Roman Literature, Gender and Reception: Domina Illustris (Routledge Monographs in Classical Studies) [1 ed.] 9780415825078, 9780203542781, 0415825075

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Roman Literature, Gender and Reception

This cutting-edge collection of essays offers provocative studies of ancient history, literature, gender identifications and roles, and subsequent interpretations of the republican and imperial Roman past. The prose and poetry of Cicero and Petronius, Lucretius, Virgil and Ovid receive fresh interpretations; pagan and Christian texts are reexamined from feminist and imaginative perspectives. Genres of epic, didactic literature and tragedy gain new depth. Finally, subsequent uses and reuses of the ancient heritage are probed with new attention: Renaissance treatises, Shakespeare, nineteenth-century American theater and contemporary productions involving prisoners and veterans. Comprising nineteen essays collectively honoring the feminist Classical scholar Judith Hallett, this book will interest the Classical scholar, the ancient historian, the student of reception studies and feminists interested in all periods. The authors, from the United States, Britain, France and Switzerland, are authorities in one or more of these fields, and chapters range from the late Republic through the late Empire to the present. Donald Lateiner teaches Greek, Latin and Ancient History at Ohio Wesleyan University. He is the editor and annotator of Barnes and Noble editions of Herodotus and Thucydides. He has recently edited (with Edith Foster) a collection of twelve historiographical essays: Thucydides and Herodotus (2012). Barbara K. Gold is Edward North Professor of Classics at Hamilton College. She was the editor of the American Journal of Philology from 2000 to 2008. Her edited volume, A Companion to Roman Love Elegy, was published in 2012. She has published widely on satire, lyric and elegy, feminist theory and late antiquity. Judith Perkins is Professor of Classics and Humanities emerita at the University of Saint Joseph. She is the author of Roman Imperial Identities in the Early Christian Era (2009) and editor (with Ronald F. Hock and J. Bradley Chance) of Ancient Fiction and Early Christian Narrative (1998).

Routledge Monographs in Classical Studies

1 The Roman Garden Katharine T. von Stackelberg 2 The Eunuch in Byzantine History and Society Shaun Tougher 3 Actors and Audience in the Roman Courtroom Leanne Bablitz 4 Life and Letters in the Ancient Greek World John Muir 5 Utopia Antiqua Rhiannon Evans 6 Greek Magic John Petropoulos 7 Between Rome and Persia Peter Edwell

8 Passions and Moral Progress in Greco-Roman Thought John T. Fitzgerald 9 Dacia Ioana A. Oltean 10 Rome in the Pyrenees Simon Esmonde-Cleary 11 Virgil’s Homeric Lens Edan Dekel 12 Plato’s Dialectic on Woman Equal, Therefore Inferior Elena Blair 13 Roman Literature, Gender and Reception Domina Illustris Edited by Donald Lateiner, Barbara K. Gold and Judith Perkins

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Credit: University of Maryland, College Park.

Roman Literature, Gender and Reception Domina Illustris Edited by Donald Lateiner, Barbara K. Gold and Judith Perkins

First published 2013 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2013 Taylor & Francis The right of the editors to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Roman literature, gender, and reception : domina illustris : essays in honor of Judith Peller Hallett / edited by Donald Lateiner, Barbara K. Gold and Judith Perkins pages cm. — (Routledge monographs in classical studies ; 13) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Latin literature—History and criticism. 2. Sex role in literature. I. Hallett, Judith P., 1944– honouree. II. Lateiner, Donald editor of compilation. III. Gold, Barbara K., 1945– editor of compilation. IV. Perkins, Judith, 1944– editor of compilation. PA6011.R59 2012 870.9′353—dc23 2012041025 ISBN: 978-0-415-82507-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-203-54278-1 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

List of Photos

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Judith Peller Hallett: An Introduction to a Force of Nature

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DONALD LATEINER AND AMY RICHLIN

PART I Roman Literature 1 Cicero and the Alien

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ERICH S. GRUEN

2 Frigidus Sanguis: Lucretius, Virgil and Death

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MICHAEL C. J. PUTNAM

3 Troy and Trauma in the Aeneid

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MARILYN B. SKINNER

4 Poetic Doubling Effects in Ovid’s “Ceyx and Alcyone” (Met. XI)

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DONALD LATEINER

5 Naso and Gods

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TIMOTHY PETER WISEMAN

6 A Note on Fame and the “Widow of Ephesus”

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SHEILA K. DICKISON

PART II Gender 7 The Fragments of Terentia

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AMY RICHLIN

8 Onomastics, Intertextuality and Gender: “Phyllis” in Roman Poetry (Gallus, Vergil, Horace, Propertius and Ovid) JACQUELINE FABRE-SERRIS

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9 Woman Warrior? Aeneas’ Encounters with the Feminine

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THOMAS VAN NORTWICK

10 “And I Became a Man”: Gender Fluidity and Closure in Perpetua’s Prison Narrative

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BARBARA K. GOLD

11 Dynastic Weaving: Claudian, Carmina minora 46–8

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HENRIETTE HARICH-SCHWARZBAUER

PART III Reception 12 The Spectacle of “Bare Life” in Martial’s Liber Spectaculorum and Martyr Discourse

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JUDITH PERKINS

13 The Role of Physicians (Galen, Mercuriale and Brookes) in the History of Greek Sport and the Olympic Revival

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HUGH M. LEE

14 A Renaissance Feminist Translation of Xenophon’s Oeconomicus

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DIANA ROBIN

15 Bianca: The Other African in Othello

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JANE DONAWERTH

16 Talfourd’s Ion: Classical Reception and Gender in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia

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LEE T. PEARCY

17 Women and Classics in Victorian Oxbridge: Parallels and Contrasts

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CHRISTOPHER STRAY

18 Ancient Myth and Feminist Politics: The Medea Project and San Francisco Women’s Prisons

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NANCY SORKIN RABINOWITZ

19 Theaters of War

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JANA ADAMITIS AND MARY-KAY GAMEL

Contributors Judith Peller Hallett: Bibliography (1970–2012) Index Nominum et Rerum Index Locorum

303 309 317 326

Photos

19.1 Prometheus Bound at American Repertory Theater. Gabriel Evert (Hermes), Gavin Creel (Prometheus). Photograph by Marcus Stern. 19.2 Flux Theatre Ensemble production of Ajax in Iraq. Left to right, Lori E. Parquet (Tekmessa), Stephen Conrad Moore (Ajax), Christina Shipp (A.J.), Chudney Sykes (Connie Mangus). Photograph by Isaiah Tanenbaum. 19.3 First performance of Theater of War, August 13, 2008, U.S. Marine Corps Combat Operational Stress Control Conference, San Diego. Left to right, Heather Raffo, David Strathairn, Jesse Eisenberg, Bill Camp, Bryan Doerries. Photograph by Ransom Riggs. 19.4 Audience discussion at an Ancient Greeks/Modern Lives presentation. Judy Hallett is visible on the speaker’s left. Photograph by Vaishnavi Sharma. 19.5 The Ajax Project at Christopher Newport University. Left to right, chorus members Andrew Pierce, Alexis Abbey, Grace Adams, Jay Banks, Natalie DeHart, Martin Lawrence, Lexi Ford, Rachel Marrs, A.J. Jelonek, Josh Clary (Teukros), Noah Falk (Eurysakes), Christina Brinkman (Tekmessa), Derek Marsh (chorus). Photograph by Geneva Wynn.

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Judith Peller Hallett An Introduction to a Force of Nature Donald Lateiner and Amy Richlin

Judith Hallett has encouraged, improved and criticized the Classics profession in the United States and abroad. She is a scholar, teacher, editor, judex optima. She has been an advocate and fighter for gender, age, and ethnic fairness, and for social and political justice inside and beyond the profession. She is also a great cook. Some have found her expectations to exceed their recognized capacity, but she inspires her many colleagues and students to go beyond their usual limits. She has often compromised generously and boldly to achieve the best result. People of every race, ethnicity and sexuality have benefited from her hard work and perseverance. Here we summarize her remarkable career.

BACKGROUND, EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION Judith Hallett’s life has strong roots in her family, hometown and Jewish identity.1 Her motto might be “everybody connects;” she was a titan of social networking long before Facebook, and her genius for prosopography has inspired both her research and her professional and personal life. She was born Judith Peller on April 4, 1944, into a family with a tradition of political activism. Hallett’s maternal grandmother met her grandfather, Benjamin Stern, when he was a labor organizer in the mills outside Boston in the early 1900s. He had arrived there from Lithuania by way of England. Her mother, Celia Stern, was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts. The family later moved to Biddeford, Maine, where Hallett’s grandfather served in the state legislature in the late 1920s. In the 1930s Celia Stern moved to Washington, DC, where civil service jobs were becoming available to Jews under President Franklin Roosevelt. There she met Leonard Peller, a young engineer trained at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Thirty years old at Pearl Harbor, he volunteered for the Navy and departed for the South Pacific late in 1943; Judith Peller was born in Chicago while he was at sea. After the war, the family settled in Melrose Park, outside Philadelphia, where young Judith attended Cheltenham High School. Benjamin Netanyahu spent his school years down the street from her, and her classmates included a Who’s Who of North American

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academics and politicians, still part of her network. In those days of plaid skirts, circle pins and tasseled loafers, girls were discouraged from being smart and went to college less frequently than boys. Judith Peller was lucky to have an inspirational Latin teacher, Marie Hildebrand Bintner, who had attended the University of Pennsylvania. When Leonard Peller died suddenly in the spring of Judith’s junior year, she abandoned plans to attend the University of Chicago and continued at her high school for her senior year. In the fall of 1962 Judith Peller arrived, not in Chicago, but at Wellesley College. There she was placed at once in advanced Latin and began a rigorous education under the tutelage of an all-female department: Charlotte Goodfellow, Dorothy Robathan (who would serve as APA President in 1965), Katherine Geffcken, and Mary Lefkowitz. Her teachers encouraged all the students to attend professional meetings and to take themselves seriously as scholars, and brought in a stream of distinguished lecturers. Judith Peller was left, as she says now, with a strong feeling that “I can do this.” She met Mark Hallett in the summer of 1963, and the two were married three years later. Mark, then a premed student at Harvard and living in Lowell House, introduced his fiancée to Zeph Stewart, the master. Impressed by what she saw there, Hallett entered the Ph.D. program at Harvard in the fall of 1966, while Mark went on to medical school. But, although Wellesley had left her well prepared academically, she was unprepared for the academic culture she found at Harvard. At the time, there were no women teaching there. Whereas Wellesley, as she describes it, was “communal, egalitarian and intellectual,” with students discussing translations and scholarly reading, Harvard, with forty students in the program, used a top-down model: professors lectured, without much in the way of student interaction, and cut students from the program through classes in prose and verse composition. Today it is hard to fathom how openly sexist the academy was in those days. When Hallett served as a teaching intern at Phillips Academy the summer before her senior year at Wellesley, a colleague there remarked, “It’s too bad that you’re going to be a matron and not a pedagogue.” Hallett’s fellowship was taken away in her second year at Harvard because she had married, so she supported herself by working as a librarian at Smyth Classical Library. Her Greek composition professor said in class, “I’ll have to turn you over my knee and spank you with a hairbrush for every missed accent.” When she was a T.A. at Harvard, a student complained, “I don’t want to be taught by a wench.” The Vietnam War and the antiwar movement had focused political attention on young men; when the women’s movement hit Boston in 1969, Hallett was ready to listen. As she says, echoing Betty Friedan, “There was no name for what I was feeling until feminism came along.” The movement arrived in the Harvard Classics Department with one of its first female professors, Janet Martin (now Emerita at Princeton), who connected the young activists in Classics with networks in other departments. Hallett says that “she raised my consciousness.” Through Martin, Hallett met Dorothea Wender, a 1956 Radcliffe B.A. and 1964 Harvard Ph.D., who

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became a longtime mentor. Martin never taught Hallett in a class, since she was only allowed to teach undergraduates, but she set Hallett on a course that she holds to this day. Nor was the landscape in Harvard Classics devoid of sympathizers: Ernst Badian took Hallett seriously and read her work; Zeph Stewart was always supportive; and Sterling Dow, who used to hold lunchtime seminars, allowed Hallett to deliver a paper that led to her first publication, a 1970 article on the meaning of the title pontifex that appeared in TAPA. Today graduate students often publish articles; in those days, it was highly unusual, much more so for a woman. Mark Hallett, like other medical students, was required by the federal government Draft Board to complete two years’ military service, and was able to complete them at the National Institute for Neurological Disease and Stroke (NINDS). Now at the National Institute of Health, he is a world-famous neurobiologist, the current Chief of the Medical Neurology Branch of its Human Motor Control Section and Editor-in-Chief of World Neurology. Back in the 1970s, the two young Halletts, a two-career family before there was a word for it, embarked on a sequence of moves between Boston, London and Washington. Judith Hallett completed her dissertation in 1971 at the Hellenic Center, worked for Erich Segal as a research assistant, taught at Clark University (1972–73), then moved to Boston University where she held the position of Assistant Professor of Classics (1974–82). Celia Peller Hallett died in 1972, having seen her “bookworm” daughter become a professor and marry a Jewish doctor. The Halletts’ first child, Nicholas, was born in 1974, at a time when women faculty were still sometimes fired if they became pregnant. Their second child, Victoria, was born in 1980. In the years that followed, the Hallett family traveled the world together. Nick entered Oberlin, and Vicky entered Harvard, both of them well prepared. Today, the Halletts take pride in the successful careers of Nick as a talented actor/musician in New York City and Vicky as a columnist for the Washington Post. The Halletts left Boston in 1983 when Mark left Brigham and Women’s Hospital for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and Judith left Boston University for the University of Maryland. Judith Hallett’s professional life has centered on her home, the locus of endless hospitality of epic proportions; her family, for she sees to it that all her networks interconnect; her home campus, where she sees to it that university and community are tightly enmeshed; and her home state, which she has represented as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention and where she has fought to keep Maryland on the progressive path, even standing with young Vicky on a traffic median waving a political poster and singing “Grand Old Flag.” For the mid-Atlantic region, she has galvanized the Classical Association of the Atlantic States, which used to be a small and sleepy affair, into a high-powered organization with prizes, large and vibrant meetings, multiple projects and tight ties between college and K–12 teachers. In recent years she has brought this energy to the development of Classics on the national and world scenes, zipping to and from Europe on a regular basis to promote women’s networks there.

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Although Hallett went to co-ed public elementary and secondary schools and a co-ed graduate school, and has only taught in co-ed colleges and universities, she is the proud product of several all-female institutions—from a French-language summer camp on Deer Isle, Maine, to Wellesley College (AB 1966). She grew up at a time when the academy remained almost closed to women, where women stood out in any group, a tiny flash of color in a sea of tweed jackets. Amy Richlin remembers her first sight of Judith Hallett, at the 1972 APA meeting in Philadelphia, which Richlin, then a college senior, attended in a kilt and crewneck sweater. “There’s Judith Hallett,” her mentor said, pointing at a woman hurtling by; she was wearing a magenta hat with a feather stuck into it. It was a glimpse of the spirit of the future, surging ahead.

ACADEMIC POSITIONS, HONORS AND ADMINISTRATIVE POSTS Hallett became a full professor at Maryland in 1993 and served as chair from 1996 to 2004. While still at Boston University, she held the Blegen Visiting Professorship at Vassar College 1980, and later she held a Mellon Professorship at Brandeis in 1982–83. She has served both the Classical Association of the Atlantic States (CAAS) and the Washington Classical Society in many positions including president. Most recently she has served with distinction as vice-president for outreach of the American Philological Association, where she has also served on many committees, including the Committee on the Status of Women and Minority Groups, and on the board of directors. She served a memorable term on the Steering Committee and as co-chair of the Women’s Classical Caucus in 1987, where she worked tirelessly and boldly to bring about change for the better in our field. In connection with CAAS, she has functioned as assistant and associate editor for Classical World for over thirty years, since 1980. Now she is co-editor with Jacqueline Fabre-Serris of a recently initiated online journal on Gender Studies in Antiquity, EuGeStA (http://eugesta.recherche.univlille3.fr/revue/eng/).

SCHOLARSHIP Hallett’s 1971 Harvard dissertation analyzed the poet Propertius’ rejection of Augustus’ social programs in Book IV of his Elegies. Ever since, she has been on the cutting edge, initiating many current scholarly conversations. Her 1973 essay, “The Role of Women in Roman Elegy: Counter-Cultural Feminism,” began a discussion on gender and elegy that continues to this day.2 Already in 1977 she conducted a seminar at the University of Copenhagen on Latin erotic poetry. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s she produced a series of articles that laid out new parameters both for Roman women’s history

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and for women writing women’s history.3 Her research interests developed out of Latin elegy into the study of gender in many branches of Latin literature; Roman women’s history and Roman family history; Roman women writers (but also Sappho); the history of Roman sexuality; the personal voice in scholarship; the classical tradition, especially as it involves women scholars; the history of scholarship and the Classics profession, with a penchant for prosopography; Latin pedagogy; feminist theory. Her huge bibliography— over eighty articles, five path-breaking books and several specially edited issues of journals—maps out a terrain that is uniquely Hallett’s. Hallett has most notably worked to recover not only the political achievements of Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, but also the poetic career of Sulpicia (whose elegies have been buried at the back of the Corpus Tibullianum). Hallett’s first book, Fathers and Daughters in Roman Society (Princeton 1984), was a detailed study of the underappreciated role of elite women in the Roman republic. The year 1997 saw two co-edited collections attesting to the range of Hallett’s interests. Compromising Traditions: The Personal Voice in Classical Scholarship (Routledge, co-editor Thomas Van Nortwick) examines how a scholar’s personal life and circumstances affect the ancient literary and historical critic. Roman Sexualities (Princeton, co-editor Marilyn Skinner) helped to balance a history of ancient sexuality then largely focused on classical Greece. Hallett’s recent work on the reception of classical literature produced another co-edited volume, British Classics Beyond England (Baylor 2008, co-editor Christopher Stray), in which Hallett published part of her ongoing work on the great popularizer of classical mythology, Edith Hamilton. Her pietas toward her own Wellesley professor, Katherine Geffcken, appears in the Festschrift Rome and Her Monuments: Essays on the City and Literature of Rome (Bolchazy-Carducci 2000, co-editor Sheila K. Dickison)—the title itself a tribute to another teacher at Wellesley, Dorothy Robathan, author of Monuments of Ancient Rome. Readers can consult the List of Publications appended here to see Hallett’s other scholarly contributions in print, starting in 1970 and continuing on (we hope) into the distant future.

ENGAGEMENT WITH SCHOLARSHIP IN THEORY AND PRACTICE Judith Hallett’s pioneering endeavors exploring ancient Greek and Roman sexuality and the family have guided classicists into new territories, even terra incognita. A founder of the Women’s Classical Caucus, Hallett has also been on the board of Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, a leading journal in English and Women’s Studies, since 1980. Other journals for which she serves on the editorial board include Amphora, the APA’s outreach journal, and Dictynna, an online journal on Latin literature based, like EuGeStA, in Europe, where Hallett has frequently lectured in the last twenty years. Her editorial advice has been invaluable to Classics students, authors and other colleagues, and to many university presses (as referee and critic), for over forty years.

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Hallett has lectured at scores of universities and colleges all over the world. Venues include London, Vienna, Rostock, Oxford, New York, Cincinnati, Los Angeles, Sidney, Shanghai, Tübingen, Prague, Lisbon, Madrid, Berlin, Geneva, Leiden and Lille, but she is equally happy to visit the smallest and newest departments, and has a particular gift for helping departments in trouble—and there are always some of those. Always generous with her time, Hallett delivered seventeen visiting academic lectures in 2005 alone. She told us, “The study of Classics is not only the oldest profession but also a global enterprise, so I welcome opportunities to be a global professional.” Hallett has organized numerous conferences, most recently at the University of Maryland (April 2012) on “Classical Greek and Roman Literature: Gendered Perspectives on Reading and Reception.” Hallett has also helped organize events on antiquity at the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians. She has written hundreds of recommendations for younger colleagues. She eschews writing book reviews (only three that we know of), considering it more constructive to critique and assist authors before publication. No person that we know represents classical philology and the cultures of Rome and Greece to more audiences and with more vigor. Her reason and her passion are obvious in public and private encounters. You will find many areas of her intellectual interests reflected in this volume’s contents—women in antiquity, Latin poetry and Roman history, and modern reception. She brings together scholars who would not know each other otherwise. Those few scholars (really few, trust us) who do not know her may think these claims are typical Festschrift hyperbole, but those who have worked with her for the American Philological Assocation, the Classical Association of the Atlantic States, the journals Classical World and EuGeStA, the Classical Association of New England Summer Classical Institute, and not least the Women’s Classical Caucus, know that this statement is modest fact, actually less than Hallett’s due.

ENGAGEMENT IN EDUCATION AND SOCIAL CAUSES Hallett’s teachers at Cheltenham High and Wellesley left her with a lasting respect for pedagogy. In the summer of 1971, thinking that a job in the academy was out of the question, Hallett attended an institute held at Tufts in order to learn to be a high school Latin teacher. Raymond Teller, half of the comedian-magician team Penn & Teller, was among her classmates, and the group as a whole provided Hallett with a taste for glamorous magic, or at least an inspiring introduction to the range of skills needed by a good teacher of grammar, syntax and literary criticism. The University of Maryland lays great stress on excellence in teaching, and Hallett has led a pedagogy class there for many years, bringing high school teachers together with a galaxy of university professors, and connecting everyone in an elaborate mentoring assignment that also draws in far-flung virtual mentors. These efforts were

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expedited by the Maryland Classics Department’s longtime commitment to Latin Day, held on campus and drawing over a thousand participants each time, ending only when the event lost its on-campus venue in 2006. While everyone in the department pitched in for these events, Hallett coordinated them, fed the crowds of participants and joined in many of the activities. These ranged from producing posters and T-shirts, to judging contests, to writing lesson plans, to designing license plates, to holding workshops, to writing the script, to writing the program quiz and songs, to conducting a mock presidential election and to performing in the program itself, memorably translating many popular songs into Latin and coaxing all to sing along. She has taught Ovid for, to and with high school teachers for many years at the CANE (Classical Association of New England) Summer Institute usually held at Dartmouth. Her dedication to the support of Latin teachers, both in the warmth of her own home and on campus, is legendary. It is this kind of innovative activity that builds a future for our traditional field, in which Judith Hallett continues to be a leader and a driving force. Hallett has served on the Maryland Humanities Council for a decade as well as on the board of trustees of the Baltimore Hebrew University. At Maryland she served as acting equity administrator in the dean’s office (1988–89), putting her beliefs into practice. As a public intellectual, Hallett has appeared to larger audiences on radio and television programs on the History Channel and PBS to promote knowledge of classical antiquity in the United States and Canada. Her experience in documentaries includes the PBS 2001 series The Roman Empire in the First Century. Among the countless panels and conferences that she has organized was a conference with neuropathologists on the death of the emperor Claudius (2001) and a colloquium on “Classics and Literature at Historically Black Colleges and Universities” (2010). In her own teaching, she lives up to the ideals she preaches. She teaches all levels of Latin, most frequently elegy, Plautus, historiography, Petronius, Vergil, Ovid and the History of the Latin Language. She has been a leader among classicists in the introduction of feminist theory and practice in varied classrooms, the professional societies and the larger world. Her students in Maryland’s M.A. program often present at conferences, where she regularly joins them in organizing paper sessions on their joint coursework—a true example of collaborative work. Hallett has promoted the Minority Student Fund of the APA and has argued both in public and behind the scenes for larger roles for women and racial and ethnic minorities. She provides the best example we know of professional amicitia and progressive inclusiveness. One cannot separate Hallett’s interests in pedagogy, feminism and Classics. The women who taught her, from Cheltenham High onwards, became lasting role models for a versatile scholar, teacher and mother. Moreover, settling down in Washington put her in a prime position to engage in a characteristic mix of politics, fund-raising and outreach. In ways unthought-of by most classicists, she has persuaded local and international businesses to

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support activities and organizations from Latin Day to the Women’s Classical Caucus. She has obtained significantly large grants from funding agencies that ordinarily would not have considered the Classics. For a while, in the WCC, she arranged to have the group honor one member every year, and then persuaded that person’s mentors, U.S. congressmen and senators, old friends, coaches, idols, anyone she could dig up, into writing congratulatory letters. Her involvement with CAAS’s “Ancestors Project” has enabled her to commemorate and pay public tribute to those who had to fight to become classicists, especially Jewish refugees from Hitler’s Europe, women and outsiders of all kinds. Maintaining the tradition of scholarly communication in Latin, she has written dozens of Ovationes to honor fellow CAAS members (recently one for a co-editor of this volume) as well as obituaries for esteemed deceased colleagues. As a founding member of the Women’s Classical Caucus, Hallett participated in, and indeed instigated, projects that completely reshaped the field, both in terms of research and professional realities. The reader may consult Barbara McManus’s account in Classics and Feminism, but even a short list would include: the launching of “Women in Antiquity” as an area for research and teaching; the advent and promotion of blind refereeing for journal articles; the placement of women on the editorial boards of journals; day care for children at the APA meeting; the Women’s Classical Caucus Newsletter (now Cloelia), which was, in the days before email, the chief means that women in the field had of knowing what was going on elsewhere; women’s involvement in the APA at every level.4 This last item was radical and transformative in the 1970s; the WCC itself was just an “affiliated group,” not really part of the APA at all, and its panels originally had to go through a daunting process of double-jurying, whereby the APA Program Committee judged again whether the WCC’s selections were worthy to appear on the program.

“FAR ABOVE RUBIES . . .” (PROV. 31:10) Judith Hallett has been our devoted friend and mentor for nearly forty years. Donald Lateiner is particularly grateful for Hallett’s help to his family, from his Austrian émigré great-aunt Lena Gitter to his granddaughter, Estella Lateiner. For nearly two decades, after they met in Washington, DC, Hallett unflinchingly served the modest but formidable Mrs. Gitter as chauffeur, amanuensis and factotum—actually as a de facto mother-daughter power duo. Hallett read Lateiner’s eulogy for Lena Gitter at her funeral. Over the years, she has helpfully critiqued many of our manuscripts, including an earlier draft of Lateiner’s chapter in this volume and Amy Richlin’s collected essays on Roman women. She is a lucid critic, an insightful and daring philologist and a loyal and helpful friend who keeps us all on our toes. Evidently needing no sleep herself, she expects equal dedication from

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her co-workers. Richlin describes the experience of serving as WCC co-chair with Hallett: “Judy had a list of battles needing to be fought, and she aimed me like a cannon into the thick of the fray.” To be included in this volume for a domina illustris is an honor for all involved—including the three editors and the many other authors. We present this volume to our friend Judith Hallett with gratitude for her intellectual achievement, pedagogical dedication and exemplary service for others. May she continue her good works for many more years. NOTES 1. Both authors thank Judith Hallett for interviews providing details on her family, personal and professional history. 2. First published in Arethusa 6 (1973) 103–24; see also John Peradotto and J. P. Sullivan (eds.), Women in the Ancient World: The Arethusa Papers (Albany 1984), 241–62. The title phrase, “counter-cultural feminism,” appeared already in her Harvard dissertation. 3. E.g. “Buzzing of a Confirmed Gadfly,” 1985; “Women as Same and Other,” 1989; “Female Homoeroticism,” 1989; “Martial’s Sulpicia,” 1992. 4. Barbara F. McManus, Classics and Feminism: Gendering the Classics (New York 1997).

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Part I

Roman Literature

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1

Cicero and the Alien Erich S. Gruen

Abstract. Cicero’s comments about foreigners are notoriously disparaging. They are regularly cited as exemplary of Roman attitudes toward Asian peoples like Phoenicians, Syrians, Jews, Phrygians, Carians, Cappadocians, Egyptians, Carthaginians, Gauls, Spaniards and Africans. Did Cicero regularly denigrate non-Romans, find foreigners offensive and degenerate, or, worse, construct them as barbaric aliens in order to call attention to the Romans’ own identity and their superiority? This paper scrutinizes the circumstances of Cicero’s pronouncements on “barbarians” and discloses a more shifting, ambiguous and variable quality, often dictated by requirements in the speeches and philosophical treatises. Cicero believes in the superiority of Rome over other nations, but not a superiority founded on ethnic difference. Cicero argues that the Romans excel rather in piety and acquiescence in divine governance. The Romans had a confident sense of their own distinctiveness, their superiority over other nations and their place in the world. The articulation of that self-confidence could take a variety of forms. One in particular has gained considerable attention: the framing of national character by contrast with the practices, behavior and qualities of other nations and peoples. The collective sense of Romanness, the values that defined Romans, should, in principle, emerge most sharply by setting them in opposition to non-Romans, by demonstrating the deficiencies and drawbacks of those who did not share Roman aspirations and ideals, by isolating the alien and insulating the integrity of Romanitas. On that score, Cicero has served as prime witness, his remarks on the topic of the outsider frequent, pointed and potent. Indeed, one can readily collect the sneers, stereotypes, calumnies, caustic comments and disparaging assessments that spook about in the Ciceronian corpus. Greeks might be deployed as the most convenient foils. Cato Maior had long before voiced a celebrated antithesis: “the words of the Greeks issue from their lips; those of the Romans come from the heart” (Plut. Cato Mai. 12.5). Cicero carried the contrast a step further, juxtaposing Greek levitas with

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Roman gravitas.1 But how representative is that statement? In fact, it flags a problem right away. The lines of differentiation are hardly clear-cut. As we know, Cicero’s own attitude (and Cato’s) toward Greek culture and Greeks was ambiguous, fraught with tortured efforts both to embrace and to distance Hellenism. Fluctuation and vacillation hold sway. That subject has already received extensive discussion and can be set aside.2 A sharper and cleaner contrast suggests itself—outside the Hellenic world and in the realm of the “barbarian.” The defining characteristics of the Romans that give them genuine distinctiveness should, one might expect, emerge unmistakably when pitted against the barbarous “Other.” And indeed the bulk of Cicero’s carping cavils disparage distant easterners and westerners. Asians fall frequently under his strictures. The best way to improve a Phrygian, he says, is to whip him. The ultimate insult one could deliver was to label an individual the worst of Mysians. Carians are so worthless that they are suited only to be subjects of human experiments (Cic. Flacc. 65). Cappadocians are emblematic for stupidity, tastelessness and a low form of humanity (Cic. Red Sen. 14). Syrians and Jews are peoples born for servitude (Cic. Prov. Cons. 10). Cicero targets Jews directly as addicted to “barbarian superstition” (Cic. Flacc. 67). Sardinians come from Phoenician stock, which is bad enough. But worse still, Phoenicians themselves rejected them and abandoned them on that disagreeable island (Cic. Scaur. 42). Elsewhere Cicero lumps Gauls, Spaniards and Africans together: they are all monstrous and barbaric nations (Cic. Q. Fr. 1.1.17). Egyptians were altogether beyond the pale. Their beliefs amounted to dementia, hopelessly irresolute and ignorant of the truth (Cic. Nat. Deor. 1.43). How else to describe religious convictions that hold animals and monsters to be sacred or a people so depraved that they worship ibises, cats, dogs and crocodiles? (Cic. De Rep. 3.14). Carthaginians carry the reputation of faithlessness and treachery—not to mention cruelty and savagery.3 Gauls are no better, possibly worse. Not only are they inveterate enemies of Rome, but they wage war against all shrines and everything sacred and holy (Cic. Font. 30, 43–44, 49). The people are a despicable lot. Even the noblest of the Gauls does not rise to the level of the meanest Roman (Cic. Font. 26–27). The list of libels is long. What is to be inferred from this cascade of calumnies? Did Roman intellectuals, Cicero foremost among them, regularly disparage non-Romans, find foreigners offensive or degenerate, or, worse, construct them as barbaric aliens in order to call attention to those qualities that defined the Romans’ own identity and their superiority over other peoples of the Mediterranean?4 Did Cicero strive to secure civic unity by separating the outsider from the constructed value-system of the insider? As one eminent scholar puts it, “if there is any group of provincials Cicero admired, I am not aware of it.”5 Scholarship has gone too far in that direction. To fasten upon Cicero the label of bigotry or contemptuous chauvinism is simplistic and misguided. Ciceronian expressions move in more than one direction, and the attitudes communicated cannot be reduced to blind prejudice.

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A methodological issue requires emphasis. Purple passages from Cicero are frequently cited in works on Roman perceptions of the alien, but the gathering of such testimonia is invariably piecemeal and fragmented. Cicero devoted no treatise to this subject, neither in general nor in regard to any ethnic group. Hence citations from his work are invariably fragments, often torn from context, and quoted as if they were considered judgments, even illustrative of broader Roman conceptualization. To treat this miscellany as if it were a systematic assessment misleads more than enlightens. Ciceronian remarks need to be treated with wariness and circumspection. They can only be confidently judged when seen in their specific setting. One particular note of caution has to be sounded. A substantial majority of the remarks come in heated forensic contests. That raises an immediate warning signal. The orator’s intensity in making a case for his client and his ferocity in maligning hostile witnesses produce excess and distortion that are readily discerned by modern readers—and were undoubtedly recognized by contemporary audiences. Not that we can discount these rhetorical flourishes altogether as transparent embellishment and empty of serious content. But one must take into account the conventions of a genre that were as fully familiar to Cicero’s listeners as to us. The orator’s depiction of Gauls supplies a revealing instance. Almost all of the references to that people in his corpus come in a single speech, the Pro Fonteio. Cicero, as often, pulls out all the stops in defense of his client, M. Fonteius, accused of res repetundae during his pro-praetorship in Gallia Transalpina during the 70s BCE. A large part of the defense consisted of discrediting the testimony of Gallic witnesses, chiefly Allobroges and Volcae, tribesmen who brought evidence of Fonteius’ depredations. Cicero makes the most of ancient history, reminding the jurors of wars fought by the ferocious Gauls in the past. He reaches all the way back to the Gallic assault on Delphi and the oracle of Pythian Apollo two centuries earlier, an episode that did not involve the Romans at all. And, of course, he recalls the terrifying Celtic attack on the capitol itself and the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, fixed in Roman tradition or legend, of more than three centuries before (Cic. Font. 30). More recent Gallic wars come in for mention as well, in vaguer terms, the people characterized as inveterate foes of Rome, harboring an innate enmity, needing to be subjugated again and again, constant threats to the populus Romanus.6 Fonteius indeed is portrayed as a tower of strength protecting the homeland from the savage onslaughts of the Gauls.7 It is not easy to imagine a jury of senators and equites buying this notion of barbarians at the gates. The Transalpina had been under Roman authority—albeit with some restiveness—for more than a generation.8 The excessive language could be indulged not so much because jurors credited it but because they took it as part of forensic convention. There is no greater reason to presume deep-rooted prejudice in Cicero’s comments about Gauls as waging war against all religions, even against the immortal gods themselves.9 The hyperbole is patent.

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Cicero’s famous pronouncement that the most prestigious person in Gaul does not bear comparison with the lowliest of Romans is often cited as a sweeping judgment on the nation.10 In fact, however, that conclusion provides an instructive example of questionable methodology. Cicero’s remark speaks only to a specific and narrow point: the trustworthiness of the witnesses’ testimony. The Gauls, in his presentation, have a special bias against Fonteius and a compelling self-interest in his conviction, so that they carry no credit in giving evidence (Cic. Font. 26–27). That is a far from wholesale condemnation of Celtic character. The discrediting of the witnesses takes priority for Cicero in the Pro Fonteio, a theme that runs throughout the speech. And even on that issue, Cicero’s convictions prompt doubts. The Gallic tribes singled out for opprobrium as prejudiced witnesses are the Allobroges and the Volcae (Cic. Font. 26; cf. 36, 46). As it happens, Cicero had occasion to speak about the Allobroges as witnesses again just a few years later, in 63 BCE, the year of his consulship. This time, however, Cicero’s depiction was drastically different. Envoys of the Allobroges had brought damaging and decisive evidence to the consul about the Catilinarian conspirators. In his Fourth Catilinarian Cicero notes with pleasure the rewards bestowed upon them by the senate for their testimony (Cic. Cat. 4.5, 4.10). And in another case in 62 BCE, growing out of the Catilinarian uprising, he goes so far as to characterize the Allobroges as the most truthful of witnesses on matters of the highest importance.11 The harsh censure of their untrustworthiness has conveniently vanished. The one Gallic institution that could have been paraded as most barbaric and inhumane is the practice of human sacrifice. Cicero might have made much of this. Yet the orator mentions it only once, a cruel and savage custom to be sure, yet he gives it scant attention, pointing out only that such men could not be expected to adhere to the truth in sworn testimony (Cic. Font. 31). The practice did not cause much comment or censure among Roman writers.12 Caesar records it in dispassionate terms as part of the divination procedure presided over by the Druids.13 Cicero presumably understood it in that context as well. And it is noteworthy that in the De Divinatione, he remarks on Druids as diviners and adds that he knew one of them personally, a man who was described as a lover of learning (Cic. De Div. 1.90). Twenty years later, when Cicero had a different axe to grind, the Gauls took on a very different coloring. In supporting D. Brutus against M. Antony in the conflict after Caesar’s assassination, Gaul suddenly earned Cicero’s fulsome praise as the land that had always served as Rome’s protector and as guardian of its common liberty.14 The orator’s fulminations cannot be detached from their frame of reference. A decade after the Pro Fonteio Cicero turned once again to the technique of discrediting foreign witnesses. He delivered his Pro Flacco in 59 BCE. The defendant, L. Valerius Flaccus, was yet another provincial governor brought to trial on yet another charge of res repetundae, with damaging testimony introduced by provincials who had allegedly suffered at his hands, this time

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in the Roman province of Asia. Cicero here too devotes a hefty portion of the speech to denouncing the character of the witnesses, thereby undermining the force of their testimony. This time he pummeled the Greeks of Asia who had shown up to bear witness. They had been either bribed or conscripted, so he claimed, for they were fickle, needy and treacherous (Cic. Flacc. 3, 6). Greeks, for all their admirable qualities, their intelligence, erudition and wisdom, have no regard for veracity—especially if they are under oath. Their concern is strictly for the cleverness of their speech, not its resemblance to the truth.15 Levitas indeed is the very hallmark of the Hellenes (Cic. Flacc. 24, 57, 61; cf. 19). Not that the orator engages in wholesale condemnation of Greeks. Instead he does something a bit more insidious. He pits good Greeks against bad. Those whose cities date back to antiquity, who dwell in Europe and who (not coincidentally) sent representatives to testify for the defense are pillars of learning and integrity. It is the Greeks of Asia, colonists, later immigrants, infected by eastern practices, who merit contempt. They inhabit places like Phrygia, Mysia, Caria and Lydia. The orator, in effect, strips them of their Hellenism and transforms them into Asians. Here come the purple patches about Phrygians who can be improved only by the whip, Carians who should serve as human experiments, Mysians who rank as the dregs of humanity and Lydians who appear on the comic stage exclusively as slaves.16 All this has as its sole purpose the undermining of witnesses’ reliability. The tendentiousness is flagrant. That this represents Cicero’s considered opinion would be a faulty finding. Jurors might have been amused by the oration, but it need not represent a serious appeal to their bigotry. One might observe that Macrobius centuries later read the speech and ascribed Cicero’s success in the case to his deft deployment of jokes (Macrob. Sat. 2.1.13). And once again when Cicero had a quite different case to make in another speech, the de Domo sua, he represented Asians in a glowingly favorable light, innocent victims of a rapacious Roman governor. Syrians, Babylonians and Persians became the most irreproachable and peace-loving of nations.17 Once again, the rhetorical context is all. Cicero’s cavils against Jews, cited ad nauseam, in fact also confine themselves to a solitary speech—and to a very specific context. They hardly amount to a blanket condemnation of the people.18 The speech, in fact, is the same Pro Flacco in which he castigates Asian Greeks as deceitful witnesses. And Jews appear in the text only as a marginal issue, far from the principal targets or the objects of attention. The particular circumstances need to be recalled. Jews were not present as witnesses at Flaccus’ trial; hence their testimony did not need to be impugned. They were in the forum demonstrating against Flaccus on an issue of particular concern to their nation. Flaccus as governor of Asia had, among other things, forbidden the export of gold from his province, an act in accord with senatorial decrees over the past few years. The reasons for these measures are disputed and need not detain us. They certainly were not aimed at Jews as such.19 But they did affect them. Flaccus’ edict meant that the Jews of Asia

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could no longer send their annual half-shekel payment to the Temple in Jerusalem, a custom practiced by Jews throughout the Mediterranean, as a token of respect and a means of financing the sacrifices. Flaccus, in fact, had seized and confiscated those funds in various cities of his province where they were being collected for shipment to Jerusalem (Cic. Flacc. 67–68). When word of this reached the Jews of Rome, they gathered for mass protests at Flaccus’ trial. Cicero unsurprisingly claims that they were suborned by the prosecutor to damage Flaccus’ cause (Cic. Flacc. 66). And he took the occasion to remind his audience that Jews in Palestine had recently been subjugated by Pompey, a demonstration that their barbara superstitio was at odds with the Roman empire and the immortal gods (Cic. Flacc. 67, 69). None of this approaches the level of ethnic hostility or antisemitism. Cicero simply denounces a pressure group that challenged the reputation of his client—and, in effect, demonstrates the influence that that group actually did possess. This particular sideshow at the trial can hardly serve as a serious signal of Roman animosity toward Jews. The absence of seriousness emerges quite clearly in Cicero’s little game of telling the jurors that he will whisper something for them alone to hear, so as not to rile up the crowd of Jews around the trial (Cic. Flacc. 68). This bit of mummery does not qualify as ethnic animus. Swipes at other peoples occur occasionally—with no greater claim on plausibility as heartfelt sentiments of the orator. The Sardinians, for example, appear as witnesses for the prosecution in the repetundae trial of M. Scaurus in 54 BCE. Scaurus’ depredations on the island had roused substantial resentment and brought Sardinians out in force at the trial. Cicero brought the same rhetorical assault against them as he had in the Pro Fonteio against the Gauls and the Pro Flacco against the Greeks of Asia.20 It was advantageous or, perhaps better, conventional and routine to disparage their credibility as witnesses. Cicero fired familiar volleys. Sardinians are portrayed as brought to the courtroom in a conspiracy, their perjuries pressured, solicited and compelled (Cic. Scaur. 20). They hoped to gain favor with the powerful or to pocket some profits (Cic. Scaur. 36). And, quite apart from covetousness and hope of reward, the nation as a whole is so worthless that they equate freedom with nothing more than license for mendacity. Their protests of indignation are merely a mask for hypocrisy (Cic. Scaur. 38, 41). Cicero cannot quite condemn them wholesale. He acknowledged that some Sardinians are men of integrity. But the vast majority lack honor, sociability, or character consonant with the Romans. As descendants of Phoenicians, that most deceptive of people, and of Carthaginians, notorious violators of oaths, they were abandoned even by them as repudiated colonists on that dismal island.21 Advocates’ defamation of witnesses had become commonplace, an expected convention rather than authentic emotion. Its absence would have been surprising. And it should not be confused with racial prejudice. Suspicions about rhetoric in forensic oratory come easily and justifiably. But not all of Cicero’s strictures on foreigners appear in speeches, complicating

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the matter.. As prime antagonist of Rome in song and story none could match Carthage. That people, colonists of the Phoenicians, carried a reputation for chicanery, an aura that generally adhered to traders, merchantmen and those engaged in maritime business. Greeks already saw Phoenicians as sailors who plowed the sea, enterprising mercantilists, colonizers and settlers all over the Mediterranean. Along with that work came some grubbing after profit, acquisitiveness and cunning, which led to the image of Phoenician craftiness.22 Carthaginians, at least in some eyes, inherited those characteristics. And by the late Republic, this reputation gained expression as Punica fides, an allusion to Carthaginians as untrustworthy, deceptive and frequent violators of oaths and treaties. The stereotype appears in rhetorical treatises. Carthaginian treachery and cruelty represent tropes to be employed whenever appropriate by orators.23 And Cicero certainly did make use of them.24 In the Pro Scauro, as we have seen, he sneered at the Poeni, inveterate treaty-breakers, true to the traditions of their forefathers, the Phoenicians, and scornful of the even more lowly Sardinians (Cic. Scaur. 42). He could still cite the Carthaginians as emblematic of cruelty in the Fourteenth Philippic in the year of his own death (Cic. Phil. 14.9). And the stereotype spilled over to Cicero’s philosophic work, outside the context of the oratorical world. In the De Officiis, he also branded the Carthaginians as foedifragi and singled Hannibal out for cruelty (Cic. De Off. 1.38). Does this mean then that, at least with regard to Carthaginians, Cicero’s condemnation was a more deep-seated one and an authentic expression of ethnic enmity? That would be tidy but too simple. The segment of the De Officiis in which the passage occurs is that which treats the bellum iustum, that is, not only the proper reasons for going to war but proper behavior during and after the conflict. Cicero argues that the one justifiable cause for going to war is to be able to live secure in peace and that victory should be followed by clemency to the defeated, with the exception of those who had been savage and brutal. In this regard, he distinguishes between various Italian peoples who had been subdued on the battlefield but subsequently embraced as citizens on the one hand, and Carthage and Numantia which had been razed to the ground on the other (Cic. De Off. 1.35). The distinction is reinforced in a somewhat different way a few lines later. Here Cicero differentiates between foreign foes with whom Rome fought de imperio and those with whom the contest involved sheer survival. It is noteworthy that in this categorization Carthaginians are bracketed with Latins, Samnites, Sabines and the followers of Pyrrhus. The fierce foes with whom Rome contended for survival were, in Cicero’s presentation, Celtiberians and Cimbri. The latter passage is that which labels the Carthaginians as violators of treaties and Hannibal as cruel, by contrast with the others like Pyrrhus who were more righteous (Cic. De Off. 1.38). Carthage comes off poorly here. But its people nevertheless belong with those who are Rome’s rivals and competitors rather than those who aim at the nation’s destruction. And, more significantly, Cicero’s comments apply

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to Carthage’s objectionable actions on the stage of diplomacy and war, not to innate character flaws.25 Indeed, later in the same treatise he puts Hannibal on an equal plane with Fabius Maximus, a particularly notable conjunction. The parallel rests on their comparable craftiness in devising stratagems, concealing their tactics, dissimulating and getting a jump on the enemy’s plans (Cic. De Off. 1.108) Cicero plainly approves of this form of calliditas. Hannibal and Fabius were worthy opponents. The Punic general, in fact, receives high praise in another Ciceronian passage, this one in a speech: a man of wisdom, courage and accomplishment who, though an enemy of Rome, was celebrated in Roman literature and memory (Cic. Sest. 142). Cicero is not engaged in national character assassination. The strangest of nations in the eyes of many Greeks and Romans were the people of Egypt. A range of peculiar customs and practices struck observers as bizarre, none more so than the extraordinary worship of animals. The matter receives comment in countless texts whose authors find it disturbing, nearly incredible and certainly unacceptable. Cicero, on the face of it, appears to follow that pattern—in his philosophic works, not his speeches. In the De Natura Deorum, he stigmatizes the beliefs of the Egyptians as dementia (Cic. Nat. Deor. 1.43). The Tusculan Disputations go further, with regard to animal worship; Cicero labels Egyptian practice as the product of minds imbued with perverse delusions (Cic. Tusc. Disp. 5.78). The remarks are frequently cited as evidence of ethnic bias and scorn for the “Other.” A closer look at the texts and their contexts, however, suggests something different. It is easy to forget, when single statements are plucked out of a treatise, that Cicero’s philosophic tracts are usually couched in the form of dialogues and that the sentiments of the speaker do not necessarily represent Cicero’s own views. The slur in the De Natura Deorum, for example, comes from the mouth of an Epicurean, spokesperson for his philosophic sect, not a group with which Cicero associated himself. And the speaker presents a sweeping indictment of various beliefs in divinity ranging from the pre-Socratics, Pythagoras and Plato to the Stoics. When he turns to poetic fantasies about the behavior of the gods, he classifies their portrayals of divine passions, lust, ferocity and unbridled emotions with confused popular opinions born of ignorance, the monstrous ideas of Persian magi and the comparably demented views of Egyptians (Cic. Nat. Deor. 1.18–43). Egypt is not here singled out; it is just another in a long list of targets for scorn, in a class with Homer, Plato and Zeno, not bad company—unless one happens to be an Epicurean. This hardly represents Cicero’s own vituperation. The Tusculan Disputations roam widely among the philosophical schools, expressing agreements or disagreements without consistent pattern or espousal of any particular doctrine, a stance closest to the more detached indeterminism of the New Academy.26 The portion of Book V that contains a nasty allusion to Egyptian reverence for animals must also be seen in context. The discussion at that point concerns the question of whether the wise man fears pain. The speaker, who may or may not represent Cicero’s opinion,

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runs through a series of examples of nations who resist pain when upholding firm convictions. He cites the familiar instance of Spartan boys who refuse even to utter a cry when their bodies are lacerated and prefer to be battered into insensibility or death rather than yield. He proceeds to note that Indian sages ignore pain when spending winters, scantily clad, in the Hindu-Kush or hurling themselves onto funeral pyres, sometimes joined by wives and relatives, allegedly as a show of devotion. It is in that frame of argument that Cicero turns to the Egyptians. In their distorted mentality, they would endure any form of torture before they would do harm to an ibis, a dog, a cat or a crocodile (Cic. Tusc. Disp. 5.76–78). Cicero obviously is no advocate of such principles or forms of conduct. But it is not his objective to vilify Egyptian customs. They serve simply as illustration of resistance to pain by persons of staunch belief. And Cicero’s remarks in fact show more admiration than disdain. He explicitly contrasts this form of tenacity with the weakening of Roman moral fiber through addiction to idleness, inactivity, luxury and sloth (Cic. Tusc. Disp. 5.78). Animal worship comes off better than that. Animal worship among Egyptians appears more than once in the De Natura Deorum. And it is striking that Cicero shows remarkably little interest in reproach or condemnation. Instead, he takes up the deliberate posture of a tolerant relativism, a position which he also ascribes to the interlocutor who represents the New Academy.27 In the dialogue, he refutes the assertion of the Epicurean that men can only conceive of gods in their own forms. He concedes that Romans fall into that category, witnessing from an early age the images of Jupiter, Juno, Apollo and the rest in human shape. But that predilection, he points out, does not hold among Egyptians, Syrians or almost any other foreign peoples. Egyptians, in fact, hold a reverence for certain animals exceeding that of any Roman’s adoration of the holiest temples and images of the gods. Indeed, he continues, Romans regularly despoil shrines and confiscate statues of deities, whereas Egyptians would never dream of seizing a crocodile, an ibis or a cat (Cic. Nat. Deor. 1.81–82) Animal worship here receives no censure or criticism. Once again, at least for the sake of the argument, Egyptians have an advantage over Romans. In another passage of the same treatise, the academic spokesman returns to the practice of deifying animals. It may prompt ridicule from those who observe it from the outside. Yet, he argues, it is more a matter of pragmatism than foolishness. Egyptians have sound reasons for revering the creatures which they elevate for devotion. The ibis kills large numbers of snakes and protects Egypt from plague by consuming the winged serpents blown from the Libyan desert. The other animals designated as deities also gained their places because of the services they perform for Egyptian society. Not a hint of disparagement here. Rather, the interlocutor employs this positive example as a means of disparaging the gods imagined by the Epicureans who perform no useful service for humanity whatever (Cic. Nat. Deor. 1.101). Much of Book III of the De Natura Deorum is devoted to refutation of Stoic theology, notably the ascription of divinity to forces of nature and the

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multiplication of gods in general. As part of his argument, the academic in the dialogue resorts to degrading parallels. Stoic deities, like the stars and products of nature, are compared to superstitions of the ignorant, to elevation of humans to divine status like a grant of celestial citizenship, to Syrian worship of fish, and, of course, to Egyptian deification of almost every imaginable beast (Cic. Nat. Deor. 3.39). To be sure, the parallel is a scornful one, but no more so than the speaker’s allusion to reverence for Hercules, Aesculapius, invented founders of cities and indeed even Romulus. The academic spokesman takes the argument further to a reductio ad absurdum. If heroes become gods, if the sun and moon are deities and if abstractions are deified, what is to prevent us from worshipping Isis and Osiris, or even enrolling among the gods oxen, ibises, asps, crocodiles, cats, and any other creatures one can think of (Cic. Nat. Deor. 3.47)? Animal worship, as we know, was reckoned as out of bounds by Romans, Greeks and Jews alike. For Cicero, that practice proved serviceable in philosophic debate as a tool to expose the flaws of Epicureans and Stoics, not as a reason to batter the alien. Cicero did not recommend reverence for dumb creatures, but he exhibits a surprising disinterest in holding it up to scorn, an attitude that puts him in the company of others who wrote at length about Egypt, namely Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus. This penchant for detached relativism with regard to the customs of others emerges in stark form in the De Republica. The interlocutor takes up the stance of the academic philosopher Carneades. Here the subject is what constitutes justice and injustice on the state level. And the speaker proposes to show that the concepts are not the same for all peoples and in all places. As illustration he employs the diverse attitudes toward the sacred and the holy to be found among various societies around the globe. Egypt, of course, provides a convenient instance, its deification of a bull as Apis, and its devotion to beasts of every form sanctified as gods. But it is only one example among many. He notes that shrines among Greeks and Romans everywhere contain images of the gods in human form, a practice that the Persians find abhorrent and nefarious. Xerxes’ notorious order to burn the temples of Athens stemmed, so says Cicero’s speaker, from his horror that the gods whose realm is the whole universe should be cooped up behind confining walls. He continues with a list of examples of people who held divergent opinions, resulting in divergent—and sometimes dubious—actions. The Gauls, for instance, regard it as shameful to cultivate grain by manual labor—so they go out and ravage other people’s fields. Others indeed, like Carthaginians and dwellers on the Black Sea, as well as Gauls, believe that human sacrifice is a pious act and one that is most pleasing to the gods (Cic. De Rep. 3.14– 15). The behavior may be repugnant to most people, but it is not Cicero’s purpose to pass judgment. Nor does he aim to distinguish the conduct of the barbarian from the civilized. On the contrary. These customs and beliefs of Egyptians, Persians, Gauls and Carthaginians are juxtaposed to comparably questionable practices by Greeks: not just Cretans and Aetolians, who had

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a somewhat dubious reputation, but also Athenians and Spartans. Nor are the Romans themselves spared. In the same passage the spokesman notes that the Romans, iustissimi homines, so he calls them ( ironically?), forbade nations beyond the Alps to plant the olive or the vine, so that Italian olive groves and vineyards could have a monopoly (Cic. De Rep. 3.15–16). Relativism in such a form is quite different from promoting ethnic bigotry. None of this should suggest some sort of universalist embrace on Cicero’s part. He held no brief for erasing distinctions among peoples or espousing a harmonious community of nations. The orator played favorites, and Roman superiority was never in question. In a famous letter of 60 or 59 BCE to his brother Quintus, who was at that time governor of Asia, Cicero advised him how best to conduct himself in governing the provincials of that region. The composition has the form of a letter but, in fact, constitutes a treatise on good governorship. Quintus did not need the advice, having already served for two years in Asia, whereas Marcus had never served as provincial governor, a fact that he freely acknowledges in the “letter.” The piece is set early in Quintus’ third year in Asia, although its actual composition need not have coincided with that immediate setting. It came close to the time of Cicero’s defense of Flaccus who had been Quintus’ predecessor as propraetor of Asia. The orator offers in the letter the same distinction between the “good Greeks,” worthy of ancient Hellas, and the untrustworthy ones dwelling in Asia, debilitated by long years of subjection to foreign masters.28 The differentiation again seems patently artificial. It serves Cicero’s purpose briefly in advice on how best to treat Quintus’ provincials. But he does not hold to it consistently, even in the letter. Indeed he refers to the Hellenic inhabitants of Asia as representatives of the most civilized (humanissimum) nation of the world (Cic. Q. Fr. 1.1.6). Marcus indeed reminds Quintus that he presides over the welfare of a people who not only possess humanitas but are responsible for passing it on to the rest of mankind—including the Romans, and Cicero himself, a prime beneficiary (Cic. Q. Fr. 1.1.27–28) The distinction between European and Asian Greeks is altogether dissolved. It is noteworthy that Cicero here does draw a contrast between the civilized Greeks in general, benefactors of humanity, and the inhumane, barbarous nations of Africa, Spain and Gaul. But for them too, he adds, if Quintus had drawn a province in which they dwelled, he would have the same obligation to treat them with the same humanitas and to act on behalf of their welfare, their interests and their security.29 The differences matter. This is not a world of similarity and equality. But Rome has an obligation to govern them all with concern for a broader civilization. The barbari are not relegated to the category of unredeemable savages. As is well known, Romans pursued a remarkably liberal policy of admitting aliens to the citizenry. This held even for ex-slaves, the vast bulk of whom were either born abroad or were descendants of those born abroad. That practice caused surprise and admiration already in antiquity, as attested in an epigraphic letter by Philip V of Macedon as early as the third century BCE.30 The motives may have been pragmatic, a means of maintaining social stability

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without undermining hierarchy.31 But the fact of frequent manumission, followed by citizenship, is notable and meaningful. The ready entrance of freedmen into the citizen body signified a level of comfort with foreigners that was unmatched elsewhere in the Classical world. Romans evidently did not worry about diluting the purity of the stock. The practice of extending the franchise to non-Romans began early with the Latins and eventually extended through the Italian peninsula—with, to be sure, some serious bumps along the way.32 But we are concerned here with the entrance of foreign persons and peoples into the civic body. There is no evidence for resistance to this as a matter of ideology or principle. Roman legends from the outset, whether based on Trojan origins or Sabine women, presupposed a mingling of peoples that made up the stock of the populus Romanus. Cicero in the de Republica has an interlocutor pointedly mock the Athenians and the Arcadians for claiming autochthony—as if they were field mice emerging from the ploughed earth.33 The issue surfaces most directly in Cicero’s Pro Balbo of 56 BCE. The orator asserts with pride the fact that Roman citizenship has been open even to tribute-paying subjects, to enemies and to slaves. He cites its bestowal upon many of those who dwell in Africa, Sicily, Sardinia and all the other provinces, and adds that the lowliest slaves who have deserved well of the Republic obtain their freedom, an automatic passport to citizenship (Cic. Balb. 24). And, elsewhere in the speech, he delivers the grand pronouncement that no nation in the entire world, whether linked in friendship or estranged by hostility to Rome, is excluded from the award of Roman citizenship to its deserving members (Cic. Balb. 30). The very foundation of the Roman imperium, he maintains, rests on the practice that stems from Romulus and his pact with the Sabines, thus establishing the principle that the citizen body must be enlarged by inclusion even of enemies into its ranks. Romulus’ example, so Cicero adds, with some hyperbole, became the model for all the maiores (Cic. Balb. 31). To be sure, these declarations come in another speech, with a particular objective. Cicero strove to defend his client, the Spaniard Balbus from Gades, whose Roman citizenship, held for sixteen years without being questioned, was now challenged for a variety of political reasons.34 Nonetheless, Cicero’s sentiments, as expressed in the Pro Balbo, were consistent with Roman behavior and attitudes generally toward the alien.35 In this instance, they have the ring of sincerity. We close with two remarkable passages in the Ciceronian corpus which have gone largely unnoticed. One comes from a speech, the De Haruspicum Responso, delivered in 56 BCE in the heat of political dispute, the other from a philosophical treatise, the De Natura Deorum, composed in 45 BCE, when Cicero had the leisure and tranquility to ruminate about matters of philosophy and theology. Both express the same sentiment. Given the distance in time, circumstances and genre, that coincidence needs to be taken seriously. In the first, Cicero observes that, whatever pride the Romans may take in themselves, they do not exceed Spaniards in numbers, nor Gauls in strength, nor Carthaginians in shrewdness, nor Greeks in the arts, nor indeed other Italians in the sensibility ingrained in the peoples of this land.

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The Romans’ special quality rests in their pietas and religio, in their conviction that all things are governed by the will of the gods (Cic. Har. Resp. 19). Cicero gives voice to the same persuasion in his treatise On the Nature of the Gods. He maintains that, if we were to compare ourselves with foreign peoples, we would discover that we are either equal or even inferior in all other matters, but far superior in one feature, namely in religio, i.e. in devotion to the gods (Cic. Nat. Deor. 2.8). This striking sentiment, expressed in such diverse contexts, presents Cicero in a very different light from that of one who constructed the alien only to exhibit Roman excellence by contrast. This is not, of course, the place to explore the complex nature or genuineness of Cicero’s religious beliefs. Ambiguity recurs with regularity. Cicero notoriously quotes the elder Cato who expressed wonder that when two haruspices meet each other on the street they don’t burst out laughing.36 Yet the haruspices are also the very diviners whose forecasts Cicero praises in the De Haruspicum Responsis. His treatises more than once express the view that belief in the gods is a matter of prudent state policy, rather than authentic conviction.37 Those two aspects, however, are perfectly compatible. Cicero presents himself as combating superstitio. But he insists that the eradication of superstitio is very different from the eradication of religio. The latter belongs to the institutions of the maiores, and wisdom requires preservation of the rites and ceremonies that they established. Nor is this mere political prudence. Cicero affirms that the very beauty of the universe and the celestial order compels him to declare belief in some surpassing and eternal nature which all men must acknowledge and admire. Divine power, evidenced not only by the sun and the heavens but by the magnitude of the Roman empire, makes it clear that such glories cannot have occurred by chance.38 It would be hazardous to conclude that these last statements give direct insight into Cicero’s inner convictions. But the comments resonate with much else that appears in the corpus, as we have seen. Cicero expresses a firm belief in the superiority of Rome over the nations, but it is not a superiority founded on ethnic differences, the exclusion or subordination of the alien and the denigration of the outsider in order to construct a collective identity or maintain internal unity. The Romans excel rather in piety and acknowledgment of the divine governance of the universe. NOTES I am pleased to offer this piece to Judy Hallett as a heartfelt token of my great affection and admiration for many years of friendship, learning, countless good deeds and selfless favors, large and small. 1. Cic. Sest. 141; Gruen (2011), 343–4. 2. See, e.g. Trouard (1942); Guite (1962), 142–59; Petrochilos (1974); Crawford (1978), 193–207; Balsdon (1979), 30–58; Dauge (1981), 546–54; Ferrary (1988), 497–526; Gruen (1992), 223–71; Isaac (2004), 381–405. 3. Cic. De Off. 1.38; Scaur. 42; Leg. Agrar. 2.95; De Rep. 3.15; Phil. 14.9.

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Erich S. Gruen 4. Cicero’s views on foreigners are regularly regarded as negative throughout. So, e.g., Balsdon (1979), 2, 10, 63–4, 66–8, 100, 162, 221; Dauge (1981), 119–31; Isaac (2004), 88–9, 225, 306, 316, 357, 412–13, 454–6. 5. Isaac (2004), 316. Similarly, Brunt (1978), 185. 6. Cic. Font. 12–13, 33, 35, 43. Cicero also alluded to the Gallic threat elsewhere—when it suited his purposes; Cat. 3.22; Prov. Cons. 33. See Gruen (2011), 146–7. 7. Cic. Font. 44. All of this is taken as serious representation by Clavel-Lévêque (1983), 609–18. 8. Cf. Ebel (1976), 75–95; Hermon (1993), 204–76. 9. Cic. Font. 30, 49. Woolf (1998), 61–2, by contrast, sees this as an appeal to Roman prejudice. 10. Cic. Font. 27: non modo cum summis civitatis nostrae viris, sed cum infimo cive Romano quisquam amplissimus Galliae comparandus est? 11. Cic. Sull. 17: Allobroges, maximarum rerum verissimi indices. 12. Diod. 5.31.3–4; Strabo 4.4.2–5; Livy 38.47.12. 13. Caes. BG 6.16. 14. Cic. Phil. 5.37: Galliaque, quae semper praesidet atque praesedit huic imperio libertati communi. 15. Cic. Flacc. 9–12: Graecus testis cum ea voluntate processit ut laedat, non iuris iurandi, sed laedendi verba meditatur . . . quibus ius iurandum iocus est. 16. Cic. Flacc. 61–6; cf. 3, 17. See the valuable remarks of Steele (2001), 53–8; cf. Vasaly (1993), 198–205. 17. Cic. De Domo 60: integerrimas pacatissimasque gentes. 18. His only other allusion to Jews couples them with Syrians, in yet another tendentious passage, this one in the de Provinciis Consularibus. Cicero lambasts Gabinius for mistreating the publicani, claiming that he handed them over in servitude to Jews and Syrians—nations who were themselves born to servitude; Prov. Cons. 10. Insofar as this has any meaningful connotation at all, it must refer to the fact that these nations suffered perennially under foreign subjugation. 19. See Gruen (2002), 19–23, with bibliography. 20. See Vasaly (1993), 193–8. 21. Cic. Scaur. 42, 44. Cf. Prov. Cons. 15. 22. Cf. Gruen (2011), 116–22. 23. Cic. De Inv. 1.71; ad Her. 4.20, 4.66. See also Sallust, Iug. 108.3. 24. See the evidence collected by Burck (1943), 304–11, who does not question it. 25. Cf. Cic. Leg. Agrar. 87, which justifies the destruction of Carthage on grounds of the threat it posed to Rome, not because of any innate wickedness. 26. Cf. Cic. Tusc. Disp. 1.17, 2.5; Acad. 1.45–6, 22.98–104. 27. E.g., Wood (1988), 58–61. 28. Cic. Q. Fr. 1.1.16; cf. 1.1. 19. Cicero elsewhere also contrasts Roman passion for liberty with other nations that endure servitude; Phil. 6.19. 29. Cic. Q. Fr. 1.1.27; cf. Moatti (1997), 91–3. 30. Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum 3, 543, lines 29–34. 31. See Treggiari (1969), 11–20; Bradley (1984), 81–5; Gardner (1993); Bradley (1994), 158–65. 32. See the still-serviceable survey of Sherwin-White (1973), 3–173. A brief and cynical analysis in Dench (2005), 117–36. 33. Cic. De Rep. 3.25. Cf. Dench (2005), 96–107. 34. On the speech, see Steele (2001), 98–110. Cf. also Cicero’s defense of Roman citizenship for the Greek poet Archias in the Pro Archia; Steele, op. cit. 82–98. 35. See the enlightened survey of such opinions by Moatti (1997), 257–98. 36. Cic. De Div. 2.51. Cicero is himself the interlocutor here, presenting the case against divination.

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37. Cic. De Div. 2.28; De Leg. 2.15–16, 2.19; Nat. Deor. 1.4. 38. Cic. De Div. 2.148; Mil. 83–84; Nat. Deor. 2.153, 3.5.

REFERENCES Balsdon, J. P. V. D. 1979. Romans and Aliens. London: Duckworth. Bradley, K. R. 1984. Slaves and Masters in the Roman Empire: A Study in Social Control. Brussels: Collection Latomus. ———. 1994. Slavery and Society at Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brunt, P. A. 1978. “Laus Imperii.” In Imperialism in the Ancient World, ed. P. D. A. Garnsey and C. R. Whittaker, 159–91. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Burck, E. 1943. “Das Bild der Karthager in der römischen Literatur.” In Rom und Karthago, ed. J. Vogt, 297–345. Leipzig: Koehler und Amelang. Clavel-Lévêque, M. 1983. “La domination romaine en Narbonnaise et les formes de representation des Gaulois.” Modes de contacts et processus de transformation dans les sociétés anciennes, Collection de l’École Française de Rome 67: 607–33. Crawford, M. H. 1978. “Greek Intellectuals and the Roman Aristocracy in the First Century B. C.” In Imperialism in the Ancient World, ed. P. D. A. Garnsey and C. R. Whittaker, 193–207. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dauge, Y. A. 1981. Le Barbare. Brussels: Collection Latomus. Dench, E. 2005. Romulus’ Asylum: Roman Identities from the Age of Alexander to the Age of Hadrian. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ebel, C. 1976. Transalpine Gaul:The Emergence of a Roman Province. Leiden: Brill. Ferrary, J.-L. 1988. Philhellénisme et imperialism. Paris: École francaise de Rome. Gardner, J. F. 1993. Being a Roman Citizen. London: Routledge. Gruen, E. S. 1992. Culture and National Identity in Republican Rome. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ———. 2002. Diaspora: Jews amidst Greeks and Romans. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. ———. 2011. Rethinking the Other in Antiquity. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Guite, H. 1962. “Cicero’s Attitude to the Greeks,” Greece and Rome, 9: 143–59. Hermon, E. 1993. Rome et la Gaule transalpine avant César, 125–59 av. J.-C. Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval. Isaac, B. 2004. The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Moatti, C. 1997. La Raison de Rome. Paris: Seuil. Petrochilos, N. 1974. Roman Attitudes to the Greeks. Athens: S. Saripolos’s Library. Sherwin-White, A. N. 1973. The Roman Citizenship, 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Steele, C. E. W. 2001. Cicero, Rhetoric, and Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Treggiari, S. 1969. Roman Freedmen during the Late Republic. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Trouard, M.A. 1942. Cicero’s Attitude toward the Greeks. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Vasaly, A. 1993. Representations: Images of the World in Ciceronian Oratory. Berkeley: University of California Press. Wood, N. 1988. Cicero’s Social and Political Thought. Berkeley: University of California Press. Woolf, G. 1998. Becoming Roman: The Origins of Provincial Civilization in Gaul. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

2

Frigidus Sanguis Lucretius, Virgil and Death Michael C. J. Putnam

Abstract. Putnam’s chapter first meditates on the difference between Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura and the Georgics of Virgil as types of didactic poetry. The earlier poet, Lucretius, tends toward epic grandeur and the later, Virgil, toward a version of pastoral. Putnam’s focus then turns to Virgil’s Aeneid. He examines in particular the phrase frigidus sanguis. It occurs in Georgics 2 to characterize the Virgilian speaker’s shyness when confronting nature’s grandiose gestures such as the imminence of death. Its only repetition by the poet, however, is in Aeneid 10 at an especially poignant moment, the killing of Pallas. For Virgil death is always with us, always inexplicable. As the second of his four Georgics nears its end, Virgil embarks on an extended dialogue with another writer regularly assumed to be Lucretius, genius of the preceding generation and author of De Rerum Natura, Rome’s first preserved masterpiece of didactic poetry.1 As the later poet’s many moments of direct emulation suggest, both artists are sustained by the Muses they set out to revere. Yet, as Virgil outlines in the brilliant conclusion to the book, there are separate aspects of the genre that distinguish the two. Lucretius, the champion of what Servius calls philosophia physica,2 composes what we might term heroic didactic, tackling the great questions that confront humankind, such as the presence or absence of divinity in our lives, the immediacy and authority of death, or nature’s great proclamations of innate power. Virgil, by contrast, would have us understand that what he offers for our contemplation might be called pastoral didactic because, at least at the end of Georgic 2, his work looks to a utopian communion of man with nature, to a romantic acceptance of the charm her external beauty manifests, to aesthetic pleasure as well as to utilitarian results. As a consequence he is inglorius (Geo. 2.486), no winner of poetic renown, no warrior of the didactic genre as is Lucretius by implicit differentiation. Virgil gives particular emphasis to the word in its context.3 The Georgics is in several senses a poem that serves as mediator between other poems and other types of poetry. In the Virgilian career, and in the literary tradition, the work comes as a bow to Hesiod as the originator

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of didactic verse. But in Virgil’s oeuvre as a whole it is poised between the Eclogues, as representative of post-Theocritean pastoral, and the Aeneid, the great continuation of the epic tradition established by Homer. But the Georgics also stands as mediation between pastoral and what I earlier designated as the courageous prowess of Lucretius as he conveys to a Roman audience the grandeur of Epicurus’s victory over nature—a type of didactic poetry sharing as many elements with epic’s grandeur as with pastoral retreat. Virgil outlines several Lucretian topics in Georgic 2, topics that he will not deal with in his “inglorious” accomplishment.4 A major one that his “chill blood” (frigidus sanguis: Geo. 2.484) will not allow him to confront is death and the fear that it brings.5 The primary focus of my chapter will be an analysis of the only other passage in the Virgilian corpus where the poet uses the same phrase, namely Aeneid 10.452. We find it at the moment when the Arcadians’ “chill blood” freezes at the prospect of Pallas’s impending death at the hands of Turnus.6 After an examination of the Homeric background of the event to which Virgil calls direct attention, I then turn to the lines themselves that constitute one of the most touching segments of his great poem as Virgil offers an example of death’s force, with all its unsolvable mysteries, in human life. Lucretius’s instruction, though aware of death’s constant imminence in human life, seeks to eliminate any fear that it might pose for mortals.7 Virgil, by contrast, in his own different heroic context, illustrates for us a striking example of the fact that death and the concomitant sorrow it brings to others still living are ever with us and ever beyond explanation and evasion. First, before moving to the more subtle counterpoint that Aeneid 10 develops among Lucretius, Georgic 2 and Virgil, let us review a few salient passages at the end of the second Georgic where Virgil stages the extraordinary dialogue between the senior poet and himself. Through this act of emulation he pays the earlier master a series of patent compliments. We begin with commonality of inspiration. Here is Virgil looking at himself at the start of his powerful peroration (475–7): Me vero primum dulces ante omnia Musae quarum sacra fero ingenti percussus amore, accipiant . . . But as for me—first may the Muses, sweet beyond compare, whose holy emblems, under the spell of a mighty love, I bear, take me to themselves . . .8

His bow to Lucretius is striking (DRN 1.921–5): Nunc age quod superest cognosce et clarius audi. nec me animi fallit quam sint obscura; sed acri percussit thyrso laudis spes magna meum cor

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Michael C. J. Putnam et simul incussit suavem mi in pectus amorem musarum . . . Come now, learn what remains, and listen to clearer words. Nor do I fail to see in mind how dark are the ways; but a great hope has smitten my heart with the sharp spur of fame, and at once has struck into my breast the sweet love of the muses, . . .9

As Virgil initiates a great discourse on how his work contrasts with that of his predecessor, he begins with a careful act of parallelism. However deep their philosophical disagreements might be, says Lucretius’s successor in didactic literature, they are united by a love of the Muses that has struck them both. But for Virgil this also means the particular muse of Lucretius who stimulates his follower toward the creation of great poetry in the same genre even as his subject matter challenges his heir’s own thinking about the nature of things. The compliment continues as Virgil becomes still more specific. Let us pick up at lines 477–82: . . . caelique vias et sidera monstrent, defectus solis varios lunaeque labores; unde tremor terris, qua vi maria alta tumescant obicibus ruptis rursusque in se ipsa residant, quid tantum Oceano properent se tingere soles hiberni, vel quae tardis mora noctibus obstet. . . . and show me heaven’s pathways, the stars, the sun’s many eclipses, the moon’s many labors; whence come tremblings of the earth, the force to make deep seas swell and burst their barriers, then sink back upon themselves; why winter suns hasten so fast to dip in Ocean, or what delays clog the laggard nights.10

It is astonishing how much Virgil uses Lucretius to tell us, however obliquely, about Lucretius. Here are some details. Line 478 is largely derived from DRN 5.751: Solis item quoque defectus lunaeque latebras . . . Likewise also the eclipses of the sun and the hidings of the moon . . .

The phrase tremor terris finds its source in DRN 6.287: inde tremor terras graviter pertemptat . . .11 Then a trembling thrills violently through the earth.

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Likewise lines 481–2 are inspired by DRN 5. 699–700: propterea noctes hiberno tempore longae cessant . . .

Therefore in winter time the long nights lag on . . . The word obstet anticipates the repetition of the verb as we move from Lucretius to Virgil (483–5): sin has ne possim naturae accedere partis frigidus obstiterit circum praecordia sanguis, rura mihi et rigui placeant in vallibus amnes, . . . But if the chill blood about my heart bar me from reaching those realms of nature, let my delight be the country and the running streams amid the dells . . .

Something stands in the way of nature as she pursues her regular pattern, namely winter nights that are longer than those of ordinary days. Something also impedes the poet Virgil from telling of nature’s abstruse but highly palpable operations.12 What we can see, experience and enjoy, says Virgil by contrast with his great exemplar, is the tangibility of the world around us, whether it be the ordinary existence of the rustic’s daily, seasonal and yearly rounds as he lives out his life with the earth and its creatures, or the amazing beauty of the plains, rivers and mountains of an idealized Greece. The dialectic with Lucretius is also in the form of a dialogue and at line 490 we turn back to another Virgilian version of his great precursor: felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas atque metus omnis et inexorabile fatum subiecit pedibus strepitumque Acherontis avari: . . . Blessed is he who has succeeded in learning the laws of nature’s working, has cast beneath his feet all fear and fate’s implacable decree, and the howl of insatiable Death . . .13

Again the compliment of younger to older poet is direct. The first line varies DRN 5.1185: . . .nec poterant quibus id fieret cognoscere causis . . . . . .nor could they learn by what causes that was brought about.

Primitive man accepted the domination of religion because he was incapable of analyzing and understanding “the nature of things.” Lucretius by contrast

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can free man from religion’s tyranny because he can do exactly that. Scientific explanation of phenomena that on the surface seem miraculous can rid the world of the superstitious worship of supposedly superhuman powers. The subsequent verses again use Lucretius to explain Lucretius. Here we are looking at Book 1 and the announcement that Epicurus does battle against religion on behalf of mankind (78–9): quare religio pedibus subiecta vicissim obteritur, nos exaequat victoria caelo. And so religion in revenge is cast beneath men’s feet and trampled, and victory raises us to heaven.

The imagery of warfare centers on the struggle of Epicurus against the stranglehold in which religion grips mankind. Lucretius is his successor and fellow soldier, and Virgil furthers the connection in parallel language. Let us turn to a moment of dialogue of a different sort between the two poets. We have seen how Virgil characterizes his frigidus sanguis, the chill blood around his heart that will not allow him to approach nature’s grand gestures and to write about them. One of these patterns is the universality of death. For Lucretius the terrors of death can be dismissed because for man there is no further existence once he has shuffled off his mortal coil. For Virgil the sorrows that come with death are ever-present in human lives. The difference takes tangible form in a potent echo between this passage in Georgic 2 and one of the most moving moments in the Aeneid, the death scene of Pallas in the epic’s tenth book. The didactic poet’s context, we remember, goes as follows: sin has ne possim naturae accedere partis frigidus obstiterit circum praecordia sanguis, . . .

The crucial phrase recurs at the moment when the Arcadians shudder as their leader, Pallas, prepares to enter battle against the Rutulian chieftain Turnus. Their reaction is couched in the same language that Virgil had earlier used to describe his own inability to argue against the power of death (Aen. 10.452): frigidus Arcadibus coit in praecordia sanguis. Cold blood gathers at the hearts of the Arcadians.

Death is in fact an ineluctable presence in human life and its force cannot be argued against, says Virgil. He cannot explain away why it should be feared, as can his fellow poet. Instead he does the opposite, proclaiming the terror its presence causes by creating one of the most poignant episodes in his epic, a vivid example of inexorabile fatum at work.

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And here another poet enters the picture whose presence deepens the intensity of the Virgilian moment. As Pallas prepares to enter the fight, he prays to Hercules for help. The scene immediately shifts to heaven and to the words of comfort Jupiter offers his son (467–72): ‘stat sua cuique dies, breve et inreparabile tempus omnibus est vitae; sed famam extendere factis, hoc virtutis opus. Troiae sub moenibus altis tot gnati cecidere deum, quin occidit una Sarpedon, mea progenies; etiam sua Turnum fata vocant metasque dati pervenit ad aevi.’ “Each has his day appointed: short and irretrievable is the span of life for all: but to lengthen fame by deeds—that is valor’s task. Under Troy’s high walls fell those many sons of gods: indeed, with them fell my own child Sarpedon. For Turnus too his own fate calls, and he has reached the goal of his allotted years.”

Virgil piles death scene on death scene by reminding us of one of the most affecting moments in the Iliad, the death of Sarpedon at the hands of Patroclus in the epic’s sixteenth book.14 What makes the episode particularly striking is the fact that Zeus, though he sheds raindrops of blood at the hero’s death, chooses not to help his son even though it remained in his power so to do. In the Iliad the immortal Zeus weeps tears of mortal blood in sympathy for the imminent death of his human son. In the Aeneid the tears are lacrimas inanis (465), the ineffectual weeping of Hercules. There are further differences. There is no appeal from earth to heaven in the Iliad as there is in the Aeneid. Part of the particular pathos in Virgil, therefore, lies in the attempted contact between the terrestrial battlefield and the sphere of the gods that in turn holds out no comfort, nor can it, in the face of death’s unavoidability. The Iliad does offer a dialogue in heaven between Zeus and Hera, who dissuades her husband from action, just as the Aeneid shows Jupiter playing the role of Hercules’s consoler in the face of the inexorable. In Virgil’s case both weeping son and comforting, pragmatic father realize that there is no averting Pallas’s doom. In Virgil Homer’s husband and wife duo is replaced by several sets of fathers and sons. Instead of Zeus’s singular grief for Sarpedon we have allusion to Pallas and Evander,15 to Hercules and Jupiter, to the generalized gnati deum (470) particularized in Sarpedon, son of Jupiter, and a double reminder of Hercules’s human grandfather, which is to say, of his mortal heritage.16 Death is about to break one of the strongest of bonds. And iuvenem (464) stresses that the link is shattered in a particularly sad, unnatural way when the son dies as his father watches. The word also calls to our attention the fact that this young warrior loses any chance of establishing for himself a history of heroic behavior, like that of Hercules or Patroclus,

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which could ultimately serve as his claim for an immortality beyond the reach of death’s clutches. The response to mourning in Virgil is the empty, bootless tears of Hercules, not the bloody drops of the sorrowing Zeus that will be experienced by mankind, here in particular by armies in the throes of war’s slaughter. The gobs of blood communicate Zeus’s wrenching grief from heaven to earth, from immortals, who suffer anguish over the deprivation of their human offspring, to mortals whose fate it is to be deprived of life. Virgil circumscribes Hercules’s display of mourning to heaven and to Jupiter alone. For him sadness at the loss of a young warrior is left without expectation of reprieve. Unlike in Homer there cannot be intimated the hope or even the possibility of divine intervention. The fact that Virgil carefully overlays the death of Pallas with that of Sarpedon doubly emphasizes how crucial the moment is for the remainder of the Aeneid and especially for its ending. For Sarpedon Zeus responds but only with a vividly human, if unparalleled, show of sorrow. For Pallas Hercules suppresses his great grief, and Jupiter’s ironically “friendly words” (dictis amicis, 466) to Hercules only confirm death as man’s fate. Turnus will soon meet his own doom at the poem’s conclusion. His prayer for clemency as death looms is directed not at a deity but at a warrior to whom Virgil grants several characteristics of Jupiter. But this Aeneas, though an incorporation of omnipotence, is on earth and immediately present as he prepares the final, deadly blow for his opponent. His unfriendly words speak of vengeance, not forgiveness. And no god intervenes to prevent the deed, as his mother Venus had in Book 2, when Aeneas in a fury readies himself to kill Helen, as Athena does in the first book of the Iliad to prevent angry Achilles from killing Agamemnon. It is, after all, the time for fate to lay claim to Turnus, and Aeneas is fate’s instrument. But it is also a moment where fate, had Virgil so chosen, could have taken a different turn and Aeneas, now an earthly king of the gods in charge of the event’s outcome, might himself have answered the suppliant hero’s prayer positively rather than with words of continued hatred. Let us summarize, then, the particular force of the episode of Pallas’s death. It is, of course, striking in itself, and troubling. The novice soldier, after praying in vain to a god who had once befriended the settlement at Pallanteum, has moments earlier entered into the fray for the first time. Turnus, established fighter and fitting challenger for Aeneas himself, has already settled upon Pallas as antagonist, a fact that causes his fellow Arcadians correctly to anticipate their leader’s imminent killing. Likewise the parallelism that Virgil deliberately establishes with the death of Sarpedon not only reinforces the sadness of the demise of a young warrior at the hands of a more experienced opponent (in this case Patroclus wearing the armor of Achilles); it also confirms the ineluctability of death for mortals, the suffering that some human deaths cause even the immortal gods and the futility of any intervention on their part to stave off, save on occasion momentarily, its inevitability.

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The episode also, abstractly but powerfully, anticipates the abrupt end of the poem with the fated death of Turnus at the hands of Aeneas.17 In Book 10 emotional response is left to the terrified Arcadians on earth and to grief-stricken Hercules in heaven and to Jupiter with his sad memories of his mortal son Sarpedon, mea progenies (471). At the conclusion of his epic Virgil brilliantly leaves emotional response solely to his readers. Any reaction on the part of bystanders or narrator is suppressed. But the poet does suggest for us the experience of one emotion, namely the suffering of the victim, Turnus. Its manifestation is nested among the epic’s last words (Aeneid 12.952): . . . vitaque cum gemitu fugit indignata sub umbras. . . . and with a groan his life fled resentfully to the shades below.18

The grief of Turnus’s personified “life” as it departs this world is the final, climactic expression of sorrow that the Aeneid asks us to ponder. To conclude let us return to where we started, to a comparison of Virgil’s uses of the phrase frigidus sanguis at Georgics 2.484 and Aeneid 10.452. In the second Georgic our teacher-poet announces that his chill blood does not allow his imagination to approach such grand topics as the “causes of things” and to have the intellectual force to trample upon death and the terrors that accompany it in men’s minds. Lucretius, who is felix (blessed), states that without fear of death, and with true understanding of the physical workings of nature, there is no need to believe superstitiously in deities who meddle in human affairs and create concerns that spoil our ability to live well. Virgil, who is merely fortunatus (favored by fortune),19 by contrast creates for his readers a richly numinous universe in which celestial creatures play a major part, whether at hand in the natural world, as regularly in the Georgics, or as distant or actual participants in a poet’s version of human history, as in the Aeneid. The effect of coming upon the phrase frigidus sanguis in Aeneid 10, as the Arcadians shudder before the approaching death of their inexperienced commander, is therefore manifold. It reminds us of the reaction of Virgil before Lucretius’s manifesto that death is of no concern to us. But what the potent episode in the epic tells us is that “chill blood” is a specific reaction to the imminence, the omnipresence of woeful death in the domain of mortals and of its invincibility. Lucretius can scorn death’s force. Virgil of the Georgics says that he lacks the ability to follow in his great predecessor’s footsteps and cannot disdain its potency. But the humanist Virgil of the Aeneid, now telling a tale of men living amid the brutality of war, instead of disputing abstractly about different philosophical speculations on dying, offers us a graphic example of frigidus sanguis as an immediate reaction to its force. For the poet of Rome’s great epic of existential reality, death ever impends and the fear that it engenders cannot be argued away. The episode of Pallas’s demise is one of his most memorable examples of this truth.

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NOTES It is a special pleasure to offer this chapter to Judy Hallett, dear friend and colleague, in thanks for all that she has done to foster the study of Classical literature and its influence at a time when humanity could benefit from its insights more than ever. I am also grateful to Donald Lateiner and Andreas Zanker for helpful criticism. 1. Though the earlier poet is never named by Virgil, I will follow the example of most critics and presume him to be Lucretius. 2. See Servius’s comment on Geo. 2.483. At 475 he sees the colloquy that Virgil sets up as debating utrum philosophiae an rusticitatis esset vita felicior (. . . whether the life of philosophy or of a country existence is happier). I would argue, to the contrary, that the challenge lies between two types of didactic poetry, one which claims to elucidate nature’s more abstruse workings, another which describes the quality of life with the earth, how to make the land productive, how to garner pleasure from such activity and from the mere contemplation of natural beauty without the need for probing too deeply into the recondite operations of the physical world. 3. The word appears at a sense pause while completing a bucolic diaeresis (as Williams 1979: ad loc.). (The line also offers an example of hiatus and a conflict in the fifth foot between ictus and accent. Further, what follows after inglorius initiates a sentence the main verb of which is finessed.) This powerful placement intensifies the narrator’s apparent lack of prestige. It also underscores the fact that we are dealing with a competition followed by a mock surrender on the part of the less stalwart epigone in the face of the earlier creator’s valor as the epigone confronts and surmounts the challenges of his subject matter. Cf. the several uses of inglorius in the Aeneid in their contexts (9.548, 10.52, 11.793, 12.397). We note also Servius’s comment on Geo. 2.486: inglorius comparatione philosophiae ([he is] lacking glory by comparison with philosophy). 4. For recent discussions of the larger immediate context of the phrase frigidus sanguis in the Georgics see Clay (1976), Muecke (1979: 97–101), Hardie (1986: 38–44), Ross (1987: 228–9), Farrell (1991: 253–62), Gale (2000: 9, 43, n. 75, 183), Kronenberg (2000, with full bibliography at note 2), Morgan (1999: 146–7, 176–7), Volk (2002: 141–5), Nelis (2004b: 75–80). 5. Commentators on line 484 note the assertion of Empedocles (fr. 105 DielsKranz) that blood surrounding the heart is the seat of thought. See Erren (2003: ad loc.); Nelis (2004a: especially 6–8). At 3.43 Lucretius takes note of the theory that the soul was composed of blood—for the Epicurean poet a matter of disbelief. Virgil by contrast would say that blood (sanguis) is by metonymy the soul and therefore the seat of thought and emotion. If it suffers from chill, as here, it is often responding to a situation engendering fear. 6. None of the standard commentaries on the Georgics (e.g. Erren, Mynors, Thomas) or on Aeneid 10 (e.g. Harrison) points out this echo between the two poems. Virgil uses the similar phrase gelidus sanguis at Aen. 3.30 and 259, 5.395–6 and 12.905 where Turnus is frightened as he enters his fatal duel with Aeneas: genua labant, gelidus concrevit frigore sanguis. His knees buckle, his blood is frozen from the cold.

The presence of the word frigore makes this instance of gelidus sanguis particularly close to the use of frigidus sanguis in Book 10. The echo reminds

Frigidus Sanguis

7.

8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

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us that Virgil is at pains there to announce that, as the victorious warrior prepares to kill Pallas, the death of Turnus himself is also in the offing. Virgil will presume that his readers catch the punning relationship of sanguis with Haemi (Geo. 2.488) that the connection between frigidus and gelidis convallibus encourages. Horace uses the phrase gelido Haemo at c. 1.12.6, an ode replete with allusions to the Georgics. Line 484 contains the only use of the word praecordia in the Georgics. Since there are four examples in the Aeneid and none in the Eclogues, Virgil may wish its appearance here to have overtones of epic. This would not be inappropriate in the larger context of the second Georgic with its several bows to the “valorous” aspect of Lucretius’ accomplishment especially vis-à-vis that of “inglorious” Virgil, enthralled by the model and the beautiful. Gloria both of content and style, however, will come to the speaker in the poem’s fourth book on apiculture, as we learn beginning with the play on tenuis in its sixth line: in tenui labor; at tenuis non gloria, . . . (the effort [concerns something] slight, but the glory is not slight . . .). To tell of bees is to deal with subjects that are minuscule, but the style, verging on epic, necessary for the undertaking is anything but delicate. On line 484 Servius makes the curious comment: . . . secundum physicos, qui dicunt stultos esse homines frigidioris sanguinis, prudentes calidi (“. . . according to natural scientists who aver that men of chill blood are foolish, of warm [blood] wise”). All translations of Virgil are those of Fairclough, revised by Goold. The translations of Lucretius are those of Bailey. Line 478 is varied in the summary of a de rerum natura sung by Iopas at Aen. 1.742. On the song itself see Carranza (2002), Grant (1977), Kinsey (1979, 1984), Segal (1971, 1981, 1984). The cause of an earthquake (tremor) is the subject of DRN 6.577 and following. The repetition of the verb obsto underscores a major difference between the two poets. What hinders nature’s activity in the Lucretian universe blocks the poet’s in Virgil’s. With both instances of obstare cf. DRN 3.26: . . . nec tellus obstat quin omnia dispiciantur, . . . . . . nor yet is earth a barrier to prevent all things from being discerned.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

Leonard and Smith comment: “i.e., the vision of the mind never meets with any check but can go wherever it wishes.” Cf. the poet’s emphatic use of video in 3.17. This passage owes much to DRN 3.35–44. For instance, line 492 contains Virgil’s only use of any form of Acheron in the Georgics. Lucretius uses forms of the cognate Acheruns only at 3.37 and 6.763. For particular commentary on the Sarpedon episode see Barchiesi (1984: 16–30), Jenkyns (1985: 65–6) and Lateiner (2002: passim). Patris hospitium (460). Alcide (461), Alcides (464). As he kills Pallas, Turnus is for the moment Patroclus/Achilles. But at the epic’s conclusion he is done to death not by a stand-in for Hector, as is Patroclus, but by Aeneas/Achilles slaying Turnus/Hector in an act of vengeance. The final parallelism is one means by which Virgil suggests an equivalence between Pallas and Patroclus in the life of Aeneas/Achilles. One of the most moving ways Virgil connects the two deaths is to echo the weeping of Achilles’ horses at the death of Patroclus (Iliad 17.437–9) in that of Pallas’ bellator equus at Aeneid 11.89–90. The grief of Zeus at the loss of Sarpedon is

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Michael C. J. Putnam of course paralleled in the mourning of Evander for Pallas (see in particular Aeneid 11.152–81). 18. Virgil uses the word gemitus on several dozen occasions, but the reader would not be wrong to remember here the magnum . . . gemitum (Aen. 10.464–5), the “great groan” that Hercules suppresses on the occasion of Pallas’s death. 19. Felix (Geo. 2.490); fortunatus (Geo. 2.493).

REFERENCES Bailey, C., ed. 1947. Titi Lucreti Cari: De Rerum Natura: Libri Sex. With prolegomena, crit. app., trans. and comm. 3 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Barchiesi, A. 1984. La traccia del modello: effetti omerici nella narrazione virgiliana. Pisa: Giardini editori. Batstone, W. 1997. “Virgilian Didaxis: Value and Meaning in the Georgics.” In C. Martindale, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Virgil, 125–44. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Carranza, P. 2002. “Philosophical Songs: The ‘Song of Iopas’ in the ‘Aeneid’ and the Francesca Episode in Inferno 5.” Dante Studies 202: 35–51. Clay, J. S. 1976. “The Argument of the End of Vergil’s Second Georgic.” Philologus 120: 232–45. Conte, G. P. 1986. The Rhetoric of Imitation: Genre and Poetic Memory in Virgil and Other Latin Poets. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. Erren, M., ed. 2003. P. Vergilius Maro: Georgica. Band 2, Kommentar. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag. Fairclough, H. R., trans. 1916, rev. G. P. Goold 1999. Virgil: Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid I–VI. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. ———, trans. 1918, rev. G. P. Goold. 2000. Virgil: Aeneid VII–XII, Appendix Vergiliana. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Farrell, J. 1991. Vergil’s Georgics and the Traditions of Ancient Epic: The Art of Allusion in Literary History. New York: Oxford University Press. Gale, M. R. 2000. Virgil on the Nature of Things: The Georgics, Lucretius and the Didactic Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Goodman, K. 2004. Georgic Modernity and British Romanticism: Poetry and the Mediation of History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Grant, D. M. 1977. “The Creation-Theme in Epic Poetry.” Comparative Literature 29: 213–20. Hardie, P. 1986. Virgil’s Aeneid: Cosmos and Imperium. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Harrison, S. J., ed. 1991. Virgil: Aeneid 10: Introduction, Translation and Commentary. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jenkyns, R. 1985. “Pathos, Tragedy and Hope in the Aeneid.” JRS 75: 60–77. Kinsey, T. E. 1979. “The Song of Iopas.” Emerita 47: 77–86. ———. 1984. “ The Song of Iopas II.” Emerita 52: 69–76. Kronenberg, L. J. 2000. “The Poet’s Fiction: Virgil’s Praise of the Farmer, Philosopher, and Poet at the End of Georgics 2.” HSCP 100: 341–60. Lateiner, D. 2002. “Pouring Bloody Drops (Iliad 16.459): ‘The Grief of Zeus.” Colby Quarterly 38: 42–61. Leonard, W. and S. Smith, eds. 1942. T. Lucreti Cari. De Rerum Natura: Libri Sex. With intro. and comm. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Morgan, L. 1999. Patterns of Redemption in Virgil’s Georgics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Muecke, F. 1979. “Poetic Self-Consciousness in Georgics II.” In A. J. Boyle, ed. Virgil’s Ascraean Song: Ramus Essays on the Georgics, 87–107. Berwick: Aureal Publications.

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Mynors, R. A. B., ed. 1990. Virgil: Georgics. With comm. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nappa, C. 2002. “Cold-Blooded Virgil. Bilingual Wordplay at Georgics 2.483–9.” CQ 52: 617–20. Nelis, D. 2004a. “Georgics 2.458–542: Virgil, Aratus and Empedocles.” Dictynna 1: 1–21. ———. 2004b. “From Didactic to Epic: Georgics 2.458–3.48.” In M. Gale, ed., Latin Epic and Didactic Poetry, 73–107. Swansea: The Classical Press of Wales. ———. 2010. “Vergil, Georgics 1.489–92: More Blood?” In F. Cairns and M. Griffin, eds., Papers of the Langford Latin Seminar 14, 135. Cambridge: Francis Cairns (Publications). Perkell, C. 1989. The Poet’s Truth: A Study of the Poet in Virgil’s Georgics. Berkeley: University of California Press. ———. 1999. “Aeneid 1: An Epic Program.” In C. Perkell, ed., Reading Vergil’s Aeneid: An Interpretive Guide, 29–49. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Ross, D. 1987. Virgil’s Elements: Physics and Poetry in the Georgics. Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press. Schiesaro, A. 1997. “The Boundaries of Knowledge in Virgil’s Georgics.” In T. Habinek and A. Schiesaro, eds., The Roman Cultural Revolution, 63–89. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Segal, C. 1971. “The Song of Iopas in the Aeneid.” Hermes 99: 336–49. ———. 1981. “Iopas Revisited ( Aeneid 1.740ff.).” Emerita 49: 17–25. ———. 1984. “Iopas Again.” Emerita 52: 77–82. Thomas, R. F., ed. 1988. Virgil: Georgics. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Volk, K. 2002. The Poetics of Latin Didactic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Williams, R. D., ed. 1979. Virgil; The Eclogues and Georgics: New York: St. Martin’s Press.

3

Troy and Trauma in the Aeneid Marilyn B. Skinner

Abstract. In response to David Quint’s celebrated paradigm of traumatic repetition in the first six books of the Aeneid (Epic and Empire, 1993), this chapter investigates narrative moments in the second half of the poem where recollections of earlier trauma resurface, thus enhancing the destructive workings of furor, “madness.” I argue that Venus in her divine persona as war-goddess, Venus Victrix, plays a decisive causal part in the reiterations of violence. My case in point involves an episode late in Book 12, the Trojan attack upon the Latin capital (554–92), in which a sudden mental flashback to the fall of Troy arguably impels Aeneas to berserk rage. Within that passage, I examine one hitherto unexplained feature, the part played by Venus in triggering that sequence of events, and connect this instance of divine agency with the goddess’ equivocal position during the civil wars of preceding decades. Those considerations, in turn, may shed further light on the problematic ending of the poem. Vergil’s Troy comes back to haunt its survivors.1 In his influential study Epic and Empire, David Quint has traced what he identifies as a compulsive repetitive pattern in the first six books of the Aeneid.2 As victims of traumatic loss, the Trojans engage in obsessive attempts to recreate their fallen city. Aeneas initially founds abortive settlements on Thrace and, under his father’s mistaken direction, in Crete, then tarries at the established communities of Buthrotum and Carthage, both evocative of his homeland, both tempting him to settle for less than his destiny. The past can be undone only through another Trojan war, the struggle with the Latins in the second half of the epic, at the end of which the Trojans emerge as winners and the hurtful ghost is exorcised (1993: 50–83). This line of development might seem an elegant one—from defeat to victory, from endless, mindless iteration to a lasting achievement: “so much effort it cost to found the Roman nation” (tantae molis erat Romanum condere gentem, Aen. 1.33). Yet Quint’s paradigm may be too simplistic, for it does not recognize narrative moments in the remaining books where trauma erupts not to induce vain endeavor but, perversely, to enhance the destructive workings of furor, “madness.” Taking

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his reading as its point of departure, my chapter turns to an episode late in Book 12, the Trojan attack upon the Latin capital (554–92), in which a sudden mental flashback to the fall of Troy arguably impels Aeneas to berserk rage. Within that passage, I will examine one unexplained feature—the part played by Venus in triggering the sequence of events—and connect this instance of divine agency with the goddess’ equivocal position during the civil wars of preceding decades. Those considerations, in turn, may shed further light on the problematic ending of the poem. In the Aeneid, memories are dense constructs weighing down the fictive characters and burdening, through their covert political implications, the contemporary flesh-and-blood audience. Mapping of the original conflict between Greeks and Trojans upon the fighting in Latium creates, according to Quint, an inescapable dilemma, for in the process, the assumed personae of Achilles and Hector lose their stability. Once Turnus and Aeneas, each playing out shifting Iliadic identities, become interchangeable, “what can be seen in one light as a therapeutic narrative mastering a traumatic past is in another only the perpetuation of that past” (1993: 80). Such self-contradiction on the level of epic plot and meaning, Quint argues persuasively, stems from the mixed message of Augustan ideology regarding earlier civil strife: promote concord by repressing the memory of atrocities, yet remember them so as to avenge them. In effect, then, Augustus “repeats the violence of civil war that he seeks to end” (80). Subsequent work responding to this hypothesis spells out in even more detail the inconsistency central to the Augustan line of thought as it reveals over and over that in Vergilian epic, the recollection of previous injuries cannot be repressed or even dealt with reasonably, much less successfully expunged by vengeance.3 Reminders of the experiences suffered during Troy’s last night are doubly traumatic when they surface in the heat of battle. In provoking the recollection discussed in this chapter, the arbitrary intervention of Venus, as we will see, is crucial. Reasons for her involvement are easy to find. Though she enjoys the benefit of (some) divine foreknowledge, the goddess, like her son, cannot see beyond what is missing, and she persists in that blinkered state. Reclaiming Troy is her pet project: the new foundation in Italy is envisioned as no break with the past, but rather a substitute for the vanished mother city. As she reminds Jupiter of his promise that her descendants would one day rule the world, she confesses, “with this, to be sure, I kept consoling myself for the demise of Troy and its sad remains, balancing with fates opposing fates” (hoc equidem occasum Troiae tristisque ruinas / solabar, fatis contraria fata rependens, 1.238–9). During the council of the gods in Book 10, she complains of enemies threatening the walls of “Troy coming to birth” (nascentis Troiae, 27) and describes the Trojans’ mission as a quest for “Latium and Pergamum revived” (Latium . . . recidiuaque Pergama, 58). In Venus’ mind, establishing Rome is only a matter of putting the pieces of Troy back together so everything can be as it once was. That, however, will not happen: when Jupiter blandly reassures his daughter of Rome’s

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destined glories (1.254–96), he picks his words carefully in order to conceal unpleasant truths—among them that, at Juno’s request, the very name of Troy will be blotted out. Accordingly, Venus operates throughout the epic on assumptions regarding the future at best only half-accurate, a situation that limits her effectiveness even as a divine helper.4 During the final books of the Aeneid, her designs complicate the issues raised by a second Trojan war that reenacts, yet supposedly cancels out, the first. Apart from her determination to recover what is irretrievable, Aeneas’ mother hauls other, more topical, baggage. Her pivotal role in Dido’s tragedy leads us to regard her—apart from her maternal proclivities, such as they are—as a goddess of sexuality. Though her erotic nature indeed does not disappear in the later books, and is outrageously on view when she seduces her husband Vulcan at 8.370–406, she nevertheless assumes an additional prominent function in the Iliadic half of the epic, taking on the character of a war goddess (Putnam 1965: 174). By presenting her son with the armor she has commissioned, including the great shield embossed at its center with the decisive battle of Actium, she manifests herself expressly as Venus Victrix (Wlosok 1967: 121–38). Given her championship of the Trojan cause, that would seem a suitable avatar for her to adopt. The cult title Victrix was stained, however, with Roman blood, for on the morning of the battle of Pharsalus, both Pompey and Caesar had reason to call upon Venus by that epithet (Ahl 1976: 286–7). Pompey had dreamt either of dedicating a temple to her at Rome (App. Bell. Civ. 2.68) or of adorning with spoils the temple of Venus Victrix that already crowned his theater—a backhanded omen, as he himself recognized, insofar as Caesar’s family traced its origins to Iulus, her grandson (Plut. Pomp. 68.2). Caesar, for his part, had made a sacrifice to the goddess the night before and vowed his own temple if all went well; his troops accordingly used Venus Victrix as their watchword (App. Bell. Civ. 2.68, 76). Behind these appeals lay a long record of annexing for political gain the emblem of Venus as bringer of victory. Sulla had been the first general to claim that he enjoyed her private favor. Waging war in Greece, he undertook a propaganda campaign to convey the impression that Aphrodite was the architect of his military successes, and the source of his celebrated felicitas (Balsdon 1951: 9). In his Greek correspondence, he used the epithet Epaphroditos as the analogue for his honorific Latin cognomen Felix (Plut. Sull. 34.2; cf. App. Bell. Civ. 1.97). When Pompey chose to surmount his permanent theater with a temple of Venus Victrix (Tert. de Spect. 10.5), he was deliberately following in Sulla’s footsteps. Shortly before the theater was dedicated in 55 BCE, Faustus Sulla, son of the dictator and husband of Pompey’s daughter, issued a denarius (Crawford 426/3; Sydenham 884) with Venus on the obverse wearing a diadem and equipped with scepter, and on the reverse, three trophies, presumably alluding to his father-in-law’s three triumphs. Caesar, meanwhile, had been advertising Venus’ parentage of the Julian line as early as 68 BCE in his funeral oration for his aunt Julia (Suet. Div. Iul. 6). By March of 49 BCE,

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when Caelius in a letter to Cicero mockingly styles him “the one sprung of Venus” (Venere prognatus, Fam. 8.15.2), the claim had become hackneyed. Sulla’s tendentious legacy thus gave rise to a fierce skirmish for control of the goddess as an ideological talisman, which culminated in her slippery presence on both sides at Pharsalus. In the sixth book of the Aeneid, the war between Caesar and Pompey is depicted as an intrafamilial quarrel between agnate descendants. While Aeneas looks on, the dead Anchises admonishes the disembodied spirits of the two generals against future confrontation. He regards as especially heinous the prospect of a father-in-law pitting himself against a former son-in-law: heu quantum inter se bellum, si lumina uitae attigerint, quantas acies stragemque ciebunt, aggeribus socer Alpinis atque arce Monoeci descendens, gener aduersis instructus Eois!

