The construction of the real and the ideal in the ancient novel: ed. by Michael Paschalis 9789491431258, 9491431250

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The Construction of the Real and the Ideal in the Ancient Novel

ANCIENT NARRATIVE Supplementum 17 Editorial Board Gareth Schmeling, University of Florida, Gainesville Stephen Harrison, Corpus Christi College, Oxford Heinz Hofmann, Universität Tübingen Massimo Fusillo, Università degli Studi dell’Aquila Ruurd Nauta, University of Groningen Stelios Panayotakis, University of Crete Costas Panayotakis (review editor), University of Glasgow

Advisory Board Jean Alvares, Montclair State University Alain Billault, Université Paris Sorbonne – Paris IV Ewen Bowie, Corpus Christi College, Oxford Jan Bremmer, University of Groningen Stavros Frangoulidis, Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki Ronald Hock, University of Southern California, Los Angeles Irene de Jong, University of Amsterdam Bernhard Kytzler, University of Natal, Durban Silvia Montiglio, Johns Hopkins University John Morgan, University of Wales, Swansea Rudi van der Paardt, University of Leiden Michael Paschalis, University of Crete Judith Perkins, Saint Joseph College, West Hartford Tim Whitmarsh, Corpus Christi College, Oxford Alfons Wouters, University of Leuven Maaike Zimmerman, University of Groningen

Subscriptions and ordering Barkhuis Zuurstukken 37 9761 KP Eelde the Netherlands Tel. +31 50 3080936 Fax +31 50 3080934 [email protected] www.ancientnarrative.com

The Construction of the Real and the Ideal in the Ancient Novel edited by

Michael Paschalis and

Stelios Panayotakis

BARKHUIS PUBLISHING

&

GRONINGEN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY GRONINGEN

2013

Book design: Barkhuis Cover Design: Nynke Tiekstra, Noordwolde ISBN 9789491431258 Image on cover: Edward Burne-Jones (1833–1898), The Heart Desires, Pygmalion (I of IV), Second Series

Copyright © 2013 the editor and authors All rights reserved. No part of this publication or the information contained herein may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronical, mechanical, by photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the authors. Although all care is taken to ensure the integrity and quality of this publication and the information herein, no responsibility is assumed by the publishers nor the authors for any damage to property or persons as a result of operation or use of this publication and/or the information contained herein.

Contents Acknowledgments G ARETH S CHMELING Introduction D ANIEL L. S ELDEN The Political Economy of Romance in Late Period Egypt

VII

IX

1

K EN D OWDEN ‘But there is a difference in the ends ...’: Brigands and Teleology in the Ancient Novel

41

F ROMA I. Z EITLIN Landscapes and Portraits: Signs of the Uncanny and Illusions of the Real

61

G IANPIERO R OSATI The Loves of the Gods: Literature as Construction of a Space of Pleasure

89

M ARGARET D OODY Comedy in Heliodoros’ Aithiopika

105

F RANÇOISE L ÉTOUBLON Mythological Paradigms in the Greek Novels

127

S ILVIA M ONTIGLIO ‘His eyes stood as though of horn or steel’: Odysseus’ Fortitude and Moral Ideals in the Greek Novels

147

M ICHAEL P ASCHALIS The Basic Plot of Callirhoe: History, Myth, and Aristotelian Poetics

161

VI

C O NT E NT S

E WEN B OWIE Caging Grasshoppers: Longus’ Materials for Weaving ‘Reality’

179

M ARIO L ABATE Tarde, immo iam sero intellexi: The Real as a Puzzle in Petronius’ Satyrica

199

J ASON K ÖNIG Landscape and Reality in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses

219

R OBERT H.F. C ARVER Between Photis and Isis: Fiction, Reality, and the Ideal in The Golden Ass of Apuleius

243

T IM W HITMARSH The Erotics of mimēsis: Gendered Aesthetics in Greek Theory and Fiction

275

Abstracts

293

Contributors

301

Indices Index locorum General index

305 305 307

Acknowledgements The conference on ‘The Construction of the Real and the Ideal in the Ancient Novel’ is the 5th in the ongoing series, Rethymnon International Conferences on the Ancient Novel (RICAN), organized by Stelios Panayotakis and Michael Paschalis (to whom we owe thanks for hospitality, physical arrangements, organizational skills, and intellectual stimulus), and held at the University of Crete on 25-26 May 2009. Thirteen of the fifteen papers delivered at the conference are printed in this volume. Warmest thanks are owed to the Ancient Narrative publisher, Roelf Barkhuis, for once again producing a marvelous book. My summaries of the papers in the Introduction are just that, summaries (I was chastised by Vered Lev Kenaan in Ancient Narrative 9 (2011) 121ff., for not privileging certain papers and approaches above others in my Introduction to the publication of the RICAN 4 papers in 2009. She misunderstands the purpose of Introductions). The richness of detail, fine points of distinction, and even of originality, are passed over in the Introduction for lack of space, not lack of respect. For these reasons all the papers are printed in full in this volume, and the reader at his peril will ignore papers and trust summaries. February 2013 Gareth Schmeling

Introduction G ARETH S CHMELING University of Florida

The theme of this volume, ‘The Construction of the Real and the Ideal in the Ancient Novel,’ allows the contributors the freedom (intended by the organizers) to use their skills to examine the real and the ideal within the works of the genre. Contributors to the volume were of course encouraged to interpret the parameters of the theme. Despite the lively and long-standing discussion of the fantasmatic role that Egypt played in the Greek and Roman novel, scholars have paid much less attention to the ways in which prose fiction figured within the field of Egyptian cultural production. Accordingly, Daniel Selden’s essay on ‘The Political Economy of Romance in Late Period Egypt’ discusses four texts written in Egypt or widely read there from the Persian occupation through the Islamic conquest (565 BC – AD 643): the Old Aramaic Life of Aḥīqar, penned during the first Persian regime; the Bentresh Stele, carved in Late Middle Egyptian hieroglyphs and erected at Karnak, either during Egypt’s last period of independence or under the early Ptolemaic kings; Chariton of Aphrodisias’ Greek novel Callirhoe, a product of the early Roman Empire; and finally, the Coptic Kambyses Romance, whose single manuscript can be dated on palaeographical grounds to the late sixth or even seventh century AD. The paper offer three principal findings: the language of novelistic production in Egypt varies with the language of political administration; each of the novels, from an indigenous point of view, constitutes a political allegory of Egypt’s increasing marginalization within the Leventine-Mediterranean world system, as it evolved from the Persian Empire through the Roman and Byzantine periods; and finally, together the novels form a coherent set of texts in which each tale both stands on its own and yet remains related to the other members of the corpus. Selden’s omission of the Demotic novel from the discussion is, therefore, to be regretted, though it is not difficult to see how the tales about Setne

The Construction of the Real and the Ideal in the Ancient Novel, IX–XVI

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Khamwas, for example, ‘who spent his time in the study of ancient monuments and books,’ would fit into this general literary-historical picture. In his essay ‘ “But there is a difference in the ends …”: Brigands and Teleology in the Ancient Novel,’ Ken Dowden tackles the thorny problem of robbers and murderers in ideal fiction. After defining brigands and reviewing Greek and Latin words for the various kinds, he looks at the individual brigands, groups them, and considers whole towns of them. Novel evidence comes from Chariton, Xenophon of Ephesus, Achilles Tatius, Heliodorus, and Apuleius. The novelists found descriptions of brigands in earlier history, but also added new characteristics to give them a role and function in the novel: brigands exist so that heroes might destroy them and so entertain the reader. Dowden, however, is also concerned with the brigand community as a subject of interest in itself, and he readily acknowledges the difficulty of discussing their reality because they have been fictionalized. In Chariton, Apuleius, and Achilles Tatius he observes that the brigands have a structural position in the narrative: they tend to occupy an early or middle position in the text. Not so in Xenophon of Ephesus who scatters brigands and pirates throughout his novel: ‘Whatever Xenophon’s novel has been about, it requires a constant presence of brigands to contextualize the trajectory of the hero and heroine.’ While many critics in the past have found Xenophon’s novel the least well written, Dowden points out the curious novelistic innovations in the characters Hippothoos (from good to bad to good) and Habrocomes the ideal hero who for a short time travels with the brigand Hippothoos, and together they do a bit of roistering – not something ideal heroes should do. Since brigands and ideal characters interact with each other at many levels, Dowden observes that ‘… any novel that finds much room for brigand society … must necessarily constitute at some level a discourse on civilized or ideal society.’ Froma Zeitlin in ‘Landscapes and Portraits: Signs of the Uncanny and Illusions of the Real’ focuses in general on ecphrasis and visual arts, and then more specifically on Achilles Tatius and the series of garden descriptions (landscape) and on the Andromeda ‘episode’ (portrait) in Heliodorus. The levels of interaction between viewer and object – ‘the illusion of breaking the frame: that is, of the viewer entering the picture or a figure in the painting (or indeed the painting itself) passing into the zone of reality,’ – are explored in depth, also in texts other than those of novels. In Achilles Tatius the love life of garden plants is confused with that of Clitophon and Leucippe, just as imitator and imitated and real and unreal are confused. Clitophon produces landscape paintings that seem to resemble ‘the sometimes fantastic impressions of Roman wall frescoes, with the detailed representations, especially of plants,

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flowers, and birds’ (cf. the various ‘styles’ in Pompeii). Zeitlin singles out the peacock for Achilles Tatius’ talents in word/images, rhetoric/art, real/ideal. The peacock in the flowering garden becomes Clitophon and Leucippe, who are more beautiful than nature. The novel of Heliodorus begins at the end with the birth of Charicleia, who emerges white from her mother’s womb, a phenomenon caused by Persinna’s gaze on the totally naked Andromeda during sex with Hydaspes (male gods and mortal women realize immediately that good sex for the gods equals pregnancy). The portrait of Andromeda has the power to walk through the painting and join reality, the reverse of what she had done when she became the portrait in the painting. In ‘The Loves of the Gods: Literature as Construction of a Space of Pleasure’ Gianpiero Rosati first looks at Achilles Tatius 1.5.6 and then Petronius 83.1-4 and notes in both the legitimization of desire by a mythical model. Then he asks the basic question whether the loves of the gods might be seen as historical precedents for human loves, or as abstract/mythical paradigms. For the sake of comparison Rosati moves away from the novel proper to the novelistic character Hero (Ovid Her. 19) who presents a middle-class reality and who is an avid reader of divine love stories which seem to give character to her emotions. Rosati observes that ‘stories about the gods’ loves hold a particular attraction for women, both … in the world of myth and … of the novel.’ The story of divine loves, popular in literature and painting, are interpolated in other love stories, as ecphrasis or story-within-story, e.g., and via these love stories the ‘novel creates a free space inside itself … the mythoi of the divine loves create a space of pleasure …’ Reading episodes of divine loves is probably akin to looking at paintings of people making love, but these pictorial scenes of love acts were probably not merely illustrations of sexual practices but in truth offered ‘an upper-class fantasy for the lower-class viewer.’ The loves of the gods legitimize the fantasies of mortals, and comments in the ancient novel on erotic literature and art are important in the ‘history of the discourse of desire.’ In ‘Comedy in Heliodorus’ Aethiopika’ Margaret Doody traces comical elements in Heliodorus’ novel. She is not concerned with citations from or allusions to comic plays, as were previous scholars of comedy on Heliodorus, but with the novel’s comicality, identified in the dissonance between the register which characters use to describe themselves (often tragic) and the author’s laughter at their self-presentation. In this section her analysis follows along lines laid down by Thomas Paulsen, Inszenierung des Schicksals (Trier 1992). Another aspect of Heliodoran comicality is in another dissonance: between the chronological setting and the comic/tragic plays cited or referred to,

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which are later than that setting, and therefore could not possibly have been used by the characters. The effect of putting into their mouths plots they could not know is comical because characters lose their ‘reality’, the illusion of being real, and come out as fictional. Doody calls this practice anachronism. She spots more elements of comicality in the discrepancy between the reference to an epic subtext (Achilles claiming Briseis as Thyamis claims Chariclea; Odysseus killing a ram for dinner as does Cnemon) and the non-epical situation/behavior of the characters involved. Finally she detects comicality in two features that distance Heliodorus from his models: the presence of processions and of gory scenes. In ‘Mythological Paradigms in the Greek Novels’ Françoise Létoublon looks at the ways in which myths serve as paradigms for the young, inexperienced lovers who will need guidance as they become more mature and in need of help. The actions of the protagonists of the Greek novels, if analysed against a background of actions in myths, that is myths involving metamorphoses, often illustrate that art imitates nature and vice versa. Létoublon points out that, especially in Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe and Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe and Clitophon, the Greek novels can be shown to reflect or refract themes and motifs in Greek mythology. As the protagonists grow, mature, find their way in the world, and evolve from unsophisticated to more sophisticated, the narrative of the novels becomes similar to life experiences, a rite de passage. Even Pan and Eros seem to be transformed in nature: their wild and uncontrolled behavior becomes almost mellow and certainly helpful and protective of young lovers. The maturing process in the young lovers is apparent in their radiant facial beauty which is reflective of their souls. Starting from the well recognized influences of the Odyssey on the Greek novels, Silvia Montiglio in her essay ‘ “His eyes stood as though of horn or steel:” Odysseus’ Fortitude and Moral Ideals in the Greek Novels,’ compares moral ideals in the two sets of texts, drawing not only on the Odyssey of Homer but also on the moralizing interpretations of it that run roughly contemporary to the novel. The main question asked in the article is: do novelists espouse similar moral ideals as those contemporary moralists saw embodied in Odysseus? The answer given is both yes and no: yes, insofar as Odysseus’ endurance, self-control, steadfastness, in short what moralists called his arete, is a noble aspiration in the novels; but also no, because that aspiration conflicts with the equally idealized demands of emotionality. Novelistic characters imitate Odysseus by trying to hide their emotions, but, if they are noble characters, in the end they fail because displaying emotions is the right thing to do.

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Michael Paschalis in his essay ‘The Basic Plot of Callirhoe: History, Myth, and Aristotelian Poetics,’ considers a basic issue of the critics’ examination of the materials which Chariton used to build his novel: is the novel both ideal and non-ideal? Using Aristotle’s Poetics as a guide, can we with confidence always separate and distinguish the basic plot from the story? Was Ben Edwin Perry (1930, 1967) correct when he claimed that behind the narrative of Callirhoe lay the historical truth of a real-life Hermocrates (Syracusan official greatly responsible for the defeat of the Athenian invasion of 413 BC), whose daughter (Chariton names her Callirhoe) married Dionysius I, ruler of Syracuse 405-367 BC? Callirhoe’s son was raised by a Dionysius of Miletus, who would later become ruler of Syracuse as Dionysius II? There are other interesting points of comparison between the extended family of Callirhoe and that of Dionysius I and II. The plot thickens, or the search behind the plot thickens. Because Chariton refers to and quotes from Homer so often, there is some scholarly opinion that behind Chaereas-Callirhoe-Dionysius lies Menelaus-Helen-Paris. Then, too, a powerful motif in Callirhoe is the anger of Chaereas, which sets the plot in motion by causing the Scheintod of Callirhoe. In the end it seems likely that Chariton used historical characters and real events to serve as antecedents of the actors in his novel. Ewen Bowie in ‘Caging Grasshoppers: Longus’ Materials for Weaving “Reality” ’ provides precise definitions for ideal and real: ideal characters and actions possess praiseworthy qualities, and they are better than the people and actions in our world; real describes situations which the reader will recognize as the kind he encounters in his own life. Thus the novels of Chariton, Xenophon of Ephesus, Achilles Tatius, and Heliodorus are ideal by reason of the characters’ behavior, but their settings are as real as those of ancient historians. Longus’ novel, however, is different: its general features and details do not come from personal observation or historical/political books, but from literary texts ‘that are themselves presenting fiction,’ i.e. Sappho and Theocritus. As Longus creatively borrows material from Theocritus 1 (Chloe 1.10.2 weaves a grasshopper cage, Theocritus 1.52-54 a boy does), he narrates a story ‘four steps [removed] from the real world.’ Bowie compares episodes in Longus 2.32, where Philetas with his son Tityrus plays a role in the action, with Theocritus 1 and similar actions; Longus 1.17 (Daphnis’ hair, eyes, complexion whiter than goats’ milk) with Theocritus 11 and with Sappho; Longus 3.32-34 and Daphnis’ acquisition for Chloe of the fairest apple previously unattainable because it was at the top of the tree, with Sappho’s epithalamia and Theocritus 28.7. Bowie’s title of ‘weaving “reality” ’ reflects his view that Longus, while knowing that his, like other novelists’, world is fictional, still

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tries at times to create a world that might have existed (Chariton’s world). The stress is on the fictionality rather than on the poetic status of the texts from which Longus borrows. Mario Labate in his essay ‘Tarde, immo iam sero intellexi: the Real as a Puzzle in Petronius’ Satyrica’ looks back to the work of Ciaffi (1955) who identified ‘the mechanics of the trap as the main narrative structure [of the Satyrica],’ from which one or more of the trio of protagonists cannot extricate himself until an external force (similar to a deus ex machina) appears and frees him. Such a narrative deus ex machina appears in Cicero Pro Caelio 65, Horace C. 1.9, Serm. 1.8.46-50, 1.2.127-133, 1.9.72-78, 2.6.110-115. Labate notes that all verifiable endings of episodes in the Satyrica are abrupt: 15.7, 78.7-8, 115.1-5, fr. 1, and that a subtitle of the Satyrica thus could be ‘Men on the Run’ or ‘Men in a Trap’. But what elements lead the trio into a trap: ‘their insufficient ability to understand “reality” …’, which becomes a dominant theme of the Cena. Labate shows that in 6.2-7.4 Petronius makes an episode out of Encolpius’ inability to look around and comprehend what he sees. The episode on board Lichas’ ship (100-115) shows how Encolpius unwittingly enters the trap which is Lichas’ ship: there is no escape (though many plans are put forward), and Encolpius is caught like a rat and whipped; the storm and shipwreck serve as the deus ex machina. Lichas had met Encolpius earlier in a section no longer extant, and the episode at 100-115 might just represent a re-entrapment of the protagonists. Jason König in ‘Landscape and Reality in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses’ divides his discussion into three parts: Fantasy Landscapes (Books 1-10), Landscape and the Body (Books 1-10) = physical presence of landscape, and Books 10-11 = Book 11 Changes Everything. Fantasy landscapes are rhetorical conceptions of landscapes, which stress their allusive and literary character. The first example adduced by König is from Met. 1.2.2: it begins with a literary landscape only to end with a sweaty horse. A succession of examples fills out the section in support of his approach. The memorable description of the bandits’ mountain hideout (4.6.1-4) is carefully analyzed to show literary qualities which include inconsistency and absurdity and give rise to the locus amoenus and locus horridus. The second section which focuses on the physicality of landscapes with emphasis on rocks, cliffs, and their ability to kill is highlighted by the episode in 7.17.3-4 (the body and landscape) where the ass describes how the boy-tormentor is able to beat him with a stick, hitting the same spot again and again on his right hip until the hide is worn away and a wound opens up, making a hole or a pit or a window. But even the dirty reality of the scene is couched in fine rhetoric. Section three: Book 11 changes everything.

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For the most part rhetorical and physical landscapes (which are really stageprops) are banished from here and replaced by higher realities – and by images of water and the sea. Isis sweeps away the threatening mountains landscapes of Books 1-10. In ‘Between Photis and Isis: Fiction, Reality, and the Ideal in The Golden Ass of Apuleius’ Robert H.F. Carver begins his investigations by pointing out that Gustave Flaubert was dazzled by The Golden Ass and remarks on its high/low elements, i.e., bestial/celestial union. Carver returns to the motif of bestiality at the end of his paper. Two women appear to mark out two possible courses in the novel; they come sequentially and Lucius does not choose one over the other (magic/Photis/sex, and religion/Isis/no sex) but enjoys (?) both of them. Carver also compares Meroe and Charite, both have major roles in the novel (are their stories told because they prefigure what will happen to Lucius?), but neither has a long-term impact on Lucius – he gets to hear stories about them. On the road to Cenchreae Lucius (still an ass with an enormous member) copulates with a Corinthian matrona (10.21-22) who is compared with Pasiphae. His success here wins for him an appointment to copulate with a condemned woman before a crowd in the amphitheater (10.34). His escape from this appointment leads to Cenchreae. The matrona from Corinth, the Pasiphae look-alike, is compared with Photis, and Carver notes that in every respect except the socio-economic Photis is superior to the matrona. Some scholars claim that Photis is the serviles … voluptates who leads to Lucius’ downfall, but on closer examination she is probably a woman of real heart who is maligned. In Book 11 Lucius follows Isis, but perhaps not with whole heart or mind. Apuleius could easily have worked Photis back into the story and left Isis in Egypt, but he did not. We will have to agree, however, with a conclusion of Carver: ‘The gap between Isis and Photis is not nearly so great as critics have made out.’ In ‘The Erotics of mimesis: Gendered Aesthetics in Greek Theory and Fiction’ Tim Whitmarsh begins with two references in Achilles Tatius, one to Selene on a bull (1.4.3), and then to Europa on a bull (1.1.2-13), and accompanying ecphrasis, and observes that ‘Leucippe has become a portmanteau, a woman-text: an irreducibly physical being who has a physical effect on Clitophon, but also an imaginary cipher for the power of textual representation. Put in the simplest of terms, women in the Greek novels should be understood both as passive objects of the gaze and as positive embodiments of the genre’s creative power.’ A central part of his paper is developed from statements in On Imitation by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who is concerned with two different types of mimesis, the first is natural, the second is cultural and proceeds

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from technical rules. The natural is superior but the cultural is often too closely connected to it, so that the two cannot always be separated: mimetic literature both artificial and capable of naturalistic representation. The production of artefacts is a form of physical reproduction, and mimesis is thus closely linked to sexual reproduction. Since it takes two correspondents to create something sexually, the roles of man and woman should be the same, but in antiquity mimesis remains androcentric: women are reduced to dismembered objects of the male gaze, and the perfect woman is one constructed of the best parts of many women. Whitmarsh concludes with an analysis of the story of the birth of Charicleia, born white to two black parents.

The Political Economy of Romance in Late Period Egypt D ANIEL L. S ELDEN University of California, Santa Cruz

One who does not die does not exist. –The Instruction of aOnchsheshonqy Given the prominence with which Egypt figures in classical romance, critics of the Greek and Roman novel – from Pierre-Daniel Huet through John J. Winkler – have returned repeatedly to ask what relationship Egypt bears to classical romance.1 Some critics hold this connection to be metonymic: Egypt, for example, provided the cultural matrix out of which classical prose fiction originally emerged. Others, however, argue that the relationship is metaphoric: e.g., Egypt constitutes the symbolic locus of perplexion, a middle passage of danger, errancy, death, and delay out of which – as in the roughly contemporary narrative of Ἔξοδος2 – the protagonists must extricate their way. In either case, then, modern scholars tend to construct Egypt as outside – respectively ‘before’ or ‘over-and-against’ – the domain proper of the novel. Hence the irony of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, which culminate with the epiphany of Isis – but in Corinth and in Rome. What I would like to do, therefore, is turn this question inside out and – all too briefly – ask not what Egypt meant for the ancient novel, but what romance in the Late Period

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2

See Huet 1670 and Winkler 1992, who hold respectively the metonymic and the metaphoric view; cf. Barns 1956. The Hebrew ‫ שמות‬may be as late as the fifth century BCE. The Septuagint redaction dates in all probability to the third century BCE. The Construction of the Real and the Ideal in the Ancient Novel, 1–40

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meant for Egypt. This entails not only considering a different parallax of texts, but also viewing them within a different frame of historical unfolding.3

I. From the Īrānian conquest through the `Arab occupation (565 BCE - 642 CE), narrative prose fiction enjoyed widespread popularity in Egypt.4 Once the Beloved Land (&A mrj) became coercively incorporated as a tributary holding within the political economy of the continually expanding Levantine-Mediterranean world system,5 romances began to circulate in Aramaic, Egyptian, Greek, and Arabic,6 correlative with shifts in the language of imperial administration.7 As early, therefore, as the Old Aramaic Life of Aḥīqar8 – redacted among Jewish mercenaries at the garrison on Elephantinē (Abw),9 and copied over an Achaemenid customs account dated to 475 BCE – these fictions assumed as their geographical and historical horizon the compass of the Īrānian, Makedonian, Roman, and Byzantine empires of which Egypt successively formed part. Indicative here is the palimpsest that constitutes the subtext to the Old Aramaic Aḥīqar, which records taxes levied on transimperial trade at Memphis (Mn-nfr), in the southwestern most corner of the Achaemenid domain (Fig. 1):

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4

5

6

7

8 9

For overlapping treatments of similar material from differing perspectives, see Selden 2010 and 2012. On the problems of ‘fiction’ relative to ‘history’ in this period, see Gill – Wiseman 1993; Bowersock 1994; Konstan 1998. A comprehensive history of the ancient Levantine-Mediterranean world economy remains to be written. For a succinct statement of the issue, see Morely 2007, 90-102. Key accounts of ‘a permanently connected Mediterranean’ (Fantalkin 2006, 199), are Braudel 1998 and Horden – Purcell 2000. For the general theory: Wallerstein 2004. It is imperative not to confuse the economy of the Levantine-Mediterranean world system with the political organization of the Mediterranean-Levantine tributary state, however integrally related; cf. Algaze 2005, Frank – Gills 1993, and İslamoğu-İnan 1997. Following Perry 1967, I use the term ‘romance’ primarily for the sake of convenience. For the ideological baggage of such generic terms, see Selden 1994; Doody 1996; Goldhill 2008a. On Aramaic as an administrative language in particular, see: Beyer 1986; Garelli 1982; Greenfield 1985. Porten – Yardeni 1993, 3:23-54; Conybeare et al. 1913 On the Jewish garrison stationed at Elephantinē, see Modreziewski 1992; Porten et al. 1996.

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TH E P O LI TI C AL EC ON O MY O F RO M AN C E

Achaemenid Empire ca. 500 BCE

Yaunā [Greece]

 Babylon

Ūvja [Persia]

Mudrāya [Egypt] Figure 1. Fantasmatic triangulation of Persian imperial space. Old Persian [and Modern] Toponyms

On the 16th of Tybi they inspected for Egypt (‫ )למצרין‬1 ship of Somenes, son of Simonides, Ionian (‫)יוני‬. One large ship it is, in accordance with its measurements. The oil which was found in it is oil, 50 jars. The tribute (‫ )מנדתא‬which was collected from it and made over to the house of the

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king (‫[ על בית מלכא‬scil., Xerxes]): gold, 10 staters of gold, 8 sheqels, 15 hallurs; silver, 10 karsh, 2 hallurs, 2 quarters.10 Aramaean agents, presumably from Yehud,11 impose tariffs here on a Greek merchant transporting oil from the satrapy of Yaunā (Ionia) to the satrapy of Mudrāya (Egypt).12 These they subsequently remit, by way of the royal treasury at Memphis,13 to the household (viθā) of the Great King at Susa in Ūvja (Elam).14 Performed by day and month of the Egyptian calendar, each entry weighs the tribute according to a mixture of Greek and Akkadian denominations,15 thereby preserving local specificities,16 at the same time that the registry sublates them within the totality of the non-homogenized, though clearly hierarchizing, Achaemenid politico-economic space.17 ————— 10 11

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14

15 16 17

Porten – Yardeni 1993, 3:94 f., condensed. For the port in question, see 3:xx-xxi. I.e., ‫ יהוד מדינתא‬. See Modreziewski 1992; Grabbe 2006, esp. 132-156, 316-321. The connection between the Customs Account and the Judean colony at Elephantinē where it was found remains unclear; the language of the customs ledger, however, is not Imperial Aramaic, but rather the same dialect represented in the Aramaic documents from the Jewish community in Egypt. See Muraoka – Porten 1998. On scribal culture of the period, see Schams 1998; van der Toorn 2007. Whether we are dealing with crown agents here (‫ )פחותא‬or ‘scribes of the treasury’, such as are referred to elsewhere in the Elephantinē archive, or both, the papyrus does not say. For the long history of Greco-Egyptian economic transactions reaching back to the New Kingdom, see Helck 1995, 46-87; Winnicki 2009; for the Īrānian Empire in particular, see Balcer 1991. Whether the Aramaic byt translates Demotic pr or Old Persian vi remains uncertain. However, the Demotic name for the storehouse at Memphis was ‘treasury of Ptah’ (HD-pr PtH), never ‘treasury of the king’, which is how the Aramaic reads. In fact, the Aramaic byt mlk’ is a fairly precise periphrasis of the Old Persian viθā, which is the normal term for the household of the Great King. Or at least this is one way to construe the geographical connections that the record lays out; that there are other possible scenarios, however, only foregrounds the complexity of the possible transimperial connections. For the satrapies of the Īrānian Empire, see Junge 1942; Toynbee 1954; Vogelgesang 1992. The Aramaic ywny can mean more generally ‘Greek’; however, in an official document, the Īrānian administrative sense of the term (‘man from Yaunā’) seems preferable or at least certainly possible here. On Greek communities in Egypt of this period, see Thompson 1988, 95-97; Clarysse – Thompson 2006, 138-46; for earlier historical connections with the Greek world, see Helck 1995; Schlotzhaurer – Villing 2006. See Bivar 1985. On the non-Aramaic technical terms in the account, see Yardeni 1994. For the economy of the Achaemenid Empire, see Briant 1982; Silver 1985; Briant – Herrenschmidt 1986; Tuplin 1987; Dandamaev – Lukonin 1989; Vali 1993; Briant 1996. For the dialectic, see Amin 1972.

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The composition that overwrites this ledger projects its geodialectics into historical romance.18 The Life of Aḥīqar is a fictionalized account of the distinguished Assyrian court scholar (ummānu) Aba-enlil-dari,19 which falls into two clearly demarcated parts:20 an introductory narrative (‫)קדמת מלוהי‬ reminiscent of the Joseph cycle in Genesis (‫)בראשית‬,21 followed by an eclectic set of apothegms (‫ )מלי‬closely related to such sapiential literature as Proverbs (‫)משלי שלמה‬.22 The tale, set primarily at the court of Esarḥaddon in Nineveh (681-669 BCE),23 recounts the vicissitudes of Aḥīqar’s career, a ‘wise and skillful scribe’ from Yehud (i.e., ‫)יהודי‬,24 who not only ‘became counselor of all Assyria (‫ )יעט אתור כלה‬and keeper of [Esarḥaddon’s] seal’: the king ordered that ‘all the troops of Assur should rely on his decrees (‫)מלוהי‬.’25 Powerful but childless, Aḥīqar grooms his clever nephew Nadin to become his successor (‫)ברי זי לא ברי‬.26 Once appointed to Esarḥaddon's court, however, Nadin forges documents that accuse Aḥīqar of plotting to ‘subvert the land against the king’, most maleficently – in less lacunose versions of the tale27 – false letters enjoining the Shāh of Persia and the Pharaoh of Egypt to converge upon Nineveh under arms, respectively from East and West.28 The incriminating epistles adduced, Aḥīqar escapes forfeiting his ————— 18

19

20

21 22

23

24

25 26 27 28

For related material, but requiring a different sort of reading, see the P.Dem. 125 Paris, which contains a decree of Cambyses regarding temple allotments on the recto and the Demotic Chronicle on the verso; cf. Spieglberg 1914. See van Dijk 1962: ‘[In the time of] King Esarḥaddon, Aba-enlil-dari, [whom] the Aramaeans (Axlamū) call Ah‘u’aqari, was ummānu.’ More than one Akkadian bureaucrat, however, is recorded as bearing this name; for an alternative rendering of the name, see Fales 1994 who also argues that the list in question, from the Seleukid period, fictively inserts this ummānu to give the fictional character a historical foundation. The relationship between the two is a problem which we can only touch on here; for preliminary philological considerations, see Kottspieper 1990. For the Assyrian background to the tale, see Parpola 2005. Genesis 39 f.; see, inter alia, Niditch – Doran 1977; Grottanelli 1987. Story 1945; Lindenberger 1983; Greenfield 1998, 43-54; Nau 1909. More generally see Crenshaw 2010; Clifford 2007; Lazarides 2007. On Babylonian wisdom literature, see Lambert 1996. Or perhaps Nineveh; Esarḥaddon moved the Assyrian capital from Nineveh to Babylon. Recensions vary on which of these cities marks the locus for the action, though in terms of symbolic geography their significance remains the same; see Salvesen 1968. Tobit 1:21 f. See Greenfield 1981; Toloni 2005. For further connections with the apocrypha, see Ruppert 1976; Cazelles 1951. For the general context, see Perdue (ed.) 2008. Nādīn: cf. Heb. ‫נתן‬, ‘to give’; on the ambivalence of the gift, see Mauss 2007. See Conybeare et al. 1913. While Assyria never succeeded in absorbing Iran or Egypt into its empire, readers of the fifth century BCE would certainly have recognized Babylon/Nineveh as centered within the Achaemenid domain, while Persia and Egypt represent its outer limits; on the ‘Neo-

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head only through the beneficence of the executioner who, concealing the sage in a subterranean vault, produces the body of a decapitated slave instead.29 Nonetheless, Nadin’s political triumph proves short-lived: bereft of Aḥīqar’s instructions, Esarḥaddon regrets the precipitateness with which he had ‘the father of all Assyria’ (‫ )אבוה זי אתור כלא‬dispatched.30 When Nadin’s treason comes to light, Aḥīqar reascends from the pit, whence the king gratefully restores ‘the master of good counsel’ (‫ )בעל עטתא טבתא‬to his rightful office, where his first act is to throw the turncoat Nadin into prison. There Nadin wastes away, listening to royal scribes recite the adages that he refused to countenance in his career, in fact the very set of apothegms which follow directly on the tale – ‫אלה מלי‬: ‘Choose the sayings (‫ )מלין‬you shall utter, then speak them to your brother to assist him. For the treachery of the mouth is more dangerous than the treachery of battle.’31 Not only, then, do the Customs Account and the Tale of Aḥīqar – i.e., the palimpsest and the romance – stake out the same geopolitical horizons: the tax records exemplify the basic sorts of economic transactions upon which the administrative, political, and military organization of the empire that the narrative imagines rests, where the ‘Assyria’ of the tale – by the mid-fifth century BCE – functions principally as a trope for the Achaemenid regime. That a provincial scribe, stationed at the outposts of the Achaemenian domain, should compose a tale about the meteoric rise of a fellow Aramaean who becomes not only master of his profession, but chief official at the court of Esarḥaddon (< Akk. Aššur-ahhe-iddina, ‘Ashur has given me a brother’),32 speaks for itself as phantasmatical projection.33 Above all, however, what the Romance of Aḥīqar idealizes is the potential for mobility – geographic, social, and economic – within the Assyro-Achaemenid tributary ————— 29

30 31 32

33

Assyrian’ empire in this context, see particularly Matilla 1999; Holloway 2002; Parpola 2004. The Elephantinē redaction breaks off at this point. For reconstruction of the conclusion, see Lindenberger 1985. Porten – Yardeni 1993, 3:32. Ibid. 3:36. The phenomenon of ‘scribal composition’ in antiquity, where ‘multiples’ or variant redactions of a text were simultaneously in circulation, has only begun to attract serious scholarly attention. For excellent preliminary studies of ‘apocryphal’ texts not unrelated to the Aḥīqar corpus, see Thomas 1998 and 2003, 40-71; see further Selden 2009. In fact, readers might profitably explore this as ‘The Relation of the Scribe to DayDreaming’ –cf. Freud 1941. In the wake of Sennacherib’s deportation of the Northern Israelite state in the generation immediately preceding Esarḥaddon, it also becomes possible to read the Tale of Aḥīqar as a type of nationalist allegory; cf. mutatis mutandis Jameson 1986. On the relative cultural autonomy of Jews in Egypt during the Īrānian period, see Davies – Finkelstein 1984, 358-400; Ray 1992.

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state.34 Under Esarḥaddon, therefore, the scribal calling not only appears as a carrière ouverte à tous les talents; unlike Mordecai in the Hebrew Esthēr, Aḥīqar’s enemies are not ‘Amalekites’ but kin:35 Assyrians of all classes, from executioner to king, prove Aḥīqar’s greatest champions at court, in effect to emphasize that within the multiethnic arena of the empire – be it in Egypt, Ashur, or Elam – foreigners were as often as not friends.36 So Aḥīqar (< Akk. Aḥī-(w)aqar, ‘my brother is precious’) questions in the adages: My own son spied out my house, what shall I say to strangers? He bore false witness against me; who, then, will declare me innocent? My poisoner came from my own house; before whom can I press my complaint?37 Lest the litigant avail himself too hastily, however, of imperial redress, Aḥīqar concomitantly stresses, ‘A king’s word is gentle, but keener and more cutting than a double-edged sword ... His anger is swifter than lightening: look out for yourself!’38 Here we see the importance of the sayings to the romance as a whole: distilling the distinctive plotting of the narrative into a set of ideological propositions that appear, as Louis Althusser has put it, ‘to have no history’,39 they allow the tale to circulate throughout the empire as a parable,40 ubiquitously valid irrespective of time, or place. Just as the triumph of the protagonist at the court of Esarḥaddon vouches for the aptitude of Aḥīqar’s adages as ‘wisdom’ (‫)חכמתה‬, so the apothegms – which retain no more than superficial local references41 – asymmetrically allow the narrative ————— 34

35

36

37 38 39 40

41

For the continuities and differences between Assyrian administrative policies and the Īrānian regime, see Lanfranchi et al. 2003; Cancik-Kirschbaum 2008. The model of political mobility is historically borne out, at least, by Cambyses’ celebrated promotion of the Egyptian priest Udjahorresnet to the Persian court in 522 BCE; see Posener 1936, 1-26. Cf. Esther 3:1. Agad and his descendents, the Amalekites, were ancestral enemies of the Yehudim; cf. Exodus 17:16-17. On the multicultural context of even so small an imperial outpost as Elephantinē, see Porten et al. 1996; Botta 2009. Porten – Yardeni 1993, 3:42. Ibid. 3:36. Althusser 1971. On the demographics of Aramaic as the language of Achaemenid administration, see Folmer 1995; Beyer 1986. Cf. the references to the deities Shamash and El –some scholars take these to be traces of an earlier Akkadian Vorlage, others as superficial references designed to link the apothegms to the Assyrian setting of the tale; see Lindenberger 1985.

DA N IE L L . S E LD E N

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to exceed its function as an historical account of the splendeurs et misères of an Assyrian imperial career.42 The Life of Aḥīqar, as Eduard Meyer aptly observed, is ‘the oldest book of world literature, internationally diffused through the most disparate tongues and diverse peoples.’43 Over the next two millennia, scribes successively recast the novel, as they translated the tale, together with its apothegms, into all the major languages of culture around the Mediterranean and across the Middle East: Demotic (Egyptian), Syriac, Armenian, Georgian, Pārsīg, Arabic, Ethiopic, Greek, Old Macedonian, Serbian, Rumanian, Russian, Turkish, Latin.44 As a result, the Life of Aḥīqar came to constitute one of the foundational fictions for the novel of the long Hellenistic period (331 BCE - 1453 CE).45 Written from a position of double deterritorialization – a displaced Judean scribe working among dispossessed Egyptians – the plot of Aḥīqar adumbrates the tripartite division that in abstracto will remain the hallmark of later Levantine-Mediterranean imperial fictions and their derivatives: fall into exile  wandering, katabasis, struggle, misrecognition  recuperative return.46 The Scheintod, around which the Life of Aḥīqar pivots, proves only the most lapidary expression of this plot, which in essence constitutes a narrative projection of the cognitive displacement inherent in what Greek rhetoricians would come to call μεταφορά.47 Aristotle, in fact, sug————— 42

43 44

45 46

47

A fuller reading of the romance than is possible here would show how the tale, in essence, narrativizes the chiastic structure of the adage: ‘A king’s word is GENTLE, but keener and more cutting than a double-edged sword. His anger is swifter than lightning; look out for yourself! Let him not kindle it against your words, lest you depart before your time. When a royal command is given you, it is a burning fire. Execute it at once, lest it flare up against you and singe your hands. But rather let the king’s command be your heart’s DELIGHT’; Cf. Todorov 1967, 32-41. Meyer 1912, 128. For the diffusional pattern, see Selden 2009. For an overview, see Contini – Grottanelli 2005, 11-89. On the remnants of the Middle Persian redaction, see de Blois 1984. For an instructive attempt to read across linguistic variants, see Paschalis 2007. On the periodization, see Droysen 1980, 3:447f. Cf. Fuchs 2004, 12-36. To periodize examples unequivocally central to the tradition: [1] Ptolemaic: Homer’s Odysseia, the Septuagint Exodos; [2] Imperial: Vergil’s Aeneis; Akhilleus Tatios’ Leukippē and Kleitophōn; Augustine’s De civitate Dei; [3] Medieval: Marie de France’s Bisclavret (West), Nezāmī’s Leylī o Majnūn (East). For the modern survival of the form, see Langley et al. 1991. On the late date for our editions of the Odyssey, see especially Nagy 1996, 107-152, and Nagy 2010, 73-353. On the ‘secondariness’ inherent to the classical romance in general, see Bakhtin 1981; cf. more generally Whitmarsh 2004a and 2004b. Cf. Todorov 1967, 32-41.

TH E P O LI TI C AL EC ON O MY O F RO M AN C E

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gests that metaphor constitutes the basis both of literary ποίησις per se,48 as well as of ‘first philosophy’ in general,49 an observation that would not only account for Aḥīqar’s coupling of narrative with sapiential propositions, but also prefigures the fundamental complicity of all later romance with metaphysics.50 At the same time, however, the narrative’s preoccupation with ‘universalizing knowledge’ (ἡ καθόλου ἐπιστήμη)51 transpires – whatever its philosophical pretentions to the unconditioned – as part and parcel of the peculiar economic, social, political, and intellectual formations that comprised the Levantine-Mediterranean tributary state. The Life of Aḥīqar is in no way mimetic of these functions, but rather occupies a position that is interstitial to their imbrication, bringing into play diverse populations, territories, becomings, affects, and eventuations. 52 These sorts of agencements53 – in which utterances do not have as their cause a subject of enunciation (bard, author, scribe, etc.) – remained typical of narrative prose fiction in Egypt as attested from the Īrānian through the ´Umayyad administrations. In this respect, then, Egypt – whatever foreign redactions later made of the material54 – elaborated its own historical tradition of Romance, just as other places, provinces, and peoples (e.g., Ioudaioi,55 Īrānians,56 Greeks57) – insofar as each occupied different positions within the Levantine-Mediterranean tributary system – likewise developed theirs, all of which were destined, nonetheless, eventually to traverse each other in numerous ways and at multiple points of intersection.58

————— 48

49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56

57 58

See Halliwell 2002. It is to Aristotle that we owe the observation that metaphor is philosophically the master trope of narrative in this period; see Poetics 1457b1 f. Aramaic metalanguage for literary composition all dates from a much later period. See Derrida 1972; de Man 1979; Haverkamp 2007; Selden 2011. See Selden Forthcoming. Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics 982a-b. Cf. Deleuze – Parnet 2002, 51. For further elaboration, see Deleuze – Guattari 1980. For the term and its translation, see Lecercle 2002, Phillips 2006. See, for example, the discussion in West 2003; Giaiero 2005. See, especially, Gruen 1998. For details, see Rypka 1959. More recent points of departure are Davis 2002; SeyedGohrab 2003. For an overview see Swain 1996, 101-131; Whitmarsh 2005. Cf. Kinoshita 2006.

DA N IE L L . S E LD E N

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II. In 404 BCE, the Shining One ( BAo.t) succeeded in liberating itself from Īrānian occupation under the leadership of Amenirdis of Sais (Grk. Ἀμυρταῖος), who founded the Twenty-Eighth dynasty and re-established a period of Egyptian independence which lasted until 343 BCE, when Artaxšaçā III impelled the rebellious province back within Īrānian imperial fold.59 Despite the linguistic and generic archaizing of Egyptian royal inscriptions from this period – a clear attempt to re-establish continuity with New Kingdom historical traditions60 – the Beloved Land, in shifting alliances with Sparta, Athens, and Cyprus, remained caught up in the escalating political controversies of the Mediterranean East that would eventuate in Alexander’s expedition.61 It comes as no surprise, then, that however conservative their protocols, Late Middle Egyptian hieroglyphic compositions,62 from the Twenty-Eighth Dynasty through the second Īrānian occupation (343-331 BCE), increasingly reflect Egypt’s decentered, though nonetheless still pivotal, position within the political economy of the Levantine-Mediterranean world system.63 Again, the privileged mode for this expression turns out to be romance.64 Of particular interest is a pseudepigraphic stele, erected at Karnak – the ‘Most Select of Places’ (Jp.t-sw.t) – near the Temple of Khons in the late fourth century BCE,65 which relates a case of daemonic possession, exorcised by the Theban god #nsw, who appears here in a peculiar bipartite form: on the one hand, the stationary ‘Khons in Thebes, Resplendent in Peace [or: Offerings]’ (#nsw-m-WAs.t-nfr-Htp), on the other, his more active, mobile coun————— 59 60 61 62

63

64

65

See Kienitz 1953; Bresciani 1985. der Manuelian 1994; Gozzoli 2006, 103-109. For a lucid summary, see Elgood 1951; for more detail Ray 1988. For the stages of the Egyptian language, see Loprieno 1998, 1-8. On Late Middle Egyptian in particular, which now replaced Aramaic as the privileged idiom of official expression, see Jansen-Winkeln 1996. No adequate overview of Egypt’s historical position within these empires currently exists; for the moment, however, see Salmon 1981; Huβ 2001, esp. 97-191 (‘Die Zeit der Suche nach der Position Ägyptens’). I.e., narrative prose fiction, with the further qualifications that emerged in the discussion of Aḥīqar above. Now Louvre C 284. Text: Kitchen 1979, 284-287. The date is disputed–others push the composition back to Dynasty 25– and a second copy of the first portion of the text, found on a Theban temple of Dynasty 30, still awaits publication by the University of Chicago Epigraphic Survey; see Kitchen 1999, 166. For the cultural significance of Karnak, see Lauffray 1979; Barguet– Aranaudiès 2008.

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terpart ‘Khons, the Counselor in Thebes’ (#nsw-pA-jrj-sxr-m-WAs.t).66 In the time of a fictional New Kingdom pharaoh – the scribes have crossed the royal titulary for Thothmosis IV (1401-1391 BCE) with that of Ramesses II (1279-1213 BCE) – an annual royal progress to Mitanni occasions a dynastic marriage between the king of Egypt and the daughter of the king of Bakhtan,67 an exotic land evidently on the far side of the Zagros mountains, perhaps the East Īrānian Bākhtriš:68 All the princes (wr.w) of the world came from the farthest reaches of the earth (SAa pHw.w) to bow in peace before the might (bA.w) of His Majesty, bearing their gifts (jnw) of gold, lapis lazuli, turquoise, and every manner of aromatic plant from God’s Land on their backs, each one striving to outdo his fellow. Then the king of Bakhtan had his gifts presented, and he placed his eldest daughter before them, praising His Majesty and beseeching life from him. In the heart of His Majesty, the woman was exceedingly beautiful, beyond anything (nfr[.t] r aA wr). Thus, her titulary was set down as the Great Queen, ‘Resplendence of Rē’ (Nfr.w-Ra[.w]).69 His Majesty takes Neferurē as tribute back to Egypt, though some years later, as the king performs the rites of Amun-Rē at Luxor, a messenger arrives from Bakhtan, announcing that the queen’s younger sister Bentresh has ————— 66

67

68

69

Broze 1989. The epithet nfr-Htp poses notorious difficulties for translations; Lichtheim (1980, 90) renders the cult title ‘Khons-the-Merciful’ though I opt here for a more literal construction: ‘resplendent with respect to peace’. The phrase pA-jrj-sxr means ‘he who makes (does/performs) sxr’, that is: ‘advice, counsel, wisdom’; hence, R. Ritner translates “Khons-the-Authority” [Simpson et al., 2003, 362-366]. Two further observations on the name: (1) Classical Egyptian has no word for politics proper, though the term sxr sometimes approaches this [for citations, see Hannig 2006, s.v. 5 (29871)]; hence, jrj sxr can also mean ‘to conduct politics’ > ‘Khons-Who-Conducts-Politics-in-Thebes’. (2) In Middle Egyptian, the verb xns means ‘to traverse’; hence, #nsw ‘Wanderer’–as a deity, the god of the Moon, in the Theban triad the child of Amun and his consort Mut; for the distritubtion of these cult titles, see Leitz 2002, V, s.v. For an overview of diplomatic marriages of the New Kingdom, see Schulman 1979. In Egyptian, the titles are necessarily asymmetrical, since only the King of Egypt may bear the honorifics: nj-sw.t bjtj nb tA.wj. As is conventional, the stele simply calls all other foreign rulers wr (‘Great One’), without further distinction, hence: pA wr n Bxtn. For a divergent interpretation, which reads ‘Oatti’ instead of ‘Bakhtan’, see Spalinger 1977, 11-18, and Kitchen 1999, 167-168. Neither critic seems to have considered the possibility of geographical double vision – e.g., historically the events involved the king of Oatti, but the stele projects them eastward onto ‘Bakhtan’– as is the case with the crossed titulary; otherwise, the setting in Mitanni makes no good hermeneutic sense. Figura etymologica: Bentresh Stela, ll. 4-6.

DA N IE L L . S E LD E N

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fallen ill (mn Abx[.w] m Ha.w=s), and imploring Ramesses to send a ‘knower of things’ (rx-jx.t) from Egypt to examine her. First, upon consulting the faculty of the House of Life ( pr-anx) and the Council of the Royal Residence (Xnw), Ramesses dispatches the royal scribe +Hwtj-m-Hb (‘Thoth is in Celebration’) to make the diagnosis: an Ax-spirit has taken hold over Bentresh’s body,70 but fortunately the daemon is ‘an enemy with whom one could contend.’71 Second, after securing the support of Khons-in-Thebes, the king sends Khons-the-Counselor – scil. the god’s cult statue – to carry out the treatment. No sooner does the deity enter the presence of the ailing princess, than she instantly returns to health ( nfr s(j) Hr-a). Departing, the spirit obsequiously responds, Welcome (jj.tj m Htp), O great god who expels wanderers (SmA.w)! Bakhtan is your mooring place (dmj=k pw Bxtn), its people are your servants (Hm.w), as am I. I shall return to the place from which I came, in order to set your heart at ease about that for which you came. May Your Majesty issue a command to celebrate with me and the king of Bakhtan! Offering cult to the spirit, the entire population of Bakhtan thereupon bursts into jubilation. In fact, so pleased is the king of Bakhtan with the prowess of Khons-the-Counselor that he detains the deity in his country for four more years: only after an admonitory dream does Bentresh’s father send the statue back to Egypt,72 laden with lavish gifts for his more prepossessing colleague, Khons-in-Thebes. This ingenious Late Period Königsnovelle,73 written on the cusp of the Makedonian invasion, employs the anachronistic geography of the New Kingdom to figure the coordinates of the Īrānian state – their tributary overlords for more than two centuries – which Alexander’s empire was about to absorb. While Mitanni, like the ‘Assyria’ of Aḥīqar, represents the Mesopotamian core of this Afroasiatic territorial domain, Egypt and Bakhtan constitute its geographical extremes, Mudrāya and Bākhtar being respectively the Western and Eastern most provinces of the Īrānian (and Makedonian) states. This begs a symbolic reading of the tale as the ‘marriage’ of imperial periph————— 70 71

72

73

See Englund 1978. One of the three traditional decisions that Egyptian physicians made upon diagnosis; see Grapow 1954-73, esp. vol. 3 (‘Kranker, Krankheiten und Arzt’). For the Egyptian ‘House of Life’, see Gardiner 1938. The inscription motivates a pun on the prepositional modifier that forms part of the god’s cult title: m WAs.t, which can mean either ‘in Thebes’ or ‘from Thebes’. Hermann 1938; Loprieno 1996; Hofman 2005. More generally, see Röβler-Köhler 1991.

13

TH E P O LI TI C AL EC ON O MY O F RO M AN C E

eries at the center – i.e., the unification of the empire as a space of reciprocal desire (Fig. 2): just as for Egypt, Bakhtan is the site of resplendent objects of appetition (nfr.w), so for Bakhtan, Egypt is the locus of salvific knowledge

Kingdom of Mitanni ca. 1500 BCE

Egypt

Mitanni

Bakhtan

Figure 2. Fantasmatic Triangulation of Tributary Relations in the Bentresh Stele

DA N IE L L . S E LD E N

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(rx) in the House of Life. The chiasmus, however, is emphatically asymmetric,74 since all power here ultimately resides with Egypt: the royal hymn that prefaces the tale not only addresses Ramesses conventionally as ‘king (nsw) of the Black Land, ruler (HoA) of the Red land, sovereign (jtj) who seizes the Nine Bows’ – i.e., dominator of the entire world;75 only Ramesses receives gifts from other potentates, holds the right to name ‘Neferurē’,76 the capacity to elevate her from princess (sA.t n wr) to queen (Hm.t-nsw wr.t), and the majesty (bA.w) to intercede magically with the gods on behalf of Bentresh’s health. In an instructively Foucauldian sense, moreover, power finds its most durative expression here in science,77 specifically in the medical categories of diagnosis and the magical efficacies of cure,78 which alone among peoples Egypt appears to possess.79 Hence Khons’ reduplication in the tale: while Khons-in-Thebes remains anchored at Karnak, Khons-the-Counselor travels to the extremities of Egypt’s imperial horizons, wherever the god’s magical protection may be needed, rendering welfare that ultimately accrues back – as tribute – to the reputation and enrichment of Khons-in-Thebes.80 Evidently, Bakhtan possesses no numenal equivalent, since the inscription leaves open no space (Leerstelle) for an interpretatio Bactriana of Khons,81 as does, for example, the roughly contemporary Satrap Stele (311 BCE), erected under Ptolemy I, whose opening supplies – in hieroglyphs – both the Greek name for the Makedonians’ new royal Residence (i.e., Alexandria), as well as its Egyptian appellation ( , Coptic: rakote).82 Phantasmatically, within the evolving Levantine-Mediterranean world system, Egypt appears here as simultaneously central and decentered: clearly the country that both galvanizes the oecumenical collective and guarantees ————— 74 75 76 77 78

79

80 81 82

On the asymmetry of chiasmus, see Selden 2007, with further bibliography. On the topos, see Uphil 1967. See Posselt 2005. Cf. Foucault 1973 and 2000. For a related point, see Erskine 1995. On the relationship of medicine to magic, see Ritner 1993, 54-57 et passim; see also the excellent exhibition catalogue Froschauer – Römer 2007. Medical texts: von Deines et al. 1958; Bardinet 1995. For further detail: Grapow 1954-73; Ghalioungui 1983; Ebeid 1999; Halioua – Ziskind 2005. Records of similar international transactions in New Kingdom archives do not have the same status as a public stele; for the problematic, see Eyre 1996. On the documents in question, see Liverani 1979; Cohen – Westbrook (eds.) 2000; Moran 2003. Translations: Moran 1992. For the context, see Grimal 1996. Iser 1970. Satrap Stele l. 4; Sethe 1904, II 14.

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transimperial order (mAa.t),83 the Beloved Land nonetheless now stands on the periphery of imperial space.84 Thus, even when what it wants to assert is Egypt’s international position, the stele turns out to be inherently self-marginalizing by virtue of its hermetic graphic idiom.85 Effectively, then, the Bentresh Stele constitutes a dialectical negation of the textual currency achieved in the Life of Aḥīqar. Both envision in abstracto wide political, economic, and cultural connectivity across the Mediterranean-Levantine East, but whereas the international dissemination of the Life of Aḥīqar achieves this in concreto, the Bentresh Stele remained firmly planted in one or two places, accessible only to those who came to Karnak, gained admittance to the inner sancta of the Temple of Amun-Rē, knew the classical Egyptian language, and could read its often abbreviated and cryptographic hieroglyphic script.86 Moreover, the two romances take virtually the same set of literary motifs – a common topographical framework; a thematics of social, economic, and epistemological mobility within the tributary state; a narrative of exile, wandering, and return; the victory of life over death; etc. – but develop them in mutually opposing ways,87 the Bentresh Stele from the magical position of the master, the Life of Aḥīqar from the sapiential perspective of the slave.88 Whatever their differences in language, medium, style, and intent, then, the two narratives have inevitably to encounter one another within the internal development of Late Egyptian literary history. While the Demotic version of the Life of Axkl – preserved on two papyri written in the same hand and dated to the first century CE89 – makes it remotely possible that the compositors of the Bentresh Stele knew the basic contours of the Aḥīqar tale, the issue here is in no way one of ‘intertextuality’,90 much less conscious allusion, but rather of what Carl Schmitt referred ————— 83 84

85

86

87 88

89 90

See Derchain 1962; Graefe 1979. In general: Assmann 1990. Cf. Bentresh Stela, l. 16 in which Khons-in-Thebes-Beautiful-in-Peace makes magical protection for his counterpart in each of the four cardinal directions. For the complex question of the politicization of classical Egyptian literature, see the essays collected in Assmann – Blumenthal (eds.) 1999. For the hermeticism inherent in hieroglyphic script, particularly of the Late Period, see Kurth 1998. The standard work on Late Period cryptography remains Sauneron 1962; see more generally Morenz 2008. Cf. Riffaterre 1978 on hypograms; for a related example, Selden 1994. Cf., in this regard, the Life of Aesop; inter alia: Adrados 1979; Patterson 1991; Hägg 1996; Kurke 2006. Betrò 2005. For a solid discussion of this aspect of novelistic texts, see Morgan – Harrison 2008.

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to as the ‘intrusion (Einbruch) of the times into the [aesthetic] play’,91 or, as Fredric Jameson preferred to call this, the texts’ ‘political unconscious’.92 Consequently, each of the romances is riven by the basic incongruity that underwrote the Levantine-Mediterranean world system, that is – in Samir Amin’s lapidary formulation – ‘the contradiction between the continued existence of the community and the negation of the community by the state.’93 Whereas the Life of Aḥīqar gives us the precarious scribal view, as it were, from below, the Bentresh Stele compensates with the over-assurance of the Egyptian priestly perspective from above. Ironically, however, it is the Judaean kātvān who writes in Aramaic, the language of imperial power, while the priests of Khons write in archaic Middle Egyptian, one provincial idiom among others within the Īrānian state.94 It is not the engagement of these two texts per se that is at stake here – there are other representatives of both positions, extant and doubtless lost – but rather the historical stance that informs each with regard to Egypt’s position within the evolution of the Levantine-Mediterranean world order.

III. In fact, the predicament that the Bentresh Stele articulates accords well with Alexander III of Macedon’s simultaneous promotion of his oracular recognition as the son of Amun at Sīwah ( %x.t-jAm), which – from an Egyptian point of view – legitimated his conquest of the Asiatics,95 and his reduction of Egypt to a province under Makedonian hegemony, now radiant from Babylon.96 Ptolemaic independence only rendered this asymmetry all the ————— 91

92 93 94 95

96

Schmitt 2008. Schmitt writes against the notions of ‘aesthetic autonomy’ popularized by F. Schiller in his Briefe über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen (1795), which is of no particular historical pertinence here except to the extent that modern scholars will, for the most part, have internalized Schiller’s aesthetic perspective; cf. de Man 1996, 129162. Jameson 1981. Amin 1972. Still useful here is Brooks 1947, 3-21 (‘The Language of Paradox’). On the historical background and the recurrent literary theme of ‘smiting the Asiatics’ see–relevant to the current context–Loprieno 1988; Helck 1995. For Egyptian imagery in coinage propaganda, see Hazzar 1995 and Dahmen 2007. On the transference of power from Pella to Babylon as the effective capital of Alexander’s kingdom, the most convenient overviews are: Bosworth 1988, 179, 235-36; Worthington 2003, 106-47. For further detail: Higgins 1980; Kuhrt 1987; Hold 1986;

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more apparent,97 in part through such apocalyptical disruptions as the Great Disorder that stirred Upper Egypt between 205-186 BCE,98 but also more routinely as Greek first redoubled, then replaced Egyptian as the principal language of provincial administration,99 while hieroglyphic culture retreated into the encyclopedic esotericism of the great temple complexes of Edfu, Dendera, Kom Ombo, and Esna.100 Accordingly, by the time that Egypt passed into Roman hands,101 Greek historical fiction was coming to displace even Demotic romance as the most prominent form of imperial literature among the increasingly bilingual Egyptian population.102 Originating for the most part from abroad,103 Greek novels in Egypt – whatever their significance for audiences elsewhere in the Empire104 – served both to insert Egyptians literate in Greek within a transimperial community of readers,105 and, at the same time, through their construction of a phantasmatic Greek identity and promotion of ‘Hellenic’ values, to estrange them.106 Thus, Kharitōn of Aphrodisias’ romance Kallirhoē107 – which lays claims to being the first (καινὸν διήγημα) of the Greek love novels108 – proved popular in Egypt from the middle of the second century CE,109 even though the romance presumes as its principal historical referent Hermokratēs of Syracuse,110 the Greek ————— 97 98

99

100

101

102

103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110

Badian 2000. For a good overall discussion of the situation, see Hammond 1997, 181190 (‘The Kingdom of Asia and the Macedonians’). For an overview, see Hölbl 1992; Bowman 1996; Manning 2010. Decree of Memphis, Dem. l. 12: pA rmT j-jr xpr Hr kt-X.t mj.t n pA tXtX j-jr xpr [n] Kmj. See Pestman 1995; McGing 1997; Veïsse 2004. For the apocalyptic overtones, see Blasius – Schipper 2002. See especially Thompson 1992 and 1994. For overviews, see Bagnall 1988; Thompson 1988; Verhoogt – Vleeming 1998. Overview: Arnold 1999; Kurth 1994; Watterson 1998. For an orientation to the complex problem of esotericism, see Hornung 1999. For further details, see Fairman 1945; Sauneron 1982; Cauville 1988; Winter 1987; Labrique 1992; Kákosy 1994; Thiessen 1998; Kurth 2007-08. See Capponi 2005. There is as yet no good survey of culture under Roman Egypt in general; however, see preliminarily Rostovtzeff 1929. See Fewster 2003. For a more general overview: Woolf 1994. On the complex relations between Demotic and Greek romance, see Tait 1992 and 1994, Rutherford 1997, Vinson 2008. One salient exception is the so-called Tefnut Romance (P.Lond. 274); see West 1969. Cf. Reardon 1971; Whitmarsh 2004a. On this subject, Goldhill 2008b. Cf. Swain 1996, esp. 101-131 (‘The Greek Novel and Greek Identity’). Text: Reardon 2004. So Tilg 2010. For Greek romances attested in Egypt before Kharitōn, see Stephens and Winkler 1995. Westlake 1958-59.

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commander who not only famously repelled the Athenian attack on Sicily in 415-413 BCE,111 but went on to rout Karthaginian forces under Ḥanba`al in 408.112 Against Hermokratēs’ efforts to safeguard Hellenic dēmokratia,113 his daughter Kallirhoē’s adventures read like the Dantesque contrapasso of an irreproachable pornē114: married to the first stranger upon whom she literally stumbles,115 Kallirhoē’s protracted peregrinations first traverse the Greek world – from Syracuse to Athens to Miletus – only to press inwards from Ionia through the western satrapies of the Achaemenid state, from Karia and Kilikia south across the Transeuphrates, and down through Assyria to Babylon, capital of Artaxerxēs, King of Kings. Acclaimed in the great Audience Hall the most estimable woman in all Europe and Asia (kallistē gunaikōn),116 Kallirhoē subsequently returns full circle, this time by way of Syria and Cyprus back to Syracuse, her home (Fig. 3). The itinerary that the romance narrates is thus clearly apodictic: identity, truth, and value transpire, as Kharitōn emplots them, by way of passage through the Other – though the Happy End in which the entire citizen collective (dēmos) throngs the Syracusan Assembly to weep for joy at Kallirhoē’s restitution, is one from which Egyptian readers, whatever their ethnic origin or social station,117 can only have been all too conscious that they stood excluded: in the Egyptian Greek of the Fayyum papyri, amongst which copies of Kallirhoē figure, hellēn was already in use as a term for ‘foreigner’.118

————— 111 112 113

114 115

116 117

118

Thucydides 6.32 f. Kharitōn 7,2,4: οὐ γὰρ ἔθνος ἄπυστον ἦν τῆς Ἀθηναίων δυστυχίας. Diodorus Siculus 13,7. Between 412 and 408, Syracuse banished Hermokratēs, who died in a street fight after a failed coup in 407; cf. Thucydides 8,85. His assault against democracy thus hovers in the background of events that clearly take place before his bid for tyranny. See Chantraine 1968, s.v. Kharitōn 1,1,6. Cf. Lucretius, De rerum natura 2,220-225: without the swerve (clinamen) ‘no collision would take place and no impact of atom upon atom would be created. Thus nature would never have created anything.’ Cf. Kallirhoē 6,3,5. For on overview of the population, see the census results in Bagnall – Frier 1994, 179323. LSJ s.v. 4.

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Figure 3. Kharitōn’s Kallirhoē and the Herodotean Divide

In the same manner, moreover, as Aḥīqar and the Bentresh Stele, Kharitōn overlays one geography upon another: on the one hand, Kallirhoē’s postHerodotean world sets Greece over against Īrān as two antithetical political spheres, where the Syracusan ekklēsia and the apadāna at Babylon constitute the metonyms of this polarity. On the other, the ambit that Kallirhoē’s journey traces circumscribes the heartland of the Levantine-Mediterranean tributary state in its expansion under Roman rule of the first century CE, whose center had now famously moved westward to ‘Lavinian shores’.119 The Herodotean mondial divide thus functions partly as a trope for the geopolitics of Rome, even as it concomitantly represents their historical antecedent.120 Or to put it more precisely: Kallirhoē’s passage (poreiā) between West and East prefigures, for readers of the early centuries CE, the circulation of persons and commodities – in Kharitōn’s romance Kallirhoē is both – within the borders of the politico-economic collective that Rome, subsuming Herodotus’ predicative fissure, would ideally embrace within its bounds.121 For Kharitōn, moreover, the Empire constitutes first and foremost a space of ————— 119

120

121

Virgil, Aeneid I, 2-3: Laviniaque venit | litora. In this connection, Chariton makes passing reference to Italy and Europe [1,1,2]), on the hand, and on the other, to the Īrānian East [5,1,7]). The references, however, are asymmetrical: for the reader of the first century CE, the first fills out the holdings of the Roman Empire, the second those of the Īrānian in the fifth century BCE. See, however, Marks 1985, 1-7 (‘The Abiding Rift between East and West’) and 143-169 (‘Rome against Parthia: Iran Resurgent’). Cf. Pliny, Naturalis Historia 37, 201-204.

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radical displacement and paradoxical conjuncture,122 where only by exception does the ‘orphan pearl’ pass ataractically from hand to hand:123 ‘One township escorted [Kallirhoē] to the next, one satrap gave [her] into the care of his neighbor, for beauty carried all subjects away.’ Writing from Aphrodisias, however, in the Roman province of Asia, Kharitōn harbors no illusions about the ‘sullen business’ (drāma skuthrōpon [4,3,2]) of tributary Empire124 – so in the next sentence Kharitōn adds: ‘It was on the expectation that this woman would wield great authority (ὅτι μέγα δυνήσεται), that each hastened to offer her alien hospitalities.’ Without warning, then, though hardly by chance, Egypt erupts into violence in the final installment of the novel, bringing to a climax the tributary antagonisms that had simmered through the whole: Events now took a different turn. A report came to the King of a major rebellion in Egypt: the Egyptians, he learned, had murdered the royal satrap and invested a king from among the locals. He had marched out from Memphis and passed through Pelusion and was already overwhelming Syria and Phoenicia, to the point where their cities were offering no more resistance; it was as though a torrent or a fire had suddenly assailed them [6,8,1-2]. Mindful of Thermopylae, Greek mercenaries make common cause with Egypt against Īrānian dependence, though despite stunning victories at Tyre and Arados, their combined numbers ultimately prove insufficient in the face of the Īrānians’ overwhelming forces: when the vanquished Pharaoh chooses death over captivity [7,5,14], Artaxerxēs’ troops immediately move in to crush the provincial insurrection and efficiently re-establish economic order. Remarkably – in particular by contrast with Josephus’ roughly contemporary Jewish War – the punitive sanctions that Artaxerxēs imposes suggest no notable duress; as Shakespeare’s Cymbeline puts it in a parallel position, ‘Pardon’s the word to all’ [V, v, 422]: so far as possible, Egyptians, Phoenicians, and Cypriots resettle where they will [8,3,12], while Kallirhoē cordially enjoins the Īrānian queen to correspond with her across the now pacific ————— 122

123

124

On this aspect of daily life in the Roman Empire, see Graf 1997; see also, for Mesopotamian conditions, BeDuhn 2001. Shota Rustaveli, Vepxis Tqaosani 16: margaliti oboli. Kharitōn’s own trope is ‘island woman’ (νησιῶτις), a metaphor used by the poets in the sense of ‘isolated’ or ‘alone’ – most famously as the setting for Sophocles’ Philoktētēs; for a useful discussion, see Snyder 1991, 63 f. On the tributary structure of the Roman province of Asia, see Millar 1993, 49-51.

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Levantine-Mediterranean demesne. This political reconciliation finds its stylistic correlate in the hybrid homogeneity of Kharitōn’s Atticizing diction which, as Mikhail Bakhtin perspicaciously observed, ‘bears absolutely no indications of historical time, no identifying traces of its era.’125 As a result Roman readers from multiple sites within the Empire, and from a range of disparate decennia, could all find themselves interpellated by the novel in locally specific ways. The disembodied reader is nothing but a critical fiction: Greek audiences in Sicily, Achaea, Asia, in Mesopotamia, Syria, or Cyprus would each have viewed Kallirhoē’s adventures from differing perspectives,126 just as readers in Babylon would have figured her glorification before Artaxerxēs quite differently before Trajan renewed hostilities with Parthia in 115 CE, and after.127 Alone among the Roman provinces, however, Aegyptus remains conspicuously absent from the harmony that tunes the novel’s close, her political dissatisfactions unnamed as well as unaddressed – an oversight which, in this case, realistically reflects Egypt’s abiding history of resistance to all political subordination within the Levantine-Mediterranean world system, from Amenirdis’ mutiny against Darius II in 411 BCE,128 through the ‘Bucolic Revolt’ that mobilized the Delta under Antoninus in 139 CE,129 to the pagan riots rejecting Egypt’s incorporation into Christendom following the Edict of Milan of 313 CE. In this respect, moreover, Kharitōn’s novel – from an Egyptian point of view – constitutes the logical sublation of the dialectic between the transimperial currency of Aḥīqar and the provincialism of the Bentresh Stele, insofar as Kallirhoē effectively preserves local recalcitrancies within a narrative combine – so Stefan Tilg has suggested for the title: Τὰ περὶ Καλλιρόην διηγήματα130 – that nonetheless circulated freely throughout the Roman Empire as a whole.131 ————— 125

126 127

128 129 130 131

See Bakhtin 1975, 234-408, esp. 236 f. For divergent analyses of Kharitōn’s Greek, which nonetheless converge on Bakhtin’s point, see Papanikolaou 1973; Ruiz Montero 1991; Hernandez Lara 1994. Selden 1994. Even though it would be impossible to predict such an event when Kharitōn was writing in the mid-first century CE, the novel proleptically includes such possibilities within the horizon of expectation that defined imperial romance. On the ‘fore-structure’ of understanding, cf. Gadamer 1965 and Jauss 1977. Bresciani 1985. See McGing 1998; Rutherford 2000. Tilg 2010. Non-proliferating, in the sense that Kallirhoē neither forms part of nor gives rise to the type of text-network characteristic of the Aḥīqar romance; see Selden 2009.

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IV. As such, historical fiction in Late Antique Egypt – considered as a canon – evolves not only rationally: it forms a coherent, dialectical progression which with Kharitōn – and his subsequent refinements in Akhilleus Tatios and Hēliodōros – would seem to have sufficiently worked through Egypt’s complex relationship to the political economy of the Levantine-Mediterranean tributary state of which it so ambivalently formed part.132 Accordingly, the Byzantine period – so far as is attested – produced only one piece of historical fiction that significantly advanced the dialectics of the Late Egyptian novel: the Coptic Kambysēs Romance, preserved in a single manuscript dated paleographically to the late sixth or seventh century CE,133 effectively transumes this entire antecedent historical tradition. Thus, under the pressure of the Byzantine-Sāsānian Wars,134 and Xusrō II Parvēz’s ultimate (re)occupation of Egypt from 618-628 CE,135 the novel returns to recuperate retrospectively the principal traumatic turning point in the millennial trajectory that secured Egypt’s subordination within the Levantine-Mediterranean world system – that is, the first Īrānian conquest of Egypt under Kambūjiya in 565 BCE.136 On the one hand, the narrative remains thoroughly hostile to this victory, situating Kambysēs’ incursion within a series of historical assailants – Hittites, Assyrians, Babylonians, Gauls – that the Egyptians had either defeated or successfully repulsed,137 relating in excruciating detail the ————— 132

133

134 135

136 137

The formation of a canon does not presuppose that any particular writer had direct access to a specific text, or that all of its components were simultaneously available as a coherent set; see McDonald – Sanders 2002. Here the relationship between the various Egyptian romances is necessarily implicit, and their logical development a matter more of history than of reading. For the dating of the Kambysēs Romance, see Spiegelberg 1908; Schubart 1938, 47; Richter 1997-98. For the basic source material, see Greatrex – Lieu 2002. Procopius, History of the Wars I, 21–II, 29; Theophanes, Chronographia, ed. C. de Boor (Leipzig, 1883), 290-327; Chronicum Anonymum, ed. I. Guidi (Leipzig, 1903) [‘Khusistan Chronicle’]; C. Bosworth, The History of al-Tabari, vol. V (New York, 1999). For discussion, see Butler 1978, 69-129, 498-507; Altheim-Stiehl 1992, and 1998; Dignas – Winter 2007. Hostilities between Byzantium and the Sāsānians were so sustained that the Romance could have been composed at virtually any point before the Arab conquest so as to refract contemporary Egyptian fears of a new Īrānian invasion through the retelling of first Iranian conquest under Kambysēs. Given the date of the manuscript, however, it seems plausible that the compositor’s work falls either immediately before or even within the decade of Xusrō II’s occupation, perhaps shortly thereafter. Text: Ludin Jansen 1950. For an intelligent appraisal of the cultural costs of this history see Ritner 1998.

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treatment that the Īrānian forces – be they Achaemenian or Sāsānid – might phantasmatically have expected at the hands of the Egyptian people.138 To Kambysēs’ demand that the Shining One ‘abandon those disgraceful persons, the kings of Egypt’ – unable, so the Šāhānšāh claims, to protect their country – and surrender unconditionally before his own prepossessing might, Pharaoh’s counselor, Bothor, sends back an aggressively noncompliant missive: Kambysēs, whose name is Sanouth in our language, which means ‘Cowardly’ or ‘Fearful’: Behold, we have sent away our messengers because we are not afraid of you, but honor ourselves and esteem our lord Pharaoh (penjoeic varaw), who rules over us in glory. We have not wanted to slay your messengers, but in the time of wrath, you shall be told what we shall do ... First, we will surely disembowel you, your children we shall slay in your presence, your tyrants (turannoc) we shall cast to the ground, and your gods (noute) who go with you we shall burn up with fire, and as for yourself, we shall have no hesitation about cooking your flesh and ... [eating] you just like bears or raging lions. Now, O miserable one, reflect, deliberate, and consider what you are to do before the wrath (orgy) comes over you through Egypt (kyme). [V, 10 – VI, 11] The Egyptians – in this account – consider various ruses to defeat the Īrānians which involve the Apis bull, but too little of the narrative survives to say for certain how this inversion of Herodotus’ Kambysēs-logos eventually played out.139 Clearly, however, we are a far cry from Ramesses II’s nonchalant dismissal in the Qadesh Inscription: ‘Too great is he, the great lord of Egypt, to allow aliens to step in his path! What are these Asiatics to you, O Amun, these wretches ignorant of god?’140 In fact, the pharaoh Ouaphrēs [Grk. Ἀπρίης141] does appear in the romance just as the Īrānians describe him, that is, both foolish and weak, so that in historical perspective, his sub————— 138

139

140 141

Cf. the pericope in the Bohairic Life of Pachomius 7-8 where Constantine’s defeat of ‘Persian’ forces (an enemy with whom historically he never engaged) leads directly to the Christianization of the Roman world. This suggests that ‘Persian’ has in the Coptic period become synonymous with the older Egyptian phantasm of the ‘Asiatics’, deemed as one of the ‘Nine Bows’, to be one of the ancestral adversaries of the Egypt. Herodotus 3,1-39; cf. Prášek 1897; Klasens 1944-48; Hofmann – Vorbichler 1980; Brown 1982; Lloyd 1994; Depuydt 1995; Selden 1999. Kitchen 1979, 35. Egyptian:

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jects’ nationalist fulminations against Kambysēs represent little more than untethered narcissistic rage.142 Like Walter Benjamin’s Angel of History, then, the Kambysēs-redactor views the Beloved Land as ‘one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage,143 without – from an Egyptian point of view – any sense of recuperative, future-oriented vision.144 ‘In the end,’ as Konstantine Kavafy soberly observed, ‘the Medes would come through’ (κ’ οἱ Mῆδοι ἐπὶ τέλους θὰ διαβοῦνε).145 At the same time, however, what belies this pessimism is the apocalyptic dimension of the Kambysēs Romance, which has deep ties to such late Egyptian compositions as the Demotic Chronicle and the Lamb of Bakchoris, or – extant in Greek – the Oracle of the Potter and Nektanebō’s Dream.146 Egyptian writers, going back at least as far as the post-Hyksos period (ca. 16481540 BCE), associated foreign domination with internal chaos, which could only be righted by the return of a legitimate king.147 The Protocol of Nfr.tj, composed early in the Twelfth Dynasty – i.e., a Middle-Kingdom composition of around 1900 BCE – constituted the archetype for such mythographical predictions:148 A king will come from the South, a man of Amun, the justified, [a] child of Upper Egypt. He shall take the White Crown, he shall wear the Red Crown; he shall join the Two Mighty Ones, he shall please the Two Lords with what they wish, with field-circler in his fist, oar in his grasp ... Asiatics will fall to his sword, Libyans will fall to his flame, rebels to his wrath, traitors to his might, as the serpent on his brow subdues the rebels for him. ... Then Order (mAa.t) will return to its seat, while Chaos (jsf.t) is driven away. Rejoice, he who may behold, he who may attend the king!149 What distinguishes the Kambysēs Romance, however, from prophetic works such as the Protocol of Nfr.tj is the Coptic redactor’s decisive move from ————— 142

143 144

145

146 147 148 149

For the logic, see Freud 1923. The romance’s chronology is here clearly fictive: Kambysēs lived roughly a generation after Apriēs, who ruled from 588-568 BCE. Benjamin 1977. See, for example, the bravado that marks such earlier conquest narratives as the Sesonchosis Romance; Stephens and Winkler 1995. C. Cavafy, ‘Thermopylae’ (1903), ad finem. For a solid appraisal of the historical situation, see Kaegi 1998. See Hupkens 2002; Dillery 2005. See especially Assmann 2000. Cf. Assmann 1985. Protocol of Nfr.tj 14 f. (Helck 1992).

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Pharaonic annal-writing to Christian metahistory in which the geopolitical crises of Realpolitik constitute the manifestation of YHVH’s retributive agency in human affairs.150 Three times the extant portions of the narrative refer to Egypt’s Īrānian scourge as ‘Naboukhodonosor’, a learned error which in part signals that ‘Kambysēs’ – self-styled ‘Ruler of the World’151 – stands here as a metonym for the entire series of Egypt’s Late Period tributary overlords (Fig. 4a-e).152 What is more, the romance situates the residence of the pharaoh ‘Ouaphrēs’ not in Sais, from which the historical Apriēs ruled,153 but rather at Taphnas, further eastward in the Nile delta.154 These details, decidedly distinct, appear together in only one other extant composition: the Septuagint translation of Jeremiah (‫)ירמיהו‬, which the redactor evidently had before him. Here the Coptic saint, who appeared personally to the Archimandrite Shenoute in moments of communal crisis,155 unequivocally denounces Saite Egypt – a passage that reads metaleptically like YHVH’s definitive response to the horrors that the Egyptians threaten to visit upon ‘Kambysēs’ in the Romance: The word of the Lord (λόγος κυρίου) came to Ieremias in Taphnas, saying, ‘Take for yourselves great stones, and hide them in the entrance, at the gate of the house (οἰκία) of Pharao in Taphnas, in the sight of the men of Iouda: and you shall say, ‘Thus has the Lord said, “Behold, I will send, and will bring Naboukhodonosor, king of Babylon, and he shall place his throne upon these stones which you have hidden, and he shall lift up weapons against them. And he shall enter in, and smite the land of Egypt, delivering some for death to death; and some for captivity to captivity; and some for the sword to the sword. And he shall kindle a fire in the houses of their gods, and shall burn them, and shall carry them away captives ... And he shall break to pieces the pillars of Heliopolis that are in On, and shall burn their houses with fire.”’ ... Thus said the Lord, ‘Behold, I will give Ouaphrēs (τὸν Ουάφρη), king of Egypt, into the hands of his enemy, and into the hands of one that seeks his life.’156 ————— 150 151 152

153 154 155 156

Cf. Koch 1983. Cf. Judith 2:5 f. where the same scenario is predicated of Naboukhodonosor. In fact, ancient historical literature often identified the two; see Sulpicius Severus, Chronica II,14,1-3; John of Antioch, Historia Chronike 1,1,28; etc. See Herodotus 2,163 and 169; Lloyd 2001. See Döpp 2003. Besa, Life of Shenoute 94 f. Ieremias 50:8-13, 51:30. For more detailed commentary on this passage, see Holladay 1989, 312-435. The Sahidic rendering of this portion does not survive.

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Figure 4a. Empire of Alexander the Great

Figure 4b. Alexander’s Successors

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Figure 4c. Roman Empire

Figure 4d. Byzantine Empire

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Figure 4e. The Caliphates

At the opening of the Kambysēs Romance, the Coptic redactor remarks that the Egyptians have been ‘disobedient’,157 infractions that effectively motivate the narrative’s ensuing counter-plot of divine retribution, where Babylon serves as the instrument of the Lord,158 and the havoc that ‘Naboukhodonosor’ wreaks upon Egypt constitutes only the latest stage in the redemption of the ‘Children of Israel’,159 the community to which all Coptic Christians now implicitly belong.160 For Jeremiah, Walter Brueggemann observes, ‘Egypt has come to be a primal metaphor for worldly power organized against the purposes of God ... [W]hen Egypt is brought under the rule and purpose of Yahweh, in effect Yahweh’s governance will be fully established.’161 The Biblical subtext thus allows the Romance to play one version of apocalyptic off against another without directly resolving the discrepancies between them. Indigenous hopes for the ascendancy of a strong native ruler – a ‘man of Amun’ or, as the

————— 157 158 159 160 161

Cf. Ieremias 3:1ff. Cf. Jeremiah 27:6, with Ieremias 34:6. See further Hill 1999. For an up-to-date overview, see Brueggemann 2006. See further Raitt 1977. See, for example, Palladius, Lausiac History 18,7. Brueggemann 1998, 424.

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Third Sibylline Oracle puts it, a king ‘from the sun’162 – stand in overt tension with the recognition that the Diocese of Egypt now forms part of a world-encompassing civitas Dei, governed by a set of theo-political imperatives that find their center elsewhere – in Byzantine rhetoric ‘Jerusalem’ – where YHVH constitutes the ultimate mediator between world powers. Does ‘Kambysēs’ invasion of the Beloved Land represent the occasion for indigenous chaos (jsf.t), or is ‘Naboukhodonosor’ the agent of theodicy, sent to restore right (mAa.t) to an Egypt that has (always) already strayed, towards anagogic ends that, according to Jeremiah’s Oracle to the Nations, supersede the Beloved Land’s provincial goals?163 The dilemma perfectly captures the predicament of Byzantine Egypt where, in a displaced theologization of imperial tributary logic, indigenous notions of cosmic order (mAa.t) continued to vie with the now universalizing pretensions of Christian truth (tme < L. Eg. tA mAa.t).164 In staging this dialectic, however, the Coptic redactor has, in the manner of St. Paul, effectively ‘foreshortened’ the issue to a post-historical perspective.165 Portraying the Shining One less as a casualty marginalized within the ‘worlding of the world’,166 the Romance ultimately resituates Coptic culture as the conservator of the multiply entwined, often contradictory, and at times – as here – mutually parasitic Levantine-Mediterranean traditions that had come to flourish on Egyptian soil.167 Propelled, as Benjamin memorably put it, by the wind that blows from Paradise, the redactor of the Kambysēs narrative not only attempts to reassemble, against certain odds, the accumulated debris of Egypt’s abiding past: each join between the shards becomes for him, in its teleological suspension of renewal, ‘a strait gate through which the Messiah might enter.’168 ————— 162

163 164 165

166 167

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Sibylline Oracles 3, 652-56; cf. Oracle of the Potter. These two epithets ‘Son of Amun’ and ‘Sun of Rē’ appear regularly in the titularies of the pharaohs. Cf. Wisdom of Solomon 10:15 and 19:1-9; see Enns 1997. Frankfurter 2000. 1 Corinthians 7:29-31: ‘But this I say, brothers, the time (kairos) has been shortened (sunestalmenos), so that from now on those who have wives should be as though they had none; and those that weep, as though they wept not; and those that rejoice, as though they rejoiced not; and those that buy, as though they possessed not; and those that use the world (kosmon), as not using it to the full: for the shape (skhēma) of this world is passing away (paragei).’ See Agamben 2000. Cf. Heidegger 1953, 48. For a pertinent example from the text of the romance, which preserves an Old Persian gloss even as it condemns the Medes, see Kammerzell 1987. Benjamin 1977, 261. Space does not permit me to carry the analysis forward into the Islāmic period; the key text here would be Ibn al-Nafis’ theological novel Risālat Fād il ibn Nātiq (c. 1270 CE), a response to Ibn Ṭufayl’s Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān .

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Nagy, G. 1996. Poetry as Performance: Homer and Beyond, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. — 2010. Homer the Classic, Washington: Center for Hellenic Studies. Nau, F. 1909. Histoire et Sagesse d’Ahiqar l’Assyrien, Paris: Letousey. Niditch, S., Doran, R. 1977. ‘The Success Story of the Wise Courtier: A Formal Approach’, JBL 96, 179-193. Papanikolaou, A. 1973. Chariton-Studien. Untersuchungen zur Sprache und Chronologie der griechischen Romane, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Parpola, S. 2004. ‘National and Ethnic Identity in the New-Assyrian Empire and Assyrian Identity in Post-Empire Times’, Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies 18:2, 5-22. — 2005. ‘Il retroterra assiro di Ahiqar’ in: Contini, Grottanelli (eds.), 91-112. Paschalis, M. 2007. ‘The Greek and Latin Alexander Romance: Comparative Readings’, in: M. Paschalis et al. (eds.), The Greek and the Roman Novel: Parallel Readings, Groningen: Barkhuis & Groningen University Library, 70-102. Patterson, A. 1991. Fables of Power: Aesopian Writing and Political History, Durham: Duke University Press. Perdue, L. (ed.) 2008. Scribes, Sages, and Seers: The Sage in the Eastern Mediterranean World, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Perry, B.E. 1967. The Ancient Romances: A Literary-Historical Account of Their Origins, Berkeley: University of California Press. Pestman, P. 1995. ‘Harronophris and Chaonnophris. Two Indigenous Pharaohs in Ptolemaic Egypt (205-186 B.C.)’, in: S.P. Vleeming (ed.), Hundred-Gated Thebes: Acts of a Colloquium on Thebes and the Theban Area in the Graeco-Roman Period, Leiden: Brill. Phillips, J. 2006. ‘Agencement/Assemblage’, Theory, Culture, and Society 23, 108-109. Porten, B. et al. 1996. The Elephantine Papyri in English: Three Millennia of Cross-cultural Continuity and Change, Leiden: Brill. Porten, B.,Yardeni, A. 1993. Textbook of Aramaic Documents from Ancient Egypt, 4 vols., Jerusalem: Magnes. Posener, G. 1936. La première domination Perse en Egypte, Cairo: IFAO. Posselt, G. 2005. Katachrese: Rhetorik des Performativen, Munich: Wilhelm Fink. Prášek, J. 1897. Kambyses u. die Überlieferung des Althertums, Leipzig. Raitt, T. 1977. A Theology of Exile: Judgment/Deliverance in Jeremiah and Ezekiel, Philadelphia: Fortress Press. Ray, J. 1988. ‘Egypt, 525-404 B.C.’, in: The Cambridge Ancient History, 2nd. ed., vol. 4, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 254-286. — 1992. ‘Jews and Other Immigrants in Late Period Egypt’, in: Johnson (ed.), 273. Reardon, B. 1971. Courants littéraires grecs des IIe et IIIe siècles après J.-C., Paris: Les Belles Lettres. — 2004. Chariton Aphrodisiensis, De Callirhoe narrationes amatoriae, Leipzig: Teubner. Richter, T. 1997-98. ‘Weitere Beobachtungen am koptischen Kambyses-Roman’, Enchoria 24, 55-66. Riffaterre, M. 1978. Semiotics of Poetry, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Ritner, R. 1993. The Mechanics of Ancient Egyptian Magical Practice, Chicago: Oriental Institute. — 1998. ‘Egypt under Roman Rule: the Legacy of Ancient Egypt’, in: Daly, Petry (eds.), 1:1-33. Röβler-Köhler, U. 1991. Individuelle Haltungen zum ägyptischen Königtum der Spätzeit, 2 vols., Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.

