first line of the passage sets the tone for the basic comic game of double entendre that runs throughout the fragment and involves double references to fish and humans, but also to different types of food (perhaps cheese and fish). 19 The intention was apparently to make the spectators assume that the cluster ἁπαλοὶ καὶ καλοί refers to humans, 20 a possibility reinforced by the allusion to the prophet Glaucus in line 5, only to make them realize in line 6 that speaker A is talking about fish. Ambiguous language is also used in line 2, with ναυτίλοισι. ναυτίλος is a poetic form of ναύτης (occurring often in tragedy21 and rarely in comedy), 22 but also a kind of cuttlefish, one of the μαλάκια, possibly resembling the “Argonaut” shell. 23 It is thoroughly described in Aristotle24 and is mainly characterized by its ability to move as if spreading sails to the breeze and thus to come up from the depths of the sea to its surface. ναυτίλοισι as the sailors but also the cuttlefish which characteristically emerge to the surface is another double entendre adding to the ambiguous meanings of the fragment, especially in combination with the

 19 See below, on lines 11–13. 20 Hence the suggested supplements to the beginning of l.1. 21 Either as a noun: e.g. A. Ag. 631, 899, 1234, PV 468; S. Aj. 1146; E. Heracl. 427, fr. 194.3, or as a — differently accented — adjective: e.g. A. Ag. 1442. Also, in combination with Γλαῦκος: e.g. E. Or. 362−364, … ἐκ δὲ κυμάτων / ὁ ναυτίλοισι μάντις ἐξήγγειλέ μοι / Νηρέως προφήτης Γλαῦκος, ἀψευδὴς θεός. 22 Elsewhere only l. 10 below, Eup. fr. 260.31 and Ar. Ra. 1207 but quoting E. Archelaus fr. 846, on which see Harder 1985, 181; Collard/Cropp/Gibert 2004, 351; Scullion 2006; Lamari 2017, 48−50. 23 Paper Nautilus, see Thompson 1947, 172–175. 24 HA 525a.20−9, 622b.1–19.

Sympotic Sexuality: The Ambiguity of Seafood in Middle Comedy  

participle φανέντος of line 3, which here could allude to the emergence of Glaucos from the sea, as in Aeschylus’ Glaucus Pontius. 25 Line 5 answers the riddle with a formula. γλαῦκον λέγεις is a formula used to answer the riddle in accord with the pattern of two speakers, as in l. 11, consisting of the key-word (substantive) + λέγεις. Glaucus is the name of numerous historical persons 26 and at least two sea-gods. One is identified as the son of Sisyphus, wandering over the waves and foreshadowing an early death to those who see him, and the other is either a fisherman of Anthedon (in Boeotia) or the son of Poseidon and a naiad, gifted with immortality and prophesizing power. 27 The latter appears in tragedy, in Aeschylus’ Γλαῦκος Πόντιος 28 and Euripides’ Orestes 364: … ἐκ δὲ κυμάτων / ὁ ναυτίλοισι μάντις ἐξήγγειλέ μοι / Νηρέως προφήτης Γλαῦκος, ἀψευδὴς θεός, / ὅς μοι τόδ’ εἶπεν ἐμφανῶς κατασταθείς. The striking similarity in diction indicates that Nausicrates may well be “playing” with one or more texts, 29 as he also takes advantage of the possible connections between the myth about the wanderings of Glaucus (son of Sisyphus) and lines 3–4 of the fragment. γλαῦκος is also an edible grey-colored fish unable to be identified securely: either a large fish, similar to a shark or dogfish, or a much smaller one from the horse-mackerel family. 30 It is pelagic according to Aristotle, 31 but also frequents rocky or sandy shores according to Oppian. 32 It was prized as a delicacy in symposia, especially its head33 and shoulders. 34 The fragment’s enumeration of fishes constructs an ambiguous context that certainly alludes to food lists, but as we are about to explore, also to sexual puns.

 25 Fr. 26 in Phryn. PS p. 6.1 = Phot. α 1981. 26 E.g. PA 2994, 3000, 3004 have lived in mid fourth century, although an allusion to a historical person here seems least possible. 27 Grimal 2002, 172. 28 See Sommerstein 2008, 24. 29 Euripides is elsewhere alluded to in later comedy; e.g. Antiph. fr. 238.3; Eub. fr. 6.2 with Hunter 1983 ad loc.; Alex. fr. 3 with Arnott 1996 ad loc.; Anaxandr. fr. 66 with Millis 2015 ad loc. For the connection between tragedy and later comedy, see e.g. Sehrt 1912; Webster 1960, 156; Webster 1970, 82–83; Nesselrath 1990, esp. 247−252; Nesselrath 1993; Arnott 1996, 62–63. 30 See Strömberg 1943, 23; Thompson 1947, 48; Olson/Sens 2000, 94; Papachrysostomou 2016, 116. 31 HA 598a13. 32 H. 1.170. 33 Archestr. fr. 21 Olson/Sens. 34 Amphis fr. 16. For the consumption of fish as a sign of indulgence and wealth, see Wilkins 2000, 293−304.

  Anna Lamari The aphrodisiac qualities of sea foods were discussed in the ancient world as they are today. It seems that seafood can be connected to sexual organs on the merit not only of biological, but also linguistic morphology. 35 It has been noted that seafoods are considered aphrodisiacs because their shape resembles that of sexual organs,36 and this appears to also have been the comic poets’ take on the subject. In a fragment by Alexis, fan mussels (πίννας), crayfish (κάραβος), and trumpet shell (κῆρυξ) are considered the “most useful” (χρησιμώτερα) seafood in a sexual context (fr. 281 K.-A.): πίννας, κάραβον, βολβούς, κοχλίας, κήρυκας, ὤι᾽, ἀκροκώλια, τοσαῦτα· τούτων ἄν τις εὕρηι φάρμακα ἐρῶν ἑταίρας ἕτερα χρησιμώτερα Fan mussels, crayfish, bulbs, snails, trumpet shells, eggs, pig’s trotters, such things; if anyone finds other aphrodisiacs more useful than these for loving a courtesan … 37

Similarly, in another fragment, also by Alexis, trumpet shells (κήρυκας), scallops (κτένας), octopus (πουλύπους), and fat fish (ἰχθῦς ἁδρός) are the most “helpful for a lover” (fr. 175 K.-A.): ἐρῶντι δέ, Κτήσων, τί μᾶλλον συμφέρει ὧν νῦν φέρων πάρειμι; κήρυκας, κτένας, βολβοὺς μέγαν τε πουλύπουν ἰχθῦς θ᾽ ἁδροὺς Cteson, what is more helpful for a lover than the things which I’ve brought with me here? Trumpet shells, scallops, bulbs, a big octopus, and fat fish.

The seafoods mentioned in this fragment resemble genitalia in terms of shape, and ἰχθῦς is used in this list either as a general term encompassing all aphrodisiac seafoods, or because of its generally phallic shape. 38 The term πουλύπους however, found at the end of the fragment and used for the octopus, can also work as

 35 Shaw 2014. 36 Dalby 2003, 14. 37 Τranslation by Rusten 2011. 38 Lawrence 1991, 312. It has been maintained that an analogy between the phallus and the fish was also put forth by the Pythagorians, who had noticed a numeric analogy between the letters of the words φαλλός and ἰχθῦς (see Eisler 1921, 261).

Sympotic Sexuality: The Ambiguity of Seafood in Middle Comedy  

a sexual innuendo because of its linguistic resemblance to the term πούς, a word that apart from the “foot” can also indicate the phallus. 39 Turning back to our very γλαῦκος and considering the fishing context of this specific fish, we can throw some new light on the sexual connotations of the passage. γλαῦκος is caught by using the κεστρεύς (a type of grey mullet) for bait.40 The κεστρεύς does not appear in Nausicrates’ passage, but it is found in catalogues of fish in other comic contexts, such as Anaxandrides, Philyllius, and Mnesimachus. 41 Antiphanes fr. 192 delivers a dialogue between two persons, probably spoken during a symposium, who use riddles involving different fish (πέρκη [perch], μελάνουρος [black tail], κεστρεύς [grey mullet], πίννη [a shellfish], τρίγλη [red mullet]) that possibly allude to hetairai or people working in the sex trade. In this dialogue specifically, κεστρεύς must be the brothel owner, μελάνουρος a customer, and πίννη and τρίγλη two hetairai (fr. 192 K.-A.): 42 (Α.) ἰχθύσιν ἀμφίβληστρον ἀνὴρ πολλοῖς περιβάλλειν οἰηθεὶς μεγάληι δαπάνηι μίαν εἵλκυσε πέρκην· καὶ ταύτην ψευσθεὶς ἄλλην κεστρεὺς ἴσον αὐτὴν ἦγεν. βουλομένη δ᾽ ἕπεται πέρκη μελανούρωι. (Β.) κεστρεύς, ἀνήρ, μελάνουρος, οὐκ οἶδ᾽ ὅ τι λέγεις· οὐδὲν λέγεις γάρ. (Α.) ἀλλ᾽ ἐγὼ σαφῶς φράσω. ἔστι τις ὃς τὰ μὲν ὄντα διδοὺς οὐκ οἶδε δεδωκὼς οἷσι δέδωκ᾽ οὐδ᾽ αὐτὸς ἔχων ὧν οὐδὲν ἐδεῖτο. (Β.) διδούς τις οὐκ ἔδωκεν οὐδ᾽ ἔχων ἔχει; οὐκ οἶδα τούτων οὐδέν. (Α.) οὐκοῦν ταῦτα καὶ ὁ γρῖφος ἔλεγεν. ὅσα γὰρ οἶσθ᾽ οὐκ οἶσθα νῦν οὐδ᾽ ὅσα δέδωκας οὐδ᾽ ὅσ᾽ ἀντ᾽ αὐτῶν ἔχεις. τοιοῦτο τοῦτ᾽ ἦν. (Β.) τοιγαροὖν κἀγώ τινα εἰπεῖν πρὸς ὑμᾶς βούλομαι γρῖφον. (Α.) λέγε. (Β.) πίννη καὶ τρίγλη φωνὰς ἰχθῦ δύ᾽ ἔχουσαι πόλλ᾽ ἐλάλουν, περὶ ὧν δὲ πρὸς ὅν τ᾽ ὤιοντο λέγειν τι, οὐκ ἐλάλουν· οὐδὲν γὰρ ἐμάνθανεν, ὥστε πρὸς ὃν μὲν ἦν αὐταῖς ὁ λόγος, πρὸς δ᾽ αὑτὰς πολλὰ λαλούσας αὐτὰς ἀμφοτέρας ἡ Δημήτηρ ἐπιτρίψαι

5

10

15

 39 Henderson 21991, 129–130. See characteristically the highly paratragic fragment from Xenarchus’ Boutalion (fr. 1. 7–10 K.-A.). 40 Opp. H. 3.193. 41 Anaxandr. fr. 42.47; Philyll. fr. 12.3; Mnesim. fr. 4.45; cf. Arnott 1996 on Alex. fr. 16.8–11; Olson/Sens 2000 on Archestr. fr. 43.1. 42 Auhagen 2009, 79–80.

  Anna Lamari (A) A man, thinking to cast his net over many fish, At great expense, caught only a single perch. Then, cheated of her, he was brought another by a mullet: It’s like they say: the perch happily follows the blacktail. (Β) A mullet, a man, a blacktail–I don’t know what you mean. It’s nonsense! (C) Well, I’ll speak clearly: There’s a man who gives away his goods, but doesn’t know he has given them, to whom he gave them, nor that he himself has what he didn’t need. (A) The giver hasn’t given, and the haver doesn’t have? I don’t get any of this. (C) Well, that’s what the riddle says: you don’t now know what you know, nor what you have given, nor what you have in return for it. That’s more or less the meaning. (B) So then, I want to tell you both a sort of riddle, too. (A) Go ahead. (B) Two talking fish, a red mullet and a giant conch, did a lot of gabbing, but weren’t saying a thing about what and to whom they imagined they spoke; he understood them not, and so they were talking to him, but it was they themselves, gabbing both of them, whom I hope Demeter will crush to smithereens! 43

5

10

15

In addition, the metaphor of the fish-courtesan is common in comedy. In a sympotic context, where seafood is considered an aphrodisiac, references to fish can allude to courtesans just as references to seafood can trigger sexual puns. In an almost “feminized sexualization of food”, 44 as it has been called, men could enjoy women the way they could enjoy food.45 Matro of Pitane calls σηπίη, the “cuttlefish”, a “fair-tressed (εὐπλόκαμος), a fearsome, speaking goddess (θεὸς αὐδήεσσα), / the only fish who knows white from black”, alluding even to the fact that her ink was used for writing,46 thus claiming that she must not be as stupid as the rest of fish infamously are. 47 A few lines later, the eel (ἔγχελυς) is the “whitearmed goddess (θεὰ λευκώλενος) … who claims to have spent time in the arms of Zeus”, a phrase Homer reserved only for Hera (fr. 1.33−43 Olson/ Sens):48

 43 Τranslation by Rusten 2011. 44 Henry 1992, 257. 45 In her study of the representation of lust and sexuality in Athenaeus, Henry maintains that “Athenaeus constructs women and food as usable, consumable, and to be enjoyed by men in nearly identical terms” (1992, 257). 46 Especially since the term used for the writing ink was τὸ μέλαν (Pl. Phdr. 276c). 47 Olson/Sens 1999, 97. 48 Il. 1.55, 595. See Olson/Sens 1999, 98.

Sympotic Sexuality: The Ambiguity of Seafood in Middle Comedy  

ἦλθε δὲ Νηρῆος θυγάτηρ, Θέτις ἀργυρόπεζα, σηπίη εὐπλόκαμος, δεινὴ θεὸς αὐδήεσσα, ἣ μόνη ἰχθὺς ἐοῦσα τὸ λευκὸν καὶ μέλαν οἶδε. καὶ Τιτυὸν εἶδον, λίμνης ἐρικυδέα γόγγρον, κείμενον ἐν λοπάδεσσ᾽· ὁ δ᾽ ἐπ᾽ ἐννέα κεῖτο τραπέζας. τῶι δὲ μετ᾽ ἴχνια βαῖνε θεὰ λευκώλενος ἰχθὺς ἔγχελυς, ἣ Διὸς εὔχετ᾽ ἐν ἀγκοίνηισι μιγῆναι, ἐκ Κωπῶν, ὅθεν ἐγχέλεων γένος ἀγροτεράων, παμμεγέθης, ἣν οὔ κε δύ᾽ ἀνέρες ἀθλητῆρες, οἷοι ἄρ᾽ Ἀστυάναξ τε καὶ Ἀντήνωρ ἐγένοντο, ῥηιδίως ἐπ᾽ ἄμαξαν ἀπ᾽ οὔδεος ὀχλίσσειαν· The daughter of Nereus, silver-footed Thetis, arrived, the cuttlefish fair-tressed, a fearsome, speaking goddess, the only fish who knows white from black. And I saw Tityus, the famed conger eel of the sea, lying in stewing-pots; he lay over nine tables. In his tracks came a white-armed goddess-fish, the eel, who claims to have spent time in the arms of Zeus. She was from Copais, whence comes the race of wild eels, and was very large; not even two athletes, men such as Astyanax and Antenor were, could easily have lifted her onto a cart from the earth. 49

35

40

35

40

In the same epic parody, Attikon Deipnon, Matro calls the anchovy (ἀφύη) a “hetaira of the sea god Triton”, highlighting the analogy between seafood and women, hetairai specifically (ἡ δὲ Φαληρικὴ ἦλθ᾽ ἀφύη, Τρίτωνος ἑταίρη, fr. 1.22). This is information that we also have from Athenaeus, who records that “Anchovy” (ἀφύη) is a common nickname for courtesans (13.586b, ἑταιρῶν ἐπωνυμία αἱ ἀφύαι). 50 In Archippus’ Ichthyes (fr. 19, καὶ τὴν μὲν ἀφύην καταπέπωκεν †ἑψητὸς ἐντυχών), the ἀφύη also possibly refers to prostitutes, while other figures like Ἀθερίνη (smelt) and Σηπία (cuttlefish) “can be assumed to have been in the sex trade”.51 Σηπία is common in food catalogues (e.g. Mnesim. fr. 4.43; Eub. fr. 109.2), but also appears in Antiphanes’ Halieuomene (fr. 27), where actual hetairai and their lovers are portrayed as fish in an elaborate metaphor 52 by a female speaker who

 49 Translation by Olson/Sens 1999. 50 See also Apollod. FGrH 244 fr. 210, according to whom these women were so called because they were thin and fair-skinned. 51 Shaw 2014, 574. 52 See Nesselrath 1998, 281.

  Anna Lamari might be a brothel mistress. 53 In this same fragment from Halieuomene, the fish τρίγλη is also mentioned (fr. 27.10), as it is here in line 11. The use of nicknames derived from seafood for courtesans is also noted by Apollodorus,54 who suggests that σαπέρδιον, the diminutive form of σαπέρδης (a fish of the Nile), was used as a nickname of Phryne, the famous fourth-century hetaira. 55 When getting back to our Nausicrates passage, all these connections make more sense. Starting at line 6, a new riddle regarding the “fair-skinned” (ξανθόχρωτες), the best of which are brought up in the sea of Aixone, 56 will be completed with the answer τρίγλας in line 11. Α τρίγλη is a red mullet,57 a small fish of reddish color that spends the winter in deep water and moves toward the shores in spring. 58 It was considered a delicacy59 and it is common in banquet catalogues.60 τρίγλη also has strong sexual connotations, which either allude to hetairai61 or are associated with intercourse. 62 In Antiphanes (fr. 27.10–11), Τρίγλη is the nickname of one of the hetairai, perhaps Callisthenes’ mistress (τρίγλας, ἔδεσμα τοῦ καλοῦ Καλλισθένους / κατεσθίει γοῦν ἐπὶ μιᾶι τὴν οὐσίαν); in a dexterous double entendre, Antiphanes jokes about Callisthenes wasting his fortune on a single visit to the fishmarket, 63 but also about consuming his property on his mistress Τρίγλη. 64 τρίγλη is a fish-name that triggers sexual nuances, regardless of

 53 Shaw 2014, 574; Henderson 2014, 187. 54 FGrH 244 fr. 212. 55 See Shaw 2014, 574–575. 56 Aixone was a deme of Athens, situated on the south coast of Halimus, neighbouring with the deme of Halai Aixonides (Whitehead 1986, 375–376, with a list of all the inscriptions concerning the activity of the deme). Until the 19th century there were remains of an ancient theater building (no longer visible), and performances of comedy were likely to have started there from mid-4th century (Csapo/Wilson 2015, 320–321). Comedy is the only genre attested in Aixone (Csapo/Wilson 2015, 327). Locally-awarded honors are therein proclaimed “during the Dionysia at the comedies held at Aixone” (IG II2 1202.15; see Csapo/Wilson 2015, 321, 327). 57 Thomson 1947, s.v. τρίγλη; Davidson 1981, 92–95. 58 Olson/Sens 2000, 173. 59 Gal. 6.715 τῶν ἄλλων ὑπερέχουσα τῆι κατὰ τὴν ἐδωδὴν ἡδονῆι. 60 Epich. fr. 122.5; Sophr. fr. 49; Cratin. frr.236.1, 358; Philyll. fr. 12.3; Ephipp. fr. 12.3; Antiph. frr. 27.10, 130.8; Mnesim. fr. 4.38; Archestr. fr. 42.1, 4; Sotad. Com. fr. 1.11; Matro SH 534.27, 31; cf. Epich. fr. 57; Cratin. fr. 62.4; Henioch. fr. 3.5. 61 Shaw 2014, 574. 62 Fish and hetairai are correlated and often mentioned together, especially in a sympotic context. Dem. 19.229; Aeschin. 1.42; Eup. fr. 174; Eub. fr. 118; D.L. 2.76, 10.132. 63 A comic topos, also Alex. frr. 76, 204; Diph. fr. 32; Antiph. frr. 145; 164. 64 Konstantakos 2000, 80−81.

Sympotic Sexuality: The Ambiguity of Seafood in Middle Comedy  

the fact that it also had antaphrodiasiac qualities (perhaps because of its association with Artemis), according to which it curbs sexual desire in men and fertility in women, 65 as in Plato Com. fr. 189.20–21, τρίγλη δ᾽ οὐκ ἐθέλει νεύρων ἐπιήρανος εἶναι· παρθένου Ἀρτέμιδος γὰρ ἔφυ καὶ στύματα μισεῖ. 66 Just a line before the end of Nausicrates’ fragment another riddle triggers a different set of ambiguous connotations that again encompass sexual innuendoes. After speaker B has answered the questions speaker A has asked, a final one comes up at line 12. It is “the one with the milk-colored skin, which the Sicilians curdle”. The answer is “ῥόμβος”, “a turbot”, but the sum of sexual allusions generated is again big and multifaceted. γαλακτόχρωτα (milk-colored) is a rare adjective67 and one of the main clues of the new riddle (the others being Σικελός and πήγνυσ᾽) and perhaps refers to a masculine noun lost in the lacuna of line 11. It could also describe the color of ῥόμβος in line 13; alternatively, it could allude to Sicilian cheese and thus, on a more complex level, to the myth of Cyclops and the beauty of Galateia (literally “the milky one”). Besides, Polyphemus is frequently presented as making cheese from the milk produced by his animals,68 and Sicily (directly referred to in Σικελικός ὄχλος) is regularly identified as the Cyclops’ island. 69 In Theocritus, Galateia’s beauty is highlighted by reference to her white skin, “whiter than cheese to look at” (11.20 λευκοτέρα πακτᾶς ποτιδεῖν), 70 a kind of praise that looks back to Anacreon and Sappho.71 In an allegorical poem featuring Polyphemus and Galateia, the fourth-century poet Philoxenus narrated his reallife love for another Galateia, one of the mistresses of Dionysius I of Syracuse. Our main source for the poem is a report by Phaenias (Ath. 1.6e−7a = 816 PMG = Phaenias fr. 13 Wehrli) according to which Dionysius I favored Philoxenus, but when he caught him trying to seduce Galateia, he sent him to the stone quarries (Ath. 1.7a). Athenaeus also mentions that before this incident, Philoxenus told Dionysius that he was writing a poem about Galateia the nymph (εἶπεν ὁ Φιλόξενος ὅτι

 65 Terpsicles Περὶ ἀφροδισίων ap. Ath. 7.325d, ἐὰν δ᾽ ἐναποπνιγῆι τρίγλη ζῶσα ἐν οἴνωι καὶ τοῦτο ἀνὴρ πίηι, ἀφροδισιάζειν οὐ δυνήσεται, ὡς Τερψικλῆς ἱστορεῖ ἐν τῶι περὶ ἀφροδισίων. κἂν γυνὴ δὲ πίηι τοῦ αὐτοῦ οἴνου, οὐ κυίσκεται; see Spanoudakis 1999. 66 Henderson 21991, 116 n. 23. 67 Also at Philyll. fr. 4.2 (referring to loafs of bread: γαλακτόχρωτας κολλάβους θερμούς); Dsc. 3.47.1 (referring to μῶλυ, a herb or garlic); Ps.-Opp. C. 3.478 (referring to animal teeth). 68 Od. 9.219; E. Cyc. 136, 208–209 with O’Sullivan/Collard 2013, 149; Antiph. fr. 131.7–9. 69 Th. 6.2.1; E. Cyc. 20–22 with O’Sullivan/Collard 2013, 134; Philox. PMG 815–824. 70 With Hunter 1999, 229. 71 According to a corrupt notice in a late rhetorician, οἷον τὰ Ἀνακρέοντος (PMG 488), τὰ Σαπφοῦς (fr. 156 Voigt), οἷον γάλακτος λευκοτέρα.

  Anna Lamari γράφων τὴν Γαλάτειαν) when the two of them were eating two mullets at dinner, Dionysius a big one, Philoxenus a smaller one (δειπνῶν ποτε παρὰ Διονυσίωι ὡς εἶδεν ἐκείνωι μὲν μεγάλην τρῖγλαν παρατεθεῖσαν, ἑαυτῶι δὲ μικράν). The reference to τρίγλη in Phaenias’ anecdote is primarily sympotic, but on another level it presents the mullets as the medium through which Philoxenus seeks to learn about the world of the Nereids and perhaps also communicate his love to Galateia. 72 What is more, the allusion to Galateia could be further reinforced by πήγνυσ᾽ (line 12). πήγνυσ᾽, meaning “curdle” (the milk), carries on the ambiguity of the passage, playing on γαλακτόχρωτα, 73 and also signifying “making stiff, solid”, “freezing”. 74 In combination with the preceding γαλακτόχρωτα and succeeding Σικελός ὄχλος, the reference could be to Sicilian cheese (τυρὸς Σικελικός), 75 similarly to Antiphanes’ fr. 233 (3–4 ἰχθῦς Σικυῶνος, Αἰγίου δ᾽ αὐλητρίδες, / τυρὸς Σικελικός), and especially in combination with πήγνυσι. References to τρίγλη and τυρός are also found in two fragments from Antiphanes’ Cyclops (frr. 130.8, 131.9) and although τυρός is not called Σικελικός, the play (Cyclops) has Sicilian references nonetheless, possibly echoing Epicharmus’ Cyclops and Nicochares’ Galateia.76 As seen above, the allusion to Galateia is reinforced by the use of γαλακτόχρωτα, an adjective that could well describe Galateia’s milk-coloured skin,  72 Note Philoxenus’ attempt to communicate with the Nymphs, βούλοιτό τινα παρ᾽ ἐκείνης τῶν κατὰ Νηρέα πυθέσθαι, by putting the τρίγλη to his ear, (ἀναλαβὼν αὐτὴν εἰς τὰς χεῖρας πρὸς τὸ οὖς προσήνεγκε), just as Cyclops communicated his love to Galateia through dolphins in Philoxenus’ very own poem (reported by Σvet. Theocr. 9.1b καὶ Φιλόξενος τὸν Κύκλωπα ποιεῖ παραμυθούμενον ἑαυτὸν ἐπὶ τῶι τῆς Γαλατείας ἔρωτι καὶ ἐντελλόμενον τοῖς δελφῖσιν, ὅπως ἀπαγγείλωσιν αὐτῆι, ὅτι ταῖς Μούσαις τὸν ἔρωτα ἀκεῖται). Philoxenus’ dithyramb is parodied in Aristophanes’ Plutus (296−301) and has influenced Aristophanes’ Cyclops, Nicochares’ Galateia, Eubulus’ (?) Dionysius, Alexis’ Galateia (see Arnott 1996, 139−140; Hunter 1999, 216−217). 73 See Dsc. 4.95. 74 The verb is regularly used of liquids (A. Pers. 496 πᾶν ῥέεθρον; Ar. Ach. 139 τοὺς ποταμοὺς). 75 But another meaning is perhaps not to be ruled out. πήγνυσ᾽ can mean “fix, plant firmly”, probably by means of a trident (τριόδους); see Pl. Sph. 220D, where one type of strike-hunting by spears and hooks (θήρα πληκτική) taking place at night is called “fire-hunting” (θήρα πυρευτική); also Epicr. fr. 7.1–4, where fishing at night with torches is mentioned (λαβὲ τριόδοντα καὶ λυχνοῦχον … φωσφόρου λύχνου σέλας). Oppian (H. 4.639−646) describes fishing by spears at night with “sweeping trident”, ῥιπῆς τε τριόδοντος (639) and ῥιπῆς τριγλώχινος (646); similar is Q.S. 7.569−575, where a fishing spear is called τανυγλώχινηι τριαίνηι (574). Although πήγνυμι does not occur in any of the abovementioned passages, Nausicrates’ reference makes perfect sense in the context of spear-fishing. In this light, the previous reference to Hecate as a φωσφόρος κόρη may have allowed him to ‘play’ with the torches used by the fishermen when fishing at night (see e.g. Epicr. fr. 7.4 φωσφόρου λύχνου σέλας). 76 Hartwig 2014, 224.

Sympotic Sexuality: The Ambiguity of Seafood in Middle Comedy  

her signature beauty. The fragment ends with speaker B’s final answer, the ῥόμβος, a “turbot”, a kind of flatfish, perhaps so called from its rhomb-like shape (9LSJ). The passage possibly continued with more of the same fish-naming sexual double-entendres that would fit well in a sympotic context, but also trigger sexual connotations. Nausicrates fr. 1 brings forth the ambiguous role the references to fish can play in Middle Comedy. Ancient Greek comic poets appear to have employed references to seafood metaphorically, playing on their sympotic but also sexual connotations that their audience were aware of. The use of seafood language by Middle Comedy poets is employed as another means of incorporating hilarious yet provocative paradramatic references that fit perfectly in fourth-century culture of sympotic and scandalizing indulgence.

Bibliography Texts and Translations Arnott, W. Geoffrey (1996), Alexis: The Fragments. A Commentary, Cambridge. Collard, Christopher/Cropp, Martin J./Gibert, John (2004), Euripides: Selected Fragmentary Plays with Introductions, Translations, and Commentaries, vol. 2, Warminster. Dobree, Peter P. (1833), Adversaria, vol. 2, ed. James Scholefield, Cambridge. Edmonds, John Maxwell (1959), The Fragments of Attic Comedy after Meineke, Bergk, and Kock, vols. 1–2, Leiden. Harder, Annette (1985), Euripides’ Kresphontes and Archelaos. Introduction, Text, and Commentary, Leiden. Hunter, Richard (1983), Eubulus: The Fragments, Cambridge. Hunter, Richard (1999), Theocritus: A Selection, Cambridge. Jacobs, Friedrich (1809), Additamenta animadversionum in Athenaei Deipnosophistas, Jena. Kaibel, Georg (1887), Athenaei Naucratitae Dipnosophistarum Libri XV, vol.2, Leipzig. Kock, Theodor (1880–1884), Comicorum Atticorum Fragmenta, vols. 1–2, Leipzig. Meineke, August (1839–1857) Fragmenta Comicorum Graecorum, 5 vols. (in 7: 1839, 1839, 1840, 1841, 1857), Berlin. Millis, Benjamin (2015), Anaxandrides: Introduction, Translation, Commentary, Fragmenta Comica 17, Heidelberg. Olson, S. Douglas/Sens, Alexander (1999), Matro of Pitane and the Tradition of Epic Parody in the Fourth Century BCE. Text, Translation, and Commentary, Atlanta. Olson, S. Douglas/Sens, Alexander (2000), Archestratos of Gela: Greek Culture and Cuisine in the Fourth Century BCE. Text, Translation, and Commentary, Oxford. O’Sullivan, Patrick/Collard, Christopher (2013), Euripides Cyclops and Major Fragments of Greek Satyric Drama, Oxford. Papachrysostomou, Athina (2016), Amphis: Introduction, Translation, Commentary, Fragmenta Comica 20, Heidelberg.

  Anna Lamari Porson, Richard (1812), Adversaria, Cambridge. Sommerstein, Alan H. (1981), Aristophanes. Knights, Warminster. Sommerstein, Alan H. (2008), Aeschylus: Fragments, Cambridge MA.

Books and Articles Auhagen, Ulrike (2009), Die Hetäre in der griechischen und römischen Komödie, Munich. Cairns, Douglas/Liapis, Vayos (eds.) (2006), Dionysalexandros: Essays on Aeschylus and his Fellow Tragedians in Honour of Alexander F. Garvie, Swansea. Csapo, Eric/Goette, Hans Ruprecht/Green, J. Richard/Wilson, Peter (eds.) (2014), Greek Theatre in the Fourth Century B.C., Berlin/Boston. Csapo, Eric/Wilson, Peter (2015), “Drama Outside Athens in the Fifth and Fourth Centuries BC”, in: Lamari (2015) 316−395. Dalby, Andrew (1993), “Food and Sexuality in Classical Greece”, in: Mars/Mars (1993) 165–190. Davidson, Alan (1981), Mediterranean Seafood, Baton Rouge. Eisler, Robert (1921), Orpheus the Fisher, London. Fludernik, Monika (2006), An Introduction to Narratology, New York. Fontaine, Michael/Scafuro, Adele C. (eds.) (2014), The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Comedy, Oxford. Gilula, Dwora (2000), “Hermippus and his Catalogue of Goods (fr. 63)”, in: Harvey/Wilkins (2000) 75−90. Grimal, Pierre (2002 [1986]), The Dictionary of Classical Mythology, trans. A.R. Maxwell-Hyslop, Malden, MA/Oxford. Headlam, Walter G. (1899), “Critical Notes”, CR 13.1, 3−8. Hartwig, Andrew (2014) “The Evolution of Comedy in the Fourth Century”, in: Csapo/Goette/ Green/Wilson (2014) 207−227. Henderson, John (21991), The Maculate Muse: Obscene Language in Attic Comedy, Oxford/New York. Henderson, John (2014), “Comedy in the Fourth Century II: Politics and Domesticity”, in: Fontaine/Scafuro (2014) 181−198. Henry, Madelein M. (1992), “The Edible Woman: Athenaeus’s Concept of the Pornographic”, in: Richlin (1992) 250–268. Konstantakos, Ioannis (2000), A Commentary on the Fragments of Eight Plays of Antiphanes, Diss. Cambridge. Kidd, Stephen E. (2014), Nonsense and Meaning in Ancient Greek Comedy, Cambridge. Lamari, Anna (ed.) (2015), Reperformances of Drama in the Fifth and Fourth Centuries BC: Authors and Contexts, TCSI 7.2, Berlin/Boston. Lamari, Anna (2017), Reperforming Greek Tragedy: Theater, Politics, and Cultural Mobility in the Fifth and Fourth Centuries BC, Berlin/Boston. Lawrence, Raymond J. (1991), “The Fish: A Lost Symbol of Sexual Liberation?”, Journal of Religion and Health 30, 311–319. MacDowell, Douglas M. (1995), Aristophanes and Athens: An Introduction to the Plays, Oxford. Mars, Gerald/Mars, Valerie (eds.) (1993), Food, Culture and History, London. Merkelbach, Reinhold/West, Martin L. (1965)‚ “The Wedding of Ceyx”, RhM 108, 300−317. Nesselrath, Heinz-Günther (1990), Die attische Mittlere Komödie, Berlin/New York.

Sympotic Sexuality: The Ambiguity of Seafood in Middle Comedy  

Nesselrath, Heinz-Günther (1993), “Parody and Later Greek Comedy”, HSCP 95, 181–195. Nesselrath, Heinz-Günther (1998), “The Polis of Athens in Middle Comedy”, in: Dobrov (1998) 271−288. Richlin, Amy (ed.) (1992), Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome, Oxford. Rusten, Jeffrey (2011), The Birth of Comedy: Texts, Documents, and Art from Athenian Comic Competitions, 486–280, Baltimore. Scullion, Scott (2006), “The Opening of Euripides’ Archelaus”, in: Cairns/Liapis (2006) 185– 200. Sehrt, Aemilius (1912), De Menandro Euripidis imitatore, Diss. Gießen. Shaw, Carl A. (2014), ‘“Genitalia of the Sea”: Seafood and Sexuality in Greek Comedy’, Mnemosyne 67, 554–576. Spanoudakis, Konstantinos (1999), “Terpsicles (RE 1)”, CQ 49.2, 637−639. Strömberg, Reinhold (1943), Studien zur Etymologie und Bildung der griechischen Fischnamen, Göteborg. Süss, Wilhelm (1954), “Scheinbare und wirkliche Inkongruenzen bei Aristophanes”, RhM 97, 115−159. Thompson, DʼArcy W. (1947), A Glossary of Greek Fishes, London. Webster, Thomas B.L. (21960), Studies in Menander, Manchester. Webster, Thomas B.L. (21970), Studies in Later Greek Comedy, Manchester. Whitehead, David (1986), The Demes of Attica 508/7 – ca. 250 B.C.: A Political and Social Study, Princeton. Wilkins, John (2000), The Boastful Chef: The Discourse of Food in Ancient Greek Comedy, Oxford.

Antje Wessels

Liber esto – Wordplay and Ambiguity in Petronius’ Satyrica Abstract: Among the many techniques employed in the Cena Trimalchionis, the centrepiece of Petronius’ Satyrica, is the application of wordplay. Wordplay disrupts the common function of language as representing a pre-existing thought and thereby appears to absolve the author from any moral responsibility. Specifically, this absolution seems to be realized through examples of wordplay that are based on a word’s alleged ambiguity — that is, with wordplays that succeed in opening up a new semantic space, without, however, changing the sequence of letters that compose the terms. The paper discusses how Trimalchio employs ambiguity in order to question and re-arrange crucial elements of the social setting, including the social status of a character. Keywords: wordplay, Libertas, fluid ambiguity, Dionysus/Liber, Roman Literature

Even before beginning to read the text of Petronius’ Satyrica, the first thing to be considered is a wordplay: the title Satyrica itself. The contrived term Satyrica or Satyricon [sc. liber] 1 alludes — or rather guides its reader allusively — to three different genres. While the first three letters — sat — invite us to think of the Roman satura, 2 this association is immediately undermined by the following -y- , which seems to turn the word into an allusion to Greek satyr-play, and, again, by the suffix -ca, which is known from titles of Greek novels. Finally, the title may remind the reader of the god Saturnus, the patron of the Saturnalia, a feast, in which the roles of slaves and patrons are exchanged, 3 and whose name may thus be understood as a reference to the instability of conventional ascriptions.

 My thanks to John Hamilton, Bettina Full, Therese Fuhrer, Martin Vöhler, Stavros Frangoulidis, and Matthew Payne.  1 Cf. Harrison 1999, xiii. The title is first mentioned in the 4th cent. AD by Aphthonius (Aelius Festus Aphthonius uel Asmonius, id est: Marius Victorinus [pseudo]) in De metris omnibus lib. 4.1 (= Grammatici Latini, ed. H. Keil, 1874, vol. 6), p. 153, l. 33: plerique, inter quos Arbiter [sc. Petronius] satyricon [...]. 2 On satyrical elements in Petronius’ Satyrica see Sullivan 1968, ch. iii & iv and Schmeling 1996, xxx–xxxviii. 3 Cf. e.g. Döpp 2011, 149. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110715811-010

  Antje Wessels The title does not simply blend together four different spheres, genres or associations, but rather sets up the reading experience as a kind of adventure-trip. The word Satyrica, even as the first letters are being processed, immediately interrupts, reopens and, again, withdraws from each previous interpretation. It does not summarize the features of an innovative, however clearly definable genre, but rather provides an example of fluid ambiguity. The experiential ambiguity has a spatio-temporal dimension, and it foreshadows a technique of reading or, more specifically, the process of how one might perceive a word, a text (specifically, Petronius’ Satyrica) and, in a more referential sense, the world around us. Since the title produces and immediately undermines upcoming expectations, it first of all prepares the reader to be extremely cautious: do not believe what you see (or hear); everything is different from what you may have thought. At the same time, the title provides a microcosm of what will happen in the core piece of the (transmitted) text: the famous Cena Trimalchionis. Like the readers, the characters of the Satyrica are continuously destabilized — and invited to fragment, revise and rebuild former expectations. The luxury of the Cena Trimalchionis is not just a showcase of material luxury — of animated objects, exotic fruits and theatrical performances. On a metapoetic level, it also points to the luxury of reading and re-reading a text, to the creation of language that is λοξός (ambiguous)4 — and, again, when speaking about a ‘text’, I mean Petronius’ Satyrica (as something written) as well as the world that is presented in it (that is, the world as a text). Trimalchio, who is presented as a rich freedman (a libertus), can allow himself to do whatever he may want to do. He does not aim, however, at employing his power by just expanding and showing his financial richness. His real power

 4 λοξός means “slanting, crosswise”, and with respect to language “indirect, ambiguous”, especially of oracles, cf. LSJ, s.v. λοξός, e.g. Luc. Alex. 10–11: κἀνταῦθα μὲν Κοκκωνᾶς ἐν Χαλκηδόνι καταλείπεται, διττούς τινας καὶ ἀμφιβόλους καὶ λοξοὺς χρησμοὺς συγγράφων, καὶ μετ᾽ ὀλίγον ἐτελεύτησε τὸν βίον, ὑπὸ ἐχίδνης, οἶμαι, δηχθείς. [11] προεισπέμπεται δὲ ὁ Ἀλέξανδρος, κομῶν ἤδη καὶ πλοκάμους καθειμένος καὶ μεσόλευκον χιτῶνα πορφυροῦν ἐνδεδυκὼς καὶ ἱμάτιον ὑπὲρ αὐτοῦ λευκὸν ἀναβεβλημένος, ἅρπην ἔχων κατὰ τὸν Περσέα, ἀφ᾽ οὗ ἑαυτὸν ἐγενεαλόγει μητρόθεν. (‘Then Cocconas was left behind in Chalcedon, composing equivocal, ambiguous, obscure oracles, and died before long, bitten, I think, by a viper. [11] It was Alexander who was sent in first; he now wore his hair long, had falling ringlets, dressed in a parti-coloured tunic of white and purple, with a white cloak over it, and carried a falchion like that of Perseus, from whom he claimed descent on his mother’s side’, transl. Harmon 1925). Even though the passage does not show a direct connection between luxury and ambiguity, the emphasis on the oracle’s ambiguity is clearly embedded into a scenario of strange luxury.

Liber esto — Wordplay and Ambiguity in Petronius’ Satyrica  

is the power of producing and controlling interpretations. Trimalchio, the freedman, feels free to perform as a stage director (a term that Stavros Frangoulidis has also used in depicting Trimalchio as the stage director of a mock funeral performance)5 – a stage director who allows himself to cut and re-arrange his text by spelling out or re-defining the semantic field of an existing word, by ascribing an unexpected meaning to it or, finally, by intentionally producing, destroying and re-producing ambiguities. Trimalchio is reading a world — a world, however, he himself creates and shapes — and he displays his role as host and pater familias by controlling the experiences of his recipients. He does so when presenting a meal, and he does so when presenting words. Trimalchio’s recipients are both the readers of the Satyrica and the protagonists in the text itself, who, after a torturous visit to Quartilla’s brothel and cursed by the wrath of the phallic Priapus, have now decided to attend Trimalchio’s dinner-party: Encolpius, the narrating character, and the group of friends who have joined him during his adventures throughout the Satyrica. Represented as Trimalchio’s audience, they serve to pre-inscribe the possible perspectives of the readers. The Cena Trimalchionis depicts the world of literature and its perception. Of course, there is no point in claiming that Trimalchio’s poems (the actual ‘literature’ he has produced) provide good poetry. The epigram in 34.10, for example, Trimalchio’s spontaneous improvisation of an epitaph after a silver skeleton is brought into the hall, 6 displays poor style and grammar: 7 eheu nos miseros, quam totus homuncio nil est! sic erimus cuncti, postquam nos auferet Orcus. ergo vivamus, dum licet esse bene.

 5 Frangoulidis 2008. Cf. also Panayotakis 1995 on the theatrical elements in Petronius’ Satyrica. Trimalchio’s performance as a stage director goes well with his function as organizer of the cena, where he has to fulfil the role of an entertainer (on the performance of improvised epigrams during the symposion cf. Höschele 2010, 27sqq.) 6 Schmeling 2011, ad loc., 125: The metrical pattern (two hexameters followed by a pentameter) is “a combination of popular origin that often can be found on tombs”. As to form and content, the poem imitates Greek epitaphs. 7 E.g. auferet instead of abstulerit. On the poem’s quality and its function within the Cena see Setaioli 2011, 91−112 (= ch. 5: “Trimalchio’s ‘Epigrams’ [Petr. 34.10; 55.3]”), esp. 102−104 on the “numerous blames addressed by scholars to this poem” (103). The Latin text is taken from the Teubner edition (Müller 1994/2009); translations, unless otherwise stated, are by myself and John Hamilton.

  Antje Wessels Ah, we miserable ones, how the whole of puny humanity is nothing! Thus, shall we all be, after Orcus will bear us away. Therefore, let us live well, as long as it is allowed.

Verses such as these may invite the reader to disregard Trimalchio’s poetic impact and to reduce his activities to the role of a γελωτοποιός, who simply aims at entertaining his guests by making corny jokes.8 Yet, Trimalchio’s poetic impact goes further. Trimalchio employs the power and techniques of language in order to create an ambiguous world and to transcend the sphere of logic and plain thinking. 9 It is not without reason that the Cena Trimalchionis starts and ends with its protagonists entering and leaving the dinner-party via a liminal or rather transitory space, which marks Trimalchio’s house as a place governed by rules that are different from those to be encountered in the ‘real world’ outside. Both scenes center around the cathartic sphere of a bathroom. Let me start with the introductory scene. When entering Trimalchio’s house, the young men have to enter a bathroom (in balneum sequi, 26.10). Before they actually succeed in reaching it and having a bath10 and while still walking around, they see (27.1−4)11 senem calvum, tunica vestitum russea, inter pueros capillatos ludentem pila. nec tam pueri nos, quamquam erat operae pretium, ad spectaculum duxerant, quam ipse pater familiae, qui soleatus pila prasina exercebatur. nec amplius eam repetebat quae terram contigerat, sed follem plenum habebat servus sufficiebatque ludentibus. notavimus etiam res novas.

 8 For the γελωτοποιός cf. e.g. Xen. Smp. 1. 11–16. 9 On the relation between creativity and power and between the art of cookery and the art of language see e.g. the passage on Trimalchio’s cook, named Daedalus, who is able to re-arrange and transform food (69.8−70.2: cum positus ... anser ... ‘mirabor’ inquam ‘nisi omnia ista de facta sunt aut certe de luto. vidi Romae Saturnalibus eiusmodi cenarum imaginem fieri’.... cum Trimalchio ait: ‘ita crescam patrimonio, non corpore, ut ista [sc. anserem et alia] cocus meus de porco fecit. non potest esse pretiosior homo. volueris, de vulva faciet piscem, de lardo palumbum, de perna turturem, de colepio gallinam. et ideo ingenio meo impositum est illi nomen bellissimum; nam Daedalus vocatur’). Cf. also Conte 2011, 132, who, additionally, refers to Trimalchio’s statement that obsonatores (cooks or buyer of victuals) and rhetores are born under the same star (39.13: in piscibus obsonatores et rhetores) and to the traditional use of gastronomical images in literary criticism and its reception in Petronius’ Satyrica (134−136). 10 Cf. 28.1: intravimus balneum, et sudore calfacti momento temporis ad frigidam eximus (“We went into the bath. We stayed till we ran with sweat, and then at once passed through into the cold water.” Transl. Heseltine 1913). 11 Transl. Allison 1930 (with modifications).

Liber esto — Wordplay and Ambiguity in Petronius’ Satyrica  

nam duo spadones in diversa parte circuli stabant, quorum alter matellam tenebat argenteam, alter numerabat pilas, non quidem eas quae inter manus lusu expellente vibrabant, sed eas quae in terram decidebant. a bald-headed old man in a russet tunic, playing ball amid a troupe of long-haired boys. It was not however so much the boys, though these were well worth looking at, that drew us to the spot, as the master himself (pater familias), who wore sandals and was playing with a green ball. He never stooped for a ball that had once touched ground, but an attendant stood by with a sackful, and supplied the players as they required them. We noticed other novelties too (res novas). For two eunuchs were stationed at opposite points of the circle, one holding a silver chamber-pot, while the other counted the balls, not those that were in play and flying from hand to hand, but rather those that fell on the floor (decidebant).

The pater familias, who is playing with green balls, turns out to be Trimalchio. The situation certainly exhibits comic aspects. The crucial point here, however, is not that a pater familias is playing with balls, but that the scene displays a dissolution of standard values: the eunuchs, whom we would expect to be interested in their master’s success, entirely ignore the balls which are passed on to the other participants of the game and pay attention exclusively to those balls which have fallen down on the floor (decidebant). That is, the eunuchs disregard the balls that still have a function and only care for the senseless parts of the game. Before Encolpius and his friends can actually enter the house, they are introduced to a world that is characterised by a special sense for those things and elements, which — outside Trimalchio’s world — would be counted as entirely useless. At the end of the dinner, again, the protagonists have to cross a liminal space, before they can leave and re-enter the real world where they had come from. After Trimalchio has staged his own mock-funeral (or, as James Joyce would call it, a funferal12), he invites his guests to enjoy a bath (72.2–3): 13 Trimalchio ‘ergo’ inquit ‘cum sciamus nos morituros esse, quare non vivamus? sic vos felices videam, coniciamus nos in balneum, meo periculo, non paenitebit. sic calet tamquam furnus.’ 14

 12 I.e. a “fun funeral” and a “fun for all”, cf. Joyce [1939] 1964, 111.15. 13 Transl. Heseltine 1913. 14 The morphological similarity of furnus and funus may suggest that here, too, a wordplay is intended (Fuhrer, per litt.).

  Antje Wessels Trimalchio said “Well, well, if we know we must die, why should we not live? As I hope for your happiness, let us jump into a bath. My life on it, you will never regret it. It is as hot as a furnace.”

The protagonists, overwhelmed by the challenging performances they had to suffer during their attendance at the dinner, decide to jump at the chance and escape the party by running into the entrance hall, from which they had first arrived. They are stopped, however, by Trimalchio’s groundkeeper who tells them (72.10):15 ‘erras’ inquit ‘si putas te exire hac posse qua venisti. nemo umquam convivarum per eandem ianuam emissus est; alia intrant, alia exeunt.’ “You are wrong,” he said “if you suppose you can go out at the door you came in by. None of the guests are ever let out by the same door; they come in at one and go out by another.”

It is probably not without reason that one of them, Ascyltus, when trying to avoid the bathroom, falls into a piscina before he can reach the door of the entrance hall in order to leave the party. One cannot be a guest of Trimalchio without being transformed. It is impossible to go back to the precise place from which you first emerged. 16 Both scenes can demonstrate that Trimalchio’s dinner-party is not simply about luxury, and that the enactments performed and experienced during the event revolve around the rules, potential meanings and techniques of literary production and its reception. A second aspect that is addressed in the Cena Trimalchionis is the redefinition of a thing or action, such as the redefinition that is delineated in the scene that follows straight after the entrance-scene: Trimalchio, who has had a bath, is now indulging in his servants’ care. While he is rubbed down “with pieces of blanketing of the softest and finest wool”, he observes that (28.3−4): tres interim iatraliptae in conspectu eius Falernum potabant, et cum plurimum rixantes effunderent, Trimalchio hoc suum propin esse dicebat.

 15 Transl. Heseltine 1913. 16 Since the Cena Trimalchionis is permeated with motifs of death, Trimalchio’s villa has also been interpreted as the underworld, see Hofmann 2014, 106−107. In this case the piscina could be considered to be the Styx.

Liber esto — Wordplay and Ambiguity in Petronius’ Satyrica  

Three ointment-doctors were swilling Falernian wine under his eyes; yet, when seeing how the fellows are brawling over their liquor and spilling most of it, Trimalchio declares, it was a toast they were making in his particular honour.

The situation itself at first sight seems to be quite simple: drunken men are spilling wine. However, Trimalchio re-defines it as an act of libation. By declaring that “this was drinking to his own health”17 Trimalchio interprets a silly accident, the spillage of wine, as an intentional act of (cultic?) devotion. Not only does his interpretation place him at the centre of attention, since he considers that this act of devotion is performed in his honour, but it also re-defines the whole situation: a silly accident, which primarily resulted from a little brawl among some undisciplined masseurs, is now turned into a highly meaningful situation with quasireligious impact. Trimalchio is certainly tremendously rich (37−38) and he is certainly extremely keen on showing and presenting his wealth. The beginning and the end of the Cena, however, and the sphere displayed in 28.3–4 can show that the crucial point of the Cena Trimalchionis is not about senseless luxury or exuberance, but about the power of creating ambiguities in situations or words that seem, at first sight, clear and plain. The most prominent scene in this context is the one which also provides the opening words of my paper’s title: ‘liber esto’ (41.7). After having enjoyed the theatrical performance of several menus, such as the peacock’s eggs, which seem to have been brooded by a wooden hen before they turn out to be real, 18 the Zodiac dish19 and the appearance of a group of hunting dogs,20 the guests of the dinner see a large dish being brought into the room — with a huge boar on it. The boar is pilleatus (40.3), which means ‘wearing a cap of liberty’. 21 And he is surrounded by little suckling pigs (40.4): circa autem minores porcelli ex coptoplacentis facti, quasi uberibus imminerent, scrofam esse positam significabant. et hi quidem apophoreti fuerunt.

 17 Transl. Calboli 2009. Heraeus’ conjecture propin esse (= προπιεῖν) (1915, 25−28) is followed by Konrad Müller in his Teubner (1994/2009, 22). Calboli 2009, 131 n. 49, following Bücheler, Friedlaender, Ernout and Scarsi, prefers the reading of MSH propinasse (propinare = προπινεῖν). Both forms are an infinitive, propin however is Greek. 18 33.5: pavonis ova gallinae [sc. ligneae] iussi supponi. 19 35.2: rotundum enim repositorium duodecim habebat signa in orbe disposita, and 39.5−15, Trimalchio’s explanation of the signa. 20 40.2: et ecce canes Laconici etiam circa mensam discurrere coeperunt. 21 On libertas in Petronius see Downer 1913, 12, 30, 36, 38, 68, 69.

  Antje Wessels Round it lay suckling pigs made of simnel cake with their mouths to the teats, thereby showing that we had a sow before us. These suckling-pigs were for the guests to take away. 22

Furthermore, when a hunting-knife is plunged into his side, a number of thrushes 23 fly out at the blow (40.5: ex cuius plaga turdi evalverunt). It is a weird ensemble. Specifically, Encolpius wonders why the aper had come in with a cap of freedom on. After ‘consuming’ “every foolish explanation of it” (41.2: postquam omnis bacalusias consumpsi), 24 he finally puts the question to one of the more experienced guests. The explanation comes on the heels of it (41.4, the speaker is the guest who is talking to Encolpius): ‘plane etiam hoc servus tuus indicare potest; non enim aenigma est, sed res aperta. hic aper, cum heri summa cena eum vindicasset, a convivis dimissus ; itaque hodie tamquam libertus in convivium revertitur.’ “Your slave [sc. I] can plainly (plane) explain that too,” he said, “there is no riddle, the thing is clear. Yesterday, this boar was devoted to be served for dinner, the guests however set him free. That’s why, today, he comes back to dinner as a freedman (libertus).”

The guest’s explanation pretends to be plane: non [...] aenigma est, sed res aperta. At the same time, however, the guest employs an expression which playfully reacts to the metapoetical meaning of the ensemble. 25 For in the center of the alleged res aperta is the aper. This aper is a boar, but it is also a word. Similarly to a word that can produce multiple meanings, the aper presented at the table is

 22 Transl. Heseltine 1913. 23 According to Lewis and Short, s.v. turdus, turdus can mean either a thrush, a fieldfare (e.g. Hor. Epist. 1.15.41) or a kind of fish, a seacarp (e.g. Plin. 32.11.53, § 151). Here, it is definitely a bird (cf. evolaverunt). The word turdus goes back to the Greek στρουθός, which is famous from the simile in Hom. Il. 2.308−330 (the mother-sparrow and her eight young). 24 According to Lewis and Short, s.v. bacalusia, this is a “kind of sweetmeat” (following Bücheler ad loc.). The translation “every foolish explanation of it” is a suggestion made by Heseltine 1913, 69, n. 1. Schmeling 2011 ad loc., 159 translates “after I ticked off even remote possibilities”. A different translation is given by the OLD, s.v. bacalusiae (sic): “(perhaps) stupid guesses”. Consumpsi is a gastronomic metaphor, which suggests that Encolpius has literally eaten one of the take-aways, at the same time that he is turning the problem over in every way: the suckling-pigs are presented as meat, but they are actually “sweet”; cf. also 40.4, where the little pigs are described as ex coptoplacentis facti. Copta is a “kind of cake made of pounded materials, Mart. 14.68 — the same, or a similar kind, called cop-tŏplăcenta, Petr. 40.4” (Lewis and Short s.v. copta: “copta, ae, f. = κόπτη). 25 My thanks to John Hamilton for drawing my attention to the potential wordplay that is suggested by the words aper and res aperta.

Liber esto — Wordplay and Ambiguity in Petronius’ Satyrica  

able to produce offspring.26 He is presented as a female who has just given birth to little pigs, and when a knife is plunged into his body (and the aper even physically turns into a res aperta 27) further unexpected offspring — birds — emerge. Furthermore, similarly to a word that is received by its readers, the aper’s offspring are meant to be received by the guests. While there are “fowlers ready with limed twigs”, who catch the thrushes as they flutter round the dining-room (40.6−7: parati aucupes cum harundinibus fuerunt et eos circa triclinium volitantes momento exceperunt)28 in order to offer them to each person at the table, 29 the little pigs are given to the guests to take away and be consumed. The guests might think that the aper is the pinnacle of the feast. However, as readers acquainted with the conversation between Encolpius and the guest, we are aware that the aper pilleatus is just the beginning of the spectacle. The aper pilleatus is not only a transformed being himself — from possession to freedman, from mother of piglets to producer of birds, and from male to female — he is also the starting point of a cascade of wordplays which will redefine and transform the role of the people who are around him. Just after the aper is presented, a fair and beautiful young boy, presumably a slave, 30 enters the scene, adorned with vine leaves and ivy. While passing around grapes among the guests and performing some of Trimalchio’s poems 31 in a ‘strident voice’, he introduces himself as Bromius, Lyaeus and Euhius (41.6): dum haec loquimur, puer speciosus, vitibus hederisque redimitus, modo Bromium, interdum Lyaeum Euhiumque confessus, calathisco uvas circumtulit et poemata domini sui acutissima voce traduxit.

 26 In ancient literature, literary texts are often thought to be living beings who behave like humans (or pubescent children), who start their own life and have their own will once their author has created them — we may think here of Hor. Epist. 1.20, Ovid’s Tristia (cf. 1.1.107−14 and 3.1) or Martial’s epigram 1.3, where authors reflect on saying farewell to their texts when they go to be published and on how the texts will henceforth withdraw from the author’s (or rather “father’s”) control. Cf. Wessels (forthcoming). 27 An ‘open artwork’ (Umberto Eco) avant la lettre. 28 Again, a hunting motif, cf. the presentation of hunting dogs (canes Laconici) in 40.2. 29 Cf. 40.7: cum suum cuique iussisset referri Trimalchio with Schmeling 2011, 158: “Each person at the table is shown his own thrush, which is then perhaps taken to the kitchen, roasted, and brought back.” 30 According to 41.7 the puer performs poems by his dominus (poemata domini); the dominus is certainly Trimalchio. 31 Three of Trimalchio’s poems can be read in 34.10 (see above), 55.3 (quod non expectes, ex transverso fit et supra nos Fortuna negotia curat. / quare da nobis vina Falerna, puer) and 55.6 — the second one being a spontaneously composed ‘poem’.

  Antje Wessels While we were saying these things, a beautiful young boy, adorned with vine leaves and ivy, revealing himself now as Bromius, and then as Lyaeus and Euhius, passed around grapes in a basket and, with a most strident voice, performed his master’s poems.

Even without listening to all these names, it is made quite clear to everyone that the guests are encountering Dionysus. The names are three epithets of the Greek god: the “thunderous” (Βρόμιος), the “loosener”, “deliverer from care” (Λυαῖος), and the one who provokes the enthusiastic and exultant Bacchic cry εὐοῖ (Εὔιος). The young boy’s behavior clearly plays with these ascriptions by imitating the god’s major features, his emblems, such as vine-leaves, ivy and grapes, and by performing Trimalchio’s poems acutissima voce (which we might imagine included high-pitched cries of εὐοῖ). Whether his behavior is meant to be a playful transformation (or translation) of his real name (a suggestion made by A.E. Housman) 32 or whether he has been inspired by the boar’s cap of liberty, remains unclear. His master Trimalchio, however, promptly reacts and shouts: Dionyse, liber esto (41.7). The three words are quite interesting, because they seem, at first sight, to disambiguate the situation — the boy is clearly marked now as “Dionysus” — but on the other hand, they succeed in opening up a space for multiple interpretations. There is no doubt that the remark plays with the Roman translation of λυαῖος, liber or Liber (capitalised), as well as with the social status of a freedman (or a ‘freed boar’), a libertus. It is clearly a lexical ambiguity, a pun. Yet, what precisely is the pun? What does Trimalchio want to say? ‘Be Dionysus, be free — analogous to the god of liberation?’ Or: ‘Be Dionysus — however not the Greek one, but the Roman version of the god’ (in this case Liber has to be written with a capital letter)? Or: ‘Since you are a Roman version of Dionysus, you are Liber (capitalised), and as a consequence you have the right to be liber (lower-case) i.e. free (or freed)?’ The boy himself has one single answer. He takes away the cap of liberty from the boar’s head and puts it on himself (41.7): puer detraxit pilleum apro capitique suo imposuit. Analogous to the freed boar, the former slave is freed. In an act that attributes Trimalchio’s liber esto to the performative language of Roman Law, the boy’s performative reaction spells out his desired interpretation: “be freed” and “be turned into a libertus”. The scene could end here, but, again, Trimalchio opens space for further interpretation. For he comments on the boy’s reaction by adding that “nobody will deny that I have a Liber pater”: tum Trimalchio rursus adiecit: ‘non negabitis me’

 32 Housman 1918, 164.

Liber esto — Wordplay and Ambiguity in Petronius’ Satyrica  

inquit ‘habere Liberum patrem.’ The guests, apparently, take this as a witty joke, not to be further commented upon: laudavimus dictum. They approve and shower the young man with kisses (puerum sane perbasiamus). By praising both, Trimalchio as well as the puer, the guests show a reaction that again reduces Trimalchio’s words to one single meaning: the slave has succeeded in being freed. Trimalchio’s words, however, are extremely ambiguous and, in fact, untranslatable.33 Basically, the discussion turns on two options for translation: “free father” or “pater Liber”, a standard title for Bacchus, the Roman Dionysus 34 — the pun being that either Trimalchio has a “free father” (which cannot be true, for he is a libertus) or that he now “has a Dionysus”. 35 Yet, there is a third possibility which plays with the ambiguity and blends together both translations. In this case, the pun would be that Trimalchio himself now turns into a free man: if his former slave in a first step has turned into Dionysus, in a second one into the Roman Liber, in a third one into the Roman Pater Liber (capitalised) and in a fourth one into a free father (a liber pater, lower-case, therefore a free man), then, from his own perspective, Trimalchio now does not have a slave anymore, but rather a “free father”. In other words, although the former slave (the puer) is still owned by Trimalchio, he (i.e. the slave) has now turned into Trimalchio’s father (his pater liber); and because he, Trimalchio’s father (pater), is now free by birth (liberum patrem habeo), Trimalchio turns from being a freedman (a libertus, who had been freed, but never had a free father)36 into being the son of a free man — and as a consequence into a free-born person.  33 Translators usually refuse to translate the passage without adding a note and presenting two or more alternatives, cf. Kritzinger 2003, 111; the German translator Wilhelm Ehlers (Müller/Ehlers 1983, 75) who uses Müller’s text [Liberum patrem] in his translation, prints the two words liberum patrem fully in capitals in order to avoid any decision and to leave open what exactly the two words refer to. 34 Cf. Arragosti 1995, 222 n. 104: “qui il nome serve a Trimalchione per realizzare il banale gioco di parole”, and Downer 1913, 12. 35 Smith’s commentary on the passage (1975, 97) explains: “Trimalchio repeats the pun in a slightly different form: ‘You won’t deny that I have a father who is free’ (an untrue claim with reference to any freedman), and ‘You won’t deny that I possess Father Liber’ (Liber Pater was a standard title for the god), i.e. the slave Dionysus.” Additionally, following a suggestion made by Richard Seaford (oral remark), it should be taken into consideration that Trimalchio presents himself as Jupiter (i.e. as the father of Dionysus, i.e. of the god Liber Pater). 36 One may feel reminded of Hor. Sat. 1.6, where the poetic I repeatedly stresses his status as a libertino patre natus — a phrase that “in different forms tolls throughout the poem” (Gowers 2011, 222), cf. e.g. 1.6.6; 7; 21; 29; 36, 45; 46; 58; in l. 38 even Dionysus is addressed (tune ... Dionysi filius ... ?).

  Antje Wessels The ambiguity ascribed to the words in question is far more than a mere pun or a funny wordplay. It has a real effect, not only on the social status of the slave, but also on the status of Trimalchio himself. Actually, what had begun as the triumph of a slave is ultimately turned into a win-win situation. In the first part of the dialogue (Dionyse, liber esto) Trimalchio seemed to embrace the possibility of losing his slave, because he does not want to lose the opportunity for a good joke (or, to modify Quintilian, Inst. Or. 6.3.28: potius servum quam dictum perdere). In the second part of the dialogue, he certainly has a freed slave (or more precisely, he has lost his slave), but as a quid pro quo, he himself exceeds the new status of his former slave, and even his own former social status: he, who had only been freed (and is a libertus), now is free by birth (liber). Additionally, since the whole scene plays with the identification of liber and Dionysus, one could even argue that Trimalchio, who, within this play, has succeeded in having a free father, a liber pater, and becoming himself a free man, a liber, simultaneously transforms into the Roman Liber, that is into Liber Pater, the Roman version of the god Dionysus, the god of theatre and poetry. If Trimalchio is viewed as Dionysus, then the people around him — those who try to flee, but are to be controlled by his regime — can be considered his satyrs. 37 Petronius’ Satyrica, literally, turns into a satyr-play, a satyricon liber, a book on the power of Dionysus. Additionally, if we assume a playful exchange of long and short syllables, the title, satyricon liber (now read with a long -i-), makes us think of Dionysus (the Roman Liber Pater: liber) and his followers (the entourage of satyrs: satyricon). Vice versa, Trimalchio’s liber esto, within the narrative an act of liberation (līber esto, with a long -i-), on a metapoetic level alludes to the text itself and its power as literature: lĭber esto (now with a short syllable), “be a book”. Finally, since books were often considered their author’s children, 38 we may even think of a wordplay that brings together lĭber (with a short -i-): “book”, līber (with a long -i-): “child”, and Pater Liber (note the ambiguous casus of Liberum in 41.8: Liberum patrem): the poet as a father who produces children — and, as a consequence, books. If we read Trimalchio’s words Non negabitis me [...] habere Liberum patrem (41.8) as a hint to the slave’s new status as a poet who himself both produces and sets free new children, the scene that follows also acquires a poetological impact. After being applauded by his guests, Trimalchio has left the dinner party in order to go to the chamber pot (ab hoc ferculo Trimalchio ad lasanum surrexit, 41.9). Sharing similarities to the poet who, after setting free his  37 For the motif of satyrs who try to flee, cf. Seidensticker 2020, 10. 38 Books were often considered to be the children of their author, cf. Ov. Trist. 1.1.1–2 and 107– 115. Cf. also n. 26 above.

Liber esto — Wordplay and Ambiguity in Petronius’ Satyrica  

book, must stay at home (cf. Hor. Sat. 1.20 or Mart. Epigr. 1.3) or in exile (cf. Ov. Trist. 1.1), while the book enjoys its freedom and turns into an active, communicative being, Trimalchio’s withdrawal from the scene, allows his guests (or passes on) the libertas to speak. When Trimalchio himself, due to constipation (as he will explain when re-entering the scene in 47.1–2), is confined to the toilet and unable to act or communicate, his guests immediately start exercising their (inherited) freedom to speak by gossiping and complaining39 without being controlled by the ‘tyrant’. Thus the guests react: “nos libertatem sine tyranno nacti coepimus invitare”. 40 Trimalchio uses the power of words to create ambiguous meanings. Trimalchio is free, not because he becomes a free man in a social sense, but rather because, similarly to Dionysus (the god of theatre and poetry), he has the power to create a poetic space. The exploitation of the lexical ambiguity of liber involves more than just a witty joke and useless wordplay. It allows Trimalchio to unfold and seize upon the semantic space that the word provides and to produce new thoughts, while being freed from any moral responsibility. It is the word that invites Trimalchio to liberate — and seize upon — its potential multiple meanings. Trimalchio’s social act of liberation is based on the semantic space of liber esto. It goes without saying that Trimalchio intentionally employs the word’s ambiguity in order to destabilize and re-create the world around him. Ambiguity here serves as a tool for thinking, which allows for the liberation from plain thinking and any concrete rules, and for a poet’s approach to the world: liber esto.

Bibliography Texts and Translations Allinson, Alfred R. (transl.) (1930), Petronius. Satyricon, New York. Arragosti, A. (1995), Petronio Arbitro, Satyricon. Introduzione, traduzione e note, Milano. Heseltine, Michael (transl.) (1913), Petronius Arbiter, London.

 39 Cf. 41.10–47.1. Additionally, it would be worth exploring whether the guests also enjoy a freedom of interpretation. For instance, “in Sat. 42 a cause of death is diagnosed (against the “expert” doctors), while in Sat. 43–45 various omens are discussed (again, often in contradiction to the “expert” priests).” (Payne per litt.). 40 For the poet as a dominus, or even a kind of ‘tyrant’, cf. Mart. Epigr. 1.3, where the poet addresses his book (parve liber, 2), which is about to escape his master’s control: sed tu, ne totiens domini patiare lituras | neve notet lusus tristis harundo tuos, | aetherias, lascive, cupis volitare per auras. Cf. also above, n. 26.

  Antje Wessels Joyce, James (1964), Finnegans Wake [1939], London. Keil, Hermann (ed.) (1874), Grammatici Latini, 1855−1880, vol. 6, Leipzig. Müller, Konrad (ed.) (1994/2009), Petronius, Satyricon Reliquiae, Berlin/New York. Müller, Konrad/Ehlers, Wilhelm (ed., transl.) (1983), Petronius Satyrica. Schelmenszenen, München.

Books and Articles Calboli, Gualtiero (2009), “Latin Syntax and Greek”, in: Philip Baldi/Pierluigi Cuzzolin (eds.), New Perspectives on Historical Latin Syntax, vol 1: Syntax of the Sentence, Berlin/New York, 65−193. Conte, Gian Biagio (1996), The Hidden Author. An Interpretation of Petronius’ Satyricon, Berkeley. Döpp, Siegmar (1993), “Saturnalien und lateinische Literatur”, in: Siegmar Döpp (ed.), Karnevaleske Phänomene in antiken und nachantiken Kulturen und Literaturen, Trier, 145−77. Downer, James W. (1913), Metaphors and Word-Plays in Petronius, Waco, TX. Frangoulidis, Stavros (2008), “Trimalchio as Narrator and Stage Director in the Cena: An Unobserved Parallelism in Petronius’ Satyricon 78”, CP 103, 81−87. Gowers, Emily (2011), Horace. Satires Book 1, Cambridge. Harrison, Stephen (ed.) (1999), Oxford Readings in the Roman Novel, Oxford. Heraeus, Wilhelm (1915), “Προπεῖν”, RhM 70, 1−41. Hofmann, Heinz (2014), “Petronius, Satyrica”, in: Edmund P. Cueva/Shannon N. Byrne (eds.), A Companion to the Ancient Novel, 96−118. Housman, Alfred Edward (1918), “Jests of Plautus, Cicero, and Trimalchio”, CR 32.7−8, 162−164. Kritzinger, Jacobus P.K. (2003), “Non negabitis me‚ inquit‚ habere liberum patrem: Petronius, Sat. 41.8 Revisited”, AClass 46, 111−117. Panayotakis, Costas (1995), Theatrum Arbitri: Theatrical Elements in the Satyrica of Petronius, Leiden. Schmeling, Gareth (1996), “Genre and the Satyrica. Menippean Satire and the Novel”, in: Claudia Klodt (ed.), Satura Lanx. Festschrift für Werner A. Krenkel zum 70. Geburtstag, Hildesheim, 105−117. Schmeling, Gareth (2011), A Commentary on the Satyrica of Petronius, Oxford. Seidensticker, Bernd (2020), Euripides. Kyklops, Berlin/New York. Setaioli, Aldo (2011), Arbitri Nugae. Petronius’ Short Poems in the Satyrica, Heidelberg. Smith, Martin S. (ed. comm.) (1975), Petronius. Cena Trimalchionis, Oxford. Sullivan, J. P. (1968), The Satyricon of Petronius. A Literary Study, London. Wessels, Antje (forthcoming), “Ovid Tristien”, in: Melanie Möller (ed.), Handbuch Ovid, Stuttgart.



Part III: Ambiguous Narratives

Robert Kirstein

Half Heroes? Ambiguity in Ovid’s Metamorphoses Abstract: Ovid’s Metamorphoses have a heroic image that is different from that of epics such as Homer’s Odyssey or Virgil’s Aeneid. The main character is replaced by a polyphony of heroes in about 250 individual narratives, which are linked to form a highly complex narrative structure. This paper attempts to analyze this aspect by integrating approaches from the Tübingen Research Training Group 1808 Ambiguity: Production and Perception and the Freiburg Collaborative Research Center 948 Heroes, Heroizations, Heroisms. In particular, at the intersection of literary studies and linguistics, it will be asked how ambiguity is generated linguistically in the Metamorphoses. It is therefore less about the evaluation of individual characters from the point of view of heroism, but rather about how, one level deeper, a language of ambiguity is constructed. A tale from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the story of Hermaphroditus and Salmacis, serves as an example text. Keywords: Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Hermaphroditus and Salmacis, Stefan Zweig, modernity versus antiquity and pre-modernity, ambiguity, ambiguity resolution, vagueness, ambiguity and narrative, ambiguity and heroism, semi-adjectives in Ovid.

 Ovid’s Metamorphoses In the 1927 novella Die unsichtbare Sammlung (The Invisible Collection), Stefan Zweig recounts the experiences of the Berlin art dealer and gallery owner K., who visits a valued customer residing in a provincial Saxon town. This customer is an elderly gentleman who has gone blind. He is a distinguished retired lieutenant with a long administrative career, and is owner of an exquisite collection of 27 artworks and engravings, including works by Rembrandt, Dürer, and Mantegna. But when K. arrives, it seems that his portfolios are completely empty! It turns out that during the great inflation at the beginning of the 1920s, his wife and daughter

 A German version of this paper has been published in: helden. heroes. héros. E-Journal on the Cultures of the Heroic, Special Issue Vol. 6: Ambige Helden (2019), 27–35. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110715811-011

  Robert Kirstein had been forced to sell all of his prints, piece by piece, in secret. Now the collection was a mere husk, consisting only of 27 protective portfolios. The works of art themselves existed purely in the imagination and memory of their former owner. All the same, the proud collector displays his collection one piece at a time to the gallery owner, who had been hastily apprised of the situation by the family, who begged him not to let the old man know that his beloved pieces were no longer a part of his collection. The old gentleman describes each individual piece in loving detail and with expert care. At the end of the story, the equally dismayed yet fascinated gallery owner reflects on his experience, summing it up with: “Was ich aber mitnahm, war mehr: Ich hatte wieder einmal reine Begeisterung lebendig spüren dürfen in dumpfer, freudloser Zeit, eine Art durchleuchtete, ganz auf die Kunst gewandte Ekstase, wie sie unsere Menschen längst verlernt zu haben scheinen.” (“But what I ended up taking with me was much more. I was once again able to feel pure excitement, even in our dismal, joyless times; it was a kind of illuminated ecstasy, utterly beholden to art, the kind of ecstasy we as humans seem to have long forgotten.” Transl. RK) Literature’s ability to shape its own realities is a timeworn topic that has occupied literary theory and discussion since antiquity — sometimes more, sometimes less. In Die unsichtbare Sammlung, Stefan Zweig explores this theme by employing a (strategic) ambiguity of being and not-being. 1 After all, the artwork and engraving collection in the 27 portfolios is both there and not-there. This ambiguous phenomenon is further exacerbated through the act of reception. The actualization of the artistic objects that were in reality lost doesn’t just take place within the characters of the story, but also in the imaginations of the novella’s readers. In his story, Zweig subtly examines fundamental questions of fictionality using the methods of literary ambiguity: the problem of presence in the state of absence, and the issue of referentiality and the ‘reality’ of unreal objects. The issues of ‘fact and fiction’ and the ambiguity of the world, both underwent a process of radicalization in the great wars and existential crises of the twentieth century. Zweig’s literary realization in Die unsichtbare Sammlung offers only one, in some respects prophetic, example, since the narrative not only points to the imaginary and fictional status of artifacts in the art world, but also to the possibility of a complete loss of culture in the real world itself. In a particularly dramatic fashion, our current postmodern culture highlights the ambiguity and brokenness of existence as well as the inadequacy of human models of perception and interpretation of the world. It also confronts the epistemic consequences, an idea which Lyotard concisely expressed as the end of the grand narratives.  1 Regarding ‘strategic’ ambiguity in texts, see Bauer et al. 2010, 23–26.

Half Heroes? Ambiguity in Ovid’s Metamorphoses  

It is also appropriate in this summary of contemporary positions to point to the new relevance and perceived modernity — indeed ‘postmodernity’ — of an author like Ovid, whose main work Metamorphoses does not revolve around a great hero, such as Homer’s Odyssey or Virgil’s Aeneid. Instead, it astutely captures the ambiguity and fragmentation of our human existence in a highly complex, narrative structure of 250 individual stories in which the various components of the world become fluid and in which gods, heroes and humans are equally dethroned, deheroized, and displaced from their central role. 2 Though it may be rather daring to compare Stefan Zweig with Ovid, it does evoke the fundamental question of the diachronic transferability of cultural and literary phenomena perceived as modern (in the broadest sense) to ancient and pre-modern conditions. In his fundamental work Die Ästhetik der Ambiguität (1988), Christoph Bode takes a clear stance regarding ambiguity and identifies it as an essential characteristic of modernity in contrast to antiquity and pre-modernity. Bode takes a decidedly aesthetic approach: Die Moderne bevorzugt […] offensichtlich Erzählverfahren, die einer platt mimetischen Lesart entgegenstehen, ja sie absichtlich erschweren, mit dem Ziel, zwischen den […] dislozierten Elementen einen Deutungsraum zu öffnen, den aufzufüllen Aufgabe des ‘aktiven’ Lesers wäre. (8) Antike Kunst wäre demnach […] ambiguitätsfern. (279)

It is made quite clear here that ambiguity represents a special challenge for the study of literature and art, in synchronic-analytical as well as diachronic-comparative respects. Unlike Bode, the following observations propose that ambiguity is

 2 The term postmodernity is used here in an epoch-spanning sense. According to Welsch: “‘Postmodern’ ist, wer sich jenseits von Einheitsobsessionen der irreduziblen Vielfalt der Sprach-, Denk- und Lebensformen bewusst ist und damit umzugehen weiß. Und dazu muss man keineswegs im zu Ende gehenden 20. Jahrhundert leben, sondern kann schon Wittgenstein oder Kant, kann Diderot, Pascal oder Aristoteles geheißen haben.” (Welsch 2008, 35). For postmodernism see also e.g. Marquard 1984, McHale 2015, Zima 2014; for more limited definitions of overly broad postmodern terms, see Welsch 2008, 41; Fowler 2000, 3–33; Wiseman 2002, 449 (s.v. “postmodernism”). Zima 2014, 25 and 36‒46 considers modernism and postmodernism “problematic” in contrast to purely chronological, ideological or stylistic categorizations. Building upon Hassan (1994, 49–55) he cites the following features for postmodern literature: “uncertainty, fragmentation, dissolution of the canon, irony, carnivalization”, 25; cf. also McHale 2015, 8‒13 (“Post-modernism and its Precursors,” beginning, among others, with Nietzsche and Lawrence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy).

  Robert Kirstein no less characteristic of ancient than it is of modern literature. 3 The story of Hermaphroditus & Salmacis (Book 4, vv. 271–388) from Ovid’s Metamorphoses serves as a test case when it comes to applying currently discussed literary theories of ambiguity to pre-modern texts. 4 The story of the young hero who encounters the nymph Salmacis while on his journey instantly displays features of an ambiguity narrative. Its narrative and aetiological vanishing point lies in the creation of the intersexed, androgynous nature of the hermaphrodite. Using the fundamental positions in modern ambiguity studies as a guideline, we will first examine the extent to which Ovid’s narrative can be deemed an ‘ambiguity narrative.’ Secondly, we will consider what conclusions can be drawn from such an analysis regarding the aspect of the heroic, and to what extent the text can also be understood as a ‘heroic narrative.’ This analysis poses the following thesis: not only does the metamorphosis merge the physical bodies of the two characters, but it also blends together two distinct heroic configurations. The phenomena of the ambiguous and the heroic seem particularly suitable for interdisciplinary and diachronic study, for they are both dynamic phenomena that can be found in many different times, discourses, sign systems and communicative situations. They also play a major role in a multitude of social and cultural processes of change and differentiation.

 Hermaproditus & Salmacis: An Ambiguity Narrative The starting point for modern ambiguity research is the 1930 work by William Empson Seven Types of Ambiguity. In his introduction, Empson gives the following definition of ambiguity:

 3 Here, reference is to be made primarily to the (potentially ambiguity-producing) concept of mimesis from ancient theory. See in particular Bauer et al. 2010, 37f., here 37: “In der Wahrnehmung von Strukturen der Welt wird Ambiguität konstatiert und dementsprechend literarisch präsentiert.” On ambiguity in the Middle Ages, see the volume published by Auge/Witthöft 2016, especially 4 and 11. 4 In 1995, a verse inscription from the 2nd century B.C. was discovered near Halicarnassus, telling the story of Hermaphroditus and Salmacis. However, it differs in many respects from Ovid’s version. The editio princeps of the epigram is by Isager 1998. See also the annotated and translated edition by Merkelbach/Stauber 1998, 39–44; for an interpretation see Romano 2009, as well as the literature quoted in ibid., 543 n. 2; for further ancient written sources see Robinson 1999, 212–217.

Half Heroes? Ambiguity in Ovid’s Metamorphoses  

‘Ambiguity’ itself can mean an indecision as to what you mean, an intention to mean several things, a probability that one or other or both of two things has been meant, and the fact that a statement has several meanings. (5–6)

Empson’s definition raises two fundamental questions, which later studies regarding ambiguity have approached and dealt with differently. On the one hand, it poses the question whether ambiguity — and more specifically lexical ambiguity — should only refer to phenomena that have a ‘double meaning’ or also to denote phenomena that have ‘multiple meanings’. Bauer et al. refer to this fundamental distinction in their 2010 work Dimensionen der Ambiguität (27). On the other hand, it asks whether we should think of ‘double meaning’ itself as the sum of several simultaneously given meanings (as Empson assumes), or whether ‘double-meaning’ should be understood as bi-valence in the sense of mutually exclusive alternatives (ibid.). Along these two lines, research has treated ambiguity either as an open concept of ‘multiple meaning’ or as a narrow concept of antagonistic bi-valence. The previously mentioned study by Bode, for instance, is a perfect example of understanding ambiguity as an open concept. The second train of thought — and the much narrower definition of ambiguity — is represented by a 1977 work by Rimmon that is one of the cornerstones of ambiguity research in literary studies. Rimmon perceives ambiguity as the connection of non-connectable elements, as a “conjunction of exclusive disjuncts” (21). In their 2009 work, Amphibolie — Ambiguität — Ambivalenz: Die Struktur antagonistischgleichzeitiger Zweiwertigkeit, Berndt/Kammer argue along the same lines as Rimmon. 5 If we apply the abovementioned definitions of ambiguity to Ovid’s narrative of Hermaphroditus & Salmacis, it immediately becomes unequivocally clear (if one is allowed to use such a term in this context) that the character of Hermaphroditus is not ambiguous in the sense of an antagonistic bi-valence, for his essence is based precisely on the coexistence of both sexes. This androgynous nature is the result of a transformation in which both beings merge with one another. The metamorphosis is provoked by the violent and rape-like embrace of the boy by the nymph Salmacis, which is so strong that the two end up irreversibly uniting into a single hybrid form. Upon taking a closer look at the narrative, however, things start to get more complex. The beginning of the story (vv. 288–301) consists of a striking description of the setting (ékphrasis tópou); the hero of the story has left his home in the

 5 Furniss/Bath 2007, 272f. also point out the danger that otherwise an immense number of multiple meanings would fall under the definition of ambiguity.