830

Ah, what great war between them, if they gain the light of life, what fighting and slaughter they will incite, the father-in-law descending from Alpine ramparts and Monaco’s stronghold, the son-in-law drawn up against him with Eastern forces! (6.828–31)

Addressing the pair as “boys” (pueri), Anchises exerts his authority as paterfamilias to prohibit categorically such fratricidal iniquity (ne . . . adsuescite . . . / neu . . . uertite, 832–3). Then he singles out Caesar as even closer kin: “and you first, you, refrain, who trace your descent from Olympus, / cast the weapons from your hand, my blood” (tuque prior, tu parce, genus qui ducis Olympo / proice tela manu, sanguis meus!, 834–5). The urgency of Anchises’ plea matches in intensity his proleptic mourning for the doomed Marcellus, and like his wish that Augustus’ heir might “break the bonds of harsh fate” (si qua fata aspera rumpas, 882), it cannot and will not be heeded. Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon, initiating hostilities, ironically answers the patriarch’s tu . . . prior. Venus’ battlefield activities in the Aeneid are all the more sinister because Vergil has inscribed that one reflection of Caesar and Pompey’s rivalry into the fighting between Trojans and Latins. In determining that Aeneas will rule in Latium only after armed struggle, Juno designates the impending encounter as likewise one between in-laws: “at this cost to their own people let father- and son-in-law be united” (hac gener atque socer coeant mercede suorum, 7.317). The war in Latium, then, revisits that historical clash of men once connected by ties of marriage and allegorically undoes the offense against pietas it commits. Alone among the leading opponents of the Trojans, Latinus will survive the war. Aeneas’ postponed marriage to Lavinia can therefore create a fresh bond of kinship and familial continuity to take the place of the ruptured historical alliance. Parallels between the historical and the mythic gener and socer are largely thematic, however, and do not correspond throughout to incidents in the

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narrative. Latinus, for example, does not himself take up arms against Aeneas nor direct the movements of the Latin army. His contribution to the strife is, if anything, a great refusal, his repeated failure to abide by the marriage agreement he made and quash the belligerent demands of Amata, Turnus and their supporters. Aeneas, in turn, does not threaten Latinus directly until he finally brings the war home to the Latin capital in an incendiary onslaught that precipitates the queen’s suicide and induces Turnus to stand and face him in single combat. His attempted burning of the city is the turning point of the conflict and the critical moment when it finally becomes a direct war of socer against gener. It is, furthermore, the event in the last half of the poem most reminiscent of the catastrophic fall of Troy. Motivation for the attack on Latinus’ stronghold puzzles critics, as it is attributed to both divine and human operations. Venus, we are told, plants the idea in Aeneas’ consciousness, but, once he notices the city standing unharmed, he himself is gripped by an impulse to escalate matters: hic mentem Aeneae genetrix pulcherrima misit iret ut ad muros urbique aduerteret agmen ocius et subita turbaret clade Latinos. ille ut uestigans diuersa per agmina Turnum huc atque huc acies circumtulit, aspicit urbem immunem tanti belli atque impune quietam. continuo pugnae accendit maioris imago. . . . :

555

560

At this point Aeneas’ most beautiful mother put the thought in his mind to march to the walls, swiftly turning his forces against the city, and confuse the Latins with an unexpected blow. He, seeking Turnus throughout the mêlée and casting his glance here and there, beheld the city exempt from such great warfare, safely at peace. Immediately the vision of a larger battle inflamed him. . . . (12.554–60)

While double determination of actions, frequent throughout the epic, has been explained in a multiplicity of ways depending on context, Venus’ stimulus can here be deemed a simple “trope for human motivation” (G. Williams 1983: 24, 34–5) or, alternatively, an instance of the poet’s tendency to show divinities manipulating already-aroused mortal passions to bring about their intended results (Lyne 1987: 70–1). In either case, “there seems precious little reason for Venus to involve herself here” (Greenwood 1989: 135), as her son is already inclined to take the offensive. Shortly before, frustrated by his inability to close with Turnus, he had “slackened all the reins of his wrath” (irarumque omnis effundit habenas, 499) and embarked on a career of wholesale butchery. In a brilliant extended setpiece (500–53), he and Turnus engage in dual aristeiai, during which the narrative point of view repeatedly shifts from the havoc wrought by one man to that left by the other.5 A rationalizing scenario would have Aeneas finally breaking off

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his fruitless battlefield exertions, looking to vent his fury elsewhere, and lighting on the unprotected citadel. If Venus contributes to any degree, the psychological effect of her cue would be simultaneous. However, Netta Berlin (1998) offers a more complex account of Aeneas’ mental processes, proposing a two-step sequence. Venus’ encroachment on the action parallels that of Juturna, who, acting on Juno’s orders, had goaded the already disaffected Rutulians into breaking the truce (12.216– 56). Now Venus interrupts her son’s aristeia to send him an electrifying prompt.6 Once he has been stirred, the sight of Latinus’ citadel with its old king in residence generates a “vision of a larger battle” (pugnae . . . maioris imago, 12.560), which is, Berlin argues, a vivid recollection of the fall of Troy (1998: 14–20).7 Specifically, Aeneas recalls the slaying of Priam, which he had witnessed helplessly from the palace roof. At that time, the dying Priam had brought to mind the thought of his own father: . . . subiit cari genitoris imago, ut regem aequaeuum crudeli uulnere uidi uitam exhalantem. . .

560

. . . the picture of my dear father entered my mind as I saw the king, his equal in years, breathing out life from a cruel wound. . . (2.560–2)

This use of imago for “mental picture” in closely related circumstances establishes that the two scenes are associated through memory, which accordingly plays a key role in the decision making. If Berlin’s understanding of pugnae . . . maioris imago is accepted, the verb accendit (12.560) conceivably defines Aeneas’ own share of responsibility: the resolution to torch the city, as opposed to merely assailing it with forces, was conjured up by his memory of Troy in flames (1998: 30–1). More lexical evidence of what we may term a “traumatic overlay” of Troy’s final night upon this foray is provided by Aeneas’ speech to the army. Assembling his troops, he informs them of the new strategy: ‘urbem hodie, causam belli, regna ipsa Latini, ni frenum accipere et uicti parare fatentur, eruam et aequa solo fumantia culmina ponam.’ “Today this city, the cause of war, the very seat of Latinus, unless it agrees, being conquered, to submit to the curb and comply, I will uproot and lay its smoldering roofs level with the ground.” (567–9)

With the dire threat urbem . . . eruam, he becomes a future perpetrator of the violence he had previously suffered (Putnam 1995: 203–4). Venus’ object in calling his attention to the city now seems plain: desiring, above all, to refound Troy in Italy, she wishes to clear the way by ridding the land of the

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Latins (Fratantuono 2007: 381–2). Her plan in this episode contravenes her saving function in Book 2. After the murder of Priam, his mother had appeared to Aeneas, reminding him of his first obligation to protect his own family.8 To check his furor and bring him to his senses, she had exposed the divine authors of Troy’s annihilation: ‘hic, ubi disiectas moles auulsaque saxis saxa uides, mixtoque undantem puluere fumum, Neptunus muros magnoque emota tridenti fundamenta quatit totamque a sedibus urbem eruit. . .’

610

“Here, where you see strewn rubble and rocks torn from rocks, and billowing smoke mixed with dust, Neptune shakes the walls and substructures moved by his great trident, and uproots the whole city from its foundations.” (2.608–12)

The first of the gods named in the nightmarish vision she conjures up is Neptune demolishing the very structures he had built: totamque a sedibus urbem / eruit, 611). As Aeneas observes these “dread shapes and great divine powers hostile to Troy” (dirae facies inimicaque Troiae / numina magna deum, 622–3), his visual impression of their labors is externalized in the simile of the felled ash tree:9 tum uero omne mihi uisum considere in ignis Ilium et ex imo uerti Neptunia Troia: ac ueluti summis antiquam in montibus ornum cum ferro accisam crebrisque bipennibus instant eruere agricolae certatim, illa usque minatur et tremefacta comam concusso uertice nutat, uulneribus donec paulatim euicta supremum congemuit traxitque iugis auulsa ruinam.

625

630

Then indeed to me all Ilium seemed to sink in flames and Neptune’s Troy to be wrenched from its base. Just as when farmers keenly strive to uproot an old ash tree on the highest slopes hacked with iron and frequent axe-blows—on the point of falling, it totters, shaking its leaves, as its top is struck, till slowly, overcome by blows, it groans for the last time and torn from the cliff has dragged ruin down. (2.624–31)

Although its destroyers attack it with axes, their object is to “uproot” it (eruere, 628), and when it falls, it is described as “torn away” (auulsa; 631). “The image,” R. D. Williams comments ad loc., “is of a great mass torn out of its surroundings.” Finally, when Aeneas begins to relate the whole story at the

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beginning of Book 2, the first metaphor he employs is, again, that of eradication: “how the Greeks extirpated Trojan power and its wretched kingdom” (Troianas ut opes et lamentabile regnum / eruerint Danai, 4–5). The sense of this devastation as an “uprooting,” which permeates his memories of Troy’s fall, wells up in his threat to level the Latin city. As we assess degrees of liability, then, we watch Venus Victrix devising a crafty stratagem to serve her own ends, but we also observe Aeneas choosing to inflict upon an undefended settlement the same fate that befell his homeland and thereby revealing that past trauma still dictates his response to present circumstances. Recent civil crisis, with its own attendant horrors, is overlaid upon the palace scene of Book 2. In a moment of catachresis, narrative illusion is shattered in order to forge connections between epic and historical events. As ancient readers themselves recognized, Aeneas’ closing picture of Priam’s headless body abandoned by the shoreline gestures toward the fate of Pompey: haec finis Priami fatorum, hic exitus illum sorte tulit Troiam incensam et prolapsa uidentem Pergama, tot quondam populis terrisque superbum regnatorem Asiae. iacet ingens litore truncus, auulsumque umeris caput et sine nomine corpus.

555

This was the limit of Priam’s fortunes; this end bore him off, witnessing Troy in flames and Pergamum collapsing, once the ruler of Asia, proud in so many peoples and lands. His great trunk lies on the shore, head torn from shoulders and corpse nameless. (Aen. 2.554–8)

Servius remarks (ap. 2.557, iacet ingens litore truncus): Pompei tangit historiam, cum ‘ingens’ dicit, non ‘magnus’. The abrupt transfer of the setting from palace to beach and the unexplained decapitation of Priam’s corpse serve to reinforce the oblique pun on magnus and draw attention to “the sudden irruption of the historical Pompey into the mythical narrative” (Bowie 1990: 473–4). Placement of this gruesome scene in a moment outside of time, as indicated by the shift in tense (iacet), implies that the death of the Trojan king should be read as a fictive reenactment of a real-life occurrence whose reverberations continue into the present. Priam in dying foreshadows the pathos of Latinus, clothes torn in mourning (scissa ueste) and bereft of wife and city, “fouling his white hair with filthy dust” (canitiem immundo perfusam puluere turpans, 12.609–11). The grim end of the first old man makes the fate of the second, too, analogous to that of Pompey. In Aeneas’ decision to fire the city two trajectories, one psychological and the other allegorical, therefore coalesce. They correspond to Quint’s recognition of a repetitioncompulsion on the narrative level and a thematic probing of ideological contradictions as two mutually implicated determinants of plot. In a dialogue with Juno mirroring his conversation with Venus at the outset (12.791–842),10 Jupiter finally lays the specter of Troy to rest. Having

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reminded his wife of Aeneas’ destined apotheosis, he forbids all further meddling (ulterius temptare ueto, 806). In exchange for relinquishing persecution, she then asks for what she emphatically claims is not forbidden by fate (nulla fati quod lege tenetur, 819): that the Latin peoples retain their ancestral name, language and dress, while the ethnic identity of their conquerors, the Trojans, perishes together with their vanquished city.11 Amused—or so, disturbingly, it would seem12—by her stubborn rancor, so akin to his own, Jupiter professes himself defeated: “I give what you wish, and yield myself, both conquered and consenting” (do quod uis, et me uictusque uolensque remitto, 833). While Juno’s concluding words, “permit that Troy be fallen along with her name” (occideritque sinas cum nomine Troia, 828), mention the city for the last time, Jupiter’s promise, “Teucer’s will be a submerged stock, mingled in body only” (commixti corpore tantum / subsident Teucri, 835–6), contains the final reference to the Trojans themselves (Anderson 1957: 30 n. 20). This agreement resolves the problem of a phantom settlement materializing over and over, trailing oppressive memories with it. From this point on, both Turnus and Aeneas will work out their destinies independently of the repetition pattern created by the destruction of Troy. How far does this closure extend? In the proem, Aeneas’ trials had been attributed to Juno’s “mindful” wrath (memorem Iunonis ob iram, 1.4). The queen of the gods is the divine principle most closely associated with fixated recollection of injury. The lasting slights inflicted by Paris and Ganymede have blemished her honor, so the price of her capitulation, no less than the damnatio memoriae of the offending nation, is steep.13 Still, if the pattern is to be broken, some concession, the more disproportionate the better, must be made to long-nursed grievances. Juno has now scored an indisputable triumph over Venus, her bitter opponent, whose hopes of a restored Pergamum are forever dashed.14 That victory can serve as a major sop to hurt pride (Fratantuono 2007: 391). Sub specie aeternitatis, then, revenant Troy is obliterated. Rome’s emergence as an autonomous state, freed from the encumbrances of history, will be the ultimate consequence of Troy’s traumatic collapse. On the temporal plane, though, Venus Victrix is by no means forestalled, even if she too has now disappeared from the poem. Traces of her presence linger in the protagonist’s disquieting conduct. One well-established reading of the Aeneid posits that Aeneas, in slaying Turnus, rather than heeding his plea for mercy, is once more overpowered by the furor Juno had instantiated (Putnam 1965: 196–201; Johnson 1976: 114–34; Putnam 1995: 161–2; Keith 2000: 77; Fratantuono 2007: 393–6, among others). His final paroxysm is provoked by a glimpse of the sword-belt Turnus had stripped from the dying Pallas, which acts as a “reminder of wild anguish” (saeui monimenta doloris, 945) and impels him to dissociate himself from the vengeful killing as he proclaims it, irrationally, a sacrifice Pallas conducted (Pallas te . . . Pallas / immolat, 948–9). Use of the verb immolat recalls the captive human sacrifices shockingly destined for Pallas’ pyre (immolet, 10.519).

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Deaths of young men and women in the Iliadic half of the epic are imbued with sexual imagery that assimilates wounding to defloration, graphically expressed through the scene embossed on the belt itself, the slaughter of the sons of Aegyptus by the Danaids on their wedding night (Conte 1986: 185– 95; Spence 1991; Oliensis 1997: 308–9). Aeneas’ affection for Pallas, as Putnam argues (1995: 27–49), may have possessive and appreciably homoerotic overtones, however sublimated. In responding to remembered grief with crazed brutality, the hero displays, not for the first time, an abnormally close link between repressed quasierotic feeling and homicidal aggression.15 Juno may embody furor unalloyed, but she does not create enmities between former intimates by fusing recollection, resentment and hatred with thwarted desire. Over that volatile synergy of psychic drives Venus instead presides (Skinner 2007: 93). Thus, even as the empire settled into the Augustan pax Romana, two monimenta erected during Vergil’s lifetime testified to her multifaceted divine personality, including its dangerous aspects. Caesar’s promised temple of Venus Genetrix, completed by Augustus, celebrated the goddess as mother of the Julian gens and, by extension, the Roman race; her rehabilitation was “one of the cornerstones of early imperial propaganda” (Milnor 2005: 57). Fittingly, that sanctuary adjoined the Forum and the Capitoline, places of civic business and ritual. Yet, within walking distance, Pompey’s shrine to Venus Victrix, surmounting the banks of seats in his theater, still looked down upon the curia Pompei, where Caesar himself had been assassinated.

NOTES Almost four decades of collaborating with Judy Hallett leave me with far too many good memories to celebrate in one brief note. This chapter, which deals with the aftereffects of remembered sorrow, may seem an odd gift in exchange for such pleasing recollections. I suspect, though, that no one has ever read or taught Vergil without reflecting upon the fragility of present happiness and the possibility that one’s life might have turned out otherwise. I am so thankful that Judy’s life has touched mine, as well as the lives of all the others—students, colleagues, friends—who honor her now. 1. This chapter originated as a paper presented at the colloquium “Invisible Cities: An Exploration of the Role of Other Cities in the Roman Imaginary,” hosted by Stanford University in February 2005. Many thanks to audience members there who gave stimulating feedback and to Susanna Morton Braund for generous hospitality. I follow the text of Mynors (1969); all translations are my own. 2. The behavior model is reminiscent, according to Quint (1993: 51), of the symptomatic reenactment of victimization studied by Freud in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1922: 17–25). Mitchell-Boyask (1996) follows Quint’s lead in bringing Peter Brooks’ Freudian notion of narrative closure to bear on the poem’s ending. For a timely new defense of applying psychoanalytic theory to classical literature, see Oliensis (2009), who provocatively examines the workings of a “textual unconscious.” 3. See, among other important treatments of memory in the epic, Bleisch (1999) on the Deiphobus episode; Most (2001); Gale (2003).

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Marilyn B. Skinner 4. For example, her mistrust of Dido and the Phoenicians (1.661–2, 670–5) either overlooks or reveals ignorance of the fact that Jupiter had already dispatched Mercury to ensure Aeneas and his men a friendly welcome at Carthage (1.297–304). Dido’s fatal passion is rendered more tragic because there was no real need for Venus’ irresponsible meddling. 5. On this passage, see Quint (2011: 276–83), who shows that chiasmus, the figure of thought that breaks down antitheses by emphasizing resemblance, is employed as a structuring principle, reinforcing the similarities between the two leaders and portraying the slaughter as a civil war of like against like. 6. The adjective pulcherrima (“most beautiful”), strange when applied to Venus in this context (Lyne 1987: 71), perhaps conveys Aeneas’ reaction to the spontaneous thought. 7. Cf. Manzoni (2002: 56–8), who independently concludes that the fiery assault on the Latin capital replicates the burning of Troy. 8. My argument does not depend upon the authenticity of the intervening Helen episode (2.567–88), though I do consider it genuine. That possibility is vigorously denied by Goold (1970), followed by Murgia (1971); see now Horsfall (2008: 553–86), with full discussion of the problem and commentary on the passage. For defenses, see Austin (1961); Conte (1986: 196–207), who demonstrates its conformity to the Homeric structural model of Il. 1.188–222; and Fish (2004), justifying its content on philosophical grounds. 9. On this simile, see Estevez (1981: 319–25), who observes its appropriateness for Priam as well as for Troy. 10. The thematic correlation between episodes is so close “that the two passages form a ring-composition that opens and closes the epic” (G. Williams 1983: 142). 11. In granting that request, Jupiter seems to contradict his earlier promise to Venus that Aeneas would impose Trojan mores on Italy; see O’Hara (1990: 132–63; 2007: 78–82). Jupiter’s speech to Venus, O’Hara (1990: 144) explains, is a consolatio, rhetorically intended to allay her fears, not an objective summary of the poem. In the phrase in question, [Aeneas] . . . moresque uiris et moenia ponet (1.264), the language is ambiguous, uiris possibly meaning “his own men,” not the peoples he has conquered. 12. The sinister resonances of 12.830–1, es germana Iouis Saturnique altera proles, / irarum tantos uoluis sub pectore fluctus (“You are twin sister to Jove and Saturn’s other child, / so great are the floods of wrath you churn beneath your breast”), have often been unpacked. Dyson (1997: 455–6) notes the conspicuous reversal of Lucretius’ insistence that gods do not “churn great floods of wrath” (magnos irarum uoluere fluctus, DRN 6.74) and regards Jupiter’s statement as the final answer to the narrator’s question at 1.11, tantaene animis caelestibus irae (“Can divinities feel such wrath?”). 13. Most (2001: 155) calls attention to the cultural meaning of oblivion in this context: “Only a society to which the establishment and institutionalization of forms of collective memory was as important to its self-understanding as was that of ancient Rome could possibly have developed, as a particularly devastating form of punishment, the damnatio memoriae.” 14. Edwards’s observation (1996: 65) is still perceptive for all its common sense: “Troy and Rome cannot coexist because each depends for its existence on the same divinities, the Penates, the Palladium and Vesta, who cannot be in two places simultaneously.” 15. Aeneas’ frenzy at the end of Book 12 resembles the rampage on which he embarks after learning of Pallas’ death in Book 10 (513–15), during which he thrice rejects the plea of a defeated opponent (see Lyne 1987: 155–6, 160; Putnam 1995: 37, 173–4; Fratantuono 2007: 305–7).

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REFERENCES Ahl, F. M. 1976. Lucan: An Introduction. Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press. Anderson, W. S. 1957. “Vergil’s Second Iliad.” TAPA 88: 17–30. Austin, R. G. 1961. “Virgil, Aeneid 2.567–88.” CQ n.s. 11.2: 185–98. Balsdon, J. P. V. D. 1951. “Sulla Felix.” JRS 41: 1–10. Berlin, N. 1998. “War and Remembrance: Aeneid 12.554–60 and Aeneas’ Memory of Troy.” AJP 119.1: 11–41. Bleisch, P. 1999. “The Empty Tomb at Rhoeteum: Deiphobus and the Problem of the Past.” CA 18.2: 187–226. Bowie, A.M. 1990. “The Death of Priam: Allegory and History in the Aeneid.” CQ 40: 470–81. Conte, G. B. 1986. The Rhetoric of Imitation: Genre and Poetic Memory in Virgil and Other Latin Poets. Trans. C. Segal. Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press. Crawford, M. H. 1975. Roman Republican Coinage. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dyson, J. T. 1997. “‘Fluctus Irarum, Fluctus Curarum’: Lucretian Religio in the Aeneid.” AJP 118.3: 449–57. Edwards, C. 1996. Writing Rome: Textual Approaches to the City. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Estevez, V. A. 1981. “‘Aeneid’ II 624–631 and the Helen and Venus Episodes.” CJ 76.4: 318–335. Fish, J. 2004. “Anger, Philodemus’ Good King, and the Helen Episode of Aeneid 2.567– 589: A New Proof of Authenticity from Herculaneum.” In Vergil, Philodemus, and the Augustans, ed. D. Armstrong et al., 111–38. Austin: University of Texas Press. Fratantuono, L. 2007. Madness Unchained: A Reading of Virgil’s Aeneid. Lanham, Md.: Lexington. Freud, S. 1922. Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Trans. C. J. M. Hubback. London: International Psycho-Analytical Press. Gale, M. R. 2003. “Poetry and the Backward Glance in Virgil’s ‘Georgics’ and ‘Aeneid.’” TAPA 133.2: 323–52. Goold, G. P. 1970. “Servius and the Helen Episode.” HSCP 74: 101–68. Greenwood, M. A. 1989. “Venus Intervenes: Five Episodes in the Aeneid.” LCM 14.9: 132–6. Horsfall, N. 2008. Virgil, Aeneid 2: A Commentary. Leiden: Brill. Johnson, W. R. 1976. Darkness Visible: A Study of Vergil’s Aeneid. Berkeley: University of California Press. Keith, A.M. 2000. Engendering Rome: Women in Latin Epic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lyne, R. O. A. M. 1987. Further Voices in Vergil’s Aeneid. Oxford: Clarendon. Manzoni, G. 2002. Pugnae maioris imago: Intertestualità e rovesciamento nella seconda esade dell’Eneide. Milan: Vita e Pensiero. Milnor, K. 2005. Gender, Domesticity, and the Age of Augustus: Inventing Private Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mitchell-Boyask, R. N. 1996. “Sine fine: Vergil’s Masterplot.” AJP 117.2: 289–307. Most, G. W. 2001. “Memory and Forgetting in the Aeneid.” Vergilius 47: 148–70. Murgia, C. E. 1971. “More on the Helen Episode.” CSCA 4: 203–17. Mynors, R. A. B., ed. 1969. P. Vergili Maronis Opera. Oxford: Clarendon. O’Hara, J. J. 1990. Death and the Optimistic Prophecy in Vergil’s Aeneid. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. 2007. Inconsistency in Roman Epic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Oliensis, E. 1997. “Sons and Lovers: Sexuality and Gender in Virgil’s Poetry.” In The Cambridge Companion to Virgil, ed. C. Martindale, 294–311. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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———. 2009. Freud’s Rome: Psychoanalysis and Latin Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Putnam, M. C. J. 1965. The Poetry of the Aeneid. Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press. ———. 1995. Virgil’s Aeneid: Interpretation and Influence. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Quint, D. 1993. Epic and Empire: Politics and Generic Form from Virgil to Milton. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. 2011. “Virgil’s Double Cross: Chiasmus and the Aeneid.” AJP 132: 273–300. Skinner, M. B. 2007. “Venus as Physician: Aen. 12.411–19.” Vergilius 53: 86–99. Spence, S. 1991. “Cinching the Text: The Danaids and the End of the Aeneid.” Vergilius 37: 11–19. Sydenham, B. A. 1952. The Coinage of the Roman Republic. Rev. with indexes by G. C. Haynes. Ed. L. Forrer and C. A. Hersh. London: Spink. Williams, G. 1983. Technique and Ideas in the Aeneid. New Haven: Yale University Press. Williams, R. D. 1972. The Aeneid of Virgil: Books 1–6. Basingstoke: St. Martin’s Press. Wlosok, A. 1967. Die Göttin Venus in Vergils Aeneis. Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag.

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Poetic Doubling Effects in Ovid’s “Ceyx and Alcyone” (Met. XI) Donald Lateiner

vocibus ambiguis deceptam praebuit aurem / nescioquis . . . / criminis . . . ficti temerarius index / refert . . . “Someone’s ear misunderstood [my] words capable of two meanings, and the rash informer reported the imagined crime.” (Cephalus, Met. 7.821–4)1

Abstract. Ovid’s “Ceyx and Alcyone” tale parodies an obsessive love in epic form. Poetic repetition reinforces the elegiac duo in una theme, and that topos varies Cephalus and Procris’ earlier disastrous “dualism.” Poetic expressiveness employs doubling tropes: repeated sounds, vocabulary and thoughts, other mirroring themes and two focalizing characters (with the charming, novel Doppelgänger Morpheus). Forms of rhetorical doubleness include anaphora, anadiplosis, epanalepsis, hendiadys and polypototon, e.g. sine me me, ossibus ossa meis, at nomen nomine tangam. Ovid’s insistent doubling in “Ceyx and Alcyone” has been misunderstood as admiration of the couple, although we show that it mocks their excessive reciprocity, as it does in four other doubling narratives of “couples”: Narcissus, Echo, Procris and Baucis. Ovid undermines sympathy for the codependent couples by mirrored words, actions and structures. Ovid’s gemination slyly satirizes the sentimental “togetherness” of love idylls. Slippage between reality and appearances is more than a literary motif; it disconcertingly happens every day. Very little was what it seemed in Ovid’s slippery postwar Rome and his poem refracts that multiplicity. Queen Alcyone mistakes Morpheus for the ghost of her lost husband Ceyx when he appears as the dripping image of her husband’s corpse. Just so, Queen Procris unwisely believes malicious gossip and fatally misinterprets her husband’s exhausted sighs (gemitus, 7.838) and words—a parallel to which we shall return. The idyll of “Ceyx and Alcyone” (so we will title Met. 11.410–748) presents an unusually long narrative for Ovid’s Metamorphoses,2 encompassing a divinely destroyed marriage and two extended interludes (ekphraseis)

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describing the storm’s thundering attack and Sleep’s silent abode. Ovid’s “Ceyx and Alcyone” chronicles a most peculiar love story in which he repeatedly deploys special doubling effects to characterize a neurotic, overly intense marriage.3 King Ceyx of Trachis, feeling the need for divine advice after his brother Daedalion’s catastrophes (11.291–345), and finding the route to the nearby Delphic oracle blocked by the obscure Phorbas and other bandits,4 plots the necessary sea journey to not so very distant Claros in Asia Minor (413–14; an esoteric nod to his source Nicander’s hometown). Familiar perils at sea rapidly produce stressful, epic storms (à la Homer, Vergil, Parthenius and other romances, etc.). The tempests occasion total shipwreck in which crews certainly drown and heroes may. Both this seemingly unnecessary sea cruise (cf. 412: hominum oblectamina) and the hero-spouse’s unexpected (to us) death trigger hysterical outbursts from his widow Alcyone, already agitated by his having left her behind. Ovid suppresses the older, Hesiodic tradition’s report of the couple’s hybris, imprudent arrogation of the impious names of Zeus and Hera. That insolence would have been comparable to his accounts of impious Arachne and Niobe. Ovid avoids theology—the expected archaic blasting punishments—and inverts Nicander’s hypothetically sappy Hellenistic romance that perhaps endorsed marital chastity. Rather, he supplies a mordant critique of an obsessive, suspicious and sterile conjugal love (Ceyx and Alcyone are childless). Ovid paints no picture of happy conjugality, human or divine, in the Metamorphoses’ vast canvas of human passions and fatal errors. The happy marriages become a null set, once one correctly analyzes his very few other, allegedly happy, companionate marriages in the ocean of erotic catastrophes.5 This chapter examines four aspects of poetic expressiveness in “Ceyx and Alcyone” that employ different forms of doubling. Such doubling in Ovid’s version becomes the narrative’s master trope, an aggrandizing, everreturning leitmotif. As a master rhetorician observed, “It’s not for lack of words that we often repeat a particular one, but a kind of witty playfulness,” non iniopia verborum fit ut ad idem verbum redeatur saepius; sed inest festivitas.6 Ovid enjoyed descriptions and analyses of character, controversiae ethicae.7 Marriage-issues and shipwreck often appear in controversiae. The elder Seneca (e.g. Contr. 7.1, 7.6, 8.6) wrote such, and, although he heard and liked Ovid the Orator, he disparagingly mentions (Contr. 2.2.12; cf. 9.6.11) Ovid the Poet’s abuses of language: verbis minime licenter usus est nisi in carminibus in quibus non ignoravit vitia sua sed amavit. “Ovid employed words not at all extravagantly, except in his poems in which he recognized his faults and reveled in them.” Seneca implicitly invokes here Classical models of verse, expectations aroused by Homeric, Vergilian and Horatian precedents, in deploring Ovid’s alleged poetic excesses. Like other classicizing critics (i.e., most of the tribe), the

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Augustan educator misapprehends both Ovid’s poetic methods and epic innovations. Ovid’s ingenuity reimagined an existing version of the popular Hellenistic romance “Ceyx and Alcyone,” apparently responding to Nicander of Colophon’s sentimental reworking of the canonical archaic (Hesiod’s) divine punishment story.8 Bypassing other poets’ plain-vanilla handling of tales already well told or long stale, Ovid revisions and reconceptualizes many familiar narratives, and thus generates unexpected humor and eccentric points of view.9 Four elements of repetition and division here claim special attention in the Ovidian “remake”: (a) rhetorical “double-talk” found in familiar tropes; (b) mimetic syntax, word placement in verses and word orders that mimic verse actions and concepts (cf. Wilkinson 1963, Lateiner 1990); (c) double focus—Ovid’s split-action narratological techniques; and (d) complementary emotions and ideas. In brief, we find amphiboly everywhere, twinning on both the verbal and word-sequence levels and the narrative and thematic levels. Ovid’s humorous rhetoric and narrative reflexivity undermine the sympathy that readers might otherwise award “devoted” lovers. Ovid subverts the anticipated gravitas of a death-filled love story of romantic togetherness, Gemeinsamkeit. Ovid parodies the stormy vicissitudes and syrupy eroticism delivered by traditional Roman elegy and so-called “ideal” novels.10

DOUBLING Literature displays doubles in many forms. Doubleness features in the themes of several Ovidian stories of identity—Narcissus’ reflection (book 3), Iphis’ sex switch from woman to man (book 9), Pygmalion’s doubled pseudoOther (book 10) or Caeneus/is’ sequential sexual identities (book 12). Ceyx and Alcyone’s marital complementarity, Ceyx’s phantom double and Somnus’ three children creatively named Morpheus, Icelos and Phobetor— spirits who can impersonate humanoids, animals, rocks and even dreams— constitute different kinds of doubleness.11 Gemellarity, or “doubling,” and parallelism ubiquitously recur in Ovid’s poem.12 Weaker forms of doubling, such as complementarities and opposites, assume too many related, duplicitous forms to catalogue here.13 The doubleness of “Ceyx and Alcyone” surfaces throughout. Alcyone’s farewell is double-edged, since she lovingly prays for her husband’s return, but she insecurely fears that he may prefer another woman (581: utque rediret / optabat nullamque sibi praeferret). She is impotent to prevent his suspected adulterous intentions under Greek (and Roman) double standards for sexual morality. The epic storm with elegiac echoes produces double-trouble for king and crew (cf. Kröner 1970). Morpheus disguised as Ceyx is guilty of doubletalk and double-crossing He says he is and is not her spouse; in fact, he alleges

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that he is Ceyx’s shade—but, actually, he is only an illusion of Ceyx’s shade—a second remove (658–60). He makes her feel special (with doubled questions, doubled verbs and doubled nouns, superlative, thematic miserrima!): . . . agnoscis Ceyca, miserrima coniunx? an mea mutata est facies? nunc respice: nosces inveniesque tuo pro coniuge coniugis umbram. . . . Do you recognize Ceyx, wretchedest spouse? Or is my appearance different/morphed? Now look again: you will recognize And find the shade of your spouse instead of your spouse.

Iris, Juno’s messenger to the land of nod, delivers her wheedling, sibilantfilled and hypnotic, anaphoric appeal to Somnus.14 She alleges confusingly, “dreams . . . in imitation equal real shapes,” somnia, quae veras aequant imitantia formas. This claim reflects Ovid’s shifting perspective on substance and the undependability of physical presences. Phantom Morpheus impersonating Ceyx barks a double-entendre to the new widow (662): falso tibi me promittere noli! “Don’t falsely hope for me [Ceyx] to return.” Alternately, we can understand, “Don’t unfaithfully promise/engage me [Morpheus/not Ceyx] to yourself.”15 Morpheus, the arch-mimic conman, more than a two-faced trickster, arrives at a double-quick pace (morae breve tempus) in front of Alcyone’s bed, “embodied” in a true facsimile but an unreal ghost of Alcyone’s dead husband.16 Morpheus is the newly minted, once appearing and underappreciated eponymous hero of Metamorphoses. The infinite duplicator can mimic any human form.17 When Alcyone learns from the Olympian sanctified vision of his Doppelgänger that a live Ceyx will never return, she deludedly begs his impersonating phantom to wait and go to hell together with her: ibimus una (676). Like the unstable sea, Ovid’s sudden, unpredictable creation frightens unwary Alcyone. Alcyone that night mourns in the palace, and again the next morning at the shore. When her spouse’s corpse floats in again, she sees an object and does a double-take, indeed triple-take, before recognizing that it is a person (11.715–25: nescio quid quasi corpus /. . ., quid . . . erat dubium /. . ., qui foret, ignorans. . ., / iam quod cognoscere posset cernit). Alcyone’s rare word (in Met.), the thematic vocative carissime, frames the entire tale (421, 727). The late Republican rhetorician who wrote a mini-encyclopedia on effective rhetoric states, “Constant repetition of a preceding word has in itself a certain charm,” habet in se quendam leporem superioris cuiusque crebra repetitio verbi ([Cic.] ad Herenn. 4.13.19–14.21, 25.34–5). Repetition enriches Ovid’s poetics. Every individual repeats and patterns words, gestures, postures, vocal tics and mannerisms.18 These features contribute to personal identity—Morpheus’ convincing, multidimensional impersonation of Ceyx

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proves (636–8). Repetitious behavior can become compulsive, obsessive and debilitating, as when Alcyone revisits the shore from which Ceyx departed. Narrational repetition in art often emphasizes recurrent, inescapable human dilemmas.19 Literature, music and visual art arrest attention by repetition to draw connections and recall the past (Kawin 1972: 1–5). Ovidian Pythagoras, purveying labile metaphysics perhaps underpinning the epic, flourishes ideas of reincarnation, philosophical but also physical repetition, for humorous ends. The same finite number of souls is recycled, the same problems recur (15.165–73, 252–8). Both the natural and civilized worlds appear unstable, unbounded and full of threat and disequilibrium, chaotic in appearance, endowed with undependable designs.20 Whether Ovid hyperdidactic Pythagoras’ extended musings here to gain any credence or respect,21 the message of the philosopher of metempsychosis amusingly fits Ovid’s dramatic, programatic, and sensational recurring patterns.

A. Double-Talk Many rhetorical devices employ repetition. For instance, geminatio or anadiplosis denominates immediate duplication without change: aequorque refundit in aequor, minus et minus (488, 723). At 141, simul, simul stresses two actions—immersion and purification—happening at one time. The ‘poetics of excess,’ Alison Keith’s attractive phrase for Ovid’s robust exuberance,22 permeates his poetry. He deploys throughout devices of mirroring and balance, such as iteration, parallelism, chiasmus23 and antithesis. Alliteration, anaphora, anadiplosis, antistrophe, assonance, climax, epanastrophe, hendiadys, isocolon, pleonasm and polyptoton produce various modes of doubling.24 These iterative devices can underscore or destabilize meaning. Polyptoton names the figure in which one word appears in two cases (or in two parts of speech): for example, tanta . . . tantoque; sine me me;25 ossibus ossa . . . nomen nomine (494, 701, 707: the last exhibits chiasmus also [two pairs with reversed order in the second]). The first line of “Ceyx and Alcyone” reads fratrisque sui fratremque secutis/ anxia prodigiis (410).26 The verse fulmina: fulmineis ardescunt ignibus ignes (523) provides a balanced “golden line” of five words for “sky fire.”27 [Ianua] nulla domo tota^est, custos in limine nullus (609, cf. 553) constitutes a versus serpentinus (in which the tail word meets or repeats the head; see section B).28 Anaphora or epanalepsis, repetition of a word or phrase in the beginning of successive clauses or verses, produces more iteration. In “Ceyx and Alcyone,” Alcyone’s first speech of twenty-three verses repeats carus, cura, metuo, abesse, aequora, venti and yet other words. Her final speech exhibits nine other repetitions (Griffin ad 421–43, 684–707). She tends to express herself pleonastically, and this eloquent wife amusingly “entrains” Ovid’s narrator into similar pairings. For example, readers meet these pairs: ter . . . ter; iam . . . iam. . . iam, pariter . . . pariter; pars . . . pars (419, 423–4, 723–4, 442–3, 487, 533–4), inque . . . inque, frangitur . . . frangitur, aliis. . . aliis,

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pars alii . . .partes [acc.], non . . . , / . . . non, dumque . . . dumque (517–18, 535–6, 551–2, 557–9, 666–7, 712). Further, sic . . . / sic and si non . . . si non constitute other versus serpentini (727–28, 706; cf. 553, 608–9, 700, 794).29 The anaphora of nulla est Alycone, nulla est (684, echoing Ceyx’s fate, 545) excites pathos, as do si non, . . . si non, sic . . . / sic, and fourfold per in hypnotic kletic or invocatory supplication (706, 727–8, cf. 44–5, 7.852–4). Even syllables within a word can expressively replicate sound and sense effects by anaphora, repetition: Ceyx, sinking underwater at sea, murmurs (566–7: quotiens immurmurat) the name of Alcyone.30 Ascending tricolon articulates anaphora in describing Icelos’ labile morphology: (639) fit fera, fit volucris, fit longo corpore serpens, “he becomes wild beasts, becomes a bird, becomes a serpent with a long body.”31 Epanastrophe places one word at the end of one clause and the same word at the start of the next, for example, Alcyone’s emphatic assertion of knowledge (437–8): quo magis hos novi (nam novi . . . ).32 Rhetorical antistrophe ends successive clauses with a repeated word, for example with Alcyone’s prominent concern for her man (574–5: induat ille / . . . venerit ille).33 Similarly, Alcyone’s remonstrances end with tecum. . . tecum (697) at caesura and verse end.34 Pleonasm provides doubled, epexegetic detail (427: aequora . . . et ponti tristis imago). Entering the habitation of Somnus, Iris experiences a muta quies (602). A “mute quiet” adds a logically superfluous but emphatic resonance. Like the Hebrew ‘Song of Songs’ hyperbolic idiom, this pleonasm produces a superlative degree. Ovid describes twilight as dubiae crepuscula lucis, where the words for the already dusky dimness embrace a hypocorism (diminutive) for twilight (596). Ovid explores doubling consequences of personifying a natural feature. Somnus drives himself (sleep) out of himself: excussit tandem sibi se (621; polyptoton also).35 The redundancy constitutes doubling. Insana Erinys is a bilingual pun, since a Latin adjective “raging, mad, monstrous” describes the infuriated Hellenic Fury (14; cf. another bilingual pun at 634–5: figurae/ Morphea). Night in day during the storm is hyperbolically described as “the appearance of night is double-deep” (550: duplicataque noctis imago est). Multiplying “k” sounds characterize questioning Latin “q” and “c” words and describe Alcyone’s diminishing uncertainty. Nescio quid quasi corpus / quid . . . dubium / corpus liquebat / qui foret/ quisquis es / siqua est / corpus: quod quo / iam quod cognoscere, “somewhat like a body / what . . . doubtful / washed the body / who it would be / whoever you are / whoever is / what body where / now what she could recognize” (716–24). The velar consonants suggest avian chatter (“quacking ducks”; cf. Lycia’s subaqueous “croaking frogs,” 6.376). The alliteration underlines her “double-take” on Ceyx’s corpse.36 Double-entendres animate Ovidian narratives, e.g. Callisto 2.430, Battus 2.704–5, Echo 3.386–7, Mestra 8.862–8, Myrrha 10.298–502 and, here, Morpheus.37 Michaela Janan remarked, “Art distorts as it represents reality,” and so Ovid excavates double-talking, misunderstandings, multileveled ironies, reflections of earlier characters and tales and pre-echoes of later ones,

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in his mirrored gallery of perverse passions. Two-for-one “poetic plurals” for singular items and vice-versa present both poetic and metrical, rhetorical and grammatical, licenses. The plural word corpora refers (564) to Ceyx’s one body claimed by two people; amores (750) refers to the elegiac master trope of “Ceyx and Alcyone”—one love shared by two. Ovid’s tales of excessively codependent couples explore misguided urges for impossible oneness.

B. Syntactic Enactment, Wilkinson’s “Expressiveness: Metaphor from Word Order” Ovid’s mastery of the possibilities of mimesis produced by Latin syntax and flexible word order allows him to separate, juxtapose, enjamb, enclose, imbricate (synchesis), align, balance, cross (chiasmus) and otherwise order his words so that their position mimics or mirrors the concept, action or positions described. Artful arrangement includes making one from two, two from one or keeping two ideas distinct within one structure (parallel, opposite, intertwined, crossed etc.). Thus, syntax offers doubling possibilities by word placement. “Ceyx and Alcyone” presents numerous examples.38 1. Separation by verse location. Three notable positions in the path of the sun appear in three words: . . . oriens mediusve cadensve. Ovid mentions first the rise and then the fall, with -ens participles for the extremes, and places medius in the middle of the balanced (three) syllable count (594: 3+3+3).39 Aut minus, aut certe medium non amplius aequor describes the ship’s vulnerable position before the storm strikes. Medial medium, with parisyllabic phrases for contrasting minus and amplius on either side, produces balanced phrases (478: 6+6; cf. 51: 3+3 words).40 Ante tamen cunctos emphasizes “beforeness” by having ante precede all other words in the verse (605; cf. 11.578, 1.563, 15.654, etc.). Word separation reinforces meaning with telling intervening words, in the phrase liquida, spatio distante . . . aqua (715–16). The interpolated phrase distances the shore water near Alcyone from that wavy seawater in which Ceyx floats. Ovid first juxtaposes (v. infra) drowning Ceyx and distant Alcyone, and then separates them by verse division: Alcyonea Ceycab movet, Ceycisb in ore/ nulla nisi Alcyonea est... (544–5). The word and deeds of Fate separate Alcyone from Morpheus/Ceyx (668): ipse ego fata tibi. When Alcyone wails, unable to speak, the word intervenit (and verse division) interrupts speech in verboque intervenit omni /plangor (708). 2. Juxtaposition or 0-degree separation of people, things and events find representation in Ovid’s poetic word order, such as pronoun pairs mentioned above (e.g. 492, 539–40, 563–4, 574–5). Ovid’s Morpheus polyptotically juxtaposes Ceyx as husband and shadow of a husband inveniesque tuo pro coniuge coniugis umbram (660: “you’ll find instead of your husband your husband’s shade”). Hysterical Alcyone, once she learns of Ceyx’s death, demands name-to-name contiguity on the gravestone, if bone-to-bone contact can’t be had in the grave (707): [si non] ossibus ossa meis, at nomen nomina tangam.41

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3. Enjambment (“straddling”: final verse words’ sense completed only by the next verse’s initial words) emphasizes hurrying, running together, falling down or reversing direction. Enjambment of the last category arises in the storm (546–7): [Ceyx] patriae quoque vellet ad oras respicere “Ceyx also wishes toward his native shores [his gaze] to turn back”42

To underline the antithesis between Ceyx’s promise to hasten his return and his actual, speedy departure, recursus/return ends one verse and protinus/ straightaway begins the next (11.454–5): . . . spes est admota recursus, protinus eductam navalibus . . . . . . hope is provided for return, Straightaway launched from the boatyard . . .

Although not conforming to traditional patterns of verse enjambment, since the prior clause stops at verse end, Ovid consciously, for topographical or verse-positional effect, juxtaposed the back and forth prefix and adverb in enjambment. 4. Enclosure and imbrication describe two related phenomena: words surrounded by two parts of one phrase indicate embracing physical, controlling position or possession or words (e.g. noun and adjective) woven into a phrase indicate inseparable interconnections. Undae. . . undas (553) frame and enclose their soggy verse. When Lucifer covers his face with dense clouds, the clouds surround the verbal action (572): densis texit sua nubibus ora. Somnus, Sleep, falls back to sleep, and he himself is hidden in the enclosed verb stratoque recondidit alto, deep within the downy bed (649). Alcyone covers her face with copious tears (657): fletu super ora profuso. Ceyx murmurs the name of his wife while he sinks immured among the waves: nominat Alcyonen ipsisque inmurmurat undis (567—sporting nine nasals for hard breathing).43 Alcyone’s wheedling tactics in the spondaic and plosive-filled verse 420 exemplify interweaving (synchesis): singultuque pias interrumpente querellas, “her sobbing interrupted her wifely complaints.” The nonverbal convulsive cries interrupt verbal appeals, while the participle identifying “break in” breaks into the accusative phrase. 5. Balance and alignment specify other verbally “topographical” devices. This technique is used in verses in which a word signifying equality falls between two verse halves: e.g. somnia, quae veras aequant imitantia formas (626: 6+7 syllables; “dreams, which in imitation equal real shapes”).44 Another example, exhibiting isocolon, appears in Alcyone’s lament: “if not a

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funeral urn, at least an inscription will join us, if not. . .,” si non urna, tamen iunget nos littera: si non . . . (706: 6+6 syllables; iung- or ‘join,’ joins the two halves, and identical opening and closing phrases “si non”). Several words or syllables achieve balance. In Sleep’s domain, the phrase “nor clamors of human tongue return a sound” (humanaeve sonum reddunt convicia linguae)45 delivers six syllables before and after “echoing:” 4+2 syllable words on each side of the echoing word, and another architectural “golden line” pattern. Consecutive verses 737–8 are quasi “golden lines” balancing adjectives and nouns and enclosing central verbs to stamp Ceyx and Alcyone’s climactic embrace (Griffin 1997): Dilectos artus amplexa recentibus alis frigida nequiquam duro dedit oscula rostro. Embracing his beloved limbs with her fresh wings, with her stiff beak she gave cold kisses—in vain.

Vertical alignment appears between significant pairs of words. Ceyx’s crew looks down from the sea crests during the storm and then looks up from the aqueous valleys: despicere . . . (to look down) appears above suspicere (to look up; 504, 506, both verse initial position). Caelum (sky), similarly, appears directly above pontus (sea) consecutively in the final position (517, 518). 6. Miscellaneous ingenious effects embellish this unusual narrative among his epic’s 250 stories. Ovid carefully positions metrical pauses (caesurae, diaereses and verse-ends). Four spondees in four words (with a caesura) underline strangulated Alcyone’s devoted sobbing (420): singultuque pias// interrumpente querellas. In consecutive lines (492–3), multiplied pauses impede the confused helmsman of Ceyx’s craft. Two caesurae and a bucolic diaeresis appear in the first, three caesurae detain the second (along with the stuttering repeat of the syllable ve, thrice in four syllables): ipse pavet// nec se,// qui sit status,/ ipse fatetur scire ratis //rector,// nec, quid //iubeatve vetetve.46 He trembles//nor does he himself, // what his status be,/ confess To know,// ‘tho’ ship’s helmsman, //nor what // to command or prohibit.

Polysyndeton, emphasized by elision, underscores rapid accumulations, movement and multiple transformations: Phantasos: ille^in humum saxumque^undamque trabemque (642, cf. 475–6, 561, with ^ for elisions). Somnolent iteration occurs when Ovid mimetically employs two synonymous words for the deep sleep-bringing hall inhabited by Sleep (586 with enallage: soporiferam Somni . . .aulam). The god Sleep has “difficulty raising his eyes, again and again falling back,” (619 with polysyndeton and mumbling elision: vix oculos tollens iterumque^iterumque relabens).47

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C. Double Action or Split-Focus “Ceyx and Alcyone” contains three principal movements: together—apart— together, but the two figures are together (alive, dead and bird-transformed) for less than one-quarter of the narrative. The couple appears first together on land (410–60). They separate, wither, and die in the swiftly scene-changing, central panel sequence: Ceyx’s Voyage-Storm-Olympian displeasure with Alcyone-Sleepyland-Morpheus’s Ceyx epiphany for Alcyone (461–656). They seem rejoined briefly, but Morpheus deceives Alcyone: she dreams that an imposter intrudes as her husband’s restless spirit (657–76). They remain, however, still “in fact” apart—one alive, one dead, and an intrusive “conspirit” from beyond (677–724). Finally, they come together again in extremis and are transformed into kingfishers, ironically out at sea (725–48). Focus shifts repeatedly within the three main panels from one character’s point of view to the other’s and to the narrator’s. The narrator’s omniscient perspective confirms and disconfirms events and comic or tragic presentations of pathetic emotions. For example, Alcyone prays for Ceyx’s fidelity to her and burns frankincense to preserve his life (577–82). The narrator notes ironically that only this prayer for marital fidelity came true (since he died before he could contravene it). Meanwhile the marriage goddess Juno rejected as polluted all Alcyone’s propitiatory offerings. Morpheus in paradoxical double-talk claims to be the true umbra of dead Ceyx, but the narrator trumps him reporting that the phantom is only a simulator, even though his somber news of Ceyx’s death is true (634–75). Ceyx’s Trachinian subjects furnish an unexpectedly skeptical viewpoint about his resurrection—was he alive again or just having his face pushed up by a wave (740: dubitabat)? An elderly bystander’s doubt undermines the narrator’s apparent credulity in the metamorphic miracle. Finally, when this interlocutor validates the birds’ true-to-the-end love, another (maybe?) taleteller trundles on to the next and last avian metamorphosis—Aesacus (749–51: hos aliquis senior . . . iunctim . . . volantes /proximus, aut idem . . . ‘hic quoque . . . ’). Ovid’s scene-cutting here alternates focus more frequently than in his other tales. The people focalizing the narrative also oscillate more quickly: Ceyx 410– 16, Alcyone 416–43, Ceyx 444–56, Alcyone 457–73, Ceyx 474–572, Alcyone 573–82 [Juno, Iris, Somnus and Morpheus allow divine digression: 583–676], Alcyone encore 677–738, Ceyx 739–41, Ceyx and Alcyone together 741–50. Two vignettes focus on Ceyx’s tandem rowing crews, double and equal yet perceived as a single machine (462–3): ordinibus geminis . . . remos aequalique ictu scindunt freta. . . . In doubled rows . . . their oars with even striking split the seas. . . .

In the ensuing storm, the synchronized rowers disintegrate into atomized, stricken individuals: sauve qui peut. Fragmented images focalize their isolated

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suffering. Unique emotional displays and desperate measures underscore the anonymous fragmentation of organization, hierarchy and order: pars . . . pars, hic . . . hic, hic . . . hic . . . ille . . . hic . . . illi . . . huic.48

D. Complementarity, Twinning and Mirroring Ceyx and Alcyone’s fiery love is equal and reciprocal: neque . . . minor ignis in ipso (445).49 Ovid’s ingenuity creates a disjunction between the two coexisting Ceyxes—Ceyx’s reality of a dead, human body and his lively, histrionic, divine Doppelgänger Morpheus. Ovid introduces Morpheus as an artist and imitator of images with a relevant hendiadys: artificem simulatoremque figurae (634). Hendiadys transforms any two into one. Morpheus’ divine ability makes his visible surfaces or facies instantly similis to Ceyx’s (654)—one person now represented by two “visibles.” This god of a thousand faces50 metatextually informs Alcyone (666–8): . . . non haec tibi nuntiat auctor ambiguus,51 non ista vagis rumoribus audis: ipse ego fata tibi praesens mea naufragus edo. . . . No ambiguous [double-crossing] narrator/poet announces this to you, These matters you don’t hear by untrustworthy [wandering] rumor: I myself in your presence report my fate—a shipwrecked sailor.

This Dreamland messenger is duplicative in name, words and appearance. He has not suffered shipwreck and he is not Ceyx ipse or even his specter, as he asserts. Yet Ceyx’s false ghost deceives her who knows him best, his sleeping wife/widow. He impersonates Ceyx well enough to persuade Alcyone who exclaims (676, 686–9): mane! . . . ibimus una! . . . . . . vidi agnovique manusque ad discedentem cupiens retinere tetendi. umbra fuit,—sed et umbra tamen manifesta virique vera mei! ‘Wait! . . . We’ll go together!’ . . . . . . I saw and recognized him and my hands to him departing I stretched out, eager to hold him. It was a ghost,—but nevertheless a real ghost and The true ghost of my husband!

The ghost is not Ceyx the human, as even Alcyone admits to her nursemaid (altrici: 683, with 689–90—noting his good looks and bright countenance). Readers know it is not Ceyx’s own ghost (spirit). The doublet, here and gone, accurately flaunts Ceyx’s former face, posture, dripping (unclothed!)

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body, beard, hair, voice, tears and gestures (653–6, 671–3).52 The fraud presents the only animated Ceyx available to distraught, needy Alcyone. Alcyone’s anguish is undercut by her wickedly hyperbolic metaphor and anaphora: nulla est Alcyone, nulla est (“Alcyone is no more, no more”), recalling the narrator’s literal obit, pro viro, qui nullus erat Ceyx (684, 579, 544: “for her husband, Ceyx who was no more”).53 Later, when a drowned corpse drifts near lamenting Alcyone, she realizes in bathetic stages that her Ceyx has finally returned (715–25). Unnamed, pitying gods unite the two now morphed into avian form. The description features terms of mutuality: ambo / alite mutantur. fatis obnoxius isdem/ tunc quoque mansit amor, nec coniugale solutum est / foedus in alitibus; coeuntque fiuntque parentes, / . . . iunctim . . . volantes (741–4, 749).54 The two rejoin on the level of plot, metaphor and sexual pun. The mutuality of their avian actions and affections realizes Alcyone’s unreasonable fantasy of two persons’ eternal (conjugal) indivisibility. Parallelism and antithesis provide additional, complementary forms of doubling. Successive and balancing verses, at the climax of the storm that destroys Ceyx, begin with verse initial anaphora in nouns: pars . . . / pars. The two verses of the next couplet flaunt verse final antithesis in adverbs: extra / . . . intus (533–36).55 Oxymoron also produces doubleness because, like antithesis, which also juxtaposes contradictory qualities, readers must engage simultaneously with two ideas. The storm waters are blacker than the Stygian wave in one line, yet grow white with spume in the next (500– 1).56 Sine me me pontus habet (701: “the sea without me [Alcyone] holds me [Ceyx]”) anaphorically presents a paradox of identity.57 The romantic cliché duae in una,58 ‘two souls in one body,’ constitutes the erotic satire’s dominant theme. It antedates Meleager’s elegy (AP 12.52.2), Plato’s Aristophanes’ mythopoetic praise of love (Symposium 189e–91e) by the halving conceit, and perhaps derives from a prehistoric cosmogony of a bisexual/asexual/presexual demiurge.59 Cephalus and Procris, encountered earlier in the poem (7.661–865), pre-echo the devices and sameness-complementarity theme of “Ceyx and Alcyone.” Images of doubling and reciprocity multiply in their love-gone-wrong story, such as Cephalus’ chiastic, anastrophic, balanced verse (4.799): coniugea eramb felixc, felixc eratb illa maritoa, “with my spouse was I happy, happy was she with her husband [me].” This three-ringed composition stresses their conjugal equality. In the next verse, mutua cura duos et amor socialis habebat (“mutual concern and shared loved held the two”), two nouns, two adjectives and one dual object all denote or imply togetherness (as does the remaining conjunction).60 Their once-happy marriage leads to Cephalus’ spousal homicide rather than Alcyone’s suicide. Ceyx’s story employs opposed vectors, departure and return. This antithesis drives him out to sea willingly but returns him without volition. His status suffers inversion: he departs as the royal commander and returns as a dead nobody, lowest of the low (461–73, 715–25). Complementarities and inversions characterize the story: the “out and in” for Ceyx’s harbor (474: exierant; 724: admotum terrae), the drowning “under” water and “coming

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up” to land (569, 724), and the early situation of alleged marital bliss transformed into later misery and death. Alcyone embraces her spouse alive and dead (459, 737: amplex-), weeps before and after (418, 444, 473, 674: lacrim-; cf. Hollenburger-Rusch 2001) and collapses in grief, both anticipating his death and afterwards (471–2, 726: lacerat, 681–3: percutit). Alcyone had attempted to prevent her husband from leaving her or from leaving by ship without her (383–8, 439–43). She misinterprets his plan to sail to Clarus, when he seeks help in comprehending his brother’s strange destruction. Her solipsism fears that his intended voyage results from her inadequacy. She tries to make him feel guilty: quae mea culpa tuam. . . carissime, mentem/ vertit? ubi est, quae cura mei prior esse solebat? (421–2: “What fault of mine, dearest, turned your feelings? Where is the loving concern for me that used to be?”) Her questions become more bizarre: does he become carefree if he abandons her, or does he desire a trip, thinking (egocentrically) he might like her more when they are apart (421–4)? Later she imagines he may be cheating on her (581). It’s “all about” her. Triple anaphora of iam combined with self-contained, end-stopped hexameters make these lines brusque—curt and insulting. Alcyone, the clinging dependent, employs women’s passive weapons, two communicative channels, needy words and nonverbal tears: dictis lacrimisque (444, cf. 387–8). Alcyone’s antitheses, mea culpa—tuam . . . mentem and iam sum carior absens—tibi (421, 424) cast her “you vs. me” distinctions in her husband’s (soon-to-be-absent) face. She resents the idea that anything can come between them. Later, Morpheus/ Ceyx’s contrasting pairs of pronouns, juxtaposed nobis—tua, nostra—tuum, and ego fata [mea]—tibi, (660–8), emphasize similarly the couple’s close, but now seriously, seeming permanently, sundered union.

CONCLUSION Ovid’s “Ceyx and Alcyone” narrative suggests the danger of obliterating useful boundaries in marriage. Some “personal space” between loving spouses preserves selfhood. Ovid instructed an audience of pretend neophytes (Ars 2.349–52):61 “you will cause [useful] anxiety when far from your absent lover; give her a rest,” procul absenti cura futuris eris;/ da requiem. While the praeceptor amoris (a welcome rôle never abandoned) claimed that he wrote for the unmarried (Ars 1.31–4), his examples for this didaxis include Phyllis, Penelope and Laodamia. Two of these stay-at-home wives grieved precisely for spouses sailed away on business. (All three deserted women lengthily reprise their loneliness in Heroides I, II, XIII). Even married love can profit from a time of separation. Ceyx proposed return in less than two months (453; cf. Ars 2.357: sed mora tuta brevis).62 Three couples in the Metamorphoses—Pyramus and Thisbe, Cephalus and Procris and Baucis and Philemon—anticipate the popular bourgeois view of Ceyx and Alcyone’s “love too strong to endure separation” (Otis 1970: 155; Griffin 1976). Such

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excessive neediness typically leads to Ovidian Liebestod, unless the pressure of another theme (e.g., theoxeny, in Baucis and Philemon’s story) trumps overcooked love.63 Ovid’s mortals, Mary-Kay Gamel notes, also experience a “strained, problematic” relationship with divinities. “Even when the gods wish humans well,” divine interference brings “drastic and usually negative consequences,” to wit, Juno’s repellent (if ritually correct) orders to make Alcyone quit sacrificing, thereby polluting Juno’s altars. Ovid’s once-happy lovers experience a primeval, mythological, Platonic and elegiac yearning for impossible oneness to merge in enduring psychic union.64 Ovid’s characters explicitly fantasize this longing, for example, Narcissus’ parodic drive to become one with his own reflection (3.341–510).65 Ovid observes human (and divine) overreaching, self-satisfaction, especially in the realm of erotic desire, whether the oppressive eroticism emerges as rape or suffocating marriage.66 One modern reading of “Ceyx and Alcyone” discovers a reassuring fantasy of bourgeois love, a contrast to many painfully uncomfortable endings, e.g., the brutal stories of Procne and Tereus or Scylla’s passion for Minos and her Megarian father. The couples Pyramus and Thisbe and Procris and Cephalus offer closer parallels: the beloved man or woman recognizes and sorrows over the beloved’s corpse, inflicts laceration on self and reaffirms their sworn union, if only in death. In the former narrative, we meet the familiar duo in una elegiac plea for one tomb, an aition, a suicide, even gods acceding to a wish for shared sepulcher. In the latter, gods interrupt notable human happiness, presumably displeased (4.137–66; 7.691–3, 698–9: non ita dis visum est). Ovid’s poetic luxury, his endless ingenuity in plot development and his humanity, however, encompass all outcomes. Satires of erotic catastrophe coexist with sympathy for creatures who know or do no better.67 The mature poet’s mordant views of human fallibility did not experience a sharp reversal for one story of erotic fixation among many, in a collection of two hundred and fifty tales. Gregson Davis realized that “the tale [of Cephalus and Procris], once its . . . syntax is properly construed, is anything but a celebration of conjugal love. On the contrary, it elegantly defines . . . the moral conditions under which a conjugal amor may be transformed and fatally perverted.”68 Ovid satirizes the all-too-human fear of conjugal solitude and the need for duets of spousal validation, but he did so with such compassion that some clever recent readers have missed the consistency of his sardonic portraits of many marriages. Ceyx and Alcyone, like Cephalus and Procris, portray excessive spousal dependency that becomes a pathological erotic fixation. NOTES Judy Hallett has provided endless warmth, integrity, commitment and courage for the cause of human dignity inside the classroom, throughout the philological profession and beyond—regardless of gender, creed or ethnicity. Judy, my friend and illus-

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trious mentor for four decades, once read, edited and improved a longer version of “double trouble,” a pivotal narrative in the greatest Latin poem. To her, amica certa in re incerta cernitur, esteemed Ovidian critic and true colleague, I offer this homage, part of a monograph examining Ovid’s poetic laboratory. 1. The busybody’s lethal misapprehension (recalling damages to Ovid inflicted by Augustus’ informant: temerarius index) finds echo in this proleptic hysteron-proteron (of past participle deceptam and verb praebuit) and enallage (the mind, not the ear, mistook Cephalus’ words). 2. Only the book boundary-breaking account of Phaëthon’s heated adolescence and catastrophe (1.751–2.400) exceeds the verse length of “Ceyx and Alcyone.” 3. Late Augustan Latin poetry, more than its forbears, exploits so-called ‘rhetorical’ structures, tropes and figures, metrical devices, word placement in line, etc., to characterize protagonists and their foibles—in part to create distance from extravagant myths for author and reader (another paper). Ahl (1985 and 1988) eloquently demanded for Ovid a paradigm of poetic rhetoric different from the one deemed appropriate for Vergil’s three opera. Wilkinson 1963 long ago, and Tissol 1997 more recently, analyze exceptional elements of Ovid’s (and others’) poetic style. 4. The land-route obstacle supplies an obviously invented but useful reason not to consult the nearest and best oracle, Delphi, but to plan a perilous seajourney that allows for epic’s greatest storm yet. 5. The best candidates for marital bliss number three: Cephalus and Procris, Baucis and Philemon and (now mostly abandoned) Pygmalion who adores his ivory Girl-Doll, an anonymous and uncomplaining superwoman. Davis 1983, Gamel 1984 and Leach 1974 have identified the comic worms in these three narrative apples. 6. [Cic.] ad Herenn. 4.14.21; Cic. de orat. 2.219, cf. 243. festivitas more helpfully labels Ovidian techniques than Quintilian’s (Inst. Or. 4.1.77) famously pejorative lascivire. Barchiesi (1981: 305) specifies Ovid’s poem’s prodigality with indices of its new procedures. 7. Sen. Contr. 2.2.8–12 furnishes autoptic reminiscences of Ovid the bonus declamator and poet. 8. Gresseth 1964, Otis 1966/1970, Griffin 1976, Renner 1978, Fantham 1979 and Parsons et al. 1981 provide details concerning the obscure genealogy of a versatile myth. Frye 1976 sketches the development of the ancient romance. 9. Retailing his own lascivus love life (e.g. Am. 1.4.21, 2.10.27), Ovid parodies elegiac predecessors’ sorry erotic situations. 10. Some earlier Roman elegists’ erotic protestations and prostrations reach tongue-in-cheek hyperbole, but Ovid pushed the genre to its creative limit. Chariton’s probably earlier novel Callirhoe supplies one prose example of lovers separated and reunited. Petronius’ later fiction further parodies the “true love” theme of prose and poetry. 11. Several Ovidian characters procreatively replicate their entire races—Deucalion and Pyrrha, Cadmus and Harmonia and unnamed Prometheus (cf. 1.363–4, 390). 12. Boreas’ rape of Orithyia reprises Tereus’ preceding Thracian lust and rape of Philomela (Segal 1992: 290). Orithyia happens to be Alcyone’s sister (6.680). Pausanias’ smarter Narcissus loved a twin sister who dressed herself and her hair as he did! (9.31.7–8, Pellizer 1986). 13. Procne, e.g. cannot be silent, while her sister and double Philomela wishes to speak (Segal 1992: 284). 14. 623–9, esp. 623ff.: Somne, quies rerum, placidissime, Somne, deorum/ pax animi, quem . . ., qui . . .; Murphy 1972 ad loc.

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Donald Lateiner 15. This warning obliquely refers to Penelope’s spousal identity worries (Ody. 23.215–24) and Cephalus’ pestering and disastrous testing of Procris’ fidelity (Met. 7.715–46). Penelope worries about pretend clones of Odysseus, men or gods, coming to her bed. Disguised Cephalus absurdly sweet-talks his own wife—seductio ad absurdum. 16. Fantham (1979: 340, 344) explains why Ovid needs a false spirit for the god’s epiphany appearing to Alcyone. Since the true umbra/imago of drowned, unburied Ceyx remains in his body (theology), the plot conveniently reunites two human spirits when Ceyx floats into Trachis’ port where Alcyone suicidally laments. Metamorphosis then unites the destroyed humans as uxorious male and univiral female birds (romantic fantasy). Ovid invented Morpheus to provide a multitasking parody of “divine machinery.” 17. His name, Morpheus, Changer of Shapes, contains Orpheus, a singer of changes (Ahl 1985: 59–60). 18. Conveniently termed “vocalics” or paralinguistics (see Poyatos 1993 for details), the field includes tone, pitch, pace, rhythm, cough, nasalization, accent, whisper, shout, etc. 19. Repetition may illustrate a character’s deficiencies, out of touch with ordinary performance standards. Such tediousness loses the power of normal emphatic utterance and “goes flat.” The necessarily comic reading of Narcissus’ story recognizes his low awareness quotient and observational capacities. 20. Wheeler 1995 emphasizes the cosmic demiurge’s careful ordering of the natural world in Met. 1. 21. Ovid would parody any philosopher’s ‘canned’ lecture (cf. Barchiesi 1989, in Knox 2006: 294–311 at 298–9). 22. In her paper on “Iterative Structures in Amores 2,” Keith (1996) quoted the notorious verses recorded by Sen. Controv. 2.2.12. She examined Am. 2.10 for geminatio (ambae, dividuumque), epanalepsis, chiasmus, adnominatio. She found expressions of “middleness” everywhere in the “central poem of the central book” of the Amores. Kawin 1972 studies other forms of repetition in Proust and Ecclesiastes. 23. E.g. 432–3, 517–18 (nearly), 544–5, 697 (with Griffin 1997 ad locc.). 24. Other duplicative tropes include homoioteleuton, polysyndeton, syllepsis, symploce and zeugma. Such devices iterate letters, phonemes, syllables, words and even clauses. Wilkinson (1963: 66–8); Tissol (1997: 18–26) identifies syllepsis as Ovid’s central trope, appropriate to the metamorphic character of Ovid’s epic. He deconstructs conjugal confidence and credulity (1997: 82 on Met. 11. 674–5): Alcyone lacrimas movet atque lacertos. 25. = Ich spaltung or Self-Splitting; cf. 2.302–3 (Earth), 6.385 (Marsyas), 10.566 (Atalanta’s oracle), 13.388 (Ajax). See also 8.819: Fames breathes herself into the wicked ruler (Fames seque viro inspirat), and 8.862: Erysichthon’s daughter Mestra a se /se quaeri gaudens. Enjambement in this case reinforces through the reader’s eye the imaginary division of one person at two ends of the two verses. Tissol (1997: 52–62) discusses “self-canceling witticisms.” 26. See also dolens . . . dolendi (345), tellus omnis et omne fretum (435), canes canibusve (599), excussit tandem sibi se (621), coniuge/coniugis (660), aequoreae miscentur aquae (520). Strictly speaking, one meets catachresis in this last example, not polyptoton, because readers meet two different parts of speech (adjective and noun) for one object. 27. N.b., the chiasmus of the cases: nom./abl.—abl./nom. Chiasmus—crossing or reverse ordering of two pairs of words—frequently occurs elsewhere in Ovid, e.g., 11.434–5, 544–5, 669, 707. 28. Polyptoton composed of mere pronouns surface: e.g. drowning Ceyx thinks of his wife, illam . . . / illius (563–4).

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29. Negatives pullulate in the Earth-inverse, divine House of Sleep: 594, 597, 598, 599, 600 (3x), 601, 608, 609 (2x). 30. The figures described in this paragraph also illustrate, necessarily, alliteration and assonance. Ovid may also pun on mare and murus. Ahl (1985) and Tissol (1997: 42–52), following Redfern (1984) and Culler (1988), discuss the disvalued but real contribution of puns to poetry. 31. 11.52–3 three times repeats flebile for dead Orpheus. Murmurat highlights pathetic fallacy with internal syllabic echo or anaphora, while respondent indicates an external echo. Compare the polyptotic, tricolonic weeping for dead Narcissus in 3.505–7, with Echo echoing: planxere sorores. // . . . planxerunt Dryades; plangentibus adsonat Echo. 32. 377–8: arma / arma. This anaphora expresses the comparably mutual love of Procris and Cephalus, as do chiasmus and pleonastic synonomy (7.799–800: coniuge eram felix, felix erat illa marito/ mutua cura duos et amor socialis habebat). 33. Add Met. 11.109–10 (at caesura), Midas’ repetitious efforts: . . . virgam: virga, . . . saxum: saxum; 325–6: linguam / lingua; 371–2: omne . . . ; omnes; 442–3: feremus . . . feremur. Cf. 12.508–9: silvis / silva; see Griffin (1997) ad 11.325–6. 34. Ovid describes once-talkative Echo employing antistrophe systematically to overcome her Juno-imposed handicap, a capacity to choose only words already spoken by another, here Narcissus (3.380, 391–2): ‘ecquis adest?’ . . . ‘adest’ . . . ‘ante’ ait ’emoriar, quam sit tibi copia nostri.’ rettulit illa nihil nisi ‘sit tibi copia nostri.’ ‘Anyone present?’ . . . ‘Present! . . .’ ‘I’ll [Narcissus] die before you have your will of me.’ She replied nothing except “Have your will of me!”

35. 36.

37.

38.

In their parallel but separate death throes, Narcissus groans in despair for loss of himself, while Echo echoes him losing her other, him: ‘eheu’ / ‘eheu’ (3.495–6, final spondees in their respective verses). Echo, nomen omen, is introduced as vocalis nymphe, / . . . resonabilis Echo. That is, her introduction performs her name in two tongues. Mount Tmolus personified sits on himself, both a personality and an object in nature. The Anatolian mountain performs Ich-Spaltung: monte suo . . . [Tmolus] consedit (11.157). Narcissus’ “hall of mirrors” offers a tale equally rich in verbal doublets, identical or very similar forms. The “excess” is festive and sympathetic to human ignorance, if not to this character’s hopeless dilemma. Nunc duo concordes anima moriemur in una here specifies only Narcissus and his image; cf. pregnant Coronis’ pre-echo 2.609: duo nunc moriemur in una—herself and her child in utero—truly in una. The first two cases are suicidal. Myrrha employs such pleasantries plentifully while indulging in masturbatory fancies about her father and lover Cinyras (10.337–40). Janan (1988: 126–8, cf. 134) remarks, “normally two separate signified that share a signifier.” Greenberg 1980 develops a feminist critique of Echo’s disabled speech. Wilkinson (1963) 65–6 provides excellent examples; cf. Lateiner (1990). Ovid exhibits his techniques of mimetic syntax early in the poem, in Met. 1’s paradigmatic divine rape story of Apollo’s pseudo-elegiac, most unequal pursuit of Daphne. e.g., rapist Apollo’s arms embrace and imprison (as the words frame) Daphne’s ligneous limbs: suis ramos, ut membra, lacertis (1.551–5). This tale offers many first examples of Ovid’s doubling tropes.

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Donald Lateiner 39. Other, nondoubling occurrences of verse-positional syntactic enactment in “Ceyx and Alcyone”: Prima begins verse 466 (cf. 3.341). Summa begins 620, ante begins 605 and ianua or entry door begins 608. Praeterit “goes before” all words in 646. Imo, ‘bottom,’ occurs at the end of 602 (cf. alto, 649). 40. Compare sequences in 11.64–6, the happier, replayed finale of Orpheus and Eurydice’s story. 41. Chione instantaneously changes “heart” after Mercury’s caduceus touches her; Ovid juxtaposes two forms of the word “touch” to signal swift consequence (11.308: tangit—tactu). 42. Respicere furthermore exhibits syntactic enactment with recursive re-. Diana oraque retro / flexit (3.187–8: “her head backwards / turns”), ready to strike Actaeon. The verse mimes her head’s move, since the verse (itself “returning”) reverts right to left in the next line. Cadmus’ question provides conventional enjambment (3.97–8): “Why. . . / do you stare at the snake? You too will be a stared-at snake” (quid . . . / serpentem spectas? et tu spectabere serpens). The active verb becomes immediately passive, grammatic/thematic inversion prominent in Narcissus’, Actaeon’s and Pentheus’ tales, all found later in this all-Theban Book 3. 43. Midas gripped food with his teeth (11.123–4): dente parabat and dente premebat (n.b., vertical alignment, parisosis, anaphora, and homoioteleuton for his matching, closing rows of teeth). The clauses, directly above and below in verse final position, enclose the inedible golden feast, fulva dapes. 44. Auct. ad Herenn. 4.20.27 dismisses perfect equality of syllables in this trope— nam id quidem puerile est. 45. 601, secl. Tarrant, rejected for banality and pastiche. 46. Notice triple repetition of the stuttering enclitic syllable -ve. Prefer the deteriores to velitve of the chief mss. 47. The pleonastic iteration of que . . . que further feeds drugged effects. The hexameter’s first half features rising, tollens, and the second half offers as last word “falling back,” relabens. The line recalls Coleridge’s definition of the couplet: “In the hexameter rises the fountain’s silvery column; / In the pentameter aye, falling in melody back.” 48. 487, 488–9, 539–43. Livy too uses divisio, e.g., 37.29.4, 31.3.5. See further Met. 1.293ff: Occupat hic collem, cumba sedet alter adunca. . . . 49. The same verse characterizes Ceyx, son of Lucifer, as sidereus, so there is syllepsis here in the starry fires of heaven and of love. Griffin (1997: 191), when noting ignis means star in 452, regrettably disvalues the wit as “a perhaps unfortunate” parachresis. 50. His fellow shape-shifting replicator has twin names, Icelos and Phobetor (“Likenesser” and “Terrorizer”) suited to both divine and human audiences, as in Homeric bilingual onomastics (640, cf. Il. 1.403–4, 2.813–14, 14.290– 1). Phantasos is Ovid’s third mimic, an objects duplicator. 51. The con-man/god Morpheus is not who he pretends to be, the spirit of a dead man, the dead Ceyx’s ghost. He is a fraudulent spirit, a real immortal. Ovid doubles Ceyx’s forma by this tantalizing apparition. 52. Were he Ceyx’s true shade, Alcyone would possess a shred of her spouse, pars pro toto (synecdoche). The fragmentation trope occurs elsewhere in Ovid’s tale: cornua, the tips of the yardarm for the entire yard (476), stratum (649) a covering used commonly on couches for the whole couch, and pars itself referring to Ceyx—the missing part of Alcyone’s conjugal unit (473). 53. Bömer (1980 ad 579) notes eleven negations and eight uses of nullus in “Ceyx and Alcyone,” but oddly he finds no significance in the agglomerated negativity. It expressively conveys Alcyone’s state of denial. Cf. multiple negations of “the real world” in the ecphrasis detailing Sleep’s surroundings.

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54. Baucis and Philemon (8.620–724), another set of conjugal inseparables, also dwell in the elegiac “two in one” topos: e.g. ite simul, concordes egimus annos, / auferat hora duos eadem, geminos . . . vultus, mutua . . . dicta, . . . dixere simul, simul abdita (chiasmus with epanaphora), de gemino vicinos corpore truncos (with syntactic enactment through synchesis, interlocking the twining-tree couple). 55. 506: inferno summum juxtaposes opposites; verses 517–18 balance each other antiphonally (Griffin 1997 ad loc.). In strong opposition to Echo’s wish that the two become one, Narcissus, whose chosen sexual partner is his own reflection, desires that one become two. He is grammatically and situationally both active and passive in the same verse: “he who approves is himself approved, and while he chases, he is chased, and equally. . .” (415, 425–6: qui probat, ipse probatur, dumque petit, petitur, pariterque . . .), with many other examples. 56. Similar light and color opposition can be found at 3.335 (Teiresias’ blindness), 423, and 4.91–2. Hermaphroditus (4.329–32) mixes (with alliteration and assonance) rubor . . . ebori . . . candore rubenti; Narcissus’ complexion mixes white with a dark red. The words lux and nox appear in Pyramus and Thisbe’s account in adjoining verses, as in Catullus 5.5–6 (Rhorer 1980). Further oppositionals: Midas lusts for and detests his riches (dives miserque / . . . optat opes et . . . odit). He receives a desirable but useless gift (gratum, sed inutile: 100, 127–8). Narcissus’ declaration, “My riches beggar me” inopem me copia fecit (3.466, in A.D. Melville’s version) perfects paradox. That verse’s contiguous em and me reversed syllables offer that story’s ubiquitous mirror in nuce. 57. More conventionally paradoxical, oxymoronic rhetoric is lupus dulcedine sanguinis asper (11.402; “a wolf savage because of blood’s sweetness”). 58. Bréguet 1960 examines the amatory cliché—unity through love (206), also found in animae dimidium meae (Hor. Carm. 1.3.8). Ovid parodies this desired singleness. Ovid had the lover Macareus exclaim: vive nec unius corpore perde duos (Her. 11.62); Narcissus thus exclaims nunc duo concordes anima moriemur in una (Met. 3.473). The topos of two bodies with one spirit animates Alcyone’s elegiac plea and slyly describes Ceyx’s one body with two spirit-images (11.388 and 653, 688–9; cf. 10.707 [Venus to Adonis], 11.64–6 [Orpheus and Eurydice]), and Am. 2.13.5, Tr. 4.4.72). Tränkle (1963: 471; cf. Bömer [1980] ad 11.388) identifies this topos as “ein Leitmotiv für die ganze Geschichte.” 59. Delcourt (1974: 117–23) anatomizes Ovid’s negative portrayal of Hermaphroditus (4.285–388), positing one from two instead of two from one, as reversing positive mystic cosmogonies. A robust female and male becomes neutrum in the impuissant semivir—nec duo sunt sed forma duplex . . . nec . . . / nec . . . , utrumque et utrumque videtur (378–9). 60. 7.799–800. Murphy (1972 ad 11.388) offers useful observations on this elegiac theme of nervous clinging devotion. N.b., epanastrophe of felix, synonomy of coniuge and marito, and triple chiastic arrangement of words. For examples of antistrophe (matching final words) in “Ceyx and Alcyone,”, see final . . . feremus / . . . feremur, and verbal polyptoton in these two verses both initialized by pariter: 11.442–3). Judy Hallett (1989) explores Roman elite preference for “same” over “other.” 61. Rhorer (1980: 88 nn. 26, 28) remarks this engaging and post-romantic aspect of Ovidian erotics. 62. Ovid excuses even Helen’s infidelity soon after because of Menelaus’ long absences (Ars 2.372). 63. Gamel (1984: 123, 126): Parallel to “Ceyx and Alcyone,” “Baucis and Philemon appear as both attractive and ridiculous, the gods as both powerful and

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64. 65.

66. 67. 68.

unpleasant, the narrator both wrong and right, the effect both gently charming and grimly minatory. . . . We cannot take this narrator, or any narrator [in Ovid’s poem], as our guide to meaning. . ..” “Ceyx and Alcyone,” unlike the partial, ax-grinding narrators of these three other stories, has no internal narrator. Ovid parodies various Platonic ideas (as here), as well as Pythagorean theories (Met. 15). Ovid mocks paederastic sexual practices of males preferring males (one of Plato’s three kinds of halved humans) in the stories of Cyparissus, Ganymede, Hyacinthus and Orpheus’s own story (10.79–219: refugerat . . . femineam Venerem; 11.1–43). Cf. Narcissus’ homoeroticism squared, the early stages of misogynistic Pygmalion, and Ars 2. Richlin (1992: 158) counts “more than fifty” rapes. Ovid presents sex as “good to think with”—from the extreme of violent lust to “too much love.” Galinsky (1975: 146–7) e.g., alleges that Ceyx and Alcyone’s’s love conforms to amatory principles that “Ovid never ridicules.” Davis (1983: 148) thus analyzes catastrophic closeness. Earlier drafts profited from the acumen of this volume’s honorand, Gregson Davis and Micaela Janan. I thank my co-editors for their suggestions, too. Errors remain my responsibility.

REFERENCES Ahl, F. 1985. Metaformations. Soundplay and Wordplay in Ovid and other Classical Poets. Ithaca and London. Ahl, F. 1988. “Ars est caelare artem (Art in puns and anagrams engraved)” in Culler: 17–43. Barchiesi, A. 1989. “Voices and narrative ‘instances’ in the Metamorphoses,” in Knox 2006: 274–319, orig. MD 23: 55–97. Bömer, Franz. 1969–86. P. Ovidius Naso. Metamorphosen. Heidelberg. 4 vols. Bréguet, E. 1960. “In una parce duobus. Thème et cliché,” Hommages à L. Herrmann. Coll. Latomus. Bruxelles. 205–14. Culler, J., ed. 1988. On Puns. The Foundation of Letters. Oxford. Davis, Gr. 1983. The Death of Procris. ‘Amor’ and the Hunt in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Rome. Delcourt, Marie. 1974. “utrumque-neutrum,” in Mélanges d’histoire des religions offerts à H.-Ch. Puech. Paris. 117–23. Fantham, Elaine. 1979. “Ovid’s Ceyx and Alcyone: The metamorphosis of a myth,” Phoenix 33: 330–45. Frye, N. 1976. The Secular Scripture. A Study of Romance. Cambridge, Mass. Galinsky, G. Karl. 1975. Ovid’s Metamorphoses. An Introduction to the Basic Aspects. Berkeley and Los Angeles. Gamel, Mary-Kay. 1984. “Baucis and Philemon: Paradigm or paradox?” Helios 11: 117–31. Greenberg, Caren. 1980. “Reading Reading: Echo’s abduction of language,” in S. McConell-Ginet et al. eds., Women and Language in Culture and Society. New York. 300–09. Gresseth, G. K. 1964. “The myth of Alcyone,” TAPA 95: 88–98. Griffin, A. H. 1976. “Ovid’s treatment of Ceyx and Alcyone,” in Acta Ovidiana Bucurestu. Bucharest. 321–4. Griffin, A. H. 1997. A Commentary on Ovid Metamorphoses Book XI = Hermathena 162/3.

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Hallett, J. P. 1989. “Woman as same and other in Classical Roman Elite,” Helios 16: 59–78 Hollenburger-Rusch, C. 2001. Liquitur in lacrimas. Zur Verwendung des Tränenmotivs in den Metamorphosen Ovids. Hildesheim. Janan, Micaela. 1988. “‘The book of good love’?: Design versus desire in Metamorphoses 10,” Ramus 17: 110–37. Kawin, B. F. 1972. Telling it again and again. Repetition in Literature and Film. Ithaca. Keith, Alison. 1996. “Iterative Structures in Amores 2,” APhA annual meeting. Unpublished presentation. Knox, P., ed. 2006. Ovid. Oxford Readings in Classical Studies. New York. Kröner, H. O. 1970. “Elegisches Unwetter,” Poetica 3: 388–408. Lateiner, D. 1990. “Mimetic syntax. Metaphor from word order, especially in Ovid,” AJP 111: 204–37. Leach, E. W. 1974. “Ekphrasis and the theme of artistic failure in Ovid’s Metamorphoses,” Ramus 3: 102–42. Murphy. G. M. H. 1972. Ovid. Metamorphoses XI. Oxford. Otis, Brooks. 1970. Ovid as an Epic Poet. Cambridge. Second edition. Parsons, P. J., P. J. Sijpesteijn and K. A. Worp. 1981. “New literary texts. 1. ‘Hesiod’s Γυναικω̃ν Κατάλογος’,” [ = P.Leid. 502–9, OCT3, F10a, 10d] in Papyri Greek and Latin. London, Pp. 1–20. Pellizer, Ezio. 1986. “Reflections, echoes, and amorous reciprocity: on reading the Narcissus story,” in J. Bremmer, ed. Interpretations of Greek Mythology. Totowa, N. J. 107–20. Cf. QUCC 17 (1984) 21–35. Poyatos, F. 1993. Paralanguage. Amsterdam and Philadelphia. Renner, T. 1978. “A Papyrus Dictionary of Metamorphoses,” HSCPh 82: 277–93. [ = P. Mich. 1447]. Rhorer, C. R. 1980. “Red and white in Ovid’s Metamorphoses: The mulberry tree in the tale of Pyramus and Thisbe,” Ramus 9: 79–88. Richlin, A. 1992. “Reading Ovid’s Rapes,” in Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome, ed. Amy Richlin (Oxford, 1992) 158–79. Rosati, G. 1981. “Il Racconto dentro il racconto. Funzioni metanarrative nelle di Ovidio,” Selva di Fasano. Atti del convegno internazionale “letterature classiche et narratologia.” Perugia. 297–309. Segal, Charles, 1992. “Philomela’s web and the pleasures of the text: Ovid’s myth of Tereus in the Metamorphoses,” in R. M. Wilhelm, H. Jones, eds., The Two Worlds of the Poet. Detroit. 281–95. Tissol, G. 1997. The Face of Nature. Wit, Narrative, and Cosmic Origins in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Princeton. Tränkle, H. 1963. “Elegisches in Ovids Metamorphosen,” Hermes 91: 459–76. Wheeler, Stephen. 1995. “Imago mundi: another view of the creation in Ovid’s Metamorphoses,” AJP 116.1: 95–121. Wilkinson, L. P. 1963. Golden Latin Artistry. Cambridge.

5

Naso and Gods Timothy Peter Wiseman

Abstract. Ovid addresses the gods five times in the Fasti, a poem designed not only for elite males but for larger listening publics. He does so when discussing Mensis Maius, a story of Numa, an interview with Flora, astronomical information about June and Ino’s connection to Mater Matuta. He has divine informants who are said to have interacted with the narrator Ovid. They offer Q and A sessions, response to prayers, lectures and spontaneous assistance. Bards (vates) are privileged communicants (F. 6.3–8, 19–24), now in Augustan Rome as well as in legendary times, despite Cicero’s and Lucretius’ rationalist scorn for the idea. Poets and prophets chanted the gods’ messages for the people, Ovid no less than others (Tr. 3.14.23–4), in the forum, circus, theater and area Capitolina (F. 6.18). Please don’t be offended, Judy, if I compare you to an ogre. I mean it only in the way Marc Bloch meant it (1954: 26) when he said that the good historian is like the ogre in the fairy-tale: wherever she smells human flesh, there her quarry lies. (All right, I know he didn’t use that pronoun, but I bet he would have, if he’d known you.) Because you care about people and not abstractions, I’d like to offer a piece on a favorite poet which I hope, despite the title, may catch that scent of humanity. Let’s think about Publius Naso and his poem of times and reasons. In particular, let’s think about the first line and first word of Fasti 5: Quaeritis unde putem Maio data nomina mensi? Do you want to know where I think the month of May got its name from?

Who is being addressed? Fasti is a didactic poem, full of the vocabulary of teaching and learning, and, like all didactic poems, it’s notionally addressed to a singular person. So why is quaeritis plural? It’s true that Naso sometimes addresses groups of people: the Quirites (4.187, 5.597, 6.775–80) or populus Romanus (4.731), whether as participants in a sacrifice (1.71, 2.631–8, 4.731, 6.775) or spectators at the games

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(4.187, 4.619–20, 5.597); women in particular (4.133–7, 4.145, 4.155), whether married (2.557) or unmarried (3.253–6, 6.475–6, 6.621), mothers (6.561) or prostitutes (4.865–70, 4.878); also boys and girls (3.815), farmers (1.669, 1.695, 4.407–11), doctors and teachers (3.827–30). But we have to assume that that is just a figure of speech, apostrophē, with the poet imagining an audience in order to vary his exposition, and it’s always clear who is supposed to be addressed, and why. What we have in the first line of Book 5 is something different. This phenomenon occurs five times in the poem. Here at 5.1 the poet is going to narrate the Muses’ dispute about the meaning of mensis Maius; at 3.370 (credite dicenti) he’s telling the story of Numa and the shield from heaven; at 5.347 (mihi credite) he’s reporting his interview with Flora; at 6.195 (si quaeritis) he’s giving astronomical information for the first day of June; and at 6.551 (quaeritis?) he’s explaining about Ino as Mater Matuta. In four of those five cases the unexplained plural comes in a substantial setpiece narrative: 110 lines on the Muses’ dispute, 133 on the Numa story, 195 on the Flora interview, and 95 on Ino and Melicertes. The exception is 6.195, but even that comes at the end of a date-item (1 June) which is mostly devoted to the 82-line story of Janus and Carna. My guess is that he had his primary audience in mind as he composed these brilliant narratives. I don’t mean an implied audience, or an ideal audience, or a fictive audience. I mean a real audience, smelling of human flesh. I assume that like most poets of the ancient world, Naso wrote in the expectation that his poems would be first received by a large public audience, and I think he occasionally allowed himself to address that audience even within the didactic conventions of the calendar poem. In four, and perhaps all five, of these cases of plural address, Naso was telling stories about the gods. In two of them, 5.1 on the Muses and 5.347 on Flora, he was telling stories about how the gods gave the didactic instructor his information. Fasti is full of divine informants, and the way they interact with the narrator is entertainingly varied. With Janus (1.89–288), Flora (5.183–378) and Erato on behalf of the Great Mother (4.191–372), there is a formal question-and-answer interview. More often it’s an invited lecture, as from Mars (3.167–252), the Muses (5.7–110), Thybris (5.635–62), Mercury (5.693–720), Juno, Juventas and Concordia (6.9–100), Minerva (6.651–710), and the Pierides (6.799–810). The information often comes in answer to a prayer, as from Venus (4.1–17), Mercury (5.445–84) or Vesta (6.249–460); but sometimes when the narrator prays we can only assume that the information that follows is the deity’s response, as from Carmentis (1.469–586), the Pierides (2.269–302), the poet’s own Muse (2.359–80), Egeria (3.259–392), Bacchus (3.713–90), Pales (4.721–806), Quirinus (4.807–62) or Bacchus again (6.481–562). Occasionally, help is even offered spontaneously, as by an unnamed Muse (1.657–62) or the god Sancus (6.213–16).

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What did his Roman audience make of all this? Fortunately we have the excellent evidence of a contemporary prose author on the subject—a serious-minded historian, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who reacted strongly against the impious belief that the gods never manifest themselves to mortals (Ant. Rom. 2.68.1–2): ὅσοι μὲν οὖν τὰς ἀθέους ἀσκοῦσι φιλοσοφίας, εἰ δὴ καὶ φιλοσοφίας αὐτὰς δεῖ καλεῖν, ἁπάσας διασύροντες τὰς ἐπιφανείας τῶν θεῶν τὰς παρ’ Ἕλλησιν ἤ βαρβάροις γενομένας καὶ ταύτας εἰς γέλωτα πολὺν ἄξουσι τὰς ἱστορίας ἀλαζονείαις ἀνθρωπίναις αὐτὰς ἀνατιθέντες, ὡς οὐδενὶ θεῶν μέλον ἀνθρώπων οὐδενός. ὅσοι δ’ οὐκ ἀπολύουσι τῆς ἀνθρωπίνης ἐπιμελείας τοὺς θεούς, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς εὐμενεῖς εἶναι νομίζουσι καὶ τοῖς κακοῖς δυσμενεῖς διὰ πολλῆς ἐληλυθότες ἱστορίας, οὐδὲ ταύτας ὐπολήψονται τὰς ἐπιφανειάς εἶναι ἀπίστους. Those who practise the atheist philosophies (if they deserve to be called philosophies at all), who ridicule all the manifestations of the gods which have taken place among either Greeks or foreigners, will reduce these reports as well to mocking laughter and attribute them to human trickery, on the grounds that none of the gods is concerned with anything human. But those who do not absolve the gods from the care of humanity, but after going deeply into history conclude that they are favorable to the good and hostile to the wicked, will not suppose that even these manifestations are incredible. Dionysius was quite explicit in his determination to strengthen the convictions of “those who are more scrupulous in preserving the beliefs about the divine power which they have inherited from their forefathers”, against the attacks of “those who despise ancestral custom and claim that the divine power has no control over human reason” (Ant. Rom. 8.56.1). And he was not alone. A few years later, Valerius Maximus put it equally clearly (1.8.7): nec me praeterit de motu et uoce deorum immortalium humanis oculis auribusque percepto quam in ancipiti opinione uersetur, sed quia non noua dicuntur sed tradita repetuntur, fidem auctores uindicent: nostrum sit inclutis litterarum monumentis consecrata perinde ac uana non refugisse. I am not unaware how controversial is the question of the perception by human sight and hearing of the movement and voices of the gods. But since what is said is not new, but a repetition of what has been handed down, my authorities may defend their own credibility. Let it be my part not to have avoided, as if they were false, events that have been consecrated in famous literary monuments. That is, poets might be telling the truth about such things.

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Naturally, our poet exploited the controversy. On the one hand (Fasti 3.167–8), si licet occultos monitus audire deorum uatibus, ut certe fama licere putat. . . if bards are allowed to hear the secret advice of the gods, as rumour certainly thinks they are,

then yes, of course he could talk to Mars. Vesta, on the other hand, is a different case (6.253–4): non equidem uidi (ualeant mendacia uatum) te, dea, nec fueras aspicienda uiro. No, I did not see you, goddess (farewell, lies of bards), nor should you have been seen by a man.

So are bards truthful, or not? The passage where he addresses the point most clearly is at the start of Book 6, again introducing a dispute among goddesses about the meaning of the month’s name (6.3–8): facta canam; sed erunt qui me finxisse loquantur, nullaque mortali numina uisa putent. est deus in nobis, agitante calescimus illo; impetus hic sacrae semina mentis habet: fas mihi praecipue uoltus uidisse deorum, uel quia sum uates, uel quia sacra cano. I shall sing what happened, but there will be some who say I have made it up, and that no divinities have appeared to a mortal. There is a god in us, and when he stirs us we glow; this urge has the seeds of a sacred mind. It is permitted for me in particular to have seen the faces of the gods, whether because I am a bard or because I sing sacred themes.

Then he sets his scene, in a numinous grove with no sound but that of running water. Three goddesses appear, one of them the formidable Juno. The poet is terrified (6.19–24): horrueram tacitoque animum pallore fatebar; tum dea, quos fecit, sustulit ipsa metus. namque ait ‘o uates, Romani conditor anni, ause per exiguos magna referre modos, ius tibi fecisti numen caeleste uidendi, cum placuit numeris condere festa tuis.

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Timothy Peter Wiseman I had started to shudder, and was confessing my mind in speechless pallor. That was when the goddess herself took away the fear she caused. For she said: “O bard, composer of the Roman year, who have dared to tell great things in tiny measures, you made for yourself the right to see heavenly divinity when you decided to compose the festivals in your verses.”

It’s time to look at his terminology. Was a “bard” something more privileged than a common or garden poeta? What was a uates, anyway? The short answer is easy: a uates was a prophet or a prophetess. It’s the term he used in this poem for Carmentis (Fasti 1.585, 5.97, 6.535–7), in the Heroides (5.123, 16.125) for Cassandra, and in the Metamorphoses for Tiresias, Amphiaraus, Orpheus, Proteus, Helenus and the Sibyl. But they are all figures of legend; were there such people in Rome too? Certainly there were. The noble Gnaeus Marcius and his brother were famous uates in the third century BC (Cic. Div. 1.89, Livy 25.12.3); Cornelius Culleolus was a uates who was listened to with respect in the civil war of 87 BC (Cic. Div. 1.4); ten years later the senate was influenced by “the chants of uates” at the time of Lepidus’ insurrection (Sall. Hist. 3.77.3M); seven years later again, when the consuls Pompey and Crassus were at odds, “certain divinely inspired individuals foretold many dreadful things if they did not come to an agreement” (App. BCiv. 1.121.563); and in the civil war of 49 BC “certain oracles were chanted, purporting to be those of the Sibyl, and some people became inspired and prophesied many things” (Dio Cass. 41.14.4). Marcus Cicero included “listening to a uates” as one of the things to avoid if you didn’t want to fall prey to superstition (Div. 2.149). Titus Lucretius detested them as bringers of anxiety; immediately after the great passage on the sacrifice of Iphigeneia, he wrote this (1.101–9): tantum religio potuit suadere malorum. tutemet a nobis iam quouis tempore uatum terriloquis uictus dictis desciscere quaeres. quippe etenim quam multa tibi iam fingere possunt somnia quae uitae rationes uertere possint fortunasque tuas omnis turbare timore! et merito, nam si certam finem esse uiderent aerumnarum homines, aliqua ratione ualerent religionibus atque minis obsistere uatum. To so much evil has religion been able to persuade people. You yourself will at some time seek to abandon us, overcome by the terrorspeaking words of the uates. Of course—how many are the nightmares they can conjure up for you already, to be able to overthrow your way of life and disturb all your fortunes with fear! And rightly, for if people saw there was an end to their troubles, by some means they would find the strength to withstand the religious threats of the uates.

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But Cicero and Lucretius were rationalists; it is not their view, but what they attacked, that we should see as the norm in Roman society. That, as I said, is the short answer; what makes the long one longer is the fact that, from at least the mid-first century BC, the word could also mean “poet”. Marcus Varro, the earliest known author to attest that usage, attributed it to the antiqui (Ling. 7.36). Naso himself used the word in that sense very frequently, to describe poets of all kinds, ancient and modern. If we find it puzzling, that may be because we don’t have a clear picture in our minds of how, and where, prophets and poets respectively operated. It’s obvious that history is full of unknown unknowns. Things that everyone took for granted weren’t normally recorded: what would be the point? Unusual circumstances were needed to mention the commonplace in the historical record. So we know about uates prophesying in the Roman forum only because in 213 BC the senate thought they were affecting public morale and ordered the praetors to control them (Livy 25.1.8–12). We know about poets reciting their works in the Roman forum only because Quintus Flaccus wanted to explain why he didn’t do that himself but read only to small groups of friends (Hor. Sat. 1.4.73–5). It’s easy to miss these passages, or ignore them. But we should be grateful to have the information, however tenuously attested, and if it’s not what we imagine went on in the Roman forum, then we’d better adjust our imaginations. Here’s Marcus Cicero (Cael. 21), talking to the jury on a ludi scaenici day when theirs was the only court in session: iam quae sit multitudo in foro, quae genera, quae studia, quae uarietas hominum uidetis. Now you see what a crowd is in the forum, what sorts, what pursuits, what variety of people. Among them might be poets and prophets, pursuing their studia for the multitudo. They had the same site (the forum), the same audience (the Roman people), the same mode (canere, cantare), the same meters (first Saturnians, then hexameters)—and when you were listening to “ultima Cumaei uenit iam carminis aetas”, or “altera iam teritur bellis ciuilibus aetas”, the question “poet or prophet?” would be pretty meaningless. It was a uates in action. Let me offer you three passages, two of them very familiar, the third perhaps less so. First, Quintus Flaccus in the thirties BC (Epod. 7.17–20): sic est: acerba fata Romanos agunt scelusque fraternae necis, ut inmerentis fluxit in terram Remi sacer nepotibus cruor. That’s how it is. What hounds the Romans is bitter fate and the crime of a brother’s murder, ever since the blood of innocent Remus flowed into the earth, a curse to his descendants.

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Second, the same Flaccus a few years later, under Caesar Augustus (Carm. 3.3.57–60): sed bellicosis fata Quiritibus hac lege dico, ne nimium pii rebusque fidentes auitae tecta uelint reparare Troiae. But I tell the fates to the warlike Quirites on this condition, that they do not, out of too much piety and self-confidence, decide to rebuild the roofs of ancestral Troy.

And third, the report of an unnamed uates in the fifth anxious year of Tiberius Caesar, when no one knew how stable the regime would be (Dio Cass. 57.18.4–5): λόγιόν τέ τι ὡς καὶ Σιβύλλειον, ἄλλως μὲν οὐδὲν τῷ τῆς πόλεως χρόνῳ προσῆκον, πρὸς δὲ τὰ παρόντα ᾀδόμενον, οὐχ ἡσυχῇ σφας ἐκίνει· ἔλεγε γὰρ ὅτι· τρὶς δὲ τριηκοσίων περιτελλομένων ἐνιαυτῶν Ῥωμαίους ἔμφυλος ὀλεῖ στάσις . . . A certain oracle, supposedly Sibylline, disturbed them not a little. Although not appropriate to the history of the city, it was chanted with reference to the present, for this is what it said: “When thrice three hundred years have come and gone, then civil conflict shall destroy the Romans. . .” All three, I think, are evidence for the same phenomenon. Poets and prophets alike were listened to as “interpreters of the gods” (Plato Ion 534e, Hor. Ars P. 391). Pay no attention, I beseech you, Judy, to those who would tell you that our friend Naso wrote for an audience of ‘elite males’.1 He tells us himself who he wrote for, from the Amores (Tr. 4.10.57–8)— carmina cum primum populo iuuenalia legi barba resecta mihi bisue semelue fuit My beard had been cut only once or twice when I first read my youthful poems to the People

—to the Metamorphoses (15.877–9): quaque patet domitis Romana potentia terris, ore legar populi, perque omnia saecula fama, siquid habent ueri uatum praesagia, uiuam.