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Rostovtzeff, M. 1929. ‘Roman Exploitation of Egypt in the First Century A.D.’, Journal of Economic and Business History 1, 337-364. Ruiz-Montero, C. 1991. ‘Aspects of the Vocabulary of Chariton of Aphrodisias’, CQ 61, 484489. Ruppert, L. 1976. ‘Zum Funktion der Achikar-Notizen im Buch Tobias’, Biblische Zeitschrift NS 20, 232-237. Rutherford, I. 1997. ‘Kalasiris and Setne Khamwas: A Greek Novel and some Egyptian Models’, ZPE 117, 203-209. — 2000. ‘The Genealogy of the Boukoloi’, JHS 120, 106-121. Salmon, P. 1981. La politique égyptienne d’Athènes (VIe et Ve siècles avant J.-C.), rev. ed., Bruxelles: Académie Royale. Salvesen, A. 1998. ‘The Legacy of Babylon and Nineveh in Aramaic Sources’, in: S. Dallie (ed.), The Legacy of Mesopotamia, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 139-161. Sauneron, S. 1982. L’Écriture figurative dans les textes d’Esna, Cairo: IFAO. Schams, C. 1998. Jewish Scribes in the Second-Temple Period, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Schlotzhauer, U., Villing, A. Naukratis: Greek Diversity in Egypt, London: British Museum. Schmitt, C. 2008 [1956]. Hamlet oder Hekuba: Der Einbruch der Zeit in das Spiel, 5th ed., Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta Verlag. Schubart, W. 1938. Die Papyri als Zeugen der antiken Kultur, 2nd ed., Berlin. Selden, D. 1994. ‘Genre of Genre’, in: J. Tatum (ed.), The Search for the Ancient Novel, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 39-64. — 1999. ‘Cambyses’ Madness, or the Reason of History,’ MD 42, 33-63. — 2007. ‘Caveat lector: Catullus and the Rhetoric of Performance’, in: J. Gaisser (ed.), Oxford Readings in Catullus, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 490-559. — 2009. ‘Text Networks’, Ancient Narrative 8, 1-23. — 2010. ‘Ancient Narratives of the West’, in: P. Logan (ed.), The Encylopedia of the Novel, Oxford: Blackwell, s.v. — 2012. ‘Mapping the Alexander Romance’, in: R. Stoneman et al. (eds.), The Alexander Romance in Persia and the East, Groningen: Barkuis Publishing & Groningen University Library, 19-59. –– Forthcoming. ‘Holy Wandering’. Sethe, K. 1904. Hieroglyphische Urkunden der griechisch-römischen Zeit, Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs. Seyed-Gohrab, A. 2003. Laylī and Majnūn: Love, Madness and Mystic Longing in Niẓāmī’s Epic Romance, Leiden: Brill. Schulman, A. 1979. ‘Diplomatic Marriage in the Egyptian New Kingdom’, JNES 38, 177193. Silver, M. 1985. Economic Structures of the Ancient Near East, Totowa: Croom Helm. Simpson, W. et al. 2003. The Literature of Ancient Egypt, New Haven: Yale University Press. Snyder, J. 1991. Prospects of Power, Lexington: University of Kentucky Press. Spalinger, A. 1977. ‘On the Bentresh Stela and Related Problems’ JSSEA 8, 11-18. Spieglberg, W. 1908. ‘Arabische Einflüsse in dem koptischen Kambsysesroman’, Zeitschrift für Ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde 45, 83-84. — 1914. Die sogenannte demotische Chronik des Pap. 215 der Bibliothèque Nationale zu Paris; nebst den auf der Rückseite des Papyrus stehenden Texten, Leipzig. Stephens, S., Winkler, J. (eds.) 1995. Ancient Greek Novels: The Fragments, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

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Story, C. 1945. ‘The Book of Proverbs and Northwest Semitic Literature’, JBL 64, 319-337. Swain, S. 1996. Hellenism and Empire: Language, Classicism, and Power in the Greek World, AD 50–250, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tait, J. 1992. ‘Demotic Literature and Egyptian Society’, in: Johnson (ed.), 303-310. — 1994. ‘Egyptian Fiction in Demotic and Greek’, in: J. Morgan, R. Stoneman (eds.), Greek Fiction: The Greek Novel in Context, London: Routledge, 203-222. Thiessen, H.-J. 1998. Vom Bild zum Buchstaben – vom Buchstaben zum Bild. Von der Arbeit an Horapollons Hieroglyphika, Mainz: Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur. Thomas, C. 1998. ‘Revivifying Resurrection Accounts: Techniques of Composition and Rewriting in the Acts of Peter cc. 25-28’, in: J. Bremmer (ed.), The Apocryphal Acts of Peter, Leuven: Peeters, 65-83. — 2003. The Acts of Peter, Gospel Literature and the Ancient Novel: Rewriting the Past, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Thompson, D. 1988. Memphis under the Ptolemies, Princeton: Princeton University Press. — 1992. ‘Literacy and the Administration in Early Ptolemaic Egypt’, in: Johnson (ed.), 323326. — 1994. ‘Literacy and Power in Ptolemaic Egypt’, in: A. Bowman, G. Woolf (eds.), Literacy and Power in the Ancient World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 67-83. Tilg, S. 2010. Chariton of Aphrodisias and the Invention of the Greek Love Novel, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Todorov, T. 1967. La poétique de la prose, Paris: Seuil. Toloni, G. 2005. ‘Tobi e Ahiqar’, in: Contini, Grottanelli (eds.), 141-165. Toynbee, A. 1954. ‘The Administrative Geography of the Achaemenian Empire’, in: A Study in History, vol. 7, London: Oxford University Press, 580-689. Tuplin, C. 1987. ‘The Administration of the Achaemenid Empire’, in: I. Carradice (ed.), Coinage and Administration in the Athenian and Persian Empires, Oxford: B.A.R, 109166. Uphil, E. 1967. ‘Nine Bows’, JEOL 6, 393-420. Vali, A. 1993. Pre-Capitalist Iran: A Theoretical History, New York: New York University Press. van der Toorn, K. 2007. Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. van Dijk, J. 1962. ‘Die Inschriftenfunde, II. Die Tontafeln aus dem resh-Heiligtum’, in: H.J. Lenzen (ed.), XVIII. Vorläufiger Bericht über die vom Deutschen Archäologischen Institut und der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft aus Mitteln der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinshcaft unternommenen Ausgrabungen in Uruk-Warka, Berlin: Mann, 44-52. Veïsse, A.-E. 2007. Les ‘révoltes égyptiennes’: Recherches sur les troubles intérieurs en Égypte du règne de Ptolémée III à la conquête romaine, Leuven: Peeters. Verhoogt, A., Vleeming, S. (eds.) 1998. The Two Faces of Graeco-Roman Egypt, Leiden: Brill. Vinson, S. 2008. ‘They-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed: Arsake, Rhadopis, and Tabubue; Ihweret and Charikleia’, Comparative Literature Studies 45, 289-315. Vogelgesang, W. 1992. The Rise and Organization of the Achaemenid Empire, Leiden: Brill. von Deines, H. et al. 1958. Übersetzung der medizinischen Texte, Berlin: Akademie-Verlag. Wallerstein, I. 2004. World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Watterson, B. 1998. The House of Horus at Edfu, Stroud: Tempus. West, S. 1969. ‘The Greek Version of the Legend of Tefnut’, JEA 55, 161-183.

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— 2003. ‘Croesus’ Second Reprieve and Other Tales of the Persian Court’, CQ NS 53, 416437. Westlake, H.D. 1958-59. ‘Hermocrates the Syracusan’, Revue bénédictine 41, 237-268. Whitmarsh, T. 2004a. Greek Literature and the Roman Empire, Oxford: Oxford University Press. — 2004b. Ancient Greek Literature, Cambridge: Polity Press. — 2005. ‘The Greek Novel: Title and Genre’, AJP 126, 587-611. Whitmarsh, T. (ed.) 2008. The Cambridge Companion to the Greek and Roman Novel, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Winkler, J.J. 1992. ‘Lollianus and the Desperadoes’, rev. ed., in: R. Hexter, D. Selden (eds.), Innovations of Antiquity, New York: Routledge, 5-50. Winnicki, J. 2009. Late Egypt and Her Neighbors: Foreign Population in Egypt in the First Millenium BC, Journal of Juristic Papyrology Supplement. Winter, E. 1987. ‘Weitere Beobachtungen zur “grammaire du temple” in der griechischrömischen Zeit,’ Ägyptische Abhandlungen 46, 61-76. Woolf, G. 1994. ‘Becoming Roman, Staying Greek: Culture, Identity, and the Civilizing Process in the Roman East’, PCPS 40, 116-143. Worthington, I. 2003. Alexander the Great: A Reader, New York: Routledge. Yardeni, A. 1994. ‘Maritime Trade and Royal Accountancy in an Erased Customs Account from 475 B.C.E. on the Aḥiqar Scroll from Elephantine’, BASOR 293, 67-78.

‘But there is a difference in the ends ...’: Brigands and Teleology in the Ancient Novel K EN D OWDEN The University of Birmingham

Οὕτως ἄρα λῃσταῖς καὶ ψυχῶν αὐτῶν ἐστι χρήματα προτιμότερα, καὶ τὸ φιλίας ὄνομα καὶ συγγενείας πρὸς ἓν τὸ κέρδος ὁρίζεται (‘So it is then that brigands place a higher value on material goods than on their very lives, and the words ‘friendship’, and ‘kin’, are defined solely in the light of profit.’) Heliodoros 1,32,4 εἰ δέ τι τῶν παρ’ ἐλπίδας ἀποβαίνοι, Βησσαέων ἡγήσῃ τούτων εὔνοιαν πρός σε πολλὴν ἐχόντων καὶ τὸν λῃστρικὸν διαθλήσεις βίον ἕως ἄν τι τέλος τῶν κατά σε δεξιώτερον ὑποφήνῃ θεός. (‘And if something untoward should happen, you will lead these men of Bessa who have much goodwill towards you, and you will endure the labours of the brigand life until such time as God indicates some better outcome for your affairs.’) Heliodoros 7,5,5

Defining the Brigand In this contribution I am not seeking to recover the history of ancient brigandry, something which, as various writers, for instance W. Riess,1 have ————— 1

Riess 2001 (which regrettably I have not seen) and Riess 2000-2001. Grünewald 2004 is also strong on the need for the social historian not to be taken in by ancient narratives. It must however be said that altogether too much attention is paid in some writing on this subject to Hobsbawm’s ideas about ‘social bandits’, which seem desperately anachronistic for the ancient world and more suited to a world obsessed by social class and fond of Robin Hood; cf. the well judged remarks of Grünewald 2004, 10-12. The Construction of the Real and the Ideal in the Ancient Novel, 41–59

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shown is a difficult task given the lack of reliable documentary and historical records for this category of ancient activity and given the treacherous nature of fictionalising and ideologising ‘evidence’ in the novel, and for that matter in historiography. Rather, I am concerned to establish what brigands are for in the novel, particularly the Greek novel (though I will occasionally consider Apuleius), and what sort of tools they provide for ‘thinking with’. Nevertheless, it will do good to start with our feet firmly on the ground and to look at the terminology of brigandage that we encounter in the novel. My primary focus is on the Greek language, but I will include some Latin equivalents. Theft and burglary existed in the ancient world and were practised by people who hoped not to be noticed. Fures steal furtim (‘secretly’), and κλέπται (‘thieves’) are well defined by Athanasios of Emesa (6 c AD): Κλέπται εἰσὶν οἱ λάθρα καὶ ἄνευ ὅπλων ἁμαρτάνοντες (‘Thieves are those who commit crimes secretly and without weapons’, Novellae constitutiones 3,4,22,22).2 Muggings were also commonplace, but vocabulary was less certain: however, there was a special, if rather optional, word, a ἅρπαξ (harpax), for a thief that stole blatantly: ἀλλ’ οὖν ἅρπαξ τότε λέγοιτ’ ἄν τις, ὅτε φανερῶς τοῦτο ποιεῖ (‘But then someone would be called a harpax, when they do this openly’, Basilika [9th century AD] 60,17,2). The Latin equivalent is a raptor: Cum raptor omnimodo furtum facit, manifestus fur existimandus est (‘As a raptor altogether commits theft, he is to be considered a bare-faced thief’, Justinian Digest 47,2,81,3). From these latter criminals result ἁρπαγαί (harpagai) and rapinae. Neither furtive nor bare-faced thieves concern us here. We are interested in something at once more open or blatant and more violent.3 It may also be on a much larger scale. This is the world of λῃσταί (lēistai, ‘brigands’, Latin latrones) in the most central sense of these words.4 They are more plural than singular: 137 times in the Greek novel in the plural, 31 in the singular (and latrones occur 50 times in the plural in Apuleius, but only 15 in the singular).5 Together they form λῃστήρια (lēistēria, brigand-teams) and, under the leadership of their λῄσταρχος (lēistarch), engage in acts of λῃστεία

————— 2

3

4 5

Cf. λάθρᾳ ὡς κλέπται, Amphilochios of Iconium (4th century AD), Contra haereticos, line 20; τὸ τὰ ἀλλότρια λάθρᾳ ἀφαιρεῖσθαι, Suda s.v. κλέπτειν (κ 1737); and Pl. R. 347b. Grünewald 2004, 15 pays particular attention to armed force (vis) in defining the latro. The detail of violence is explored by Riess 2000-2001, 266-271, who shows that the undoubted real violence is presented in technicolor by Apuleius. For fluctuation in the application of latro, see Macmullen 1967, 255. Watanabe 2003, 90 (from 16 in Char. 1,9,2, to 10,000 [!] at Ach.Tat. 3,24,1) and 96.

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(lēisteia, brigandry).6 The word λῄσταρχος (lēistarch), however, and its derivatives do not enter the language – or, I suppose, the imaginaire – before the 1st century BC in Diodoros and Appian. There they apply to ‘brigands’ confronted by the Romans,7 which reflects a demonisation of all armed opposition to the Roman state (other than foreign armies), converting resistance groups into outlaws.8 Brigands are dramatic and characterful for a narration, and beget an adjective λῃστρικός9 (lēistrikos, ‘brigandish’) – mostly in Heliodoros, which shows something of the distinctiveness of his view of brigands and that all novelists are not the same. It is interesting incidentally that we hear of a board game named latrones too, which speaks more broadly for their grip on the imagination – as do tombstones for their impact on reality: interfectus a latronibus (‘killed by brigands’).10 Brigands then, do not conceal themselves except to gain surprise, and form a group very like soldiers, a plurality of armed men. They are murderous and a very real danger to public order and safety, as no normal group can resist them. Thus no mercy is shown to these desperadoes: if found and defeated they may be shown no quarter and all will be killed. So, at Xenophon 5,3, the governor of Egypt sends ‘many soldiers’, a battle results (such battles actually happened),11 many fall on both sides, but finally at nightfall the brigands are routed and all of them are ‘slaughtered’ (φονεύονται), except for a few who are caught alive (doubtless to be brought before the governor). Only Hippothoös gets away. Any real brigands who are sent to the governor for sentencing will suffer the most savage punishments, for instance cruci————— 6

7

8

9 10

11

This corresponds to reality outlined in Grünewald 2004, 15, of the proneness of the latro to collecting in a factio about him. App. Hisp. 289, 291 and D.S. 33,1,5 (all concerning the campaign against Viriathus); App. Mith. 417 (ἡγουμένων λῃσταρχῶν οἷα πολέμου στρατηγῶν, ‘with lēistarchs leading them as though they were generals in war’). In historical terms some sort of tighter organisation may have set in amongst the Cilicians pirates in the early 1st century BC, to judge by Ormerod 1924, 222. Cf. McGing 1998, 160. I think it is a less satisfactory alternative to suppose that Romans made no distinction, if that is what Shaw 1984, 6-7 means, but he allows the ideological dimension in wars at 8. The form without the rho is quite rare and does not appear in the texts of the novel. Game: Ovid, Ars 3,357; Martial 7,72,8; 14,18; Macmullen 1967, 256; it implies no love of course any more than the game ‘Snakes and ladders’ indicates affection for snakes. Tombstones: Shaw 1984, 10-12 with a photograph of CIL 3,242, and see Grünewald 2004, 24; mentioned a propos of the Good Samaritan, on whom see below, by Aldrete 2004, 39. In depositions on papyri, persons may be denounced as behaving like brigands, ‘in brigandish (lēistrikos) manner’, McGing 1998, 167. Cf the discussion of the Boukoloi by McGing 1998, 181.

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fied as in Petronius, like Theron in Chariton (3,4,18), and like the two lēistai next to Jesus, or being thrown to the beasts.12 If they live in a village, then they will all be wiped out and the village sacked (as at the end of Heliodoros, Book 1). They take on these risks, evidently because of various forms of desperation that matched the enormity of the risks, for instance having no means of survival or sustenance.13 Thus a depressed region may altogether turn to piracy or brigandage, whether they are Cilicians in the end to be eradicated by Pompey, or Somalis who in our times await their own resolution – or like the men of Bessa in Heliodoros (see the epigraph of this contribution).14 Just as there is a distinction between thieves and robbers, so also there is a distinction between brigands and sea-brigands, who from the time of Polybios onwards are called ‘pirates’ (allegedly from the Attic use of πεῖρα, peira ‘attempt’, to mean trickery and deception).15 From the time of Diodoros, they have, in place of a archipeiratēs, an Archpirate, a pirate boss.16 In Latin there is a further distinction, or at least choice of vocabulary, between latrones and praedones, but my sense is that this is mainly a matter of period – praedones is the earlier, native, term, from Plautus to Cicero, gradually replaced by Greek-based terms, latrones and piratae. After Cicero it is maybe progressively more archaic. Though brigands engage in acts of λῃστεία (lēisteia), the word is used only by: Chariton, four times; Heliodoros, twice (in twice the length of text); and Achilles, once. Chariton’s use is rather impressionistic, sometimes ‘subjective’: at 3,7,2 an alleged ship skulks, maybe for lēisteia or maybe for spying; at 1,7,5 Theron’s audience realise he is proposing lēisteia or tombrobbing (&c); at the beginning of Bk 8 (8,1,4), we are assured there will be no more lēisteia, slavery (&c), and at 8,4,5 Callirhoe thanks Dionysios for saving her from lēisteia, slavery (without &c). It seems the word is best placed in a list of afflictions.17 In Achilles the one use is in the (reported) mouth of Kallisthenes (8,17,3), justifying to Kalligone his piratical kidnapping of her. It was his love for her, apparently, that caused him to take on the role of lēisteia (ἔρως ————— 12 13

14 15

16 17

Sat. 111; and see Shaw 1984, 20. Beasts: McGing 1998, 167. See Plu. Apophth. Lak. 223d. For the motivations of veterans and deserters, see Shaw 1984, 29-30. The various remarks of Grünewald 2004 on pastores are valuable (see index s.v.). Plb. 4,4,1; 4,79,6; 21,12,1. Πειραταί: Οἱ κατὰ θάλασσαν λῃσταὶ, EM 667,43. πεῖρα γὰρ Ἀττικῶς δόλος καὶ τέχνη, ὅθεν καὶ πειραταὶ οἱ κατὰ θάλατταν κακοῦργοι, Σ S. Aj. 1. D.S. 20,97,5. Cf. Ach.Tat. 4,1,3 for similar listing of λῃσταί, or X. Eph. 5,9,12 for listing of λῃστήρια.

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δέ με λῃστείας ὑποκριτὴν πεποίηκε). So, for Kallisthenes at least, piracy is a manner of behaviour that one adopts. Heliodoros 6,13 is comparable: the Egyptian crone reports the attack of Mitranes on Thyamis’ team and observes that the villagers make a life, a bios, of lēisteia.18 This then moves us towards the territory of another unevenly distributed word – ληστεύειν (to engage in lēisteia), a word in fact only used by Xenophon. At 4,1,5 (twice), Hippothoös and his comrades make the decision to ληστεύειν (lēisteuein) in a particular place: it is a professional choice; very similar is the one use in the participle (ληστεύοντες, 3,10,5). At 5,2,2, rather revealingly for our purposes, Hippothoös decides to move on to rob cities rather than individuals, another career choice.

Before the Novel In the imagination, ship-borne brigands are known to the Odyssey (Polyphemos envisages Odysseus and his crew being λῃστῆρες (lēistēres) who ‘risk their lives to bring trouble to others’, 9,254-5),19 but they are not really part of the epic genre and we will never meet pirates or brigands in the text, unless we count Odysseus himself (e.g. among the Kikones, or – lying – at 14,213), or the Hymn to Dionysos. Rather, they are part of the fabric of a less elevated aesthetic. The general sense of those who discuss piracy is that it is in New Comedy that they acquire their foothold (though that is surprisingly difficult to evidence) and that they pass from there into declamation and on to the novel.20 But they are also prevalent in historiography, which of course should not simply be regarded as a mirror of reality. It has its own imaginaire and so ————— 18

19 20

The other Heliodoros passage is trivial – the keepsakes of Charikleia might be thought to have been acquired by λῃστεία, 9,24,7. Cf Th. 1,5,2. Comedy > declamation > novel: Ormerod 1924, 260-270; de Souza 1999, 60, 214-218. λη(ι)στ- words do not appear in the New Comedy in TLG, except that a daughter has been kidnapped by brigands at Men. Sikyonios 357 – and something similar has happened to Palaestra in the Rudens of Plautus (40). Latrones really only figure in the Miles Gloriosus, where Pyrgopolynices has rounded up a band of them to serve as soldiers for King Seleukos (74, 76, 949), unless the word at this stage means ‘mercenary’ (as OLD, and Shaw 1984, 26-28 – it is interesting that both latro and peirates have suffered considerable semantic shifts, as though they needed a displaced term). Praedones, who tend to be marine brigands (pirates) capture Palaestrio’s ship at Miles 118 and represent a danger on the high seas at Trinummus 1088; and there is a background noise of peopletrafficking (Rudens 40, Poenulus 897).

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did its sources. That is how Jack Winkler (1980) was able to deal with Diodoros 71,4 on the Boukoloi as a fictional elaboration of admittedly public names and events, but fictional in much the same way as Apuleius or Lollianos. This has now taken a drastic turn with a remarkable article of Ian Rutherford’s (2000) in which he places the boukoloi stories, particularly of Heliodoros and Dio, in the context of a very long-standing Egyptian narrative tradition in which ‘outlaws [boukoloi] oppose Egyptian authority’. As the Egyptian word for boukoloi has moved in its application over the centuries from easterners and foreigners to domestic outlaw herdsmen, there is quite a wide range of stories being reflected here, and the geography of the boukoloi reappears, arguably, in the exodus of the Jews from Egypt, where we may note that the leader is a sort of priest, Moses, who is (treated as) the son of the rightful authority. It is hard to know how to digest this non-Greek material, but perhaps it does point to an ideological role (or roles) of boukoloi before they hit Dio and the Greek novel. They are fundamentally mythic, because – if we may turn to Barthes21 – their stories require a secondorder interpretation beyond the primary, apparently historiographic, hermeneusis. Perhaps for Achilles they revert from myth to mere narrative (the sort perceived by some modern historians in the novel).22 But in Heliodoros, they continue the mythic tradition.

Novel and Structural Position There is no doubt that the brigands of the novel, on a limited view, exist to pose a danger and a threat to those that are invested in the Greco-Roman economy, for the aesthetic pleasure of bourgeois readers. But there is more than this: the brigand community can become a subject of interest in itself, and it requires a ‘reading’ more intense than that which sees in it only an accessory to the achievement of the heroes.23 Brigands tend to have an early or middle position in the text. In Chariton they intervene early, of course, to seize Kallirhoe from the tomb (thus doing ————— 21 22 23

Barthes 1957, e.g. 187-188 (in ‘Le mythe, aujourd’hui’). See note 20 above (de Souza, Shaw). I think Riess 2000-2001, 271 has focused too narrowly on the invalidity of the novel for accurate reconstruction of history when he comments: ‘The authors used them as structural elements. Their only function in the novel was to increase suspense, bring about peripeties, changes in fortune and serve as a transition to the next chain of actions’. Similarly, though he allows robbers to become a tribulation in the eyes of the Lucius of Bk 11 (272), he has overplayed the difference between Apuleius and the Greek novel.

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both tomb-robbery and kidnapping), and to taxi her to Ionia; there are no significant occurrences later in the novel.24 The brigands are an early episode in the Metamorphoses: in Apuleius’ version they seize Lucius at the end of Bk 3, and then Bk 4 is the Book of the Brigands. More than that, however, they frame the central story of Cupid and Psyche and their society is therefore acutely juxtaposed with the mise en abyme of the whole novel. Finally, they cannot be destroyed until Lucius has been alleged to be a brigand (7,1-2) and Tlepolemos has taken on the role of brigand in Bk 7 (and acquired a father Theron at 7,5!). In Achilles brigands are instrumental in the action of the third book, complete with a chief and a village (3,13).25 Later (5,7), he has a brief irruption of lēistai to seize Leukippe (and behead her, of course). After that brigands are a matter of the past. In Longus there is the band that kills Dorkon and seizes Daphnis in Bk 1 (28-31), though some of the Methymnean actions in Bk 2 (20) are of piratical character. These instances on the whole tend towards placing brigands in the first half of the action: they serve typically to marginalise the hero and heroine in terms of landscape and to derail their lives. But there is more than this in two other novels. Xenophon forms an exception to my rule on positioning: brigands and pirates occur throughout the novel.26 Hero and heroine are seized by Korymbos at 1,13 and later passed to Apsyrtos; at 2,11-13 Hippothoös ‘the lēistes’ emerges to seize Anthia; at 3,8 she is stolen from a tomb only to be sold off at 3,11, leaving Habrokomes to be captured by proto-Boukoloi at 3,12. At 4,3, Anthia is captured again by Hippothoös and brought to the brigand’s cave (some echoes here in Apuleius’ Charite). It is only at 5,9 that she is bought out of slavery, amazingly – or significantly – by the rather reformed Hippothoös. Whatever Xenophon’s novel has been about, it requires a constant presence of brigands to contextualise the trajectory of the hero and heroine. This becomes in turn a two-way process where, as I have observed elsewhere,27 Anthia’s value is transmitted to Amphinomos, her brigand guard as she is in the pit with the dogs (4,6), and the companionship of Habrokomes in some strange way rubs off on Hippothoös: so in-between burning villages and ‘butchering many men’ (4,1), a real enough activity of brigands,28 he can take on the role of sightseer in Laodikeia in order to search for ————— 24 25

26

27 28

Eg, barbarian lēistai are envisaged (3,10,2) as destroying Chaireas’ ship. The ‘great City of the Bandits’ (Winkler in CAGN) at 3,14 is an over-translation; what is referred to is the larger ‘body of brigands’ (λῃστηρίῳ). ‘Adventures with pirates are perhaps more closely packed in this romance than in any other’, Ormerod 1924, 266. Dowden 2007, 142-144. McGing 1998, 181 on the inhabitants of Kerkenouphis.

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Habrokomes. And much later he will protect and support Anthia and get her home (5,9; 5,11), and make it his home ever after (5,15). The debriganding of Hippothoös matters for the closure of the novel. In Heliodoros brigands define and frame the first half of the novel. The sunrise opening passes the parole immediately to ‘men armed as brigands’ and the readership is given brigands’ eyes to see with. As is well known, the opening is presented as a hermeneutic exercise which brigands read with a brigand’s agenda and readers read with their own agenda. Readers pass the test when they see that the issue is not the wealth laid out before them but the girl whose indescribable beauty suggests divinity.

The Individual Brigand Brigands are evidently worth attention individually. Xenophon’s attention to Hippothoös, though doubtless continuing the new comic tradition of interest in all types of characters, remains a surprise, and an innovation, at the stage at which he writes (Chariton was not going to involve us much with Theron, after all) and the brigands who roam all over his novel effectively become in part what his novel is about. Later, Heliodoros, maybe starting in some way from Egyptian narrative tradition, will present us with a brigand Thyamis only presently to reveal that at the core of this character is the son of a priest and a creditable man: rather like the soul of Plutarch or Plotinos,29 he is submerged in the brigand life until such time as he can return home and resume his rightful position. He is treading water and really has a mission rather like Charikleia’s: he may seem to be a brigand and she may seem to be a Delphic Greek, but the truth is Otherwise. There is a background to this in philosophising history. It may begin with the interest of Poseidonios in the causes of slave revolts and such events. Certainly we find a strong focus on Viriathus, the Lusitanian ‘brigand chief’ (147-139 BC) in Diodoros, and there is some reason to agree with Theiler that the philosophical development of this paragraph points to the interests of Poseidonios.30 The stages in his bios are summarised in Livy Periocha 52: ————— 29 30

Cf. Dowden 1981, 351, and 1998, 17. This is quite apart from general considerations such as: ‘Da die Darstellung des Posidonius mit dem Jahre 144 begann, musst er schon vom Jahre 144 ab Diodors Quelle sein’ (Schulten 1911, 605). On Viriathus see the detailed discussion of Grünewald 2004, 3347, and 36 for his sequence of bioi.

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ex pastore venator, ex venatore latro, mox iusti quoque exercitus dux factus. From shepherd he became a hunter, from hunter a brigand, and presently also the commander of a proper army. Tacitus, himself capable of a rather Poseidonian Germania, must surely be influenced by this type of writing when he looks at the career of the Numidian leader Tacfarinas who rebelled in AD 17 (Annals 2,52):31 mox desertor, vagos primum et latrociniis suetos ad praedam et raptus congregare, dein more militiae per vexilla et turmas componere, postremo ... Musulamiorum dux haberi. Presently he became a deserter, at first grouping together stray persons accustomed to acts of brigandry for plunder and abductions; then like an army he put them together with standards and squadrons ... finally he was counted commander of the Musulamii. And I think it is probable that Xenophon’s Hippothoös reflects that sort of tradition too. But there is one further ingredient we need to consider as we reach the second century AD: according to Lucian (Alexander 2), ‘Arrian, the disciple of Epiktetos ... and a man who spent a life devoted to culture’ controversially32 wrote a life of the lēistēs Tillorobos. We do not know quite how literally Lucian means this, but the name is barbarian and Arrian must have shown some extended interest in him. He seems to have taken the philosophic historiography a step further and that is of a piece with the work, surely before him of Xenophon, and surely after him (and in his wake?) of Heliodoros.

The Brigand bios Brigands are of philosophical interest because they represent an extreme distance from recommended society. They have no regard for the sanctity of human life. They burn whole villages and slaughter numerous men (Xeno————— 31

32

For both Viriathus and Tacfarinas, see also Shaw 1984, 36. For Tacfarinas see Grünewald 2004, 48-57. Cf. Grünewald 2004, 6.

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phon 4,1,1); and slaughter so characterises them that we may say without fear of contradiction that ‘slaughter is the mark of a brigand not of bravery’ (Alexander Romance 3,12 = Arrian FGrH 156 F175b,36). This is what we learn snappily from a fragment of Plautus’ play the Caecus or Praedones: ita sunt praedones: prorsum parcunt nemini (‘That’s what brigands are like: they spare absolutely no-one’). Brigands are marginal and ‘other’ in a variety of ways.33 Harsh and marginal landscapes are their natural home. They have this habitat in common with beasts. Homer describes Lemnos as ἀμιχθαλόεσσαν (Iliad 24,753, ‘unmixed with?’); one explanation the D scholia offer for this word is that it is so called διὰ τοὺς ἐνοικοῦντας ἀγρίους καὶ θηριώδεις, καὶ λῃστρικὸν βίον ἐπανῃρημένους (‘because of the savage and bestial people who live on it and have taken up the brigandish life’).34 Theron (‘Bestial’) is a good name for a bandit chief (Chariton, and Tlepolemos’ father in Apuleius, above); Thrasyleon (‘Bold as a Lion’, Apuleius) is suitably emphatic and bestial; Trachinos (‘Rough’, Heliodoros) is good too. The ἀδικία (adikia, lawlessness) of murderousness is only a starting point for their vices. So, Theopompos speaks of people living ‘not decently but in an unbridled way like brigands’ (μὴ κοσμίως ἀλλ’ ἀσώτως καὶ τοῖς λῃσταῖς παραπλησίως, FGrH 115 F224): disorder and profligate selfindulgence, ἀσωτία (asōtia), is their hallmark. This is displayed in ‘roistering’ (a quaint English word with its own distant origins lying in the marginalising of the countryside, rus). Apuleius portrays the brigand community in these colours: estur ac potatur incondite ... ac iam cetera semiferis Lapithisque similia (‘there is unrestrained eating and drinking ... and by now all else is like the half-beasts [Centaurs] and the Lapiths’ 4,8).35 Hippothoös and his band are found εὐωχούμενοι (‘roistering’) in Xenophon (2,13, with a bit of human sacrifice – barbarically to Ares – to help it along).36 And a simi————— 33

34

35 36

Hopwood 1998, 197, 201. He also refers, 202 and n.38, for the effective equation of brigands with beasts, to the Cod. Theod. 1,29,8: per omnes regiones, in quibus fera et periculi sui nescia latronum fervet insania... (‘in all regions in which the wild insanity of brigands, unaware of the danger it puts them in, seethes’). For landscapes, see also de Souza 1999, 216. λῃσταὶ γὰρ ἐμφύονται πέτραις καὶ κρημνῶν περιέχονται (Plu. Arat. 50,8); and cf. Watanabe 2004, 17. For the deletion of [Tebanibus Centauris], see Dowden 1980, 220-221. Cited by Hopwood 1998, 197 as an instance of ‘roistering’. Bandits worship Ares, like Scythians in Herodotos (4,59), but with Germanic customs: Ares: X. Eph. 2,13,1, Apul. Met. 7,5; Germanic, cf. Dowden 2000, 181-184.

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lar portrait of unrestrained roistering is implicit in the destroyed banquet of brigands that opens the Aithiopika. But in that particular scene, the combination of riotous banqueting and slaughter, inter alia by bow and arrows, ineluctably calls up the banqueting of the Suitors and its reward in Homer’s Odyssey. Thus there is now a family of images, and the brigands are not far from the negative values in this iconic text of Homer’s, one where the arrival of reason allows Telemachos to perceive that ‘one should no longer put up with the 4-year asōtia of the suitors’ (Ps.-Herakleitos Homerika Problemata 61,2). It is as though Telemachos was complicit in their asōtia until he chose otherwise.37 Accordingly, it may be significant that we discover as the first half of the Aithiopika concludes that it was Theagenes that slew the brigands. In a re-sorting of constituents, he has become Odysseus or Telemachos and made it possible for Charikleia to return to her true home. Marriage to Nausikaä, gently hinted at, or marriage to Kalypso or Kirke, might have detained Odysseus from his homeward journey. Charikleia too is offered marriages, two of them by brigands and the second even lower than the first:38 at least Thyamis is at heart respectable, but Trachinos (5,26) is a base prospect. The brigands thus reflect many of the obstacles to Odysseus’ return.39 They are more than an improvised danger to generate exciting episodes. Turning from the vice of asōtia to the telos (goal in life) pursued by brigands, we quickly see that brigands are driven by the quest for material goods and their lives are devoted to obtaining them. Aristotle even remarks that their attitude to κέρδος (kerdos), profit, is a worse vice than their asōtia.40 Heliodoros, towards the close of the first book, underlines this way of thinking: at 1,33,3 the lēistai of the various villages are incentivised by the promise of goods and money, even in the heat of battle (ὑφ’ ὧν ἁλόντες ————— 37

38

39

40

It is worth observing that the idea of Telemachos’ complicity is in a way raised by Odysseus himself at Od. 16,95. Marriage to an archpirate is of course a good declamatory topos: Quint. Decl. 367 (342), cf. Ormerod 1924, 265. The marriage to Kalypso is represented by Theagenes and Arsake, cf. Dido and Aeneas for the interpretation of the prospect as destructive of lifemission. I wonder too whether we should think of Od. 12,397-398, the six-day feasting of Odysseus’ companions on the cattle of Helios, a conspicuous failure of self-control. Arist. EN 1122a: ὁ μέντοι κυβευτὴς καὶ ὁ λωποδύτης καὶ ὁ λῃστὴς τῶν ἀνελευθέρων εἰσίν· αἰσχροκερδεῖς γάρ. κέρδους γὰρ ἕνεκα ἀμφότεροι πραγματεύονται καὶ ὀνείδη ὑπομένουσιν, καὶ οἳ μὲν κινδύνους τοὺς μεγίστους ἕνεκα τοῦ λήμματος ... καὶ πᾶσαι δὴ αἱ τοιαῦται λήψεις ἀνελεύθεροι. εἰκότως δὲ τῇ ἐλευθεριότητι ἀνελευθερία ἐναντίον λέγεται· μεῖζόν τε γάρ ἐστι κακὸν τῆς ἀσωτίας, καὶ μᾶλλον ἐπὶ ταύτην ἁμαρτάνουσιν ἢ κατὰ τὴν λεχθεῖσαν ἀσωτίαν.

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οἱ λῃσταὶ καὶ μηδὲ παρὰ τὸ ζέον τῆς μάχης τῆς μνήμης τὸ κέρδος ἀποβαλόντες). The major and indeed sole objective of bandits is kerdos, and they put material goods even before their lives themselves (οὕτως ἄρα λῃσταῖς καὶ ψυχῶν αὐτῶν ἐστι χρήματα προτιμότερα, καὶ τὸ φιλίας ὄνομα καὶ συγγενείας πρὸς ἓν τὸ κέρδος ὁρίζεται, 1,32,4). Barbarians (which Thyamis at this moment becomes, but which amounts to little more than ‘brigands’ here) do away with everything they love to stop anyone else getting it (1,30). This is stylistically Heliodoran, but Heliodoros is only taking to its logical conclusion the brigands of Xenophon or of Apuleius. Xenophon’s Apsyrtos notes how Korymbos is arriving with ‘lots of amazing goods’ (Ἄψυρτος ὁ προεστὼς τοῦ λῃστηρίου πυθόμενος ὅτι τε ἥκουσιν οἱ περὶ τὸν Κόρυμβον καὶ ὅτι πολλὰ εἶεν καὶ θαυμάσια κομίζοντες χρήματα, 2,2,1), and Apuleius gives a similar ekphrastic picture of huge quantities of loot. This is so obvious that it may not seem worth stating. But it is important to underline the closeness of brigands to material goods in the imaginaire. They have only one virtue, not a redeeming virtue, because it is only amidst such extreme adikia that it gains any significance: ‘honour amongst thieves’. This is an English proverb of uncertain origin, probably only gradually acquiring fixity in this form, but the thought goes back to antiquity and had much clearer application, where we are considering the behaviour of whole communities that had turned to brigandage – though I note in passing that there is a grey area between armies and bands of brigands the further back we go: the Trojan theft of Helen is at root a characteristic piratical kidnapping (as Herodotos noted),41 and but for Helen, the Greek army, with its emphasis on the value of material goods as the incentive for fighting (Briseis is my geras...), is little more than a band of brigands looking for kerdos. To return, however, to the virtue: Plato sensibly observes that armies, brigands and thieves cannot achieve anything unless they have some sense of justice amongst themselves.42 And Alexander of Aphrodisias, in the generation following Apuleius, drives home the need for justice to make brigand society work.43 Thus brigand leaders must be fair in the distribution of spoils ————— 41 42

43

On such kidnapping, see eg Ormerod 1924, 31-32. Pl. R. 351c δοκεῖς ἂν ἢ πόλιν ἢ στρατόπεδον ἢ λῃστὰς ἢ κλέπτας ἢ ἄλλο τι ἔθνος, ὅσα κοινῇ ἐπί τι ἔρχεται ἀδίκως, πρᾶξαι ἄν τι δύνασθαι, εἰ ἀδικοῖεν ἀλλήλους; Similar thoughts in Cicero and Augustine, cf. Grünewald 2004, 6. Alex. Aphr. de an. libri mantissa p.158 Bruns: ὅτι γὰρ τὸ δίκαιον συνέχει τὴν κοινωνίαν δῆλόν ἐστιν ἐπὶ τῶν ἀδικωτάτων εἶναι δοκούντων. οὗτοι δέ εἰσιν οἱ λῃσταί, οἷς ἡ πρὸς ἀλλήλους κοινωνία ὑπὸ δικαιοσύνης σώζεται τῆς πρὸς ἀλλήλους. διά τε γὰρ τὸ μὴ πλεονεκτεῖν ἀλλήλους καὶ διὰ τὸ μὴ ψεύδεσθαι, καὶ διὰ τὸ τιμᾶν τὸ κρεῖττον δοκοῦν καὶ

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if they are to be successful: Viriathus, whom we mentioned earlier in Spain in the 140s, was a successful practitioner in this respect according to Diodoros.44 Furthermore, the discussion of Viriathus’ justice in distributions is based on an anecdote about his marriage, which begins to call up, and may have inspired (perhaps via Cassius Dio?), the scene in Heliodoros (1,19) where Thyamis stresses his own selflessness in distributions in order to claim the hand of Charikleia in marriage. Can our heroes accept any part in this life? Apparently so: Xenophon, Apuleius and Heliodoros, the novelists most interested in bandits represent a world where even one of our heroes may enter the category of brigand. As we have seen, Tlepolemus must take on the identity of a brigand. But Habrokomes too takes the brigand oath (that is what it must be, at 2,14,4) and travels with Hippothoös, doing a bit of roistering (3,1,4); indeed, if he had not got distracted by looking for Anthia, he would doubtless have been party to the slaughter and pillaging of 4,1. Equally Thyamis suggests to Theagenes (as I have remarked elsewhere) that he should become a brigand for a while.45 So brigands are not wholly separable and other, and they are not a pantomime category existing solely in 2-D to harass hero and heroine for the reader’s delectation, any more than in real life they were miscellaneous desperadoes condemned to an eternal existence as outlaws. These were actual communities in life and possible lives in our heroes’ experience. They enter into that experience, or are simply passively affected by it, at certain points in the novels, often as though it was a preliminary or a transition. In some sense they have entered a liminal world, the domain of dangers and the sort of inversions that one encounters in initiation scenarios and other rituals that switch off normal life, the Ausnahmeritual.46 That is not to say there is an initiation ritual at issue, as I have shown in earlier papers where I have observed that initiatory format can exist derivatively or purely psycho————— 44

45

46

τὸ τὰ συγκείμενα φυλάττειν, καὶ διὰ τὸ βοηθεῖν τοῖς ἀσθενεστέροις, διὰ ταῦτα ἡ πρὸς ἀλλήλους αὐτοῖς κοινωνία συμμένει, ὧν πᾶν τοὐναντίον εἰς οὓς ἀδικοῦσιν ποιοῦσιν. Ὅτι Ὑρίατθος ὁ λῄσταρχος ὁ Λυσιτανὸς καὶ δίκαιος ἦν ἐν ταῖς διανομαῖς τῶν λαφύρων καὶ κατ’ ἀξίαν τιμῶν τοὺς ἀνδραγαθήσαντας ἐξαιρέτοις δώροις, ἔτι δὲ οὐδὲν ἁπλῶς ἐκ τῶν κοινῶν νοσφιζόμενος. διὸ καὶ συνέβαινε τοὺς προθυμότατα συγκινδυνεύειν αὐτῷ τιμῶντας οἱονεί τινα κοινὸν εὐεργέτην καὶ σωτῆρα, D.S. 33,1,5 (= Poseidonios F96b Theiler), cf. D.C. 22,73,1. Dowden 2009, 91-92 on Heliod. 7,5. For a real life categorisation of persons as deliberately choosing the wicked and lēistrikos bios, see the discussion of BGU 2 (1898) 372 in McGing 1998, 175. Lalanne 2006, 109-117 (‘Aux marges du monde «civilisé»’) presents a rich evocation of this liminal period in the novel.

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logically, particularly in literature susceptible to mythocritique.47 But equally that does not preclude a Heliodoros or an Apuleius from slotting this ‘myth’ into a consciously philosophical framework. My sense is that they signal this behaviour by using brigands to encase, in one instance, the first half of the novel, and in the other the Cupid and Psyche core of the novel.

Deeper Meanings Thyamis, then, requests Charikleia’s hand nobly. The significance of this scene is made even more evident by the mirror marriage scene at Heliodoros 5,30-32: there the laws even of brigand society are undermined by Trachinos, exploited by Kalasiris, and turned into a conflict by Peloros. The intertextual play between this and the first book of the Iliad is now added to the intratextual play with the Thyamis scene. Achilles does kill Agamemnon in this new version, and the foundations of brigand society give way. So, finally now, at the end of the fifth book, it transpires that what the first brigands were looking at as sun rose on the novel at 1,1 was in fact, unknown to them, the destruction of a society like their own by the failure of any internal morality and coherence. They do not understand that, and they end up, as Book 1 closes, participating in, and instigating, the destruction of a more just brigand society, that of Thyamis.48 One message of the first half of the Aithiopika is the failure of all these ‘brigand’ societies, societies focussed on the acquisition of material goods in a liminal and transitional world between Greece and Ethiopia. The second half will present us with other pictures to reject. Brigands play a significant part in the religio-philosophical imaginaire. We can start with Xenophon’s contemporary, Epiktetos (1,9,13-15) as he envisages his pupils struggling to understand why suicide is not best: οὐκ ἀδιάφορα ταῦτα καὶ οὐδὲν πρὸς ἡμᾶς καὶ ὁ θάνατος οὐ κακόν; καὶ συγγενεῖς τινες τοῦ θεοῦ ἐσμεν κἀκεῖθεν ἐληλύθαμεν; ἄφες ἡμᾶς ἀπελθεῖν ὅθεν ἐληλύθαμεν, ἄφες λυθῆναί ποτε τῶν δεσμῶν τούτων τῶν ἐξηρτημένων καὶ βαρούντων. ἐνταῦθα λῃσταὶ καὶ κλέπται καὶ δικαστήρια καὶ οἱ καλούμενοι τύραννοι δοκοῦντες ἔχειν τινὰ ἐφ’ ἡμῖν ἐξουσίαν διὰ τὸ σωμάτιον καὶ τὰ τούτου κτήματα. ἄφες δείξωμεν αὐτοῖς, ὅτι οὐδενὸς ἔχουσιν ἐξουσίαν. ————— 47 48

Dowden 2005 and 1999. On the justice of Thyamis, see also Knemon’s account at 2,17,4 and Watanabe 2004, 21.

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Are these things not a matter of indifference and nothing to us? And is not death no evil? Let us go back whence we came; let us finally be released from these chains bound tight that weigh us down. Here we find lēistai and thieves and lawcourts and would-be tyrants who think they have some power over us due to our body and its appurtenances. Let us go show them that they have power over no-one.’ This is not some Coded Message of the Novel. But the analysis of the bios of the hero and heroine is patterned on a shared model which extends into the philosophical analysis of lifestyles. Xenophon’s Ephesiaka, as I have argued elsewhere (Dowden 2007), is a not unphilosophical work. And Heliodoros is in my opinion much closer to Epiktetos’ vision. Then there is a second text: Ἄνθρωπός τις κατέβαινεν ἀπὸ Ἰερουσαλὴμ εἰς Ἰεριχὼ καὶ λῃσταῖς περιέπεσεν ... Σαμαρίτης δέ τις ὁδεύων ἦλθεν κατ’ αὐτὸν καὶ ἰδὼν ἐσπλαγχνίσθη. A certain man was coming down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among lēistai... But a certain Samaritan who was on the road came to him and was distressed when he saw him. Luke 10,30; 10,33. How might a Christian Epiktetos read this parable? I think it is irresistible that he would be talking about the fall of the soul into the world, whose moral dangers are symbolised by the figure of the brigand:49 homo enim adgressuram passus Adam esse cognoscitur, latrones diabolus et concupiscentia, Samaritanus Dominus. The man who suffers the attack can be recognised as Adam, and the brigands as the devil and lust. The Samaritan is the Lord. Zeno of Verona, Tractatus 1,37 (2,13) 3 §10 (PL 9, 431b-c).50 ————— 49 50

See Welch 1999. Ed. B. Löfstedt [Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 22]. The manuscripts have Eva (not et) concupiscentia (‘the lust is Eve’), an error induced by Adam. Löfstedt records a fascinating conjecture of van den Hout, levita concupiscentia (‘the Levite is lust’).

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Zeno, a 4th century author, puts it snappily, but we can already see it in earlier authors and Zeno, or his manuscript tradition, has somewhat garbled it. Origen (1st half 3rd century) presents a fuller version: Ἀνάγεται ὁ ἄνθρωπος εἰς τὸν Ἀδάμ· ἡ δὲ Ἱερουσαλὴμ εἰς τὸν παράδεισον· ἡ δὲ Ἱεριχὼ εἰς τὸν κόσμον· οἱ δὲ λησταὶ εἰς τὰς ἀντικειμένας ἐνεργείας· ὁ ἱερεὺς εἰς τὸν νόμον· ὁ λευίτης εἰς τὸν προφητικὸν λόγον· ὁ Σαμαρείτης εἰς Χριστὸν τὸν ἐκ Μαρίας σάρκα φορέσαντα· τὰ τραύματα εἰς τὴν παρακοήν· The man represents Adam, Jerusalem paradise, Jericho the world, the brigands the forces that oppose us, the priest the Law, the Levite the prophetic discourse, the Samaritan Christ wearing the flesh he got from Mary, the wounds failure to understand. Origen, Homilies on Luke 34 Origen proceeds to go into much more detail, but that is where, I think, he exercises his originality.51 The fundamentals of this interpretation go back a long way, as Welch has shown and we can see traces of it in the previous century in Irenaeus and Clement.52 When you put this approach together with the way Epiktetos is talking, the symbolic possibilities of brigands take on quite definite form.

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Origen continues: τὸ κτῆνος εἰς τὸ σῶμα Χριστοῦ· τὸ πανδοχεῖον εἰς τὴν ἐκκλησίαν· τὰ δύο δηνάρια εἰς τὴν περὶ πατρὸς καὶ υἱοῦ γνῶσιν· ὁ πανδοχεὺς εἰς τοὺς τῆς ἐκκλησίας ἐπιστατοῦντας ἀγγέλους· ἡ ἐπάνοδος τοῦ Σαμαρέως ἡ δευτέρα Χριστοῦ ἐπιφάνεια. τοὺς πρὸ Χριστοῦ ἐλθόντας ψευδοδιδασκάλους· τὰ τραύματα εἰς ... τὰς ἁμαρτίας ὁ μὲν ἱερεὺς τὸν νόμον δηλοῖ· Λευίτης δὲ τὸν προφητικὸν λόγον· ὁ Σαμαρείτης τοίνυν ὁδεύων ὃ ἑρμηνεύεται φύλαξ, ὅς ἐστι Χριστός· ὃς οὐ νυστάζει οὐδὲ ὑπνοῖ ἐν τῷ φυλάσσειν τὸν Ἰσραήλ, εἶδεν τὸν κείμενον τὸν ἡμιθνῆτα ἐπὶ τοῦ ἰδίου κτήνους τοῦτ’ ἔστι τοῦ σώματος ἐπαναπαῦσαι διενοήθη διὰ φιλανθρωπίαν, ᾗ ‹πάντες οἱ κοπιῶντες καὶ πεφορτισμένοι› ἐπαναπαύονται. Welch 1999, 55; Irenaeus contra haereses 3,17,3 (Migne PL 7, 930d) is very slight but must be thinking along these lines, cf the argument of Welch 1999, 106-107 n.16. Clement Quis dives 29: τοὺς ὑπὸ τῶν κοσμοκρατόρων τοῦ σκότους ὀλίγου τεθανατωμένους τοῖς πολλοῖς τραύμασι, φόβοις, ἐπιθυμίαις, ὀργαῖς, λύπαις, ἀπάταις, ἡδοναῖς; τούτων δὲ τῶν τραυμάτων μόνος ἰατρὸς Ἰησοῦς (‘those who have been practically killed through the many wounds, fears, desires, rages, pains, deceptions, and pleasures inflicted by the cosmic powers of darkness. And for these wounds the only doctor is Christ’).

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Synthesis What has preceded may seem obvious, or it may seem dangerous. It is obvious that brigands exist and pursue material goods, that the Good Samaritan was in fact interpreted as the descent and recovery of the soul by some writers, that there were real brigands in a real world that were of interest to historiographers, and that their communities in life or in fiction could not subsist on internal lawlessness. It is dangerous if we are thought to claim that brigands somehow have a uniform meaning and application amongst all novelists, as they do among some philosophers, and church fathers, and that they necessarily encode a view of the perhaps self-imposed hostility of the world from which they sought to escape. Nonetheless, it seems clear from the material presented that brigands, like beasts, are ‘good to think with’: quid latrones, quid ferae ... nefariae Fortunae profuit? – ‘what advantage were the brigands to wicked Fortune, what advantage were the beasts... ?’, as the priest asks at Apuleius, Metamorphoses 11,15. They represent a choice of bios which occurs at the margins and constitutes an ‘other’ to civilised societies. Thus a Viriathos or a Tillorobos are at once surprising and entirely predictable subjects of interest to philosophically inclined historians. And any novel that finds much room for brigand society between its covers must necessarily constitute at some level a discourse on civilised or ideal society. Xenophon toys with humanising Amphinomos and recovers Hippothoös by finally incorporating him in Ephesian bourgeois society, whilst inconsistently chronicling his pillaging and mass murders, as he tries to resolve the binary opposition between inexperienced bourgeois and misguided bandit.53 In Heliodoros, as always, the situation is much deeper and much more complex: the various brigands and brigand communities, apparently starting from an already ideological base in native Egyptian literature, constitute a richly suggestive part of the dialectic on the quest for the good life (which may be true of Apuleius’ novel too). Thus brigands are not just an entertainment but a counterpoint.54 And ‘falling ————— 53

54

There is no room here to go into the topos of the ‘humane pirate’, on which see Watanabe 2004, 18 and n. 57. I think it may be best to leave the contrary poles unresolved rather than try ingeniously to accommodate them into the single concept of ‘hegemonic masculinity’ (Watanabe 2004, 21). Cultural antithesis according to Watanabe 2004, 19. From this point of view, de Souza 1999, 214-215 is too limited to the entertainment function, probably as a result of focusing on a perceived contrast between ‘historical narratives’ and ‘stories for entertainment’ (217); similarly Shaw 1984, 44 turns to the topic of high-culture versus oral popular culture.

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among brigands’ is not just to meet with external danger, but also on occasion to face the choice of becoming a brigand (or a brigand’s bride) oneself. All men are born with the desire for happiness; just, they do not agree on what constitutes happiness (cf. Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 1,4). The good is certainly that at which everything – whether deed or preference – aims; just, there is a difference in the ends (1,1), differences which you can see in action in the bioi that people lead (1,5). Bioi are of three principal types: the life of pleasure, status, and contemplation. Brigands belong to the first category: they collect wealth and roister. Because they are susceptible to this analysis, they carry with them a variety of possible realisations within a discourse, that of the novel, which is concerned with bioi and in which the brigand is ‘one of the constants of the genre’ (Grünewald 2004, 7). This is what the novel is and this is why it lay open to Merkelbach’s approach (in whose world, ‘die Räuber wurden von Mysteriendienern dargestellt’).55 If we are to understand the range of association that the elements of the novel carry with them, we must study swashbuckling less and ethics more. In a way Merkelbach did not go far enough: the brigands are so much more than bogies to leap out at us as we ride on an initiatory ‘ghost train’.

Bibliography Aldrete, G.S. 2004. Daily life in the Roman city, Westport, CT – London: Greenwood Press. Barthes, R. 1957. Mythologies, Paris: Seuil. de Souza, P. 1999. Piracy in the Graeco-Roman World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dowden, K. 1980. ‘Eleven Notes on the Text of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses’,CQ 30, 218-226. — 1981. ‘Psyche on the Rock’, Latomus 41, 336-352. — 1998. ‘Cupid and Psyche: a question of the vision of Apuleius’, in: M. Zimmerman et al. (eds.), Aspects of Apuleius’ Golden Ass, Volume II: Cupid and Psyche, Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1-22. — 1999. ‘The Passage Rite in Myth, Ritual and the Greek Novel’, in: M. Padilla (ed.), Rites of Passage in Ancient Greece: Literature, Religion, Society [Bucknell Review 43.1], Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, London – Toronto: Associated University Presses, 221-243. — 2000. European Paganism: the realities of cult from antiquity to the middle ages, London – New York: Routledge. — 2005. ‘Greek novel and the ritual of life: an exercise in taxonomy’, in: S. Harrison, M. Paschalis, S. Frangoulidis (eds.), Metaphor and the Ancient Novel, Ancient Narrative Supplementum 4, Groningen: Barkhuis & Groningen University Library, 23-35.

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Merkelbach 1962, 75 n.2; and they are under the sway of the goddess, like ‘alle feindlichen Mächte, denen der Mensch im Leben begegnet’ (97).

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— 2007. ‘Novel ways of being philosophical, or A tale of two dogs and a phoenix’, in: J.R. Morgan, M. Jones (eds.), Philosophical Presences in the Ancient Novel, Ancient Narrative Supplementum 10, Groningen: Barkhuis & Groningen University Library, 137-150. — 2009. ‘L’affirmation de soi chez les romanciers’, in: B. Pouderon, C. Bost-Pouderon (eds.), Passions, vertus et vices dans l’ancien roman, Lyon: Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée, 85-96. Grünewald, T. 2004. Bandits in the Roman Empire: Myth and Reality, Eng. tr. J. Drinkwater, London, New York: Routledge. Hopwood, K. 1998. ‘“All that may Become a Man”: the Bandit in the Ancient Novel’, in: L. Foxhall, J. Salmon (eds.), When Men were Men: masculinity, power, and identity in classical antiquity, London, New York: Routledge, 195-204. Lalanne, S. 2006. Une éducation grecque: rites de passage et construction des genres dans le roman grec ancien, Paris: Éditions La Découverte. McGing, B.C. 1998. ‘Bandits, real and imagined in Greco-Roman Egypt’, BASP 35, 159-183. Macmullen, R. 1967. Enemies of the Roman order: treason, unrest, and alienation in the Empire, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Merkelbach, R. 1962. Roman und Mysterium in der Antike, Munich, Berlin: Beck. Ormerod, H.A. 1924. Piracy in the Ancient World: an essay in Mediterranean history, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Riess, W. 2001. Apuleius und die Räuber: ein Beitrag zur historischen Kriminalitätsforschung, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner (not seen; review by B.D. Shaw, Ancient Narrative 2, 2002, 268-279). — 2000-2001. ‘Between Fiction and Reality: Robbers in Apuleius’ Golden Ass’, Ancient Narrative 1, 260-282. Rutherford, I.C. 2000. ‘The Genealogy of the Boukoloi: How Greek Literature Appropriated an Egyptian Narrative-Motif’, JHS 120, 106-121. Schulten, A. 1911. ‘Polybius und Posidonius über Iberien und die Iberischen Kriege’, Hermes 46, 568-607. Shaw, B.D. 1984. ‘Bandits in the Roman Empire’, Past and Present 105, 3-52. Watanabe, A. 2003. ‘Hippothoös the Lover, Bandit, and Friend: a Study of the Elite Masculinity in the Novel’, diss. Yale. — 2004. ‘The Masculinity of Hippothoös’, Ancient Narrative 3, 1-42. Welch, J.W. 1999. ‘The Good Samaritan: a Type and Shadow of the Plan of Salvation’, BYU Studies 38.2, 50-115. Winkler, J.J. 1980. ‘Lollianos and the Desperadoes’, JHS 100, 155-181.

Abbreviation BGU = Aegyptische Urkunden aus den Königlichen (or, later, Staatlichen) Museen zu Berlin, Griechische Urkunden, Berlin.

Landscapes and Portraits: Signs of the Uncanny and Illusions of the Real F ROMA I. Z EITLIN Princeton University References to works of art are a commonplace in the ancient novel, both Greek and Roman, and in the Second Sophistic as a whole, in keeping with the heightened significance of the visual arts from the Hellenistic period on. This cultural development entails a growing familiarity with famous specimens of aesthetic production, as well as with a repertory of well-known mythic images, along with the pleasures of rhetorical display in the skillful management of vivid description.1 These references fulfill a variety of functions. They range in length from brief epigrams on notable objects to standalone examples of fully realized scenes, such as in Philostratus’ Imagines. Descriptions of characters may elicit comparisons with works of art to articulate the image of their outstanding beauty, sometimes alluding to famous exemplars as the touchstone of excellence.2 Or specific objects, such as cups, gems, coverlets, cloaks, belts, statues, and temple metopes (to name only a few) may elicit an author’s interest in representing their images for play and profit. Ekphrases may also be embedded in a longer literary work, such as in epic (starting with the best known instance in Homer’s Shield of Achilles), in drama (e.g., Euripides’ Ion), or in the novel – the topic of this essay.3 ————— 1

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For prescriptive advice on the art of vivid description as given in rhetorical treatises and instantiated in progymnasmata, see Harlan 1965, 9-51, Webb 2009, 39-60, Goldhill 2007, and Squire 2009, 142-144. This is especially true for statues (figures in the round), especially Aphrodite or Artemis, when it comes to Chariton’s Callirhoe, Xenophon’s Anthia, and Heliodorus’s Charicleia. Lucian’s Eikones reels off a whole list of the best-known works for his composite portrait in praise of a beautiful woman, along with the masterpieces of the best-known painters. See Cheney 1999, 30-31 for the list. Any other, even less touristed, spectator could conjure up the same or similar images to describe the individual features of a beautiful woman. For a brief and convenient overview of the genres of ekphrasis, see Elsner 2002. The Construction of the Real and the Ideal in the Ancient Novel, 61–87

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Above all, whatever the form or the genre, they partake in a culture of visuality, in which the aim is, as so often noted, to make ‘listeners into viewers,’ and to bring the scene depicted vividly before the eyes.4 The reaction of an internal spectator to these ekphrases varies, according to the context: at times, there is a connoisseurship of quality (as in the proem to Daphnis and Chloe or in Lucian, de domo) that may emphasize the skill of the artist in the use, for example, of color, line, and scenic details. Or they may elicit responses that hover between astonished absorption in what is being viewed and erudite commentary on the subject portrayed.5 One may delight in mimetic effects or resort to the faculty of phantasia in praise of what the artist’s skill has imagined. At other times, there is a personal identification with what is viewed (and described), generally in an erotic context, such as Encolpius’ reactions to the paintings he sees in Petronius’ gallery of art (Sat. 83), or the responses of both the first narrator and Clitophon to the painting of Europa and the bull at the outset of Achilles Tatius (1,2-3). Viewing a work of art may also serve a premonitory function as proleptic signs of future event, and as such, is endowed with special symbolic value (Ach. Tat. 5,4). Finally, whether signaled explicitly as such or not, embedded ekphrases call forth interpretation in broader terms of the relationship between word and image, as between content and context, and they inevitably raise issues of representation, with all the ambiguities, tensions, and contradictions that the notion entails. My claim in the context of this volume is that such descriptions, whether of ‘actual’ or of ‘painted’ scenes, partake in a rich dialectic between the real and the ideal – or perhaps more accurately, between the real and the illusory, which blurs those comfortable boundaries that distinguish fact from fiction, ————— 4

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By now, the bibliography on ekphrasis is immense and seems to be growing exponentially, for both Greek and Roman literature. Most recently, see Squire 2009, 139-146 (with extensive bibliographical references in n.196). Hardie 2002, 173, offers an excellent overview of ekphrastic complexity: ‘Literary ekphrasis incorporates a double structure of an absent present. At a first level, it exploits the power of the visual arts to create an illusion of presence, as a painter or a sculptor deceives the beholder into believing that what is represented is really present. At a second level, in the paragone between the powers of verbal and visual artists, ekphrasis uses the writer’s powers of enargeia in creating a textual illusion of visual images. If the writer is successful, we will ‘see’ the artwork ‘before our very eyes,’ perhaps in an imaginary likeness more lifelike than any actual painting or statue could ever be. The writer has the power to break through obstacles of immobility and externality that separate any statue or painting from the reality it represents, since words can both narrate physical movement over time and provide scripts for the expression of internal, psychological, movement of emotion.’ Newby 2002 and 2009.

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verbal metaphor from visual realization, the literal from the imaginary, truth from deception – and this on aesthetic, cognitive, and psychological levels. In the process, this dialectic partakes especially in a consideration of the relationship between nature and art, between phusis and technê, which, especially in the Second Sophistic, plays with their possible levels of interaction, whether confusion, inversion, imitation, or cooperation. At its furthest limit the boundary that separates the viewer from the object is breached, with the illusion of breaking the frame: that is, of the viewer entering the picture or a figure in the painting (or indeed the painting itself) passing into the zone of ‘reality.’ This is the topic I wish to explore in this essay in what I see as the two most extreme examples of ‘breaking the frame’: the first, in the series of garden descriptions at the opening of Achilles Tatius, and the second, in the portrait of Andromeda that serves as the model for Charicleia in Heliodorus. Each example, in its own way, depends on a broader cultural competence that evokes a reader’s recognition of well-known tropes, whether of horticultural precepts or the painted garden frescoes in Roman houses in the first instance,6 or the popularity of a given theme in both literature and art, in the case of the second.7 In both these passages, as elsewhere in the genre, the author can count on a storehouse of cultural memory when it comes to the plastic arts.8 Despite their obvious differences – one a landscape, the other a portrait – each work of art plays a central role in the narrative. ‘Achilles Tatius (and Longus) employ paintings to initiate the process itself of story telling, while Heliodorus employs the painting of Andromeda to initiate the plot itself.’9 Even so, I should emphasize, these are not arbitrary choices; rather, they might be classified as the two most self-reflexive cases of description in the sophistic novels, not least because each in its own way unsettles conventional patterns of perception.

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8 9

This interplay, as Rosati 1983, 136 puts it in another context, depends on ‘the visual suggestions exercised by rich urban decoration, while their influence should be referred to a mode of perceiving reality, that is, to visualize scenes.’ In other words, this is a twoway transaction. The abduction of Europa, the subject of the painting in Achilles Tatius, is an equally, if not better known theme of literature and painting; see Bartsch 1989, 55 (with further references), but my focus here is on the landscape. Whitmarsh 2002, 116, citing Rohde 1876, 155-156. Anderson 1997, 318.

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Ekphrastic Games First, however, let me set the stage, with respect to two aspects of the interplay between reality and illusion as between nature and art. A work of art, whether actual or imaginary, is a material object, which operates outside the text as a concrete referent. As such, it has documentary value as a means of authenticating a given narrative, and can be used as a framing device (as in Achilles Tatius and Longus) to establish a setting and a scene – not only of viewing, but also of telling – by the author or narrator.10 At the same time, its status as an artificial object, made by human hands, opens a larger horizon of expectation in assessing the merits of what is represented, that is, most often in the terms most familiar from ancient art criticism – its relation to reality, its life-likeness – that gives a surge of thaumastic pleasure to viewers. The illusionist nature of mimetic realism, so dear to ancient evaluations of art, as instantiated by the numerous epigrams on the lifelikeness of Myron’s cow11 or the famous anecdote about the contest between the two painters, Zeuxis and Parrhasius, remains a continuing source of contestation. The deceptions of the trompe l’oeil effect give rise to endless marvel and delight, whose underlying preoccupation is nothing less than a desire to probe those limits of art and nature, or even more ambitiously, to institute a two-way passage across the ontological border that separates the ‘real’ from the representation of it and thus to experience the frisson, the sensation, both pleasurable and unsettling, that is generated when life and art, or more broadly, reality and art purport to be continuous. In its two-dimensional illusion of depth and volume in narrated space, the scene of painting is especially conducive to arousing the fantasy of a double exchange, that either the spectator could cross into the imaginary space behind the painting, or conversely, that the figures within it might leap out of the frame into the space of the spectator – that is when, as Jaś Elsner puts it, ‘the sophist’s viewing narrates away the boundary of observer and observed, and there seems to be a union of

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See Maeder 1991, especially 3-17 on the programmatic openings of Achilles Tatius and Longus in an exploration of the dichotomy between reality and creation. As Hardie 2002, 174, further remarks: ‘An ekphrasis of the usual kind demands of the reader a twofold suspension of disbelief with regard to the work of art described, requiring of us firstly that through words we really can ‘see’ a visual object, and secondly that through this verbally evoked visual object itself we have access to the reality of which it is an artistic representation.’ On Myron’s cow, see Gross 1992, 139-142, Goldhill 2007, 15-19, and Squire 2010.

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realities between beholder and image.’12 And as Norman Bryson further observes: There may come a moment when ‘words and pictures collaborate to produce a hyperreal, sensuously intense experience that goes beyond the limits of both pictures and words.’13 A second and corollary point: if ekphrasis depends on the collaboration and interdependence of word and image, an underlying notion also suggests that if art imitates nature, the norm for praising versimilitude in works of art, the converse may also be true – that nature imitates art. Some would argue that the idea originates as far back as Ovid, in his preoccupation with artistic production arising out of nature (as also for figuration of persons).14 This holds especially true for landscape, with the further development that ‘nature itself may be confused with an artistic product, with a work of art, and it is the semblance of art that ennobles nature itself.’15 For the former, in fact, Pliny the Younger (Ep. 5,16,13) certainly states it in his rapturous description of his villa with a view: ‘You will grasp great pleasure if you look at the site of this region from a mountain. For you will seem to see, not lands, but some painted form of exceeding beauty.’16 Philostratus, in his proem (1,5,10) to the Imagines gives both sides: ‘For one who wishes a clever theory (sophizesthai), the invention of painting belongs to the gods – witness on earth all the designs with which the Seasons paint the meadows, and the manifestations (phainomena) we see in the heavens – but for one who is merely seeking the origin of art (genesis tês technês), imitation (mimesis) is an invention most ancient and most akin to nature (physis); and wise men invented it, calling it now painting (zôgraphia), now plastic art (plastikê).’ Just as the subjects I wish to address (landscape and portrait) could not differ more from one another (in typology as in function), so will be my focus of interest. The first, the garden series in Achilles Tatius demands both sequential and retrospective reading, as these descriptions unfold in time and ————— 12

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Elsner 1995, 33. Philostratus is often explicit about this effect, e.g.: ‘The painting has such regard for truthfulness (alêtheia) that it even shows drops of dew dripping from the flowers and a bee settling on the flowers – whether it is a bee deceived by the painting, or whether we are to be deceived into thinking it is real, I do not know. Imag. 1,23,2) or ‘How have I suffered! I have been carried away by the image into thinking these are not painted but living and moving and loving’ (Imag. 1,28,2). Bryson 1994, 173. See especially Rosati 1983, 68-72 with numerous examples (on Ovid). Also GalandHallyn 1994, 170-183 and Solodow 1988, 203-231. Rosati 1983, 70. Ekphrases in Statius’ Silvae are also relevant; see Bergmann 1991 (Statius), 1995 (Pliny), and Myers 2005 (on both). Also, more generally, Myers forthcoming, on representations of gardens in Roman literature.

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space, and together compel the attention of the reader to reflect on different zones of reality, illusion, and fiction-making, from the very start. However they may relate to the story that is to unfold and to the characters and their adventures, these opening signals usher us into what I call the region of the uncanny, in which the slippage from one zone to the other destabilizes perspective but also delights the reader in an invitation to deciphering the different levels of the narrative. Add to this the materiality of description as matching the rhetorical prescriptions for garden design, which in turn are executed and instantiated in the specimens that are given to our view. My claim will be that in one sense there is a progressive move in Achilles Tatius from an initial gazing at a pictorial garden to the characters, who themselves enter into a similar landscape. The triangle of horticulture, rhetoric, and artistic object in the shape of the painting, all collude in one sense or another to suggest, not a trompe l’oeil that would take place in a single temporal moment of illusionist confusion, but rather a sliding scale from the most artificial (the painting) to the most ‘real.’ Yet, at the same time, this last ‘reality’ in the description of the paradeisos alerts us to the complications of such viewing by drawing our attention to the possibilities of metaleptic transferences in the creation of images as well as a world of doubling, shadows, and reflections17 (1,15,6-7) that adds another dimension to the initial work of art. These effects are both ‘real,’ in the sense that reflections in water are observable phenomena, and ‘artful’ in the sense that such perceptions gesture beyond the ordinary to a more mysterious dimension of experience. My second instance of uncanny viewing invokes a very different set of issues. Unlike the first that deranges perception, as it were, but could be construed as a coincidence rather than an experiment with perspective, or as a show-off rhetorical overload on the part of an overeager narrator to display his skill, the portrait of Andromeda in Heliodorus challenges the relationship between art and reality in a more essential way, as it definitively crosses the fundamental line between reality and illusion, between the model and the copy, which occupies such an important place in ancient conceptions of the image. Its counterpart may be Ovid’s story of Pygmalion, who prays to Venus not for the statue he has made to be his wife, but for a wife that would resemble his statue (Met. 10,274-276). As Jaś Elsner puts it: ‘This is an outrageous reversal of the logic of likeness – the logic on which the whole project of realist art is built. Illusionism is gone mad in the deluded viewer’s ————— 17

‘The water served as a mirror for the flowers, giving the impression of a double grove, one real, and the other a shadowy reflection.’ (τὸ δὲ ὕδωρ τῶν ἀνθέων ἦν κάτοπτρον, ὡς δοκεῖν τὸ ἄλσος εἶναι διπλοῦν, τὸ μὲν τῆς ἀληθείας, τὸ δὲ τῆς σκιᾶς).

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attempt to map life on to art, to make the real like that which imitated the real, like that which was imagined as real.’18 The portrait of Andromeda, on the other hand, moves in precisely the opposite direction to generate a copy from an artificial original, but with equally, even more, unsettling effects, given that in Heliodorus’ plot this uncanny exchange goes far beyond a single episode to constitute the decisive proof of identity and the solution to the entire riddle of the text. While Pygmalion’s achievement consists in animating a statue and bringing it to life, the portrait of Andromeda is reproduced down to the last detail in an animate human being. Yet in both the cases that I will be exploring – Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus – a work of art takes pride of place, albeit for quite different reasons.

The Landscapes in Achilles Tatius Gardens, it should be stated at the outset, already partake of the artificial as cultivated spaces, carefully worked, where ‘nature meets and is refashioned by art.’19 The opening of the novel sets the scene with the description of a painting in the temple of Astarte in the Phoenician city of Sidon. The locale may be exotic, but the subject of the painting, the abduction of Europa by Zeus in the form of a bull is not – either in myth or in art,20 and what is more, the story it tells matches the place where it is situated.21 The ekphrasis portrays the scene as divided into two parts, one on land, set in a flowery meadow (leimôn) where the girlish companions of Europa watch with a mingled expression of joy and fear as she sails away on the back of the bull. The second is the sea itself, or rather the seashore, from which the receding figure of Europa is glimpsed (1,2-13). The next scene takes place in another landscape – a grove (alsos) shaded by thick plane trees and watered by a fresh stream (1,3). The third goes by still another name. It is a paradeisos, a garden park, but it is also described as an alsos, and it is located in the domain of Clitophon’s house (1.15,1-8). I would not be the first – far from it – to notice the unusual device of beginning this novel with three landscape scenes, nor to point out the strange ————— 18 19 20

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Elsner 1991, 164. Carruesco forthcoming, 1. Harlan 1965, 96-98. Cheney 1999, 96-98, also notes the intertextual relationship with Moschus’ Europa, not only in theme, but in its depiction of a locus amoenus, and the use of an ekphrasis. Specifically in the double reference to canals, one for irrigation (the painting) and the other (in the description of Sidon) to form a double harbor in the city.

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reduplications between the original painting with its flowery leimôn and the garden spaces (the alsos and paradeisos) that follow. Shadi Bartsch, for example, has noted that there is a ‘striking similarity between elements of Achilles Tatius’ pictorial descriptions and other descriptions of events presented in the narrative as real phenomena ... which already sets up an internal tension between the real and the admittedly pictorial.’22 Numerous details from the walled garden in the Europa painting recur in the paradeisos, along with elements from the grove where the narrator begins his tale. Richard Martin’s inspired essay gives a close reading of these three scenes, which he links together under the rubric of a ‘good place to talk’ to explore the imbrication of topos (place) and discourse. That is, he traces a certain transformational logic that successively and subtly reinforces the links between tale and topography by which ‘narrators and characters intersect and merge’ in their respective landscapes.23 The use of repeated key words and metaphor in the initial painting that blends myth (Europa) and the everyday present (the first, unnamed, narrator) sets the stage for what follows – first, the grove (alsos) where the first narrator brings Clitophon to tell his story, since ‘surroundings are pleasant and altogether suitable for listening to a love story.’24 But the full impact of this topography is not attained until we are ushered into the third locus amoenus, described as a paradeisos, an ornamental garden, but also called an alsos. Clitophon has fallen in love with Leucippe and seeking to win her by seductive persuasion, the place he chooses, itself a ‘pleasure for the eyes’ (pros ophthalmôn hêdonên), is, as Martin calls it, ‘a lover’s landscape’ that in the description of its features in anthropomorphic terms, crosses the boundary of the real to constitute a ‘loving landscape.’ The diction of plants and trees, which embrace, interweave, and converse with one another conveys ‘closeness and intimacy, human contact, and touch,’ to produce an entirely eroticized environment.25 The description ————— 22 23 24

25

Bartsch 1989, 164. Martin 2002, 147. The allusion to Plato’s Phaedrus is unmistakable and has been noted by virtually every commentator. Martin 2002, 151. ‘The branches were flourishing, each leaning upon one another throughout, and there were neighboring interminglings (periplokai) of their leaves, embraces (peribolai) of their foliage, intertwinings (symplokai) of their fruits’ (1,15,2). These same terms are used elsewhere in the romance ‘to refer to the couplings of lips and bodies rather than plants.’ Bartsch 1989, 51, and see her entire discussion, 50-53, which stresses the correspondences between Leucippe and Europa. Cheney 1999 gives the fullest analysis of these scenes, reading the elements of what he calls a recurrent ‘garden’ pattern as consisting of an ekphrasis, a description of a maiden, a locus amoenus, and an erotic encounter.

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reaches full bloom, as it were, in Clitophon’s account of the love life of plants, the pining of palms for one another until a gardener takes a shoot of the female palm and grafts it into the very heart of the male – a kind of a vegetable marriage (1,17,3-5). Martin notes that ‘the spatial transformations have begun to form a chain in which earlier scenes make best sense only in light of their later metamorphoses. Thus, the lovers’ landscape of the third passage (1,15,1-7) can now be seen to foreshadow the dendroerotics of the fourth, the landscape as lover (1,17,3-5).’26 The final rhetorical flourish translates Leucippe herself into a garden – ‘she is more beautiful than the flowers (roses, violets); her hair curls more tightly than ivy ... her whole appearance was that of a flower-full meadow.’ The entire series exemplifies the ‘dilemma of nature’s relation to art, reality’s ties to imitation.’27 Martin views this sequence primarily in its function as a metanarrative, whereby Achilles Tatius strives ‘to make text mimic topos’ and, as author, himself ‘takes the guise of the landscape artist.’28 The figure of the gardener in the Europa painting recurs in the tale of the lovesick palms recounted in the paradeisos, and the labors of both can stand in for the work of the novelist, whose mimetic efforts are thereby naturalized – or better yet, are made more perfect than nature. My interest, however, lies elsewhere, in parsing the uncanny descriptions of these cultivated spaces, taking my points of reference outside the text. For gardens, as I mentioned above, are never wholly ‘natural’; they are designed by human hands according to certain precepts and as in this instance, contain manmade elements such as surrounding walls, columns, and stone basins for water. Hence, as cultivated spaces, they occupy an ambiguous status between art and nature, reality and imitation. While Clitophon’s garden replicates a number of the features in the painting, as previously emphasized, there are also significant differences that gesture towards an animation, a bringing to life, of the previous scene, intensified by the addition of detailed descriptions of the trees and flowers, now ruffled by a light breeze. The architecture of the space (with colonnades, walls, portico) in this more structured environment is also, unlike the painting, a place of natural habitation, especially for birds, pecking for food or flying around the treetops; their music is heard, they strut their colors. Some are tame (trophai anthrôpôn), others fly free – yet a further set of distinctions that add a new ————— 26 27 28

Martin 2002, 153. Martin 2002, 151. Martin 2002, 146, 147. He adduces the parallels of Philetas’ garden in Longus and the vinedresser in Philostratus’ Heroikos. For another approach to these gardens, see de Temmerman 2009, who proposes to read a ‘slippage between different levels of narration’ [that of the frame and that of the story] that obeys the rhetorical rules of metalepsis.

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variation to the gardenscape (nurture vs. nature). Light, shade, movement, and color are dominant features in the text. I have argued that the sensation of passing from the space of a painting to a ‘real’ environment functions as a breaching of the boundary between the two zones, passing from the artificial to the living landscape – not simultaneously, of course, but in temporal sequence as developed in the intervening narrative. The love story begins; the narrator is initiated into techniques of seduction by his praeceptor amoris, and his apt pupil, Clitophon, takes the opportunity to fully eroticize this ornamental garden in a dazzling display of metaphoric transubstantiation, in what Tim Whitmarsh has aptly called ‘a linguistic tour-de-force, replete with illusionistic metaphor and destabilizing mimetic effects.’29 Yet for all of its innovative textual features, the paradeisos can be understood in the actual horticultural and aesthetic practices that we know from the architecture and decoration of the Roman villa that reached its heights of luxury in the century preceding.30 Still further, the ‘real’ gardens themselves are subject already to notions that have been validated in rhetorical prescriptions called an ars topiaria or opus topiarium, which consisted of extracting a set of typical landscape images as a basic lexicon that could be combined and recombined to product variety but also stability – like a rhetorician’s stock of loci and imagines, and like Aristotle’s generic fund of definitions, called topoi. The Roman Art of Gardens: Horticulture and Painted Frescos It is certainly no coincidence that the Roman art of gardens, as we know it, has its origins in that period which witnesses the influx of Hellenic culture into Italy, in the period of the late Republic, to flourish under the Empire. The stimulation arose from contact with Greece itself – its sacred precincts, philosophers’ groves, and historically from the Hellenistic cities, with their theaters, royal residences, gymnasia, and other public gardens, etc., as well as from the East, whose horticultural models, especially in paradeisoi or formal gardens, were of still much older vintage, and to which Alcinous’ garden in Homer was heavily indebted. Added to these was certainly the rise of Alexandrian interest in nature and idyllic scenes that rapidly found their way into the Roman idiom, although it is only in later Greek literature, in the Second Sophistic in fact that garden ekphrases became a vogue, classified by rhetorical handbooks as ‘ἐκφράζειν οἷον κάλλος χωρίου καὶ φυτείας ————— 29 30

Whitmarsh 2010, 340. Grimal 19843, Martinez 2008, Cheney 1999.

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διαφόρους καὶ ῥευμάτων ποικιλίας καὶ ὅσα τοιαῦτα (ekphrazein hoion kallos chôriou kai phuteias diaphorous kai rheumatôn poikilias kai hosa toiauta, Hermog. de ideis 2,4,40).31 That the Roman garden, in any case, amalgamated a number of ideas from all of these, along with Italian and even properly Latin elements, to produce unique and distinctive results need not concern us here.32 What is most striking in our context is the development of landscape paintings in domestic architecture, which developed at the end of the socalled Second Style of Roman wall painting, while garden scenes proper are taken up in the Third Style. By the Fourth Style, ‘the most popular role of the painted garden was as a means of enlarging space in an actual garden to give the illusion that the vegetation continued beyond the planted area.’ That is, as Mazzoleni observes, ‘the painted images enter into a direct dialogue with architectural structure of real spaces around them, creating fictive extensions of that space based on visual deception.’33 The effect is to blur the distinction between inside and outside – between real garden vistas viewed from within the house and the painted décor that continues the illusion of the exterior gardens in interior space. Hence, ‘the space of the painting simultaneously reflects and transforms the real, physical space that surrounds it or is enclosed by it ... to dissolve and recreate the concept of limit between the inside and the outside of the painting, and, more importantly, how these cancelled or redefined limits are permeable, making the mimetic and the real space interpenetrate one another.’34 The garden in the painting of Europa has much in common, as it happens, with these depictions (so that together the picture and Clitophon’s ‘real’ garden might be said to constitute a composite view, with respect to design). But more to the point is the fact that the paradeisos itself seems to resemble more closely the sometime fantastic impressions of Roman wall frescoes, with their detailed representations, especially of plants, flowers, and birds (the latter also often perched on water basins), when ‘as often, the ————— 31

32

33 34

Such descriptions are classified under the sweet and pleasurable style. Libanius’ list of the six charms of landscape (springs, plantings, gardens, soft breezes, flowers, and birdsong, Progym. IV,1077-1078; I, 517, 200) could be drawn from Achilles Tatius alone. On the locus amoenus and its description, see Harlan 1965, 23-27, with further textual evidence. For a recent survey of descriptions of gardens and landscapes in Greek literature, see Martinez 2008. On Roman gardens see e.g., Grimal 19843 (originally published in 1943; still the most useful), Macdougall and Jashemski 1981, Conan 1984, Macdougall 1987, Bowie 2004, and further bibliography in Carruesco 2006. Mazzoleni 2004, 24. Carruesco forthcoming, 4-5. See also Kuttner 1999 and Bergmann 2002.

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painted garden was on a wall of a portico confronting and mirroring the real garden,’35 in a game of mimetic legerdemain36 (Fig. 1). The Peacock: Rhetoric and Image I want to single out just one example of the complex interplay of word and image, rhetoric and art, the real and the ideal, by focusing on the figure of the peacock, which enjoys a rich ekphrastic and pictorial tradition. Descriptions of the bird frame the entire seduction scene in the paradeisos. Its gorgeous appearance, fanning its tail to attract his female counterpart, is Clitophon’s cue to enter upon his own amorous discourse in response to the bird, who too is called an (erômenos). The peacock’s exhibitionist beauty is a ‘garden (leimôn) in itself, one that ‘contains more beautiful flowers (euanthesteros) than a natural garden with its ravishing colors of gold and purple’ (1,16,3). By the time he has finished his erotic stories of plants, animals, and rivers, Clitophon can conclude from the girl’s delighted reaction that ‘the gleaming peacock seemed nothing in comparison with Leucippe’s face,’ and the earlier comparison of the bird to a meadow is now transferred to the beloved girl, herself, whose ‘entire appearance was that of a flowery leimôn’ (1,19,1-2). The rhetorical lover first merges with the object he describes. Like the peacock, he wishes to get the female’s attention by showing off his spectrum of rhetorical colors. The peacock in turn, as an amorous showpiece, first merges with and then is deemed superior to nature itself, until Leucippe’s reactions to his erotic lessons evokes Clitophon’s admiration of her beauty, which surpasses that of the flowery peacock. Flower, fauna, and girl merge in this metamorphic fantasia. Achilles Tatius’ rhetorical play with the peacock bears the hallmarks of his inimitable style. But he is by no means alone in deploying his descriptive talents in praise of this resplendent avian specimen. We find similar attention paid to the extravagant beauty of the bird, for example, in Dio Chrystostom (Ol. 12,2-3), Aelian (HA 5,21), Lucian (de domo 11), and in a progymnasma ————— 35 36

Carruesco forthcoming, 3. Garden frescos, it should be emphasized, may simulate real gardens, but they tend to be ‘idealized, schematized, or even imaginary. They are not exact reproductions from nature but the original theme is realistic in their depictions of birds, fruits, and foliage ... Along with such realistic features as lattices, fences, and enclosures, the architecture may equally contain bizarre and fanciful elements’ (Grimal 19843, 12). These consist of such items as pinakes (small paintings) or theatrical masks, mythological figures and statuary set in the midst of the greenery. The trompe l’oeil effect is most marked when the frescos form the fourth wall, as it were, of a peristyle garden.

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of Nicolaos – all of whom find ways for their own purposes to praise the peacock (color, light, reflection, comparison to flowers, garden, rainbow, heavens, theater, etc.). The rhetor especially is fond of referring to the peacock as a model for his own exhibitionist eloquence, often in the form of a prolalia (or prologue to a speech). Lucian does exactly this in de domo; Philostratus in the Lives of the Sophists tells us that another rhetor, Hippodromus, in praise of fine speaking (euphêmia), began with the peacock, ‘showing how admiration (epainos) makes him spread his plumage aloft’ (Phil. VS 617), while Clitophon, upon first spying the bird in the garden, is spurred on to impress his beloved. Nicolaos, for his part, goes so far as claim a comparison of the peacock with a painting: ‘Nature imitates art and reworks the work of painters,’ surpassing even Apelles himself (406-407 Walz).37 Real peacocks were a fixture of Roman garden parks in relative profusion (as well as noted as gourmet delicacies),38 while painted images are not infrequently depicted in garden frescoes (as in mosaics and on ceilings) most often ‘poised on the ledge in a painting, as if in equilibrium between reality and an image, whose presence contributes to create an illusion of depth’39 (Figs. 2 and 3). The initial garden in the painting of Europa, as it turns out, cannot hope to compete with Clitophon’s more elaborate paradeisos. But it establishes the pictorial atmosphere that is finally superseded (or its promise fulfilled) by the apparently realistic gardenscape, whose shadows, reflections, and doublings, and its extravagant use of metaphor, as it segues into a fully fledged sophistic locus amoenus, go well beyond naturalism in any conventional sense to offer a remarkable example of the novelist’s rhetorical play with the intertwined categories of nature and art.40

The Portrait of Andromeda Achilles Tatius’ novel opens with the description of a painting that depicts the abduction of Europa. The previous discussion focused on only one aspect ————— 37

38 39 40

See Bompaire 1958, 718-721, for an analysis of these texts. See also Heath 2006 on the phoenix at Elim in Ezekiel Tragicus in relation to Hellenistic visuality. Athen. Deipn. 14,71 (654d-655b). Grimal 19843, 289, and his whole discussion, 289-290. See also Kondoleon 1994, 109-117. On metaphor and the baroque uses of deception in Achilles Tatius more generally as trumping realism, see Mignogna 1995. For Whitmarsh 2010, the paradeisos represents a point of transition between the structured world of the house and the freer space of the adventure-world.