  Robert Kirstein Troas and has set out to explore the world. In this respect he is comparable to the Homeric figure of Odysseus. It is not by chance that the verb errare (v. 294) has been chosen for this excerpt, for it clearly signals the intertextual reference to the pretext of the Odyssey and refers to the typical heroic moment of the transgression of space and norms. At some point on his journey, the boy reaches Lydia and Caria, regions in Asia Minor, and there he finds a quiet pool (stagnum), whose water is extraordinarily clear (vv. 297–298): videt hic stagnum lucentis ad imum / usque solum lymphae. (“He looks upon a pool whose clear water shimmers to the bottom”). But the purity of the water is rendered ambiguous, for the spring is so pure that it lacks any plant growth. The reader begins to feel a sense of foreboding that the locus amoenus will soon become a locus terribilis (vv. 298–300): non illic canna palustris / nec steriles ulvae nec acuta cuspide iunci. / perspicuus liquor est. (“A place where neither swamp reeds, nor infertile reed grass, nor spiked bulrush grows. The water is crystal clear”). The water of Salmacis’ spring is thus given two distinct meanings within the same passage — purity and sterility — which are inherently antagonistic. Yet they coexist with one another. The purity of the water reflects the boy’s character, and is how he ‘sees’ the pond, i.e. from his perspective (videt), while, the ominous adjective sterilis is from the perspective of the omniscient, authoritative narrative voice. The ambiguity becomes even more complex when it comes to the character Salmacis, for it is both the name of the pool and of the nymph who dwells within it. 6 This ambiguity of referring to either the pool or the personage tied to it is maintained throughout the story. There are thus two meanings of ‘Salmacis’ which also seem to be antagonistic and mutually exclusive, and which challenge the reader’s imagination even if one allows the laws of the narrative world of metamorphoses to take hold. The impression that the text calls for an almost metapoetic reflection on aspects of ambiguity is strengthened if we consider that liquid water, with its formless essence, clearly brings to mind the phenomenon of vagueness, which is a close cousin to ambiguity. Charles Segal had already called attention to the symbolic correlation between landscape and character in 1969. As extraordinary as the pool is due to its clarity and the absence of fauna, equally extraordinary is the personage of the nymph belonging to it. Salmacis, as expressly stated in verse 304, is the “only” (sola) nymph who is not part of Diana the goddess of the hunt’s retinue. She is not interested in the hunt, not even at the urging of her sisters, and prefers to  6 Cf. Fränkel 1956, 88: “He pictures the translucent waters of the Salmacis pool as embedded in green meadows […], and soon afterward he similarly describes the naiad Salmacis as clad in a transparent dress and reclining on soft grass […]”. See also Keith 1999, 217.

Half Heroes? Ambiguity in Ovid’s Metamorphoses  

spend her time bathing (vv. 306–307). 7 Because Salmacis is at once water and water nymph (lympha and nympha), spending her time bathing in the pool can be interpreted as a form of narcissism (v. 310 sed modo fonte suo formosos perluit artus — “but she soon bathes her lovely limbs in her spring”). 8 With the narrative of Hermaphroditus & Salmacis, we have so far only dealt with ambiguous phenomena at the level of individual characters, events, and settings. Often, however, the focus is not on the limited ambiguity that can be detected here or there in the narrative, but rather on the question of whether literary texts — and even other works of art — can be characterized in their entirety by an ‘ambiguity’ that includes and influences all narrative subsystems. In such cases, one can speak of a ‘narrative’ or ‘textual ambiguity’. 9 Rimmon (1977) discusses such forms of narrative ambiguity in detail: When the narrative is truly ambiguous, the enigma remains unsolved, not because the text provides no answer, but because it provides two mutually exclusive yet equally tenable answers. Searching for a solution, the reader gropes for clues and realizes that they balance each other in the deadlock of opposition. (45)

Jens Mittelbach argues along similar lines in Die Kunst des Widerspruchs. Ambiguität als Darstellungsprinzip in Shakespeares Henry V und Julius Caesar (2003): Textuelle Ambiguität soll hier, bis zu diesem Punkt Rimmon entsprechend, als eine Eigenschaft bestimmter literarischer Texte verstanden werden, die bewusst so vertextet sind, dass sie an der Textoberfläche mehr als eine Lesart unterstützen, wobei diese Lesarten sich zwar gegenseitig ausschließen, ihre gleichzeitige Realisierung im Rezeptionsprozess vom Text aber gefordert ist. (23)

Applied to works of the Augustan period, such as Ovid’s Metamorphoses or Virgil’s Aeneid, an opportunity opens up to establish whether, and to what extent, these two major epic narratives exhibit ambiguities that affect the interpretation of the respective text. Such narrative ambiguities emerge when, in addition to the pro-Augustinian surface structure, a second, anti-Augustinian deep structure, or secondary structure is identified. This debate has been an ongoing discussion —

 7 Regarding the exceptionality of the nymph Salmacis, see Robinson 1999, 217f. 8 Cf. Segal 1969, 25: “The Salmacis-Hermaphroditus episode is perhaps the most elaborate use of the ambiguous symbolism of water”; and: “It is directly after the description of the clear ‘pool […] that’ we are given the sensuous details of the nymph’s life […]. She ‘washes her lovely limbs’ (formosos perluit artus) in her own fountain.” 9 On ‘narrative ambiguity’, see also Bauer et al. 2010, 27; Münkler 2011; Potysch 2018, 183–195.

  Robert Kirstein known as the further-voices theory — within classical philological research since the 1960s, first in the USA and then also in Europe. Taking a look back at Ovid’s Salmacis, and our description of the ambiguity of water and water nymph, element and personage, we briefly mentioned another issue regarding the definition of two concepts: the relationship between ambiguity and vagueness. The fundamental difference between the two terms is usually derived from the view that vagueness is essentially characterized by borderline cases, whereas ambiguity is characterized by the clear demarcation of distinct meanings. Take a landscape for example: the transition between a mountain and the valley from which it rises may be blurred by the gradual transition of the mountain’s slopes, so that it is nearly impossible to define a clear boundary between mountain and non-mountain. 10 In Ovid’s narrative, the vagueness of ‘water’ creates an even more complex ambiguity between personage and element, thereby provoking a further increase in reader-response activity. The narrative’s ending provides a remarkable example of the resolution of ambiguity. For when both figures merge, Salmacis’ ontological ambiguity, which after all was both water nymph and water, acquires an ironic clarity. By becoming part of the new androgynous being Hermaphroditus, she sheds her other being — the element water — and transforms completely into a single personage. Admittedly this transformation comes with the price of a renewed ambiguity, for she is dissolved into the twofold nature of the new hero Hermaphroditus. The opposing and dynamic processes of ambiguation and disambiguation overlap and intertwine in this Ovidian narrative, in many ways much like its characters.

 Hermaphroditus & Salmacis: A Heroic Narrative The story of Hermaphroditus & Salmacis contains a number of ambiguous phenomena which in their narrative density and semantic complexity ultimately prompt us to consider the heroic status of the two characters. The following thoughts regarding a heroic narrative are based on a heuristic typology that identifies five characteristics as essential features of heroism. Schlechtriemen (2016) describes them as follows:

 10 On the distinction between vagueness and ambiguity, see also Kennedy 2011, 507; Mittelbach 2003, 9; Sorensen 2019, 2; Tuggy 1993, 275.

Half Heroes? Ambiguity in Ovid’s Metamorphoses  

1) they are extraordinary, 2) they are autonomous and transgressive, 3) they are morally and affectively charged, 4) they have an agonistic character and, 5) they have a high degree of agency. (17, emphasis in the original text)

When applying this model to an ancient text like Ovid’s Metamorphoses, two limitations are inherently apparent. Firstly, these are fictional characters, objects, and events in a fictional heroic narrative, in which moral and aesthetic categories may be different from those in factual texts, such as in Livy’s historical work Ab urbe condita, also written in Augustan times. 11 In addition to this synchronicanalytical difference, there is also the possibility of diachronically comparative epoch-specific differences in the underlying moral and aesthetic norms and expectations, as well as the hero semantics specific to the epoch and culture from which they derive. 12 When it comes to Ovid’s narrative, the structure of the plot — in which the agency is predominantly in the hands of the female character — plays a vital role. 13 For it is the nymph Salmacis who notices the boy, it is she whose sexual desire is awakened, she who speaks to him, and it is she who — in a reversal of the traditional gender roles prevalent in stories within the Metamorphoses — approaches the boy both verbally and physically. And it is she who finally rapes him in such a way that a new being, the two-sexed Hermaphroditus, emerges from the blending of both bodies. 14 Therefore one can safely say that the character of Salmacis exudes a high degree of exceptionality (an extraordinary hero), a character trait that is emphasized in the introductory part of the story when it is said that she alone among the nymphs does not belong to the retinue of the Goddess of the hunt Diana (v. 304 solaque Naiadum celeri non nota Dianae; triple negation nec ... nec ... nec in vv. 302–303; see also above, p. 162). At the same time, the placebound nature of Salmacis is a significant contrast to the ideal of agency and exceptionalism. In most ancient epics, highly mobile, ‘journeying’ male heroes such as Ulysses, Jason, or Aeneas are juxtaposed with female figures who, in contrast, are immobile and often serve the function of a delaying moment when they prevent the hero from carrying out his actual quest (e.g. Calypso, Kirke,

 11 De Jong 2014, 171f. points out the similarity of ancient historiography to narrative text forms like the epic. 12 For diachronic aspects, see von den Hoff et al. 2013, the Merkur booklet “Heldengedenken. Über das heroische Phantasma”, ed. Lau 2009, with contributions on antiquity by Neiman 2009 and Schmitt 2009, as well as Weinelt 2015, 17f. 13 For more on agency, see Schlechtriemen 2016. 14 Regarding the reversal of gender roles, see also Bömer 1976, 114f., 118, and n. 15; compare also the haste with which Salmacis desires the boy (v. 317 properabat).

  Robert Kirstein Nausikaa, Dido — a notable exception is Medea, whose agency is so high that she follows Jason to Greece). In an allusion to Odysseus, the male character in Ovid’s narrative is explicitly described as ‘roaming through unknown lands’ (v. 294 ignotis errare locis). Alison Keith conducted a gender analysis of the Hermaphroditus & Salmacis story looking specifically at the relation of characters and space and describes Salmacis as an “immobile female obstacle(s)”.15 This interpretation is particularly fitting in the case of Salmacis because, as a toponymic water nymph, she is both an individual figure and a part of the landscape, and thus the epitome of place-bound and immobile (cf. v. 338 simulatque gradu discedere verso). This dual nature is directly reflected in Ovid’s play on words lympha — nympha ‘water — nymph’, vv. 298–302). 16 It is not just Salmacis’ personage which is exceptional; her act of raping the boy is highly transgressive in regards to the extradiegetic world, but also according to the norms of the narrative world of Metamorphoses.17 Exactly the opposite is true for the male character, who is characterized by an almost complete absence of agency. The only exceptions can be found at the beginning and end of the story, where he is described once as a ‘travelling hero’ and once as the son of Hermes and Aphrodite, to whom he turns pleadingly. Much like Salmacis, where a balance is struck between her strength of agency and her place-boundedness, the boy’s divine parentage creates a counterweight to his weak agency. 18 Still, a number of direct and indirect characterizations make the character’s overall lack of agency within the actual narrative clear. Like many other protagonists of the Metamorphoses, our hero is still young, standing on the threshold between childhood and young adulthood. In the introductory part, he is called puer (‘child, boy’) by the internal narrator Alcithoe. The reader even

 15 Keith 1999, 217: “Until the moment when Salmacis sees Hermaphroditus, then, the Ovidian narrative proceeds on a gendered narrative trajectory that distinguishes the male epic hero from the feminized site of his labours […]. The very framework of the tale encodes the gendered dichotomy of ‘male-hero-human’ on the side of the subject; and female- obstacle-boundary-space, on the other’ identified by De Lauretis as intrinsic to western narrative.” On gender aspects in Ovid, see also Sharrock 2002, and Salzman-Mitchell 2005. In the context of the heroic see Hauck et al. 2018; Rolshoven et al. 2018; regarding the concept of space in the Hermaphroditus & Salmacis narrative, see Kirstein 2018. 16 Regarding the use of wordplay, see Zirker/Winter-Froemel 2015; the role reversal is also reflected in the grammatical subject-object structures, including the reversal of seeing and being seen, see Kirstein 2018, 110 with notes 23 and 139. 17 Romano 2009, 559 also refers to this in his comparison to the Salmakis inscription. 18 In the Salmakis inscription (see n. 4 above) Hermaphroditus is described as ‘quite outstanding’ in the sense of an extraordinary hero.

Half Heroes? Ambiguity in Ovid’s Metamorphoses  

learns his exact age: fifteen years old (vv. 292–293 is tria cum primum fecit quinquennia, montes / deseruit patrios [...]). He is repeatedly described as puer throughout the text, both by the superordinate narrative voice and directly by Salmacis herself: et tunc quoque forte legebat, cum puerum vidit visumque optavit habere. nec tamen ante adiit, etsi properabat adire, quam se composuit, quam circumspexit amictus et finxit vultum et meruit formosa videri. tunc sic orsa loqui: ‘puer o dignissime credi esse deus, seu tu deus es, potes esse Cupido, sive es mortalis, qui te genuere, beati […].’

315

320

and she chanced to be gathering flowers when she saw this glorious boy and wanted at once to possess him. Keen as she was to approach him, she didn’t move closer until she had made herself pretty. She cast a careful eye on her dress and arranged her expression. Nobody now could have questioned her beauty. At last she spoke: ‘Magnificent boy, one could easily take you to be a god! If you are a god, you must surely be Cupid. If only a mortal, why then, your parents are wonderfully blessed! […].’ (transl. Raeburn 2004, 146f.).

Only once is the term iuvenis (‘young man’) used to describe him. This occurs precisely at the point in the narrative where Salmacis clasps him close in an act of physical violence, ‘stealing kisses’ and ‘touching his chest’ against his will: ‘vicimus et meus est!’ exclamat nais, et omni veste procul iacta mediis inmittitur undi pugnantemque tenet luctantiaque oscula carpit subiectatque manus invitaque pectora tangit et nunc hac iuveni, nunc circumfunditur illac.

360

‘Victory! He’s mine!’ the naiad shouted. Then stripping off all her clothes and tossing them wide, she dived in after her quarry, grabbed hold of his limbs as he struggled against her, greedily kissing him, sliding her hands underneath him to fondle his unresponsive nipples and wrapping herself round each of his sides in turn (transl. Raeburn 2004, 148). 19

The boy does not yet know the meaning of love, and blushes as soon as Salmacis speaks to him (v. 330 nescit, enim, quid amor; sed et erubuisse decebat). A fateful consequence of the final transformation, a merging of both beings, is that the

 19 On iuvenis, see also Nill 2019.

  Robert Kirstein male half will never reach true adulthood, but will pass directly from adolescence — puer — to a permanent state of semivir or semimas (‘half-man’). 20 Contextually it is particularly noteworthy that the boy’s name remains undisclosed to us at first. The Minyad Alcithoe, who is telling the story to her sisters to pass the time (vv. 274–275), introduces him quite anonymously with the demonstrative pronoun ille (v. 296), while the name of the female character, Salmacis, is given at the very beginning of the story (v. 306). The name Hermaphroditus, however, is not mentioned until the very end of the story (v. 383), in a moment of narrative logic when the metamorphosis is completed and Hermaphroditus has become ‘half-man’ (semi-mas or semi-vir). At this point of the story he beseeches his divine parents that from now on anyone who touches the pool should be transformed into a half-being like himself: Ergo, ubi se liquidas, quo vir descenderat, undas semimarem fecisse videt mollitaque in illis membra, manus tendens, sed iam non voce virili Hermaphroditus ait: ‘nato date munera vestro, et pater et genetrix, amborum nomen habenti: quisquis in hos fontes vir venerit, exeat inde semivir et tactis subito mollescat in undis.’

380

385

And so, when he saw that the pool which his manhood had entered had left him only half of a man and this was the place where his limbs had softened, Hermaphroditus stretched out his hands and appealed, no more with a masculine voice: ‘Dear father and mother, I pray you, grant this boon to the son who bears the names of you both: whoever enters this pool as a man, let him weaken as soon as he touches the water and always emerge with his manhood diminished!’ (transl. Raeburn 2004, 149f.).

Even more striking than the initial omission of the proper name is the use of semi(‘half’), to build two compound words: semi-mas in verse 381, and semi-vir (‘halfman’) in verse 386, both stylistically stressed by their parallel positioning within the verse. In Ovidian texts, the concept of the ‘half’ is used quite frequently: simply consider the poem Amores 1.5 in Ovid’s Elegies of Love. With this book the young poet rose to distinction early in his career. In Amores 1.5, the curtain rises on the stage of Ovidian romantic poetry to reveal his beloved Corinna for the first time. And even though the poet’s much desired union is attained, the atmosphere

 20 Robinson 1999, 220 discusses the question of whether, in the Ovidian representation, both bodies merge into the new body in equal parts or whether the male part predominates (“[…] Hermaphroditus is also described with terms more appropriate to effeminacy than to androgyny,” with reference to Bömer 1976, 131 on semimas).

Half Heroes? Ambiguity in Ovid’s Metamorphoses  

of the poem is charged with copious ambiguities: it is midday, the sunlight illuminates the bedchamber through shutters that are half open and half closed; Corinna is exposed, yet also clothed. The readers are at once present within the room, and not present, as “voyeurs at half distance”. 21 Therefore, the reader is not surprised when in the next poem of Amores (1.6), the lover is found languishing in front of the closed door of his beloved, now an excluded lover (exclusus amator), begging the slave guarding her door to open it just a crack. The reasoning here is that he is so emaciated by lovesickness that his body could easily pass through the narrowest of gaps. 22 Once again, the concept of ‘a half’ is present, this time in relation to the door which the slave is supposed to open ‘halfway’ (ianua ... semiadaperta). Ovid’s preference for semi-adjectives creates word usages such as: semideus, semihomo, semivir, semimas, semiaderpetus, semifer (‘semi-beast’), semicrem(at)us (‘half-burned’) and semilacer (‘half-torn’).23

 Conclusion Was Ovid the poet of halves? Such a poetic substructure appears to be a fitting representation of a ‘postmodern’ Grenzgänger, a man who reflected upon the crises of the outgoing republic and Augustus’s new order, which was marked by success but at the price of political freedom, in highly complex poetry, perhaps not unlike modern writers such as Stefan Zweig.24 A similar intertwining process regarding ambiguation and disambiguation emerges when the text is read as a heroic narrative, for both characters display distinctly heroic qualities. At the same time, these qualities are not fully realized until both are transformed into the new unified character of Hermaphroditus. In a way, one can observe at a meta-poetic level how the text, or the ideal author

 21 In accordance with Wertheimer 2014, 270f.; see also Kirstein 2015, 274f. 22 Cf. Ovid, Amores 1.6.1–6: Ianitor (indignum) dura religate catena, / difficilem moto cardine pande forem. / quod precor exiguum est: aditu fac ianua parvo / obliquum capiat semiadaperta latus. / longus amor tales corpus tenuavit in usus / aptaque subducto pondere membra dedit. 23 Cf. Ovid, Met. 1.192; 12.536; 2.633; 12.287; 7.344; Bömer 1976, 131 on Met. 4.381. In Ars amatoria 2.24 Ovid refers to the hybrid form of the Minotaur with: semibovemque virum semivirumque bovem (Sharrock 1994, 128–133). Regarding the semi-composita in Latin see Hübner 1980; Thomas 2002; Lucarini 2010. 24 Cf. von Albrecht 2000, 305: “Aber Ovid trägt zugleich typische Züge eines ‘letzten’ Vertreters einer Epoche.” For more on the concept of a ‘Grenzgänger’ see Fludernik/Gehrke 1999.

  Robert Kirstein embedded within the text, not only forms and transforms the characters, but also the textual hero images that these characters represent. 25 The story of Hemaphroditus & Salmacis is a perfect example of how Ovid’s Metamorphoses, or parts of it, can be read both as an ambiguity narrative as well as a heroic narrative, and that both aspects are intimately connected with one another. For it is precisely within these fictional heroic narratives, with their aesthetic quest to gain independence, that all facets of the heroic, including aspects of deheroization, can be acted out with far greater license than appears to ever be possible in factual texts (or other media).26 Thus, ambiguity phenomena are particularly suitable as textual strategies with this purpose in mind, for heroic narratives are based on processes of attribution which, in a non-essential sense, are unavoidably polyphonic, ambiguous and perceptually dependent.27 Ovid’s Metamorphoses, with its myriad of mutually relativizing individual narratives, provides an ideal laboratory for the study of ambiguity and heroization phenomena.28

 25 Here is a parallel to the “removal” of the heroes that Nill 2019 elaborates on in his contribution to the study of Antaeus and Hercules in Lucan’s Bellum Civile. But whereas the “convergence of the two combatants via their similarity” destabilizes and even neutralizes the dichotomous antinomy between the paradigmatically ‘good’ hero Heracles and the monster Antaeus, the merger-metamorphosis of the nymph Salmacis with the boy has a stabilizing effect. 26 For more on the aspect of deheroization, see Gelz et al. 2015. 27 Cf. Schlechtriemen 2016, 17. 28 Pace Bode 1988 (see also p. 159). The topic of ambiguous heroes illustrates once again that ambiguity phenomena are not simply a threat to the success of communication (e.g. Chomsky 2002, 107: “If you want to make sure that we never misunderstand one another, for that purpose language is not well designed, because you have such properties as ambiguity”), but can also be quite productive, see for example Piantadosi et al. 2012, 281: “[the Chomskyan view] on ambiguity is exactly backwards. We argue, contrary to the Chomskyan view, that ambiguity is in fact a desirable property of communication systems […]. We argue for two beneficial properties of ambiguity: first, where context is informative about meaning, unambiguous language is partly redundant with the context and therefore inefficient; and second, ambiguity allows the re-use of words and sounds which are more easily produced or understood.” This is similar to Winkler 2015, 1: “[A]mbiguity is constitutive of communication […] and productive in legal, political and philosophical discourse […], as well as in literature […] and the arts […].” On October 13, 1953 Thomas Mann noted in a diary entry: “Heitere Ambiguität ist im Grunde mein Element.” (Jens 1995, 127).

Half Heroes? Ambiguity in Ovid’s Metamorphoses  

Bibliography Albrecht, Michael von (2000), Das Buch der Verwandlungen. Ovid-Interpretationen, Düsseldorf. Auge, Oliver/Witthöft, Christiane (eds.) (2016), Ambiguität im Mittelalter. Formen zeitgenössischer Reflexion und interdisziplinärer Rezeption. Interdisziplinäre Tagung Ambiguität im Mittelalter, Berlin. Bauer, Matthias/Knape, Joachim/Koch, Peter/Winkler, Susanne (2010), “Dimensionen der Ambiguität”, in: Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik 158, 7–75. Berndt, Frauke/Kammer, Stephan (2009), “Amphibolie, Ambiguität, Ambivalenz: Die Struktur antagonistisch-gleichzeitiger Zweiwertigkeit”, in: Frauke Berndt/Stephan Kammer (eds.), Amphibolie, Ambiguität, Ambivalenz, Würzburg, 7–30. Bode, Christoph (1988), Die Ästhetik der Ambiguität. Zu Funktion und Bedeutung von Mehrdeutigkeit in der Literatur der Moderne, Tübingen. Bömer, Franz (1976), P. Ovidius Naso. Metamorphosen. Kommentar. Buch IV–V, Heidelberg. Chomsky, Noam (2002), On Nature and Language. Edited by Adriana Belletti and Luigi Rizzi, Cambridge. Lauretis, Teresa de (1984), Alice Doesn’t. Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema, Bloomington. Empson, William (31953), Seven Types of Ambiguity [1930], London. Fludernik, Monika/Gehrke, Hans-Joachim (eds.) (1999), Grenzgänger zwischen Kulturen, Würzburg. Fowler, Don (2000), Roman Constructions. Readings in Postmodern Latin, Oxford. Fränkel, Hermann (21956), Ovid. A Poet between Two Worlds, Berkeley. Furniss, Tom/Bath, Michael (²2007), Reading Poetry. An Introduction, Harlow. Gelz, Andreas/Helm, Katharina/Hubert, Hans W./Marquart, Benjamin/Willis, Jakob (2015), “Phänomene der Deheroisierung in Vormoderne und Moderne”, in: helden. heroes. héros. E-Journal zu Kulturen des Heroischen 3.1, 135–149. Hassan, Ihab (21994), “Postmoderne heute”, in: Wolfgang Welsch (ed.), Wege aus der Moderne. Schlüsseltexte der Postmoderne-Diskussion, Berlin, 47–56. Hauck, Carolin/Mommertz, Monika/Schlüter, Andreas/Seedorf, Thomas (eds.) (2018), Tracing the Heroic Through Gender, Baden-Baden. Hoff, Ralf von den/Asch, Ronald G./Aurnhammer, Achim/Bröckling, Ulrich/Korte, Barbara/Leonhard, Jörn/Studt, Birgit (2013), “Helden — Heroisierungen — Heroismen. Transformationen und Konjunkturen von der Antike bis zur Moderne. Konzeptionelle Ausgangspunkte des Sonderforschungsbereichs 948”, in: helden. heroes. héros. E-Journal zu Kulturen des Heroischen 1.1, 7–14. Hübner, Wolfgang (1980), “Corpore semifero. Ekphrasis oder Metamorphose des Steinbocks ?”, in: Hermes 108, 73–83. Isager, Signe (1998), “The Pride of Halikarnassos. Editio princeps of an Inscription from Salmacis”, in: Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 123, 1–23. Jens, Inge (1995), Thomas Mann. Tagebücher 1953–1955, Frankfurt am Main. Jong, Irene de (2014), Narratology & Classics. A Practical Guide, Oxford. Keith, Alison (1999), “Versions of Epic Masculinity in Ovid’s Metamorphoses”, in: Philip Hardie/Alessandro Barchiesi/Stephen Hinds (eds.), Ovidian Transformations. Essays on the Metamorphoses and its Reception, Cambridge, 214–239.

  Robert Kirstein Kennedy, Christopher (2011), “Ambiguity and Vagueness: An Overview”, in: Claudia Maienborn/Klaus v. Heusinger/Paul Portner (eds.), Semantics. An International Handbook of Natural Language Meaning, Berlin, 507–535. Kenney, Edward J. (21995), P. Ovidi Nasonis: Amores; Medicamina Faciei Femineae; Ars Amatoria; Remedia iteratis curis edidit, Oxford. Kirstein, Robert (2015), “Ficta et Facta. Reflexionen über den Realgehalt der Dinge bei Ovid”, in: Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und Allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft 60, 257–277. Kirstein, Robert (2018), “Zeit, Raum, Geschlecht. Ovids Erzählung von Hermaphrodit und Salmacis (Metamorphosen 4.271–388)”, in: Wolfgang Polleichtner (ed.), Literatur- und Kulturtheorie und altsprachlicher Unterricht, Speyer, 99–145. Lau, Jörg (ed.) (2009), Heldengedenken. Über das heroische Phantasma, Merkur. Deutsche Zeitschrift für europäisches Denken 63 (724). Lucarini, Carlo Martino (2010), “Semipaganus (Pers. Chol. 6–7) e la storia di ‘paganus’”, in: Rivista di Filologia e di Istruzione Classica 138 (3–4), 426–444. Marquard, Odo (1984), Abschied vom Prinzipiellen. Philosophische Studien, Stuttgart. McHale, Brian (2015), The Cambridge Introduction to Postmodernism, Cambridge. Merkelbach, Reinhold/Stauber, Josef (1998), Steinepigramme aus dem griechischen Osten, Bd. 1: Die Westküste Kleinasiens von Knidos bis Ilion, Stuttgart. Mittelbach, Jens (2003), Die Kunst des Widerspruchs. Ambiguität als Darstellungsprinzip in Shakespeares Henry V und Julius Caesar, Trier. Münkler, Marina (2011), Narrative Ambiguität. Die Faustbücher des 16. bis 18. Jahrhunderts, Göttingen. Neiman, Susan (2009), “Wenn Odysseus ein Held sein soll, dann können wir es auch sein”, in: Merkur. Deutsche Zeitschrift für europäisches Denken 63 (724), 849–859. Nill, Hans-Peter (2019), “Antaeus und Hercules. Zur ‘Entfernung’ des Heroischen und Nicht-Heroischen bei Lucan”, in: helden. heroes. héros. E-Journal on the Cultures of the Heroic, Special Issue Vol. 6: Ambige Helden, 57–65. Piantadosi, Steven T./Tily, Harry/Gibson, Edward (2012), “The Communicative Function of Ambiguity in Language”, in: Cognition 122, 280–291. Potysch, Nicolas (2018), Wiederholt doppeldeutig in Bild und Schrift. Ambiguität im durchbilderten Roman, Hannover. Raeburn, David (2004), Ovid. Metamorphoses. A New Verse Translation. With an Introduction by Denis Feeney, London. Rimmon, Shlomith (1977), The Concept of Ambiguity, the Example of James, Chicago. Robinson, Matthew (1999), “Salmacis and Hermaphroditus. When Two Become One”, in: Classical Quarterly 49, 212–223. Rolshoven, Johanna/Krause, Toni J./Winkler, Justin (eds.) (2018), Heroes. Repräsentationen des Heroischen in Geschichte, Literatur und Alltag, Bielefeld. Romano, Allen T. (2009), “The Invention of Marriage. Hermaphroditus and Salmacis at Halicarnassus and in Ovid”, in: Classical Quarterly 59, 543–561. Salzman-Mitchell, Patricia B. (2005), A Web of Fantasies. Gaze, Image and Gender in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Columbus, OH. Schlechtriemen, Tobias (2016), “The Hero and a Thousand Actors. On the Constitution of Heroic Agency”, in: helden. heroes. héros. E-Journal zu Kulturen des Heroischen 4.1, 17–32. Schmitt, Arbogast (2009), “Achill — ein Held?”, in: Merkur. Deutsche Zeitschrift für europäisches Denken 63 (724), 860–870.

Half Heroes? Ambiguity in Ovid’s Metamorphoses  

Segal, Charles (1969), Landscape in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. A Study in the Transformations of a Literary Symbol, Wiesbaden. Sharrock, Alison (1994), Seduction and Repetition in Ovid’s Ars Amatoria 2, Oxford. Sharrock, Alison (2002), “Gender and Sexuality”, in: Philip Hardie (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Ovid, Cambridge, 95–107. Sorensen, Roy (2018), “Vagueness”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2018 Edition), (ed.) Edward N. Zalta, URL = . Tarrant, Richard J. (2004), P. Ovidi Nasonis Metamorphoses. Recognovit brevique adnotatione critica instruxit, Oxford. Thomas, Jean-François (2002), “La lexicalisation de l’idée de moitié dans la composition nominale en latin”, in: Bulletin de la Société de linguistique de Paris 97, 219–243. Tuggy, David (1993), “Ambiguity, Polysemy, and Vagueness”, in: Cognitive Linguistics 4 (3), 273–290. Weinelt, Nora (2015), “Zum dialektischen Verhältnis der Begriffe ‘Held’ und ‘Anti-Held’. Eine Annäherung aus literaturwissenschaftlicher Perspektive”, in: helden. heroes. héros. E-Journal zu Kulturen des Heroischen 3.1, 15–22. Welsch, Wolfgang (72008), Unsere postmoderne Moderne, Berlin. Wertheimer, Jürgen (2014), “Das Kipp-Spiel des Als Ob”, in: Matthias Neuber (ed.), Fiktion und Fiktionalismus — Beiträge zu Hans Vaihingers ‘Philosophie des Als Ob’, Würzburg, 265– 280. Winkler, Susanne (2015), “Exploring Ambiguity and the Ambiguity Model from a Transdisciplinary Perspective”, in: Susanne Winkler (ed.), Ambiguity. Language and Communication, Berlin, 1–25. Wiseman, Timothy P. (2002), Classics in Progress. Essays on Ancient Greece and Rome, Oxford. Zima, Peter V. (32014), Moderne — Postmoderne. Gesellschaft, Philosophie, Literatur, Stuttgart. Zirker, Angelika/Winter-Froemel, Esme (2015), “Wordplay and Its Interfaces in Speaker-Hearer Interaction: An Introduction”, in: Angelika Zirker/Esme Winter-Froemel (eds.), Wordplay and Metalinguistic/Metadiscursive Reflection. Authors, Contexts, Techniques, and MetaReflection, Berlin, 1–22. Zweig, Stefan (2001), Meisternovellen, Frankfurt am Main.

Stella Alekou

Underneath the Arachnean and Minervan Veil of Ambiguity: Cultural and Political Simulatio in Ovidian Ecphrasis Abstract: This article examines the tale of Arachne and Minerva in Ovid’s Metamorphoses Book 6 and argues that the ecphrastic interlude in the given account reveals contrasting conceptions of simulatio that engender ambiguity. It is shown that the certamen results in an ambivalent victory for the propagandistic compositional order, but also in a questionable silencing of artistic expressions of resistance; ecphrasis emerges in both Arachne’s wordless story-telling and Ovid’s verbal tapestry as a powerful and polyphonic device that acts as a veiled platform of sociopolitical criticism. With focus on the ambiguities of cultural and political simulatio in the episode in question, this discussion discloses a variety of conflictual perspectives and multiple layers of violated clarity, which may, paradoxically, elucidate the reader’s perception of one of the most famous stories in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Keywords: simulatio, ecphrasis, cultural and political ambiguities, paradigmatic tapestries, art as weapon Ovid’s Metamorphoses is a work that has fostered many debates in scholarship. 1 A significant disagreement in past discussions concerns pro-Augustan and antiAugustan interpretations of the text, which led, nonetheless, to the general view that “Ovid’s use of Greek myth is a veiled commentary on Roman politics.”2 Whether aiming to defend or expose Augustan propaganda, most scholars argue that Ovid’s fictional accounts are thus also meant to suggest a reevaluation of specific historical accounts.3 What is of particular interest in the given work is that the device of metamorphosis not only facilitates transition from myth to reality and vice versa, but also acts as an instrument of intentionally ambiguous

 1 See Williams 1968, 100‒101. 2 Ziogas 2011, 37. On a discussion of political dimensions of Ovidian poetry, see Powell 1992; Barchiesi 1997; Wheeler 1999, 194‒205; Davis 2006. 3 Ahl 1984, 174‒208. See also Curran 1972, 71‒91; Williams 2009, 155. On definitions of Augustanism see Feeney 1992, 3. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110715811-012

  Stella Alekou meaning-making. 4 An excellent example of intended ambiguity is Ovidian ecphrasis5 and the double ecphrasis of Arachneʼs and Minervaʼs tapestries in particular, that has often been examined as a miniature of two different aspects of the Metamorphoses. 6 This is a unique ecphrasis, as it focuses on the multifaceted and often conflictual meanings of simulatio to deliberately explore two contrasting attitudes toward artistic power, all the while unfolding the spider’s double nature: 7 aranea innocently weaving her artistic canvas, and aranea ad infinitum on the watch, ready to take on those who would fray her nets. 8 Creatively elaborated by the Greco-Roman imagery, this duality is at the center of the spider’s mythology and is explored in Ovid’s mythography, to serve a specific agenda. By focusing on cultural and political ambiguities in the episode in question, this paper will discuss Ovidian simulatio as intentionally violating clarity, to paradoxically influence the reader’s understanding of one of the most wellknown stories in Ovid’s epos.

 Cultural Ambiguities: Redefining the Self In Metamorphoses Book 6, the narrator informs us that, prior to her transformation into a spider, Arachne existed as a young woman from Lydia (11). The  4 On ambiguity as an “instrument of creative meaning-making”, see Fontaine 2018, xiii. See also Hardie 2002, 174 and Solodow 1988, 203‒232 on the overlap between the vocabularies of metamorphosis and of art. 5 On ecphrasis in ancient literature, see Squire 2015, who focuses on ecphrastic “intermediality” and examines ancient as well as modern notions of ecphrasis. Cf. Graf 1995, 143–155; Heffernan 1993; Boehm/Pfotenhauer 1995. 6 Leach 1974, 103 and 106. See also Glei 1998, 85−104, who interprets Arachne’s winning tapestry and Minerva’s classically composed tapestry as visual analogies to Ovidʼs Metamorphoses and Vergil’s Aeneid, based on language, content and structure, namely, the three areas in which, as the author argues, the poetological discourse is quite implicit in the epic. 7 On post-structuralist preoccupations with iconicity of textuality and orality with regard to this account, see Vincent 1994, 361. On the antithesis between image and narrative within an ecphrasis see Konstan 2017, 26‒48. On the definition of ecphrasis based on an etymological interpretation, see Denham 2010, 143. See also Brassat 2017, 63–87, who presents a wide range of meanings of ecphrasis. On the original definition of classical Greek ecphrasis, see Kurman 1974, 1. 8 The spider’s double nature has been also attested in Homer, who speaks of spiders weaving their web in abandoned places (Od. 16.33‒5) and compares the net made by Hephaistos in order to trap lovers to a spider’s web (Od. 8.272‒81). For a discussion on these passages see Aeppli 1986, 190‒191; Ballestra-Puech 2006, 25. See also Rosati 1999, 248. On the spider’s nature, see Plin. Nat. Hist. 11.83; Cat. 68.49; Ov. Am. 1.14.7.

Underneath the Arachnean and Minervan Veil of Ambiguity  

girl’s humble origins are juxtaposed with her fame as a talented weaver (7‒8: non illa loco nec origine gentis / clara, sed arte fuit), 9 and, most importantly, with her boastful refusal to acknowledge the power of the master of weaving (6‒7: quam sibi lanificae non cedere laudibus artis / audierat […]). Arachne’s hubristic behaviour offends Minerva, who appears to her disguised as an old woman (26: Pallas anum simulat) and advises her to beg the goddess for forgiveness (33). The girl’s second refusal leads to the famous ecphrastic interlude: the weaving competition (70‒128). 10 The prominent motif of the tapestries, and of the work itself, namely, transformation, is foreshadowed by the use of the term simulat, which reappears at line 80, to seal Minerva’s strategically moralistic presence, first as an old lady (26) and, later on, self-portrayed in her tapestry as a peaceful weaver and a just divinity (80‒81: percussamque sua simulat de cuspide terram / edere cum bacis fetum canentis oliuae). While in her artistic creation the goddess sets the moral example through punitive transformation (83‒100), the Lydian girl illustrates the gods’ immoral actions against mortal women, as a result of deceptive transformation (103‒126). The contrast with the goddess’ majestic tapestry is further supported in the text, as Arachne’s work, in response to the Minervan simulatio, is introduced with a pair of antithetical images: that of the elusa Europa (103‒104) and of the uerus taurus (104), a juxtaposition resumed in uera putares (104), that alludes to an invoked measure of artistic value, that of trompe-l’oeil, the perfect illusion. 11 Image-making and image-changing unfolds progressively and interactively the ethics of transformation and does so in many layers, both intratextual and intervisual, whether prescriptive or descriptive. The reader is faced with the confrontation of two models of description: Minerva’s tapestry, a piece of Classicistic art, structurally balanced and thematically grandiose, in support of the established order, illustrates the judging gods standing on either side of Jupiter and the disputants on opposite sides (70‒73):12 Cecropia Pallas scopulum Mauortis in arce pingit et antiquam de terrae nomine litem.

 9 For the Latin text, see Tarrant 2004. For the translation, see Goold 1984. 10 On the links between the accounts of Ovid’s Arachne and Virgil’s Turnus, see Hejduk 2012, 764‒767. 11 Vincent 1994, 374 n. 23. On pictorial illusionism and verbal fictionality, “forced into an unusually close symbiosis” in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, see Hardie 2002, 174. On the falsehood and appearance of reality in this passage, see Salzman-Mitchell 2005, 133. On the theme of verisimilitude in this ecphrasis, see Johnson 2008, 85. 12 See Anderson 1972, 151‒171; Leach 1974, 102.

  Stella Alekou bis sex caelestes medio Ioue sedibus altis augusta grauitate sedent. Pallas pictures the hills of Mars on the citadel of Cecrops and that old dispute over the naming of the land. There sit twelve heavenly gods on lofty thrones in awful majesty, Jove in their midst.

Completed with four panels in each corner (85: quattuor in partes certamina quattuor addit), it further displays the punishment of “fabled transgressors”, 13 mortals who challenged the gods, and is ironically framed with ornamental, peaceful, olive leaves (101‒102): circuit extremas oleis pacalibus oras (is modus est) operisque sua facit arbore finem. The goddess then wove around her work a border of peaceful olive-wreath. This was the end; and so, with her own tree, her task was done.

Interestingly, the panels depict non-Greek challengers to Minerva’s order, emphasizing the outsiders’ quest for self-distinction against those in power, 14 whereas the non-Greeks in the four corners seem to be marking the horizons of the Roman imperium. A Thracian transgressor (87: Threiciam Rhodopen habet angulus unus et Haemum,), a Pygmaean queen (90‒91: altera Pygmaeae fatum miserabile matris / pars habet), a Trojan princess (93: pinxit et Antigonen), and the Eastern Cinyras (98: Cinyran habet angulus orbum) set the limits of the Roman world.15 One may safely argue that Arachne from Lydia, which had been part of the Roman province of Asia since 133 BC, was to eventually become part of the paradigmatic tapestry herself. 16 However, the four accounts are also strategically situated in the text: the two female victims are a queen and a princess who are placed in the inner space of the textual tapestry (90‒95), framed by two male transgressors (87‒89, 96‒100). The arrangement of the given anti-exempla also suggests that the young Lydian woman’s humble background (7) does not fit in with the already illustrated royalties; to keep stylistic balance and socio-economic order, the corners need to remain only four, and women need to be kept in

 13 Dufallo 2013, 167. 14 Dufallo 2013, 166. On the examination of the four corners of the tapestries with regard to divine justice, see Salzman-Mitchell 2005, 130‒131. 15 Dufallo 2013, 167‒168. 16 See Anderson 1972, 152 and Dufallo 2013, 168‒169 on this reading.

Underneath the Arachnean and Minervan Veil of Ambiguity  

the inner circle. The narrator’s insistence on Arachne’s socio-cultural background (5, 11, 103) seems, in this perspective, to suggest that the young woman is therefore not part of Minerva’s ecphrastic agenda. It has been argued that the goddess’ art is a completed and a victorious one (82) because she is an artist, as opposed to Arachne, the artisan in the making, whose work is condemned to never come to an end 17 — her transformation into a spider, weaving endlessly meaningless webs, appears in support of this statement. However, the ring composition, insinuated in the opening statement about Minerva’s tapestry, antiquam litem (71), and in Arachne’s eventual transformation, in the same metrical position, antiquas telas (127), 18 suggests that the post-transformation Arachnean web is not meaningless, as it textually exposes the lis (71: litem), a lawsuit by which an unjust sentence is to be revealed or perhaps foreshadowed.19 The legal meaning of lis, as well as, in a paronomasia of some sort, the military meaning of telum, a weapon used for fighting at a distance, 20 are recalled in Arachne’s ambiguous ending, 21 and point to the spider’s second nature as potentially harmful. The reader is thus warned that Arachne’s traits are not limited to her talent and that they may go beyond socio-legal standards of behavioral patterns. If Minerva illustrates “the divine powers squelching the outsized ambitions of foreigners”, the foreign Arachne discloses the divine transgressions against the Greeks, as her tapestry depicts principally Greek maidens subjected to lustful gods, with the exception of the Phoenician princess, Europa.22 The latter’s presence embodies transition not only from East to West and from Minerva’s work, whose final panel illustrates the Cypriot Cinyras, to Arachne’s, but also from the young woman’s fictional illustrations to Ovid’s accounts, and that on Europa in particular (Met. 2.833‒875). This backward reading is also encouraged by the narrator, who declares that “the maid seems to be looking back, back on the land she has left” (6.105: ipsa uidebatur terras spectare relictas). In fact, the Arachnean

 17 Vincent 1994, 363. 18 On the term antiquas in this context, see Salzman-Mitchell 2005, 138. 19 On the legal meaning of lis, see Berger 1991, 462 s.v. lis. See Gai. Inst. 2.52 on the use of lis with regard to an unjust sentence. 20 See OCD s.v. telum 3b. On the transformation of textiles into weapons in the given account, see Salzman-Mitchell 2005, 135. 21 See also the narrator’s use of telas/tela at lines 54‒55, with respect to the equal ground on which the two weavers compete. As Wheeler 1995, 113 points out, the word lis “echoes the original ‘dispute’ of chaos settled by the demiurge” in Ovid’s Met. 1.21. 22 See Dufallo 2013, 169 and n. 111 for a list of the Greek women and the only male love object (Admetus).

  Stella Alekou and the Ovidian narratives seem to coincide, at least in part, with regard to their stylistic approach, as asserted by Ovidian scholars. 23 Lifelike and flagrantly asymmetrical, Arachne’s work consists of a series of divine males gratifying their lust for women, with no apparent structure or order; 24 instead of center, margin, hierarchy and linearity, the classical notions attested in Minerva’s hypotactic and elevated tapestry, we witness knots, networks, webs and interweaving, in an expandable parataxis,25 or so it seems. For, the numbers of the gods’ transformations, arranged in gradual decrescendo (103‒126: Jupiter’s eight, Neptune’s six, Apollo’s four and Liber’s and Saturn’s two — one each), also reflected in the number of verses that describe them (103‒115, 115‒122, 122‒124, 125), seem to imply that this tapestry has been completed as well. The Arachnean arrangement of fictional accounts may also suggest that the passive victimization of women in Ovid’s textual tapestry has also come to an end, and that, with the completion of Arachne’s work, we enter a new era in the cosmos of the Metamorphoses, in which the feminae take action. The rapidity by which the gods’ transformations are described follows the rhythm of Minerva’s quick disguise as an old lady (26‒27), to suggest that what Arachne illustrates with images, namely, an intended simulation in order to deceive, Minerva has practiced in person.26 Her accusations of divine pretentiousness are further backed up by the narrator, who refers to the goddess’ actions as simulated deeds (26, 80). The legal meaning of the term simulatio is of great significance in this context, as simulare (simulatio), which means “to simulate”, “to pretend”, may also refer to acts concluded simulate (simulated acts), which are not valid, as more valid is “what is being done than what is being expressed in simulated terms”; what matters is, thus, the truth of the matter (ueritas rei) and not what has been feigned in a written deed. 27 The use of the term simulat by the Ovidian narrator twice (26, 80) may imply that Minerva’s acts of transformations (prior to the competition and within the tapestry), were not valid because they

 23 On the thematic and other links between the Ovidian and the Arachnean narratives, see Johnson 2008, 86; Brown 2005, 108‒110; Oliensis 2004, 287. “The Metamorphoses can be considered a series of epyllia loosely linked together, telling the same stories woven by the ill-fated seamstress,” as argued by Smith 1968, 11. 24 See Anderson 1972, 151‒171 and Leach 1974, 102. 25 This is also reflected in the narrator’s choice and arrangement of words, such as intertextos, nexilibus and the crisscross of terms (128): nexilibus flores hederis habet intertextos. See Smith 1968, 99 and Vincent 1994, 371. 26 On the significance of Minerva’s appearance in disguise in the given account, see Johnson 2008, 83. 27 See Berger 1991, 708 s.v. simulare.

Underneath the Arachnean and Minervan Veil of Ambiguity  

were concluded in simulated terms of some sort. Minerva’s piece of work may itself in fact be seen as a simulatio, as the contest depicted therein was the theme of Phidias’ sculptural work, placed on the Parthenon.28 Ovid seems, thus, to be reviving a staged trial to allude to a famous work which depicts the myth of the Athenian civilization. The act of simulatio extends to a cultural claim of authority, as the Greek myth serves here as means of promoting the morals of Augustan propaganda (73): augusta grauitate. The cultural ambiguity emerges, then, in the identification of the Greek behind the Roman. If ecphrasis is generally adequate to appeal to an ambivalent viewer, one who may distinguish in it a set of opposing modes, in the case of the Ovidian account on Arachne and Minerva, the simplistic dichotomy on aesthetic grounds between the symmetrical and the unsymmetrical seems misleading. This double perspective does not so much emerge as a breach between the two tapestries, but rather coexists in conflictual terms within both of them and extends to a cultural interaction. The battle between the Greek and the non-Greek, the mythic past and the Augustan present, expressed as Hellenic imagery and imperial self-definition, participates in the refashioning of Roman identity in both artistic creations to shed light on the ambivalent use of Greek culture in Augustus’ public program.29 The two ecphrastic objects emanate from Roman reality and the Roman reception of the Greek, as they creatively illustrate an attempt to redefine the self through the other, as phil-hellenic and anti-hellenic. A historical and diachronic reading of “Ovide post-structuralisé” 30 could, in fact, suggest that the literary technique of ecphrasis may serve the empire, but it may also “subject the empire’s very tools to intensive reassessment.” 31 It seems, therefore, reasonable to suggest that the Arachne and Minerva ecphrasis presumes that the audience is able to recognize both its illusionism and its realism as symptomatic of the two-sided nature of Augustus’ public attitude not only towards the Greek legacy, but also towards Romanitas.

 28 There, Athena and Poseidon appear standing in the center and separated by the goddess’ signature, the olive tree. On Ovid’s geography with regard to this hypothesis, see Vincent 1994, 364‒365 and n. 10. See also Salzman-Mitchell 2005, 129. 29 On Augustan ambiguities, see Hardie 2002, 156. The inclusive nature of the Augustan culture and its ambiguous nature are discussed in Galinsky 1999, 107. 30 Vincent 1994, 361. 31 Dufallo 2013, 141.

  Stella Alekou

 Political Ambiguities (De-)Constructing the Other Through the matrix of ecphrasis, “the aesthetician’s topos par excellence”,32 the myth gradually becomes the paradigm for real action. In the sphere of fiction, the quality or the verisimilitude of the second tapestry causes Minerva’s violent reaction against Arachne and her work: the goddess tears the web and hits the mortal woman with a shuttle (130‒133): doluit successu flaua uirago et rupit pictas, caelestia crimina, uestes; utque Cytoriaco radium de monte tenebat, ter quater Idmoniae frontem percussit Arachnes. The golden-haired goddess was indignant at her success and rent the embroidered web with its heavenly crimes; and, as she held a shuttle of Cytorian boxwood, thrice and again she struck Idmonian Arachne’s head.

Minerva would no longer appear as a kind pedagogue, but as a cruel and revengeful punisher, did the narrator not intervene, to suggest a different perspective: in the young woman’s attempt to hang herself, the goddess transforms Arachne into a spider and becomes her divine savior (135: pendentem Pallas miserata leuavit). Presented as Minervan pedagogy, 33 the art’s dependence on official myth-making and legal tutelage becomes eventually an eerie omen for Ovid’s fate. The goddess’ authoritarian reaction foreshadows Augustus’ punishment of artists, including that of our poet, whose exile in 8 CE is apparently a response to the morally daring nature of his work. 34 Arachne’s account may, in fact, be read as reminiscent of Ovid’s Ars Amatoria. 35 One could thus justly suggest that, in his Metamorphoses, to avoid censorship, the poet seemingly presents an innocent mythological compendium of tales on transformation, whilst he provides a subversive illustration

 32 Steiner 1989, 279. 33 On the problematic relationship between artist and political power, see Rosati 1999, 250. On autodidactism with regard to this myth, see Salzman-Mitchell 2005, 135. 34 On the subject of patronage in Ovid’s work, see Syme 1997, 94‒113; Dufallo 2013, 165. On the causes of Ovid’s exile, see Johnson 2008, 3‒21 and 74‒95. 35 Dufallo 2013, 166. On the Arachne episode specifically, see Barkan 1986, 1‒18; Vial 2010, 304‒307.

Underneath the Arachnean and Minervan Veil of Ambiguity  

of the political reality of his era. 36 But the poet does so all the while exploring the dynamics of gender as a platform of political critique, by empowering women with the ability to give their own account of the male-dominated political arena.37 In weaving marvelous tapestries, both Minerva and Arachne epitomize and publicize the dynamic power of female story-telling.38 Through her stories, Arachne reveals the intentional nature of the ambiguous forms the gods assume in order to deceive. Her creation is undeniably provocative, not (only) because it is flawless and accurate (129‒131), but because it is uncompromisingly realistic. 39 If Jupiter appears as a real bull (103‒104), it is not with the use of magic; magic is not needed, not only because the young woman is talented (7‒8), but because reality is more shocking than fiction. 40 Arachne’s graphic depictions of bestiality (103‒126) reflect what is real in the sphere of myth, as gods do transform themselves into animals, to deceive and to rape women, something the external reader is aware of, as almost all Arachnean accounts reflect previous tales in the Metamorphoses. 41 In this obscene panorama, Arachne’s impeccable work of art is provocative because it catches the gods in flagranti in a contest with the advocate of virgins, the virgin goddess, the daughter of Jupiter, who is, in turn, illustrated as the arch-rapist, ruler of a regime of rapists. 42 By forcing Minerva to face reality, Arachne forces her internal viewer to admit her hypocrisy.43 Whether the goddess’ cruel attack on Arachne is the outcome of a profound embarrassment or of her shame for being defeated by a mortal

 36 Ziogas 2011, 23. The second use of the term simulat appears in the context of the seemingly innocent and peaceful olive leaves, suggesting that the Pax Augusta is a simulated one. On the symbolic meaning of the olive in this account (6.81: oliuae), see Salzman-Mitchell 2005, 131. 37 On the role of women in story-telling and transmission of fiction, see Heath 2011, 69. On the etymological and metapoetic link between phases of wool-working and narrative, see Rosati 1999, 245‒247. 38 Salzman-Mitchell 2005, 139 argues that Arachne’s gaze becomes a weapon to put forward the causes of women. 39 Ziogas 2011, 25. On realism and ecphrasis, see Roby 2016, 104‒105. 40 Vincent 1994, 374 comments that there is something magical in Arachne’s tapestry. Cf. Ziogas 2011, 45 n. 11, and his comment on Ovid’s magical realism. 41 See for example Persephone’s account in both Arachne’s tapestry and Ovid’s Book 5, and a discussion on specific passages in Hinds 1987, 3‒50. On the theme of rape in Ovid’s work, see Curran 1984, 263‒286; Murgatroyd 2000, 75‒92. See also Richlin 1992, 158‒179 on the main characteristics of rape narratives in Ovid’s corpus; Murgatroyd 2005 on the typology of Ovidian rape narratives in the Fasti; Keramida 2019, 153‒187 on the female figura of rape narratives and victimisation in the Ars Amatoria. 42 See Johnson 2008, 87 on this contradiction. 43 Ziogas 2011, 26.

  Stella Alekou is of minor importance here. The fact that her reaction is a violent one confirms by default the truthfulness and the realism of Arachne’s depiction of the rulers. The tearing of the uestes and the hitting of the girl’s forehead with a phallic shuttle (133) repeat the caelestia crimina (131) outside the artificial sphere of the ecphrasis by activating yet another divine rape.44 The destruction of evidence in order to obliterate the caelestia crimina validates the artist’s accusation of censorship.45 The goddess is part of the argument, and is objectified to serve the Arachnean agenda, in a dramatized scene of tragic recognitions. 46 Arachne’s controversial ending has been an issue of debate among scholars, who have attempted to resolve the ambiguities by arguing that her feeling of disgrace and shame coincides with that of a rape victim, adding that her choice is gender-nuanced, as suicide is “a particularly female way” to end her life.47 A contextual reading of the passage in question (130‒138) may suggest, nonetheless, that the choice of self-inflicted death is not an exclusively female practice and that it could also be seen as an act of resistance. In fact, Roman history presents numerous examples of convicted male aristocrats who make the decision to preempt execution by courageously committing suicide, a sort of noble death that becomes an expression of political libertas, stressed in the works of many Roman authors, including Ovid and Horace.48 Ovid and Horace refer to three women in particular, among others, all three of them outsiders, barbarae, and condemned in the male-dominated literature of the winning side, namely, Dido, Medea and Cleopatra. Horace’s depiction of Cleopatra’s honorable unwillingness to submit and be treated as a slave (Carm. 1.37.31‒32: priuata deduci superbo, / non humilis mulier, triumpho) encourages us to appreciate the decision to commit suicide as one of non-conformity. Augustus would have wished to celebrate his triumphal victory with Cleopatra as his captive, while she was still alive; instead, a Roman

 44 Oliensis 2004, 292; Salzman-Mitchell 2005, 137. 45 Ziogas 2011, 30. 46 On ecphrasis and drama, see Dufallo 2013, 15. See also Norton 2013, 106 who remarks that “Ecphrasis has its place in tragedy as it blurs the line between visual and verbal media, just like the drama in which it is placed”. See also Kurman 1974, 13 who states that “ecphrases are dramas which, although conveyed by the written (or spoken) word, are acted (cf. Dante’s visibile parlare) by the figures represented. Ecphrases can be regarded as scripts for drama, as scenarios; their radical aspect of presentation […] is the acted rather than the spoken or written or ‘felt’ word. Thus, we can regard ecphrases in epic poetry as outcroppings of the dramatic impulse, as miniature dramas (whether historical, pastoral, lyrical, or scriptural).” 47 Ziogas 2011, 31‒32. 48 On suicide as a noble death and a citizen’s right, see Johnson 2008, 94. See Tac. Ann. 11.3.1. On women’s suicides, see Shelton 2013, 34‒41.

Underneath the Arachnean and Minervan Veil of Ambiguity  

simulacrum, the visual representation of the vanquished, is carried in the triple triumph at Rome in 29 BC.49 Cleopatra’s Horatian end becomes a motif in Latin literature: women’s suicides are described as beautiful deaths (Plin. Ep. 3.16.7: pulcherrimae mortis) and are often translated as lack of fear — to use the sword, to recall Dido’s epistolary illustration (Ov. Her. 7.97‒198). 50 If suicide in this context appears as the only means of reparation, Arachne’s woolen noose may be viewed as a powerful sword, and her suicide as an act of rebellion and not of selfpunishment. 51 The duality art — weapon is echoed in an epitaphic inscription in Tristia (3.3.74): imagined as engraved on Ovid’s tomb, the passage in question presents the poet’s wit as the cause of his death. The poet also compares his exilic poetry to the songs a slave girl sings while performing her assigned spinning (Tr. 4.1.13‒ 14),52 the same verses that, he argued, would become the cause of his tragic end. One can perhaps suggest that Arachne’s tapestry acts as Ovid’s prophetic epitaph, 53 but forms, additionally, a reminiscence of another poet’s suicide: Minerva’s refusal to allow Arachne to put an end to her life, presented as an act of pity (Met. 6.136), points to Augustus’ reaction towards Gallus’ death. 54 Even though the ruler’s wrath was the cause of the poet’s suicide, it is reported that the princeps wept for him. 55 The same merciful emperor would sentence Ovid to relegation instead of death, a sort of ambiguous clementia that was one of Augustus’

 49 Wyke 1992, 98‒104 and 105; Zanker 1988, 102‒188. See also Pelling 1988, 319: “it would have been more comfortable if she had died at once […] but it is still credible that, however torn, she should now have chosen death rather than the triumph.” Cf. Johnson 1967, 387‒402. 50 On Dido’s suicide in Ovid, see Hill 2004, 121. 51 On Arachne’s self-punishment, see Ziogas 2011, 32, who also refers to the double function of the artistic tool, used to provoke the ruler and employed as the means to end the artist’s life. 52 See Kurman 1974, 6 on prophecy and ecphrasis: “Prophecy, like similes and ecphrases, is a commonplace in epic poetry, and like them grants a respite from the spatial and temporal confines of the narrative; it retards the pace of the narrative by removing the reader from the literal realm in much the same way that ecphrasis or simile transports the reader to a figurative level.” 53 See Hejduk 2012, 767 on the ambiguities in the Latin text of the particular account, which, as the scholar argues, allow Arachne’s words to carry unintentionally prophetic second meanings. See also Casali 2006, 219 on “Ovid’s project of constructing his poetic career as a constant pain in Augustus’ neck.” Arachne is a type of the poet destroyed by power, according to Harries 1990, 64‒82. See also Feeney 1991, 193. 54 Ziogas 2011, 34. See Feeney 1992, on Gallus’ suicide (Ov. Tr. 2.446). 55 Suet. Aug. 66. See Claassen 2017, 318‒341 on Ovid’s work with regard to Gallus.

  Stella Alekou typical imperial policies.56 This kind of hypocrisy is what Arachne reproaches Minerva for; as her art becomes a powerful weapon by which she denounces the crimes committed and foreshadows those to come, her suicide comes to be a part of the Ovidian agenda. The political atmosphere during the poet’s last decade at Rome, and the inevitable literary changes that take place during this time, form the factors which influence Ovid’s poetic strategy and which leave their distinctive mark on his epos.57 Politically informed, artistic creation in the Metamorphoses emerges in the account of Minerva and Arachne within an interplay between the artist and the artist’s performance conditions, to reveal the interdependence between patronage, insinuated in Minerva’s first pedagogical simulatio (26), and censorship, stated in the destruction of the Arachnean tapestry (130‒131): doluit successu flaua uirago et rupit pictas, caelestia crimina, uestes; The golden-haired goddess was indignant at her success and rent the embroidered web with its heavenly crimes.

The sociohistorical character of the episode reveals the poet’s meditation on the cruel consequences of bold artistic expression, that include violence and silencing, and points to the real motifs of tyrannical power and its abuse,58 urging the reader to redefine the Augustan grauitas (73), as per its seemingly peaceful and moral intentions, insinuated in the use of the term oliuae (101‒102): circuit extremas oleis pacalibus oras (is modus est) operisque sua facit arbore finem. The goddess then wove around her work a border of peaceful olive-wreath. This was the end; and so, with her own tree, her task was done.

Arachne’s project absorbs the qualities of a concealed and ambivalent commentary on the state’s regulation of art and intellectual suppression in the light of Augustus’ ideological program.59 The literary-historical evidence traced in these  56 In Ziogas’ words 2011, 35 this is “[a]n outburst of anger disguised as a touch of pity.” Also see Ahl 1984, 203. On the banning of Ovid’s books from public libraries, see Tr. 3.1.60; Pont. 1.1.5. On clementia as the manifestation of tyrannical power, see Konstan 2005, 337. On clementia in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, see de Lachapelle, 2011, 158‒160. 57 Johnson 2008, 20. 58 Ahl 1985, 86. 59 See Syme 1951, 487 on the reductions in the freedom of literary expression in the principate.

Underneath the Arachnean and Minervan Veil of Ambiguity  

verses concerns events that take place in a period of dramatic change, also marked by the drastic legal measures of 18–17 BC, which address the criminalization of adultery. 60 This unprecedented invasion of private life61 sheds light on the contrast between the ethics of this legislation and what was reported about the emperor’s immoral, yet hidden life-style, which included extra-marital sex.62 Personal life-choices as well as personal events in the life of the emperor, such as Julia’s conviction of adultery and treason and eventual exile in 2 BC, 63 play a significant role in the spirit of repression that marks the last decade of his reign, and are indirectly reported in the Arachnean web. 64 This political interpretation of the Ovidian verses is further suggested in Met. 15, where the comparison between Augustus and Jupiter (857‒860) encourages the reader to interpret the phrase Iouis ira as “the anger of Augustus”. 65 As Wheeler states in discussing the final Book, “Ovid’s prayer on behalf of the emperor’s health responds to the dynastic crisis of A.D. 8, which involved the exile of the younger Julia for adultery.” 66 Not surprisingly, it has been argued that Ovid’s relegatio may have been directly linked to this affair. 67 The political reception in the narrative of the Ovidian epos is enlightened through intratextual correspondences between the various accounts and Books, such as Books 6 and 15, that create a poetic network of historical allusions identifiable by the ideal reader. 68 Arachne’s tapestry participates in the Ovidian web by strategically unfolding the threads of the artist’s well-established awareness with regard to the (illegitimate) causes of the emperor’s punishment decision, but also to the fact that, be that as it may, art does survive the artist, as also stated in the poem’s sphragis (15.871−879). 69 In denouncing the unethical actions — that include adultery, rape and deception — of those in power,  60 On matters of legislation in Ovid’s work, see Syme 1997, 199‒214. On Ovid and the law in the Metamorphoses, see Ziogas 2016, 24‒41 and VerStreeg/Barclay 2013, 395‒420. 61 See a discussion on the social legislation in Levick 2010, 94 who argues that with these measures “[t]he iron hand was clearly felt. Whatever other statesmanlike motives may be ascribed to Augustus in bringing forward this legislation, one is obvious: he was disciplining, if not punishing, the Senate.” 62 Ziogas 2011, 36. See Suet. Aug. 68‒70. 63 Cass. Dio 55.10. 64 On the spirit of repression of that particular period, see Johnson 2008, 15. 65 Cf. Ov. Tr. 1.5.78 and 3.11.62. See a discussion in Wheeler 2000, 148. 66 Wheeler 1999, 146. 67 Michalopoulos 2014, 17. On Julia’s exile, see Tac. Ann. 4.71. On the theme of exile in Ovid’s work, see Gaertner 2007, 155‒172. 68 See a discussion in Tsitsiou-Chelidoni 2003, 156‒157 and 160‒163. 69 Johnson 2008, 122 argues that “the epic testifies to the power of poetry to rescue artists and their art for a posterity less autocratic or narrow-minded than their own.”

  Stella Alekou resumed at 6.103‒128, the soon-to-be-exiled poet seems to be preparing his exile by appropriating Arachne’s tapestry as a veiled platform for political criticism of pretentious Augustan moral conservativism.70 The ambiguous portrayal of Arachne and her tapestry in Ovid’s epic poem is revealed in many layers that reflect the cultural and political preoccupations of the poet’s era. The ambivalent reading of the relevant passages lies, more importantly, in the fact that the young woman from Lydia receives a sentence for having revealed political ambiguities that confirm a sort of intended simulatio. Her conviction speaks louder than the narrator’s pious language, and lasts longer than the narrative itself. 71 Her story is to be continued, because the spider’s double nature has not completely unfolded: we have seen her weave her artistic canvas, and now it is time to see her trap in her nets those who attempted to control her art. Her Ovidian telae (127) will further expose the litem (71), foreshadowing Ovid’s unjust punishment, through the voiceless words of other rebellious women in the Books to follow.72 Notwithstanding its repetitive nature, ambivalent backward and forward readings and allusive sense of continuity, Arachne’s myth has survived through time as intentionally ambiguous in both text and context, and, for this reason also, as genuinely Ovidian.

Bibliography Text and Translation Goold, G.P. (1984), Ovid in Six Volumes: Metamorphoses, with an English Translation by Frank J. Miller, Cambridge MA. Tarrant, Richard J. (2004), P. Ovidi Nasonis Metamorphoses, Oxford.

Books and Articles Aeppli, Ernest (1986), Der Traum [1951], Zurich. Ahl, Frederick (1984), “The Art of Safe Criticism in Greece and Rome”, AJP 105, 174‒208. Ahl, Frederick (1985), Metaformations: Soundplay and Wordplay in Ovid and Other Classical Poets, Ithaca NY.

 70 “Arachne becomes the prototype of the exiled poet”, argues Harries 1990, 64‒82. 71 For backward and forward readings of the account, see Kruman 1974, 6 and Ziogas 2013, 94‒ 95. 72 See Ovid’s account on Philomela (Met. 6.412‒674).

Underneath the Arachnean and Minervan Veil of Ambiguity  

Anderson, William S. (1972), Ovid’s Metamorphoses: Books 6‒10, Norman. Barchiesi, Alessandro (1997), The Poet and the Prince: Ovid and Augustan Discourse, Berkeley. Ballestra-Puech, Sylvie (2006), Métamorphoses d’Arachné: L’artiste en araignée dans la littérature occidentale, Genève. Barkan, Leonard (1986), The Gods made Flesh: Metamorphosis & the Pursuit of Paganism, New Haven. Berger, Adolf (1991), Encyclopedic Dictionary of Roman Law, Vol. 43, Philadelphia. Boehm, Gottfried/Pfotenhauer, Helmut (eds.) (1995), Beschreibungskunst —Kunstbeschreibung. Ekphrasis von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, Munich. Brassat, Wolfgang/Squire, Michel J. (2017), “Die Gattung der Ekphrasis”, in: Wolfgang Brassat (ed.), Rhetorik und die bildenden Künste, Berlin, 63‒87. Brown, Sarah Annes (2005), Ovid: Myth and Metamorphosis, Bristol. Casali, Sergio (2006), “The Art of Making Oneself Hated: Rethinking (Anti-)Augustanism in Ovid’s Ars Amatoria”, in: Roy Gibson/Steven Green/Alison Sharrock (eds.), The Art of Love: Bimillennial Essays on Ovid’s Ars Amatoria and Remedia Amoris, Oxford, 216‒234. Claassen, Jo-Marie (2017), “The Exiled Ovid’s Reception of Gallus”, CJ 112, 318‒341. Curran, Leo C. (1972), “Transformation and Anti-Augustanism in Ovid’s Metamorphoses”, Arethusa 2, 71‒91. Curran, Leo C. (1984), “Rape and Rape Victims in the Metamorphoses”, in: John Peradotto/John P. Sullivan (eds.), Women in the Ancient World, Albany NY, 263‒286. Davis, Peter J. (2006), Ovid and Augustus: A Political Reading of Ovid’s Erotic Poems, London. De Lachapelle, Flamerie, Clementia. Recherches sur la notion de clémence à Rome, du début du 1er siècle a.C. à la mort d’Auguste, Paris. Denham, Robert D. (2010), Poets on Paintings: A Bibliography, Jefferson NC. Dufallo, Basil (2013), The Captor’s Image: Greek Culture in Roman Ecphrasis, Oxford. Fayer, Carla (2005), La familia romana: aspetti giuridici ed antiquari, Vol. 2, Rome. Feeney, Denis (1991), The Gods in Epic, Oxford. Feeney, Denis (1992), “Si licet et fas est: Ovid’s Fasti and the Problem of Free Speech under the Principate”, in: Anton Powell (ed.), Roman Poetry and Propaganda in the Age of Augustus, London, 1‒25. Fontaine, Michael/McNamara, Charles J./Short, William Michael (eds.) (2018), Quasi labor intus: Ambiguity in Latin Literature. Papers in honor of Reginald Thomas Foster, Gowanus. Gaertner, Jan Felix (ed.) (2007), Writing Exile: The Discourse of Displacement in Greco-Roman Antiquity and Beyond, Leiden/Boston. Galinsky, Karl (1999), “Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Augustan Cultural Thematics”, in: Philip Hardie/Alessandro Barchiesi/Stephen Hinds (eds.), Ovidian Transformations: Essays on the Metamorphoses and its Reception, Cambridge, 103‒111. Glei, Reinhold F. (1998), “Der interepische poetologische Diskurs: Zum Verhältnis von Metamorphosen und Aeneis”, in: Hildegard, L.C. Tristram (ed.), New Methods in the Research of Epic — Neue Methoden der Epenforschung, Tübingen, 85−104. Graf, Fritz (1995). “Ekphrasis: Die Entstehung der Gattung in der Antike”, in: Gottfried Boehm/ Helmut Pfotenhauer (eds.), Beschreibungskunst — Kunstbeschreibung. Ekphrasis von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, Munich, 143–155. Hardie, Philip (2002), Ovid’s Poetics of Illusion, Cambridge. Harries, Byron (1990), “The Spinner and the Poet: Arachne in Ovid’s Metamorphoses”, PCPhS 36, 64‒82.

  Stella Alekou Heath, John (2011), “Women’s Work: Female Transmission of Mythical Narrative”, TAPhA 141, 69‒104. Heffernan, James (1993), The Museum of Words: The Poetics of Ekphrasis from Homer to Ashberry, Chicago IL. Hejduk, Julia D. (2012), “Arachne’s Attitude: Metamorphoses 6.25”, Mnemosyne 65, 764‒768. Hill, Timothy (2004), Ambitiosa Mors: Suicide and the Self in Roman Thought and Literature, New York. Hinds, Stephen (1987), The Metamorphosis of Persephone: Ovid and the Self-conscious Muse, Cambridge. Johnson, Walter R. (1967), “A Quean [sic], a Great Queen? Cleopatra and the Politics of Misrepresentation”, Arion 6, 387‒402. Johnson, Patricia J. (2008), Ovid before Exile: Art and Punishment in the Metamorphoses, Madison. Keramida, Despina (2019), “The Re-Imagination of a Letter-Writer and the De-Construction of an Ovidian Rape Narrative at Ars Amatoria 1.527‒64”, C&M 67, 153‒187. Konstan, David (2005), “Clemency as Virtue”, CPh 100, 337‒346. Konstan, David (2017), “Image versus Narrative: Ecphrasis in the Classical Tradition”, in: Andreas N. Michalopoulos/Sophia Papaioannou/Andrew Zissos (eds.), Dicite Pierides: Classical Studies in Honour of Stratis Kyriakidis, Newcastle upon Tyne, 26‒48. Kurman, George (1974), “Ecphrasis in Epic Poetry”, Comparative Literature 26, 1‒13. Leach, Eleanor W. (1974), “Ekphrasis and the Theme of Artistic Failure in Ovid’s Metamorphoses”, Ramus 3, 102‒142. Levick, Barbara (2010), Augustus: Image and Substance, Harlow/London/New York. Michalopoulos, Andreas N. (2014), Ovid, Heroides 20-21: Acontius and Cydippe. Introduction, Text, Translation, Commentary, Athens [in Greek]. Murgatroyd, Paul (2000), “Plotting in Ovidian Rape Narratives”, Eranos 98, 75‒92. Murgatroyd, Paul (2005), Mythical and Legendary Narrative in Ovid’s Fasti, Leiden/Boston. Norton, Liz (2013), Aspects of Ecphrastic Technique in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Newcastle upon Tyne. Oliensis, Ellen (2004), “The Power of Image-Makers: Representation and Revenge in Ovid Metamorphoses 6 and Tristia 4”, ClAnt 23, 285‒321. Pelling, Christopher (1988), Plutarch: Life of Antony, Cambridge. Powell, Anton (ed.) (1992), Roman Poetry and Propaganda in the Age of Augustus, London. Richlin, Amy (1992), “Reading Ovid’s Rapes”, in: Amy Richlin (ed.), Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome, New York/Oxford, 158‒179. Rosati, Gianpiero (1999), “Form in Motion: Weaving the Text in the Metamorphoses”, in: Philip Hardie/Alessandro Barchiesi/Stephen Hinds (eds.), Ovidian Transformations: Essays on the Metamorphoses and its Reception, Cambridge, 240‒253. Roby, Courtney (2016), Technical Ekphrasis in Greek and Roman Science and Literature: The Written Machine Between Alexandria and Rome, Cambridge/New York. Salzman-Mitchell, Patricia B. (2005), A Web of Fantasies: Gaze, Image and Gender in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Columbus. Shelton, Jo-Ann (2013), The Women of Pliny’s Letters, London/New York. Smith, Barbara H. (1968), Poetic Closure: A Study of How Poems End, Chicago. Solodow, Joseph B. (1988), The World of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Chapel Hill. Steiner, Wendy (1989), “The Causes of Effect: Edith Wharton and the Economics of Ekphrasis”, Poetics Today 10.2, 279‒297.

Underneath the Arachnean and Minervan Veil of Ambiguity  

Squire, Michael (2015), “Ecphrasis: Visual and verbal interactions in ancient Greek and Latin literature”, in: Oxford Handbooks Online (DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935390.013.58). Syme, Ronald (1951), The Roman Revolution, Oxford. Syme, Ronald (1997), History in Ovid, Oxford. Tsitsiou-Chelidoni, Chrysanthe (2003), Ovid. Metamorphosen, Buch VIII. Narrative Technik und literarischer Kontext, Frankfurt M. VerSteeg, Russ/Barclay, Nina (2003), “Rhetoric and Law in Ovid’s Orpheus”, Law and Literature 15.3, 395‒420. Vial, Hélène (2010), La Métamorphose dans les Métamorphoses d’Ovide, Paris. Vincent, Michael (1994), “Between Ovid and Barthes: Ekphrasis, Orality, Textuality in Ovid’s Arachne”, Arethusa 27, 361‒386. Williams, Gareth D. (2009), “The Metamorphoses: Politics and Narrative”, in: Peter E. Knox (ed.), A Companion to Ovid, Chichester/Malden MA, 154‒169. Williams, Gordon (1968), Tradition and Originality in Roman Poetry, London. Wheeler, Stephen M. (1995), “Imago Mundi: Another View of the Creation in Ovid’s Metamorphoses”, AJPh 116, 95‒121. Wheeler, Stephen M. (1999), A Discourse of Wonders: Audience and Performance in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Philadelphia. Wheeler, Stephen M. (2000), Narrative Dynamics in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Tübingen. Wyke, Maria (1992), “Augustan Cleopatras: Female Power and Poetic Authority in Roman Poetry and Propaganda in the Age of Augustus”, in: Anton Powell (ed.), Roman Poetry and Propaganda in the Age of Augustus, London, 98‒104. Zanker, Paul (1988), The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus (trans. A. Shapiro), Ann Arbor. Ziogas, Ioannis (2011), “Ovid in Rushdie, Rushdie in Ovid: A Nexus of Artistic Webs”, Arion 19.1, 23‒50. Ziogas, Ioannis (2013), Ovid and Hesiod: The Metamorphosis of the Catalogue of Women, Cambridge. Ziogas, Ioannis (2016), “Orpheus and the Law: The Story of Myrrha in Ovid’s Metamorphoses”, Law in Context 34, 24‒41.

Jacqueline Fabre-Serris

Ambigua Verba, Hidden Desire and Auctorial Intentionality in Some Ovidian Speeches (Met. 3.279−92; 7.810−23; 10.364−6, 440−1) Abstract: This paper focuses on a special type of ingenious expression used by Ovid in the Metamorphoses: the ambigua uerba. I examine under what circumstances Ovid attributes ambiguous replies referring to erotic desires and erotic feelings to certain characters. I argue that ambiguity is a linguistic device employed by Ovid to give more complexity to his psychological analysis of love and, more precisely, to explore, in a very subtle way, how difficult human relations are to grasp and understand, even for those concerned. All of these replies constitute an indirect hint of a hidden desire that cannot be clearly expressed or, what is even more interesting, perceived as such by the speaker himself. Keywords: ambigua uerba, Ovid, psychological analysis, erotic feelings, hidden desire

According to Seneca the Elder, Ovid was a brilliant student of the rhetorician Arellius Fuscus (Contr. 2.2.8). He was taught to extend narrative scenarios from a briefly summarized plot and trained to find, in the controuersiae, various arguments to support, in succession, both parties involved in a trial and, in the suasoriae, to deliberate, by impersonating mythological or historical character(s), before taking a particular decision at a crucial moment. Seneca states that Ovid preferred to deal with the suasoriae rather than with the controuersiae, unless the latter were ethicae, i.e., focused on ethical issues, treated from a psychological perspective (Contr. 2.2.12). Seneca here provides some very interesting information since he allows us to view Ovid’s narrative practice in the Metamorphoses from the perspective of these rhetorical exercises. Taking as his starting point the summaries of mythological stories found in such mythographers as Parthenius of Nicaea, Ovid applied to these plots various techniques and skills learned in the schools of rhetoric in order to expand them into long narratives. In these accounts he describes in detail the feelings, thoughts and actions of the main characters by adopting a psychological point of view. He displays great skill in offering insightful observations

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110715811-013

  Jacqueline Fabre-Serris and subtle ways of expressing them. The most famous rhetoricians were renowned for their ability to elaborate brilliant sentences in which they expressed, in the most striking way, ingenious ideas, in relation to both the situation and the character of the persons they were supporting or impersonating. Seneca the Elder employs the adverb ethicos to qualify this kind of innovative expression, which he considers to be based on psychological perceptions. 1 Quintilian claims that Ovid was especially gifted in this regard, even nimium ingenii amator (“too much in love with his own ingenuity”, Inst. Or. 10.88). In this paper I want to focus on a special instance of ingenious expressions and sentences used by Ovid: the ambigua uerba. In Ars Amatoria 1.487−488, he praises the use of ‘ambiguous signs’ as a way of being discreetly understood: neue aliquis uerbis odiosas offerat auris, / quam potes, ambiguis callidus abde notis (“In order that someone may not interpret your speech in an unwelcome way, as much as possible, hide it skillfully by using some equivocal signs”). 2 Ovid here suggests that some silent gestures (notae) should be preferred to words if they can be discreetly understood in two different ways. But in other passages he has highlighted the capability of language itself to convey a double meaning. In this paper I will examine three passages of the Metamorphoses, where ambiguous replies referring to erotic desires and erotic feelings are attributed to certain characters. In my opinion, when inserting ambigua uerba in his narratives, Ovid is exploring, in a very subtle way, how complex human relations are, as well as how difficult they are to grasp and understand, even for those concerned. I will argue that in all of the examples I have selected the ambiguous words constitute an indirect hint of a hidden desire that cannot be clearly expressed or, what is even more interesting, perceived as such by the speaker himself. 3

 1 Contr. 2.3.23; 2.4.8, Suas. 1.13. See, for example, Contr. 2.4.8: Albucius ethicos, ut multi putant, dixit; certe laudatum est, cum diceret: exeuntem puer secutus est (“Albucius has spoken, in the opinion of many, from a psychological perspective, and he has been praised when he said: ‘while I went out, the boy followed me’”). 2 The text of Ovid used throughout is Lafaye 1928. All English translations are my own. 3 In so doing Ovid appears to be a precursor of what we now regard as ‘depth psychology’, which is hardly surprising given the role played by ‘his Narcissus’ in the development of psychoanalytical theories after Freud’s essay on narcissism in 1914.

Ambigua Verba, Hidden Desire and Auctorial Intentionality in Ovid  

 The Failed Meeting between Echo and Narcissus According to Ovid, Metamorphoses 3, and Conon, Narrationes 24, Narcissus was a beautiful boy uninterested in loving or being loved, who despised all his lovers. Both authors give an example of his victims, Conon a boy, called Ameinas, Ovid a nymph, called Echo. Conon describes Narcissus’ love for himself as resulting from Ameinas’ request to Eros. Before killing himself in front of the door of Narcissus’ home, Ameinas implores the god to take revenge. In Metamorphoses 3, Narcissus’ furor does not result from the revenge of Eros. His love for himself is the reason why Narcissus cannot be “touched” by love although he is “desired” by many young boys and girls: multi illum iuuenes, multae cupiere puellae […] nulli illum iuuenes, nullae tetigere puellae (353−355). Ovid has created the failed meeting between the boy and the nymph Echo in order to provide his readers with a first glimpse of Narcissus’ furor, while revealing that his furor preexists the episode in the source. However, this clue remains unclear to Narcissus. How does Ovid do it? By imagining a dialogue between the nymph and the boy in which both use ambiguous words. Echo is a nymph with a reduced capacity to speak. She can only repeat the end of the words she hears. Separated from his hunting companions, Narcissus starts calling: ‘Ecquis adest?’ (“‘Is anyone here?’”, 380). Echo, who is secretly following him, repeats the last word to engage in dialogue: ‘adest’ (“‘there is somebody’”, 380). Narcissus is astonished (stupet, 381), which is to be taken as a sign of desire, 4 and after looking all around, he cries aloud: ‘Veni’ (“‘Come’”, 382). As nobody comes, Narcissus adds: ‘Quid’, inquit, / ‘me fugis?’ (“‘Why do you run from me?’”, 383−384). Echo repeats all these words. Narcissus insists: ‘Huc coeamus’ (“‘Here let us meet’”, 386). Ovid claims that “Echo was ready to reply to nothing with more pleasure than to this word coeamus” (nullique libentius umquam / responsura sono ‘coeamus’ rettulit Echo, 386−387). He gives no explanation, but the reader understands: coeamus is an ambiguous word meaning both “let

 4 See Metamorphoses 4.676, where Ovid uses the same verb stupet in an explicitly erotic context: Vidit Abantiades (…) trahit inscius ignes/ et stupet; eximiae correptus imagine formae/ paene suas quatere est oblitus in aere pennas (“Abas’ son sees her (Andromeda) … without being conscious he becomes imbued with the fires of love and is astonished; seized by the image of her extreme beauty he almost forgets to beat his wings”). Ovid also uses the word adstupet (3.418) and the expression correptus imagine formae (3.673−677), when Narcissus sees himself in the spring.

  Jacqueline Fabre-Serris us meet” and “let us make love”. Yet it is not the only ambiguous word in this dialogue. As is already noted,5 Echo skillfully repeats some parts of Narcissus’ sentences with the effect of providing them with an ambiguous meaning, or more precisely, with an erotic meaning. But actually, Echo can be ingenious in this way only because Narcissus’ words are in themselves erotic requests. Why are they erotic requests? By using some words for physical reactions expressing strong interest (stupet, aciem, partes in omnis, uoce … magna) Ovid suggests that, when Narcissus first hears the echo of his own voice (adest, repeated by the nymph), the boy immediately feels desire. Ovid builds on the metaphor imago uocis that is a translation of the Greek word ἠχώ.6 This evocative expression allows him to highlight the fact that Echo’s voice is only the reproduction (imago) of Narcissus’ voice, even if both voices seem to alternate with each other. Narcissus is described as alternae deceptus imagine uocis (“deceived by the reflection of his voice alternating with another’s voice”, 385). Ovid inserts in his narration many repetitions of words and sounds in order to mimic the phenomenon of echoing, not only when he describes Echo’s amorous conduct (sequitur … sequitur, 371−372, sinit … sinit, 377), but also when he stages the truthful yet deceitful dialogue between the nymph and the boy: uoce (Narcissus, 382) … uocat (Echo, 382) … uocantem (Narcissus, 382); ueni (Narcissus, 382) … nullo ueniente (383).7 What is more, Ovid clearly suggests that the sexual attraction exerted on Narcissus by his own voice anticipates the erotic appeal of his own body seen in the mirror of the spring. Indeed, as often noted, 8 uisae correptus imagine formae (“seized by the image of his beauty as it was seen”, 416) is constructed as a variation on alternae deceptus imagine uocis (“deceived by the echo which alternates with his own voice”, 3.385). The erotic dialogue between Echo and Narcissus is possible only since Narcissus’ desire is awakened by the “reflection” (imago) of his own voice, and subsequently the words he uses become more and more ambiguous. When he sees the nymph, Narcissus’ reaction confirms that he was only attracted by the imago of his own voice. As soon as the nymph comes out of the woods and attempts to embrace him by putting her arms around his neck (ibat, ut iniceret sperato bracchia collo, “she (Echo) was going to throw her arms around his neck”, 389), Narcissus reacts with violence. He tries immediately to escape  5 Rosati 1983, 30; Barchiesi 2007, 188–189. 6 This expression is also used by Virgil, Georg. 4.50. As noted by Hardie 2002, 152, “the intricate parallelism between the stories of Echo and Narcissus in Metamorphoses 3 is helped by the linguistic chance that allows Latin to use imago to mean ‘echo’ as well as ‘visual image, reflection’, whereas in Greek εἰκών in the first sign is very rare.” 7 See Rosati 1983, 30. 8 Rosati 1983, 26; Fabre-Serris 1995, 184; Barchiesi 2007, 194.

