Ovid's Tragic Heroines: Gender Abjection and Generic Code-switching 9781501770357, 9781501770371, 9781501770364

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OVID’S TRAGIC HEROINES

OVID’S TRAGIC HEROINES

G E N D E R A B J EC T I O N A N D G E N E R I C CO D E-­S W I TC H I N G

J essica  A . W esterhold

CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS Ithaca and London

Copyright © 2023 by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. Visit our website at cornellpress​.­cornell​.­edu. First published 2023 by Cornell University Press Librarians: A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 9781501770357 (hardcover) ISBN 9781501770371 (pdf ) ISBN 9781501770364 (epub) Jacket image: Fresco of Medea, room E, House of Jason, Pompeii, Naples inv. 114321. Printed by permission of the Ministry of Culture—National Archaeological Museum of Naples. Photo by Luigi Spina.

For Heather June-­Ella Quinsey

C o n te n ts

Acknowl­edgments  ix List of Abbreviations  xi

Introduction: Ovid’s Tragic Per­for­mances

1

1. Signs of Abject Desire in Ars Amatoria 15 2. Rescripting Phaedra for an Elegiac Role 39 3. Medean Disruptions in Epic and Elegy 79 Conclusion: Ovid’s Abject Exile Notes  135 References  183 Index of Ancient Sources  201 General Index  207

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A ck n o w l­e d gm e n ts

This proj­ect has spanned several years and has under­gone numerous metamorphoses. Along the way, I have benefited from the support, advice, and encouragement of many generous readers, mentors, colleagues, friends, and ­family. The acknowl­edgments below are by no means exhaustive, and I owe gratitude to many more than I can name ­here. Alison Keith has guided this proj­ect from its inception. Without her kindness and expertise, this book would not exist. Alison continues to be my most trusted advisor, mentor, and role model. I am equally grateful to Victoria Wohl, Erik Gunderson, Carole Newlands, and Jarrett Welsh, for their challenging questions and insightful suggestions which informed this work at its earliest stages. I am deeply grateful to the staff at Cornell University Press and in par­tic­u­ lar to Bethany Wasik, acquisitions editor, for expertly shepherding this proj­ ect and especially for her unflagging patience with my questions during the pro­cess. I am also indebted to Cornell’s anonymous referees for their atten­ tive reading of my drafts and their generous and valuable comments. Thank you to the production editor, Anne Jones, and the team at Westchester Pub­ lishing Ser­vices for their skillful copyediting and typesetting; to Scott Garner for his careful indexing; and to Bettina Bergmann for allowing me to use her beautiful image. Fi­nally, I would have been lost without the sharp eye of my department research assistant, Daniel Green, who diligently checked my cita­ tions and quotations. All remaining errors and omissions are my own. I have also benefited from the encouragement and advice of my colleagues at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Thank you all, especially the Classics Department staff and faculty: Justin Arft, Tristan Barnes, Salvador Bartera, Jes­ sica Black, Dylan Bloy, Donna Bodenheimer, Stephen Collins-­Elliott, Lorenzo Del Monte, John Friend, Reema Habib, Kelle Knight, Theodora Kopestonsky, Maura Lafferty, Merle Langdon, Robert Sklenar, and Aleydis Van de Moortel. My gratitude to the Marco Institute for Medieval and Re­nais­sance Studies at the University of Tennessee for generously contributing to the publication costs. I also want to thank the members of my Reading Accountability Group in the summer of 2021, Robin Baidya, Dawn Coleman, and Kalynn Schulz, for ix

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sharing their writing strategies, keeping me focused, and lifting my spirits. The librarians at John C. Hodges Library must also be acknowledged for their skill­ ful assistance locating so many impor­tant resources. My thanks in par­tic­u­lar go to the staff in the Interlibrary Ser­vices Department and to Molly Royse, the Classics librarian. I have benefited from the attentive reading, feedback, and advice of many friends and colleagues. In addition to t­ hose named above, my sincere thanks go to Robin Barrow, Taylor Coughlan, Chris Craig, Dan Curley, Megan Drink­ water, Laurel Fulkerson, John Han, Sharon James, Anne Langendorfer, Rhonda Lott, Daniel Moore, Jocelyn Moore, Emma Scioli, Alison Sharrock, and Mark Tabone. Over the years and ­because of the generosity of my home department, I have also had the opportunity of sharing portions of ­these chap­ ters with accommodating audiences. In par­tic­u­lar, I am grateful to the ques­ tions and input from ­those attending my talks at conferences held by the Classical Association of Canada, the Classical Association of the M ­ iddle West and South and its Southern Section, the Society for Classical Studies, and the 2015 Augustan Poetry Conference sponsored by the University of São Paulo, as well as invited talks at the University of Kansas and the Haslam Scholars Program at my home institution. Lastly, I owe my deepest gratitude to the friends and f­amily who contin­ ued to cheer, comfort, and motivate me when I needed it the most. Above all, my wife Heather Quinsey, who has accompanied me through this journey from start to finish with unlimited patience and grace. She inspires my work and fills my life with joy ­every day. ­Unless other­wise noted, I use Kenney’s text of the Ars Amatoria (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995); Palmer’s text of the Heroides (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1898); Tarrant’s text of the Metamorphoses (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); and Owen’s text of the Tristia (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1915). All translations are my own.

A b b r e vi ati o ns

When citing ancient authors and works I follow abbreviations found in the OCD. For journals, I follow the Année Philologique ab­ breviations first. For journals not listed by the Année Philologique, I follow OCD. CIL 1863–2012. Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. Berlin-­Brandenburg Acad­ emy of Sciences and Humanities. ILS Dessau, Hermann, ed. 1892–1916. Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae. Berlin: Weidmannos. OCD Hornblower, Simon, and Antony Spawforth. 2012. Oxford Classical Dictionary. 4th ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. OLD Glare, P. G. W., and Christopher Stray, eds. 2012. Oxford Latin Dictionary. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. TGF2 Nauck, August. 1964. Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta. 2nd ed. Supple­ mented by Bruno Snell. Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlagsbuchhandlung. TrGF Bruno Snell, R.  Kannicht, and S. Radt, eds. Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta. 6 vols. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht. Snell, Bruno, ed. 1986. Vol. 1. Poetae Minores Radt, Stefan, ed. 1985. Vol. 3. Aeschylus Radt, Stefan, ed. 1999. Vol. 4. Sophocles Kannicht, Richard, ed. 2004. Vols. 5.1 and 5.2. Euripides FGrH Jacoby, Felix. 1998. Fragmente der griechischen Historiker. Leiden: Brill.

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Introduction Ovid’s Tragic Per­for­mances

at tanti tibi sit non indulgere theatris, dum bene de uacuo pectore cedat amor. eneruant animos citharae lotosque lyraeque et uox et numeris brachia mota suis. illic adsidue ficti saltantur amantes; But deem it impor­tant not to indulge in the theatres, ­until love withdraws entirely from your heart. The lutes and flutes and lyres and voice and arms dancing to their own beat weaken the spirit. ­There fabled lovers are constantly danced [in the pantomime]; (Ov. Rem. am. 751–55) Supremo die identidem exquirens, an iam de se tumultus foris esset, petito speculo capillum sibi comi ac malas labantes corrigi praecepit et admissos amicos percontatus, ecquid iis uideretur mi[ni]mum uitae commode transegisse, adiecit et clausulam: ἐπεὶ δὲ πάνυ καῶς πέπαισται, δότε κρότον καὶ πάντες ἡμᾶς μετὰ χαρᾶς προπέμψατε. On his final day he was repeatedly inquiring ­whether ­there was a disturbance outside b­ ecause of him, and ­after he asked for a mirror, he requested that his hair be combed and that his slipping jaw be set straight and he asked his friends who had been admitted ­whether he seemed to them to have played the mime of life fittingly, and he added this tag: Since the part has been played well, give applause and all of you send me forth with joy. (Suet. Aug. 99.1)

Per­for­mance was vitally impor­tant to ancient Roman identity. This is first evident in Ovid’s erotodidactic poem above, pub­ lished at the end of the first ­century BCE, where he warns against g­ oing to the theater with a broken heart, for watching the per­for­mance of an emotion one 1

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is trying to overcome ­will have a negative psychological effect on the viewer. Writing over one hundred years ­later about events in Ovid’s lifetime, Suetonius reports that Augustus’s last words figured his life as a per­for­mance, even if it is unlikely that Augustus did, in fact, end his life with t­hese words. Suetonius, however, relies on the verisimilitude of his story, which demands that an audi­ ence believe Augustus might have said ­these words.1 Suetonius’s story is credi­ ble ­because Roman culture was highly theatrical, a characteristic which Anthony Boyle traces back to the sixth-­century BCE Etruscans, and which can be seen in two very impor­tant cultural institutions, the triumph and the funeral. “The theatrics of Rome’s social institutions and their po­liti­cal force ­were certainly well established before the city’s first attested drama was produced. Spectacle was always already both the display and the agent of power.”2 Spectacle con­ structed the Roman elite self. The spectacle of the triumphal general parading through the city was a transparent and transcendent per­for­mance of Roman military might and imperial expansion as embodied by the elite general at the center of the show.3 Similarly, during a funeral pro­cession for an aristocrat, Ro­ man funeral masks (imagines) of deceased officeholders in the ­family w ­ ere worn by hired actors. A surviving relative attending a funeral would gaze upon the imagines of his distinguished ancestors as if upon a mirror. In addition to offer­ ing an opportunity for self-­identification as a member of the ­family, the imagines functioned as models for emulation, motivating ­later generations to live up to or surpass the accomplishments of their ancestors.4 Plays also offered a way for Romans to examine their own identity and their relationship to o ­ thers. In addition to “native” Italian and Etruscan spectacles, tragedy as a genre and a spectacle was an impor­tant institution imported into Sicily, Magna Graecia, and Roman Italy from Greece.5 Learned Romans would be familiar with the Attic Greek tragedies themselves, while they and less edu­ cated inhabitants would know them through the per­for­mance of Latin adapta­ tions.6 Livius Andronicus, a man from Tarentum, identified as semigraecus by Suetonius (Gram. 1.2), is said to have translated the first tragedy into Latin for the ludi Romani of 240 BCE.7 Livius also famously translated Homer’s Odyssey into Latin Saturnians. Feeney (2016) has analyzed this unique “translation proj­ ect,” situating it as part of Rome’s entrance into an international Hellenic world.8 As he and ­others have noted, translations of Greek dramas offered Ro­ mans the opportunity to become familiar with the Greek ­people with whom they w ­ ere coming into contact and eventually would conquer.9 Si­mul­ta­neously, as Feeney also argues, the Romans w ­ ere identifying themselves as experts, even inheritors, of the canonical Greek literary and dramatic tradition.10 The pro­cess of translating Greek lit­er­a­ture for a Roman audience also in­ troduced new concepts into the Roman cultural vocabulary and, with t­hese

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new concepts, new ways of imagining Roman identities. For this reason, Fee­ ney (2016, 140) contends that performing Greek characters in Latin adapta­ tions of Greek plays “enabled the audience to try out what it was like to look at the world like a Greek, to identify momentarily with Greeks and their per­ spectives, in order to refine what it was like to look at the world as a Roman did.”11 In the case of Attic tragedy, ­these identities took the form of new “roles,” both dramatic and social, for, as noted above, the Roman subject figured his life as a per­for­mance. Ovid made impor­tant contributions to this translation proj­ect. His poetry, specifically his “translation” of two plays which appear throughout his work in vari­ous forms, Euripides’s Hippolytus and Medea, ex­ plores the roles Euripides’s characters Phaedra and Medea offer to Ovid’s au­ dience, both when the characters act as vehicles for exploring new or expanded categories of gender and genre and as confirmations of reductive and ste­reo­ typical categories.

Ovid, in Theory ­ ere, I examine the ways in which Ovid’s poetry participates in the translation H of Greek lit­er­a­ture to Roman per­for­mance through a lens that brings gender and genre in dialogue with one another. To do so, I draw on the theories and vocabulary in scholarly lit­er­a­ture in order to better understand Ovid’s pro­cess of gender and generic construction and its effect. For example, Judith Butler main­ tains that social identities are performative and theorizes the “assumption” of gender, sex, and kinship roles as an identification.12 The roles which one may perform are defined and restricted by ­those recognized in one’s community. This identification is performative in as much as it is constituted through be­hav­ ior and attire (e.g., by a Roman matrona) which act as a “citation” of the sym­ bolic position with which the individual identifies.13 “Acts, gestures, and desire produce the effect of an internal core or substance, but produce this on the surface of the body, through the play of signifying absences that suggest, but never reveal, the organ­izing princi­ple of identity as a cause. Such acts, gestures, enact­ ments, generally construed, are performative in the sense that the essence or iden­ tity that they other­wise purport to express are fabrications manufactured and sustained through corporeal signs and other discursive means” (Butler 2008, 185). Applying Butler’s formulation, a Roman becomes a matrona ­because she persuasively performs this role. She dresses (by wearing the stola) and behaves (by advocating for one’s c­ hildren) in a way which is recognizable to Roman soci­ ety as a matrona. Just as the adaptations of Greek drama did for republican cul­ ture, so Ovid’s Phaedra and Medea offered new roles to his audience in the

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Augustan Age and provided a guide for how to cite ­these roles. Throughout his work the heroines continue to evolve as identities multiply performed by vari­ ous characters in his corpus. However, Ovid’s verse demonstrates that Phaedra and Medea always ultimately represent monstrous identities, whose lust and rage must be punished and eliminated in order to protect the normative subjects with whom they interact. In addition to Butler’s theory of the per­for­mance of gender, I draw on Ju­ lia Kristeva’s understanding of the abject to elucidate why Ovid introduces ­these novel identities only to repudiate them. Kristeva theorizes the abject as that part of the self or of a society which must be rejected and is then refused acknowl­edgment as part of the self or society. Instead, the abject is established as an other who embodies ­these distasteful characteristics in order to create a fictional individual or society—an ideal self or state which is f­ree from char­ acteristics now associated solely with the abject.14 Judith Butler expands Kriste­ va’s definition in her formulation of the abject: “The abject designates ­here precisely ­those ‘unlivable’ and ‘uninhabitable’ zones of social life,” excluded from subjecthood but necessary to delimit “the domain of the subject.” “It [the abject] w ­ ill constitute that site of dreaded identification against which—­ and by virtue of which—­the domain of the subject ­will circumscribe its own claim to autonomy and to life” (Butler 1993, 3).15 By embodying what is unac­ ceptable for normative society, the female abject subject reminds a good Ro­ man w ­ oman how not to act. At the same time, abject be­hav­iors and desires originate in and are, in fact, undesirable characteristics of any normative Ro­ man matrona. This places pressure upon a Roman ­woman to repudiate and associate t­ hese failures with an abject subject and introduces the potential for her failed per­for­mance of the normative identity matrona by admitting or ex­ pressing any of t­ hese abject characteristics. As we ­will see in this study, Ovid’s Phaedras and Medeas make efforts to find a place for themselves in society, but Ovid’s verse repeatedly constructs them as abject subjects, required to de­ fine what is normative in terms of gender and genre. I have expanded my definition of Ovid’s Phaedras and Medeas to include ­those heroines who “cite” them, following closely Curley’s application of Con­ te’s concept of “code modeling.”16 He has demonstrated that characters in Ovid, who embody distinct tragic dilemmas or “code models,” act as “local models” or tragic paradigms. When characters who do not have their own tragic provenance, such as Byblis (Met. 9), take up such dilemmas, or tragic “codes” in Ovid’s corpus, “[their] story has been encoded as a tragedy” (Cur­ ley 2013, 16). When I use the term “tragic” in the following chapters, I refer specifically to the tragic genre. So as not to create confusion, I do not use “tragic” at any point in its vernacular sense, that is, mournful, pathetic, or di­

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sastrous.17 While it may seem strange to call Byblis, for instance, “tragic” when scholars do not have any evidence that her myth was represented in a tragedy, I employ the term to describe her and the other female desiring sub­ jects who cite Phaedra or Medea. ­These heroines make up the corpus of Phaedra-­like and Medea-­like figures ­under consideration in this study. The code-­modeling which Curley identifies in t­ hese episodes is thus a ge­ neric paradigm, not a series of specific allusions (although we w ­ ill see that al­ lusions are in some cases very pointedly made to Euripides’s plays).18 Like Curley, I do not pursue line-­by-­line comparisons of Ovid’s use of a Euripid­ ean source text or aim to establish Euripides as the primary source for the Ovidian repre­sen­ta­tions I consider in the following chapters. Rather, taking up Ovid’s own cues, which he gives us through direct allusions to Euripides, general thematic correspondences, and lexical and rhetorical strategies which evoke the tragic stage, I consider how the echoes of the Euripidean Phaedra and Medea guide and inform the interpretation of ­these mythological figures in Ovid. More specifically, I consider how the two heroines, as established by their tragic repre­sen­ta­tions, disrupt Ovid’s verse and are mastered by the poet. Looking specifically at the tragic voices citing Phaedra and Medea in Ovid’s elegy and epic, we may see that the tragic heroine’s voice is a threat—­sometimes playful, sometimes domineering, sometimes desperate. Each heroine comes to embody the abject self and song. Her excessive passions are always pre­sent as the narrator’s (and audience’s) own secret but disavowed emotions. Her tragic tradition is always already drawn from the same mythological matrix as the more reasonable Roman genres of epic and elegy. In this way she can be lo­ cated spatially on the fringes of both community and canon—­included as a member of the group but excluded from the inner circle. Her threat and mar­ ginal location are marked by her feminine gender and by her tragic genre.19 This monograph joins the growing work of scholars who have applied the theoretical concepts of abjection and monstrosity to Greek and Latin lit­er­a­ture with ­great success. Their studies demonstrate how Greek and Roman identity was constructed and shored up through vari­ous pro­cesses of disidentification. Most recently, Spentzou (2018) interprets Lucan’s Caesar as an abject subject, destabilizing the categories of subject and object. Felton (2012), Del Lucchese (2019), and Mitchell (2021) see the monster as a marker of the bound­aries de­ fining what is h ­ uman and normative. By contrast, Valladares (2021) traces an aesthetic of tenderness in Roman art and lit­er­a­ture beginning in the first ­century BCE, which paradoxically embraced monstrous mythological figures. Valladares’s focus on the late republic and early empire joins ­those of Hardie (2009), Lowe (2015), and Pietropaolo (2021). Hardie’s (2009) collection, Paradox and the Marvellous in Augustan Lit­er­a­ture and Culture, includes several ­contributions

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which broach this subject, especially t­hose from Barchiesi, Platt, and Rosati. Lowe (2015) and Pietropaulo (2021) explore the monstrous and grotesque in Augustan poetry specifically. Bloomsbury’s Cultural History Series w ­ ill soon include Felton’s forthcoming A Cultural History of Monsters in Antiquity. Felton is also the editor of the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Monsters in Classical Myth.20 This impor­tant work has illuminated Greek and Roman systems of cat­ egorization, marginalization, and oppression such as nationality, gender, ability, and sexuality. My reading of Ovid’s abject tragic heroines contributes to t­ hese studies by investigating how his poetic play both reinforces dangerous gender ste­reo­types and si­mul­ta­neously reveals their fiction.

Phaedra and Medea in Greece Euripides’s extant Hippolytus (Hipp. II), performed at the Athenian City Dio­ nysia in 428 BCE, is his second and only surviving treatment of the myth.21 The action of the play takes place in Troezen while Theseus is away consult­ ing an oracle. Phaedra, wife of Theseus, falls in love with her stepson, Hip­ polytus. The play begins with Aphrodite announcing that Phaedra’s desire is part of the goddess’s revenge upon Hippolytus. Phaedra has chosen to die rather than act on her desire, for the sake of her f­amily’s reputation and her sons’ ­future, but her nurse approaches Hippolytus without Phaedra’s consent. Fearing the consequences if Hippolytus tells his f­ather, Phaedra accuses her stepson of rape. This accusation is delivered in the form of a letter and read by Theseus ­after her suicide. Theseus, influenced by Phaedra’s false charges against Hippolytus, exiles and curses his son, who is killed by Poseidon’s bull, sent from the sea in response to Theseus’s curse.22 In Euripides’s Medea, performed at the Athenian City Dionysia in 431 BCE, the eponymous heroine turns to murderous revenge when the hero, Jason, finds a Greek wife in Corinth.23 We meet her in agony over her abandonment and watch her devise and implement a plot which results in the death, not of Jason, but of Jason’s c­ hildren with Medea, his bride, and ­f uture father-­in-­law. Medea’s rage is provoked by Jason’s oath-­breaking. She considers their mar­ riage a sort of alliance between equals which he has ­violated. Her revenge ap­ pears to be a distorted version of the epic hero’s punishment of his enemies.24 Unlike Phaedra, the Euripidean Medea has no gods motivating her excessive passion. The play ends with Medea flying from the stage on the mēchanē as if a god herself. Her myth continues with a c­ areer as a murderous evil stepmother to Theseus in Athens.25

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While Euripides tells one version of Medea’s and Phaedra’s myth, other po­ ets in other genres foreground dif­fer­ent themes and moments. Medea’s mytho­ logical tradition links her Euripidean revenge with Phaedra’s forbidden lust, for Phaedra’s story rehearses Medea’s at its beginning. In Apollonius’s famous epic, Medea is a maiden in love, who violates laws of kinship—­betraying her ­father and killing her b­ rother for love of a foreign (and therefore inappropriate) be­ loved.26 Her erotic choice represents a violation of gender norms. It is the role of the male guardian, not a young girl, to choose a suitable match. Medea flees with Jason back to Greece, employing her magic to rejuvenate e­ ither Jason, his ­father, or the nurses of Dionysus, and her guile and reputation to persuade Pelias’s ­daughters to kill their ­father on Jason’s behalf.27 Medea’s myth is expan­ sive, encompassing a full life—­maiden, wife, aged m ­ other—­and incorporating many tragic roles such as destructive lover, vengeful wife, and evil stepmother.28 This Phaedra-­like episode in Medea’s myth was fresh in the minds of the Roman literati as Ovid began his c­ areer, for Varro Atacinus had recently translated Apol­ lonius’s epic Argonautica into Latin—­Argonautae—­sometime a­ fter 47 BCE.29

Phaedra and Medea in Rome As noted above, Phaedra and Medea would likely be familiar to a Roman au­ dience from the stage. Moreover, elite Romans would know their myths and their literary tradition from school. Early Roman poets, beginning with Liv­ ius Andronicus, self-­consciously chose and translated Greek models that ­were central to the Greek education of Magna Graecia.30 Each act of translation was a judgment of the literary value of the text. Translations also consciously cited their Greek models and the ­later Roman models which mediated each new adaptation.31 As an example, Feeney (2016, 156) adduces Livius’s Odusseia, whose title and first line signals its model, Homer’s Odyssey, and its in­ novation, in Livius’s Latin Saturnians.32 This self-­referential characteristic is especially strong in ­later translations. Euripides’s Medea, as I w ­ ill discuss fur­ ther below, was reworked by each subsequent generation of Latin poets, and we may see in successive translations expressions of an awareness of the past iterations as well as a desire to innovate.33 We do not have any extant fragments of a Roman Phaedra or Hippolytus be­ fore Seneca’s Phaedra, a generation ­after Ovid’s death;34 however, such an ab­ sence of the myth in Roman tragedy does not preclude access to and knowledge of the Greek plays. Suetonius (Vita Ter. 5) reports that Terence traveled to Greece to read Menander’s plays.35 Ovid, at least, knew one of Euripides’s tragedies

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entitled Hippolytus, for this play is the first listed in a cata­logue of tragedies which offer materiam . . . ​amoris (Tristia 2.382): “Is t­here anything in the Hippolytus ex­ cept the blind passion of a stepmother?” (numquid in Hippolyto, nisi caecae flamma novercae, Tristia 2.383). Greek plays ­were being performed in southern Italy be­ fore Livius Andronicus’s Roman production; a Phaedra or Hippolytus may have been among them.36 Feeney (2016) emphasizes the significance of Roman expo­ sure to Greek theater in the third c­ entury as the Roman army expanded into Magna Graecia and the Greek mainland. In addition to southern Italians bring­ ing Greek dramas to Rome and translating them into Latin, Roman soldiers spent a considerable amount of time in Sicily during the wars against Carthage and presumably attended Greek dramatic productions ­there.37 While Phaedra is absent from our roster of extant Latin plays, the Roman tragedians produced several plays about Medea and Medea-­like figures.38 Medea herself appears in the tragedies of Roman playwrights Ennius,39 Pacuvius,40 and Accius.41 While Ennius’s Medea Exul and Accius’s Medea are believed to be adap­ tations of Euripides’s play, Ennius’s Medea may have been set in Athens and Pacuvius’s Medus in Colchis and Media.42 As Boyle (2006; 2012) and Cowan (2010) have argued, the Euripidean Medea offered the Roman audience the op­ portunity to assume or reject identification with a Greek character and Greek culture. Romans might have seen themselves in the Greek hero Jason facing a barbarian other, or in Medea for whom Greece is a foreign land and Greeks are enemies.43 In the imperial period, tragedy seems to have been superseded to some de­ gree by the pantomime.44 The freedmen of Augustus and Maecenas, Pylades and Bathyllus, are credited with introducing the tragic and comic pantomime respectively to Rome in 22 BCE.45 This was a more stylized per­for­mance with a single actor, which, nevertheless, incorporated arias and material from tragedy. Lucian advises the dancer of pantomime “not to be ignorant of anything that is told by Homer and Hesiod and the best poets, and above all by tragedy” (οὐδὲν τῶν ὑπὸ τοῦ Ὁμήρου καὶ Ἡσιόδου καὶ τῶν ἀρίστων ποιητῶν καὶ μάλιστα τῆς τραγῳδίας λεγομένων ἀγνοήσει, de Saltatione, 61).46 He provides a list of popu­lar pantomime subjects (37–61) which ­every good dancer should know, among which he includes the Athenian myths “concerning Theseus and Ae­ geus” (ὅσα περὶ . . . ​Θησέως καὶ Αἰγέως, 40), “the reception of Medea and her flight back to Persia” (τὴν Μηδείας ὑποδοχὴν καὶ αὖθις ἐς Πέρσας φυγὴν, 40), “the d­ aughters of Pandion” (θυγατέρας . . . ​τὰς Πανδίονος, 40), and “Hippoly­ tus’ suffering” (τὸ Ἱππολύτου πάθος, 40); the Corinthian myths, including “Glauce and Creon” (τὴν Γλαύκην καὶ τὸν Κρέοντα, 42); in Crete, “Phaidra” (τὴν Φαίδραν, 49); and in Thrace, “Jason” (τὸν Ἰάσονα, 52).47

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Generic Per­for­mances With the exception of Ovid’s own tragedy, Medea, which is now lost but for two lines,48 Ovid’s adaptations of Euripides’s heroines w ­ ere twofold—­ translated from Greek into Latin and reconceptualized from tragedy into el­ egy or epic.49 As Curley (2013) and o ­ thers have noted, Ovid signals both strategies of adaptation through allusive play. In this pro­cess, Ovid’s construc­ tion of Phaedra and Medea as gendered abject subjects is also defined by the generic contexts in which Ovid locates them, inextricably linking their embodi­ ment of characteristics undesirable to both the Roman w ­ oman and the genres of epic and elegy to their tragic provenance. They wreak havoc in Ov­ id’s Roman elegy and epic ­because they do not belong ­either at Rome or in the genres to which the Augustan poet has relocated them. This play with tragic disruption of other genres by Phaedra and Medea is characteristic of Ovid’s thematization of genre throughout his poetry. ­There has been a ­g reat deal of scholarly attention to the dialectic of epic and elegy in Ovid.50 This is no surprise as elegy is the genre most represented in his cor­ pus, and elegy programmatically defines itself as epic’s antithesis.51 His ele­ giac poems include the erotic Amores; the erotodidactic Ars Amatoria, Remedia Amoris, and Medicamina; the epistolary Heroides; the calendar Fasti; and the ex­ ilic Ibis, Tristia, and Epistulae ex Ponto. Hinds (1987), reconsidering Heinze (1919), argues that Ovid’s poetry intentionally crosses the bound­aries differ­ entiating genres and signals ­these crossings while betraying anx­i­eties over the resulting generic contamination.52 Hence, Ovid’s epic poem, Metamorphoses, has been called “a masterpiece of generic transformation” (Farrell 2009, 376). Both undermining and observing generic expectation, however, rely on liter­ ary codes and conventions to which attention is drawn, especially in the pro­cess of their transgression. That generic codes are not the product of modern criti­ cism is attested by, for example, Horace’s comments about genre in Ars Poetica (73–85), where the poet identifies themes and meters appropriate to each genre.53 Horace contends that hexameter is suitable for kings and wars, elegiac couplets for lament and ­humble elegies, rage for iambics which are used by comedy and tragedy, lyric for gods, their ­children, athletic victories, and lovesickness. Ovid gives a similar description of the conventions of literary genre in Remedia Amoris (372–86). Responding to criticisms of his Ars Amatoria, the poet-­praeceptor cites generic expectations as a defense for the content of his verse. He enjoins his pupil to “suit each [work] to its own meter” (ad numeros exige quidque suos, 372): war for hexameter; anger for tragedy; everyday life for comedy; insults for iam­ bics; and love for elegy.

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The passage, of course, invites suspicion. Ovid anticipates his audience’s laughter over such strict rules articulated in the context of a didactic poem written in elegiac couplets. Nonetheless, ­these programmatic rules and expec­ tations accord with Horace’s ­earlier list. Ovid’s generic play relies on a famil­ iarity with such traditional definitions of literary genre. A generic code is described by Conte (1986, 81) as a model in relation to which poets can define their own poetry. Reference to the “norm” of a generic discourse “delimits the common space within which new poetry can both emulate tradition and speak with a fresh voice.” Conte (1986, 93) sees genres as “definable precisely in their mutual relationship” and as “a horizon of historically formalized (and historically variable) literary expectations.” Codes would be familiar to an an­ cient audience, suggesting that the audience would recognize generic ele­ ments out of place, that is, in the wrong generic context. Therefore, Ovid’s crossing of genres in his elegiac and epic poems—­incorporating tragic themes and language—­could be identified by an ancient reader or auditor of his work. While Roman erotic elegy programmatically defines itself against epic, Ovid also juxtaposes tragedy to elegy and other genres. In Amores 3.1, for ex­ ample, the personified Elegy and Tragedy vie to be Ovid’s genre of choice.54 The poet, on a stroll in the woods, is confronted by Elegy and Tragedy, who wear costumes emblematic of their genre: uenit odoratos Elegia nexa capillos, et, puto, pes illi longior alter erat. forma decens, uestis tenuissima, uultus amantis, et pedibus uitium causa decoris erat. uenit et ingenti uiolenta Tragoedia passu: fronte comae torua, palla iacebat humi; laeua ma­nus sceptrum late regale mouebat, (3.1.7–13) Elegy came with hair bound and fragrant, and, I think, one foot was lon­ ger than the other. Her shape was becoming, her dress most thin, the face of a lover, and her feet’s imperfection was the reason for her beauty. Violent Tragedy also came with a ­g iant stride: her hair was lying on her grim brow, her mantle on the ground; her left hand was brandishing widely a royal scepter, Despite the dialectic of elegy and tragedy constructed so explic­itly by the poet himself in his earliest literary endeavors, the function of tragedy in Ovid’s ex­ tant work has only recently begun to receive due consideration.55 Most atten­ tion has been paid to the use of tragedy in the Metamorphoses56 and Heroides,57 in which scholars have identified and traced specific Greek and Roman tragic

I NT R OD U CT I ON 11

allusions and intertexts. More recently, tragedy in his exilic work has received attention.58 Some recent scholarship considers how Ovid “stages” episodes in his Metamorphoses or the epistolary monologues of Heroides through consideration of dramatic ele­ments: for example, creating a sense of spectacle with a setting which resembles a stage or an introduction which recalls a stage entrance or tragic prologue, including (in the case of the Metamorphoses) direct speech in imitation of dramatic dialogue, or employing the language of the theater in the narrative.59 Thus far t­ here has been only one monograph treatment of this topic, Curley’s Tragedy in Ovid (2013). My research expands on his impor­tant study of Ovid’s reception of Greek tragedy, which has demonstrated its per­ vasive influence throughout the poet’s work.

Ovid on the Intersection of Genre and Gender As I argue in subsequent chapters, when Phaedra and Medea enter Ovid’s verse, they challenge the literary sophistication of his reader. Knowledge of both Greek and Roman tragedies, particularly their most famous songs, con­ stituted “cultural capital,” and was taught in schools.60 For this reason, indi­ vidual characters could be invoked in a variety of contexts. Cicero, for instance, cites Ennius’s Medea in thirteen passages of his work for demonstrations of rhetorical techniques, emotional experiences, and philosophical arguments.61 In ­these cases, Cicero uses my­thol­ogy as a symbolic system, adducing mytho­ logical characters as if they w ­ ere words in a language to illustrate his argu­ ments. Cicero relies on his audience’s familiarity with Medea’s myth in order to make his points clear. Charles Segal refers to this shared language of myth as a “megatext,” one which shows a “conscious awareness of sign systems” indicating “an advanced, if not explicit, semiotic consciousness” (1986, 51).62 Within this system, characters may act as paradigms for one another. Segal adduces the myths of young men transitioning (or not) to adulthood: The­ seus, Perseus, Telemachus, Orestes, Phaethon, Hippolytus, and Actaeon (1986, 56). As symbols in a system, t­ hese myths and characters are also polysemic. For example, while at the beginning of their myths Telemachus and Orestes are both young men displaying ­g reat loyalty to their f­ athers, ­later in their sto­ ries Telemachus’s loyalty to his ­mother stands in stark contrast to the violent antipathy of Orestes to his. The megatext of myth is rendered even more nu­ anced when the speaker and addressee have carefully studied the literary provenance of each repre­sen­ta­tion of mythological characters, as Cicero and his elite Roman audience had.

12 I NT R OD U CT I ON

In my analy­sis of Ovid’s repre­sen­ta­tions of the two tragic heroines, Phae­ dra and Medea, Segal’s formulation of this megatext shines a light on Ovid’s discursive strategies and ­those he attributes to his heroines. Considering the two heroines and their paradigms in his corpus, I investigate further what their generic origin connotes; how they manipulate their literary tradition, employ­ ing generic codes in order to redefine or reify their meaning in the megatext of myth; and how their gender affects the success of their attempts to control their connotation, specifically in their new, nondramatic poetic location. When Phaedra and Medea speak in Ovid’s work, their tragic lineage looms large, con­ stituting a challenge to overcome or the inevitable outcome of the verses they compose. My definition of Phaedra-­like and Medea-­like figures follows Curley’s for­ mulation and includes ­those mythological heroines whose stories in Ovid’s corpus engage most closely with the plot and themes of Euripides’s plays. In the Ovidian Phaedra’s epistle (Her. 4), our heroine-­writer makes reference to a number of traceable moments in Euripides’s extant play.63 But Larmour has argued that the stories of Scylla, Byblis, and Myrrha—­found in Metamorphoses 8, 9, and 10 respectively—­incorporate t­hose ele­ments of Euripides’s Hipp. II which the Hippolytus-­Virbius episode (15.479–621) does not.64 In book 9, for example, “Caunus plays the part of Hippolytus”65 by reacting to Byblis’s inces­ tuous desire. Although in Ovid’s tale, the nurse is replaced by a letter, Caunus’s response (Met. 9.574–79) resembles that of Euripides’s extant Hippolytus (Hipp. II, 602–67) in its sudden and violent fury. Caunus’s flight also recalls Hippolytus’s exile in Hipp. II.66 Other ele­ments of the plot, such as Phaedra’s initial desire to die and the sophistic nurse who intervenes and mediates, show up in Myrrha’s tale.67 As is the case for Phaedra, we may find traceable moments from Euripid­ es’s Medea throughout Ovid’s work.68 Potentially, the closest reworking of Euripides’s tragedy may have been found in Ovid’s own lost tragedy, Medea (cited above).69 In the Heroides, both Hypsipyle’s (Her. 6) and Medea’s (12) let­ ters anticipate the events of the Attic tragedy in what Barchiesi (1993) calls a “­f uture reflexive.”70 Ovid’s epic Medea follows Apollonius’s epic more closely, for her Phaedra-­like tradition is foregrounded, while her Euripidean revenge is relegated to only a few lines (Met. 7.394–97).71 Nonetheless we find Eurip­ ides’s play restaged elsewhere in the Metamorphoses. Newlands (1997) interprets Medea’s tale as part of a larger “marriage group” found in books 6–8 (Procne, Medea, Scylla, Procris, Orithyia). Procne in par­tic­u­lar completes her story by rehearsing Medea’s Euripidean infanticide at the end of book 6, preparing Ov­ id’s audience for his introduction of Medea at the beginning of book 7.72 Ovid’s epic Procne, moreover, is renewing the mutual influence of Euripid­

I NT R OD U CT I ON 13

es’s Medea and Sophocles’s Tereus in the fifth-­century theater of Dionysus. Pointing to the chorus’s omission of Procne as a pre­ce­dent for Medea’s crime at Eur. Med. 1282–84,73 March (2003) has argued that Tereus could have been written a­ fter Sophocles saw the moving revenge staged by Euripides in 431 BCE. Alternatively, Sommerstein, Fitzpatrick, and Talboy (2006, 158–59) sug­ gest that Tereus preceded Medea, and that Euripides pointedly suppresses the knowledge of Procne, the absence of which his audience would note. By in­ corporating famous ele­ments of Euripides’s Medea in Procne’s tale, Ovid may be signaling his awareness of his tragic pre­de­ces­sors’ dialogue, further con­ necting both heroines in his Metamorphoses to fifth-­century Attic tragedy. The intersection of per­for­mance and performativity is crucial to Ovid’s con­ struction of the Euripidean heroines. The literary repre­sen­ta­tion of ­woman or girl, torn between her erotic desire and normative gender and kinship roles, acts as a citation of a very specific identity, that of the Phaedra of Attic tragedy. The repre­sen­ta­tion of betrayed lover searching for a means of revenge cites the Medea of Euripides’s tragedy. Ovid’s engagement with his literary pre­de­ces­sors in the genre of tragedy highlights the dramatic per­for­mance of a role such as that of incestuous stepmother or murderous wife. His engagement with tragic paradigms also draws attention to the performative nature of gender and kin­ ship roles, identities which must be repeated, for each citation is made ­under dif­fer­ent circumstances (each individual production of the play) and by dif­fer­ ent subjects (each individual actor playing Phaedra or Medea).

Tragic Passions The following chapters consider the effect of such citations of Phaedra and Medea in Ovid’s pre-­exilic works. In chapter 1, I begin my study with Ovid’s erotodidactic poem, Ars Amatoria, where the myths of Phaedra, Medea, and similar heroines are distilled into examples that function like words in the megatext of myth. Their semiotic value is cited by the poet-­praeceptor in in­ structive cata­logues meant to provide lessons for his pupils. Chapter 2 explores the effect of Phaedra-­like female narrating voices on the same megatext of myth which the poet-­praeceptor speaks (Phaedra, Her. 4, and Byblis, Met. 9). Each heroine strug­gles to redefine her meaning as sign by shifting her cita­ tion into a new generic context. In chapter 3, I demonstrate how Medea-­like female speakers, by contrast, embrace their traditional exemplary function and exploit the destruction it cites (Hypsipyle, Her. 6, and Procne, Met. 6). Ovid’s repre­sen­ta­tions of Phaedra-­and Medea-­like figures are creative prod­ ucts, meditations on gender, genre, and power in Augustan Rome. Nonetheless,

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his gendered discourses repeatedly reproduce, in their deep structure, gen­ der hierarchies which justify the subordination of female bodies in the Roman world. Ovid’s play with the Augustan discourses of desire and femininity in these passages paradoxically reinvests cultural norms with authority ­ through their very repetition. Before his exile, however, Ovid’s own, albeit hesi­ tant, alignment with ­these marginal feminine voices attributes to poetry the power to influence Roman norms of gender and genre as he represents his heroines trying to manipulate the symbolic economy of myth and redefine their semantic value despite the weight of their literary tradition. Phaedra’s own Attic tragic heritage provides a pre­ce­dent for the poet’s ability to rede­ fine the paradigmatic value of a mythological character. Barrett notes that Euripides’s two Hippolytus plays are unusual among Attic tragic playwrights.74 “He produced so radical and so successful a recasting of his original treatment that with it . . . ​he won one of the only four first prizes that he achieved throughout his c­ areer” (Barrett 1964, 13).75 How radically distinct each of Phaedra’s tragic repre­sen­ta­tions was is not clear from the extant evidence, but we may nevertheless surmise that each it­ eration of Phaedra by Euripides and Sophocles, like Butlerian citations, grad­ ually modified her symbolic value. So too, we can interpret Ovid’s further iterations of Phaedra and Medea u ­ nder dif­fer­ent names in his own work as attempts to innovate in this tradition by redefining their symbolic value. Ov­ id’s temporary alignment with female writing subjects does not, however, rep­ resent the male poet’s identification with an abject feminine position. The poetic failure, punishment, and repudiation of female writers are constructed as the result of their “nature” as ­Woman, and are generically marked as “tragic.” His masculine poetic voice, by contrast, ultimately aligns itself with a controlled, rational, and authoritative ars, whose gendered and generic po­ sition enjoys a f­ ree reign to oscillate and play with poetic possibilities.

C h a p te r   1

Signs of Abject Desire in Ars Amatoria

Throughout Ovid’s poetry, Phaedra and Medea appear as paradigms in exemplary cata­logues of mythological figures meant to teach, warn, or encourage the auditor or reader. In his erotodidactic poetry alone, Phaedra and Medea appear in ten lists.1 Their pedagogical efficacy relies on the audience’s shared knowledge of their myths from which, the author can assume, a common logical association w ­ ill be drawn. T ­ hese lists serve as a con­ ve­nient beginning to our exploration of Phaedra-­and Medea-­like figures in Ovid’s texts. Ostensibly distilled to their central exemplarity as items in a list, we may see how Ovid manipulates their true polysemic connotation, some­ times in tension with the purported lesson presented by the narrator, or poet-­ praeceptor, of the didactic poem. This chapter w ­ ill focus on two lists from the books of the Ars Amatoria instructing male lovers (1.283–340; 2.381–84, 399– 408).2 The cata­logues of ­women are inflected by gender ste­reo­types of femi­ nine irrationality and generic codes from tragedy. Each example, therefore, fundamentally stands for the theme of Phaedra’s and Medea’s tragic plays—­the danger to men posed by destructive female passion. In a metapoetic register, ­these figures embody the generic introduction of tragic ele­ments to elegy. The idea of the “abject” subject, as defined by Kristeva and Butler, is a use­ ful lens through which to look at Ovid’s paradigms. If we use the abject to think about ­these lists, we can see what kind of ideological work they are ­doing. The Kristevan abject subject is a fictitious other who absorbs all of the 15

16 C h ap t e r  1

qualities which are socially repugnant but, nevertheless, originate in members of the community. This imaginary subject is constructed in order to produce a complementary and equally imaginary normative subject with which re­ spectable members of society may self-­identify.3 Butler further theorizes the abject, once constructed, as a cautionary figure who embodies the exclusion and punishment one may suffer if one fails to eliminate or successfully sup­ press ­those repudiated qualities the abject subject embodies. ­Because the ab­ ject figure si­mul­ta­neously demarcates the limits of normal and acceptable be­hav­iors for members of a community and acts as a warning continuously regulating this be­hav­ior, its existence is essential.4 With this definition in mind, it is pos­si­ble to understand the abject female desire described by the poet-­ praeceptor as both a cautionary tale—­a warning for the Augustan subject of how not to act—­and the definition of what male desire is not. Indeed, the structure of the cata­logue constructs a male desire which is by contrast h ­ uman, in control, and civilized. Nevertheless, t­ hese figures in Ovid’s verse illustrate the porous nature of the boundary between us and them; male and female; tragedy and elegy; for what is constructed as abject originates in, but is dis­ avowed by, the ideal subject and is reassigned as a characteristic of the abject. Each of the individual mythological heroines in the two cata­logues ­under consideration can be understood as similarly abjected, for they participate in what Charles Segal has identified as a semiotics of myth, “a coded system of virtually interchangeable symbols,”5 whose paradigmatic relationship is em­ phasized by the structure of a poetic cata­logue. He argues for a “megatext” of myth at work in ancient lit­er­a­ture.6 The total system of myth acts like a lan­ guage in the ancient world, and, in this language, mythological characters act like words. A mythological figure like Medea, for example, represents more than just the specific character Medea. She may also represent the concept of “revenge,” or stand for a ­woman who kills her ­children. Moreover, the sym­ bolic meanings created in myth sometimes reaffirm social expectations and cultural norms—­for example, warnings about taboos (e.g., Oedipus and in­ cest) or examples of virtuous be­hav­ior (Penelope and the ideal wife) (Segal 1986, 49). ­Because this language is unconscious, but shared, Ovid can assume that his audience can “read” the megatext (Segal 1986, 58). We can see how this lan­ guage of myth is “spoken” in tragedy when characters use other mythologi­ cal characters as examples of certain be­hav­iors. In Euripides’s Hippolytus, for example, the nurse and the chorus offer to Phaedra, as models for self-­ forgiveness, Zeus and Dawn (451–57) and Iole and Semele (545–64), and thereby identify mythological examples which are paradigms in a given cate­

SI GNS O F A B J ECT DES I R E I N A R S A M ATO R I A

17

gory.7 The nurse suggests to Phaedra divine examples, who carried on a­ fter shameful love affairs, in order to dissuade her from her plans of suicide. The persuasiveness of her examples relies on the familiarity of the internal audi­ ence (Phaedra) and the external audience with ­these myths. The discourse which represented and reified ste­reo­types about female pas­ sion was produced by a power­f ul patriarchal structure. A Roman w ­ oman’s ­father determined her identity in the ­family (she was named ­after her ­father), and her ­father ultimately de­cided whom she would marry. The discourse of marriage reflects the passive position of the w ­ omen, who w ­ ere “led into, held in, or given in” marriage (in matrimonium ducere / in matrimonio habere / in matrimonium dare / collocare; OLD, matrimonium, 1.a–­d.). Marriage established impor­tant familial and social relationships between men, creating affinitates between families.8 ­Women whose adultery threatened the f­ amily eco­nom­ically (i.e., through a potential extramarital pregnancy which disrupted inheritance rights) or socially (i.e., by dissolving the alliance between two families) ­were punished in kind by the lex Julia de adulteriis coercendis, a law most likely passed around 18 BCE.9 Adulteresses lost inheritance rights and ­were no longer mar­ riageable ­under the terms of the lex Julia, but took on the status of “prosti­ tute” u ­ nder the law.10 Their bodies w ­ ere also dressed for the part. They w ­ ere no longer allowed to wear the stola, the traditional dress of a matrona. Instead, they w ­ ere made to wear the toga, the costume of a man and of a prostitute.11 No longer recognized as matronae, their bodies ­were outwardly marked and defined by their transgressive sexuality. The corporeal signification of the toga for the adulteress and the prostitute, a man’s costume, supports the argument that active sexuality is gendered masculine in Roman discourses of desire; hence, ­women who made their own decisions about their sexual partners w ­ ere behaving like men and w ­ ere not recognizable as w ­ omen. ­These laws consti­ tuted a statutory abjection by excluding ­women who disrupted social norms from Roman society as w ­ omen while serving to define normative feminine sexuality as passive. Furthermore, men ­were expected ­under the law to police the sexuality of their wives. If a husband did not take action ­after discovering his wife’s transgressions, he was considered a pimp u ­ nder the lex Julia.12 The ­legal abjection of male subjects who did not police normative sexual mores also delineated the proper per­for­mance of masculinity, and their punishment, like that of transgressive w ­ omen, served as a warning for ­others to remain within the bound­aries ­these abject subjects drew. Our reading w ­ ill reveal that the punishments for sexual indiscretion meted out to the heroines, which are carefully cata­logued in the poet-­praeceptor’s list, reflect ­these social and ­legal realities of Ovid’s time.

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Ars Amatoria 1.283–340 The first cata­logue we ­will consider is found at 1.283–340, where the poet-­ praeceptor offers a list of w ­ omen in love: Byblis, Myrrha, Pasiphae, Aerope, Scylla, Clytemnestra, Medea, Phthia, Phaedra, and Phineus’s wife. Although our poet-­praeceptor tells us the purpose of his list—to assure the “hunting” lover of a catch b­ ecause the prey wants to be caught (haec quoque, quam poteris credere nolle, uolet, 274)—­a careful reading of this passage and its narrative frame demonstrates that, for a literary pupil with knowledge of ­earlier, more elabo­ rated treatments of t­ hese myths, their function as exempla exceeds the intent of our teacher and his lesson. Instead, the mythological desiring ­women in Ovid’s Ars construct normative desiring subjects both through their function as cautionary tales and through their alterity—­subjects whose desires define, through their opposition, desires that are considered normative in the Augus­ tan world. As we saw from the Euripidean lists, paradigmatic relationships may be long established.13 Ovid’s audience likely could generate a list of paradigms of female desire on their own. The list ­under consideration has been compared to Propertius 3.19.1–28, whose collection of elegies was published perhaps twenty years before the first two books of Ovid’s Ars.14 Propertius 3.19 con­ structs a very similar list of desiring w ­ omen (Pasiphae, Tyro, Myrrha, Medea, Clytemnestra, and Scylla, in that order) as proof to his beloved, Cynthia, that ­women’s sexual appetite (libido) is out of control. ­These paradigms are established in the plastic arts as well. Let us consider, as examples, two groups of frescoes painted a­ fter Ovid’s poetry was published. Three frescoes featuring Medea, Phaedra, and Helen ­were found in an inner room of the Pompeian House of Jason, dating from 10 to 20 CE. Two of ­these heroines appear in Ovid’s list, one in Propertius’s. Medea sits to the side of the composition, head in hand, holding a dagger, and looking t­oward her ­children who take up the rest of the panel. Phaedra reclines in the center of her panel, her nurse on one side holding a wax tablet, an attendant on the other holding a jewelry box. Helen is depicted standing beside a seated Paris with Cupid in the center. The panels offer viewers a moment when the heroine makes her crucial decision.15 A series of frescoes from the Villa of Munatia Procula at Tor Marancia near Rome, which dates to a l­ ittle over a ­century ­after Ovid’s death, resembles even more closely the list in Ars Amatoria ­because of the brevity of each repre­sen­ta­tion. It depicts five ­women, four of which ap­ pear in Ovid’s list and three in Propertius’s: Canace, Myrrha, Pasiphae, Pha­ edra, and Scylla.16 Each ­woman floats on a plain background, is accompanied by her name and, in most instances, holds a prop. Canace holds a sword, Myr­ rha runs (from her ­father?), Pasiphae stands by the bull, Scylla is on the wall

Wall-painting of Phaedra from the Villa of Munatia Procula, Tor Marancia, Vatican, sala delle Nozze Aldobrandini inv. 79636. Photograph courtesy of B. Bergmann, all rights reserved. Reproduced from Bettina Bergmann, “The Lineup: Passion, Transgression, and Mythical Women in Roman Painting,” EuGeSta 7, 2017, fig. 5.

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of Megara holding her ­father’s lock of hair, and Phaedra (see figure) holds a noose. Both collections of painted figures function as a literary list of exam­ ples, giving only the most necessary information, but inviting the viewer to create a thematic association between the heroines and their myths. Group­ ings such as ­those found in the House of Jason and the Villa of Munatia Proc­ ula attest to the long-­lived role ­these mythological characters held as paradigms in the Roman mind.17 The groupings may also speak to the influence of the poetic depictions, especially Ovid’s Ars Amatoria, Heroides, and Metamorphoses, for each of ­these characters is memorably “painted” by the poet in t­hese poems.18 When Ovid’s poet-­praeceptor calls upon ­these familiar paradigms of desiring ­women, he maintains the list is meant to bolster the confidence of his reader-­ pupil of a f­ uture erotic conquest. When the poet-­praeceptor speaks the language of myth in this passage, his stated lesson—­that all ­women are sex crazed—is in productive tension with a list of paradigms whose passions do not lead to the sort of romantic and pleas­ur­able affairs the pupil may seek. Instead, their sto­ ries have disastrous outcomes. The first five examples—­Byblis, Myrrha, Pa­ siphae, Aerope, and Scylla—­destroy the ­family by violating normative kinship roles. ­These examples are focalized through the perspective of the ­woman, per­ haps justifying their inclusion in a list of ­eager lovers. Despite themselves, they could not fight their desire. When the narrator shifts perspective with Agamem­ non and begins to offer examples from the point of view of the w ­ omen’s victims—­Agamemnon, Creusa, Phoenix, Hippolytus, and Phineus—­the cata­ logue demonstrates that w ­ omen’s excessive sexual passion is complemented by their excessive rage. The cata­logue is structured in the following way: 283–84: Byblis 285–88: Myrrha 289–326: Pasiphae 327–30: Aerope 331–32: Scylla 333–34: Agamemnon 335–36: Medea 337: Phoenix 338: Hippolytus 339–40: Phineus The frame of the cata­logue organizes gender categories into normative and abject. Before the narrator introduces his exemplary heroines, the reader is primed to oppose rational man to irrational woman/beast.

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prima tuae menti ueniat fiducia, cunctas posse capi: capies, tu modo tende plagas. uere prius uolucres taceant, aestate cicadae, Maenalius lepori det sua terga canis, femina quam iuueni blande temptata repugnet; haec quoque, quam poteris credere nolle, uolet. utque uiro furtiua Venus, sic grata puellae; uir male dissimulat, tectius illa cupit. conueniat maribus ne quam nos ante rogemus, femina iam partes uicta rogantis aget.19 mollibus in pratis admugit femina tauro, femina cornipedi semper adhinnit equo. parcior in nobis nec tam furiosa libido; legitimum finem flamma uirilis habet. (Ars 1.269–82) First let confidence enter your mind, all w ­ omen can be caught: you w ­ ill catch them, merely spread your nets. Birds would be s­ ilent in the spring, cicadas in the summer, the Maenalian hound would turn her back to the hare, before a ­woman who is charmingly approached would resist a young man; she also, whom you can believe is not willing, w ­ ill be will­ ing. And just as secret love is pleasing to a man, so it is to a girl; a man is not good at feigning, she desires in a more covert way. Should it suit us men not to ask her first, the ­woman, already overcome, ­will play the part of the asker. The female moos at the bull in the soft meadows, the female always neighs to the hoofed h ­ orse. Desire is more moderate in us and not so full of madness; the manly flame has a lawful limit. The exclusivity of the didactic “we” (nos, 277; in nobis, 281; nostra, 342) cre­ ates a closed circle which includes the poet-­praeceptor and the student in a uni­ fied category. This category is identified as male by the direct address in line 267: “whoever and wherever you are, men, direct teachable minds” (quiquis ubique, uiri, dociles aduertite mentes). The category “Man” (uir) is opposed to the excluded femina who is the object of study. Furthermore, Ovid uses a se­ ries of comparatives (tectius, 276; parcior, 281; acrior . . . ​nostra plusque, 342), marking the difference between the two categories by degrees. The us-­them dichotomy is further reinforced by examples from the animal world which frame the assuring statements that ­women w ­ ill be caught ­because they actively desire, although they appear other­wise. In fact, the natu­ral be­hav­ior of ani­ mals (birds, cicadas, hunting dogs) is more likely to be reversed (271–73) than a femina would refuse her suitor (repugnet, 273). If men ­don’t ask them first

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(ante rogemus, 277), ­women ­will act the part of the suitor (278). The compari­ son of aggressive female sexuality to natu­ral animal be­hav­ior and the repeti­ tion of the word femina in three successive lines, even in the same metrical position (278–80), equates w ­ omen’s sexuality with animal sexuality. Such a strategy further differentiates men from w ­ omen, but more importantly ex­ cludes female sexuality from h ­ uman sexuality, relegating it to the lower order of beast. The binary categories of active and passive are established by the grammar and syntax of the poet-­praeceptor’s frame. The female is the active desirer, which aligns the male with the passive position—­and it is this reversal which is aligned with natu­ral animal be­hav­ior (271–73, cited above) and opposed to ­human be­ hav­ior. Also set in opposition are the natures of masculine and feminine de­ sires. ­Women are like men in that they enjoy illicit affairs (furtiua, 275), but they are dif­fer­ent in their experience of desire. They are better at disguising it (276). Their desire (libido) is less sparing (parcior, 281), is keener (acrior, 342), and has more madness (furiosa, 281; plus furoris, 342).20 The comparatives ar­ ticulate the presence of excess.21 The “more than” masculine desire of ­women is constructed in such a way as to define female desire as what male desire is not, and vice versa. What the pupil learns is that “we” men are more sincere in our love (in comparison to the dissimulation of w ­ omen), more in control, less fierce and less insane. The final line in the last couplet (282) before we move into the list defines male desire definitively: legitimum finem flamma uirilis habet. A man’s love “burns,” so to speak, it is a flame (flamma) but it burns within legitimate or l­egal bound­aries. The abject sexuality constructed by the poet-­ praeceptor’s frame is one which an individual cannot control, which does not have a legitimate boundary, but which instead controls the individual, render­ ing it abject—­excluded from what counts as ­human, but set as a limit of the very sexuality which it exceeds. Such desires are associated exclusively with ­women in this passage, implying that men do not experience such desire ­because their sexuality is u ­ nder control. As noted above, the poet-­praeceptor confidently states that “should it suit us men not to ask her first, the ­woman, already overcome, ­will play the part of the asker” (conueniat maribus ne quam nos ante rogemus, / femina iam partes uicta rogantis aget, 277–78). The phrase partes . . . ​agere not only signals an ac­ tive role for ­women but is also used to describe acting a role onstage, and Ov­ id’s use of this dramatic language h ­ ere reminds us of his list’s engagement with tragedy and its themes.22 This semantic context acts as a cue for the reader who was more sensitive to repre­sen­ta­tions of any of ­these heroines which may have been or ­were currently found on the tragic stage.23 While the first two exempla, Byblis and Myrrha, ­were not, so far as we know, subjects of trage­

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dies, the remaining eight examples ­were.24 Such a reminder complicates the meaning of the poet-­praeceptor’s list by introducing to the mind of his audi­ ence the complex and manifold repre­sen­ta­tions of each heroine offered by both Greek and Roman tragedians.25 The cata­logue which follows can be un­ derstood as a list of the “roles” available to w ­ omen. They, that is, ­women, are the same as the paradigms. Like the floating figures of the imperial fresco in Tor Marancia, Ovid’s list provides only the most necessary identifiers to readers—­a mere one to four lines. T ­ hese examples frame an extended Pasiphae narrative (thirty-­eight lines). Byblis (283–84) and Myrrha (285–88), the examples preceding the Pasiphae pas­ sage, share a similar structure with some variation. Byblida quid referam, uetito quae fratris amore arsit et est laqueo fortiter ulta nefas? Myrrha patrem, sed non qua filia debet, amauit, et nunc obducto cortice pressa latet; illius lacrimis, quas arbore fundit odora, unguimur, et dominae nomina gutta tenet. (Ars 1.283–88) Why should I mention Byblis, who burned with a forbidden love for her ­brother and bravely avenged her unspeakable crime with a noose? Myrrha loved her ­father, but not as a ­daughter should, and now she is hidden, constrained beneath enveloping bark; with her tears, which she sheds from a fragrant tree, we anoint ourselves, and the oil retains its mistress’s name. The first hexameter of each example begins with a proper name, names a kin­ ship role which has been distorted, and ends with amor/amare, the aspect of the relationship which is in crisis. In both cases, the kinship role (­brother and ­father) is positioned next to the noun or pronoun which identifies the girl, em­ phasizing by proximity a close relationship which has become too close. En­ closed by the proper names and names of ­family position are words indicating both the existence of rules (the incest taboo) and their transgression (“forbid­ den,” uetito, 283; “not as a ­daughter should,” non . . . ​filia debet, 285). The remaining lines of each example indicate the punishment for this trans­ gression. Byblis becomes an avenger (ulta) of her own crime; the punishment she exacts is suicide (laqueo). Her suicide, accomplished in a feminine manner (hanging), returns her to a normative status; however, her status as criminal and avenger—­a combination of opposing roles—­reflects her incestuous posi­ tion.26 Incest forces Myrrha and her f­ather to inhabit two separate kinship

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relationships at once (­daughter to ­father as well as wife to husband), a paradoxi­ cal state akin to lawbreaker and law enforcer (“avenged her unspeakable crime,” est . . . ​ulta nefas, 284). Myrrha’s crime is now hidden and constrained by her new form (nunc obducto cortice pressa latet, 286). The additional couplet indicates that her name (her identity as a h ­ uman who once lived) and her sorrow (repre­ sented by her tears, lacrimis, 287) now belong to the sap of a tree. Both w ­ omen are removed from the ­human realm as punishment, thereby rendered abject. The extended treatment of Pasiphae which disrupts the cata­logue further defines the exemplarity of Byblis, Myrrha, and the heroines that follow.27 It also explores in detail the themes of gender violation and its punishment, while introducing tragedy as a generic theme, both with Pasiphae’s previous tragic role and with bacchic imagery and vocabulary. Her object of desire—­the bull—­ connects the list to its frame by reprising the association of female desire with animal sexuality. Ovid depicts his Pasiphae leaving the marriage chamber and being carried into the wilderness (“The queen has left ­behind her marriage bed and is car­ ried into the grove and forest like a bacchante, driven by the Aonian god,” in nemus et saltus thalamo regina relicto/ fertur, ut Aonio concita Baccha deo, Ars 1.311– 12).28 The mountains, on the margins of culture, are the requisite space for bacchantes to whom the poet-­praeceptor compares Pasiphae in the pentame­ ter. Desiring w ­ omen are often characterized by furor in Ovid, as they are in the frame (furiosa, 281; plus furoris, 342), or they are associated with the wor­ ship of Dionysus, as Pasiphae is.29 In fact, similes likening any w ­ oman acting 30 passionately or irrationally to bacchantes are numerous. His worship was also closely associated with drunkenness and sexual promiscuity in both Greece and Rome.31 In addition, the presence of Dionysus and his worship in Roman poetry often signals the presence of tragic ele­ments in other genres.32 Men­ tion of Dionysus not only alerts the reader-­pupil to the ecstatic nature of the ­women’s desire but also reminds him of the context in which this destructive desire became canonical, at the tragic competitions of the City Dionysia in Athens.33 As noted e­ arlier, eight of the ten heroines featured in this list w ­ ere depicted on the Attic stage. Pasiphae herself was the subject of Euripides’s (now fragmentary) Cretans, which told the story of Minos’s discovery of the birth of the Minotaur.34 While worshippers of Bacchus in real life returned to their normative social roles, the tragic bacchantes inflicted damage upon their kin, ravaged homes, and in par­tic­u­lar destroyed the men in ­those homes.35 For the Romans, moreover, the threat posed by worshippers of Bacchus had a historic context. Early in the second c­ entury BCE, the worship of Dionysus in Rome fell ­under the suspicion of the Senate. Of par­tic­u­lar concern ­were the Greek origins of the cult and the unsupervised gatherings of ­people where

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gender and class distinctions ­were blurred.36 As Seaford puts it: “The intensity of the cult, together with the secret initiation and oath of loyalty to which its members ­were subjected, may have been—or seemed to be—­a focus of iden­ tity that transcended, and so threatened loyalty to, the existing structures of the Roman order” (Seaford 2006, 60–61).37 A senatus consultum was passed in 186 BCE restricting assemblies, but individual worship was allowed to con­ tinue. As a result of the suppression and its legacy, Roman literary references to bacchantes resonate particularly strongly with the context of social disor­ der.38 Still a generic marker, the bacchantes also and especially represented the wild, often violent, extralegal frenzy of a foreign religion, the ecstasy of the other. In the Aeneid, for instance, bacchic frenzy is inspired not by Bacchus but by a fury, Allecto, or is simulated in order to work against male order and un­ dermine homosocial alliances.39 Velleius Paterculus (2.82.4) tells us that in 34 BCE, Antony presented himself as the New Dionysus in his triumph over the Armenians in Alexandria. Antony’s per­for­mance, Miller argues, “was precisely the kind of ‘eastern excess’ that allowed Augustus to portray himself as the defender of traditional Roman order against the dangers of an orientalizing and effeminate tyranny” (Miller 2004, 167).40 In short, w ­ omen who behave like bacchantes resemble ­women in tragedies and symbolize a threat to the Ro­ man f­ amily and state. Also like the bacchantes of tragedy, Pasiphae can no longer discern oppo­ sitional categories. She describes the bull as if he w ­ ere a man, calling him domino . . . ​meo (314), ipsum (315), and again meo (322).41 The poet-­praeceptor urges Pasiphae to make a distinction: “If you prefer to deceive your man/hus­ band, deceive [him] with a man” (siue uirum mauis fallere, falle uiro, 310). The line relies on the two meanings for the word vir, both “man” and “husband,” further emphasizing the exclusive nature of the role of husband—­one must be a man to be a vir.42 Ovid’s Pasiphae treats the female cows as if they ­were ­humans, and behaves vindictively and jealously as if they w ­ ere paelices (320, 321), iterating the alignment of ­women with animals that the animal comparanda in the frame articulates (271–73, 278–80). Another reminder of tragedy is Pasiphae’s inability to recognize who she is—­both her ­human form and her status as ­human wife and queen—­a pro­ grammatic dilemma of Attic Greek tragedy.43 The poet-­praeceptor draws at­ tention to this when he addresses Pasiphae: ille tuus nullas sentit adulter opes. quid tibi cum speculo montana armenta petenti? quid totiens positas fingis inepta comas? crede tamen speculo, quod te negat esse iuuencam: (Ars, 1.304–7)

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That lover of yours does not notice any riches. What good does a mir­ ror do you if you are seeking out the herd in the mountains? Why do you, silly ­woman, style your hair so often? Nevertheless, trust your mirror which denies that you are a cow. She is unable to “see” herself, despite the mirror in her hand, nor does she realize that the bull is unable to feel the influence of (sentit, 304; OLD, sentire, 5) her careful cultus. The poet-­praeceptor represents a Pasiphae who longs to be a virgo, drawing upon the mythological exempla of the victimized maidens Europa and Io (“And now she asks to become Europa, now Io, one ­because she is a cow, the other b­ ecause she was carried by a cow,” et modo se Europen fieri, modo postulat Io, / altera quod bos est, altera uecta boue, Ars am. 1.323–24), the former pursued by Zeus in the form of a bull, the latter transformed into a cow by Zeus. Pasiphae the mythological character is a desiring wife pursuing the object of her desire, but she wants to be a mythological, victimized maiden who is pursued as an object of desire. Like the first two examples of desiring w ­ omen in the poet-­praeceptor’s list, Pasiphae is represented as behaving in a way which is normal for neither her social role as wife/queen nor her gender role as ­woman, and her story de­ scribes in more detail the threat this poses to men in her f­amily. We are told that the concern (cura, 301), which she should have for her husband, does not delay her from ­running off to the herd: “She accompanies the herd, nor does love for her husband delay her from ­going, and Minos was conquered by a bull” (it comes armentis, nec ituram cura moratur / coniugis, et Minos a boue uictus erat, 301–2). The structure of the couplet and the enjambment of coniugis in the pentameter reinforces the displacement of her cura. Instead of appearing in its proper place with her husband, Minos, identified twice in the following line (coniugis, Minos), cura shares the hexameter line with armentis. In line 302, both his familial role (husband) and proper name are given and fill the first hemistich of the pentameter, drawing our attention to him. The second hemistich describes the outcome of her displaced cura as Minos, her ­human husband, is made the vanquished ­enemy of a cow: Minos a boue uictus erat. The outcome overturns the proper hierarchy of man and beast.44 Further­ more, by leaving the marriage chamber (thalamo regina relicto, 311), which is a symbol of the relationship to her husband and the h ­ ouse­hold which he controls, Pasiphae steps over the threshold of normative f­ amily roles. This movement spatially signifies her transgression and her movement ­toward a position outside of society and the traditional rules which govern its mem­ bers. Pasiphae’s desire is no longer part of civilization but is located in the wilderness.

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In the frame the poet-­praeceptor compares ­women with cows, claiming that, like female cows that pursue a bull, a ­woman ­will eventually pursue a man: “The ­woman, already overcome, w ­ ill play the part of the asker. The female moos at the bull in the soft meadows” (femina iam partes uicta rogantis aget. / mollibus in pratis admugit femina tauro, 278–79). In the Pasiphae passage, the poet-­praeceptor tells the story of a w ­ oman who literally equates ­women with cows, a ­woman who wants to be a cow, and a w ­ oman who equates a bull with a man. Pasiphae must perform the role of a beast to satisfy her unnatural (i.e., abnormal) desire. Active female desire, for which Pasiphae is an exemplum, makes men into beasts as well. ­Because it reverses a fundamental Roman gender binary—­active/masculine vs. passive/ feminine—­active female desire is also associated with and represented as revers­ ing other fundamental categories such as ­family roles (through incest and adul­ tery) and the hierarchy of man and beast. The ultimate product of Pasiphae’s consummated desire is the monstrous Minotaur, half-­bull, half-­man. He is not explic­itly named in this passage, but he gives away his f­ ather (partu proditus auctor erat, 1.326), hinting at his biform nature. Her offspring epitomizes the results when categories are dissolved and the abject irrupts into normative society.45 Closing the frame of the lengthy Pasiphae passage are more brief exem­ pla: Aerope, Scylla, Clytemnestra, Medea, Phthia, Phaedra, and a mythologi­ cal heroine whose name is lost. Cressa Thyesteo si se abstinuisset amore (et quantum est uno posse carere uiro?), non medium rupisset iter curruque retorto Auroram uersis Phoebus adisset equis. filia purpureos Niso furata capillos pube premit rabidos inguinibusque canes. qui Martem terra, Neptunum effugit in undis, coniugis Atrides uictima dira fuit. cui non defleta est Ephyraeae flamma Creusae et nece natorum sanguinolenta parens? fleuit Amyntorides per inania lumina Phoenix; Hippolytum rabidi diripuistis equi. quid fodis immeritis, Phineu, sua lumina natis? poena reuersura est in caput ista tuum. omnia feminea sunt ista libidine mota; acrior est nostra plusque furoris habet. (Ars am. 1.327–42) If the Cretan ­woman had abstained from love for Thyestes (and is it so much to be able to stay away from one man?), Phoebus would not have

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broken his journey midway, changed course in his chariot and ap­ proached Aurora with rerouted ­horses. ­Because his ­daughter stole the red lock from Nisus’ hair, she holds back savage dogs with her groin and abdomen. The son of Atreus, who fled Mars by land, Neptune on the waves, was the dreadful victim of his wife. Who has not wept over the flames of Ephyrean Creusa and the ­mother bloodied by the murder of her sons? The son of Amyntor, Phoenix, wept through empty eyes; you, savage h ­ orses, tore apart Hippolytus. Why do you dig out the eyes of your innocent sons, Phineus? That punishment w ­ ill be turned onto your head. All of t­ hose ­things ­were motivated by female desire; it is keener than ours and has more madness. Again, in ­these brief examples, our poet-­praeceptor foregrounds ­family relation­ ships. This focus highlights the failure of each ­woman to perform properly her kinship role of wife, d­ aughter, or ­mother. Aerope (327–30) is named only by her nationality (Cressa, 327) and role as adulteress with Thyestes (Thyesteo, 327). This sort of learned reference is a Hellenistic feature characteristic of the Roman elegists, but it also suggests that Aerope’s recognition relies on ­these two defining positions with which the heroine is in conflict. Following Aerope is a hybrid Scylla (331–32), combining both the d­ aughter of Nisus and the biform monster.46 The failure to perform her kinship role properly, due to her active desire, is given prominence by placing filia in the first position, in close proximity to the name of her f­ ather, but separated by the very t­ hing whose theft ultimately disrupts her per­for­mance of ­daughter, the purpureos . . . ​ capillos (331). Her abject sexuality is manifested in her monstrous body around her genitals (pube inguinibusque, 332). Clytemnestra (333–34) is also only named through her kinship role (coniugis Atrides, 334), and is, moreover, denied a subject position (Agamemnon holds this place). Likewise, Medea’s (335–36) name is suppressed—­she is known only by her murder of Creusa (flamma Creusae, 335) and by her role as parens (336), which is delayed ­until the last position, qualified by the destruction she has wrought.47 Line 337 describes the victim of Phthia, her son-­in-­law. Both the ­father (Amyntor) and the son (Phoenix) are named in the single line. The di­ sastrous outcome resulting directly from Phthia’s active desire (inania lumina, 337) stands in for her.48 Phaedra (338), too, is displaced by the result of her desire, while Hippolytus’s name takes first position. The list finishes with a story (339–40) nearly identical to Phthia’s (337), whose result—­the blinding of a son by a ­father, Phineus—­replaces the name of the ­woman.49 Phineus is addressed by the poet-­praeceptor, in the vocative case, and holds a central po­ sition in the first line (339).

