The Cyclops Myth and the Making of Selfhood 9781463243494

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The Cyclops Myth and the Making of Selfhood

Perspectives on Philosophy and Religious Thought 19

Perspectives on Philosophy and Religious Thought (formerly Gorgias Studies in Philosophy and Theology) provides a forum for original scholarship on theological and philosophical issues, promoting dialogue between the wide-ranging fields of religious and logical thought. This series includes studies on both the interaction between different theistic or philosophical traditions and their development in historical perspective.

The Cyclops Myth and the Making of Selfhood

Paul Robertson

gp 2022

Gorgias Press LLC, 954 River Road, Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA www.gorgiaspress.com 2022 Copyright © by Gorgias Press LLC

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise without the prior written permission of Gorgias Press LLC. ‫ܐ‬

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2022

ISBN 978-1-4632-4348-7

ISSN 1940-0020

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A Cataloging-in-Publication Record is available at the Library of Congress. Printed in the United States of America

For Jules Thunder thunder in the sky Made by the Cyclops with one eye Forged for Zeus king of the gods Who fought the Titans against all odds

TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments .................................................................... xi List of Illustrations ................................................................... xv Preface...................................................................................xvii Outline of Chapters .......................................................xviii Introduction. Selfhood and the Cyclops Myth ............................. 1 What is Selfhood?.............................................................. 1 Ancient Versus Modern Selfhood ....................................... 3 The Cyclops Myth.............................................................. 8 What is Myth? ................................................................. 11 Myth, Culture, and Change – or, Reception Theory.......... 12 Chapter One. The Archaic Period: Homer and Hesiod ............. 21 The “Original” Myths and the Objective-Participant Homeric Paradigm ............................................................ 21 Ancient Cyclops Myths ............................................... 21 Selfhood in the Odyssey ............................................. 26 Homer’s Cyclops and the Archaic Period .................... 36 Chapter Two. The Classical Era: Euripides’ Cyclops ................. 49 The Comic Cyclops and the First Appearance of Subjective Preferences, Interior Psychology, and Individual Features ................................................................... 49 Euripides’ Cyclops ...................................................... 49 Mirror Reading Euripides and Objective-Participant Selfhood ............................................................. 51 The Appearance of Subjective-Individualist Selfhood in Euripides ........................................................ 55 Euripides and the Classical Period .............................. 62

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Chapter Three. The Hellenistic Age: Theocritus....................... 69 The Romantic Cyclops of Greek Bucolic Poetry................ 69 Idyll VI ....................................................................... 72 Idyll XI........................................................................ 77 Theocritus’ Cyclops and the Hellenistic Age................ 85 Conclusion ...................................................................... 94 Chapter Four. The Roman Empire: Virgil and Ovid ................. 97 Multiple Cyclops and Mixed Selfhood .............................. 97 Virgil’s Eclogues .......................................................... 99 Virgil’s Aeneid .......................................................... 103 Ovid’s Metamorphoses ............................................... 109 Selfhood in the Roman Empire ................................. 118 Conclusion .................................................................... 132 Art History Excursus 1: The Greek and Roman Cyclops, a Selective Summary ........................................................ 135 Chapter Five. The Post-Classical World and the Middle Ages....143 The Christian and (Neo-)Platonic Cyclops of Morality, Internality, and Abstraction ................................... 143 Nonnus of Panopolis................................................. 146 Scholars and Scholiasts of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages: Fulgentius, Boethius, Remigius, K and T Revisers, St. Gall glosses, and the Second Vatican Mythographer .................... 150 Late Medieval Folktales and Story Collections .......... 159 Early Modern Opera and Theater.............................. 163 Early and Late Medieval Society ............................... 167 Conclusion .................................................................... 179 Chapter Six. Modernity: Graphic Novels, Comics, Film, Young Adult Novels ................................................................. 183 The Fully Subjective-Individualist Cyclops of Modern Pop Culture .................................................................. 183 Graphic Novels and Comic Books: Isabel Greenberg’s “Encyclopedia of Early Earth” and Marvel’s XMen .................................................................. 185 Selfhood in Modern Film: The Cyclops in Krull ......... 191 Selfhood in Modern Novels: Percy Jackson ............... 193 Early Modern, Modern, and Post-Modern Society ..... 198