Ambigua Verba, Hidden Desire and Auctorial Intentionality in Ovid  

this unexpected lover, apparently repulsive to him in her Otherness, by claiming (390−391): ‘manus complexibus aufer! / ante’, ait, ‘emoriar quam sit tibi copia nostri!’ 9 (“‘Remove your hands and don’t try to embrace me may I die’, says he, ‘before you can get me/ I give you power over me!’”). 10 Ovid describes both interlocutors as using equivocal words, each on her or his own behalf, Echo intentionally, Narcissus unconsciously. It is striking that both behave in a sexually unconventional way. Women are supposed to respond to male advances, not to take the initiative in love. However, as pointed out by Ovid in Ars Amatoria 1, female sexual restraint originates in the different social roles assigned to the two sexes. If men agreed to change their attitude, then women would ‘do their part’ by begging them (conueniat maribus ne quam nos ante rogemus; / femina iam partes uicta rogantis agat, 1.277−278). Ovid’s portrait of Echo illustrates this theory. Despite her inability to be the first to speak, by repeating Narcissus’ words Echo successfully initiates a dialogue in which she expresses her own desire and looks for immediate satisfaction. She is ingenious, but this erotic dialogue is possible only because Narcissus’s desire is awakened by the “reflection” of his own voice, as is clearly proved by the fact that his replies take on an erotic significance, instantly exploited by Echo.

 Cephalus’ False or True Infidelity? In Metamorphoses’ Book 7, Cephalus tells how he dramatically lost his wife, Procris. 11 Cephalus goes hunting every day. Ovid describes his hunting practice as excessive and then abnormal: Cephalus stops only when his hand is satiata ferinae / … caedis (“filled with the killing of wild beasts”, 808−809). Every day, after hunting, Cephalus was accustomed to look for the coolness provided by the trees and the breeze (repetebam frigus et umbras / et quae de gelidis exibat

 9 Echo’s last words are: sit tibi copia nostri. As noted by Barchiesi 2007, 188, they constitute an extension of the nymph’s abilities and a less realistic tour de force, even if her utterance is ascribed to the effects of her desire. 10 As noted by Hardie 2002, 156, “the punishment for Narcissus’ pride and his refusal to be ‘touched’ in the sexual sense is his absolute inability to touch the object of his desire, quod tangere non est, ‘which cannot be touched’ (478), as he realises his earlier error, posse putes tangi, ‘you would think he would be able to be touched’ (453).” 11 On the story of Cephalus and Procris, see, for example, Pöschl 1959; Otis 1970, 166−182, 263−277, 410−413; Labate 1975; Davis 1983; Fabre-Serris 1989; Hejduk 2011; Papaioannou 2017.

  Jacqueline Fabre-Serris uallibus, auram, “I was looking for the coolness, the shade, and the breeze coming out from the chill valleys”, 809−810). He explains that he was mainly looking for the breeze and had acquired the habit of calling to it (811–820). The narrative construction is significant. Ovid makes Cephalus relate the details of how he was calling the breeze. One day, however, these appeals are interpreted by someone who hears Cephalus’ words from a long distance away and without seeing him. This man concludes that Cephalus is calling a nymph with whom he is in love. Of course, if we consider only the facts, this interpretation, imputed to someone who does not see what Cephalus is really doing, is wrong. However, the reader is implicitly invited to take account of what Cephalus is saying, because, when psychologically interpreting a repetitive behavior, words are as important (or even more) as acts. Actually, Cephalus’ appeals to the breeze are in themselves ambiguous. They resound like erotic invitations addressed to someone whose name, Aura (‘the breeze’) seems to be that of a woman. Cephalus asks Aura not only to “come” (‘Aura’, recordor enim, ‘uenias’ 12 cantare solebam, “‘Breeze’, for I remember it, ‘come’, I used to sing”, 813), but to make him happy and come to his embrace (‘meque iuues intresque sinus, 13 gratissima, nostros’, “‘and delight me and come, most welcome, to my embrace’”, 814) in order to relieve the heat that is burning him, as she usually does (‘utque facis, releuare uelis, quibus urimur, aestus’, 14 “‘and be willing, as you often do, to relieve the heat from which I burn’”, 815). Cephalus says that he used to add some caressing words (blanditias plures, 817). Blanditiae is a word employed by the elegists to designate “sweet and flattering speech”, aimed at seducing a woman.15 The blanditiae quoted by Cephalus seem to allude to erotic pleasures and therefore conclude the sexual intercourse to which his first words were the prelude (817−820):16 ‘Tu mihi magna uoluptas’ dicere sim solitus ‘Tu me reficisque fouesque; tu facis ut siluas, ut amem loca sola meoque spiritus iste tuus semper capiatur ab ore.’

820

 12 The verb uenire is commonly used for erotic appeals (see for example Propertius: aut si’s dura, nega; siue’s non dura, uenito! 2.22.43). 13 Sinus is also regularly used in elegiac texts (see Tibullus, 1.1.46: et dominam tenero continuisse sinu; or Sulpicia, 3.13.3−4: illum Cytherea …/ attulit in nostrum deposuitque sinum). 14 As pointed out by Labate 1975, 126, aestus is often used as metaphor for describing love in elegiac poetry. 15 See for example Tibullus, 1.1.72; 2.91; 4.71; 9.77; Propertius, 1.9.30; 15.42; 2.19.4; 3.13.33; Ovid, Am. 1.2.35; 4.66; 2.1.21; 9b.45; 19.17; 3.1.46; 7.11; 11a.31. 16 See again Labate 1975, 127, for the elegiac tone of the words and motifs present in this call to the breeze.

Ambigua Verba, Hidden Desire and Auctorial Intentionality in Ovid  

‘You are my great delight’, I used to say, ‘You restore and coddle/comfort me, you make me love the woods, the solitary places and that breath of yours is always snatched at by my mouth.

Even if Cephalus finds fault with his destiny (sic me mea fata trahebant, “so my fates were drawing me on”, 816), he recognizes that his speech was “ambiguous” (uocibus ambiguis, 821). How to interpret this recurrent sequence with these “ambiguous words”? As psychology teaches us, the use of certain words is symptomatic of when someone — repeatedly — tries to satisfy an unconscious desire in an imaginary way. I argue that Ovid makes Cephalus choose, seemingly more or less unconsciously, “ambiguous words” in order to stage an imaginary erotic situation whose repetition gives him pleasure. But why does Cephalus enjoy speaking to an element of wild nature, the breeze, as if it were a real woman, and ask her to come and join him? He previously stated that he has refused to have an illicit affair with another element of wild nature, the dawn (7.700–710). In Ovid’s narrative, the dawn is, at the same time, a real woman, the goddess Aurora, encountered by Cephalus when he was hunting. Cephalus says that he has refused Aurora’s advances. Why does Cephalus behave differently with the breeze, Aura, whose name is almost the same as Aurora? In fact, the two situations are not exactly the same. Ovid tells us that Aurora is attracted to Cephalus at first glance. She abducts him and tries to please and seduce him but completely fails: Cephalus claims that he is in love with his wife, Procris. Since Aura is not a real woman, it follows that Cephalus’ erotic requests cannot result in an illicit love affair and he will not cheat on his wife. There is another key difference. Whereas Aurora is chasing Cephalus, Aura’s main feature is to be impossible to grasp, as is the case for the wild animals Cephalus is hunting every day. In his epigram 31, Callimachus points out some similarities between loving and hunting: 17 like the hunter Epicydes who “searches out every hare and the tracks of every roe, beset by frost and snow” and despises any animal already killed, “(his) love pursues what flees from him, but what lies ready, it passes up”. Ovid may have had this text in mind when, in the Metamorphoses, he describes what happens to such girls as Daphne, Io, Syrinx, Callisto and Arethusa, who are and want to remain virgins. They refuse male advances and spend their time hunting wild animals18 in almost ‘female only’ spaces, insofar as they

 17 On hunt and love, see Fabre-Serris, 1995, 276–285. 18 Syrinx is not explicitly described as a huntress, but since Jupiter suggests that Syrinx could be afraid to enter the dens of wild animals (quodsi sola times latebras intrare ferarum, 1.593), the

  Jacqueline Fabre-Serris are mainly frequented by the goddess Diana and her nymphs.19 Yet they are seen and desired by men who immediately pursue them like the animals these girls were chasing in their hunts.20 Considering this common theme, all these accounts seem to imply that the attractiveness of these girls may be increased by their openly expressed wish to remain virgins, i.e., untouched. As it is constructed, the version of Cephalus’ story told in Book 7 leads the reader to infer that there would be, at least in the male imagination, an analogy between untouched girls, wild animals chased during the hunt and other elements of nature like the breeze. Indeed, although Cephalus is in love with his wife and a faithful husband, he seems to be attracted by the ‘untouched’ (conceived as the defining feature of female nature)21 to the point of fantasizing about an erotic meeting with a fictitious woman, ‘embodied’ by the breeze, an element of wild nature impossible to grasp, but that gives him the illusion of coming from the bottom of the valley when he calls her. Looking for the breeze appears to complete Cephalus’ previous activity, since Aura’s coming into his arms is another way of fulfilling what is hidden behind his relentless hunts: the secret desire to come into contact with untamed nature through the wild animals (he is chasing) that share with the virgin, as symbol of ‘the feminine’, the particularity of being ‘untouched. Ovid tells the ultimate sequence of the Cephalus and Procris story in such a way as to show how achieving a pure fantasy, even if it is only through ambiguous words, can be dangerous. One day Cephalus hears a few moans, then a slight noise from a falling leaf. He believes that there is a wild animal (sum ratus esse feram, 841), hurls his javelin despite seeing nothing, and kills his own wife, who had followed him in order to ascertain whether or not he was being unfaithful, and is hidden behind bushes.22  reader may suppose that she also is a huntress, insofar as the hunt is the most likely circumstance where a girl could venture into such places. The same two words are used in Daphne’s story: siluarum latebris captiuarumque ferarum/ exuuiis gaudens (1.475–476) 19 Four of these girls are described as companions of Diana: Daphne (1.475–476), Io (1.694– 698), Callisto (2.411–416) and Arethusa (5.618–620). 20 This comparison is explicit in Met. 1.533–539 (Daphne) and 5.604–606 (Arethusa). 21 It is no coincidence that, as Ovid points out, after their separation, Cephalus falls again in love with Procris once she has joined the group of the nymphs who accompany Diana in her hunts, in other words, when she can be assimilated to the virgins who are the companions of the goddess: Offensaque mei genus omne perosa uirorum / montibus errabat, studiis operata Dianae. / Tum miho deserto uiolentior ignis ad ossa / peruenit (“and in her resentment towards me hating the whole race of men, she wandered on the mountains occupied in the pursuits of Diana. Now, deserted, a more violent fire came into my bones”, 7.745−748). 22 Hyginus relates the death of Procris by explaining that one day she follows Cephalus when he goes out hunting because she is still frightened by Aurora (nihilominus illa timens Auroram) and that when he sees a bush moving, her husband throws his javelin and kills her (Fab. 189.9).

Ambigua Verba, Hidden Desire and Auctorial Intentionality in Ovid  

The last sequence of their story corresponds exactly to the reason why he enjoys hunting: he pierces with his javelin the body of his beloved, mistaken for a beast to be stopped in its flight. Ovid had previously written another version of the Cephalus and Procris story in the Ars Amatoria. It is very interesting to compare both versions. In Ars Amatoria 3.685–746, the story is used as an exemplum to dissuade women from becoming suspicious too quickly and believing that their beloved is unfaithful: Nec cito credideris; quantum cito credere laedat ,/ exemplum uobis non leue Procris erit (“Don’t believe too quickly that you have a rival; how dangerous it is to believe too quickly, Procris will be a strong example for you”, 685−686). Ovid focuses on Procris’ reaction and not on Cephalus’ conduct, as is the case in the Metamorphoses. The narrative construction at the beginning is the same. After the hunt Cephalus has made it a habit to come and rest in a shaded place where the zephyrs and the breeze blow. One day, someone hears Cephalus from a long distance and without seeing him, at the very moment he calls the breeze: ‘Quaeque meos releues aestus, cantare solebat, / accipienda sinu, mobilis aura, ueni’ (“‘you who relieve my ardor, he used to sing, changing breeze, come so I can receive you on my chest/in my embrace’”, 697−698). This man reports these words to Procris, who believes that this Aura is a rival.23 Ovid underscores that she is deceived by this name, understood as a girl’s name (ut accepit nomen, quasi paelicis, “when she hears the name as it were of a female lover”, 701). In the end, when Procris is hidden behind bushes, Ovid removes any ambiguity by putting into Cephalus’ mouth another call addressed both to the Breeze and … to the zephyrs: ‘Zephyri molles auraque’, dixit, ‘ades’ (“‘Sweet zephyrs and you, Breeze, come close to me’”, 728). He again stresses that Procris’ mistake was caused by the name Aura: since Cephalus calls both the zephyrs and the breeze, Aura cannot be the name of a girl (ut patuit miserae iucundus nominis error, “when it became clear for the great pleasure of the unfortunate Procris that there had been an error caused by the name”, 729; nomine suspectas iam spiritus exit in auras, “my life breath is already going toward these breezes, suspected because of their name”, 741). The situation staged in the Metamorphoses is very different: the mistake is caused not only by the name, Aura, but, by the ‘words’ employed by Cephalus, which were and remain ‘ambiguous’, as he himself acknowledges.

 23 In the Metamorphoses, Ovid gives not one but many examples of Cephalus’ ‘ambiguous’ calls to the breeze; and it is the man who one day hears him who believes that Cephalus is in love with a nymph (nympham mihi credit amari, 823).

  Jacqueline Fabre-Serris

 Cinyras, A Father more Implicated than he Believes When, in Metamorphoses’ Book 10, Ovid relates the love affair of Myrrha and Cinyras, he focuses on the fact that the young girl is aware of the immoral nature of her desire. She finally yields to her incestuous love for her father but only after a long debate with herself, a failed suicide and the tempting offer of help made by her nurse. However, some parts of Ovid’s account, characterized by an equivocal use of language, suggest that Myrrha’s father is not as innocent as he thinks he is when he discovers the true nature of his illicit affair. When Cinyras asks his daughter to choose a husband among her many suitors, all worthy of her, Myrrha says nothing, but looks at her father while crying. Cinyras attributes her way of reacting to “virginal fear” (uirginei … timoris, 361). He wipes away Myrrha’s tears and kisses her (oscula iungit, 362). Then he asks her to indicate what man she would marry. Myrrha says: similem tibi (“one like you”, 364). Cinyras apparently enjoys this ambiguous expression, used consciously by his daughter. Without taking into account the context of Myrrha’s reply — silence, long glance, tears, kiss — he interprets it as a sign of her filial love: ‘Esto / tam pia semper’ ait (“‘May you always be so pious’, he says”, 365−366). At this moment in the story, Cinyras can be regarded as merely shortsighted. However, when Myrrha’s nurse tries to persuade him to accept an appointment with an unknown woman, his way of reacting deserves more suspicion. Cinyras asks one question: about her age (440). The nurse says: ‘Par’ ait ‘est Myrrhae’ (“‘the same’, she says, ‘as Myrrha’s’”, 441). Her reply echoes that of Myrrha’s, one that resulted, as the reader knows, from her incestuous desire. Cinyras seems also to enjoy this wording, either because he is attracted by young girls, or because the reply refers directly to his daughter. Whatever the reason, he immediately accepts the encounter without asking for anything else, as the reader may conclude when reading the following text: Quam postquam adducere iussa est (“after she was bidden to fetch her”, 441). The way Ovid describes Cinyras’ and Myrrha’s encounters confirms suspicions raised by Cinyras’ interest in the age of his unknown lover. As previously specified by Ovid, when the nurse decides to help Myrrha, she does not dare to say the word that corresponds to the specific nature of her desire: ‘Vive’ ait haec ‘potiere tuo’, et, non ausa ‘parente’ / dicere, conticuit … (“‘Live’, she said, ‘and take possession of your’, but she does not dare to say ‘father’, and she remained silent”, 429−430). However, when Cinyras and Myrrha are making love, they do not show the same restraint: Forsitan aetatis quoque nomine ‘filia’ dixit; / dixit et illa: ‘pater’, sceleri ne nomina desint (“Maybe using also the name appropriate to her

Ambigua Verba, Hidden Desire and Auctorial Intentionality in Ovid  

age, he called her ‘(my) daughter’ and she says ‘(my) father’, so that even the words are not lacking to their crime”, 467−468). The word referring to familial bonds is employed first by the father, who does not know the real nature of his erotic relationship. 24 Should we infer that Cinyras is experiencing it with an unknown woman of his daughter’s age as if it were the equivalent of an incestuous union? Stimulated by some words with double entendre chosen by Myrrha and her nurse, he would come to do the same. However, the use of ambiguous words does not mean the same thing for Myrrha, the nurse and Cinyras. Myrrha and her nurse are telling the truth but in a veiled way. They use the expression par, referring to a situation that does not appear to be ‘real’: Myrrha wants to marry a man “like her father”; the age of Cinyras’ lover is “like his daughter’s”. It seems that in Ovid’s version Cinyras is attracted, but does not identify the reason for his interest precisely because of this indirect wording. As a result, he is having sex with a girl who could be his daughter because of her age but who is not, in his opinion, his own daughter. Why does he employ a word apparently not relevant to this situation, unless in some way he is satisfying a fantasy? The verbal exchange filia/pater enables him to experience an incestuous union, enjoyable on the express condition that he believes it is not real: in his opinion his lover is the same age as Myrrha (and he can call her “my daughter”), but she is not really his daughter . This sine qua non condition is confirmed by his violent reaction when he discovers the identity of his lover: he immediately tries to kill his daughter. 25

 Conclusion As I previously observed, the ars rhetorica consisted both in a set of techniques of analysis and in the right way of using certain words, images, and figures of speech. Several conclusions emerge from Ovid’s use of ambigua uerba in these passages of the Metamorphoses. First, the ambiguous words or expressions are

 24 For the fact that the utterance of the familial terms pater and filia perhaps violates a further taboo, see Lowrie (1993) who discusses the possibility of interpreting Ovid’s text in relation to this comment of Servius (ad Aen. 4.58): et Romae cum Cereri sacra fiunt, obseruatur ne quis patrem aut filiam nominat quod fructus matrimonii per liberos constet (“and in Rome, during the ceremonies in honour of Ceres, the rule is that no one should name either the father or the daughter for the reason that the fruit of marriage exists through children”). The words prohibited are exactly the words Ovid suggests Myrrha and her father called each other in bed. 25 For a closer and more detailed analysis of this episode, see Fabre-Serris 2014.

  Jacqueline Fabre-Serris not employed by the main narrator, ‘Ovid’, but put by him into the mouth of female or male characters. In most cases, these words or expressions are not identified as ambiguous by these characters. What they signify is therefore left to the interpretation of the reader. Another point to note is that these words are used in very specific erotic contexts such as love for oneself, incest, and hidden and unacknowledged desire for a female figure other than that embodied by a wife. Furthermore, the use of ambiguous words apparently varies with gender. Echo and Myrrha consciously employ some words with double entendre to express in a roundabout way their sexual desires, which cannot be displayed in another way. Men such as Narcissus and Cinyras, when they hear ambiguous words, do not identify the double entendre, but they enjoy them, considering their immediate reaction: they also unconsciously start to use ambiguous words themselves. Should we assume that Ovid has sought to highlight a gender difference? Given the sexual restraint expected from them, would women have developed greater skills at expressing in a veiled way their erotic feelings? If neither Narcissus nor Cinyras seem to be fully aware of what they are doing, the situation is less clear for Cephalus, because Procris’s husband tells his story in retrospect. At the time, apparently, Cephalus was not aware that, when he was talking to the Breeze as if it were a woman, he was trying to live out an erotic fantasy. However, when he reports the reaction of the man who immediately believes that this Aura is a nymph, even if Cephalus gives the excuse of his fata and therefore remains in denial, he recognizes that he was using ambigua uerba. As mentioned in the programmatic text of the conference, “ambiguity in the sense of two or more possible meanings is considered to be a distinctive feature of modern art and literature”. I hope I have demonstrated that this statement can be challenged when confronted with Ovid’s practice of verbal ambiguity in the Metamorphoses. In my opinion it is clear from the three ways in which some of Ovid’s secondary characters use ambiguous words: in a conscious way, in an unconscious way and in a semi-conscious way, that ambiguity is a language practice fully recognized also by ancient poets as it is employed by Ovid in a very ingenious manner to give more complexity to his psychological analysis of love. In this regard, we have here another example to add to those that have brought Ovid success among the modern specialists of depth psychology.

Ambigua Verba, Hidden Desire and Auctorial Intentionality in Ovid  

Bibliography Barchiesi, Alessandro (2007), Ovidio Metamorfosi, Vol. II, libri III−IV, Milano. Davis, Gregson (1983), The Death of Procris, Amor and the Hunt in the Metamorphoses, Rome. Fabre-Serris, Jacqueline (1989), “La chasse amoureuse: à propos de l'épisode de Céphale et Procris (Mét., VII, 690–862)”, R.E.L. 66, 122–138. Fabre-Serris, Jacqueline (1995), Mythe et poésie dans les Métamorphoses d’Ovide. Fonctions et significations de la mythologie dans la Rome augustéenne, Paris. Fabre-Serris, Jacqueline (2014), “Natura selvatica e Gender. L’intoccato, il sesso e il sangue (Ovidio (Metamorfosi) e Pavese (La Belva, Dialoghi con Leucò)”, in: Saveria Chemotti (ed.), La scena inospitale. Genere, natura e polis, Padova, 275−288. Hardie, Philip (2002), Ovid’s Poetics of Illusion, Cambridge. Hejduk, Julia (2011), “Death by Elegy: Ovid’s Cephalus and Procris”, TAPA 141, 285–314. Labate, Mario (1975), “Amore coniugale e amore elegiaco nell’episodio di Cefalo e Procri, Ov., Met., VII, 661−865”, Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, 5, 103−128. Lafaye Georges (ed., tr.) (1928), Ovide, Les Métamorphoses, Vols. I−III, Les Belles Lettres, Paris. Lowrie, Michèle (1993), “Myrrha’s Second Taboo, Metamorphoses 10.467−8”, CP 88, 50−52. Otis, Brooks (1970), Ovid As an Epic Poet, Cambridge. Papaioannou, Sophia (2017), “Epic Middles and Epic Awareness in the Narrative of Cephalus and Procris in Ovid’s Metamorphoses”, Paideia 72, 239–260. Pellizer, Ezio (1982), Favole dʼidentità, favole di paura. Storie di caccia e altri racconti della Grecia antica, Roma. Pöschl, Viktor (1959), “Kephalos und Prokris in Ovid’s Metamorphosen”, Hermes 87, 328−343. Rosati, Gianpiero (1983), Narciso e Pigmalione. Illusioni e spettacolo nelle Metamorfosi di Ovidio, Firenze.

Stavros Frangoulidis

The Pleasures of Ambiguity: Aristomenes’ Tale of Socrates in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses Abstract: Ambiguity, defined here as multiple interpretations of the same events or sequence of events, permeates both Aristomenes’ tale and its narrative context in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses. As regards the context, interpretative uncertainty arising from the debate between the skeptic and Lucius over the veracity of Aristomenes’ tale sets up the possibility of alternate readings of the story, enabling the novel’s readers to maintain simultaneously a detachment from the book and a sympathetic suspension of disbelief. In Aristomenes’ tale, ambiguity is activated by the device of double perspective, as Aristomenes and the witches compose plans of diametrically opposed objectives. As a result, readers understand events in the story both as driven by the witches and as perceived by Aristomenes and his friend. This kind of bifocal technique shares with irony the notion that meaning emerges at different levels for the various participants in the narrative. In effect, only the readers are capable of understanding the true meaning of events, and even of envisaging their outcome. Keywords: Apuleius, Metamorphoses, double perspective, stereoscopic technique, audience engagement, plot advancement

Ambiguity in the sense of binary responses to and interpretations of the same events is embedded in the fabric of both Aristomenes’ tale on the supernatural and its narrative framing in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses. 1 With regard to the frame, ambiguity arising from the debate between Lucius’ travelling companions over the tale sets up the possibility of alternate readings of the same story, allowing the reader to maintain at once a critical distance from the book as a whole and a sympathetic suspension of disbelief, so as to enjoy the voluptas derived from reading a novel. The same can be said of the tale per se, where ambiguity is

 1 The text of the Metamorphoses is from the OCT edition of Zimmerman 2012. All English translations of Apuleius’ text are from the Loeb edition of Hanson 1989. My warmest thanks go to both David Konstan and Stephen Harrison for their most welcome comments and suggestions on a draft of this work; to Theresa Fuhrer and Martin Vöhler for constructive criticism; and to Eleni Manolaraki and Niki Ikonomaki for helpful suggestions. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110715811-014

  Stavros Frangoulidis brought to the fore through the device of multiperspectivity: 2 Aristomenes and the witches compose plans of conflicting aims, leaving the readers to understand the events as being driven by both parties, regardless of how they are perceived by Socrates and his friend. This bifocal or stereoscopic technique shares with dramatic irony the notion that a text’s message is perceived in different ways by its various inter- and extra-textual recipients, with only the extratextual reader being able to understand the true meaning of events, and even to predict their development. 3 Whereas Aristomenes’ tale has received excellent discussion from the perspective of constant reevaluation of the incredible events, little attention has been paid to the ambivalence arising from the substitution of the dreamlike for the real. 4 In what follows I shall focus on the ambiguity that arises from alternate responses to the same events in Aristomenes’ tale and the narrative of its context, viewing it as a device designed to hold audience attention and advance the plot. As a self-reflexive mode aimed at stressing the truthfulness of the narrative and shedding light on its possible reception, simultaneous binary responses are evident in the exchange between the skeptic and Lucius that frames Aristomenes’ tale. Representing one potential reaction, the skeptic, a kind of introductory character, dismisses the account as a monstrous lie (1.2.5): ‘Parce’ inquit ‘in verba ista haec tam absurda tamque immania mentiendo’ (“Stop telling such ridiculous and monstrous lies”). This addressee does not wish to give the narrative — and therefore the book — a chance to unfold. 5 On the other hand, Lucius, who is driven by curiosity to join in the conversation, stands for readers who desire novelty. The skeptic explains that he has no time for what violates the laws of nature (1.3.1),  2 For a detailed presentation of multiperspectivity, its forms and uses, see Hartner 2012. 3 A similar instance occurs in Seneca’s Hercules Furens. In the play there are two alternate perspectives as a result of distinct plans: Juno composes her scheme of madness for Hercules’s demise and Hercules creates his plan for the implementation of the new kind of Golden Age. It is the parallel presentation of the two plans that generates irony: Hercules is under the impression that he is moving forward his plan to implement his new era of universal peace, whereas in actual fact he is carrying out Juno’s scheme to destroy him. On this see Frangoulidis (forthcoming). 4 Winkler 1985, 82−86; Harrison 2000, 210−259. I have elsewhere discussed the tale from the Greimasian perspective of switching roles (Frangoulidis 1999, 375−391). Benson (2019, 191, n. 32) points out the recurrence of situations in the novel where characters “dream or think they are dreaming”; Aristomenes is the first such figure, though he is swiftly disabused of the idea that he has had a nightmare brought on by overdrinking (1.18). For an excellent discussion of tragic and comic imagery linked with Aristomenes and Socrates, see May 2006, 128−142. May further discusses ambivalence in the tale especially as relating to clothing. 5 On the play of meaning resulting from the competing voices of the character (actor) and author (auctor) in the frame, see Winkler 1985, 28−29.

The Pleasures of Ambiguity  

but Lucius counters that under certain circumstances marvelous events can indeed occur, and that it would not be wise to dismiss them as mendacia altogether (1.3.3). 6 The element of verisimilitude is crucial in laying the groundwork for the other wondrous events to be told, foremost of which is Lucius’ metamorphosis into a donkey as a result of magic and his re-transformation through Isis’ help. Beyond canonical views, Isis too could be seen as belonging to the realm of the fantastic. Lucius’ ensuing recollection of a sword swallower — hardly evidence that magic exists 7 — is designed to enhance the narrative’s veracity and prepare the reader for what lies ahead. He thus exhorts the narrator to continue (1.4.6). The stereoscopic perspective is further amplified in the inset tale. Before this becomes evident, Aristomenes recounts how he arrived at Hypata, a city constructed in literary terms around the idea that magic holds sway and appearances deceive, as Therese Fuhrer has shown.8 On his way to the baths Aristomenes comes across his friend Socrates in a wretched state. All his ensuing actions show that the two men are close (1.7.2−4): Aristomenes gives Socrates his clothes, leads him to the baths and an inn and offers him food and wine. After regaining his strength Socrates recounts how he was set upon by robbers and took refuge in the inn of an ageing but good-looking woman named Meroe. Meroe’s kindness in responding to and welcoming Socrates after his misfortune on the road (1.7.8) echoes Aristomenes’ similar kind treatment of his friend after meeting him in a wretched state (1.7.2−4), but the repetition only serves to augment the contrasting intentions of the two characters. Rather than taking guileless care of a friend, the witch’s intention from the outset was to exploit him mercilessly for her own ends (1.7.9); and unlike Aristomenes, who offers clothes to his friend, Meroe exerts tyrannical control over her lover, removing his garments and appropriating his scanty earnings from his work as a sack carrier (1.7.10). Socrates falls into the trap precisely because he is initially unaware of who Meroe is and what her eventual intentions are. As a fallible interpreter Aristomenes instantly labels the old woman a whore (1.8.1), but Socrates corrects his view, informing him that Meroe is a sorceress with supernatural powers. In response to Aristomenes’ disbelief Socrates digresses to recount a series of tales pertaining to the witch’s exploits, all of which emphasize her vindictiveness towards faithless lovers and opponents (1.9−10). What is more, the last of the tales shows how Meroe once imprisoned the entire  6 On the Met. as a work of fiction, seeking to lay claim to the status of fact, albeit not focusing on either Aristomenes’ tale or its frame, see the excellent discussion in Laird 1990, 129−164. 7 I owe this observation to David Konstan. 8 Fuhrer 2015, passim.

  Stavros Frangoulidis population of Hypata in their homes, and only released them on condition that they would no longer harm her, and how she punished the person who incited the citizens to take action against her (1.10). Woven into the narrative of Socrates’ travails, these stories have didactic value, forewarning both Aristomenes and the extratextual audience of how cruelly the witch can behave towards anyone daring to resist her. Yet despite his initial fear, Aristomenes takes on the role of mover of the action. He devises a plan to rescue his friend, which ultimately reveals an inability to comprehend or believe in the witch’s supernatural powers (1.11.3). The fact that Socrates even agrees to the escape attempt indicates that he too believes running away is the only course of action open to him. The plan involves going to bed early and leaving the town at dawn, and is set in motion forthwith. In the erroneous belief that ordinary physical means will afford adequate protection against sorcery, Aristomenes locks the doors and places his bed behind them, while Socrates sinks into a deep sleep (1.11.6−8). The words exchanged by Panthia and Meroe once they burst into the room (1.12.4−8) constitute an ironic reversal of the earlier conversation between the pair of male friends about the witch in the same location (1.7−10). Instead of Socrates defaming his mistress, Meroe now damns her lover for slandering her and attempting to leave in secret. His disloyalty motivates her to discard the elegiac guise of Calypso mourning her abandonment by Ulysses, 9 and instead assume the persona of the vindictive witch to exact revenge, already familiar to the story’s audience from Socrates’ inset tales (1.9−10). Meroe further identifies Aristomenes as auctor of the escape plan, while he is watching events from under his bed, reduced from his former confident self as rescuer to a wreck now that he is aware of the women’s power (1.12.7). In her capacity as plot instigator, Meroe vows to punish Aristomenes for his outrages (1.12.8). To Panthia’s proposal that they tear him apart, she counters that it is better to let him live and endure the misery of burying his friend’s remains when he finally dies, providing a more befitting resolution to his endeavors (1.13.3): supersit hic saltem qui miselli huius corpus parvo contumulet humo (“let him at least survive to bury this poor wretch’s corpse with a little earth”). The conversation between the witches in the room marks the transition from Aristomenes’ escape plan to Meroe’s design of revenge on her opponents, and a

 9 On the epic affiliations of the episode see the excellent discussion in Harrison 1990, 194−195. On the presence of elegiac motifs regarding the presentation of Lucius and Fotis and Lucius and Isis in the novel, see Hindermann 2009, 75−84.

The Pleasures of Ambiguity  

consequent shift and re-signification of roles within the tale, which goes unnoticed by the two friends, rendering them incapable of comprehending events. On account of his status as would-be escapee, Socrates becomes the target of Meroe’s vengeance, whereas Aristomenes turns from the facilitator of his friend’s flight into an accomplice in the murder plot. The revenge plan is immediately put into action (1.13.4−8). The cutting of Socrates’ neck with a sword to remove his heart marks an escalation of violence, accentuating the distance from the elegiac role of Meroe as Calypso in mourning. Whereas she previously deprived her lover of all of his possessions (1.7.10), she now extracts from his body the core of his life and feelings, to keep him her own forever (1.13.6). What is more, Socrates is made to suffer further by experiencing the illusion that he is still alive. This is due to the ability of the witches to make the dead temporarily appear to be alive through their ars. In terms of technicalities, this becomes possible as Panthia inserts a sponge into the wound, staunching the flow of blood, but instructs the sponge to return to the sea via a stream (1.13.7): ‘Heus tu,’ inquit ‘spongia, cave in mari nata per fluvium transeas’ (“Listen, o sponge, born in the sea, take care to travel back through a river”). The witches’ subsequent urination over Aristomenes’ face serves as testimony to their presence in the room through the odor which remains the following morning. The witches’ ability to make the dead appear to be alive is consistent with magical powers capable of temporarily awakening the dead. This becomes clear from both extra-textual and intra-textual evidence: in Lucan’s Bellum Civile the witch Erichtho, also located in Thessaly, summons up a dead body to tell Sextus Pompeius how the battle of Pharsalus will turn out, 10 while the witches in Thelyphron’s tale also engage in awakening a dead individual, even though they end up rousing the guard instead of the dead person (2.21−30). The error is due to the guard and the dead man having the same name. In fashioning such illusions the witches bring to mind Plato’s representation of the sophists: as the latter engage in verbal dexterity in manipulating the appearances of things, 11 so the magician, as de Romilly puts it, “calls up phantoms and makes people believe in things that do not exist”. 12 What is more, Plato often  10 Eventually the ability to interact with the dead is one the witches share with gods: cf. Hermes’ wand in the Iliad and Odyssey, with which he both leads the living to Hades and reawakens the dead. 11 Plato, Soph. 235a: περὶ δ᾿ οὖν τοῦ σοφιστοῦ … ὅτι τῶν γοήτων ἐστί τις, μιμητὴς ὢν τῶν ὄντων; Plato, De Leg. 908d: σοφιστῶν μηχαναί. Also de Romilly 1975, 26−27. On Platonism in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, including the tale, see Schlam 1992, passim; Harrison 1998, 57; Harrison 2000, 252−259 and most recently Littlewood 2019, 370−374. 12 de Romilly 1975, 26−27.

  Stavros Frangoulidis portrays sophists as magicians in their avowed aim to mislead. 13 Plato’s portrayal of the sophists as sorcerers is seen later in Philo of Alexandria, who associates the sophists with Egyptian magicians in their respective use of sophisms and tricks (σοφίσματα καὶ τέχνας) with a view to deceive (πρὸς ἀπάτην). 14 Fuller discussion is beyond the scope of the present paper, but the possibility of a Platonic reading of Aristomenes’ tale suggests an allegorical dimension that could further enhance the significance of the ambiguously presented events. In the tale there are two alternative plans, one hatched by Aristomenes and the other by the witches. The intermingling of the two serves to create confusion in the minds of Aristomenes and his friend as to the interpretation of events. Ambiguity is thus embedded in the fabric of the narrative, aiming at augmenting audience engagement and advancing the plot. The substitution of the dreamlike for the real is evinced in the events following the witches’ exit from the room (1.14.1). Aristomenes is of course convinced that Socrates is dead, and that he is now locked in the room with a corpse. In his delusion he imagines that the cadaver will be discovered in the morning and that he will be sentenced to death for murdering his companion, as no one would believe an incredible tale about witches. In metaliterary terms this is a reflection of authorial concerns over the credibility of the narrative. His feeling of anxiety motivates a new plan to leave the room in secret, in what amounts to exiting the plot

 13 Plato, Soph. 241b: ἐὰν αὐτὸν διερευνῶμεν ἐν τῇ τῶν ψευδουργῶν καὶ γοήτων τέχνῃ τιθέντες; Plato, Symp. 203d: ἀλλὰ (sc. ὁ Ἔρως) … δεινὸς γόης καὶ φαρμακεὺς καὶ σοφιστής. For an extensive treatment of the topic see de Romilly 1975, 23−43. Comparison with Plato is corroborated by the fact that as a Middle Platonist Apuleius composed two philosophical treatises, one on Plato and his Doctrines and another on The God of Socrates. 14 Philo, Det. 38: σοφισταὶ καὶ μάγοι … ἀνθρώπων σοφίσματα καὶ τέχνας εἶναι τα γινόμενα πεπλασμένας πρὸς ἀπάτην; Mos. 1.92: σοφισταὶ δ’ ὅσοι καὶ μάγοι παρετύγχανον τί καταπλήττεσθε; Also Philo, Mos. 1.277: μαγικὴν σοφιστείαν. For the representation of reality see also Theseus in Shakespeare, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 5, Scene 1, 2−22 (edited by Foakes 2003): “More strange than true. I never may believe / These antique fables, nor these fairy toys. / Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, / Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend / More than cool reason ever comprehends. / The lunatic, the lover, and the poet / Are of imagination all compact: / One sees more devils than vast hell can hold; / That is the madman. The lover, all as frantic, / Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt. / The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, / Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; / And as imagination bodies forth / The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen / Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing / A local habitation and a name. / Such tricks hath strong imagination / That if it would but apprehend some joy, / It comprehends some bringer of that joy; / Or in the night, imagining some fear, / How easy is a bush supposed a bear?”

The Pleasures of Ambiguity  

and avoiding punishment. Unbeknown to him, however, the dead man in the room will appear to be alive later on. Aristomenes immediately puts his escape plan into action; but in an ironic twist the guard suggests there is a motive for his hurried departure, making him even more apprehensive at the prospect of being wrongly accused of murder. This development comes about as Aristomenes asks the guard to open the door; in taking on the functions of a blocking character, the ianitor refuses to execute the command. The fact that Aristomenes wishes to leave when the roads are full of thieves leads the guard to suspect he may be guilty of some offense. The argument that he owns nothing worth stealing fails to allay the doorman’s suspicions. This intensifies Aristomenes’ sense of anguish that Meroe has spared his life only so that he can be sentenced to die by crucifixion (1.15.6): bonam Meroen non misericordia iugulo meo pepercisse, sed saevitia cruci me reservasse (“the gentle Meroe had indeed spared my throat not out of mercy, but in her cruelty had reserved me for the cross”); but at the same time, the extra-textual audience are fully aware that she has merely assigned him the role of leading his friend to his resting place (1.13.3). As the victim of the witches’ deception, Aristomenes’ ensuing decision to commit suicide so as to escape conviction also ends in failure, in what amounts to an intimation to readers that he is incapable of exiting the plot and therefore escaping the role Meroe has assigned him in the revenge plot. 15 The triumph of the dreamlike element the following morning (1.17) rewrites the events of the night in every respect (1.15). In contrast to his previous role as an obstacle, the guard now bursts into the room to inform Aristomenes that it is dawn, thus restarting the plot (1.17.1). At the same moment Socrates is roused from his slumbers, not least because Aristomenes has fallen on top of him while attempting to hang himself. The sight of an unharmed Socrates fills Aristomenes with joy (1.17.4), as the horror of the previous night now seems to have been nothing but a nightmare; but an alternative reading is also brought to the fore in the awareness that Socrates appears to be alive only through the witches’ ars. The impression that he is unharmed offers Aristomenes the chance to clear himself of any accusations, while simultaneously embracing and kissing Socrates out of joy. The guard is also convinced that all is well, since he did not witness the events in the room the previous night. Nevertheless, the device of double perspective allows evidence of the previous night’s events to intrude: in what serves as a reminder both to Aristomenes and to readers of what happened, Socrates pushes his friend away and asks why he is reeking of urine; but Aristomenes explains the  15 On Aristomenes’ comical suicidal attempt, see Harrison 2000, 224.

  Stavros Frangoulidis odor away as self-wetting, in line with his delusion that nothing untoward occurred (1.17.7). The bifocal technique continues to be seen as events unfold. Socrates’ apparent rising from his sleep offers new impetus to the advancement of the plot, since it allows Aristomenes to think that he can carry forward his plan to lead his friend to safety. In contrast to his previous failed attempt to leave the inn alone (1.15), Aristomenes here exhorts his friend to hurry up (1.17.8): ‘Quin imus’ inquam ‘et itineris matutini gratiam capimus? (“Why don’t we go and take advantage of travelling in the early morning?”); the audience, however, are well-positioned to envisage the horrific culmination of the proposed journey. On the road Aristomenes checks his friend’s neck at the point where he saw Meroe plunging in her sword, but cannot make out any scar as the sponge conceals the wound. The fact that he does not see any traces of the crime allows him to attribute the previous night’s experience to overindulgence in food and wine to such an extent that he feels saturated in human blood (1.18.4−5).16 This is surely an ironic allusion to the bloody killing that in fact took place. Like Aristomenes, Socrates too views his experience the previous night as a dream in which his own heart was removed, leaving him considerably weakened — a credible explanation, given that he was portrayed as sleeping when the witches performed their crime (1.18.7). The attempt by both characters to reinterpret the night’s events as a dream sustains ambiguity, allowing Aristomenes to maintain the illusion that he is leading his friend to safety. Mirroring his previous care for his friend in the inn (1.7.3), Aristomenes offers Socrates bread and cheese to regain his strength, while simultaneously directing him to sit under a plane tree (1.18.8): iuxta platanum istam residamus. The setting is reminiscent of the pastoral landscape near the river Ilyssos in Plato’s Phaedrus, which also commences with a conversation on the deceptive value of rhetoric, the verbal equivalent of magic (see above).17 Any reminder, however, of the care Aristomenes shows to Socrates in the Metamorphoses serves to direct attention to a change in the signification of nourishment: whereas previously the food provided in the inn helped him to regain his strength (1.7.4), here the voracious consumption of bread and cheese renders him pale (1.19.1). This change is determined by the fact that food is sustenance only for the living. The deathly pallor Socrates assumes strikes terror into Aristomenes once more, as he cannot see any  16 On wine-drinking causing Aristomenes to have incredible experiences, see Benson 2019, 250−251. An intratextual link with the events of the witches’ revenge is also established, as Socrates draws attention to the fact that he is drenched in urine, but to no avail. 17 See n. 11 above.

The Pleasures of Ambiguity  

passers-by who could testify to his innocence, unmindful that Meroe has in fact assigned him the role of laying his friend to rest. Eating bread and cheese makes Socrates thirsty as the cheese is salty. Literary echoes from the Phaedrus may foreshadow the presence of a stream nearby, as plane trees need abundant moisture. Ironically Aristomenes directs his friend to the nearby stream to quench his thirst (1.19.8), oblivious to Panthia’s spell placed on the sponge (1.13.7). Whereas water is normally the source of life, here it is ascribed negative connotations through its association with the witches’ revenge plan; and whereas wine previously helped Socrates to open up and narrate the story of his misfortune to his friend (1.7.4), here water silences him forever. As soon as he touches the liquid with his lips (1.19.9), his wound opens up and the sponge obeys Panthia’s instruction, leaping into the stream to return to the sea and causing Socrates’ end. The demise of her victim marks the triumph of the supernatural, in contrast to Phaedrus, where the Platonic philosopher challenges the deceptive promises of rhetoric when compared to his true philosophical discourse on the immortality of the soul. 18 The tension between the two potential outcomes of Aristomenes’ adventure, which helps both to sustain uninterrupted interest in the narrative and advance the plot, continues up to the end of the tale. Although the mourning and burial of Socrates appears to Aristomenes to be an act of piety towards an old friend, readers know that he is actually completing his role as an instrument of the witches. In sum, Aristomenes occupies an ambivalent position in the narrative. He tries to help his companion in a desperate state; but through his actions he aggravates Meroe’s counter-response, eventually becoming the unwitting agent of his friend’s demise. As a narrative mechanism, the alternative interpretations accorded to the same events allow the plot to evolve, as otherwise it would have been inconceivable for a friend to turn against his companion’s interests. This offers further evidence that in the supernatural world the operation of those social bonds that hold society together is suspended. Only after the burial does Aristomenes perceive the dangers arising from the interaction of the opposing strategies that readers have been capable of distinguishing all along, and fully appreciate the dramatic irony. This is evidenced in his guilty conscience, which underlies his decision to stay away from his home town in Aigion, and become an exile in Aitolia, where he remarries as a mark of  18 On the representation of the Apuleian Socrates as a caricature of the philosopher Socrates through allusions to Aristophanes’ satirical portrayal of the same philosopher, see Littlewood 2019, 371−374.

  Stavros Frangoulidis reestablishing new social bonds. In attempting to assist his friend Socrates, he has ended up in what is only a slightly better position, estranged from his former life. Both as a self-referential trope aimed at increasing credibility and therefore the novelty of the narrative, and as a reflection of possible audience reception, the device of simultaneous binary responses to the same events resumes following Aristomenes’ tale. In the exchange between the skeptic and Lucius, with each character remaining true to his initial position, the skeptic dismisses Aristomenes’ story as an outrageous lie (1.20.2): ‘nihil’ inquit ‘hac fabula fabulosius, nihil isto mendacio absurdius (“That is the most fabulous fable, the most ridiculous lie that I have ever heard”), whereas Lucius restates his belief in the truthfulness and by implication the innovative poetics of the narrative (1.20.4): nam et mihi et tibi et cunctis hominibus multa usu venire mira et paene infecta, quae tamen ignaro relata fidem perdant (“I and you and all human beings actually experience many strange and almost unparalleled events which are disbelieved when reported to someone who is ignorant of them”). The tension over these mutually exclusive responses is eventually resolved in favor of Lucius. The skeptic is an introductory character: he appears at the outset of the narrative as if to underscore the book’s novelty and innovative poetics, and he vanishes soon after, as Aristomenes’ autobiographical story strongly contradicts his views on the narrative’s fictional truthfulness, which have been fully defeated by the narrator’s tale. Had it been otherwise, Apuleius’ novel would have ended right there. On the other hand, Lucius remains the protagonist throughout the book, which bears out his belief in and approach to the supernatural. 19 I have argued above that both as a textual strategy designed to maintain uninterrupted interest in the book and as a plot-forwarding device, the notion of ambiguous interpretation of the same events is included in both the fabric of Aristomenes’ tale and its frame. As regards the tale, this interpretive uncertainty is brought to the fore through the mechanism of double perspective, as both Aristomenes and the witches compose alternate plans with conflicting aims, by having the readers understand the ensuing events both as driven by the witches and as perceived by Aristomenes and his friend. As far as the frame is concerned, ambiguity arising from the debate between the skeptic and Lucius over the fictional veracity of Aristomenes’ tale sets up the possibility of alternate readings of the story, enabling the recipients to maintain both a critical distance toward the book and a sympathetic suspension of disbelief, so as to enjoy the pleasures derived from reading. This kind of bifocal or stereoscopic technique — seeing double as  19 On the affirmation of the incredible, see Winkler 1985, 86.

The Pleasures of Ambiguity  

it were — which resonates through the tale and its frame, has in common with irony the notion that the meaning is created on a different level by the characters in the narrative and the readers respectively. Ultimately, the readers are the only ones with a vantage point that enables them to understand events correctly, and even to predict their outcome.

Bibliography Texts and Translations Foakes, Reginald A. (ed.) (2003), A Midsummer Night’s Dream, New Cambridge Shakespeare Series, Cambridge. Hanson, Arthur J. (tr.) (1989), Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, Cambridge MA. Zimmerman, Maike (ed.) (2012), Apulei Metamorposeon Libri XI, Oxford.

Books and Articles Benson, Geoffrey (2019), Apuleius’ Invisible Ass: Encounters with the Unseen in the Metamorphoses, Cambridge. Borghini, Alberto (1991), “Il platano e la morte: a proposito di Apul. Met. I 19”, Aufidus 15, 7−14. Burges, Jonathan, “Travel Literature in Antiquity”, in: The Literary Encyclopedia, at: http://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=7224 Frangoulidis, Stavros (1999), “Cui videbor veri similia dicere proferens vera?: Aristomenes and the Witches in Apuleius’ Tale of Aristomenes”, CJ 94, 375−391. Frangoulidis, Stavros (2008), Witches, Isis and Narrative: Approaches to Magic in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, Berlin/New York. Frangoulidis, Stavros (forthcoming), “From Victor to Victim: Metadrama and Movement of Plot in Seneca’s Hercules Furens”, EuGeStA 10. Fuhrer, Therese (2015), “‘In jeder Stadt steckt ein grosser Roman’: Hypata — eine erzählte Stadt in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses”, in: Therese Fuhrer/Felix Mundt/Jan Stenger (eds.), Constructing and Modelling Images of the City, Berlin/Boston, 87−108. Harrison, Stephen J. (1990), “Some Odyssean Scenes in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses”, MD 25, 193−201. Harrison, Stephen J. (2000), Apuleius: The Latin Sophist, Oxford. Hartner, Marcus (2012), “Multiperspectivity”, in: Peter Hühn/John Pier/Wolf Schmid/Jörg Schönert (eds.), The Living Handbook of Narratology, Hamburg, especially par. 3.1, at: http://www.lhn.uni-hamburg.de/article/multiperspectivity Hindermann, Judith (2009), “The Elegiac Ass: The Concept of Servitium Amoris in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses”, Ramus 38, 75−84. Keulen Wytse H. (2000), “Significant Names in Apuleius: A Good Contriver and his Rival in the Cheese Tale (Met. 1.5)”, Mnemosyne 53, 310−321.

  Stavros Frangoulidis Keulen Wytse H. (2007), Apuleius Madaurensis Metamorphoses, Book 1: Text, Introduction and Commentary, Groningen. Laird, Andrew (1990), “‘Person’, ‘Persona’ and ‘Representation’ in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses”, MD 25, 129−164. Littlewood, Cedric (2019), “Socrates in Roman Satire”, in: Christopher Moore (ed.), Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Socrates, Leiden/Boston, 367−398. May, Regine (2006), Apuleius and Drama: The Ass on Stage, Oxford. McCreight, Thomas D. (1993), “Sacrificial Ritual in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses”, GCN 5, 31−61. Panayotakis, Stelios (1998), “On Wine and Nightmares: Apul. Met. 1,18)”, GCN 9, 115−129. de Romilly, Jacqueline (1975), Magic and Rhetoric in Ancient Greece, Cambridge MA. Ruebel, James S. (2000), Apuleius: The Metamorphoses Book 1, Wauconda Ill. Schlam, Carl C. (1992), The Metamorphosis of Apuleius. On Making an Ass of Oneself, Chapel Hill. Winkler, John J. (1985), Auctor and Actor. A Narratological Reading of the Apuleius’ Golden Ass, Berkeley/Los Angeles.

Marco Formisano

Legens. Ambiguity, Syllepsis and Allegory in Claudian’s De Raptu Proserpinae Abstract: The De Raptu Proserpinae is widely seen as the high point of Claudian’s classicism. In my discussion, however, I observe this poem from a different perspective, leaving aside questions of the poem’s classical models and instead concentrating on its exquisitely late antique allegorical potential. My main argument is that the praefatio performs allegory through a powerful syllepsis located at its very center (legens, v. 6): it represents an invitation to read allegorically. I suggest that this famous praefatio, generally taken to refer to Claudian’s own poetic career, is instead an allegory of reading, which is always unavoidably ambiguous, and that within the preface ambiguity itself reaches its apex through the syllepsis legens. 1 Keywords: epic poetry, late antiquity, allegory, allegoresis, syllepsis, Claudian, interruption

Ambiguity is not only a feature characterizing certain texts, but it can be defined as the primary way of functioning of any text belonging to any historical period and literary genre. A text is always ambiguous, not so much because its author intentionally wanted it to be so, but more compellingly because the meaning produced by each reader is always a result of the constitutive semantic instability of the written words. Moreover, whatever the meaning might be that the author intentionally attached to his or her text, the text itself always turns away from it, so that readers are confronted with an unavoidable and always recurring ambiguity: between the intention of the author and the meaning produced by the readers’ own interpretation. But, if ambiguity and literature are by definition intertwined, allegory and allegoresis — more than any other generic or hermeneutic discourse — make ambiguity their ruling principle, since in an allegory or an allegorical interpretation (allegoresis) the literal meaning always adumbrates that  1 I would like to express my deep gratitude to the editors of this volume: Therese Fuhrer, Martin Vöhler and Stavros Frangoulidis. Paolo Felice Sacchi gave me, as always, very valuable suggestions. While preparing this paper for publication I had the opportunity to discuss Claudianʼs epic poem with the students in my Master’s seminar on late Latin poetics at Ghent University. I thank them all, and in particular Seppe De Craemere, for their astute comments and passionate readings. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110715811-015

  Marco Formisano other meaning which at the same time is located in and transcends the text. Late antiquity no doubt represents the golden age of allegory and allegoresis, not so much because authors intentionally produce allegories in the proper sense (as for example with Prudentius’ Psychomachia) but rather because allegoresis pervasively affects the reading of many texts of this period. In the following discussion I draw attention to one of the most ambiguous texts of late Latin poetry, which in my opinion has been the object of critical distortion precisely because its modern interpreters see in its inherent ambiguity an obstacle to the comprehension of the text, instead of productively making sense of it (Praef. 1.1−12): Inuenta secuit primus qui nave profundum et rudibus remis sollicitavit aquas, qui, dubiis ausus committere flatibus alnum, quas natura negat praebuit arte vias, tranquillis primum trepidus se credidit undis litora securo tramite summa legens; mox longos temptare sinus et linquere terras et leni coepit pandere vela Noto; ast ubi paulatim praeceps audacia crevit cordaque languentem dedidicere metum, iam vagus inrumpit pelagus caelumque secutus Aegaeas hiemes Ioniumque domat.

5

10

He who first cut the deep with the ship he had invented, and disturbed the waters with rough-hewn oars, who dared to commit his vessel of alder-wood to the unreliable blasts and made available by his art ways which nature denies, at first trusted himself trembling to the calm waves, coasting along the edge of the shores on a safe course; soon he began to try out vast bays, to leave the land and spread his sails to the mild south wind; but when, little by little, his impetuous boldness grew and his heart forgot sluggish fear, roving now far and wide he burst upon open water, and, following the sky, mastered Aegean storms and the Ionian Sea. 2

There is a man, the first who decides to cross the sea on a boat. Gradually, after having trained himself in controlling nature through his technique, and having unlearned his fear, this man leaves the coast and with his boat finally reaches the open sea. This is the very simple content of the preface to the first book of the De Raptu Proserpinae by Claudian, written between the end of the 4th and the early 5th century, consisting of three books; a fourth, final book, containing the last

 2 I follow the text of Charlet 1991 and give the English translation of Gruzelier 1993.

Legens. Ambiguity, Syllepsis and Allegory in Claudian’s De Raptu Proserpinae  

part of the myth, i.e. Ceres’ reconciliation and the consequent distribution of grain, was probably never written.3 If we only consider this brief but elegantly constructed prefatory poem 4 and its content, not much meaning emerges from this apparently banal narration. The most intriguing aspect is that no explicit or implicit connection is established with the epic poem itself or its content, i.e. the myth of Proserpina’s abduction, so that this preface can quite perfectly be read in isolation or, better put, it could be attached to virtually any other text. In formal terms, too, its meter marks its independence from the epic proper, since, like the preface to the second book, it is in elegiac couplets. But how can readers make sense of this preface? What could its meaning or meanings be, both per se and considered with the epic poem itself? Undoubtedly readers are implicitly invited to interpret this carmen as the “threshold” to the subsequent mythological epic, and yet the author does not provide any kind of instruction on how to connect it to the epic proper. We do not find, for instance, any hint of a comparison between the unnamed sailor and the poet, or any other mythical sailors. 5 Of course, while reading of a person who undertakes for the first time a journey on the sea within a classically crafted little Latin poem our memory almost unavoidably brings us to the first sailor of Greek myth, Jason, and the saga of the Argonauts.6 As always seems to happen as soon as a text presents itself as ambiguous or difficult to interpret, scholars’ reaction is diverted from the text itself to the author’s intentions — in other words, the question becomes “Whatever did the author want to say?” instead of “What does this text mean?” Instead of appreciating and interpreting ambiguity as such, critics pertinaciously try to solve it, as if the aporia of meaning deriving from the ambiguous text simply represented a provocation

 3 See Charlet 1991, XXXVIII. Schottenius Cullhed 2019, 83–84 offers a concise overview of various speculations advanced by scholars and possible interpretations. 4 Felgentreu 1999, 163 speaks of a “knappe, dichte, strenge Form”. 5 An anonymous copyist of a now lost manuscript of Sankt-Gallen tried to fill what for him was a gap in the meaning by adding to the end of Claudian’s text a reassuring final element revealing the supposed comparison: sic ego qui rudibus scripsi praeludia verbis / ingredior Stygi nobili Ditis opus. See Felgentreu 1999, 161. 6 See Felgentreu 1999, 156–167, Charlet 1991, 4–5 (who provides a list of parallels from Horace to Martial) and Harrison 2017 (who comments that “the invention of the ship mentioned by Claudian irresistibly recalls the story of the Argonauts” [240, emphasis mine]).

  Marco Formisano launched by the author to his readers in order for them to exercise their detective skills. 7 But this shift of attention from the text to its author is fatal for interpretation. Especially in the case of ancient authors whose biographies are barely known to us, this critical attitude ends up privileging reconstruction — for instance of the historical and biographical circumstances within which the author operated or of his or her intentions — instead of interpreting the text as it appears to us. Along these lines, in the case of this mysterious praefatio, the most accredited interpretation is sustained by the effort of reconstructing Claudian’s poetic career, presupposing a long series of details which are far from being obvious or historically founded. According to most scholars, we must read this preface as a passage in which Claudian is speaking about himself and his poetic activity: the sailing man represents the poet himself, who is ready to attempt a major undertaking, i.e. the writing of epic poetry with a mythological subject, which is traditionally conceived of as the highest poetic achievement. But, as I have suggested, this interpretation is problematic not only because the text contains not a single hint at comparison of any kind, or at any activity other than sailing, but also for two other reasons. First, this interpretation presumes that, prior to this poem, Claudian had been a panegyric poet. As some scholars have already observed, panegyric and epic are in late antiquity very tightly connected. Stephen Wheeler, for instance, contends that in Claudian’s poem the tradition of heroic epic is subsumed within the panegyric genre: panegyric, Wheeler argues, is in fact “the culmination of epic tradition.” 8 Second, and more importantly, this interpretation — while offering the advantage of allaying the anxiety for contextual and biographical reconstruction broadly characterizing the hermeneutics of Classics by providing an allegedly historical and ‘objective’ explanation — is actually based on an idée reçue, an absolute lack of information, and a massive amount of uncertainty. Nonetheless, and symptomatically, the editor of the poem in the Budé, Jean-Louis Charlet, leaves no room for doubt: En claire, elle (scil. cette preface) signifie qu’ après avoir écrit de petits poèmes (v. 5−6: navigation le long des côtes), puis de poèmes de moyenne importance (v. 7−8: traverse des

 7 Felgentreu 1999, 163 exemplarily defines the solving of the allegory (“Auflösung der Allegorie”) in the case of this praefatio as “redundant”, as if allegory always needs to be “solved”. 8 Wheeler 2007, 120, Ware 2004 and Pelttari 2014, 57 also emphasize the epic quality of Claudian’s panegyric poetry. Others suppose that Claudian wrote De Raptu Proserpinae in an earlier stage of his career, in which case the reference would be to his carmina minora and compositions in Greek. See Guipponi-Gineste 2010, 20 (with relevant bibliography).

Legens. Ambiguity, Syllepsis and Allegory in Claudian’s De Raptu Proserpinae  

golfes en s’écartant de la terre), le poète entreprend une oeuvre audacieuse (v. 9−12: navigation en haute mer qui affronte les tempêtes et les surmonte). 9

To be sure, Charlet himself rightly notes that, even if everybody seems to agree with this reading of the praefatio, there is no scholarly consensus about the details and above all the chronology, which nonetheless seems to be the real preoccupation of many scholars.10 But again, despite the unavoidable divergences in evaluating single details, scholarly discussion is not about the text itself, but rather about Claudian, his intentions and the circumstances within which he conceived his poem. Yet the question “What might Claudian have wanted to say with this poem?” is not only unsolvable but also irrelevant to the interpretation. I would even go so far as to point out that, even if we could ever find external evidence somehow confirming the currently prevailing hypothesis that Claudian wanted to present his own poetic career in an allegorical form, this certainty would not solve the immanent ambiguity of the text, nor would it in itself actually be an interpretation at all, but rather a description of external factors and authorial intentions. And finally, even if we strongly believe that the reconstruction of Claudian’s intentions is fundamental to interpreting the text, then we should at least acknowledge the obvious: in this preface Claudian himself clearly did not want to give any hint at, or establish any connection with, his own poetic career, or with the subject matter of the poem (the myth of Proserpina), or with any specific historical event. It is thus safer to argue that, whatever Claudian’s intentions might have been, this ambiguous preface and more generally De Raptu Proserpinae avoids any reference to his own biography and to the immediate historical context. 11 How, then, to read De Raptu Proserpinae (to echo the telling title of Charlet’s article, “Comment lire le de raptu Proserpinae”)? Of course, no interpretation is ever entirely stable, for it is in the nature of any hermeneutic act that it must always be ever-changing: there is no single access to the text, there is no single “how to read”. A valid interpretation need not represent a dogma; instead we call it valid precisely because it invites being challenged, being put under scrutiny and in the end perhaps being undone by future critics.

 9 Charlet 1991, XX, emphasis mine. In his 2008 edition Onorato (p. 13) accepts this interpretation without discussing it. 10 See Charlet 1991, XXI−XXVIII. Cf. Harrison 2016. 11 The eluding of the historical context within a poetic text might be identified as a characteristic of late antique texts. See Formisano, forthcoming.

  Marco Formisano After having pointed to the ambiguous nature of the famous preface and having described the epistemic difficulties intrinsic to the kind of criticism which departs from ambiguity as a kind of enigmatic puzzle intentionally launched by the poet, in what follows I discuss the short carmen by taking seriously its very function as a preface, i.e. as a hermeneutic key to the entire epic: it is the preface which tells us how to read the De Raptu Proserpinae. To recall the definition by Gerard Genette at the opening of his famous Seuils, a paratext is “a fringe of the printed text which in reality controls one’s whole reading of the text.” 12 If we read the praefatio in this way, on the one hand we will perceive it as an organic part of the epic poem as a whole, but on the other we will be able to appreciate its constitutive ambiguity and to make sense of it — without feeling the urge to solve a puzzle by alienating it from the corpus of the poem proper and launching aleatory reconstructions of Claudian’s original intentions, whatever they might have been. This preface not only functions as a paratext to the main poetic text, i.e. the mythological narration, but also represents a mise-en-abyme both of what a paratext in itself is, and of the very act of reading. It associates the reading of this poem with a narrative of displacement: there is a man who undertakes a voyage at sea and gradually distances himself from the mainland, and precisely this displacement is seen in the positive terms of an accomplishment rather than, for instance, of a loss. Within this narrative a clear tension but also a complementarity is established between land and water. As Genette notes at the beginning of his treatise, a paratext “constitutes a zone between the text and off-text, a zone not only of transition but also of transaction.”13 More than any other aspect, the evident theme of the preface is transition, represented as a sea journey. Moreover, as probably any reader immediately perceives, the preface needs to be read as an allegory itself. As mentioned above, this allegory has been interpreted by the majority of critics as an intentional camouflage crafted by Claudian himself in order to reveal to his readers that he is now presenting an epic poem, and that this represents a major achievement in comparison to his previous, allegedly less ambitious writings. Within this construction, it remains mysterious why Claudian should have felt it necessary to convey this very basic point by means of an allegory. On the other hand, the De Raptu Proserpinae itself, as is uncontroversially accepted, 14 invites being read allegorically, although it per se is not an allegory but a mythological tale. This allegorical preface therefore perfectly fits within the epic project at large by offering a key to its interpretation,  12 Genette 1997, 2 (quoting Philippe Lejeune). 13 Genette 1997, 2. 14 See Charlet 2000 for a summary of different positions.

Legens. Ambiguity, Syllepsis and Allegory in Claudian’s De Raptu Proserpinae  

but at the same time it stays outside of the mythic narration proper by implicitly emphasizing its own paratextual nature. As observed by Laura Jansen, a paratext is not only ‘beside’ or ‘next to’ (para) the text, but also an organic part of that text. In her words, “paratexts are neither fully attached to nor detached from the text, but they conform to a liminal zone between its inside and outside.” 15 Although classicist readers — eager as they are to read their texts always in function of previous works, hunting for all possible intertextual references and allusions — might not be attracted by what the text itself has to say, displacement and rupture undoubtedly are the main topic of the preface and of the entire poem.16 This preface transfigures its own prefatory nature in an allegory, by vividly representing its own liminal condition along with a litoral narrative, represented by the tension between the mainland (litora summa) and the high sea (profundum), thus pointing to a displacement of meaning — as opposed to a literal narrative — and hence implicitly inviting an allegorical understanding of the preface and of the epic poem altogether. At the same time, this preface manifestly does not offer any single reference either to the epic which follows, or to the historical context, or to the author himself, so that, if we had found this little carmen separately from the corpus of the poem, we would not have been able to reconstruct that it belongs to the De Raptu Proserpinae. Aaron Pelttari comments that most late antique prefaces, and particularly those written by Claudian, “center upon the poet and his relation to the subject”. He also contends that “Claudian’s prefaces guarantee that his poems will be read within their original context.” 17 This is not, however, the case with this particular praefatio, which is perhaps unique within Claudian’s oeuvre, since within it both the poet and the context are manifestly obscured, while, more importantly, what Pelttari calls “room for reading” — i.e. a proactive call to the readers to interpret — is implicitly exalted.18 Classicists are not friends of allegory, for it represents for them an apparently insurmountable epistemic obstacle, capable of powerfully shaking their hermeneutical practices that are usually oriented at reconstructing, through the text, broader cultural and historical contexts. Typically (as the story of the interpretation of this particular praefatio ever since the intrusive anonymous scribe in Sankt-Gallen exemplarily shows), as soon as they encounter an allegory, they try to “solve” it, i.e. to identify a stable meaning, supported by a precise contextual reading and the consideration of the author’s Sitz im Leben. And yet, allegory is not a camouflage  15 Jansen 2014, 5. 16 See Formisano 2017, 220–227. 17 Pelttari 2014, 57. 18 Pelttari 2014, 72.

  Marco Formisano concocted by the author in order to titillate the detective skills of his or her readers. But as modern discussions of allegory and allegoresis point out, allegory is defined by two characteristics above all. First, it produces its meaning through negation, since it constitutively denies what it presents, and second, it is self-reflexive, since it refers to itself and its own use of verbal signs. 19 Accordingly, instead of finding a “solution” to an allegorical enigma, it might be more rewarding for a literary interpretation to consider allegory as such, i.e. as an approach which emphasizes the ambiguity sustaining the poem as a whole. As recently pointed out by Fredric Jameson in his book Allegory and Ideology, allegory is often misused to refer to a “oneto-one narrative” which establishes a neat correspondence between two levels of signification. This two-level system is according to Jameson “the mark of bad allegory,” while “genuine allegory does not seek the ‘meaning’ of a work, but rather functions to reveal its structure of multiple meanings, and thereby to modify the very meaning of the word meaning.” 20 Most scholars have considered both prefaces of Claudian’s major epic poem as texts which are readable separately from the poem. This critical tendency is based on the fact that neither preface, in content or in form, shows a connection to Proserpina’s myth itself or to its epic hexametric form. They are mostly read as external textual occasions on which Claudian describes his own poetic career (first praefatio) and compares himself to Orpheus who after a long break returns to his activity as a singer in order to celebrate Hercules’ labors (second praefatio). Christine Schmitz has convincingly insisted on the necessity of involving both prefaces in the interpretation of the poem as a whole by identifying a motif which runs through the entire poem: the civilizing role of ars upon untamed nature. 21 Moreover, Schmitz contends that Claudian does not distance his new epic from his previous panegyric poems, as most scholars imply, but instead that the poet compares himself to Orpheus, who in the second preface is presented as the admirer of Hercules’ labors. In this sense, Schmitz is interested in shedding light not only on the internal cohesion of this text, i.e. between the prefaces and the body of the poem itself, but also between Claudian’s epic and panegyric projects. 22 In doing so, she implicitly emphasizes the fundamental coherence of Claudian’s persona who is able to combine different literary genres under the same poetics in an organic manner.

 19 See Kablitz 2016, 15. 20 Jameson 2019, 10. 21 Schmitz 2004. 22 On internal cohesion within Claudian’s oeuvre, see also Bureau 2009 and, in greater detail, Guipponi-Gineste 2010, who affirms that all works by Claudian, including the carmina minora, are part of a “projet poétique d’une grande cohérence” (10).

Legens. Ambiguity, Syllepsis and Allegory in Claudian’s De Raptu Proserpinae  

Here I am less interested in identifying a conceptual coherence between the De Raptu Proserpinae and Claudian’s other works. Rather, my intention is to shed light on the fundamental role which the first preface plays for the entire poem; for this, I would argue, provides a key to the interpretation of the epic poem as an allegory. For the majority of critics, allegory ends up being a sort of superficial disguise for a certain deeper meaning. 23 While not denying the communis opinio, Pelttari adds a significant element to the interpretation by identifying the invention of the first boat (which he also reads as a reference to Jason) as a “transgressive act” paralleling the epic project of Claudian himself: “The figure of the first mariner makes a problem of originality rather than of conventionality.” 24 If we proceed with a consideration of the text itself — i.e. on the one hand leaving aside the tentative reconstruction of Claudian’s intentions, whatever those might have been, and on the other hand renouncing the search for a single and precise meaning beyond the allegory represented by Proserpina’s myth — we will discover that the preface can be read as an invitation to consider ambiguity as a constitutive aspect of this specific poem and perhaps, more broadly, of late antique poetics. What strikes the reader is the apparent banality of the preface’s content, which stands in powerful contrast with the highly elaborate style of the elegiac couplets. More particularly, one word stands out both in its meaning and in its position: the present participle legens, located precisely in the middle of the twelve-line preface. Although no other commentator has noticed this, this word sustains and gives meaning to the preface and therefore, I suggest, to the entire poem. In it, also by virtue of its central position, the reader can perceive the profound ambiguity following which he or she can approach the whole poem: litora summa legens (v. 6) “skirting the edge of the shores,” after which the man who is sailing feels free to move away from the coast and spread his sails to the winds. Moreover, the positioning of legens at the very center of this carmen and at the end of the pentameter adds a performative quality to its meaning: until now the sailor is legens, but from now on he no longer “skirts/reads” the coast. If we read this text spatially, i.e. visualizing it in terms of space, legens represents a sort of border, beyond which something different begins. The sailor is thus an allegory not of the author but of the reader, who experiences a profound change in his or her approach to the text. Thus legens is a syllepsis, i.e. a word within which different meanings “fall together”, which is arguably the single most characteristic figure for what we call ambiguity. The understanding of syllepsis I am referring  23 See Charlet 2000 for a mise au point of the various hermeneutic strategies adopted by scholars; approaches have not significantly changed since then. 24 Pelttari 2014, 7.

  Marco Formisano to derives from literary theorist Michael Riffaterre, who in his landmark 1980 article “Syllepsis” argued that this figure and the ambiguity which derives from it strongly mark literary discourse as such. In this article, Riffaterre prefers the term “presuppositions” to intertextual references: The text is not simply a sequence of words organized as syntagms but a sequence of presuppositions. In literary writings every lexical element is the tip of an iceberg, of a lexical complex whose whole semantic system is compressed within the one word that presupposes it. To put it otherwise: the literary text is a sequence of embeddings with each significant word summarizing the syntagm situated elsewhere. 25

In our case, the word legens, emphasized by its central position and at the end of the pentameter, while superficially meaning “skirting”, evokes its apparently absent meaning, i.e. “reading”. And precisely this possibility of perceiving other apparently absent meanings within a certain word produces ambiguity, which, according to Riffaterre, is “the kind of obscurity that prevents the reader from quite discerning which of a word’s pertinent meanings are equally acceptable in context.”26 Therefore, if we accept that legens, as a syllepsis, has the meaning not only of “skirting” but also of “reading”, which is precisely what a reader does in the moment of perceiving this very text — and also in the moment of perceiving the possibility of its inherent ambiguity — then we may interpret this preface as an instantiation of the very act of reading and, consequently, of the constitutive ambiguity which always derives from it. Elsewhere I have argued that the De Raptu Proserpinae strongly thematizes disjunction from literary tradition, by producing a new literary space, allegorized by the underworld; 27 I read the mainland (litora summa, v. 6) from which the solitary sailing man is departing as the landscape of the classical poetic tradition.28 In the present essay I would like to add a further layer of complexity to my previous thoughts by proposing that this preface can be read as an allegory of allegory, or perhaps as an allegory of reading, to allude to the title of Paul de Man’s famous book. 29 As we have seen, the allegorical potential of the preface, as well as of the

 25 Riffaterre 1980, 627 (emphasis added). 26 Riffaterre 1980, 628. 27 Formisano 2017, 227. 28 For a similar reading see also Pelttari 2014: “the image of poetic production as a voyage is common throughout Latin poetry, but this allegory can also be read as referring to the tradition” (7, emphasis added). 29 de Man 1982.

Legens. Ambiguity, Syllepsis and Allegory in Claudian’s De Raptu Proserpinae  

poem in its entirety, is universally accepted, but rarely discussed or problematized as such. Charlet insists on the contemporary Christian readership and its “habitudes de lecture”, 30 whereas Bruno Bureau emphasizes the commonalities between pagan and Christian authors in the use of allegory and allegoresis (Claudian and Prudentius). 31 Among others, Hellenist Gianfranco Agosti insists on the necessity of applying allegoresis to the reading of late antique texts at large, both prose and poetry. 32 And as I myself have argued elsewhere, although today allegory is marginalized on our current hermeneutic horizon, it deserves to be re-activated for the interpretation precisely of late antique texts.33 Returning to our text, reading legens as “reading”, the process of distantiation from the edge of the shores (litora summa, v. 6) becomes the distantiation from the literal/littoral meaning, where seafaring on the open sea (pelagus, v. 11) and the act of following the sky (caelumque secutus, v. 11) become an allegory of allegoresis itself, without however promoting any stable meaning other than itself. Claudian’s preface marks its distance from the text by virtue of its formal aspects (elegiac couplets opposed to the hexametric body of the epic proper), and of its non-relatedness to the topic of the poem, as well as by thematizing spatial distance itself (from the coast towards the high sea). At the same time it offers its readers the hermeneutical key to the poem itself: the story of the abduction of Proserpina cannot claim any particular theological authority any more. Therefore it inherently requires being read allegorically. Charlet, in his programmatic article on “Comment lire”, suggests some possibilities, insisting above all on a political and a cosmological allegory able to satisfy both Christian and pagan readers.34 By establishing this “one-to-one” allegory — or allegories — Charlet follows the common critical tendency that avoids the danger of arbitrariness which in his mind casts a shadow on every allegorical reading. But the kind of allegoresis to which this text seems to invite its readers is far from establishing a simple equation between a literal and an allegorical meaning; this equation would be a “bad allegory” in Jameson’s terms. Rather — and more simply perhaps — it manifests the loss of a stable significance of the classical tradition. The thematization of this loss of significance characterizes the poem in its fundamental structural aspects as well. The textuality of De Raptu Proserpinae

 30 Charlet 2000, 186. 31 Bureau 2009, 5 n. 13. 32 Agosti 2005. 33 Formisano 2018. 34 Charlet 2000.

  Marco Formisano constantly evokes a process of distantiation and interruption. Many passages exemplarily represent break and interruption. In Book 1 Sicily is represented in its violent separation from continental Italy (141−147): Trinacria quondam Italiae pars una fuit, sed pontus et aestus mutavere situm. Rupit confinia Nereus victor et abscissos interluit aequore montes parvaque cognatas prohibent discrimina terras. Nunc illam socia ruptam tellure trisulcam opposuit natura mari.

145

Trinacria was once a conjoined part of Italy, but sea and time have changed the lie of the land. Victorious Nereus burst his boundaries and washed between the severed mountains with his waters, and a small division keeps apart these kindred countries. Now Nature has set against the sea that three-pronged island that is broken from its related ground.

At the end of Book 1 Proserpina is portrayed at the moment when her work at weaving a tapestry is interrupted by the arrival of the three goddesses who will eventually attract her outside of the palace: imperfectumque laborem / deserit (271−272). Interruption is the main theme of the preface of Book 2, represented by Orpheus who returns to his poetic activity after a long break. But by displaying interruption as a motif, the preface also performs an interruption in itself, since it breaks the narration between Books 1 and 2, and at the same time recalls Proserpina’s imperfectus labor. As convincingly noticed by Schmitz, the representation of Orpheus as an artist parallels that of Proserpina herself.35 Book 2 contains the central scene of the raptus, which is described in terms of violent rupture (151−213). And again in Book 3, Ceres, while desperately looking for her daughter, enters the empty palace where she was hidden and finds her unfinished work in the process of being completed by an audax aranea with her “sacrilegious text” (153−158): foribusque reclusis, dum vacuas sedes et desolata pererrat atria, semirutas confuso stamine telas atque interruptas agnoscit pectinis artes. divinitus perit ille labor, spatiumque relictum audax sacrilego supplebat aranea textu.

 35 Schmitz 2004, 36.

155

Legens. Ambiguity, Syllepsis and Allegory in Claudian’s De Raptu Proserpinae  

Opening the doors, as she passed through the empty rooms and deserted halls, she recognized the half-ruined weaving with its disordered threads and the work of the shuttle that had been broken off. That wonderful task of the goddess had gone to waste and the bold spider was completing the gap left behind with her sacrilegious web.

But the most impressive sign of interruption is of course the fact that the poem was never completed by its author. We can speculate, if we like, that he suddenly died and thus was not able to put an end to his work. But, precisely as in the case of Proserpina’s weaving, nothing prevents us from attributing an aesthetic significance to the fact of the poem’s lack of completion, fully independently of the intentions of Claudian.36 To conclude, the allegory represented by this highly ambiguous preface must be taken seriously in itself; it represents the hermeneutic key to the entire poem. No other truth is indicated by the poet; his allegory is not a one-to-one symbolism where every literal element has an allegorical correspondent. Rather, this allegory represents allegory itself, the struggle with the classical poetic tradition, as well as, more generally, the eternal search for a meaning located outside the text. My hermeneutic strategy on the one hand recognizes the liminality of the praefatio as a paratext, but differently from the usual biographical approach, which banalizes the inherent ambiguity by trying to solve it, and reads it as wholly separated from the poem itself, my reading re-establishes the role of the praefatio for the understanding of the entire poem as an allegory. Read this way, this preface becomes a superb manifesto of late antique poetics for a number of reasons — above all because it offers the key to the interpretation of the entire poem, by showing its function as a program of poetic hermeneutics. As has recently been argued, late antiquity is the age of the preface which becomes a means of increasing the distance between the author and his/her text. 37 This particular preface also allegorizes the distantiation from the classical tradition, represented by the mythological subject matter (the tale of Proserpina), which cannot be read otherwise than as something else. To this “something else” we certainly can attribute some particular meaning — cosmological, political, ritual — but we must keep in mind that no firm interpretation is offered by the text itself, which along with all other possible meanings also signifies its own radical and ineffable ambiguity.

 36 Schottenius Cullhed 2019 interprets interruption in this poem as a typical feature of the language of trauma, particularly as related to sexual violence. 37 McGill 2017.

  Marco Formisano

Bibliography Agosti, Gianfranco (2005), “Interpretazione omerica e creazione poetica nella tarda antichità”, in: Antje Kolde et al. (eds.), Koryphaio andri. Mélanges offerts à Andre Hurst, Geneva, 19−32. Albrecht, Michael von (1989), “Proserpina’s Tapestry in Claudian’s De Raptu Proserpinae: Tradition and Design”, ICS 14, 383−390. Bureau, Bruno (2009), “Figures de poètes chez Claudien”, in: Perrine Galland-Hallyn/Vincent Zarini (eds.), Manifestes littéraires dans la latinité tardive: poétique et rhétorique, Paris, 51−70. Charlet, Jean-Louis (1991), Claudien, Oeuvres: Tome 1. Le rapt de Proserpine, Paris. Charlet, Jean-Louis (2000), “Comment lire le de raptu Proserpinae de Claudien”, REL 78, 180−194. Felgentreu, Fritz (1999), Claudians praefationes: Bedingungen, Beschreibungen und Wirkungen einer poetischen Kleinform, Stuttgart/Leipzig. Formisano, Marco (2017), “Displacing Tradition. A New-Allegorical Reading of Ausonius, Claudian and Rutilius Namatianus”, in: Jaś Elsner/Jesús Hernández Lobato (eds.), The Poetics of Late Latin Literature, 207−235. Formisano, Marco (2018), “Fragments, Allegory, and Anachronicity. Walter Benjamin and Claudian”, in: Sigrid Schottenius-Cullhed/Mats Malm (eds.), Reading Late Antiquity, Heidelberg, 33−50. Formisano, Marco (forthcoming), “Seeing Double: The Contemporary and the Immemorial in Claudian and Colluthus”, Ramus. Jameson, Fredric (2019), Allegory and Ideology, London. Jansen, Laura (ed.) (2014), The Roman Paratext: Frame, Texts, Readers, Cambridge. Kablitz, Andreas (2016), Zwischen Rhetorik und Ontologie: Struktur und Geschichte der Allegorie im Spiegel der jüngeren Literaturwissenschaft, Heidelberg. Genette, Gérard (1997), Paratexts. Thresholds of Interpretation, trans. by J.E. Lewin, Cambridge. Gruzelier, Claire (1993) (ed.), Claudian. De Raptu Proserpinae. Edited with Introduction, Translation and Commentary, Oxford. Guipponi-Gineste, Marie-France (2010), Claudien: poète du monde à la cour dʼOccident, Paris. Harrison, Stephen (2017), “Metapoetics in the Prefaces of Claudian’s De Raptu Proserpinae”, in: Jaś Elsner/Jesús Hernandez Lobáto (eds.), The Poetics of Late Latin Literature, Oxford, 236−251. Hinds, Stephen (2012), Displacing Persephone: Epic between Worlds, Housman Lecture, London. Man, Paul de (1979), Allegories of Reading. Figural Language in Rousseau, Nietzsche, Rilke, and Proust, New Haven. McGill, Scott (2017), “Rewriting Ausonius”, in: Jaś Elsner/Jesús Hernandez Lobato (eds.), The Poetics of Late Latin Literature, Oxford, 252−277. Onorato, Marco (2008), Claudio Claudiano, De Raptu Proserpinae, Naples. Pelttari, Aaron (2014), The Space That Remains. Reading Latin Poetry in Late Antiquity, Ithaca, NY. Riffaterre, Michael (1980), “Syllepsis”, Critical Inquiry 6.4, 625−638. Schmitz, Christine (2004), “Das Orpheus-Thema in Claudians De raptu Proserpinae”, in: WiduWolfgang Ehlers/Fritz Felgentreu/Stephen Wheeler (eds.), Aetas Claudianea, Munich/ Leipzig, 28−56.