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The structure of the list increases its psychological proximity to the reader-­ pupil. The names of the heroines gradually dis­appear, and they are identified only by their crime or their punishment.50 The list begins with five tales that fo­ cus on the consequences for the desiring ­woman (283–332), but the focus shifts with Clytemnestra to the consequences for the male victims of her desire (333– 40). The last three examples describe the mutilation of young men (337–40), close in age and lineage to Ovid’s ideal readers. All this amounts to an implicit lesson for the reader-­pupil—­a ­woman who does not contain, repress, and dis­ simulate her “naturally” intemperate desire ­will visit destruction upon the male members of her ­family and ­will be punished. The direct address to Hippolytus’s ­horses (diripuistis equi, 338) and Phineus (fodis . . . ​Phineu, 339) draws attention to the male reader-­pupil’s own risk in the face of female desire and his own respon­ sibility for resisting and repressing this female desire. Even in the shortest exam­ ples, we get a sense of what is at stake—­the dissolution of normative kinship relations and normative gendered positions of active and passive, the same ten­ sions which w ­ ere explored in Greek tragedies such as Hippolytus.51 The frame ends with an implicit alignment of ­women with tragedy, con­ structing both gender and genre as abject. omnia feminea sunt ista libidine mota; acrior est nostra plusque furoris habet. ergo age, ne dubita cunctas sperare puellas: uix erit e multis, quae neget, una, tibi. (Ars am. 1.341–44) All of ­those ­things w ­ ere motivated by female desire; it is keener than ours and has more madness. Therefore come, do not hesitate to hope for all the girls: scarcely w ­ ill ­there be one girl out of the many who would say no to you. As an abject desire, that of the active desiring ­woman delineates normative desire by representing what normative desire is not. Her desire defines the border beyond which the desire of men and w ­ omen ceases to be counted as socially and culturally acceptable and begins to resemble the desire of the non­ human. Her wild, irrational love circumscribes the lawful, finite (legitimus finis, 282), and moderate (parcior, 281) desire of Roman men, which, although still a flame (flamma uirilis, 282), is contained. Female desire is described only as the antithesis of male desire (through the use of negatives and comparatives as we see in line 281, parcior in nobis nec tam furiosa libido). The list, moreover, dem­ onstrates that female desire obstructs normative masculinity in general and normative masculine desire in par­tic­u­lar by “playing the part of the asker”

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(partes . . . ​rogantis aget, 1.278). In order for masculine desire to function, femi­ nine desire must only be apparent as a nondesire, one so successfully dissimu­ lated it cannot be detected (“whom you can believe is not willing,” quam poteris credere nolle, 274; “a man is not good at feigning, she desires in a more covert way,” uir male dissimulat, tectius illa cupit, 276). The two categories—­masculine and feminine—­are themselves opposed (active vs. passive) but they are linked in their relational status as normative roles within the discursive economy of Ovid’s ideal readers. ­These borders of normative and abject desire are policed by the threat of punishment. For the desiring female subject, the punishment is monstrosity, madness, or death. For the desiring man, the punishment is a feminized position. For the man who fails to control active female desire, the punishment is destruction. In all cases, the punishment refuses the mythologi­ cal w ­ oman or man a livable life, one which is an identity intelligible as a h ­ uman 52 ­woman or man within the symbolic gendered system of Ovid’s time. The destructive potential of w ­ omen’s erotic desires, furthermore, con­ structs all female passion in a continuum, with erotic desire balancing rage. Valladares (2021, 169–71) points to this very tension in her discussion of the frescoes in the House of Jason, discussed above. H ­ ere the myths of Helen and Phaedra guide a viewer to recall the erotic ele­ments of Medea’s myth. At the same time, the central position of Medea reminds a viewer of the violent de­ nouement of all three heroines’ stories. On this continuum, all ­women in love are also always already capable of murderous revenge. In Ovid’s cata­logue, this potential is signaled by the first entry of the list with Byblis’s reflexive ven­ geance. She is said to have “bravely avenged her unspeakable crime” (fortiter ulta nefas, 284). As we have observed, Pasiphae’s comic ira is taken out on her paelices, the cows of the herd. While her revenge is no threat to any h ­ uman men in her life, the excess of her jealous rage foreshadows the h ­ uman victims of ­later examples. She is said to hold the entrails of her rivals in her hands in victory and dare them to “please my lord” (et tenuit laeta paelicis exta ma­nu. / paelicibus quotiens placauit numina caesis/ atque ait exta tenens “ite, placete meo,” 320–22), in a parody of perverted ritual sacrifices familiar from the tragic stage. The description of her revenge, which is disguised as sacrifices (commentaque sacra, 319), is introduced by a simile comparing Pasiphae’s psychological state to an ecstatic maenad (312), marking her vengeance, like her lust, as generi­ cally tragic.53 Aerope’s lust is called Thyestean (327), guiding the pupil back to the tragic stage where, in both Greek and Roman drama, Thyestes was the victim of Atreus’s mad revenge.54 Following Aerope, the revenge associated with the examples in the cata­logue are noted explic­itly and become the focus of the entries. Agamemnon is called the “dire victim” of his wife (Clytemnes­ tra, 334), the subject of Aeschylus’s tragedy Agamemnon among ­others. Creu­

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sa’s flame, by which Medea kills her, is lamented (335), while the parent (Medea) is described as spattered by her ­children’s blood (336), as she was on Euripides’s tragic stage. Phoenix, blinded (337), Hippolytus, dismembered (338), and Phineus, blinder of his own son (339–40), finish off the list.55

Ars Amatoria 2.381–408 If we look ahead to book 2, likely published with book 1, we may see two of the characters included in the list of ­women in love, in a shorter list of ­women enraged.56 The poet-­praeceptor employs the same strategies to construct t­ hese passions as natu­r al, but wild and inhuman; disruptive to normative gender roles; and generically tragic—an abject rage which defines the limits of a nor­ mative, righ­teous anger. This companion book instructs the successful lover in maintaining his newly acquired relationship. At 2.349–408, the lesson turns to absence, its benefits and dangers. Phyllis, Penelope, and Laodamia are all deployed as examples of ­women whose hearts grew fonder while their lovers ­were away (353–56). The poet-­praeceptor warns, with the example of Helen, that too much absence offers an opportunity for adultery (357–72). He then abruptly turns to men’s philandering with cautionary examples of w ­ omen’s rage (ira, 373) when they catch their lovers cheating (377). Our three exam­ ples are Medea, Procne, and Clytemnestra. The short cata­logues are structured in the following way: 353–54: Phyllis 355: Penelope 356: Laodamia 357–72: Helen 381–82: Medea 383–84: Procne 399–408: Clytemnestra Let us first consider the short introduction to the list of enraged w ­ omen. sed neque fuluus aper media tam saeuus in ira est, fulmineo rabidos cum rotat ore canes, nec lea, cum catulis lactentibus ubera praebet, nec breuis ignaro uipera laesa pede femina quam socii deprensa paelice lecti: ardet et in uultu pignora mentis habet.

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in ferrum flammasque ruit positoque decore fertur, ut Aonii cornibus icta dei. (373–80) But neither is the golden bull as savage in the midst of rage, when he rolls fierce dogs with a lightning jaw, nor the lioness, when she offers her ud­ ders to nursing cubs, nor the small snake harmed by an ignorant foot, as a ­woman when a rival for her shared bed is caught: she burns and wears proof of her feelings on her face. She rushes for sword and flames and, ­after putting aside her honor, is carried away like she has been struck by the horns of the Aonian god. As the poet-­praeceptor does in the previous book, he marks the excessive nature of a w ­ oman’s passion by a comparative simile and by a description of its irrationality. Her rage is more savage than wild animals’ (neque . . . ​tam saevus in ira . . . ​femina quam). She puts aside honor (positoque decore, 379) as she heedlessly ­faces death (in ferrum flammasque, 379). ­Women’s wild passion is again constructed as innate and aligned with the be­hav­ior of animals, not ­humans. In the list of desiring ­women in book 1, a ­woman in love is as natu­ ral as birds singing (271) and resembles the sexual be­hav­ior of cows or ­horses (279–80). In this list, however, a ­woman’s passion exceeds the natu­ral rage of wild animals. She is more savage than a boar fighting for its life (and winning: rotat ore canes, 374), a nursing lion (375), or a snake accidentally trampled (376).57 Like erotic passion, ira is figured as a flame (ardet, 378). Compare, for exam­ ple, the same verb used to describe Phyllis’s erotic desire at 2.354: “When his sails ­were set she burned more intensely” (exarsit uelis acrius illa datis). Unlike erotic passion, her anger is not disguised but is vis­i­ble on her face (378).58 No­ where is the blame associated with her lover. The context of the animal comparanda does not suggest intended harm (from the point of view of a Roman). The first context suggests, but does not identify, a boar hunt with no trace of the ­human hunters. The second notes only that the lioness is a ­mother but does not go further. The final example is offered as an accidental injury. ­Woman, rounding off the comparison, is enraged ­because she has caught an­ other w ­ oman (paelice, 377) in the bed she shares, but the cheating lover is only suggested by lecti’s modifier, socii (377). The rage of a w ­ oman is therefore con­ structed as more savage than savage beasts and not justly motivated by an intentional injury. Her rival, like the ignaro . . . ​pede treading the snake, is an oversight that should be avoided by a careful lover. As we saw in the cata­logue of desiring ­women from book 1, this short cata­ logue, along with its frame, demonstrates the destructiveness of a ­woman’s passion. While this insight is more surprising when discovered in a set of ex­

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amples assuring a pupil w ­ ill find a girl than in a list of jealous w ­ omen, this par­tic­u­lar anger is motivated by her love and reinforces the e­ arlier, implicit les­ son that all female passions—­erotic and enraged—­are connected. They are, furthermore, excessive and disruptive, threatening not only the rival but also the male members of her ­family in general. They exceed the bounds of the ­human b­ ecause her emotions are like an animal’s. They also exceed the bounds of civil society and its laws b­ ecause her emotions motivate her to punish with­ out just cause. Consider Medea and Procne, whose brief entries highlight their importance as examples. coniugis admissum uiolataque iura marita est barbara per natos Phasias ulta suos. altera dira parens haec est, quam cernis, hirundo: aspice, signatum sanguine pectus habet. (381–84) The barbarian of Phasis avenged her spouse’s crime and the v­ iolated oaths of marriage by means of her own c­ hildren. Another terrible par­ ent is this swallow that you see: look, her breast is marked by blood. Jason is called only coniugis (381), but his responsibility in the form of a pos­ sessive genitive governs the hexameter line which describes their ­violated mar­ riage vows. This is followed by a pentameter dedicated to Medea and her infanticidal vengeance. She is identified twice by her nationality at the start of each hemistich (barbara . . . ​Phasias, 382), signaling her ethnic difference from Ovid’s readers. Her act, ulta, is followed by the final word suos, responding to the initial possessive coniugis at the start of the couplet and implicitly compar­ ing Medea’s guilt with Jason’s. Unnamed husband is guilty of broken wedding vows, but the Phasian took revenge with the lives of her own c­ hildren.59 Procne, “the other fearful parent,” is the alternate (altera, 383) Medea, and therefore augments, by her own exemplary repetition, the infanticide, which is only al­ luded to by her descriptor parens, her postmetamorphic form hirundo (383), and the blood which marks her chest. Her exemplarity is particularly vis­i­ble. The poet-­praeceptor points out the swallow in view of the pupil (quam cernis, 383) and enjoins him to look at (aspice, 384) the mark of her crime.60 Unlike Medea’s entry, Procne’s guilty husband is missing entirely. Jason must stand for both his crime and Tereus’s, attenuating the responsibility of both and mag­ nifying the guilt of the ­women. ­These two examples are strongly marked generically by their famous dra­ matic tradition. Both have been treated multiple times by Greek and Roman tragic playwrights.61 They also contain generic markers in the verse. The short

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list is introduced by a simile comparing angry ­women to maenads inspired by the god of tragedy: “She is carried away, like she has been struck by the horns of the Aonian god” (fertur, ut Aonii cornibus icta dei, 2.380). Compare this line to the simile, discussed above, which likens Pasiphae to a maenad at 1.312: “She is carried, like a bacchante, driven by the Aonian god” (fertur, ut Aonio concita Baccha deo).62 Reinforcing the generic association with tragedy are the sugges­ tions of costuming. ­Woman is said to wear proof of her feelings “on her face” (in uultu, 378), as if wearing a mask, while Procne, dressed as a swallow, is adorned with bloody marks (384). The poet-­praeceptor pauses before moving on to the third, expanded example of Clytemnestra, to note that “this” hoc is a threat to “well-­composed” and “strong” amores (“This breaks up loves that are well composed, this breaks up loves that are strong; cautious husbands must fear t­hose crimes,” hoc bene compositos, hoc firmos soluit amores; / crimina sunt cautis ista timenda uiris, 385–86). When read with a sensitivity to generic cues, this couplet appears to oppose tragic female anger not only to normative, stable sexuality but also to elegy, for both Ovid and his pre­de­ces­sor Gallus wrote five books of elegies titled Amores. Hoc, by proximity, appears to refer, not to a lover’s infidelity, but to the subject of the last six couplets—­the boar, the lion, ­Woman, Medea, Procne. Hoc equates all five and synthesizes them into “wild tragic W ­ oman,” an antithesis to orderly sexual relationships and the elegiac proj­ect. Her crimes, not Jason’s or the un­ mentioned Tereus’s, “must be feared by cautious men.” The poet-­praeceptor as­ sures his students before moving on to his third example that a cautious man may cheat with impunity. Just as in the cata­logue of book 1, discussed above, the poet-­praeceptor constructs w ­ omen’s desire as abject, absorbing the negative as­ pects of desire which normative male desire disavows. Her desire is what his is not—­animalistic, out of control, and socially destructive. However, as the frame introducing ­women’s infidelity and Clytemnestra’s entry demonstrate, it is a man’s duty to maintain normative amores, and men who fail to punish and re­ move abject female desire from society themselves move outside of the defined bound­aries of normative masculinity and into abjection. The Atreidae, Menelaus and Agamemnon, serve as examples of poorly per­ formed masculinity b­ ecause they are unable to regulate their wives’ passions. Rounding off the examples of ­women whose hearts grew fonder with absence and introducing the list of enraged ­women, Medea, Procne, and Clytemnes­ tra, is the cautionary example of Helen, who was left alone too long. The poet-­ praeceptor explic­itly blames Menelaus for her infidelity (“In no way does Helen sin; in no way is this adulterer to blame,” nil Helene peccat, nihil hic committit adulter, 365; “By giving time and place you are compelling adultery,” cogis adulterium dando tempusque locumque, 367; “I absolve Helen from blame,”

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Helenen ego crimine soluo, 371), while deriding him with name-­calling in direct address (“What stupidity was this, Menelaus,” qui stupor hic, Menelae, fuit, 361; “Madman, do you trust,” credis, furiose, 363) (357–72). The abuse directed ­toward “you, Menelaus” (361–68) places the pupil in an unstable position as a participant in the bullying. This position, however, always threatens to slip into the role of bullied, as the second person singular has been the didactic address to the pupil throughout his lessons. The insecurity of the reader’s identity re­ flects the insecurity of his masculinity, which he is implicitly urged to police through the regulation of his gendered other—­Woman. Again, we see a ­woman compared to animals (“Madman, do you trust timid doves to a hawk, do you trust a full sheepfold to a mountain wolf ?,” accipitri timidas credis, furiose, columbas, / plenum montano credis ouile lupo?, 363–64). By failing to police her gender role, Menelaus has threatened his own, which now suffers the pun­ ishment of abjection, for he is called furiose (363), a characterization fre­ quently associated with the wild, tragic w ­ oman. The example of Clytemnestra ends the list of vengeful w ­ omen. While Menelaus’s failure makes him an object of ridicule, his b­ rother’s punishment is far more frightening. ­Here, abject female sexuality and the vengeance which results are expressed by an example from tragedy and are explic­itly connected to the ­mistake of the husband. As in the case of Helen and Menelaus, the poet-­ praeceptor removes fault, and with it, agency, from Clytemnestra. The exam­ ple is introduced by a couplet identifying a w ­ oman’s adultery as divine retribution: “If Venus is injured she brandishes just weapons and she hurls back the spear and she ­causes you yourself to complain about what she just now complained” (laesa Venus iusta arma mouet telumque remittit / et, modo quod questa est, ipse querare, facit, 397–98). Clytemnestra’s story follows. dum fuit Atrides una contentus, et illa casta fuit; uitio est improba facta uiri. audierat laurumque ma­nu uittasque ferentem pro nata Chrysen non ualuisse sua; audierat, Lyrnesi, tuos, abducta, dolores, bellaque per turpis longius isse moras. haec tamen audierat; Priameida uiderat ipsa: uictor erat praedae praeda pudenda suae. inde Thyestiaden animo thalamoque recepit et male peccantem Tyndaris ulta uirum. (399–408) While Atreus’s son was happy with one ­woman, she also was chaste; she became shameless b­ ecause of her husband’s fault. She had heard that

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Chryses, although he carried the laurel in his hand and he wore the fil­ lets, had not prevailed on behalf of his own ­daughter; she had heard about your grief, Lyrnesian captive, and how the wars had lasted longer ­because of shameful delays. Nevertheless, she had heard ­these ­things; Priam’s ­daughter she had seen herself: the conqueror was the shameful prize of his own prize. From this point she welcomed Thyestes’s son into her heart and her marriage bed and Tyndareus’s d­ aughter took revenge on her husband who made a terrible ­mistake. Agamemnon’s infidelity is blamed for her infidelity (“she became shameless ­because of her husband’s fault,” vitio est improba facta viri, 400). The two words, ulta virum, close the list and end the lesson. If men are men, w ­ omen lack pas­ sion, both amor (i.e., cheating, 357–72) and ira (373–408). Abject sexual desire and the rage which follows are again aligned with genre in this example, for “she had heard” (audierat) the poets recite Homer’s first book of the Iliad, where Chryses is rebuffed by Agamemnon (Ars am. 2.401–2; Hom. Il. 1.22–32), and, “she had heard” (audierat) the ­later passage in which Agamemnon takes Briseis from Achilles (Ars am. 2.403–4; Hom. Il. 1.318–48). “Nevertheless ­these [verses] she had heard: Priam’s ­daughter [Cassandra] she herself had seen” (405) on the tragic stage. The poet-­praeceptor’s charge characterizes Homeric epic as innocu­ ous rumor.63 Her revenge comes only with the spectacle of Aeschylus’s Agamemnon or Accius’s Clytaemestra. The penultimate couplet of this passage alludes to the stage entrance of Agamemnon leading his captive, Cassandra (Aesch. Ag. 783). The pentameter cleverly reverses the roles of possessor and prize syntacti­ cally and through the polyptoton of praeda, which traps Agamemnon as prize of his own prize (praedae praeda pudenda suae, 406). The same line also emphasizes the resulting gender reversal through the alliteration of p, uniting Cassandra (praedae) with Agamemnon (praeda), feminized by the adjective pudenda, which was used as a euphemism for female genitalia.64 The same phrase is used in book 3 to describe Cephalus in a short list of goddesses, Luna and Aurora, who shame­ lessly gratify their desires (nec Cephalus roseae praeda pudenda deae, 3.84). ­Here Cephalus’s masculinity, compromised by his mortal status and his rape by a fe­ male goddess, is emphasized by the adjective-­noun phrase “shameful prize.”65 Suae, moreover, repeats the reflexive possessive adjective which ends Medea’s pentameter in a similar phrase (per natos Phasias ulta suos, 2.382), associating Agamemnon with another abjected, tragic ­woman. Ovid’s couplets, having linked Clytemnestra’s adulterous revenge with two tragedies, Agamemnon and Medea, evokes a third with Aegisthus’s epithet Thyestiaden, a reminder of an­ other tragic murder of ­children, closely linked in Greek and Roman lit­er­a­ture with Procne—­Atreus’s murder of Thyestes’s sons and the meal they become.66

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Conclusion As noted in the beginning of this chapter, Ovid’s poet-­praeceptor takes part in a long tradition of didactic cata­logues of mythological characters. ­These lists rely on a shared knowledge of the megatext, allowing the poet-­praeceptor to speak each heroine like a word.67 The two lists ­under consideration in this chapter reveal the connotations Phaedra-­and Medea-­like figures may have held as words of the megatext. However, in our close reading of the poetic con­ texts that Ovid constructs, we have also observed that, like other languages, symbols are polysemic and their intended connotations are difficult to con­ trol. As we saw in the lists from book 1 and 2, Ovid’s verse constructs their passions—­erotic and vengeful—as what Kristeva and Butler theorize as abject, embodying the characteristics which are rejected from normative Roman de­ sire. His lists demonstrate, moreover, that their exemplary abject passions threaten normative masculine subjects when they are not contained outside the borders they define, acting as a warning to both men and ­women. The exemplary paradigms are introduced in Ars 1 as proof that a male lover ­will have no trou­ble finding a willing girlfriend and in Ars 2 as a warning not to be absent too long from a lover or be caught being unfaithful. Ovid, how­ ever, intervenes. The frame and the syntactic and linguistic structure of the lists themselves guide the literary reader to introduce meanings in excess of the poet-­praeceptor’s ostensible lessons. In the frames introducing and conclud­ ing the lessons, Ovid aligns the female examples in both lists with w ­ omen in general, and w ­ omen in general with animals. ­Because t­ hese frames also con­ struct the animal-­like category of ­woman in opposition to the male pupil learn­ ing this lesson, men are implicitly aligned with the ­human. Her exclusion from what is h ­ uman defines and guarantees his humanity. In the frames and the cata­logues themselves, Ovid also employs thematic and linguistic cues to connect the Phaedra-­and Medea-­like figures with their tales most familiar from the tragic stage. The frame and generic signals act as a warning to the literary pupil who would seek to violate the sexual-­social taboos and ­legal constraints governing appropriate gender per­for­mances in Augustan Rome.68 Especially following the passage of the lex Julia, masculine desire was de­ fined as one that conformed to the l­egal restrictions imposed on the Roman man’s sexual appetites, while defining men who did not conform as unmanly or effeminate. Roman marriage customs, furthermore, demanded that a ­woman remain an object, a “gift,” in order to function as the conduit for cre­ ating alliances between men; her desire must constantly be dissimulated. This fiction of w ­ oman’s lack of desire helped to maintain the fiction of her body as object and alleviated anx­ie­ ties about a disruption to this system. Moreover,

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for a Roman matrona, her sexual partner was restricted to her husband. Active extramarital sexuality was forbidden and severely punished by the lex Julia. The cata­logues found in Ars 1 and 2 offered a good Roman ­woman and man the op­ portunity to confirm their own inclusion in the community by identifying in opposition to Phaedra-­or Medea-­like figures, whose active sexuality was di­ rected t­ oward inappropriate bodies and resulted in catastrophe to men and their families. This pro­cess resembles the one Feeney (2016) has located in Roman reactions to Greek drama in general, discussed at length in the introduction.69 Ovid’s specific construction of ­these paradigms as abject subjects inextri­ cably links feminine gender to the tragic genre. The heroines’ aberrant pas­ sions define the masculine gender to which they are compared in the Ars 1 and 2 and the elegiac genre in which the lists are deployed. The duplication aug­ ments their abjection—­belonging in neither the society of the author and his audience nor the genre in which they are inscribed. This compounded repu­ diation si­mul­ta­neously increases Ovid’s poetic mastery over theme and form. He introduces into a lighthearted lesson on dating transgressive d­ aughters and wives—­two categories decidedly off the list of beloveds for his audience—­only to reinvest Augustan norms of sexual be­hav­ior.70 The poet-­praeceptor and the author who writes him are warning their readers from the very be­hav­ior Au­ gustan law punishes. In order for a masculine subject to escape a feminized, abject position, he must constantly be vigilant both of his own sexuality, lest it take control of him, and of the sexuality of the female body, lest he lose control and suffer the consequences of her hidden but always pre­sent abject sexual desire. Ovid also demonstrates his mastery over form, for he introduces a destabilizing tragic code into his elegiac verse only to restore generic expec­ tations along with gender norms.

C h a p te r   2

Rescripting Phaedra for an Elegiac Role

In chapter 1 we explored the semiotics of my­ thol­ogy in Ovid’s erotodidactic poem Ars Amatoria. Ovid’s narrator manipu­ lates mythological exempla as signs within this semiotic system (or, as Segal has termed it, the megatext) in order to communicate lessons to his reader-­ pupils.1 The relations of ­these signs to each other, to the narrative frame, and to the total system, however, creates meaning sometimes in excess of his in­ tentions. The lists of heroines deployed for the purpose of instruction about seduction and love affairs also reveal female desire to be excessive and bestial. Applying the concept of the abject as formulated by Kristeva and Butler in the previous chapter, we may see how such a construction defines normative de­ siring subjects by means of their opposites, “threatening spectres,” to borrow Butler’s term (1993, 104), whose desires define the borders beyond which de­ sire is no longer recognizable as h ­ uman.2 In this chapter, we w ­ ill examine Ov­ id’s repre­sen­ta­tions of Phaedra (Her. 4) and Byblis (Met. 9.439–665) as authors speaking the same language of myth that constructed their own exemplarity as abject in the Ars Amatoria. I continue to use the term “abject,” following Kristeva and Butler, to describe subjects who define the limits of normal gen­ der roles and generic conventions by embodying what is unacceptable, and who serve as a warning to ­others not to follow suit. Phaedra’s account appears in a collection of elegiac epistles written by mythological heroines to their beloveds, possibly predating the Ars. Byblis’s 39

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metamorphic story is woven into Ovid’s epic, circulating sometime in the years between Ovid’s Ars and his relegation.3 The heroines share a desire for a ­family member: Phaedra is famously in love with her stepson, Hippolytus; Byblis’s story resembles the Euripidean Phaedra’s, but her beloved is her twin b­ rother, Caunus. Phaedra’s myth is most famous from Greek tragedy, and Byblis re­ prises Phaedra’s role, but both heroines choose the elegiac code in order to redefine their relationships to their beloveds. Each hopes this new elegiac ex­ pression within a system which valorizes desire ­will provide a universe in which she is recognized as a lover and not repudiated as a monster. The elegiac epis­ tolary form that they choose offers control over their self-­presentation. Ovid, however, is holding the pen. Phaedra’s own relation to the examples she uses undermines her attempts to alter her symbolic meaning. Byblis is thwarted not only by the language she uses in her letter but also by the language of the narrator, who defines and then reiterates her exemplary meaning in the frame. Conte argues that the Roman erotic elegists redefined Augustan discourse to suit the world of lovers.4 “Thus, elegy’s need for recuperation induces it to welcome within itself the values of fides, pietas, and sanctitas. . . . ​The fides of elegy is named by a language of love, the chastity requested of Cynthia is not the one a wife and m ­ other austerely displays, and so forth” (Conte 1994a, 39– 40). In the world of elegy, Phaedra’s desire for Hippolytus above all other men, and her husband in par­tic­u­lar, could potentially be understood as the reciprocal and faithful love that the elegiac lover hopes for from his beloved. The suffering she has endured is a proof of this constancy, and her silence about this desire is not a means of self-­denial but a strategy for deceiving t­ hose who would stand in the way of the two lovers.5 Such a shift in symbolic meaning is pos­si­ble ­because words and symbols (such as the meaning of a heroine like Phaedra in the symbolic system of my­thol­ogy) carry with them multiple connotations (Phaedra is a girl in love, an adulterous wife, a loving m ­ other to her biological sons, and an evil stepmother). The context of the speaker’s utterance and the identity of the speaker using t­hese words guide the audience member ­toward the connotation appropriate to the occasion and usage. As Conte notes, an ele­ giac setting privileges an erotic definition of a word like fides. Julia Kristeva has theorized a pro­cess whereby poets exploit the inherent polysemy of words and symbols. She argues that, through this pro­cess, po­ etry may permanently alter a symbolic system. Her understanding of the spe­ cial power of poetry to disrupt and reconfigure discourses as formulated in her 1974 thesis, La Révolution du Langage Poétique, suggests a way of understand­ ing the power of Ovid’s poem to destabilize discourses of desire while si­mul­ ta­neously representing and reinscribing the Augustan ideologies which they reproduce.6 Kristeva borrows the term chora from Plato’s Timaeus to describe



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her theoretical space in which, before the meanings of words and symbols have been differentiated and established, semiotic relations and categories are in flux, continually formed and dismantled and reformed. This semiotic chora is presymbolic, that is, before meaning, but it is ­under the influence of the sym­ bolic in the form of psy­chol­ogy and culture.7 What separates this space from the order of the symbolic, in which signification and meaning take place, is the lack of differentiation between a speaking or writing subject and other words, ­things, and subjects. In order for a subject to signify and thereby com­ municate using language or some other symbolic system, t­ here must be a the­ sis of a subject, that is, the differentiation of the subject from every­thing ­else currently undifferentiated in the semiotic chora (Kristeva 1984, 34–36, 43–45).8 She calls this moment the thetic stage, a term I use in this chapter to describe Ovid’s repre­sen­ta­tion of the heroines’ own pro­cess of self-­identification and self-­representation.9 Phaedra’s and Byblis’s proj­ects are all about making dif­ ference out of sameness (same ­family; twin ­brother).10 The pro­cess of signification—­using a symbolic system like language to communicate—­implies a level of agency ­because the speaker chooses how they fit into this cultural and linguistic system. Successful communication re­ quires that a speaker assume an identity—in Byblis’s case, s­ ister or lover, for language derives meaning as much from the speaker and their relation to the addressee as from the words they use. Augustan cultural norms would set an expectation that the proclamation of love from a ­sister to her b­ rother carries a dif­fer­ent meaning than the same declaration from a girl to a boy who is not her sibling. ­Because the positing of the subject that is required in the thetic phase for signification differentiates the subject from and thereby defines an other, “the signifier [of this other ­thing or person] represents the subject—­not the thetic ego but the very pro­cess by which it is posited” (Kristeva 1984, 67). In order for the signifier “­brother” to refer to Caunus when it is uttered by Byblis, Byblis must first identify herself as a subject who would be a ­sister in relation to Caunus. This self-­identification is a thesis, and situates her si­mul­ta­ neously in the vari­ous other kinship relations this position entails: ­daughter to Miletus and Cyane, grand­daughter to Maeander and Apollo, ­etc. She must make Caunus the other; however, their relations as “desiring subject” and “ob­ ject of desire” are countermanded by their positions in the symbolic system of kinship. Kristeva’s formulation of the thetic stage reveals the crucial role that an addressee and their culturally determined expectations play in the suc­ cess of language (or the reader to an author’s text). The identities available to the speaker are constrained by cultural norms and limit the number of speak­ ing positions from which a subject can be “heard” by other members of her community.11

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As noted above, both heroines in the episodes we ­will consider employ the elegiac code in their love letters. Kristeva calls such a generic shift a transposi­ tion ­because it “involves an altering of the thetic position—­the destruction of the old position and the formation of a new one. The new signifying system may be produced with the same signifying material” (Kristeva 1984, 59). While Phaedra and Byblis do indeed posit themselves in new relations to their kin­ dred beloveds, the continuity of signifying material—­the mythic, tragic, and Augustan symbolic systems—­works in reverse to limit and circumscribe the positions a Phaedra or Byblis may take, imprisoning them in the same ste­reo­ types from which they wish to break f­ ree. This is the result of the “ordering” Kristeva describes in the semiotic chora: “Its vocal and gestural organ­ization is subject to what we ­shall call an objective ordering [ordonnancement], which is dictated by natu­ral or socio-­historical constraints. . . . ​We may therefore posit that social organ­ization, always already symbolic, imprints its constraint in a mediated form which organizes the chora” (Kristeva 1984, 26–27; emphasis added). Phaedra and Byblis take on new elegiac roles, but their choices have already been prescribed by the discourses of myth and female desire which tragedy, elegy, and epic all reproduce. Ovid, the true author of the verses written by Phaedra and Byblis, guarantees their failure. He inserts reminders for their readers of their “tragic” provenance into the epistles which the heroines write and, in the case of Byblis, the narrative frame of her poetry. Heroides 4 is an example of what Elizabeth Harvey has called “transvestite ventriloquism,” that is, a male author writing in the guise of a w ­ oman.12 She argues, furthermore, that transvestite ventriloquism has a “double-­voice,” the “interaction” between the constructed female voice and the male author speaking through that voice.13 In the Metamorphoses, Byblis’s letter is created within the story itself. This is not an example of transvestite ventriloquism, for ­there is no question that the letter is part of Ovid’s epic poem and not the verse of Byblis. I would argue that, b­ ecause it represents a fictional example of a girl’s letter, the type of letter someone like Byblis or Phaedra would write, her em­ bedded letter has the same double-­voice as Phaedra’s Heroidean epistle.14 Her voice, manipulated by the male author writing it, seems to sabotage its own elegiac thesis. Ovid’s poems demonstrate the uncontrollability and destructive potential of female desire, while si­mul­ta­neously revealing the limits of the ele­ giac genre.15 Although love is the telos of this genre, not all desires are welcome. Phaedra-­like desire, as her letter proves, is one such unwelcome love. Phaedra was the subject of three Attic Greek tragic plays: the fragmentary Euripides’s Hippolytus (Hipp. I) and Sophocles’s Phaedra; and Euripides’s sec­ ond, extant Hippolytus (Hipp. II).16 She is the fourth writer in Ovid’s epistolary poems, Heroides. Barchiesi and Kennedy have observed that the Heroides en­



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gage with their “source text(s)” and create a tension between the letter writ­ ers’ hopes and expectations for their f­ uture and the predetermined literary outcome of their stories.17 At issue in Euripides’s Hippolytus II is the discourse of shame in relation to kinship structures—­specifically the shame required to preserve reputation for the sake of the ­family Phaedra has with Theseus, and especially to preserve their sons’ ­f uture status as Athenian citizens. Phaedra’s desire to keep ­silent is directly related to the παρρησία (“freedom of speech”) of the men in her f­ amily.18 Should Phaedra speak about her incestuous desire, she would invite gossip, damaging the public image of her male kin. We may be seeing in the extant Phaedra’s violent rejection of female dis­ simulation, and her self-­destructive adherence to traditional roles, a direct re­ sponse to (or correction of ) Euripides’s e­ arlier Hippolytus I, which depicted a Phaedra who approached Hippolytus herself and made her accusations against him to Theseus in person, committing suicide only ­after Hippolytus is killed. It is this first play (and/or Sophocles’s Phaedra) which seems to be the primary “source text” for Heroides 4, but the epistles in the collection often engage mul­ tiple “source texts” and, more broadly, the literary tradition as a ­whole.19 Heroides 4 contains multiple echoes of Hipp. II;20 therefore, looking back to the extant Euripidean Phaedra is fruitful for understanding her self-­presentation in the Ovidian epistle in terms of its relation to her literary tradition.21 Like Phaedra, Byblis is already known to Ovid’s readers as a mythological heroine who is in vari­ous ways implicated in an incestuous desire for her ­brother.22 She has also been identified as a paradigm of female desire by the poet-­praeceptor in the first list of mythological heroines considered in chapter 1 alongside Phaedra.23 Allusive cues direct the reader to assimilate Ovid’s pre­sen­ ta­tion of Byblis’s story to Phaedra’s from the Attic tragedies of Euripides and Sophocles. We may see correspondences to Phaedra’s Ovidian epistle, which offers a mediating text through its own allusive play with the Attic plays. More­ over, as we noted in the introduction, Byblis’s narrative frame also participates in this allusive play, for Caunus is a Hippolytus-­like figure, whose (over)reaction recalls that of Euripides’s character in Hipp. II. In Hipp. II, Hippolytus calls the nurse’s message about Phaedra’s desire “unspeakable words” (λόγων ἄρρητον εἰϲήκουϲ᾽ ὄπα, Eur., Hipp. II, 602) and “terrible t­ hings” (δείν᾽, 604), and o ­ rders the nurse not to touch him (οὐ μὴ προϲοίϲειϲ χεῖρα μηδ᾽ ἅψηι πέπλων, 606), before launching into a speech defending his misogyny (616–67). Caunus reacts with equal horror to the letter Byblis’s messenger has given him. Where Hip­ polytus o ­ rders the nurse to keep her hands off of him, Caunus nearly lays (vio­ lent) hands upon the messenger (“and, scarcely holding back his hands from the face of the trembling servant,” uixque ma­nus retinens trepidantis ab ore ministri, Met. 9.576), calls him the “wicked author of a forbidden desire” (o uetitae

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scelerate libidinis auctor, 577), and o ­ rders him to flee (effuge, 578), recalling The­ seus’s ­orders for Hippolytus in Hipp. II (893). Like Hippolytus, Caunus too goes into exile, but of his own accord. We are told that “he flees his fatherland and the unspeakable crime” (patriam fugit ille nefasque, Met., 9.633). Patriam recalls the ­father’s involvement in Hippolytus’s exile, while nefas echoes the nurse’s “un­ speakable words” to which Hippolytus reacts. Fi­nally, Byblis, like the Heroi­ dean Phaedra and other heroines in Ovid’s poetry, rehearses the conflict be­ tween love and shame which, although mediated by Hellenistic sources to some degree, Curley and Larmour trace back to the repre­sen­ta­tions of Phae­ dra in tragedy, and which we ­will consider in more detail below.24

Phaedra, Heroides 4 In Heroides 4, Ovid’s Phaedra rewrites herself in elegiac couplets, relying on the genre to reinterpret her famous story by redefining her exemplary status. She says that her Euripidean pudor must be blended with elegiac amor (pudor est miscendus amori, 9). Her verse (“secrets are carried over land and sea with this writing,” his arcana notis terra pelagoque feruntur, 5), therefore, takes on a metapoetic significance. The text (notis) containing her “secrets,” which are “carried over land and sea,” is moving in both directions, from Phaedra’s writ­ ing location t­ oward Hippolytus and from Greece t­ oward Ovid’s writing loca­ tion, Rome. Feruntur si­mul­ta­neously expresses four ideas: a physical transfer from Greece to Rome (“land and sea,” terra pelagoque); a translation (translatio) from the Greek; borrowing from a source model, as feruntur often indicates a citation;25 and a translation from tragedy to elegy. Phaedra’s famous mythological tradition has defined her as wife of The­ seus, making her stepmother of Hippolytus. This thesis as a speaking subject necessarily circumscribes the meaning of words which she utters. Amor in par­ tic­u­lar, when spoken by Phaedra to Theseus, may be erotic, in agreement with her relationship with him in the system of kinship. When spoken to Hip­ polytus, it may mean affectionate or maternal love, in agreement with their kinship relations. If she speaks it to Hippolytus erotically, she is speaking adul­ tery and incest, social taboos which contravene the rules governing f­amily roles and their interrelationships. Her strong generic tradition further inflects amor when she speaks. In many plays which survive, erotic love expressed by ­women on the tragic stage leads to disaster.26 Phaedra, in par­tic­u­lar, represents the most destructive kind of tragic, female erotic desire. Her amor, once spo­ ken, not only dissolves the f­ amily but also the very body of the young man to whom the utterance is directed.



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In the opening lines of the epistle (“a wish for good health, which she her­ self ­will lack u ­ nless you give it, the Cretan girl sends to the Amazonian man,” 27 Qua, nisi tu dederis, caritura est ipsa, salutem / Mittit Amazonio Cressa puella viro, 1–2) we may see Phaedra’s solution. The word puella (2) beginning her ele­ giac letter makes Phaedra’s new generic thesis clear. With this description, she claims the poetic identity of elegiac beloved.28 By repositioning herself as an elegiac speaker, Phaedra claims a new thesis and therefore hopes to shift the connotative meaning of impor­tant words and symbols in her story.29 We may see that throughout her epistle, Phaedra manipulates kinship roles or uses the names that determine t­ hose roles through kinship relations to dissimulate adultery. She calls them nomina vana, demonstrating that, in her opinion, names signifying symbolic roles are arbitrary and meaningless in themselves. Her new thesis claims that desire (Venus) determines kinship roles (“the chain of ­family on which Venus herself has placed her own bonds,” generis . . . ​catena, / imposuit nodos cui Venus ipsa suos, 135–36). Phaedra’s poetic semiosis, however, is directed only at Hippolytus as internal reader. This new thesis allows Phaedra to modify Theseus’s role in her story. The elegiac position she claims for both Hippolytus and herself in line 2 (puella viro) leaves Theseus only a marginal, unacknowledged role or non­ex­is­tent role as husband since the status of the elegiac puella is always obscure. She exists somewhere in the interstices be­ tween adulterous wife to a cuckolded husband and avaricious meretrix loyal only to the lover with the most pleasing gifts.30 Phaedra does not even men­ tion Theseus u ­ ntil line 65 and ­there he is named as a player in Ariadne’s myth, not Phaedra’s (4.63–66). Phaedra does not speak of Theseus as her husband ­until line 111, where she enumerates his failures to perform his kinship role as husband and ­father properly.31 Theseus’s name is surrounded by repeated iterations of the name of Pirithous, love for whom has superseded that felt for Phaedra and Hippoly­ tus: “the coast of his dear Pirithous holds him; Theseus has put Pirithous be­ fore Phaedra, Pirithous before you, ­unless we deny what is obvious” (Illum Pirithoi detinet ora sui; / Praeposuit Theseus, nisi si manifesta negamus, / Pirithoum Phaedrae Pirithoumque tibi, 110–12). In line 112 Phaedra equates herself with Hippolytus grammatically. They both endure exactly the same fate, the same suffering, which Phaedra calls iniuria (113).32 She emphasizes their shared suf­ fering by referring to herself and Hippolytus in the first person plural, with plural pronouns (nos, 113; uterque sumus, 114), and by enumerating the iniuriae committed by Theseus against each of their families. Prima securigeras inter virtute puellas Te peperit, nati digna vigore parens.

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Si quaeras, ubi sit, Theseus latus ense peregit: Nec tanto mater pignore tuta fuit.  120 At ne nupta quidem taedaque accepta iugali; Cur, nisi ne caperes regna paterna nothus? (117–22) The first in martial virtue among the axe-­bearing girls bore you, a par­ ent worthy of her son’s vigor. If you ask where she is, Theseus pierced her side with his sword: nor as a m ­ other was she safe b­ ecause of so g­ reat a pledge. But she was not even married and had not been welcomed with the wedding torch; why not, ­unless so that you, a bastard, would not take his f­ ather’s throne? Phaedra’s accusations that Theseus is not performing his kinship roles prop­ erly (implicitly) justify her refusal to perform her own role as wife, ­mother,33 and (step)­mother properly and (explic­itly) authorize the role she suggests for Hippolytus: “Go now, honor your ­father’s bed as he deserves, the bed which he himself shuns and renounces by his own deeds” (I nunc, sic meriti lectum reverere parentis, / Quem fugit et factis abdicat ipse suis, 127–28).34 In Phaedra’s esti­ mation, Theseus’s bad per­for­mance (sic meriti) and the abdication of his role (abdicare) demand a new set of relations within the kinship structure.35 We may see elegiac vocabulary and themes throughout Phaedra’s letter. For example, among the iniuriae Phaedra lists is Hippolyta’s murder. In the elegiac code, Phaedra’s description of Hippoyta has an erotic connotation. Compare prima . . . ​inter . . . ​puellas to the opening lines of Propertius’s Mono­ biblos, Cynthia prima (Prop. 1.1). Phaedra calls her a parent worthy of Hip­ polytus’s vigor. Digna is an adjective which is traced back to the first elegiac poet, Gallus, who tells Caesar that the Muses have fi­nally written poems which he could call worthy of his mistress (Hollis 2007, fr. 145, 7).36 By describing Hippolyta’s relationship to her son in terms which in the elegiac code are sex­ ualized and used to describe the beloved and her relationship to the amator, Phaedra is setting a pre­ce­dent for her own eroticized per­for­mance of mater to natus. ­Earlier in her letter, moreover, Phaedra claims she w ­ ill not break her marriage bonds b­ ecause of nequitia (Non ego nequitia socialia foedera rumpam, Her. 4.17). This word is an elegiac marker, which Jacobson notes is found in no other letter in this collection but is familiar from Ovid’s Amores.37 The elegiac Phaedra claims she is compelled to write elegiac verse by Amor.38 Quidquid Amor iussit, non est contemnere tutum: Regnat et in dominos ius habet ille deos.



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Ille mihi primo dubitanti scribere dixit: “Scribe: dabit victas ferreus ille ma­nus.” (11–14) What­ever Love has ordered, it is not safe to disregard: he rules and has control over the gods, our masters. He said to me, when at first I was hesitating to write: “Write: that steely one w ­ ill hand over his conquered hands.” She assumes a programmatic masculine elegiac position expressed in the open­ ing poems of Propertius and Ovid’s Amores.39 Phaedra’s generic engagement, nevertheless, is motivated by a desire to maintain a feminine position. Unlike the amator of Amores 1.2, who surrenders to Cupid and joins his triumphal pa­ rade as a captive (“Look, I confess, I am your new prize; I offer my conquered hands to your laws,” en ego, confiteor, tua sum noua praeda, Cupido; / porrigimus uictas ad tua iura ma­nus, 19–20), Phaedra ­will not be the captive of Amor; Hip­ polytus ­will be her captive (“that steely one ­will hand over his conquered hands,” dabit victas ferreus ille ma­nus, 14). This position is in line with the femi­ nine elegiac position of the puella-­domina.40 In addition, Phaedra invokes the programmatic themes of elegiac furta, eluding a husband or guard: “during the night you w ­ ill not have to unlock the door of a stern husband, you ­will not have to trick the guard” (Non tibi per tenebras duri reseranda mariti / Ianua, non custos decipiendus erit, 141–42). Phaedra, however, follows the example of Propertius’s masculine elegiac amator, who claims his elegiac incipit is also his erotic initiation: “Cynthia first captured me with her eyes, wretched me, who had been touched by no De­ sires before” (Cynthia prima suis miserum me cepit ocellis, / contactum nullis ante Cupidinibus, Prop. 1.1.1–2).41 Like Propertius’s amator, Phaedra represents her­ self as innocent, new to the love which ­orders her to write. Non ego nequitia socialia foedera rumpam; Fama, velim quaeras, crimine nostra vacat. Venit amor gravius, quo serius: urimur intus; Urimur, et caecum pectora vulnus habent. Scilicet ut teneros laedunt iuga prima iuvencos, Frenaque vix patitur de grege captus equus, Sic male vixque subit primos rude pectus amores, Sarcinaque haec animo non sedet apta meo. Ars fit, ubi a teneris crimen condiscitur annis; Quae venit exacto tempore, peius amat. Tu nova servatae capies libamina famae, (Her. 4.17–27)

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I ­will not break my marriage contract b­ ecause of wantonness; our repu­ tation, I wish you would ask, is without reproach. Love came on more deeply ­because it was l­ater: I am burning inside; I am burning, and my heart holds an unseen wound. To be sure, just like yokes applied for the first time hurt tender young bulls, and a ­horse captured from the herd endures bridles with difficulty, the untried heart submits to first love poorly and with difficulty, and this burden sits uncomfortably on my mind; she who comes to love ­later in life loves more intensely. You ­will take the first fruits of a guarded reputation, Phaedra claims her reputation is without reproach (18) and well guarded (27), and she characterizes her love as late-­coming (19, 26), a first love (23, 27), which lacks artifice (25).42 Phaedra urges Hippolytus to be more elegiac himself. Tu modo duritiam silvis depone iugosis: Non sum militia digna perire tua. Quid iuvat incinctae studia exercere Dianae Et Veneri numeros eripuisse suos? Quod caret alterna requie, durabile non est: Haec reparat vires fessaque membra novat. Arcus, et arma tuae tibi sunt imitanda Dianae, Si numquam cesses tendere, mollis erit. (Her. 4.85–92). You just put down your hardness in the mountainous forest: I do not deserve to be destroyed by your military campaign. What is the use of showing devotion to girded Diana and taking from Venus her own rhythms? Work without occasional rest is not sustainable: rest revives strength and restores tired limbs. You must imitate your dear Diana’s weapons. Your bow w ­ ill be soft, if you never stop stretching it. She claims that she is not an appropriate participant in his military exercises, recalling the opposition set up by the Roman elegists between a­ ctual military duty and their own “military duty of love” (militia amoris).43 She chides him for not resting from his ser­vice to Diana through ser­vice to Venus. Palmer trans­ lates numeros as “dues,” taking it to mean parts of a pro­cess or an exercise, but the linguistic play of numeros, which can also refer to poetic meter (OLD, numerus, 14), and alterna, especially when the numeri belong to Venus, calls to mind the alternating verses of the elegiac couplet.44 Phaedra’s words liken Hippoly­ tus’s hunting with the virgin goddess Diana to sex (incinctae studia exercere Di-



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anae, 87; Arcus . . . ​Si numquam cesses tendere, mollis erit, 91–92), and sex (Veneri, 88) to rest, which allows his fessa membra to become durabilis once again.45 Should her intended audience, Hippolytus, accept her new generic iden­ tity, the meaning of Phaedra as symbol in the megatext w ­ ill privilege her erotic over her destructive connotations according to the elegiac code. As a result of her new poetic thesis as an elegiac puella, Theseus is relegated to a blocking figure, preventing the lovers from being together. His inuriae, connoting sex­ ual infidelity in an elegiac context, committed against her further justifies her affair. The proposed extramarital affair is the privileged site for love and fidel­ ity. Pudor may be understood as an obstacle to achieving true elegiac virtue—­ becoming a loyal beloved to her lover. Her lovesickness is no longer a symptom of madness but an indicator of her unfailing love. Phaedra’s desire is no lon­ ger the punishment of a vindictive Aphrodite but a playful Cupid who com­ pels her to express this desire in a poetic epistle.46 Phaedra recognizes that the be­hav­ior of lover and beloved still look like nor­ mative ­family relations to ­others who are not interpreting their actions through an elegiac code. ­Here we may see how gesture and per­for­mance act as signs. Just as the elegists employed words associated in other contexts with the masculine institution of amicitia, such as inuriae and fides, to describe their love affairs, so Phaedra relies on the expectation of her audience to perform one relationship (an elegiac extramarital affair) while appearing to perform an­ other (a normative mother-­son relationship in the context of a ­family). Pha­ edra suggests that she and Hippolytus put on a per­for­mance in order to conceal their affair. The reference to acting, however, is another reminder of her dra­ matic origins. Phaedra attempts to demonstrate to Hippolytus that the per­ for­mance of normative kinship roles, noverca and provignus, at least, closely resembles the per­for­mance of the very incest taboo which circumscribes them—­embracing (amplexos, 139), living in the same h ­ ouse (143), kissing (oscula, 144), and sharing a bed (in lecto . . . ​meo, 146). In this she anticipates Ju­ dith Butler, who theorizes gender and kinship roles as an effect of their per­for­mance.47 One does not behave like a stepmother ­because one is a step­ mother; one is a stepmother ­because one performs the role in ways that makes her recognizable as a stepmother. Meaning is provided by the “audience”—in the case of Phaedra’s letter, e­ ither by the other members of the h ­ ouse­hold or Ovid’s readers. Phaedra stresses the power of this audience to bestow mean­ ing on a name (videar, 129; laudabimur, 139; dicar, 140; merebere, 145), as she imagines a positive response to their duplicitous per­for­mance. Such a revela­ tion is in part a continuation of the theme of appearance and reputation which is so impor­tant to Euripides’s play, but in Ovid, b­ ecause Phaedra demands that Hippolytus reconceptualize her per­for­mance through the discourse of elegy,

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appearance and reputation are now inextricably linked to generic codes and interpretation.48 Once she has established Theseus’s renunciation of his own role in the ­family (cited above), Phaedra begins to redefine her own. Nec, quia privigno videar coitura noverca, Terruerint animos nomina vana tuos. Ista vetus pietas, aevo moritura futuro, Rustica Saturno regna tenente fuit.49 (Her. 4.129–32) And do not let meaningless names frighten your mind ­because I seem like a stepmother about to have sex with her stepson. That ancient pi­ ety, destined to die in a f­ uture generation, was rustic even when Saturn held power. In this passage more than any other in the letter, the intersection between the past generic per­for­mances of the “role” of Phaedra on the tragic stage and the per­for­mance of gender and kinship roles is made manifest. The names, as Phaedra demonstrates, are meaningless (vana, 130) in themselves. The be­hav­ ior of a “stepmother who w ­ ill have sex with her stepson” (privigno . . . ​coitura noverca, 129), as it is performed by the character Phaedra familiar from trag­ edy, and that of her opposite, a “stepmother who is faithful to [her] stepson” (privigno fida noverca meo, 140), are almost indistinguishable.50 As Phaedra points out to Hippolytus, although she has “translated” their role from tragedy to elegy, ­there ­will be no need to rehearse the elegiac plot of furta. Only Hippolytus, who has been informed of her new elegiac thesis, ­will know the code with which to decipher her per­for­mance. Other lookerson, she presumes, ­will interpret her per­for­mance and utterance of amor in the terms of a normative kinship structure (cognato nomine, 138). Nec l­abor est celare, licet peccemus, amorem: Cognato poterit nomine culpa tegi. Viderit amplexos aliquis, laudabimur ambo: Dicar privigno fida noverca meo. Non tibi per tenebras duri reseranda mariti Ianua, non custos decipiendus erit. Ut tenuit domus una duos, domus una tenebit; Oscula aperta dabas, oscula aperta dabis; Tutus eris mecum laudemque merebere culpa, Tu licet in lecto conspiciare meo. (Her. 4.137–46)



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And it is not a ­labor to hide our love, although we transgress: the crime can be concealed by the name of kinship. Let someone see our embraces, we ­will both be praised: I ­will be called a stepmother who is faithful to my stepson. And during the night you ­will not have to unlock the door of a stern husband, you ­will not have to trick the guard. Just as a single ­house has held us both, a single h ­ ouse w ­ ill hold us; you used to give kisses openly, you w ­ ill give kisses openly; you w ­ ill be safe with me and, although you w ­ ill be seen in my bed, you w ­ ill earn praise for the crime. Phaedra wishes to be called a “faithful stepmother” (fida noverca, 140). This title plays with the stock character of the saeva noverca (“wicked stepmother”), an evil stepmother who plots against her husband’s ­children.51 This is a role Phaedra refuses by claiming its opposite, the fida noverca; yet her reputation is based on a misinterpretation of her incestuous erotic affection as maternal af­ fection. She is transferring appearances and interpretation, not per­for­mance. Such a move is doubly elegiac. The strategy accords with the elegiac trope of deceiving one’s ward in order to carry on an affair. Fides, moreover, when read with elegy’s tradition of employing Roman virtues in erotic relationships, takes on added erotic meaning. Performativity and dramatic per­for­mance, however, are reminders to her reader of her tragic tradition. The failure of Phaedra’s poetic proj­ect arises from the larger context of her letter’s authorship, namely Ovid’s “transvestite ventriloquism.” Her failure, ­because she is the ostensible author of this text, makes her complicit in her own abjection. Her tragic tradition is her true nature. Ovid has given Phae­ dra an opportunity to express, in “her own voice,” herself and her poetic tra­ dition in the terms of elegy.52 Instead, she repeatedly reminds us of her Euripidean source. As a tragic subject, generically, she does not belong to el­ egy. Her generic identity instead helps define what elegy is not. Moreover, the amator with whom Phaedra self-­identifies is the male amator of Tibullus, Prop­ ertius, and Ovid.53 As a ­woman she is not recognized as an amator. As an amator, she is not recognizable as feminine. Reminders of her tragic tradition can be found throughout her epistle in the form of props and themes from the plays themselves as well as references to dramatic per­for­mances and the genre of tragedy in general. We ­will consider only a few examples. The very form of Phaedra’s communication, a letter, appears in at least one of the tragic versions of her tale. In her elegiac epistle, she commands Hip­ polytus to read the ­whole ­thing. Perlege, quodcumque est: quid epistola lecta nocebit? Te quoque in hac aliquid quod iuvet esse potest. (Her. 4.3–4)

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Read to the end, what­ever is ­there: What harm ­will come from reading a letter? In this letter t­ here could be something that pleases you as well. The extant Hippolytus contains a most harmful letter, the one written to The­ seus by Phaedra and read ­after her suicide, charging Hippolytus with rape.54 Rosenmeyer, following Jost, categorizes Phaedra’s Euripidean letter as a “ki­ netic” letter b­ ecause it functions as an agent in the plot, affecting the outcome of the play.55 The letter is like an actor, giving voice to Phaedra’s lifeless body which remains onstage.56 Rosenmeyer suggests that Euripides introduces the letter in his second Hippolytus for the sake of propriety, “a way to mute, at least temporarily, the disturbing implications of Phaedra’s passion” (Rosenmeyer 2001, 90). The delay of the peripeteia, however, is only momentary, for the letter itself acts as a token which initiates the anagnorisis. The letter’s function in the tragedy as a device for recognition makes it a symbol of the outcome of the recognition—­Phaedra’s accusation, Theseus’s curse, and Hippolytus’s death. The Ovidian Phaedra unwittingly activates the allusion, ironically by ask­ ing what harm a letter can do (quid epistola lecta nocebit, 3) in the opening of her letter of seduction. This allusion acts as an interpretive guide for the ex­ ternal reader who is unable, or able only with difficulty, to read Phaedra’s ac­ count of her desire without assuming that it holds the same destructive power as the Euripidean (and/or Sophoclean) Phaedra’s desire. Furthermore, repre­ sen­ta­tions of this myth in Roman art suggest that some version of Phaedra’s story included a seduction letter to Hippolytus.57 Perlege perhaps points to this letter, anticipating Hippolytus’s (former) refusal to finish reading or, perhaps, Hippolytus’s (former) refusal to hear Phaedra out in person.58 Such an allu­ sion further multiplies the pos­si­ble meaning of the lines, adding to the inter­ pretive frame the tragic connotation of sexually aggressive and transgressive be­hav­ior (the attempts of a w ­ oman to seduce a man, and a member of her ­family openly), for an affair between Phaedra and Hippolytus would have been legally incestuous ­under Roman law.59 In the second Hippolytus, the audience must guess the contents of her let­ ter based on Theseus’s reaction. He reports her charges against Hippolytus, but not her words. ­Because the audience has watched the events unfold ­earlier in the play, they know that her charges are unfounded even if Theseus does not. By contrast, Heroides 4 offers unmediated access to Phaedra’s Ovidian let­ ter. While Phaedra is writing a confession, so to speak, one which takes plea­ sure in expressing her desire and may even, she supposes, give plea­sure (“­there could be something that pleases,” quod iuvet esse potest, 4), she is in fact provid­ ing evidence against herself. Ovid’s engagement with Phaedra’s tragic heri­



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tage once again acts as an interpretive guide, inviting the audience/reader to question the authority of her new elegiac thesis.60 Shame as a theme has already been mentioned. It is central to the extant Euripidean play and very likely to the lost plays of Euripides and Sophocles. The theme of silence and revelation familiar from the Euripidean play is also expressed in Phaedra’s opening lines.61 While the greeting refers to the lineage of both the writer and the addressee (“the Cretan girl to the Amazonian man,” Amazonio Cressa puella viro, 2), Phaedra avoids naming ­either of them as she does in the Euripidean play, delaying ­until line 36 to do so.62 Amazonio . . . ​viro also recalls the moment in Euripides’s play where Phaedra avoids naming Hip­ polytus even as she reveals to the nurse her desire for him by calling him “whoever he is, the son of the Amazon.”63 The phrase Cressa puella echoes the words of the chorus, who address Phaedra with “Oh unhappy Cretan girl” just ­after her revelation.64 Like the Euripidean Phaedra, whose silence is a strategy for preserving a reputation which is governed by shame, the Ovidian Phaedra’s speech is con­ strained by her concern for pudor.65 His arcana notis terra pelagoque feruntur; Inspicit acceptas hostis ab hoste notas. Ter tecum conata loqui ter inutilis haesit Lingua, ter in primo destitit ore sonus. Qua licet et sequitur, pudor est miscendus amori; Dicere quae puduit, scribere iussit amor. Quidquid Amor iussit, non est contemnere tutum; Regnat et in dominos ius habet ille deos. (Her. 4.5–12) Secrets are carried over land and sea with this writing; even an ­enemy looks over writings received from their e­ nemy. Three times I tried to speak to you, three times my useless tongue was frozen, three times my voice s­ topped at my lips. Shame must be mixed with love when it prop­ erly arises; what love has ordered me to write brings shame to speak. It is not safe to disregard what Love has ordered; he rules and has control over the gods our masters. As Kaster has noted, the Roman virtue of pudor resembles the Greek emo­ tion of αἰδώς.66 Both rely on the notion of a judging community or audience for their function and govern individual be­hav­ior through constraint and a de­ sire to appear socially normative.67 While αἰδώς is generally understood to be

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an anticipatory emotion, preventing bad be­hav­ior, pudor, Kaster notes, tends to be reactive.68 So for Phaedra to say she is ashamed to speak something (Dicere quae puduit, 10) is to imply that she is aware that what she is ashamed to speak amounts to be­hav­ior which ­will incur social censure. Also implicit in her pudor is the awareness that she is sexually transgressive. For ­women, pudor, says Kaster, “was largely ­limited to a single frame of reference, the sexual . . . ​con­ gruent with their pudicitia” (Kaster 1997, 9).69 Again following the example of Euripides’s Phaedra, the Ovidian Phaedra claims that divine injunction is responsible for her revelation (scribere iussit amor, 10). The Euripidean Phaedra of Hipp. II resists speaking her desire throughout the play, and would die in silence, Aphrodite announces, ­were the goddess not to reveal it.70 While both Sophocles’s Phaedra and Euripides’s Hippolytus II express the idea that Eros cannot be conquered, in Euripides’s first Hippolytus, dialogue attributed to Phaedra identifies the god as her “teacher of daring and courage.”71 This echoes Phaedra’s elegiac claim of divine injunc­ tion and serves as proof of her true tragic source through its allusion. In contrast to her Euripidean counterpart, she admits previous attempts to ex­ press her desire of her own volition (ter tecum conata loqui, 7). This admission itself may be an ironic reference to tragic Phaedras. Casali (1995, 4) points out that the Ovidian Phaedra’s three attempts to speak her desire correspond to the Euripidean Phaedra’s attempts to suppress her desire—­through silence, self-­control, and fi­nally suicide—in previous tragic incarnations.72 Tragedy lurks ­behind even her ostensibly positive messages. Phaedra, fol­ lowing the elegiac example of Ovid’s poet-­praeceptor, constructs two elegant Hellenistic lists of exempla (53–66; 93–104), despite her claim that the qualita­ tive difference of her late-­coming love is its lack of ars (25). Phaedra has al­ ready hinted at her admiration of ars with her praise of Hippolytus’s own success in following the poet-­praeceptor’s advice on masculine cultus (75–78).73 Like the poet-­praeceptor, or perhaps imitating him, Phaedra uses mythologi­ cal exempla in the form of cata­logues as a didactic strategy. She offers a list of Cretan w ­ omen as an apology for her hereditary desire.74 In both cases, her ex­ amples carry with them more reminders of her tragic origin.75 Let us consider the first cata­logue.76 Forsitan hunc generis fato reddamus amorem, Et Venus ex tota gente tributa petat. Iuppiter Europen, prima est ea gentis origo, Dilexit, tauro dissimulante deum; Pasiphae mater, decepto subdita tauro, Enixa est utero crimen onusque suo;



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Perfidus Aegides, ducentia fila secutus, Curva meae fugit tecta sororis ope. En, ego nunc, ne forte parum Minoia credar, In socias leges ultima gentis eo. Hoc quoque fatale est: placuit domus una duabus; Me tua forma capit, capta parente soror. Thesides Theseusque duas rapuere sorores: Ponite de nostra bina tropaea domo. (Her. 4.53–66). Perhaps we may be repeating this love b­ ecause of our ­family’s destiny, and Venus demands her tribute from the entire ­family. Jupiter loved Eu­ ropa, the first of our f­ amily, when a bull form disguised the god; My ­mother Pasiphae slept with a bull whom she tricked, and bore her crime and her burden in her womb; the lying son of Aegeus, ­after he followed the guiding thread, fled the twisted prison with the help of my s­ ister. And now I, the last of our line, follow the laws of our ­family in case I am not considered Minoan enough. This too is destined: one h ­ ouse has pleased two ­women; me your beauty captured, captured by your ­father was my ­sister. The son of Theseus and Theseus ran away with two ­sisters: erect double trophies over our ­house. This list echoes and elaborates on the examples given by Phaedra in Hipp. II, just before the nurse discovers her desire for Hippolytus. ­Here Phaedra intro­ duces her ­mother (337) and Ariadne (339) as examples of the evils from which she ­will fashion good by her suicide. The stichomythia of Euripides’s text is mirrored by Ovid’s hexameter lines: ΦΑΊΔΡΑ: ὦ

τλῆμον, οἷον, μῆτερ, ἠράϲθηϲ ἔρον. ἔϲχε ταύρου, τέκνον; ἢ τί φὴιϲ τόδε; ΦΑΊΔΡΑ: ϲύ τ᾽, ὦ τάλαιν᾽ ὅμαιμε, Διονύϲου δάμαρ. ΤΡΟΦΌϹ: τέκνον, τί πάϲχειϲ; ϲυγγόνουϲ κακορροθεῖϲ; ΦΑΊΔΡΑ: τρίτη δ᾽ ἐγὼ δύστηνοϲ ὡϲ ἀπόλλυμαι. (Eur. Hipp. II, 337–41) ΤΡΟΦΌϹ: ὃν

Phaedra: Unhappy ­mother, what a love you loved. Nurse: The one she had for the bull, child? Or what is it you say? Phaedra: And you, wretched ­sister, Dionysus’s bride. Nurse: What do you suffer, child? Do you speak badly about your relatives? Phaedra: And I the third, how wretchedly I die. The Ovidian Phaedra follows her tragic model by placing herself as the final exemplar in the list of Cretan ­women. When she calls herself the “last of the

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line” (ultima gentis, 62), she is in a sense speaking of Euripides’s Phaedra, who not only intends to be the last through her suicide but does indeed accomplish this at the end of the play. The Ovidian Phaedra, by contrast, interprets her membership in such a f­ amily as a challenge to live up to their reputation: “in case I am not considered Minoan enough” (ne forte parum Minoia credar, 61). She also uses it as a justification for her forwardness. Phaedra’s identification as a victim of Aphrodite, like the other w ­ omen of her f­ amily, rehearses the motivating plot of Euripides’s extant play, where Aph­ rodite opens the play by announcing her intention to use Phaedra as a h ­ uman weapon against Hippolytus (1–57). Phaedra never learns this fact, although the chorus suggests it in their own cata­logue of rhetorical examples (545–64, quoted in n. 75 above). The subjects of each couplet alternate, male lover to female lover—­Iuppiter (55), Pasiphae (57), perfidus Aegides (59), En, ego nunc (61)—­but the alternation implicitly establishes a paradigmatic status between the four examples. Their similarity is further reinforced by the content of the couplets. Jupiter, Pasiphae, Theseus, and Phaedra herself are the active lovers who use deceit to attain their desires. Although Theseus is only said to escape the labyrinth with the help of Phaedra’s s­ ister, his epithet, perfidus (59), and the description of the curva tecta (60), literally “curved and covered t­hings,” suggest deceit and concealment.77 At the close of her letter, Phaedra makes her paradigmatic relation with her m ­ other explicit: “My m ­ other could seduce the bull: ­Will you be fiercer than a savage bull?” (potuit corrumpere taurum / Mater: eris tauro saevior ipse truci, 165–66). The couplet also draws an explicit comparison between Hippolytus and Pasiphae’s bull, ostensibly challenging him to be more ­human(e) to Phaedra and her desire than was Pasiphae’s bull. The comparison, of course, has the opposite effect of aligning Phaedra’s de­ sire with her m ­ other’s bestial desire. It also makes painfully clear Phaedra’s true intent, “to seduce” (corrumpere), while recalling both ­mother’s and ­daughter’s tragic origin, through the same verb whose root, rumpere, recalls the tragic death of Hippolytus.78 Generic markers also guide her readers to interpret her poetry using the tragic code, not the elegiac code. If we look closely at Phaedra’s language, her “voice” sounds tragic even as it speaks in an elegiac code. Take, for example, Phaedra’s claim that she ­will not break her marriage contract ­because of ele­ giac nequitia (17). Phaedra si­mul­ta­neously identifies with elegy by speaking in its code, and distances herself from it by refusing to embrace the elegiac life of nequitia. She claims that she is no ordinary amator. Her amor is “more than” what is experienced by the elegiac crowd. Her degree of difference is responsible for a more burdensome (gravius, 19), more serious (serius, 19), and more intense (peius, 26) experience of love as a fire (19, 20) and wound (20,



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21). Young lovers become jaded. Their love is merely ars (25). The language in this passage is heavy, so to speak, with metapoetic signals. If McKeown’s con­ jecture is correct,79 and the Ars Amatoria and Heroides ­were being written at the same time, Ovid is again constructing a Phaedra who reveals herself to Ovid’s external readers as the “tragic” Phaedra while writing what is meant to be her elegiac self, for Phaedra is essentially saying, “I am not the amator of the Amores, who goes on to teach his Ars Amatoria ­later in life. My amor is not associated with light (levis) elegiac nequitia, it is more serious (gravius).” Gravis, in generic terms, is set in opposition to elegy in Ovid, and most frequently describes epic, but Ovid already used this adjective to describe tragedy in op­ position to elegy in Am. 3.1.80 The personified Elegy describes herself as levis: “I am but light, and along with me Cupid, my love, is light” (sum leuis, et mecum leuis est, mea cura, Cupido, 3.1.41). Tragedy, by contrast, urges Ovid: “It is time for you to be moved by the stroke of the more serious thyrsus” (tempus erat thyrso pulsum grauiore moueri, 3.1.23; cf. also 35, 36), characterizing her­ self as a gravis genre.81 In the end Phaedra concedes that her per­for­mance is deceitful: “And it is not a l­abor to hide our love . . . ​the crime can be concealed by the name of kinship” (Nec ­labor est celare . . . ​/ Cognato poterit nomine culpa tegi, 137–38). Shame, which prevents both the Euripidean and Ovidian Phaedra from speak­ ing to Hippolytus directly, is again invoked as a corrective emotion, guiding the proper per­for­mance of be­hav­ior within the system of kinship. The figure of covering a crime invokes the Greek visual and literary meta­phor of “shame” (αἰδώς) as a mantle, which surfaces in Euripides’s Hipp. II, and repeats the Ro­ man Augustan associations of feminine shame (pudor) (or lack of ) with the figure of covering and uncovering.82 Phaedra l­ater contends that shame has been routed by love: “No lover sees what is proper. He has lost all sense of shame and shame, in its flight, has abandoned its standards” (quid deceat, non videt ullus amans. / Depuduit, profugusque pudor sua signa reliquit, 154–55). Nev­ ertheless, shame (pudor) is generically marked in this letter as tragic and is in a dialectic relationship with elegiac love. The irrepressible tragic “source” acts as a meta­phor for abject female desire. While Phaedra’s elegiac per­for­mance of her tragic role—­that of noverca—as a tactic for the dissimulation of her per­ for­mance of her elegiac role may rely on their similar performativity, she is ultimately unable to disguise her source text.83 In addition to the repetition of the key themes of silence and shame from Attic tragedy, her letter carries a number of metapoetic signals which suggest that Phaedra, despite her attempted elegiac thesis, never left the tragic stage. Her poetic form, the letter, is itself an impor­tant actor in her tragic tradition. Her didactic cata­logues, which, at first glance, resemble cata­logues found in

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the elegies of Propertius (e.g., 3.19) and Ovid (e.g., Ars am. 1.283–340), are, upon closer inspection, allusions to hers and o ­ thers’ tragedies.84 Furthermore, the description of and references to dramatic per­for­mances and words with strong connotations of the tragic genre compromise her elegiac thesis. As Bar­ chiesi (1993, 342) notes, Phaedra’s injunction finge videre (4.176) at the close of her letter emphasizes the metatheatricality of her epistle, evoking the role of spectator while also echoing Hippolytus’s own wish to look at himself: “Alas, if only it was pos­si­ble for me to step back and look upon myself, so that I might weep over the wrongs we are suffering” (Hipp. II, 1077–79).85 In the end Pha­ edra’s poetic transposition is unsuccessful.86 Phaedra’s generic “core” is natu­ ralized by Ovid’s text, which demonstrates that Phaedra, as a tragic exemplum, has only one thesis available to her.87 Presenting Phaedra’s construction as her own is proof of this, for, as Harvey argues in the case of Erasmus’s ventrilo­ quized Folly, “she, too, enacts the folly she personifies through the disruptions of her rhe­toric” (Harvey 1992, 60).88 At no point does Ovid take off the “Phaedra” mask or slip out of character, but, as we have seen, while he writes her writing about per­for­mance and per­ formativity, he speaks through her to the audience, ironically reminding them, with her own loaded words, of repre­sen­ta­tions of her which ­were performed on the stage. He also reminds the audience through this pro­cess of his own lit­ erary per­for­mance, playing the part of a w ­ oman, who, while trying to switch roles before an audience expecting the familiar “tragic” Phaedra, puts on an ill-­ fitting elegiac costume which shows the tragic costume beneath. What we are left with is a formula that naturalizes Phaedra’s desire as “essentially” destruc­ tive through its inextricable connection to genre. Ovid’s text constructs Phae­ dra’s unimaginable tragic desire in such a way that it cannot be re­imagined, rearticulated, or rescued from the margins of intelligibility—­the realm of the abject—­through a generic translation. At the end of the letter, she invites Hip­ polytus to create another audience: “You are reading the words of a suppliant, imagine also that you see my tears” (verba precantis / Perlegis, et lacrimas finge videre meas, 175–76). A ­ fter attempting to manipulate language by using it in another generic code and failing, Phaedra relents and allows herself to become what she always was, the tragic spectacle of a suffering female body.89 Her suf­ fering is the result of and the punishment for her violation of the incest taboo. Her visibility in Ovid’s “tragic” epistle is a form of social control, warning t­ hose who may stray from cultural gender norms. Her failed thesis in a new genre is also a means of defining generic norms—­Phaedra’s “tragic” desire can only ap­ pear in elegy as a “monster,” belonging as it does beyond the code of elegy and instead on the tragic stage.