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Wherever Roman power extends over conquered lands, I shall be read [aloud] in the mouth of the People, and if the prophecies of the uates have any truth, I shall live in fame through all the centuries.

That was the audience from whom Augustus deliberately cut him off, forcing him to rely on the written word sent from exile (Tr. 3.14.23–4): nunc incorrectum populi peruenit in ora, in populi quicquam si tamen ore meum est. As it is, [my work] has come to the mouth of the People uncorrected— assuming anything of mine is in the mouth of the People.

Despite our modern assumptions about a book-reading literary culture, the evidence is unequivocal: Publius Naso wrote for the Roman people. And who were they? Not just the rich and powerful, masters of their own destiny, escorted by their slaves and clients, but also—and mainly—the opifices et tabernarii (Cic. Flacc. 18, App. BCiv. 2.113.472), artisans and shopkeepers, who on public holidays locked up the tabernae where they lived and worked and came out into the piazza to be instructed and entertained. Can you imagine yourself as one of them—as it might be, Aurelia Nice, fishmonger from the Horrea Galbae, or Nostia Cleopatra, beautician from the Vicus Longus, or Sellia Epyre, gold-thread dressmaker from the Sacra Via (ILS 7500, 7618, 7692)? You can’t control your destiny. Pale Death may kick your door in any of a dozen ways, with fire, flood and famine among the more obvious: all those apocalyptic horsemen—to change the metaphor a little—are riding through Rome at the time Fasti is being written (Dio Cass. 55.22.3, 26.1–27.3). You need to know how the gods are disposed, and when someone claims to be able to tell you, and makes you laugh at the same time, then of course you listen to him. The Roman forum wasn’t the only place to do so. When the ludi circenses were on, and everyone was in the Circus Maximus, there were ten or twenty races per day (Dio Cass. 59.7.2–3), each of seven laps and so lasting about fifteen minutes. In between, the people had to be entertained. There were uates in the circus (Juvenal 6.584), there were actors (Festus 370L), there were dancing girls (Priapea 27) and we can be sure there were poets performing there too (Dio Chrys. Or. 20.10). Here is Naso talking to Flora about her games (Fasti 5.185–90): incipis Aprili, transis in tempora Mai: alter te fugiens, cum uenit, alter habet. cum tua sint cedantque tibi confinia mensum, conuenit in laudes ille uel ille tuas. circus in hunc exit clamataque palma theatris: hoc quoque cum circi munere carmen eat.

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Timothy Peter Wiseman You begin in April, you cross over into the times of May: the one has you as it flees, the other when it comes. Since the borders of the months are yours and fall to you, either of them is fitting for your praises. The Circus continues into this month, and the palm acclaimed in the theatres. Let this song too go with the Circus’s show.

The Augustan calendars mark 3 May as ludi in circo, and this passage comes between two of the five places where the poet lets slip a second-person-plural address (5.1, 5.347). I’m sure he was writing in the confident expectation that he would be performing in the circus that day each year, telling the Roman people about the quarrelling Muses and his conversation with Flora—and I hope he managed it at least once before Augustus banished him. The Circus Maximus was a racetrack stadium 600 meters long, with a capacity estimated at 150,000. It’s obvious that a poet, a prophet or a dancing girl couldn’t command the entire audience at once. But we can guess whereabouts Naso expected to be performing. At the north-west (starting gates) end, on the Aventine side, there was an open space where Flora’s temple used to be. It had burned down in 31 BC, and Augustus didn’t rebuild it—or its neighbour, the temple of Ceres, Liber and Libera—until the very end of his principate, almost certainly after Naso’s banishment (Tac. Ann. 2.49.1). But Flora’s cult continued; it was still her space. Where better for the poet to invoke the Mother of Flowers (Fasti 5.183) and bring her before her people for an affectionate interview? At a time of food shortages, she could remind them that all growing things depend on her favor (5.261–74, 311–30). Similarly, the opening passage of Fasti 6 was surely meant for an audience in the area Capitolina, on the dedication day of Juno Moneta on the arx. The poet all but tells us so, when Juno appears to him: haec erat (agnoui) quae stat in arce Iouis (6.18). Juno makes much of her Capitoline and Saturnian status (6.29–34 and 52), she argues with Juventas, who had an altar in the Capitolium (Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 3.69.5), and their dispute is ended by Concordia, whose temple was also on the arx (Livy 22.33.8). It was, after all, a piazza with plenty of space—enough for a popular assembly (App. BCiv. 1.15.64), enough for the ludi Capitolini to be held there every October—and since the poet is about to drop another of his second-person-plural addresses (6.195), I think we may populate it with his intended audience on the first day of June. This is the passage (6.5–8) where Naso is most explicit about his credentials for talking to gods: est deus in nobis, agitante calescimus illo; impetus hic sacrae semina mentis habet: fas mihi praecipue uoltus uidisse deorum, uel quia sum uates, uel quia sacra cano.

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There is a god in us, and when he stirs us we glow; this urge has the seeds of a sacred mind. It is permitted for me in particular to have seen the faces of the gods, whether because I am a bard or because I sing sacred themes.

How serious was he being here? Of course I know one can never answer that question, but at least we can listen to what he says. We get warm, calescimus, when the god within makes his presence felt. Was that just a casual turn of phrase? Let me draw your attention to the testimony of another Publius, a century and a half later, who was an expert on conversations with gods. Sometime in the late 140s AD, Aelius Aristides gave a speech in Pergamum in which he reported what the Muses had said to him in a dream (Or. 28.21). One of his rivals criticised it, and he gave a withering reply (28.113–4, trans. Charles A. Behr): δέδοικα μὲν οὖν μὴ παρὰ κωφὸν λέγω καί τινα τρόπον ἐξορχοῦμαι δεικνὺς ἀμυήτῳ τὰ ἱερά· ὅμως δὲ ὥσπερ ἐν μύθῳ τις ἀπόρρητος λόγος τοῖς μὲν ἀκούειν δυνατοῖς εἰρήσεται, σοὶ δὲ οὐδὲν μᾶλλον. λέγω γὰρ οὖν ὡς ἐπειδὰν περιέλθῃ τὸ τοῦ θεοῦ φῶς καί, το λεγόμενον δὴ τοῦτο, ἀστράψῃ δι ́ ἅρματος, οἷα δὴ ταῖς Μούσαις ἅρματα οἱ ποιηταὶ δεδώκασιν, καὶ κατάσχῃ τὴν ψυχὴν τοῦ λέγοντος, ὥσπερ τι πόμα παρελθὸν ἐξ Ἀπόλλωνος πηγῶν, εὐθὺς μὲν τόνου καὶ θέρμης ἐνέπλησεν μετ’ εὐθυμίας, ἦρεν δὲ τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς ἄνω καὶ τὰς τρίχας διέστησεν . . . I am afraid that I am talking to one who is deaf. And in a certain way I am betraying the mystery by revealing the sacred rites to one who is uninitiated. But still, like a kind of secret tale in a religious myth, it will be told to those who can understand it, but no more to you. I say that whenever the light of god has come over the speaker and, in the words of the proverb, “there is lightning through the chariot,” such chariots as those which the poets have given to the Muses, and it has possessed his soul like a drink which has come from the springs of Apollo, then straightway it fills him with strength and warmth and good spirits, and lifts up his eyes and causes his hair to rise . . . Aristides knew what he was talking about. One winter in Smyrna Asclepius had spoken to him in a dream and told him to bathe in the river immediately. It was freezing cold, but he was “still full of warmth from the vision of the god”—not warmth as from human devising, but continuous, “producing the same effect throughout the whole of my body and during the whole time” (Hieroi logoi 2.21–2). What exactly was he talking about? I don’t know, but perhaps Naso did. He was, and he knew it, the most brilliantly original and creative poetic talent in the history of Latin literature. He must have had an opinion about where

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inspiration came from. Like Aristides, he knew about the god’s presence making your hair stand on end (Fasti 1.97, 3.332); he too thought of himself as a charioteer (1.25, 2.360, 4.10, 6.586), and he drank, if not from the springs of Apollo, at least from the stream of Egeria and the Camenae (3.273–5). Yes, these are figures of speech, and if you believe that il n’y a pas d’horstexte, there’s nothing more to be said. But there’s no reason to doubt that Aristides was trying to describe what really happened to him (“Aristides,” says William Harris [2009: 121], “though exceedingly vain and egocentric, is a relatively credible witness”), and when we find Naso using the same idiom, it’s not absurd to suppose that his calescimus could be genuinely physiological, whatever the “true” cause of the reaction. He may well have thought there was a god in him, who warmed his flesh with inspiration. What do you think, Judy? Can you smell it? NOTE 1. At the editors’ request, I reveal that the author I mainly had in mind at this point was Richard J. King (2006). But the idiom is not uncommon.

REFERENCES Bloch, M. 1954. The Historian’s Craft. Manchester: Manchester University Press Harris, W. V. 2009. Dreams and Experience in Classical Antiquity. Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press King, R. J. 2006. Desiring Rome: Male Subjectivity and Reading Ovid’s Fasti. Columbus Ohio: Ohio State University Press

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A Note on Fame and the “Widow of Ephesus” Sheila K. Dickison

Abstract. The “Widow of Ephesus” treats the widow as a celebrity, and that affects readers’ reactions to her behavior and expectations about the story’s outcome. In this note, I apply recent studies’ insights into the phenomenon of celebrity, particularly Tom Payne’s witty, irreverent and popularizing book, Fame: What the Classics Tell Us about Our Cult of Celebrity. Payne understands fame as “a systematic cycle of celebration, consecration and sacrifice” that is used to create celebrities in order to kill them, whether literally or figuratively, as sacrificial victims. The theme of fame and celebrity in the “Widow of Ephesus” accounts for some of the ambiguity with which the other characters—and readers— view the widow of this story. In Niall Slater’s analysis (2009: 27) of “The Widow of Ephesus,” he observes: In its immediate context, this internal narrative offers a study in varied audience response: Lichas thinks it outrageous, the rest of the men laugh, and Tryphaena is embarrassed (compare Richlin, ‘Sex in the Satyrica’, p. 89), but on the whole it fulfills Eumolpus’s intention of restoring good feeling after conflict. The thematic import is more controversial: it can be seen as a traditional misogynistic tale, proving no woman is really virtuous (Conte 1996a: 104–7), as a triumph of life in the midst of death (Arrowsmith 1966), or as a microcosm of the way the Satyrica devours other literature. (Rimell 2002: 123–39) In addition, this simple and elegant tale develops another theme: the widow as celebrity and how that affects our reactions to her behavior and our expectations about the story’s outcome. Tom Payne’s witty, irreverent and popularizing book Fame: What the Classics Tell Us about Our Cult of Celebrity (2009) examines the cult of celebrity throughout history and makes the case that fame is “a systematic cycle of celebration, consecration and sacrifice” (106)—that we create celebrities in order to kill them, whether literally or figuratively, as sacrificial victims.1 And those are certainly our expectations as to how the tale of “The Widow of Ephesus” will end.

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In his recent study on fame, The Frenzy of Renown: Fame and its History, Leo Braudy (1997: 15) defines fame as made up of four elements: “a person, an accomplishment, immediate publicity and what posterity has thought about them ever since.” All four elements are present in this tale. Braudy (17) also reminds us that an important aspect of fame, at least for the Romans, was that accomplishment be connected with behavior in the public sphere. Winning fame is a male prerogative. The good woman has no part in this public world; her sphere is the domestic world. When a woman moved outside of the domestic sphere, she threatened “the Roman identification of masculinity and public display” (Baudy 1997: 95). In a second recent study of fame, Chris Rojek’s Celebrity (2001), we find the useful observation that celebrities are “cultural fabrications” (10). While a celebrity’s impact on the public may appear to be spontaneous, the image has been carefully stage-managed (in modern times by publicists, agents, photographers and so on). In the case of the widow of Ephesus, we can read between the lines that she has carefully staged her own image as the most renowned example of pudicitia (female virtue; here marital fidelity). Rojek also makes the illuminating suggestion that celebrity status “always implies a split between a private and public self” and that the “public presentation of self is always a staged activity, in which the human actor presents a ‘front’ or ‘face’ to others while keeping a significant portion of the self in reserve” (11). Later in this note, I will show that the end of the story depends on the revelation of the widow’s private self.

THE WIDOW AS CELEBRITY The tale begins with a spotlight on the matrona.2 From the opening sentence, we learn that she is a marvel to wonder at (spectaculum sui) for women of neighboring communities (111.2) because of her such well-known virtue (tam notae . . . pudicitiae). As scholars have pointed out, spectaculum sui sets up the “theatrical” nature of her behavior, a “performance” not just for women of her community but of neighboring communities (vicinarum . . . gentium). How wide an audience this is can be imagined from the fact that the story is set in Ephesus, a very large and prosperous city in this period. That she has played an active role in “creating the spectacle” is clear from the verb, evocaret (she summoned; McGlathery 2001: 122).3 The complex second sentence again directs our attention to the widow (haec), dispatches her husband in three words (cum virum extulisset, when she had arranged for her husband to be carried out of the house for burial) and then concentrates on the deliberate public actions that constitute her grief: not content with the ordinary signs of mourning, she takes it upon herself to keep watch over the dead body and weep over it day and night. The connective, ergo, underlines the deliberate nature of the widow’s cultivation of her relationship with her public, just as the words in conspectu frequentiae suggest that she is playing to a large

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crowd. The third sentence focuses on her audience, who by now are involved in this “theatrical interaction” with her: parentes, propinqui, magistratus, finally complorata . . . ab omnibus (111.3).4 Again we are reminded of her exalted status as a woman of unique example (singularis exempli femina; 111.3). The light (lumen; 111.4) that burns in the tomb like a beacon and that her maid relights when it goes out symbolizes her preeminence in virtue. This portion of the narrative culminates in a confirmation of her celebrity status; this is surely what has motivated her from the beginning: in tota civitate . . . solum illud affulsisse verum pudicitiae amorisque exemplum omnis ordinis homines confitebantur (11.5).5 Public recognition is widespread and total (in tota civitate . . . solum illud . . . exemplum). The point is emphatically made by putting the main action of the sentence into a cum clause in a cum inversum construction.

THE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SIDES OF THE WIDOW’S PERSONALITY As Rojek’s observations about celebrities suggest, the public and private self are important halves of the celebrity personality. For the widow, her public self is the carefully cultivated image as the singular model of a modest and chaste woman, as we have seen. The end of the tale reveals her private self, powerfully highlighted as a contrast to the soldier’s (miles) ignominious surrender to defeatism in the face of the dilemma presented by the body stolen from the cross. In a total reversal of his previous actions, the victor miles is now helpless and entrapped; he finds himself unable to act (circumscriptus desidet), fearing punishment (veritus supplicium) and ready to fall on his sword for his neglect of duty (gladio . . . ignaviae suae; 112.2). It is the widow who takes charge, indicating in direct speech her clear preference for life over death: malo mortuum inpendere quam vivum occidere (I prefer to hang a dead man, rather than to kill a living one; 112.8). It is she who orders (iubet) her dead husband’s body to be lifted from the coffin and fixed onto the cross. It is her cleverness (ingenio) that the miles is said to have taken advantage of in order to save both of them. The narrator’s Quid diutius moror (why do I delay longer; 112.2) signals a quickening pace in the story that mirrors the widow’s confident and powerful actions.

THE WIDOW AS SACRIFICIAL VICTIM As early as the second sentence of the episode, the reader gets the impression that the widow’s determination to keep watch over her husband’s body (corpus custodire) and weep over it whole nights and days (totis noctibus diebusque coepit) will end in her own death. Her determination to end her life by not eating (mortem inedia persequentem) is underlined by the use of a

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compound present participle and the widow’s choice of her means to death (inedia). Surely starvation is the most appropriate way for this singular example of marital fidelity to end her life. Neither parents nor relatives can dissuade her; even the magistrates are rejected, and they too finally depart. After five days without eating and drinking, she is now to all intents and purposes given up for dead by everybody, mourned as a woman of remarkable example (complorata singularis exempli femina; 111.3). That such is the case is confirmed by the fact that this is the language of an epitaph (Courtney 2001: 168). The first hint that the tale will have a different ending is in the mention of the light that accompanies the widow and her maid. As often as the light went out (defecerat, which can also mean “expired or died”), the maid brings it back to life again (renovabat; 111.4). The tale of the widow of Ephesus of course closes with a surprising twist: the widow does not go on to the literal end that she had seemingly planned for herself and that the mythic pattern would predict but in new circumstances quickly sizes up the situation and decisively embraces life for herself and her new husband. The theme of fame and celebrity in the telling of “The Widow of Ephesus” accounts for some of the ambiguity with which the other characters in the story and readers view her. On one level, by creating a public self that glorifies pudicitia, a female virtue belonging to the private sphere, the widow shocks by her violation of the Roman value system. On a second level, the revelation of a private self that reveals her to be a decisive, almost masculine individual who masterminds the choice of life over death violates what we thought we knew about her public self. Finally, her choice of life at the end of the tale violates our expectations that a celebrated figure will end as a sacrificial victim— adulation at the beginning replaced by a literal or figurative death. NOTES I count Judy Hallett as a very dear friend whom I have had the pleasure of knowing for more than forty years. An inspiration to many, she is legendary for her support of students, colleagues and friends. Her innovative and creative scholarship has added immeasurably to a richer understanding of the ancients. 1. For a perceptive review of Payne, see Weber (2010: 1). 2. Courtney (2001: 166 n. 11) notes that nowhere does Petronius use the term widow. She is identified as matrona, mulier or uxor in the text. 3. See, for example, McGlathery (2001: 119). 4. Parents, relatives, magistrates . . . mourned by the whole city. 5. In the whole city . . . people of every rank agreed that that had shone forth as the only true example of married love and fidelity.

REFERENCES Braudy, L. 1997. The Frenzy of Renown: Fame and Its History. 2nd ed. New York: Random House.

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Courtney, E. 2001. A Companion to Petronius. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McGlathery, D. B. 2001. “The Tomb of Epic: Bakhtinian Parody and Petronius’ Tale of the Widow of Ephesus.” In Carnivalizing Difference: Bakhtin and the Other, ed. P. I. Barta, P. A. Miller, C. Platter, D. Shepherd, 119–40. London: Routledge. Payne, T. 2009. Fame: What the Classics Tell Us about Our Cult of Celebrity. New York: Picador. Rojek, C. 2001. Celebrity. London: Reaktion. Slater, N. W. 2009. “Reading the Satyrica.” In Petronius: A Handbook, ed. J. Prag and I. Repath, 16–31. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Weber, C. 2010. “Killing the Gods.” New York Times Book Review, Dec. 5, 1.

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Part II

Gender

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The Fragments of Terentia1 Amy Richlin

Abstract. The letters of elite Roman women are largely lost. But all the major Roman male epistolographers corresponded with women; fragments of those women’s letters are embedded in the famous letter-books of Cicero and his ilk. As a thought experiment, this chapter assembles the fragments of the letters of Cicero’s wife Terentia from Book 14 of the Ad familiares, with translations and notes. A final section discusses Terentia’s imagined letter-book in terms of epistolarity and the history of fragment-collecting in the discipline of Classics.

LOST WOMEN LETTER WRITERS In the late 460s CE, Sidonius Apollinaris, in the programmatic letter of the first book of his Letters, made passing reference to a work now lost and mysterious: nam de Marco Tullio silere melius puto, quem in stilo epistulari nec Iulius Titianus sub nominibus inlustrium feminarum digna similitudine expressit (“Indeed, I think it better to be silent about Marcus Tullius, whose epistolary style not even Julius Titianus in his Letters of Famous Women imitated with the closeness it deserves,” Ep. 1.1.2). It is one of the curiosities of Latin literary history that, though a Titianus might find it worth his while to ventriloquize famous women in a sort of prose Heroides, the plentiful correspondence of elite Roman women was not preserved. We do have some letters addressed to women in the corpora of the great epistolographers: Cicero first of all, with a whole book of letters to Terentia (Ad familiares 14), along with reports of his correspondence with Caerellia; Pliny, whose female correspondents included not only his wife Calpurnia but her aunt Calpurnia Hispulla and four other women; Fronto, whose two letters to Domitia Lucilla, mother of Marcus Aurelius, mention other letters between them; Symmachus, whose son preserved in his letter-book over eighty letters addressed to Symmachus’s daughter and her husband; and particularly Augustine and Jerome.2 But what about women’s own letters? Sometimes letters from women form part of ancient biographies and histories. Among such texts—which

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we might think of as appliquéed letters, or paintings of letters, as opposed to the scrapbooked letters of letter-books—Judith Hallett has championed as genuine the letter-fragments attributed to Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi (2004, 2006). Generally, however, to get at “real letters” by women, historians have preferred the vastly more plentiful remnants of a much lower class (see Rosenmeyer 2001: 3–11 on what makes a letter real). Writing letters was part of daily business for people in all walks of life, and there is no shortage of letters on papyrus by women (Bagnall and Cribiore 2006; Wilfong 2002); the friendship networks of women in Roman army encampments are beginning to be reconstructed from their correspondence by Elizabeth Greene (2011, Forthcoming). In the general dearth of writing by Roman women, scholars have made the most of what little we have; still it does not seem to have occurred to anyone that fragments of another set of elite epistolographers might be wrung from the letters addressed to them. If we take these women seriously as historical actors, why not reconstruct their fragments as philologists have loved to rebuild lost male writers from their testimony? As a preliminary exercise, then, this chapter will assemble the fragments of Terentia from Cicero’s letters and begin what I hope will be a longer conversation about them. Although these fragments should be viewed as seriously as the fragments of Roman orators, I also see them as necessarily a transcript of a half-overheard conversation, obscured by the static of time and the voice of Terentia’s interlocutor, something like Anne Carson’s interview with Stesichorus in Autobiography of Red (1998: 147–9). First, then, I present a list of the fragments of Terentia’s letters embedded in Cicero’s letters, with brief commentary and translations, then some observations on the endeavor of collecting fragments and on its relation to the nature of epistolarity and of writing women’s history.

THE FRAGMENTS OF TERENTIA Most ancient letter-books are lopsided, preserving mainly letters by a famous letter writer; even where there are some replies, direct exchanges are not common, much less a series of letters extending back and forth over time. This structure, I think, commonly gives the impression of single authorship—“Cicero’s letters” and “Pliny’s letters,” for instance—and leads readers to understand this author always to be the initiator, the addressee to be the responder. But of course this is not so for real letters; letters like those in Fam. 14, clearly not rewritten for publication, form part of a chain of which we usually do not see the first link. As will be discussed further below, the amoebaic structure of letter-writing affects the meaning made within each letter: the letter writer writes in response to the letter just received, or to a silence, but always with the recipient in mind, an imagined interlocutor. This, then, is where our fragments come from. Cicero, like most letter writers, echoes the letters to which he is responding. For example, the first letter

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in Book 14 of Ad familiares includes, in its first paragraph, these words: Quae si, tu ut scribis, fato facta putarem, ferrem paulo facilius; sed omnia sunt mea culpa commissa (“If I could attribute these events to fate, as you write I should, I would bear them a little more easily; but everything that was done was my fault,” Fam. 14.1.1). The first group of words in boldface type clearly picks up on words in Terentia’s most recent letter to Cicero, as, arguably, do the words mea culpa. Other wording seems to refer to shared knowledge: quoniam sperare nos amici iubent (“since our friends order us to have hope,” 14.1.2). The fragments that follow, then, derive from similar embedded words.3 The letters from Cicero to Terentia that make up Book 14 derive from three main points in their lives: Cicero’s exile in 58–57 BCE (14.1, 2, 3, 4); his return from his governorship in Cilicia into the outbreak of the Civil War, in October of 50 (14.5, inbound from Athens) and January 49 (still in central Italy, 14.14, 18); and his separations from Terentia during the Civil War itself (14.7, leaving Italy, June 49; 14.6, from Pompey’s camp, July 48; 14.9, 12, 16, 17, 19, from Brundisium, November 48 through January 47; 14.8, 11, 13, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, still at Brundisium, June through September of 47). Cicero’s position on the map is “away”; Terentia’s is “home,” in Rome as far as we can tell. Note that the letters are chronologically jumbled as presented in the letter-book, an artifact of the assemblage (see Beard 2002); in chronological order, they are: From Cicero’s exile: Fam. 14.4, 2, 1, 3 Returning from Cilicia: Fam. 14.5 In central Italy after his return from Cilicia: Fam. 14.18, 14 In the Civil War: Fam. 14.7, 6; 12, 19, 9, 17, 16; 8, 21, 11, 15, 10, 13, 24, 23, 22, 20 This jumbling obscures the fact that Terentia’s husband came home after his governorship for only about six months before leaving again for the war, and that, on his return from the war, he spent a year sitting in Brundisium (October 48 through September 47), waiting for his fate to be resolved by Caesar. The letters in Ad familiares 14 are often studied as evidence of Cicero’s state of mind at these crisis points in his life, in which case they are often thrown in with the more politically informative letters to Atticus and other male correspondents. Reacting against the unscrambling of the original letter-books, a job over which modern editors toiled, Mary Beard has argued that Cicero’s letter-books should be read as artfully made assemblages, producing a model treatment of the Tiro letters, Ad familiares 16 (2002); on the same principle, Erik Gunderson has carried out a literary analysis of the Terentia and Tiro letters together (2007). Biographers of Terentia, and historians of Roman women generally, have used Ad familiares 14 as evidence of the relationship between this husband-wife pair (esp. Claassen 1996; Dixon 1986; Treggiari 2007). We might think instead here of this letter-book as part of a Venn diagram, where the small area of intersection

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is all that remains of one of the circles: Terentia’s Letters to Cicero, or just her letters to Cicero. I want to emphasize that the missing circle was originally there; thus the total number of the Letters to Cicero reconstructed here matches only misleadingly the total number of letters in Fam. 14, for even the selection of letters in Fam. 14 makes it clear that there were more letters from Terentia to Cicero at the time Cicero’s extant letters were written. The relative map position of the two correspondents is certainly constructed by the selection of letters, since they must have written to each other when Terentia was, say, in Tusculum and Cicero was in Rome. The missing circle thus contained kinds of material not in the intersection of the two circles; indeed, if each side of a correspondence is a sample of a subjectivity, within Cicero’s letters we have for Terentia only a sample of that sample—the part he responded to. Still, the fragments, taken as the extant remains of an original corpus that existed independently of Cicero’s own letters, provide evidence of Terentia preferable to the combination of what Cicero says about her as well as to her in his letters, and certainly preferable to later ancient life-writing, particularly Plutarch’s Life of Cicero. In order to make sense of what Terentia was writing, her letters are put into chronological order here and numbered accordingly; the fragments are then given in the order in which Cicero responds to Terentia’s words and ideas in his letters to her. Even this order is a phantom: the dates of some letters have long been the subject of scholarly debate—here I mainly follow Shackleton Bailey 1977—and we cannot know whether Cicero followed Terentia’s order point by point. Again, the number of her letters, her position on the map with respect to Cicero, and the material about which she wrote all exceed what is visible in Fam. 14, for, out of the subset of Cicero’s letters to her that were kept (after their divorce), the editor of Fam. 14 perhaps made his own selection—a selection whose narrative arc tells a story that has been read as unfavorable to Terentia. If the editor was Tiro, as seems likely (most recently Treggiari 2007: 80), a third party enters the family dynamics. The undoing of the letter-book order, as it turns out, also throws into question the letter-book’s story. And who did keep the letters in Fam. 14? Could it have been Terentia herself? Were these particular letters the ones she saved as records of three crisis points in her life? Did Tiro only take what she had and shuffle it? Maybe there is another story in this letterbook, a subtext. If so, it is very much obscured, and most restoration must be conjectured. Take what follows as a thought experiment, then, rather than as even a hypothetical reconstruction of a letter-book; and yet the letters once were real. Frgs. 1–7, from Terentia Letters to Cicero 1: written before Cicero Fam. 14.4, April 30 (so dated; from Brundisium), 58 BCE 1 (Fam. 14.4.1) velim epistulas ad nos saepius scribas I wish you’d send us letters more often

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2 (Fam. 14.4.1) cupio te videre et in meo complexu tenere. deos oravi uti . . . I want to see you and hold you in my arms. I pray to the gods that . . . 3 (Fam. 14.4.3) si roges, ad te veniam If you’d ask me, I’d come to you 4 (Fam. 14.4.4) Pisonem certo scio fore semper nostrum I know Piso will always be loyal to us 5 (Fam. 14.4.4) de familia liberata quid est agendum? molestum . . . What is to be done about the household slaves we’ve freed? It’s a problem . . . 6 (Fam. 14.4.5) animo sis magno et spem habeas salutis reciperandae You should be of good heart and have hope of getting your life back 7 (Fam. 14.4.6) curae mihi erat . . . noli te culpare. necesse est ut vivas, ut omnia feras, pro liberis patrem desiderantibus I’m worried . . . Don’t blame yourself. You have to live, and bear it all, for the sake of your children, who miss their father See Shackleton Bailey 1977: 284–7. Fam. 14.4 is, chronologically, the first in the exile series, written from Brundisium as Cicero was about to leave Italy. It is clear, however, from the letter’s opening words that Cicero has been writing to Terentia from the road, and has likewise been hearing from her; Fam. 14.4 is written in response to Terentia Letters 1. Shackleton Bailey remarks of all the letters from exile that they are addressed to the whole family but really address Terentia. Cicero’s letter begins with excuses for not writing more often, framed in terms of extravagant expressions of grief and remorse; if it comes to the worst, he wishes he could die in Terentia’s arms and notes the prayers she had always given as a good wife (castissime, 14.4.1), ill rewarded by the gods. He then dithers as to whether she should come to join him or not, concluding that her ill health plus the practical help she can give him at Rome outweigh his need to have her with him immediately, but that, if all hope is gone, she should come at once, for she is his consolation (14.4.3). He expresses lively concern about their children and weighs the family’s assets; he agrees that their son-in-law Piso will remain loyal; he gives advice on what to do about the complicated freeing of the household slaves, and tells Terentia not to worry (14.4.4). He responds gloomily to her encouragements to hope, wishes to hear more from her, gives further reports on those who have helped him and might help her, and closes with words of empathy and praise. Most of this constitutes explicit replies to points raised in her letter(s) to him, and the expressions of emotion seem likely to be echoic.

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Frgs. 8–12, from Terentia Letters to Cicero 2: written before Cicero Fam. 14.2, October 5 (so dated; from Thessalonica), 58 BCE 8 (Fam. 14.2.1) epistulas mi perbreves scribis You write me such short letters 9 (Fam. 14.2.2) spem habeo in novis tribunis pl. I’m hopeful about the new tribunes of the plebs 10 (Fam. 14.2.3) domum redimam I’m going to buy back our house 11 (Fam. 14.2.4) necesse est ut scribas ad eos qui tibi auxilio forent You have to write to the sort of men who’d be able to help you 12 (Fam. 14.2.4) noli longius recedere Don’t move any further away See Shackleton Bailey 1977: 287–8. Fam. 14.2 is, chronologically, the second letter in the group, and responds to a letter from Terentia that must have been written no later than mid-September. Cicero again opens with an excuse to Terentia, saying he writes to no one longiores epistulas. This excuse, placed at the hinge of two long letters (14.1 and 2), obscures the fact that the letter-book has fast-forwarded, omitting the letters between April (Fam. 14.4) and October. Here, as he would note again in 14.1, Cicero has heard details of Terentia’s labors from a third party; P. Valerius has written him an account of how Terentia was “conducted from the Temple of Vesta to the Tabula Valeria,” which throws him into exclamations of pity and remorse. His language here includes terms of endearment—mea lux, meum desiderium (“my light, my desire”)—found elsewhere mainly in love poetry (14.2.2); it is possible that this language echoes similar endearments on her part (compare Sulpicia ap. Tibull. 4.12.1, mea lux). He constantly expresses concern for her health, and specifically for the “tears and sordes (mourning clothes)” into which she has been cast (14.2.2; cf. squalor, 14.3.2), but there is no direct sign that she has complained of either. The assumption of disheveled mourning in public, a standard move protesting prosecution, would have been a strong statement on her part (so, rightly, Treggiari 2007: 60, 66), and Cicero here responds to it. He begs her to write “as often as possible” (14.2.4). As he would again in 14.1, what Cicero picks up from her letter is practical advice on what he can do to help himself (not specific enough, he complains), along with news on hopeful developments in Rome and her plans about their house, evidently aimed at getting the property back. Note that she still writes about the property as “our house,” despite the fact that it has been torn down; he insists on the bleaker truth, yet states that he will take the restoration of the

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property as the final token of his own restoration (14.2.3). She, along with others (speaking for the family as a whole? or with Cicero’s friends?) has also told him not to go any further away from Rome. Frgs. 13–19, from Terentia Letters to Cicero 3: written before Cicero Fam. 14.1, November 25 (so dated; from Dyrrachium), 58 BCE 13 (Fam. 14.1.1) omnes vexationes fato fieri putes, non tua culpa All our troubles—you should attribute them to fate, and not to your own fault 14 (Fam. 14.1.2) sperare nos amici iussere Our friends order us to have hope 15 (Fam. 14.1.3) amicis placuit, ut tu familiam . . . Our friends think it is a good idea for you to [do something with] our household slaves 16 (Fam. 14.1.3) istic pestilentia etiam permanet? valetudini servias Is there still an outbreak of illness going on there? Take care of your health 17 (Fam. 14.1.4) de Quinto fratre, me mitte accusare About your brother Quintus—don’t you accuse me 18 (Fam. 14.1.5) gratias agas [list of men] et eis narres te certiorem a me de eorum officio esse factum You should thank [list of men] and you should tell them it was by me that you were informed of their good offices . . . 19 (Fam. 14.1.5) vicum vendam I’m going to sell my apartment block4 See Shackleton Bailey 1977: 289–90. Fam. 14.1 was sent almost two months after Fam. 14.2; Cicero writes in Thessalonica but sends the letter from Dyrrachium. Terentia’s letter perhaps responds at least in part to 14.2, sent from Thessalonica on October 5; there should have been time for 14.2 to reach her and for her reply to have reached Cicero by the time 14.1 was written. 14.2.3 urges her not to spend her own money on working toward the restoration of their house, but to let others do it; 14.1.5 shows that she repeated her intention to do so anyway. Like Fam. 14.2.2, Fam. 14.1.1 indicates that, although others wrote to Cicero of the huge efforts Terentia was undertaking, she did not herself complain of them to Cicero in Letters to Cicero 3. Cicero again wishes he could return to Terentia’s embrace (14.1.3), makes excuses for a previous

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request (evidently) that Terentia should do more to work with his brother Quintus (14.1.4) and begs Terentia to keep him informed of her actions. The problem with Quintus does not appear elsewhere in any of these exile letters, and it is possible that Terentia in Letters to Cicero 3 reacted to something Quintus had said to her, claiming Cicero as his source. Note that, responding to his complaint in 14.2 that he did not know whom to write to unless she told him, she has given him a list and instructed him to tell these people he heard of their help from her; in the world of Roman elite favor-exchange, this marks her position as a power broker. What Cicero picks up from her letter to him is, again, practical, upbeat, and concerned for his mental and physical well-being. Frgs. 20–3, from Terentia Letters to Cicero 4: written before Cicero Fam. 14.3, November 29 (so dated), 58 BCE 20 (Fam. 14.3.2) eramus in spe We’re hopeful 21 (Fam. 14.3.3) maximae mihi curae erat ut tuto esses. praecipiam ut . . . I’m very worried about your safety. I’d recommend that . . . 22 (Fam. 14.3.3) te scribere ad amicos [list of names] oportet, et gratias agere . . . litteras Dexippo des . . . eis narres te certiorem a me de eorum officio esse factum You have to write to these friends [list of names], and thank them . . . you should give the letters to Dexippus [to carry] . . . you should tell them it was by me that you were informed of their good offices . . . 23 (Fam. 14.3.5) si velis, ad te veniam If you’d like, I’ll come to you See Shackleton Bailey 1977: 291. Fam. 14.3 is the fourth and last in the group of letters Cicero wrote to Terentia from exile, dated four days after Fam. 14.1. The letter includes, in Shackleton Bailey’s opinion, a hint at Cicero’s thoughts of suicide (14.3.5); we might note that it is couched as the alternative to a plan that, rather than Terentia coming to join him, Cicero should come back—“if you all succeed in your endeavors.” Letters to Cicero 4, then, would have been written either as a follow-up to Letters 3 or in response to a letter from Cicero that is not in Fam. 14. Letters 4 was one of a batch of letters, as Cicero remarks, and must have evinced increased worry about Cicero’s state of mind. Fam. 14.3 opens with notice that Cicero has received “three letters,” evidently all from Terentia, and evidently bearing bad news (14.3.1). After expressing his feelings of guilt at length, however, he goes on to report that

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he has complied with Terentia’s instructions on writing letters to those who can help him, and to explain what messengers he has sent, in order that he may hear from her as often as possible. He rejects her offer to come to him, saying that he needs her more on the spot in Rome, for the whole effort to reinstate him depends on her (14.3.5). At the end, he not only repeats his plea for frequent letters but expresses his devotion to her (“believe me, nothing is dearer to me than you are, or ever has been”). Despite the sad images that begin the letter, most of what Cicero has picked up from her letter consists, again, of expressions of hope, concern for his safety and practical instructions. We might note that the flow of practical instructions runs mostly from her to him, and that she has again specified that he should let his addressees know that he heard of their kindnesses from her. His rejection of her offer to come to him is interesting, considering how much was later made of the journey she did not make in 48–47; note that here he effectively threatens to kill himself if she does not stay in Rome and solve their problems. Compare Fam. 14.4.3/ frg. 3 (April, 58), and Q. fr. 1.3.3 (June 13, 58): Quid quod mulierem miserrimam, fidelissimam coniugem, me prosequi non sum passus, ut esset quae reliquias communis calamitatis, communis liberos tueretur. And what of the fact that I did not allow that poor woman, my most faithful wife, to follow me, just so she would be able to stand guard over the shared salvage of our disaster, and our shared children. She might have joined him. Frgs. 24–6, from Terentia Letters to Cicero 5: written before Cicero Fam. 14.5, October 16 (so dated; from Athens), 50 BCE 24 (Fam. 14.5.1) Verebar ne litterae superiores non tibi redditae sint I am afraid my earlier letters were not delivered to you 25 (Fam. 14.5.1) te exspectabam, itaque epistulam longiorem non scribebam I’m expecting to see you, and so I’m not writing a longer letter 26 (Fam. 14.5.2) ut scis, Precius emortuus est, et hereditas . . . As you know, Precius is dead, and the inheritance . . . See Shackleton Bailey 1977: 461–2. Terentia’s short letter evidently dealt with the logistics of Cicero’s return to Italy from his governorship in Cilicia, the state of politics and of Terentia’s health and the impact of both on her projected journey to meet Cicero in southern Italy, and some family

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business regarding an inheritance. In Fam. 14.5 he backs into a request that she should let Atticus handle this (hoc velim cures . . . ut Pomponius aut . . . Camillus . . . curet, “this business, I wish you’d see to it . . . that Pomponius or . . . Camillus . . . should see to it,” 14.5.2). Clearly she had been dealing with it herself, through her own agent. In the event, she met him at Brundisium on the very day he arrived, November 24 (Fam. 16.9.2), having made the long journey south on the eve of the Civil War. The earlier letters she was worried had not reached him would have had to do with the unpleasant surprise of Tullia’s marriage to Cornelius Dolabella, which at this point she perhaps did not yet realize was unwelcome to Cicero. She should have anticipated having enough time before she saw him, though, to justify writing a longer letter now or to write again before she left Rome, which would not have been until about November 10. Perhaps she was being evasive; he seems to pick up on a certain defensiveness at 14.5.1 (Neque sum admiratus). Frgs. 27–8, from Terentia Letters to Cicero 6: written before Cicero Fam. 14.18, January 22 (so dated; from Formiae), 49 BCE 27 (Fam. 14.18.1) ubinam honeste et tuto possumus esse? Wherever can we be that will be both appropriate to our rank and safe? 28 (Fam. 14.18.2) domum deserere nolebam; consilium capiebamus de propugnaculis et praesidio I do not want to abandon the house; we’re making a plan for fortifying it and setting up a guard See Shackleton Bailey 1977: 482. Cicero, hoping for a triumph on his return from Cilicia, never re-entered the city, but Terentia went back to the house on the Palatine that had been rebuilt with such trouble after Cicero’s return from exile, and Tullia went back to Rome with her, perhaps staying with her mother instead of with her husband Dolabella, who was busy helping Caesar. Tullia was about two months pregnant. Fam. 14.18 and 14.14 deal with Cicero’s conflicting desires: he wants Terentia and Tullia to be safe with him in the country, and to do what will look good to other political families on his side of the war, but also wants the house not to be left open to looters. A letter speaking for both Terentia and Tullia seems to have told him that they were actively looking into the options but that they were leaning towards staying put. His repeated affirmation that the decision belongs to the women as well as to him (14.18.1, 14.14.1) and urgings that they think it over very carefully (14.18.1, 2; 14.14.2) must be in response to their articulations of their own ideas. In the midst of his excited rehearsal of options in 14.18 Cicero endorses a plan to have the steward Philotimus, who was Terentia’s freedman, see to the fortification of the house. He also requests daily couri-

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ers, and Fam. 14.14 was written the next day, but the two women had joined him at Formiae by February 2. The family then stayed together off and on until Cicero left to join Pompey in Greece in early June. Frgs. 29–31, from Terentia Letters to Cicero 7: written before Cicero Fam. 14.14, January 23 (so dated; from Minturnae), 49 BCE 29 (Fam. 14.14.1) attamen quid nos par sit facere etiam non intellegebam but I still don’t see what we are to do 30 (Fam. 14.14.1) quomodo se habent nostra praedia? How are things going at our country houses? 31 (Fam. 14.14.2) quid est cum nostris? How are things going with our side? See Shackleton Bailey 1977: 482–3. Fam. 14.14 is very similar in content to 14.18, and mostly conveys Cicero’s own fears. He does, however, speak reassuringly about what the two women’s situation would be in the country (bellissime, “just fine”) and presents them with news updates on men who have joined or helped Pompey. [Frgs. 32–4], from Terentia Letters to Cicero [8]: written, if at all, before Cicero Fam. 14.7, June 7 (so dated), 49 BCE [32] (Fam. 14.7.1) cura ut valeas. magnae nobis curae valetudo tua . . . deum orabam ut salutem tuam tueatur . . . Take care of yourself. Tullia and I are worried about your state of health . . . I’m praying to the god to watch over your good health . . . [33] (Fam. 14.7.2) ad nos scribe ut primum potes cum in navem conscenderis Write us as soon as possible after you’ve boarded ship [34] (Fam. 14.7.3) quo eamus si milites . . .? Where would we go if the soldiers . . .? See Shackleton Bailey 1977: 495–6. Cicero in Fam. 14.7 gives physical details of an illness that took a turn for the better within two days after he had last seen Terentia and Tullia, so it is possible that he is not responding to a letter from Terentia at all but to concerns they had discussed before separating. His letter continues a conversation on his prospects in joining Pompey and on the question of where Terentia and Tullia should go to be

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safe as the war escalates and he leaves Italy. It is noteworthy that there is no trace in Cicero’s letter-book of correspondence between him and Terentia (or indeed with anyone) over the death of Tullia’s first baby, born prematurely on May 19 (Att. 10.18). Frgs. 35–6, from Terentia Letters to Cicero 9: written before Cicero Fam. 14.6, July 15 (so dated), 48 BCE 35 (Fam. 14.6) Quare litteras non saepius ad nos scribis? Why don’t you write us a letter more often? 36 (Fam. 14.6) non possum . . .um vendere, nec . . .um . . . cui tu satis fieri velis moleste fert . . . nostra mihi gratias egit pro . . . I can’t sell the [name] estate, nor the [name] estate. . . . the one whom you want to please is getting annoyed . . . Our girl has thanked me for . . . See Shackleton Bailey 1977: 499–500. Terentia’s letter reached Cicero in Pompey’s camp; his short letter in reply avoids naming their daughter Tullia or her husband Dolabella, evidently for security reasons, and hers presumably followed the same protocol. The problem at hand is the money owed Dolabella for Tullia’s dowry; in Cicero’s absence, Terentia has been handling this. She has been trying to sell an estate. For him, what lay ahead was Pompey’s disastrous defeat at Pharsalus in August; on the home front, business still had to be carried on. At this point Dolabella was not far from Cicero, in Caesar’s camp, and was writing to him as a loyal son-in-law. Even in these circumstances, Terentia is still asking Cicero to write more frequently than he does. We might conjecture, then, that she habitually wrote more letters than she received in return and found it frustrating. On the tone of Fam. 14.6, see Treggiari 2007:116; she suggests that Cicero might have resented the fact that Terentia could help Tullia when he could not. Frgs. 37–8, from Terentia Letters to Cicero 10: written before Cicero Fam. 14.12, November 4 (so dated), 48 BCE 37 (Fam. 14.12) salvos in Italiam vos venisse gaudeo I’m glad that you all have reached Italy safely 38 (Fam. 14.12) velim te adiuvare possim. ad te veniam quam celerrime . . . I wish I could help you. I’ll come to you as quickly as I can . . . See Shackleton Bailey 1977: 503. After the failed campaign with Pompey, Cicero did not return to Brundisium until mid-October, as Shackleton Bailey

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estimates (1966: 270–1), perhaps simply because, ordinarily, a messenger took seven to nine days getting from Rome to Brundisium (Treggiari 2007: 71, 180 n. 5). That is, if Cicero notified Terentia immediately on his arrival, it took about the usual amount of time, despite the unsettled state of the countryside, for his letter to reach her and hers to elicit Fam. 14.12. In that letter—in which he speaks to Terentia as an individual, not as part of the family group—Cicero expresses pessimism about the possible impact of his return on his family, about what Terentia could possibly do to help him and about the practicality of her traveling to Brundisium to join him, which he says would be useless anyway. Shackleton Bailey dates Att. 11.5 to November 4 on the basis of perceived similarities to Fam. 14.12, but in that much longer letter it is notable that Atticus has not volunteered to join Cicero but has advised him to draw nearer to Rome, traveling at night; also Cicero has had numerous letters from Atticus to which he has not yet replied. What Cicero picks up from Terentia’s letter is all positive. Frgs. 39–40, from Terentia Letters to Cicero 11: written before Cicero Fam. 14.19, for which the date of November 27, 48 BCE is Shackleton Bailey’s guess based on Att. 11.6. 39 (Fam. 14.19) valetudo Tulliae nostrae mihi magnae curae est . . . our dear Tullia’s illness is a big worry to me . . . 40 (Fam. 14.19) velimus propius accedas We wish you’d move closer in See Shackleton Bailey 1977: 501. Terentia at this point is keeping Cicero abreast of both family and political news; he ends Fam. 14.19 with a request that she see to it that Atticus’ letters are sent on to him. She has evidently given up on the idea of traveling to Brundisium and, like Atticus, wants Cicero to move north, which he says here he knows he should do but cannot. Frgs. 41–2, from Terentia Letters to Cicero 12: written before Cicero Fam. 14.9, for which the date of December 17, 48 BCE, is Shackleton Bailey’s guess based on Att. 11.7. 41 (Fam. 14.9) Dolabella et Tullia minus valent . . . Dolabella and Tullia are not feeling well . . . 42 (Fam. 14.9) quid tibi consilii est? What are your plans? See Shackleton Bailey 1977: 501. Cicero’s very short letter says only that the news that both Dolabella and Tullia are ill has made him feel even worse, and that he does not know what to do.

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Frg. 43, from Terentia Letters to Cicero 13: written before Cicero Fam. 14.17, for which the date of December 23, 48 BCE, is Shackleton Bailey’s guess based on Att. 11.8. 43 (Fam. 14.17) quare ad me non longiores epistulas et saepius scribis? Why don’t you write me longer letters, and more often? See Shackleton Bailey 1977: 501. At this point Terentia has been asking for more and better information from Cicero; his very short reply directs her to find out from two friends, [Q. Paconius] Lepta and Trebatius, who had managed to see Cicero in Brundisium. It seems quite possible that she knew Cicero was writing at much greater length to Atticus. Frg. 44, from Terentia Letters to Cicero 14: written before Cicero Fam. 14.16, January 4 (so dated); the year, 47 BCE, has been doubted, but the dire tone places it either in 57 or 47, and the references to Volumnia surely decide for 47. 44 (Fam. 14.16) Volumnia nec satis officiosa in me nec diligenter cauteque agebat, nam . . . Volumnia is not behaving properly to me, nor acting with care or caution; in fact . . . See Shackleton Bailey 1977: 501–2. Cicero’s response in Fam. 14.16 indicates that he has been waiting to hear from Terentia, but his comments on Volumnia’s behavior must be agreeing with complaints Terentia had made in her last letter. This perhaps supports the idea that she habitually wrote more letters than she received in reply. His further comments are somewhat dismissive of Terentia’s issues (alia sunt quae magis curemus, “we’ve got worse things to worry about”), perhaps annoying to a wife who was once again risking personal humiliation in order to bring her husband back from a sort of exile—this time, self-imposed. Volumnia, Antony’s mistress, was a former mime actress, now very influential; Susan Treggiari strongly agrees with Shackleton Bailey’s idea that Terentia had appealed to her for help (“fascinating,” 2007: 121). The word officiosa, if Cicero’s officiosior picks it up from Terentia’s letter, implies a feeling on Terentia’s part that it was gracious of her to talk to Volumnia at all and that Volumnia should have been grateful for the chance to help. Frg. 45, from Terentia Letters to Cicero 15: written before Cicero Fam. 14.8, June 2 (so dated), 47 BCE 45 (Fam. 14.8) Litterae Caesaris allatae sunt quae . . . A letter from Caesar has arrived that . . .

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See Shackleton Bailey 1977: 502. Fam. 14.8 appears after a gap of five months in Fam. 14—a gap obscured, as always, by the chronological jumbling of the letters. Cicero’s extremely depressed letters to Atticus from March through May (Att. 11.10–15) say explicitly that he cannot bring himself to respond as he should. In one of these Cicero mentions a letter to Terentia that does not appear in Fam. 14 (Att. 11.11.2); it concerned money, which Cicero desperately needed. The other main family troubles in these letters are the hostile behavior of Quintus Cicero and his son towards Cicero, and Cicero’s embarrassment over the actions of his son-in-law Dolabella (Att. 11.14.2, 11.15.3); among other issues, Dolabella was advocating the cancellation of debts at a time when Cicero needed to call his debts in. Terentia, then, has still been working for the practical support of a husband who now describes himself as ruined, and is caught between the feelings of her husband and her daughter about her daughter’s husband. In Fam. 14.8, a very short letter, Cicero expresses concern for Terentia’s illness, which he has heard about from at least two separate sources. But not from her; what he thanks her for is news of the arrival of a letter from Caesar. And he asks her to keep him posted. Frg. 46, from Terentia Letters to Cicero 16: written before Cicero Fam. 14.21, 47 BCE, which is dated slightly later than Fam. 14.8 by Shackleton Bailey. 46 (Fam. 14.21) minus belle me habeo . . . I don’t feel well . . . See Shackleton Bailey 1977: 502. The extremely short Fam. 14.21 offers only generic get-well wishes and instructions to take care of what needs to be done and to keep Cicero posted. Frgs. 47–8, from Terentia Letters to Cicero 17: written before Cicero Fam. 14.11, June 14 (so dated), 47 BCE 47 (Fam. 14.11) quando Tullia ad te venerit, fac me certiorem . . . When Tullia reaches you, let me know . . . 48 (Fam. 14.11) velim Ciceronem I wish you would [young Marcus] Cicero See Shackleton Bailey 1977: 502–3. Fam. 14.11 bears the surprising (to us) news that Tullia has made the journey to Brundisium to see her father; she had arrived on June 12, presumably a good week after Terentia’s letter announcing her departure (no response extant) would have arrived by courier. By July 9 Cicero was writing to Terentia about initiating Tullia’s divorce from Dolabella, although in the event this did not take place until late the next year.

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Meanwhile, Cicero abruptly announces a plan to send their son to negotiate with Caesar; perhaps this was in response to a request by Terentia to send him home to her. He was only eighteen, and she had not seen him in two years. On June 3 Cicero had written to Atticus about what he had heard about Terentia’s will—nothing good (Att. 11.16.5); her own freedman Philotimus had told Cicero she had “done some things wickedly (scelerate).” Cicero recurs to it in letters to Atticus dated July 5 (Att. 11.25.3), August 6 (Att. 11.24.2), August 25 or soon after (Att. 11.21.1), and around September 1 (Att. 11.22.2). He does not bring it up explicitly in any of the subsequent letters to Terentia in Fam. 14, but the Brundisium letters as a group have been taken as evidence that Cicero was cooling toward her; Treggiari presents all possible mitigating reasons for their tone (2007: 118–30), but, as will be seen, Terentia increasingly gives (information, help, children) without getting much in return. Frgs. 49–51, from Terentia Letters to Cicero 18: written before Cicero Fam. 14.15, June 19 (so dated), 47 BCE 49 (Fam. 14.15) Ciceronem desidero; mitte, amabo, Romam I miss Marcus; please send him to Rome 50 (Fam. 14.15) Quid novi est? quid fieri velis? praescribe mihi quid facto sit opus. What’s new? What would you like done? Tell me what you think needs doing. 51 (Fam. 14.15) Tulliam desidero I miss Tullia See Shackleton Bailey 1977: 503. When Terentia wrote this letter, she would not yet have heard back from Cicero about Tullia’s arrival, and evidently was still asking about plans for young Marcus. Cicero’s very brief reply fobs her off on their friend Sicca for news updates, and says shortly that Tullia is still staying with him (on June 14 he had written to Atticus that he was about to send her back home, Att. 11.17a). Frg. 52, from Terentia Letters to Cicero 19: written before Cicero Fam. 14.10, July 9 (so dated), 47 BCE 52 (Fam. 14.10) quid fieri velis? velim apertius scribas What do you want done? I wish you’d write more plainly See Shackleton Bailey 1977: 503. The very elliptical Fam. 14.10 meets Terentia’s request for explicit instructions about a pressing matter with directions to speak with Atticus. Shackleton Bailey takes the issue to be Tullia’s divorce

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and dates Att. 11.23 to July 9 (1966: 56, 291), the same day as Fam. 14.10, because it contains details about Dolabella’s misbehavior and Cicero’s wish to send a “notice of divorce” (nuntium, Att. 11.23.3), a word repeated in 14.13 on July 10. Att. 11.23 has to be later than July 8, a date mentioned in this otherwise undated letter. But surely Fam. 14.10 implies that Cicero wrote the letter to Atticus he mentions in 14.10 well before 14.10; the order of events implied by 14.10 is (1) sometime shortly before June 23 (serius quam oportuit, “later than I should have”; apertius scribi, quoniam ad illum scripseram, necesse non fuit, “there was no need for me to write more plainly [to you], since I had [already] written to him,” 14.10), Cicero writes a (not extant) letter to Atticus about a divorce, (2) June 23–24, Cicero writes to Terentia with brief, unclear directions, (3) July 1–2, knowing nothing of Cicero’s letter to Atticus, Terentia writes to complain that Cicero’s instructions are not clear to her, (4) July 9, Cicero writes Fam. 14.10 to tell Terentia to talk to Atticus if she has not already done so, and that same day writes again to Atticus (Att. 11.23) by fast messenger (11.23.2), enclosing a more specific letter to Terentia as an afterthought (see below). Yet Cicero also asks Terentia to send him a letter on developments as soon as possible—still expecting from her what he is only sporadically willing to give. Frg. 53, from Terentia Letters to Cicero 20: written before Cicero Fam. 14.13, July 10 (so dated), 47 BCE 53 Atticum percontata sum; dixit tibi placere nuntium remitti. num insanis? illum saltem specie nostrum nunc metuo, non est quem lacessas I’ve spoken with Atticus and he says you want a notice of divorce sent [to Dolabella]. Have you taken leave of your senses? [Dolabella] is dangerous these days, the last person you should wish to make angry. At least now he is ostensibly ours. See Shackleton Bailey 1977: 503. Fam. 14.13 was written the day after Fam. 14.10. But there must have been yet another letter, not extant in Fam. 14, for in 14.13 Cicero refers to “what I wrote to you in my most recent letter about sending a [divorce] notice”: this would have to have been written later in the day on July 9, a clarification. The backpedaling in Fam. 14.13 seems to reflect a letter written by Terentia on July 3 after she and Atticus have compared notes; the verbs in Fam. 14.13 admit to Cicero’s lack of firsthand knowledge specifically of public unrest and Dolabella’s potential for violence (ignoro) and concede to Terentia the ability to act (or not) and judge (quiesces, iudicabis, putabis, facies—“you will do nothing, you will judge, you will think, you will do”). With a one-week time lag, then, Terentia would have been receiving conflicting messages sent on the same or succeeding days, along with what she could glean from Atticus, and letters would have been crossing in the mail. Cicero’s letters to Atticus from June through early August of 47 veer among laments for Tullia, detailed accusations of

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Dolabella, plans to send him a notice of divorce, plans to pay him the second installment of Tullia’s dowry, requests for Atticus to work with Terentia to bring this about (Att. 11.25.3) and bitter complaints about Terentia’s supposed peculations—in response to Atticus’ promise of his own and Terentia’s financial help (11.24.3). Discussion of the divorce, however, ceases. Frg. 54, from Terentia Letters to Cicero 21: written before Cicero Fam. 14.24, August 11 (so dated), 47 BCE 54 (Fam. 14.24) cum scias de Caesaris adventu et de litteris quas Philotimus habeat, fac me statim certiorem When you know about Caesar’s arrival and about the letter that Philotimus may have, let me know at once See Shackleton Bailey 1977: 503. Cicero had written to Atticus on July 9 and again on July 22 about a rumor that Philotimus had arrived at Rhodes with a letter for Cicero from Caesar, and was expected at Brundisium on August 13 (Att. 11.23, 19); on August 6, however, Philotimus is still reported at Ephesus (Att. 11.24). Word of the rumor must have reached Terentia by August 4 either from Cicero or indirectly, for in Fam. 14.24 he writes to tell her he still has no firm news and promises he will let her know at once. Frg. 55, from Terentia Letters to Cicero 22: written before Cicero Fam. 14.23, August 12 (so dated), 47 BCE 55 (Fam. 14.23) cum scias quid Caesar faciat et quo te agas, fac me certiorem When you know what Caesar is doing and where you’re going, let me know See Shackleton Bailey 1977: 503–4. In Fam. 14.23, written the day after 14.24, Cicero lets Terentia know that he has finally heard from Caesar, favorably enough, and is deciding whether to wait for Caesar in Brundisium or go to meet him; he says he will let Terentia know what he decides, and pressingly requests couriers from her (with mail? or for his own use?). Frg. 56, from Terentia Letters to Cicero 23: written before Cicero Fam. 14.22, September 1 (so dated), 47 BCE 56 (Fam. 14.22) quid facies? What are you going to do? See Shackleton Bailey 1977: 504. In Fam. 14.22 Cicero tells Terentia only that he is still waiting for his couriers’ return in order to decide what he

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should do. Details of his indecision are provided in a letter to Atticus from around this time (Att. 11.22), Cicero’s last to Atticus until April of 46. Frg. 57, from Terentia Letters to Cicero 24: written before Cicero Fam. 14.20, October 1 (so dated), 47 BCE 57 (Fam. 14.20) ecquando advenis? When will you get home? See Shackleton Bailey 1977: 504. Fam. 14.20, chronologically the last in Book 14, brings Cicero home from Brundisium at last, with instructions to get the house at Tusculum ready for his arrival. Terentia at this point had not seen him for over two years, and meanwhile had held the household together in Rome, dealt with Tullia’s difficult marriage, hung onto Cicero’s properties in the teeth of threatened confiscation, and evidently managed her own property as well. At the other end of her epistolary connection was a husband who needed her constant help and sympathy, sent her conflicting directions, told her not to come see him, refused to try to move north from Brundisium where he was very uncomfortable, expressed little to her and nothing but laments and complaints to his best friend (including another threat of suicide, Att. 11.25.1 [July 5], possibly also 11.15.2 [May 14]), and, by the end of their time apart, was leaving her out of the loop of his instructions and giving her signs that he no longer trusted her or cared much for her. Treggiari describes Fam. 14.20 as “notorious,” but argues that it shows he still trusted Terentia to make the Tusculum house ready for him and planned to see her there (2007: 128–9). But he does not say anything about seeing Terentia, and the “we” of his letter seems to exclude her: In Tusculanum nos venturos putamus aut Nonis aut postridie. ibi ut sint omnia parata. plures enim fortasse nobiscum erunt et, ut arbitror, diutius ibi commorabimur. We think we will arrive at the Tusculum house either on the Nones or the day after. Have everything ready there. For perhaps there will be several people with us and, as I think, we will stay there for some time.

HOW TO READ THE FRAGMENTS OF AN IMAGINED LETTER-BOOK Of course we might apply the same method to Cicero’s other correspondents, most obviously Atticus, whose own letters are so glaringly absent from the letter-books named for him, and who is Cicero’s most addressed correspondent. Why Terentia? All history-writing is an assemblage of fragments; so Page duBois on Sappho: “We have come to recognize that our access to the

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past is always fragmented, our construction of our past interested, particular, and historically determined” (1995: 39; quoted by Susan Stephens, 2002: 84 n. 25, quotations forming another kind of collage). If all history-writing works from fragments, the writing of women’s history has to work harder from fewer fragments, and ancient women’s history works hardest of all; we are used to piecing, we are well acquainted with the spaces between. Themes can be traced in the fragments of Terentia’s letters imagined here. Her desires are centripetal: she often wishes to hear from her husband more frequently, or to hear more from him; she wants to be in the loop; she wishes he would go no further away than Thessalonica, she wants him to leave Brundisium for someplace closer to Rome; she wants him home; she misses her children when they are away from her. She also expresses her own willingness to go to meet her husband, and, when he does not tell her to stay put, she comes to him. She shows a strong desire to hold onto their house in Rome: home. She has business there, and not just with women, not only with Volumnia; she insists that Cicero remind those who have helped him that he heard about it from her. Cicero recognizes her as a power broker in her own right: “you from whom everybody used to seek resources (opem),” Fam. 14.2.2. When Cicero is exiled, she constantly writes to him of hope, an emotion that looks to the future, to continuity. She is the compass foot, like the daughter Yeats wished for, “rooted in one dear perpetual place”; he was wishing for someone less like Maud Gonne—less political. Terentia was both rooted and political. Thinking of the “matriotic” voice outlined by Judith Hallett in writing about Cornelia (2004), we can certainly see Terentia “putting family first,” and imagine her letters as a kind of “motivational” writing. Can we say of her that she “depends on her male kin for her social identity” (2004: 31)? Thinking of Terentia’s life in these terms shows how much her life revolved around, not her agnatic kin—her true male kin, in Roman terms—but the kin she chose when she married Cicero: her marital house and household; the son-in-law she chose for their daughter. It does her no discredit to label that choice farsighted; she could see trouble coming from her front-row seat in Rome much more clearly than Cicero, preoccupied with Cilicia and his fantasies of a triumph. She had lost the house once already, when Cicero was in exile; now it would be the house of Dolabella’s father-in-law: insurance. She and Atticus were not so different—both business people, both noncombatants, both survivors. Life-writing tries to make a continuous story out of fragments; for recent biographers of Terentia, the noncontinuous nature of letters and letterbooks has pushed its way into the story they make out of letters. Jo-Marie Claassen begins, “we are in the position of friends of the husband,” knowing only one side—particularly misleading in the case of divorce (1996: 209, cf. 225). That is, the reader of half a correspondence is encouraged to take a side, because the other half of the correspondence did not bother to show up: the letter-book construction enlists us. She rereads the brevity of the final letters (216): in a letter, length has meaning. Finally, she rereads the divorce

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itself, as if it were a last letter (a nuntius): Terentia running out of patience at last? Cicero, having met crisis with paralysis as Terentia went into action, needing at last to control at least one thing? For, in their historical context, Terentia was not just home, she was on the home front. So Susan Treggiari places Terentia explicitly “on the front line,” in the context of the story of her public ordeal in the Forum Romanum during Cicero’s exile (2007: 65–6). Treggiari insists on and enumerates Terentia’s responsibilities while Cicero was away, some pretty startling (like the fortifications of the house in 49 BCE), tracing them back to Cicero’s first absence during his quaestorship in Sicily (86).5 Her reader begins to recognize the normative expectations of a woman married to this career, like those of the wife of a nineteenth-century naval officer: run the house, manage the money, bring up the children, sometimes for years at a time. Knowing him, Terentia might have expected her husband to be away less often than others. But for Terentia, holding the fort, in the end, meant living through the occupation of the city in his absence. The selection of letters in Fam. 14, then, is drawn from her finest hours. At the same time, part of her job would always have been writing letters; her letter-writing was a form of action, always aimed at keeping up morale (so Treggiari 2007: 61). Letter-writing, though, has rules of its own, handily outlined by Janet Altman in Epistolarity (1982: 186–7). Letters in an ongoing exchange share qualities of linkage that mark them as part of a series: openings and closings; elliptical references to shared knowledge, people whose names need no glossing, code words. The beginnings and endings of letters, as in formal speeches, are often weighted; even the conventions of salutation and closing bear meaning, for any reader of a letter but more so for long-term, close correspondents. We can be sure Terentia read those formulae with close attention, as each letter arrived, an inadequate stand-in for a missing husband. Erik Gunderson has analyzed the barrage of Cicero’s wishes for Terentia’s (ill) health in the letters of 47 BCE as a convention made into a weapon through repetition (2007: 9–27). The expression of lack in a letter is feminizing, a position Ovid plays with in the Heroides; Cicero’s abject expressions of need in Fam. 14 are finally replaced by a sort of pity for his poor sick wife, certainly an assertion of power, however unconvincing. If Terentia played Penelope to Cicero’s Odysseus, then, the letters do not match normative expectations of who is the daring adventurer and who is the one in need of rescue. Gunderson takes the problem in Fam. 14 to be “a too-healthy wife and her effeminizing effect on Cicero” and comments that “his women are always already more heroic” (2007: 8, 24). In a letter exchange, of course, two people take turns being writer and reader, active and passive, in an amoebaic structure like that in verbal dueling. A letter exchange, however, takes place in slow motion. The time lag between sending and hearing back again adds a thrill of suspense to epistolary communication, and produces many conventions; the repeated requests to write often, to write more frequently, opening and closing letters, are

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expressions of desire and lack contingent on the absence that gives birth to letters. For Cicero, it often seems, leaving letters unanswered was a habitual form of passive aggression, a way to maintain his importance, to assert control, when he was down. He could have come by the habit legitimately; for a couple parted by the husband’s official travels, the structure of their separation organizes their communication, so that the wife produces a stream of letters often without any direct response, which reach the husband in a cluster, and he answers when business permits. This would have been what happened when Cicero was in Cilicia, with a three-month time lag in mail delivery (Treggiari 2007: 86). Within Italy, as seen in the fragments above, the time lag between Rome and Brundisium was only about a week, just long enough to cause trouble. And time passed more slowly in 48–47 BCE for Cicero than it did for Terentia, in Rome with all the action. Once a letter comes to rest and is kept, it falls into the condition of a souvenir, as described by Susan Stewart in On Longing (1984: 135): [The] capacity of objects to serve as traces of authentic experience is, in fact, exemplified by the souvenir. . . . we need and desire souvenirs of events that are reportable, events whose materiality has escaped us, events that thereby exist only through the invention of narrative. . . . The souvenir speaks to a context of origin through a language of longing, for it is not an object arising out of need or use value; it is an object arising out of the necessarily insatiable demands of nostalgia. People keep objects that tell them their own story as they wish to remember it and as they wish to have it back; sometimes, as they wish to have it recognized by others. So, for Stewart, “The souvenir [of individual experience] . . . is intimately mapped against the life history of an individual . . . Because of its connection to biography and its place in constituting the notion of the individual life, the memento becomes emblematic of the worth of that life” (1984: 138–9). Paradoxically, as the letter received in the mail stands in for a present lack, the letter saved marks a more irrevocable lack. Who kept the letters in Fam. 14 after the divorce? Of what did they constitute a memento? Perhaps these letters were an emblem of the worth of a wife’s life, for surely they contain little to mark Cicero at his best. Longing drives the letter, and the saving of the letter, and then creates a letter-book, out of which our longing might tear fragments of Terentia.6 This map is emphatically not the terrain; “[a]n epistolary Cicero,” as Gunderson remarks, “is a fragmented self” (2007: 45). Yet letter-books give the illusion of immanence, of genuineness, and readers often speak of voyeurism; the word “fascination” recurs in life-writers and writers on fragments (Most 2010: 376; Stephens 2002: 68; Treggiari 2007: 121). This chapter, then, marks a desire for contact with a lost whole—the other side of the Venn diagram. We might end with some thoughts on the history of fragment collecting, to put our thought experiment into its own historical context.

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Glenn Most defines fragment-collecting (2009: 13 = 2010: 372) as “the systematic search through the works by those authors that survive in order to gather up as far as possible actual pieces from texts that have not survived and information about them and their authors, with the aim of reconstructing these latter as far as possible.” Fragments themselves are “surviving parts of lost wholes” (2010: 371), “a nostalgic compensation for loss” (2009: 9), the token of an original “plenitude.” An illusory plenitude, as he observes, provides the satisfaction of imagining it may be better than the real thing (2010: 376). So Enrica Malcovati describes the pleasure she experienced in collecting the fragments of Roman oratory (1930: viii), . . . cum . . . ex his quamvis laceris fragmentis, eorum temporum quasi imaginem vitae exprimentibus, et plebis in comitiis fremitum et iudiciorum tumultus atque senatus disceptationum sonitum audire viderer. . . . when, from these fragments that depict, no matter how tattered they may be, a sort of image of the life of their times, I seemed to hear the hubbub of the populace in their assemblies and the shouting of the courtrooms and the boom of the debates in the senate. Glenn Most traces the history of fragment-collecting from the Renaissance desire to have all that remains of a lost perfect beauty—an aesthetic desire— to the nineteenth-century desire for scientific understanding of the past, “an attempt to understand the entire, complex totality of the ancient Greek and Roman cultures that had produced [the canonical masterworks]” (2010: 374). It began to be noticed about forty years ago that this attempt had not aimed for such a total totality; if it is true, as Most says, that “[e]very culture that studies fragments tries to acquire the fragments it wishes it deserves,” then it is time for more fragments of women. Susan Stephens, on the other hand, claims that the ancient settings from which we take fragments already constituted a “radical detachment of a fragment from its original context”; she is thinking of lexicons and quotations in general, though, and perhaps we might argue that words passed back and forth in a letter exchange are not so radically detached. We might also point out that an even more radical detachment is what we see in the modern authoritative collections of fragments, with their own new authors’ names attached: Ribbeck, Malcovati, Marx. Philologists’ books of fragments construct a new text that is ostensibly a reconstruction of an original text—as Stephens says, a deceptive “reification . . . with a seemingly unmediated text” accompanied by a “hypothetical context” (2002: 74, 76). Surely she is right; a desire to escape this pitfall informs Anne Carson’s translation of Sappho (2003), with more gaps than words on its pages. The fragments of Terentia are even more scattered than Sappho’s. What I would like to leave the reader with is a sense that the canon of which Cicero’s letters form a part is actually a canon of which Cicero and Terentia’s letters form a part, and that the fragments of Terentia are really there, even if the

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whole must be imagined. I think they make good company for Cornelia and the two Sulpicias. NOTES Judith Hallett has spent more time communicating with women than perhaps any classicist since classicists began—more, even, than the great humanists like Laura Cereta, more than her own much-studied Edith Hamilton. Her media may be more ephemeral, her talents honed in the age of telecommunications and the internet, but that temporal placement put her, luckily for us all, in a great time for women. Thus her aims are all the more focused: to hear women’s voices, to speak in reply, to act on what she hears. In a long history of writing, which I hope will continue for many years to come, she has reported on Roman women’s correspondence ranging from the (literal) barrage of the glandes Perusinae aimed at Fulvia to the strong voices of the two Sulpicias and of Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi (Hallett 1977, 1992, 2004, 2006, 2009a, 2009b, 2010). No one has worked harder to hear what was said, even in the faint reverberations of the unsaid. To Judith Hallett, then, I dedicate this small effort along lines she inspires. 1. Many thanks to the editors for their patience, and to Mario Telὸ for timely help with the bibliography. 2. On Caerellia, see Hemelrijk 1999: 55, 190, 205. Women to whom letters are addressed in Pliny’s letter-book: Calpurnia (6.4, 6.7, 7.5); Calpurnia Hispulla (4.19, 8.11); Calvina (2.4); Corellia (3.3); the elder Corellia (7.14); Pompeia Celerina, his second wife’s mother (1.4). These letters are discussed amidst a full treatment of women in Pliny’s letter-book in Carlon 2009; on the Calpurnia letters, see esp. De Pretis 2003. Fronto’s letters to Domitia Lucilla (M. Caes. 2.3, 2.15) are discussed in Richlin 2011; see also Taoka Forthcoming. On Symmachus’s letters to his daughter, see Salzman and Roberts 2011, introduction to Letter 1.11. On Augustine’s letters to women, see McWilliam 2007; on Jerome’s, see Miller 1993. See Wenskus 2001 for analysis of Latin/ Greek code-switching in letters to elite Roman women. 3. See Laks 1997 on the difference between fragment and testimonium. 4. The word vicum in Cicero’s letter is translated variously by Shackleton Bailey (1977: 290) as “a row of houses, either in the country . . . or in town,” and by Treggiari as “village” (2007: 68) and “street of houses” (2007: 185 n. 63). Surely Terentia, battling it out in Rome, would have sold urban real estate if possible—a street-long row house, then, broken into apartments, as commonly in Rome. 5. Treggiari on Terentia’s responsibilities: 2007: 64, 66, 74, 86, 102–3, 112–14, 118, 127–8. 6. See Beard 2002: 141–2 on how Cicero’s letters were read after his death.

REFERENCES Altman, J. G. 1982. Epistolarity. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press. Bagnall, R. S., and R. Cribiore. 2006. Women’s Letters from Ancient Egypt: 300 BC—AD 800. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Beard, M. 2002. “Ciceronian Correspondences: Making a Life Out of Letters.” In Classics in Progress, ed. T. P. Wiseman, 103–44. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Carlon, J. M. 2009. Pliny’s Women. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Carson, A. 1998. Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ———, trans. 2003. If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho. New York: Vintage. Claassen, J.-M. 1996. “Documents of a Crumbling Marriage: The Case of Cicero and Terentia.” Phoenix 50: 208–32. De Pretis, A. 2003. “‘Insincerity,’ ‘Facts,’ and ‘Epistolarity’: Approaches to Pliny’s Epistles to Calpurnia.” Arethusa 36: 127–46. Dixon, S. 1986. “Family Finances: Tullia and Terentia.” In The Family in Ancient Rome: New Perspectives, ed. B. Rawson, 93–120. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. duBois, P. 1995. Sappho Is Burning. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Greene, E. M. 2011. “Women and Families in the Auxiliary Military Communities of the Roman West in the First and Second Centuries AD.” Diss. University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill. ———. Forthcoming. “The Families of Roman Auxiliary Soldiers in the Military Diplomas.” In Proceedings of the Roman Frontiers Congress 2009, ed. P. Bidwell. Oxford: Archaeopress. Gunderson, E. 2007. “S. V. B.; E. V.” Classical Antiquity 26.1: 1–48. Hallett, J. P. 1977. “Perusinae glandes and the Changing Image of Augustus.” American Journal of Ancient History 2: 151–71. ———. 1989. “Women as ‘Same’ and ‘Other’ in the Classical Roman Elite.” Helios 16: 59–78. ———. 1992. “Martial’s Sulpicia and Propertius’s Cynthia.” Classical World 86: 99–124. ———. 2004. “Matriot Games? Cornelia, Mother of the Gracchi, and the Forging of Family-oriented Political Values.” In Women’s Influence on Classical Civilization, ed. F. McHardy and E. Marshall, 26–39. London: Routledge. ———. 2006. “Introduction: Cornelia and her Maternal Legacy.” Helios 33: 119– 47. ———. 2009a. “Corpus Erat: Sulpicia’s Elegiac Text and Body in Ovid’s Pygmalion Narrative (Metamorphoses 10.238–297).” In Bodies and Boundaries in GraecoRoman Antiquity, ed. T. Fögen and M. M. Lee, 111–24. Berlin: DeGruyter. ———. 2009b. “Absent Roman Fathers in the Writings of Their Daughters.” In Growing Up Fatherless in Antiquity, ed. S. R. Hübner and D. M. Ratzan, 175–91. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2010. “Human Connections and Paternal Evocations: Two Elite Roman Women Writers and the Valuing of Others.” In Valuing Others in Classical Antiquity, ed. R. M. Rosen and I. Sluiter, 353–73. Leiden: Brill. Hemelrijk, E. 1999. Matrona Docta: Educated Women in the Roman Elite from Cornelia to Julia Domna. London: Routledge. Laks, A. 1997. “Du témoignage comme fragment.” In Most 1997, 237–64. Malcovati, E. 1930. Oratorum Romanorum Fragmenta. Vol. 1. Torino: Giambattista Paravia. McWilliam, J. 2007. “Augustine’s Letters to Women.” In Feminist Interpretations of Augustine, ed. J. C. Stark, 189–202. State College, PA: Penn State Press. Miller, P. C. 1993. “The Blazing Body: Ascetic Desire in Jerome’s Letter to Eustochium.” Journal of Early Christian Studies 1: 21–45. Most, G. W., ed. 1997. Collecting Fragments/Fragmente Sammeln. Aporemata 1. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht. ———. 2009. “On Fragments.” In The Fragment: An Incomplete History, ed. W. Tronzo, 9–22. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute. ———. 2010. “Fragments.” In The Classical Tradition, ed. A. Grafton, G. W. Most and S. Settis, 371–77. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Richlin, A. 2011. “Parallel Lives: Domitia Lucilla and Cratia, Fronto and Marcus.” Eugesta 1: 163–203.

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Rosenmeyer, P. A. 2001. Ancient Epistolary Fictions: The Letter in Greek Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Salzman, M. R., and M. Roberts, ed. and trans. 2011. The Letters of Symmachus: Book One. Leiden: Brill. Shackleton Bailey, D. R. 1966. Cicero’s Letters to Atticus. Vol. 5. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1977. Cicero Epistulae ad Familiares. Vol. 1: 63–47 B.C. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sherwin-White, A. N. 1966. The Letters of Pliny: A Historical and Social Commentary. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Stephens, S. 2002. “Commenting on Fragments.” In The Classical Commentary: Histories, Practices, Theory, ed. R. K. Gibson and C. S. Kraus, 67–87. Leiden: Brill. Stewart, S. 1984. On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Taoka, Y. Forthcoming. “Liminal Women in Fronto’s Letters.” Classical Journal 108. Treggiari, S. 2007. Terentia, Tullia and Publilia: The Women of Cicero’s Family. New York: Routledge. Wenskus, O. 2001. “Wie schreibt man einer Dame? Zum Problem der Sprachwahl in der römischen Epistolographie.” Wiener Studien 114: 215–32. Wilfong, T. G. 2002. Women of Jeme: Lives in a Coptic Town in Late Antique Egypt. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

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Onomastics, Intertextuality and Gender “Phyllis” in Roman Poetry (Gallus, Vergil, Horace, Propertius and Ovid) Jacqueline Fabre-Serris

Abstract. We find the name Phyllis in Vergil, Horace, Propertius and Ovid. It did not refer in all cases to the mythical heroine. It can be attributed to a shepherdess, a slave or a musician. This chapter proposes the thesis that the mythic Phyllis was one of the most famous exempla used in the Amores of Gallus to illustrate his conception of passion. The chapter further aims to show that each poet after Gallus takes part in the debate initiated by Gallus about themes of fidelity/ infidelity and constancy/renunciation, from a personal perspective connected with a particular literary genre: bucolic, lyric poetry and elegy. In the Heroides, his collection of letters in elegiac verse from abandoned women, Ovid chose Phyllis as the second of his heroines. This choice is intriguing: Phyllis follows Penelope, the most famous example of a woman left alone but remaining faithful. To judge merely from the small number of our sources on Phyllis, her history was far from well known. Two ancient mythographers have transmitted her story; one, Apollodorus, prior to Ovid; the other his contemporary, Hyginus. So have two late commentators, Servius and Tzetzes.1 They relate that this daughter of a Thracian king aided and became enamoured of a Greek, Demophoon, the son of Theseus, when he was shipwrecked on his return from Troy. He left after promising her that he would return to marry her. She killed herself after having waited in vain. If Phyllis’ story did not involve two important onomastic details, to which I will return, it would be of minimal significance. Greek literary sources provide little evidence about Phyllis. It appears that Callimachus has told the story, but the fragment which is extant (νυμφίε Δημοφοῶν, ἄ[δικε ξενέ],2 “bridegroom Demophoon, unjust guest”) is too short to give an idea of his overall narrative. It is also possible that Euphorion’s work featured Phyllis in some way.3 Callimachus and Euphorion were important for the Latin neoteric poets, but as the Augustan elegists rarely refer to either of them directly, it is likely that Ovid has a direct Roman precursor. The pride of place that he accords Phyllis in his Heroides (and his references to this mythological heroine in both the Ars amatoria and the Remedia amoris) suggest that he drew on a famous, fairly recent Latin version of her story.

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It warrants attention that the name Phyllis occurs several times in Vergil’s Eclogues. The name appears twice in Horace’s Odes, at 2.4 and 4.11 respectively, as well as once in Propertius, in 4.8. But in none of these poems does the name Phyllis designate the mythological heroine. One of the most promising recent developments in ancient Latin literary criticism centers on the connections of onomastics (the study of names, especially proper names) with Roman literature and society. In this paper in honor of Judith Peller Hallett, a most brilliant representative of this field of research, I wish to show, exploring the use of the name Phyllis, how onomastic analysis figures prominently among the intertextual strategies subtly developed by the Latin poets of the first century BCE. This name is attested for Roman female slaves and former slaves, but we do not know what connections such usage had with overall Greek culture and/or Latin literature.4 Like other referential elements, proper names in Latin literary texts function as clues that enable readers to interpret the texts in which they appear by understanding what is at stake. Roman poets employed the name Phyllis to evoke the mythological heroine by alluding to some details of her story, and to summon up as background the earlier writings about her, although in these passages, the name specifically designates a shepherdess, a slave, a courtesan or a prostitute. It is these allusions, and these revisions, whose purpose I wish to analyze in the texts of Vergil, Horace and Propertius, texts where one encounters a Phyllis who is not the mythological heroine. This analysis allows me to propose (and to attempt to substantiate) a hypothesis concerning a famous Roman treatment of the Phyllis story, likely to explain Ovid’s choice, who, as far as we know from our extant sources,5 is the only Latin author who represented the mythological heroine.

1. PHYLLIS IN THE ECLOGUES Vergil’s Eclogues abound in literary references that are at the same time deliberate allusions to other literary works, but are less comprehensible to readers today than they were to Vergil’s audience. He inserts the name Phyllis four times in the verbal jousts of these pastoral poems. It is very likely that these jousts serve to represent the situation in which Vergil is placing himself, when he evokes the name of Demophoon’s lover. The reader must therefore consider that the poet, like the shepherd in the poem, is responding to a predecessor. The fifth and final passage which features a Phyllis is in this respect particularly ‘speaking’. It concerns a moment in the Tenth Eclogue, addressed to Gallus, where Vergil pretends to yield the speech to the poet of the Amores. One of the great changes in the study of Roman literature has come about through the application of a modern critical theory, namely intertextuality, which has proven itself more suitable than the idea of imitation for understanding the production of poetic texts. This theory has enabled us to appreciate the fact that each author inserts into the

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text words and expressions from other Greek and Latin texts that constitute a lineage of poetic succession from whose practitioners he distinguishes himself through innovations and changes in perspective. This method has also been used to good effect in efforts to recapture the themes of lost works, as in the case of Gallus’ Amores, the underlying principle being that a text, addressed to an author, necessarily contains references to his work. In the Tenth Eclogue, Phyllis is the name of the shepherdess whom Gallus presents as a possible love object, as if he had been an Arcadian shepherd-poet: certe siue mihi Phyllis siue esset Amyntas, seu quicumque furor (quid tum, si fuscus Amyntas? et nigrae uiolae sunt et uaccinia nigra), mecum inter salices lenta sub uite iaceret: serta mihi Phyllis legeret, cantaret Amyntas. (37–41) Surely, whether it were Phyllis or Amyntas or any other passion (what does it matter if Amyntas is dark? violets are black and vaccinia is black), either would be lying at my side among the willows, under the supple vine. Phyllis would gather garlands for me, Amyntas would sing for me.

Vergil’s decision to make Gallus the speaker of these lines implies that the words assigned to Gallus echo Gallus’ own poetic texts in some way. It is probable that a proper name, deliberately chosen in preference to another, is one of the self-referential elements in his discourse. The hypothesis that I have developed in a recent book is that the pastoral motifs throughout the entire passage, differing from those elsewhere in the text which are specifically Vergil’s (and are attributed to the influence of Theocritus), revisit a thematic motif prominent in the Amores, which Gallus had associated with a particular country—Arcadia.6 This does not imply, however, that this was the case also for the names Vergil used: they might have been drawn from non-pastoral passages of the Amores. What hypotheses regarding Gallus’ use of the name Phyllis can one derive from this text? According to the principle of repetition with variations, which characterizes literary references, the allusions Vergil has made to Gallus’ poetry likely combine with a personal thematic (re)writing. Vergil’s Phyllis is a shepherdess who is stretched out among the willows, under the supple vine, in the company of her beloved, or she gathers garlands for him. Why this vegetal framework, emphasizing trees and flowers, and this particular activity? It is tempting to suppose that Vergil’s references to the trees and flowers revisit an important etiological detail of the Phyllis myth. Trees play an essential role in certain versions of Phyllis’ story that the mythographers have transmitted. According to Hyginus, the leaves of the trees, which sprouted from the tomb of the young girl, fell periodically in order to mourn her death, accounting for her name in Greek, φύλλα “leaves”. According to Servius, the unhappy Phyllis hung herself and was transformed into an

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almond tree without leaves. When Demophoon returned, he embraced the trunk, which then grew leaves, a detail included in order to explain the change in the name of these leaves, from πέταλα (petals) to φύλλα. The activity of this shepherdess is also significant: the weaving of garlands is a metaphor for poetic composition that evokes the complaints, presumably addressed to the absent beloved by the abandoned lover. The expression serta . . . legeret is interesting in other respects, and thus no less significant. It results from an amalgamation of two successive actions: gathering the flowers and weaving them into garlands. Yet since the Latin word legere at the same time means “to read”, the phrase serta . . . legeret could constitute a double reference to certain words and themes of Gallus, whether or not they are associated with Phyllis. At the beginning of the Tenth Eclogue we find indeed a passage widely recognized as a variation on verses preserved in the Gallus papyrus discovered three decades ago at Qaṣr Ibrîm: . . . sed quae legat ipsa Lycoris, / carmina sunt dicenda (“ . . . I must sing the kinds of songs that Lycoris herself might read”). In the elegies of Gallus’ successor Propertius, the words serta and legere, here in the sense of “to read”, occur in the context of a symposium where the poet’s beloved Cynthia is depicted as reading the poet’s own verses: cum tua praependent demissae in pocula sertae/ et mea deducta carmina uoce legis (“when the garlands hang down, drooping into your cups, and you read my poems in a low voice”, 2.33.37–8). But to return to Phyllis, if one admits that some of the references in this passage are allusions to the mythological heroine of that name, the most likely explanation for these allusions is that Gallus had made use of the heroine’s history as an exemplum. Such a practice is characteristic of Gallus’ collection of love poems, as attested by his evocation of two other mythic stories: that of Acontius’ love of Cydippe and of Milanion’s love of Atalanta, both treated, like the story of Phyllis, by Callimachus. I return to the occurrences of the word “Phyllis” in the Eclogues. The name Phyllis is the first word of a stanza assigned to Damoetas, the shepherd who inaugurated the responsive singing in the Third Eclogue: Phyllida mitte mihi, meus est natalis, Iolla; cum faciam uitula pro frugibus, ipse uenito (76–7). Send Phyllis to me, Iollas, it is my birthday; when I will sacrifice a heifer for my harvests, come yourself!

The arrivals of Phyllis and Iollas are justified by the festive events: a birthday and a sacrifice; these events both take place on fixed dates. The name Phyllis is taken up by Menalcas in the same position at the beginning of another verse: Phyllida amo ante alias; nam me discedere fleuit, et longum “Formose, uale, uale” inquit “Iolla” (78–9).

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Phyllis I love before all others; for she wept when I departed, and she said, over a long time, “farewell, farewell, lovely Iollas”.

Here Vergil has created a fictional dialogue where the two shepherds respectively efface themselves, Damoetas behind an unknown first-person speaker addressing himself to someone named Iollas, Menalcas behind another first-person speaker corresponding to this Iollas. With the second occurrence of the name Phyllis arise allusions to a love affair, the departure of a lover and tears shed for a long time by the young girl. All these elements recall the history of the mythological Phyllis, except that the perspective on the love affair is different. The introductory declaration assigned to the lover, Phyllida amo, underscores the force of his emotions; the Thracian Phyllis killed herself because her beloved, she believed, no longer loved her. This reworking of the story in the second stanza invites the reader to reconsider what is said in the first. If Menalcas responds to Damoetas by playing with elements of the mythological story, it is because Damoetas had initiated this allusion, by asking Iollas to send Phyllis and to come himself afterwards. The separation that is imposed and the reunion that is promised refer, in fact, to two narrative elements of the myth, but the request of Damoetas modifies them. After having been separated owing to the departure of Phyllis (and not that of her lover), the two shepherds are again reunited when Iollas arrives in his turn. The reference to two fixed dates, the birthday and the sacrifice, also recalls a detail of the mythological story: according to Hyginus, Demophoon had given Phyllis a date for his return, which he did not honor. As in the Tenth Eclogue, the insertion of Phyllis’ story in a pastoral framework has brought about a change in the amatory scenario evoked. Vergil retrojects into the past a separation that produced great sorrow for the female lover; in the present, it is she who will leave her lover with his consent, and this separation will not be lasting, since he will rejoin her. The name Phyllis reappears in a passage of the Third Eclogue, for which Keith Dix has proposed an ingenious interpretation: Dic quibus in terris inscripti nomina regum nascantur flores, et Phyllida solus habeto. (106–7) “Tell me in what lands grow flowers inscribed with royal names, and have Phyllis for yourself!”

This passage occurs as the response to a riddle proposed by the shepherd Menalcas: Dic quibus in terris et eris mihi magnus Apollo / tris pateat caeli spatium non amplius ulnas (“Tell me, and for me you will be great Apollo, in what lands the space of the heavens is no more than three cubits wide”, 104–5). To show that he has understood Menalcas’ words, Damoetas must create his own riddle in reply, the answer to which will be identical or at least have some connection with the answer to the first riddle. Dix interprets the

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flowers carrying the inscribed names of kings as an allusion to the hyacinth, which Greek mythology associates either with the son of Amyclas, Hyacinth, or with the son of Telamon, Ajax. Searching for a poet who would have spoken about the origins of the hyacinth and of Phyllis (nascantur here can convey the sense of “originate”), Dix advances the name of Euphorion of Chalkis, basing his argument on fragments of this poet.7 As the original literary text, which prominently featured aetiologies of flowers and of trees, Dix proposes Euphorion’s poem on the Grynean Grove. Vergil’s Tenth Eclogue contains the name Phyllis (37, 41), the word nemus (“grove”, 43), and the names of the flowers uiolae and uaccinia (39), which, according to some scholars,8 designate two types of hyacinth. If these three elements refer to the poem on the Grynean Grove which Vergil associated with Gallus in the Sixth Eclogue, then the response to the question Dic quibus in terris, posed at lines 104 and 106 in the Third Eclogue, should be “in the Grove of Grynium”, a locale described by both Euphorion and by Gallus.9 One might object that, according to Servius (ad Buc. 6.72), Euphorion’s poem on the Grynean Grove treats a quarrel between two soothsayers, Calchas and Mopsus, over the number of fruits on a tree in this grove. But nothing would have precluded Euphorion from also describing the framework of this quarrel in this lost poem. According to Pausanias, the Grynean Grove was remarkable for the variety of its aromas,10 which Servius Auctus indicated as well (ad Buc. 6.72): Gryneum nemus est in finibus Ioniis Apollini a Gryno filio consecratum, vel a Grynio, Moesiae civitate, ubi est locus arboribus multis iucundus, gramine floribusque uariis omni tempore uestitus, abundans etiam fontibus (“The Grynian grove is in the Ionian lands; it was consecrated to Apollo by his son Grynus; or the name comes from Grynium, a city of Moesia, where it is a place that is rendered pleasant by numerous trees, and that is covered in all seasons by herbs and by various flowers, and where also springs abound”). Concerning Gallus, one might ask what value to accord to the injunction that Vergil places in the mouth of Linus in the Sixth Eclogue when Linus gives Gallus the reeds of Hesiod: His tibi Grynei nemoris dicatur origo / ne quis sit lucus quo se plus iactet Apollo (“with these (reeds), let the origin of the Grynean Grove be told, so that there may be no sacred grove of which Apollo is more proud”, 72–3). Are these words a suggestion? Or an allusion to a text already composed? Since these words are pronounced during a scene of poetic consecration, on the model of the Theogony where Hesiod receives the subject of his work from the Muses, the subject here assigned to Gallus has necessarily a foundation in his work. Two additional texts allow us, I believe, to specify the nature of the original text to which Vergil alludes: Metamorphoses 10 of Ovid, and the Culex.11 One finds in both texts a description of woods conceived on the same model. Both poets enumerate several species of trees, sometimes alluding to their “origin”, invariably explained by the unfortunate destiny of one mortal or another. Some of these trees figure in both texts: poplar, oak, cypress, beech and myrtle. In the Metamorphoses, these woods are evoked in a Gallan context. Ovid

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constructs his song of Orpheus as a response to Vergil’s critique of Gallan poetics in Book Four of the Georgics.12 It is significant that one also finds in the text metamorphoses into trees and flowers, and the appearance of the hyacinth, born at the death of Apollo’s beloved. The Culex offers an aetiology for the almond tree. Its author condemns the perfidy of the unfaithful lover of Phyllis: Posterius cui Demophoon aeterna reliquit / perfidiam lamentandi mala—perfide multis / perfide Demophoon et nunc deflende puellis (“then the tree to which Demophoon bequeathed the eternal misfortune of lamenting his unfaithfulness, unfaithful, unfaithful Demophoon, now the object of tears for so many young girls”, 131–3; the Latin text used here is M. G. Iodice, ed., Appendix Virgiliana [Mondadori 2002]). This condemnation apparently alludes to verses of Callimachus (the preserved fragment is an exclamation, ἄ [δικε ξενέ], the probable model for Gallus). Perhaps it was Gallus who introduced the motif of perfidia, using the words perfidus and/or perfidia. In Elegy 1.13, addressed to Gallus and evoking his inconstancy, the very fault for which Demophoon is reproached, Propertius in fact calls Gallus “faithless” in verses containing the words imitabor and tuas uoces, that suggest a direct citation of Gallus’ work: at non ipse tuas imitabor, perfide, uoces (“but for my part, faithless one, I will not imitate your words”, 3). In the Fifth Eclogue, the name of Phyllis is mentioned in lines 10–11, at the moment of choosing the theme for the contest: Incipe, Mopse, prior si quos aut Phyllidis ignis / aut Alconis habes laudes aut iurgia Codri (“begin first, Mopsus, that you may have [for your subjects] the fires of Phyllis, the praises of Alcon or the quarrels of Codrus”). Amorous passion, praises or insults comprise a large part of the subject matter treated in pastoral poetry. According to R. Nisbet,13 Codrus designates Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus, a poet himself as well as a later patron of the poets Tibullus and Ovid. If that is the case, the two other pastoral names perhaps also allude to poets, among them Gallus, indirectly evoked by the “fires of Phyllis”. In the Seventh Eclogue, the name Phyllis appears in a stanza assigned to the first shepherd in the amoebaic song-and-response competition, Thyrsis: Aret ager; uitio moriens sitit aeris herba; Liber pampineas inuidit collibus umbras: Phyllidis aduentu nostrae nemus omne uirebit, Iuppiter et laeto descendet plurimus imbri. (57–60). The field is desolate; for lack of air the grass thirsts, dying; Liber denies the hills shade from his vines: At the arrival of our Phyllis every grove will turn green, And Jupiter will descend abundantly in a joyful shower.

Here we find some details from the story of the Thracian Phyllis—both an arrival and a (re)-greening of the woods—but in the Eclogue it is the young girl who arrives, not her lover. On the one hand, the pastoral framework

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requires ‘demythologizing’. Phyllis is now a shepherdess, the absence of leaves results from the dryness of the summer, and a good rainfall suffices to make the forests green again. On the other hand, Vergil amuses himself by ‘mythologizing’ the situation, speaking of Liber and Jupiter in the manner of Lucretius. In line 60, he resorts to poetic usage to evoke a divinity for a natural phenomenon, in a quasi-explicit fashion. The rules of responsive singing require that Corydon respond to Thyrsis by demonstrating equal ingenuity in his allusions to the myth of Phyllis: Populus Alcidae gratissima, uitis Iaccho, formosae myrtus Veneri, sua laurea Phoebo, Phyllis amat corylos; illas dum Phyllis amabit, nec myrtus uincet corylos, nec laurea Phoebi. (61–4) The poplar is most dear to Alcides, the vine to Bacchus, the myrtle to beautiful Venus, his own laurel to Apollo. Phyllis loves the hazel; as long as Phyllis shall love them neither the myrtle nor the laurel of Apollo will prevail over the hazels.

The first four associations between a plant and a hero or god are traditional. Phyllis is associated with the hazel and not, as one would expect, the almond tree. In fact both species closely enough resemble one another for the Greek word for hazelnut, κάρυον (from which, according to Priscian 2.36.22, comes the Latin spelling corylus, established through a false connection with the Greek word) to be able to designate, by extension, the almond. It is tempting to see in this passage a new variation on the enumeration that Gallus undoubtedly made of the various species of the Grynean Grove, sometimes associating them with a Greek mythological narrative. Vergil engages in an equivalent literary practice by mentioning different gods. But it is also possible that this element was present in Gallus’ text: in the Culex, the quercus is associated with Ceres (135), and in the Metamorphoses, the pinus belongs to Cybele (10.103–5). In the Seventh Eclogue the love of Phyllis is presented neither as exclusive nor as eternal, unlike the representation of elegiac passion. Such love is apparently profitable for both parties: as long as Phyllis’ love will last, the object of her love will be judged preferable to the love objects of Venus and of Apollo. To conclude my discussion of the Eclogues, all the uses of the name Phyllis enter, in my opinion, into the general strategy of this first Vergilian poetic collection, which simultaneously illustrates and defends his choice of genre. Vergil’s explicit thesis in the Tenth Eclogue is that the type of life associated with the pastoral universe is preferable to the type of life pursued by the elegiac lover, as represented by Gallus, whose Amores delineate different occasions for suffering. The successive recombinations of the elements from this mythological story, one of the famous exempla used in Gallus’ Amores, have a single aim: to show that their integration into the

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bucolic genre fundamentally changes their nature. In bucolic poetry only activities without danger are associated with the name Phyllis, as well as love affairs . . . happy ones.

2. PHYLLIS IN HORACE’S ODES Horace speaks of a Phyllis in Ode 2.4, addressed to a man whom he calls Xanthias Phoceus. In this text, he amuses himself by describing an ordinary situation at Rome, the passion of a master for one of his slaves, using the fashionable discourse of love poetry. He creates from this passion, for which Xanthias is ashamed either because of his lowly born love-object or because his desire is excessive, a variant of elegiac love with a mythological background evoked through several exempla. Onomastics is a key element for creating a situation that recalls an elegiac scenario reversing the actual social relationship between the lovers. In Aristophanes’ Frogs Xanthias is the name of a slave, which is perfect for a man whom love transforms into a seruus of a domina conceived on the model of Gallus’ beloved Lycoris.14 The slave whom he loves is named Phyllis. Is Horace referring to this woman by her real name? Not impossible, since Phyllis is documented among the names of Roman slaves at the time that Horace writes in the first century BCE.15 Actual or fictitious, this name allows Horace to repeat Vergil’s poetic procedure and imagine his own variation on the Greek myth featuring Phyllis in response to Gallus, by using a literary genre of which he, Horace, also represents himself as Roman inventor: the lyric ode. So that Xanthias may cease to be ashamed of his passion for a woman of low social station, Horace recalls for him a series of precedents taken from Greek mythology: the love of Achilles for Briseïs, of Ajax for Tecmessa and of Agamemnon for Cassandra. All these evoke the Trojan War and its aftermath which also provide the background to the story of the mythological Phyllis. The final exemplum has the advantage of anticipating a reflection Horace himself makes: Cassandra was the daughter of a king, who became a captive. Perhaps, Horace suggests in lines 13–16, these are Phyllis’ circumstances as well. The transition from the interrogative mood to the affirmative in three steps is a sufficiently clear sign of the poet’s intention. Horace is not serious and demonstrates as much: from nescias (13) when speaking of Phyllis’ parents, who are perhaps beati (“wealthy”), he moves to certe (“unquestionably”, 15) when speaking of her royal origin and unfair fate, then to crede (“believe”, 17): to be so faithful and so little interested in money, it must be that she is of good birth. The lighthearted tone that Horace adopts contributes to the unbelievability of a hypothetical situation, one involving the daughter of a king mistreated by fate whose character conforms to her birth. The reader suddenly realizes that Horace has extrapolated these circumstances from the girl’s name alone, because it recalls a famous Gallan exemplum. This detached and semi-ironic way of

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dealing with amorous emotions is typical of Horatian lyrics on love. The poem’s last stanza confirms such a reading: Horace reassures his interlocutor; he is not a rival, a frequent character in elegy. Even if he praises Phyllis’ beauty, the lyric poet remains integer (“untouched”, 22), that is to say, “in possession of all his faculties”. Such a situation totally reverses the customary plight of the elegiac lover, a prey to furor (“madness”), and forgetful of everything, including himself. Briefly, all is constructed so that the reader is amused, without really believing in this “elegiac” version of a commonplace situation. The master is held captive by passion. His slave is beautiful. But is she really in love? Does she deserve such an excessive investment of emotions? The response of Horace is that her name speaks for herself. What an avatar for the unhappy queen of Thrace who died of love for a Greek warrior of the Trojan War! The situation is very different in Ode 4.11, a text apparently addressed to a woman named Phyllis. If the addressee of a poetic text is, as such, designated as its first reader, he is neither the only, nor often the most important. The indication of a poetic addressee has special significance for other readers, who have to interpret the person named and the terms in which the author addresses himself to her as so many clues, actually meant for themselves. It is necessary to keep this interpretive situation in mind whenever we encounter a fictional addressee, as we do here, where the poetic strategy is further complicated by the fact that another, actual reader, Horace’s patron Maecenas, would have been the preferred addressee. In this ode, Horace invites a Phyllis to come to celebrate the Ides of April, which is Maecenas’ birthday (13–16). This circumstance recalls the Third Eclogue. This invitation, when it occurs in the fourth stanza, confirms that Horace has been playing a game with mythological narrative since the beginning of the poem. He has, indeed, amassed allusions to the Greek story with the intention to downplay the dramatic elements exactly as Vergil did: Est mihi nonum superantis annum plenus Albani cadus, est in horto, Phylli, nectendis apium coronis est hederae uis multa, qua crinis religata fulges I have a jar full of superb Alban wine, Phyllis, more than nine years old; and in the garden parsley for the weaving of garlands and abundance of ivy, with which you will shine, having bound your hair (1–5).