Legens. Ambiguity, Syllepsis and Allegory in Claudian’s De Raptu Proserpinae  

Schottenius Cullhed, Sigrid (2019), “Proserpina in Pieces. Claudian on Her Rape”, Ramus 48, 1, 82–94. Ware, Catherine (2004), “Claudian: The Epic Poet in the Prefaces”, in: Monica Gale (ed.), Latin Epic and Didactic Poetry: Genre, Tradition and Individuality, Swansea, 181−201. Ware, Catherine (2011), “Proserpina and the Martyrs: Pagan and Christian in Claudian’s De Raptu Proserpinae”, in: Elizabeth Mullins et al. (eds.), Listen, O Isles, unto Me: Studies in Medieval Word and Image in Honour of Jennifer O’Reilly, Cork, 16−27. Wheeler, Stephen (2007), “More Roman Than Romans of Rome: Virgilian (Self-)Fashioning in Claudian’s Panegyric for the Consuls Olybrius and Probinus”, in: John H.D. Scourfield (ed.), Texts and Culture in Late Antiquity. Inheritance, Authority, and Change, Swansea, 97−134.



Part IV: Ambiguity as Argument

Irmgard Männlein-Robert

Between Conversion and Madness: Sophisticated Ambiguity in Lucian’s Nigrinus Abstract: In this contribution, Lucian’s Nigrinus is examined for intended ambiguity, which calls for a satirical and ironic reading of the text. Nigrinus shows numerous ambiguous, linguistic-stylistic, generic and compositional features that cause a reader to react with disconcertment and which are to be evaluated as intended ambiguity markers. These markers are analyzed and interpreted as subversive strategies and planned disruptive tactics that allow educated recipients to arrive at a satirical reading and a thoroughly sober, critical view of an inappropriate, seemingly insane enthusiasm for philosophy.1 Keywords: Satire, irony, ambiguity markers, conversion, madness, philosophy

In this paper I would like to focus on a text by Lucian of Samosata, who was a sophisticated, rhetorically elaborate author of the Second Sophistic, active in the 2nd century A.D. Lucian is famous not only for being innovative in terms of genre — he created a new hybrid of Platonic and comic dialogue with elements from Menippean satire 2 — but also for his critical engagement with historical and contemporary philosophers, primarily with regard to their inappropriate self-understanding. 3 The Nigrinus, on which I would like to concentrate here, deals with the apparently fashionable theme of conversion, that is, a dramatic experience that fundamentally and effectively changes a person’s life, very often in the direction of philosophy. 4

 1 I would like to thank Matthew Chaldekas, Tübingen, for helpful and elegant corrections of my English. 2 See Helm 1906 and Helm 1927, now better Hall 1981 and Branham 1989; cf. Whitmarsh 2001, 247–294. 3 On this subject in general, see Alexiou 1990; Clay 1992; Nesselrath 2002. 4 See Gigon 1946 (focus on Socrates, Plato, Aristotle); Nock 1933; Betz 1961; Schäublin 1985, 117; 124f.; cf. also Attias 1998; for a review of research, see Tanaseanu-Döbler 2008, 11–22. Lucian is applying — ironically — the theme of ‘conversion’ to his own biography,when he hints at the ‘turning point in his life’ (of course, to be understood as his new creation of hybrid dialogue with philosophical elements) in Bis accusatus 28, cf. Schlapbach 2010, 265–270. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110715811-016

  Irmgard Männlein-Robert The conversion in this Platonically stylized 5 text is about conversion to philosophy evoked by a Platonist philosopher: Nigrinus. Lucian’s Nigrinus consists of two closely connected parts: first, a letter from a certain ‘Loukianos’ addressed to the Platonic philosopher Nigrinus, in which he documents the effect of Nigrinus’ words on him, and second, a dialogue — bearing the title Νιγρίνου Φιλοσοφία — between two anonymous speakers, in which the one (let us name him Speaker A) is astonished at the new, arrogant behaviour of the other one (let us name him Speaker B). 6 Speaker B then enthusiastically explains his experience of conversion to philosophy, initiated by Nigrinus in Rome, and thereby sweeps along his interlocutor (Speaker A) and in the end also succeeds in converting him to philosophy. The stylized speech of the philosopher Nigrinus is narrated verbatim by Speaker B as a protreptikos (sc. λόγος), i.e. as an advertising speech for philosophy, 7 which contains moral-philosophical criticism of the corrupt customs of the people in Rome and glorification of the ideal conditions in Athens. 8 Recent studies on this text have focused primarily on the relationship between rhetoric and philosophy, 9 or on the question of whether Nigrinus’ speech is to be seen as a protreptic first turn in the direction of true philosophy or if it is a more popular speech. Recent research has also concentrated on the evaluation of the many linguistic images — the intertextual allusions and poetic and philosophical pre-texts 10 — on the literary embedding in the contemporary scene of the Second Sophistic of the 2nd century A.D., or on comparisons with other conversion stories from the imperial period. 11 In fact this text was either perceived by modern interpreters as an authentic portrayal of a  5 For details (with further literature) see Hunter 2012, 15–18. 6 We may not take it for granted that the dedicator ‘Loukianos’ is to be identified with the author Lucian of Samosata. In other dialogues, he uses this ‘Loukianos’ as a mask as well, see Paulsen 2009, esp. 232 with n. 8. The identity of Speaker B is not defined, pace Szlagor 2005, 159 and passim, who identifies him with the author Lucian himself. And also neither the historicity nor the identity of the Platonist Nigrinus can be proven, so we take him as a typical representative of the Platonic hairesis (from Lucian’s perspective); for a more optimistic (satirical) identification with a contemporary Platonist (Albinus), see after Quacquarelli 1956, 43f. now Tarrant 1985, esp. 94f. For the the phenomenon of masquerade and conversion, see Cancik 2008, 376–378 and passim; for the fictionality of Lucian’s masks, see Dubel 1994; Ní Mheallaigh 2010; Ní Mheallaigh 2014, 177–181 and Baumbach/Möllendorff 2017, 13–57. 7 On the definition and problem of the genre ‘Protreptikos’, see Jordan 1986. 8 For close similarities to the genre of diatribe see Stowers 1988. 9 See after Quacquarelli 1956, now in great detail Lechner 2016. Here, according to his thesis, psychagogy via rhetoric is presented according to the model of the Platonic Phaedrus. 10 See e.g. Anderson 1978 and Schröder 2000 and Lechner 2016 passim. 11 See above notes 1 and 3.

Between Conversion and Madness  

real conversion to philosophy,12 or read as a satirical and ironic hyperbole of a conversion. 13 So, obviously, looking at his text and its reception we are confronted with extreme controversy: is this text an allusive but true conversion story or a highly ironic satire on philosophical madness? In my opinion, Lucian’s Nigrinus is a complex text which exhibits intentional ‘ambiguity’. Methodologically and conceptually, in some respects the following is inspired by a seminal article that Joachim Knape and other Tübingen colleagues presented in 2010 on “Dimensions of Ambiguity” (“Dimensionen der Ambiguität”). 14 I also refer to the concept of ‘narrative ambiguity’ developed by the Israeli Anglist Shlomith Rimmon. 15 According to this concept, the author of a text can evoke in the recipient two fundamentally contradictory ways of reading by means of the textual presentation. I now think that with regard to Lucian’s Nigrinus one can speak of such a type of ambiguity. This ambiguity is intended a priori and is generated by the narrative presentation as well as by the construction of certain ‘frames’. 16 In this contribution, however, the aim is to examine Lucian’s Nigrinus for its intended ambiguity, 17 which is — in my opinion — constructed by numerous ambiguous narrative, stylistic, compositional and intertextual features that cause a reader disconcertment. The unsettling effect, which arises during the initial moment of the decoding of ambiguity, presupposes, on the one hand, a recipient who has the ability to be ironic and the necessary competence in interpreting ambiguity. 18 The recipient of the text is the key with regard to the phenomenon of ambiguity, since this can only be identified when doubts about the previously accepted validity of what has been said arise at certain points in the text, i.e. when his or her disconcertment calls into question the ‘factual pact’, and when a different, opposite meaning to what has been said proves to be at

 12 Quacquarelli 1956 and Hall 1981, 157–164. Hubert Cancik reads the Nigrinus completely unironically, interpreting it along the undoubtedly used conversion topoi as a document of “recruitment and conversion to a philosophical school” and “autobiographical conversion story”, see Cancik 2008. See also Cancik 2012, esp. 104–108. Lechner 2016 interprets this text only as a “tragicomical dialogue”, which “cautions against the intriguing protreptic discourses of philosophers of that period”. 13 See e.g. Szlagor 2005, 163–179; Möllendorff 2010; Berdozzo 2011, 228–234. For the whole discussion on irony in Nigrinus, see Paulsen 2009. 14 Bauer et al. 2010. 15 Rimmon 1977. 16 Bauer et al. 2010, 10. 17 A similar idea is already found in Möllendorff 2010, 15–17. 18 Bauer et al. 2010, 20.

  Irmgard Männlein-Robert least as plausible as the spontaneous reading at a turning moment (‘Kippmoment’).19 On the other hand, the evocation of this unsettling effect requires irony signals of various kinds to be placed in the text itself. I call them intentionally placed ‘markers of ambiguity’.20 We must therefore ask: I) which ambiguity markers do we find in the Nigrinus and how are the aforementioned turning moments evoked in the recipient, and II) what strategy does Lucian as author pursue with this ambiguity tactic?

 Markers of Ambiguity . Frames One sort of marker of ambiguity can be identified in the frames of this text (taken as literary frames in the text itself): the first frame is presented with the dedication letter from ‘Loukianos’ to Nigrinus (Nigr. Epist., l. 1–11); another one we have before the beginning (c. 1.1 – c. 12.29) and after the end (c. 35–38) of the narrated dialogue 21 between the two speakers (A and B); and a third — spatial — frame we find in the beginning of the encounter between Speaker B and the philosopher Nigrinus (c. 2.13–20). So we have a quite complicated framing around the nucleus of the whole story, the speech of Nigrinus, reported verbatim by Speaker B. Let us first have a look at the dedication letter as a first frame (epist. l. 1–11): ΠΡΟΣ ΝΙΓΡΙΝΟΝ ΕΠΙΣΤΟΛΗ Λουκιανὸς Νιγρίνῳ εὖ πράττειν. Ἡ μὲν παροιμία φησίν, Γλαῦκα εἰς Ἀθήνας, ὡς γελοῖον ὂν εἴ τις ἐκεῖ κομίζοι γλαῦκας, ὅτι πολλαὶ παρ’ αὐτοῖς εἰσιν. ἐγὼ δ’ εἰ μὲν δύναμιν λόγων ἐπιδείξασθαι βουλόμενος ἔπειτα Νιγρίνῳ γράψας βιβλίον ἔπεμπον, εἰχόμην ἂν τῷ γελοίῳ γλαῦκας ὡς ἀληθῶς ἐμπορευόμενος· ἐπεὶ δὲ μόνην σοι δηλῶσαι τὴν ἐμὴν γνώμην ἐθέλω, ὅπως τε νῦν ἔχω καὶ ὅτι μὴ παρέργως εἴλημμαι πρὸς τῶν σῶν λόγων, ἀποφεύγοιμ’ ἂν εἰκότως καὶ τὸ τοῦ Θουκυδίδου λέγοντος ὅτι ἡ ἀμαθία μὲν θράσος, ὀκνηροὺς δὲ τὸ λελογισμένον ἀπεργάζεται· δῆλον γὰρ ὡς οὐχ ἡ ἀμαθία μοι μόνη τῆς τοιαύτης τόλμης, ἀλλὰ καὶ ὁ πρὸς τοὺς λόγους ἔρως αἴτιος. ἔρρωσο.22

 19 Bauer et al. 2010, 13f. 20 Bauer et al. 2010, 25. Cf. also the partly coinciding structural phenomena of irony, named by Hutcheon 1994, 156. See also Nünlist 2000, 77f. 21 “Das Potenzial für Ambiguität wird erhöht, wenn Erzählerfiguren von Dialogen berichten”, so Bauer et al. 2010, 32. 22 “LETTER TO NIGRINUS. Best wishes to Nigrinus from Lucian! The proverb says ‘An owl to Athens!’ meaning that it would be ridiculous for anyone to bring owls there, because they have

Between Conversion and Madness  

Here Loukianos as an enthusiastic convert tries to impress Nigrinus by sending him a βιβλίον (epist. l. 5). This βιβλίον is meant to be a document that testifies to the effect Nigrinus had on him, proof of the concomitant effective conversion of Speaker B to (Platonic) philosophy. Not least because of the Platonic greeting formula (εὖ πράττειν) together with the proverbial ‘an owl to Athens’ 23 the dedicator Loukianos creates the expectation of a really philosophical Platonic text and real Platonic dogmatics. After this, we finally learn in c. 2.13f. that Nigrinus is a Platonic philosopher. At second glance, one might wonder about the expression at l. 4 δύναμιν λόγων ἐπιδείξασθαι, as this labels the following dialogue as an ἐπίδειξις, a traditional rhetorical genre used by sophists. 24 Moreover, the phrase is formulated in an unreal conditional which therefore casts a double shadow on it. What follows is an epideixis about the effectiveness and the love of ‘words’ (cf. also ὁ πρὸς τοὺς λόγους ἔρως, l. 15f.). So already here we decode ironic markers of ambiguity, because the focus is on (rhetorically shaped) ‘words’, and not on arguments, as one might have expected of a Platonist. This discrepancy highlights the aim of the whole dedication, which turns out to be a purely sophistic or rather a sophisticated one (this can also be seen in the play around his supposed ignorance: ἀμαθία, l. 8–11). I call this the ‘literary frame’ of Lucian’s Nigrinus. The second frame, to be found at the beginning and at the end of the dialogue (c. 1–12 init.; c. 35–38), is too complex to completely analyze here, but I want to mention only one obvious crack or marker of ambiguity (c. 2.8–12): ἐστάλην μὲν εὐθὺ τῆς πόλεως βουλόμενος ἰατρὸν ὀφθαλμῶν θεάσασθαί τινα· τὸ γάρ μοι πάθος τὸ ἐν τῷ ὀφθαλμῷ μᾶλλον ἐπετείνετο. οἶδα τούτων ἕκαστα, καὶ ηὐξάμην σέ τινι σπουδαίῳ ἐπιτυχεῖν. 25

 plenty in the city. If I wanted to display my command of language, and were sending Nigrinus a book written for that purpose, I should be exposing myself to ridicule as a genuine importer of owls. But it is only my state of mind which I wish to reveal to you, how I feel now, and how deeply I have been moved by your discourse. So I may fairly be acquitted even of the charge contained in Thucydides saying that ignorance makes men bold, but discourse cautious, for clearly this great hardihood of mine is not due to ignorance alone, but also to fondness for discourse! Good health to you!” (transl. by Harmon 1953, 99). 23 For the hyperbolic semantics of this proverb see Schröder 2000, but in my opinion she wrongly pushes the hypothesis that Nigrinus is a mask for Lucian himself. 24 See (as a later example, but based on previous texts of this genre) Menander Rhetor’s διαίρεσις τῶν ἐπιδεικτικῶν, Russell/Wilson 1981; Heath 2004, 277–279. 25 “Well, I made straight for Rome, wanting to see an oculist; for I was having more and more trouble with my eye. / I know all that, and hoped you would find an able man.” (transl. Harmon 1953, 101).

  Irmgard Männlein-Robert Here we learn that the visit of Speaker B to Rome is actually motivated by an eye disease, but what we get is not how he saw the ophthalmologist (who is never mentioned again!), but straightforwardly the story about his visit to Nigrinus’ house in Rome and directly afterwards his exultant recovery from this very disease. I call this frame the ‘occasion-related’ frame in the Nigrinus. Here the Platonist Nigrinus is to be identified as the real doctor, and the eye disease must be taken as a metaphor for Speaker B’s psychological loss, his philosophical blindness. 26 So the speech of Nigrinus proves to be a therapy with the effect of healing and initiation into philosophy. 27 Such a shift in the real intention of Speaker B’s visit to Rome we can identify as a signal for ambiguity. Now I come to the third frame mentioned, the spatial scene Speaker B describes (c. 2.13–20): δόξαν οὖν μοι διὰ πολλοῦ προσειπεῖν Νιγρῖνον τὸν Πλατωνικὸν φιλόσοφον, ἕωθεν ἐξαναστὰς ὡς αὐτὸν ἀφικόμην καὶ κόψας τὴν θύραν τοῦ παιδὸς εἰσαγγείλαντος ἐκλήθην· καὶ παρελθὼν εἴσω καταλαμβάνω τὸν μὲν ἐν χερσὶ βιβλίον ἔχοντα, πολλὰς δὲ εἰκόνας παλαιῶν φιλοσόφων ἐν κύκλῳ κειμένας. προὔκειτο δὲ ἐν μέσῳ καὶ πινάκιόν τισι τῶν ἀπὸ γεωμετρίας σχημάτων καταγεγραμμένον καὶ σφαῖρα καλάμου πρὸς τὸ τοῦ παντὸς μίμημα ὡς ἐδόκει πεποιημένη. 28

When he enters Nigrinus’ house in the very early morning to make his salutatio, he finds the Platonist holding a book in his hand (l. 16);29 around him are many εἰκόνες of “old philosophers”,30 in the middle, a πίναξ with geometrical drawings and a σφαῖρα as a model of the universe. This is the ‘spatial frame’ of Nigrinus’ speech, which at this point we expect to be learned, full of references to old philosophers and focused on the mathematical and astronomical, in short, subjects and interests well known from Plato’s own dialogues (Theaetetus, Timaeus, etc.) and also from later Platonists. The self-presentation of Nigrinus in this context produces an ironizing frame around the whole speech, as it creates a big contrast with Nigrinus’ rhetorically shaped long talk about bad morals in Rome and good

 26 For the dense allusions to Plato’s allegory of the cave, see Szlagor 2005, 167, Paulsen 2009, 233f. and Berdozzo 2011, 219. 27 See Hunter 2012, 15. 28 “As I had resolved to pay my respects to Nigrinus the Platonic philosopher, which I had not done for a long time, I got up early and went to his house, and when I had knocked at the door and the man had announced me, I was asked in. On entering, I found him with a book in his hands and many busts of ancient philosophers standing round about. Beside him there had been placed a tabled filled with figures in geometry and a reed globe, made, I thought, to represent the universe” (transl. Harmon 1953, 101–103). 29 Cf. Tac. Dial. 3.1: Maternus has a book in his hands. 30 Cf. Juv., 2.4–7. For more parallels with Juvenal’s satire see Paulsen 2009, 235f.

Between Conversion and Madness  

morals in Athens (c. 12.30 – c. 34), in which he talks neither about anything that a normally educated contemporary might expect a Platonist to talk about — no mathematics, no cosmology, no metaphysics, no theology, no Platonic ethics, nothing on homoiosis theo31 —nor in a distinctively Platonic manner or style. The marker of ambiguity therefore lies in the discrepancy between the philosopher’s self-presentation and his unplatonic, even unphilosophical speech, as well as in the narrator’s styling of this encounter as a kind of ‘enlightenment’ in the full sense (the early-morning scene as well as the intended healing from an eye disease are to be taken as light-metaphors). 32

. Literary Ambiguities: Evoked Contexts with Potential for Ambiguity More ambiguities can be identified in the outset of the dialogue between the enthusiastic convert and his interlocutor (c. 3.24–28): ὁ δὲ ἀπ’ ἀρξάμενος, ὦ ἑταῖρε, περὶ τούτων λέγειν καὶ τὴν ἑαυτοῦ γνώμην διηγεῖσθαι τοσαύτην τινά μου λόγων ἀμβροσίαν κατεσκέδασεν, ὥστε καὶ τὰς Σειρῆνας ἐκείνας, εἴ τινες ἄρα ἐγένοντο, καὶ τὰς ἀηδόνας καὶ τὸν Ὁμήρου λωτὸν ἀρχαῖον ἀποδεῖξαι· οὕτω θεσπέσια ἐφθέγξατο. 33

Here Speaker B compares the effect of Nigrinus’ speech with that of “Sirens, nightingales and the lotus of Homer”, all θεσπέσια (c. 3.28). At first he seems to want to illustrate through these poetic images and allusions only the extraordinarily suggestive power of Nigrinus’ words. However, these literary allusions prove to be ambiguity markers for the Sirens’ song described in the Homeric Odyssey (12.39–54; 12.184–91) not only is acoustically sweet, beguiling and suggestive, but also promises “more” knowledge in their singing (πλείονα εἰδώς), although it leads to death those who follow them. The Sirens thus turn out to be ‘false muses’, death demons, who show enormously suggestive prospects and promise universal knowledge, but instead destroy it. In order to resist them, one must either close one’s ears with wax (cf. Odysseus’ companions) or be bound (cf.

 31 For this see Dörrie/Baltes 1993, 367–372; Berdozzo 2011, 223f. 32 For further details, see Szlagor 2005, 165–169. 33 “Beginning to talk on these topics and to explain his position, my dear fellow, he poured enough ambrosial speech over me to put out of date the famous Sirens (if there ever were any) and the nightingales and the lotus of Homer. A divine utterance!” (transl. Harmon 1953, 103).

  Irmgard Männlein-Robert Odysseus). Thus, with a view to the whole semantics of the Homeric Sirens, a second, opposing reading appears here, according to which the words of Nigrinus appear aesthetically and substantively tempting, but their promises turn out to be false, hypocritical and misleading, and he ultimately brings ruin upon his victims. The suggestive song of the nightingale (cf. 19.515–23) is acoustically beautiful, but in the end a lament, because Procne, when she is transformed into a nightingale, laments the murder of her own son committed in madness (δι’ ἀφραδίας, 19.523); thus, the beautiful sound is ultimately based on a crime. Finally the effect of lotus eating is extremely dangerous, because the actual goal is forgotten (9.94–99), and Odysseus’ companions are only brought back to reason through force and bondage. So every recipient who knows the literary contexts evoked by “Sirens, nightingale and lotus” and the cryptic semantics and the potential danger of these suggestive images, at this point will come to a subversive interpretation of the effect of Nigrinus’ speech: the life-threatening danger evoked in the poetic allusions can only be escaped, as Odysseus does, through a clear mind and the observance of warnings (such as the ones Circe gives Odysseus regarding the Sirens). Another ambiguity marker is to be seen in the μανία often invoked in this text, which is described as the effect of Nigrinus on Speaker B and on Speaker A. Thus, the conversion to the philosophy of Nigrinus appears as ‘madness’ that is contagious. In this context, we must now draw attention to two ‘turning moments’ with considerable ambiguity potential, which occur after the representation of Nigrinus’ speech: 1) When Speaker B has reached the end of his re-presentation of Nigrinus’ speech, he describes his fascination and how he was spellbound by the philosopher and his words during the speech (c. 35.31–33): ταῦτά τε καὶ πολλὰ ἕτερα τοιαῦτα διελθὼν κατέπαυσε τὸν λόγον. ἐγὼ δὲ τέως μὲν ἤκουον αὐτοῦ τεθηπώς, μὴ σιωπήσῃ πεφοβημένος. 34

He explicitly identifies his “enchantment” (κεκηλημένος, c. 35.3) with that of the Phaeacians. The fact that this must be a marker for a further — contrary, critical — reading beyond the phenomenon of suggestion and fascination emanating from a narrative is again proven by the awareness of the literary context of the scene, which is alluded to. The enchantment of the Phaeacians occurs in an intermezzo in Book 11 of the Homeric Odyssey: after Odysseus has described in detail, as the

 34 “When he had said this and much more of the same sort, he ended his talk. Until then I had listened to him in awe, fearing that he would cease” (transl. Harmon 1953, 135).

Between Conversion and Madness  

last of his adventures, the most dangerous one, his katabasis into Hades, including some encounters with shadows of the deceased, he breaks off (11.328–332). The Phaeaceans are amazed because of this almost unbelievable story and lose the ability to speak; they are captivated by Odysseus’s spell: ὥς ἔφαθ’, οἱ δ’ ἄρα πάντες ἀκὴν ἐγένοντο σιωπῇ, / κηληθμῷ δ’ ἔσχοντο κατὰ μέγαρα σκιόεντα (11.333f. = 13.1f.). 35 I will not dwell on the fact here that Odysseus’s break is intended to achieve a well-calculated goal in the context of the story in order to serve his own basic interests: to be taken home richly rewarded in exchange for a continuation of his narrative.36 So, in that our Speaker B identifies the effect of Nigrinus on him with that of Odysseus on the Phaeaceans, the seriousness of Nigrinus (and his speech) is questioned and it turns out — at least for a contemporary of the 2nd century A.D. — to be a ghost and horror story, one extremely pleasant to listen to and effective in conversation but without substance, just like the story of Odysseus. 2) The second ‘turning moment’, in which ambiguity emerges, can be found at the end of the text, when Speaker A now feels μανία for his part in Speaker B’s description of his enthusiasm (c. 38.13–20): ὥστε καὶ μεταξὺ σοῦ λέγοντος ἔπασχόν τι ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ, καὶ παυσαμένου ἄχθομαι καὶ ἵνα δὴ καὶ κατὰ σὲ εἴπω, τέτρωμαι· καὶ μὴ θαυμάσῃς· οἶσθα γὰρ ὅτι καὶ οἱ πρὸς τῶν κυνῶν τῶν λυσσώντων δηχθέντες οὐκ αὐτοὶ μόνοι λυσσῶσιν, ἀλλὰ κἄν τινας ἑτέρους [καὶ αὐτοὶ] ἐν τῇ μανίᾳ τὸ αὐτὸ τοῦτο διαθῶσιν, καὶ οὗτοι ἔκφρονες γίγνονται· συμμεταβαίνει γάρ τι τοῦ πάθους ἅμα τῷ δήγματι καὶ πολυγονεῖται ἡ νόσος καὶ πολλὴ γίγνεται τῆς μανίας διαδοχή. 37

That he lets himself be carried away and infected by B’s enthusiasm is reminiscent on the one hand of the effect of Socrates on Alcibiades as described in Plato’s Symposium (217e6–218a: bite of a snake). On the other hand, the effect of Nigrinus’ speech on the words of B here is illustrated by a comparison with the bite of rabid dogs and the resulting madness. This in my opinion clearly marks the irony underlying the described madness. 38 For the effect emanating from Nigrinus’  35 “So he spoke, and they were all hushed in silence, and were spellbound throughout the shadowy halls” (transl. Murray 1953, 409). 36 For this aspect, see Most 1989. 37 “The consequence is that as you talked I felt something like a change of heart, and now that you have stopped I am put out: to speak in your own style, I am wounded. And no wonder! For you know that people bitten by mad dogs not only go mad themselves, but if in their fury they treat others as the dogs treated them, the others take leave of their senses too. Something of the affection is transmitted with the bite; the disease multiplies, and there is a great run of madness” (transl. Harmon 1953, 139). 38 Cf. the less satirical reading in Szlagor 2005, 177–179.

  Irmgard Männlein-Robert words thus becomes recognizable as a dangerous, insane and infectious disease. Thus, in the end Platonic philosophy — at least in the manner of this Nigrinus — turns out to be a mental, emotional and senseless excitement (c. 38.18: ἔκφρονες) and infectious disease. That this turning moment is intentional is proven by a passage from another of Lucian’s writings, more precisely, from his Philopseudes. 39 Here, Tychiades tells Philocles what unbelievable but exciting horror and ghost stories he had heard at a friend’s bedside in a group of friends. Philocles responds by revealing his infection with these lies, comparing them to the bite of rabid dogs that infect others, and that the fictionality of these stories was clearly exposed throughout the narrative given by Tychiades (Philops. c. 40): ΦΙΛΟΚΛΗΣ: καὶ αὐτός, ὦ Τυχιάδη, τοιοῦτόν τι ἀπέλαυσα τῆς διηγήσεως. φασί γέ τοι μὴ μόνον λυττᾶν καὶ τὸ ὕδωρ φοβεῖσθαι ὁπόσους ἂν οἱ λυττῶντες κύνες δάκωσιν, ἀλλὰ κἄν τινα ὁ δηχθεὶς ἄνθρωπος δάκῃ, ἴσα τῷ κυνὶ δύναται τὸ δῆγμα, καὶ τὰ αὐτὰ κἀκεῖνος φοβεῖται. καὶ σὺ τοίνυν ἔοικας αὐτὸς ἐν Εὐκράτους δηχθεὶς ὑπὸ πολλῶν ψευσμάτων μεταδεδωκέναι κἀμοὶ τοῦ δήγματος· οὕτω δαιμόνων μοι τὴν ψυχὴν ἐνέπλησας. ΤΥΧΙΑΔΗΣ: ἀλλὰ θαρρῶμεν, ὦ φιλότης, μέγα τῶν τοιούτων ἀλεξιφάρμακον ἔχοντες τὴν ἀλήθειαν καὶ τὸν ἐπὶ πᾶσι λόγον ὀρθόν, ᾧ χρωμένους ἡμᾶς οὐδὲν οὐ μὴ ταράξῃ τῶν κενῶν καὶ ματαίων τούτων ψευσμάτων. 40

The fascination of lying stories can only be neutralized by the antidote of truth and clear reason.41 With the emphasis on infectious rabies (λύττα resp. λύσσα) as an illustration of the previously conjured mania of the experience of conversion, it becomes clear that the whole encounter of Speaker B with Nigrinus, his speech, is to be interpreted as a kind of ‘ghost story’ completely in the sense of Odysseus’s katabasis narrative before the Phaeacians: as a fascinating and suggestive speech, which one likes to listen to, but which is exposed as a story of pure lies.

 39 Cf. also Luc. Hermot. c. 86. 40 “Philocles: Your story has had the same enjoyable effect upon me, Tychiades. They say, you know, that not only those who are bitten by mad dogs go mad and fear water, but if a man who has been bitten bites anyone else, his bite has the same effect as the dog’s, and the other man has the same fears. It is likely, therefore, that having been bitten yourself by a multitude of lies in the house of Eucrates, you have passed the bite on to me; you have filled my soul so full of spirits! Tychiades: Well, never mind, my dear fellow; we have a powerful antidote to such poisons in truth and in sound reason brought to bear everywhere. As long as we make use of this, none of these empty, foolish lies will disturb our peace.” (transl. Harmon 1969, 381). 41 See Baumbach/Möllendorff 2017, 170.

Between Conversion and Madness  

 Why ‘Intended Ambiguity’? All these elaborate and sophisticated markers of ambiguity, on all levels and in all their fluid layers, are only to be understood by an ironical and well-educated audience. We may assume that a rhetorically trained, stylistically and literarily versed author like Lucian would have been able to avoid ambiguities in his text. We must therefore conclude that he intended the ambiguity that I have identified at certain points in his Nigrinus. After our analysis of the carefully planned use of ambiguity markers, which in different ways induce a turning moment for the recipient and allow a contrary semantics to what has been said to appear, we have to ask why the author Lucian pursues such a strategy of ambiguity and what his intention is by doing so. As far as I can see, the intended and sophisticated ambiguity markers, of which we have shown a few examples, are to be analyzed and interpreted as: 1) traces and hints to deconstruct philosophical conversion stories and the whole ‘madness’ of conversions and conversion stories. The presumed protreptic of Nigrinus’ speech in the end concerns itself simply with commonplaces of good and bad behaviour, not with a philosophical perspective. Lucian presents Nigrinus as a ‘philosopher’ unmasking himself by his own (non-philosophical) words. The whole enlightenment that Speaker B is glad about is ambiguous in itself, as in the end he is driven mad by Nigrinus, rather than grounded in rational thought, and he is even contaminating others. The highlighted markers of ambiguity are also to be interpreted as: 2) subversive strategies and sophisticated tactics of interference that allow learned recipients an ironic, satirical reading and a critically sober view of inappropriate, seemingly mad enthusiasm for philosophy; and as 3) a means of unmasking the philosophical hairesis of Platonism and of presenting as problematic a typical contemporaneous representative of this very sect. 42 So the philosopher himself, his habits, as well as his philosophical program turn out to be not serious, not trustworthy — moreover one feels reminded of a Cynical diatribe, but not of a Platonic ethics or even metaphysics. We see with Nigrinus, his self-fashioning and his indifferent speech and also with the interest of Speaker B two typical representatives of a certain educated elite, interested in philosophical self-presentation and in giving and getting philosophical advice for well-being and living. We know from other authors from the Second Sophistic, who are very familiar with Platonic philosophy, just to mention Maximus Tyrius

 42 Cf. Schlapbach 2010, who interprets the Nigrinus from a perspective focused on the (failed or problematic) reception of Plato’s logoi themselves.

  Irmgard Männlein-Robert or Apuleius of Madauros, 43 that there must have been just such an audience (especially in Rome, but elsewhere as well), interested in (Platonic) philosophy and well trained in Platonic texts. Obviously it is this kind of audience the author Lucian wants to warn about dissembling, false philosophers without a real philosophical message. It might very well be that there was a sort of rivalry about audiences between the more philosophical and the more rhetorical authors in these times. So perhaps we may interpret this intended ambiguity in the Nigrinus as a sort of implicit advertisement for Lucian’s own mainly rhetorical, but in any case critical interests and aims with regard to untrustworthy philosophy and hypocrisy.

Bibliography Texts and Translations Harmon, Austin Morris (ed.) (1953), Lucian. With an English Translation by A.M. Harmon, in Eight Volumes, Volume I, London/Cambridge, MA. Harmon, Austin Morris (ed.) (1969), Lucian. With an English Translation by A.M. Harmon, in Eight Volumes, Volume III, London/Cambridge, MA. Murray, Augustus Taber (1953), Homer: The Odyssey, With an English Translation by A.T. Murray, in two Volumes, Volume I, London/Cambridge, MA.

Books and Articles Alexiou, Alice Sparberg (1990), Philosophers in Lucian, Diss. Fordham, New York. Anderson, Graham (1978), “Lucian’s Nigrinus: The Problem of Form”, GRBS 19, 367–374. Attias, Jean-Christophe (ed.) (1998), De la conversion, Paris. Bauer, Matthias/Knape, Joachim/Koch, Peter/Winkler, Susanne (2010), “Dimensionen der Ambiguität”, Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik 40, 7–41. Baumbach, Manuel/Möllendorff, Peter von (2017), Ein literarischer Prometheus. Lukian aus Samosata und die Zweite Sophistik, Heidelberg. Berdozzo, Fabio (2011), Götter, Mythen, Philosophen. Lukian und die paganen Göttervorstellungen seiner Zeit, Berlin/Boston. Betz, Hans Dieter (1961), Lukian von Samosata und das Neue Testament. Religionsgeschichtliche und paränetische Parallelen. Ein Beitrag zum Corpus Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti, Berlin.

 43 For Maximus see Trapp 1997; Puiggali 1983; Männlein-Robert 2018a; for Apuleius see e.g. Moreschini 1987; Bradley 1998; Shumate 1996; Männlein-Robert 2018b.

Between Conversion and Madness  

Bradley, Keith R. (1998), “Contending with Conversion: Reflections on the Reformation of Lucius the Ass”, Phoenix 52, 315–334. Branham, Robert Bracht (1989), Unruly Eloquence: Lucian and the Comedy of Traditions, Cambridge, MA. Cancik, Hubert (2008), “Lucian on Conversion. Some Remarks on Lucian’s Dialogue Nigrinos”, in: Hildegard Cancik-Lindemaier (ed.), Römische Religion im Kontext. Kulturelle Bedingungen religiöser Diskurse. Gesammelte Aufsätze I, Tübingen, 375–394. Cancik, Hubert (2012), “Lehrer — Charismaiker — Philosoph”, in: Almut-Barbara Renger (ed.), Meister und Schüler in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Von Religionen der Antike bis zur modernen Esoterik, Göttingen, 97–113. Clay, Diskin (1992), “Lucian of Samosata: Four Philosophical Lives (Nigrinus, Demonax, Peregrinus, Alexander Pseudomantis)”, ANRW II 36.5, 3406–50. Dörrie, Heinrich/Baltes, Matthias (eds.) (1993), Der Platonismus im 2. und 3. Jahrhundert nach Christus. Bausteine 73–100: Text, Übersettung, Kommentar, Stuttgart/Bad Cannstatt. Dubel, Sandrine (1994), “Dialogue et autoportrait: les masques de Lucien”, in: Alain Billault (ed.), Lucien de Samosate. Actes du colloque international de Lyon organisé au Centre d’Études Romaines et Gallo-Romaines les 30 septembre – 1er octobre 1993, Lyon/Paris, 19–26. Gigon, Olof (1946), “Antike Erzählungen über die Berufung zur Philosophie”, MH 3, 1–21. Hall, Jennifer (1981), Lucian’s Satire, New York. Heath, Malcolm (2004), Menander. A Rhetor in Context, Oxford. Helm, Rudolf (1906), Lucian und Menipp, Leipzig/Berlin (= Hildesheim 1967). Helm, Rudolf (1927), “Lukianos”, RE 13.2, 1725–1777. Hunter, Richard (2012), Plato and the Traditions of Ancient Literature. The Silent Stream, Cambridge. Hutcheon, Linda (1994), Irony’s Edge. The Theory and Politics of Irony, London/New York. Jordan, Mark D. (1986), “Ancient Philosophic Protreptic and the Problem of Persuasive Genres”, Rhetorica 4/4, 309–333. Lechner, Thomas (2016), “Bittersüße Pfeile. Protreptische Rhetorik und platonische Philosophie in Lukians Nigrinus (2. Teil)”, Millenium 9, 67–140. Männlein-Robert, Irmgard (2018a), “Mittelplatonismus und Neupythagoreismus. Sechstes Kapitel § 71. Maximos von Tyros”, in: Christoph Riedweg/Christoph Horn/Dietmar Wyrwa (eds.), Die Philosophie der Antike, Bd. 5/1: Die Philosophie der Kaiserzeit und der Spätantike, Basel, 659–664 and 703–704 (Bibliography). Männlein-Robert, Irmgard (2018b), “Mittelplatonismus und Neupythagoreismus. Sechstes Kapitel § 63. Apuleius von Madaura”, in: Christoph Riedweg/Christoph Horn/Dietmar Wyrwa (eds.), Die Philosophie der Antike, Bd. 5/1: Die Philosophie der Kaiserzeit und der Spätantike, Basel, 617–630 and 692–697 (Bibliography). Möllendorff, Peter von (2010), “Λόγος ἄπιστος. Der Logos als Helfer und Gegenspieler bei Lukian”, in: Ferdinand Rupert Prostmeier/Horacio E. Lona (eds.), Logos der Vernunft — Logos des Glaubens, Berlin/Boston, 5–23. Moreschini, Claudio (1987), “Alcune considerazioni sulla conversione di Lucio nelle Metamorfosi di Apuleio”, Augustinianum 27, 219–225. Most, Glenn W. (1989), “The Structure and Function of Odysseus’ Apologoi”, TAPhA 119, 15–30. Nesselrath, Heinz-Günther (2002), “Lukian und die antike Philosophie”, in: Martin Ebner et al. (eds.), Φιλοψευδεῖς ἢ ἀπιστῶν. Die Lügenfreunde oder: der Ungläubige, Darmstadt, 135– 152.

  Irmgard Männlein-Robert Ní Mheallaigh, Karen (2010), “The Game of the Name: Onymity and the Contract of Reading in Lucian”, in: Francesca Mestre/Pilar Gómez (eds.), Lucian of Samosata, Greek Writer and Roman Citizen, Barcelona, 83–93. Ní Mheallaigh, Karen (2014), Reading Fiction with Lucian. Fakes, Freaks and Hyperreality, Cambridge. Nock, Arthur Darby (1933), Conversion. The Old and the New in Religion from Alexander the Great to Augustine of Hippo, Oxford (= Baylor 2019). Nünlist, René (2000), “Rhetorische Ironie — Dramatische Ironie. Definitions- und Interpretationsprobleme”, in: Jürgen Paul Schwindt (ed.), Zwischen Tradition und Innovation. Poetische Verfahren im Spannungsfeld Klassischer und Neuerer Literatur und Literaturwissenschaft, München/Leipzig, 67–87. Paulsen, Thomas (2009), “‘Ambrosia floss aus seinen Reden’: Scherz, Satire, Ironie und tiefere Bedeutung in Lukians Nigrinos”, in: Reinhold F. Glei (ed.), Ironie. Griechische und lateinische Fallstudien, Trier, 229–245. Puiggali, Jacques (1983), Étude sur les dialexeis de Maxime de Tyr, conférencier platonicien du IIème siècle, Lille. Quacquarelli, Antonio (1956), La retorica antica al bivio (L’Ad Nigrinum di Luciano e l’Ad Donatum di Cipriano), Roma. Rimmon, Shlomit (1977), The Concept of Ambiguity: The Example of James, Chicago. Russell, Donald Andrew/Wilson, Nigel G. (eds.) (1981), Menander Rhetor. Edited with Translation and Commentary, Oxford. Schäublin, Christoph (1985), “Konversionen in antiken Dialogen?”, in: Christoph Schäublin (ed.), Catalepton. Festschrift für Bernhard Wyss zum 80. Geburtstag, Basel, 117–131. Schlapbach, Karin (2010), “The logoi of Philosophers in Lucian of Samosata”, ClAnt 29.2, 250– 277. Schröder, Bianca-Jeanette (2000), “‘Eulen nach Athen’. Ein Vorschlag zu Lukians Nigrinos”, Hermes 128, 435–442. Shumate, Nancy J. (1996), Crisis and Conversion in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, Ann Arbor. Stowers, Stanley K. (1988), “The Diatribe”, in: David Edward Aune (ed.), Greco-Roman Literature and the New Testament. Selected forms and genres, Atlanta, 71–83. Szlagor, Barbara (2005), Verflochtene Bilder. Lukians Porträtierung “göttlicher Männer”, Trier. Tanaseanu-Döbler, Illinca (2008), Konversion zur Philosophie in der Spätantike. Kaiser Julian und Synesios von Kyrene, Stuttgart. Tarrant, Harold A.S. (1985), “Alcinous, Albinus, Nigrinus”, Antichthon 19, 87–95. Trapp, Michael B. (1997), “Philosophical Sermons: The ‘Dialexeis’ of Maximus of Tyre”, in: ANRW II 34.3, 1945–1976. Whitmarsh, Tim (2001), Greek Literature and the Roman Empire: The Politics of Imitation, Oxford.

Richard F. Thomas

Catullan Ambiguity Abstract: This paper explores instances of ambiguity in Catullus in connection with the naming and characterizing of various figures who appear on the Catullan stage. The paper focuses on the critical struggle over the very presence of ambiguity and situates that struggle in the Rhetorica ad Herennium, a text with which Catullus would have been familiar. The paper then proceeds by way of Quintilian’s treatment of the art of safe criticism to observe the relative lack of ambiguity in invective against political figures in the poetry of Catullus, suggesting that he was relatively unaffected by move from republican libertas to autocracy that begins in 49 BCE soon after his death. Keywords: civil war, emphasis, figurative language, hyperbole, safe speech, significatio, Roman republic

 Catullus and Republican Libertas In 1589 in the Arte of English Poesie George Puttenham set out the difference between literal or plain language and that which is figurative and ornamental, with a focus on the latter (3.7): As figures be the instruments of ornament in every language, so be they also in a sort abuses or rather trespasses in speech, because they pass the ordinary limits of common utterance, and be occupied of purpose to deceive the ear and also the mind, drawing it from plainness and simplicity to a certain doubleness, whereby our talk is the more guileful and abusing, for what else is your metaphor but an inversion of sense by transport; your allegory but a duplicity of meaning or dissimulation under covert and dark intendments?

Five hundred years later Paul de Man put it this way, extending the potential of figural language to constitute the very essence of literature itself, if we only allow rhetoric to participate in the formation of meaning: 1 The grammatical model of the question becomes rhetorical not when we have, on the one hand, a literal meaning and on the other hand a figural meaning, but when it is impossible to decide by grammatical or other linguistic devices which of the two meanings (that can

 1 De Man 1979, 10. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110715811-017

  Richard F. Thomas be entirely incompatible) prevails. Rhetoric radically suspends logic and opens up vertiginous possibilities of referential aberration. And although it would perhaps be somewhat more remote from common usage, I would not hesitate to equate the rhetorical, figural potentiality of language with literature itself.

By “rhetoric” de Man means the tropes and figures that constitute figural or figurative language, those uses that potentially disrupt the plain or literal level of language and the grammar that constitute it. One of the questions with which this volume began was “Is it not possible to find in antiquity clear examples of deliberately employed (intended) ambiguity?” Eighteen years ago I tried to answer that same question with a clear “yes, it is indeed possible.” 2 That was at a time when the very possibility of the ambiguous in Virgil’s poetry was still being contested and debated. In the present context it will be useful to trace the observations of Puttenham and de Man back to a text that was written around the time Catullus was born. There is no reason to believe that this work, the Rhetorica ad Herennium (probably late 80s BCE), once thought to be among the juvenile writings of Cicero, would not have been among the texts the young poet read as part of his rhetorical training. 3 Catullus and the generation of poets that followed, at least those who read through to the end of the treatise, will have come upon a section left almost to the end, on significatio, Greek ἔμφασις, the rhetorical figure or trope (4.67) quae plus in suspicione relinquit quam positum est in oratione. Ea fit per exsuperationem, ambiguum, consequentiam, abscisionem, similitudinem. which leaves more under suspicion than has been stated in the speech. It is produced by hyperbole, ambiguity, logical consequence, aposiopesis, and analogy.

Of the examples given I am here most interested in hyperbole and ambiguity, on which the treatise continues (4.67):  2 Thomas 2000. 3 In general the earlier date has has held up against the suggestion of Douglas 1960 of a date in the mid-50s BCE. So Calboli 1969, 12–17 and Kennedy 1972, 13 n. 14, 135 n. 45. Winkel 1979 suggests that the later date may be correct, on the basis of purported use by the author of the treatise of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, which may have been introduced into Latin after Cicero wrote the De Inventione. The compounded circumstantial evidence of this argument seem tenuous at best. That said, it is sufficient for the current argument that the ideas of the Ad Herennium be available to Catullus around the 60s BCE, and it is hard to believe that the handbook in question was originating information on the topic here under scrutiny. Cf. also Sinclair 1993, 561 n. 2, who “follow[s] the consensus “in dating the work to between 86 and 82 BC” (cf. OCD “perhaps written 86–82 BC)”.

Catullan Ambiguity  

Per exsuperationem, cum plus est dictum quam patitur veritas, augendae suspicionis causa, sic: ‘hic de tanto patrimonio tam cito testam qui sibi petat ignem non reliquit.’ Per ambiguum, cum verbum potest in duas pluresve sententias accipi, sed accipitur tamen in eam partem quam vult is qui dixit; ut de eo si dicas qui multas hereditates adierit: ‘prospice tu, qui plurimum cernis.’ 4 [Emphasis is produced] through hyperbole when more is said than the truth warrants, so as to give greater force to that suspicion, as follows: “Out of so great a patrimony, in so short a time, this man doesn’t have left even an earthen pitcher with which to seek a fire for himself.” [Emphasis is produced] through ambiguity when a word can be taken in two or more senses, but yet is taken in that sense which the speaker intends; for example, if you should say concerning a man who has come into many legacies: “Just look out, you, who look out for yourself so handsomely.”

This terrain is one on which the rhetorician is most cautious, continuing (4.67): ambigua quemadmodum vitanda sunt quae obscuram reddunt orationem, item haec consequenda quae conficiunt huiusmodi significationem. even as we must avoid those ambiguities which render the style obscure, so we must seek those which produce an emphasis of this sort.

This cautious disdain for a more confounding ambiguity goes back to Aristotle for whom the third of five rules of writing pure or correct Greek (τὸ ἑλληνίζειν) consists of avoiding amphibolies (Rhet. III. 5.1407a 32–35) … ταῦτα δέ, ἂν μὴ τἀναντία προαιρῆται. ὅπερ ποιοῦσιν, ὅταν μηθὲν μὲν ἔχωσι λέγειν, προσποιῶνται δέ τι λέγειν· οἱ γὰρ τοιοῦτοι ἐν ποιήσει λέγουσι ταῦτα, οἷον Ἐμπεδοκλῆς. … unless the opposite effect [obscurity] is being sought. People do this when they have nothing to say but are pretending to say something; such people say these things by the use of verse, like Empedocles.

The positivistic anger inherent in these words again resonates in RAH 2.16, where the author inveighs against dialecticians who delight in finding ambiguities in the law, becoming “tiresome hecklers” when others speak and “offensive and obscure interpreters” of what they write, and in their own writings becoming “completely inarticulate.” The aim of the rhetorician should be to remove ambiguity, to show that there is but one meaning — ours, not our adversary’s — which is true,

 4 hereditatem cernere = “accept an inheritance” (TLL III 865.11–38; OLD sv cerno 4.)

  Richard F. Thomas “the honorable, the right, statute, custom, nature, the good, and equity” (RAH 2.16 honeste, recte, lege, more, natura, bono et aequo).5 These attitudes and rhetorical debates will have piqued the interest of the young bad boy neoteric poet, for whom such rules are made to be broken. Ambiguity and hyperbole will have appealed, along with other forms of significatio, for instance line 5 of Catullus 13, the dinner invitation to Fabullus (or was that “little Fabius”?), the poet’s injunction to his friend: we will dine well if you bring along a nice big dinner, a pretty girl, and “wine and salt/wit and laughter” (et vino et sale et omnibus cachinnis). Wine and laughter, framing the line, one concrete, the other abstract, can only have literal or plain meaning; but they are mediated by salt, which had acquired the abstract meaning of wit long before its first uses in Roman comedy. The language of the middle of the line is figured, but it becomes so only in the process of the line’s unfolding: “wine and salt” if we stop with sale, “wit and laughter” if that is where we start. From plain to figural if we go all the way. Similarly in Catullus 2 and 3, for those who see a phallic aspect to the passer of the poet, the figured meaning only emerges as the details of the poems unfold themselves, and admit of double entendre.6 As with ambiguity, so it is with the closely related figure hyperbole, often involving metaphor, deprecation or/and self-deprecation: 1.14b 1–2 si qui forte mearum ineptiarum / lectores eritis (“whoever of you will be readers of my trifles”); 22.14 idem inficeto est inficetior rure (“he’s dumber than the dumb countryside”); 32.7–8 sed domi maneas paresque nobis / novem continuas fututiones (“but stay at home and prepare nine consecutive fuckings for me”); 36.1 annales Volusi, cacata carta (“annals of Volusius, shitty sheets”); 58.4 [Lesbia] glubit magnanimos Remi nepotes (“Lesbia peels the bark off the stout-hearted descendants of Remus”). Here we may productively turn to Catullan uses of the superlative, the grammatical form par excellence with the potential for hyperbole. Sometimes the superlative is part of the plain or literal, as at 64.324 of the love of Jupiter for Peleus: Opis carissime nato (“most dear to the son of Ops”). No ambiguity here; Jupiter let him marry Thetis after all. The same may apply to superlatives in the polymetrics. No one would doubt the straightforwardness of novissime (“most recently”) at 4.24 or the address to his friend and poetic soulmate at 14a.2 iucundissime Calve

 5 It would be interesting to pursue this treatment down into contemporary poststructuralist debates around Critical Legal Theory in general or, in US constitutional law the crucial and deadly struggle between Originalism and Living Constitutionalism. 6 See Thomas 1993 with further bibliography.

Catullan Ambiguity  

(“most delightful Calvus”). The potential of the superlative for an ironical or figured sense does not require that it have such a sense everywhere; sometimes a superlative is just a superlative, and only context will tell if there is more in play. But elsewhere the grammatical form has crossed the line, has become figured, “when more is said than the truth warrants, so as to give greater force to the suspicion”.7 If Haupt’s piissimi at 29.23 is correct, in the context of Caesar and Pompey on the subject of Caesar’s lieutenant Mamurra, then more is indeed being said than the truth warrants, for their actions are hardly signs of actual pietas, particularly as viewed from a standpoint inimical to the two triumvirs.8 Hyperbole is by nature potentially suspect. When the narrator of Poem 4 reports that the phaselus says (ait) it was the fastest (celerrimus) boat out there, and that this is very well known (cognitissima) to the distant locales of Asia Minor, do we believe, or possibly detect braggadocio on the part of the craft, now growing old in its retirement, moored on an Italian lake, telling tall tales to passersby? And sometimes the very identity of the superlatives may lead to the sort of “referential aberration” de Man mentioned,9 as in Poem 36 when the poet’s “naughtiest of girlfriends” (pessima puella) promised to consign “the choicest writings of the unkindest poet” (electissima pessimi poetae / scripta) to the fire. She meant those of Catullus, unkindest for attacking her, but he thought she was just talking about quality, so must mean the worst poet there is, Volusius. Which brings us to Poem 49, with its five superlatives across seven lines, and the old question: Disertissime Romuli nepotum quot sunt quotque fuere, Marce Tulli, quotque post aliis erunt in annis, ratias tibi maximas Catullus agit pessimus omium poeta, tanto pessimus omium poeta, quanto tu optimus omium patronus.

5

Most skilled in speech of the descendants of Romulus, all who are, and all who have been, and all who shall be in other years to come, Marcus Tullius, — to you Catullus gives his

 7 RAH 4.67 cum plus est dictum quam patitur veritas. 8 At Phil. 13.43, Cicero taunts Antony for using a superlative (piissimus) that does not exist in the Latin language, clearly not the case as is evident in a fragment of his own Letters (17.3.1 Watt), and in later authors, including Quintilian. 9 See above p. 1

  Richard F. Thomas greatest thanks, he the worst of all poets, as much the worst poet of all as you are the best advocate of all. [emphasis added]

The job of the rhetorician, in dealing with legal documents, is, through various stages of argument, to arrive at the conclusion “that the text is not ambiguous since one well understands which is the true sense” (RAH 2.16 nec esse ambiguum cum intellegatur utra sententia vera sit). In the case of Catullus 49, that is not possible, much as critics have tried to pull off the task ever since 1850, when a certain C.T. Clumper of Amsterdam suggested that the poem be taken ironically. In 1885, Aemilius Baehrens led the charge against this “homo cetera insigniter perversus, Clumperus”, 10 but by then he could not proceed simply by ridiculing the name of the opener of Pandora’s box, since other scholars with names like Otto Jahn, Otto Ribbeck and Eduard von Wölfflin had concurred with Clumper. That the debate has proceeded for over 150 years is proof in itself that the poem is ambiguous. If Catullus did not believe himself to be “the worst poet of all” as he emphatically did not — the confusion around the identity of pessimi poetae at 36.6, Catullus for Lesbia, but Volusius for Catullus, points to his view of who the best poet was — then the possibility of irony is necessarily activated by optimus … patronus, whether or not we allow additional insult by taking omnium as an objective genitive: “defender of everyone/anyone.” All commentators except Baehrens, joined by Robison Ellis (“Wölfflin and his followers confound irony with humility, or at the utmost with persiflage”) 11 and Elmer T. Merrill (“mistakenly understood by many critics to be ironical in tone”)12 admit at least the possibility of irony, even if they would wish it otherwise. So Fordyce: 13 Irony can be read into the poem … Thus B. Schmidt, following Wölfflin, takes the poem to be an ironical rejoinder to a disparagement of Catullus’ poetry by Cicero, who in 54 by his successful defense of Vatinius (whom he had attacked two years before) against a prosecution by Catullus’ friend Calvus, had, he suggests, both offended Catullus and laid himself open to the charge of indiscriminate advocacy. To each of these points there is a reply; a formal address from a young poet to a distinguished public figure may not be inappropriate; even if pessimus poeta is mock modesty, it does not follow that optimus omnium is mock praise, and the use of the phrase omnium patronus of Cicero in a letter (Fam. 6.7.4) by Caecina, who means no disparagement by it, may be mere coincidence; and, though Cicero’s

 10 Baehrens 1885, II 251, with reference to Clumper 1850, 150. For bibliographic references of these aspects of the reception of Catullus 49, see Tatum 1988. 11 Ellis 1889, 170. 12 Merrill 1893, 82. 13 Fordyce 1961, 214.

Catullan Ambiguity  

own taste in poetry was for the old tradition that he admired in Ennius and himself continued and was no doubt out of sympathy with the literary standards of the new poets, there is nothing to suggest any personal animosity, and both his references to the new school (Tusc. 3.45, Att. 7.2) were made some time after Catullus’ death. The poem may be meant to be taken at face value, as a genuine expression of admiration and gratitude. [emphasis added]

The tentative final sentence shows that the game is up, the battle for unfigured, literal meaning lost. Fordyce’s wish is that and no more. A poem that “may be taken at face value” may also, on the evidence here collected, be taken at anything but face value. If irony is activated, no amount of scholarly activity will remove it, that is if one returns to the poem and reads it, like all the polymetrics, as a self-contained poem, not as if it were a Ciceronian letter, to be understood as sincere if only we had the other side of the correspondence.14 By irony I understand a “mechanism which leads people to understand the opposite of what is actually said.”15 Again, De Man on the conditions of ambiguity, whose words are pertinent when irony is detected: … when it is impossible to decide by grammatical or other linguistic devices which of the two meanings (that can be entirely incompatible) prevails. Rhetoric radically suspends logic and opens up vertiginous possibilities of referential aberration.

Merrill, for whom there is no place for irony in the poem, noted on line 5 pessimus omnium poeta: “the self-depreciation heightens the praise of v. 7; Catullus also speaks of himself with excessive modesty in addressing his patron Nepos in 1.” Jeffrey Tatum found a different course, referring to “the modesty of Poem 1, which is a mannerism advertising Catullus’ Callimachean affiliation.” 16 And from within that Callimachean system the designation nugae (1.4) is a trope, not at all the same as designating oneself “the worst poet of all” — as it would be a trope for

 14 Scholars have been imaginative here: Catullus is (sincerely) thanking Cicero for prosecuting Vatinius, for defending Caelius Rufus, for not mentioning the poet’s name in the Pro Caelio (what happens in Baiae stays in Baiae), for attacking Lesbia in the same oration, for sending him his verses, and so on. Thomson 1967 thinks Cicero must have sent his poetry to Catullus and thinks this is what Catullus 49 is saying: “You, Cicero, with your notable prosaic gifts, have been gracious (in sending your verses to me). And I thank you very much indeed. You ask me for criticism. Now, I know I may be the worst of poets, while you, my dear sir (notice the emphatic tu), are quite the most distinguished of all — advocates.” See Thomson 1997, 323–334 for some of the extensive bibliography. 15 Rosique 2013, 17. 16 Tatum 1988, 180.

  Richard F. Thomas Horace when he took it over to describe his thoughts, which turn into the magnificent poem Satire 1.9.17 Such instances of nugae have rightly been seen as “practically synonymous with ludus,”18 and therefore entirely positive, in their brevity, and the opposition of that brevity to less favored longer artifacts, resembling the “nightingales” of Callimachus, “the sweeter for being short” (Aetia 1.1.16 ἀ̣η̣[δονίδες] δ̣ ὧδε μελιχρότεραι). Fordyce ultimately saw, or wanted to see in Poem 49 “the formal address of a young poet to a distinguished public figure.” 19 Distinguished public figures may desire such formal respect, but probably the last place one should look for it is in the poetry of Catullus. A general observation: given that ambiguity and ironical hyperbole are poetic possibilities attested in the rhetorical tradition to which Catullus had access — as well as being phenomena of which the human mind at all periods is capable — the denial of those possibilities is an interpretive act, and the practitioner of that act only stands on higher and firmer ground if the nature and context of the usage point to a total absence of irony. So for instance with a ritually functional text, even within a literary context, it is possible to exclude claims for irony from hyperbolic expression. When the opening of the prayer of Georgics 1.5–42 addresses the sun and moon with the words “You, o brightest lights of the world” (vos, o clarissima mundi / lumina), it would be implausible to propose any irony, since the sun and moon are the brightest lights of the world, and on them the world of the farmer depends. The onus would be on me to prove hyperbole that led to Paul de Manʼs “referential aberration.” That is not the case for Catullus, who demonstrably does not think he is the the worst poet of them all. The aberration of his stating as much opens up the possibility of further aberration. And when Fordyce marshals his own rhetoric from the initial concession (“Irony can be read into the poem”) to the reassuring and stabilizing conclusion (“The poem may be meant to be taken at face value, as a genuine expression of admiration and gratitude”), he is attempting to persuade as surely as the critic who inverts the order and ends up pushing for irony or ambiguity. And as for Poem 1, what about Nepos, who has seemed, by way of relationship to Catullus, to be in some sort of connection to Cicero, his acquaintance and friend, and biographer of Cicero’s close friend Atticus? If nugae is, at the end of the Callimachean day, not so much a sign of modesty as a claim to the ideal of

 17 Horace’s Satires abound with such self-deprecating utterances about the poetics of the ostensibly prosaic genre he Callimacheanizes away from its Lucilian source model, notably at Sat. 1.4.39–62. 18 Wagenvoort 1956, 39. 19 Fordyce 1961, 214.

Catullan Ambiguity  

small-scale poetics that are exemplified in the book of polymetrics, and if pessimus poeta and optimus patronus constitute figured language, and are referentially aberrant, what happens to the literary achievement of Nepos much trumpeted by Catullus, in Poem 1? A fellow Transpadane born in 100 BCE, as critics have seen, he is not an obvious dedicatee of a book such as the libellus of Catullus, whose description of the three-book universal history of Nepos has seemed strange to some readers coming to Poem 1 from the rest of the oeuvre of Catullus (1.3–7): namque tu solebas meas esse aliquid putare nugas, iam tum, cum ausus es unus Italorum omne aevum tribus explicare cartis doctis, Iuppiter, et laboriosis!

5

for you used to think that my trifles were worth something, long ago, when you took courage, you alone of Italians, to set forth the whole history of the world in three volumes, learned volumes, by Jupiter, and laboriously wrought.

Between nugas and cartis there would seem to be some sort of relationship. If we see the use of figured language, the poem would seem to fit with Catullus 49. In 1967 John P. Elder stated that the opening poem expressed the hope that “respected literary leaders like Nepos” recognize the new Callimachean ethos that Catullus had brought to Roman poetry. Elder set out contrasting language and terminology that “seem to propose some sort of difference between the kind of writing Nepos now practiced or admired in others, and the kind Catullus supports”,20 in particular libellum vs. tribus cartis and lepidum nouum vs. doctis laboriosis. The use of doctus with laboriosus, is pointed, the latter adjective qualifying and coloring the former (“damned sound scholarship!”),21 or even suggesting “pompous” (Elder). The only other use of laboriosus in Catullus takes its coloring from malis, and suggests nothing positive 38.1–2: malest, Cornifici, tuo Catullo, /

 20 Elder 1967, 144–145. 21 See Quinn 1970, 90: “Unqualified admiration was not the done thing in the Catullan circle: cartae (cf. 22.6 cartae regiae)is hardly a grand synonym for volumina (though it is used by Lucretius, 3.10); explicare similarly undercuts the grandiloquence of omne aevum, soliciting a visual image of ‘the whole of time’ laid out on three sheets of papyrus; the cartae are doctae, Iuppiter (‘damned fine scholarship’ — though doctus implies taste as well as learning; see on 35.17), but they are also laboriosae (a word that suggests going out of one’s way to make work for oneself — cf. Cic. Cael. 1 vos laboriosos existimet).

  Richard F. Thomas malest, me hercule, et est laboriose (“your Catullus is unwell, Cornificius, unwell, dammit, terribly unwell”). It certainly looks as if the word was not one of those favored neoteric epithets, particularly if we add the line from Calvus (fr. 2 Bl. C, 35 Hollis): durum rus fugit et laboriosum (“he runs away from the harsh, toilsome countryside”). Laboriosus, then, shows every sign of being a neoteric catchword, and not in a good way. Hollis — whose rhetoric resembles that of Fordyce on Catullus 49 — makes a valiant effort to secure a straightforward meaning for Catullus 1, for that is clearly one of the missions of his commentary on the line of Calvus: 22 There is a faint resemblance between this line and Cat. 1.7 “doctis, Iuppiter, et laboriosis”. One naturally sees here the dislike of the unsophisticated countryside which is prominent in Catullus (22.14 “idem infaceto est infacetior rure”, 36.19 “pleni ruris et inficetiarum”). But these epithets may indicate the reasons why the unknown person leaves (or shuns) the countryside, not the poet’s own view; elsewhere (see on 42) Calvus may have endorsed (? tongue in cheek) the old Catonian view of success in agriculture as the best measure of virtue. [emphasis supplied]

The strategy is almost an unconscious reflex, not aimed at explicating the fragment of Calvus, but rather preserving an unfigured reading of the opening poem of Catullus. The denial of meaning that could lead to larger disruptive outcomes is as much a critical act as the detection of irony and ambiguity. Hollis’ deployment of his own rhetoric is evident in the words I italicize. Not that Catullus 1 is an attack, but it seems to draw a contrast, not surprisingly. As has been noted there is the possibility, but no more than that, of cordial relations with Nepos the fellow Transpadane who (born 100 BCE) was around the age of Catullus’ father. And the older man may have complimented Catullus on his nugae, if we flirt with the biographical and we take the words of Catullus 1 to somehow reflect the words of Nepos, which will not have come across as a compliment. It is one thing for the author to say “Please accept my trifles”, another for a reader to say, “I enjoyed your trifles.” As for the chartae of Nepos, they may not have descended to the level of those of Volusius (36.1, 20 cacata charta) or the handsome but horrible chartae regiae of the Suffenus of 22.6, but it is not hard to activate those contexts once one encounters laboriosis. It is doubtful Catullus spent much time with the prose Chronica of Nepos, who is unlikely to have had much of an idea of what was happening in Roman literature. As late as 35 BCE, possibly as late as 32, with the poetry of Calvus and Cinna readily available, along

 22 Hollis 2007, 78–79.

Catullan Ambiguity  

with the elegy of Cornelius Gallus and almost certainly the Eclogues of Virgil, Nepos (Att. 12.4) could believe Lucius Julius Calidus, of whom not a word survives, to be “the most graceful poet our age has produced following the death of Lucretius and Catullus” (idem L. Iulium Calidum, quem post Lucretii Catullique mortem multo elegantissimum poetam nostram tulisse aetatem vere videor posse contendere). As Clausen put it: “Was he too old, or temperamentally disinclined, to appreciate Cornelius Gallus and Virgilʼs Eclogues? Only one conclusion is plausible … like his friend Cicero, Nepos did not care for the cantores Euphorionis.” 23 We might ask where the Cicero of Poem 49 and the Nepos of Poem 1 fit into the world of Catullus’s friendships and relationships. I would suggest they are outliers. They would seem not to belong inside the circle, with Cinna or Calvus, nor completely outside, with Volusius, Furius and Aurelius, and any number of others on whom Catullus shone his light. 24 It is time to move to politics, and to the use of figured language when writing in politically interesting and difficult times. In fact the author of RAH has nothing really to say on that topic. Whatever the vicissitudes of his time in the late second and early first centuries BCE, his system is aimed at a free republic, a respublica libera, the only political system under which oratory can flourish. He presumably did not imagine that the turbulence of his lifetime — inherited memories of the Gracchi, the Social Wars and turbulence down to Marius, waiting for Sulla — would culminate in the full-scale civil wars to come, and lead to a world in which one man ruled and in which as a consequence some of the purpose and aims of forensic oratory, the persuasion of fellow citizens, would cease to exist. 25

 Quintilian and Imperial Emphasis That is the world that Quintilian knew, and the differences in political systems between the early first century BCE and the last years of the century that followed

 23 See Clausen 1971, 37 n. 1. 24 While it is always hazardous to construct “circles” with insiders and outsiders, both the poetry of Catullus, and the comments of Cicero characterizing the group (poetae novi, neōteroi, cantores Euphorionis, imply some sort of cultural entity. 25 For background information, see the three consecutive chapters, in Part II, “Contexts of Production” of Marilyn Skinner’s Blackwell Companion to Catullus: for what may be known of the Transpadane and related Catulli see Wiseman 2007; on the political context during the poet’s lifetime, see Konstan 2007; and for the intellectual climate in which Catullus was writing, see Feldherr 2007.

  Richard F. Thomas are radical and pointed, as Quintilian shows. “Emphasis,” the rhetorician noted at Inst. 9.2.64, “is among the figures where a hidden meaning is elicited from the wording” (est emphasis etiam inter figuras, cum ex aliquo dicto latens aliquid eruitur). 26 The example Quintilian chooses is not political or ideological, rather one of the most contentious passages in Virgil, the words of Dido at Aen. 4.550–555: non licuit thalami expertem sine crimine vitam / degere, more ferae, talis nec tangere curas, glossed by Quintilian to mean “though Dido complains of marriage, her feelings nevertheless break out at this point, so that she thinks an unwedded life fit for beasts rather than for humans.” 27 The ‘Loeb edition’ follows a different path: “Ah that I could not spend my life apart from wedlock, a blameless life, like some wild creature, and not know such cares!” — suppressing any sexual connotations of more ferae, which seems difficult given the sexual relations Dido has been enjoying since the cave scene earlier in Aen. 4. 28 This is not the place to attempt to arrive at a conclusive reading of these lines, if one even exists. Indeed, as Austin puts it: 29 A most difficult passage, to which Henry devotes twelve pages. We must not forget Dido’s state of mind as she comes painfully to this final conclusion of her self-torment; she is scarcely coherent now, and it is as if we overhear the mutterings of delirium … this is one of those passages which will have a different message for every reader of Virgil: Mackail well remarks “the broken inconsequence of lines 548–552, and the note on which Dido breaks off, are among the masterpieces of Virgilian art”; and in such a moment neither dogma nor pedantry has any place.

 26 Elsewhere (9.2.3) defined as “the power of hinting at more than one says” (desiderat illam plus quam dixeris significationem, transl. Russell 2001). 27 Transl. Russell 2001. 28 Fairclough/Goold 22001. For similar ambiguity and a notable Freudian syntactical slip, also in the mouth of Dido, see Aen. 4.19 huic uni forsan potui succumbere culpae (“under this one could I perhaps have lain”; OLD succumbere 2a), corrected when the reader gets to culpae “to this one slip could I have succumbed” (OLD 3c). Cf. Clausen 1987, 77–78: “The syntactical ambiguity, with Dido’s almost instantaneous correction mirrors as her wavering constancy and sudden resolution as she thinks of Aeneas and then, guiltily, of her dead husband Sychaeus.” See Thomas 2001, 76–77 on the physical sense of succumbere here, and on Ovid’s enlisting and inversion of this physical sense at Trist. 2.534, where the final word of the line forces the reader to take arma as “penis” contulit in Tyrios arma virumque toros, as “[Virgil] brought arms and the man against the Tyrians” becomes “brought a man and his tool into Tyrian beds” (for which cf. Ov. Am. 1.9.25–6 nempe maritorum somnis utuntur amantes, / et sua sopitis hostibus arma movent, “Lovers of course make good use of husbands’ sleep, and stir up their weapons when the enemy is dozing”). 29 Austin 1963, 163.164–5.

Catullan Ambiguity  

Quintilian then moves to a related type, and it is here that he differs from the RAH, and suggests a usage specific to Domitianic Rome: “related or identical with this type (i.e. emphasis) is one of which we nowadays make great use” (huic vel confinis vel eadem est qua nunc utimur plurimum). This type, which he knows his reader is looking forward to, is distinct from irony (which says the opposite of what it means) and is one where we hint at what we are saying, specifically “something hidden and to be discovered by the hearer” (aliud latens et auditori quasi inveniendum). This is what contemporaries call “Figure” (schema), this and “Figured Controversies” (controversiae figuratae). It is used in three ways (Inst. 9.2.65–6): Unus si dicere palam parum tutum est, alter si non decet, tertius qui venustatis modo gratia adhibetur et ipsa novitate ac varietate magis quam si relatio sit recta delectat. (1) if speaking openly is unsafe; (2) if doing so is unseemly; (3) if it is employed simply for the sake of elegance and delights through its very novelty and variety than if it were recounted straightforwardly.

The Virgilian example would fit under (2), but it is (1) that is the interesting one for our purposes. In an important article, “The Art of Safe Criticism in Greece and Rome,” Frederick Ahl considered this passage as a key to the reading of Roman literature. 30 When is it dangerous to talk openly? Certainly in Flavian Rome, but also when republic was becoming monarchy. These are the same texts through which I thought about Virgilian ambiguity in 2000, and it interesting to return to them in the context of those years just before Pharsalus, Philippi and Actium. The ambiguities of Virgil around ideology are apparent. What is the affiliation of the soldier who dispossesses Meliboeus of his farm in Ecl. 1? Who is the puer of Ecl. 4 who will return us to the age of gold? What does it mean that Jupiter, who looks a lot like Augustus, hurls thunderbolts against the farmer’s crops in Georg. 1? Or that Aeneas, who also looks a lot like Augustus, consigns captive Italians for human sacrifice? But what about a few years earlier, the time when the Rubicon was just a river, Julius Caesar was just a man, Virgil still a teenager and Octavian but a boy, not yet in his teens when Catullus died — assuming that happened by the year 52 or even 51 BCE? Putting aside the cases of Cornelius Nepos (Poem 1) and Cicero (Poem 49) it is hard to find much in the way of ambiguity towards the political players alive and active as Catullus was writing. Indeed, it rather looks as if lam-

 30 Ahl 1984.

  Richard F. Thomas pooning was the order of the day, for him as for Calvus, whose epigram on Pompey’s desire for an active homosexual partner shows little need for ambiguity (Calvus 18 Blänsdorf and Courtney, 39 Hollis): Magnus, quem metuunt omnes, digito caput uno scalpit; quid dicas hunc sibi velle? Virum. Magnus, whom everyone’s scared of, scratches his head with one finger. What would you say he wants? A man.

The opening words, as Hollis notes, show “the poet has no such fears.” 31 Hollis well adduces Catullus in Poem 93, who “far from wishing to please Caesar, is totally indifferent to him”: Nil nimium studeo, Caesar, tibi velle placere, nec scire utrum sis albus an ater homo. I haven’t much interest in wanting to please you, Caesar, Nor in knowing whether you are a white man or a black.

Whether or not we agree with Ingemann that there may be a sexual double entendre here (from λευκός, “passive homosexual”, and μέλας, “manly”),32 or settle for the meaning attested elsewhere “in knowing the first thing about you,” Calvus and Catullus are on the same page: between them, the two poets exhibited a high level of comfort directing obscene and other invective or insult against the two most powerful political figures of the decade of the 50’s. And of course Poem 57 removes any doubt on this score, and in Poem 29 Caesar and Pompey are both implicated (23–24 eone nomine urbis opulentissime / socer generque, perdidistis omnia?) in the attack on Mamurra, the plundering lieutenant of Caesar. And the same goes for others, tightfisted governors under whom Catullus and his young friends have to serve, to their financial and other detriment. At Inst. 11.1.37–38 Quintilian treats the shift in tone and meaning depending on the status, rank and power of who is speaking. The taunts against Agamemnon, considered laughable when made by Thersites (ridentur) would on the lips of a Diomedes be a sign of greatness of mind. Similarly the words of Crassus to Philippus are a sign of honorable frankness (honestissimae libertatis): “Shall I consider you a consul, when you do not consider me a senator?” (ego te consulem putem, cum tu me non putes senatorem?). What is frank on the lips of equals is  31 Hollis 2007, 83. 32 Ingemann 1981–2.

Catullan Ambiguity  

utter madness (insania) when power is out of balance, and what is the example Quintilian chooses? Negat se magni facere aliquis poetarum utrum Caesar ater an albus homo sit: insania! verte, ut idem Caesar de illo dixerit, adrogantia est. One of the poets says that he doesn’t at all care whether Caesar is a black man or a white: madness! Turn it around, so that Caesar has said the same thing of the poet, and it is just arrogance.

For Quintilian it is unimaginable that one would say such a thing about a Caesar. He here shows no awareness of Tacitus’s sense that there once was a time, even in the principate of Augustus, when “deeds were challenged, while words went unpunished” (Ann. 1.72, facta arguebantur, dicta impune erant). Of course he was training those who would be using speech in the principate of Domitian, so his alarm at Catullus’ freedom is understandable, but it is worth pondering the gap between a state in which the two poets could write of Pompey and Caesar what they undeniably wrote, and a world in which such freedom was inconceivable. That is a gap that for Quintilian was filled by the varied fates of Asinius Pollio, Cassius Severus, Ovid, Cremutius Cordus, Lucan, Thrasea Paetus, and many others. 33 How did Catullus survive such open and unsafe speech? There are two ways of proceeding. Tacitus, through the words of Cremutius Cordus at Ann. 4.34.5, made a point about free speech. In his own defense, Cremutius is made to say: Carmina Bibaculi et Catulli referta contumeliis Caesarum leguntur: sed ipse divus Iulius, ipse divus Augustus et tulere ista et reliquere, haud facile dixerim, moderatione magis an sapientia. namque spreta exolescunt: si irascare, adgnita videntur. The poems of Bibaculus and Catullus are full of insulting language and are still read today. But even the divine Julius himself, the divine Augustus himself, both put up with these things and let them alone, I couldn’t easily say whether through restraint or wisdom. For things that are spurned tend to die down, but if you become angry you seem to be acknowledging things.

Tacitus knew why Catullus and Calvus were able to write those poems. Even when the republic, and liberty, were slipping away, it is a mark of those aspiring to autocracy to tolerate, or seem to tolerate, free speech. Once autocracy is estab-

 33 See Goodyear 1981, 141–150 for a meticulous accounting of the difficult questions surrounding maiestas laws and other legal or extrajudicial measures of the early principate.

  Richard F. Thomas lished, particularly after civil war, things may change. Suetonius, closer to Quintilian than to Tacitus, followed a different path, finding an explanation for the inexplicable in a biographical detail that makes Quintilian’s insania seem more comprehensible (Div. Iul. 73): Simultates contra nullas tam graves excepit umquam, ut non occasione oblata libens deponeret … Gaio Calvo post famosa epigrammata de reconciliatione per amicos agenti ultro ac prior scripsit. Valerium Catullum, a quo sibi versiculis de Mamurra perpetua stigmata imposita non dissimulaverat, satis facientem eadem die adhibuit cenae hospitioque patris eius, sicut consuerat, uti perseveravit. On the other hand he never took on such serious feuds that he didn’t gladly set them aside if the opportunity offered … When Gaius Calvus after writing scurrilous epigrams was making reconciliatory moves through some friends, Caesar wrote first and without any prompting. He made no secret of the fact that he had been branded by an eternal stain by the verses that Valerius Catullus wrote concerning Mamurra (Cat. 29 and 57), but when Catullus apologized Caesar asked him to dinner the very same day, and continued his established ties of hospitality with Catullus’ father.

There is no other evidence for any such retraction or attempted reconciliation from either poet, nor do we have any evidence for a relationship between Caesar and the father of Catullus, who is otherwise unknown, and looks to be invented for the purposes of this anecdote, as evidence of Caesar’s magnanimity. It is generally assumed that Caesar and Catullus senior would have entertained Caesar during the latter’s command in Cisalpine Gaul, but this looks like the usual scholiastic attempt to invent biographical detail to explain away what does not need explaining away. It is also hard to imagine what a Catullan apology would look like. Doubtless it would be full of superlatives, perhaps even resemble Cat. 49, the “thank-you” poem to Cicero! Nor did Catullus make use of ambiguity in his poetic dealings with other political figures, albeit below the status and power of Pompey and Caesar. Apart from Mamurra, the direct target of Poems 29 and 57, we have in Poem 28 the proconsul L. Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus (most likely candidate) and the propraetor C. Memmius who are labelled vappa (lit. “flat wine”) and irruma[tor] (“enforcer of fellatio,” also at 10.12) respectively. The poem is from the perspective of Catullus and his young friends who have to endure non-remunerative and abusive treatment from the governors on whose staff they are serving. The exaggeration and sexualizing of abuse are part of the point, and one may assume Piso and Memmius saw the humor. But things did change, and what may be viewed as a post-republican ambiguity and hidden meaning did take hold once times became dangerous, starting in Rome after Pharsalus, and in the twenty years following. One place to look for

Catullan Ambiguity  

the ambiguity and emphasis of autocracy is in the works of Cicero in the period after he was allowed by Caesar to return to Rome. “Nothing here but rumors” (hic rumores tantum) Cicero wrote to his old friend (ad Att. 12.2) in April of 46 BCE, as news of the republican defeat of that month at Utica; “but no one can verify anything” (sed auctor nullius rei quisquam). Not for long, and probably by May of the same year, with the defeat at Thapsus and news of the suicide of Cato at Utica fully in his consciousness and bringing home the full reality of the Pompeian defeat, Cicero, starting to write his eulogy of (again) Cato, wrote to Atticus (Ad Att. 12.4 = 240 SB): Sed de Catone πρόβλημα Ἀρχιμήδειον est. non adsequor ut scribam quod tui convivae non modo libenter sed etiam aequo animo legere possint; quin etiam si a sententiis eius dictis, si ab omni voluntate consiliisque quae de re publica habuit recedam ψιλῶς que velim gravitatem constantiamque eius laudare, hoc ipsum tamen istis odiosum ἄκουσμα sit. sed vere laudari ille vir non potest nisi haec ornata sint, quod ille ea quae nunc sunt et futura viderit et ne fierent contenderit et facta ne videret vitam reliquerit. Horum quid est quod Aledio probare possimus? Now about the Cato: it’s a problem for an Archimedes. I cannot work anything out which your boon companions would read with equanimity, let alone enjoyment. Even if I were to keep clear of his speeches in the Senate and his whole political outlook and opinions and choose simply to praise his seriousness of purpose and steadfastness, even this would grate upon their ears. But no genuine eulogy of that remarkable man is possible without paying tribute to the way he foresaw our present situation and strove to avert it and abandoned his life rather than witness it in actuality. Can any of that be made acceptable to Aledius? (transl. Shackleton Bailey)

We do not know who Aledius (possibly Atedius) was, clearly one of the triumphant Caesarians, operating as unofficial censor in times in which speech had now become unsafe. With Atticus, and relying on dependable letter-carriers, Cicero could be open, these letters revealing much. In 1998 D.R. Shackleton Bailey published “Caesar’s Men in Cicero’s Correspondence,” culling from letters from the “autumn of 47 [when] Cicero could begin to pick up some of the threads of his old life,” although “the senate and law-courts, which had made up so large a part of it, were no more for him under the new autocracy.” 34 At the end of March of 49 BCE Caesar had met with Cicero to try and enlist his support and induce him to return to Rome and convene the Senate. Cicero declined, politely enough on the evidence of the letter he sent to

 34 Shackleton Bailey 1998, 107.

  Richard F. Thomas Atticus on the 28th. He also privately expressed his view of those surrounding Caesar: 35 Many of his principal adherents were obscurities, some needy and disreputable, parvenus, hungry adventurers. Cicero writes of them to Atticus in March 49: “Gods! What an entourage, what an Underworld, to use your favourite expression … What a gang of desperados (9.18.2)!” And a few days later: “You may take my word for it that every shady character in Italy is with Caesar. I saw the whole crew at Formiae and I assure you I thought them more like beasts than men (9.19.1).”

By 46 BCE, waiting for Caesar’s pardon, Cicero had in part changed his tune, as he writes of dining with Caesar’s men, as he wrote to Varro following the defeat at Thapsus:36 “I said to myself ‘What can I expect?’ So I go on dining every night with our rulers. What am I to do? One must go with the times” (Ad fam. 9.7.1). In the same summer he was giving lessons in declamation to Hirtius and Dolabella, whereby among other advantages “I gain some protection against the hazards of these times.

But while “going with the times” publicly, his real feelings emerge, particularly in the safety of his correspondence with his alter ego. To focus on just one of them, Aulus Hirtius, Shackleton Bailey well juxtaposes Cicero’s “superficially warm” relationship with the man who would die fighting Antony while consul in 43 with the realities as they emerge first from a reply from Cicero to Atticus from May 13, 45 BCE: 37 His true feelings are laid bare in a letter to Atticus written shortly after Tullia’s death: “It is nice that Hirtius has written sympathetically to you about me (that was kind of him), and much nicer that you did not send me his letter — that was even kinder of you.” (Ad Att. 12.44.1) In his sorrow Cicero had no use for the sympathy of a man for whom he really felt nothing positive.