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Byblis, Metamorphosis 9.439–665 Byblis’s story in the Metamorphoses narrates the pro­cess of Phaedra’s poetic the­ sis and its reception.90 Her name, in fact, means “papyrus leaves” or “book” in Greek (Byblos), a pun which draws attention to her multiple literary associations: the subject of books, a writer of books, and a reader of books.91 In Ovid’s tale, Byblis is overcome with desire for her twin ­brother, Caunus, and writes him a love letter. This intratextuality between Heroides 4 and Byblis’s story in book 9 of the Metamorphoses is signaled by the correspondences between themes as well as the very similar structure of the letter Byblis writes, which opens with nearly the same line as Phaedra’s: “a wish for good health, which she ­will not have, ­unless you give it,” quam, nisi tu dederis, non est habitura salutem, Met. 9.530 (cf. “a wish for good health, which she herself ­will lack, u ­ nless you give it,” Qua, nisi tu dederis, caritura est ipsa, salutem, Her. 4.1). In the Metamorphoses, the letter is “writ­ ten” in the narrative of a male poet, who is given the power to emphasize or suppress what ele­ments he chooses.92 The insincerity or perhaps the ars which we suspect b­ ehind Phaedra’s emotional plea to Hippolytus is revealed by the narrator of Byblis’s tale, and we are privy to the rhetorical strategies in the Heroidean letter which is the centerpiece of the passage. Although Byblis’s letter is embedded in an epic poem, Byblis tries to intro­ duce into the symbolic kinship roles of s­ ister and b­ rother an erotic valence through the introduction of the elegiac code, as Phaedra has in her Ovidian letter. As we saw in the case of Phaedra’s letter (Her. 4), in order for Byblis to express her desire in a way which Caunus ­will “understand,” and accept as “de­ sire,” she must define who she is in relation to Caunus and to the kinship system in which they participate.93 In the pro­cess, Byblis also defines her own signifying power as exemplum in the megatext of myth. Phaedra’s letter at­ tempts such a redefinition but fails. Her “true” tragic nature cannot be sup­ pressed by a new generic code, for her tradition cannot be reinterpreted in the elegiac world. It is unintelligible, an abject passion excluded from the generic universe of elegy. In Ovid’s epic, the narration of the pro­cess of signification reveals that the place of enunciation for Byblis (and therefore Phaedra, whose writing instance she enacts) is overdetermined by literary tradition. Ovid’s tale relies on ­theses (in this case, the mythological thesis which establishes Byb­ lis’s exemplarity in the mythic megatext and the t­ heses of vari­ous positions in the system of kinship) and draws attention both to the foundation of t­hese positions and to ­those positions which are necessarily excluded in the pro­cess. Ovid, however, is successful in positing himself as a writing subject through the pro­cess of her generic repudiation and tragic abjection.

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As Ovid pre­sents the story, Byblis’s dreams reveal her true nature, her in­ nate meaning as a sign in the megatext of myth, in much the same way Pha­ edra’s words in her letter betray her (poorly) repressed tragic core.94 As noted above and in chapter 1, correspondences to the Greek tragedies featuring Pha­ edra, Ovid’s Heroides 4, and the Scylla and Myrrha episodes which surround Byblis’s story in books 8 and 10 connect Byblis to the Phaedra of Greek trag­ edy.95 Byblis does not recognize her own tragic model u ­ ntil she sees a per­for­ mance in her dreams. spes tamen obscenas animo demittere non est ausa suo uigilans; placida resoluta quiete saepe uidet quod amat; uisa est quoque iungere fratri corpus et erubuit, quamuis sopita iacebat. somnus abit; silet illa diu repetitque quietis ipsa suae speciem, dubiaque ita mente profatur: “me miseram! tacitae quid uult sibi noctis imago? quam nolim rata sit! cur haec ego somnia uidi?” (Met. 9.468–75) Nevertheless, she did not dare to admit obscene hopes into her mind while awake; ­after she is relaxed in peaceful rest she often sees what she loves; she seemed even to join her body with her ­brother and she blushed, although she was sleeping in her bed. Sleep departs; she is quiet for a long time and she herself recalls the image of her own slumber, and she speaks with an uncertain mind in this way: “Poor me! what does the night’s vision wish for itself ? If only I did not think it! Why did I see ­these dreams?” Byblis’s hopes (spes) are premature. We are told only that she is “burning in­ side” (aestuat intus, 465) and has an aversion to the names of kinship (nomina sanguinis, 466). Although her desire is not yet apparent to her (manifesta sibi, 464), nevertheless, her hopes are “indecent” (obscenas, 468).96 The straightfor­ ward meaning of the adjective, with a specifically sexual connotation, prolep­ tically describes Byblis’s desire. A less overt, but equally impor­tant meaning, I would suggest, is attached to this adjective. Varro (Ling. 7.96) tells us obsc(a)enus is derived from scaena, “the stage” (Obscaenum dictum ab scaena). It comes to mean shameful (turpe) ­because it describes what should only be said on the stage (in scaena).97 ­Here I believe the secondary meaning works in conjunc­ tion with the language of spectacle (uidet, uisa est, 470; repetit . . . ​speciem, 472– 73; imago, 474; uidi, 475) to reinforce the idea that Byblis is watching a dramatic per­for­mance (uidet quod amat, 470) in which she is the player (uisa est, 470).



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The passive of video, of course, is commonly used to indicate dreams, but its juxtaposition with the active in the same line, as well as the frequency of look­ ing, seeing, and image words, puts the literal meaning in play.98 Kristeva locates the initiation of the thetic stage in the Lacanian mirror stage. Lacan’s mirror stage describes the moment when a child, seeing her own image in the mirror for the first time, conceives of herself as a ­whole, coher­ ent body and distinguishes her body from other objects. This moment sets in motion her entry into the world of language and symbolism, as the ability to distinguish also introduces the ability to name the now differentiated objects. According to Kristeva, “Positing the imaged ego leads to the positing of the object, which is, likewise, separate and signifiable” (Kristeva 1984, 46). The the­ sis of the body image is necessary for this naming pro­cess, for naming an ob­ ject necessarily names the subject’s symbolic relation to that object. Byblis returns to the thetic stage as a result of seeing an image (imago) of herself. Byblis’s moment of recognition establishes her as both a sign in the symbolic system of myth (for Byblis’s imago is one familiar to Ovid’s readers) and as a reader of this language, specifically a reader of Ovid’s text in the language of myth (for her recognition of her own imago demonstrates that she is also fa­ miliar with what she sees). Byblis is faced with the contradiction introduced by her “tragic” desire. A (Roman) ­woman is the object of desire, a beloved, not a lover. Her normative position in the sexual dyad, as we have discussed in the previous chapter, is pas­ sive. Furthermore, a ­sister, according to the relations governed by the kinship system, is prohibited from any erotic relationship with her b­ rother, be it active or passive. Kristeva identifies such a contradictory position as a characteristic of the signifying subject.99 Each individual who engages in a symbolic system is faced at the thetic stage with the “heterogeneous contradiction” (Kristeva 1984, 82) of all the pos­si­ble and undifferentiated identities and the one identity which ex­ cludes ­these possibilities. In the thetic stage, through the positing of the subject, one chooses a symbolic position from which to relate to objects, and excludes vari­ous other possibilities for the subject, thereby (temporarily) eliminating any ambiguity in an individual’s identity as a speaking, communicating, and writing subject. Byblis’s thesis is both symbolic and literary, narrative levels which are some­ times indistinguishable in the episode and are in constant tension. The ten­ sion between her tragic literary tradition and the role with which she self-­identifies, ­sister, creates a desire to renegotiate her relationship to her ­brother linguistically.100 As a subject speaking from her current position in the kinship system, ­sister, her desire appears (or is “read”) by Caunus as incest. For this reason, Byblis must make Caunus a very specific other, or rather not

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an other who is excluded from ­those with whom sex is permitted by the kin­ ship system. She can only do this through a new thesis of her mythological identity. As the narrating voice tells us at the opening of the tale: “Byblis is set as an example for girls to love what is permitted” (Byblis in exemplo est ut ament concessa puellae, 454).101 Nevertheless, we are invited to read (or hear) a tale which describes her strug­gle against her already determined and fixed value as an exemplum of destructive female desire by attempting to shift her posi­ tion in the kinship system and thereby re­orient her relations with Caunus. A new positionality would redefine her desire as concessum and change the im­ plied meaning of the narrator’s statement (quoted above) from “a [negative] example [cautioning] girls to love what is permitted” to “a [positive] example for girls to love what is permitted [in emulation].” Kristeva theorizes that the poetic pro­cess reveals the pro­cess of signification.102 “The thetic—­that crucial place on the basis of which the ­human being constitutes himself as signifying and/or social—is the very place textual experience aims t­ oward. . . . ​But at the same time and as a result, textual experience reaches the very foundation of the social—­that which is exploited by sociality but which elaborates and can go beyond it, e­ ither destroying or transforming it” (Kristeva 1984, 67). We are told in the framing narrative, “Now [Byblis] calls him master, now she hates the names of kinship, and now she wishes him to call her Byblis rather than s­ ister” (iam dominum appellat, iam nomina sanguinis odit, / Byblida iam mauult quam se uocet ille sororem, 466–67). Raval (2001, 293) notes that the position of her name and her kinship role (first and last in line 467, respec­ tively) reflects Byblis’s conception of the distance between the two roles. Her grammatical position as subject of all three verbs demonstrates her agency in the proj­ect of renaming, even before she is aware of why she has begun. This line also expresses Byblis’s wish (mauult) for a discursive metamorphosis, a spa­ tial and temporal movement away from kinship relations. Her hoped-­for out­ come, to be Byblis to Caunus, not s­ ister to b­ rother, is foregrounded syntactically. In addition to her search for a new relationship to Caunus, Byblis, as Jenkins has noted, cites the variants of her myth during her soliloquy (Caunus as lover: 9.511–12, Nicaenetus quoted by Parthenius 11.3; Byblis’s confession in person: 513–14, Parthenius 11.3; and Ovid’s innovative epistle: 515–16, Jenkins 2000, 441), suggesting that she is diving back into the chora, so to speak, of her liter­ ary tradition for a mythic position. Kristeva theorizes a fully embodied writing subject, whose composition is produced by the experiences of her individual material existence (e.g., sex, class, ethnicity). Ovid pre­sents Byblis in just this way. He situates her genealogi­ cally (­daughter of Miletus and Cyane, 447–53), geo­graph­ic­ ally (Miletus in Asia



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Minor, 448–49),103 and materially (vividly describing her body as she writes her letter, 517–29).104 Since she is a literary construction, however, Byblis’s repre­ sen­ta­tion as a writer reflects Ovid’s ideological universe and the anx­ie­ ties which it represses or displaces onto marginal figures. Anxiety over the ­f uture is signaled at the very beginning of her letter. “quam, nisi tu dederis, non est habitura salutem, hanc tibi mittit amans; pudet, a, pudet edere nomen! et si quid cupiam quaeris, sine nomine uellem posset agi mea causa meo, nec cognita Byblis ante forem quam spes uotorum certa fuisset.” (Met. 9.530–34) “This wish for good health which she ­will not have, ­unless you give it, a lover sends to you; I am ashamed, ah, ashamed to say the name! And if you are asking what I want, I wish my case could be pleaded anony­ mously and I would not be recognized as Byblis before the hope for my prayers has been assured.” Fear over the consequences of her letter of confession is the ostensible reason for her wish to warp time or see into the f­uture to determine w ­ hether t­hings turn out the way she hopes (spes . . . ​certa fuisset, 534) before she signs the love letter (sine nomine uellem / posset agi mea causa meo, nec cognita Byblis, 532–33). The epistolary genre, as Rosenmeyer (2001, 74–75) notes, is concerned with time, seeking to bridge the temporal distance between the moment the letter was written and the ­future in which the addressee ­will read it by creating a sense of the pre­sent in the language itself. Byblis expresses a wish to move past the mo­ ment of reception to the time when Caunus has finished her letter and made a judgment about its contents. In its dialogue with Ovid’s Heroides, Byblis’s “­future” resembles the ironic tension in the heroines’ epistles, whose literary ­futures predict the very outcome the heroines strug­gle to prevent.105 Her unat­ tainable wish, however, suggests that she is aware of her ­limited control over Caunus’s reaction to her poetic epistle and, therefore, her literary reception. This greeting, in fact, expresses a connection between time and identity. “And should you ask what I desire, without a name I would prefer” (532). Respectabil­ ity, reputation, and chastity—­normative feminine be­hav­ior all falling u ­ nder the virtue pudicitia—­excludes, as I have argued, any active sexuality, let alone an in­ cestuous one. For this reason, Byblis says that it shames her to give it a name (pudet edere nomen, 531). Feminine desire is an absence of desire, leaving “what I want” (quid cupiam), for Byblis, “nameless” and “not recognized” (sine nomine,

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nec cognita). The f­ uture tense (habitura, 530), which suspends Byblis somewhere in time between the pre­sent and the unknowable f­ uture, also reflects her limin­ ality. For time belongs to the symbolic world to which she cannot belong as long as she refuses her own symbolic identity: “I wish my case could be pleaded anonymously and I would not be recognized as Byblis before the hope for my prayers has been assured” (sine nomine uellem / posset agi mea causa meo, nec cognita Byblis, 532–33).106 The narrator, of course, has defined the symbolic identity Byblis seeks to avoid (454); nevertheless, she is represented as unaware of her exemplarity. The repetition of the first-­person possessive adjective implicitly connects the nouns the adjectives modify (nomen and causa) and emphasizes By­ blis’s perceived control over her identity both through the repetition and through the conceptual connection. It is her name to use or not and her case to plead. The narrator describes in detail Byblis’s strug­gle to compose her letter (518– 29). She “writes and deletes; changes, criticizes, and approves” (et notat et delet; mutat culpatque probatque, 524) what she has written in an attempt to find a means of representing her desire to her addressee. “She had written ‘­sister’; ‘­sister’ it seemed best to erase” (scripta “soror” fuerat; uisum est delere sororem, 528). The alliteration of s in the beginning and end of the line, along with the word “soror” in the second and last position, draws attention to her kinship role to Caunus. Scripta soror, moreover, evokes the scripta puella of Roman erotic elegy, the significance of which we w ­ ill discuss below. The narrative rep­ resents a writing pro­cess in which Byblis is both author (“having consid­ ered . . . ​she composed the words,” meditata . . . ​componit verba, 521) and material of her poem. As a writer in the epistolary genre in the style of the Heroides, Byblis can be understood as representing herself in a self-­conscious way to her beloved addressee.107 This re-­presentation, h ­ ere as in the Heroides, amounts to an attempt to rewrite her own literary tradition.108 She “had been written as a s­ ister [by Ovid, Parthenius, and Apollonius, among o ­ thers109], but it seemed good to erase [herself as] ­sister” and write a new role for herself. As noted above, the first line of Byblis’s letter also closely reworks that of Phaedra’s: Qua, nisi tu dederis, caritura est ipsa, salutem (Her. 4.1), as does her story. Byblis, despite her young age, resembles the tragic Phaedra, and, in Ov­ id’s epic (re)interpretation of the epistle, his tale of Byblis claims its tragic model with references to the Ovidian mediating text of Phaedra’s epistle and to Euripidean themes and correspondences.110 Like Phaedra, Byblis’s aim is to seduce her beloved (513–14). In both cases, the beloved is a relative; in the story of Byblis, the kinship is stronger—­they are not only blood relatives but twins (prolem . . . ​gemellam, 453). Moreover, Byblis and Caunus are ­children of Miletus, who, we are told a few lines e­ arlier (439–49), fled Crete in order to allay Minos’s fears of a coup from a younger rival. The connection to Minos



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reminds the reader of Phaedra, his ­daughter, and, perhaps, the inheritance (or curse, if we believe Phaedra’s claim) of Cretan ­women’s abject sexuality.111 Byblis’s preoccupation with appearance is directly linked to her concern for preserving reputation governed by pudor, a virtue which, for Roman w ­ omen, was directed t­ oward governing proper sexual be­hav­ior and the reputation which resulted from their be­hav­ior.112 As noted above, this theme of concealment/ revelation as it intersects with reputation/appearance is an impor­tant one in Euripides’s Hipp. II. We also saw how this theme is doubly significant to the Ovidian Phaedra’s construction (Her. 4) ­because of its centrality to her tragic source text(s) and its currency and engagement in Augustan lit­er­a­ture. Perhaps following the Ovidian Phaedra’s example, Byblis claims to Caunus that she is compelled to write what pudor prevents her from saying. Both Phaedra and Byb­ lis choose to write letters in order to overcome their shame. Phaedra tells her reader that her tongue is useless (utilis, Her. 4.7) and she blames pudor (9–10) for her inability to speak. Similarly, Byblis questions ­whether pudor ­will prevent her from confessing her love in person: “­Will you be able to speak? ­Will you be able to confess? Love ­will compel me, I ­will be able to; or, if shame holds my tongue, a secret letter ­will confess my hidden passion” (poterisne loqui? poterisne fateri? / coget amor, potero; uel, si pudor ora tenebit, / littera celatos arcana fatebitur ignes, Met. 9.514–16). Phaedra says that her letter carries “secrets” (his arcana notis, Her. 4.5); Byblis says that her “secret” letter ­will confess her hidden passion (littera celatos arcana fatebitur ignes, Met. 9.516). Despite her insistence that she feels a sense of shame in confessing at the beginning of her letter, she ­later claims to have no regard for reputation (reuerentia famae, 556). Byblis ­here offers a condensed version of Phaedra’s ar­ gument in Heroides 4 for privileging appearance. In both letters the ­women point out how the per­for­mance of their proper kinship roles is similar enough to be confused for the improper, incestuous, per­for­mance. Compare Her. 4.137–46 (quoted above) to Met. 9.556–60: nec nos aut durus pater aut reuerentia famae aut timor impediet; tamen ut sit causa timendi, dulcia fraterno sub nomine furta tegemus. est mihi libertas tecum secreta loquendi, et damus amplexus et iungimus oscula coram; And neither a harsh ­father nor regard for reputation nor fear ­will hold us back; nevertheless, should ­there be a reason for fearing, we ­will hide our sweet stolen moments u ­ nder the name of b­ rother. I am f­ ree to speak privately with you, and we embrace and kiss out in the open;

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Both letter writers note that t­ here are no authority figures standing in the way; however, their argument only draws attention to the very figure whose kin­ ship relation should prevent the sexual liaison they desire (husband, mariti, Her. 4.141; ­father, pater, Met. 9.556). Byblis’s language of deception echoes Phae­ dra’s. The idea of physically covering (tegi, Her. 4.138; tegemus, Met. 9.558), cou­ pled with its abstract cover, a name (nomine, Her. 4.138; nomine, Met. 9.558), suggests a disguise.113 The name of “relative” (cognato, Her. 4.138) or “­brother” (fraterno, Met. 9.558) is a role accompanied by the costume of be­hav­ior which covers (tego) the player, disguising the actor beneath. Both ­women note that such a per­for­mance ­will afford them and their lovers the freedom (libertas, Met. 9.559) of privacy (in lecto meo, Her. 4.146; libertas . . . ​secreta loquendi, Met. 9.559) as well as the opportunity for public displays of affection, that is, kissing in full view (aperta, Her. 4.144; coram, Met. 9.560). The narrator’s frame pre­sents Byblis as a would-be elegiac poet. As we watch her begin her composition, the narrator’s phrase scripta “soror” (528) echoes scripta puella, the traditional beloved of Roman erotic elegy.114 Byblis is described as writing on wax writing tablets (tabellas, 523; ceris, 529), the con­ stant companion and confidant of an elegiac lover and beloved.115 Early in the passage, the narrator hints at her elegiac proj­ect. Her careful cultus (462–63) is reminiscent not only of Pasiphae’s absurd preparations in the Ars (1.289– 326) but also the well-­manicured puellae of Roman erotic elegy.116 In fact, a ­woman’s care for her appearance as a means of catching and keeping the at­ tention of a man is the poet-­praeceptor’s primary lesson for his female readers in book 3 of the Ars.117 In addition to the elegiac language of her letter (amans, 531, 547; uiolenta Cupidinis arma, 543; dura/-­us, 545, 556), Byblis adds the neo­ teric exclamation “a” (9.531), echoing the sympathetic narrator’s response to the plaints of maidens like Calvus’s Io, and more recently Vergil’s and Ovid’s Pasiphae (Ecl. 6.47, 52; Ars am. 1.313).118 Byblis strengthens her neoteric asso­ ciations with a second Catullan allusion, although faint, in her description of the old men whose concern is lawful be­hav­ior. Like Catullus and Lesbia in Catull. 5,119 who seek to confuse the senum seueriorum with their uncountable number of kisses, Byblis, in a series of jussive subjunctives (“Let old men know the laws . . . ​seek ­after . . . ​preserve,” iura senes norint . . . ​inquirant . . . ​seruent, Met. 9.551–52), playfully bids Caunus disregard the senes and embrace the phi­ losophy “ignorance is bliss” (“What is allowed we still do not know and we believe all ­things are allowed,” quid liceat nescimus adhuc et cuncta licere / credimus, 554–55).120 Byblis calls Caunus dominus (iam dominum appellat, 466), a role describing the enslavement of the lover to the beloved. Servitium amoris in elegy, how­ ever, is always the predicament of the male amator; the puella often plays the



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part of the domina who rules over his heart.121 For Byblis to call Caunus a dominus aligns him with the feminine role, her with the masculine, and indicates to the readers familiar with the elegiac code that Byblis’s attempt to fit her desire into the elegiac paradigm may be problematic.122 Like Phaedra, Byblis claims that she ­will be compelled to write a letter of seduction by Amor (“love ­will compel me,” coget amor, 515; “Unhappily and for a long time I have fought to escape the violent weapons of Cupid . . . ​overcome, I am compelled to con­ fess,” pugnauique diu uiolenta Cupidinis arma / effugere infelix . . . ​superata fateri / cogor, 543–44, 545–46; “not about to confess, if extreme passion w ­ ere not compelling me,” non fassurae, nisi cogeret ultimus ardor, 562). Yet, as we noted above, this is a programmatic claim made by the male authors of Roman erotic elegy. This claim, therefore, aligns both Phaedra and Byblis with a masculine elegiac subjectivity. Byblis’s epic letter, nevertheless, demonstrates a more suc­ cessful self-­presentation as a feminine subject than Phaedra’s. To this end, Byblis invites Caunus to look at her, making herself the object of his mascu­ line gaze,123 and she draws attention to her feminine weakness: “I endured more difficulties than you think a ­woman could bear” (plus quam ferre puellam / posse putes ego dura124 tuli, 544–45).125 Byblis’s play with signification by exploiting, not negating, the instability of signs—­her mythical symbolism and kinship roles in general—­depends on another (i.e., Caunus) to recognize her new elegiac thesis. Kristeva maintains that poetry effects a “revolution in poetic language.” Poetry’s language is in­ formed by the multiple meanings of signs it reintroduces into the symbolic economy from the semiotic chora. In order for poetry to affect language, how­ ever, the newly introduced meaning must be accepted into linguistic and symbolic systems by ­others. The narrator introduces Byblis’s story as an ex­ ample (Byblis in exemplo est, 9.454), focusing the reader’s attention on one spe­ cific meaning her myth holds as a sign in the megatext of myth. If Caunus does not successfully interpret (or refuses to read) Byblis’s words, her new “role” as elegiac lover-­beloved w ­ ill be socially illegible. Likewise, if Ovid’s reader does not accept Byblis’s translation into a new genre, her signifying power as a mythological sign remains unchanged.126 Even before she picks up the pen Byblis can “imagine” how the “vision from her sleep” (quietis / . . . ​suae speciem, 472–73), which she takes plea­sure in re­ calling (repetit, 472), ­will seem and be seen by Caunus, the reader of her let­ ter. Byblis realizes signification—­the pro­cess by which signs take on symbolic meaning—­requires “two judges” (“Nevertheless that act requires the decision of two,” tamen arbitrium quaerit res ista duorum, 505). For this reason, she does not know yet what the symbolic meaning of the “­things seen” “signif[ies]” (“What therefore do my dreams signify for me,” quid mihi significant ergo mea

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uisa, 495). She is both the generator and interpreter of the visual signs. With­ out a “second judge,” an other to complete the cir­cuit (i.e., a successful com­ munication including the receipt of her message and the verification of its meaning through a shared understanding), her intentional meaning as author is not confirmed. Ovid’s text acknowledges that an author needs a reader. It also acknowl­ edges the potential for the reader to assign to the signs of a text a meaning which differs from the intended meaning of the author. Byblis’s inner mono­ logue clearly expresses this anxiety—­“Imagine it is pleasing to me; it ­will seem to be a crime to him” (finge placere mihi; scelus esse uidebitur illi, 506). Ovid art­ fully renders the conflicting positions of author and reader through grammat­ ical structure, which juxtaposes mihi in the last position before the caesura to illi at the end of the line. In line 506, the phrase belonging to Caunus’s ­imagined reaction is a full foot longer (scelus esse uidebitur illi, 506), indicating perhaps that the role of reader has more sway over the meaning of a text. It is certainly true that Hippolytus’s reaction to Phaedra’s message in Euripides’s tragic dra­ matization of her myth strongly informs her symbolic meaning in the mega­ text of Greek myth, and the only interpretation of Phaedra as a paradigm in the Metamorphoses is that of Hippolytus/Virbius (15.497–546). Caunus, how­ ever, refuses to be a reader of her text, throwing the tablets down only par­ tially read (lecta sibi parte, 575). ­After the failure of her letter, Byblis privileges physical per­for­mance over the textual. Byblis learns that a reader’s m ­ ental images are much harder to con­ trol, and therefore the meaning of the text is even more unstable. By writing the letter, Byblis creates proof of her desire which her dream per­for­mance lacked: “Why indeed did I rashly create evidence of this wound?” (quid enim temeraria uulneris huius / indicium feci, 585–86). Her words, she determines, have to be hidden (celanda . . . ​uerba, 586–87) from Caunus, as much as their affair has to be hidden from ­others (furta tegemus, 558). et tamen ipsa loqui nec me committere cerae debueram praesensque meos aperire furores. uidisset lacrimas, uultum uidisset amantis; plura loqui poteram, quam quae cepere tabellae; inuito potui circumdare bracchia collo et, si reicerer, potui moritura uideri amplectique pedes adfusaque poscere uitam. omnia fecissem, quorum si singula duram flectere non poterant, potuissent omnia, mentem. (Met. 9.601–9)



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Nevertheless, I myself should have spoken and not entrusted myself to wax tablets and revealed my passion in person. He would have seen my tears, he would have seen the face of his lover; I could have said more than what the tablets held; I could have put my arms around his reluctant neck and, if I was rejected, I could have seemed to be on the verge of death and I could have embraced his feet and, prostrate, begged for my life. I would have done it all, if each of t­ hese ­things individually could not change his unfeeling mind, every­thing would have been pos­si­ble. Byblis cannot control the intended meaning of her poetry; she should have performed it herself.127 This inability of an author to control the reception of her text surfaces in the repetition of forms of mitto. When she is awake, trans­ mitting her desires is equivalent to admitting her desire to herself and taking on a Phaedra-­like role. Byblis does not dare to cause her obscene hopes to enter her mind (literally “send down,” demittere, 468). As long as she refuses this role while awake (“So long as I do not try to do any of it awake,” dummodo tale nihil uigilans committere temptem, 479), her desire remains safely hidden from an au­ dience (testis, 481). As discussed above, Byblis modifies the formulaic epistolary greeting, in a way which also betrays her anxiety over “sending” her text to her reader. “This wish for good health which she w ­ ill not have, u ­ nless you give it, a lover sends to you” (quam, nisi tu dederis, non est habitura salutem, / hanc tibi mittit amans, 530–31). The salutem as text relies on the reciprocity of the receiver.128 A bad omen accompanies the physical sending of her text. The tablets fall, “nevertheless she sent [them]” (misit tamen, 572).129 In contrast to Byblis’s de­ sires, for which she requires the recognition of an other, the omen of the falling tablet constitutes “sure signs” (signaque certa, 600), which she was not mentally fit to interpret. She realizes too late that the omen should have prevented her from committing (committere, 601) herself to wax, and considers w ­ hether her choice of dissemination affected the reception of her text (forsitan et missi sit quaedam culpa ministri, 610).130 “Sending” her desire in vari­ous media is the site of Byblis’s vulnerability—­the moment between utterance and reception, when her position as a writing subject is in jeopardy. Once sent, t­here is nothing left which the text has not said, nothing “unspeakable” left to send (“Now I am not able to do anything unspeakable,” iam nequeo nil commisisse nefandum, 626). Regardless of the efforts Byblis makes in the narrative, the introduction to her tale has already established Byblis’s meaning as a mythic sign represent­ ing incest (“Byblis is set as an example for girls to love what is permitted,” Byblis in exemplo est ut ament concessa puellae, 454). The passage begins by defining each character through their kinship relations.

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Hic tibi, dum sequitur patriae curuamina ripae, filia Maeandri totiens redeuntis eodem cognita Cyanee praestanti corpora forma, Byblida cum Cauno, prolem est enixa gemellam. Byblis in exemplo est ut ament concessa puellae, Byblis Apollinei correpta cupidine fratris. [non soror ut fratrem nec qua debebat amabat.] (Met. 9.450–56) ­ ere Cyane, of exceptional physical beauty, the ­daughter of the river H Maeander, who returns so many times to the same place, while she was following the bends of her f­ ather’s banks, was known by you, and gave birth to twin offspring, Byblis along with Caunus. Byblis is set as an ex­ ample for girls to love what is permitted. Byblis was seized by a desire for her Apolline ­brother. [The ­sister did not love him as a b­ rother and not in the way she should.] Cyane is identified as the ­daughter of Maeander (filia Maeandri, 451) and the ­mother of Byblis and Caunus (prolem est enixa gemellam, 453). ­Here cognita (452) as a sexual euphemism creates a direct link between sexual relations and kin­ ship relations which are “recognizable” within the ­family and as a ­family. By­ blis and Caunus’s relationship as twins is also established. The next line positions Byblis in a greater mythic megatext. Byblis’s exemplary status in this mega­ text makes her always already a signifier of abject desire, and Ovid’s language constructs her in just such a way (“Byblis is set as an example,” Byblis in exemplo est, 454). She is not allowed to fall in love with her ­brother gradually; she always was, even before she knew it. illa quidem primo nullos intellegit ignes nec peccare putat, quod saepius oscula iungat, quod sua fraterno circumdet bracchia collo, . . . sed nondum manifesta sibi est nullumque sub illo igne facit uotum; uerumtamen aestuat intus. (Met. 9.457–59, 464–65) At first, indeed, she recognizes none of the fires of love, nor does she think she is making a ­mistake ­because she kisses him more often, ­because she throws her arms around her ­brother’s neck, . . . But she is not yet aware of her own desire and she makes no prayer for that fire of love; however, it burns inside her.



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Byblis is represented as incestuous by nature. We are told Byblis has deceived herself: “and for a long time she is deceived by the false appearance of piety” (mendacique diu pietatis fallitur umbra, 460). As in the case of Phaedra, Byblis’s cultural abjection is augmented by her generic abjection—­a tragic heroine in an epic poem. From the beginning, she is represented as performing the role of the incestuous lover Phaedra, not the kinship role of loving ­sister. In her letter, Phaedra recommends the per­for­ mance of “a stepmother who is faithful to my stepson” (privigno fida noverca meo, Her. 4.140) in order to hide (celare, 137) the role of a “stepmother who w ­ ill have sex with her step-­son” (privigno . . . ​coitura noverca, 129) beneath the cover of the name “relative” (“the crime can be concealed by the name of kinship,” cognato poterit nomine culpa tegi, 138). Culpa, moreover, carries the connotation of “affair” in late republican and Augustan poetry.131 ­These multiple meanings encapsulate Byblis’s and Phaedra’s double violation—­they desire a lover who is outside of marriage and also within their own f­amily. Among the activities common to both, Phaedra lists openly kissing and lying in the same bed (“you used to give kisses openly, you ­will give kisses openly; you ­will be safe with me and, although you w ­ ill be seen in my bed, you w ­ ill earn praise for the crime,” Oscula aperta dabas, oscula aperta dabis; / Tutus eris mecum laudemque merebere culpa, / Tu licet in lecto conspiciare meo, Her. 4.144–46). So, too, Byblis, even before she knows why, takes advantage of the affection afforded to siblings by indulg­ ing in one too many kisses (“she kisses him more often,” saepius oscula iungat, Met. 9.458) and throwing her arms about her ­brother’s neck (sua fraterno circumdet bracchia collo, 459). She even primps (“preparing herself to see her b­ rother,” uisuraque fratrem / culta, 461–62) in order to catch his eye.132 At the close of her letter in the Heroides, Phaedra invites Hippolytus to be an audience to her suffering body (“You are reading the words of a suppliant, imagine also that you see my tears” (verba precantis / Perlegis, et lacrimas finge videre meas, 175–76). Ovid constructs a similar tragic spectacle in book 9 of his Metamorphoses by painting a vivid picture of Byblis beginning the letter (517– 29): her posture (“She raises up on her side and, leaning upon her left elbow,” in latus erigitur cubitoque innixa sinistro, 518), talking to herself in direct speech (519–20), and her trembling hand (ma­nu trementi, 521) as it writes, erases, and rewrites. Phaedra tells Hippolytus that “shame must be mixed with love” (pudor est miscendus amori, Her. 4.9). In this line, elegiac amor is juxtaposed with Phae­ dra’s traditional shame, indicating that she infuses her tragic symbolism with elegiac meaning. Byblis’s own fusion is announced by the narrator. She wears her generic persona on her face like a mask (“boldness is mixed with shame on her face,” in uultu est audacia mixta pudori, 527). We imagine Byblis’s suffering as a per­for­mance, as Phaedra has asked Hippolytus to do (“imagine my tears,”

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Her. 4.176), and as Byblis has watched her own per­for­mance in her dreams (474–86). Her suffering female body resembles Phaedra’s on the tragic stage.133 As noted above, Phaedra accomplishes ­little in Euripides’s Hipp. II besides suf­ fering. Her two other acts are writing a letter and committing suicide. Adding to the dramatic quality of Byblis’s epic tale is the quantity of direct speech which makes up a large portion of the narrative—128 of the 227 lines.134 Her tragic “nature” is fortified by association with Dionysus’s followers, maenads, an association we see attributed to other tragic heroines.135 The rhe­ torical question in her incipit, “Where am I carried?” (quo feror?, 509), is acousti­ cally similar to the noun furor, the linguistic signal of a w ­ oman out of control, 136 or rather, u ­ nder the control of sexual desire. The passive feror also introduces the image of a subject literally ­under the control of something other—­being dragged—­with no knowledge of the outcome or destination (quo?). Her desire is described by the narrator using the traditional image of a fire (ignes, 457; igne, aestuat intus, 465), one common to both men and ­women. Her fire, however, even though she does not recognize it (“At first, indeed, she recognizes none of the fires of love,” illa quidem primo nullos intellegit ignes, 457), is gendered in its excessiveness. The par­tic­u­lar feminine excess of her desire is signaled by the comparative saepius (458), the adverb nimium (462), the qualification of her hope as obscenas (468), and the ele­ment of deceit (“false appearance of piety,” mendaci . . . ​pietatis . . . ​umbra, 460), even if Byblis is lying only to herself. The narrator’s language recalls the discourse employed by the poet-­ praeceptor in Ars 1, where he characterizes feminine desire as “more moderate in us and not so full of madness” (parcior in nobis nec tam furiosa libido, 281) and “keener than ours and has more madness” (acrior est nostra plusque furoris habet, 342). The “obscene” nature of ­women’s lust is demonstrated by the list he provides, starting with Byblis herself (Ars am. 1. 283–84). In the Metamorphosis, Byblis dissimulates her desire, illustrating another lesson to male pu­ pils that w ­ omen cover their desire better than men (“a man is not good at feigning, she desires in a more covert way,” uir male dissimulat, tectius illa cupit, 1.276). ­After reading part of her letter, Caunus calls her desire uetitae (“wicked author of a forbidden love,” o uetitae scelerate libidinis auctor, Met. 9.577), mim­ icking the poet-­praeceptor’s own assessment of Byblis (“Why should I mention Byblis, who burned with a forbidden love for her b­ rother and bravely avenged her unspeakable crime with a noose?” Byblida quid referam, uetito quae fratris amore / arsit et est laqueo fortiter ulta nefas, Ars am. 1.283–84). The narrator of the Metamorphoses calls Byblis’s desire “madness” (furores, 9.583) and Byblis her­ self “maddened” (furibunda, 637) and “insane” (demens, 638), echoing again the description of ­women’s desire in Ars 1 (281, 342, quoted above). The lan­ guage of madness precedes a simile likening Byblis to a bacchant (“like Ismar­



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ian bacchantes celebrate triennial rites, driven by your thyrsus, son of Semele,” utque tuo motae, proles Semeleia, thyrso / Ismariae celebrant repetita triennia Bacchae, Met. 9.641–42), as it does in the poet-­praeceptor’s description of Pasiphae (“and is carried, like a bacchante, driven by the Aonian god,” fertur, ut Aonio concita Baccha deo, Ars am.1.312). Again, we are reminded of Byblis’s tragic in­ heritance of Phaedra’s destructive desire. When Byblis begins her monologue, she adopts the same discourse. She de­ scribes her feminine desire as madness (quae male sum, 493), an “obscene flame” (obscenae . . . ​flammae, 509), and one that is deceptively hidden (celatos . . . ​ignes, 516). In her letter, she figures her desire as a sickness generated by a wound which has vis­i­ble symptoms, both physical and behavioral. She describes her desire, combining all of ­these meta­phors in one sentence—­“a fiery madness burning inside,” and an illness against which she has fought and lost (540–42). esse quidem laesi poterat tibi pectoris index et color et macies et uultus et umida saepe lumina nec causa suspiria mota patenti et crebri amplexus et quae, si forte notasti, oscula sentiri non esse sororia possent. ipsa tamen, quamuis animi graue uulnus habebam, quamuis intus erat furor igneus, omnia feci (sunt mihi di testes) ut tandem sanior essem. (Met. 9.535–42) In fact, both my pallor and thin frame and expression and often teary eyes and breathlessness caused by no evident reason and frequent em­ braces and the sort of kisses, if by chance you noticed, that could not be perceived as sisterly, ­were able to be proof of an ailing heart. Neverthe­ less, although I was suffering a serious wound to my spirit, although ­there was a fiery madness inside me, I myself did every­thing (the gods are my witnesses) to be well at last. ­ fter her epistolary proposition is refused, Byblis calls her desire a wound (uulA neris, 585), and something that must be hidden (quae celanda fuerunt, 586). She blames her poor judgment on her lovesickness (si non male sana fuissem, 600). Like Phaedra, Byblis’s impulse to conceal her libido reflects Augustan gender norms which demand that a ­woman uphold a pudicitia that exhibits no active desire on her part.137 The tale itself offers Byblis as a dramatic per­for­mance to the external reader as well as to Byblis herself. The word umbra (“shadow,” 460), used to describe the false appearance of familial virtue (mendacique . . . ​pietatis, 460), engages

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with the idea of vision through the contrast of light and dark. It is ironic that the “shadows” of the day are deceptive, while the imagines noctis (474, 480) make manifest (483) what the umbrae could not (460). As discussed above, the dream is described in language evocative of a play. Byblis is both the audience (“she sees,” uidet, 470; “she seeks the image again,” repetitque . . . ​speciem, 472– 73; “I saw,” uidi, 475; “my visions,” mea uisa, 495) and costar with her ­brother, Caunus (“she seemed even to join her body with her b­ rother,” uisa est quoque iungere fratri / corpus, 470–71; “He is indeed beautiful to eyes, even though they are hostile, and he is pleasing,” ille quidem est oculis quamuis formosus iniquis / et placet, 476–77). She takes plea­sure in the “visions” ­because she is the sole audience member. ­There is no one to act as witness (testis, 481) to her dreams in the trial and judgment of her desire. ­After her dream, however, she (alone) becomes a credible witness (testis) and can recognize the criminal de­ sire (manifesta libido, 483). Manifesta engages this idea of being “caught in the act” when ­others are looking, since mani-­comes from ma­nus (OLD, manifestus [app. MA­NUS + festus]). Nor does Byblis “catch” herself red-­handed before her dream b­ ecause she does not recognize her be­hav­ior as symptomatic of sexual desire. She tells herself to make a m ­ ental picture (“imagine it is pleasing to me,” finge placere mihi, 506), which includes Caunus as an audience member (“it w ­ ill seem to be a crime to him,” scelus esse uidebitur illi, 506). The language of the passage blurs the function of the senses—­seeing and hearing—­and their role for an audience member or a reader. One both sees a per­for­mance and hears the dialogue spoken by the actors. In the ancient world, one saw the words of a text and heard them b­ ecause they ­were read aloud. But when a written text engages with the rhe­toric of dramatic per­for­mance, the idea of “seeing” the meaning of a text goes beyond seeing the individual letters which make up words; the reader sees the per­for­mance which she imagines in her head. Pha­ edra closes her letter to Hippolytus with a request to create a ­mental image of what she describes in her letter (“You are reading the words of a suppliant, imagine also that you see my tears,” verba precantis / Perlegis, et lacrimas finge videre meas, Her. 4.175–76). As she begins to write her letter, Byblis says, “a secret letter ­will confess my hidden passion” (littera celatos arcana fatebitur ignes, Met. 9.516), and “let him see: let us confess our insane love” (uiderit; insanos . . . ​fateamur amores, 519).138 Her confession, like Phaedra’s, is a written one, but the sense of her statement is that Caunus ­will come to know about her desire by visualizing what she confesses in writing ­because the letter is a sort of mediating “actor.” The text itself “speaks,” performing the amores which Byblis could not confess aloud. Byblis’s letter resembles the letter of Euripidean Phaedra, whose letter is said to cry out to Theseus.139



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As we demonstrated above, Byblis shares with many literary Augustan ­ omen in love, such as Dido and the Ovidian Phaedra, the meta­phors of fe­ w male desire as wildness, madness, or sickness, and as uncontrollable or exces­ sive. The excess of Byblis’s letter, filling up even the margins of the tablets (“her hand, which was writing such t­ hings to no purpose, handed over the full wax tablets, and the last line clung to its margin,” Talia nequiquam perarantem plena reliquit / cera manum summusque in margine uersus adhaesit, 564–65), replicates the excess of her desire. As Raval notes, Byblis’s desire, like her text, trans­ gresses the normative borders defined by the incest taboo.140 Janan considers Byblis’s excessive text a meta­phor for poetic expansiveness, employed as a tool for differentiation from literary pre­de­ces­sors.141 Her expansive tendencies, ar­ gues Janan (1991, 248–55), resemble Ovid’s; her textual failure “points to [ex­ pansion’s] logical conclusion, the using up of all new possibilities . . . ​the exhaustion of the Roman literary tradition, struggling with its own sense of belatedness.”142 The repre­sen­ta­tion of Byblis’s desire as excessive (even her own as it spills into the margins) takes up the ideological work of characterizing her desire as both generically and culturally abject. With this line in the introductory frame, “Byblis seized by a desire for her Apolline ­brother” (Byblis Apollinei correpta cupidine fratris, 455), the narrator makes clear Byblis’s positionality in relation to Caunus, who is identified as the son of Apollo. Apollo was most closely associated with the rational and temperate. One thinks immediately of the inscriptions on his Delphic ­temple: μηδὲν ἄγαν (“nothing in excess,” Pausanias, 10.24.1). Line 455 neatly and thickly weaves together t­ hese connotations, which had been constructed and reinforced through mythic discourses, in five short words. Apollonei writes Cau­ nus as the rational, masculine subject, fittingly qualified by his role, properly performed, as ­brother in the symbolic order of kinship. Byblis stands in op­ position, a ­woman whose sexuality is both out of control (signaled by the pas­ sive participle, correpta) and in violation of the symbolic order of kinship ­because it is sexual desire for a ­brother. ­After she is safely silenced and con­ tained through metamorphosis, the narrator calls her “Phoebean Byblis” (Phoebeia Byblis, 663), acknowledging for the first time her own kinship with the god of reason, Apollo. The epithet also signals her normativizing incorpora­ tion into the landscape, a pro­cess of feminization of both ­woman and earth common in Latin epic.143 Byblis’s metamorphosis into a stream also results in a metamorphosis from tragic subject into an Apollonian font (of poetry), but at the cost of her voice. We may imagine the font as Ovid’s Apollonian (and Callimachean) poetic source, mastering and transforming the tragic material. Pausanias tells us, moreover, that ­there was another inscription on Apol­ lo’s ­temple: γνῶθι σαυτόν (“know thyself ”). Tragedy dramatizes the danger

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of female sexuality to the male subject, but it also dramatizes the danger of the return of the abject to that same, rational subject. Euripides’s Bacchae explic­itly articulates the need to know one’s inner Dionysus. Nicaenetus’s version of By­ blis’s story seems to teach this very lesson. Caunus, whose epithet in the pas­ sage quoted by Parthenius is “always loving justice/laws” (ἀεί φιλέοντα θέμιστας, 11.2), is in love with Byblis and flees Miletus to avoid his desire. This version, moreover, demonstrates that Byblis’s desire—­represented in Ovid’s poem as not permitted within the definition of her normative kinship role— is also the desire of Parthenius’s Caunus. Ovid’s Caunus is, in terms of gender and sexuality, the normative twin of Byblis. Byblis has quite literally “crossed the line” (modumque / exit, 631–32) in her pursuit of Caunus.144 As his abjected doppelgänger, Byblis cannot position herself as subject to Caunus’s other ­because they are, in fact, the same. The story anticipates Kristeva’s and Butler’s definitions of the abject—­something internal to the self which is repudiated and transformed, psychologically and linguistically, into a fearsome other.145 In her soliloquy, Byblis comments on what a perfect ­family they would make b­ ecause, of course, they are already a ­family and share every­thing. O ego, si liceat mutato nomine iungi, quam bene, Caune, tuo poteram nurus esse parenti! quam bene, Caune, meo poteras gener esse parenti! omnia di facerent essent communia nobis, praeter auos; tu me vellem generosior esses. (Met. 9.487–91) If my name ­were changed and I could be joined to you, how good a daughter-­in-­law I could be to your f­ ather, Caunus! How good a son-­in-­ law you could be to mine, Caunus! Should the gods make it happen, every­thing would be shared by us, except our grandparents; I would want you to have a higher status than I. Her elegiac thesis introduces alternative kinship bonds in which she becomes her ­brother’s wife, her ­father’s daughter-­in-­law. Removing the common grand­ parents, as Byblis wishes to do in this passage, would normalize this new ­family but also remove it. Byblis and Caunus exist corporeally only through the grandparents, whose symbolic kinship roles define Byblis’s ­family relation­ ship with Caunus as ­sister, not wife. The elegiac thesis of her literary model, Phaedra, similarly disturbs normal f­amily relations. Her citation of the role of (step)­mother redefines her as her husband’s ­daughter and her lover’s ­mother, and ­father and son are replicated as father-­in-­law and son-­in-­law.146 In addition to the aspect of performativity already inherent in the familial position, be­



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having in a way that approximates a ­sister or (step)­mother, Phaedra’s literary heritage introduces a dramatic per­for­mance for both—­her tragic role.

Conclusion As we discussed e­ arlier, Kristeva theorizes a temporal space which she names the semiotic chora and in which the speaking self has not been distinguished from the other. The chora is already ordered by the symbolic, limiting the po­ tential t­heses available to certain speaking subjects. Adopting her approach, we have seen how the mythological and literary chora to which Phaedra and Byblis return is already ordered by the Augustan system of kinship and ge­ neric codes. Certain gender and genre combinations are foreclosed ­because they w ­ ill not be comprehensible to the other whom the speaker attempts to address in her thesis as subject. Both Phaedra and Byblis return to the thetic stage in order to speak from another thesis, but their chosen combination of female elegiac amator of their male kin is forbidden by the incest taboo and by the elegiac universe. Their identity is only vis­i­ble as abject—­what a step­ mother, ­sister, and elegiac amator or puella is not.147 Ovid’s ventriloquism con­ firms this ordering and obstructs their ability to successfully perform a transposition which may lead to a reordering, as Kristeva affirms poetry has the ability to do. He does this by disrupting a potential completed cir­cuit between heroine and external audience that would introduce a radical new subject, employing the same strategies used by his poet-­praeceptor in the Ars. ­These disruptive strategies guide the heroines’ audience back to the tragic tradition they seek to escape through their new thesis. In the case of Phaedra’s poetic epistle, we do not know if Hippolytus, her addressee, ­will “hear” her utterance as an elegiac amator, thereby acknowledg­ ing this new thesis she proposes. Ovid’s reminders of tragedy—­lexical and thematic—­make it difficult to imagine that Hippolytus would see her as any­ thing but her Euripidean instantiation. In the case of Byblis, the epic narrator describes her writing pro­cess, including her self-­recognition as a Phaedra-­like figure, her return to the thetic stage, her choice of a new voice, the writing of her epistle, and her failure to successfully reposition herself in terms of kin­ ship and genre. Before telling her story, the narrator defines her meaning in the megatext of myth, making clear that she was not able to rewrite her story. In the story itself, the same strategies apparent in Phaedra’s ventriloquized let­ ter also construct Byblis as an abject gendered and generic subject in order to explain and justify her final silencing and banishment from the h ­ uman—­Phaedra through suicide, Byblis through metamorphosis.

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Phaedra’s and Byblis’s roles as “alterae Ovid,” to borrow Janan’s phrase, function as part of a larger proj­ect which shifts anx­i­eties over poetic failure and the inability to control the meaning of one’s text onto the abject body of the desiring w ­ oman, designated other, and safely removed from the poetics of the male author ­behind her repre­sen­ta­tion.148 The reason Phaedra and By­ blis are unsuccessful and cannot secure a position from which to create a mean­ ingful poem with the power to persuade (or charm) is their “nature.” Neither can find an intelligible position from which to use language ­because neither ­were ever (nor ever can be) inside the symbolic system. Their poetry, in the end, is received by their (and therefore Ovid’s) audience, not as an erotic el­ egy, but as a poetic monstrum.149 Their poetry “sounds” like an unsuccessful attempt to sing elegy in a tragic register. They are repudiated for their excess and threat to kinship systems; but, along with their sexual body, Ovid success­ fully sloughs the constraints of literary influence, poetic limitations, and mortality.150 As noted ­earlier, Phaedra fi­nally concedes and invites Hippolytus and her external readers to look at her suffering body (Her. 4.176). Likewise, Ovid’s epic narrator focuses on Byblis’s suffering body while also foreground­ ing her as the type of writing subject Kristeva describes. Ovid forces us to in­ terpret her as an author in her specific material context, not as a disembodied poetic voice. ­These repre­sen­ta­tions do not remind us that Ovid is also embod­ ied. Rather they shift materiality onto the body of the fictional female author, relieving Ovid of his corporeality. By aligning the negative aspects of poetry and his own writing instance with ­these abject figures, Ovid is able to disem­ body his own corpus.151

C h a p te r   3

Medean Disruptions in Epic and Elegy

As we saw in chapter  1, mythological ­women whose innapropriate desires are refused by their beloveds frequently turn to ven­ geance.1 The amor of Ovid’s Phaedra-­like figures was characterized as an exces­ sive furor. It was also frequently associated with Dionysus. Likewise, the emotion of ira when it arises in the stories of revenge familiar from Greek tragedy is rep­ resented in Ovid’s poetry as furiosus, excessive and Dionysiac. Tragic w ­ omen seeking revenge in Ovid’s poems follow the Greek model Medea, whose erotic jealousy drives her to kill her rival and her own ­children as punishment for Ja­ son’s betrayal.2 We see Medea-­like figures throughout Ovid. In this chapter, we ­will consider Hypsipyle’s Medea-­like self-­presentation in Heroides 6, followed by the Procne tale in Metamorphoses 6. Both heroines, unlike Phaedra and Byblis, who attempt to escape their tragic tradition and redefine themselves as elegiac subjects, accept the meaning of Medea-­like figures in the megatext of myth.3 They both, furthermore, are represented as relying on Medean ira to have the same disruptive and destructive power as Phaedrian amor in Ovid’s elegiac and epic poetry. For Hypsipyle, this entails a threat that relies on her addressee’s own fluency in the megatext in order to persuade him to renounce his tragic role. For Procne, her Medea-­like tradition offers a means of punishing her ­enemy who does not understand the tragic role she performs. As in previous chapters, I use the term abject, following Kristeva and Butler, to describe characters and

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passions which are distasteful and therefore disavowed. Their expulsion from what is within the limits of acceptability acts both as a punishment for that be­ hav­ior and establishes ­these subjects as warnings to ­those who would violate the rules governing normativity. As we saw in chapters 1 and 2, in Ovid’s poetry, the abject nature of ­these subjects is augmented by their secondary generic unsuit­ ability—­a tragic character out of place.4 While tragic erotic desire in Ovid interrogates the fine line between pudor and amor, tragic ira complicates the distinction between justice and vio­lence in the very construction of its difference. Ovid’s ubiquitous deployment of tragic examples of ­these emotions separates normative amor and ira from non­ normative, or abject, versions through gender and genre. Ovid’s play, how­ ever, with multiple connotations of each exemplary heroine, as we have seen in ­earlier chapters, reminds his readers of the nature of the abject—­that it orig­ inates from its opposite and that the characteristics which define an abject passion (or mythological character) ­were never removed from their norma­ tive origin in the pro­cess. So, for example, Byblis’s abject desire contains all of the characteristics defined as taboo for Caunus’s normative desire, but Cau­ nus need only fall in love with the wrong person at the wrong time or love too much for his own desire to share in his ­sister’s “prohibited love” (inconcessus amor). The myth—­and Ovid’s treatment—­highlights this potential lack of difference symbolically through their status as twin siblings. They are, in fact, the same person; but Byblis represents what is inferior—­she is a ­woman with an incestuous passion who cannot control her emotions or actions. Likewise, Ovid’s Medeas demonstrate that a masculine ira which is justified and in proper proportion always holds the potential for its opposite, and justice, which is guaranteed by the law, may find its origin in violent revenge.5 On the generic level, Ovid’s construction of famous tragic heroines as abject subjects reproduces and normalizes a secondary hierarchy privileging the epic and elegiac genres. Elegy and epic, in the pro­cess of their definition as not trag­ edy, necessarily punish and exclude ­these abject ­women and their destructive feelings. But the origin of the abject, which his tales expose, si­mul­ta­neously dismantles this generic hierarchy by destabilizing generic distinctions. Ovid wrote a tragic Medea, but this heroine appears throughout his poetry and has a tradition that, a­ fter Euripides, always alludes to her tragic treatment, while in­ corporating several genres.6 Ovid himself w ­ ill ­later point out the elegiac in tragedy and epic (and tragedy in elegy and epic) to Augustus in Tr. 2.371–408. Among the examples of materia amoris in tragedy are Medea and Procne (387–90).

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Hypsipyle, Heroides 6 Heroides 6 is a letter written by Hypsipyle, queen of Lemnos, to Jason just ­after she learned of his affair with Medea. Ovid’s own retelling of Hypsipyle’s and Medea’s myths shows the impact, in par­tic­u­lar, of Apollonius’s Argonautica and Euripides’s Medea, but we also may see influences from a variety of additional sources, including the Greek tragic treatments of the Hypsipyle myth by Ae­ schylus (Hypsipyle, TrGF 3. 247–48), Sophocles (Lemniae, TrGF 4.384–89),7 Eurip­ ides (Hypsipyle, TrGF 5.2.752–70), and the Roman tragic treatments of the Medea myth by Ennius ( Joc. frr. 103–16) and Accius (Dangel frr. 467–99).8 Ac­ cording to the mythological tradition, the ­women of Lemnos kill the men of their island out of erotic jealousy. The men have preferred Thracian w ­ omen taken captive in an e­ arlier conflict. Hypsipyle is the only w ­ oman of her city who does not take revenge.9 Instead she piously preserves her f­ather’s life at her own risk. In her letter, however, Hypsipyle reminds Jason that ­every myth­ ological ­woman’s amor contains the potential for ira. While Phaedra’s letter explored the potential for redefining symbolic gender and genre roles through per­for­mance, Hypsipyle’s letter approaches this topic textually.10 The overriding theme of Heroides 6 is the literary canon and its recep­ tion.11 Hypsipyle is not concerned with per­for­mance alone. Ovid ventriloquizes a Hypsipyle who exploits the pro­cess of abjection, which Ovid’s poet-­praeceptor and epic narrator have employed. Hypsipyle constructs a Medean ira as innately tragic. Her own epistolary persona is defined implicitly by contrast. This pro­cess allows her to claim a generic identity in accordance with Jason’s own epic heroic tradition.12 At the same time, she threatens to move from her normative subject position into Medea’s abject space as a punishment for Jason’s transgressions.13 In her elegiac letter, Jason’s erotic decision is presented by Hypsipyle as a generic choice which w ­ ill determine his gender status. As we ­shall see, choosing Hypsi­ pyle is presented as rescuing his epic heroic masculinity. In this formula, Hypsi­ pyle plays the normative matrona. Should he choose Medea, he ­will slide into the abject subjectivity defined by the tragic tradition, in which his masculinity is ap­ propriated by Medea. Her threat to become Medea demonstrates that the tragic tradition, if Jason chooses Medea, ­will draw them all into the genre which de­ mands feminized heroes, masculine heroines, and their destructive passions. This pro­cess, however, also exposes the tragic potential of all female desire. As a literary lover, Hypsipyle’s love, transformed into anger, can only manifest itself as Medean ira—by nature a threat to the masculine subject. Hypsipyle repeatedly displays her literacy and familiarity with tragedy, and in par­tic­u­lar Euripides’s Medea.14 As Jacobson (1974, 103) notes, “It is quite as if Hypsipyle had read Euripides’s Medea.”15 Hypsipyle relies on Jason’s own

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literacy in order to give her threats weight. Without a knowledge of both Hypsipyle’s and Medea’s literary tradition, Jason would not understand the full import of her threat to become a Medea to Medea. Pelicis ipsa meos implessem sanguine vultus, Quosque veneficiis abstulit illa suis. Medeae Medea forem . . . (149–51) Myself, I would have covered my face and the face she stole with her poison with my rival’s blood. I would be a Medea to Medea. Her threat to be a Medea could refer to the murder Medea has already committed—­the murder of her ­brother, Apsyrtus. Hypsipyle has already men­ tioned this murder as one reason for her fear of Medea. Such a reference would fit chronologically into this part of their myths. Medeam timui: plus est Medea noverca; Medeae faciunt ad scelus omne ma­nus. Spargere quae fratris potuit lacerata per agros Corpora, pignoribus parceret illa meis? (127–30) I feared Medea: Medea is more than a stepmother; Medea’s hands are suited to ­every crime. Would she, who was capable of scattering her ­brother’s lacerated body across the fields, spare my ­children? Chronologically, Medea’s ira has not surfaced, and the innocent victims of her revenge, her sons, may not yet be conceived. Nevertheless, Hypsipyle’s threat to become Medea functions as the type of rhetorical citation used by the poet-­praeceptor in Ovid’s Ars 2.372–86, where Medea, along with Procne, is cited as an example of an angry ­woman betrayed by her lover.16 The threat against a paelex (149), moreover, reminds the literary reader of Medea’s own murder of a rival at the end of Euripides’s play, a connection strengthened by other correspondences throughout the letter, which I w ­ ill discuss further be­ low.17 ­These correspondences are not coincidental. Like the poet-­praeceptor in Ars 2, who expects his (young) pupils to recognize unnamed Medeas and Proc­ nes through allusive details from their myths, Hypsipyle assumes that her reader(s) w ­ ill recognize Euripides’s Medea18 in the ironic guise of her acciden­ tal similarities.19 Her implicit message to Jason (and Medea, it seems) is: “You know what Medea does to Creusa and her own sons at the end of that play. I am capable of the same.”

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Hypsipyle signals her expectation of her reader’s literary literacy linguisti­ cally, structurally, and intertextually throughout the letter. She tells Jason that she has heard the “story” (fama prior, 9) about Jason and Medea, related in, for example, Euripides’s play or Apollonius’s epic.20 Hypsipyle chides Jason for not writing to update her about his exploits in Colchis (4–16). She must hear it from a Thessalian traveler (23–40). Hypsipyle frequently uses words which refer to writing or telling a story (diceris, 2, 132; scripto tuo, 4; signatur, 7; missa, 8; littera, fama prior, 9; scripsit, 16; narratur, 19; dicar, 21; narrat, 32, 39; memini, 64; feror, 114).21 The ubiquity of the language of reading and writing sets a meta­ poetic tone for the entire epistle. I would argue in addition that, in Hypsipy­ le’s literary letter, all words connoting storytelling and writing (cited above) act as Alexandrian footnotes, signaling allusions to other literary works.22 A word such as “it is told” (narratur, 19)23 “underlines the allusiveness of the verses, and intensifies their demand to be interpreted as a system of allusion” (Hinds 1998, 2). We can identify a number of footnotes in Hypsipyle’s letter. In the first instance, Hypsipyle asks: “Why did the rumor come to me before your own letter?” (Cur mihi fama prior de te quam littera venit?, 9). She follows this question with a summary of the story she has heard in indirect speech. The fama prior she summarizes may be interpreted as a former (prior) treatment(s) of Jason’s myth, such as Apollonius’s or Accius’s. T ­ oward the end of her letter, moreover, Hypsipyle says: “I am called the ­daughter of Minoan Thoas” (ego Minoo nata Thoante feror, 114). ­Here she cites her traditional gene­ alogy. In ­these ways Hypsipyle draws her reader’s attention to specific treat­ ments of her myth. The words connoting writing (cited above) also suggest a concern about authorial control—­who is allowed to write the authoritative version of a story. While many heroines in Ovid’s collection are represented as attempting to in­ novate within their literary tradition and thereby take authorial control, the Ovidian Hypsipyle reminds Jason only of the canonical versions of their myths. Of the thirteen instances of words connoting storytelling cited above, Hypsi­ pyle is the active subject of only one—­memini (64). Ovid uses memini in par­ tic­u­lar elsewhere to cite specific passages, a usage that Conte (1986, 57–69) has termed a “reflective allusion.” We may see a very clear example of this type of allusion with memini at Met. 14.812–16, where Mars quotes (Ennius’s) Jupi­ ter to himself (Ennius’s Annales, 54–55 Sk.).24 In his Ars Amatoria 2.169–72, Ov­ id’s praeceptor “remembers” (memini) his anger in Amores 1.7.25 In Hypsipyle’s letter, what she remembers is listening to Jason: “I recall that you could not speak the rest” (Cetera te memini non potuisse loqui, 64). It is noteworthy that, as a storyteller, he was inadequate, for he could not finish his tale.26

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Not surprisingly, storytelling and gossip play an impor­tant role in her let­ ter. The letter opens with Hypsipyle’s embittered announcement that she has learned about him from another. Her source, we learn soon, is a traveler. Nuper ab Haemoniis hospes mihi Thessalus oris Venerat et tactum vix bene limen erat, “Aesonides” dixi “quid agit meus?” ille pudore Haesit in opposita lumina fixus humo. Protinus exilui tunicisque a pectore ruptis “Vivit? an” exclamo “me quoque fata vocant?” “Vivit” ait timidus: timidum iurare coegi: Vix mihi teste deo credita vita tua est. Ut rediit animus, tua facta requirere coepi. (23–31) Recently a Thessalian stranger had come to me from Haemonian shores, and he had scarcely touched my threshold when I said “How is my son of Aeson?” He was frozen with shame and fixed his eyes on the ground before him. Right away I jumped to my feet and, a­ fter tearing my tunic from my breast, I shouted “Is he alive? Or do the fates also call me?” Tim­ idly he said: “He is alive.” I forced the timid man to swear: scarcely did I trust you lived although the god acted as witness. When my soul recov­ ered, I began to ask ­after your deeds. The stranger is particularly literary in his role, recalling as he does the many hospites from whom Greek heroines of both epic and tragedy receive information about their absent heroes. Most famously, Homer’s Penelope begs for informa­ tion from the Cretan stranger about her own beloved hero abroad in Homer’s Odyssey (19.92–95). Hypsipyle’s Thessalian stranger further resembles Penelo­ pe’s if we consider the allusion at 25–26 to Apollonius’s epic Argonautica 1.784, where Thessalian Jason fixes his eyes upon the ground just as the stranger does ­here.27 Hypsipyle’s stranger allusively evokes Jason; Penelope’s is Odysseus him­ self. We also find the figure of the stranger in tragedy. Aeschylus’s Clytemnestra, for example, tells the chorus that she has heard many injurious reports (πολλὰς κλύουσαν κληδόνας παλιγκότους, Ag. 863) about Agamemnon’s fate.28 Hypsi­ pyle’s stranger also recalls the formulaic messenger speeches in tragedy.29 ­These speeches traditionally describe the dramatic events which lead to the hero’s or heroine’s death.30 ­Here, Hypsipyle’s stranger, if we are to accept lines 32–38 as au­then­tic,31 tells us an equally dramatic story. Although it does not result in the death of the hero, its outcome—­Jason’s alliance with Medea—­leaves Hypsipyle in the same helpless state which drove Sophocles’s Deianira to suicide.

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Hypsipyle comments on the Thessalian’s gifted storytelling. His ingenium ex­ poses her heartache: “While he recounts each t­ hing one by one, he exposes our broken heart with his own natu­ral talent in the swift course of telling his tale” (Singula dum narrat, studio cursuque loquendi / Detegit ingenio vulnera nostra suo, 39–40). It is tempting to see Ovid ­behind the mask, so to speak, of this story­ teller. His story follows the version Ovid ­will l­ater compose in his epic Metamorphoses. The stranger describes the bronze-­hoofed oxen of Mars (Narrat aeripedes Martis arasse boves, 6.32; aeripedes tauri tactaeque uaporibus herbae, Met. 7.105), sowing the serpent’s teeth (Vipereos dentes in humum pro semine iactos, 6.33; uipereos dentes et aratos spargit in agros, Met. 7.122), the sudden “crop” of armed men (6.34; Met. 7.124–33), and their “civil war” (Terrigenas populos civili Marte peremptos / Inplesse aetatis fata diurna suae, 6.35–36; terrigenae pereunt per mutua uulnera fratres / ciuilique cadunt acie, Met. 7.141–42). It may also correspond to the version Ovid told or ­will soon dramatize in his own Medea. We may even see Hypsipyle echo a line delivered by Medea in this very play: Huc feror, et lacrimis osque sinusque madent (Her. 6.70); feror huc illuc, ut plena deo (Sen. Suas. 3.7).32 The metapoetic resonance of such a comment draws attention both to the fiction of Hypsipyle’s epistle—­Ovid is, of course, the ventriloquist ­behind Hypsipyle, who exposes her heartache in this fictional letter—­and to Hypsipyle as a fictional character. The stranger is but one of a number of tellers of her vulnera. Hypsipyle also quotes gossip that is spreading about Jason’s acta. Adde, quod adscribi factis procerumque tuisque Se cavet33 et titulo coniugis uxor obest. Atque aliquis Peliae de partibus acta venenis Imputat et populum, qui sibi credat, habet: “Non haec Aesonides, sed Phasias Aeetine Aurea Phrixeae terga revellit ovis.” (99–104) Add the fact that she ­orders that she be credited for yours and your com­ panions’ achievements and she the wife obstructs the honor of her hus­ band. And someone from Pelias’s faction attributed the achievement to her poison and swayed the p­ eople who believe them: “­These deeds are not ­those of Aeson’s son, but the Phasian ­daughter of Aeetes plucked the golden hide from the Phrixean sheep.” According to an unnamed source associated with Pelias, Medea’s magic is re­ sponsible for the heroic deeds of Jason and his Argonauts. The gossip, quoted directly, identifies Medea, not Jason, as the “plucker” (revellit, 104) of the Golden Fleece (103–4). As a literary figure, Medea’s fama consists of the plays, poems,

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and prose accounts which tell her story. The language of this passage recom­ mends this metapoetic reading again. Hypsipyle claims that Medea “­orders that she be written in addition to [adscribi, 99] the exploits of the Argonauts,” that is, that her heroism be included in the literary tradition of Jason and his band of heroes. She also states that Medea “damages her husband’s inscription of honor [titulo, 100].” In both cases Medea is characterized as attempting to con­ trol the textual rec­ord of hers and Jason’s myth, which is figured as gossip in Hypsipyle’s metapoetic letter. The meta­phor of the mask, which I employed above, is strongly suggested by Hypsipyle’s letter. This dramatic tone serves as a further citation and an indica­ tion that tragedy is the literary tradition which should act as the fama prior for Ovid’s reader of Hypsipyle’s epistle. As we saw in Ovid’s treatment of Phaedra-­ like figures in previous chapters, Hypsipyle’s letter is dramatic both structurally and linguistically. In addition to the stranger’s “messenger speech,” discussed above, t­here are several instances of direct speech in her letter, suggestive of dramatic dialogue—­four partial and six full lines (16, 25, 29–30, 59–62, 103–4).34 Among the quotes in the letter, Hypsipyle reports Jason’s four lines, where he makes his empty promises, signaling the citation with memini.35 Tertia messis erat, cum tu dare vela coactus Implesti lacrimis talia verba tuis: “Abstrahor, Hypsipyle, sed dent modo fata recursus. Vir tuus hinc abeo, vir tibi semper ero. Quod tamen e nobis gravida celatur in alvo, Vivat, et eiusdem simus uterque parens.” Hactenus: et lacrimis in falsa cadentibus ora Cetera te memini non potuisse loqui. (57–64) It was the third harvest when you ­were forced to set sail and you filled such words as t­ hese with your tears: “I am torn away, Hypsipyle, but if only the fates ­will grant a return. I leave h ­ ere your husband, a husband to you I w ­ ill always be. Nevertheless, ­because our burden is hidden in your womb, let him live, and let us both become a parent of the same child.” So you said: and as tears fell on your lying face I recall that you could not speak the rest. She quotes this per­for­mance again ­later in the letter. Compare lines 59–60 to 111–12: Abstrahor, Hypsipyle. sed dent modo fata recursus. Vir tuus hinc abeo, vir tibi semper ero.