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of the picture, in keeping with our primary interest in the depiction of gardens in this and the following two scenes. The subject, however, we may recall, is the mythological figure of Europa that in the first instance looks ahead primarily to the heroine, Leucippe, who is shortly to enter the narrative.41 In Heliodorus, the image of a mythological figure occupies an even more important position; it holds the key to the identity of the heroine and is the pièce de résistance in every sense of the word in the dénouement of the plot. As defined, the French phrase refers to a creation, which defies (i.e. ‘resists’) orthodox or common conventions and practices, emphasizing the qualities that make it unique and special, and may be used, in fact, to describe a work of art. While Longus and Achilles Tatius open their respective works with an ekphrasis of a painting (suggesting a novelistic topos), in this case, as Tim Whitmarsh observes, ‘the Aethiopica ... adapts this convention by siting a painting at the point of genesis of the novel, but this time actually within the dramatic action represented.’42 Still further, the relationship between the image and the person in Heliodorus is not merely one of allusion, or even of topical resemblance in the dramatic mise en scène (although it is these too); rather it is one of identity, with the added reversal of terms (who or what is the original?), so that however we parse the terms, the artistic representation of Andromeda is more than an image; it is a portrait. The idea itself of a portrait (of the beloved) recurs earlier in the genre of romance, especially in Chariton. There both hero and heroine confront constructed images of one another: Callirhoe possesses a portrait ring of her absent husband with which she communes (1,14,9-10; 2,11,1-3), and when she mistakenly believes he is dead, the miniature eikôn serves as the model for a lifesize funeral replica of him (4,1,10). Chaereas, for his part, in his search for Callirhoe across the sea, unexpectedly comes upon a golden portrait statue of her, which was dedicated in the temple of Aphrodite in Miletus by his rival, the wealthy landowner Dionysius, who has just now married her. Whatever talismanic value these icons possess in the economy of the story, they do not challenge the fundamental laws that regulate original and copy; in fact, functionally speaking, together they represent the two traditional motivations for the uses of images: a sign of mortality (the funeral ————— 41

42

See Bettini 1999, 181-183, on the extensive relevance of the painting (its figures, actions, episodes, imagery) to the rest of the novel, concluding his discussion with the observation that ‘the fog of premonition grows ever more dense’ (183). Cf. also the analysis of Reeves 2007 along the same lines and the rich discussion of Morales 2004, 37-48. Whitmarsh 2002, 115.

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effigy) and the other (golden, no less) is on the side of the divine. Both too are substitutes for the ‘real’ thing; both too are indices of absent presence.43 The case of Charicleia, of course, is quite the reverse. It is also unique in the working out of the topos of recognition (anagnorisis) because of the extraordinary circumstances of her life story and the puzzling factor of her appearance.44 The plot resorts to all the conventional modes and typical tropes of anagnorisis45 to establish, in the face of a logical skepticism, the identity of the heroine at this moment of greatest risk, when the altars for sacrifice are already prepared and Charicleia (together with Theagenes) has passed the required chastity test. This is the moment when the girl produces the swaddling band, in the presence of Persinna, inscribed with the tale of her exposure, together with the recognition tokens her mother had also left with her. Earlier in the fourth book, we had learned from the queen Persinna’s own inscribed words that: [The Ethiopian] line descends from the Sun and Dionysus among gods and from Perseus and Andromeda and from Memnon too among heroes. Those who in the course of time came to build the royal palace decorated it with scenes from the stories of these figures: they painted the likenesses and exploits (eikonas kai praxeis) of the others in the men’s quarters and the colonnades, but made use of the romance of Perseus and Andromeda to adorn the bedchambers. It was there one day (ten years had gone by and we had no children) that your father and I happened to be taking a siesta in the drowsy heat of summer.... During your father’s intimacy with me the painting had presented me with the image of Andromeda, who was depicted stark naked (τὴν Ἀνδρομέδαν ἡ γραφὴ παρασχοῦσα καὶ πανταχόθεν ἐπιδείξασα γυμνὴν), for Perseus was in the very act of releasing her from the rocks, and had unfortunately shaped the embryo to her exact likeness (ὁμοιοειδὲς ἐκείνῃ τὸ σπαρὲν οὐκ εὐτυχῶς ἐμόρφωσεν.) (4,8,3-4)

————— 43 44

45

See Zeitlin 2003. For closer analysis of this extravagantly staged recognition, see especially Cave 1988, 17-22, Morgan 1989, and Lowe 2000, 255-258. For example: a twin demonstration of ‘show and tell;’ empirical evidence, juridical or quasi-juridical proceedings, the corroboration of witnesses, the display of signs and tokens, including marks on the body. Premonitory omens, such as Hydaspes’ dream the night before, are useful also to prepare the way. Timing is everything in such dramatic revelations.

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Now, however, at the critical moment in Meroe, Charicleia’s birthplace, the puzzle of identity is about to be revealed once and for all. It is not surprising that the king Hydaspes is unconvinced, even if the story turns out to be true: But how can we be sure that this girl is not an impostor? How can we be certain that this is indeed the girl-child born to me, that the child did not perish after being abandoned, that someone did not chance upon the tokens of recognition, and has not made use of the gifts of fortune by bestowing them on this girl and using her as a kind of mask, so exploiting my desire for a child and imposing upon us a false and suppositious line of succession, clouding the light of truth with this band. (10,13,5) By a stroke of good fortune, Sisimithres, the chief gymnosophist, is present and can vouch for her identity. Coincidentally, he was the hitherto unnamed Ethiopian ambassador to Egypt who had taken up the abandoned child and gave her to the Delphic priest, Charicles, whom he subsequently met in Egypt, but whose identity no one had known until now. Despite the passing of the years, he recognizes her face, her eyes, and her form. Eventually, he bids her reveal the existence of a single discreet sign on her body – a black birthmark, ‘like a ring of ebony staining the ivory of the arm’ (10,15,2) that clinches the string of proofs to establish her legitimate status. Nevertheless, the enigma about family resemblance remains. What about the improbable story of that painting? ‘How could we, Ethiopians both,’ asks the king, ‘produce, contrary to all probability (para to eikos), a white daughter?’ (10,14,5). The queen, it seems, was correct in her initial decision to expose the child. Who would believe such a counterintuitive claim? The solution to the problem of her skin color is contained, says Simisthres, in the written message on the band, which the reader, as we have seen, had encountered much earlier in the romance. But there we learned only that Persinna’s gaze fell upon the ‘painting of Andromeda, depicted stark naked, just as Perseus was in the very act of releasing her from the rocks’ (4,8,5). Now Sisimithres goes further to explain the phenomenon more formally in the language of mimetic theory: ‘Persinna hereby swears that she absorbed certain images (eidôla) and visual forms (phantasiai) of resemblance (homoiôtes) from the painting of Andromeda that she looked at while in your embrace. If you wish other proofs, you have the model (archetypon) at your disposal: look at the figure of Andromeda that is shown in the painting and you will see the girl’s features faithfully reproduced. The painting (eikôn) was brought

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out and put beside Charicleia .... Everyone present was amazed at the perfect resemblance (homoiôtês). (10,14,7) We recognize key terms in the conception of the image such as resemblance, imitation, faux-semblant, and the mimetic relations between appearance and reality, illusion and truth, and copy and model. From this latter perspective, the power of the image resides in its verisimilitude, its life-likeness, its deceptive, sometimes uncanny, imitation of the real. This mimetic realism in a work of art, in fact, is the quality that, according to Greek aesthetics, as we have discussed more fully above, most elicits a sense of wonder from the viewer, but in Heliodorus’ case, the terms are reversed. Amazement now consists in the recognition that the painting is the true model (archetypon) and the girl is merely the copy. Art seems to triumph over biology in this fantastic tale that accounts for the mismatch between child and parent and challenges our notions of the relations between nature and artifice in what has been called ‘one of most striking and bizarre features in an eccentric text.’46 There are, however, three further elements to consider. The first is the notion of maternal influence, the second, the status of a work of art and the spectator in this post-classical period, and the third is the myth of Andromeda itself in both text and image and the conventions of representation. Maternal Impression Heliodorus did not wholly invent the bizarre phenomenon of what has subsequently been called the ‘Andromeda Effect’ after this very text. Theories of maternal influence were not unknown in antiquity; they are cited by a number of ancient authorities from the archaic period on, with an even longer afterlife in both folk and medical beliefs.47 While Pliny proposes a general embryological theory of sense impressions of sights and sounds (in addition to memory and mere thought) to account for accidental likenesses,48 another source comes closest to Persinna’s experience. The 5th-century philosopher, Empedocles, is credited (probably apocryphally) with the claim that ‘children acquire their form from the woman’s imagination (phantasia) at the moment of conception, and it often happens,’ he continues, ‘that when women are seized by a passion for images or for statues, they give birth to chil————— 46 47

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Whitmarsh 1994, and see further Whitmarsh 1998, 110-111. See Reeve 1989, Curletto 1999, Doniger and Spinner 1998, Bettini 1999, 198-200, and Dilke 1980. Pliny, NH 7,52 and see Beagon 2005, 212-214 for further useful commentary.

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dren to resemble those images or statues.’49 Much more could be said about the role of paternal insecurity in the long-lived credence given to such ideas that ascribe the major responsibility for family resemblance (or rather, the lack thereof) to the mother, but the other, more rational explanation for the failure of the child to resemble its parents, is the one that Persinna feared the most: namely, adultery with another man (and the ensuing illegitimacy of her offspring).50 The Astonished Gaze of the Spectator: The Beauty of the Portrait We have already examined specimens of ekphrastic description in Achilles Tatius in the context of art and nature, the real and the ideal, with ideas, we proposed, that reflected the culture of viewing of his time. Heliodorus, however, has gone considerably further in the bold and unprecedented step of making an ‘artwork the origin of the narrative itself within the economy of the text.’51 Strictly speaking, however, the narrator does not actually describe the painting, but merely names its mythological subject as ‘Perseus liberating Andromeda from her chains.’ He can be confident that the image represents a familiar scene that readers would easily recognize, both from viewing actual works of art and from other literary descriptions. We can point, in fact, to three examples of such verbal ekphrases (dating from the second and third centuries C.E.). One is in the romance of Achilles Tatius, referred to above (3,7); a second in the sophist Lucian’s discourse on the paintings in a beautiful hall (de domo, 22), and the third appears as one of the paintings described in Philostratus’ Imagines, the collection of independent ekphrases of works that are purportedly viewed in an art gallery (1,29,2-4). Each in its own way is a brilliant specimen of the sophist’s rhetorical skill in bringing ————— 49

50

51

Empedocles, DK 31A81 (summarized by Aetius 5,12,2). Billault 1981, 67-68, notes the familiarity of anecdotes associating Ethiopians with black-white reversals in the matter of conception and birth to claim that the role Heliodorus attributes to the painting is ‘the crystallization of heterogeneous legendary elements.’ The Midrash in the Talmudic context also reports two cases of Ethiopians and the birth of a white child and under the same circumstances as Heliodorus: Midrash Rabbah, Numbers 9,34; Midrash Rabbah, Genesis 73,10. See further Stol 2000, 154. On the other hand, men might take advantage of the same theory, as the medical writer, Soranus and other authors relate. Unattractive husbands could have their wives gaze at beautiful statues or paintings in order to give birth to beautiful children. See, especially, Dion. Hal. de imit. 6,1 U-R., and Whitmarsh in this volume, 275-291. The reverse is, of course, also true: an ugly or bizarre sight at conception yields ugly or bizarre offspring. For references, see Dilke 1980, 165 n.7. Whitmarsh 1999, 110.

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the scene to life before the reader’s eye; together, they attest to the popularity of this highly dramatic story as a subject for art, whose iconography may be taken as ‘a cue to a widely shared visual repertoire.’52 In fact, ‘the rescue of Andromeda ... was among the most frequently depicted myths in antiquity.’53 Although known from vase paintings, dating as early as the late archaic period, but generally clustering around Attic red-figure and South Italian pottery of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.E., the majority of these representations are found in around two dozen Roman and Campanian wall paintings that date from the closing years of the first century B.C.E. to 79 C.E. (Figs. 4 and 5). Add to these mosaics, reliefs, murals, coins, gems, and other artifacts that continue to be produced throughout the imperial period.54 Barbarians too evidently were fond of representing the maiden, if we can believe Philostratus’ account of Apollonius of Tyana’s visit to the palace of the Persian court in Babylon, where he claimed to have seen figures from Greek myth, including more than one image of Andromeda, embroidered on the gold and silver tapestries that adorn the bedchambers, men’s quarters and colonnades.55 While artistic representations may depict different moments in the tale and vary in choice of pose and style, one persistent element in the iconographical tradition is the portrayal of Andromeda with a pale complexion. This fact testifies, on the one hand, to a certain confusion about the location of the story. Some versions situate her in Joppa (present day Jaffa), with a Phoenician pedigree, and others, like Heliodorus, insist on her Ethiopian provenance, with the city of Meroe as the center. Without entering into the complexities of ancient ideas about the Ethiopians as collated from numerous sources, from Homer on, which diverge considerably, especially with regard to their location and genetic origins,56 one might simply explain a ————— 52 53 54

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Whitmarsh 2002, 116; Amedick 2002. Harlan 1965, 113. Harlan 1965, 113-120; Schauenburg 1960, Philipps 1986, LIMC s.v. Andromeda, vol. 1, 1981, 774-790. For a brilliant reading of several examples of these different representations, see Elsner 2007, 3-11. The scene remains a favorite theme in later Western art. See, for examples, the works of Titian, Rubens, Ingres, Delacroix, Redon, Doré, Chassériau, Moreau, Burne-Jones, Dali, and Di Chirico, to name only a few of the best known artists. Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana, 1,25. The other figures named from Greek mythology are Amymone and Orpheus. These decorations may well be fictional, but the emphasis on the Hellenizing tendencies of the court is not. I concur with the opinion that the same Philostratus was also the author of the Imagines, mentioned above. See, for example, Lesky 1959, Lonis 1981 and 1992, and Romm 1992, 45-49. For a broad survey of Ethiopians in the Greek and Roman experience, see Snowden 1970.

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fair-skinned Andromeda as a product of Greek pictorial conventions by which ‘whiteness’ is a sign of ‘heroic quality and a prestigious position in the mythological tradition.’57 By Philostratus’ time (3rd century C.E.), however, this state of affairs is cause for comment. In the description of the painting mentioned above, he acknowledges the anomaly and expressly says: ‘The maiden is charming in that she is fair of skin though in Ethiopia [italics mine], and charming is the very beauty of her form.’ He even goes so far as to add that ‘she would outshine a Lydian girl in delicacy, an Attic girl in dignity, a Spartan one in vigor.’ The standards of beauty and moral virtue against which Andromeda is measured are Greek, but even so, she exceeds them all. Philostratus intensifies the effect of the contrast by indicating the presence of more typical Ethiopians, ‘with their strange coloring ... most of whom look alike’ (Phil. Imag. 1,29,25).58 Charicleia was the product of Persinna’s gaze at a painting of fairskinned Andromeda at the moment of conception. In light of this familiar iconography, however, in both word and image, it is tempting to consider that actual paintings (or their descriptions) were in fact the initial inspiration behind Heliodorus’ conception of his own work, whose plot takes off, as it were, from Philostratus’ observation, ‘although in Ethiopia,’ to devise a narrative intrigue of riddling identity. From this perspective, the image of a fair-skinned Andromeda is indeed rightfully the original, and accordingly, Charicleia can only be the copy. This turnabout may beg the question, but for experienced readers (and viewers), it would be yet another cunning entry into the more general problem of contested genealogy. Even more, it highlights the uncanny reversal of art imitating nature to the extent that its effects cross over into the domain of reality at its foundations. Could one go as far as Jonas Palm in this regard when he claims ‘that in this period it became customary to see reality with the eyes of the graphic artist and even to regard reality as an artwork to be portrayed through the painter’s art’ ? 59 Probably not. At any rate, to complicate matters further, Charicleia is white-skinned like the portrait, but, as we know, she also has a black birth mark on her body, ‘like a ring of ebony staining the ivory of the arm.’ This the single proof remaining, one that will assure the legitimate line of succession and, even more, verify the truth of the girl’s heritage, even if the simile evokes yet another artistic medium, namely, sculpture (10,15,2). ————— 57 58 59

Bérard 2000, 405. On the later traditions of depicting a black Andromeda, see also McGrath 1992. Palm 1965, 210 (quoted by Bartsch 1989, 167).

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At the same time, let us recall, that the only detail given to us about the figure of Andromeda is her total nudity. While the later tradition, from the Renaissance on, delights in displaying a naked Andromeda chained to the rock in a variety of postures, Greek and Roman specimens generally resort to the conventions of partial exposure amidst various types of draped fabric. Michael Anderson draws attention to this unusual feature (and the lack of ekphrastic detail) to argue that in this way the work preserves the chastity (even prudery) of Persinna (and the author generally), by avoiding any potentially lewd description.60 Beauty, of course, is ineffable, even godlike in its almost epiphanic appearance; it may be asserted in words, but difficult, if not impossible, to describe. Throughout the text, Heliodorus generally invokes the typical device of the novelistic genre in comparing the girl to a goddess on the one hand, or to a beautiful statue, on the other hand (or both), as a way of conjuring up an image of a beauty that passes description.61 Hence, the text resorts to detailed descriptions of Charicleia’s beautiful accoutrements, including her costume at both the beginning and the end that makes her a stand-in for the goddess Artemis (and her statue), exalted in her dignity and resplendent in her accessories (1,3; 1,7; 3,4; 10,9). Although it is never anywhere stated, if Charicleia is beautiful, then so must have been the portrait of Andromeda, but this fact is not what causes the astonishment of the spectators, but rather the power of the figure in the painting to create another in its own image. Much more could be said about the myth of Andromeda, its relation to Charicleia’s story itself, and the problematics of cultural identification (physis and nomos, nature and nurture), even beyond the current discussion, but to conclude: I have argued that the series of garden ekphrases in Achilles Tatius undermines any notion of a static contest between art and nature; instead the movement from one landscape proceeds to an elaborate intermingling of the two categories and ends by disturbing our sensible fields of reference. As for the painting of Andromeda in Heliodorus, in the bizarre translation of the ‘reality’ of art into the ‘reality’ of nature in the portrait as the model for the person, the novel experiments to the furthest degree with our habitual patterns of perception to confuse the boundaries between the real and the illusionist, between finally, art and nature itself.62 ————— 60 61 62

Anderson 1997, 318-320. For Callirhoe in Chariton, see Zeitlin 2003, 78-82. My heartfelt thanks to Jaś Elsner and Tim Whitmarsh for their encouragement and generous critique, and to Tim in particular for his cogent contributions to our understanding of Heliodorus.

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Fig. 1: Garden scene with birds and basin: House of Marine Venus, I c. C. E.

Fig. 2: Peacock on garden fence: House of the Golden Bracelet, Pompeii, 2d style; Mus. Arch. Naz. Napoli.

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Fig 3. Peacock and theatrical mask with architectural columns.Villa of Poppaea at Oplontis, 2d style.

Fig. 4. Perseus & Andromeda: House of Dioscuri, Pompeii, I c. C. E., Mus. Arch. Naz. di Napoli.

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Fig 5. Perseus & Andromeda, House of the Priest Amandus, I c. C. E., Mus. Arch. Naz. di Napoli.

Bibliography Amedick, R. 2002. ‘Die Schöne, das Seeungeheuer und der Held : Antike Bildbeschreibungen und die Ikonographie mythologischer Bilder’, AW 33.5, 527-538. Anderson, M. 1997. ‘The Sôphrosunê of Persinna and the Romantic Strategy of Heliodorus’ Aethiopica’, CPh 92, 302-337. Bartsch, S. 1989. Decoding the Ancient Novel: the Reader and the Role of Description in Heliodorus and Achilles Tatius, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

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Beagon, M. 2005. The Elder Pliny on the Human Animal: Natural History, Book 7, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bérard, C. 2000. ‘The Image of the Other and the Foreign Hero’, in: B. Cohen (ed.), Not the Classical Ideal: Athens and the Construction of the Other in Greek Art, Leiden: Brill, 390-412. Bergmann, B. 1991. ‘Painted Perspectives of a Villa Visit: Landscape as Status and Metaphor’ in: E. Gazda (ed.), Roman Art in the Private Sphere: New Perspectives on the Architecture and Decor of the Domus, Villa, and Insula, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 49-70. — 1995. ‘Visualizing Pliny’s Villas’, Journal of Roman Archaeology 8, 406-420. — 2002. ‘Art and nature in the villa at Oplontis’, in: T. McGinn (ed.), Pompeian Brothels, Pompeii’s Ancient History, Mirrors and Mysteries, Art and Nature at Oplontis, & the Herculaneum ‘Basilica’, JRA Supplementary Series 47, Portsmouth, RI, 87-120. Bettini, M. 1999. The Portrait of the Lover, trans. L. Gibbs. Berkeley: University of California Press. Billault, A. 1981. ‘Le mythe de Persée et les Éthiopiques d’Héliodore: légendes, représentations et fiction littéraire’, REG 94, 63-75. Bompaire, J. 1958. Lucien Écrivain: Imitation et Création, Paris: de Boccard. Bowie, E.L. 2004. ‘The Geography of the Second Sophistic: Cultural Variations’, in: B. Borg (ed.), Paideia: The World of the Second Sophistic, Berlin, New York: De Gruyter, 65-83. Bryson, N. 1994. ‘Philostratus and the Imaginary Museum’, in: S. Goldhill, R. Osborne (eds.), Art and Text in Ancient Greek Culture, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 255283. Carruesco, J. 2008. ‘Aspectes iconogràfics de la villa: jardins i paisatges’, in: J.A. Remolà (ed.), El territori de Tàrraco: villes romanes del Camp de Tarragona, Tarragona: MNAT: 23-48. — forthcoming. ‘Garden Painting, Pliny’s Villae and the Ancient Novel: The Functions of the Garden as a Rhetorical and Symbolic Resource’, Presented at ICAN IV 2008. Cave, T. 1988. Recognitions: a Study in Poetics, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cheney, D. 1999. The Garden Ekphrasis: Visual Aspects of the Ancient Novel, MA thesis, Calgary, Alberta. Conan, M. 1984. ‘Nature into Art: Gardens and Landscapes in the Everyday Life of Ancient Rome’, Journal of Garden History 6, 348-356. Curletto, S. 2000. ‘L’immaginazione e il concepimento: fortuna di una teoria embriogenetica e di un mito letterario’, Maia 52, 533-564. de Temmermann, K. 2009. ‘A Flowery Meadow and a Hidden Metalepsis in Achilles Tatius’, CQ 59, 667-670. Dilke, O.A.W. 1980. ‘Heliodorus and the Colour Problem’, PP 193, 264-271. Doniger, W., Spinner, G. 1998. ‘Misconceptions: Female Imaginations and Male Fantasies in Parental Imprinting’, Daedalus 127, 97-129. Elsner J. 1991. ‘Visual Mimesis and the Myth of the Real: Ovid’s Pygmalion as Viewer’, Ramus 20, 154-168. — 1995. Art and the Roman Viewer: The Transformation of Art from the Pagan World to Christianity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. — 2002. ‘Introduction: the Genres of Ekphrasis’, Ramus 31, 1-15 = The Verbal and the Visual: Cultures of Ekphrasis in Antiquity. — 2007. Roman Eyes: Visuality and Subjectivity in Art and Text, Princeton (N.J.): Princeton University Press.

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Galand-Hallyn. P. 1994. Le reflet des fleurs: Description et métalanguage poétique d'Homère à la Renaissance, Geneva: Droz. Goldhill, S. 2007. ‘What is Ekphrasis For?’, CPh 102, 1-19. Grimal, P. 19843. Les jardins romains, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Gross, K. 1992. The Dream of the Moving Statue, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Hardie, P. 2002. Ovid’s Poetics of Illusion, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Harlan [Keuls], E. 1965. The Description of Paintings as a Literary Device and its Application in Achilles Tatius, Unpub. Diss. Columbia University. Heath, J. 2006. ‘Ezekiel Tragicus and Hellenistic Visuality: the Phoenix at Elim’, Journal of Theological Studies NS 57, 23-41. Kondoleon, C. 1994. Domestic and Divine: Roman Mosaics in the House of Dionysos, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press Kuttner, A. 1999. ‘Looking Outside Inside: Ancient Roman Garden Rooms’, Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes [formerly Journal of Garden History] 1 [special issue, J. Dixon Hunt (ed.), The Immediate Garden and the Larger Landscape], 735. Lesky, A. 1959. ‘Aithiopika’, Hermes 87, 27-38. LIMC = 1981–. Lexicon iconographicum mythologiae classicae, Zurich: Artemis Verlag. Lonis, R. 1981. ‘Les trois approches de l’éthiopien par l’opinion gréco-romain’, Ktèma 6, 6987. — 1992. ‘Les Éthiopiens sous le regard d’Héliodore’, in: F.M. Baslez, P. Hoffmann, M. Trédé (eds.), Le monde du roman grec, Paris: Presses de ENS, 233-241. Lowe, N.J. 2000. The Classical Plot and the Invention of Western Narrative, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McGrath, E. 1992. ‘The Black Andromeda’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 55, 1-18. MacDougall, E.B., Jashemski, W.F. (eds.), 1981. Ancient Roman Gardens, Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Trustees for Harvard University. MacDougall, E.B. (ed.), 1987. Ancient Roman Villa Gardens (Colloquium on the History of Landscape Architecture, 10), Washington: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection. Maeder, D. 1991.‘Au seuil des romans grecs: Effets de réel et effets de création,’ GCN 4, 133. Martin, R.P. 2002. ‘A Good Place to Talk: Discourse and Topos in Achilles Tatius and Philostratus’, in: M. Paschalis, S. Frangoulidis (eds.), Space in the Ancient Novel, Ancient Narrative Supplementum 1, Groningen: Barkhuis & Groningen University Library, 143160. Martínez, M. 2008. ‘Descripciones de jardines y paisajes en la literatura griega antigua’, Cuadernos de filología clásica. Estudios griegos e indoeuropeos 18, 279-318. Mazzoleni, D. 2004. Domus: Wall Painting in the Roman House, transl. A.L. Jenkins, Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum. Mignogna, E. 1995. ‘Roman und “Paradoxon”: die Metamorphosen der Metapher in Achilleus Tatios’ Leukippe und Kleitophon’, GCN 6, 21-37. Morales, H. 2004. Vision and Narrative in Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe and Clitophon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Morgan, J.R. 1989. ‘A Sense of the Ending: the Conclusion of Heliodoros’ Aithiopika’, TAPhA 119, 299-320.

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Myers, K.S. 2005. ‘Docta Otia: Garden Ownership and Configurations of Leisure in Statius and Pliny the Younger,’ Arethusa 38, 103-129. — “Representations of Gardens in Roman Literature”, forthcoming in Gardens of the Roman Empire, Cambridge. Newby, Z. 2002. ‘Testing the Boundaries of Ekphrasis: Lucian On the Hall’, Ramus 31, 126135. — 2009. ‘Absorption and Erudition in Philostratus’ Imagines’, in: E. Bowie, J. Elsner (eds.), Philostratus, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 322-342. Palm, J. 1965. ‘Bemerkungen zur Ekphrase in der griechischen Literatur’, Kunglia Humanistiska Vetenskapssamfundet i Uppsala 1, 108-211. Phillips, K. 1986. ‘Perseus and Andromeda’, AJA 72, 1-23. Reeve, M.D. 1989. ‘Conception’, PCPS n.s. 35, 81-112. Reeves, B. 2007. ‘The Role of the “Ekphrasis” in Plot Development: the Painting of Europa and the Bull in Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe and Clitophon’, Mnemosyne 60, 87-101. Romm, J. 1992. The Edges of the Earth in Ancient Thought: Geography, Exploration, and Fiction, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Rosati, G. 1983. Narciso e Pigmalione: illusione e spettacolo nelle Metamorfosi di Ovidio, Florence: Sansoni. Schauenburg, K. 1960. Perseus in der Kunst des Altertums, Bonn: R. Habelt. Snowden, F. 1970. Blacks in Antiquity: Ethiopians in the Greco-Roman Experience, Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Solodow J. 1988. The World of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Squire, M. 2009. Image and Text in Graeco-Roman Antiquity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. — 2010. ‘Making Myron’s Cow Moo? Ecphrastic Epigram and the Poetics of Simulation’, AJP 131, 589-634. Stol, M. 2000. Birth in Babylonia and the Bible: Its Mediterranean Setting, Groningen: Styx. Webb, R. 2009. Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion in Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Practice, Surrey: Ashgate. Whitmarsh, T. 1994. Art and Narrative in Heliodorus’ Aethiopica: Perception, Deception, Desire, M. Phil. dissertation, Cambridge. — 1998. ‘The Birth of a Prodigy: Heliodorus and the Genealogy of Hellenism’, in: R. Hunter (ed.), Studies in Heliodorus, Cambridge: Cambridge Philological Society, Suppl. vol. 21, 92-124. — 1999. ‘Writes of Passage: Cultural Initiation in Heliodorus’ Ethiopica’, in: R. Miles (ed.), Constructing Identities in Late Antiquity, London: Routledge, 16-40. — 2002. ‘Written on the body: Ekphrasis, Perception and Deception in Heliodorus’ Aethiopica’, Ramus 31: 111-125. — 2010. ‘Domestic Poetics: Hippias’ House in Achilles Tatius’, ClAnt 29, 327-348. Zeitlin, F.I. 2003. ‘Living Bodies and Sculpted Portraits in Chariton’s Theater of Romance’, in: S. Panayotakis, M. Zimmerman, W. Keulen (eds.), The Ancient Novel and Beyond, Mnemosyne Supplementa 241, Leiden: Brill, 71-84.

The Loves of the Gods: Literature as Construction of a Space of Pleasure G IANPIERO R OSATI Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa

Mimetic Loves A famous scene of Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe and Clitophon offers an exemplary illustration of the mimetic mechanism that leads a mortal in love to find the legitimization of his desire in the loves of the gods (1,5,6): He sang Apollo’s reproach to Daphne for resisting his advances, and of how he pursued her, and was on the point of seizing her when the girl metamorphosed into a shrub, and of how Apollo wreathed himself with the shrub’s leaves. This song inflamed my soul all the more, for erotic stories fuel the appetite. Even if you school yourself into self-control, an example incites you to imitate it, especially when that example is a divine one; in which case, any shame that you feel at your moral errors becomes an outspoken affront to the station of a higher being. This was how I counselled myself: ‘You see, Apollo too desires, and he too desires a maiden. He feels no shame at his lust, but hunts the maiden; whereas you, you are hesitant and embarrassed, and you practise an untimely self-control. Do you think yourself superior to a god?’ (transl. Whitmarsh) Not only do the erotic experiences of a god cancel the sense of guilt of the mortal, who projects his own situation on that of the myth, but they also fuel his desire, by means of a reference to a superior model (the typical ‘mediation mechanism’ à la Girard),1 and act as an incentive to its satisfaction.2 ————— 1 2

Cf. especially Girard 1965. Cf. Morales 2004, 80-82. The Construction of the Real and the Ideal in the Ancient Novel, 89–103

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The legitimization of desire by a mythical model had already been perfectly illustrated in a scene of Terence’s Eunuchus (583-591), where the young Chaerea feels that he is authorized by the sight of a picture representing Jupiter, the seducer of Danaë, to seduce in turn his beloved Pamphila: dum adparatur, virgo in conclavi sedet suspectans tabulam quandam pictam: ibi inerat pictura haec, Iovem quo pacto Danaae misisse aiunt quondam in gremium imbrem aureum. egomet quoque id spectare coepi, et quia consimilem luserat iam olim ille ludum, inpendio magis animu’ gaudebat mihi, deum sese in hominem convortisse atque in alienas tegulas venisse clanculum per inpluvium fucum factum mulieri. at quem deum! ‘qui templa caeli summa sonitu concutit.’ ego homuncio hoc non facerem? ego illud vero ita feci – ac lubens. ‘While things were being got ready, the girl sat in the room, looking up at a painting; it depicted the story of how Jupiter sent a shower of gold into Danaë’s bosom. I began to look at it myself, and the fact that he played a similar game long ago made me all the more excited: a god had turned himself into human shape, made his way by stealth on to another man’s roof, and come through the skylight to play a trick on a woman. And what a god! The one who shakes the lofty vaults of heaven with his thunder! Was I, a mere mortal, not to do the same? I did just that – and gladly.’ (transl. Barsby) Like the narrator in Achilles Tatius, Chaerea, too, reaches an awareness of his desire ‘on the basis of another’, divine model. But to remain in the field of the novel, there is another famous scene that illustrates this mechanism of reference to the paradigm of divine loves by means of a figurative model, that of Petronius, in which Encolpius tells of his entry into a picture gallery (83,1-4): in pinacothecam perveni vario genere tabularum mirabilem […] hinc aquila ferebat caelo sublimis Idaeum, illinc candidus Hylas repellebat improbam Naida. damnabat Apollo noxias manus lyramque resolutam modo nato flore honorabat. inter quos [etiam] pictorum amantium vultus tamquam in solitudine exclamavi: ‘ergo amor etiam deos tangit. Iuppiter in caelo suo non invenit quod eligeret, et peccaturus in terris nemini tamen iniuriam fecit. Hylan Nympha praedata imperasset amori sui, si venturum ad interdictum Herculem credidisset. Apollo pueri umbram

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revocavit in florem, et omnes fabulae quoque habuerunt sine aemulo complexus. at ego in societatem recepi hospitem Lycurgo crudeliorem.’ ‘I walked into an art gallery, which had an astonishing range of pictures […] There was one picture in which an eagle aloft was bearing away the lad from Mt. Ida; in another, the fair-skinned Hylas was trying to fend off a persistent Naiad; a third depicted Apollo cursing his guilty hands and adorning his unstrung lyre with a newly sprung blossom. As I stood surrounded by these portrayals of lovers’ expressions, in a spirit of desolation I cried out: ‘So even the gods are pricked by love. Jupiter found no object for his affection in heaven and though he visited earth to sin, he did violence to no one. The Nymph who took Hylas as her prize would have repressed her feelings had she believed that Hercules would appear to forbid the deed. Apollo summoned back the departed shade of his boy to turn him into a flower. All these stories, and not just the pictures, have described embraces enjoyed without a rival; but the person I hospitably befriended has turned out to be more cruel than Lycurgus.’ (transl. Walsh) Here, too, the mortal in love in his monologue creates a parallel between his own condition and mythical divine loves. But what are loves of the gods for a character in an ancient novel, are they reality or fiction? In other words, do they authorize human loves on the basis of their effective reality, as ‘historical’ precedents (at least from the point of view of the characters or the narrator), or are they to be considered as mythical paradigms, or abstract symbols of fictitious events? It is not easy to give a definite answer to this question, both because the distinction between reality and fiction is itself a cultural product, which varies in time and in space, and because novels often declare their awareness of being fiction themselves. Achilles Tatius’ novel is an example of this, in which the insidious plot of various forms of irony and complicity between the different levels of narration and reading makes the distinction between reality and fiction even more complicated; and this is true above all in the case of Longus, who shows an extreme awareness of the intertwining of these two levels. However, we find some help in other texts of ancient love literature: for example, in a character in Ovid’s Heroides, a heroine who, in a letter to her beloved, invokes the clemency of Neptune by appealing to the legendary loves of the god:

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at tibi flammarum memori, Neptune, tuarum nullus erat ventis inpediendus amor, si neque Amymone nec, laudatissima forma, criminis est Tyro fabula vana tui, lucidaque Alcyone Calyceque Hecataeone nata, et nondum nexis angue Medusa comis, flavaque Laudice caeloque recepta Celaeno, et quarum memini nomina lecta mihi. has certe pluresque canunt, Neptune, poetae molle latus lateri conposuisse tuo. ‘Yet, Neptune, oughtst let no love be hindered by the winds – if neither Amymone, nor Tyro much be praised for beauty, are stories idly charged to thee, nor shining Alcyone, and Calyce, child of Hecataeon, nor Medusa when her locks were not yet twined with snakes, nor golden-haired Laodice or Celaeno taken to the skies, nor those whose names I mind me of having read. These, surely, Neptune, and many more, the poets say in their songs have mingled their soft embraces with thine own.’ (transl. Showerman) Here, in her letter to Leander (Ep. 19,129-138), Hero defines the loves of Neptune as a fabula, and traces her knowledge of them to her own reading of poetry. Fabula here undoubtedly has the meaning of an invention, a mythological-literary fantasy, as opposed to the concrete reality of life;3 it is the same opposition that Ovid creates in an elegy from Tomi between the literary trials of Ulysses and his own real sufferings in exile (Tr. 1,5,79-80 illius pars maxima ficta laborum: / ponitur in nostris fabula nulla malis [‘those foils of his were mostly fiction; my troubles are no legendary tales’, transl. Melville]). As is often the case elsewhere (e.g. in the passage from Petronius quoted above), fabula designates the inventions of myth, such as the loves of Jupiter ([Verg.] Lydia 25 f. ac, si / fabula non vana est, tauro Iove digna vel auro [‘and if the story isn’t false, my girl alone […] is worthy Jupiter as bull or gold’, transl. Mooney]) or Apollo ([Tib.] 3,4,68 non est in vanum fabula ficta iocum [‘it is no story made for idle merriment’, transl. Postgate]); these are the vanissimae fabulae of pagan mythology later deplored by Fathers of the Church like Augustine (C. D. 7,18). Augustine himself had a clear awareness of the contagious effect of the above-mentioned scene of Terence (Conf. 1,16,26 nisi Terentius induceret nequam adulescentem proponentem ————— 3

On this concept cf. Lazzarini 1984.

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sibi Iovem ad exemplum stupri, dum spectat tabulam quandam pictam in pariete [‘had not Terence withal brought a lewd young man upon the stage, propounding Jupiter to himself for an example of his adultery, whilst he beholds a certain picture on the wall’, transl. Watts]), and together with other Church Fathers condemned this perverse use of mythology, and the aberrant concept of the divinity that it presupposes; but the condemnation of the immoral use of mythical fabulae, and the gods that are their protagonists, which goes back at least to Xenophanes (frg. 15 D-K), had already been widespread among pagan writers, such as Cicero (N. D. 1,16,42) and Seneca. The stories of divine loves handed down by literature or by painting thus exert a contagious power over those who read or view them: they foster passion, either potentially or in practice, in the reading/viewing subject, and if their protagonist is a god, they also enact an ethical and cultural paradigm of behaviour. In other words, the reading or viewing subject creates a specular relationship with the situation of the god with whom he/she identifies, finding in him a model and at the same time a conniving accomplice (he/she practises ‘a kind of lived intertextuality’, to use the brilliant expression of J. Morgan).4 Fascinated, like Don Quixote and Emma Bovary, by his/her literary models, the subject in love transforms a mere biographical episode into a gratifying cultural experience, and finds a ‘high’ paradigm that ennobles his/her condition, and, more important, takes away his/her responsibility on the moral level (cf. e.g. Prop. 2,30,31-32 quod si nemo exstat qui vicerit Alitis arma, / communis culpae cur reus unus agor? [‘and if none has arisen to prevail over the weapons of the winged god, why am I alone accused of a universal fault?’], transl. Goold), authorizing him/her to live out experiences shared by the gods, and even by the greatest of them, Jupiter. But we may obtain further useful indications from Hero’s words in Ovid: firstly, Hero is a novelistic character (in this, among the heroines of Ovid’s work she is similar only to Cydippe), a woman who does not belong to the world of myth, but to a ‘middle-class’ reality and kind of life, which includes the habit of reading poetic texts.5 And it is striking that it is a woman who proves to be a keen reader of divine love stories, and remembers them in detail, as if this subject helped to define her cultural and emotional horizon (as a result, the woman does not hesitate to create a link between literature and real life, as soon as the opportunity arises). In other words, stories about

————— 4 5

Cf. Morgan 2007, 113, who builds on Conte 1996. Cf. Rosati 1996, 21.

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the gods’ loves hold a particular attraction for women, both (as we shall see) in the world of myth, and in the de-mythicized world of the novel.6

The mise en abyme of Desire The myths of divine loves, made familiar by literature and painting, were well known to every learned person, as recalled already by Euripides (Hipp. 451-456 ‘Whoso have scrolls writ in the ancient days, and wander still themselves by paths of song, they know how Zeus of yore desired the embrace of Semele; they know how radiant Dawn up to the Gods snatched Cephalus of yore, and all for love’; transl. Way; 1005-1006 ‘I do not know this practice except what I have heard about and seen in pictures’); on the literary level, their fortunes must have been linked with works of a catalogic nature, such as the Erotes, or Beautiful Boys, of the Alexandrine poet Phanocles, which was a popular genre in the Hellenistic age, in the wake of the great model of the (pseudo)Hesiodean Catalogue.7 The ideal place to include the theme of divine loves, the ekphrasis, or the story, in turn requires a suitable scenario; and in fact there is a situation-type linked with the introduction of this theme. A well-known scene in Virgil’s Georgics (4.335-349) represents a group of water nymphs as they weave, sitting on their vitreis ... sedilibus (350), and listening to stories of divine loves told by one of them: ... eam circum Milesia vellera Nymphae carpebant hyali saturo fucata colore, Drymoque Xanthoque Ligeaque Phyllodoceque, caesariem effusae nitidam per candida colla, Cydippe et flava Lycorias, altera virgo, altera tum primos Lucinae experta labores, Clioque et Beroe soror, Oceanitides ambae, ambae auro, pictis incinctae pellibus ambae, atque Ephyre atque Opis et Asia Deiopea et tandem positis velox Arethusa sagittis. inter quas curam Clymene narrabat inanem Volcani, Martisque dolos et dulcia furta, aque Chao densos divum numerabat amores. ————— 6

7

On the textualization of reading (and writing) in ancient novel, cf. now PaschalisPanayotakis-Schmeling 2009. Cf. Hunter 2005.

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carmine quo captae dum fusis mollia pensa devolvunt… ‘About her the Nymphs were spinning fleeces of Miletus, dyed with rich glassy hue – Drymo and Xantho, Ligea and Phyllodoce, their shining tresses floating over snowy necks; Cydippe and golden-haired Lycorias a maiden one, the other having but felt the first birth-throes; Clio and Beroe her sister, daughters of Ocean both, both arrayed in gold and both in dappled hides; Ephyre and Opis, and Asian Deiopea, and fleet Arethusa, her arrows laid aside at last. Among these Clymene was telling of Vulcan’s baffled care, of the wiles and stolen joys of Mars, and from Chaos on was rehearsing the countless loves of the gods. And while, charmed by the strain, they unrolled the soft coils from their spindles…’ (transl. Fairclough) In this seductive natural scenario, exalted by the rich clothing and the exotic colours, the nymphs indulge in the pleasure of listening (348) to the divine loves. A similar background surrounds the Muses as they narrate the loves of Jupiter in an elegy by Propertius (2,30,27-32): illic aspicies scopulis haerere Sorores et canere antiqui dulcia furta Iovis, ut Semelast combustus, ut est deperditus Io, denique ut ad Troiae tecta volarit avis. quod si nemo exstat qui vicerit Alitis arma, communis culpae cur reus unus agor? ‘There you will see (the poet is adressing Cynthia) the Sisters sitting upon the rocks and singing of the sweet loves of Jove in legend, how he was inflamed by Semele and undone by Io and finally became a bird and flew to the homes of Troy. And if none has arisen to prevail over the weapons of the winged god, why am I alone accused of a universal fault?’ Here, too, a rocky panorama is the background to a female assembly, dedicated to recounting the ancient loves of Jupiter, the Don Juan of Olympus. The cavern of the nymphs which is a background to the narration acts as a locus amoenus which exalts, here as elsewhere, the erotic character of the stories that are narrated there; indeed, it is almost their external equivalent in the panorama. The link between locus amoenus and the discourse of love,

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which, as is known, goes back to the opening scene of Plato’s Phaedrus (229b), where the fascination of the place is expressly associated with a story of divine love (that of Boreas and Orithyia, which is said to have taken place there), is made explicit for example by Achilles Tatius (‘Well, it is time to hear your story,’ I said. ‘A setting such as this is delightful, and just right for erotic fiction’, 1,2,3), and finds its most outstanding expression in Longus, a novel that the narrator presents as the narrative translation of a painting of an erotic nature, seen in a cavern of the nymphs (on this subject, I refer to a well known, influential article by Froma Zeitlin, who insists on the interaction between the aesthetic and the erotic dimensions).8 In Longus, then, we find the elucidation of the close relationship between an ekphrasis of an erotic character (even if it does not regard divine loves), the physical place that is its background, and the story that is its verbal form. The famous final sentence of the proem (pánta erotiká, proem. 2) seems to supply the key to this use of the ekphrasis as a mise en abyme and a symbol of the object of desire (which is no surprise in a text like that of Longus, which displays the mechanisms of its functioning in such a self-conscious manner). It is well-known that in the novel, literature acts as a cultural superstructure of the characters (who are more or less ‘mythomaniacs’), that is to say, it is the reference framework of the erotic events that they experience. Seeing erotic art, or reading erotic literature, produces longing: among the strategies for the construction of desire, literature, with its myths, acts as food and an incentive for pleasure, it mobilizes the activity of fantasy, creating in the subject who undergoes this experience an emotional, but also a cultural involvement (and an impulse to imitate those models). Here, however, what I want to point out is the attitude of characters towards the specific theme of divine loves; and thus I return to the ‘miniaturized’ form usually associated with this artistic-literary subject. The stories of gods’ loves, inserted into other love stories, in the form of an ekphrasis, or a story within the story, first of all display an obvious reflexive function, setting up a parallel between the framework and the theme inserted, and they may perform various narrative functions (of anticipation, or contrast, or of other kinds). In every case, as a mise en abyme that reflects the story-framework, they mirror the mediated nature of desire, they are the representation of the models, the gods, who epitomize it paradigmatically. Through those love stories, the novel creates a free space inside itself, in which the characters can immerse themselves: in other words, the mythoi of the divine loves create a space of pleasure, to be made the object of one’s own imagination, to dream about, ————— 8

Zeitlin 1990.

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also in order to find food and a stimulus for one’s own desire (as in Longus, it is above all the need to imitate the object of the erotic ekphrasis that is at work). The mythical-literary universe of divine loves is the ideal place for the rêveries of lovers, it is their ‘window’ on the world of pleasure, just as the window is the symbol of the fantasies of Emma Bovary.9 What is dramatized in these texts is looking as interpreting, the mirroring of the lover’s situation in the divine one: the monologue of the various characters in love (in Achilles Tatius, Terence, Longus, Petronius, Propertius, and so on) is the formal device to suggest their daydreaming; and we watch them as they gaze in pleasure at this dream world (that is, as readers of the novel, we too become the object of the seduction of the story). Reading (or hearing) stories of divine loves must have been a fantasy experience somehow similar to looking at representations of people making love. Scenes representing (human or divine) love-making are a subject matter quite common in Roman visual culture, but, as J.R. Clarke has observed,10 far from being a mere representation of actual sexual behaviours, or explicit illustrations of sexual practices and positions (as they have been generally interpreted), they are rather ‘a fantasy ... of imaginary social mobility’, a dream of self-identification with superior socio-cultural models.11 The erotics of display in the lupanaria, for example, did not correspond to the realities of the sexual services clients could receive there, but offered ‘an upper-class fantasy for the lower-class viewer’;12 those artistic representations depict ‘environments far removed from the realities of the lupanar’ and in fact ‘encode fantasies of upper-class sexual luxuries for viewers who could not afford them’.13 Thus, those images are somehow an idealization and sublimation of desire; and a similar mimetic ambition (a true fantasy of ‘social mobility’) must have been stimulated by representations of the divine loves. We know that bedrooms of the Roman upper class were decorated with erotic tabellae illustrating concubitus varios Venerisque figuras, as well as with wall paintings of mythic and divine loves: an artistic tradition that was linked to the name of Parrhasius from Ephesos: cf. scilicet in domibus vestris ut prisca virorum / artificis fulgent corpora picta manu, / sic quae concubitus varios Venerisque figuras / exprimat, est aliquo parva tabella loco. ————— 9 10 11 12 13

Cf. esp. Rousset 1962, chap. 5. Cf. Clarke 1998. Clarke 1998, 202. Ibid. Clarke 1998, 205.

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Why, in our dwellings, as in brilliant paintings the artist’s brush great men of old displays, so here and there one finds a little picture shows love-making and Venus’ varied ways. Ov. Tr. 2,521-524 (transl. Melville); quae manus obscenas depinxit prima tabellas et posuit casta turpia visa domo, illa puellarum ingenuos corrupit ocellos nequitiaeque suae noluit esse rudis. a gemat in tenebris, ista qui protulit arte orgia sub tacita condita laetitia! non istis olim variabant tecta figuris: tum paries nullo crimine pictus erat. ‘It was the artist who first painted lewd panels and set up indecent pictures in a virtuous house, who corrupted the innocent eyes of girls, refusing to leave them ignorant of his own depravity. Oh, may he be stricken with blindness, whose art has revealed the mysteries that lay concealed behind silent bliss. Not with those designs used the folk of old to adorn their homes: not then were walls painted with scenes of shame’; Prop. 2,6,27-34 Pinxit [scil. Parrhasius] et minoribus tabellis libidines, eo genere petulantis ioci se reficiens. He also painted some smaller pictures of an immodest nature, taking his recreation in this sort of wanton amusement. Plin. Nat. 35,72 (transl. Rackham); cubicula plurifariam disposita tabellis ac sigillis lascivissimarum picturarum et figurarum adornavit librisque Elephantidis instruxit, ne cui in opera edenda exemplar imperatae schemae deesset. ‘The bedrooms were variously decked out with paintings and sculptures showing the most provocative images and figures, while the library was equipped with the works of Elephantis, so that an illustration of the required position would always available if anyone needed guidance in completing their performance. Suet. Tib. 43,2 (transl. Edwards);

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Parrhasi quoque tabulam, in qua Meleagro Atalanta ore morigeratur, legatam sibi sub condicione, ut si argumento offenderetur decies pro ea sestertium acciperet, non modo praetulit, sed et in cubiculo dedicavit. ‘Thus when a picture by the artist Parrhasius was bequeathed to him with the condition that if he were offended by the subject matter (it represented Atalanta pleasuring Meleager with her mouth), he should instead have a million sesterces, he not only preferred to keep the picture but set it up in his bed-chamber’. Suet. Tib. 44,2 Mythological wall paintings, we know, were the most impressive and ambitious features of the decorative equipment of Roman private houses (from the mid-Augustan period to 79 A.D.), and their content was usually erotic. An important article by David Fredrick has persuasively contextualized those erotic mythological scenes, frequently of violent subjects (rape, he emphasizes, is their single most common scene), within the social code that the Roman house embedded: the house was primarily, in its architectural and decorative message, a ‘theatre of power’ of the dominus, and those images too are somehow connected with his social relations of power. So, what the gaze at the erotic object in the mythological wall paintings visualizes is a fantasy of power, the pleasure of erotic conquest and possession of the dominus.14 Those erotic scenes were also represented on everyday life objects (especially female life), such as pottery, gems, lamps and mirrors. And we can also think of some episodes of aristocratic taste during the imperial age: Suetonius, for example, who describes the sophisticated pleasures of Tiberius, tells of certain loca amoena deliberately constructed as theatrical backgrounds, almost scenery for openly erotic pictures (a kind of living, animated painting that the spectator can ‘enter into’, becoming one of the actors): in silvis quoque ac nemoribus passim Venerios locos commentus est prostantisque per antra et cavas rupes ex utriusque sexus pube Paniscorum et Nympharum habitu, quae palam iam et vulgo nomine insulae abutentes ‘Caprineum’ dictitabant. ‘In the woods, too, and groves all over the island, he set out his ‘haunts of Venus’ where boys and girls dressed up as Pan and the nymphs solic————— 14

Cf. Fredrick 1995.

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ited outside caves and grottoes. People used quite openly and commonly to talk of ‘the old goat’s den’, making a play on the name of the island’. Suet. Tib. 43,2 As regards the spread of a voyeuristic use of pictures of divine loves among the learned pagans of the 2nd century (and earlier), a passage written by a Church Father, Clement of Alexandria, is particularly instructive, in which he stigmatizes this practice and recognizes the role of fantasy in sexuality (Protr. 4,60-61): But most men are not of this mind. Casting off shame and fear, they have their homes decorated with pictures representing the unnatural lust of the daemons. In the lewdness to which their thoughts are given, they adorn their chambers with painted tablets hung on high like votive offerings, regarding licentiousness as piety; and, when lying upon the bed, while still in the midst of their own embraces, they fix their gaze upon the naked Aphrodite, who lies bound in her adultery. Also, to show they approve the representation of effeminacy, they engrave in the hoops of their rings the amorous bird hovering over Leda, using a seal which reflects the licentiousness of Zeus. These are the patterns for your voluptuousness; these are the stories that give divine sanction for wanton living; these are the lessons taught by gods who fornicate along with you (transl. Butterworth, modified). The mechanism of mimetic identification, through this form of ‘learned voyeurism’ (that is, ‘lived intertextuality’), of human beings in divine models, as ‘archetypes of voluptuousness’ is made openly explicit here,15 and for a Christian, it is the proof of the aberrant nature of a religion which, through a perverse use of the myths of the gods, and the pictures representing them, creates an incentive to sin. The ‘domestication of desire’ (to use the phrase ————— 15

As well as in the quoted passage by Augustine, conf. 1,16,26 ita vero non cognosceremus verba haec, imbrem et aureum et gremium et fucum et templa caeli et alia verba, quae in eo loco scripta sunt, nisi Terentius induceret nequam adulescentem proponentem sibi Iovem ad exemplum stupri, dum spectat tabulam quandam pictam in pariete, ubi ‘inerat pictura haec, Iovem quo pacto Danaae misisse aiunt in gremium quondam imbrem aureum, fucum factum mulieri’? Et vide, quemadmodum se concitat ad libidinem quasi caelesti magisterio: ‘At quem Deum! inquit. Qui templa caeli summo sonitu concutit. Ego homuncio id non facerem? Ego illud vero feci ac libens.’ Non omnino per hanc turpitudinem verba ista commodius discuntur, sed per haec verba turpitudo ista confidentius perpetratur.

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of Molly Myerowitz)16 is in fact a flight, an escape into the realm of fantasy: and to identify oneself with gods, not just with mortals, when making love is of course much more thrilling. Simon Goldhill17 has linked the language of Clement, in his description of the impact of those erotic pictures on the soul of a person looking at them, with the Stoic theory of visual perception, and has found a close analogy in the passage where Achilles Tatius describes the pleasure that the lover receives from the sight of the person loved (5,13,4): ‘The pleasure of the spectacle floods in through the eyes and settles in the breast, ever drawing with it the image of the beloved. This pleasure is impressed upon the soul’s mirror, having its form there; then the beauty floods out again, drawn towards the desirous heart by invisible beams, and imprints the shadowy image deep down inside’. According to this concept, it is through the gaze that desire takes possession of the whole soul, and the desiring subject receives impressions (phantasiai) from the images of the object of his love, which are impressed on his/her soul, modelling it like wax. This is the process that is created when people look at the representations of divine loves; a technique of stimulating sexual fantasies through images which is not confined to the ancient world. A striking parallel of ‘erotic consumption’ of the same artistic subject can be found in Renaissance culture, where above all the tapestry of Arachne (Ovid, Met. 6,103-128), with the erotic adventures of the gods, acted as a model for various works, e.g. Correggio’s Loves of the gods, or the series of engravings on the same subject by Jacopo Caraglio, and above all the Modi (The Sexual Positions) by his teacher, Marcantonio Raimondi.18 Once again, the recourse to stories of myth and their cultural authority acted as a screen for a less confessable programme of voyeuristic eroticism (illustrating a series of sexual positions), but this did not prevent Raimondi from suffering a prison sentence at the hands of the Pope. Before concluding, let me return briefly to the frequent connection of erotic literature with female consumption (Hero in Ovid, but also the various female audiences listening to stories of divine loves). Achilles Tatius too confirms that women are credited with a penchant for erotic myths (‘the female species is rather fond of myths’, 5,5,1; cf. also 1,19,1 ‘During this exposition, I was eyeing the girl to see how she reacted to hearing about desire. She seemed to be signalling that the experience was not without a certain pleasure’); and their passion for ekphraseis or stories about erotic ————— 16 17 18

Cf. Myerowitz 1992. Goldhill 2001. Cf. esp. Talvacchia 1999 and Bull 2005.

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myths, which are mises en abyme of the themes of the novel, might then be seen as a way of living the experience of love metonymically, for people like women in the Greek world, who were condemned to a ‘passive’ life, subject to limitations and binding social protocols.19 As if the ancient novel, through myth and literature, supplied in this subject, above all for women, an ideal space that is alternative to reality, a free space of pleasure where they can immerse themselves and dream: almost an anticipation of the vicarious female life in the modern novel (but which, in ancient literature too, Ovid’s Hero laments as a common painful condition).20 So those images of desire seem to represent the escape fantasies of women eager to quit the gloomy confines of the women’s quarters. We may thus be tempted to see the loves of the gods as the sentimental novels of the ancient world, that provide ‘desire-mediating’ models and at the same time legitimize the fantasies and projections of mortals, ennobling them with prestigious precedents with which to identify. But the problem of the destination and the psychological function of ancient novels is of course too complex to be discussed now. My point here is just that what the ancient erotic narratives say about the consumption of erotic art and literature (especially divine loves) has a significant place in the history of the discourse of desire.

Bibliography Bartsch, S. 1989. Decoding the ancient novel: The reader and the role of description in Heliodorus and Achilles Tatius, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Brooks, P. 1993. Body Work: Objects of Desire in Modern Narrative, Cambridge, Ma., London: Harvard University Press. Bull, M. 2005. The Mirror of the Gods: How Renaissance Artists Rediscovered the Pagan Gods, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Clarke, J.R. 1998. Looking at Lovemaking: Constructions of Sexuality in Roman Art. 100 B.C. - A.D. 250, Berkeley: University of California Press. Conte, G.B. 1996. The Hidden Author. An Interpretation of Petronius’s Satyricon, BerkeleyLos Angeles-London: University of California Press. Fredrick, D. 1995. ‘Beyond the Atrium to Ariadne: Erotic Painting and Visual Pleasure in the Roman House’, ClAnt 14, 266-287. Girard, R. 1965. Deceit, Desire, and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

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20

In this sense, too, we could also say that ‘the rise of the novel is closely tied to the rise of the idea of privacy’ (Brooks 1993, 28). Cf. Ep. 19,9-32 and Rosati 1996, 18-21, also on the later receptions (Boccaccio, Byron) of this theme (20 n.36).

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Goldhill, S. 2001. ‘The Erotic Eye: Visual Stimulation and Cultural Conflict’, in: Id. (ed.), Being Greek under Rome: Cultural Identity, the Second Sophistic and the Development of Empire, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 154-194. Hunter, R. (ed.) 2005. The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women: Constructions and Reconstructions, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lazzarini, C. 1984. ‘Historia/fabula: forme della costruzione poetica virgiliana nel commento di Servio all’Eneide’, MD 12, 117-144. Morales, H. 2004. Vision and narrative in Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe and Clitophon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Morgan, J. 2007. ‘Kleitophon and Encolpius: Achilleus Tatius as Hidden Author’, in: M. Paschalis et al. (eds.), The Greek and the Roman Novel. Parallel Readings, Groningen: Barkhuis & Groningen University Library, 105-120. Myerowitz, M. 1992. ‘The Domestication of Desire: Ovid’s Parva Tabella and the Theater of Love’, in: A. Richlin (ed.), Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome, New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 131-157. Paschalis, M., Panayotakis, S., Schmeling, G. (eds.) 2009. Readers and Writers in the Ancient Novel, Ancient Narrative Supplementum 12, Groningen: Barkhuis & Groningen University Library. Rosati, G. 1996. P. Ovidii Nasonis Heroidum epistulae XVIII - XIX (Leander Heroni - Hero Leandro), Florence: Le Monnier. Rousset, J. 1962. Forme et signification: essais sur les structures littéraires de Corneille à Claudel, Paris: Corti. Talvacchia, B. 1999. Taking Positions: On the Erotic in Renaissance Culture, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Zeitlin, F.I. 1990. ‘The Poetics of Eros: Nature, Art, and Imitation in Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe’, in: D. Halperin, J. Winkler, F. Zeitlin (eds.), Before Sexuality. The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 417-464.

Comedy in Heliodoros’ Aithiopika M ARGARET D OODY University of Notre Dame

Goethe, considering Manzoni, once made the admittedly paradoxical statement that ‘Alle Poesie’ – that is, all literature – ‘eigentlich in Anachronismen verkehre’ (‘actually deals in anachronisms’). Goethe criticizes Manzoni for dividing his characters between the categories of the modern and the historical. Apparently Goethe thinks that all writers must inevitably modernize the past. Hence all are anachronistic. This is true even of the revered masters of antiquity: Die Ilias wie die Odyssee, die sämtliche Tragiker und was uns von wahrer Poesie übrig geblieben ist, lebt und atmet nur in Anachronismen.1 The Iliad, like the Odyssey, the collected Tragedians and whatever remains to us of true poesy, lives and breathes only in anachronisms. (806) This problem must be confronted consciously or unconsciously by any fiction writer, especially one dealing with the past. Almost all writers of early Greek novels, as far as we can tell, wrote ‘historical novels’ – I believe for sound political reasons. Though we may be a trifle annoyed by their habit of setting things in an imaginary past, customarily the past of the Persian Empire, that device enabled novelists to represent indirectly the negative sides of Roman colonialism, imperial rule, and arbitrary sway over other populations. Anachronism of historical setting is a pointed and conscious choice. A perception of anachronism, however, is itself a source of creative comedy. That which is humorous or funny, that which plays with the unfitness of things, may offer a means of moving towards something which cannot be settled safely in the historical past nor in the conventional present. Effective ————— 1

See Goethe, “Teilnahme Goethes an Manzoni,” in Schriften zur Literatur, Werke ed. Ernst Beutler (Zurich, 1950), vol. 15, 782-843; 806. The Construction of the Real and the Ideal in the Ancient Novel, 105–126

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comedy lends energy to the exploration of what is not fully defined or established. An old division of the ancient novels into ‘comic’ and ‘ideal’ seems a red herring – a rather stale one at that. The discovery of Phoinikika put an end to the elaborate theories as to the incapacity of novelists writing in Greek to achieve true comedy in the Petronian manner. But does all comedy have to be in the manner of Phoinikika? Is not the novel essentially a comic form altogether? So Nietzsche brilliantly intuited in Die Geburt der Tragödie. Though Nietzsche meant that as no compliment. In this paper I propose to examine Heliodoros’ Aithiopika searching for his kind of comedy, observing how he handles some of his chosen constituents of narrative, how he observes incongruity and plays with the unfitness of things. He embraces anachronism and uses it most creatively. A problem in searching out his ‘comedy,’ however, is that the concepts of Tragedy and Comedy are in classical antiquity well established as genres. Tragedy is defined by the works of Aeschylus, Sophokles and Euripides. Of the tragic writers Heliodoros seems especially fond of Euripides. Literary references to the plays are completely anachronistic, as Heliodoros really knows. Sophokles and Euripides were writing later than the period of the heyday of the Persian Empire employed as a temporal setting for his novel. There is a double anachronism at play: the tragedies are ‘too late’ for the time of these characters who quote them, and ‘antique’ in the eyes of us, the readers. Greek staged comedy since the political-fantastic works of Aristophanes’ time had stabilized in the domestic and humane (more or less) works of New Comedy, best known to us by the works of Menander. Mime (about which less is known) permitted vulgar materials and clowning. That the author of Aithiopika is entirely conscious of these modes and genres there can be no question. See, for example N.J. Lowe’s working out of the relation of the plot to New Comedy patterns.2 Heliodoros engages in what jazz players call ‘riffs,’ playing with the patterns and expectations of both Tragedy and Comedy. It is my contention that he regards use of or reference to such genres as conscious anachronism. The more he uses literary genres – including the Epic – the less we can simply ‘believe’ in them, or be sure that certain tropes will have reliable effects. He overplays both ‘tragic’ and ‘comic,’ as these pertain to the time-hallowed genres of Athenian Tragedy and New Comedy. Playing with the concepts, he offers us a new range of modes and styles, and displays a new aesthetic geography. ————— 2

Lowe 2000.

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Heliodoros is a master of anachronism in a basic narrative sense – events meet us out of time. Characters and happenings are encountered by the reader out of chronological order – and characters within the narrative may experience these encounters in a different order. In his narrative Heliodoros dares the reader to follow the time-line of the narrative and the time-sense of his characters. Time is teasingly important in a novel that so dashingly and urbanely slashes into its own narrative lines, playing with time as well as space. Aithiopika hurls us back into flashbacks, doubles on itself. N.J. Lowe points out that the whole central action takes only 39 days – ‘a day below the chronological budget of the Odyssey’.3 That in itself is a comical choice of temporal duration. Yet in reading either the epic or the novel we seem to have lived through much more time than some six weeks. We gain a consciousness of years, a new burden of experience. In the Odyssey, one ‘beginning’ may be the defeat of Troy, but the ‘whole story’ would go back to the beginning of the war at Troy. The time covered by the Aithiopika seems to run at least from the birth of Charikleia a little over seventeen years ago. But we start abruptly with just one morning, dawn of a day like and yet unlike any other. Heliodoros’ Aithiopika announces its comedy in its first words: ‘Day had begun to smile’ – Ἡμέρας ἄρτι διαγελώσης καὶ ἡλίου τὰς ἀκρωρείας καταυγάζοντος (1,1,1),4 ‘Day had begun to smile as the sun touched the top of the hills…’ (incidentally, could Shakespeare have been recollecting this passage when he wrote ‘Full many a glorious morning have I seen, / Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye’?).5 Helios smiles on us – or laughs at us. The unfixed point of view, the meta-narrator, is also beginning to smile as he relates to the first of the surprising series of spectacles and events. Our unseen light-bearer does not make us privy to knowledge, but offers us puzzles and clues, employing the limited mentality and necessarily limited point of view of imperfect characters (and readers). We seem to be taking a wide survey of a scene; but we are seeing through the eyes of criminals – that is, bandits. We don’t realize what we are NOT seeing in this scene. The joke is on us. We don’t see Kalasiris in hiding, or coming over another hill to the side. We only find out about that in Book 5, ch. 33 – at the point of reconnection. The passages are connected by ————— 3 4

5

Lowe 2000, 244. All quotations from Aithiopika are from the Belles Lettres edition in three volumes. I have consulted John Morgan’s translation in Collected Ancient Greek Novels, ed. B.P. Reardon, but my wording is not always the same. Shakespeare, sonnet 33, in The Sonnets and A Lover’s Complaint, ed. John Kerrigan (London: Penguin Books, 2010).

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the coming of the dawn, the emphatic immediacy of ἄρτι, and the stress on watching, point of view, and dawn: Ἡμέρας ἄρτι διαγελώσης καὶ ἡλίου τὰς ἀκρωρείας καταυγάζοντος; Ἄρτι γὰρ ἐμοῦ ὅτε ἡμέραν εἶδον τὸν λόφον κατιόντος… (5,33,2). Kalasiris was another watcher (‘I was just descending the hill when I saw the day dawn’), but we didn’t know about him. As we enter into the novel we know nothing about Kalasiris, or his crafty role in inciting the lethal brawl on the beach. Our absence of knowledge renders us ridiculous – without our knowing it. The fact that we cannot ‘miss’ Kalasiris renders our vision naïve. We start our life – the life with this novel – in a state of ignorance, even if our entry is an initiation into enlightenment under an amused and smiling Helios. In the initial imaginary view we have such an eyeful that we cannot think of anything ‘missing’. The scene on the beach is fascinating and troubling. It is violent, yet strangely peaceful. Corpses and the materials of a banquet lie strewn about together, in a manner showing bizarre connection between pleasant things (drinking cups) and violent things (a missile). The characters employed to see this sight are a group of bandits, so our first view is criminal. At first the brigands do not even look at the immediate disaster. They are looking too far away out to sea – like proper part-time pirates they hope to see ships sailing past, but there aren’t any. Then they move their gaze nearer to shore, and see a stalled ship, with no crew, but evidently full of cargo, judging by how deep it lies in the water – a professional view. Only belatedly do they take in the scene on the beach – the men recently killed, the mixture of food and blood, overturned benches – everything speaking of sudden attack. At length they take in the arrows which have killed the majority of the slain. The narrative lingers selfcongratulatingly on its own effects: Καὶ μυρίον εἶδος ὁ δαίμων ἐπὶ μικροῦ τοῦ χωρίου διεσκεύαστο, οἶνον αἵματι μιάνας, καὶ συμποσίοις πόλεμον ἐπιστήσας, φόνους καὶ πότους, σπονδὰς καὶ σφαγὰς ἐπισυνάψας, καὶ τοιοῦτον θέατρον λῃσταῖς Αἰγυπτίοις ἐπιδείξας. The δαίμων had contrived myriad sights within a little space. Wine and blood mixed, symposium with battle, murder and drinking, libation and

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sacrifices together, all displayed as a sight for the eyes of Egyptian bandits. (1,1,6) If this isn’t good theatre, you are hard to please, the narrator – or otherwise, the author, demon-director of this scene – seems to be saying. The word θέατρον implies not only something to see but also the dramatic theatre – a constant metaphor in the novel as a whole. The first temporary viewers (besides ourselves) are not worthy of such a splendid and wittily gruesome scene. These gorgeously ironic literary effects are wasted on the eyes of Egyptian bandits. The instructed eye (our own) not only gazes at the imaginary sight, but begins to pick up the message. The truly instructed reader will be reminded of a famous scene not in a drama but in an epic – the scene of Odysseus killing the suitors at that bloody dinner in Ithaca. In this case, however, the heroic and lethal wielder of the strong bow, the excellent shot, is, paradoxically, female; the as yet unidentified woman (who is to become known to us as our heroine Charikleia), strangely replaces the epic hero. Her heroic and violent triumph is not utterly apparent because of her gender. We and the intruding males do not and cannot see the connection between the corpse-strewn beach and another impressive (even splendid) sight: a beautiful girl, laurel-crowned, holding a bow seated on a rock, gazing sorrowfully at a man perhaps mortally wounded lying on the ground. The woman jumps up, so the arrows rattle in the quiver; her hair flows about her like that of a bacchante. The men think she is perhaps a goddess, Artemis or Isis. It’s all a mystery to them. But when the girl clasps the young man passionately, they begin to doubt: ‘Why would this be the work of a goddess? What cause would a δαίμων have to embrace the body of a dead man?’ (1,2,7). The girl is descending from goddess to δαίμων, a more obscure and less admirable divine being. Or perhaps the young woman is ascending, becoming more of a force and less a statue? A daimon has much more of an edge than a statue; a daimon is something unknown of which we are afraid. We probably haven’t noticed the first δαίμων who has contrived the whole scene – and now smiles down upon it like a Cheshire cat. We have been comically thrust into the company – and into the control – of divine demons. The brigands, who have been hovering behind bushes in a very Gilbertian manner, extremely cautious for cutthroat criminals, emerge at this juncture and are seen by the bright female. The girl addresses them in a ringing speech, in a manner both rational and commanding: ‘If,’ she said, ‘you are phantoms (εἴδωλα) of the dead it is not just of you to harass us, for you were

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killed in mutual battle. Those who were killed were killed in lawful self defense and to punish the hubris of an attack on me.’ After starting out by reasoning with the unwashed gang as if they were dead persons, the demonic beauty takes up the alternative. But this seems a strange order of business. Would it not be preferable to start out with the assumption that one is addressing living persons? After all, living enemies might not stay still while being addressed as hypothetical ghosts. And would malicious spirits of men recently killed patiently submit to logical reasoning regarding the justice of their deaths? The goddess-girl is rhetorically assured, but her logic is comical. When she addresses the row of male apparitions as (possibly) alive, she insults them straight away: ‘If you are living men, you seem to me to be criminals leading a bad life’ (1,3,1). Having thus bluntly done her best to alienate her audience (contrary to what Aristotle advises in the Rhetoric), she continues more dramatically: ‘You have come in happy time. Free us from the pains that oppress us by a timely murder and bring our drama to its conclusion’ (1,3,1). This bravely ironic command is rhetorically striking. But, like the rest of her speech, it might as well not have been uttered. Ἡ μὲν ταῦτα ἐπετραγῴδει, οἱ δὲ οὐδὲν συνιέναι τῶν λεγομένων ἔχοντες τοὺς μὲν αὐτοῦ καταλείπουσιν, ἰσχυρὰν αὐτοῖς φυλακὴν τὴν ἀσθένειαν αὐτῶν ἐπιστήσαντες, ἐπὶ δὲ τὴν ναῦν ὁρμήσαντες τὸν φόρτον ἐξήντλουν, τῶν μὲν ἄλλων ὑπερορῶντες. πολλὰ δὲ ἦν καὶ ποικίλα, χρυσοῦ δὲ καὶ ἀργύρου καὶ λίθων πολυτίμων καὶ σηρικῆς ἐσθῆτος, ὅση δύναμις ἑκάστοις, ἐκφοροῦντες. Thus she tragedied [ἐπετραγῴδει] but the listening bandits understood nothing. Considering the pair strongly guarded by their own weakness, the men left them and turned to the ship, relieving it speedily of its cargo. Many and various were these contents, gold and silver and fine quality gemstones and sensuous silks, each man taking his own. (1,3,1-2) The effect of Charikleia’s tragedy speech is lost entirely on her hearers (save for us). Her rhetoric has no effect on Greekless men; they are hearers but they comprehend not a word. The anticlimax develops from their point of view. They see no need to put into operation any ‘theory of mind’.6 Chari————— 6

‘Theory of mind’ is a matter of some interest to contemporary theorists of the novel. Lisa Zunshine (2006) argues that we are actively interested in literary characters because they represent the complex social functioning of the mind, and display ‘theory of mind,’ that

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kleia ceases to attract them; they turn from her and her apparently dying companion, and turn to what really does interest them, the rich cargo of the ship. And the reader too is introduced (for the first of many times) to rich and sensuous things, including the fine gemstones that recur throughout the narrative. Gold, silver, soft fabrics and precious gems indeed possess their own attraction and can incite men to dynamic activity. Charikleia is momentarily in danger of being outclassed, superseded in the reader’s interest – if the reader is vulgar enough. But we waver, while the rational gang takes only the most valuable things, dividing them in tidy piles on the beach. This piratical care – like Charikleia’s passionate speech – is a useless expenditure of energy. For our tidy first group of brigands, about ten men, is chased away by a second band three times more numerous. The first lot of uncomprehending thieves runs away without any swag. The second group proclaims the girl their prisoner. ‘Thus for a second time the girl was captured without being fought for’ (1,3,5). The effect is something like that in chapter 8 of Alice through the Looking-Glass when Alice is captured first by the Red Knight and then by the White Knight. The ‘second time’ is a key to comedy. We know Karl Marx’s dictum that History repeats itself ‘the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.’ Repetition with variation is one of the keys to Heliodoros’ comic effects, and δεύτερον here is treacherous to grandeur. Heliodoros keeps bringing us back to the ineptitude of mental processes, and the imbecilities of spoken (sometimes written) language. Such problems affect the narrative itself, which makes us aware of its own devices (such as repetition) and constantly comments on expression and interpretation. The adventure story is undercut by little comic touches reflecting on narrative modes. In Book 2, Knemon and Theagenes, fearful for the fate of Charikleia, seize a little boat and start rowing. But they are not good at it, and go zig-zag instead of straight (2,2,2-3). In part this is a compliment to their class – Τheagenes might be expected to measure up when it comes to fighting bulls, but rowing is a lowly job. The effect is very funny; in the midst of their eagerness to come to the rescue, they can’t get going. Delays and hitches are the name of the game to Heliodoros. Nothing goes in a straight line. Kalasiris, who sometimes seems to the reader to manifest a sort of ideal of epic narration – or a belief in that ideal – is strangely fond of wandering off the straight track, forsaking his constant epideictic role and deviating into ————— is the belief that others have perception consciousness and will react in certain ways to stimuli. Characters may also display amusing or distressing gaps in empathetic consciousness and reasoning, as here.

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something else like a perfect Proteus (as Knemon complains). Why should Kalasiris tell Knemon (and us) all about Rhodopis? Because Kalasiris is a central character, not an incidental one – at least to himself. As we listen to the priest’s autobiography, we might – if we were very wise readers indeed – ask ourselves the question: where in this narrative have we heard anything like that tone before? We might recollect Thyamis’ speech to his bandit band in Book 1. We might but we probably won’t, as this episode is at a different level of action and narrative from Kalasiris’ internal narration to Knemon. Thyamis as an orator addresses his men, saying that the gang constitutes an Ekklesia – but of course they don’t. An Athenian Ekklesia is a meeting of all adult male citizens, each of whom is entitled to speak if he wishes, and to register approval or the reverse. Men take turns in speaking. Here only Thyamis holds the floor, in an archaic mode of leadership. He wants to claim Charikleia as his share of the booty. Of course the situation is dripping with epic reference. Agamemnon and Akhilleus fell out about precisely such a claim. Who has a right to Briseis? In this case, Thyamis must persuade his men to consent to his claim to the beautiful girl (in some respects this could seem like a schoolboy exercise in rhetoric.) Thyamis seems to need to persuade himself – not merely his men – that he is being thoughtful and righteous when he says he wouldn’t consider it in accordance with justice for him to take the girl without the men’s consent. Only later does he introduce the idea that if he wants to marry the captive instead of raping her, he has to get her consent as well. To bribe his followers into giving him the gift (unlike Agamemnon in a similar situation), Thyamis first tries a placating tone. He says that if they allow him this one precious thing, he will leave the rest of the rich plunder from the ship to the men, and won’t ask anything for himself. He won’t rely on military justification, or the rights inherent in his status. Self-praising, he proses on, setting forth his equal treatment of his men. In distribution of women, he has never forced a well-born woman, and has played fair in distributing the other females to his men. He’s arguing that his good behavior in the past deserves a reward – this beautiful and evidently well-born girl for himself. And, he wants to assure his audience, he doesn’t want the girl for vulgar sexual pleasure; Thyamis takes a high tone, here: Ἐπειδὴ γὰρ τὴν πάνδημον Ἀφροδίτην τὸ προφητικὸν ἀτιμάζει γένος, ‘For the prophetic sort of men despise Aphrodite Pandemos’ (1,19,7), Or – ‘The priestly caste despises the vulgar pleasures of sex.’ However, Thyamis adds, he is not indulging in any

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such low pleasure – far from it. He asks for the girl ‘not for fleshly joys’ (οὐ τῆς καθ’ ἡδονὴν χρείας) but for the purpose of begetting, obtaining a posterity (7). In his conceit, Thyamis thinks his men will take this project as seriously he does his proclaimed dynastic desire for reproduction – as if the bandits would like to see a lot more Thyamises. The speech is rich in implied insults to Aphrodite and to Charikleia. The bandit chief’s reference to Aphrodite Pandemos takes us back to Pausanias’ argument in Plato’s Symposium. Aphrodite Pandemos is the common people’s kind of sexuality, largely heterosexual, merely physical. Pausanias repudiates the democratic Aphrodite in making an argument for homosexual love of a highly defined kind, the love of an older man for a beautiful youth (Symposium, 181b). Pausanias’ speech in its context is highly self-interested; he wants to support and render respectable his love for Agathon and to indicate the benefit to the younger man, the beloved, of such a moral and educative love. Aphrodite Urania, Pausanias claims, is more spiritual and intellectual, concerned with true beauty of soul. Thyamis badly mangles the argument of Plato’s speaker, not only because at this moment he is not trying to argue for homosexuality, but because he has no interest at all in any spiritual connection with the beloved or anyone else. He doesn’t even see the defect in his announced excuse for taking the lovely captive – although desire for carnal heirs is a fleshly and worldly desire repudiated by the speaker in the Symposium whom he imitates. Pompous hypocrisy plays through everything Thyamis says. He leaves himself wide open for Charikleia to soothe and deceive him through a combination of flattery and high seriousness, putting off the wedding in order to fulfill her religious obligations. She mirrors his lies back to him. Charikleia knows Thyamis is popping with lust of the pandemos kind. She gravely and genteelly offers him a mirror of his own playacting. Of course the disappointed bandit chief has to consent to the delay. Like the first gang of bandits he’s not a very good listener; he has not caught the sarcastic irony in her speech, ‘For a captive to be judged worthy of sleeping with her captor, what a surpassingly happy fortune’ (1,22,6). Disappointed Thyamis then forgets his grandiose promise to his men, at the end of the event when it comes to the share-out, taking a lot of the best stuff for himself (1,23,2). When we meet Kalasiris it is just barely possible that we might begin to guess (as of course we never do on first reading) that Thyamis is his son. There are great differences between them. Kalasiris cares about others as well as himself, and truly believes in the spiritual calling. But if Thyamis

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grew up with Kalasiris, he would have learned how the priestly caste carries on. That’s the way those prophetic types sound. Thyamis nowhere gives the impression of any of his father’s intellect or asceticism – though he knows how to ‘talk the talk’. A little bit of moral-spiritual window dressing makes it easier to get what you want. Priestliness is show. Both he and his brother have a strong sense of entitlement. In rearing his sons, Kalasiris has been a failure – something of which he is partly aware; the conflict between the brothers deeply hurts him. Kalasiris still seems to think his son is suited to the priesthood, but that may be another aspect of characteristic blindness. Kalasiris’ death leaves Egypt an inferior priest of Isis. The characterization of the complex and loveable Kalasiris seems to represent something entirely new in the Novel. Here readers can become aware of the deficiencies of admirable characters, which we have come to love and rely on; our reaction is complex, and is not satiric scorn, or repudiation, but something much more complicated. Heliodoros’ way of writing democratizes. It does so in dealing with high and low together – not just high and low characters, but characters who may transform into high and low. Most graphically and simply Charikleia and Theagenes both so transform in a class sense when they are in disguise as beggars, or when they are captives of the Persians. But that’s too simple. The real ‘democratization’ is woven into the style. High thoughts, generosity, idealism, kindness are interwoven with less admirable qualities within the same personage. Knemon is kind and in some respects valuable and efficient – he helps to cure the wounded Theagenes. He is not an utter coward, but he isn’t very courageous, and he is a blabbermouth, which is why Charikleia eventually would like to exclude him from her party. Knemon, however, thinks of himself as tragic (in that respect he parodies Charikleia.) The sad story he tells of himself is highly recognizable as a version or revisiting of Hippolytos. Of course that is comically unfitting. What takes all the air out of the tragic (as Knemon does not realize) is that the Athenian lad is alive and well and loquaciously able to tell his own story. A classical Hippolytos should not survive. Knemon is anything but reserved and his story remains stubbornly comic – even though it involves the death of the Phaidra-figure, the wicked stepmother Demainete. Arsake is the less impressive because she has been parodied in advance by Demainete, at the Knemon-level of story. Almost everything associated with Knemon includes material associated with mimes and low comedy: flute-girls, prostitutes, rivals, substitutions. The trick played upon the mendacious step-mother belongs on a low comic stage. Sir Philip Sidney, one of Heliodoros’ many

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admirers, recognizes this plot-trick as funny when he borrows it for the discomfiture of the comic duchess Gynecia in his novel Arcadia (written in the 1580s).7 Even more discomfiting comic material is associated with Knemon in a mock-epic episode. When Thermouthis, the Egyptian bandit vice-chief, and Knemon escaped from the burned-over hideout, they eventually become violently hungry. On finding a flock, they kill and roast a ram. Now, a ram might be a suitable dinner for Odysseus and his men, but it is not a dinner for two. Grandeur of conception breaks down against bodily reality. Thermouthis and Knemon are also too impatient to wait for the cookery to be done. They devour chunks of half raw flesh, dripping with blood – and wash it down with milk. This hideous meal is reminiscent of the Cyclops, though he kept sheep and ate men; here are two men who eat sheep – or try to. No wonder Knemon’s feigned complaint later of gastric disturbance – and diarrhoea! – is completely convincing to his loutish companion. Many heroes have been wily and made clever escapes – not least Odysseus. But neither Odysseus or any of his heroic successors was reduced to graphic complaints regarding gripes in their bowels and the need to evacuate every few minutes. The ruse works – at the cost of giving us some unpleasant associations with Knemon, who is still to himself the hero of his own tale, although no epic or tragic hero could tolerate such disgusting associations for a moment. The novel offers many subtleties of comic characterization, and meditation on the relation of psyche to flesh. On meeting Theagenes, handsome young descendant of Achilles, for the first time at the party in Delphi, Kalasiris is struck by the young man’s abstraction and inconsistent behavior. The Egyptian priest, an acute observer, already knows that Charikleia has fallen in love with the youthful stranger. With dishonest tact Kalasiris has soothed Charikles’ fear that Charikleia’s complaint of a headache is the effect of the evil eye put upon her by envious onlookers. Now Kalasiris, a detective on the job, observes Theagenes, who is jerky, abstracted, and inconsistent, and can deduce that Theagenes has fallen in love with Charikleia. A lover and a drunkard are both alike, Kalasiris thinks. ‘Seeing that the souls of both alike are swimming in a wet patch of passion’; ἅτε τῆς ψυχῆς ἀμφοτέροις ἐφ’ ὑγροῦ τοῦ πάθους σαλευούσης (3,10,4-5). This comic sentence brings the hero to earth. We may still admit Theagenes’ status as both a stunningly handsome young man and a lover. Yet the man is transformed in this perceptive sentence. Drunkenness and an explosion of semen are ————— 7

See Sir Philip Sidney, The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia, ed. Jean Robertson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), Third Book or Act, 221-227.

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brought in to the periphery of our consciousness. The problem about how the mind works is a problem regarding what personality is, and mind and personality are related to physiology, to how the male body works. Tragedy represents one of our best cultural efforts at getting above the common stain of the wet patch and the imperfection of ourselves and our lives. Heliodoros places it in the centre of his novel in order to interrogate it; he refuses to let the Novel be intimidated by the grandeur of this most elevated of genres. Charikleia is attracted to Tragedy as a kind of transcendental elevator to give significance to pain, disappointment and danger. Charikleia – who thinks she is Greek but is not – may love the tragic partly because of the value of Tragedy as a sign of Hellenic cultural capital. One sees in her occasionally an almost morbidly smug reliance on tragic effects. It’s natural for her to slip into tragic mode when the going gets rough. Rather than simply admiring or disparaging tragic themes and habits, Heliodoros seems to suggest that tragedy as an idea can serve the self as a release and a consolation. It isn’t wrong to call upon it as self-fortifying mechanism serving a psychological purpose – even if comically inappropriate to the problem at hand. Occasionally Theagenes seems to pick up the habit from his beloved, as in Book 5 when the couples are about to be taken by Mitranes’ Persian force: ‘So now why do we ourselves not cut short the tragedy and hand ourselves over to those who plot to kill us?’ (5,6,4). Charikleia gets satisfaction out of confronting the daimon who has entrapped her in a plot and created a history of trouble. ‘Φέρε’ ἔφη ‘καὶ ἡμεῖς δαίμονι τῷ εἰληχότι χορεύσωμεν κατὰ τὸν ἐκείνου τρόπον· ᾄσωμεν αὐτῷ θρήνους καὶ γόους ὑπορχησώμεθα· ζόφος δὲ ἐπιχείσθω καὶ νὺξ ἀλαμπὴς ἡγείσθω τῶν δρωμένων, τοῦδε τοῦ λύχνου τῇ γῇ προσαραχθέντος.’ ‘Let us celebrate,’ said she, ‘our δαίμων fittingly; on the spot let us praise him in the dance. Let us offer to him threnodies and dance to dirgeful music our enactment of our sufferings; let the dusk then overshadow us and, so that lightless Night may take charge of the festivities, dash the lamp upon the ground.’ (6,8,3) I have been a bit free in translation here, trying to capture what seem to be metric, formal and ritualistic elements in Charikleia’s parodic speech as she verbally enacts what she ironically suggests.