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Art History Excursus 2: The Post-Medieval Cyclops, a Selective Summary ........................................................................211 Conclusion ............................................................................ 219 Bibliography ......................................................................... 223 Primary Sources and Translations.................................. 223 Secondary Sources......................................................... 225 Indices .................................................................................. 253 Concepts & Ideas ........................................................... 253 Authors, Ancient/Primary Sources................................. 256 Authors, Modern Academic ........................................... 258

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS An odyssey indeed. This project has run across years and continents, jobs and institutions, apartments and houses, phases of life, and all the twists and turns that accompany any lengthy undertaking of this kind. With the journey come the many you meet along the way, and I’ve truly enjoyed the people, places, and events that helped shape my work into its final form here. First, I would like to acknowledge the Fondation Hardt, which kindly provided me a research fellowship to study at the Baron’s estate. Those weeks in the library, at the dining table, and running through the beautiful landscape outside Geneva were instrumental in turning this project from draft into book. Special thanks to Gary and Heidi for making the stay so fantastically pleasant, and to the many colleagues that shared my time there for the many rich and charming discussions over superb food and drink. Thank you for so politely tolerating my French. Second, I would like to acknowledge the Center for Hellenic Studies, which also kindly hosted me to work on song culture in Athenian drama some years ago. Working alongside Kenny Morrell and Gregory Nagy was edifying to say the least. Perhaps what is more they re-stimulated my engagement with ancient drama and especially Euripides, whose comparison with Homer helped me realize that this project’s comparative nature was both possible and justifiable. Third, my thanks to the staff at Gorgias Press, excellent scholars in their own right as well as hugely helpful in getting this book through the final stages from messy digital file to beautiful hard copy. Tuomas, how fortuitous and entertaining our time at the SBL has been; I hope there will be many more. Brice, most of

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all I appreciate your support of my framing and finalizing the book in the form and shape I always wanted it to be. I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to my many excellent colleagues, past and present, for reviewing chapters, critiquing my claims and arguments, and providing numerous recommendations, historical examples, and secondary literature that much improved the book. As always, any remaining faults are mine alone. Particular thanks to colleagues at UNH, David Bachrach and Ann Zimo, who patiently guided me in areas outside my expertise. My dear colleagues and friends in CHI were crucial to the book’s success in many other ways too, especially my two department chairs across the book’s life, Stephen Trzaskoma and Scott Smith, who have been tirelessly and strategically supportive of this project and my career more widely. I’ve also been fortunate to have had the tremendous encouragement of two college deans, Heidi Bostic and Michele Dillon, who aided my research alongside my teaching with support both moral and material. Special thanks to Donna Berghorn, whose astute questions at a crucial, early juncture of the project were critical in opening up a narrow conference presentation to its potential for a wide-ranging monograph. I don’t know that this book would exist otherwise. Donna, you’re also the only person in these acknowledgments who truly appreciated the gravity of my surprise encounter with that shaman in western Mongolia. Many former professors and colleagues hugely illuminated me in ways that informed this project both broad and narrow, from wrapping my head around dense philosophical frameworks to properly rendering Virgil’s Latin: Stan Stowers, David Konstan, Pura Nieto Hernández, Michael Putnam, Charles Fornara, Stratis Papaioannou, Nigel Nicholson, Wally Englert, Ellen Millender, and Alex Nice. Special appreciation goes to Christopher Gill, whom I still haven’t had the pleasure of meeting in person, but whose theories found me at a formative time back during my graduate studies and which underpin the present book in its entirety. Thank you Chris for not only changing how I see the ancient world at a fundamental level but also for reading an earlier draft of my work – entirely unsolicited – with a magnanimous spirit and brilliantly careful eye.