Each argument to convince Phyllis to join him for this celebration includes either the metamorphosis of a tragic detail from the Greek myth, or an allusion to the Eclogues, which here function as a model for Horace’s text. According to Apollodorus and Tzetzes, Phyllis and Demophoon separate at

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a place called “Nine Ways”. For Hyginus, on the day fixed for the return of Demophoon, Phyllis ran nine times towards the shore; thus the name of “Nine Ways” has remained for this path. Here the number nine indicates the number of years that it has taken to mature a good wine. The mention of a garden, which implies the presence of trees and flowers, is a variant for the woods that Gallus undoubtedly made the background for his evocation of the story of Phyllis. The plaiting of garlands recalls the Tenth Eclogue, but the mention of wine imparts a symposium-like ambiance to the situation imagined by Vergil.16 The word uis, which is not the most common word to designate abundance, has perhaps been chosen to evoke the uirebit (“will turn green”) of line 59 of the Seventh Eclogue. The mythological Phyllis hung herself from a tree; the woman whom Horace invites will be able to bind her hair with ivy. She will then be even more beautiful. The word Horace employs to suggest her brilliance, fulges, has as a corresponding adjective fulua. It is the equivalent of flaua, “golden-haired”, by which Horace describes the Phyllis of Ode 2.4, suggesting an adjective and/or an idea appropriated from Gallus’ Amores. The mention in line 8 of a sacrifice is explained by the circumstances of the poem, but perhaps also alludes to the Third Eclogue, where it is the reason given by Damoetas to have Iollas come. Horace not only invites Phyllis to join him in celebrating Maecenas’ birthday. He gives her advice which is itself an allusion to the plight of the mythological heroine: that she should renounce Telephus, whom a rich young woman passionately desires and holds bound: Telephum, quem tu petis, occupauit non tuae sortis iuuenem puella diues et lasciuia tenetque grata compede uinctum Telephus, whom you seek, a youth not part of your destiny, A young woman, rich and lascivious, has taken possession of him, and holds him bound by a pleasurable shackle. (21–4)

Here the poet also plays with the details of the Greek myth. Petis suggests the constancy of Phyllis’ desire. The motif of binding is transformed from the means of the young heroine’s death into love-chains that shackle Telephus, and symbolizes the impossibility of the beloved’s return since another woman not only holds him captive (occupauit, tenet) but also makes him happy (grata compede) to be in this state. Horace selected the name Telephus because the mythological hero who bears it, like Demophoon, was associated with the Trojan War. Because he had been wounded by the spear of Achilles and cured by the same weapon, Hellenistic poetry represents Telephus as an exemplum of the suffering and healing brought about by love (A.P. 5.225; 291).17 Considering the mythic circumstances evoked, this Telephus’ situation does not leave any hope for his return to this Phyllis. The advice given

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by Horace to Phyllis is that which Vergil gave to Gallus in the Tenth Eclogue: renunciation. This renuntiatio amoris is presented as a specific example of “the right way to live”, since it is preceded by examples of two male mythological characters who are not themselves represented as lovers, Phaëthon and Bellerophon whose behavior Horace condemns. Phaethon, Horace says, was burned by auaras spes (“greedy hopes”, 25–6). The example of Bellerophon, according to Horace, teaches us semper ut te digna sequare et ultra/ quam licet sperare nefas putando/ disparem uites (“always to follow things worthy of you and, by thinking that it is forbidden to hope beyond what is allowed, to avoid someone who is unequal”, 29–31). The phrase digna te continues Horace’s allusions to the poetry of Gallus. Indeed, the mere choice of the word dignus, an adjective present in the papyrus of Qaṣr Ibrîm, is one of most frequent references to the Amores found in the erotic poetry of the Augustan period. In the papyrus discovered at Qaṣr Ibrîm, what Gallus claims is worthy of the puella is poetry. The use of the neuter plural digna permits a generalization, which does not exclude the possibility that Horace refers to carmina with this word. In fact, in lines 31–2, he calls this Phyllis meorum finis amorum (“the last of my loves”)—a way of letting the reader know the relationship that unites him with her—and proposes that she learn some modos (“verses”) in order to recite them amanda uoce (“with a loveable voice”, 34–5). If Horace’s poem were an elegy, these verses would celebrate the beloved woman. The carmen he proposes for Phyllis in 35–6 also seeks to terminate her erotic sufferings: minuentur atrae/ carmine curae (“black cares are diminished by song”). Like the Vergilian eclogue, the Horatian ode is a remedy for love. But not for love alone! Although Horace addresses Ode 4.11 to a woman (a somewhat unusual situation in the Odes), and, although the story which Horace implicitly evokes has a female heroine, the occasion to which she is invited depends entirely on the personal relationship between two men, a relationship which moreover echoes that of Phyllis and her lover. The first of these individuals, who as poet-speaker proclaims the importance of this day for him and hence makes a declaration of affection, organizes a celebration for the birthday of the second, who will apparently be detained elsewhere. Was this ode, replete with allusive language, also written with Maecenas in mind? Although his moral advice is directed at Phyllis, it also would be valuable for him. In that case, to whom does the reference to imparem apply? To Maecenas’ wife Terentia? The displacement strategy of attributing to a woman (here Phyllis) the behavior of a man in love formed an important part of the tradition of Latin poetry as early as Catullus’ carmina 64 and 68. The relationships of Maecenas and his wife are said to have been passionate in the manner of the love affairs depicted in elegy, with ruptures and reconciliations, but nothing in the text orients us toward this interpretation. Does the word imparem designate Augustus? Horace’s poem dates from the era of Maecenas’ fall from favor. Maecenas’ situation applies, mutatis mutandis, to Phyllis: he is no longer the preferred friend of the princeps. Is it worth

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taking into account that both mythological exempla concern males and two mortals who aspired to be the equal to gods, and that Augustus himself was often assimilated to the most powerful among the gods? The erotic situations evoked or suggested in Ode 4.11, and particularly the relationship of Horace with Phyllis, whom he has chosen as the addressee but presented in a not very credible, or at least ambiguous, fashion as meorum finis amorum (“the last of my loves”), would then be only a means of speaking, sotto voce, of the relationship between two male friends. I believe that indeed this text— where Horace constantly resorts to displacements in order to evoke, without explicitly stating, what has changed and will never return, and to suggest the only attitude which is prudent—has, as its object, more or less hidden, the relationship between the three men: Horace, Maecenas and Augustus. What confirms this reading, it seems to me, is the end of the poem where the poet endeavors to say without saying, to suggest without declaring, that is, to communicate through intertextuality. Ellen Oliensis18 has interpreted the last words of Ode 4.11 as referring back to the ending of Ode 4.6. She brings to our attention a series of striking verbal repetitions: amicum/amanda; reddidi/reddas; carmen/carmine; docilis/condisce; modorum/modos (“agreeable / loveable”; “I recited / you may recite”; “song / by song”; “easily taught / learn”; “of the verses / verses”). This last section of Ode 4.6 is a text dictated to a young girl who will have to repeat it, as is also the case for Phyllis: ego dis amicum, / saeculo festas referente luces, / reddidi carmen docilis modorum/ uatis Horati (“I, who was taught the verses of the poet-prophet Horace, recited a song agreeable to the gods, when the centuries brought back the festal days”, 41–4). Horace’s own Carmen seculare, to which he here alludes by paraphrase, ranked the most important indication that Horace had received the favor of Augustus. The young girl whom Horace asks to recite it in this Ode is on the eve of her marriage; in other words, her circumstances are those officially celebrated in the Carmen seculare, because of their presumable effects on the long-term survival and prosperity of Rome. The song by Horace that Phyllis will interpret has, in contrast, a more personal aim: to diminish the black cares that all humans may house in their hearts. What is the purpose of this final allusion, grasped only by the readers of Horace, if not to recall for them (and to recall for Maecenas) that the favor of Augustus does not prevent Horace from suffering if his friend chooses to go elsewhere than Horace’s home to celebrate his birthday? The fact that Phyllis, his addressee in this Ode, whose name and references to the earlier Greek myth associated with her name reveal her as fictional figure, is a woman has no importance for Horace. She functions as a screen between two men, one of whom is not able to talk directly to the other (as is confirmed by the absence of texts addressed to Maecenas in Book Four of the Odes) since the separation that is evoked was also his own doing. Horace calls this addressee who substitutes for Maecenas Phyllis because her mythological homonym offers the best example of an individual who has suffered without renunciation. If she would agree to come and to perform a Horatian

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ode, she would also be the best spokesperson for the man who advises her to limit her hopes by recalling that this is the voice of wisdom, but who also ends the song with the word connoting suffering, curae.

3. PHYLLIS IN PROPERTIUS AND OVID To finish this journey from text to text by the elegiac poets, I will briefly analyze the manner in which Propertius and Ovid each positions himself in this poetic tradition created from the name Phyllis. Propertius responded to Horace, not so much to the content of Ode 4.11, although he drew on the poem, as he did more generally to the choice of using different degrees of parody that Horace had developed in treating elegiac motifs. A woman called Phyllis appears in Elegy 4.8, which is an attempt to renew elegy by introducing a satiric dimension into the genre.19 In Ode 4.11, the woman called Phyllis was an erotically selective courtesan. Here she is a common prostitute: Propertius speaks of her place of work (near the temple of Diana) and her strong penchant for drinking (a subtle allusion to the first line of Horace’s Ode). She is one of two girls invited by the poet to an al fresco banquet, where the mythological narrative is travestied. The unfaithful lover uses both Phyllis and his other partner Teia in an attempt to deceive his mistress Cynthia, an unsuccessful attempt because he is unable to perform sexually with them. Cynthia, moreover, does not simply lament in vain; rather, she seeks him out and recaptures him after a violent physical confrontation where she puts her rivals to flight and beats up both the poet and his slave Lygdamus. After all these true-false Phyllises, how did Ovid conceive his evocations of the heroine rendered famous by the first Roman love elegist? In the Ars amatoria, he uses Phyllis as an exemplum, on the Gallan model, for the effects of absence (2.253), then for the excesses of love (3.38), in a passage where he concludes by revisiting a motif that caused disputes among the successors of Gallus: the use of erotic skills, artes, associated, explicitly or implicitly, in the Amores with the slavery of love, seruitium amoris, as a strategy for conquest. Taken up by Tibullus in 1.4, his own ars amandi, the motif had been called into question by Propertius in his inaugural elegy.20 Ovid assumed the paradoxical position that Phyllis died not for having succumbed to an excessive love, which she had to renounce, but for want of practicing erotic artes well. This is what he states clearly in Ars amatoria 3, where he includes Phyllis when enumerating the passions of women: Quid uos perdiderit, dicam: nescistis amare; / defuit ars uobis; arte perennat amor (What has ruined you, I am going to say: you lack the art; it is thanks to the art that love persists”, 41–2). Heroides 2 also makes this assertion. There Phyllis complains naively of having been deceived because she had not detected the artes in the gestures and words of her lover. Yet it appears that she erred in believing in her lover’s infidelity and—this was the final bidding of Demophoon (Phylli, fac exspectes Demophoonta tuum, “Phyllis, make sure you wait for your Demophoon”, 98)—for, finally, not having waited . . . long enough.

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Ovid makes the same point in a different form in the Remedia amoris, where he imputes the death of Phyllis to the absence of a praeceptor amoris such as himself: Vixisset Phyllis, si me foret usa magistro,/ et per quod nouies, saepius isset iter (“Phyllis would have lived, if only she had me as her master, and, on the route on which she had gone nine times, she would have gone more often”, 55–6). Thus we reach the conclusion of this rapid study: as re-examined and corrected by Ovid, the heroine made famous by Gallus has become an exemplum of what happens to a woman who, because she hadn’t read Ovid’s poetry (for a very good reason!), did not know the good artes (“the right way”) of loving and . . . forgetting—the strategy advised by Horace that Ovid introduced into the elegiac genre precisely because it is another form of the “art of love”.

NOTES 1. Apollod., Epit. 6.16–6.17; Hyg., Fab. 59; Servius, Ad Buc. 5, 10; Tzetz., ad Lyc., Alexandra 495. 2. Frg 556 Pfeiffer. 3. According to frag. 58 Powell (Dix 1995: 258), Euphorion had evoked the story of Phyllis in regard to that of Laodice, a daughter of Priam, who had had a child with Acamas or with Demophoon. 4. Solin 2003: 606, 1452. 5. Ovid mentions a Tuscus, who “owes his name to his Phyllis” (quique sua nomen Phyllide Tuscus habet), Pont. 4.16.20. 6. Fabre-Serris 2008: 47–94. 7. See Note 3 concerning Phyllis. For Hyacinth, Dix (1995: 258) returns to a fragment of Euphorion (Powell, 40), evoking the origin of the hyacinth after the death of Ajax in a manner which also implies another story of its origin, i.e. after the death of Hyacinth. 8. Dix (1995: n. 11, 259). Servius, Junius Philargyrius and the scholia of Berne identify the uaccinia (evoked in Eclogue 2.18) with uiolae purpureae, which renders tautological line 39 of Eclogue 10: et nigrae uiolae sunt et uaccinia nigra. Junius Philargyrius and the scholia of Berne (ad Buc. 3.106–7) indicate as well that the uiolae are born from the blood of Ajax. 9. Dix (1995: 261). I have left aside his analysis, also very convincing, of the first riddle (in lines 104–5), which is resolved in the same manner, by proposing the Grynean Grove. 10. Pausanias 1, 21, 7. 11. Fabre-Serris 2005 and Forthcoming. 12. Fabre-Serris 2005. 13. Nisbet 2002. 14. Phoceus is found only in Horace, who, with this adjective and the name Xanthias, has chosen words capable, at the cost of two distortions (if one thinks of Xanthe and of Phocea), of evoking in large measure the region of Troy. On the choice of Greek pseudonyms to designate Romans, see Lyne 1980: 200. 15. Solin 2003: 606. 16. As O. Murray (1993: 103) has noted, this is a way of evoking the De symposio of Maecenas, a text where, according to Servius (ad Aen. 8.310), Maecenas had Horace and Vergil appear on the scene, in a nostalgic perspective. 17. Perhaps there is another reason for the choice of Telephus. According to Servius Danielis (ad Buc. 6.72), the city of Grynium in Moesia would have

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been founded by Grynius, the son of Eurypylus, who was himself the son of Telephus. Did one find the name of Telephus in Gallus’poem on the Grynean Grove, where he evoked Phyllis ? Or was a doctus reader able, by himself, to join the two names? 18. Oliensis 2007. 19. Fabre-Serris 2011. 20. In me tardus Amor non ullas cogitat artis/ nec meminit notas, ut prius, ire uias (“For my part, Amor shows himself as slow: he no longer thinks about any art and he forgets to go, as previously, on known ways”, 1.1.17–18).

REFERENCES Barchiesi, A. 2007. “Carmina: Odes and Carmen Saeculare”. In S. Harrison, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Horace, 59–160. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Citti, F. 1996 “Τὴν κατὰ σαυτὸν ἔλα: Fillide e gli amori ‘dispari’”. Eikasmos 7: 261–81. Davis, G. 1975. “The persona of Licymnia: A reevaluation of Horace, Carm. 2.12”. Philologus 119: 70–83. Dix, T. K. 1995. “Vergil in the Grynean Grove: two riddles in the third Eclogue.” Classical Philology 50: 256–62. Fabre-Serris, J. 2005. “Histoires d’inceste et de furor dans les Métamorphoses 9 et dans le chant en catalogue d’Orphée: une réponse d’Ovide au livre 4 des Géorgiques.” Dictynna 2 (http://dictynna.revues.org) ———. 2008 Rome, l’Arcadie et la mer des Argonautes. Essai sur la naissance d’une mythologie des origines en Occident. Lille: Presses universitaires du Septentrion. ———. 2011. “Élégie érotique et discours satirique. Sur trois expérimentations propertiennes: les élégies, 4, 7; 4, 8 et 4, 9.” Materiali e discussioni per l’analisi dei testi classici 67: 51–77. ———. Forthcoming. “Le Culex et la construction du mythe augustéen. Practiques et enjeux d’un pòeme faussement adressé à Octave.” La costruzione del mito augusteo, conference org. by G. Rosati, Udine 2011. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter. Farrell, J. 1992. “Literary Allusion and Cultural Poetics in Vergil’s Third Eclogue.” Vergilius 38: 64–71. Hallett, J. P. 1973. “The Role of Women in Roman Elegy: Counter-Cultural Feminism.” Arethusa 6: 103–24. ———. 2009. “Sulpicia and her Resistant Intertextuality.” In D. van Mal-Maeder, A. Burnier, L. Núñez, éds. Jeux de voix: Enonciation, intertextualité et intentionnalité dans la littérature antique, 141.155. Bern, Berlin, Brussels, Frankfurt am Main, New York, Oxford, Vienna: Peter Lang. Lyne, R. O. A. M. 1980. The Latin Love Poets: From Catullus to Ovid. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Maltby, R. 1991. A Lexicon of Ancient Latin Etymologies. Leeds: Cairns (Arca 25). Murray, O. 1993. “Symposium and Genre in the Poetry of Horace”. In N. Rudd, ed., Horace 2000: A Celebration: Essays for the Bimillenium, 89–105. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Nisbet, R. G. M. 2002. “A Wine-Jar for Messala: Carmina 3.21.” in T. Woodman and D. Feeney, eds. Traditions and Contexts in the Poetry of Horace, 80–92. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Oliensis, E. 1997. “The Erotics of Amicitia: Readings in Tibullus, Propertius and Horace”. In J. Hallett and M. Skinner, eds., Roman Sexualities, 151–71. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

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———. 2007. “Erotics and Gender”. In S. Harrison, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Horace, 221–34. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Quinn, K. 1980. Horace, The Odes, New York: St. Martin’s Press. Roller, M. 2003. “Horizontal Women: Posture and Sex in the Roman Conuiuium.” American Journal of Philology 124: 377–422. Ross, D. O. 1975. Backgrounds to Augustan Poetry: Gallus, Elegy and Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Salomies, O. 2001. “Names and Identities: Onomastics and Prosopography”. In J. Bodel, ed., Epigraphic Evidence, Ancient History from Inscriptions, 73–94. London and New York: Routledge. Savage, J. J. H. 1958. “The Art of the Third Eclogue of Vergil (55–111)”. Transactions of the American Philological Association 89: 142–58. Solin, H. 2003. Die griechischen Personennamen in Rom. Ein Namenbuch. BerlinNew York: Walter de Gruyter. 3 vol. Sutherland, E., 2005. “Literary Women in Horace’s Odes 2. 11 and 2. 12”. In W. W. Batstone and G. Tissol, eds., Defining Genre and Gender in Latin Literature, 193–210. New York: Peter Lang.

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Woman Warrior? Aeneas’ Encounters with the Feminine Thomas Van Nortwick

Abstract. The Aeneid has been understood by many influential scholars to present Aeneas’ ascent toward a new Roman paradigm of manliness, a shedding of atavistic modes of action and perception. At the same time, the poem is animated by the vivid portraits of powerful female characters such as Camilla, Dido and Juno. This chapter examines how Aeneas’s interactions with these figures and others like them articulate his journey toward a new Roman heroic ideal. tum frigida toto paulatim exsoluit se corpore, lentaque colla et captum leto posuit caput, arma relinquens vitaque cum gemitu fugit indignata sub umbras. Slowly the chill seeped from her body then, her yielding neck laid down her head, death’s captive, and leaving her limbs life fled with a groan under the earth, indignant.1 (Aeneid 11.828–31)

Extinguished in Virgil’s languidly beautiful verse, Camilla leaves the Aeneid. She is one of his most striking creations, a woman warrior who skims along the top of the corn, sexy and lethal, recalling Penthesilea (1.491), latent in Dido. Her drooping head evokes the deaths of Euryalus and Pallas (9.433–7; 11.68–71); her soul’s escape is echoed verbatim when Turnus dies (12.952). Camilla is a minor character, but her passing sounds an insistent elegiac note in the poem’s music, a tone that will die away further in the parting of Juturna and Turnus (12.869–86), and disappear finally with the latter’s death.2 The Aeneid has been understood by many influential scholars to present Aeneas’ ascent toward a new Roman paradigm of manliness, a shedding of atavistic modes of action and perception.3 We might ask, then, how the loss of what dies with Camilla, a virgin warrior from a pastoral world, shapes our view of the poem’s beleaguered hero. As we will see, this question is part of a larger inquiry, about how the interactions of Aeneas with feminine forces throughout the poem articulate his journey toward a new Roman ideal. This latter topic will be our focus here.4

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STORMY WEATHER Virgil makes it clear in the proem that all the human pain and desolation he will describe in his poem follow from the jealous anger of one goddess, saevae memorem Iunonis. . .iram (“the unforgetting rage of savage Juno,” 1.4). Paris picks the wrong deity in a beauty contest and so, the Aeneid. The poet himself seems at a loss in the face of such rage: tantaene animis caelestibus irae? (“can hearts of gods conceive a rage so great?” 1.11) Paris’ blunder motivates the Iliad, but finds mention only in passing at the end of the work (Il. 24.26–30). Divine anger (mēnis) is prominent in that poem, but not Hera’s; in the Odyssey, Poseidon provides the model for Juno, and not nearly as important to the plot. After a brief sketch of Carthage, we (and the Trojan refugees) are plunged immediately into a huge storm, orchestrated entirely by Juno, who is intent on preventing the Trojans from reaching Italy. She bribes Aeolus with the promise of a sexy nymph, and the winds are loosed (1.50–101). The gendered nature of this opening could not be more clear. In response to feminine disruption of the natural order there follows an ascending series of masculine responses from the gods. Neptune calms the sea, asserting his leverage over Aeolus, a lesser god; Jupiter himself answers Venus’ fears for her son by laying out the triumphal future of Aeneas and his male line (1.65– 156; 223–96). In the midst of this chain of command, we see Aeneas twice, before and after Neptune appears, first in the midst of Juno’s storm, calling those who died at Troy “three and four-times blessed” (1.94–101); second, bucking up his crew after the landing at Carthage, then “pressing his anxiety deep down inside himself” (1.198–209). Both of these speeches echo Odysseus in the Odyssey, a frequent paradigm for Aeneas in the first half of the poem (Od. 5.306–12; 12.208–21). Neither implied comparison works in favor of the Roman hero, and neither makes us confident about his masculine authority: his first appearance in the poem shows him wishing he were dead;5 the second bracing address is immediately undercut by the poet, who lets us see the anxiety and selfdoubt beneath the surface. Divine paradigms are displayed for us. In the midst of them, Aeneas looks like the wrong man to lead the mission of founding an empire. THE HERO AND HIS MOTHER Our doubts are not allayed by his next foray, a scouting expedition through the Libyan woods with Achates. To reach maturity, masculine heroes in ancient epic must separate from their mothers and come to terms with the world of their fathers.6 At this point, Aeneas has lost his birth father (3.710– 11) and been driven from his home and wife. Lonely and vulnerable, he now meets his mother, disguised as a young Spartan maiden, complete with bow and quiver, her hair loose, her knees bare (1.314–20). To call this a mismatch

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hardly covers it. Not only do mothers in the heroic tradition rarely let go without a struggle, but Aeneas has to break free of a goddess who is the quintessence of entangling, boundary-blurring desire. True to her nature, Venus is (1) in disguise and (2) dressed for seduction. The creepy incestuous aspect of (2) increases if we know the scene from the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite that Virgil echoes here: Aphrodite, disguised as a young virgin, allows herself to be seduced by Anchises (Hymn. Hom. 5.81–106). Venus invites Aeneas to the scene of his own conception.7 In response to this apparition, our hero again channels Odysseus: o quam te memorem, virgo? Namque haud tibi vultus mortalis, nec vox hominem sonat; o, dea certe (an Phoebi soror? an Nympharum sanguinis una?) How should I address you, maiden? You neither look nor sound mortal. Surely you are a goddess! (sister of Apollo? One of the family of nymphs?) (1.327–9)

Homer’s hero sweet-talks Nausicaa, an impressionable virgin, playing on her emerging interest in men to get her help (Od. 6. 149–85). He manipulates his target with the usual efficacious fakery, in control of himself and the situation. Against this background, Aeneas comes across as earnest and dim. Having delivered to her son the information he will need to approach Dido, Venus sheds her disguise in a sexually charged epiphany, leaving her son sputtering: ‘quid natum totiens, crudelis tu quoque, falsis ludis imaginibus? cur dextrae iungere dextram non datur ac veras audire et reddere voces?’ Are you cruel, too? Why tease your son so often with disguises? Why not join hands and speak the truth? (1.402–9)

Cruel, indeed. Odysseus’ successful manipulation of his target makes Aeneas appear all the more pitiable here, at once needy and inept. Mastery is not evident. Venus has already intervened to manage her son’s passions, as we learn in Book 2. There we hear Aeneas recall his burning desire to kill Helen amid the inferno at Troy: subit ira cadentem/ulcisci patriam et sceleratas sumere poenas (“Anger came over me, / to avenge my fallen fatherland and punish her hateful crimes,” 2.575–6). Venus appears and urges him to defend his wife and children who are trapped in the burning city: nate, quis indomitas tantus dolor excitat iras? quid furis? aut quonam nostri tibi cura recessit?8

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My son, what grief so great excites unconquered anger ? Why are you raging? Have you no care for us? (2.594–5)

Here the goddess seems to be in line with the grander vision of Jupiter, a rare enough event. Anger can lead to a loss of self-control, always a dangerous thing for the masculine hero.9 Aeneas must resist the urge to give in to his emotions. His family needs him; Rome needs him. Of course, losing himself in other kinds of passion is fine with Venus, it would seem. Indeed, serving as the brake on any kind of strong emotion is not usually in Venus’ nature. We are not, after all, so far away from the passage in Book 1 (657–88), where Virgil recalls how she contrived the liaison that prompted all the misery to follow in Troy. A closer look at the epiphany in Book 2 suggests that Virgil means to echo there her later appearance in the Libyan woods. She appears to him at Troy in her fully divine form (italics are mine): cum mihi se, non ante oculis tam clara, videndam obtulit et pura per noctem in luce refulsit alma parens, confessa deam qualisque videri caelicolis et quanta solet, dextraque prehensum continuit roseoque haec insuper addidit ore: before my eyes, never so clear, my loving mother appeared and shone radiant in the night, immortal, tall as she appeared to gods; taking my hand she held me back, and spoke these words from her rosy mouth: (2.589–93)

The passage in Book 1 begins this way, with Aeneas in the role of the hero who is awake while others sleep: at pius Aeneas per noctem plurima volvens, ut primum lux alma data est, exire locosque . . . But Aeneas, duty-bound and worrying through the night, Resolved to explore when the loving light of day appeared . . . (1.306–7)

And when she wafts away: dixit et avertans rosea cervice refulsit . . . she spoke and turning with her rosy neck shone forth . . . (4.402)

Taking the passages as they come to us in the poem, we first see Venus deliberately, even cruelly, toying with her son before telling him what he needs to know. In Aeneas’ retelling of the Troy episode, she is alma, “loving,

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nurturing” and reveals herself as divine immediately, then delivers her warning straight. In the Libyan woods she wafts away, gleaming with her rosy neck, leaving her son yearning for the touch of her hand (1.408–9); at Troy she takes his hand and speaks to him from her rosy mouth (2.593). The verbal echoes draw our attention to differences in Venus’ behavior in the two episodes. She does the right thing and gets him back on track in Troy, but cannot resist playing with him later. In the unending struggle against forces opposing their will, other heroes usually can count at least on unswerving support and nurture from their own mothers. Aeneas, so alone and—as the first three books show us—so uneasy in the role of leader, can expect no such thing from Venus. Constancy, like emotional restraint, is not in her nature.10 Her subsequent partnership with Juno in Book 4 brings yet another round of uncontrolled passion followed by suffering. Venus’ motives in the chilling conversation with Juno, which leads to the “marriage” of Aeneas and Dido in the cave, are opaque at best (4.93–128). About Juno we have no doubts: she will do whatever she can to derail the Trojans’ arrival in Italy. Venus, who has had assurances from Jupiter that Aeneas will indeed complete his mission, is nevertheless amused by the prospect of the doomed liaison to come: non adversata petenti/ adnuit atque dolis risit Cytherea repertis (“not averse, the Cytherean goddess gave assent to Juno’s plea and smiled at the deceptions revealed,” 4.127–8). Perhaps we are not surprised to hear that Venus is delighted that her matchmaking (however brutally effected) will succeed. It’s what she does, after all. But we may wonder how, as the hero’s mother, she can rejoice in a union that she already knows can only bring pain to both principals. Not only does Aeneas seem to be the wrong man for the mission, but he also has the wrong mother.

AUDIENCE WITH THE QUEEN/LOVER/ WITCH/GODDESS/MOTHER By the time Venus travels back up to Olympus from the Libyan woods, Virgil has established that Aeneas’ masculine authority is suspect and that his own mother cannot be counted on to offer unambiguous support. With these doubtful credentials, he now heads for Carthage and the encounter that will define the first part of his journey and reverberate through the rest. Dido is Virgil’s most compelling character, powerful, virtuous, passionate, large-souled, heroic but not solipsistic.11 All of these qualities are evident from the surface of the poem. To this rich mix Virgil adds a dizzying number of allusions, all frontloaded before Dido appears. The queen is implicitly compared to Circe, Arete, Nausicaa, Artemis/Diana, Aphrodite/ Venus and Apollonius’s Medea.12 Because these paradigms appear mostly before Dido does, the effect is to create expectations, against which the poet can play. Will the queen maintain a regal air of command, or give in to coquettish yearnings? Virginal modesty or seductive eroticism? Heroic or

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witchy? Already flummoxed by Venus, it is hard to imagine Aeneas exhibiting mastery over this formidable juggernaut. Juno and Venus will have their thumbs on the scale, of course, so that Dido’s destruction is assured from the outset, but their intervention does nothing to reassure us about Aeneas’ own powers. Before he meets the queen, who will shape so much of his future, Aeneas has a mediated encounter with his past in the murals on the Carthaginian temple of Juno.13 This famous passage introduces the paradox that informs all of Virgil’s work, that events that were/would be painful in life can deliver pleasure when refracted through the prism of art. At the very end of the description of the mural comes the Amazon Penthesilea, raging in the midst of her band of women warriors, one breast bared (1.490–3).14 Like Camilla in the catalog of Italian forces (7.803–17), Penthesilea holds the emphatic last position in Virgil’s description of the mural. A maiden (virgo) among the men, she fixes the type in the poem, looking forward to Camilla and, more immediately, to Dido: Haec dum Dardanio Aeneae miranda videntur, dum stupet obtutuque haeret defixus in uno, regina ad templum, forma pulcherrima Dido, incessit magna iuvenum stipante caterva. qualis in Eurotae ripis aut per iuga Cynthi exercet Diana choros, quam mille secutae hinc atque hinc glomerantur Oreades; illa pharetram fert umero gradiensque deas supereminet omnis (Latonae tacitum pertemptat gaudia pectus): Talis erat Dido, talem se laeta ferebat per medios instans operi regnisque futuris. While Aeneas stared at these wonders, and, struck dumb, took them in with one gaze, the queen, most beautiful Dido, strode toward the temple, surrounded by a crowd of youths. As on the banks of Eurotas or the cliffs of Cynthus Diana trains her dancers, and here and there myriad mountain nymphs are gathered behind her. She carries a quiver on her shoulder, striding taller than the rest, (and joy pervades the tranquil heart of Leto): such was Dido, happy as she made her way among them, urging on the work of her new kingdom. (1.494–504)

Dido is presumably not still a virgo, but this allusion suggests that we should look for something maidenly in her. She is to combine, in fact, the regal command and virginal ferocity of Diana with the innocent sweetness of Homer’s Nausicaa, whose appearance with her maidens in Odyssey 6 prompts the simile on which this one is modeled (Od. 6.102–9). And

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speaking of armed virgins, let us not forget the Spartan girl who crosses Aeneas’ path in the woods. In order of appearance, the series runs thus: Venus-as-Spartan-virgin huntress, Penthesilea, Dido-as-virgin huntress/goddess. Or: Venus-as-hero’s mother/lover, Penthesilea, Dido-as-hero’s mother/ lover? The uncomfortably incestuous overtones of the forest meeting are here echoed in Aeneas’ first glimpse of Dido.15 While he witnesses the queen’s portentous arrival, Aeneas has been covered in a cloud by Venus. His own advent is no less spectacular. The clouds part and he steps forth like a god, made beautiful by Venus, who is compared to an artist decorating ivory or framing silver with gold (1.586–93). Looking at the mural, Aeneas was said to be “nourished by an empty image” (pictura pascit inani, 1.464). Now he becomes Venus’ work of art—like her, he “shines forth” (refulsit, 1.588).16 What kind of nourishment can the queen receive from him? Their first meeting is so freighted with baggage from the past, of both the two characters within the story and the poetic tradition Virgil draws on to make his work, that it is hard to see much hope for a fruitful outcome. After a handsome welcome from the queen, the Trojans retire to the royal palace for a night of food, wine and storytelling. In her invitation, quare agite, o tectis, iuvenes, succedite nostris (“Come young men, step into my house,” 1.627), Dido recalls Circe, welcoming Odysseus’ doomed advance party into her magical house (Od. 10.230–1). As if alive to the allusion, Venus sends in Cupid—Aeneas’ half brother, as she reminds him—to co-opt any power Dido might have over her visitor. Like Homer’s Hermes, Cupid pre-empts the possibility of the hero falling under the hostess’ witchy sway (Od. 10.274–306). Venus’ motives in the intervention remain ambiguous at best. Her initiative will help keep the heroic mission on track and crush her son’s chances for personal happiness, just the reverse of what Virgil’s Homeric paradigms would lead us to expect. Thetis will do anything to ensure that Achilles gets what he thinks will make him happy—arrange for many of his fellow Greeks to die in battle (Il. 1.357–427); supply divine armor so he can pursue a self-destructive desire for vengeance (Il. 18.424– 67)—even when we can see that her ministrations begin to abet his murderous obsession. Penelope wants to keep her son safe at home, and must be deceived if he is to move toward masculine maturity. The name of Odysseus’ mother, Antikleia (“against glory”) tells us everything we need to know about her priorities.

THE UXORIOUS HERO After a spectacular arranged “marriage” in the convenient cave, Dido and Aeneas spend the winter together. True to the tone of its advance billing, we hear nothing about the fun parts of this interlude. Instead, Virgil delivers unrelieved suffering and poignant self-delusion. The portrait of Dido in

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Book 4 is surely one of the most powerful evocations of tragic nobility in all of ancient literature. She burns; she wanders distractedly through the city, pierced through the heart like a doe accidentally struck by an “unknowing” shepherd. Learning of his plans to leave her, she rages, “bereft of spirit” (4.300). Aeneas is opaque by comparison. His major appearance is to deliver a horrendously inadequate and self-serving reply to Dido’s fiery denunciation of him (4.305–61). Just before this explosive exchange, we get a tiny hint of how Aeneas might have fared, had he been allowed to stay with Dido. After hearing the jealous prayers of Iarbas, a thwarted African suitor of Dido, Jupiter dispatches Mercury to yank Aeneas back on track. He has been dawdling. Enough time spent with a foreign seductress: Italy and the Roman imperium await (4.223–37). Virgil lingers over Mercury’s preparations—don the winged sandals, grab the magic wand, launch out on the wind—and his flight down past Atlas to Carthage (4.238–58). The Homeric paradigm is the journey of Hermes, sent by Zeus to Ogygia to effect the release of Odysseus from the seductive clutches of Calypso, also described in some detail (Od. 5.43–58). Viewed through the long lens of Roman destiny, Dido becomes an inconvenient impediment, the familiar figure of the “detaining woman,” who keeps the hero from his appointed tasks.17 The god alights: ut primum alatis tetigit magalia plantis, Aenean fundantem arces ac tecta novantem conspicit. Atque illi stellatus iaspide fulva ensis erat Tyrioque ardebat murice laena demissa ex umeris, dives quae munera Dido fecerat, et tenui telas discreverat auro. When first he landed on the huts with winged feet, he spied Aeneas laying the foundations for towers and homes. That man wore a sword bejeweled with yellow jasper and from his shoulders hung a cloak that glowed with purple dye, gifts from wealthy Dido, who had woven through it threads of gold. (4.259–64)

We glimpse an invigorated Aeneas, building the city. He is attired in what a good Roman—or an angry African (4.215–19)—might view as rather too much finery, the get-up of an exotic “Easterner.”18 The sword and cape are gifts from Dido, clearly symbolic of their union and its effect on Aeneas. For the first time in the poem, we see Aeneas apparently more confident in himself and his powers as the result of his relationship with a woman. The tentative, insecure and reluctant leader we saw in Books 1 and 3 gives way in this vignette to a revitalized male version of his paramour. Dido, after all, has already modeled for Aeneas what he is supposed to do: leader of a band of exiles, forced to abandon her homeland by enemies, she has lost her

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beloved spouse through no fault of her own (he came to her in a dream after his death and urged her to leave); now resettled, she has founded a new city that is flourishing under her leadership. Aeneas has joined her in this project, beginning to realize an altered version of his destiny. But it is, of course, the wrong city. And Mercury’s opening words point to another and perhaps equally important problem: tu nunc Karthaginis altae fundamenta locas pulchramque uxorius urbem exstruis? Siting lofty Carthage are you now, so devoted to your “wife,” and building her beautiful city? (4.265–7)

Aeneas has not learned the lesson illustrated in so many ways in the poem so far: women must be controlled. We can imagine the sneer on Mercury’s face when he labels our hero uxorius. Aeneas must work toward the founding of a new city, but not by drawing strength from a partnership with his paramour. The god’s message snuffs out Aeneas’s alternate future in an instant. His hair literally “stands on end” (arrectaeque horrore comae, 4.280), and he rushes to abandon Dido as fast as he can, ordering the Trojans to prepare for immediate departure. Nothing can keep him now, not Dido’s tirades, not Anna’s pleas. Even so, he is not fast enough for Mercury, who comes again in a dream and drives him out to sea under the cover of darkness. Aeneas’ last act as he leaves is a concise symbol of what his flight means, withdrawal, punctuated by a violent severing of connection: dixit vaginaque eripit ensem fulmineum strictoque ferit retinacula ferro. He spoke, and snatching from its scabbard the deadly sword he slashed the stern rope. (4.579–80)

FURTHER TRAINING The rest of Book 4 belongs to Dido and her poignant death. Snatched away from the threat of further entanglement, Aeneas is free to absorb further lessons in heroism. Books 5–8, crowded with character and incident, show us Aeneas struggling to absorb the lessons offered him. Juno remains his relentless and implacable enemy, arranging for some Trojan women to set fire to his ships in Sicily, sending her pet monster Allecto to poison the hearts of Amata and Turnus in Italy, rousing the latter to attack the Roman camp in Book 9. Two journeys in particular offer opportunities for heroic

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education, the trip to the Underworld in Book 6 and a visit to the future site of Rome in Book 8. In each, there are displayed for Aeneas paradigms of masculine heroism. A key element in this ideal, as we have seen, is the control of women and things feminine. In response to Juno’s opening provocation in Sicily, guidance comes from an unexpected quarter. Ascanius, who only a few months before could be impersonated by a god disguised as an infant, shows a precocious aptitude for ordering women around, chastising the rebellious wives who have set fire to the ships (5.604–79). We will soon see that in fact the young man is considered by the gods to be too valuable for the future of Rome to risk his life in battle. He will be sequestered from the violence in Italy, while Aeneas—who will never see that destiny fulfilled—sacrifices all possibility of personal happiness to the imperium that lies glistening far in the future. We might expect the Sibyl, as the Trojans’ guide for the katabasis in Book 6, to assume the familiar role of feminine anima figure who leads the soul in a journey of personal self-discovery. By traveling to the dark Underworld, Aeneas might be understood to be journeying toward his own inner recesses, where the mythic tradition of antiquity would have him encounter deep truths about himself. But in the prelude to that journey, Apollo co-opts the Sibyl’s feminine passions in the service of his own masculine vision of the future. His maddened seer rages around the cave at the entrance to Hades, trying to drive the god from her chest. He wears down her “savage mouth” (80), subdues her fierce heart and shapes her to his will (6.77–80). Suitably subdued, the Sibyl foretells the future for Aeneas, which includes a lot about how the Trojans will act in the service of Rome’s destiny but not much about what awaits Aeneas personally: wars impend, blood flowing in the Tiber and the rise of another Achilles from Latium. One tantalizing item: a foreign bride (presumably for Aeneas) will again cause great trouble for the Trojans. It is left to Anchises to reveal the thrilling prospect for Aeneas of personal oblivion after his soul drinks the waters of Lethe (6.713–15). After she finishes, Apollo rides her, digging the spurs beneath her breast (6.98–101). The imagery here is of horse-breaking, a well-worn metaphor in Classical literature for sexual domination of women by men.19 Apollo must exert control over his servant before she can be trusted to lead the hero into the Underworld. The progress of Roman destiny requires the imposing of male control on disorderly female emotions. Apollo’s domination of the Sibyl is aligned here with Neptune quelling Juno’s storm and Mercury’s driving Aeneas away from Dido. The fact that other more assertive males must enforce the last of these makes it clear that Aeneas is not yet ready to assume the mantle of new Roman male hero. More education is required. Meanwhile, we wonder who will fill the role of the foreign bride. However we or Aeneas may have thought about Dido, to Jupiter and the male regime on Olympus she looked like a troublesome foreign bride, from whom Aeneas had to be torn. To the Trojans, she would be the second foreign woman to bring disaster on them because of one of their leaders. In this view,

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Aeneas becomes in turn a second Paris, the role for which Iarbas has already cast him (4.215–18). Now there will be yet another foreign wife. Judging from the impact of past versions, no one but perhaps Aeneas—whose desires are never paramount for the gods at least—would want another spirited, independent woman in the role. Indeed, everything we have seen so far suggests that the very destiny of Rome rests on the suppression of female power and agency. One last reminder of the cost of Aeneas’ new position as leader comes to us in the Underworld. Making his way toward the meeting with his father, Aeneas encounters the ghost of Dido, walking among those destroyed by love. The fleeting glimpse we had of another Aeneas who might have stayed and thrived in Carthage, marked by a fruitful mix of masculine and feminine, is mirrored here in the figure of Dido, fiercely proud like Ajax, a queen who could rule Carthage and lead her people. Such a configuration of power and gender is no longer available to Aeneas. Instead, on to Italy and his next foreign bride.

CAMILLA’S DEBUT Camilla appears last in a catalog of Italian forces that rounds out the portrait of pre-Roman Italy in Book 7. Echoes of earlier Greek myth sound throughout the march of heroes—Halaesus, son of Agamemnon, Hippolytus’s son Virbius—mingled with the comic book villain Mezentius and quasimaagical, pastoral figures like Umbro and Camilla. As in Homer’s battle narratives, the minibiographies focus on a celebration of those we already know are destined to be the losers. The entire list reinforces a pervasive sense of nostalgia and impending loss, a numinous world on the eve of extinction.20 That Camilla’s portrait comes in the emphatic last position underscores yet again the lesson offered in the poem so far: independent women, however alluring, are finally the enemies of the new Roman order. Behind Camilla, as we have said, lie earlier versions of the woman warrior, Penthesilea, Harpalyce (1.316), and Dido. Coming across the stage here freights her character with a cluster of associations that have accrued through the poem. Like the portrait of Dido, hers is preceded by several paradigms that create expectations for us. Penthesilea and Harpalyce embody a potent mix of sexual physicality and virginal austerity; Venus’ virgin persona in the Libyan woods skews the model—however ironically—toward a coy innocence full of sexual promise; Dido adds dignity and an air of authority and, of course, courageous but doomed heroism. It is difficult— and perhaps unwise—to try to define the exact import of this rich set of associations. Typically for Virgil’s poetry, the edges of each portrait blur into the others, with the valence subtly shifting in each new example. The process will continue to the very end of the poem, as Virgil’s interweaving of verbal and thematic echoes builds toward Aeneas’s final sword thrust.

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THE HERO’S MOTHER (2) Isolated by Juno’s relentless enmity, Aeneas travels to the future site of Rome in Book 8, looking for allies. Evander welcomes the Trojans, pledges support against the Latins and invites them to a feast in honor of Hercules. Aeneas’ status as hero-in-training persists: Virgil’s Homeric model here is Book 3 of the Odyssey, when Telemachus visits Pylos and finds Nestor sacrificing to Poseidon. As a hero-tourist, Aeneas visits the Palatine-to-be, another glimpse into the future of Rome. But the episode is dominated by Evander’s retelling of the triumph of Hercules—another tourist—over Cacus, the fire-breathing monster who was plaguing the Arcadians.21 In one sense the message of the myth for Aeneas is clear enough: like Hercules, he must vanquish the fire monster. The latter role seems for the moment to be filled by Turnus, to whose portrait in the catalog much fire imagery is attached (7.783–8).22 Viewed from our perspective, the association of Aeneas with Hercules may have another, more troubling dimension. The Greek hero is famously hated and persecuted by his mother—Juno in this poem. Aeneas already has a difficult mother, whose support cannot be trusted. By aligning the Trojan hero with his heroic predecessor, Virgil adds another dimension to the already dismal relationship between Aeneas and Juno. Now we have two mothers for Aeneas, the passionate but inconstant Venus and Juno, definitely the bad mother. This paradigm would make Juno’s hatred of Aeneas yet more personal. Being a substitute Paris is bad enough; inheriting Juno’s hatred for Hercules is a whole new level of trouble. Venus’ solipsistic mothering put her son in a relationship doomed to failure; Juno’s attentions, motivated at this point solely by the desire to inflict pain for its own sake, escalate the emotional cost of her abuse yet further. Perhaps this is the place to contemplate again the troubling series of paradigms in Book 1: Venus-as-hero’s mother/lover, Penthesilea, Dido-as-hero’s mother/lover. Could we think of Dido as the “good mother,” who offers Aeneas the chance to realize his true nature, only to be crushed by his other mothers, Venus and Juno?23

THE FOREIGN BRIDE The consolation prize for all of this suffering is to be Latinus’ daughter, Lavinia. Her opacity as a character underscores yet again how unimportant Aeneas’ personal happiness is in the long view of Roman history. Insubstantial, bland, childlike, she utters not one syllable in the poem. Though she is to be Aeneas’s wife, as with Ascanius her importance is entirely in the future. We first learn the identity of the new foreign bride from Anchises in the Underworld, where she appears as one procreative link in the long chain of Roman destiny, a woman who will give Aeneas children in his old age,

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who will themselves produce kings who will be the parents of kings, and so on into the future (6.764–6). As Book 7 opens, her hair catches fire, recalling Ascanius/Iulus at Troy (2.681–4; 7.73–80): both children will be kept safe to preserve the future destiny of Rome. As Book 12 opens, Lavinia’s blush in response to Amata begging Turnus not to fight the Trojans evokes a simile from Virgil, comparing her face to ivory stained with red dye or lilies mixed with roses (12.64–9). True to her blank persona, Lavinia can be compared to an inert work of art, to be decorated as someone else pleases. The simile recalls Homer’s comparison of Menelaus’ bleeding leg to a piece of ivory stained with red paint (Il. 4.141–7). On the one hand, Virgil’s allusion foreshadows the end of the fragile truce Aeneas has labored to effect: Menelaus’ wounding breaks the truce between Greeks and Trojans.24 More to the point for us here is the connection to Aeneas before the murals at Carthage: sic ait atque animum pictura pascit inani (“so he spoke and nourished his soul with an empty image,” 1.464). We saw Aeneas himself described later as Venus’ work of art when he appears from the mist before Dido. Our question there is equally germane here: what nourishment can Aeneas expect from Lavinia?

CLOSING THE DOOR: CAMILLA, JUTURNA, TURNUS Such are the marital prospects the gods have arranged for Aeneas. Books 9–12, modeled on the end of the Iliad, propel our hero toward his showdown with Turnus. That final encounter seals the fate of Turnus and the native Italians, but carries with it many other kinds of closure, including historical, cultural, and literary. As she did in Book 7, so here Juno starts things going, this time by rousing Turnus to attack the Trojan camp while Aeneas is away at Pallanteum (9.1–24). Thus begins the battling that will kill Nisus, Euryalus, Pallas, Lausus and Camilla, all exemplars of a certain kind of youthful, fiery, and—from the poem’s point of view—anachronistic hero. All are tied by Virgil’s intricate poetic web to both Dido and Turnus—and so, to Aeneas.25 For our purposes, the death of Camilla is the key event, out of which radiate, backwards and forwards, the most important threads. Her story dominates the end of Book 11. Turnus agrees to let her lead her troops into battle while he guards the Latin city walls. The entire episode leading up to Camilla’s death echoes Iliad 16. Diana looks down and marks the young virgin as her favorite, prompting Virgil to tell the story of her birth and dedication to the goddess. Like the sad musings of Hercules over the impending death of Pallas (10.464–72), Diana’s resignation at the prospect of Camilla’s death recalls Zeus’ regret at losing his son Sarpedon (Il. 16.431–8). After a brief aristeia, Camilla, accompanied by her troop of virgin warriors, is drawn by the beauty of his armor to follow one Chloreus. In her distraction, she is fatally wounded by the sneaky Arruns, who melts back into the

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crowd after throwing the spear. The sequence echoes Patroclus’ death later in Iliad 16, stunned by Apollo, wounded by Eurphorbus, who skulks away, then finished off by Hector (Il. 16.786–867). Virgil marks her passing in the lines we have quoted above (11.828–31). Virgil’s portrait of Camilla has been built, as we have said, on multiple allusions, inside and outside of the poem. From the Iliad, Sarpedon and Patroclus serve as models. The latter reference recalls Pallas, who has played this role for Aeneas in Book 10. Nisus and Euryalus flash by once more, the former in his prayer to Diana (9.404–9), the latter in his own fateful fascination with shining ornament and in imagery of his last moment (9.433–7). Camilla’s passing marks the climax of an evolving archetype that stretches yet further back, to Harpalyce, to Penthesilea, to Dido, strong, independent female figures, with Venus’ Spartan-huntress disguise as an ironic counterpoint. The early exemplars are all female, each presented as a potential threat to Aeneas’ mission. With Nisus and Euryalus, Virgil expands the paradigm to include fiery, naïve young men, modulating the portrait in a way that links it to the fruitful gender ambiguity we found in Dido and—however fleetingly—in Aeneas. Not only will Aeneas be denied a strong woman partner in his labors, but the feminine reservoir in him, on which he seemed to be drawing before Mercury arrived to crush it, must be shut off for good. The complex of traits embodied so strikingly by Camilla has a diminished afterlife, fading slowly through the poem’s last scenes. Though she is finally co-opted by Jupiter, the river nymph Juturna, a denatured version of female independence, clings as long as she can to her brother Turnus. When the ghastly Dira swoops down to drive her away, we feel her parting more keenly, as the last faint resonance of the long series that begins in the poem’s opening scenes. The world of the poem must be purged of all vestiges of this arresting but doomed figure. That inexorable process, like so many of Virgil’s themes in the poem, is not complete until Turnus dies. The line marking both his and the poem’s end repeats verbatim, as we have said, the end of Camilla’s life, vitaque cum gemitu fugit indignata sub umbras (“life fled with a groan under the earth, indignant,” 12.952 = 11.831), as if the woman warrior dies away slowly, echoing. The allusions to Patroclus in Camilla now pull together a delicate set of threads in Virgil’s poetic web. If, as I have argued elsewhere, both Dido and Turnus play the role of alter ego or second self to Aeneas, as Patroclus does to Achilles in the Iliad, then Aeneas’s killing of Turnus completes a kind of spiritual suicide that begins in Book 4.26 The Italian hero is penetrated by Aeneas’ sword, echoing the violent severing that releases the Trojan hero from Dido. If we also understand that something of Camilla dies with Turnus, as the verbal echoes and Homeric allusions suggest, then can we now understand that part of what Aeneas also annihilates with his final sword thrust is that set of traits in himself embodied by both Dido and Camilla?

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CONCLUSION: A DESICCATED WORLD Driven from Carthage and the possible self a union with Dido represents, Aeneas soldiers on toward his destined encounters with a second Achilles and a foreign bride. As the former figure, Turnus will eventually come to carry some of what Dido—and by association Penthesilea and Camilla—represent. The latter role is to be filled by Lavinia, a virtual cipher, as far from the independent spirit of the woman warrior as can be imagined. Once she is established as Aeneas’s destined mate, the complex of attributes once resident in Dido seems to split in the poem, with some of the queen’s blend of feminine and masculine energies living on for a brief time in Camilla.27 But now that residual vitality can only exist in a magical figure, with none of the fruitful civilizing power Dido embodies. Though Camilla’s spirit in turn lingers in a denatured form in Juturna and only vanishes entirely with Turnus, her death in Book 11 removes the virgin warrior figure in its pure form from the story. By the time Aeneas buries his sword in Turnus, the relentless drive of Roman destiny, orchestrated principally by Jupiter, has eradicated all traces of the spirit resident so appealingly in Camilla. Virgil’s intricate skein of allusions pushes the implications of this exclusion yet further: not only will Camilla and her like be absent from the new world, but males will be denied access to the power that drawing on such qualities in themselves might bring them. Adam Parry’s justly celebrated essay on the two voices of the Aeneid identifies and portrays a perspective, a voice, in the poem that runs counter to the triumphal vision of the Roman imperium toward which Aeneas labors, for which so many people must die.28 Subsequent commentators have filled out Parry’s brilliant sketch, tracing various sources of the poem’s pervasive melancholy. But one aspect of that second voice has not yet, I think, been sufficiently appreciated. Aeneas is to become a new kind of hero, which in the tradition of ancient epic means essentially a new kind of man. This new Roman man cannot invite into himself the feminine spirit that complements his masculine drive for control over the world and its people.29 The loss of that possible way of being, like the passing of the vibrant energy of Italy before the Trojans arrived, leaves a sadder, heavier world for Aeneas to shoulder as he trudges into the future. NOTES No one I know deserves the title “woman warrior” more than Judy Hallett, to whom this chapter is dedicated with admiration and affection. 1. All translations are mine. 2. On Camilla, see Rosenmeyer (1960); Gransden (1991: 20–5); Boyd (1992); Horsfall (2003: 465–72); Fratantuono (2005) and (2009). 3. E.g., Otis (1964: 306–7, 312–13); also Galinsky (1988). 4. Oliensis (1997) is an excellent recent discussion of sexuality and gender in the Aeneid. Putnam (1995) is a brilliant exploration of submerged homoeroticism in the poem.

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5. Note the echoes in 1.92, 11.828–9, 12.951. 6. See further Van Nortwick (1992: 46–7, 111–12). 7. On Venus as seductive toward Aeneas, see Putnam (1995: 42–3); Reckford (1996); Oliensis (1997: 306). 8. Creusa’s last words to Aeneas echo Venus’ here (cf. 2.594–5, 776–7). Does the parallel suggest a maternal role for Creusa? As we will see, Aeneas has several potential mothers, not necessarily helpful to someone trying to complete a journey to adult maturity. 9. Pace Galinsky (1988). 10. Or does the report in Book 2 reflect the hopeful naiveté of Aeneas, no less damaging to his heroic profile? Venus supports the main mission at the end of Book 8, when she gives Aeneas his new arms, but by then Aeneas has been stripped of any hope for personal happiness. See also Putnam (1985) on Venus’ seductive behavior toward Aeneas in book 8. 11. On Dido, Otis (1964: 264–72); Oliensis (1997: 305–6); Hardie (1998: 61–2, 78–9). 12. For Circe: 1.627, Od. 10.229–31 (also note the use of the “advance party”); Arete: 1.615–16, Od. 7.237–42; Nausicaa: 1.327–34, 494–504, Od. 6.102– 9, 149–63; Artemis/Diana: 1.494–504; Aphrodite/Venus: 1.314–34, Hymn. Hom. 5.81–142; Medea: 4.90–128, Apollonius Rhodius Arg. 3.52–110. 13. On this scene, see Parry (1963: 122–3); Hunt (1973: 3–7); Johnson (1976: 99–105). 14. On Penthesilea and Dido, Hardie (1997: 78–9). 15. See further Oliensis (1997: 306–7). 16. Cf. Od. 6.229–35; 23.156–62. 17. E.g. Penelope, Circe, Nausicaa. 18. On Dido as Cleopatra, Wyke (1992). 19. E.g. Anacreon 417; Sophocles Ant. 477–8. 20. See Parry (1963: 109–10). 21. For Hercules as model for Aeneas, Galinsky (1972), 135–52; Zarker (1972). Morgan (1998) offers a fresh perspective on the episode’s political context. Putnam (1995: 30–32), traces the connections between violence and eroticism in the episode. 22. On the identity of the other Achilles, see Van Nortwick (1980). 23. On Dido as mother, Oliensis (1997: 305–6). 24. For Lavinia’s blush as reflecting “the contagion of desire,” see Oliensis (1997: 308). 25. See further Van Nortwick (1992: 156–60). On Aeneas and Camilla, see Fratantuono (2005: 147–8). 26. Turnus as second self to Aeneas: Van Nortwick (1992: 151–2, 172–3). 27. See Oliensis (1997: 307), who sees Camilla as one “avatar” for Dido but also suggests (less convincingly, to me) that Dido is split into Lavinia and Amata. 28. Parry (1963: 121–2). 29. For Gilgamesh and Achilles as models for such an assimilation, see Van Nortwick (1992: 8–88).

REFERENCES Boyd, B. W. 1992. “Virgil’s Camilla and the Traditions of Catalogue and Ecphrasis (Aeneid 7.803–17).” American Journal of Philology 113: 213–34. Fratantuono, L. 2005. “The Penultimate Books of the Aeneid.” Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica, New Series, 80.2: 147–50. ———. 2009. A Commentary on Virgil, Aeneid XI. Brussels: Editions Latomus.

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Galinsky, K. 1972. The Herakles Theme. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 1988. “The Anger of Aeneas.” American Journal of Philology 109: 321–48. Gransden, K. 1991. Virgil: Aeneid Book XI. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hardie, P. 1998. Virgil. Greece & Rome: New Surveys in the Classics 28. Horsfall, N. 2003. Virgil, Aeneid 11: A Commentary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hunt, J. 1973. Forms of Glory: Structure and Sense in Virgil’s Aeneid. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Johnson, R. 1976. Darkness Visible: A Study of Vergil’s Aeneid. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Morgan, L. 1998. “Assimilation and Civil War: Hercules and Cacus.” In H. P. Stahl, ed., Vergil’s Aeneid: Augustan Epic and Political Context, 175–197. London: Duckworth. Oliensis, E. 1997. “Sons and Lovers: Sexuality and Gender in Virgil’s Poetry.” In C. Martindale, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Virgil, 303–11. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Otis, B. 1964. Virgil: A Study in Civilized Poetry. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Parry, A. 1966. “The Two Voices of Virgil’s Aeneid.” In S. Commager, ed., Virgil: A Collection of Critical Essays, 107–23. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall. Putnam, M. 1995. “Possessiveness, Sexuality, and Heroism in the Aeneid.” In M. Putnam, ed., Virgil’s Aeneid: Interpretation and Influence, 27–49. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Reckford, K. 1996. “Recognizing Venus (I): Aeneas Meets His Mother.” Arion III. 3: 1–42. Rosenmeyer, T. 1960. “Virgil and Heroism: Aeneid XI.” Classical Journal 55: 159–64. Van Nortwick, T. 1980. “Aeneas, Turnus, and Achilles.” Transactions of the American Philological Association 110: 303–14. ———. 1992. Somewhere I Have Never Travelled: The Second Self and the Hero’s Journey in Ancient Epic. New York: Oxford University Press. Wyke, M. 1992. “Augustan Cleopatras: Female Power and Poetic Authority.” In A. Powell, ed., Roman Poetry and Propaganda in the Age of Augustus, 98–140. Bristol: University of Bristol Press. Zarker, J. 1972. “The Hercules Theme in the Aeneid.” Vergilius 18: 3448.

10 “And I Became a Man” Gender Fluidity and Closure in Perpetua’s Prison Narrative Barbara K. Gold

Abstract. In Perpetua’s famous prison narrative from the early second century CE, Perpetua fights in her own portion of the narrative with a large Egyptian and she “becomes male” (facta sum masculus). At the end of her martyrdom, however, which appears in the framing narrative, she modestly covers herself after she is thrown by the beast she faces in the amphitheater and pins up her hair. Masculus no longer, she again becomes a filia. This chapter investigates Perpetua’s transgressive behavior in this prison narrative, the relation of her behavior to the asceticism ascribed to women in this period, and the way in which the framing narrative of Perpetua’s martyr tale adds both narrative closure and closure to the gender fluidity we find in Perpetua’s own tale, and sets her back into normalized conventions of gender. The Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis contains the narrative of the martyrdom of Perpetua, a young Roman woman from Carthage and catechumen (Christian in training), and a group of her fellow Christians, all of whom were arrested in Carthage in the year 203 CE and martyred there in the reign of Septimius Severus. This text, said to have been written in Perpetua’s own hand (manu sua et suo sensu, “in her own hand and reflecting her own feelings,” 2.3) while she was in prison awaiting execution, is remarkable for a number of reasons. It is the earliest prose piece in Latin that we have by a Christian woman (or by any woman), and it becomes an important model for many later martyr texts. It gives us an insight into a formative period of Christianity, and also into the dynamics of the life of a provincial Roman family in the third century CE. And it focuses on a figure who is—though not strictly speaking a virgin herself—nonetheless the precursor to the later ascetic, virginal figures such as the two Macrinas, Olympias and Melania in the third-fifth centuries, women who were “more like men than nature would seem to allow” (as Palladius says in his Lausiac History)1 and who gave up marriage and children to lead a celibate life devoted to God.2 Pretty much everything we know about Perpetua is found in the Passio, a text that is partly by her (sec. 3–10), and partly by two other hands: a narrator/editor (sec. 1–2, 11.1, 14–21) and one of her fellow martyrs and

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perhaps teacher, Saturus (11.2–13). She was in her early twenties, a nursing mother, and a Christian but not yet baptized when she was arrested. The arrest took place either in Carthage or in a town near Carthage, Thuburbo Minus. Perpetua was arrested along with four others: Felicitas (another woman, perhaps a slave), Revocatus (perhaps also a slave), Secundulus and Saturninus; a sixth person, Saturus, turned himself in later. Vibia Perpetua was, it seems, from a Roman family of good standing living in Carthage or a small town southeast of Carthage. Her family must have been thoroughly Romanized, having probably received citizenship under Tiberius.3 She is described as honeste nata, liberaliter instituta, matronaliter nupta (“well-born, brought up in a manner befitting a free person, and married in the fashion of a respectable Roman woman,” Passio 2.1). She has a family consisting of a father (with whom she has a difficult relationship), mother, maternal aunt, two brothers (one of whom is also a Christian), and a son, who is an infant still at the breast. Another brother had died at the age of seven of a terrible facial cancer. There is no mention at all of her husband, and this presents us with a difficult problem. There have been many reasons offered for his absence. He may have been dead, been on an extended trip or been estranged from Perpetua and her family if he was not a Christian (Bremmer 2002, 87–8). Or, it may be that Perpetua took the path of many women after her, who, in the process of becoming Christians, divested themselves of their prior familial relationships, including husbands and children, so that they might become virginal and dedicate themselves to God.4 Cooper has even suggested that Perpetua might have been a concubine, whose child was born out of wedlock and therefore was cared for during her imprisonment and after her death by her own family and not by her husband and his family (Cooper 2011). Nearly all of the (few) biographical details we have are told to us not by Perpetua in her part of the narrative but by the editor of the narrative. Perpetua gives us no biographical information (though she does mention her dead brother), but rather presents an account of several meetings with her father after her arrest, a few details of her trial and her time in prison, and visions that she had while in prison. We can surmise from Perpetua’s account that she had strong connections with her family, and in particular with her father. Perpetua describes four difficult visits from her father, who comes to dissuade her from her illconsidered and (to him) inexplicable march toward martyrdom, an act that will, he feels, have dire consequences not only for her but also for her family. In her father’s first visit, Perpetua puts him through a Socratic question and answer sequence (one in which the answer is obvious all along to her): “‘Father, do you see, for example, the pitcher or whatever is lying there?’ ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I do.’ And I said, ‘Can you call it by any other name than what it is?’ ‘No.’ ‘And so then I cannot call myself anything other than what I am: a Christian’ (Christiana).” In response to this semantic game-playing, her father was so angry that he threw himself at her as if he wanted to pluck

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her eyes out, but then left angrily in defeat, conquered, along with his devil’s arguments (Passio 3.1–3). On his next visit, before the second vision, he says to Perpetua: “‘My daughter, have pity on me and my gray hair! (miserere, filia, canis meis). Have pity on me—I am your father, if I am worthy to be called father by you. Didn’t I bring you up with these hands, so that now you are in the prime of life? Didn’t I put you first, before all your brothers? Don’t disgrace me in the eyes of everyone. Think of your brothers. Think of your mother and aunt. Think of your own son, who won’t be able to survive after your death. Give up your pride or you’ll be the ruin of us all. If something terrible should happen to you, none of us will be able to speak freely’. This is what he kept saying just like a devoted father, kissing my hands and throwing himself at my feet, and weeping, now he called me not ‘daughter’ but ‘my lady’” (“haec dicebat quasi pater pro sua pietate basians mihi manus et se ad pedes meos iactans et lacrimans me iam non filiam nominabat sed dominam,” Passio 5.2–5; passage quoted in Latin is 5.5). Thus, reversing gender roles, he supplicates her, calling her domina (“my lady”), no longer filia (“daughter”).5 A third visit comes during her interrogation by the governor, Hilarianus. The governor asks Perpetua to show mercy to her father and baby and to sacrifice pro salute imperatorum (“for the health of the emperors,” Passio 6.3). She refuses to do so, reiterating that she is a Christian. Perpetua’s father tries again to dissuade her and to get her to sacrifice. Hilarianus orders her father to be knocked down and beaten with a rod (6.5), and Perpetua grieves for his old age (dolui pro senecta eius misera, Passio 6.5). Hilarianus’ motivation for his harsh actions is unclear: he may have been trying to put pressure on Perpetua to recant by physically abusing her father in front of her; he may have been trying to get Perpetua’s father to take control of the situation and to exert his patria potestas in the manner of a good Roman male citizen and father; or he may have simply been venting his fury on this unrepentant woman and her father, who is acting in a subservient manner and displaying feminized behavior unbecoming for a Roman male. Finally, shortly before her execution, Perpetua’s father appears one final time; here he exhibits mourning behavior (tearing out his beard, prostrating himself), and again Perpetua grieves for his infelix old age (Passio 9.2–3). Perpetua’s father is slowly reduced to a role of subservience: far from the self-contained paterfamilias who has absolute control over every member of his domus and in particular the women, this father now calls his daughter domina, kisses her hands, weeps and prostrates himself at her feet. This posture of her father is shocking—so desperate is he to convince Perpetua to renounce her Christianity that he is willing to take on the feminine position and to allow her to take the dominant role. Although he seems throughout the Passio to be genuinely affectionate toward his daughter (so he says “Didn’t I put you first, before all your brothers?” 5.2), he is also clearly worried about his own reputation and that of his household (“you’ll be the ruin of us all. If something terrible should happen to you, none of us will be able to speak freely,” 5.4).

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Perpetua’s main account of her imprisonment is comprised of four visions that come to her before her execution: the first, in which she steps on the head of a serpent, climbs a ladder, and sees in an immense garden a godlike figure; two visions concerning her dead brother, Dinocrates; and a final and fourth vision the day before her execution. Her dreams are vivid and self-revelatory; while they contain a number of images found in other late antique and medieval writers, they also give a clear sense of an individual and idiosyncratic personality that shines through the work. So Shaw refers to an “immanent ‘presence’ of the author that exudes from her own account” (Shaw 1993, 27). It is the fourth vision (Passio 10) that has aroused the most interest. In this vision, the most famous part of her narrative, Perpetua’s transgressive behavior is placed in the foreground in a startling way. Here, Pomponius, a deacon who had visited her in prison, comes to that prison to get Perpetua.6 He leads her to the amphitheater, pledges that he will assist her (using the term conlaboro tecum, “I am suffering along with you,” 10.4)7 and then departs (just as Saturus does in the first vision). Perpetua sees a huge and boisterous crowd in the arena (10.5) and is surprised to find no wild beasts attacking her. Instead she beholds an Egyptian “hideous to look at” (10.6: Aegyptius foedus specie) with his seconds. Perpetua had her own assistants as well (10.6). And then, she says, “I was disrobed, and I became a man” (10.7: expoliata sum et facta sum masculus). Standing opposite her is her opponent rolling in the arena and covered in yellow sand (afa, 10.7). The Egyptian here presumably stands for the Devil, who was, she claimed, to be her true opponent the next day in her actual contest or agôn.8 Then another man appears, a paternal figure as in her first vision, so tall that he stood above the highest point of the amphitheater. He was clothed in purple robes and carrying a rod (virga) like an owner and trainer of gladiators (lanista, Passio 10.8). This man is a Christ figure, there to present her to die in the amphitheater just as an agônothete or director of the games might present gladiators for their own form of combat in the pagan games. This lanista is holding a green branch with golden apples. If Perpetua wins, she will get this branch; if she does not, she will be dispatched by the Egyptian. Then ensues a brutally physical battle between Perpetua and the Egyptian, a pankration with wrestling, punching and kicking. Perpetua knocks the Egyptian down, trampling on his head (as she did the serpent in vision one and as Eve is promised she will do in Genesis 3:15) and winning the prize. The lanista kisses Perpetua and says to her “Peace be with you, daughter” (Passio 10.13), while the crowd cheers and her seconds sing psalms. Perpetua then walks in honor and glory to the Porta Sanavivaria (the Gate of Life, through which victims and gladiators who were spared exited the arena). This is the end of the vision and very nearly the end of Perpetua’s portion of the narrative. It only remains for her to interpret her dream, saying that at this point she awoke and understood that she would fight on the next day, not ad bestias (“to be sacrificed to the beasts”) but against the Devil

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(diabolum, Passio 10.14). She also understood that victory was in her hands (sciebam mihi esse victoriam, Passio 10.14). This dream contains a number of standard images common to other visions and accounts of martyrdom, and found in texts from the New Testament on, many of which allude to agonistic institutions of the day. But in the particular context of Perpetua’s life and narrative, the images and modes of expression take on a deeper and extraordinary meaning. First, in general, we can infer from the language here that the death of martyrs is viewed as a munus, a public entertainment (a combination here of athletic event and gladiatorial games, which were kept separate in Rome), a munus offered by God to the communities where they were held as a different variety of the munera that they were accustomed to see. In these munera (or agônes), God or Christ is the agent of their martyrdom, not the officials who in fact presided over the trials and executions. It is a “performance orchestrated by God” (Bowersock 1995, 52) with Roman officials acting as his unwilling assistants. These executions or performances were held in the most conspicuous places in the city, as both the martyrs and (sometimes) the local magistrates desired. Second, there is the disturbing figure of the “hideous to look at Egyptian,” a figure who has occasioned much spirited debate. While Shaw sees this choice of word and image as a “simple reflection of racism” (Shaw 1993, 28), pointing out that the Egyptians were the most despised, hated and reviled ethnic group in the Roman world—therefore an appropriate choice for a dark and satanic thing (Shaw 1993, 28, n. 62; cf. Tilley 1994, 846), many see the Egyptian as representing more than just racist tendencies. The Egyptian nationality may have been chosen to represent the various mystic and pagan cults that originated in the east (and the reigning emperor, Septimius Severus, was a special worshipper of Serapis, an Egyptian god; cf. Dronke 1984, 14), cults that competed with Christianity as possible choices for the Romans. Egypt was thought to contain a “forbidden knowledge, a threat to the wisdom of the true God” (Dronke 1984, 14). Or the Egyptian might symbolize a large and impressive athletic opponent, parallel to the gigantic Ethiopian whom Heliodorus’ protagonist fought against in his novel the Aethiopica (Aeth. 10.30–2; cf. Salisbury 1997, 110). Finally, Perpetua’s fourth vision is imbued with the imagery and ideology of an athletic contest and the important cultural embodiments associated with them: spectacles and spectators, the body, the gaze, moral virtues, philosophical discourse and civic institutions. Martyrs were, from the time of the New Testament, cast as athletes. So Paul in I Corinthians compared the Christian life to the restraint in all things exercised by every athlete (I Cor. 9.24–7); according to Tertullian, Christians were considered spiritual athletes, and they were supposed to discipline their bodies” (ad mart. 3). And Tertullian says that prison is the perfect proving ground for the kinds of visionary experiences that Perpetua had (ad mart. 2–3). In this fourth and final vision, we see the logical development of the theme of the fearless woman who refuses to be subordinated to the role of

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daughter. As Castelli says, Perpetua’s victory “is described as and by the stripping off of feminine gender” (Castelli 1991, 42; her emphasis). Perpetua’s sudden and brief transformation in 10.7 into a masculus is both necessary in order to explain her victory over the large Egyptian man and a sign of confidence in her ability to win. She must prevail because she is fighting for God.9 Her victory is marked by her signifying male body; her transformation might be seen as a “culturally conditioned affirmation of Perpetua’s ultimate victory” (Tilley 1994, 844). In antiquity the male body was considered the cultural and physical norm. Biblical metaphors were full of masculine images that “reinforced prejudice for male superiority” (Tilley 1994, 844; Eph 4:13, 6:11–17; Rom. 13:12). “Male” and “female” became metaphors for moral categories, with male standing for strong, superior and female standing for weak, inferior. In order, then, to be strong and to fight against beasts or demons or to bear up bravely under duress, one had to be “male” or “virile” in one way or another. The designations “male” and “female” became over time terms that could indicate either sex. Sex was then transcended, and sexuality became fluid and temporary, and could refer to a common human nature. The terms came to describe less a static state or a sexual category than a moral category: to “become female” was to become morally weak or degenerate; to “become male” was to attain “a higher state or moral and spiritual perfection” (Vogt 1985, 72–80).10 Perpetua’s male body would, by this reading, indicate that she has been strengthened, turned into an athlete who could prevail over her Egyptian opponent, and that she has reached a higher spiritual state. For women, courage, conscious choice and self- possession constituted gender transgression when viewed through men’s eyes (Miles 1989, 55). Parents, mothers and fathers alike, were horrified by this behavior. We know that Perpetua’s father was infuriated by her stubbornness and independence (Passio 3.3), and Thecla’s mother, on hearing Thecla reject marriage, cried out “Burn the lawless woman” (Acts of Paul and Thecla 20). It was not, of course, the male characteristics that critics despised, but rather women who tried to act like men and against their nature. Philo, the first-century CE Jewish philosopher, tries to mediate this contradiction when he says: “Progress is nothing else than the giving up of the female gender by changing into the male, since the female gender is material, passive, corporeal, and senseperceptible; while the male is active, rational, incorporeal and more akin to mind and thought” (Philo, Questiones et solutiones in Genesim 1.8, quoted in MacDonald 1987, 99).11 One means for women to “become male” was to follow the path of asceticism. If women accepted voluntary celibacy and discarded their former world of property, husband and children (as Perpetua did), they took on “a new status that elevated them beyond the deficiencies of the female condition” (Clark 1986, 43). So Jerome says that once a woman prefers Jesus Christ to a husband and babies, “she will cease to be a woman and will be called a man” (Jerome, Comment. on Ep. to the Ephesians III [Eph. 5:28]).

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She would now be considered man’s equal, not his inferior; here Jerome quotes Paul that “in Christ Jesus there is no male and female” (Jerome Ep. 71,2,2; 75,2,2). Thus with sexuality and family relations removed, all that remains, says Jerome, is for women to “transcend their femaleness.” The transformation into a male body such as Perpetua underwent became later, for holy women in particular, a common trope: “the mark of true holiness is that the women become men” (Castelli 1991, 42–7; quote on p. 42). This transformation can take many forms (cutting one’s hair, acting in a masculine way, transvestism), but it does not often take the form of a complete, physical metamorphosis (even if in a dream or briefly) into a male body.12 And the transformation is not usually described in a narration, as here; it is more often “fait accompli” (Castelli 1991, 42). We should look closely, then, at both the language used in the Passio and at Perpetua’s fluid gendering throughout her narrative. There is some disagreement among scholars over whether casting off the female refers to female appearance or female sexuality. In Perpetua’s narrative, Perpetua does not regard the change in her appearance or body as enduring: as soon as the contest with the Egyptian is over, she returns to her original form as she approaches the lanista, who gives her the branch with the golden apples, kisses her, and says to her: filia, pax tecum (“daughter, peace be with you,” Passio 10.13). We should also take note here that when Perpetua says “I became a man” (Passio 10.7), she says facta sum masculus, using the feminine form of the participle facta. Thus in this moment she was both male and female.13 In addition to complicating her transition to a male form by the use of this participle, Perpetua chooses to use for “man” not the word vir or mas but the less common word masculus. This word, with its diminutive ending, might indicate by its very form an ambiguity in the text about the strength and duration of the transformation. There are three interesting uses of this word by Classical Latin authors that might be instructive. Livy (31.12.6), in describing a strange portent accompanying the violation of a temple, says that among the Sabines was born a child of uncertain sex: incertus infans natus, masculus an femina esset; he then continues: “another was found, age sixteen, whose sex could not be determined (ambiguo sexu).” Although masculus is used in opposition to femina here, it appears in a context of sexual ambiguity.14 Elsewhere, Horace, in Ep. 1.19.28, speaking of the poet Sappho, says that “masculine Sappho shapes her Muse with the meter of Archilochus” (temperat Archilochi Musam pede mascula Sappho). It is not clear whether mascula here is a term of praise or blame,15 but certainly Sappho was a figure whose sexuality was often thought ambiguous.16 The word masculus, then, seems to signal, both by its form and its semantic connotation and associations, a sexual ambiguity in Perpetua’s transformation into a male body. And in Horace’s Epodes, the author refers to the “masculine libido” (masculae libidinis, Epode 5.41) of the witch, Arimensian Folia. While it is not clear what exactly Horace means by masculae here, it may refer to a fearsome woman (or witch) who

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lusts after other women (such a woman would have been fearsome by her very nature). The word clearly marks Folia in some way as an unnatural character who acts in a manner contrary to normal gender expectations. I am not suggesting that the word masculus is used of Perpetua here to mark her as a woman who loves other women,17 but it is certainly a word full of sexual ambiguities that characterizes Perpetua—uneasily—as a woman who is acting, at this moment at least, in a manner that is not consonant with her conventional gender roles.18 In all but the final part of Perpetua’s narrative, only two short sections before the end, Perpetua is a filia, and it is as a woman that she receives her reward. From her point of view, there has been no enduring change to her body.19 Apart from the fact that Perpetua “became a man” in her fourth vision, her sex remains unchanged in the other parts of the narrative.20 But Perpetua’s gender qualities vary widely throughout the narrative. In addition to the gendered terms discussed above, earlier in her narrative we see the same fluctuations of gender in Latin forms that Perpetua uses which prepare us for this sexual ambiguity. In the first section of the narrative (3.5), she says—referring to her whole group of four men and two women—baptizati sumus (“we were baptized”), using the masculine plural of the group. It would be normal in Latin for a woman to subsume her identity under the masculine plural if the group is of mixed gender, but it is still noteworthy that she refers to herself here in the masculine plural, especially given the quick shift to feminine endings immediately afterwards. Later in this same section, she says numquam experta eram tales tenebras (“I had never experienced such a dark place before,” 3.5), using the feminine singular. Similarly in the same section (sec. 3), she says “benedicti diaconi . . . constituerunt praemio uti paucis horis emissi in meliorem locum carceris refrigeraremus” (“those saintly deacons arranged our transfer for a few hours—and for a price—into the better part of the prison, where we could have some relief,” 3.7), again using the generalizing masculine plural of the group; this is followed by sollicita pro eo adloquebar matrem (“Anxious for him [the baby], I spoke to Mother,” 3.8).21 So Perpetua tends to subsume her identity under the masculinizing plural when she identifies as a part of the group, but when she extracts herself and becomes an individual writing her own story, the descriptive adjectives and participles all take feminine endings. The main point at which this grammatical gendering is called into question is her statement facta sum masculus (10.7). Perpetua’s actions in her own part of the narrative, however, cast her in a dominant and controlling male role. She is independent, courageous, and brave, a leader of her group. She dominates her father, who is cast into an increasingly feminized position as the narrative progresses.22 She willingly gives up her baby to her family, divesting herself of her maternal role. When the Roman prison guards try to dress her for the “games” in the pagan role of Ceres (and the men as Saturn), she refuses and she wins that verbal contest (Passio 18.4–6). She is portrayed as a fierce combatant in her

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fourth vision, fighting in a pankration against her Egyptian opponent. It has even been argued, from a Freudian standpoint, that when she claims that her father wanted to attack her “as if he was going to pluck my eyes out,” (Passio 3.5), there is a relationship between the reference to blinding and castration anxiety, evidence for “Perpetua’s tendency to self-identification as male” (Bal 1991, 232, n. 14). This masculinizing of Perpetua becomes more interesting if we examine her own autobiographical recounting of her story against the framing narrative which treats Perpetua as a character in the drama. The external narrator, or editor, who both introduces Perpetua in section 2 and then tells the story of her death in sections 14–21, highlights her feminine side in several ways. So in section 20, we find out that the animal chosen for Perpetua and her one other companion female martyr, Felicitas, to fight was an extremely fierce heifer (“in order to mimic (aemulatus) their sex even as regards the beast,” 20.1). The authorities (or, as the text says, the Devil, diabolus), according to the narrator, chose the heifer as a cruel joke—to remind these women, who had the boldness to renounce their conventional social and familial roles, that their proper role was as women.23 In this same section, Perpetua is cast by the editor/narrator in a demure, feminine role after her fight with the beast. After she was thrown by the heifer, she “fell onto the small of her back. And when she sat up, she rearranged the tunic that had been torn away from her body to cover her thigh, being more concerned with her modesty than her pain. Then she asked for a hairpin and pinned up her disheveled hair; for it was not fitting to suffer martyrdom with her hair loose since she might seem to be mourning in her hour of glory” (Passio 20.3–5). This Perpetua, so concerned with the typical feminine preoccupations of modesty and keeping a proper demeanor, hardly seems to accord with the Perpetua we see in sections 3–10, the autobiographical part of the Passio. There we are presented with a far more aggressive, confident woman concerned more with winning her contest, even at the cost of losing her family, than with covering up her exposed thigh and pinning up her loose hair. As Bal points out in her narratological critique of the Passio, the main structural contest in the Passio is between narration and description (Bal 1991, 227). Perpetua is telling (or purports to be telling) her story in real time, in a self-referential and autobiographical narration.24 She is not able, of course, to write the end of her story since that end is death. So “the story contains its own unnarratable ending—it entails the death of its narrator” (literally: Bal 1991, 231).25 When Perpetua finishes telling her fourth vision, she says “Then I woke up. And I understood that I was going to fight not against animals but against the Devil. But I also knew that victory was to be mine. This is what I did up to the day before the games. As for what happened during the games themselves: anyone who wants to write about that may do so” (Passio 10.14–15). Thus she defers and loses control of the ending, her death, and hands it over to the narrator/editor. The editor then describes Perpetua from an

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outside point of view (or focal point), treating her as a character in a closely controlled narrative, molding her into the figure he wishes her to be (a woman who, in the midst of her passion, covers up her exposed flesh and pins up her dispersos capillos [20.5]) and writing her death (sec. 21). The narrator/editor both achieves narrative closure and attempts to fix more firmly Perpetua’s gender identity. But Perpetua’s tale of her contest calls this fixed gender identity into question, revealing a woman who often behaves in a determinedly masculine way and yet firmly identifies with her corporeality, her female relationships, and her sexuality throughout her story. And even at her end, Perpetua, who has only been wounded by the heifer and must now be dispatched by an inexperienced gladiator, has to help him bring about her final moment: “Perpetua, however, so that she might taste some pain, screamed when she was stabbed to the bone; and then she herself guided the trembling hand of the inexperienced gladiator to her throat. Perhaps so great a woman, feared as she was by the unclean spirit, could not have been killed unless she herself had willed it” (Passio 21.9–10). So Perpetua is the master of her own fate even in the editor’s account of her death, defying his attempts to fix her gender firmly as conventional female. The gender ambiguity in the text of Perpetua persists until the end, both in its narrative structure, and in the characterization of Perpetua and the language used to describe her and her behavior. As Castelli says, “just as her narrative remains open-ended and therefore ambiguous, it also narrates an ambiguity toward gendered imagery and gendered identity on the part of its main character; whereas Perpetua’s own story calls narrative closure and fixed gender identity into question, the framing narrative finishes the story and puts Perpetua back into the conventions of gender, as a woman (femina)” (21.10; Castelli 1991, 35). This ambiguity in gender identification and in transformations of the human body lay at the heart of the spiritual progress that many Christians made in the early Church, both men and women. But for women, the transformations were more evident, more problematic, and more controversial. Perpetua’s narrative is a striking early example of such a fraught journey. NOTES This chapter is about a courageous woman who led the way for many women after her; it is thus a fitting piece to be dedicated to my long-time friend and colleague, Judy Hallett. 1. Palladius, Lausiac History, Prol. 5, trans. W. K. Lowther Clarke (London 1918), 37. See Castelli 1991, 44–5. John Chrysostom reportedly claimed about the abbess Olympias: “Don’t say ‘woman’ but ‘what a man!’ because this is a man, despite her physical appearance” (Palladius, Dialogus de vita S. Ioannis Chrysostomi in Migne, PG 47, 56, cited by Castelli 1991, 45 and n. 22). Such women both received accolades for their manly piety but were also condemned and feared for their gender ambiguity and their casting off of traditional roles.

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2. See on this, Cooper 2011. 3. See Bremmer 2002, 87, for discussion of the name Vibius and its probable provenance. 4. See Castelli 1991, 44–7. See too Heffernan 1988, 233–4, who gives as one possible reason for Perpetua’s missing husband “the idea that following baptism the renunciation of the marriage debt was an achievement of the highest good.” 5. My translations are in some places influenced by the translation of J. Farrell and C. Williams (in Bremmer and Formisano 2012). 6. Pomponius is often compared to the pagan dignitary who brings the participants to the contest, but, as Bremmer points out, his dress, especially the absence of a belt, marks him as a Christian, not a pagan (2002, 114–15). 7. This is a Christian term; see Bremmer 2002, 114. 8. The Egyptian may also be used to signify the paradigm of a strong athlete. Bremmer (2002, 116) cites L. Robert here for Robert’s influential interpretation of the athletic contest in the fourth vision. Bremmer points out that the Egyptians were the “athletes par excellence of the Roman Empire,” and therefore it is not surprising that an Egyptian would be Perpetua’s opponent here. But also the Devil was often represented as black, and this may have affected the choice of the Egyptian in Perpetua’s contest. 9. Lateiner, in writing of sexual and gender transformations in Ovid, says that “Ovid’s treatment of transsexualities and transvestisms . . . dwells on the instrumental and social consequences of their transits” (2009, 151); the same might be said of Perpetua’s transformation into a male in her contest with the Egyptian. 10. Metaphors of woman turning into man and woman becoming male were commonly used in Gnosticism. See Clement of Alexandria, who says “the woman . . . when she has freed herself of the cravings of the flesh, achieves perfection in this life as the man does . . . for souls are . . . neither masculine nor feminine, when they no longer marry nor are married. Perhaps she is thus turned into a man, the woman who is no more feminine than he, the perfect, manly, woman” (cf. Vogt 1985, 73; see Clement, Stromates VI.100.6). 11. Cf. Castelli 1991, 44–5, who points out that there are many encomia to women who “become male” and yet also condemnation and mistrust. For example, cutting one’s hair, as Thecla did, to try to disguise oneself as a man or as a rejection of self-beautification, was seen as negative since “women’s hair stands for their subjugation” (p. 44). 12. We have many examples of such women, most of them after Perpetua’s time but a few before her, for example, Thecla. There are certainly parallels between the stories of Perpetua and Thecla, and it is tempting to think that Perpetua must have read her story. See on this Bremmer 1998, 176ff. and 2002, 107ff.; he asks whether Perpetua had read the Acts of Paul and knew enough Greek to do so. 13. Such gender fluidity was certainly present in classical texts before the time of Perpetua, and the Passio likely borrows from such stories of transformations as we find in Classical authors, most notably Ovid. See for example Ovid’s story of Teiresias, who famously turned in both directions, first being transformed from male to female (deque viro factus—mirabile!—femina, Met. 3.326) and then after seven years being changed back again into his original masculine shape. Ovidian characters who are changed from female to male (or back and forth) include Sithon (Met. 4.279–80: ambiguus fuerit modo vir, modo femina Sithon [“Sithon’s sex was fluid, now male, now female”]; Mestra (female to male— and various animals, Met. 8.847–74; Iphis (female to male, Met. 9.666–797); Caenis/Caeneus (female to male, Met. 12.168–209). But Ovid’s fondness for destabilized genders and fluid identities had perhaps a political motive that we do not find in the story of Perpetua’s transformation into a male; see on this Lateiner 2009, esp. 150ff. H. Fränkel proposes that Ovid’s tale of Callisto,

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21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

Barbara K. Gold who turned into a bear, and her son Arcas reveals an awareness of two natures within one being that “prefigures the dogma of two natures in Christ” (Ovid, A Poet between Two Worlds [Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1945], 81–2). J. Briscoe, in his commentary on Livy, gives references to other passages that mention hermaphrodites in Livy and other authors; they were regarded by the Romans as a “major abomination.” He points out that the second instance of the sixteen-year-old boy whose sex could not be determined is an example of a change of sex rather than hermaphroditism. In any case, ambiguous sexuality was seen as frightening and an abomination. See J. Briscoe, A Commentary on Livy Books XXXI–XXXIII (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), p. 89, ad loc. A. S. Wilkins, in his commentary on Horace’s Epistles, says that “mascula is a term of praise, not of blame, as the Scholiasts strangely suppose” (Wilkins, ed., The Epistles of Horace, London, 1958, 233 ad loc). Both Wilkins and the Scholiasts seem to have been caught off guard by Horace’s lovely ambiguity in this word. Brooten suggests that the background to mascula Sappho in Horace Ep. 1.19.28, as well as the mascula libido in Hor. Epodes 5.41, might be the “masculine desires” attributed to tribades, or females who love other females, by writers in antiquity (especially Christian writers such as Paul; see Brooten 1996, 34ff.). Brooten thinks that the word mascula, when applied to Sappho, could imply exactly this (Brooten 1996, 34ff.), and she finds support for this argument in Porphyrion, a Scholiast, who says that Sappho is mascula perhaps because of her homoeroticism (Brooten 1996, 34, n. 24). The fact that the very ambiguous word masculus is used here of Perpetua by Perpetua could support the argument that Perpetua did not herself write the narrative but that rather an editor or narrator wrote it for and about her. The use of the word could be seen as an uneasy attempt to explain how Perpetua could fight with and conquer such a fearsome opponent. A further point, raised by Judith Perkins, is that the representation of Perpetua in her narrative (as a nursing mother) and of her companion Felicitas (as pregnant and giving birth while in prison) highlights the maternal body, which is featured in “contemporary debates about Christ’s real flesh and his real birth” (Perkins 2009, 167–9). M. Bal disagrees; she sees Perpetua as moving away from femininity and toward masculinity throughout. Perpetua is, she says, a “proto-feminist heroine” in her victory over gender limitations and a “proto-post-modern” in her victory over narration (Bal 1991, 227–41; quotes from p. 241). See Williams 2012 for these references and for a good discussion of the issue of gender in the Passio. On the increasing feminizing of Perpetua’s father, see Castelli 1991, 37ff. See on this Shaw 1993, 7–9. See Bremmer 2002, 83–4; he points out that one stylistic feature unique to Perpetua’s part of the diary is that she regularly uses expressions indicating the passage of time (e.g. “after a few days”). See Castelli 1991, 34ff. on the open-endedness of Perpetua’s narrative and of autobiography in general: “by its nature, no autobiography can come to closure” (34).

REFERENCES Bal, M. 1991. “Perpetual Contest.” In M. Bal, On Story-Telling: Essays in Narratology, ed. D. Jobling, 227–41. Sonoma, CA: Polebridge Press.

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Bowersock, G. W. 1995. Martyrdom and Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bremmer, J. N. 1998. “The Novel and the Apocryphal Acts: Place, Time and Readership.” In H. Hofmann and M. Zimmerman, eds., Groningen Colloquia on the Novel. Vol. IX, 157–80. Groningen: Egbert Forsten. ———. 2002. “Perpetua and Her Diary: Authenticity, Family and Visions.” In W. Ameling, ed., Märtyrer und Märtyrerakten, 77–120. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. Bremmer J. N. and M. Formisano, eds. 2012. Perpetua’s Passions. Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brooten, B. J. 1996. Love between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Castelli, E. 1991. “‘I Will Make Mary Male’: Pieties of the Body and Gender Transformation of Christian Women in Late Antiquity.” In J. Epstein and K. Straub, eds. Body Guards: The Cultural Politics of Gender Ambiguity, 29–49. New York and London: Routledge. Clark, E. A. 1986. “‘Devil’s Gateway and the Bride of Christ’: Women in the Early Christian World.” In E. A. Clark, Ascetic Piety and Women’s Faith: Essays on Late Ancient Christianity, 23–60. Studies in Women and Religion 20. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press. Cooper, K. 2007. “Closely Watched Households: Visibility, Exposure and Private Power in the Roman Domus.” Past and Present 197: 3–33. ———. 2011. “A Father, a Daughter and a Procurator: Authority and Resistance in the Prison Memoir of Perpetua of Carthage.” Gender and History 23: 685–702. Dronke, P. 1984. Women Writers of the Middle Ages: A Critical Study of Texts from Perpetua (203) to Marguerite Porete (1310). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Heffernan, T. 1988. Sacred Biography: Saints and their Biographers in the Middle Ages. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lateiner, D. 2009. “Transsexuals and Transvestites in Ovid’s Metamorphoses.” In T. Fögen and M. Lee, eds., Bodies and Boundaries in Graeco-Roman Antiquity, 125–54. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter. MacDonald, D. R. 1987. There is No Male and Female. Philadelphia: Fortress Press. Miles, M. R. 1989. Carnal Knowing: Female Nakedness and Religious Meaning in the Christian West. Boston: Beacon Press. Perkins, J. 2009. “The Rhetoric of the Maternal Body.” In J. Perkins, Roman Imperial Identities in the Early Christian Era, 159–71. London and New York: Routledge. Salisbury, J. E. 1997. Perpetua’s Passion: The Death and Memory of a Young Roman Woman. New York and London: Routledge. Shaw, B. 1993. “The Passion of Perpetua.” Past and Present 139: 3–45 (rev. version in R. Osborne, ed. 2004. Studies in Ancient Greek and Roman Society, 286–325. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Tilley, M. A. 1994. “The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity.” In E. S. Fiorenza, ed., Searching the Scriptures. Vol. 2: A Feminist Commentary, 829–58. New York: Crossroad. Vogt, K. 1985. “‘Becoming Male’: One Aspect of an Early Christian Anthropology.” In E.S. Fiorenza and M. Collins, eds., Women—Invisible in Theology and Church, 72–83. Edinburgh: T & T Clark. Williams, C. 2012. “Perpetua’s Gender. A Latinist Reads the Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis.” In J. N. Bremmer and M. Formisano, eds., Perpetua’s Passions. Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis, 54–77. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

11 Dynastic Weaving Claudian, Carmina minora 46–8 Henriette Harich-Schwarzbauer

Abstract. Claudian’s carmina minora 46–8, usually interpreted as ‘occasional poetry,’ may be read as a sequence of epigrams which intend to confirm the young emperor’s role as representative of the Roman Empire and to refrain him from military duties. The fictive weaver Serena, the “stepmother,” mother-in-law, but also (by adoption) sister of Honorius, encourages him by her handicrafts to concentrate on the role of representative in order to avoid the danger of war and to secure his life and the Theodosian dynasty. The three poems pretend to be parerga to gifts sent to Honorius whereas it is likely that they are just literary gifts.

FAMILY BONDS: SERENA, NIECE AND ADOPTED DAUGHTER OF THEODOSIUS I In the study of Roman culture, it is well established that family relationships and their politics were a driving force of Roman political life and that these relationships found their way into Roman literature. Judith P. Hallett is one of the pioneers in the study of women’s roles in Roman family relationships and the importance of this topic for the analysis of Roman social structures. Her groundbreaking study Fathers and Daughters in Roman Society. Women and the Elite Family (1984) was one of the first in the field of women’s studies and a catalyst for many of us, attracting the interest of historians and literary critics alike. The study of Roman family relationships is today one of the most prolific fields in ancient studies and continues to be of great relevance for our own society.1 In my contribution to this volume, I would like to carry on the fundamental questions discussed by Hallett in 1984 and examine how family relationships influenced dynastic politics in late antiquity. The center of my attention is Serena, one of the most powerful women at the turn of the fourth to fifth centuries. It seems that, to put it simply, Serena as a little girl already shrewdly understood the possibilities of family politics and exploited these

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for her own purposes. She paid for this with her own life. In the year 408, Serena was hanged in Rome.2 Serena (ca. 365–408) was the niece of Emperor Theodosius I.3 She was the daughter of Theodosius’ brother Honorius. After her father died (before 379), she grew up in Theodosius’ household and was adopted by him. After the death of Theodosius’ first wife, Aelia Flavia Flacilla (†386), she looked after his sons Arcadius (*377) and Honorius (*384). In 384 she was married to Stilicho, military commander and son of a Vandal. They had three children, Maria, Eucherius and Thermantia.4 Maria was married to Honorius in 398, and after her death in 408, Thermantia was briefly Honorius’ wife. Eucherius, in turn, was engaged to Galla Placidia, who was Arcadius’ and Honorius’ half-sister.5 In short, Serena was both cousin and sister of the two rulers, Arcadius and Honorius, as well as Honorius’ mother-in-law. Of course, this factual account of family relationships does not allow us to draw any conclusions about how Serena got along with individual members of her family. We do not know what kind of emotional bonds (positive or negative) existed between them and Serena, who possessed informal, though not institutional, power. There are many suspicions concerning Serena (and Stilicho). The most striking one is that she manipulated family politics—her daughters’ marriages remained without children6—in order to help her son Eucherius to the throne. It is very likely that Serena was able to assume the role of mother for Honorius and expand this in a positive way, so that she had considerable influence on him, since at the time of Aelia Flacilla’s death, he was only two years old and not much older than Serena’s firstborn daughter, Maria. Arcadius, in contrast, was already nine years old when his natural mother died. Serena’s relationship to him probably remained that of a sister.7 However, it is difficult to say to what extent and at what point after Flacilla’s death Serena took on the role of mother for both of her adoptive brothers, especially since Galla, Theodosius’ second wife,8 was in poor health and weakened by many pregnancies.9 Traditionally, Serena’s role has been harshly criticized. However, this criticism probably originates in reservations about her husband Stilicho (the Vandal). Nevertheless, Serena together with Stilicho won the highest praise from Claudius Claudianus, who had worked at the Milanese court since 396. It is not unreasonable to surmise that Claudian was already in contact with Serena when he was still in Constantinople and that he came to Rome and then Milan under her agency.10 Claudian enjoyed Stilicho’s patronage and Serena’s matronage. He presents his relationship to Serena as close and very supportive.11

SERENA THE WEAVER: CARMINA MINORA 46–8 Claudian’s panegyric poems and some of his carmina minora cast much light on Serena’s life. The empress’ powerful position at court from the end of the fourth century onwards is well documented, even though the praise is post

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mortem and belongs in the genre of funeral oration.12 Claudius Claudianus already paid tribute to Serena during her lifetime. On the basis of his œuvre, we can reconstruct the biography of a strong woman who wielded power by virtue of her dynastic position. A series of poems dedicated to Serena and counted among Claudian’s carmina minora play a major role in this depiction. Three of these poems (c. min. 46–8) are indisputably attributed to Claudian. Hall (1985) in his edition regards a fourth poem as “spurium / suspectum.” However, he considers that Claudian’s authorship of this poem (c. spur. 4) is plausible.13 The subject of these four poems is the gifts that Serena weaves and skillfully embellishes. The poems’ tituli are later additions. Depending on how much importance is attributed to these tituli, they may provide the main argument for counting c. spur. 4 among the genuine poems about Serena. Carmen minus 46 (De chlamyde et frenis equi Honorio Augusto a Serena missis) and c. min. 47 (De freno phaleris et cingulo equi Honorio Augusto a Serena missis) are both composed in fifteen hexameters. Carmen minus 48 (De zona equi Arcadio Augusto a Serena missa) is written in six elegiac couplets, and c. spur. 4 (De zona a Serena Arcadio Augusto missa) in three elegiac couplets.14 All four poems claim to be accounts of gifts being handed over. For our purposes, it is not important whether or not the gifts described in the poems were really delivered or whether it was even possible for a donum to reach Arcadius in Constantinople in a time of crisis.15 The crucial question is rather how Claudian portrays Serena’s relation to her brother (or brothers)16 and how this gift is linked to the ostentatious splendor common at court in late antiquity. Historical scholarship has dated the poems based on their references to Serena as “mother-in-law” (c. min. 46, 47) and “sister” (c. min. 48). The premise is that the poet, from the time Honorius married Maria (398), referred to Serena preferably as mother-in-law, which in the dynastic hierarchy is a superior title to sister.17 Whereas cc. min. 46 and 47 are undoubtedly addressed to Honorius,18 the lack of reference to his wife Maria in c. min. 48 makes Arcadius,19 his brother, another possible addressee in addition to Honorius. In this poem, the poet talks about Serena’s role as sister (11–12): Augescit brevitas doni pietate Serenae quae volucres etiam fratribus ornat equos. The smallness of the gift is increased by the love of the sister who also adorns the swift horses of her brothers.20

Hall, in accordance to Claverius’ (Paris 1602) titulus de zona equi Archadii assumes Arcadius as the addressee of this poem (c. min. 48), and suggests a titulus in analogy to that of his reading of c. min. 47 according to manuscript O3 (de freno phaleris et cingulo equi honorii a serena missis). However, the tituli are later paratexts which possibly influenced the readings of these poems.21 Apart from the titulus, we can, in this specific case, also regard c. spur. 4 as paratext to c. min. 48. Line 12 (fratribus) suggests

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that Honorius is the addressee, and an analogous poem to Arcadius would follow.22 On this account, c. spur. 4 would need to be counted as a poem of the corpus Claudianeum. The space accorded to Serena in Claudian’s work is, as already mentioned, considerable. She repeatedly appears as the figure who strengthens the dynasty, either in her role as teacher of Maria, or by offering advice and support to Theodosius, or as upholder of dynastic power during Honorius’ absence for war. Especially well documented is her care of Honorius, whom she looks after like her own child.23 In what follows, I will examine poems 46–8. As I am going to show, these poems deal with gifts woven by Serena for Honorius and adorned by her with artfully crafted embellishments.

SERENA’S GIFT Carmina minora 46–8 can be read as triptychon. In these poems, Claudian delineates Serena’s relationship to Honorius. He attributes to Serena the task of designing the emperor’s image. In this context, it is established that the young emperor should be rid of his military duties. At the core of c. min. 46 is Serena’s interest to foster the public perception of Honorius’ imperial image. This image is the product of female craftsmanship, the weaving and adorning with symbols of power: the cloak and the horse in all its splendor. The political significance immanent in female craftsmanship is intended to have its impact domi, not in bello. The poem follows a bipartite structure. The first, longer part (1–10) recalls Thetis’ anxious care for Achilles (whose death before Troy was famously predicted). The second, shorter part (11–15) compares the relationship of Serena and Honorius to the mother-son relationship between these mythical figures.24 The main point of this mythological example is the emphasis on Thetis’ endeavor to prolong her son’s outstanding glory among his peers beyond the time of the Trojan War. Female labor, dedicated to peace, is the focus of the subsequent comparison of Thetis and Serena. In the expectation of Achilles’ return from Troy, Thetis weaves a chlamys of purple and gold for him and embellishes the reins of his horses with pearls: sed placidos etiam cinctus et mitia pacis ornamenta dabat, bello quibus ille peracto conspicuus reges inter fulgeret Achivos. ipsa manu chlamydes ostro texebat et auro frenaque quae volucrem Xanthum Baliumque decerent aequore quaesitis onerabat sedula gemmis. (c. min. 46.5–10) Yet she wanted to give him peaceful belts, too, and soft embellishments of peace with which after the war he should shine brightly among the Achaeans. She wove with her own hand cloaks in purple and gold

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In the first, mythical, part of the poem, the poet introduces the perspective of the mother who looks at the young ruler. She regards it as her obsequium (11–12) to establish his authority in peacetime. The point in choosing Thetis and Achilles as a mythical example, therefore, is not only one of sublimation and literary commemoration. The exemplum alludes specifically to the fact that Achilles did not return from the Trojan War. The objects (chlamydes, frena) woven by Thetis, which were supposed to make Achilles the champion of all the other princes, turned out to be of no use, since the warrior died before his time. The example of Thetis’ anxious care for Achilles, therefore, legitimizes Serena’s maternal providentia and her strategy to keep the young Honorius from the role of military commander.25 In the second part of this poem, which contains an apostrophe to the young ruler (11: princeps altissime), this strategy develops into a legitimate claim, justified in the competition, as it were, for Honorius’ protection and declared an obligation for his parents-in-law: “diversis certant / obsequiis soceri” (Your parents-in-law compete for you in their different obligations, 11–12). Stilicho is already on the battlefield for Honorius, and Serena prepares Honorius to present his power in all its splendor. Both of them, Stilicho and Serena, perform munera (13), which serve to protect the dynasty. The societal obligations of women and men are sharply defined as a dichotomy.26 It is important to recognize that two of Serena’s familial roles (mother and mother-in-law) are at stake here. They do not contradict each other but belong to different levels of the text. Serena’s role as mother-in-law appears on the surface when she is mentioned in one breath with Stilicho in the context of their mutual obligations toward Honorius as parents-in-law (soceri, 11). Her role as mother is alluded to indirectly through the myth. As I previously pointed out, the terms for Serena’s familial relationships (soror, soceri) in cc. min. 46–8 have led to considerations about whether to date these poems before or after Honorius’ marriage with Maria. The bonds between mother and son became less important in this context after his marriage. However, c. min. 46 gives a vivid impression of how, within these closely interlacing dynastic relationships, Serena in her role as mother crafts her son’s power. Scholarship is influenced by speculations about Serena’s dynastic ambitions in favor of her biological son and produces a negative image of this woman who moved her chess pieces in order to see Eucherius installed on the imperial throne. Carmen minus 46 suggests differently. It expresses the mother’s anxiety about losing her surrogate son, Honorius, on the battlefield and thereby puts the imperial image to the fore. The poem does not provide an unmediated picture of Honorius’ role as princeps clausus27 who has no military duties. Claudian delineates a motherson relationship that is guided by the providentia of the mother who fears that her son might not return from the battlefield. He attributes this motive, leading to the ruler’s substitution of ostentatious splendor for military glory, to Serena,

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and this sheds a more differentiated light on Serena’s relationship to Honorius. Serena as mother makes the decisive step, in order to establish with Honorius a new type of ruler who eludes death on the battlefield and thereby avoids putting the dynasty at risk. This motive is reflected in the fabric crafted by Serena. Whereas Thetis manufactures a chlamys, a garment symbolic of the warrior, Serena weaves velamina (15), which are precisely not specified as chlamys.28 The central idea, to ground the power of the emperor in the ostentatious display of wealth and make this a substitute for military glory, is continued in c. min. 47. At its core is the horse as symbol of the emperor. An apostrophe to the horse (“o felix sonipes”) begins the poem. Apostrophe to an object is found elsewhere in Claudian’s serial poems. It facilitates a different point of view and variatio.29 The horse (which remains unnamed) is considered fortunate, and its owner, Honorius, is venerated.30 Horse and warrior are part and parcel of the epic genre.31 The apostrophe (“oh, fortunate horse”) therefore opens a window into epic poetry and has a ring of makarismos (blessing).32 That said, horses are often companions of tragic figures, the very ones who do not return from battle. Claudian’s main intertext in this poem is Statius Thebaid 9.211–13. Hippomedon reproaches the horse of the dead Tydeus: Quid o nova fata recusas, infelix sonipes? numquam tibi dulce superbi regis onus. . . ? Why do you reject a new fate, unfortunate horse? Will it never again be a sweet burden for you to carry a proud king. . .?