Along with such realities are the nicknames Cicero privately bestowed on the Caesarians, in the case of Hirtius the obscure Πεντέλοιπον, perhaps referring to his appetite, “Five gullet” (πεντέλαιμον), or “Lick all” (Παντόλοιχον), in a letter two months after the Ides of March in 44, when Cicero notes that the Caesarians are “afraid of peace” (Ad Att. 14.21.2 timere otium). There is nothing particularly admirable about Cicero’s state of mind in these years, but it is interesting to observe

 35 Shackleton Bailey 1998, 108−109. 36 Shackleton Bailey 1998, 110. 37 Shackleton Bailey 1998, 112.

Catullan Ambiguity  

the workings of what can and cannot be written before and after the events of 48– 30 BCE.

 Living to Regret It: The Case of A. Caecina What if Catullus had lived on into the mid-40s? We can imagine that possibility by closing with a Pompeian survivor, A. Caecina, son of the man whom Cicero defended in the Pro Caecina. Suetonius closes his section on the clemency and tolerance of abuse by Caesar by noting that “he bore with good nature the shredding of his reputation by the scurrilous book of Aulus Caecina and the abusive poems of Pitholaus” (Div. Iul. 75.5 Aulique Caecinae criminosissimo libro et Pitholai carminibus maledictissimis laceratam existimationem suam civili animo tulit). Of Pitholaus we know nothing, nor do we know whether Caesar pardoned Caecina, who fought on the Pompeian side including at Thapsus, though he spared his life following the battle ([Caes.] Bell. Afr. 89.5). It is assumed from Suetonius’ wording (civili animo) that Caecina was granted a pardon, but whether and when that occurred is not known for sure. More than six months after Thapsus, Cicero was working on his behalf, advising Caecina to stay in Sicily where he had been permitted to return, pending full pardon and return to Rome (Ad Fam. 6.6, 6.8, 6.5 = 234–5, 239 SB). Cicero predicts the pardon will come through, noting that Caecina had similarly predicted an end to Cicero’s own exile in 58. We also have a response from Caecina to Cicero (Ad Fam. 6.7 = 237 SB), from late in 46 or early 45, and from that we can see how it must have felt to have lived through a period when speech became unsafe. Caecina first apologizes for not having sent Cicero a book he is working on, perhaps on the subject of eloquence. He has hesitated to send it because his son feared it might be taken the wrong way and do stupid damage to Caecina (ne ea res inepte mihi noceret), given his current state of exile from Rome, due he supposes to his wartime abuse of Caesar (Ad Fam. 6.7.1 meus error exsilio corrigitur, cuius summa criminis est quod armatus adversario male dixi — “my mistake is being corrected by exile, and the sum of the charge against me is that while under arms I abused my enemy”) — hardly the main basis for his exile, but that is how he sees it. His new book will therefore be muted in its praise of Cicero, for fear of offending Caesar, and the letter ends by asking that Cicero not circulate the book, or else that he revise it in such a way that it can do no damage to Caecina (6.7.6 peto a te ne exeat, aut ut corrigas ne mihi noceat).

  Richard F. Thomas To be misconstrued by Caesar in January of 45 feels very different from how it would have felt before Pharsalus and Thapsus, and Caecina gives us a glimpse of just how that felt (Ad Fam. 6.7.4): Cum vero ad ipsius Caesaris nomen veni, toto corpore contremesco, non poenae metu, sed illius iudicii. totum enim Caesarem non novi. quem putas animum esse, ubi secum loquitur? Hoc probabit: hoc verbum suspiciosum est. Quid, si hoc muto? at vereor, ne peius sit. age vero, laudo aliquem: num offendo? cum porro offendam, quid, si non vult? armati stilum persequitur: victi et nondum restituti quid faciet? Coming to the name of Caesar, my whole body trembles, not through fear of his punishment, but of his judgement. I know nothing about the real Caesar. What do you think my state of mind is, when I reflect to myself? This bit he’ll approve of. But here he might see innuendo. What if I change it? But I’m afraid I make it worse. Come then. I praise someone: am I giving offence? Then when I make a criticism, what if he doesn’t like it? He persecutes the pen of a man at arms with him; what will he do to a man he has beaten in war and not yet pardoned.

This was a world Catullus never knew, dying two or three years before Caesar left his province and marched on Rome in January 49. By then his poems, including those on the political figures who fought and died in the ensuing years of civil war, dictatorship, and proscription, were circulating freely and would be read by Cremutius Cordus, Tacitus, and any number of Romans who could through their reading remind themselves that there was once a republic, a world in which direct and free speech still lived.

Bibliography Texts and Translations Blänsdorf, Jürgen (ed.) (22011), Fragmenta poetarum Latinorum epicorum et lyricorum, ed. post Willy Morel/Karl Büchner, Berlin/Boston. Calboli, Gualtiero (ed.) (1969), Cornifici Rhetorica ad C. Herennium, 1969. Courtney, Edward (ed.) (1993), The Fragmentary Latin Poets, Oxford. Dylan, Bob (1965), “Ballad of a Thin Man”, Copyright © 1965 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1993 by Special Rider Music. Hollis, Adrian S. (ed.) (2007), Fragments of Roman Poetry c. 60 BC–AD 20, Oxford. Fairclough, H. Rushton/George P. Goold (ed., transl.) (22001), Virgil, vol. 1: Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid I–VI . (Loeb Classical Library), London/Cambridge MA. Russel, Donald A. (ed., transl.) (2001), Quintilian, The Orator's Education, 5 vols. (Loeb Classical Library), Cambridge MA/Harvard.

Catullan Ambiguity  

Shackleton Bailey, David R. (ed., transl.) (2001), Cicero. Letters to Friends, 3 vols. (Loeb Classical Library), Cambridge MA/London. Shackleton Bailey, David R. (ed., transl.) (1966/67), Cicero. Letters to Atticus, vol 5: 48−45 B.C., 211−354 (Books XI to XIII), vol. 6: 44 B.C., 355–426 (Books XIV - XVI), Cambridge MA.

Books and Articles Ahl, Frederick M. (1984), “The Art of Safe Criticism in Greece and Rome”, AJP 105, 174–208. Austin, Roland G. (1963), P. Vergili Maronis Aeneidos Liber Quartus, Oxford. Baehrens, Aemilius (1885), Catulli Veronensis Liber, Volumen II: Commentarium, Leipzig. Clausen, Wendell (1976), “Catulli Veronensis Liber”, CP 71, 37–43. Clausen, Wendell (1987), Virgil’s Aeneid and the Tradition of Hellenistic Poetry, Berkeley/Los Angeles/London. Clumper, Karl Theodor (1850), “Annotationes in Catulli Epigrammata”, in: Miscellanea Philologa et Paedagogica 2, Amsterdam, 146−150. De Man, Paul (1982), Allegories of Reading. Figural Language in Rousseau, Rilke, and Proust, New Haven/London. Douglas, Alan E. (1960), “Clausulae in the Rhetorica ad Herennium as Evidence of its Date”, CQ 10, 65–78. Elder, John P. (1967), “Catullus I, His Poetic Creed, and Nepos”, HSCP 71, 143–149. Ellis, Robinson (1889), A Commentary on Catullus, 2nd ed., Oxford. Feldherr, Andrew (2007), “The Intellectual Climate”, in: Marilyn Skinner (ed.), A Companion to Catullus, Chichester, 116–135. Fordyce, Charles J. (1961), Catullus: A Commentary, Oxford. Goodyear, Francis R. D. (1981), The Annals of Tacitus Volume II (Annals 1.55–81 and Annals 2), Cambridge. Ingemann, Vibeke (1981–82), “Albus an ater — A Double Entendre in C. 93?”, C&M 33, 145–150. Kennedy, George (1972), The Art of Rhetoric in the Roman World, Princeton. Konstan, David (2007), “The Contemporary Political Context”, in: Marilyn Skinner (ed.), A Companion to Catullus, Chichester, 94–115. Merrill, Elmer Truesdell (1893), Commentary on Catullus, Cambridge MA. Puttenham, George (1589), The Arte of English Poesie, London. Quinn, Kenneth (1970), Catullus, The Poems. Edited with Introduction, Revised Text and Commentary, London/Basingstoke. Rosique, Susana Rodríguez (2013), “The Power of Inversion. Irony from Utterance to Discourse”, in: Leonor Ruiz Gurillo/Maria Belén Alvorado Ortega (eds.), Irony and Humor: From Pragmatics to Discourse, Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 17–38 Shackleton Bailey, David R. (1998), “Caesar’s Men in Cicero’s Correspondence”, Ciceroniana 10, 107–18. Sinclair, Patrick (1993), “The Sententia in Rhetorica ad Herennium: A Study in the Sociology of Rhetoric”, AJP 114, 561–580. Tatum, W. Jeffrey (1988), “Catullus’ Criticism of Cicero in Poem 49”, TAPA 118, 179–184. Thomas, Richard F. (2000), “A Trope by Any Other Name: ‘Polysemy,’ Ambiguity, and Significatio in Virgil”, HSCP 100, 381–407.

  Richard F. Thomas Thomas, Richard F. (1993), “Sparrows, Hares and Doves: ‘Source Criticism’ and the Limits of Plurality”, Helios 20, 131–142. Thomson, Douglas F.S. (1997), Catullus. Edited with a Textual and Interpretative Commentary, Toronto/Buffalo/London. Thomson, Douglas F.S. (1967), “Catullus and Cicero: Poetry and Criticism of Poetry”, CW 60, 225–230. Wagenvoort, Hendrik (1956), Studies in Roman Literature, Culture and Religion, Leiden. Wiseman, Timothy P. (2007), “The Valerii Catulli of Verona”, in: Marilyn Skinner (ed.), A Companion to Catullus, Chichester, 79–93. Winckel, L.C. (1979), “Some remarks on the date of the Rhetorica ad Herennium”, Mnemosyne 32, 327–332.

Stephen Harrison

Prophetic, Poetic and Political Ambiguity in Vergil Eclogue 4 Abstract: The debate about the possible identity of the male child whose birth is predicted in Eclogue 4 is one of the longest-standing discussions in Vergilian interpretation. This contribution follows recent suggestions that the future baby can be read as deliberately ambiguous between potential children of the young Caesar and Antony from the perspective of the poem’s setting at the Pact of Brindisi of autumn 40 BCE; but it also suggests that the child may allude to the political position and family prospects of Sextus Pompeius in the period between the Pact of Misenum (summer 39) and the beginning of the Bellum Siculum (winter 39−38), the likely publication point of the Eclogues, whose original readership might well see links with both Pacts in Eclogue 4. Keywords: Augustus, Eclogues, Gaius Claudius Marcellus, Octavia, M. Asinius Pollio, Cn. Pompeius Magnus, Sextus Pompeius, prophecy, Sibylline Oracles, Vergil

 Introduction The debate about the possible identity of the male child whose birth is predicted in Eclogue 4 is one of the longest-standing discussions in Vergilian interpretation. Candidates proposed in the extensive literature range from potential sons of the young Caesar (the future Augustus) and Mark Antony (M. Antonius) to an actual son of the poem’s addressee C. Asinius Pollio — so already D. Servius (4th–5th century), on Eclogue 4.11 — and Jesus Christ — so already Lactantius (4th century), Inst. 7.24.1 This contribution follows recent suggestions that the future baby can be read as deliberately ambiguous between potential children of the young Caesar and Antony from the perspective of the poem’s setting at the Pact of Brindisi of autumn 40 BCE; but it also suggests that the child may allude to the political position and family prospects of Sextus Pompeius in the period between the Pact of Misenum (summer 39) and the beginning of the Bellum Siculum (winter  1 For a good recent discussion and bibliography of the issue see Cucchiarelli 2012, 237−239 and Holzberg 2015, 54; for rich earlier gatherings of material see Du Quesnay 1976, 31−38 and Coleiro 1979, 239−245. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110715811-018

  Stephen Harrison 39−38), the likely publication point of the Eclogues, whose original readership might well see links with both Pacts in Eclogue 4.

 Eclogue 4 − Contexts The setting of Eclogue 4 is generally agreed to be the so-called Pact of Brindisi in October 40 BCE,2 aimed at reinforcing the then endangered political alliance between the two most powerful triumvirs, the young Caesar and Antony. 3 It was orchestrated by C. Asinius Pollio, the consul of that same year and the addressee of Eclogue 4, which refers explicitly to his consulship (4.3 consule, 4.11 te consule); the settlement was sealed by the immediate marriage of Antony to Caesar’s sister Octavia (Plut. Ant. 31, Dio 48.31.3), and the rapid birth of a child as heir to both dynasts would be conventionally expected, as often expressed in ancient wedding-poems. 4 Just before this, in the summer of 40, the young Caesar had himself married Scribonia, a relative of Sextus Pompeius, in another political union aimed at reconciling a competing dynast (App. BC 5.53, Dio 48.16.2); thus by the end of 40 BCE both the major triumvirs were recently (re-)married and potentially expecting heirs. The poem’s clear use of elements from Catullus 64’s prophecy of the Parcae foretelling the greatness of the future baby Achilles at the wedding of his parents Peleus and Thetis also points to this moment of power marriage and dynastic expectations.5 In fact, both Antony/Octavia and Caesar/Scribonia had daughters, not sons, in 39 (Antonia Maior in August, and Julia in October), and neither couple ever had a surviving male heir; but the poem’s prophecy of a future male baby who was to inherit mastery of the world could be thoroughly and conveniently ambiguous between a potential child of Caesar and a potential child of Antony in late 40 BCE, the poem’s primary dramatic date. 6  2 Some, recently Pelling 1996, 19 and Seng 1999, 61−64, prefer a date in late 41, looking to the particularly dark situation of the Perusine war and to the future prospect of a whole year of Pollio’s saving consulship, but the parallels with Catullus 64 strongly suggest a link with the Pact of Brindisium and its element of marriage and future heir (see n. 5 below), and late 40 BCE ooks right politically too (see the pithy arguments of Du Quesnay 1976, 30−31). 3 The third triumvir M. Aemilius Lepidus was still technically in office and part of the Brindisi discussions, but was always less important. In 40−36 BCE he was to be away in Africa where he governed two provinces, taking no part in the Misenum discussions, where Sextus in effect displaced him (see Weigel 1992, 81−85); there seems to be no reference to him in Eclogue 4. 4 Cf. e.g. Cat. 61.204−205, Stat. Silv. 1.2.266−268. 5 See e.g. Du Quesnay 1976, 68−75, Trimble 2013. 6 See e.g. Williams 1968, 282−283 and 1974, Hardie 1998, 21, Harrison 2007, 41−42.

Prophetic, Poetic and Political Ambiguity in Vergil Eclogue 4  

Roman poetry had been fully aware of the notorious ambiguity of prophetic pronouncements since Ennius’ reporting of the Delphic oracle given to Pyrrhus of Epirus as he prepared to invade Italy (Ann. 179 Sk. aio te Aeacida Romanos vincere posse: “I say, descendant of Aeacus, that you can overcome the Romans / the Romans can overcome you”). 7 In Eclogue 4 this is reinforced by the use of a particular literary tradition of prophecy. It has been noted since Lactantius in the early 4th century (Inst. 7.24) that this Latin hexameter poem is likely to be influenced by the genre of Greek hexameter Sibylline Oracles.8 These were prophetic texts attributed to various Sibyls which were suitably obscure and ambiguous in their historical references and predictions for the future, and which may have been available in part to Vergil via the Hellenistic Jewish culture of Alexandria, with which Rome had had close contact since Julius Caesar’s stay there in 48−47 BCE.9 This link is marked at the opening of Eclogue 4 with its reference to an Italian Sibyl located at a famously Greek sanctuary in Campania (4 Ultima Cumaei venit iam carminis aetas, “the last age of the song of [the Sibyl of] Cumae has come”). The two-way ambiguity of Vergil’s poem between a child of Caesar and a child of Antony in the consulship of Pollio thus follows an established literary tradition of prophecy; but I also want to suggest a further layer of ambiguity imposed by the historical events of the following year. By the time the Eclogue book finally emerged in 39−38 BCE, 10 another political deal had taken place which was similar to that of Brindisi and could be presented in the same light as a marriage which might advance peace for the Roman world. In the summer of 39 Caesar, Antony and Sextus Pompeius agreed terms of alliance in the so-called Pact of Misenum, which involved the betrothal of Caesar’s two-year-old nephew Marcellus to Sextus’ young daughter (App. BC 5.73, Dio 48.38.3). My argument in this paper is that our reading of Eclogue 4 is enriched if we see additional possible references to the Pact of Misenum as well as the Pact of Brindisi, as the Eclogue book’s contemporary readers may well have done. Thus the potential male heir to Rome in the poem could be seen in the light of the possibility of an eventual son of Marcellus and grandson of Sextus, as well as a future child of either Caesar or Antony. Though Eclogue 4 promises that the boy-child will be conceived in Pollio’s consular year of 40, the fact that this had  7 Selected as an example of oracular ambiguity by Cic. Div. 2.116; see further Skutsch 1985, 333−334. 8 See especially Du Quesnay 1976, 75−81, Coleiro 1979, 235−240, Nisbet 1978/1995, Harrison 2007, 38−39 (for some caution see Lightfoot 2007, 235−237). 9 It has been argued that parts of Or. Sib. 3 refer to Cleopatra: see Collins 1974, 61−70, Lightfoot 2007, 239 n. 112 (for some scepticism on this see Gruen 2016). 10 For the date see Cucchiarelli 2012, 15−16, and see further my conclusion below.

  Stephen Harrison not happened and that girls had been born instead (though hopes for male heirs no doubt remained) allows the poem to be read in 39/38 as referring secondarily to the Pact of Misenum as well as primarily to the Pact of Brindisi, both being marriage-settlements of competing dynasts from which a male baby could be envisaged as a harmonious outcome. It is even possible that the author modified its final form to achieve this end, since other details in the poem referring to the dynastic situation of 40 BCE can also be interpreted as applying to the (not dissimilar) political circumstances of 39, and especially the figure of Sextus Pompeius (see below). So the two-way ambiguity between Caesar and Antony of 40 BCE, already recognised by scholars, can be argued to become a three-way ambiguity between Caesar, Antony and Sextus after 39.11

 Possible Ambiguities in the Poem In what follows I look at various key passages of Eclogue 4 through the filter of the Pact of Misenum as well as the Pact of Brindisi.

. Sicily and the Consulship The poem begins with references to Sicily and a consulship (Ecl. 4.1−3): Sicelides Musae, paulo maiora canamus. non omnis arbusta iuvant humilesque myricae: si canimus silvas, silvae sint consule dignae. Muses of Sicily, let us sing of things a little greater. Not all are pleased by groves and lowly tamarisks: If we sing of woods, let the woods be worthy of a consul.

Though it is made clear some way into the poem that the consul referred to is Pollio (4.12), these lines could easily also refer to the situation of Sextus Pompeius in 39 BCE. The opening reference to “Muses of Sicily” designates Vergil’s primary poetic model Theocritus from Syracuse in Sicily (cf. similarly Eclogue 6.1 Syracosio …

 11 This paper thus follows the recent tendency of scholarship to restore Sextus Pompeius to greater political and cultural importance in this period, where later Caesarian sources tend to play down his role — see Powell/Welch 2002 and Welch 2012. Virgilian scholars generally hold there are no direct allusions to Sextus in the poet’s work; cf. e.g. Rossi 1988.

Prophetic, Poetic and Political Ambiguity in Vergil Eclogue 4  

versu), but it might also remind the contemporary reader of the Eclogue book that Sicily was Sextus’ key base of operations throughout the period 43−36 BCE. 12 Likewise, the honouring of a consul gains relevance in the context of the Pact of Misenum, which (amongst other things) designated the consuls for the next four years, including Antony and Caesar for the second time and Sextus for the first (Dio 48.35.1, 36.4, App. BC 5.72). 13 Sextus’ pride in his status as consul designate is famously recorded in an inscription by his legate Lucius Plinius Rufus originally erected at Marsala in Sicily, now preserved in the Museo Nazionale Archeologico in Palermo (ILS 8891 = ILLRP 426): Mag(no) Pompeio Mag(ni) f(ilio) Pio imp(eratore) augure / co(n)s(ule) des(ignato) / por[ta]m et turres / L(ucius) Plinius L(uci) f(ilius) Rufus leg(atus) pro pr(aetore) pr(aetor) des(ignatus) f(aciendum) c(uravit). Under Magnus Pompeius Pius, son of Magnus, imperator, augur, designated consul, Lucius Plinius Rufus, son of Lucius, legate propraetor, designated praetor saw to the construction of a gate and towers.

Sextus was never in fact to enjoy his consulship, since the Bellum Siculum of 38−36 against the triumvirs put paid to it, but its attractive future prospect for him (as for Caesar and Antony and their second consulships) 14 was clearly a key feature of the political deal at Misenum, which could be picked up by a contemporary reader of Vergil’s poem. The future consulship of any of the three dynasts could constitute a secondary reference additional to that of the actual consulship of Pollio.

. Great Ancestry and Divine Destiny A similar multiple ambiguity can be found in the poem’s reference to the great ancestry of the future baby and his eventual heavenly destiny (15−17): ille deum vitam accipiet divisque videbit permixtos heroas et ipse videbitur illis pacatumque reget patriis virtutibus orbem.

 12 See e.g. Stone 2002. 13 See Osgood 2006, 206 and Lange 2019, 249−250. 14 Both in fact prevented by the outbreak of war in 39−8 and changed political arrangements: Antony had to wait for his second consulship until 34, Caesar until 33.

  Stephen Harrison He will receive the life of the gods and will see Heroes mixed with gods and will himself be seen by them And he will rule over a world pacified by his father’s/his ancestor’s virtues.

Here two claims are made about the future child — that he will join the community of gods and that he will inherit and rule over a world pacified by his father or ancestor. 15 The prospect of future apotheosis, a common claim for the Hellenistic kings increasingly rivalled by Roman grandees at the end of the Republic, is not unnatural for all three candidates, since all either claimed or were accorded various forms of divine honours and divine descent. We are told that in 38 in Athens Antony sought identity with Dionysus (Dio 48.39.2)16 and he had already claimed descent from Hercules (Plut. Ant. 2), while the young Caesar was formally divi filius after his adoptive father had been consecrated by senatorial decree as Divus Iulius in 42 BCE and may already have been the recipient of minor divine honours in Italy (Verg. Ecl. 1.7−8, 43, cf. App. BC 5.132). Sextus too sought divine associations: he claimed that his father Pompey the Great was equivalent to Neptune as ruler of the seas (Dio 48.19.2), and consequently that he himself was the son of Neptune (App. BC 5.100, Dio 48.48.5), a boast referred to ironically by Horace at Epodes 9.7−8, calling Sextus (by then defeated and dead) Neptunius / dux. Likewise, the claim to be descended from either a father or an ancestor who has pacified the world could be applied to all three candidates. Antony’s notional ancestor Hercules is commonly presented as a world-travelling and all-subduing victor (Verg. Aen. 6.801−803, Hor. Epist. 2.1.5−12, Curt. 3.10.5, Sen. Ben. 1.13.3).17 The young Caesar’s adoptive father Julius was similarly depicted by Cicero as an unparalleled world-conqueror in the context of his four-fold triumph of 46 BCE.18 Cicero himself had also said much the same about Pompey in 66, 19 and Pompey’s heritage of conquest a generation before could still be claimed for Sextus’ future grandson in 39 as well as for the notional heir of Caesar and Antony in 40.

 15 Patrius is crucially ambiguous here: cf. OLD s.v. 1 and 3. 16 Pelling 1996, 22−23 17 For pacare of this activity cf. Aen. 6.803, Sen. HF 442. 18 Marc. 5 nec vero disiunctissimas terras citius passibus cuiusquam potuisse peragrari, quam tuis non dicam cursibus, sed victoriis lustratae sunt, and 28 obstupescent posteri certe imperia, provincias, Rhenum, Oceanum, Nilum, pugnas innumerabilis, incredibilis victorias, monimenta, munera, triumphos audientes et legentes tuos, pointing to clear links with Hercules: see Harrison 2018. 19 Leg. Man. 43−4 quod igitur nomen umquam in orbe terrarum clarius fuit? cuius res gestae pares? An vero ullam usquam esse oram tam desertam putatis, quo non illius diei fama pervaserit … ?

Prophetic, Poetic and Political Ambiguity in Vergil Eclogue 4  

. Historic Deeds Similarly ambivalent between the three candidates is the statement that the future child has a great father/forefather whose deeds will be read about, presumably in written works (26−27): At simul heroum laudes et facta parentis iam legere et quae sit poteris cognoscere virtus … But at the same time you will already be able to read of the praises of heroes And the deeds of your father/forefather, and realise what virtue is …

Again there is a crucial lexical ambiguity here referring to ancestry: parens refers most naturally to a father, but it can refer to a grandfather (Ov. Met. 5.237) or any kind of ancestor. 20 For a potential son of Caesar or Antony in 40, the natural reference would be to the triumvirs themselves; for the potential son of the young Marcellus in 39, the reference could be to the child’s grandfather Sextus or his great-grandfather Pompey. All these are plausible candidates for being described as heroes with mighty deeds worth recording. The future Augustus was to have many biographers 21 and poetic panegyrists, 22 not least himself, 23 just as Julius Caesar had written up his own campaigns in Gaul and was the hero of other histories and poems, 24 while Antony may have been a main focus of a history by his one-time comrade Q. Dellius. 25 Sextus Pompey is very likely to have had his own historian, even if none is actually recorded, 26 just as the achievements of Pompey the Great were chronicled by Theophanes of Mytilene (Cic. Arch. 24).

 20 OLD s.v. 2. 21 E.g. Nicolaus of Damascus – see Toher 2017. 22 Vergil in the Aeneid and Horace in the Odes, alongside the lost work of Varius (Courtney 1993, 275, Hollis 2007, 273−275). 23 For his autobiographical works see Cornell et al. 2013, 1.454−462. 24 E.g. the lost Bellum Sequanicum of Varro Atacinus (Hollis 2007, 165−166, 179−180) and Furius Bibaculus’ lost poem on the Gallic Wars (Hollis 2007, 119−121, 128−135). 25 Cornell et al. 2013, 1.424−425. 26 A possible candidate is the historian T. Labienus, who seems to have been a Pompeian in sympathy and of the right generation (see Sen. Contr.10 praef. 5 on his “Pompeian passions”, Cornell et al. 2013, 1.472−3).

  Stephen Harrison

. Heroic Expeditions In lines 35−37 the age of the future child is presented as likely to witness new versions of the voyage of the Argo or the departure of Achilles to Troy: alter erit tum Tiphys et altera quae vehat Argo delectos heroas; erunt etiam altera bella atque iterum ad Troiam magnus mittetur Achilles. There will be a second Tiphys and a second Argo To carry picked heroes; there will be further wars And once again a great Achilles will be sent to Troy.

Here we find an element in the poem which makes more sense in the context of 39 BCE rather than 40, that of an Eastern voyage, in the same direction as the Argonauts’ journey or the expedition of the Trojan War. In October 39, very soon after the Pact of Misenum, Antony sailed for the East with Octavia via Greece, explicitly intending the conquest of Parthia (App. BC 5.75). 27 Julius Caesar had been said to be about to embark on a Parthian expedition at the time of his death (Plut. Caes. 58, Suet. Div. Jul. 44), but Antony’s actual voyage of 39 fits the passage nicely. This emphasis on heroic ships might also provide a mythical encomium for Sextus, who controlled the seas around Italy tightly in the period 41−39 and was firmly associated with naval warfare;28 the emphasis on chosen heroes, conventional for the crew of the Argo (cf. Cat. 64.4 lecti iuvenes), might defend Sextus against the charge that he had used runaway slaves in his crews in 40 (Dio 48.19.2), while magnus … Achilles 29 might even look to Sextus’ full name Sextus Pompeius Magnus Pius, inherited from his father, and its implied link with Alexander the Great who thought himself a second Achilles and famously visited Troy, 30 though as far as we know Sextus had no plans to emulate his father’s Eastern victories or presence in this region. 31

 27 Pelling 1996, 21. 28 Welch 2012, 203−259. 29 Another clear nod to the prophecy of the future birth and heroic career of Achilles in Catullus 64.338−70 (see Trimble 2013, 262). 30 See e.g. Minchin 2012. 31 Though it is interesting to note that Pompey honoured the modern city of Troy for its loyalty to Rome in an inscription of 62 celebrating his Eastern victories: SEG 46.1565.

Prophetic, Poetic and Political Ambiguity in Vergil Eclogue 4  

. Divine Links and Future Distinguished Career At 48−49 the poem stresses the future baby’s close relationship to the gods and to Jupiter: Adgredere o magnos (aderit iam tempus) honores, cara deum suboles, magnum Iovis incrementum. O come to claim great honours (the time for it will soon arrive), Dear issue of the gods, great growth of Jupiter.

Again this could refer to all three candidates, who all paraded their divine links.32 Both Antony and Caesar famously claimed to be descended from the gods and Jupiter: Antony via Jupiter’s son Hercules (see above), Caesar via his daughter Venus, ancestress of the gens Iulia through Aeneas and Iulus (see the Aeneid). But Sextus is also relevant here: as the supposed son of Neptune (see above), he is Jupiter’s nephew (if not direct descendant) and deum suboles, and, as in magnus … Achilles (37; see above), Sextus’ and his father’s famous cognomen may be in play in magnos … honores (48). These honours envisaged for the child might easily look to the remarkable political offices and distinctions (both senses of honor 33) of his great ancestor Cn. Pompeius Magnus, three times consul (once on his own), triple triumphator and de facto triumvir for seven years. They could also allude to the multiple offices and privileges acquired by Sextus Pompeius at Misenum according to Dio (48.36.4−5): “that Sextus himself should be chosen consul and appointed augur, should obtain seventy million sesterces from his father’s estate, and should govern Sicily, Sardinia and Achaia for five years”; the phrase might also evoke the prestigious second consulships agreed for Caesar and Antony in 39 as well as their status as triumvirs in 40.

 Conclusion This paper has sought to argue that the long-debated question of the identity of the future child in Eclogue 4 can be given a fresh twist if modern readers, like those of the Eclogue collection when published, can feel free to take into consideration not only the events of 40 BCE and the Pact of Brindisium, but also the

 32 See e.g. Gurval 1995, 91−94. 33 OLD s.v., 4 and 5.

  Stephen Harrison events of 39 BCE and the Pact of Misenum. Both were agreements between the then masters of the Roman world which sought to establish a new era of peace by means of marriage, and looked to seal their agreements by the birth of a future heir who would unite the bloodline of the Caesars with that of another dynast, and the poem can reflect both for an original readership of the poem that has recently experienced both. Here as elsewhere in the Latin poetry of the Triumviral period the reader needs to take into account the fast-moving political situation: just as Vergil seems to move in the short period of the Eclogues from the patronage of Pollio (praised in Ecl. 3 and addressed in Ecl. 4 and 8) 34 to that of the young Caesar (lavishly honoured in Eclogue 1 and in effect the dedicatee of the collection), so the future heir prophesied in Eclogue 4 may reflect the temporarily enhanced position of Sextus in 39 as well as the pre-eminence of Caesar and Antony in 40. Poems which are firmly based at a particular historical point can read quite differently from a later perspective, however short the interval: thus Horace’s Epode 1, with its anxious dispatching of Maecenas to Actium before the battle, takes on a quite different colour once it appears in a book which includes a narrative of Caesar’s victory written less than two years later (Ep. 9). The difficulty of extracting a fixed identity for the future male child of Eclogue 4 is thus not only natural in the context of a prophetic hexameter poem linked with the Sibylline tradition; it is also politically prudent in a rapidlychanging environment of power and alliances. The Scribonia whose potential child may be celebrated in 40 found herself divorced from Augustus by 38 when he married Livia, while Octavia’s marriage to Antony had broken down by 35/4 when she returned to Italy without him (Dio 49.33.4), 35 and the Sextus who had sought harmonious power-sharing with the two major triumvirs at Misenum became the young Caesar’s main enemy in the Bellum Siculum of 38−36 and died defeated in 35. Sensible Romans in the 30s BCE needed to be prepared for rapid political change and to stay on good terms with all major parties as far as possible: Nepos narrates how in this period the shrewd and aged Atticus carefully cultivated both the young Caesar and Antony on the grounds that either might emerge as the future master of the world (Att. 20.5). If the possible presence of Sextus and the Pact of Misenum in Eclogue 4 is accepted, this gives a possible terminus ante quem for the publication of the Eclogue book. Such potential praise of Sextus in a book in effect dedicated to the young Caesar is unlikely after the opening of the Bellum Siculum in the winter of  34 Assuming it is indeed he who is the addressee of Eclogue 8: here I agree with the arguments of Cucchiarelli 2012, 411−413, who summarises the debate well. 35 Pelling 1996, 42.

Prophetic, Poetic and Political Ambiguity in Vergil Eclogue 4  

39−8, though its relatively concealed nature might just have allowed it to remain after that date. In any case, I strongly agree with those who see Pollio (with his victory over the Parthini) and not the young Caesar (with his victory in Illyria) as the addressee of Eclogue 8 and who consequently see no identifiable date in the Eclogues after the triumph of Pollio in 39 (cf. Ecl. 4.13); 36 furthermore, there is no major sign in the Eclogues in more general terms of the resumption of civil war, another strong indication that the book was finished by the winter of 39/8 BCE, when both the Pact of Brindisi and the Pact of Misenum would be prominent recent memories for its original readership, and might be ambiguously invoked in the promotion of peace through the means of dynastic marriage.

Bibliography Bowman, Alan K./Champlin, Edward/Lintott, Andrew (eds.) (1996), The Cambridge Ancient History X: The Augustan Empire, 43 B.C. – A.D. 69, Cambridge. Coleiro, Edward (1979), An Introduction to Vergil’s Bucolics with a Critical Edition of the Text, Amsterdam. Cornell, Timothy J. et al. (eds.) (2013), The Fragments of the Roman Historians [3 vols.], Oxford. Courtney, Edward (1993), The Fragmentary Latin Poets, Oxford. Cucchiarelli, Andrea (2012), Publio Virgilio Marone, Le Bucoliche, Rome. Du Quesnay, Ian Le M. (1976), “Vergil’s Fourth Eclogue”, PLLS 1, 25−100. Farrell, Joseph A./Nelis, Damien P. (eds.) (2013), Augustan poetry and the Roman Republic, Oxford. Gruen, Erich S. (2016), “Sibylline Oracles”, OCD. [5th online edition; doi: 10.1093/acrefore/ 9780199381135.013.8134] Gurval, Robert A. (1988), Actium and Augustus, Ann Arbor. Hardie, Philip R. (1998), Virgil, Oxford. Harrison, Stephen J. (2007), Generic Enrichment in Vergil and Horace, Oxford. Harrison, Stephen J. (2018), “Herculis ritu: Caesar as Hercules in Cicero’s Pro Marcello”, CQ 68, 338−343. Hollis, Adrian S. (2007), Fragments of Roman Poetry 60 BC – AD 20, Oxford. Holzberg, Niklas (2015), Vergil 1. Bucolica: Eine Bibliographie, Munich. [online at http://www.niklasholzberg.com/Homepage/Bibliographien.html] Lange, Carsten H. (2019), “Cassius Dio on Sextus Pompeius and Late Roman Civil War”, in: Osgood/Baron 2019, 236−258. Lightfoot, Jane L. (2007), The Sybilline Oracles. With Introduction, Translation, and Commentary on the First and Second Books, Oxford. Minchin, Elizabeth (2012), “Commemoration and Pilgrimage in the Ancient World: Troy and the Stratigraphy of Cultural Memory”, G&R 59, 76−89.

 36 See conveniently Cucchiarelli 2012, 411−413 and Coliero 1979, 94−95.

  Stephen Harrison Nisbet, Robin G.M. (1978), “Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue: Easterners and Westerners”, BICS 25, 59−78. [reprinted in Nisbet 1995, 47−75] Nisbet, Robin G.M. (1995), Collected Papers on Latin Literature, Oxford. Osgood, Josiah (2006), Caesar’s Legacy, Cambridge. Osgood, Josiah/Baron, Christopher (eds.) (2019), Cassius Dio and the Late Roman Republic, Leiden/Boston. Pelling, Christopher R.B. (1996), “The Triumviral Period”, in: Bowman et al. 1996, 1−69. Powell, Anton/Welch, Kathryn (eds.) (2002), Sextus Pompeius, London. Rossi, Ruggero F. (1988), “Pompeo, Sesto”, in: Enciclopedia Virgiliana IV, 198−199. Seng, Helmut (1999), Vergils Eklogenbuch: Aufbau, Chronologie und Zahlenverhältnisse, Hildesheim 1999. Skutsch, Otto (1985), The Annals of Quintus Ennius, Oxford. Stone, Shelley C. (2002), “Sextus Pompeius, Octavianus and Sicily”, in: Powell/Welch 2002, 135−165. Toher, Mark (2017), Nicolaus of Damascus: The Life of Augustus and the Autobiography, Cambridge. Trimble, Gail C. (2013), “Catullus 64 and the Prophetic Voice in Virgilʼs Fourth Eclogue”, in: Farrell/Nelis 2013, 263−77. Welch, Kathryn (2012), Magnus Pius: Sextus Pompeius and the transformation of the Roman Republic, Swansea. Weigel, Richard D. (1992), Lepidus, the Tarnished Triumvir, London. Williams, Gordon W. (1968), Tradition and Originality in Roman Poetry, Oxford. Williams, Gordon W. (1974), “A Version of Pastoral: Virgil, Eclogue 4”, in: Woodman/West 1974, 31−46. Woodman, Anthony J./West, David (eds.) (1974), Quality and pleasure in Latin poetry, Cambridge.

Janja Soldo

Vitae aut vocis ambigua: Seneca the Younger and Ambiguity Abstract: My paper demonstrates that Seneca’s understanding of ambiguity is both indebted to his Stoic predecessors and an innovative contribution to defining and explaining ambiguity. In his Epistulae Morales, Seneca moves away from an understanding of ambiguity that is primarily based on language, and focuses on the idea of an ambiguous reality, describing human behaviour and life itself as ambiguous. A close reading of Ep. 9 and 45 shows the great importance Seneca attaches to discovering and understanding the ambiguity inherent in life and brings it into line with his treatment of logic, one of the three constitutive elements of Stoic philosophy. Keywords: Seneca the Younger, Epistulae Morales, Stoicism, philosophy, letters

 Ambiguity and Stoic Philosophy Heraclitus famously said that one cannot step into the same river twice, 1 forever puzzling later generations of philosophers and earning himself the epithet ‘the obscure’ with this and other barely comprehensible utterances. 2 The so-called ‘river fragment’ — ποταμοῖσι τοῖσιν αὐτοῖσιν ἐμβαίνουσιν ἕτερα καὶ ἕτερα ὕδατα ἐπιρρεῖ (Cleanthes apud Ar. Did. in Eus. PE 15.20.2) — has provoked widely differing interpretations, not least because it is syntactically ambiguous: τοῖσιν αὐτοῖσιν can refer to the rivers (ποταμοῖσι) or to those stepping into the river

 I was given the opportunity to present this paper in Thessaloniki and at a conference in Tübingen, and I wish to thank the participants at both conferences for their comments. I also want to express my gratitude to Lisa Cordes for commenting on two different versions of this paper.  1 Preserved in Heracl. Alleg. 24.4 and Cleanthes apud Ar. Did. in Eus. PE 15.20.2 (= D65a–b in Laks/Most 2016), testimonies are Plat. Crat. 402a and Sen. Ep. 58.23 (= D65c–d in Laks/Most 2016). 2 Cf. e.g. Cic. Fin. 2.15; Lucr. DRN 1.638–640. The rhetorician Theon, who most probably composed his Progymnasmata in the first century AD., explained Heraclitus’ obscurity in the following way: “it is because of […] ambiguity that the books of Heraclitus the philosopher are obscure to such a degree, whether he employed it intentionally, or else out of ignorance” (Atherton 1993, 189). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110715811-019

  Janja Soldo (ἐμβαίνουσιν). Aristotle criticised Heraclitus for his ambiguous writing, regarding it as a weakness (Arist. Rhet. 1407b6), even though his obscurity seems to have been the point: Heraclitus was deliberately ambiguous in order to create a dense and allusive style and to provoke his readers. 3 Apart from the obscure Heraclitus, however, ambiguity is mostly seen as a serious obstacle to the educational intention of philosophical writing. How can you teach anyone about the good life, the afterlife or the nature of god if your writing is unclear and your words can be interpreted one way or another? The Stoics were among the first philosophers to systematise and to theorise ambiguity since they were invested in exploring all aspects of language.4 Chrysippus in particular, the third head of the school and the most important innovator of Stoicism, seems to have had a great interest in ambiguity.5 He notoriously believed that “every word is naturally ambiguous, since from the same two or even more things can be understood.” 6 The only definition of ambiguity that can be securely attributed to the Stoics is preserved by Diogenes Laertius (7.62): Ἀμφιβολία δέ ἐστι λέξις δύο ἢ καὶ πλείονα πράγματα σημαίνουσα λεκτικῶς καὶ κυρίως καὶ κατὰ τὸ αὐτὸ ἔθος, ὥσθ’ ἅμα τὰ πλείονα ἐκδέξασθαι κατὰ ταύτην τὴν λέξιν· οἷον Αὐλητρὶς πέπτωκε· δηλοῦνται γὰρ δι’ αὐτῆς τὸ μὲν τοιοῦτον, Οἰκία τρὶς πέπτωκε, τὸ δὲ τοιοῦτον, Αὐλήτρια πέπτωκε.

 3 Kahn 1979, 89. 4 The following discussion of ambiguity in Stoicism is a brief overview and therefore does not lay any claim to completeness; for an in-depth analysis see Atherton’s ground-breaking study (Atherton 1993). For philosophical explorations into ambiguity prior to the Stoics, Plato and Aristotle are particularly relevant; for their treatment of ambiguity see the contributions by Balla and Golitsis in this volume. The Stoics identified several types of ambiguity. Theon and the physician and philosopher Galen, who both listed and thus preserved the Stoic categories of ambiguity, record respectively seven and eight categories. Among these are, for example, homonymy, such as the word andreios, which can mean either ‘for a man’ or ‘courageous’ (cf. Gal. Sophism. p. 13 Gabler, 4–5); syntactical ambiguity, such as the double nominative in the sentence “Egyptians too are Colchians” (cf. Theon, Prog. p. 81 Sprengel, 4–9); elleipsis, such as the question “whose are you” which can refer either to someone’s father or to someone’s master (cf. Gal. Sophism. p. 13 Gabler, 8–10). 5 A list of seven or maybe eight treatises on ambiguity by Chrysippus survives in D.L. 7.193. It is not clear whether or not the first treatise mentioned in the list (“Against Those Who Reject Division, two books”) also deals with ambiguity. Sadly, however, Chrysippus’ treatises are lost, as are all other Stoic works on ambiguity. For a discussion of the surviving fragments, see Atherton 1993, 28–31. 6 Gell. 11.12.1: (Chrysippus ait) omne verbum ambiguum natura esse, quoniam ex eodem duo vel plura accipi possunt. The translation is from Atherton 1993, 298.

Vitae aut vocis ambigua: Seneca the Younger and Ambiguity  

Ambiguity is an utterance signifying two or even more pragmata, linguistically, strictly, and in the same usage, so that the several pragmata are understood simultaneously in relation to this utterance; for example, Auletris peptoke: for by it are indicated both something like this, “a house has fallen three times”, and something like this, “a flute-girl has fallen”. 7

As Catherine Atherton points out, strictly speaking, neither the words nor the phrase are ambiguous but it is the sequence of letters that creates the ambiguity. 8 We can read the sequence either as one word — αὐλητρίς — or as two words — αὐλὴ τρίς — because word division and prosodic signs are established only much later. However, the example also shows another important feature of ambiguity: it works differently in writing than it does in spoken discourse. With accentuation and clear signalling of the word division, this sequence would not have been ambiguous in a speech. Why was ambiguity so important to the Stoics? The study of ambiguity is not an end in itself but a helpful tool in the quest for virtue, which the Stoics regarded as the only way to achieve happiness and which they defined as perfect reason. Reason helps the wise man make the right decision and do the right thing. Therefore, it was of the utmost importance for the Stoic wise man to distinguish between true and false and to base his distinction on secure knowledge. 9 In this system, ambiguity is a disruptive force: 10 if you miss an ambiguity, you might form a wrong judgement, make an ill-informed decision, do the wrong thing and thus deviate from your journey towards wisdom. Still worse, ambiguity might lead not only to one wrong action but to a consistent misconception and a behavioural pattern. Nothing less than one’s happiness is at stake when the Stoics remind their followers to distinguish between “what is true and what false, what plausible and what said ambiguously” (D.L. 7.47). Hence, the Stoics expected their students either to dissolve ambiguities or to avoid them in the first place.

 7 The translation is taken from Atherton 1993, 135–136. 8 Atherton 1993, 138–139, and for a more detailed discussion of the passage see 131–174. 9 The Stoic conception of knowledge is best explained in Long/Sedley 1987, 41A (= SVF 1.66 = Cic. Acad. 2.145), 41B (= SVF 1.60 = Cic. Acad. 1.41–42) and 41C (= Sext. Emp. Against the Professors 7.151–157). 10 See Atherton 1993, 56–62.

  Janja Soldo

 Seneca on Lexical Ambiguity: Ep. 9 We can find echoes of these ideas in the Epistulae Morales, the collection of letters that Seneca composed late in his life. 11 The collection presents itself as an educational course in Stoic philosophy with a particular focus on ethics, albeit one that does not deliver handbook definitions of Stoic terminology or a complete overview of the doctrine. Instead, it presupposes prior knowledge of the material and is an unsystematic introduction to the practical application of Stoic philosophy. Hence, we cannot find a handy definition of ambiguity anywhere in the Epistulae Morales. 12 Rather, Seneca deals with the topic en passant. We can find the first extensive discussion of ambiguity quite early on in the collection, in Ep. 9. The letter suggests that Lucilius, who is Seneca’s only addressee, asked him in one of his (alleged) replies whether or not the wise man has any friends. 13 Lucilius is referring to Epicurus’ sharp rebuttal of the Cynic belief that the sage is self-content and therefore does not need any friends. Both the Stoics and the Cynics shared the view that a characteristic feature of the wise man is his apatheia, often translated as ‘indifference’.14 Seneca cautions Lucilius that the Latin rendering of the term, animus impatiens or, respectively, impatientia, is ambiguous, however closely it may resemble the Greek term (9.2–3): (2) In ambiguitatem incidendum est, si exprimere ἀπάθειαν uno verbo cito voluerimus et impatientiam dicere; poterit enim contrarium ei quod significare volumus intellegi. Nos eum volumus dicere qui respuat omnis mali sensum: accipietur is qui nullum ferre possit malum. Vide ergo num satius sit aut invulnerabilem animum dicere aut animum extra omnem patientiam positum. (3) Hoc inter nos et illos interest: noster sapiens vincit quidem incommodum omne sed sentit, illorum ne sentit quidem. Illud nobis et illis commune est, sapientem se ipso esse contentum. Sed tamen et amicum habere vult et vicinum et contubernalem, quamvis sibi ipse sufficiat. 15

 11 For a good summary of the arguments regarding the publication date see Setaioli 2014, 191– 192. 12 Seneca’s treatment of logic and language is somewhat under-explored by scholarship but Barnes 1994, 12–23; Cooper 2004; Hamacher 2006 and Wildberger 2006, 133–202 are notable exceptions. 13 Scholars have long debated whether or not the Epistulae Morales are fictional or authentic (a good summary of the debate and opposing opinions can be found in Graver 1996 and Setaioli 2014). The communis opinio is to regard them as fictional, see Edwards 2007 and 2015 (it has, however, been most recently questioned by Mollea 2019). 14 On the Cynic influences in Seneca, see del Giovane 2015. 15 The Latin text follows the Oxford edition of Reynolds 1965.

Vitae aut vocis ambigua: Seneca the Younger and Ambiguity  

(2) If we choose to express the Greek word apatheia by a single term and say impatientia, we cannot help but create ambiguity, for impatientia can also be understood in the opposite sense to what we intend: we mean by it a person who refuses to feel any misfortune, but it will be taken to refer to one who cannot bear any misfortune. Consider, then, whether it might not be better to speak of the invulnerable mind or the mind set beyond all suffering. (3) Our [i.e. the Stoic] position is different from theirs [i.e. the Cynic] in that our wise person conquers all adversities, but still feels them; theirs does not even feel them. That the sage is self-sufficient is a point that is held in common between us; yet even though he is content with himself, he still wishes to have a friend, a neighbor, a companion. 16

Apatheia is the first Greek term used in the letters.17 The very nature of the discussion makes the change of register necessary, yet the use of the Greek also marks the significance of the word. When Seneca explains it in detail — unlike many other terms he uses in the previous letters — he puts himself in the tradition of his Stoic predecessors who, as we have seen, had an outspoken interest in precise terminology and definitions. 18 For Seneca, the challenge of ambiguity lies not only in understanding a concept but also in communicating it clearly: insisting that one ought to draw a line between Cynicism and Stoicism, he makes clear that he does not want to be mistaken for a Cynic. The ambiguity of impatientia makes it deeply problematic to convey how the Stoics use the term because it runs the risk of accidentally advocating the Cynic interpretation. In fact, the future tense in accipietur anticipates that the default reaction will be to understand impatientia in line with the Cynic definition, making it even more pressing to use the term carefully.

 16 The translations of Seneca’s Letters are from Graver/Long 2015. On this passage see also Richardson-Hay 2006 ad loc. Seneca’s explanation of the different meanings of the term impatientia is not as straightforward as it seems. He presents two different meanings of the Latin word impatientia — to refuse to feel misfortune or to be unable to bear misfortune — and seems to connect them to Stoicism and Cynicism respectively. He is right when he describes the Stoic as refusing to feel misfortune but nevertheless feeling it, but his description of the Cynic definition is inaccurate: it is certainly not the case that a Cynic is unable to bear misfortune. As Seneca says himself, a Cynic claims not to feel misfortune, which is a different idea altogether. 17 Seneca laments the poverty of Latin philosophical vocabulary in Ep. 58.1 but he is, as Inwood 2005, 13 has highlighted, the first philosopher to write genuinely Latin philosophical works. Bilingualism and code-switching are common in Roman epistolography and indicative of their writers’ elite status, but less often used by Seneca. As Elder/Mullen 2019, 31 point out, the Epistulae Morales are not a private correspondence and therefore do not contain many instances of code-switching. 18 Definitions were even regarded as an important branch of logic by some Stoics, see D.L. 7.41– 42 (cf. Wildberger 2006, 137).

  Janja Soldo In this passage, Seneca illustrates the importance of precise terminology in philosophical discourse: clarity is crucial for understanding and communicating central tenets of Stoicism, such as the indifference of the wise man, particularly for a teacher of philosophy. In order to achieve clarity in thinking and in expression, the philosopher needs time and leisure to find concise terms and distinct phrases to express a specific thought — a topic that is particularly prominent in the first book of the Epistulae Morales. 19 It takes time to translate a term properly; translating it too quickly (cito) and translating it with one Latin term (uno verbo) will produce ambiguity. A ‘fast-track’ approach to philosophy or any element of it runs counter to the very idea of the Epistulae Morales with their emphasis on incremental education and inevitably slow progress. In Ep. 9, Seneca’s discussion of ambiguity is in line with Stoic doctrine: forming correct judgements and making the right decisions is tantamount to truly understanding philosophical concepts. The solution that Seneca presents in Ep. 9 is to try a different root, such as the phrase invulnerabilem animum, or a slightly longer and more awkward yet more precise phrase, such as animum extra omnem patientiam positum. Both alternatives avoid the ambiguity that Seneca discusses but, ironically, create a new ambiguity since the word patientia, which can mean both patience and suffering, is ambiguous as well.20

 Seneca and Ambiguous Reality: Ep. 45 We can find a very different form of ambiguity in Ep. 45. Seneca responds to Lucilius’ complaint that he is short of books in Sicily, where he is procurator, and promises to send him some of his books (45.1). The titles and authors of these books are not mentioned anywhere but their description suggests that Lucilius probably asked to borrow Stoic literature (45.3–4): on the one hand, Seneca writes that he is indebted to the authors and that he greatly appreciates them; on the other hand, he complains that they wasted their time on logical riddles, a complaint that he often makes about his Stoic forefathers. Even though the Stoics vowed to engage with ethics, physics and logic in equal parts, 21 Seneca clearly  19 Cf. e.g. Ep. 1 and 12. On the relevance of time and leisure for Senecan writing, see Edwards 2014. 20 See ThLL s.v. patientia. See also Scarpat 1975, 204. 21 Cf. e.g. Long/Sedley 1987, 26A (= SVF 2.35 = Aetius 1, Preface 2) and C (= SVF. 2.42 = Plut. On Stoic Self-Contradictions 1035a); Sen. Ep. 89.9. Yet Diogenes Laertius tells us of harsh disputes

Vitae aut vocis ambigua: Seneca the Younger and Ambiguity  

prioritises the study of ethics and physics 22 and is often dismissive of the third strand of the Stoic curriculum — not so much of logic per se but of logical quibbles.23 These are, he argues, in no way appropriate for anyone who is seriously committed to and interested in philosophy, because they do not provide any spiritual guidance but merely stimulate the intellect. 24 If done for their own sake, logical riddles distract from the hard work required by ethics. Whereas Seneca disapproves of such riddles, they seem to have been fashionable in Rome at the time and Lucilius is depicted as being fond of them.25 Since the collection does not contain Lucilius’ replies, his interest in logic is merely echoed by Seneca’s outspoken rejection of and distaste for logical pedantry. In Seneca’s view, dealing with ambiguities and logical fallacies for their own sake is a waste of time: what is the point of distinguishing between different meanings of words and of dissolving ambiguities that no one would have even noticed? (45.5–6) (5) multum illis temporis verborum cavillatio eripuit, captiosae disputationes quae acumen inritum exercent. Nectimus nodos et ambiguam significationem verbis illigamus ac deinde dissolvimus: tantum nobis vacat? […] (6) Quid mihi vocum similitudines distinguis, quibus nemo umquam nisi dum disputant captus est? (5) A great deal of their time was spent on verbal chicanery, riddling disputes that exercise the intellect to no avail. We tie knots; we knit ambiguous meanings into our words, and then we unravel them again. Do we really have that much time? […] (6) Why are you drawing distinctions between homonymous terms, terms that no one ever finds confusing except during the disputation itself?

A topic from Ep. 9 re-emerges in this letter: Seneca’s concern for time in relation to ambiguity (multum … temporis). But whereas he urged Lucilius to spend more time on detecting and dissolving the ambiguity inherent in impatientia in letter 9, he is, in letter 45, adamant that Lucilius spend as little time as possible with ambiguities. This change in attitude results from the differences between the words that contain the ambiguity: it is important to understand impatientia  among the Stoics as to which part of philosophy is to be regarded as the most important one (7.41). 22 Most of Seneca’s philosophical works focus on ethics and only the Natural Questions on physics, but there is no evidence that he wrote a treatise on logic. 23 Cf. e.g. Ep. 48.6–12; 49.5–12; 82.8–12; 83.8–12; 85; 87.28–41; 111; 113.21–22. 24 For that line of argument, see e.g. Ep. 106.12; 109.17; 111.4. 25 Barnes 1997, 13: “Now whatever these texts may insinuate about Seneca’s own attitude to logic, they surely shout loud about the attitude of Lucilius. In particular, they show that Lucilius had a passionate interest in the subject.”

  Janja Soldo properly, because it is a significant term, and because misunderstanding it would have serious consequences for a student of philosophy; the logical riddles on the other hand are largely irrelevant (they are dismissed as pointless, inritum). But more importantly, logical riddles are often based on homonyms and must be presented in an artificial context in order to be confusing, whereas words that have two distinct meanings invite genuine misunderstanding. The famous ‘horn paradox’, which exploits the meanings of the word ‘to have’,26 is an example of a misguided interest in ambiguity (45.8). It is important to stress that Seneca does not dismiss the study of logic and language altogether but calls for a shift in emphasis: it should be used to distinguish between ambiguities that matter. Logic does have the right tools to teach you how to improve relationships and your life, but they must be applied to important matters and to the real world. Instead of wasting one’s time with logical conundrums and linguistic subtleties, Seneca urges Lucilius to think about ambiguity in a more useful way. He illustrates his point with two interesting examples that demonstrate his unconventional and moralising understanding of ambiguity. The first example shows us that Seneca’s concept of ambiguity goes far beyond Stoic doctrine. He gives Lucilius the following advice (45.7): Adulatio quam similis est amicitiae! Non imitatur tantum illam sed vincit et praeterit; apertis ac propitiis auribus recipitur et in praecordia ima descendit, eo ipso gratiosa quo laedit: doce quemadmodum hanc similitudinem possim dinoscere. Venit ad me pro amico blandus inimicus; vitia nobis sub virtutum nomine obrepunt: temeritas sub titulo fortitudinis latet, moderatio vocatur ignavia, pro cauto timidus accipitur. Flattery looks very much like friendship, indeed not only resembles it but actually wins out against it. A person drinks it in with eager ears and takes it deeply to heart, delighted by the very qualities that make it dangerous. Teach me to make distinctions there! A charming enemy comes to me as a friend; faults creep in calling themselves virtues; temerity cloaks itself with the name of courage; cowardice gets called moderation; and timidity passes itself off as caution.

It is conspicuous that the term ambiguitas and its cognates are absent from this paragraph. Seneca instead chooses the noun similitudo and the adjective similis, using the same word with which he describes lexical ambiguities in 45.6 (vocum similitudines). Thus, he closely links them with the phenomenon that he describes in this passage — let us call it ambiguous reality — and identifies it as a  26 In a later letter, Seneca quotes the paradox in full (Ep. 49.8): quod non perdidisti habes; cornua autem non perdidisti; cornua ergo habes (“What you have not lost, you have. But you have not lost your horns. Therefore you have horns”).

Vitae aut vocis ambigua: Seneca the Younger and Ambiguity  

kind of ambiguity. However, classifying the distinction between flattery and friendship as an ambiguity seems to be a bit of a stretch because it goes far beyond the discussion in Ep. 9 and beyond the realm of words and their meanings. Since Seneca does not explain what the connection is between these disparate forms of ambiguity, we will have to reconstruct it. They have two things in common: a need for interpretation and an emphasis on correct terminology. Both lexical ambiguity and ambiguous reality need to be interpreted. The list of contrastive pairs — flattery vs. friendship; faults vs. virtues; temerity vs. courage; cowardice vs. moderation; timidity vs. caution — suggests that the conduct of our fellow human beings needs constant monitoring and re-evaluation. Words and human behaviour can have deceptive surfaces: a word can have two different meanings, just as an action can be the result of entirely different intentions. Such an interpretation must go hand in hand with the correct nomenclature: Seneca stresses repeatedly in the above passage how important it is to attach the right terms to the different kinds of behaviour. His choice of words such as nomine, titulo, vocatur, accipitur emphasises his concern with finding the suitable terminology to decode ambiguity. Seneca’s concept of an ambiguous reality is unique and distinctly different from previous attempts to explain ambiguity, because he treats ambiguity not as a theoretical or linguistic phenomenon but as a concern of daily decision-making and human relationships. Whereas the Stoic definition preserved by Diogenes Laertius limited itself to utterances that produce different meanings, the whole world is, according to Seneca, potentially ambiguous. Only philosophy can teach us how to deal with the ambiguities inherent in human behaviour and character. That Seneca does not dismiss engagement with and interest in lexical ambiguities altogether becomes apparent from the second example he discusses in 45.9: Si utique vis verborum ambiguitates diducere, hoc nos doce, beatum non eum esse quem vulgus appellat, ad quem pecunia magna confluxit, sed illum cui bonum omne in animo est. If you really want to draw distinctions among terms, explain to us the following: that the happy person is not the one ordinary people call happy, not the one who has been showered with money, but rather the one whose every good resides in the mind.

The passage draws on the two meanings of beatus, happy and rich, which are directly linked to each other: if you are rich you must be happy.27 Unlike the arti-

 27 See ThLL s.v. beo.

  Janja Soldo ficial ambiguities trapping philosophical novices in useless syllogisms and absurd conclusions, understanding the ambiguity of beatus is highly relevant for the Stoic proficiens. They must know what happiness is in order to achieve it.28 The popular meaning of beatus is rejected in favour of a philosophical interpretation, and thus Seneca contradicts societal expectations of what constitutes happiness. The passage is a continuation of Seneca’s efforts to challenge the common conception of wealth and poverty and to instill a Stoic conception of happiness in his readers. From the very first letter, the Epistulae Morales argue that wealth has no impact on happiness, and Seneca writes again and again that only the wise man is truly happy. 29 By embedding his ongoing effort to rid his audience of false preconceptions about the nature of happiness in a discussion about ambiguity, Seneca gives his argument more weight.

 Vitae aut vocis ambigua With his pragmatic and moralising approach to dialectic and semantics, Seneca stands out from the Stoic tradition. For Seneca, ambiguity plays a central role in the everyday effort to improve oneself. His letters underline the urgency of learning how to detect and dissolve ambiguity: not only philosophical terminology, such as impatientia or beatus, is potentially ambiguous, but life itself is ambiguous. If we want to learn how to navigate it successfully, we must know how to interpret the world around us and how to distinguish between good and bad. Ep. 90.29 neatly summarises the two types of ambiguity Seneca shows an interest in. The passage sketches the evolution of philosophy, which begins with an interest in the world’s origin and an exploration of the human soul, then goes on to investigate the criteria for truth and ultimately scrutinizes the distinction

 28 That some distinctions are necessary in order to live a good life is an observation Seneca repeats in Ep. 109.18: hanc mihi praesta curam, ut voluptatem, ut gloriam contemnam. Postea docebis inplicta solvere, ambigua distinguere, obscura perspicere: nunc doce quod necesse est (“Provide me with a treatment such that I spurn pleasure and glory. Later on you will teach me how to solve complex questions, clarify ambiguities, and see through obscurities. For now, teach me what is indispensable”). 29 Already the first letter comments on the true nature of poverty, claiming that “a person is not poor, I think, as long as what little he has left is enough for him” (Ep. 1.5: non puto pauperem cui quantulumcumque superest sat est) and the second letter explains that wealth means “having what one needs, first of all; then, having enough” (Ep. 2.6: primus [divitiarum modus] habere quod necesse est, proximus quod sat est).

Vitae aut vocis ambigua: Seneca the Younger and Ambiguity  

between truth and falsehood.30 Seneca’s description of this evolution doubles as an explanation of the Stoic philosophical curriculum, in which physics comes first, then logic, then ethics. The pinnacle of the curriculum is to learn how to tell apart vitae aut vocis ambigua,31 an expression so pithy as to make Lucilius never forget which one he should study first.

Bibliography Texts and Translations Graver, Margaret/Long, Anthony (eds.) (2015), Seneca: Letters on Ethics to Lucilius, Chicago. Laks, André/Most, Glenn (eds.) (2016), Early Greek Philosophy, Cambridge MA. Reynolds, Leighton Durham (ed.) (1965), L. Annaei Senecae Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales recognouit et adnotatione critica instruxit, t. I: Libri I–XIII, t. II: Libri XIV–XX, Oxford.

Books and Articles Atherton, Catherine (1993), The Stoics on Ambiguity, Cambridge. Barnes, Jonathan (1997), Logic and the Imperial Stoa, Leiden/Boston. Cooper, John (2004), “Moral Theory and Moral Improvement: Seneca”, in: John Cooper (ed.), Knowledge, Nature, and the Good: Essays on Ancient Philosophy, Princeton, 309–334. Edwards, Catharine (2007), “Epistolography”, in: Stephen Harrison (ed.), A Companion to Latin Literature, Malden MA, 270–284. Edwards, Catharine (2014), “Ethics V. Death and Time”, in: Gregor Damschen/Andreas Heil (eds.), Brill’s Companion to Seneca. Philosopher and Dramatist, Leiden/Boston, 323–342. Edwards, Catharine (2015), “Absent Presence in Seneca’s Epistles. Philosophy and Friendship”, in: Shadi Bartsch/Alessandro Schiesaro (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Seneca, Cambridge, 41–53. Edwards, Catharine (2019), Seneca Select Letters, Cambridge. Elder, Olivia/Mullen, Alex (2019), The Language of Roman Letters. Bilingual Epistolography from Cicero to Fronto, Cambridge. Giovane, Barbara del (2015), Seneca, la diatriba e la ricerca di una morale austera. Caratteristiche, influenze, mediazioni di un rapporto complesso, Florence. Graver, Margaret (1996), Therapeutic Reading and Seneca’s Moral Epistles, unpubl. D. Phil. thesis Brown University.  30 Similar to Ep. 89.11: ambigua secernere, falsa sub specie veri latentia coarguere (“to distinguish ambiguities and to expose falsehoods that lurk under the appearance of truth”). 31 As Edwards 2019 ad loc. points out, there is an uncanny parallel in QNat. 1 pr. 2: philosophy helps us recognise our faults and the ambiguities of life (errores nostros discutit, et lumen admouet, quo discernantur ambigua vitae).

  Janja Soldo Hamacher, Ulf Gregor (2006), Senecas 82. Brief an Lucilius. Dialektikkritik illustriert am Beispiel der Bekämpfung des metus mortis, Leipzig. Inwood, Brad (2005), Reading Seneca: Stoic Philosophy at Rome, Oxford. Kahn, Charles (1979), The Art and Thought of Heraclitus, Cambridge. Long, Anthony/Sedley, David (1987), The Hellenistic Philosophers, Cambridge. Mollea, Simone (2019), “Naturales Quaestiones 4A Praef. and Ep. 34.2: Approaching the Chronology and non-fictional Nature of Seneca’s Epistulae Morales”, Classical Quarterly 69.1, 319–334. Richardson-Hay, Christine (2006), First Lessons. Book 1 of Seneca’s Epistulae Morales, Bern. Scarpat, Guiseppe (1975), La Lettera 65 di Seneca, Brescia. Setaioli, Aldo (2014), “Epistulae Morales”, in: Gregor Damschen/Andreas Heil (eds.), Brill’s Companion to Seneca. Philosopher and Dramatist, Leiden/Boston, 191–200. Wildberger, Jula (2006), Seneca und die Stoa. Der Platz des Menschen in der Welt, Berlin/New York.

Lisa Cordes

Who speaks? – Ambiguity and Vagueness in the Design of Cicero’s Dialogue Speakers Abstract: By looking at exemplary passages from Cicero’s dialogues and letters, the paper identifies two perspectives that Cicero has on his dialogue speakers, and two types of Uneindeutigkeit concerning their identities and relationships with the extra-textual world. The first type is an ambiguity created by the communicative setting of the dramatic dialogue. It concerns the point of reference of the ‘I’ that speaks and, consequently, may concern the content of what is said. The second type is a vagueness that can be observed in cases where the textual character is described as a kind of ‘hybrid’ created by the blending of several individuals. While the first type is based on the coexistence of two distinguishable perspectives on the dialogue, revealing a binary notion of the relationship between the author and the text-internal speaker, the second type conveys a notion of this relationship as a matter of degree. Keywords: Philosophical dialogues, vagueness, communicative structure, hybridity, literary persona, authorship

 Introduction Who ‘speaks’ in the text? And whose thoughts are uttered by the speaker? These questions evoke one of the fundamental debates in modern literary studies. While for centuries the relationship between the speaker in a text and the author was seen as a key to interpretation, scholarship in the 1960s abandoned this perspective. Earlier biographically oriented questions — does the first-person voice tell of the author’s own experiences? Does the author hide behind one of his characters? — were judged to be unanswerable or to fall wholly outside the scope of literary studies. “What does it matter who speaks?” asked Foucault. 1 Consequently, numerous concepts were proposed that describe the text-internal speaker as distinct from the empirical author. These concepts were useful to move beyond simplistic biographical approaches. Yet, as more recent scholarship has emphasised, they threaten to obscure the fact that the texts can be ambiguous in  1 Foucault 1969/1994, 77/792, referring to Beckett: “Qu’importe qui parle, quelqu’un a dit qu’importe qui parle.” https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110715811-020

  Lisa Cordes this regard. The question of what the precise relationship is between the text-internal speaker and the author may be unanswerable in the overwhelming majority of cases, but it is nonetheless raised in different contexts and various ways. In Classical Philology, the potential ambiguity of literary first-person speech has been emphasised primarily in relation to authorial voices in poetry and fictional narrative. For example, Kirk Freudenburg describes the handling of seemingly autobiographical material in Horace’s satires as “a game of catch-me-if-youcan”; 2 Christopher Diez shows how the conflicting depictions of the ‘I’ in Roman elegy invite both a referential and a fictional reading;3 Tim Whitmarsh emphasises that the narrator in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses or Lucian’s True Stories is at once identified with the author and distanced from him.4 Despite this increased interest, there is still a lack of analyses that compare different types of such ambiguities and their respective uses in the texts.5 Also, the notions of fiction that underlie these ambiguities, as well as the underlying conceptions of the text-internal speakers and their relationships with the extra-textual world deserve closer examination. 6 In the present paper I want to address these aspects exemplarily by focussing on Cicero’s dialogues. While Cicero’s use of the dialogue form and the construction of the dialogic voices have been studied intensively in recent years,7 the corpus has not played a major role in the context described here. 8 The dialogues lend themselves well to an analysis, however, as in their case, unlike in poetry and in Whitmarsh’s “fictional autobiographies”, the relationship between the text-internal speakers and the author is explicitly discussed. Thanks to the proems and the letters in which Cicero comments on the literary design of the dialogues, we have a rare case of a double commentary that can show how the design of the speakers was imagined and spoken of. In the action of the dialogues we can trace how  2 Freudenburg 2010, 271. 3 Diez 2016, 425–428. 4 Whitmarsh 2009/2013, 59/238. 5 Recently McCarthy 2019 has emphasised that the poems of Horace, Catullus, and Propertius show significant variation in this regard. 6 I study these aspects from a cross-genre perspective in a book project focussing on Latin literature of the late republic and early imperial period. 7 Cf. e.g. Fox 2000 on the ambiguity produced by the dialogue form in Rep.; Gildenhard 2007 on the political significance of the literary design of the Tusc.; Schofield 2008 on the exploitation of Cicero’s authorial presence in the dialogues; Gildenhard 2013 on the generic choice of the dialogue form; Steel 2013 on the dialogues’ formal features; Stroup 2013 on the evolution of Cicero’s dialogue voices. 8 Mayer 2003, 62–64 discusses a few passages, but does not take into account the ambiguity of the speaker’s design; a brief mention also in Iddeng 2005, 192–193.

Who speaks?  

these ideas are put to artistic use. The dialogues can thus sharpen our view both of Cicero’s conceptions of the text-internal speakers and of these conceptions’ (ambiguous) manifestations in the texts. By looking at exemplary passages from the dialogues and the letters, I will identify two perspectives that Cicero has on his dialogue speakers, and, linked to that, two types of Uneindeutigkeit9 (interpretative uncertainty) concerning their identities and their relations to the extra-textual world.10 In doing so, I am not concerned with the much-debated question of whether and to what extent the dialogue speakers should be seen as mouthpieces for the historical Cicero, uttering his philosophical views, 11 nor do I, at this point, want to concentrate on the political implications that this way of thinking about the speakers might have. Rather, I want to show how Cicero’s depictions and the different types of Uneindeutigkeit created by them can foster our understanding of the ancient notions of fiction and of the literary persona. 12 The first type of Uneindeutigkeit, which I will illustrate by concentrating on De amicitia, is an ambiguity created by the dialogue’s communicative setting. Ambiguity is here understood as a double-meaning that, in the first place, concerns the point of reference of the ‘I’ that speaks and, consequently, may concern the content of what is said.13 By pointing to the communicative structure of the dialogue and by giving contradictory hints on the question of who speaks, Cicero explicitly produces such an ambiguity. As we will see, this ambiguity has different effects depending on whether the alternative meanings are mutually exclusive or not. The second type of Uneindeutigkeit, which I will illustrate by looking at passages from De re publica, and from a famous letter to Atticus about the speakers in the Academici libri (13,19 = 326 SB), concerns the identity of a dialogue speaker that is presented as a literalised image of a historical individual. In this case, the text-internal speaker is seen as a ‘mixed entity’, a kind of ‘hybrid’, created by the merging of several text-external individuals. While the first type of

 9 I use Uneindeutigkeit as a generic term under which I subsume the concepts of ambiguity and vagueness as defined here. 10 Gildenhard 2007, 22, and Powell 1996, 26 seem to allude to Foucault when they emphasise that in Rome and especially in Cicero’s dialogues “it mattered who was speaking”. They refer to the choice of characters rather than to the Uneindeutigkeit concerning their relationships with the extra-textual world. 11 For a critical stance on this tradition see below, n. 40. 12 To distinguish the concept of the literary persona — whose ancient notion is to be discussed here — from the Latin term persona, I do not italicise the former. 13 On the ambiguity created by multiple reference and by the multiplication of communication processes in poetry, cf. Bauer et al. 2010, 28.

  Lisa Cordes Uneindeutigkeit is based on the coexistence of two clearly distinguishable perspectives on the action in the dialogue and on the identity of the speaker, conveying a binary notion of fiction, the second type conveys notions of fiction and of identity as matters of degree. Due to the gradated nature of such speaker modelling, the second kind of Uneindeutigkeit is best described using the concept of vagueness. 14

 Ambiguity Created by the Doubling of Communication Levels Let us start with De amicitia and the first type of Uneindeutigkeit. As has long been recognised, the proem of De amicitia contains contradictory statements about the dialogue’s historicity. On the one hand, Cicero stresses that he is offering an authentic account of a conversation that was held by Laelius, Fannius, and Scaevola in 129 BCE and that was reported to him by Scaevola (§ 3). On the other hand, Cicero emphasises his role in creating the literary work by referring to his selection of the dialogue speakers: as Cato had been the right figure to discuss old age in De senectute, Laelius is the appropriate character to speak about friendship and “to recount those very views that he, as Scaevola recalled, discussed in reality” (4: idonea … Laeli persona … quae de amicitia ea ipsa dissereret quae disputata ab eo meminisset Scaevola). The contradictory presentation led to a debate in older research about the historicity of the dialogue and the unity of the proem.15 Today, scholars no longer usually discuss whether Cicero’s dialogues represent historical facts. 16 Instead, the focus has shifted to the understanding of fiction that underlies this presentation and to its possible intention. 17 What is decisive in the present context is that the proem raises not only the question of the historicity of the dialogue, but explicitly also that of the speakers’ identities.

 14 On the concept of vagueness see below, n. 41. 15 Cf. Neuhausen 1985, 110–111 with an overview of the debate. 16 Burton 2007 has recently argued for the historicity of De amicitia, however. 17 On the representation of fact and fiction in De amicitia and other dialogues, see Neuhausen 1985, 122–146, who emphasises the significance of appropriateness (aptum), plausibility (veri simillimum), and persuasiveness (probabile). Cf. also Hein 2019, 96–108 on Cicero’s discussion of the speakers in the Academici libri. That there is no conflict between a serious purpose and a playful treatment of the claims of factuality is shown by Gildenhard 2013, 253–256 with regard to De oratore and De re publica.

Who speaks?  

At the beginning of the proem Cicero draws a clear picture of his relation to the characters of De amicitia and De senectute. He uses vocabulary that emphasises the dramatic design of the dialogues and stresses his role as the author or ‘director’ who makes his characters ‘appear on the scene’. 18 Yet it is they who speak. He writes: Amic. 3: quasi … ipsos induxi loquentes, ne ‘inquam’ et ‘inquit’ saepius interponeretur … I have, as it were, introduced them themselves as speaking, to avoid too frequent interventions of ‘I said’ and ‘he said’ … Amic. 4: … Catonem induxi senem disputantem, quia nulla videbatur aptior persona quae de illa aetate loqueretur … idonea mihi Laeli persona visa est quae de amicitia … dissereret … … I introduced the aged Cato as speaking, since no figure seemed to me more appropriate to speak about that age … The figure of Laelius seemed suitable to me to discuss friendship …

All the verba loquendi (loqui, disputare, disserere) relate to the text-internal characters Cato and Laelius. Cicero, to the contrary, appears as responsible for the overall composition of the dialogue. For himself, he uses the expressions induxi, mihi aptior videtur, mihi idonea visa est, emphasising his role in choosing the characters and staging their appearance in the text. This clear distinction is blurred, however, in the course of the proem. In a famous reference to the design of De senectute, Cicero writes that while reading the dialogue he was at times so moved that he believed Cato was speaking — not himself (4: ut Catonem non me loqui existimem). 19 With this, Cicero introduces a new perspective on the events of the dialogue. The idea that Cato is speaking is now presented as an illusion.20 In fact, Cicero says, it is his own voice that we hear in De senectute. Shortly afterwards, however, he returns to the earlier point of view: When he writes “at that time [scil. in De senectute] Cato spoke” (5: tum est Cato locutus), the verbum loquendi refers to the dialogue character again. This play upon the different perspectives on the speaker’s identity is picked up a little later when Cicero talks about De amicitia. The chain of thought is structured chi-

 18 On the use of inducere in the theatrical context, cf. TLL 7.1, s.v. induco, 1239, 67–68, Powell 1990, 78. Translations of De amicitia are mine. 19 According to Neuhausen 1985, 128, Cicero emphasises here that in De senectute he successfully reconciled fiction and historical reality. This self-praise is linked to the question of the identity of the text-internal speaker. 20 This aspect is hinted at by quasi (3), but made explicit only here.

  Lisa Cordes astically with regard to the earlier discussion. First, Laelius is presented as speaking in the dialogue (5: Laelius … de amicitia loquetur). Then Cicero asks Atticus to turn his thoughts away from him, Cicero, and believe that Laelius was speaking (5: tu velim a me animum parumper avertas, Laelium loqui ipsum putes). Up to this point, however, no one else but Laelius had been presented as being the speaker in De amicitia. Hence, the request not to think of Cicero while reading the dialogue, introduces the idea that he may be the speaker, rather than preventing it. The contrasting perspectives on the speakers’ identities are directly juxtaposed here, and stylistically emphasised by the chiasmus. This suggests that Cicero is deliberately presenting the matter as ambiguous. Instead of allowing readers to immerse themselves completely in the fictitious setting of the dialogue, the proem alerts them to an ambiguity that is characteristic of the communication situation in theatre. As Elisabeth Hollmann emphasises with reference to Plautine comedies, the plot on a theatre stage always oscillates between reality and illusion. The audience can perceive it as ‘real’ or as fictive, and the play itself can favour one reception or the other. The prologue plays a central role in that: it can help to construct the internal communication system by focusing on the fakereality on stage, or it can steer the audience’s attention to the external communication system by pointing to the real situation in the theatre. 21 By explicitly presenting different perspectives on the identity of the speaker, Cicero points to a similar doubling of communication levels, and, like the prologue speaker in a comedy,22 he emphasises the ambiguities involved in it.23 According to this presentation, it is not possible to give an unambiguous answer to the question of who speaks in De amicitia. The answer depends on the approach to reception adopted by the reader of the dialogue. S/he may concentrate on the internal communication system, on the action within the dialogue, and so will hear Laelius speak, i.e. the historical figure in the year 129 BCE in conversation with his sons-in-law (perspective 1: Laelius loquitur). But s/he may also

 21 Hollmann 2016, 11–12. Whitmarsh 2009/2013, 61/241 points out that (textual) role-play creates a tension between reality and illusion: “this illusion [scil. of impersonation] oscillates between success (readers are led to believe in the impersonation) and self-exposure (our attention is drawn to the very artificiality of the illusion).” 22 On this, see Stroup 2013, 143–145, who calls De amicitia “the most dramatically sophisticated” of Cicero’s dialogues. Similarities between the Ciceronian proems and the prologues to drama have been noted elsewhere, cf. Wulfram 2009, 14 n. 30 with an overview of older research. 23 According to Bauer et al. 2010, 31–32, the doubling of communication levels is one of three ways to create ambiguity in a literary text. Winter-Froemel/Zirker 2010 consider ambiguity as a pragmatic phenomenon that arises at various levels in the interaction between participants in oral and written communication.

Who speaks?  

call to mind the external communication system and remember that it was Cicero who composed the dialogue. In this case, the proem offers two perspectives on the identity of the speaking ‘I’. In the first, Laelius is still imagined as being the speaker, but he appears as a literary figure that owes its selection and design to the author (perspective 2a: Cicero Laelium loquentem induxit). In the second, Cicero himself is perceived to be the speaker, expressing himself ‘through the mask’ of his characters (perspective 2b: Cicero [per Laeli personam] loquitur). 24 It is important to note that Cicero himself mentions these perspectives, be it in reference to De amicitia or to De senectute, and juxtaposes them in the proem.25 In discussions about the ancient notion of the literary persona — which focussed primarily on whether it is useful or legitimate to apply to the ancient texts postmodern approaches distinguishing between the text-internal speaker and the author — scholars have often foregrounded one of these perspectives. Roland Mayer, for example, cites evidence of reception in Quintilian and Lactantius, who read the dialogues of Plato and Cicero in the last of the three ways mentioned. Mayer stresses that the ancient readers saw the author even behind clearly defined historical figures. 26 We see that the proem of De amicitia does in fact suggest such a reading. Yet it presents it as one of several possibilities to approach the text. Cicero draws the readers’ attention to the coexistence of two levels of communication, and to their own role in foregrounding one or the other while reading the dialogue.27 The simultaneous presence of the ‘mask’ and the author ‘behind  24 Cicero expresses the idea that he could speak ‘through the mask’ of his characters explicitly in a letter to Volumnius (Fam. 7,32,2) in which he asks his addressee to intervene if someone attributes a bad joke to him. He says that he is only responsible for what in De oratore he argues about humour per Antoni personam. Persona can be translated here as ‘figure’ or ‘mask’. The point is that Cicero represents himself as the speaker (quae a me … per Antoni personam disputata de ridiculis). Scholarship paid much attention to Cicero’s apparent slip of the tongue, since in De oratore it is Strabo, not Antonius, who presents the theory of humour (cf. van der Blom 2010, 170). However, the mistake fits well with the request in the letter, since the importance lies in what Cicero has to say about humour and not whose mask he uses. Hence, one may wonder whether this is an oversight. 25 Perspective 1: tum est Cato locutus; nunc Laelius loquetur (5); perspective 2a: Catonem induxi disputantem (4); perspective 2b: Catonem non me loqui existimem (4), for the latter see also above n. 24. 26 Mayer 2003, 61–64. He argues against scholars who point to the dramatic quality of, especially, poetry and to Roman rhetorical education, which, they argue, led to a widespread habit of thinking in terms of fictive roles. 27 The effect of the ambiguity thus created is comparable to what Mittelbach 2003, 22–23 says about ambiguous images in optical illusions (‘Vexierbilder’): they draw the attention of the beholder, on the one hand, to the principles of construction of these images, on the other hand, to his own perception.

  Lisa Cordes the mask’ (perspectives 1 and 2b) creates the first type of ambiguity described here. 28 The third perspective Cicero refers to (2a), is a kind of ‘intermediate’ which cannot be described with the mask metaphor. In section 3 we will take a closer look at how a speaker’s identity can be understood from this perspective. Through the ambiguous presentation in the proem of De amicitia, which describes the dialogic ‘I’ as potentially relating to both Cicero and Laelius, Cicero, on the one hand, draws attention to the literary game made possible by the communication structure of the dramatic dialogue. On the other hand, he lends auctoritas to the positions expressed in the dialogue and to himself. 29 In the course of the dialogue we find several passages that make use of the doubling of communication levels in one or the other of these ways. An example of a playful approach is Laelius’ mention of conversations that he held with Cato and Scipio ‘on old age’ and with Scipio and others ‘on the state’: Amic. 11: senectus enim quamvis non sit gravis – ut memini Catonem anno ante quam est mortuus mecum et cum Scipione disserere – tamen aufert … viriditatem … For old age, even if it is not oppressive — as I recall that Cato a year before he died expounded to me and Scipio — , takes away the force of life … Amic. 14: … [Scipio] perpaucis ante mortem diebus, cum … tuque etiam, Scaevola, mecum venisses, triduum disseruit de re publica … … [Scipio] a few days before his death, when … you too, Scaevola, had accompanied me, spoke for three whole days on the state …

If seen within the internal communication system, these remarks confirm the historicity of the dialogue: Laelius ‘recalls’ what was discussed in the conversations that Cicero ‘recorded’ in De senectute and in De re publica (perspective 1). If we read the remarks with an eye to the external communication system, however, we see the author playing with the claims of facticity and ultimately invalidating them. He refers to his earlier works and emphasises his presence behind the text. On the basis of the clear text-internal deixis of the passages (Catonem mecum disserere; tu etiam,

 28 Whitmarsh 2009/2013, 60–63/239–245 and Tilg 2019, 70–74 emphasise the permeability of the boundary between the narrator and the author in ancient narrative texts, the former draws parallels to the situation on stage. 29 In Amic. 4 and Sen. 3 Cicero famously emphasises that giving a speech to a historical figure adds auctoritas to what is said. See van der Blom 2010, 168–174 for the authority that the historical interlocutors lend to Cicero and the views expressed in his dialogues, and 244–247 for the interlocutors in Sen. and Amic. in particular.