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Charikleia at this point is playing with putting on a show. The powerful demon/daimon deserves celebration as a consummately negative personal deity. Charikleia’s speech in itself is a great example of the daimonic Heliodoran art, as it so directly exhibits how tragedy can be rendered comic. Charikleia herself intends a kind of comedy – it is her project here to be sarcastic about her tragic fate. But the speech is differently rendered comic for us by the author who provides the control of which Charikleia complains. The heroine imitates her meta-daimon in acting as ironic director of a negative musical drama, a mime of despair. Charikleia accuses the stronger demon who lies behind all the drama and fictional scenes of the novel of playing with her. Heliodoros’ heroine is a rare example of a character accusing her author. Dignifying her life in terms of tragedy is comic, but here she has got above that primary simplicity. ‘But if the universe should destroy him, a man would still be nobler than that which kills him, because he knows he dies,’ says Pascal.8 Charikleia is trying to rise above the tragic by the distancing effect of her own irony, which she is conscious makes her greater than that which destroys her. Her irony proposes a claim to spiritual grandeur, bestowing a kind of tragic dignity. Yet, unlike the case with the reader of Pascal, the reader of this novel will not accord her total belief. If partly sympathetic, we see into her mechanism of psychological compensation. And we know that in this she resembles ourselves. Her apostrophe here is an aspect of a search for the ideal, which at a much lower level is true of Thyamis’ speech to his men. The novel itself in its own odd way searches for an ideal which won’t ask for an escape from the demands of other people or from realities. Artifice and play sparkle around loss and estrangement. The ideal and distressing real are bound up in each other and neither can flee. Take the case of the emblematic emerald. The emerald is an emblem of beauty of chastity, and high aspiration. So we see it in the collection of jewels that are the tokens and the dowry of Charikleia. They included ‘emeralds green as the first shoots of wheat’; the image seems to connect the emeralds with Charikleia the lost daughter, as a Persephone figure (2,30,3). But emerald mines are the cause of the war which Hydaspes makes on the Persians – a war about a border dispute and resources. The child’s black Ethiopian self-appointed guardian encountered the ————— 8

‘L’homme n’est qu’un roseau...mais c’est un roseau pensant. Il ne ferait pas que l’univers entire s’arme pour l’écraser.... Mais quand l’univers l’écraserait, l’homme serait plus noble que ce qui la tue, puisqu’il sait qu’il meurt....’, Pascal, Pensées (1670), Fragment 397.

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widowed and sorrowful Charikles in Egypt, and was able to give him the child to care for, only because the Ethiopian was there on embassy regarding the emerald-mine dispute. His sudden recall prevented his telling Charikles more about the girl. The emerald-mine war both obstructs and facilitates Charikleia’s return home ten years later. Emeralds are at the bottom of the plot that which is beautiful and good is also that which provides a stimulus to conflict and violence. Emeralds continue to exist as earthy resources and heavenly emblems. Charikleia’s ‘tragic’ view of life at low points is comically not the truth of the matter. But only a very high and intelligent character would make the mistakes the way she makes them – Heliodoros is not denigrating his heroine, but exploring the world through and with her. Not only is the world not as she thinks – she is not always as she thinks she is. Tragedy has the changes rung upon it in Heliodoros’ novel so that it becomes visibly a concept – a concept that can be made fun of. Tragedy is one of the many different forms of artificial pleasure that swell the Heliodoran scene. He constantly proposes challenges to it. For a strong example, the sight of all those warm and even bleeding corpses (like extras in a mystery story) all over the beach at the outset is not a tragic scene. The chaste tragic stage of Athens was not supposed to offer bloody bodies strewn about a beach. Everything comes off as impure, and is seen by the wrong eyes (and as for ‘whodunit?’ the answer would seem to be our heroine). The author repeatedly satisfies our lust for two things that are not consonant with Greek Tragedy – certainly not with what Aristotle said about it. Two things rudely break into the purity, chastity and idealism of Tragedy. Those two things are a) parades and b) scenes of cruelty, blood or death. Although a certain amount of parading and processing has been used in introducing serious drama worldwide, a parade is different from a compact and devastating tragic play. The parade of Dionysus at the Athenian Anthesterion is a revivifying spectacle. The dramas offered to Dionysus in the early spring festival were in some sense subordinate to the god’s own celebration. A bad or off-the-mark tragedy has proverbially ‘nothing to do with Dionysus’ – a proverbial judgment reiterated in the novel by Knemon, when he accuses Kalasiris of introducing an inappropriate episode (adding that the priest narrator reminds him of Proteus) (2,24,4). If a narrative or drama has nothing to do with Dionysus, the reverse may also be true. Dionysus (pace Nietzsche) is not obliged to respect Tragedy. Aristotle in the Poetics remarkably disregards the entire religious and public context of Attic theatre. In a bold secularizing move Aristotle established ‘literature’ as well as literary

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theory and blew off Dionysus. Through the ages Dionysus has returned the compliment. Dionysian yearnings can be satisfied by drum beats and blown instruments, by the pleasing array of human bodies and fine beasts in elegant and varied parade. This is what the wine-drinker Knemon yearns for – and what he makes water-drinking Kalasiris give him: an imaginary Dionysian orgy, the recollected opulence of the parade at Delphi. For Knemon, enjoying a brilliantly detailed description will be the same thing as being there (3,1,1). As a hearer he is a representative of the desirous novel-reader, lusting to lose himself in a big active description. Logos becomes theatron. The word is made – should be made – spectacular experience. Knemon’s desire – which is ours – for parade and spectacle is to be satisfied in a not totally dissimilar fashion at Meroë. In Ethiopia we are promised we shall be given everything in excess. Everything is gigantic: A mighty Tract of Land it contains, and looks more like a Continent than an Island...It brings forth Creatures remarkable for their Size...and is fruitful in all manners of Plants and Trees...For besides Palm-Trees that grow there to a prodigious Height full laden with Fruit, it produces Barley also, and Wheat so very tall, that a Man on Horse-back, or even sitting on a Camel, may be covered by it. (10,5,2)9 This translation of 1717 seems an inspiration to Jonathan Swift in creating his Brobdingnag, the land of giants, in Book II of Gulliver’s Travels (1726). Gulliver’s first experience is of a gigantic field of “Corn” (i.e. wheat) “rising at least forty Foot”.10 Meroë in Aithiopika offers the gigantic spectacle of a futuristic city, graced with giant palms and statues, and centered on the temples of Sun and Moon. It suits parades and shows; the procession of condemned captives is ————— 9

10

The Adventures of Theagenes and Chariclia. A Romance. Being the Rise, Progress, Tryals and happy Success of the Heroic Loves of these Two Illustrious Persons (London: E. Curll et al., 1717). (The very first English translation was Thomas Underdowne’s An AETHiopian Historie…very wittie and pleasaunt [1569]). ‘I fell into a high road, for so I took it to be, though it served to the Inhabitants only as a foot Path through a Field of Barley. Here I walked on for some time, but could see little on either side, it being now near harvest, and the Corn rising at least forty Foot. I was an Hour walking to the end of this field, which was fenced in with a Hedge of at least one hundred and twenty Foot high, and the Trees so lofty that I could make no computation of their Altitude.’Escaping from the giants he tries to hide in the field, but is pierced by the ‘Beards of the fallen Ears so strong and pointed’, and is captured by the reapers. Jonathan Swift, chapter 2 of ‘A Voyage to Brobdingnag’ in Gulliver’s Travels (London: Penguin Classics, 2001), 81-82.

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later followed by the procession of ambassadors bearing extraordinary and exotic presents, finished off by the Camelopard, which spooks the horses and the bulls (10, chs. 26-28). Spectacles, big parades – these satisfy us insofar as they answer to our desire to see the world, to know what is big, beautiful, rich, exciting, and exotic. A parade is at once serious and playful, solemnly celebratory and ritually joyous. Unlike the tragedies of Sophokles and Co., a parade offers no written text. Its value lies chiefly in the fact that it is experiential, enacted uniquely in a moment in time, unrepeatable. Thus, unlike a literary piece, a parade is never anachronistic. But retelling a spectacle (as Kalasiris does) is an act that embraces incongruity and anachronism. Procession and the fuss of a parade actually put a damper on any possibility of potent serious tragedy. This is evident to Samuel Richardson’s character Robert Lovelace, in an eighteenth-century novel in which the influence of Heliodoros is quite marked, most of all in the character of its heroine Clarissa. Lovelace, who designs to obtain the beautiful and spiritual young woman without the ceremony of marriage, gleefully fantasizes about what would happen if he and his three boon companions were to abduct Clarissa’s best friend Anna Howe and her mother and their maid – and rape them. Lovelace conjures up the men’s trial, turning the imagined future event into a crowded joyful procession. How bravely shall we enter a court, I at the head of you, dressed out each man, as if to his wedding appearance! – You are sure of all the women, old and young, of your side. – What brave fellows! – What charming gentlemen! – ...All will croud after me.... Then what a noise will this matter make! – Is it not enough, suppose us moving from the Prison to the Sessions-house, to make a noble heart thump it away most gloriously, when such an one finds himself attended to his trial by a parade of guards and officers, of miens and aspects warlike and unwarlike; himself their whole care, and their business! – weapons in their hands, some bright, some rusty...others...strutting before with fine painted staves! Shoals of people following, with a Which is he whom the young Lady appears against? – Then, let us look down, look up, look round, which way we will, we shall see all the doors, the shops, the windows, the signirons and balconies (garrets, gutters, and chimney-tops included) all white-capt, black-hooded, and periwgg’d or crop-ear’d up by the Immobile Vulgus: while the floating street-swarmers, who have seen us pass by at once place, run with stretched-out necks, and strained eye-balls... and elbow and shoulder themselves into places by which we have not

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passed, in order to obtain another sight of us; every street continuing to pour out its swarms of late-comers, to add to the gathering snowball....11 Here Lovelace ingeniously plays with the fantasized procession, reveling in the creation of numberless different watchers, an excessive street population, a gloriously expanding crowd. Lovelace in describing a non-event, in a hypothetical future, makes himself the central figure, the eidolon sought by spectators and not the spectator. He endows this fantasy with his own pleasure and pride (lightly mocked through self-reflexive irony). Kalasiris as narrator can bring an event before his hearer’s eye through words alone, but he conjures up the procession of Delphi that has happened in the past. Lovelace (whom another character describes as ‘a perfect Proteus’) is particularly versatile and ingenious in creating as vividly as if it were an event that had taken place, an event that might (or more probably might not) take place in the future – but whose real importance is that it takes place in his special imagination. To present a potential trial thus, as a rich and entertaining comic procession, is to banish moral reasoning along with pity and terror. Lovelace’s virtuoso fantasia is designed to make of Clarissa – or her stand-in Anna – but part of a spectacle in which the woman’s own words or feelings will be of little or no value. Lovelace is brilliantly undercutting in advance Clarissa’s claim to Tragedy. Aristotle was right – pomp and parades are antidotes to true tragedy. To counter the tragic, get up a show. Tragedy, as Lovelace knows, gets lost in ‘the show’. The spectator’s eye is not the moral point of view. Kalasiris narrating the procession of Delphi is evidently amused at the style of spectatorship he himself adopts to accommodate the preferences of the naïve Knemon. It is, however, the author (or daimon-author), not a character as stand-in, who supplies the details of the pomps of Meroë. Like Knemon, we readers delight in the details of the splendid and eventually horrific ‘African’ show, having forgotten to take in the mild implicit rebuke of the Egyptian priest who laughs gently at Knemon’s desire even as he gratifies it. The more greedy we are for pomp and spectacle in Meroë, the further we are from Tragedy – though not the further from violence. The second of the two important elements that cut against Tragedy as Aristotle wants it to be is bloody spectacle. Classical and neo-classical criticism is very just – actual scenes of killing and torture have their own fasci————— 11

Samuel Richardson, Clarissa. Or, The History of A Young Lady, 3rd edition 1751, 8 vols., AMS reprint (New York NY: AMS Press, 1990), IV, 257-259.

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nation, even a sort of pornographic appeal, but they deflect Tragedy which depends on personality and (Aristotle insists) on individual fate partially self-caused. We have already noted the impact of that initial bloody spectacle of dead bodies and damaged limbs on the beach, a mock replay of the climax of an epic with a ‘happy’ ending. What we long thought would constitute the ‘happy ending’ of this novel, with a triumphant Kalasiris introducing Charikleia to her parents, simply doesn’t happen. Kalasiris has unexpectedly died and the young people have to go on without him. In Book 10 of Aithiopika the pleasure of ritual and procession is both countered and reinforced by the addition of spectacles of pain. A procession of miserable captives is led in for sacrifice, first being forced to walk over a hot gridiron, so that the chaste could be sacrificed to the higher gods. Our favorite characters are endangered; over the busy proceedings impends sacrificial homicide. This ritual killing would/will be performed in full view of the spectator/reader – without regard to the offstage prudency of Athenian drama. Proleptic sacrifice leads us to imagine Charikleia’s throat being cut. Actual dangers are summoned by the narrative. We are treated to the sight of pain inflicted. Torture is justified, in the ordeal of the hot gridiron testing virginity in full view of the fascinated audience. A chastity test is used by Achilles Tatius, but Heliodoros carries it to extremes. Pain – rather than tragic recognition – seems the order of the day. The intellect is commanded to observe sensuous suffering, to entertain an assault on the animal senses. This replays and varies an effect the author had already captured when Charikleia is condemned to be burned on the pyre for poisoning Kybele. And that poisoning – against all chaste rules of tragedy – was conducted front and centre of the narrative scene. We readers/spectators formerly watched Kybele stiffen and turn black. Introducing such material is attention-getting to a degree. It mimics the pleasures of the Roman Circus – Look, real blood! Somebody’s being burnt! The Circus is not the tragic stage – it is both more and less. Both Apuleius and Heliodoros write sharply and observantly regarding the Circus style of pleasures – including the torture and slaughter of animals. Heliodoros resembles the African author in noting the predatory Roman view of African animals (and persons); I wonder whether Heliodoros were not a Phoenician of North Africa rather than totally to be identifiable as Ἐμεσηνός. A striking echo of the scene of trial by fire in Meroë is found in The Foundling, a tale written by the 17 year-old Charlotte Brontë, as one of the ‘Angria’ series written with her brother Branwell. Edward Sydney in search of his parentage arrives in Angria: ‘It was a lovely day in the beginning of

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summer when his foot touched Africa’s coast’.12 Coming to Verdopolis, great capital city of Angria, Sydney is struck by its grandeur, by a street a quarter of a mile broad, and a ‘colossal building’ with a ‘vast dome’ (11). Brobdingnagian Meroë in Heliodoros’ Book 10 immediately proves to be in more ways than one a source for this Verdopolis. The new visitor is soon to be amazed and horrified at a street entertainment, led by a tall man (the villainous Frenchman called ‘Pigtail’) with a wagon accompanied by two dismal younger men dancing and followed by forced performers: These were followed by two musicians...and the procession closed by a strong of some twenty or thirty naked, lean miserable-looking children... The wagon immediately stopped; the black curtains flew open, and the horrid apparition of a living skeleton sprang from under them. It bore in its bony fingers a brazier full of burning coals which it placed on the ground. The leader...made a sign. Two of the enfants [sic] instantly leapt into the fiery brazier. The skeleton raised it to his head without any apparent effort, and commenced dancing to a tune which the musicians at this moment struck up. The enfants lay for an instant motionless, then, starting up, they continued to cut capers of half a yard high and fling themselves into all imaginative attitudes, until their extremities were entirely consumed. (13-14) This sequence – gigantic Verdopolis and the grimly exotic lethal ‘entertainment’ – seems a direct reflection of Aithiopika as translated in 1711: Hydaspes ordered the Fire to be brought: Upon which the Officers chusing from among the Multitude certain Boys and Girls under Age for Marriage (for by such only could the Fire be handled without Danger) conducted it from the Temple, and setting it in the midst, constrained the Captives to stand upon it one after another; of whom the greatest Part unable to bear the first touch, much less to continue long upon the Fire, the soles of their Feet blistered and shriveled up immediately; the Fire being a sort of Gridiron, or Grate, made with Bars of Gold, which had this Quality belonging to it; that it never fail’d of burning those whose Bodies were defiled by any Venereal Act... (10,8,1-2). ————— 12

Charlotte Bronte, The Foundling; a Tale of Our Own Times by Captain Tree (London: Hesperus Classics, 2004), 10.

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If in Heliodoros’ Africa there are young people whose feet are badly burned on a gridiron, heated with fire brought in by virgin children, let us carry that idea to excess with burning not just the feet but the legs of the hapless virgin children themselves. That this slyly sadistic aspect of Heliodoros’ novel, though seldom discussed by academic critics, attracts the guilty attention of readers is suggested by Brontë’s openly sadistic spectacle; Edward Sydney tries to interfere but is hooted down. Cruelty – in action and as a concept – has a considerable place in Heliodoros’ novel, itself a tale of conflict of values and the clash of civilizations. The King of Ethiopia is named Hydaspes, Greek name for an Indian river and the name of the most famous victory of Alexander in India. The values entering the novel at the end seem to be Indian values. The Gymnosophists (‘naked philosophers’) – who oppose ambition, bloodshed and cruelty – seem to be imported from tales regarding Alexander, including what we call the Alexander Romance. The good Sisimithres (the black man who was Charikleia’s original rescuer), like the peaceful Gymnosophists, repudiates all these spectacular cruelties. Once Hydaspes is illuminated by paternal affection at the revelation of his living daughter, he is rendered emotionally unwilling to sacrifice the girl; yet his duty still tells him to fulfill his word. At this point Sisimithres is able to tell him that the gods do not want this prepared sacrifice – and not only this particular one. Sisimithres seizes the moment to persuade the king to abolish human sacrifice in Ethiopia for all ages to come: εἰς τὸν ἑξῆς αἰώνα (10,39,3). Sisimithres’ dignified appeal gives us a different sense of the sun that smiles upon us, and the Lord of the Sun whom Hydaspes worships. We are to become enlightened. The spiritual morality invoked by Sisimithres implicitly questions and reduces the pleasures of Tragedy too – and the inequities of Tragedy, whereby the sufferings of small people are disregarded, merely serving as supports for attention to the Great Heroic Sufferer. In his deployment of parading spectacle and spectacular cruelty, Heliodoros has playfully challenged Tragedy at its own game of the serious. Tragedy, always present as an idea, and inserted in quotations, references and parallels, is constantly undermined. Elements apparently antagonistic to strictly virtuous and aesthetic Tragedy – spectacle and suffering (visible and gratuitous) – are, we come to suspect, also secret components of it. The Novel is substituted by Heliodoros for Epic and Tragedy, while at the same time swallowing and digesting New Comedy. The Novel provides a means towards true anagnorisis – moral and social recognition going beyond personal reunions or recoveries.

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Anachronism plays through the final sequence, as through the whole novel. The description of a powerful Ethiopia able to stand against a Persian empire in its heyday is anachronistic. Readers might feel superior to a society that still practices human sacrifice – but any Romano-Hellenistic superiority of the first readers of Book 10 could be checked or tempered by an acknowledgement that the Roman Circus provides plenty of human sacrifice. Sisimithres is the voice of the biggest anachronism – the anachronism of the future. The entire novel tends towards unsettling the present and the past and driving forwards into the unknown. It is a novel of Enlightenment par excellence; Aithiopika was not without reason an important text for the late Renaissance and the Enlightenment. We can imagine for personages in the novel a future that is different from the past. But that is not all. We can begin to see that we, too, by dint of imagination might attain a different future. Fiction offers a mode of living in the future, of going towards something different – and hence relies on an anachronism which has little to do with merely factual inconsistencies in relation to the past. To read a novel is to live anachronistically, participating in fictive events and living out of time in an imagined, even fantastic, past, while feeding it with our knowledge of the present and being encouraged actually to live in the future. Much of the substantial and stylistic comedy of Heliodoros’ novel arises from the subtle exhibition of the inadequacy of the terms ‘Tragedy’ and ‘Comedy’ to the ‘modern’ narrative – that is, to Heliodoros’ modern narrative. He persuades us to note conceptual lack of fit, and the inadequacy of stylistic habits or traditions for dealing with feelings, thoughts and situations. The disconcerting – and fascinating – mix of genres is part of the comic point. The strongest thematic plot line of the novel seems to depend on the recognition that the self, who you are, is not what you think. The main plot line certainly depends on a traditional and formal anagnorisis; Persinna’s written tainia accompanying the foundling baby will at last serve to reunite a family. Family reunion after trauma is a staple of many tragedies and almost all comedies. But Heliodoros seems more interested in the discovery that the self you seem in your own eyes to be at any moment isn’t necessarily what you are. Charikleia is simply not who she thought she was when she was in that procession in Delphi. The notion of yourself at any given point in time is always anachronistic to some extent; old material, old versions of the self will be intruded upon by new apprehensions and circumstances. The psyche is perpetually caught in anachronism, struggling, as it were, to transmogrify and keep up. N.J. Lowe has pointed out the way in which propriety is ob-

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served so that the heroine of this novel gets permission to marry from every possible guardian or kyros.13 This in itself is comic overkill. The truly funny thing, however, is that this kind of propriety has already come to seem superfluous or destructive, like human and animal sacrifice. The plea to do without human sacrifice has a larger resonance than just not sacrificing human beings on a physical altar. There is an amorphous, open-ended and indefinable ‘new’ struggling with various anachronistic modes, genres, and rules. Literary allusions and quotations function as all literary allusions inevitably do – as powerful anachronisms. Epic and tragic quotations may console characters or reader or author – but consolation arises from the ways in which the references do not quite fit. Consciousness has to arise and deal with this lack of fit. The psyche is involuntarily a mediator of the past, comprehending its urgent inappropriateness and pointed incompleteness. That entails a sense of the past’s connection and disconnection with the present, and knowledge that the present (unlike a finished play) always lacks closure and certainty. This is a story where nobody ends up quite where they started, in which ‘home’ is achieved only by moving away. Identities have to be discarded, rediscovered, reinterpreted. It works along an axis of prophecy – like the Old Testament as read by Christians, to be fulfilled in the New. Or like the Aeneid – we are entertained and edified by seeing how prophecies work their purpose out. The prophetic plot sustains the reader in an idea of the future as a richer and more holy condition. We never exactly see it – we hear about what is to be. We may be content with a phoinikopter instead of actually catching a Phoenix. Day smiles on us and at us as we read.

Bibliography Lowe, N.J. 2000. The Classical Plot and the Invention of Western Narrative, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zunshine, L. 2006. Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel, Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2006.

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Lowe 2000, 257-258.

Mythological Paradigms in the Greek Novels1 F RANÇOISE L ÉTOUBLON University of Grenoble

As a specialist in Homer, I have been interested in the textual links of the Greek novels, particularly with Greek myths from the archaic period to the Hellenistic and Roman times. The important book published in 2004 by Edmund Cueva on The Myths of Fiction: Studies in the Canonical Greek Novels, far from exhausting the matter, renewed our interest in this field. The main idea in my paper derives from Malcolm Willcock’s seminal articles on mythological paradigms in Homer (Willcock 1964; 1977). Reading the Greek novels, I felt they might show parallels with the argumentative use of myth as a paradigm in the Homeric cases of Meleager and Niobe, but this impression remained confused until a more precise research could begin. The clearer instances take place in Daphnis and Chloe, with interesting parallels in Leucippe and Cleitophon.

Myth and Paradigm in Daphnis and Chloe Each of the first three books of Daphnis and Chloe contains an example of such a passage.2 As we will see, they are composed in a similar way, so that it could be called a ‘formulaic style’ in the Homeric manner:3 an oral narrative concerning a young maiden is told to Chloe by Daphnis – in one case ————— 1

2

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I would like to thank C. Eades and J. Hallett for their help, Stephen Rojcewicz for his careful revision of my English, and the organizers of RICAN 5 for their invitation. I am grateful for the many comments made by the audience in Rethymnon. I am responsible for any remaining errors. On the series of ‘included narratives’, see Hunter 1983, 52-57; Morgan 2004, 171-172, 195-197; Bowie 2009. Wouters 1994 analyzed the prooemion and the three mythological tales in the light of critical analysis, with an interesting reference to MacQueen 1985, 1990. See the introduction by Pattoni 2005, 104, 112-116. The Construction of the Real and the Ideal in the Ancient Novel, 127–145

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the tale is told by another character, whereas Daphnis and Chloe both mime the adventure they listen to. The young girl is in each case pursued by Pan, whose advances she rejects; these maidens are actually reluctant to respond to any kind of love, and they prefer to disappear or to lose their human nature in a metamorphosis into an animal or a plant.4 The constant presence of the apostrophe in the vocative (παρθένος, παρθένε, in the first case, ὦ κόρη in the third one) and the high frequency of elements of comparison to Chloe (οὕτω καλὴ) indicate the status of paradigms: they are given as models for the young girl, who must learn a lesson through them. The first example concerns a bird, φάττα as a common name (‘woodpigeon’); under this same name, Φάττα existed first as a nymph as well as a young shepherd and musician. This example also entails, in a very allusive manner, an inserted tale within a tale concerning a tree, who was herself once a young nymph called Pitys (the very name of the pinetree in Greek). Pitys rejected Pan’s erotic impulses and was metamorphosed into the pine. We read explicitly that Phatta, crowned with pine branches,5 was singing of Pan and Pitys.6 So the story of Daphnis and Chloe contains tales of several Nymphs who were the victims of the same dangerous god, and if we admit that the first instance of the device – Pitys behind and before Phatta – is a model for the others, those tales seem to include many similar stories, as if the fate of young girls eternally recurs with the terrible danger of being raped by this quasi-animal god. All these girls can escape, but at the price of becoming part of the actual surroundings of Lesbos (the location for the story of Daphnis and Chloe). These maidens become: singing birds, trees that lightly move with the wind and offer their green leaves for crowning the hair of the maids, a musical instrument, and the phenomenon of the echo. The case of Phatta and Pitys shows a tale within a tale, with a strong effect of mirroring the larger story we are reading; it recalls some of the devices of composition used in the Odyssey, and attested in some of the Platonic dialogues.7 The tale begins because the bird is heard singing and this song is so charming that Chloe wants to learn about it: the didactic role of the explanation is stressed in advance, before the narrator quotes Daphnis’ ————— 4 5

6 7

A common feature in most of the Ovidian metamorphoses. Chloe is herself crowned with pine branches in 1,23,3: commemorating Pitys’ story, it could be a symbol of virginity. In the end of the Novel, Pan will live facing a pine-tree (4,39,2 τῷ Πανὶ δὲ ἔδοσαν ἀντὶ τῆς πίτυος οἰκεῖν...). On the importance of Pitys, see Morgan 2004, 172. See Létoublon 1983.

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words: 1,27 ‘a wood pigeon pleased them by singing a pastoral song from the wood. When Chloe wanted to know what its song meant, Daphnis taught her, telling her a story that had often been told.’8 The first words uttered in Daphnis’ discourse show the emphasis put on the comparison between Chloe and the former nymph: both are parthenoi, both are beautiful and they similarly care for cattle. Note that as in the frame narrative of Daphnis and Chloe, Phatta’s cattle are supposed to appreciate her songs, so that the cows do not need to be pushed or prodded with a goad: ‘She was a beautiful singer too, and her cows enjoyed her singing.’ Then comes the mention of the subject of her song, Pan and Pitys, with the phrase cited above, ‘sitting under a pine and garlanded with pine, she sang the story of Pan and Pitys, and the cows stayed close to her voice.’ Phatta’s story is actually linked neither to Pan nor to love, but to a competition with a boy who was both a shepherd and singer like her: they entered into rivalry, and his voice drew eight of her cows to his own cattle.9 Desperate by her defeat and loss, Phatta asked the gods to be metamorphosed into a bird (‘the girl was distressed at the loss of her herd and at her defeat as a singer, and prayed to the gods to turn her into a bird before she arrived home’), and they fulfilled her prayer. We suggest that the content of the tale told by Phatta might be almost subliminally quite as important as the nice and sweet competition tale told by Daphnis. The second occurrence of a myth told inside the narrative, in book 2, is more developed and amplified by the addition of a mimetic dance. It is first narrated by Lamon, Daphnis’ adoptive father; then it is played on the syrinx while Daphnis and Chloe dance and mime the story being sung.10 It concerns a nymph called Syrinx and the same god Pan who tried to rape Pitys in Phatta’s tale; it is an aetiological tale for the invention of the musical instrument, which is essential for the young lovers throughout the tale (2,34-37). Let us note in the first line11 παρθένος καλὴ and ᾖδεν as a kind of echo of the former passage; but the continuation τὴν φωνὴν μουσική shows that Syrinx, when she was a young and beautiful girl, was already related to the ————— 8 9

10

11

All translations are from Reardon’s Collected Ancient Greek Novels (1989). Therefore it reminds of several mythological tales told in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, like Athena and Arachne, Apollo and Marsyas. Antoninus Liberalis tells an interesting version of Aedon and her sister Chelidon, where Aedon enters a competition in technical work with her husband Polytechnos. See also Athena and Pallas in Apollodorus. In the wake of my former study (n. 7), this reduplication could be one of the devices of a reflective text, like tale in the tale in the case of Phatta singing Pitys. 2,34,1 Αὕτη ἡ σῦριγξ τὸ ὄργανον οὐκ ἦν ὄργανον ἀλλὰ παρθένος καλὴ καὶ τὴν φωνὴν μουσική·αἶγας ἔνεμεν, Νύμφαις συνέπαιζεν, ᾖδεν οἷον νῦν.

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Muses, more than simply gifted in singing; this gift for music drew Pan to her, and he made her an erotic proposition. She just laughed at this proposal (‘But she laughed at his love and said that she’d never accept as a lover a creature who wasn’t completely goat or completely man’) with a pun on his half-animal nature that must have been very hurtful for him. He tried to rape her, so she ran away (‘Pan started to chase her, intending to use violence’) and hid herself in the bulrushes, disappearing into a marsh. Pan, disappointed in his erotic hopes – as it seems to happen constantly: we actually do not know of many successes in his enterprises in Greek literature... – cut the bulrushes in his anger, but did not find her, and he invented the instrument to play music with them. The end of 2,34 is then devoted to the technical character of the syrinx, with its unequal pipes, that symbolize their unequal relation.12 The beginning of 2,35 is also striking because of the use of the literary lexical means. ‘Lamon had just finished his storytelling (τοῦ μυθολογήματος, actually a hapax in the Greek novels),13 and Philetas was praising him for telling a story sweeter than any song (ὡς εἰπόντα μῦθον ᾠδῆς γλυκύτερον)’. The word μυθολόγημα well shows that the author was aware of the significance of this mythological narrative: as said above, the reflective dimension is essential. Philetas’ congratulations on Lamon’s narrative quality go on in this vein, and show a kind of competition between telling a story and singing that reminds us of the prologue and its competition between the painting seen in a cave of the Nymphs and the desire to tell a similar story.14 The story told by Lamon finds a kind of echo in the text, through Philetas’ playing the syrinx brought by Tityros. It is important that this syrinx seems to be the very instrument invented by Pan in the former paragraph: ‘You could have imagined it was the very instrument that Pan first put together.’ We meet here with one of the author’s remarks on the similarity between the ‘real’ world pointed to in the frame of the novel, the world ————— 12

13

14

Gill’s translation, in Reardon (ed.) 1989, does not take into account this important detail, as if he had a different text. In the parallel story told in Achilles Tatius, the inequality of the pipes receives still more emphasis, but no comparison to Pan’s relation with the nymph is expressed. It may thus be asked whether it comes from Longus’ own poetic invention. The TLG gives about 50 instances of the word, the half of them in Byzantine Greek authors. On the three tales, see Bowie 2009, particularly for this passage p.123. On the second myth of the series see Morgan 2004, 195-197. See later the remark on the birth of the socalled paragone because of a phrase recalling Simonides’ aphorism.

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Daphnis and Chloe are living in, and the other world of the tales told as mythoi. Is it possible that Philetas inherited Pan’s very syrinx? Anyhow, Philetas’ music seems to please the audience as far as it imitates the sounds of life: ‘he played music that fitted a herd of cows, music that suited a herd of goats, music that flocks of sheep would love.’ Furthermore, for a third time, Daphnis and Chloe begin to dance, miming the story heard, imitating Pan and Syrinx: 2,37 ‘Daphnis took the part of Pan, and Chloe the part of Syrinx. He begged and tried to talk her round; she smiled indifferently. He gave chase, running on tiptoe to give the impression of having hooves; she acted as if she were tired of running away.’ This passage emphasizes mimetic pleasure, and suggests that dancing the feelings of Pan and Syrinx, along with music-playing, is the acme of the whole episode. The length of this three-fold passage heightens its importance in the whole story. As we met instances of mythological paradigm in book one and two, we may anticipate another such narrative in book 3, the story about the nymph Echo and Pan, in 3,23.15 Though the whole passage is shorter than Syrinx’s myth, the introduction of the myth is more developed than in the former instances, with an allusion to other Nymphs; we still meet the apostrophic vocative (kore):16 ‘My dear girl, there is a great family of Nymphs: there are Nymphs of the Ash, Nymphs of the Oak, and Nymphs of the Meadow. All of them are beautiful, and all of them are sweet singers. One of them had a daughter called Echo, who was mortal because she had a mortal father, but was beautiful because she had a beautiful mother.’ This third item recalls the first one, though the comparison with Chloe’s beauty is not explicit there – we may think it goes without saying since it has been said initially about Phatta. Anyway, Echo is also καλή, and as the daughter of a Nymph playing with the Muses, she has the same relation to music as Syrinx (‘She was brought up by the Nymphs, and taught by the Muses to play the pipes, the flute, the lyre and the cithara, and to sing songs of every kind. When she grew up and flowered into a lovely girl, she danced with the Nymphs and sang with the Muses’); the musical instruments mentioned are lyra and kithara, usually linked in Greek culture to high genres, particularly epos. But the verbs συρίζειν and αὐλεῖν refer thereafter to both kinds of flute, the aulos and syrinx, more common in bucolic poetry, as can ————— 15 16

And it could be asked why there is none in book 4. On the repetitions in Daphnis and Chloe as a device that could come from Homer, see Pattoni 2005, 104, 112-116, quoted above.

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be seen in Theocritus’ poetry.17 Does the use of συρίζειν suppose that the syrinx already exists as a musical instrument, and therefore that the myth told in book 2 occurred before this one in book 3, in a kind of relative chronology of mythology? Thereafter in this musical context comes crucial information: this nymph devoted herself to virginity, she absolutely avoided meeting males (ἄρρενας δὲ ἔφευγε πάντας ... ‘But she shunned all males both human and divine, loving her virginity’). In the former instances, the character of Pan was not developed, it is more stressed here that he cannot stand this kind of despising: since he becomes mad with this indifference, he strikes at her by making her cattle mad, which reminds us of Phatta’s losing eight of her cows, and, of course, of the problems met by both Daphnis and Chloe with their own cattle: ‘Pan was angry with the girl, because of his jealousy of her musical artistry and because of his failure to enjoy her beauty’. The goddess Gê (Earth), who likes hearing her voice, makes her disappear entirely with her cattle, preserving her gift for imitating sounds heard, be it a voice, an instrument or an animal, with a pun on the word μέλη meaning both ‘songs’ and ‘limbs’: ‘As a favor to the Nymphs, Earth hid all her limbs and preserved their music; and by the will of the Muses, Earth has the power of speech and copies everything, just as the girl did then – gods, men, instruments, beasts.’ So echo, now a common name for a natural phenomenon, even imitates Pan playing the panpipe, so that his own erotic desire grows, and he still pursues her: ‘and when he hears it, he jumps up and chases over the mountains. All he wants now is to know who his invisible pupil is.’ If we compare the version of the Echo-story told by Longus to that told by Ovid in the Metamorphoses we note several important differences:18 the character of Echo is not in love here, but she runs away from Pan’s dangerous love, actually from every male person: it seems that Pan is only the worst of them. No Narcissus here. Instead of being transformed into stone cliffs that produce the phenomenon of echo, Longus’ Echo merely disappears in the air or rather in the earth, which reminds us of Syrinx’s disappearing in the marsh. Pan’s disappointment may be interpreted as a symbol of the vanity of any physical desire, which cannot ever find full satisfaction. The common feature in these three myths where Pan plays a role seems to be that the god, in his disappointed or deceived longing for a young girl, brings about a metamorphosis: Pitys into the pine-tree, Syrinx into the musical instrument, and Echo into the natural phenomenon. This feature also appears, ————— 17 18

Létoublon 2005. See Gély-Ghédira 2000.

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in a quasi-systematic manner, in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which could be explained by a general attitude of Greek myths towards the natural environment, and by Ovid’s borrowing from lost Greek models, as Cameron (2004) demonstrated.

Eros, a Myth in a Reflective Tale Apart from those characteristic paradigmatic myths, a long narrative with an officially didactic aim is told in book 2 by the old Philetas to both Daphnis and Chloe.19 The character himself is very interesting: his name might mean something like ‘Love’, but above all, he recalls a famous Greek bucolic poet, who was probably the protos heuretes of the genre, prior to Theocritus.20 Since the god Eros plays an important role in the frame narrative, the inserted tale takes on a crucial reflective value. As in the short Hellenistic epigrams, Eros’ effects are first described without a revelation of his identity, until Philetas explains that he saw his attributes (bow and arrows, wings) and eventually calls him by his name, with a very characteristic (and poetic) anaphora (2,6 f.). I still want to stress the paradigmatic value of the tale: Philetas was in love with Amaryllis (as Daphnis is now with Chloe), he endured the same bodily sensations of cold and heat, resembling symptoms of illness, as Daphnis and Chloe are now enduring, after Sappho’s well-known model: ‘I was young myself once and fell in love with Amaryllis. I forgot to eat; I didn’t drink; I couldn’t sleep. My soul was in pain; my heart pounded; my body was frozen (Ἤλγουν τὴν ψυχήν, τὸ σῶμα ἐψυχόμην·). I cried out as though being his; I was silent as though dying; I plunged in rivers as though on fire (ὡς παιόμενος, … ὡς νεκρούμενος, … ὡς καόμενος).’ And in a very interesting manner, Philetas even tells us that he then called on Pan for help, because he is a male, in a different situation from the Nymphs of the three other myths; but notice that in the novel, Pan plays a protective role as well for Chloe: it may be supposed that the musical activities he practised and even invented through his mythical misadventures in ————— 19

20

On this whole passage, and its didactic aspect, see Morgan 2004, 179-185. See first Philetas’ words: Ἥκω δὲ ὑμῖν ὅσα εἶδον μηνύσων, ... ‘I’ve come to tell you what I’ve seen and to pass on to you what I’ve heard’. See also later on the pupils’ reaction: ἐπυνθάνοντο τί ἐστί ποτε ὁ Ἔρως .... The theme of teaching and learning recurs in Daphnis and Chloe: see about Lycaenion 3,17,2; 3,19,1. On Philetas’ character as a feature of intertextuality, see Morgan 2008, 219. See another view in Di Marco 2000.

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the past, have in some way appeased his libido. The sentence anyway contains a clear allusion to Pan’s love for Pitys, confirming our analysis of the myth of Pitys within the mythological tale about Phatta in book 1: ‘I called on Pan to help me, since he himself had been in love with Pitys. I praised Echo for calling after me the name of Amaryllis.’ In other words, he came to ‘sublimate’ his erotic impulses. The most important mythical figure in Philetas’ discourse is of course Eros, particularly through his description in the garden in the typical ideal manner analyzed by Curtius. The young boy is described only from outside, with comparisons (‘His skin was white like milk, and his hair was reddishgold like fire, ... sometimes hiding under the poppies like a young partridge’), with anaphorical adjectives (γυμνὸς ἦν, μόνος ἦν ‘naked, alone’) and with action verbs (ἔπαιζεν ... ὑπέφευγε, ἔβαλλέ με τοῖς μύρτοις ... ἔθελγε). That he is an enigma is repeated by Philetas himself (‘but this was something tricky and impossible to catch’, ἀλλὰ τοῦτο ποικίλον τι χρῆμα ἦν καὶ ἀθήρατον), and by Eros as an answer to the question asked by Philetas: ‘And I’m hard to catch, even for a hawk and an eagle and any bird faster than these. I’m not really a boy, even though I look like one, but I’m even older than Cronus and the whole of time itself. I’ve known you when, as a lusty young man, you used to graze your large herd of cows on that mountain there, and I’ve been with you while you played the pipes beside those oaks when you were in love with Amaryllis. But you didn’t see me, although I was standing very close to the girl.’) The boy does not tell Philetas his name, but reveals that he is now the shepherd (ποιμαίνω) of Daphnis and Chloe as he was his once, when he was a youth in love with Amaryllis21 (‘Well, I gave her to you, and now you have sons who are good cowherds and farmers. At the moment, Daphnis and Chloe are the flock I am looking after.’). Thereafter Philetas tells only how the young boy fled away with his bow and arrows: 2,6 ‘He said this and then hopped like a young nightingale into the myrtles ... I saw wings growing from his shoulders and a little bow between his wings, and then I saw neither them nor him.’ At the very end of his narrative, Philetas unveils the name of this enigmatic (at least for the young pupils he is teaching) paidion, and there with a repetition and a poetical rhythm very typical of Longus’ style: Ἔρωτι, ὦ ————— 21

The girl loved by Philetas was called Amaryllis, which reminds us of the best known of Virgil’s Eclogues. Daphnis and Chloe also features a Tityros, who faces us with the same issue. Some critics thought that Longus read Virgil, but the coincidence might be explained by a same Greek source for both of them. Theocritus’ remaining poetry provides several parallels for both authors. See Morgan 2004, 183.

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παῖδες, κατέσπεισθε καὶ Ἔρωτι ὑμῶν μέλει. ‘you are consecrated to Love, my children, and Love is looking after you.’ Philetas then goes on, stressing more and more Eros’ powers, that he deems stronger than Zeus’ himself: ‘Love is a god, my children; he is young, beautiful, and winged; ... Zeus has not so much power as he has: he rules the elements; he rules the stars; he rules his fellow gods....’ This specific claim made by Philetas, though rather common in Greek literature, seems to me interesting for explaining the importance of Eros in the novel, in itself a kind of landmark for the whole genre.22 Though the novel is not recognized as such in critical works until the European Renaissance, the authors themselves seem to point to their work with the plural neuter ἐρωτικά or the periphrases such as Ἔρωτος πάθη ‘Love stories’.23 Philetas’ narrative thus appears a very exemplar for the whole novel genre, at least for the sub-genre characterized as ‘ideal’. Furthermore, this claim meets with a parallel in the beginning of Leucippe and Clitophon: in the famous ekphrasis of a painting showing the Rape of Europa seen in the shrine of Astarte in Sidon, 1,1,2: ‘Though the entire painting was worthy of admiration, I devoted my special attention to this figure of Eros leading the bull, for I have long been fascinated by passion, and I exclaimed, ‘to think that a child can have such power over heaven and earth and sea.’’ This coincidence leads us to examine Leucippe and Clitophon for myths used as paradigms.

Parallels and Differences in Leucippe and Clitophon Book 1 of Leucippe and Clitophon contains an interesting parallel to the mythological paradigms in Daphnis and Chloe: the same kind of oral narrative, the same claim to teaching, and particularly the young girl, here Leucippe; instead of putting on the stage one and the same narrator, be it Daphnis for Chloe or Philetas for both of the characters, the brilliant Achilles Tatius distributes the role of narrating several myths following each other to two boys in dialogue, with a play on the roles of the addressee: in 1,16-18 both Satyros and Clitophon speak as if they would address each other, while ————— 22 23

On the genre of the novel, see Selden 1994, Goldhill 2008 with earlier references. See Chariton 1,1, πάθος ἐρωτικόν, cf. 3,2,6, Longus 1,1,2 ἐρωτικά, 1,1,6 τύχην ἐρωτικήν; Heliodorus 2,25,2 πάθος ἐρωτικόν, 6,5,4 τὰ ἐρώτων πάθη, 7,15,3 εἰς ἐρωτικόν πάθος; Achilles Tatius 1,2,3 μύθων ἐρωτικῶν.

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both of them actually speak for Leucippe,24 who is wandering in the paradeisos with Clio: he takes first the opportunity (λαβὼν τὴν εὐκαιρίαν) of the peacock parade for a development of the theme of a show staged by the male for enticing the female. Thus the character appears as organizing the play, like a theater director,25who directs the girl’s eyes towards a stage so that he can better succeed in his own aim. He portrays the peacock as an actor in a theater (‘the peacock, who at this very moment ... spread his beautiful tail and showed the amphitheater of his feathers’), and turns the attention towards the bird’s tactic (‘He does this by design’, I said, ‘for he is a lover. He uses his gorgeous resources thus when he wishes to arouse his mistress.’). Clitophon’s own strategy is modeled on this love parade, but the girl is too young and naïve for such a distant reflection. Satyros, Clitophon’s servant and accomplice, begins to speak with the same argumentative target (‘understanding the reason for my speech’), and the dialogue develops four examples that refer to the biological and mythological tradition: the Magnetic stone, the palm tree called phoenix, the ‘seacrossing’ (διαπόντιος) myth of the male river Alpheios and the female spring Arethusa, and the viper and eel. We shall come back later to the second example; let us now stress the argumentative intention of Satyros’ narrative, in continuity of Clitophon’s one. Clitophon’s words were intended to turn Leucippe towards love, or at least to prepare (παρασκευάσαι) her to look at him and admire him like the female bird who looks at the peacock’s parade. In a similar spirit, the examples show how strong love is: Satyros’ question puts Eros in the foreground of the discussion, so that the stone, the palm tree, the river and spring, and the reptiles all appear as instances of love in the domains of nature: the peacock, above: ἐρωτικός, the stones: 1,17,2 ἐρᾷ, ἐρωτικὸν ... πῦρ, ἐρώσης λίθου, ἐρωμένου σιδήρου, the palm tree: 1,17,3 ἐρᾶν, τὸν ἔρωτα, ἐρᾶν, ὁ ἐραστής, τὸ ἐρώμενον, τῆς ἐρωμένης συμπλοκῇ, Alpheios and Arethusa: 1,18,1 ἐρωμένην, 2 ἐραστήν, ἐρωμένην,

————— 24

25

1,16 Clitophon and Satyros here play roles, see Létoublon 1993, 154-155 on other ‘ritual idioms’ of the lovers. On the use of theater terminology in the novel, the study published by Walden in 1894 on Heliodorus may be extended: see Crismani 1997.

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the reptiles: 1,18,3 ἄλλο ἔρωτος μυστήριον, ἐραστής, ἐρωμένη,26 ἐραστής, ἐραστήν. The love strategy is very deliberate, since after the end of this discourse, Clitophon, looking at Leucippe’s face, sees her as a beautiful flower meadow, and complacently describes it, but comes with Satyros to the progress of his affair and the success of the dialogue they held (1,19,3), accurately using the word mythologia.27 The strategy continues at the beginning of book 2, when Clitophon and Satyros both enter the girl’s room; Clitophon cannot help looking at her, even for a while (2,1,1). The myth of the origin of the wine (2,2) has a more decorative function, which might help us to understand the use of myths as a paradigm: the characters tell them with a demonstrative intention, they want the myth to provoke an echo in life. Myths also appear in paintings, at first sight with a decorative function, in the wake of the ekphrastic mania in the time of ‘Second Sophistic’:28 –

Europa and Zeus as a bull, at the opening of the novel (1,1,2-13, ending with the detail of the description of Eros as a winged child driving the bull, just before the character exclaims as quoted above: ‘And Eros was leading the bull: Eros, a tiny child, with wings spread, quiver dangling, torch in hand. He had turned to look at Zeus with a sly smile, as if in mockery that he had, for Love’s sake, become a bull’). – Andromeda and Perseus in parallel and visual symmetry with Prometheus and Heracles. – Tereus, the lark and the nightingale, 5,3,4-8 and 5,5,2-9.29 This instance may appear as a paradigm because it begins as a confirmation of the wonder just seen by the characters, raising the question of how the experience is to be understood: ‘O Zeus, what are you trying to tell us by this sign? If you have really given us this bird as a warning, please send your message again in a still more perspicuous sign. Then, turning around, I happened to face an artist’s studio and saw a painting on display whose allusions could but confirm the ominous bird. It showed the rape of Philomela, Tereus attacking her, her tongue cut out. The plot of the drama ————— 26

27

28 29

Note the figure of chiasmus in this sentence: ὁ μὲν ἠπειρώτης ἐραστής, ἡ δὲ ἐρωμένην νησιῶτις. The rhetoric seems to join together both of the lovers, whereas their origins (continent/island) oppose them. 1,19,4 Ἑαυτοὺς μὲν ἐπῃνοῦμεν ἐγώ τε καὶ ὁ Σάτυρος, ἐγὼ μὲν ἐμαυτὸν τῆς μυθολογίας, ὁ δὲ ὅτι μοι τὰς ἀφορμὰς παρέσχεν. See Bartsch 1989 on ekphraseis in Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus, and now Webb 2009. On this peculiar ekphrasis, see the fine analysis by Dubel 2006.

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was there in every detail – the robe, Tereus, the banquet. A maid was holding the unfolded robe; Philomela stood beside her and pointed to the pictures she had woven’). As if the narrator was not sure that the reader understood the meaning of the myth, the question of the interpretation is asked twice, the first time by Clitophon who directly addresses the supreme god, and receives as an answer the sight of the painting exhibited in a painter’s workshop; the second time by Leucippe30 for the sake of a general taste of women for listening to fables (5,5,1 φιλόμυθον). So the text says twice that a meaning is required; this requirement could be extended to other cases, and maybe to the whole of Greek myths, and to the origin of mythology in the fundamental issues addressed by mankind. If the narrative asks questions through telling and showing a myth, such as the story of the Thracian Tereus and the daughters of Pandion (or Pandareos, if we follow the Odyssey),31 the narrative does not answer the questions it raises. So, if we follow Achilles Tatius on this trail, we could conclude that the myths do not explain anything, but instead pose questions, they help men in their thinking. We might take in earnest the use by Menelaus of the word σύμβολον:32 an event or an object which refers to another event or object, the real world pointing to another world. Myths are crucial in the search for meaning, they do not necessarily spell out that meaning. The second commentary on the painting by Clitophon is in my opinion the most interesting, as it stresses the role of Philomela’s tongue, giving in Greek an equivalent to the Ovidian version of this story: 5,5,4 τὴν γλῶτταν τῆς Φιλομήλας φοβεῖται, καὶ ἕδνα τῶν γάμων αὐτῇ δίδωσι μηκέτι λαλεῖν ... ἡ γὰρ Φιλομήλας τέχνη σιωπῶσαν εὕρηκε φωνήν. ὑφαίνει γὰρ πέπλον ἄγγελον ... καὶ μιμεῖται τὴν γλῶτταν ἡ χείρ, καὶ Πρόκνης τοῖς ὀφθαλμοῖς τὰ τῶν ὤτων μηνύει καὶ πρὸς αὐτὴν ἃ πέπονθε τῇ κερκίδι λαλεῖ. ‘He feared Philomela’s tongue, and his wedding present to her was the gift of silence. He snipped off the blossom of her voice. But even this was ineffectual, for Philomela’s skill discovered voiceless speech. She wove, you see, a robe as messenger, and she threaded the drama into her embroidery, hand imitating ————— 30

31 32

Asking for meaning of the myth as expressed by Leucippe, 5,5,1: ‘Τί βούλεται τῆς εἰκόνος ὁ μῦθος; …’ ‘What does this picture mean? In the story, who are these birds, and the women, and that awful man?’ On the Pandareids, see Levaniouk 2008. 5,4,1 (Menelaus is speaking): ‘You see these two unfavorable signs: the bird’s aggressive wing and the threat implicit in this painting. Interpreters of signs tell us to consider the story of any painting we chance to see as we set out on business.’

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tongue; she conveyed the ear’s message to Prokne’s eyes, telling her what she suffered by means of her shuttle.’ The text probably recalls the famous aphorism on painting and poetry by Simonides,33 and plays on the paradox of speaking vs. silence; τῇ κερκίδι λαλεῖ ‘she talks with her shuttle’ also recalls the fragment of Sophocles’ Tereus known through the quotation in Aristotle’s Poetics:34 it appears as a passage very deeply charged with bookishness and literary knowledge. Of course, Achilles Tatius did not intend to show how learned his hero was. He rather wants the learned reader to recognize those signs and have a kind of smile of connivance.35 Moreover, the repetition of questions on the sense of the myth and its image as well as the stylistic emphasis all point to the importance of this bloody story. It is not a paradigm, but this myth announces deeds to come: during the following night, Leucippe is raped by brigands and at this sight, Clitophon throws himself on the brigands’ swords, receives an injury, and despite all his body injuries, wants to be on the boat with which the strategos has been pursuing them.36 Moreover, two other events in the novel show myths playing a first-place role, since they act as a proof of virginity or faith, through an ordeal, as the account of their aetiology explains: first the myth of Syrinx, parallel to the story mimetically danced in Daphnis and Chloe, receives the charge of proving Leucippe’s virginity, 8,6,3-10. The mythological narrative takes place in Artemis’ shrine, in a sacred wood behind the temple, near the cave where the test will happen. The narrative is placed in the mouth of a priest, thus somehow sanctified. He first explains the shape of the syrinx hanging in the cave, with its unequal bulrushes that produce harmony: 8,6,5 ‘The reason (αἴτιον) for such a ranking is the distribution of notes (ἡ τῆς ἁρμονίας διανομή)’.37 The parallel in Daphnis and Chloe is less technical, but explains this shape as a symbol of the unequal relation between Pan and the Nymph Syrinx. But the rush and pursuit of the girl by the amorous god and his eventual disappointment feature at the core of the myth: 8,6,7 ‘Pan pursued her in a race for love (δρόμον ἐρωτικόν); a thick wood received her in her flight. At that ————— 33

34

35

36

37

Plut. De gloria Athen., Mor. 88.347, the main ancient source whence the so-called paragone derived. See also id. Quomodo adolescens poetas audire debeat, Mor. 68.18. Κερκίδος φωνή, Arist., Poet. 16,1454b 36. Garnaud 1991 recognized this quotation (n. ad loc.), but he apparently did not see the allusion to Simonides’ aphorism. See also the images of the Erinyes cooking (5,5,8) and the rhetorical allure of the sentence, 5,5,7. Thus he will see from his bed on the boat the girl’s head cut, the second apparent death episode of his beloved. Numerous technical details that I leave aside here, are given in the text.

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moment, Pan, who was right on her heels, reached out his hand to seize her. He thought he had caught her (ᾤετο τεθηρακέναι) and was holding her by the hair, but the tresses in his hand were reeds (καλάμων δὲ κόμην εἶχεν ἡ χείρ). They say that she sank into the earth and that the earth produced reeds in her place. Pan cut the reeds angrily for concealing the object of his desire’. As in both cases of Syrinx and Echo in Longus’ narratives, the disappearance of the nymph expressed here by the perfect infinitive λελύσθαι (8,6,9 ‘he thought the maid had been changed into the reeds and wept that he had cut her, supposing his beloved had been slashed’), causes the metamorphosis of the bulrushes into the musical instrument, as a substitute for a recall of the girl to life: the image of dismembering and reconstructing the body is very striking here (8,6,10 ‘Gathering up the severed bits of reed as if they were the limbs of her body and joining them together as a single body, he held in his hands the cut ends of the reeds and kissed them as if they were the maiden’s wounds. He groaned as he put his lover’s lips to them and so breathed into the flutes from above as he kissed them’); the music produced by flowing in the bulrushes becomes the metaphor of her respiration (‘His breath flowed through the narrow reed passages and made flutelike sounds: the syrinx had a voice’). The whole process indicates a replacement of the girl by the instrument, which Pan eventually kisses as if it were the girl’s face and mouth. This very instrument, exhibited in the cave as an anathema to Artemis, is supposed to sound by itself, as if Pan himself was playing, if the girl entering is a virgin, whereas if the woman had lied about her virginity, what would occur would be silence instead of melodious music. Thus the syrinx is a proof of virginity. Leucippe is sure of being pure: though she encountered pirates, brigands and powerful men who were in eager to have sex with her, she escaped all those dangers, and Clitophon did not have any actual opportunity for making love with her. The test of virginity mixes religion and right: the priest and the court cannot be distinguished. The second aetiology of a test as a proof of virtue is another cave, called ‘Styx’s water’ (8,12,1), presented as part of Clitophon’s narrative. It is intended to explain whether Melite’s claim of fidelity is true or not, and the narrator plays with the reader’s sense of anticipation, delaying the report of the test to the following day (8,11,4). This gives the opportunity for the aetiology: a young girl called Rhodopis took part in Artemis’ hunting (8,12,1) and swore that she would never ‘undergo Aphrodite’s violence’ (8,12,3). In the same place of Ephesos, the young Euthynicos was also eager for hunting

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and swore he would never ‘know Aphrodite’ (Ἀφροδίτην ... εἰδέναι): as is usual in the novels (see for instance the thread of Xenophon’s Ephesiaca and the character of Habrocomes), the goddess could not stand such abhorrence of love, and she sent her son Eros against Rhodopis. Rhodopis killed a doe, but in the same time received Eros’ arrow in her heart. Rhodopis and Euthynicos then saw each another, immediately fell in love and betrayed their oath in this very cave. Seeing Aphrodite laughing at this treachery, Artemis changed the girl into water in the very place where she lost her virginity, and this cave is ‘now’ a test for truth-telling or lying concerning virginity. Achilles Tatius is still playing with parallelisms: Rhodopis and Euthynicos both swore they would never fall in love, like Hippolytos in the most known Greek version of the devotion to Artemis, or like Callisto in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Rhodopis here recalls Anthia in the Ephesiaca. But the agon between Artemis and Aphrodite is made unequal since Artemis is alone, while Aphrodite has with her her son Eros, armed with a bow like Rhodopis. On behalf of his mother, Eros directs an arrow against the girl whilst she aims her arrow towards an animal (a doe): both arrows touch the target, Rhodopis and Euthynicos make love in the cave, and Artemis changes the girl into the water of the spring; the text does not explain Euthynicos’ fate. The symmetry of those narratives produces the successive moves of the court to the places where Leucippe first, and then Melite, are proved innocent: 8,14, Leucippe in the cave produces the sweetest syrinx music ever heard, and Melite stays in the Styx water without any overflow. Of course, the reader knows that Melite’s truth is not the whole truth, and that Clitophon also did not tell the whole truth about their relationship: he had slept with her, but they had sex only after Thersandros’ return, whereas Melite’s oath written on the tablet hanging on her neck claimed that she did not make love with him before her husband’s return. These episodes serve as paradigms since both of the females involved show their characters to be modeled on the mythical parallel, but without its tragic ending. Like Syrinx, Leucippe escaped the dangerous desire of her would-be-rapists, but she did not disappear like her model. The use of casuistry makes the similarity between Rhodopis and Melite less convincing: Rhodopis, under Aphrodite’s and Eros’ influence, was unfaithful to her betrothed, and metamorphosed into water, but now has the task of proving faithfulness or falsehood. Melite’s swearing is faithful only as far as the temporal restriction is taken into account. The test by water is formalistic, and accepts the reservation.

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The parallels between Daphnis and Chloe on the one hand, and Leucippe and Clitophon on the other, are quite striking, particularly for the use of the myth of Syrinx. But though the use of myth is far more sophisticated in the second novel, the freshness of the first and its deep intricacy in the symbolic intention of showing the sexual violence by Pan’s character on a young maiden is meaningful. Let us come back to the presence in the text, between other narratives by Satyros and Clitophon, of the development on the Magnetic stone: in an article, I show that this metaphor for love attested in tragedy is developed in the Platonic theory of both love and of poetic inspiration (Létoublon 2012). Here it gives a Platonic and poetic tone to the whole exchange.38 Among the uses of myth in the Greek novels, as in Homeric poetry, we saw several instances of myth as a paradigm for the young inexperienced heroes: these stories of old times may help instruct the youths how to behave in the awful events they have to face. From the explicit use as paradigm in Daphnis and Chloe and the parallel, but more sophisticated, mythical stories in Leucippe and Clitophon, it may be inferred that the use as paradigm, although not always the case, is frequent. Though both novels appear very different from each other in many features, the similarities are striking. The similarities could come from the awareness in both that things and beings in nature are the imitation of something else, and result from a metamorphosis:39 thus a cave, a tree or a bird, is not simply a cave, tree or bird, but a nymph is there in mysterious way, and the whole world resonates with echoes of former living beings. The case of Echo could be taken as a symbol of this presence which makes nature ‘full of gods’ (Larson 2007). It is particularly striking in the description of gardens and caves, where art imitates nature, but nature itself seems an imitation. Once more, Achilles Tatius is especially sophisticated on this point.40 I left Chariton aside, because in Chaireas and Callirhoe the examples of mythological paradigms did not appear as clearly as those in both Longus and Achilles Tatius. But it may be asked why this use was not met in Heliodorus’ Aethiopica for all the subtlety of this peculiar novel. The answer ————— 38

39

40

The Platonic tone in Achilles may be due to a philosophical literacy that often appears in the novels, even in Xenophon of Ephesus, see Doulamis 2007, and more generally the whole of Morgan & Jones 2007. Platonic theories may have been transmitted through scholarship rather than a personal implication in philosophy, see for instance Alcinoos (Whittaker & Louis 1990). See the beginning of the tale of Syrinx quoted above: Αὕτη ἡ σῦριγξ τὸ ὄργανον οὐκ ἦν ὄργανον... See Zeitlin 1990 and 1994, and Winkler 1990. See also Alaux and Létoublon 2005.

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could be that this very subtlety surpasses the telling of myths, just as it does not need to use as many explicit metaphors as the other ideal novels. The metaphors of athleticism and of the magnetism of Love do underlie the text, but they do not need an explicit expression like those met in Chariton, Achilles Tatius or Longus (Létoublon 2007, 2008 and 2012). In the Aethiopica, the myth of Andromeda rescued by Perseus actually underlie the text, as the allusion to the painting in the royal bedroom of Persinna and Hydaspes in the linen band given by the queen with the child to Sisimithres, when deciphered by Calasiris, well attests. The painting comes to the fore in the dénouement, in book 10, when it is necessary for Charicleia to prove her ascendancy through her striking resemblance with Andromeda on the painting, and the black ring on the white skin of her arm.41 The resemblance between Charicleia and the Andromeda of the myth on the painting well implies a relation of modeling, but Heliodorus does not need an explicit narration for suggesting this very presence. Novels show how young characters imitate mythical models in their evolution from paides to teenagers and adults: the novel stages the rite de passage, as Dowden (1999), following Van Gennep, has shown. But Pan seems to transform himself too, moving from an erotic maniac to a peaceful protector: the association of Pan, the Nymphs and Eros as protecting gods for Daphnis and Chloe is striking, especially at the conclusion: 4,36,39 ἀμφοτέρων ἐμέλησε Πανὶ καὶ Νύμφας καὶ Ἔρωτι. Eros is called Daphnis’ and Chloe’s shepherd (poimen) in the garden of Philetas, but the whole Trinity constituted by Pan, Eros and the Nymphs may be so named. We have tried to show the importance of imitation, mimesis, in the link with Platonic ideas between the tale proper and the myths told in the tale within the tale. Achilles Tatius, with some allusions such as the Magnetic stone, confirms in a somehow pedantic way – pedantry is moderated by irony – the knowledge of philosophical literature. This magisterial achievement is found in the Aethiopica, where the myths need no narrative to be deeply present in the voyage of the heroes towards their country. The Platonic atmosphere is constantly present in the drawing of their souls to each other, symbolized by their radiant beauty, as a reflection of their souls on their faces and bodies. ————— 41

Létoublon 1992; 1993, 134-136. Since Achilles Tatius has a detailed ekphrasis of an Andromeda delivered by Perseus, symmetrical to a Prometheus and Herakles, the comparison is striking: Tatius complacently describes Andromeda’ pallor, her almost blue skin at the extremities indicating she is almost dying. Heliodorus, in contrast to this taste for ekphrasis, seems to avoid it mostly, or even to delete the most characteristic ekphrases, expected by the readers. He is nevertheless a kind of virtuoso in this genre, when he wants to, like the description of Charicleia’s ring (Létoublon 1992; 1993, 69).

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Bibliography Alaux, J., Létoublon, F. 2005. ‘La grotte et la source. Paysage naturel et artifice dans Daphnis et Chloé et Leucippé et Clitophon’, in: B. Pouderon (ed.), Lieux, décors et paysages de l’ancien roman des origines à Byzance, Lyon: Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée, 57-74. Bartsch, S. 1989. Decoding the Ancient Novel: The Reader and the Role of Description in Heliodorus and Achilles Tatius, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Bowie, E. 2009. ‘The Uses of Bookishness’, in: M. Paschalis, S. Panayotakis, G. Schmeling (eds.), Readers and Writers in the Ancient Novel, Ancient Narrative Supplementum 12, Groningen: Barkhuis & Groningen University Library, 115-126. Cameron, A. 2004. Greek Mythography in the Roman World, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. Crismani, D. 1997. Il teatro nel romanzo ellenistico d’amore e di avventure, Alessandria: Ed. dell’Orso. Cueva, E.P. 2004. The Myths of Fiction: Studies in the Canonical Greek Novels, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Curtius, E.R. 1990. European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, transl. by W.R. Trask, with a new afterword by P. Godman, 7th ed., Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Di Marco, L. 2000. ‘Fileta praeceptor amoris: Longo Sofista e la correzione del modello bucolico’, SCO 47, 9-35. Doulamis, K. 2007. ‘Stoic Echoes and Style in Xenophon of Ephesus’, in: Morgan, Jones (eds.), 151-175. Dowden, K. 1999. ‘Fluctuating Meanings: “Passage Rites” in Ritual, Myth, Odyssey, and the Greek Romance’, in: M.W. Padilla (ed.), Rites of Passage in Ancient Greece: Literature, Religion, Society, Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 221-243. Dubel, S. 2006. ‘L’hirondelle et l’épervier, le rossignol et la huppe (Achille Tatius, Leucippé et Clitophon V, 3-5): notes sur la difficulté d’établir un mythe’, in: V. Gély, J.-L. Haquette, A. Tomiche (eds.), Philomèle. Figures du rossignol dans la tradition littéraire et artistique, Clermont-Ferrand: Presses Universitaires Blaise Pascal, 37-52. Garnaud J.-P. 1991. Achille Tatius d’Alexandrie, Le roman de Leucippé et Clitophon, Paris: Les Belles Lettres. Gély-Ghedira, V. 2000. La Nostalgie du moi: Echo dans la littérature européenne, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Goldhill, S. 2008. ‘Genre’, in: Whitmarsh (ed.), 185-200. Hunter, R. 1983. A Study of Daphnis and Chloe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Larson, J. 2007. ‘A Land Full of Gods: Nature Deities in Greek Religion’, in: D. Ogden (ed.), A Companion to Greek Religion, Oxford: Blackwell, 57-70. Létoublon, F. 1983. ‘Le miroir et la boucle’, Poétique 40, 19-35. — 1992. ‘Un bracelet d’ébène sur son bras d’ivoire’, in: J.-M. Racault et al. (eds.), Métissages, Saint-Denis de la Réunion: Harmattan, 83-97. — 1993. Les lieux communs du roman: stéréotypes grecs d’aventure et d’amour, Mnemosyne Supplementa 123, Leiden: Brill. — 2005. ‘Le don de la musique’, in: A. Kolde, A. Lukinovich, A.-L. Rey (eds.), Κορυφαίῳ ἀνδρί. Mélanges offerts à André Hurst, Genève: Droz, 191-201. — 2007. ‘L’Amour athlète’, in: S. David, É. Geny (eds.), Troîka, parcours antiques. Mélanges offerts a Michel Woronoff 1, Besançon: Presses Universitaires de Franche-Comté, 331-340.

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— 2008. ‘Pirates des cœurs’, in: D. Auger, E. Wolff (eds.), Culture classique et christianisme. Mélanges offerts à Jean Bouffartigue, Paris: Picard, 293-300. 2012 La pierre magnétique de l’amour, in S. Laigneau-Fontaine, F. Poli (eds), Liber aureus. Mélanges Nicole Fick, Nancy, ADRA, 209-218. Levaniouk, O. 2008 ‘Penelope and the Pandareids’, Phoenix 62, special issue Penelope’s Revenge. Essays on Gender and Epic, 5-38. Morgan, J.R. 2004. Longus, Daphnis and Chloe, Warminster: Aris and Phillips. Morgan, J.R., Harrison, S. 2008. ‘Intertextuality’, in: Whitmarsh (ed.), 218-236 (Morgan, ‘1. The Greek Novel’, 218-227; Harrison, ‘2. The Roman Novel’, 227-236). Morgan, J.R., Jones, M. (eds.), 2007. Philosophical Presences in the Ancient Novel, Ancient Narrative Supplementum 10, Groningen: Barkhuis & Groningen University Library. Pattoni, M.P. 2005. Longo Sofista, Dafni e Cloe, Milano: Biblioteca Universale Rizzoli. Picone, M., Zimmermann, B. (eds.), 1997. Der antike Roman und seine mittelalterliche Rezeption, Basel, Boston: Birkhäuser. Reardon, B.P. (ed.), 1989. Collected Ancient Greek Novels, Berkeley: California University Press. Selden, D. 1994. ‘Genre of Genre’, in: Tatum (ed.), 39-64. Tatum, J. (ed.), 1994. The Search for the Ancient Novel, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Walden, J.W.H. 1894. ‘Stage terms in Heliodorus’ Aethiopica’, HSCPh 5, 1-43. Webb, R. 2009. Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion in Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Practice. Farnham: Ashgate. Whitmarsh, T. (ed.), 2008. The Cambridge Companion to the Greek and Roman Novel, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Whittaker, J., Louis, P. 1990. Alcinoos. Enseignement des doctrines de Platon, Paris: CUF. Willcock, M. 1964. ‘Mythological Paradeigma in Homer’, CQ 14, 141-154. — 1977. ‘Ad hoc Invention in the Iliad’, HSCPh 18, 41-53. Winkler, J.J. 1990. The Constraints of Desire: the Anthropology of Sex and Gender in Ancient Greece, London: Routledge. Wouters, A. 1994. ‘Longus, Daphnis et Chloé. Le prooemium et les histoires enchâssées, à la lumière de la critique récente’, Les études classiques 62 131-167. Zeitlin, F.I. 1990. ‘The poetics of Eros: nature, art, and imitation in Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe’, in: D.M. Halperin, J.J. Winkler, F.I. Zeitlin (eds.), Before Sexuality: the Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient World, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 417-464. — 1994. ‘Gardens of Desire in Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe. Nature, Art, and Imitation’, in: Tatum (ed.), 148-170.

‘His eyes stood as though of horn or steel’: Odysseus’ Fortitude and Moral Ideals in the Greek Novels S ILVIA M ONTIGLIO Johns Hopkins University

The novels are odysseys: they tell of wanderings, adventures, and homecomings. An intriguing and sophisticated reference to the Odyssey as the novels’ main sub-text occurs in Heliodorus’ Aethiopica, at the beginning of the couple’s journey from Delphi to Africa, the central journey in this novel, and one which reproduces Odysseus’ journey more closely than those in other novels because it is not circular: just as Odysseus travels from Troy to his homeland, Charicleia and Theagenes, guided by Calasiris, plan to reach the girl’s country from abroad. After some time on Cephallenia, one of the Ionian Islands, they resume the navigation in the direction of Egypt. The night of their departure Odysseus in a dream announces to Calasiris that his journey from now on will be on troubled waters, for he did not sail to Ithaca to pay homage to Odysseus’ reputation as all travelers to the area do. Therefore, ‘Ordeals like mine shall you undergo; land and sea you shall find united in enmity against you’ (5,22,3).1 Odysseus’ complaint testifies to his status as a cult-hero in the Ionian Islands, which is documented by other sources,2 and to the sense of selfimportance attributed in the collective imagination to such heroes. As one scholar put it speaking of Achilles, ‘These hero-ghosts seem to have been pure ego.’3 From a narratological angle, however, Odysseus’ grim prophecy identifies Calasiris’ upcoming misadventures as a wanderer with his own, ————— 1

2

3

Translations of the novels are generally taken, but sometimes adapted, from Reardon 1989. Cf. Malkin 1998 passim. The choice of Odysseus as the cause of the travelers’ misadventures may also draw on the hero’s repute as ‘hater’ or ‘hated,’ as in his telltale name. King 1987, 86. The Construction of the Real and the Ideal in the Ancient Novel, 147–159

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thus spelling out that this novel’s wanderings will be similar to those in the Odyssey.4 We have already had a taste of Calasiris’ self-fashioning as an Odysseus-like wanderer from the very way he introduced the narrative of his life (2,21,5): Ἰλιόθεν με φέρεις, ‘you are carrying me from Troy’, as at the beginning of Odysseus’ narrative (Od. 9,39): Ἰλιόθεν με φέρων. Calasiris from the start intimates that the narrative of his adventures will include as much wandering and suffering as that of Odysseus.5 Thus, when Calasiris meets with Odysseus’ punishment, he receives an imprimatur, as it were, for his Odysseus persona as a wanderer. Odysseus himself signs it. But there is more: Odysseus’ words cast him not only as the underlying reference for Calasiris, but also as the mastermind of the plot. By cursing Calasiris, Odysseus plays the role of the punishing god as the efficient motif that initiates Calasiris’ wanderings. As Thomas Paulsen puts it, ‘the one pursued in epic in the novel becomes the pursuer.’ Odysseus is Calasiris’ Poseidon, or, stripped of his mythic dress, a projection of the author himself.6 Heliodorus borrows Odysseus’ anger (μῆνις at 5,22,5) to give impetus to the plot at a major juncture; he entrusts Odysseus with adding new information about the couple’s journey, namely that it will be, as the readers expect but do not know for certain, adventurous.7 Odysseus’ curse immediately bears results. Calasiris and his young protégés had a smooth, uneventful navigation from Delphi to Cephallenia, before they met with Odysseus’ anger. But shortly after they leave the island, a storm hits them (5,22,7), just as a storm hits Odysseus early on his return journey. Odysseus/Heliodorus straightaway takes care to disrupt Calasiris’ journey as the gods disrupted Odysseus’ own. The young couple, guided by the ‘faulty’ Calasiris, will then face all kinds of trials as Odysseus did. And, like him, they will earn the happy ending because they deserve it. The optimistic teleology underlying the Odyssey (goodness wins, wickedness loses) is boosted in the novels, whose protagonists triumph in the end because the gods love them; and the gods love them ————— 4 5

6 7

See Whitmarsh 1998, 98. See Paulsen 1992, 143-145. Morgan aptly translates ‘It is an Odyssey of woes.’ As Paulsen points out, Calasiris’ association with the wandering Odysseus is furthered by the scene in which Nausicles’ daughter washes his feet as Nausicaa’s maids wash Odysseus’ (2,22,2 and Od. 6,206 f.), for Calasiris calls himself a wanderer (2,22,3) as Odysseus does (6,206). Paulsen (161-164) mentions as additional parallels Calasiris’ disguise, the ‘nekyia’ (= the necromancy scene), and the duration of Calasiris’ wandering, also ten years (7,8,2). Paulsen 1992, 162. The oracle at 2,35,5 had not spoken of adventures.

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because they are, though with variations, exceptionally pure and innocent, and because they prove their virtue in the course of their wanderings, whereby they ‘make amends’ for an original fault.8 The happy ending has an even stronger moral justification in the novels than in the Odyssey, where Poseidon never says that Odysseus has ‘made amends’ by wandering, and would have kept persecuting him were it not that the other gods have decided otherwise.9 Chariton in particular rewrites the Odyssey as a sort of A Pilgrim’s Progress, with the male protagonist proving and improving himself along the way. In Heliodorus there is no clear original fault on the lovers’ part to make amends for (though Charicleia initially feels ashamed of her elopement),10 hence the intervention ex machina of Odysseus himself to tie the misfortunes which will beset the couple to Calasiris’ negligence, according to the Odyssey pattern of ‘fault-retribution.’ Nonetheless, in this novel as well much emphasis is placed on the meritorious behavior of the couple (in this case mainly Charicleia), which guarantees the happy outcome: Odysseus himself, directly after announcing to Calasiris the difficulties to come, tells him that Penelope blesses Charicleia for honoring chastity and promises her a happy ending to her tribulations (5,22,3).11 In Achilles Tatius the happy ending is likewise tied to the observance of chastity (4,1,3-8). In putting a premium on moral deserts the novels agree with contemporary philosophical readings of the Odyssey’s adventures as ‘tests for virtue’ which Odysseus ————— 8

9

10 11

Cf. especially Callirhoe 8,1,3; see also 4,4,9: ‘I have paid the penalty.’ In Achilles Tatius’ novel the couple is guilty of elopement; in Xenophon’s it is Habrocomes’ contempt of Eros that causes all the troubles: even if the nature of the fault is reminiscent of Hippolytus’, the ultimate punishment for it, a dreadful journey, repeats Odysseus’. That Xenophon has the Homeric wanderer in mind becomes clear in the end, when the couple dedicates an inscription in Artemis’ temple summarizing their misadventures as ‘all they suffered and all they did’ (5,15,2), a phrase which cannot but evoke the daring and enduring Odysseus as described in the Odyssey (e.g., 4,242). We note, however, that the terms are reversed: Odysseus is ‘daring and enduring’ whereas Anthia and Habrocomes are in the first place sufferers. The shift of emphasis points to the greater passivity of the novelistic heroes. The complex issue of the Odyssey’s theodicy obviously falls beyond the scope of this paper: see the incisive remarks by Scodel 1998, 3, 9 and passim, with more bibliographical references. See Liviabella Furiani 2006, 84. On the anticipatory function of Penelope’s words, see Morgan 1989, 303 and 306. Likewise, the clear Odyssean imprint Chariton gives to the lovers’ reunion by means of the citation of Od. 23,296 identifies Callirhoe with Penelope (the royal bed in which the couple celebrates the reunion is also reminiscent of Odysseus: see Guez 2009). In her case, however, the reference might be intended to dispel ambiguity, for she is also an impersonation of Helen and of the Penelope who shows herself to the suitors: see Biraud 1985.

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brilliantly passes – though in those moralizing readings the happy ending is not an extrinsic reward but is Odysseus’ own moral excellence, ἀρετή or virtus. By Odysseus’ ἀρετή philosophers contemporary with the novelists essentially mean his forbearance, steadfastness, and self-restraint: in one word, his fortitude. Do the heroes and heroines of novel borrow this quality of Odysseus to go through their ordeals? Does their virtuousness include Odysseus-like fortitude?12 There is no question that the novelistic lovers have the same firmness of purpose as Odysseus. Just as Odysseus keeps the return foremost in his thought, then the goal of his revenge, and to accomplish both he fights unflinchingly against all kinds of obstacles and bears up with painful and demeaning treatment,so the novels’ protagonists keep remembering each other, and in each other’s name they survive the hardest trials. At the same time, however, our lovers are characterized by hyperemotionality, which makes them unfit to imitate Odysseus’ fortitude consistently. Let us be more precise: the Odysseus of Homer is not unemotional. We all remember his tears, for instance as he discloses his identity to Telemachus, or as he embraces Penelope, or of course when Argus dies. But all in all Odysseus is able to hide his emotions when it would be dangerous to show them (and sometimes even when it would not be, witness the cruel fiction he is able to sustain in front of his dejected father). Based on this characteristic, philosophers since Plato (but perhaps already Socrates) attributed to Odysseus unbendable self-control, which they saw demonstrated especially in two episodes: when he silences his barking heart (in Odyssey 20), and when he watches Penelope weep without showing any emotion (in Odyssey 19). Plutarch combines the two scenes to highlight Odysseus’ ability to keep his body obedient to his mind: ‘And Odysseus himself, as he sat beside Penelope, ‘in his heart pitied his wife as she wept, but his eyes stood as though of horn or steel, without trembling, in his lids.’ So full of selfcontrol (ἐγκρατείας) was his body in every part and his reason, keeping everything in obedience and submission, ordered his eyes not to cry, his tongue not to utter a sound, his heart not to tremble or bark. ‘In obedience his heart remained enduring,’ for his reasoning faculty reached to his irrational ————— 12

I am limiting the discussion to the novels’ interpretation of Odysseus’ fortitude. Other features of the Homeric hero which shape novelistic characters include his speaking skills (Calasiris and Charicleia), his cunning (Chaereas in his military feat; Calasiris and Charicleia when they disguise themselves as beggars, etc.), and his lying, notably about his identity (Charicleia).

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movements and made his breath and blood obedient and subservient to itself’ (Concerning Talkativeness 506AB). The novels’ heroes and heroines, no matter how firm they stand when put under the worst pressure, do not follow Odysseus in transmitting their fortitude from their mind to their ‘breath and blood.’ Often they do try to hide their emotions when they think it safer – but cannot do it entirely. Whereas Odysseus’ ability to repress his emotions is both verbal and physical, the novels’ protagonists often say one thing and, inadvertently, show another. A telling example of this lack of self-mastery, and one which naturally invites comparison with Odysseus’ behavior, is the scene in Chariton in which Chaereas, at the shocking discovery of Callirhoe’s marriage to Dionysius, ‘said nothing in the presence of the attendant [who has given him the news] but forced himself to keep silence (ἐσίγησεν ἐγκρατῶς) – although he could not stop tears from coming to his eyes’ (Callirhoe 3,6,6). Like Odysseus in Plutarch’s description, Chaereas displays ἐγκράτεια. The comparison with Odysseus is also encouraged by the motive of Chaereas’ enkratic silence, namely prudence, and more specifically a concern for keeping his identity concealed. But Chaereas fails to impersonate Odysseus fully. Besides having to be restrained by his friend, who prevents him from speaking (3,6,5), Chaereas, in spite of his successful effort to keep quiet, cannot contain his tears, which have a ‘will’ of their own (αὐτομάτως).13 This failure of his reason to master his emotional impulses sets him off from Odysseus, whose ἐγκράτεια, as interpreted by Plutarch, radiates from his mind down to every movement of the body, visible and invisible alike. When later Mithridates, before the trial in Babylon, asks him to have the strength (καρτέρησον) to stay hidden from Callirhoe (5,2,4), he promises but at once weeps, and as soon as he is alone, bursts into lamentation. Surely we are not surprised by Chaereas’ inability to imitate Odysseus’ fortitude, for Chaereas is the most impulsive and suicidal of all the novelistic heroes. But his wife, the intelligent and circumspect Callirhoe, who in many ways proves to possess Odysseus-like prudence and can even persevere in a lie bigger than any Odysseus ever tells , that her child is by Dionysius, also betrays her emotions when it is unsafe to do so: with the Persian eunuch, the slave of Artaxerxes who attempts to coerce her to satisfy the king’s desire. Though ‘well bred and intelligent’ enough to swallow her anger at the eu————— 13

Cf. Jouanno 2001, 78. Because Chaereas cannot control his emotions, he gives away his identity in spite of his silence: Callirhoe understands that the young man who has arrived at Dionysius’ estate is Chaereas from the description of his deportment (3,9,1-2).

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nuch’s overture and to pretend that she does not understand its substance, in their second interview she gives herself away by showing love for Chaereas; she responds angrily to the eunuch who insults her beloved; and busts into tears (Callirhoe 6,7,9-10). Corinne Jouanno, who has observed these and more expressions of lack of self-mastery in Chariton,14 begins her study by challenging the distinction between ‘idealistic’ and ‘realistic’ novels, with the Greek ones belonging to the first category and the Roman ones to the second. Those emotional expressions, she argues, in the case of Chariton show the ‘ideal’ novelist’s ‘realistic’ attentiveness to the body’s involuntary manifestations of feelings. At the same time, however, her study seems to suggest that those expressions do not so much testify to the novelist’s attention to the facts of love and life as to his endorsing a moral ideal which values such expressions. Emotionality enhances the heroine’s beauty. Both Dionysius and Artaxerxes recall the signs of strong emotions which made Callirhoe’s beauty even more irresistible: tears, silence, embarrassment, weeping (2,4,3; 6,7,1-2). Leucippe’s already beautiful eyes are made more beautiful by her tears (Leucippe and Clitophon 6,7,1-5). That showing one’s emotions is ‘beautiful and good’ in the world-view of the novels appears especially from the behavior of Dionysius, a character particularly dear to Chariton, in his final appearance. Dionysius, that embodiment of paideia, who strongly believes that selfmastery is a token of it, and who indeed never betrays himself in dangerous situations, is, however, shown to be hyper-emotional as soon as he can safely let his feelings out. Of his numerous attempts to control his emotions the last one in particular invites comparison with Odysseus because its main motive is prudence: upon learning from the Great King that Callirhoe has recovered Chaereas, ‘at this moment especially Dionysius showed his good sense and fine training (φρόνησιν καὶ παιδείαν ἐξαίρετον). Like a man unperturbed by a thunderbolt falling at his feet, so he, on hearing words more shattering than any thunderbolt – namely that Chaereas was taking Callirhoe back to Syracuse – nevertheless stood there without flinching (εὐσταθής), deeming any expression of sorrow unsafe (οὐκ ... ἀσφαλές), since the queen had been rescued’ (Callirhoe 8,5,10-11). Dionysius is as capable as Odysseus of transmitting the orders of his mind to his body. Just as Odysseus remains ἔμπεδον, firmly set in the ground, or ἀσφαλής, unfaltering, when hit by missiles or words (Od. 17,234235; ibid. 463-64); just as his eyes can ‘stand without trembling’ (ἕστασαν ... ————— 14

Jouanno 2001.

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ἀτρέμας, Od. 19,211-212); so Dionysius’ entire body remains unmoved.15 Dionysius, however, rushes off (ἔσπευδεν) as soon as he can to give free rein to his tears (Callirhoe 8,5,12). For a long time tears prevent him from reading Callirhoe’s letter, which the queen has given him (8,5,13); and when he finally reads it, he indulges lamenting his fate and solitude. This episode suggests that for Chariton the ideal that has been called ‘heautocratic’ is not to be dismissed: quite the contrary, it is a noble aspiration indeed, in the novel as in contemporary culture.16 The same holds true for several passages in Heliodorus.17 But the heautocratic ideal is humanized either because the aspiration fails or because the author wants to highlight that a noble character’s self-control is only momentary, and he does so through overcompensation, as it were, by allowing that character to let his feelings out to his heart’s content as soon as circumstances permit. Chariton himself ‘rushes off’ (ἔσπευδεν) in his narrative to show Dionysius crying, as if to correct straightaway his hero’s display of Odysseus-like self-control.18 We can contrast the description of Dionysius’ behavior with the Homeric ————— 15

16

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Not so, however, after the shocking denouement of the trial: then even Dionysius’ φύσις εὐστάθεια cannot hold fast (5,9,8). The term heautocratic translates heautocratique in Jouanno 2001. Jouanno argues that Chariton’s novel does not endorse the heautocratic ideal. Conversely, de Temmerman (2009) suggests that Chariton views sôphrosynê, which also includes self-control, as a positive quality, one which Chaereas finally acquires in Book 7. Heliodorus says that not to be able to hide one’s feelings or contain them belongs to lowly women (Aethiopica 3,3,8). The barbarian Thermouthis, though he tries to hide his hostile intentions, betrays them by his expression (2,13,1). His undignified behavior throughout the scene casts a negative light also on his initial inability to hide his emotions. Cnemon’s spectacular sobbing as he is about to announce that he will not accompany Charicleia and Calasiris on their search (6,7,3) points up his cowardliness, as does his uncontrolled shaking when he thinks that Thisbe has come back to life (5,3,3). In Heliodorus there seems to be more criticism of uncontrolled responses of the body than in Chariton. Consider also Callirhoe’s behavior with the pirate Theron (Callirhoe 1,11,2): she prudently pretends to believe what he says, but then, covering her head, withdraws to weep and lament her fate. Likewise, after ‘laughing internally’ at Theron’s stupidity and keeping up the pretence that she believes him for as long as she is in his company, she bursts into lamentation as soon as she is alone (1,14,6); she does the same after her first encounter with Artaxerxes’ eunuch (6,6,2), during which she shows prudence and restraint (cf. 6,5,6 and 8). Chaereas, though capable of keeping an ἐγκρατής silence, as soon as he can withdraw from sight throws himself on the ground and weeps in despair (3,6,6); and, if he can force himself to promise to Mithridates that he will not seek Callirhoe, once he is back in his room he gives himself to lamentation (5,2,4). Charicleia is able to lie and promise marriage without meaning it; but as soon as she finishes her deceitful speech, she bursts into tears (Aethiopica 1,23,1; cf. also 5,26,2-4). Charicleia, however, succeeds at mastering her emotions completely at 10,19,1.

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picture of Odysseus, especially in Odyssey 13-22, where it is imperative for him, as for Dionysius in the novelistic episode, to hide his emotions, but where he could release them, as Dionysius does, when he is by himself, at least in the form of internal monologues (a ‘genre’ of which Odysseus is the master). This is indeed what another novelistic hero, Clitophon, does: a prisoner, he cannot lament out loud because his guards, though asleep, are nearby, yet he pours out his emotions within himself (Leucippe and Clitophon 3,10,1-11,1]). Odysseus’ internal monologues, in contrast, either concern the planning of his revenge or, significantly, aim to repress the emotion which wants to surface, for instance when he rebukes his heart in Odyssey 20, or, during his wanderings, when he resists the temptation of suicide after his comrades have released the winds from Aeolus’ bag (in Odyssey 10): at that time Odysseus does not allow his feelings to escape but ‘ponders’ whether to throw himself into the sea; he decides to endure in silence.19 One could extend the comparison precisely to the uses and meanings of silence: when Odysseus keeps his peace, it is because he either chooses to or is obeying divine orders (from Athena). He is never the victim of speechlessness, not even when he is given awful news or witnesses a tragedy. Characters of novels most of the time become silent because of unmanageable emotions. Whereas it costs them dearly to impose silence on their feelings, they often lose their voice because of them. The sudden onset of aphônia is formulaic in the genre, and not only as a symptom of love, but in response to overwhelming news or events.20 Far from being a moral ideal, a perfect impersonation of Odysseus-like self-mastery belongs to the only true villain in Chariton’s novel, Theron, who is unmistakably fashioned after Odysseus in a variety of ways: he tells ————— 19

20

Another episode that invites comparison with the behavior of the novels’ characters is at Od. 19,1-2: Odysseus, as is often the case with the protagonists of novels, is left alone in the hall at night, but instead of lamenting his fate, he ponders the murder of the suitors. It is true that he cries out his desperation when he copes with the storm in Book 5. But even then, in two instances (out of three) Odysseus is considering options (if I do this, something bad will happen, but if I do that, something even worse will): cf. 407 f., 464 f. (the monologue with no ‘decisional’ content is at 298 f.). The list would be endless for Chariton. In An Ephesian Tale Habrocomes is speechless (‘a-gape’) when faced with erotic proposals (Anthia likewise: 2,4,5) and when taken to the cross (1,16,6; 4,2,2). In Leucippe and Clitophon Clinias is speechless at the news of Charicles’ death (1,12,2; 1,13,1); Leucippe when she is captured (3,11,2); and Clitophon at hearing the made-up story of Leucippe’s murder (7,4,1). In the Aethiopica, Cnemon is struck dumb when the ‘adulterer’ he was about to kill turns out to be his father (1,12,3); Charicleia as she recognizes Theagenes (7,7,5); and so on. Dionysius enkratic silence (Callirhoe 2,4,1-2) reveals rather than conceals his passion.