In c. min. 47, the relation of horse and rider is turned around. The horse no longer is the rider’s companion into war, but plays an integral part in the creation of the imperial image. This shift in function is brought about by Serena’s weaving and craftsmanship. The future power of the imperial image is conveyed as a result of Serena’s skill.33 The transformation of the impetuous, youthful horse into the majestic horse of the emperor is accomplished through its adornment (3–8).34 In just the same way, we can infer, the emperor may be transformed and given majesty through magnificent splendor. Serena crafts frena (1), monilia (9), and purpura (10) for the harness, a girth (zona, 11) and the head ornament (phalerae, 15). Each item of the horse’s gear radiates splendor; each item is woven expensively and adorned with precious gems. An oriental blaze of color (Persarum gentile decus, 13) and splendor characterizes the horse as symbol of power. As in c. min. 46, Serena, the mother, is the one who makes this adornment and devotes her female labor to the task: et medium te zona liget variata colorum floribus et castae manibus sudata Serenae, Persarum gentile decus. sic quippe laborat maternis studiis nec dedignatur equestres

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Henriette Harich-Schwarzbauer moliri phaleras, genero latura decorem. (47.11–15) And your middle may be adorned with a girth, varied in the color of flowers and molded by chaste Serena’s hands, an adornment of the race of the Persians. For in this way she toils for you with a mother’s devotion and does not disdain to craft a horse’s head decoration in order to offer it as an adornment to her son-in-law.

The link between the horse’s splendor and Serena’s weaving, anticipated in c. min. 46, is made explicit in 47.12. Already in c. min. 46, where Serena’s rank is that of regina,35 she appears as mother who regards it as her duty and makes every effort to foster her son’s (and son-in-law’s) position and to disregard her own.36 This aspect is picked up in c. min. 47. Now it is made even clearer that Serena does both: she takes on the great task of crafting Honorius’ imperial splendor and is prepared to put her own dignitas as regina last. Carmen minus 48, in contrast to the two preceding poems, is composed in elegiac couplets. This poem pretends to be a letter37 that accompanies a gift from Serena, a zona for the horse. However, what seems to address Honorius is the gift itself. The difference between the poet and the authoress of the poem dissolves, as if, in a manner of speaking, Serena were writing the letter in the gift’s name. The topos of the weaving woman (in this case, the sister), who honors her brother with her manual labor, is continued in this poem. However, the poem is more specific than c. min. 47 in that the focus is on one individual part of the magnificent harness, namely, the zona. At first sight, this girth appears to be only a small gift in comparison to the abundance and splendor of all the other gifts crafted by Serena. However, it is noteworthy that, while the girth as such is rather inconspicuous, it is the part of the harness that links all parts of the harness together. The transformation of the impetuous horse38 into the symbol of power and magnificence is now complete. The horse presents its own stateliness with self-confidence. This is underlined in the following exclamation: O quantum formae sibi conscius erigit armos spargit et excussis colla superba iubis. (48.9–10) Oh, how conscious of its own beauty it raises its flanks and stretches its proud neck, after shaking its mane.

The lesser importance of the zona is balanced by Serena’s sisterly love39 to her brother: Augescit brevitas doni pietate Serenae, quae volucres etiam fratribus ornat equos. (48.11–12)

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The smallness of the gift is increased by the love of the sister who also adorns the swift horses of her brothers.

The last couplet names the gift’s origin. The comparatively small value is reflected in the poem, which is shorter than the preceding ones. The brevitas doni (11), a woven object, is accordingly transposed to a metapoetic level. The process of weaving is assimilated to that of the poetic production.40

CONCLUSION Carmina minora 46–8 can be read as a sequence of poems. It is a triptychon, and the opening of its wings (c. min. 46 and 47) signifies a progression from the general to the specific (c. min. 48). The difference between general and specific is formally captured through the change of meter. Read as a sequence, therefore, these poems give an impression of the role attributed to Serena at the imperial court. She weaves, so to speak, the role of the young Emperor Honorius by reducing his role, with the help of the gifts she skillfully crafts, to the function of representation. Protection of the young emperor is her motive. As mother (and motherin-law), she wants to save him from potentially fatal military glory. Serena has learned from reading the works of the ancients.41 As sister, too, she helps, confirming Honorius in this role. Reading these poems in sequence, we can also recognize the hierarchical order of the different roles attributed to Serena. The mother in Serena is the driving force behind these woven gifts, supported by her roles as the mother-in-law and sister. Providentia as a motive is absent from c. spur. 4. In this poem, there is no link to the mother’s anxiety about her son’s death, which is her motive for establishing his imperial image. It is unlikely, therefore, that this poem belongs to cc. min. 46–8. Although these three poems give no clue regarding the chronological order of their composition,42 they explicitly document the power of textiles and give an account of the political significance of the female craft of weaving at the imperial court.43 Serena’s skillfully crafted textiles are symbols of power. Carmina min. 46–8 are usually seen as separate occasional poems among Claudian’s Carmina minora. However, read together, they go beyond their supposed ephemerality. They tell us of the transformation of the imperial image that is brought about by the skillfully crafted textiles of the worried mother.44 NOTES Judith Hallett has enhanced Classical Studies in a unique way through her wonderful personality, her extraordinary commitment, and her innovative research. Early in her career and with great foresight, she has sketched out the development of Classical Studies reaching into the twenty first century and has contributed to the radical

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overhaul of the discipline. As a person and researcher she is an unequalled model. I would like to take this as an opportunity to thank her, our domina illustris, in my own name and in the name of many of my younger colleagues, whom she inspires and supports tirelessly by “weaving the coming generations.” My great thanks go to Dr Astrid Voigt for her translation of my contribution into English. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

For a recent example of this lively tradition, see Ann-Cathrin Harder (2008). See Demandt (1989: 144 with sources). See Gross-Albenhausen (2001: 450–1). See Clauss (2002: 370–8, 434–5, “Stammbaum 11: die theodosianische Familie”) for details. His study focuses on the empresses. Serena has no separate chapter. See Demandt (1989: 139 with sources). See Holum (1982: 49 with n. 8). Holum (1982: 49) does not differentiate Serena’s role in relation to Arcadius from that to Honorius: “Raised in the effete atmosphere of the eastern court, sheltered, after Flacilla’s death, in the lap of their cousin Serena.” Theodosius married Galla in 387. Clauss (2002: 375) assumes that Serena took over the care for all three of Theodosius’ children, including Galla Placidia, only after Galla died in 394. Contra Cameron (1970: 409). Cf. c. min. 31 (Epistula ad Serenam): Serena brings about Claudian’s marriage. He refers to himself as her cliens (62). On this, see, e.g., Clauss (2002: 370–4, “Im Feldherrnmantel: Aelia Flacilla”). See Hall (1985: 416, “carmen fortasse genuinum”). Cameron (1970: 407–9) links the poem to c. min. 48 and thinks it is genuine. Ricci (1991/1992: 275–9), by contrast, concludes on the basis of a metrical and lexical analysis that this poem is not by Claudian. Cf. the tituli in the edition of Hall (1985). Ricci (2001) has valid arguments against these tituli and proposes De Chlamyde (c. min. 46); De phaleris (c. min. 47); De zona equi Honorio Augusto a Serena missa (c. min. 48). Cameron (1970: 408) rejects the idea of a “cold war” in 393–400, which would have prevented any kind of exchange between the West and the East. On channels of communication more generally used at this time, see Long (1996: 191–2). Already Cameron (1970: 407) argued that Claudian emphasized the mother relationship when talking about Serena and Honorius. Cf. Cameron (1970: 406–7); Ricci (2001: 272). Ricci (2001: 280). Hall (1985: 400). I follow the edition of Hall (1985). All translations are my own (HHS). On the tituli of the cc. min. see also Harich-Schwarzbauer (2009: 18–19), with further literature on the debate. Ricci (1991/1992: 276–9) and Ricci (2001: 281), against Hall (1985: 400) and in accordance with the manuscript tradition, take Honorius as addressee. Ricci (2001: 281 ad loc.) rightly explains fratribus as “plurale generico.” Cf. esp. Honorius’ words in nupt. Honorii et Mariae (41–3): “stirpe soror, pietate parens, tibi creditus infans / inque tuo crevi gremio, partuque remoto / tu potius Flacilla mihi.” On the bipartite structure, cf. Ricci (2001: 273). Hallett (1984: 330) points out that during the Roman Republic and Empire, young men of the ages of Achilles or Hector would not have been given the responsibility for warfare. This kind of age limit was probably still valid and is likely to be reflected in c. min. 46.

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26. On the discussion of the necessity of strict societal expectations, including the rigid dichotomy of gender, in Claudian, see Harich-Schwarzbauer (2006: 114–20). 27. Sidon. Apoll. c. 5, 358. 28. Ricci (2001: 275 ad loc.) takes chlamys and velamina as synonymous. 29. Cf. c. min. 34 (apostrophe to the crystal) in the series of crystal poems (cc. min. 33–9). 30. Cf. Ricci (1988: 263–4) and Ricci (2001: 276). 31. Cf. Ricci (1988: 263–4). Ricci points to the epic context (e.g. Camilla) but does not mention the fateful pairing of horse and warrior. 32. Cf. Ricci (1988: 263–4) and Ricci (2001: 276 ad loc.). 33. The potential function of this splendor is expressed in the subjunctive of the verbs: luxurient (9); vestiat (10); liget (11). 34. Lines 7–8 in particular show this transformation: “et crine superbus / erecto virides spumis perfunde zmaragdos.” (And proudly tossing your mane bathe the green emeralds in your foam). 35. On regina, a title appropriated by Claudian to Serena, cf. c. min. 30, 5 (Laus Serenae); c. min. 31, 36 (Epistula ad Serenam): “sub pedibus regitur terra fretumque tuis.” (land and sea, subdued to your feet, you rule.) 36. C. min. 46, 14–15: “reginae contenta modum servare Serena / urget telas.” (Serena, content to restrict herself to the duty of the queen, is busy weaving garments.) 37. The letter format explains the elegiac couplet as choice of meter. 38. C. min. 47, 3: “seu tua per campos vento iuba lusit Hiberos” (whether in the plains of Spain the wind playfully tosses your mane). 39. C. min. 48, 1–2: “parva sororis / munera”, 11: “doni pietate Serenae.” 40. This is anticipated in c. min. 47, 10–11 (“variata colorum / floribus”). On the metaphorical use of flores (for the ornatus verborum) in this case, cf. Roberts (1989: 49–50). 41. In c. min. 30, 149–59, Serena appears as an excellent connoisseur of ancient literature and its values. 42. Ricci (2001: 280 ad loc.) suggests that Serena’s exclusive title after Honorius’ wedding to Maria is mother-in-law, so c. min. 48 would have been composed before 398. 43. On the political significance of textiles, cf. Wagner-Hasel (2007: 325) with further general reading on this subject. 44. Magnani (2002: 78) fails to see this essential point; he talks with reference to Claudian of a “passatempo amato da Serena.”

REFERENCES Cameron, A. 1970. Claudian: Poetry and Propaganda at the Court of Honorius. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Clauss M. 2002. “Die Frauen der theodosianischen Familie.” In Die Kaiserinnen Roms: Von Livia bis Theodora, ed. H. Temporini-Gräfin Vitzthum, 370–435. Munich: C. H. Beck. Consolino, F. E., ed. 1986. Claudiano: Elogio di Serena. With Latin text and source. Venice: Marsilio. Demandt, A. 1989. Die Spätantike: Römische Geschichte von Diokletian bis Justinian, 284–565 n. Chr. Munich: Beck, cop. Gross-Albenhausen, K. 2001. “Serena.” In Der Neue Pauly. Enzyklopädie der Antike, ed. H. Cancik et al., 11: 450–1. Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler.

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Hall, J. B., ed. 1985. Claudianus: Carmina. Leipzig: B. G. Teubner. Hallett, J. P. 1984. Fathers and Daughters in Roman Society: Women and the Elite Family. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Harders, A.-C. 2008. Suavissima soror: Untersuchungen zu den Bruder-SchwesterBeziehungen in der römischen Republik. Munich: C. H. Beck. Harich-Schwarzbauer, H. 2006. “Das ‘dritte Geschlecht’: Zur Eunuchenherrschaft in Claudians Invektive gegen Eutrop.” In Frauen und Geschlechter: Bilder— Rollen—Realitäten in den Texten antiker Autoren der römischen Kaiserzeit, ed. C. Ulf and R. Rollinger with the collaboration of K. Schnegg, 105–22. Vienna: Böhlau Wien. ———. 2009. “Prodigiosa silex: Serielle Lektüre der Carmina minora Claudians.” In Lateinische Poesie der Spätantike. Internationale Tagung in Castelen bei Augst, 11–13. Oktober 2007, ed. H. Harich-Schwarzbauer and P. Schierl, 11–31. Basel: Schwabe. Holum, K. G. 1982. Theodosian Empresses: Women and Imperial Dominion in Late Antiquity. Berkeley: University of California Press. Long, J. 1996. Claudian’s in Eutropium: Or, How, When, and Why to Slander a Eunuch. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Magnani, A. 2002. Serena: L’ultima romana. Milan: Jaca Book. Ricci, M. L. 1988. I doni di Serena (Claudiano Carm. min. 46–48 Hall). Invigilata Lucernis 10: 263–77. ———. 1991/1992. Problemi di contenuto e di attribuzione in due carmi pseudoclaudianei. Invigilata lucernis 13/14: 269–79. ———. 2001. Claudii Claudiani Carmina minora. Introduction, translation and commentary by M. L. Ricci. Bari: Edipuglia. Roberts, M. 1989. The Jeweled Style: Poetry and Poetics in Late Antiquity. Ithaca/ London: Cornell University Press. Wagner-Hasel, B. 2007. “Der Stoff der Macht—Kleideraufwand, elitärer Konsum und homerisches Königtum.” In Keimelion: Elitenbildung und elitärer Konsum von der mykenischen Palastzeit zur homerischen Epoche. Akten des internationalen Kongresses vom 3. bis zum 5. Februar 2005 in Salzburg, ed. E. Alram-Stern and G. Nightingale, 325–37. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.

Part III

Reception

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12 The Spectacle of “Bare Life” in Martial’s Liber Spectaculorum and Martyr Discourse Judith Perkins

Abstract. In his Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Giorgio Agamben invokes the archaic Roman figure of the homo sacer as a central element in his argument. The homo sacer held an anomalous position in religious law: “It is not permitted to sacrifice him, yet he who kills him will not be condemned for homicide.” Agamben describes the homo sacer as the “originary figure of life taken into the sovereign ban.” Agamben’s discussion provides the basis for my exploration of some of the cultural dynamics enabling the formation of a Christian identity in the context of Roman imperial sovereignty. By comparing the representation of victims of the Roman games in Martial’s poetry and Christian martyr Acts, I offer that a new Roman sovereignty and its effects contributed to the appeal of the Christian movement in the early imperial period. Christianity emerged in a period of increasing cosmopolitan sovereignty. This study explores some of the cultural dynamics enabling the formation of a Christian identity in this new sovereignty of the early imperial period, by juxtaposing perspectives inscribed in Martial’s Liber Spectaculorum and in selected Christian martyr Acts. The nature of sovereignty has become a major focus of contemporary philosophic thinkers, and Giorgio Agamben’s discussion of the topic in his Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (1998) provides a heuristic for my exploration. Agamben has focused on the problem of human life and its capacity to realize its human potential, achieve human distinction and become a rational, speaking, determining human being (Colebrook 2008: 107). Agamben’s project is to show that the practices of modern sovereign states relegating subjects to the unhuman and allowing them to be killed are not an anomaly, but woven into very structure of western politics and its notion of sovereignty.1 To avoid such atrocities, Agamben argues for “completely new politics,” based on new premises; he questions whether “the political fact is not perhaps thinkable beyond relation, and thus, no longer in the form of a connection” (1998: 11, 29). In the remainder of this study, I will utilize Agamben’s observations to suggest how the refiguring of sovereignty in the early empire, with its concomitant

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shaping of new forms of what Agamben calls “bare life,” contributed to the expansion of Christianity. Viewing Christianity as a counteridentity spun off by the accelerating sovereignty of Roman imperialism might provide some direction for pursuing Agamben’s project to refigure a new political model— one not based on the exclusion of some human life from a full political life. Agamben bases his discussion of sovereignty on Carl Schmitt’s influential dictum that “the sovereign is he who decides on the state of exception” (Ausnahmezustand, 1985: 1).2 Schmitt argues that the decision on the exception to suspend the law in a state of emergency must be a real decision, because it cannot be predicated on existing norms: “details of the emergency cannot be anticipated, nor can one spell out what may take place is such a case . . . and of how it [the emergency] is to be eliminated” (6–7). Deciding the exception is thus to establish “an underived norm.” As Schmitt writes, “In political reality there is no irresistible highest or greatest power that operates like natural law” (17). Schmitt also points to the inherent problem that actual physical power poses for any legally constituted highest power: “the pistol . . . is also a symbol of power.” To decide an exception is therefore always a political move, because it exceeds the existing legal system. The sovereign, in effect, thus determines the entire political/legal order. Establishing an exception, he also defines the nature of the “normal situation” (13). The sovereign sets the limits and defines the purview of the law (Mills 2008: 62). Schmitt (1985: 7) emphasizes the anomalous position of the sovereign, above and outside the law, but also by virtue of his ability to suspend the juridical system within it. In his examination of sovereignty, Agamben’s focus is the human life affected by the sovereign exception, and he observes that this life also occupies a position of inclusive exclusion: “What is excluded in the exception maintains itself in relation to the rule in the form of the rule’s suspension. The rule applies to the suspension in no longer applying to it, in withdrawing from it” (Agamben 1998: 17–18, emphasis in source). The excluded exception remains within the law by virtue of having lost its protection, being taken out (ex-capere) from its purview (the exception of Jews from German law provides the ultimate exception). Agamben describes the exception as having the structure of a ban: “The relation of exception is a relation of ban. He who is banned is not simply set outside the law and made indifferent to it but rather abandoned by it, that is exposed and threatened on the threshold in which life and law, outside and inside become indistinguishable” (1998: 28–9). Agamben argues further that this ban provides “the original political relationship” (181). As evidence for this statement, Agamben (1998: 7) adduces the opposition between zēn and eu zēn offered by Aristotle in his discussion of the polis, “born with regard for life, but existing essentially with regard to the good life” (Pol. 1252b 29–30, γινοµένη µὲν τοῦ ζῆν ἕνεκεν, οὖσα δὲ τοῦ εὖ ζῆν). In this formulation, Agamben notes, political life, the good life, comes into being by leaving behind, abandoning bare life, zoē.3 Agamben (1998: 7–8)

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sees the exclusion of some human being (bare life) from the political emerging even more clearly when Aristotle locates the polis in the transition from voice to language (phonē to logos). The polis is for those with logos: Λόγον δὲ μόνον ἄνθρωπος ἔχει τῶν ζῴων· ἡ μὲν οὖν φωνὴ τοῦ λυπηροῦ καὶ ἡδέος ἐστὶ σημεῖον, διὸ καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις ὑπάρχει ζῴοις . . . ὁ δὲ λόγος ἐπὶ τῷ δηλοῦν ἐστι τὸ συμφέρον καὶ τὸ βλαβερόν, ὥστε καὶ τὸ δίκαιον καὶ τὸ ἄδικον· τοῦτο γὰρ πρὸς τὰ ἄλλα ζῷα τοῖς ἀνθρώποις ἴδιον, τὸ μόνον ἀγαθοῦ καὶ κακοῦ καὶ δικαίου καὶ ἀδίκου καὶ τῶν ἄλλων αἴσθησιν ἔχειν· ἡ δὲ τούτων κοινωνία ποιεῖ οἰκίαν καὶ πόλιν Among human beings only man has language. The voice is the sign of pain and pleasure, and this is why it belongs to other living beings. . . . But language is for manifesting the fitting and unfitting and the just and the unjust. To have the sensation of the good and the bad, the just and the unjust is what is proper to men as opposed to other living beings, and the community of these things makes dwelling and the city (Pol. 1.2.16; 1253a, 9–18). Agamben (1998: 8) holds that this opposition between phonē and logos, nature and culture is a crucial move in the creation of the political: “There is politics because man is the living being, who in language, separates and opposes himself to his own bare life and at the same time, maintains himself in relation to that bare life as an inclusive exclusion.” Western politics, according to Agamben, is premised upon defining the limits separating real life from bare life, truly human from nonhuman or not-quite-human life (Norris 2005: 262). And in this scheme, “the fundamental activity of sovereign power is the production of bare life as originary political element and as threshold of articulation between nature and culture, zoē and bios” (Agamben 1998: 181). Although these statements may seem to equate “bare life” with natural life, Agamben shows in several places that this is not his position.4 He writes explicitly, “Bare life is not simply natural reproductive life, the zoē of the Greeks, nor bios, a qualified form of life. It is rather . . . a zone of indistinction and continuous transition between man and beast, nature and culture” (1998: 109). Bare life is not natural biological life, but endangered and expendable political life (Ziarek 2008: 93). Just as the sovereign occupies the threshold between law and exemption, so bare life straddles that same indeterminate space as target of sovereign power, of the ban, that sets the limits for real human life. To clarify his meaning of bare life, Agamben makes paradigmatic use of the archaic Roman figure evoked in the title of his study, the homo sacer.5 Agamben’s figurative use of the homo sacer needs to be emphasized because, as Michèle Lowrie writes, “the explanatory value of the homo sacer resides not in its historicity, but in being good to think with” (2007: 33).6 Agamben

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takes his description of the homo sacer from Verrius Flaccus, preserved in the lexicon of Pompeius Festus, “It is not permitted to sacrifice him, yet he who kills him will not be condemned for homicide” (cited in Agamben 1998: 71).7 Agamben offers the homo sacer as the “originary figure of life taken into the sovereign ban” (1998: 83). Excepted from the protection of both profane and religious law, the homo sacer is available for unlimited violence without it constituting a crime. Because the legal order specifically permits the death of the homo sacer, he remains part of that legal order, but he is excluded from that order in that killing him does not constitute a homicide. According to Agamben (1998: 83), the situation of the homo sacer defines the structure of the sovereign sphere where it is permitted to kill without legal culpability. And the abject vulnerability of the homo sacer manifests the nature of all the life caught in that sovereign sphere.8 Although she accepts the importance of Agamben’s ideas for deciphering the nexus of power and human being, Michèle Lowrie indicates problems with his chronology for political sovereignty in Rome.9 She challenges Agamben’s interpretation for a system of sovereignty already operating in the republican period and holds that sovereignty in the sense of the right to decide the exception came to Rome only with Augustus. Lowrie argues that what is attested to in the continuing states of exception (invoked by the senatus consultum ultimum) in the late Republic is not sovereignty, but rather a legal structure too fluid and diffuse to deal with the accelerating political violence of the period (Lintott 1999b).10 It was this instability that contributed to setting in motion the emergence of sovereignty in the person of Augustus, who Lowrie suggests provides a “foundational model” of sovereignty (2007: 55). Lowrie recognizes, however, that “Agamben’s larger point that power of life or death over citizens inheres in sovereignty” also resonates in earlier cases when citizens like Tiberius Gracchus and the Catilinarians were executed without trial (39). But full sovereignty appears in Rome in the person of Augustus and his successors.11 This tight nexus between the power over life and death and sovereignty helps to situate the accelerating dimensions of civic shows featuring gladiatorial contests, beast hunts and executions from Julius Caesar through the early imperial period.12 If a crucial aspect of sovereignty is fashioning bare life, the civic shows and their violence performed the ideological work of showcasing the sovereign’s power over life and death. Augustus shaped the shows for his own ends. He refigured the seating arrangements to reflect his hierarchical social vision (Suet. Aug. 44.2; Rawson 1987) and limited the number and size of munera for producers other than himself (Dio 54.2.4). He also increased the violence of the show. In the republic, the exotic animal species brought to Rome for exhibition were not generally killed in the shows until Augustus had thirty-six crocodiles slaughtered at the dedication of the Temple of Mars Ultor in 2 BC (Dio 55.10.8). Kathleen Coleman (1996: 63) traces Augustus’ innovation to his imperialist drive; to take life is the quintessential sign of power and control. Augustus’ careful recording

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of the number and size of his shows in his Res gestae (22–3) further marks their importance in reifying his sovereignty. A collection of epigrams, the so-called Liber Spectaculorum, attributed to Martial, attests to the ability of the shows to manifest sovereign power. This collection celebrates the opening of the Flavian amphitheater by providing a series of poetic cameos depicting scenes performed in the monumental building. Both the size of this amphitheater and its shows functioned to legitimize the new Flavian sovereignty. The poems’ narrator writes as a witness to the thrilling spectacles displaying the power and divinity of an unidentified “Caesar,” a title likely incorporating both Titus and Domitian (Coleman 2006: lxxxii, xlv–lxiv).13 The book begins with three epigrams accentuating the imperialist themes of Rome as the summation of a historical progress and the humanitarian benefactor of diverse races. The first two epigrams describe the amphitheater itself. The first proclaims how this monumental building has surpassed and subsumed all the previous wonders of the world (Fitzgerald 2007: 38): omnis Caesareo cedit labor amphitheatro: unum pro cunctis Fama loquetur opus All labour yields to Caesar’s amphitheater Fame will tell of one work instead of them all. (Spect. 1.7–8, trans. Coleman 2006)14

The third epigram metaphorically conveys Rome’s geographical supremacy by describing the diverse, polyglot makeup of the audience gathered in the amphitheater; Thracians, Sarmatians, Egyptians, Arabs, and other races are all present for the shows. The poem’s central conceit is that the diverse voices of all these races are unified into one acclamation hailing the emperor as verus patriae pater (Spect. 3.12). All differences are erased, and all are unified in the spectacle of the sovereign. Contributing to this poetic tone of triumphant universal dominance, Martial offers several epigrams in his collection featuring executions performed as mythological enactments, termed “fatal charades” by Coleman (1990) in her seminal study of the phenomenon.15 Humans depicted as deprived of identity while publically performing their deaths seem near embodiments of Agamben’s notion of bare life.16 Deprived of voice and agency, this human life hovers between human and animal, little different than the beasts hunted down in the venationes. The poems show that Martial’s reaction to watching these staged executions is to either mock the sufferers or co-opt them into acting as a testament for the emperor’s overarching preeminence.17 An epigram featuring Orpheus combines both features. It opens by declaring that whatever marvels the peaks of Rhodope saw when Orpheus charmed the world of nature, the amphitheater now offers to Caesar. The initial scene is an idyllic one of

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nature pacified—peaks, forests, birds, wild and domestic beasts all respond to Orpheus’s charms. The tone changes in the last couplet: ipse sed ingrato iacuit laceratus ab urso. haec tantum res est facta παρ’ ἱστορίαν But he fell, torn apart by an unappreciative bear. This was the only thing that happened contrary to the story. (Spect. 24.7–8)

The understatement in tantum res, “this small thing,” ironically emphasizes, as it dismisses, what must have been a very great thing for the man cast in the role of Orpheus—his dying, savaged by a bear. The man’s enacted death becomes an occasion for a joke. This same mockery inflects an epigram describing the death of a mock Daedalus: Daedale, Lucano cum sic lacereris ab urso, quam cuperes pennas nunc habuisse tuas! Seeing that you are being torn apart like that by a Lucanian bear, Daedalus, how you must wish you had your feathers now! (Spect. 10).

The joke turns on the discrepancy between the great artificer and his hapless stand-in, and the real pain for this Daedalus is lost in the laughter.18 In another epigram, featuring Pasiphae, Martial repeats his theme that Caesar’s spectacles eclipse all marvels of the past: Iunctam Pasiphae Dictaeo credite tauro: Vidimus, accepit fabula prisca fidem ne se miretur, Caesar, longaeva vetustas: quidquid fama canit, praestat harena tibi. You must believe that Pasiphae did couple with the bull of Dicte: we have seen it happen, the age-old myth has been vindicated. Don’t let ancient tradition vaunt herself, Caesar: whatever legend sings, the amphitheater offers you. (Spect. 6.1–4).

In this case, what the amphitheater seems to have offered was an actual copulation of a woman with a bull. As the poet exclaims, credite . . . vidimus (Spect. 6.1–2). What the poem does not see, what it passes over, is the real death of the woman taking the role of Pasiphae. Commentators point out that the realism in these enacted mythological scenes functions to devalue myth by rendering it superfluous. What need is

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there for hoary old stories when the real event takes place before our very eyes? Through such spectacles, the emperor subsumes and transcends the past. William Fitzgerald (2007: 53) argues that the real target of the mythological enactments and their violence “is not the criminal but the past itself.” Fitzgerald’s point underlines, however, how starkly the pain of the persons suffering in the amphitheater is erased in the poems. These suffering people exist only as mirrors of the emperor’s limitless sovereignty, his power over life, death and time itself. The criminal and even her crime are effaced; there is no space open for compassion. Martial’s poems and the spectacles they offer allow for no acknowledgment of the inherent limit inscribed by death and so solidify the message that Roman sovereignty exceeds every boundary.19 And they indicate that the spectators witnessing the death of others in the amphitheater are moved to experience the same emotions that caused the respectful (pius) performing elephant to bow before the emperor: they worshiped Caesar and felt the presence of Rome’s god (crede mihi, nostrum sentit et ille deum, Spect. 20.4; Coleman 2006: lxxiv).20 The poems bear witness that contemporary spectators could experience the fatal charades as emotionally laden spectacles of sovereignty exhibiting the emperor’s power over life and death. Yet the ideological consensus showcased in the amphitheater was in the process of being interrupted. A new site of social and political power was under construction that, among other things, would discourage the expression of such pleasure at watching the suffering of humans reduced to bare life as these epigrams display.21 In her “Fatal Charades,” Coleman points to factors that I believe were crucial for empowering this emerging social construction. She notes that these mass executions staged by imperial authorities for the entertainment of audiences presuppose numerous persons whom the state regards as “dispensable,” “no account,” “sub-human,” “superfluous” persons (1990: 54, 55, 72). She also recognizes that an evolving differential judicial system that would eventually result in the humiliores/honestiores distinction likely enlarged the pool of criminals eligible for these executions (55). I will argue that this production of new categories of no-account persons and the judicial changes taking shape during the early imperial period that devalued the status of numerous free persons across the empire, opening them to new violent punishments, helped to shred the traditional civic ideal and sparked a resentment that was a contributing factor in the appeal of Christianity. In her discussion of Verrius Flaccus’ description of the sacer homo, Lowrie (2007: 36) observes that Flaccus refers to multiple legal steps for rendering someone sacer.22 She suggests this emphasis on multiplicity better reflects the Augustan period, when duplicate judicial practices were evolving, than the archaic period. As a member of Augustus’ entourage, tutor to his grandsons, Verrius Flaccus would have been in a good position to observe Augustus’ legal refigurations and may have allowed contemporary themes to color his historical perspective.23 By extending the judicial hearing

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system (cognitio extra ordinem), where a single delegate of the state was given leeway in deciding cases and determining new crimes and punishments, Augustus initiated a new arbitrariness and opportunity for harsher punishments in the judicial system that also fostered a growing emphasis on status for determining punishments (Robinson 1995: 10). In criminal cases, the cognitio system dispensed with the standing juries of the Republic and their statutes, and so left defendants “utterly from start to end at the mercy of the iudex” (Peachin 1996: 8).24 By the mid-third century, the cognitio system had virtually replaced the older system, and sovereignty was well in place. That the sovereign was both the source of law and exempted from it was also well established. Ulpian forthrightly writes, “princeps legibus solutus est.” 25 Roman law, according to Michael Peachin (1996: 5), is virtually “omnipresence” in the empire; most subjects would likely have some “face-to-face” acquaintance with it. And what they would have seen, especially in criminal cases, was a system weighted in favor of the elite, not just nominally, but explicitly. While the humiliores/ honestiores legal dichotomy setting different penalties according to status might not have been fully established until the late third century, its development suggests it must have been already under way during the first century (Garnsey 1970: 170). The inequality and new harshness of this status-based penalty system can be observed in the changed penalties of a Republican law noted by Marcian, a jurist of the Severan period: Marcianus 14 inst.: Legis corneliae de sicariis et veneficis poena insulae deportatio est et omnium bonorum ademptio. sed solent hodie capite puniri, nisi honestiore loco positi fuerint, ut poenam legis sustineant: humiliores enim solent vel bestiis subici, altiores vero deportantur in insulam. The penalty of the Cornelian Law relating to murderers and poisoners is deportation to an island and the confiscation of all property. It is, however, at present, customary to inflict capital punishment, unless the parties are honestiores, in which case they receive the punishment laid down by the statute. It is customary for persons of inferior rank to be thrown to wild beasts, and for those higher in rank to be deported to an island. (Digest 48.8.3.5) Marcian makes clear that the traditional penalty under the republican law had been deportation and forfeit of property. This traditional punishment still holds for higher-status persons. As Marcian explains, their status (honestiore loco) makes them exempt from the new, harsher punishments prescribed “at present” (hodie) for lower-status persons. Only humiliores face being torn apart by beasts, rather than deported, as they would have been under the republican law and as higher-status persons still are.26

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The reframing of the imperial under stratum in this law seems the very essence of the sovereign decision that functions, as Agamben says, as a form of exclusion. Marcian’s law specifically excludes the humiliores from a protection from death that is granted to the altiores, the upper stratum. Like the homo sacer, the under stratum are included within the law by an exclusion that permits them to be killed. The condemned humiliores may not actually approach the limits of nonbeing that Agamben focuses on as examples of bare life: the comatose patient, the concentration camp Muselmann.27 Nevertheless, these evolving judicial changes were pushing numerous people toward the legal border zone between human and animal that slaves had long occupied. Only the highest tip of the population pyramid would qualify as honestiores, a category limited to senators, knights, and municipal decurions as well as military veterans (Scheidel 2006: 42). These judicial changes increased the pool of persons eligible for harsh punishments and available for the large spectacles of death in the arena. And it is not difficult to believe that they would have engendered resentment in those newly liable to harsh physical penalties. Free lower-stratum persons experiencing the failure of a civic ideal based on isonomy and their vulnerability to extreme judicial severity might well have felt such a grievance. Early Christian writings, I suggest, tapped into this resentment, and this contributed to Christianity’s appeal in its particular historical trajectory. Martial’s representation of the mythological enactments provides a context for appreciating this appeal. What is most noticeable about the condemned prisoners in his balanced and elegant epigrams is their erasure as persons. They are reduced to inarticulate bodies. They exist as objects for entertainment and testament to the emperor’s sovereignty. The represented torpor and lack of agency of the Flavian condemned links them to “bare life.” They exist simply as mute targets of sovereign aggression, enduring a final insult to their personhood—meeting death while role-playing in costume. The most devastating aspect of bare life is its deprivation of a political voice, of an enunciatory position. Human subjectivity depends on being in a position to speak in the first person. As Aristotle writes, real life, political life, belongs only to those possessing logos (Pol. 1253a 9–15). The condemned in Martial’s epigrams are represented as voiceless, lacking any potential to act, to decide, to determine, to be any more than mere bodies threatened by death. In the next century and a half, however, Christian narratives provide a very different representation of the condemned. They emphasize the agency, energy, and resiliency of condemned martyrs, who are active participants in the process of their executions, welcoming death, enduring great pain, winning a great reward. This dynamic posture is well attested; a few examples will suffice. The martyrs Carpus and Papylus are depicted as rushing to their execution: καὶ κατερχόμενοι ἔσπευδον οἱ ἀμφότεροι ἐπὶ τὸ ἀμφιθέατρον, ὅπως ταχέως ἀπαλλαγῶσιν τοῦ κόσμου (They hastened to the arena so they might more quickly depart from the world, 36). The proconsul asks Pionius why

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he is rushing toward death, and he answers that he is rather rushing toward life (Τί σπεύδεις ἐπὶ τὸν θάνατον; ἀπεκρίνατο· Οὐκ ἐπὶτὸν θάνατον ἀλλ’ ἐπὶ τὴν ζωήν, Mart. Pion. 20.5). Polycarp mocks the crowd in Smyrna and shakes his fist at them (ἐπισείσας αὐτοῖς τὴν χεῖρα, Mart. Poly. 9.2). These condemned criminals are figured very differently from those of Martial. The use of first-person narrators in several martyr narratives foregrounds the condemned martyr’s agency and voice.28 The Passion of Perpetua is in part a first-person narrative, but Perpetua’s self-possession emerges strongly even in the reported sections. One scene in the Passion of Perpetua relates to a mythological enactment. When Perpetua and her companion martyrs are about to enter the amphitheater for their execution, they are stopped and forced to dress up as priests or priestesses of pagan divinities. Perpetua resists and make an impassioned argument: “Ideo ad hoc sponte peruenimus ne libertas nostra obduceretur; ideo animam nostram addiximus, ne tale aliquid faceremus; hoc uobiscum pacti sumus.” We came to this voluntarily, that our freedom should not be violated. We pledged our lives, that we might not do any thing such as this. We agreed to this with you, 18.4–5). The threefold reiteration of the first-person plural insists on Perpetua’s subjectivity and the martyrs’ agency. They are not to be coerced; they set the ground rules. Their freedom is intact. Her plea is successful; the martyrs are allowed to enter the arena “just as they were” (quomodo erant, 18.6). This scene provides the voice missing in Martial’s representations: a strong objection to the ultimate humiliation of being denied dying as oneself and a claim for recognition from the other of their status as equally human beings. The narrative stresses the prisoners’ active involvement in negotiating their deaths. The episode lacks credibility, but it testifies to the Christians’ assiduous reframing of the passivity of their judicial deaths; they are not victims of a sovereign decision. This template for denying the fearsomeness of imperial penalties and claiming agency could well have had an appeal in this period when people were adjusting to a new loss of civic rights and vulnerability to harsh punishments. A passage from Tertullian’s treatise on the shows suggests why even innocent Roman subjects might have, with good reason, lived in fear of enduring harsh judicial treatment. In the middle of a passage urging pity toward those suffering in the shows, even if they are guilty, Tertullian interjects, “Quis autem mihi sponsor est, nocentes semper vel ad bestias vel ad quodcumque supplicium decerni, ut non innocentiae quoque inferatur aut ultione [iu]dicantis aut infirmitate defensionis aut instantia quaestionis?” (Who can be sure whether it is, in fact, always the guilty who are thrown to the beasts? Spect. 19.2–3). And he gives reasons why the innocent might suffer as well: “the vindictiveness of the judge, the weakness of the lawyer, or the severity of the trial.” Tertullian’s assessment of imperial justice, should one get caught up in it, does not seem far off the mark. In a careful examination of Ulpian’s statement (Dig. 49.1.1.pr) on the frequency and necessity of appeals resulting from “the iniquity (iniquitas) or insufficient legal knowledge (imperita) of judges,” Michael Peachin finds the

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jurist “has put his finger on a real problem” (1996: 11, 51).29 The cognitio system, with its fewer checks and balances, not only placed the accused in a vulnerable position, but also, by utilizing inexperienced or unknowledgeable judges, increased the likelihood of invalid judgments. Innocent Roman subjects had cause to be worried about being caught up in a biased and inept judicial system. Christian writings, however, display no fear of Roman judicial officials; in fact, they exhibit a certain aggression. For all their willingness to die, martyrs are not represented as passively accepting their death sentence. They are often depicted as dying with a threat on their lips; they warn that a judgment day is coming when their oppressors will pay for their actions. Polycarp responds to the governor threatening to burn him: ἀγνοεῖς γὰρ τὸ τῆς μελλούσης κρίσεως καὶ αἰωνίου κολάσεως τοῖς ἀσεβέσι τηρούμενον πῦρ (For you are ignorant of the fire of the future judgment and eternal punishment, which is reserved for the ungodly, Mart. Poly. 11.2). In the Acts of Carpus, Papylus, and Agathonicê, Carpus also reminds the soldier lighting the fire to burn him of the coming judgment: Καὶ ἡμεῖς τῆς αὐτῆς μητρὸς ἐγεννήθημεν Εὔας καὶ τὴν αὐτὴν σάρκα ἔχομεν, ἀλλ’ ἀφορῶντες εἰς τὸ δικαστήριον τὸ ἀληθινὸν πάντα ὑπομένωμεν (We too were born of the same mother, Eve, and we have the same flesh. Let us endure all things looking forward to the judgment seat of truth, Mart. Carp. 40). The implied retribution figured in final judgment discourse suggests a Christian resentment toward the Roman judicial system and the Christians’ belief that they would be vindicated. They could bank their anger and wait for their debts to be settled up.30 This is an activist attitude; the Christians refused to allow their liability to the judicial brutality of the new sovereignty to consign them to the inertia of bare life. That Christian documents celebrating the voices and stories of these banned persons consigned to death remain in the historical record testifies to their achievement of a political voice, a voice capable of “articulating the just and the unjust.” (Arist. Pol. 1.2.16; 1253a, 17–18). Their perspective on viewing the pain of others—that, as Tertullian said, “it should not be delighted in”—became normative.31 The Christian perspective prevailed in the economy of ideas.32 When a marginalized group, as Christians were in the early period, gains a foothold in history, obtaining an institutional legitimacy and continuity, that fact raises a question: whose interests do they manifest? My suggestion would be that one explanation for Christianity’s successful institutionalization is that it harnessed the resentment of persons across the empire who were being fashioned as a kind of bare life by a judicial system that exempted most subjects from its legal protection from deadly punishments. The still-unfulfilled messianic impulse fueling early Christianity with its focus on a future redemption and remediation of present inequities has continued to structure contemporary emancipatory movements, including Marxism (Žižek 2008: 185–205). Agamben’s project also shares this

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structure. It looks forward to a new “form-of-life,” “happy life,” beyond the distinction of zoē and bios. And this “happy life” will be “an absolutely profane ‘sufficient life’ that has reached the perfection of its own power and its own communicability” (Agamben 2000: 114–15). This life will have a politics “beyond relation” (Agamben 1998: 29), and its “whatever” life will exist as singularities “without being tied by any common property, by any identity. They are expropriated of all identity so as to appropriate belonging itself” (Agamben 1993: 11). Agamben’s vision of a future free of the differences of identity, of race, gender, nation, and class that have contributed in large part to the “bloody mystifications of a new planetary order” (1998: 12) that we call modernity continues the tradition of hope for a community, free from political ban, a community that has never been seen, “what has never happened” (1999: 159, emphasis in source).33

NOTES It gives great pleasure to offer this chapter focused on enlarging community and expanding notions of inclusivity to honor Judy Hallett, who has worked tirelessly to achieve these goals in Classics and all her other communities. 1. Agamben (1998, 1999, 2004, 2005) advances this project. Agamben develops his ideas in response to Foucault’s contention that the politics of human life, biopolitics, belongs to “the threshold of modernity”; “modern man is an animal whose politics places his living being in question” (Foucault 1980: 143). Agamben argues rather that the inclusion of “bare life” within the political is not a modern conception, but has always provided the basis of sovereign power. Norris (2000), Colebrook (2008), Deutscher (2008), Rasch (2007), Spinks (2008), Ziarek (2008) and Mills (2008) have informed my summary of the Foucault–Agamben debate and its ramifications for bare life. 2. Schmitt, a German legal thinker and eventually a theorist of German National Socialism, wrote his Political Theology in 1922. Walter Benjamin later engaged with his work, and their debate over power and violence is focused on in Agamben’s State of Exception (2005). 3. The term bare life (nuda vita) is based on Benjamin’s blosses Leben in his “Critique of Violence” to denote “the bearer of link between violence and the law” (Agamben 1998: 65; cf. Benjamin 1996: 250). 4. See Mills (2008: 69–79) for a discussion of Agamben’s various notions of life: “zoē or biological life, bios or political life, bare life (sometimes rendered as sacred life or naked life . . . and a new form-of-life.” The last term refers to a not-yet-determined form of life, happy life, uncoupled from sovereign ban. 5. Agamben likely invokes this figure and its vulnerable sacredness to counter Walter Benjamin’s thesis that the sacredness of human life could have some role to play in moving beyond the realm of legal violence (Benjamin 1996; Mills 2008: 71). 6. Agamben’s observations, while “good to think with,” can lack empirical foundation. As he notes, his work has led to “misunderstandings” by those who took his paradigmatic use for “historiographic theses or reconstructions” (2009: 9). Dubreuil (2006: 83–4), for example, offers a persuasive critique of the inadequacy of Agamben’s distinction between zôê (“simple fact of living common to all living beings [animals, men, or gods]”) and bios (“the form or

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7.

8.

9.

10.

11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

16. 17.

18.

19.

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way of living proper to an individual or a group”) for corresponding to the actual lexical range of these Greek terms. Festus’s De verberorum significatu is based on the De uerborum significatu of Verrius Flaccus: “At homo sacer is est, quem populus iudicavit ob maleficium; neque fas est eum immolari, sed qui occidit, parricidi non damnatur; nam lege tribunicia prima cavetur ‘si quis eum, qui eo plebei scito sacer sit, occiderit, parricidia ne sit.’ Ex quo quivis homo malus atque improbus sacer appellari solet.” For discussion of the homo sacer, see Strachan-Davidson (1912: 1:1–9); Bennett (1930); Cantarella (1991: 297–305); Rupke (1992: 67–8); and Lowrie (2007: 34–6). See Glinister and Woods (2007) for the composition of Festus’ text. Agamben (1998: 84) conveys the inherent symmetry between the sovereign and the sacer homo. “The sovereign is the one with respect to whom all men are potentially homines sacri and homo sacer is the one with respect to whom all men are sovereign.” See Lowrie (2007) for a detailed examination of the legal issues raised by both Verrius Flaccus’ description of the homo sacer and invocations of the senatus consultum ultimum in the late Republic. Agamben (2005: 40–51) discusses the use of the SCU and its relation to sovereignty. Lowrie points out that, in Agamben and Schmitt’s terms, the sovereign in his capacity to suspend the laws must stand outside of and be exempt from the law. Yet both Scipio Nasica and Cicero, after executing citizens, went into exile, although they had acted under a senatus consultum ultimum. Their actions testify to an inherent indeterminacy about their legal liability and exemption from the law. See Eder (1990) for the controversies around the extent of Augustus’ sovereignty. Syme (1939: 439) seems to me correct in asserting that Augustus “was the least republican of men.” See Coleman (2006: lxxii ff.) for an overview. Sovereignty and spectacle are much-studied topics. Castelli (2004: 104–33) surveys the death spectacles enacted in shows and offers a review of the scholarship on the topic. Erik Gunderson (2003: 651) comments, “Martial finds in the shows what it means to be an emperor.” The edition, commentary and poem numbering and translation of Coleman (2006) are used. Scobie (1988: 194–7), Bartsch (1994: 50–4), and Fitzgerald (2007: 48–57) also discuss Martial’s “fatal charades.” For enacted deaths in Martial, see Alcides Spect. 19; Daedalus Spect. 10; Laureolus, Spect. 9; Orpheus Spect. 24 and 25; Pasphae Spect. 6[5]; Leander Spect. 28. See also Mucius Scaevola in Martial Liber 8.30 and 10.25. Potter (1993: 66–70) makes the case for the importance of Martial’s epigrams on mythological enactments as context for the spectacle of martyrdom. “Near” in the sense that the Roman criminals still remain inside the judicial order, subject to its jurisdiction. The mockery of victims at the games seems not uncommon. Amat (1996: 225) points to the black humor in the choice of a cow for the animal that attacks Perpetua, a lactating mother. The crowd mocks Saturus wet with blood by using the bathhouse greeting, salum lotum (Pass. Perp. 21.2). Fitzgerald (2007: 55) notes this couplet “amounts to a sadistic laugh,” but suggests this is not the usual focus of Martial’s poems on the condemned. In fact, this tone does not seem uncommon to me (Spect. 25 and 10 seem to share it. Cf. Coleman 1990). Wiseman (1985: 1–9) emphasizes the difference between modern and ancient perspectives on cruelty. The origin of gladiatorial contests in the context of funerals and the later placement of performances at the end of year suggest that the shows were

192

20.

21. 22. 23.

24. 25.

26.

27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

32. 33.

Judith Perkins associated with both personal death and the natural cycle of death (Wiedemann 1992: 12). “Believe me, it too feels the presence of our god.” Commenting on Spect. 2, Coleman (2006: 164) notes Martial’s “sycophantic jingoism.” This description also seems to catch the tone of Spect. 20, but it seems a jingoism inflected with sincerity. This change does not necessarily indicate that moderns are less cruel than the ancients, but only that there is an ideological bias against publicly exhibiting and enjoying enactments of cruelty. Lowrie (2007: 36) sees references to an original plebiscite (plebei scito), the tribunician law (lege tribunicia prima) and the people (populus iudicavit) in the declaration of the homo sacer. Because Agamben cites only Pompeius Festus for the homo sacer passage, Lowrie (2007: 35, n. 12) suggests he was unaware that this definition was derived from Verrius Flaccus and was a product of the Augustan period. She suggests that Agamben is not interested in historical precision, but in timeless ideas. Perkins (2009: 97–100) treats the topic of judicial change and Christian beginnings at greater length. Digest 1.3,31 referencing Ulpianus libro 13 ad legem Iuliam et Papiam, ‘The princeps is not bound by the laws.” See Peachin (1996: 24–5) for a discussion of the ancient testimony to the emperor’s exemption from the law. Pliny, Pan. 65.1; Fronto, Ad M. Caes. 1.16; Cassius Dio, 53.18.1. Garnsey (1970: 111) holds that honestiores did begin to become liable to harsher punishments in the late third and early fourth century, when death was substituted for deportation for some crimes. Bauman (1996: 124–7) sees the humiliores/honestiores distinction already functioning in the second century. This is Primo Levi’s name for the concentration camp victim who is so undone and apathetic that he no longer cares or knows whether he lives or dies. See Castelli (2004: 70–103) on the first-person accounts of Perpetua, Pionius, and Ignatius. Cf. Perkins (2009: 164–6), questioning the authenticity of Perpetua’s narrative. In this quotation, Peachin is specifically referring to the jurists’ lack of knowledge. In his discussion of iniquity, he takes as already well established the inherent inequality of Roman law and points to judges’ bribe taking (1996: 11–12). Slavoj Žižek (2008: 186–7) supplies this image of “banks of rage” for the delayed vengeance inscribed in Christianity. See Konstan (2001) for an overview of pity and its configuration in Greece and Rome. He notes that Egyptian papyri petitions do not ask for pity until the second century AD Gaddis (2005: 143) shows that Augustine locates Christian use of coercive discipline as used “toward the greater good of its targets.” In this paradigm, violence could be refigured as resulting from a paternal concern for the well-being of victims. Friedman (1998: 207) supplies “economy of ideas” in her discussion of history’s “winners.” Agamben writes, “But this—what has never happened—is the historical and wholly actual homeland of humanity” (1999: 159). See Mills (2004) for Agamben’s messianism.

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———. 1999. Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive. New York: Zone. ———. 2000. Means without Ends: Notes on Politics, Theory out of Bounds. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ———. 2004. The Open: Man and Animal. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. ———. 2005. State of Exception. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 2009. The Signature of All Things: On Method. New York: Zone. Agamben, G., and D. Heller-Roazen. 1999a. Potentialities: Collected Essays in Philosophy. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. Amat, J. 1996. Passion de Perpétue et de Félicité: Suivi des Actes. Sources chrétiennes, no. 417. Paris: Editions du Cerf. Aubert, J.-J. 2002. “A Double Standard in Roman Criminal Law? The Death Penalty and Social Structure in Late Republican and Early Imperial Law.” In Speculum iuris: Roman Law as a Reflection of Social and Economic Life in Antiquity, ed. J.-J. Aubert and A. J. B. Sirks, 94–133. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Barton, C. A. 1993. The Sorrows of the Ancient Romans: The Gladiator and the Monster. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Bartsch, S. 1994. Actors in the Audience: Theatricality and Doublespeak from Nero to Hadrian. Revealing Antiquity 6. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Bastiaensen, A. A. R., G. A. A. Kortekas, A. P. Orban and M. M. van Assendelf. 1987. Atti e passioni dei martiri, 1st ed. Scrittori greci e latini. Rome: Fondazione Lorenzo Valla. Bauman, R. A. 1996. Crime and Punishment in Ancient Rome. New York: Routledge. Benjamin, W. 1996. “Critique of Violence.” In Selected Writings, vol. 1, 1913–1926, ed. M. Bullock and M. W. Jennings, trans. Edmund Jephcott, 236–52. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap. Bennett, H. 1930. “Sacer esto.” TAPA 61: 5–18. Brown, P. 2002. Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire. Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England. Cantarella, E. 1991. I supplizi capitali in Grecia e a Roma, 1st ed. Collana storica Rizzoli. Milan: Rizzoli. Castelli, E. A. 2004. Martyrdom and Memory: Early Christian Culture Making. Gender, Theory, and Religion. New York: Columbia University Press. Colebrook, C. 2008. “Agamben: Aesthetics, Potentiality, and Life.” South Atlantic Quarterly 107.1: 107–20. Coleman, K. M. 1990. “Fatal Charades: Roman Executions Staged as Mythological Enactments.” JRS 80: 44–73. ———. 1996. “Ptolemy Philadelphus and the Roman Amphitheater.” In Roman Theater and Society. E. Togo Salmon Papers 1, ed. W. Slater, 49–68. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. ———, ed. 2006. M. Valerii Martialis Liber spectaculorum, with translation and commentary. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Deutscher, P. 2008. “The Inversion of Exceptionality: Foucault, Agamben, and Reproduction Rights.” South Atlantic Quarterly 107.1: 55–70. Dubreuil, L. 2006. “Leaving Politics: Bios, zôê and Life.” diacritics 36:83–98. Eder, W. 1990. “Augustus and the Power of Tradition: The Augustan Principate as Binding Link between Republic and Empire.” In Between Republic and Empire: Interpretations of Augustus and His Principate, ed. K. A. Raaflaub et al., 71–122. Berkeley: University of California Press. Edwards, C. 2007. Death in Ancient Rome. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. Fitzgerald, W. 2007. Martial: The World of the Epigram. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Foucault, M. 1980. The History of Sexuality: An Introduction. Trans. R. Hurley. Vol. 1. New York: Vintage. Friedman, S. S. 1998. Mappings: Feminism and the Cultural Geographies of Encounter. Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press.

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Gaddis, M. 2005. There Is No Crime for Those Who Have Christ: Religious Violence in the Christian Roman Empire. Berkeley: University of California Press. Garnsey, P. 1970. Social Status and Legal Privilege in the Roman Empire. Oxford: Clarendon. Glinister, F., and C. Woods, eds. 2007. Verrius, Festus and Paul. Lexicography, Scholarship, and Society 93. London: Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies Supplement 93. Gunderson, E. 1996. “The Ideology of the Arena.” ClAnt 15: 113–15. ———. 2003. “The Flavian Amphitheatre: All the World Is a Stage.” In Flavian Rome: Culture, Image, Text, ed. A. J. Boyle and W. J. Dominik, 637–58. Leiden: Brill. Kaster, R. 2005. Emotion, Restraint, and Community in Ancient Rome. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Konstan, D. 2001. Pity Transformed. Classical Inter/Faces. London: Duckworth. Levi, P. 1959. If This Is a Man. New York: Orion. Lindsay, W. M., ed. 1913. Sexti Pompei Festi. De uerborum significatu quae supersunt cum Pauli Epitome. Thewrewkianis copiis usus edidit. Leipzig: Teubner. Lintott, A. W. 1999a. The Constitution of the Roman Republic. New York: Clarendon. ———. 1999b. Violence in Republican Rome, 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lowrie, M. 2007. “Agamben and the Roman Republic.” Law and Humanities 1.1: 31–56. Mills, C. 2004. “Agamben’s Messianic Politics, Abandonment and Happy Life.” Contretemps 5: 42–62. ———. 2008. The Philosophy of Agamben, Continental European Philosophy. Stocksfield: Acumen. Musurillo, H., ed. 1972. Acts of the Christian Martyrs. Oxford: Clarendon. Norris, A. 2000. “Giorgio Agamben and the Politics of the Living Dead.” diacritics 30: 38–58. ———. 2005. “The Exemplary Exception.” In Politics, Metaphysics, and Death: Essays on Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer, ed. A. Norris, 262–83. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. Peachin, M. 1996. Iudex vice Caesaris: Deputy Emperors and the Administration of Justice during the Principate. Stuttgart: F. Steiner. Perkins, J. 2009. Roman Imperial Identities in the Early Christian Era. London: Routledge. Potter, D. S. 1993. “Martyrdom as Spectacle.” In Theater and Society in the Classical World, ed. R. Scodel, 53–88. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. ———. 1996. “Performance, Power, and Justice in the High Empire.” In Roman Theater and Society. E. Togo Salmon Papers 1, ed. W. Slater, 129–59. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Rasch, W. 2007. “From Sovereign Ban to Banning Sovereignty.” In Giorgio Agamben: Sovereignty and Life, ed. M. Calarco and S. DeCaroli, 92–108. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. Rawson, B. 1987. “Discrimina Ordinum: The Lex Julia Theatralis.” PBSR 55: 83–114. Rives, J. 2006. “Magic, Religion and Law: The Case of the Lex Cornelia de Sicariis et Veneficiis.” In Religion and Law in Classical and Christian Rome, ed. C. Ando and J. Rüpke, 47–67. Stuttgart: Steiner. Robinson, O. F. 1995. The Criminal Law of Ancient Rome. London: Duckworth. ———. 1997. The Sources of Roman Law: Problems and Methods for Ancient Historians. Approaching the Ancient World. New York: Routledge. Rupke, J. 1992. “You Shall Not Kill: Hierarchies of Norms in Ancient Rome.” Numen 39: 58–79. Scheidel, W. 2006. “Stratification, Deprivation and the Quality of Life.” In Poverty in the Roman World, ed. E. M. Atkins and R. Osborne, 40–59. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Schmitt, C. 1985. Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty. Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Scobie, A. 1988. “Spectator Security and Comfort at Gladiatorial Games.” Nikephoros 1: 191–243. Spinks, L. 2008. “Except for Law: Raymond Chandler, James Ellroy, and the Politics of Exception.” South Atlantic Quarterly 107.1: 121–44. Strachan-Davidson, J. L. 1912. Problems of the Roman Criminal Law. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon. Syme, R. 1939. The Roman Revolution. Oxford: Clarendon. Tertullian. 1954. Quinti Septimi Florentis Tertulliani Opera, Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina 1–2. Turnholt, Belgium: Typographi Brepols. Wiedemann, T. E. J. 1992. Emperors and Gladiators. London: Routledge. Wiseman, T. P. 1985. Catullus and His World: A Reappraisal. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ziarek, E. P. 2008. “Bare Life on Strike: Notes on the Biopolitics of Race and Gender.” South Atlantic Quarterly 107.1: 89–106. Žižek, S. 2008. Violence: Six Sideways Reflections. Big Ideas/Small Books. New York: Picador.

13 The Role of Physicians (Galen, Mercuriale and Brookes) in the History of Greek Sport and the Olympic Revival Hugh M. Lee Abstract. Our legacy from ancient Greece includes the Olympics and the idea that education should develop the body as well as the mind. In their transmission to the modern world, three physicians have played crucial roles: the Greek Galen of Pergamon, the Italian Girolamo Mercuriale, and the Englishman William Penny Brookes. All three advocated exercise to promote health and fitness. Galen and Mercuriale, however, were hostile to full-time athletics and competitions like the Olympic games. Brookes, on the contrary, was instrumental in the nineteenth-century Olympic movement which led to Coubertin’s games of 1896. From the ancient Greeks we have inherited the idea of cultivating the arete, the excellence, of the body. In the polis, the gymnasium served as the venue for exercise, affording individuals the opportunity to strive for personal excellence, while the panhellenic festivals, and above all, the Olympic Games, provided a stage on which the highest levels of human physical achievement could be demonstrated. Education should aim to develop not only the mind but also the body. The transfer of these ideals from the ancient to the modern world has not, however, been a straight line but involved some twists and turns. Three physicians have played crucial roles in that transfer: Galen (AD 129?–?199/216)1 from the ancient Greek world, Girolamo Mercuriale (1530–1606) from Renaissance Italy, and the Englishman William Penny Brookes (1809–1895). Born in Pergamon (modern Bergama, Turkey) into a wealthy and prominent family, Galen studied medicine there as well as in Smyrna and Alexandria. In 157 AD he returned home and took up practice as a surgeon for a gladiatorial school. The year 162 AD found him in Rome, where he remained until 165 or 166 AD. His homecoming was brief, however, for in 168 AD he was summoned to northern Italy to serve as physician to the emperors Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, who were preparing a campaign against the Germans. He subsequently seems to have spent the remainder of his life in Rome.2 Galen’s written output was prodigious, and more of his work survives than from any other author of classical antiquity. According to one estimate,

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“His writings in Greek amount to approximately ten percent of all surviving Greek literature before AD 350.”3 With respect to post-Classical influence, only Aristotle is his rival. Galenism—the theory and practice of medicine in accordance with the ideas of Galen—held sway for more than a millennium, and well into the modern era he continued to be studied in medical schools.4 Among his writings one finds treatises on anatomical, physiological and epidemiological subjects. Galen, however, regarded himself not only as a medical practitioner but also as a philosopher. Thus, listed among his works are essays entitled The Best Doctor Is Also a Philosopher, The Art of Medicine, and The Affections and Errors of the Soul.5 Furthermore, he was a philologist and authored commentaries on the works of Hippocrates. With this more expansive view of his role as a physician, he expresses his vehement criticisms of full-time athletes and athletics. As a doctor he regards physical exercise, or what the Greeks called gymnastics, as conducive to the health of the body.6 Galen believes that in gymnastics, as in everything else, moderation is the key and that athletes carry exercise to an extreme. In his Exhortation for Medicine, he states: Will they (the athletes) claim the most important blessing of all—health? You will find no one in a more treacherous physical condition if we are to believe Hippokrates, who said that the extreme good health for which they strive is treacherous. And Hippocrates said something which is liked by all: “Healthy training is moderation in diet, stamina in work (Epidemics 6.4.18).” He proposed a healthful program: “Work, food, drink, sleep, love, and all in moderation (Epidemics 6.6.2).” But athletes overexert every day at their exercises, and they force-feed themselves, frequently extending their meals until midnight.7 In the same essay Galen complains that athletes sleep excessively, that they suffer severe injuries and that they are not useful to the city.8 In his treatise on the Exercise with the Small Ball, he decries other sports, such as sprinting, vigorous horseback riding, the long jump, the discus throw and wrestling, which cause serious injuries. In comparison, playing games with the small ball is superior because it provides a workout for most of the body while producing the fewest injuries.9 In the essay entitled To Thrasyboulos, he repeats his criticisms but adds some sports history. He asserts that originally in the time of Homer those who competed in sports were all-around athletes skilled in more than one event, whereas specialization began “a little before Plato’s time,” and with it the rise of trainers. He states, “Athletic trainers attempt to dignify their perverted art (kakotechnia) with the respectable term ‘gymnastics.’ In Plato’s time, it had not yet departed so far from natural practices as it has now, but it had already begun to aim at something other than true improvement, concerning itself rather with a form of strength that would overcome one’s antagonist.” In other words, the goal of the athlete and his trainer is not

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physical health but victory in the games. Here too, Galen questions the value of athletes to polis: “Plato agreed precisely with Hippocrates about this type of gymnastics, the aim of which is the good condition of athletes. He criticizes it as being of no use for political activity, a point made by Hippocrates too, in the following summary form: ‘The athletic state is not natural; better the healthy condition.’”10 Galen was not original in his complaints about athletes. Many centuries earlier writers like Xenophanes (c. 570–c. 475 BC) and Euripides (c. 480– 406 BC), both of whom he quotes in his Exhortation for Medicine, had anticipated those criticisms. Over the centuries, however, this negative view of athletes seems to have drawn few adherents. The Greeks voted with their feet, as it were, for athletics continued to be popular into the late Roman Empire and the Olympic Games lasted over a millennium into the late fourth or early fifth century AD.11 With the end of the ancient world, not only did the Olympic Games disappear but also a civilization which valued both the physical and intellectual culture of the gymnasium. Education in Europe focused solely on the latter. In the Renaissance, however, the revival of interest in Classical antiquity attracted renewed attention to physical education. Girolamo Mercuriale, the son of a physician, Giovanni, was born in the city of Forli in northeastern Italy. His family was of some prominence: San Mercuriale was the first bishop and patron saint of Forli, the cathedral of Forli is named after him, and Mercuriale is interred there in the Capella Mercuriale.12 He studied medicine in Padua and Bologna, and was graduated in philosophy and medicine in Venice in 1555.13 He then returned to Forli, whence in 1562 he departed to Rome as a member of a diplomatic mission to the pope. There he became physician to the powerful Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, who served as his patron.14 He may also have taught medical courses at La Sapienza, the University of Rome.15 His Roman sojourn ended in 1569, and over the ensuing decades he became professor of medicine at the universities of Padua (1569), Bologna (1587) and Pisa (1592). In 1573, in an incident strikingly reminiscent of Galen’s recall to Italy to serve as physician to the emperors, Mercuriale was summoned to Vienna to attend the ailing Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian II. Mercuriale was the author of numerous medical essays, but his bestknown work, written during his Roman sojourn, is the treatise known as De Arte Gymnastica (DAG), first published in 1569 and then revised and reprinted in numerous later editions (1573, 1577, 1581, 1601, 1644, 1672).16 It is the first comprehensive examination of exercise and athletics in the post-Classical world. The second and later editions were dedicated to Emperor Maximilian II, whom the author enjoins to be like the enlightened rulers of antiquity by being a patron of the gymnastic art.17 In advocating the exercise of the body, Mercuriale divides the gymnastic art into three categories: (1) the ars gymnastica medica or legitima, that is, the “medical” or “legitimate” gymnastic art, whose goal is to produce

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physical health; (2) the ars gymnastica bellica, that is, the “martial” gymnastic art, which prepares citizens to be good soldiers; and (3) the ars athletica or vitiosa, which is the “athletic” or “evil” art. The term ars vitiosa is a translation of Galen’s kakotechnia, and Mercuriale acknowledges (DAG 1.3.111–12, pp. 30–1) the Greek physician to be the source of his hostility to athletics. The appeal to resuscitate the gymnastic art is therefore a call to restore the education of the body. It is not a summons to bring back athletic competitions like the Olympics. Athletes train to win prizes, not to make their bodies healthy. Indeed, they do the opposite and cause harm to their bodies. Mercuriale also cites (DAG: 34–7ff.) Galen’s account of the origins of gymnastics and its corruption into full-time athletics shortly before Plato’s time. Concerning the panhellenic festivals, Mercuriale says little, nor makes much use of either Pindar, who composed odes in honor of victors in the Games, or the traveler Pausanias, who has left detailed descriptions of the panhellenic sites. Yet both authors were well known in the Renaissance, and a new edition of Pindar had been published by Aldus Manutius in 1513. Mercuriale omits Pindar from his bibliography, although he quotes the poet once and on three occasions cites the scholia, the ancient commentators on Pindar.18 In contrast he cites Galen on ninety-two occasions, more often than any other author.19 In other respects too Galen was a model. Mercuriale produced a great number of medical writings, and they cover a range of topics including the diseases of women and children.20 Moreover, he was wide-ranging in his intellectual interests, a veritable Renaissance man.21 Like Galen, he saw himself as a philosopher, indeed calling himself a medicus philosophus or “physician philosopher” on the title page of the 1569 edition. He demonstrates this philosophical bent throughout the DAG, discoursing on a variety of questions such as the nature of exercise and how it differs from work and movement (2.1), inquiring whether standing still, as opposed to movement, is exercise (3.3), and similarly whether holding one’s breath (3.6) or being carried in a chariot (3.10) constitutes exercise. He also expounds on the “qualities of reading, speaking, laughing and crying” (6.6). He discusses other ancient philosophers including Aristotle, Plato, Plutarch, and Seneca.22 Furthermore, Mercuriale was a philologist and medical scholar. Like Galen, he edited texts and wrote commentaries on the works of Hippocrates.23 He also edited some of Galen’s writings.24 Mercuriale’s landmark antiquarian study of ancient gymnastics is thus an important work in the history of physical education as well as in the history of Greek sport. More than two centuries later, J. C. F. Guts Muths, in his Gymnastik für die Jugend, conjures up the spirit of Mercuriale with his exhortation, “Pursue gymnastic exercises to lengthen life, but do not live solely to pursue gymnastic exercises.”25 In the scholarly world, the German Johann Heinrich Krause in the nineteenth century and the Englishman E. Norman Gardiner in the first decades of the twentieth century will echo

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Mercuriale’s hostility to athletes and athletics. Their writings will in turn encourage the erroneous idea that ancient Greek athletes were amateurs, that is, that they competed purely for the love of sport and disdained monetary and other lucrative rewards, whereas in fact no stigma was attached to the winning of valuable prizes in antiquity.26 Yet Mercuriale’s antiathletic view was not universally shared. Beginning in the Renaissance, Pindar’s victory odes were a subject of interest and inspired modern imitations.27 Using Pindar among his many ancient sources, the Frenchman Petrus Faber (Pierre du Favre de St. Jorry), published his Agonisticon in 1592. This work is the first detailed study of the ancient panhellenic festivals; a second edition followed in 1595. Faber justifies athletic competitions by arguing that they could inspire youth to military fitness. In effect, he is saying that athletics, if prizes are limited, could be a form of the ars gymnastica bellica. Thus, he writes, ‘The Roman emperors, in part to please the populace, in part even for public usefulness . . . decided to retain in the republic of the Roman world athletic games already established in Greece of old before the time of Plato himself, in order that, through many exercises of this manner, young men might become quicker and faster for war.’28 He cites with approval a decree of the emperors Diocletian and Maximian which exempted from civic duties athletes who had won three times in major sacred contests like the Olympic Games.29 In turn, the Englishman Gilbert West, using the Agonisticon, published his Dissertation on the Olympick Games in 1749. West reiterates Faber’s military justification, but also argues that Olympic Games, with limited prizes, can benefit public morals and morale, promote patriotism and enhance the economy.30 Meanwhile, the ancient Olympics enjoyed some popularity on the musical stage. In the early 1730s, Pietro Metastasio wrote L’Olimpiade, a pastoral drama about the ancient Games very loosely based on a passage in Herodotus (6.126–31). Although replete with anachronisms and other factual errors, the libretto proved attractive, and over the next century, it was set to music by fifty-seven composers, mostly Italian.31 The Greek war for independence from the Ottoman Turks also inspired native pride in the country’s ancient heritage, including the Olympic Games. Indeed, under the influence of both the political and cultural Hellenic revival, “Olympian” or “Olympic” games of various sorts were celebrated throughout Europe during the nineteenth century.32 In this environment William Penny Brookes made his contribution to the Olympic tradition. At first glance, he appears to be a more humble figure than Galen and Mercuriale, who were intellectual celebrities, scholars, imperial physicians, and denizens of major urban and cultural centers. Brookes instead was a country doctor from the Shropshire village of Much Wenlock, described as “a little corporate and agricultural town, isolated and in a quiet nook among surrounding hills, and cut off, to a certain extent, by the absence of river, rail and canal, from its neighbors.”33

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Brookes, like Mercuriale, was the son of a physician. For his medical studies he journeyed abroad, first to Padua and then to Paris, and he knew French, Greek and Latin.34 The Padua connection is intriguing: as noted above, Mercuriale had been a professor there in 1569, and the 1601 and 1672 editions of DAG, along with Faber’s Agonisticon, are listed in the library catalog under libri antichi, ‘old books.’ In 1830, while Brookes was still studying in Paris, his father died, and young Brookes returned home the next year to assume his father’s medical practice. Being a rural physician meant riding as much as seventy miles a day on horseback. Brookes’ generous spirit and sense of duty to his community led him, however, to take on a wide range of additional activities beyond his medical duties. He was a justice of the peace for forty years, and a commissioner of roads and taxes. As chairman of a gas company he was involved in bringing improved gas lights, and he also became a director of the company which brought new rail lines to Much Wenlock. The philanthropist contributed most of the funding for the town council chamber. In 1841, he founded the Wenlock Agricultural Reading Society, which was a lending library open to local farmers. He also advocated physical education in the schools.35 This desire to improve the well-being, physical and otherwise, of his fellow citizens, led him in 1850 to expand the Wenlock Agricultural Reading Society by establishing the Wenlock Olympic Class (WOC) “for the moral, physical and intellectual improvement of the inhabitants of the Town and Neighborhood and especially of the Working Classes, by the encouragement of out-door recreation, and by the award of prizes annually at public Meetings for skill in Athletic exercises and proficiency in intellectual and industrial attainments.” The ideals are reminiscent of the socially utilitarian benefits described by West in 1749, but there is no evidence that Brookes had read West, nor any record of West’s Dissertation in the library of the Agricultural Reading Society.36 The first of these “public meetings for skill in athletic exercises” was the 1850 Much Wenlock Olympian Games. Events included cricket, football, quoits and a fifty-yard race with the contestants hopping on one leg, but also footraces, a high jump and a long jump. The Much Wenlock Games continue to be celebrated annually.37 Whereas the original Wenlock contests had a limited focus and were aimed at improving the lives of the local residents, Brookes’ Olympic vision grew over time. In 1860 the WOC was separated from the Wenlock Agricultural Reading Society and became the Wenlock Olympian Society, perhaps to assist Brookes’ expanding Olympic vision.38 He helped found the Shropshire Olympian games, which were held in 1860 (in conjunction with the eleventh Much Wenlock games), 1861 (in Wellington), 1862 (in Much Wenlock) and 1864 (in Shrewsbury). Brookes was also a founder of the National Olympian Games held in London in 1866–68, 1874, 1877, and 1883. Elsewhere in England, National Olympic Festivals were also held in Liverpool (1862–67) and Morpeth in Northumberland

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(1871–1958). Brookes was also a friend of John Hulley, who, together with Charles Melly, founded the Liverpool Olympics.39 Not only did these nineteenth-century games foreshadow the 1896 Olympics, but Brookes was also a major influence on Pierre de Coubertin. He corresponded with the Frenchman and was a participant in the international dialogue which bore fruit in the Olympics of 1896.40 Indeed, Brookes originated the concept of a recurring international Olympic festival.41 Pageantry is now an integral component of the Olympic spectacle. Brookes had introduced pageantry into his Wenlock games.42 In October of 1890, Brookes convoked a special autumn observance of the Wenlock competition, usually held in the spring, for Coubertin’s visit.43 The ultimate public recognition for his contributions occurred posthumously in 1994, when Juan Antonio Samaranch, then president of the International Olympic Committee, laid a wreath at Brookes’ grave at Much Wenlock and proclaimed: “I came to pay homage and tribute to Dr. Brookes, who really was the founder of the modern Olympic Games.”44 One could argue that Brookes, through his Olympic legacy, has had a more profound and wider influence on posterity than have Galen and Mercuriale. Thanks to these three doctors, a version of the gymnastic culture of Classical antiquity has been restored to the modern world. Public and private facilities for exercise are now commonplace. Physical fitness is a desideratum, and exercise valued as a means toward that end. For elite athletes, competitions such as the modern Olympics, soccer’s World Cup, football’s Super Bowl, and baseball’s World Series provide venues to display and celebrate physical arête. Galen and Mercuriale would no doubt disapprove of these championship contests by full-time athletes and would regard them as immoderate and inimical to physical health. The Olympic games were revived in spite of their hostility. Although neither would agree with the Olympic vision of Dr. Brookes, they could perhaps derive some consolation from the fact that he shared their advocacy of exercise and, while not a scholar or academic, he too was a kind of medicus philosophus who had a broader concept of their shared profession. NOTES For Doctors Mark and Judith Hallett, in whom medicine and Classics interact to the mutual benefit of each. Cherchez la femme, cherchez l’homme. 1. For the dates see Vivian Nutton, Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed., under the entry Galen, 621. See also Nutton 2004: 226, 388 n. 2 for problems concerning the dates of his birth and death. 2. See Nutton 2004: 216–29 for a detailed account of “The Life and Career of Galen”; also Nutton: 1973. 3. Nutton 2004: 390 n. 22. He suggests that Galen wrote or dictated two or three pages a day over a career of sixty years, and adds that discoveries since the publication of the standard Kühn edition of 1821–33, “especially of versions

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4.

5. 6.

7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

12.

13. 14. 15. 16.

17. 18.

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in Latin or Arabic, have added another 20 or 30 per cent to its approximately 16,000 pages.” The Corpus Medicorum Graecorum (1908–) contains both texts which supesede Kühn’s as well as ones not found therein. There is a Teubner edition, Claudii Galeni Pergameni Scripta minora, edited by J. Marquardt, I. Müller and G. Helmreich, Leipzig 1884–93. Singer 1997 provides English translations of fifteen of Galen’s essays. See Temkin 1973: passim, for a book-length study of Galenism. See also Nutton 1995b: 79–83; 1995c: 142–3, 157–8, 177, 200, 204; Wear 1995: 310, 351–2; Neve 1995: 480–3; also Nutton 2005; and Siraisi 1997, and 2000: 4, 6–7, 9–11. Nutton 2004: 221–3, discusses Galen as a philosopher. These essays are available in English translation in the handy anthology by Singer. By gymnastics is not meant the modern Olympic sport of that name. The word stems from gymnos, the Greek term for “nude, naked”. When the Greeks worked out, they did so nude, and thus the place where they exercised was called the gymnasion, whence gymnasium. Translation by Miller 2004: 174, who provides sections 9–14 of the essay. Singer 1997: 35–52, who gives the title as An Exhortation to Study the Arts, translates the entire essay, with the passage quoted being found on 47. Miller 2004: 174–6. Miller 2004: 121–4; Singer 1997: 299–304 also offers a translation of this essay. The translation of these passages from To Thrasyboulos 33, 36 is from Singer 1997: 84–5. The late fourth century date is based on the edicts of Theodosius the Great, who in 391 and 392 AD banned pagan practices; see the Codex Theodosianus, 16.10.10, 16.10.12. Accordingly, the Byzantine author Georgius Cedrenus (fl. 1100) writes that the Olympics ended under Theodosius I (379–395 AD). Drees 1968: 159 thus suggests that the last Olympics occurred in 393 AD. On the other hand, since a ban may be ignored, the Olympic games may have continued. Two scholia to Lucian, Rhetorum Praeceptor 9, state that the Games endured until the temple of Zeus was burnt down. Theodosius II ordered the destruction of pagan temples and shrines in 435 AD (Codex Theodosianus 16.10.25). Thus, Drees also suggests a date of 425 AD, for the last Olympics, during the reign of Theodosius II, who ruled from 408 to 450 AD. According to Sinn 2000: 122, recent excavations indicate that “Olympia seems to have continued its cult-related operations until the first decades of the fifth century.” Robinson 1955: 207 provides translations of Cedrenus and the scholia to Lucian. For photos of the church, chapel, a painting of Saint Mercuriale receiving relics from Jerusalem with Mercuriale in the background and a memorial plaque to Mercuriale, see the following website, accessed September 28, 2011: http:// himetop.wikidot.com/mercuriali-s-chapel. Nutton 1990: 296. See Robertson 1992: for the cardinal’s immense power and influence, though this book contains no mention of Mercuriale. Stalla 1996: 28. All references herein are to the new edition published in 2008. The first edition of DAG actually bears the title Artis Gymnasticae apud Antiquos Celeberrrimae Nostris Temporibus Ignoratae Libri Sex. In the second and later editions, the title becomes De Arte Gymnastica Libri Sex. Mercuriale 2008: 5. Mercuriale 2008: 248–9, cites Pindar Fragm. 148 (= Athenaeus s 1.40.22B). References to the scholia are to be found on 280–1, 292–3, and 340–1.

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19. Agasse 2008: 882–5, gives a chart of the most frequently cited ancient sources on 884; Pliny the Elder is cited 42 times, and Martial 33. At pp. 891–904, Agasse discusses in detail Galen’s influence on Mercuriale, but also notes, 902–4, some differences between the two. 20. See the bibliographies of Mercuriale’s seventy-three works in Mercuriale 2008: 809–45 (arranged in order of publication) and 847–52 (arranged by topic). 21. As with gymnastics, his interest was not only in the subject per se but also antiquarian; see Siraisi 2003 and 2004: 2, 24–9. 22. Agasse 2008: 905–8. 23. Cerasoli and Pozzi 2008: 838–41, 845, 851–2, 859–60. See also the essay by Fortuna. 24. Cerasoli and Pozzi 2008: 843–4, 852, 860. See also the essay by Jouanna; Siraisi 2000: 11–12. 25. Guts Muths 1803: 193. 26. Young 1984; Lee 2003a and 2009; Kyle 1990. 27. Revard 2001. 28. Faber 1592: 4. The translation from Faber’s Latin is mine. 29. Faber 1592: 2, 4. The rescript is preserved in the Codex Justinianus (= Codex Iuris Civilis) 10.54.1. 30. West 1749: 150, 181, 191–206. See also Lee 2011: 114–16. 31. Segrave 2005 and 2010; Lee 2003b: 167–8 and 2011: 113. 32. Ruehl: 2004. 33. From The Wellington Journal and Shropshire Advertiser, August 9, 1856, quoted on the website of the Wenlock Olympian Society, accessed October 1, 2011: http://www.wenlock-olympian-society.org.uk/history/wpb/agriculturalreading-society.shtml. 34. Cromarty 2004. 35. Drury 2007–08: 24–5. 36. Chris Cannon, archivist of the Wenlock Olympian Society, has informed me that no listing for West’s Dissertation is to be found in the Wenlock Agricultural Society’s catalog of books compiled by Brookes. 37. The Much Wenlock Games maintains a website, accessed 26 August 2010,: go to http://www.wenlock-olympian-society.org.uk/. I have not seen B. Neumüller’s diploma thesis (Cologne, 1985), Die Geschichte der Much Wenlock Games 1850–1895. 38. Young 1996: 8–9, 28. 39. Ruehl 2004: 8–11, 14; Young 1996: 8–12, 24–41. 40. Young 1996: 70–95, 167–9. 41. Young 1996: 59–62, 85, 121–2, 169. 42. Young 1996: 10–11. 43. Young 1996: 78–80. 44. From the BBC Home Page, accessed October 1, 2011: http://www.bbc.co.uk/ shropshire/features/2004/08/william_penny_brookes.shtml.

REFERENCES Agasse, Jean-Michel. 2008. “Girolamo Mercuriale. Humanism and Physical Culture in the Renaissance,” transl. from French by C. Nutton, in Mercuriale 2008: 861–1133. Anthony, D. 2004. ‘Letters Pierre De Coubertin—William Penny Brookes,’ Journal of Olympic History 12 (May): 61–4. Arcangeli, A. and Nutton, V., eds. 2008. Girolamo Mercuriale. Medicina e Cultura nell’ Europa del Cinquecento, Firenze: Leo S. Olschki Editore. Cerasoli, G. 2008. “Nota Biografica” in Mercuriale 2008, 797–800.

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Cerasoli, G. and Pozzi, A. 2008. “Bibliografia delle Opere a Stampa di Girolamo Mercuriale” in Mercuriale 2008: 809–60. Conrad, L., Neve, M., Nutton, V., Porter, R., and Wear, A. 1995. The Western Medical Tradition. 800 BC to AD 1800, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cromarty, Helen Clare, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ‘Brookes, William Penny,’ online edn, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004 [http://www. oxforddnb.com/view/article/39187, accessed 31 July 2010]. Drees, L. 1968. Olympia. Gods, Artists, and Athletes, New York and Washington: Frederick A. Praeger. Drury, P. M. E. 2007–8. ‘From Much Wenlock to Athens: A Life of Dr William Penny Brookes,’ Medical Historian. Bulletin of Liverpool Medical Historical Society 2007–2008 Session, 23–8. Faber, Petrus. 1592. Agonisticon, Lugdunum. Fontana, S. 2008. “Girolamo Mercuriale editore di Galeno. In Arcangeli and Nutton 2008, 217–31. Guts Muths, Johann Christoph Friedrich. 1803. Gymnastics for Youth, C. G. Salzmann, transl. Philadelphia: P. Byrne. Jouanna, J. 2008. “Mercuriale, commentateur et editeur d’Hippocrate.” In Arcangeli and Nutton 2008, 269–300. Kühn, K. G. 1821–33, reprinted 1964–5. Claudii Galeni Opera Omnia, Leipzig: K. H. Knobloch. Kyle, D. 1990. “E. Norman Gardiner and the Decline of Greek Sport.” In D. Kyle and G. Stark, eds., Essays on Sport History and Sport Mythology, College Station, Pennsylvania: 7–44. Lee, H. 2003a. “Galen, J.H. Krause, and the Olympic Myth of Greek Amateur Athletics”, Stadion 29: 11–20. ———. 2003b. ‘Politics, Society, and Greek Athletics: Views from the Twenty-first Century,’ Journal of Sport History: 167–71. ———. 2009. “The Influence of Mercurialis’ De Arte Gymnastica.” In J. McClelland and B. Merrilees, eds., Sport and Culture in Early Modern Europe/Le Sport dans la Civilisation de l’Europe Pré-Moderne, Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies: 81–95. ———. 2011. “Gilbert West and the Revival of the Olympic Games.” In B. Goff and M. Simpson, eds., Thinking the Olympics: The Classical Tradition and the Modern Games, Bristol Classical Press. Mercuriale, Girolamo. 2008. De Arte Gymnastica, C. Pennuto, ed. and V. Nutton transl., Firenze: Leo S. Olschki Editore. Miller, S. 2004. Arete, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Neve, M. 1995. In L. Conrad, M. Neve, V. Nutton, R. Porter, and A. Wear, The Western Medical Tradition. 800 BC to AD 1800, Cambridge, England and New York: Cambridge University Press, 477–94. Nutton, V. 1973. “The Chronology of Galen’s Early Career,” CQ 23: 158–71. [reprinted in Nutton 1988]. ———. 1984. “Galen in the eyes of his contemporaries,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 58: 315–24 [reprinted in Nutton 1988]. ———. 1988. From Democedes to Harvey: Studies in the History of Medicine, London: Variorum Reprints. ———. 1990. “Les exercices et la santé: Hieronymus Mercurialis et la gymnastique médicale.” In J. Céard, M. Fontaine, and J-C. Margolin, eds., Le corps à la Renaissance. Actes du XXXe Colloque de Tours 1987, Paris: Aux Amateurs de Livres, 295–308. ———. 1995a. “Roman medicine, 250 BC to AD 200.” In L. Conrad, M. Neve, V. Nutton, R. Porter, and A. Wear, The Western Medical Tradition. 800 BC to AD 1800, Cambridge, England and New York: Cambridge University Press, 39–70.

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———. 1995b. “Medicine in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages.” In L. Conrad, M. Neve, V. Nutton, R. Porter, and A. Wear, The Western Medical Tradition. 800 BC to AD 1800, Cambridge, England and New York: Cambridge University Press, 71–87. ———. 1995c. “Medicine in Medieval Western Europe, 1000–1500.” In L. Conrad, M. Neve, V. Nutton, R. Porter, and A. Wear The Western Medical Tradition. 800 BC to AD 1800, Cambridge, England and New York: Cambridge University Press, 139–205. ———. 2004. Ancient Medicine, New York: Routledge. ———. 2005. “The Fatal Embrace: Galen and the History of Ancient Medicine,” Science in Context 18.1: 111–121. Revard, S. 2001. Pindar and the Renaissance Hymn-ode, 1450–1700, Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Robertson, C. 1992. Il Gran Cardinale: Alessandro Farese, Patron of the Arts, New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Robinson, R. S. 1955. Sources for the History of Greek Athletics, Cincinnati. Ruehl, J. K. 2004. “Olympic Games before Coubertin.” In J. Findling and K. Pelle eds., Encyclopedia of the Modern Olympic Movement, Westport: Greenwood Press, 3–16. Segrave, J. 2005. ‘Pietro Metastaio’s L’Olimpiade and the Survival of the Olympic Idea in 18th Century Europe,’ OLYMPIKA. The International Journal of Olympic Studies 14: 1–28. ———. 2010. ‘Music as Sport History: The Special Case of Pietro Metastasio’s L’Olimpiade and the Story of the Olympic Games.’ In A. Bateman and J. Bale, eds., Sporting Sounds. Relationships Between Sport and Music, London and New York: Routledge, 150–78. Singer, P. N. 1997. Galen, Selected Works, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sinn, U. 2000. Olympia. Cult, Sport, and Ancient Festival, Princeton: Markus Wiener. Siraisi, N. 1997. “Vesalius and the Reading of Galen’s Teleology,” Renaissance Quarterly 50.1: 1–37. ———. 2000. “Anatomizing the Past: Physicians and History in Renaissance Culture,” Renaissance Quarterly 53.1: 1–30. ———. 2003. “History, Antiquarianism, and Medicine: The Case of Girolamo Mercuriale” Journal of the History of Ideas 64.2: 231–251. ———. 2004. “Medicine and the Renaissance World of Learning,” [ = The Fielding H. Garrison Lecture], Bulletin of the History of Medicine 78: 1–36. Stalla, R. 1996. “Introduzione.” In Mercuriale, G., De Arte Gymnastica, ed. and transl. M. Napolitano, Rome: Elefante: 9–25. Temkin, O. 1973. Galenism, Rise and Decline of a Medical Philosophy, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. Wear, A. 1995. “Medicine in Early Modern Europe, 1500–1700.” In L. Conrad, M. Neve, V. Nutton, R. Porter, and A. Wear, The Western Medical Tradition. 800 BC to AD 1800, Cambridge, England and New York: Cambridge University Press, 215–361. West, G. 1749. Odes of Pindar, With several other Pieces in Prose and Verse, Translated from the Greek. To which is prefixed a Dissertation on the Olympick Games, London: R. Dodsley. Young, D. C. 1984. The Olympic Myth of Greek Amateur Athletics, Chicago: Ares Publishers. ———. 1996. The Modern Olympics. A Struggle for Revival, Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press.

14 A Renaissance Feminist Translation of Xenophon’s Oeconomicus Diana Robin

Abstract. This chapter offers the first published study of Alessandro Piccolomini’s Italian translation of Xenophon’s Oeconomicus, which was printed under the title La economica in 1540. In my study of the translation, I focus solely on the central section of the dialogue, where Xenophon’s principal interlocutor, a landowner named Ischomachus, tells Socrates how he taught his bride to be a good wife. I approach my analysis of Piccolomini’s work with a number of questions. First, how literal is the translation? How well, and with what aim in mind, does Piccolomini convey the irony that is so characteristic of all Xenophon’s Socratic dialogues? What did Piccolomini choose to excise from Xenophon’s sometimes sexually explicit text? What has he added to the original and why? Finally, what does Piccolomini’s radical revision of Xenophon’s dialogue on marriage suggest about his intellectual milieu in Siena and his readers, among whom were a number of prominent women scholars and writers? Xenophon’s Socratic dialogue, the Oeconomicus, is a text regularly taught in American university courses on women in the ancient world. The dialogue is often presented as a textbook case of fourth-century BCE Greek misogyny.1 Some critics, however, Michel Foucault among them, have seen the work as an important example of the representation of the model marriage as a complementary relationship between a man and his wife rather than a strictly hierarchical one. Foucault saw the Oeconomicus as inaugurating a significant moment of change in the history of sexuality and marriage—a moment in which relations between men and women were beginning to be differently imagined.2 I began the project of analyzing Alessandro Piccolomini’s translation of the Oeconomicus into Italian, which he titled La economica,3 with two questions. How might Piccolomini have read Xenophon’s double portrait of Ischomachus and his model wife; and, if the Oeconomicus did seem to offer a standard example of fourth-century BCE misogyny in Athens, what then was it that Piccolomini—if not a “protofeminist,” certainly a man noted for his commitment to the education of women—aimed to do in translating

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this work, which he dedicated to the Sienese intellectual Frasia de Veturi? Piccolomini cultivated friendships with numerous other women writers in Siena, notably Laudomia Forteguerri whose sonnet cycle he edited, annotated with a commentary, and published.4 It is interesting to note, however, that his dedicatory letter to Venturi does not pay homage either to Forteguerri or to the women of Siena as a group, except to say that the foundation for good government lies with the family and the mothers who cultivate it.5 The Oeconomicus has a tripartite structure: a dialogue between Socrates and Critobulus, which introduces the topic of estate management (1.1–6.17); a dialogue between Socrates and an estate owner by the name of Ischomachus, who describes how he educated his fourteen-year-old wife to be his partner in managing his estate (7.1–10.13) and finally, a dialogue between Socrates and Ischomachus on other aspects of managing an estate, which concludes the conversation between the two men (11.1–22.12). This chapter analyzes Piccolomini’s translation of the central section of Xenophon’s Oeconomicus (7.1–10.13), on the training of a wife.6 The editions of the primary texts I refer to throughout my chapter are Piccolomini’s 1540 edition of his translation, La economica di Xenophonte, and Sarah Pomeroy’s edition of the Greek text, Xenophon, Oeconomicus. A Social and Historical Commentary (Oxford 1994).

TEXT HISTORY AND TRANSLATIONS Xenophon’s works were unknown in Europe until the Sicilian scholar Giovanni Aurispa traveled to Constantinople in 1421 and again in 1423, returning with a cache of over two hundred Greek books, among which were the works of Plato, Xenophon, Demosthenes, Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles and other ancient Greek authors previously unknown in Europe.7 A century later, when Alessandro Piccolomini embarked on his translation of Xenophon’s Oeconomicus, the first one ever to be published in Italian, he had no trouble finding a Greek exemplar from which to work. The oldest and best Greek manuscripts of the Oeconomicus dating to the twelfth or thirteenth centuries had long been accessible to scholars in the public libraries of Florence, Rome and Venice (Laurentianus 80.13 and 85.9; Vaticanus Reginensis 96; Venetus Marcianus 511).8 But since Piccolomini already had available to him several high-quality printed editions of the Greek work—the Juntine edition first published in Florence 1516 and again in 1527, and the Aldine Xenophontis omnia quae extant printed in Venice 1525—Piccolomini probably worked from one of these editions. Eleven Latin translations and commentaries of the Oeconomicus preceded Piccolomini’s Italian version of the work. The most popular of these was Raffaele Maffei’s translation and commentary, first published in 1506 and reprinted five more times before 1530 (Rome: Joannem Besicken 1506; Paris: Joannem Parvum et Jodocum Badium Ascensium 1511, 1515, 1526;

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and Basel: H. Frobeni 1530). Geoffrey Tory published the first French translation of the Oeconomicus in 1531, and Gentian Hervet published the first English translation of the work in 1534 (London: no publisher, rpts. 1537, 1544, 1573).9 It appears unlikely that Piccolomini used Maffei’s Latin translation as a model for his own work since Maffei’s Latin text is a somewhat condensed translation of the dialogue, often eliminating such features as the attributions of speeches to speakers, inquam and inquit (ἔφην, ἔφη in Xenophon’s Greek text).10 Piccolomini’s La economica (1540 ) appears to have been written around the same time he published two other translations that year: Book 6 of Virgil’s Aeneid (Venice 1540), composed as part of a group translation project by the members of the Sienese academy, the Intronati, and Book 13 of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Venice 1541). Just months before Piccolomini’s La economica went to press, he published another dialogue, the La Raffaella ovvero Dialogo della bella creanza delle donne (Venice: Curtio Navò, 1539). Since both works were dedicated to Frasia Placidi De Venturi, and since their dedicatory letters are dated within nine months of one another in 1538 (the Oeconomicus on 8 January and the Raffaella on 22 October), Florindo Cerreta has suggested that they were composed as a pair.11 In fact, it is difficult to imagine that reading and translating Xenophon’s Oeconomicus did not in some way prompt Piccolomini’s invention of the Raffaella, as a species of palinode to counteract the saccharine portrait of the good wife in the Oeconomicus.

A Comedy? La Raffaella and La Economica Piccolomini’s two dialogues, the Raffaella ovvero Dialogo della bella creanza12 and his translation of Xenophon’s pedagogic dialogue, La economica, represent two sides of the same coin. Both works represent an extended conversation between two persons on marriage, in which one of the interlocutors plays the role of the older and wiser of the two, the teacher and mentor, while the other takes the part of the initiate. In Xenophon’s dialogue, Ischomachus instructs his wife, who was only fourteen when he married her, on how to run a house (“quando io la tolsi, non aveva più che quindici anni,” 7.5).13 In Piccolomini’s Raffaella ovvero Dialogo della bella creanza delle donne, however, the protagonist Raffaella, who resembles the procuress Nanna in Aretino’s Dialogo nel quale la Nanna insegna alla Pippa (1536),14 teaches her much younger friend, Margarita how to cheat on her husband, whose long absences have destroyed her hopes of marital happiness. A number of issues and themes articulated in Xenophon’s dialogue on the ideal marriage are recapped, if addressed differently, in the Dialogo della bella creanza. Chief among these are four: the governance of the house and its servants, which must be the wife’s responsibility; the nature of the wife’s own conduct as the guardian or governor of the house and its laws (φύλαξ, νομοφύλαξ, Oec. 9.15);15 the problem of the wife’s idleness when she is alone all day and finally, the issue of the use of cosmetics by the young wife.

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Drawing an analogy between the state and the domestic household in Piccolomini’s Dialogo della bella creanza, Raffaella spells out a wife’s responsibilities and rewards: “The governance of the house [she tells her newly married young friend], when it is well administered, is a gentlewoman’s greatest adornment and causes her to be highly esteemed by anyone who understands, as well as wonderfully loved by her husband since a man can have no greater satisfaction than to see his things and his children and everything he has in his home cherished and protected by his wife” (“Il governo del la casa quando gli è ben guidato, è di grandissimo ornamento a una gentildonna e la fa stimar molto appresso di chi la sa, e ben voler maravigliosamente dal marito suo, perochè non può aver un uomo maggior contentezza che vedere la robba e i figli e quel che egli ha in casa amato e custodito da la moglie sua,” La Raffaella, 74).16 Using the same image of the house as city-state in La Economica, Ischomachus tells his wife that just as in well-governed cities, it is not enough that citizens make laws and that the laws are good unless they appoint a guardian to enforce the laws. Similarly the lady of the house has to ensure that her laws are enforced in the governing of her servants (“Et le mostrai come ne le ben governate città non basta che i cittadini faccin le leggi, e che sien buone, se non constituiscono ancora chi s’adoperi che sieno osservate, . . . così parimente la donna in una casa ha da operarsi che le leggi e comandamenti imposti a servi,” La economica 9.14–15).17 Both of the young wives’ mentors, Raffaella and Ischomachus, warn against the opposite of ben governare: the dangers of idleness, sloth, sluggishness and sleeping too much. The key villains in both dialogues are ozio, pigrizia, tedio del vivere and sonno. The lady of the house, counsels Raffaella, “should not let idleness, too many naps, laziness, or boredom get the better of her as many do. . . . These are the women who lie in bed until midday and let their houses go to ruin.” (“Non si lassi pigliar dominio addosso da l’ozio, dal sonno, da la pigrizia e dal tedio del viver come molte fanno, che . . . stanno fino a mezzogiorno nel letto e lassano andare a brodetto la casa,” Raffaella, 74–5). And the kind of ruin this would be, Ischomachus spells out in one of his many admonitions to his wife against pigrizia and ozio. Both dialogues link idleness ultimately to the abuse of cosmetics and then, as if causally, to sexual infidelity. In this passage from his translation of Xenophon’s Oeconomicus, Piccolomini’s idiosyncratic vocabulary and speech patterns recall those in the comic dialogue he had already published in 1539: “Questa le mostrai, che io volevo che fusse la vita sua, e non starsi a seder negrittosa,18 piena d’otio, sbadigliando, come molte fanno, non sapendo far altro, che dar se in mano di qualcuna di queste donneciuole, che depegnendo loro viso et acconciando la testa, le deridino, e le ingannino.” (La economica 10.11–12: “This I showed her since I wanted this to be her life and not to sit around listlessly, full of idleness, yawning as many do, not knowing how to do anything other than to put themselves in the hands of one of those little women who, painting their faces and doing up their hair, would mock and cheat them.”)

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The connection between a woman’s use of heavy pancake makeup and her promiscuous pursuit of sex is a standard trope in Classical literature.19 In both Piccolomini’s dialogues, the older and more experienced of the two interlocutors, uses the same strategy in advising the young wife against extreme beautifying remedies—though Raffaela offers complicated recipes of her own, some requiring the grinding, cooking, and straining of quicksilver, pearls, eggs, lilies and plucked pigeons.20 Both Ischomachus and Raffaela pose rhetorical questions to show the absurdity of whitening creams. In a scene that comes off as pure farce in both Xenophon’s Greek original and Piccolomini’s translation, Ischomachus asks his wife to imagine how she would feel if they changed places and he played the woman. “Would you prefer to have me in your arms if I am healthy and arrayed simply and without any artifice when I am with you, or [would you prefer me] slathered with some makeup so I seem softer and more delicate than I am?” (“Pensaresti più d’haverme ne le braccia, o se io sano e disposto puramente e senza arte alcuna ti stesse apresso, o vero intriso di qualche impiastro, per parerte più molle, e delicato, che io non sono?” 10.5) Raffaella also uses ridicule in her advice to Margarita: “What could we see worse than a young girl who has so plastered her face white powder and covered it with such a thick mask that she is hardly recognizable for who she is?” (“Che potiam veder peggio che una giovine, che sì abbia incalcinato e coperto il viso di sì grossa mascara, che appena è conosciuta per chi la sia?”)21 Marriage and adultery are important themes in Renaissance comedy as well as in the many dialoghi d’amore of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The comic take on marriage and the role and responsibilities of a wife represented in Piccolomini’s Raffaella make it appear on the surface very different from the La economica. But certainly the two works share, as I shall argue, a similar impetus. For one thing, the staging of a Socratic dialogue in the manner of Xenophon’s Oeconomicus, the Memorabilia and the Symposium always afforded, as Pomeroy has noted, opportunities for comedy, satire and irony. For another, it is important to bear in mind that widespread talk was already circulating in Athens about a man named Ischomachus and his scandalous wife some years before Xenophon sat down to write the Oeconomicus.

WAS XENOPHON’S ISCHOMACHUS A HISTORICAL FIGURE? Was there a historical Ischomachus whose life inspired Xenophon’s dialogue? The name Ischomachus was not uncommon: it is found in Attic comedy, oratory and historical sources of the fifth and fourth centuries BC. References to the wealth, financial losses and wife and daughters of a character or characters named Ischomachus are found in the texts of the comic poets Araros.22 Most modern scholars identify the characters of Ischomachus and his wife depicted by Xenophon in his Oeconomicus with the historical figures whom Andocides attacks in On the Mysteries.23 In this speech, Andocides accuses his notoriously wealthy and self-avowedly pious countryman Callias

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of committing incest. Callias, he claims, has been living in a ménage à trois with his wife and her mother, whom he here identifies as Ischomachus’ wife, naming her elsewhere in the speech as “Chrysilla” (1.127). I quote the relevant passage from On the Mysteries: Callias married a daughter of Ischomachus; and after living with her for less than a year he took her mother, and the utter scoundrel went on living with the mother and the daughter,.. and kept them both in his house. . . . But Ischomachus’ daughter thought it would be better to die than to live seeing what was going on. She tried to hang herself, but before she’d finished she was taken down and put to bed. After she recovered, she ran away from the house; and so the mother ousted the daughter. Later when he’d had enough of her, he turned her out too (1.124–7).24 In 362/1, when Xenophon wrote the Oeconomicus, he had long known of the scandal involving Ischomachus’ wife.25 Xenophon not only belonged to a number of literary circles flourishing in Athens but he was politically active at the time when Andocides revived the lurid story of Callias’ adultery, incest and his wife’s attempted suicide in the speech he delivered publicly in 399, the year Xenophon was sentenced to exile. Xenophon’s fantasy dialogue between a prosperous landowner and his perfect wife, who later in life, without her husband to guide her, takes a wrong turn, must have appealed to his Athenian audience—because of its protagonist and the scandal with which his name was associated. Nor has the irony of Xenophon’s portrait of the “good wife” been lost on subsequent generations of readers. The story of Ischomachus’ wife as told by Andocides in On the Mysteries would have been readily available to Piccolomini since it was already in print by 1525 in the edition published by Aldus Manutius in Venice.26 But the identification of Andocides’ Ischomachus and his wife as models for the married couple in the Oeconomicus affects our reading not just of Xenophon’s dialogue but also of Piccolomini’s translation of the work.