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Vir meus hinc ieras, cur non meus inde redisti? Sim reducis coniunx, sicut euntis eram. You went away my husband, why no longer my husband did you return? Let me be your wife as you return, just as I was when you left. In addition to the per­for­mances of the Thessalian stranger and Jason, ­there are two “choruses” in the form of Hypsipyle’s i­magined incredulous interro­ gators (timide credentibus, 15) and the supporters of Pelias (populum, qui sibi credat, 102). In addition to correspondences with Euripides’s Medea as well as the echo of Ovid’s own tragedy, Hypsipyle also alludes to Accius’s Medea at the close of her letter, when she wishes for Medea to “wander helpless, hopeless, bloodied by her own act of murder” (Erret inops, exspes, caede cruenta sua, 162). Accius’s Medea may be making a similar wish for Jason to become “an exile among enemies, a hopeless, destitute, lonely vagabond” (exul inter hostes, expes expers desertus vagus, Acc. Med. Dangel fr. 492).36 This is itself a reworking of Euripides’s Hippolytus 1028–31, where Hippolytus wishes this fate upon him­ self if he forswears his oath that he never touched Phaedra.37 Her language, moreover, echoes that of the Greek tragic heroine’s “desperation speech” in, for instance, Euripides’s Hecuba.38 Through her specific allusion to Accius and the Greek tragic tradition more generally, Hypsipyle is directing her internal audience, and Ovid’s larger audience, to the Roman and Greek tragic tradi­ tion as her intended generic code.39 But Hypsipyle si­mul­ta­neously and explic­itly differentiates her story from Medea’s tragedy.40 She constructs Medea as what she is not. This is the pro­cess of abjection familiar from the poet-­praeceptor’s us-­against-­them rhe­toric in the Ars Amatoria and the Remedia Amoris.41 Given Hypsipyle’s literary knowledge, it is no surprise that she makes an elegiac gesture with a sort of recusatio near the beginning and end of her letter. A ­ fter listing the furies as attendants at her wed­ ding (45–46), Hypsipyle disavows Jason’s myth as her own, linking him instead to Medea’s. Hypsipyle’s questions, arranged in a rising tricolon, ask what the Argo, and by metonymy, Jason’s mythic adventure, has to do with her: “What do the Minyans have to do with me, what does the pine of Dodona have to do with me? What does my fatherland have to do with you, sailor Tiphys?” (Quid mihi cum Minyis, quid cum Dodonide pinu? / Quid tibi cum patria, navita Tiphy, mea?, 47–48).42 She follows this with a couplet defining her location as not Col­ chis, implying that Lemnos never should have been included in Jason’s voyage since it was not the goal of the hero’s quest: “Lemnos was not the ram remark­ able b­ ecause of its golden fleece, and not the kingdom of old Aeetes” (Non erat hic aries villo spectabilis aureo, / Nec senis Aeetae regia Lemnos erat, 49–50). Her

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geography is ill suited to Jason’s epic. Hypsipyle ironically uses tragic rhe­toric to explain her reluctant participation in the myth: “At first I was determined to drive out the ­enemy camp with a band of ­women, but my fates ­were drawing me away” (Certa fui primo, sed me mea fata trahebant, / Hospita feminea pellere castra ma­nu, 51–52). Hypsipyle’s evil fate—­tragic erotic passion—­pulls her, like the destinies of so many tragic heroines before her, away from acting in her own best interest.43 In this instance, her best interest required her to act like an epic hero defending her fatherland, not a tragic heroine. ­Later we find an even closer analog to the elegiac recusatio, for, like the elegists who claim they ­were just about to write epic, Hypsipyle claims she was about to perform the role of Medea. She almost (paene) sent her two boys to their ­future stepmother, as Me­ dea does in Euripides’s play (Ov. Her. 6.125; Eur. Med. 945–58). Unlike Medea, who does not need to fear Creusa, Hypsipyle knows what Medea is capable of (127–30), since her role extends beyond that of stepmother (plus est Medea noverca, 127). Following Euripides’s Medea, Hypsipyle frames Jason’s betrayal as both po­ liti­cal and national by foregrounding Medea’s non-­Greek status. In fact, the first time she refers to Medea, Hypsipyle calls her barbara: “The barbarian poi­ soner is said to have come with you, welcomed into the share of the marriage bed promised to me” (Barbara narratur venisse venefica tecum, / In mihi promissi parte recepta tori, 19–20).44 She balances the hexameter line with Medea (barbara) as the first word and Jason (tecum) the last. This separation and contrast highlights Jason’s difference from Medea even as Hypsipyle identifies them as companions. The qualifying adjective, venefica, emphasizes her otherness as a witch, and, through its proximity to tecum, her potential (and ­future) threat to Jason. Hypsipyle returns to this theme at 83–96, where she lingers on Me­ dea’s magical abilities and asks Jason how he can sleep next to such a power­ ful witch (95–96). The theme also offers Hypsipyle another opportunity for differentiating herself from Medea, when she claims to have no knowledge of magical arts (93).45 As noted above, narratur acts as an allusive signal. Per­ haps guided by the hexameter, we may think of Medea’s aid in Apollonius to Jason in the form of spells and ointments and their subsequent voyage from Colchis, but venefica also reminds the well-­read Jason of Medea’s poison used against Creusa on the Euripidean stage (τοιοῖσδε φαρμάκοις, 789). In this play, Jason’s betrayal of Medea is motivated, ostensibly, by Jason’s desire for a Greek wife and legitimate sons. Her non-­Greek status is central to her suffering ­because it is the cause of her abandonment, her general isolation in Corinth, and her lack of recourse.46 Hypsipyle also emphasizes Medea’s foreignness geo­ graph­i­cally, for she is identified by the river (Phasias, 103)47 in her remote, in­

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clement country (a gelido . . . ​axe, 106).48 More geographic place names and descriptions fill the couplet in which Hypsipyle commands Medea to seek a husband in her own part of the world: “Let her seek a husband for herself from Tanais and the swamps of watery Scythia and even her fatherland of Phasis” (Illa sibi a Tanai Scythiaeque paludibus udae / Quaerat et a patria Phasidis usque virum, 107–8). Hypsipyle does not name Medea ­until line 75, and then immediately directs Jason’s attention back to her foreign birth (79–81).49 By withholding her name, Hypsipyle denies Medea an identity beyond her definition as Hypsipyle’s op­ posite. When Medea’s name fi­nally appears, moreover, it mirrors Hypsipyle’s ego, both located second, before and ­after the caesura: “Should I fulfill the vows? ­Will Medea enjoy the vows?” (vota ego persolvam? votis Medea fruetur?, 75). This line again sets up Medea as Hypsipyle’s opposite, enjoying the fruits of vows made by Hypsipyle. Hypsipyle pre­sents herself as a loyal and pious ­woman, whose dedication is exploited by a barbarian without t­ hese virtues. Hypsipyle also pre­sents herself as a normative feminine subject, perform­ ing appropriate kinship roles and directing her chaste, imperceptible desire ­toward an appropriate match. Near the close of her letter, Hipsipyle carefully compares and contrasts in alternating verses and chiastic lines her chaste vir­ tue to Medea’s shamelessness.50 Turpiter illa virum cognovit adultera virgo: Me tibi teque mihi taeda pudica dedit; Prodidit illa patrem: rapui de clade Thoanta; Deseruit Colchos: me mea Lemnos habet. Quid refert, scelerata piam si vincit et ipso Crimine dotata est emeruitque virum? (133–38) That adulterous maiden came to know her man shamefully: a chaste wedding torch gave me to you and you to me; she betrayed her f­ ather: I saved Thoas from disaster; she deserted Colchis: my own Lemnos holds me. Why mention w ­ hether the criminal overcame her piety and was dowered and earned her husband by this very crime? In the first two couplets, the demonstrative adjective which describes Medea (illa) is qualified immediately by her inferiority to Hypsipyle: turpiter illa (133); prodidit illa (135). In the first instance, moreover, Medea’s sexual devi­ ance is highlighted syntactically by the central position of the euphemistic cognovit and her further description as an adulterous maiden. Medea and her

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deviance surround Jason, the virum (133), replicating her control over him and his status as man, hero, and husband, for vir connotes all of ­these mascu­ linities. T ­ hese lines further surround the pentameter in which Hipysipyle’s pronoun stands in the first position, and surrounds with anaphora another anaphora of Jason’s pronoun, followed by her gift to him, a chaste marriage. The unmodified me (134) reflects her honest and guileless be­hav­ior t­oward Jason. At 135–36 Medea is contrasted in chiastic lines to Hypsipyle. “She be­ trayed her ­father, I saved mine. She left her homeland, I remain at home.” A couplet follows in which Hypsipyle adds to the list, through praeteritio, the victory of her criminal rival over her own piety (137) and Medea’s ability to earn her husband with a dowry won by crime (138). While cursing Medea, Hypsipyle calls the marriage “ours” (lecti nostri), and Medea the “marriage robber/inferior bride/bridal proxy” (subnuba): “what Hypsipyle laments, let the marriage robber of our bed also mourn and let her be subject to her own terms” (Quod gemit Hypsipyle, lecti quoque subnuba nostri / Maereat et leges sentiat ipsa suas, 153–54). She cites Medean law (leges suas) to differentiate a marriage made ­under Greek laws from one contracted u ­ nder the “laws” of an autonomous, non-­Greek ­woman. Hypsipyle refers to Medea as uxor, but one who deprives Jason of his honor (100). By contrast, Hypsipyle represents herself as a Roman matrona, who, as Ver­ ducci notes, is particularly Augustan in her status as a m ­ other of two: “I am also blessed in number and, with Lucina favoring, I offered twin offspring as a two­ fold pledge of our love” (Felix in numero quoque sum, prolemque gemellam, / Pignora Lucina bina favente dedi, 121–22).51 She claims a legitimate marriage to Jason. Unlike Medea, who “knows” Jason shamefully (turpiter, 133), Hypsipyle’s inti­ macy (cognita) with Jason is not adultery (furto) but legitimate marriage at­ tended by the appropriate gods, Juno and Hymen: “You did not come to know me in secret: Juno was pre­sent as a marriage attendant and Hymen bound his ­temples with wreaths” (Non ego sum furto tibi cognita: pronuba Iuno / Adfuit et sertis tempora vinctus Hymen, 43–44). She quotes Jason’s promise to remain her vir, a word she appears to interpret as “husband”52: “I leave ­here your husband, a husband to you I ­will always be” (Vir tuus hinc abeo, vir tibi semper ero, 60). As noted above, however, Jason may have intended another interpretation of vir, that is, “man.” Yet Hypsipyle’s letter charges that Jason’s failure to remain her husband also resulted in his failure to maintain his masculinity and his heroic status, since he has relinquished ­these to Medea. By contrast, Hypsipyle’s suc­ cessful birth of two boys constitutes her proper per­for­mance of this marriage, for, in addition to the implicit goal of creating alliances between families, the explicit goal of marriage is offspring. The twins’ similarity to Jason testifies to her fidelity (123–24), and therefore to her proper per­for­mance of another as­

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pect of the role of “wife,” chastity. Lindheim (2003, 121) notes that Hypsipyle expresses strong maternal feelings in order to represent herself as a good wife and ­mother in opposition to Medea, for Hypsipyle decides not to send them as ambassadors out of fear for their safety: “Whom I almost allowed to be brought as ambassadors on their ­mother’s behalf, but the savage stepmother held me back from my original course” (Legatos quos paene dedi pro matre ferendos, / Sed tenuit coeptas saeva noverca vias, 125–26). In addition to her virtues as matrona and ­mother, she highlights her ­family connections—­nobilitas generosaque (113)—­making clear that hers is a beneficial and therefore appropriate marriage alliance with a royal Greek ­family (Minoo . . . ​ Thoante, 114) and divine ancestry (Bacchus avus, 115).53 Si te nobilitas generosaque nomina tangunt, En ego Minoo nata Thoante feror. Bacchus avus: Bacchi coniunx redimita corona Praeradiat stellis signa minora suis. Dos tibi Lemnos erit, terra ingeniosa colenti; Me quoque dotalis inter habere potes. Nunc etiam peperi: gratare ambobus, Iason; Dulce mihi gravidae fecerat auctor onus. Felix in numero quoque sum, prolemque gemellam, Pignora Lucina bina favente dedi. Si quaeris, cui sint similes, cognosceris illis: Fallere non norunt, cetera patris habent. (113–24) If noble birth and honorable names mean something to you, well, I am called the d­ aughter of Minoan Thoas. Bacchus is my grand­father: Bacchus’s crowned wife outshines lesser stars with her own constella­ tion. Your dowry w ­ ill be Lemnos, a land suited to the farmer; you w ­ ill be able to count me among your dowry payment as well. Now I have even given birth: congratulate us both, Jason; you as the cause of my pregnancy made the burden sweet for me. I am also blessed in number and, with Lucina favoring, I offered twin offspring as a twofold pledge of our love. If you ask whom they resemble, you w ­ ill see yourself in them: although they do not know how to lie, they have the rest of your traits. Hypsipyle is careful to list the benefits which Jason ­will accrue in a marriage to her in the form of dowry—­the kingdom of Lemnos (116) as well herself (118); and her reproductive capacity to which she points in the following line (119).

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When Hypsipyle returns to Medea’s foreign status a­ fter naming her for the first time, it is to remark on the irony of her previous fears. Non equidem secura fui, semperque verebar, Ne pater Argolica sumeret urbe nurum. Argolidas timui: nocuit mihi barbara pelex: Non expectata vulnus ab hoste tuli. (79–82) In fact, I was not without some concern, and I was always afraid that your ­father would take a daughter-­in-­law from an Argive city. I feared the ­daughters of Argos: a barbarian rival did not threaten me. I bear a wound from an ­enemy I did not expect. Hypsipyle admits to fearing rivals from mainland Greece (Argolidas, 81), not a “barbarian rival” (barbara pelex, 81).54 Hypsipyle may be from the periphery of the Greek world, but Lemnos is still Greek. Colchis, however, belongs to the wild frontier, beyond the civilized world. Moreover, Hypsipyle i­magined that Jason’s ­father would arrange this marriage. Instead, Jason has preferred an alliance with a foreigner, augmenting the impropriety of his choice through his impiety ­toward his f­ amily, to which Hypsipyle returns. Non probat Alcimede mater tua, consule matrem, Non pater, a gelido cui venit axe nurus; Illa sibi a Tanai Scythiaeque paludibus udae Quaerat et a patria Phasidis usque virum. (105–8) Your ­mother, Alcimede, does not approve, ask your ­mother, nor does your ­father, whose daughter-­in-­law came from the icy north. Let her seek a husband for herself from Tanais and the swamps of watery Scythia and even her fatherland of Phasis. As I noted in chapter 1, marriage was an impor­tant ave­nue for creating po­ liti­cal and social alliances in the ancient Greek and Roman world. While Ro­ man grooms might actively seek their own marriage alliances, as Agrippa did by marrying Atticus’s ­daughter, it would not be surprising for a paterfamilias to look for a bride whose connections could benefit the f­amily.55 Hypsipyle urges Jason to consult with his parents on this m ­ atter, as they disapprove (non probat, 105) of a barbarian daughter-­in-­law.56 Not only is Medea a frightening witch (83–96), who threatens to eclipse Jason’s heroic status (99–104), she is also a bad match for a Greek aristocrat and, therefore, not an approved bride for Jason.

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Hypsipyle advises both Jason and Medea to look for mates in their own part of the world (a patria, 108).57 In addition to Medea’s construction as an ethnic and cultural other, Hypsi­ pyle characterizes Medea as hostile—an e­ nemy (“I bear a wound from an e­ nemy I did not expect,” Non expectata vulnus ab hoste tuli, 82). Hypsipyle commands a Greek army (54), whereas Medea works alone, with spells, on the margins of the world. Hypsipyle also contructs Medea as a po­liti­cal rival, vying for honor among factions. She claims that someone from Pelias’s faction—­Jason’s personal and po­liti­cal ­enemy—­holds sway over a credulous populace whom Hypsipyle quotes: “­These deeds are not ­those of Aeson’s son, but the Phasian ­daughter of Aeetes plucked the golden hide from the Phrixean sheep” (Non haec Aesonides, sed Phasias Aeetine / Aurea Phrixeae terga revellit ovis, 103–4). By identifying Jason and Medea by their patronymics and contrasting them at the end of their respec­ tive cola in line 103, she draws attention to the po­liti­cal and national context of their rivalry, for their genealogy marks both their ethnicity and their claim to royal, po­liti­cal power. Medea, however, commands three and half feet of the hexameter, grammatically claiming the titulum she demands. When Hypsipyle threatens to become a Medea to Medea, she reveals her sophisticated under­ standing of the language of myth and the literary tradition which has handed it down. In order for her threat to have any power over Jason, he too must be versed in this language and tradition. He must recognize, along with the pupil of the Ars, that a mythological ­woman in love is an avenging ­woman.58 In combination with her allusive generic play with epic and elegy, Hypsipyle offers a superficial self-­presentation as a helpless and abandoned ­woman. Such a self-­presentation, familiar from Phaedra’s epistle, is in line with the majority of letters in the collection and, I argue, demonstrates Hypsipyle’s familiarity with not only the mythological roles available to young ­women but also the collection in which her letter appears. She pre­sents herself specifically as an Ariadne—­a naïve, abandoned maiden, watching the ­water for her lover to re­ turn. The alternative role she chooses for herself (67–70), however, is strategic and includes genealogical and mythological connotations which point Jason back to the generically tragic, Medea-­like potential of Hypsipyle while serving as an example of the inherent abject nature of female passion.59 The image of Hypsipyle looking from a high point over the ocean for Ja­ son’s ship is sufficient to evoke the Catullan Ariadne, who is similarly depicted scanning the sea for Theseus. Caerula propulsae subducitur unda carinae: Terra tibi, nobis adspiciuntur aquae.

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In latus omne patens turris circumspicit undas: Huc feror, et lacrimis osque sinusque madent. (Her. 6.67–70) A blue wave is pressed out from ­under the speeding ship: you survey the land, I the sea. Vis­i­ble from all sides a tower scans the waves: I am driven ­here, and both my face and breast are wet with tears. saxea ut effigies bacchantis, prospicit, eheu, prospicit et magnis curarum fluctuat undis, (Catull. 64.61–62) Like a stone statue of a bacchant, she looks into the distance, alas, she looks into the distance and she tosses with ­g reat waves of worry. ac tum praeruptos tristem conscendere montes, unde aciem pelagi uastos protenderet aestus, (Catull. 64.126–27) And then the sad girl ascends the very steep mountains, where she might stretch her gaze over the vast billows of the sea. Both Catullus’s narrator and Ariadne herself reproach Theseus for his perfidy. Hypsipyle follows this example and casts Jason in the role of Theseus, the breaker of promises.60 Mobilis Aesonide vernaque incertior aura, Cur tua pollicito pondere verba carent? (109–10) Changeable son of Aeson and more uncertain than the spring breeze, why do your words lack the authority you promised? immemor at iuuenis fugiens pellit uada remis, irrita uentosae linquens promissa procellae. (Catull. 64.58–59) The forgetful youth fled and pressed the waves with his oars, leaving empty promises to the windy storm. quis dum aliquid cupiens animus praegestit apisci, nil metuunt iurare, nihil promittere parcunt: sed simul ac cupidae mentis satiata libido est, dicta nihil metuere, nihil periuria curant. (Catull. 64.145–48)

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[Men], while their mind desires something and wants to obtain it, are not afraid to swear anything, abstain from promising nothing: but as soon as the desire of their greedy mind is satisfied, they do not fear what they said at all, care not at all for their broken promises. He and his words do not have the weight to ground them, but are changeable (mobilis; verna aura, 109), leading him as vir to leave her, but not yet return in the same capacity (111). Her model, Ariadne, has made the same charges against Theseus, whose forgetfulness (immemor, Catull. 64.58) has rendered his promises meaningless (irrata, Catull. 64.59). When Hypsipyle first quotes Jason’s promises to him, she frames his speech with the image of his tears: Implesti lacrimis talia verba tuis (58); et lacrimis in falsa cadentibus ora (63). ­After he promises to remain her vir, she notes that the tears that surround “such words” “fall on a lying face.”61 Theseus, claims Ariadne, has gone further, shamelessly swearing anything to get what he wants (Catull. 64.145–48). Hypsipyle is willing to make allowances for Jason, whose reason has been compromised by barbarian magic; he may still change his mind. Ariadne’s curses against Theseus, that his forgetfulness w ­ ill be fatal (Catull. 64.200–201), are l­ater realized when he forgets to properly signal his ­father from the sea, and Aegeus commits suicide from grief (241–45). Likewise, Hypsipyle’s curses against Medea seem to come true on the Euripidean stage.62 We may see the allusion to Catullus 64 strengthened by verbal correspon­ dences in Catullus. Hypsipyle says that Jason is less reliable than the spring wind (109), an image which recalls Ariadne’s complaint that Theseus has aban­ doned his promises to the windy storm (Catull. 64.59). Line 162 (“wander helpless, hopeless, bloodied by her own act of murder,” Erret inops, exspes, caede cruenta sua) not only recalls the words of Accius’s Medea but may also be look­ ing back to Catullus 64.197: “I am compelled, helpless, burning, blind ­because of insane passion” (cogor inops, ardens, amenti caeca furore). Hypsipyle picks up both Accius’s image of wandering as well as the alliteration of e and ex and the adjective expes. She also adopts, in the same sedes, the Catullan Ariadne’s adjective inops, from a line which describes her own psychological wandering. In addition to demonstrating that Hypsipyle is aware of the literary personae available to her and choosing from them strategically, Hypsipyle’s self-­ representation as Ariadne suggests that she is conscious of being a contribu­ tor to a volume of poetic epistles. Fulkerson argues that Phaedra’s letter (Her. 4) follows Ariadne’s (Her. 10) as a model of an abandoned maiden.63 ­Because Hypsipyle’s self-­presentation employs this “poetics of abandonment” (Fulk­ erson 2005, 2), it appears that, if she has not yet seen a draft of Ariadne’s let­ ter, she has a­ dopted a rhe­toric in line with her fellow contributors.64

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Ariadne, however, carries with her myth of abandonment other connota­ tions to which Hypsipyle subtly alludes. ­These provide the true message of Hypsipyle’s pose, for they serve as reminders of the vengeance which aban­ doned maidens frequently seek. Her use of feror in line 70 means literally “car­ ried to this place.” She is driven to the towers by her desire to catch a glimpse of the Argo. It echoes the line from Ovid’s tragedy Medea (quoted above) and repeats the image of being carried by an external force, which we also saw in Met. 9, where Byblis asks: quo feror? (9.509).65 Feror is also used as a footnote ­later in the letter when Hypsipyle identifies her geneaology: “well, I am called the ­daughter of Minoan Thoas” (En ego Minoo nata Thoante feror, 114). I would argue that the two uses of this form of fero in a letter which is preoccupied with storytelling and reception mutually inform one another. Huc feror carries a secondary meaning: “I am carried over to this passage [in the story of Ari­ adne, where I reprise her role as maiden, abandoned on an island].” This in­ terpretation is further supported by the intersection of Hypsipyle’s story and Ariadne’s, for, in the second use of feror, Hypsipyle traces her ­family back to her grandparents, Dionysus and Ariadne (114–16).66 Her kinship with Diony­ sus makes her both genealogically and generically prone to the excessive pas­ sions displayed by Phaedras and Medeas. Feror (114) is suggestive of lack of self-­control and is reminiscent of the mad­ ness of maenads who wander the mountains as they celebrate Dionysus, as noted above and in e­ arlier chapters.67 The Catullan Ariadne is herself likened to a bacchant in the passage cited above (64.61–62). As grand­daughter of Dio­ nysus from a Cretan f­ amily, Hypsipyle’s literary tradition almost demands that she be “driven” by the forces of an excessive and inappropriate desire, in the fashion of Dionysus’s maenads or her great-­aunt Phaedra. She recalls that a fury (Erinys) carried the wedding torch in her wedding to Jason (6.45–46). The presence of a fury also reminds us of the tragic genre, over which Dionysus presides, for the furies are the eponymous antagonists of Aeschylus’s tragedy Eumenides. Their transformation into Erinyes marks the end of a trilogy which documents a familial cycle of revenge, whose origin lay in part in two acts of adultery.68 The Catullan Ariadne famously recites the words of the nurse at the open­ ing of Euripides’s and Ennius’s Medea.69 Leigh, moreover, has identified an in­ tertext with this very passage in the first couplet of Heroides 6, where litora . . . ​ tetigisse (Her. 6.1) recalls tetigissent litora (Catull. 64.172).70 This acts as another guide for readers to look back to Medea’s tragic tradition. Apollonius’s Jason sets a pre­ce­dent for comparison when he offers Ariadne as an example to the hesitating Medea (3.997–1007, 1100–1101). Hypsipyle’s learned self-­identification with Ariadne may also be understood as a self-­identification with Medea

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through the mediating epic Argonautica. Hypsipyle cites Medea’s mythologi­ cal youth as told in Apollonius’s epic, in which Medea herself is a maiden in love, who, like Ariadne or Scylla, betrayed her natal ­family in order to follow her hero.71 Moreover, she knows, as we do, that some abandoned maidens, with whom Ariadne may be compared and for whom she may be substituted as examples of this paradigm, take revenge for their abandonment ­later in their stories.72 Ariadne curses Theseus in Catullus’s poem (64.188–201), and Jupiter nods assent (204–6). We know that her curses are fulfilled in the form of Theseus’s fatal forgetfulness. Hypsipyle’s curses predict (or cause) the Euripidean Me­ dea’s fate. In a sense, she writes Euripides’s play. Moreover, her story replays Medea’s in many ways. The “plot” she weaves follows that of Medea’s myth. Both aided Jason in his quest; both have two sons by Jason (61, 119); both are abandoned by Jason. Hypsipyle also appears to be repeating (or anticipating) Medea’s own curses.73 Jacobson points out that Hypsipyle’s final curse, which ends her letter, repeats the language she uses to insult Medea.74 Compare “she curses the absent” (devovet absentes, 91) and “live both bride and husband in a cursed marriage bed” (vivite devote nuptaque virque toro, 164). We may even see Medea in attendance at Hypsipyle’s wedding in the form of a fury, for Medea is called a wretched fury in Euripides. Compare “sad Erinys” (tristis Erinys, Her. 6.45) to “bloody, wretched Erinys” (φονίαν τάλαιναν Ἐρινύν, Med. 1259–60). Vaiopoulos, who points out this “intertextual hint,” notes that this may explain Ovid’s unusual use of the singular Erinys.75 Hypsipyle also adopts Medea’s Euripidean rhe­toric of contracts, a rhe­toric which figures Jason’s betrayal as illegal and unjust. As noted above, Hypsipyle foregrounds Medea’s foreign birth in order to construct her as Jason’s po­liti­cal ­enemy. This makes his alliance with Medea tantamount to treason. A similar argument is also central to Medea’s rhetorical strategy, although she argues it as a foreign ally and represents their marriage as part of a po­liti­cal contract whose terms included her own aid to the hero.76 In Euripides, Medea’s justification for her anger relies on the keeping of oaths, which she claims Jason forswore.77 Near the beginning of the play, she calls upon the “­great Themis” (Justice) to witness the injustice which Jason and Creusa have committed (ἀδικεῖν, 165). ὦ μεγάλα Θέμι καὶ πότνι᾽ Ἄρτεμι λεύσσεθ᾽ ἃ πάσχω, μεγάλοις ὅρκοις ἐνδησαμένα τὸν κατάρατον πόσιν; ὅν ποτ᾽ ἐγὼ νύμφαν τ᾽ ἐσίδοιμ᾽ αὐτοῖς μελάθροις διακναιομένους, οἷ᾽ ἐμὲ πρόσθεν τολμῶσ᾽ ἀδικεῖν. (160–65)

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O ­g reat Themis and mistress Artemis, do you see what I suffer, I who bound with g­ reat oaths my accursed husband? May I see him and his bride some day destroyed along with their ­house, such injustice did they dare to commit against me before. Medea calls Jason her “accursed husband” whom she has “bound by ­g reat oaths” (161–63). She w ­ ill l­ater bind Aegeus with oaths (734–55) in order to se­ cure a safe refuge. Medea, however, has no authority to make such claims on ­either Greek man, being both a w ­ oman and a Colchian. Her mythological ­future as would-be murderer of Aegeus’s legitimate son, Theseus, also teaches that entering into contracts with Medea is ill-­advised. In her lament over the married w ­ oman’s plight (230–34), Euripides’s Medea describes a w ­ oman “buying her husband” (πόσιν πρίασθαι, 233). This language is at odds with a Greek ­woman’s traditionally passive role in the marriage ex­ change, where her ­father would offer the dowry to a prospective husband.78 In her letter, Hypsipyle cites the Euripidean Medea’s self-­presentation when she describes Medea’s help as her dowry (137–38).79 Even during Ovid’s time, it would be unusual for a w ­ oman to contract her own marriage.80 While this characterization of Medea as the masculine partner is meant to insult Medea and effeminize Jason in the pro­cess, Hypsipyle suggested a similar role for her­ self ­earlier when she offered Jason a dowry of her own, the kingdom of Lem­ nos and its subjects: “Your dowry ­will be Lemnos . . . ​you ­will be able to count me among your dowry payment as well” (Dos tibi Lemnos erit . . . ​Me quoque dotalis inter habere potes, 117–18).81 Hypsipyle opens her letter with a reminder of this contract, whose terms she, at least, has upheld by preserving her kingdom, which she promised in return for Jason’s marriage vows: pacta tibi . . . ​mea regna (5). She continues to cite this contract throughout her letter—­promissi . . . ​tori (20) and pacta, iura (41). This constitutes another departure from the version told in Apollonius’s Argonautica, where Jason’s two-­day visit on Lemnos does not end with a wed­ ding.82 She ­later calls herself “Thoas’s ­daughter, cheated out of her marriage” (coniugio fraudata Thoantias, 163). If the literate reader thinks back to Eurip­ ides’s Medea,83 whose claims to the rights of wife are baseless and refuted by Jason, or to Apollonius’s Argonautica, where ­there is no marriage and only the traces of a romance between Hypsipyle and Jason, Hypsipyle’s claims ­here in Heroides 6 appear suspect.84 She is repeating, or perhaps imitating, the outraged but mistaken Euripidean Medea, whose marriage contract was interpreted very differently by the other party, Jason. Although Hypsipyle warns Jason that Medea is considered by many, includ­ ing herself (97–104),85 to be the real hero (99–100),86 Hypsipyle, like the

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Euripidean Medea, claims that she is responsible for his safety (53–55).87 Jacob­ son (1974, 100) notes that “in each account of the deeds [10–14; 31–38], Ja­ son’s role is completely ignored.” She credits Medea with overcoming challenges for him while si­mul­ta­neously subjugating him (97–98). Hypsipyle further notifies Jason that he has not forfeited her kindness, although he does not deserve it (147–48). Offering salvation to the hero out of love is yet an­ other characteristic of ­these myths, for Ariadne also cites her aid to Theseus in Catullus 64.149–51. Regret over their sacrifices on behalf of the hero ­after their ungrateful abandonment is the primary cause of their anger and the prime motivation for their subsequent revenge. Hypsipyle has identified Medea as an inappropriate and even dangerous ally for Jason (51–53). Hypsipyle asks Jason why he is not afraid of Medea (95–96). She calls Medea her e­ nemy (hoste, 82). In this re­spect, Ovid’s Hypsipyle is adopt­ ing but modifying the rhe­toric of Euripides’s Medea, where Medea refers to Jason as very hostile (ἔχθιστος, 467). Jason, claims Medea, has in turn made her an ­enemy (ἐχθρὰ, 507) to her ­family,88 but Hypsipyle threatens Medean vengeance (149).89 Hypsipyle says that her heart is in pain (dolet), and that love mixed with anger abounds (6.76). L ­ ater in her letter, Hypsipyle comments that pain (dolor) gives weapons (arma) even to the cowardly (6.140). The pain of heartbreak is clearly connected in her mind (and the mind of Ovid) with re­ venge, which is figured as a military ­battle in 140. She is the queen of an is­ land of ­women who kill their husbands ­because of erotic jealousy.90 We know, as does Hypsipyle herself, although she never remarks on the irony, that her army is truly the ­enemy both of men and patriarchy.91 Unlike Medea, Hypsi­ pyle’s tradition does not include revenge upon her rival, Medea, of whose ex­ istence she seems never to have been aware. Hypsipyle is also known for not taking revenge and sparing her ­father. She is driven into exile for not behaving like a Medea. The Ovidian Hypsipyle, however, demonstrates through subtle and sophisticated subtext of generic signals and literary allusions that, as a ­woman in love, she embodies the potential for revenge. We have observed that, despite Hypsipyle’s self-­representation as not-­ Medea, she resembles Medea in a number of ways. So too, the very strategies which Hypsipyle uses to define Medea as her opposite si­mul­ta­neously dem­ onstrate their similarities. I have argued that “Should I fulfill the vows? ­Will Medea enjoy the vows?” (vota ego persolvam? votis Medea fruetur?, 75) sets up Me­ dea as Hypsipyle’s opposite, enjoying the fruits of vows made by Hypsipyle. Hypsipyle pre­sents herself as a loyal and pious w ­ oman, whose dedication is exploited by a barbarian without ­these virtues. One may use this very line to demonstrate that the two w ­ omen may be the same w ­ oman, for Hypsipyle’s placement of ego mirrors Medea’s name in its position as the second word of

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the hemistich a­ fter a form of votum. This is the first time Hypsipyle names Me­ dea. By naming her, Hypsipyle fi­nally gives Medea a full existence. She is brought onto the “stage” of Hypsipyle’s letter as her mirror image or as her substitute, for Medea ­will enjoy the benefits of Hypsipyle’s vows. Hypsipyle’s tragic self-­characterization reminds us that w ­ omen cannot be allies to men and are always potential Medeas to Jasons. Ovid explores Me­ dea’s own early c­ areer as a Phaedra in Met. 7.92 “Reason could not overcome passion” (ratione furorem/ uincere non poterat, Met. 7.10–11) expresses the strug­ gle shared by ­every Phaedra and Medea, and it articulates the fundamental dichotomy of masculine reason and feminine madness, that is, lack of reason.93 While Hypsipyle demonstrates a stunning command of the literary canon, her letter is written by Ovid, and Ovid’s readers know that Heroides 6 is in fact a demonstration of his own erudition. But while Ovid speaks with a female voice, his verse relies on gender ste­reo­types. Hypsipyle’s abjection of Medea, represented as complex and intentional in ­every way, reinforces gender norms that define femininity. It further constructs Medea’s abject subjectivity, in terms of the tragic generic code, as one beyond the bounds of ­woman, wife, and ally. Conte has demonstrated that “tragic” voices such as Dido’s in Vergil’s Aeneid offer a sympathetic passion that threatens the success of Rome’s epic hero, Aeneas, and, therefore, cannot thrive in the epic.94 So too, Medea’s fem­ inine passion, as Hypsipyle carefully outlines to Jason, is an obstacle to the epic hero. It must necessarily belong to the tragic stage. Ovid’s ventriloquism of Hypsipyle, moreover, further reveals, through her persuasive threat of generic transformation, that her passion also belongs to this genre. Ovid pre­sents a lit­ erary critic who is gendered and suffers from a feminine passion which is ex­ cessive. She betrays this excess by her jealous rants. A w ­ oman speaking or writing desire is always, like Dido, a temporary alternative voice in the mas­ culine genre of epic, borrowed from her appropriate genre—­tragedy.

Procne, Metamorphoses 6.412–674 In Heroides 6, Ovid creates a writer who relies on Jason’s literary knowledge in order to make an effective threat of revenge. In Metamorphoses 6 the Ovid­ ian Procne relies on Tereus’s illiteracy in order to carry out her revenge with­ out his knowledge. While Tereus is an ­eager audience and actor, he has not recognized the tragic stage on which he stands and he misinterprets the roles available to himself and ­others. As we saw in the case of Byblis’s tale in book 9, the narrator guides our interpretation of characters and events throughout

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Procne’s tale using framing devices, language, poetic syntax, and explicit com­ mentary. Although Tereus is ignorant, we know the story and his role in it, and we may appreciate Procne’s literacy and clever per­for­mance of tragic roles available to her. At the close of the tale, Procne, Philomela, and Tereus are physically and permanently marked by their symbolic meaning in the mega­ text of myth and the literary tradition.95 Procne and Philomela, stained by blood, bear the inscription of murderers (caedis . . . ​notae, signataque sanguine, 669–70), while Tereus carries formerly epic weapons now brandished in the interest of excessive tragic revenge (immodicum praelonga cuspide rostrum, 673). Ovid’s audience was familiar with Procne’s story. The narrator of the Metamorphoses tells us that the Athenian princess, Procne, was married to the king of Thrace, Tereus. Missing her younger ­sister, Philomela, Procne sent her husband to Athens to bring her sibling back to Thrace for a visit. Tereus is overcome with lust for Philomela. He rapes her, removes her tongue to prevent her from report­ ing his crime, and keeps her captive. Philomela communicates with her ­sister by means of a tapestry. Procne and Philomela re­unite and punish Tereus by trick­ ing him into eating his only son, Itys. Some variations exist, but Philomela’s rape by Tereus, the s­ isters’ revenge, and their subsequent metamorphosis is shared by most extant accounts.96 The first reference to the myth occurs in Homer (Od. 19.518–23) and Hesiod (Op. 564–70), where she is identified as a lamenting ­woman. She appears throughout Greek and Roman poetry in this capacity.97 The tale was performed on the Attic stage in Sophocles’s (fragmentary) Tereus, produced some time before 414 BCE (TrGF 4.581–95b).98 Fr. 581, if it belongs to Sophocles’s Tereus, suggests that the metamorphosis of the three characters was described in the play.99 For the Roman stage, Livius Andronicus wrote a Tereus, which was performed in the late third or early second ­century BCE. A ­century ­later, Accius produced a Tereus (Dangel fr. 439–54). We may see from Sopho­ cles’s and Accius’s fragments the influence of the former on the latter and of one or both on Ovid’s version in Metamorphoses.100 As noted above, intertexts with Sophocles and Accius identify t­ hese plays as influences. Accius’s play in par­ tic­u­lar is likely to be most familiar to Ovid’s Roman audience, as his plays contin­ ued to be performed throughout the late Republic, and we know that this play in par­tic­ul­ar was produced in 44 BCE at the ludi Apollinares.101 From the fragments, we may see that Ovid (6.458–60) ­adopted and expanded the emphasis on Tere­ us’s Thracian barbarian descent found in both Sophocles and Accius:102 digna quidem facies, sed et hunc innata libido exstimulat, pronumque genus regionibus illis in Venerem est; flagrat uitio gentisque suoque. (Ov. Met. 6.458–60)

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Her beauty, indeed, was worth it, but his own innate passion also incited him, and the ­people in his part of the world are prone to lust; he is on fire ­because of his own moral failing and the moral failing of his ­people. φιλάργυρον μὲν πᾶν τὸ βάρβαρον γένος (Soph. Ter. TrGF 4.587) For all barbarian ­people love money. Tereus, indomito more atque animo barbaro, conspexit in eam; amore uecors flammeo, depositus facinus pessimum ex dementia confingit. (Acc. Ter. Dangel fr. 439–42) Tereus, with unrestrained be­hav­ior and a barbarian mind, looked upon her; mad with fiery love and overcome, he concocted the worst crime from his madness. The Ovidian Tereus is wholly identified by his ethnicity. He is introduced as Threicius Tereus (424), and ­later called rex Odrysius (490), and barbarus (515).103 Other ele­ments familiar from Ovid’s version appear to have been part of the Greek and Roman plays: the metamorphoses of Tereus and perhaps the s­ isters (TrGF 4.581), the presence of Dionysian worship (Dangel fr. 445),104 a concern over the power of speech (Dangel fr. 443–44), a redefinition of piety (Dangel fr. 450), and the enthusiastic participation of Philomela in the revenge plan (Dangel fr. 453–54). Hypsipyle foregrounded issues of literary tradition and reception through frequent references to storytelling, sharing, and watching or hearing per­for­ mances of tales. So too, the narrator of Procne’s tale situates the audience in a context of storytellers and their audiences. Book 5, which precedes the tale of Procne and her s­ ister, consists of a lengthy tale sung by the divine poets, the Muses, in a private re-­performance of a song sung for an e­ arlier poetic com­ petition (5.250–678). The Muses’ anger and punishment of their rivals for hubris inspire their audience, Minerva, to seek out her own punishment for Arachne’s arrogant competition. The narrator comments that Niobe, whose tale follows Arachne’s, could have avoided her own punishment had she been able to learn from the story (rumor, 147) of Arachne (150–51). The story of Niobe inspires its audience to share similar tales. The narrator remarks on the naturalness of one story inspiring ­others: “and as it happens, ­because of a more recent event they recount events from before” (utque fit, a facto propiore priora renarrant, 316). An anonymous storyteller (e quibus unus, 317) relates a story

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told to him by an unnamed local (gentisque illius, 323) about Latona’s punish­ ment of the Lycians. Another anonymous storyteller (reminiscitur alter, 383) then shares the tale of Apollo’s punishment of Marsyas. This tale reprises the context of poetic competition which inspired the song of the Muses in book 5 and the competition of textual tales in the weaving of Minerva and Arachne.105 The narrator then returns to the reception of Niobe’s tale. We are told that she is criticized by every­one (mater in inuidia est, 403) but her ­brother Pelops, who is unique in his sympathetic interpretation of her story (“it is said that Pelops alone cried over her,” hanc quoque dicitur unus/ flesse Pelops, 403–4). Dicitur signals that his reception of Niobe’s story is itself the product of literary tradition. Additionally, his own tale is briefly told by the narrator, continuing the context of storytelling (404–11). The narrator further prepares us for the tale of Procne, Philomela, and Tereus in par­tic­u­lar by including proximal tales with similar content. Before beginning their winning song, Uranie tells Minerva about their attempted rape at the hands of Pyreneus whom they fled on wings and who, trying to follow them, fell from the high tower and stained the ground with his blood (5.269– 293). The stain foreshadows the bloody marks on the swallow and nightingale (6.669–70; cited above).106 The attempted rape, moreover, occurred in Thrace, associating this location with sexual vio­lence in the minds of Uranie’s and Ov­ id’s audience. The tale which immediately follows that of Procne, Philomela, and Tereus confirms this association, for the Thracian Boreas, the divine North Wind, rapes another Athenian w ­ oman, Orithyia (681–710). In fact, the first half of book 6 is concerned with the theme of divine revenge. As noted above, the tale of Minerva’s punishment of Arachne is followed by Latona’s punishment of Niobe, her punishment of the Lycians, and Apollo’s punishment of Marsyas. Even Pelops’s brief tale repeats but inverts the theme of revenge. His ­father is famous for his punishment. Pelops’s fate, moreover, reverses the fate of Marsyas. One is dismembered by a god; the other is reconstituted by the gods. As has been well noted by several scholars, Ovid’s epic version of this myth is marked as dramatic and specifically tragic by ele­ments which are now fa­ miliar to us from other poems and passages.107 Among t­ hese ele­ments is the common tragic theme of revenge which we explored above in the surround­ ing tales.108 It is safe to assume that revenge was also a central theme of the tragedies of Sophocles and Accius too. At the start of the tale, the wedding of Procne and Tereus is attended by tragic furies, divine agents of revenge. Eumenides tenuere ­faces de funere raptas, Eumenides strauere torum, tectoque profanus incubuit bubo thalamique in culmine sedit.

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hac aue coniuncti Procne Tereusque, parentes hac aue sunt facti. gratata est scilicet illis Thracia, disque ipsi grates egere diemque, quaque data est claro Pandione nata tyranno quaque erat ortus Itys, festam iussere vocari; (430–37) The Eumenides held torches stolen from a funeral, the Eumenides spread the couch, and the ill-­omened owl leaned on the roof and sat just above their marriage chamber. U ­ nder this bird of omen Procne and Tereus ­were joined, u ­ nder this bird of omen they ­were made parents. In fact, Thrace rejoiced at ­these events, and themselves gave thanks to the gods, and they instituted a festival on that day when Pandion gave his ­daughter in marriage to the famous king and when Itys was born; Eumenides, emphasized by the anaphora (430, 431), are furies associated ge­ nerically with tragedy, as shown in Hypsipyle’s letter.109 As noted above, this is also the title of Aeschylus’s tragedy that ends a trilogy recounting the cycle of murder and revenge in the ­house of Atreus. Furies continue to signal the generic code by which the tale should be interpreted throughout the passage: Procne arms herself with weapons of the furies (furialia arma, 591); she is goaded by the furies of grief (furiis agitata doloris, 595); Philomela is spattered by Itys’s blood which is described as “of the furies” (furiali caede, 657); and fi­ nally, Tereus calls upon the furies, “snaky ­sisters” (uipereas sorores, 662). Direct speech is attributed to all of the characters:110 Procne (17 lines: 440–44, 611–19, 621–22, 631–35, 652, 655); Pandion (8 lines: 496–503, 509); Tereus (513); and Philomela (16 lines: 533–48).111 Tereus’s reaction to Philomela’s speech is to silence her by cutting out her tongue. Her inability to speak determines the sub­ sequent actions and preoccupies other characters. The narrator tells us that she wished most of all to speak again at the revelation of her revenge (659–60). Even Itys is given a line: “­mother, ­mother” (mater, mater, 640). Of the 251 lines which make up this episode,112 about 43 (some partial), or 17 ­percent, are uttered in direct speech. The number is slight in comparison to Byblis (56 ­percent), but the frequency and the participation of all the characters are significant, especially considering that the plot is focused on the inability of one central character to speak at all. Ovid’s narrator offers notional stage sets, entrances, costumes, and props. Consider, for example, the description of the ill-­omened wedding, which re­ sembles the prologue of an Attic tragedy, where a character gives the audi­ ence background information before the action of the play begins. H ­ ere the narrator describes the marriage and birth of Itys before introducing the tem­

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poral location of the first act with iam tempora Titan (438).113 The formula is again employed to introduce the temporal location of Philomela’s rescue with “it was time” (tempus erat, 587). ­After Tereus’s speedy voyage to Athens and greeting between father-­and son-­in-­law, Philomela makes a dramatic entrance onto the Athenian stage: “look, Philomela is ­here, splendid ­because of her ­g rand attire” (ecce uenit magno diues Philomela paratu, 451). Ecce activates the vocabulary of spectacle and invites the external audience to turn their heads, so to speak, from Procne in Thrace t­ oward Philomela in Athens as she enters the story.114 In this line, the narrator allows our eyes to focus first on the ­woman and then to admire her costume. The adjective magnus is suggestive of generic cues such as gravis and maior. We may imagine Ovid’s secondary meaning, “Look, h ­ ere she comes, Philomela extravagantly costumed for the tragic stage (extravagant ­because of a tragic costume).”115 Procne ­later dresses herself and her ­sister as maenads (591–94, 598–99).116 The costumes include props associ­ ated with maenads: a vine leaf garland, deer skin, and spear (592–94 and cited as insignia Bacchi at 598). Philomela’s “pitiful song” (carmen miserabile, 582) is itself a tragic prop, acting as the token which facilitates the anagnoresis and re­ sembles not only the textile which likely played a part on Sophocles’s and Accius’s stage but also embedded letters like the Euripidean Agamemnon’s in Iphigenia at Aulis or Phaedra’s in Hippolytus II.117 In addition, the god of tragedy, Bacchus, plays an impor­tant role in Ovid’s tale.118 In Athens, Bacchus is poured as wine into a gold cup ­after Phoebus the sun sets. Iam l­abor exiguus Phoebo restabat equique pulsabant pedibus spatium decliuis Olympi. regales epulae mensis et Bacchus in auro ponitur; hinc placido dant turgida corpora somno. at rex Odrysius, quamuis secessit, in illa aestuat . . . (486–91) Now very l­ittle work was left for Phoebus and his h ­ orses ­were pound­ ing the distance of sloping Olympus with their hooves. Royal feasts are set on the ­tables and Bacchus is poured into golden cups; then well-­fed bodies give themselves to peaceful sleep. But the Odrysian king, al­ though he retired to bed, burns for her . . . For other tired bodies, once Bacchus is poured, the night is given to sleep; the Thracian Tereus, however, burns (aestuat, 491). The golden cup and his fires of love replace the sun while his sleep is replaced by sleepless fantasies (493).

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Bacchus appears again when his worship becomes an opportunity for Procne to rescue her s­ ister. Tempus erat quo sacra solent trieterica Bacchi Sithoniae celebrare nurus. Nox conscia sacris, nocte sonat Rhodope tinnitibus aeris acuti, nocte sua est egressa domo regina deique ritibus instruitur furialiaque accipit arma. uite caput tegitur, lateri ceruina sinistro uellera dependent, umero leuis incubat hasta. concita per silvas turba comitante suarum terribilis Procne furiisque agitata doloris, Bacche, tuas simulat. (587–96) It was the time when the Sithonian daughters-­in-­law are accustomed to celebrate Bacchus’s biennial rites. Night is an accessory to their rites, by night Rhodope resounds with the ringing of shrill bronze, by night the queen has left her h ­ ouse and outfits herself for the rites of the god and takes up the weapons of the furies. Her head is covered with a grape­ vine, on her left side hangs the skin of a deer, on her shoulder a light spear lies. Procne pretends to be one of your own, Bacchus, frightful with a troop of ­women accompanying her, driven through the forest and impelled by the furies of her grief. ­ ere we may see Bacchus associated with night (588, 589, 590), as it was with H the desire of Tereus, and connected to the revenge plans of Procne, thereby signaling the tragic lineage of both.119 When Tereus is l­ater “blind” to the re­ venge enacted upon him, the narrator says that “such a g­ reat night is in his mind” (tantaque nox animi est, 652). He has consumed and incorporated the ­sisters’ tragic vengeance into his body in the form of night. At lines 472–73, the narrator exclaims, “by the gods, how much blind night do mortal hearts pos­ sess” (pro superi, quantum mortalia pectora caecae / noctis habent) ­after the descrip­ tion of Tereus’s deceitful plea to Pandion on Procne’s behalf and just before revealing his success. If interpreted through the association soon firmly estab­ lished between night and Bacchus, the narrator is signaling the tragic nature of Tereus’s per­for­mance and the events which are set in motion—­Pandion’s cre­ dulity, Philomela’s voyage, Philomela’s rape, and the ­sisters’ revenge. Fitzpatrick and Curley comment that the notae of Philomela’s textile text ­were safe from Tereus ­because he was, presumably, illiterate (in the Greek lan­ guage).120 They and o ­ thers further identify Philomela’s carmen miserabile as its

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own tragic script.121 Philomela’s “tragedy” represents Ovid’s own tragic text which is inscrutable to Tereus, for he is generically illiterate. Nevertheless, Tereus is characterized as an e­ ager spectator and aspiring poet.122 The moment Tereus becomes a spectator in Athens marks the inception of his sexual de­ sire. This desire coincides with and motivates a desire to become his own sto­ ryteller and playwright. We follow the irony of his generic misinterpretations and poor translation. Just as the semiosis of Phaedra and Byblis considered in chapter 2 created a generic monstrum ­because they w ­ ere unable to retranslate their tales into the more accommodating genre of elegy, so, too, Tereus’s se­ miosis fails ­because he neither recognizes his tragic context nor understands the distinctions defining genre. Like the female tragic heroines whose failure to perform normative Augustan femininity confines them to their tragic genre in Ovid’s verse, so Tereus’s failed masculinity—­foreign, culturally illiterate, and excessive—­condemns him to a similar fate. When the tale opens, we meet a ­silent Tereus, who is generically marked as an epic hero. Threicius Tereus haec auxiliaribus armis fuderat et clarum uincendo nomen habebat; quem sibi Pandion opibusque uirisque potentem et genus a magno ducentem forte Gradiuo conubio Procnes iunxit. (424–28) Thracian Tereus had routed t­ hese [enemies] with his auxiliaries and held a name famous for conquering; Pandion joined to himself through a mar­ riage to Procne this man who was power­ful ­because of his wealth and soldiers, and traced his ­people back to the ­great, brave Mars Gradivus. His claim to fame is military victory, and his power derives from wealth and mili­ tary strength. His divine ancestor is the god of war, by convention, a god at home in martial epic. The epic epithet Gradivus123 is acoustically similar to gravis, a familiar generic marker for epic, which is intensified by the adjective magnus.124 As military ally, Tereus wordlessly defends Athens (424–25), marries Procne (426–32), produces a male heir (433), and dutifully fulfills his wife’s requests (444–46). His greeting on arrival—­the shaking of hands (447–48)—­performs and affirms his normative, masculine affinity to Pandion. We may see, however, in this epic introduction potential generic crossings, for Tereus’s “famous name” in the literary tradition comes not from conquering Athens’s enemies but the maiden Philomela (“and he conquered by force one maiden” (uirginem et unam / ui superat, 6.524–25).125 As we see at 525, vires/vis also means vio­lence and is used

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in this passage and the larger poem to denote rape.126 Gravis and maior, more­ over, is used by Ovid to characterize tragedy as well as epic, and, as I argue above, magnus ­will qualify Philomela’s costume as tragic ­later in the passage.127 Indeed, it is the spectacular entrance of Philomela in Athens, the birthplace of Greek tragedy, that initiates Tereus as a theatergoer and triggers his desire to translate his epic role into a dramatic role.128 Tereus may be interpreted as a metic attending a dramatic per­for­mance. He continues to watch Philomela persuade her ­father: “Tereus looks at her and caresses her with his eyes, and feels the kisses” (spectat eam Tereus praecontrectatque videndo, osculaqua . . . ​cernens, 478–79). In many ways, however, Tereus is looking out onto an Athenian audience from the stage, an unwitting player in a tragedy. His lack of familiar­ ity with drama leaves him unable to recognize and correctly interpret his plot. Watching Philomela inspires Tereus to script and perform his own play. Tereus, however, mixes generic roles unsuccessfully. Tereus’s per­for­mance is comic in the first instance, for he begins by considering vari­ous routes to ob­ taining a beloved familiar to a modern audience from Roman comedy—­bribing her friends (461), or nurse (462), and promising her expensive gifts (463), even his kingdom (463). Of course, Ovid’s elegiac oeuvre suggests that Tereus is rather (or also) an elegiac amator, a conventional figure whose own indebted­ ness to comedy has been well established.129 Tereus plays neither role well. Successful comic lovers are usually adulescentes, and both comic and elegiac lovers are also usually unmarried.130 Tereus studies the role of ­father (et quotiens amplectitur illa parentem, / esse parens uellet, 481–82), another poor choice for a lover, but one found ­behind the myth of another tragedy depicting cannibalism—­Thyestes, discussed below.131 Tereus’s first per­for­mance is a ­g reat success. His deceptive persuasion of Pandion is characterized by Ovid’s verse as a costume, another signal of the operative generic code in this passage. He is said to express his own wishes sub illa (“as if for her,” 468). The preposition sub, in the dramatic context cre­ ated by Ovid’s narrative, carries the connotation of “concealed u ­ nder” (OLD, sub, 4) as well as “in the name of ” (OLD, sub, 5). Tereus costumes his own de­ sires as Procne’s, thereby performing her role (agit, 468; OLD, agere, 25, “to play [a role]”;132 “he turns back to Procne’s commands and makes his own pleas as if for her. Love was making him eloquent,” reuertitur ore / ad mandata Procnes et agit sua uota sub illa. / facundum faciebat amor, 467–69; “By the sheer size of his crime Tereus is believed to be pious,” ipso sceleris molimine Tereus / creditur esse pius, 473–74).133 We may compare this to the poet-­praeceptor’s in­ structions for the proper “per­for­mance” of lover (agendus amans, Ars 1.611), where eloquence, inspired by desire, is described using the vocabulary of the­ atrical per­for­mance:

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non tua sub nostras ueniat facundia leges; fac tantum cupias, sponte disertus eris. est tibi agendus amans, imitandaque uulnera uerbis; haec tibi quaeratur qualibet arte fides. (Ars am. 1.609–12) Your eloquence need not be governed by my laws: just make yourself want it, you w ­ ill be well spoken on your own. You must play the role of lover, and speak as if you have a broken heart; you must seek this confi­ dence by any and ­every skill. In both passages, eloquence is performative and the means to credibility. Pandion, the king of Athens, tragedy’s birthplace, should be the canniest theatergoer. Instead he continues to interpret Tereus through the code of epic, which, u ­ ntil Philomela’s entrance, has defined Tereus and his relationship to his father-­in-­law.134 Pandion’s epic reading of Tereus’s per­for­mance is marked at the close by his repetition of the clasping of hands (“[Pandion] embraces his departing son-­in-­law’s right hand,” et generi dextram conplexus euntis, 494), to which he adds Philomela’s in a gesture that ironically recalls a marriage (“he joined their right hands between them,” dextras . . . ​inter seque datas iunxit, 506– 7),135 and a request for a promise to return Philomela soon (496–508). Pandi­ on’s premonitions (praesagia, 510) mark an unconscious perception of the generic context. ­After Philomela’s entrance, the simile comparing her to the nymphs famil­ iar from the first books of the Metamorphoses foreshadows her rape. It also pre­ pares us for the role Tereus w ­ ill give her. As Hardie (2002) notes, the simile at 452–54 exposes Tereus’s fantastical desire for Philomela, who reimagines her as “the sort of Naiads and Dryads we are used to hearing about who walk around in the midst of the woods” (quales audire solemus/ Naidas et Dryadas mediis incedere siluis, 452–53). The simile continues, “if only you should give to them a similar style and costume” (si modo des illis cultus similesque paratus, 454). Anderson notes that Tereus’s sudden desire recalls Apollo’s for Daphne in book 1, and, as Hardie further argues, the stories in t­ hese first books condi­ tion us “to see nymphs as potential rape victims” (Hardie 2002, 262).136 The narrator describes how Tereus begins to reimagine Philomela’s role while still in Athens. Much like Byblis, who would recall her erotic dreams with Caunus (9.468–86),137 Tereus imagines looking at Philomela while the ­house sleeps. “But the Odrysian king, although he retired to bed, burns for her and, recall­ ing her face and movements and hands, he imagines what­ever he wants that he has not yet seen” (at rex Odrysius, quamuis secessit, in illa / aestuat et repetens faciem motusque manusque / qualia uult fingit quae nondum uidit, 490–92). The

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verb fingo, a word used to describe forming something physically with materi­ als such as clay as well as forming ideas, suggests Tereus’s styling of Philome­ la’s appearance and actions.138 Once Pandion has entrusted Philomela to Tereus, he proceeds to place Philomela in two successive notional sets. The first is his ship, which is painted (pictae) like a Roman stage: “Philomela was placed on his painted ship” (imposita est pictae Philomela carinae, 511). The narrator says that Tereus “never turns his eye away from her just as when the hunting bird of Jupiter drops a hare into his high nest” (see below, 515–17). The nest of the simile repeats the visibility of Philomela’s position while establishing the control of Tereus the watcher-­director.139 . . . ​nusquam lumen detorquet ab illa, non aliter quam cum pedibus praedator obuncis deposuit nido leporem Iouis ales in alto; nulla fuga est capto, spectat sua praemia raptor. (Met. 6.515–18) [Tereus] never turns his eye away from her just as when the hunting bird of Jupiter drops a hare into his high nest from curved talons; ­there is no escape for the captive, the captor looks at his prize. The simile again recalls t­hose used to describe Ovidian nymphs. Compare, for example, the image of a hare captured by an ea­gle to Apollo’s own dis­ avowal as predator (1.505–6), the simile which compares him to a predator (1.533–38), and Arethusa’s simile comparing herself to a dove fleeing a hawk (5.605–6). While looking forward to the epic role of nymph which Tereus has in mind (and back to the nymphs e­ arlier in the Metamorphoses),140 Philomela’s placement on a ship also recalls another epic role, that of Apollonius’s Hellenis­ tic Medea in love, soon to be encountered in several versions in Ovid’s epic—­ Scylla, Ariadne (8), Byblis (9), and Myrrha (10).141 The first of ­these mythological examples, Medea herself, appears soon ­after Philomela’s story ends (Met. 7.1– 424). Each of ­these maidens w ­ ill betray their ­father and endeavor to join their beloved on their voyage to a foreign (to the maiden) land. The second notional set is a hut deep in the forest.142 In Sophocles’s play, as March notes, the mask would make it plausible for both s­ isters to share a stage without a recognition. The stabula, I believe, does more work than providing a plausible delay of recognition and emphasizing Tereus’s barbarity. Ovid has chosen this epic solution for Philomela’s concealment for its metapoetic reso­ nance. The stabula locates Philomela in the epic world of nymphs and divine rapists surveyed above (“[Tereus] drags [Philomela] into a hut hidden by an an­

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cient forest,” in stabula alta trahit, siluis obscura uetustis, 521).143 In keeping with the denouement of Ovid’s e­ arlier tales of divine rape (e.g., Daphne, Io, Cal­ listo, Arethusa), Tereus performs his own metamorphic silencing of her body by taking her tongue.144 The narrator adds to the scene appropriate hunting similes (527–30), again echoing similes from divine erotic pursuits like the ones considered ­earlier. While the ancient forest where the stabula is located is appropriate to the epic context of a nymph, the woods carry a metapoetic resonance as poetic material. Such a meta­phorical use is borrowed from the identical use of the Greek ὕλη, meaning “forest,” “­matter,” “raw material.”145 Tereus draws Philomela into the raw material of an ancient literary tradition in order to rewrite her role. He is, however, unfamiliar with the poetry from which he borrows. He appropriates ill-­suited generic roles for himself and Philomela, for, as we have seen, a new role requires a new thesis. Meaning depends on the writing subject, who must be communicating appropriate messages to appropriate addressees. The addressee, moreover, is defined by their relationship to the writing subject.146 Philomela’s new role requires, above all, Tereus’s ability to script and play a coherent sup­ porting role. In this re­spect, Tereus resembles Phaedra and Byblis. Like the two desiring w ­ omen, this desiring barbarian constructs roles which are interpretable only as monstra—­incomprehensible generic hybrids.147 The word stabula, more­ over, was used to describe brothels (OLD, stabulum, 2.b.). This secondary mean­ ing further signals Tereus’s complete misunderstanding of Philomela’s status and his generic confusion. She is a tragic maiden, not an epic nymph or elegiac meretrix. His confusion of generic categories is amplified by the social catego­ ries which are confounded as a result of his actions—­sisters become romantic rivals, husbands become brothers-­in-­law.148 His crossing of categories is perma­ nently marked by his final taboo violation, cannibalism. Philomela resists her generic translation and the confusion it c­ auses for the kinship system. Her appeal to this f­amily and the gods who protect it in her distress (frustra clamato saepe parente, / saepe sorore sua, magnis super omnia diuis, 525–26) emphasizes her strong connection with them in contrast to Tere­ us’s alienation. Just as Phaedra’s and Byblis’s abject desire v­ iolated the gender norms which demand a non­ex­is­tent or undetectable female desire, so too, Tereus’s abject and excessive desire violates the gender norms which demand a controlled and lawful masculinity. As we saw in chapter 1, Ovid’s poet-­ praeceptor cites this masculinity in his lessons (“Desire is more moderate in us and not so full of madness; the manly flame has a lawful limit,” parcior in nobis nec tam furiosa libido; / legitimum finem flamma uirilis habet, Ars am. 1.281– 82). The abject desire of Phaedra-­like figures is marked in Ovid’s verse by their gender and genre. For Tereus, it is his ethnicity and genre. Philomela identifies

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this abjection when she says that he is “barbaric ­because of savage deeds” (diris barbare factis, 533) and points out his inability to feel loyalty to the Athenian customs which govern their society—­piety, empathy, and the institution of marriage (“did the pious and tearful requests of my ­father not move you or a concern for my ­sister or my maidenhood or your marriage vows?,” nec te mandata parentis / cum lacrimis mouere piis nec cura sororis / nec mea uirginitas nec coniugialia iura, 534–36). As noted above, Tereus costumed Philomela according to his fantasy of put­ ting her in a woodland scene appropriate to nymphs. The narrator pre­sents Philomela as if performing onstage by directing our gaze, focalized by Tere­ us’s gaze, on the maiden.149 The grammatical structure reproduces syntacti­ cally the theatrical gaze of the audience. Philomela is described with a series of feminine accusative participles: “pale and trembling and fearing every­thing and now in tears asking where her s­ ister is” (pallentem trepidamque et cuncta timentem / et iam cum lacrimis ubi sit germana rogantem, 522–23). The participles describe the actor and her gestures, whom we watch along with the subject of the sentence, Tereus—­pallid, shivering, showing fear, crying, and asking a question—­while 523 reports the lines of the actor: “Where is my ­sister?”150 Philomela soon becomes the grammatical subject as the narrator refocalizes the tale through her eyes, but this agency is undermined by the simile in which she is likened to the prey of predators (527–30). That we are meant to watch Philomela’s dramatic speech that follows is suggested by the description of her gestures: “tearing at her loosened hair [like one in mourning, arms cut from striking herself in lament], stretching out her palms” (passos laniata capillos, / [lugenti similis, caesis plangore lacertis] / intendens palmas, 531–33). Just before she begins her speech, the narrator announces that Philomela’s reason has returned (mox ubi mens rediit, 531). When we privilege the metapo­ etic reading of this passage, Philomela’s reason emerges as the means by which she recognizes the generic context. Like the Ovidian Hypsipyle, Philomela is represented as consciously choosing to give ­free rein to her female rage and, thereby, to embrace her tragic heritage. Such a choice is tantamount to relin­ quishing all normative female kinship roles—­daughter, ­sister, wife—­and as­ suming an abject role only intelligible on the tragic stage. She appears, moreover, to combine several famous tragic roles, including, perhaps, the in­ novative tragic roles of Philomela created by Sophocles and Accius, now lost. She is at once Sophocles’s defiant Antigone and Elektra, the selfless protectors of ­family duty, and Euripides’s willing maiden sacrifices, Polyxena, Iphigenia, and the Parthenos of Heraclidae.151 Antigone, for example, reproaches Creon for his laws, which contradict divine laws governing kinship (Ant. 450–523, 891–928). Creon’s policies, Antigone claims, treat piety as impiety (“since I have

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acquired a name for impiety, although, in fact, I am living piously,” ἐπεί γε δὴ/ τὴν δυccέβειαν εὐcεβοῦc᾽ ἐκτηcάμην, 923–24). So Philomela reproaches Tereus’s disdain for kinship laws (534–36), which results in a similar paradox (“you have confused every­thing,” omnia turbasti, 537; cf. Procne l­ater in the passage, who states “in my marriage with Tereus, piety is a crime,” scelus est pietas in coniuge Terei, 635). Philomela hopes that Tereus’s punishment ­will be guaranteed by the gods (“Nevertheless, if the gods perceive this, if the gods’ powers amount to anything . . . ​someday you ­will pay the penalty,” si tamen haec superi cernunt, si numina diuum / sunt aliquid, . . . ​/ quandocumque mihi poenas dabis, 542–44). Like all of t­ hese tragic maidens, Philomela welcomes death. Her gesture, in par­tic­u­lar, echoes t­hose of Euripides’s maidens, who bravely accept their fates.152 Philomela “was offering her neck and began to hope for her own death ­after she saw the sword” (iugulum Philomela parabat / spemque suae mortis uiso conceperat ense, 553–54). So do Iphigenia, who announces, “I ­will offer my neck with a stout heart” (παρέξω γὰρ δέρην εὐκαρδίωc, IA 1560), and Polyxena, “this throat is ready” (πάρεcτι λαιμὸc εὐτρεπὴc ὅδε, Hec. 565). This gesture is per­ haps cued by the sight of the sword, which awaited Polyxena and Iphigenia at the altar, as it is for Philomela in Ovid’s tale (uiso . . . ​ense, 554).153 Philomela, however, regrets her defilement before death: “Why not take this life, so that no crime remains for you to commit, traitor? If only you had done it before you had committed sexual assualt: I would have had a ghost f­ ree of crime” (quin animam hanc, ne quod facinus tibi, perfide, restet, / eripis? atque utinam fecisses ante nefandos / concubitus; uacuas habuissem criminis umbras, 539–41); by contrast, the Euripidean maidens took pride in their ­free and unviolated bodies.154 As noted above, Tereus’s manual metamorphosis silences Philomela in a perverted imitation of the transformed nymphs such as Daphne, whose tree can only nod ambiguously (1.567), or Callisto, who could only give a bear’s growl (2.483–84).155 While the nymphs’ newly speechless forms are the work of gods (Peneus and Juno), Tereus is a mortal, and the new form he fashions is a horrifying parody of divine creation. Instead of disappearing forever into the landscape and providing an etiology for a plant or natu­ral phenomenon by her story, Philomela engineers a creative means of communication. This is commented on explic­itly by the narrator: “­g reat inventiveness is found in grief, and comfort comes to wretched circumstances” (grande doloris / ingenium est, miserisque uenit sollertia rebus, 574–75). The nymph Io, whose tale follows Daphne in book 1.583–686, 713–79 of the Metamorphoses, appears to offer a close analog for Philomela, but the differences in their fate demonstrate Tereus’s misappropriation of the roles of amorous god and nymph.156 Io is raped by Jupiter, who pursues the nymph a­ fter seeing her

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leave her ­father, Inachus (588–89). Jupiter suggests she cool off in the shade of a deep forest (umbras / altorum nemorum, 1.590–91), resembling Tereus’s hut set deep in the forest (6.521, cited above).157 Io is transformed into a cow by Jupiter in order to prevent his crime from being discovered by his wife (1.610–11), as Tereus likewise silences Philomela to deceive his. Like Philomela, moreover, Io reveals her identity to a ­family member (her ­father) through writing: “she pre­ sented the sad evidence of her changed form, a letter in place of words, which her foot formed in the dust” (littera pro uerbis, quam pes in puluere duxit, / corporis indicium mutati triste peregit, 1.649–50). Her writing in the dust is “sad evidence of her changed form,” just as Philomela’s woven writing is a “pitiful song” (carmen miserabile, 6.582) and a “testimony of the crime” (indicium sceleris, 578).158 De­ spite t­ hese similarities, however, Io’s story differs in fundamental ways. Her pur­ suer is a god. His transformation of her body results in something beautiful (formosa, 1.612), which even Juno reluctantly admires (quamquam inuita, probat, 613). Jupiter ­later restores her form (739–43), and she gives birth to Epaphus (748) and becomes the goddess Isis (747). Io’s ­father, Inachus, unlike Procne, does not seek revenge for Zeus’s actions. Instead, he laments (651–67) and ac­ cepts his immortal dolor (661). By contrast, Philomela’s weaving more closely resembles the Euripidean Phaedra’s letter in its effect on its reader, for Procne does not console her grief with lament, as Inachus does. Just as Theseus reacts to Phaedra’s epistolary accusation by fatally cursing his son, so Procne becomes the image of revenge against Tereus’s mortal crimes (6.586). Upon reading Philomela’s “tragedy,” Procne also recognizes the tragic con­ text. Her psychological metamorphosis into a tragic angry ­woman is imme­ diate: “but about to mix up right and wrong she rushes out and is entirely the image of vengeance” (sed fasque nefasque / confusura ruit poenaeque in imagine tota est, 585–86). This confusion of good and bad resembles the conflict faced by tragic characters, who commit crimes in order to right wrongs: Medea, like Procne, kills her sons to punish her deceitful husband; Clytemnestra murders Agamemnon in retaliation for their d­ aughter’s sacrifice and his adultery; De­ ianira employs magic and deceit in the hopes of regaining Heracles’s erotic attention.159 Imagine (586) engages with the language of exemplarity. We may see the very same exemplarity named for another tragic avenging m ­ other in the Metamorphoses, Hecuba: “she is entirely the image of vengeance” (poenaeque in imagine tota est, 13.546).160 The notae marking the avian bodies of the ­sisters at the end of this tale w ­ ill reduce them to their “signs”—­their exem­ plarity in the symbolic system of myth.161 Procne’s generic metamorphosis ­here defines her exemplary status as the tragic Procne, which her physical metamorphosis w ­ ill inscribe into her new body.