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An undergraduate professor of mine once told me and my fellow students that, if you’re lucky, your students become your teachers. I’ve been lucky indeed. I’ll never forget the excellent students in the “Advanced Myth” seminar of Fall 2020 who engaged enthusiastically and insightfully with the readings and theories that appear in this book. Special thanks to those students whose discussions, ideas, questions, and written work showed me things that I’d missed and pointed me toward new ways of seeing the material: Tim, Gabby, Kaley, Hannah, Deanna, Schuyler, Caroline, Paul, Lizzie, Liz, Tyler, and Thomas. To this list I must add Camden, whose own hand helped shape this book’s final form, proving himself less student than colleague and friend. As always, the profoundest of my gratitude belongs to my parents, Mark and Annemarie. I could write a hundred books and devote each and every one to them, and it still wouldn’t suffice. The older I get the more I appreciate all you’ve done, Mom and Dad, in teaching me how to grow, to think, to behave, and to live life the right way. My father once told me that one never stops being a parent, and truly neither of you have stopped teaching me by example how to live with grace, generosity, morality, industry, principle, honesty, and kindness. Finally, the best for last: thank you Jill for all these years of love, support, friendship, and joy. You’ve seen this thing from start to finish, and together we’ve created even greater things in the meantime. So much more awaits us in this life. Dover, New Hampshire November 2021

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Illustrations are found in Art History Excursuses 1 (pp. 135–142) and 2 (pp. 211–218). All images are used with permission. Figure 1. Black-figured neck-amphora, attributed to Polyphemos Group (circa 520 BCE). Chalcidian, Italy. The British Museum, London. Figure 2. Red-figured calyx-krater, attributed to Cyclops Painter (circa 420-410 BCE). Lucania, Greece. The British Museum, London. Figure 3. Black-figured oinochoe, attributed to The Painter of Vatican G49 (circa 500-490 BCE). Attica, Fikellura grave 10. The British Museum, London. Figure 4. Sculpture of stone, Dolomitic marble from Greek island of Thasos (circa 150 BCE or later). Greek or Roman. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Figure 5. Wall painting: Polyphemus and Galatea in a landscape, Fresco, from the imperial villa of Agrippa Postumus at Boscotrecase, near Pompeii (last decade of 1st century BCE). The Met, New York. Figure 6. Acis and Galatea, by Nicolas Poussin. Oil on canvas (16271628). National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin. Figure 7. Polifemo, by Guido Reni. Oil on canvas (1639-1640). Barberini Collection; Sacchetti Collection, at the Musei Capitolini, Rome. Copyright of The Cultural Heritage Department of the City of Rome Digital Image Archive. Figure 8. “Cyclops sive,” in Monstrorum Historia by Ulisse Aldrovandi. Woodcut illustration (1642). Bernard Becker Medical Library, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis. Figure 9. Acis and Galatea Discovered by Polyphemus, Manufacture Royale des Gobelins. Tapestry, wool and silk (circa 1680-1684). Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

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Figure 10. Polyphemus, by Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein. Painting, watercolor (1802). Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte Oldenburg, LMO 15.011, Foto: Sven Adelaide. Figure 11. Odysseus and Polyphemus, by Arnold Böcklin. Oil and tempera on panel (1896). Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Figure 12. Galatea, by Gustave Moreau. Ink, tempera, gouache, and watercolor on cardboard (1896). Museo Nacional ThyssenBornemisza, Madrid. Figure 13. The Encyclopedia of Early Earth, by Isabel Greenberg (2013). Little, Brown and Company.

PREFACE This is a book about two seemingly separate but interrelated strands in the history of western thought: the myth of the Cyclops, and the story of selfhood. The Cyclops is well-known in modernity as a mythical monster with a single eye. This story goes back thousands of years, with the most famous version by the ancient Greek poet Homer in the Odyssey. It is this general story of the Cyclops that interests me and forms the backbone of this book, as I detail the ways that this ancient myth moves through time, from its ancient Paleolithic roots, to Greek and Roman times, through the medieval period, and into modernity with comics and the Percy Jackson novels. In the following chapters, I explore the many ways that the Cyclops myth is re-told in different periods, in something of a grand exploration in comparative storytelling. Alongside the Cyclops myth, my other major interest is selfhood, namely how we understand our own identity. By analyzing and comparing the different Cyclops myths, I ask and try to answer some of the big questions in philosophy and the humanities. In particular, I want to know why we think about ourselves the way that we do. Where did our notion of “the self” come from? Where and how did it change along the winding course of history? In this way, we can think of selfhood as the payoff for reading and comparing the Cyclops myth so widely. While the many myths of the Cyclops are interesting and worthwhile in their own right, I think that the comparison of these myths can suggest answers for some important questions around selfhood, humanity, and society today. The Cyclops myth is especially suited to answer these types of questions, for several reasons. First, it is a myth that is re-told