Who speaks?  

Scaevola), the speaker should still be identified as Laelius. Yet he appears as a literary character that is saying what the author has scripted for him, without being fully aware of the implications of his statements (perspective 2a). 30 After the explicit references to the dialogue’s ambiguous communication structure in the proem and the engagement with this structure in chapters 11 and 14, the reader’s attention is sharpened for more subtle touches. After Laelius has for the first time broached his friendship with the late Scipio, he expresses his hope for memoria: Amic. 15: … amicitiae nostrae memoriam spero sempiternam fore, idque eo mihi magis est cordi, quod ex omnibus saeculis vix tria aut quattuor nominantur paria amicorum; quo in genere sperare videor Scipionis et Laeli amicitiam notam posteritati fore. … I hope that the memory of our friendship will be eternal, and that is all the more important to me since in all the centuries one can hardly name three or four pairs of friends; among their ranks, so I may probably hope, the friendship of Scipio and Laelius too will be known to posterity.

If read in the context of the internal communication system (perspective 1), this wish is unremarkable. But if we read it against the background of what was said in the proem, this passage, too, may appear as a winking comment that the author has put into the mouth of his character. After all, it is Cicero’s literary composition that ensures what Laelius is hoping for, namely that the friendship between him and Scipio will become famous. When read within the external communication system, the text plays with the topical promise of immortality through literature. At the beginning of the passage, the possessive pronoun noster refers explicitly to the inner-textual characters. The speaker appears, once again, as the fictionalised character of Laelius, unaware of the self-conscious games being played by the author (perspective 2a). In the second part of the sentence there are no such references, and indeed Laelius is mentioned in the third person and by name. Here, one could imagine Cicero himself to be the speaker (perspective 2b). In any case, a focus on the external communication system brings into view also the recipients of the dialogue: the dedicatee Atticus and later readers. As representatives of the aforementioned posteritas, they are ultimately those on whom Laelius’ hope rests and who are in a position to judge whether it has been fulfilled.  30 Winter-Froemel/Zirker 2010, 88–94 show that ambiguities that arise from playing with the different levels of communication in a literary text are often not directed at the characters involved but at the readers. Cf. also the illuminating article by Volk 2005, who with regard to Ovid’s elegiac poetry distinguishes between the questions of ‘who speaks’ and ‘who has the say’.

  Lisa Cordes That the ambiguity created by the doubling of communication levels can also affect the addressees of the text becomes apparent at the end of the dialogue. Laelius concludes his speech by calling on Fannius and Scaevola to strive for virtue: Amic. 104: Haec habui de amicitia quae dicerem; vos autem hortor ut ita virtutem locetis … ut ea excepta nihil amicitia praestabilius putetis. That is all that I had to say about friendship. But you I exhort to rank virtue so highly … that you reckon nothing aside from it to be more excellent than friendship.

These words can be imagined to be spoken not only by Laelius (perspective 1) but also by Cicero (perspective 2b), whose literary composition likewise ends with Laelius’ speech. If we read the statement with an eye to the external communication system, we can relate hortor and vos to the extra-textual world, too. The exhortation would then again include Atticus and later recipients.31 Such a doubling of the addressees was noticed at an early stage of reception with regard to De senectute. Hartmut Wulfram refers to a miniature in a 15th-century deluxe codex that precedes the dialogue text (fig. 13). In it, Cato is depicted as he addresses both the text-internal addressees Scipio and Laelius, and the extra-textual dedicatee Atticus, as well as an anonymous servant, who could be taken to stand for a more general readership. 32 The communicative situation of De amicitia could be represented in a similar way; the extra-textual author Cicero could be included as corresponding to the extra-textual dedicatee Atticus. The definitions of literary ambiguity proposed in research literature diverge on the question of whether the alternative meanings must be mutually exclusive or not. 33 In the passages from De amicitia examined here, both options can be observed. In the playful treatment of the dialogue’s historicity in chapters 11 and 14, the readings offered by the doubling of communicative levels are mutually exclusive. When read in the context of the internal communication system, Laelius’ references to his earlier conversations on old age and on the state support the factuality of both the present and the earlier dialogues. In the context of the external communication system, however, they point metaleptically at the author, who, with a wink, highlights his creative power and the coherence of his  31 Sauer 2013 analyses the potential doubling of the addressees with regard to Cicero’s constitutional writings. He shows that the dialogue figures reflect different attitudes of reception on the part of the general readership and thus offer an opportunity to react to objections from different groups of readers. 32 Wulfram 2009, 19–21, referring to Musée Condé, Chantilly, Bibliothèque du château, MS 0282 (0491), fol. 214. 33 For an overview of the different positions, see Bauer et al. 2010, 27.

Who speaks?  

work. Chapter 15 shows that the different readings can also interact with each other in complex ways. The passage communicates the desire that the memory of the friendship between Laelius and Scipio be eternal, independently of whether we read it within the framework of the internal or external communication system. Through this congruence across communicative levels, the desire for memoria is in a sense doubled. However, since the external system, with the author and the extra-textual recipients, includes the very entities that can vouch for the preservation of memoria, a focus on the external system already indicates the fulfilment of the desire. The hope for memoria is voiced with all the more confidence. In chapter 104, finally, a change of perspective on the speaker’s identity does not change the sense of what is said. Cicero and Laelius are conflated in the firstperson speaker. As if from one mouth they call upon their respective addressees to strive for virtue. This gives the admonition a particular emphasis. In this case, the ambiguity regarding the speaker’s identity that is created by the doubled communication structure is not used for the sake of a literary game. Rather, it strengthens the auctoritas of what is said and points to the paraenetic nature of the dialogue.

 Vagueness Created by Partial Blending In the passages discussed so far, we analysed an ambiguity that is based on the coexistence of two clearly distinguishable perspectives on the text. Starting from the presentation in the proem, we focused on either the internal or the external communication system of De amicitia and investigated the double-meanings that arise from the possibility to take on both of these perspectives simultaneously.34 In the following I want to focus on a second type of Uneindeutigkeit that Cicero discusses. It regards the text-internal speaker as a literary figure and is thus one possibility for understanding the perspective referred to above as (2a). In this context, a letter in which Cicero reflects on Varro’s role in the Academici Libri (Att. 13,19 = 326 SB) is illuminating. 35 In it, Cicero tells Atticus that he was able to put Varro in a positive light by making him utter Antiochus’ arguments. These are convincing, he says, as they combine Antiochusʼ acuity with his own — Cicero’s — elegance of style:

 34 For similar ambiguities in De re publica and for examples in Plato, see Hösle 2004. 35 On this letter and the difficulties raised by the choice of Varro as dialogue speaker, cf. Hein 2019, 154–175.

  Lisa Cordes Att. 13,19,5: sunt enim vehementer πιθανὰ Antiochia; quae diligenter a me expressa acumen habent Antiochi, nitorem orationis nostrum si modo is est aliquis in nobis. For Antiochus’ arguments are very persuasive and I have set them out faithfully; they have the acuteness of their originator and my elegance of style, that is if I can claim such a quality. 36

According to this description, characteristics from three different individuals coalesce in the representation of ‘Varro’. The character that Cicero describes bears the name of Varro, voices the philosophical arguments of Antiochus, and speaks with the eloquence of Cicero. Despite the explicit naming of the character, then, the question of ‘who speaks’ cannot be answered beyond doubt. The character appears as an artificial blend that can be identified, to a certain degree and in a specific way, with all three, Varro, Cicero, and Antiochus. This notion of the text-internal character as an entity created by the partial blending of several people is found elsewhere. In the first book of De re publica the interlocutors discuss whether Socrates concerned himself with questions of natural science. In response to Tubero’s remark that in Plato’s dialogues Socrates does in fact speak about mathematical phenomena, Scipio counters that one must distinguish between the historical and the Platonic Socrates, for in his devotion Plato wanted to derive everything from his teacher: Rep. 1,10,16: itaque cum Socratem unice dilexisset, eique omnia tribuere voluisset, leporem Socraticum subtilitatemque sermonis cum obscuritate Pythagorae et cum illa plurimarum artium gravitate contexuit. And so, as he loved Socrates with singular affection and wished to give him credit for everything, he interwove Socrates’ charm and subtlety in argument with the obscurity of Pythagoras and the ponderous learning in so many branches of knowledge. 37

Here, too, the dialogue figure is described as a kind of hybrid in which characteristics of several people coalesce. According to this view, the Platonic ‘Socrates’ combines the humour and conversational habits of the historical Socrates with Pythagoras’ views on natural philosophy. In contrast to the first example, the rhetorical skills shown by the character are not attributed to the author, but to the historical model. Plato initially appears as a compiler who has not given any of his own characteristics to the literary character. 38 Yet, since the preceding section

 36 Translation: Shackleton Bailey 1999, modified. 37 Translation: Keyes 1928, modified. 38 For Plato’s ‘anonymity’, see Erler 2006, 44–55.

Who speaks?  

discussed in detail Plato’s study-journeys and his contact with teachers of various schools of philosophy, the gravitas plurimarum artium, which the character Socrates exhibits, according to Scipio, can be taken as relating to him. Once again, the dialogue character would then be constituted through the merging of three historical individuals: Socrates, Pythagoras, and Plato. 39 As in the case of Cicero’s Varro, the aim of such speaker modelling is the creation of an ideal figure that bestows special honour on its namesake. The fact that Scipio’s analysis is motivated by a discussion on the relationship between the historical Socrates and his representation in Plato reveals the Uneindeutigkeit exhibited by such a design of speakers. After all, the relationship between the historical model, the author, and other figures that may have been incorporated into the dialogue character, as well as the ‘contribution’ each has made to its design, is usually not commented upon so clearly as in the letter to Atticus. The question raised here is not absolute — does the author speak or the character? — but one that addresses the kind and the degree of the blending: which extra-literary figures have been incorporated into the character and in which respects, and to what degree have they influenced it? 40 As this second type of Uneindeutigkeit does not arise from the coexistence of two clearly defined alternative perspectives, but can be described as a gradated phenomenon, we should speak of vagueness rather than ambiguity. The speaker’s identity becomes a matter of degree and, as such, cannot be established beyond doubt. 41 It is important to note that the speakers that are described in this way are explicit textual entities. The first type of Uneindeutigkeit, discussed above, was based on the communicative structure of the dramatic dialogue. Accordingly, it appeared as an ‘oral’ phenomenon: we saw that Cicero’s ambiguous presentation of the speakers in De amicitia and De senectute was based on a contradictory use  39 In Plut. Quaest. conv. 8,2,719a Florus explicitly describes the Platonic Socrates as a blend of several people. He argues that in his dialogues Plato “mixed” Socrates with Lycurgus, as well as with Pythagoras (ὁ Πλάτων … ἅτε δὴ τῷ Σωκράτει τὸν Λυκοῦργον ἀναμιγνὺς οὐχ ἧττον ἢ τὸν Πυθαγόραν). 40 Such questions have marked the discussion of the Ciceronian dialogue characters into modern times. The discussion on whether an interlocutor should be seen as a mouthpiece for Cicero has been criticised, e.g. by Fox 2007, 215–218 and passim, but is still held, e.g. by Schofield 2008, 82, van der Blom 2010, 170–171. Rarer is the question of whether style and word-choice should be attributed to the author or to the historical model of the interlocutor; cf. Burton 2007, 23, however, who sees “the authentic voice of Laelius” reflected in De amicitia. 41 Gullvåg/Næss 1996, 1415–1417 show that in logic, vagueness is understood as a phenomenon generated by a “gradual change associated with a dichotomy” as e.g. in the sorites paradox. According to so-called fuzzy logic, a vague proposition takes on “‘unusual truth values’ thought of as degrees of truth and falsehood”.

  Lisa Cordes of the verba loquendi. In the present case, in contrast, the vagueness regarding the speakers’ identity is explicitly generated in the medium of text. Both, Cicero and Scipio, emphasise that ‘Varro’ and ‘Socrates’ are artificial figures that were created by the author when he composed the literary work. Accordingly, there are no verba loquendi used in these discussions. Instead, Scipio argues that Plato “interwove” (contexuit) characteristics of different individuals when he created his ‘Socrates’. Instead of referring to a theatrical, and thus oral, setting, he uses imagery taken from the crafts to describe the modelling of the speaker. The notion of the text-internal speakers as ‘hybrids’ has also been visualised in the course of reception. Jonathan Powell points to the frontispiece of Angelo Mai’s editio princeps of De re publica which is an illustration of the dialogue setting. It takes up the old view that the character of Laelius is to be identified with Socrates and the character of Scipio with Plato, who also stands for the author himself. 42 Accordingly, the illustration depicts Scipio as bearing the features of Plato, and Laelius as bearing those of Socrates (fig. 14).43 In the nineteenth-century image the speakers are thus imagined in a way that is not unlike the perspective described here. The focus of the illustration is not on the doubling of communication levels, as in the miniature discussed above, but on the idea of hybridisation, of artificially blending different individuals who coalesce in the dialogue speaker.

 Conclusion All interlocutors discussed here are clearly named historical individuals (Laelius, Cato, Varro, Socrates), yet the question of ‘who speaks’ cannot in either case be answered beyond doubt. This Uneindeutigkeit stems not from the perspective of the (post-)modern reader, who is per se sceptical of biographical readings and of simplistic equations of the text-internal and text-external figures, but it is discussed by Cicero himself and, in the case of De amicitia, is reinforced by the ambiguous presentation in the proem. In this paper we identified two ways in which Cicero discusses the design of dialogue speakers and, linked to that, two types of Uneindeutigkeit concerning their identity. The first type arises through the communication structure of the dramatic dialogue which, similarly to that in a thea-

 42 On this, see Fox 2000, 276–277, Sauer 2013, 182 with n. 26. 43 Powell 1996, 19–21.

Who speaks?  

tre, is conceived as a double structure. In the proem of De amicitia Cicero demonstrates that the answer to the question of ‘who speaks’ depends on the reader’s perspective on the dialogue. The possibility of adopting two different perspectives at the same time creates an ambiguity regarding the point of reference of the ‘I’ that speaks, and, in consequence, may affect the sense of what is said. The alternative meanings thus created can be mutually exclusive and, through their coexistence, create a surplus of meaning. In this case, the doubling of communicative levels enables a complex literary game that plays with the presence of the author, with the questions of fact and fiction, and with different levels of reception. In cases where the sense of what is said is not affected by the doubling of communication levels, it is emphasised with all the more authority. Author and character then speak as if with one voice, reinforcing the auctoritas of both the statements and their author. The second type of Uneindeutigkeit concerns the text-internal character as a literalised version of a historical individual. We saw that the dialogue speaker can be imagined as an artificial hybrid that is created by the partial blending of several text-external individuals. This notion of speaker modelling and the Uneindeutigkeit that arises from it are explicit textual phenomena. The relationship between the speaker, the author and other text-external individuals that may have been incorporated into the speaker’s design is conceived as gradated. In this perspective, the author is not located on an extra-textual level of communication that is characterised by a permeability to the inner-textual level and thus allows him to metaleptically ‘break in’ to the world of the dialogue from time to time. Rather, the author (just as the other extra-textual individuals) is incorporated into the design of the dialogue speaker, in a way and to a degree that cannot be determined beyond doubt. With this, he himself forms part of the artificial hybrid that speaks in the text.44

 44 I am grateful to the conference organisers for the invitation to Thessaloniki and for the opportunity to contribute to this volume. The paper benefitted from their comments and from the discussions at the conference. For valuable feedback I would like to thank Stephen Harrison and Robert Kirstein, as well as Bianca-Jeanette Schröder, Caecilia-Désirée Hein and Oliver Schelske. Earlier versions of the paper were presented at the University of Potsdam and at the ENS Paris. I am much obliged to Nicola Hömke and Emeline Marquis for the invitations and discussions. Orla Mulholland and Clare O’Neill helped me with the English version of this text.

  Lisa Cordes

Fig. 13: Miniature from a 15th century French codex, depicting the dialogue setting of De senectute: Cato speaks to Scipio, Laelius and Atticus (Chantilly, MS 0282 (0491), fol. 214), courtesy of Musée Condé, Chantilly, France.

Fig. 14: Frontispiece of Angelo Mai’s editio princeps of De re publica (Rome, 1822), depicting the dialogue’s setting, courtesy of the University Library of the Freie Universität Berlin.

Who speaks?  

Bibliography Texts and Translations Cicero, On Old Age, On Friendship, On Divination, transl. by W.A. Falconer, London/Cambridge, MA 1923 (LCL 154). M. Tullius Cicero, Laelius, Einleitung u. Kommentar v. K.A. Neuhausen, Lf. 1–3, Heidelberg 1981/1985/1992. Cicero, Laelius, On Friendship & The Dream of Scipio, ed. with introd. and comm. by Jonathan G.F. Powell, Warminster 1990. (= Powell, 1990). Cicero, Letters to Atticus, vol. IV, ed. and transl. by D.R. Shackleton Bailey, London/Cambridge, MA 1999 (LCL 491). Cicero, On the Republic, On the Laws, transl. by Clinton W. Keyes, London/Cambridge, MA 1928 (LCL 213).

Books and Articles Bauer, Matthias/Knape, Joachim/Koch, Peter/Winkler, Susanne (2010), “Dimensionen der Ambiguität”, in: Wolfgang Klein/Susanne Winkler (eds.), Ambiguität, Stuttgart/Weimar, 7–75. Burton, Paul (2007), “Genre and Fact in the Preface to Cicero’s De Amicitia”, Antichton 41, 13– 32. Diez, Christopher (2016), “Autofiktionalität bei Ovid. Überlegungen zur Gedankenführung und Sprecherinstanz in Amores 2,1”, Gymnasium 123, 425–448. Erler, Michael (2006), Platon, München. Foucault, Michel (1969/1994), “Qu’est-ce qu’un auteur?”, in: Daniel Defert/François Ewald (eds.), Dits et écrits 1954–1988 par Michel Foucault, vol. I: 1954–1969, Paris 1994, 789– 821. (originally in: Bulletin de la Société française de philosophie 63, 1969, 73–104). Fox, Matthew (2000), “Dialogue and Irony in Cicero: Reading De republica”, in: Alison Sharrock/Helen Morales (eds.), Intratextuality: Greek and Roman Textual Relations, Oxford, 263–286. Fox, Matthew (2007), Cicero’s Philosophy of History, Oxford. Freudenburg, Kirk (2010), “Horatius Anceps: Persona and Self-relevation in Satire and Song”, in: Gregson Davis (ed.), A Companion to Horace, Malden, MA, 271–290. Gildenhard, Ingo (2007), Paideia Romana: Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations, Cambridge. Gildenhard, Ingo (2013), “Cicero’s Dialogues: Historiography Manqué and the Evidence of Fiction”, in: Sabine Föllinger/Gernot Michael Müller (eds.), Der Dialog in der Antike, Berlin/ Boston, 235–274. Gullvåg, Ingemund/Næss, Arne (1996), “Vagueness and ambiguity”, in: Marcelo Dascal/Dietfried Gerhardus/Kuno Lorenz/Georg Meggle (eds.), Sprachphilosophie. Philosophy of Language. La philosophie du langage. Ein internationales Handbuch zeitgenössischer Forschung. Zweiter Halbband, Berlin/New York, 1407–1417. Hein, Caecilia-Désirée (2019), Cicero als philosophischer Schriftsteller. Kommentar zu ausgewählten Briefen aus den Jahren 45–44, Heidelberg.

  Lisa Cordes Hösle, Vittorio (2004), “Eine Form der Selbsttranszendierung philosophischer Dialoge bei Cicero und Platon und ihre Bedeutung für die Philologie”, Hermes 132, 152–166. Hollmann, Elisabeth (2016), Die plautinischen Prologe und ihre Funktion. Zur Konstruktion von Spannung und Komik in den Komödien des Plautus, Berlin/Boston. Iddeng, Jon W. (2005), “How Shall we Comprehend the Roman I-Poet? A Reassessment of the persona-Theory”, Classica et Mediaevalia 56, 187–205. Mayer, Roland G. (2003), “Persona(l) Problems. The Literary Persona in Antiquity Revisited”, MD 50, 55–80. McCarthy, Kathleen (2019), First-Person Form in Horace, Catullus, and Propertius, Ithaca. Mittelbach, Jens (2003), Die Kunst des Widerspruchs. Ambiguität als Darstellungsprinzip in Shakespeares ‚Henry V‘ und ‚Julius Caesar‘, Trier. Powell, Jonathan G. (1996), “Second Thoughts on the Dream of Scipio”, PLLS 9, 13–27. Sauer, Jochen (2013), “Dialog, Argument und der implizite Leser in Ciceros staatsphilosophischen Schriften”, in: Sabine Föllinger/Gernot Michael Müller (eds.), Der Dialog in der Antike, Berlin/Boston, 173–197. Schofield, Malcom (2008), “Ciceronian Dialogue”, in: Simon Goldhill (ed.), The End of Dialogue in Antiquity, Cambridge, 63–84. Steel, Catherine (2013), “Structure, Meaning and Authority in Ciceros’s Dialogues”, in: Sabine Föllinger/Gernot Michael Müller (eds.), Der Dialog in der Antike, Berlin/Boston, 221–234. Stroup, Sarah Culpepper (2013), “‘When I read my Cato, it is as if Cato speaks’: The Birth and Evolution of Cicero’s Dialogic Voice”, in: Anna Marmodoro/Jonathan Hill (eds.), The Author’s Voice in Classical and Late Antiquity, Oxford, 123–151. Tilg, Stefan (2019), “Autor und Erzähler — Antike”, in: Eva von Contzen/Stefan Tilg (eds.), Handbuch Historische Narratologie, Berlin, 69–81. van der Blom, Henriette (2010), Cicero’s Role Models. The Political Strategy of a Newcomer, Oxford. Volk, Katharina (2005), “Ille ego: (Mis)Reading Ovid’s Elegiac Persona”, A&A 51, 83–96. Whitmarsh, Tim (2009/2013), “An I for an I: reading fictional autobiography”, in: Anna Marmodoro/Jonathan Hill (eds.), The Author’s Voice in Classical and Late Antiquity, Oxford 2013, 233–247 (originally 2009 in: Cento Pagine 3, 56–66). Winter-Froemel, Esme/Zirker, Angelika (2010), “Ambiguität in der Sprecher-Hörer-Interaktion. Linguistische und literaturwissenschaftliche Perspektiven”, in: Wolfgang Klein/Susanne Winkler (eds.), Ambiguität, Stuttgart/Weimar, 76–97. Wulfram, Hartmut (2009), Ex uno plures. Drei Studien zum postumen Persönlichkeitsbild des Alten Cato, Berlin.

Therese Fuhrer

Unsettling Effects and Disconcertment — Strategies of Enacting Interpretations in Tacitusʼ Annals Abstract: Disconcertment or the intention to cause it can, in the production of literature and art, be considered the defining feature of the modern era. My paper is based on the premise that such an approach in ancient literature presupposes a distinct rhetorical and poetic practice that can be revealed by textual analysis focussing specifically on these features. Its object are the moments (moventia or triggers) that produce ambiguity in the process of conveying information in the factual description of events in Roman historiography, focussing on passages in the Nero books of Tacitusʼ Annals. I am interested in the question to what extent the transmission of information itself offers possibilities for structuring the facts and contents so that the reliable knowledge expected is at once cast into doubt or fundamentally called into question, i.e. to what extent the process of conveying factual knowledge can produce unsettling effects and disconcertment. Keywords: Roman historiography, Nero, Seneca the Younger, transmission of information, causal relations, insinuation

 Preliminary Remarks: Rhetorical and Literary Strategies of Disconcertment and Unsettling Effects In the following I propose to apply the concept and the diagnosis of unsettling effects to a specific stage in the process of reading and understanding information provided by a text. Disconcertment (in German: ‘Verunsicherung’, i.e. ‘creating uncertainty’) can be understood as the result of various psychological processes triggered by empirical experience or perception in the mind. It delays, disrupts or even stops the modus of automatic perception and the normalised genesis of experience and knowledge. 1 There are various rhetorical or literary modi of unsettling and disconcertment such as ambiguity, paradox, irony and

 1 See Knape 2015 and the contributions in Früh/Fuhrer/Humar/Vöhler 2015. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110715811-021

  Therese Fuhrer parody, the creation of aporía and isosthénia (the counterbalancing of an argument against an equally strong one), or the use of polemics and destructive topoi, including processes of ‘insinuation’, ‘suspicion’ or ‘suggestion’. 2 The object of this paper is the processes or moments (moventia or triggers) that have the potential to produce disconcertment or sceptical reserve in the process of reception. I do not wish to focus on the issue of whether, in terms of communication theory and of rhetoric, the act of persuasion is actually successful. Rather the object of the following textual analysis will be the process of unsettling per se, i.e. the immanent potential within literary texts to disconcert current definitions and hallowed certainties and to transform them into objects of doubt and of sceptical distancing, and even to prevent them altogether. 3 By exemplary analyses I will attempt to show what modes of thinking or unquestioned assumptions are being undermined — potentially at least — by the textual procedures of unsettling. But I do not want to stop there: I will also focus on strategies by means of which the processes and habits of interpreting the material recounted — in the case of historiography: of interpreting the events and facts, the protagonists and their actions — are unsettled. I call these ‘strategies of enacting interpretation’. An interpretation may be ‘enacted’ by stylistic and linguistic modes, by narrative or intra- and intertextual strategies and in the process of conveying information: by the ordering, structuring or even omission of information.4 I am interested in textual ploys which are designed to trigger semantic guesses and guesses about discourse relations, to produce doubts about the context and relationship of the narrated facts, where the reader has to generate causal or antithetical connections, where the reader has to fill gaps or make inferences and generate meaning where it is not made explicit in the text.

 2 In classical rhetorical theory this method is defined as insinuatio (Gr. éphodos, the secret or illicit path); see Zinsmaier 1998. Modern rhetoric talks of a three-stage process (“der persuasive Dreischritt”) when in the process of persuasion the audience is to be led to the position presented by the orator (certum 2), it (the audience) must first be weaned from the position adopted before (certum 1). This objective is achieved by the orator by creating doubt (dubium) about this previous position. See Knape 2015, esp. 16−20. 3 I am thus concerned with the second stage of the ‘three-stage process’ in rhetorics (cf. n. 2 above), i.e. the textʼs objective of creating doubt. 4 On the function of order, duration, frequency in historiographical narration see Munslow 2009, 51−59. For a case study in Sallustʼs Bellum Catilinae see Fuhrer 2018.

Unsettling Effects and Disconcertment  

 Tacitus The object of my analysis are the Nero books of Tacitus’ Annals. The late Tacitus has been labelled the ‘master’ of brevitas and of implicit claims and criticism.5 He is well known for his literary techniques such as ‘innuendo’, 6 ‘insinuation’,7 steering or manipulation of the reader (‘Leserlenkung’),8 ‘irony’, 9 ‘scepticism’,10 ‘suggestion’ and ‘suggestive allusions’, 11 ‘ambiguity’ or ‘uncertainty’12 and of exposing techniques of ‘make-believe’.13 It has often been said that his ‘pointed style’ 14 or ‘epigrammatic style’ 15 have an unsettling effect in the process of grasping the meaning in the course of reading.16 To explain this, research generally resorts to theses about ideological tendencies, seeing Tacitus as a critic of the political system of the principate. 17 This approach runs the risk of implying that the text (and even more often the author) is suggesting a certain and specific interpretation, whereas the description and analysis of strategies of unsettling and disconcertment absolves us of the requirement to define the purpose, tendency and aim of criticism. We are not obliged to makes guesses about the Tacitean voice behind any implication and innuendo,

 5 See esp. Syme 1958/31967, 340−352; Martin 32001, 214−235; Damon 2003, 12−20; Oakley 2009; Fuhrer 2019, 208−210. 6 See e.g. Ryberg 1942, passim: “the art of innuendo”; Sullivan 1976; Whitehead 1979, 474f.; Develin 1983, 64f. and 85−88; Grethlein 2013, 141; Schulz 2019, 134. 7 See e.g. Grethlein 2013, 142–152. Cf. also Syme 1958/31967, e.g. 316: “malicious insinuation”. 8 See Hausmann 2009 and Teltenkötter 2017. 9 See e.g. Syme 1958/31967, 349; O’Gorman 2000, 10−14. 10 See e.g. Syme 1958/31967, 397−407; O’Gorman 2000, 2f.: “sceptical history”; Suerbaum 2015: “Skepsis und Suggestion”. 11 See e.g. Develin 1983, passim: “insidious suggestion”; Devillers 1994, 122−124: “suggérer”, “laisser entendre”; Dench 2009, 396: “implication and suggestion”; Suerbaum 2015: “Skepsis und Suggestion”. 12 See e.g. Pelling 2009, 166: “Tacitusʼ unequivocal verdict”; Grethlein 2013, 140−167 (“ambiguity as mimetic device”, “narratorial uncertainty”); Schulz 2019, 130−163 (“creating uncertainty”). 13 Haynes 2003. 14 Voss 1963; Oakley 2009, 199−203. 15 Plass 1988, 13: “epigrammatic style”; 12: “antithetic epigrammatic prose”; 30: “oscillation”. 16 Cf. Schulz 2019, 130−133 who is drawing on the ideas put forward in Früh/Fuhrer/Humar/ Vöhler 2015. On the “unsettling effect” of Tacitusʼ “appendix sentences” see Damon 2003, 18f. 17 As e.g. Syme 1958/31967; Devillers 1994; Haynes 2003; Sailor 2008, esp. 321 (cf. the critical approach by Grethlein 2013, 166f.); Pelling 2009; Devillers 2012. On this reading of the Tacitean text see Dench 2009, 402−404, and my own remarks on p. 326f., below.

  Therese Fuhrer which is the usual way of dealing with the Tacitean ‘suggestive style’. 18 My aim is, therefore, to show that, in the process of conveying and juxtaposing information,19 the text steers us towards a position to avoid the adoption of a clear-cut (affirmative or polemic) stance.20 I will ask the following questions: By what narrative, dramatic or descriptive means does Tacitus’ text — not: criticize, but rather — call into question traditional positions and challenge claims to objectivity in order to disturb established modes of thinking and perceptions?

. Poppaea Urges Nero to Commit Matricide This can be easily illustrated by taking the example of the first chapter of the 14th book of the Annales: 21 (1) Gaio Vipsano Fonteio consulibus diu meditatum scelus non ultra Nero distulit, vetustate imperii coalita audacia et flagrantior in dies amore Poppaeae, quae sibi matrimonium et discidium Octaviae incolumi Agrippina haud sperans crebris criminationibus, aliquando per facetias incusare principem et pupillum vocare, qui iussis alienis obnoxius non modo imperii, sed libertatis etiam indigeret. (2) cur enim differri nuptias suas? ... (3) haec atque talia lacrimis et arte adulterae penetrantia nemo prohibebat, cupientibus cunctis infringi potentiam matris et credente nullo usque ad caedem eius duratura filii odia. (1) With Gaius Vipstanus and C. Fonteius as consuls, Nero deferred no further the long contemplated crime, his daring strengthened by his protracted experience of command and himself being daily more inflamed with love for Poppaea, who, despairing of marriage for

 18 Cf. e.g. Löfstedt 1948, 6: “Tacitus induces, nay compels, the reader to feel as he feels”; also Syme 1958/31967 (cf. the critical remarks by Pelling 2009, 166f.; Dench 2009, 395f.), passim, e.g. 313: “the author unobtrusively suggests lessons of conduct” (in spite of his remark, p. 521: “The attempt to extricate the true opinions of the historian and fathom his personality is more than hazardous”). For the almost ‘formulaic’ expressions such as “Tacitus suggests/insinuates that” or “as Tacitusʼ text/Tacitusʼ language suggests” cf. e.g. Woodman 1993, 110–113; Woodman 1992/1998, 179/174; Develin 1983, e.g. 92−94; Pelling 1993/2012, 66/290; 78/304f.; 80/307; Devillers 1994, 123f. (“Tacite laisse entendre”, “laisse prévoir”, “suggère”); O’Gorman 2000, e.g. 151 and 154; Suerbaum 2015, passim; cf. Pelling 2009, 158−160: “insight manipulated”. Cf. also Woodman 1992/1998, 176/173; “Tacitusʼ implicit position at this point is …”; ibid. 182/180: “Tacitus sarcastically implies that …”; ibid. 183/181: “Tacitusʼ allusions to Virgil and especially Horace strongly support the suggestion that …”. 19 As e.g. Pelling 1993/2012, 64/287: “suggesting juxtapositions”; Devillers 2012, 171: “a method where certain information either follows or precedes other information that might suggest a positive impression of the princeps and ruin its effects”. Cf. Ryberg 1942, 390. 20 The ideas are taken up by Schulz 2019, 159−163. 21 The text is from Heubner 1983, the translation by Woodman 2004.

Unsettling Effects and Disconcertment  

herself and of his divorce from Octavia as long as Agrippina was preserved, censured the princeps with regular reproaches and sometimes by way of a witticism called him “the ward”, susceptible to the orders of another and lacking not only command but even freedom. (2) Why was her wedding being deferred? ... (3) No one attempted to prevent such penetrating words as these, accompanied as they were by the artful tears of an adulteress, since all desired his mother’s power broken and none believed that her son’s hatred would harden into slaughter.

The book and the account of the events open with the mention of the year 59 AD. A crime, the matricide, had already been “planned long before” (diu meditatum) and Nero did not wish to postpone it any longer (non ultra Nero distulit). 22 We are given the information that Nero is becoming more inflamed from day to day by his passion for his paramour Poppaea. She quickly moves to the centre of the narrative in the following relative clause: 23 “As long as Agrippina was preserved” (incolumi Agrippina), she could hardly hope for (haud sperans) Nero’s divorce from his wife Octavia. The matricide seems therefore to be motivated by the influence of Poppaea. Nero’s role is suggested by her reproaches (§ 2): he is weak and easily led, led not by others but — as the syntax implies — by a woman who is neither his mother nor his wife but his illicit paramour. Poppaea is the ‘bad character’, not Nero. This is of course hardly surprising: in this or similar ways Tacitus paints the portrait of all the Julio-Claudian emperors.24 But the narrative does not stop at this rather trivial image. The text of the Nero books (Ann. 13−16) presents a series of different answers to the question of who the powerful actors were in Nero’s court. Let us remain for the moment at the first chapter of the 14th book. In § 3 we are told that “nobody prevented” Poppaea’s influence on Nero (nemo prohibebat). The reason for this ostensible negligence is given in two ablative absolutes: “All desired (cupientibus cunctis) Agrippina’s power broken”, “and none believed” (et credente nullo) that the son’s hatred would harden into the perpetration of murder. According to the text “everybody” (cuncti) is well aware of Poppaea’s intentions and exploits them so to speak naively for their own ends. The  22 The participle diu meditatum does not specify who planned the crime but now — at the start of the new year and the new book — Nero is clearly the agent of the matricide that has been set in motion. 23 On this episode, see Holztrattner 1995, 39−46. On the typical Tacitean sentence structure that consists “of a pithy main clause … followed by a subordinate appendix that overwhelms the main clause in length and complexity” and its unsettling effect cf. Damon 2003, 16−19 (quotation on p. 16); Oakley 2009, 205f.; Martin 22001, 220−225; Fuhrer 2019, 210 with n. 36. See already Klingner 1955, 187−200. 24 See Späth 2012, 445−450; Schulz 2019, 101–108.

  Therese Fuhrer identity of the group of people around Nero remains unresolved. However, the context of the Nero books, in particular the passages in which the above-mentioned wish to limit Agrippina’s influence is stressed, would seem to indicate Seneca and Burrus, the elderly statesmen and advisors of the young emperor Nero. 25 As I hope to show in the following, Seneca and Burrus in fact play a central part in Tacitusʼ accounts of the events leading to the scandalous act of matricide. I would like to examine further passages to see how the narrative ambiguates the role of these two powerful men at Nero’s court. I am concerned with showing how the presentation of the actors and the communication of ambiguous information invite the reader to scrutinize the motives of the principal actors, in particular Seneca and Burrus, and the political relevance and moral quality of their actions. 26 Yet clear-cut judgements are carefully avoided. Instead the process of forming judgements is left to the act of interpretation that the reader has to perform.

. Nero’s Mentors: Burrus and Seneca Let us go back to Book 13 of the Annales, which covers the period after Nero’s assumption of power in 54 AD. At the beginning of book 13, Tacitus describes Agrippina as the dominant woman at the imperial court who has ordered a number of politically and personally motivated murders without Nero’s knowledge or approval (13.1.1: ignaro Nerone; 13.1.3: invito principe). The series of murders is only stopped when Burrus and Seneca intervene (13.2.1f.): (1) Ibaturque in caedes, nisi Afranius Burrus et Annaeus Seneca obviam issent. hi rectores imperatoriae iuventae et, rarum in societate potentiae, concordes, diversa arte ex aequo pollebant, Burrus militaribus curis et severitate morum, Seneca praeceptis eloquentiae et comitate honesta, iuvantes in vicem, quo facilius lubricam principis aetatem, si virtutem aspernaretur, voluptatibus concessis retinerent. (2) certamen utrique unum erat contra ferociam Agrippinae, quae cunctis malae dominationis cupidinibus flagrans habebat in partibus Pallantem, quo auctore Claudius nuptiis incestis et adoptione exitiosa semet perverterat.

 25 Cf. Koestermann 1968, 24: “Wenn es heißt credente nullo etc., so ist darin auch eine Entlastung der beiden Ratgeber des Kaisers enthalten”. 26 The communis opinio is that Tacitus judges Seneca and Burrus innocent; see e.g. Koestermann 1968, 24 (cf. n. 25 above); Koestermann 1967, 236f.; Holztrattner 1995, 45f.; Devillers 1995, 327f.: Tacitus stages Poppaea as a protagonist in the plans of Neroʼs matricide against the hypothesis of Senecaʼs active role (as in Dio Cass. 61.12.1); cf. ibid. 337. Drinkwater 2018, 179−187 links “all three” together in their plan to “turn Nero violently against his mother” (p. 182).

Unsettling Effects and Disconcertment  

(1) And the general trend was toward slaughter, had not Afranius Burrus and Annaeus Seneca stepped in. These mentors of the Commander’s youth were mutually harmonious (a rarity in an alliance of power) and equally forceful by different means, Burrus in military concerns and the severity of his behavior, Seneca in his precepts for eloquence and an honorable affability, each helping the other so that they might more easily retain their hold on the slipperiness of the princeps’s age by permitting him pleasures if he spurned virtue. (2) They both had the same struggle against the defiance of Agrippina, who, blazing with all the desires of her evil domination, had Pallas on her side, at whose instigation Claudius had destroyed himself with his incestuous wedding and the ruinous adoption.

The description of their differing roles at the court place the focus — not on Agrippina, but — on Nero, who needs to be restrained; and this can be achieved only by permitting him voluptates, seeing that he spurned virtutes. At first sight this seems praiseworthy, but not for Seneca, who in writings such as De ira, published in the forties or early fifties of the 1st century AD, advocated the traditional Stoic position that only strict control of emotions (apátheia) could lead to perfection (perfecta virtus).27 According to this, every emotion, if once permitted and given a free rein, is hard to control and to restrain. The notion that “by permitting him pleasures” (voluptatibus concessis) Nero could be contained seems downright paradoxical or even false and dangerous, in any case it must cause disconcertment. It seems comprehensible, though, and even justified in the text, by the following information (§ 2), namely that the real aim of Seneca and Burrus was to combat Agrippina’s “defiance” (ferocia). We should note that the text does not explicitly state that Seneca and Burrus led Nero off the straight and narrow in order to reduce Agrippina’s power and thus to stabilise Nero’s position and their own. The information is not followed by an auctorial comment questioning or explicitly criticising this behaviour. The linguistic representation and the arrangement of information rather create the effect of ambivalent openness. The text does not establish a clear causal link, nor does it provide an unambiguous diagnosis of the causes leading to Nero’s loss of self-control and finally to the matricide. Causal connections are implied, but the text does not impose this interpretation. 28 It does not attempt to overpower the reader, rather I would argue that the text nudges us towards a critical reading or, at least, it aims to avoid an unequivocal interpretative stance.

 27 Cf. e.g. Sen. De ira 1.15; 2.1; 2.9. See Harris 2001, 112−117 (with n. 132 on the date of publication). 28 On the role of relations and causality in Tacitusʼ text, see already (and still most valuable) Syme 1958/31967, 304−321; cf. Batstone 2009, esp. 28; Schulz 2019, 123−129.

  Therese Fuhrer

. The ‘Trial’ of Agrippina and the Role of Burrus When Agrippina is denounced by a former female rival who accuses her of planning to marry the pretender to the throne Rubellius Plautus and to carry out a coup (13.19.3), Nero not only wishes to kill his mother and Plautus but also to dismiss Burrus from his position as Praetorian prefect, because this position committed Burrus to loyalty towards Agrippina (13.20.1): 29 … ut non tantum matrem Plautumque interficere, sed Burrum etiam demovere praefectura destinaret, tamquam Agrippinae gratia provectum et vicem reddentem… … not only to kill his mother and Plautus but also to remove Burrus from the prefecture, on the grounds that he had been advanced by Agrippina’s favor and was Nero rendering her a return…

Nero’s threat to Burrus comes as a surprise in the narrative order. In § 2 Tacitus cites the historiographer Fabius Rusticus for the information that Burrus retained his rank only by Senecaʼs help (sed ope Senecae dignationem Burro retentam), but Tacitus dismisses his source as tendentious.30 Nonetheless the information about Neroʼs threat to Burrus and the ‘last minute rescue’ by Seneca has now been presented, and it retains a certain impact as a representative speech act. 31 It sticks in the readers’ minds when immediately afterwards we hear of Nero’s determination to murder Agrippina. He can only be restrained by Burrus’ promise that she would be killed, if the circumstances would justify it (13.20.3): trepidus et interficiendae matris avidus non prius differri potuit, quam Burrus necem eius promitteret, si facinoris coargueretur: sed cuicumque, nedum parenti defensionem tribuendam. Nero, trembling and greedy for his mother’s killing, could not be put off, until Burrus promised she would be executed if she were confirmed in her deed: anyone, above all a parent, should be granted a defense, he said.

Nero has a firm plan to murder Agrippina, and Burrus is named as an accessory. In light of the information provided in the previous section that Burrus’ position

 29 On this sequel of events, see Drinkwater 2018, 176−179. On Burrusʼ commitment towards Agrippina, see Ann. 12.42.1f. 30 See Koestermann 1967, 272f.; Koestermann 1968, 25. 31 This is a strategy that Tacitus often deploys when referring to rumours; on the “the dynamics of rumours” in Tacitus, see Suerbaum 2015, 192−220: “ein suggestives literarisches Darstellungsmittel”; cf. Schulz 2019, 145f. on the narrative and argumentative function of rumour.

Unsettling Effects and Disconcertment  

as a Praetorian prefect was under threat, the promise to execute his mother can be understood as a concession by the frightened Burrus to the menacing Nero. Agrippina, however, manages to refute the accusations explained by Burrus (13.21.1: crimina et auctores exposuit), and emerges victorious from the ‘trial’ (13.21.6), 32 Burrusʼ (und Seneca’s) goal of restraining Nero from matricide is achieved, and Burrus, too, appears to have been acquitted. Again it has to be stressed that the behaviour of all the protagonists is not in any way judged or even condemned. There is no explicit auctorial comment. The text does not manipulate the interpretative discourse in such a way that a clearcut understanding of the events recounted is either suggested or generated. Instead the sequence of information induces us to take a fresh view of connections or indeed to see these connections for the first time. We are free to draw conclusions that make no claims to unambiguity or to final validity. If the text were persuasive in the sense of the third phase in the process of rhetorical persuasion, such claims would have to be made explicitly. Let us shortly return to the beginning of Book 14 and to the dramatic date 59 AD. Poppaea has now gained influence over Nero and is urging him to murder his mother. We recall that “everyone” (cuncti) was informed about Poppaea’s goals and of her influence over the emperor and that they exploited this in their efforts to curb Agrippina’s power, but without believing (credente nullo) that Nero’s hatred of his mother would “harden” into murder (14.1.3). However, our reading of the previous chapters — it is not Agrippina, but Nero, who needs to be restrained — lets us ponder whether Seneca and Burrus were completely unaware of Nero’s emotional instability and the seriousness of his murderous thoughts.

. The Matricide Attempt Fails: The Roles of Seneca and Burrus The narrative order moves to the report about Agrippina’s attempt to bind her son to her by an incestuous offer (14.2.1). Nero avoided contact with her, but then, finding her too burdensome, decided to kill her (14.3.1). Nero plans the murder in the shape of a shipwreck. 33 This attempt fails and Agrippina escapes to safety (14.3.3−14.6). The news is brought to Nero the same

 32 On the ‘trial’, see Drinkwater 2018, 177f. 33 On Tacitusʼ “incredible … rendering of the events” and the “crafting” of the narrative, cf. Luke 2013, 208−210; Devillers 1995.

  Therese Fuhrer night and the following text shows the effect that this news had on him, in particular the news that he seemed to have planned the matricide. Nero is beside himself with fear (14.7.2). He is at a loss at what to do and turns to Burrus and Seneca (14.7.2−5): (2) … quod contra subsidium sibi, nisi quid Burrus et Seneca? [expergens] quos statim acciverat, incertum an et ante ignaros. (3) igitur longum utriusque silentium, ne inriti dissuaderent, an eo descensum credebant, , nisi praeveniretur Agrippina, pereundum Neroni esset. post Seneca hactenus promptius, respiceret Burrum ac siscitaretur, an militi imperanda caedes esset. (4) ille praetorianos toti Caesarum domui obstrictos memoresque Germanici nihil adversus progeniem eius atrox ausuros respondit: perpetraret Anicetus promissa. (5) qui nihil cunctatus poscit summam sceleris. (2) … what would be his defense against her, unless Burrus and Seneca came up with something? [To try them out,] he had immediately summoned them (it being doubtful whether they were ignorant even before this). (3) There was thus a long silence from each, lest their dissuasion be unavailing − or else they believed that things had reached such depths that, unless Agrippina were forestalled, Nero must perish. Afterward Seneca was the readier to the extent that he looked at Burrus and inquired whether her slaughter should be commanded of the soldiery; (4) the other replied that the praetorians, bound to the whole house of the Caesars and mindful of Germanicus, would not venture anything frightful against his progeny: let Anicetus complete what he had promised. (5) And he for his part had no hesitation but actually demanded the climax of the crime.

The text stages his helpless perplexity with a question in indirect speech which dramatically underlines the crucial importance of the two mentors for the princeps. Already — that same night — “he had summoned” (acciverat) them: incertum an et ante ignaros, “it being doubtful whether they were ignorant even before this”. 34 This information is disconcerting, because it leaves the question unanswered as to whether until that moment they were aware of the murder plan that had just been carried out. Actually, the information about their immediate presence points in another direction: Nero managed to summon the two men to him so rapidly because they were ‘already’ informed. But again: the text does not establish a clear causal relation. Tacitus presents the two as remaining silent for a long time (14.7.3); he mentions two possible reasons: either because they wanted to advise Nero against

 34 See Woodcock 52001, 92: “Notice that incertum an, instead of introducing an ind. quest. clause, has degenerated into the equivalent of a single adverb (= ‘doubtfully’) qualifying ignaros”; he proposes two translations: “‘probably not unaware (of the plot) even before this’ or ‘it is doubtful whether they were unaware’”. See also Ryberg 1942, 401f.; Devillers 1995, 337f.; Luke 2013, 209−111; Suerbaum 2015, 107−113.

Unsettling Effects and Disconcertment  

another assassination attempt but did not want to meet with a rebuff from him (ne inriti dissuaderent) or because in this precarious situation they thought they had to fear for Nero’s life if Agrippina survived, which meant that the pre-emptive murder of Agrippina was now inevitable.35 This twofold ambiguity triggers suspicion: Even if Burrus and Seneca did not know about the first assassination attempt, in this nocturnal scene they are portrayed as Nero’s closest confidants, whose advice he seeks in this moment of fear. In this situation they are not only advisors, they also possess the authority to legitimise the matricide as a political murder designed to protect the emperor. It is Burrus (§ 4: ille) who orders Anicetus (the organizer of the first attempt) to go ahead and implement the plan again. Therefore, their silence can be interpreted not as a sign of moral misgivings but of purely tactical considerations. For they both know that they will not be able to make Nero change his mind and then formally legitimise the murder. But: does their presence in the scene and in the text at this stage make them appear weak or guilty or at least partly responsible for the murder? Or is it the other way round: are we invited to consider the fact that now, at the latest, the murder is necessary to stabilize the emperor’s power, that their influence and therefore their power, too, is required to maintain peace and prevent political instability? Only the subsequent events prove them wrong. Seneca’s power and his role as the mentor of the princeps come to an end after Burrusʼ death and the consolidation of power by the new Praetorian prefect Tigellinus in 62 AD (14.51−57). It is only at this point that Nero goes so far as to repudiate his wife Octavia, to marry Poppaea and finally even to murder Octavia (14.59.3−64). Seneca’s death is then presented as the final capitulation to the power of the obviously ‘bad’ characters. 36

 Conclusion The two ‘senior advisors’ at the imperial court are clearly differentiated from those characters who have a negative influence on Nero and are only looking out for their own advantage. On the whole, Seneca and Burrus stand out as positive elements in a world in which values appear precarious. Yet they are also part of  35 On this conclusion and its consequences (and the topic of politically motivated killing), see Luke 2013, 210−224. 36 Cf. Ann. 15.61.2 on Neroʼs consilium, consisting of Poppaea and Tigellinus: quod erat saevienti principi intimum consiliorum.

  Therese Fuhrer the system that is dominated by the power structures and the discourses of power. And within it — this is implied by the text as a tangible discourse — they are not powerless good people, but they play their part in shaping the discourses of power. They fail in the face of them, not because they lose the battle of good against evil but because they are participating in the ‘power game’.37 Tacitus’ ‘protean style’ has often been interpreted in classical scholarship as the reflection of the turmoil in the political system of the early principate that is described in the texts.38 It is argued that in his language and style in the Annals Tacitus reflects the perspective of a senator who is steeped in the Republican constitutional tradition and who now in the principate has to accept the regime of a single individual or members and confidants of the Julio-Claudian clan. As in all presidential systems, success depends on a small number of protagonists involved to a greater or lesser degree in contingent changes in power. Such an analysis can apply both to the circumstances and the time span described in the text (the Julio-Claudian principate) and to the period in which the text was written and published. In my analysis of the Tacitean text I would like to go a little further. I would argue that the text does not make unequivocal criticisms but shows time and time again that the course of events in history is dependent on ambiguous situations and constellations of motives. It is not the case that the Tacitean text is suggestive in the sense that it has made us believe that the Julio-Claudian emperors, particularly Nero, are bad emperors who destroyed the rights and the dignity of the Roman political and social elite. The suggestive potential consists rather in the disconcerting power of ambiguity generated by the text and its language, the narrative order, the selection and omission of information, thus generating doubt and uncertainty, scepticism or resistance to accepted patterns of interpretation.39 In this view, the aim of Tacitus’ ‘protean style’ is not to support and to impose, by hidden methods, a certain position in an extra-textual political discourse. On the contrary, the aim is to ambiguate the extra-textual discourses by means of a newly formulated depiction and a newly ordered narrative. The explicitness of discourse that is called into question in this way is not replaced by a new form of explicitness. In my view, Tacitus’ text aims rather to erode mental schemata so as

 37 On the strategies of justification of the matricide by Seneca and Burrus, esp. Senecaʼs letter to the Senate, cf. Luke 2013. 38 See n. 17 and 18 above. 39 Drinkwater 2018, 10−12 lists the different and also conflicting judgments about Nero as personality and as emperor since Gerolamo Cardano (16th c.); this variety of judgments and interpretations is, in my opinion, not least due to the ambiguity of the Tacitean text.

Unsettling Effects and Disconcertment  

to allow (not to impose) other interpretations — whatever they may be — of the historical events to come into play. The Tacitean text does not permit explicitness but creates space for further interpretations.40

Bibliography Texts and Translations P. Cornelius Tacitus, tom. I, Annales, ed. Heinrich Heubner, Stuttgart 1983. Tacitus, The Annals, translated with introduction and notes by Anthony J. Woodman, Indianapolis 2004.

Books and Articles Batstone, William W. (2009), “Postmodern Historiographical Theory and the Roman Historians”, in: Feldherr 2009, 24−40. Damon, Cynthia (2003), Tacitus, Histories Book I, Cambridge. Dench, Emma (2009), “The Roman Historians and Twentieth-century Approaches to Roman History”, in: Feldherr 2009, 394−406. Develin, Robert (1983), “Tacitus and the Techniques of Insidious Suggestion”, Antichthon 17, 64−95. Devillers, Olivier (1994), Lʼart de la persuasion dans les Annales de Tacite, Bruxelles. Devillers, Olivier (1995), “Tacite, les sources et les impératifs de la narration: le récit de la mort dʼAgrippine (Annales XIV, 1−13)”, Latomus 54/2, 325−345. Devillers, Olivier (2012), “The Concentration of Power and Writing History: Forms of Historical Persuasion in the Histories (1.1−49)”, in: Victoria E. Pagán (ed.), A Companion to Tacitus, Malden/Oxford, 162−186. Drinkwater, John F. (2018), Nero: Emperor and Court, Cambridge. Feldherr, Andrew (ed.) (2009), The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Historians, Cambridge. Früh, Ramona/Fuhrer, Therese/Humar, Marcel/Vöhler, Martin (eds.) (2015), Irritationen — Rhetorische und poetische Verfahren der Verunsicherung, Berlin/Boston. Fuhrer, Therese (2018), “On the Economy of ‘Sending and Receiving Information’ in Roman Historiography”, in: Stephen J. Harrison/Alison Sharrock/Stavros Frangoulidis (eds.), Intratextuality and Roman Literature, Berlin/Boston, 423‒429. Fuhrer, Therese (2019), “Strategien der Informationsvergabe in lateinischer Prosa − Tacitus und die literarischen Verfahren der Irritation und Insinuation”, in: Inka Mülder-Bach/Jens

 40 This article has benefited greatly from my stay as a visitor at the Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies at the University of Hamburg in the summer of 2019; I am deeply grateful to my hosts and fellows for their friendly and professional support and for stimulating discussions. I would also like to thank Paul Knight for translating this article from German.

  Therese Fuhrer Kersten/Martin Zimmermann (eds.), Prosa schreiben: Literatur — Geschichte – Recht, München, 201−224. Grethlein, Jonas (2013), Experience and Teleology in Ancient Historiography: ‘Futures Past’ from Herodotus to Augustine, Cambridge. Harris, William V. (2001), Restraining Rage. The Ideology of Anger Control in Classical Antiquity, Cambridge, MA. Hausmann, Michael (2012), Leserlenkung durch Tacitus in den Tiberius- und Claudiusbüchern der Annalen, Berlin/New York. Haynes, Holly (2003), The History of Make-Believe: Tacitus on Imperial Rome, Berkeley. Holztrattner, Franz (1995), Poppaea Neronis potens: Studien zu Poppaea Sabina, Graz/Horn. Klingner, Friedrich (1955), “Beobachtungen über Sprache und Stil des Tacitus am Anfang des 13. Annalenbuchs”, Hermes 83, 187−200. Knape, Joachim (2015), “Inversive Persuasion: zur Epistemologie und Rhetorik der ‘Rhetorik der Verunsicherung”’, in: Früh/Fuhrer/Humar/Vöhler 2015, 1−60. Koestermann, Erich (1967), Cornelius Tacitus, Annalen, Bd. 3, Buch 11−13, Heidelberg. Koestermann, Erich (1968), Cornelius Tacitus, Annalen, Bd. 4, Buch 14−16, Heidelberg. Löfstedt, Einar (1948), “On the Style of Tacitus”, JRS 38, 1−8. Luce, Torrey J./Woodman, Anthony J. (eds.) (1993), Tacitus and the Tacitean Tradition, Princeton. Luke, Trevor (2013), “From Crisis to Consensus: Salutary Ideology and the Murder of Agrippina”, ICS 38, 207−228. Martin, Ronald (32001), Tacitus, London. Munslow, Alun (2009), Narrative and History, Chippenham/Eastbourne. Oakley, Stephen P. (2009), “Style and language”, in: Woodman 2009, 195−211. O’Gorman, Ellen (2000), Irony and Misreading in the Annals of Tacitus, Cambridge. Pelling, Christopher (1993/2012), “Tacitus and Germanicus”, in: Luce/Woodman 1993, 59−85, repr. in: Rhiannon Ash (ed.), Oxford Readings in Classical Studies: Tacitus, Oxford 2012, 281−313. Pelling, Christopher (2009), “Tacitusʼ Personal Voice”, in: Woodman 2009, 147−167. Plass, Paul (1988), Wit and the Writing of History: The Rhetoric of Historiography in Imperial Rome, Madison, WI. Ryberg, Inez Scott (1942), “Tacitusʼ Art of Innuendo”, TAPA 73, 383−404. Sailor, Dylan (2008), Writing and Empire in Tacitus, Cambridge. Schulz, Verena (2019), Deconstructing Imperial Representation: Tacitus, Cassius Dio, and Suetonius on Nero and Domitian, Leiden/Boston. Späth, Thomas (2012), “Masculinity and Gender Performance in Tacitus”, in: Victoria E. Pagán (ed.), A Companion to Tacitus, Malden/Oxford, 431−457. Suerbaum, Werner (2015), Skepsis und Suggestion: Tacitus als Historiker und als Literat, Heidelberg. Sullivan, Donald (1976), “Innuendo and the ‘Weighted Alternative’ in Tacitus”, CJ 71, 312−326. Syme, Ronald (1958/31967), Tacitus, Oxford. Teltenkötter, Patrick (2017), Das Nerobild zwischen Faktizität und Fiktionalität: Leserlenkung bei Tacitus und Sueton anhand der Beschreibung des Brandes von Rom 64 n. Chr., Berlin/ Münster. Voss, Bernd-Reiner (1963), Der pointierte Stil des Tacitus, Münster. White, Hayden (1987/21990), The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation, Baltimore/London.

Unsettling Effects and Disconcertment  

Whitehead, David (1979), “Tacitus and the Loaded Alternative”, Latomus 38, 474−459. Woodcock, E. C. (52001), Tacitus, Annals XIV, London. Woodman, Anthony J. (1988), Rhetoric in Classical Historiography: Four Studies, Portland etc. Woodman, Anthony J. (1992/1998), “Neroʼs Alien Capital: Tacitus as Paradoxographer (Annales 15.36−7)”, in: Anthony J. Woodman/Jonathan Powell (eds.), Author and Audience in Latin Literature, Cambridge 1992, 173−188, 251−255 = Anthony J. Woodman, Tacitus Reviewed, Oxford 1998, 168−89. Woodman, Anthony J. (1993), “Amateur Dramatics at the Court of Nero”, in: Luce/Woodman 1993, 104−128. Woodman, Anthony J. (ed.) (2009), The Cambridge Companion to Tacitus, Cambridge. Zinsmaier, Thomas (1998), “Insinuatio”, Historisches Wörterbuch der Rhetorik 4, 418−423.

Bram van der Velden

The Latin Commentary Tradition on ‘Inclusive’ Intended Ambiguity Abstract: In the Latin commentary tradition, we find comments on types of intended ambiguity familiar to us from ancient rhetorical criticism: ambiguities employed for jokes or puns, or for accommodating hidden meanings. These ambiguities can be said to be ‘exclusive’ ambiguities, whereby there is a ‘surface’ and a ‘deeper’ meaning of a word or phrase, the latter being the ‘point’ of the utterance. However, Latin commentators also comment on intended ‘inclusive’ ambiguities, whereby the author is seen to communicate multiple meanings at once, with all these meanings operating on the same level and all being ‘correct’. There appears to be no ancient theoretical reflection on this topic. I argue that there are two reasons for this disconnect between theory and practice: not all statements in ancient prescriptivist treatises on prose apply to poetry, and ancient commentators — who need to explain a text line-by-line — do not always operate on the basis of the same exegetical principles as writers of rhetorical treatises do.1 Keywords: ambiguity, Latin commentary tradition, hidden meanings, jokes and puns, ancient literary criticism

In a significant number of comments in the late antique Latin commentary tradition, 2 literary ambiguity is portrayed as a linguistic phenomenon which can be put to good use by a skilled author. This tradition generally does not see ambiguity as a hindrance to understanding which the author should have avoided, contrary to what we would expect on the basis of rhetorical and grammatical treatises. 3 This  1 This article is based on sub-sections of my (yet unpublished) dissertation: Van der Velden 2017. I am grateful to the organizers of the conference and editors of this volume for their hospitality, kindness and good advice. 2 For the purposes of this article, I will use this term to refer to late antique Latin commentaries written on earlier ‘pagan’ texts. I am aware, however, that the term is imprecise, as there is also an extensive late antique Christian commentary tradition, which is also interested in the co-existence of multiple meanings. I hope to be able to discuss the interaction between the pagan and Christian tradition in this regard at a later stage, as well as that between the Greek and the Latin exegetical tradition. 3 For which see Demetr. Eloc. 196; Arist. [Rh. Al.] 1435a32–3; Ael. Arist. AR 56.1.13.1.5; Rhet. Her. 4.54.67; Quint. Inst. 8.2.16 and the grammars by Charisius, Diomedes, Donatus and Pompeius (GL 1.271.26–32; 1.449.6–8; 4.394.26–8 and 5.295.14–28 respectively). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110715811-022

  Bram van der Velden fact is not always made clear in studies on ancient Latin commentaries, which may partly be caused by the commonly-held assumption that positive evaluations of intentional ambiguity are primarily a modern phenomenon. 4 In the first half of my article I will study cases in which the Latin commentary tradition offers comments on intentional ambiguity similar to those found in ancient rhetorical treatises: ambiguity employed for the purposes of hidden meanings, or for jokes and puns. Both of these kinds of ambiguity may be labelled ‘exclusive’: they feature a meaning which is the ‘point’ of the utterance, because it is the punchline of the joke, or the latent meaning which the author secretly wants to get across. Studying these comments will allow us to see the practical interpretative application of the theory set forward in treatises. In its second half, I will demonstrate that there is also a kind of ambiguity commented on in the Latin commentary tradition which does not seem to have a clear point of contact with ancient treatises: that of ‘inclusive’ ambiguities, whereby both meanings are seen as valid and operative on the same level. To conclude, I will attempt to provide an explanation for the differences between ancient treatises and the Latin commentary tradition in this regard.

 ‘Exclusive’ Ambiguities: Hidden Meanings In ancient rhetorical treatises, the use of intentional ambiguity to mask ‘hidden meanings’ is often mentioned as conducive to emphasis or significatio, defined by the Rhetorica ad Herennium as “the figure which leaves more to be suspected than

 4 Georges’ 1891 monograph on ancient critical (here in the sense of ‘censuring’) approaches to the Aeneid, for instance, groups Servius’ comments on ambiguitas and amphibolia under Unklarheit, Zweideutigkeit (p. 561), whereas none of the five Beweisstellen adduced feature any negative evaluation. Diederich’s 1999 monograph on Porphyrio’s commentary on Horace also groups statements on ambiguity under a section termed “Negativkritik?” (pp. 266–279) and more specifically under “Obscuritas (amphibolia, ambiguitas): Verstoß gegen die perspicuitas” (pp. 268– 71). This is done on the basis of late antique grammars, which do indeed tend to classify ambiguity as a uitium orationis (cf. p. 267, n. 1402). As Diederich notes herself (p. 271), none of Porphyrio’s cited comments on ambiguity are accompanied by criticism, so his exegetical practice seems not to be in line with the principles of ancient grammar. The absence of criticism on ambiguities in ancient commentaries cannot simply be attributed to a general lack of criticism found in them, as both Porphyrio and Servius do in fact preserve traces of clear-cut negative aesthetic judgements, either voiced by themselves or attributed to others (see e.g. Servius on Georg. 1.24, 2.177 and Aen. 8.291, 9.1 and 12.83 for critics who culpant Virgil, or Porphyrio’s criticism on Horace’s cacozelia as gathered in Diederich 1999, 275–279).

The Latin Commentary Tradition on ‘Inclusive’ Intended Ambiguity  

has been actually asserted”. 5 Quintilian mentions that there “are three uses of this device: (1) if it is unsafe to speak openly, (2) if it is unseemly to do so, (3) when it is employed simply for elegance and gives more pleasure by its freshness and variety than the straightforward statement would have done”. 6 The connection between emphasis/significatio and the intentional use of ambiguity is most clearly made in the Rhetorica ad Herennium and Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria, although the earlier tradition hints at it as well. 7 The Rhetorica ad Herennium notes that significatio is “produced through Ambiguity when a word can be taken in two or more senses, but yet is taken in that sense which the speaker intends”. 8 Note how the ambiguity is said to be ‘exclusive’: there is a presence of multiple meanings, but the intended audience is supposed to see only one of these meanings as the right one. 9 We see a reflection of the use of intentional ambiguity for this purpose in Servius’ analysis 10 of Venus’ speech to the council of the gods. After summarizing all the troubles suffered by the Trojans, she adds (Verg. Aen. 10.59–62): non satius cineres patriae insedisse supremos atque solum quo Troia fuit? Xanthum et Simoenta redde, oro, miseris iterumque reuoluere casus da, pater, Iliacos Teucris.  5 Rhet. Her. 4.67: significatio est res quae plus in suspicione relinquit quam positum est in oratione, transl. Caplan 1954. 6 Inst. 9.2.66: eius [sc. emphasis] triplex usus est: unus si dicere palam parum tutum est, alter si non decet, tertius qui uenustatis modo gratia adhibetur et ipsa nouitate ac uarietate magis quam si relatio sit recta delectat, transl. Russell 2011. 7 As mentioned by Thomas 2000, 394–398. Thomas is indebted to Ahl 1984, an article which he mentions on p. 395, who in turn is indebted to Rhys Roberts 1910, especially pp. 17–26, whom Ahl mentions on p. 178, n. 7. See also Thomas in this volume. 8 Rhet. Her. 4.67: per ambiguum, cum uerbum potest in duas pluresue sententias accipi, sed accipitur tamen in eam partem quam uult is qui dixit, transl. Caplan 1954. 9 We see the same principle at work in the ambiguity of oracles, in which there is often a hidden meaning which turns out to be the right one. More on ambiguity in oracles is found in Stanford 1939, 115–128 (a general overview), Fuhrmann 1966, 51–54 (on the exegesis of oracles and riddles), Rougement 2005 (who claims that in historical reality, oracles did not actually contain many ambiguities), and Codecà/Orlandini 2007 (who classify the different kinds of ambiguities found in oracles). 10 Phrases such as “Servius comments” and “Servius analyses” are meant as a shorthand: it may well be that Servius is merely picking and choosing material from the vast tradition of Vergilian exegesis that precedes him. This article will sidestep the ‘Servian question’ regarding the relationship between the ‘shorter’ and ‘longer’ version of his commentary. The recent addition to the ‘Harvard Servius’ project does not attempt to provide a definitive answer: “the Compiler … fused with his text of Servius another ancient commentary related to, if not identical with, the commentary of Aelius Donatus” (Kaster/Murgia 2018, xi).

  Bram van der Velden Would it not be better to have settled on the last ashes of their country, and the soil where once was Troy? Restore, I pray, Xanthus and Simoïs to a hapless people, and let the Teucrians relive once more the woes of Ilium! 11

On Xanthum et Simoenta / redde, oro Servius comments:12 ambiguum est utrum dicat, redde nobis re uera Troiam antiquam, an, redde nobis terras in Italia ad similitudinem Troiae: nouimus enim hanc fuisse consuetudinem, ut aduenae patriae suae imaginem sibi redderent, ut ‘effigiem Xanthi Troiamque uidetis’ [Aen. 3.497]. bene ergo Venus medio usa est genere loquendi, ut utrumque significaret, et antiquae reditum Troiae et imperium Italiae, quod Troianis Iuppiter ad similitudinem Troiae fore promiserat. et magis hoc est quod latenter desiderat atque petit. It is ambiguous whether she says “give us the real (re uera) old Troy back”, or “give us lands in Italy similar to Troy”, for we know that the custom existed that foreigners made a representation of their fatherland for themselves, as is the case with “you see a copy of Xanthus and you see a [new] Troy” [Aen. 3.497]. Venus has therefore used this middle way of speaking to good effect, so that she means both, the return of the old Troy and the rule over Italy, of which Jupiter had promised that it would be similar to the rule of Troy. Especially the latter is what she secretly desires and seeks. 13

Quite a bit in this comment reminds us of the aforementioned discussion of significatio/emphasis. Servius probably thinks that Venus wants Juno (who speaks directly after this) to understand her words as “give us Troy back at its former location”: this is also implied in the rhetorical question non ... fuit? This would arguably be less problematic for Juno than what Venus secretly wishes (latenter desiderat): a new Troy in Italy. The ‘real’ meaning is meant for Jupiter, who is reminded of his earlier promises, presumably those of the council of the gods in the first book (cf. 1.258–9: cernes urbem et promissa Lauini / moenia). 14 The use of this ambiguity is seen as deliberate and reason for praise rather than blame (bene ergo Venus medio usa est genere loquendi). This discussion, in which the audience of the ambiguity is text-internal, can be seen as the background to the reflection found in the scholia on a different kind of communicative relationship, that between the poet and the reader. Here we enter the realms of what we would now call ‘dramatic irony’, where the author

 11 All Aeneid translations in this article are those of Rushton Fairclough 1916. 12 This comment is also adduced by Thomas 2000, 389. 13 All translations of the ancient commentaries are my own. 14 The question of whether the commentator is ‘correct’ in these and all the following cases is, of course, a valid one, but not of importance for the present article: I am merely attempting to reconstruct the commentators’ critical horizons.

The Latin Commentary Tradition on ‘Inclusive’ Intended Ambiguity  

has a ‘hidden meaning’ which only the readers are meant to understand. 15 In book 7 of Lucan’s Bellum Civile, Pompey holds a speech for his own men before the battle of Pharsalus. It starts with (7.342–4): ‘quem flagitat’ inquit ‘uestra diem uirtus, finis ciuilibus armis, quem quaesistis, adest. totas effundite uires.’ “Behold the day,” he said, “which your courage demands; behold the welcome end of the civil war. Put forth your whole strength.” 16

On finis ciuilibus armis, the Commenta Bernensia comment: totum hoc ἀμφιβόλως et non sine praesagio mali (“this is all ambiguous and not without foreshadowing of a bad outcome”). This is an interesting comment because of totum: it does not limit the ambiguity to a single utterance but refers to a passage as a whole. Pompey thinks of the finis as the end of the war that is to follow a victory, but we, the readers, of the end that follows his defeat. totas effundite uires for Pompey refers to his soldiers’ doing their utmost in battle; for us it refers to their death. The praesagium mali commented on by the scholiast is to be noticed by the readers of the work but not necessarily by the internal audience. Again, there are two ‘meanings’, but one of them turns out to be clearly the ‘right’ one. Another example of this is provided by Servius’ comment on Aeneid 6.717– 718 (but mentioned on 1.267), 17 in which Anchises tells Aeneas that he is going to present his descendants: hanc prolem cupio enumerare meorum / quo magis Italia mecum laetere reperta. A obvious interpretation of mecum is to take it with laetere (“be happy with me that you have found Italy”). Servius, however, leaves open room for the interpretation mecum reperta: ab hac autem historia [Cato’s traditional version of the myth, in which Anchises is still alive when the Trojans reach Italy] ita discedit Vergilius, ut aliquibus locis ostendat, non se per ignorantiam, sed per artem poeticam hoc fecisse, ut illo loco ‘quo magis Italia mecum laetere reperta’: ecce ἀμφιβολικῶς dixit, ostendit tamen Anchisen ad Italiam peruenisse. Virgil has diverged from this story in such a way that he shows in several places that he has not done this through ignorance, but through poetic license, as in quo magis Italia mecum laetere reperta, there he speaks ambiguously, and shows that Anchises did actually make it to Italy.

 15 On dramatic irony in ancient exegesis, see Trautner 1907; Nünlist 2009, 231–237. 16 All translations of Lucan in this chapter are those of Duff 1928. 17 Also discussed in Casali 2008.

  Bram van der Velden The implication of non … per ignorantiam is that Cato’s version of the myth is ‘correct’, and that Virgil considered it the right version as well, but decided to use a different version for the Aeneid. 18 In other words, the two meanings are exclusive, as one of them is the ‘correct’ one.

 ‘Exclusive’ Ambiguities: Jokes and Puns Theoretical reflection on the use of intentional ambiguity in the context of jokes and puns goes back to at least Aristotle, who in his Rhetoric (1412a32–b5) speaks of “jokes on words” (τὰ ἀστεῖα παρὰ γράμμα). One example in the Latin tradition is mentioned by Cicero in De Oratore 2.253: a lover of ballgames is suspected of being responsible for causing damage to statues at night. When he failed to show up for something, it was remarked that he “had broken an arm” (bracchium fregisse). The most obvious meaning of this referential ambiguity would be that bracchium refers to his own arm, but the utterance is only successful if the audience realizes that there is a secondary reference to the arms of the statues. Moreover, the audience needs to understand that this particular reference is in fact the real ‘meaning’ of the utterance: the speaker does not really mean to suggest that the ballgame-lover has broken his own arm; this meaning only acts as a ‘foil’ for the ‘real’ meaning. In this sense, the ambiguity is ‘exclusive’ as in ambiguities discussed in the previous section. There is a difference as well: the goal of ‘hidden comments’ to make sure that at least one of the recipients of the message is unable to grasp its ‘deeper’ meaning. The point of jokes and puns, however, is that the audience understands both meanings, and realizes that the ‘joke’ meaning is the ‘real’ meaning. The use of ambiguity for jokes is in the Latin tradition almost synonymous with the name of Cicero. Cassius Severus, quoted by Seneca the Elder on the subject of the “vice of playing on a word with more than one meaning” (Contr. 7.3.9: uiti, quod ex captione unius uerbi plura significantis nascitur), mentions that he will pass over the “countless utterances [of this kind] which Cicero made in speech or writing” (innumerabilia quae Cicero in orationibus aut in sermone dixit). Severus sees Pomponius, the writer of Atellan farce, as the originator of this kind of joke, with Laberius and later Cicero being indebted to him, although the latter  18 The same is shown by Servius’ note on me, pater optime, fessum / deseris in Aen. 3.710–11, lines which describes the death of Anchises: ut supra diximus, secundum Vergilium: nam Cato eum in Originibus ad Italiam uenisse docet; unde etiam in sexto illud amphibolon est ‘quo magis Italia mecum laetere reperta’.

The Latin Commentary Tradition on ‘Inclusive’ Intended Ambiguity  

is said to have made a virtue out of it (qui illud ad uirtutem transtulisset).19 Aper in Tacitus’ Dialogus criticizes Cicero’s “horrible and insipid buffoonery” (foedam et insulsam scurrilitatem, 22). Quintilian is also not afraid to criticize Cicero in his section on jokes based on ambiguities (Inst. 6.3.46–69). Perhaps because of Cicero's reputation in this regard, the scholia on his speeches are willing to see intentional puns even when it may be argued that they were not intended. In In Verrem 1.12.36, for example, Cicero asserts that as an aedile, he will work together with the Roman people to punish wicked men, and adds: hoc munus aedilitatis meae populo Romano amplissimum pulcherrimumque polliceor (“I promise this as the most magnificent and beautiful munus of my aedileship”). A munus given by an aedile usually refers to a gladiatorial show,20 but Cicero arguably uses the term in a broader sense here. Pseudo-Asconius comments: allusit ad ambiguitatem ‘muneris’ et u/Verris, nomen bestiae praeferentis.21 The joke here is that munus could be a gladiatorial show, and uerres (‘boar’) an animal taking part in such a show. This seems far-fetched, and Stangl’s apparatus simply comments ‘errat’.22 A similar case is Verr. 2.2.9.24, in which Cicero describes Verres as a Venerius [i.e. ‘wanton’] homo, who e Chelidonis sinu in prouinciam profectus esset (“had departed for the province from Chelidon’s lap”). Chelidon is the prostitute who was Verres’ mistress. Pseudo-Asconius claims that Cicero alludit ad nomen, quod hirundo, quam ‘chelidona’ Graeci uocant, ueris, id est temporis Veneris, sit amica (“makes a joke based on her name, as the swallow — called ‘chelidon’ in Greek — is the friend of spring, the season of Venus”). 23 It will come as no surprise that the scholia on Terence include remarks on the use of ambiguity for jokes. One example comes from Donatus’ commentary on a

 19 But as Wölfflin 1887, 205–206 remarks on this passage, similar jokes can be found in Plautus as well. 20 Heitland/Cowie 1885 ad loc. 21 The manuscripts read perferentis; Stangl 1912 prints praeferentis with a note that it should be understood as prae se ferentis, which should probably be construed with Verris rather than bestiae and understood as ‘Verres, which is displayed (lit “displays itself”) as a name for a beast’. The meaning of prae se ferentis is still awkward in that case, and I have been unable to find an instance in TLL praefero where it means prae se ferre in the sense required here. I wonder whether it would be better to change perferentis into perferens, which would agree with the implied subject of allusit: Cicero says/conveys (OLD perfero 2, TLL perfero 1II) that Verres is the name for a beast. 22 Stangl 1912 ad loc. Heitland/Cowie 1885 ad loc. do not mention this interpretation. 23 Schmiedeberg 1909, 1122 n. 1 (also mentioned by Stangl 1912 ad loc.) thinks that the scholiast makes a pun of his own here, based on uer(r)is amica.

  Bram van der Velden passage in the Andria.24 In it, Pamphilus’ father Simo orders his slave to tie up the slave Davus, because he suspects him of helping Pamphilus to avoid the marriage that his father has arranged for him (860–871). In the following dialogue, Pamphilus has just announced that he will summon Davus (953–955): SI. non potest. PA. qui? SI. quia habet aliud magis ex sese et maiu’. PA. quidnam? SI. uinctus est. PA. pater, non recte uinctust. SI. haud ita iussi. SI. He can’t come. PA. Why not? SI. It’s personal. He’s something more important on his hands. PA. What is it? SI. He’s tied up. PA. Father, that’s not proper. SI. I told them to tie him properly. 25

One of the comments made on haud ita iussi (955) is the following: eleganter lusit ad amphiboliam; […] Pamphilus enim dixerat ‘non iuste’, ille sic respondit, quasi dixerit ‘non diligenter uinctus est’. He has elegantly made a playful remark based on ambiguity. For Pamphilus had said “it was not proper [non iuste]”, but he responds as though he had said “he was not properly tied up”.

Non recte uinctus est could mean: “it was not proper to tie him up”, but also “he was tied up in a bad way”. The first meaning, according to the scholiast, is intended by Pamphilus but his father responds as if Pamphilus had said the second. Not only does the scholiast interpret the amphibolia as intentional, he also values the use by saying eleganter lusit ad amphiboliam. 26 To summarize, the Latin scholia regard the deliberate use of ‘exclusive ambiguities’ as a phenomenon which can be used productively by an author. In this, they operate in line with rhetorical treatises.

 24 It is highly likely that the version as we have it is not Donatus’ original commentary: Reeve 1983, 156 speaks of the “impossible task [of] reconstructing the original commentary” of Donatus. Zetzel 1975, 339–354 uses the Bembine scholia on Terence to reconstruct the kinds of abridgments and excerption that must have happened between Donatus’ original commentary and the version that is transmitted. For a general introduction to the Terentian commentaries ascribed to Donatus, see now Zetzel 2018, 254 and Cioffi 2018, esp. 17–32. 25 Transl. (adapted) by Barsby 2001a. 26 See Kruschwitz 2010 for a recent reading of this passage with an overview of earlier interpretations.

The Latin Commentary Tradition on ‘Inclusive’ Intended Ambiguity  

 ‘Inclusive’ Ambiguities In Terence’s Hecyra, Laches offers comment on problems between mothers-inlaw and daughters-in-law (198–201): pro deum atque hominum fidem, quod hoc genus est, quae haec est coniuratio! utin omnes mulieres eadem aeque studeant nolintque omnia neque declinatam quicquam ab aliarum ingenio ullam reperias! itaque adeo uno animo omnes socrus oderunt nurus. In the name of gods and men, what a breed they are, what a gang of conspirators! All women have identical likes and dislikes about everything! You can’t find a single one whose character differs in any respect from the others! In particular, all mothers-in-law with one accord hate their daughters-in-law. 27

All modern commentators have taken the line in the natural way Barsby takes it here: with socrus as nominative and nurus as accusative. The commentary ascribed to Donatus, however, comments on the last line with necessaria sententiae amphibolia ad describendam utramque personam (“a necessary ambiguity of the sentence employed to describe both people”). In other words, he wants to read both ‘all mothers-in-law hate their daughters-in-law’ and ‘all daughters-in-law hate their mothers-in-law’. With the words necessaria amphibolia the commentator implies that he thinks the ambiguity is part of the verbal dexterity of the poet, not something that should have been avoided. This type of intentional ambiguity, or at least perceived as such by the commentator, does not seem to be in line with those discussed in ancient treatises.28 There is no ‘hierarchy of meanings’ with one of them being ‘more correct’. Edwards’s term ‘intensification of meaning’29 seems apt: the author is simply trying to say multiple things at once without wishing for his readers to discover his ‘real’ meaning. A similar view is found in the Adnotationes super Lucanum on a passage

 27 Transl. Barsby 2001b. 28 Cf. also Wölfflin 1887, 205 (also quoted by Edwards 1961, 133): “Hier lässt die alte Theorie eine Lücke”, although he is specifically speaking about lexical ambiguity of this kind. Scholarship has sometimes used the term apo koinou for syntactic ‘inclusive ambiguity’ (Aken 1884 on Catullus, Tibullus and Propertius; Konijnenburg 1896 on Virgil; Trout 1923 on Propertius; Grimm 1928 on Horace; Eller 1938 on Ovid), but the ancient conception of the term is different. It is used by Apollonius Dyscolus (GG 2.2.170.20) and pseudo-Herodian (GG 2.2.172.12–13), but their definition does not cover passages in which there is a presence of multiple meanings, cf. Grimm 1928, 7. 29 Edwards 1961.

  Bram van der Velden from the Bellum Civile (4.262–266), which describes how Caesar is trying to surround his opponents, who are called “short of water” (inopes undae in line 264) because they are among “waterless hills” (siccis … collibus in line 263): campos eques obuius omnes abstulit et siccis inclusit collibus hostem. tunc inopes undae praerupta cingere fossa Caesar auet nec castra pati contingere ripas aut circum largos curuari bracchia fontes. Caesar’s cavalry met them and drove them off the plains and cooped them up among waterless hills. Next Caesar eagerly attempts to surround them, in their lack of water, with a steep trench; he will not suffer their camp to reach the river banks or their outworks to enclose abundant springs.

On contingere ripas, the scholia note that: utrumque conuenit ad intellectum, quod amphibolon posuit, siue ne ripae castra, siue ne castra ripas contingant. Both meanings apply to our understanding of the passage, because he left it ambiguous whether [he did not allow] the river banks to reach the camp or the camp to reach the river banks.

Both castra and ripas could, according to the scholiast, be subject and object of contingere. The interpretative stakes are of course minimal, but the underlying line of thinking is what interests us here. The scholiast sees that the poet has phrased the line ambiguously (amphibolon posuit), and does not criticize him for it or try to decide which meaning constitutes the ‘correct’ one. Instead, he simply allows the two meanings to co-exist. Such inclusive ambiguities can operate on a semantic level as well. In this case, scholiasts tend not to use the word field of amphibolia or ambiguitas, but refer to the ‘inclusive’ co-existence of meanings nevertheless. In the fourth book of the Aeneid, for instance, Dido is speaking to Anna (20–23): Anna, fatebor enim, miseri post fata Sychaei coniugis et sparsos fraterna caede Penates solus hic inflexit sensus animumque labantem impulit. Anna — for I will own it — since the death of my hapless lord Sychaeus, and the shattering of our home by a brother’s murder, he [sc. Aeneas] alone has swayed my will and overthrown my tottering soul.

The Latin Commentary Tradition on ‘Inclusive’ Intended Ambiguity  

Servius comments on fatebor: bene uno sermone et culpam expressit et necessitatem: fateri enim et coactorum est et culpabilium (“he/she has expressed both ‘blame’ and ‘necessity’ to good effect, as ‘to confess’ is used to describe both people who are compelled to do something and people who are guilty”). In other words: he sees Virgil or Dido as consciously causing two distinct semantic ranges of fateri to overlap. The first is broadly covered by the English ‘to accept as true, concede, acknowledge, admit’ (OLD 1); that is to say, to declare something having been probed by someone or something else, i.e. the necessitas of the coacti mentioned by Servius. The second is broadly covered by the English ‘to admit guilt’, ‘confess’ (OLD 1b), i.e. to declare something which is one’s own fault. There is no indication that one of these meanings is ‘more correct’: et … et appears to indicate that both apply here. Bene indicates that this way of speaking is evaluated positively. Along similar lines runs Servius’ comment on a passage in Aeneid 9 (197– 200): obstipuit magno laudum percussus amore Euryalus, simul his ardentem adfatur amicum: ‘mene igitur socium summis adiungere rebus, Nise, fugis? solum te in tanta pericula mittam?’ Euryalus was dazed, smitten with mighty love of praise, and at once speaks thus to his ardent friend: “Do you refuse then, Nisus, to let me join in this great endeavour? Am I to send you alone into such great perils?