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Andrew Feldherr has persuasively argued that this passage models modes of spectatorship for Ovid’s Roman audience.162 The first is represented by Tereus’s objectifying gaze of Philomela, which constructs the viewed as an other, able to be possessed or rejected. He notes that in Procne we may see two ways of viewing—­her objectifying gaze upon Itys and her sympathetic gaze upon Philomela. The former identifies a viewer in opposition to the actor, the latter blurs the bound­aries between self and other. Feldherr has argued that Procne reads Philomela’s tragedy as her own. She identifies with and even assumes her role. As I have argued, this passage is also about gender and generic conven­ tions. With the playwrights and per­for­mances foregrounded, the spectators embody modes of reception articulated by the poet and the limitations which delineate his or her choices. We have considered how, in the first part of this passage, all of the characters participate in a drama: as actors, whose gestures, costumes, and dialogue are described by the narrator; as spectators, who watch and react to per­for­mances; or as playwrights, scripting and directing their own plays. From this perspective, we can see how Tereus and Philomela reconceive their myths through their own scripts. We can also see in this passage, as we have in ­earlier passages, how gender is inextricably linked to generic codes in Ovid and how abject gendered subjects—­women and emasculated men—­are unable to successfully translate their “tragic” tales into another generic code. While Tereus tries and fails to perform as an epic amorous deity, Philomela embraces tragedy, moving the drama forward to a successful revenge. Procne is represented as the most sophisticated poet and performer among them. It has been observed that her per­for­mance alludes to three Euripidean tragedies in par­tic­u­lar, in addition to her own.163 The first is Bacchae, in which Agave’s maenadic madness results in her son’s death.164 The ­sisters share Agave’s role: both act the part of a maenad and participate in the dismemberment of a son, but Philomela, the aunt, is left holding his head. Itys’s head, like Pentheus’s, is both a gruesome prop and revelatory for the uninformed parent. Agave, how­ ever, has been struck by a Dionysian madness and is sympathetically grief-­ stricken once she regains her senses. By contrast, Tereus is the grief-­stricken parent, whose ignorance is exploited by a ­mother who knowingly slaughters her own son. Omophagy, associated with Bacchic worship, and briefly men­ tioned in Euripides’s play, is ­here the vehicle for revenge. The cannibalistic revenge alludes to a second Euripidean play, Thyestes.165 Procne’s revenge replicates Atreus’s. Both trick their enemies into eating their own son(s) as revenge for sexual misconduct—­Thyestes’s adultery with Atre­ us’s wife, Aerope, and Tereus’s adultery with and rape of Procne’s ­sister, Philomela. For the Romans, Atreus represented the danger of a tyrant, exploit­ ing his power and acting excessively.166 Both Accius and Varius Rufus ­were

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famous for their dramatic treatments of this myth.167 While the Thyestes/ Atreus treatments shift the cannibalism from the tyrant, Atreus, to his victim, the connection emphasizes both the messages about tyranny and the tragic provenance of Tereus himself. As Pavlock (1991) successfully shows, Ovid’s Tereus represents the quin­tes­sen­tial tyrant. In the Fasti, Ovid extends the as­ sociation of Tereus with famous tyrants in his comparison of Tereus to Tar­ quinius Superbus (Fasti, 2.851–56).168 The Fasti, written while he was also working on Metamorphoses, introduces another tragic paradigm into the nexus from the uniquely Roman tragic subgenre of praetexta, Lucretia.169 Lucretia represents a Roman reinterpretation of the Greek Attic sacrificial maiden, whose sacrifice is represented as voluntary and often welcome. As we have seen, Philomela endeavors to play this part to Tereus’s Sextus Tarquinius. The third and most explicit allusion is to Eurpides’s Medea. Procne’s choice of punishment, killing a man’s son even though the child is also hers, is the same horrifying and heartbreaking punishment Medea chooses for Jason. While considering the appropriate punishment to fit the crime (615–18), she states that, what­ever it is, it ­will be something magnus (“I have prepared some­ thing g­ reat; what it is I am still uncertain,” magnum quodcumque paraui; / quid sit, adhuc dubito, 618–19). Magnus signals that her choice ­will be taken from trag­ edy, for, as we have seen already in this passage, magnus carries a metapoetic resonance, associated ­here with the tragic genre (427, 451). Intratexts with Ov­ id’s Heroides 12 further inform the well-­versed reader of Ovid that her revenge ­will be borrowed from Medea in par­tic­u­lar. Medea ends her epistle with the threat: “Certainly my mind conceives something greater” (nescio quid certe mens mea maius agit, Her. 12.212). As Hinds has noted, her threat marks her entrance into the genre of tragedy with the metapoetic maius.170 Procne’s echo of Me­ dea’s line signals both the “code model” (Euripidean-­style tragedy) and the “ex­ emplary model” (Euripides’s Medea) of her intended revenge.171 The narrator tells us that Procne “is reminded of what she could do by [Itys]” (quid possit, ab illo / admonita est, 620–21). The Athenian princess is “reminded of ” the revenge she has seen in the theater of Dionysus, where an ­earlier Procne and Medea punished their husbands with the murder of their sons. Procne’s monologue, in which she decides to kill her son and then strug­gles over her decision, re­ hearses the Euripidean Medea’s own,172 as we see by comparing Metamorphoses 6.620–34 to Euripides’s Medea 1021–80.173 Sophocles, March (2003) argues, may have been directly influenced by Euripides’s Medea, having written Tereus ­after attending a per­for­mance of Euripides’s moving play.174 If she is right, Procne’s revenge, and perhaps the conflicted speech, originates from this very play. As­ suming March’s proposal, Ovid’s intratextual reference to Medea’s letter now appears to cite Sophocles’s own debt to Euripides’s Medea.

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Ovid’s Procne recasts her own version of Tereus: Philomela as Procne, Tereus as Pandion, and Itys as Philomela, while she takes the role of Tereus.175 For example, Feldherr (2010, 199–239) notes that Procne’s identification with her ­sister leads her to objectify Itys and thereby replicate the gaze of Tereus. When we consider Ovid’s tale from the perspective of poetic production, how­ ever, Procne can be interpreted as consciously assuming Tereus’s role. Procne’s assumption of mourning clothes ­after Tereus manufactures the story of Philomela’s death foreshadows her conscious generic change. The mourning attire suggests both tragedy and Tereus’s ­earlier characterization in the tale thus far. We watch her tear off the gleaming golden gown from her shoulders and put on dark garments (uelamina Procne / deripit ex umeris auro fulgentia lato / induiturque atras uestes, 566–68).176 The description of her clothing, moreover, revives the gold/Phoebus–­night/Bacchus dichotomy which appeared ­earlier in the passage. As we saw, the sun, day, and Phoebus Apollo are all associated with the Athenian Pandion. By contrast, Thracian Tereus is associated with night, darkness, and Bacchus. Night is further connected to Tereus’s ability to manip­ ulate Pandion’s trust by the narrator’s interjection quantum . . . ​caecae / noctis (472–73). In preparation for her lament prompted by another successful Terean deceit, Procne replaces her shining, golden Apolline robes with dark Bacchic ones. The clothing change signals the beginning of a generic transition from epic to tragedy and looks ahead to her per­for­mance as Tereus. Procne takes advantage of the cele­bration of Dionysus currently taking place in Thrace by disguising herself and Philomela as participants. This is the most explicit dramatic costuming in the passage, for Procne is consciously act­ ing a part: “she pretends to be one of your own, Bacchus” (Bacche, tuas simulat, 596).177 The costume also marks her complete transition. The narrator first sets the stage (“it was the time when . . . ​night . . . ​in the night . . . ​in the night,” tempus erat quo . . . ​nox . . . ​nocte . . . ​nocte, 587–90), then draws the external au­ dience’s attention to Procne as she makes her entrance (“the queen comes out from her h ­ ouse,” sua est egressa domo regina, 590). Her exit from the ­house (and onto the meta­phorical stage) is reminiscent of the ancient set where doors (one central door for Greek, three for Roman) are used as entrances and of­ ten represent a domicile or other private space.178 It also repeats the common plot of tragedies featuring a heroine whose (often destructive) exit from the ­house sets the play’s plot in motion.179 The narrator then describes Procne’s costume in detail. ritibus instruitur furialiaque accipit arma. uite caput tegitur, lateri ceruina sinistro uellera dependent, umero leuis incubat hasta.

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concita per siluas turba comitante suarum terribilis Procne. (Met. 6.591–94) She outfits herself for the rites of the god and takes up the weapons of the furies. Her head is covered with a grapevine, on her left side hangs the skin of a deer, on her shoulder a light spear lies. Procne pretends to be one of your own, Bacchus, frightful with a troop of ­women accom­ panying her, driven through the forest. Procne’s costume is “tragic” in multiple ways. While her mourning attire re­ flected the theme of night associated with the god of tragedy, ­here Procne is dressed as the god’s nocturnal worshipper, a maenad.180 She is even accompa­ nied by a chorus of sorts—­a com­pany of w ­ omen (turba comitante suarum, 181 594). Her new role includes meta­phorical “weapons of the furies” (furialia . . . ​arma, 591). The narrator tells us she is driven by “the furies of her grief ” (furiisque agitate doloris, 595). As noted above, furies are also convention­ ally associated with the genre of tragedy through their function as deities of vengeance and their starring role in Aeschylus’s Eumenides.182 Procne fully assumes the tragic role of her Thracian husband, Tereus, as she rescues her s­ ister and begins to formulate her revenge. Procne takes on her new Thracian identity by feigning the Bacchic cele­bration of Thracian ­women ­(Sithoniae . . . ​nurus, 588). Striking, too, is that this is the only instance of her being called regina (Met. 6.590). The singular title complements Tereus’s strong characterization as tyrant (tyrannus, 436, 549, 581; rex, 490, 520). This new role as Thracian monarch may be foreshadowed by her description as “the matron of a savage tyrant” (saeui matrona tyranni, 581) as she reads Philomela’s message. Her costume, the traditional costume of a maenad, cites Tereus’s e­ arlier role as sol­ dier and erotic hunter. Her thyrsus is called a hasta (“spear,” 593) and she has “troops” (turba comitante suarum, 594). Her deer skin (ceruina . . . ​uellera, 592–93), while being a common accessory for the bacchant, looks back to the simile com­ paring Tereus to predatory animals (ea­gle, 516–17; wolf, 527–28; predatory bird, 529–30), and forward to her own simile as tigress hunting a nursing fawn—­Itys (636–37). Procne adopts the acquisitive gaze of her husband. At her rescue, just as at her abduction, Philomela becomes the grammatical object, this time of Procne, who grabs her, dresses her, drags her, and leads her: “she grabs her s­ ister and, ­after grabbing her, dresses her and she covers . . . ​[and] dragging her, astonished, she leads her” (germanamque rapit raptaeque . . . ​/ induit et . . . abdit / attonitamque trahens . . . ​ducit, 598–600). The narrator uses the verb rapio twice, in a chiastic anaphora surrounding the caesura to make the vio­lence of the action and its

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resemblance to Tereus’s ­earlier vio­lence clear (cf. raptor, 518; arreptam, 552, to germanamque rapit raptaeque, 598).183 Moreover, Procne costumes Philomela (“she dresses [her s­ ister] in the attire of Bacchus and covers her face with vines of ivy” (insignia Bacchi / induit et uultus hederarum frondibus abdit, 598–99) and places her on a new stage—­inside the Thracian palace (“dragging her, she led her inside the walls of her home,” trahens intra sua moenia ducit, 600), just as Tereus had ­earlier placed Philomela onstage in the hut. The analogy is strongly suggested by the repetition of words (trahit, 521; trahens, 600) and deed (in stabula alta, 521; intra sua moenia, 600). Procne is described as burning and unable to contain her anger (“Procne herself is on fire and does not contain her anger,” ardet et iram/ non capit ipsa suam Procne, 609–10), just as Tereus cannot contain his burning de­ sire (“and his heart does not contain his internal flames,” nec capiunt inclusas pectora flammas, 466). ­After seizing and dragging Philomela into the ­house, we glimpse Philomela’s horror (Philomela . . . ​horruit infelix, 601–2) before Procne denudes her of her costume in a way which is unsettlingly erotic, reinforcing the revival of her husband’s role: nacta locum Procne sacrorum pignora demit oraque deuelat miserae pudibunda sororis amplexumque petit; (Met. 6.603–5) ­ fter finding a place, Procne takes off the symbols of Bacchic rites and A uncovers her pitiful ­sister’s shame-­filled face and embraces her; While Procne has already taken the role of Tereus and repeats the abduction of her ­sister, she costumes Philomela as Procne, installing Philomela in the palace as the queen. When Itys arrives he is recast as his aunt. Nec mora, traxit Ityn, ueluti Gangetica ceruae lactentem fetum per siluas tigris opacas; utque domus altae partem tenuere remotam, tendentemque ma­nus et iam sua fata uidentem et “mater, mater” clamantem et colla petentem ense ferit Procne, (636–41) Without delay, she dragged Itys away, like a tiger of the Gan­ges drags a deer’s suckling fawn through the dark forest; and when they arrived at an interior part of the g­ rand h ­ ouse, Procne pierced him with a sword as he stretches out his hands and then realizes his fate and shouts “­mother, ­mother” and seeks his m ­ other’s neck.

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Itys is dragged (traxit Ityn, 636) by Procne. Itys is described by accusative ad­ jective participles, as we saw with Philomela and her body (Met. 6.639–41).184 Tereus dragged Philomela through ancient woods into a deep and dark cot­ tage. Procne, playing Tereus, is likened to a tiger dragging a fawn through dark woods. She takes him to a secluded part of the deep ­house (“[Tereus] drags [Philomela] into a hut hidden by an ancient forest,” in stabula alta trahit siluis obscura uetustis, 521; “through the dark forest, an interior part of the g­ rand ­house,” per siluas . . . ​opacas; / domus altae partem . . . ​remotam, 637–38). Again, we watch an actor performing. In this case we also watch him watch the scene he is in, for we are told, “then [he] realizes his fate” (iam sua fata uidentem, 639). Again, we hear an actor deliver a line “­Mother, ­mother” (640), just as Philomela calls out to her f­ amily (523–54). Our narrator opens the next scene with a close focus on Tereus, who is set visibly on a high throne (sedens solio Tereus sublimis auito, 650). In this final scene, Tereus is represented as unwittingly “onstage.” Procne has cast Tereus as a sort of Pandion. This is highly ironic ­because, envying Pandion’s physical access to Philomela, he fantasized about playing his role in Athens (482).185 He ­will suffer the loss of his child ­because of his own credulity. Pandion handed over both ­daughters to Tereus, believing him to be a friend when he was truly an e­ nemy. Likewise, Tereus entrusts his son and himself to Procne. The narrator states that “such a ­great night is in his mind” (tantaque nox animi est, 652) before Tereus speaks. This phrase closely repeats the narrator’s sententia before revealing that Tereus’s deceitful speech to Pandion is successful: “how much blind night do mortal hearts possess” (quantum mortalia pectora caecae / noctis habent, 472–73). This is only the second time the narrator attributes direct speech to Tereus. The first is at line 513, where Tereus sincerely expresses his joy (“ ‘I have won!’ he shouts, ‘my prayers are being carried with me,’ ” “uicimus!” exclamat, “mecum mea uota feruntur!”). Like Pandion, Tereus is not consciously performing a role and is expressing, not performing, emotional responses. Pandion cries as he says goodbye to his d­ aughter and son-­in-­law (495, 505, 509). Likewise, the nar­ rator tells us that Tereus sheds tears upon learning that he has eaten his son (flet modo, 665), a stark contrast to the fictive tears Tereus employed in his previous per­for­mances which deceived Pandion.186 Tereus’s epic power is a martial vio­lence, which moves from a manifest nor­ mative, masculine epic vio­lence (opibusque uirisque potentem, 426) that saved Pandion’s kingdom to an erotic and fearful vio­lence that is realized only through deceptive persuasion (facundum faciebat amor, 469) and hidden deep in the forest. The Athenians resort first to persuasion: Procne (“when coaxingly to her husband,” cum blandita uiro, 440), Philomela (“coaxingly holding,” blanda tenens, 476), Pandion (“­gently tears between requests,” lacrimae mites inter man-

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data, 505), and even Itys (“with childish coaxing words,” blanditiis puerilibus, 626). Philomela is the first to learn that persuasion is in­effec­tive. Initially she tries to persuade Tereus with tears (cum lacrimis, 523). A ­ fter suffering his erotic vio­lence (ui, 525), Philomela’s threats to call for just aid (534–48) result only in his anger (ira, 549) and fear (metus, 550) followed by more vio­lence. Procne seems to realize quickly that Tereus may not be swayed and moves immedi­ ately to violent revenge. She tells Philomela that it is time for the sword, not persuasion: “ ‘this must not be accomplished with tears,’ she said, ‘but with a sword’ ” (“non est lacrimis hoc” inquit “agendum, / sed ferro”, 611–12). The revenge of the ­sisters is literally satisfying. They are fi­nally re­united in their plea­sure (gaudia, 653, 660). Retaliatory vio­lence achieves the goal of re­ union that Tereus had denied them in prefering his own gaudia (514). Like Tereus, the s­ isters dissimulate their violent intent, masking it ­under the guise of ritual—­religion (“she pretends to be one of your own, Bacchus,” Bacche, tuas simulat, 596), and f­amily tradition (“inventing a ritual in the custom of her country,” patrii moris sacrum mentita, 648).187 It is the confession of their revenge which brings them plea­sure (“Procne could not pretend that she was not feeling a cruel joy,” dissimulare nequit crudelia gaudia Procne, 653; “to testify to her joy,” testari gaudia, 660).188 The reciprocity of suffering, Tereus’s for Philomela’s, suggests that the ­sister’s plea­sure also resembles Tereus’s sexual plea­sure.189 The erotics of tragic revenge had already been expressed on the Attic stage. We may recall Clytemnestra’s orgasmic murder of Agamemnon. She describes his blood giving her plea­sure (χαίρουσαν, 1391) as it covers her, likening it to a rain which feeds the fertile budding crops (“the sown corn [re­ joices] in the w ­ ater granted by Zeus in the bursting of the bud,” διοσδότῳ / γάνει σπορητὸς κάλυκος ἐν λοχεύμασιν, 1391–92).190 The sexualization of the w ­ omen’s tragic revenge, which tragic ira strives ­toward, brings us full cir­ cle to tragic libido. In the end, ira, not amor, offers the plea­sure that tragic ­women in love seek. Procne’s tale transitions into the brief tale of Boreas (677–721), the North Wind, whose sons, Calais and Zetes, w ­ ill quickly mature and join the crew of the Argo, providing a bridge to book 7 where Medea’s story begins.191 The nar­ rator, momentarily, regains control and resituates us firmly in the masculine epic genre with the po­liti­cal succession of Erectheus, who takes (capit, 677), rather than snatches (rapit), his Athenian scepter. He has a reputation for justice (iustitia). The Thracian Boreas seeks the hand of the Athenian princess, Ori­ thyia. He is compared and defined in opposition to Tereus and other Thracians (“Tereus and the Thracians w ­ ere causing trou­ble for Boreas,” Boreae Tereus Thracesque nocebant, 682). The suggestion is that, ­because he is not a Tereus, he is worthy of being the affine of the Athenian king, Erectheus. The external

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reader may be sympathetic, but the internal audience, Erectheus, is not. Boreas first follows Athenian custom, preferring persuasion to vio­lence, but this strat­ egy fails, for vio­lence is natu­ral to the god (“while he asks and prefers to employ prayers rather than force. But since he is getting no traction with coaxing words, frightening b­ ecause of rage, which is customary for him . . . ,” dum rogat et precibus mauult quam uiribus uti. / ast ubi blanditiis agitur nihil, horridus ira, / quae solita est illi . . . ​, 684–86). Boreas connects the epic opes of Tereus, the epic ally (“power­ful ­because of his wealth and soldiers,” opibusque uirisque potentem, 426), with the erotic vis of Tereus the rapist (ui superat, 525). With ­these lexical simi­ larities, Ovid encourages his audience to compare the two Thracians. “et merito!” dixit “quid enim mea tela reliqui, saeuitiam et uires iramque animosque minaces, admouique preces, quarum me dedecet usus? apta mihi uis est: ui tristia nubila pello, ui freta concutio nodosaque robora uerto induroque niues et terras grandine pulso. idem ego cum fratres caelo sum nactus aperto (nam mihi campus is est), tanto molimine luctor, ut medius nostris concursibus insonet aether exsiliantque cauis elisi nubibus ignes; idem ego, cum subii conuexa foramina terrae supposuique ferox imis mea terga cauernis, sollicito manes totumque tremoribus orbem. hac ope debueram thalamos petiisse, socerque non orandus erat mihi sed faciendus Erectheus.” (Met. 6.687–701) “And I deserve it!” he said. “For why have I abandoned my weapons, cru­ elty and vio­lence and rage and threatening attitudes, and [why] have I applied prayers, whose application does not suit me? Vio­lence suits me; with vio­lence I compel the dark clouds, with vio­lence I shake the sea and I overturn the knotty oaks and I harden the snows and I strike lands with hail. Likewise, when I meet my ­brothers in the open sky (for this is my battlefield), I strug­gle with such g­ reat effort that the m ­ iddle of the heaven resounds with our clashes and fire is forced out and leaps forth from the hollow clouds; likewise, when I have entered the vaulted caves of the earth and fiercely I have set my body beneath the lowest caverns, I frighten the ghosts and the ­whole world with my shaking. With this power I should have sought marriage, and I should not have begged Erectheus to be my father-­in-­law but made him.”

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His power is constructed as divine (he customarily uses it to control the natu­ral world) and suited to him (690), and its application is undisguised. The word vis is repeated five times in eight lines (684–91). He appropriately redefines Erec­ theus as an ­enemy and takes his spoils (700–701, 706–7), the maiden Orithyia, who is, unlike Philomela, one of the maidens who populate the first few books of the poem taken by an amorous god from a less power­ful ­father and made the ­mother of two heroes.192 Boreas does not write himself. He is fully written. Even his words are signaled as a script (“having spoken t­ hese ­things or t­ hings not weaker than ­these, Boreas . . . ,” haec Boreas aut his non inferiora locutus . . . ​, 702).

Conclusion The previous chapter examined how Ovid’s repre­sen­ta­tions of the tragic ­women in love, Phaedra and Byblis, are characterized by attempts to renovate or expand the role for which they are famous in the tragic tradition—­examples of perverse and destructive female desire. Their gender and overdetermined generic tradition, however, prevents a transposition. Ovid’s verse repeatedly signals their tragic nature, thereby duplicating their abject status—­active fe­ male desirers and tragic characters in the wrong genre. This chapter explores Ovid’s construction of female tragic ira. Like his construction of female tragic libido, Hypsipyle’s and Procne’s passion is constructed si­mul­ta­neously and in­ eluctably through gender, genre, and politics. In terms of gender, the ira threat­ ened by Hypsipyle and fully experienced by Procne is marked as excessive and destructive, as it was in the cata­logue in Ars Amatoria. Like female libido, this passion cannot be contained by w ­ omen, so must be excluded due to the threat it poses to society. Hypsipyle and Procne, however, do not attempt a transposition. Ovid’s repre­sen­ta­tion of tragic ­women enraged reverses this signifying practice—it is reductive, not expansive. Instead, the heroines dem­ onstrate their knowledge of the literary canon and the inescapable influence of the tragic tradition in order to accomplish their goals. In her poetic epistle, Hypsipyle uses intimidation, not seduction, as Phae­ dra did, to persuade her addressee. She threatens a tragic end to Jason’s story, constructing the tragic instantiation of his myth as an abject possibility, an un­ livable life in which gender roles are reversed—­Medea is the hero and pun­ isher, and families are dissolved. She offers as an alternative his epic tradition which rescues his masculinity, his ­family, and his heroic legacy. In Ovid’s epic poem, Procne recognizes the tragic clues provided by the narrator and tricks the illiterate Tereus into performing his tragic role, despite an initial epic in­ troduction to his character. In the pro­cess, Ovid portrays the strug­gles of an

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author to create a new authoritative text in the face of a long poetic tradition. This pro­cess resembles that of Byblis in book 9 of the poem. Procne’s tale, by contrast, does not offer an alternative to the punishment of abjection as Byb­ lis’s and Hypsipyle’s do. Rather, her tale demonstrates that the successful poet and playwright is the one who innovates her tragic tradition but does not try to write against it. Ovid, moreover, demonstrates the gravity, so to speak, of the tragic code, which threatens the integrity of their new generic contexts—­epistolary elegy and epic. As his poet-­praeceptor warns in book 2 of the Ars Amatoria, following the examples of Medea and Procne (2.381–84): “This breaks up loves that are well composed, this breaks up loves that are strong; cautious husbands must fear t­ hose crimes” (hoc bene compositos, hoc firmos soluit amores; / crimina sunt cautis ista timenda uiris, 385–86). “Well-­composed loves,” as I argued in chap­ ter 1, are both strong romantic bonds and Ovid’s ­earlier, well-­written collec­ tion of elegies, the Amores. The Ovidian Hypsipyle offers Jason a choice between the masculine genres of epic and elegy and the emasculating genre of tragedy. If she chooses to play Medea, he ­will, necessarily, be read as her tragic counterpart, the suffering victim. Likewise, Procne, knowing that Tereus is generically illiterate, draws him into his own tragedy. In both cases, tragedy overshadows and eventually overtakes the message. Hypsipyle ends her letter with a Medean curse on Medea and Jason that they suffer the events performed in Euripides’s play. The tale of the Athenian ­sisters briefly marks a traditionally tragic end with the suffering of male characters. While Tereus, himself an abject masculine subject, is eternally trapped within his desire for revenge motivated by sorrow (“he was swift due to his own grief and desire for revenge,” ille dolore suo poenaeque cupidine uelox, 671), Pandion’s sorrow, which kills him (675–76), resembles that of male heroes brought low at the end of Attic tragedies, who face the revelation of events and, along with the audience, learn a lesson. Consider, for example, the Euripidean Jason with the bodies of his sons in his arms, or the Sophoclean Creon left alone ­after the suicides of his niece, his son, and his wife. Productive or reductive, the literary strategies of an Ovidian Phaedra or Medea have the same results. Ovid’s verse demonstrates that their abject tragic passion is their nature. The tragic ­woman in love appears in the elegiac genre as an abject amator. Likewise, the tragic ­woman enraged is constructed in op­ position to the epic hero. On the tragic stage, the focus shifts from war to its aftermath. Grief, which motivates female revenge, is directly or indirectly caused by epic action. In Ovid’s verse, we see po­liti­cal and martial language in both Hypsipyle’s ventriloquized self-­construction and Procne’s tale. Hypsi­ pyle makes much of her power as ruler over subjects who have recently acted

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125

as soldiers. She describes Medea as a hostile foreign power, an e­ nemy and poor choice as ally. Procne, likewise, is characterized as a soldier and assumes the weapons which Tereus abandoned in his own poetic proj­ect inspired by libido. In Procne’s hands, however, the weapons are Bacchic. She cannot be trusted with exacting justice, for hers is an abject ira, unable to be contained or man­ aged and therefore destructive to all, Tereus and Pandion alike. This is Hypsi­ pyle’s threat, that she ­will become a tragic warrior like Procne. Her new generic thesis as Medea is guaranteed by generations of readers who recognize this subjectivity. It draws Jason into the same tragic code. If she is read as aveng­ ing Medea, he is necessarily read as Jason bereft.

​Conclusion Ovid’s Abject Exile

seruare potui, perdere an possim rogas? I was able to save: Are you asking ­whether I can destroy? (Ovid, Medea, quoted by Quintilian 8.5.6)

The roles of Ovid’s Phaedra-­and Medea-­like fig­ ures in a larger Roman “translation proj­ect” (Feeney 2016) date back at least to Livius Andronicus in the third c­ entury BCE, and they contributed significantly to Greek drama and their Roman adaptations, offering Roman audiences new choices for self-­expression or the opportunity to bolster their Roman identity in opposition to the Greek characters onstage. Mirroring the potential Roman re­ sponse to Greek drama—­exploring a new identity or repudiating the other—­the previous chapters describe how Ovid’s adaptations of Hippolytus and Medea ex­ plore and test the limits of gender and genre or reaffirm ste­reo­types and generic expectations. Sometimes Ovid represents the Greek tragic heroines, Phaedra, Medea, and their doppelgängers, defying gender expectations by reimagining their tragedies in new, Roman genres. At other times, his adaptations pre­sent heroines who do not innovate, but closely translate their Greek code model. In both cases, the epic and elegiac “roles” in Ovid’s verse rely on his Roman reader/ auditor’s familiarity with generic codes and conventions and the literary tradi­ tion of Phaedra and Medea. In the extended treatments of their myth, internal audiences model vari­ous levels of literacy as they watch and respond to the po­ etic per­for­mance of the heroines.1 In ­doing so, Ovid signals his tragic inspiration by incorporating codes, con­ ventions, and allusions associated with this genre.2 He explic­itly signals his code model with pointed allusions. In Heroides 4, Phaedra herself alludes to a 12 6

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letter, which may have appeared in both Euripidean plays, when she enjoins Hippolytus, “Read to the end, what­ever is ­there: What harm ­will come from reading a letter?” (Perlege, quodcumque est: quid epistola lecta nocebit?, Her. 4). Ovid also signals his code model by incorporating ele­ments associated with trag­ edy and drama such as references to the god of tragedy, Dionysus, direct speech, and plot conventions like the messenger speech. He also incorporates plot ele­ments from Euripides’s Hippolytus and Medea and their ­later adapta­ tions. Phaedra’s nurse, for example, appears in Byblis’s tale (Met. 9), and Hyp­ sipyle threatens to reprise Medea’s murder of Jason’s new bride (Her. 6). Building on the impor­tant work of Curley (2013), who demonstrated that tragic heroines and ­those who reperform their roles act as codes themselves, I have argued that, when employed by Ovid, the codes of the tragic heroines, Phaedra and Medea, mark their Ovidian counter­parts as both out of place in the code of their new generic context, elegy or epic, and unrecognizable as ­women who belong to t­hese new codes. I have also applied the theories of Kristeva and Butler (abjection, performativity, and semiosis) to better under­ stand the effect of Ovid’s adaptations of Phaedra-­and Medea-­like figures and the construction of their gender. Kristeva and Butler have theorized the ab­ ject subject as one who defines by opposition what is normative.3 Furthermore, Butler has described gender as a per­for­mance or citation of cultural norms. She has termed per­for­mances that fail to properly cite normative gender roles “­doing gender wrong.”4 Abject subjects act as cautionary tales in order to en­ sure proper per­for­mance of gender roles. Phaedra-­and Medea-­like figures are repeatedly represented by Ovid as doubly abject, constructed in such a way that genre and gender are inextricably linked and amplify one another. As trag­ ically coded figures, they do not belong in elegiac and epic poetry. Their dis­ placement serves to highlight the traditional generic conventions of their new generic context. As w ­ omen ­doing their gender wrong, they are culturally out of place. Their poor per­for­mance defines in opposition proper gender roles: Phaedra dramatizes what a good wife and stepmother is not; Byblis inherits all of the negative qualities her twin ­brother lacks. In what Segal (1986, 52) has termed the megatext of myth,5 Phaedra-­and Medea-­like figures behave like words in a language. Their stories are crystallized into a ste­reo­type: incestuous desire, jealous rage, dangerous witch, vengeful ­woman. In chapter 1 we considered their connotations in two very traditional, catalogue-­style lists the poet-­praeceptor offers of mythological ­women. T ­ hese lists construct all of the examples, including Phaedra and Medea, as paradigms, substitutable symbols representing the irrational, dangerous (to men and their families) passion of ­women as part of the poet-­praeceptor’s larger lessons about sexual relationships between men and w ­ omen. Byblis, for example, is summed

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up as she “who burned with a forbidden love for her ­brother and bravely avenged her unspeakable crime with a noose” (uetito quae fratris amore / arsit et est laqueo fortiter ulta nefas, 1.283–84). Phaedra is referred to indirectly in the poet-­praeceptor’s direct address to Hippolytus’s h ­ orses: “you, savage h ­ orses, tore apart Hippoly­ tus” (Hippolytum rabidi diripuistis equi, 1.338). Ovid plays with this “language” when he represents Phaedra-­and Medea-­ like figures as authors manipulating this very symbolic system. Instead of the teacher as narrator we have the character herself narrating the story or an om­ niscient narrator who has access to her experience. In this way, Ovid gives a voice to the abject figures who are other­wise excluded and silenced. Phaedra, Hyspipyle, Procne, and Byblis are attuned to social per­for­mance as a means of constructing themselves as a subject in relation to other members of a ­family and larger community. Their self-­construction through per­for­mance is complicated by the memory of the tragic per­for­mance of Phaedra and Me­ dea on the Attic stage. This memory is activated by the incorporation of tragic codes and conventions in Ovid’s elegiac and epic depictions of the heroines and their doppelgängers. This guides his audience to apply Phaedra’s and Me­ dea’s tragic treatments to their interpretation of Ovid’s verse regardless of the generic code the heroine may be speaking. The alien nature of the tragic code in another genre reflects and emphasizes the cultural inappropriateness which renders the heroines and their passions abject. In the case of Phaedra (Her. 4) and Byblis (Met. 9), their new per­for­mance is an attempt to redefine their exemplary meaning in the mythic megatext. Kristeva (Kristeva 1984, 59) has termed this a transposition—­altering the mean­ ing of a symbol by altering the system in which it is used.6 Both heroines proposed a new poetic thesis for themselves as speaking subjects (lovers, not stepmothers or s­ isters). Although the represented writing subjects, Phaedra and Byblis, demonstrate that they know that the social per­for­mance of their gendered roles and the literary per­for­mance of their tragic roles have the power to deconstruct and reconstruct themselves as signifying symbols, Ovid further demonstrates that, in their case, gender and genre create a difference in poetic authority. In the case of Hypsipyle (Her. 6) and Procne (Met. 6), Ovid represents female subjects who have learned that the abject heroine is confined to the nature of her gender and genre. Medea is called only “the ­mother blood­ ied by the murder of her sons” in the poet-­praeceptor’s list (nece natorum sanguinolenta parens, Ars 1.336). This is the very paradigm Hypsipyle warns against and Procne performs. While the Phaedra-­like figures considered in chapter 2 seek a more expansive role for themselves, the Medea-­like figures in chapter 3 rely on the ability (or inability) of their internal audience to recognize tradi­ tional tragic meaning in the megatext. This move is reductive, embracing in­

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stead of transforming the exemplarity of abject desiring w ­ omen. In the end, both paradigms demonstrate that w ­ omen, symbolized by the tragic figures of Phaedra and Medea, cannot manipulate the symbolic economy. The expanded treatments of Phaedra-­and Medea-­like figures in chapters 2 and 3 illustrate how Ovid briefly aligns himself with the heroines who are rep­ resented, to vari­ous degrees, as poets like himself.7 However, their abject sta­ tus is constructed in order to define by contrast the borders of what is deemed normal and ensure the authority of the masculine subject who emerges as privileged and at the center of ­these borders. With the failure and subsequent silencing of Phaedra-­and Medea-­like poets, Ovid is revealed as always in con­ trol.8 He can bring to life disruptive, tragic heroines in his elegy and epic and also master them by reestablishing gender and generic norms, thereby per­ forming his poetic authority.

Playing with Gender Ovid’s poetic play with the limits of acceptable and abject desires resembles the way poets at the end of the first ­century BCE played with gender. Schol­ arship on artistic repre­sen­ta­tions of men in effeminizing sexual roles, includ­ ing and especially in Roman erotic elegy, has suggested that the Roman male took plea­sure in “playing the other” (to borrow a phrase from Zeitlin by way of Skinner 1993, 120). Maintaining a position of masculinity in ancient Rome required constant vigilance in e­ very area of life—­public and private. Identify­ ing with the effeminized, passive position may have served as an escape. As Skinner posits in the case of Catullan poetry, such a fantastical identification with a marginal figure “must have afforded a fleeting relaxation of stringent psychic controls, a luxurious but relatively harmless foray into sentimental self-­ indulgence” (Skinner 1993, 120). In order for Roman men to enjoy the license to oscillate between masculine and feminine subject positions f­ ree from a de­ termining biological sex and without fear of remaining permanently effemi­ nized, the gendered position of a ­woman (or any other marginal figure, e.g., a slave, a foreigner) had to be constructed as natu­ral, ahistorical, and tied to their sexed bodies (i.e., precisely fixed). If marginal figures are by nature passive and subordinate to the Roman male, then he may put on what­ever costume he pleases, knowing he can re­ sume his (never ceded) place of power in the hierarchy. Ovid’s construction of Phaedra-­and Medea-­like figures as abject participates in this pro­cess, allow­ ing him as poet to align briefly with the heroines while never ceding his place as the true poetic authority.9 Abject female desire and the marginal position

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of powerlessness it embodies alleviated social, cultural, and po­liti­cal anx­i­eties in Roman men of the Augustan age, whose ability to perform their masculin­ ity had been seriously curtailed by the new emperor’s assumption of traditional social and po­liti­cal roles once shared among the aristocracy. “Lit­er­a­ture ­under the new regime was less a means of self-­assertion than a complex negotiation of new Imaginary and Symbolic categories of what Romanitas and nobilitas meant in a world of public subordination to a single central author” (Miller 2004, 75). Moreover, all Roman men occupied an effeminized position in rela­ tion to the emperor. Such a tenuous position made it all the more impor­tant to maintain a superiority over other groups. Preserving an already unstable status provided a motivation for Ovid and his contemporaries to sustain the inferior position of the other through repeated symbolic (i.e., discursive, lit­ erary, and artistic repre­sen­ta­tions) repudiation.

The Other as Abject Constructing the other as abject, however, results in an interdependent rela­ tionship. In one of two extant lines from Ovid’s tragedy, Medea (quoted at the start of this chapter), Medea asks perhaps Jason or Creon, “I was able to save: Are you asking w ­ hether I can destroy?” Such a comment articulates the power of the abject female subject, for the fiction of his privilege is founded on her as a fictional monster. Reminders of this relationship appear throughout Ovid’s literary repre­sen­ta­tions. Hippolytus is literally torn to pieces ­because of female desire.10 Reborn as Virbius, Hippolytus introduces his story at Metamorphoses 15.479–621: “If the story has reached your ears that a certain Hippolytus fell to his death b­ ecause of the gullibility of his ­father, the deceit of his wicked step­ mother” (“Fando aliquem Hippolytum uestras si contigit aures / credulitate patris, sceleratae fraude nouercae / occubuisse neci”, 497–99). He describes Phaedra’s at­ tempts at seduction (500–502). The fraus of Phaedra, Virbius maintains, ulti­ mately resulted in his dismemberment which made him unrecognizable as the young man Hippolytus: “and none of my body parts which you are able to recognize” (“nullasque in corpora partes / noscere quas posses”, 528–29). At Rome, Ovid freely ventriloquized Phaedra-­and Medea-­like heroines. In 8 CE, Ovid was relegated to Tomis on the Black Sea. The author himself is the only near con­temporary source we have for his punishment, which, he tells us, was for “a poem and a m ­ istake” (carmen et error, Tr. 2.207).11 At Tomis (and en route ­toward his new home), Ovid’s position in opposition to the abject heroines of his ­earlier verse was less assured. Tomis shared the same sea as Medea’s Colchis. His verse, like that of his ventriloquized heroine Byblis, lo­

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cates him at the very fringe of the civilized world: “the most distant land, the most distant world holds me” (ultima me tellus, ultimus orbis habet, Pont. 2.7.66). From exile, Ovid’s poetic strategies resume the reductive constructions of the Ars and highlight the fundamental symbolic meaning of ­these heroines in Ov­ id’s poetry and the importance of abject figures to maintaining the privileged position of the male author.12 Ovid’s epic recounts that, a­ fter chasing Caunus out of Miletus into the lands inhabited by monsters like the Chimaera (635–49), shouting through the lands like a celebrant of Dionysus (641–42), Byblis collapses and is fi­nally ­silent: “Byblis lies s­ ilent, and she grips the green grass with her fingernails and wets the grass with a stream of tears” (muta iacet, uiridesque suis tenet unguibus herbas / Byblis, et umectat lacrimarum gramina riuo, Met. 9.655–56).13 ­Whether Ovid’s voice was rendered mute as Byblis’s is a mystery. If his contemporaries in Rome ­were aware of or discussed his exilic poetry, ­these receptions no lon­ ger survive.14 In fact, the lack of con­temporary evidence of Ovid’s relegation beyond his own poems and the hyperbolic nature of his descriptions of Tomis have led some scholars to theorize that his “exile” was a poetic fiction.15 Ovid seeks to distance himself from both heroines by coding Tomis itself as abject both in its extreme location and as a stage for tragedy. Throughout both the Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto, Tomis the place is frequently constructed in opposition to Rome.16 Where Rome is warm, fertile, and filled with friends and ­family, Tomis is cold, barren, and devoid of any individually characterized figures who offer consolation, companionship, or aid.17 Trista 3.8, for instance, ends with his frequent plea for a change of location: “But, since once he em­ ployed hate in a civilized way, let our exile be lighter by changing the loca­ tion” (at, quoniam semel est odio civiliter usus, / mutato levior sit fuga nostra loco, 41–42). The comparative aspect of this request resembles past and ­future pleas, first made to Augustus himself: “if you grant me, the petitioner, a milder and closer exile, a ­g reat part of my punishment w ­ ill be lightened” (mitius exilium si das propiusque roganti, / pars erit ex poena magna levata mea, Tr. 2.185–86). We may see the same plea again and again throughout the remaining exile poetry.18 The comparative aspect also resembles that of female desire which we have seen in his ­earlier work.19 Female desire holds an abject status in its nature as more than the normative desire which it defines.20 Ovid’s location is “further than” the borders of the civilized Roman world, marking the location beyond which all is barbara (barbara terra, Tr. 3.1.18; 3.3.46; 4.4.86; barbaria, Tr. 3.10.4; 5.1.46). Ovid reminds his addressees that his new abject location is geo­g raph­ i­cally connected to the Euripidean heroines, Medea (Tristia 3.9) and Iphigenia (Tristia 4.4 and ex Ponto 3.2).21 Tomis’s connection to Medea is strengthened linguistically through the epithet barbara, used to describe Medea in Ovid’s

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verse (Ars am. 2.382; Her. 6.19, 107; 12.70, 105; Tr. 2.526),22 and by the descrip­ tion of Tomis and Medea’s Colchis as an icy region (axis gelidus: Her. 6.106; Tr. 2.190, 5.2.64; Pont. 2.10.48, 4.14.62, 4.15.36). As Tristia 3.9 is the last extended treatment of the Medea myth in Ovid’s work, this poem makes a natu­ral conclusion to our study of the heroines, Pha­ edra and Medea. This poem was written in Tomis perhaps a year or two ­after his arrival. Ovid tells us the etymology of the name Tomis, which, he says, takes its name “from the slaughter of Absyrtus” (ab Absyrti caede, 6). He de­ rives Tomis from the Greek verb τέμνω, “to cut”: “Thereafter this place was called Tomis, since the s­ ister is said to have cut apart her own b­ rother’s limbs ­there” (inde Tomis dictus locus hic, quia fertur in illo / membra soror fratris consecuisse sui, 33–34).23 The poem preceding 3.9 begins with a wish for mytho­ logical, magical flying instruments which include Medea’s own serpent-­drawn chariot (Tr. 3.8.1–6). Ovid’s reference cites the end of Euripides’s play. The Euripidean Medea, therefore, is fresh in our minds as we move into Tristia 3.9, although the tale he tells in this poem brings us back to her early ­career told by Apollonius and Varro. Fittingly, Ovid’s strange etiology combines Medea’s Euripidean slaughter with her Hellenistic, Phaedra-­like love for Jason. Following the etiology, Ovid recounts Medea’s escape from Colchis (Tr. 3.9.5–10). Ovid tells us that she has already dared but, also, she ­will dare many crimes (ausa atque ausura multa nefanda ma­nu, 16). The Argo has landed on the banks of Tomis and a lookout has spotted Aeetes on the ­water. Medea reacts in desperation. Her choice to kill and dismember her b­ rother is represented as sudden—­Ovid uses words meaning “by chance” (casu, 22), “right away” (protinus, 25)—­but it is this lack of rationality which makes Ovid’s last extended treatment of the Medea myth so frightening. Her ­brother’s presence, like her sons’ in Euripides, inspires her plan, but this Medea does not strug­gle with her decision. Medea claims in her letter (Her. 12) that she can barely write about her ­brother’s murder, she is so ashamed, suggesting she was conflicted from the beginning. ­Here Medea is thrilled with the idea: dum quid agat quaerit, dum versat in omnia vultus, ad fratrem casu lumina flexa tulit. cuius ut oblata est praesentia, “vicimus” inquit: “hic mihi morte sua causa salutis erit.” (21–24) While she was searching for a plan, while she was turning her head in ­every direction, by chance she directed her eyes t­ oward her ­brother. When his presence offered itself, she said: “We have won. He w ­ ill be the source of my salvation with his death.”

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As evidenced in chapter 3, Hypsipyle and Procne do not try to innovate the Medea paradigm. Hypsipyle uses it as a threat to Jason if he fails to perform his epic role. Procne uses it as a model for her revenge, which the culturally illiterate Tereus does not recognize. So too, Medea’s creative pro­cess in Tristia 3.9 is described as taking advantage of what (or who) is at hand. Medea seems to be inspired by the version of her own myth which Apollonius does not employ,24 but which is told by the mythographer Pherecydes.25 In this ver­ sion, Medea dismembers her ­brother and scatters his remains in the w ­ ater in order to slow her ­father’s pursuit of the Argo. She transfers this version to her current location and uses it to save her own life. The last ten lines of the poem give a gruesome description of the murder (25–34). She scatters his limbs on the ground of Tomis, not in the ocean. She then places his hands and head on a jutting rock to be sure Aeetes recognizes him. Aeetes is slowed by a grief which is indeed new (novus, 31)—­new not only to the myth but also to the poet, for Ovid’s new grief has found him, like Aeetes, on the shores of Tomis, looking at the scattered remains of his poetic corpus.26 In 3.9, Phaedra surfaces as well, through an allusion to the Euripidean play Hippolytus and Ovid’s ­earlier descriptions of Hippolytus’s dismemberment, in which his body was scattered across the landscape (Eur. HII. 1236–39; Ov. Met. 15.524–29, Fast. 6.742–44; Tr. 3.9.27–32).27 This secondary tragic allusion un­ derscores the connection of female tragic desire and rage in Ovid, for Phae­ dra’s desire led to the death of a young man. The dual allusion and Ovid’s sustained self-­construction in opposition to the space stained by Phaedra’s re­ venge and Medea’s fratricide draw an implicit association between him and the victims of this type of passion. In this formula, Ovid resembles Hippoly­ tus. The blame for such irrational vio­lence, moreover, is shifted con­ve­niently from the true source of his punishment, Augustus, to the tragic ­woman. The pro­cess of geographic abjection, which incorporates the gender and ge­ neric abjections from his pre-­exilic work, again defines Ovid as what Tomis and the tragic heroines are not. The construction aligns Ovid as a masculine epic hero who is guaranteed a homecoming. He associates himself with the quest through comparison, simile, and allusion to the epic heroes of t­ hese myths.28 The myth of Jason and the Argonauts, for example, is implicitly evoked in the penultimate poem of Tristia 1, where the masthead of Ovid’s boat, featuring Minerva, is ad­ dressed as a helping deity as Ovid sets out on his sea voyage to Jason’s initial heroic destination, the sea of Aeolian Helle (1.10.15), from his ultimate destina­ tion, Corinth (1.10.9).29 At Pont. 1.4 Ovid compares his suffering to Jason’s (23– 46) and envisions an Odyssean reunion with his wife (49–54). If Tomis is the realm of monsters and murderers whom epic heroes must overcome or tame, Rome is the land to which they inevitably return ­after achieving their goals.

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Ovid’s Abject Subjects The repetition of Phaedra-­and Medea-­like characters in vari­ous forms through­ out his corpus may be a symptom of anxiety over ­women’s sexuality and the hierarchies of power articulated by repre­sen­ta­tions of sexual subjects, but it also testifies to a fascination with ­these abject figures. As noted above, “play­ ing the other” offered elite Roman men relief from their own rigid gender per­ for­mance. Skinner (1993, 120) further argues that “the craving to undergo such a disorienting emotional experience, if only temporarily and artificially, was . . . ​a basic component in the construction of ancient male sexuality.” The reading subject, according to Elsner, may also share madness with the abject female desiring subject, at least while she is in the pro­cess of reading. He ar­ gues that the reader is complicit in her own deception that ars is natura, and this desire for self-­deception is akin to madness.30 Moreover, we have seen that ­these abject sexual subjects also articulate the relationship of a poet with his text and his audience.31 Their sexual circulation, like that of the text, intro­ duces promiscuous, excessive, and sometimes dangerous interpretations of an author’s verses.32 Repudiated, she carries with her t­ hose aspects of authorship and the text which threaten the fiction of poetic authority, intentionality, tex­ tual control, and immortal fame. But, as Ovid’s Phaedras and Medeas empha­ size through their repeated repre­sen­ta­tions and as Ovid’s own relegation proves, an author has ­little control over her meaning once her message is ut­ tered.33 Ovid’s poetry and his abject subjects have the power to introduce new meanings for the paradigms of female sexuality, regardless of his (or Augus­ tus’s) intention. His poetry does not belong to him. For that m ­ atter, it no lon­ ger belongs to his first Roman readers. As Ovid himself predicts at the close of the Metamorphoses, “he,” wearing the many guises of his narrators, from the poet-­praeceptor to the lovesick Phaedra, lives “on the lips of the ­people” (ore populi, Met. 15.873).

N ote s

Introduction

1. See chapter 1, n. 2 for the conjectured dates of Ovid’s poetry. Suetonius’s Lives of the Caesars was published between 119 and 122 CE. See Power 2021, 17. For Suet. Aug. 99.1 quoted above, the second hand in MS P and Philippus Beroaldus has cor­ rected minimum to mimum, which makes better sense in the context. Regardless of ­whether we accept mimum or minimum, the meta­phor of dramatic playacting is made clear by both πέπαισται and κρότον. See Myerowitz 1985, 187; Beacham 1999, 151; Boyle 2006, 160; and Power 2021, 146–50 for discussions of this passage. 2. Boyle 2006, 7. See further, e.g., Dupont 1985; Bettini 1991; Bartsch 1994; Flower 1995, 1996, 2004; Beacham 1999, 35–44 and passim; Boyle 2006, 3–7; and Gildenhard and Revermann 2010, 18–19 and n. 78 on institutional and social per­for­mance, includ­ ing drama, in ancient Rome. See Wiseman 1998, 75–120 for the promotion of the gentes with spectacles, including the Roman dramatic genre of the fa­bula praetexta. 3. See Beard 2007 for a discussion of the Roman triumph. 4. See Flower 1996, 91–127, on imagines in Roman funerals; and 12–15 on the emo­ tion of shame and the function of the imagines as an audience judging younger mem­ bers of a ­family. 5. For an overview of Roman tragedy and its history, see, e.g., Beare 1965; Tarrant 1978; Currie 1981; Beacham 1991, 117–26; Fantham 2005; Paratore 2005; Schiesaro 2005; Boyle 2006, esp. 3–23; Gildenhard 2010; Manuwald 2010, 1–41; and Feeney 2016. For tragedy in the late republic and imperial period, see, e.g., Slater 1996 and Beacham 1999. Gildenhard (2010) and Feeney (2016) offer recent theories on the Roman moti­ vation and interest in Greek drama. For material evidence of the Roman theater, see, e.g., Savarese 2007 and Borriello et al. 2010. 6. See Currie 1981, 2704 and passim; Fantham 2005, 116–17 and passim; Schiesaro 2005, 269–71 and passim; and Feeney 2016, 1–16 and passim for the influence of Attic tragedy on Roman drama. 7. Cicero (Brut. 72) calls it a fa­bula. See Boyle 2006, 28, 246 n. 7, and 8 for evidence supporting fa­bula to mean “tragedy,” and further ancient sources. See Boyle 2006, 27–36, and Feeney 2016, 45–64, for a biography of Livius Andronicus and summary of his work. 8. Feeney 2016, 17–44, 131–32, and passim. 9. Feeney 2016, 140–41, citing McElduff 2013, 78. 10. See, in par­tic­u­lar, Feeney 2016, 62–64 and 116–36. He further applies Tauss­ ig’s idea of “mimesis and alterity”: “The competing cultures, then, oscillate between concentrating on otherness, by focusing on what is dif­fer­ent about their rivals, and 135

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concentrating on similarity, by the imitative pro­cess that best enables them to define and master what makes up that otherness,” 133. 11. See further Feeney 2016, 80–81, citing Wardy 2000, 87, 140–51, 181–85; and Fee­ ney 2016, 179–98 and passim. In a similar vein, Gildenhard (2010, 179) has argued that ­these shifts “introduce inevitable disjunctions between discourse and practice (espe­ cially if the texts have their origins in a foreign culture) and thereby expand the scope of what becomes conceivable in a given society.” 12. See Butler 1993, 12–16, for a clear but concise summary of her theory of the “assumption” of sexual identity and her debt to Lacan. See also Butler 2008, 183–93, for an ­earlier formulation of gender identification and performativity. 13. Butler 1993, 12–16, 93–119, and 244–46 n. 7–8; 2008, 185. Butler borrows the idea of the “citation” from Derrida in order to expand Lacan’s idea of the “assump­ tion” of sex. She argues that an individual’s assumption of “sex” must be understood as constrained by ideology already at work in the historical and cultural context into which an individual is born. Derridean citationality introduces the idea of the iterabil­ ity and performativity of an individual’s assumption of a “sex” which is “always de­ rivative” (1993, 13), i.e., a choice of sexual identity already authorized and acknowledged as a legitimate sexual identity. 14. “It is thus not lack of cleanliness or health that ­causes abjection but what disturbs identity, system, order. What does not re­spect borders, positions, rules,” Kristeva 1982, 4. See further Kristeva 1982, 1–31 and passim, for her formulation of “abject.” 15. See also Butler 1993, 3–16 and 93–119, for further explanation of her under­ standing of “abject.” 16. See Curley 2013, 14–17 and 179–85, for a full explanation of code-­modeling and his application of Conte’s concept. The “codes” of Phaedra and Medea encompass not only their characteristic dilemmas but also pointed allusions to their Euripidean instan­ tiations and the entirety of their mythological “lifetimes,” or as Curley (2013, 180) terms it, the “synchrony” of their myths. Curley (2013, 177–85) follows, among o ­ thers, Larmour 1990 and Newlands 1997 in noting how Ovid cites a heroine’s code through intratextual and Alexandrian footnotes, signaling that a reader should recognize, for example, Hypsipyle’s threat to play Medea in her letter to Jason (Her. 6). 17. Curley (2013, 4) also limits his use of “tragic” to its generic sense. 18. See Curley 2013, 14–18. 19. See Conte 1986; Keith 2000; and Panoussi 2009 for the tragic figure in Vergil’s Aeneid. 20. See also ­earlier studies by Bartsch 1997; Atherton 1998; and Murgatroyd 2007. 21. The first Hippolytus (Hipp. I) featured a Phaedra whose repre­sen­ta­tion was by all accounts more aggressive and threatening. She prob­ably approached Hippolytus herself. Hipp. I was sometimes referred to as Hippolytus Kalyptomenos ­because the char­ acter covered himself in shame at her proposal. See Barrett 1964, 11. Perhaps mock­ ing this play in the contest between Aeschylus and Euripides of Aristophanes’s Frogs, Aeschylus states that he never made Phaedras or Stheneboias into prostitutes (ἀλλ᾽ οὐ μὰ Δί᾽ οὐ Φαίδραc ἐποίουν πόρναc οὐδὲ Ϲθενεβοίαc, 1043). For a discussion of Euripides’s two Hippolyti and Sophocles’s Phaedra, see Barrett 1964, 10–15; Snell 1964, 23–69; and Webster 1967, 64–76. See Herter 1940 for the mythological tradition and its Greek and Roman reception.

NOTES TO PA GES 6– 7

137

22. Barrett (1964, 6–10) conjectures that Phaedra’s part in the Hippolytus legend goes back to the sixth ­century BCE when Theseus was ­adopted as an Athenian hero. She is mentioned in Hom. Od. 11.321–25 in connection with Procris, Ariadne, and Theseus. Barrett suspects this passage to be an Attic insertion also dated to the sixth c­ entury. See the fourth-­century Asclepiades’s Tragodoumena (FGrH 12 fr. 28), Paus. 1.22.2, and Apol­ lod. Epit. 1.18–19 for variants on the myth not represented in Euripides’s extant play. See further Barrett 1964, 26–27, and Coffey and Mayer 1990, 9–10 and n. 30. The Alexandrian playwright Lycophron wrote a Hippolytus, but ­there is no evidence of Roman tragic treatments before Seneca. Pfeiffer 1968, 119–20, and Coffey and Mayer 1990, 10 and n. 31. 23. See Boyle 2012, 4–5, for a summary of Euripides’s treatments of Medea with bibliography. Boyle draws attention to the many mythological ele­ments to which Euripides’s play Medea is our earliest testament, including the adultery, poisoned robes, Aegeus’s visit to Corinth, her escape in a flying chariot, and, especially, the intentional infanticide by Medea. For variants on the ­children’s death, see Boyle 2012, 3–4. 24. Foley (2001, 243–71) interprets Medea’s famous strug­gle at Med. 1021–80 not as a strug­gle between her reason and her passion but as her “force (e.g., courage) that directs the self to action,” guiding her “plans” (θυμὸς δὲ κρείσσων τῶν ἐμῶν βουλευμάτων, 1079; Foley 2001, 253). Foley argues that Medea’s plan for revenge follows the archaic model of “helping friends and harming enemies” familiar from Homer’s Achilles. 25. Hyg. Fab. 26; Apollod. Bibl. 1.9.28, Epit.1.4–6; Paus. 2.3.7–8; Plut. Thes. 12; Diod. Sic. 4.55–56; Ov. Met. 7.402–24. Sfyroeras (1994–95) has argued that Euripides’s Medea also looks forward to her Athenian c­ areer by shifting her relationship to her sons from ­mother to stepmother. Euripides’s Aegeus may have been set in Athens. See Webster 1967, 77–80, for a conjectured outline of the play, the evidence, fragments, and dating. Sophocles’s Aegeus also told the story of Theseus in Attica and may have included Me­ dea. See Sutton 1984, 5–6, who further cites Pearson 1917, 15–21; Welcker 1938, I.393; Bates 1961, 166; and TrGF 4.19–25. 26. Sophocles’s Colchides may have also represented a young Medea in love as well as the murder of Apsyrtus in Aeetes’s palace. Scholiasts on Apollonius’s Argonautica cite Sophocles’s play, suggesting that it was a source for the Hellenistic epic. Pearson 1917, 15–23; Welcker 1938, 1.333; Bates 1961, 189; TrGF 4.336–49; Sutton 1984, 32–33; and Boyle 2012, 4. 27. ­These episodes w ­ ere also featured on the tragic stage. See Boyle 2012, 3–5, and Gildenhard and Zissos 2013 for a summary of fifth-­century BCE Greek treatments of Medea with bibliography. A fourth-­century tragedian, Carcinus, also wrote a Medea (Aris. Rh. 2.23.28, 1400 b8 = Carcinus TrGF 1.70, 1e). On the fragment, see further West 2007 and Hall 2010, 18 and 24 n. 20. Aeschylus’s Trophoi may have dramatized her rejuvenation of Dionysus’s nurses; Sophocles Rhizotomoi may have featured a magical Medea; Sophocles’s Scythae may have followed the Argo home. Euripides’s Peliades described Pelias’s death. 28. See, e.g., Clauss and Johnston 1997, 6–7, and Bartel and Simon 2010, 1–2, for the complexity of Medea in myth. 29. See Polt 2013, 207 n. 14, with further bibliography. Boyle (2012, 30–31 n. 59) sum­ marizes the account of Medea’s myth given by the first-­century BCE historian Diodorus Siculus (4.45–56), which diverges in small ways from her more familiar variants. One de­ tail significant to Ovid is the practice of sacrificing strangers who arrive in Colchis, which

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resembles the story of Iphigenia in Tauris (Euripides), put to use by Ovid in his exile poems. 30. See further Citroni 2003, 171–80; Farrell 2005, 427; and Feeney 2016, 152–78. 31. Feeney (2016, 169) cites Cowan 2013, 330. 32. See further Feeney (2016, 53–55, 62–64, 268–89 nn. 51–59), who cites Hinds 1998, 60–61. 33. Cowan 2013, 170–71. 34. Fitch (1987, 50–53) has settled on an early date for Phaedra of 41–54 CE, based on stylistic analy­sis. 35. Feeney 2016, 167, 305 n. 66. 36. See chapters 1 and 2 for evidence of Phaedra-­like characters in Roman drama. 37. See Feeney 2016, 122–27, for the importance of drama in Sicily at this time. 38. See, e.g., Hinds 1993; Heinze 1997, 9–10; Newlands 1997; Fantham 2005, 119– 20; Boyle 2006, 71–78, 92, 94, and 115–17; 2012, 6–16; Cowan 2010; and Curley 2013, 19–58 for Medea in Roman tragedy. 39. Medea Exul /Medea, ca. 203–169 BCE ( Joc. frr. 103–16). 40. Medus, ca. late third ­century–ca. 140 BCE (Warmington fr. 231–65). 41. Medea sive The Argonautae, second half of the second c­ entury BCE (Dangel frr. 467–99). 42. See Jocelyn 1967, 342–47, for evidence and further bibliography on t­ hese plays. Jocelyn (1967, 122, 378–79) identifies fr. 112 as belonging to a second play by Ennius which takes place a­ fter the events of Euripides’s extant Medea in Athens. 43. See Vogt-­Spira 2000, 273; Boyle 2006, 71–78; 2012, 6–19; Cowan 2010; and Fee­ ney 2016, 143. 44. See Beacham 1991, 140–49; 1999, 140–47; Boyle 2006, 171–72; Garelli 2007; Lada-­Richards 2007, 2013; Hall and Wyles 2008; Webb 2008; and Zanobi 2010 on the Roman pantomime. 45. Pantomime as a genre was very likely developing over the course of several de­ cades. See Lada-­Richards 2013, 110–13, for a discussion of its history. See also Beacham 1999, 142–43, and Boyle 2006, 171–72. 46. See Lada-­Richards 2013, 111–12 and nn. 26–27 for pantomime’s long-­standing connection to tragedy. 47. See Lada-­Richards 2013, 113 and n. 31, for evidence and further references re­ garding the staging of Vergil (Eclogues) and Ovid (Amores and Heroides) to m ­ usic. She demonstrates the similarities between the dance of this genre and Ovid’s detailed, body-­focused descriptions of metamorphoses. She argues persuasively that readers of his Metamorphoses, familiar with the per­for­mance genre, would read Ovid’s verse from this perspective (2013, 115 and passim; 2016; 2018). See further Currie (1981, 2703 n. 4), who cites Ovid at Tr. 2.519–20 (“My poems have often been danced for the p­ eople, often they even have held your own eyes,” et mea sunt populo saltata poemata saepe,/ saepe oculos etiam detinuere tuos) and 5.7.25–27. 48. “I am carried h ­ ere and t­ here, as if full of the god” (feror huc illuc, ut plena deo, Sen. Suas. 3.7); “I was able to save: are you asking ­whether I can destroy?” (seruare potui: perdere an possim rogas, Quint. Inst. 8.5.6). For a discussion of Ovid’s lost tragedy, see Curley 2013, 19–58, esp. 37–49. For further bibliography on reconstructions of the play, Curley (2013, 21 n. 7) cites Arcellaschi 1990, 231–67, and Heinze 1997, 221–52.

NOTES TO PA GES 9– 11

139

49. See Curley 2013, 102, for a demonstration of this pro­cess in Ovid’s “translation” of Euripides’s Hecuba. 50. For the dialectic between elegy and epic in Ovid, see, e.g., Heinze 1919; Otis 1970, 1–44 and passim; Hinds 1987, 1992a and b, and 2000; Keith 2002; and Farrell 2009, 270–80. 51. See, e.g., S­ ullivan 1972. Farrell (2009, 370) calculates that 65 ­percent of Ovid’s extant poetry is in elegiac couplets, the hexameter poem Metamorphoses making up the remainder. He notes, however, that Ovid’s lost Aratea was likely composed in hex­ ameter, while his Medea would have been composed in tragic meters. 52. Hinds 1987, 1992a and b. In his famous and influential interpretation of the epic and elegiac genres in Ovid, Heinze (1919) compares the treatment of the Persephone myth as it is represented in the elegiac Fasti and the epic Metamorphoses and concludes that the respective treatments are generically appropriate in theme and language. See also Farrell 2009, 373–76, for a summary of Heinze’s 1919 argument and scholarship responding to his conclusions including Hinds. Barchiesi (2001) and Farrell (2009, 374) note the influence of Kroll’s 1924 monograph which argues that generic trans­ gression is a characteristic of Hellenistic and Roman verse. 53. Farrell 2009, 378. 54. On this poem and further bibliography, see De Caro 2003, 140–42; Curley 2013, 38–49; Westerhold 2013; and Filippi 2015, 198–99. Keith (1994), Wyke (2002, 1989) and Perkins (2011, 313–33) employ the personified Elegy as an interpretive tool for under­ standing the metapoetic function of the elegiac puella in Roman erotic elegy. 3.1 is commonly cited by ­those who wish to reconstruct Ovid’s short-­lived c­ areer as a tragic poet. See Hollis 1977; Heinze 1997, 223; McKeown 1987–1998, 1:86–89, and 3:394. 55. See Curley 2013, 5–6, for a thorough review of the scholarship on this topic. 56. See, e.g., Jannacone 1953; D’Anna 1959; Bömer 1969–1986; Otis 1970, 376; La­ faye 1971, 141–159; Anderson 1972, 1997; Currie 1981; Larmour 1990; Ciappi 1998; Cur­ ley 1999, 2003, 2013; Gildenhard and Zissos 1999, 2007, 2013; Keith 2002, 2010b; Feldherr 2004, 2008, 2010; Williams 2012; and Westerhold 2013, 2014. 57. See, e.g., Jacobson 1974; Currie 1981; Barchiesi 1993; Hinds 1993; Bessone 1997, 11–41; Kennedy 2002; Davis 2012; and Curley 2013. See Filippi 2015 on archaic Ro­ man tragedy in Ovid’s elegy. 58. See, e.g., Davisson 1984; Ingleheart 2010; and Boyle 2012, 21. 59. See Curley 1999, 2003, 2013; Gildenhard and Zissos 1999, 2007; and Keith 2002. Similar work has been done for Vergil’s Aeneid. See, e.g., Hardie 1997; Keith 2000, 2020, 91–117; and Panoussi 2009. 60. Goldberg 1996, 571; 2000, 52 and passim; 2005; Boyle 2006, 154; 2012, 16–18; Gildenhard 2010, 179–80; and Feeney 2016, 86–88, 131–36. See Bourdieu’s “Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction,” in Knowledge, Education, and Cultural Change, ed. Richard K. Brown, 71–112. London: Tavistock, 1973, for an explanation of the term “cultural capital,” which he uses to describe knowledge that identifies membership in superior social groups. In her treatment of W ­ oman in Propertius, Fantham (2006, 189) notes that Propertius relies largely on mythological exempla drawn from Homer, trag­ edy, and Apollonius, for “­these would be what his public had read or heard or seen, so that a phrase or even a mere epithet could evoke remembered texts or images without need for narrative.”

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61. Cicero cites the opening lines in seven of the thirteen instances; Jocelyn 1967, 52–53. Canter (1936, 40–41) identifies the myth of Jason and the Argo as a frequent exemplum in Cicero’s works. See further Zillinger 1911; Jocelyn 1973; Shackleton Bai­ ley 1983; Goldberg 2000; Gildenhard 2007; Zetzel 2007; and Boyle 2012, 16–19, on Cicero’s use of tragedy. Shackleton Bailey (1983, 244–45) provides statistics which he confirms against Zillinger’s (1911, 244 n. 33) data; Zetzel 2007, 2. See Zillinger 1911, 50–68, for citations of poets by genre in Cicero, and 97–124 for citations of Ennius. 62. Segal (1986, 52) defines this “megatext” as “not merely the totality of themes or songs that the poets of an oral culture would have had available in their repertoires but also the network of more or less subconscious patterns, or deep structures, or un­ displaced forms, which tales of a given type share with one another.” 63. Her. 4 may also allude to moments from Euripides’s Hipp. I and Sophocles’s Phaedra which we do not recognize. For a careful comparison of Her. 4 to the extant Euripidean play as well as to the fragments and evidence for the two lost plays of Eurip­ ides and Sophocles, see, e.g., Jacobson 1974, 142–45, and Casali 1995. 64. Larmour 1990, 137–41. “The ‘pudor-­amor’ conflict, the nurse’s disastrous at­ tempts to help and the overwhelming power of the pathological libido—­are incorpo­ rated, again through a sort of contaminatio, into other episodes: the Myrrha, Byblis and Scylla” (137). 65. Larmour 1990, 137, and Curley 2013, 91–92. Curley (1999, 197–98) notes that, in Scylla’s tale, Minos also fills this role to a certain degree, pointing to Minos’s aston­ ished reaction (turbatus, 8.96) to Scylla’s gift of her ­father’s lock, which resembles Cau­ nus’s reaction to Byblis’s letter (attonitus, 9.574). 66. Barrett 1964, 13. 67. Myrrha decides to hang herself b­ ecause she is unable to suppress her incestu­ ous desire (Met. 10.378–79). Her nurse discovers her and begs to intervene (382–430), at one point offering spells and herbal remedies (carmine sanet et herbis/ . . . ​magico lustrabere ritu, 397–98). It is the nurse who approaches Cinyras and arranges for the meeting. Phaedra in Hipp. II eventually hangs herself ­after writing her letter of accu­ sation against Hippolytus (800–2), but at the beginning of the play, Phaedra has re­ solved to die (400–401). Her nurse intervenes (284–310, 433–81), offering spells and enchanting words as a cure (ἐπωιδαὶ . . . ​λόγοι θελκτήριοι/ . . . ​τι τῆcδε φάρμακον νόcου, Hipp. II, 478–79), and approaches Hippolytus in an attempt to seduce him on Phaedra’s behalf (565–615). See Anderson 1972, 501–17 ad 298–502; esp. 508–9, ad 371–76, 377–79; Larmour 1990, 138; and Bruzzone 2012. 68. For a comprehensive treatment of Euripides’s Medea as source text for Ovid’s own Medeas, see Curley 2013, 121–33, 141–53, and passim. 69. For a discussion of Ovid’s lost tragedy, see Curley 2013, 19–58, esp. 37–49. For further bibliography on reconstructions of the play, Curley (2013, 21 n. 7) cites Arcel­ laschi 1990, 231–67, and Heinze 1997, 221–52. 70. See further Jacobson 1974, 103, 120–23; Knox 1986, 1995, 196–201; Hinds 1993; Lindheim 2003, 125, 226 n. 104–6; Michalopoulos 2004; and Curley 2013, 177–216. 71. Curley (2013, 43) cites Currie 1981, 2704, who argues that what the poet omit­ ted in the Met. he treated in his tragedy. See Williams 2012; Curley 2013, 43 n. 119; and Gildenhard and Zissos 2013 for further bibliography.