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Cretan tales; claims that he alone was saved owing to his piety; is attached to gain, kerdos; and debates with himself (his internal monologues, like Odysseus’, are deliberative).21 He also displays fortitude under torture: ‘He had fire applied to him; his flesh was torn; but he held out for a long time and almost overcame the torture. But conscience is a strong force in every one of us, and truth is all-powerful; with reluctance, and slowly, Theron confessed’ (Callirhoe 3,4,12-13). Theron’s fortitude, however, is not a positive quality, for it serves his dishonesty and ultimately has to collapse. His yielding elicits a moral explanation: truth has prevailed. Though Chariton is particularly keen to stage characters aspiring, but failing, to control themselves, we find instances of the same behavior in other novels as well. To give just one example: like Dionysius in Chariton (2,4,1-2), Theagenes in Heliodorus cannot hide his love in front of his guests (3,10,4).22 Nor is the failure of self-control limited to love, as our examples so far might suggest. Rather, the initial victory of love over reason, which itself marks a defeat of the heautocratic ideal because often it follows an attempt to suppress the passion, reverberates into a general glamorization of emotionality even outside the erotic domain. I am thinking in particular of Hydaspes’ behavior when he recognizes his daughter at the end of the Aethiopica. Whereas Persinna, Hydaspes’ wife, ‘could not contain herself any longer’ (οὐκέτι κατεῖχεν), ran to embrace the girl and almost fell to the ground with her, weeping and bellowing from overflowing joy, the king, though moved in his soul and full of pity for his wife, ‘stood with his eyes fixed as unblinkingly on the scene before him as if they had been of horn or steel, fighting back the welling tears. His soul was buffeted by waves of fatherly love and manly resolve that fought for possession of his will, which was pulled in two directions by the opposing tide races. But finally he bowed to all-conquering nature: not only was he convinced that he was a father, but also betrayed a father’s feelings ... he visibly embraced Charikleia and poured out a libation of his tears to acknowledge his fatherhood’ (Aethiopica 10,16). ————— 21

22

Cf. Callirhoe 1,7,1-2; 1,9,6; 1,12,2. On Theron as a perverted Odysseus see Kasprzyk 2001. See also Leucippe and Clitophon 5,21,2: Clitophon, after reading Leucippe’s letter, forces himself to hide his emotion in front of Melite but cannot κρατεῖν, and has to make up an excuse and leave because the emotion has the better of him. οὐκ ἐκαρτέρησεν commonly describes a character’s yielding to passion (e.g., in Chariton 4,3,9 for Chaereas and a number of times in Xenophon), with no blame attached.

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The reader is initially invited to appreciate a gendered divide, reminiscent especially of fifth-century representations: tears, no longer heroic as they were in Homer, belong to women.23 In our novel likewise the queen has no compunction to weep in public,24 while the king tries to hold on to the heautocratic ideal with a manly heart by imitating Odysseus as he watches, apparently imperturbable, Penelope weeping (at Odyssey 19,209-212). It perhaps is significant that the only character in the extant novels who is compared with the enduring Odysseus facing one of his hardest emotional trials is a public figure, and the model ruler. This seems again to suggest that in the world of the novels Odysseus-like fortitude is a noble aspiration, at least for a man concerned with his authority. Indeed, in Chariton two visible public figures, Dionysius and Artaxerxes, are ashamed of their passion and seek to subdue it also because they care about their image as men of power.25 Nonetheless, in Heliodorus’ passage the allusion to Odyssey 19 highlights the opposite results of Odysseus’ and Hydaspes’ aspiration to selfcontrol, for directly after Hydaspes’ outward imperturbability is compared with Odysseus’, the text dwells on the inner tempest that agitates the king’s mind, ending with the predictable defeat of his ‘manly resolve.’ Homer begins his description by mentioning Odysseus’ inner feelings but ends on his outward imperturbable appearance, of the καρτερός and cunning hero, as ever mindful of his scheme: ‘And Odysseus in his heart pitied his wife as she wept, but his eyes stood as though of horn or steel, without trembling, in his lids. With guile he hid his tears.’ We are left with the image of an unruffled surface, perfectly impermeable to the movements of the heart. In contrast Hydaspes’ description shifts from his apparent imperturbability to his real turmoil, which is given the last word in anticipation of his emotional outpouring. Hydaspes aspires to Odysseus’ καρτερία whereas Persinna does not. But in the end Hydaspes joins his wife in that he fails in the role of Odysseus. Heliodorus’ choice of the episode from Odyssey 19, which appealed to Plutarch because of Odysseus’ unshakeable self-control, to characterize Hydaspes at the climactic juncture in which he gives in to his fatherly feelings, can be taken to epitomize the novels’ adaptation of the model of the καρτερός hero to their moral ideals.26 Hydaspes, the ideal king, when facing ————— 23 24

25 26

The classic book on the subject is Monsacré 1984. She does though in an earlier scene: moved by Charicleia’s noble deportment and her incumbent death, she makes an effort to hide her tears but in vain (10,8,1). Cf. 2,4,4; 6,3,8. It is possible that Heliodorus was aware of the use of Od. 19,209-212 made by Plutarch and other moralists (cf. also [Plutarch] On the Life and Poetry of Homer 135). In addition

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the highest emotional tension remembers Odysseus but soon abandons that model.27 He behaves like the typical novelistic lover at the outset of his passion: trying to fight against it, but yielding. The parallel with the novelistic lover is brought out by language and imagery: Hydaspes’ fatherly feelings are a πατρικὸν πάθος just as the lovers experience a πάθος ἐρωτικόν (the subject of Chariton’s novel); the metaphor of the wave to signify inner battle is applied both to Hydaspes and to the lover trying not to drown in his passion (Callirhoe 3,2,6). If lovers are ‘defeated’ (cf., in Xenophon, ἡττᾶται at 1,3,1; νενίκημαι at 1,4,1) by their passion,28 just so was Hydaspes ‘defeated (ἡττήθη) by all-conquering nature.’ The reference to Odysseus serves to highlight, not the character’s heroic τλημοσύνη but, quite to the contrary, the victory of uncontrollable emotions. To recapitulate: the high sympathy and approval with which emotionality is regarded in the novels clashes with the contemporary idealization of Odysseus’ fortitude, and this in spite of their adoption of an Odyssey-pattern for their structure and ‘morality tale,’ that virtue wins. No matter how noble an aspiration for the novels’ heroes (and heroines), in the end self-restraint has to yield to the force of the emotion for them to fit the novels’ moral ideals.29 Rather than the self-restrained Odysseus, the one who occasionally fails to control himself, as when he weeps listening to Demodocus’ songs or ————— 27

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to having Platonic sympathies, the novelist was familiar with, and interested in, Homeric criticism: see Telò 1999. Artaxerxes likewise cannot restrain himself (οὐ κατέσχεν) and weeps in public when he is reunited with Statira against all odds (Callirhoe 8,5,5). Artaxerxes’ tears apparently displeased one of the early-modern translators of the novel, who openly stated that in his version ‘the great king no longer cries unmanfully, as in the original, but ‘sighs heroically’’ (in Hägg 1983, 211). Chaereas likewise is a wounded soldier (1,1,7); Clitophon pontificates on beauty’s power to wound the soul (1,4,4). De Temmerman 2009 suggests that Chariton, by citing Homeric lines which describe Achilles hyperemotional responses to Patroclus’ death in connection with Chaereas’ similar responses to facts related to his love, brings out the lightness of Chaereas’ reasons compared to Achilles’, as well as his self-pity, ‘which entails criticism of Chaereas’ behavior’ (‘ce qui entraîne une attitude critique à l’égard de la conduite de Chairéas’). Because the novel’s motor and ruling force is Eros, however, I would think that Chariton does not aim to criticize the reasons for Chaereas’ hyperemotional behavior by comparing them to Achilles’, but rather to transpose Homer’s descriptions of emotional responses to tragic events onto an erotic plane. Homeric lines describing such responses (including Achilles’ to Patroclus’ death) are applied to other characters as well (especially Dionysius, but also Artaxerxes at 6,1,8) when under the sway of Eros, with no implied criticism of their behavior.

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watching Argus die, might be in the background of several scenes in Chariton in which the protagonists behave in a similar way.30 There is, however, one episode in which Odysseus’ fortitude is called upon to guide a novelistic lover through a risky endeavor. It is in Leucippe and Clitophon. Satyrus, Clitophon’s servant, has put Leucippe’s guardian to sleep as Odysseus did the Cyclops, so that Clitophon can have his way with the girl. It is now our hero’s turn to find the courage to enter Leucippe’s room and stab her ... not in her eye of course: ‘Your Cyclops is asleep; see that you prove yourself a brave Odysseus’ (2,23,3). But Clitophon’s performance is pathetic at best: as soon as he enters the room, he starts ‘trembling a double trembling’ (τρέμων τρόμον διπλοῦν) from fear and hope, with one emotion chasing the other: ‘the fear of the danger we were running troubled the hopes of my heart, while the hope of success dulled with pleasure the fear I had conceived; hope was afraid and apprehension rejoiced.’ Like Hydaspes, Clitophon cannot live up to his Homeric paradigm. The spirit of our passage, though, is different: Clitophon is not looked upon with approval for his failure to impersonate Odysseus, as Hydaspes is. Quite to the contrary, Clitophon’s inadequacy to imitate his Homeric model brings out the lack of heroism – call it Odyssean or otherwise – which characterizes the protagonist of Achilles Tatius’ novel throughout.31 In keeping with the less idealistic mood of his novel, Achilles does not revise, in Chariton’s or in Heliodorus’ fashion, the model of heroism embodied by Odysseus to adjust it to a moral ideal which puts forward, and even glamorizes, the expression of strong emotions. Instead, Achilles exploits one of Odysseus’ greatest feats to produce a mock-impersonation, which sets Clitophon’s cowardliness off against the courage of his model. Had Odysseus been listening to his emotions as Clitophon did to his, the Cyclops would still have his eyesight.32 ————— 30

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32

Cf. Jouanno 2001, 78, n.15. Cf. Callirhoe 1,3,6-7; 1,11,2; 3,3,14, in which Callirhoe (twice) and Chaereas (once) cover their head to hide their tears as Odysseus (and Telemachus) do. Scholars have spoken of ‘epic’ or ‘Homeric’ parody for this episode: see Morales 2004, 86, adducing Fusillo 1988, 24: ‘This passage of Achilles Tatius can therefore be considered an epic parody, since it shows a decided incongruity between the Homeric pattern and the romantic rewriting: The Odyssean device to get rid of Polyphemus is here degraded to a comic artifice to get into a girl’s bed, in a way that recalls the Freudian conception of comicality.’ On Homeric parody in Achilles, see also Létoublon 2008, 718721 (on the storm at 3,5). My heartfelt thanks to Michael Paschalis and Stelios Panayotakis for inviting me to read a version of this paper at the 5th Rethymnon International Conference on the Ancient Novel (May 2009), and to all the participants for their comments.

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Bibliography Biraud, M. 1985. ‘L’hypotexte homérique et les rôles amoureux de Callirhoé dans le roman de Chariton,’ in: Sémiologie de l’amour dans les civilisations méditerranéennes. Publications de la Faculté des Lettres et Sciences humaines de Nice 29, 21-27. de Temmerman, K. 2009. ‘Un protagoniste passionné. Quelques réflexions sur l’expression incontrôlée des emotions chez Chairéas,’ in: Pouderon, Bost-Pouderon (eds.), 239-255. Fusillo, M. 1988. ‘Textual Patterns and Narrative Situations in the Greek Novel’, GCN 1, 17-31. Guez, J-Ph. 2009. ‘Homme tyrannique, homme royal dans le roman de Chariton’, in: Pouderon, Bost-Pouderon (eds.), 23-38. Hägg, T. 1983. The Novel in Antiquity, Berkeley: University of California Press. Jouanno, C. 2001. ‘Chariton et le langage du corps’, in: A. Billault (ed.), ΟΠΩΡΑ. La belle saison de l’hellénisme. Études de literature antique offertes au Recteur Jacques Bompaire, Paris: Presses de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 73-84. Kasprzyk, D. 2001. ‘Théron, pirate, conteur et narrateur dans le roman de Chariton, Chairéas et Callirhoé,’ in: B. Pouderon (ed.), Les personnages du roman grec, Lyon: Maison de L’Orient et de la Méditerranée, 149-164. King, K.C. 1987. Achilles: Paradigms of the War Hero from Homer to the Middle Ages, Berkeley: University of California Press. Létoublon, F. 2008. ‘Λύτο γούνατα: d’Homère aux romans grecs’, in: D. Auger, J. Peigney (eds.), Phileuripidès. Mélanges offerts à François Jouan, Nanterre: Presses Universitaires de Paris 10, 711-723. Liviabella Furiani, P. 2006. ‘I nodi e i doni del destino nelle Etiopiche di Eliodoro’, in: E. Mirri, F. Valori (eds.), Libertà e destino, Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 83-104. Malkin, I. 1998. The Returns of Odysseus: Colonization and Ethnicity, Berkeley: University of California Press. Monsacré, H. 1984. Les larmes d’Achille, Paris: La Découverte. Morales, H. 2004. Vision and Narrative in Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe and Clitophon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Morgan, J. 1989. ‘A Sense of the Ending: the Conclusion of Heliodoros’ Aithiopika’, TAPhA 119, 299-320. Paulsen, T. 1992. Inszenierung des Schicksals: Tragödie und Komödie im Roman des Heliodor, Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag. Pouderon, B., Bost-Pouderon, C. (eds.) 2009. Passions, vertus et vices dans l’ancien roman, Lyon: Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée. Reardon, B.P. (ed.) 1989. Collected Ancient Greek Novels, Berkeley: University of California Press. Scodel, R. 1998. ‘The Removal of the Arms, the Recognition with Laertes, and Narrative Tension in the Odyssey’, CP 93.1, 1-17. Telò, M. 1999. ‘Eliodoro e la critica omerica antica’, SIFC 17.1, 71-87. Whitmarsh, T. 1998. ‘The Birth of a Prodigy: Heliodorus and the Genealogy of Hellenism’, in: R. Hunter (ed.), Studies in Heliodorus, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 93-124.

The Basic Plot of Callirhoe: History, Myth, and Aristotelian Poetics M ICHAEL P ASCHALIS University of Crete

Introduction We should pause, however, to nuance the concept of the ideal novel. Like all ideals, it does not exist in practice: even the most philosophically high-minded novels are idiosyncratic, sophisticated, playful, and ethically complex. For example, the earliest novel, Chariton’s Callirhoe, turns upon the story of a woman who loves her husband; after he has jealously kicked her into a coma and she has been abducted by pirates, she is forced to marry a second husband for the sake of her unborn child (for which she earns comparisons with the arch-bigamist Helen of Troy, 2.6.1, 5.2.8, 5.5.9). Hardly an ‘ideal’ love story, then, on any criterion.1 Callirhoe is indeed conventionally characterized as an ideal novel. The heroine possesses exceptional beauty which exerts universal attraction, causes her to be identified with Aphrodite in appearance and worship and all the major players in the novel to fall in love with her. Chaereas achieves the incredible feat — also considering the capacities he had displayed up to that moment — of capturing the city of Tyre, a feat which matches one of Alexander’s most difficult siege enterprises (7.2.6-4.9). But the features mentioned by Whitmarsh would hardly qualify Callirhoe as an ‘ideal’ love story. Can then a novel be both ‘ideal’ and ‘non-ideal’? An obvious difference between Chaereas’ kick and the same character’s feat of capturing Tyre is that the former is the event that triggers the basic plot action as outlined by Whitmarsh, while the latter is an episode in the context of the Egyptian revolt — it is not the capture of Tyre but the later capture by Chaereas of the ————— 1

Whitmarsh 2008, 6. The Construction of the Real and the Ideal in the Ancient Novel, 161–177

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island of Aradus which leads to the reunion of the couple, since it is then that Chaereas discovers Callirhoe among the captive women. Are we then dealing with a novel in which basic plot elements are ‘nonideal’ and secondary ones are ‘ideal’? Strictly speaking it may not be possible to draw an absolutely clear line between primary and secondary plot elements. But the concept of a ‘basic plot’ had been formulated by Aristotle centuries before Callirhoe was written: in his Poetics he had distinguished between ‘basic plot’ and ‘episodes’ in the composition of dramatic and epic works, had advised that a writer should start by outlining the plot of his work and had provided examples of what this outline should contain. Closely related to this line of research is Perry’s thesis that behind the novel we have before us there may have been a ‘real’ plot. I will therefore start by presenting and discussing his view, according to which the plot of Callirhoe was based on a pre-existing legendary-historical tradition. The evidence for the treatment of Chariton as a historical novel includes the presence of historical names in the narrative, something which is explicitly stated at the very beginning of the novel. The relation of names to the basic plot is also a central concern of Aristotle’s Poetics.

Perry and the Historical Romance The novel’s relation to historiography and the historical background has attracted a lot of scholarly attention.2 Much less attention has been given to the historicity of its plot. In 1930 Ben Edwin Perry published an article entitled ‘Chariton and his Romance from a Literary-historical Point of View’. He put together the main evidence concerning the ‘historical’ features of Callirhoe and raised some significant questions as regards the basic plot of the novel. The article has not enjoyed great favor, mainly on account of Perry’s claim that the plot of the novel ‘was based in the main upon a genuine, popular saga’.3 Perry detected ‘nature and reality’ behind Callirhoe’s supposedly ideal story. The following passage elucidates his viewpoint: […] it is certain that in Chariton legend and history have determined in a greater degree than in any of the other extant erotic romances, not only the choice of dramatis personae, but also the character of the episodes ————— 2 3

For a survey see Smith 2007, 1-13. See for instance Plepelits 1976, 30-32 (against Perry’s theory); Hunter 1994, 1056-1057 (in favor of Perry’s theory).

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and of the style. This acts as a check upon that irresponsible plasmatic license which makes the fortune and behavior of the characters in the later romances so extravagantly and automatically ideal and so unreal. By being closer to legend Chariton is closer to nature and reality. If he had been making up his plot out of his own imagination and had felt disposed to cut loose from tradition entirely, it is unlikely that he would have represented Chaereas as kicking his bride in the brutal manner that he does, or that he would have allowed the heroine Kallirhoe to marry another man in the absence of her beloved husband. (Perry 1930, 100-101) Perry based his argument on information derived from the novel itself and from ancient sources. In the novel Callirhoe is the daughter of Hermocrates, ruler of Syracuse. Hermocrates is identified as the Sicilian statesman who greatly contributed to the defeat of the Athenians in 413 B.C. or as the novel says: ‘οὗτος ὁ νικήσας Ἀθηναίους’ (1.1.3-4). The real Hermocrates had a daughter that married Dionysius I who ruled Syracuse from 405 to 367 and was succeeded by his son Dionysius II. Callirhoe received a kick in the diaphragm from her jealous husband and fell into a coma. The daughter of the historical Hermocrates, whose name we do not know, had a violent end. According to Plutarch ‘she was terribly and outrageously abused in the body by the seditious Syracusans’ (ἀποστάντες οἱ Συρακούσιοι δεινὰς καὶ παρανόμους ὕβρεις εἰς το σῶμα καθύβρισαν) and as result put an end to her own life (Dion. 3.1). In Diodorus 13.112.4 the Italian Greeks who deserted Dionysius entered Syracuse unopposed and ‘seized his wife and treated her so appallingly (οὕτω διέθεσαν κακῶς) as to ensure that the tyrannos’ fury would never be appeased, figuring that their revenge on her would create the strongest bond between them all for their rebellion against him”.4 Chariton’s heroine suffered from a Scheintod and later recovered. Her tomb was robbed by the pirate Theron who took her to Miletus. There he sold her as a slave to the wealthy Dionysius who fell in love with her. Considering that Hermocrates’ daughter married Dionysius I, the suggestion that Milesian Dionysius was named after him cannot be easily discarded. Callirhoe discovered that she was pregnant with Chaereas’ child, considered abortion but eventually married Dionysius and allowed him to think that the child was his. When in the end the heroine and Chaereas were re-united, she left her baby son to Dionysius’ care. At different points in the novel it is said ————— 4

Green 2010, 268.

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that one day the child will return to Sicily as a young man to see his grandfather and succeed him in the rule of Syracuse: ‘[…] Think of all the sons of gods and kings we hear of that were born in slavery and later regained the rank of their fathers, like Zethus and Amphion and Cyrus! You too, my child, will sail to Sicily. You will search for your father and grandfather and tell them your mother's story. A fleet will set out from there to come to my aid. You, my child, will restore your parents to each other. […]’ (2.9.5 Callirhoe addressing her unborn son) ‘[…] But you, my child, what do you choose for yourself? Death by poison before seeing the sun, being cast out with your mother, and perhaps even denied a grave? Or rather to live and have two fathers, one the leader of Sicily, the other of Ionia? And when you become a man, you will easily be recognized by your relatives, for I am sure that I shall bear you in the likeness of your father. And you will sail home in splendor on a Milesian warship, and Hermocrates shall receive his grandson with joy, now ready to be a general. It is a contrary vote which you cast against me, my child, and you do not permit us to die. […]’ (2.11.2 Callirhoe addressing her unborn son) ‘[…] Grant that my son be happier than his parents and the equal of his grandsire. May he, too, sail on a flagship, and may men say of his prowess on the sea [ναυμαχοῦντος], “Hermocrates’ grandson is greater than he.” His grandsire, too, will be happy to have a successor in his valor, and we, his parents, shall feel that delight even though we are dead. […]’ (3.8.8 Callirhoe praying to Aphrodite) ‘[…] Please, do not be angry. Indeed, I am with you in spirit through the son we share, and I entrust him to you to bring up and to educate in a way worthy of us. Let him have no experience of a stepmother. You have not only a son, but a daughter as well; two children are enough. Marry them to each other when he becomes a man, and send him to Syracuse so that he may also see his grandfather. […]’ (8.4.5-6 Callirhoe’s letter to Dionysius) Looking at his little son, he rocked him in his arms and said, ‘One day, my child, you too shall leave me and go to your mother; she herself has

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asked you to. And I shall live all alone, with no one to blame but myself. […]’ (8.5.15 Dionysius to Callirhoe’s son)5 Regarding Callirhoe’s marriage to Dionysius, Perry emphasized the point that in the rest of the Greek novels ‘it is an unwritten law that the heroine must remain faithful to one man at all costs, and not merely faithful at heart but, above all, in person’. And as regards the child he stressed the following: […] it is very odd that this child should have been sent to Miletus to be brought up by Dionysius when his parents, after the capture of Arados, could just as well have taken him with them to Syracuse. This incident is so contrary to Chariton's tender idealism, so unlike Kallirhoe, and so purposeless as far as the story is concerned, that we cannot regard it as pure invention. Our author must have been following some tradition that obliged him to make this concession.6 In the novel the child of Callirhoe, daughter of Hermocrates who is the present ruler of Syracuse, is given no name, but the fact that the future successor to the rule of Syracuse is brought up not by his parents but by Dionysius may have something to do with the fact that the historical Syracusan ruler Dionysius I was succeeded by his son Dionysius II.

Aristotle’s Poetics and the Basic Plot of Callirhoe According to Lucas ‘there is no passage earlier than the fourth century A.D. of which it can be asserted with confidence that it is derived directly from the Poetics’.7 Hellenistic and Roman poetics is predominantly concerned with style and character while Aristotelian poetics is broader in scope and stresses the primacy of plot (muthos) over other elements. Points of contact can, however, be found and hence there has been much discussion in favor of and against the influence of Aristotle’s Poetics on Hellenistic and Roman literature and literary theory.8 Furthermore, though Aristotle’s Poetics is ————— 5

6 7 8

All translations are derived from Goold 1995. For the text I have consulted Reardon 2004. Perry 1930, 102. Lucas 1978, XXIII. See for instance Rostagni, A. 1921; Brink 1946; Brink 1963 and 1971; Gallavotti 1969; Richardson 1980; Hering 1983; Kyriakou 1997; MacPhail 2001.

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mainly concerned with drama and epic it has been used as a critical tool for the study of the ancient novel, approximately as early modern theoretical and critical discussions applied Aristotelian guidelines to genres other than these two.9 Reardon in The Form of Romance conducted a systematic formal analysis of the ancient novel using Aristotle’s Poetics as a critical tool.10 RuizMontero in her survey entitled ‘The Rise of the Greek Novel’ discussed the relevance of Aristotle’s Poetics to the ancient novel under the sub-heading ‘Tragedy’ of the section ‘The Dramatic Tradition’.11 Several scholars have noted the Aristotelian flavor of the beginning of the last chapter of Callirhoe (8.1.4): ‘Νομίζω δὲ καὶ τὸ τελευταῖον τοῦτο σύγγραμμα τοῖς ἀναγιγνώσκουσιν ἥδιστον γενήσεσθαι· καθάρσιον γάρ ἐστι τῶν ἐν τοῖς πρώτοις σκυθρωπῶν’ (‘Moreover, I think that this last book will prove the most agreeable to its readers, because it cleanses away the grim events of the earlier ones’).12 Recently Stephan Tilg has drawn attention to the fact that ‘no other novelist so programmatically expresses a piece of his poetics, and […] no other novelist so programmatically refers to any piece of literary theory.’ In his view Chariton invented the novelistic happy ending by reinterpreting Aristotle’s idea of tragic pleasure and catharsis and ‘developed the idea and the plan for the novel at least partly in dialogue with the Poetics.’13 I would neither accept nor reject Chariton’s familiarity with Aristotle’s Poetics. But since I am concerned with the notion of the ‘basic plot’ of Callirhoe, it would be worth considering Aristotle’s view on this and related issues. In chapter 17 of his Poetics Aristotle discusses what he calls ‘general structure’ (τὸ καθόλου), ‘basic plot’ (μῦθος), ‘story’ (λόγος), or ‘essential core’ (τὸ ἴδιον) of one tragedy and one epic, Euripides’ Iphigenia in Tauris and Homer’s Odyssey.14 I quote the whole passage: With both ready-made stories and his own inventions [τούς τε λόγους καὶ τοὺς πεποιημένους], the poet should lay out the general structure [ἐκτίθεσθαι καθόλου], and only then develop the sequence of episodes [εἶθ’οὕτως ἐπεισοδιοῦν καὶ παρατείνειν]. For what I mean by contem————— 9 10 11 12 13 14

Weinberg 1961; Cave 2001; Kappl 2006; Reardon 1991. Ruiz-Montero 1996. See also Cicu 1982. Müller 1976, 120; Fusillo 1991, 44; Ruiz-Montero 1996, 50-51. Tilg 2010, 130-137 with earlier literature. See also Heiserman, Reardon 21-22. On the various meanings of μῦθος and related terminology in Aristotle’s Poetics see Downing 1984.

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plating the general structure [τὸ καθόλου], take the Iphigenia [in Tauris]. A girl was sacrificed, and vanished without trace from her sacrificers; settled in a different country, where it was a custom to sacrifice strangers to the goddess, she became priestess of this rite. Later, the priestess’ brother happened to arrive there — that the god’s oracle told him to go there, and for what purpose, is outside the plot [ἔξω του μύθου]. Captured after his arrival, and on the point of being sacrificed, he caused his recognition — whether as in Euripides, or as Polyidus designed it, by saying (as was probable) that it was not just his sister’s but his own fate too to be sacrificed — and hence was rescued. The next stage is to supply names and devise the episodes [μετὰ ταῦτα δὲ ἤδη ὑποθέντα τὰ ὀνόματα ἐπεισοδιοῦν], but care must be taken to keep the episodes integral: thus, in Orestes’ case, the mad fit that caused his capture and his rescue by purification. Now in plays the episodes are concise, but epic gains length from them. The story [λόγος] of the Odyssey is not long: a man is away from home many years; he is watched by Poseidon, and isolated; moreover, affairs at home are such that his property is consumed by suitors, and his son conspired against; but he returns after shipwreck, allows some people to recognize him, and launches an attack which brings his own survival and his enemies’ destruction. That is the essential core [τὸ ἴδιον]; the rest is episodes. (Ar. Poet. 1455a34-1455b23)15 Gerald Else rejected, as far as drama is concerned, the Aristotelian rule that the poet should first lay out the general structure of his play: ‘Aeschylus and Sophocles, or even Euripides, did not begin with an abstract type of conception [….] and end with Agamemnon, Oedipus, and Orestes. They began with the concrete individual figures — τὰ γενόμενα ὀνόματα, b15 — and the stories attached to them by tradition, then saw in these new possibilities of development, which in turn necessitated changes or elaborations of character, etc.’. But he thought that this method of composition was applicable to writers of melodrama and fiction: ‘no genuine tragedy (as distinguished from melodrama, detective fiction, etc.) was ever produced by Aristotle’s analytical method’.16 Cicu felt certain that ancient novel writers ‘abbiano seguito il consiglio della Poetica e una volta stabilito τὸ ἴδιον, vi abbiano imbastito intorno l’intreccio con una serie coordinate di sequenze narrative. Senza un preciso progetto il racconto del romanzo poteva con facilità diventare ————— 15 16

For the text I consulted Kassel 1998; the translation is by Halliwell 1995. 1957, 309, quoting Wilamowitz.

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farraginoso e ingovernabile e l’unità dell’insie-me spezzata e sommersa nel flusso della fantasia inventiva’.17 There is no way of knowing Chariton’s exact method of composition, let alone whether he consulted Aristotle’s Poetics in composing Callirhoe. But the very notion of a basic plot is crucial and concerns three particular points of what I have been discussing: the relevance of the basic plots provided by Aristotle to the plot of Callirhoe; the amount of information to be included in a basic plot; and the relation between plot and proper names. The essential plot of the Iphigenia in Tauris as outlined by Aristotle is about a girl who is sacrificed, then vanishes without a trace and later emerges on a different land as a priestess; when her brother happens to arrive there some time later, he is captured and recognition follows. If we substitute ‘husband and wife’ for ‘brother and sister’ we have a plot that presents obvious similarities with the Callirhoe plot, something that has not gone unnoticed. Like Iphigenia Callirhoe suffers an act of violence, is believed to be dead, and reappears in a land different from her own. The first part of the plot of Callirhoe in Aristotelian terms is already there: after being kicked in the stomach by her husband and believed to be dead, the wife comes back to life and re-emerges on a different island. The girl in the basic plot of Iphigenia in Tauris assumes a different identity and becomes a priestess. By analogy the most vital event in Callirhoe’s new life is her pregnancy by Chaereas, which forces her to take a second husband (what Aristotle would have called τὸ ἀναγκαῖον). After complications and adventures in the novelistic life of Callirhoe and Chaereas, eventually the couple are re-united. Recognition of identity, so vital to the plot of Iphigenia, is downplayed in the novel vis-à-vis the mutual recognition (rediscovery) of husband and wife (8.1.7-8 ἐγνώρισεν· γνωρίσασα). Modern outlines and summaries of the plot of Callirhoe differ in terms of length and the kind of information they include.18 Chariton was undoubtedly familiar with the διηγήσεις or ὑποθέσεις of dramatic or narrative works, but these also differ in length and the kind of information provided. How many and which of the adventures of Chaereas and Callirhoe should be included in a basic plot of the novel composed according to the Aristotelian examples? I mean those adventures that fall under the headings of ‘enslavement of Chaereas’, ‘trial at Babylon’ and ‘war’. The basic plot of Iphigenia in Tauris is no help here, because action takes place in a single place. But when it comes to the logos of the Odyssey, it becomes clear that all the hero’s adven————— 17 18

1982, 130. See for instance Perry 1967, 141-142; Reardon 1982, 7; Goold 1995, 5-8.

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tures prior to his arrival in Ithaca are left out, most probably because they are considered ‘episodes’, and action proper begins with book 13. Aristotle’s main concern here was the imitation of a ‘single action’.19 I suspect that in a basic plot of Callirhoe composed according to Aristotle’s instructions Chaereas’ enslavement, the trial at Babylon and the war would also have been left out and the plot would have proceeded directly to the recognition section. This would have made of the events which Perry considered ‘real’ (the kick, the pregnancy, the second marriage) the most vital part of the basic plot. One feature that especially distinguishes Aristotle’s essential plots is the omission of proper names. He specifies that names should not be applied at this early stage of composition and should be omitted when they already exist, because they represent ‘particulars’ as opposed to the basic plot that ought to represent ‘the universal’. On the relation of names to plot structure Aristotle had also pronounced himself earlier, in the distinction drawn between poetry and history in chapter 9: Consequently poetry is more philosophical and more elevated than history, since poetry relates more of the universal [τὰ καθόλου], while history relates particulars [τὰ καθ’ ἕκαστον]. ‘Universal’ means the kinds of things which it suits a certain kind of person to say or do, in terms of probability or necessity: poetry aims for this and only afterwards it gives individual names [οὗ στοχάζεται ἡ ποίησις ὀνόματα ἐπιτιθεμένη].20 A ‘particular’ means, say, what Alcibiades did or experienced. In comedy, this point has by now become obvious: the poets construct the plot on the basis of probability, and only then supply arbitrary names [τὰ τυχόντα ὀνόματα ὑποτιθέασιν]; they do not, like iambic poets, write about a particular person. But in tragedy they adhere to the actual names [τῶν γενομένων ὀνομάτων ἀντέχονται]. The reason is that the possible seems plausible: about the possibility of things which have not occurred we are not yet sure; but it is evident that actual events [τὰ γενόμενα] are possible — they could not otherwise have occurred. Yet even in some tragedies there are only one or two familiar names, while the rest are invented [ἓν ἢ δύο τῶν γνωρίμων ἐστὶν ὀνομάτων, τὰ δὲ ἄλλα πεποιημένα]; and in certain plays no name is familiar, for example in Antheus […]. (Ar. Poet. 1451b5-21) ————— 19 20

Else 1957, 513. For the translation of ‘ὀνόματα ἐπιτιθεμένη’ I have followed the interpretation given by Else 1957, 307-308 and Lucas 1978, 121 (Halliwell 1995, ad loc. translates ‘even though attaching names to the agents’).

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The interpretation of the passage involves some vexed questions that will not concern me here.21 Relevant to the issue at hand is the distinction Aristotle makes between arbitrary names applied to works of comedy and existing names retained in tragedy. Callirhoe stands in the middle as ‘historical fiction’: it retained some historical names and reused them in a fictional context. Perry’s theory about the existence of a historical-legendary narrative on which Callirhoe was based depends on the inclusion of historical names in the novel (like Hermocrates and Dionysius)22 and so do some readings of the novel as ‘historical’. If we did not have these names, there would be absolutely no basis for associating, for instance, the violence exercised against Callirhoe, the daughter of the fictional Hermocrates, with the violence exercised against the daughter of the real Hermocrates. Does this imply that Chariton was aware of the significance of retaining ‘actual names’, as Aristotle recommended for tragedy? It is hard to say but it is a possibility.

Trojan Legend In outlining the basic plot of Callirhoe Whitmarsh notes the following: ‘[Callirhoe] is forced to marry a second husband for the sake of her unborn child (for which she earns comparisons with the arch-bigamist Helen of Troy […]). Hardly an ‘ideal’ love story, then, on any criterion’.23 There are two points here that are relevant to the issues raised above. The possible association of Callirhoe with Helen in the basic plot of the novel; and the notion that Helen’s career as an ‘arch-bigamist’ makes of the basic plot a non-ideal one. As regards the former point, Whitmarsh specifies that the figure of Helen is introduced in the context of a comparison, while Marcelle Laplace, arguing against Perry, claimed that the very plot of Callirhoe is based on Trojan legend or rather legends: B. E. Perry, for whom the Greek novel was a kind of epic, assumed that behind the adventures of Callirhoe, the daughter of Hermocrates, there was a legendary history of the daughter of the Syracusan general who defeated the Athenians in 413 B.C. […] The influence of legend, or rather of legends, on the fiction of Callirhoe is true; but they are actually Trojan legends. The plural indicates that Chariton refers both to Greek ————— 21 22 23

For a detailed discussion, see Else 1957, 301-337. Scarcella 1993. Whitmarsh 2008, 6.

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past (the Trojan war) and the Roman past (the destiny of Trojan Aeneas). We will show that the two legends shape the dramatic plot of Chariton’s fiction, and that the meaning of their combination is deduced from the roles that the author assigns respectively to Fortune and Aphrodite.24 Trojan and especially Homeric material is widespread in the novel and has attracted a lot of attention.25 But did Trojan legend actually shape the basic plot of Callirhoe? The novel repeatedly refers to Helen’s second marriage in connection with Callirhoe’s marriage to Dionysius, a key feature of the basic plot. Laplace herself felt compelled, however, to make the following necessary clarification: ‘Cependant, le remarriage de Callirhoé n’équivaut pas à celui d’Hélène. Car Callirhoé épouse Dionysios pour sauver son enfant’.26 Indeed the event at Miletus that determines the second marriage is the discovery of the heroine’s pregnancy by her first husband and it is a development that excludes an association with Helen in the basic plot of the novel. Helen’s career cannot have inspired Callirhoe’s second marriage, because in this case the reader would have had to imagine a version of the Helen story in which the heroine was pregnant by Menelaus when she married Paris. A fictional reworking by Chariton of Helen’s second marriage, one that would imply that Callirhoe’s marriage to Dionysius was shaped after the model of the mythical ‘arch-bigamist’ is also to be excluded. Worthy of particular attention is the way in which Chariton handles the MenelausHelen-Paris relationship. Here are the main passages in which this relationship is mentioned: […] I buried my wife, and the new slave spurns me. I had hoped that she was Aphrodite's gift to me, and was dreaming that I should be happier than Menelaus with his Spartan wife, for I cannot believe that even Helen was as beautiful. […]’ (Callirhoe 2.6.1) ‘[…] It was risky and shortsighted to bring Callirhoe to Babylon, where there are so many men like Mithridates! Menelaus could not keep Helen safe in respectable Sparta, but an oriental shepherd boy outwitted him, king though he was. There is many a man like Paris in Persia. Can you ————— 24 25

26

Laplace 1980, 83. Papanikolaou 1973, 14-16; Müller 1976 ; Fusillo 1990; Manuwald 2000; Hirschberger 2001; Sanz Morales & Laguna Mariscal 2003. Laplace 1980, 114.

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not recognize the prelude to danger? Cities welcome us and governors give us hospitality. She has already begun to put on airs, and the king has not yet seen her. My only hope of safety lies in keeping my wife hidden. She will be secure if she can stay out of sight.’ (Callirhoe 5.2.8-9) In the morning a jostling crowd gathered about the palace, and the streets were thronged to the city limits. Everyone hocked together, ostensibly to listen to the trial, but really to see Callirhoe, who, just as she had formerly surpassed the beauty of the other women, so now appeared to surpass herself. Consequently, when she entered the courtroom she looked just as the divine poet describes Helen, when she appeared to them that were about Priam and Panthous and also Thymoetes, elders of the people. The sight of her brought admiration and silence, and they all prayed for the prize of sleeping beside her. Indeed, if Mithridates had been compelled to plead first, he would have been unable to speak, for on the old wound, as it were, he had received another, more violent, blow (Callirhoe 5.5.8-9) Fortune was now planning a blow as grim as incredible: though in possession of Callirhoe, Chaereas was to remain ignorant of the fact and, sailing away with other men’s wives aboard his warships, was to leave his wife there alone, not, like Ariadne, asleep, nor for a Dionysus to marry, but as booty for his enemies. But Aphrodite thought this excessive; by now she was becoming reconciled to Chaereas, though earlier she had been intensely angered at his intemperate jealousy; for, having received from her the fairest of gifts, surpassing even that given to Alexander surnamed Paris, he had repaid her favor with insult. Since Chaereas had now made full amends to Love by his wanderings from west to east amid countless tribulations, Aphrodite took pity on him, and, as she had originally brought together this handsome pair, so now, having harassed them over land and sea, she resolved to unite them again. (Callirhoe 8.1.2-3) Chariton avoids causing Dionysius to appear like Paris, in order to bypass the issue of adultery. In the first two passages the person speaking is Dionysius and imagines himself not as Paris but as Menelaus, the first husband. He cannot put himself in the place of Paris, because he does not yet know that Callirhoe is married and because in his eyes Paris is identifiable with Mithri-

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dates. The fourth passage which conveys Aphrodite’s thoughts is illuminating: Dionysius believed that Callirhoe-Helen was Aphrodite’s gift to him as another Menelaus (first passage) but Aphrodite reveals that she was actually a gift to Chaereas-Menelaus. This is an inversion of the Judgment of Paris, when the goddess promised Helen to Paris, and it is an inversion we have from two sources: from Dionysius and especially from Aphrodite who controls the major action in the novel. Finally Callirhoe profits from the comparison with Helen in terms of unsurpassed beauty, but derives nothing from her notoriety: in the courtroom she appears like Helen at Troy before the Trojan Elders and attracts universal admiration, but the author is careful not to mention Dionysius after that, something which would have made of him an adulterous Paris; instead he mentions Mithridates, a suitor whose stunned reaction adds to Callirhoe’s legendary beauty (passage 3). Let me also add that no war is provoked on account of Callirhoe: the war-ship on which Chaereas-Menelaus and his close friend bearing the speaking name Polycharmus reach Miletus is burnt by the men of Phocas, and the two friends are seized. Dionysius’ faithful estate manager is able to nip in the bud the war (πόλεμος) against Dionysius’ house (3.7.2-3). The clash between Dionysius and Mithridates at Babylon, which may represent the duel between Menelaus and Paris,27 is one between the husband and an unsuccessful suitor, not between first and second husband. King Artaxerxes’ arbitration between Chaereas and Dionysius is thwarted by the timely outbreak of the Egyptian revolt. But the war is not caused by Callirhoe-Helen, and Chaereas and Dionysius never meet on the battlefield in a fight that would determine the fate of Helen, as Paris and Menelaus did in the Iliad, but perform individual feats.28 On the whole then Callirhoe’s marriage to Dionysus, a basic plot event, cannot have been inspired by the precedent of Helen, the ‘arch-bigamist’. But there is an Iliadic event that may have provided inspiration for the basic plot of the novel. Chaereas’ kick is the action which triggers the rest of the action in the novel. Chaereas delivers it in a state of uncontrolled anger: ‘κρατούμενος δὲ ὑπὸ τῆς ὀργῆς ἐλάκτισε προσιοῦσαν’ (1.4.12). Reasons and motives do not appear in the Aristotelian plots of Iphigenia and the Odyssey, even though they are not placed ἔξω τοῦ μύθου,29 but only facts and events. ————— 27 28

29

Laplace 1980, 96-98. It is true that Chaereas joins the Egyptian revolt in revenge against the ‘judge’ Artaxerxes-Paris (7.1.3-11) but he is simply misled by Dionysius who tells him that the King had given Callirhoe to him and in addition the King remains a suitor to the end. This is explicitly stated in connection with the reason and purpose that brought Orestes to Tauris.

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Some years ago Scourfield pointed out the centrality of anger in the novel and its function as the driving impulse of the story: the action is set in motion by Chaereas’ anger, and at 8.1.3 Aphrodite confesses that it was her own anger at Chaereas’ hybris that caused him and Callirhoe so many tribulations. Scourfield suggested similarities with the wrath of Achilles (without elaborating), the wrath of Poseidon and especially Juno’s wrath in the Aeneid.30 Could Chaereas’ kick represent a novelistic version of the sword blow that the angry Achilles was considering to deliver against Agamemnon before he was stopped by Athena (Iliad 1.188-222)? When Chaereas is misled to believe that his wife is unfaithful to him, his grief is compared to that of Achilles when he learned of Patroclus’ death (Iliad 18.22-24 is quoted). When he learns the truth after the tragic event, he conceives the desire to kill himself but is prevented (ἐκώλυε) by Polycharmus ‘his closest friend, as in Homer Patroclus was of Achilles.’ (1.5.2). The clash between Achilles and Agamemnon is neither mentioned nor alluded to anywhere in the novel— in fact Agamemnon is not explicitly mentioned at all — and attention focuses exclusively on the Achilles-Patroclus relationship. Chariton establishes a clear parallel between this and the Chaereas-Callirhoe relationship, in the sense that lines from the Iliad which express the brief of Achilles, resulting from Patroclus’ death, are used at various places to provide a Homeric color to the grief of the protagonists of the novel.31 But is all allusion to the anger of Achilles to be excluded? To sum up, Chaereas’ kick and Callirhoe’s pregnancy, the key events in a basic plot constructed according to Aristotle’s guidelines, are ‘non-ideal’ and look ‘realistic’. The heroine’s pregnancy forces her to take a second husband and her son becomes associated with developments placed outside the time frame of the novel. Although she and Chaereas are reunited, they entrust the boy to Callirhoe’s second husband in order to ‘bring him up and educate him in a manner worthy of them’. The narrative assigns him a key role in the future of another city, to succeed to his ruling grandfather Hermocrates. This is an apparent anomaly, as Perry suggested. If in addition one takes into consideration that the adoptive father bears the name Dionysius, like the son-in-law of historical Hermocrates who became ruler of Syracuse, ————— 30 31

Scourfield 2003. Fusillo 1990, 35-38; Sanz Morales & Laguna Mariscal 2003. The parallel has been treated as evidence that Chariton interpreted Achilles’ grief for Patroclus as erotic in character. On homosexuality in the novel cf. 1.3.6

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it may not be so bold to assume that Chariton adapted an existing dynastic line of succession (Dionysus I succeeded by Dionysus II). To Perry Chaereas’ kicking of his loving bride looked so ‘real’ that it cannot have been invented. What makes matters more realistic is that Callirhoe was pregnant when she received the blow. Available evidence suggests a violent death for the daughter of the historical Hermocrates. Regarding the possible incorporation of Trojan material in the basic plot of the story, I have argued that this view has no basis. I have also attempted to show that Chariton avoids identifying Callirhoe with Helen in her capacity as an ‘arch-bigamist’ and that he treats Dionysius not as another Paris but as another Menelaus. Does the narrative suggest an allusive association of Chaereas’ kick with the sword blow that the angry Achilles prepares to deliver to Agamemnon in Iliad 1, especially since both cases involve the clash of two males over a female? The context gives great prominence to the anger of Chaereas and associates him with Achilles, but only as regards his grief before and after the event, which is reminiscent of Achilles’ grief for the death of Patroclus. I think, however, that the theme of human anger, placed at the beginning of the novel and portrayed as the emotion that triggers the main action, would have anyway evoked the beginning of the Iliad. Inspiration from a historical event, as Perry suggested, and poetic memory coincide in an act of violence and it may have been the latter that turned it into the triggering event of the novel.

Bibliography Brink, K. O. 1946. ‘Callimachus and Aristotle: An Inquiry into Callimachus’ ΠΡΟΣ ΠΡΑΞΙΦΑΝΗΝ’, CQ 40, 11-26. Brink, C. O. 1963. Horace on poetry I Prolegomena to the Literary Epistles, Cambridge: Cambridge U. P. Brink, C. O. 1971. Horace on Poetry II: The Ars Poetica, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cave, T. 2001. ‘The Afterlife of the Poetics’, in Ø. Andersen & J. Haarberg (eds.), Making Sense of Aristotle: Essays in Poetics, London: Duckworth, 197-217. Cicu, L. 1982. ‘La Poetica di Aristotele e le Strutture dell'Antico Romanzo d’Amore e d’Avventure,’ Sandalion 5, 107-141. Downing, E. 1984. E. “Οἷον Ψυχή: An Essay on Aristotle's Muthos”, CA 3, 164-178. Else, Gerard F. 1957, Aristotle’s Poetics: The Argument, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Fusillo, M. 1990. ‘Il testo nel testo: la citazione nel romanzo greco’. MD 25, 27-48.

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— 1991. Naissance du Roman, traduit de l’Italien par Marielle Abrioux, Paris: Éditions du Seuil. Gallavotti, C. 1969. ‘Tracce della Poetica di Aristotele negli scolii omerici,’ Maia 21, 203214. Goold, G. P. (ed., transl.) 1995. Chariton: Callirhoe, Cambridge, Mass.- London: Harvard University Press. Green, P. (transl., comm.) 2010. Diodorus Siculus: The Persian wars to the fall of Athens , books 11–14.34 (480 – 401 BCE), Austin: University of Texas Press. Halliwell, Stephen (ed., transl.) 1995. Aristotle: Poetics, Cambridge, Mass. Hering, W. 1983. ‘Zur Wirkung der poetic des Aristoteles in der Antike’, in J. Irmscher & R. Müller (eds.), Aristoteles als Wissenschaftstheoriker, Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 255-258. Hirschberger, M. 2001. ‘Epos und Tragödie in Charitons Kallirhoe. Ein Beitrag zur Intertextualität des griechischen Romans’, WJA 25, 157–186. Hunter, R. 1994. ‘History and Historicity in the Romance of Chariton’, ANRW II.34.2, 10551086. Kappl, Brigitte 2006. Die Poetik des Aristoteles in der Dichtungstheorie des Cinquecento, Berlin - New York: Walter de Gruyter. Kassel, Rudolf (ed.) 1968. Aristotelis de arte poetica liber, Οξφόρδη. Kyriakou, P. 1997. ‘Aristotle’s Poetics and Stoic Literary Theory’, RhM 140, 257-280. Laplace, Marcelle 1980. ‘Les Legendes Troyennes dans le ‘Roman’ de Chariton, Chaireas et Callirhoe’, REG 93, 83-125 Lucas, D. W. (comm.) 1978. Aristotle: Poetics 1978, Oxford: Clarendon Press. MacPhail, E. 2001. ‘The Plot of History from Antiquity to the Renaissance’, JHI 62, 1-16. Manuwald, Gesine 2000. ‘Zitate als Mittel des Erzählens – Zur Darstellungstechnik Charitons in seinem Roman Kallirhoe, WJA 24, 97–122. Müller, C. W. 1976. ‘Chariton von Aphrodisias und die Theorie des Romans in der Antike’, A&A 22, 115-136. Papanikolaou A. D. 1973. Chariton-Studien. Untersuchungen zur Sprache und Chronologie der griechiscen Romane, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Perry, B. E. 1930. ‘Chariton and his Romance from a Literary-historical Point of View’, AJP 51, 93-134. — 1967. The Ancient Romances: A Literary-Historical Account of their Origins, Berkeley Los Angeles: University of California Press. Plepelits, Karl (transl., comm.) 1976. Chariton von Aphrodisias, Kallirhoe, Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann. Reardon, B. P. 1982. ‘Theme, Structure and Narrative in Chariton’, YCS 27, 1-27. — 1991. The Form of Greek Romance, Princeton: Princeton University Press. — (ed.) 2004. Chariton Aphrodisiensis. De Callirroe narrationes amatoriae, München Leipzig: K. G. Saur Verlag. Richardson, N. J. 1980. ‘Literary Criticism in the Exegetical Scholia to the Iliad: A Sketch’, CQ 30, 265-287. Rostagni, A. 1921. Aristotele e aristotelismo nella storia dell’estetica antica. Origini, significato, svolgimento della ‘Poetica’, Florence: Stab. Tipografico E. Ariani. Ruiz-Montero, C. 1996. ‘The Rise of the Greek Novel’, in Gareth Schmeling (ed.), The Novel in the Ancient World, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 29-85. Sanz Morales, M. & G. Laguna Mariscal 2003. ‘The relationship between Achilles and Patroclus according to Chariton of Aphrodisias’, CQ 53, 292-295.

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Scarcella, A. M. 1993. ‘Metastasi narratologica del dato storico nel romanzo erotico greco’, in P. Liviabella Furiani & L. Rossetti (eds.), Romanzo e romanzieri. Note di narratologia greca, Napoli: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane,77-102. Scourfield, J. H. D. 2003. ‘Anger and Gender in Chariton’s Chaereas and Callirhoe’, in Susanna Braund and Glenn W. Most (eds.), Ancient Anger: Perspectives from Homer to Galen, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Smith, Steven D. 2007. Greek Identity and the Athenian Past in Chariton: The Romance of Empire, Groningen: Barkhuis and Groningen Library. Tilg, Stefan 2010. Chariton of Aphrodisias and the Invention of the Greek Love Novel, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Weinberg, Bernard 1961. A History of Literary Criticism in the Italian Renaissance, volumes I-II, Chicago-London: University of Chicago Press. Whitmarsh, T. (ed.) 2008. The Cambridge Companion to the Greek and Roman Novel, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Caging Grasshoppers: Longus’ Materials for Weaving ‘Reality’ E WEN B OWIE University of Oxford

The other papers in this volume have operated, explicitly or implicitly, with a number of different definitions of ‘the real’ and ‘the ideal’. I had better make it clear how I mean to use these terms. By ‘ideal’ I understand a presentation of action and character that emphasises praiseworthy qualities or actions, on occasion by eliminating or obscuring motives or choices that might be expected in ‘ordinary’, ‘real’ people. The resulting characters are like those attributed by Aristotle to tragedy, ‘better than in our world’, βελτίους ἢ καθ’ ἡμᾶς.1 By ‘real’ I understand situations and behaviour which seem to a reader to correspond more or less closely with what he or she has encountered or expects to encounter in the world in which he or she lives. It is immediately apparent that on this understanding ‘real’ and ‘ideal’ are not opposites. ‘Real’ and the ‘ideal’ may indeed be opposite when they apply to behaviour, but my concept of the ‘ideal’ has no simple relation to ‘situation’. On my terminology, then, the gang of four Greek novels – those of Chariton, Xenophon, Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus – earn their frequently given epithet ‘ideal’ by reason of their characters’ behaviour, but their settings are in general as ‘real’ as those of historians, ethnographers, geographers or letter-writers. Indeed in an early paper, delivered at the first conference on the ancient novel, ICAN, in Bangor 1976, I argued that for this reason the Greek novels could and should be taken, albeit with caution, as evidence for the society of the Greek world in the Roman empire. I still think that for the gang of four this is broadly the case. Chariton, for example, builds up a readily recognisable universe in which what is familiar ————— 1

Po. 1448a4. Translations such as ‘better than ourselves’ (Halliwell 1987) or ‘better than we are’ (Janko 1987) do not fully catch the sense of the phrase, explained correctly by Lucas 1968, 64 as comparable to ‘people now’ (τῶν νῦν) at a18. The Construction of the Real and the Ideal in the Ancient Novel, 179–197

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to him and his readers from their contemporary world – cities, meetings of an assembly, sea-journeys, country villas, local aristocrats, reasoned discussions of possible courses of action and, of course, the whole gamut of emotions including ἔρως – are blended with data about the early fourth century Mediterranean world that can be acquired by reading historians like Thucydides, Philistus and Ephorus or geographers like Poseidonius and Strabo, spiced up with some features like pirates that may owe more to declamation than to historiography. Declamation and New Comedy are perhaps the closest to fictional sources that we can postulate for Chariton’s inventio, though of course he draws on Attic tragedy for patterns of plot and on Homer both for these and for carefully calibrated intertextuality in the form of telling citations of single lines.2 With Longus, however, things are different. Many of the general features and of the details of the pastoral world in which Daphnis and Chloe are located for most of their story seem to derive neither from personal observation, nor from the descriptions of a political or socio-economic historian of Lesbos, but from literary texts that are themselves presenting fiction: chief amongst these are Homer, Theocritus and post-Theocritean bucolic poetry.3 Other poetic texts on which Longus drew were not, perhaps, overtly presenting a fictional world – I think here of the sixth century B.C. poets Sappho and Alcaeus, both of whose Mytilenean connections recommended them as intertexts for Longus’ project, and perhaps of Ibycus, and of Philitas in the third century B.C.: but the poetic universe presented by these melic poets of archaic Greece or even by the Hellenistic elegy of Philitas was arguably by the second and third centuries A.D. a world much more distant from readers than the worlds of Thucydides and Ephorus and shared more with the fictional worlds of Homer and Theocritus. Moreover at an early stage in his miniature novel Longus gives his readers very clear indications that the universe of Daphnis and Chloe has as its principal point of origin not the real world but that of artistic creations, above all literary creations. In looking at the debt of Longus to Theocritus and Sappho I am of course revisiting well-trodden territory, and I shall be repeating points found in the excellent discussions of Hunter (1983) and Pattoni (2005) as well as plundering ideas from other scholars. But I hope that approaching these is————— 2

3

For the novelists’ exploitation of canonical Greek mythology, especially as mediated by Attic tragedy, see now Lefteratou 2010. For Homer as fiction see Bowie 1993. For Theocritus as an ‘inventor’ of fiction see Payne 2007.

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sues with different questions will still yield some new and worthwhile perspectives.

The Country Longus’ pointers to intertextuality with Theocritus start with his preface. On the one hand it presents crucial details evocative of Theocritus’ pastoral world. Its description of a locus amoenus with a spring, πηγή, and of a painting involving grazing beasts, ποίμνια, and shepherds, ποιμένες, and a story given over entirely to desire (πάvτα ἐρωτικά), points strongly to pastoral.4 The word πηγή, ‘spring’, of course prompts a reader also to think of (literary) sources.5 Shortly after the preface we read that the goatherd who found an abandoned baby being suckled by one of his goats decided, with his wife, to call this child Daphnis, ‘so that the name of the child might also seem pastoral’ (ὡς δ’ ἂv καὶ τὸ ὄvoμα τoῦ παιδίoυ πoιμεvικὸv δoκoίη, Δάφνιν αὐτὸν ἔγvωσαv καλεῖv, 1,3,2). Given that some traditions about Daphnis preceded Theocritus this cannot be conclusive,6 but surely the best known Daphnis is that of Theocritus 1 (perhaps the same as the one who makes a cameo appearance in Theocritus 7,73, but less easy to conceive as identical with the homo-erotic Daphnis of Theocritus 6).7 It becomes progressively more certain that the constituents of Longus’ pastoral landscape are to be seen as drawing on that of Theocritus, and that poem 1 of Theocritus is of primary importance. At 1,10,2 Longus describes Daphnis and Chloe’s spring pastimes: while Daphnis made a syrinx, Chloe gathered some rushes and began to weave a grasshopper cage or trap. The passage evokes the boy depicted weaving a grasshopper cage or trap on the cup in (once again) Theocritus 1,52-54, likewise totally absorbed in his artistic activity: both texts even

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Above all to the opening of the poem that stood first in at least some ancient editions of Theocritus, Ἁδύ τι τὸ ψιθύρισμα καὶ ἁ πίτυς, αἰπόλε, τήνα, | ἁ ποτὶ ταῖς παγαῖσι, μελίσδεται, ἁδὺ δὲ καὶ τύ | συρίσδες … (‘A sweet sort of whispering does that pine-tree, goatherd, over there | the one by the springs, make as its music, and sweetly too do you play the rustic pipe ...’), Theoc. 1,1-3. Of course Theocritus’ locus amoenus itself exploits earlier well-known intertexts – the cave of Calypso at Odyssey 5,55-74, and perhaps Sappho fr. 2 L-P and Ibycus fr. 286 PMGF – all of these with erotic associations. Cf. LSJ s.v. πηγή II.2. Notably the poem ascribed to Stesichorus by Aelian VH 10,18 = fr. 279 PMGF. On the Daphnis of Theoc. 6 see Bowie 1996.

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have the same disagreement in the manuscript tradition – is this a grasshopper trap (ἀκριδoθήραv) or a grasshopper cage (ἀκριδoθήκηv)?8 But as well as such details the opening sequence of Daphnis and Chloe flashes a different sort of signal. By a provocative pleonasm Longus calls the painting in the cave εἰκόνος γραφήν, ‘the sketch of a painting’, and proposes ἀντιγράψαι τῇ γραφῇ, ‘to sketch in emulation of the sketch’, having sought out an ἐξηγητής, ‘expounder’, who can explain its contents. We are thus taken on a vertiginous journey that brings us several steps from the real world: the work we are asked to imagine is itself the representation (γραφή) of a painting (εἰκών) – itself a representation, we imagine, of events in some sort of universe: the exposition of the ἐξηγητής takes us one further step from reality, and in the narrator’s version – the one we are reading – even by arithmetic progression, and not the geometric progression on which a Platonist reader might insist, we are already four steps from the real world. This gap from the real world is important to remember when we encounter some further, clearly signalled Theocritean intertexts: I pick out three, each of which is very familiar. For my first case I move forward to a scene late in Book 2. Chloe, abducted by the naval task-force from Methymna, has been rescued through the intervention of Pan, whose capacity for anger is known to readers from Theocritus 1.9 A party is held to celebrate Chloe’s safe return. The couple and their families celebrate by sacrificing their best she-goat to the nymphs; the next day they sacrifice their leading he-goat to Pan. Philetas joins the ensuing celebration, accompanied by his son Tityrus, πυρρὸv παιδίov καὶ γλαυκόv, ‘a young boy with red hair and bright eyes’ (2,32,1). The reader who has Theocritus in mind could well be puzzled: the suitor of Amaryllis in Theocritus 3 also had a young Tityrus to do his bidding, in his case to watch his goats during his wooing; but the description given to that ————— 8

9

The identity of the variae lectiones itself raises questions: are the two readings of Longus’ MSS, ἀκριδoθήραv in V and ἀκριδoθήκηv in F, the same as the two of those of Theocritus by chance, or because Longus himself circulated two editions with variants, as once argued by Young 1968 and 1971? Or has an ancient or Byzantine reader of Longus been sent to his text of Theocritus by the signals to which I have drawn attention and corrected his text. οὐ θέμις, ὦ ποιμήν, τὸ μεσαμβρινὸν οὐ θέμις ἄμμιν | συρίσδεν. τὸν Πᾶνα δεδοίκαμες· ἦ γὰρ ἀπ’ ἄγρας | τανίκα κεκμακὼς ἀμπαύεται· ἔστι δὲ πικρός, | καί οἱ ἀεὶ δριμεῖα χολὰ ποτὶ ῥινὶ κάθηται (‘It is not allowed, shepherd, at midday, it is not allowed for us | to play the pipe. Pan it is that we fear: for after all from his chase | at that time he is tired, and rests; and he is sharp-tempered, | and pungent bile is always seated at his nose’), Theoc. 1,15-18.

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Tityrus suggested a younger fellow-shepherd with whom the singer had a sexual relationship, not a son: the diagnostic phrase is Τίτυρ’ ἐμὶν τὸ καλὸv πεφιλημέvε, βόσκε τὰς αἶγας (‘Tityrus, my lovely darling, graze the goats’, Theoc. 3,3). Is Longus simply playing randomly, or at least carelessly, with pastoral names? Or is he asking his reader to revisit the opening of Theocritus poem 3 and to ponder whether the Tityrus there is perhaps a beloved son and not a beloved ἐρώμεvoς?10 If this inclines the reader to detach Longus’ pastoral universe from that of Theocritus she soon encounters a deterrent. Philetas sends off his son Tityrus to fetch his full-size syrinx so that he can demonstrate his skill, second only to Pan’s.11 Meanwhile Daphnis’ father Lamon expounds ‘the tale (μῦθος) of syrinx’. Lamon presents this μῦθος as one which ‘a Sicilian goatherd sang to him for the fee of a goat and a syrinx’ (μῦθον ὃν αὐτῷ Σικελὸς αἰπόλος ᾖσεν ἐπὶ μισθῷ τράγῳ καὶ σύριγγι). Sicilian goatherds are as out of place in Lesbos as the Tyrian pirates who in Book 1 carried off Daphnis (to whom I shall return), and Longus’ unusual breach of verisimilitude flags up a literary allusion, chiefly if not wholly to the poetry of Theocritus. We are not indeed to understand the goatherd to be Theocritus himself:12 Theocritus was, after all, no goatherd. Rather this αἰπόλος is the fictional Pan-fearing and mysteriously unnamed goatherd of Theocritus 1,23-63, domiciled on the slopes of Sicilian Etna, who persuaded the fictional shepherd Thyrsis to sing his myth of Daphnis for the reward of a splendid cup and three milkings of a goat. The syrinx with which Longus here replaces the Theocritean cup is a payment thematically appropriate to both texts, and it too has a model within Thyrsis’ song in Theocritus 1, when the dying Daphnis hands his syrinx to Pan.13 Lamon’s story (μῦθος) about Pan’s erotic self-assertiveness, then, has a similar sort of plausible pastoral aetiology to the song of Theocritus’ fictional character Thyrsis about the erotic misadventures of a mythical Daph————— 10

11

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13

There might also have been such an ancient scholarly debate on the relation to Sappho of her πάις Kleis, 132 L-P and 98b, cf. the claim that Sappho had a daughter Cleis made in P.Oxy. 1800 and Suda Σ 107. Cf. μετὰ Πᾶνα τὸ δεύτερον ἆθλον ἀποισῇ, (‘after Pan you will carry off the second prize’), Theoc. 1,3. The note in Morgan 2004, 195 surprisingly identifies the Σικελὸς αἰπόλος as ‘implicitly Theokritos of Syracuse’. Theoc. 1,128-130. This moment is also exploited by Longus for the scene in which the dying Dorcon gives Chloe his syrinx, 1,29,3. The fee that combines a goat and a syrinx is also found in pseudo-Theoc. 8,85, and Morgan 2004, 195 is right to suggest that this (too) is drawn upon by Longus, but it seems to me that Theoc. 1 remains the primary intertext.

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nis, and this similarity reminds the reader always to be alert to read Longus’ text against that of Theocritus. For my second case I move back to Book 1. Here Longus blends the fictional world of Theocritus with the less demonstrably fictional world of Sappho, whose poetry is naturally an important model for a story of desire set on Lesbos. The first distinct allusion is at 1,17,2: after having had his life’s first kiss from Chloe Daphnis, for the first time, begins to marvel at her blonde hair, her eyes and her complexion. τότε πρῶτον καὶ τὴν κόμην αὐτῆς ἐθαύμασεν ὅτι ξανθή, καὶ τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς ὅτι μεγάλοι καθάπερ βοός, καὶ τὸ πρόσωπον ὅτι λευκότερον ἀληθῶς καὶ τοῦ τῶν αἰγῶν γάλακτος, ὥσπερ τότε πρῶτον ὀφθαλμοὺς κτησάμενος, τὸν δὲ πρότερον χρόνον πεπηρωμένος. Then for the first time he marvelled at her hair, that it was blonde, and her eyes, that they were large like a cow’s, and her face, that it was really whiter even than goats’ milk – as if it was then for the first time he had acquired eyes, and had previously been bereft of sight. Long. 1,17,3 Longus’ comparison of Chloe’s complexion to milk seems certainly to have its ultimate origin in early Greek love poetry, since it is shortly followed by a comparison of her lips to roses, χείλη ῥόδωv ἁπαλώτερα, ‘lips more tender than roses’ (1,18,1), and we read in the late writer Gregory of Corinth: οἷον τὰ Ἀνακρέοντος, τὰ Σαπφοῦς, οἷον γάλακτος λευκοτέρα, ὕδατος ἁπαλωτέρα, πηκτίδων ἐμμελεστέρα, ἵππου γαυροτέρα, ῥόδωv ἁβροτέρα, ἱματίου ἑανοῦ μαλακωτέρα, χρυσοῦ τιμιωτέρα.14 Such as the phrases of Anacreon, the phrases of Sappho, such as ‘more white than milk’, ‘more gentle than water’, ‘more tuneful than lyres’, ‘more spirited than a mare’, ‘more delicate than roses’, ‘more soft than a fine robe’, ‘more precious than gold’. Milk is an obvious standard of whiteness, but the pastoral context which is very unlikely to have been that in Sappho or Anacreon makes the comparison especially appropriate in Daphnis and Chloe. Longus, however, is not ————— 14

Gregory of Corinth (commenting on Hermogenes, de meth. 13 = Rhet. Gr. 7,1236 Walz) giving, with Demetrius de eloc. 162, Sappho fr. 156 L-P.

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simply picking out a phrase from the poetry of a canonical poet, well known to some in the second century AD,15 his game is more complicated. Theocritus had already drawn on the Sapphic or Anacreontic comparisons in poem 11,16 where he has his young, love-sick Polyphemus open his song with the following address to a nymph whose name Galateia makes her complexion’s comparison to milk especially witty: Ὦ λευκὰ Γαλάτεια, τί τὸν φιλέοντ’ ἀποβάλλῃ, λευκοτέρα πακτᾶς ποτιδεῖν, ἁπαλωτέρα ἀρνός, μόσχω γαυροτέρα, φιαρωτέρα ὄμφακος ὠμᾶς; O white Galatea, why do you reject him who loves you, Whiter than curd-cheese to look upon, gentler than water, More spirited than a calf, plumper than an unripe grape. Theocritus 11,19-21 Longus expects his reader to know this poem of Theocritus, and ups the ante by insisting that in the case of Chloe her face was really, ἀληθῶς, whiter than goat’s milk. ‘Really’. Really? In what level of ‘reality’ is Longus’ reader now located? Or rather, how many steps away from reality is she? The whole issue of fictionality has been thrown open by the carefully chosen word ἀληθῶς. Longus and his readers are quite likely to have taken the girls addressed or recalled in Sappho’s poems to have been ‘real’ people, but they know that the worlds both of Theocritus’ pastoral poetry and of Daphnis and Chloe are not real but fictional. They know too that the mythical Polyphemus of Homer’s Odyssey, developed by Theocritus in this poem (and in his poem 6), as it had also earlier been by Philoxenus of Cythera, was a character introduced to the Greek world by Homer’s Odysseus in his apologoi, for ancient readers a stronger candidate for classification as fiction than Greeks and Trojans of Homer’s author-narrative.

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The clearest witnesses are the rubbish dumps of Oxyrhynchus which have yielded so much Sappho: but note also Plutarch (cf. Bowie 2004b), Maximus of Tyre, and Athenaeus. Given Theocritus’ telling use of Sappho elsewhere it is more likely that, of the two poets named by Gregory of Corinth, Sappho and not Anacreon is his intertext.

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That the issue of fictionality is intended to continue to occupy at least a part of the reader’s mind is suggested by its re-introduction by Longus only a page later:17 when Dorcon bestialises himself in a wolfskin and hides to ambush Chloe we read of the thick bushes and undergrowth in which he secretes himself ‘ῥᾳδίως ἂν ἐκεῖ καὶ λύκος ἀληθινὸς ἔλαθε λοχῶν’, ‘there even a real wolf could easily have hid in ambush’ (1,20,3). One of Longus’ only two other uses of the adverb ἀληθῶς, and one of his only two other uses of the adjective ἀληθινός, also relate to procedures of creating verisimilitude in a work of τέχνη comparable to those in which he is engaged himself.18 At 2,36,2 the contribution of Chloe’s father Dryas to the fête champêtre is a pantomime in which his dance mimes a worker at different stages in the vintage: ταῦτα πάντα οὕτως εὐσχημόνως ὠρχήσατο Δρύας καὶ ἐναργῶς, ὥστε ἐδόκουν βλέπειν καὶ τὰς ἀμπέλους καὶ τὴν ληνὸν καὶ τοὺς πίθους καὶ ἀληθῶς Δρύαντα πίνοντα. All this Dryas danced so elegantly and vividly that they thought they were looking at the grapes and the grape-press and the wine-vats and Dryas really drinking. By selecting for this rustic version of one of Greek middlebrow culture’s most popular art-forms in the Roman imperial period a subject of which he had himself offered a virtuoso ecphrastic treatment at the beginning of this book (2,1), Longus invites his readers to consider whether he too has been telling his rural story εὐσχημόνως … καὶ ἐναργῶς, ‘elegantly and vividly’, to the point that they too think they have ‘reality’ before their eyes (i.e. with the sort of ἐνάργεια, ‘vividness’, commended in ecphrasis). That such an invitation is indeed made seems to me to be corroborated by the narrator’s comment on the pantomime that immediately follows Dryas’ performance, this time a pantomime danced by Daphnis and Chloe themselves: they dance the myth of syrinx that has just been narrated by Lamon (2,34), and although, as ————— 17

18

42 lines of Teubner text, or a few columns on a papyrus roll (though our remarkable lack of any fragment of a roll or codex of Longus from Egypt prevents us knowing the formats in which his text circulated). Longus’ other uses of ἀληθῶς, 3,18,2, and ἀληθινούς, 3,25,3, like his other uses of ἀληθής seem not to raise so insistently issues relating to Longus’ own creation of fiction, but after sensitisation by the cases in Book 2 a reader will at least be reminded of the fictionality of the narrative in which they appear.

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I have argued elsewhere,19 they bowdlerise and soften the traditionally brutal myth, their performance too ‘captures’ reality: Daphnis kisses Chloe ‘as if it was after a real flight that he had found her again’: ὁ δὲ … φιλήσας ὡς ἐκ φυγῆς ἀληθινῆς εὑρεθεῖσαν τὴν Χλόην (2,38,1). My next case explores how Longus can engage in elaborate weaving of strands without moving outside the corpus of a single author. At 3,33,4 he returns to the great love poet of Lesbos, Sappho: it is autumn, abundant crops of fruit have been harvested, and Daphnis, now assured that his marriage to Chloe is secure and will take place soon, in late autumn (τῷ μετοπώρῳ, 3,32,3), rushes to her with the good tidings and is keen to pluck the one remaining and apparently unattainable apple to present to her as a gift, manifestly a plucking and presentation that symbolise his imminent taking of her as his bride: μία μηλέα τετρύγητο καὶ οὔτε καρπὸν εἶχεν οὔτε φύλλον· γυμνοὶ πάντες ἦσαν οἱ κλάδοι· καὶ ἓν μῆλον ἐπέττετο ἐπ’ αὐτοῖς ἄκροις ἀκρότατον, μέγα καὶ καλὸν καὶ τῶν πολλῶν τὴν εὐανθίαν ἐνίκα μόνον· ἔδεισεν ὁ τρυγῶν ἀνελθεῖν, ἠμέλησε καθελεῖν· τάχα δὲ καὶ ἐφυλάττετο τὸ καλὸν μῆλον ἐρωτικῷ ποιμένι. τοῦτο τὸ μῆλον ὡς εἶδεν ὁ Δάφνις, ὥρμα τρυγᾶν ἀνελθὼν καὶ Χλόης κωλυούσης ἠμέλησεν· ἡ μὲν ἀμεληθεῖσα, ὀργισθεῖσα πρὸς τὰς ἀγέλας ἀπῆλθε· Δάφνις δὲ ἀναδραμὼν ἐξίκετο τρυγῆσαι καὶ κομίσαι δῶρον Χλόῃ καὶ λόγον τοιόνδε εἶπεν ὠργισμένῃ· ‘ὦ παρθένε, τοῦτο τὸ μῆλον ἔφυσαν Ὧραι καλαὶ καὶ φυτὸν καλὸν ἔθρεψε πεπαίνοντος Ἡλίου, καὶ ἐτήρησε Τύχη. καὶ οὐκ ἔμελλον αὐτὸ καταλιπεῖν ὀφθαλμοὺς ἔχων, ἵνα πέσῃ χαμαὶ καὶ ἢ ποίμνιον αὐτὸ πατήσῃ νεμόμενον ἢ ἑρπετὸν φαρμάξῃ συρόμενον ἢ χρόνος δαπανήσῃ κείμενον, βλεπόμενον, ἐπαινούμενον. τοῦτο Ἀφροδίτη κάλλους ἔλαβεν ἆθλον· τοῦτο ἐγὼ σοὶ δίδωμι νικητήριον. ὁμοίους ἔχετε τοὺς μάρτυρας· ἐκεῖνος ἦν ποιμήν, αἰπόλος ἐγώ.’ ταῦτα εἰπὼν ἐντίθησι τοῖς κόλποις· ἡ δὲ ἐγγὺς γενόμενον κατεφίλησεν, ὥστε ὁ Δάφνις οὐ μετέγνω τολμήσας ἀνελθεῖν εἰς τοσοῦτον ὕψος· ἔλαβε γὰρ κρεῖττον καὶ χρυσοῦ μήλου φίλημα. One apple-tree had been harvested, and had neither fruit nor foliage; all its branches were bare; and one apple was ripening, on the very topmost branches the topmost, large and fair, and on its own it surpassed the fineness of the bloom of many. The harvester had been afraid to climb ————— 19

Bowie 2003, with further suggestions in Bowie 2007. For the importance of pantomime in this period see Lada Richards 2007, Hall and Wyles 2008.

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up, had paid no attention to bringing it down; and perhaps the fair apple was in fact being saved for a shepherd in the power of Desire. When Daphnis saw this apple he was keen to climb up and harvest it and paid no attention to Chloe when she tried to stop him. When he paid no attention she became angry and went off to the flocks. But Daphnis shinned up and reached and harvested it, and brought it as a gift to Chloe, and delivered this speech to her in her anger: ‘Maiden, this apple the fair Seasons have created, and a fair tree has nurtured as the sun ripened it, and Fortune has kept it safe. And I who have eyes was not going to abandon it, so that it might fall to the ground and either a sheep might trample it as it grazed or a creeping thing might poison it as it slithered or time might wither it as it lay, as it was seen, as it was praised. This is what Aphrodite got as the prize for beauty; this is what I give to you as your victory prize. You two have similar witnesses: that man was a shepherd, I am a goat-herd.’ With these words he placed the apple in her bosom: and she kissed him as he came close to her, so that Daphnis did not repent that he had dared to climb up to such a height, for he got a kiss better even than a golden apple. Long. 3,33,3-3,34,3 With the phrase καὶ ἓν μῆλον ἐπέττετο ἐπ’ αὐτοῖς ἄκροις ἀκρότατον (‘one apple was ripening, on the very topmost branches the topmost’) Longus begins a complex refashioning of two sequences from Sappho’s epithalamia, preserved for us by Demetrius de elocutione (On Style) and Syrianus on Hermogenes,20 but doubtless familiar to Longus and to some of his readership in the context of a complete poem, a poem which may also have included fr. 107 L-P ἦρ’ ἔτι παρθενίας ἐπιβάλλομαι; (‘So then do I still yearn for my virginity’).21 ————— 20

21

Demetrius de elocutione 106 = fr.105(c) L-P, Syrianus on Hermogenes Id. 1.1 = fr.105(a) LP. Known to us from Apollonius Dyscolus On conjunctions 490. Its dactylic metre suggests that it came from either the same hexametric poem as frr. 105(a) and (c) or from one in a similar genre and presumably found in the same section of editions of Sappho. If 104(a) L-P, known from Demetrius de eloc. 141, was also hexametric, and hence likewise in this same section, then its reference to sheep and goats may have caught Longus’ pastoral eye: Ἔσπερε πάντα φέρων ὄσα φαίνολις ἐσκέδασ’ Αὔως, |†φέρεις ὄιν, φέρεις αἶγα, φέρεις ἄπυ† μάτερι παῖδα (‘Evening star, bringing everything that luminous dawn has scattered, you bring the sheep, you bring the goat, you bring the child back to its mother’). But it is not certain that the apparently corrupt first half of the second line was originally dactylic. Did the hexametric fr.106 L-P (again from Demetrius de eloc. 146) also belong here with its reference to the superiority of Lesbian singers (πέρροχος, ὠς ὄτ’

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In the first sequence Sappho 105(a) L-P compares a bride to an unplucked apple, a comparison also alluded to by Himerius:22 οἶον τὸ γλυκύμαλον ἐρεύθεται ἄκρωι ἐπ’ ὔσδωι, ἄκρον ἐπ’ ἀκροτάτωι, λελάθοντο δὲ μαλοδρόπηες, οὐ μὰν ἐκλελάθοντ’, ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἐδύναντ’ ἐπίκεσθαι. As the sweet-apple reddens upon the high bough, high on the highest, and the apple-pickers have forgotten it, no, it is not that they have quite forgotten it, but they could not reach it. In the second sequence Sappho 105(c) L-P compares a bride to a hyacinth trampled by shepherds: οἴαν τὰν ὐάκινθον ἐν ὤρεσι ποίμενες ἄνδρες πόσσι καταστείβοισι, χάμαι δέ τε πόρφυρον ἄνθος ... like the hyacinth that in the mountains shepherd men trample down with their feet, and on the ground its dark-red flower … Longus takes his καὶ ἓν μῆλον … ἐπ’ αὐτοῖς ἄκροις ἀκρότατον (‘one apple … on the very topmost branches the topmost’) from Sappho 105(a) but offers a different pair of explanations for the apple’s survival: instead of λελάθοντο δὲ μαλοδρόπηες, | οὐ μὰν ἐκλελάθοντ’, ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἐδύναντ’ ἐπίκεσθαι (‘the apple-pickers have forgotten it, | no, it is not that they have wholly forgotten it, but they could not reach it’) Longus writes ἔδεισεν ὁ τρυγῶν ἀνελθεῖν, ἠμέλησε καθελεῖν (‘The harvester had been afraid to climb up, had paid no attention to bringing it down’), and his characteristic asyndeton here leaves the reader uncertain which of the two explanations to prefer. Then Longus offers a third explanation which relocates ποίμενες, ‘shepherds’, from Sappho 105(c): τάχα δὲ καὶ ἐφυλάττετο τὸ καλὸν μῆλον ἐρωτικῷ ποιμένι (‘and perhaps the fair apple was in fact being saved for a shepherd in the power of Desire’). Longus’ now significantly singular shepherd, ποιμένι, is marked out by his attribute ἐρωτικῷ, ‘in the power of De————— 22

ἄοιδος ὀ Λέσβιος ἀλλοδάποισιν, ‘outstanding, as when a singer from Lesbos (competes with?) singers from other places’)? 105 (b) L-P Σαπφοῦς ἦν ἄρα μήλῳ μὲν εἰκάσαι τὴν κόρην ... τὸν νύμφιόν τε Ἀχιλλεῖ παρομοιῶσαι καὶ εἰς ταὐτὸν ἀγαγεῖν τῷ ἥρωι τὸν νεανίσκον ταῖς πράξεσι (‘so Sappho was able to compare the girl to an apple …. and to liken the bridegroom to Achilles and to place the youth on the same level as the hero in his achievements’), Himerius Or. 1,16.

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sire’, as (at least potentially) Daphnis (who is in love, ἐρωτικῷ) by contrast with Sappho’s plural ποίμενες – plural as Daphnis’ pastoral rivals for Chloe are plural, and older men, ἄνδρες, than the still ephebic Daphnis. Longus then re-exploits Sappho fr. 105(c) at 3,34,2 to adumbrate one of the fates from which Daphnis wishes to save the unique apple, trampling by a sheep: ἵνα πέσῃ χαμαὶ καὶ ἢ ποίμνιον αὐτὸ πατήσῃ νεμόμενον … (‘ it might fall to the ground and either a sheep might trample it as it grazed …’). It is also possible, though no more, that the poem from which 105(c) is drawn also contributed to Daphnis’ description of the apple as τοῦτο τὸ μῆλον ἔφυσαν Ὧραι καλαὶ καὶ φυτὸν καλὸν ἔθρεψε πεπαίνοντος Ἡλίου, καὶ ἐτήρησε Τύχη: ‘This apple the fair Seasons have created, and a fair tree has nurtured as the sun ripened it, and Fortune has kept it safe’. The case for Sappho’s contribution rests on Catullus 62,39-42, arguably also drawing on Sappho 105(c), in its comparison of a bride to a flower: Ut flos in saeptis secretus nascitur hortis ignotus pecori, nullo convolsus aratro, quem mulcent aurae, firmat sol, educat imber; multi illum pueri, multae optavere puellae. As a flower grows hidden away in a walled garden unknown to the flock, torn up by no plough, which the breezes soften, the sun strengthens, the rain rears; many are the lads that have desired it, many the lasses. But if Longus here recalls Sappho, he very probably also recalls Theocritus 28,7, where in a non-pastoral (i.e. non-fictional) context the poet praises his friend Nicias as Νικίαν, Χαρίτων ἰμεροφώνων ἴερον φύτον, ‘Nicias, holy plant of the Graces with their voices of longing’, a phrase itself calqued on that of another love poet of the archaic period: Εὐρύαλε γλαυκέων Χαρίτων θάλος, < Ὡρᾶν > καλλικόμων μελέδημα, σὲ μὲν Κύπρις ἅ τ’ ἀγανοβλέφαρος Πειθὼ ῥοδέοισιν ἐν ἄνθεσι θρέψαν Euryalus, sapling of the blue-eyed Graces, darling of the fair-tressed Seasons, you are one whom the Cyprian and Persuasion with her soft eyelids

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have nurtured amid rose flowers Ibycus fr. 288 PMGF Here of course both the addressee of Theocritus and that of Ibycus, Nicias and Euryalus, will have been taken by audiences or readers of their poems to have been real people. So Longus has created a sequence that complicates and deepens the fictional texture of his pastoral landscape, enhancing its complexity (ποικιλία) by weaving together details that come from different parts of the same poem of Sappho, or perhaps from different poems of Sappho in Sappho’s book of epithalamia, and in at least one detail drawing yet again on Theocritus, and through him on another celebrated love poet of the archaic period, Ibycus. The fictionality of Longus’ world is brought out by the fact that this time the Theocritean text, like its Ibycan intertext, introduces a ‘real’ and not a fictional character.

The City The world of the city, which we encounter much less in Daphnis and Chloe, works with a different set of intertexts, some of which will have pulled a contemporary reader closer to ‘reality’, τὸ καθ’ ἡμᾶς, whether immediate or mediated. The civic aristocrat, who owned large estates worked by slaves and himself lived chiefly in an urban landscape beautified by white marble, while enjoying ready access to opulent coastal villas, was very familiar to imperial Greek pepaideumenoi, some of whom were precisely such aristocrats. Some scholars may also be right to see Daphnis’ ‘real’ father Dionysophanes as a fictional version of a ‘real’ descendant of Pompey’s friend and historian the great Theophanes of Mytilene.23 But once again literary texts play a prominent role. The name of Chloe’s father, Megacles, disclosed to the reader only late in the narrative (4,35,1) in a significantly sympotic context in Mytilene, evokes both the seventh century Mytilenean warlord known

————— 23

Theophanes of Mytilene was a cliens of Pompey: his grandson Q.Pompeius Macer reached the praetorship in Rome in AD 15, and his descendants included M. Pompeius Macrinus Neos Theophanes, cos.suff. AD 115 (PIR2 P 628) and that man’s son M. Pompeius Macrinus Theophanes (PIR2 P 629), grandfather of Cornelia Cethegilla (PIR2 G 118) honoured as benefactor by Mytilene in (probably) the 170s, cf. IG xii 2 237 = ILS 8824. For a stemma see PIR2 P p.274. On Theophanes see Bowie 2011.

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to Aristotle (probably from the συμποτικά of Alcaeus)24 and the many Athenian Alcmeonids of that name, among them the early fifth-century Athenian victor in the chariot race at Delphi celebrated by Pindar in Pythian 7.25 These men called Megacles were ‘real’ people, but were distanced from secondcentury readers by their appearance only in canonical literary texts – Alcaeus, Pindar, Aristotle. But the migration of the name Megacles into fiction begins no later than Aristophanes’ Clouds 46-48, where Strepsiades, an ἄγροικος, identifies his hyper-urban wife as the niece of a Megacles, son of Megacles. The apparently (but not, as we know, ‘really’) ἄγροικος Daphnis goes one better than Strepsiades by marrying a girl who is ‘really’ the daughter of a Megacles. The fictions of Comedy, but chiefly New Comedy, are also important as sources of Longus’ exposure and recognition themes, and of the name and status of Astylos’ parasite Gnathon, but such New Comedy intertexts are ones that Longus shares with novelists both earlier (e.g. Chariton) and later (Heliodorus).

The Sea Longus makes a similar move in his abrupt and unselfconscious introduction at 1,28,1 of Tyrian pirates who will kill Dorcon and briefly kidnap Daphnis – abrupt even though a λῃστῶν καταδρομή (‘piratical incursion’) has been advertised in his preface (pr. 2): Τύριοι λῃσταὶ Καρικὴν ἔχοντες ἡμιολίαν ὡς ἂν δοκοῖεν βάρβαροι προσέσχον τοῖς ἀγροῖς ... (‘Tyrian pirates with a light Carian cutter put into the estate …’).26 Admittedly these pirates’ Tyrian ethnicity is in question, since the two important manuscripts F and V offer different readings: F has Πύρριoι, V Τύριoι. Πύρριoι cannot stand, and if we accept Reeve’s conjecture Πυρραῖοι Longus confines even the novelistic commonplace of pirates to the island of Lesbos. If we are to imagine the action as taking place in the classical period, Pyrrha was then an independent Greek city on the large gulf running far into the south-west coast of Lesbos, now the gulf of Kalloni, where theoretically pirates might indeed be based. But Pyrrha is never attested as a pirates’ nest, as were (ever since the Odyssey) the Phoenician cities; and if Pyrrha did harbour pirates, why did Longus’ Mytileneans not take some action against it as they later do against ————— 24

25 26

οἷον ἐν Μυτιλήνῃ τοὺς Πενθιλίδας Μεγακλῆς περιιόντας καὶ τύπτοντας ταῖς κορύναις ἐπιθέμενος μετὰ τῶν φίλων ἀνεῖλεν, Ar. Pol. 1311b26-28. On Megacles the Pythian victor see Athanassaki 2011 and Athanassaki forthcoming. For the suitability of such a craft for piracy cf. Arr. An. 3,24.