SOCRATIC IRONY Sarah Pomeroy has argued that Xenophon’s four Socratic dialogues–—the Memorabilia, the Symposium, the Apology and the Oeconomicus—represent Socrates in a way that agrees with Plato’s portrait of him.27 We find in Xenophon’s Socrates the same professions of ignorance, the same mocking, belittling, irony and sarcasm familiar to us from Plato’s dialogues.28 What impact, then, does attention to irony in the Oeconomicus have on our sense of what Xenophon, and later Piccolomini, are doing in their crafting of the character of Ischomachus, whom critics have seen as “unbearably patronizing and repressive” towards his wife by modern standards?29 How has Xenophon used irony in the dialogue? And how is it captured in

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Piccolomini’s translation? Are there places where the irony is lost? The following examples will provide a sense of how both the ancient author and his translator handled the problem. When Ischomachus tells Socrates that he has taught his wife how important it is that everything in the house has its own place, Socrates comments dryly: “Say what? When your wife heard all that, did she pay any attention to you at all?” (Τί οὖν; ἔφην ἐγώ, ῶ ᾿Ισχόμαχε, ταῦτα ἀκούσασα, ἡ γυνή πώς σοι ὑπήκουε; Oec. 9.18).30 Piccolomini’s own translation of the same passage, “E come mostrava ella d’odirti volentieri?” (“And how did she show she was listening to you willingly?” 9.18) condenses Xenophon’s three clauses into one and, still, the Italian lacks the bite of Socrates’ taunting query in the Greek original, though it does capture the philosopher’s skepticism about the effectiveness of Ischomachus’ teaching methods. And when Ischomachus reports to Socrates that his wife crowed with delight at his command that she take good care of their possessions, she says she would only be sorry if he asked her to neglect them. Judging her a complete fool, Socrates answers, “By Hera, Ischomachus, you’re showing me that the woman has the mind of a man!” (Νὴ τὴν ῞Ηρα, ἔφην, ὦ ᾿Ισχόμαχε¸ ἀνδρικήν γε ἐπιδεικνυεις τὴν διάνόιαν τῆς γυναικός, 10.1). Piccolomini does not translate this passage but his paraphrase of it perfectly captures its spirit. He has Socrates turn to his original interlocutor, Critobulus, in his dialogue, and he says, “When I heard how wise the lady’s answer was, Critobulus, I said to Ischomachus, you’re telling me, Ischomachus, that he lady has a capacious mind!” (“Sentendo io, Critobolo, così savia risposta di donna, dissi ad Iscomaco, grande animo, Iscomaco, mi racconti di donna,” 10.1). Here Piccolomini’s introduction of a third interlocutor on the set, Critobulus (whom Socrates does not invoke by name here in Xenophon’s text) emphasizes the comedy in Socrates’ response, which Ischomachus understands one way and Critobulus another. Socrates’ quip that this fourteen-year-old girl31 who has to be taught everything about housework by her husband is “così savia” and has a “grande animo” is typical of the wisecracking Socrates in other dialogues of both Plato and Xenophon. But behind all the irony, though, in both Piccolomini and his Greek model, is the question implied throughout this dialogue by Socrates, the paradigmatic teacher, in all his responses to Ischmachus’ boasts: Yes, but can virtue be taught? Can one be taught to care? How do you teach those who abuse wine, or idleness, or sloth, or sleep to have ἐπιμέλεια (care, concern, attention) in Xenophon’s terms? And when you have taught your wife to care is she ready to be a guardian of the laws herself—ἡ φύλαξ in Xenophon’s platonizing term?32 Or is Ischomachus’ only ultimate pedagogic tool in Piccolomini’s translation a threat? As we saw in a passage I cited earlier, Ischomachus wanted to teach his wife to live a useful life: “non starsi a seder negrittosa, piena d’otio” (“not to sit around listlessly, full of idleness”). Otherwise, he warns her—and this warning does not appear in Xenophon’s text—“You might put yourself into the hands of those women, who, painting

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their faces and doing up their hair, would mock and cheat you” (“che darse in mano di qualcuna di queste donneciuole, che dipegnendo loro il viso, et acconciando la testa, le deridino, e le ingannino,” 10.13). In Piccolomini’s translation, Ischomachus’ report of his conversations with his wife end here, with him assuring Socrates that his wife had now understood everything he told her and that she was living according to the rules he had taught her (“Doppo ch’ ella hebbe intese tutte queste cose, hai da saper, Socrate, che sempre visse secondo la regola e la norma che io le mostrai,” 10.13). While Piccolomini closely follows the words Xenophon puts into Ischomachus’ mouth, it is at this point, at the close of Ischomachus’ narrative of his schooling of his wife, that the Sienese scholar diverges significantly from his model. Piccolomini has Socrates say he has now heard enough about Ischomachus’ wife, her accomplishments, her way of life—and about her duties as a good mother of a family (“de l’offitio d’una buona madre di famiglia, mi par haver udito abastanza,” 10.13). Since this comment is nowhere to be found in Xenophon, one is tempted to wonder whether Piccolomini’s Socrates, wearing his satirist’s hat, alludes here to Andocides’ sketch of the wife of Ischomachus (10.13).

CENSORING XENOPHON’S MISOGYNY AND EXPLICTLY SEXUAL IMAGERY The most radical changes Piccolomini has made in his translation of Xenophon’s dialogue I would classify as editorializing. In order not to offend his female audience, Piccolomini engages in a certain amount of censorship. Passages in the Greek that contained explicitly sexual imagery, crude language, or language demeaning to women, he has either excised or altered. While Ischomachus is presented in Xenophon’s dialogue as a pompous fool, he is portrayed as both more respectful and more considerate of his wife in Piccolomini’s translation. Whereas Xenophon has Ischomachus address his wife as ὦ γυναί (“o woman” or “o wife”), which English translators have rendered variously as “dear” or “my dear,”33 among other appellations, that is not what the Greek says. Piccolomini solves the problem in his Italian translation by either not translating γυναί at all or by softening it with the address “consorte mia.” Xenophon’s depiction of Ischomachus’ description of his young bride in the Oeconomicus produces a caricature of the Athenian gentleman farmer. She is a wild animal needing to be tamed. Ischomachus tells Socrates: “Well, Socrates, when [my wife] had got used to my hand (χειροήθης) and she had been tamed (ἐτετιθάσευτο) enough to enter into a conversation, I questioned her thus”. . . (ὦ Σώκρατες, ἐπεὶ ἤδη μοι χειροήθης ἦν καὶ ἐτετιθάσευτο ὥστε διαλέγεσθαι, ἠρόμην αὐτὴν ὧδε. . . . 7.10). In Piccolomini’s translation, Ischomachus’ wife needs conversation and a caring partner, not taming. She is a young girl who is gradually becoming accustomed to life in her husband’s house and who needs to gain self-assurance. “When she began to learn the

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ways of the house,” Ischomachus tells Socrates, “and I saw that she was starting to feel more sure of herself, and because of this it seemed to me that I could now speak more comfortably with her, after choosing a suitable time I said to her. . . ”. (“Com’ ella si fu un poco domesticata, e che io la vidi incominciar ad haver sicurtà e per questo, mi parve poter già domesticamente parlare, pigliando il tempo commodo li dissi . . .”, 7.10). Piccolomini’s Ischomachus is sensitive to his wife’s emotions and the delicacy of the situation in a way that Xenophon’s gentleman farmer is not: “la vidi incominciar ad haver sicurtà ” and “pigliando il tempo commodo, li dissi” are additions to the Greek. Nor is Ischomachus’ wife so intimidated by her husband in Piccolomini’s translation that she is portrayed as jumping at his every command, which would turn this satirical dialogue for his sixteenth-century audience of women and men into a farce. When Xenophon’s Ischomachus says: “I want to describe to you the wholly high-minded actions of this girl (πάνυ μεγαλόφρονα αὐτῆς), because of which, when she’s heard my words just once, she instantly obeys” (ἅ μου ἅπαξ ἀκούσασα ταχὺ ἐπείθετο, 10.1), Piccolomini paraphrases Ischomachus’ answer, “Molte altre cose . . . potrei contarti non manco magnanime” (“I could tell you many other things no less highminded,” 10.1). Piccolomini simply deletes in his translation Ischomachus’ gloating about how fast his wife jumps to do everything he asks. Piccolomini regularly censors Xenophon’s Greek text. In a passage portraying the couple’s intimate relations, Piccolomini replaces sexually explicit language with nonsexual language or euphemisms, no doubt so as not to offend the women for whom he intended the translation. In his lecture, for example, on the use of cosmetics which we discussed previously, Ischomachus asks his wife in the Greek text: Xenophon: Ποτέρως ἂν οὖν . . . δοκοίην εἶναι ἀξιοφίλητος μᾶλλον κοινωνός, εἴ σοι τὸ σῶμα πειρῴμην παρέχειν . . . ἐπιμελόμενος ὅπως ὑγιαῖνόν τε καὶ ἐρρωμένον. . . . ἢ εἴ σοι μίλτῳ ἀλειφόμενος καὶ τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς ὑπαλειφόμενος ἀνδρεικέλῳ, επιδεικνύοιμί τε ἐμαυτὸν καὶ συνείην ἐξαπατῶν σε.34 My translation: “Which would be preferable then. . . . would I seem a more worthy companion if I tried to show you my body, taking care that it would be healthy and vigorous . . . or [would I seem worthier] if I displayed myself to you smeared with red chalk and painted under the eyes with flesh-colored paint and if I went to bed with you having deceived you?” (10.5) Piccolomini’s translation “Pensaresti più d’haverme ne le braccia, o se io sano e disposto puramente e senza arte alcuna ti stesse apresso, o vero intriso di qualche impiastro, per parerte più molle, e delicato, che io non sono?” (10.5. See my translation of Piccolomini on p. 7.) In Piccolomini’s translation, he altogether omits both the graphic image “to display” or “to expose” (ἐπιδεικνύοιμι) and the erotically suggestive phrase

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“to offer you my body” (σοι τὸ σῶμα παρέχειν). He also deletes the participle “deceiving” (ἐξαπατῶν), which has often an explicitly sexual sense in Greek poetry.35 And in the same passage, Piccolomini diminishes the force of συνεῖναι (“to have sexual intercourse with”) and replaces it with the euphemisms “d’ haverme ne le braccia” and “ti stesse apresso” (10.5). Another way Piccolomini maintains decorum in his La economica is by avoiding literal translations of Xenophon’s Greek that could carry a superfluous sexual charge. When Xenophon’s Ischomachus tells Socrates, for example, that “in matters of the belly his wife had been very beautifully trained” (τά γε ἀμφὶ γαστέρα . . . πάνυ καλῶς . . . ἦλθε πεπαιδευμένη), Piccolomini eschews the rich image γαστήρ (belly, womb), which in Greek poetry suggests all the human cravings and pleasures, foremost among them sex. He translates the phrase “era temperatissima del mangiare e del bere” (“she exercised great moderation in eating and drinking,” 7.6). Perhaps the most interesting case of Piccolomini’s vigilant eliminating of sexual imagery from his translation of the Oeconomicus occurs when Ischomachus boasts that his own wife is more exciting than a slave girl because his wife sleeps with him voluntarily whereas the slave is coerced to do so. In the Greek text, Ischomachus says that his wife “is an exciting sight whenever she, being fresher and better dressed, is compared to a servant, since she is willing to pleasure him (ὁπόταν τὸ ἑκοῦσαν χαρίζεσθαι προσῇ), whereas the slave girl is forced to submit” (ἀντὶ τοῦ ἀναγκαζομένην ὑπηρετεῖν, 10.12). Omitting Xenophon’s comparison between the wife’s willingness to have sex with her husband and the compulsion with which the slave must perform the same act, Piccolomini makes the contrast between wife and servant solely about exercise and housework rather than sex and pleasure. As in Xenophon’s text, the wife in Piccolomini’s translation follows her servants everywhere, instructing those who are deficient in their household crafts and learning from those who are more expert than she. As Piccolomini renders the passage about the wife’s “willingness to oblige” (10.9–12), it is the wife’s vigorous supervision of her servants that distinguishes her from them and makes her more beautiful than they: “[Questo esercitio] vestirebbe ‘l volto di color fresco e vivo vago, e non finto, e tanto più le riuscirebbe, quanto la pigliarebbe tal esercitio, spontaneamente, e non forzata da la necessità, come fa la maggior parte di chi serve.” (“And this exercise would suffuse her face with a healthy, vivacious, and lovely glow, not a fake one, all the more, the more such exercise she would take of her own accord—not being forced by necessity as the majority of those who serve do,” 10.12). CONCLUSION We have now examined Piccolomini’s La economica from a number of vantage points: first, the relation of Piccolomini’s Italian translation to its Greek exemplar; second, Piccolomini’s use of comedy and Socratic irony; third,

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his obvious censorship of language offensive or demeaning to women; and fourth, the possible influence of a speech by Andocides on the work’s tone and intent. In conclusion, I consider briefly what I see as Piccolomini’s chief contribution to his sixteenth-century female audience in his presenting his La economica to them, which offers a still more radical theorization of gender complementarity in marriage than its exemplar. At first glance, there is nothing new in the interlocking premises that underlie Ischomachus’ prescriptions for the good marriage in both the Oeconomicus and Piccolomini’s translation: that is, that the institutions of marriage and the family are divinely ordained (7.18); and that fundamental to maintenance of the human community is the marriage yoke, binding together a man and a woman for life (ζεῦγος in Xenophon; giogo in Piccolomini 7.18–22). In Ischomachus’ formulation, this yoke engenders a partnership (κοινωνία) between a man and a woman, in which complementarity and reciprocity are the results of their common project of household management. Piccolomini nowhere uses the equivalent word “partnership” or “community” for the Greek image of κοινωνία, but he clearly describes the concept in his translation of Xenophon’s theory of separate but equally valued spheres of responsibility apportioned to the sexes by the gods (οἱ θεοί in Xenophon, 7.18; gli Dii and Dio in Piccolomini 7.17–23). To women is given the indoors, the care of children, the house, and the family’s possessions; to men, the out-of-doors and the defense of family and house from outside aggressors: “ . . . Dio habbia ordinato a loro le fatiche, e gli esserciti fuor di casa, lassando com’ ho detto, qui di dentro a le donne” (7.23–5). The most novel idea in the work appears, however, when Xenophon’s Ischomachus states that God has also given an equal portion of qualities of mind and character to both the male and the female. Xenophon’s protagonist says that God has shared out portions of μνήμη καὶ ἐπιμέλεια (memory and care) to the man and the woman in such a way that no one could tell which of the sexes received more (7.26). In this passage, Piccolomini’s translation departs markedly from its exemplar. Adding a third intellectual gift—discorso—to the roster of gifts from God, Piccolomini renders this passage: “Memory, discourse, and care, as facilities necessary to the duties of both the man and the woman, God himself distributed separately, in such a way that it was not possible to know with certainty who got the greater share.” (“La memoria poi, e il discorso, e la diligentia, per esser cose necessarie a l’offitio così de l’huomo come de la donna, esso Dio partitamente lo divise loro; tal che non si può chiaramente conoscer chi di loro n’ habbia più parte,” 7.26–7) The addition of discorso to Xenophon’s list of gifts of the mind given by God in equal shares to both sexes is significant. The assertion in La economica of the potential equality of women and men as speakers, writers, and thinkers would have been more pleasing to the women of Piccolomini’s literary circle in Siena than any other tenet. Certainly the addition of discorso to the roster of intellectual qualities that both sexes might share

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in equal measure reflected the quality of Piccolomini’s friendships with such Sienese women as Frasia de Venturi and Laudomia Forteguerri, whom he considered his colleagues and his peers.36 The whole passage is crowned, moreover, by Ischomachus’ coda in both the ancient Greek and Italian texts: τὸ ἐγκρατές (self-control), he remarks (modestia e temperantia in Piccolomini’s translation), is given by God to both the man and the woman, and “the one who gets more of it, whether husband or wife, brings home more honor and utility than the other.” (“Che più ne piglia, o’l marito, o la moglie, quello porta maggior utile et honor in casa sua che l’altro non fa,” 7.27–8).37 Xenophon’s conclusion that the female of the species “might get for herself” (pigliare) more self-mastery, moderation or even-handedness than the male contradicts the prescriptive writings of the great early humanists on the education of women—Leonardo Bruni, Francesco Barbaro and Juan de Vives, who caution against women’s “natural” weakness of will.38 Ischomachus’ statement to the contrary makes the Oeconomicus and its heir, La economica, two of the most important texts on women and marriage in antiquity and the Renaissance. NOTES I would like to thank our editors Donald Lateiner, Barbara Gold and Judith Perkins for inviting me to share the privilege of contributing to this volume. Judith Hallett has been my friend, mentor and constant source of inspiration as we move through all the jostling sectors of our lives, as department heads and faculty, scholars and teachers, mothers and daughters, friends and lovers, and wives and partners. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

Lefkowitz and Fant 1992, 196–7. See also Robin 2011. Foucault 1988, 150–85; Foucault 1990, 143–65. Piccolomini 1540. Piccolomini 1541; Piéjus 1993, 524–51; Piéjus 2009, 221–34; Eisenbichler 2001, 277–304. Piccolomini 1540, 1. Pomeroy 1994; Marchant 1921. Sabbadini 1905; Sabbadini 1931, vii-xxii; Wilson 1992, 9–12; 23–53; Robin 1983, 202–24; Robin 1991. See Marchant 1992, xxviii; Kraye in Grendler 1999, 6: 9–17; esp. 10–11. Marsh 1992, 7: 750–90; 777–88. Marsh 1992, 179. Cerreta 1960, 19. Alfano 2001. Piccolomini 1540, 15v; Xenophon, Oec. 7.5; Pomeroy 1994, 268, notes that fourteen was the normal age for an Athenian girl to marry. Aretino 1992. All citations of the Greek text are from Marchant 1921; I use the Greek text’s numbering in referring to the corresponding text in Piccolomini’s Italian translation. Piccolomini 2001, ed. G. Alfano, 76; all subsequent quotations from the Raffaella are from Alfano’s edition. I am deeply indebted to Elissa Weaver’s lifesaving corrections of my Italian translations. Whatever errors remain are mine alone.

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17. See Plato’s radical proposal (Republic 5.456a–57a): in the ideal state both male and female guardians would govern the state; Xenophon, Oec. 9.14 uses the same Platonic term νομοφύλαξ (guardian); see also Plato Laws 755a; 770c; and similarly φυλακικὴς γυνή (female guardian) in Plato Rep. 456a and c; Piccolomini renders the Greek with the circumlocution “chi s’adoperi [le leggi].” 18. Vid. neghittoso. 19. See Lysias, On the Murder of Eratosthenes: 14, 17, in Lefkowitz and Fant 1992, 66–70; see also Ar. Eccl.; Plato Lys. 217d; Plut. Alc. 39; Juv. 6.481. 20. See Alfano 2001, 56–60. 21. Alfano 2001, 55. 22. 16 = Ath. 6.237A and Cratinus (fr. 365 Kassel-Austin = Athen. I.8A); and the orators Lysias (19.46.387); Isaeus fr. 19; Ps.-Demosthenes 58.30; and Andocides On the Mysteries I.124, as cited in Pomeroy 1994, 260–1. 23. The majority opinion is held by Davies 1971, 248, 265–8; Waterfield in Tredennick and Robin Waterfield 1990, 285–887; MacDowell 1962; Harvey 1984, 68–70; Lefkowitz and Fant 1992, 197; Pomeroy alone, 263, does not concur. 24. See Gagarin and MacDowell 1998, 109–10; MacDowell 1962; Edwards 1995. 25. Waterfield, 286, theorizes that Ischomachus and Chrysilla’s daughter was born c. 438; that Chrysilla moves in with her daughter and the daughter’s husband Callias in 422. So Andocides is citing past history in 399. 26. Marchant 1992, dates Aldus Manutius’ first edition of the dialogue to 1525; Edwards 1995, dates the same edition to 1513. 27. Pomeroy 1994, 22; 28; for a comparison of Xenophon’s and Plato’s portrayal of Socrates, see also Waterfield and Tredennick 1990, 1–26; 271–88. 28. Pomeroy 1994, 28. 29. Davies 1993, 219. 30. All translations from the Greek in this chapter are mine. 31. See Oec. 8.5. 32. Plato, Rep. 456c; 457a. 33. Marchant 1992, 416–17, 418–19, 426–7; Lefkowitz and Fant 1992, 198–9, 202. 34. Marchant text 1992, Loeb edition. 35. For example, Theogn. 254; Aristoph. Thesm. 343. 36. See my introduction. 37. Piccolomini’s text is a verbatim translation of the Greek. Words omitted from the original are here underlined; their omission does not alter the meaning (ἐξουσίαν ἐποίησεν ὁ θεὸς ὁπότερος ἂν ᾖ βελτίων . . . πλεῖον φέρεσθαι . . . “god gave the capability to whoever of the two might be likely to bring home more”. . . 7.27). 38. See Bruni 1963, 119–33; Barbaro 1978, 179–228; Vives 2002.

REFERENCES Alfano, G., ed. 2001. Piccolomini. Raffaella ovvero della bella creanza. Rome: Salerno Editrice. Aquilecchia, G. and A. Romano, eds. 1992. Edizione nazionale delle opere di Pietro Aretino, 3 tom. Rome: Salerno Editrice. Beauchamp, V. W., E. Hageman and M. Mikesell, edd. 2002. Juan Luis Vives. The Instruction of a Christen Woman. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Cerreta, F. 1960. Alessandro Piccolomini. Letterato e filosofo senese del cinquecento. Siena: Accademia Senese degli Intronati. Davies, J. K. 1971. Athenian Propertied Families, 248, 265–8. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

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Davies, J. K. 1993. Democracy and Classical Greece. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Edwards, M. 1995. Greek Orators IV. Andocides. Warminster (UK): Aris & Phillips, Ltd. Eisenbichler, K. 2001. “Laudomia Forteguerri Loves Margaret of Austria.” In Same Sex Love and Desire among Women in the Middle Ages, eds. F. C. Sautman and Pamela Sheingorn, 277–80. New York: Palgrave. Foucault, Michel. 1988. “The Wife.” In The History of Sexuality. 3: The Care of the Self, tr. R. Hurley, 147–85. New York: Vintage Books. ———. 1990, “Economics.” In The History of Sexuality. 2: The Use of Pleasure, tr. R. Hurley, 143–65. New York: Vintage Books. ———. 1990. “Ischomachus’ Household.” In The History of Sexuality. 2: The Use of Pleasure, tr. R. Hurley, 152–65. New York: Vintage Books. Gagarin, M., and D. MacDowell, ed. and tr. 1998. Antiphon and Andocides, 109– 10. Austin: University of Texas Press. Harvey, F. D. 1984.”The Wicked Wife of Ischomachus.” EMC NS 3: 68–70. Kohl, B. G., ed. and tr. 1978. “Francesco Barbaro: On Wifely Duties.” In The Earthly Republic: Italian Humanists on Government and Society, edd. B. G. Kohl and R. G. Witt, 179–228. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Kraye, J. 1999. “Classical Scholarship.” In Encyclopedia of the Renaissance, ed. Paul Grendler, 6: 9–17. New York: Scribner’s. Lefkowitz, M. R. and M. B. Fant. 1992. Women’s Life in Greece and Rome. A Source Book in Translation, 196–7. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. MacDowell, D., ed. 1962. Andokides. On the Mysteries. With an introduction and commentary. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Marchant, E. C., ed. 1921. Xenophontis opera omnia. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Marchant, E. C. and O. J. Todd, tr. 1992. Xenophon. Memorabilia. Oeconomicus. Symposium. Apology. Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press. Marsh, D. 1992. “Xenophon.” In Medieval and Renaissance Translations and Commentaries, ed. V. Brown, 7: 750–90; 777–88. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press. Piccolomini, A. 1540. La economica di Xenophonte. Venice: al segno del Pozzo. ———. 1541. Lettura del S. Alessandro Piccolomini Infiammato. Bologna: Bartolomeo Bonardo & Marc’Antonio d Carpi. Piéjus, Marie-Françoise. 2009. “La Louange des dames par Alessandro Piccolomini.” In Visages et Paroles de Femmes dans la Littératura italienne de la Renaissance, 51–72. Paris: Université Paris III. Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2009. ———. 1993. “Orazione in lode delle donne detta in Siena a gli Intronati (Venise, Gabriele Giolito, 1545).” Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana , 170.552: 524–51. ———. 2009. “Les poétesses siennoises entre le jeu et l’écriture.” In Visages et Paroles de Femmes dans la Littératura italienne de la Renaissance, 221–34. Paris: Université Paris III. Sorbonne Nouvelle. Pomeroy, S. 1994. Xenophon. Oeconomicus. A Social and Historical Commentary. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Robin, D. 1983. “Unknown Greek Poems of Francesco Filelfo,” Renaissance Quarterly 36: 202–24. ———. 1991. Filelfo in Milan. Writings, 1451–1477. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. 2007. Publishing Women: Salons, the Presses, and the Counter-Reformation in Sixteenth-Century Italy. Chicago: University of Chicago. ———. 2011. “La traduction par A. Piccolomini de l’Economique de Xenophon,” in M.-F. Piéjus, M. Plaisance, M. Residori, eds., Alessandro Piccolomini (1508–

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1579). Un Siennois à la croisée des genres et des savoirs. Actes du Colloque International (Paris 23–25 septembre 2010). (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3). Sabbadini, R. 1905. Le scoperte dei codici latini e grachi ne’secoli xiv e xv. Florence: Sansoni. Sabbadini, R. ed. 1931. Il Carteggio di Giovanni Aurispa. Rome: Dell’ Istituto Palazzo dei Filippini. Waterfield, R. 1990. “The Estate Manager: Introduction.” In Xenophon. Conversations of Socrates, ed. and trans. R. Waterfield and H. Tredennick, 271–359. London and New York: Penguin. Wilson, N. G. 1992. From Byzantium to Italy. Greek Studies in the Italian Renaissance, 9–12; 23–53. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Woodward, W. H., ed. 1963. “Leonardo Bruni. De studiis et literis.” In Vittorino da Feltre and Other Humanist Educators, ed. W. H. Woodward, 119–33. New York: Teachers College, Columbia University.

15 Bianca The Other African in Othello Jane Donawerth

Abstract. This chapter argues that the name of the character “Bianca” in Shakespeare’s Othello indicates her place of origin. From the regal “Aethyopia” in King Darius (1561), to “Barbary,” Desdemona’s mother’s maid in Othello, the names of African characters in Elizabethan drama indicate where they came from. Bianca’s name, derived from the Italian word for North Africans, “Bianchi,” is drawn perhaps from a source for Othello, Descrittione dell’Africa (1554) by Leo Africanus and translated into English as “white or tawnie Moors.” A North African Bianca completes the multicultural setting of Mediterranean adventure plays mixing peoples and cultures in love and revenge plots. Recognizing Bianca as African highlights economies of race and gender, helping us interpret the handkerchief Othello gave Desdemona, which is held by Bianca at the end and has traveled from Africa to Italy to Cyprus through a multicultural world where people, as well as goods, are in commerce with each other. Literary history of the early modern period in the last two decades has increasingly focused on the multicultural Mediterranean.1 In this study I wish to add to this exploration by arguing that Othello is not the only African in the tragedy named for him, that Bianca would have been perceived as a North African “white” or “tawny” Moor. This chapter thus falls into two halves, the first marshalling evidence for considering Bianca as African, and the second offering a revised interpretation that results from that understanding.

READING BIANCA AS AFRICAN Many characters in Shakespearean and earlier Renaissance drama are designated simply by the people or place of their origin. In The Story of Kyng Daryus, published in 1565, for example, the characters Persya, Iuda, Medey and Aethyopia are invited to a banquet at Kyng Daryus’ palace.2 The female endings to the names and the lack of masculine titles (not even the servants address these characters as “King”) suggest that these are female allegorical

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characters, named for their countries. The presence of male allegorical characters, such as Iniquytie and Equytie, further implies that these female characters also should be read as allegorical, representing their countries.3 As Bindu Malieckal points out, within Othello itself Desdemona refers “to her mother’s black maid, a Moorish woman whose name—‘Barbary’— signifies her nature and nationality” (Malieckal 1999: 53).4 Similarly, Othello is “the Moor.” When Iago predicts to Roderigo that Othello will not return to Venice but will take Desdemona off to inaccessible Mauritania5 (the Latin name for that vague space of North Africa covering not only present-day Mauritania, but also Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia), he is reminding the audience of the etymology of Moor: a “Moor” is a person who comes from “Mauritania.” Even Iago’s name might be such a place name, since one of the Cape Verde Islands, known in the Renaissance as S. Iago or Sant Iago (Pory 1600: 54), lies off the Atlantic Coast of Africa, controlled at times by the Spanish, at times by the Portuguese.6 In John Marston’s 1605 play The Wonder of Women; or, The Tragedie of Sophonisba (Marston 1856: 1:146–216), the origin of the name of Sophonisba’s servant Zanthia is unspecified, but it, too, could be such a place name. The play is set in classical Roman times in North Africa but reflects the multicultural Mediterranean of the playwright’s own times with characters from Carthage, Libya, Ethiopia, Rome and an army of warriors from Numidia. Zanthia, I argue, is a maid, like Barbary, named for her birthplace: Zante (or sometimes Zacinto), one of the Mediterranean islands important to trade between Italy and Greece, under continual territorial dispute, but at the time of the play’s setting, belonging to Rome.7 While there are no references to the skin color or race of Marston’s Zanthia, later playwrights borrow the name Zanthia from Marston and, assuming that the North African setting of the play indicates the race and color of the maid, make their characters “blackamoors.” These include Zanche (with an Italianate name ending) in John Webster’s 1612 play The White Devil (Webster 2003) and Zanthia (or Abdella) in John Fletcher’s 1618 play The Knight of Malta (Fletcher, Field ? and Massinger ? 1966). Descriptive names can refer not only to origin but also to race. In the introduction to A Geographical Historie of Africa, written by Leo Africanus and published in English translation by John Pory in 1600 (so in time to influence the writing of Othello), Pory describes the peoples of Africa in this way:8 This part of the worlde is inhabited especially by fiue principall nations, to wit, by the people called Cafi or Caftes, . . . by the Abassins, the Egyptians, the Arabians, and the Africans or Moores, properly so called; which last are of two kinds, namely white or tawnie Moores, and Negros or blacke Moores. (Pory 1600: 6) As Anthony Barthelemy and Bernadette Andrea point out, these North African peoples are called “Bianchi” in Leo Africanus’ original Italian version

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of his treatise.9 Most scholars agree that Shakespeare must have read the main source for Othello, Geraldi Cinthio’s Gli Hecatommithi, third decade, seventh novel, in the original Italian, since there was no English translation available (for example, Neill 2006: 22). It is reasonable to assume, then, that Shakespeare might well have consulted Leo Africanus in the Italian version, most readily available in Giovanni Battista Ramusio’s mid-sixteenth-century collection, Della nauigatione et viaggi, where the playwright might have read, “Quelli che vi habitano, cio è bianchi sono appellati El barbar” (in Pory’s translation, “The tawnie people of the said region were called by the name of Barbar”).10 Leo uses “Negri” to refer to southern and western black Moors, while “Bianchi,” white Moors, refers to North Africans, whom the English often called “tawny” Moors, the race of people resulting from the merger in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance of Berber, Beduin Arab and other African peoples.11 Othello, it is clear in the play, belongs to the “Negri” or black Moors. Bianca’s name, with feminine singular ending, comes from the plural masculine Italian word for North Africans, bianchi.12 As the title “The Moor” identifies Othello as raced in the tragedy, just as surely the name Bianca identifies Cassio’s woman as raced.13 Bianca appears three times in Othello. The first time, Bianca tells Cassio she has missed him during the previous week; he reassures her that he will soon visit her and gives her the handkerchief that Iago had planted in Cassio’s lodging (3.4.163–98). The second time, Bianca rails at Cassio about the handkerchief; she accuses him of being unfaithful to her, and Cassio follows her out (4.1.139–52). The third and final time, Bianca mourns Cassio’s injuries, and Iago accuses her of hiring the assassins (5.1.76–132). Nowhere is any reference made to her skin as black or tawny. Indeed, in act V, Iago uses the physical effects of her fear for Cassio—“Look you pale, mistress?” (5.1.107)—to imply her guilt in the lieutenant’s attempted murder. North Africans, descendants of the intermixing of the original Berber tribes with the conquering Bedouin Arabs, would have looked to early modern English much as Italians or Spaniards did.14 However, there is another indicator of Bianca’s origins: Cassio calls Bianca a “monkey” (4.1.126), a term associated by the English with exotic Africa, and one so stereotyped and negative that Cassio does not use it when Bianca is present. In addition, when Shakespeare had previously worked with a Mediterranean setting, for The Merchant of Venice, he had similarly introduced characters who reflected the multicultural circulation of people as well as goods. As Eldred Jones (1971: 41) points out, “The Prince of Morocco in The Merchant of Venice is described in the first folio edition as a ‘tawny Moor’ (an Elizabethan variant of ‘white Moor’),” although his entrance lines suggest, instead, that Morocco was played in blackface: “Mislike me not for my complexion, / The shadowed livery of the burnish’d sun” (Mer. 2.1.1– 2). Additionally, a female who seems to be part of Jessica and Lorenzo’s household is termed a Moor: Lorenzo scolds Launcelot that he will have to answer “to the commonwealth . . . [for] the getting up of the Negro’s belly;

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the Moor is with child by you, Launcelot” (3.5.37–9).15 For an Elizabethan audience, these personages would have been necessary to the authenticity of the Mediterranean setting, and would have repeated in comic analogies the anxieties about the dangers of commerce with foreign peoples that the main plot concerning Bassanio, Antonio and Shylock foregrounds. As many historians and critics have argued, race was in the process of construction in seventeenth-century England,16 and many markers besides skin color—particularly religion and language—might have signaled race; it is not until the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century medicalization of race that skin color becomes the emphatic marker. Indeed, Leo Africanus describes the North African “bianchi” as superior to other Africans: Barbary “is the most noble and worthie region of all Africa, the inhabitants whereof are of a browne or tawnie colour, being a ciuill people, [with] wholsome lawes and constitutions” (1600: 2).17 The addition of another character of foreign origin makes sense in this tragedy. Other tragedies and adventure plays set on Mediterranean islands almost uniformly reflect the multicultural Mediterranean of Shakespeare’s time.18 Christopher Marlowe’s c. 1589 play, The Jew of Malta, set on Malta, includes Christians, Turks, Jews and Blackamore characters (Marlowe 2003: 241–340). Thomas Kyd’s c. 1590 play, The Tragedye of Solyman and Perseda, set on Rhodes, includes English, French and Spanish soldiers, Christians from Rhodes battling Ottoman Turks, and the Prince of Cyprus, who is designated throughout the play as “Cipris” (Kyd 1955: 161–229). Similarly, Fletcher’s 1618 play The Knight of Malta includes Italian, French, Spanish, Danish, Turk and Moorish characters. Thomas Heywood’s c.1600 and 1630 plays, The Fair Maid of the West Parts I and II, set in the Mediterranean if not on an island, pits Protestant English against North African black Muslims and continental Catholics (Heywood 1967). The Cyprus setting of Othello, then, is part of a stage tradition of representing the multicultural Mediterranean by means of island settings, where the confrontation of cultures is most fierce and the intermixture of peoples is most intense, and where race is represented by triads more often than binaries. Such settings reflected the trade wars and religious conflicts that were the backdrop of Mediterranean commerce for several centuries before and after Shakespeare’s tragedy. Iago reminds us early in Othello of this island setting for tragedies and adventure plays when he lists his previous campaigns: “at Rhodes, at Cyprus,” where Othello “had seen the proof” of his sergeant’s military prowess (1.1.29–30). On the map most familiar to the early modern English, that published with the book of Acts in the Geneva Bible,19 we can see that Cyprus is significant as an island setting because it is furthest from Italy; the merchants would have moved along the island steppingstones from Sicily to Malta to Crete to Rhodes and finally to Cyprus, depending on which power held the islands.20 As Daniel Vitkus has argued, England is relegated to the sidelines in this Mediterranean contest over trade, a contest in which the players were

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the Spanish Empire at the western end of the Mediterranean, the Ottoman Empire at the eastern end, and the Italian city-states conveniently situated as brokers in between.21 There is, of course, another Shakespearean character named “Bianca.” The Bianca of Taming of the Shrew, set in Padua, is the “good” daughter, and her name obviously refers to the equation of white with “fair”—in this case used ironically, since Bianca, rather than Katherine, turns out to be a disobedient wife. In both cases, however, the name Bianca comes from the Italian word for “white”; it is simply that in Italian the word has multiple meanings. In the context of The Taming of the Shrew and a wealthy Paduan urban family, we have every reason to interpret the name Bianca as referring to the fair skin of the Italian beauty. In the context of Othello and a multicultural island under territorial dispute, we have every reason to interpret the name Bianca as indicating North African descent, as in the case of Desdemona’s maid Barbary. Moreover, despite Cassio’s description of Bianca as “fair Bianca” (3.4.165), the early modern audience would have perceived a white or tawny North African as raced: as Claire Jowitt points out, race might be based on region, ethnicity, religion, even gender, as well as skin color (2006: 287).22 In a series of Elizabethan and Jacobean plays set on Mediterranean islands, embattled European patriarchs contend with Turks and Moors without and disloyal women within the household. These plays raise and allay anxieties about English expansion and traffic with a multicultural world, fears concerning the competitiveness of trade, and uncertainties about the challenges to the domestic hierarchy in an increasingly mercantile household. I argue that Othello falls into this category of early modern drama, and that an African woman—in this case, Bianca—is one of the conventional markers of this theatrical genre.

A MULTICULTURAL OTHELLO How does reading Bianca as the second African in the play change our conception of the play? Entertaining the possibility that Bianca originates from the Bianchi, or “tawny” Moors, Othello is no longer a black-and-white play, although still decidedly a play that focuses on color. Especially in American criticism, with our history of white oppression of African-Americans, we have frequently—many times aptly—read or performed Othello as such a play about racial conflict between black and white. But for early modern Britain, the racial tensions were multicultural rather than binary, as reflected in the plays we have reviewed. Such plays regularly represented multicultural conflicts through a triangulated dramatic structure of race, rather than a binary one: the Roman, Cathaginian and Numidian characters of Marston’s Sophonisba, for example, or the Romans, Goths and Moor of Shakespeare’s own Titus Andronicus.23

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Second, with Bianca as North African, race in Othello may be seen as a category encompassing all characters. If Othello is the Moor and everyone else is not, then only Othello is raced. If Othello is the Moor and Bianca is the North African, then we need to see further that Cassio is the Florentine and Desdemona is the super-subtle Venetian.24 Thus, Bianca is raced by her place name, but so also is Desdemona raced by her origin and her fair skin— as is Tamora the Goth in Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus or Tamburlaine the Scythian in Marlowe’s epic drama (see Floyd-Wilson 2003, esp. 89–97). Several modern productions of Othello have portrayed Bianca as also a person of color—in commonsense fashion reinforcing the cultural implications of the setting on Cyprus.25 The presence of Bianca, a white African, in the tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice, a black African, allows us to see more clearly the workings of ideology that the play takes pains to spell out in Iago’s plots. That Bianca is raced by her name but not by epithet or description in the play makes us aware of Iago’s construction of Othello as raced. Othello and others in the play are busy constructing themselves as unraced in comparison with the Turks: “Are we turned Turks?” (2.3.148), Othello asks his Venetian and Cypriot soldiers. At the same time, Iago is busy constructing Othello as raced in comparison with these same European and Cypriot citizens. To Iago, Othello is a “black ram” (1.1.90), “a Barbary horse” (1.1.113), “an erring barbarian” (1.3.345–6),26 the “lusty Moor” (2.1.275) and “black Othello” (2.3.26). As many critics have pointed out (i.e, Orkin 1987: 166–88; Bartels 2006: 144; Hall 1995: 2–13), Iago’s view of Othello as raced and inferior then travels in the play. This racial ideology is reproduced first in Roderigo, who sees Othello as “the thick-lips” (1.1.68), “a lascivious Moor” (1.1.127) and “an extravagant and wheeling stranger” (1.1.137); then in Brabantio, who finds it “against all rules of nature” (1.3.103) for his daughter to cling to Othello’s “sooty bosom” (1.2.71); and finally in Othello himself, who discovers his name “now begrimed and black / As mine own face” (3.3.404–5). Thus, race in Othello is not an attribute of Bianca or of Othello, but rather, as Judith Butler argues concerning gender, a relationship between people— between Othello and other characters in the play.27 And that relationship is called into being by Iago’s words (1990: esp. 10).28 Opening up interpretation to reconsideration of Bianca’s race makes us further question other aspects of Bianca’s identity in the play. Critics have been fairly uniform in judging Bianca as Iago judges her. Maynard Mack reads Bianca as the physical embodiment of Othello’s fantasy of Desdemona’s whoredom (1993: 252). Stephen Rogers dismisses Bianca as “Cassio’s whore” (1973: 219), and even Nancy Gutierrez, in an otherwise nuanced feminist interpretation linking witchcraft and adultery, sees Bianca only as “a prostitute” (1991: 13).29 Bianca does not so identify herself. When Iago blames Cassio’s attack on “whoring” and Emilia, colluding with Iago, calls Bianca a “strumpet” (5.1.118–23), Bianca defends herself: “I am no strumpet, but of life as honest / As you that thus abuse me” (ll. 124–5).30

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For centuries critics have been defending Desdemona from Iago’s slanders, but they have been in remarkable agreement with Iago’s calumny of Bianca. These critics have textual evidence to back up Iago’s judgment. The 1623 First Folio Dramatis Personae lists Bianca as “A Curtezan.” But as Edward Pechter further points out, in his remarkable close reading of Bianca and stage traditions, our basis for seeing Bianca as a prostitute is Iago’s word and Iago’s word only. No quarto published during Shakespeare’s lifetime includes a Dramatis Personae, nor does the 1622 first quarto of Othello. In the Folio, the Dramatis Personae lists come only at the end of plays, and only for those plays that finish at the top of a folio page: the lists are used to fill up the white space. Consequently, we may conclude that the lists are the work of the printer or compositor, not Shakespeare. Naming Bianca “Curtezan” here must be merely following Iago’s misogynous interpretation.31 If we do not accept Iago’s interpretation, what view of North Africans do we have from other sources? Leo Africanus tells us this about the Bianchi or North African white Moors: Those which we before named white, or tawney moores, are most stedfast in friendship: as likewise they indifferently and fauourably esteeme of other Nations: and wholy indevor themselues in this one thing, namely, that they may leade a most pleasant and iocund life. . . . Neither is there any people in all Africa that lead a more happie and honorable life. (Leo Africanus 1600: 40–1) If we view Bianca through Leo’s characterization of North Africans, we might reread her scenes in the play, seeing, instead of simply Cassio’s whore, a woman loyal to Cassio, enjoying the pleasures of bed and board, attractive in her congenial disposition and honorable enough to be treated respectfully by men of some consequence on Cyprus. Thus, seeing Bianca as North African pushes us to reread the play, opening Bianca’s status to interpretation. Cassio initially exchanges lovers’ greetings with Bianca. To Bianca’s “Save you, friend Cassio,” Cassio replies, “What make you from home? / How is’t with you, my most fair Bianca? / I’faith, sweet love, I was coming to your house” (3.4.164–6). This romantic exchange is quite different from the tavern bawdy used with Doll Tearsheet in Shakespeare’s history plays. But under the tutelage of Iago, who sees Bianca as “A huswife that by selling her desires / Buys herself bread and clothes,” a “creature,” a “strumpet” (4.1.94–6), Cassio later calls Bianca “a customer” (4.1.120), a “bauble” (4.1.132) and a “fitchew” (4.1.140). “Customer” and “fitchew,” like “huswife,” are Elizabethan slang terms for “prostitute.” Bianca herself, angry at Cassio’s possession of a woman’s handkerchief, distinguishes herself from such a person in her insults to Cassio: take the handkerchief, she tells him, and “give it your hobbyhorse” (4.1.146). “Hobbyhorse” is yet another slang term for “whore.” Clearly Bianca identifies herself as respectable, outside such a category. In a similarly

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sympathetic reading of Bianca, John Draper argues that we should imagine Bianca as a widow, possibly a common-law wife of Cassio (1966: 87–9). If, as Kent Cartwright maintains, “the play invites throughout a shifting and reshifting of spectatorial empathy and intellectual disturbance” (1991:161), then Bianca is one focus of this shifting. While empathy for Bianca is overridden in her early appearances by Cassio’s and Iago’s mockery, concern for Desdemona and Bianca’s own jealous railings, empathy is nevertheless foregrounded in Bianca’s final appearance, when Iago and Emilia call her “strumpet” and Iago accuses her of instigating the attack on Cassio, so that we question not only Iago’s but also Emilia’s accusations and judgment. How, then, do the other characters—and the vast majority of critics—so readily view Bianca through the lens of Iago’s misogyny? As Peter Stallybrass suggests, “The discourses of racism and misogyny are deployed and interrogated in the play” (1986: 136). If Bianca is meant to be viewed as a North African, then the discourses of racism and misogyny combine as subtext to motivate Iago’s stereotyping her as a whore.32 Certainly, Cassio’s easy familiarity with Bianca’s house indicates he is sleeping with her, but such relationships were not necessarily disreputable. Draper points out that the men of the play, even Iago, do not use “thou” with Bianca, but the respectful “you.” In contrast, the prostitute Doll of Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part II is addressed as “thou.”33 If Bianca is not a courtesan but instead a widow,34 then the women in the play fall into the typical early modern grouping of Desdemona the maid, Emilia the wife and Bianca the widow. All the women, no matter their estate, are betrayed by their men.35 To be a woman in Othello is to exist in a tragic world, fraught with peril, because of the misogyny of the men who rule that world.36 Just as Iago does not create but deploys racism against Othello, so he does not create but amplifies and deploys misogyny against all of these women.37 Finally, to make an interpretive leap, seeing Bianca as North African allows us to reconsider the action of the play in connection to the mercantile setting.38 The plot of Othello moves through a series of crises in relationships between men and women and between peoples of differing races: Brabantio and Desdemona (father and daughter), Cassio and Desdemona (suitor and patron), Emilia and Iago (wife and husband), Othello and Brabantio (Moor and Venetian), Turks and Venetians, Bianca and Cassio (man and woman in love as well as African and Florentine) and Othello and Desdemona (husband and wife as well as African and Venetian). For another play in a Mediterranean setting, Jean Howard has argued that the discourse of race is used to manage the discourse of gender (1994: 102). In Othello, alternatively, the discourses of race and gender amplify each other, so that the crises in relationships of men and women across the racial line take center stage in the second half of the play.39 The circulation of the handkerchief thus marks these crises in gender and racial relationships, and it is Shakespeare who gives the handkerchief its travels, which are absent from his source in Cinthio.40 Lynda Boose

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and Frances Teague have interpreted the strawberry-spotted handkerchief as representing the wedding sheets and Desdemona’s virginity (Boose 1975: 369–71; Teague 1991: 184). Peter Stallybrass has termed the handkerchief a “fetish” symbolizing wealth and status for all and purity for women, since its purpose is to clean the body’s orifices (1986: 125). Susan Frye has argued that the handkerchief, representing women’s production of textiles, symbolizes a woman’s chaste but eroticized body, since producing textiles keeps women busy, and so chaste, silent and obedient (2000: esp. 222–3, 228). While certainly these meanings obtain for the handkerchief, its circulation also recalls the political issues invoked by the setting of Othello. The handkerchief, “dy’d in mummy” (3.4.70), is a fetish carrying the significance of commerce (what Cassio later terms “custom” in reference to Bianca). Powdered mummy flesh was viewed as a medicinal ingredient and imported from Egypt to England.41 The handkerchief moves in the play not only between men and women, but also through the tales Othello tells about it, along the Mediterranean trade routes. Woven by an exotic Eastern sibyl, given by an Egyptian (or, in another version Othello recounts, by Othello’s father) to Othello’s mother, the handkerchief possesses a magic that keeps a marriage faithful (3.4.51–72). It is offered by his mother to Othello, who carries it from his homeland in Mauritania to Venice, where he gifts it to Desdemona as a betrothal present; from there, stolen by Emilia and passed to Iago (3.3.319–33), it is placed in Florentine Cassio’s bed in Cyprus (3.3.338), and he in turn lends it to Bianca, the North African (3.4.174). The story of the handkerchief begins in Egypt and moves across North Africa, from there to Venice and with Othello and Desdemona to Cyprus—the far reaches of the eastern Mediterranean. In terms of the early-modern giftexchange culture, the handkerchief acquires significance from the hands of the people it passes through. In more contemporary terms, as it circulates, the handkerchief picks up the weight of anxieties concerning relationships in a multicultural Mediterranean and an increasingly tensely gendered world. The handkerchief signals the anxieties that the setting on Cyprus evokes— the dangers of a multicultural world of commerce.42 Othello’s mother possessed the handkerchief because she was anxious to keep Othello’s father’s love. Iago wakes Brabantio at the beginning of the play with a call to fear the intertwined loss of his daughter’s virginity and the merchant’s wealth: “Look to . . . your daughter, and your bags!” (1.1.82). The jealousy roused by Desdemona’s loss of the handkerchief is a prelude to Emilia’s accusation at the end of the play that Desdemona paid too much for her “filthy bargain” (5.2.164); the circulation of foreign wealth precipitates anxieties about the dangers of sexual commerce.43 In the last lines of the play, standing before “the tragic loading of this bed,” Gratiano is instructed to seize Othello’s fortunes. Othello thus explores fears that if a people’s wealth arises from trade and is expressed in foreign commodities, soon they might find their very identities part of what is traded.44 The play expresses what Kim Hall calls “the threatening possibility: that English identity will be subsumed under

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foreign difference,” not only through sexual pollution, but also through consumption of foreign culture (1995: 124). The handkerchief ends with Bianca, marking her as a site of the interaction of cultures.45 When Desdemona tries to bind Othello’s headache, he brushes her hand aside, and she drops it. Emilia picks it up, intending to “have the work ta’en out” (3.3.313), or to copy the embroidery on another handkerchief for her husband,46 who has insisted she steal it. Instead, Iago enters and takes possession of the original, plotting to give it to Cassio as evidence of Desdemona’s infidelity. Cassio gives it to Bianca, who throws it back at him (“There; give it your hobbyhorse,” 4.1.146), thinking it comes from a paramour. All of these occasions indicate commerce or custom— both the circulation of goods around the Mediterranean and the sexual relations of the men and women of the play.47 Bianca’s name, signifying a North African origin and connected with the handkerchief at the end, teases the audience with other commercial possibilities. Bianca, like the handkerchief, must also have been a traveler: did she arrive with a military husband who was paid to defend Cyprus, or was she, like Othello, once a slave, imported to Cyprus from Africa? The recognition of Bianca as an African has brought into relief the interrelated economies of race and gender in Othello. Joyce MacDonald suggests that “the handkerchief serves as a kind of visual shorthand for the gender and racial significance of Othello’s origins. . . . [and] also serves some of the same purpose for Bianca” (2001: 194).48 The play is set on Cyprus not only because the island is a military outpost, but also because it is a position from which Europeans might control Mediterranean trade. The repeated mention of the Turks would remind the audience not only of this military threat, but also of the mercantile benefits of difference. The “wealthy curlèd darlings” (1.2.69) that Desdemona refuses for Othello are wealthy precisely from trade: Venice’s wealth resulted from her position as mistress of Mediterranean trade, not from land (as was more common in England). The play, however, makes the audience accept the premise that Cyprus is still controlled by Christians (Bartels 2006: 145); like Rhodes in 1522, Cyprus fell to the Turks in 1573. Only Malta and Crete remained in Christian hands when Othello was first performed (and Crete fell in the late seventeenth century). As Stephen Greenblatt has argued, “Shakespeare relentlessly explores the relations of power in a given culture” (1980: 254). Othello is not a domestic tragedy. We do not see Othello and Desdemona together in their home until the accusation scene (4.2). Instead, Othello is a romantic tragedy, like Shakespeare’s later Antony and Cleopatra, where the lovers’ story is heightened by the dangers of their interaction with the world of power and contest around them—not the Roman Mediterranean, where the empire is contested between triumvirs, but the Renaissance Mediterranean, where trade is contested between Venice and the Ottoman Empire. At the end of the play, the handkerchief remains with Bianca. She had thrown it at Cassio,49 but Cassio’s endearments in the next few lines indicate

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he must have picked it up and, soothing her, given it back into her hands as they walked offstage, Bianca inviting him to supper at her house. A few lines later, Iago and Othello talk about the handkerchief as if it is not there: IAGO. OTHELLO.

And did you see the handkerchief? Was that mine? (4.1.163–4)

Since Iago and Othello use the past tense, Cassio and Bianca must have carried the handkerchief out with them. Throughout the second half of the play, the inclusion of Bianca, the other African, along with the Egyptiancrafted handkerchief, have marked the crises of relationships in a multicultural world where people, as well as goods, are in commerce with each other. NOTES 1. On Africans and their representations in English literature, see Evans (1970: 124–40); Jones (1971); Barthelemy (1987); Hall (1995); and Habib (2008). On Moors and their representations, see Vitkus (2003); Burton (2005) and Andrea (2007). On global difference, see Gillies (1994). I am grateful to the members of Mary Fuller’s Shakespeare Association of America seminar in April 2009 and to the participants in the University of Maryland Medieval and Renaissance Field Committee Workshop in October 2011 for helpful suggestions. Special thanks go to Judy Hallett, Paul Kaplan, Carole Levin, Karen Nelson and Adele Seeff. 2. See A Pretie New Enterlude . . . of the Story of Kyng Daryus (1565). Aethyopia in this play is thus one of the earliest positive portrayals of a black woman on the English stage. 3. My thanks to Brian Gilbert for this observation on the female endings. Female representations of countries are especially appropriate with Queen Elizabeth on the throne in 1565. 4. See also Sousa 1999: 122. Malieckal is referring to Othello 4.3.26. All references to Othello will be to Shakespeare (2007), edited by David Bevington. 5. Shakespeare, Othello 4.2.224. On the origins of the term Moor from the Latin Maurus, applied to the people of Mauritania, of mixed Berber and Arab lineage, see Barthelemy (1987: 7–8). 6. See Hakluyt (1598–1600: 2:60); or Pory (1600: 54). Several critics have suggested that Iago is named for Sant Iago or Santiago (Spanish for Saint James) because of his association, as patron saint of Spain, with the defeat of the Moors. See, for example, Rea (1986: 97–8); Everett (2000: 67). 7. The English would have been familiar with the geography of Zante and Cyprus from travel narratives such as “The First Voyage or Iorney, Made by Master Lawrence Aldersey, Marchant of London, to the Cities of Ierusalem, and Tripolis, &c. In the Yeere 1581,” in Hakluyt (1598–1600: 2:150–4); and “The Second Voyage of M. Laurence Aldersey, to the Cities of Alexandria, and Cayro in Aegypt. Anno 1586,” in Hakluyt (1598–1600: 2:283). 8. See Pory (1600: 6). On sources on Africa available to Shakespeare, see Levin (1996). On Leo Africanus, see Masonen (2005); Davis (2006). 9. See Barthelemy (1987: 12–14) on Affricani bianchi in Leo Africanus; Andrea (2001: 20). See also Dilwyn Knox (1989: 12), who explains, “G. J. Vossius (1577–1649) observed that Venetians commonly called ‘negroes’ blanchi

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11. 12.

13.

14. 15. 16.

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(‘whites’).” Knox mistranslates Vossius’ Latin into Italian. According to Knox (n. 46), Gerhardus Johnannes Vossius in Commentariorum rhetoricorum sive oratoriarum institutionum libri sex (1681: 2:251) writes, “Veneti hodie similiter eos blanco [sic] nuncupant.” As we can see from Leo Africanus, this Latin would have been translated as bianchi by the Venetians. I thank Paul Kaplan with heartfelt gratitude for his discussion of “Black Verona” at the 2011 University of Maryland symposium on race, and for sharing his unpublished research on Africans in Italy and Spain named “Bianco” or “Blanco.” See Leo Africanus (1554: fol. 2r); Leo Africanus (2001: 250) and Leo Africanus (1600: 5). See also Leo Africanus (1554: fol. 2v): “I bianchi dell’Africa sono diuisi in cinque popoli,” a subheading translated as “Of the division of the Africans, that is the Whites, in several peoples” by Zhiri (Leo Africanus 2001: 251) and as “A diuision of the tawnie Moores into sundrie tribes or nations” by Pory (1600: 7). Both Pory, as we have seen, and Leo in his own Latin version demonstrate that readers understood bianchi to mean “white or tawnie Moors.” The Latin uses the word subfusci (brownish or dark) to translate bianchi as Pory uses “tawny”; see Leo Africanus (1632). For help with Italian dictionaries and Leo’s texts, my gratitude goes to Tony Mullan and the Rare Book Room at the Library of Congress, to the Folger Shakespeare Library and to the Maryland Room of the University of Maryland. In his unpublished paper, Paul Kaplan (2011) mentions Zuan Bianco as a name for a Venetian African slave. In the biography Jean de France, Duc de Berri, Françoise Lehoux (1966–68: 1:39–40) cites the record of a black slave named “Johan Blanc” given to the king of France. Aurelia Martín Casares discusses “the case of a black slave called Juan Blanco (John White)” but interprets it as “a joke in bad taste since his owner’s surname was not Blanco” (2005: 252). Similarly, Knox discusses Vossius’s observation that Venetians called blacks “whites” as an example of irony, and specifically “antiphrasis.” In his unpublished paper and in his discussions with me, Paul Kaplan has also accepted Knox’s reading of the designation “Bianco” or “Blanco” for African male slaves as name by antiphrasis. I see no reason to read any of these references as jokes or irony. Especially in the case Kaplan cites of Zuan Bianco, who is also called Joannis Aethiopis and Giovanni the Moor (in translation), “Bianco” seems to be, as Leo Africanus explains it, another geographical designation—the bianchi or peoples of North Africa. Similarly, the title of Thomas Dekker’s lost play, The White Moor, would have indicated the race of the title character. On this play, see Adams (1939). The anonymous seventeenth-century manuscript play The White Ethiopian, in contrast, is a very literal retelling of the story of Heliodorus’s Aethiopica, a popular late-Greek romance about a white daughter of a black African queen and king. See Matthews (1951). My thanks to Margaret Sinclair for this reference. On the inhabitants of Barbary as “tawnie people” and the origins of the two different groups of tawny and black Africans, see Leo Africanus (1600: 5–6). For a reading of Launcelot’s Moor in Merchant, see Loomba (2000: 211). See, for example, Gilroy (1993: xi): “The history of the black Atlantic yields a course of lessons as to the . . . mutability of identities which are always unfinished, always being made.” Daryl W. Palmer explains that race in the sixteenth century was based on “intercultural contact and contracts, the cultivation and exploitation of ethnic differences” (1997: 37). Claire Jowitt lists the sixteenth-century meanings of “race”: a “complex term,” as “group,” “lineage,” “nation,” “gender,” “class,” “color” and “religion” (2006: 287). See also OED Online, s.v. “race,” no. 6. Michael Neill discusses the elasticity

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18.

19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

28.

29.

30.

Jane Donawerth of the racial terms black and Moor in his introduction to Othello (2006: 114–15). Emily Bartels argues that the English, because of trade relations with North Africans, would have distinguished between “West African and its Negroes . . . [as] predominately ‘savage,’ North Africa and its Moors . . . [as] contrastingly ‘civilized’”(2006: 141). On “adventure plays” with Mediterranean settings, also see Jean E. Howard (2004: 344–62, esp. 360) on English imperialism: “plays that so powerfully and rawly embody the ambitions and the insecurities of a small Northern nation imagining a place in the sun.” See The Geneva Bible 1969, between fols. 69 and 70 of the New Testament. Jonathan Bate remarks that Renaissance sailors called navigation in the Mediterranean “sailing by the islands” (2004: 290). See Vitkus (2003: passim but, for example, 6–9). On the relationship of Venice to the Ottoman Empire as background for Othello, see Vaughan (1994: 24–7). Doris Adler suggests that “Bianca has the blackened reputation Iago would give to Desdemona, yet she is called ‘white’ and ‘fair’” (1974: 255). All references to Shakespeare’s plays other than Othello will be to The Riverside Shakespeare (Shakespeare 1974). On English stereotyping of Venice as a city of whores, see McPherson (1990: 81–4, 86–90); Vaughan (1994: 16–17). For example, Bianca was played by a black actress in both John Dexter’s 1964 and Trevor Nunn’s 1989 productions. See Vaughan (1994: 229); Pechter (1999: 133); Kolin (2002: 73); Neill (2006: 66). Iago’s use of “barbarian” here is wordplay, since a Barbarian comes from Barbary, the large northwest section of Africa on early modern European maps. See Judith Butler (1990: esp. 10); race, like gender, I argue, is a relationship between people. As Dympna Callaghan (1996: 193–4) points out, race is also a performance. A Jacobean audience of Othello “would have witnessed . . . the spectacle of two men, one young with his face whitened and one older with his face blackened” (210). On even slavery as “a negotiated relationship” “though imposed and maintained by violence,” see Berlin (1998: 2). On the ways that Iago uses conditionals to manipulate his listeners, see Doran (1976: 63–91). If Bianca is also African, the kind of reading of Othello as comic Other owing to his race is no longer possible, as in Michael Bristol’s (1990) inventive but reductive reading of Othello as charivari where Othello is a comic parody of the old husband, further alienated by his black face. For Russ McDonald’s more nuanced reading of comic elements in Othello that yet heighten the Moor’s tragedy, see McDonald (1979). On Bianca as prostitute, see also Grennan (1987: 282); Vaughan (1994: 85); MacDonald (2001: 193–6); and Nina Rulon-Miller’s 1995 bibliographic survey of critics who read Bianca as a whore. Lisa Jardine (1996: 19) even insists (with no textual support) that Bianca must be a Venetian courtesan, the stage type. Aphra Behn (1967) may also have viewed Bianca as a prostitute, because, in her 1677 play The Rover, she names the prostitute Angelica “Bianca,” although the plot is quite different from Othello. Dympna Callaghan also sees Bianca as a courtesan, but she qualifies that terminology: “Regular sexual relations with a man to whom she was not married but to whom she was in some measure economically dependent, might make a woman a courtesan, but it would not necessarily make the conditions of her sexual service synonymous with, say, a brothel in Southwark” (2001: 65). Michael Neill, in his introduction to Othello, suggests, “Not only does Bianca’s use of the word [‘honest’] offer the play’s first open challenge to the much

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31. 32. 33. 34.

35. 36.

37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43.

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vaunted ‘honesty’ of Iago, it also calls in question the value of the purely technical chastity by which the male world sets such frantic store” (2006: 177). See also Grennan (1987: 283): Bianca is “far from being the object men have made of her in their speech (IV.i.108ff.).” Ironically, William Empson’s (1951) exhaustive study of the word honest in Othello does not mention Bianca’s use of the word. Poignantly, Bianca’s defense of herself near the end of the play “as honest” (5.1.125) echoes Othello’s defenses of himself against racial stereotypes. Near the beginning of the play, Othello tells the Venetian council that it is love, not “heat” that makes him want to take Desdemona with him to Cyprus (1.3.265), resisting the stereotype of the lustful African. And near the end of the play, Othello tells Desdemona that patience was one of his virtues until he was told she had been false to him (4.2.55), resisting the stereotype of the vengeful Moor. On Iago’s reading Bianca’s body for blame at the end of the play, the way Othello earlier had read Desdemona’s, see Boose (2004: 36–7). See Pechter (1999: 133–9). For further defenses of Bianca, see Neely (1977: 139–40); Snyder (1993: 296); Orlin (2004: 6). On such combinations, see Loomba (2004: 799). See Draper (1966: 86). For instances of “you” in addresses to Bianca, see Cassio, 3.4.164–5, and Iago, 5.1.128. For use of “thou” in addresses to Doll, see, for example, 2H4 2.4.152, “Hark thee hither, Mistress Doll.” In the source of the play, there are two nameless women associated with the character of the corporal (who becomes Cassio in Othello). See Cinthio (2007: 39–40). The first is a seamstress: “The Corporal had a woman at home who worked the most wonderful embroidery on lawn, and seeing the handkerchief and learning that it belonged to the Moor’s wife, she began to make a similar one before it went back” (39). The second is a courtesan: the Corporal is attacked “issuing from the house of a courtesan with whom he used to amuse himself” (40). On “the female protagonists . . . silenced and victimized by the tragic action” in Othello, see Gajowski (1991: 105–7, esp. 105 on Bianca). On the condition of women as the tragic ground of the action of Othello, see Wiley (1989: 135). It is interesting, in light of this intertwining of racial and gender stereotyping, that Desdemona identifies herself with her mother’s maid Barbary. In act 4, scene 3, Desdemona fears the same fate as her mother’s African servant—to love a man who leaves her to die alone in sorrow. In premonition, she sings the maid’s song, “Sing willow, willow, willow.” On Iago’s misogyny, see also Boose (2004: 37–8). For a similar reading of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, where “blackness is associated with femaleness, foreignness, political upheaval, and chaos,” see Hall (1995: 22–3). On Iago’s success in amplifying what is already there, see Greenblatt (1980: 235). On Shakespeare’s elaboration of the story of the handkerchief, see de Sousa (1999: 125–6). See OED Online, s.v. “mummy,” no. 1: “A substance prepared for medicinal use from mummified (usually human) flesh”—and especially from “ancient Egyptian mummies.” Indeed, Nabil Matar argues that Hakluyt’s collections document “the dangers of Mediterranean trade among the Muslims and Catholics” (Matar 2001: 560). On the transgressiveness of Moorish characters in Shakespeare as “polluting sexual contact with European partners,” see Gillies (1994: 25). It is perhaps significant that Lodovico continues his instruction to Iago: “Look on the tragic loading of this bed. / This is thy work” (5.2. 374–5). Lodovico uses the

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44. 45. 46. 47.

48.

49.

Jane Donawerth same word for the murders, “work,” as had designated the embroidery on the handkerchief. See de Sousa (1999: 113), on Othello’s loss of identity through oscillation between two cultures. My thanks to Elaine Beilin, at the lunch at “Attending to Early Modern Women,” for insisting on the importance of the question “Why does Bianca end with the handkerchief?” See Frye (2000: 230) for an explanation of copying a pattern onto a spot sampler. Thus, Bianca, an African, not a prostitute but sleeping with Cassio, suggests an appreciation of sexual pleasure that Othello resists; on Othello’s reluctance to accept sexual pleasure, see Greenblatt (1980: 243, 250, and esp. p. 251: “pleasure itself becomes for Othello pollution, a defilement of his property in Desdemona and in himself”). MacDonald, however, means mainly gender, since she insists that Bianca is not “literally dark-skinned,” but “that she is racialized as black, assigned a set of negative sexual characteristics associated with Africa and Africans” (2001: 196). Tellingly, MacDonald reads “Bianca” as meaning “fair” (195–6). Bianca says, “There; give it your hobbyhorse” (4.1.146). I interpret “There” as an implied stage direction that she throws the handkerchief at Cassio.

REFERENCES Adams, J. Q. 1939. “Hill’s List of Early Plays in Manuscript.” Library s4–20: 80–1. Adler, D. 1974. “The Rhetoric of Black and White in Othello.” Shakespeare Quarterly 25.2 (Spring): 248–57. Andrea, B. 2001. “Assimilation or Dissimulation?: Leo Africanus’s ‘Geographical Historie of Africa’ and the Parable of Amphibia.” ARIEL 32.3 (July): 7–29. ———. 2007. Women and Islam in Early Modern English Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bartels, E. C. 2006. “Othello and the Moor.” In Early Modern English Drama: A Critical Companion, ed. G. A. Sullivan, P. Cheney, A. Hadfield, 140–51. New York: Oxford University Press. Barthelemy, A. G. 1987. Black Face Maligned Race: The Representations of Blacks in English Drama from Shakespeare to Southern. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. Bate, J. 2004. “Shakespeare’s Islands.” In Shakespeare and the Mediterranean, Proceedings of the International Shakespeare Association 2001, ed. T. Clayton, S. Brock, V. Forés, 289–307. Newark: University of Delaware Press. Behn, A. 1967. The Rover (1677). Ed. F. M. Link. Regents Restoration Drama Series. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Berlin, I. 1998. Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Boose, L. E. 1975. “Othello’s Handkerchief: ‘The Recognizance and Pledge of Love.” English Literary Renaissance 5: 360–74. ———. 2004. “‘Let It Be Hid’: The Pornographic Aesthetic of Shakespeare’s Othello.” In Othello, ed. L. C. Orlin, 22–48. New Casebooks. New York: Palgrave. Bristol, M. D. 1990. “Charivari and the Comedy of Abjection in Othello.” Renaissance Drama n.s. 21: 3–21. Burton, J. 2005. Traffic and Turning: Islam and English Drama, 1579–1624. Newark: University of Delaware Press. Butler, J. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge.

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Callaghan, D. 1996. “‘Othello Was a White Man’: Properties of Race on Shakespeare’s Stage.” In Alternative Shakespeares, ed. T. Hawkes, 2:192–215. New York: Routledge. ———. 2001. “Looking Well to Linens: Women and Cultural Production in Othello and Shakespeare’s England.” In Marxist Shakespeares, ed. J. Howard and S. C. Sherslow, 53–81. New York: Routledge. Cartwright, K. 1991. “Audience Response and the Denouement of Othello.” In Othello: New Perspectives, ed. V. M. Vaughan and K. Cartwright, 160–76. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. Casares, A. M. 2005. “Free and Freed Black Africans in Granada in the Time of the Spanish Renaissance.” In Black Africans in Renaissance Europe, ed. T. F. Earle and K. J. P. Lowe, 247–60. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cinthio (G. B. Giraldi). 2007. Excerpt from Gli Hecatommithi. In William Shakespeare, Othello, the Moor of Venice: Texts and Contexts, ed. K. F. Hall, 31–42. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s. Davis, N. Z. 2006. Trickster Travels: A Sixteenth-Century Muslim between Worlds. New York: Hill and Wang. de Sousa, G. U. 1999. Shakespeare’s Cross-Cultural Encounters. New York: St. Martin’s. Doran, M. 1976. Shakespeare’s Dramatic Language. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Draper, J. W. 1966. The “Othello” of Shakespeare’s Audience. New York: Octagon. Empson, W. 1951. “‘Honest’ in Othello.” In The Structure of Words, 218–36. London: Chatto & Windus. Evans, K. W. 1970. “The Racial Factor in Othello.” Shakespeare Studies 5: 124–40. Everett, B. 2000. “‘Spanish’ Othello: The Making of Shakespeare’s Moor.” In Shakespeare and Race, ed. C. M. S. Alexander and S. Wells, 64–81. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fletcher, J., N. Field (?) and P. Massinger (?). 1966. The Knight of Malta (1618). In The Dramatic Works of Beaumont and Fletcher Canon, ed. F. Bowers, 8:347– 465. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Floyd-Wilson, M. 2003. English Ethnicity and Race in Early Modern Drama. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Frye, S. 2000. “Staging Women’s Relations to Textiles in Othello and Cymbeline.” In Early Modern Visual Culture: Representation, Race, and Empire in Renaissance England, ed. P. Erickson and C. Hulse, 215–50. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Gajowski, E. 1991. “The Female Perspective in Othello.” In Othello: New Perspectives, ed. V. M. Vaughan and K. Cartwright, 97–114. Rutherford, N. J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. The Geneva Bible: A Facsimile of the 1560 Edition. 1969. Intro. by L. E. Berry. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Gillies, J. 1994. Shakespeare and the Geography of Difference. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gilroy, P. 1993. The Black Atlantic. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Greenblatt, S. 1980. Renaissance Self-Fashioning from More to Shakespeare. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Grennan, E. 1987. “The Women’s Voices in Othello: Speech, Song, Silence.” Shakespeare Quarterly 38.3 (Autumn): 275–92. Gutierrez, N. 1991. “Witchcraft and Adultery in Othello: Strategies of Subversion.” In Playing with Gender: A Renaissance Pursuit, ed. J. R. Brink, M. C. Horowitz, A. P. Coudert, 3–18. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Habib, I. 2008. Black Lives in the English Archives, 1500–1677: Imprints of the Invisible. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate.

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Hakluyt, R. 1598–1600. The Principal Navigations, Voiages, Traffiques and Discoueries of the English Nation. . . . 3 vols. London. Hall, K. 1995. Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England. Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press. Heywood, T. 1967. The Fair Maid of the West, Parts I and II (c. 1600 and c. 1630). Ed. R. K. Turner Jr. Regents Renaissance Drama Series. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Howard, J. E. 1994. “An English Lass amid the Moors: Gender, Race, Sexuality, and National Identity in Heywood’s The Fair Maid of the West.” In Women, “Race,” and Writing in the Early Modern Period, ed. M. Hendricks and P. Parker, 101–17. New York: Routledge. ———. 2004. “Gender on the Periphery.” In Shakespeare and the Mediterranean, Proceedings of the International Shakespeare Association 2001, ed. T. Clayton, S. Brock, V. Forés, 344–62. Newark: University of Delaware Press. Jardine, L. 1996. Reading Shakespeare Historically. New York: Routledge. Jones, E. D. 1971. The Elizabethan Image of Africa. Folger Shakespeare Library. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. Jowitt, C. 2006. “The Island Princess and Race.” In Early Modern English Drama: A Critical Companion, ed. G. A. Sullivan Jr., P. Cheney, A. Hadfield, 287–97. New York: Oxford University Press. Kaplan, P. 2011. “Black Verona: A Case Study of the African Presence in Early Modern Italian Art and Society.” Medieval and Early Modern Field Studies Symposium on Race. University of Maryland, Apr. 1. Knox, D. 1989. Ironia: Medieval and Renaissance Ideas on Irony. Leiden: Brill. Kolin, P. C. 2002. “Blackness Made Visible: A Survey of Othello in Criticism, on Stage, and on the Screen.” In Othello: New Critical Essays, ed. P. C. Kolin, 1–87. New York: Routledge. Kyd, T. 1955. The Tragedye of Solyman and Perseda (1590). In The Works of Thomas Kyd, ed. F. S. Boas, 161–229. Oxford: Clarendon. Lehoux, F. 1966–68. Jean de France, Duc de Berri: Sa Vie. 4 vols. Paris: Picard and Co. Leo Africanus, J. [as Giouan Lioni Africano]. 1554. Descrittione dell’Africa & delle cose notabili che iui sono. In Della nauigatione et viaggi, 2nd ed., ed. G. B. Ramusio, fols. 1–102. Venice. ———. 1600. A Geographical Historie of Africa, Written in Arabicke and Italian by Iohn Leo a More. Trans. and intro. J. Pory. London. ———. [as Ioannis Leonis Africani]. 1632. Africae: Descriptio IX. lib. absoluta. Batavia. ———. 2001. “Leo Africanus.” Trans. O. Zhiri. In Travel Knowledge: European “Discoveries” in the Early Modern Period, ed. I. Kamps and J. G. Singh, 249–66. New York: Palgrave. Levin, C. 1996. “Background and Echoes of Othello: From Leo Africanus to Ignatius Sancho.” Lamar Journal of the Humanities 22.2 (Fall): 45–69. Loomba, A. 2000. “‘Delicious Traffick’: Racial and Religious Difference on Early Modern Stages.” In Shakespeare and Race, ed. C. M. S. Alexander and S. Wells, 203–24. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2004. “Sexuality and Racial Difference.” Excerpt from Gender, Race, Renaissance Drama (1989). In Shakespeare: An Anthology of Criticism and Theory, 1945–2000, ed. R. McDonald, 794–816. Oxford: Blackwell. MacDonald, J. G. 2001. “Black Ram, White Ewe: Shakespeare, Race, and Women.” In A Feminist Companion to Shakespeare, ed. D. Callaghan, 188–207. New York: Blackwell. Mack, M. 1993. “What Happens in Shakespearean Tragedy.” Repr. of “The Jacobean Shakespeare” (1960). In Everybody’s Shakespeare: Reflections Chiefly on the Tragedies, 231–62. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

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Malieckal, B. 1999. “‘Hell’s Perfect Character’: The Black Woman as the Islamic Other in Fletcher’s The Knight of Malta.” Essays in Arts and Sciences 28 (Oct.): 53–68. Marlowe, C. 2003. The Jew of Malta (c. 1589). In Christopher Marlowe: The Complete Plays, ed. F. Romany and R. Lindsey, 241–340. London: Penguin. Marston, J. 1856. The Wonder of Women; or, The Tragedie of Sophonisba (1605). In The Works of John Marston, ed. J. O. Halliwell, 1:146–216. London: John Russell Smith. Masonen, P. 2005. “The Ambivalence of al-Hasan or Leo Africanus.” In Other Routes: 1500 Years of African and Asian Travel Writing, ed. T. Khair, M. Leer, J. D. Edwards, H. Ziadeh, 131–5. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Matar, N. 2001. “English Accounts of Captivity in North Africa and the Middle East: 1577–1625.” Renaissance Drama 54.2 (Summer): 553–72. Matthews, A. D. 1951. “The White Ethiopian: A Critical Edition.” Ph.D. diss., University of Florida. McDonald, R. 1979. “Othello, Thorello, and the Problem of the Foolish Hero.” Shakespeare Quarterly 30: 51–67. McPherson, D. 1990. Shakespeare, Jonson, and the Myth of Venice. Newark: University of Delaware Press. Neely, C. T. 1977. “Women and Men in Othello: ‘What Should Such a Fool / Do with So Good a Woman?’” Shakespeare Studies 10: 133–58. Neill, M., ed. 2006. Othello, the Moor of Venice by William Shakespeare. Oxford: Clarendon. Orkin, M. 1987. “Othello and the ‘Plain Face’ of Racism.” Shakespeare Quarterly 38: 166–88. Orlin, L. C., ed. 2004. Othello by William Shakespeare. New Casebooks. New York: Palgrave. Palmer, D. W. 1997. “Merchants and Miscegenation: The Three Ladies of London, The Jew of Malta, and The Merchant of Venice.” In Race, Ethnicity, and Power in the Renaissance, ed. J. G. MacDonald, 36–66. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997. Pechter, E. 1999. Othello and Interpretive Traditions. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. Pory, J. 1600. “A Generall Description of All Africa.” Introduction in J. Leo Africanus, A Geographical Historie of Africa, Written in Arabicke and Italian by Iohn Leo a More, 1–55. London. A Pretie New Enterlude . . . of the Story of Kyng Daryus. 1565. Published as King Darius, ed. John S. Farmer. Tudor Facsimile Texts Series, 1907. Repr. 1970. New York: AMS. Rea, J. A. 1986. “Iago.” Names 34: 97–98. Rogers, S. 1973. “Othello: Comedy in Reverse.” Shakespeare Quarterly 24.2 (Spring): 210–20. Rulon-Miller, N. 1995. “Othello’s Bianca: Climbing out of the Bed of Patriarchy.” Upstart Crow 15: 99–114. Shakespeare, W. 1974. The Riverside Shakespeare. Ed. G. B. Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ———. 2007. Othello. Ed. D. Bevington. In William Shakespeare, Othello, the Moor of Venice: Texts and Contexts, ed. K. Hall, 43–167. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s. Snyder, S. 1993. “A Modern Perspective.” In W. Shakespeare, Othello, ed. B. A. Mowat and P. Werstine, 287–98. New Folger Library Series. New York: Washington Square. Stallybrass, P. 1986. “Patriarchal Territories: The Body Enclosed.” In Rewriting the Renaissance, ed. M. W. Ferguson, M. Quilligan, N. J. Vickers, 123–42. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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16 Talfourd’s Ion Classical Reception and Gender in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia Lee T. Pearcy

Abstract. In mid-nineteenth-century Philadelphia, plays with classical subjects were nearly as popular as Shakespeare. Contemporary reaction to one of these plays, Thomas Talfourd’s Ion, or The Foundling of Argos, reveals its audiences’ expectations about gender on stage and in society. American audiences, unlike their English counterparts, expected to see the role of Ion played by a woman. Especially in the 1830s, actresses playing Ion faced audiences who expected to see their feminine qualities preserved. They were disguised as a boy on the edge of manhood, but to be successful, the disguise had to fail by preserving their essential character as women. Classical reception is no single or uniform phenomenon. The eighteenth century had a different relationship to Greece and Rome than the nineteenth; Britain and America look at their classical pasts with different eyes.1 There may be some profit in zooming in still closer and examining the reception of Classical drama within a nation in a single city at a single time. In this chapter I intend first to attempt to discover just how popular neoclassical drama was in mid-nineteenth-century Philadelphia. I will then turn to Thomas Talfourd’s Ion, or The Foundling of Argos. I hope to show how the reception of this play reflects its audiences’ expectations about gender on stage and their anxieties about its negotiation in their own society. There are many reasons to focus attention on neoclassical drama and its audience in Philadelphia between 1835 and 1855. First, the history of theater in America often reduces itself to a history of theater in New York, with due attention to the class distinctions between audiences at the Park and Bowery, the Astor Place riot, the place of imported plays and actors and so on. Yet American theater happened in other places—not only in regional metropolises like Philadelphia or New Orleans, but in frontier cities like Pittsburgh or Buffalo.2 Second, Philadelphia with 63,802 citizens was still the second-largest city in the country in 1830. It had been the nation’s capital and retained a strong sense of its importance in American cultural life. For these and other reasons Philadelphia has at least as good a claim as New

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York to represent important aspects of American attitudes toward Classical drama in the years before the Civil War.3 The two decades between 1835 and 1855 also form a distinct period in the history of theater in Philadelphia.4 In 1835 William B. Wood, the leading actor-manager of the city since 1800 and diarist of its theatrical life, ended his active career. Twenty years later the splendidly neoclassical Chesnut Street Theatre,5 known as “Old Drury,” closed after sixty-two years, and Dion Boucicault made his first appearance in Philadelphia. Boucicault’s first American venture, 1853–1860, marked the beginning of the end of the old stock companies tied to single theaters and their replacement by touring casts and productions. Between these events, however, the actors and managers of the Arch Street, Chesnut Street and Walnut Street theaters, along with the National, the Olympic, the Pennsylvania and half-a-dozen others that flickered in and out of existence, gave Philadelphia a vibrant theatrical life in which neoclassical dramas played a leading role.

THE POPULARITY OF NEOCLASSICAL DRAMA IN PHILADELPHIA A. H. Wilson’s exhaustive chronicle of mid-nineteenth century Philadelphia dramatic life lists well over 3,300 titles produced between 1835 and 1855.6 Philadelphians, not surprisingly, shared Jacksonian7 America’s fondness for melodrama. Popular characters included Mose the fireman, comically clever Yankees and anything—anything at all—played by Edwin Forrest, but some titles have a distinctively Philadelphian flavor. Drama in German, for example, appeared not only at the German National Theater, but also at the mainstream Arch and Chesnut Street houses and may have appealed especially to Philadelphia’s large population of German immigrants and people of German descent. Joseph Sterling Coyne’s farce of the 1840s, Did You Ever Send Your Wife to Brooklyn?, spawned local imitations in dozens of American cities, including Philadelphia, and Philadelphian audiences had a chance to attend Did You Ever Send Your Wife to Bristol? (or to Burlington, Germantown and other nearby towns and cities).8 Philadelphians also shared their countrymen’s fondness for dramas set in ancient Greece and Rome. In Philadelphia a few classical dramas could draw repeated audiences year after year. When we consider that only thirty-six of the 3000-plus plays in Wilson’s catalog have titles that suggest a Greek or Roman setting or theme, it may seem that Classical drama was not very popular among Philadelphia audiences in the decades before the Civil War. Sheer number of titles, however, may not be the most reliable indicator of popular taste. It is more telling to consider which dramas had the best chance of drawing audiences to repeated performances year after year. Then as now, long runs indicate popular shows. By this criterion, there were three surefire ways for a theater manager in the 1830s, 40s or 50s to make money in Philadelphia: Dickens, Shakespeare or Greece and Rome.

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In 1856, thanks in part to persistent lobbying by Dion Boucicault, an act of Congress gave dramatists “the sole right to print, publish, act, perform, or represent” the plays they wrote. Until then, and perhaps until 1891, when the United States signed an international copyright agreement, there was little to stop a theater manager from producing a dramatization of any popular novel.9 Charles Dickens, as he himself frequently complained, was a prime target of this piracy. David Copperfield, a play by John Brougham, had twentyfive performances in Philadelphia between 1850 and 1855, and Brougham’s Bleak House had a good run at the Arch Street Theater in November 1853. Pickwick Papers spawned at least two dramatic versions.10 Barnaby Rudge was a hit in 1841 and again in 1853–55. Dickens, though, could not compete with Shakespeare. Between 1835 and 1841 the most frequently performed play on Philadelphia stages was Richard III, with eighty-three performances; Othello with fifty-seven and Hamlet with fifty-three were its nearest competitors. In 1835 alone a Philadelphia theatergoer could have seen Richard III fourteen times; Hamlet and Macbeth seven times each; King Lear, Romeo and Juliet or Merchant of Venice six; Much Ado About Nothing five; As You Like It three times; The Tempest and Taming of the Shrew (in David Garrick’s adaptation, Katharine and Petruchio) twice and single performances of King John, The Merry Wives of Windsor and The Winter’s Tale. Understanding the popularity of Dickens and Shakespeare allows us to appreciate the relative importance of neoclassical dramas in the cultural life of nineteenth-century Philadelphia. Of the twenty years following 1835, only 1849 and 1850 failed to see a performance of John Banim’s Damon and Pythias, which had 100 productions in two decades. In the same period Virginius, or The Roman Father had seventy-six, Thomas Talfourd’s Ion appeared forty-six times on Philadelphia stages and John Howard Payne’s Brutus, or The Fall of Tarquin was produced thirty-nine times. None of these plays was as popular as Richard III, which was performed 199 times in the same period, but Damon and Pythias approached the popularity of Romeo and Juliet (122 performances), and Ion and Brutus matched or nearly matched As You Like It (forty-five performances). Popular plays spawned parodies, and the appearance of a comic version of a serious play was another good indicator of popularity. John Augustus Stone’s Metamora, or the Last of the Wampanoags, for example, which became a sensational hit thanks in large part to Edwin Forrest’s unforgettable portrayal of the title role, spawned Metamora, or the Last of the Pollywogs in 1848, and a farcical version of Damon and Pythias had Philadelphia performances in 1840, 1841 and 1845. Almost immediately after its first London performances Talfourd’s Ion gave rise to Ion Travestie, by Frederick Fox Cooper, which had a short run at the Walnut Street Theater in 1837. Nor should we forget that Louisa May Alcott’s collection of “comic tragedies,” first published in 1893 but written much earlier, contains an Ion which owes at least something to Talfourd’s, if only the character names Adrastus, Ion and Medon.

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It seems clear, then, that Philadelphia audiences in Jacksonian America enjoyed plays with Classical themes. By focusing now on Talfourd’s Ion, I hope to uncover some of the factors that influenced these plays’ popularity. Although Ion was not, if we use number of performances as a criterion, the most popular neoclassical play in mid-century Philadelphia, significant differences between the construction of its title role and consequent reception in America and in England make it a useful touchstone to understand developing American approaches to gender on the stage.

TALFOURD’S ION Because Talfourd’s Ion is not, in fact, much like Euripides’ Ion or any other Greek tragedy, a brief summary may be in order for those who are unfamiliar with it.11 The play is set in Argos, which is suffering from a plague and oppressed by its cruel king, Adrastus. An oracle reveals that “Argos ne’er shall find release, / Till her monarch’s race shall cease”; that is, that Argos is fated to become a republic once the family of Adrastus has died out. Ion, a foundling raised by Medon, priest of Apollo, joins a conspiracy to assassinate Adrastus, and to him falls the task of killing the monarch. While the conspirators are making their way into the palace, Medon learns that Ion is in fact Adrastus’ son, whom agents of the king’s father had, everyone thought, thrown into the sea. Medon rushes to the palace just in time to prevent parricide with the chiastic cry, “Ion, forbear! / Behold thy son, Adrastus!” Ion succeeds his father as king, initiates a series of democratic reforms and then kills himself as a sacrifice to the gods of Argos so that the “monarch’s race shall cease” and his country be free. As the curtain falls, news arrives that the plague has abated, and Ion dies. Talfourd himself wrote of his play that Euripides’ Ion “gave the first hint of the situation in which its hero is introduced . . . but otherwise there is no resemblance between this imperfect sketch and that exquisite picture.”12 Audiences inclined to look for sources must have thought of Sophocles more than Euripides, and especially of Oedipus Tyrannus when they saw the play’s opening scene, with elders lamenting the plague that afflicts their city, or the first encounter between Ion and Adrastus, which evokes the exchange between Oedipus and Teiresias. Antigone may have contributed Ion’s deliberate disobedience of the tyrant’s edict and his insistence that “the eternal law, that where guilt is / Sorrow shall answer it” trumps Adrastus’ human law. Edith Hall suggests that “the motif of the patriotic youth’s suicide owes something to Euripides’ Phoenician Women” and that “the reconciliation of the dying king Adrastus with his long-lost son Ion powerfully recalls the endings of both Hippolytus and Trachiniae.”13 To these I am tempted to add two plays in which Euripides presents kings of Argos opposed by young monarchs with democratic leanings: Suppliant Women, which turns on the contrast between Adrastus, king of Argos, and Theseus, and The Children of

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Heracles, in which the young king of Athens, Demophon, is really a democrat in disguise, and another king of Argos, Eurystheus, becomes a more sympathetic character as his life ends, just as Adrastus does in Talfourd’s play. Talfourd certainly knew at least some of these ancient dramas from his time at Reading School. Between 1806 and 1827 Reading School’s students, directed by headmaster Richard Valpy, presented eight Greek dramas, including such seldom studied plays as Euripides’ Orestes and Heracles, for the triennial visits of the school’s governors, and Talfourd may have acted in Reading’s Antigone of 1812.14 It is harder to decide whether and how Greek drama entered into the way a mid-nineteenth century audience in Philadelphia received Talfourd’s Ion. Writing in the North American Review for 1837, Cornelius Felton, Eliot Professor of Greek at Harvard, drew a distinction between the response of “the classical scholar” and “the reader, whose knowledge is bounded by the literature of his mother tongue.” The Classical scholar, Felton suggests, will find it hard to shake off the impression that he is reading “a long-lost work of Sophocles,” and Talfourd’s verses fall so readily into Greek iambics that “at times he hardly knows whether he is reading Greek or English.” The Greekless reader, on the other hand, will admire “clear conception of character,” “polished and melodious versification,” and “rich and enchanting imagery” without inquiring into the relation between Talfourd’s Ion and Attic tragedy. Felton writes for a Classically educated reader capable of composing Greek iambics, or at least of remembering that he had once done so.15 The review addresses the responses of these highly educated readers, not theatergoers, and it seems unlikely that the audiences who filled the Walnut Street Theater in Philadelphia for four performances of Talfourd’s Ion between December 6 and 12, 1836, brought with them any very encyclopedic knowledge of Greek drama. Those whose education ran in that direction were likely to have known only Oedipus Tyrannus and Medea, the two plays included in Collectanea Graeca Majora, Andrew Dalzell’s (1742–1806) anthology of 1789, which had its first American edition in 1808 and became a standard text at Harvard, Yale, South Carolina College, Columbia, Hamilton and the University of Tennessee by 1829.16 For the response of Philadelphians “whose knowledge,” as Felton put it, “is bounded by the literature of [their] mother tongue” we must go to the recollections of Charles Durang (1794–1870). Durang was an actor, dancing master and author who published a history of the Philadelphia stage as a series of weekly columns in the Philadelphia Sunday Dispatch between May 7, 1854, and March 1, 1863. His history spans the years 1749–1855. The publisher and antiquarian Charles Augustus Poulson gathered Durang’s columns into a series of scrapbooks. Copies survive in several Philadelphia collections, and I was able to consult the set at the Library Company of Philadelphia.17 Durang writes as an eyewitness to the Philadelphia premiere of Ion and as a man of the theater who could offer knowledgeable comparisons of different productions of the play, but we should bear in mind that he writes of Ion

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as an old man looking back on the theater of his middle years. He had seen Ellen Tree and Charlotte Cushman play Ion, and he could imagine how the originator of the role, William Charles Macready, would have handled it, but he preferred the first Ion he saw in Philadelphia, Frances (“Fanny”) Jarman Ternan. (Mrs. Ternan, as she is described in cast lists, was the mother of Ellen Ternan, who later became the mistress of Charles Dickens.) Durang’s evaluation of the four Ions deserves analysis: We have seen Ion acted in a way that embraced no element of the poet’s genius or sublimity of thought. How Macready—the original of the character—played it, we can imagine. His conception may have been chastely Grecian, yet frigid and severe, without the freshness of youth. Miss Cushman did not satisfy us—there was too much of the masculine crispness about the personation of the boy—nor did Miss E. Tree, (who played it soon after at the Chesnut Street Theatre,) although her delineaton [sic] was replete with polished power. Mrs. Ternan gave it the poetical impress, the psychological feeling of the author’s mind. She snatched the poet’s mantle of pure angelic thoughts. Talfourd’s plays require intellectual acting, probably more so than those of Knowles’; and when that quality fails in the actor, the play itself fails. In an important study of women in male roles on the nineteenth-century American stage, Elizabeth Reitz Mullenix explores the complexity of responses to the common practice of having male roles played by female actors.18 The 1830s, Reitz Mullenix notes, saw a shift in critical reviews of women in “breeches roles” (as they were called) from approval to censure, paralleling the movement of public opinion on women’s increasing involvement in what had been masculine spheres of activity (p. 56). Durang’s assessment of his four Ions reflects this moment of anxiety. Macready, the lone male actor, must have been “frigid and severe, without the freshness of youth.” Since Durang seems never to have seen Macready in the role, his mental image must draw at least in part on ideas about the effect of gender on performance. American theater in the nineteenth century saw the proliferation of leading roles for boys, and these parts were nearly always played by actresses. Women, it was thought, resembled boys or adolescent youths because of their high voices and slight build, but they had the intellectual maturity and stamina to handle demanding parts. Adult male actors, on the other hand, often seemed too stiff and heavy to be convincing as boys; as a nineteenth-century biographer of Charlotte Cushman said in appraising her work as Romeo, “When a man has achieved the experience requisite to act Romeo, he has ceased to be young enough to look it; and this discrepancy is felt to be unendurable in the young, passionate Romeo, and detracts from the interest of the play. Who could endure to see a man with the muscles of Macready, in the part of the gallant and loving boy?”19 Durang’s assessment of Macready as “frigid and severe” echoes this view.

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Critical responses to actresses in breeches roles like Ion sometimes reveal uneasiness over their possible subversion of gender. Terms of praise like “charming,” “graceful,” “sweet,” “noble” or “suffering” reinforce an ideology in which women were treated as essentially equivalent to children. In 1825 a critic for the New York Daily Mirror praised an actress’ realization of a youth in these terms: “Without the energy to sustain the heavier parts of the drama, she has a naiveté, and, if we may be allowed to speak, an infantine grace, which makes her a valuable as well as beautiful ornament of the stage.”20 So strong was the association between femininity and juvenility that actresses like Charlotte Cushman continued to play youthful breeches roles when they were well past youth. Durang’s ranking of his three female Ions gives first place to Fanny Ternan on the grounds that she conveyed the “pure, angelic thoughts” of Talfourd’s verse better than her rivals. Ternan’s angelic, traditionally feminine Ion contrasts with Charlotte Cushman’s. Hers was too masculine—a reminder that even when playing breeches roles, women were expected to preserve and convey their femininity. The New York Daily Mirror, for example, prepared its readers for Ellen Tree’s 1837 debut as Ion by reprinting a review from the London Times that characterized her performance in these terms: She has a woman’s energy, and woman’s passion, and woman’s tenderness, and woman’s weakness. She cannot unsex herself. In Ion, for instance, she is not a whit masculine. She becomes not Ion, but Ion becomes Ellen Tree—most beautifully and eloquently delivering Sergeant Talford’s [sic] beautiful and eloquent reveries. Yet she has nothing cold or methodical, or, least of all, lack-a-daisical about her. Energy—nay, fierceness, if need be—she can develop most decidedly. Passion can flash and lighten from her deep dark eye, and scorn distend her exquisitelychiselled nostrils, and contempt curl her very beautiful lip; but still all is emphatically feminine. She is evidently of the stuff of which the maids, wives, and mothers who daily surround us, are fashioned.21 Durang could have seen Tree play Ion at the Chestnut Street Theater in April 1837, five months after Fanny Ternan’s appearance at the Walnut Street Theater in December 1836. He admired her “polished power,” as had the London critic, but preferred Ternan’s more overtly feminine portrayal of the character. Ion in America was uniformly a breeches role, while in England the part became associated with its muscled originator, William Macready. This circumstance, I suggest, contributed to the different reception of the play in the two countries. In Britain, as Edith Hall has argued, Talfourd’s Ion was received as a contribution to the swirling political debates of the 1830s: electoral reform, the Corn Law, abolition of slavery and the place of the monarchy.22 The play has, or could seem to have, something to say about at least the last two of these issues, and both its author, a radical member of Parliament from 1837, and its leading actor-manager, an enthusiastic

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republican who opened his theater to radical causes, embraced the cause of reform. Talfourd, also, might not have approved of casting Ion as a breeches role; in 1821, reviewing Charles Horn’s Dirce, an opera in which Madame Vestris portrayed an ancient Greek man, he wrote, A first-rate singer, or a woman dressed in male attire, may be a fit representation of a Persian satrap, or a Neapolitan warrior, but will scarcely be worthy to represent the meanest of that race who fought at Thermopylae and Marathon. Our feelings revolt at the profanation.23 American theater in the 1830s often dealt with the kind of political themes that British audiences were prepared to find in Talfourd’s Ion.24 Neoclassical dramas could raise political issues, but it is striking how often in America a Classical setting seems to mute political receptions or remove them to a safely remote time or space. Robert Montgomery Bird’s The Gladiator (1831), for example, treated the slave revolt led by Spartacus and had its premier performance only a month after Nat Turner’s insurrection. It seemed to its author to have direct relevance to the question of slavery, for he wrote in his diary that if the play were to be produced in a slave state, the company “would be rewarded with the Penitentiary.”25 Yet the prologue on opening night made no such connection; instead, it evoked contemporary Polish resistance to Czarist Russia. Enthusiastic audiences in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1839 applauded the play without irony. Although our revolution had settled the question of monarchy or republic that is central to Talfourd’s Ion, other issues, social and cultural more than strictly political, remained, and audiences could find them in the play. Seeing the youthful Ion played by a woman may have allowed American audiences to contemplate from a safe distance their own uncertainties and anxieties about what kind of men, and especially what kind of women, would populate the new republic. It is striking that the most popular neoclassical plays in antebellum Philadelphia give a central place to questions about masculine and feminine roles. John Banim’s Damon and Pythias examines passionate masculine friendships (and takes care to establish the heterosexuality of the title characters); Virginius, or The Roman Father and Brutus, or The Fall of Tarquin (and, for that matter, Ion) explore the relationship between father and son; and the crossgendered casting of Ion, as I have shown, provoked observers in New York and Philadelphia to reflect on the proper nature and essential qualities of femininity. Despite the obvious appeal of a republican play in America, critics like Felton and Durang seem not to have focused on the political message of Talfourd’s play. Instead, they remark on two features: Talfourd’s language and the character of Ion. Both language and character are described in ways that emphasize their feminine aspects. Durang, for example, praises the “poetical impress” and “psychological feeling of the author’s mind” in Ternan’s “impersonation of the brave and gentle Grecian youth.” Talfourd’s tragedy

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itself is “pure and fine” and needs “a refined audience to appreciate its flowing poetical beauties.” Actors and producers did have a choice between politics and pathos. Ion’s character can be read as poised between Macready and Ternan and between manhood and boyhood. Before his first entrance two sages of Argos, Agenor and Cleon, discuss his character. Agenor wonders that Ion alone has been allowed to leave the temple precinct to visit those sickened by the plague. His delicate, flowerlike character seems unsuited to the task: By no internal contest is he train’d For such hard duty; no emotions rude Hath his clear spirit vanquish’d;—Love, the germ Of his mild nature, hath spread graces forth, Expanding with its progress, as the store Of rainbow colour which the seed conceals Sheds out its tints from its dim treasury To flush and circle in the flower. (I.i)

Cleon demurs; recently a change has come over the young man: His form appears dilated; in those eyes Where pleasure danced, a thoughtful sadness dwells; Stern purpose knits the forehead, which till now Knew not the passing wrinkle of a care: Those limbs which in their heedless motion own’d A stripling’s playful happiness, are strung As if the iron hardships of the camp Had given them sturdy nurture; and his step, Its airiness of yesterday forgotten, Awakes the echoes of these desolate courts, As if a hero of gigantic mould Paced them in armour. (I.i)

What an actor chooses to emphasize and who an actor is will guide an audience’s reception of the character. Especially in the 1830s, actresses playing Ion faced audiences who expected to see their feminine qualities preserved. They were disguised as a boy on the edge of manhood, but to be successful, the disguise had to fail by preserving their essential femininity, and thus their audience’s expectations about women. NOTES I am glad to offer this small chapter to Judy Hallett in acknowledgement of three decades of friendship, and in gratitude for all she has done to improve my thinking on gender, politics and American receptions of Classics. An earlier version was delivered

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as part of a Sawyer Seminar, Theatre after Athens, sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, at Northwestern University on December 5, 2009; I am grateful to the foundation, Northwestern and to the audience and organizers of the seminar for their encouragement and comments. 1. On some problems inherent in periodization, see Michelakis 2008. 2. The early years of Edwin Forrest’s career, before his first New York appearance as Othello in 1826, may serve as an example. After making his debut at the Walnut Street Theater in Philadelphia in 1820, Forrest appeared in Pittsburgh, Louisville, Lexington and Cincinnati. In 1824 he joined James H. Caldwell’s New American Theatre in New Orleans, and in 1825 he played supporting roles in Charles Gilfert’s company in Albany; see Miller 2007: 59–60. 3. Philadelphia would drop to fourth place in the 1840 census, behind New York, New Orleans (which grew from 27,176 citizens in the 1830 census to 102,913 in 1840) and Baltimore. See Gibson 1998. 4. For the history of theater in Philadelphia, see Wilson 1935 and the collection of material gathered by Charles Durang (1794–1870), Durang 1854–63. I am grateful to the Library Company for permission to use material in its collections. 5. “Chesnut” was the usual nineteenth-century spelling of Chestnut Street. 6. My rough count gives 3346, including alternative titles. 7. For a possible objection to the term “Jacksonian” see Howe 2007: 4–5. I use it for convenience as a purely chronological label. 8. For the fad, see Meserve 1986: 136. 9. On the culture of reprinting in Jacksonian America, see McGill 2003; for Dickens, see especially 109–40. 10. Pickwick Club, or The Age we Live in, and W. T. Montcrieff’s Sam Weller, or The Pickwick Papers. 11. For Ion I use the third edition (Talfourd 1836a), supplemented by Talfourd 1836b, an annotated prompt copy in the collection of the Library Company of Philadelphia. The prompt copy is stamped on the front end-paper, “Property of the New Theatre” and lists casts and costumes for the Philadelphia and New York productions of December 1836. 12. Talfourd 1846: 17. 13. Hall 1997a: 291. 14. Hall 1997b. 15. Certainly there were women in nineteenth-century America who knew Greek well (see Winterer 2007), but my masculine pronoun appropriately reflects both the reality of antebellum American higher education and Felton’s expectations about his audience. 16. See Winterer 2002: 33. 17. Durang 1854–63. 18. Reitz Mullenix 2000. 19. Stebbins 1879: 59. 20. New York Mirror 1825, quoted Reitz Mullenix 2000: 127. 21. Quoted Reitz Mullenix 2002: 163. 22. Hall 1997a. 23. New Monthly Magazine vol. III (1821), p. 330; quoted Hall 1997a: 297–8. 24. From many examples I mention Richard Penn Smith’s The Eighth of January (1829) and The Triumph at Plattsburg (1830), both of which deal with victories in the War of 1812; Mordecai Noah’s The Grecian Captive, or, The Fall of Athens (1822), which treats the Greek struggle for independence from Ottoman Turkey and ends with the heroine’s rescue by an American frigate; and Smith’s William Penn and John Augustus Stone’s Metamora; or, The

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Last of the Wampanoags (both 1829), which present sympathetic portraits of native Americans. 25. Miller 2007: 72.