NOTES TO PA GES 12– 17

141

72. Newlands 1997, 192–95; Curley 2003, 186; and Williams 2012. See further Cur­ ley 2013, 177–216 and passim, for a broader treatment of Medeas in Ovid’s oeuvre. 73. “One, in fact, one ­woman of ­those before, I hear, who threw her hand on her beloved ­children: Ino driven mad by the gods” (μίαν δὴ κλύω μίαν τῶν πάρος/ γυναῖκ᾽ ἐν φίλοις χέρα βαλεῖν τέκνοις·/ Ἰνὼ μανεῖσαν ἐκ θεῶν). 74. Aristophanes also revised a play, Clouds, ­after a poor reception at the City Diony­ sia in 424–423 BCE, although it is unclear ­whether the revised version was produced or merely circulated as a text (Dover 1968, lxxxi). The extant Clouds, like Euripides’s Hipp. II, reflects the revised play. See Dover 1968, lxxx–­xcviii for a discussion of the evidence. 75. Barrett 1964, 13. 1. Signs of Abject Desire in Ars Amatoria

1. Medea: Ars am. 1. 1.283–340, 2.99–104, 2.373–408, 3.32–40; Rem. am. 41–68, 261– 88. Varro Atacinus’s Argonautae appears on a recommended reading list at Ars am. 3.329–48. Phaedra: Ars am. 1.283–340, 1.509–12, 1.741–46; Rem. am. 41–68, 741–49. 2. The dating for Ovid’s poetry is uncertain. Heinze (1997, 21) dates the first two books of Ars am. to the years 6–1 BCE, situating their publication ­after the first edi­ tion of Am., Medea, and the single epistles. He dates the third book of Ars am. to the years 1 BCE–1 CE, just a­ fter the second edition of Am. and Rem. am. and before his longer poems Fast. and Met. McKeown’s (1987–98, vol 1, 77) conjecture is 2 BCE–1 CE; Hollis (1977, xiii), before spring of 2 CE. Holzberg (2006, 40–42) follows scholars who argue that all three books ­were written together. He provides a summary of the arguments on both sides with bibliography. See further, e.g., Hollis 1977, xi–­xiii; McKe­ own 1987–98, vol 1, 74–89, vol. 3, 384–86; Heinze 1997, 21–24; Gibson 2003, 37–43; Keith 2010a; and Curley 2013, 38–40. 3. See further in the introduction “Ovid, in Theory” and Kristeva 1982, 1–31. 4. See further in the introduction “Ovid, in Theory” and Butler 1993, 3–16, 93–119. 5. Segal’s (1986, 57) understanding of myth as a semiotic system derives from other theorists, including and especially Barthes (Mythologies, 1972) and Lévi-­Strauss. 6. See also the introduction, “Ovid on the Intersection.” 7. “Therefore, however many understand the writings of the ancients and them­ selves are always in the com­pany of the Muses know that Zeus once desired marriage with Semele, and they know that once beautifully shining Dawn seized Cephalus and carried him off to the gods ­because of desire: nevertheless, they dwell in the sky and they do not flee away from the gods.” (ὅϲοι μὲν οὖν γραφάϲ τε τῶν παλαιτέρων/ ἔχουϲιν αὐτοί τ᾽ εἰϲὶν ἐν μούϲαιϲ ἀεὶ/ ἴϲαϲι μὲν Ζεὺϲ ὥϲ ποτ᾽ ἠράϲθη γάμων/ Ϲεμέληϲ, ἴϲαϲι δ᾽ ὡϲ ἀνήρπαϲέν ποτε/ ἡ καλλιφεγγὴϲ Κέφαλον ἐϲ θεοὺϲ Ἕωϲ/ ἔρωτοϲ οὕνεκ᾽· ἀλλ᾽ ὅμωϲ ἐν οὐρανῶι/ ναίουϲι κοὐ φεύγουϲιν ἐκποδὼν θεούϲ, Eur. Hipp. II, 451–57). “Cypris gave in a deadly marriage to Alcmene’s son the Oechalian filly, unyoked to a marriage bed, formerly unhusbanded, unbetrothed, and joined her in wedlock away from the ­house of Eurytus, like a wildly roaming naiad and a Bacchante with blood, with smoke: O wretched in marriage. O holy wall of Thebes, O font of Dirce, you may confirm how Cypris comes: for, ­after wedding the ­mother of twice-­ born Bacchus to the flaming thunder, she put her to bed with a deadly destiny. For she

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inspires all terribly, like some bee flying ­here and t­here.” (τὰν μὲν Οἰχαλίαι/ πῶλον ἄζυγα λέκτρων,/ ἄνανδρον τὸ πρὶν καὶ ἄνυμφον, οἴκων/ ζεύξαϲ᾽ ἀπ᾽ Εὐρυτίων/ δρομάδα ναΐδ᾽ ὅπωϲ τε βάκ-­/ χαν ϲὺν αἵματι, ϲὺν καπνῶι,/ φονίοιϲι νυμφείοιϲ/ Ἀλκμήναϲ τόκωι Κύπριϲ ἐξέδωκεν·/ ὦ τλάμων ὑμεναίων./ ὦ Θήβαϲ ἱερὸν/ τεῖχοϲ, ὦ ϲτόμα Δίρκας,/ ϲυνείποιτ᾽ ἂν ἁ Κύπριϲ οἷον ἕρπει·/ βροντᾶι γὰρ ἀμφιπύρωι/ τοκάδα τὰν διγόνοιο βάκ-­/ χου νυμφευϲαμένα πότμωι/ φονίωι κατηύναϲεν./ δεινὰ γὰρ τὰ πάντ᾽ ἐπιπνεῖ, μέλιϲϲα δ᾽ οἵ-­/ α τιϲ πεπόταται, Eur. Hipp. II, 545–64). 8. See Treggiari 1991, 3–36, for a detailed discussion of marriage customs in Rome, and 107–19 for the relationship of affinitas created by marriages. 9. McGinn 1998, 70, and Treggiari 1991, 277. 10. McGinn 1998, 92–93, 143, 156–71. 11. See McGinn 1998, 140–215, for a careful analy­sis of the lex Julia de adulteriis coercendis and its social and economic implications. See Edmondson 2008, 37–38, on the importance of the toga and stola as a costume in “stagecraft” (tragoedia; citing Polyb. 6.53–54, 56.9), defining the Roman community of men and ­women. 12. McGinn 1998, 171–94. 13. Segal (1986, 53, 57), citing ­earlier research (53, n. 13), traces literary paradig­ matic analogies to Homer, which he conjectures predate the poet: “Homer is prob­ably developing a systematic coherence already pre­sent in the mythic material.” 14. I am following the dating for Propertius’s third book of Goold 1990, 2; Hollis 1977, xiii; and McKeown 1987–98, vol 1, 75. Propertius, book 3, ca. 23–21 BCE; Ovid, Ars 1, 2, sometime between 20 and 2 BCE, but most likely closer to 2 BCE. 15. Bergmann (1996) has applied the term “pregnant moment” to t­hese frescoes. For a careful discussion of this h ­ ouse and its frescoes, see Bergmann 1996 and Valladares 2021, 158–73. 16. Bergmann (2017, 218) describes the frescoes as depicting the “perfect moment” of each myth. The villa was built ca. 127 CE. The paintings may be as late as the third ­century CE. See, most recently, Newby 2016 and Bergmann 2017. The original place­ ment of ­these paintings in the room is not known. See Bergmann 2017, 211–12, for conjectures. 17. Bergmann (2017, 209–23) argues that “galleries of heroines” can be traced to the fifth ­century BCE in Greece, and, further, that ­these galleries ­were influenced by and influenced similar cata­logues in lit­er­a­ture and per­for­mances on the stage. See Fred­ rick 1995, 274–75 and passim, Bergmann 2017, and Valladares 2021 for the associations suggested by painting groups, and Bergmann 2017 in relation to the Tor Marancia grouping in par­tic­u­lar. 18. See Bergmann 2017, 213–15, and Valladares 2021, 158–73, for a discussion of Ovid’s literary cata­logues and his Her. in relation to ­these groups. 19. MSS R, Y, Pa, and the second hand of MS H read agat. MS O alone reads cogat. MS A and all other manuscripts read aget. See Kenney 1959, 246–47, for arguments in support of reading aget. 20. I would suggest that in line 331, the participle furata which modifies filia hints at but suppresses the Megarian Scylla’s desire for Minos through its acoustic similarity to furor. 21. See Leach 1964 for the repre­sen­ta­tion of w ­ omen’s desire as excessive in the Ars am.

NOTES TO PA GES 22– 24

143

22. OLD, agere, 25. 23. Ovid’s own tragedy, Medea, may have been finished by the time of the Ars am. See McKeown 1987–98, vol 1, 77, 87. 24. Pasiphae: Euripides, Cretans; Accius’s Minos/Minotaurus. Aerope: Euripides, Cretan ­Women, according to the scholion on Aristophanes’s Frogs (Σ Batr. 849), and perhaps Sophocles’s Atreus. See Owen 1924, 216 ad 2.391 for a complete list of evidence of trag­ edies on the subject, including Eur., Cretan ­Women, and Webster 37–39 for a summary of evidence on the subject m ­ atter of Cretan ­Women. Scylla: according to Ovid himself, the subject of a play by an unknown tragedian (cf. Tristia 2.393–94: inpia nec tragicos tetigisset Scylla coturnos, / ni patrium crinem desecuisset amor); Hollis 1977, 91 ad 331–32; Owen 1924, 217 ad 2.393. Clytemnestra: Aeschylus, Oresteia; Sophocles, Electra; Eurip­ ides, Electra; Ennius, Eumenides, Iphigenia at Aulis; Accius, Clytemnestra or Aegisthus? Me­ dea: Aeschylus, Trophoi; Sophocles, Aegeus?, Colchides, Rhizotomoi, Scythae; Euripides, Aegeus, Medea, Peliades; Carcinus, Medea; Ennius, Medea Exul / Medea; Pacuvius, Medus; Accius, Medea sive Argonautae; Ovid, Medea. Phthia: Euripides, Phoenix; Ennius, Phoenix (cf. Webster, 84–85). Phaedra: Euripides, Hipp. I and II; Sophocles, Phaedra. And Phine­ us’s wife: perhaps the subject of Aeschylus, Phineus, and Sophocles, Tympanistae and Phineus A and B. 25. ­These “tragic” repre­sen­ta­tions would have been very familiar to Ovid’s audi­ ence. In addition to the plays featuring Medea (note 24 above), Romans would have seen Medea represented in the dramatic and poetic genres of pantomime, epic, lyric, and elegy; in the art of private homes and public spaces; and in the speeches of Roman orators. See in the introduction “Phaedra and Medea in Rome” for a summary of t­ hese depictions in the Roman republic and early principate with further bibliography. In her discussion of tenderness in Roman art, Valladares 2021, 130 and passim, argues that wall paintings engaged a viewer in meaning-­making and narrative construction by re­ calling images from art and lit­er­a­ture but not reproducing one in par­tic­u­lar. 26. Loraux (1987, 7–30) argues the most dishonorable suicide, and the one associ­ ated with ­women, particularly in tragedy, was hanging. 27. Ovid’s treatment of Pasiphae reworks Vergil’s Pasiphae in Ecl. 6. See Armstrong 2006, 170–77, 180–81; Hollis 1977, 93 ad 289–326; and Pietropaolo 2020, 178–98, for a detailed discussion of this passage and comparisons of the two Pasiphaes. 28. Compare Vergil’s Pasiphae, who wanders through the mountains (Ecl. 6.52), reflecting the wandering of her senses and equating her with both the masculine pas­ toral lover and the wandering of the followers of Dionysus. Armstrong (2006, 174– 77) has mapped out the instances of pastoral ele­ments in the passage, drawing special attention to a resemblance to Corydon of Ecl. 2 and Gallus of Ecl. 6. See also Hubbard 1975, 61–62, for a similar argument. 29. In the Met., Medea’s strug­gle over her passion is described as a strug­gle between ratio and furor (7.10); Scylla is called furibunda (8.107); Byblis calls love furor (9.512, 541, 602), and the narrator refers to her love as a furor (9.583) and her as furibunda (9.637); Myrrha is also called furibunda (10.410). 30. Vergil likens the lovesick Dido to a bacchant (Aen. 4.301–3). In Ov. Met., Byblis is compared to a maenad (9.641–43). The connection between the bacchant and the sexually transgressive ­woman can be traced back to Greek repre­sen­ta­tions. On this topic in Greek myth and lit­er­a­ture, Seaford (1990) argues exposure to the wild was

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part of the initiation pro­cess which resulted in a son’s return to the natal h ­ ouse­hold and a ­daughter’s transfer to a husband’s (161). “Maenadism represents in an extreme form the loss of control by the male of the female, and was indeed i­magined as in­ volving the danger of illicit sex” (163, emphasis added). Seaford offers tragic examples of out-­of-­control ­women associated with Bacchic worship (1990, 163–64); see also Pease 1967, 278–83; Warden 1978, 181–82; Keuls 1985, 349–79; Miller 1995; Janka 1997, 296– 98; Janan 2001, 76–78; Gibson 2003, 367–68; Armstrong 2006, 97–98; Gardner 2013, 176, and n. 64; Spentzou 2018, 264; and Panoussi 2019, 117–67, for an analy­sis of this topic and a comprehensive list of comparanda from Greek and Latin lit­er­a­ture. 31. Cf., e.g., Eur. Bacch., where Pentheus charges the maenads with drunkenness and that “each one in dif­fer­ent directions slinks off to a secret place and serves the beds of men” (ἄλλην δ᾽ ἄλλοϲ᾽ εἰϲ ἐρημίαν/ πτώϲϲουϲαν εὐναῖϲ ἀρϲένων ὑπηρετεῖν, 222–223); or the Roman charges in the Bacchanalia, which included “the promiscuous debauchery of ­free men and w ­ omen,” stupra permiscua ingenuorum feminarumque, Livy 39.8. 32. See Conte 1986, 159–84; Hardie 1997; and Panoussi 2009 on tragic contamina­ tion in Vergil’s Aeneid; for Ovid, see in the introduction “Generic Per­for­mances.” 33. Zeitlin (1996, 343–44) has argued that the feminine aspects of Dionysus reflected and associated the god with the intrinsically feminine genre of tragedy. 34. See Hollis 1977, 93 ad 289–326 for references; see Webster 1967, 87–92, and Col­ lard and Cropp 2008, 516–19, for evidence and a summary of the play. 35. See Seaford 2006, 26–38, for an in­ter­est­ing discussion of the (mythical) kin-­k illing vio­lence of the thiasos and its potential for community-­building. Seaford argues that the dissolution of bound­aries the individual participants experienced and meta­phorical vio­lence done to the private f­ amily created a strong cohesion in the community which was then harnessed through state-­controlled festivals. Moreover, as the group most closely associated with the private sphere, the h ­ ouse, w ­ omen figured prominently in myths of re­sis­tance to Dionysus and w ­ ere the best representatives for the ritual dis­ solution of the private sphere in the ­actual per­for­mance of his rites (34). See also Pa­ noussi 2019, 117–19, on this symbolism in Latin authors. 36. Livy (39.8–19) provides a description of the suppression and the events leading up to the senatorial decree; for the inscription preserving the senatus consultum see CIL I.196 and ILS 18. See Seaford 2006, 58–61, for a discussion of the social and po­liti­cal significance of the suppression. 37. See also Takács 2000 and Panoussi 2019, 120–39, for a discussion of the sup­ pression and the mechanisms of the religious and ideological control used by the Ro­ man elite. While Takács argues that the suppression of the worship of Bacchus was merely an excuse for exercising such control and curtailing Hellenistic influence, Livy’s account (39.8–19), prob­ably published during Ovid’s early writing c­ areer, provides a dif­fer­ent perspective. Anxiety over gender reversal and sexual deviance is evident in Livy’s narrative of the event: “In Livy’s narrative, the cult of Bacchus represents dis­ order and madness while the state represented by the (all male) Senate stands for or­ der and sanity” (Takács 2000, 310), attesting to the reception of the event at the dawn of the Augustan era. For the dating of Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita, see Syme 1959; Walsh 1961, 1–19; and Ogilvie 1965, 1–2. 38. The suppression included over 6,000 executions. See Livy 39.17–19 for the sen­ tencing and punishment of the conspirators named. Bauman (1992, 35–37) argues that

NOTES TO PA GES 25– 28

145

the Senate’s suppression was “anti-­feminist” and motivated by a fear of a primarily fe­ male cult plotting against the state. Most in­ter­est­ing is his discussion of the use of coniuratio by Cato (De Coniuratio; Livy 34.2.3) and Terence (Hec. 198; Hyg. Fab. 15:507) in reference to this and other ­women’s “movements” (36). See also Gruen 1990, 34–78. 39. Deiphobus describes Helen simulating Bacchic worship while aiding the Greeks hiding in the Trojan ­horse (Verg. Aen. 6.517–19). Amata, inspired (inspirans, 7.351) by a snake from Allecto’s hair, feigns Bacchic worship for the sake of hiding Lavinia and pre­ venting her marriage to Aeneas, a marriage contract struck between the Trojan leader and her husband, Evander (7.385–88); the description of the feigned rites continues through line 405. Allecto finds Amata already distressed over the marriage, a distress qualified as womanly (“[Amata], whom a womanly anxiety and anger was tormenting over the arrival of the Teucrians and Turnus’ marriage,” quam super aduentu Teucrum Turnique hymenaeis / femineae ardentem curaeque iraeque coquebant, 7.344–45). In addition to the fire imagery, which we see in the elegiac descriptions of desire, Amata’s resulting furor (“without delay she raves out of her mind through the city,” sine more furit lymphata per urbem, 7.377) is inspired explic­itly to disrupt the ­house­hold: “so that, maddened by the monster [snake], she might throw the entire ­house into confusion,” (quo furibunda domum monstro permisceat omnem, 7.348). See Panoussi 2009, 124–33, on this passage. 40. See Miller 2004, 166–67, for a detailed discussion of intertextual relations be­ tween Antony, Amor, and Bacchus in Roman elegy (Am. 1.2.43–48, 51–52, and Prop. 2.16.41–42). See further Miller 2009, 18 and nn. 15, 17, 26–28, 176–77, 180–81, for Ant­ ony’s self-­identification with Bacchus/Liber/Dionysus. 41. This is in contrast to Pasiphae’s speech in Euripides’s Cretans (TrGF 5.1.472e, quoted below in note 51) where Pasiphae points to the ridiculousness of this possibil­ ity as proof of her innocence. 42. See OLD, vir, 1., “an adult male;” 2a., “a husband”; see also Williams 1968, 528– 29, 539, 542; Hollis 1977, 95 ad 310; Davis 1999, 445–46; and Miller 2004, 170–74 for the ambiguity of this term, particularly in elegy. 43. Oedipus famously embodied the tragic lack of self-­knowledge and his anagnorisis (“recognition”) articulates an impor­tant part of the resolution of the tragic plot (cf. Arist. Poet. 11.1452a–­b). Pasiphae’s d­ aughter Phaedra compares time to a mirror in Eur, Hipp, II, 428–30: “Time, holding up a mirror as though to a young maiden, sometimes reveals the base among mortals, among whom may I never be seen” (κακοὺϲ δὲ θνητῶν ἐξέφην᾽, ὅταν τύχηι,/ προθεὶϲ κάτοπτρον ὥστε παρθένωι νέαι,/ χρόνοϲ· παρ᾽ οἷϲι μήποτ᾽ ὀφθείην ἐγω). Goff (1990, 23–24) argues that this passage is a case of misidentifi­ cation, that it reveals her subjectivity caught between anticipation of her transgression and a nostalgia for her lost innocence. 44. See Pietropaolo 2020, 194, for the grotesque nature of this passage. 45. I am grateful to Cornell University Press’s anonymous reader for drawing my attention to Pasiphae’s abject offspring, the Minotaur. At Her. 4.57–58, Phaedra calls her ­mother’s pregnancy a crimen in a list of Cretan abject desire: Pasiphae mater, decepto subdita tauro, / Enixa est utero crimen onusque suo. Pietropaolo (2020, 197–98) points to a ­later mention of the minotaur at Ars am. 2.24 in connection to Daedalus’s escape. 46. If we assume that Ovid intentionally combined the two mythological charac­ ters, the monster of 332 could be read as another example of active female desire, whose abject “natu­ral” form is unnatural and monstrous. ­There is no metamorphosis.

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The Scylla of line 331 is already the monster of 332. Ovid repeats this “­mistake” on several occasions, as does Prop. 4.4.39–40, but not 3.19.21–28; and Verg. Ecl. 6.74–76. For a full list of hybrid Scyllas and references, see Hinds 1993, 15, n. 14, and Casali 2007, 181, n. 1. See Hopman 2012 and Lowe 2015, 73–84, for Scylla’s repre­sen­ta­tion as monster in Greek and Roman art and lit­er­a­ture. 47. It seems not even Creusa can escape the discourse of female desire, for her death by fire, flamma, recalls the use of flamma to describe masculine desire in line 282. In addition, so far as we know, the adjective Ephyraea used to describe Creusa occurs only once prior to this in Latin lit­er­a­ture, in Prop. 2.6.1 to modify the name of a Greek prostitute from Corinth in a poem averring that Cynthia is more promiscuous than infamous prostitutes (“Not in the same way w ­ ere they filling the h ­ ouse of Ephyraean Lais,” non ita complebant Ephyraeae Laidos aedis). 48. See Hollis 1977, 98 ad loc. for a summary of the story and Webster 1967, 84–85, for a summary of Eur. Phoenix. 49. See Hollis 1977, 98 ad loc. for references. 50. Cf. Prop. 3.19.11–22, where only the names of the first two examples, Pasiphae and Tyro, are suppressed. 51. While it is hard to tell from the extant fragments, Pasiphae’s speech in Euripides’s Cretans suggests that she is ­either responding to specific accusations of this kind or she is anticipating t­ hese charges. She denies any voluntary, and therefore active, desire, placing the blame upon the gods (ἐκ θεοῦ, TrGF 5.1.472e.9), exonerating her from actively play­ ing the part of her own exchanger by choosing (another) man for a husband (οὐ μὴν δέμαϲ γ’ εὖ.[ca. 8 ll. ν]υμφίου˙ / τοιῶνδε λέκτρω[ν οὕνεκ᾽ εἰϲ] πεδοϲτιβῆ / ῥινὸν καθιϲ. [ca. 15 ll.]ται / ἀλλ᾽ οὐδὲ παίδων. [ca. 9 ll.] πόϲιν / θέϲθαι, TrGF 5.1.472e.16–20). Of note is that her argument relies on what is likely (ἔχει γὰρ οὐδὲν εἰκόϲ, TrGF 5.472e.11)—in other words, what is within the bounds of intelligible and reasonable ­human be­hav­ior. In addition, she argues that she would be an adulteress (μάχ[λο]ϲ) if she threw her body at a man (μὲν ἀνδρί): ἐγ[ώ] γὰρ εἰ μὲν ἀνδρί προὔβαλον δέμαϲ / τοὐμόν λαθραίαν ἐμπολωμένη Κύπριν, / ὀρθῶϲ ἄν ἤδη μάχ[λο]ϲ οὖϲ᾽ ἐφαινόμην, TrGF 5.1.472e.6–8). The implication is that, b­ ecause her lover is not a man but a bull, the current situation (νῦν δ’, 9) is not recognizable as adultery. Ovid’s poet-­praeceptor expresses a similar sentiment: siue uirum mauis fallere, falle uiro, Ars am. 1.310. The poet-­praeceptor, perhaps echoing Pa­ siphae herself, urges like-­for-­like trade, with a play on the meanings of uir. See Hollis 1977, 95 ad 310; and Leach 1964, 143 n. 1a. In both of t­hese passages, adultery with a man is recognizable and nameable (μάχ[λο]ϲ, fallere), although punishable. The madness, which in Euripides can only be explained as divinely inspired (ἐκ θεοῦ γὰρ προϲβολῆϲ, TrGF 5.1.472e.9), is, in Ovid, proof and punishment of Pasiphae’s abject position. 52. According to Butler (1993, 14–15), “the symbolic o ­ ught to be rethought as a series of normativizing injunctions that secure the borders of sex through the threat of psychosis, abjection, psychic unlivability . . .” 53. See above for a discussion of Dionysiac imagery as a generic marker in this passage. 54. Euripides and Sophocles both wrote tragedies of this myth. In Rome, Ennius, Accius, and Varius Rufus wrote plays depicting the two b­ rothers. Varius’s play Thyestes was commissioned and produced for Augustus’s t­riple triumph in 29 BCE. For a full discussion of the tragic treatments of this myth, see in chapter 3 “Procne.”

NOTES TO PA GES 31– 37

147

55. See above n. 24 for the tragic plays depicting ­these myths. 56. See above n. 2 for conjectured chronologies of Ovid’s works with bibliography. 57. See further Leach 1964, 145, on the imagery of ­woman’s rage in this passage. 58. In book 1 the poet-­praeceptor characterizes ­women as master dissimulators of erotic passion. Cf. uir male dissimulat, tectius illa cupit, 1.276, discussed above. He ­will ­later warn ­women to avoid rage b­ ecause this emotion disfigures the face of ­women (3.501–8). 59. Compare Byblis’s entry at 1.284: arsit et est laqueo fortiter ulta nefas, with ulta in the same sedes as Medea’s above. In this line we may find the collocation of erotic fire (arsit) and revenge (ulta). Moreover, although Byblis’s revenge targets only herself, the outcome disrupts by ending a f­amily line. She may not be used to create an affinity with another man, nor ­will she produce heirs to continue the ­family name. 60. See Feldherr 2008, 2010, 199–239, for Ovid’s intertextual development and crys­ tallization of Procne as sign in the Met. 6 and Fasti 2, as he does h ­ ere (signatum, 384). Feldherr argues that this is an objectifying pro­cess which allows the reader to define themselves in opposition to the other in Ovid’s verse (or on the tragic stage). 61. For Medea, see n. 24 above. Procne: Sophocles, Tereus; Livius Andronicus, Tereus; Accius, Tereus. See chapter  3 for further discussion of the tragic tradition of both heroines. 62. Procris is similarly described as “a Bacchant driven by the thyrsus” (ut thyrso concita Baccha, Ars am. 3.710; discussed below), and Phyllis, “as if renewing the triennial festival for Edonian Bacchus” (ut Edono referens trieterica Baccho, Rem. am. 593). See also n. 30 for comparanda outside Ovid’s erotodidactic poems and further bibliography. 63. The rumor, moreover, may further allude to Clytemnestra’s speech in Aesch. Ag., in which she complains of the rumors which visit a ­woman waiting for her hus­ band to return from war (861–65). 64. Cf. “the shameful part is hidden ­under concealing clothing” (parsque sub iniecta ueste pudenda latet, Ars am. 2.618), describing the famous gesture of Praxiteles’s Cnidian Venus. In Remedia, the poet-­praeceptor suggests the lover let himself see “ob­ scene parts” (obscenas partes, 429) or “shameful marks on the dirty couch” (in immundo signa pudenda toro, 432) in order to get over a girlfriend. 65. Cf. “and through such approaches they seek shameful profit” (perque aditus talis lucra pudenda petant, Ars am. 3.442). The lying would-be lovers, who seek shameful (sex­ ual) gains, are characterized as effeminate by the standards of the poet-­praeceptor’s les­ sons, for they are more well dressed and coifed than the w ­ omen they seduce (“when the man is smoother than the ­woman herself,” cum sit uir leuior ipsa, 437; see further 433– 34, 443–46). L ­ ater the adjective describes the threat of rape for w ­ omen who pass out at the banquet ­table a­ fter too much Lyaeo (Bacchus/wine, 765): “Many shameful ­things are accustomed to happen during sleep” (per somnos fieri multa pudenda solent, 3.768). 66. Cf. Ars am. 1. 327, where Aerope’s desire is called Thyestean: “If the Cretan ­woman had abstained from love for Thyestes” (Cressa Thyesteo si se abstinuisset amore). See nn. 24 and 54 above for a list of Greek and Roman tragedies depicting the ­house of Atreus. 67. See in the introduction “Ovid on the Intersection,” and above for Segal’s for­ mulation of the megatext of myth. 68. See, e.g., Skinner 1993, 111–15, and Gleason 1995, xx–­xxvi, 62–67, and passim, on self-­control as a defining feature of masculinity, which must be constantly maintained in

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order to avoid slipping into a feminine position: “Ancient masculinity is thus intrinsically unstable and always at risk, but never so much as in the presence of the sexually experi­ enced female, whose erotic energies are presumed to be boundless and whose erotic de­ mands are correspondingly insatiable” (Skinner 1993, 111). See in the introduction “Ovid, in Theory” and Butler 1993, 12–16, and 2006, 183–93, for Butler’s formulation of gender identification and performativity. 69. See also Feldherr 2010, discussed in chapter 3, for the same reader responses to Ovid’s epic poem, Met. 70. Miller 2004, 160–83, has recently argued that Ovid’s parody of Augustan dis­ course, while relying on the assumed hegemony of such discourse, unintentionally exposes its contradictions and limits. Gibson (2003, 32–35, 2006, 2007, 112–14), citing 3.305 (sed sit, ut in multis, modus hic quoque) argues that the Ars teaches “an ethic of the ­middle way” (2007, 3). He maintains this ethics of moderation not only reflects the generic ­middle position of the Ars, situated between elegy and epic, but is also anti-­ Augustan, or at least subversive, in that it leads to a confusion of the sexual categories the lex Julia de adulteriis coercendis sought to clearly define. 2. Rescripting Phaedra for an Elegiac Role

1. See in the introduction “Ovid on the Intersection” and chapter 1 for an explana­ tion of Segal’s (1986) “megatext” of myth. 2. See in the introduction “Ovid, in Theory” and chapter 1 for a full explanation of this term. 3. Heinze (1997) dates the single epistles to between 16 and 5 BCE, Ars am. 1 and 2 from 6 to 1 BCE, and Metamorphoses between 1 and 8 CE. See further chapter 1, n. 2 and, below, n. 79. 4. See Conte 1994a, 35–66. See also n. 32 below on the elegiac reinterpretation of amicitia, iniuria, and the client-­patron relationship. 5. See also Barchiesi 1993, 346: “Ovid’s heroines . . . ​are conditioned by an inter­ textuality which is not simply mythological, but is specifically literary . . . ​the reader hesitates about their place in the literary tradition; they are characters who at­ tempt to rewrite their story in terms of a new and dif­fer­ent code. . . . ​Dif­fer­ent genres diffract our perceptions and multiply differences.” 6. French feminist theories, especially the ideas of Cixous and Irigaray, which have not been considered in my reading, offer multiple approaches to ­women’s writing which could be productively applied to Phaedra and Byblis as female writing subjects. See Gold 1993 for a brief overview of feminist approaches, including theories of ­women’s writing developed by the French feminists, Cixous (écriture feminine), Kristeva and Irigaray (parler femme), and their utility for reading ancient male-­authored texts. In her article, Gold applies Alice Jardine’s idea of “gynesis” to Propertius. 7. See Kristeva 1984, 21–106, especially 25–37, for an explanation of the semiotic chora: “The semiotic can thus be understood as pre-­thetic, preceding the positing of the subject. Previous to the ego thinking within a proposition, no Meaning exists, but ­there do exist articulations heterogeneous to signification and the sign: the semiotic chora” (36). Spentzou (2003, 85–122) characterizes the creative potential of the female authors in the Heroides as a sort of Kristevan chora.

NOTES TO PA GES 41– 42

149

8. “All enunciation, ­whether of a word or of a sentence, is thetic. It requires an iden­ tification; in other words, the subject must separate from and through his image, from and through his objects. This image and objects must first be posited in a space that becomes symbolic b­ ecause it connects the two separated positions, recording them or redistributing them in an open combinatorial system” (Kristeva 1984, 43). 9. See Kristeva 1984, 43–45, for an explanation of this pro­cess for a speaking sub­ ject, and 68–71 for the thetic in artistic practices. 10. Janan (1991) identifies the theme of repetition and difference, which surfaces in the Byblis passage as it does throughout the Metamorphoses, as a symptom of a uniquely Roman anxiety over belatedness in the literary tradition. 11. While lit­er­a­ture, especially poetry, complicates the thesis of a subject and the symbolic system which this thesis makes pos­si­ble, a literary work is still located within the logic of such symbolic systems. Therefore, the producer of a text and the textual product rely on the rules governing ­these systems: “Without the completion of the thetic phase . . . ​no signifying practice is pos­si­ble” (Kristeva, 1984, 63). See Kristeva 1984, 62–67, for poetry’s reliance on symbolic systems and its simultaneous transgres­ sion of such systems. Roudiez (Kristeva 1984, 7–8), in his introduction to Kristeva, states: “Consciousness is far from dominating the pro­cess and . . . ​the writing subject is a complex, heterogeneous force. . . . ​The writing subject, then, includes not only the consciousness of the writer but also his or her unconscious. . . . ​The subject of writ­ ing also includes the non-­conscious . . . ​an area covered by the notion of dominant ide­ ology” (8). The writing subject’s positionality, i.e., status within a society, gendered, racial, class, and so on, also determines the strength and focus of the repressive func­ tion governing their desires and the literary repre­sen­ta­tions they create. 12. Harvey’s (1992) formulation assumes that a man writing as a ­woman w ­ ill al­ ways be dif­fer­ent from a ­woman writing as a ­woman. Harvey advocates “a tactical es­ sentialism, the belief that even while we recognize the constructed nature of gender, we can still adhere to a conviction that w ­ omen and men (and their respective voices) are not po­liti­cally interchangeable” (13). 13. Harvey’s (1992) critical analy­sis of the “double-­voice” of transvestite ventrilo­ quism focuses on “the gap between the male voice and the female voice it takes on” as a site for revealing gender construction: “In male appropriations of feminine voices we can see what is most desired and most feared about w ­ omen and why male authors might have wished to occupy that cultural space, however contingently and provision­ ally” (32). See also Kennedy 2002, 226–31, and Lindheim 2003, passim, especially 136– 76, for the double-­voice in Ovid’s Heroides. Applying Harvey’s theory, Lindheim argues that the female writers of the Heroides construct themselves in order to sustain or renew their status as the addressee’s object of desire, cheating themselves of any true agency. 14. See Westerhold 2018 on Byblis’s feminine writing voice. See Rosenmeyer 2001 for an analy­sis of embedded letters in ancient Greek lit­er­a­ture. 15. Conte (1994a, 35–66) argues elegy is the most reductive genre ­because it reinter­ prets all discourse to suit an all-­encompassing erotic ideology. In her discussion of the Fasti, Newlands (1995, 108–9, 140–45) has noted a similar “failure” of elegy to accom­ modate grander, Augustan material into its code in the tale of Vesta and Priapus. 16. See in the introduction “Phaedra and Medea in Greece” for a full discussion and further references about ­these plays.

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17. Barchiesi (1993) points out that in works such as Apollonius’s Argo. and Ovid’s Her., the allusion looks forward temporally from the point of view of a younger hero/ heroine whose ­f uture has already been written by other writers (334). This pre­sents the opportunity for dramatic irony, while a shared knowledge of the predetermined outcome creates “a sort of complicity between [the author and the reader] against the characters,” (334) and “forces the reader to enter into discussion with the text he is reading” (335); cf. Kennedy 2002, 224–25. 18. Phaedra announces to the chorus and her nurse that her suicide is meant to pre­ serve her reputation, which would allow her male marital kin to live in Athens as ­free men enjoying freedom of speech (Hipp. II, 420–23). See Goff 1990, passim, and McClure 1999, 112–57, on the connection of silence, speech, and reputation in Hipp. II. 19. See Jacobson 1974, 142–45, for specific correspondences with Sophocles’s Phaedra and Euripides’s first Hippolytus. According to Jacobson, Her. 4 must follow Hipp. I (like Ov. Met. and Sen. Phae.): “The fact that in all Ovid’s poetry Phaedra is con­ demned outright, never extenuated, suits best the first Phaedra Euripides por­ trayed” (144). See also Davis 1995. Barchiesi (1993) argues that allusions point not only to single models but to participation in a broader literary tradition. Adducing Her. 12 (Medea’s letter) and Dido from Verg. Aen., Barchiesi suggests, “Augustan poets are particularly interested in this potential ­because they write in a tradition which has rich articulations and separate canons” (352). Pace Rosati 1985, who traces Euripidean in­ fluences as they are filtered through elegiac mediating texts and codes; see also Hinds 1993 on Met. 12. In addition, Hinds (1993) and Fulkerson (2005) demonstrate an intratextuality between the epistles themselves. See also Kauffman 1986, 42–43. 20. This may be ­because Hipp. II preserved certain ele­ments from the e­ arlier plays or ­because the Ovidian Phaedra is an amalgam of all of her tragic instantiations. Ja­ cobson (1974) cata­logues intertexts between Ovid’s depictions of Phaedra, Euripid­ es’s Hipp. I, Hipp P. II, and Sophocles’s Phaedra (142–45), where he finds a number of correspondences with Hipp. II along with Hipp. I: “Ovid, we must apparently conclude, knew and was using both of Euripides’ plays (and, just possibly, Sophocles’ too)” (145). See also Casali 1995, passim, for allusions and intertexts with Hipp. II. 21. One could imagine that the Ovidian Phaedra (from Hipp. I) has seen the second play and is trying to pre­sent herself and the circumstances accordingly in her letter. 22. Byblis’s story was famous and told to Latin readers by Parthenius (11). Ovid follows this version, in which Byblis hangs herself a­ fter her rejection by Caunus, in Ars am. 1.283–84: “Why should I mention Byblis, who burned with a forbidden love for her b­ rother and bravely avenged her unspeakable crime with a noose?” (Byblida quid referam, uetito quae fratris amore / arsit et est laqueo fortiter ulta nefas?). Greek ver­ sions included Apollonius of Rhodes (according to Parth. 11 in The Foundation of Caunus), Aristocritus (also according to Parth. 11, in On Miletus), Conon (preserved by Photius of Byzantium), Nicaenetus (quoted by Parth. 11), Antoninus Liberalis (30), Nicander (II), and Hyginus (243.6). See Anderson 1972, 449–50 ad 450–665; White 1982; Celoria 1992, 193–95; Lightfoot 1999, 433–36; and Jenkins 2000, 440–41, for the liter­ ary tradition. On Ovid, see also Bömer 1969–1986, 414–15 ad 450–471; Otis 1970, 386– 88, 415–17; and Hollis 1977, 92 ad 283–84. 23. See in the introduction “Ovid on the Intersection” for evidence and references connecting Phaedra to ­these maidens: Scylla, Byblis, and Myrrha.

NOTES TO PA GES 44– 46

151

24. See further Larmour 1990 and Curley 2013, 59–94. 25. See OLD, fero, 38, “to get (from a source), derive”; see Hinds 1998, 2, on feruntur’s use as an Alexandrian footnote. 26. In some cases, love for a husband (e.g., Eur. Alcestis, Helen) or a son (Eur. Ion) has a happy ending. 27. Ehwald prints “quam” at Her. 4.1. 28. For Phaedra’s elegiac self-­presentation, see Jacobson 1974, 147; Casali 1995, 3; Davis 1995; and Fulkerson 2005, 126. 29. Jacobson (1974, 147) points to the “juxtaposition of ‘geo­g raph­i­cal’ adjectives” which emphasize geographic and national distance. “The current relationship, wife and son of Theseus, virtually ­mother and child, is completely obscured,” and puella viro stands in as a new relation, “sharp with erotic-­elegiac overtones.” 30. See James 2003, 47–52, on the relationship of the puella and ego to the tradi­ tional figure of vir as husband, and 71–107 on the avida puella. 31. Her argument resembles the argument Plutarch attributes to Phaedra in (pre­ sumably) Hipp. I: “that he made a Phaedra who accuses Theseus that she lusted a­ fter Hippolytus due to his transgressions” (ὅτι τήν τε Φαίδραν καὶ προσεγκαλοῦσαν τῷ Θησεῖ πεποίηκεν ὡς διὰ τὰς ἐκείνου παρανομίας ἐρασθεῖσαν τοῦ Ἱππολύτου, Mor. 27f–28a; Barrett 1964, 18). In Sophocles’s and Seneca’s Phaedra, Theseus has been ab­ sent for so long, he is believed to be dead (TrGF 4.686; Barrett 1964, 12). 32. See Rosati 1985, 119, on Phaedra’s construction of the two as equally victimized by Theseus. See Lyne 1980, 39–40, for Catullus’s use of iniuria as infidelity, especially in poem 72. He argues that, b­ ecause it engages the language of amicitia with which Catullus describes the sacred foedus between himself and Lesbia, “Catullus means that Lesbia has not just committed wrongs against him (i.e., acts of infidelity), she has committed them with such wilful and inimical intent that the w ­ holeness of Catullan love (exalted amicitia) is now impossible” (40). See also Oliensis 1997a, who charts how the client-­patron relationship of amicitia and its vocabulary is translated into the ele­ giac code in the relationship between lover and beloved in Tibullus, Propertius, and Horace. 33. Jacobson (1974, 156) contrasts the Ovidian Phaedra’s renunciation of her ma­ ternal role to the Euripidean in Hipp. II, who maintains her loyalty to her husband and ­children to the end. Gordon (1997, 283) associates the Ovidian Phaedra’s attitude ­toward her ­children with her masculine repre­sen­ta­tion in the poem. 34. ­These lines in effect answer the question Hippolytus poses to the nurse in Hipp. II, 651–55: “Even so, O base ­human, you at least have come to make an agreement with us for my ­father’s untouchable bed. I ­will cleanse with streams of ­water, pouring them into my ears. In fact, how could I be a base man, I who think I am impure ­because I have heard such t­ hings” (ὡϲ καὶ ϲύ γ᾽ ἡμῖν πατρόϲ, ὦ κακὸν κάρα,/ λέκτρων ἀθίκτων ἦλθεϲ ἐϲ ϲυναλλαγάϲ·/ ἁγὼ ῥυτοῖϲ ναϲμοῖϲιν ἐξομόρξομαι/ ἐϲ ὦτα κλύζων. πῶϲ ἂν οὖν εἴην κακόϲ,/ ὃϲ οὐδ᾽ ἀκούϲαϲ τοιάδ᾽ ἁγνεύειν δοκῶ). Barrett (1964, 18) and Webster (1967, 67), based on fragments from Hipp. I, argue that in this play Phaedra attempts to persuade Hippolytus to seize rule from his ­father (TrGF 5.1.432–34). This is perhaps Ovid’s source for her argument in this passage. 35. In her self-­presentation, Phaedra makes some attempt to justify her desire and the renegotiation of kinship roles it requires by calling the institution which governs

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them, pietas (131), out of date (rustica, 132), and by appealing to divine examples and their absolute power over the mos maiorum (133–36). 36. Cf., e.g., Prop. 1.13.29. Addressing Gallus, Propertius calls his own girlfriend most like Leda who was worthy of Jupiter (Ioue dignae Ledae). See also Am. 1.3.20; Tib. 2.6.43; Sulpicia [Tib.] 3.1.8, 3.13.10. 37. Jacobson 1974, 150. The use of nequitia in an elegiac context to mean “deprav­ ity,” or “wantonness” [OLD, nequitia, 1,3], can be traced back to Gallus. Hollis 2007, fr. 145. At the start of Am. 2, Ovid figures his elegiac poetry as tales of his nequitia: “I have written this, too . . . ​I, that Naso, poet of my own wantonness” (Hoc quoque composui . . . ​/ ille ego nequitiae Naso poeta meae, Am. 2.1.1–2). When Phaedra claims she does not com­ mit adultery ­because of nequitia, she is, perhaps, implying that it was not Ovid’s poetry which gave her the idea. For uses of the word in elegy, see also, e.g., Prop. 1.6.26, 1.15.38, 2.5.1–2, 2.24.6, 3.10.24, 3.19.10; Ovid Am. 1.13.32, 3.4.10, 3.1.17, 3.11.37, 3.14.17. 38. In Hipp. II, by contrast, Phaedra’s attempts to conceal her abject desire are foiled by a meddlesome and rhetorically persuasive nurse. Rosati (1985, 122–28) outlines traces of the argument given by the Euripidean nurse, filtered by the Roman comic and elegiac lena, who serves a similar function, in Phaedra’s own arguments. 39. Cf. Prop. 1.1.1–8; Ovid, Am. 1.1.1–4, 21–30, especially Cupid’s direct address to the poet: “quod” que “canas, uates, accipe” dixit “opus!”, 24; to Her. 4.13–14. Cf. Am. 2.1.3: hoc quoque iussit Amor, to Her. 4.11. See Jacobson, 149. 40. See Luck 1969, 61, 121–22, for this theme in Roman erotic elegy. The poet-­ praeceptor of Ov. Ars am. is one example of a male elegiac subject who claims domi­ nance. He offers as analogy, Achilles’s submission to his own praeceptor, Chiron: uerberibus iussas praebuit ille ma­nus (Ars am. 1.16), an analogy which echoes Phaedra’s reported promise of Cupid that Hippolytus w ­ ill offer his conquered hands to her: dabit victas ferreus ille ma­nus (Her. 4.14). The praeceptor boasts, however, that his captive ­will be Cupid himself (Ars am. 1.21–24), from which he ­will exact revenge for the submissive elegiac position the praeceptor held in the past. H ­ ere the exception proves the rule that the submissive position, although feminized, belongs programmatically to the male ele­ giac amator, a gendered position his exemplary masculine analog demonstrates. 41. See Davis 1995, 44, on Phaedra taking the masculine role of amator. 42. Spentzou (2003, 43–84) has noted a tension in the Heroides between a longing for innocence and the ars associated with love. For Phaedra’s letter as deceptive, see Farrell 1998 and Lindheim 2003, 27–28 and passim. Such an interpretation is in line with the general precepts of cultus as a means of deceptive seduction (Ars am. 1.611; 3.101–28, 155, 210); on this topic, see Kauffman 1986, 52 and Conte 1994, 54a. 43. See Palmer 1898, 310 ad. Her. 4.86. for a note on militia applied to hunting; see also OLD, 1d., for figurative use with other “occupations or ser­vices.” Some MSS read materia for militia, strengthening the metapoetic resonance. We see an example of militia amoris in Am. 1.9.1: “­Every lover is a soldier, and Cupid has his own camp” (Militat omnis amans, et habet sua castra Cupido). See Lyne 1980, 71–78, for this theme in Roman erotic elegy. 44. See Palmer 1898, 310 ad loc. and OLD, numerus, 12 b., “the successive move­ ments performed in an exercise,” which cites this line in its examples. Ovid is fond of puns on the elegiac meter, the alternus versus; cf., e.g., Am. 1.1.3–4: “the following verse was equal; Cupid is said to have laughed and stolen one foot” (par erat inferior

NOTES TO PA GES 49– 52

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uersus; risisse Cupido / dicitur atque unum surripuisse pedem); 17–18; cf. Am. 3.1.7–10. See Sharrock 1990 for a discussion of this use of alternus in Roman erotic elegy. 45. The argument for alternating love with hunting also echoes the argument of Hippolytus’s Therapon in Hipp. II (88–120) and in Hipp. I (TrGF 5.1.428), addressed to Hippolytus by an unidentified speaker. 46. Phaedra does refer to Aphrodite’s curse of the Cretan w ­ omen (53–66), but only in order to justify her desire as an unavoidable inherited trait. See below for further discussion. 47. Butler 1993, 12–14 and passim. 48. See Gill 1990; Goff 1990; and McClure 1999, 112–57. Casali (1995, 11) points out the irony of the Ovidian Phaedra’s “optimistic unconcern about being seen to­ gether with Hippolytus,” for she herself has identified the source of Venus’s anger against her ­family as the Sun, who saw Venus and Mars together. 49. The tone of this couplet recalls Ars am. 3.113, where the poet-­praeceptor an­ nounces to his female students: “previously t­ here was an uncultivated simplicity; but now Rome is golden” (simplicitas rudis ante fuit; nunc aurea Roma est). This is perhaps another clue that the two proj­ects ­were simultaneous and/or we are meant to read Phaedra’s epistle as if she has read the Ars. This last suggestion does not exclude the possibility that Ovid has written books of the Ars as a prequel, so to speak, of his ­earlier amatory poetry. 50. In addition to Phaedra’s depiction as a stepmother in love with her stepson in Euripides and Sophocles, the fear of the “amorous stepmother” also appears in Latin lit­er­a­ture and declamation. In Rome, a man would likely remarry a w ­ oman of child­ bearing age. In some cases the wife may be the same age or younger than her hus­ band’s adult ­children. Such circumstances have been cited as pos­si­ble ­causes for this fear. Gray-­Fow 1988, 748–49; Treggiari 1991, 401; and Watson 1995, 136–39. 51. See Gray-­Fow 1988; Treggiari 1991, 391–92; and Watson 1995, 92–206, for the tradition of the saeva noverca in Latin lit­er­a­ture and its basis in Roman life and law. See Watson 1995, 109–13, for the portrayal of Phaedra as a saeva noverca in Latin lit­er­a­ture. 52. The authenticity of the female voice in Heroides is much contested. Many follow Harvey’s (1992) conclusions regarding transvestite ventriloquism, described above, nn. 12 and 13. See, e.g., Gordon 1997 and Lindheim 2003. Fulkerson (2005, 5) argues that the gendered voice is entirely a construction, and not affected by biology. 53. As I argue elsewhere, Sulpicia’s elegiac speaking voice is qualitatively dif­fer­ent; Westerhold 2018. See also Fulkerson 2017, 46–53, for evidence of ­women’s literacy and a discussion of “feminine” Latin. 54. Casali (1995, 1–3) notes that the intrusion of a letter into a preexisting story, in this instance, complicates the central prob­lem in the story, i.e., the revelation of Pha­ edra’s desire. In addition, he notes the act of writing “is already a forewarning of Pha­ edra’s (tragic) letter to Theseus” (1). 55. “One could not ask for a better example of Jost’s category of kinetic letters, as Phaedra’s letter instigates violent action and reaction, links suicide with hom­ic­ ide, and requires divine intervention to ‘rewrite’ its contents” (88). See Rosenmeyer 2001, 65– 66 and 65 nn. 12 and 13, for an explanation of the difference between “communica­ tive” and “kinetic” letters as formulated by Jost.

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56. As Rosenmeyer (2001, 90) points out, Phaedra’s letter “speaks” to Theseus: “it shouts, it shouts, the inconsolable tablet” (βοᾶι βοᾶι δέλτοϲ ἄλαϲτα, Eur., Hipp. II, 877). See further Rosenmeyer 2001, 61–97. 57. In the House of Jason, for example, Phaedra’s nurse carries wax tablets. See chap­ ter 1 and Valladares 2021, 158–73, for discussion of this fresco. See further Jacobson 1974, 146, n.11; Casali 1995, 3, 13 n.12; Bergmann 1996; and Jolivet 2001, 249–50, n. 78, for fur­ ther references. See also Leo 1878, 178–79, who argues for a seduction letter in Hipp. I. 58. As noted ­earlier, Webster (1967) argues that in Hipp. I Hippolytus veiled himself and prob­ably left the stage in reaction to Phaedra’s approach (65, 67); see Barchiesi 1993, 337, who connects Phaedra’s invitation to read with Theseus’s unsuspecting opening of her letter in Hipp. II. 59. Watson (1995, 137) draws this distinction between the Greek and Roman l­egal status of stepmother. In Greece the ­union would only be considered adultery. See Wat­ son 1995, 137 n. 11, for further bibliography on incest between stepparent and stepchild. At the end of the first c­ entury CE, a­ fter incest prohibitions had been relaxed, to the point that even a paternal u ­ ncle was allowed to marry his niece, a stepmother was one of four affines still prohibited to a Roman man as a marriage partner (Corbier 1991, 177). 60. Bassi (1998, 42–98) argues that all mediated speech in Greek lit­er­a­ture and drama, such as a letter, is marked as deceptive in opposition to unmediated dialogue. 61. See Goff 1990, 1–26 and passim, and Zeitlin 1996, 219–84, on this theme in Euripides’s Hipp. II. 62. The Euripidean Phaedra manages to suppress Hippolytus’s name entirely. It is the nurse who names him, in connection with the issue of inheritance should Phaedra die (310), and ­after Phaedra has revealed her desire (352). His name, spoken aloud, is the trigger for Phaedra’s speech and revelation of her desire (310–53). 63. ὅστιϲ ποθ᾽ οὗτόϲ ἐσθ᾽, ὁ τῆϲ Ἀμαζόνοϲ, Eur., Hipp. II, 351. When the nurse names Hippolytus a second time, identifying him as Phaedra’s beloved (“Do you say Hippolytus?” Ἱππόλυτον αὐδᾷϲ; 352), Phaedra refuses any responsibility for the rev­ elation, saying “you are hearing your own words, not mine” (ϲοῦ τάδ᾽, οὐκ ἐμοῦ κλύειϲ, 352). See Casali 1995, 2–3. 64. ὦ τάλαινα παῖ Κρηϲία, Eur., Hipp. II, 372. Casali (1995, 2–3) adds to the allu­ sion the ste­reo­type of the Cretan liar, pointing to Phaedra’s lying letter in Hipp. II, the current letter, and her elegiac pose. Fulkerson (2005, 129), in contrast, reads Phaedra’s self-­identification as an allusion to and an identification with her s­ ister, Ariadne. 65. Cf., e.g., Eur., Hipp. II, 331: “out of shame we contrive good” (ἐκ τῶν γὰρ αἰσχρῶν ἐσθλὰ μηχανώμεθα). 66. See Cairns 1993, 10–11; Kaster 1997, 3; and Scheff 1997, 209, for the similarities between αἰδώς and pudor. 67. See Kaster 1997 on the threat of judgment connoted by the word pudor. 68. Kaster 1997, 12–14. Kaster does note, however, that “pudor can also denote . . . ​ a desire to avoid be­hav­ior that ­causes [the feeling of shame]” (4). 69. See Newlands 1995, 146–74, esp. 168, for the association of female speech, sexu­ ality, and shame in the tales of Lucretia (Fasti 2) and Myrrha (Met. 10). 70. Aphrodite announces that she has inspired Phaedra with a love for Hippolytus and intends to reveal her desire to Theseus as a means to punish Hippolytus (Eur., Hipp. II, 21–50).

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71. “I have a teacher of daring and courage . . . ​Eros, the most unconquerable god of all” (ἔχω δὲ τόλμηϲ καὶ θράϲουϲ διδάϲκαλον . . . ​Ἔρωτα, πάντων δυϲμαχώτατον θεόν (Hipp. I, TrGF 5.1.430; Webster 1967, 67). In Sophocles’s Phaedra, unattributed dialogue expresses the power of Eros (TrGF 4.684; Barrett 1964, 23). In Hipp. II, the power of Aph­ rodite and Eros is described, e.g., by the nurse (433–81) and the chorus (525–64, 1268–82). 72. Jacobson (1974, 148) reads the repetition of ter as a parody of an epic motif. 73. Compare the precepts of Ovid’s poet-­praeceptor in his Ars am. (1.505–24). In fact, his exemplars include Phaedra and Hippolytus: “Phaedra loved Hippolytus, and he was not very dressed up” (Hippolytum Phaedra, nec erat bene cultus, amauit, 1.511; in addition to Ariadne and Theseus: “Theseus carried off Minos’s d­ aughter, al­ though he had not adorned his t­ emples with a hair pin,” Minoida Theseus / abstulit, a nulla tempora comptus acu, 1.509–10). Jacobson (1974, 150) reads Phaedra as a poet-­ praeceptor in her own right. See further Fulkerson 2005, 1–22. 74. See Armstrong 2006, 1–28, 109–66, on Cretan w ­ omen and sexuality, and 12–16 for a summary of Roman literary receptions of the myths of Cretan w ­ omen. 75. The chorus of Hipp. II also provides examples of victims of Aphrodite and Eros, Iole and Semele (545–64). It is noteworthy that Iole is likened to a bacchant (ὅπωϲ τε βάκ-­/χαν, 550–51), which is echoed in the antistrophe in the same metrical position by the genitive of Bacchus (τοκάδα τὰν διγόνοιο Βάκ-­/χου, 560–61) in a phrase which identifies Semele. The echo reinforces the similarity of the two ­women while drawing attention to the similarity of ­women ­under the influence of Aphrodite and Bacchus. 76. Phaedra offers a second Alexandrian cata­logue of actively desiring w ­ omen and their beloved hunters—­Cephalus and Aurora, Cinyras and Venus, and Meleager and Atalanta (93–104). The list provides examples which seem to be straightforward ana­ logs to Phaedra and Hippolytus. Again, as Jacobson (1974, 153) notes, the list alludes to Hipp. II by repeating examples used by the nurse (Cephalus and Eos, Zeus and Se­ mele, 454–56) in order to persuade Phaedra not to commit suicide. Her list appears to be an attempt to construct a more inclusive list of the desires that count. Phaedra’s examples are presented as egalitarian love affairs where lover and beloved vacillate from female to male, but the denouement of each mythological love contains the seeds of tragedies. See further Jacobson 1974, 153–54; Casali 1995, 6–7; and Davis 1995, 53–55. 77. Jacobson (1974) argues that the theme of deceit functions “as if to underscore the presence of deceit in her own attempt to win Hippolytus” (156). 78. Hipp. II, 1198–248. Hippolytus actually dies in the com­pany of Theseus, but his accident is ultimately the cause of his death. Seneca l­ater uses the same verb to de­ scribe Hippolytus’s dismemberment in his Phaedra, when his ­horses tear his body from the tree trunk where he is impaled: “and they end the delay and tear apart their mas­ ter at the same time” (et pariter moram / dominumque rumpunt, 1101–2). 79. McKeown (1998) comments, in connection with Am. 2.18, on the scholarly con­ sensus that 2.18.19–20 refers to the Ars, indicating the work was recently begun at the time of the second edition of Am., while Her. would have just been finished, and he suggests that the two proj­ects may well have overlapped. McKeown 1989, vol 1, 74– 89, vol. 3, 384–86: “The pre­sent tense of profitemur (19) and scribimus (22) seems to sug­ gest that Ovid was actively engaged on more than one of his amatory works when 2.18 was written, perhaps not only the Amores and Heroides, but also, if line 19 refers to the Ars . . . ​that poem as well” (1, 87).

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80. See in the introduction “Generic Per­for­mances” for a more detailed discussion of Am. 3.1. 81. In Medea’s letter to Jason, Medea announces that her mind is conceiving of something greater (Nescio quid certe mens mea maius agit, Her. 12.212), which Hinds (1993, 39–40) argues is a reference to her tragic tradition. 82. See Ferrari 2002, 54–56, 72–86, for a discussion of αἰδώς in Greek art and lit­er­a­ ture along with further references. See Kaster 1997, 3 n. 5, for the meta­phor of pudor as a garment with references and comparanda. Ovid’s text echoes Vergil’s Dido, who also acknowledges both her “crime” and the need to “cover” it. T ­ here, too, pudor motivates this per­for­mance, for she has sworn an oath to pudor (4.27), and, although she ­later dis­ regards her reputation and openly expresses her desire, she does so ­under the name of “wife,” again a per­for­mance: “and, in fact, Dido is not moved by appearance or reputa­ tion nor is she now contemplating a secret affair: she calls it a marriage, she hides the crime with this name” (neque enim specie famaue mouetur / nec iam furtiuum Dido meditatur amorem: / coniugium uocat, hoc praetexit nomine culpam, Aen. 4.170–73). See further Gildenhard and Zissos 2013, 96 and 125 n. 35. The female poet Sulpicia, by contrast, explic­itly denies pudor power over her be­hav­ior, a poetic move which expresses both a sexual desire and her renunciation of normative feminine be­hav­ior. See Keith 1997 and Merriam 2005 on Dido as a pos­si­ble literary paradigm for Sulpicia. See Fulkerson 2017 for a very recent introduction and commentary on Sulpicia’s poems. Fabre-­Serris (2009) argues that Her. 4 (as well as 15) alludes directly to the Sulpician corpus. See further Westerhold 2018 on Sulpicia and Ovid with further bibliography. 83. Casali (1995) argues that the elegiac genre cannot change the tragic story: “When the expressive code is changed the story does not change: Phaedra ­will die, Hippolytus ­will die. . . . ​­Behind the distorting filter of elegiac language the reader rec­ ognizes the prefiguration of the ‘tragic’ end of the story” (5). See also Verducci 1985, 19–20, who notes that allusions in the epistles work against the heroines: “The fictive speaker thus becomes, through her own words, the involuntary and unconscious vic­ tim of the poet’s authorial and often allusively literary parody” (19–20). 84. See chapter 1 for a discussion of ­these lists. 85. φεῦ / εἴθ᾿ ἦν ἐμαυτὸν προϲβλέπειν ἐναντίον / ϲτάνθ᾽, ὡϲ ἐδάκρυϲ᾽ οἷα πάϲχομεν κακά. 86. Fulkerson (2005, 146) argues that “the Heroides provoke us to ask to what extent a heroine has the textual authority to change her story but, more importantly, to what extent our own literary experience ­will permit her to effect this change” (146). 87. Contra Verducci 1985, 31–32 and passim, who, while also connecting the issue of allusive tension to the question of poetic authority, argues that the epistolary writ­ ers seem “real” ­because they successfully defy expectations set up by their source texts. 88. Quoting Erasmus, Harvey continues her argument that, although w ­ omen are associated with disguise and deception, they remain “undisguisable (‘a ­woman is still a ­woman . . . ​no ­matter what role she may try to play’)” (62). 89. See Rabinowitz 1991 for the female body as the object of the male pornographic gaze. 90. This is the temporal aspect of Curley’s (2013, 95–133) argument that Ovid’s re­ interpretation of Greek tragedy in the Metamorphoses effects changes to the story al­ lowed by the generic transition from drama, which limits spatial and temporal

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aspects, “here-­and-­now,” to epic, which affords seemingly unlimited narrative possi­ bilities in the “there-­and-­then.” 91. See Ahl 1985, 211–12; Janan 1991, 240; Raval 2001, 295–96 and passim; and Rosenmeyer 2001, 19. In addition to the pun on her name, Ahl draws attention to Byb­ lis’s connection to w ­ ater, in which papyrus grows. She is turned into a stream which bears her name. Her ­mother, Cyane, is a ­water nymph and her grand­father, the river Maeander, a river, Janan (1991, 243) notes, which acts as an “artistic paradigm” in the Met. See also Boyd 2006 on the Maeander river as a model and map, so to speak, for the narrative structure of the Met. Ahl (1985, 211–13) also points out Byblis’s connection to Io, another “writer,” who was reported by Apollodorus and Plutarch to have wandered to the town Byblos when searching for her lost son; to Daedalus through their shared reliance on wax; and to the Sibyl, acoustically. See Ahl 1985, 144–50, for his discussion of the Io episode. 92. Lindheim (2003, 22–23) notes that the letter writer (of the Heroides) is ­free of “the impediment of an ordering, external narrating voice that might accord to her tale secondary status, curbing its length and de-­accentuating its importance” (23). 93. Kristeva (1984, 66–67) emphasizes the need for a semiotic “code” to be shared in order to function as a means of communication: “[A h ­ uman being’s] semiotic ‘code’ is cut off from any pos­si­ble identification u ­ nless it is assumed by the other (first the ­mother, then the symbolic and/or the social group)” (66). Looking to social anthro­ pology, she further explores the shared dependence of the social and the symbolic on the thetic (72–85). Responding to Lévi-­Strauss (1969, 249, n. 90), Kristeva remarks, “All ­things stemming from social symbolism, hence kinship structures and myth itself, are symbolic devices, made pos­si­ble by the thetic, which has taken on social symbolism as such” (74, emphasis added). 94. Anderson (1972, 451–52 ad 468–71) notes that “Ovid’s dramatic sensitivity ­here anticipates Freud.” He likens Byblis’s erotic dream to the “subconscious” (451 ad 464–65). Jocasta, another tragic heroine, but one whose incest offered a model for Freud, also speaks of dreams of incest in Sophocles’s play Oedipus Tyrannos: “do not fear marriage to your m ­ other: for many mortals already have lain with their m ­ other in dreams” (cὺ δ᾿ ἐc τὰ μητρὸc μὴ φοβοῦ νυμφεύματα· / πολλοὶ γὰρ ἤδη κἀν ὀνείραcιν βροτῶν / μητρὶ ξυνηυνάcθηcαν, 980–82). In her account, however, the dreams are merely wish fulfill­ ment. See Bassi 1998, 31–33, on Freud and this play. See Scioli 2015 for dreams in Latin el­ egy and 212–14 for a discussion of Byblis’s dream. For a summary of Freudian and Jungian dream theories, see, e.g., Freud 1915; Jung 1969; Segal 1984; and Csapo 2005, 86–110. 95. See in the introduction “Ovid on the Intersection” for a detailed discussion of the correspondences between t­ hese texts and further references. See Janan 1991, 246, n. 18; Raval 2001, 289, 300; and Curley 2013, 84–94, 183–84, for correspondences with Phaedra’s epistle (Her. 4); and Raval 2001 for correspondences with Her. in general. See Nagle 1983; Ahl 1985, 214; Rosati 1985, 121–22; Verducci 1985, 190–97; Larmour 1990; and Tissol 1997, 36–52, for a comparison of Phaedra’s epistle (Her. 4) and the Byblis and Myrrha episodes in Ovid’s Met. 96. Contra Anderson 1972, 451–52 ad 468–71, who argues that her suppression of spes obscenas (468) while awake “implies that Byblis has become aware of her desire.” 97. OLD, obsc(a)enus, 2–4; “Obscenum is said from scena; this word Accius writes, as the Greeks [do], scena . . . ​for that reason a shameful ­thing is obscaenum ­because it

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should not be spoken publicly except on the stage (scaena)” (obscenum dictum ab scena; eam, ut Graeci, aut Accius scribit scenam . . . ​quare turpe ideo obscaenum quod nisi in scaena palam dici non debet, Varro, Ling. 7.96); Miller (2004, 34), citing Barton (1993, 142 n.173) citing Varro (above), uses the En­glish word obscene to describe Catull. 64.62–67, where the description of Ariadne violates her subjectivity in a way that is pornographic, obscene: “The alienation of ­either the flesh or the experience from the self, its specu­ larization ob scaenum (for the stage) is the essence of the obscene.” Ernout and Meillet (1967 ad loc.) report that the etymology of obscenus, -­a, -­um is unknown, but also conjecture a connection between obscenus and sc(a)ena from the Greek word σκηνή (“stage”) through an Etruscan intermediary. 98. OLD, visum, -­i, n [pple. of VIDEO], a. “a vision (usu. as presented in a dream).” 99. “We see the condition of the subject of signifiance as a heterogeneous contra­ diction between two irreconcilable ele­ments—­separate but inseparable from the pro­ cess in which they assume asymmetrical functions” (Kristeva, 1984, 82). Kristeva’s (1984, 17) term, “signifiance,” refers to the pro­cess of signification associated with lit­ erary practice and the text, regulated by social, cultural, and ­legal systems but trans­ forming ­these systems if it is introduced into their discourse. See Kristeva 1984, 81–82, 202–7, for a full description of this relationship in the pro­cess of signification. 100. See also Ahl 1985, 213–14, in his discussion of this episode. He identifies the “assault upon fixed forms of words” as a larger theme of social constraint and self-­ expression in the Met. 101. The opening of Myrrha’s tale makes this point even more explicit: choose one man from your many suitors, Myrrha, but d­ on’t let it be that one, i.e., the one excluded by the incest taboo, your f­ather (“From everywhere the finest princes desire you; from the entire east young men are ­here to compete for your hand; out of them all choose one for your husband, Myrrha, only let one not be among them all,” undique lecti / te cupiunt proceres, totoque oriente iuuentus / ad thalami certamen adest: ex omnibus unum / elige, Myrrha, uirum—­dum ne sit in omnibus unus, Met. 10.315–18). 102. Kristeva (1984) argues that poetic mimesis “dissolves” the pro­cess of creating meaning, b­ ecause its mimetic denotation points to a solely discursive construction (­there is not a real object as a referent), and its mimetic enunciator is likewise solely discursive. “Mimesis, in our view, is a transgression of the thetic when truth is no longer a reference to an object that is identifiable outside of language,” and for this reason, “mimesis and the poetic language . . . ​prevent the imposition of the thetic from hiding the semiotic pro­cess that produces it” (58). This puts the subject of enunciation “in pro­ cess/on trial.” See 57–59 for further discussion of mimesis and meaning. See esp. 16–17, 62–71, and 99–106 for an explanation of the “text” and its signifying practices. 103. Her geo­g raph­i­cal location doubles as a genealogy, since the town is named ­after her f­ ather: “and in the Asian land you constructed walls holding the name of the builder” (et in Aside terra / moenia constituis positoris habentia nomen, 448–49). 104. Perhaps another aspect of Byblis’s corporeal repre­sen­ta­tion is her letter. Tissol (1997, 44–46) argues that Byblis’s letter foregrounds the physicality of the written word, especially when she erases soror and when her writing spills into the margins of the page. 105. Barchiesi 1993. 106. Kristeva (1986, 192 and passim) connects the diachronic characteristic of syntax in language to the idea of linear time. As a consequence, the temporality of grammar

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informs the “thesis” of the subject in relation to the predicate in a sentence (1984, 54–55), and the positing of a subject in culture (1984, 66–67, 72) includes a temporal delay u ­ ntil her symbolic role is recognized by other members of the community. When one consid­ ers, as Butler does, the positing of the subject as a performativity requiring repetition (1993, 12–14 and passim; 2000; 2008), the symbolic is l­imited by time (for each citation is only temporary, never permanent), but si­mul­ta­neously relies on time (as the continual citation of the symbolic role or law over time creates the illusion of permanence). 107. Lindheim (2003, 13–77 and passim) argues that the epistolary form of the Heroides gives the author “the authority to arrange the narrative as she sees fit, in agreement with her own perspective on events” (22–23). 108. See Jacobson 1974, 147, n. 13, who likens Byblis’s deletion to Phaedra’s avoid­ ance of kinship names in Her. 4. See above for a discussion of Phaedra’s strategies of renaming. Farrell (1998, 320–21) argues that the deletion of soror is the act which allows Byblis’s passion to be expressed sincerely. Kennedy’s (2002, 224–26) idea of “tem­ porality” in the Heroides suggests the heroines have the power to reimagine their myths in the epistles: “The heroine’s stories, when we come to read their letters, are, in this sense, already written. . . . ​The epistolary form freezes them at a moment within the story, foreseeing or desiring a par­tic­u­lar ‘end’ to their stories, which may or may not approximate to the ‘end,’ the outcome or consequences, with which the external reader is familiar” (225). Contra Lindheim (2003), who argues that the heroines do not rewrite their stories: “Rather than struggling against the tellings that the prior texts have provided in an effort to rewrite their stories, the heroines choose to inhabit their traditional, recognizable selves and stories” (34). 109. In all of the e­ arlier versions of the Byblis story she is ­sister to Caunus. 110. Byblis’s epistolary greeting may also signal another Euripidean tragic influ­ ence, Aeolus (TGF2, 14–41), for her greeting may recall that of Canace in Heroides 11 (“The ­daughter of Aeolis sends to the son of Aeolis a wish for good health, which she herself does not have,” Aeolis Aeolidae quam non habet ipsa salutem / mittit, Her. 11.1–2). Palmer (1898) does not include this line, which the MS S does. See Palmer 1898, xli–­ xlii, for a very brief discussion of ­these lines in the manuscript tradition. Canace and Macareus, ­children of Aeolus, fell in love and conceived a child. See further Cur­ ley 2013, 70 and n. 30. Raval (2001, 289–90) also points to Met. 9.506–8 as an allusion to Her. 11 (289–90), which characterizes Byblis as a reader of the epistles. See Paratore 1970; Verducci 1985, 191–97; and Raval 2001, 298–304, for further discussion of Byb­ lis’s reading of Heroides and correspondences with Heroides 4 and 11 in par­tic­u­lar. See also Fulkerson 2005, 1–22 and passim, who argues that the heroines of the Heroides demonstrate their familiarity with the literary tradition, including the other letters in the collection, in their own epistolary poetry. Consider also the e­ arlier allusion, “Her right hand holds a pen, an empty wax tablet the other holds” (dextra tenet ferrum, uacuam tenet altera ceram, Met. 9.522), to “My right hand holds the pen, a drawn sword the other holds” (Dextra tenet calamum, strictum tenet altera ferrum, Her. 11.3), noted by Anderson (1972, 454–55 ad 520–22) and Raval (2001, 299–300). 111. And perhaps Ovid’s readers are reminded of Minos’s sexuality. According to a variant reported by Apollodorus (3.1.2) and Antoninus Liberalis (30), Miletus was flee­ ing the sexual advances of Minos. See Anderson 1972, 447–48 ad. 418–49 for a summary of this tradition.