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Methymna? Prima facie against the reading Τύριoι is the phrase offered by both manuscripts ὡς ἂν δοκοῖεν βάρβαροι, apparently explaining why these pirates were in a Carian boat: but it is no explanation, since Tyrians were already βάρβαροι anyway. The conjecture made by one of the correctors of V, ὡς μὴ δοκοῖεν βάρβαροι, was presumably made to solve this problem. Reeve (in the apparatus to his Teubner edition) objected that Carians too were barbarians; but although this was the case in the classical period, it may not have been the perception of Longus, writing when all Caria was an integral part of the Roman province Asia and boasted many Greek cities. If, as I believe we should, we accept the reading Τύριοι, Longus’ Tyrian pirates take us to the pirates of earlier novels and his combination of Tyrians and Carians recalls their association as piratical inhabitants of the Aegean in Thucydides (1,8,1, cf. 1,4,1). But a more particular and meaningful allusion is possible. The reference to Caria may also be calculated to trigger thoughts of the greatest city of Caria, Aphrodisias, as a cradle of the novels, home of Chariton (as he himself wrote in his opening sentence) and, it seems likely, of both Antonius Diogenes and the author of the Ninus romance. Longus thus impresses upon his reader that his very unusual novel, dominated by a Theocritean pastoral landscape, is nevertheless to be read as a variant within the genre created by Chariton of Aphrodisias,27 and that its construction weaves together materials drawn from both traditions.

‘Reality’(?) Alongside such predominantly fictional intertexts one writer professedly committed to τὸ … ἀληθέστερον, ‘what is more true’, stands out: Thucydides. In this context there is neither space nor need for a detailed analysis: briefly, Longus’ account of the war between Mytilene and Methymna (2,193,3,1) presents a parodic version of Thucydidean war-narrative, glancing repeatedly at the Mytilene episode in Book 3 of Thucydides and exploiting many details of his language. One point of this sequence is to show those readers who know the Thucydidean features of Chariton’s novel, especially his opening, that Longus can play the Thucydides game too; another is to invite readers to compare the different ontological status of fictions woven from fictions and fictions woven from ‘history’. But although it is only in ————— 27

For a strong case for seeing Chariton as the inventor of the genre see Tilg 2010. For Aphrodisias as probably also the origin of Antonius Diogenes and of the author of the Ninus romance see Bowie 2002 and 2004a.

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2,19-3,3,1 that extended comparison with Thucydides is proposed to the reader, Thucydides’ importance for reading Daphnis and Chloe had already been advertised unambiguously in the preface.28 There the key phrase is κτῆμα δὲ τερπνὸν πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποις, ‘a pleasing possession for all men’, which many have seen to pick up Thucydides’ arguments at 1,21-22, presenting poets and λογογράφοι, ‘prose-writers’, as unreliable and as more interested in achieving τὸ προσαγωγότερον τῇ ἀκροάσει ἢ ἀληθέστερον, ‘what is more attractive to listen to than what is nearer the truth’, (1,21,1) whereas Thucydides himself has produced κτῆμά τε ἐς αἰεὶ μᾶλλον ἢ ἀγώνισμα ἐς τὸ παραχρῆμα ἀκούειν, ‘a possession for ever rather than a competitive piece with an eye on immediate listening’ – a κτῆμα, ‘possession’, which he expects to be judged ὠφέλιμα, ‘useful’, by whoever wants a clear account, even if avoidance of τὸ μυθῶδες, ‘that which is like myth’, has tied his hands in the production of τέρψις, ‘pleasure’ (1,22,4). In his preface Longus is picking up key words both from Thucydides’ historiographical programme in this section of his first book and from Theocritus’ self-presentation as laborious creator of pastoral τέρψις, ‘pleasure’, and claiming to be successful on both sets of criteria. I have tried to set out the key elements in a table (printed below). Longus’ prose emulates the careful elaboration of Theocritus’ poetry. His term ἐξεπονησάμην, ‘I have laboured to create’, used again by Philetas in 2,3,3 of his garden that is a mis-en-abyme of the whole book, just as Philetas the erotodidaskalos is a poetic representative of Longus’ narrator in his text, varies the term ἐξεπόνασα, ‘I laboured to create’, used by Lycidas of his own song at Theocritus 7,51 – a song that was significantly about a journey to Mytilene. Like Theocritus, Longus hopes his work will be τερπνόν, ‘pleasing’. But alongside this quality, only implicitly acknowledged as a goal by Thucydides, he expects, like Thucydides, that it will be ὠφέλιμον, ‘useful’, ————— 28

The full text of the relevant sentences of Thucydides, essential to an understanding of its parts, runs as follows: καὶ ἐς μὲν ἀκρόασιν ἴσως τὸ μὴ μυθῶδες αὐτῶν ἀτερπέστερον φανεῖται· ὅσοι δὲ βουλήσονται τῶν τε γενομένων τὸ σαφὲς σκοπεῖν καὶ τῶν μελλόντων ποτὲ αὖθις κατὰ τὸ ἀνθρώπινον τοιούτων καὶ παραπλησίων ἔσεσθαι, ὠφέλιμα κρίνειν αὐτὰ ἀρκούντως ἕξει. κτῆμά τε ἐς αἰεὶ μᾶλλον ἢ ἀγώνισμα ἐς τὸ παραχρῆμα ἀκούειν ξύγκειται (‘and for something to listen to perhaps their lack of myth-like content will seem to diminish pleasure: but it will be sufficient if they are judged useful by all those who shall wish to examine that which is secure in what has happened and what is going to happen of a similar sort and along similar lines at some point again given human nature. And it has been composed as a possession for ever rather than as a competitive piece with an eye on immediate listening’), Th. 1,22,4. For discussions of the bearing of these sentences on Longus’ preface see Hunter 1983 and Lugenbill 2001-2002, and for Longus’ use of Thucydides Cueva 1998, Trzaskoma 2005.

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despite, as we discover later, moving towards τὸ μυθῶδες, ‘that which is like myth’.29 In his quest for his material Longus is both like and unlike Thucydides: ζήτησις is involved, but it is ζήτησις of an expounder or interpreter, suspiciously like ὁ παρατυχών, ‘the man who (conveniently) happened to be present (at the time)’, whose testimony Thucydides rejects in his phrase οὐκ ἐκ τοῦ παρατυχόντος, ‘not from a man who happened to be present’ (1,22,2). But this intermediary is not the weak link he would be in Thucydides’ chain because Longus’ ultimate goal is not τὸ ἀληθέστερον, ‘what is more true’: τὸ ἀληθές, ‘what is true’, has indeed an important part to play, as we have seen, but the word’s introduction is as often as not to remind the reader of the narrative’s exuberant fictionality.

Conclusion Was my title misleading, then, with its phrase ‘weaving ‘reality’’. Not so. The inverted commas around ‘reality’ are crucial. Longus knows that the universe he creates is, like that of earlier novelists, a fictional universe. Like them he works hard, if not entirely consistently, to create a universe that might well have existed. But he expects not simply to be compared to them in respect of his success in the production of verisimilitude but to be seen to outstrip them by the infrequency of his resort to ‘the real world’ as basketwork material and by his predominant mode of reworking and reweaving earlier literary and chiefly fictional texts. It is my stress on the fictionality, rather than on the poetic status, of the majority of these texts that differentiates what I have been arguing for from the positions taken by Richard Hunter and Maria Pia Pattoni. If we are to read the grasshopper cage being woven by Chloe at 1,10,2 as a symbol of Longus’ own meticulously crafted construction, then we should also reflect that we, the grasshoppers confined pleasurably within that miniature cage, are separated from the outside world by no more than fictional barriers.

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Most explicitly when Pan classifies the story that will be told about Chloe as a μῦθος, 2,27,2.

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Table

Pre-Thucydides ποιηταί Pre-Thucydides λογογράφοι Thucydides

Theocritus

Longus

πόνος in εὕρεσις / ζήτησις τῆς ἀληθείας No, cf. 1,20,3-21,1 No, cf. 1,20,3-21,1  1,22,3 ἐπιπόνως δὲ ηὑρίσκετο

πόνος in ἀπόδειξις

The result is ἀληθέστερον

The result is ὠφέλιμον

The result is μυθῶδες

No

The result is τερπνόν / προαγωγόν ?

?

?



?

No



?



 1,22,4 ὠφέλιμα κρίνειν αὐτὰ ἀρκούντως ἕξει sometimes cf. 11,1 ff. φάρμακον ... κοῦφον δέ τι τοῦτο καὶ ἁδύ  pr.3 ὃ καὶ νοσοῦντα ἰάσεται...

No, cf. 1,21,1

?

 1,21,1 with ?  in 1,22,4 1,22,4 τὸ σαφές note the force of ἴσως and φανεῖται ?  cf. 7,51 ? cf. 7,13-14  cf. e.g. ἐξεπόνασα 1,52 ἐπεὶ αἰπόλῳ 1,146 ἀκριδοθήραν / ἔξοχ’ ἐῴκει πλῆρές τοι ἀκριδoθήκην μέλιτος τὸ καλὸν στόμα some:  pr.3 ?  pr.3 pr.3 ἐξεπονησάμην κτῆμα ἀναζητησάμενος cf. 2,3,3 (loquiδὲ τερπνὸν ἐξηγητὴν tur Philetas) πᾶσιν ἐξεπονησάμην ἀνθρώποις ἀκριδoθήκην

 cf. 1,64-145 Thyrsis’ song about Daphnis  2,27,2 (Chloe) ἐξ ἧς Ἔρως μῦθον ποιῆσαι θέλει

Bibliography Athanassaki, L. 2011. ‘Song, politics, and cultural memory: Pindar’s Pythian 7 and the Alcmaeonid temple of Apollo’, in: L. Athanassaki, E.L. Bowie (eds.), Archaic and Classical Choral Song. Performance, Politics and Dissemination, Berlin: de Gruyter, 235258. — forthcoming. ‘Rekindling the memory of the alleged treason of the Alcmaeonids at Marathon: from Megacles to Alcibiades’, in: K. Buraselis, I. Koulakiotis (eds.), Marathon: The Day After, Athens. Bowie, E.L. 1993. ‘Lies, fiction and slander in early Greek poetry’, in: C. Gill, T.P. Wiseman (eds.), Lies and fiction in the ancient world, Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1-37. — 1996. ‘Frame and framed in Theocritus poems 6 and 7’, Hellenistica Groningana 2, 91100. — 2002. ‘The chronology of the earlier Greek novels since B.E. Perry: revisions and precisions’, Ancient Narrative 2, 47-63. — 2003. ‘The function of mythology in Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe’, in: J.-A. López Férez (ed.), Mitos en la literatura griega helenística e imperial, Madrid: Ediclas, 361-376. — 2004a. ‘The geography of the second sophistic: cultural variations’, in: B. Borg (ed.), Paideia: the world of the second sophistic, Berlin, New York: De Gruyter, 65-83.

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— 2004b. ‘Poetry and music in the Life of Plutarch’s Statesman’, in: L. de Blois, J. Bons, T. Kessels, D.M. Schenkeveld (eds.), The Statesman in Plutarch’s Works, vol. 1, Mnemosyne Suppl. 250, Leiden: Brill, 115-123. — 2007. ‘Pulling the other: Longus and tragedy’, in: C. Kraus, S. Goldhill, H.P. Foley, J. Elsner (eds.), Visualizing the tragic: Festschrift for F. Zeitlin, New York: Oxford University Press, 338-352. — 2011. ‘Men fron Mytilene’, in: T.A. Schmitz, N. Wiater (eds.), The Struggle for Identity. Greeks and their past in the First Century BCE, Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 49-63. Cueva, E. 1998. ‘Longus and Thucydides: A New Interpretation’, GRBS 39, 429-440. Hall, E., Wyles, R. (eds.) 2008. New Directions in Ancient Pantomime, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Halliwell, S. 1987. The Poetics of Aristotle: Translation and Commentary, London: Duckworth. Hunter, R.L. 1983. A Study of Daphnis & Chloe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Janko, R. 1987. Aristotle Poetics, with the Tractatus Coislinianus, Reconstruction of Poetics II, and the fragments of the On Poets, translated with notes, Indianapolis / Cambridge: Hackett. Lada Richards, I. 2007. Silent Eloquence: Lucian and Pantomime Dancing, London: Duckworth. Lefteratou, A. 2010. Myth and narrative in the Greek novels, Oxford D.Phil. thesis. Lucas, D.W. 1968. Aristotle Poetics, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lugenbill, R.D. 2001-2002. ‘A delightful possession: Longus’ Prologue and Thucydides’, CJ 97, 233-247. Morgan, J.R. 2004. Longus, Daphnis and Chloe: Translated with an introduction and commentary, Oxford: Oxbow. Pattoni, M.P. 2005. Longo Sofista. Dafni e Cloe, Milano: Biblioteca Universale Rizzoli. Payne, M. 2007. Theocritus and the Invention of Fiction, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tilg, S. 2010. Chariton of Aphrodisias and the Invention of the Greek Novel, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Trzaskoma, S. 2005. ‘A Novelist Writing “History”: Longus’ Thucydides Again’, GRBS 45, 75-90. Young, D.C.C. 1968. ‘Author’s variants in the manuscript tradition of Longus’, PCPhS 194, 65-74. –– 1971. ‘Second thoughts on Longus’ second thoughts’, PCPhS 197, 91-107.

Tarde, immo iam sero intellexi: The Real as a Puzzle in Petronius’ Satyrica M ARIO L ABATE University of Florence The narration handed down to us of the Satyrica opens, as is known, with the ‘school scene’. The protagonist Encolpius appears to be wholly absorbed in discussing with the teacher of rhetoric Agamemnon de causis corruptae eloquentiae, commenting in the portico on the challenging speech that the master had just given inside the school (3,1). In spite of the passionate enthusiasm that seems to grip the young man for the more ‘controversial’ subjects of cultural current affairs, the reader quickly learns that in that situation, Encolpius had got involved, in a certain sense, more than he had intended or planned to. Probably as a result of his irregular, itinerant style of life, typical of a person who needed to find a way of making ends meet every day, he was interpreting the role of a scholasticus with an enthusiasm that had led him so far from reality that he found himself a prisoner of that world of the school whose artificial character, separated from the real world, he was denouncing. It is not by chance that the narrative voice defines his attack against rhetorical speeches and speakers as a piece of rhetorical speaking.1 Real life, with its fundamental necessities, had already made its voice heard to his companion in misfortune Ascyltos, who had quietly gone away – as he later reveals – under the impulse of the pangs of hunger.2 ————— 1

2

Petr. 3,1 non est passus Agamemnon me diutius declamare in porticu quam ipse in schola sudaverat ‘Agamemnon would not allow me to stand declaiming out in the colonnade longer than he had spent sweating inside the school’. All translations of passages from the Satyrica are by M. Heseltine, revised by E.H. Warmington (The Loeb Classical Library), Cambridge, Mass. & London 1969. In a few passages I modified the translation. Petr. 10,1 ‘quid ego, homo stultissime, facere debui, cum fame morerer?’ ‘Well, you fool, what do you expect? I was perishing of hunger.’ The Construction of the Real and the Ideal in the Ancient Novel, 199–217

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In an essay of more than fifty years ago, to which the passing of time is doing justice, Vincenzo Ciaffi (1955) identified the mechanism of the trap as the main narrative structure that organises the complex material of this novel by Petronius. The protagonist of the story, together with the characters that are associated with him, ends up repeatedly, and almost compulsively, by finding himself in (or even creating) situations that he cannot control or manage, and he becomes a prisoner of them, until some external force breaks in, to interrupt the vicious circle into which he has fallen unawares. The narrative deus ex machina usually presents an unexpected, particularly lively character, which can legitimately be connected with certain wild endings, which, as we know from a famous testimony supplied by Cicero, must have been typical of popular theatre, and above all mime:3 Mimi ergo iam exitus, non fabulae; in quo cum clausula non invenitur, fugit aliquis e manibus, dein scabilla concrepant, aulaeum tollitur. So, then, we have the finale of a mime, not of a proper play; the sort of thing where, when no fit ending can be found, someone escapes from someone’s clutches, off go the clappers, and we get the curtain. Cic. Cael. 65, transl. R. Gardner (Loeb) Horace had already adopted this kind of ending in his satires of a more mimetic-dramatic character: the witches’ mime, the adultery mime, the mime of the so-called ‘encounter with the bore’.4 In Hor. serm. 1,8,46-50, the comical deus ex machina is the loud noise (a splitting of wood which sounds like a crepitus ventris) with which Priapus provokes the hasty flight of Canidia and Sagana: nam, displosa sonat quantum vesica, pepedi diffissa nate ficus; at illae currere in urbem. Canidiae dentis, altum Saganae caliendrum excidere atque herbas atque incantata lacertis vincula cum magno risuque iocoque videres. For as loud as the noise of a bursting bladder was the crack when my figwood buttock split. Away they ran into town. Then amid great laughter ————— 3

4

Cf. Preston 1915; Zeitlin 1971, 654 f. = 1999, 22 f. The topic is fully discussed in Tilg 2002. On mime and popular theatre in Petronius, cf. Panayotakis 1995. Rudd 1961.

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and mirth you might see Canidia’s teeth and Sagana’s high wig come tumbling down, and from their arms the herbs and enchanted love knots. transl. H. Rushton Fairclough (Loeb) In 1,2,127-133, we find a true ‘adultery mime’5 scene, the flight discincta tunica of the adulterer, caught red-handed by the husband who returns at the crucial moment from the countryside: nec vereor, ne, dum futuo, vir rure recurrat, ianua frangatur, latret canis, undique magno pulsa domus strepitu resonet, vepallida lecto desiliat mulier, miseram se conscia clamet, cruribus haec metuat, doti deprensa, egomet mi. discincta tunica fugiendum est et pede nudo, ne nummi pereant aut puga aut denique fama. No fears have I in her company, that a husband may rush back from the country, the door burst open, the dog bark, the house ring through and through with the din and clatter of his knocking; that the woman, white as a sheet, will leap away, the maid in league with her cry out in terror, she fearing for her limbs, her guilty mistress for her dowry, and I for myself. With clothes dishevelled and bare of foot, I must run off, dreading disaster in purse or person or at least repute. transl. H. Rushton Fairclough (Loeb) In 1,9,72-78, salvation arrives, when all hope appears to be lost, with the unexpected intervention of the adversarius, and the animated scene of the transfer to the courtroom: huncine solem tam nigrum surrexe mihi! fugit inprobus ac me sub cultro linquit. casu venit obvius illi adversarius et ‘quo tu, turpissime?’ magna inclamat voce, et ‘licet antestari?’ ego vero oppono auriculam. rapit in ius; clamor utrimque, undique concursus. sic me servavit Apollo.

————— 5

McKeown 1979.

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To think so black a sun as this has shone for me! The rascal runs away and leaves me under the knife. It now chanced that the plaintiff came face to face with his opponent. ‘Where go you, you scoundrel?’ he loudly shouts, and to me: ‘May I call you as witness?’ I offer my ear to touch. He hurries the man to court. There is shouting here and there, and on all sides a running to and fro. Thus was I saved by Apollo. transl. H. Rushton Fairclough (Loeb) Similar, or at least comparable, endings are to be found also in the satires of Book 2. See the turmoil at the end of the fable about the country mouse and the town mouse, which in turn brings the whole composition to a close (2,6,110-115):6 ille cubans gaudet mutata sorte bonisque rebus agit laetum convivam, cum subito ingens valvarum strepitus lectis excussit utrumque. currere per totum pavidi conclave magisque exanimes trepidare, simul domus alta Molossis personuit canibus. The other, lying at ease, enjoys his changed lot, and amid the good cheer is playing the happy guest, when of a sudden a terrible banging of the doors tumbled them both from their couches. In panic they run the length of the hall, and still more terror-stricken were they, as the lofty palace rang with the barking of Molossian hounds. transl. H. Rushton Fairclough (Loeb)

————— 6

The cena Nasidieni ends with a flight (2,8,93-95 quem nos sic fugimus ulti, / ut nihil omnino gustaremus, velut illis / Canidia adflasset, peior serpentibus Afris ‘but off we ran, taking our revenge on him by tasting nothing at all, as though the things were blasted with Canidia’s breath, more deadly than African serpents’ transl. H. Rushton Fairclough); there is a rather heated exchange of repartees, with the threat of physical violence, at the end of the dialogue between Horace and his servant Davus, who takes his Saturnalian freedom a bit too far (2,7,116-118 ‘unde mihi lapidem?’ ‘quorsum est opus?’ ‘unde sagittas?’/ ‘aut insanit homo aut versus facit.’ ‘ocius hinc te / ni rapis, accedes opera agro nona Sabino’ ‘Where can I find a stone?’ ‘What’s it for?’ ‘Or where arrows?’ ‘The man’s raving, or else verse-making.’ ‘If you don’t take yourself off in a jiffy, you’ll make the ninth labourer on my Sabine farm’ transl. H. Rushton Fairclough); cf. also the ending of the satire about Damasippus (2,3,320 f.).

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It is significant, I believe, that almost all the narrative sequences in which we can verify the results, in the Satyrica, present a dynamics composed of brusque accelerations and sudden changes. Let us recall a few examples: 1) The tunicula thrown by the peasant in Ascyltos’ face, with the consequent hasty flight towards the inn, seems to offer an unexpected solution to the episode in the forum, when the situation seems to have reached a deadlock (Petr. 15,7 indignatus enim rusticus, quod nos centonem exhibendum postularemus, misit in faciem Ascylti tunicam et liberatos querella iussit pallium deponere, quod solum litem faciebat ‘the countryman lost his temper when we said his rags must be shown in public, threw the shirt in Ascyltos’s face, and asked us, now that we had no grievance, to give up the cloak which had raised the whole quarrel’). 2) The cena Trimalchionis finally arrives at an unhoped-for way to escape with the arrival of the firemen, the breaking down of the door, and the hasty flight of the protagonists (Petr. 78,7-8 itaque vigiles, qui custodiebant vicinam regionem, rati ardere Trimalchionis domum effregerunt ianuam subito et cum aqua securibusque tumultuari suo iure coeperunt. nos occasionem opportunissimam nacti Agamemnoni verba dedimus raptimque tam plane quam ex incendio fugimus ‘so the watch, who were patrolling the streets close by, thought Trimalchio’s house was alight, and suddenly burst in the door and proceeded with water and axes to do their duty in creating a disturbance. My friends and I seized this most welcome opportunity, outwitted Agamemnon, and took to our heels as quickly as if there were a real fire’). 3) The episode of the ship finds its solution in a fantastic shipwreck, an attack of the fishermen-robbers and the forced rescue of the recalcitrant old poet (Petr. 115,1-5 audimus murmur insolitum et sub diaeta magistri quasi cupientis exire beluae gemitum. persecuti igitur sonum invenimus Eumolpum sedentem membranaeque ingenti versus ingerentem. mirati ergo quod illi vacaret in vicinia mortis poema facere, extrahimus clamantem iubemusque bonam habere mentem. at ille interpellatus excanduit et ‘sinite me’ inquit ‘sententiam explere; laborat carmen in fine’. inicio ego phrenetico manum iubeoque Gitona accedere et in terram trahere poetam mugientem ‘we heard a strange noise, and a groaning like a wild beast wanting to get out, coming from under the master’s cabin. So we followed the sound, and found Eumolpus sitting there inscribing verses on a great parchment. So we were surprised at his having time to write poetry with death close at hand, and we pulled him out, though

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he protested, and implored him to be sensible. But he was furious at our interruption, and cried: ‘Let me complete my thought; the poem halts at the close.’ I laid hands on the maniac, and told Giton to help me to drag the bellowing bard ashore’). It is possible that also the episode of the brothel had a rather animated conclusion, if the two fragments of text conserved at 8,4, refer to it: these lead us to imagine a sexual assault (adeo ubique omnes mihi videbantur satyrion bibisse ‘everyone in the place seemed to be drunk on aphrodisiac’) and an effective reaction, probably on the part of Encolpius and Ascyltos, for once united (iunctis viribus molestum contempsimus ‘but our united forces defied our assailant’). It is not difficult to hypothesise that this narrative resource already proved to be useful to solve a series of episodes of the background, whose reconstruction is left, apart from scanty indications, to our imagination: e.g. the libidinosa migratio that had involved the wife of Lichas and the sack of his ship (113,3), or the burglary in the villa of Lycurgus (117,3), or again the probable hasty flight connected with the profanation of the mysteries of Priapus, during the course of which Encolpius had lost the tunic with the gold coins sewn into the hem (12,5 f.).7 If we are not over-indulging our imagination, we may suppose that also the two ‘extreme’ narrative sequences of which we have a certain knowledge may be included in this brief catalogue. According to a hypothesis that I judge to be not improbable, the story narrated by Encolpius started at Marseille, where the protagonist, driven by the needs of paupertas, had probably found himself in the part, initially convenient but subsequently extremely inconvenient, of the scapegoat: tractus est autem sermo ex more Gallorum. nam Massilienses quotiens pestilentia laborabant, unus se ex pauperibus offerebat alendus anno integro publicis et purioribus cibis. hic postea ornatus verbenis et vestibus sacris circumducebatur per totam civitatem cum execrationibus, ut in ipsum reciderent mala totius civitatis, et sic proiciebatur. hoc autem in Petronio lectum est. The language here is taken from the customs of the Gauls. For whenever the people of Massilia were afflicted by plague, one of the poor people would offer himself to be fed at public expense for a whole year, and ————— 7

Cf. Labate 2010.

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then this man, decorated with aromatic branches and sacred vestments, would be led around the whole city amid curses, so that the evils of the whole city might fall upon him, and so he was thrown to his death. But this can be read in Petronius. Serv. ad Aen. 3,57 It is of a certain importance to establish whether proiciebatur is to be interpreted here (as Ehlers does correctly, in my opinion) in its more drastic meaning of ‘throwing, or hurling over a precipice’, rather than in its ‘milder’ meaning of ‘expelling from the city’. The first interpretation, which does not require any operations on the text to make it inevitable (like the praecipitabatur of Stephanos, accepted by Bücheler) is recommended both by the note of Lactantius Placidus ad Stat. Theb. 10,193, which reproposes the note of Servius with slight adaptations, and by a passage of the Vita Caligulae by Suetonius, who attributes a version sui generis of the ritual of the pharmakòs to the cruel emperor: denique certo et sollemni die per totam civitatem ductus ex urbe, extra pomeria saxis occidebatur a populo. And so on a certain ritual day, having been led through the whole city to its outside, he would be killed by the people with rocks. Lactantius Placidus ad Stat. Theb. 10,193 uotum exegit ab eo, qui pro salute sua gladiatoriam operam promiserat, spectauitque ferro dimicantem nec dimisit nisi uictorem et post multas preces. alterum, qui se periturum ea de causa uouerat, cunctantem pueris tradidit, uerbenatum infulatumque uotum reposcentes per uicos agerent, quoad praecipitaretur ex aggere. A man who had made a vow to fight in the arena, if the emperor recovered, he compelled to keep his word, watched him as he fought sword in hand, and would not let him go until he was victorious, and then only after many entreaties. Another who had offered his life for the same reason, but delayed to kill himself, he turned over to his slaves, with orders to drive him through the streets decked with sacred boughs and fillets, calling for the fulfilment of his vow, and finally hurl him from the embankment. Suet. Cal. 27,2, transl. J.C. Rolfe (Loeb)

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If the ending presented ‘à la Marseillaise’ was thus so dramatic, we are led to think that the protagonist, compelled by the need to make ends meet, had really got himself into trouble – we do not how far he had planned this, or was aware of it. The only escape route that we can imagine, in a situation where the problems were bound to come to a head sooner or later, is a hasty, adventurous flight, which might be the beginning of a narrative scheme destined to be repeated all through the novel. It is not by chance that in the awareness of Encolpius the character and the narrator, this same mechanism seems to be present also at Croton, where it ends up by reproducing a situation that has many elements in common with the deadlock of Marseilles: behind the pleasantness of a kind of world of plenty, which sees the protagonist ‘fattened up’ (saginatum corpus impleveram) by the whole community, intent on lavishing masses of favours on him and his companions, Encolpius sees the arrival of a future full of threats and dangers, which will leave him no other choice than the wandering, marginal existence of adventurers: ceterum ego, etsi quotidie magis magisque superfluentibus bonis saginatum corpus impleveram putabamque a custodia mei removisse vultum Fortunam, tamen saepius tam consuetudinem meam cogitabam quam causam, et ‘quid’ aiebam ‘si callidus captator exploratorem in Africam miserit mendaciumque deprehenderit nostrum? quid, si etiam mercennarius praesenti felicitate lassus indicium ad amicos detulerit totamque fallaciam invidiosa proditione detexerit? nempe rursus fugiendum erit et tandem expugnata paupertas nova mendicitate revocanda. dii deaeque, quam male est extra legem viventibus: quicquid meruerunt, semper expectant.’ But though I had lined my stuffed body well every day with the evergrowing supply of good things, and believed that Fortune had turned away her face from keeping a watch on me, still I again and again thought over my past habits as much as the cause of it all, and kept saying to myself, ‘Supposing some cunning legacy-hunter sends a spy over to Africa and finds out our lies? Or supposing the servant grows weary of his present luck and gives his friends a hint, or betrays us out of spite, and exposes the whole plot? Of course we shall have to run away again; we must start afresh as beggars, and call back the poverty we have now at last driven out. Ah! gods and goddesses! the out law has a hard life; he is always waiting to get what he deserves.’ Petr. 125,2-4

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It appears to me significant that the lexical family which plays a role of absolute structural dominance in the Satyrica, is the one variously connected with the root of the verb fugere. ‘Men on the run’ (or even, for large parts, ‘Three men on the run’) might thus be a suitable title for the dynamic narrative of Petronius’ novel, in the same way as its ‘logical antecedent’: ‘Men in a trap’ or ‘Three men in a trap’. The question on which I would like to reflect in this paper is the following one: what is the force that draws the men into a trap, and closes the trap behind them, thus creating the presupposition whereby the story can only proceed in a fantastic manner through flight? There is a simple, almost tautological answer: this force is above all their unawareness, their insufficient ability to understand ‘reality’ and to foresee developments, even the most elementary and obvious ones, even if useful indications and signs of orientation are not lacking, which are clear enough to the reader, but seem to escape the attention of the protagonist, and often also that of the protagonist-narrator. Erroneous perception and judgment is a characteristic of the protagonist hero, Encolpius the character, but it cannot be said to be completely solved by hindsight, the wider awareness that the Inarrator should possess. The croupier who deals the cards and does the adding up is the one who has been called the ‘hidden author’.8 But it is not necessarily true that the margin of ambiguity and resistance to interpretation which at times appears to us to be insurmountable always derives exclusively from our fragmentary knowledge of the text, rather than from a challenge that the author poses to his readers, in order to continue to remain hidden. One of the dominant themes of the Cena is the inability of Encolpius to decipher the mechanisms that govern the universe of Trimalchio’s house, in clear contrast with the perfect control that the dominus cenae exerts over every single moment, every event, and every performance. Encolpius is the spectator of a show9 whose script has been planned in detail so that the novice who has been invited will not understand, will misinterpret, will find all his expectations disappointed, will always be surprised when anyone explains to him the real meaning of what he is witnessing, and will continue to make mistakes, even when he thinks he has started to understand the way to decipher the messages that he receives (at times in code, real puzzles). The Cena proposes Trimalchio’s challenge to his scholastici guests on the basis, not of culture intended in the traditional sense (although here, too, ————— 8 9

Conte 1996. Cf. Rosati 1983.

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Trimalchio nourishes an enormous ambition to have his say), but at least on the basis of intellectual qualities, the ability to use and decipher new languages, thus demonstrating sharpness and readiness of wit. But what we could define as the cultural code of urbanitas seems to dominate, in the Satyrica, the whole of the narrative universe, or at least, that of the Graeca urbs. Within this reality, Encolpius is one who cannot find the way, and who continually gets lost in the meanders of a maze that proves to be intricate for him. The protagonists have probably just arrived in a city of complicated plan, and accidental circumstances may easily aggravate their understandable imprudentia locorum. But when the theme of losing the way in the maze is set out for the second time (ch. 79), the reader clearly sees that our heroes have not made any progress, they have not acquired any awareness, either thanks to experience or to their cultural learning: they have not developed any key to the problem, nor do they possess that basic wisdom or wit, thanks to which the member of the group who should be least equipped, that is to say the puer Giton, solves the problem for them, by making use of the repertoire of folklore (the ‘story of Tom Thumb’). Let us go back to the first occasion on which Encolpius gets lost in the maze: opportune subduxi me et cursim Ascylton persequi coepi. sed nec viam diligenter tenebam [quia] nec quod stabulum esset sciebam. itaque quocumque ieram, eodem revertebar, donec et cursu fatigatus et sudore iam madens accedo aniculam quandam, quae agreste holus vendebat, et ‘rogo’ inquam ‘mater, numquid scis ubi ego habitem?’ delectata est illa urbanitate tam stulta et ‘quidni sciam?’ inquit consurrexitque et coepit me praecedere. divinam ego putabam et ... subinde ut in locum secretiorem venimus, centonem anus urbana reiecit et ‘hic’ inquit ‘debes habitare’. cum ego negarem me agnoscere domum, video quosdam inter titulos nudasque meretrices furtim spatiantes. tarde, immo iam sero intellexi me in fornicem esse deductum. I took occasion to steal away and proceeded hurriedly to look for Ascyltos. But I did not remember the road accurately, and I did not know which our lodgings were. So wherever I went, I kept coming back to the same spot, till I was tired out with walking, and dripping with sweat. At last I went up to an old woman who was selling country vegetables and said, ‘Please, mother, do you happen to know where I live?’ She was charmed with such a polite fool. ‘Of course I do,’ she said, and got up

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and proceeded to lead the way. I thought her a prophetess ... and when we had got into an obscure quarter the obliging old lady pushed back a patchwork curtain and said, ‘This should be your house.’ I was saying that I did not remember it, when I noticed customers walking cautiously about among placards of price and naked whores. Slowly, indeed too late, I became aware that I had been taken into a bawdy-house. Petr. 6,2-7,4 What is it that leads Encolpius to pass from the maze, not to the way out, but into another trap (the brothel)? Paradoxically, it is actually the figure of a ‘helper’, who presents the mild, reassuring aspect of an old woman selling her vegetables in the street (accedo aniculam quandam quae agreste holus vendebat). The fact is that the question that the gormless protagonist asks the woman is such as to start off a mechanism that he is not able to understand or to control.10 At the height of his bewilderment and disorientation, Encolpius asks: rogo…mater, numquid scis ubi ego habitem? The woman’s reaction seems to be encouraging (delectata est illa urbanitate tam stulta), even if Encolpius-the-character obviously had no intention of being witty: his was a request for help made by a person who is unable to realise the absurdity of what he is asking. It is clear, then, that the sentence is to be attributed to the point of view of the old woman (or, if anything, to the competence of Encolpius-the-narrator). She interprets his question as a playful provocation, like those impossible questions asked with the aim of teasing, and so she decides to play along, and answers tit for tat: quidni sciam? ‘Of course! Do you think I don’t know that?’. But Encolpius is not capable, even at this point, of picking up the irony, and on the contrary understands his helper’s immediate willingness to help (consurrexitque et coepit me praecedere ‘she stood up and started showing me the way’) as the manifestation of one of those unexpected, incomprehensible coincidences that govern the universe of the novel: divinam ego putabam , ‘I thought she was a clairvoyant’. Not even the secluded locality where he is taken, or the patchwork tent (an indication of a somewhat disreputable place), lead him to have any suspicions. Nor even the sly comment with which the old woman terminates her task: hic debes habitare. The sentence is ambiguous, because it plays on the possible double meaning of debeo, which may also express, in an attenuated ————— 10

As formulated, the question is apparently absurd, or foolish: it is defined as an ‘Irish request’ by Walsh 1970, evidently on the basis of the proverbially limited wits of the Irish.

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sense, an approximate evaluation.11 In other words, the old woman might have said: ‘I imagine you may live here, I’d say you probably live here’ (and this is what Encolpius-the-character understands, seeing that he replies by denying the exactness of the ‘topographic’ indication: cum ego negarem me agnoscere domum); on the contrary, the old woman was really saying: ‘this is the kind of place that is suitable for you’. It is only the evidence of reality (7,3 video quosdam inter titulos nudasque meretrices furtim spatiantes ‘I see customers wandering around warily among the notice boards, and naked prostitutes’) that leads the character to understand what is really happening to him: instead of helping him, the old woman has played a dirty trick on him, by leading him into a brothel, a trap in which he risks losing his mask of ‘respectability’, which serves for him to make a living as a scholasticus in the Greek city: tarde, immo iam sero intellexi me in fornicem esse deductum. Encolpius’ lack of understanding is to some extent the result of his constitutional inability – perhaps because he is a scholasticus – to use in the events of life the resources that he possesses, or he should possess, as a learned man who has studied. Even at the end of the story, Encolpius does not seem to realise that the old woman’s urbanitas is based on the adaptation of a famous anecdote, referred to by Horace in his satire against adultery: quidam notus homo cum exiret fornice, ‘macte virtute esto’ inquit sententia dia Catonis; ‘nam simul ac venas inflavit taetra libido, huc iuvenes aequom est descendere, non alienas permolere uxores.’ When from a brothel a man he knew was coming forth, ‘A blessing on thy well-doing!’ runs Cato’s revered utterance; ‘for when shameful passion has swelled the veins, ’tis well that young men come down hither, rather than tamper with other men’s wives.’ Hor. serm. 1,2,31-35, transl. H. Rushton Fairclough (Loeb) Horace stopped here, but we know, from the world of the school, the end of the story: ————— 11

Cf. 33,8 hic nescio quid boni debet esse ‘what treasure have we here?’; 49,7 plane ... hic debet servus esse nequissimus ‘this must be a most wretched servant’; 67,7 sex pondo et selibram debet habere ‘she must have six pounds and a half of gold on her’.

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Catone transeunte, quidam exiit de fornice. quem cum fugeret, revocavit et laudavit. postea, cum frequentius eum exeuntem de eodem lupanari vidisset, dixisse fertur: ‘adulescens, ego te laudavi tamquam huc intervenires, non tamquam hic habitares’. As Cato was passing by, a man came out of a brothel. He tried to run away from Cato, but he called him back and commended him. Later, when he had seen him coming out more often from the same house of ill repute, he is said to have remarked : ‘Young man, I commended you for coming here sometimes, not for living here’. ps. Acr. ad l. Finally realising the insidiae created by the old woman, Encolpius tries to save what he can: 7,4 operui caput et per medium lupanar fugere coepi in alteram partem ‘I covered my head, and began to run through the brothel to another part’. The coup de théâtre that follows seems to start up the fantastic mechanism of the novel: cum ecce in ipso aditu occurrit mihi aeque lassus ac moriens Ascyltos ‘when just at the entrance Ascyltos met me, as tired as I was and half-dead’. A narrative twist accompanied by a kind of comment: putares ab eadem anicula esse deductum ‘it looked as though the same old lady had brought him there’. Who does this comment belong to? To Encolpius-the-character, to Encolpius-the-narrator, to both or to neither of the two? We are not able to give an answer, in particular because the incomplete conditions of the text between the episode of the brothel and the following episode of the quarrel in the inn make it necessary to adopt great prudence. What is certain is that this comment reveals a clear disposition (predisposition) to interpret what follows in accordance with the narrative schemes of the novel, which include the occurrence of totally unexpected happenings, astonishing coincidences, and parallelisms governed by mysterious forces. Compare, for example, 104,10: when Lichas tells Tryphaena that he has had a dream in which Priapus revealed to him Encolpion quod quaeris, scito a me in navem tuam esse perductum ‘Encolpius – to answer your inquiry – has been led by me on board your ship’, Tryphaena reacts with the shudder of a person who recognises an extraordinary coincidence: exhorruit Tryphaena et ‘putes’ inquit ‘nos una dormiisse; nam et mihi simulacrum Neptuni ... videbatur dicere: “in nave Lichae Gitona invenies”’ ‘Tryphena shuddered and said, “You would think we had slept together; I

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also dreamed that a likeness of Neptune ... said to me: ‘You will find Giton on board Lichas’s ship.”’ The story that Ascyltos tells to explain his presence in loco tam deformi shows an extraordinary parallelism with that of Encolpius: Ascyltos too got lost in the maze of the unknown city, he, too, found a guide who was apparently reassuring, but in fact was treacherous, the pater familiae, who – he says – took him to that place for purposes that were not particularly commendable (8,2-4 ‘cum errarem’ inquit ‘per totam civitatem nec invenirem quo loco stabulum reliquissem, accessit ad me pater familiae et ducem se itineris humanissime promisit. per anfractus deinde obscurissimos egressus in hunc locum me perduxit prolatoque peculio coepit rogare stuprum’ ‘I was wandering all over the town without finding where I had left my lodgings, when a respectable person came up to me and very kindly offered to direct me. He took me round a number of dark turnings and brought me out here, and then proceeded to offer me some of his cash and ask me for dirty intercourse’). The reader of the Satyrica then learns, together with the highly indignant Encolpius, that in actual fact Ascyltos found the street of the inn, and took advantage to try to waylay Giton, the novel Lucretia threatened by a novel Tarquinius. When did all this happen? Before or after the episode of the brothel? We are not able to say with certainty, but in the former case, it would follow that the whole story of Ascyltos and the pater familiae is nothing other than a shameless lie, and the readiness of Encolpius to believe, or indeed, to live out, fictional stereotypes is one of the forces that determine his incapacity to understand and interpret reality. I would like to point out, briefly, at least one other case in which an interpretation of this kind is not only possible, but, in my opinion, plausible: the episode of the forum. While Encolpius and Ascyltos try to take advantage of the place and the opportunity to sell the pallium which is the fruit of a previous wrongdoing, a couple, composed of a rusticus and of a mulier draw close, apparently interested in the goods. The peasant is no stranger to Encolpius. Ascyltos, and subsequently also Encolpius, realise that he is nonchalantly wearing a garment that seems to be of little value, but they know that it contains a treasure: the tunicula, with the gold coins sewn into the hem, which Encolpius had previously lost, and which had been the cause of suspicion and recriminations between the two fratres. What’s more, on touching and checking, the coins seem to be still in their place, and the present owner seems to be completely unaware of their presence. Truly an incredible series of coincidences,

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a game of the goddess of novels, Fortuna. The comment of the narrative voice (13,1 o lusum fortunae mirabilem! ‘What a wonderful stroke of luck!’) underlines the awareness that the events narrated or experienced belong to the world of the novel, and are governed by its rules. But we cannot say with certainty whether this exclamation, which contains meta-literary implications, belongs to the wider point of view of Encolpius-the-narrator, or whether here the narrator is interpreting the narrower, and perhaps illusory, point of view of himself as a character. In reality, what is experienced by the protagonists and indicated by the narrative I as a lusus fortunae could be completely different, it could have a director, and a script written by others: the meeting might not be a fantastic coincidence at all, but rather a cunningly laid trap, in which the rusticus and his mulier are the actors, Quartilla is the architect, and the presumed treasure is the bait. Verifying this hypothesis would mean going into a complicated discussion of reconstructive philology: how are we to interpret the expression recuperato, ut putabamus, thesauro ‘as we thought, we had got back our savings’ (15,8)? Are the mulier who accompanies the rusticus and the ancilla Quartillae of the following scene the same person, or is this connection due only to the arbitrary comment of an interpolator? Have the pallium and the tunica got anything to do with the profanation of the mysteries of Priapus that Quartilla complains about? It is clearly impossible to deal with all these problems here.12 I would only like to underline that here, too, it is possible (in my opinion, probable) that the fictional imaginary acts as one of the forces that cause the protagonist not to understand, or to understand too late, the story that he is experiencing and telling. One last example, just for a brief comment. The pervigilium Priapi shows us a particularly unwitting Encolpius, condemned to endure, together with his companions, a situation whose dynamics he does not control, which is dominated by ambiguous, authoritarian subjects. The climax of the ‘tortures’, above all of a sexual nature, that our heroes undergo is without doubt represented by the double intervention of the cinaedus. Encolpius (and Ascyltos) have already experienced, at the end of the first phase of the expiation ritual – the one that probably takes place in the deversorium confiscated by Quartilla –, the tiring performances of this grotesque character. The cinaedus reappears at the climax of the second phase, and inflicts on the vainly reluctant Encolpius a series of erotic practices which closely recall, in their obnoxiousness, themes and situations of Horace’s ————— 12

See Labate 2010, also for bibliographical references.

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erotic epodes.13 In despair, Encolpius finds the strength to address a disconsolate protest to Quartilla: non tenui ego diutius lacrimas, sed ad ultimam perductus tristitiam ‘quaeso’ inquam ‘domina, certe embasicoetan iusseras dari.’ I could not forbear tears any longer, but being brought to the last extremity, says I: ‘Madam, I ask you – you surely had given orders that a lewd mug be presented to me.’ Petr. 24,1-3 Quartilla had thus ordered ‘the embasicoetas to be served’, and instead Encolpius had had to suffer the attack of the cinaedus: his expectation of something pleasant had been overturned into the most obnoxious of experiences. It is sufficient to look through the various proposals recorded by Burman14 to realise that Petronian exegesis was in the dark for a long time, until González de Salas (partly on the basis of a note ad loc. by Casaubon) gave the correct interpretation, creating a connection between this passage and a precious item of information handed down to us by Athenaeus:15 ΕΦΗΒΟΣ. τὸ καλούμενον ποτήριον ἐμβασικοίταν οὕτως φησὶ καλεῖσθαι Φιλήμων ὁ Ἀθηναῖος ἐν τῷ περὶ Ἀττικῶν Ὀνομάτων ἢ Γλωσσῶν. Στέφανος δ’ ὁ κωμικὸς ἐν Φιλολάκωνί φησι· τούτῳ προέπιεν ὁ βασιλεὺς κώμην τινά. Β. καινόν τι τοῦτο γέγονε νῦν ποτήριον; Α. κώμη μὲν οὖν τίς ἐστι περὶ τὴν Θουρίαν. B. εἰς τὰς Ῥοδιακὰς ὅλος ἀπηνέχθην ἐγὼ καὶ τοὺς ἐφήβους, Σωσία, τοὺς δυσχερεῖς.

————— 13

14 15

Petr. 23,4-5 consumptis versibus suis immundissimo me basio conspuit. mox et super lectum venit atque omni vi detexit recusantem. super inguina mea diu multumque frustra moluit. [per]fluebant per frontem sudantis acaciae rivi, et inter rugas malarum tantum erat cretae, putares detectum parietem nimbo laborare ‘having done with his poetry, he smeared my lips with loathsome kisses; then getting onto my bed he threw off the coverings though I stoutly resisted. For a long while he worked mightily over my groin to no purpose; streams of sweating gum oozed over his forehead, and came trickling down the wrinkles of his cheeks like pelting rain on a peeling wall’; cf. Hor. epod. 12,7 f. Burman 1743, I, 112 ad loc. Ibid., II, 121 ad loc.

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Ephebus. The cup called embasicoetas is also named ephebus, according to Philemon of Athens in his work On Attic Words or Glosses. And the comic poet Stephanus says in The Pro-Laconian: ‘To him the king pledged a village. B. Is that some new kind of cup that is now the fashion? S. No, it is a real village in the territory of Thurii. B. I was entirely carried away for the moment, Sosias, into thinking of those Rhodian vessels and those ephebi which are so hard to manage.’ Athen. 11,469a-b, transl. C.B. Gulick (Loeb) According to a gloss of Philemon of Athens, ἐμβασικοίτας was thus the name of a cup that could also be called ἔφηβος: this latter denomination was found in a passage of the comic poet Stephanos, a repartee in which one of the interlocutors jokes about the fashion that proposed crockery of strange forms and with strange names (such as ‘ephebes’, which were, according to the speaker, δυσχερεῖς, ‘unwieldy’). As regards the cup called an ‘ephebe’, we know, from another passage of Athenaeus,16 that it was an equivalent of the cups, whose name was taken ‘ἀπὸ τοῦ ἀρύσασθαι’ (e.g. ἀρύταινα, ἀρυστήρ, ἀρύστιχος), and thus designated the instrument used to take wine from a crater, a kind of ‘ladle’. Encolpius had evidently interpreted Quartilla’s order to mean that he had to serve that kind of cup to the guests, perhaps ‘the cup that takes people to bed’, a kind of last drink, or ‘stirrup cup’. Quartilla reacts to his protest with a sarcastic exclamation: complosit illa tenerius manus et ‘o’ inquit ‘hominem acutum atque urbanitatis vernulae fontem. quid? tu non intellexeras cinaedum embasicoetan vocari?’ Then she, with a gentle clapping of her hands: ‘What a very smart gentleman,’ says she, ‘– a man of excellent natural wit! What? Hadn’t you understood that ‘lewd mug’ is a title we give to a sodomite?’’ Petr. 24,2 Embasicoetas is thus the name of the cinaedus, one of those curious speaking names that lend themselves to the host’s punning, and test the keenness of spirit of his guests: like Carpus, Trimalchio’s servant,17 or Colocyntha and ————— 16 17

Athen. 10,23,17. Petr. 36,6-8.

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Chelidon, the names of cinaedi in the houses of Roman ladies, according to the testimony of Juvenal’s ‘Winstedt fragment’.18 The reaction of Quartilla combines the affected surprise of the gesture (complosit illa tenerius manus) with the malicious irony of the words: Encolpius, as happens with an increasing regularity in the Cena, has been the victim of his own inability to grasp the situation, as a result of his insufficient command of language and of the cultural code that governs the universe of the Graeca urbs. The young scholasticus is not sufficiently a ‘man of the world’ to know that among people who know Greek and know how to live in society, it is necessary to be ready to understand a double meaning, and solve a riddle. Quartilla had given orders to ‘serve the embasicoetas’: Encolpius protests, as he does not understand that the arrival of the cinaedus and the attentions inflicted on him are simply the execution of this command. In reality, the protagonist demonstrates, in this case too, all his intellectual and cultural inadequacy, which win him the antiphrastic apostrophe of ‘true source of our national urbanitas’.19 Since he knows what an embasi————— 18 19

Iuv. 6,365 O 1-6. For the interpretation of nicknames, cf. Courtney 1980, 305-306 ad loc. The expression urbanitatis vernaculae fontem (where vernaculae is the effective conjecture of Schoppius for the version handed down, vernulae) has been the subject of discussion and exegetic doubts. According to Aragosti (in Aragosti-Cosci-Cotrozzi 1988, 114 f.) ‘urbanitas vernacula is…the wittiness typical of the verna, provocative, but tending towards narrow-minded insularity’, but it could also be taken as a reference ‘to the positive meaning of verna, and thus in an ironic sense: ‘oh, what a perceptive man, a true source of the wittiness of a verna!’’. I believe it is unlikely that the ironic formulation of the sentence can admit a limitative sense of vernaculae (and the consequent oxymoronic relationship with urbanitatis, which Fuchs 1959, 61, proposed to solve by inserting a negation: urbanitatis vernaculae). For the interpretation that I propose (‘a true source of our local, national urbanitas’), I believe it is important to make a comparison, which so far appears to have been overlooked, with Cic. fam. 9,15,2 accedunt non Attici sed salsiores quam illi Atticorum Romani veteres atque urbani sales. ego autem (existimes licet quidlibet) mirifice capior facetiis, maxime n o s t r a t i b u s ... .itaque te cum video, omnis mihi Granios, omnis Lucilios, vere ut dicam, Crassos quoque et Laelios videre videor. moriar si praeter te quemquam reliquum habeo in quo possim imaginem antiquae et v e r n a c u l a e f e s t i v i t a t i s agnoscere, ‘Besides, there is your wit, not Attic, but more pungent than that of Attic writers–the good old city wit of Rome. Now for me (you may think what you please of it) humour, and most of all the home-grown kind, has a wonderful fascination ... And so, whenever I meet you, I seem in very truth to meet all the Granii, all the Lucilii, yes, and the Crassi too and the Laelii. May I die if I can find a single soul left, except yourself, in whom I can recognize any resemblance to the ancient and indigenous jocularity’ (transl. W. Glynn Williams, Loeb). The irony is probably twofold: Encolpius does not show a great mastery of wittiness, and it is a kind of ‘national-

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coetas is and since he should know that the object (perhaps a figured vase) is also called an ‘ephebe’, Encolpius possessed sufficient elements to suspect that the cinaedus, a kind of older, much less attractive ephebe, could be defined as ‘one who gets into the bed’. In other words, Encolpius should have expected it. But above all, he should have understood at least when the cinaedus came on to the scene, if for no other reason, because his own narrative voice supplied the key to solve the riddle: mox et super lectum venit atque omni vi detexit recusantem ‘then getting onto my bed he threw off the coverings though I stoutly resisted’ (Petr. 23,4). Embasicoetas could be glossed as qui super lectum venit. And yet, here, too, we might say that Encolpius tarde, immo iam sero intellexit.

Bibliography Aragosti, A., Cosci, P., Cotrozzi, A. 1988. Petronio: l’episodio di Quartilla (Satyricon 1626,6), Bologna: Pitagora. Burman, P., 1743. Titi Petronii Arbitri Satiricôn quae supersunt…, Amstelaedami 17432. Ciaffi, V. 1955. Struttura del Satyricon, Torino: Fac. di Lettere e Filosofia. Conte, G.B. 1996. The Hidden Author: An Interpretation of Petronius’ Satyricon, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. Courtney, E. 1980. A Commentary on the Satires of Juvenal, London: Athlone Press. Fuchs, H. 1959. ‘Verderbnisse im Petrontext’, in: H. Dahlmann (ed.), Studien zur Textgeschichte und Textkritik, Köln: Westdeutsche Verlag, 57-82. Labate, M. 2010. ‘L’episodio del foro, Quartilla e altri problemi di ricostruzione della trama’, in: L. Landolfi (ed.), Itaque conabor opus versibus pandere. Tra prosa e poesia: percorsi intertestuali nei Satyrica. Incontri sulla poesia latina di età imperiale (III), Bologna: Pàtron, 41-61. McKeown, J. 1979. ‘Augustan Elegy and Mime’, PCPhS n.s. 25, 71-84. Panayotakis, C. 1995. Theatrum Arbitri: Theatrical Elements in the ‘Satyrica’ of Petronius, Leiden, New York, Köln: Brill. Preston, K. 1915. ‘Some Sources of Comic Effect in Petronius’, CPh 10, 260-269. Rosati, G. 1983. ‘Trimalchione in scena’, Maia 35, 213-227 (transl. as ‘Trimalchio on Stage’, in: S.J. Harrison (ed.), Oxford Readings in the Roman Novel, Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press 1999, 85-104). Rudd, N. 1961. ‘Horace’s Encounter with the Bore’, Phoenix 15, 79-86. Tilg, S. 2002. ‘Die ‘Flucht’ in Petron’, MD 49, 213-226. Walsh, P.G. 1970. The Roman Novel, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zeitlin, F. 1971. ‘Petronius as Paradox: Anarchy and Artistic Integrity’, TAPhA 102, 631-684 (repr. in S.J. Harrison (ed.), Oxford Readings in the Roman Novel, Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press 1999, 1-49).

————— istic’ narrow-mindedness that prevents him from understanding a quip based on a ‘Greek’ double meaning.

Landscape and Reality in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses J ASON K ÖNIG University of St Andrews

Introduction Apuleius’ Metamorphoses invites its readers – more conspicuously so than any of the other surviving ancient novels – to reflect on the possibility that mortal understandings of ‘reality’ are inadequate. One of the major themes of the work is the way in which the validity of Lucius’ perceptions of the world around him, in Books 1-10, is thrown into doubt by his access to higher, divine knowledge in Book 11 (although the work of course also leaves open the possibility that Lucius’ judgement in Book 11 is just as flawed as it always had been).1 In that sense, reading Apuleius takes us right to the heart of the concerns of this volume. My argument in this paper is that the work’s representation of landscape – and especially mountainous landscape – plays a key role in Apuleius’ exploration of that theme. I aim to show that Apuleius’ landscapes are characterised by two different strands. The first is a strikingly rhetorical conception of landscape. The Metamorphoses is full of stylised, mirage-like terrains, which draw heavily on recognised literary and rhetorical motifs. Apuleius, I suggest, goes out of his way to expose the inadequate, fabricated, unreal character of those representations. In my second section I draw attention to a rather different strand in Apuleius’ narrative, that is its obsessive sense of the physical presence of landscape and the way in which landscape impinges on the human (or asinine) body. This strand of description at first sight looks ————— 1

My subject in what follows is the difference between Book 11 and what comes before, rather than the (important) satirical elements of Book 11, but that should not be taken to imply that I read the work as straightforwardly didactic or protreptic: cf. Shumate 1996, esp. 7, 13-14 and 325-328 on the Metamorphoses as ‘simultaneously a satire of credulity and a seductive evocation of religious belief’ (7). The Construction of the Real and the Ideal in the Ancient Novel, 219–241

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diametrically opposed to the rhetorical strand I have just outlined. Nevertheless I aim to show here that it ultimately turns out to be just as inadequate: both of these ways of perceiving physical space turn out to be signs of Lucius’ subjection to the sublunary world in Books 1-10; both are rejected in favour of what the narrator represents as the higher realities of Isis in Book 11 (which is the subject of the third and final section of this chapter). The destruction of the stage-set mountain at the very end of Book 10 stands, I will argue, as an emblem of the novel’s rejection of Lucius’ flawed, pre-Isis experience of landscape in all that has come before. In all of these senses Apuleius’ depiction of landscape is highly complex and self-conscious. In some ways it is even surprisingly modern. Admittedly Apuleius’ obsession with mountains as places of fear and danger is entirely typical of classical and other pre-modern writing. The idea of mountains as places of beauty and sublimity, to be climbed and admired, is a surprisingly modern one: it is now commonplace to claim that these notions have become widespread only in the last two hundred years or so.2 In other respects, however, Apuleius’ landscape depictions have a sophistication which goes beyond what we find in most other classical texts. Perhaps most importantly, the Metamorphoses offers a striking counter-example to the idea that premodern writing on landscape, mountainous landscape in particular, is characterised by an unthinking adherence to allegorical or conventionally rhetorical portrayal:3 Apuleius does indeed use rhetorical and poetic stereotypes of landscape description, as I have suggested, but he also self-consciously demonstrates their inadequacy, sweeping them away from view with the stage-set mountain of Book 10. One might point also to Apuleius’ concern with the corporeality of landscape – the second of my two strands outlined above. The frequency with which Apuleius returns to that theme is hard to parallel in other surviving classical literature. It also has striking resonances with phenomenological approaches to landscape in recent scholarship, which often shows a similar interest in the tactile or ‘haptic’ character of landscape – in other words the way in which it impinges on our sense of touch and contributes to our own bodily experience of movement through the world.4 Finally, the two different strands of landscape perception I have drawn attention to in the Metamorphoses correspond roughly with the two different ways of conceiving landscape which have lain at the heart of writing in cultural geography in recent decades: on the one hand landscape as symbol or ————— 2 3 4

See Nicholson 1959, 38-42; MacFarlane 2003, esp. 137-167. See Nicholson 1959, esp. 34-71. See Wylie 2007, 166-169.

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construct; on the other hand landscape as lived, material reality. A large proportion of recent work within the discipline of cultural geography debates the relative merits of those two different models.5 Not only does Apuleius show some awareness of those two alternative conceptions, he also takes the further step of suggesting that they are ultimately compatible with each other, and equally inadequate, in the sense that both of them are associated with the sublunary world of human perception which Lucius claims (whether or not we believe him) to have discarded at the beginning of Book 11.

Fantasy Landscapes How then does Apuleius characterise the extraordinary landscapes Lucius moves through in his travels? Their most striking feature is simply their remarkable prominence within the narrative. The Metamorphoses is packed with mountains – rocks, peaks and precipices, many of them dangerous and threatening, marked out by imagery of steepness and roughness and jaggedness. Those passages alternate with more welcoming landscapes – valleys and plains, streams and meadows.6 The landscapes of the work are also often fantastical, fabricated, mirage-like (an effect which is enhanced by the geographical imprecision of the central books of the novel).7 That quality is the main subject of this section. Lucian’s immersion in these fantastical landscapes goes hand in hand with his imprisonment in a new body and a new identity. Some aspects of the artificiality of the work’s landscapes have been well discussed in recent scholarship. For one thing, Apuleius’ landscapes often have allegorical connotations. Maaike Zimmerman has shown that these become increasingly important as the Metamorphoses goes on, although she rightly avoids suggesting that they articulate any simplistic message, seeing instead a playfully imprecise engagement with allegorical and moralising

————— 5 6 7

See Wylie 2007, 1-16. For surveys of Apuleius’ depiction of landscape see de Biasi 1990; Krabbe 2003, 90-121. Millar 1981 (cf. Fick 1991) has rightly discussed the realistic quality of Apuleius’ depiction of Roman provincial life in some parts of the text. However, that realism is in tension with ostentatiously unrealistic and stylised pictures of wild landscape elsewhere in the novel, which are disorientatingly cut free from any kind of topographical markers: see Zimmerman 2000, 11; Slater 2002, 173. The Onos, by contrast, is much more precise about topography: see Graverini 2002, esp. 58-59.

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language.8 There has also been a great deal of work on the allusive, literary character of the novel’s landscapes, and (closely related to that) the way in which they draw on rhetorical traditions of ekphrastic landscape description.9 Much of that literary-rhetorical embellishment seems to have been Apuleius’ innovation, rather than something taken from his Greek source, given that it is not present in any sustained form within the Onos.10 It is important to stress, of course, that ekphrasis is not always automatically associated with artificiality. Ancient theories of ekphrasis – by which I mean the practice of producing enargeia or clarity, in Greek rhetorical theory – view it as a technique which aims to bring to life the scene being described, making absent things present.11 However, there is also a strong strand within these ancient discussions, which acknowledges the gap between the fabricated scene and the original on which it is based,12 and Apuleius is clearly aware of that (as we shall see below in looking at his description of the bandits’ lair at 4,6).13 That recent scholarship on the literary and rhetorical texture of the novel’s terrains has greatly enhanced our detailed understanding of particular passages. However, there has been a general failure to acknowledge the fact that these effects go well beyond literary game playing. It is not simply that Apuleius sometimes chooses to break the illusion of narrative – winking, as it were, at his audience. In addition, I suggest, this acute awareness of artificial landscape keys into the wider theme of false perception which is so important for the work as a whole, and which comes to a head at the moment of transition between Books 10 and 11. In Book 11, everything changes. From now on, so the narrator suggests, that immersion in the world of the senses and the body, which has preoccupied Lucius and us as readers so intensely, will be replaced by the higher realities of Isis.14 Maeve O’Brien has argued ————— 8

9

10

11 12 13 14

Zimmerman 2002, esp. 91-96 (with reference to the Hesiodic distinction between the hard road to virtue and the easy way to vice: Works and Days 287-291); cf. Bakhtin 1981, 120; also Elsner and Rubiés 1999, 8-15 on travel as a metaphor for the journey to spiritual enlightenment in the Neoplatonic (and later, Christian) writing of the later Roman Empire. See esp. below on Met. 4,6; also de Biasi 1990, 248-253 on landscape in Apuleius’ Florida (esp. Florida 1, 10,4, 11 and 21). Most of the passages I discuss from the Metamorphoses in this chapter have no close equivalent in the Onos; all exceptions are noted. See Webb 2009, esp. 87-106. See Webb 2009, 167-191. See Shumate 1996, 67-71 on the links between ekphrasis and artificiality in the work. Admittedly, that argument is complicated by the fact that the narrating voice has several different layers. In many passages in Books 1-10 we look at landscape through Lucius’ eyes as he experienced it at the time: see Zimmerman 2002, esp. 81-86 and 95. In other

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that this distinction between the mortal and divine realms is crucial to the Metamorphoses.15 She suggests, with particular reference to Apuleius’ work De Platone,16 that Apuleius draws on Plato – especially the Gorgias and the Phaedrus – in order to set up a contrast between two types of discourse: the sublunary, earthly discourse of Books 1-10, which is concerned above all with trickery and appearance, associated with things which are literally visible in the world of senses; and the higher discourse of Book 11, which can give access to higher truths, and portrays things which are visible to the mind’s eye. From a slightly different perspective, Nancy Shumate has explored at length the way in which the Metamorphoses parallels other ancient (and also modern) conversion narratives where conversion is preceded by an impression of disintegrating reality. She explains that ‘according to this pattern of crisis and conversion, a perception of the collapse of familiar cognitive constructs precedes the convert’s reconstruction of a new world and world view along religious lines’.17 And she shows how Books 1-4 in particular are full of a sense of the unstable and untrustworthy character of the physical world as Lucius perceives it.18 The very opening sentences of Lucius’ narrative fit in with the pattern of rhetorical landscape description. He tells us first of all that he was travelling to Thessaly on business. Then in the second sentence of 1,2 we find the following: After I had emerged from the steep paths of the mountains (ardua montium) and the slippery paths of the valleys and the wet paths through the meadows and the cloddy paths of the fields, riding on a native white horse, because he too was very tired, and in order that I might also my—————

15 16 17 18

cases, however, particularly in some of the lengthier passages of ekphrasis, we seem to be hearing the voice of the narrator speaking with hindsight, showing off his rhetorical skills: see Paschalis 2002 on 2,4, with reference also to 4,6, 5,1, 6,14 and 10,32-3; also van Mal-Maeder 1997a. That need not mean, however, that we should see these ekphrasis scenes as irrelevant to Lucius’ perception of the world at the time. In practice it is often difficult to separate actor and auctor securely (cf. below on 4,6). We might anyway feel that the narrator is trying to reproduce for us, through these set-piece passages of rhetorical description, the world of false perceptions which his own former self had moved through. Alternatively – and more unsettlingly – we might even take this as a sign that he is still mired in that world of false rhetoric, and keen to indulge in it even after his conversion in Book 11. O’Brien 2002. O’Brien 2002, 10-15. Shumate 1996, 14. Shumate 1996, 43-90.

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self shake off my saddle-soreness by the invigorating act of walking, I jumped down to my feet, attentively rubbed away the sweat from my horse’s forehead, caressed his ears, detached his bridle, and led him forward at a gentle pace, until the accustomed and natural operations of his stomach removed the discomfort of his weariness. (Met. 1,2,2) The opening group of four phrases – ‘steep paths ... slippery paths ... wet paths ... cloddy paths’ – is carefully crafted. It draws heavily on epic language;19 it also has a heavily rhetorical feel, as if ticking off in turn the different categories of landscape description one might use in a rhetorical exercise.20 Lucius is offering, in other words, an elevated and idealised vision of his own travel. It is striking, however, that the air of detachment and even idealisation or aggrandisement implied by the first half of the sentence is not maintained. Most obviously, anyone coming to this passage as a second reader will know that Lucius is about to have a more brutal set of confrontations with the ardua montium than he is bargaining for here (as we shall see further in the next section).21 Even within this opening sentence there is a move from elevated language downwards to very mundane, physical concerns – the wiping of the sweat, the horse’s digestion problems.22 Here then, in the very opening section of the narrative, Apuleius presents us with a rhetorical vision of landscape while also signalling its inadequacy as a representation of the real, bodily experience of travelling: Lucius is quite literally brought down to earth as the sentence goes on. In addition, the word ‘emerged’ (emersi) perhaps even anticipates Lucius’ final emergence from the oppressive world of rocky slopes, slippery paths and false perceptions which has held him in its grip throughout Books 1-10.23 That passage is followed, in Books 1 and 2, by Lucius’ first impressions of the town of Hypata. Here the text repeatedly returns to the image of landscapes which are formed or altered by magic. Landscape, on that account, is malleable, open to fabrication, untrustworthy. In 2,1, the most prominent of several examples,24 Lucius speaks as follows:

————— 19 20

21 22 23 24

See Keulen 2007, 97-100. See de Biasi 1990, 201-202; Merlier-Espenel 1999, 163-164; Zimmerman 2002, 79-80; also Keulen 2007, 96 on overlaps with Florida 21,3. See Krabbe 2003, 92. See Keulen 2007, 96-97 and 100-104. Cf. Krabbe 2003, 109-110. Other key passages include 1,3,1, 1,8,4, 2,5,4-7.

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Nothing of what I saw in that city seemed to me to be what it was, but everything had been completely transformed into another shape by deadly muttering; the result was that I believed that the stones I stumbled over were hardened humans, that the birds I heard were feathered humans, that the trees which ran around the city wall were in the same way foliated humans, and that the waters of the fountains were liquefied human bodies. (2,1,3-4) That sentence – and especially the phrase ‘nothing seemed to me to be what it was’ – foregrounds the theme of untrustworthy perception.25 Here we clearly are seeing events through Lucius’ eyes as he experienced them at the time.26 The surface appearance of the city’s landscape, in Lucius’ view, is not reliable; it hides behind it a sinister, magical reality. Equally Lucius’ own perception of the ubiquity of magic seems suspect in itself: this is a highly literary landscape, imbued with precedents from Ovid’s Metamorphoses and elsewhere, as if Lucius has read Ovid too literal-mindedly and fabricated a vision of the landscape of Hypata on that basis.27 The link between landscape and fabrication or false perception becomes even more prominent after Lucius’ transformation. There are, for example, several scenes which use the poetic conventions of the locus amoenus to describe apparently idyllic landscapes which later turn out to be deceptive and dangerous.28 The most striking example comes very soon after Lucius’ transformation. Having been led away from his host’s house in Hypata by the robbers in 3,28 he is convinced that he has found roses, the antidote to his metamorphosis: a little further off I saw a glen full of the shade of a leafy wood; and in the middle of its various little plants and luxuriant shrubs, shone the bright red colour of gleaming roses. And now in my heart, which was not wholly bestial, I thought that it was a grove of Venus and the Graces, within whose dark recesses the royal splendour of this festive flower was gleaming (4,2,1-2).

————— 25 26 27

28

See van Mal-Maeder 2001, 58-61; Shumate 1996, 50 and 60-61. See Paschalis 2002, 138-139. For that suggestion, see Penwill 1990, 8; cf. Shumate 1996, 56-60; van Mal-Maeder 2001, 59. See Merlier-Espenel 1999; Mattiacci 2001.

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His hopes are dashed. The flowers turn out to be not roses but oleanders, which are poisonous. Lucius resolves to eat them anyway, but at that moment the gardener and several others approach him and begin to beat him. The locus amoenus – marked as such among other things by the association with Venus and by the imagined presence of the rose, the archetypal flower of such spaces – turns out to be a mirage, a place of violence and threat, populated by a much more mundane flower, which is described by the narrating Lucius in pointedly realistic, almost scientific terms.29 There are several other similar examples of false locus amoenus scenes in the work.30 That theme of fabricated, fantasy landscape is treated in more extended form in a number of passages in the work which draw on traditions of ekphrasis. The first and lengthiest of these – and the one which has received most critical attention – comes early in 4,6, where we hear a description of the bandits’ mountain hideout: The subject and occasion demand that I should offer a description of the region and the cave which the robbers inhabited. For I shall at the same time put my abilities to the test and also make sure that you gain a clear insight into the question of whether I really was a donkey in my understanding and my faculties of perception. The mountain was rough, shady with forest foliage and exceptionally high. Its very steep slopes, where it was surrounded by jagged and hence inaccessible rocks, were encircled by hollow, pitted valleys... From the highest peak a spring gushed down abounding in giant bubbles, and pouring down the steep sides, it vomited out silvery waves... (4,6,1-4) The first thing that stands out here is simply the elaborately crafted nature of this description. The rhetorical character of the description is enhanced by the apostrophe to the reader, a common feature of ekphrasis, which draws attention to the way in which the scene is being brought to life in front of our eyes.31 We seem to be hearing here the voice of the post-conversion narrator, especially when he informs us that he wishes to use the description as a display of his talent (ingenium). That said, Apuleius also makes it clear, in his desire to let the reader know ‘whether I really was a donkey in my under————— 29

30

31

See Mattiacci 2001, 853-858, who shows that Apuleius’ version involves a much more complex play with locus amoenus conventions than the equivalent scene in Onos 17; and cf. Hijmans et al. 1977, 28 f. ad loc.; de Biasi 1990, 216-219. E.g., see Met. 1,19, with de Biasi 1990, 219-222; Merlier-Espenel 1999, 162-163; Mattiacci 2001, 847-853; also Met. 8,18-19; and Hijmans et al. 1977, 28-29 for a full list. See Trinquier 1999, 268, esp. n.58.

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standing and my faculties of perception’ (4,6,2), that the description has at least some connection with Lucius’ pre-conversion view of the world, being based on the details he stored away in his mind at the time.32 The literary quality of the work is also clear. The language of jaggedness and steepness, which is a recurring feature of the work as a whole, draws heavily on stereotyped poetic language of mountain description.33 Moreover, the passage is full of carefully crafted language, packed, for example, with alliteration and assonance.34 A number of scholars have seen this as a key passage in the history of locus horridus traditions in Latin poetry, pointing out how Lucius systematically inverts the motifs of the locus amoenus in Virgil and Seneca and others.35 In addition, the passage has a historiographical character: for example the opening phrase – ‘the subject and occasion itself demand’ – echoes a number of passages of Sallust and Tacitus.36 Not only that, but it is also clear on closer inspection that the passage has a strong air of exaggeration and inconsistency and absurdity, and that Apuleius goes out of his way here to draw attention to the artificiality of the description.37 For one thing, the jaggedness of the hideout as it is described here contradicts Lucius’ account of their arrival at the hideout just a few lines before: ‘we then climbed a gentle slope and arrived at our destination’ (4,5,7).38 The grand, imposing quality of the passage – appropriate to epic or historiography – is undermined by a final bucolic detail, just after the passage quoted above, where we hear that the mountain was topped with a ‘tiny hut carelessly thatched with cane’, which recalls the hut of Philemon and Baucis in Ovid, Metamorphoses 8,629-630 or the hut in Ps.-Virgil’s Moretum 60-61 and 66.39 And the passage’s historiographical pretensions have an obvious absurdity when we note the incongruity between the serious tone and the identity of Lucius, at the time of gathering his material, as a donkey.40 That seriousness is further undermined when we take account of a passage from Lucian’s On How to Write History 19-20, which is critical of those who pad their histories out with excessively long landscape descrip————— 32 33 34 35 36 37

38 39 40

See Trinquier 1999, 270-271; de Jong 2001, 209. See Krabbe 2003, 93 for a good example. See de Biasi 1990, 210-214. See Schiesaro 1985, esp. 214-219. See Walsh 1970, 57-58; Schiesaro 1985, 215; Trinquier 1999, 267. See Keuls 1974, 267; de Biasi 1990, 215; Trinquier 1999, 269-276; Mattiacci 2001, 845846. See Keuls 1974, 267. See Trinquier 1999, 271-272. See Trinquier 1999, 270-271.

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tions of precisely this kind.41 All of those factors contribute to the impression of a fantasy mountain, almost a cardboard cut-out, patched together rather inconsistently from conventional rhetorical and poetic motifs.

Landscape and the Body Landscape, then, is consistently linked with fabrication and false perception in Books 1-10 of the Metamorphoses. In parallel with that theme, however, there is another prominent strand of landscape description – standing in contrast to the unrealistic, stylised character of the scenes I have been discussing so far – which stresses the physicality of landscape, and its ability to impinge on human and asinine bodies in ways which produce suffering.42 Maaike Zimmerman, among others, has shown how Lucius’ landscape descriptions often reflect his own perception of the situation in which he finds himself.43 She focuses, however, on the mental rather than the bodily impact of the roads Lucius travels along. That bodily impact seems to me to be one of the things which make Apuleius’ description of travel so memorable. Admittedly some aspects of this interest in the physicality of landscape are present in the Onos, as part of that work’s obsession with the harshness and brutality of lower-class life.44 But it is also clear that Apuleius has very much extended those themes in his own version. Admittedly, too, some of the motifs I dis————— 41 42

43 44

See Keuls 1974, 266-267; Schiesaro 1985, 214-215; Trinquier 1999, 269-270. For reasons of space it has not been possible to give close attention here to the remarkable landscapes of the Cupid and Psyche story, but it should be clear at once that they fit in with many of the patterns I have been discussing. Psyche encounters landscapes which are highly literary and stylised: e.g., see Harrison 2002, 48-52 for their literary character; and on locus horridus stereotypes in the cliff of 6,14,2-4, and its close links to the earlier description of the robber’s cave, see Schiesaro 1985, 211-212 and 219-222; de Biasi 1990, 229-230; Merlier-Espenel 1999, 165-167. At the same time they are brutally physical landscapes (see further examples later in this section). Those themes play a key role in the work’s depiction of Psyche’s immersion in the realm of earthly experience: see Kenney 1990, esp. 184-185, Edwards 1992 and Harrison 2000, 256-258 on the Platonic distinction between spiritual and earthly in the famous scene in Metamorphoses 5,24 where Psyche falls back to earth. In all of those respects, Psyche parallels Lucius: see Frangoulidis 2008, 120-124 on general parallels between Cupid and Psyche; also 6,13,4 and 6,16-20, with Harrison 2002, 51-52, for Psyche’s encounters with infernal landscape, which parallel the repeated use of infernal imagery for the landscapes Lucius moves through (on which see Nethercut 1969, esp. 101, 103-104 and O’Brien 2002, esp. 32-35 and 104, n. 53). See Zimmerman 2002, esp. 81-86 and 95; cf. Bakhtin 1981, 120; de Biasi 1990. See Hall 1995.

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cuss in this section can be paralleled elsewhere in surviving classical literature. However, the sheer frequency with which they recur in the Metamorphoses is, I suggest, quite remarkable. One function of that sense of the physicality of landscape is to debunk the unrealistic, idealised, rhetorical versions of landscape I have so far been discussing. At the same time, however, it draws attention to another aspect of the limitation of Lucius’ understanding of the world, standing as a sign of his earthliness, and his inability to see beyond bodily experience to higher spiritual truths. The most straightforward manifestation of that theme, and the one where Apuleius is closest to the Onos, comes in the many scenes where Lucius is concerned about the way in which the landscape digs into his feet as he walks, or otherwise impedes his progress. There is a cluster of these scenes in Book 9. In 9,9, for example, Lucius describes his journey with the false priests: the road was pitted with puddle-filled channels, wet in places with stagnant swamp-water, and in other places slippery with filthy slime. In addition, my legs were battered by frequent obstacles and continual slipping... (9,9,1-2) In 9,10,5, having passed into the ownership of a baker, Lucius is having trouble with his feet again: ‘Immediately ... he led me along a steep path which was threateningly full of sharp stones and bushes of every kind, to the mill which he ran’.45 And in 9,32,4, winter brings a particularly unpleasant version of the same problem: ‘In the morning, stepping with my naked feet on the freezing mud and the extra-sharp fragments of ice, I was tormented to death’.46 An even more brutal version of this kind of encounter with rocky landscapes comes in the many scenes where people are attacked and often killed with rocks. In 4,27,4, for example, the girl who is being held by the robbers in their hideout explains that she has dreamt of her new husband being killed: ‘one of the robbers, provoked to a state of fury at his relentless pursuit, having grabbed a stone which lay at his feet, struck my poor young husband and killed him’. In 8,17 Lucius and those he is travelling with suddenly find themselves under attack for no apparent reason, in a scene which replays Odysseus’ encounter with the stone-throwing Laestrygonians in Homer’s Odyssey Book 10: ‘For from the rooftops and from the nearest hill ————— 45 46

Onos 42 mentions only a ‘hard road’. Cf. Onos 43.

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those farmers quickly rolled down rocks on top of us ... In fact, one of the stones suddenly smashed against the head of the woman who was sitting on my back’ (8,17,4-5). And in 9,40, Lucius’ owner attacks a Roman soldier who has accosted him on the road: ‘immediately he began to pound him on his face and his hands and his sides, with his fists, his elbows, his teeth, even with a rock grabbed from the road’ (9,40,2).47 Most horrifyingly of all, there is a succession of scenes in the central books set in the robbers’ hideout where individuals are thrown over cliffs to die on the rocks beneath, or else are threatened with that fate. In 4,5, one of Lucius’ fellow donkeys is thrown over a cliff ‘even now still breathing, off a very high precipice down into the next valley’ (4,5,4) as punishment for collapsing out of exhaustion, moments after Lucius had contemplated doing the same.48 Here, the physical impact of landscape is made horrifyingly clear, although it is important to stress that even at such a moment of physical brutality Apuleius is reluctant to abandon a rhetorical style of presentation: these phrases have a highly crafted, alliterative character.49 In 4,12, some of the newly returned robbers give an account of the death of one of their comrades, Alcimus, who was pushed out of a window by an old woman: ‘quite apart from the great altitude, he fell on top of an enormous rock which was lying nearby, and his ribcage was shattered and scattered’ (4,12,8). One of Psyche’s sisters, in the story Lucius listens to in the hideout, dies by being dashed on the rocks after jumping off the cliff without the help of Zephyr: ‘her limbs were tossed and scattered by the rocks of the cliff’ (5,27,3); her other sister meets with the same fate not long afterwards (5,27,5). In 6,25, Lucius is taken out to collect some stolen goods which have been stashed in a cave and collapses with exhaustion: ‘battering me and shoving me with frequent blows they made me fall on top of a rock at the side of the road’ (6,25,4). When they return to the hideout they threaten to dispose of him, given his weakness, by throwing him over a cliff,50 and he contemplates his fate in a soliloquy:51 ‘Do you see those nearby ravines and the sharp rocks which stick out into them, which will penetrate you before you reach the bottom and rip you apart limb by limb?’ (6,26,6). Ironically that is precisely the fate that awaits many of the robbers themselves after ————— 47 48 49

50 51

Cf. Onos 44. Cf. Onos 19. See de Biasi 1990, 236-237; and cf. similar comments at 230 on 6,26, discussed later in this paragraph. Cf. Onos 22. Cf. Onos 23 for a much briefer version.

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their capture in 7,13,6.52 The Metamorphoses, then, has an obsessive and gruesome fascination with the extreme vulnerability of human and asinine bodies to the physicality of landscape. That fascination has, to my knowledge, never received any sustained critical attention.53 One particularly outlandish manifestation of those concerns is in the many scenes where Apuleius presents us with bodies which are immured in the landscape or trapped by it, so as almost to become a part of it. Lucius’ perception of the magical quality of the landscape of Hypata, quoted above, is a good example from early in the work: ‘I believed that the stones I stumbled over were hardened humans...’ (2,1,4). In 2,5,7, similarly, Lucius is warned about the magical powers of his wife’s host, who transforms her lovers ‘instantly into rocks or sheep or any other sort of animal’ if they offend her. In 8,22, a particularly horrifying example, Lucius hears a report of a terrible punishment inflicted on a slave who is covered in honey and tied to a tree so as to be devoured by ants: ‘after a long period of torture the man died, with his flesh and even his innards eaten away, and they denuded his limbs so that only the bones remained, deprived of meat and shining with great brightness, and still clinging to that fatal tree’ (8,22,7). The slave’s body stands as a part of the landscape after his death. Metaphorical petrification also recurs often in the work. In 6,14,6, for example, Psyche, overwhelmed by the terrors of the inaccessible cliff from which she has been instructed to fetch water, is ‘turned into stone by the impossibility of it’, becoming almost a part of the landscape she fears. And in 4,5,3, mentioned already above, the exhausted donkey is described in similar terms: the robbers agree among themselves ‘not to delay their flight too long for the sake of a dead, or rather petrified, donkey’, as if he has already become a part of the jagged mountain landscape in which he is about to meet his death. There are even hints that Lucius himself envisages his metamorphosis as a process which has similarities with this experience of being absorbed or entrapped by landscape.54 In 3,23 he expresses his desire to take to the air as an owl, but his transformation into a donkey in 3,24 keeps him firmly tied to the earth.55 He is acutely aware of the coarseness of his new body: ‘my hair was thickening into bristles and my delicate skin was hardening into hide (duratur in corium)’ (3,24,4). That word ‘duratur’ echoes the similar phrase used ————— 52 53

54 55

In Onos 26, by contrast, the bandits are tied up and led away to the governor. However, see brief discussion of rocky deaths in Nethercut 1969, 105-106 and Smith 1998, 72-73. See also below for even stronger hints in the retransformation scene in 11,13. See Frangoulidis 2008, 162.

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in 2,1,4 to describe ‘rocks transformed (literally ‘hardened’) from men’ (lapides ... de homine duratos). The similarity between these passages stands out all the more given that this usage of durare to describe metamorphosis is unique to Apuleius in surviving Latin.56 For one final illustration I want to turn finally now to the episode in Book 7 which follows Lucius’ liberation from the bandits’ hideout. This is a section of the novel where Apuleius’ sensitivity to the encounter between body and landscape is particularly acute. We join the action in 7,14, where Lucius is anticipating the rewards he has been promised for helping the girl Charite in her attempted escape from the robbers. He is to be allowed ‘to run free in the country fields’ (7,14,5) and he is at last happy: ‘I was now about to give up loads and burdens, and having gained my freedom was sure to find some roses at the beginning of spring in the flowering meadows’ (7,15,1).57 Predictably enough, however, this turns out to be another one of the novel’s false locus amoenus scenes, and Lucius is soon plunged back into a nightmare world of discomfort and danger. The wife of the herdsman assigned to look after him, ‘a greedy and utterly wicked woman’ (7,15,3) attaches Lucius to a mill and puts him to work, driving him mercilessly. The claustrophobia of his endless ‘circling steps’ (ambagibus) (7,15,5) stands in contrast with the freedom he has anticipated. Not only that, but the harsh, painful, rocky landscapes which have been so much of a torment to him before now infect even Lucius’ food: we hear that she used to give him ‘bran which was unsifted and dirty and rough with much gravel’ (furfures incretos ac sordidos multoque lapide salebrosos) (7,15,5). Not only does the rocky landscape impinge on him painfully from the outside; here it also works his way inside his body through his consumption of the gravel.58 There is no relief in view. Soon afterwards, Lucius is assigned to carry wood down from the nearby mountain, and the boy given the task of supervising him turns out to be a monster of cruelty:59 Not only was I exhausted by the steep ridge of the high mountain, not only did I wear down my hooves by knocking them against rocky spikes, ————— 56 57 58

59

See van Mal-Maeder 2001, 60. Cf. Onos 27, but with no locus amoenus imagery and no mention of roses. Cf. 9,32,4, where he eats lettuce which has rotted into a ‘bitter mess of muddy juice’ (amaram caenosi sucus cariem). Much of the material discussed in this paragraph is close to Onos 29-31, although some of Apuleius’ most memorable phrases (e.g. the image of the ‘pit or window’ in 7,17,4 or the description of the bank ‘slippery with muddy slime’ in 7,18,8) have no equivalent there.

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I was also beaten into shape even on the downward slope by frequent blows from a stick to such an extent that the pain from the blows penetrated even into the marrow of my bones. By always striking his blows against my right hip, and always hitting the same place, he wore away the hide and inflicted on me a very wide wound, making a hole – or rather a pit or even a window (immo fovea vel etiam fenestra). (7,17,3-4) The mountain vocabulary here is entirely familiar by this stage to anyone who has read the rest of the novel – the steep slopes and spiky rocks, which trip Lucius and dig into him. What makes this passage stand out is the extraordinary description of the pit in his skin: the physical impact of Lucius’ enslavement is so extreme that his body almost becomes a landscape, to be dug up and hollowed out. Worse is to come. Whenever Lucius’ load becomes unbalanced the boy evens out the load by adding stones rather than moving sticks from one side to the other (7,17,5): Lucius is being pressed down by rocks from above as well as tormented by them underfoot. Moreover, the boy offers him no help ‘if by some chance, where the edge of the bank was slippery with muddy slime (limo caenoso), I collapsed because of my inability to bear my burden and slid down’ (7,18,2). In 7,20, finally, the boy sets fire to Lucius and he has to throw himself into a ‘puddle of muddy water’ (7,20,2), coating his body in grime in order to save himself.60 On one level this attention to the suffering of the body in its encounter with landscape is ostentatiously ‘realistic’. It is a sign that Lucius undergoes a very visceral confrontation with the ‘real world’. In that sense it debunks the ‘false rhetoric’ of the idealised, stereotyped landscape scenes laid out in the previous section. At the same time, however, it also reveals other limitations in Lucius’ viewpoint. Most importantly it reminds us of the fact that he inhabits a world where bodily concerns are so overwhelming that it is hard to see beyond them to higher spiritual truths.61 This is another rather different aspect of the ‘earthliness’ of Books 1-10 discussed in the previous section. Moreover, the theme of the body’s confrontation with landscape also contributes to the impression of Lucius as a figure who is disoriented and confused, forced by his new situation to experience the world in ways which are alien to him. There has been a tendency in ancient novel scholarship to categorise Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, along with Petronius’ Satyrica and ————— 60

61

Cf. 4,5,7, where Lucius rolls in dust, for a more pleasurable version of the image of voluntary immersion in landscape. On the prominence of bodily concerns in Books 1-10 see (among others) Schlam 1970; de Filippo 1970; Penwill 1975, esp. 59-66; Bradley 2000.