REFERENCES Durang, C. (Charles). 1854–63. Durang’s History of the Philadelphia Stage Scrapbook (Uy8 1699.F), The Library Company of Philadelphia. Gibson, C. 1998. “Population of the 100 Largest Cities and Other Urban Places in the United States: 1790 to 1900,” Population Division Working Paper No. 27, U.S. Bureau of the Census, http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/ twps0027/twps0027.html, accessed June 14, 2009. Hall, E. 1997a. “Talfourd’s Ancient Greeks in the Theatre of Reform.” International Journal of the Classical Tradition 3.3: 283–307. ———. 1997b. “Greek Plays in Georgian Reading.” Greece and Rome 44.1: 59–81. Howe, D. W. 2007. What Hath God Wrought? The Transformation of America, 1815–1848. New York: Oxford University Press. McGill, M. 2003. American Literature and the Culture of Reprinting. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Meserve, W. J. 1986. Heralds of Promise: The Drama of the American People during the Age of Jackson, 1829–1849. New York, Westport, CT, London: Greenwood Press. Michelakis, P. 2008. “Performance Reception: Canonization and Periodization.” In L. Hardwick and C. Stray, eds., A Companion to Classical Reception, 219–28. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Miller, T. 2007. Entertaining the Nation: American Drama in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Reitz Mullenix, E. 2000. Wearing the Breeches: Gender on the Antebellum Stage. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Stebbins, E. 1879. Charlotte Cushman: Her Letters and Memories of Her Life. Boston: Houghton, Osgood, and Company. Stephens, S. and P. Vasunia, eds. 2010. Classics and National Cultures. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Talfourd, T. N. (Thomas Noon). 1836a. Ion: A Tragedy, in Five Acts. Philadelphia and New York: Turner and Fisher. ———. 1836b. Ion; A Tragedy, In Five Acts. Third edition. London: Edward Moxon. ———. 1846. Tragedies: To Which are Added A Few Sonnets and Verses. New York: C. S. Francis. Wilson, A. H. 1935. A History of the Philadelphia Theatre 1835 to 1855. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, repr. 1968. New York: Greenwood Press. Winterer, C. 2002. The Culture of Classicism: Ancient Greece and Rome in American Intellectual Life 1780–1910. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press. ———. 2007. The Mirror of Antiquity: American Women and the Classical Tradition, 1750–1900. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

17 Women and Classics in Victorian Oxbridge Parallels and Contrasts Christopher Stray

Abstract. This chapter is an exercise in comparison, exploring the relationship between women and Classics within the institutional contexts that shape and color the relationship. Beginning with and centering on Cambridge, I place women’s experience of Classics there in a perspective gained by contrast with Oxford, and to a lesser extent with other institutions. In addition, I suggest possible comparanda for the terms “women” and “Classics” themselves. If women were, in nineteenthcentury Britain and America, outsiders, then so were foreign nationals and Jews. If Classics was a body of knowledge subject to canon formation and commodification, in part via examinations and publishing, then so were vernacular literatures. As for the institutional contexts in which women (and others) learned Classics (and other subjects), these, too, differed in ways that significantly affected the nature and status of the learners and what they learned. In the 1840s, when the Yale graduate Charles Astor Bristed spent five years at Cambridge, he found that recourse to the prostitutes of the nearby village of Barnwell was an everyday matter for some of his fellow undergraduates. Nevertheless, the sight of an attractive young woman in the street outside abruptly ended a tutorial on the Choephoroe as tutor and pupils alike scrambled to inspect her. The tutor (Tom Taylor, later editor of Punch) allowed a pupil to translate four lines without interrupting him: he had been looking out of the window and suddenly exclaimed, “There’s such a pretty girl just gone by! . . . Have you had your walk today? Put on your boots and let’s go out and see her” (Stray 2008: 142).1 As Bristed explained, “A pretty face is a rare sight in Cambridge. You don’t see one once in three months on an average” (ibid.). Attractive women were certainly not to be found in the colleges: “The bed-makers are the women who take care of the rooms; there is about one to each staircase, that is to say, to every eight rooms. For obvious reasons they are selected from such of the fair sex as have long passed the age at which they might have had any personal attractions” (ibid.: 16). Women students first came to Cambridge three decades later, when the founding of Girton (1869) and Newnham (1871) colleges gave them a

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firm local residential basis. Yet though these students were presumptively respectable young women, inevitably they were objects of curiosity, suspicion and even alarm in some circles. The educational expectations of girls had been encouraged earlier in the 1860s, when they were allowed to sit the Local (or Middle-Class) examinations set up for boys by Oxford (1857) and Cambridge (1858).2 The creation of a network of girls’ schools by the Girls’ Public Day School Company (GPDS) from the early 1870s also encouraged girls to apply to Newnham and Girton, and soon provided employment opportunities for their alumnae. In the next thirty years, women went from Cambridge to the growing network of GPDS schools, teaching Classics (and in some cases becoming headmistresses) and sending their own pupils back to Girton or Newnham.3 In Cambridge women students were taught in the 1870s both by women and by supportive male academics, and from 1881 they were allowed to sit the Classical Tripos examinations. It was just at this point that the Tripos was divided into two parts. Part I was a traditional mix of language and literature; Part II comprised five specialized courses (literature, philosophy, history, archaeology and comparative philology), the first of these being compulsory until 1895. Since a degree could be gained on Part I alone, recruitment to Part II was poor, but though the absolute numbers of women were lower than those of men, proportionally they were twice as great. The fresh fields of Part II, especially archaeology, offered a welcome alternative to the traditional linguistic grind of Part I, for which the girls’ relatively short and weak training left them ill prepared. Yet this barrier had to be surmounted before they could escape to the more congenial challenges of Part II.4 Crucial to the acceptance of women in examinations, in a university traditionally dominated by mathematics, was the ideology of assessment by intellectual merit.5 This led both to female access to examinations and eventually to what alarmed many men and some women: direct comparison with male achievement.6 In 1872 two Oxford colleges set up entrance scholarships for candidates in the Local examinations, to which girls had been given access three years before, only to find that the highest scorer, “A.M.A.H. Rogers,” was in fact Annie Rogers, daughter of the professor of political economy.7 The informal marking of Tripos papers in Cambridge soon led to comparisons, though women tended to cluster in the lower classes. In 1887, however, Agnata Ramsay was placed in the first class of Part I of the Classical Tripos. The women’s results were printed separately, but the men’s listing contained no first classes that year. Ramsay was thus in effect (though she could not be so called) Senior Classic: the top of a list that was formally in two separate and parallel parts but could easily be converted into a single ranking order by a reader.8 Similar developments can be seen in Oxford, though with a time lag that might be expected, since the first women’s colleges (Lady Margaret Hall and Somerville) were founded later, in 1879.9 Women were allowed access in 1884 to Mods (Honour Moderations, the preliminary Classical

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examination) and to the final examinations in modern history, natural sciences and mathematics; Greats (Literae Humaniores) was opened to them in 1888. Here, too, there were early triumphs: Elizabeth Hodge gained a first in Mods in 1888, and this was a factor in the opening of Greats to women in the same year. Hodge gained a second class in Greats in 1890. Two years later Emily Penrose, daughter of the architect (and first director) of the British School at Athens, took a first, having entered Somerville College at age thirty-one with no Latin and only modern Greek. She subsequently became principal of Bedford College, London, and later of Somerville (1907–25). If we look beyond the handful of star performers who have understandably occupied the limelight in work on women Classicists, we find a situation different from that in Cambridge, largely because of distinctive local patterns of curricular content and status. In Cambridge, mathematics, while no longer dominant, remained the largest single honors subject, and since 1857 it had been possible to sit the Classical Tripos examination without first having gained mathematical honors. In Oxford the relationship was reversed, a Classics bar being removed in 1864, and Greats was the most prestigious as well as the best-subscribed course in an arts-centered university. Its size and prestige, and its linkage to public-school teaching and headmasterships, civil service administration and other careers that were not open to women, probably explain why very few women attempted it.10 It is true that Greats was centered on history and philosophy, and that women were allowed to bypass Mods, its heavily linguistic preliminary examination—a fact that must have highlighted Elizabeth Hodge’s achievement in 1888. But it should also be taken into account that the ability to bypass Mods and go directly to Greats may have made the latter, in a sense, a more forbidding challenge for women. There were no stepping stones across this river; it must be crossed at a single leap. Nor were many women well qualified to take the leap, since the girls’ schools that multiplied in the 1870s were relatively weak in Classics, in comparison, for example, with their modernlanguage teaching. Thus, while Mods stood in relation to Greats as Part I of the Classical Tripos did to Part II, the nature of the challenge for women was very different. At both universities, the local ideologies of curriculum and achievement provided both help and hindrance to women. The severely meritocratic ideology which at Cambridge had admitted women to honors examinations and had supported publication of their results from 1881 (followed by Oxford only in 1890) gave women a tougher challenge by treating them, in some respects, equally. The Oxford assessment system was different from that of Cambridge. It used a less precise and more humanistic scheme of Greek-letter marking rather than the severely numerical merit order of its rival, and in theory examination candidates were placed absolutely rather than in relation to one another, so that a degree class might contain all candidates or none.11 As Hartog and Rhodes commented in 1936, this system, which they described as “common at Oxford, but not elsewhere,” reflected a concern with quality

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rather than quantity (Hartog and Rhodes 1936, 154). The literal marking system can be related to the Oxonian concern to avoid intensive ranking. A committee of the university’s reigning Hebdomadal Board declared in 1829 that the standard for each class should be “absolute and positive.” Mark Curthoys (1997: 334–5) comments on this that “Theoretically, all the candidates could be in the first class, and individual classes could be (and sometimes were) empty,” and he suggests that this encouraged the use of Greek letter grades. This system, based on sociomoral rather than purely intellectual ranking, both gave women an advantage and constrained them. It did not give them the gender-free support of the Cambridge ranking system, but it encouraged the protective deference due to an “angel in the house,” notably in women’s freedom to avoid the preliminary examinations. Each place, then, offered both constraints and opportunities, but in different ways. The two curricula of the two universities were also informed by very different conceptions of Classics. In Oxford the linguistic tests of Mods led to a higher end—the high-cultural grandeur of ancient history and philosophy enshrined in Greats and fueled by Benjamin Jowett’s Platonism (c. 1850–90), which overlaid an earlier focus on Aristotelian logic and ethics. At Cambridge, the narrower textual tradition of Porson and his followers made Part I a crucial foundation on which the specialized options of Part II rested: they were developments rather than ends in themselves. Thus, though both universities had Classical courses that began with a detailed study of texts and went on to focus on history, philosophy and so on, their governing ideologies were very different. Women at Oxford had other accessible options. The school of modern history, established in 1872, had no preliminary examination, and was very popular: though Greats was declared officially to be the university’s premier course until the Great War, Modern History overtook it in recruitment around 1890. Together with English (1896; the Cambridge equivalent did not appear until 1917) and modern languages (1905), it provided an attractive alternative to Classics.12 Cambridge, too, had a history school, but even loyal Cantabrigians admitted that Oxford’s was superior. Advising his brother Arthur on where to send a son, the Cambridge Greek scholar Richard Jebb wrote on April 15, 1893, that . . . there is now a good School of History at Cambridge. Still, Oxford is from the point of view of the world at large, the best market to which to bring a taste for the study of history. I mean that honours in History at Oxford count more, in public opinion, than honours in History at Cambridge; because people have so long been wont to associate that study pre-eminently with Oxford.” (Jebb papers)13 When Jebb wrote, modern history had just overtaken Greats in terms of the numbers of students recruited. In 1891–93, about forty women were studying history at each university, but they constituted 32 percent of the female student

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body at Oxford and only 12 percent of that in Cambridge, which was more than twice as large (123 students at Oxford, versus 264 at Cambridge). History attracted more Oxford women than any other subject; in Cambridge it was in fourth place, behind mathematics, natural sciences and modern languages.14 Oxford and Cambridge together can further be contrasted with other British universities, where different conditions prevailed—though some colleges were influenced by their elder sisters, e.g. University College London (founded as the University of London in 1828) by Cambridge, and its younger Anglican rival King’s College London (1831) by Oxford—and with the independent women’s colleges in the United States. UCL banned compulsory courses, Latin and Greek composition and chapel. KCL responded with compulsion, chapel and Classical books aimed at “ladies”—an echo of the Oxonian pattern of marginalizing deference (Browne 1851).15 The American colleges represented a further extension of independence, not even linked within a federal university as UCL and KCL were, but completely autonomous. (In some cases, however, they were loosely federated as sisters, and Radcliffe and Barnard moved within the larger male orbits of Harvard and Columbia, respectively.) In Scotland campaigns for women’s education, the development of distance-learning schemes, and the offering of “lectures for ladies” by (male) professors in the 1870s led eventually to legislative action. After several defeats, parliament in 1889 passed an act giving women access to Scottish universities; the first students enrolled in 1892. In Glasgow they were greeted in the student magazine by a set of doggerel verses that focused on the minutiae of classical learning: When they try you as Jebb used to try me Can you conjugate Phero alway? And the difference twixt Heimi and Eimi Are you sure, dear, you always can say? Is young M––– never into a wax sent Does old M––– never murmur his moan When you tell ’em the circumflex accent ’s Proparoxytone? Are you through Tupto yet? How should I know? Do you now e’en Tithaemi despise? And are Pheugo and Phradzo and Phaino As plain as the day to your eyes? Think you Curtius quite easy to learn is, (Or is’t Goodwin you know through and through?) Did you ever, dear, make Tissaphernes An aorist too? Can you Hellenise Wendell as we did, With some help from ‘Liddell and Scott’, And—I wonder if M does as he did –

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Nearly always from Richard a lot? Can you skilfully use the enclitic Asper Spiritus (always on tho)? Ah, is Murray as kindly a critic As Jebb long ago? Do you read Mark or Luke of a Monday From a text that is not authorized? Do you take the precaution on Sunday With Greek to insert the Revised? Have those eyes of yours (whisper dear) really Gazed in secret on Butcher or Bohn Or the Key—key accursed—that’s called Kelly E’er rested upon? (A.L.T., 1892)16

The next week’s issue contained a response, by “Fenella”: The questions in grammar you ask us We could answer a decade ago: With more serious work you may task us, And our knowledge and learning we’ll show. ’Twere vain to endeavour to floor us With a chapter of Thucydides, With a Pindaric ode or a chorus Of Euripides And we know all the gods and the goddesses And we’ve read of the heroes of old, And the Gorgons with long snaky tresses, And the eagerly sought fleece of gold; And we’ve read of the terrible misuse Of the treacherous horse of Troy, And the wanderings long of Odysseus, And hoi Achaioi (Fenella 1892)17

A.L.T.’s verses concentrate almost entirely on linguistic points; Fenella’s response, in contrast, avoids linguistic specifics, moving on firmly in its second stanza to the Greek myths and Homer. While terser in utterance, her verses betoken a wider conception of Classics than the minute drudgery of classroom interrogation. To use the terms deployed by Murray in his Glasgow inaugural lecture (Murray 1889), they give a glimpse of the Greece to which Greek gives access.18 The emphasis on Greek grammar and syntax in A.L.T’s greeting may have represented a deliberate targeting of the women’s weak points. Certainly

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they had relatively little prior schooling in Latin and Greek (however, a substantial proportion of the men in Jebb’s and Murray’s classes had learned no Greek before their matriculation). The combination of technical weakness and a vision of the literature to be reached through the language is evident in an account of a preliminary Latin class for girls in Glasgow, taught by a (male) don: When I passed through “Middle Latin” I was one of seven, who sat round a table in the old Studio, surrounded by models of classical statuary. We knew each other familiarly, and during the interval before the hour struck we made more noise, one lecturer complained, than two hundred men in the Humanity class-room at “the Hill”. “You have such shrill voices” he observed in making a private moan to one of us, “you make grammatical errors that would be whipped out of a boy before he was twelve, and yet you have more feeling for prose than the men ahead of you.” (Nimmo 1901)19 To return to Cambridge: marginalization occurred through class, race and religion as well as via gender. Women’s experience can be compared with that of male noncollegiate students, Jews, Indians and Japanese—and Americans. Jews were able to succeed more easily in mathematics, away from the conventional social expectations of the humanities (the same pattern was visible in U.S. universities in the twentieth century).20 With Indian men, there was the complication that they were often seen as unmasculine (Vasunia 2008). Amy Levy, a Newnham student and the second Jewish woman to study at Cambridge, produced a substantial body of prose and poetry in her short life, the poetry admired by Oscar Wilde among others (Beckham 2000). The problems of Jewish assimilation are evident in some of her writing, but also in her drawings, in which she depicts herself with a stereotypically hooked nose. One of her tutors was Francis Jenkinson of King’s College, who is recognizable from his own distinctive nose. Some of the drawings contain Greek, misspelled and wrongly accented.21 A drawing entitled “Ye Newnham Women” shows a student puffing a pipe in her room. Her books include not only Plato and a lexicon, but also the erotic Ovid, the materialist Lucretius and the roué Byron. On the wall hangs a picture of a fistfight. This is a depiction of a student pushing at the boundaries of conventional values.22 Levy’s brief career at Newnham (1879–81) and her failure to get very far in Greek offer a salutary contrast to the success stories of women like Agnata Ramsay and, most notably, Jane Harrison. Other women remained unsung despite considerable achievements. Edith Sharpley, who entered Newnham in the same year as Levy, ended up with a first in Part II of the Tripos, specializing in philosophy. In 1884 she was appointed Classical lecturer, and she was vice principal of the college from 1911 to 1918. One of her pupils remembered “the fastidiousness of her taste and the ruthlessness

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of her judgment . . . Her keen sense of humour made me grasp at the joys of Aristophanes and be willing to choose Liddell and Scott instead of a complexion, so as to understand her jokes” (Beard, King and Stray 1998: 15–16). Edith Sharpley deserves to be remembered as someone who devoted her life to teaching Classics and to her college. The students were not the only academically linked women in Cambridge. The wives of the married male dons of the 1880s and 1890s formed a distinct category, in some cases a social group, socializing with one another and being called on by women undergraduates for tea and gossip. Some of the dons’ wives formed a dining club; they included the American Caroline Jebb, wife of the Regius Professor of Greek, known for her striking looks and directness of speech. They met in their houses, and at times a grumpy academic husband was told to go off and dine in college to make room for them. There were also women—often intelligent wives who were too old to have attended the recently founded girls’ schools—who formed the audiences for the Lectures for Ladies taught by sympathetic dons. In Cambridge they were given inter alios by Richard Jebb and J. E. B. Mayor in the early 1870s. On May 29, 1870, Mayor wrote to his brother Joseph, “I am to examine ‘women’ in Latin for the university this July; I believe there are only 8 candidates. Last year the subjects were Aeneid I–VI and Cicero de Officiis but the answers were very poor: this year Aeneid VII VIII and Livy XXII are all that are required. The lectures to ladies prosper; mine in particular have suffered no diminution from the May term. Of 18 pupils, six are governesses, the very class one most wished to help” (Mayor Papers: B16.46).23 Mayor’s class included Julia Kennedy, the younger of the two unmarried daughters of his own teacher, Benjamin Kennedy, who after retirement from the headship of Shrewsbury School in 1866 had the following year been elected Regius Professor of Greek in the University. Mayor described her as “very intelligent” in a May 24, 1870, letter to Charlotte Mayor Jr. (Mayor Papers B14.4). After the Kennedy family arrived in Cambridge in 1867, Julia began to learn philology from the etymologist W. W. Skeat; by the following decade she was sufficiently competent to be asked to give lectures on AngloSaxon at Girton College. In 1890 she was elected to membership of the Cambridge Philological Society. This election may have been influenced by local knowledge that the Revised Latin Primer, which had appeared under her father’s name in 1888, was in fact largely her work and that of her elder sister.24 The Misses Kennedy supported the young women who had the access to college they themselves did not, but Julia did more than that. In 1870 she was thirty-one, within the extended age range of the earliest students at Newnham and Girton, and the same age as Emily Penrose was on entering Somerville; she was able to begin as a student and then become a teacher. Marion, three years older, largely confined herself to administration, and in any case had to run the Kennedy household after their mother’s death in 1874. Julia, uniquely, was able to leap through a narrow transient gap between the old order and the new.

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In Oxford the lecturers included the church historian Mandell Creighton and the Latinist Henry Nettleship. Creighton was a distinguished scholar who became bishop of Peterborough and then of London but was capable of eccentric social behavior, such as putting his arm round a Girton girl in the street and telling her how lovely she was. In her diary for September 26, 1890, Georgina Walrond of Girton College wrote, “Mr C[reighton]: he told me my great danger was that I was so universally attractive that I might fail to get the right person to marry . . . I have quite ceased being embarrassed when he puts his arm round my neck and fondles my hand!” (Walrond diaries). Nettleship and Mayor had been lined up by Oxford University Press to produce a standard Latin dictionary to stand alongside Liddell and Scott. But this partnership was not to be. Mayor backed out early on, Nettleship made little progress before his premature death, and the plates of Lewis and Short were bought from Harper and Brothers of New York and sold by OUP from 1879 on (Stray 2011a). Nettleship, like his fellow liberal Arthur Sidgwick, was a fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, one of the first colleges to allow fellows to marry. But while some dons were able to marry from the 1860s because of individual college statutes, the general change in regulations that permitted marriage came in the early 1880s, when dozens of dons were married, in some cases to their own (ex-)students. New housing developments in both cities created a new element in their social life. In North Oxford a largescale development took place on land owned by St. John’s College; in 1900 the sex ratio there was 3:1 in favor of women (Hinchcliffe 1992). The older women could be fierce critics of female undergraduates: “Women students and women dons alike lived in perpetual fear of shocking a curious body of opinion vaguely known as ‘North Oxford’ . . . It was understood to consist of the pussy element in dons’ wives backed by the coerced support of their husbands” (Howarth 2000: 276, quoting W. Meikle, Toward a Sane Feminism [1916], 64–5).25 I have already mentioned that some male dons married women they met while teaching them. Not quite in this league is the remarkable AprilSeptember marriage in 1889 of Montagu Butler (fifty-seven), Master of Trinity, and Agnata Ramsay (twenty-one; first class 1887), who met at a performance of the Cambridge Greek Play. Butler declared that “It was her goodness, not her Greek and Latin, which have stolen my heart” (Butler 1925: 30). Ramsay was known to be working on an edition of Herodotus Book VII (it was published by Macmillan in 1891), and when their first child was born, the Cambridge Review went to town with references to a “crib to Herodotus.”26 Ramsay was perhaps the first British woman to produce an edition of a Classical author—an achievement that looks forward to the work of Amy Dale, Nan Dunbar and Pat Easterling in the twentieth century. But in the late 1890s, when Jane Harrison was writing, teaching and publishing on Greek art and religion, Agnata Ramsay’s time was taken up with acting as her husband’s hostess and bringing up their young children.

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Some of the women at Cambridge were doubly outsiders, since they came from abroad. There is at present no easy way to identify foreign students who attended Cambridge in the nineteenth century, so that one has to rely on specific sources and anecdotal evidence. For example, the American Eleanor Field, writing of her experiences at Newnham in the Century magazine in 1891, mentioned that in 1886 there had been seven Americans and two South Africans in residence (Field 1891: 289). Bristed mentions an Australian student at Trinity in the 1840s (Stray 2008: 57). The American Negro clergyman Alexander Crummell was at Queens’ College from 1849 to 1853 (Wahle 1968). The Japanese who came in the 1890s are quite well documented (e.g., Koyama 2004). What is lacking is any overall picture. In the case of women from the United States, however, a survey is available, in a dissertation by Tanya Novak, herself, appropriately, an American studying in Cambridge (Novak 1990). Novak found that between 1872 and 1914, sixty-seven women traveled from the United States to study at Cambridge, fifty-six at Newnham and nine at Girton. The disparity is accounted for by the different ideological stances of the two colleges: Girton expected women, like the men, to take a full degree course; Newnham allowed short-term and nondegree study. In the early years, some American women went to Cambridge to gain the kind of “postgraduate” experience they could not at that stage gain in the United States. Their age range, like that of the first Girton and Newnham students, was wider than that of later years: those in their thirties formed the largest single category up to 1895. Of the sixty-seven, we know the subjects of study for forty-five. Of these, ten studied classics, ten mathematics/physics, eleven history/economics and nine natural sciences (Novak 1990: 52). The Classicists were all at Cambridge in the period 1874–94, but the numbers involved are too small to allow a detailed analysis. There were other Classics than those of antiquity. In the 1860s and 1870s, when the examination-oriented market for books was growing, Shakespeare was seen as an author who might appeal to girls and be studied in the Local examinations, and then in the new girls’ day schools.27 An English canon was emerging but was not established in university curricula at Oxford until the 1890s, or in Cambridge until the First World War. It was a curious anomaly that dons were producing scholarly and popular editions of Shakespeare, while the introduction of English honors courses was resisted. The outstanding edition of the nineteenth century was pioneered at Trinity College, Cambridge, by the Classicist and curriculum reformer W. G. Clark and his friend Henry Luard, a devotee of Richard Porson. The sample they issued in 1860 made it clear that, as their publisher Alexander Macmillan put it, they intended to edit the text “in the manner in which it has been customary to edit an Ancient Latin or Greek classic” (Murphy 2003: 203). The transition from ancient to English Classics continued in the career of a younger Trinity classicist, Arthur Verrall. Verrall is remembered now as an eccentric rationalist interpreter of Euripides, but it was his wildly popular lectures on Shakespeare and Austen that led to his being appointed the first holder of the new

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chair of English literature in 1911.28 Had English been available in Oxford and Cambridge in the 1870s and 1880s, perhaps it would have attracted the attention of women: new students, new knowledge. But in the world of Shakespearean editing, at least, women were rarely seen until the 1930s.29 These later developments should be compared with the substantial evidence for women’s work in writing and (especially) translation in the nineteenth century. Some women were relatively independent, though they often belonged to informal networks.30 Others worked for or with their fathers. One such father was Karl Adolf Buchheim, editor of many German classics for Oxford University Press’s Clarendon Press Series. Several of these books were done in collaboration with his daughter Emma Sophia, who also produced titles independently, including an edition of Niebuhr’s Greek hero tales.31 Other young women formed “harems” controlled by a dominant male—for example, the Oxford historian Edward Augustus Freeman, whose team included his own daughters and other young women.32 This chapter has been an exercise in comparison, exploring the relationship between women and Classics within the institutional contexts that shape and color the relationship. Beginning with and centering on Cambridge, I have tried to place women’s experience of Classics there in a perspective gained by contrast with Oxford, and to a lesser extent with other institutions. In addition, I have suggested possible comparanda for the terms “women” and “Classics” themselves. If women were, in nineteenth-century Britain and America, outsiders, then so were foreign nationals and Jews. If Classics was a body of knowledge subject to canon formation and commodification, in part via examinations and publishing, then so were vernacular literatures. As for the institutional contexts in which women (and others) learned Classics (and other subjects), these, too, differed in ways that significantly affected the nature and status of the learners and what they learned. NOTES This chapter is based on a contribution to the “Women and Classics” seminar coorganized with Yopie Prins at the American Philological Association meeting in Philadelphia in January 2009. My involvement came, as so many things have done, at the prompting of Judy Hallett. 1. This is an annotated edition of Bristed’s account of his time at Cambridge, first published in 1852; it includes an introduction, index and bibliography of Bristed’s writings. Bristed, the grandson of John Jacob Astor II, was in Cambridge from 1840 to 1845. Sometime after his statement that “A pretty face is a rare sight in Cambridge,” he found that a reading party planned for Dinan in Brittany had been transferred to the island of Jersey, apparently because of its high pulchritude quotient. 2. In Cambridge, girls took the examinations informally from 1863, formally from 1864; the arrangement was made permanent in 1867. The campaign for female access was much less successful in Oxford: the initial approach made in 1863 was rebuffed, and girls were only admitted in 1869 (Howarth 2000: 244). McWilliams Tullberg (1998: 35) gives the year incorrectly as 1879.

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3. This development has yet to be systematically investigated; a beginning was made in Beard, King and Stray (1998). 4. For women’s experience of the Classical Tripos, see Breay (1999). 5. See Warwick (2003); Stray (2011b). 6. Behind all this lay the strength of liberalism in Cambridge, long greater than in Oxford. University membership for women, however, had to wait until 1948, nearly thirty years after Oxford had awarded it. 7. She gained first-class honors in 1877. The colleges were, of course, male; the first women’s colleges would be founded seven years later. 8. In some cases, indeed, the university calendar annotated women’s positions to this effect, explaining that they stood between two ranked male candidates. 9. As in Cambridge, the Anglican establishment opened first (though, in fact, in Oxford the first two foundations were simultaneous, as Somerville’s founders moved faster). Newnham had and has no chapel; Somerville acquired one in 1935, but it is nondenominational and unconsecrated. 10. Cf. the discussion in Howarth and Curthoys (1987) and in Howarth (2000). 11. This was thus (another) Greek alphabet for women to learn; cf. Prins (2006). On the contrasting marking systems of the two universities, see Stray (2005a). Greek letters are used in some Bodleian shelf marks, but not as far as I know in Cambridge University Library. 12. A study of the courses taken by Oxford-educated headmasters and headmistresses found that of the former, 60 percent had read Greats, 14 percent history. The women’s figures were history 43 percent, English 18 percent, modern languages 10 percent (Howarth and Curthoys 1987: 20). 13. With regard to the “good School of History,” a law and history tripos had been set up in 1870 and split into separate examinations in the two subjects in 1875. A useful summary of the differences between the two universities in relation to access for women was published by Francis H. Stoddard (1886). He reckoned that Oxford had twenty-six special courses for women and thirty-one university courses open to them, for a total of fifty-seven. Cambridge had thirty-two special courses and sixty-two open to them—a total of ninety-four (ibid., 593). 14. For these figures, based on entry to final examinations, see Howarth and Curthoys (1987: 15). 15. Browne held the chair of Classics at King’s College London. 16. Eight stanzas are omitted. Gilbert Murray (“Young M”) had held the Greek chair since succeeding Richard Jebb (“Richard”) in 1889; Alexander Murdoch (“Old M”) acted as assistant to both men. “Wendell” was presumably Oliver Wendell Homes—perhaps his Autocrat at the Breakfast Table, familiar to Jebb (and to his American wife Caroline, who had met Holmes). “Butcher” was Jebb’s friend Henry Butcher, then professor of Greek at Glasgow’s great rival, Edinburgh University, and coauthor with Andrew Lang of a well-known translation of the Odyssey (1879). Bohn’s Classical Library and Kelly’s Keys to the Classics were widely used as cribs. 17. Two verses are omitted. Not surprisingly, no Fenella is to be found in the list of women students of the year. 18. Murray had argued that the object of study should be “not Greek but Greece.” 19. Mrs. Nimmo had graduated in 1898, as Miss Rule, with a first in English. The setting is the large mansion bought by the wealthy shipping heiress Isabella Elder to house university-level classes for women. It had been built for a local pottery manufacturer who had a large collection of painting and sculpture. The lecturer may have been George Ramsay, professor of Latin, a supporter of women’s education. 20. In Cambridge a Jew could matriculate, take the mathematical tripos and become senior wrangler (top of the first class), but he could not obtain a degree. In

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22. 23.

24.

25. 26.

27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

32.

Christopher Stray Oxford he could not matriculate. For the manipulation of entry to Ivy League universities to exclude Jews, Negroes and others, see Karabel (2005). Her Greek is thus not “lady’s Greek / without the accents,” but either a failed attempt at accentual accuracy or simply an impressionistic visual representation of Greek. For a discussion of some of the issues, see Prins (2006). It should be remembered, in addition, that gentlemen had happily written unaccented Greek in the eighteenth century and that, from 1756 till the early nineteenth century, Oxford University Press had published editions of Greek authors without accents (Carter 1975: 392, 397, 399). I am unable to include an image here, as the owner of Amy Levy’s papers does not allow copying or publication of her drawings. Mayor also helped even more disadvantaged women, those who lived in the female refuge, on whose management committee he sat. In the same letter, he reports, “I have been to the Female Refuge to read them literature . . . the matron is exactly the proper women for the position, though she is not always orthodox about her ’Hs.” The book quickly succeeded Kennedy’s previous textbook, the Public School Latin Primer of 1866, as the best-selling Latin grammar book in Britain. Plans by the publisher, Longmans, to publish it in the United States had been frustrated by Kennedy’s refusal to change his terminology for the subjunctive or his break with the traditional order of cases. On the sisters and their involvement, see Stray (1993; 2005b). The word pussy might be glossed ‘censorious mature female.’ An oil painting of the bride is reproduced in Beard, King and Stray (1998: 24), where the description of Ramsay as “apprehensive” (“the image of the apprehensive bride in her white lace against a background of leather-bound scholarship”) is, I believe, an overinterpretation. The correspondence of Bartholomew Price, secretary to the Delegates of Oxford University Press, in the late 1860s suggests that girls were seen as a major market (Stray 2012). He died soon afterward, to be succeeded by “Q” (Arthur Quiller-Couch). On Verrall, see Lowe (2005). For the work of Alice Walker on the Oxford Shakespeare from 1936, see Murphy (2003: 225–9). On the editions produced by Charlotte Porter and Helen Clarke (1903–13), see Roberts (2006). See Stark (1999) for women translators from German. Niebuhr’s Griechische Heroen-Geschichten, ed. E. S. Buchheim (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1886). Her father was a liberal who fled Germany in 1848 and later served as professor of German at King’s College London from 1863 until his death in 1900. The hero tales had originally formed part I of Karl Buchheim’s Easy German Readings (1858), which had gone into over twenty editions by 1884. For Freeman’s “historic harem” (the term is J. R. Green’s), see, e.g. Howsam 2004.

REFERENCES Beard, M., G. King and C. Stray. 1998. The Birds and the Bees: Women in Classics, Cambridge 1871–1948. Cambridge: Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge. Beckman, L. H. 2000. Amy Levy: Her Life and Writings. Athens: Ohio State University Press. Breay, C. 1999. “Women and the Classical Tripos, 1869–1914.” In Stray 1999: 49–70. Browne, R. W. 1851. Rudiments of Latin Grammar for Ladies. London: J. W. Parker.

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Butler, J. R. M. 1925. Henry Montagu Butler: Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, 1886–1918. London: Longmans, Green. Carter, H. 1975. A History of the Oxford University Press. Vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Curthoys, M. C. 1997. “The Examination System,” in History of the University of Oxford VI: The Nineteenth Century Part 1, ed. M. G. Brock and M. C. Curthoys. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 339–74. Fenella [pseud.]. 1892. “A Reply from the Girls in the Greek Class.” Glasgow University Magazine January 13, 76. Field, E. 1891. “Women at an English University.” The Century 42: 287–94. Hallett, J., and C. Stray, eds. 2008. British Classics beyond England. Waco Tex.: Baylor University Press. Hartog, P., and E. Rhodes. 1936. The Marks of Examiners. London: Macmillan. Hinchcliffe, T. 1992. North Oxford. New Haven: Yale University Press. Howarth, J. 2000. “‘In Oxford, but Not . . . of Oxford’: The Women’s Colleges.” In The History of the University of Oxford, vol. 7, Nineteenth-Century Oxford Part 2, ed. M. G. Brock and M. Curthoys, 237–307. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Howarth, J., and M. Curthoys. 1987. “Gender, Curriculum and Career: A Case Study of Women University Students in England before 1914.” In Women, Education and the Professions, ed. P. Summerfield, 4–20. Leicester: History of Education Society Occasional Publications 8. Howsam, L. 2004. “Academic Discipline or Literary Genre? The Establishment of Boundaries in Historical Writing.” Victorian Literature and Culture 32.2: 525–45. Hurst, I. 2007. “‘A Fleet of . . . Inexperienced Argonauts’: Oxford Women and the Classics, 1873–1920.” In Stray 2007: 14–27. Jebb, R. Papers. Trinity College Library, Cambridge. Karabel, J. 2005. The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Koyama, N. 2004. Japanese Students at Cambridge University in the Meiji Era, 1868–1912: Pioneers for the Modernization of Japan. Translated by I. Ruxton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Library. Lowe, N. J. 2005. “Problematic Verrall: The Sceptic at Law.” In The Owl of Minerva: The Cambridge Praelections of 1906, ed. C. A. Stray, 142–60. Cambridge: Cambridge Philological Society. Mayor Papers. Trinity College Library, Cambridge. McWilliams Tullberg, R. 1998. Women at Cambridge: A Men’s University—though of a Mixed Type. Rev. ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Murphy, A. 2003. Shakespeare in Print: A History and Chronology of Shakespeare Publishing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Murray, G. 1889. The Place of Greek in Education: An Inaugural Lecture Delivered in the University of Glasgow, November 6, 1889. Glasgow: J. MacLehose. Nimmo, H. M. 1901. “Some Recent Notes and Recollections of Queen Margaret College Life.” In The Book of the Jubilee 1451–1901, in Commemoration of the Ninth Jubilee of the University of Glasgow, 147–8. Glasgow: J. MacLehose. Novak, T. 1990. “Women’s Education: Connections between America and Cambridge, 1874–1914.” History Tripos Pt. II dissertation, Cambridge University. Girton College Archives, 81990/32. Prins, Y. 2006. “‘Lady’s Greek’ (with the Accents): A Metrical Translation of Euripides by A. Mary F. Robinson.” Victorian Literature and Culture 34: 591–618. Roberts, J. 2006. “Women Edit Shakespeare.” In Shakespeare Survey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 59: 136–46. Smith, J., and C. Stray, eds. 2001. Teaching and Learning in Nineteenth-Century Cambridge. Woodbridge: Boydell. Stark, S. 1999. Behind Inverted Commas: Translation and Anglo-German Cultural Relations in the Nineteenth Century. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

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Stoddard, F. H. 1886. “Women in the English Universities.” New Englander and Yale Review 9: 573–93. Stray, C. 1993. “Who Wrote Kennedy?” ad familiares V: ii. ———, ed. 1999. Classics in Cambridge: Curriculum, Culture and Community. Cambridge: Cambridge Philological Society. ———. 2005a. “From Oral to Written Examination: Cambridge, Oxford and Dublin 1700–1914.” History of Universities 20.2: 76–130. ———. 2005b. “Kennedy, Marion.” ODNB. www.oxforddnb.com. ———, ed. 2007. Oxford Classics: Teaching and Learning 1800–2000. London: Duckworth. ———, ed. 2008. An American in Victorian Cambridge: Charles Astor Bristed’s Five Years in an English University. Exeter: University of Exeter Press. ———. 2011a. “Lex Wrecks: A Tale of two Latin Dictionaries.” in Dictionaries 32, 66–81. ———. 2011b. “Rank (Dis)order in Cambridge 1753–1909: The Wooden Spoon.” History of Universities 25.2:163–96. ———. 2013. “Education.” In History of Oxford University Press II: 1780–1896, ed. S. Eliot. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sutherland, G. 2001. “‘Girton for Ladies, Newnham for Governesses.’” In Smith and Stray 2001: 139–49. T., A. L. 1892. “To the Girls in the Greek Class.” Glasgow University Magazine, January 6, 68. Vasunia, P. 2008. “Latin and Greek in the Indian Civil Service.” In Hallett and Stray 2008: 61–93. Wahle, K. O. 1968. “Alexander Crummell: Black Evangelist and Pan-Negro Nationalist.” Phylon 29: 388–95. Walrond, G. Diaries. Girton College archives, Cambridge. Warwick, A. 2003. Masters of Theory: Cambridge and the Rise of Mathematical Physics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

18 Ancient Myth and Feminist Politics The Medea Project and San Francisco Women’s Prisons Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz

Abstract. This chapter analyzes the work of Rhodessa Jones’ Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women/HIV Circle, which has often used ancient myth as the basis of modern productions. Jones works with incarcerated women in San Francisco, Johannesburg, South Africa and elsewhere; she asks the women to respond to the ancient stories and to talk about their own lives in relation to them. In Food Taboos, Jones asked how incarcerated women see their own journey to the Underworld and how they relate to Demeter-Persephone. Slouching towards Armageddon takes up the Pandora myth as a framework for analyzing contemporary race relations. In the end, the chapter asks how much societal change can result from individual projects like this one. While in the early days of second-wave feminism, the literary canon and Classics as a discipline might have seemed to some to be women’s enemy (Case 1988), the ancient myths and dramas have proven continually attractive to women playwrights, translators, directors and actresses. Rhodessa Jones and the Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women, a multiracial company of theater professionals and incarcerated women, has used these myths to advance their vision of the arts as a form of activism. Five productions have been based on ancient myth: Reality Is Just Outside the Window (1992, Medea); Food Taboos in the Land of the Dead (1993, Persephone), A Taste of Somewhere Else: A Place at the Table (1994, Sisyphus), Slouching towards Armageddon: A Captive’s Conversation/Observation on Race (1999, Pandora) and Can We Get There by Candlelight? (2002, Inanna).1 I am a Classicist who has long been interested in prison work; having taught the Medea Project with Euripides’ Medea, I decided to use my sabbatical to work with them. It turned out that Jones is no longer primarily teaching in the San Francisco jails, though her work there is carried on by the core group which she mentored. But she has not abandoned her social justice agenda. Currently she is developing a performance piece in a Johannesburg prison, as well as working with girls at risk, battered women and women living with HIV. The Medea Project has increasingly sought to become a replicable model (for instance by training local artists to run the

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program in Johannesburg as well as in San Francisco). I will focus here on the project and two of their Classically inspired productions—Food Taboos and Slouching towards Armageddon—putting them in a larger sociopolitical context.

WHAT ARE WE UP AGAINST? Prisons are big business in this country. The U.S. incarcerates more people than any other nation (1 in 32); as of 2009, 3.31% of the population was involved in some aspect of the criminal justice system (awaiting trial, in jail, on probation) (Bureau of Justice Statistics, http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/). While men make up 92% of the prison population, women are now the fastest growing group, increasing at double the rate of men since 1985 (http://www.aclu.org/ Dec. 12, 2007; Davis 2003: 65).2 This trend results from the war on drugs and stiff sentencing laws (especially the three strikes law, which demands extended prison time for persons convicted of three felonies [http://www.threestrikes.org/tslaw.html; http://www.lao.ca.gov/ analysis_1995/3strikes.html]). Given rising rates of unemployment and poverty, as well as the loss of social programs providing a safety net, women trying to survive and provide for their children may turn to prostitution or drug trafficking, and as a result, they end up in jail (Davis 2005: 41).3 What is to be done? There are of course various answers to that question. The prison abolition movement “focus[es] . . . not . . . only on the prison system as an isolated institution but . . . all the social relations that support the permanence of the prison” (Davis 2003: 112; Davis 2004; cf. Clark 2004). Those in the abolition movement argue that we must attack the underlying problems in society; as Angela Davis puts it: “the link that is usually assumed in popular and scholarly discourse is that crime produces punishment. . . . think about the possibility that punishment may be a consequence of other forces . . . even more important, imprisonment is the punitive solution to a whole range of social problems that are not being addressed” (Davis 2005: 40). Others prefer to work “within the system,” offering various kinds of programming, including theater projects (see Tocci 2007 for an overview; Balfour 2004; Ryan 1976; Buell 2011). The Medea Project has been active since 1989; it is unusual among prison theater programs in its longevity, its form—it combines the personal, educational, intellectual and political, with public performance—and its focus on women.4 In 1986 Jones was asked to teach aerobics in jail; after listening to the women she met, she developed a performance piece based on their stories (Big Butt Girls, Hard Headed Women); subsequently she began to have the incarcerated women write their own pieces and to perform for themselves and other prisoners (Jones 2003). Her goals to this day are: “To organize the people, democratize the stage!! Tell our stories while creating community!” (Jones 2010a).

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Underlying such work is often the hope of reducing recidivism, a goal that is hard to accomplish and just as hard to document.5 While the Medea Project originally claimed that as its goal, the web site now more modestly asks whether “an arts-based approach helps reduce the numbers of women returning to jail” (www.culturalodyssey.org). Nonetheless, the project has not given up hope. It still seeks to prepare women to leave jail and return to society as productive members of it; participants realize that, having been in jail and having been in the Medea Project, they have “learned something, they have been through fire” (Jones interview). As a result of this process, they see that they are not just victims and not just offenders but have something to offer to others. But the emphasis is more on individual transformation than on changing statistics of recidivism. It is not, as I said, easy work. The “revolving door” of prison is pushed along by a larger system—the way release is handled (often at night, with the ex-offender having little or no money) and the lack of support services after release. Furthermore, there are significant problems for ex-offenders in getting employment and access to other social programs (Alexander 2010: esp. 55–7, 137–72). Why do women return to prison? Food Taboos (1993) developed in part in response to an article arguing that girls’ victimization leads to offending; girls “are labeled and processed as deviants—and subsequently as criminals—for refusing to accept or participate in their own victimization. . . . This refusal results in structural . . . dislocation . . . and leads to entry into the criminal life. . . . Crime becomes a rational choice in the face of dislocation . . . drugs are used to dull the pain of the reality of their lives” (Arnold 1990: 154). Recidivism is then a result of “what has happened way back when they were girls, and what propelled them toward this abyss called jail” (Jones 1993: 17). According to Jones and others, the result is that some women seem to “prefer living in ‘lockdown’” (Jones 2010a; cf. Arnold 1990: 154, 158). Jones and Sean Reynolds, her social worker colleague in the Medea Project, address both the element of individual choice and the “politics of what happens to people. Who gets a shot and who doesn’t?” (Jones interview). They try to make options other than prison feel real to the participants—“to say ‘you could try this’” (Jones interview). In the artistic process, they all go on a spiritual journey that creates a sense of community which may be able to replace the comfort of being on the inside.

THE MEDEA WORKSHOP PROCESS The workshop process begins with a “check-in.” In these discussions the aim is to “keep it real” and figure out “why are we here, how did it happen that we ended up in jail?” (Jones interview). The point is not to point the finger but still to get women to “take responsibility so they can get on with life.” In order to change, each woman must come to terms with her own

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role in her current situation. Nonetheless, the Medea Project recognizes that incarceration is a social problem; there are larger causes to this effect. Thus, at the same time, they analyze the political realities of race and class that bring women to prison again and again. In the workshops for Slouching towards Armageddon, the facilitators pushed hard on the questions of race and racism; participants educated themselves about the great black women revolutionaries. The participants write pieces based on their experiences, and that selfexpression is a key to the transformation process. Jones, however, insists that they go beyond emotion: “We’re gonna cry, we’re gonna stop crying. So what are the political ramifications?” The loss of children, love and freedom are analyzed. How did it happen? Jones then crafts a script and molds it into a show with costumes, music, dance and humor. This process then culminates in live performances in San Francisco theaters for an audience of friends, families and others. Throughout, the Medea Project emphasizes that the incarcerated women are of value—that their stories matter—though society acts as if they were disposable. The celebration that follows the show also provides a networking opportunity to enable the women to go on with their lives outside more successfully. In encouraging women to tell their stories, Jones often uses herself as an example. Her similarity to them is crucial to her ability to do this work. One of twelve children of migrant farmworkers, she became pregnant as a teenager. Her life might have stopped there, and she might easily have been in the same situation as the women she works with. She was also very familiar with jail, growing up through the experiences of her brothers, in particular. But her parents insisted that she continue her education while she was pregnant, even if it was hard; then she found theater. She is often quoted as saying that “Theater saved my life. Art saved my life.” The community she found there suggested other ways of living. She has also always been “a political activist. I’ve been blessed with the challenge of making art/performance with the disenfranchised, the incarcerated and the angry young. What is art? Why do we make art? Who is art for?” (Jones unpublished writings). Since art saved her life, she has given the gift of theater to the women she has worked with since the late 80s. But Jones is not presumptuous: “I teach women how to save their own lives through the creative process. . . . Now I’m not going to say that I’ve saved that many. Because the culture has to be interested, and benign neglect is everywhere” (Jones 2010b: 197).

THE ELEMENT OF PERFORMANCE Along with personal writing and workshops, it is central to the Medea Project philosophy that the participants put on a public performance—Jones is a director, and she is clearly constructing a show. When we talked, I questioned

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the emphasis on the particular form of the performance, given that reviews may actually compare the performance (unfavorably) to other professional theater productions. Jones maintains that she is not doing therapy or social work, and that is why the performance is necessary. She rejects the question of whether this is great art, saying that “Art for art’s sake is over.” In another conversation, she goes further and claims that these women’s words are “their Shakespeare” (Jones interview). While I would argue that Shakespeare and Euripides, for instance, offer a poetry and a grandeur lacking in these plays, the Medea Project productions are definitely these women’s chance to tell their suppressed stories. As one speaker says in Slouching towards Armageddon: You asked me not to specify but to lie When I spoke the truth you asked me to run and hide How long will it be until I state my claim And how much will it take for this system to rearrange I shall not be silent any longer because despite my situation I grow even stronger.

Ex-offender and core member, Angela Wilson, is adamant that telling your truth from your point of view and having others listen is fundamental to the Medea Project process. The audience cannot write the performers off. I still maintain that theater does more than just allow self-expression. In plays based on autobiography, the aspect of performance can create a productive distance between the speaker’s experience and her presentation of that experience. In the process of preparing a monologue for public presentation, the “victim” or “survivor” gains skills of self-presentation as well as deeper insight into her experience. The growth was apparent in tapes of the rehearsals of a “letter to my father”—both the speaker and the letter got stronger and stronger as Jones pushed her and questioned her. Moreover, the very process of working on a production leads to a sense of trust between the participants, who in many instances have been taught never to trust another woman, as we see in the script for Slouching, for instance. “Going live” helps to form the community that Jones is after. More than that, however, the deadline of a performance adds a sense of urgency and discipline. As the show gets closer, the pressure is on. Jones uses that urgency in the rehearsals, emphasizing that the women “have to be good!” In rehearsal, a woman has to fall into the arms of the other women, and she is afraid. Jones yells: “She is not to be dropped” (Andrews 1999). She continues, telling them that there are plenty of people out there waiting for that to happen. And the performance itself is an enormous high—the cast tells me that they have a sense of “I did it, I was good.” On stage, in costume, they build on and gain from the enthusiasm of the audience—palpable in the tapes of the work. As Jones also points out, the “Stage is an amazing place to create a safe environment to have a dialogue” with an audience

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and with one another. Throughout the two aspects work together—asking the hard questions and putting together a performance piece that will make these marginalized women visible (Jones interview).

MYTHIC CONTEXT Jones has produced many shows based on Greek myth (Warner 2004). As a guilt-ridden left-wing Classicist, I was somewhat suspicious of this practice given the reputation of the Greeks for being the source of so much that is oppressive to women in our own society. Not only were the ancient societies male-dominated, but the study of the ancients was historically constructed as the purview of elite white men. Given this role, why would a multicultural contemporary feminist theater group find sustenance there? In answering that question, Jones turns first to her childhood love of storytelling. Her family did not have a TV when she was young, so telling stories around the table was a primary form of entertainment. She also had mythology books as a child and loved the stories, in particular the Demeter-Persephone myth. Second, for Jones the myths build on the power of storytelling itself. When she tells the stories to the women in prison, she gets their attention: “They love stories, almost like children.” Thus, she does not see ancient mythology as holding women back but as part of the culture, not that different from modern-day storytelling or spoken word poetry (Jones interview). In the production process, Jones asks the women to find themselves in the myth; the myth then structures the performance piece. It becomes a thread between the different stories that individual women tell (Jones interview). Fe Bongolan, performer and dramaturg, sees the myth as still powerful: “The myth helps define the reality we inhabit. It is still operative. There is a context outside themselves [the women in the project], a reason they are there, which is bigger than the specific law they broke. It frames the incarceration, and they are still in it.” She argues that the myths tell a truth; far from simply revealing an old problem, they explain a current one because “The war on women is eternal” (Bongolan interview). In her view, this mythic structure is not a form of fate (implying that the women can’t change because “things have always been like that”); it rather “enables the incarcerated women to stand separate, see a bigger arena in which to play and hope for themselves.” The Medea Project also deploys myth as a means of pushing back against labeling the women inside; so, for instance, the statement “I believe in mythology vs. pathology” is part of the ritual closing of workshops and shows. The mythic frame provides a way for women to represent themselves outside what the criminal justice system and the media have to say about their lives—it is seen as liberating not constraining. At the same time, the ancient myths give coherence to the piece for the audience who might be familiar with the stories. It may then facilitate the establishment of a connection between the insiders and the outsiders, leading to the recognition

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that “there but for the grace of God go I” (Bongolan interview). Such understanding increases the possibility for meaningful social change. The mythic references then validate both the myth—it is still relevant— and the women—they are not alone. But the Medea Project doesn’t simply apply the myth uncritically. It reappropriates it, as well. Bongolan points out that “On one level, Medea Project’s Medea is stuck, unlike the Euripidean character, but by reappropriating the story, we reappropriate the ancient agenda: Otherwise people tell our story for us . . . We reinvent myth as much as we reinvent ourselves. We twist its tale/tail” (Bongolan interview). In this retelling we see the power of story to allow the assertion of agency. Jones says that the Persephone “myth came in for me because I realized that I would be descending into hell to hang out with women who choose to be there” (email correspondence 9/15/11). After listening to the women talk, she read them the Homeric Hymn to Demeter and asked them to think about “what is the Underworld . . . in contemporary life. . . . for them.” The myth resonated strongly: “The women immediately saw a very clear parallel between Persephone’s descent into the land of the dead and their descent into ‘the life’-drug addiction, prostitution, and everything that happens to runaways,” Jones told the reporter from the Progressive (“Women-in-Prison Theater” 1993). At the same time, her brother Bill T. Jones suggested that she look at the image of the rings of hell from Dante. She asked the women to name them as part of the process of writing, and these ideas of evil appear in the final production.

DEMETER AND PERSEPHONE The Homeric Hymn to Demeter has been subject to multiple interpretations. While the Frazer school of myth critics treated it as a nature myth, explaining the transition of the seasons, it is also deeply resonant with the stages of women’s lives and ancient marriage (Frazer 1940; Foley 1994: 103–12; Lincoln 1981: 71–90). Feminists especially note its representation of gender conflict and the mother-daughter relationship (Foley 1994: 112–37; Arthur 1977; on Black women and myth, especially Persephone-Demeter, see Walters 2007: 12–15, chapters 1, 3, 5). Themes of abandonment and the grieving mother dominate the Medea Project interpretation, as Jones, Bongolan and long-time project member Felicia Scaggs agree; but the title’s reference to “food taboos” places special emphasis on the fruit that seduces Persephone and drags her back to the Underworld. In Food Taboos Demeter and Persephone are called upon and evoked, but the ancient story is not told; it is taken for granted and placed in a world context. The play begins with a section on birth called “Spring at the End of the World.” The actors are in a liminal space, as is Persephone at the opening of the Hymn, but we don’t see Persephone. Instead a goddess enters and tells a story of violence and infanticide. The episode ends with these lines: “mama cooked

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me, Daddy ate me, who’s gonna hang me on the Christmas Tree?” While this jingle has its mythic elements—the stories of Atreus, Pelops and Cronus all refer to men who eat their young—it takes place in the violent present and is entitled “Once Upon a Time Called Now.” The next episode relates Persephone to an African legend about an Abiku (or, in Ibo, obanje), a child who comes and goes, destined to die before maturity. This mother loses several children; named as Demeter she awakes in a crack house, lost but reclaiming her family in a litany that echoes the Medea Project’s ritual recitation of women’s names in workshops. The litany is a way that women claim their importance in the world and “come to terms with their mother,” which Jones’ partner Sean Reynolds insisted was essential to the healing process—to make “some kind of peace with our mothers—the first woman in our lives” (Jones email 11/19/11). In the play, the naming process leads into the mother’s search for her daughter. The following scene, “Abandonment,” switches gears; we are now listening to a girl calling for “mother, Demeter.” Was “Demeter” in jail when her daughter was raped? Was she in a crack house? How many children are calling for these women now that they are in jail?6 The women all “remember mama” doing something—finally Mama is “worrying about me.”7 What do these women’s voices show us about the myth? Is there a sense in which Demeter abandoned her daughter, or did the girl Persephone simply wander too far away, ignoring cultural norms about women’s behavior? On the other hand, what is the cultural environment? In the Hymn, some of the gods hear (Hekate) and see (Helios), but they do nothing (Homeric Hymn 22–9). Similarly, today girls may report abuse and not be listened to, or they may even be punished for speaking out against the powerful male who is, after all, necessary to the mother’s financial, emotional or erotic life.8 Persephone’s pomegranate in the modern United States is drugs, represented in the play by “skittles,” the drug of choice in jail since cigarettes (another drug substitute) are contraband (Food Taboos playbill). An actress enters pushing skittles on the audience; then she says: “I got you. You are now, all of you, my product, my numbers, my statistics, my prisoner.” The skittles are not only what lures people in, but as sugar, they also point to the diet in jail, “the white elephant” that no one talks about (Jones interview; “Nudging the Memory,” draft manuscript). Moreover, in the play Jones uses them to point to the larger political system; not only does the speaker have all the skittles, but she can also deny people “work” and has taken “millions of acres of land” (Food Taboos 1993). All the women whisper Persephone’s name, implying that each lost young woman is Persephone. The repeated refrain is “You shoulda known better.” While this line might seem harsh, merely reiterating what society says when it blames women for being raped, it is also part of what Jones calls “keeping it real.” This scene is derived from a writing assignment that Jones often makes; she asks the participants to write “a letter to my younger self.” Persephone, like many girls in Greek myth, is playing and enjoying herself when her rape occurs. Did she put herself in harm’s way? Not in the Homeric Hymn, but

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perhaps it is true for the girl “who dates” and hangs out with “thugs” and then ends up brutally murdered. At the same time, we might also ask how she was supposed to know if “nobody told her that while doing time for prostitution, trying to get enough money to feed her baby, her baby’s brains are splattered on the back seat of a car in the Tenderloin. Nobody told her, so how could she know” (A Place at the Table 1994). That story is a “cautionary tale” of the dangers facing young women, but it can also raise the question of what we are going to do about it. Jones demands that we ask ourselves “How will we educate young women?” (Jones interview). In this appropriation of the Persephone story, little attention is paid to incest, though sexual violence and prostitution are threads running through the script. While the most obvious feminist element in the Hymn would seem to be her rape by Hades, or Zeus’ making a gift of his daughter to his brother (in modern parlance, pimping her out to him), the women in the Medea Project did not take that up in their writings (though rape by the father is explicit in the workshop tapes for Slouching [Andrews 1999]). In fact, incest and sexual abuse come up over and over again in the women’s narratives around their life experiences. In an earlier draft I speculated that the silence arose from women’s fears of airing that bit of dirty laundry, or from Jones’ interests. Jones objected: “Please remember that Food Taboos was probably our second performance based on a myth. I was only beginning to scratch the surface of the plight of incarcerated women’s lives as well as the rich exploration/ excavation of the myth! . . . I had no set ideas going into the piece and this still holds true today” (Jones email 11/5/11).

PANDORA When the Rockefeller Foundation (Partnerships Affirming Community Transformation program) solicited a proposal from the Medea Project for a performance dealing with race, Jones immediately thought of “Slouching towards Bethlehem,” Joan Didion’s essay about San Francisco in 1967— especially the counterculture—which culminates in two stories about the reckless endangerment of youth in that culture.9 For Jones, the word “slouching” also refers to “kids in the ‘hood,’” with their low slung pants, baseball caps, and a particular shambling gait. Substituting Armageddon for Bethlehem, we see that this youth culture is leading us toward the end of the world. In rehearsal, she yells at the women to get them ready to perform: “[You are] evil to play with; you’re slouching; we are people that people are scared of in the streets. But also yourselves. . . . Be in the game. We are slouching to Armageddon” (Andrews 1999). The production (subtitled both “The Politics of Personal Destruction” and “Conversations on Race with Incarcerated Women”) was based on the Pandora myth. Some details of the myth are particularly important here. In Hesiod, Pandora is created as an evil gift to counteract Prometheus’ gifts to

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mortals (on sacrifice and exchange, see Vernant 1990: 183–201). In the Theogony, where she is not named, however, Athena adorns her with a lovely dress and veil, marking her as a bride (Th. 573–8). This woman/wife is the bane of man’s existence, although necessary for his comfort in old age and for progeny (Th. 590–3, 604–7; see Loraux 1993: 72–3, esp.; Zeitlin 1996: 53–5). The story is reminiscent of the creation of Eve in that it ties evil in the world to the female of the species. In addition, Pandora is the origin of the “race of women” (Th. 591), and women therefore seem to stand apart from men in some essential way. Having been made from earth and water, she is like her pot in the Works and Days version, which holds all the evils of men’s lives, and which she then releases. In Theogony her very being is a beautiful but deceptive trap (“sheer trickery, leaving men resourceless,” Th. 589); in Works and Days she is a snare but also an active agent of deceit (78, esp. 69–82). I could go on, but it would seem that the negativity or misogyny of the myth is clear (Zeitlin 1996: 56–8). This myth does not then seem like a promising inspiration for the incarcerated women who work with the Medea Project. What do they make of it? In their play, the story is told not once but twice. The first time it is a rephrasing of Hesiod but with a few significant changes—not the least of which is tone! In the Greek, Pandora is created as the “semblance of a modest maiden” (parthenos, Th. 572). In the Medea Project’s version, the story goes like this: Pandora was a woman. And y’all know how women are . . . Even my Momma used to tell me “don’t trust no women.” Well Pandora was no different. She was made by Zeus, the “Big Daddy” god of them all, to trick humankind. The problem with Pandora was that she was too damned nosy . . . if she had just been able to mind her own business . . . but wait a minute . . . rewind. I’m gettin’ way ahead of myself. Not to gossip or nothin’ or get into no “he said/she said” type of thing but the word out on the street is that Zeus made Pandora so that he could get back at Prometheus who wouldn’t give Zeus (and the other gods) R-E-S-P-E-CT in the way, you know, a God would expect. Prometheus kept treating human beings better, at least according to Zeus and the whole Greek god posse. If you let Zeus tell it, they was gettin’ cold dissed. . . . Can’t no man really resist some good pu . . . well, you know, a fine woman. So, right . . . Zeus made Pandora fine. She was the ultimate in beauty according to the stories about her. I ain’t never seen her myself . . . So anyway, Pandora . . . she was fine. Yup, she was fine—not everybody’s type but you know the so-called standard fine. . . . You know, curly red hair, big baby blue eyes, slim . . . maiden and vixen with the red fiery hair and the white white skin and gowns . . . Miss Pandora worked everybody’s nerves. . . . Well Zeus hooked her all up and he and the other gods GAVE her to Epimetheus. Now you know: “You can’t never get something for nothing,” as my Momma usedta say. So Zeus definitely put some crazi-

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ness up in the mix. Before he gave her to Epimetheus, he and the other gods gave Pandora a box or a jar or something . . . Some people say jar, others say box, but each god put some messed up juju hoodoo type drama up in there. Whooa girl. They gave THAT to Pandora, sealed it up and sent her on to her man. Zeus even put more drama into the whole scheme because he was really hating on Prometheus. So he decided: I’m a give Pandora a very nosy, inquisitive nature AND l’ma tell her: “Baby, I need you to hold this here for me. You the onliest one I know I can really trust to hold this . . . but there is one thing you can’t ever, ever do . . . You can’t open up this box . . . No matter what . . . Your man might threaten you, your Momma might beg you, somebody might say they gon’ give you some money but don’t ever in your life open up this box. If you do, I’m telling you—-you gon’ regret it and so is everybody else in the World. So Pandora was set up. Zeus had already given her this nosy nature so she said, “yeah, sure you right Zeus. l’m a hold it for you, baby. Your box is safe with me . . . “but y’all know she opened the box and when she did all Hell broke loose . . . “Only hope was left.” The modern street language here calls upon an image of women that resonated with the San Francisco audience; it got a huge laugh. Pandora is a woman, and we all know about women—that is, we all know what the world says about women. Women are nosy, like Pandora. Moreover, women have been told “never trust a woman,” a precept that the Medea Project consciously works to undo and resist. The “pimp daddy” Zeus creates her; she is the definition of fine in this culture: white with red hair and blue eyes. In performance the actress emphasizes that there are two kinds of “juju,” and she has been given the “bad juju,” not the good juju. Everyone in the audience laughs. The mingling of traditional Greek myth and African spirituality makes clear that the stories are not really specific to one culture or the other. It is significant that the power dynamic between Zeus and Pandora is played with: he has created her; then he gives her the box to hold. Using the box, but also referring to the jar, makes the sexual reference stand out for modern audiences; her holding it also relates to women’s role in drug trafficking. When Zeus emphasizes not opening it, he almost guarantees that she will. And it makes the culture’s point that you can never trust a woman. The production was also partially inspired by Dante; the Evils in the play refer to Dante’s circles of Hell and the related sins. In political workshops, the participants discussed each and expanded on their meaning; in the script each is named and embodied by a woman in the cast—but according to the stage directions, they are “all: mad as hell” (script). They were staged as a police lineup at the beginning of the show—“actually pretty funny” (Bongolan email 10/25/11), and, when they are named, it is like the call out or prison roll call. As singer Paulette Jones says in the show, “[now] you are a number not a name. [You have to] Play a brand new game (Andrews 1999).

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One evil, money, becomes more specifically racialized in Jones’ explosive explanation to the cast: “Nike pays women predominantly nothing, and we buy it. What she is talking about is money as evil; the love of money is the root of all evil. We sell ourselves for so little money. We might as well, got to get something for it. . . . A nigger boy is laying in the street dead because somebody took his damn shoes. . . . !” (Andrews 1999). The real topic of the show is race. Today a Pandora’s box is one that we don’t want to open because it will make trouble—or we might say, don’t open that can of worms. Race is the Pandora’s Box that we don’t want to open. (The question, “are we post-racial?,” is a sign of that reluctance.) This show provides a discussion of the race question from the perspective of women on the inside, who are predominantly but not exclusively women of color. Race has more than one meaning in the play—the race of racialization in the United States, competitive races, and metaphoric races. Then too, at different points in the play, Stephen Foster’s “Camptown Races” is heard, and everyone in the cast begins to run. The song is very jolly, and yet it was part of the minstrel song repertoire, sung by whites in blackface, using black dialect, while the “camptowns” were locations for former slaves and migrant workers. Thus the “happy” lyrics and jaunty rhythm make the miserable workers into stereotypical “darkies,”10 running on command. In another episode, the character named Mother of God starts an actual race, calling out “On your mark, get ready, go.” The women are therefore in a race. But it turns out to be a rat race: how do you stay out of jail? Resist becoming a statistic or caught in the revolving door? In this race, women move forward and back with each cue: Affirmative Action Proposition 209 Re-segregation Cultural Equity School Vouchers Ethnic Cleansing Tolerance/1ntolerance Proposition 187 Brown vs. Board of Education The women also hurl racist epithets at the audience, which are shocking at first, and then amusing as the playfulness of the actresses takes the sting out of the words.11 Other encounters with racism, in restaurants, in an interracial affair, make that scene more emotional and less humorous. In the workshop, there was an extensive discussion of the word “nigger” or “niggah” (Andrews

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1999). While the participants for the most part agreed that it was a commonly used word, the script also asserts that it is not all right: “Let me say this: that word nigga’ was yesteryear. Today I refused to be called out my name . . . Shit, nigga’, them fighting words.” Despite oppression, these women refuse to go along with it—as the monologue I cited earlier puts it: “I will not be silent any longer.”

RECLAIMING PANDORA The performance comes back to a second Pandora narrative in which Pandora is a mother goddess who has powers but is misinterpreted. Her jar is full of gifts from nature, and she gives them instead of receiving them from the gods; they are beneficial, not the bane of men’s existence: Well these sisters say she had a jar; and from that jar she poured forth many gifts into the World for humankind. . . . What gifts? . . . a pomegranate, which became a lemon, which became a pear. . . flowering trees that bore fruit, gnarled trees hung with olives and . . . the grapevine . . . She reached into the jar for a handful of seeds and sprinkled them over the hillside . . . plants for hunger and illness, for weaving and dyeing. Hidden beneath [her] surface [were] minerals, ore and clay of endless form . . . flint [for making fire]. [When] Pandora turned the jar on its side, [she covered] the hillside with Her flowing aura. Mortals were bathed in the changing colors of her aura: [she bring[s] wonder, curiosity, memory [She] brings wisdom. [She] bring[s] justice and mercy. [She] bring[s] caring and communal bonds. [She] bring[s] courage, strength, endurance. [She] bring[s] loving kindness for all human beings. [She] bring[s] the seeds of peace . . . You know how it is once a story gets going and it’s juicy . . . it just kinda sticks. Well, that’s what I think happened to Pandora. Somebody turned her best blessing into her worse curse. According to the women of the Medea Project, what we have from Hesiod is only the story told by the patriarchal victors. When I talked to Angela Wilson, who was in the play, about whether the myth was problematic, she responded vehemently that it was not! Having performed it, she had a strong argument for “revision” and for Pandora as a sign of women’s power—on the “box,” she says “the vagina is a great weapon. Pandora is pissed off: ‘I’ve been used and sold,’ which is a lot of people’s story” (Wilson interview). What does it mean that hope remains in the jar (60–105; on the difficulties of interpretation of elpis see Zeitlin 1996: 64–7, with references)? If the jar was full of evils, is hope an evil? Does hope fool us? Or does it keep us going? Wilson’s reaction makes me think that Pandora is actually keeping hope—“the only thing keeping her alive” (Wilson interview).

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In the program notes, Rhodessa Jones dreams aloud that Pandora was “given a choice: Silence or exile in the box! She chooses the box.” She is a strong woman: “Wide-eyed, fierce and fearless—a woman with an opinion, a woman able to partake in a sociopolitical cultural conversation. Stepping out of the box on steady legs, she squares her shoulders, and with head held high she looks us all in the eye: Then instructs us to pursue hope” (Jones 1999). In this version of the story, Jones uses the myth to inspire women to hope, to find a way out of the box. The Medea Project tries to create Pandoras, not in Hesiod’s image, but in the tradition of the great goddesses who came before. But more people have read Hesiod than have seen this production. Thus, as the Chorus of Euripides’ Medea says, the men have told the stories, and lying stories to boot (Medea 415–30); the matriarchal version that these women give is not known, like much subaltern speech. Thus, Hesiod’s version dominates and provides the cultural stories that incarcerated women are up against. It is very difficult for a trained Hellenist to find herself working on living writers much less with them. While research is never objective, it is even less so when the researcher is embedded in the object of study.12 I acknowledge here my enthusiasm for the work that Jones is doing and my admiration for her because she has been committed to social justice over the long haul. It is easy to demand that prison work show results (or to ask “where are the statistics showing that it works?”), but sitting with her current group of theater professionals, women living with HIV and ex-offenders, I realized viscerally that we must not discount the individuals who are changed.13 In a powerful moment in the workshops for Slouching, Sean Reynolds points out to one of the offenders whose daughter has just been killed in a drug deal gone wrong that the prison authorities do not have to let her go to her daughter’s funeral—or to do anything else for that matter; they have all the power. But the Medea Project workshops and performances give these women a chance to speak up and have a “time out” from incarceration. In that sense, they recapture some semblance of agency. It is not just the workshop that can have this liberating effect. The performance before an audience can also have a transformative effect, leading people to do something beyond acting as voyeurs. To close on a personal note, it has had that effect on me and has deepened my resolve to do something in the prison near where I teach in upstate New York. I am currently part of a small group of Hamilton College faculty which teaches in the prison; I am working on the Medea Project model, revising it as fits my situation—that is, we are working with men in a library, and I am not a theater professional. There are differences of race, class, gender and age between me and them. Indeed, there is very little in common between what we are doing and the Medea Project, which emphasizes the culture of women more than prison culture. And Rhodessa Jones is no longer teaching in the prisons on a regular basis. Yet I am inspired by Jones and her work. Are we taking down the prison-industrial complex? Not directly, but we are using our knowledge to make a difference in these men’s lives.

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NOTES This chapter owes much to my work with the inestimable and indefatigable Judy Hallett in the APA and in The Democratic Turn project. She is truly a force of nature. 1. I want to thank Corinne Bancroft, Andres Matlock, Amy Tannenbaum, students in my course “Tragedy: Then and Now,” who read and commented on an early draft of this paper, as well as Peter Rabinowitz who provided moral and editorial support. Barbara Gold’s editorial eagle eye saved me from many embarrassing mistakes. Thanks also to the wonderful women of the Medea Project, especially Rhodessa Jones, Fe Bongolan, Angela Wilson and Cassandra Steptoe, who agreed to be interviewed about the work. Support from Patrick Reynolds and Margaret Gentry at Hamilton College and the Christian A. Johnson Fund made this research possible. 2. As a result of the statistics, women tend to be “hyperinvisible” in the prison system, which is almost entirely geared toward men (Gordon 2004: 55; Davis 2003: 64–5). The change in rates of incarceration overlaps with “persisting images of the hypersexuality that serve to justify assaults against them [women of color] both in and outside of prison” (Davis 2003: 80). Sexual abuse, in the form of the strip search, “has become an institutionalized component of punishment behind prison walls” (Davis 2003: 77; on strip search, see also Davis 2005: 46–7; Clark 2004). 3. A huge problem is that they cannot provide for their children while in jail, and they tend to lose them (Clark 2004: 103; Travis and Waul 2003). One woman in the Medea Project is an example of the problems posed by the economy and its dreadful effects. She was arrested and incarcerated on a drug charge; while she was in prison her child was shot (see above; n. 6 below.) 4. Cf. RTA (Rehabilitation through the Arts) at Sing Sing in New York (Buell 2011), the Actors’ Gang Prison Project in L.A., http://www.theactorsgang. com/prison.html; Shakespeare Behind Bars in Luckett, Kentucky. (www. shakespearebehindbars.org). 5. Two-thirds of released prisoners return within three years of their release (U.S. Department of Justice 2010, www.justice.gov/). 6. One of the most difficult aspects of the system of incarceration is the separation of women from their children (Crooms and Gardiner 2004: 264; Travis and Waul 2003). See Covington 2003 on the need for a specific consideration of the issues facing women in the criminal justice system. 7. Jones created “I Remember My Mother” as a way to celebrate memory, “in this case an attempt to get the Medea Project to consider/revisit /honor images and stories of our mothers in our lives.” (Jones email 11/19/11). 8. Many of the women in the Medea Project have experienced this violence. E.g. in Reality Is Just Outside the Window, Dorsha Brown speaks about her rape and subsequent beating by her mother in “My mother keeps it.” 9. Didion took her title from the Yeats poem, which ends: “And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”

10. The song also controls the performers (Crawford 2001: 132): “A song like De Camptown Races, with a tune written to hold performers to the prescribed notes, helped to channel unruliness into a more controlled mode of expression.” 11. “wigger, spigger pligger, vigger chigger jigger igger bigger afrigger eurigger rigger smigger tigger nigger.” The workshops on race made people confront their fears about saying these words.

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12. Fraden 2003: 11, on her tendency not to push too hard as a result of her intimate involvement with the project . 13. I am not alone in feeling this ambivalence; see, for example, Ann Folwell Stanford 2004. See also Baz Kershaw’s succinct analysis of the difference between inculcating coping strategies and producing practices that challenge and resist (Kershaw 2004: 36)

REFERENCES

Interviews Conducted by the Author, September 2011 Rhodessa Jones Fe Bongolan Angela Wilson

Medea Project Productions Andrews, L. 1999. Workshop Tapes: Slouching towards Armageddon. VHS. Medea Project. 1992. Reality Is Just Outside the Window. Conceived and directed by Rhodessa Jones. January 8. Medea Project. 1993. Food Taboos in the Land of the Dead. Conceived and directed by Rhodessa Jones. April 1. Medea Project. 1994. A Taste of Somewhere Else: A Place at the Table. Conceived and directed by Rhodessa Jones. February 10. Medea Project. 1999. Slouching towards Armageddon: A Captive’s Conversation/ Observation on Race Politics of Personal Destruction. Conceived and directed by Rhodessa Jones. January 21.

Editions and Secondary Texts Alexander, M. 2010. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: New Press. Arnold, R. 1990. “Processes of Victimization and Criminalization of Black Women.” Social Justice 17: 153–63. Arthur, M. 1977. “Politics and Pomegranates and Interpretation of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter.” Arethusa: 7–47. Rpt. in Foley 1994: 212–42. Balfour, M., ed. 2004. Theatre in Prison: Theory and Practice. Bristol: Intellect. Buell, B. 2011. “Rehabilitation through the Arts at Sing Sing: Drama in the Big House.” In Performing New Lives: Prison Theatre, ed. J. Shailor, 49–65. London: Jessica Kingsley. Case, S.-E. 1988. Feminism and Theatre. New York: Methuen. Clark, M. 2004. “Somebody’s Daughter Theatre: Celebrating Difference with Women in Prison. In Theatre in Prison: Theory and Practice, ed. M. Balfour, 101–6. Bristol: Intellect. Covington, S. S. 2003. “A Woman’s Journey Home: Challenges for Female Offenders.” In Prisoners Once Removed: The Impact of Incarceration and Reentry on Children, Families, and Communities, ed. J. Travis and M. Waul, 67–104. Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press. Crawford, R. 2001. An Introduction to America’s Music. New York: Norton. Crooms, L. and J. K. Gardiner. 2004. “Preface.” Feminist Studies 30: 261–8. Davis, A. 2003. Are Prisons Obsolete? New York: Seven Stories.

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———. 2004. “Globalism and the Prison Industrial Complex.” In Keeping Good Time: Reflections on Knowledge, Power, and People, interview with author Avery Gordon, 46–62. Boulder: Paradigm. ———. 2005. Abolition Democracy: Beyond Empire, Prisons, and Torture: Interviews with Angela Y. Davis. New York: Seven Stories. Foley, H., ed. 1994. The Homeric Hymn to Demeter. Translation, Commentary and Interpretive Essays. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Fraden, R. 2003. “The Confessional Voice: Medea’s Brutal Imagination.” In Captive Audience: Prison and Captivity in Contemporary Theater, ed. T. Fahy and K. King, 9–24. New York: Routledge. Frazer, J. 1940. The Golden Bough: a Study in Magic and Religion. Abridged ed. New York: Macmillan. Glaze, L. 2010. “Correctional Populations in the United States, 2009.” Bureau of Justice Statistics. http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov. Gordon, A. 2004. Keeping Good Time: Reflections on Knowledge, Power, and People. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers. Jones, R. (Rhodessa). 1993. Interviewed in “Women-in-Prison Theater.” The Progressive 57: 17. ———. 1999. “Director’s Notes: Slouching towards Armageddon. ———. 2003. Untitled Essay. In Inner Lives: Voices of African American Women in Prison, ed. P. Johnson. New York: New York University Press. 243–51. ———. 2010a. Unpublished writings. ———. 2010b. In Conversations with Great Teachers, interview with editor, Bill Smoot. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 193–201. ———. n.d. “Nudging the Memory,” draft manuscript. Kershaw, B. 2004. “Pathologies of Hope in Drama and Theatre.” In Theatre in Prison: Theory and Practice, ed. M. Balfour, 35–54. Bristol: Intellect. Lincoln, B. 1981. Emerging from the Chrysalis: Studies in Rituals of Women’s Initiation. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Loraux, N. 1993. The Children of Athena: Athenian Ideas about Citizenship and the Division between the Sexes. Trans. C. Levine. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Mastronarde, D., ed. 2002. Euripides. Medea. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Most, G. W., ed. Hesiod: Theogony, Works and Days, Testimonia, ed. and trans. G. W. Most. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Ryan, P. R. 1976. “Theatre and Therapy.” The Drama Review: TDR. 20: 31–42. Stanford, A. F. 2004. “More Than Just Words: Women’s Poetry and Resistance at Cook County Jail.” Feminist Studies 30: 277–301. Tocci, L. 2007. The Proscenium Cage: Critical Case Studies in U.S. Prison Theatre Programs. Youngstown: Cambria Press. Travis, J. and M. Waul. 2003. Prisoners Once Removed: The Impact of Incarceration and Reentry on Children, Families, and Communities. Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press. Vernant, J.-P. 1990. Myth and Society in Ancient Greece. Trans. J. Lloyd. New York: Zone Books. Walters, T. 2007. African American Literature and the Classicist Tradition: Black Women Writers from Wheatley to Morrison. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Warner, S. 2004. “The Medea Project: Mythic Theater for Incarcerated Women.” Feminist Studies 30: 483–509. Zeitlin, F. 1996. “Signifying Difference: the Myth of Pandora.” In Playing the Other: Gender and Society in Classical Greek Literature, 53–86. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

19 Theaters of War Jana Adamitis and Mary-Kay Gamel

Abstract. Engaged performance seeks to affect its audience in particular ways, usually trying to provoke some kind of change in them. One kind of engaged performance over the last ten years has been influenced by the work of Jonathan Shay, who argues that theater in Athens arose from the political need to purify, purge and reclarify civic understanding to its returning soldiers, so they could again fulfill the roles of citizens of a democracy. During the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last ten years, some engaged performances have sought to provide therapy to military personnel and veterans of these wars. We analyze various recent examples of engaged performance in the United States based on Greek drama, discussing both the advantages and problems of this approach. The U.S. war in Afghanistan was launched a month after terrorist attacks via hijacked airliners in New York and other locations killed more than 3,000 people. In response, the United States and allied nations sought to destroy the al-Qaeda terrorist organization, put a stop to its use of Afghanistan as a base and remove the Taliban regime from power. Then, in March 2003, the United States and its allies invaded Iraq, aiming to topple dictator Saddam Hussein. Both actions had some quick results but were followed by long years of occupation and insurgency, with very high costs in terms of money and lives. On December 15, 2011, the U.S. secretary of defense declared the Iraq war officially over, and the last U.S. troops left Iraq three days later. In June 2010 the war in Afghanistan became the second-longest continuous military conflict in U.S. history. It continues to this day, although President Obama has stated that all U.S. troops will be out by 2014.1 No matter when the Afghanistan war ends, the effects of both of these wars on the Americans who served in them—more than 2.3 million—are far from over. Deaths among U.S. forces are far lower than those in the Vietnam War, but injuries sustained by the survivors may well be harder to detect and longer-lasting. Because of advances in combat medicine, faster evacuations and better body armor, soldiers wounded in the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts are eight times more likely to survive than those wounded

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in the Vietnam War. An estimated one-third of these veterans return with traumatic brain injuries, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or depression. Many have difficulty finding employment, and many are homeless. The numbers and costs—in medical treatment, broken families, suicides, medical disability claims—are already huge, and over the next forty years, costs could reach $930 billion (The Week 2012). In September 2011, just one week after the tenth anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the Chronicle of Higher Education published an op-ed piece titled “Why I Can No Longer Teach U.S. Military History.” The author, Joyce Goldberg, a professor at the University of Texas at Arlington, suggested that universities need to help student veterans and their families and friends cope with the emotional trauma of war. Her course description and syllabus focused on U.S. military history through the Vietnam era, but many of the students had enrolled in her class not to learn about that topic, she felt, but rather for “finding solace, seeking closure, or securing an understanding of their own—or, in many cases, their loved ones’— recent military experiences.” In her view what these students needed was “personal catharsis,” a need she felt unprepared to meet (Goldberg 2011). Readers’ responses to the article generally agreed that something should be done to address this pressing issue among university students—a need that may very well increase in the coming years, as the veterans of the war in Afghanistan reintegrate into civilian life. In November 2011 the director of the Institute for Veterans and Military Families at Syracuse University responded in a letter to the editor aptly titled “Engaged Faculty Members Can Help Veterans in the Classroom.” He invited universities to “build on the strengths of their experts to address the issues faced by veterans, and . . . to create relevant, community-engaged opportunities to engage in scholarship, research, teaching and service” (Schmeling 2011). The use of the word “engaged” in the latter document makes us, two academics involved in staging ancient Mediterranean drama for modern audiences, think of “engaged performance,” performance that seeks to affect its audiences in particular ways, usually trying to provoke some kind of change in them. Performance of this sort is sometimes called “applied theater” (Prentki and Preston 2009). Kershaw, drawing on Schechner’s distinction between entertainment and efficacy, prefers the term “efficacy,” defined as “the potential that theatre may have to make the immediate effects of performance influence, however minutely, the general historical evolution of wide social and political realities” (Kershaw 1992: 1). In her recent book Cohen-Cruz argues that “engaged performance includes, but is larger than, applied theatre” (2010: 5) and insists that the term “engaged” must have “its historical connotation of commitment, but unfettered by assumptions of aesthetic mediocrity and strictly material usefulness” (3). One particular kind of engaged performance focuses on providing therapy for loss (Kanter 2007), and there is evidence that in the ancient Mediterranean world performance sometimes had a therapeutic function. Mitchell-Boyask (2008)

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discusses connections between drama and the cult of Asklepios in ancient Greece; Hartigan (2009) compares ancient and modern drama therapy. We might also remember that, when Aristotle says that viewers of tragedy experience a katharsis of feelings aroused by witnessing the tragic events, he is using a medical term indicating beneficial therapy. Such studies of applied, engaged or efficacious drama invoke Boal and Brecht far more often than Sophocles and Euripides. Yet Classical texts and Classicists have been actively and effectively involved in “engaged performances” in recent years. An important catalyst has been the work of psychiatrist Jonathan Shay. Shay, a psychiatrist who has treated Vietnam War veterans, argues that the experiences of warriors in Homer’s Iliad can be compared with the combat trauma suffered by veterans of our recent wars. In his Achilles in Vietnam (1994), a deeply thoughtful and well-written book, he maintains that the Homeric poem can illuminate modern warfare and also that the testimony of modern soldiers can inform interpretation of the Iliad; he develops these points in his Odysseus in America (2002) and “Moral Injury” (2012). Shay argues that those who send others to battle owe them concern and care for their welfare before, during and after the battle. Such care should include appropriate training, building cohesion between soldiers and accepting and providing support for grief, not encouraging berserking (wild rage which can overwhelm soldiers during battle) and intentional injustice, respecting the enemy’s humanity, and acknowledging (rather than denying) psychiatric casualties. Shay maintains that narrative can play a powerful role in sharing grief. He regards Homer as a “doctor of the soul” (1994: 188), whose epic can have a therapeutic function, possessing the power to heal the personality changes and character damage resulting from the emotional distress of war by communalizing the trauma. Here we might think about Homer in different ways, as a performer—human, part of a society, perhaps even as a warrior or at least affected by war himself—and as “Homer,” a text—unaffected, alwaysalready ancient (we owe this insight to Duncan 2011). Modern veterans who tell their own personal Iliad to receptive audience members can begin to lay aside their feelings of aloneness, transform their ever-present suffering into a conscious memory of past events and thus use their narrative as a means of establishing authority and control over those events. But Shay also bemoans the lack of opportunities that our culture provides for creating a shared communal experience through a performed narrative. Arguing that Athenians “communally reintegrated their returning warriors through recurring participation in rituals of the theater” (1994: 230) with the aim of providing what Goldberg called “personal catharsis,” he suggests that “we need a modern equivalent of Athenian tragedy” (1994: 194). He expands his interpretation of the function of Athenian tragic drama (though quite briefly) in “The Birth of Tragedy—out of the Needs of Democracy,” in which he states, “Athenian theater was created and performed by combat veterans for an audience of combat veterans; they did this to enable returning soldiers to

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function together in a democratic polity. . . . Surrounded by combat-proven comrades seated around him in the theater, he could feel safe enough to take in what he could take in. My conjecture is that the distinctive character of Athenian theater arose from the political need to purify, purge and reclarify civic understanding to its returning soldiers, so they could again fulfill the roles of citizens of a democracy” (Shay 1995). Shay suggests a kind of theater that we think can be called “theater of war” for several reasons: first, because texts such as the Iliad and Greek drama often involve war as setting and theme; second, because current and former warriors may be in the audience; and perhaps most important, because engaged performance seeks to make contact with its audiences in ways different from theater that seeks to entertain or enlighten them. It does not, of course, make war on them, but it can confront, challenge and console them. Shay’s work has had a strong impact on Classical scholarship. Meagher’s Herakles Gone Mad (2006), for example, is a translation of Euripides’ Herakles accompanied by an essay and commentary deeply influenced by Shay’s ideas. In this play Herakles returns home from the last of his labors (stealing Cerberus from Hades and rescuing his friend Theseus) to find his stepfather Amphitryon and his wife and children threatened by a homicidal usurper, whom he quickly dispatches. Then, driven mad by the command of Hera, who hates him as the illegitimate offspring of her husband Zeus, he kills his whole family except his stepfather. Once he realizes what he has done, he plans to commit suicide until Theseus appears and convinces him to continue living and come with him to Athens. Meagher pays tribute to Shay for changing “the way Homer is read today” and argues that Achilles and Odysseus “suffer from PTSD” (2006: 50). Herakles’ labors were mostly directed against supernatural animals, but Meagher calls them “wars” (54) and insists Herakles is a “war veteran,” as are Theseus, the play’s Chorus of Theban elders and the playwright too (44–6). With the help of his stepfather and Theseus, Herakles comes to his senses and realizes what he has done; Meagher calls this “recovery” and insists, “It is only in this circle of survivors, this community of friends, that Herakles could hope to and will find healing” by reconstructing and sharing the full narrative of his trauma (58). Meagher describes this as a “redefinition of heroism,” since “none of Herakles’ labors called for the courage he must now summon and somehow find within himself” (60). Meagher’s reading of this play is powerful and passionate, and his honesty about the influences on his reading praiseworthy. We think, however, that what he calls a translation is often closer to an adaptation. To be sure, every translation involves interpretation, but Meagher includes sentences in brackets which he acknowledges are not in the Greek text but insists are “invariably consistent with the sense of the original Greek” (xii). And Meagher does not always alert the reader to his changes. For example, as Herakles returns to sanity and sees his children’s bodies, he asks, “What is this sight I see, wretched as I am?” and Amphitryon answers, “You waged a

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war which was not a war on your children” (Herakles 1132–3, our translation). Meagher has Amphitryon answer, “War. What you witness, my boy, is the ungodly war you waged against children, your own,” and inserts a note here that the text “construes the palace of Thebes as a battlefield and the slaughter within as war. That is clearly how the mad Herakles saw it; and, we might surmise, how Euripides would have us see it” (Meagher 2006: 150). A potential support for Meagher’s argument is that the name of the goddess Madness who drives Herakles mad is Lussa, a word that refers specifically to the madness generated in battle, what Shay calls “berserking.” But we think Euripides’ text specifies that Herakles’ action was not a war because it was waged against those who (like the herd animals killed by Ajax in Sophocles’ play) could not fight back. Herakles’ actions not only destroy those dearest to him but also violate the heroic code of battle, afflicting him with not only grief and remorse but also shame. Hall finds the play far more open than Meagher believes, even suggesting that Herakles’ labors might be considered the actions of a contract serial killer (2010: 171). We agree with Goldhill that in Athens, “The establishment of democratic institutions made public debate, collective decision making, and the shared ideals of participatory citizenship central elements of political practice. To be in an audience was not just a thread in the city’s social fabric, it was a fundamental political act. To sit as an evaluating, judging spectator was to participate as a political subject” (1999: 5). By putting his interpretation into the text in order to guide the reader to a particular response, Meagher reduces the play’s complexity and the chance for audience members to make the connections between meanings for themselves. Peter Sellars, a renowned director of theater and opera, has often created engaged productions—not surprisingly, since he teaches “Art as Social Action” and “Art as Moral Action” at UCLA. Four of his productions over the past twenty-five years draw on Classical sources: Ajax, based on Sophocles, in a version by Robert Auletta in 1986 at the American National Theater in Washington, D.C.; The Persians (based on Aeschylus), again adapted by Auletta, at the Edinburgh Festival and the Los Angeles Mark Taper Forum in 1993; Euripides’ The Children of Herakles, translated by Ralph Gladstone, at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 2003 (after touring to Germany, Italy and France); and Handel’s opera Hercules, based on Sophocles’ Women of Trachis, at Lyric Opera Chicago in 2011. All these productions combined ancient and modern elements. Each was staged in modern dress, with strong connections to specific contemporary historical moments, but gradually the allusions became more specific and pointed. Auletta’s Persians is based on Aeschylus’ play about the second invasion of Greece by the mighty and powerful Persian Empire in 480 BCE. An outmanned and outfinanced coalition of Greek states, led by the Athenians, repelled this invasion. Produced in 472 BCE, only eight years after this remarkable victory, Persians could have been a triumphal gloat. Instead

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it sensitively depicts the Persians’ fear and despair at the Greek victory, and the ghost of Darius offers a warning to the victors: “Piles of corpses will speak without words to the eyes of human beings that we mortals must not think too big. . . . Don’t despise your own status and lose great wealth by lusting after more. Zeus, a severe auditor, punishes those who boast too much” (818–28, our translation). Auletta, however, reversed the situation, with the United States depicted as the powerful nation invading the weaker Persians (the Iraqis), in an explicit critique of the 1991 invasion of Iraq. The Chorus tells Atossa, Queen of Persia: They are terrorists, you see, Force always seems to work for them. They are experts at applying sanctions— to garotte a country, cut off its vital life of trade, suffocate and humiliate its people . . . They want what lives under the desiccated, searing, fruitless skin of our land— its hidden life, treasure . . . those dark, lubricating, percussive, sacred, slippery fluids (Auletta 1993: 35)

And she responds: I curse the name of America. What she has taken from us— Cutting from each Persian woman, a living husband, or a son, or a father (37)

Later a messenger, after describing the terrible effects of rockets, missiles, tanks, Stealth bombers and B-52s carpet bombing (41) continues, “Real American made monsters . . . fantasy screens . . . given permission for a true killing spree . . . breathing bullets . . . the true American way . . . the pounding blood force of their bloody country . . . ” (45). The anti-American propaganda of this version is far less subtle than the war commentary from the Persians’ perspective in Aeschylus’ script. Instead of the self-recriminations and laments with which Aeschylus’ play ends, Auletta depicts Xerxes as a defiant, even mad, but triumphant Saddam Hussein: And now they are terrified that I will survive and threaten their interests once again . . .

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Of course, this was before Saddam was found and hanged. Not surprisingly, the night Gamel saw The Persians, fully half of the Los Angeles audience stalked out before the end. This production may have been engaged, but its actual audience was enraged. Sellars’ Children of Herakles was a fascinating experiment. The director, seeking to arouse discussions about the worldwide problem of refugees and their treatment, chose to stage a very rarely performed Euripides play about the children of Herakles after his death and their struggles to find safety, shelter and sustenance. The performance was the centerpiece for a variety of activities, including journalists’ interviews of political leaders and experts on human rights and immigration issues; testimony from refugees; coffee before the performance and food afterward for the audience, cast and refugee participants; and finally a film. The event was more like a town meeting than a professional theater performance, and that was why Sellars brought it to Cambridge, Massachusetts, rather than New York or Washington, D.C. In each city where the production was staged, actual refugee children were chosen to serve as the chorus. Mostly they clustered around the central altar, but twice during the show they went out into the audience and thanked audience members for welcoming them into their city. Both The Persians and The Children of Herakles were minimalist productions, with bare stages, some actors at desks using microphones and little naturalistic acting. Sellars offered this explanation: The whole point is that if you’re a refugee, you can only bring what you can carry. You don’t have anything. You lost it. So that’s why the stage is bare, because these people have lost it. I’m also trying to dispense with the virtual world and get you into just sheer human presence. One of the things I’m very into at the moment is image deprivation. You know, images are used all over the place and are so cheap. And the Greeks operated differently. You’re not allowed to see Oedipus take his eyes out. That happens elsewhere. What you have to see are the consequences; what you

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have to see are the root causes. But you don’t see the CNN image, because Aeschylus and Sophocles and Euripides knew that the deepest images are the ones you form in your own mind. (Clay 2003) Among Sellars’ productions of ancient drama, his version of Handel’s opera Hercules seems the most obviously indebted to Shay’s ideas. Based on still another play about Herakles, Sophocles’ Women of Trachis, this opera depicts the hero, his labors over, returning home from an actual war, the siege of the Thessalian city Oichalia. He brings the king’s daughter, Iole, as a captive, and his second wife, Deianeira, begins to suspect he besieged the city and killed Iole’s father to get this girl for himself. Sophocles’ play focuses on Deianeira and her difficult relationship with Herakles, which is exacerbated by underlings who tell her different stories, and ends with her causing his death (apparently unintentionally) and then committing suicide. Like many Baroque operas, Handel’s softens the hard edges of its Classical source: in Sophocles’ play the girl says not one word, so her connection to the hero remains a mystery, but in the opera Iole insists that there is nothing illicit in her and Hercules’ relationship, and she welcomes the marriage to his son Hyllus with which the play ends. Sellars cut the opera from three acts to two, eliminating a number of Hercules’ arias but keeping him on the stage, moody and distracted, while Deianeira tries in vain to attract his attention. The Chicago set had marble columns (broken, perhaps to suggest the protagonist’s house destroyed by enforced separation and jealousy), but Hercules’ contemporary military uniform and Iole’s orange prison jumpsuit and hood evoked the current wars in the Mideast. Overall, the production strongly suggested that the tragic problems of communication and trust between the soldier and his wife were caused by his war experiences. Here again was a powerful production but one that clearly followed an agenda which reduced the opera’s complexity and ambiguity.2 Another example of an engaged production was a rock-musical version of Prometheus Bound at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in March 2011. This production started from the script presumably by Aeschylus (some have questioned his authorship) depicting the punishment of Prometheus for defying Zeus’ intention to kill off the human race. For giving humans fire and hope, Prometheus is chained to a rock in an isolated spot far from Greece. There he is visited by various supporters and opponents, but he firmly resists all attempts to get him to make peace with Zeus. At the end of the drama, he is cast down into Hades. This production, with script and lyrics by Steven Sater (one of the creators of the musical version of Spring Awakening), music composed by Serj Tankian and directed by Diane Paulus, was advertised as “the struggle against the brute force of a ruthless dictator” by “Western civilization’s first prisoner of conscience” (American Repertory Theater n.d.). Sater learned Greek while recovering from injuries sustained when his apartment caught fire during his sophomore year in college, and he began working on his Prometheus translation

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during the Iraq war, when he was feeling “grave concern about the state of our nation.” He believes in art as “a weapon for peace,” and Paulus too wants theater “to touch people beyond it being an artistic experience” (Collins-Hughes 2011). During the production’s run, various events sought to make the connection between the ancient script and current events: a public panel discussion was offered, as well as workshops at two local high schools. Most significantly, with the support of Amnesty International, each performance was dedicated to an actual prisoner somewhere in the world, and audience members were offered postcards to send expressing solidarity with those prisoners and urging their release. Here again the impulse to “engage” was good, and many aspects of the production were strong. The small theater near Harvard Square had almost no actual seats; the actors circulated among the standing audience. Prometheus was bound but moved to different places. The staging and all the performers were energetic and focused, and the title role was excitingly performed by Gavin Creel, the star of Paulus’ 2009 Broadway hit production of Hair. There were problems, however. The script was often clunky, with archaisms (“alas,” “verily,” “reckless miscreant,” “none stood against him save me”) and awkward compounds (“mind-deranged,” “under-rower of the gods,” “high-devising son of straight-counseling Themis”). The spoken language and sung lyrics were in quite different registers: the far more colloquial latter included “we lose our fucking minds,” “the bad-ass-laughter nights that remain,” and “not such a disaster / that fucks with you after.” As the last example suggests, the rhymes in the lyrics were often less than wonderful: the central song, for example, includes “Prometheus/see for us/ be for us/set free for us.” We very much believe in the importance of music in productions of Greek drama, not just because the original Athenian productions involved songs, but also because music arouses responses different from and deeper than the spoken word. The Sater-Tankian Prometheus has seventeen songs (more than three times as many as the Greek script), and in this production music was not ancillary but dominant. As often with professional productions of Greek drama, the chorus consisted of only a few members—in this case, three—so that the dynamic of individual and crowd fundamental to Athenian performance was absent. And the rock-musical concept imposed some definite parameters on the production. Almost all the musical numbers were solos with backup singers simply echoing “aaaah,” “doo doo doo,” “na na na na na” and the like. The large band was so loud that although the singers were miked, many of the lyrics were incomprehensible. Perhaps most important, the central character’s being portrayed as and by a star, together with his association with innocent victims of tyranny, eliminated some of the more interesting possibilities in the Greek script, such as Prometheus’ arrogance and self-absorption in his long speeches claiming that he has provided humans with all the skills they need (436–71, 476–506). And his opponents were uniformly portrayed as monsters—even Oceanos, who in the Greek

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script is certainly a waffler, but who advises Prometheus to do what he thinks is in the titan’s own best interests. A bolder adapter than Sater is Ellen McLaughlin, who has produced numerous versions of Greek drama. The latest is Ajax in Iraq, performed in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 2008 and in New York and Minneapolis in 2011. Sophocles’ original script depicts how Ajax, second only to Achilles among the Greek warriors at Troy, becomes enraged when he is not awarded Achilles’ arms as a recognition of his valor. He decides to kill Agamemnon, Menelaos and Odysseus, the recipient of the prize, but the goddess Athena deludes him into slaughtering herds of animals instead. When Ajax realizes what has happened, he kills himself, and the rest of the play focuses on whether his body will be refused burial and dishonored. In the surprising final scene, Odysseus argues on Ajax’s behalf and prevails. In her version McLaughlin combines two different worlds, the Middle East in mythical and present times. There are two Ajaxes, the Homeric warrior and A.J., a female specialist serving in Iraq; two choruses, ancient and modern; other characters from the Sophocles play, including Odysseus, Ajax’s wife Tekmessa, and his half-brother, Teukros; and modern characters, including female soldiers in Ajax’s unit, A.J.’s superior officer and others. The one character who moves between ancient and modern worlds is the goddess Athena. Like Ajax, A.J. is driven to a violent breakdown and suicide, in her case by repeated sexual abuse by her superior officer (an all-toocommon experience for female soldiers). This officer’s own suffering caused by the war is identified as the cause for his exploitation of A.J. McLaughlin’s script grew out of a residency at Harvard with students at the American Repertory Theater Institute for Advanced Theater Training. After the students did research on contemporary war and its impact on soldiers, the playwright saw the connection with Ajax and worked to fuse ancient and modern perspectives (McLaughlin 2011: 6–8). The influence of Shay’s ideas on this script is clear: in one scene a therapist is counseling a woman who describes her husband’s erratic behavior since returning from his latest tour of duty, and soldiers frequently make statements such as “I can’t stay home. I don’t feel like I mean anything except here” (13) and “You may not have to deal with it right away, but eventually you will have to make sense of what you did and what you saw as a combat veteran” (47). Neither of us has seen this play staged, so we cannot comment on its theatrical effectiveness, but the interweaving of different elements obviously has the potential for both powerful effects and difficulties. McLaughlin’s notes on design suggest that references to the modern world dominate production elements: “If most of the cast is in a basic costume of desert fatigues for the duration of the play . . . the addition of wrist bands or some other easily adopted costume piece can indicate the change into the Greek chorus” (McLaughlin 2011: 5). The script’s linguistic register is primarily modern and colloquial, which of course is to be expected from enlisted personnel, but even Athena uses phrases like “no one expected him to go completely

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bananas . . . KABLOOEY!” (23). The only exceptions are Ajax, Tekmessa and the Greek chorus, who speak in measured—though not metrical—lines. (The only music called for is recorded: popular songs and “Taps.”) Here is the conclusion of McLaughlin’s version of Ajax’s speech in which he convinces his wife and his troops that he has changed his mind about killing himself: I’m going now to wash the blood off of me and to bury my sword for good. I’ll put everything away. My anger, My glory, My old fashioned sense of justice. It’s time to stow that ancient gear and get on with things. (McLaughlin 2011: 45)

This speech is definitely more elevated than most of the dialogue, but it is hardly comparable to and less than half the length of Sophocles’ magnificent lines (the famous “deception speech,” 646–92). This script also contains a remarkable amount of direct address: more than half the lines are specified to be directed to the audience. There is nothing inherently wrong about that, especially in a nonnaturalistic production, and Athena’s comments to the audience are often powerful. She ends her first address, “It’s a play by Sophocles. It’s about what I did to him. Because I could” (9), and later observes, “The difference between you and the person who can do unspeakable things? Not so great. Believe me. I can turn you in an instant” (31). But others’ more predictable remarks quickly grow tedious, such as those of an American officer involved in the 2003 invasion: “In the rush to war, no one thought past the invasion and the transfer of power. . . . The occupying force is the one that won’t last. Everybody knows this but no one knows it better than the Iraqis. They’ve done it for centuries. They know it’s just a matter of waiting it out” (16). And the script condenses the last third of Sophocles’ play—Teukros defending his brother against the Greek commanders and Odysseus paying honor to his former enemy, in both cases bravely and eloquently—into a few lines grudgingly narrated by Athena: “It’s an ugly business, this haggling, it goes on for a long time and neither side comes off looking all that good” (52). For her finale, McLaughlin creates a memorial service for A.J. conducted by a Christian minister with tributes from her fellow soldiers and a sentimental conclusion about her son. We find the idea of a female Ajax appealing, but overall this play is far more about A.J. than Ajax, and its complications often muddy rather than clarify the issues. More ambitious than a single theatrical production is Theater of War, a project which uses Greek drama explicitly to provide therapy to contemporary war veterans. Founded in 2008 and directed by Bryan Doerries, Theater of War adopts Shay’s premises that both Athenian actors and audiences in the fifth century included citizen soldiers who had quite likely experienced

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active duty and that Athenian tragedy is a form of communal therapy aimed at ritually reintegrating combat veterans into the community. Funded by a $3.7 million grant from the Pentagon, Theater of War has presented almost two hundred events to military and civilian communities across the United States and Europe since 2008. These events typically include stage and screen actors reading scenes from Sophocles’ Ajax and Philoctetes, activeduty soldiers, veterans, spouses or other family members, and mental health professionals or military chaplains. The play readings aim to forge a common vocabulary for discussing the impact of war on individuals, families and communities, seeking “to de-stigmatize psychological injury, increase awareness of post-deployment psychological health issues, disseminate information regarding available resources, and foster greater family, community, and troop resilience” (Outside the Wire n.d.). Doerries believes Ajax and Philoctetes are ideal for achieving these goals because both plays ask a fundamental question: “How do we restore humanity to those who feel they have lost it?” (Doerries 2010) and he states “By performing these scenes, we’re hoping that our modern-day soldiers will see their difficulties in a larger historical context, and perhaps feel less alone” (Healy 2009). An eloquent appreciation of this project is provided by Meineck (2009), who has developed his own kind of theater of war (on which see below). In February 2011 we attended a Theater of War event. This was not at a military base but a theater in downtown Washington, D.C., and the program featured scenes from Ajax. An introduction by Doerries was followed by a staged reading of five scenes from the play, comments by therapists and military personnel and their loved ones and an open discussion. The audience included members of the military and civilians, though the civilian audience members may have been screened, and Doerries explicitly discouraged audience members from voicing antiwar sentiments (apparently as requested by the Pentagon). Such censorship is ironic, since Sophocles has Ajax’s men denounce “the neverending disaster of soldiers’ toils” (1186), saying that the man who first devised warfare “destroyed human beings” (1198). The staged readings were primarily drawn from the first two-thirds of the play. It’s understandable why Doerries would choose to include these scenes: The modern veteran could relate to Ajax’s rage not only because (to borrow a phrase from Shay) “deep assumptions of ‘what’s right’ are violated” (Shay 1994: 5), but also through his feelings of shame and isolation, and his belief that the only way out of his situation is suicide. Indeed, members of the military in the February 2011 audience did identify with Ajax: During the open discussion, one courageous soldier stood up and declared he had attempted suicide himself—not once but multiple times—and was still struggling to find a reason to live, for a way to deal with his emotional distress. This revelation, which had an emotionally powerful effect on all present, served as a testament to the effectiveness of tragedy as a means for therapy. As this chapter goes to press the suicide rate of active-duty American soldiers has risen to one per day, a huge increase.