On summis, Servius comments: ‘summum’ et extremum dicimus et laudabile. bene ergo in re dubia sermone usus est dubio; nam hoc dicit: non debes me nec a tua gloria nec a periculis segregare. In other words: according to Servius, Euryalus or Virgil wants both these possible meanings of the word (summus meaning ‘final’ and therefore dangerous; and ‘praiseworthy’) to be taken into account, and Servius praises him for employing this ambiguity intentionally. Similarly, in Aen. 1.70, Juno commands Aeolus to thwart the Trojans: disice corpora ponto. Servius comments: tam uirorum quam nauium (“of men as well as of ships”). The use of corpus to refer to the body of a human being (OLD 1) and its use in the context of a ‘body’ of a ship (OLD 6) constitute two different meanings of the word: Servius sees Juno as alluding to these two meanings at the same time. Of all ancient Latin commentaries, the Servian one seems most attuned to the co-existence of multiple meanings. Servius also often comments on ambiguities which would fit Empson’s category of when “a word or a grammatical structure

  Bram van der Velden is effective in several ways at once.” 30 An example is his comment on Anchises’ wish to the gods of the sea, earth and storms, ferte uiam uento facilem et spirate secundi (“carry us onward with easy wind, and blow with favouring breath”) in Aeneid 3.529, where he notices that the latter imperative et ad uentum pertinet et ad fauorem (“is said in relation both to the winds and to [the gods’] favour”): it carries the literal notion of ‘to blow’ and the metaphorical notion of ‘to assist’. An intricate example is formed by Servius’ commentary on Centauri in foribus stabulant (“the Centaurs are stalled at the doors”, Aeneid 6.286), part of the description of the beasts in the underworld on which he comments (material only found in the longer DS commentary in italics): bene ‘in foribus’, quia ea quae contra naturam possunt creari, statim pereunt. aut ideo in aditu monstra sunt posita, ut propter hoc terribiliora essent inferis. ‘stabulant’ autem habitant. … et bene adlusit, quia ex parte equi sunt. The phrase “at the doors” is used to good effect, because things which can be created against the laws of nature perish immediately. Or the beasts are placed at the entrance to make them more terrifying for the inhabitants of the underworld. With “they stable” he means “they live” … and his word play is clever, seeing that Centaurs are part horse.

The first thing to notice is the remark on stabulant, which can be simply glossed as habitant, as Servius does here, but the fact that the Centaurs are part horse gives an additional appropriateness to the metaphor. 31 This example could also have been classified under ‘jokes and puns’. More difficult is in foribus: clearly, we are meant to think of the Centaurs located on the outside of the hypothetical building in which the creatures are located (DS’s remark that this is done in order to make the place as terrifying as possible is amusing), but Servius’ remark that they statim pereunt hardly seems relevant. 32 Perhaps he is thinking of in foribus as meaning ‘close to death’, similar to the expression foras spectare, which we find in Seneca, Epistulae Morales 12.3, among other texts. 33 If that is true, this  30 Empson 1953, 2–3 gives an example of this kind of ambiguity in his analysis of “Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang”’ (Shakespeare, Sonnets 73.4): “the comparison holds for many reasons; because ruined monastery choirs are places in which to sing, because they involve sitting in a row, because they are made of wood, are carved into knots and so forth.” 31 Horsfall 2013 ad loc. agrees with Servius’ observation. 32 Jeunet-Mancy 2012 ad loc. does not address this question. 33 The adverbs foras and foris are often connected with the idea of ‘death’, especially with the idea of carrying a dead person out of the house, as the TLL article foras/foris mentions (e.g. foras IA1aβ under de mortuo), although I have not been able to find similar examples with foris used as a noun. Maya Feile Tomes has pointed out to me that the English expression ‘at death’s door’ is a comparandum.

The Latin Commentary Tradition on ‘Inclusive’ Intended Ambiguity  

would be another case of an ‘inclusive’ ambiguity, in which both meanings apply to the passage at hand.

 A Disconnect between Theory and Practice How do we explain the fact that there appears not to be any ancient theoretical reflection on the use of such ‘inclusive’ ambiguities? There seem to me to be two concurrent explanations. First, we may keep in mind that the ancient demand for σαφήνεια/perspicuitas 34 and the resulting ancient deprecation of intentional ambiguity is primarily found in contexts dealing with prose. When Aristotle follows up his precept “do not be ambiguous” with “unless you deliberately intend the opposite, like those who, having nothing to say, yet pretend to say something; such people accomplish this by the use of verse, after the manner of Empedocles”, 35 he appears to suggest that the demand for absolute lack of ambiguity is not as strong in poetry as it is in prose. Ancient prescriptivist treatises like Aristotle’s are in general primarily confined to prose, 36 whereas statements on intentional ‘inclusive’ ambiguity in the ancient Latin scholia appear to be confined to poetry. It is possible that, if the instances of inclusive equal-level ambiguity mentioned above had occurred in prose, they would have been criticized in rhetorical treatises, as when Quintilian criticizes Cicero for an ambiguity in the Brutus (Inst. 7.9.12). Secondly, as Nünlist reminds us, 37 the working methods of ancient scholiasts differ from those of the writers of treatises. The latter are primarily concerned with explaining ‘concepts’. When dealing with, e.g. ambiguity, they can pick a clear-cut example in which its intentional use serves a very clear and obvious purpose, such as that of hidden meanings and of jokes. Scholiasts, however, are in the business of explaining texts, line-by-line. In that capacity, they encounter

 34 Cf. Fuhrmann 1966 for an extensive introduction to ancient conceptions of obscurity. 35 Rh. 1407a31–5: μὴ ἀμφιβόλοις. τοῦτο δ’ ἂν μὴ τἀναντία προαιρῆται, ὅπερ ποιοῦσιν ὅταν μηδὲν μὲν ἔχωσι λέγειν, προσποιῶνται δέ τι λέγειν· οἱ γὰρ τοιοῦτοι ἐν ποιήσει λέγουσιν ταῦτα, οἷον Ἐμπεδοκλῆς; transl. (slightly adapted) Freese 1926. 36 It is true that Hor. Ars 448–9 speaks of a good critic who parum claris lucem dare coget, / arguet ambigue dictum (“will force you to flood the obscure with light, will convict the doubtful phrase”, transl. Rushton Fairclough 1926), but this passage is clearly about unintentional ambiguity: a remark that the text is ambiguous will hardly cause an author who intentionally put the ambiguity there to change his text. 37 Nünlist 2009, 2.

  Bram van der Velden situations which rhetorical theory does not fully cover, but which they still need to explain to their readers. For that purpose, they might at times make use of, and perhaps even devise, interpretative principles which cannot be found in rhetorical treatises.

 Coda In 1551, the alchemist, doctor, poet and scholar Johann Michael Schütz (also known as Michael Toxites), 38 published a commentary on Cicero’s De Domo Sua.39 The commentary claims to be a representation of Johannes Sturm’s views on the speech (it is called ex scholis Iohannis Sturmii Pomeridianis). It is probable that this is the case: we know that Sturm did indeed ask his friend Schütz to publish commentaries on the basis of his lecture notes. 40 De Domo Sua opens as follows (Dom. 1): cum multa diuinitus, pontifices, a maioribus nostris inuenta atque instituta sunt, tum nihil praeclarius quam quod eosdem et religionibus deorum immortalium et summae rei publicae praeesse uoluerunt. Among the many divinely-inspired expedients of government established by our ancestors, there is none more striking than that whereby they expressed their intention that the worship of the gods and the vital interests of the state should be entrusted to the direction of the same individuals. 41

On the word diuinitus, Toxites writes the following: 42 uocabulum est ambiguum: significat enim primo id quod a deo offertur: deinde id, quod est mirabile. quamquam autem scriptores tradunt uitanda esse, tamen oratores illis utuntur tum, cum utramque significationem adferunt propter uim maiorem: ita hoc in loco usurpauit. sunt autem haec uerba τὸ δέινον [sic] generis dicendi. The word is ambiguous. Firstly, it refers to something offered by a god; secondly, to something marvelous. Even though authors relate that ambiguities such as these should be

 38 For a recent introduction to Toxites’ life and works, see Willard 2016, 361–367 with further bibliography. 39 Toxites 1551. 40 Classen 1990, 168–169. 41 Transl. Watts 1923. 42 Toxites 1551, 25. I have been unable to find ancient examples which link τὸ δεινόν to the concept of ambiguity.

The Latin Commentary Tradition on ‘Inclusive’ Intended Ambiguity  

avoided, orators employ them when they use both possible meanings to give their utterance more force: this is what Cicero does in this passage. These words are of the genus dicendi called τὸ δεινόν.

This comment is remarkable, as it is an early instantiation both of the view that ‘inclusive equal-level’ ambiguities are part of the arsenal of the ancient orator, and of the view that there is a remarkable disconnect between ancient theory and practice in this regard. It would be worth investigating whether Sturm’s (or Toxites’) view can be traced further back in the history of scholarship.

Bibliography Texts and Translations Barsby, John (ed., trans.) (2001), Terence: The Woman of Andros, The Self-Tormentor, The Eunuch, Cambridge, MA. Caplan, Harry (ed., trans.) (1954), [Cicero]: Rhetorica ad Herennium, Cambridge, MA. Duff, James D. (ed., trans.) (1928), Lucan: The Civil War (Pharsalia), Cambridge, MA. Freese, John H. (ed., trans.) (1926), Aristotle, Art of Rhetoric, Cambridge, MA. GG: Alfred Hilgard, August Lentz, Richard Schneider and Gustav Uhlig (eds.) (1867–1910), Grammatici Graeci (4 vols.), Leipzig. GL: Heinrich Keil (ed.) (1855–1880), Grammatici Latini (7 vols.), Leipzig. Heitland, William E./Cowie, Herbert (eds.) (1885), M.T. Ciceronis in Q. Caecilium divinatio et in C. Verrem actio prima, Cambridge. Horsfall, Nicholas (ed.) (2013), Virgil: Aeneid 6, 2 vols., Berlin/Boston. Jeunet-Mancy, Emmanuelle (ed., trans.) (2012), Servius: Commentaire sur l’Enéide de Virgile, Livre VI, Paris. Kaster, Robert A./Murgia, Charles E. (eds.) (2018), Serviani in Vergili Aeneidos Libros 9–12 Commentarii, New York. Rhys Roberts, William (ed., trans.) (1910), Dionysius of Halicarnassus on Literary Composition, London. Rushton Fairclough, Henry (ed., trans.) (1916) [revised by George P. Goold], Virgil: Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid, Books 1–6, Cambridge, MA. Rushton Fairclough, Henry (ed., trans.) (1918) [revised by George P. Goold], Virgil: Aeneid, Books 7-12, Appendix Vergiliana, Cambridge, MA. Rushton Fairclough, Henry (ed., trans.) (1926), Horace: Satires, Epistles, The Art of Poetry, Cambridge, MA. Russell, Donald A. (ed., trans.) (2001), Quintilian: The Orator’s Education, 5 vols., Cambridge, MA. Stangl, Thomas (ed.) (1912), Ciceronis orationum scholiastae, volumen II: commentarios continens, Vienna/Leipzig. Toxites, Michael (1551), Commentarius Micaeli Toxitae Rhaeti P.L. in orationem M.T. Ciceronis pro domo sua, Zürich. [available on https://books.google.com/books?id=twdSAAAAcAAJ]

  Bram van der Velden Watts, Neville H. (trans.) (1923), Cicero: Pro Archia, Post Reditum in Senatu, Post Reditum ad Quirites, De Domo Sua, De Haruspicum Responsis, Pro Plancio, Cambridge, MA.

Books and Articles Ahl, Frederick (1984), “The Art of Safe Criticism in Greece and Rome”, AJP 105, 174–208. Aken, Otto von (1884), De figurae ἀπὸ κοινοῦ usu apud Catullum, Tibullum, Propertium, Schulnachrichten Gymnasium Fridericianum Schwerin. Aken, Otto von (2001b), Terence: Phormio, The Mother-in-Law, The Brothers, Cambridge, MA. Casali, Sergio (2008), “‘Ecce ἀμφιβολικῶς dixit’: allusioni ‘irrazionali’ alle varianti scartate della storia di Didone e Anna secondo Servio’, in: Sergio Casali/Fabio Stok (eds.), Servio, stratificazioni esegetiche e modelli culturali = Servius, Exegetical Stratifications and Cultural Models, Brussels, 24–37. Cioffi, Carmela (2018), Prolegomena a Donato, Commentum ad Andriam, Berlin/Boston. Classen, C. Joachim (1990), “Cicero orator inter Germanos redivivus”, Humanistica Lovaniensia 39, 157–176. Codecà, Maria A./Orlandini, Anna M. (2007), “L’ambiguitas des réponses oraculaires”, in Claude Moussy/Anna M. Orlandini (eds.), L’ambiguité en Grèce et à Rome: Approche linguistique, Paris, 103–112. Diederich, Silke (1999), Der Horazkommentar des Porphyrio im Rahmen der kaiserzeitlichen Schul- und Bildungstradition, Berlin/New York. Edwards, Mark W. (1961), “Intensification of Meaning in Propertius and Others”, TAPA 92, 128– 144. Eller, Henry M. (1938), Studies in Apo Koinou in Ovid, Chicago. Empson, William (1953), Seven Types of Ambiguity (revised edition), London. Fuhrmann, Manfred (1966), “Obscuritas: Das Problem der Dunkelheit in der rhetorischen und literarästhetischen Theorie der Antike”, in: Wolfgang Iser (ed.), Immanente Ästhetik, ästhetische Reflexion, Munich, 47–72. Georges, Heinrich (1891), Die antike Äneiskritik aus den Scholien und anderen Quellen, Stuttgart. Grimm, John C.M. (1928), The Construction apo koinou in the Works of Horace, Philadelphia. Kruschwitz, Peter (2010), “Alles nur ein Missverständnis: zu Erklärung und gedanklicher Struktur von Terenz, Andria 954–956”, Hermes 138, 370–376. Nünlist, René (2009), The Ancient Critic at Work: Terms and Concepts of Literary Criticism in Greek Scholia, Cambridge/New York. Reeve, Michael D. (1983), “Aelius Donatus, Commentary on Terence”, in: Leighton D. Reynolds (ed.), Texts and Transmission: A Survey of the Latin Classics, Oxford, 153–156. Rougemont, G. (2005), “Les oracles grecs recouraient-ils habituellement à lʼambiguïté volontaire?”, in: Louis Basset/Frédérique Biville (eds.), Les jeux et les ruses de l’ambiguïté volontaire dans les textes grecs et latins, Lyon, 219–235. Schmiedeberg, Paul (1909), Review of Stangl 1909, Wochenschrift für Klassische Philologie 26, 1118–1124. Stangl, Thomas (1909), Pseudoasconiana, Paderborn. Stanford, William B. (1939), Ambiguity in Greek Literature, Oxford.

The Latin Commentary Tradition on ‘Inclusive’ Intended Ambiguity  

Thomas, Richard F. (2000), “A Trope by Any Other Name: ‘Polysemy’, Ambiguity, and significatio in Virgil”, HSCP 100, 381–407. Trautner, Ludwig (1907), Die Amphibolien bei den drei griechischen Tragikern und ihre Beurteilung durch die antike Ästhetik, Nürnberg. Trout, Elsie E. (1923), The Construction apo koinou in the Elegies of Propertius, diss. Chicago. Van der Velden, Abraham J.L. (2017), Ancient Approaches to Ambiguity in Literature, diss. Cambridge. Van Konijnenburg, Jan W.T. (1896), De figurae apo koinou usu apud Vergilium, diss. Groningen. Willard, Thomas (2016), “Hard Places: Paracelsian Neologisms and Early Modern Guides”, in: Albrecht Classen (ed.), Multilingualism in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age, Berlin/ Boston, 355–394. Wölfflin, Eduard (1887), “Das Wortspiel im Lateinischen”, Sitzungsberichte der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 2, 187–208. Zetzel, James E.G. (1975), “On the History of Latin Scholia”, HSCP 79, 335–354. Zetzel, James E.G. (2018), Critics, Compiler, and Commentators. An Introduction to Roman Philology, 200 BCE−800 CE, Oxford.



Part V: Ambiguous Receptions

Florian Mehltretter

Ambivalent Allegories: Giovan Battista Marino’s Adone (1623) between Censorship and Hermeneutic Freedom Abstract: Marino’s epic on the love between Venus and Adonis contains elements that were judged heretical at the time of its publication in 1623; indeed, the book was put on the index librorum prohibitorum in 1624. In an ultimately futile attempt to render his poem immune against censorship, Marino had integrated an allegorical level of meaning into the text itself and, at the same time, furnished it with a paratextual ‘allegoria’. The article shows the ambiguous interference of the literal meaning of the text, its possible internal allegories, and the external allegory provided by the paratexts, which goes beyond its original purpose of keeping the censors in the dark and contributes to the aesthetic texture of the poem as a work of art. Keywords: allegory, ambiguity, baroque, censorship, Inquisition, Marino

This article will explore a case of ambiguity in the sense of undecidability of interpretation as a result of a specific structuring of an entire text, 1 in this case in conjunction with a set of paratexts prepared by or in accordance with the author of the main text. By undecidability of interpretation I do not mean a property that the text may have in common with all human utterances subject to différance (as in Derrida).2 There are two reasons for this: on the one hand, it is highly doubtful whether a concept of linguistic meaning as the unstable product of sliding acts of differentiation within a system defined by difference alone, and thus entirely separated from any actual or potential pragmatics, is entirely satisfactory. On the other

 1 ‘Undecidabilty’ is taken to imply a choice between two or more mutually exclusive interpretations — a choice that is in no way determined by the text itself. Cf. Rimmon-Kenan 1977, 17. 2 Cf. Derrida 1967, 288. I use the term utterance, although usually taken to refer more to spoken than to written acts of linguistic communication, in a more general sense that embraces both of these, taking into account various theories (like Derrida’s) that stress the similarities between them. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110715811-023

  Florian Mehltretter hand, even granted the plausibility of such a description, this article is not designed to show what makes the text a human utterance like all the others, but rather what makes it special. In a similar way, the ambiguity of the text will not be treated as just another case of the general interpretative ‘openness’ of an autonomous work of art. This notion, useful as it may be, needs to be differentiated both systematically and historically: systematically, ‘openness’ does not necessarily imply complete arbitrariness. One could even argue that, on the contrary, a poem that could equally well be read, say, as a paean to free love and as a description of a safety razor (and perhaps other things besides), will not necessarily be a particularly interesting poem; it could, in fact be accused of vagueness or of having little to offer. There may even be degrees of openness. An amusing limerick will probably work best if understood in a particular way, but it will still be ‘open’ in the sense that this particular way will have to be chosen and realised in the first place — and there will still be the freedom to focus on any of the many dimensions that make a text a work of literature: not just its semantic potential, but also its form and sound and their interactions with one another. On the other hand, even a highly complex and open work will appear richer in interpretations that seek to integrate a great number of plausible observations on all dimensions of the text and their possible relations to one another, even if this means confining the range of interpretations, than in readings that make it all things to all men and women. 3 Historically, one could also argue that artistic texts are more or less open according to their historical circumstances. Ideas about the autonomy of art and the openness of its meaning will probably have to guide our use of the concept of art in general, but phenomena corresponding to either of these can be thin on the ground in certain epochs. The period chosen for this article, the beginning of the seventeenth century, is part of a very dramatic process of ‘closure’ of the art system, a ‘differentiation’ that will eventually produce a crucial boundary between the art system and other systems and thus a situation of relative autonomy. 4 But this process is still under way in 1623, the date of publication of the long narrative poem we are going to analyse. It will be argued in this article that the phenomena described here will contribute to this process, even if the strategies deployed by the author of the text may, on the surface, seem to serve more banal functions. The question of functions raises the issue as to whether and in what way the ambiguity that will be shown in the text is to be taken as intended ambiguity. By intention, I do not mean private intention in the sense that we need to find out  3 Cf. Kablitz 2013, 200; for the role of ‘openness’ in art in general see Tegtmeyer 2006. 4 This terminology is taken from Luhmann 1995, especially 215–218.

Ambivalent Allegories  

what the author experienced in life or told his friends and relations in order to understand his or her text. I mean a dimension of human communication (as opposed to a mere processing of environment perception), according to which we understand a human utterance as intentional. Intention is thus a dimension of interpretation: we read the text as an utterance by someone trying to tell us something that is relevant to us, very probably (but not necessarily) in a consistent and orderly way. 5 Even though ambiguity seems at first sight deficient as to the clear structuring of such communication, it can be accepted or even savoured as a positive element of a text in special forms of communication like artistic communication,6 as an interesting challenge for the reader searching for relevance. 7 In this case, the reader will either in some way try to overcome the ambiguity of the text, or else interpret its very ambiguity as relevant and interesting. We shall see that the text under scrutiny here will try to foil any attempts at disambiguation while offering an interesting textual game to those who are prepared to play in the shimmering light of its ambivalence, be it for aesthetic reasons or for the fun of observing its strategies in a particular contemporary situation. In the case investigated here, this will be a situation of religious surveillance (within a culture of ‘vigilance’).8 In the case of the primary, contemporary readers, knowledge of this situation may form part of a set of shared assumptions. In the case of later readers, both the historical distance, which separates them from the text, and the history of its reception will render this less likely, but it is still possible that later readers may wish to integrate historical knowledge of the situation contemporary to the moment of creation of the work into their reading. If, within such a historically informed reading, a set of qualities can be plausibly assigned to a textual structure and linked to contemporary political or cultural circumstances we know of, it may be inferred that it is part of a strategy to cope with this situation and thus must be called intentional. The interpretation of intention would then be based on a coupling of text data and situational information (but it will still be an interpretation).  5 This forms part of linguistic behaviour as observed by H.P. Grice, in: Cole/Morgan (eds.) 1975, 41–58, and later developed by relevance theorists (Sperber/Wilson 1986, for poetry see especially Pilkington 2000). 6 See the article by Joachim Knape in this book. 7 For a relevance theory approach to poetry, see Pilkington 2000, especially 77–82. 8 This term is meant to cover the many forms of culturally coded attention, care or surveillance, whether benign or suppressive, currently investigated by the LMU (University of Munich) collaborative research centre Vigilanzkulturen (SFB 1369).

  Florian Mehltretter In the case of a work of art, however, part of the intention may be of a specifically artistic nature. Besides trying to tell a particular story or to argue a particular point, or (as in the case investigated here) to hide its more problematic implications in order to evade political or religious surveillance, a text may also be formally well made or interesting or self-reflective — or even ambiguous for its own sake in the sense alluded to above. Ambiguity can thus be part of the artistic intention we ascribe to a given work. Intended ambiguity, then, will be understood as an (at least partial) undecidability between two or more interpretations, which can be associated with a strategy, be it a strategy that deals with the pragmatic situation at the moment of origin of the text or a strategy to render a work of art ambiguous for artistic reasons. This latter possibility may be part of a general tendency towards the greater autonomy of art. It will be the final hypothesis of this article that these two kinds of strategic goals can in certain cases merge or coincide. In the spring of 1623, Italian baroque poet Giambattista Marino returned to Italy after a prestigious sojourn at the French court, during which he had published his long epic poem, L’Adone, on the love of Venus and Adonis and the latter’s subsequent death, and received a royal pension of 3000 scudi per year.9 Marino’s re-entry to his home country started in triumphal manner, but ended on a minor key: upon his arrival in Rome, he was questioned by the Inquisition, and L’Adone was condemned by Pope Urban VIII, himself an occasional poet, in 1624 and again in 1625, shortly after Marino’s death. 10 Various writers were then entrusted with a revision of the poem according to Counter Reformation orthodoxy, which took decades and never produced a definitive version, especially because the incriminating lasciviousness of the poem was and is deeply rooted in its thematic core. 11 Even though this precluded the possibility of an official edition printed in regions of Italy belonging to or close to the Papal States, the poem continued to be printed in its original form outside Italy and in the republic of Venice, and enjoyed remarkable success up to the end of the century.

 9 Cf. Marino, letter to Lorenzo Scoto, July 1615. 10 Cf. Carminati 2008. As Carminati points out, Marino had to deal with the Congregazioni del Sant’Uffizio and the Index as early as 1604, when he had written a poem against Giovan Battista Deti, now apparently lost. 11 The final condemnation was issued on February 4th, 1627 by Niccolò Riccardi, Consultore dell’Indice and later Maestro del Sacro Palazzo. The attempts at purging the text of its problematic aspects were made by members of the Accademia degli Umoristi. Vincenzo Armanni tried to expunge any lascivious passages from the text in 1674, as did Anton Giulio Brignole in 1648.

Ambivalent Allegories  

But the fact remains that the last year of Marino’s life was overshadowed by the inculpation and suspension of what had been intended as his final triumphal publication. Marino was quite taken aback by this outcome, as we know from his correspondence,12 having counted, rather, on a warm welcome at the papal court. He may have misjudged Urban VIII’s own attitude, who, as a classicist poet, must have disapproved of Marino’s aesthetics of rule-breaking surprise or meraviglia. But more importantly, he seems not to have reckoned on the possibility of a condemnation of his work on moral grounds. And this is, indeed, what happened: The poem was indicted as “morum corruptivus ob eius obscoenitatem quam maximam” in 1624, and in 1625 as mixing the sacred with the profane.13 Marino’s personal enemy, the poet Tommaso Stigliani, remarked in 1627 that Marino seemed “unable to enter a brothel without passing through the sacristy.” 14 A telling example of this is Canto XVI, where Marino describes the temple of Venus in terms of a monastery, complete with a kind of erotic holy water and an altarpiece depicting Venus herself, as well as nuns who, when not singing amorous psalms, behave uncannily like temple prostitutes. 15 As I have shown elsewhere,16 this apparent mixture of the sacred and the profane is but the surface manifestation of a heterodox deep structure in Marino’s poem, which proposes a sensualist reading of neoplatonism, resulting in a panerotic account of the world and its perceptibility by the desire for physical beauty. In Canto XI, when Adonis is contemplating the third heaven, Venus explains to him that the human soul, born among the eternal forms of heaven and enamoured of their beauty, will search for that beauty during its earthly existence and will ardently desire and love anything that conforms to it, and this loving search will never come to an end, its ardour will ever increase (XI 37.8–9): “sempre amor novo a novo bel succede, / tanto più cerca, quanto più possiede” (new love will ever follow on new beauty and love will all the more search, the more it possesses).17

 12 Cf. Marino 1966, 341. Marino was conscious of a difference between France, his chosen country of publication, and the Papal States as regards the acceptance of any risqué elements of his poem, but he counted on the effects of change coming with a new pope, perhaps misjudging the Roman cultural atmosphere from distant France. 13 De Bujanda 2002. 14 Stigliani 1627, quoted in Giovanni Pozzi’s comment on the Adone: Marino 1988, vol. II, 607. 15 Marino 1988 (vol. I), XVI 29–34. For this episode, Marino uses a poem by Clément Marot as his main source, but elaborates on the material presented there. 16 Mehltretter 2013, 331–353. 17 All translations by the author of this article. All quotations from Adone follow the edition Marino 1988 (vol. I).

  Florian Mehltretter The Platonic overtones are quite audible in this passage, but the movement described is not the typical ascent of neoplatonist meditation, but, rather, a horizontal striving for continually renewed charms — charms, moreover, that can and must be possessed. Such possession is the privileged mode of cognition in Marino’s Adone. Indeed, in Canto VIII, in which Adonis is led through the garden of the senses, it is the sense of touch which is presented as the most secure means of attaining knowledge, and at the same time, as the privileged medium of possession and joy (VIII 20.3–4): “del vero / fido ministro, e padre dei diletti” (faithful minister of truth and father of joys). And when Marino celebrates Galileo’s invention of the telescope in Canto X, he does so in distinctly erotic language, describing Galileo as a new Endymion who can, with the aid of his telescope, gaze on the unveiled and utterly naked Diana: “senza che vel nulla ne chiuda, / novello Endimion, mirarla ignuda.” (X 43.7–8). Whether the Inquisitors perceived this underlying sensualist philosophy or merely noted the confluence of obscene and religious semantics in many passages, they at any rate felt they had to interfere and stop the printing press. Now, why would a poet specializing in well-aimed audacity fail to see this peril? I will try to show that Marino did take precautions against such an outcome by making his text ambiguous, especially by a sophisticated use of allegory. This does not mean that the allegory aims at a very specific function which anticipates specific allegations, but neither should its presence be underestimated, as is generally the case in research on Marino.18 Rather, my hypothesis will be that Marino knew that there might be some problems with the authorities, and added an allegorical element as a kind of veil or cloud of ambiguity. The inquisitorial readers seem not to have accepted the allegorical reading proposed, perhaps because of their literal-mindedness — a surprising thing in theologians, but perhaps a sign of a new regime of literalness at the beginning of the 17th century — or more probably because of the irritating nature of this ambivalent allegory. Marino may have taken his cue from the greatest poet of the generation before his, Torquato Tasso. Tasso’s use of allegory is, of course, a landmark of his time, not least because of his grand crusade epic, Gerusalemme liberata. In order to grasp the most important aspects of Tasso’s attitude, let us first look at a letter written by him to Scipione Gonzaga in 1575:

 18 The allegories are considered ridiculous or hypocritical by Damiani 1899, Bongioanni 1907, Fusco 1956. Calcaterra 1961 considers them contorted and mendacious, but tries to show that Marino did not see the problems associated with them. On allegory in general see Kablitz 2016.

Ambivalent Allegories  

[basta] l’essaminare il senso litterale, ché l’allegorico non è sottoposto a censura; né fu mai biasmata in poeta l’allegoria, né può esser biasmata cosa che può esser intesa in molti modi. 19 It suffices to examine the literal sense, as the allegorical is not subject to censorship; and never has there been reproach for allegory in any poet, nor can a thing be reproached that can be understood in many ways.

According to this account, allegory is in itself ambiguous and implicit, and thus escapes censorship (Tasso’s dealings with the Inquisition were well known in his time, even if this letter was not). This letter refers to one of three possible meanings of allegoria in late 16th century Italian: not so much to allegory as extended metaphor (the first meaning), but to an allegorical layer of sense that is ascribed to a given text by the reader (the second meaning of allegoria). Being a product of interpretation, this type of allegorical significance is beyond the control (and thus the responsibility) of the author. The third possible meaning of allegoria, which we will find in a later letter of Tasso’s, refers to a type of paratext added to a given text in order to explain explicitly and in writing, and thus render governable what is to be taken as the allegorical meaning of the work in question. It is a type of text that counteracts the very quality of ambivalence that makes the allegorical meaning such a safe bet in a situation characterised by censorship, but it can obviously be used to deflect interpretations from any dangerous aspects a text may have. This genre flourishes in the sixteenth century, but up to Tasso it is a type of paratext written by one author to accompany a poem by another, such as Ludovico Dolce’s allegory for Ariosto’s Orlando furioso published in 1542. One year after the date of the letter quoted above, Tasso refers to this paratextual genre, in which, however, he has recently himself written an interpretation for his own epic poem, Gerusalemme liberata, being probably the first modern author to do so: […] ho disteso minutissimamente l’Allegoria non d’una parte ma di tutto il poema [...] mostrerò ch’io non ho avuto altro fine che di servire al politico; e con questo scudo cercherò d’assicurare ben bene gli amori e gl’incanti. 20

 19 Letter to Scipione Gonzaga, Tasso 2008, 204. 20 Letter to Luca Scalabrino, Tasso 1901, I, 185.

  Florian Mehltretter I have written a detailed allegory not just for a part, but for the whole of the poem [...] It will be seen that I have had no other purpose but to serve politics; and with this shield I will try to cover the amorous and the magic.

Tasso’s concern here is to rescue the erotic and the magical aspects of his poem from possible allegations of frivolousness or heresy, and to this end he uses the allegorical explanation contained in his allegoria paratext as a ‘shield’, assigning as it does a hidden layer of spiritual meaning to his tales of love and sorcery. Marino’s idea seems to be to make use of paratextual allegory in the sense of Tasso’s second letter, which would ideally check the openness of allegorical interpretation and construct a reliable shield against censorship, but to use it in order to create even greater ambiguity and thus render his poem immune to criticism, in the sense of Tasso’s first letter. He combines the two approaches mentioned at different moments by Tasso, into a new technique that can be described as confusion or ‘irritation’ by allegorical ambiguity. 21 He does this by having his publisher print an allegedly allographic allegoria supposed to have been written by Marino’s friend Lorenzo Scoto, but almost certainly by himself, along with the main text (in the form of allegorical prose introductions to each canto) and at the same time inscribing allegorical elements into the poem itself, and playing on the interferences between text and paratext resulting from this. Two examples will illustrate this in greater detail. We have just seen how Canto VIII introduces the sense of touch as the most reliable of the senses for the acquisition of knowledge and as the father of joy, “padre dei piaceri.” The allegorical prose interpretation appended to this canto, however, does not speak of knowledge at all, denouncing, rather, the sensual pleasure of love: joy, according to this allegory, “alludes to the criminal opinion of those who put the highest good in sensual pleasure. Adonis, who undresses and washes in this episode, is taken to signify man, who, having given himself over to carnal pleasures and bathing in the waters of sensuality, remains naked and bereft of all good habits and virtues.” 22 This seems to be a deliberate misreading of Marino’s text in terms of a crude morality. Its irritating effect appears to be, on the face of it, of a comparatively

 21 For irritation as a rhetorical device, see the volume by Früh/Fuhrer/Humar/Vöhler 2015. 22 “Il piacere […] allude alla scelerata opinione di coloro che posero il sommo bene ne’ diletti sensuali. Adone che si spoglia e lava, significa l’uomo che, datosi in preda alle carnalità e attuffandosi dentro l’acque del senso, rimane ignudo e privo degli abiti buoni e virtuosi.” (Marino 1988, Allegoria, canto VIII 422).

Ambivalent Allegories  

simple type, deriving as it does from a reversion of the judgment given in the poem itself. But in order to be able to do this, the allegorist has to pass in silence over the whole philosophical dimension of the canto, over subjects such as the reliability of knowledge gained by the senses as well as Marino’s idea of knowledge by possession. In a way, one could say that the prose allegory discards any secondary or allegorical sense of the episode of carnal love recounted in the text, insisting instead on a more literal reading. Thus, the allegory emerges as less allegorical than the poem it is supposed to allegorise. This may be a shrewd move if the author wishes to deflect suspicion in a reader who reads the allegorical prose as such, but on a reader who takes the poem itself into account, it has a deeply bewildering effect. Carlo Calcaterra ascribes this ambiguity to a novel experience of the contradictory nature of the world itself, to be reconciled only in its representation by the supreme artist.23 There may be something in this, but we shall see that Marino does offer a unified key to the irritating multiformity of experience, and it will turn out to be love. But before we come to this more general aspect of Marino’s text, it is necessary to analyse a more sophisticated example of the disconcerting interaction between poem and allegory, this time in Canto V. In this part of the poem, Mercury instructs Adonis with the aid of five exemplary myths, in order to prepare him for the high task of loving Venus herself. Amongst these, there is the story of the hunter Actaeon, which is performed as a play before Venus and Adonis towards the end of the canto. This myth has a high potential for allegory in the early modern age, in two ways especially: Actaeon, the hunter, who by accident discovers Diana bathing naked in a fountain and afterwards is chased to death by his own hounds, is traditionally the man who is devoured by his own desires, e.g. in Petrarch’s canzone number 23. 24 On the other hand, in Giordano Bruno’s Degli eroici furori, Actaeon is depicted as a seeker after knowledge.25 In the light of what has been shown above, this must be the ideal myth for Marino’s purposes, as it combines eroticism and cognition. And indeed, the prose allegory mentions them both, albeit in

 23 “A’ suoi occhi tutta la vita, in ogni tempo e in ogni luogo, tra gli dei e tra gli uomini, è sempre intessuta di siffatte contraddizioni e ambiguità: e la loro conciliazione avviene sopra un altro piano: in quello dell’arte” — Calcaterra 1961, 112. 24 Petrarca 1996. 25 De gli eroici furori, sonnet “Alle selve i mastini e i veltri slaccia”, in Bruno 2000, 818.

  Florian Mehltretter strangely disjunctive and, of course, negative fashion: the performance of the Actaeon play, it says, teaches us how damaging is the will to inquire with too much curiosity into the divine secrets beyond what is fitting, and the grave risk youth takes of being devoured by its own passions if it pursues its ferine appetites. 26 In this case, however, it is the poem itself that eschews the allegorical mode: in fact, in the canto, the play of Actaeon is presented quite literally as an example of the dangers of hunting. Anyone familiar with the Adonis myth will know that this is indeed a highly relevant meaning, as Adonis will in the end be killed by a wild boar he has been hunting. But this edifying example never reaches Adonis, who falls asleep during the performance, and thus the poet casts the play in an ambiguous light between boredom and the slumber of the senses. Adonis’ end in the teeth of a boar is itself highly ambiguous. In order to understand this, we must consider one last text passage that deals with allegorical meanings, this time not from the prose allegory, but from the prooemium in the first canto. Its tenth stanza alludes to the motif of Silenus in Plato’s Symposium, which had been used previously by Tasso for the prooemium of his own epic, Gerusalemme liberata (I 10): Ombreggia il ver Parnaso e non rivela / gli alti misteri ai semplici profani, / ma con scorza mentita asconde e cela, / quasi in rozzo Silen, celesti arcani. / Però dal vel che tesse or la mia tela / in molli versi e favolosi e vani / questo senso verace altri raccoglia: / smoderato piacer termina in doglia. Parnassus steeps in shadow and does not reveal its high mysteries to the simple profane, but with mendacious bark hides, as in a rough Silenus, the heavenly arcana. Therefore, from the veil that now my canvas weaves in soft and fabulous and vain verse, others may reap this true meaning: Immoderate pleasure ends in pain.

Within the very stanza that states that Parnassus does not reveal its mysteries, Marino ascribes a very simple moral sense to his text. The enormous machinery of the longest epic in Italian literature collapses into a simplistic proverb, which is given as the hidden meaning of the poem. But it cannot be that, because this would be a contradiction in terms. The hidden meaning that is concealed inside the tree cannot be the meaning openly displayed on the pages of the prooemium.

 26 “La rappresentazione d’Atteone ci dà ammaestramento quanto sia dannosa cosa il volere irreverentemente e con soverchia curiosità conoscere de’ secreti divini più di quel che si conviene e quanto pericolo corra la gioventù di essere divorata dalle proprie passioni, seguitando gli appetiti ferini.” (Marino 1988, Allegoria, canto V 263–4).

Ambivalent Allegories  

The comical ambiguity of the Silenus motif, which is already present in Plato, was necessarily suppressed in the proem Tasso wrote for his highly serious crusade epic, Gerusalemme liberata. With his ambivalent use of the Silenus motif, Marino renews an earlier reading of it in a famous comical text printed in Lyon in 1535: François Rabelais’ prologue to his second novel, Gargantua. In this preface, Rabelais first asks the reader to believe that his tales of monstrous thirst and appetite amongst giants are but the outward shell of a “plus hault sens” and a “doctrine plus absconce.” But then, he asks his readers whether they really think that such poets as Homer or Ovid ever intended the elaborate hidden meanings ascribed to them by Christian allegorists. He very much doubts this. On the other hand: Si ne le croiez: quelle cause est, pourquoy autant n’en ferez de ces joyeuses et nouvelles chronicques? Combien que les dictans n’y pensasse en plus que vous qui paradventure beviez comme moy. 27 If you don’t believe it, what reason not to do the same with these joyful and new chronicles? Inasmuch as I, in dictating them, did not think of such things any more than you do, who probably have drunk as much as I have.

The Silenus model of hidden meaning, then, has a highly ambiguous past between comical potential (in Plato and Rabelais) and seriousness (Tasso), and I think Marino alludes to it in his mock-serious and contradictory use of that model.28 In any case, the moral allegory offered in Marino’s prooemium does not really explain the end of Adonis in a satisfying manner. Adonis is killed accidentally by the boar, which, having fallen in love with Adonis’ beautiful body, pursues the youth full of desire. The prose allegory of Canto XVIII seeks to explain the boar as that brutish sensuality which is the object of Adonis’ quest and now turns on him to kill him, rather like Actaeon’s hounds in the play Adonis has slept through in Canto V. But in the myth of Actaeon, the hounds are not themselves driven by sexual appetite, and the hunter does not become an object of such desire. The allegory has to obliterate this interesting difference, in order to state its point. And in any case, Marino’s Venus has a better explanation and, moreover, is given

 27 Rabelais 1995, 49. 28 Rabelais’ book was circulating in printed form; Marino is known to have used rare sources from the previous century, such as Colonna’s Hypnerotomachia Poliphili; and his knowledge of French literature of the early sixteenth century is borne out by his use of Marot’s poem for the episode of the temple of Venus in canto XVI mentioned above.

  Florian Mehltretter centre stage for her long speech on the subject right in the middle of the poem, in Canto XI (33): La luce che tu miri è quella istessa / Ch’arde ne’ tuoi begli occhi (ella rispose) / specchio di Dio che si vagheggia in essa, / fior dele più perfette e rare cose, / stampa immortal da quel suggello impressa, / dove il Fattor la sua sembianza pose, / proporzion d’ogni mortal fattura, / pregio del mondo e gloria di Natura. The light which you see is the same light that burns in your beautiful eyes, she answered, mirror of God who regards Himself in it, flower of the most perfect and rare things, immortal stamp impressed by that seal, in which the Creator put his countenance, proportion of every product of the doing of mortals, excellence of the world and glory of Nature.

Love is everything, according to this speech. Venus proceeds for ten more stanzas to show that every aspect of life on earth is contained in the divine light of love and beauty, everything that seems disparate, contingent or contradictory is part of the unity of this light, and we may infer from this that Adonis’ tragic end by love is part of this overall scheme as well. Sustained by the Goddess of love, this may be a partisan view, but it is so much more articulate and so much more in tune with Adonis’ ascent to the pinnacle both of sensuality and of knowledge described over the first eleven cantos that many readers will prefer it over the simplistic alternative given in the prooemium. But the important thing is that the reader is given a choice whether or not to open the Silenus and, once having done so, perhaps even (within certain limits) which interpretation to embrace. Both the critical reader of the Inquisition and the benevolent reader perusing a literary work of art will be free to take their pick or, indeed, savour the delicate balance produced by the allegorical ambiguity of Marino’s poem. One might even say: the tactics of evasion used by the poet to counteract the vigilance of church authorities, pragmatic as they may be in their original intention, enhance the aesthetic openness of the work of art and become aspects of its artistic sophistication.

Bibliography Texts and Translations Bruno, Giordano (2000), Dialoghi filosofici italiani, ed. Michele Ciliberto, Milan. Marino, Giovan Battista (1988), L’Adone, ed. Giovanni Pozzi, Milan.

Ambivalent Allegories  

Marino, Giovan Battista (1966), Lettere, ed. Marziano Guglielminetti, Turin. Petrarca, Francesco (1996), Canzoniere, ed. Marco Santagata, Milan. Rabelais, François (1995), Gargantua, Edition critique sur le texte de l’édition publiée en 1542 à Lyon par François Juste. Introduite et annotée par Floyd Gray, Paris. Tasso, Torquato (1901), Le Lettere, ed. C. Guasti, Florence. Tasso, Torquato (1983), Gerusalemme liberata, edd. Claudio Varese, Guido Arbizzoni, Milan. Tasso, Torquato (2008), Lettere poetiche, ed. Carla Molinari, Varese.

Books and Articles Calcaterra, Carlo (1961), Parnaso in rivolta. Barocco e Antibarocco nella poesia italiana, Bologna. Carminati, Clizia (2008), Giovan Battista Marino tra inquisizione e censura, Rome/Padova. De Bujanda, Jesus Martinez (ed.) (2002), Index Librorum Prohibitorum 1600–1966, Geneva. Derrida, Jacques (1967), L’écriture et la différence, Paris. Früh, Ramona/Fuhrer, Therese/Humar, Marcel/Vöhler, Martin (eds.) (2015), Irritationen. Rhetorische und poetische Verfahren der Verunsicherung, Berlin/Munich/Boston. Grice, Herbert Paul (1975), “Logic and Conversation”, in: Peter Cole/Jerry L. Morgan (eds.), Syntax and Semantics 3: Speech Acts, New York, 41–58. Kablitz, Andreas (2013), Kunst des Möglichen. Theorie der Literatur, Freiburg i. Br./Berlin/Vienna. Kablitz, Andreas (2016), Zwischen Rhetorik und Ontologie. Struktur und Geschichte der Allegorie im Spiegel der jüngeren Literaturwissenschaft, Heidelberg. Luhmann, Niklas (1995), Die Kunst der Gesellschaft, Frankfurt M. Mehltretter, Florian (2013), “Das Ende der Renaissance-Episteme? Bemerkungen zu Giovan Battista Marinos Adonis-Epos”, in: Andreas Höfele/Jan-Dirk Müller/Wulf Oesterreicher (eds.), Die Frühe Neuzeit. Revisionen einer Epoche, Berlin/New York (Pluralisierung und Autorität, 40), 331–353. Pilkington, Adrian (2000), Poetic Effects. A Relevance Theory Perspective, Amsterdam. Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith (1977), The Concept of Ambiguity, the Example of James, Chicago. Sperber, Dan/Wilson, Deirdre (1986), Relevance. Communication and Cognition, Oxford. Tegtmeyer, Henning (2006), Formbezug und Weltbezug: die Deutungsoffenheit der Kunst, Paderborn.

Michalis Chryssanthopoulos

Multipliers of Ambiguity: The Use of Quotations in Cavafy’s Poems Concerning the Emperor Julian Abstract: The paper examines the process of enhancement of ambiguity in the poems that refer to the Emperor Julian the Apostate written by the Modern Greek poet C.P. Cavafy. It focuses on the use of quotations deriving from Julian’s or his biographers’ texts that are re-contextualised within the modernist poems of Cavafy, so that the reader comes across two very often diverging or even opposed meanings: the first meaning is determined by the context of the ancient text, while the second by that of the modern poem. It demonstrates that the twelve socalled Julian poems can be read as a counter-biography, in dialogue with Julian’s own writings, which offers several entry points in order to discuss the antagonisms, rhetorical struggles, double-edged arguments and ambiguous attitudes of the participants, ancient and modern. Keywords: Cavafy, Julian the Apostate, ambiguity, autobiography, biography, paganism, conversion, homosexuality, rhetorical contest

I would propose two starting points in order to understand the concept of ambiguity within its long literary tradition. The first consists of the systematic but also conflicting views on irony expressed by the German Romantics, poets, essay-writers and philosophers at the turn of the 18th and early 19th century. Irony is an essential tool in multiplying the possible meanings of a speech act. It functions in this manner from its oldest and most basic form, when the intention of the speaker is opposed to what he actually says, as in the oft-repeated statement in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Act III, Scene 2, “for Brutus is an honourable man”,1 through to Friedrich Schlegel’s use of irony as a mode of poetic reflection that “can multiply it in, as it were, an endless array of mirrors”, 2 and on to its subsequent criticism by the later Romantics through the concept of humour. 3 The second starting point is William Empson’s study Seven Types of Ambiguity, first published in 1930. In this essay ambiguity is defined as any verbal nuance, however  1 Behler 1988, 48. 2 Behler 1988, 45. 3 Behler 1988, 68−69. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110715811-024

  Michalis Chryssanthopoulos slight, which gives room for alternative reactions to the same piece of language.4 The study proposes a scale of seven types or degrees of ambiguity, commencing from cases where a word is effective in several ways at once to those where a full contradiction can be inferred in a statement, marking a division in the author’s mind.5 The subject of my paper is ambiguity in the poetry of Cavafy as expressed in the poems referring to the character of the Emperor Julian, who is an outstanding figure for several reasons. Firstly, he is a most privileged subject in terms of the number of poems devoted to any historical or fictional character by Cavafy, as he is given a central role in twelve out of a total of around two hundred and fifty poems. Secondly, Julian is the most ambiguous character in Cavafy’s poetry, and this ambiguity is enhanced by the fact that almost all of the poems in hand include references to texts from Late Antiquity, written either by Julian himself or by one of his biographers, either in the title, or in the main text of the poem or as a motto. As it happens, the quotations deriving from the ancient texts are re-contextualised within the modernist poems of Cavafy, and the reader encounters two very often diverging or even opposed meanings that enhance the ambiguity already inscribed: actually, the first meaning is determined by the context of the ancient text, while the second by that of the modern poem. The character of the Emperor Julian the “Apostate” (Παραβάτης in Greek) as developed in the twelve so-called Julian poems has been the object of thorough analysis by a number of scholars in terms of the historical grounding of the poems, for it has been argued that Cavafy is a poet who pays the greatest respect to primary sources.6 However, while criticism has been meticulous in establishing this aspect of the Julian poems, their mode of presentation and reader response have not received the same attention. Reception is important because Julian was not only a contentious figure during his reign in the 4th century AD, but also had a very contentious reputation in the 19th and 20th centuries, positive when romantic and post-romantic views on pagan antiquity were strong and negative when Christian or anti-romantic influence was predominant. Not only is Julian an ambiguous personality historically, as well as within Cavafy’s poetical world, but this ambiguity is enhanced by means of the narrative technique employed, which foregrounds the narrative aspect: central factors are

 4 Empson 1972, 19. 5 Empson 1972, 19−69 and 225−271. 6 Haas 1982, Lavagnini 1994, Bowersock 1981, Mendelson 2012b argue, in one way or another, that Cavafy is critical or keeps his distance from Julian. A different and sympathetic but not comprehensive approach is that of Browning 1975.

Multipliers of Ambiguity  

the function of the narrator (sometimes Christian, sometimes pagan), the relationship between narrative time and time of action, as well as the intertextual and self-referential aspect, i.e. how the poem itself comments on its relationship to other writings, which often happen to be Julian’s own. Accordingly, my approach to the twelve Julian poems will be guided by a number of considerations. I will read the poems as rhetorical exercises constructed in a manner similar to exercises by Julian himself (his letters to a number of correspondents, or the letter to the inhabitants of Antioch entitled Misopogon or The Beard-Hater). I will also read the poems as a kind of biography of Julian composed by Cavafy, which is in dialogue and creates an interface with the autobiographical elements in Julian’s own writings. I will argue that in Cavafy’s biography of Julian, the character of the Emperor Julian gives way to his texts, so that the human subject is replaced by the historical subject matter. 7 I will be guided by an element common to both Julian and Cavafy, a personal and idiosyncratic philosophy of history and an attempt to delineate yet also modify “the rules of engagement” in this world. Julian was the reformer who wanted to re-fashion the Imperium Romanum, working against the grain of his time – against Christianity and Constantine’s sweeping reforms that brought together the State and the Christian Church. He also was a philosopher who wanted to rationalise the feelings of his subjects, especially as regards religion. Cavafy is a poet with a revisionist approach towards a number of historiographical commonplaces, and attempts to re-write history in a fashion that lends emphasis to aesthetics. Furthermore, Cavafy focuses on the trivial and the forgotten, and re-fashions poetical language by introducing the element of the irrational in a controlled manner. 8 Cavafy’s reading of Julian is anti-romantic, because it does not idealise his paganism, its central argument being that one cannot disregard the prevailing

 7 Bowersock 1981, 101 argues that Cavafy is concerned with “a rather small number of topics” (Julian’s childhood, Julian at Antioch, Julian’s death) and that Christianity is “the common denominator for every single one of the poems”. He concludes that “Christianity was the real obsession”. I disagree. The topics are not few, and Christianity was definitely not the real obsession, as will be shown. The aim of the poems is to enhance the ambiguity of Julian’s complex personality, i.e. the philosopher turned king and the Christian who converted to paganism. 8 In the poem Orofernis (written in 1904 and published in 1916) the main character has his past constructed not only out of what has been documented, but also out of what has been lost in historical research or cannot be recalled — a clear break from the then dominant rules of historiography: “His death must have been recorded somewhere and then lost. / Or maybe history passed it by, / and very rightly didn’t deign / to notice such a trivial thing.” (Cavafy 2012, 24). In other poems Cavafy presents what can be termed as mystical experiences: the unpublished Symeon and the unfinished Athanasios are relevant examples (Cavafy 2012, 331–332, 361).

  Michalis Chryssanthopoulos forces in a certain historical situation. One can interpret the Julian poems as an attempt to criticise illusions in politics in general, and more specifically the illusions the Greeks held until the Asia Minor military, political and social disaster in 1922. Furthermore, in support of this argument, publication history should be taken into account: the first poem about Julian was published in September 1923, just after the Greek Asia Minor expedition, the defeat by the Turkish army and the population exchange disaster that led to the uprooting of one and a half million Christians of Greek descent from Asia Minor, as well as of several hundred thousand Muslims from Greece. However, the poem Julian at the Mysteries had been written as early as 1896, while another, A Great Procession of Priests and Laymen, published in 1926, was developed from an earlier version entitled The Cross, dated 1892. 9 Why were these two poems only published after 1923? The delay is highly indicative of the political reasoning governing the publication of Cavafy’s Julian poems, i.e. a critique of political illusionism. The twelve poems differ concerning their narrative mode and fall into two groups, one narrated in the third person singular and the other in the first-person plural. The first group comprises of eight poems, three from the canon of the 154 poems, 10 one unpublished and four unfinished compositions. The second group comprises of four poems, three from the canon and one unfinished. Cavafy organised the poems that deal with Julian from two perspectives: from the point of view of a critically detached third person, at times a Christian and at others a pagan, and from that of an involved and hostile first-person plural, which is always Christian. The narrative difference between the two perspectives allows the reader to formally perceive the tensions inherent in the development of the “Julian” theme. This is a work in progress, as indicated by the five “under construction” poems, which organises itself as a biography of Julian in dialogue with Julian’s own autobiographical texts and reflects on the mode of writing that pertains to biography and autobiography. 11

 Poems Narrated by Third-Person Narrator The poems in this group are narrated by a third-person narrator; those completed mention Julian’s name in their title, and the time of narration is within his life  9 Mendelson 2012b, 483. 10 Established in 1935 as the first publication in a collection of the 153 poems that Cavafy had published and not repudiated, as well as a poem prepared for publication in 1933. 11 Cf. Liddell 1974, 203−204, on the Marineti-Cavafy dialogue about Cavafy being a futurist poet.

Multipliers of Ambiguity  

span. The three poems from the canon are Julian Seeing Indifference, published in September 1923, Julian in Nicomedia published in January 1924 and Julian and the Antiochians published in November 1926. 12 In the first two poems the narrator’s religious beliefs are not revealed, but one presumes he is not a Christian. In the third poem, Julian and the Antiochians, the narrator shares the point of view of the Christians and refers to Julian’s “false gods”, while the quotation from his open letter to the inhabitants of Antioch, Misopogon or the Beard-Hater shows that he has left Antioch to fight the Persian king and is walking to his death. Also narrated by a third-person narrator is Julian at the Mysteries, written in November 1896,13 but only published posthumously in 1968. Four of the five unfinished poems are narrated by a third-person narrator, namely Athanasius (written April 1920), The Bishop Pegasius (written May 1920), The Rescue of Julian (written December 1923), and an undated draft, the so-called [Matthew first, first Luke].14 However, discussing their narrative technique is tentative, as neither the poems nor their titles have been finalised. 15 The above poems delineate a portrait of Julian as someone brought up as a Christian, but who subsequently converted to paganism. The religious conversion of Julian raises a number of questions that historians have been unable to answer: how devout a Christian was he before converting to paganism, how much did he hide his true religious feelings out of fear for his life (having one’s father, uncle, cousins and brother slain is not reassuring) or out of cunning and planning. These unanswered questions create very interesting tensions if approached from the point of view of Cavafy’s poetry: the unfinished The Rescue of Julian highlights the circumstances around — and ensuing debt for — his not being slain together with his father, uncle and cousins. Julian in Nicomedia brings the sincerity of Julian’s religious feelings to the fore, as does the unfinished The Bishop Pegasius, which further links these feelings with latent or undisclosed homosexual ones. 16 Finally, Julian Seeing Indifference comments on the tensions created by the fact that his Christian upbringing and education have influenced, or even determined his views on how the pagan religious order should be structured. Julian  12 See Cavafy 2012, 116, 119 and 137. 13 Cavafy 2012, 290−291. 14 See Lavagnini 1994, 16−17, about the dating of the poems by Cavafy. Corrections, as shown in her commentaries, could have been made later. 15 See extensively on the issues of the unfinished poems Dimiroulis 2015, 557−566. See also for the drafts the Digital Collection of the Cavafy Archive at: https://cavafy.onassis.org 16 It has been argued, using as a reference Libanius, that Julian’s love life was very poor to nonexistent, as the only recorded relationship was that with his wife-cousin, Helena, who died with their child in childbirth. See Bowersock 1978, 15.

  Michalis Chryssanthopoulos the Apostate is an alien among Christians, but he is also an alien among pagans due to his Christian upbringing, which has led him to view the world through a Christian lens. It is as a convert to paganism that he attempts to reconcile conflicting views, Christian and pagan. Furthermore, Julian has to negotiate the differences between the Orthodox and the Arian Christian point of view, especially because his predecessor and cousin, Constantius, was pro-Arian. Cavafy is conscious of these tensions; his poems attempt to underscore the conflicts and ensuing compromises and thus enhance ambiguity. He achieves this via quotations from Julian’s texts, as well as from the texts of his biographers, and by re-contextualising events within his modernist poems. Julian Seeing Indifference, written in 1923, is the first poem about Julian that the reader encounters in Cavafy’s initially published opus. The title includes a quotation from Julian’s letters, which is repeated and expanded in the first two lines of the poem and criticises the lack of interest shown among the people of the Roman Empire for the revival of the pagan religion: “Therefore, when I saw that there is among us great indifference about the gods and that all reverence for the heavenly powers has been driven out by impure and vulgar luxury, I always secretly lamented this state of things.” 17 The third-person narrative, most interestingly, puts forward the tension created by the juxtaposition of the Hellenes (Έλληνες) and someone brought up as a Christian (Χριστιανομαθημένος). The conflict perceived is not between Christians and pagans, but within the ranks of the pagans, between a tradition of freedom adopted by Julian’s pagan friends, the Hellenes, and a new order, à la manière du christianisme, adopted by Julian himself, who had been brought up as a Christian and had adopted Christian ways. Julian Seeing Indifference comments on the tensions created by the Christian upbringing and education (Bildung) of this prominent pagan. Julian is an alien among Christians, which is something historians have discussed extensively, but he is also an alien among pagans on account of his Christian Bildung. This poem envelops the first thesis put forward in the development of the Julian theme: that the society of pagans surrounding the Emperor does not identify with him; on the contrary, it asserts its difference as being a society of Hellenes that encounters someone coming from the ranks of the Christians, who has been brought up with a Christian education. The poem functions as a rhetorical exercise that engages with his writings and establishes the importance of education (Bildung), the key element par excellence of the autobiographical and the biographical dimension. Furthermore, the poem presents and underscores Julian’s idiosyncratic and against-the-grain approach to both paganism and Christianity.  17 Letter no 20, To the High-priest Theodorus, Julian, ed. Wright 1961, 55−61, the extract on p. 59.

Multipliers of Ambiguity  

Julian in Nicomedia was published a few months later. Julian’s name is mentioned in the title and the narrative is in the third person. The narrator is rather detached and does not identify himself with the Christian point of view, while the time of narration is near the time of action, when Julian was still young. Based on the writings of Julian’s acquaintance and Christian opponent, Gregory Nazianzen, 18 the poem is set in Julian’s maternal Nicomedia. It mentions his living relatives and educators and links the present to his past. Julian pretends to be a devout Christian in order to avoid the wrath of the Emperor Constantius, who had ordered or acquiesced to the slaughter of Julian’s father, uncle and cousins a few years previously, and of his brother Gallus a little later. It is obvious in the poem that church-going, even if not exactly sincere, will not do any harm in these circumstances. The narrator is critical of Julian, but places the act within its historical context: Julian only repeats a practice he was sincere about in the past, part of his upbringing. Furthermore, how can one be blamed for trying to save one’s neck, even in an era of martyrs of faith? The ambiguity concerning Julian’s action in Nicomedia is enhanced by the present reader’s knowledge of Julian’s subsequent conversion: he was then only pretending to be devout; it is now clear he had not been sincere, but was that clear to him when he was under Constantius’ axe? The poem Julian and the Antiochians, narrated in the third person, is developed from the viewpoint of an inhabitant of Antioch, whose religious allegiance does not become an issue, but who shares the Christian point of view as he refers to Julian’s “false gods”. Again, the time of the narration is within Julian’s own lifespan, though now quite near his death. The quotation from Misopogon or The Beard-Hater, his open letter to the Antiochians, shows that Julian had left Antioch to fight the Persian king and, with the ex-post knowledge one has, that he was walking to his death. The poem is built as a rhetorical exercise: not only does it function as an answer to Julian’s Misopogon (as a quotation from this text provides the heading of the poem), but the quotation itself is an interpretation by Julian of an intriguing saying familiar in Antioch. The full quotation, which is reproduced in an abridged form in the poem, stands as following: The Χι, say the citizens, ‘never harmed the city, nor did the Κάππα’. Now the meaning of this riddle which your wisdom invented is hard to understand, but I obtained interpreters from your city and I was informed that these are the first letters of names, and that the former is intended to represent Christ, the latter Constantius. Bear with me then, if I speak  18 Bowersock 1981, 98−99. Greg. Naz. in MPG XXXV, cols. 551 (reference to ὑπαναγιγνώσκειν, ὑπαναγνώστης) and 632.

  Michalis Chryssanthopoulos frankly. In one thing Constantius did harm you, in that when he had appointed me as Caesar he did not put me to death. 19

We can observe a series of exchanges, like a tennis rally, between Julian and the Antiochians: while they argue that X and K did not harm the city, he interprets their argument and incorporates it, with his own comment, in his text. Furthermore, he argues that Constantius did actually harm the Antiochians, as he did not put Julian to death: a reality and, at the same time, a self-addressed irony, as he is referring to the past actions of Constantius who put Julian’s father and brother to death on different occasions, but died before encountering Julian, who was campaigning against him. Cavafy incorporates the quotation from the Misopogon without at the same time incorporating Julian’s ironical self-accusation, and creates a fictional character, an inhabitant of Antioch who replies to Julian, comments on his habits, critical of thοse of his co-citizens, and mocks him. The poem can be read as a response to Julian’s self-addressed and ironical Misopogon, a text that comprises a great number of autobiographical elements, and as Cavafy’s attempt at a playful biography of Julian. 20 One can argue that ambiguity is amplified by the series of exchanges. In the three abovementioned poems the narrator presents Julian from the point of view of a contemporary character, while he was still alive. The narrator pictures him without much sympathy, but also without hatred. He rather ridicules his attitude and behaviour and underscores his attribute of being a misfit among his contemporaries. Julian does not fit well among the Greek pagans, who criticise his attempt to organise the worship of their gods according to the methods of the Christian church; he does not fit well among the group of the devout Christians attending mass in Nicomedia; and he does not fit well among the circus and theatre going extrovert population of Antiochia. The quality of the misfit also indicates that he can be considered a political and social illusionist who tries to move against the grain of his time.

 19 Τὸ Χῖ, φασίν, οὐδὲν ἠδίκησε τὴν πόλιν οὐδὲ τὸ Κάππα. Τί μέν ἐστι τοῦτο τῆς ὑμετέρας σοφίας τὸ αἴνιγμα ξυνεῖναι χαλεπόν, τυχόντες δὲ ἡμεῖς ἐξηγητῶν ἀπὸ τῆς ὑμετέρας πόλεως ἐδιδάχθημεν ἀρχὰς ὀνομάτων εἶναι τὰ γράμματα, δηλοῦν δὲ ἐθέλειν τὸ μὲν Χριστόν, τὸ δὲ Κωνστάντιον. Ἀνέχεσθε οὖν μου λέγοντος μετὰ παρρησίας. Ἓν μόνον ὑμᾶς ὁ Κωνστάντιος ἠδίκησεν, ὅτι με Καίσαρα ποιήσας οὐκ ἀπέκτεινεν, Julian, ed. Wright 1959, 420−511, the extract on 472−475. 20 The Belgian scholar Jozeph Bidez published his book on Julian in 1930, after Cavafy had commenced his own project of writing a series of poems on this subject. The great influx of biographies on Julian is a much later phenomenon.

Multipliers of Ambiguity  

I will also focus on two of the unfinished poems narrated by a third-person narrator, The Bishop Pegasius, written in May 1920 and The Rescue of Julian, written in December 1923. In both poems the third-person narrator is pro-Christian and refers to events in the earlier life of Julian, emphasising his ex-post point of view and the knowledge it implies. The temporal difference between the time of action and the time of narration is established in both poems. In The Bishop Pegasius emphasis is laid on the fluidity of the religious (and other) identity of the bishop: he is termed as “the false Christian bishop Pegasius”.21 A piece of information we only have from Julian himself, in a letter written from Constantinople in 362 or early 363 AD, addressed possibly, but without certainty, to high-priest Theodorus. In his account, Julian describes his encounter with a Christian bishop when he was much younger, on a visit to Troy (Letter 19). 22 In his description Julian emphasises a type of communication with Pegasius, while he is fascinated by the ancient temples of Ilium, but also observes that this fascination is shared by the Christian bishop, who takes him to the temple of Athena and shows him the statues, all in perfect condition. Julian argues in his letter that even if Pegasius pretended to be irreligious concerning the pagan deities, because he was “ambitious for power” (δυναστείας ὀρεγόμενος), he did not harm the temples, “except for what amounted to a few stones, and that was as a blind” (πλὴν ὀλίγων παντάπασι λίθων ἐκ καλύμματος) and, therefore, he should be honoured together with others who were converted to paganism.23 In Cavafy’s poem the encounter between Julian and the bishop is presented without any explicit reference to Julian’s letter on the conversion of Pegasius. The poem attempts to communicate the feelings of a younger Julian who visits Ilion. The narrative is doubled-edged, with a strong erotic undertone: They looked with longing and affection at the statues– still, they spoke to one another haltingly, with innuendos, with double-meaning words, with phrases full of cautiousness … 24

Of course Julian is negotiating his Christian upbringing and his conversion to paganism in the poem. However, he keeps the conversion secret because he fears

 21 Cavafy 2012, 362. 22 Julian, ed. Wright 1959, 49−55. 23 Julian, ed. Wright 1959, 52−55. 24 See Cavafy 1994, 107−113 and for the hand-written verses of the poem under construction see The Digital Collection of the Cavafy Archive, C.P. Cavafy Archive, File 1, Sub-file 1, Item 8 [GR-OF CA CA-SF01-S01-F01-SF001-0008 (174)]: https://cavafy.onassis.org/el/object/4hnk-xx8n-bqd3/

  Michalis Chryssanthopoulos Constantius, the Emperor, and his half-brother, Gallus, Caesar of the East, who are Christians. So he is trying to keep and yet also share what he feels is a secret; this ambiguity is enhanced because he understands that the other person also has a secret, which he may encounter. What is the effect of the cautious phrases, the double-entendre and the charged atmosphere on the reader of the poem? The “innuendos”, the “double-meaning words”, the “phrases full of cautiousness” are the appropriate vocabulary for Cavafy when dealing in his poems with homosexual encounters left largely undisclosed. 25 The unpublished Bishop of Pegasius is a good example of how ambiguity is enhanced by means of an ancient text used within a modern context. Julian’s narrative asks a number of questions concerning the religious identity of Pegasius: is he a pagan and why does he hide behind the pretence of Christianity? It also offers a plausible explanation, arguing that he is “ambitious for power” and therefore tries to be accommodating with those who are in power. Julian introduces Pegasius in his letter to Theodorus and this is the only evidence of his existence; otherwise the man remains unknown.26 Cavafy’s poem discusses an encounter between Julian and a person whose existence is only attested to in a letter by Julian, and adds to the uncertainty of the events by focusing on the body language of the two young men, and by introducing an element of mutual attraction based on their secrets, the nature of which is uncertain. The unfinished poem gives the reader some inconclusive clues that succeed in introducing another possibility, that of an undisclosed homosexual longing between the two characters, which goes hand in hand with the undisclosed religious secret they share. Of course, these elements exist in a fragmentary form, while their parallels can be established in a number of instances in Cavafy’s poetical practice. At the same time, they are ambiguous and resist interpretation because of their fragmentary nature. The Rescue of Julian 27 is an attempt to analyse experiences in Julian’s early life through a quotation from his own writings in 362 AD (Oratio IV, Hymn to King Helios. Julian argues in his writings that King Helios was of cardinal influence in moulding his personality as: … from my earliest years my mind was so completely swayed by the light that illumines the heavens that not only did I desire to gaze intently at the sun, but whenever I walked abroad

 25 Cavafy 2012, 362. See Mendelson 2012, 594 on the subject of homosexuality. 26 As argued by W.C. Wright (Julian, ed. Wright 1959, 49). 27 Cavafy 2012, 369.

Multipliers of Ambiguity  

in the night season, when the firmament was clear and cloudless, I abandoned all else without exception and gave myself up to the beauties of the heavens. 28

In the hymn devoted to King Helios, Julian feels obliged to deal with an early period in his life that was distinct and different from the time he was writing in, i.e. to deal with his early years, during which he was brought up as a Christian. (Why does the pagan Emperor have to do deal with the past if it is not a point of weakness, but also a point of interest for the poet Cavafy?) This hesitation will allow him to underscore the complexity of Julian’s character as someone who wishes to hide an aspect of his life and a side of his character. And the hymn actually foregrounds this complex experience: But why do I mention this, when I have more important things to tell, if I should relate how, in those days, I thought about the gods? However, let that darkness be buried in oblivion. 29

Cavafy attempts to build his poem around the sentence that acknowledges the existence of the past and, at the same time, represses it: “However, let that darkness be buried in oblivion” (λήθη δὲ ἔστω τοῦ σκότους ἐκείνου). Two nouns, “oblivion” (λήθη) and “darkness” (σκότος), that possess a parallel if not similar signification, are placed next to one another, creating a revealing tension. If a Christian upbringing and life is darkness, and the hymn to the god Helios is the way to turn the darkness into light, then the oblivion of the darkness, the erasing of the darkness from consciousness and its repression to the unconscious (itself a determining darkness, according to psychoanalytical theory) is a way of incorporating conflicting feelings and conflicting realities. And what could be more conflicting than death and life: on the one hand the murder of Julian’s father and other relatives, and on the other his own survival, which was engineered by Christian priests, although, as the incomplete Cavafy poem underscores, “this information comes from a Christian source”. 30 With this verse the relativity of provenance, the question of the source, is added to the process that concerns the mode of oblivion and the juxtaposition of

 28 Julian, ed. Wright 1913, 130−131. 29 Julian, ed. Wright 1913, 130−131. 30 Cavafy 2012, 369. See Cavafy 1994, 159−170. For the hand-written verses of the poem under construction see the Onassis Foundation Digital Collection of the Cavafy Archive, C.P. Cavafy Archive, File 1, Sub-file 1, Item 14 [GR-OF CA CA-SF01-S01-F01-SF001-0014 (173)]: https://cavafy. onassis.org/el/object/zgkq-r3my-fqcc/

  Michalis Chryssanthopoulos the darkness of one system of faith to the luminosity of the other. Cavafy is meticulous in his use of written sources, as several critics have argued.31 The question that remains to be answered is how he uses them, if not by quoting and recontextualising. In The Rescue of Julian he offers an excellent example, using Julian’s writings that refer to his own past. It is a time he explicitly says he wants to forget, in order to foreground it as a most traumatic one: that of a six-year-old child who experienced the murder of his father, and his own rescue thanks to the intervention of “the Christian priests” who “brought him to asylum in the church”. Cavafy does not stop there; he places Julian in the position of looking into the past and uses his own words, λήθη δὲ ἔστω τοῦ σκότους ἐκείνου, 32 in order to underscore the incisiveness of the ex-post perspective. Although the story is attributed to Christian sources, it does sound plausible as it would not have been against the principles of the actors. They could not have known that Julian would convert to paganism and try to undo the transformation of the Roman Empire into a Christian state; otherwise, why would one be surprised by “the priests of Christ rescuing an innocent Christian child”? We are taken through a series of mirrors, a system of references that multiply ambiguity by incorporating ancient texts into a modernist poem, because we are in a position to know something more than Julian himself and these very “priests of Christ” and not be surprised. Although they adopt the third-person narrative mode, the two unfinished poems, The Bishop Pegasius and The Rescue of Julian, share the point of view held by the Christians towards Julian. From a narrative point of view and because of their partisan approach they prefigure the poems that will be discussed further on.

 Poems Narrated by a First-Person Narrator This group comprises three poems from the canon, published from 1926 to 1935, namely, A Great Procession of Priests and Laymen published in 1926, You didn’t Understand published in 1928 and On the Outskirts of Antioch published posthumously in 1935, as well as the unfinished poem, Hunc deorum templis, written in March 1926. 33 These poems are narrated by a first-person narrator who adopts the  31 Bowersock 1981, 95; Lavagnini in Cavafy 1994, 167−170. 32 Mendelson 2012, 369, translates as “let there be no memory of that darkness”, but I think that the translation of λήθη as “oblivion” is a much better choice that “no memory”. 33 Cavafy 2012, 135, 144, 175−176 and 379.

Multipliers of Ambiguity  

point of view held by the Christians towards Julian and uses the first-person plural, placing himself among the Christians who abhor the Emperor and taking a far more aggressive stance towards the apostate Emperor. Their argument is simple: one cannot convert to paganism, especially if one is the Emperor of the Roman Empire, as he is not permitted to rule by separating the state from the church. In every poem narrated from a Christian point of view, Julian is the enemy of the first-person plural who narrates. In the poem A Great Procession of Priests and Laymen, the first poem published in this group, both the narration and the action take place after Julian’s death in his campaign against the Persians in 363 AD.34 The way the description of the religious ceremony is linked with the state and its power underscores the role of the sovereign. The poem proclaims Christianity as the official religion of the Empire, which is upheld by the state organisation and by Julian’s successor, Jovian. The historical sources that the poem uses derive from Theodoret, Sozomen and Gregory Nazianzen, and there is no reference to Julian’s own writings. It is significant, however, that the poem A Great Procession of Priests and Laymen closes with a line that proclaims: “For the most pious Jovian let us pray”. Cavafy, as well as the reader of the poem, is well aware that Jovian, a devout Christian who re-established Christianity as the official religion and signed an onerous peace treaty with the Persian King, died a few months after having been proclaimed Emperor. The prayer of the last line is typical of Cavafy’s irony and his acumen in enhancing ambiguity by including an ex-post point of view in the narrative. The poem You didn’t Understand is based on a comment by Julian and its rhetorical refutation by a Christian narrator, quoted in Sozomen’s Ecclesiastical History, which I have to quote in Greek because it involves a play on the verb γιγνώσκω: Τάδε γὰρ ἐπιτωθάζων ὁ βασιλεὺς τοῖς τότε διαπρέπουσιν ἐπισκόποις ἐπέστειλεν· «ἀνέγνων, ἔγνων, κατέγνων», τοὺς δὲ πρὸς ταῦτα ἀντιγράψαι· «ἀνέγνως, ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἔγνως· εἰ γὰρ ἔγνως, οὐκ ἂν κατέγνως». 35

The quotation of both Julian’s saying and the bishops’ reply by Sozomen acquires a different character when included verbatim in the short poem. The immediate response, at the same level of the argument, underlines the function of the poem as a repetition of the rhetorical exercise which was quoted by Sozomen and could  34 An earlier version of this poem, entitled The Cross, may have been written in 1892 (Mendelson 2012, 483) and demonstrates Cavafy’s reticence to publish his poems on Julian before 1922. 35 Sozomenus, ed. Hansen 1960, 223.

  Michalis Chryssanthopoulos have taken place in a supposed exchange of witticisms. But the poem adds the narrator’s comments on Julian: he is called ‘fatuous’, ‘ridiculous’. The narrator takes sides, and he and the bishops become a ‘we’. The real question that the reader is called upon to answer is put aside: what does he find more persuasive, the parataxis ἀνέγνων, ἔγνων, κατέγνων or the hypotaxis, ἀνέγνως, ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἔγνως· εἰ γὰρ ἔγνως, οὐκ ἂν κατέγνως? At the same time, however, a political issue is insinuated: Julian’s vindictive edict that prohibited non-pagan teachers of rhetoric from making use of classical texts in their teaching. If Julian, in his administrative -cum- rhetorical acumen, obliged the Christian teachers of rhetoric to use the texts of the Church-fathers as examples in their teaching, instead of Homer and Hesiod, how would they be able to overcome their handicap? Cavafy is quite interested in the subject of Julian’s edict of 362 AD, as his unpublished, undated and untitled draft [Matthew first, first Luke] clearly demonstrates. One question remains pending, however: if the reader of this specific poem perceives a rhetorical struggle, does he also perceive a winner in this struggle? The poem, although narrated by a Christian, remains ambiguous as to its intended meaning. In every one of these poems narrated from a Christian point of view, Julian is presented as the enemy of the first-person plural narrator. However, is this statement unambiguous? What is the general feeling of the poem, and what does the reader perceive? On the outskirts of Antioch, written in 1932−33 but published posthumously,36 is the last of the Julian poems completed by Cavafy. One can observe that irony has a strong presence here. Not only does the poem continue the rhetorical contest between Christians and pagans, it also adds a new dimension, the use of deeds. The contest moves to the sphere of action. Based on a long description by Edward Gibbon, it presents a fire at the temple of Apollo at Daphne viewed through a Christian lens. The Christian narrator, in the first-person plural, explains the reasons for the fire: because Julian had asked for the temple to be purified by removing the body of a Christian martyr, Babylas, buried nearby “… an enormous fire / broke out: a terrifying fire / and the sanctuary and Apollo both burned up”. The expression “sanctuary and Apollo” exemplifies the narrator’s point of view. The rest is to be anticipated: Julian blames the Christians for the fire and explodes into a rage. The poem ends with a verse that has become a motto in Greek: “Το ουσιώδες είναι που έσκασε”. Right and wrong, true and false, are irrelevant in the area of political impressions and persuasion: Julian did have a fit, he did explode, and that is the issue from the Christian point of view.

 36 Cavafy 2012, 175−176.

Multipliers of Ambiguity  

To conclude, one can argue that Cavafy’s twelve Julian poems bring to the fore the tensions that prevailed in the changing world of the 4th century AD, when the structure of the Roman Empire had to come to terms with the structure of the Christian Church. The poems create a wide stage that allows several entry points to discuss the antagonisms, rhetorical struggles, double-edged arguments, as well as the ambiguous attitudes of the participants. They also provide ample space for the diverging views of the readers to be expressed and tested, as the inherent ambiguity of Julian’s character is further enhanced by Cavafy’s technique of incorporating antique texts in modernist poems.

Bibliography Texts and Translations The Digital Collection of the Cavafy Archive, which contains the works of C.P. Cavafy held by the Onassis Foundation, at: https://cavafy.onassis.org Cavafy, Constantine P. (1994), [Κ.Π. Καβάφης], Ατελή Ποιήματα [Unfinished Poems] (19181932), ed. Renata Lavagnini, Athens. Cavafy, Constantine P. (2012), Complete Poems, translated with introduction and commentary by Daniel Mendelson, New York. Cavafy, Constantine P. (2015), [Κ.Π. Καβάφης], Τα Ποιήματα: δημοσιευμένα και αδημοσίευτα [Poems: Published and Unpublished], Athens. Julian, ed. Wright (1913), The Works of the Emperor Julian, ed. Wilmer C. Wright, vol. I, The Loeb Classical Library, London. Julian (1959), The Works of the Emperor Julian, ed. Wilmer C. Wright, vol. II, The Loeb Classical Library, London. Julian (1961), The Works of the Emperor Julian, ed. Wilmer C. Wright, vol. III, The Loeb Classical Library, London. Sozomenus, ed. Hansen (1960), Kirchengeschichte, ed. Günther Christian Hansen, Berlin.

Books and Articles Behler, Ernst (1993), German Romantic Literary Theory, Cambridge. Behler, Ernst (1988), “The Theory of Irony in German Romanticism”, in: Frederick Garber (ed.), Romantic Irony, Budapest, 43–81. Bowersock, Glen W. (1981), “The Julian Poems of C.P. Cavafy”, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 7, 89−104. Bowersock, Glen W. (1978), Julian the Apostate, Cambridge MA. Browning, Robert (1975), The Emperor Julian, London. Dimiroulis, Dimitris (2015), “Ποιήματα εν προόδω”, in: Cavafy 2015, 557−566.

  Michalis Chryssanthopoulos Empson, William (1972), Seven Types of Ambiguity, Harmondsworth. Haas, Diana (1982), “Cavafy’s reading notes on Gibbon’s ‘Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’”, Folia Neohellenica, IV, 25−95. Hirst, Anthony (1995), “Philosophical, Historical and Sensual: An Examination of Cavafy’s Thematic Collections’, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 19, 33−93. Jusdanis, Gregory (1987), The Poetics of Cavafy: Textuality, Eroticism, History, Princeton. Liddell, Robert (1974), Cavafy: A Critical Biography, London. Mendelson, Daniel (2012a), “Introduction”, in: Cavafy 2012, xvii−lxxii. Mendelson, Daniel (2012b), “Notes”, in: Cavafy 2012, 397−650.

Joachim Knape

Seven Perspectives of Ambiguity and the Problem of Intentionality Abstract: The question of ambiguity leads to many perspectives. The ‘text’ with its structures is just one of them, and that was exactly the focus of literary scholar William Empson (Seven Types of Ambiguity). My considerations go far beyond that. They deal with the seven most important communicative dimensions of ambiguity. This way of looking at things is multi-layered, and the author and his intention is one of the central components of the ambiguity-complex. The intention thus arises outside the text. But must we therefore speak of an ‘intentional fallacy’ (Wimsatt and Beardsley)? One can speak of this fallacy, however, only under a reductionist analytical premise, exclusive ‘observation’ of the purely aesthetic components of texts without looking at the pragmatic-communicative frames and settings. This is a permitted reductionism, but it is subcomplex. Literary texts are semantically and functionally multi-layered and open up many perspectives for analytical approaches in today’s studies. Keywords: aesthetic, communication model, hermeneutics, intention, intentional fallacy, literary analysis, rhetoric, textuality, perspectives of ambiguity

William Empson’s classic work on ambiguity theory Seven Types of Ambiguity was first published in 1930. Based on the tenets of literary criticism of his time, Empson identified seven ambiguous structural types that can be found in literary texts. As a rhetorician and a supervisor in a Tübingen postgraduate research training group on ambiguity (that works from a much broader viewpoint than Empson’s) I have to deal with the full range of its communicative conditions. In the first part of my paper I would therefore like to present a broader model that also has seven components which I call the communicative perspectives of ambiguity. The second part will then deal with the theoretical and methodological problems of investigating intentionality in literary texts. I want to begin with a scene from a romantic comedy that takes place in Paris in 1640. The young, educated noble lady Roxane is on her way to a ‘discussion meeting’. She is a member of a literary circle that meets regularly, and today the meeting is to begin with a keynote on the subject of ‘tender passion’. As chance would have it, Roxane meets the young soldier Christian, who she is deeply and passionately in love with, in front of the building where her meeting is to take place. Why does she love him? Because he is a handsome man who writes her https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110715811-025

  Joachim Knape beautiful letters — and he must do so because they are not yet allowed to talk to each other alone in private. Based on the letters she has gotten from him, Roxane has constructed an idealized picture of her lover. She can feel that: “Christian has a brilliant mind.” We later learn why she has drawn that conclusion when she says: “I don’t believe there’s anyone in the world who can match him in saying those sweet nothings that mean everything.” Roxane interprets these “nothings” in a very peculiar way: “he says exquisite things to me”, she notes, and is thus a “master of eloquence”. This is the key: she loves him because he is capable of expressing “sweet nothings that mean everything.” And our ears should perk up here. In his letters, this Christian talks in a way that we would call, if not ambiguous, then at the very least circumscriptive, vague, underspecified, or indefinite. 1 In any case, he certainly doesn’t speak clearly in his letters. In this paradigmatic scene, the two lovers meet secretly and are alone for the first time. Something happens that surprises Roxane. The dialogue begins as follows: Roxane: “Let’s sit down. Talk to me. I’m listening.” Christian (sits down and says): “I love you.” Roxane: “(Closing her eyes) Yes, speak to me of love.” Christian: “I love you.” Roxane: “That’s the theme – now elaborate on it.” Christian: “I love ...” Roxane: “Develop your theme!” Christian: “I love you so much!” Roxane: “Go on.” Christian: “I ... I’d be so happy if you loved me! Tell me that you do, Roxane!” Roxane: “(Pouting) You’re giving me water when I expect cream! Tell me how you love me.” Christian: “I love you ... much.” Roxane: “Surely you can express your feelings better than that!”