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some of the Greek fragments, as a ‘comic-realistic’ novel, in contrast with the more idealised Greek novel tradition.62 That is partly, and justifiably, because of Apuleius’ interest in portraying, in some respects very convincingly, the experience of non-elite life in Roman Achaia.63 It is also, however, due in part to the novel’s obsession with grotesque physicality. In practice, however, close attention to the physical working of the human body and to the grotesque aspects of the body, can often have a disconcerting, defamiliarising effect, rather than contributing to an impression of realism. Such representations gain their power precisely by their ability to undermine and unsettle any sense of the naturalness of the way we experience our bodies in dayto-day life.64 Lucius’ encounter with landscape is a case in point, in the sense that it draws attention to alienness of his own body. Often he seems to be struggling to find exactly the right way of describing these peculiar experiences: the image of the ‘pit or window’ in his skin from 7,17,4 is an extreme but in some ways typical example. The encounter with landscapes makes him experience his body in unfamiliar, unsettling almost dream-like ways. The defamiliarising effect is also linked with ideas of status. Lucius’ uncomfortable, bewildered awareness of his own body and its vulnerability is closely linked with his drop in status, from elite to non-elite, from human to animal (that latter fall being conceptualised as equivalent to the fall from free to slave).65 And it is hardly surprising that this drop in status is dramatized through the confrontation with harsh and uncivilized terrain. Wild landscapes – and particularly mountain landscapes – were widely viewed as places for bandits and outcasts who stood apart from normal human culture, and for prodigies who overturned the normal rules of the natural world, as Lucius does in his metamorphosed state.66 Lucius’ perception of the physicality of landscape in Books 1-10 thus has an air of unreality hanging over it, even when it pays attention to the gritty details of corporeal experience. In the process it plays a key part in the ————— 62

63 64

65 66

See Holzberg 1995; also Fusillo 1999, 61 for a list of examples of that usage from earlier scholarship, whose approach he rejects. See Millar 1981; also Mattiacci 2001, 843-845. Cf. Rimell 2002, 13-15 and 123-124 on Petronius, criticising Auerbach 1953 and others for too straightforwardly applying the vocabulary of realism to the Satyrica; cf. Morales 2004, 128-130 on the way in which Achilles Tatius’ descriptions of the physicality of emotional reactions are so detailed that they block any sense of realism, having instead an alienating effect. Cf. Gianotti 1995; Bradley 2000, esp. 114. See Trinquier 1999, 262-267; Buxton 1994, 81-96.

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dynamic traced by Nancy Shumate, which I have discussed already. The world of Books 1-10, she suggests, is ‘a world characterized by a gradual disintegration of the categories devised to organise its parts into a tidy and meaningful whole. Lucius’ environment is one that is radically defamiliarized by changes that rupture its previous unity; it is marked by every kind of instability. His world is one where matter itself is unstable and where familiar ontological and cultural categories – death and life, human and animal, male and female, for example – merge unpredictably into one another’.67 The defamiliarising quality of Apuleius’ highly physical descriptions of landscape in Books 1-10 – where even the boundaries between living bodies and inert mud and rock are not secure – makes a significant contribution to that portrayal of unstable reality.

Books 10-11 Book 11 changes everything. The strange landscape experiences of Books 110 – which are both excessively rhetorical and excessively physical at the same time – are banished from the novel together with the other aspects of Lucius’ former self, replaced by the higher realities Lucius claims to perceive (albeit, we might suspect, with a degree of self-delusion even here) through his devotion to Isis. In this final section I want to look closely at some of the key passages which make that shift clear. At 10,29, Lucius is led inside the arena. As he waits, he watches a mime performance of the judgement of Paris which takes place on a stage-set version of Mount Ida, described in intricate detail.68 Even more so than for the other mountains of Books 1-10, Apuleius goes out of his way to stress its artificial character: There was a wooden mountain constructed with lofty workmanship (sublimi instructus fabrica) on the model of that famous mountain which the poet Homer sang of, Mount Ida. It was planted with greenery and living trees, pouring out river water from a spring, made by the hands of the craftsman, on the highest summit. (10,30,1)

————— 67 68

Shumate 1996, 35. Oddly not discussed by de Biasi 1990.

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The themes of fabrication are deeply ingrained here.69 The mountain is literally brought alive through the hands of the artificer, through the living plants and trees which grow on it. And its fake, theatrical quality is pointed up all the more prominently at the end of Lucius’ description, once the mime has finished: Then from the highest summit of the mountain, through a hidden pipe, saffron dissolved in wine bursts up high into the air, and falling to the ground, scattering, it rains down on the goats who are pasturing all around with a sweet-smelling shower, until, dyed to a greater beauty, they swap their natural whiteness for a yellow colour. And then, when the whole theatre was filled with a pleasant fragrance, a chasm in the earth swallowed up the wooden mountain. (10,34,2) Here, we see a literalised version of the Golden Age of Virgil Eclogues 4. The sheep become coloured by saffron, but through human, theatrical ingenuity, rather than the workings of nature.70 The juxtaposition of that allusion with two distinct references to moralising discussions of theatricality in Seneca only points up the theme of artificial fabrication all the more.71 My argument here is that the wooden mountain stands broadly speaking for all the other extravagant, theatrical landscapes Lucius has moved through in his travels. Its similarity with the mountain which houses the robbers’ hideout in 4,6 helps to cement that association: for example, the Mount Ida of the arena is described as ‘pouring out river water from a spring on the highest summit’ (summo cacumine ... fonte manante fluviales aquas eliquans) (10,30,1), in much the same way as the mountain of the bandits (‘from the highest peak a spring gushed down’; de summo vertice fons affluens 4,6,4).72 Its character as a stage set is also surely significant: it stands, I suggest, for the way in which Lucius (although he may not be aware of it at the time) is about to discard the world of artifice and illusion he has been in thrall to up till now. Here, with Lucius on the brink of his conversion, the text says goodbye to theatricality, and indeed to theatrical landscapes, sweeping them into oblivion (along with the sensual, voyeuristic pleasures of the ‘earthly Venus’ which are given such prominence in the description of ————— 69 70 71 72

See Zimmerman 1993, 148. See Zimmerman 2000, 404. See Finkelpearl 1991, 231-232. See Zimmerman 1993, 146, n.9; Krabbe 2003, 96.

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the dance itself).73 To my knowledge that fairly obvious point has gone more or less unnoticed in recent Apuleius scholarship. It is striking, too, that this mountain, unlike all of the others we have encountered so far in the work, is described in strikingly pleasant terms. Gone now is the language of fearful precipices and rocky paths.74 It is as though Apuleius is prompting us as readers, in the moment leading up to the conversion scene, to step back from the association of landscape with suffering and to see it for what it really is – as a stage-set, a prop of the sublunary world of illusion which Lucius will be freed from by his forthcoming devotion to Isis. In Book 11 mountain landscape and mountain imagery disappear abruptly from view, along with the frequent descriptions of travel by road.75 They are replaced by new images of water and the sea. Admittedly there is a fair amount of water imagery sprinkled through Books 1-10, but in contrast with the water of Book 11 it usually involves rivers rather than the sea, and water which is dangerous and frightening rather calm.76 In 11,1, Lucius, after his escape from the arena, bathes on the beach at Cenchreae in order to purify himself. In 11,3, he sees a vision of the divine face of the goddess Isis rising from the sea. In 11,7, having sprinkled himself with sea water, he makes his way to the festival of Isis, and admires the sea, now lapping calmly against the shore after a storm. After his retransformation the water imagery persists: for example, another bath and purificatory sprinkling in 11,23, and a journey by sea to Rome in 11,26. Mountains in Book 11 are marked above all by their absence or, in the few passages where they do intrude, by their difference from the mountains of Books 1-10. In 11,13, for example, at the moment of Lucius’ transformation back into human form we see a reversal of the earlier hint that Lucius has experienced his body as a kind of landscape, hard and lapidary: the long list of changes to his body includes the detail that ‘my lofty neck shrank (cervix procera cohibetur)77...my rock-like teeth went back to their human smallness’ (dentes saxei redeunt ad humanam minutiem)’ (11,13,5). In 11,25, Lucius’ emotional prayer of thanksgiving to Isis includes a celebration of her powers over nature: ‘The birds travelling in the sky are in awe of your majesty, the beasts wandering on the mountains, the snakes hiding in ————— 73

74 75 76 77

Cf. Schlam 1970, 484-485; Zimmerman 1993, 159-161; Merlier-Espenel 1999, 171-172; Finkelpearl 1991, esp. 225-226. See Zimmerman 2000, 367; cf. Krabbe 2003, 95 and 109. See Zimmerman 2002, 80-81. See Nethercut 1968, 111-113; Krabbe 2003, 473-519; Frangoulidis 2008, 217-232. Cf. 6,14 for procerus applied to a mountain.

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the ground, and the monsters swimming in the sea’ (11,25,3-4). Lucius is now able to view his earlier experience – as ‘a beast wandering on the mountains’ – with a sense of detachment which is utterly different from his own suffering immersion in mountainous landscape in Books 1-10, and to see with hindsight what he had been blind to before, that all of the world is imbued with the power of Isis.78 One other particularly important passage, finally, is the speech given by the priest of Isis in the moments after Lucius’ re-metamorphosis: ‘on the slippery path of vigorous youth (lubrico virentis aetatulae) you slid into servile pleasures and gained the perverse reward of your unfortunate curiosity’. (11,15,1) ‘At once’, Lucius tells us, ‘I joined the ceremonial procession and walked along accompanying the shrine’ (11,16,2). Looking back at Books 110 with this passage in mind we can see that the harsh and slippery roads Lucius has travelled on79 are among other things literalised versions of the metaphorical slippery path the priest draws attention to here.80 Here Lucius is finally in a position, if he pays attention to the priest, to step back from his earlier concern with bodily discomfort, and to understand landscape in a more sophisticated, metaphorical fashion thanks to his newly acquired religious knowledge. The disappearance of slippery roads in Book 11 is also an emblem of Lucius’ move from the paths of error to the straight road of righteousness. It is no accident that we see Lucius, immediately after this speech, joining the straight and orderly procession of the goddess, an experience of walking utterly unlike what he has been through in the novel up till now.

Conclusions Apuleius’ portrayal of landscape, I have argued, has a degree of complexity and sophistication which goes beyond most other examples in classical liter————— 78

79

80

Krabbe 2003, 96-98 points out that many of the mountain images of Books 1-10 are transformed in Book 11 to other uses: e.g. the ‘wooden platform’ (tribunal ligneum) of 11,24,2 echoes the wooden mountain of 10,30-34, and the word iugum, used repeatedly of mountain ridges in Books 1-10 is now used to describe the ‘yoke’ of servitude to Isis, willingly accepted by Lucius (11,15,5 and 11,30,1); see also van Mal-Maeder 1997b, 9798 on the way in which Isis’ control over the world stands as a superior equivalent to the magic of Meroe, who similarly exercises control over landscape in 1,8; cf. Frangoulidis 2008, 193-195. See Krabbe 2003, 102-105 for a full survey of the word lubricus and related vocabulary in the novel. Cf. Zimmerman 2002, 87-89; Keulen 2007, 98.

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ature. It offers a striking counter-example to the widespread tendency to assume that classical landscape depiction is nearly always dependent upon stylised rhetorical and poetic clichés. I have also argued, more specifically, that Apuleius’ remarkable portrayal of landscape plays a major role in his representation of reality in the Metamorphoses. The landscapes of Books 110 are marked out both by their highly rhetorical, stereotyped character and also at the same time by their insistent physicality, which impinges painfully on the novel’s human and asinine bodies. Both of those qualities, paradoxically, are signs of the limitation of Lucius’ experience of ‘reality’ in Books 1-10: he is mired in a world of illusion and self-delusion, a world where it is almost impossible to see beyond his bodily appetites and discomforts. It is only with the intervention of Isis that those limitations – at least according to Lucius’ own retrospective account – are swept away from view. With them disappear the extravagant and threatening mountain landscapes we have become so familiar with in all that has gone before.

Bibliography Auerbach, E. 1953. Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (tr. W.R. Trask; first published in German in 1946), Princeton: Princeton University Press. Bakhtin, M.M. 1981. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M.M. Bakhtin (edited by M. Holquist; translated by C. Emerson and M. Holquist), Austin: University of Texas Press. Bradley, K.R. 2000. ‘Animalizing the slave: the truth of fiction’, JRS 90, 110-125. Buxton, R. 1994. Imaginary Greece: The Contexts of Mythology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. De Biasi, L. 1990. ‘Le descrizioni del paesaggio naturale nelle opere di Apuleio. Aspetti letterari’, MAT 14, 199-264. De Filippo, J.G. 1970. ‘Curiositas and the Platonism of Apuleius’ Golden Ass’, AJPh 111, 471-492. De Jong, I.J.F. 2001. ‘The prologue as a pseudo-dialogue and the identity of its (main) speaker’, in: A. Kahane, A. Laird (eds.) A Companion to the Prologue of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 201-212. Edwards, M. 1992. ‘The tale of Cupid and Psyche’, ZPE 94, 77-94. Elsner, J., Rubiés, J.-P. 1999. ‘Introduction’, in: J. Elsner, J.-P. Rubiés (eds.), Voyages and Visions: Towards a Cultural History of Travel, London: Reaktion Books, 1-56. Fick, N. 1991. ‘Ville et campagne dans les Métamorphoses d’Apulée’, RBPh 69, 110-130. Finkelpearl, E. 1991. ‘The judgement of Lucius: Apuleius’ Metamorphoses 10.29-34’, CA 10, 221-236. Frangoulidis, S. 2008. Witches, Isis and Narrative: Approaches to Magic in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter. Fusillo, M. 1999. ‘The conflict of emotions: a topos in the Greek erotic novel’, in: S. Swain (ed.), Oxford Readings in the Greek Novel, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 60-82 (first published in French in 1990).

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Gianotti, G.F. 1995. ‘In viaggio con l’asino’, in: F. Rosa, F. Zambon (eds.), Pothos: il viaggio, la nostalgia, Trento: Dipartimento di scienze filologiche e storiche, 107-132. Graverini, L. 2002. ‘Corinth, Rome and Africa: a cultural background for the tale of the ass’, in: Paschalis, Frangoulidis (eds.), 58-77. Hall, E. 1995. ‘The ass with double vision’, in: D. Margolies, M. Ioannou (eds.) Heart of the Heartless World: Essays in Cultural Resistance in Memory of Margot Heineman, London, Boulder: Pluto Press, 47-59. Harrison, S.J. 2000. Apuleius: A Latin Sophist, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. — 2002. ‘Literary topography in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses’, in: Paschalis, Frangoulidis (eds.), 40-57. Hijmans, B.L. et al. 1977. Apuleius Madaurensis Metamorphoses: Book IV 1-27, Text, Introduction and Commentary, Groningen: Bouma. Holzberg, N. 1995. The Ancient Novel: An Introduction (translated by C. Jackson-Holzberg; first published in German in 1986), London: Routledge. Kenney, E.J. 1990. ‘Psyche and her mysterious husband’, in: D.A. Russell (ed.), Antonine Literature, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 175-198. Keulen, W.H. 2007. Apuleius Madaurensis Metamorphoses: Book I, Text, Introduction and Commentary, Groningen: Egbert Forsten. Keuls, E. 1974. ‘Une cible de la satire: le locus amoenus’, LEC 42, 265-275. Krabbe, J.K. 2003. Lusus iste: Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, Dallas, Lanham, Boulder, New York, London: University Press of America. MacFarlane, R. 2003. Mountains of the Mind: The History of a Fascination, London: Granta Books. Mattiacci, S. 2001. ‘Riscritture apuleiane del locus amoenus’, in: S. Bianchetti et al. (eds.), POIKILMA: Studi in onore di Michele R. Cataudella, La Spezia: Agorà edizioni, 843859. Merlier-Espenel, V. 1999. ‘Les représentations de la nature dans les Métamorphoses d’Apulée’, in: C. Cusset (ed.), La nature et ses représentations dans l’antiquité, Paris: Centre national de documentation pédagogique, 157-172. Millar, F. 1981. ‘The world of the Golden Ass’, JRS 71, 63-75. Morales, H. 2004. Vision and Narrative in Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe and Clitophon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nethercut, W.R. 1968. ‘Apuleius’ literary art: resonance and depth in the Metamorphoses’, CJ 64, 110-119. — 1969. ‘Apuleius’ Metamorphoses: the journey’, Agon 3, 97-134. Nicholson, M. 1959. Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory: The Development of the Aesthetics of the Infinite, Ithaca: Cornell University Press (reprinted 1997, Seattle: University of Washington Press). O’Brien, M. 2002. Apuleius’ Debt to Plato in the Metamorphoses, Lewiston, Queenston, Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press. Paschalis, M. 2002. ‘Reading space: a re-examination of Apuleian ekphrasis’, in: Paschalis, Frangoulidis (eds), 132-142. Paschalis, M., Frangoulidis, S. (eds.). 2002. Space in the Ancient Novel, Ancient Narrative Supplementum 1, Groningen: Barkhuis Publishing & Groningen University Library. Penwill, J. 1975. ‘Slavish pleasures and profitless curiosity: fall and redemption in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses’, Ramus 69, 49-82. — 1990. ‘Ambages reciprocae: reviewing Apuleius’ Metamorphoses’, Ramus 19, 1-25.

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Rimell, V. 2002. Petronius and the Anatomy of Fiction, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schiesaro, A. 1985. ‘Il locus horridus nelle Metamorfosi di Apuleio, Met. IV, 28-35’, Maia 37, 211-223. Schlam, C. 1970. ‘Platonica in the Metamorphoses of Apuleius’, TAPhA 101, 477-487. Shumate, N. 1996. Crisis and Conversion in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Slater, N.W. 2002. ‘Space and displacement in Apuleius’, in: Paschalis, Frangoulidis (eds.), 161-176. Smith, W. 1998. ‘Cupid and Psyche tale: mirror of the novel’, in: M. Zimmerman et al. (eds.), Aspects of Apuleius’ Golden Ass Volume II: Cupid and Psyche, Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 69-82. Trinquier, J. 1999. ‘Le motif du repaire des brigands et le topos du locus horridus: Apulée, Metamorphoses, IV, 6’, RPh 73, 257-277. Van Mal-Maeder, D. 1997a. ‘Descriptions et descripteurs: mais qui décrit dans les Métamorphoses d’Apulée?’, in: M. Picone, B. Zimmermann (eds.), Der antike Roman und seine mittelalterliche Rezeption, Basel, Boston, Berlin: Birkhäuser Verlag, 171-201. — 1997b. ‘Lector intende: laetaberis: the enigma of the last book of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses’, GCN 8, 87-118. — 2001. Apuleius Madaurensis Metamorphoses: Livre II, Texte, Introduction et Commentaire, Groningen: Egbert Forsten. Walsh, P.G. 1970. The Roman Novel. The ‘Satyricon’ of Petronius and the ‘Metamorphoses’ of Apuleius, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Webb, R. 2009. Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion in Ancient Rhetorical Practice and Theory, Aldershot, Burlington, VT: Ashgate. Wylie, J. 2007. Landscape, London, New York: Routledge. Zimmerman, M. 1993. ‘Narrative judgement and reader response in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses 10,29-34: the pantomime of the judgement of Paris’, GCN 5, 143-161. — 2000. Apuleius Madaurensis Metamorphoses: Book X, Text, Introduction and Commentary, Groningen: Egbert Forsten. — 2002. ‘On the road in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses’, in: Paschalis, Frangoulidis (eds.), 7897.

Between Photis and Isis: Fiction, Reality, and the Ideal in The Golden Ass of Apuleius R OBERT H.F. C ARVER University of Durham

Introduction At the very time that he was writing Madame Bovary (acknowledged today as a masterpiece of French Realism), Gustave Flaubert was reading The Golden Ass.1 In a letter to his mistress, Louise Colet (27-28 June 1852), he describes his ‘dazzled’ reaction to the work: he praises the realistic dimension in Apuleius, his willingness to present Nature as she actually is (La nature pour elle-même); but he also encapsulates the novel’s unsettling mix of high and low elements, its fusion of the corporeal with the sublime: ‘It reeks of incense and urine; bestiality is there married to mysticism’ (Ça sent l’encens et l’urine, la bestialité s’y marie au mysticisme). That image of a bestial-celestial union – whether a true ‘marriage’ (conubium) or merely a coniunctio oppositorum (‘a yoking together of opposites’) – will prove emblematic in our discussion of the interplay of the ‘real’ and the ‘ideal’ in The Golden Ass. These terms, of course, are labile. In popular usage, ‘real’ describes things as they ‘really’ are (inevitably, a lower ‘reality’), while ‘ideal’ suggests things as they ought (‘ideally’) to be (a higher, but generally unattainable state, achieved, if at all, only in the imagination, or in art, such as certain kinds of fiction). For Platonists, however, the ‘ideal’ is the ‘real’: true ‘reality’ is only disclosed to the philosophically enlightened few who are able to view the full light of the sun, while the mass of mankind sits, shackled, in ————— 1

See Carver 2007, 1. Much of the power of Madame Bovary derives from Emma’s inability to reconcile her ‘ideal’ image of herself (as someone entitled to romance and the ‘finer things’ in life) with the ‘reality’ of her provincial existence. The result is adultery, disillusionment, mounting debt, and a (badly botched) suicide by arsenic. The Construction of the Real and the Ideal in the Ancient Novel, 243–274

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the darkness of Plato’s Cave, watching the illusory play of shadows cast on the opposite wall by the fire burning behind them (Republic 7, 514a-520a).

Plutarch and Isis In De Iside et Osiride, Plutarch (twice claimed as an ‘ancestor’ within The Golden Ass – at 1,2 and 2,3) demonstrates how that quest for enlightenment can take a religious direction within the Middle Platonism of the second century: Isis is ‘a goddess exceptionally wise and a lover of wisdom’ (ἐξαιρέτως σοϕὴν καὶ ϕιλόσοϕον, 351f); her shrine, the Iseion (Plutarch derives the name from οἶδα: ‘know’, and ὄν: ‘being’), promises ‘knowledge and comprehension of reality’ (γνῶσιν καὶ εἴδησιν τοῦ ὄντος, 352a); and, for her initiates, consecration, by a strict regimen and by abstinence from many kinds of food and from the lusts of the flesh, curtails licentiousness and the love of pleasure, and induces a habit of patient submission to the stern and rigorous services in shrines, the end and aim [τέλος] of which is the knowledge [γνῶσις] of Him [sc. Osiris] who is the First, the Lord of All, the Ideal One [νοητοῦ] (351f-352a). If one adopts a unitarian approach to The Golden Ass – seeing the novel as a carefully co-ordinated set of parts, and the Isiac ending (Book 11) as a (more or less) serious account of religious enlightenment and initiation – it is possible to construct a reading along these Platonic/Plutarchan lines: the world of the first ten books is dominated by illusion, carnality, violence, and vice – all the way from Hypata, where Lucius is unable to believe in the ‘reality’ of anything that he sees (Nec fuit in illa ciuitate quod aspiciens id esse crederem quod esset, 2,1),2 to Corinth, where (among other enormities) a mother poisons her own infant daughter for the sake of an inheritance (10,28). The robberies, murders, rapes, adulteries, and deceptions depicted here suggest subjection to the rule of Isis’ enemy, Seth-Typhon, the dismemberer of Osiris. Typhon, Plutarch tells us (351f), ‘is conceited, as his name implies, because of his ignorance and self-deception’ (... δι’ ἄγνοιαν καὶ ἀπάτην ————— 2

Cf. O’Brien 2002, 48: ‘The prevailing atmosphere in Hypata is one of the Platonic world of semblance’. Note also that the story of ‘Cupid and Psyche’ is narrated in a cave (spelunca): Charite complains of being ‘shut up like a slave in this prison of stone’ (inque isto saxeo carcere seruiliter clausa, 4,24).

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τετυφωμένος) and he symbolizes that part of the soul which is ‘impressionable, impulsive, irrational and truculent’ (παθητικὸν καὶ τιτανικὸν καὶ ἄλογον καὶ ἔμπληκτον, 371b). It may seem doubly appropriate (given Seth’s associations with asses) that Lucius, having indulged his appetite for magic as well as for sex, should spend twelve months (and more than seven books) in asinine form.3 Isis, on this reading, releases Lucius from the suffering world of vice, and illusory pleasures (all products, ultimately, of Typhonian ἄγνοια), and brings him to know the higher ‘reality’, Osiris, variously identified as ‘the Ideal One’ (νοητός), and as ‘Intelligence and reason, the Ruler and Lord of all that is good’ (352a; 371a).4 Froma Zeitlin lucidly summarizes (from a unitarian point of view) the role of the two principal female figures in this process: Broadly speaking, the novel is constructed as a progression from magic to religion, each represented by a female figure – the first in the wanton servant girl Photis and the second in the miraculous epiphany of the goddess. The plot leads from an initial (and disastrous) desire through sexual dalliance to learn the secrets of magical power (hence his accidental transformation into an ass) to the ultimate acquisition of a higher knowledge in the deity, Isis, who after all his sufferings, finally redeems him by her gracious intervention and restores him to human form. The price is initiation into her mysteries and a role in her cult as a priest enjoined to permanent celibacy. As Harrison puts it, ‘Photis’ initiation of Lucius into the false and enslaving mysteries of sex and magic can [in retrospect] be identified as an inferior and negative version of the true and final initiation into the chaste cult of Isis, where the service of the god is ... true pleasure’.5 ... [96] ... Even more to the point, Lucius’ eventual rejection of sexuality and earthly desire seems rather a case of the ————— 3

4

5

On the Seth/ass nexus, see De Iside 362f. Cf. 363c (‘the ass reaps the consequences of his resemblance because of his stupidity and his lascivious behaviour no less than because of his colour’); 363a (‘in the sacrifice to the Sun they enjoin upon the worshippers not to wear any golden ornaments nor to give fodder to an ass’); and 363b (the sacrifice of ‘such animals as have incarnate in them souls of unholy and unrighteous men who have been transformed into other bodies’). Cf. Winkler 1985, 298-318, esp. 314. The epithet νοητός (from νοέω) could also be rendered as ‘intelligible’, suggesting that Osiris falls within the province of the understanding, as opposed to the simply visible. Lucius’ vision of Isis (11,1-4) might be compared, on a unitarian reading, to the account given by Diotima to Socrates in the Symposium (210e): ‘suddenly he will have revealed to him ... a wondrous vision, beautiful in its nature; and this, Socrates, is the final object of all those previous toils.’ But cf. Lucius’ response to Photis at Met. 2,7-9. Harrison 1996, 512.

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failure of the erotic quest: a species of anti-romance, quite at odds with the majority of the extant novels. Instead, the story devolves into a matter of two choices: bad knowledge (magic), bad sex (Photis); good knowledge (religion), no sex (Isis).6 The suggestion of ‘anti-romance’ is rich in possibilities, but the lack of any reference here to Osiris reflects Isis’ own silence on the subject of her husband in The Golden Ass. Plutarch makes it clear that the goddess’ role, ultimately, is that of a mediatrix, leading the devotee to Osiris (and the knowledge that he embodies); but Lucius spends a full year (the same time that he spent as an ass) believing that Isis is herself the end point, the summum numen (11,26-27).7 Another problem with such schematization is that apparent polarities in Apuleius’ fictional world – such as the antithetical pairing of Isis with Meroë, Photis, and the dea Syria – are liable, under closer scrutiny, to collapse into identities (or near identities).

Meroë and Charite Isis’ intervention in Book 11 comes at the end of a long series of pseudosoteriological moments, but even the ‘salvation’ that she offers is open to question.8 It is often assumed that Isis saves Lucius in his darkest hour.9 In ————— 6 7

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Zeitlin 2008, 95-96. Cf. Frangoulidis 2008, 171. Cf. Winkler 1985, 217-223. The powers which Isis claims for herself far exceed those attributed to her elsewhere. Solmsen 1979, 87-88: ‘Isis’ other claims – for example, to have created all that grows, to have power over the elements, and to control the shining vaults [88] of Heaven, the wholesome breezes of the sea, and the silent realm below – elude verification. They must be accepted on faith’. Plutarch makes it clear that ‘Osiris contributes the origins, and Isis receives them and distributes them’ (De Iside 377a-b). We also see, in ‘Cupid and Psyche’, a goddess (Venus) appropriating honours to which (as is shown by her conduct) she is not really entitled (Met. 4,30). We might note that Lucius’ first humiliation (his mock-trial during the Risus festival) follows on from Byrrhena’s party where the linen-clad and shaven-headed Zatchlas (presumably a priest of Isis) appears to extract the truth from the corpse of a murdered man in the tale told by Thelyphron (2,28). Byrrhena is usually regarded in positive terms as a precursor of Isis, but her name may suggest a link (via πυρρός and burrus/byrrus, ‘yellowish-red’, ‘tawny’) with the ‘red-haired’ (πυρρόν) Seth (Plutarch, De Iside 362f). The possibility that she helped to orchestrate Lucius’ humiliation is suggested by her insistent invitation at 2,18 (cum impendio excusarem, negauit ueniam), her failure to intervene on his behalf at the trial, and his visceral response to a further invitation to dine at her house (ad haec ego formidans et procul perhorrescens etiam ipsam domum eius, 3,12). Cf. the

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fact, his most acute crisis has been averted by an almost effortless escape from the amphitheatre (10,35); when the theophany finally comes, Lucius is lying, alone and unharried, by the seashore. One of the uncracked jokes of The Golden Ass is that Isis’ intervention is causally irrelevant to the physical transformation. By the time of the final book, anyone (including Lucius himself) could have supplied the requisite roses.10 Isis, in this light, seems to score a spiritual bargain, binding Lucius to her service for the rest of his life (ei totum debere quod uiues, 11,6). Winkler has commented upon the pecuniary aspects of the initiations (Lucius is forced to sell the clothes off his back at 11,28) and his incipient misgivings as to the good faith of the priests (de fide quoque eorum opinari coeptabam sequius, 11,29).11 We might add that the loss of Lucius’ clothes recalls the divestiture of Socrates in Book 1. After being stripped and robbed by bandits, Socrates is hospitably received by an inn-keeper named Meroë, but ‘by a single act of intercourse’, he binds himself to ‘a lengthy and disastrous union’ (ab unico congressu annosam ac pestilentem connem contraho)12 which leads him to hand over to his bona uxor the few garments (laciniae) that the bandits had left him to cover his nakedness, as well as the paltry earnings from his new job as a porter (saccariam faciens, 1,7).13 The supposed saviour is, in reality, a homicidal witch. For unitarians, Socrates’ disastrous involvement in sex and witchcraft prefigures Lucius’ entanglements with Photis and Pamphile.14 Aristomenes (anticipating Mithras at 11,15) berates his friend for having preferred ‘Venereal pleasure and a leathery strumpet to hearth and children’, and tells him ————— 9

10 11

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suggestion (Drake 2000) that Byrrhena is ‘a red-headed she-ass devoted to Seth’ – dismissed by van Mal-Maeder 2001, 87, n. 4. e.g. Sandy 1978, 137. Lucius gives textual support to such a view in his prayer to Isis: tu meis iam nunc extremis aerumnis subsiste (11,2); but his prospects in the mill (ad ultimam salutis metam detrusus, 9,13) seemed notably bleaker. On the mill as Inferno, see Sabnis 2008. Sandy 1978, 136. Winkler 1985, 215-223. See also Harrison 2000, 238-252, and Libby 2008. Even Griffiths (1978, 152-153) admits the ‘rather [153] mercenary spirit’ of the priests of Isis in Rome. I follow Hanson (the Loeb editor) here, preferring the conjecture connem to Robertson’s connem (‘affair’). This foreshadows Lucius’ asinine life as a carrier of burdens and (more problematically) his religious office as ‘shrine-bearer’ (pastophorus, 11,30). Schlam 1992, 69: ‘Lucius too succumbs to magic through sex, albeit from more than one joining. And Fotis, like Circe, transforms the man into a beast.’

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that he has only got what he deserved.15 But if ‘Meroë’ contains (appropriately for an inn-keeper) a pun on merum (‘strong wine’), it was also the name of a region of the Nile particularly associated with Isis.16 The powers that Socrates attributes to this femina diuina (1,8) are the same as those ascribed to the Egyptian goddess.17 Like Isis, her capacity to attract devotion extends to all corners of the world, and she expects no deviation among her devotees. Moreover, Panthia (‘all divine’) – the name of Meroë’s sister and co-urinatrix (1,13) – is one of the epithets traditionally applied to Isis.18 We find similarly problematic patterns and congruences throughout the novel. Psyche’s adventures parallel those of both Lucius (curiositas; Fall; suffering; divine intervention) and (based on what we know from Plutarch) Isis (search for a lost husband; revenge upon those responsible for that loss). I would argue, however, that the harmonies finally achieved in ‘Cupid and Psyche’ (6,21-24) are destabilized (or, at the very least, qualified) by the unhappy resolution in the frame-tale of Charite and Tlepolemus – an ‘ideal novel’ (on the Greek model) which goes wrong because of the incursion of (the baser kind of) reality in the form of Thrasyllus (8,1-14).19 The parallels between Psyche and Charite are well attested, and we expect, in the latter’s tale, a similarly happy ending.20 This appears to be materializing following ————— 15

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Pol quidem tu dignus ... es extrema sustinere ... qui uoluptatem Veneriam et scortum scorteum lari et liberis praetulisti (1,8). Cf. Lucius’ claim at 3,19: Iam denique nec larem requiro nec domuitionem paro (‘I no longer miss my own hearth, nor am I preparing to go home’). The adjective scitula (‘attractive’) is applied to Meroë (1,7), Photis (2,6), and Psyche (5,25). Juvenal (6,526-529) derides the disciple who would, if the goddess commanded, fetch water from Meroë with which to sprinkle the Temple of Isis in the Campus Martius. Cf. Schlam 1992, 50: ‘the purposes for which the goddess and the witches exercise their powers are antithetical.’ Cf. Witt 1977, 72; Schlam 1992, 68. Note how Tlepolemus (7,4-12) impersonates the famous thief, Haemus, in order to rescue his bride, Charite, from the bandits (a legitimate act of self-abasement within the constraints of ‘ideal’ romance, and sanctioned, ultimately, by the example of the Odyssey), while his murderer, Thrasyllus – despite his ‘distinguished birth’ (natalibus praenobilis, 8,1) and wealth (locuples, 8,1) – has, through his practice of ‘gormandizing, whoring, and day-time drinking’ (luxuriae popinalis scortisque et diurnis potationibus exercitatus) actually joined the fellowship of thieves (factionibus latronum male sociatus, 8,1). Mithras’ comments at 11,15 suggest that Lucius has also ‘degenerated’. In the Onos (34), the newly-weds are drowned (almost casually) by a freak tide. If Thrasyllus represents the incursion of reality into ideal romance, the account of his effects is nevertheless highly literary (epic as well as tragic), in sharp contrast to the low realism, say, of the liquid dung used by Lucius against the vengeful mother (a parodic Althaea) at 7,28. Charite (like Psyche at 5,26-27) also imitates Isis in exacting vengeance for the loss of her husband (8,8-14).

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the despatching of the bandits, when a joyful ‘procession’ (pompa) forms to welcome Charite, ‘a virgin riding in triumph on an ass’ (uirginem asino triumphantem, 7,13). The reunited couple are married (7,13) and Lucius (hailed as Charite’s ‘saviour’, sospitatorem, 7,14) is promised a life of ease, a full manger, and the freedom ‘to run lasciviously amongst the herds of horses in the fields’ (rurestribus potius campis in greges equinos lasciuiens discurrerem, 7,14). Yet the promises prove illusory even while Charite is still alive: the ideal realm of aristocratic newly-weds cannot ameliorate the ‘real’ world of toil and suffering. Instead of roaming in a pasture, Lucius is ‘yoked’ (subiugum me dedit) to a mill where his food is described with ‘gritty’ realism (‘unsifted bran, filthy and rough due to its high stone content’, furfures ... incretos ac sordidos multoque lapide salebrosos, 7,15).21 When he is finally set amongst the horses, he performs an elaborate dance (tripudians graduque molli gestiens) while choosing ‘the mares which would make the most suitable concubines for me’ (equas opportunissimas iam mihi concubinas futuras deligebam, 7,16). The ironies are heavy: he is ‘free’, but still an ‘ass’ (tandem liber asinus). The participle tripudians has religious connotations, suggesting a ‘ritual dance in triple time’ performed by priests (OLD s.v. tripudium),22 but the contemplated union is bestial (and what attributes, one wonders, would make some mares more ‘suitable’ than others?). In reality, Lucius receives not ‘concubines’ but kicks and bites (from the jealous stallions at 7,16) and then falls into the clutches of the sadistic boy (puer deterrimus, 7,17) who seems to embody the torments traditionally associated with Cupid – a primal deity unconstrained by the nuptial yoke imposed in the ‘ideal’ fictional world created by the ‘crazy and drunken old woman’ (delira et temulenta ... anicula, 6,25) to comfort the captive Charite.23 Following the attempted escape of her charges, the narratrix hangs herself (pendebat, 6,30) from the bough of a cypress – the same tree from which Cupid, in her tale, spoke to the lately pendulant Psyche (penduli, 5,24) following her transgression. Charite’s revenge on Thrasyllus – inviting him to enter her bedroom without a lamp (nullo lumine conscio, 8,10), making a spectacle of his unconscious form, and then gouging out his eyes (producing a ‘Blind Cupid’ of sorts) – concretizes the negative energies that remained ————— 21

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Cf. 11,15, where Mithras urges Lucius to ‘take on the voluntary yoke of service’ to Isis (ministerii iugum subi uoluntarium). Lucius’ shaven head as an initiate (raso capillo, 11,30) may make us recall (perhaps jarringly) the half-shaven heads (capillum semirasi) of the slaves in the second mill (9,12). Cf. the lymphaticum tripudium (‘frantic dance’, 8,27) of the debauched devotees of the dea Syria. Carver 2007, 234.

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mere intentions when Psyche stood by her unknown husband’s bed, razor and lamp in hand (5,22-23).24

The Road to Cenchreae Most of what Lucius encounters following Charite’s wedding (7,13) suggests the working of saeuissima Fortuna, but, in Book 10, his circumstances seem to be improving. Thanks to his (supposed) skill in ‘impersonating’ a human (eating at table as a parasitus; wrestling and dancing on two legs, 10,16-17), he becomes – like Psyche at 4,28-29 – the object of the people’s gaze (10,19); and that attention will also result in a coniugium of a kind. Psyche, exposed on the crag (scopulus) at 4,35, awaits the coming of the monstrous husband (saeuum atque ferum uipereumque malum, 4,33) who may devour her (deuoraturum, 5,18). Lucius’ tricks excite a Corinthian matrona, and his couplings with ‘that excellent wife’ (egregia illa uxor, 10,23)25 lead to an appointment in the amphitheatre where he is due to engage in another parodic ‘marriage’, copulating with a condemned woman and quite possibly being killed by the beast sent to devour her (10,34).26 In each case, danger gives way to an ostensibly happy ending; but the Isiac theophany should not blind us to the strangeness of what happens at Corinth. This is one of several ‘Minoan moments’ in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses.27 Lucius – the son of a second Theseus (1,23), but still in asinine form – copu————— 24 25

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Cf. the entry of Meroë and Panthia, carrying a lamp, sponge, and sword (1,12). Does the etymology of egregia (literally, ‘[chosen] from the herd’) suggest that the latent ‘bestiality’ of the (seemingly respectable) matrona has been manifested in her union with the ass? Note egregius applied to Mithras at 11,28, and the use of grex at 11,30: Lucius has been elected, he tells us (rather conceitedly), to differentiate him in the service of the mysteries from the common herd (Ac ne sacris suis gregi cetero permixtus deseruirem). The metaphor castimoniae iugum subeo (‘I submit to the yoke of abstinence’, 11,30) may suggest that he remains a beast of burden even after his conversion. bestiis ... damnatam meisque praeclaris nuptiis destinatam (‘condemned to the beasts and destined for illustrious nuptials with me’, 10,34). Cf. 10,29: talis mulieris publicitus matrimonium confarreaturus (‘with such a woman, I was about to go through the solemn rite of marriage in public’). Notice how Lucius is almost ‘devoured’ by stallions during his attempted congress with the mares (7,16). At the beginning of Book 10, the long account of the Phaedra-like stepmother is introduced as tragedy (10,2), but metamorphoses (as the reality-distorting effects of a mandragora-induced Scheintod are dispelled) into something tragic-comic (10,11-12). Isis identifies herself with the goddess known to the Cretans as ‘Dictynna Diana’ (11,5). I am grateful to our generous hosts, Michael Paschalis and Stelios Panayotakis, for the opportunity to reflect on such moments in Crete itself during RICAN V.

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lates with a high-born woman who is twice compared to Pasiphae (10,19 and 10,22). In the Classical myth, the Cretan queen’s crazed passion for the bull is a punishment imposed by Poseidon, but the divine economy – as so often – mitigates misfortune by the collateral benefits it confers. As A. D. Hope puts it, at the end of his sonnet, ‘Pasiphae’: But when – within – she felt the pulse, the blow, The burst of copious seed, the burning kiss Fill her with monstrous life, she did not weep.28 The immediate outcome may be ‘monstrous’, but the seed which the bull implants is ‘copious’: the birth of the Minotaur is also associated with techne – with the artifice of Daedalus, the design of the labyrinth, the invention of flight. We could even see the sacrifice of the Athenian youths as an early instance of cultural exchange, a way to force into contact two great civilizations – to the obvious advantage of the Western tradition. But what is the fruit of Lucius’ couplings at Corinth? Within the overall topography of the novel, the isthmus acts as a land-bridge between ‘real’ and ideal, bestial and divine.29 The city presents the extremes of voluptuary indulgence, but a theophany and the promise of salvation are provided only six miles away in the port of Cenchreae.30 Apuleius’ setting for the climax in————— 28

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‘Pasiphae’ serves as an antipodean counterpart to W.B. Yeats’ ‘Leda and the Swan’ (a poem about another ‘seminal’ event – a pagan ‘Annunciation’ as Yeats called it in an early version of the poem). Mason (1971, 161) refers to Corinth’s ‘temple prostitution associated with the cult of Aphrodite’ and notes (165): ‘The city on the Isthmus became Vanity Fair, or worse; it was a symbol of the secular life which Lucius/Apuleius rejected in the Isis-book.’ Cf. Zimmerman 2000, 249-250. As St Paul’s Letters to the Corinthians show, Corinth was also a major centre for early Christianity, though the devotees of this (most recently imported Eastern mystery) cult were evidently not immune to the vices of their fellow Corinthians: 1 Cor. 6 refers to fornication, adultery, and homosexuality; 1 Cor. 5:1 describes an example of πορνεία – incest with a step-mother – which is not even found ‘among the pagans’ (cf. the false accusation against a step-son in Met. 10,2-12). Note how Paul (Acts 18,18) anticipates Lucius’ actions at Met. 11,30: before sailing for Ephesus, he ‘shaved his head at Cenchreae, for he had a vow’ (κειράμενος ἐν Κεγχρεαῖς τὴν κεφαλήν, εἴχεν γα`ρ εὐχήν). Lucius’ reference (Met. 10,35) to Cenchreae being ‘washed’ by the Saronic Gulf (alluitur ... Saronico mari) may remind us that victory over the Persians at the Battle of Salamis (480 BC) did not protect Greece against religious invasions from the east. Cf. Zimmerman 2000, 413: ‘the mention of this accurate distance marks this flight from the Corinthian theatre as the narrator’s flight from one fictional world to another, towards a new “reality”’.

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volves a conscious departure from his source, the (lost) Metamorphoses ascribed by Photius (Bibliotheca 129) to ‘Lucius of Patrae’ (Thessalonica would appear – on the evidence of Onos 49 – to be the original location of the amphitheatre in which the Esel-Mensch regained his human form). The name of Lucius’ owner, Thiasus, has Dionysian associations, suggesting ‘an orgiastic dance in honour of Bacchus’, as well as ‘a collegium devoted to the cult of Bacchus’,31 and he processes into his home-town of Corinth in the manner of Silenus, mounted upon Lucius (a fellow Corinthian, 2,12), having ‘spurned’ his ‘Thessalian horses’ (spretis ... equis ... Thessalicis, 10,18) for a splendidly decked-out ass.32 The Dionysian associations may seem appropriate given Corinth’s reputation for carnality: the spectacle provided by Thiasus (with its sense-deceiving stage-effects, its pantomime depicting the victory of a meretricious Venus in the ‘Judgement of Paris’, and its climax in which a woman is to be raped by one animal and eaten by another) ought to be a complete contrast with the events of Book 11; but the picture is complicated by (among other factors) Plutarch’s frequent identification of Osiris with Dionysus (356b, 362b, and 364e) and his reference to ‘statues of Osiris in human form of the ithyphallic type, on account of his creative and fostering power’ (371f). In the description of Lucius’ congress with the matrona (10,21-22), several (conflicting) registers are detectable: divine (the ‘ambrosial dew’ of her lips33), ideal (her ‘pure and sincere kisses’), elegiac (her endearments: ‘Amo’ et ‘Cupio’ et ‘Te solum diligo’), ‘realistic’ (her hard-headed bargaining with the keeper for another night), and (underlying it all) bestial. Apologists for this particular perversion might argue that Apuleius is depicting here not an act of bestiality but of zoophilia: a loving, consensual, and mutually pleasure-giving instance of inter-specific intercourse.34 But when Lucius comments that the matrona does not bestow the ‘money-demanding kisses of harlots’ (basiola ... meretricum poscinummia, 10,21), he forgets that she is ————— 31 32

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Zimmerman 2000, 249. For Silenus on an ass, see Ovid, Fasti 1,399 and 3,749. I wonder whether there might also be a parodic reference to Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, mounted on ‘a young ass’ (ὀνάριον) in John 12, and/or to the Old Testament prophecy (Zechariah 9:910) that it fulfils. Zimmerman (2000, 283) notes Charite’s reference to Tlepolemus’ ambroseum corpus. Cf. the dancer at 10,31 (gratia coloris ambrosei). Even serious critics are somewhat indulgent: Winkler (1985, 193) concentrates on ‘the rich lady’s sincerity and tenderness, her non-whorish kisses’; Shumate (1996, 126) sees the scene as ‘a crucial step in his progress to Isis’. Zimmerman (2000, 277) effectively counters such readings.

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the customer, while he is the gigolo, the ‘nice piece of ass’ that she has purchased for the night.

The Corinthian Matrona and Photis Book 10 also serves to counterpoint episodes in the second and third books depicting Lucius’ affair with Pamphile’s slave-girl, Photis.35 In each case, love-making occurs after elaborate (quasi-ritualistic) preparations and is followed (not much later) by metamorphosis (into and out of an ass).36 The oil of balsam that the matrona smears over herself and Lucius (10,21) as part of their pseudo-marriage echoes the (transformative) anointings of Pamphile and Lucius (3,21 and 3,24), as well as the attempt by Psyche to enhance her appearance with a tiny drop (tantillum, 6,20) of divine beauty (a transgression which leads to near death, divine intervention, and marriage to Cupid).37 If we take Stephen Harrison’s early sketch of Photis – ‘Fotis is a slave of low origins, low activities and low desires, knowing and cunning, a sexual athlete of a high order’38 – and map it onto the matrona, we have a woman of high position (pollens et opulens, 10,19), with bestial desires and the knowledge and means to satisfy those desires, a ‘sexual athlete’ of the very highest order. The slave-girl from Hypata can actually be shown, in every aspect apart from the socio-economic, to be the Corinthian lady’s superior.39 ————— 35

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e.g. the impersonation of Venus by Photis at 2,17 and by the pantomime performer at 10,32 (cf. Psyche being mistaken for Venus at 4,28-29). Note also the public humiliation and danger in the theatre at Hypata (connected with the Festival of Laughter, 3,1-11), and the public degradation and danger expected from his contact with the condemned woman in the theatre at Corinth (10,29 and 10,34). Photis’ generous spread at 2,15 (a sharp contrast to Lucius’ empty conuiuium with Milo at 1,26: cenatus solis fabulis) anticipates the baker’s full table at 10,16. For other details, see Schlam 1970, 481; de Smet 1987, 620; Zimmerman 2000; and van Mal-Maeder 2001. The French translator George de la Bouthière (Lyon, 1553, pp. 606-607) substitutes for the coupling with the matrona, an (unconsummated) encounter with a woman whom he mistakes for Photis. See Gaisser 2008, 282. Psyche and Lucius both illicitly open a ‘jar’ (pyxis). Note also how ‘the Graces were sprinkling balsam’ (Gratiae spargebant balsama, 6,24) at the wedding. Harrison 1990, 198. Note Lucius’ claim that until he met Photis, he had been a ‘spurner [even] of ladies’ embraces’ (spretorem matronalium amplexuum ) and that he no longer desires to go home (sc. to Corinth): nec larem requiro nec domuitionem paro (3,19). The matrona at 10,21 pants out teneo (‘I hold you’) while copulating with a donkey, whereas Photis at 3,15 defines herself in terms of the love which binds her to Lucius (amor is, quo tibi teneor).

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In mating with the matrona, Lucius ‘realizes’ a potential for human-animal intercourse that has, hitherto, been merely adumbrated (in the case of Photis at 3,24, and of Charite at 4,23: puellam mehercules et asino tali concupiscendam),40 alleged (Cupid and Psyche;41 Lucius at 7,21: ferinas uoluptates auersa Venere inuitat ad nuptias), or anticipated (providing a sacrificial ‘substitute’ for the exhausted young man who services the catamitic devotees of the dea Syria at 8,26). Lucius’ concern at 10,22 about how he might safely ‘mount’ (inscendere) the matrona may echo Photis’ ‘mounting’ of the couch at 2,17 (inscenso grabatulo); but Photis’ ineligibility for bestial couplings at 3,24 – Lucius’ organ has enlarged to the point where he is no longer capable of ‘holding’ her (mihi iam nequeunti tenere Photidem) – contrasts with the matrona’s seemingly unlimited capacity.42 Lucius is, in a physical sense, completely taken in by the woman (totum me ... totum recepit, 10,22), and one might ask whether the same could be said (metaphorically) about his relationship with Isis and her priests in Book 11.43 The name of the matrona’s mythological alter ego, Pasiphae (‘shining on all’), reflects her father, Helios, but it is connected (via φάω: ‘shine’, φάος/φῶς: ‘light’, and φωτίζω: ‘enlighten’) with Photis (who is etymologically – through lux – the natural companion of Lucius).44 The ‘wax-candles, sparkling with brilliant light’ (cerei praeclara micantes luce, 10,20), and the ‘shining limbs’ (lucida … membra) of the matrona (10,22) have a liminal

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Cf. the unsettling elements (necrophilia and bestiality!) in the punishment threatening Charite: to be stripped naked (nudam uirginem), sewn inside the eviscerated belly of the ass so that it (Lucius) ‘restrains the body of the girl in a beastly embrace’ (corpus puellae nexu ferino coerceat), and left (shades of Psyche’s appointment with her ‘bestial’ bridegroom on the scopulum, 4,33-35) atop some ‘rugged rock’ (saxum scruposum, 6,31). Psyche’s sisters persuade her that she is sleeping with a ‘serpent’ and promise to join her in a new marriage, ‘human to human’ (hominem te iungemus homini, 5,20) once she has killed her bestial husband. Cf. 5,21: in eodem corpore odit bestiam, diligit maritum (‘in the same body, she hates the beast, she loves the husband’). Cf. Zimmerman 2000, 286. We may take tenere as a euphemism. As an impediment to love-making at 3,24, Lucius’ hypertrophied phallus is the reverse image of the impotence which dogs Encolpius in that earlier parody of ideal romance, Petronius’ Satyrica. Note the conjunction of credulity, (seemingly) limitless receptivity, pseudo-theophany, and religious interpretation in Lucius’ account of the sword-swallower at 1,4 – an incident which he witnessed, significantly, in a place (Athens) which should have nurtured in him a philosophical spirit of scepticism. Hence Firenzuola calls Photis ‘Lucia’ in his version of L’asino d’oro (Venice, 1550). See Carver 2007, 255.

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(albeit ironic) function, standing on the threshold of the photismos (‘enlightenment’) that ought to accompany the theophany of Book 11.45 The linking of ‘Photis’ with φῶς (‘light’) can be found in the earliest printed commentary on The Golden Ass (Bologna, 1500), though to Beroaldus the name was apt simply because Photis was a ‘shining girl’ (lucida puella), ‘burning for love-making’ (ardescens in Venerem).46 Today, however, Photis is generally viewed as une lumière de l'erreur, qui luit pour ceux dont l’âme n’a pas été préparée à discerner la vérité.47 She has even been called ‘the femme fatale who leads Lucius to his doom’.48

Seruiles uoluptates The ‘slavish pleasures’ in Mithras’s speech at 11,15 are usually taken to refer to Lucius’ affair with Photis and/or his indulgence in magic: lubrico uirentis aetatulae ad seruiles delapsus uoluptates curiositatis inprosperae sinistrum praemium reportasti. Sed utcumque Fortunae caecitas, dum te pessimis periculis discruciat, ad religiosam istam beatitudinem inprouida produxit malitia. ... Nam cum coeperis deae seruire, tunc magis senties fructum tuae libertatis. [16] Ad istum modum uaticinatus sacerdos egregius fatigatos anhelitus trahens conticuit. ————— 45

46

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Lucius does see the dazzling moon in 11,1 and a midnight sun at 11,23 (nocte media uidi solem candido coruscantem lumine), but one wonders how much inner illumination he actually gains. Commentarii, fol. 27v; Carver 2007, 255. The Greek photion (‘sweetie’) and the Latin fotus (‘enclaspments of love’) have also been suggested. Scobie (1969, 63) connects the name with foueo (‘to nurture’). Grimal 1969, 98: ‘l’histoire de Photis est à peu près l’exacte contra-partie de celle de Psyché. La ‘curiosité’ de Psyché lui révèle le divin; celle de Lucius précipite, par Photis, son âme humaine dans la bestialité. La même lumière – la lampe, compagne des amants – peut provoquer des effets absolument opposés.’ Cf. Sandy 1978, 137. Krabbe 1989, 110. Cf. James 1987, 56: ‘Fotis’ “love” for Lucius proves to be extremely possessive and her lover is punished upon the two occasions he leaves or attempts to leave her side’; and O’Brien 2002, 50: ‘her part in his disastrous metamorphosis is just as disingenuous as her part in the circumstances leading to his trial. That is, we cannot know whether she rooks Lucius (twice) on purpose, or not, but the likelihood is that she did.’ Photis is criticized for being ‘possessive’ when she was attempting (2,18) to prevent the very danger that apparently befell Lucius – encountering robbers on his journey home (2,32). Van Mal-Maeder (2001, 409) cites further condemnations of Photis and notes: ‘Face à ce flot d’accusations, seul Carver 1990 se fait avocat de la défense.’

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‘... having slid on the slippery period of green youth into slavish pleasures, you gained the baleful reward of your unfortunate curiosity. But howsoever the blindness of Fortune tortured you with the worst dangers, so it is that her unseeing malice has brought you to this religious blessedness. ... For once you begin to serve the goddess, you will experience more fully the fruit of your freedom.’ Having prophesied in this manner, the excellent priest, drawing laboured breaths, fell silent. Since Lucius’ tribulations have resulted in a return, not merely to his original human form, but to a higher state as a postulant of Isis, it would be possible (even on a unitarian reading) to see Photis as the unwitting agent of Providence in a felix lapsus (‘Fortunate Fall’). Lubrico may pick up Photis’ ‘sinuous motions’ (lubricis gestibus) at 2,17 (itself an echo of inlubricans in the kitchen scene at 2,7, where the bottom-wiggling pot-stirrer is linked to the Corinthian matrona by her breast-band, and by her linen tunic to Isis), but the post-vaticinatory swoon of Mithras (fatigatos anhelitus) also recalls the erotic climax of Book 2: ‘sated’ with ‘the fruit [fructu] of pendular Venus’, Lucius collapses with Photis in a version (however parodic) of Platonic ecstasy (defatigati simul ambo corruimus inter mutuos amplexus animas anhelantes, 2,17).49 Mithras promises the (superior) ‘fruit’ of freedom (fructum ... libertatis), through ‘serving’ (or ‘becoming a slave to’) the goddess (deae seruire), in implied contrast to the forms of enslavement that Lucius has endured (or enjoyed) in the previous ten books. Yet the earlier variations on the elegiac theme of seruitium amoris should not be dismissed completely. Under Roman Law, Lucius would be liable to Milo in a civil action for corrupting another man’s slave-girl (thus debasing her value).50 But in declaring, ego tibi mutua uoluntate mancipata sum (‘I am made over to you by mutual will’, 2,10), Photis assumes that she is in a position (despite her actual servitude) to confer the essential part of herself upon the man she loves. Lucius (though free-born) reciprocates: in seruilem modum addictum atque mancipatum teneas uolentem (‘You hold me willingly made over and delivered up like a slave’, 3,19). New Comedy furnishes us with humorous examples of such seruitium.51 In Plautus’ Casina, Lysidamus is so infatuated with the slave-girl that he ————— 49

50 51

Griffiths (1978, 153) compares the description of the priest of the dea Syria (anhelitus crebros referens, 8,27). Summers 1970, 524, n. 31; Lateiner 2001, 220, n. 6. Carver 1991, 14-33, esp. 16.

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subjugates himself to his own slave, Olympio, in a bid for help (servos sum tuos, 737); and the Bacchides ends with the blocking figures finally submitting to their sons’ mistresses with the resigned sigh, ducite nos quo lubet tamquam addictos (‘Lead us wherever you will, as though made over to you’, 1205). The philosophical tradition supplies opposing views of Love’s enslaving power. Xenophon (Memorabilia 1,3,11) records Socrates’ response to Critobulus’ kissing of the son of Alcibiades: ‘Won’t you lose your liberty in a trice and become a slave, begin spending large sums on harmful pleasures?’ (ἆρ’ οὐκ ἂν αὐτίκα μάλα δοῦλος μὲν εἶναι ἀντ’ ἐλευθέρου, πολλὰ δὲ δαπανᾶν εἰς βλαβερὰς ἡδονάς). But in Plato’s Symposium (183a-b), Pausanias condones lovers ‘submitting to such slavery as no slave would ever endure’ (καὶ ἐθέλοντες δουλείας δουλεύειν οἵας οὐδ’ ἂν δοῦλος οὐδείς) as ‘compassing a most honourable end’ (ὡς πάγκαλόν τι πρᾶγμα διαπραττομένου). Apuleius seems, at 3,19, to be adumbrating a heterosexual version of the movement of love described in the Phaedrus: Therefore the soul will not, if it can help it, be left alone by the beautiful one, but esteems him above all others, forgets for him mother and brothers and all friends,52 neglects property and cares not for its loss, and despising all the customs and proprieties in which it formerly took pride, it is ready to be a slave [δουλεύειν] and to sleep wherever it is allowed, as near as possible to the beloved; for it not only reveres him who possesses beauty, but finds in him the only healer of its greatest woes ...53 We might also note the emphasis on internal states (inibi and animus) in the triclinium where the ‘serving’ Photis safeguards Lucius against the attentions of Pamphile: sed adsidue respiciens praeministrantem Photidem inibi recreabar animi (‘but continually, I kept looking at Photis as she waited upon us, and thereby I revived my spirits’, 2,11). Photis, in fact, reverses the usual flow of illusion and reality in the novel: what she delivers is better than what she appears to offer. She also confirms Plutarch’s claims for the transformational quality of Love. Her initial appearance as an aggressive door-keeper (1,22) highlights her master’s occupa-

————— 52 53

Cf. Met. 3,19: nec larem requiro nec domuitionem paro. Phaedrus 252a (Loeb).

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tion as a money-lender.54 Her next role (in the kitchen at 2,7) combines the functions (normally distinct in New Comedy) of the pert ancilla (who obtains lovers for her courtesan mistress) and of the courtesan herself.55 The meretrix mala is a stock-figure of New Comedy;56 but Donatus acknowledges her counterpart, the bona meretrix (or ‘tart with a heart’), who is motivated not by commercial appetite but by genuine affection for her summus amator.57 Photis shows the good-heartedness of the bona meretrix without actually being a courtesan.58 The munus (payment for services by money or gift) which features so openly in New Comedy, and so uncomfortably in the elegiac poets, is nowhere to be seen.59 She considers fleeing to escape a cruel beating from her mistress (meque uerberare saeuissime consueuit, 3,16), but is held back by the thought of losing Lucius (iam de fuga consilium tenebam, sed istud quidem tui contemplatione abieci statim, 3,16); and she risks her own life to satisfy Lucius’ curiosity about magic: sed tuum postulatum praeponam periculo meo (‘I place your demand before the danger to myself’, 3,20).60 A comparison of Photis with Palaestra (her equivalent in the Onos) suggests that Apuleius has completely remodelled their common prototype in the (lost) Metamorphoses.61 Palaestra would be the perfect foil to Isis, and her sexual services could aptly be designated ‘slavish pleasures’. Photis, however, is not. A unitarian explanation might be that the slave-girl’s enhanced appeal is designed to attract uninitiated Lucius and uninitiated reader alike, until we encounter the inexplicabilis uoluptas (11,24) derived from contemplation of the divine which ‘renders the voluptas Lucius experienced ————— 54

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56 57

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Cf. Plutarch, Dialogue on Love 762b-c: ‘Every lover becomes generous, single-hearted, high-minded, even though he was miserly before’ (Loeb). Carver 1991, 25. Scobie (1969, 57) points to a precedent for such compounding in Astaphium, the soliciting ancilla of Plautus’ Truculentus. See generally, May 2006, 171180. See, e.g., Plautus, Captiui 57-58; and Apuleius, Florida 16. Donatus on Hecyra 774, in Aeli Donati quod fertur commentum Terenti, ed. P. Wessner, vol. 1 (Leipzig: Teubner, 1902), p. 309. I am grateful to Peter Brown (Trinity College, Oxford) for conversations in 1993 about the bona meretrix. Scobie (1969, 60) observes that the name ‘Fotis’ avoids the associations with prostitution contained in ‘Palaestra’. e.g. Ovid, Amores 1,10. Plutarch, Dialogue on Love 759e: ‘no one not in love ever endured pain or danger merely for the sake of Aphroditê’s pleasures’. Cf. 761e: ‘Women have no part at all in Ares, but if Love possesses them, it leads them to acts of courage beyond the bounds of nature, even to die’ (Loeb). Carver 1990; Carver 1991, 14-33.

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with Fotis quite meaningless.’62 Those configurations which establish Photis as the earthly counterpart of Isis (e.g. abundant hair, spice-sweet breath, and a way with roses)63 will accordingly be explained in terms of parody or foreshadowing: Photis appears to be the incarnation of Venus (2,17) and seems to hold the key to unlock ‘divine’ secrets (3,15); but her love-tie with Lucius dissolves in the moment of asinine transformation as her command over the mysteries is seen to be illusory.64 In Smith’s words: the suggestion of Fotis’ beauty being present in the august deity indicates that Lucius’ earlier misconceived attraction has been sublimated and transferred to a meaningful object – to the goddess who can benefit Lucius rather than lead him to disaster.65

Plato, Apuleius, and the Two (or Three) Loves A Platonic gloss has also been supplied using Pausanias’ distinction (Symposium, 180d-181e) between Aphrodite Pandemos (‘Common Love’) and Aphrodite Urania (‘Heavenly Love’): The devotees of A. Pandemos and her corresponding Eros ‘love bodies rather than souls and, for choice, those most devoid of mind (ὡς ἂν δύνωνται ἀνοητοτάτων), only thinking about achieving their object (διαπράξασθαι), never mind whether well (καλῶς) or not’ (181b2-6). The relationship of Lucius and Photis could [20] hardly be more accurately or succinctly described.66 Kenney’s analysis may work if we limit ourselves to the macro-structures of the plot; but it appears reductive as soon as we examine the finer detail of narrative and characterization. It is true that in Apologia 12, Apuleius ob————— 62

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Penwill 1975, 50. Cf. Kenney 1990, 20. An obvious problem is that Lucius had already been ‘initiated into many cults’ (sacris pluribus initiatus, 3,15) before he met Photis. Hair: 2,8-10, 2,17, 3,23, and 11,3; breath: 2,10 and 11,4; roses: 2,16-17, 3,25, 11,6, and 11,13. De Smet (1987, 617) observes that both names are disyllabic and both end in -is and concludes (619) that Photis is ‘the direct opposite of Isis, the truth and the inner light’. Cf. Kenney 1990, 12, n. 51; Harrison 1996, 512 (quoted by Zeitlin supra). Griffith (2008, 164) provides an interesting variation on the theme: ‘as an absurdly boastful, but woefully incompetent purveyor of the occult arts, Photis is the direct descendant of the alazon or “quack” of Attic Old Comedy’. Smith 1972, 533. Cf. James 1987, 252; Kenney 1990, 12, n. 51. Kenney 1990, 19-20, n. 84.

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serves that Venus is a ‘double goddess’ (gemina dea) composed of Venus uulgaria and Venus caeles.67 The first fetters the ‘servile bodies’ (serua corpora) of men and beasts in the embraces of lust, while the second ‘wins her lovers to the pursuit of virtue’. In the De dogmate Platonis (2,13), he describes the so-called ‘love’ which is ‘for the sake of pleasure only’ as an ardent appetite, by the libidinous stimulus of which, the lovers of body being captivated, think that the whole man consists in that which they behold. The same Plato forbids us to call such like calamities of souls friendships, because they are not mutual and are incapable of producing reciprocal love [quod nec mutuae sint nec reciprocari queant], and neither possess constancy nor length of duration. To which may be added that such love terminates in satiety and penitence.68 The affair with Photis certainly begins (on Lucius’ part) with ulterior motives (gaining access to magic while avoiding involvement with Pamphile)69 and ‘terminates’ badly, but Apuleius repeatedly emphasizes the reciprocal nature of their relationship.70 Moreover, in the De dogmate Platonis (2,14), he trinitizes the Pausanian duality of love: Hence Plato enumerates three kinds of love; of which one is divine, being in concord with an incorruptible intellect and the nature of virtue, and which is not accompanied by repentance [diuinus cum incorrupta mente et uirtutis ratione conueniens, non paenitendus]; the second pertains to a degenerate mind, and the most corrupt pleasure [degeneris animi et corruptissimae uoluptatis]; and the third is mingled from both, and pertains to a soul of temperate disposition and [281] moderate desires [mediocris ingenii et cupidinis modicae]. But souls that are more ————— 67

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Cf. Tatum 1979, 50. In The Dialogue on Love, Plutarch states (764b) that ‘the Egyptians recognize two Loves, just as the Greeks do, Uranios and Pandemos’ (Loeb). Trans. Taylor (1822 / 1997), 280; Latin text ed. Thomas (1908). Cf. Mathis 2008, 212: ‘Because Lucius is motivated to seduce Photis only by his curiositas and not by any feelings of love for her, she cannot occupy the position of a true domina, and he cannot, by extension, be a true elegiac lover.’ In his illuminating study, Sexual Symmetry (1994), David Konstan virtually defines the Greek novels in terms of ‘the uniqueness of the symmetrical representation of passionate love’ (138) to be found within them – in sharp contrast to the unequal relationships which supposedly inform the Satyricon and The Golden Ass. Yet, however catastrophic the outcome, the symmetrical aspects of Lucius and Photis’ relationship need (pace Konstan) to be acknowledged. Cf. Charite and Tlepolemus: sanctae caritatis adfectione mutuo (4,26).

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clouded with oblivion [fusciores] are impelled by corporeal desires, and propose to themselves one thing only, that they may enjoy the use of bodies, and may assuage their ardour by pleasure and delight of this kind. Purer minds, who are facetious and courteous [facetae et urbanae], love the souls of those that are good, are benevolent to them, and desirous that they may excel in laudable arts,71 and may be rendered more worthy and illustrious characters [uti quam plurimum potiantur bonis artibus et meliores praestantioresque reddantur]. Souls of a middle nature consist of both the extremes, and in consequence of this are not entirely averse to the delights of the body, and may be allured by souls of an amiable disposition [nec delectationibus corporum prorsus carere et lepidis animarum ingeniis capi posse].72 The section concludes: Est amoris tertia species, quam diximus mediam, diuini atque terreni proximitate collectus nexuque et consortio parili copulatus, et ut rationi propinquuus est diuinus ille, ita terrenus ille cupidini iunctus est uoluptati. There is a third species of love, which we have termed Intermediate, produced by its proximity to divine and earthly love, and united with them in an equal nexus and association; and just as, being near to reason, that love is divine, so it is earthly, being linked to desire and pleasure.73 One can find, in the affair between Lucius and Photis, aspects of both the higher and lower kinds of love; but since the desire simultaneously affects both minds and bodies, it may be safest to see here an example of the third, intermediate kind of love. Photis embodies, in fictive terms, the notion of mediation which occupies such an important position in Platonic philosophy.74 As Apuleius notes in Apologia 12 (recalling the Phaedrus), the sight of mortal beauty can stir the soul to recollect the absolute Beauty it knew in the other (‘real’) world, and by means of this recollection, begin its ascent. Lu————— 71

72 73 74

Cf. Photis’ (reluctant) acquiescence in Lucius’ request to learn the magic arts of her mistress: sed melius de te doctrinaque praesumo (3,15). Photis is described as lepida at 2,7. Trans. R. H. F. C. Thus the Platonic triad and the theory of daemonical mediation outlined in the De deo Socratis.

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cius’ initial (ithyphallic) reaction to Photis echoes (or, at the very least, parodies) that of sensitive souls which, on seeing ‘any likeness of the things of that other world, are stricken with amazement and can no longer control themselves’ (Phaedrus 250a).75 Under the influence of the beloved (Socrates tells us), the feathers which once covered the lover’s soul begin to emerge again. The witch’s metamorphosis into an owl was evidently a detail in the lost Metamorphoses of ‘Lucius of Patrae’ (cf. Onos 12), but Apuleius – an attentive reader of the Phaedrus – doubtless enjoyed the Platonic ironies of Lucius’ transformation. From this perspective, one could see, in Lucius’ transformation into an ass instead of a winged being, his failure to advance through the designated stages of Platonic love – to ascend ‘from this world to the other world and to absolute beauty’ (Phaedrus 250e). This invites a new gloss on Lucius’ reference to Photis as the one who ‘in the course of fashioning me into a bird, produced [or ‘put the finishing touches to’] an ass’ (quae me, dum auem fabricat, perfecit asinum, 9,15).76 On this analysis, Photis, as a sort of sacerdos of Love, has been doing her best to transform Lucius into a higher kind of being, but the material proves intractable.77 Corrupted by his unholy desire for magic, Lucius becomes, literally, the ‘fourfooted beast’ (τετράποδος) who is ‘not ashamed to pursue pleasure in violation of nature’ (οὐδ’ αἰσχύνεται παρὰ φύσιν ἡδονὴν διώκων, Phaedrus 250e251a).78 ————— 75

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Met. 2,7: Isto aspectu defixus obstipui et mirabundus steti; steterunt et membra quae iacebant ante (‘I was astonished, struck motionless by that sight, and I stood marvelling; there also stood up those parts that had previously been lying down’). Cf. 2,10: Nec diutius quiui tantum cruciatum uoluptatis eximiae sustinere ... (‘No longer able to withstand such torture of extraordinary pleasure …’). The verb perfecit is deliciously ambiguous: Lucius actor no doubt means simply ‘produced’, but the knowing reader may well hear Lucius auctor laughing at his asinine alter ego. Even Lucius’ ‘ulterior motives’ in courting Photis can be seen as a misguided attempt at Platonic ascent. We are told, in the Symposium (184c), that ‘there is left one sort of voluntary thraldom which is not scandalous; I mean, in the cause of virtue.’ Socrates, similarly, says in Euthydemos (282b) that ‘there is nothing disgraceful or objectionable in subordination or enslavement to an erastes or any person, in complete readiness to perform any service – of those services which are honourable – out of zeal for becoming wise.’ Lucius sees Photis as his route to a higher plane of knowledge, and she only accedes to his request because she believes, on the basis of his high birth and former religious initiations, that he will not abuse that knowledge (3,15). E.g. his bestial intercourse with the matrona in Book 10. I suspect that the description in the Phaedrus (254a) of the wicked horse of the soul making amorous advances upon the beloved lies behind the (false) charge made against Lucius in 7,21: ferinas uoluptates auersa Venere inuitat ad nuptias (‘He incites his bestial desires to a union to which Venus

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Lucius’ affair with a slave-girl may be incompatible with the observance of chastity expected of an initiate of Isis, but a reciprocal (and potentially fecund) relationship such as that suggested by Photis actually accords with the life-giving principles of the goddess in her roles as Ceres and Venus. Apuleius chooses to emphasize the self-denying aspects of the cult, suppressing mention of the ‘warm sexuality’ which ‘pervades the traditional Egyptian view’ of Isis and ‘her ability to personify love throughout its spectrum’.79 Plutarch records Eudoxus’ assertion that ‘Isis is a deity who presides over love affairs’, and observes that, while Osiris is detached from worldly concerns, the archetypal wife and mother, Isis, enamoured of her husband’s beauty, ‘fills our earth here with all things fair and good that partake of generation’.80 The cult of Isis involves fundamental paradoxes – on the one hand, we hear the elegiac poets complaining of the periods of sexual abstinence imposed upon them by their mistresses’ devotion to Isis; on the other, we learn that ‘Isis herself was said to have been a prostitute in Tyre for ten years’ and that ‘[h]er temples were located near brothels and marketplaces, and they had a reputation for being meeting places for prostitutes.’81 Lucius himself tells us that it is his fear of being unable to meet the exacting demands of chastity (castimoniorum abstinentiam satis arduam, 11,19) which causes him to defer the initiation again and again. He has certainly (to use Smith’s terms) ‘transferred’ his attentions from one ‘object’ to another, but has he really ‘sublimated’ anything? His devotion to the goddess is expressed in erotic terms: he finds it almost impossible to break the ‘bonds of his burning desire for her’ when called to return home (uix equidem abruptis ardentissimi desiderii retinaculis, 11,24).82 The gap between Isis and Photis is not nearly so great as critics have made out.83 ————— 79 80

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is averse’). Note Lucius’ cry at 11,2: Depelle quadripedis diram faciem (‘Remove the dreadful aspect of a quadruped!’). Griffiths 1978, 158. De Iside 372e, 382f. But cp. the ithyphallic cult of Osiris (365b-c and 372a) mentioned supra. Pomeroy 1975, 222. Cf. Ovid, Ars amatoria 1,77-78, and Juvenal’s description of the matrona hurrying to an adulterous tryst ‘in the gardens, or rather, near the shrine of the Isiac bawd’ (expectatur in hortis | aut aput Isiacae potius sacraria lenae, 6,488-489). desiderium is used of lustful desire in 8,8 (of Thrasyllus) and 9,19 (of Philesitherus). Cf. Lucius’ declared unwillingness (3,19) to go home owing to his desire for Photis. Pomeroy (1975, 223) notes that Isis’ cult was ‘open to all’ and that it ‘never abandoned its associations with the lowly members of society.’ D. van Mal-Maeder (2001, 409-411) has argued persuasively for the need to move beyond binary oppositions in viewing Photis and Isis, though recent criticism shows that there is still an argument to be won: e.g.

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Does this mean that the Isiac conversion is a sham, or that Apuleius intends to ridicule such systems of belief? Not necessarily. We know, from Apologia 55, that Apuleius had undergone several initiations, and in Book 11 of the novel, he manufactures a powerful impression of religious experience. But he also introduces – perhaps from the vantage-point of maturer years – more critical perspectives. What is called into question is the notion that a purely spiritual conversion such as Lucius’ can lead to an understanding of ultimate reality without the support of a philosophical framework. Plutarch repeatedly stresses the need to ‘adopt, as our guide in these mysteries, the reasoning that comes from philosophy’.84 The search for Truth, he tells us, is ‘a work more hallowed than any form of holy living or temple service’ (ἁγνείας τε πάσης καὶ νεωκορίας ἔργον ὁσιώτερον).85 Merely having a beard and wearing a coarse cloak does not make philosophers, nor does dressing in linen and shaving the hair make votaries of Isis; but the true votary of Isis is he who, when he has legitimately received what is set forth in the ceremonies connected with these gods, uses reason in investigating and in studying the truth contained therein (352c). So, too, for Apuleius, the really compelling mode of initiation is into the alta ... et diuina Platonica, ‘the deep and divine Platonic [mysteries]’ (Apologia 12). According to Plutarch, ‘we shall comprehend reality [εἰσομένων τὸ ὄν] if in a reasonable and devout frame of mind [μετὰ λόγου καὶ ὁσίως] we pass within the portals of [Isis’] shrines’ (De Iside 352a). Lucius the convert certainly behaves ‘devoutly’ (ὁσίως), but there is little or nothing to indicate that he acts ‘rationally’ (μετὰ λόγου). We might add that even Plutarch – a generally sympathetic observer – records the tradition that the Egyptians were by nature ‘light-minded and readily inclined to change and novelty’ (κούϕους καὶ πρὸς μεταβολὴν καὶ νεοτερισμὸν ὀξυρρόπους) – a description that fits the neophiliac (and, consequently, metamorphic) Lucius with alarming accuracy.86 ————— 84

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Baldwin 2008, 20: ‘Why WOULD Lucius want to rejoin Photis (p. 204)? She was just a sex object and his means to a magical end.’ De Iside 378b. Cf. 378d, where he observes that there is ‘nothing ... more divine than reasoning’; 379b: ‘nothing of man’s usual possessions is more divine than reasoning, especially reasoning about the gods’; and 355c: the need to interpret stories about the gods ‘reverently and philosophically’. De Iside 351e. De Iside 380a. Note Lucius’ descriptions of himself as cupidus cognoscendi quae rara miraque sunt (‘desirous of knowing those things that are rare and strange’, 2,1) and siti-

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Lucius derives ‘inexplicable pleasure’ (inexplicabilis uoluptas) from contemplating the simulacrum of the goddess (11,24). In this context, simulacrum obviously means ‘statue’; but a Platonist might sense the pejorative potential of the word: ‘a pale copy, semblance’. Lucius has just described (lingering over the details of his costly and much-admired apparel) how he was set up in the temple ‘in the manner of a statue’ (in uicem simulacri, 11,24). But initiation ought to lead to a focusing upon the form itself rather than the outward show.87 Plutarch observes that ‘there are some among the Greeks who have not learned nor habituated themselves to speak of the bronze, the painted, and the stone effigies as statues of the gods and dedications in their honour, but they call them gods’.88 Plotinus (in the century following Apuleius) describes the initiate who has achieved true mystical union as: one who, having penetrated the inner sanctuary, leaves the temple images behind him – though these become once more first objects of regard when he leaves the holies; for there his converse was not with image, not with trace, but with the very truth in the view of which all the rest is but of secondary concern.89 Lucius is nowhere near this level of enlightenment.90 Indeed, the word used to describe his enjoyment of the statue (perfruebar, 11,24) is the same as that for his (masturbatory) enjoyment of women’s hair (perfrui, 2,8).91 In the Apologia, Apuleius defends his carrying of a simulacrum of a god by observing that the image was meant to be made of wood (the cheapest possible material) and that, when he commissioned the work, he had been —————

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tor ... nouitatis (‘a thirster after novelty’, 1,2). Cf. Plutarch’s use of μεταβαλεῖν in rejecting the ‘notion that the gods, in fear of Typhon, changed themselves’ into animals (De Iside 379f). Plutarch also observes of the Egyptians’ worship of animals that they have ‘filled their sacred offices with ridicule and derision’ on account of their ‘silly practices’. Cf. Diotima’s observations in the Symposium (210a-212a). De Iside 379c-d. Cf. 382c: statues of the divine are ‘works of bronze and stone which are alike subject to destruction and disfiguration, and by their nature are void of all perception and comprehension.’ Plotinus, Enneads 6,9,11, p. 624. Cf. Plutarch, De Iside 382d and 382f-383a. Englert 2008 appears to reach broadly similar conclusions using different texts and approaches. Griffiths (1975, 319) simply notes that ‘The pleasure is adoration of the goddess, for she is deemed to be fully present in her image.’ Jupiter uses perfruatur in the context of Cupid and Psyche (6,23).

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quite indifferent as to which god the craftsman chose to carve.92 He refers with pride to the hymns he had composed to Aesculapius, but for him these gods (and the rites attached to them) were simply mediators, enabling access to the supreme deity who is beyond naming.93 In De deo Socratis 15, indeed, he consigns not only Aesculapius but also Osiris to the rank of daemones.94 Plutarch paraphrases the Symposium (202e) when he notes that Plato calls this class of being an interpretative and ministering class, midway between gods and men, in that they convey thither the prayers and petitions of men, and thence they bring hither the oracles and gifts of good things ...95 Plutarch goes on to observe, however, that Isis and Osiris were ‘translated for their virtues from good demigods [daimones] into gods’.96 This highlights a philosophical problem in the Egyptian theogony: it is easy to see how subordinate beings (daemones) could be promoted a certain way up the divine hierarchy; but how could a daemon like Osiris (necessarily a secondary creature rather than a primary creator) actually become ‘the First, the Lord of All, the Ideal One’?97 Apuleius is perhaps exploiting this ambiguity when he describes, in the procession of Book 11, someone carrying ‘the venerable image of the supreme deity’ which is similar in appearance to no living thing, animal or human.98 Griffiths identifies this summum numen with Osiris, but has great difficulty reconciling the formlessness of the image with the fact that ‘Osiris is always anthropomorphic’.99 I propose an alternative hypothesis: namely, that Apuleius is subtly alluding to the ultimate power beyond Isis and Osiris, which Egyptians would address by the honorific title ‘Amoun’ or ‘Ammon’ (De Iside 354d), and which alert Platonists would identify with the supreme deity described in the De deo Socratis: qui omnium rerum dominator atque auctor est, solutum ab omnibus nexibus patiendi aliquid gerendiue, nulla uice ad alicuius rei munia obstrictum ————— 92

93 94 95 96 97 98

99

Apologia 65 cites the distaste for expensive rites expressed by Plato in Book 12 of the Laws (955e). In Apologia 64, he refuses to name his god. Cf. De deo Socratis 1,22. Tatum 1979, 43. Cf. Schlam 1992, 13. De Iside 361c. Plutarch, De Iside 361e (cf. 362e). De Iside 352a. Gerebat alius felici suo gremio summi numinis uenerandam effigiem, non pecoris, non auis, non ferae, ac ne hominis quidem ipsius consimilem (11,11). Griffiths 1975, 226.

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who is the ruler and author of all things, released from all connection with suffering or doing anything, not obliged by any reciprocal relation to the provision of anything ...100 It is only at the very summit of the hierarchy of human and divine that we find the supreme being who is freed from the requirements of nexus. Lower down the chain, even goddesses and slave-girls may be linked. A more obviously comic encapsulation of the novel’s tensions is the ‘ass with glued-on wings’ (asinus pinnis adglutinatis, 11,8) which (the stillasinine) Lucius observes at the end of the anteludia (the pageants that precede Isis’ peculiaris pompa – her ‘procession proper’, 11,9): at one level, it carnivalizes (in a hermeneutically reconcilable blend of iocum and serium) the imminent translation of Lucius from the plane of sluggish quadruped to that of winged soul;101 at another level, it merely underscores (by its emphasis on gluing) our doubts both about the integritas (‘wholeness’) of Lucius’ transformation and about the nature of the junction between the creature’s wings (Book 11) and body (Books 1-10).102 It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that, at the end of the work, Lucius, despite all his earnest flappings towards the divine, is still (in many respects, at least) an ass – earth-bound and somewhat risible (tamen rideres, 11,8).103

Epilogue: Ideal Fiction and Servile Reality Where does this leave Photis? In Book 9, Lucius experiences ‘reality’ at the opposite end of the spectrum, and through a different kind of epiphany,

————— 100 101 102

103

De deo Socratis I.116, 124. See Gersh 1986, 1:231. On ‘carnivalization’, cf. Schlam 1992, 137, n. 8. One might well wonder what an ass is doing at a festival of Isis. Plutarch tells us (Moralia 362f) that because of their resemblance to Typhon (who had murdered Osiris), asses in certain parts were commonly pushed over cliffs and red-haired men were abused. We might recall that (the asinine) Lucius had already been given (metaphorical) wings at Met. 6,26 by his fear of being pushed over a cliff (timor ungulas mihi alas fecerat). Griffiths (1975, 180) notes the close connection between Corinth and the figures of Bellerephon and Pegasus (parodied at 11,8 in the ‘decrepit old man’ and the winged ass) but asserts that ‘This ass must be firmly distinguished from the central character of the narrative’.

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perceiving – however fleetingly – the suffering of his fellow workers (both animal and human) in the mill.104 For William Fitzgerald: The sight is a hideous parody of the vision of Fotis in the kitchen [2,7], her limbs showing voluptuously through her clothes as she works, her breasts accented by a red band. ... For the animals, work at the mill is an endless circle as they turn the wheels that will grind the grain into the flour that will find its way into kitchens where Fotises prepare meals under the appreciative gaze of Luciuses. The circular motion of the wheels they drive grotesquely echoes the undulations of Fotis as she stirs the pot.105 Even if we do not find the verbal correspondences posited here particularly persuasive, the suggestive structural parallels should embolden us to ask other awkward questions about the intersections of fiction and reality in the novel. At the beginning of Book 7, one of the brigands’ spies returns from Hypata with news of reactions to their robbery: they have nothing to fear since the blame has landed on the young guest who had ‘wormed his way through false protestations of love into the heart of Milo’s slave-girl’ (falsis amoribus ancillae Milonis animum inrepens) and made a thorough reconnaissance (7,1). Paula James, noting that Photis is shown ‘as an innocent dupe and Lucius once more suffers the torment of false accusation’, wonders why she did not speak up on his behalf.106 The simple answer is that the narrative demands that Lucius’ metamorphosis not be made public at this stage (though we might add that Photis would hardly be likely to implicate herself and Pamphile in forbidden dealings in the magic arts). But if we play, uninvited, the part of the lector scrupulosus (cf. 9,30) and ask what would have happened to Photis, our conclusions cannot be cheerful. Since Lucius’ slave, though tortured almost to death (tormentis uexatum pluribus ac paene ad ultimam mortem excarnificatum, 7,2), reveals nothing about ‘his master’s crimes and plots’ (scelerum consiliorumque erilium), the information about the slave-girl’s seduction must have come from Photis herself, and, accord————— 104

105 106

The scene (9,12-13) has affinities with – and may even (I believe) have exerted an influence on – the storm scene in Shakespeare’s King Lear, where the foolish and deluded king suddenly sees the commonality between himself and ‘Poor Tom’ (the disguised Edgar): ‘Thou art the thing itself: unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, fork’d animal as thou art’ (III.iv.106-108). Fitzgerald 2000, 109. James 1987, 110.

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ing to ancient law, could only have been extracted under torture.107 There is a clear implication that it was Lucius’ intimacy with the slave-girl that allowed him to ‘explore thoroughly the door-locks’ and treasure-stores in the house.108 Photis’ punishment is potentially two-fold: even if she avoids the penalty of the law for abetting a thief in robbing her master (torture to obtain the confession; death, perhaps by crematio, to punish the offence), she still faces the (potentially worse) vengeance of her mistress, Pamphile, upon whose necromantic preserves she has encroached.109 Nothing of this, of course, is made explicit in the plot: the reformed Lucius is careful to tell us about the welcome of his friends (familiares), household slaves (uernulae), and relatives (11,18), but (as though in a deliberate tease) Photis is mentioned only negatively, in the context of the return, from Hypata, of the slaves left behind (cum me Photis malis incapistrasset erroribus, 11,20).110 His horse – the ‘slave with the name “Shining White”’ (seruum ... meum ... nomine Candidum) foretold by the chief priest in Lucius’ dream (11,20) – receives more attention than the lover (a slave-girl with the name ‘Shining Light’) who, for nearly two books, occupied centre-stage. Photis has all but ceased to exist – except in such verbal and morphological echoes.111 In playing the part of a lector scrupulosus, we might, however, contemplate alternatives to the Isiac conclusion. The ending of the Onos, where the humanized Loukios enjoys the humiliation of a reunion with the woman whom he had pleasured as an ass, looks like a parodic nod to the dénouement of ‘ideal’ Greek romance.112 Apuleius introduced his own variation on the traditional theme, substituting, for the reunion of parted lovers, the communion of regenerated hero with salvific goddess. Such an ending, however, ————— 107

108 109

110

111

112

Bradley 1984, 133. Cf. the torture of the slave in 10,10, more Graecorum (‘according to the custom of the Greeks’); the ‘fire and wheel’ which threaten Lucius (a citizen!) at the Risus trial (cum ritu Graeciensi ignis et rota, 3,9); and the torture of slave-girls in Met. 10,28 and (on the orders of the hero) in Chariton’s Chaereas and Callirhoe 1,5. ianuae claustra sedulo explorauit (7,1). Bradley 1984, 131: ‘According to Callistratus crematio was the penalty for slaves who had conspired against their owners’. Either ‘when Fotis by her wicked error fitted me for a halter’ (Lindsay 1932), or ‘when Photis had entangled me in my sorry wanderings’ (Hanson 1989). Incapistro (a neologism) literally means to ‘halter’ or ‘muzzle’. Juvenal refers to the ‘matrimonial halter’ (maritale capistrum, 6,43). The attempt of the newly transformed (and naked) Lucius to cover his ‘privates’ with his hands at 11,14 recalls the pose of Photis at 2,17, though there she was covering herself for provocative purposes (de industria) rather than out of ‘modesty’ (uerecundia). Cf. Anderson 1982, 75.