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As Gamel pointed out during the discussion, the staged reading—like McLaughlin’s Ajax in Iraq—omitted parts of the original play. Odysseus’ surprising intervention, when he argues that his former enemy deserves honor, moves away from violence as the primary means for resolving disputes to dialogue, debate and closure, so that the cathartic ending honors men like Ajax who trusted that doing what’s right will be recognized. The play itself suggests there is hope for a better future without abandoning the heroes of the past. Doerries seems to believe that his ideas come directly from Sophocles, whom he described in his Washington, D.C., remarks as “a general” who “wrote in code.” Yet his translation, which the actors used that evening, included modern terms such as “shell-shocked” and “thousand-yard stare.” And as in many contemporary productions of ancient drama, the crucial role of the chorus is mostly elided, eliminating the important fact that Ajax is not alone but supported by his faithful soldiers (whose needs he completely ignores, however, in his focus on himself). Duncan (2011) points out that compared with Theater of War, the Festival of Dionysos at Athens was an important civic/cultural event without a clear “agenda”; hence soldiers’ reintegration was possible because the theater community consisted of a wide range of citizens. He argues that choosing only certain scenes from Greek plays removes the characters’ actions/responses from a broader plotline; if the full story of Ajax or Philoctetes is not told, these characters’ miseries don’t necessarily become more “universal,” but indeed may become more abrupt and unintelligible. Also, the usual format of Theater of War is not a staged reading but professional actors reading emotionally from a white-draped table at the front of a lecture hall. Duncan points out that this format suggests that those at the front table have knowledge/understanding/ expertise beyond that of the audience. Another example of “engaged Classics” is Ancient Greeks/Modern Lives, a project sponsored by Aquila Theatre and New York University and supported by a major grant, a Chairman’s Special Award, from the National Endowment for the Humanities—the largest the NEH has ever awarded. Like Theater of War, AG/ML includes readings from Greek texts (Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, Sophocles’ Ajax, Euripides’ Herakles and Homer’s Odyssey) by professional actors, preceded by an introduction and followed by a discussion led by a Classics scholar and a town hall meeting including audience comments. The AG/ML project’s web site has a section titled “For Veterans,” and the project was launched in April 2011 by a conference at New York University on Combat Trauma on the Ancient Stage. AG/ML director Peter Meineck, himself a veteran, suggests that this project’s aim is quite different from that of Theater of War: “Our approach with the veterans is that we’re not therapists; that’s not what we do. We feel that we can learn from the veterans. Also, putting veterans together with the public is a wonderful experience, because I think many of us in the general public don’t really understand the veteran experience, and as people who

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vote for leaders who get us into wars we have a responsibility to understand the effect of war on the family and what happens in nostoi, what happens when somebody comes home” (Coleman 2011). AG/ML’s events are intentionally much more diverse than Theater of War: they take place all across the country, primarily in public libraries, to which the project gives copies of new translations of Classical Greek texts, and are led by local scholars chosen with the aid of the American Philological Association who have a variety of backgrounds and viewpoints. These scholars give a public lecture of their choice, coordinate a reading group and choose what books the group reads. The overall themes (“Rites of Passage,” “Stranger in a Strange Land,” “Homecoming” and “From Homer to Hip Hop”) are chosen by the project but offer much latitude for all participants to take the discussions into areas that interest them (including condemnations of war).3 Our final example of “engaged performance” is a personal one. In February 2011 the Classics and Theater programs at Adamitis’ institution, Christopher Newport University, produced The Ajax Project, directed by Gamel. The university is located in Newport News, Virginia, an area with a strong military presence, and Ajax was selected because students in Adamitis’ courses on Greek tragedy regularly choose it as their favorite play. On the first day of rehearsal, one of the student actors asked, “Is this production going to denigrate our military?” and we assured the cast that there was no such intent. In fact, the actors were given Adamitis’ strong literal translation of the Greek text and asked to use it as the basis for developing their own characters, including the ten individuals in the chorus, each of whom chose her or his own name. At first the actors were intimidated by the idea of writing their own lines but soon (with our guidance) they warmed to the process, which helped them to “own” their performances. The final script followed the plot of the original, and we were especially pleased that, as in the Athenian production, music took the production to a higher level, with Tekmessa and Ajax singing and the chorus both singing and dancing. The production also included some changes from Sophocles’ script: The set and costumes evoked modern-day Afghanistan, with the troops in desert fatigues and Tekmessa in a burka; human prisoners of war were substituted for the animals slaughtered by Ajax; the chorus included female soldiers and Odysseus was played by a woman; and Athena appeared at the end of the play, watching as Ajax’s body was carried out while “Taps” sounded. The lines written by the cast included personal and sometimes critical observations on war. Each of the five performances was prefaced by a scholarly lecture on aspects of the Ajax myth in western culture and followed by a talkback with the cast and the audience. As we expected, the subject matter proved timely, and the discussions lively. The Ajax Project was, in Adamitis’ (biased) opinion, one of the most intellectual productions her university has presented, and she hopes more such productions will be staged there. Returning to the Chronicle article with which we began this chapter, we agree with Goldberg’s point that most academics are not psychologists.

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Most of us are not veterans either, and we should not try to present ourselves as such. However, as academics and community members, we can act upon Jonathan Shay’s call to establish a modern equivalent of Athenian tragedy. As Theater of War and Aquila’s Ancient Greeks/Modern Lives do at the national level, academics can consider how best to address war trauma and other important issues within our own institutions and communities. As Gamel has argued elsewhere (Gamel 2013), theater in ancient Athens was not professional but community theater. The city invested a huge amount of money, time and energy in the theatrical festivals. Performing was limited to citizens, and a performance at the Great Dionysia might attract an audience consisting of nearly 50 percent of the citizenry. The festivals were organized so as to involve citizens of different ages and status—rich and poor, young and old. And long afterward the citizens remembered and discussed what they had done and seen at the festivals. Communal activities are increasingly rare in contemporary American culture, but performances at contemporary universities offer splendid opportunities to raise significant issues in a communal setting for intellectual, social and therapeutic purposes. Full productions of ancient Mediterranean drama, enhanced by preparatory activities and audience talkbacks, can speak to contemporary problems subtly and without didacticism. NOTES This chapter was written to celebrate Judy Hallett’s outstanding work as Vice-President for Outreach of the American Philological Association, 2008–2012. 1. Versions of this chapter were presented at the 2011 Annual Meeting of the Modern Language Association by Jana Adamitis and at the 2011 Annual Meeting of the American Philological Association by Mary-Kay Gamel. 2. For a vivid rendition of the complete score with a wider dramatic, musical and psychological range, see the Bel Air Classiques production available on DVD. 3. For a full discussion of AG/ML see Meineck (2012).

REFERENCES American Repertory Theater. n.d. “Prometheus Bound: February 25, 2011–April 2, 2011.” http://www.americanrepertorytheater.org/node/4994. Ancient Greeks/Modern Lives. 2012. http://ancientgreeksmodernlives.org/. Auletta, R. 1993. The Persians by Aeschylus: A Modern Version. Los Angeles: Sun & Moon. Brown, J. 2010. “Away from Battle, Soldiers Find Relief in ‘Theater of War.’” PBS NewsHour, February 3. http://pbs.org/newshour/bbentertainment/jan-june10/ ptsd_02–03.html. Clay, C. 2003. “Modern Greek: Peter Sellars Adopts Herakles’ Children.” Boston Phoenix, January 2–9. http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/arts/theater/documents/02622498.htm. Cohen, A. R., and B. M. Rogers. 2010. “Interview: Theater of War.” Didaskalia 8: 17.

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Cohen-Cruz, J. 2010. Engaging Performance: Theatre as Call and Response. London: Routledge. Coleman, K. 2011. “Questions for Peter Meineck, NYU.” American Philological Association. http://www.apaclassics.org/index.php/awards_and_fellowships/questions_ for_peter_meineck. Collins-Hughes, L. 2011. “Prometheus Bound Is a Greek Tragedy Set to Rock Music.” Boston Globe, February 20. http://www.boston.com/ae/theater_arts/articles/2011/02/20/prometheus_bound_is_a_greek_tragedy_set_to_rock_music/. Doerries, B. 2010. “Answering the Call to Help Our Soldiers Heal.” Washington Post, May 30. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/30/ AR2010053003297.html. Duncan, A. 2011. Personal communication to Gamel. Gamel, M.-K. 2013. “The Festival of Dionysos: A Community Theater.” In The Spaces of Greek and Roman Theatre, ed. Paul Monaghan, Jane Griffiths and Frank Sear. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars. Gates, A. 2011. “The Insanity of War Is Not Ancient Myth.” New York Times, June 17. Goldberg, J. S. 2011. “Why I Can No Longer Teach U.S. Military History.” Chronicle of Higher Education, September 18. http://chronicle.com/article/Why-I-CanNo-Longer-Teach-US/129054/. Goldhill, S. 1999. “Programme Notes.” In Performance Culture and Athenian Democracy, ed. S. Goldhill and Robin Osborne, 1–29. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hall, E. 2010. Greek Tragedy: Suffering under the Sun. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Handel, G. F. 2004. Hercules. Conducted by William Christie. Directed by Luc Bondy. Paris: Bel Air Classiques. Hartigan, K. V. 2009. Performance and Cure: Drama and Healing in Ancient Greece and Contemporary America. London: Duckworth. Healy, P. 2009. “The Anguish of War for Today’s Soldiers, Explored by Sophocles.” New York Times, November 11. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/12/ theater/12greeks.html. Kanter, J. 2007. Performing Loss: Rebuilding Community through Theater and Writing. Urbana/Champaign: Southern Illinois University Press. Kershaw, B. 1992. The Politics of Performance: Radical Theatre as Cultural Intervention. London: Routledge. McLaughlin, E. 2005. The Greek Plays. New York: Theatre Communications Group. ———. 2011. Ajax in Iraq. New York: Playscripts. Meagher, R. E. 2006. Herakles Gone Mad: Rethinking Heroism in an Age of Endless War. Northampton: Olive Branch. Meineck, P. 2009. “‘These Are Men Whose Minds the Dead Have Ravished’: Theater of War/The Philoctetes Project.” Arion 17.1: 173–91. ———. 2012. “Combat Trauma and the Ancient Stage: ‘Restoration’ by Cultural Catharsis.” Intertexts 16:1, 7–22. Mitchell-Boyask, R. 2008. Plague and the Athenian Imagination: Drama, History and the Cult of Asclepius. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Outside the Wire. n.d. “Theater of War: Overview.” http://www.outsidethewirellc. com/projects/theater-of-war/overview. Prentki, T., and S. Preston. 2009. The Applied Theatre Reader. London: Routledge. Schechner, R. 1988. “From Ritual to Theater and Back: The Efficacy-Entertainment Braid.” In Performance Theory, rev. ed., 106–52. London: Routledge. Schmeling, J. 2011. “Engaged Faculty Members Can Help Veterans in the Classroom.” Chronicle of Higher Education, November 4. http://chronicle.com/article/ Engaged-Faculty-Members-Can/129663/.

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Shay. J. 1994. Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character. New York: Scribner. ———. 1995. “The Birth of Tragedy—Out of the Needs of Democracy.” Didaskalia 2: 2. ———. 2002. Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming. New York: Scribner. ———. 2012. “Moral Injury.” Intertexts 16.1: 55–64. The Week. 2012. “A Tough Homecoming.” January 20. http://theweek.com/article/ index/223423/a-tough-homecoming-for-war-veterans.

Photo 19.1 Prometheus Bound at American Repertory Theater. Gabriel Evert (Hermes), Gavin Creel (Prometheus). Photograph by Marcus Stern.

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Photo 19.2 Flux Theatre Ensemble production of Ajax in Iraq. Left to right, Lori E. Parquet (Tekmessa), Stephen Conrad Moore (Ajax), Christina Shipp (A.J.), Chudney Sykes (Connie Mangus). Photograph by Isaiah Tanenbaum.

Photo 19.3 First performance of Theater of War, August 13, 2008, U.S. Marine Corps Combat Operational Stress Control Conference, San Diego. Left to right, Heather Raffo, David Strathairn, Jesse Eisenberg, Bill Camp, Bryan Doerries. Photograph by Ransom Riggs.

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Photo 19.4 Audience discussion at an Ancient Greeks/Modern Lives presentation. Judy Hallett is visible on the speaker’s left. Photograph by Vaishnavi Sharma.

Photo 19.5 The Ajax Project at Christopher Newport University. Left to right, chorus members Andrew Pierce, Alexis Abbey, Grace Adams, Jay Banks, Natalie DeHart, Martin Lawrence, Lexi Ford, Rachel Marrs, A.J. Jelonek, Josh Clary (Teukros), Noah Falk (Eurysakes), Christina Brinkman (Tekmessa), Derek Marsh (Chorus). Photograph by Geneva Wynn.

Contributors

Jana Adamitis is Associate Professor of Classical Studies and Chair of the Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures Department at Christopher Newport University. Professor Adamitis received her B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh. She publishes and teaches on ancient drama, Latin literature and Greek and Roman culture and society. Sheila K. Dickison served as Associate Provost and Director of the University Honors Program at the University of Florida, Gainesville, and was also a member of the Classics Department. She has published articles on Roman social history and Tacitus, and Cicero’s Verrine Oration II.4 (1992) in the Wayne State University Press Pedagogy Series. She is co-author of Cicero, De Amicitia Selections (Bolchazy-Carducci, 2006) and, with Judith Hallett, Roman Women Reader (Bolchazy-Carducci, Forthcoming). She is currently Associate Director for Academic Programs in the Bob Graham Center for Public Service at the University of Florida. Jane Donawerth, University of Maryland Distinguished Scholar-Teacher, is a professor of English and Women’s Studies. She has published Shakespeare and the Sixteenth Century Study of Language, Frankenstein’s Daughters, and articles in PMLA and Shakespeare Quarterly, and co-translated Letters, Orations, and Selected Rhetorical Dialogues by Madeleine de Scudéry. She has won five teaching awards, and numerous scholarly awards, including two NEH fellowships. She was a founder of the prize-winning Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal. Her latest book is Conversational Rhetoric: The Rise and Fall of a Women’s Tradition, 1600 to 1900 (Southern Illinois University Press, 2012). Jacqueline Fabre-Serris is Professor of Latin literature at the University of Lille 3. She is the author of three books, Mythe et Poésie dans les Métamorphoses d’Ovide (1995), Mythologie et littérature à Rome (1998), Rome, l’Arcadie et la mer des Argonautes. Essai sur la naissance d’une mythologie des origines en Occident (2008). She has published many

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articles. She is codirector of the journals Dictynna and EuGeStA, and of a series on mythography. She is in charge of three international networks: on Augustan poetry; on the mythographers (Polymnia); and on gender studies in antiquity (EuGeStA). She is also in charge of two websites: Polymnia and EuGeStA. Mary-Kay Gamel is Professor of Classics, Comparative Literature, and Theater Arts at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She has staged more than twenty productions of ancient Greek, Roman and medieval drama including scripts by all the extant ancient playwrights, many in her own translations and adaptations. She has published widely on ancient drama in performance and is currently completing a book on concepts of authenticity in staging ancient dramas. She received the 2009 Scholarly Outreach Prize from the American Philological Association for her theatrical work. Barbara K. Gold is Edward North Professor of Classics at Hamilton College. She was the editor of the American Journal of Philology from 2000 to 2008. She is the editor of Literary and Artistic Patronage in Ancient Rome, author of Literary Patronage in Greece and Rome and co-editor of Sex and Gender in Medieval and Renaissance Texts: The Latin Tradition and Roman Dining. Her edited volume, A Companion to Roman Love Elegy (Wiley-Blackwell), was published in 2012. She has published widely on satire, lyric and elegy, feminist theory and late antiquity. Forthcoming is Perpetua: A Martyr’s Tale (Oxford University Press). Erich S. Gruen is Gladys Rehard Wood Professor of History and Classics, Emeritus, at the University of California, Berkeley. He works at the intersections of Greek, Roman and Jewish history. His books include The Last Generation of the Roman Republic (1974), The Hellenistic World and the Coming of Rome (1984), Heritage and Hellenism (1998), Diaspora: Jews amidst Greeks and Romans (2002), and Rethinking the Other in Antiquity (2011). Current articles in press or in preparation treat topics such as the book of Jonah, Roman comedy, Polybius and Josephus, Philo, Caligula and the Roman imperial cult, and kinship relations and Jewish identity. Henriette Harich-Schwarzbauer is Professor of Classics (Latin) at the University of Basel. She has taught at the University of Graz and was visiting professor at the University of Sorbonne I, Paris. Her primary research interests are in Seneca and in the history of philosophy (especially of the imperial period) and in the literature of late antiquity. She has published two books, Hypatia. Die spätantiken Quellen. Eingeleitet, kommentiert und interpretiert (Sapheneia 16) Bern 2011, and Carmen perpetuum. Ovids Metamorphosen in der Weltliteratur (Weltliteratur intertextuell) Basel 2012, edited with Alexander Honold. Her articles include contributions on Roman epic, the classical tradition and the reception of the classics.

Contributors

305

Donald Lateiner teaches Greek, Latin and ancient history at Ohio Wesleyan University. He is the author of The Historical Method of Herodotus (Toronto 1989) and Sardonic Smile: Nonverbal Behavior in Homeric Epic (Michigan 1995), and the editor and annotator of Barnes and Noble editions of Herodotus and Thucydides. He has published more than sixty articles and over one hundred book reviews, usually on topics connected to Hellenic historiography or nonverbal behaviors in ancient epic and in the Greek and Roman novels. He has recently edited (with Edith Foster) a collection of twelve essays on Hellenic history-writing: Thucydides and Herodotus (Oxford 2012). He contributed for that volume an analysis of Hellenic Oaths in the two historians. Hugh M. Lee is Professor of Classics emeritus at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is the author of The Program and Schedule of the Ancient Olympic Games (Hildesheim 2001), and articles and book chapters on Greek and Roman sports. His current research interests lie in the history of the scholarship of ancient sports during in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, especially the works of Girolamo Mercuriale, Petrus Faber and Gilbert West. Since 1988, Lee has served on the editorial board of Nikephoros. Zeitschrift für Sport und Kultur im Altertum. Lee T. Pearcy received his Ph.D. in Latin from Bryn Mawr College in 1974. In 1985 he joined the faculty of the Episcopal Academy in Merion, Pennsylvania, where he has served as chair of the Classics Department and Director of Curriculum. He also holds a concurrent appointment as Research Associate in the Department of Greek, Latin, and Classical Studies at Bryn Mawr. His research focuses on Classical reception, ancient medicine and Latin poetry. His books include Mediated Muse: English Translations of Ovid 1560–1700 (1984), The Shorter Homeric Hymns (1989) and most recently The Grammar of Our Civility: Classical Education in America (2005). Judith Perkins is Professor of Classics and Humanities emerita at the University of Saint Joseph. She is the author of The Suffering Self; Pain and Representation in the Early Christian Era (1995) and Roman Imperial Identities in the Early Christian Era (2009), and editor (with Ronald F. Hock and J. Bradley Chance) of Ancient Fiction and Early Christian Narrative (1998). Michael C. J. Putnam is MacMillan Professor of Classics and Professor of Comparative Literature emeritus at Brown University. His most recent books are Poetic Interplay: Catullus and Horace (2006), The Virgilian Tradition (with Jan Ziolkowski, 2008), Jacopo Sannazaro: The Latin Poetry (2009) and A Companion to Virgil’s Aeneid and its Tradition (with Joseph Farrell, 2010). He is a life trustee of the American Academy in Rome which awarded him its Centennial Medal in 2009. He is a

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fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the American Philosophical Society. Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz is Professor of Comparative Literature at Hamilton College. She teaches a wide range of courses, including Greek Tragedy: Then and Now, Twentieth-Century Fiction, Literature on Trials and Modern Drama. She is the author of Anxiety Veiled (1993) and Greek Tragedy (2008), as well as the co-editor of Feminist Theory and the Classics (1993), Among Women: From the Homosocial to the Homoerotic in the Ancient World (2002), and the co-editor and translator of Women on the Edge: Four Plays by Euripides (1999). Her current interests are in the modern use of Greek tragedy for politically progressive purposes. Amy Richlin is Professor of Classics at UCLA. She has published widely on the history of sexuality, on Latin literature and on Roman women’s history. Her books include The Garden of Priapus (1983, rev. ed. 1992), Rome and the Mysterious Orient: Three Plays by Plautus (2005),and Marcus Aurelius in Love (2006). She edited Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome (1992) and co-edited Feminist Theory and the Classics (1993). She is now revising a book on epistolarity, the end of the ancient sex/gender system and the circulation of knowledge about that system in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with the working title How Fronto’s Letters Got Lost: Reading Roman Pederasty in Modern Europe. A book of her collected essays on Roman women’s history is forthcoming from University of Michigan Press. Other current interests include Roman comedy as slave-theater and the teaching of classical literature to Native Americans in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Diana Robin is Professor emerita of Greek and Latin at the University of New Mexico, scholar-in-residence at the Newberry Library in Chicago and fellow of the American Academy in Rome. Her recent publications include: The Odes of Francesco Filelfo. Latin Text, English Translation, and Commentary (Cambridge and London 2009); Publishing Women: Salons, the Presses and the Counter-Reformation in Sixteenth-Century Italy (Chicago 2007, awarded the MLA Marraro Prize in Italian Literature) and the Encyclopedia of Women in the Renaissance: Italy, France, and England, coedited with A. Larsen and C. Levin (Denver and Oxford 2007, awarded the Bainton Prize in Reference by the Sixteenth-Century Society). Marilyn B. Skinner is Professor of Classics emerita at the University of Arizona in Tucson. She received her Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1977. Her primary research specialization is Roman literature and culture in the Republican and Augustan eras. Together with Judith P. Hallett, Dr. Skinner co-edited the essay collection Roman Sexualities (1997), which pioneered work on Roman sexual protocols. She has written three mono-

Contributors

307

graphs in the field of Roman studies, Catullus’ Passer: The Arrangement of the Book of Polymetric Poems (1981), Catullus in Verona (2003) and a biographical monograph Clodia Metelli:The Tribune’s Sister (2011). Christopher Stray is Honorary Research Fellow, Department of History and Classics, Swansea University, and Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Classical Studies, University of London. He has published on the history and sociology of classical education and scholarship, examinations, textbooks, institutional slang and the Cambridge Wooden Spoon. His current projects include historical introductions for the new editions of the Oxford Latin Dictionary and Liddell and Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon, contributions to a history of Oxford University Press and an edited volume on the expurgation of Classical texts. Thomas Van Nortwick is Nathan A. Greenberg Professor of Classics at Oberlin College, where he has taught since 1974. He has published scholarly articles on Greek and Latin literature, autobiographical essays and five books, including Somewhere I Have Never Travelled: The Second Self and the Hero’s Journey in Ancient Epic (Oxford 1992), Compromising Traditions: The Personal Voice in Classical Scholarship (Routledge, 1997, with Judith Hallett) and The Unknown Odysseus: Alternate Worlds in Homer’s Odyssey (Michigan 2009). He was awarded the American Philological Association’s Excellence in Teaching Award in 1993. Timothy Peter Wiseman is Emeritus Professor of Classics at the University of Exeter, and a Fellow of the British Academy. His most recent books are The Myths of Rome (Exeter 2004), Unwritten Rome (Exeter 2008), and Remembering the Roman People (Oxford 2009). Times and Reasons is a new translation of Ovid’s Fasti by Anne and Peter Wiseman (Oxford 2011).

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Judith Peller Hallett: Bibliography (1970–2012)

DOCTORAL DISSERTATION “Book IV: Propertius’ Recusatio to Augustus and Augustan Ideals,” under the direction of Professors G. P. Goold and Zeph Stewart. Summary published in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 76 (1972) 285–9.

BOOKS AND EDITED COLLECTIONS Fathers and Daughters in Roman Society: Women and the Elite Family (Princeton 1984). 422 pages. “Techniques of Composition in Catullus,” coeditor with Marilyn Skinner. Special issue of Classical World 81.5 (May-June 1988). Contributor of essay, “Catullus on Composition: Response,” 395–401. Sappho and Lady Mary Wroth: Integrating Women Writers of Classical Antiquity and the English Renaissance into the College Curriculum, coeditor with Jane Donawerth and Adele Seeff. Curriculum booklet of the 1994 NEH Summer Institute, Center for Renaissance and Baroque Studies, University of Maryland, College Park, July 1995. “Six [North American] Women Classicists,” Editor. Published as a special issue of Classical World 90.2–3 (November/December 1996-January/February 1997). Coauthor of introduction and contributor of essay, “Edith Hamilton,” 83–96 and 107–47. Compromising Traditions: The Personal Voice in Classical Scholarship, coeditor with Thomas Van Nortwick. (London and New York 1996). Author of introduction and contributor of essay “Doing What Comes Nationally: Writing as an American in Classical Scholarship,” 1–15 and 120–52. Roman Sexualities, coeditor with Marilyn Skinner (Princeton 1997). Contributor of essay, “Female Homoeroticism and the Denial of Roman Reality,” 255–73. Rome and her Monuments: Essays on the City and Literature of Rome in Honor of Katherine Geffcken, coeditor with Sheila K. Dickison, (Wauconda. IL 2000). Author of introduction and contributor of essay, “Mortal and Immortal: Animal, Vegetable and Mineral: Equality and Change in Ovid’s Baucis and Philemon Episode (Metamorphoses 8.616–724),” ix–xiii and 545–61. “The Personal Voice in Classical Scholarship: Literary and Theoretical Reflection,” a special issue of the journal Arethusa 34.2 (Spring 2001), coedited with Thomas Van Nortwick. Author of introduction: 133–5. “Roman Mothers,” a special issue of the classical journal Helios 33.2 (2006). Editor and author of “Introduction: Cornelia and Her Maternal Legacy,” 119–47 and “Fulvia, Mother of Iullus Antonius,” 149–64.

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British Classics beyond England, coeditor with Christopher Stray (Waco 2008): coauthor of introduction, author of essay, “The Anglicizing Way: Edith Hamilton (1867–1963) and the Twentieth Century Transformation of US Classics,” 1–9 and 149–65. Roman Women Reader, coauthor with Sheila K. Dickison, forthcoming. “Quae Supersunt: Classics in the Kennedy Era,” editor of special section, Classical Bulletin 84 (2008.2) 46–93, with essays by Judith P. Hallett, Michael C. J. Putnam, Nancy Sultan and an introduction coauthored by Judith P. Hallett and Evan Thomas. “Feminist Mentoring across Boundaries,” editor of special section in Cloelia: Women’s Classical Caucus Newsletter 39.1 (fall 2009) 9–21, with essays by Judith P. Hallett, Paula James, Donald Lateiner, Bonnie MacLachlan, Christiane Reitz and Henriette Harich-Schwarzbauer.

CHAPTERS IN BOOKS “Ianua Iucunda: The Characterization of the Door in Catullus 67,” in Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History II. Collection Latomus 168 (Brussels 1980) 106–22. “The Role of Women in Roman Elegy: Counter-cultural Feminism,” in Women in the Ancient World: The Arethusa Papers, ed. John Peradotto and John P. Sullivan (Albany 1984) 241–62. First published in Arethusa and cited under “Articles” below. Reprinted in Latin Erotic Elegy: An Anthology and Reader, ed. Paul Allen Miller (London and New York 2002) 329–47. “Queens, Princeps and the Women of the Augustan Elite: Propertius’ Cornelia-Elegy and the Res Gestae Divi Augusti,” in The Age of Augustus, ed. Rolf Winkes (Providence and Louvain-La-Neuve 1986) 73–88. “Roman Attitudes toward Sex,” in Civilization of the Ancient Mediterranean: Greece and Rome, Volume II, ed. Michael Grant and Rachel Kitzinger (New York 1988) 1265–78. “Sappho and Her Social Context: Sense and Sensuality,” in Classical and Medieval Literature Criticism, ed. Julia O. Krstovic (Detroit, New York, Fort Lauderdale, London 1989) Vol. 3, 465–9. Reprinted in Volume II (Contemporary Approaches) of Re-Reading Sappho: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. E. Greene (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1997) 125–42. “Perspectives on Roman Women,” in From Augustus to Nero: The First Dynasty of Imperial Rome, ed. Ronald Mellor (Lansing 1989) 132–44. “The Women’s Classical Caucus,” in Classics: A Profession in Crisis? ed. Phyllis Culham and Lowell Edmunds (Lanham 1989) 339–50. “Female Homoeroticism and the Denial of Roman Reality in Latin Literature,” in Homosexuality in the Ancient World, ed. with introduction by R. Dynes and Stephen Donaldson (New York and London 1992) 179–98. First published in Yale Journal of Criticism and cited under “Articles” below. Also published in Roman Sexualities, cited under “Books” above. “The Case of the Missing President: Werner Jaeger and the American Philological Association,” in Werner Jaeger Reconsidered, ed. William M. Calder III, Illinois Classical Studies, supplement 3 (1992) 33–68. “Agnatio, Affinitas and Cognatio in Classical Rome: Semantic and Political Implications, Anglo-American Applications,” in Tria Lustra: Essays and Notes Presented to John Pinsent, ed. H. D. Jocelyn with the assistance of Helena Hurt (Liverpool Classical Papers No. 3, 1993) 215–28. “Feminist Theory, Historical Periods, Literary Canons and the Study of GrecoRoman Antiquity,” in Feminist Theory and the Classics, ed. Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz and Amy Richlin (New York and London 1993) 44–72.

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“Martial’s Sulpicia and Propertius’ Cynthia,” in Women in Classical Antiquity: Essays in Honor of Joy K. King, ed. M. DeForest (Oak Park 1993) 270–301. “The Political Backdrop of Plautus’ Casina,” in Transitions to Empire: Essays in Greco-Roman History 360–146 BC, in Honor of E. Badian, ed. E. Harris and R. Wallace (Norman, OK 1996) 409–38. “Nec castrare velis meos libellos: Sexual and Poetic Lusus in Catullus, Martial and the Carmina Priapea,” in Satura Lanx: Festschrift für Werner Krenkel zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Claudia Klodt (Hildesheim, Zürich and New York 1996) 321–44. “Women’s Lives in the Ancient Mediterranean,” in Women and Christian Origins, ed. R. Kraemer and M. R. D’Angelo (Oxford 1999) 13–34. “Edith Hamilton,” in American National Biography, ed. John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (Oxford 1999) 918–20. “Women’s Roles in Ancient Rome,” in Women’s Roles in Ancient Civilizations: A Reference Guide, ed. Bella Zweig Vivante (Westport and London 1999) 257–89. “Roman Women Writers” (Literaturschaffende Frauen), in Der Neue Pauly: Enzyklopädie der Antike, ed. H. Cancik and H. Schneider (Stuttgart und Weimar 1999) 338–42. Articles on Cornelia, Sulpicia I and II and Claudia Severa for Women Writing Latin from Roman Antiquity to Early Modern Europe, Volume I, Women Writing Latin in Roman Antiquity, Late Antiquity, and the Early Christian Era, ed. Laurie J. Churchill, Rhyllis R. Brown and Jane E. Jeffrey (New York and London 2002) 13–24, 45–65, 85–99. “Feminae furentes: The Frenzy of Noble Women in Vergil’s Aeneid and the Letter of Cornelia, Mother of the Gracchi,” in Vergil’s Aeneid, ed. William Anderson and Lorena Quartarone. Modern Language Association’s series on Approaches to Teaching World Literature (New York 2002) 159–67. “Sulpicia and the Valerii: Family Ties and Poetic Unity,” in Noctes Atticae: Articles on Greco-Roman Antiquity and Its Nachleben, Presented to Jorgen Mejer on His 60th Birthday, ed. Henrik Fich, Gorm Tortzen, Pernille Flensted-Jensen, Adam Schwartz and Thomas Heine (Copenhagen 2002) 141–9. “Cornelius Nepos and Constructions of Gender in Augustan Poetry,” in Hommages à Carl Deroux, ed. Pol Defosse, Volume 1-Poésie, Collection Latomus 266 (Brussels 2002) 254–66. “Resistant (and Enabling) Reading: The Satyricon and Latin Love Elegy,” in The Ancient Novel and Beyond, ed. Maaike Zimmerman, Stelios Panayotakis and Wytse Keulen (Leiden and Boston 2003) 329–43. “Matriot Games? Cornelia, Mother of the Gracchi, and the Forging of Family-Oriented Political Values,” in Women’s Influence on Classical Civilization, ed. F. McHardy and E. Marshall (London 2004) 26–39. “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Topics in American Classical Studies,” in Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered History in America, ed. M. Stein (New York 2004) 224–7. (with Ronnie Ancona) “Catullus in the Secondary School Curriculum”, in the Blackwell Companion to Catullus, ed. M. B. Skinner (Malden and Oxford 2007) 481–501. “Edith Hamilton and Greco-Roman Mythology,” in American Women and Classical Myths, ed. Gregory A. Staley (Waco 2008) 105–30. “Absent Roman Fathers in the Writings of Their Daughters,” in Growing Up Fatherless in Antiquity, ed. Sabine R Huebner and David M. Ratzan (Cambridge 2009) 175–91. “Corpus Erat: Sulpicia’s Elegiac Text and Body in Ovid’s Pygmalion Narrative (Metamorphoses 10.238–297)”, in Bodies and Boundaries in Graeco-Roman Antiquity, ed. Thorsten Foegen and Mireille Lee (Berlin and New York 2009) 111–24.

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“Sulpicia and Her Resistant Intertextuality,” in Jeu de Voix: Enonciation, intertextualité et intentionnalité dans la litérature antique, éd. Danielle van Mal-Maeder, Alexandre Burnier, Loreto Núñez, Echo [special issue]. Collection de l’Institut d’Archéologie et de Sciences de l’antiquité de l’Université de Lausanne (2009) 141–55. “The Kennedy Family and Edith Hamilton’s Greece,” special section on “Classics in the Kennedy Era” of Classical Bulletin 84.2 (2008) 77–89. “Mentoring the Mature: One Feminist Academic and Her Failures,” special section on “Feminist Mentoring across Boundaries” of Cloelia: Women’s Classical Caucus Newsletter 39.1 (Fall 2009) 13–15. “Ovid’s Thisbe and a Roman Woman Love Poet,” in Approaches to Teaching the Works of Ovid and the Ovidian Tradition, ed. Barbara W. Boyd and Cora Fox, Approaches to Teaching World Literature, Modern Language Association (New York 2010) 170–7. “Human Connections and Paternal Evocations: Two Elite Roman Women Writers and the Valuing of Others,” Valuing Others in Classical Antiquity, ed. Ralph Rosen and Ineke Sluiter (Leiden 2010) 353–73. “Ballio’s Brothel, Phoenicium’s Letter, and the Literary Education of Greco-Roman Prostitutes: The Evidence of Plautus’ Pseudolus,” in Greek Prostitutes in the Ancient Mediterranean 800 BCE–200 CE, ed. Allison Glazebrook and Madeleine M. Henry (Madison, WI 2011) 172–96. “Recovering Sulpicia: The Value and Limitations of Prosopography and Intertextuality,” in Receptions of Antiquity, ed. Jan Nelis (Ghent 2011) 297–311. “Women in Augustan Rome,” in A Companion to Women in the Ancient World, ed. Sharon L. James and Sheila Dillon (Malden and Oxford 2012) 372–84. “Anxiety and Influence: Ovid’s Amores 3.7 and Encolpius’ Impotence in Satyricon 126ff.,” in Narrating Desire: Eros, Sex and Gender in the Ancient World, ed. Marilia Futre Pinheiro, Marilyn Skinner and Froma Zeitlin (Berlin and New York 2012) 211–22. “Authorial Identity in Latin Love Elegy: Literary Fiction and Erotic Failings,” in A Companion to Roman Love Elegy, ed. Barbara K. Gold (Malden and Oxford 2012) 269–84. Entries on “daughter”, “femininity”, “gender, Greece, Rome, late antiquity” and “materfamilias,” in The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Ancient History, ed. Roger S. Bagnall, Kai Broderson, Craige Champion, Andrew Erskine and Sabine Huebner (Malden and New York, 2012). “The Lessons of Cassandra: Classical Learning and the Classical Legacy of Jane Addams and Hull House,” in Classicizing Chicago, refereed website ed. Kathryn G. Bosher, Justine McConnell and Sara Monoson (Evanston 2012). “Fulvia: The Representation of an Elite Roman Woman Warrior,” in Women and War in Antiquity, ed. Jacqueline Fabre-Serris and Alison Keith (Baltimore and London forthcoming). (with Judith Hindermann) “Roman Elegy and the Roman Novel,” in A Companion to the Ancient Novel, ed. Edmund Cueva (Malden and Oxford forthcoming). “Moving and Dramatic Athenian Citizenship: Edith Hamilton’s Americanization of Greek Tragedy,” in Greek Drama in the Americas, ed. Kathryn F. Bosher and Amanda Wrigley (Oxford forthcoming). “Classics and Classicists,” in American Women’s History: An Encyclopedia, ed. Hasia Diner; articles on “Gender: Greece, Rome, late antiquity.” Forthcoming.

ARTICLES “Over Troubled Waters: The Meaning of the Title pontifex,” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 101 (1970) 219–27.

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“The Role of Women in Roman Elegy: Counter-Cultural Feminism,” Arethusa 6.1 (1973) 103–24. Reprinted in Women in the Ancient World: The Arethusa Papers, cited under “Chapters in Books” above. “Women in Roman Elegy: A Reply,” in “Forum,” Arethusa 7.2 (1974) 211–17. “Masturbator, mascarpio,” Glotta 54 (1976) 292–308. “Puppy Love: Martial 1.83 and CIL IV 8898,” Hermes 105 (1977) 252–3. “Perusinae glandes and the Changing Image of Augustus,” American Journal of Ancient History 2 (1977) 151–71. “Something in Excess?” Priapea 50.2,” Mnemosyne 31 (1978) 203–6. “Divine Unction: Some Further Thoughts on Catullus 13,” Latomus 37 (1978) 747–8. “Morigerari: Suetonius, Tiberius 44,” L’Antiquité Classique 47 (1978) 196–200. “Sappho and her Social Context: Sense and Sensuality,” Signs. Journal of Women in Culture and Society 4 (1979) 447–64, reprinted in Classical and Medieval Literature Criticism and Re-Reading Sappho, cited under “Chapters in Books“ above. “Response to Stigers,” Signs. Journal of Women in Culture and Society 4 (1979) 373–4. “Pepedi diffissa nate ficus: Priapic Revenge in Horace, Satires 1.8,” Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 124 (1981) 341–7. “Beloved Cleis,” Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica n.s. 10 (1982) 21–31. “Classics and Women’s Studies,” Working Paper No. 119, Wellesley College Center for Research on Women (1983) 31 pp. “Buzzing of a Confirmed Gadfly: ho de anexetastos bios ou biotos anthropois,” Helios 12.2 (1985) 23–37. “Women as ‘Same’ and ‘Other’ in [the] Classical Roman Elite,” Helios 16.1 (Spring 1989) 59–78. “Female Homoeroticism and the Denial of Roman Reality in Latin Literature,” The Yale Journal of Criticism 3.1 (Fall 1989) 209–27, reprinted in Homosexuality in the Ancient World, cited under “Chapters in Books” above; the article also appears in Roman Sexualities, cited under “Books” above. “Contextualizing the Text: The Journey to Ovid,” Helios 17.2 (Fall 1990) 187–95. “Public Programs, Private Initiatives: Latin Day 1988 at the University of Maryland, College Park,” Classical Outlook 68.1 (Fall 1990) 3–8. (with Lee Pearcy) “Nunc Meminisse Iuvat: Classics and Classicists between the World Wars,” Classical World 85.1 (1991) 1–27. “Agrippina Minor,” “Octavia,” and “Olympias.” World Book Encyclopedia (1991). “Martial’s Sulpicia and Propertius’ Cynthia,” Classical World 86.2 (1992) 99–123. Also published in Women in Classical Antiquity, cited under “Chapters in Books” above. “Heeding Our Native Informants: The Uses of Latin Literary Texts in Recovering Elite Roman Attitudes toward Age, Gender and Social Status,” Echos du Monde Classique/Classical Views 36 n.s. 11 (1992) 333–55. “Edith Hamilton,” Classical Outlook 70.2 (1993) 56–7. “Plautine Ingredients in the Performance of the Pseudolus,” (Essays in Honor of Jerry Clack) Classical World 87.1 (1993) 21–6. “George Depue Hadzsits,” “Edith Hamilton,” “Julius Sachs,” Biographical Dictionary of North American Classicists, ed. Ward W. Briggs, Jr. (Westport and London 1994) 246–7, 253–5, 553–4. (with Lillian Doherty) “The Classical Tradition,” program notes for the Maryland Opera Studio production of Monteverdi’s The Return of Ulysses to His Homeland/Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria (December 1994) 10–13. “Is Classics Ancient History? A Mini-Symposium,” sidebar to “Can Classics Die?,” by David Damrosch, Lingua Franca (September/October 1995), 62–3. “Some New American Perspectives and Initiatives on Graduate Education” and “Acculturating the Aspiring Classicist,” Council of University Classics Departments (UK) 25 (1996) 5–14.

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“Reading Roman Women’s Writings,” Longman Latin Newsletter (Fall 1997) 36–48. “The Future of Latin Literary and Roman Cultural Studies,” (with Joseph Farrell and Richard Thomas), New England Classical Journal 26.2 (November 1998) 13–31. “Caveat Cenans” (with William Valente, MD, Richard Talbert and Philip Mackowiak, MD), American Journal of Medicine 112 (April 1, 2002) 392–8. “Women’s Voices and Catullus’ Poetry,” Classical World 95.4 (2002) 421–4. “Centering from the Periphery in the Augustan Roman World: Ovid’s Autobiography in Tristia 4.10 and Cornelius Nepos’ Biography of Atticus,” Arethusa 36.3 (fall 2003) 345–59. Memorial tribute to Judith Ginsburg, Classical World 96.4 (2003) 440. Memorial tribute to Amy High, Capitolium/Washington Classical Society Newsletter 25.1 (Fall 2003). Reprinted in Prima 8.1 (Fall 2003). Memorial tribute to Henry Max Hoenigswald, Classical World 97.4 (2004) 439–40. “Catullan Voices in Heroides 15: How Sappho Became a Man,” Dictynna, April 2005 (online publication). “Safe as Houses? The Politics and Discourse of Feminism and Classics,” in “Gender and Diversity in Place: Proceedings of the Fourth Conference on Feminism and Classics,” May 27–30, 2004, University of Arizona, ed. Marilyn B. Skinner. Posted in November 2005 on Diotima. Materials for the Study of Women and Gender in the Ancient World (online publication). “Classics and the 77th Annual Scripps National Spelling Bee,” Amphora 4.1 (2005) 4–5, 19. Memorial tribute to Christina Elliott Sorum. Classical World 98.4 (2005) 443–5. “The Performing, and Timing, of Feminist Classics,” Cloelia: Women’s Classical Caucus Newsletter 33.1 (fall 2005) 18–19. “Listening to Ancient Greek and Roman Women: Lawrence Summers, Sappho and Cornelia,” American Classical League Newsletter 28.1 (2005) 29–34. “Despondere/despondent,” in “Ask a Classicist,” Amphora 4.2 (2005) 8. “Female Sexualities and the Classical Roman Elite: Influential Images, Complex Historical Realities,” American Sexuality 3.3 (December 2005) (online publication). “Sulpicia and Her Fama: An Intertextual Approach to Recovering Her Latin Literary Image,” special section, “Engaging with Sulpicia,” in Classical World 100 (2006) 37–42. “Catullus and Horace on Roman Women Poets,” special thematic issue “Catullus in Contemporary Perspective,” Antichthon 40 (2006) 65–88. “Believing in Yesterday while Living for Today,” in “Brief Mention: A Discussion of Lee T. Pearcy, The Grammar of Our Civility: Classical Education in America” (Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2005), American Journal of Philology 127.4 (2006) 589–94. “Songs as Sights: Latinized Versions of Popular Lyrics as Sight Translation Exercises,” with John Starks, Classical Association of the Midwest and Southern States, Committee for the Promotion of Latin Online (online publication) 3.1 (2006) 1–16. “Gender, Class and Roman Rhetoric: Assessing the Writing of Plautus’ Phoenicium (Pseudolus 41–73),” Advances in the History of Rhetoric 9 (2006) 33–54. “Rereading Laura Riding,” Amphora 5.1 (2007). “Ancient Roman Women’s Writings Sub Specie XXV Annorum,” special issue on “What We Have Done and Where We Are Going,” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 26.1 (spring 2007) 247–51. (with Sarah B. Pomeroy) “WCC Founding Members Remember,” Cloelia: Women’s Classical Caucus Newsletter 37.1 (2007) 10–12. “Cinematic and Poetic Lenses on Ancient Imperial Emotions: The BBC-TV I, Claudius, Tibullus 3.1–6 and Forced Divorce in Julio-Claudian Rome,” in Stacie Raucci, ed., Recreating the Classics: Hollywood and Ancient Empires, special issue of Classical and Modern Literature 28.1 (spring 2008) 111–27.

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(with Lillian Doherty) “Latin Teacher Training Initiatives at the University of Maryland, College Park,” Paedagogus, Classical World 102.3 (2009) 323–9. “Ovid’s Sappho and Roman Women Latin Poets,” Dictynna 6 (2009). http://dictynna.revues.org/269. Memorial tribute to Christine Dunbar Sarbanes, Classical World 102.4 (2009) 487–9. “Wilder Rediscovered: Thornton Wilder’s Ivy Ode at Yale,” The Thornton Wilder Society Newsletter 5 (2010) 3, 8. “Scenarios of Sulpiciae: Moral Discourses and Immoral Verses,” EuGeStA 1 (2011) 79–96. (Thornton) “Wilder’s Engagements with Classical Antiquity,” Conference Reports. The Thornton Wilder Society Newsletter 6 (2011) 3. Memorial tribute to Valerie French, Association of Ancient Historians Newsletter 117 (Spring 2012) 3–4.

REVIEWS AND REVIEW ARTICLES Herrmann Harrauer, A Bibliography to Propertius (Hildesheim 1973), Classical World 69 (1976) 471–2. J. N. Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (London and Baltimore 1972), Liverpool Classical Monthly 8.7 (July 1983) 102–8. H. P. Foley, ed. Reflections of Women in Antiquity (New York, London and Paris, l981). Ethics. An International Journal of Social, Political and Legal Philosophy 94.2 (1984) 375.

TRANSLATIONS INTO ENGLISH Of Hesiod, Sappho, Alcman, Aeschylus, Euripides, Aristophanes, Plutarch, Sallust and Sulpicia in S. B. Pomeroy, Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity (New York, Schocken Books, 1975) 2–3, 48, 53–4, 65, 89–90, 102– 8, 171, 173–4. The Sulpicia translation is reprinted in Seasons of Women: Song, Poetry, Ritual, Prayer, Myth, Story, ed. P. Washbourne (San Francisco, Harper and Row, 1979) and F. Roy Willis, Western Civilization (Lexington, D. C. Heath, 1985). Of the Renaissance Latin author Politian in Alexander Blok as Man and Poet by Kornei Chokovsky, translated from the Russian by K. O’Connor and D. Burgin. Of Harvard College 1674 Latin Quaestiones and 1678 Latin Theses in New England Begins: The Seventeenth Century. Volume 2, Mentality and Environment (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1982) 155–7.

TRANSLATIONS INTO AND WRITINGS IN LATIN Of botanical diagnoses, by S. Golubic and K. Lucas, Journal of Thycology 1983 and 1984. Sixty-four Ovationes, tributes to colleagues and public figures with a dedication to the Classics, composed in Latin and published in Classical World (1988–2012). Some of these were cowritten by students in Latin 472/672, “The History of the Latin Language. “Vergilian Verses on the Inauguration of William Jefferson Clinton,” Capitolium: The Newsletter of the Washington Classical Society 14.2 (1993); Vergilius 39 (1993) 30. “A [Latin] Poem in Honor of Mary Corinne Rosebrook,” Capitolium 15.2 (February 1994) 8. “Carmen Insulae Viridis (= When Irish Eyes Are Smiling),” in Latine Cantemus. Cantica Popularia Latine Reddita, by Franz Schlosser et alii (Wauconda 1966) 98.

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“Versus Horatiani in honorem Werner Krenkel septuagenarii,” in Satura Lanx: Festschrift für Werner Krenkel zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Clodia Klodt (Hildesheim, Zürich and New York 1996), preface. Floreat Societas Classica/Aufer Nos Ad Britannos, based on “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” honoring the British Classical Association on its Centenary, Classical Association News 28 (June 2003) 12. Catullan verses in honor of Mary Lefkowitz, New England Classical Journal 33.2 (May 2006) 134. Translations of “Comfortably Numb,” “Iron Man” and “Contemporary English” for “Provenance, The Brethren of the Stone” by Jen Liu, Art Forum Art Fair, Berlin; Liverpool Biennial: Virtual Grizedale; Akademie Schloss Solitude and Romerstrasse Galerie, Stuttgart (2006), and Nueans, Duesseldorf; Galerie Lucy Mackintosh, Lausanne (2007). Latin versions of popular songs (“Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” “We’re In the Money,” “Happy Days Are Here Again,” “All Shook Up,” “Surfin’ USA,” “That’s Amore” and selections from 2003 Latin Day songs about Julius Caesar), recorded by John Starks, in connection with 2006 article in CAMWS Committee for the Promotion of Latin Online. “Carmen Hortulani Insani”/ “The Mad Gardener’s Song,” Knight Letter. The Lewis Carroll Society of North America Volume II.11, number 81 (winter 2008) 16.

Index Nominum et Rerum

Abiku (obanje) 274 Achilles 41, 170, 287, 293 activism 267, 270 Ad familiares (Cicero) 93, 94–111 adnominatio 68n22 Adrastus 243–5 adultery 211, 212, 227 Aeneas: as new kind of masculine hero 145–7, 150; relationship with Dido 140–2; relationship with Lavinia 147–8; relationship with mother 137–40; as uxorious hero 142–4 Aeneid (Virgil): death in 29, 32–3, 34–5; furor in 44–5, 46, 138–9; gendered nature of opening in 137; human sacrifice in 48; memory in 41, 45, 47; motherson relationship in 137–40; repetition in 47, 48; sexual imagery in 49; use of frigidus sanguis in 32, 35; woman warrior in 136 Afghanistan 284–5, 297 Agamben, Giorgio 179–82, 189–90 Agamemnon 34, 127, 293 Agamemnon (Aeschylus) 296 Ajax 124, 127, 293, 294, 295, 296 Ajax (Sophocles) 288, 293, 295, 296 Ajax in Iraq (McLaughlin) 296 The Ajax Project 293–4, 297, 298 Alcott, Louisa May 243 Alcyone 53–66 alignment 60–1, 70n43 allegory 43, 47, 222–3 alliteration 58, 69n30, 71n56 Altman, Janet 113 American students, at Cambridge 258, 261

Amores (Gallus) 120–2, 126–7, 129, 130 amphiboly 55 anaphora 57–8, 64, 65, 69nn31–32, 70n43 Anchises 43, 138, 145, 147–8 Ancient Greeks/Modern Lives (AG/ML) 296–7, 298 Andocides 211–12, 214, 217 Andrea, Bernadette 223–4 anima 145 animal worship 14, 20–1, 22 antiphrasis 233n12 antistrophe 58, 59n34, 71n60 antithesis 13, 60, 64 Apollinaris, Sidonius 93 Apollo 124, 145, 149 apostrophē 75, 170, 171 apotheosis 48 “applied theater” 285 area Capitolina, poet’s performance in 82 Aristides, P. Aelius 83, 84 Aristophanes: Frogs 127 Aristotle 180, 181, 187, 197, 286 ash tree, simile of 46–7 Asians, Cicero on 14, 17 assonance 69n30, 71n56 athletics 197–202 Atticus, T. Pomponius 102, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109–10, 111, 112 Augustine 93, 192n31 Augustus (emperor) 41, 49, 182–3, 185–6 Auletta, Robert 289–90 autobiography 161, 271 Babylonians 17 balance 59, 60–1, 64

318

Index Nominum et Rerum

Balbus, L. Cornelius 24 Banim, John 244, 248 “bare life” 180–2, 183, 185, 187, 189 Barnard College 256 Barthelemy, Anthony 223–4 Beard, Mary 95 Berlin, Netta 45 Bianca 224, 226–9, 231–2 Bird, Robert M. 248 Bongolan, Fe 272–73 Boose, Lynda 229–30 Boucicault, Dion 242, 243 Braudy, Leo 86 breeches roles 246–9 Bristed, Charles A. 252, 261, 262n1 Brookes, William P. 200–2 Buchheim, Emma S. 262 Buchheim, Karl A. 262 Butler, Judith 227 Butler, Montagu 260 Caelius Rufus, M. 43 Caesar, C. Julius: 49, 106–7, 108, 110; on human sacrifice 16; on parentage of Julian line 42–3 Callias 211–12 Callimachus 119, 122, 125 Calpurnia 93 Cambridge University 252–3, 254, 258–9, 260–2 Camilla 136, 141, 146, 148–9, 150 Carmina Minora (Claudian) 166–73 Carpus 187, 189 Carson, Anne 94, 115 Carthaginians 14, 18, 19–20, 25 Carthaginians, Cicero on 18–20 Cartwright, Kent 229 Cassandra 78, 127 Cassio 224, 225, 227, 228–9, 230, 231–2 Castelli, E. 158, 162 celebrities: as fabrications 86; public and private self of 87; as sacrificial victims 85 censorship 214–16, 217, 295 Cephalus 64, 65, 66, 68n15 “Ceyx and Alcyone” (Ovid) 53–66; complementarity/twinning/ mirroring in 63–5; double action/split-focus in 62–3; double-talk in 57–9; doubling in 55–65; repetition in 55, 56–7; syntactic enactment in 59–61 chiasmus 50n5, 57, 59, 68n22, 69n32, 71nn54 & 60

The Children of Heracles (Euripides) 244–5, 287, 288, 290, 296 Christian martyrs 153–62, 187–8 Cicero: Ad familiares 93, 94–111; De Divinatione 16; De Domo sua 17; De Haruspicum Responso 24–5; De Natura Deorum 20, 21–2, 24, 25; De Officiis 19; De Republica 22, 24; on Epicureans 20, 21, 22; exile of 95, 97, 100, 102, 106, 112, 113, 191n10; Fourth Catilinarian 16; on Greek levitas/Roman gravitas 13–14, 17; on non-Romans 14–21, 22; Pro Balbo 24; Pro Flacco 16–18; Pro Fonteio 15–16; Pro Scauro 19; relativism of 22–3; on Roman citizenship 24; on Roman theology 24–5; on Spaniards 14; on Stoic theology 21–2; Tusculan Disputations 20–1; on war 19–20 Cicero, Marcus Tullius 78, 79 Cicero, Quintus Tullius 23, 99, 100, 107 Cinthio, Geraldi 224, 229 Circus Maximus, poet’s performance in 81–2 citizenship, Roman 23–4 civic identity 13, 14 Claassen, Jo-Marie 112–13 Clark, W. G. 261 Classical Tripos 253, 254 Claudian 166–73 cliché 71n58 cliché, duo in una 53, 64, 66, 71n58 closure, narrative 49n2, 162 cognitio extra ordinem 186, 189 Cohen-Cruz, J. 285 Coleman, Kathleen M. 182, 183, 185 Columbia University 256 combat trauma 286, 296 Cooper, K. 154 Cornelia, mother of Gracchi 94, 112, 116 Cosmetics, relation to sexual promiscuity 211, 213–14 Coubertin, Pierre de 202 Creighton, Mandell 260 Crete 40, 225, 231 cross-dressing, in theater 246–9 Crummell, Alexander 261 Culex 124, 125, 126 Curthoys, Mark 255 Cushman, Charlotte 246, 247 Cyprus 225, 227, 228, 230, 231

Index Nominum et Rerum Daedalus 184 Dale, Amy 260 Dalzell, Andrew 245 Damoetas 122, 123, 129 Damon and Pythias (Banim) 243, 244, 248 Davis, Angela 268 Davis, Gregson 66 De Arte Gymnastica (DAG) 198–9, 201 death 81, 144, 149, 184; of Ceyx 54; of Pallas 29, 32–3, 34–5; of Sarpedon 33; of Turnus 34–5 decorum 216 Demeter 272, 273–4 Demophoön 119, 120, 122, 123, 125, 128–9, 132 De Rerum Natura (Lucretius) 28 Desdemona 223, 227, 228, 229, 230–1 determination, double 44 Dickens, Charles 243, 246 didactic literature 28–35, 74–8 Didion, Joan 275 Dido 42, 50n4, 140, 142–4, 145–6 Dionysius of Halicarnassus 76 divine manifestations 76 divine punishment 55 divorce 107, 108–10, 112–13, 114 Dix, Keith 123–4 Doerries, Bryan 294–5, 296 Dolabella, P. Cornelius 102, 104, 105, 107, 109–10 Domitia Lucilla 93 double action 62–3 double-entendre 58–9 double-talk 57–9 doubling 54, 55–65 Draper, John 229 dreams and visions, Christian 156–8, 160 Druids 16 duBois, Page 111–12 Dunbar, Nan 260 Duncan, A. 296 duo in una 53, 64, 66, 71n58 Durang, Charles 245–6, 247, 248 dynastic strategies 166–73 Early Christian literature 187, 189–90 Easterling, Pat 260 Echo 59, 69n34, 71n55 Eclogues (Virgil) 120–7, 128–9 economica, La (Piccolomini) 209, 210, 211

319

Egyptian(s): Cicero on 14, 20–1, 22; in vision of Perpetua 156, 157, 158, 159, 161, 163n8 enclosure 60 “engaged performance” 284, 285–98 enjambment 60, 68n25, 70n42 epanalepsis 57–8, 68n22 epanaphora 71n54 epanastrophe 58, 71n60 Epicurus 29, 32 Euphorion 119, 124 Euripides: on athletes 198; The Children of Heracles 244–5, 287, 288, 290, 296; Medea 267, 280; Phoenician Women 244; Suppliant Women 244 Evander 33, 147 exile 81; of Cicero 95, 97, 100, 102, 106, 112, 113, 191n10; of Xenophon 212 Faber, Petrus 200, 201 fame, elements of 86 family bonds 166–7 Fasti (Ovid) 74–8 fatal charades 183, 185 father-daughter relationship 154–5, 158, 160 father-son relationship 33, 45, 248 Felton, Cornelius 245, 248 Festus, Pompeius 182 Field, Eleanor 261 Fitzgerald, William 185 Flaccus, L. Valerius 16–18 Flaccus, Quintus Horatius 79–80 Flaccus, Verrius 182, 185 Fletcher, John 223 food taboos 267, 269, 273–4 Forrest, Edwin 242, 243, 250n2 Forteguerri, Laudomia 208, 218 Foucault, Michel 190n1, 207 Freeman, Edward A. 262 Freud, Sigmund 49n2 frigidus sanguis (chill blood) 29, 32, 35 Frogs (Aristophanes) 127 Frye, Susan 230 funeral oration 42, 168 furor 40, 46, 48, 49, 128 Galen 196–98, 199, 202 Gallus (Amores) 120–22, 124, 125, 126–7, 129, 130, 133 Gamel, Mary-Kay 66, 290, 296, 297, 298

320

Index Nominum et Rerum

Gardiner, E. Norman 199–200 Gauls 14, 15–16, 18, 22, 24–5 gender: Aeneid, gendered nature of opening in 137; fluidity of 156–62 gender transformation 159–61 Geographical Historie of Africa (Leo Africanus) 223–4 Georgics (Virgil) 28–32 geminatio 57, 68n22 Girls’ Public Day School Company (GPDS) 253 Girton College 252–3, 259, 261 Glasgow University 256–8 Goldberg, Joyce 285, 286, 297 Greats 254, 255–6 Greek books, in the Renaissance 208 Greeks: Roman views on 13–14, 17, 23 Greenblatt, Stephen 231 Greene, Elizabeth 94 Gunderson, Erik 95, 113, 114 Gutierrez, Nancy 227 gymnastics 197, 198–99, 203n6 Hall, Edith 244, 247, 288 Hall, J. B. 168 Hall, Kim 230–1 Hall, Lady Margaret 253 Hallett, Judith Peller 1–9, 94, 112, 166 Hallett, Mark 2, 3 Hannibal 19, 20 Harpalyce 146, 149 Harris, William 84 Harrison, Jane 258, 260 Hartigan, K. V. 286 Hartog, P. 254–5 Harvard University 256 Hector 37n17, 41, 149 Herakles Gone Mad (Meagher) 287 Hercules 22, 33–34, 35, 147, 148, 291 Hercules (opera) 288, 291 heroic didactic 28 Heroides (Ovid) 78, 113, 132 Hervet, Gentian 209 Hesiod 28–29, 275–6, 280; Theogony 276; Works and Days 276 Heywood, Thomas 225 Hilarianus 155 Hodge, Elizabeth 254 Homeric Hymns, see Hymn [Homeric] Homer: Iliad 33, 34, 41–2, 44, 45–6, 47–8, 137, 145, 147, 149, 286, 287; Odyssey 137, 141, 147, 296 homo sacer 182, 185–6, 187

Homo Sacer: Sovereign and Bare Life (Agamben) 179–83, 187, 189–90 Honorius 167, 168–69, 170–1, 172, 173 Honour Moderations (Mods) 253–4, 255 Horace (Q. Horatius Flaccus) 159–60; Odes 127–33 horse-breaking metaphor 145 Howard, Jean 229 human sacrifice 16, 22, 48 humiliores/honestiores 186–7 Hussein, Saddam 289–90 hybris 54 Hyginus 119, 121, 123, 129 Hymn [Homeric] to Demeter/Ceres 273, 274–5 Hymn [Homeric] to Aphrodite/Venus 138, 151n12 Iago 223, 224, 225, 227, 228, 229, 230, 231, 232 Iliad (Homer): anger in 34, 137; death in 33, 149; war in 41–2, 44, 45–6, 47–8, 145, 147, 286, 287 imago 45 imbrication 60 incest 138, 142, 212, 275 Indian students, at Cambridge 258 intertextuality 120–1, 131, 171 inversions 54, 64–5 Iodice, M. G. 125 Iollas 122–23, 129 Ion (Euripides) 244 Ion, or The Foundling of Argos (Talfourd) 241, 243, 244–9 Iphigeneia 78 Iraq 284–5, 289, 292, 293, 294 Iris 56, 58, 62 irony 233n12; Socratic in Xenophon 212–14 Ischomachus 209, 210, 213–15, 216, 217, 218; as historical figure 211–12 iteration 40, 57, 61, 70n47 Janan, Michaela 58–9 Japanese students, at Cambridge 258, 261 Jebb, Caroline 259 Jebb, Richard 255, 258, 259, 263n16 Jenkinson, Francis 258 Jerome (Saint) 93, 158–9

Index Nominum et Rerum The Jew of Malta (Marlowe) 225 Jews: and animal worship 22; Cicero on 14, 17–18, 26n18; and German law 180; students at Cambridge 258, 262, 263n20–4n20 Jones, Bill T. 273 Jones, Eldred 224 Jones, Paulette 277–8 Jones, Rhodessa 267, 268–75, 276–8, 280 Jowett, Benjamin 255 Jowitt, Claire 226, 233n16 Juno: furor, as principle of 48, 49, 137; reconciliation with Jupiter 47–8; and trauma 77–8; and Troy 42, 43, 145, 147, 148 Jupiter (Zeus) 137, 140, 143, 145, 150; grief of 33, 34; and Troy 41–2, 47–8 juxtaposition 13–14, 22–3, 59, 60, 64, 65, 71n55, 179 Kaplan, Paul 233nn11–12 katharsis 286 Keith, Alison 57, 68n22 Kennedy, Benjamin 259 Kennedy, Julia 259 Kennedy, Marion 259 Kershaw, Baz 285 King’s College London 256 Krause, Johann H. 199–200 Kyd, Thomas 225 La economica (Piccolomini) 209, 210, 211 late antiquity 166–73 Latinus 43, 44, 45, 47, 147 Lavinia 43, 147–8, 150 Leo Africanus, Joannes 222, 223–4, 225, 228 letters of famous women 93–116; collecting fragments of 115; interpretations of fragments of 111–14; Terentia and Cicero 94–111 Levy, Amy 258–9 Liber Spectaculorum (Martial) 179, 183–5, 187 life-writing 96, 112 Livy 159, 164n14 logos 181, 187 love: amores 59. see also “Ceyx and Alcyone” (Ovid) Lowrie, Michèle 181, 182, 185, 191n10, 192nn22–23

321

Luard, H. R. 261 Lucretius 50n12, 78–9; De Rerum Natura 28; and Virgil 29–32, 35, 36n5, 37n6 MacDonald, Joyce 231, 236n48 Mack, Maynard 227 Macready, William C. 246, 247, 249 Macrobius 17 Maecenas 128, 129, 130–1 Maffei, Raffaele 208–9 Malcovati, Enrica 115 Malieckal, Bindu 223 Malta 225, 231 Manutius, Aldus 199, 212 Marcellus 43 Marcian (jurist) 186, 187 Marlowe, Christopher 225 marriage: adultery as literary theme in 211, 212, 227; advice to wife in ancient Greece 209–11, 213, 214–16; complementarity in 55, 64–5, 207, 217–18; model for Foucault 207 Marston, John 223, 226 Martial (Marcus Valerius Martialis) 179, 183–5, 187 martyrs, Christian 153–62, 187–8 Marxism 189 masculine hero 137–8, 139 masculus 153, 158, 159–60 mastertrope, duo in una 53, 66 matriotic voice 112 Maximus, Fabius 20 Maximus, Valerius 76 Mayor, J. E. B. 259, 260, 264n23 McLaughlin, Ellen 293–4 Meagher, R. E. 287–8 Medea (Euripides) 267, 280 Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women 267–8, 269–77; Food Taboos production of 273–5; mythic context of 272–3; Pandora production of 275–80; performance element of 270–2; workshop process of 269–70 Meineck, Peter 295, 296–7 memory 45, 217, 286; in Aeneid 41 Menalcas 122–3 Menelaos 293 Mercuriale, Girolamo 198–200, 202 Mercury 143, 144, 149 messianism 189 Metamorphoses (Ovid) 53–4, 56

322

Index Nominum et Rerum

metaphor 47, 64, 81, 122, 146, 158, 183, 278 metapoetry 173 Metastasio, Pietro 200 metrical pauses 61 mimetic syntax 55, 69n38 mirroring 47–48, 57, 63–5 misogyny: in myth of Pandora 276; in Oeconomicus 207; in Othello 228–9; and sexual imagery 214– 16; in “The Widow of Ephesus” 85 Mitchell-Boyask, R. 285–6 Mods (Honour Moderations) 253–4, 255 Moors (North Africans, Muslims) 224, 226, 228 Morpheus 53, 55–57, 58, 59, 62, 63, 65 Most, Glenn 115 mother-daughter relationship 273–5 mother-son relationship 137–40, 169, 170–1 mourning 34, 43, 47, 56, 98, 121, 155 Mullenix, Elizabeth R. 246 multiculturalism, Mediterranean 222, 223, 224–5, 226–31 Murray, Gilbert 257, 258, 263n16 Muths, J. C. F. Guts 199 Narcissus 55, 66, 69nn34 & 36, 71nn55–56 narrative closure 49n2, 162 Naso, [P. Ovidius] 74–78 Nausicaa 138, 141 Neill, Michael 233n16–4n16, 234n30–5n30 Nettleship, Henry 260 Newnham College 252–3, 258, 259, 261, 263n9 Nicander 54, 55 Niebuhr, B. G. 262 Nisbet, R. 125 non-Romans 13–14, 24 Novak, Tanya 261 Odes of Horace: Phyllis in 127–33 Odysseus 113, 137, 138, 142, 143, 287, 293, 294, 296, 297 Odysseus in America (Shay) 286 Odyssey (Homer) 137, 141, 147, 296 Oeconomicus (Xenophon) 207–18 Oliensis, Ellen 131 Olympic Games 196, 198, 200, 201–2

onomastics 120, 127 On the Mysteries (Andocides) 211–12 Orpheus 183–4 Othello (Shakespeare) 230–1; allegorical characters in 223; misogyny in 228–9; multicultural setting of 225, 229; race in 224, 226–7; sources for 223–4; symbolism 229–32 Ottoman Empire 226, 231 Ovid (P. Ovidius Naso): Ars Amatoria 119, 132; audiences of 65, 75–6, 79, 80–1, 82; divine informants of 74, 75; doubling in works of 55–65; Fasti 74–8; gender fluidity in works of 163n3–4n3; Heroides 65, 78, 113, 119, 132; Metamorphoses 53–54, 56; Remedia Amoris 119, 132–3 Oxford University 253–5, 260, 261, 262 oxymoron 64 Pallas: death of 29, 32–3, 34–5; swordbelt of 48–9 Pandora 275–80 Papylus (martyr) 187, 189 paradox 62, 64, 114, 132, 141 parallelism 30, 32, 34, 37n17–8n17, 64 parisosis 70n43 Parry, Adam 150 Pasiphaë 184 Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis 154–62 pastoral didactic 28 pathos 33, 47, 58, 249 Patroclus 33 Pausanias 124, 199 Payne, Tom 85 Peachin, Michael 186, 188–9 Pechter, Edward 228 Peller, Leonard 1, 2 Penrose, Emily 254, 259 Penthesilea 136, 141, 142, 146, 147, 149, 150 Perpetua (martyr) 153–62; background and family of 154; relationship with father 154–5; visions of 156–8 Persephone 272, 273–5 Persians 17, 22 The Persians (Auletta) 288–90 Pharsalus, battle of 42, 43, 104 Philadelphia, theater in 241–4 Philo 158

Index Nominum et Rerum Philoctetes (Sophocles) 295 Phoenicians 14, 18, 19 Phoenician Women (Euripides) 244 phonē 181 Phyllis: in Amores of Gallus 120–2, 126–7, 129, 130; in Eclogues of Virgil 120–7; in Heroides of Ovid 119, 132; in Odes of Horace 120, 127–33; in Propertius 120, 122, 125, 132 Piccolomini, Alessandro 207–8, 209–11, 213–17 Pindar 199, 200 Pionius (martyr) 187–8 Plato 64, 198, 212 pleonasm 58, 69n32 Plutarch 96 poets and prophets (vates) 74–84 Polycarp of Smyrna (martyr) 188, 189 polyptoton 57, 71n60 polysyndeton 61 Pomeroy, Sarah 211, 212 Pompeius Festus (Sextus Pompeius Festus) 182 Pompey 18, 42, 43, 47, 78, 103–4 Pomponius 156, 163n6 Porson, Richard 255, 261 Poulson, Charles A. 245 Priam 45, 46, 47 prison abolition movement 268 prison narratives 156–8 prison projects 267–8, 269–77 Procris 53, 64, 65, 66, 68n15 Prometheus 275–6, 277 Prometheus Bound (Sater-Tankian) 291–3 Propertius 120, 122, 125, 132 prostitutes 75, 120, 132, 227–8, 229, 234n29, 268, 273, 275 protofeminism 207 public libraries, during Renaissance 208 Putnam, M. C. J. 49 Quint, David 40–1, 47, 49n2 Quintus (brother of Cicero) 23, 99, 100, 107 race 224–5, 226–7 racism 157, 229, 270, 278–9 Radcliffe College 256 Raffaella 209–11 Ramsay, Agnata 253, 258, 260 Ramsay, George 263n19 Ramusio, Giovanni B. 224

323

reductio ad absurdum 22 repetition 113, 121, 131; in Aeneid 28, 31, 40, 47, 48; in “Ceyx and Alcyone” 55, 56–7 Reynolds, Sean 269, 274, 280 Rhodes 110, 225, 231 Rhodes, E. 254–5 Richlin, Amy 4, 8, 9 Rogers, Annie 253 Rogers, Stephen 227 Rojek, Chris 86, 87 Roman law 185–9 Roman people, as audiences 76, 81–2 Sappho 111–12, 115, 159, 164nn16–17 Sardinians 14, 18, 19 Sarpedon 33, 34, 35, 148, 149 satire 64, 66, 211 satire, in Xenophon’s Oeconomicus 211 Scaggs, Felicia 273 Scaurus, M. 18 Schechner, R. 285 Schmitt, Carl 180, 190n2 Sellars, Peter 288, 290–1 Seneca (the elder) 54–5, 199 Serena 166–73 serial poetry 171 Servius 28, 47, 119, 121–2, 124 sexual imagery 49, 214–16 sexuality 158; and aggression 49 sexual pollution 235n43–6n43, 236n47 Shackleton Bailey, D. R. 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104–5, 106, 107, 108–9, 110 Shakespeare, William 243; Antony and Cleopatra 231; Henry IV, Part II 229; Merchant of Venice 224–5; Othello 223–4, 225, 226–9, 230–1; Taming of the Shrew 226; Titus Andronicus 226, 227 Sharpley, Edith 258–9 Shaw, B. 156, 157 Shay, Jonathan 286, 287, 294–5, 298 Sibyl 78, 145 Sidgwick, Arthur 260 simile 141, 148; ash tree 46–7 Skeat, W. W. 259 Slater, Niall 85 slaves/slavery 120, 127, 128, 154, 216, 247, 248 slippage, as literary motif 53 Slouching Towards Armageddon 270, 271, 275, 280

324

Index Nominum et Rerum

Socratic dialogue 154, 207, 209–11, 212–14 Somerville College 254, 259, 263n9 Somnus 55, 56, 58 Sophocles 244, 245, 286, 291, 294, 297; Ajax 288, 293, 295, 296 sovereignty 179–80, 182–3, 185 Spaniards 14, 24 split-focus 62–3 Stallybrass, Peter 229, 230 Stephens, Susan 112, 115 stereotypes 13, 19, 224, 229, 235nn30 & 36, 258, 278 Stern, Benjamin 1 Stern, Celia 1 Stewart, Susan 114 Stilicho 167, 170 suicide 44, 66, 100, 111, 287, 291, 293; of active-duty soldiers 295; of Alcyone 64; attempted, of wife of Callias 212; of Ion 244; of Ischomachus’ wife; of Phyllis 121–2, 123 Sulla, Faustus 42–3 Sulpicia (elegist) 5, 98 superstition 14, 18, 22, 25, 32, 35, 78 Suppliant Women (Euripides) 244 symbolism: in Aeneid 143, 144; in Carmina minora 169, 171–2, 173; in Odes 129; in Othello 229–32; in Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis 157; of power 180; in “Widow of Ephesus” 87 synchesis 59, 60 synonomy 69n32, 71n60 syntactic enactment 59–61, 70n42 Syrians 14, 17, 21, 26n18 Talfourd, Thomas Noon 243, 244, 245, 248–9 A Taste of Somewhere Else: Place at the Table 267 Teague, Frances 230 Telephus 129–30 Terentia, letters to Cicero 94–111; in central Italy after return from Cilicia 101–3; during Cicero’s exile 96–101; interpretations of 112–14; return from governorship in Cilicia 101–2; separations during Civil War (from Brundisium) 103–11; themes in 112 Ternan, Frances (“Fanny”) Jarman 246, 247, 248, 249

Tertullian 157, 188, 189 Theater of War 294–97 Thecla 158, 163nn11–12 Theocritus 121 Theodosius I 167, 169, 203n11 Theodosius II 203n11 Thetis 142, 169, 170, 171 Tiro, Marcus Tullius 95, 96 Tory, Geoffrey 209 The Tragedye of Solyman (Kyd) 225 translations 207–18 Tree, Ellen 246, 247 Treggiari, Susan 106, 108, 111, 113 triptychon 169, 173 Troy, destruction of 41–2, 44, 45–6, 47–8, 145, 147 Tullia 102–4, 105, 107, 108–10 Turnus 41, 44, 48, 147, 148, 149, 150; death of 34–5; and death of Pallas 29, 33 Ulpian 186, 188–9 University College London 256 Valerius Maximus 76 Varro, Marcus 79 vates (poets and prophets) 74–84 Venice 223, 230, 231 Venturi, Frasia de 209, 218 Venus: as divine helper 42, 46; relationship with son 137–40; temples of 49; and Troy 41–2, 44, 45–6; as victory goddess 42–3, 47, 48 Virgil: death in works of 32–5; Eclogues 120–7, 128–9; Georgics 28–35; human sacrifice in works of 48; and Lucretius 29–32, 35, 36n5, 37n6; memory in works of 41, 45, 47; parallelism in works of 30; repetition in works of 47, 48; sexual imagery in works of 49; use of frigidus sanguis 32, 35; warfare imagery in works of 32. see also Aeneid Verrall, Arthur 261–2 veterans 187, 285, 286–7, 294–5, 296–7, 298 Vitkus, Daniel 225–6 Volumnia [Cytheris] 106, 112 Walrond, Georgina 260 war: Cicero on 19–20; civil 41, 78, 95, 102, 242; in Iliad 41–2, 44,

Index Nominum et Rerum 45–6, 47–8, 145, 147, 286, 287; imagery in works of Virgil 32; U.S. 284–5, 297; in works of Homer 41–2, 44, 45–6, 47–8, 145, 147, 286, 287 weaving 122, 169–70, 171–3 Webster, John 223 West, Gilbert 200, 201 “Widow of Ephesus”: themes in 85–8 wife, of Xenophon 209–11 Wilde, Oscar 258 Williams, R. D. 46–7 Wilson, A. H. 242 Wilson, Angela 271, 279 woman warrior 136, 146, 148–9, 150

325

women: and cosmetics 211, 213–14; as guardians of the state; higher education of 253–62; letters of famous 93–116; representations of, in antiquity 85–8 Wood, William B. 242 Xanthias 127 Xenophanes 198 Xenophon, commentaries on during Renaissance 207–18 Xerxes 22, 289–90 Zeus 54, 143, 275, 276–7, 287, 289, 291; grief of 33, 34

Index Locorum

Acts of Paul and Thecla 20, 158 Aeschylus Persae 818–28, 289 Prometheus Vinctus 436–71, 292 476–506, 292 Anthologia Palatina 5:225, 129 5:291, 129 12.52.2, 64 Apollonius Rhodius Argonautica 3.52–110, 151n12 Appianus Bellum Civile 1.15.64, 82 1.97, 42 1.121.563, 78 2.68, 42 2.76, 42 2.113.472, 81 Aristides, P. Aelius Hieroi logoi 2.21–2, 83 Aristotle Politics 1252b, 29–30, 180 1253a, 181, 187, 189 1253a, 9–15, 187 Augustus Res gestae 22–3, 183 Caesar De Bello Gallico 6.16, 16

[Cicero]= Auctor, Rhetorica Ad Herennium 4.13.19–14.21, 56 4.14.21, 67n6 4.20.27, 70n44 4.25.34–5, 56 Cicero De Divinatione 1.4, 78 1.89, 78 1.90, 16 2.28, 27n37 2.51, 26n36 2.148, 27n38 2.149, 78 De Domo Sua 60, 26n17 De Haruspicum Responso 19, 25 De Lege Agraria 87, 26n25 De Natura Deorum 1.18–43, 20 1.43, 14, 20 1.81–82, 21 1.101, 21 2.8, 25 3.39, 22 3.47, 22 De Officiis 1.35, 19 1.38, 19 1.108, 20 De Oratore 2.219, 67n6 2.243, 67n6 De Provinciis Consularibus 10, 14 33, 26n6

Index Locorum De Republica 3.14, 14 3.14–15, 22 3.15–16, 23 3.25, 26n33 Epistulae ad Atticum 10.18, 104 11.5, 105 11.6, 105 11.7, 105 11.8, 106 11.10–15, 107 11.11.2, 107 11.14.2, 107 11.15.2, 111 11.15.3, 107 11.16.5, 108 11.17a, 108 11.19, 110 11.21.1, 108 11.22, 111 11.22.2, 108 11.23, 109, 110 11.23.3, 109 11.24, 110 11.24.2, 108 11.24.3, 110 11.25.1, 111 11.25.3, 108, 110 Epistulae ad Familiares 4.12.1, 98 8.15.2, 43 14., 93, 96, 100, 108, 113 14.1, 95, 98, 99, 100 14.1.1, 95, 99 14.1.2, 95, 99 14.1.3, 99 14.1.4, 99, 100 14.1.5, 99 14.2, 95, 98, 99, 100 14.2.1, 98 14.2.2, 98, 99, 112 14.2.3, 98, 99 14.2.4, 98 14.3, 95, 100 14.3.1, 100 14.3.2, 98, 100 14.3.3, 100 14.3.5, 100, 101 14.4, 95, 97, 98 14.4.1, 96 14.4.3, 97, 101 14.4.4, 97

14.4.5, 97 14.4.6, 97 14.5, 95, 101, 102 14.5.1, 101, 102 14.5.2, 101, 102 14.6, 95, 104 14.7, 95, 103 14.7.1, 103 14.7.2, 103 14.7.3, 103 14.8, 95, 106, 107 14.9, 95, 105 14.10, 108, 109 14.11, 95, 107 14.12, 95, 104, 105 14.13, 95, 109 14.14, 95, 103 14.14.1, 102, 103 14.14.2, 102, 103 14.15, 108 14.16, 95, 106 14.17, 95, 106 14.18, 95, 102, 103 14.18.1, 102 14.18.2, 102 14.19, 95, 105 14.20, 95, 111 14.21, 95, 107 14.22, 95, 110 14.23, 95, 110 14.24, 95, 110 16.9.2, 102 Epistulae ad Quintum Fratrem 1.1.6, 23 1.1.17, 14 1.1.27–28, 23 1.3.3, 101 In Catilinam 3.22, 26n6 4.5, 16 4.10, 16 Orationes Philippicae 5.37, 26n14 6.19, 26n28 14.9, 19 Post Reditum in Senatu 14, 14 Pro Balbo 24, 24 30, 24 31, 24 Pro Caelio 21, 79

327

328

Index Locorum

Pro Flacco 3, 17 6, 17 9–12, 26n15 18, 81 19, 17 24, 17 57, 17 61, 17 61–6, 26n16 65, 14 66, 18 67, 14, 18 67–68, 18 68, 18 69, 18 Pro Fonteio 12–13, 26n6 26, 16 26–27, 14, 16 27, 26n10 30, 14, 15 31, 16 33, 26n6 35, 26n6 36, 16 43, 26n6 43–44, 14 44, 26n7 46, 16 49, 14 Pro Scauro 20, 18 36, 18 38, 18 41, 18 42, 14, 19 Pro Sestio 142, 20 Pro Sulla 17, 26n11 Tusculanae Disputationes 5.76–78, 21 5.78, 20, 21 Claudian (Claudius Claudianus) Carmina Minora 30.5, 175n35 30.141–59, 175n41 31, 174n11 31.36, 175n35 34, 175n29 46, 168, 169, 171, 172, 173 46.1–10, 169 46.5–10, 169 46.11, 170, 173

46.11–12, 170 46.11–15, 169 46.13, 170 46.15, 171 46.14–15, 175n36 46–8, 170 47.168, 171, 172, 173 47.1, 171 47.3, 175n38 47.3–8, 171 47.9, 171 47.10, 171 47.10–11, 175n40 47.11, 171 47.11–15, 172 47.12, 172 47.13, 171 47.15, 171 48, 168, 173, 174n13 48.1–2, 175n39 48.9–10, 172 48.11, 175n39 48.11–12, 168, 172 Clemens Stromateis VI.100.6, 163n10 Culex (Appendix Vergiliana) 131–3, 125 135, 126 Dio Cassius 41.14.4, 78 54.2.4, 182 55.10.8, 182 55.22.3, 81 55.26.1–27.3, 81 57.18.4–5, 80 59.7.2–3, 81 Dio Chrysostom Orationes 20.10, 81 28.21, 83 28.113–4, 83 Dionysius of Halicarnassus Antiquitates Romanae 2.68.1–2, 76 3.69.5, 82 8.56.1, 76 Euripides Heracles 1132–3, 288 Medea 415–30, 280

Index Locorum Festus 370L, 81 Heliodorus Aethiopica 10.30–2, 157 Hesiod Erga 69–82, 276 78, 276 Theogonia 572, 276 573–8, 276 589, 276 590–3, 276 591, 276 604–7, 276 Homeric Hymns Hymnus Homericus ad Cererem [Demeter] 22–9, 273–5 Hymnus Homericus ad Venerem [Aphrodite] 5.81–106, 138 5.81–142, 151n12 Homerus Iliad 1.188–222, 50n8 1.357–427, 142 1.403–4, 70n50 2.813–14, 70n50 4.141–7, 148 14.290–1, 70n50 16, 148, 149 16.431–8, 148 16.786–867, 149 17.437–9, 37n17 18.424–67, 142 24.26–30, 137 Odyssey 5.43–58, 143 5.306–12, 137 6.102–9, 141, 151n12 6.149–63, 151n12 6.149–85, 138 7.237–42, 151n12 10.229–31, 151n12 10.230–1, 142 10.274–306, 142 12.208–21, 137 23.215–24, 68n15 Horace Ars Poetica 391, 80

Epistles 1.19.28, 159, 164n16 Epodes 5.41, 159, 164n16 7.17–20, 79 Odes 1.3.8, 71n58 1.12.6, 37n6 2.4, 120, 127, 129 2.4.22–24, 128 3.3.57–60, 80 4.6, 131 4.6.41–4, 131 4.11, 120, 128, 130, 131, 132 vv. 1–5, 128 vv. 13–16, 127, 128 vv. 21–4, 129 vv. 25–6, 130 vv. 29–31, 130 vv. 31–2, 130 vv. 34–5, 130 Satires 1.4.73–5, 79 Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae 7500, 81 7618, 81 7692, 81 Jerome (Saint; Eusebius Sofronius Hieronymus) Commentary on Epistle to the Ephesians 71,2,2, 159 75,2,2, 159 Commentary on Epistle to the Ephesians III, 158 Juvenal 6.584, 81 Livy 22.33.8, 82 25.1.8–12, 79 25.12.3, 78 31.3.5, 70n48 31.12.6, 159 37.29.4, 70n48 Lucretius De Rerum Natura 1.921–5, 29–30 3.17, 37n12 3.26, 37n12 3.35–44, 37n13 3.37, 37n13

329

330

Index Locorum 3.43, 36n5 5.699–700, 31 5.751, 30 5.1185, 31 6.74, 50n12 6.287, 30 6.577, 37n11 6.763, 37n13

Macrobius Saturnalia 2.1.13, 17 Marcian Digest 48.8.3.5, 186 49.1.1.pr, 188 Martial Liber Spectaculorum 1.7–8, 183 2, 192n20 3.12, 183 6.1–2, 184 6.1–4, 184 6[5], 191n15 9, 191n1510, 184, 191nn15&18 18.6, 188 19, 191n15 19.2–3, 188 20, 192n20 20.4, 185 24, 191n15 24.7–8, 184 25, 191nn15&18 28, 191n15 Martyrdom of Carpus, Papylus, and Agathonicê 40, 189 Martyrdom of Pionius 20.5, 187–8 Martyrdom of Polycarp 9.2, 188 11.2, 189 Ovid Amores 1.4.21, 67n9 2.10, 68n22 2.10.27, 67n9 2.13.5, 71n58 Ars Amatoria 1.31–4, 65 2.253, 132 2.349–52, 65 2.357, 65

2.372, 71n62 3.38, 132 3.41–2, 132 Fasti 1.25, 84 1.71, 74 1.89–288, 75 1.97, 84 1.101–9, 78 1.469–586, 75 1.585, 78 1.657–62, 75 1.669, 75 1.695, 75 2.269–302, 75 2.359–80, 75 2.360, 84 2.557, 75 2.631–8, 74 3.167–8, 77 3.167–252, 75 3.253–6, 75 3.259–392, 75 3.273–5, 84 3.332, 84 3.370, 75 3.713–90, 75 3.815, 75 3.827–30, 75 4.1–17, 75 4.10, 84 4.133–7, 75 4.145, 75 4.155, 75 4.187, 74, 75 4.191–372, 75 4.407–11, 75 4.619–20, 75 4.721–806, 75 4.731, 74 4.807–62, 75 4.865–70, 75 4.878, 75 5.1, 75, 82 5.7–110, 75 5.97, 78 5.183, 82 5.183–378, 75 5.185–90, 81–82 5.261–74, 82 5.311–30, 82 5.347, 75, 82 5.445–84, 75 5.597, 74, 75

Index Locorum 5.635–62, 75 5.693–720, 75 6.3–8, 74, 77 6.5–8, 82–83 6.9–100, 75 6.18, 82 6.19–24, 74, 77 6.29–34, 82 6.52, 82 6.195, 75, 82 6.213–16, 75 6.249–460, 75 6.253–4, 77 6.475–6, 75 6.481–562, 75 6.535–7, 78 6.551, 75 6.561, 75 6.586, 84 6.621, 75 6.651–710, 75 6.775, 74 6.775–80, 74 6.799–810, 75 Heroides 2, 132 2.98, 132 5.123, 78 11.62, 71n58 16.125, 78 Metamorphoses 1.293, 70n48 1.363–4, 67n11 1.390, 67n11 1.551–5, 69n38 1.563, 59 1.751–2.400, 67n2 2.302–3, 68n25 2.430, 58 2.609, 69n36 2.704–5, 58 3.97–8, 70n42 3.187–8, 70n42 3.326, 163n13 3.335, 71n56 3.341, 70n39 3.341–510, 66 3.380, 69n34 3.386–7, 58 3.391–2, 69n34 3.466, 71n56 3.473, 71n58 3.495–6, 69n34 3.505–7, 69n31

4.91–2, 71n56 4.137–66, 66 4.279–80, 163n13 4.285–388, 71n59 4.329–32, 71n56 4.799, 64 5.5–6, 71n56 6.376, 58 6.385, 68n25 6.680, 67n12 7.661–865, 64 7.691–3, 66 7.698–9, 66 7.715–46, 68n15 7.799–800, 69n32, 71n60 7.821–4, 53 7.838, 53 7.852–4, 58 8.620–724, 71n54 8.819, 68n25 8.847–74, 163n13 8.862–8, 58 9.31.7–8, 67n12 9.666–797, 163n13 10.79–219, 72n65 10.103–5, 126 10.298–502, 58 10.337–40, 69n37 10.566, 68n25 10.707, 71n58 11.1–43, 72n65 11.14, 58 11.44–5, 58 11.52–3, 69n31 11.64–6, 70n40, 71n58 11.100, 71n56 11.109–10,69n33 11.123–4, 70n43 11.127–8, 71n56 11.141, 57 11.157, 69n35 11.206, 71n58 11.291–345, 54 11.308, 70n41 11.325–6, 69n33 11.345, 68n26 11.371–2, 69n33 11.377–8, 69n32 11.378–9, 71n59 11.383–8, 65 11.387–8, 65 11.388, 71n58, 71n60 11.402, 71n57, 71n58 11.410, 57

331

332

Index Locorum 11.410–16, 62 11.410–60, 62 11.410–748, 53 11.412, 54 11.413–14, 54 11.415, 71n55 11.416–43, 62 11.418, 65 11.419, 57 11.420, 60, 61 11.421, 56, 65 11.421–2, 65 11.421–4, 65 11.421–43, 57 11.423, 71n56 11.423–4, 57 11.424, 65 11.425–6, 71n55 11.427, 58 11.432–3, 68n23 11.434–5, 68n27 11.435, 68n26 11.437–8, 58 11.439–43, 65 11.442–3, 57, 71n60 11.444, 65 11.444–56, 62 11.445, 63 11.452, 70n49 11.453, 65 11.454–5, 60 11.457–73, 62 11.459, 65 11.461–73, 64 11.461–656, 62 11.462–3, 62 11.466, 70n39 11.471–2, 65 11.473, 65, 70n52 11.473–82, 62 11.474, 64 11.474–572, 62 11.475–6, 61 11.476, 70n52 11.478, 59 11.481, 57 11.487, 57, 70n48 11.488–9, 70n48 11.492, 59 11.492–3, 61 11.494, 57 11.500–1, 64 11.504, 61 11.506, 61, 71n55 11.517, 61

11.517–18, 58, 68n23, 71n55 11.518, 61 11.520, 68n26 11.523, 57 11.533–4, 57 11.533–36, 64 11.535–6, 58 11.539–40, 59 11.539–43, 70n48 11.544, 64 11.544–5, 59, 68n23, 68n27 11.545, 58 11.546–7, 60 11.550, 58 11.551–2, 58 11.553, 57, 58, 60 11.557–9, 58 11.561, 61 11.563–4, 59, 68n28 11.564, 59 11.566–7, 58 11.567, 60 11.569, 65 11.572, 60 11.574–5, 58, 59 11.577–82, 62 11.578, 59 11.579, 64 11.581, 55, 65 11.583–676, 62 11.586, 61 11.594, 59, 69n29 11.596, 58 11.597, 69n29 11.598, 69n29 11.599, 68n26, 69n29 11.600, 69n29 11.601, 69n29 11.602, 58, 70n39 11.605, 59, 70n39 11.608, 69n29, 70n39 11.608–9, 58 11.609, 69n29 11.619, 61 11.620, 70n39 11.621, 58, 68n26 11.623–9, 67n14 11.626, 60 11.634, 63 11.634–5, 58 11.634–75, 62 11.636–8, 57 11.639, 58 11.640, 70n50 11.642, 61

Index Locorum 11.646, 70n39 11.649, 60, 70n39, 70n52 11.653, 71n58 11.653–6, 64 11.654, 63 11.657, 60 11.657–76, 62 11.658–60, 56 11.660, 59, 68n26 11.660–8, 65 11.662, 56 11.666–7, 58 11.666–8, 63 11.668, 59 11.669, 68n27 11.671–3, 64 11.674, 65 11.674–5, 68n24 11.676, 56, 63 11.677–724, 62 11.677–738, 62 11.681–3, 65 11.683, 63 11.684, 58, 64 11.684–707, 57 11.686–9, 63 11.688–9, 71n58 11.689–90, 63 11.697, 58, 68n23 11.7.661–865, 64 11.700, 58 11.701, 57 11.706, 58, 61 11.707, 57, 59, 68n27 11.708, 59 11.712, 58 11.715–16, 59 11.715–25, 56, 64 11.716–24, 58 11.723, 57 11.723–4, 57 11.724, 64, 65 11.725–48, 62 11.726, 65 11.727, 56 11.727–8, 58 11.737, 65 11.737–8, 61 11.739–41, 62 11.740, 62 11.741–4, 64 11.741–50, 62 11.749, 58, 64 11.749–51, 62 11.750, 59

12.168–209, 163n13 12.508–9, 69n33 13.388, 68n25 15.165–73, 57 15.252–8, 57 15.654, 59 15.877–9, 80 Remedia Amoris 55–6, 133 Tristia 3.14.23–4, 74, 81 4.4.72, 71n58 4.10.57–8, 80 Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis 1–2, 153 2.1, 154 2.3, 153 3.1–3, 155 3.3, 158 3.5, 160, 161 3.7, 160 3.8, 160 3–10, 153, 161 5.2, 155 5.2–5, 155 5.4, 155 6.3, 155 6.5, 155 9.2–3, 155 10.4, 156 10.5, 156 10.6, 156 10.7, 156, 159, 160 10.8, 156 10.13, 156, 159 10.14, 157 10.14–15, 161 11.1, 153 11.2–13, 154 14–21, 161, 153 18.4–6, 160 20, 161 20.1, 161 20.2, 191n17 20.3–5, 161 21, 162 21.9–10, 162 21.10, 162 Petronius Satyrica 11.5, 87 111.2, 86 111.3, 87, 88 111.4, 87, 88

333

334

Index Locorum

112.2, 87 112.8, 87 Philo Quaestiones et solutiones in Genesim 1.8, 158 Plato Ion 534e, 80 Leges 755a, 219n17 770c, 219n17 Lysis 217d, 219n19 Respublica 456a, 219n17 Symposium 189e–91e, 64 Pliny Epistulae 1.4, 116n2 2.4, 116n2 3.3, 116n2 4.19, 116n2 6.4, 116n2 6.7, 116n2 7.5, 116n2 7.14, 116n2 8.11, 116n2 Plutarch Cato Maior 12.5, 31 Pompeius 68.2, 42 Sulla 34.2, 42 Priapea 27, 81 Propertius 1.1.17–18, 134n20 1.13, 125 4.8, 132 Quintilian Institutio Oratoria 4.1.77, 67n6 Sallustius Historiae 3.77.3M, 78 Seneca Controversiae 2.2.8–12, 67n7 2.2.12, 54, 68n22 7.1, 54

7.6, 54 8.6, 54 9.6.11, 54 Servius ad Aeneida 2.557, 47, 75 8: 310, 133n16 ad Bucolica 6:72, 124, 133n17 Shakespeare Merchant of Venice 2.1.1–2, 224 3.5.37–9, 225 Othello 1.1.29–30, 225 1.1.68, 227 1.1.82, 230 1.1.90, 227 1.1.113, 227 1.1.127, 227 1.1.137, 227 1.2.69, 231 1.2.71, 227 1.3.103, 227 1.3.265, 235n30 1.3.345–6, 227 2.1.275, 227 2.3.26, 227 2.3.148, 227 3.3.313, 231 3.3.319–33, 230 3.3.338, 230 3.3.404–5, 227 3.4.51–72, 230 3.4.70, 230 3.4.163–98, 224 3.4.164–5, 235n33 3.4.164–6, 228 3.4.174, 230 4.1.94–6, 228 4.1.120, 228 4.1.126, 224 4.1.132, 228 4.1.139–52, 224 4.1.140, 228 4.1.146, 228, 231, 236n49 4.1.163–4, 232 4.2.224, 232n5 4.3.26, 232n4 5.1.76–132, 224 5.1.107, 224 5.1.118–23, 227 5.1.124–5, 227 5.1.125, 235n30

Index Locorum 5.1.128, 235n33 5.2.164, 230 5.2.374–5, 235n43 Sidonius Apollinaris Epistles 1.1.2, 93 Sophocles Ajax 646–92, 294 1186, 295 1198, 295 Statius Thebaid 9.211–13, 171 Suetonius Divus Augustus 44.2, 182 Divus Julius 6, 42 Tacitus Annales 2.49.1, 82 Tertullian De Spectaculis 10.5, 42 Testamentum Novum Ephesians 4:13, 158 6:11–17, 158 I Corinthians 9.24–7, 157 Romans 13:12, 158 Tibullus 1.4, 132 Valerius Maximus 1.8.7, 76 Varro De Lingua Latina 7.36, 79 Virgil Aeneid 1.11, 50n12, 137 1.198–209, 137 1.223–96, 137 1.238–9, 41 1.254–96, 42 1.264, 50n11 1.297–304, 50n4 1.33, 40 1.306–7, 139 1.314–20, 137

1.314–34, 151n12 1.316, 146 1.327–9, 138 1.327–34, 151n12 1.4, 48, 137 1.50–101, 137 1.65–156, 137 1.92, 151n5 1.94–101, 137 1.402–9, 138 1.408–9, 140 1.464, 142, 148 1.490–3, 141 1.491, 136 1.494–504, 141, 151n12 1.586–93, 142 1.588, 142 1.615–616, 151n12 1.627, 142, 151n12 1.657–88, 139 1.661–2, 50n4 1.670–5, 50n4 1.742, 37n10 2.4–5, 47 2.554–8, 47 2.555, 47 2.557, 47 2.560–2, 45 2.567–88, 50n8 2.575–6, 138 2.589–93, 139 2.593, 140 2.594–5, 139, 151n8 2.608–12, 46 2.610, 46 2.611, 46 2.622–3, 46 2.624–31, 46 2.625, 46 2.628, 46 2.630, 46 2.631, 46 2.681–4, 148 2.776–7, 151n8 3.30, 36n6 3.259, 36n6 3.710–11, 137 4.90–128, 151n12 4.93–128, 140 4.127–8, 140 4.215–18, 146 4.215–19, 143 4.223–37, 143 4.238–58, 143

335

336

Index Locorum 4.259–64, 143 4.265–7, 144 4.280, 144 4.300, 143 4.305–61, 143 4.402, 139 4.579–80, 144 5.395–6, 36n6 5.604–79, 145 6.77–80, 145 6.98–101, 145 6.713–15, 145 6.764–6, 148 6.828–31, 43 6.832–3, 43 6.834–5, 43 6.882, 43 7.73–80, 148 7.317, 43 7.783–8, 147 7.803–17, 141 8.370–406, 42 9.1–24, 148 9.404–9, 149 9.433–7, 136, 149 9.548, 36n3 10.52, 36n3 10.58, 41 10.452, 29, 32, 35 10.464–5, 38n18 10.464–72, 148 10.519, 48 11.68–71, 136 11.89–90, 37n17 11.152–81, 38n17 11.793, 36n3 11.828–9, 151n5 11.828–31, 136, 149 11.831, 149 12.64–9, 148 12.216–56, 45 12.397, 36n3 12.499, 44 12.500–53, 44 12.513–15, 50n15 12.554–60, 44 12.554–92, 40 12.555, 44 12.560, 44, 45 12.560–2, 45 12.567–9, 45 12.609–11, 47 12.791–842, 47 12.806, 48

12.819, 48 12.828, 48 12.830–1, 50n12 12.833, 48 12.835–6, 48 12.869–86, 136 12.905, 36n6 12.945, 48 12.948–9, 48 12.951, 151n5 12.952, 35, 136, 149 Eclogae 2.18, 133n8 2.33.37–8, 122 3.104, 124 3.104–5, 123 3.106, 124 3.106–7, 123 3.72–3, 124 3.78–9, 122 5.10–11, 125 7.57–60, 125 7.61–4, 126 10.37–41, 121, 124 10.39, 124 10.43, 124 Georgica 1.78–9, 32 2.464, 33 2.465, 33 2.467–72, 33 2.470, 33 2.475, 36n2 2.475–7, 29 2.477–82, 30 2.478, 37n10 2.481–2, 31 2.483–5, 31 2.484, 29, 35, 37nn6–7 2.486, 28, 36n3 2.488, 37n6 2.490, 31 2.492, 37n13 Xenophon Oeconomicus 1.1–6.17, 208 1.124–7, 212 1.127, 212 7.1–10.13, 208 7.6, 216 7.10, 214, 215 7.17–23, 217 7.18, 217

Index Locorum 7.18–22, 217 7.23–5, 217 7.26, 217 7.26–7, 217 7.27–8, 218 9.14–15, 210 9.15, 209

9.18, 213 10.1, 213, 215 10.5, 211, 215–216 10.9–12, 216 10.11–12, 210 10.12, 216 10.13, 214

337