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112. Kaster 1997, 9. See above nn. 66–68 for a discussion of pudor and its associa­ tion with feminine pudicitia. 113. So, too, the poet-­praeceptor of the Ars uses the same verb when he claims ­women cover their desire better (tectius, 1.276). 114. See Raval 2001 for elegiac ele­ments in Byblis’s letter, and 295–96 for Byblis’s sta­ tus as writer and subject of her text, with references to ­woman as tablet in Greek lit­er­a­ ture and ­woman as text (scripta puella) in Roman erotic elegy. See Gold 1993; Keith 1994; and Wyke 1987, 1989, and 2002 for a more general discussion of the scripta puella. 115. See, e.g., McCarthy 1998 on the importance of wax tablets to the elegiac poet. 116. See in chapter 1 “Ars Amatoria 1.283–340” and n. 132 below for Pasiphae in Ars am. See Keith 2008b for the dress of the elegiac puella. 117. Ars am. 3.127–280; See also Rem. Am. 341–44, and Medic. For a recent discus­ sion of the connection of cultus to femininity, see Shumka 2008, 173–78. 118. “Ah unhappy maiden, you eat ­bitter herbs” (a uirgo infelix, herbis pasceris amaris; Calvus, Courtney, fr. 9). 119. “Let us live, my Lesbia, and let us love, and let us assess all the rumors of the rather serious old men as worth one penny” (Viuamus mea Lesbia, atque amemus, / rumoresque senum seueriorum / omnes unius aestimemus assis, 5.1–3). 120. Another Catullan allusion may be perceived in Byblis’s comment that Caunus’s ­mother is neither a tiger nor made of rock or iron, nor did he nurse at the teat of a lion. Cf. Met. 9.613–15 with Catull. 64.154–57: “What lion bore you u ­ nder a lonely rock, what sea conceived you and spat you out from its foaming waves, what Syrtis, what greedy Scylla, what vast Charybdis, you who give rewards such as t­hese in re­ turn for your sweet life?” (quaenam te genuit sola sub rupe leaena, / quod mare conceptum spumantibus exspuit undis, quae Syrtis, quae Scylla rapax, quae uasta Carybdis, / talia qui reddis pro dulci praemia uita?); and Raval 2001, 304–5. 121. Raval 2001, 294. See Luck 1969, 37, 61, 121–22; Lyne 1980; Conte 1994b, 322– 23; Greene 1998; McCarthy 1998; Fitzgerald 2000, 72–77; and Raval 2001, 294, n. 25, for the traditional elegiac theme of servitium amoris, the marginal position assumed by the elegiac subject in relation to his female beloved (reversing gender hierarchies) and in relation to the free-­born Roman male citizen (as slave). Cf. Prop. 1.5.18–19: “Poor man, you w ­ ill not be able to know who or where you are! At that time you ­will be forced to know a painful slavery to our girlfriend” (nec poteris, qui sis aut ubi, nosse miser! / tum graue seruitium nostrae cogere puellae / discere). For Byblis to take this posi­ tion as slave to love is to assume the (emasculated but still) masculine guise of the elegiac amator. As Gold (1993, 89–90) has argued, however, the puella’s role is entirely relational. She therefore oscillates between dominator and dominated in opposition to the amator. See also Greene 1998 and Wyke 2002, 159–62, 172–73, on the puella’s inconsistent depiction as dominator/dominated. 122. In contrast, Phaedra correctly self-­identifies with the puella-­domina (Her. 4.14) in her attempt to construct herself as a feminine elegiac subject; however, her gendered position is blurred by her simultaneous identification with the amator who is compelled to write by love (Her. 4.13–18) and is being punished by Venus (Her. 4.53–54). 123. Byblis follows the example of the majority of the female writers of the Heroides, who draw attention to their own bodies. “Emblematic of their sexual passivity is their habit of dwelling on their own physical appearance while ignoring the man’s” (Gordon

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1997, 280). Phaedra and Sappho are exceptional in this re­spect. In her epistle Phaedra describes her own acquisitive, objectifying gaze on Hippolytus’s exercising body (Her. 4.70–84). Ovid’s repre­sen­ta­tion of her gaze of Hippolytus’s body mimics the male gaze in its eroticization of his movements; however, her scopic plea­sure is not the result of his corporeal suffering but his demonstration of healthy strength. See Gordon 1997, 280–83, for a comparison of the feminine and masculine gaze of the Heroides. See Mulvey [1989] 2009, 19–22 and passim, for her famous formulation of the gaze in film theory. 124. Dura modifies, perhaps, arma (543), or perhaps stands as a substantive: “I bore adversities.” Metrically, however, the short a makes ego an alternative modified noun, adding another feminine elegiac persona (the puella dura) to the costume of puella Byblis wears for her letter. 125. ­These lines recall si­mul­ta­neously the defenseless victim of divine desire Cal­ listo (“She indeed fights back as much as a w ­ oman can [if only you w ­ ere watching, Saturnian: you would have been gentler], she indeed fights back; but what man could a girl overcome, or who could conquer Jupiter?” illa quidem contra, quantum modo femina posset / (adspiceres utinam, Saturnia: mitior esses), / illa quidem pugnat; sed quem superare puella, /quisue Iouem poterat? Met., 2.434–36) and the superfeminine courage of Polyxena (“brave and unhappy and a maiden who is more than w ­ oman,” fortis et infelix et plus quam femina uirgo, Met., 13.451). While both characters are gender bend­ ers to some degree (Callisto refuses suitors and chooses the com­pany of Diana; Po­ lyxena offers her chest to the sword, a masculine death), both are maidens whose stories, like Byblis’s, are poised on the threshold between virginity and marriage. 126. Byblis’s story demonstrates that a writing subject is mute (muta, 655) and un­ able to be effective without a reader. We learn ­later that Byblis, ­after announcing her desire to every­one (“she admits her hope for forbidden desire,” inconcessaeque fatetur / spem Veneris, 638–39) and pursuing her ­brother through Caria (“she follows her fugitive ­brother’s footsteps,” profugi sequitur uestigia fratris, 640), fi­nally collapses in silence (Bybli, iaces, 651; muta iacet, 655). See further Natoli 2017, 33–79, on speech loss in the Metamorphoses accompanying a character’s exclusion from community. 127. See Tissol 1997, 46–47, and Raval 2001, 304, for further discussion of this pas­ sage. “Speech requires the speaker’s presence, from which flow all the rhetorical advan­ tages of gesture, of facial and bodily expression, and most importantly, of adjustment to the perceived response of the audience” (Tissol 1997, 47; emphasis added). See also Rosen­ meyer 1996, 20 and passim, for the unpredictability of epistolary reception. 128. See also Jenkins 2000 for a discussion of this anxiety and its connection with anx­i­eties over literary reception. Byblis’s desire remains in the realm of fantasy ­until it is received and becomes a speech act (439). 129. Cf. Am. 1.12.3–4. The amator has entrusted his tablets containing a letter to his beloved to the servant Nape. When the reply is negative, the amator blames an omen—­ Nape tripping on her way out the door: “­There is something in omens; just now when Nape wished to leave, she hit the threshold with her toes and s­ topped” (omina sunt aliquid: modo cum discedere uellet, / ad limen digitos restitit icta Nape). 130. Am. 1.11 and 1.12, in their narration of the amator’s sending and receiving of love notes, share some of the same anx­i­eties as Byblis’s tale. Both poems stress the power of the messenger and the reader in the success of the amator’s communication. Byblis’s messenger finds a fitting time to deliver the tablets (“The servant, finding a

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fitting time, went,” apta minister / tempora nactus adit, Met. 9.572–73), but when Cau­ nus’s reaction is negative, Byblis suspects that the messenger did not find a fitting time, choosing one in which Caunus was distracted by other m ­ atters (“And perhaps the ser­ vant whom I sent made some m ­ istake; he did not approach him suitably; and he did not choose a fitting time, I suppose, and he did not seek both an unoccupied hour and mind,” forsitan et missi sit quaedam culpa ministri; / non adiit apte, nec legit idonea, credo, / tempora, nec petiit horamque animumque uacantem, 9.610–12). Likewise, the amator enjoins Nape to find a fitting time when his beloved’s mind is f­ree (“Give her the tablets while she is happily f­ree,” uacuae bene redde tabellas, 1.11.15). The stress on the reader’s leisure indicates a desire for intellectual receptivity to the message. 131. I owe this insight to an anonymous reviewer for Cornell University Press. Cf., e.g., Catull. 68.139; Ov. Met. 2.37; Verg. Aen. 4.170–73. See n. 82 above on Dido’s cov­ ering of her culpa. 132. Byblis’s cultus recalls that of Pasiphae (Ars am. 1.303–7), whose fine clothes and mirror, the praeceptor tells her, has no effect on her bull. Byblis’s toilette is meant for the gaze of an inappropriate love interest, and, although we are not told it is to no avail, a literary reader can guess that Caunus is not charmed. Furthermore, Byblis’s jealousy over Caunus’s interest in other ­women (“and if any other is more beautiful to him, she envies her,” et si qua est illic formosior, inuidet illi, Met. 9.463) is reminiscent of Pasiphae’s more absurd, but equally horrifying, Junonian jealousy of her “rivals,” cows (Ars am. 1.313–22). See chapter 1, “Ars Amatoria 1.283–340,” for a discussion of this passage. 133. Zeitlin (1996) has identified the passivity effected by the peripeteia of Greek Attic tragedy, which leads to suffering and pathos, as a feminine experience which tragedy offers to the masculine Greek subject in the audience of Attic tragedy. She argues that the peripeteia results in “a shift . . . ​from active to passive, from mastery over the self and ­others to surrender and grief. Sometimes t­here is madness, always suffering and pa­ thos” (363). See 349–52 for the body as a feminine theme in Attic Greek tragedy. See esp. 247–48 and 351 for Hippolytus’s feminine suffering which reflects Phaedra’s. 134. 9.439–665. I count Byblis’s letter as direct speech ­because it is quoted verba­ tim. Holzberg’s (2002, 134–35) count is 122. Holzberg, moreover, includes only 212 lines in the Byblis episode. I start at 9.439 ­because I consider the paratextual transition part of the frame and significant to the understanding of Ovid’s tale. See Keith 2002, 265, for direct speech as an indication of tragic influence in the Pentheus episode of Met. 3, which contains 167 out of 223 lines. 135. As noted in chapter 1, similes of bacchantes combine the meta­phor of femi­ nine sexuality as a wild, uncontrollable ecstasis with the per­for­mance site of tragedy through the divine figure of Dionysus. 136. See chapter  1 for a full discussion of this theme with comparanda and references. 137. See further Curley 2013, 69–94, 141–59, and passim, for Ovid’s repre­sen­ta­tion of this strug­gle between pudor and amor, which he traces back to tragedy and locates in both Her. 4 and Met. 9. 138. Anderson (1972, 454 ad loc.) translates uiderit as “let Caunus see to his own ac­ tions,” citing other instances of this use at 10.624 and Ars am. 3.671. He argues the phrase “limit[s] the responsibilities of the speaker and place[s] the onus on the other person, the subject of uiderit.” My translation is intentionally ambiguous, allowing the

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multiple meanings of uideo to interact with other uses of the verb in this passage, creat­ ing a semantic network suggesting si­mul­ta­neously sight, spectacle, and appearance. 139. See n. 56 above. 140. Raval 2001, 302. Raval (2001) also argues that Byblis is responding, as a reader of Ovidian elegy, to the poet-­lover’s request that his beloved’s written response be ef­ fusive (2001, 301–2; Am. 1.11.19–22), but, as Raval points out in her discussion of By­ blis’s reading of the Ars (297–98; Ars am. 1.455–58, 3.469–78), hers is a “misreading”: the poet-­lover is asking for an effusive reply. Caunus has shown no erotic interest in Byblis, let alone sent her a love letter to which she responds. Farrell (1998, 319–20) ar­ gues that Byblis’s decision to write at all is a “misreading” of the Ars and a symptom of her gender transgression, since the poet-­praeceptor enjoins his male pupils to use writing as the first tool of seduction (Ars am. 1.437–86). 141. See Janan 1991, 241–42 n. 11, for a summary of opinions on Ovid’s own expansiveness. 142. Janan 1991, 249. Like Byblis’s f­ ather, whose symbolic position defines her love for Caunus as incest, Ovid’s literary “­fathers” define the appropriate material for po­ etry ( Janan 1991, 252–53 and passim): “The poem replicates itself (and, through a com­ plex pattern of allusion, its author Ovid’s poetic ­career), limiting creative options to the already known—­the literary realization of incest” (242). 143. See Keith 2000, 36–64, for this pro­cess in Latin epic, and especially 50–52 in the Met. 144. Janan 1991, 253, n. 36. 145. Kristeva 1982, 4, 67–68, and passim; Butler 1993, 3. 146. In her analy­sis of Antigone, Judith Butler argues, as she also does for the cat­ egories of gender and sex (1993, 2008), that the ideal per­for­mance of a f­ amily role—­ she offers the f­ather—is temporal and open to transformation through each of its iterations and instantiations. “Kinship is not simply a situation she [Antigone] is in but a set of practices that she also performs, relations that are reinstituted in time precisely through the practice of their repetition” (Butler 2000, 57–58). The symbolic position of a f­ ather, a ­sister, or a (step)­mother is thus an “ideality” which is never fully realized in any individual who assumes one of ­these roles. Byblis’s and Phaedra’s bad per­for­ mances of their kinship roles represent a renegotiation of the relations of prohibition in their families and a potential transformation; Butler 2000, 20–21. 147. The poetry of Sulpicia may, in fact, pre­sent an historic female elegiac amator, but her self-­presentation differs in meaningful ways from the male amatores whom Phaedra and Byblis imitate. See further Westerhold 2018; Fulkerson 2017, 46–53, 221– 94; and nn. 53 and 82 above. 148. Janan 1991, 245. Janan argues that Ovid’s text exposes the trap, the author’s complicity in its construction, and the necessity for readers to read beyond such a de­ termined frame of reference. 149. Newlands 1995, 146–74, notes that, in Ovid, “the vocal w ­ oman is often punished for transgressing this [gender and kinship] cultural norm, and typically the punishment takes the form of the silence the ­woman has refused to keep” (166–67). She cites, in addition to Lara and Lucretia in the Fasti, Philomela, Byblis, and Myrrha in the Met. 150. In her study of Ovid’s Met., Enterline (2000, 1–90) notes a similar pattern of displacement in the rape narratives of the Met. She demonstrates a pattern of displacing

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anx­i­eties about poetic authority onto the resisting, ­silent female body who is most often the object and subject of the poetry (e.g., Daphne, Syrinx, Philomela). The narrator embodies the potential for any poetic speaker to be alienated from his/her own tongue in stories about the difference between “his” voice and “her” re­sis­tance” (71). In the stories Enterline considers, “her” resisting body is changed and a­ dopted as a tool for poetry (e.g., Syrinx becomes the pipes of Pan). 151. Farrell (1999, 127–41) argues along similar lines that throughout the Met. the fragility and temporality of the physical poetic corpus is juxtaposed against the immor­ tal poetic voice. “At all points the liability of the text to change is tied to its material, bookish form. Opposed to this is the status of the poem as song, which being immate­ rial is not liable to t­ hose forces that threaten the stability of the material text” (141). 3. Medean Disruptions in Epic and Elegy

1. See Curley 2013, 68–74, on the connection between the elegiac “pathos of love” and tragic “pathos,” to which Ovid draws attention at Tr. 2.381–408. 2. Curley (2013, 180 and passim) refers to this model as a “master Medea code,” which is created through a network of “footnotes” to Ovid’s own poems as well as ­those of ­others. In addition to the cata­logues and citations deployed as examples in his erotic elegy, didactic poetry, and exilic poetry, an example of which we consider in chapter 1, and the two poetic passages ­under consideration in this chapter, the Heroides includes a letter from Medea herself (12), the Met. features vengeful acts by Medea (7.1–424), Althaea (8.445–525), and Hecuba (13.399–575), and Ovid’s lone tragedy is Medea. 3. See the introduction “Ovid on the Intersection” for an explanation of Segal’s term “megatext.” 4. See especially the introduction “Ovid, in Theory” for a full definition of Kriste­ va’s and Butler’s theories of the abject. 5. Freud (1918) famously locates the origin of sacrifice and taboo in the first mur­ der of the ­father. His murder is both an act of vio­lence in retaliation for a perceived wrong (i.e., revenge) and the foundation of social taboos (i.e., laws and civil justice). See Girard 1977 and 1987 and his theory of the “scapegoat” for connections between revenge and justice. Girard theorizes that ritualized vio­lence, committed by the com­ munity and justified by divine or civil law, absorbs the retributive cycle of vendetta culture. See further Csapo 2005, 116–20. Kristeva (1984, 75–83) proposes, as a coun­ terpart to the thetic, sacrifice, and the ritual that accompanies the originary sacrifice, i.e., the dance enacting the vio­lence leading up to first murder. From this dance, notes Kristeva, comes poetry (including and most significantly, tragedy). As a mimesis of what precedes the sacrifice which ultimately forecloses all other vio­lence and makes social order pos­si­ble, this ritual straddles the threshold of the thetic and the semiotic chora. “From its roots in ritual, poetry retains the expenditure of the thetic, its open­ ing on to semiotic vehemence and its capacity for letting jouissance come through” (80). See Csapo 2005, 145–61, for dance, ritual, and sacrifice as theorized by Jane Har­ rison and the Cambridge Ritualists. Joplin (1984) applies Lévi-­Strauss and Girard to Ovid’s Procne, along with other myths. She focuses on the violent institution and main­ tenance of difference through the sacrifice of female discourse.

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6. See Clauss and Johnston 1997 and Heike and Simon 2010 for recent collections of essays which consider a variety of generic Medeas; and Ramus 2012, 41, “Roman Medea,” for essays exploring Medea in Latin lit­er­at­ure. See the introduction of this book for a summary of Medea’s literary treatments. 7. Sophocles may have produced a second edition of Lemniae as Aristophanes did for Clouds. See Sutton 1984, xii, citing Stephanus of Byzantium (fr. 380). 8. See Jacobson 1974, 94–97 and 94 n. 1; Knox 1995, 170–71; and Fulkerson 2005, 41–43, for a list of pos­si­ble sources and further bibliography. See further Jacobson 1974, 94–97, for a brief comparison of Her. 6 with Ap. Rhod. and other sources. ­There have also been many comparative readings of Her. 6 and 12 (the letters of Hypsipyle and Medea). See, e.g., Bloch 2000; and Fulkerson 2005, 40–66 and 40, n. 2 for further bib­ liography. See further Jacobson 1974; Verducci 1985, 33–85; Hinds 1993, 27–34; Heinze 1997, 38–39; Lindheim 2003, 114–33; Michalopoulos 2004; Curley 2013, 181–82; Vaiopoulos 2013; and Filippi 2015. 9. See, e.g., Burkert 1970 and Verducci 1985, 59–62, for the Hypsipyle myth and extant sources. 10. Fulkerson (2005) also reads the Heroides as a meditation on poetic authority and reception in the Augustan era. “For me, the Heroides provoke the metapoetic ques­ tion of ­whether we might be willing to take Briseis’ word (Ovid’s word) over Hom­ er’s, Ariadne’s (Ovid’s) over Catullus’. How wedded are we to the stories we know; how unwilling to view them differently?” 17–18. See chapter 2 for Phaedra’s attempts to change her own story in Her. 4. 11. Michalopoulos (2004, 113 and passim) also argues that the meaning of Hypsi­ pyle’s letter requires a knowledge of her literary tradition and Medea’s but attributes the intertextual play to Ovid alone. 12. Lindheim (2003, 13–77 and passim) applies Lacan’s formulation of desire to in­ terpret the epistolary strategies of the heroines in this collection, wherein some heroines reflect their beloved’s narcissistic fantasies, o ­ thers, helpless ­women. See fur­ ther 114–33 for Lindheim’s reading of Her. 6 and 12. 13. See chapter 1 on the threat abject female desire poses for normative masculine subjects in Ars am. 2. 14. Fulkerson (2005, 2 and passim) calls the writers of Heroides “excessively liter­ ate” and argues that we are to imagine them responding and alluding to each other’s epistles. As Verducci notes, the mimetic aim of epistolary fiction guides readers to at­ tribute literary allusions to e­ arlier work and their ironic effects to the heroines writing the letters (25–26); contra Vaiopoulos (2013, 125 and passim), who argues that Ovid puts the letters in dialogue while the heroines remain oblivious. 15. See further, e.g., Jacobson 1974, 94–108; Verducci 1985, 58–59; and Lindheim 2003, 118, for Hypsipyle’s familiarity with Euripides’s play. 16. “The barbarian of Phasis avenged her spouse’s crime and the v­ iolated oaths of marriage by means of her own c­ hildren” (coniugis admissum uiolataque iura marita est/ barbara per natos Phasias ulta suos, 381–82). See chapter 1 for a discussion of this pas­ sage and the use of mythological paradigms as a language. Cf. Medea in Ov. Met.: “the ­mother wickedly took revenge and fled Jason’s weapons” (ultaque se male mater Iasonis effugit arma, 7.397). Medea’s exemplary status in Her. 6 is also noted by Mi­ chalopoulos (2004, 112).

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17. Line 127 may even look “forward” to tragedies which recounted Medea’s dan­ gerous role as stepmother to Theseus, when she (almost) murders the Athenian hero. Euripides’s Aegeus, Ennius’s Medea Exul, and Accius’s Medea may have all been set in Athens. See Jocelyn 1967, 342–47, for evidence and further bibliography on t­hese plays. Jocelyn (1967, 122, 378–79) identifies fr. 112 as belonging to a second play by Ennius which takes place ­after the events of Euripides’s extant Medea in Athens, also told in Ov. Met. 7.398–424. 18. Along with allusions to other literary works. See Bloch 2000, 202. 19. Jacobson (1974, 102 and passim), who does not believe Ovid exploits fully the potential for irony in the Heroides, remarks, “This letter, however, is one of the major exceptions. Irony is so pervasive, so informing a ­factor that one is almost inclined to suggest that the poem exists for the irony in it,” 102. 20. See Leigh 1997, 607, on the metapoetic significance of fama in this epistle. See further Feeney 1991, 184–87, 247–49, and Hardie 2012 on fama as literary tradition and poetic innovation in Verg. Aen. and Ov. Met. (12.53–58; 15.871–79). 21. Jacobson (1974, 98 and passim) connects the theme of “telling, saying” to Hyp­ sipyle’s opinion that Jason has insulted her and failed to recognize her merit. See also Leigh 1997, 607. 22. Ross 1975, 78. See further Conte 1986, 57–69; Hinds 1998, 1–5; Miller 1993; and Curley 2013, 154, on the Alexandrian footnote and other techniques for signaling intertexts and allusions in Roman poetry. See chapter 2 n. 25 for an example of an Al­ exandrian footnote in Phaedra’s epistle at Her. 4.5. See OLD, fero, 38, “to get (from a source), derive.” 23. Also identified by Michalopoulos (2004, 97) and Vaiopoulos (2013, 128). See Miller 1993, 157–58 n. 10 for an example of narratur as an allusive cue at Met. 7.826–27. 24. Conte 1986, 57–63; Hinds 1998, 14–15; and Miller 1993, 153. See also Conte 1986, 57–63; Solodow 1988, 227–28; Miller 1993; and Hinds 1998, 3–16, for further discussion and examples. 25. Cf. Ars am. 2.551: “I remember, her own husband had given kisses” (oscula uir dederat, memini, suus). 26. See Armstrong 2006, 32–37, for Jason’s role as cunning storyteller at Ap. Rhod. 3.997–1004; 1083–101. 27. Noted by Knox 1995, 176. “He having fixed his eyes on the ground” (ὁ δ᾽ ἐπὶ χθονὸς ὄμματ᾽ ἐρείσας, Ap. Rhod. 1.784). 28. Ag. 861–65: “First of all, it is a terrible evil for a ­woman without her man to sit alone in the h ­ ouse, hearing many injurious reports: and for one man to arrive, then an­ other to bring an additional evil worse than the last, shouting out misfortune for the ­house” (τὸ μὲν γυναῖκα πρῶτον ἄρσενος δίχα / ἧσθαι δόμοις ἔρημον ἔκπαγλον κακόν, / πολλὰς κλύουσαν κληδόνας παλιγκότους˙ / καὶ τὸν μὲν ἥκειν, τὸν δ᾽ ἐπεσφέρειν κακοῦ / κάκιον ἄλλο, πῆμα λάσκοντας δόμοις). Likewise, Sophocles’s De­ ianira receives news about Heracles from a messenger (Trach. 180–290). 29. Jacobson (1974, 101) comments on the “dramatic” nature of the stranger. 30. The messenger in Trachiniae, for example, is Deianira’s son Hyllus. He describes the gruesome death of Heracles (749–812). 31. Lines 31–38 are considered by some to be spurious. See Jacobson 1974, 99–100, for an explanation of this opinion and a persuasive argument for their authenticity.

NOTES TO PA GES 85– 87

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32. Noted by Knox (1995, 186). Cf., Sen. Med., 123: incerta vecors mente non sana feror; Leo 1878, 166–67; Knox 1986, 211. See Curley 2013, 37–49, on Ovid’s Medea, the chro­ nology and further bibliography. 33. Knox (1995, 191–2) accepts Koch’s emendation se iubet. Other readings include avet, favet, iuvet. 34. See the introduction “Generic Per­for­mances” and chapter 2 n. 134 for direct speech as structurally dramatic, with further bibliography. 35. Following, as it does, a direct quote ­here, the close reader of Ovid may suspect a quotation or close reworking of lines from another poem, as happens at Met. 14.812– 16, where Mars quotes the Ennian Jupiter of Ann. Skutsch fr. 54 (cited above). Conte 1986, 57–63; Miller 1993, 153; and Hinds 1998, 3–16. Bloch (2000, 205) suggests that this instance of memini cites Medea’s epistle at 12.85–91. 36. Dangel (2002, 351) notes further correspondences with Ap. Rhod. 4.338–39, 345–50, 360–65, 376–84, and lists variants with bibliography. 37. Eur. Hipp. 1028–31: “I wish to die without glory, without a name, without a city, without a home, wandering the land as an exile, and I wish no sea or land wel­ come me” (ἦ τἄρ᾽ ὀλοίμην ἀκλεὴϲ ἀνώνυμοϲ / [ἄπολιϲ ἄοικοϲ, φυγὰϲ ἀλητεύων χθόνα,] / καὶ μήτε πόντοϲ μήτε γῆ δέξαιτό μου). Knox 1995, 201. See further Hinds 2011, 29–33, on this “exile pattern” of speech in Her. 6 and in Greek and Roman trag­ edy with further bibliography. 38. Hecuba a­ fter discovering Polydorus’s murder: “without a city, all alone, the most unfortunate of mortals” (ἄπολιϲ ἔρημοϲ, ἀθλιωτάτη βροτῶν, Eur. Hec. 811). See also similar language which Deianira uses to describe the captive ­women of Oechalia in Soph. Trach. 299–300: “I, seeing them unlucky in a foreign land, wandering without a home and without a ­father” (ταύταϲ ὁρώϲῃ δυϲπότμουϲ ἐπὶ ξένηϲ / χώραϲ ἀοίκουϲ ἀπάτοράϲ τ᾽ ἀλωμέναϲ). Deianira, an accidental Medea, embodies the unstable bound­ aries between female erotic passion and rage, for the outcome of each is indistinguish­ able. She herself warns sensible w ­ omen against rage: “but as I said, it is not noble for a sensible w ­ oman to be angry” (ἀλλ᾽ οὐ γάρ, ὥϲπερ εἶπον, ὀργαίνειν καλὸν / γυναῖκα νοῦν ἔχουϲαν, 552–53). On the “desperation speech” in Greek and Roman lit­er­a­ture, see, e.g., Fowler 1987; Dué 2006, 50–53, 120; Curley 2013, 147–51. 39. I am applying Conte’s (1986, 29–31) formulation of code models and exemplary models in my reading. Conte 1986, 31 and passim, understands two levels of literary imitation. The “exemplary model” is the work “precisely imitated” by an auther. The “code model” is the work that is representative of the genre and imitated generally by an author. Ovid’s Hypsipyle intentionally writes a letter which is most productively interpreted in terms of the Greek tragic code. Euripides’s Medea, moreover, serves as the preeminent exemplary model. See the introduction “Ovid, in Theory” for the ap­ plication of Conte’s formulation of generic code models to Ovid by Curley (2013). 40. Lindheim (2003, 114–35) argues that Hypsipyle identifies herself in opposition to her rival, but also likens herself to her rival in an attempt to approximate the type of ­woman to whom Jason is attracted. 41. See chapter 1 for a discussion of this pro­cess in Ovid’s erotodidactic poetry. 42. Michalopoulos (2004, 110–11) points out Hypsipyle’s participation in Medea and Jason’s crimes at Ap. Rhod. 3.1203–6 and 4.424–34 in the form of her gift of a cloak to Jason, as well as Ovid’s suppression of ­these details.

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43. Cf. Eur. Med. 1078–80: “and I know what sort of evil I am likely to do, but my passion is stronger than my deliberations, which is the origin of the greatest evil for ­humans” (καὶ μανθάνω μὲν οἷα δρᾶν μέλλω κακά, / θυμὸς δὲ κρείσσων τῶν ἐμῶν βουλευμάτων, / ὅσπερ μεγίστων αἴτιος κακῶν βροτοῖς). See Foley 2001, 253, for an alternative interpretation of this line as a combination of reason and emotion, not a triumph of passion over reason. In his ­later epic, the Ovidian Medea exclaims: “I see the better path and I approve it, but I follow the worse” (uideo meliora proboque, / deteriora sequor, Met. 7.20–21). 44. Ovid’s poet-­praeceptor calls Medea barbara at Ars am. 2.382 in a short list of ex­ amples of cheated ­women: “The barbarian of Phasis avenged by means of her own ­children” (barbara per natos Phasias ulta suos). Fulkerson (2005, 45) notes that Medea ­later refers to herself as barbara (12.70, 105). See further Jacobson 1974, 101; Bloch 2000, 202; and Lindheim 2003, 119. 45. Lindheim 2003, 121–22; Michalopoulos 2004; Fulkerson 2005, 50; and Vaio­ poulos 2013, 140. See Newlands 1997, 189–91, for Medea’s witchiness as dehumanizing in Met. 7. 46. Cf., Jason’s words to Medea (“wishing to save you and to beget princes as ­brothers to my c­ hildren, a safeguard for the h ­ ouse,” σῷσαι θέλων / σέ, καὶ τέκνοισι τοῖς ἐμοῖς ὁμοσπόρους / φῦσαι τυράννους παῖδας, ἔρυμα δώμασιν, 595–97) and Me­ dea’s own words to the chorus (“but I am all alone without a city and I am being in­ jured by my husband, carried off as a prize from a barbarian land,” ἐγὼ δ᾽ ἔρημος ἄπολις οὖσ᾽ ὑβρίζομαι / πρὸς ἀνδρός, ἐκ γῆς βαρβάρου λελῃσμένη, 255–56). See also 536–38, 1330, where Jason claims to have done her a ser­vice by taking her from a bar­ barian land. Michalopoulos 2004, 98. 47. See Knox 1995, 192. 48. Ovid ­will ­later identify his abject land of exile, Tomis, as gelidus axis: Trist. 5.2.64; Pont. 2.10.48, 4.14.62, 4.15.36; Knox 1995, 193. See Rosenmeyer 1997 for the exiled Ovid as a Heroidean abandoned maiden. 49. Noted by Jacobson (1974, 101). 50. See also Lindheim 2003, 120. 51. See Verducci 1985, 63. See also Lindheim 2003, 120, on Hypsipyle as chaste wife. 52. See chapter 1, n. 42, for vir as “husband” with further bibliography. 53. See also Michalopoulos 2004, 113, on Hypsipyle’s status. 54. See Knox 1995, 187 ad 80, for Argolica and Argolidas meaning “of mainland Greece” generally. 55. Nepos, Atticus 12.1. See chapter 1, n. 8 for further discussion of the importance of Roman affinitates. We may see another famous example of this in the imperial ­family when Tiberius was forced to divorce his wife, Vipsania, and marry Augustus’s ­daughter Julia: “He was compelled to take Julia, Augustus’s ­daughter, as a wife im­ mediately, not without ­great anguish in his heart” (Iuliam Augusti filiam confestim coactus est ducere non sine magno angore animi, Sue. Tib. 7). 56. Vaiopoulos (2013, 133–34, 146 n. 50) draws attention to connotations of p(a) elex (6.81), which can mean prostitute (from the Greek παλλακίς) and can connote a lower social status (Gellius 4.3.3), further strengthening Hypsipyle’s discursive con­ struction of Medea as a bad wife—­both ­because of her inferior social status and her

NOTES TO PA GES 93– 96

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sexuality. Michalopoulos (2004, 98) points out the irony of the common root in the names Alcimede and Medea—­μῆδος. See further McKeown 1987–1998, vol. 2, 380, and Knox 1995, 154 ad 5.60, 187 ad 6.81. 57. Cf. Ap. Rhod. 3.639–40, where, in Medea’s monologue, she commands herself and Jason to look to their own homes and families: “Let him court an Achaean maiden far away among his own ­people, and may my virginity and my parents’ home be my concern” (μνάσθω ἑὸν κατὰ δῆμον Ἀχαιίδα τηλόθι κούρην, / ἄμμι δὲ παρθενίη τε μέλοι καὶ δῶμα τοκήων). 58. Jacobson (1974) reads Hypsipyle’s letter as preoccupied with gender and gen­ der roles. He argues, however, that Medea and the Lemnian ­women represent one version of femininity (misandric and violent) which she has failed to perform, and that Hypsipyle wants to be Medea in order to be victorious over men. 59. Pace Fulkerson 2005, 54, who reads t­ hese strategies as both a testament to the poetic authority of the heroines and a means for “the reader to trap them in their ca­ nonical narratives.” Vaiopoulos (2013, 139–40) also notes Hypsipyle’s purposeful dis­ tortions and omissions of her story in her self-­presentation. Helen makes this connection in Her. 16.95–98, where she cites Hypsipyle and Ariadne as abandoned maidens; Fulkerson 2005, 63. Medea’s resemblance to Ariadne in Met. 7, noted by Cur­ ley (2013, 127), further recommends this reading. 60. Although Theseus’s famous epithet in Catull. 64, perfidus, is used three times (132, 133, 174) to describe him, it only appears once in Hypsipyle’s letter as the ab­ stract noun perfidia (perfidiae pretio qua nece dignus eras, 146), but the deceit is attributed to Jason. Hypsipyle also points out that, in one re­spect alone, the boys do not resem­ ble their ­father, for “they do not know how to lie” (fallere non norunt, 124). 61. Tereus, whose story is discussed ­later in this chapter, uses false tears on two occasions in order to persuade his addressees of his feigned sincerity: to Pandion at Met. 6.471; and to Procne at 565–66. See further Westerhold 2019. 62. Lindheim 2003, 122–23. Fulkerson (2005, 53, n. 42) and Vaiopoulos (2013, 141) note the similarity between Hypsipyle’s curses on Medea and Catullan Ariadne’s curses on Theseus (64.188–201), and the irony they create. In both cases the heroines appear to be the magical cause of an outcome demanded by mythological tradition. Fullker­ son (2005, 53) further notes ge­ne­tics may be responsible for the effectiveness of both heroine’s curses, as Ariadne is the grand­mother of Hypsipyle (Her. 6.115–16, discussed below). See Michalopoulos 2004, 111–16, for an analy­sis of the form of Hypsipyle’s curses in addition to intertexts with other sources. 63. Fulkerson 2005, 122–42. See chapter 2 for a discussion of Ariadne in Her. 4. 64. Fulkerson (2005, 2 and passim) interprets the fictional writers of the Heroides as “composing their texts together and with reference to the poetic issues of that community” (2). 65. See chapter 2 for this discussion. 66. Vaiopoulos 2013, 141. Knox (1995, 194–95 ad 115–16) does not accept line 115. 67. See, e.g., Catull. 64.256–64 or Met. 4.1–30 for a description of w ­ omen’s ecstatic worship of Bacchus. Apollonius’s Lemnian ­women are likened to maenads when they attack the Argo: “resembling flesh-­eating bacchantes,” Θυιάσιν ὠμοβόροις ἴκελαι, Ap. Rhod. 1.636. See further Panoussi 2019, 150–51, on the influence of Ap. Rhod. 1.627–39 and Dionysus as helping divinity in Her. 6. See also chapter 1, n. 31 for the

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charges attending the Senate’s actions against the Bacchanalia, which included sexual licentiousness. 68. See Gregory 1999, xxxv, on furies and revenge in Attic tragedy. For furies as tragic figures in Latin lit­er­a­ture, see Gildenhard and Zissos 2007, 1.10–22 and n. 4. 69. Eur. Med. 1–8; Enn. Med. Joc. fr. 103; Catull. 64.171–72. 70. Leigh 1997, 606 and passim. Leigh remarks a second allusion to Dido, another abandoned, tragic figure in Augustan poetry, whose curses act as a passive revenge against her departing lover, at Verg. Aen. 4.657–58: litora . . . ​tetigissent . . . ​carinae. For Dido as a “tragic” voice in Vergil’s epic, see, e.g., Conte 1986, 158–84; Keith 2002, 263; Panoussi 2009; Curley 2013, 52–57; and Gildenhard and Zissos 2013. See Armstrong 2006, 52–61, for correspondences between Vergil’s Dido and Catullus 64. 71. Curley (2013, 14–16, 92–94, 146–47) and Larmour (1990) have identified this pat­ tern, which Curley calls a modesty-­desire topos. See further chapters 1 and 2, as I ap­ ply his formulation to my reading of ­these w ­ omen as interchangeable abject desiring subjects. 72. Cf., e.g., Ars am. 3.33–40, where Ariadne appears in a list of ­women deceived—­ Medea, Ariadne, Phyllis, Dido—or Rem. am. 743–45, where Phaedra and Ariadne are cited as examples of wealth facilitating poor romantic decisions. 73. Vaiopoulos (2013, 140) argues that Hypsipyle’s adoption of the curse constitutes an imitation of Medea’s magic. See also Fulkerson 2005, 50–55, and Lindheim 2003, 124, on Hypsipyle’s magical curse. 74. Jacobson 1974, 104. 75. Vaiopoulos 2013, 134–35. He further notes a pos­si­ble intertext with Ap. Rhod. 3.776 where Medea is called an Ἐρινύς. See also Michalopoulos 2004, 100 and nn. 38, 39. 76. See n. 55 above for a discussion with further bibliography of the importance of marriage in cementing po­liti­cal relationships in ancient Greece and Rome. 77. See, e.g., Eur. Med. 20–23, 492–98, 1391–92; on Medea’s engagement with the masculine language of oath-­swearing, see, e.g., Williamson 1990. See Newlands 1997, 184, on Jason’s oaths in Met. 7 to Medea. 78. Williamson 1990, 18–19 and passim. 79. See Bloch 2000, 202, for intertextual allusions to Her. 12. 80. See n. 55 above. 81. In Her. 7, Dido makes a similar offer to Aeneas—­Carthage as dowry (149–50). I owe this insight to an anonymous reviewer for Cornell University Press. Cf. also the first of the anonymous Elegies for Maecenas (Miller 2009, 92–93): hic modo miles erat, ne posset femina Romam / dotalem strupri turpis habere sui (53–54). In this poem, Actian Apollo prevents Cleopatra from taking Rome as her dowry. 82. Knox 1995, 175 ad 17–18; Bloch 2000, 199; and Michalopoulos 2004, 100. 83. Cf. also Her. 7.133–38; Bloch 2000, 199, n. 18. 84. Apollonius offers hints of the erotic relationship between Hypsipyle and Jason. At 1.850–52 the narrator says that Cypris, acting on behalf of Hephaestos, inspired “sweet desire” (γλυκὺν ἵμερον); at 1.872–73, Heracles urges the heroes to get back to their own affairs while Jason stays in “Hypsipyle’s bed” (ἐνὶ λέκτροις / Ὑψιπύλης); at 3.1206, Jason puts on a robe given as a token of their “frequent or loud-­voiced bed­ dings” (ἀδινῆς μνημήιον εὐνῆς). 85. Bloch 2000, 200–201.

NOTES TO PA GES 98– 101

171

86. Cf. Eur. Med. 475–90; Ap. Rhod. 4.355–67; Bloch 2000, 201 and n. 23; see Bloch 2000, 201, n. 24, for further bibliography on Jason as a disappointing hero in Apollonius. 87. Bloch 2000, 201. Cf. Eur. Med. 488–89; Am. 2.18.23–24, where Ovid lists the epistles, ­either Her. 6 or 12 or both are identified as “what the ingrate, Jason, might read” (quod male gratus Iason . . . ​lega[n]t); Her. 17.193; Bloch 2000, 197 and n. 4. 88. Fulkerson (2005, 45–46) notes that, in the Heroides, both Hypsipyle and Medea refer to their paelices as hostes (6.82; 12.182), a unique occurrence in the collection. 89. Jacobson 1974, 104, and Verducci 1985, 62. Lindheim (2003, 123–24) argues that Hypsipyle’s self-­presentation is a wish, pointing to the imperative and subjunctive moods in the final lines of the poem. Indeed, her potential Medea-­ness is contra­ dicted by her own mythological tradition, where she refuses revenge upon her ­father. 90. Commenting on 6.139 (“I condemn the Lemnian ­women’s crime, I do not ad­ mire it, Jason,” Lemniadum facinus culpo, non miror, Iason), Fulkerson (2005, 52) suggests that Hypsipyle’s failure to kill Thoas was due to naivety and that, having learned what men are ­really like, she has assumed the vengeful jealousy inherent in all Lemnian ­women. Vaiopoulos (2013, 139) argues that Hypsipyle’s participation in the Lemnian androcide already makes her a Medea. 91. Cf., e.g., Ars am. 3.672, where the praeceptor figures his warnings against infidel­ ity to his female pupils, whom he calls Lemniasi, as “swords” for his own death. In this passage, the Lemnian ­women are paradigms of betrayed man-­k illers. He describes his own suicidal be­hav­ior in language used by Ovid for w ­ omen in love (quo feror insanus, 3.667), suggesting that it is a mad, abject passion which would drive a man to be hon­ est with a ­woman. See Gibson 2003, 352 ad 667–68, who compares this phrase to Dido at Verg. Aen. 4.595, Byblis at Met. 9.508–9, and Myrrha at Met. 10.320. 92. Clauss (1997, 161–64) compares Medea’s conflict between shame and love in book 3 of Ap. Rhod. with Phaedra’s in Eur. Hippolytus II. 93. In Medea’s letter, if we accept its authenticity, we may see a dramatization of this metamorphosis from desiring w ­ oman to avenging w ­ oman, and from Hellenistic epic to tragedy. See Verducci 1985, 66–81; Newlands 1997, 179 n. 3; and Fulkerson 2005, 40–66. See, e.g., Jacobson 1974; Hinds 1993; and Knox 2002, 120–21, on the debate over Her. 12. Verducci (1985, 17) notes that Her. 12 is the only treatment where a mature Me­ dea is represented as a sympathetic w ­ oman in love. Newlands (1997, 182–83 and n. 8) notes that Medea’s choice to pursue deteriora despite her recognition of meliora (at Met. 7.20–21) transforms the Euripidean victory of anger over reason (Eur. Med. 1078–79) into the victory of love over reason. Foley (2001, 253) has argued that θυμός should be read as “seat of rationality” and not anger, giving the Euripidean lines another mean­ ing entirely. 94. Conte 1986, 159–84. 95. Feldherr (2010, 224–32) traces this “textualization” of Procne, Philomela, and Tereus in the episode and in Fasti 2 in connection with the theme of reception. Feld­ herr (2010, 232) argues that reducing the characters to their literary exemplarity facili­ tates the objectifying “gaze” of Ovid’s audience. See the introduction “Ovid on the Intersection” for Segal’s (1986) theory of Greco-­Roman myth as a megatext. 96. See further Ant. Lib.; Apollod. 3.14.8; Hyg. 45; Paus. 1.5.4; and Thuc. 2.29.3. See March 2003, 143–51, and Panoussi 2019, 247 n. 2, for a good overview of the myth­ ological tradition.

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97. Cf., e.g., Aesch. Supp. 57–66; Aesch. Ag. 1140–49; Eur. Heracl. 1021–23; Eur. Hel. 1107–12; Eur. Phoen. 1514–18; Soph. El. 107, 148–49, 1077; Soph. Aj. 629–30; Soph. Trach. 962–63. See further, e.g., Loraux 1990, 84–100; March  2003; and Monella 2005 for Greek and Roman treatments of the tale. 98. Sutton 1984, 132; March 2003. 99. Sutton 1984, 129–30. 100. On Sophocles’s Tereus, see Sutton 1984, 127–32; Curley 1997, 2003; March 2003; Monella 2005, 79–125; Boyle 2006, 133–37; and Coo 2013. On Livius An­ dronicus’s and Accius’s Tereus, see Boyle 2006, 133–37; Dangel 2002, 346–47. See An­ derson 1972, 206–37; Sutton 1984, 130–32; Ciappi 1998; Curley 2003, 2013, 28–29; and Monella 2005, 173–220, for a comparison of the Greek with the Roman play. 101. Boyle 2006, 134, 158–59. Gildenhard and Zissos (2007 n. 4) and Feldherr (2010, 215) cite Cic. Att. 16.2.3 and 16.5.1. 102. See further, Sutton 1984, 129, and March 2003. 103. See Pavlock 1991 for Ovid’s characterization of Tereus as a stereotypical tyrannus/rex. 104. See March 2003, 149, on the pos­si­ble absence of Bacchus in Sophocles’s play, but Bacchic ele­ments in other variants. 105. Feldherr (2004) and James (2004) both argue that Marsyas’s tale expresses the challenges of literary innovation and generic limitations in the Augustan era. 106. “He strikes the ground stained with his criminal blood as he dies” (tundit humum moriens scelerato sanguine tinctam, 5.293); “to this day the stains of murder have not left their chest, and their feathers are marked by blood” (neque adhuc de pectore caedis/ excessere notae, signataque sanguine pluma est, 6.669–70). 107. For the tragic nature of Ovid’s version of this tale, see, e.g., Curley 1997, 2003, 189–97 and passim; Gildenhard and Zissos 1999, 2007; Schiesaro 2003, 83–85; Feld­ herr 2010, 199–239; and Hinds 2011, 5–6 and passim. 108. Curley 2003, 192. 109. The two anaphoras (hac aue, 433, 434; quaque, 436, 437) which begin the lines, interrupted by a single line of variation (435), draw our attention back to the first anaphora announcing the tragic theme and sound almost like a tragic choral ode in its repetition of an idea which offers an interpretative guide for the audience—­ “Eumenides . . . ​Eumendies . . . ​with this bird . . . ​this bird . . . ​that day . . . ​that day.” 110. See n. 34 above. 111. Curley (2003, 192–93) notes her speech is “tantamount to a dramatic rhesis.” 112. I count, inclusively, lines 424–674. 113. See Curley 2013, 96–107, and Westerhold 2014, 3–4, for a similar prologue and dramatic setting in the Hecuba episode, Met. 13.429–38. See further, Segal 1969; Ro­ sati 1983, 129–52; Hinds 1987, 33–42, and 2002, 136–40; and Curley 2013, 95–133, for Ovid’s variations on locus est as a signal of a locus amoenus, and the dramatic character­ istics of ­these scenes in his poetry. See Coleman 1977, 132 ad 4.6, with further bibliog­ raphy, on the myth of Saturn’s flight and exile in Italy, called tempora Titan at Ov. Met. 6.438 and Saturnia regna at Verg. Ecl. 4.6. 114. See Anderson 1972, 174, 211 ad 6.165, 451–54; Curley 2003, 192; 2013, 99; and Feldherr 2010, 211, on ecce as a signal of a dramatic entrance in Vergil, Ovid, and in this passage in par­tic­u­lar.

NOTES TO PA GES 105– 108

173

115. Ovid uses gravior and maior to describe tragedy at, e.g., Am. 3.1.23–24. See chapter 2 for a discussion of generic terms in this poem. See further, Hinds 1993, 39– 40, and Trinacty 2007, 67. Descriptions of late Republican and early Imperial per­for­ mances recommend this reading. Cicero, for example, in a letter to Marcus Marius (Fam. 7.1), is critical of the ostentatious tragic costumes, sets, and props presented for the opening of Pompey’s Theater in 55 BCE. He mentions the six hundred mules in­ cluded in Accius’s Clytaemestra and the three thousand mixing bowls featured in a Trojan Horse (7.1.2). Shackleton-­Bailey (1977, 326) notes that both Livius Andronicus and Naevius w ­ ere known to have written a Trojan Horse. 116. Hardie 2002, 268–69, and Curley 2003, 192. Citing March (2003, 157–61), Cur­ ley (2003, 191 n. 49) further notes Procne’s self-­diguise may reverse the disguise of the Sophoclean Philomela, whom March posits was dressed as a h ­ ouse servant and kept in the palace. 117. See further Rosenmeyer 2001, 61–97, for the embedded letters in ­these tragedies. 118. See Panoussi 2019, 140–46, for Bacchic ritual in this passage. Curley (2003, 178–89 and passim) argues that Bacchus played an impor­tant role in Sophocles’s Tereus, perhaps as the deus ex machina resolving the tragedy (TrGF 4.589). He cites Fitzpatrick (2001, 99), who argues for Apollo. W ­ ere it Apollo, the adoption of Bac­ chus by Ovid would resemble other reversals which Curley (2003, 190–91 and n. 49) remarks in the Ovidian adaptation of Sophocles’s tragedy. He notes but rejects the conjecture that Ovid is adopting an Accian innovation (Dangel fr. 445, cited above; Curley 2003, 181). 119. March (2003, 149), citing Apollod. 3.14.7, notes that Pandion’s reign witnessed the introduction of the worship of Dionysus. Itys’s murder may have been a sacrifice to the god in an ­earlier variant. She cites further Burkert (1983, 179–85). Such a vari­ ant, if known to Ovid, would create a stronger Bacchic resonance to Procne’s filicide. 120. Fitzpatrick 2001, 98; Curley 2003, 193–94; and Newlands 2018, 160. See New­ lands 1997, 206; Curley 2003, 193–95; and Natoli 2017, 74, on Philomela’s carmen miserabile as a text. See March  2003, 160, for the importance of literacy as a mark of civilization and difference in Sophocles’s play. See Natoli 2017, 74, for the intertext with Verg. Geo. 5.111–15. 121. Curley 2003, 194; Feldherr 2010, 209–10. See further Schiesaro 2003, 74 and n. 13. Newlands (1997, 206 and n. 47), in her comparison of Orithyia and Medea in Ov­ id’s Met., argues that the speech of Medea, represented by her magical carmina, is both the source of female power and a threat to male power. By analogy, therefore, we may interpret Tereus as silencing Philomela for fear of her speech, but her carmen reveals his crime and subsequently destroys the ­family. 122. Feldherr 2010, 211–12. 123. Gradivus is also an archaic epic epithet. Ovid uses it again for Mars at Romu­ lus’s apotheosis (Met. 14.820) and at the narrator’s prayer to Mars (and the other gods) to delay the death of Augustus (15.863). Anderson 1972, 208–9 ad 426–28. 124. For ­these terms as generic signals, see n. 115 above. 125. Also noted by Newlands (1995, 164). 126. Cf., e.g., Cephisus’s rape of Liriope: uim tulit, 3.344; Sol’s rape of Leucothoe: uim passa, 4.233; Neptune’s rape of Caenis: uim passa, 12.197; or Vertumnus’s anticipated but

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TO PAGES 108– 110

unnecessary rape of Pomona: uimque parat: sed ui non est opus, 14.770. Per OLD, uis is used in the singular as “vio­lence” (1) and “a force used to obtain sexual gratification” (2); in the plural as “hostile strength” (21). See Kennedy 2012, 194–95 and passim, on the play of literal and meta­phorical meanings of vis and other words in Ovid’s elegy. On Ovid’s rapes, see Curran 1978 and Richlin 1991. 127. See n. 115 above for the tragic connotations of Philomela’s Athenian attire. 128. Feldherr (2010, 209) identifies this generic shift ­earlier, at Procne’s first direct speech (440–44). Curley (2003, 167 n. 6) suggests that Ovid’s emphasis on Tereus’s gaze adapts the Sophoclean pun of ἐπόπτην (watcher) and ἔποπα (hoopoe) and Tereus and τηρέω (to watch over). 129. Currie 1981, 2729; Dobrov 1993; Barsby 1996; James 2012; and Curley 2013, 46 and n. 130, 71. 130. Characters like Plautus’s Lysidamus in Casina are foolish ­because they are not the right age to be lovers. 131. An oracle tells Thyestes that the child of an incestuous u ­ nion with his ­daughter, Pelopia, ­will take revenge for his ­brother’s revenge—­the cannibalistic meal. This child is Aegisthus, the coagent of revenge in other tragedies. Feldherr (2010, 213) notes that the comparison of the spectacle to the meta­phorical food for desire (omnia pro stimulis facibusque ciboque furoris / accipit, Met. 6.480–81) anticipates Tereus’s a­ ctual meal. In book 10 of Ovid’s Met., we see another mythological ­father committing incest when Cinyras is tricked into taking his d­ aughter, Myrrha, into his bed. 132. See chapter 1 for the theatrical connotation of this phrase in Ars am. 133. See further Kennedy 2012, 195–96. 134. By contrast, Feldherr (2010, 212) interprets Pandion’s credulity as a result of his nationality, for an Athenian would be accustomed to a man playing the part of a ­woman (sub illa). 135. Pavlock 1991, 507, and Hardie 2002, 266. This may be an allusion to the myth­ ological traditions related by Apollod. Bibl. 3.14.8 and Hyg. 45, in which Tereus claims Procne has died and takes Philomela as a second wife. For this tradition, see further Pavlock 1991, 507, and Hardie 2002, 266. Feldherr (2010, 217–25) has demonstrated that Ovid’s epic version, when read alongside Ovid’s tale of Lucretia in Fasti, explores the importance of ­family and marriage to Roman myth and ritual. See also Newlands 1997, 192–95, and Panoussi 2019, 141–42. 136. Anderson 1972, 211–12 ad 451–54. Apollo gives voice to his own fantasy of generic transformation of Daphne from epic nymph to elegaic puella: “He looks at her unstyled hair hanging down her neck, and [asks] ‘What if her hair ­were arranged?’ ” (spectat inornatos collo pendere capillos, / et “quid si comantur?,” Met. 1.497–98). See fur­ ther Hardie 2002, 260–62, and Newlands 2018, 155. 137. See chapter 2 for a discussion of this passage and its theatricality. 138. OLD, fingo, 1–4 for literal meanings of “forming,” “shaping,” 5–10 for meta­ phorical meanings of “devising,” “inventing,” “contriving.” 139. In the last line of the simile (518), the captured hare (capto), Philomela, is sur­ rounded grammatically by the lack of escape (nulla fuga) and its captor (raptor). Capto, spectat surrounding the caesura emphasizes both his gaze and its power. What is seen is possessed (capto . . . ​sua praemia, 518).

NOTES TO PA GES 110– 111

175

140. Ovid may be asking us to look even further back in the epic canon to Hesiod’s Cata­logue of ­Women and its more proximal mediators, the Homeric Hymns and Callima­ chus’s Hymns. See, e.g., Hardie 2005 and Ziogas 2010 for the influence of epic cata­ logues on Ovid’s poetry. 141. See the introduction “Ovid on the Intersection” and chapter 1 on the paradig­ matic status of ­these figures and further bibliography. 142. Curley (2003, 177–78) argues that her cottage imprisonment is an Ovidian in­ novation, for a tragedy could neither accommodate a second setting nor a time lapse of a year, nor would it be necessary. March (2003, 158–59), contra Calder (1974, 89), posits that Sophocles’s play followed the variant recorded by Ant. Lib. Met. 11 and in­ troduced Philomela into the palace as a slave, with the short hair, costume, and mask of a slave. 143. Also noted by Feldherr (2010, 214). 144. Also noted by Pavlock (1991, 39). Newlands (2018, 157–58), noting the elegiac connotation of domina (660) to refer to the mutilated Philomela and an intertext be­ tween this violent scene and one found in Verg. Aen. 10.395–96, argues that Tereus’s genre blending diminishes his epic status and possibly foreshadows Philomela’s ­f uture revenge. 145. See the introduction “Generic Per­for­mances” for the metapoetic resonance of a forest in Am. 3.1.1 (stat uetus et multos incaedua silua per annos), where, as I argue elsewhere, Ovid’s amator strolls through an ancient forest in order to find a new liter­ ary proj­ect. Ovid’s verse is in dialogue with two famous examples of metapoetic silvae, which Tereus’s scene also resembles. Cf. incedunt arbusta per alta, Enn. Ann. 175 Sk.; itur in antiquam siluam, stabula alta ferarum, Verg. Aen. 6.179. Both forests allude to Homer’s forest at Il. 23.114–20; Westerhold 2013. Like Tereus’s woodland hut, each Latin forest has depth—­alta. Verg. Aen. provides an even closer intertext, for his ancient forest acts as a deep abode for wild animals. In Vergil, the forest as stabula alta offers timber for the pyre of Misenus. Tereus’s stabula alta may also be seen to memorialize the meta­phorical death of Philomela the maiden, the lost ­sister of Procne. For the figu­ rative use of silva, see further Bright 1980, 20–49; Hinds 1998, 11–14; Keith 1999, 41– 62; 2008a, 125; Petrain 2000, 409–21; Wray 2007, 127–43; Newlands 2011, 6–7; Walters 2013; and Westerhold 2013. 146. See chapter 2 for Julia Kristeva’s theory of poetic semiosis and my application of her “thetic stage” to the Ovidian letters of Phaedra (Her. 4) and Byblis (Met. 9). 147. Tereus’s per­for­mance before an Athenian audience further emasculates him for the Romans. Pandion remarks that Tereus shares the desire of the ­sisters: et uoluere ambae (uoluisti tu quoque, Tereu) (497). In his discussion of this passage, Feldherr (2008, 38–39; 2010, 204–7), citing Webb (2005), adduces Juv. 3.93–97, which describes a Greek actor becoming the w ­ oman he plays. Ovid’s tale, like Juvenal’s satire, expresses the threat of mimesis for both actor and spectator, which destabalizes the barrier be­ tween self and other, including especially gender barriers. Moreover, Ovid tells us in Ars am. 1.276 that w ­ omen dissimulate better: uir male dissimulat, tectius illa cupit (see chapter 1 on this passage). See further Kennedy 2012, 196–97, on the danger of mi­ mesis as it is explored at the end of Ars am. 1. 148. Well noted by Panoussi (2019, 140–46).

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TO PAGES 112– 115

149. See Feldherr 2010 for a sustained consideration of focalization in the Metamorphoses and its effect on audience identification. 150. See further Gildenhard and Zissos 1999, 165–67, on the use of accusative par­ ticiples and the gaze in this passage; and Curley 2013, 117, on looking at Hercules’s pain in Met. 9. 151. Pavlock 1991, 39. March (2003, 154–55) suggests that Sophocles’s Tereus repre­ sented Procne as the strong ­sister (i.e., Antigone or Elektra), citing Sophocles’s wont to contrast a pair of s­ isters, strong and weak. She notes, moreover, Procne’s privileging of sibling over husband and child (155). 152. Eur. IA 1375–76, 1555; Eur. Hec. 347, 548. 153. Cf. “he has put a sharp knife in his hand a­ fter drawing it from its sheath . . . ​ the priest taking the knife” (ἔθηκεν ὀξὺ χειρὶ φάcγανον cπάcαc / κολεῶν ἔcωθεν, . . . ​ ἱερεὺc δὲ φάcγανον λαβὼν, Eur. IA 1566–67, 1578); “Then taking a gilded knife by its ­handle he drew it from its sheath” (εἶτ᾽ ἀμφίχρυcον φάcγανον κώπηc λαβὼν / ἐξεῖλκε κολεοῦ, Eur. Hec. 543–44). 154. Iphigenia aspires to prevent the rape of all Greek ­women by her death, IA 1378– 84; cf. Eur. Hec. 367, 548–52. 155. Natoli (2017, 33–79) argues that speechlessness in the Met., including Philome­ la’s, attends characters who are removed from ­human communities. 156. See Newlands 2018, 152–64, who also comments on Tereus’s misidentification with divine erotic vio­lence. Pavlock (1991, 39–40) compares the two passages and fur­ ther notes the simile at 6.516–17, which aligns Tereus with Jupiter through his bird. 157. Jupiter’s dark forest is the lair of wild beasts (latebras intrare ferarum, Met. 1.593), perhaps offering another intertext to the forest of Verg. Aen., which was the deep dwelling of wild beasts (stabula alta ferarum, Aen. 6.179). Noted by Newlands (2018, 154). 158. Natoli (2017, 54–65) includes Io and Philomela (65–79) among the silenced characters that use writing to overcome their obstacles to communication. He further connects this with Ovid’s own use of poetry to reclaim a voice from relegation. 159. See Dodds 1960, xvii; Schiesaro 2003, 85; Curley 2013, 143–45; and Panoussi 2019, 117–67, for the the moral confusion associated with Dionysian worship and trag­ edy. Schiesaro (2003, 76 n. 18) further connects Procne’s confusion of good and bad to the god of tragedy through an intertext with Hor. Carm. 1.18.7–11, where exces­ sive worship of Bacchus leads to an intoxicated confusion. The adjective Sithonia is used in both loci (Carm. 1.18.9; Met. 6.588). 160. Curley 2003, 185–86; Fantham 2004–2005, 123; and Westerhold 2014, 310 n. 69. 161. Feldherr 2010, 209–10. See also nn. 95 and 106 above. 162. Feldherr 2008; 2010, 199–239. 163. See, e.g., Curley 2003, 2013, 134–41, 229–30; Feldherr 2008, 37, 2010, 203 and n. 6 for intertexts with Attic Greek tragedy and further bibliography. Gildenhard and Zissos (2007, 4.36–37) interpret Procne as an author who innovates on Philomela’s carmen miserabile (6. 582) and provides a model for ­f uture authors (4.37). 164. Curley (2003, 187) argues that Procne’s maenadic disguise is transferred by Ovid from the Pentheus passage in Met. 3. Curley (1997, 320) further notes that Itys’s repeated cry “­mother” (6.640) resembles that of Pentheus who cries to his own m ­ other

NOTES TO PA GES 115– 116

177

at Bacchae 1118 and 1120. Itys’s cry, Curley (1997, 320–22) argues further, may also re­ place Procne’s own traditional lament of “Itys, Itys.” See further Feldherr 2008, 44–45, 2010, 230–31, and March 2003, 141. 165. TrGF 5.1.391–97. Sophocles may have written three plays about the b­ rothers, one of which told the story of Atreus’s revenge: TrGF 4.247–69. See Jocelyn 1967, 418–19, and March 2003, 150 and n. 33, for a list of Greek playwrights known to have written a play by this name with further bibliography. Schiesaro (2003, 70–138) traces Seneca’s reception of Ovid’s Tereus through allusions in his Thyestes, further confirm­ ing the recognition of Ovid’s own allusions. 166. See Boyle 2006, 79, for the po­liti­cal importance of Epirus as the pos­si­ble set­ ting of Ennius’s Thyestes. See Boyle 2006, 127–28, for the Accian genealogical connec­ tion of the Atreidae with the Romans via Evander and the association of Atreus with Tiberius Gracchus when Accius’s play, Atreus, was produced. See Bilinski 1958, 44–45, on the first production of Accius’s Tereus as an attack on Marius and his party. 167. For Accius’s Atreus, see Jocelyn 1967, 414–15, and Boyle 2006, 127–33. For Varius Rufus’s Thyestes, see Boyle 2006, 161–62, and Hollis 2007, 256–58, 275–78, frr. 153–56. We know of seven Roman treatments of this myth, including one by a Gracchus (Hollis 2007, 276, 335–37, fr. 200). Ennius wrote a Thyestes (Joc. frr. 149–160), which, Jocelyn (1967, 412–19) argues, covered the events predating the feast, but he also provides an overview of arguments for the inclusion of the feast in the plot. See further Boyle 2006, 78–83. 168. The association of Tereus and Tarquinius in the Roman mind is demonstrated by the substitution made of Accius’s Tereus for his Brutus at the Ludi Apollinares by Gaius Antonius, the ­brother of Marc Antony. Boyle (2006, 158) notes that, although Brutus, Caesar’s assassin, intended the praetexta about his ancestor, the substitution “affected ­little the po­liti­cal semiotics of the occasion.” See Cic. Phil. 10.8 for a con­temporary ac­ count of the play. See further Boyle 2006, 158–59, and Feldherr 2010, 215–16. 169. See Boyle 2006, 12–13; Feldherr 2010, 217–25; and n. 135 above. 170. Hinds 1993, 39–40. Williams (2012), citing this line and other signals in Met. 7, argues that “moreness” is the fundamental characteristic of the Ovidian Medea. See also chapter 2 for further discussion of Hinds’s interpretation of Her. 12 and the meta­ poetic resonance of this line with reference to Her. 4.19. Schiesaro (2003, 81 and n. 25) identifies an intertext with Procne’s statement and Seneca’s Atreus at Thy. 269–70 and further cites Prop. 2.34.66. 171. ­These terms are borrowed from Conte (1986). See n. 39 above. For the intra­ texts with Her. 12 and further intertext with Seneca, see Curley 2013, 226–27. 172. See also Larmour 1990, 131–34; Curley 1997, 320; March 2003, 155–56; and Gildenhard and Zissos 2007, 3.29. Newlands (1997, 193–94) sees less conflict in Proc­ ne’s decision by comparison to Euripides’s Medea. 173. In both Euripides and Ovid, the ­mothers are momentarily overcome with a ma­ ternal impulse, which nearly breaks their resolve. This maternal impulse, in each case, is precipitated by the bodies of their c­ hildren. Medea says goodbye to her plans a­ fter her ­children gaze and smile at her (1041–42; 1048). For Procne, Itys’s embraces, coos, and kisses bring tears to her eyes (6.625–26; 628). Both ­women just as quickly restrain their emotions and affirm their original intentions (Med. 1049–51; Met. 6.629–30).

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174. Sommerstein, Fitzpatrick, and Talboy (2006, 158–59) also note the influence of one play on the other but argue that Tereus need not precede Medea. See also the introduction “Ovid on the Intersection.” 175. Procne’s assumption of Tereus’s role has been well noted by previous scholars. See Joplin 1984, 45; Larmour 1990, 133–34; Pavlock 1991, 40–46; Segal 1994, 267, 269, and passim; Newlands 1997, 194–95; Gildenhard and Zissos 1999, 167, 2007, 3.30–36 and passim; Schiesaro 2003, 82–83; and Feldherr 2010, 202. 176. In book 6, ater is used only three times. The first instance is to describe the Niobids’ mourning attire (uestibus atris, 288) as Apollo and Artemis kill each one. The next is found in this passage, just ten lines ­earlier, to describe the dark earth into which Philomela’s d­ ying tongue murmurs (terrae . . . ​atrae, 558). Has her tongue called up the fury that Procne w ­ ill become? 177. Hardie 2002, 268–69; Curley 2003, 192. Citing March (2003, 157–61), Curley (2003, 191 n. 49) further notes Procne’s self-­diguise may reverse the disguise of the Sophoclean Philomela. 178. See, e.g., Boyle 2006, 21; Manuwald 2011, 69. 179. See Shaw’s 1975 seminal article on the “the female intruder” in Attic tragedy; see, e.g., Foley 1982 and Easterling 1987 for responses to Shaw. 180. See further chapter 1 for a detailed discussion of maenadic and Dionysiac imag­ ery in Ovid and Latin lit­er­a­ture in general, and Panoussi 2009 for tragedy in Vergil’s Aeneid. It has also been noted that Ovid’s maenadic Procne looks back to two “tragic” characters in Vergil’s epic, Dido and Amata. Hardie 2002, 269 n. 20, and Curley 2013, 27. Vergil’s Amata, driven, like Procne, by a fury (Aen. 7.351), costumes herself as a bacchant in order to sneak her ­daughter, Lavinia, away from the palace and prevent her marriage to Aeneas (7.385–88). See chapter 1, n. 39, for further discussion of this passage. Dido is likened to Pentheus and Orestes chased by the furies (Aen. 4.469–73). Dido is further lik­ ened to a maenad when she learns of Aeneas’s impending departure (4.301–3). This allu­ sion is especially strong: in both cases the ­women experience dolor (Met. 6.595; Aen. 4.296); the rites are introduced by a temporal adverb (quo, 587; ubi, 4.302); they are de­ scribed as trieterica in the same sedes (trieterica Bacchi, Met. 6.587; trieterica Baccho, Aen. 4.302); and the rites are located temporally at night (Met. 6.588–90; Aen. 4.303), and geo­ graph­ic­ ally by the name of a mountain (Rhodope, Met. 6.589; Cithaeron, Aen. 4.303), which resounds with the cele­brations (sonat Rhodope tinnitibus aeris acuti, Met. 6.589; nocturnusque uocat clamore Cithaeron, Aen. 4.303). Procne is called regina for the first and only time in this tale (Met. 6.590), a frequent description of Dido, used in the passage ­under consideration (Aen. 4.296), and crucial to her role in Vergil’s epic. Dido, however, charges Aeneas with pretending (“dissimulare etiam sperasti”, 4.305), while the narrator tells us that Procne herself pretends (Bacche, tuas simulat, 6.596). 181. Anderson (1972, 174–75 ad 6.165), in a comment about ecce as a “dramatic expletive” for introducing impor­tant scenes in epic, also notes Vergil’s use of “crowd scenes” to draw attention to an impor­tant figure. He cites Vergil’s use of the phrase magna comitante caterua for Laocoon at Aen. 1.497 and Dido at Aen. 2.40. While An­ derson does not refer to this at 6.594, Ovid’s use of the crowd for Procne may offer another intertext with Dido: cf., Aen. 2.40. A more proximal intratext may be found between Procne’s “chorus” of companions with Hecuba’s: captiuarum agmina ma-

NOTES TO PA GES 118– 127

179

trum, Met. 13.560. As noted above, Procne and Hecuba also share an exemplary status as poenaeque in imagine tota est, 6.586; 13.546. 182. See n. 68 above for the association of furies with tragedy. 183. Also noted by Natoli (2017, 77) and Panoussi (2019, 143–44 and 248 n. 16). 184. Noted by Gildenhard and Zissos (1999, 167). 185. In this re­spect, Tereus embodies the threat of drama to the actor who becomes what he plays. Tereus acted the part of an Athenian princess, Procne, whose ­family is the victim of his vio­lence. He becomes Pandion, an Athenian victim of his vio­lence. Tereus also embodies the threat of drama to the spectator who identifies with an effec­ tive actor and becomes what he watches. Tereus, through identifying with Pandion, eventually becomes him. 186. See Westerhold 2019 for the role of tears in this passage. 187. Panoussi (2019, 144) argues that maenadism creates a bond between the ­sisters. 188. Joplin (1984, 45–46 n. 36) cites Achilles Tatius, Leukippe and Keitophon, where “passionate ­women” like Procne are said to prioritize the plea­sure of revenge over the harm done to themselves and their loved ones. 189. See Adams 1982, 197–98, on gaudia with sexual connotations. He cites Ovid Am. 3.7.63; Catull. 61.110; Tib. 2.1.12. 190. Aesch. Ag. 1389–92: “and spouting a swift gush of blood, he hit me with a black drop of gory dew, rejoicing no less than the sown corn rejoices in the w ­ ater granted by Zeus in the bursting of the bud,” (κἀκφυσιῶν ὀξεῖαν αἵματος σφαγὴν / βάλλει μ᾽ ἐρεμνῇ ψακάδι φοινίας δρόσου, / χαίρουσαν οὐδὲν ἧσσον ἢ διοσδότῳ / γάνει σπορητὸς κάλυκος ἐν λοχεύμασιν). 191. Boreas’s appearance at the end of Procne’s tale may be a vestige of the Sopho­ clean and/or Accian play. Tragedies commonly ended with a deus ex machina. March (2003, 161 and n. 54) suggests that Sophocles began his play with Ares and ended it with Athena. We may see Tereus, son of Mars, as a trace of this god’s Sophoclean prologue, with Boreas, a real god, apparently resolving the contradiction of Procne’s Terean be­hav­ior. 192. Newlands (1997, 203–7) identifies this tale as the last of the “marriage group,” in which Ovid investigates gender inequities in love and power. She notes both that Orithyia, unlike Procne, Medea, Scylla, and Procris, offers no re­sis­tance to Boreas, and that Boreas “spells out h ­ ere what the other tales imply: passion and force rule in h ­ uman affairs as in divine ones” by eventually ignoring rules governing marriage and taking what he wants (205). See further Feldherr 2010, 233–35, who connects this myth with Roman foundation myths and Romulus in par­tic­u­lar. Conclusion

1. Pace Feldherr (2010), who traces the multiple, sometimes contradictory models of spectatorship which Ovid’s Metamorphoses pre­sents to his audience. 2. See the introduction for a more detailed discussion of generic codes as defined by Conte (1986) and applied to Ovid by Curley (1999, 2013). 3. See the introduction for a detailed discussion of this theoretical term.