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was by no means inevitable. Even unitarians recognize the ‘close affinity’ between the ‘romantic episodes’ with Photis and ‘facets of the ideal loveromance’,113 and one can easily imagine a conclusion in which she was reunited with Lucius, manumitted, or accommodated in some way within the Isiac dispensation.114 Photis’ servile condition is an obvious obstacle to such a reunion, but not an insurmountable one. In a discussion of the courtesans (hetairai) in Menander’s plays, Plutarch observes that ‘if they are good and return a man’s love, either a father is discovered for them who is a citizen [so that the loving couple can marry], or some extra time is allowed for their affair, which brings a humane relationship of respect.’115 In Plautus’ Mostellaria, Philolaches purchases and manumits his beloved Philematium; and while there is no mention of nuptials at the end of the play, it is safe to assume that the state of concubinage will continue. In Casina, Lysidamus and his son, Euthynicus, are both in love with the same slave-girl, and the opposing factions put forward, as husbands-to-be, compliant slaves who will give a legal cover to their masters’ clandestinae nuptiae (Casina 944). At the end of these machinations, an Epilogue announces that Casina has been discovered to be a daughter to Alcesimus, and, newly clothed in the citizenship that such paternity affords, is able to be taken as Euthynicus’ wife.116 In Plautus’ Rudens, the meretrix is actually called Palaestra (the name of Photis’ equivalent in the Onos), and the rediscovery of lost tokens of Athenian free-birth allows her to be married to the young citizen – a theme which recurs in Plautus’ Cistellaria, Curculio, and Poenulus, and in Terence’s Andria.117 Such precedents demonstrate that the love between a citizen and a slave-girl was capable of being given some kind of publicly acknowledged permanence and (in the world of literature, at least) was susceptible to the sorts of metamorphosis in which Apuleius delights.118 He had, after all, resolved the problem of ‘marriage between unequals’ (impares nuptiae, 6,9) in the case of a god ————— 113 114

115 116

117

118

Walsh 1970, 30; cf. Frangoulidis 2008. Cp. Zeitlin 2008, 96, n. 12, on ‘the failure of the erotic quest’: ‘the tragic end of Charite’s story ... signifies the end of the earthly romance plot that might have provided a model for Lucius’. Moralia 712c, quoted by Brown 1990, 246. Cf. Pomeroy 1975, 139. Cf. Glycerium in Terence’s Andria, and Griffin (1985, 118) on the figure of the loving meretrix. Cf. May 2006, 179, on Apuleius’ changing of the slave-girl’s name: ‘Any link with the Plautine Palaestra would have caused unwanted associations of an anagnorisis and marriage.’ On the possibilities in real life of a citizen marrying a freedwoman, see Rousselle 1989, 308-309.

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(Cupid) marrying a mortal (Psyche, the daughter of a king, but described by Venus as her ‘runaway slave’, delitescentem ancillam, 6,7).119 Such an ending does not, however, form part of Apuleius’ explicit design. There can be no place for ‘wanton’ slave-girls amongst the theophanies and initiations of Book 11. The Isiac conclusion demands that Photis be shed. But she is one of the noisy silences of Book 11 – the victim of a hermeneutic swindle that (perhaps intentionally) does not quite come off. Photis’ absence from the finale should help us to consider how much photismos (if any) accompanies Lucius’ conversion. If we remain at the unitarian end of the critical spectrum, the absence of an erstwhile ‘servile’ lover will be more than compensated for by Lucius’ higher union with the deity – a relationship which has been viewed as a hieros gamos (‘sacred marriage’).120 But if we accept the contention that Lucius, through his failure in Book 11 to process religious experience philosophically, remains inwardly asinine (the victim of Typhonian ἄγνοια and conceit), then his relationship with Isis moves a step or two closer to his congress with the Corinthian matrona, becoming yet another of those incongruous couplings that readers such as Flaubert have found so ‘dazzling’.121

Bibliography Apuleius, Apulée: Les Metamorphoses. Tome I, ed. D. S. Robertson, Paris: Budé, 1940. — Apuleius III: De philosophia libri, ed. P. Thomas, Leipzig: Teubner, 1908. — The Metamorphosis or Golden Ass, and Philosophical Works, trans. T. Taylor, London: Robert Triphook, 1822. Reprinted in Apuleius’ Golden Ass, or The Metamorphosis, and other Philosophical Writings, Frome, Somerset: The Prometheus Trust, 1997. Plotinus, Enneads, trans. S. MacKenna and B. S. Page, 4th edn., London: Faber, 1969.

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Photis and Psyche are both Venus-impersonating slave-girls who engage (without the consent of their mistresses – one a witch, the other a goddess who behaves like a witch) in relationships with higher-status males, and make calamitous, transformative, but (for some, at least) ultimately felicitous mistakes about the contents of an ointment-jar (pyxis). Frangoulidis 2008. Cf. Schlam 1992, 21: ‘yet among the tableaux of book 11 is a celebration of a kind of marriage: the new initiate is displayed as the mate of the goddess.’ An additional irony is the fact that, in an Egyptian context, the divine is often contained (or expressed) in animal form. Hence Plutarch observes (Moralia 362d) that Apis is ‘the bodily image of the soul of Osiris’. Shakespeare brilliantly combines elements of Isis, Charite, and the Corinthian matrona in the coupling of Titania with the ass-headed Bottom, who draws (perhaps significantly) on 1 Corinthians 2:9 to express the ‘most rare vision’ that he has had: ‘The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen ...’ (IV.i). See Carver 2007, 433-445.

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Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride, in: Plutarch’s Moralia V, trans. F. C. Babbitt, Loeb Classical Library, London: Heinemann, 1936. Xenophon, ‘Memorabilia’ and ‘Oeconomicus’, trans. E. C. Marchant, Loeb Classical Library, London: Heinemann, 1923. Anderson, G. 1982. Eros sophistes: Ancient Novelists at Play, Chico, CA: Scholars Press. Baldwin, B. 2008. Review of Frangoulidis 2008, Petronian Society Newsletter 38, 20. Bradley, K. R. 1984. Slaves and Masters in the Roman Empire, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Brown, P. G. McC. 1990. ‘Plots and Prostitutes in Greek New Comedy’, Papers of the Leeds International Latin Seminar 6, 241-266. Carver, R. H. F. 1990. ‘Serviles voluptates and The Golden Ass of Apuleius: A Defence of Fotis’, abstracted in: J. Tatum, G. Vernazza (eds.), The Ancient Novel: Classical Paradigms and Modern Perspectives, Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College / NEH, 55-56. — 1991. ‘A Configurative Reading of The Golden Ass’, in: ‘The Protean Ass: The Metamorphoses of Apuleius from Antiquity to the English Renaissance’, D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1-65. — 2007. The Protean Ass: The ‘Metamorphoses’ of Apuleius from Antiquity to the Renaissance, Oxford: Oxford University Press. De Smet, R. 1987. ‘The Erotic Adventure of Lucius and Photis’, Latomus 46, 613-623. Drake, G. 2000. ‘Apuleius’ Tales within Tales in The Golden Ass’, in: C. S. Wright, J. B. Holloway (eds.), Tales within Tales: Apuleius through Time, New York: AMS Press, 327. Englert, W. 2008. ‘Only Halfway to Happiness: A Platonic Reading of Apuleius’ Golden Ass’, abstracted in: Futre et al. (eds.), 216. Fitzgerald, W. 2000. Slavery and the Roman Literary Imagination, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Frangoulidis, S. 2008. Witches, Isis and Narrative: Approaches to Magic in Apuleius’ ‘Metamorphoses’, Berlin: De Gruyter. Futre, M.P. et al. (eds.) 2008. ICAN IV: Crossroads in the Ancient Novel: Spaces, Frontiers, Intersections, Lisbon: Cosmos. Gaisser, J. H. 2008. The Fortunes of Apuleius and the ‘Golden Ass’: A Study in Transmission and Reception, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Gersh, S. 1986. Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism: The Latin Tradition, 2 vols., Notre Dame: Notre Dame Univ. Press. Griffin, J. 1985. Latin Poets and Roman Life, London: Duckworth. Griffith, R. D. 2008. ‘Shamans and Charlatans: Magic, Mixups, Literary Memory in Apuleius’ Golden Ass Book Three’, abstracted in: Futre et al. (eds.), 164. Griffiths, J. G. 1975. Apuleius of Madauros: The Isis-Book (Metamorphoses, Book XI), Leiden: Brill. — 1978. ‘Isis in the Metamorphoses of Apuleius’, in: Hijmans, Van der Paardt (eds.), 141166. Grimal, P. 1969. ‘A la recherche d’Apulée’, REL 47, 94-99. Harrison, S. J. 1990. ‘Some Odyssean Scenes in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses’, MD 25, 193201. — 1996. ‘Apuleius’, in: G. Schmeling (ed.), The Novel in the Ancient World, Leiden: Brill, 491-516. — 2000. Apuleius: A Latin Sophist, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Hijmans, B. L., Van der Paardt, R. Th. (eds.) 1978. Aspects of Apuleius’ Golden Ass, Groningen: Bouma. James, P. 1987. Unity in Diversity: A Study of Apuleius’ ‘Metamorphoses’, Hildesheim: Olms Weidmann. Kenney, E. J. 2003. ‘In the Mill with Slaves: Lucius Looks back with Gratitude’, TAPhA 133, 159-192. — (ed.) 1990. Apuleius: Cupid and Psyche, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Konstan, D. 1994. Sexual Symmetry: Love in the Ancient Novels and Related Genres, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Krabbe, J. K. 1989. The ‘Metamorphoses’ of Apuleius, New York: Peter Lang. Lateiner, D. 2001. ‘Humiliation and Immobility in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses’, TAPhA 131, 217-255. Libby, B. B. 2008. ‘Moons, (Smoke) and Mirrors in Apuleius’ Portrayal of Isis’, abstracted in: Futre et al. (eds.), 179. Mason, H. J. 1971. ‘Lucius at Corinth’, Phoenix 25, 160-165. Mathis, A. G. 2008. ‘Playing with Elegy: Tales of Lovers in Books 1 and 2 of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses’, in: W. Riess (ed.), Paideia at Play: Learning and Wit in Apuleius, Ancient Narrative Supplementum 11, Groningen: Barkhuis & Groningen University Library, 195-214. May, R. 2006. Apuleius and Drama: The Ass on Stage, Oxford: Oxford University Press. O’Brien, M. C. 2002. Apuleius’ Debt to Plato in the ‘Metamorphoses’, Lewiston-Queenston, Lampeter: Edwin Mellon. Penwill, J. L. 1975. ‘Slavish Pleasures and Profitless Curiosity: Fall and Redemption in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses’, Ramus 4, 49-82. Pomeroy, S. B. 1975. Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity, New York: Schocken. Rousselle, A. 1989. ‘Personal Status and Sexual Practice’, in: M. Feher (ed.), Zone 5: Fragments for a History of the Human Body, Part Three, New York: Zone, 300-333. Sabnis, S. 2008. ‘Donkey Gone to Hell: A Katabasis Motif in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses’, abstracted in: Futre et al. (eds.), 196. Sandy, G. N. 1978. ‘Book 11: Ballast or Anchor?’, in: Hijmans, Van der Paardt (eds.), 123137. Schlam, C. C. 1970. ‘Platonica in the Metamorphoses of Apuleius’, TAPhA 101, 477-487. — 1992. The ‘Metamorphoses’ of Apuleius: On Making an Ass of Oneself, London: Duckworth. Scobie, A. 1969. Aspects of the Ancient Romance and Its Heritage: Essays on Apuleius, Petronius, and the Greek Romances, Meisenheim am Glam: Anton Hain. Shumate, N. 1996. Crisis and Conversion in Apuleius’‘Metamorphoses’, Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press. Smith, W. J. 1972. ‘The Narrative Voice in Apuleius’, TAPhA 103, 513-534. Solmsen, F. 1979. Isis among the Greeks and Romans, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Summers, R. 1970. ‘Roman Justice and Apuleius’ Metamorphoses’, TAPhA 101, 511-531. Tatum, J. 1979. Apuleius and the Golden Ass, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Van Mal-Maeder, D. 2001. Apuleius Madaurensis Metamorphoses: Livre II, Texte, Introduction et Commentaire, Groningen Commentaries on Apuleius, Groningen: Egbert Forsten. Winkler, J. J. 1985. ‘Auctor’ & ‘Actor’: A Narratological Reading of Apuleius’s ‘Golden Ass’, Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Witt, R. 1977. Isis in the Greco-Roman World, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Zeitlin, F. 2008. ‘Religion in the Ancient Novel’, in: T. Whitmarsh (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Greek and Roman Novel, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 91108. Zimmerman, M. 2000. Apuleius Madaurensis Metamorphoses: Book X, Text, Introduction and Commentary, Groningen Commentaries on Apuleius, Groningen: Egbert Forsten.

The Erotics of mimēsis: Gendered Aesthetics in Greek Theory and Fiction T IM W HITMARSH Corpus Christi College, Oxford

‘She looked like a picture I had once seen of Selene on a bull...’. These words of Achilles Tatius (1,4,3) are famous partly for the textual uncertainty (should we read Selene or Europa?), a philological ambiguity that has provoked an unusually sophisticated response, couched in terms of both cultural and gender politics.1 But even if we leave aside the critical question of whether (or, better, how) this picture relates back to the narrator’s earlier ekphrasis of the painting of Europa on a bull (1,1,2-13), it is clear that this passage invites us to reflect on the relationship between beauty, gender and mimēsis. As is now widely recognised, novelistic beauty is regularly expressed in terms of availability to the dominant, aestheticising gaze.2 Leucippe is like a picture in that she exists to be surveyed, contemplated and (particularly in Leucippe and Clitophon, with its distinctive homodiegetic narrative form) textually constructed by a male viewer. Despite the incontrovertible masculinism of the (and particularly this) Greek novel, however, the passage in question represents more than a celebration of male subjectivity. The picture-like Leucippe herself wields enormous power over Clitophon, power that is imaged in military terms: ‘as soon as I saw her, I was destroyed (apolōlein); for the wounds (titrōskei) of beauty are more piercing than those of an missile (belos) ...’ (1,4,4). This impression is reinforced by the inevitable echo3 of the pictorial ekphrasis near the ————— 1

2 3

Discussion and further references at Morales 2004, 38-48, who lays the emphasis on voyeurism; see also Selden 1994, who explores the play of cultural perspectives (discussed further in Whitmarsh 2011). I am grateful to audiences at Ohio State University and in Oxford for their feedback and encouragement. See especially Morales 2004; also Haynes 2003, 53-70. Less direct if we read ‘Selene’ rather than ‘Europa’, but no less insistent. If we read the two paintings as identical (which would involve an ironic reading of pote, ‘once’), I The Construction of the Real and the Ideal in the Ancient Novel, 275–291

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start of the novel, where (for all that the hypotextual narrative is one of rape),4 Europa seems strikingly in control: she holds his horn ‘as a rider would a bridle’, and indeed the bull ‘is steered in this direction, responding to the pressure from the rider’s hand’ (1,1,10); she holds her veil as though she were sailing the bull like a ship (1,1,12). The unnamed narrator interprets the painting as a parable for Eros’ authority over even the king of the gods (1,1,13; 1,2,1). Clearly at one level this ‘power’ possessed by the love-object is circumscribed by very traditional male ideology, limited as it is to the capacity to impress men, and constituted exclusively by ‘to-be-looked-at-ness’.5 Viewed from this perspective, the woman’s apparent force is, as Laura Mulvey would have it, simply a male projection of the fear of castration.6 Indeed, Achilles’ imagery of wounding suggests a troubling vulnerability of the male body to the phallic ‘missile’, a translation into the romance genre of the Homeric ‘drooping poppy’ syndrome;7 and Europa’s firm hand on Zeus’ ‘horn’ (keras) needs little explication.8 At another level, however, this will not do. The eroticised, aestheticised woman is also the blazon of the romance as a genre (a fact, I have argued elsewhere, that is signalled in the very titling conventions).9 This tendency becomes explicit in late-antique and Byzantine texts, where Heliodorus’ text in particular is personified in the form of the female protagonist;10 an enthusiast for the text can be described as ‘the lover (erastēs) of Charicleia’.11 But it is already implicit in the novels, where the very pictorial, ‘graphic’ quality of the description of beautiful protagonists presents them as constructed, artefactual: in effect, embodiments of textuality. When Achilles (or Clitophon) compares Leucippe to ‘a picture I had once seen of Selene on a bull’, what he actually says is, more literally (if less elegantly) —————

4

5 6 7

8 9 10 11

wonder whether we could take Clitophon to be implicitly ‘correcting’ the unnamed narrator in a second sense (i.e. in addition to identifying the subject as Selene rather than Europa): he supplies the face that is missing from the earlier description. In Moschus’ canonical version, he ‘snatches’ her (Eur. 110), and she bewails her fate (146-148). Mulvey 1975 = 1998, 837. Mulvey 1975 =1998, 840. Hom. Il. 8,306-308, with Fowler 1987 on Latin versions (Cat. 11,21-24; also Verg. Aen. 9,435-437 and Ov. Met. 10,190-193) that develop the nexus of wounding, defloration and castration imagery more explicitly. See Henderson 1991, 127 for slang keras = ‘penis’. Whitmarsh 2005. See further Whitmarsh 2005, 593. ‘Philip the Philosopher’ (= Hld. Test. XIII Colonna) 12-13.

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τοιαύτην εἶδον ἐγώ ποτε ἐπὶ ταύρῳ γεγραμμένην Σελήνην. I had once seen Selene like that, represented (gegrammenēn) on a bull. (1,4,3) The word gegrammenēn (‘drawn’, ‘represented’) exploits the well-known indeterminacy of the Greek graphein, which can refer either to painting or to writing. If readers think back to the initial ekphrasis of Europa on the bull, the irony is redoubled, since that was of course a textual transcription of a painting, in other words a graphē in both senses simultaneously. The textualisation of Leucippe is underlined presently, as Clitophon describes her cheek: λευκὴ παρειά, τὸ λευκὸν εἰς μέσον ἐφοινίσσετο καὶ ἐμιμεῖτο πορφύραν, οἵαν εἰς τὸν ἐλέφαντα Λυδίη βάπτει γυνή. Her cheek was white, the white reddening towards the centre in imitation of purple, such as a Lydian woman uses to die ivory. (1,4,3) The blush of her cheek ‘imitates’ (emimeito) purple; at exactly this moment, Clitophon engages in an ostentatious literary imitation, invoking a famous couplet from Homer (Iliad 4,141-142). If the cliché12 is characteristic of the bombastic Clitophon, readers may wish to ascribe to the author the sophisticatedly self-reflexive manipulation of the language of mimēsis (along with the ingenious evocation of a simile used by Homer to describe wounding, in the context of an egregious beauty that will turn out to ‘wound’ its beholder). But these distinctions are hard to enforce (hidden authors are, after all, well hidden).13 The crucial point is that Leucippe has become a portmanteau, a woman-text: an irreducibly physical being who has a physical effect on Clitophon,14 but also an imaginary cipher for the power of textual representation. Put in the simplest of terms, women in the Greek novels should be understood both as passive objects of the gaze and as positive embodiments of the genre’s creative power. My point is not the familiar (and clearly true) ————— 12 13

14

Jax 1936 discusses the many uses of this quotation. On the difficulties of separating author from narrator in Achilles Tatius see Whitmarsh 2003; Marinčič 2007; Morgan 2007. Note the orgasmic language of Clitophon’s response: the petit mort of apolōlein (‘I was destroyed’), the ‘outpouring’ (katarrhei) of beauty into his soul (1,4,4; the Platonic language is echoed in 1,9,4-5, where Bychkov 1999 traces the allusions).

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one that there are examples in the narratives proper of both weak and strong women,15 nor the related claim that the novels might serve as both oppressive and empowering for women readers.16 The issue here is rather different, and relates primarily to aesthetics: in the economy of the romance, women are at once alienated from the text, fixed at the other end of the narrative telescope, and figuratively constitutive of it.17 Each construction of femininity is in equal measure androcentric and stereotyped, but the second tenses against the first in ways that have not (I think) been well enough appreciated. In this paper, I trace this emphasis on female iconicity in rhetorical theory and fiction. My primary focus will be, in the first instance, on the On imitation (Peri mimēseōs) of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a treatise on the art of imitating prior literary models.18 What we shall find in this text is a powerful theorising of the bifocal gendering of textuality noted above; I then return in conclusion to the novels, arguing both that Dionysius is a direct source for at least one of the later novelists, and that the novel’s complex treatment of this theme can be better understood if read against a Dionysian backdrop. On imitation, originally in three books, survives in the form of a few fragments of book 1 cited by late-antique and Byzantine commentators on the rhetoricians, additional fragments and an extensive epitome of book 2 (again probably late-antique or later), and a couple of cross-references elsewhere in Dionysius’s work.19 In addition, chapter 3 the Letter to Pompeius Geminus contains a partial quotation, or perhaps reformulation, from book 2’s discussion of historians, also supplying the addressee (one Demetrius) and the contents of the three books (the first the theory of mimēsis, the sec————— 15 16 17

18

19

Representations of women are surveyed by Haynes 2003; see also Johne 2003. So Egger 1988; 1994. Kenaan 2008 is provocative on the complex relationship between gender and textuality in Greece and Rome. On the distinction between this sense of mimēsis and the ‘philosophical’ one of imitating reality see esp. Flashar 1978, who however overemphasises the discreteness of the two meanings (‘in Dionysius’ opinion linguistic imitation was an aspect of imitation in general’, Goudriaan 1989, 688). Ep. Pomp. 3,1; De Thuc. 1. The fragments are to be found in Usener-Radermacher 1965, Aujac 1992 and Battisti 1997; the latter two are less confident than Usener was in the attribution of fragments to particular books. In this paper I refer to Usener-Radermacher, for ease of consultation. Radermacher 1940 identifies another possible fragment. On the De imitatione see Flashar 1978, 87-88; Russell 1979, esp. 5-6; Heath 1989; Aujac 1992, 11-22; Cizek 1994, 17-19; Battisti 1997, 9-30; Whitmarsh 2001, 71-75; Hunter 2009, 107-127. More generally on Dionysian mimetic theory see Goudriaan 1989, 1.218-250 (I have read not the Dutch, but the English summary at 2.688); Hidber 1996, 56-74; Fornaro 1997, 12-14; Halliwell 2002, 292-296 (oddly omitting any mention of De imit.).

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ond the literary models to be imitated, the third, unfinished, on the methods of mimēsis).20 Dionysius is best-known for his distinctive combination of cultural classicism with general support for Rome: this comes out in both his rhetorical works (Roman conquest is credited with stimulating the return to the Attic style, On the ancient orators 3,1)21 and more directly in his Roman antiquities, which is both an assertion of Rome’s providentially ordained imperial destiny and a demonstration that the original city was ethnically and culturally Greek.22 What is striking about the surviving portions of On imitation, however, is the emphasis not (as elsewhere) on cultural identity, but on sexuality and gender. Mimēsis is repeatedly imaged in terms of heterosexual erotics. This principle is staked out in what looks like a programmatic definition of mimēsis and its sibling zēlos (‘emulation’) in book one: μίμησις ἐστιν ἐνέργεια διὰ τῶν θεωρημάτων ἐκματτομένη τὸ παράδειγμα ... ζῆλος δέ ἐστιν ἐνέργεια ψυχῆς πρὸς θαῦμα τοῦ δοκοῦντος εἶναι καλοῦ κινουμένη. Mimēsis is an activity (energeia) of receiving the impression of the model, through theorems ... Zēlos is an activity (energeia) of the soul when it is stirred (kinoumenē) to wonder at something that seems beautiful. (De imit. fr. 3 U-R) The second sentence is striking for its phallic imagery: not only does the idea of ‘stirring’ (kinoumenē) the soul into ‘activity’ (energeia) suggest tumescence, but also both roots can themselves carry an obscene, sexual sense.23 In the first sentence, by contrast, mimēsis is presented in terms of receptivity: still an ‘activity’, but now one that involves ‘receiving the impression of’ (ekmattomenē) the literary original, like wax receiving the imprint of a ————— 20

21

22 23

Ep. Pomp. 3,1, a section that is, however, heavily emended (discussion at Fornaro 1997, 164-166). There are some discrepancies, notably in the apparent weight given to historians: Heath 1989 discusses the relationship between the Letter and the Epitome, reasserting Usener’s claim that the Letter reflects a draft version of On imitation, the Epitome the revised, published version. Although Dionysius seems to have only minimal respect for Rome as a producer of culture: Hidber 1996, 75-81 sketches the various critical positions on this point. See inter alia Gabba 1991, 10-22; Hartog 1991; Luraghi 2003; Wiater 2011. For energein see LSJ s.v. III; for the well-known kinein = binein, see LSJ s.v. II.4 and Henderson 1991, 151-152 and index s.v.

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seal.24 In both sentences, moreover, the imitative activity is described using a passive, feminine participle. The mimetic process is imagined, then, as hybridised between the genders, a hermaphroditic phenomenon.25 The imagery of ‘receiving an impression’ also locates us squarely within the metaphorical field of cultural production, of the artificed manufacture of goods. Dionysius is deeply concerned to identify the position of mimēsis on the spectrum between nature and culture. (This focus may at first sight seem to be a departure from our themes of sexuality and gender; the connection will, however, become clear presently.) But here too matters are intricate, since elsewhere mimēsis seems to be better when it is natural. In one fragment from On imitation, it is said that ‘the most important part of talent lies in our nature (phusis), which it is not in our power to have in the way that we want it’.26 To unpack the implications of this position, let us look to a passage from the Dinarchus that expands on what seems to be the same point: ὡς δὲ καθόλου εἰπεῖν, δύο τρόπους τῆς διαφορᾶς τῆς πρὸς τὰ ἀρχαῖα μιμήσεως εὕροι τις ἄν· ὧν ὃ μὲν φυσικός τέ ἐστι καὶ ἐκ πολλῆς κατηχήσεως καὶ συντροφίας λαμβανόμενος, ὃ δὲ τούτῳ προσεχὴς ἐκ τῶν τῆς τέχνης παραγγελμάτων. περὶ μὲν οὖν τοῦ προτέρου, τί ἄν τις καὶ λέγοι; περὶ δὲ τοῦ δευτέρου, τουτὶ ἂν ἔχοι τις εἰπεῖν ὅτι πᾶσι μὲν τοῖς ἀρχετύποις αὐτοφυής τις ἐπιτρέχει χάρις καὶ ὥρα, τοῖς δ’ ἀπὸ τούτων κατεσκευασμένοις, κἂν ἐπ’ ἄκρον μιμήσεως ἔλθωσι, πρόσεστίν τι ὅμως τὸ ἐπιτετηδευμένον καὶ οὐκ ἐκ φύσεως ὑπάρχον. Speaking generally, you will find two different types of mimēsis of the ancients. The first is natural, and is acquired from long instruction and nurturing; the second, closely related to the first, proceeds from technical rules. About the first, what is there to be said? About the second, it might be said that all models are suffused with a certain natural grace and beauty, whereas in the copies, even if they reach the pinnacle of imitation, there is still an artificial, non-natural quality. (Dinarchus 7,5-6) ————— 24 25

26

Mattein, again, can have a sexual sense (Henderson 1991, 194). Compare ps.-Longinus’ equally gender-bending imagery, presenting mimēsis in terms of both insemination (13,2) and militarism (13,4); and see further Whitmarsh 2001, 57-60. τῆς μὲν δυνάμεως τὴν κυριωτάτην εἶναι μοῖραν ἐν τῆι φύσει, ἣν οὐκ ἐφ’ ἡμῖν ἔστιν οἵαν ἀξιοῦμεν ἔχειν (De imit. fr. 3 Aujac = 5 Usener-Radermacher). Dionysius proceeds to oppose ‘talent’ to prohairesis, an Aristotelian word denoting the parts of our character that are open to us to develop through training. Cf. also fr. 1 Usener-Radermacher: in politikoi logoi, you need φύσις δεξιά, μάθησις ἀκριβής, ἄσκησις ἐπίπονος.

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The ‘two different types of mimēsis’ turn out to be clearly marked: the natural type is better, producing the ‘grace and beauty’ that the cultural type can never quite attain. Dionysius is here intervening in the familiar debate over the relative weighting of nature and nurture, or more specifically innate ability and training, in literary production.27 What is interesting, however, is that immediately on articulation, the nature/culture distinction deconstructs itself. The superior form is not purely natural: it also develops ‘from long instruction and nurturing’ (even if Dionysius seems to have the education specifically of the child in mind,28 i.e. the process of acculturation has been completed by the time that the adult effects his literary imitations). The sharp line between superior, ‘natural’ mimēsis and the inferior, ‘cultural’ form begins to pixellate; the two are indeed ‘closely related’. Mimēsis seems to occupy the absolute state of neither nature nor culture (and neither masculine nor feminine), but the fluid spaces in-between. What is at stake in this emphasis on the ambiguous position of mimēsis between nature and culture? One answer must surely be to do with the kind of cultural capital that Dionysius is hoarding. Insisting that only the ‘naturally’ talented can succeed at the highest level allows him to minimise the socially transformative effects of education, in effect barricading aesthetics so as to prevent undesirables (including Romans?)29 from accessing elite prestige. At the same time, if nature alone were sufficient, then the pedagogue Dionysius would be out of a job. For Dionysius, mimēsis is about more than just literary reproduction: it’s also about social reproduction, the preservation of traditional class hierarchies and cultural exclusivity (in what was, of course, the challenging political context of Augustan Rome).30 But this is not the whole answer, since the discourse of nature and culture does not attach itself exclusively to the faculties of the imitator. If we look back to the Dinarchus passage cited above, we can detect a peculiar slippage. At the start of the passage, the ‘good’ type of mimēsis is said to be ————— 27

28

29

30

Cizek 1994, 69-71 discusses the wider context; see also Goudriaan 1989, 234-240 (in Dutch). Katēkhēsis implies the kind of oral training given to the very young (in the Christian Church, ‘catechism’ is pre-baptismal instruction); cf. also suntrophia, ‘joint nurturing’. As Ewen Bowie suggests to me, the nature/culture distinction might in certain contexts be taken to distinguish native speakers from non-native speakers. On imperial Greek strictures on opsimathy see Schmitz 1997, 152-156 (who however assumes that this accusation is targeted narrowly at social parvenus). The classic work on ‘social reproduction’ is Bourdieu 1990. I use the word ‘reproduction’ advisedly, for reasons that will quickly become clear.

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natural (physikos) because it proceeds from the good nature of the imitator. Towards the end, however, this language is cross-applied to the mimetic creations themselves, which possess ‘natural grace and beauty’ or an ‘artificial, non-natural quality’. Now it is the ontological status of the artefact that is at issue; behind this sentence is a long history of philosophical reflection on the reality of naturalness or the mimetic product.31 Yet although he seems here to argue that mimēsis can be natural, this is not an unqualified association: elsewhere, Dionysius suggests that apparent naturalness in literature in fact springs from cunning artifice (a device he associates particularly with Lysias).32 As Halliwell notes, ‘Dionysius regards mimēsis simultaneously as a kind of stylized fabrication or invention, yet also as a possible means of depicting and conveying truth or nature’.33 Mimetic literature is at once artificial and capable of naturalistic representation. This is where we rejoin the discussion of sexuality, for the natural production of natural artefacts is, fundamentally, imagined as a form of physical reproduction. (The Greek physis, nature, derives from phuein, to ‘beget’). In its ontogenic role, mimēsis is thus closely linked with sexual reproduction. This association is not new with Dionysus (Diotima’s talk of ‘birthing’ beautiful and grand logoi in Plato’s Symposium is an important precursor),34 and indeed fits into a wider, apparently cross-cultural pattern.35 Michael Taussig, in his intriguing Mimēsis and alterity, describes the womb as ‘the mimetic organ par excellence’, emphasising ‘in the submerged and constant body of the mother the dual meaning of reproduction as birthing and reproduction as replication’.36 Reproductive fertility is, perhaps, both the readiest metaphor for and the most primal instantiation of creativity. An extraordinary story, preserved in the epitome of book 2 of Dionysius’ On imitation, underlines this powerful association between mimetic and parturitive creativity. Despite the difficulties presented by the epitome, we ————— 31

32

33 34 35 36

Halliwell 2002 offers rich discussion of philosophical mimēsis, with further bibliography: see esp. 37-71 on Plato and the representation of reality (also 138-142 on Republic 10), and 153-154 (with n.5) on Aristotle and the naturalness of mimēsis. See e.g. De comp. 20, on the use of appropriate language in mimēsis: ‘these effects are the work not of Nature improvising, but of art trying to represent (mimēsasthai) events’; also Lys. 3,8 (πεποίηται ... αὐτῷ τὸ ἀποίητον) and Isae. 16 for Lysias’ skill in dissimulating his artfulness. In general on the dissimulation theme in ancient criticism see Cronje 1993. Halliwell 2002, 292-296 (at 295). Pl. Symp. 210d 2-6; see Hunter 2009, 115. See e.g. Friedman 1987. Taussig 1993, 35; more fully explicated at 112-128.

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can clearly see that the anecdote dramatises the themes we have traced so far: ἡ γὰρ ψυχὴ τοῦ ἀναγιγνώσκοντος ὑπὸ τῆς συνεχοῦς παρατηρήσεως τὴν ὁμοιότητα τοῦ χαρακτῆρος ἐφέλκεται, ὁποῖόν τι καὶ γυναῖκα ἀγροίκου παθεῖν ὁ μῦθος λέγει. ἀνδρί, φασί, γεωργῷ τὴν ὄψιν αἰσχρῷ παρέστη δέος μὴ τέκνων ὁμοίων γένηται πατήρ. ὁ φόβος δὲ αὐτὸν οὗτος εὐπαιδίας ἐδίδαξε τέχνην. καὶ εἰκόνας πλάσας εὐπρεπεῖς, εἰς αὐτὰς βλέπειν εἴθισε τὴν γυναῖκα· καὶ μετὰ ταῦτα συγγενόμενος αὐτῇ τὸ κάλλος εὐτύχησε τῶν εἰκόνων. οὕτω καὶ λόγων μιμήσει ὁμοιότης τίκτεται. The reader’s soul absorbs the likeness of the style [/‘imprint’] thanks to continual observation, rather like the experience of the farmer’s wife according to the myth. It is said that a fear arose in a farmer who was ugly to behold that he would become the father of similar children. This fear taught (edidaxe) him an artifice (tekhnēn) to produce good children. He fashioned some handsome pictures, and habituated his wife to look at them. Afterwards, he coupled with her, and was blessed with the beauty of the paintings. In the same way, in the mimēsis of words too resemblance is born. (6,1 U-R) The analogy between reproduction and literary mimēsis is explicit here, and underlined by the sharing of imagery: in the last sentence, a resemblance between the emulator and the original author ‘is born’ (tiktetai) through the operations of mimēsis. Like the first passage discussed above, this one plays with the theme of gender hybridity, for the imitator plays the role of both husband and wife: the first represents learned (edidaxe) artistry (tekhnēn), the second creative power, both of which are necessary to generate aesthetically pleasing literature. The reference to tekhnē also reminds us that the discourse of gender hybridity relates to the nature-culture polarity, here in a way that is as precisely defined as it is cross-culturally familiar:37 woman stands for nature, man for culture. Despite the depiction of mimēsis as a fusion of female and male qualities, however, the story also reflects a traditional androcentrism: all the decisive actions are taken by the man (the wife ————— 37

This equivalence is explored in the classic study of Ortner 1974, esp. 71-83; her refined conclusion is that women are associated not with nature per se but with the mediation between nature and culture.

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is not the subject of any verb), and his cultural intervention transcends the normative expectations of ‘natural’ sexual reproduction.38 It is not just the reproductive aspect of mimēsis that is sexualised. For Dionysius, the desire to imitate is stimulated by an erotic desire for beauty. We can see this already in the first quotation above from On imitation, where) zēlos (emulation) is defined as ‘an activity of the soul when it is stirred to wonder at something that seems beautiful’. Beautiful artefacts are generated when the creator is himself (sic) captivated by beauty. There is another memorable parable in the epitome of book 2, which illustrates how this erotic mimēsis proceeds: Ζεῦξις ἦν ζωγράφος, καὶ παρὰ Κροτωνιατῶν ἐθαυμάζετο· καὶ αὐτῷ τὴν Ἑλένην γράφοντι γυμνὴν γυμνὰς ἰδεῖν τὰς παρ’ αὐτοῖς ἔπεμψαν παρθένους· οὐκ ἐπειδήπερ ἦσαν ἅπασαι καλαί, ἀλλ’ οὐκ εἰκὸς ἦν ὡς παντάπασιν ἦσαν αἰσχραί· ὃ δ’ ἦν ἄξιον παρ’ ἑκάστῃ γραφῆς, ἐς μίαν ἠθροίσθη σώματος εἰκόνα, κἀκ πολλῶν μερῶν συλλογῆς ἓν τι συνέθηκεν ἡ τέχνη τέλειον εἶδος. τοιγαροῦν πάρεστι καὶ σοὶ καθάπερ ἐν θεάτρῳ καλῶν σωμάτων ἰδέας ἐξιστορεῖν καὶ τῆς ἐκείνων ψυχῆς ἀπανθίζεσθαι τὸ κρεῖττον, καὶ τὸν τῆς πολυμαθείας ἔρανον συλλέγοντι οὐκ ἐξίτηλον χρόνῳ γενησομένην εἰκόνα τυποῦν ἀλλ’ ἀθάνατον τέχνης κάλλος. Zeuxis was a painter feted among the people of Croton. Now, when he was painting Helen naked, the people sent him the local maidens for him to scrutinise naked – not because they were all beautiful, but because it was unlikely that they were all totally ugly. The aspects that were worthy of painting in each of them united them into a single representation of a body. Out of the collage of many parts, artistry (tekhnē) composed one complete form. Therefore it is open to you too, as if in a viewing-space (theatrōi), to inquire into (exhistorein) the forms of beautiful bodies, and pluck any superior example from their souls, and by bringing together the feast (eranon) of polymathy you can shape an image (eikona) that will be not destroyed by time, but an immortal beauty formed by art. (6,1 U-R) The story itself is well-known from Cicero and Pliny, perhaps deriving ultimately from Duris of Samos,39 but it is here put to a characteristically Dio————— 38

In normal circumstances, Greek children were supposed to resemble their parents: Gow 1952, 2.334 supplies references.

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nysian use. The point of the story in other sources is to illustrate the widespread principle that perfection does not exist in any one form.40 Assuming a reasonable amount of fidelity in the epitomator, we can detect in Dionysius, by contrast, an additional parable about the erotics of art, the omipotent, fetishising male gaze and the power of tekhnē: art here works with nature to engender ‘human’ life, but also transcends nature, creating out of a collection of flawed bodies a ‘perfect form’ (teleion eidos). This story is all about the authority of the male, who views this pornographic41 display of female flesh from a detached, dispassionate vantage, as an aesthete, rather than a lover. ‘The story of the painting of Helen casts Zeuxis as Paris, judging the beauty of women and rewarded with the ‘naked Helen’’,42 certainly; and indeed the passage takes its place in a long tradition of prurient accounts of males judging beauty contests (such as the pair of poems by Rufinus where the narrator is asked to serve as a kritēs for, respectively, the front and the rear of three women).43 Compared to other similar accounts, however, Dionysius’ story seems pointedly to remove all trace of lustful viewing. In fact, Zeuxis’ subjectivity seems entirely erased (if we can trust the epitomator): after the girls arrive, he is never the subject of an active verb. The process of scrutinising bodies is denoted with one passive verb (the parts ‘were united’, ēthroisthē); the only agency in the creation of the picture is granted to tekhnē, ‘art’. The narrative is thus transformed from an ethically risky story of a man peering at naked young bodies into a parable about critical judgement. Indeed, the final sentence describes this process of ————— 39

40

41

42 43

Cic. De inv. 2,1-3; Plin. NH 35,64. The attribution to Duris is often repeated, but in fact seems to rest on a hypothesis of Jex-Blake and Sellers (1968 (1896), lxi-lxii), who tend to ascribe to him any unattributed story about the Greek painters. Cf. Cic. De inv. 2.3 (neque enim putavit omnia, quae quaereret ad venustatem, uno se in corpore reperire posse ideo, quod nihil simplici in genere omnibus ex partibus perfectum natura expolivit); the point is already attributed to Parrhasius at Xen. Mem. 3,10,2 (noted by Jex-Blake and Sellers 1968 (1896), lxii). On the other hand, if the story really does come from Duris, it is not impossible that it was linked to mimēsis there: Duris’ interest in the topic is attested in the literary-critical fragments (FGrH F1,89). Literally so, if we assume the definition of pornography as the reduction of women to fetishised body parts (see Whitmarsh 2001, 74 with n.127). Hunter 2009, 117. AP 5.35-36, = Rufinus 11-12 Page. We hear of such beauty competitions in Alciphron (4.14.4-6) and Athenaeus (609e-610b, although the women there are clothed); see also Σ Hom. Il. 9,28. The reference to a theatron in the final sentence quoted above may reinforce this impression of a beauty contest (although I am not aware of any evidence for the space in which such events were held). The male equivalents are better known, thanks to Crowther 1985.

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bodily scrutiny as one of ‘inquiry’ (exhistorein),44 a notably intellectualising word. At one level, this passage confirms worst fears about the androcentric psychology underlying ancient aesthetics. Women are reduced to dismembered objects of the male gaze, valued only insofar as one or other part of them may be deemed serviceable to an alien programme. They exist for men to consume (a metaphorical association that is expressed in the analogy between the painted Helen and a ‘feast’ of learning). The ‘perfect form’ of woman-as-icon (eikōn) is an impossible ideal, realisable only through the medium of (male) art. This conclusion would not be wrong, but there is more to be said: we need to integrate also the more constructive role given to female (pro)creativity in the alternative (albeit no less androcentric) story of the ugly farmer. The two Dionysian stories give us different models of the gendering of mimēsis: in the second, the constructive role is given entirely to male artificing, but the first depends on a cooperation with female reproductivity. This duality is, as we have seen, characteristic of the wider thought of Dionysius, who sees literary creativity as a blend of female and male principles, of nature and art. Let us return now to the Greek novels: does this reading of Dionysian mimēsis theory help us to understand a case like that of Achilles’ Leucippe, the gaze-object who also functions as an icon for the aesthetics of the text itself? Leucippe and Clitophon, with its scopophiliac ego-narrator(s),45 seems to embody the ‘Zeuxis’ principle, whereby the woman-as-text is composed by the male eye. The description of the painting of Europa near the start of the text is of course suggestively programmatic in connection with narratives of erotic abduction,46 but it also acclimatises readers to a certain ‘way of seeing’ women, both as passive objects of male aesthetic appreciation and as sites of textual dismemberment. The portrait of Europa disaggregates her into a series of eroticised body parts: belly button, stomach, flanks, waist, breasts (1,1,11), all presented in terms of their visibility (‘her body could be seen (hupephaineto) through her clothing ... her dress was a mirror of her body’, 1,1,10-11), an account that could have come straight from Ovid’s Amores. This pictorialised, eroticised woman is iconic of the viewing strategies that Clitophon adopts towards Leucippe: a ‘compelling image, her ————— 44

45 46

Hunter 2009, 121 plausibly hears an echo of Herodotean historia here (and elsewhere in this passage). Morales 2004. See most recently von Möllendorff 2009, with further literature.

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body is discovered and uncovered, dissected and inspected with increasing ferocity as the narrative progresses.’47 When he first sees her, and (in the passage with which we opened) compares her to a painting, he once again proceeds to anthologise her physiognomy, this time focusing on her face: her eyes, her brows, her cheeks, her mouth (provocatively compared to a rose ‘when it begins to part its petal lips’, 1.4.3).48 Much of the narrative energy of Leucippe and Clitophon derives from the ironic tension between Clitophon’s attempts to objectify his beloved and her refusal (or inability) to act that role. In the first two of the series of Leucippe’s three false deaths, Clitophon thinks he sees her being dismembered (3,15,4-5, 5,7-4), as if the narrative were transplanting into narrative actuality the metaphoral dissection that his initial description suggested.49 Yet she is precisely not dismembered: despite his faulty perception, her body remains intact. Readers of Achilles are aware simultaneously of Clitophon’s fetishising narrative gaze and of the ‘real’ woman who lies behind it, a woman capable of eluding and deceiving his limited vision (as, for example, when she disguises herself as the slave Lacaena in books 5 and 6). The gender dynamics of Heliodorus are, however, very different. Charicleia is indeed proclaimed beautiful, but she is never anatomised as Leucippe is. When she first appears in the Delphic procession, her description (delivered by the staid priest Calasiris) emphasises the beauty of her clothing, hair and accoutrements (3,4,1-6). The account is not unerotic (her breastplate features snakes weaving sinuously under her breasts, for example), but the eroticism is metonymically transferred from her body parts to her clothing;50 and, what is more, her description is paralleled with a similar description of Theagenes. In this novel as a whole, the female protagonist is exceptionally strong and energetic,51 pointing to a different role not only in the narrative but also in the text’s aesthetic structure. This reappraisal of the female is reflected in the central role that Heliodorus gives to the ‘ugly farmer’ principle, which lies at the very narrative heart of Charicleia and Theagenes. The extraordinary circumstances of Charicleia’s birth are created by the impression of the picture of Andromeda ————— 47 48 49

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Morales 2004, 156. A comparably florid anatomical portrait comes at 1,19,1. The relationship between violence and the gaze is thoughtfully discussed by Morales 2004, 166-184. On this description see Whitmarsh 2002, 120-121. The general tendency of the novelists to avoid specific physiognomics is explored by Dubel 2001; see also Keul-Deutscher 1996 on Heliodorus’ strategies for depicting or accounting for beauty. Johne 1987.

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at the time of conception.52 It is hard to imagine that Heliodorus did not have Dionysius in mind. In the ‘recognition’ scene, the crowd wonder ‘at the accuracy (akribōmenon) of the likeness (homoiotētos)’ that exists between the painting and Charicleia (10,14,7), employing language that not only resonates with art-critical theory (ironically reversed: the girl resembles the picture rather than the other way around), but specifically invokes the Dionysian story, where ‘likeness’ is also at issue. In Dionysius, it is said that ‘the reader’s soul absorbs the likeness (homoiotēta) of the imprint thanks to continual observation’ (6,1 U-R); compare Sisimithres’ claim that Persinna, Charicleia’s mother, ‘drew in certain images (eidōla) and visual forms of resemblance (phantasias homoiotētōn) from the picture’ (10,14,7).53 Of all the novels (even more than Chariton’s Callirhoe), Charicleia and Theagenes gives the most central role to maternity. In making the royal mother the guardian of a secret, Heliodorus is of course looking to Penelope’s role in the Odyssey, but the theme is more than tralatician. Like Dionysius’ ugly farmer, Charicleia’s father Hydaspes shares his paternity with the artwork, a subversive patrilineal minimisation. Hydaspes, moreover, is in this respect the dupe of his wife: no wonder she originally feared that would accuse her of adultery (moikheian, 4,8,6), since in a sense an ‘interloper’ actually has fathered his daughter. Persinna’s natural bond with Charicleia is the key to the resolution of the narrative: as Charicleia acknowledges in book 9, ‘the one undeniable recognition token, Theagenes, is maternal nature (physis), thanks to which parents’ love for children is affected on first encounter, stirred by some mysterious empathy’ (9,24,8).54 More than this, Persinna actually supplies part of the textual narrative, in the form of the tainia or band with which Charicleia was exposed, and which supplies the missing part of Calasiris’ hermeneutic jigsaw (4,8). The tainia itself is extraordinarily personal, cast in the form of a letter from mother to daughter, and inscribed ‘in the tears and blood I have shed for you’ (4,8,6). The intimate bond between mother and daughter, their hidden secret, is the central enigma and wondrous conceit of Charicleia and Theagenes, and its embodiment in the tainia yields the Heliodorean equivalent of the bed of Odysseus and Penelope. If the mimetic erotics of Leucippe and Clitophon are driven primarily by Clitophon’s attempt to anatomise and pictorialise Leucippe, those of Helio————— 52

53 54

I have discussed the points in this and the following sentence more fully at Whitmarsh 2001, 85-86 and 2002, 115-116. The rest of the sentence is unfortunately corrupt. Hydaspes too experiences parental physis (10,16,2, 7).

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dorus rest on the mystification of childbirth. Achilles’ inspiration need not have come directly from Dionysius (he had a wealth of poetic erotics on which to draw), but Heliodorus’ almost certainly did: Charicleia and Theagenes seems to creatively reread On imitation in order to reconceive (as it were) the gendered aesthetics of the novel. As I have emphasised throughout, this is not a question of a warmer embrace of female subjectivity, since an association of women primarily with parturition is itself an equally masculinist fiction; but it does point to an androcentrism in ancient aesthetics that is much richer and more varied than is often imagined.

Bibliography Aujac, G. 1992. Denys d’Halicarnasse, Opuscules rhétoriques, tome V, Paris: Belles Lettres. Battisti, D.G. 1997. Dionigi d’Alicarnasso, sull’imitazione, Edizione critica, traduzione e commento, Pisa – Rome: Istituti Editoriali e Poligrafici Internazionali. Bourdieu, P., Passeron, J.C. 1990. Reproduction in education, society and culture, 2nd ed., London: Sage Publications. Bychkov, O. 1999. ‘ἡ τοῦ κάλλους ἀπορροή: a note on Achilles Tatius 1.9.4-5, 5.13.4’, CQ 49, 339-341. Cizek, A.N. 1994. Imitatio et tractatio: die literarisch-rhetorischen Grundlagen der Nachahmung in Antike und Mittelalter, Tübingen: Niemeyer. Cronje, J.V. 1993. ‘The principle of concealment (ΤΟ ΛΑΘΕΙΝ) in Greek literary theory’, AClass 36, 55-64. Crowther, N.B. 1985. ‘Male “beauty” contests in Greece: the euandria and euexia’, AC 54, 285-291. Dubel, S. 2001. ‘La beauté romanesque ou le refus du portrait dans le roman grec de l’époque impériale’, in: B. Pouderon et al. (eds.), Les personnages du roman grec, Lyon: Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée, 29-58. Egger, B. 1988. ‘Zu den Frauenrollen im griechischen Roman: die Frau als Heldin und Leserin’, GCN 1, 33-66; transl. as ‘The role of women in the Greek novel: woman as heroine and reader’, in: S. Swain (ed.), Oxford readings in the Greek novel, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1999, 108-136. — 1994. ‘Women and marriage in the Greek novels: the boundaries of romance’, in: J. Tatum (ed.), The search for the ancient novel, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 260-280. Flashar, H. 1978. ‘Die klassizistische Theorie der Mimesis’, in: id. (ed.), Le “Classicisme” à Rome au Ier siècle avant et après J.-C., Vandoeuvres: Fondation Hardt (= Entretiens 25), 79-96. Fornaro, S. 1997. Dionisio di Alicarnasso, epistola a Pompeo Gemino, Introduzione e commento, Stuttgart and Leipzig: Teubner. Fowler, D.P. 1987. ‘Vergil on killing virgins’, in: M. Whitby et al. (eds.), Homo Viator: Classical Essays for John Bramble, Bristol: Bristol Classical Press, 185-198. Friedman, S.S. 1987. ‘Creativity and the childbirth metaphor: gender difference in literary discourse’, Feminist studies 13, 49-82.

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Gabba, E. 1991. Dionysius and the early history of Rome, Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oxford: University of California Press. Goudriaan, K. 1989. Over classicisme: Dionysius van Halicarnassus en zijn program van welsprekendheid, cultuur en politiek, 2 vols. Diss., Amsterdam. Gow, A.S.F. 1952. Theocritus, 2 vols, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Halliwell, S. 2002. The aesthetics of mimesis: ancient texts and modern problems, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Hardie, P. 1994. Virgil, Aeneid book IX, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hartog, F. 1991. ‘Rome et la Grèce: les choix de Dénys d'Halicarnasse’, in: S. Said (ed.), ἙΛΛΗΝΙΣΜΟΣ: quelques jalons pour une histoire de l’identité grec, Leiden: Brill, 160167. Haynes, K. 2003. Fashioning the feminine in the Greek novel, London, New York: Routledge. Heath, M. 1989. ‘Dionysius of Halicarnassus On imitation’, Hermes 117, 370-373. Henderson, J. 1991. The maculate muse: obscene language in Attic comedy, 2nd ed., New York: Oxford University Press. Hidber, T. 1996. Das klassizistische Manifest des Dionys von Halikarnass: die praefatio zu De oratoribus ueteribus, Stuttgart: Teubner. Hunter, R.L. 2009. Critical moments in classical literature: studies in the ancient view of literature and its uses, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jax, K. 1936. ‘τόποι’, WS 54, 43-51. Jex-Blake, K., Sellers, E. 1968 (1896) The Elder Pliny’s chapters on the history art, Chicago: Argonaut (London: MacMillan). Johne, R. 1987. ‘Dido und Charikleia: Zur Gestaltung der Frau bei Vergil und im griechischen Liebesroman’, Eirene 24, 21-33. — 2003. ‘Women in the ancient novel’, in: G. Schmeling (ed.), The novel in the ancient world, 2nd ed., Leiden: Brill, 151-207. Kenaan, V.L. 2008. Pandora’s senses: the feminine character of the text in the ancient world, Madison: Wisconsin University Press. Keul-Deutscher, M. 1996. ‘Heliodorstudien 1: Die Schönheit in den Aethiopica’, RhM 139, 319-333. Luraghi, N. 2003 ‘Dionysios von Halikarnassos zwischen Griechen und Römern’, in: U. Eigler (ed.), Formen römischer Geschichtsschreibung von den Anfängen bis Livius: Gattungen, Autoren, Kontexte, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 268-286. Marinčič, M. 2007. ‘Advertising one’s own story: text and speech in Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe and Clitophon’, in: V. Rimell (ed.), Seeing tongues, hearing scripts: orality and representation in the ancient novel, Ancient Narrative Supplementum 7, Groningen: Barkhuis & Groningen University Library, 168-200. Möllendorff, P. von. 2009. ‘Bild-Störung: das Gemälde von Europas Entführung in Achilleus Tatios’ Roman Leukippe und Kleitophon’, in: A.-B. Renger, R.A. Ißler (eds.), Europa Stier und Sternenkranz: von der Union mit Zeus zum Staatenverbund, Bonn: Bonn University Press, 145-164. Morales, H. 2004. Vision and narrative in Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe and Clitophon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Morgan, J.R. 2007. ‘Kleitophon and Encolpius: Achilleus Tatios as hidden author’, in: M. Paschalis, S. Frangoulidis, S. Harrison, M. Zimmerman (eds.), The Greek and the Roman novel: parallel readings, Ancient Narrative Supplementum 8, Groningen: Barkhuis & Groningen University Library, 105-120.

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Mulvey, L. 1975. ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative in the Cinema’, Screen 16, 6-18; variously repr., cited from L. Braudy, M. Cohen (eds.), Film Theory and Criticism, 5th ed., New York: Oxford University Press, 1998, 833-844. Ortner, S.B. 1974. ‘Is female to male as nature is to culture?’, in: M.Z. Rosaldo, L. Lamphere (eds.), Woman, culture, and society, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 68-87. Radermacher, L. 1940. ‘Phidias in einem übergesehenen Zitat aus Dionysius von Halicarnassos περὶ μιμήσεως?’, RhM 89, 78-80. Russell, D. 1979. ‘De imitatione’, in: D. West, T. Woodman (eds.), Creative imitation in Latin literature, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1-16. Schmitz, T. 1997. Bildung und Macht: zur sozialen unde politischen Funktion der zweiten Sophistik in der griechischen Welt der Kaiserzeit, Munich: Beck. Selden, D.L. 1994. ‘Genre of genre’, in: J. Tatum (ed.), The search for the ancient novel, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 39-64. Taussig, M. 1993. Mimesis and alterity: a particular history of the senses, New York and Abingdon: Routledge. Usener, H., Radermacher, L. 1965. Dionysii Halicarnaseus quae extant vol. VI: opuscula II, Stuttgart: Teubner. Whitmarsh, T. 2001. Greek literature and the Roman empire: the politics of imitation, Oxford: Oxford University Press. — 2002. ‘Written on the body: perception, deception and desire in Heliodorus’ Aethiopica’, Ramus 31, 111-124. — 2003. ‘Reading for pleasure: narrative, irony, and erotics in Achilles Tatius’, in: S. Panayotakis, M. Zimmerman, W. Keulen (eds.), The ancient novel and beyond, Mnemosyne Supplementa 241, Leiden: Brill, 191-205. — 2005. ‘The Greek Novel: Titles and Genre’, AJP 126, 587-611. — 2011. Narrative and identity in the ancient Greek love novel: returning romance, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wiater, N. 2011. The ideology of classicism: language, history, and identity in Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Abstracts D ANIEL L. S ELDEN The Political Economy of Romance in Late Period Egypt The essay examines the dialectical development of prose fiction in Egypt in the Late Period, from the first Persian Occupation to the Byzantine era. Taking four major texts—the Life of Aḥiqar (Old Aramaic), the Bentresh Stele (Ptolemaic hieroglyphs), Chariton’s Callirhoē (Greek), and the Cambyses-Romance (Coptic)—the paper shows that each fiction both reflects and serves to mediate Egypt’s changing and increasingly marginalized position within the continuously evolving Levantine-Mediterranean world system. The paper argues not only that what each romance narrativizes is principally its own “political unconscious” (Fredric Jameson), but that taken together they evolve rationally as a series without any of their compositors being necessarily aware of his predecessor’s work.

K EN D OWDEN ‘But there is a difference in the ends ...’: Brigands and Teleology in the Ancient Novel What exactly are lēistai (brigands)? The overwhelming picture is of a significant armed band led by a lēistarch. Before the novel, they appear, it seems, in New Comedy and in historiography, where their depiction owes as much to ideology as it does to narrative. Within the novel, brigands do more than just provide thrilling adventure: they raise questions of world-view, and of the bios we lead. The focus on individual brigands is parallelled by, and maybe has its source in, treatments of figures like Virathus in Poseidonios-influenced historiography. The brigand bios is devoted to profit and to pleasures whose icon is ‘roistering’, but equally they do form a society and therefore constitute a model. Intertextuality with Iliad and Odyssey matter but perhaps even more striking is Christian allegorisation of the parable of the Good Samaritan,

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which has its roots in pagan philosophy. We need to look at the life-goals of brigands with an Aristotelian eye.

F ROMA I. Z EITLIN Landscapes and Portraits: Signs of the Uncanny and Illusions of the Real Ekphrastic descriptions, whether of ‘actual’ or of ‘painted’ scenes partake in a rich dialectic between the real and the illusionist, which blurs boundaries between fact and fiction, verbal metaphor and visual realization, the literal and the imaginary, truth and deception – and this on aesthetic, cognitive, and psychological levels. At its furthest limit the boundary that separates the viewer from the object is breached, with the illusion of breaking the frame: that is, of the viewer entering the picture or a figure in the painting (or indeed the painting itself) passing into the zone of ‘reality.’ This essay examines landscape in Achilles Tatius and portraiture in Heliodorus from this point of view.

G IANPIERO R OSATI The Loves of the Gods: Literature as Construction of a Space of Pleasure In the ancient novel, as well as in visual culture, the theme of mythic, divine loves acts as a mimetic mechanism (à la Girard), that mirrors the mediated nature of desire and creates a free, ideal space for the rêveries of lovers. Besides providing superior ‘desire-mediating’ models to humans and legitimizing their fantasies and self-projections, these ‘windows’ on the world of pleasure (both as paintings and as textual ecphraseis) offer an escape into the realm of fantasy. The recurrent presence of female figures (Muses, nymphs, or mortal women) as listeners or viewers of scenes of divine love may suggest a particular female penchant for this subject.

M ARGARET D OODY Comedy in Heliodoros’ Aithiopika Heliodoros uses anachronism deliberately to develop new forms of comedy and to incorporate and question in his novel the classical genres of Comedy

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and Tragedy. He is remarkably versatile in comic characterization, tracing resemblances between Thyamis and Kalasiris, son and father, even though they make very different impressions on the reader at first encounter. His comedy favours cultural change. Parades, spectacles of cruelty and gigantism all work to question generic authorities and imperial ideas.

F RANÇOISE L ÉTOUBLON Mythological Paradigms in the Greek Novels From the explicit use of myth as paradigm in Daphnis and Chloe (narratives concerning Phatta, Syrinx, and Echo, the first of them entailing the myth of Pitys and Pan) and from the parallel, more sophisticated, mythical stories in Leucippe and Cleitophon (mostly concerning Syrinx), it may be concluded that the use of a mythological tale as a paradigm was frequent in the Greek novel. This could derive from the consciousness that things and beings in nature are the imitation of one another, resulting from a metamorphosis: the case of Echo is a symbol of this presence which makes nature “full of gods”. The use is particularly striking in the description of gardens and caves, where art imitates nature, but nature itself seems an imitation.

S ILVIA M ONTIGLIO ‘His eyes stood as though of horn or steel’: Odysseus’ Fortitude and Moral Ideals in the Greek Novels Readers have long recognized that the Greek novels borrow structural and thematic elements from the Odyssey. This paper focuses on another aspect in the novels’ exploitation of the Homeric epic: their appropriation and modification of moral ideals valued in the Odyssey, especially endurance. The novels’ heroes and heroines go through ordeals comparable to those of Odysseus and display similar fortitude. But in one detail they differ from the Homeric hero: they cannot control their emotions. This feature, however, is not a sign of weakness or simply a realistic trait, but amounts to a moral ideal. This appears most notably through the behaviour of Dionysius (in Chariton), that embodiment of self-control, who nonetheless displays over-emotionality when it is safe to do so, and through the description of Hydaspes’ failed attempt to

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imitate Odysseus as he watches Penelope weep, apparently unmoved. The Heliodorean character cannot refrain from weeping when Chariclea is recognized as his daughter, and his emotionality earns him the title of father.

M ICHAEL P ASCHALIS The Basic Plot of Callirhoe: History, Myth, and Aristotelian Poetics The basic plot of the ideal novel Callirhoe, if constructed according to the guidelines Aristotle provides in his Poetics, is definitely non-ideal. A pregnant young wife is kicked into a coma by her jealous husband; she is later found in another city and forced to marry a second husband for the sake of her unborn child; she is eventually reunited with her first husband but entrusts her son to the second husband, though in the future he is destined to rule in her own city. The paper examines the basic plot vis-à-vis the theory that behind the novel we have before us there may have been a real plot, and the suggestion that the plot is based on Trojan legend.

E WEN B OWIE Caging Grasshoppers: Longus’ Materials for Weaving ‘Reality’ After defining ‘real’ and ‘ideal’ in relation to character/behaviour and to setting, I note that, whereas the other four Greek ‘ideal’ novelists create a realistic background, using personal observation or historiography, Longus draws chiefly on literary texts that themselves present a fictional world (Homer and Theocritus) or a semi-fictional world (archaic melic poetry). In ‘The Country’ I explore the debt to Theocritus’ landscape, especially poem 1, of Longus’, advertised by his preface as several steps from the real world. I then discuss 2,32’s relation to Theocritus 1; 1,17,3’s to Sappho and Anacreon via Theocritus 11, convoluted by the term ἀληθῶς; and the apple’s at 3,33,4 to Sappho’s epithalamia, Theocritus 28 and Ibycus. ‘The City’ explores the literary forebears of Longus’ Megacles; ‘The Sea’ looks at his ‘Tyrian’ pirates’ origins in earlier novels, especially Chariton; and ‘Reality’ considers how his use of Thucydides underlines his own fictionality.

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M ARIO L ABATE Tarde, immo iam sero intellexi: The Real as a Puzzle in Petronius’ Satyrica Vincenzo Ciaffi identified the mechanism of the trap as the main narrative structure in Petronius’ Satyrica. The protagonist of the story ends up by finding himself in situations that he cannot control or manage, until some external force breaks in, to interrupt the vicious circle into which he has fallen unawares. The narrative deus ex machina usually presents a particularly lively character who can be connected with certain wild endings, which must have been typical of popular theatre, and above all of mime. Almost all the narrative sequences in which we can verify the results, in the Satyrica, present a dynamics composed of brusque accelerations and sudden changes. This narrative resource already proved to be useful to solve a series of episodes of the background: e.g. the libidinosa migratio that had involved the wife of Lichas and the sack of his ship, or the burglary in the villa of Lycurgus, or again the probable hasty flight, connected with the profanation of the mysteries of Priapus. We may perhaps suppose that also the two ‘extreme’ narrative sequences of which we have a certain knowledge may be included in this brief catalogue. The question on which this paper aims to reflect in is the following one: what is the force that draws the characters into a trap, and closes the trap behind them, thus creating the presupposition whereby the story can only proceed through flight? This force is above all their lack of awareness, their inability to understand ‘reality’ and to foresee developments, even the most elementary and obvious ones. One of the dominant themes of the Cena is the incapacity of Encolpius to decipher the mechanisms that govern Trimalchio’s house, in clear contrast with the perfect control that the dominus cenae exerts over every single moment, every event, and every performance. In the Graeca urbs Encolpius is unable to find the way, and continually gets lost in the meanders of a maze that proves to be too intricate for him. This lack of understanding is to some extent the result of his constitutional inability to use the resources that he possesses, or should possess, as a learned man who has studied, in the events of life. An interpretation of this kind is possible also in the episode of the forum: what is experienced by the protagonists and indicated by the narrative I as a lusus fortunae could be completely different, it could have a director, and a script written by others: the meeting might not be a fantastic coincidence at all, but rather a cunningly laid trap. The pervigilium Priapi, too, shows us a particularly unwitting Encolpios, condemned to endure, together with his companions, a situation whose dynamics he does not control, whose

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climax is represented by the double intervention of the cinaedus. Misunderstanding embasicoetas, Encolpius is the victim of his own inability to grasp the situation, as a result of his insufficient command of language and of the cultural code that governs the universe of the Graeca urbs.

J ASON K ÖNIG Landscape and Reality in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses This chapter argues that the Apuleius’ representation of landscape in the Metamorphoses—and especially mountainous landscape—plays a key role in his reflections on the inadequacy of mortal understandings of reality. I aim to show that Apuleius’ landscapes are characterised by two different strands. The first is a strikingly rhetorical conception of landscape; the second is an obsessive awareness of the physical presence of landscape and the way in which landscape impinges on the human (or asinine) body. Both of those visions of landscape are ultimately represented as inadequate. The destruction of the stage-set mountain at the very end of Book 10 stands, I argue, as an emblem of the novel’s rejection of Lucius’ flawed, pre-Isis experience of landscape in all that has come before.

R OBERT H.F. C ARVER Between Photis and Isis: Fiction, Reality, and the Ideal in The Golden Ass of Apuleius This paper explores the interplay of ‘real’ and ‘ideal’ in The Golden Ass by collating three female characters: a slave-girl (Photis) who triggers Lucius’ original metamorphosis and whose name (however ironically) suggests ‘Light’; an Egyptian goddess (Isis) who demands his life-long devotion in exchange for a garland of re-transforming roses; and a wealthy matrona of Corinth who chooses to copulate with him while he is still a donkey. Drawing on the Middle Platonic tradition and invoking the precedent of New Comedy, it provides a philosophical critique of Lucius’ religious initiations while suggesting a new understanding of Photis’ role as a mediatrix between the mundane and the divine.

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T IM W HITMARSH The Erotics of mimēsis: Gendered Aesthetics in Greek Theory and Fiction This chapter proposes a new reading of the gendered aesthetics of the Greek novels, by reading them through the lens of the mimetic theory of Dionysius of Halicarnassus. It begins with the paradoxical that the novelists tend to present women simultaneously as disempowered objects of the narrative gaze and as embodiments of the high aesthetics of the text itself. This bivalence is reflected in Dionysius’ On mimesis, where women are figurative of both gazedat beauty and a reproductive power that is assimilated to artistic creativity. These two different modes of gendering are, it is argued, prioritised respectively by Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus.

Contributors E WEN B OWIE was Praelector in Classics at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, from 1965 to 2007, and latterly Professor of Classical Languages and Literature at Oxford. He has published widely on early Greek elegiac and iambic poetry; Aristophanes; Hellenistic poetry; and the Greek literature and culture of the Roman period. He is currently completing a commentary on Longus, Daphnis and Chloe. R OBERT C ARVER is a Senior Lecturer in Renaissance Literature in the Department of English Studies at the University of Durham. Recent publications include The Protean Ass: The ‘Metamorphoses’ of Apuleius from Antiquity to the Renaissance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). He is currently investigating the relationship between ancient prose fiction and the so-called ‘Rise of the Novel’. M ARGARET A NNE D OODY is John and Barbara Glynn Professor of Literature at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, USA. She is the author of The True Story of the Novel and other critical works, as well as the “Aristotle” mystery stories. She is currently writing a book on Jane Austen and completing the seventh “Aristotle” mystery, A Cloudy Day in Babylon, in which Alexander must die. K EN D OWDEN is Professor of Classics at the University of Birmingham, and Director of its Institute of Archaeology and Antiquity. He is well known for Uses of Greek Mythology (Routledge, 1992) and has recently completed, with Niall Livingstone, the Companion to Greek Mythology (Blackwell, 2011) to which he has contributed several chapters, including one on soteriology. He also writes on fragmentary Greek historians, as various as Diktys of Crete and Poseidonios for the Brill New Jacoby (ed. Ian Worthington). In the study of the novel, he has written articles especially on Apuleius and Heliodoros and often on their religio-philosophical aspects (as in the present volume). Many of these are in the pages of the Ancient Narrative supplements, several others (in French) are in the various acts of the colloquia at Tours, ed. B. Pouderon

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& C. Bost-Pouderon (Collection de la Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée, Lyon). J ASON K ÖNIG is Senior Lecturer in Greek at the University of St Andrews. He has written widely on ancient prose fiction and on imperial Greek literature more broadly. His publications include Athletics and Literature in the Roman Empire (Cambridge, 2005) and Saints and Symposiasts: The Literature of Food and the Symposium in Greco-Roman and Early Christian Culture (Cambridge, 2012). M ARIO L ABATE is Professor of Latin Literature at the University of Florence. His studies mainly deal with Augustan poetry, and in this field, he has dedicated his attention to elegy and to epic poetry, and in particular to Ovid. He also takes an interest in Latin narrative, with studies above all on Petronius, both from the literary and the critical-exegetic point of view. He has worked, among other authors, on Horace, Virgil and Tacitus. His methodological approach shows an attention to the study of cultural models, and poetic imagination, but also to the study of literary forms and intertextuality. F RANÇOISE L ÉTOUBLON is Professor of Greek Literature and Linguistics at the Université Stendhal (Grenoble). She is the author of Il allait, pareil à la nuit. Les verbes de mouvement en grec: supplétisme et aspect verbal (Paris 1985) and of Les lieux communs du roman (Leiden 1993). She has edited La langue et les textes en grec ancien. Colloque Pierre Chantraine (Amsterdam 1993), Impressions d’îles (Toulouse 1996), Hommage à Milman Parry. Le style formulaire de l’épopée homérique et la théorie de l’oralité poétique (Amsterdam 1997), Homère en France après la Querelle (Paris 1999). She is currently working on Homeric poetry, oral poetry, mythology, and their reception, from antiquity (Greek novels) to modern times (for instance in Angelopoulos’ films). S ILVIA M ONTIGLIO is Gildersleeve Professor of Classics at Johns Hopkins University. She is the author of Silence in the Land of Logos (2000), Wandering in Ancient Greek Culture (2005), From Villain to Hero: Odysseus in Ancient Thought (2011), and Love and Providence: Recognition in the Ancient Novel (2012).

CONTRIBUTORS

303

M ICHAEL P ASCHALIS is Professor of Classics at the University of Crete. He has published articles on Hellenistic and Roman poetry and prose including the ancient novel, on the reception of the Classics and on European and Modern Greek literature. He is the author of Virgil’s Aeneid: Semantic Relations and Proper Names (Oxford 1997) and has edited three volumes of Rethymnon Classical Studies. He has co-edited four volumes of Ancient Narrative Supplements and The Reception of Antiquity in the Byzantine and Modern Greek Novel. G IANPIERO R OSATI is Professor of Latin literature at the Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa. He is the author of Narciso e Pigmalione. Illusione e spettacolo nelle Metamorfosi di Ovidio (1983) and numerous publications on Ovid and other Latin authors (among which are Petronius and Apuleius). He has contributed books 4-6 (2007-09) to the commentary on Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Fondazione Valla, dir. by A. Barchiesi). He also translated and introduced Statius’ Achilleid (1994) and is currently working on Flavian literature and culture. D ANIEL L. S ELDEN is Professor of Literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He has written widely on Greek and Roman literature, as well as on cross-cultural relations in the Mediterranean East. His most recent book, Hieroglyphic Egyptian: An Introduction to the Language and Literature of the Middle Kingdom, appeared with the University of California Press in January 2013. F ROMA I. Z EITLIN is Ewing Professor of Greek Language & Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature at Princeton University, Emeritus. She has published extensively in Greek literature (epic, drama, prose fiction). Her relevant publications include essays on Petronius, Longus, Chariton, Achilles Tatius, and post-classical Homer. Her current project is Vision, Figuration, and Image from Theater to Romance in the Ancient Greek World. T IM W HITMARSH is Professor of Ancient Literatures and E.P. Warren Praelector, Fellow and Tutor at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He has written, among other books, Narrative and identity in the ancient Greek novel: Returning Romance (Cambridge, 2011), and edited The Cambridge companion to the Greek and Roman novel (Cambridge, 2008).

Indices Index locorum* Achilles Tatius 1.1-13, 67 1.1.2, 135 1.1.2-13, 137 1.1.10-11, 286 1.2-3, 62 1.2.3, 68, 96 1.4.3-4, 275 1.5.6, 89 1.15.1-8, 67 1.15.6-7, 66 1.16-18, 135 1.17.3-5, 69 1.19.1, 102 1.19.1-2, 72 2.23.3, 158 3.10.1-11.1, 154 5.3.4-8, 137 5.4, 62 5.5.1, 102 5.5.2-9, 137 5.13.4, 101 8.6.3-10, 139 8.12.1, 140 8.17.3, 44 Apuleius Apol. 12, 261 Met. 1.2.2, 223 1.7.9-10, 247 2.2.3-4, 224 2.11.5, 257 3.19.6, 257

4.2.1-2, 225 4.6.1-4, 226 4.8.4, 50 7.14.5-15.5, 232 7.17.3-4, 232 8.17.4-5, 229 10.21.22, 252 10.30.1, 235 10.34.2, 236 11.13.5, 237 11.15.1, 238 11.15.1-16.1, 255 Soc. 15, 266 124, 266 Aristophanes Clouds 46-48, 192 Aristoteles EN 1122a, 51 Metaph. 982a-b, 9 Po. 1448a4, 179 1451b5-21, 169 1455a34-1455b23, 166 1457b1 f., 9 Athenaeus Deipn. 2.469a-b, 214 Augustinus Conf. 1.16.26, 92

————— *

This index only offers a selection of the passages discussed.

306 Bible, NT Luke 10.30-33, 55 Chariton 2.6.1, 172 2.9.5, 164 2.11.2, 164 3.6.6, 151 3.8.8, 164 5.2.8-9, 172 5.5.8-9, 172 6.8.1-2, 20 7.5.14, 20 8.1.2-3, 172 8.1.4, 166 8.3.12, 20 8.4.5-6, 164 8.5.12-13, 153 Clemens Alex. Protr. 4.60-61, 100 Quis dives 29, 56 Dinarchus 7.5-6, 280 Epictetus 1.9.13-15, 54 Euripides Hipp. 451-56, 94 Heliodorus 1.1.1, 107 1.1.6, 108 1.19, 53 1.19.7, 112 1.33.3, 51 3.10.4-5, 115 4.8.3-4, 75 5.8.3, 116 5.22.3, 147 5.26, 51 5.30-32, 54 5.33.2, 108 6.8.3, 116 9.24.8, 288 10.5.2, 119 10.8.1-2, 123 10.13.5, 76 10.14.7, 288

IN D IC ES

10.15.2, 80 10.16, 155 Homerus Il. 24.753, 50 Horatius serm. 1.2.31-35, 210 1.2.127-133, 201 1.8.46-50, 200 1.9.72-78, 201 Irenaeus adv.haer. 3.17.3, 56 Longus 1.3.2, 181 1.17.2-3, 184 1.20.3, 186 1.27, 129 1.28.1, 192 2.6 f., 133 2.19-3.3.1, 193 2.32.1, 182 2.34-37, 129 2.35, 130 2.36.2, 186 3.23, 131 3.33.3-34.3, 187 4.35.1, 191 4.36.39, 143 1.10.2, 181 Lucianus Alex. 2, 49 Ovidius Ep. 19.129-38, 91 Met. 10.274-76, 66 Tr. 1.5.79-80, 92 2.521-24, 97 Petronius 6.2-7.4, 208 15.7, 203 24.1-3, 214 78.7-8, 203 83, 62 83.1-4, 90

IN D IC ES

Petronius (cont.) 115.1-5, 203 125.2-4, 206 Philostratus Im. 1.5.10, 65 VA 1.25, 79 Plato Phdr. 229b, 96 R. 351c, 52 Plinius Ep. 5.16.13, 65 Plotinus Enneads 6.9.11, 265 Plutarchus DIO 351f-352a, 244 352a, 266 372e, 263

Propertius 2.6.27-34, 98 2.30.27-32, 95 2.30.31-32, 93 Tacitus Ann. 2.52, 49 Terentius Eun. 583-591, 90 Theocritus 11.19-21, 185 Thucydides 1.21-22, 194 Vergilius G. 4.335-49, 94 Xenophon Eph. 2.2.1, 52 2.13, 50 2.14.4, 53 4.1.5, 45 5.3, 43

General Index Achilles Tatius, 63, 91 robbers in L&C, 47 adikia (lawlessness), 50 Aesculapius, 266 aesthetics ancient -, 281, 286 Aḥīqar, 5 Alcaeus, 180, 192 Alexander of Aphrodisias, 52 Alexander the Great, 16 ἀληθῶς, 185 Althusser, L., 7 Amin, S., 16 Ammon, 266 anachronism in Heliodorus, 106, 125 in literature, 105 Anderson, M., 81 Andromeda, 143 iconography, 79 ‘Andromeda Effect’, 77

Anthia (Xenophon), 47 Antonius Diogenes, 193 Aphrodisias, 193 Aphrodite Pandemos and Aphrodite Urania, 259 apple, 188 Apsyrtos (Xenophon), 52 Apuleius Apology, 259 De dogmate Platonis, 260 philosophus Platonicus, 223 Apuleius’ Met. Corinth in -, 251 Lucius ~ Psyche, 248 Meroë ~ Isis, 248 ‘Minoan Moments’ in -, 250 Photis ~ Isis, 245 robber episodes, 47 Aristoteles, 51 Poetics, 9, 162, 165

307

308 art and nature, 63, 64, 69, 80, 142, 285 gardens, 67 asōtia (profligate self-indulgence), 51 Bakhtin, M., 21 Barthes, R., 46 Bartsch, S., 68 basic plot, 162, 168, 175 Benjamin, W., 29 Bentresh Stele, 10, 15 Beroaldus, 255 Bible, OT Exodus, 1 bios (way of life), 48, 55 piracy, 45 boukoloi, 46 brigands honour amongst -, 52 in the novel, 43, 46 marginality of -, 50 sea -, ‘pirates’, 44, 192 Brueggemann, W., 28 Bryson, N., 65 Bucolic poetry, 180 Byzantine Egypt, 29 Callirhoe (Chariton), 151 Cambyses Romance, 22 Cameron, A., 133 catharsis, 166 Catullus, 190 Chaereas (Chariton), 151 characterization comic -, 115 in Chariton, 155 in Heliodorus, 114 Lucius in Apul. Met., 265 protagonists in Satyrica, 207 characters in Apul. Met. Byrrhena, 246 Charite, 248 Corinthian matron, 251 Cupid, 249 Panthia, 248 Photis, 253 Socrates, 247 Thrasyllus, 248 Charicleia (Heliodorus), 48, 75, 109, 116, 287

IN D IC ES

Chariton, 17, 44, 46, 74, 149, 161, 179, 193 Charlotte Brontë The Foundling, 122 chastity, 263 Chloe, 182 Ciaffi, V., 200 Cicu, L., 168 Clarke, J.R., 97 Clemens Alex. Quis dives, 56 Clitophon (Achilles Tatius), 158, 275, 286 closure, 48 Conte, J.B., 207 conversion, 264 conversion narratives, 223 Coptic literature, 22 copy and model, 66, 77 Correggio Loves of the gods, 101 Cueva, E., 127 daemones., 266 Daphnis, 181 deus ex machina, 200 Dinarchus, 280 Dionysius (Chariton), 152, 163 Dionysius of Halicarnassus Peri mimēseōs, 278 Dionysophanes, 191 divine loves and ecphrasis, 94 and female audience, 93, 102 and Renaissance culture, 101 as enticement of desire, 96 as escape phantasy, 97, 101 condemned by Church Fathers, 100 in literature, 93 in painting, 93 mimetic function of -, 97 Don Quixote, 93 Dowden, K., 143 Duris of Samos, 284 Echo, 131, 142 ecphrasis, 61, 137, 186, 286 Europa on the bull, 275 Hermogenes on -, 71 of landscape, 222, 224

IN D IC ES

Egyptian romance, 2, 9, 10 Elephantinē, 2 Else, G.F., 167 Elsner, J., 64, 67 Emma Bovary, 93, 243 emotionality, 150 in Heliodorus, 155 Encolpius, 204, 208 misunderstanding, 215 scholasticus, 199, 210 ἐγκράτεια (self-control), 151 Epictetus, 54 Eros, 133, 143, 276 erotic paintings and sexual phantasies, 99, 101 fabula, 92 fiction and ‘history’, 193 Fitzgerald, W., 268 flight narrative scheme in Petr. Sat., 206 trap and -, 207 fortitude, 150, 155 in Greek novels, 156 Foucault, M., 14 Fredrick, D., 99 Galatea, 185 gaze, 277 and desire, 101 dominant -, 275 male -, 285 gender, 156, 275 androcentrism, 283, 289 Girard, R., 89 goatherd, 183 Goldhill, S., 101 Good Samaritan, 55 Greco-Roman Egypt, 17 Greek novel, 275 ‘ideal –’, 179 Greek novels in Egypt, 17 Griffiths, J.Gwyn, 266 Grimal, P., 73, 255 grotesque in Apul. Met., 234 Grünewald, T., 59 Gustave Flaubert, 243 Habrokomes (Xenophon), 53 Halliwell, S., 282

Harlan, E., 79 Harrison, S.J., 253 Heliodorus, 43, 63, 147 brigands in -, 48 gender dynamics of -, 287 narrative anachronism, 107 opening scene, 51 Hermocrates (Chariton), 163 Hippothoös (Xenophon), 47, 49 historical novel, 162 historiography philosophic -, 49 pirates in -, 45 Thucydides, 194 Homerus, 180, 185 Hope, A.D. ‘Pasiphae’, 251 horticulture, 66, 67, 70 Huet, P.-D., 1 Hunter, R., 180, 285 Hydaspes (Heliodorus), 155 ideal, 243 initiation, 247, 265 initiation scenarios, 53 intertextuality Heliodorus & Homerus, 54 ‘lived - ’, 93, 100 Longus & Sappho, 184 Longus & Theocritus, 181 Longus & Thucydides, 193 intratextuality, 54 Irenaeus, 56 irony, 249, 262, 277, 287 Isis, 220, 237, 244, 263 Jacopo Caraglio Loves of the gods, 101 James, P., 268 Jameson, F., 16 Jonathan Swift Gulliver’s Travels, 119 Jouanno, C., 152 Kalasiris (Heliodorus), 108 and Odysseus, 148 Kavafy, K., 24 Kenney, E.J., 259 kerdos (profit), 51, 155 King, K.C., 147 Knemon (Heliodorus), 114

309

310 Königsnovelle, 12 Krabbe, J., 255 Lalanne, S., 53 landscape, 65 and body, 229, 231, 232 in Roman wall paintings, 71 marginal -, 50 mountainous -, 219, 234 phantasy -, 226 rocky - in Apul. Met., 229 Laplace, M.J., 171 Late Egyptian literature, 10, 15, 22 ‘latrones’ board game, 43 latrones (brigands), 42 legend and history, 162 lēistai (brigands), 42 lēistarchos, brigand leader, 42 lēisteia, 44 lēistēria, brigand-teams, 42 Leucippe (Ach. Tatius), 275, 286 Life of Aḥīqar, 2, 5, 15 liminal space, 53 locus amoenus, 95, 181, 225 locus horridus, 227 Longus, 63, 91, 180 embedded tales, 127 proem to D&C, 62 robbers in D&C, 47 Love Platonic theories of -, 257 Lowe, N.J., 106, 125 Lucas, D.W., 165 Lucianus, 49 De domo, 62 Lucius false perception of -, 225, 232 Marcantonio Raimondi Modi (The Sexual Positions), 101 Martin, R., 68 maternal impression, 77 Mazzoleni, D., 71 Megacles, 191 Merkelbach, R., 59 metamorphosis, 128, 132, 140, 142, 231 metaphor, 1, 9, 28, 109, 140 feasting, 286 fertility, 282

IN D IC ES

petrification, 231 slippery path, 238 wave of passion, 157 metonymy, 1, 25, 102 Meyer, E., 8 mime, 200 mimēsis, 277, 279 literary -, 283 mimetic realism, 64, 71, 77 mise en abyme, 47, 96, 102, 194 monologues of Odysseus, 154 Morales, H., 286 Morgan, J.R., 93 mountains in ancient literature, 220 mugging, 42 Mulvey, L., 276 Myerowitz, M., 101 myth, 138 in Greek novels, 142 τὸ μυθῶδες, 195 narrative structure of Petr. Satyrica, 200 nature and culture, 280, 283 New Comedy, 45, 124, 192, 256 Ninus romance, 193 O’Brien, M., 222 Odysseus, 154 cult-hero, 147 Odyssey, 45, 51, 107, 128, 148, 185 moralizing readings of -, 149 Origenes, 56 Osiris, 245, 266 paideia, 152 painting, 143, 182 and poetry, 139 myths in -, 137 Palm, J., 80 Pan, 128, 131, 133, 143, 182 and Syrinx, 139 pantomime, 186 parable, 7 paradeisos, 66, 67 parades in Heliodorus, 119 paradigm, 133, 137 Parrhasius from Ephesos, 97

IN D IC ES

Pasiphae, 254 Pattoni, M.P., 180 Paulsen, T., 148 peacock, 72, 136 Penwill, J.L., 259 Perry, B.E., 162, 169 Petronius Cena Trimalchionis, 207 pervigilium Priapi, 213 phantasia, 62, 72, 77 pharmakòs (scapegoat), 205 Phatta, 128 Philetas, 133, 182, 194 Philomela and Tereus, 137 philosophy analysis of lifestyles, 55 Philostratus Imagines, 61 pirates, 192 Pitys, 128 Plato Phaedrus, 257 Symposium, 257, 259, 282 Platonism, 243 Middle -, 244 Plotinus, 265 Plutarchus, 150 De Iside et Osiride, 244, 264 politics and the novel, 9, 12, 19, 22 Pomeroy, S., 263 popular theatre, 200 portrait of Andromeda (Heliodorus), 74, 287 portraits in Greek novels, 74 Posidonius, 48 praedones, 44 proper names and plot, 169 ps. Lucianus Onos, 228, 252, 269 Pygmalion, 66 readers ‘visual repertoire’, 79 cultural competence of -, 63, 78, 139 female -, 102 realism, 243

reality vs. fiction, 91 Reardon, B.P., 166 recognition, 168, 192, 288 Reeve, M., 193 Riess, W., 41 rite de passage, 143 roistering, 50 Roman art of gardens, 70 Roman visual culture, 97 Roman wall painting, 71, 79 Ruiz-Montero, C., 166 Rutherford, I., 46 Samuel Richardson Clarissa, 120 Sappho, 180, 184, 187 Satrap Stele, 14 Satyrica hasty flights in -, 203 sudden changes in -, 203 Schmitt, C., 15 Scourfield, J.H.D., 174 Second Sophistic, 63, 71, 137 Seth-Typhon, 244 Shumate, N., 223, 235 significant names for brigands, 50 Photis (Apuleius), 255 Thiasus (Apuleius), 252 Sir Philip Sidney Arcadia, 114 slavery, 256 Smith, W.S., 259, 263 space perception of - in Apul. Met., 220 spectacle in Heliodorus, 119 Syrinx, 129, 139, 186 Tacfarinas, 49 Taussig, M., 282 Telemachus, 51 Tereus and Philomela, 137 text-network Life of Aḥīqar, 8 Theagenes (Heliodorus), 51, 53 Theocritus, 181, 183, 190 theophany, 247 Theron (Chariton), 50, 154

311

312 Thrasyleon (Apuleius), 50 Thucydides, 193 Thyamis (Heliodorus), 48, 51, 54 Tilg, S., 21, 166 time in Heliodorus, 107 Tityrus, 182 topos recognition, 75 Trachinos (Heliodorus), 50 Tragedy in Heliodorus, 114, 116, 124 trap narrative structure in Petr. Sat., 200, 207, 209, 213 Trojan legend in Chariton, 171 urbanitas vernacula, 216 van Mal-Maeder, D., 255

IN D IC ES

Venus uulgaria and Venus caeles, 260 virginity test, 139 Viriathus, 48, 53 Welch, J.W., 56 whiteness, 80 Whitmarsh, T., 70, 74, 78, 161, 170 Willcock, M., 127 Winkler, J.J., 1, 46, 247 wisdom literature, 5 women in Greek novels, 277 word and image, 62, 65, 72 Xenophon brigands in Eph., 47 Zeitlin, F.I., 96, 245 zēlos (‘emulation’), 279, 284 Zeno of Verona, 55 Zeuxis, 284 Zimmerman, M., 221, 228, 252