As the scene progresses, we as observers very quickly realize that Christian really can’t do better at all. There is some sort of secret here. In the end, Roxane runs away horrified and frustrated, and “she closes the door in his face”. Let us briefly analyze this anchor scene. On the one hand, we have the young soldier Christian, who only knows military laconism — with its short, clear statements — and who, as a soldier, considers this to be the normal, right and proper way to speak. For Christian, the imperative form epitomizes the ideal of directness, simplicity, and definiteness of speech in battle, where there is no time for  1 Cf. Deemter 1996.

Seven Perspectives of Ambiguity and the Problem of Intentionality  

questioning. Military settings demand absolutely clear speech acts, and this pattern of behavior also serves as his model of courtship communication. Theoretically speaking, his statement “I love you” is a so-called ‘intentional sentence’, which is described in debates about philosophical intentionality as a “sentence about believing”.2 For Christian, this one sentence says everything: it is (actually) true, unambiguous, and cannot be improved upon. In his opinion, it has to be enough, and indeed, it’s all Christian can offer. On the other hand, we have in Roxane a woman who associates ‘tender love’ or ‘tender passion’ with versatile, aesthetic ways of speaking. She even has a theoretical model of ‘eloquence’, as she puts it, and demands that her lover be able to use both amplification and the artistic double-step from ‘theme’ to ‘elaboration’ or thematic development. She is, as the drama puts it, “so fond of fine words and gracious wit”. With a woman like her, Christian shouldn’t just simply, clearly, and straightforwardly demand a kiss as a proof of her love; he would have to express his desire in an inauthentic, equivocal, and indirectly descriptive way, using expolitio (polishing) and amplificatio (both of which represent elaborateness). In a literary context, this would perhaps be called a poetic way of speaking. How great then is Roxane’s surprise and delight when exactly this happens just a short while later. The drama soon comes to a second scene, a balcony scene as we know it from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Christian hasn’t given up. Instead, immediately after Roxane fled in disgust, he sneaked into her garden and is now fulfilling her eloquence expectations in a second attempt at seduction. He wins her back with a speech that puts her into a trance, at the climax of which he demands a kiss. Now, his desire is expressed in a metaphorical cascade of periphrases, in a series of comparative expressions for a kiss, which William Empson would assign to his first type of ambiguity.3 In Christian’s suddenly poetically fluent speech, the kiss becomes a “vow made at closer range, a more precise promise, a confession that contains its own proof, a seal placed on a pact that has already been signed,” and, to quote further, “a secret told to the mouth rather than to the ear, a fleeting moment filled with the hush of eternity, a communion that has the fragrance of a flower, a way of living by the beat of another heart, and tasting another soul on one’s lips!” These flowers of eloquence overjoy Roxane. She believes that Christian’s communicative Janus-faced nature is due to his moodiness: sometimes he speaks semantically simply and clearly, other times he is playful and semantically complex — as is appropriate in courtship conversations.  2 Münch 1993, 13–23. 3 Empson 1966, 23–29.

  Joachim Knape Let’s reveal the secret: Christian has a ghostwriter for his love letters, and even a ghost speaker for the conversation that takes place in the darkness of the balcony scene. The ghost speaker is one of Christian’s soldier comrades: a poet 4 named Cyrano de Bergerac who is disfigured with a nose that is too long. The historical poet of the same name died in 1655. Roxane doesn’t know what the Parisian audience of Edmond Rostand’s 1897 drama Cyrano de Bergerac already do: namely, that only a poet like Cyrano in the mask (Latin in persona) of the beautiful Christian can meet Roxane’s expectations regarding elaborate romantic texts. Both men love Roxane, and both men die before reaching their goal. In the end, Roxane is left alone with her aesthetic demands. This drama illustrates the tension between a text maker’s design interests (intention) 5 and the interests of an addressee (expectation). What are addressee interests? They might be sensory interests in experience, or a rational interest for Erkenntnis, that is for insight and knowledge (or we can call it an epistemic interest — there is no exact English translation of Habermas’ German category of Erkenntnisinteresse). But the courtship game, presented to us in the drama, would be a complex experience in reality. In courtship scenes, a lover must be able to express ‘sweet nothings’ with their romantic texts. This is flirtation, which comes very close to poetry. In such situations, expressions should playfully consist of imprecise, unclear, and ultimately ambiguous formulations. In the play, they are called “little flowers of eloquence”, and Roxane confirms her appreciation of these flores rhetoricae when she says “those little flowers have their charm”.6 In the realm of eroticism, however, there are quite different “flowers” which elevate ‘semantic ambiguity’ to a principle. And this brings me to the second case I would like to submit as evidence for the communicative realities of ambiguity. Catullus’ collection of poems from around two thousand years ago is but a small volume in today’s editions. But the little booklet contains something that has always aroused great interest: many of the poems are among the most obscene in the erotica handed down from antiquity. But that's not all: even in the texts that seem ‘harmless’ at first glance, one constantly discovers word games that refer to the sexual realm. This, in turn, makes Catullus’ verses very amusing — provided you’re willing to laugh at poetry that has a distinctly bawdy character. 7

 4 In the English version he is called “poet”, Rostand 2012, 87; in the French version “auteur”, Rostand 1898, 121. 5 Knape 2008a, 901–904. 6 Rostand 2012, 128. 7 Holzberg 2003, 7.

Seven Perspectives of Ambiguity and the Problem of Intentionality  

This is what the German classical philologist Niklas Holzberg wrote in his 2002 work on the Roman poet Catullus, which is already in its third edition. It’s a book that for all intents and purposes deals exclusively with ambiguity in all of its different shades, as Holzberg sees it. And it most beautifully refutes the thesis of modern literary critics that ambiguity and polyvalence are above all hallmarks of modern poetry. 8 Ambiguity is historically ubiquitous. Catullus’ poetry has attracted a great deal of interest since antiquity, and according to Holzberg, it is “highly demanding in literary terms when it comes to style, metrics, intertextuality and its treatment of subject matter”.9 The sensitive Roxane from our French tragicomedy would have liked most of Catullus’ poems at first glance, because they conceal their ‘ambiguity’. Only very specific framework conditions and communicative factors provide a hermeneutic key to their disambiguation, to the resolution of ambiguity and the establishment of monosemy.10 But as we have heard, such monosemy — especially in sexual terms — would likely no longer interest the idealist Roxane.

 Seven Perspectives With Catullus and Rostand’s Cyrano I have introduced two examples that I would like to use to solidify the theoretical taxonomy I will present here. It is founded on the premises of communication theory and consists of seven main perspectives of ambiguity. I will begin with the three classical constituents of communication as described by Shannon and Weaver in their 1949 model of technical communication: 11 (1) Sender, (2) Channel-Medium-Text-Complex, and (3) Receiver or Addressee. I will project my seven perspectives onto these entities.

. Mode of Interaction Let us begin our reflections on ‘interactional ambiguity’ with a look at the work of Quintilian (1st century AD). In his summa of ancient rhetoric, he declares perspicuitas (semantic clarity and purity) to be the prima virtus, the first rhetorical

 8 Bode 1988; Bode 1997, 68. 9 Holzberg 2003, 7. 10 Cf. Hirst 1987. 11 Shannon/Weaver 1949.

  Joachim Knape virtue of the orator (Inst. Or. 8.2.22). 12 More recently, in 1975, the British philosopher of communication Herbert P. Grice stated in the context of the second of his famous conversational maxims briefly and laconically: “Avoid ambiguity”.13 According to this premise, our hero Christian acts perfectly correctly. But maybe we need to speak of a sort of ‘Christian-paradox’. Although Christian acts correctly in our scene according to Grice’s “cooperative principle”, 14 he is still rejected by Roxane. He avoids ambiguity because he does not want to cause irritation, insecurity, or misunderstanding. But Roxane wants the experience of esprit, she wants diversity, variance, semantic agility, and a wealth of different elements. These are the triggers of activity and the evidence of intelligence, and yes, evidence of art. She demands poetic ambiguity, which only another, the loving imposter Cyrano, can give her. This case illustrates the first theoretical problem, the problem of acceptance that may arise for texts based on differing hypotheses of status or frame. 15 We can think of communicative statuses as lying on a continuum with two opposite poles. On the one hand, we have standard or normal communication in “lebenswelt/lifeworld”-situations (as Husserl puts it), 16 which can be seen as the ‘pragmatized’ pole. In such settings, the conversational maxims codified by Herbert Grice apply.17 According to Grice, when deviations such as ambiguity occur, conversational implicatures are used to try to repair in the direction of normal language operation. Thus, when ambiguity arises it triggers a disambiguation reflex; the listener tries to correct the semantics. 18 In this respect, under standard (or normal) communicative frameworks, ambiguity is seen as part of a linguistics of error, and deviations are not acceptable. This is how Christian sees things. Our Roxane, on the other hand, is attracted to the opposite pole, the de-pragmatized pole. This side of the continuum presupposes a status of licensed or specialized communication, such as occurs in artistic situations. 19 The licensed frame of poetic playfulness only asks for appropriateness, and even then it almost requires ambiguous structures to be present in the work. In terms of production theory, an alternative motto for this pole might be: “produce ambiguity!”

 12 Lausberg 1990, § 528. 13 Grice 1975, 46; Grice 1989. 14 Grice 1975, 45. 15 Goffman 1979; Knape 2013, 14f. 16 On “Lebenswelt” see Husserl 1954, §§ 33–34. 17 Cf. Knape 2011, 10. 18 Grice 1975, 50–56. 19 Petersen 1995; Knape 2008a, 898–906; Knape 2013, 15.

Seven Perspectives of Ambiguity and the Problem of Intentionality  

In the two scenes with Christian, Roxane experiences the co-presence of dissonant speech structures, and thus a form of ambiguity. When two people experience dissonance in their status hypotheses, it can lead to rejection and non-acceptance. In our scene, dissonance arises because courtship communication does not have a clear status.20 Courtship is ambiguous. Instead, this type of communication fluctuates between the two poles. It clearly has a strong tendency to playfulness, and thus to licensed communication. Is flirtation normal? Not entirely. Courtship situations are status-ambiguous, because they allow a lot of communication that is not expected in standard communication. Grice's maxims may, indeed must, be softened or even playfully subverted when it comes to flirtation. It is clear that Christian and Roxane have different intentions, or at least different expectations. Christian sees love as elementary and existential, i.e. as more normal and authentic. He acts based on a pragmatic understanding of standard communication, and his simplicity is, so to speak, the embodiment of the good and the true. His behavior could be seen as obeying the maxim of the moralist Seneca the Younger, Simplex recti cura est, multiplex pravi / “Concern for what is right takes but one form; depravity is manifold”.21 Similarly, the old principle of Simplex sigillum veri / “simplicity is the sign of truth” can be traced back to the Christian rhetorician Marius Victorinus (4th century AD).22 In fact, the entire character of Christian in the play is one of a simplex, a kind of Simplicius Simplicissimus. Roxane, on the other hand, is a multiplex. She devotes her entire existence to the variety of the aesthetic language game. In the end, she cannot escape her nature and leads everything into disaster. So, Seneca is the spoilsport right? I will now shift to a second theoretical problem, namely the dialogue-monologue-difference.23 Monologues have a unilateral structure of communicative offering, while the aim of everyday face-to-face dialogues is to solve problems together. In real dialogues, the addressee is an active partner. In such situations ambiguity isn’t so much of a problem, because over the course of situative turntaking, the participants in a dialogue can ask “What do you mean? What exactly do your words mean?” 24 But in the anchor scene, Christian doesn’t understand at

 20 Becker 2009; Knape/Becker/Guhr 2009. 21 Seneca, Epistulae Morales 122.17, transl. Graver/Long 2015, 493. 22 Quod enim simplex, hoc veritas / “for that which is simple, that is truth”, Marius Victorinus, Adversus Arium I, 43; Engl. transl. Mary T. Clark 1971, 160. 23 For this difference see Knape 2015, 113–119 and 122–125. 24 Cf. Beaugrande/Dressler 1981, cap. VI.9.7.; Bauer et al. 2010, 18f.

  Joachim Knape all why Roxane is asking, because he thinks he has already said everything with the formula “I love you”. This illustrates the third problem as well: the performance difference, which is here manifested as a spontaneous-text-work-difference. In the production of face-to-face dialogues, the principle of ex tempore dicere prevails. Dialogists are extemporizers, and spontaneously create a common, but ephemeral prose text. This prose text vanishes immediately (ephemeral performance); all that remains is the trace of a memory of it. We call this a spontaneous text. When it comes to monologic communication, however, the situation is completely different. The addressee is no longer a partner in production, but only the recipient of a unidirectional presentation setting. 25 The monologist creates his strategically reflected and elaborated text for such presentation settings completely on his own. The recipient, on the other hand, can only listen to or read the monologic text. Even Plato in the Phaedrus complained about the persistent performance of such written texts: they merely exist in space monologically, unilaterally, unidirectionally, helpless and incapable of dialogue. 26 But in aesthetic settings, exactly this type of one-sided communication is desired, because addressees expect to be confronted with an elaborated artifact.27 We call such calculated monological texts works. So, we are confronted here with a question of difference: is it simply text, or is it also a calculated work? And it is important to note that works are capable of constructing possible worlds beyond the authorial “self-experience”.28

. Actor This brings us to the second perspective of ambiguity, which is focused on the actor. In the complex model of communication, ambiguity resides in the actors. The system of language and concrete notated texts outside of the body merely provide the semiotic and structural conditions that facilitate ambiguity in mental processing. On the one hand we have the textual construction of ambiguity, on the other the mental experience of ambiguity. In other words, on the one side we have the text producer, whom we could also call the author or simply the text maker, who is the creator of ambiguity.  25 Knape 2009b, 17–21. 26 Knape 2015, 123–125. 27 Because this artifact can follow its own rules, we speak here of licensed communication; Knape 2013, 14f. 28 Eagleton 2013, 136f.

Seven Perspectives of Ambiguity and the Problem of Intentionality  

They are usually also the sender of the text as well. On the other, we have the addressee as an observer of the sent text, 29 who may have the experience of ambiguity. 30 In normal lebenswelt communicative frames, text makers (i.e. every one of us) occasionally utilize strategic ambiguity for rhetorical reasons (for instance, to create doubt in a court of law). 31 At other times, ambiguity unintentionally creeps into a text maker’s text (error ambiguity). But the maker can also intentionally construct precisely calculated ambiguities in licensed communicative frames as well (planned ambiguity). An intention is a strategically proactive habitus (or mindset) on the part of the text maker, his conscious authorial control over his work. I have to emphasize this because intentionality is sometimes confused with causality in a phenomenological sense.32 In order to avoid any misunderstanding, we should clearly say here: an unconscious motivation or cause is not a reflected intention. This is the sense in which John Searle distinguishes between “the regularity account of causation and the intentional account of causation.” 33

. Knowledge Prerequisites I would now like to move on to the third perspective of ambiguity, namely to the knowledge prerequisites. In the field of rhetoric — which, as is known, is a communicative discipline — the highest regulative principle is aptum or to prépon, i.e. the idea of propriety. If communication is to be successful, the text maker has to base his calculations on a common ground and common interfaces with the addressee. In ideal situations, his or her communicative partners have an equivalent level of knowledge on which he can base an equivalency calculation. This applies to both world knowledge and code knowledge, as well as common knowledge regarding situations, emotions, ideological values, semiotic systems (common language), and intertextuality (common textual universe), as well as knowledge about aesthetic overcodes and logical standards.

 29 In the case of courtship communication “the suggestion is also made that the female role inclines the performer to expect to be the subject”, and another confirmed assumption “is that each participant is in easy reach of both the subject and observer role.” Goffman 1971, 72 n. 124; cf. Argyle et al. 1968. 30 Cf. Goffman 1971, 70–77. 31 For “strategy” see Knape/Becker/Böhme 2009. 32 E.g. Glenn 2003, 32. 33 Searle 1983, 128.

  Joachim Knape If he or she does not have any information about knowledge equivalencies, then the author’s anticipatory calculation might miss the mark. Any divergence or disparity between partners can endanger communicative success, and authors must always keep this in mind. Discrepancies of knowledge can cause experiences of ambiguity. Roxane, for instance, is mistaken when it comes to the question of knowledge equivalence: while she and Christian have only common emotional knowledge, they have no common knowledge about situations, no common cultural values, and above all no common knowledge of aesthetic codes. All Christian knows about is the military and men’s needs. Historical research is unclear regarding knowledge discrepancies in Catullus’ ancient audience. For his part, Niklas Holzberg assumes that Catullus was at home among a small group of literary, cultured men who had the same educational levels, the same extremely high aesthetic standards, and the same obscene male humor. Catullus can easily delight his readers with intertextual references to poets such as Callimachus or Sappho in his work. His recipients are all aesthetic insiders. 34

. Mental Processing Now to the fourth perspective: mental processing. Both the text producer and the text addressee take different cognitive paths during the communication process in order to integrate the text into their interests. We assume that both sides are involved and willing to cooperate. Here again, the communicative frames mentioned above are crucial. In normal communication, a lot of cognitive processing takes place automatically and without reflection. 35 In licensed or specialized communication (i.e. in aesthetic discourse, which is our focus here), 36 however, cognitive processes are much more concentrated and specific. The question of intentionality is particularly important for the creator of works; I will return to this point later. The addressee, on the other hand, is concerned with frame expectations that determine certain interpretations, and with understanding the communicative offering they are confronted with.

 34 Holzberg 2003, 39–44. 35 “System 1”, according to Kahneman 2011, 20–24. 36 Cf. Knape 2013, 14f.

Seven Perspectives of Ambiguity and the Problem of Intentionality  

. Medium Three perspectives remain, all of which I would like to classify as belonging to the ‘organon or tool dimension’ (as we rhetoricians call it) of the ambiguity-complex. The first of these is the fifth perspective, which can be described with the key word of medium. Here we are dealing with experiences of ambiguity that are caused by the medium and its specific conditions of notation. 37 Such elements can lead to perceptual distortions and errors which take the form of ambiguities. What is a medium? In contemporary rhetoric theory, a medium is defined as a platform upon which textures are placed. I thus systematically differentiate between the categories of medium and text. In other words, a medium is an installation to save and perform texts.38 And this medial installation can become the source of experiences of ambiguity, for example in cases involving deficits caused by poor perception, background noise, transmission errors, sensory misperceptions or gaps in tradition and data loss. In such situations, a text — understood as a highly informational complex of signs — can become ambiguous, unclear, or opaque due to the shortcomings of the medium. In purely written texts of scripturality, missing accents, for instance, can lead to ambiguities that do not occur when speaking. Scripturality and orality are phenomena of the perspective of mediality, not of textuality. As Terry Eagleton put it, “a change of tone can signal a shift of meaning”. 39 The ephemeral nature of orality can also lead to errors, uncertainties, and ambiguousness in the saving in the memory. Persistent texts of scriptuality, on the other hand, allow for constant textual control. Our Roxane, for instance, is deceived at the medial level in the darkness of the balcony scene because she thinks that Cyrano’s body (which is acting as the medium) is actually Christian’s body. Cyrano, who orally performs her beloved poetic sentences, has changed his voice so that she believes Christian is the speaker, i.e. the medium. To provide another example: the constraint of theater’s medial linearity leads to very specific interpretations of behavior in the direction of textual specificity or ambiguity. And Holzberg also emphasizes that Catullus’ texts lead to very different interpretations when they are read sequentially from

 37 Knape 2012. 38 Cf. Knape 2013, 19. 39 Eagleton 2013, 141.

  Joachim Knape a scroll than when leafing back and forth through them in modern book editions. 40 Marshall McLuhan, the founder of modern media theory, speaks for instance of a ‘cool’ medium when its texts are “low definition”, such that “so little is given” and “much has to be filled in by the listener”. 41 Cool media demand “a high degree of personal participation or completion by the audience”.42 At the same time, however, “any hot medium allows of less participation than a cool one”. 43 This is why we say they are one potential source of ambiguity.

. Text Now on to the sixth perspective. It belongs to the normal spectrum of ambiguity for literary critics. It is the analytical level of the kind of structures that researchers like William Empson have discovered and codified as ambiguity-structures in texts. 44 Competing offers of meaning in texts are perceived by the observer as an ambiguity in the narrower sense. Texts are thus offers for interpretation on the part of observers (listeners, readers), and some texts offer consciously constructed ambiguities, especially literary texts.

. Code The seventh perspective of ambiguity deals with the level of codes, such as languages (linguistic systems), 45 the image codes of cultures, aesthetic rules of an epoch (aesthetic overcodes), 46 or even the codified rhetorical figures of speech. Here, I would just like to point to phenomena such as homonymy or phonetic equivocation as systemically anchored triggers of ambiguity that have been the subjects of research by linguists. 47

 40 Holzberg 2003, 11. 41 “A photograph is, visually, ‘high definition’”, McLuhan 1996, 22. 42 “And speech is a cool medium of low definition, because so little is given and so much has to be filled in by the listener”, McLuhan 1996, 23. 43 McLuhan 1996, 23. 44 Cf. Knape 2021. 45 “La langue” in the theoretical sense of Ferdinand de Saussure. 46 For the concept of over coding, see Eco 1976, 133; Knape 2019a. 47 This has already been observed by Aristotle, see Bedell 1972, 26–33.

Seven Perspectives of Ambiguity and the Problem of Intentionality  

 On Intentionality If the two sides of communication (sender and addressee) do not switch off, but rather interact with one another, then they also want to cooperate with one another. Ideally, they will even have a common goal and many common interests. The sender must then make a communicative offering that fits within the addressee’s range of expectations. From an interactional point of view, intention is thus the counterpart of expectation, based on the assumption that the offer is then adequately processed in optimal conditions. Niklas Holzberg e.g. assumes that this ideal construction applied to Catullus’ literary group as well. This group engaged in aesthetic situations, and delighted and amused themselves with carefully calculated texts and the texts’ surprises that incorporated the poetic play of quotations, allusions, figural games, forms and linguistic artistry, and obscene suggestions or “sexual double entendres” — to use a formulation that Terry Eagleton used in reference to Shakespeare. 48 The aesthetic situation (as I would call it) can take place in a variety of concrete settings. It might arise in special spheres of exclusiveness, such as in a theater or at a presentation of poems. Or it might occur in individual acts of aesthetic concentration on sensual and mental experience, such as when reading a poetic work. Such frames of interpretation even allowed Catullus to insult Julius Caesar and give him obscene titles; to a certain extent, aesthetic settings protect the author. 49 This is because aesthetic situations are subject to a contract of fictionality. 50 But there are also ambiguous settings, which are sometimes even deliberately defined as such, in which authors may not only play aesthetically, but may also seek to have a serious rhetorical effect with political messages. 51 When poets are persecuted and prosecuted, it is because judges expect such a situative duality (both playfulness and seriousness). In the case of our drama with Roxane and Christian, we are dealing with different frame expectations that lead to different perceptions. The situational status of flirting is ambiguous (is it a game, or is it serious?). Roxane believes she is in an aesthetic setting, while Christian thinks he is in a lifeworld situation. This creates a tension between intention (or strategy) and expectation. Christian offers a confession of his love only in the manner of a standard text, while Roxane expects a work. His performance of the text is thus  48 Eagleton 2013, 123. 49 Holzberg 2003, 43 and 109f. 50 Nickel-Bacon/Groeben/Schreier 2000; Knape 2008a, 899; Knape 2011, 19. 51 Knape 2008a, 901–904; Bauer et al. 2010.

  Joachim Knape correspondingly different than her expectations. Roxane ultimately does not really expect a conversation, but rather a poetic presentation of his ‘work’. And what do the first-order observers in the theater audience see? Both situational ambiguity and scenic ambiguity. 52 The case of courtship in this play thus makes it clear that there are undefined — or ambiguous — settings in which multiple frame-calculi can appear on the side of intention and frame-assumptions on the side of expectation. If the communicative status of the situation is not explicitly defined, it can lead to differences in interpretation or experiences of ambiguity. 53 But what about aesthetically calculated intentional ambiguity? According to the 1954 theory of New Critics William Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley, we cannot even pose the question in this way, because the question itself contains, as they put it, a romantic intentionalist assumption, and “such an inquiry would have nothing to do with the poem”. 54 In their astute article, Wimsatt and Beardsley propose a thesis that became famous in the realm of “contemporary textual Gnosticism” (Eco) 55 of the deconstructionist movement: “the design or intention of the author is neither available nor desirable as a standard for judging the success of a work of literary art”.56 This thesis is based on seven premises. First: in a communicative setting, only first-order observers interact with the work, in places such as theaters. This also applies to situations in which people only read. Second: they are listeners or readers in an aesthetic situation (we can imagine, for instance, Catullus’ ancient club of poetry lovers). 57 We must systematically distinguish such situations from the lebenswelt or academic situations. Third: participants have the frame expectations of licensed communication. Fourth: in the setting of an aesthetic situation, they concentrate solely on a work “of literary art”. Fifth: as works, such texts do not have an intention, but rather only a meaning. 58 Any search for an intention would result in an “intentional fallacy”.59

 52 Knape/Kuhs 2015. 53 See also Knape 2011. 54 Wimsatt/Beardsley 1954, 16 and 18; a first version of the article appeared 1946. 55 Eco 1992, 39. 56 Wimsatt/Beardsley 1954, 3. 57 For the phenomenon of recitatio in literary circles, cf. Hor. ars 438–444. 58 One consequence of this approach is Wolfgang Kayser’s attempt to distinguish between author intention and work intention. Cf. Kayser 1992, 17. 59 Wimsatt/Beardsley 1954; cf. Danneberg/Müller 1983; Köppe 2007.

Seven Perspectives of Ambiguity and the Problem of Intentionality  

Sixth: such first-order aesthetic observers follow a ‘single work purism’: they concentrate solely on the perceptible semantic and poetic offerings of a work, and practice a sufficient amount of mental immersion into the virtual world of the work. This can lead to absolutely subjective punctum interpretations, as Roland Barthes called them. 60 Seventh: ‘work purists’ with an awareness for art work try to situationally put themselves in a purely aesthetic attitude of expectation that is correlated with a corresponding expectational horizon.61 Following Pierre Bourdieu, we could call this a transient and situation-dependent habitus of aesthetic communication, or the temporary habitus of the aesthetic observer, which requires a kind of purism of interest. Such addressees want ambiguity games. At this point, we need to pose the question of whether all literary readers actually have a purity of interest, exclusively aesthetic expectations, and whether they are entirely immanentist and reductionist, concentrated solely on the poetic side of works. Is such a reductionism a realistic premise? And what happens if the work itself plays with strategically applied ambiguity, for instance with ambiguities of identity? Observers are sometimes provoked by intertextual deixis to an external referent and challenged to establish connections to real-world references through disambiguation. Such elements are clearly present in Catullus’ work: he plays with allusion, explicitly alludes to politicians such as Caesear (whom he obscenely humiliates), and establishes historical references that lead the listeners and readers down different paths and out of the aesthetic situation. Even the internal intrigue of our Cyrano drama is also about one question: who is speaking? 62 The textual Gnosticism initiated by Wimsatt/Beardsley and others has, as Umberto Eco states in 1992, produced “radical reader-oriented theories of interpretation”. 63 Eco criticizes the associated idea of the omnipotence of the reader and his boundless readings. He rehabilitates the intention and stresses that professional “interpreting” is not only an individual “using” literature, 64 but a socially situated interpretation that assumes “that there are somewhere criteria for limiting interpretation”.65 When we think of our communication model with its  60 For “punctum interpretation” versus “studium interpretation” see Barthes 2000, 25–28 and 49–59. 61 For more on the concept of “expectation horizon”, see Jauß 1970; Hawthorne 2000, 155 and 295f. 62 Cf. Holzberg 2003, 11–14; Knape 2008b. 63 Eco 1992, 40. 64 Eco 1988. 65 Eco 1992, 40.

  Joachim Knape three instances from left to right (sender, channel, recipient), deconstruction accentuated only the right side of the model with the reader (intentio lectoris). Eco, on the other hand, wants at least to grant the work — in the middle of the model — its demands on the reader (intentio operis). The rhetorical approach goes even further. It is model-left oriented and programmatically asks for the author/orator (intentio auctoris), even if this often becomes a difficult methodological challenge. As a work, a text can also become absolute and auratic. 66 In such cases, its intentionally constructed poetic ambiguities become highly valuable: they are no longer defects, but rather a hallmark of quality. Indeed, many authors almost force us to draw historical and lifeworldly connections with their ambiguities, to shift from the game to the realm of the real, and to activate our world knowledge. Such text makers work with the poetic-facticity paradox and use ambiguities to convey hidden messages for the lebenswelt. 67 Quintilian, for instance, highlighted cases of satirical criticism of tyranny as an important function of ambiguity. 68 In these cases, the text maker’s design interest is itself ambiguous, and as a result, the observer’s expectation horizon must expand if he is to do justice to the complex offerings of the work. In other words, the observer is provoked to change or diversify his habitus. This fits with my approach as a rhetorician. I call it rhetorical literary analysis, which examines the messages of communicators in aesthetic frames.69 As we have seen, three analytical categories are particularly important in such an analysis: the actor as text maker and observer, his perspective, and his auctorial, intertextual corpus as a multifaceted instrument of communication (his work and its epitexts). I also consider it quite realistic to assume that there is a double frame in many cases of first-order literary observation. It is Roxane’s dream, and Catullus’ wild masquerade also deals with it. He too portrays himself as different speaking personae (the real historical Catullus, the purely literary Catullus, Catullus as Lesbia or Catullus as Lesbius, etc.). Under the conditions of a double frame in a double situation, his audience understands double, or multiple meanings. In such cases, the audience’s omnipresent world knowledge is the best possible aid to comprehension.

 66 For the term “work”, see Knape 2008a, 896f.; Knape 2009a; Knape 2019b, 7f. 67 Knape 2011, 7. 68 Cf. Bauer et al. 2010. 69 Knape 2013, 167–180.

Seven Perspectives of Ambiguity and the Problem of Intentionality  

As Ogden and Richards formulate it in their 1923 book The Meaning of Meaning: “By leaving out essential elements in the language situation we easily raise problems and difficulties which vanish when the whole transaction is considered in greater detail”. 70 And history shows that text makers and text observers do this quite often; they regularly assume situations to be both aesthetic and rhetorical, i.e. both a mere textual game and the construction of a worldly message. When such ambiguities later lead to accusations, trials, and banishments — such as in the case of the Roman poet Ovid — poets like to retreat back to the purely aesthetic (i.e. non-binding) position in order to protect and defend themselves, and the presence of multiple frames is denied.71 Intention resides in the text maker, and experiences of ambiguity in the addressee. They are the result of an uncertain observation. But who is doing the observing? On the addressee side of the communicative model, we are confronted by a cascade of observations, the various levels of which we can classify as different experiences of ambiguity and diverse reactions to ambiguity. At the lowest level, we find the virtually involved zero-order observer of communication within the possible world of the fictional drama. This includes our Roxane as a theatrical figure. 72 She considers courtship situations to be aesthetic situations. That’s not quite wrong, but it's also not quite right. That is why she does not expect to be confronted with a simple text, but rather with elaborate statements that have the status of something more like an (artistic) work. And she observes in the anchor scene how poor Christian is unable to deliver either spontaneously or deliberately. Only the ghost speaker Cyrano, trained as a poet, is able to create an artistic work as Christian’s persona in the balcony scene. In the end, Roxane experiences behavioral ambiguity, or an ambiguity of identity, in Christian which results from situational ambiguity: Christian surprises her with his contradictory speech behavior. As a result, Roxane has an irritating and dissonant experience. But this is not the case for the historical spectators of the drama in the year 1897, who are involved in the world of theatrical communication. In accordance with some systems theorists, we call these factual spectators first-order observers. 73 They know more, because in the aesthetic situation of the theater they are

 70 Ogden/Richards 1923, 9. 71 Cf. Knape 2011, 7–11. 72 “Whoever loves has a prime interest in finding out whether his/her lover (still) loves. […] Modern art can be understood only if we recognize how artists use their means, that is, how they observe what they do”, Luhmann 2012, 225. 73 Goffman 1971, 70–77; Foerster 1981.

  Joachim Knape able to observe the more complex context of deception playing out on stage, and are amused and delighted by it. They thus have an experience of fiction, but no experience of ambiguity, because they know more than the dramatis personae. Finally comes the question of whether there are also second-order observers. And the answer is yes, there are: 74 they are the people who later professionally observe the historical observers of performances, e.g. in the theater. This includes, for example, the modern academic community that analyzes Catullus’ works from a historical distance. Second-order observers find themselves in other types of situations, such as in studium situations. According to Holzberg’s findings, for instance, these academic observers of Catullus’s writings have come to absolutely contradictory reconstructions and interpretations. This is a prime example of what I would like to call epistemological ambiguity, and it is the result of ambiguous hermeneutics. Some researchers come to conclusions that support Holzberg's positions. 75 Others are at a distance from his theses. Holzberg’s critics confirm such ambiguity, for example when one of them writes that readers should “definitely know” Holzberg’s book, “but not read it as the only book on Catullus”. 76 Thus, in the case of Catullus epistemological ambiguity continues. As Holzberg wrote in 2002, the interpretations in the last hundred years of research on Catullus had been the victim of a “philology dominated by wishful thinking,” that was characterized by a “Victorian prudery” that “interpreted away” the sexual ambiguity and obscenity of Catullus’ body of work. 77 For most of these second-order observers, “repression” and “romantic infatuation” had been at work, which transformed Catullus into a “good bourgeois man” according to the sexual ideals of the 19th century. 78 Holzberg himself is a second-order observer, but he sees something differently than the others in Catullus’ works. For him, Catullus’ work is not a “critique of morals”, but rather a purely entertaining offering, a merry literary game with sexually unequivocal denotations and ambiguous connotations. 79

 74 “One researcher observes what other researchers observe,” Luhmann 2012, 224. “Whatever one might think of this, there is at any rate also the possibility of second-order observation, observation of society as an observing system. And the second-order observer can also see less and sees differently than the observed observer,” Luhmann 2013, 329. 75 E.g. Thomas 1982; Thomas 1993; Kirstein 2017. 76 Lobe 2002, 223. 77 Holzberg 2003, 7, 9, 35. 78 Holzberg 2003, 7. 79 Holzberg 2003, 149, 191–198.

Seven Perspectives of Ambiguity and the Problem of Intentionality  

Wimsatt and Beardsley say that “the poem is not the critic’s own and not the author’s”, because “the poem belongs to the public”. 80 While this is true because we are dealing with texts that have the status of (artistic) works, when it comes to second-order observers we are dealing with a variety of interests. Due to their specific social role, these observers have a complex scholarly Erkenntnisinteresse, and not just an exclusively personal interest in aesthetic experience with punctum interpretations, like some first-order observers. The Trends in Classics Thessaloniki conference of 2019 also took place in a setting of the study situation type, but the participants were third-order observers, because they observed the academic observers of the second-order observation, too. And in doing so, they experienced contradictory academic statements from which we can only draw one conclusion: they dealt with scholastic ambiguity. The observers of the second or third order find themselves in an academic situation, and thus, ex officio, usually seek to carry out complex, historically informed studium interpretations, as Roland Barthes called it. 81 Overall, we do not see a purism of interest for the individual work, but rather a variety of interests and intertextual perspectives (intertextual deixis). We look for relevant paratexts and epitexts, as Gérard Genette calls them, (for instance, letters by the authors),82 in order to arrive at complex images. Even if there are no direct epitexts, and a given solitary work remains a riddle, the work also exists within the context of historical discourse, which literary critics include in their analyses. They also look for intention as a sediment in the text. All decisions regarding genre, for example, are intentional, part of a textstrategy, and leave traces in the structure of a text which can be interpreted as the sediment of intention. Hypotheses about intention can later seek to explain the existence of certain structures (such as clear ambiguities) in a text. Of course, such historical explanations of the presence of ambiguity do not explain the entire semantics of a given work. In the best scenarios, further sources can help with extended interpretation. Multi-perspectivism deals with inquiries with varying degrees of complexity. So, it is not about the “return of the author” to philological hermeneutics at any price, but rather about a diversity of perspectives. 83 Of course it is possible to analytically ignore the question of whether the structure of a work is the sediment  80 Wimsatt/Beardsley 1954, 5. 81 Cf. N. 60. 82 Genette 1997. 83 Spoerhase 2007, 448.

  Joachim Knape of a psychological process. But within the extended academic frame, an exclusively aesthetic and absolutely isolated observation of a work represents a degree of reduction. Nevertheless — and I want to emphasize this point — observers can always only limit themselves to one frame of understanding, and such work purism and observational reductionism is also a legitimate approach. As Terry Eagleton has pointed out, we often have no other choice, because “authors may have long forgotten what they intended a poem or story to mean”. 84 And in many cases, the author is unknown anyway. I will come to my conclusion. In 1936, Ivor Richards wrote that scientific rhetoric is “a study of misunderstanding and its remedies”. 85 We have seen here that the source of misunderstanding is a cultural universal, namely ambiguity. When we humans interpret something — not just texts — then ambiguity usually arises; we thus learn the techniques of disambiguation early on in life. Theoretically then, it is sensible to accept the fact that there are a plurality of perspectives.

Bibliography Texts and Translations Rostand, Edmond (1898), Cyrano de Bergerac. Comédie héroïque en cinq actes en vers [Représentée à Paris, sur le Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin, le 28 décembre 1897], Paris. Rostand, Edmond (2012 [1898]), Cyrano de Bergerac. A Heroic Comedy in Five Acts, transl. Lowell Blair, with an Introduction by Eteel Lawson and a New Afterword by Cynthia B. Kerr, London. Seneca: Letters on Ethics, transl. Margaret Graver/Anthony A. Long (2015), Chicago/London. Marius Victorinus (1971), “Adversus Arium”, in: Marii Victorini opera. 1. Opera theologica, ed. Paul Henry/Pierre Hadot, Vienna. Marius Victorinus (1981), “Adversus Arium”, in: Marius Victorinus: Theological Treatises on the Trinity, transl. Mary T. Clark, Washington DC.

Books and Articles Argyle, Michael et al. (1968), “The Effects of Visibility on Interaction in a Dyad”, Human Relations 21, 3–17. Barthes, Roland (2000), Camera lucida. Reflections on Photography, London. [French original 1980]

 84 Eagleton 2013, 135. 85 Richards 1936, 3; cf. Knape 2013, 179.

Seven Perspectives of Ambiguity and the Problem of Intentionality  

Bauer, Matthias et al. (2010), “Dimensionen der Ambiguität”, LiLi. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik 40, No 158, 7–75. Beaugrande, Robert-Alain de/Dressler, Wolfgang Ulrich (1981), Introduction to Text Linguistics, London/New York. [German original 1972] Becker, Nils (2009), Überzeugen im erotischen Partnerwerbungsgespräch, Berlin. Bedell, William (1972), Ambiguity in Greek Literature. Studies in Theory and Practice, New York/ London. Bode, Christoph (1988), Ästhetik der Ambiguität. Zur Funktion und Bedeutung von Mehrdeutigkeit in der Literatur der Moderne, Tübingen. Bode, Christoph (1997), “Ambiguität”, in: Klaus Weimar/Harald Fricke/Jan-Dirk Müller (eds.), Reallexikon der deutschen Literaturwissenschaft, Vol. 1, Berlin etc., 67–70. Danneberg, Lutz/Müller, Hans-Harald (1983), “Der ‚intentionale Fehlschluss‘ ein Dogma? Systematischer Forschungsbericht zur Kontroverse um eine intentionalistische Konzeption in den Textwissenschaften”, Zeitschrift für allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 14, 103–137 [part 1] and 376–411 [part 2]. Deemter, Kees van (1996), Semantic Ambiguity and Underspecification, Stanford CA. Eagleton, Terry (2013), How to Read Literature, New Haven/London. Eco, Umberto (1976), A Theory of Semiotics, Bloomington IN/London. Eco, Umberto (1988), “Intentio lectoris: The State of the Art”, Differentia 2, 147–168. Eco, Umberto (1992), “Interpretation and History”, in: Umberto Eco with Richard Rorty/Jonathan Culler/Christine Brooke-Rose, Interpretation and Overinterpretation, ed. Stefan Collini, Cambridge, 23–43. Empson, William (111966), Seven Types of Ambiguity, New York. [11930] Foerster, Heinz von (1981), Observing Systems, Seaside CA. Genette, Gérard (1997), Paratexts. Thresholds of Interpretation, Cambridge MA. [French original 1987] Glenn, Philipp (2003), Laughter in Interaction, New York. Goffman, Erving (21971), Strategic Interaction, Philadelphia. [11969] Goffman, Erving (1979), “Footing”, Semiotica 29, 1‒29. Grice, Herbert P. (1975), “Logic and Conversation” [1967], in: Peter Cole/Jerry L. Morgan (eds.), Syntax and Semantics, Vol. 3, New York/San Francisco/London, 41–58. Grice, Herbert P. (1989), Studies in the Way of Words, Cambridge MA/London. Hawthorne, Jeremy (42000), A Glossary of Contemporary Literary Theory, New York. Hirst, Graeme (1987), Semantic Interpretation and the Resolution of Ambiguity, Cambridge MA. Holzberg, Niklas (32003), Catull. Der Dichter und sein erotisches Werk, Munich. [12002] Husserl, Edmund (1954), Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie: eine Einleitung in die phänomenologische Philosophie (a 1936 unfinished book, Dordrecht). Jauß, Hans Robert (1970), “Literaturgeschichte als Provokation” [1967], in: Hans Robert Jauß, Literaturgeschichte als Provokation, Frankfurt M., 144–207. Kahnemann, Daniel (2011), Thinking Fast and Slow, New York. Kayser, Wolfgang (201992), Das sprachliche Kunstwerk. Eine Einführung in die Literaturwissenschaft, Tübingen/Basel. [11948] Kirstein, Robert (2017), “Violence in an Erotic Landscape. Catullus, Caesar, and the Borders of Empire and Existence (carm. 11)”, in: Michael Champion/Lara O’Sullivan (eds.), Cultural Perceptions of Violence in the Hellenistic World, London/New York, 191–207.

  Joachim Knape Knape, Joachim (2008a), “Rhetorik der Künste”, in: Ulla Fix/Andreas Gardt/Joachim Knape (eds.), Rhetorik und Stilistik/Rhetoric and Stylistics. Ein internationales Handbuch historischer und systematischer Forschung. An international Handbook of Historical and Systematic Research, Vol. 1, Berlin/New York, 894–928. Knape, Joachim (2008b), “Wer spricht? Rhetorische Stimmen und anthropologische Modelle in Sebastian Brants Narrenschiff”, in: Hans-Gert Roloff/Jean-Marie Valentin/Volkshard Wels (eds.), Sebastian Brant (1457–1521), Berlin, 267–298. Knape, Joachim (2009a), “Werk, Bildtext und Medium in agonaler Kunstrhetorik”, in: Sabine Heiser/Christiane Holm (eds.), Gedächtnisparagone — Intermermediale Konstellationen, Göttingen, 79−91. Knape, Joachim (2009b), “Rhetorik des Gesprächs”, in: Joachim Knape (ed.), Rhetorik im Gespräch. Ergänzt um Beiträge zum Tübinger Courtship-Rhetorik-Projekt, Berlin, 13–52. Knape, Joachim (2011), “Zur Problematik literarischer Rhetorik am Beispiel Thomas Bernhards”, in: Joachim Knape/Olaf Kramer (eds.), Rhetorik und Sprachkunst bei Thomas Bernhard, Würzburg, 5–24. Knape, Joachim (2012), “Duale Performanz in Rom”, in: Felix Mundt (ed.), Kommunikationsräume im kaiserzeitlichen Rom, Berlin/Boston, 123–142. Knape, Joachim (2013), Modern Rhetoric in Culture, Arts, and Media: 13 Essays, Berlin/Boston. Knape, Joachim (2015), “Von der intendierten Ambiguität in die Aporie. Monologische und dialogische Erkenntniswege am Beispiel von Platons ‘Hippias Minor’”, in: Susanne Winkler (ed.), Ambiguity. Language and Communication, Berlin/Munich/Boston, 111–154. Knape, Joachim (2019a), “Ästhetische Relativitätstheorie”, in: Annette Gerok-Reiter et al. (eds.), Ästhetische Reflexionsfiguren in der Vormoderne, Heidelberg, 67–107. Knape, Joachim (2019b), Die Dinge. Ihr Bild, ihr Design und ihre Rhetorik. Mit den Stillleben von Heinrich Müller Basel, Wiesbaden. Knape, Joachim (2021), “Radical Text Theory and Textual Ambiguity. With two Analyses of Dadaist Anti-Text-Strategies”, in: Matthias Bauer/Angelika Zirker (eds.), Strategies of Ambiguity, London. Knape, Joachim/Becker, Nils/Böhme, Katie (2009), “Strategie”, in: Historisches Wörterbuch der Rhetorik 9, 152–172. Knape, Joachim/Becker, Nils/Guhr, Dagny (2009), “Das Tübinger Projekt zur Courtshiprhetorik”, in: Joachim Knape (ed.), Rhetorik im Gespräch. Ergänzt um Beiträge zum Tübinger Courtship-Rhetorik-Projekt, Berlin, 233–250. Knape, Joachim/Kuhs, Sofia (2015), “Szenische Ambiguität und politischer Zweifel in Parlamentsdebatten”, in: F. Duerr/F. Landkammer/J. Bahnmüller (eds.), Kognition, Kooperation, Persuasion, Berlin, 181–196. Köppe, Tilmann (2007), “E.D. Hirsch versus M.C. Beardsley und W.K. Wimsatt. Zu einem Konzept des Fortschritts in der Debatte um den ‘intentionalen Fehlschluss’”, in: Ralf Klausnitzer/Carlos Spoerhase (eds.), Kontroversen in der Literaturtheorie/Literaturtheorie in der Kontroverse, Bern etc., 299–310. Lausberg, Heinrich (31990), Handbuch der literarischen Rhetorik. Eine Grundlegung der Literaturwissenschaft, Stuttgart. [11960] Lobe, Michael (2002), “Rezension von Niklas Holzberg: Catull”, Forum Classicum 45, 220–223. Luhmann, Niklas (2000), Art as a Social System, transl. Eva M. Knodt, Stanford CA. [German original 1995] Luhmann, Niklas (2012 [1997]): Theory of Society. Vol. 1, transl. Rhodes Barrett. Stanford CA, 2012. [German original 1997]

Seven Perspectives of Ambiguity and the Problem of Intentionality  

Luhmann, Niklas (2013 [1997]): Theory of Society. Vol. 2, transl. Rhodes Barrett. Stanford CA, 2013. [German original 1997] McLuhan, Marshall (1996), Understanding Media. The Extensions of Man, Cambridge MA. [11964] Münch, Dieter (1993), Intention und Zeichen. Untersuchungen zu Franz Brentano und zu Edmund Husserls Frühwerk, Frankfurt M./München. Nickel-Bacon, Irmgard/Groeben, Norbert/Schreier, Margrit (2000), “Fiktionssignale pragmatisch. Ein medienübergreifendes Modell zur Unterscheidung von Fiktion(en) und Realität(en)”, Poetica 32,3−4, 267–299. Ogden, Charles Kay/Richards, Ivor Armstrong (1923), The Meaning of Meaning, London. Petersen, Jürgen (1995), “Fiktionalität als Redestatus. Ein Beitrag zur literaturwissenschaftlichen Grundlagenforschung”, Sprachkunst 26, 139–163. Richards, Ivor Armstrong (1936), The Philosophy of Rhetoric, Oxford. Searle, John R. (1983), Intentionality. An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind, Cambridge MA. Shannon, Claude E./Weaver, Warren (1949), The Mathematical Theory of Communication, Urbana IL. Spoerhase, Carlos (2007), Autorschaft und Interpretation. Methodische Grundlagen einer philologischen Hermeneutik, Berlin/New York. Thomas, Richard F. (1982), “Catullus and the Polemics of Poetic Reference (Poem 64.1–18)”, AJP 103, 144–164. Thomas, Richard F. (1993), “Sparrows, Hares, and Doves: A Catullan Metaphor and Its Tradition”, Helios 20, 131–142. Wimsatt, William/Beardsley, Monroe (1954), “The Intentional Fallacy”, in: William K. Wimsatt (ed.), The Verbal Icon. Studies in the Meaning of Poetry, Lexington, 2–18.

List of Contributors Stella Alekou is a Postdoctoral Researcher (Excellence Hubs RESTART 2016–2020) at the University of Cyprus (Department of Classics) since 2018. She was previously employed at the Open University of Cyprus (Studies in Hellenic Culture, 2019), as well as at the Department of French and European Studies of the University of Cyprus, where she worked as a Research Associate (Project funded by A.G. Leventis Foundation, 2014–2016). She has also worked as a Research Fellow at the University of the West of England (Alexander College, LLM, 2015–2019), and as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Central Lancashire – CY (Department of Law, 2012–2015). She is the author of Médée et la rhétorique de la mémoire au féminin (Ovide, « Héroïdes » XII), L’Harmattan, 2018. Her research focuses on gender in antiquity and the reception of Roman law in Latin literature. Chloe Balla is Associate Professor of Ancient Philosophy at the University of Crete. She studied philosophy and classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Thessaloniki. Her research focuses on the texts of the Sophists, Plato, and Aristotle, as well as on the Greek medical writers. Her most recent work includes a Modern Greek translation of Aristotle’s Athenaion Politeia (in collaboration with Robert W. Wallace, who contributed with a commentary and a preface; Athens 2015, Nissos publications/Stavros Niarchos Foundation). She is currently writing a book on Plato’s Phaedo. Jenny Strauss Clay is William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Classics Emerita at the University of Virginia. Her research interests focus mainly on archaic Greek poetry, on which she has written extensively, including four books: The Wrath of Athena: Gods and Men in Homer’s Odyssey (1983, Princeton University Press, reprint 1996), The Politics of Olympus: Form and Meaning in the Major Homeric Hymns (1989, Princeton University Press, reprint 2005), Hesiod’s Cosmos (2003, Cambridge University Press), and Homer’s Trojan Theater (2011, Cambridge University Press). In addition, she has published over sixty articles on Greek and Roman poetry. She is currently working with Athanassios Vergados on a commentary on Hesiod’s Theogony. Michalis Chryssanthopoulos is Professor of General and Comparative Literature at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Birmingham. He works on Modern Greek Literature from a comparative perspective, on the theory of literature and on autobiography. His main publications, in Greek, are: G. Vizyenos: between Memory and Imagination (1994), Dream in literature: Artemidorus and Freud (2005), Greek Surrealism and the Construction of Tradition (2012), and Autobiography: between History and Literature (2015). Forthcoming is a book on Cavafy. Lisa Cordes is Assistant Professor of Latin Philology at the Humboldt-Universität Berlin. After studying Classics and History in Freiburg and Padova, she worked as a research assistant at the Freie Universität Berlin and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. In 2016, she finished her PhD in Classical Philology (Kaiser und Tyrann. Die Kodierung und Umkodierung der Herrscherrepräsentation Neros und Domitians, Berlin/Boston, 2017). She is currently working on a project that analyses forms of relating the first-person speaker and the author in Latin literature of the Late Republic and Early Principate from a transgeneric point of view.

  List of Contributors Jacqueline Fabre-Serris is Professor of Latin Literature at the University of Lille. She has written three books: Mythe et Poésie dans les Métamorphoses d’Ovide (1995), Mythologie et littérature à Rome (1998), Rome, l’Arcadie et la mer des Argonautes. Essai sur la naissance d’une mythologie des origines en Occident (2008). She has published on Latin literature, on mythology and mythography, gender, and classical reception. She is co-director of the electronic reviews Dictynna, Eugesta, and Polymnia, and a series on mythography: Mythographes, published by Les Presses universitaires du Septentrion. Marco Formisano is Professor of Latin Literature at Ghent University. He focusses particularly on the literature of late antiquity, ancient technical and scientific texts, the early Christian martyr acts and classical reception. His recent publications include Knowledge, Text and Practice (co-edited with P. Van der Eijk, CUP 2017); Marginality, Canonicity, Passion (co-edited with C. Shuttleworth Kraus, OUP 2018); For Example. Martyrdom and Imitation in Early Christian Texts and Art (co-edited with A. Bettenworth and D. Boschung, Wilhem Fink Verlag 2020). He is the editor of the book series “The Library of the Other Antiquity”, devoted to late antique literature and its reception (Universitätsverlag Winter, Heidelberg). Stavros Frangoulidis is Professor of Latin at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He is the author of several articles in the fields of Roman comedy, Senecan tragedy and the Latin novel. In collaboration with Theodore Papanghelis, Gesine Manuwald and Stephen Harrison he has edited several volumes on Latin Literature for Trends in Classics – Supplementary Volumes. 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). Therese Fuhrer has held Chairs of Latin at the Universities of Trier, Zurich, Freiburg, the Free University of Berlin, and since 2013 at the LMU Munich. She is the author and editor of several books and has published a number of papers and book chapters on topics ranging from early and Hellenistic Greek poetry through republican and Augustan poetry and prose to Augustine. She is currently engaged in a number of research projects in the field of ancient philosophy and rhetoric, on Roman historiography, on the authorial voice, and Late Antiquity. Pantelis Golitsis is Assistant Professor of Ancient and Medieval Philosophy at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Department of Philosophy. His main research interests lie in the reception of Aristotle in Late Antiquity and Byzantium. He is the author of Les Commentaires de Simplicius et de Jean Philopon à la Physique d’Aristote (Berlin, 2008; Prix Zographos of the Association pour l’encouragement des Études Grecques en France). He is currently finishing a new critical edition of Alexander of Aphrodisias’ commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics. John T. Hamilton is the William R. Kenan Professor of German and Comparative Literature at Harvard University. Publications include: Soliciting Darkness: Pindar, Obscurity, and the Classical Tradition (2004); Music, Madness, and the Unworking of Language (2008); Security: Politics, Humanity, and the Philology of Care (2013); and Philology of the Flesh (2018). Stephen Harrison is Senior Research Fellow at Corpus Christi College, Oxford and Professor of Latin Literature at the University of Oxford. He is author and/or editor of many books on Latin

List of Contributors  

literature and its reception, including a commentary on Horace Odes 2 (CUP) and Victorian Horace: Classics and Class (Bloomsbury), both published in 2017, and Life, Love and Death in Latin Literature, edited with Stavros Frangoulidis (De Gruyter, 2018). Robert Kirstein was educated at the University of Bonn, Oxford University and the University of Münster (PhD). He is a former Feodor-Lynen-Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung. Currently he holds the chair of Latin Literature at the University of Tübingen. Research interests are Greek and Latin poetry, especially of the Hellenistic Age; the History of Classical Scholarship, especially of the 19th and early 20th century; the Greek and Latin epigram; Ovid and narratology. Joachim Knape is Senior Professor of Rhetoric, Institute for General Rhetoric at the University of Tübingen. He studied German philology, political science, philosophy and theology in Göttingen, Regensburg and Bamberg. His doctoral dissertation (Göttingen 1982), was History as a Term in the Middle Ages and in Early Modern Times. He received his habilitation in Bamberg (1988) in German philology of the middle ages and early modern times with published work on humanism in the renaissance: Poetry, Justice and Freedom. Studies on the life and work of Sebastian Brant 1457–1521. He was appointed professor of rhetoric in Tübingen in 1991 and was Dean of the Tübingen Faculty of Modern Philology from 2004 to 2009. Since 2018 he is a Senior Professor. His research focuses are: the history of rhetoric, theory of rhetoric, rhetorical semiotics, media rhetoric, textual rhetoric, rhetoric of images, poetics and aesthetics, Renaissance studies, German language and literature. Anna Lamari is Assistant Professor of Ancient Greek Literature at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. She is the author of Narrative, Intertext, and Space in Euripides’ Phoenissae (Berlin/New York 2010), and Reperforming Greek Tragedy (Berlin/Boston 2017). She is currently working on a commentary on Middle Comedy poets Nausicrates, Nicostratus, Ophelion, Philetaerus, Philippus and Philiscus in the series Fragmenta Comica (FrC). Michael Lüthy has been Professor of Art History at the Free University of Berlin (2010–14), at the Bauhaus-University Weimar (2014–20) and since 2020 at the State Academy of Art and Design Stuttgart. Born 02.07.1966 in Zürich, he first studied law and then art history and history in Basel and Berlin, gained his PhD with a study on Édouard Manet (2000) and his habilitation with a study on Wittgenstein’s aesthetics (2010). His main fields of study are 19th- and early 20th-century French art, post-war American art and theories of modern art. Irmgard Männlein-Robert studied Classical Philology and German Philology in Würzburg and London. She received her doctorate in 2000 with a thesis on the Platonist Longinus. Following her habilitation in 2005 in Würzburg on Hellenistic poetics and aesthetics, she was appointed to the Chair of Greek Philology at the University of Tübingen in 2006. Her research focuses on Plato and late antique Platonism (in literary and philosophical terms), Hellenistic poetics and aesthetics as well as religious subjects. Florian Mehltretter holds the chair of Italian Literature at Munich’s Ludwig Maximilian University. His books include Die unmögliche Tragödie. Karnevalisierung und Gattungsmischung im venezianischen Opernlibretto, Frankfurt 1994; Der Text unserer Natur. Studien zu Illuminismus

  List of Contributors und Aufklärung in Frankreich in der zweiten Hälfte des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts, Tübingen 2009; and Kanonisierung und Medialität. Petrarcas Rime in der Frühzeit des Buchdrucks (1470– 1687), Münster 2009. His research interests focus on the Trecento, Cinquecento, the baroque, Dante reception, and opera. Susanne Reichlin is Chair of Late Medieval and Early Modern Literature at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich. Her major fields of interest include narratology, media-studies, literature and economics. Recent publications include: “Zeit – Mittelalter”, in: Eva von Contzen/ Stefan Tilg (eds.), Handbuch historische Narratologie, Berlin 2019, 181–193; “The Relationship Between Regularity and Irregularity in Middle High German Poems on Fortuna”, in: Arndt Brendecke/Peter Vogt (eds.), The End of Fortuna and the Rise of Modernity, Berlin/Boston 2017, 15– 46; Fides/triuwe. Special issue of “Das Mittelalter” (co-edited 2015). Evina Sistakou is Professor of Greek Literature at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. She is the author of The Geography of Callimachus and Hellenistic Avant-Garde Poetry (Athens 2005, in Modern Greek), Reconstructing the Epic. Cross-Readings of the Trojan Myth in Hellenistic Poetry (Leuven 2008), The Aesthetics of Darkness. A Study of Hellenistic Romanticism in Apollonius, Lycophron and Nicander (Leuven 2012) and Tragic Failures. Alexandrian Responses to Tragedy and the Tragic (Berlin/Boston 2016). She has published articles on Apollonius, Callimachus, Lycophron, Euphorion, Greek epigram and Hellenistic aesthetics. Janja Soldo is currently Lecturer in Classics at Maynooth University. She previously held posts in Swansea, Royal Holloway University of London and LMU Munich where she did her doctoral work. Her thesis, a commentary on the second book of Seneca’s Epistulae Morales (letters 13– 21), will be published by Oxford University Press in 2021. Her main research interest is ancient epistolography, in particular Seneca the Younger, Fronto and fictional letter collections. Richard F. Thomas is George Martin Lane Professor of the Classics at Harvard University. He was educated at the University of Auckland (BA 1972, MA 1973) and The University of Michigan (PhD 1977), and has taught at Harvard (1977–84, 1987–present), the University of Cincinnati (1984–86) and Cornell (1986–87). His teaching and research interests are focused on Hellenistic Greek and Roman literature (chiefly Callimachus, Theocritus, Catullus, Virgil, Horace, Propertius, Ovid, Tacitus), intertextuality, translation and translation theory, the reception of Roman literature, and the lyrics of Bob Dylan. Publications include more than 100 articles and reviews and the following books: Lands and Peoples in Roman Poetry: The Ethnographical Tradition (1982), Reading Virgil and his Texts. Studies in Intertextuality (1999), Virgil and the Augustan Reception (2001), Why Bob Dylan Matters (2017), commentaries on Virgil, Georgics (1988) and Horace, Odes 4 and Carmen Saeculare (2011). He has co-edited and contributed to Classics and the Uses of Reception (2006), Bob Dylan’s Performance Artistry (2007), and the three-volume Virgil Encyclopedia (2014). Bram van der Velden is a postdoctoral researcher at Leiden University and lecturer at the University of Groningen. He did his BA and MA in Leiden, spending an Erasmus semester in Freiburg during the former and two semesters as a Special Student at Harvard during the latter. He subsequently received his PhD from King’s College, Cambridge for his thesis entitled ‘Ancient Approaches to Ambiguity in Literature’.

List of Contributors  

Martin Vöhler is Professor of Ancient Greek Philology at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. His research interests include the Classical tradition in Germany and Europe, publications on Hölderlin and Pindar. He is co-editor of the Hölderlin-Jahrbuch and several volumes on Catharsis (before and after Aristotle), the Reception of Antiquity (Urgeschichten der Moderne, Mythen in nachmythischer Zeit, Mythenkorrekturen), Aesthetic and Rhetoric Theory (Gewalt und Ästhetik, Un/reinheit, ästhetische Erfahrung, Mimesis, Realismus, Rhetorik der Verunsicherung), Eighteenth-Century Humanism (I–III) and Philhellenism. Antje Wessels is Professor of Latin Language and Literature at Leiden University, The Netherlands. She has published monographs on the History of Scholarship (Ursprungszauber, 2003) and Aesthetic Experience (Ästhetisierung und ästhetische Erfahrung von Gewalt. Zu Senecas Tragödien, 2014) and is co-editor of several volumes on the Creative Reception of Antiquity (Mythos Sisyphus 2001, Kunerts Antike 2004), Aesthetic Theory (Bewegte Erfahrungen 2008) and Fragments (Der Neue Poseidipp, 2015).

General Index Adonis 351, 354‒356, 358‒362 aesthetic –frames 381, 386, 389, 393, 396‒397 –situation 393‒397 aesthetics 383‒384, 387‒390, 392‒397, 399‒400 Ahl, Frederick 263 Alcibiades 245 allegory/allegoresis 219‒220, 222, 224‒ 229, 231, 356‒362 ambiguity (amphibolía) –and communication 170, 299, 302–307, 309, 311, 351‒354 –and danger 263–264, 266–267 –and heroism 160, 164–170, see also heroic, heroism, heroization –and hyperbole 258 –and identity 299–300, 302–304, 307, 310–311, 374, 395, 397 –and narrative 158‒160, 366 –and vagueness see vagueness –behavioral 397 –complex 381 –definition of 7, 101‒102, 286, 288, 293, 351‒354, 365‒366 –disambiguation 164 –dissolution of 164 –epistemological 398 –error 386, 389, 391 –experience of 354, 362, 388‒389, 391, 394, 397‒398 –experiential 142 –in ancient literature 7‒9 –in ancient rhetoric 5‒7 –in Hellenistic poetry 104‒114 –in modern art and literature 3‒5 –in modern/pre-modern times 157, 159‒ 160, 169, 354‒362 –intentional (planned) 175‒176, 181–182, 185, 188, 302, 331‒345, 351‒354, 356, 362, 381, 389, 394, 396 –interactional 385, 393 –markers of 237, 240‒241, 243‒244, 247 –narrative/textual 108–114, 163 https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110715811-027

–of language 104–108, 251, 252–254 –of reality 285, 290, 292–293 –open/narrow concept of 161 –poetic 386, 396 –scenic 394 –scholastic 399 –semantic 340‒341, 384 –sexual 262, 374, 398 –situational 393‒394, 397 –Stoic view of 286, 288, 293 –strategic 158, 356, 358‒362, 377, 389, 395 –syntactic 339‒340 –ubiquitous 385 analysis –literary 396, 399 –psychological 193‒194, 199, 204 –textual 396, 399 anonymity 95 Apollonius of Rhodes –Argonautica 108 Arachne 175‒188 art 175‒177, 179, 182‒183, 185‒188 auctoritas 304, 307, 311 Augustus (Imperator Caesar Diui Filius) 181‒182, 184‒187, 272, 277 Aura 199, 201, 204 authorial –comment 321‒322 –criticism 331‒332 autobiography 365, 368 Barberini, Maffeo (Pope Urban VIII) 354‒ 355 Barthes, Roland 395, 399 Beardsley, Monroe 381, 394‒395, 399 biography 365, 367‒368, 372 blending 297, 307‒311 Bode, Christoph 159‒161, 170 Borges, Jorge Luis 118‒119 Caecina, A. 269‒270 Caesar C. Iulius 255, 263‒270, 393 Calidus, L. Iulius 261

  General Index Callimachus –the poet 258 –Aetia 115‒119 –Epigrams 105‒107 –Hymns 105, 112‒114 Calvus, C. Licinius 260‒261, 264 Carminati, Clizia 354 Catullus 384‒385, 390‒391, 393‒396, 398 Cavafy 365‒379 censorship 182, 186, 354‒362 Cephalus 197‒201, 204 Chomsky, Noam 170 Cicero 252, 256‒261, 267‒269, 278, 297‒314, 336, 344‒345 Cinyras 202‒204 Claudian 219‒233 communication –levels 299‒300, 302‒307, 309, 311 –licensed or specialized 386‒390, 394 –model 381, 385, 388, 395‒397 –normal or standard 382, 386‒387, 390 –perspectives 381, 399‒400 communicative –statuses 386‒387, 394, 399 –structure/setting/system 299‒300, 302‒307, 309, 311 conscious 194, 204 contest, rhetorical 365, 367, 370‒371, 377‒379 see also rhetoric conversion 371, 373 courtship 383‒384, 387, 389, 394, 397 Cremutius Cordus, A. 265, 270 crime(s) 182, 186 cunning 91, 99 cynicism 288‒289 de Man, Paul 251‒252, 255, 257‒258 desire, erotic 194, 196‒197, 199, 202 dialectic 15‒20, 23‒25 dialogue-monologue‒difference 387 Diana 356, 359 Dido 262 Dionysus 150‒153 disambiguation 164, 385‒386, 395, 400 discourse –bucolic 107‒108

–relations 316 –extra-textual 326 –interpretative 323 –of power 326 double-meaning 299, 307 double responses/perspectives –and Apuleius’ Metamorphoses 207‒217 –Aristomenes’ tale of Socrates 209‒216 –the framing narrative 208‒209, 216 –and bifocal/stereoscopic technique 207‒217 –and ironies generated 207‒217 doubt 316, 324, 326 duplicity 97‒99 Eagleton, Terry 388, 391, 393, 400 Echo 195‒197, 204 Eco, Umberto 4–5, 7, 149 n. 27 ékphrasis 175‒177, 181‒185 eloquence 382‒384 Empedocles 17, 20‒23 émphasis/significatio 253, 261‒269, 332‒333 see also significatio Empson, William 160‒161, 365, 381, 383, 392 Endymion 356 enthusiasm 237‒238, 241, 243, 245, 247 epistemology 115‒119 Erictho 211 Erkenntnisinteresse 384, 399 ethics 288, 290‒291, 295 expectation 383‒384, 387, 390, 393‒ 396 explicitness 316, 321, 323, 326‒327 expression, form of (schéma tes léxeos) 6 fallacy 11‒14, 18‒19, 22 fictionality 393, 397 flirtation 384, 387 flores rhetoricae 384 frames 239‒242 gender 197, 204 Genette, Gérard 399 glóssai 105 Grice, Herbert P. 386‒387

General Index  

Hecate 123, 128, 136 Heraclitus 11, 17, 21, 23, 25 heroic, heroism, heroization see also ambiguity and heroism –agency 165‒166 –and gender 165‒166 –de-heroization 170 –exceptionality 163, 165 –in modern/pre-modern times 165 –mobility/immobility of heroic figures 165‒166 –transgressivity 162, 166 –typology/characteristics of 164‒165 –violence 167 hetaírai 123, 131, 133‒134 Hirtius, Aulus 268 homonymity (homonymía) 6‒7, 94‒96, 98, 286, 291‒292 homosexuality 369, 374 hyperbolé 252‒255, 258 Index librorum prohibitorum 351, 354, 363 individual word (léxis) 6 information –selection of 316, 318, 320‒324, 326 inquisition 357, 362 intention 381, 387, 389, 393‒397, 399 –definition of 389, 393 intentional fallacy 381, 394 interpretation –punctum 395 –stadium 395, 398‒399 interruption 230‒231 irony 256‒258, 260, 263, 315, 317 –dramatic 334‒336, 378 –Romantic 365 isosthenía 316 jokes –and puns 336‒338 journey/navigation 221‒224 Julian, the Apostate 365‒379 katábasis 245‒246 knowledge 384, 389‒390, 396 Kurtz, Johann 44, 57‒58

laboriosus 259‒260 language 11‒13, 16‒20, 23‒26 –figured 254‒255, 259, 261, 263 libertus 142 logic 285, 288‒292, 295 loxós 142 Lucan –Bellum Civile 211 Lucian 237‒250 manía 246 Mann, Thomas 170 Marcellus, C. Claudius 275 Marino, Giambattista 351‒362 McLuhan, Marshall 392 meaning(s) –double 299, 307 –hidden 332‒336 –intensification of 339 medium 385, 391‒392 Megarians 13‒14, 16‒17, 22, 25 métis 83, 85, 88, 92‒95, 98 Minerva 175‒183, 186 Mittelbach, Jens 163‒164 monologue 387‒388 monosemy 385 multi-perspectivism 399 Myrrha 202‒204 Narcissus 194‒197, 204 Nepos, Cornelius 257‒261 nugae 257‒260 observation 381, 396‒400 observer 382, 389, 392, 394‒400 Octavia (sister of Augustus) 274 Odysseus –identity of 81‒88 –name of 81‒88 –reception of 243‒246 Ogden, Charles K. 397 ontology 117‒119 openness 321 Orpheus 226, 230 oútis 83‒88, 93, 97 Ovid –the poet 193–204, 397

  General Index –and postmodernity 159, 169 –Ars Amatoria 194, 197, 202 –concept of space in 166 – ‘concept of the half’ in 168‒169 –figures –age of 166‒167 –and landscapes 166 –proper names of 168 –Grenzgänger 169 –Hermaphroditus 157‒170 –Metamorphoses 157‒170, 193‒204 –semi-adjectives in 168‒169 paganism 367, 369‒370, 373, 376‒377 paratext(s) 225, 351, 357‒362 patronage 182 n. 34 pedagogy 182 persona 384, 397 –literary 299, 303 perspicuity (saphéneia, perspicuitas) 5 persuasion 316, 323 Philo of Alexandria 212 Plato 15, 25, 29‒42 Platonism 237‒238, 241‒243, 245‒248 politics, Roman 175 Pollio, M. Asinius 273‒274 Pompeius, Cn. 264‒269, 279, 281 Pompeius, Sextus (Sextus Pompeius Magnus Pius) 273‒284 postmodernism 115‒119 power 319‒321, 323, 325‒326, 373‒374 Pozzi, Giovanni 355 praefatio 220, 222‒226, 231 processing, cognitive 390 Procris 198‒201 prophecy –ambiguous 275 Proserpina 223, 229‒231 protreptic 238‒239, 247 punishment 178, 182, 185, 188 Puttenham, George 251‒252 puzzles, logical 290‒292 Quintilian 261‒266, 385, 396 Rabelais, François 361 rape 183‒184, 187

readers/recipients 302‒303, 305‒306, 310‒311 reason 11, 15‒16, 18, 25 redefinition 146 referentiality 95, 97‒98 refutation 13‒14, 16, 18 relevance 353 rhetoric 315‒316, 323, 381, 385, 388‒ 389, 391‒393, 396‒397, 400 see also contest, rhetorical Richards, Ivor A. 397, 400 Rimmon-Kenon, Shlomith 54, 102, 161, 163, 239, 351 Rome 238, 241‒242, 248 Rostand, Edmond 384‒385 satura 141 scholastic 399 Scoto, Lorenzo 354, 358 seafood 123‒124, 126, 130, 132‒134, 137 Second Sophistic 237‒238, 247 Seneca the Younger 285‒296, 320‒326, 387 Seneca the Elder 193‒194 separation (diaíresis) 6 sexuality 123, 132 Shackleton Bailey, D.R. 267‒268 Shannon, Claude E. 385 Sibylline Oracles 275 significatio 252‒254 see also émphasis simulatio 175‒177, 180‒181, 186, 188 Sirens 243‒244 skepticism 316‒317, 326 Socrates 29‒41, 237 n. 4, 245, 308‒310 sophists 11‒14, 16, 23‒25 sphere, cathartic 144 Stigliani, Tommaso 355 Stoic curriculum 291, 295 stress (prosodía) 6 suggestion 316‒319, 323, 326 suicide 184‒186 syllepsis 227‒228 synonymy 94‒96, 98 Tacitus 265‒266, 270, 315‒329 Tasso, Torquato 356‒358, 360‒361

General Index  

text-internal speaker 297‒299, 301, 303, 305‒308, 310‒311 textuality 381, 391 Thapsus 267‒270 Theocritus –bucolic idylls 107‒110 The Three Living and the Three Dead 51‒ 54 trígle 123‒126, 128, 131, 134‒136 truth 15‒18, 22‒23 Tychiades 246 unambiguity 321, 323 unconscious 197, 199, 204 unfinished 230 Urban VIII (Pope) (Maffeo Barberini) 354– 355 vagueness 162, 164, 297, 299‒300, 307, 309‒310

values –dissolution of 145 Venus 354‒355, 359, 361‒362 verba, ambigua 194‒204 Victorinus, Marius 387 vigilance 353, 362 Virgil –Eclogues 273‒284 war, civil 261, 266, 269 Weaver, Warren 385 Wimsatt, William 381, 394‒395, 399 witches –and sophists 211‒212 work 386, 388‒390, 394‒400 Zweig, Stefan 157‒158, 169

Index of Passages The Index Locorum includes both ancient and modern sources. The relevant editions used are to be found in the bibliography accompanying each article Adnotationes super Lucanum ‒ ad Luc. BCiv 4.262‒266 339‒340 Alexis fr. 175 K‒A fr. 281 K‒A

130 130

Antiphanes fr. 27 K‒A fr. 192 K‒A

133‒134 131‒132

Apuleius ‒ Met. 1.2.5 1.13.3 1.13.7 1.15.6 1.17.8 1.18.8 1.20.2 1.20.4

208 210 211 213 214 214 216 216

Aristophanes ‒ Nu. 1172‒1173

38

Aristotle ‒ Cat. 1.1a1‒6 ‒ EE I 8.1217b25‒1218a1 ‒ Int. 2.16a30‒33 ‒ Metaph. I 4.985a4‒5 I 4.985a13‒17 I 5.986b4‒6 I 7.988b11‒16 I 8.989b4‒5 I 8.989b16‒19

94 22 n. 42 95 n. 10 23 n. 46 23 n. 47 23 n. 46 24 n. 49 24 24 n. 48

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110715811-028

I 8.989b19‒21 23 n. 46 II 1.993b28‒30 15 III 6.1002b27‒28 23 n. 46 IV 5.1009a16‒22 13 V 6–7 and 9 22 n. 42 IX 3 14 n. 10 ‒ Ph. I 8‒9.191a24‒192a14 12 n. 5 ‒ Po. 6.1449b24‒28 5‒6 22.1458a18 20 ‒ Protr. B 79 Düring 26 n. 55 ‒ Rh. I 1.1355a21‒22 15 I 1.1355a23‒28 40 n. 28 I 1.1355a29‒33 14 I 1.1355a33‒36 17 I 1.1355a36‒38 15 I 1.1355b15‒21 17 I 1.1355b25‒31 40 n. 28 II 24.1400b34‒1402a28 5 II 24.1402a3‒28 17 III 2.1404b1‒5 20 III 2.1404b2 5 III 2.1404b37‒39 22 III 5.1407a19‒20 20 III 5.1407a31‒35 343 III 5.1407a32‒35 253 III 5.1407a33‒b6 21 III 5.1407b11‒18 21 III 5.1412a32‒b5 336 ‒ SE 1.165a13‒14 99 1.165a17‒26 14 4.165b23‒166b27 5 4.165b29‒30 19 4.165b31‒34 18 4.166a6‒7 18 4.166a36‒37 19 4.166b15‒19 18

  Index of Passages 6.165b23‒166b27 6.167a23‒28 7.169a22‒27 7.169a37‒b1: 12.173a29‒30 21.177b37‒178a2 ‒ Top. VIII 1.151b8‒10 VIII 7.160a17‒34

5 18 22 25 n. 52 16 19 16 12 n. 2

[Aristotle] ‒ Rh. Al. 25.1

20

[Caesar] ‒ BAfr. 89.5

269

Callimachus ‒ Aet. passim ‒ Epigrams 11 Pf. 47 Pf. ‒ Hymns 1 5 6

115‒119 105‒106 106‒107 112‒113 113‒114 113‒114

Calvus fr. 2 Blänsdorf, Courtney fr. 18 Blänsdorf, Courtney

260 264

Cassius Dio 61.12.1

320 n. 26

Catullus 1 13 28 29 49 57 64 64.324 93

254, 258–261 254 266 255, 266 255‒258 264, 266 280 254 264

Cavafy – Cavafy 2012, Complete Poems 24 367 n. 8 116 370 119 371 137 371–372 362 373–374 369 374–376 135 377 144 377–378 175–6 378 – Cavafy 1994, Ατελή Ποιήματα [Unfinished Poems] 107−113 373 Cicero ‒ Amic. 3 4 5 11 14 15 104 ‒ Att. 9.18.2 9.19.1 12.2 12.44.1 13.19.5 14.21.2 ‒ De Or. passim 2.253 ‒ Fam. 6.5 6.6 6.7 6.8 7.32.2 9.7.1 ‒ Leg. Man. 43‒44 ‒ Marcell. 5 28

300‒301 300‒301, 304 n. 29 301‒302 304, 306 304, 306 305, 307 306‒307 268 268 267 268 307‒308 268 303 n. 24 336 269 269 256, 270 269 303 n. 24 268 278 278 279

Index of Passages  

275

Homer ‒ Od. 1.62 1.68‒75 1.216‒220 3.120‒122 4.678 5.173‒179 5.340 5.356‒357 5.423 8.550‒554 8.552‒554 9.19‒20 9.94‒99 9.364 9.401 9.405‒414 9.415 9.422‒423 9.528‒529 11.328‒332 11.333‒334 11.363‒366 12.39‒54 12.184‒191 13.303 13.386 14.119‒127 14.145‒146 16.187 18.281‒283 19.107‒108 19.275 19.407 19.515‒523 21.321‒324 23.215‒217

82 97 82‒83 85 92 n. 2 91 82 91 82 84 95‒96 98 244 8, 98 8 92‒93 96 94 98 245 245 85 243 243 92 n. 2 92 n. 2 86 82 86‒87 87 87 82 82 244 87 87‒88

Gorgias ‒ Hel. 14

31 n. 3

Horace ‒ C. 1.37.31‒32

184

Heraclitus fr. 93 DK

8

‒ Phil. 13.43 ‒ Rep. 1.10.16 ‒ Sen. 3

255 n. 8 308‒309 304 n. 29

[Cicero] ‒ Rhet. Her. 2.16 4.67

253‒254, 256 252‒255

Claudian ‒ Rapt. Praef. 1 1.141‒147 1.271‒272 2.151‒213 3.153‒158

220 230 230 230 230

Commenta Bernensia ‒ ad Luc. BCiv 7.342‒344 335 Cornelius Nepos ‒ Att. 12.4

260‒261

Critias DK 88 B1, 2

33 n. 12

[Donatus] ad Ter. An. 953‒955 338 ad Ter. Hec. 198‒201 339 Ennius ‒ Ann. 179 Skutsch

ILS 8891 = ILLRP 426 277

  Index of Passages Lucian ‒ Nigr. Epist., c. 1.1‒11 c. 1.1‒ c. 12.29 c. 2.13‒20 c. 35‒38 ‒ Phil. c. 40 Lycophron ‒ Al. 1‒12

240‒241 240‒241 240‒242 240‒241, 244‒246 246

110‒111

Marino, Giovan Battista ‒ L’Adone I,10 360 VIII,20,3‒4 356 X,43,7‒8 356 XI,33 362 XI,37,8‒9 355 XVI,29‒34 355 Matro of Pitane fr. 1.33‒43 Olson/Sens

132‒133

Michael Toxites ‒ ad Cic. Dom. 1

344‒345

Nausicrates fr. 1 K‒A

123‒129, 134‒137

Ovid ‒ Am. 1.5 1.6 ‒ Met. 4.271‒388 4.297‒300 4.302‒303 4.310 4.315‒322 4.356‒360 4.380‒386 6.6‒7 6.7‒8 6.26

168‒169 169 160‒170 162 162, 165 163 167 167‒168 168‒169 177 177 177

6.70‒73 6.71 6.80‒81 6.85 6.101‒102 6.103‒104 6.127 6.130‒133 6.135 ‒ Tr. 3.3.74 4.1.13‒14 Petronius ‒ Sat. 27.1‒4 28.1 28.3‒4 34.10 39.13 40.6‒7 41 69.8‒70.2 72.3 72.10 Philo of Alexandria ‒ Det. 38 ‒ Mos. 1.92 1.277 Plato ‒ Ap. 18b4‒c8 21a4‒7 ‒ Euthd. 277e‒278a ‒ Euthphr. 11d6‒e1 ‒ Grg. 481b10‒c4 ‒ Lg. 908d ‒ Men. 79e7‒80a6

177‒178 179, 188 177 178 178, 186 177 179, 188 182, 186 182 185 185

144 144 n. 10 146 143 144 n. 9 149 147‒153 144 n. 9 145 146

212 n. 14 212 n. 14 212 n. 14

38 n. 24 34 n. 14 18 39 38 211 n. 11 38

Index of Passages  

97e2‒98a5 ‒ Phd. 57a1‒2 59b10 61a8‒b7 61b5‒7 64a‒69e 64a4‒5 96a6‒99d2 99c6‒9 117b6‒7 118a7‒8 ‒ R. I.336b1‒d4 II.364b5 VI.508d4‒6 VI.509b6‒8 ‒ Smp. 203d 217e6‒218a ‒ Sph. 235a 241b

40 30 31 34 35 31 30 35 36 33 31 38 n. 26 37 n. 22 15 n. 13 15 n. 14 212 n. 13 245 211 n. 11 212 n. 13

Pliny ‒ Ep. 3.16.7

185

Pseudo-Asconius ‒ ad Cic. Verr. 1.12.36 2.2.9.24

337 337

Quintilian ‒ Inst. 6.3.46‒69 7.9.12 9.2.64 9.2.65‒66 11.1.37‒38

337 343 261‒262 263 264‒265

Seneca the Elder ‒ Controv. 7.3.9

336

Seneca ‒ De ira 1.15 2.1 2.9 ‒ Ep. 9.2‒3 45.5‒9 90.29 Servius ‒ ad Verg. Aen. 1.70 1.267 3.529 4.20‒23 6.286 6.717‒718 9.197‒200 10.59‒62

321 n. 27 321 n. 27 321 n. 27 288‒290 290‒294 294‒295

341 335‒336 342 340‒341 342 335‒336 341 334

Shakespeare, William ‒ Midsummer Night’s Dream V 1, 2‒22 (Foakes) 212 n. 14 Suetonius ‒ Iul. 73 75.5

266 269

Tacitus ‒ Ann. 1.72 4.34.5 12.42.1f. 13.1.1 13.1.3 13.2.1‒2 13.19.3 13.20.1‒3 13.21 14.1.3 14.2.1 14.3.1 14.3.3‒14.6 14.7.2‒5 14.7.3

265 265‒266 322 n. 29 320 320 320 322 322 323 323 323 323 323 324 324

  Index of Passages 14.7.4 14.51‒57 14.59.3‒64 15.61.2 Theocritus ‒ Id. 1 7 11 Virgil ‒ Aen. 4.550‒555 ‒ Ecl. 4.1‒3

324 325 325 325 n. 36

4.15‒17 4.26‒27 4.35‒37 4.48‒50

277‒278 279 280 281

107 107‒108 109‒110

Xenophon ‒ Hell. 2.3.56 ‒ Mem. 1.1.1

33

262

Zweig, Stefan ‒ Die unsichtbare Sammlung 157‒158, 169

276‒277

33 n. 11