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4. Cf. Butler 2006, 190. See the introduction for Butler’s explanation of the social pressures on individuals to perform normative gender roles as a society or state de­ fines them. 5. See the introduction and chapter 1 for further discussion of this term. 6. See chapter 2 for Kristeva’s formulation of semiosis, the semiotic chora, and po­ etry’s power to modify language. 7. Enterline (2000) has argued that such an alignment in his Met. is a symptom of Ovid’s anxiety over poetic authority. Identifying Echo (among other female figures in the Met.) as a surrogate for Ovid, Enterline notes that “although the poet pictures his own survival on his reader’s lips, his own ­earlier story of the same circumstance [i.e., Echo] stresses two prob­lems the final lines occlude: even the most faithful, literal re­ voicing alters the original” (57). See also Natoli (2017), who examines repre­sen­ta­ tions of writing as a means for recovering a voice. 8. Williams (2012) has made a similar argument with regard to Medea in the Met. He interprets her as a poet competing with Ovid for authorial control over the poem. Her failure proves Ovid’s mastery. 9. Cf. the myth of Achilles at Skyros, whose masculinity is too strong to be threat­ ened by a girl’s costume. See Cyrino (1998) for a discussion of and further references to the Roman fascination with gender reversal and transvestism, with a focus on this myth in par­tic­u­lar. On this myth in Rome, see also Heslin (2005). See Gold (1998) on transvestism in Roman comedy. 10. See Most (1992) on the figure of dismemberment in Neronian poetry, includ­ ing Seneca’s tragedies, as an exploration of personal identity. 11. For Ovid’s relegation, see, e.g., Thibault 1964, 20–32; Hollis 1977, xiii–­xvii; Wil­ liams 1994, 3–8; Gaertner 2005, 14 and n. 43, 24; Claassen 2008, 2–3; and Fulkerson 2012, 340 and n. 2. 12. See also Davisson 1993 and Johnson 1997, 403, on shifting exemplarity in the exile poems. 13. See chapter 2 for a discussion of Byblis’s tale in Met. 9. Tissol (2014, 75–76 ad 5–12) sees a resemblance between Byblis’s hesitation to identify herself by name at the opening of her letter to Caunus (Met. 9.530–34) and Ovid’s own ostensible hesita­ tion to name himself at Pont. 1.2.5–12 (vereor ne nomine lecto / durus et aversa cetera mente legas, 7–8); 1.7.1–6; and 3.5.1–4. 14. As Claassen (2008, 4) notes, Pliny the Elder (HN 32.152) is the first instance of a vague reference to Ovid’s relegation to Tomis, with Statius (Silv. 1.2.254–55) being the second, and more explicit, reference. 15. Ovid’s exile was questioned by, e.g., Brown (1985), who includes in his argu­ ment the resemblance of the epistles from exile to Ovid’s own fictional epistolary po­ ems by mythological heroines and heroes. See Williams (1994, 3–8); Claassen (1999, 19, 34 and 265 n. 125; 2008, 229–30); and Tissol (2014, 13–18) for a discussion of this theory. 16. It has been well noted that Ovid’s verse thematizes the contrast between his exilic location and Rome. See Evans 1983, 50–73, esp. 69–73; Videau-­Delibes 1991, 151–60; Williams 1994, 11–12; and Larosa 2013, 35–37. 17. See, e.g., Williams’s (1994, 26–34) reading of Pont. 1.8, where Ovid contrasts the fertile landscape of Italy to his own barren Tomis, which lacks the garden in which

NOTES TO PA GES 131– 134

181

Ovid was accustomed to write (37). Ovid’s complaint locates poetic production and agricultural production in the same space. 18. Cf. “an exile safer and a ­little more quiet” (tutius exilium pauloque quietus, Tr. 2.577–78); “a changed place” (mutati loci, Tr. 3.5.54). 19. See especially chapter 1. 20. See chapter 1 for this construction in Ovid’s erotodidactic poems. 21. ­These are the only tragic heroines treated with any depth in the exile poems. Evans 1983, 62; Oliensis 1997b, 187–88; and Ingleheart 2010. Natoli (2017, 108–22) ar­ gues that Philomela provides Ovid with a model for exile overcome by poetry. 22. See Jacobson 1974, 101; Bloch 2000, 202; Lindheim 2003, 119; and Fulkerson 2005, 45. 23. Oliensis (1997b, 190 and 193 n. 31), citing Ahl (1985), connects this etymology with Caesar, “the cutter,” cutting Ovid off from his home and from his work: “his body ­will never be re­united with his literary corpus” (190). 24. Ap. Rhod. 4.452–76 narrates the story of an adult Ab(p)syrtus deceived and mur­ dered by Jason and Medea. We may also see in Ovid’s intertext with his own Met. (cf. Medea’s exclamation, “vicimus” inquit: 3.9.23, to Tereus’s: “uicimus!” exclamat, Met. 6.513) a hint that Medea is also inspired by the Thracian tyrant. 25. FGrH 3 fr. 32; Cic. Leg. Man. 22; Apollod. 1.9.24. Jason in Eur. Med. 1334 charges that Medea killed her ­brother “by the hearth” (παρέστιον). See Bremmer 1997, 85, for Pherecydes’s version, and passim for all extant versions of his murder. 26. Oliensis (1997b, 188) interprets the metapoetic message as Ovid-­Medea’s “dis­ owning of certain of his own ‘­family members’ ” and Ovid-­Aeetes mourning the loss. She further reads the collocation of legere and tristis in 32 as a reference to his Tristia—­ Medean poems meant to delay Augustus. Oliensis (1997b, 189–90) further notes a reference to Marc Antony’s famous treatment of Cicero’s hands and head, which he ordered nailed to the rostra. Sen. Suas. 6.17–21; Plut. Cic. 48–49. Oliensis (1997b, 193 n. 28) cites Schubert (1990, 97). 27. See further Filippi 2015, 206–8, for intertexts with Enn. Alexander, Ov. Her. 6, and Ibis. 28. Ovid’s self-­associations with epic heroes can be found at Tr. 1.1.99–100; 1.2.4–12; 1.5.19–24, 54–84; 1.9.27–33; 3.5.37–42; 3.8.1–10; 3.11.62; 4.1.15–18, 31–32; 4.3.29–30, 63–78; 4.4.61–88; 5.1.53–64; 5.2.13–16; 5.4.11–12; 5.5.3–4, 41–58; 5.6.7–12, 25–28; 5.14.35–40; and Pont. 1.3.5–6, 61–82; 2.2.25–26; 2.3.41–48; 2.4.22–23; 2.6.25–30; 2.7.60; 3.6.17–20; 4.10.9–28, 78. Harrison (2002, 90–91), remarking Ovid’s generic alignment with epic from Tomis, compares Tr. 1 with Hom. Od. and Verg. Aen. See McGowan 2009, 177–201, for Ovid’s self-­association with Ulysses in the exile poems. See, e.g., Videau-­Delibes 1991, 51–105, Claassen 2008, 174–76, and Tissol 2014, 6–10, for a discus­ sion of Ovid’s use of mythological exempla and his generic interaction with epic in the exile poems. See further Kenney 2001, 262–67, and Tissol 2014, 7 and 103–4, ad Tr. 1.4. 29. Claassen (2008, 174–75) has identified Jason as the most topical myth for Ovid’s exile. See further Videau-­Delibes 1991, 54–56. 30. Elsner and Sharrock 1991, 159–61 and passim. Elsner’s study considers the Pyg­ malion episode from Met. as a meta­phor for creating and viewing realistic art: “The ivory statue . . . ​generates him as a viewer-­lover, just as the Metamorphoses generates us as its readers” (155). “Ovid suddenly brings the reader up against the bound­aries of

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his own desire as generated by the text. What can happen in a story ­can’t happen in life. The erotic myth of Pygmalion’s statue turned to flesh is as much an assertion of absence as it was of fulfillment” (165). 31. This relationship is expressed explic­itly through their repre­sen­ta­tion as writing subjects (see especially chapter 2), and implicitly through their self-­construction as an elegiac puella who is the materia of Roman erotic elegy. On this topic, see Wyke 1987, 2002; Gold 1993; Keith 1994; and chapter 2. 32. The realism of Am. 3.12 translates this into Corinna’s promiscuity, for which Ovid, her writer, is at fault: “she sells her body with my talent” (ingenio prostitit illa meo, 8). Horace expresses a similar (mock) fear for the f­ uture of his book once it has been published at Epist. 1.20, e.g., dirtied by the hands of commoners (manibus . . . ​ volgi, 11), eaten by moths (12), or used as a school text (17–18). He addresses the book as if it ­were a separate being altogether from its author (1–9): “You seem, book, to be looking at Vertumnus and Janus” (Vertumnum Ianumque, liber, spectare videris, 1). 33. Pygmalion, notes Elsner (1991, 159 and passim), is both the creator and viewer. He can, therefore, completely control the interpretation of his statue as artistic cre­ ation. Ovid is not so fortunate. “If Pygmalion the artist is a figure for Ovid the writer, then the myth as a ­whole undermines the integrity of Ovid’s writing since he is not its only reader, he cannot control its meanings as Pygmalion does ­those of the statue” (Elsner and Sharrock 1991, 167 n. 28).

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Index of A n ci e n t S o u r ce s

Accius Medea: frr. 467–99 (Dangel): 81, 138n41; fr. 492: 87 Tereus: frr. 439–54 (Dangel): 101; 439–42: 102; fr. 443–44: 102; fr. 445: 102, 173n118; fr. 450: 102; fr. 453–54: 102 Aeschylus Agamemnon: 783: 36; 861–65: 147n63, 166n28; 863: 84; 1140–49: 172n97; 1389–92: 179n190; 1391: 121; 1391–92: 121 Hypsipyle: frr. 3.247–48 (TrGF): 81 Suppliants: 57–66: 172n97 Antoninus Liberalis 30: 150n22, 159n111 Apollodorus Bibliotheca: 1.9.24: 181n25; 1.9.28: 137n25; 3.1.2: 159n111; 3.14.7: 173n119; 3.14.8: 171n96, 174n135 Epitome: 1.4–6: 137n25; 1.18–19: 137n22 Apollonius Rhodius Argonautica: 1.627–39: 169n67; 1.636: 169n67; 1.784: 84, 166n27; 1.850–52: 170n84; 1.872–73: 170n84; 3.639–40: 169n57; 3.776: 170n75; 3.997–1004: 166n26; 3.997–1007: 96; 3.1083–101: 166n26; 3.1100–101: 96; 3.1203–6: 167n42; 3.1206: 170n84; 4.338–39: 167n36; 4.345–50: 167n36; 4.355–67: 171n86; 4.360–65: 167n36; 4.367–84: 167n36; 4.424–34: 167n42; 4.452–76: 181n24 Aristophanes Frogs: 1043: 136n21 Aristotle Poetics: 11.1452a–­b: 145n43 Asclepiades Tragodoumena: fr. 28 (FGrH 12): 137n22 Calvus fr. 9 (Courtney): 160n118

Carcinus fr. 1.70, 1e (TrGF): 137n27 Catullus 5.1–3: 160n119; 61.110: 179n189; 64.58: 95; 64.58–59: 94; 64.59: 95; 64.61–62: 94, 96; 64.62–67: 157n97; 64.126–27: 94; 64.132: 169n60; 64.133: 169n60; 64.145–48: 94–95; 64.149–51: 99; 64.154–57: 160n120; 64.171–72: 170n69; 64.172: 96; 64.174: 169n60; 64.188–201: 97, 169n62; 64.197: 95; 64.200–201: 95; 64.204–6: 97; 64.241–45: 95; 64.256–64: 169n67; 68.139: 162n131 Cicero Brutus: 72: 135n7 Epistulae ad Atticum: 16.2.3: 172n101; 16.5.1: 172n101 Epistulae ad Familiares: 7.1.2: 173n115 Orationes Philippicae: 10.8: 177n168 Pro Lege Manilia: 22: 181n25 Diodorus Siculus 4.45–56: 137n29; 4.55–56: 137n25 Elegies for Maecenas 53–54: 170n81 Ennius Annales: fr. 54 (Skutsch): 167n35; frr. 54–55: 83; fr. 175: 175n145 Medea Exul/Medea: fr. 103 ( Jocelyn): 170n69; frr. 103–16: 81, 138n39; fr. 112: 138n42, 166n17 Thyestes: frr. 149–60 ( Jocelyn): 177n167 Euripides Aeolus: frr. 14–41 (TGF2): 159n110 Bacchae: 222–23: 144n31; 1118: 176n164; 1120: 176n164 Cretans: fr. 5.1.472e.6–8 (TrGF): 146n51; fr. 5.1.472e.9: 146n51; fr. 5.1.472e.11: 146n51; fr. 5.1.472e.16–20: 146n51 201

20 2

I n d e x o f A n c i e n t S o ur c e s

Euripides (continued) Hecuba: 347: 176n152; 367: 176n154; 543–44: 176n153; 548: 176n152; 548–52: 176n154; 565: 113; 811: 167n38 Helen: 1107–12: 172n97 Heracles: 1021–23: 172n97 Hippolytus I: fr. 5.1.428 (TrGF): 153n45; fr. 5.1.430: 155n71; fr. 5.1.432–34: 151n34 Hippolytus II: 1–57: 56; 21–50: 154n70; 88–120: 153n45; 284–310: 140n67; 310: 154n62; 310–53: 154n62; 331: 154n65; 337: 55; 337–41: 55; 339: 55; 351: 154n63; 352: 154n62, 154n63; 372: 154n64; 400–401: 140n67; 420–23: 150n18; 428–30: 145n43; 433–81: 140n67, 155n71; 451–57: 16, 141n7; 454–56: 155n76; 478–79: 140n67; 525–64: 155n71; 545–64: 16, 56, 141n7, 155n75; 550–51: 155n75; 560–61: 155n75; 602: 43; 602–67: 12; 604: 43; 606: 43; 616–67: 43; 651–55: 151n34; 800–802: 140n67; 877: 154n56; 893: 44; 1028–31: 87, 167n37; 1077–79: 58; 1198–248: 155n78; 1236–39: 133; 1268–82: 155n71 Hypsipyle: frr. 5.2.752–70 (TrGF): 81 Iphigenia Aulidensis: 1375–76: 176n152; 1378–84: 176n154; 1555: 176n152; 1560: 113; 1566–67: 176n153; 1578: 176n153 Medea: 1–8: 170n69; 20–23: 170n77; 160–65: 97–98; 161–63: 98; 165: 97; 230–34: 98; 233: 98; 255–56: 168n46; 467: 99; 475–90: 171n86; 488–89: 171n87; 492–98: 170n77; 507: 99; 595–97: 168n46; 734–55: 98; 789: 88; 945–58: 88; 1021–80: 116, 137n24; 1041–42: 177n173; 1048: 177n173; 1049–51: 177n173; 1078–79: 171n93; 1078–80: 168n43; 1079: 137n24; 1259–60: 97; 1282–84: 13, 141n73; 1334: 181n25; 1391–92: 170n77 Phoenissae: 1514–18: 172n97 Thyestes: frr. 5.1.391–97 (TrGF): 177n165 Gallus fr. 145 (Hollis): 46, 152n37 Gellius Noctes Atticae: 4.3.3: 168n56 Hesiod Opera et Dies: 564–70: 101

Homer Iliad: 1.22–32: 36; 1.318–48: 36; 23.114–20: 175n145 Odyssey: 11.321–25: 137n22; 19.92–95: 84; 19.518–23: 101 Horace Ars Poetica: 73–85: 9 Carmina: 1.18.7–11: 176n159; 1.18.9: 176n159 Epistulae: 1.20.1: 182n32; 1.20.1–9: 182n32; 1.20.11: 182n32; 1.20.12: 182n32; 1.20.17–18: 182n32 Hyginus Fabulae: 15.507: 144n38; 26: 137n25; 45: 171n96, 174n135; 243.6: 150n22 Inscriptions CIL I.196: 144n36 ILS 18: 144n36 Juvenal 3.93–97: 175n147 Livy 34.2.3: 144n38; 39.8: 144n31; 39.8–19: 144n36, 144n37; 39.17–19: 144n38 Lucian De Saltatione: 40: 8; 42: 8; 49: 8; 52: 8; 61: 8 Nepos Atticus: 12.1: 168n55 Ovid Amores: 1.1.1–4: 152n39; 1.1.3–4: 152n44; 1.1.21–30: 152n39; 1.1.24: 152n39; 1.2.19–20: 47; 1.2.43–48: 145n40; 1.2.51–52: 145n40; 1.3.20: 152n36; 1.9.1: 152n43; 1.11.15: 161n130; 1.11.19–22: 163n140; 1.12.3–4: 161n129; 1.13.32: 152n37; 2.1.1–2: 152n37; 2.1.3: 152n39; 2.18.19: 155n79; 2.18.19–20: 155n79; 2.18.22: 155n79; 2.18.23–24: 171n87; 3.1.1: 175n145; 3.1.7–10: 152n44; 3.1.7–13: 10; 3.1.17: 152n37; 3.1.23: 57; 3.1.23–24: 173n115; 3.1.35: 57; 3.1.36: 57; 3.1.41: 57; 3.4.10: 152n37; 3.7.63: 179n189; 3.11.37: 152n37; 3.12.8: 182n32; 3.14.17: 152n37 Ars Amatoria: 1.16: 152n40; 1.21–24: 152n40; 1.267: 21; 1.269–82: 21; 1.271: 32; 1.271–73: 21, 22, 25; 1.273: 21; 1.274: 18, 30; 1.275: 22; 1.276: 21, 22, 30, 72, 147n58, 160n113, 175n147;



I n d e x o f A n c i e n t S o ur c e s 1.277: 21, 22; 1.277–78: 22; 1.278: 22, 30; 1.278–79: 27; 1.278–80: 22, 25; 1.279–80: 32; 1.281: 21, 22, 24, 29, 72; 1.281–82: 111; 1.282: 22, 29, 146n47; 1.283: 23; 1.283–84: 20, 23, 72, 128, 150n22; 1.283–88: 23; 1.283–332: 29; 1.283–340: 15, 18, 58, 141n1; 1.284: 24, 30, 147n59; 1.285: 23; 1.285–88: 20, 23; 1.286: 24; 1.287: 24; 1.289–326: 20, 66; 1.301: 26; 1.301–2: 26; 1.302: 26; 1.303–7: 162n132; 1.304: 26; 1.304–7: 25–26; 1.310: 25, 146n51; 1.311: 26; 1.311–12: 24; 1.312: 30, 34, 73; 1.313: 66; 1.313–22: 162n132; 1.314: 25; 1.315: 25; 1.319: 30; 1.320: 25; 1.320–22: 30; 1.321: 25; 1.322: 25; 1.323–24: 26; 1.326: 27; 1.327: 28, 30, 147n66; 1.327–30: 20, 28; 1.327–42: 27–28; 1.331: 28, 142n20, 145n46; 1.331–32: 20, 28; 1.332: 28, 145n46; 1.333–34: 20, 28; 1.333–40: 29; 1.334: 28, 30; 1.335: 28, 31; 1.335–36: 20, 28; 1.336: 28, 31, 128; 1.337: 20, 28, 31; 1.337–40: 29; 1.338: 20, 28, 29, 31, 128; 1.339: 28, 29; 1.339–40: 20, 28, 31; 1.341–44: 29; 1.342: 21, 22, 24, 72; 1.437–86: 163n140; 1.455–58: 163n140; 1.505–24: 155n73; 1.509–10: 155n73; 1.509–12: 141n1; 1.511: 155n73; 1.609–12: 109; 1.611: 108, 152n42; 1.741–46: 141n1; 2.24: 145n45; 2.99–104: 141n1; 2.169–72: 83; 2.349–408: 31; 2.353–54: 31; 2.353–56: 31; 2.354: 32; 2.355: 31; 2.356: 31; 2.357–72: 31, 35, 36; 2.361: 35; 2.361–68: 35; 2.363: 35; 2.363–64: 35; 2.365: 34; 2.367: 34; 2.371: 34–35; 2.372–86: 82; 2.373: 31; 2.373–80: 31–32; 2.373–408: 36, 141n1; 2.374: 32; 2.375: 32; 2.376: 32; 2.377: 31, 32; 2.378: 32, 34; 2.379: 32; 2.380: 34; 2.381: 33; 2.381–82: 31, 165n16; 2.381–84: 15, 33, 124; 2.382: 33, 36, 132, 168n44; 2.383: 33; 2.383–84: 31; 2.384: 33, 34, 147n60; 2.385–86: 34, 124; 2.397–98: 35; 2.399–408: 15, 31, 35–36; 2.400: 36; 2.401–2: 36; 2.403–4: 36; 2.405: 36; 2.406: 36; 2.551: 166n25; 2.618: 147n64; 3.32–40: 141n1; 3.33–40: 170n72; 3.84: 36; 3.101–28: 152n42; 3.113: 153n49; 3.127–280: 160n117; 3.155: 152n42; 3.210: 152n42; 3.305: 148n70; 3.329–48: 141n1; 3.433–34: 147n65; 3.437: 147n65; 3.442: 147n65; 3.443–46:

203

147n65; 3.469–78: 163n140; 3.501–8: 147n58; 3.671: 162n138; 3.672: 171n91; 3.710: 147n62; 3.765: 147n65; 3.768: 147n65 Epistulae ex Ponto: 1.2.5–12: 180n13; 1.2.7–8: 180n13; 1.3.5–6: 181n28; 1.3.61–82: 181n28; 1.4.23–46: 133; 1.4.49–54: 133; 1.7.1–6: 180n13; 2.2.25–26: 181n28; 2.3.41–48: 181n28; 2.4.22–23: 181n28; 2.6.25–30: 181n28; 2.7.60: 181n28; 2.7.66: 131; 2.10.48: 132, 168n48; 3.5.1–4: 180n13; 3.6.17–20: 181n28; 4.10.9–28: 181n28; 4.10.78: 181n28; 4.14.62: 132, 168n48; 4.15.36: 132, 168n48 Fasti: 2.851–56: 116; 6.742–44: 133 Heroides: 4.1: 59, 64, 151n27; 4.1–2: 45; 4.2: 45, 53; 4.3: 52, 127; 4.3–4: 51–52; 4.4: 52; 4.5: 44, 65, 166n22; 4.5–12: 53; 4.7: 54, 65; 4.9: 44, 71; 4.9–10: 65; 4.10: 54; 4.11: 152n39; 4.11–14: 46–47; 4.13–14: 152n39; 4.13–18: 160n122; 4.14: 47, 152n40; 4.17: 46, 56; 4.17–27: 47–48; 4.18: 48; 4.19: 48, 56, 177n170; 4.20: 56; 4.21: 57; 4.23: 48; 4.25: 48, 54, 57; 4.26: 48, 56; 4.27: 48; 4.53–54: 160n122; 4.53–66: 54, 55, 153n46; 4.55: 56; 4.57: 56; 4.57–58: 145n45; 4.59: 56; 4.60: 56; 4.61: 56; 4.62: 56; 4.63–66: 45; 4.70–84: 160n123; 4.75–78: 54; 4.85–92: 48; 4.87: 48; 4.88: 49; 4.91–92: 48; 4.93–104: 54, 155n76; 4.110–12: 45; 4.113: 45; 4.114: 45; 4.117–22: 45–46; 4.127–28: 46; 4.129: 49, 50, 71; 4.129–32: 50; 4.130: 50; 4.131: 151n35; 4.132: 151n35; 4.133–36: 151n35; 4.135–36: 45; 4.137: 71; 4.137–38: 57; 4.137–46: 50–51, 65; 4.138: 50, 66, 71; 4.139: 49; 4.140: 49, 50, 51, 71; 4.141: 66; 4.141–42: 47; 4.143: 49; 4.144: 49, 66; 4.144–46: 71; 4.145: 49; 4.146: 49, 66; 4.154–55: 57; 4.165–66: 56; 4.175–76: 58, 71, 74; 4.176: 71–72, 78; 6.1: 96; 6.2: 83; 6.4: 83; 6.4–16: 83; 6.5: 98; 6.7: 83; 6.8: 83; 6.9: 83; 6.10–14: 99; 6.15: 87; 6.16: 83, 86; 6.19: 83, 132; 6.19–20: 88; 6.20: 98; 6.21: 83; 6.23–31: 84; 6.23–40: 83; 6.25: 86; 6.25–26: 84; 6.29–30: 86; 6.31–38: 99, 166n31; 6.32: 83, 85; 6.32–38: 84; 6.33: 85; 6.34: 85; 6.35–36: 85; 6.39: 83; 6.39–40: 85; 6.41: 98; 6.43–44: 90; 6.45: 97; 6.45–46: 87, 96; 6.47–48: 87; 6.49–50: 87; 6.51–52: 88; 6.51–53: 99; 6.53–55: 99; 6.54: 93;

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Ovid (continued) 6.57–64: 86; 6.58: 95; 6.59–60: 86; 6.59–62: 86; 6.60: 90; 6.61: 97; 6.63: 95; 6.64: 83; 6.67–70: 93, 94; 6.70: 85, 96; 6.75: 89, 99; 6.76: 99; 6.79–81: 89; 6.79–82: 92; 6.81: 92, 168n56; 6.82: 93, 99, 171n88; 6.83–96: 88, 92; 6.91: 97; 6.93: 88; 6.95–96: 88, 99; 6.97–98: 99; 6.97–104: 98; 6.99: 86; 6.99–100: 98; 6.99–104: 85, 92; 6.100: 86, 90; 6.102: 87; 6.103: 88, 93; 6.103–4: 85, 86, 93; 6.104: 85; 6.105: 92; 6.105–8: 92; 6.106: 89, 132; 6.107: 132; 6.107–8: 89; 6.108: 93; 6.109: 95; 6.109–10: 94; 6.111: 95; 6.111–12: 86–87; 6.113: 91; 6.113–24: 91; 6.114: 83, 91, 96; 6.114–16: 96; 6.115: 91; 6.115–16: 169n62; 6.116: 91; 6.117–18: 98; 6.118: 91; 6.119: 91, 97; 6.121–22: 90; 6.123–24: 90; 6.124: 169n60; 6.125: 88; 6.125–26: 91; 6.127: 88, 166n17; 6.127–30: 82, 88; 6.132: 83; 6.133: 89, 90; 6.133–38: 89; 6.134: 90; 6.135: 89; 6.135–36: 90; 6.137: 90; 6.137–38: 98; 6.138: 90; 6.139: 171n90; 6.140: 99; 6.146: 169n60; 6.147–48: 99; 6.149: 82, 99; 6.149–51: 82; 6.153–54: 90; 6.162: 87, 95; 6.163: 98; 6.164: 97; 7.133–38: 170n83; 7.149–50: 170n81; 11.1–2: 159n110; 11.3: 159n110; 11.289–90: 159n110; 12.21–24: 132; 12.70: 132, 168n44; 12.85–91: 167n35; 12.105: 132, 168n44; 12.182: 171n88; 12.212: 116, 156n81; 16.95–98: 169n59; 17.193: 171n87 Medea: See Quintilian: Institutio Oratoria 8.5.6; Seneca the Elder: Suasoriae 3.7 Metamorphoses: 1.497–98: 174n136; 1.505–6: 110; 1.533–38: 110; 1.567: 113; 1.583–686: 113; 1.588–89: 114; 1.590–91: 114; 1.593: 176n157; 1.610–11: 114; 1.612: 114; 1.613: 114; 1.649–50: 114; 1.651–67: 114; 1.661: 114; 1.713–79: 113; 1.739–43: 114; 1.747: 114; 1.748: 114; 2.37: 162n131; 2.434–36: 161n125; 2.483–84: 113; 3.344: 173n126; 4.1–30: 169n67; 4.6: 172n113; 4.37: 176n163; 4.233: 173n126; 5.250–678: 102; 5.269–93: 103; 5.293: 172n106; 5.605–6: 110; 6.147: 102; 6.150–51: 102; 6.288: 178n176; 6.316: 102; 6.317: 102; 6.323: 103; 6.383: 103; 6.403: 103; 6.403–4: 103; 6.404–11: 103; 6.424: 102; 6.424–25: 107;

6.424–28: 107; 6.424–674: 172n112; 6.426: 120, 122; 6.426–32: 107; 6.427: 116; 6.430: 104; 6.430–37: 103–4; 6.431: 104; 6.433: 107, 172n109; 6.434: 172n109; 6.435: 172n109; 6.436: 118, 172n109; 6.437: 172n109; 6.438: 105, 172n113; 6.440: 120; 6.440–44: 104, 174n128; 6.444–46: 107; 6.451: 105, 116; 6.452–53: 109; 6.452–54: 109; 6.454: 109; 6.458–60: 101–2; 6.461: 108; 6.462: 108; 6.463: 108; 6.466: 119; 6.467–69: 108; 6.468: 108; 6.469: 120; 6.471: 169n61; 6.472–73: 106, 117, 120; 6.473–74: 108; 6.476: 120; 6.478–79: 108; 6.480–81: 174n131; 6.481–82: 108; 6.482: 120; 6.486–91: 105; 6.490: 102, 118; 6.490–92: 109; 6.491: 105; 6.493: 105; 6.494: 109; 6.495: 120; 6.496–503: 104; 6.497: 175n147; 6.505: 120–21; 6.506–7: 109; 6.509: 104, 120; 6.510: 109; 6.511: 110; 6.513: 104, 120, 181n24; 6.514: 121; 6.515: 102; 6.515–17: 110; 6.515–18: 110; 6.516–17: 118, 176n156; 6.518: 119, 174n139; 6.520: 118; 6.521: 110–11, 114, 119, 120; 6.522–23: 112; 6.523: 112, 121; 6.523–54: 120; 6.524–25: 107; 6.525: 107, 121, 122; 6.525–26: 111; 6.527–28: 118; 6.527–30: 111, 112; 6.529–30: 118; 6.531: 112; 6.531–33: 112; 6.533: 112; 6.533–48: 104; 6.534–36: 112, 113; 6.534–48: 121; 6.537: 113; 6.539–41: 113; 6.542–44: 113; 6.549: 118, 121; 6.550: 121; 6.552: 119; 6.553–54: 113; 6.554: 113; 6.558: 178n176; 6.565–66: 169n61; 6.566–68: 117; 6.574–75: 113; 6.578: 114; 6.581: 118; 6.582: 114, 176n163; 6.585–86: 114; 6.586: 114, 178n181; 6.587: 105, 178n180; 6.587–90: 117; 6.587–96: 106; 6.588: 106, 118, 176n159; 6.588–90: 178n180; 6.589: 106, 178n180; 6.590: 106, 117, 118, 178n180; 6.591: 104, 118; 6.591–94: 105, 117–18; 6.592–93: 118; 6.592–94: 105; 6.593: 118; 6.594: 118, 178n181; 6.595: 104, 118, 178n180; 6.596: 117, 121, 178n180; 6.598: 105, 119; 6.598–99: 105, 119; 6.598–600: 118; 6.600: 119; 6.601–2: 119; 6.603–5: 119; 6.609–10: 119; 6.611–12: 121; 6.611–19: 104; 6.615–18: 116; 6.618–19: 116; 6.620–21: 116; 6.620–34: 116; 6.621–22: 104; 6.625–26: 177n173; 6.626: 121; 6.628:



I n d e x o f A n c i e n t S o ur c e s 177n173; 6.629–30: 177n173; 6.631–35: 104; 6.635: 113; 6.636: 120; 6.636–37: 118; 6.636–41: 119; 6.637–38: 120; 6.639: 120; 6.639–41: 120; 6.640: 104, 176n164; 6.648: 121; 6.650: 120; 6.652: 104, 106, 120; 6.653: 121; 6.655: 104; 6.657: 104; 6.659–60: 104; 6.660: 121, 175n144; 6.662: 104; 6.665: 120; 6.669–70: 101, 103, 172n106; 6.671: 124; 6.673: 101; 6.675–76: 124; 6.677: 121; 6.677–721: 121; 6.681–710: 103; 6.682: 121; 6.684–86: 122; 6.684–91: 123; 6.687–701: 122; 6.690: 123; 6.700–701: 123; 6.702: 123; 6.706–7: 123; 7.1–424: 110, 164n2; 7.10: 143n29; 7.10–11: 100; 7.20–21: 168n43, 171n93; 7.105: 85; 7.122: 85; 7.124–33: 85; 7.141–42: 85; 7.394–97: 12; 7.397: 165n16; 7.398–424: 166n17; 7.402–24: 137n25; 7.826–27: 166n23; 8.96: 140n65; 8.107: 143n29; 8.445–525: 164n2; 9.439–49: 64; 9.439–665: 39, 162n134; 9.447–53: 62; 9.448–49: 158n103; 9.450–56: 70; 9.451: 70; 9.452: 70; 9.453: 64, 70; 9.454: 62, 64, 67, 69, 70; 9.455: 75; 9.457: 72; 9.457–59: 70; 9.458: 71, 72; 9.459: 71; 9.460: 71, 72, 73, 74; 9.461–62: 71; 9.462: 72; 9.462–63: 66; 9.463: 162n132; 9.464: 60; 9.464–65: 70; 9.465: 60, 72; 9.466: 60, 66; 9.466–67: 62; 9.467: 62; 9.468: 69, 72; 9.468–75: 60; 9.468–86: 109; 9.470: 60, 74; 9.470–71: 74; 9.472: 73; 9.472–73: 60, 67, 74; 9.474: 60, 74; 9.474–86: 72; 9.475: 60, 74; 9.476–77: 74; 9.479: 69; 9.480: 74; 9.481: 69, 74; 9.483: 74; 9.487–91: 76; 9.493: 73; 9.495: 67–68, 74; 9.505: 67; 9.506: 68, 74; 9.506–8: 159n110; 9.508–9: 171n91; 9.509: 72, 73, 96; 9.511–12: 62; 9.512: 143n29; 9.513–14: 62, 64; 9.514–16: 65; 9.515: 67; 9.515–16: 62; 9.516: 65, 73, 74; 9.517–29: 71; 9.518–29: 64; 9.519: 74; 9.519–20: 71; 9.521: 64, 71; 9.522: 159n110; 9.523: 66; 9.524: 64; 9.527: 71; 9.528: 64, 66; 9.529: 66; 9.530: 59, 64; 9.530–31: 69; 9.530–34: 63, 180n13; 9.531: 63, 66; 9.532: 63; 9.532–33: 63, 64; 9.534: 63; 9.535–42: 73; 9.540–42: 73; 9.541: 143n29; 9.543: 66, 161n124; 9.543–44: 67; 9.544–45: 67; 9.545: 66; 9.545–46: 67; 9.547: 66; 9.551–52: 66; 9.554–55: 66; 9.556: 65, 66; 9.556–60:

205

65; 9.558: 66, 68; 9.559: 66; 9.560: 66; 9.562: 67; 9.564–65: 75; 9.572: 69; 9.572–73: 161n130; 9.574: 140n65; 9.574–79: 12; 9.575: 68; 9.576: 43; 9.577: 44, 72; 9.578: 44; 9.583: 72, 143n29; 9.585: 73; 9.585–86: 68; 9.586: 73; 9.586–87: 68; 9.600: 69, 73; 9.601: 69; 9.601–9: 68–69; 9.602: 143n29; 9.610: 69; 9.610–12: 161n130; 9.613–15: 160n120; 9.626: 69; 9.631–32: 76; 9.633: 44; 9.635–49: 131; 9.637: 72, 143n29; 9.638: 72; 9.638–39: 161n126; 9.640: 161n126; 9.641–42: 73, 131; 9.641–43: 143n30; 9.651: 161n126; 9.655: 161n126; 9.655–56: 131; 9.663: 75; 10.315–18: 158n101; 10.320: 171n91; 10.378–79: 140n67; 10.382–430: 140n67; 10.397–98: 140n67; 10.410: 143n29; 10.624: 162n138; 12.53–58: 166n20; 12.197: 173n126; 13.399–575: 164n2; 13.429–38: 172n113; 13.451: 161n125; 13.546: 114, 178n181; 13.560: 178n181; 14.770: 173n126; 14.812–16: 83, 167n35; 14.820: 173n123; 15.479–621: 12, 130; 15.497–99: 130; 15.497–546: 68; 15.500–502: 130; 15.524–29: 133; 15.528–29: 130; 15.863: 173n123; 15.871–79: 166n20; 15.873: 134 Remedia Amoris: 41–68: 141n1; 261–88: 141n1; 341–44: 160n117; 372: 9; 372–86: 9; 429: 147n64; 432: 147n64; 593: 147n62; 741–49: 141n1; 743–45: 170n72; 751–55: 1 Tristia: 1.1.99–100: 181n28; 1.2.4–12: 181n28; 1.5.19–24: 181n28; 1.5.54–84: 181n28; 1.9.27–33: 181n28; 1.10.9: 133; 1.10.15: 133; 2.185–86: 131; 2.190: 132; 2.207: 130; 2.371–408: 80; 2.381–408: 164n1; 2.382: 8; 2.383: 8; 2.387–90: 80; 2.393–94: 143n24; 2.519–20: 138n47; 2.526: 132; 2.577–78: 181n18; 3.1.18: 131; 3.3.46: 131; 3.5.37–42: 181n28; 3.5.54: 181n18; 3.8.1–6: 132; 3.8.1–10: 181n28; 3.8.41–42: 131; 3.9.5–10: 132; 3.9.6: 132; 3.9.16: 132; 3.9.22: 132; 3.9.23: 181n24; 3.9.25: 132; 3.9.25–34: 133; 3.9.27–32: 133; 3.9.31: 133; 3.9.32: 181n26; 3.9.33–34: 132; 3.10.4: 131; 3.11.62: 181n28; 4.1.15–18: 181n28; 4.1.31–32: 181n28; 4.3.29–30: 181n28; 4.3.63–78: 181n28; 4.4.61–88: 181n28; 4.4.86: 131; 5.1.46: 131; 5.1.53–64:

20 6

I n d e x o f A n c i e n t S o ur c es

Ovid (continued) 181n28; 5.2.13–16: 181n28; 5.2.64: 132, 168n48; 5.4.11–12: 181n28; 5.5.3–4: 181n28; 5.5.41–58: 181n28; 5.6.7–12: 181n28; 5.6.25–28: 181n28; 5.7.25–27: 138n47; 5.14.35–40: 181n28 Pacuvius Medus: frr. 231–65 (Warmington): 138n40 Parthenius Narrationum amatoriarum libellus: 11.2: 76; 11.3: 62 Pausanias 1.5.4: 171n96; 1.22.2: 137n22; 2.3.7–8: 137n25; 10.24.1: 75 Pherecydes fr. 32 (FGrH 3): 181n25 Pliny the Elder Naturalis Historia: 32.152: 180n14 Plutarch Cicero: 48–49: 181n26 Moralia: 27f–28a: 151n31 Theseus: 12: 137n25 Propertius 1.1.1: 46; 1.1.1–2: 47; 1.1.1–8: 152n39; 1.5.18–19: 160n121; 1.6.26: 152n37; 1.13.29: 152n36; 1.15.38: 152n37; 2.5.1–2: 152n37; 2.6.1: 146n47; 2.16.41–42: 145n40; 2.24.6: 152n37; 2.34.66: 177n170; 3.10.24: 152n37; 3.19.1–28: 18; 3.19.10: 152n37; 3.19.11–22: 146n50; 3.19.21–28: 145n46; 4.4.39–40: 145n46 Quintilian Institutio Oratoria: 8.5.6: 126, 138n48 Seneca the Elder Suasoriae: 3.7: 85, 138n48; 6.17–21: 181n26 Seneca the Younger Medea: 123: 167n32 Phaedra: 1101–2: 155n78 Thyestes: 269–70: 177n170 Sophocles Aegeus: frr. 4.19–25 (TrGF): 137n25 Ajax: 629–30: 172n97 Antigone: 450–523: 112; 891–928: 112; 923–24: 112–13

Colchides: frr. 4.336–49 (TrGF): 137n26 Electra: 107: 172n97; 148–49: 172n97; 1077: 172n97 Lemniae: frr. 4.384–89 (TrGF): 81 Oedipus Tyrannos: 980–82: 157n94 Phaedra: fr. 4.684 (TrGF): 155n71; fr. 4.686: 151n31 Tereus: fr. 4.581 (TrGF): 101, 102; fr. 4.587: 102; fr. 4.589: 173n118 Thyestes: frr. 4.247–69 (TrGF): 177n165 Trachiniae: 180–290: 166n28; 299–300: 167n38; 552–53: 167n38; 749–812: 166n30; 962–63: 172n97 Statius Silvae: 1.2.254–55: 180n14 Suetonius De grammaticis et rhetoribus: 1.2: 2 Divus Augustus: 99.1: 1, 135n1 Tiberius: 7: 168n55 Sulpicia 3.1.8: 152n36; 3.13.10: 152n36 Terence Hecyra: 198: 144n38 Thucydides 2.29.3: 171n96 Tibullus 2.1.12: 179n189; 2.6.43: 152n36 Varro De Lingua Latina: 7.96: 60, 157n97 Velleius Paterculus 2.82.4: 25 Vergil Aeneid: 1.497: 178n181; 2.40: 178n181; 4.27: 156n82; 4.170–73: 156n82, 162n131; 4.296: 178n180; 4.301–3: 143n30, 178n180; 4.302: 178n180; 4.303: 178n180; 4.305: 178n180; 4.469–73: 178n180; 4.595: 171n91; 4.657–58: 170n70; 6.179: 175n145, 176n157; 6.517–19: 145n39; 7.344–45: 145n39; 7.348: 145n39; 7.351: 145n39, 178n180; 7.377: 145n39; 7.385–88: 145n39, 178n180; 10.395–96: 175n144 Eclogues: 4.6: 172n113; 6.47: 66; 6.52: 66, 143n28; 6.74–76: 145n46 Georgics: 5.111–15: 173n120

General Index

Page numbers in italics refer to figures. abject, 4, 5, 14–16, 22, 24, 65, 71, 81, 87, 145n45; and Byblis, 24, 39, 59, 71, 75–78, 80, 111, 123–24, 127; defined, 15–16; desire, 16, 34–38, 70, 80, 93, 111, 123–31, 145n46, 152n38, 171n91; as discussed by Butler and Kristeva, 4, 15–16, 37, 39, 76, 79, 127, 136n14, 146n52; and ethnicity, 111–12; and exile, 130–34, 168n48; and gender, 4–6, 16, 17, 24, 127, 134; and gender in Ovid, 4–6, 9, 14, 20, 28–38, 76–80, 100, 111, 115, 123–24, 127–34; and genre, 29, 39, 59, 71, 75–77, 80, 100, 111, 123–24, 127; and Hypsipyle, 81, 87, 100, 124; and Medea, 4–5, 9, 87, 100, 124, 127–32, 134; and Pasiphae, 27, 146n51; and Phaedra, 4–5, 9, 39, 51, 65, 77–78, 111, 123–24, 127–30, 134; and Philomela, 112; and Tereus, 124 Accius, 36, 83, 101–3, 115–16, 143n24, 146n54, 157n97, 166n17, 173n115, 173n118; Jason in, 83; Medea in, 8, 81, 87, 95, 143n24, 166n17; and Philomela, 105, 112; Procne in, 102, 179n191; and Tereus, 101–3, 115–16, 177n168 Aeetes, 85, 87, 93, 132–33, 137n26, 181n26 Aegeus, 8, 55, 95, 98, 137n23 Aerope, 18, 20, 27–30, 115, 143n24, 147n66 Aeschylus, 30, 36, 81, 84, 96, 104, 118, 136n21, 137n27, 147n63 Agamemnon, 20, 27–30, 34–36, 84, 105, 114, 121 Ahl, Frederick, 157n91, 158n100, 181n23 amor, 1, 23, 36, 79–80, 81, 108, 121; and Byblis, 23, 65, 67, 80; and Phaedra, 44–48, 50, 53–57, 71, 79 Anderson, William, 109, 157n94, 157n96, 159n110, 162n138, 178n181 Antigone, 112–13, 163n146, 176n151

Antoninus Liberalis, 150n22, 159n111, 175n142 Antony, Marc, 25, 177n168, 181n26 Aphrodite, 6, 49, 54, 56, 153n46, 154n70, 155n71, 155n75, 170n84. See also Venus Apollo, 27–28, 41, 75, 103, 105, 109–10, 117, 173n118, 174n136, 178n176 Apollodorus, 157n91, 159n111, 173n119, 174n135 Apollonius, 12, 64, 75, 81, 139n60, 150n17, 150n22, 167n36, 167n42, 169n67; Jason in, 83–84, 88, 96–98, 167n42, 170n84, 181n24; Medea in, 7, 83–84, 88, 97–98, 110, 132–33, 167n42, 170n75, 170n84, 181n24 Apsyrtus, 82, 132–33, 137n26, 181n24 Ariadne, 45, 55, 93–99, 110, 137n22, 154n64, 155n73, 157n97, 165n10, 169n59, 169n62 Aristophanes, 136n21, 141n74, 143n24, 165n7 Armstrong, Rebecca, 143n28 Atreus, 27–30, 36, 104, 115–16, 177n165, 177n170 Augustus, 1–2, 8, 25, 80, 130–34, 146n54, 148n70, 168n55, 173n123, 181n26 bacchantes, 162n135, 169n67; in Catullus, 94, 96; in Greek tragedy, 24, 115, 144n31, 155n75; in Ovid, 24–25, 30, 34, 72–73, 96, 105–6, 117–18, 131, 147n62; in Rome, 24–25, 144n31, 144nn36–38; in Vergil, 25, 143n30, 145n39, 178n180 Bacchus. See bacchantes; Dionysus Barchiesi, Alessandro, 6, 12, 42, 58, 139n52, 150n17, 150n19 Barrett, William Spencer, 14, 137n22, 151n34 Barthes, Roland, 141n5 Barton, Carlin, 157n97 207

20 8 G e n e ra l

Index

Bassi, Karen, 154n60 Bauman, Richard, 144n38 Bergmann, Bettina, 142nn15–17 Bloch, David, 167n35 Boreas, 103, 121–23, 179nn191–92 Boyle, Anthony, 2, 8, 137n23, 137n29, 177n168 Brown, Fitton, 180n15 Brutus, 177n168 Butler, Judith, 14, 39, 49, 146n52, 163n146; and the abject, 4, 15–16, 37, 39, 76, 79, 127; and performativity, 3–4, 127, 136n13, 158n106 Byblis, 18, 20, 109–11, 150n22, 157n94, 158nn103–4, 160n120, 161n130, 162n132; and the abject, 24, 39, 59, 71, 75–78, 80, 111, 123–24, 127; and amor, 23, 65, 67, 80; and gender, 66–67, 72–73, 75–78, 123, 128, 143n30, 160n121, 161nn124–25, 163n140, 163n146; and incest, 12, 23, 40–43, 59–65, 68–77, 80, 127–28, 150n22, 157n96, 163n142; and issues of genre, 4–5, 22–23, 42, 59–61, 64–67, 71–78, 123, 159n110, 160n121, 163n140; in Nicaenetus, 76; and revenge, 30, 147n59; self-­presentation of, 13, 40–42, 59–78, 128–31, 157n91, 159n108, 160n121, 160n123, 161n126, 180n13; and shame, 44, 63–65; and silence, 75, 77, 131, 161n126, 163n149 Caesar, Julius, 5, 46, 177n168 Callimachus, 75, 175n140 Callisto, 111, 113, 161n125 Calvus, 66 Canace, 18, 159n110 cannibalism, 108, 111, 115–16, 174n131 Canter, H. V., 140n61 Carcinus, 137n27, 143n24 Casali, Sergio, 54, 153n48, 153n54, 154n64, 156n83 Cassandra, 35–36 Catullus, 66, 93–97, 99, 129, 151n32, 160nn119–20, 165n10, 169n60, 169n62 Caunus, 12, 131, 140n65, 150n22, 159n109, 160n120, 161n130, 162n138, 180n13; and incest, 40–44, 59–68, 70–76, 80, 109, 162n132, 163n140, 163n142 Cephalus, 36, 141n7, 155n76 chora, 42, 62, 67, 77, 148n7, 164n5; defined, 40–41 Chryses, 35–36

Cicero, 11, 140n61, 172n101, 173n115, 181n26 Cinyras, 140n67, 155n76, 174n131 citation, 3, 7, 13, 44, 86, 127, 136n13, 158n106; and Medea, 4–5, 13, 82, 98, 116, 164n2, 167n35; and Phaedra, 4–5, 13, 14, 76 City Dionysia (Athens), 6, 24, 141n74 Claassen, Jo-­Marie, 180n14, 181n29 Cleopatra, 170n81 Clytemnestra, 18, 27–31, 34–36, 84, 114, 121, 143n24, 147n63, 166n28 code modeling, 4–5, 136n16, 167n39; in Ovid, 4–15, 38–42, 46–50, 56–59, 100, 104, 108–9, 115–16, 124–28, 136n16 Conte, Gian Biagio, 4, 10, 40, 83, 100, 149n15, 167n39 Cowan, Robert, 8 Creon, 8, 112, 124, 130 Creusa, 20, 27–28, 82, 88, 97, 146n47 Cupid, 18, 47, 49, 57, 66–67, 152nn39–40, 152nn43–44 Curley, Daniel, 106, 140n65, 170n71, 172n111, 174n128, 175n142, 176n164; on code modeling and genre, 4–5, 9–12, 44, 127, 136nn16–17, 156n90, 164n2, 173n116, 173n118, 178n177 Currie, Harry ­MacLeod, 140n71 curses, 6, 52, 65, 90, 95, 97–98, 114, 124, 153n46, 169n62, 170n70, 170n73 Cyane, 41, 62, 70, 157n91 Dangel, Jacqueline, 167n36 Daphne, 109, 111, 113, 163n150, 174n136 Deianira, 84, 114, 166n28, 166n30, 167n38 Del Lucchese, Filippo, 5 Derrida, Jacques, 136n13 Diana, 48, 161n125 Dido, 75, 100, 143n30, 150n19, 156n82, 170n70, 170n72, 170n81, 178nn180–81 Dionysus, 7, 145n39, 162n135, 173n119; and Greek tragedy, 55, 76, 79, 96, 102, 127, 137n27, 141n7, 144n33, 173n118; in Ovid, 24, 72–73, 79, 91, 96, 102, 105–6, 115–21, 127; and Roman worship, 24–25, 144nn35–38, 176n159. See also bacchantes; theater of Dionysus Elektra, 112, 176n151 Elsner, John, 134, 181n30, 182n33 Ennius, 8, 11, 81–83, 96, 138n42, 140n61, 146n54, 166n17, 167n35, 177n167 Enterline, Lynn, 163n150, 180n7 Erectheus, 121–23

G e n e ra l I n d e x Erinys. See Furies Ernout, Alfred, 157n97 Euripides, 3, 9, 65, 126–28, 131–33, 140n63, 146n54, 166n17, 167n39, 176n154, 176n164; and Byblis, 159n110; Dionysus in, 55, 76, 141n7; dramatic adaptations of, 8, 80, 178n174; Hippolytus in, 6, 12, 43–44, 52–57, 68, 140n67, 151n31, 151n34, 154nn62–63, 155n78; Jason in, 6–7, 83, 97–99, 116, 124, 167n37, 181n25; Medea in, 6–8, 12–13, 31, 81–83, 87, 95–99, 116, 132, 137nn23–25, 171n93, 177nn172–73, 181n25; Pasiphae in, 24, 143n24, 145n41, 146n51; Pelias in, 137n27; Phaedra in, 40–44, 68, 72, 77, 136n21, 140n67, 143n24, 145n43, 150nn18–21, 151n31, 151nn33–34, 154nn63–64; Phaedra’s desire in, 6–8, 12–17, 51–57, 152n38, 153n50, 154n62, 154n70, 155n71, 155n76, 171n92; and Procne, 12–13, 116; as source for Ovidian Philomela, 112–13; as source for Ovidian Tereus, 115; Theseus in, 6, 43–44, 52–53, 74, 114, 151n31, 154n70, 155n78 Europa, 26, 54–55 exile, 12, 44, 87, 99; and the abject, 130–134, 168n48; of Hippolytus, 6, 12, 44; of Ovid, 14, 130–34, 180nn13–17, 181n21, 181n29 Fabre-­Serris, Jacqueline, 156n82 Fantham, Elaine, 139n60 Farrell, Joseph, 139nn51–52, 159n108, 163n140, 164n151 Feeney, Denis, 2–3, 7–8, 38, 135n10 Feldherr, Andrew, 115, 117, 147n60, 171n95, 172n101, 172n105, 174n128, 174n131, 174nn134–35, 179n192 Felton, Debbie, 5–6 Fitch, John, 138n34 Fitzpatrick, David, 13, 106, 173n118, 178n174 Foley, Helene, 137n24 frescoes, 20, 23, 30, 142nn15–17, 143n25, 154n57; Medea in, 18, 30; Phaedra in, 18, 19, 20, 30 Freud, Sigmund, 157n94, 164n5 Fulkerson, Laurel, 95, 150n19, 153n52, 154n64, 156n86, 165n10, 165n14, 168n44, 169n59, 169n62, 169n64, 171n88 furies, 25, 87, 96–97, 103–4, 106, 118, 145n39, 172n109, 178n180

209

Gallus, 34, 46, 143n28, 152nn36–37 Gibson, Roy, 148n70 Gildenhard, Ingo, 136n11, 172n101, 176n163 Girard, René, 164n5 Goff, Barbara, 145n43 Gold, Barbara, 148n6 Gordon, Pamela, 151n33 Hardie, Philip, 5, 109 Harvey, Elizabeth, 42, 58, 149nn12–13, 153n52, 156n88 Hecuba, 114, 164n2, 167n38, 178n181 Heinze, Richard, 9, 139n52, 141n2, 148n3 Helen, 18, 30–31, 34–36, 145n39, 169n59 Heracles, 114, 141n7, 166n28, 166n30, 170n84 Hinds, Stephen, 9, 116, 150n19, 156n81, 177n170 Hippolyta, 46, 53 Hippolytus, 8, 11, 54, 58–59, 68, 71, 77–78, 137n22, 151n34, 153n48; in Euripides, 6, 12, 43–44, 52–57, 68, 140n67, 151n31, 151n34, 154nn62–63, 155n78; and Ovidian depiction of Phaedra’s desire, 40, 44–52, 57, 71, 74, 130, 152n40, 155n73, 155n76, 160n123; in Seneca, 155n78; as victim, 20, 27–29, 31, 44, 52, 128, 130, 133, 156n83 Hollis, Adrian, 141n2 Holzberg, Niklas, 141n2, 162n134 Homer, 2, 7–8, 36, 84, 101, 137n24, 139n60, 142n13, 165n10, 175n145 Homeric Hymns, 175n140 Horace, 9–10, 151n32, 176n159 House of Jason (Pompeii), 18, 20, 30, 154n57 Hyginus, 150n22, 174n135 Hypsipyle, 12–13, 102–4, 112, 169n60; and the abject, 81, 87, 100, 124; in Apollonius, 167n42, 170n84; and Ariadne, 93–97, 99, 169n62; and gender, 81, 123, 169n58; and issues of genre, 81, 87, 93, 99–100, 123; and Medea, 79–100, 123–25, 127, 133, 136n16, 165n11, 167n40, 168n56, 169n58, 170n73, 171nn88–90; and revenge, 81–82, 95–99, 171nn89–90; self-­presentation of, 81–88, 93–100, 124–25, 128, 166n21, 167n39, 169n59, 171n89 incest, 13, 16, 27, 52, 127, 154n59, 157n94, 159n110, 174n131; and Byblis, 12, 23, 40–43, 59–65, 68–77, 80, 127–28,

21 0 G e n e ra l

Index

incest (continued) 150n22, 157n96, 163n142; and Caunus, 40–41, 43–44, 59, 61–68, 70–76, 80, 163n140, 163n142; and Myrrha, 23–24, 140n67, 158n101, 174n131; and Phaedra, 40, 43–44, 46–52, 58, 64–65, 71, 77, 153n50 infidelity, 28, 31–36, 96, 114, 171n91; by Clytemnestra, 31, 34–36; in Greek and Roman law, 17, 38, 154n59; by Helen, 31, 34–36; by Jason, 33, 81, 84, 86–90, 92, 94–95, 97, 137n23; and Medea, 31, 33, 89; and Pasiphae, 27, 146n51; and Phaedra, 40, 44–49, 56; and Procne, 31, 33; by Tereus, 101–3, 106, 108–9, 113, 115; by Thyestes, 115 Io, 26, 66, 111, 113–14, 157n91, 176n158 Iphigenia, 112, 113, 131, 137n29, 176n154 ira, 30–32, 36, 79–82, 112, 119, 121–23. See also revenge Itys, 101, 104, 115–21, 173n119, 176n164 Jacobson, Howard, 81, 97, 99, 166n19, 166n21, 166n29, 169n58; on Phaedra, 46, 150nn19–20, 151n29, 151n33, 155nn72–73, 155nn76–77 James, Paula, 172n105 Janan, Micaela, 75, 78, 149n10, 157n91, 163n148 Jason, 8, 79–85, 86–100, 125–27, 130–32, 156n81, 166n21, 167n40, 169n60, 181n29; in Accius, 83; in Apollonius, 83–84, 88, 96–98, 167n42, 170n84, 181n24; in Euripides, 6–7, 83, 97–99, 116, 124, 167n37, 181n25; and genre, 123–24, 133; and infidelity, 33, 81, 84, 86–90, 92, 94–95, 97, 137n23; and issues of gender, 81, 90, 98, 123–24 Jenkins, Thomas, 62 Jocelyn, H. D., 138n42, 166n17, 177n167 Joplin, Patricia, 164n5, 179n188 Juno, 90, 113, 114, 162n132 Jupiter, 54–56, 83, 97, 110, 113–14, 152n36, 161n125, 167n35, 176n156. See also Zeus Kaster, Robert, 53–54, 154n68 Keith, Alison, 139n54 Kennedy, Duncan, 42, 159n108 Knox, Peter, 167n33, 169n66 Kristeva, Julia, 40–42, 61–62, 67, 77–78, 148nn6–7, 149n11, 157n93, 158n99, 158n102, 158n106, 164n5; and the abject, 4, 15–16, 37, 39, 76, 79, 127, 136n14

Lacan, Jacques, 61, 136n13, 165n12 Larmour, David, 12, 44, 136n16, 170n71 Leigh, Matthew, 96, 170n70 Lemnos, 81, 87, 89, 91–92, 98, 169n58, 171nn90–91 Lévi-­Strauss, Claude, 141n5, 157n93, 164n5 lex Julia de adulteriis coercendis, 17, 37–38, 148n70 Lindheim, Sara, 91, 149n13, 157n92, 159nn107–8, 165n12, 167n40, 171n89 Livius Andronicus, 2, 7–8, 101, 126, 173n115 Livy, 144nn36–38 Loraux, Nicole, 143n26 Lowe, Dunstan, 5–6 Lucretia, 116, 163n149, 174n135 Lyne, R. O. A. M., 151n32 Macareus, 159n110 Maeander, 41, 70 Maecenas, 8 maenads. See bacchantes March, Jenny, 13, 110, 116, 173n116, 173n119, 175n142, 176n151, 179n191 Mars, 27–28, 83, 85, 107, 153n48, 167n35, 173n123, 179n191 Marsyas, 103, 172n105 McKeown, J. C., 57, 141n2, 155n79 Medea, 20, 27–38, 114, 121, 126, 143n25, 143n29, 156n81, 173n121, 177n170; and the abject, 4–5, 9, 87, 100, 124, 127–32, 134; in Accius, 8, 81, 87, 95, 143n24, 166n17; in Aeschylus, 137n27; in Apollonius, 7, 83–84, 88, 97–98, 110, 132–33, 167n42, 170n75, 170n84, 181n24; in Cicero, 11; in Diodorus Siculus, 137n29; in Ennius, 96; in Euripides, 6–8, 12–13, 31, 81–83, 87, 95–99, 116, 132, 137nn23–25, 171n93, 177nn172–73, 181n25; in frescoes, 18, 30; and gender, 3–5, 7, 9, 12–14, 15, 98, 127, 129–30, 169n58; and Hypsipyle, 79–100, 123–25, 127, 133, 136n16, 165n11, 167n40, 168n56, 169n58, 170n73, 171nn88–90; and infidelity, 31, 33, 89; and issues of genre, 3, 5, 9, 12–13, 15, 128, 171n93; and Phaedra, 100; and Procne, 33, 79, 80, 116, 133, 177nn172–73; in Propertius, 18; and revenge, 16, 33, 79–82, 97, 114, 116, 133, 147n59, 164n2, 165n16, 168n44, 171n93; and self-­presentation, 98, 180n8, 181n26; in Sophocles, 137nn25–27, 143n24; in Varro Atacinus, 132

G e n e ra l I n d e x megatext, 11–13, 16, 37–39, 49, 59–60, 67–70, 77, 79, 101, 127–28; defined, 140n62 Meillet, Antoine, 157n97 Michalopoulos, Andreas, 165n11, 165n16, 167n42, 168n56 Miller, Paul Allen, 25, 148n70, 157n97 Minerva, 102–3, 133 Minos, 24, 26, 64–65, 140n65, 142n20, 159n111 Minotaur, 24, 27, 145n45 Mitchell, Fiona, 5 monstrosity, 4–6; in Ovid, 4, 27–30, 40, 58, 78, 107, 111, 130–33, 145n46; and Phaedra, 4, 40, 58, 136n21 Muses, 46, 102–3, 141n7 Myrrha, 12, 18–24, 60, 110, 140n67, 143n29, 158n101, 163n149, 174n131 Natoli, Bartolo, 176n155, 176n158, 181n21 nequitia, 46–47, 56–57, 152n37 Newlands, Carole, 12, 136n16, 149n15, 163n149, 171n93, 173n121, 175n144, 177n172, 179n192 Nicaenetus, 62, 76, 150n22 Niobe, 102–3 Nisus, 27–28 oaths, 6, 25, 33, 87, 89, 97–100, 112, 156n82, 165n16 Oliensis, Ellen, 151n32, 181n23, 181n26 Orestes, 11, 178n180 Orithyia, 12, 103, 121, 123, 173n121, 179n192 Palmer, Arthur, 48, 159n110 Pandion, 8, 104–10, 117, 120, 124–25, 169n61, 173n119, 174n134, 175n147, 179n185 Panoussi, Vassiliki, 179n187 pantomime, 1, 8, 138n45, 143n25 Parthenius, 62, 64, 76, 150n22 Pasiphae, 18, 20, 23–27, 30, 34, 54–56, 66, 73, 143n27, 146n51, 162n132; in Euripides, 24, 143n24, 145n41, 146n51; in Propertius, 146n50; in Vergil, 143nn27–28 Pavlock, Barbara, 116, 175n144, 176n156 Pelias, 7, 85, 87, 93, 137n27 Penelope, 16, 31, 84 Pentheus, 115, 144n31, 162n134, 176n164, 178n180 performativity, 68–69, 81, 138n47; and Butler, 3–4, 127, 136n13, 158n106; and

211

gender, 3–4, 13, 72, 76–77, 88, 109–15, 117–20, 163n146, 171n93, 174n134; and genre, 51, 57–58, 72, 76–77, 86–88, 100–109, 110–20, 128, 173n115 Perkins, Caroline, 139n54 Phaedra, 8, 27–29, 37–38, 67–68, 74–76, 126–32, 137n22, 153n46, 153n54, 155n73, 163n146; and the abject, 4–5, 9, 39, 51, 65, 77–78, 111, 123–24, 127–30, 134; and amor, 44–48, 50, 53–57, 71, 79; in frescoes, 18, 19, 20, 30; and gender, 3–5, 9, 12–15, 51, 73, 77–78, 81, 100, 123, 127–30, 151n33, 160n122; and incest, 40, 43–44, 46–52, 58, 64–65, 71, 77, 153n50; and issues of genre, 3, 9–15, 42–51, 54–60, 64–65, 77–81, 123, 128, 160n122; and Medea, 100; and revenge, 6–7, 133; and self-­presentation, 40–43, 44–58, 59–60, 64–66, 77–78, 93, 151n35, 152n37, 154n64, 159n108; and shame, 43, 53–54, 57, 65, 71, 136n21, 153n48, 171n92; and silence, 40, 43, 53–54, 57, 128–29; in Sophocles, 42–43, 52, 143n24, 150n20, 153n50; and suicide, 6, 17, 43, 52, 54–56, 72, 77, 150n18, 153n55, 155n76. See also Euripides: Phaedra in; Euripides: Phaedra’s desire in Philomela, 101–9, 117–23, 171n95, 174n135, 174n139, 175n142, 175n145, 176n163, 178n176, 181n21; in Accius, 105, 112; and genre, 105, 108, 110–15, 174n128, 175n142; and silence, 104, 111, 113–14, 163nn149–50, 173n121, 176n158; in Sophocles, 101, 105, 112, 173n116, 178n177 Phineus, 18, 20, 27–29, 31, 143n24 Phoebus. See Apollo Phoenix, 20, 27–28, 31 Phthia, 18, 27–29, 143n24 Phyllis, 31–32, 147n62, 170n72 Pietropaolo, Mariapia, 5–6, 145n45 Platt, Verity, 6 Pliny the Elder, 180n14 Plutarch, 151n31, 157n91 Polyxena, 112, 113, 161n125 Pompey’s Theater, 173n115 Procne, 31–34, 113, 124–25, 128, 169n61, 171n95, 174n135, 176nn163–64, 178n177, 178n180; in Accius, 102, 179n191; and Euripides, 12–13, 116; and genre, 105–8, 115, 117–20, 123–24,

21 2 G e n e ra l

Index

Procne (continued) 147n60, 176n159; and Medea, 33, 79, 80, 116, 133, 177nn172–73; and revenge, 13, 33, 79, 100–106, 114–21, 133, 164n5, 173n119, 175n144; in Sophocles, 13, 101, 173n116, 176n151, 179n191 Procris, 12, 137n22, 147n62, 179n192 Propertius, 18, 46, 47, 51, 58, 139n60, 142n14, 146n50, 148n6, 151n32, 152n36, 160n121 pudor, 65, 71, 80, 84, 140n64, 154n68, 156n82; and Phaedra, 44, 49, 53–54, 57, 65, 71. See also shame Pygmalion, 181n30, 182n33 rape, 6, 36, 52, 103, 109, 111, 147n65, 163n150, 173n126, 176n154; of Philomela, 101–3, 106, 108–9, 113, 115, 119, 121–22 Raval, Shilpa, 62, 75, 159n110, 163n140 revenge, 32–33, 79–80, 93, 96–99, 103–4, 114, 124, 127, 164n5, 171n91, 174n131; and Ariadne, 95–97, 99; and Byblis, 30, 147n59; and Clytemnestra, 35–36; and Hecuba, 114; and Hypsipyle, 81–82, 95–99, 171nn89–90; and Medea, 16, 33, 79–82, 97, 114, 116, 133, 147n59, 164n2, 165n16, 168n44, 171n93; and Phaedra, 6–7, 133; of Procne and Philomela, 13, 33, 79, 100–106, 114–21, 133, 164n5, 173n119, 175n144. See also ira Rosati, Gianpiero, 6, 150n19 Rosenmeyer, Patricia, 52, 63, 154n56 Schiesaro, Alessandro, 176n159, 177n165, 177n170 Scylla, 12, 18, 20, 27–28, 60, 97, 110, 140nn64–65, 142n20, 143n29, 145n46 Seaford, Richard, 25, 143n30, 144n35 Segal, Charles, 11–12, 16, 39, 127, 140n62, 141n5, 142n13 Semele, 16, 73, 141n7, 155nn75–76 Seneca, 7, 137n22, 138n34, 151n31, 155n78, 177n165, 177n170 Sfyroeras, Pavlos, 137n25 Shackleton Bailey, D. R., 140n61, 173n115 shame, 17, 35–36, 53–54, 57, 84, 119, 154n68, 156n82; and Byblis, 44, 63–65; and Phaedra, 43, 53–54, 57, 65, 71, 136n21, 153n48, 171n92. See also pudor silence, 21, 107, 113, 128–29, 163n149, 176n158; and Byblis, 75, 77, 131,

161n126, 163n149; and Phaedra, 40, 43, 53–54, 57, 128–29; and Philomela, 104, 111, 113–14, 163nn149–50, 173n121, 176n158 Skinner, Marilyn, 129, 134 Sol, 173n126 Sommerstein, Alan, 13, 178n174 Sophocles, 53, 81, 103, 110, 116, 124, 140n63, 157n94, 165n7, 166n28, 173n118; Medea in, 137nn25–27, 143n24; Phaedra in, 42–43, 52, 143n24, 150n20, 153n50; Philomela in, 101, 105, 112, 173n116, 178n177; Procne in, 13, 101, 173n116, 176n151, 179n191; Tereus in, 101–2, 174n128, 178n174, 179n191; Theseus in, 137n25, 151n31; Thyestes in, 146n54, 177n165 Spentzou, Efrossini, 5, 148n7, 152n42 Suetonius, 1–2, 7, 135n1 suicide, 84, 95, 124, 153n55, 171n91; and Byblis, 23, 128; and gender, 23, 143n26; and Phaedra, 6, 17, 43, 52, 54–56, 72, 77, 150n18, 153n55, 155n76 Sulpicia, 153n53, 156n82, 163n147 Takács, Sarolta, 144n37 Talboy, Thomas, 13, 178n174 Tarquinius Superbus, 116, 177n168 Tereus, 33–34, 102–117, 119–25, 169n61, 171n95, 173n121, 174n131, 174n135, 175n145, 177n168; and the abject, 124; in Accius, 101–3, 115–16, 177n168; and gender, 120, 175n147, 179n185; and genre, 100–101, 107–12, 113–16, 118, 123–24, 133, 174n128, 175n144, 179n185; in Sophocles, 101–2, 174n128, 178n174, 179n191 theater of Dionysus, 13, 116 Theseus, 8, 11, 98, 137n22, 166n17; in Catullus, 94–95, 97, 169n60, 169n62; in Euripides, 6, 43–44, 52–53, 74, 114, 151n31, 154n70, 155n78; in Ovid, 44–46, 49–50, 55–56, 151n29, 153n54, 155n73; in Seneca, 151n31; in Sophocles, 137n25, 151n31 thetic stage, 41–42, 61–62, 67, 77, 149n8, 149n11, 164n5; defined, 41 Thoas, 83, 89, 91, 96, 98, 171n90 Thrace, 8, 81, 101–7, 117–19, 121–22, 181n24 Thyestes, 27, 28, 30, 35–36, 108, 115–16, 146n54, 174n131, 177n165, 177n167 Tibullus, 51, 151n32 Tissol, Garth, 158n104

G e n e ra l I n d e x Tomis, 130–33, 168n48, 180n14, 180n17 Tor Marancia, 18, 19, 23 transvestite ventriloquism, 42, 51, 58, 77, 81, 85, 100, 124, 130, 149nn12–13 Tyndareus, 35–36 Tyro, 18, 146n50 Vaiopoulos, Vaios, 97, 165n14, 168n56, 169n59, 169n62, 170n73, 170n75, 171n90 Valladares, Hérica, 5, 30, 143n25 Varius Rufus, 115–16, 146n54 Varro, 60, 157n97 Varro Atacinus, 7, 132, 141n1 Velleius Paterculus, 25 vengeance. See revenge Venus, 21, 35, 45, 48, 54–55, 141n7, 147n64, 153n48, 155n76, 160n122. See also Aphrodite

213

Verducci, Florence, 90, 156n87, 165n14, 171n93 Vergil, 66, 100, 138n47, 143nn27–28, 143n30, 156n82, 170n70, 175nn144–45, 178nn180–81 Villa of Munatia Procula, 18, 19, 20, 23, 142n16 Virbius, 12, 68, 130 Watson, Patricia, 154n59 Webster, T. B. L., 151n34, 154n58 Williams, Gareth, 177n170, 180n8 Wyke, Maria, 139n54 Zeitlin, Froma, 129, 144n33, 162n133 Zeus, 16, 26, 114, 121, 141n7, 155n76, 179n190. See also Jupiter Zillinger, Wilhelm, 140n61 Zissos, Andrew, 172n101, 176n163