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by notable voices across western history in every historical period, and therefore allows for a truly wide comparison. Many myths from the ancient world have survived into the modern period, but very few are the myths that are re-told so consistently and widely across history. Second, unlike some more general myths that re-occur across history – such as myths of dragons and serpents – the Cyclops myth is distinct for involving a human-like character, namely the Cyclops himself. This makes the myth a prime candidate for reflecting on what makes humans human, in comparison, contradistinction, or even in parallel to the stories of this one-eyed creature. Indeed, I think that the Cyclops’ status, as human-like but not entirely human, is a specific reason why he is engaged so often as different authors throughout history articulate and suggest the characteristics of proper human selfhood. These two strands, the Cyclops myth and western selfhood, are each enormous subjects in their own right. An attempt to link the two in a single book cannot be exhaustive with respect to either, and I make no attempt or claim to cover either subject in their entirety. My goal is not to dig into the minutiae of any one field, text, historical era, mode of artistic reception, or theory of myth, but rather to put mythology and selfhood into broader conversation. It is only when we take this wider view that we can see the productive linkages between these two subjects, and I therefore invite the reader to look with me at the contours of the forest instead of just the trees.

OUTLINE OF CHAPTERS

In the Introduction, I provide the theoretical grounding and methodological bases for my readings and arguments in all the subsequent chapters. The first half of the introduction details the notion of selfhood: defining it, giving examples, and engaging with other recent scholarship on the idea. I particularly engage with the classicist Christopher Gill, who has argued for a key differentiation between ancient selfhood, which he terms “objective-participant”, and modern selfhood, which he terms “subjective-individualist”. This selfhood differentiation has greatly stimulated by own thought and work, and it provides the starting point for my study. The second half of the Introduction discusses a few other

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key frameworks by way of background: myth, myth theory, and the relationship of myth to culture and change. A running thread in this book is my argument that changes in myth over time can reflect and indicate wider cultural shifts in values and understandings, such as around selfhood. In Chapter One, I discuss the Homeric Age, situating the Cyclops myth in ancient traditions such as those found in the Greek poets Hesiod and Homer, along with other pre-Homer traditions. I then discuss Homer’s story of Odysseus and the Cyclops named Polyphemus in greater detail, as befits its influence on later myth. This chapter bookends one side of my continuum of selfhood, what Gill called an objective-participant selfhood. I argue that the selfhood of this period, reflected and encapsulated in the Cyclops of Homer’s Odyssey, is the fullest representation of this type of objective-participant selfhood from which other periods depart, to varying but inexorable degrees, in their shift toward a fully modern, subjective-individualist selfhood. In Chapter Two, I discuss the Classical Era, specifically Euripides’ satyr play Cyclops. While this account of the Cyclops is still mostly Homeric, I focus on a few small but important changes in Euripides’ description of the Cyclops Polyphemus that I argue reflect a slightly changed notion of selfhood. While Gill describes literature of this period as wholly objective-participant, I argue that some of the earliest seeds of subjective-individualist selfhood can be found in Euripides’ play in his description of the Cyclops. In Chapter Three, I discuss the Hellenistic Age and Theocritus’ Idylls VI and XI. These bucolic poems, along with fragments of other non-surviving works, demonstrate the first substantial departure from the Homeric Cyclops. In doing so, they articulate a notable shift in the period’s understanding of selfhood. Theocritus’ Cyclops originates, or at least popularizes, the notion of Polyphemus as emotional and sentimental, with descriptions and considerations that are markedly but not yet wholly subjectiveindividualist. The art historical record shows a parallel shift from an interest in the Homeric/Euripidean Cyclops to the more sentimental, romantic Cyclops of the Acis and Galatea myth, pioneered in the Hellenistic Age and further explored in subsequent centuries.

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Chapter Four details the period of the Roman Empire, particularly Virgil and Ovid. Both these authors had knowledge of the Homeric/Euripidean, more objective-participant Cyclops as well as the Theocritean, more subjective-individualist Cyclops. Virgil and Ovid each synthesize these two Cyclops accounts in different ways, and both authors maintain something of a balance between the different myths, speaking to the fact that selfhood is changing in a subjective-individualist way, but only gradually and varyingly. At the conclusion of this chapter I introduce a representative selection from the art historical record. Our earliest vase paintings show clearly a Cyclops that reflects the Homeric account. Such depictions bridge into the early Classical Era, not only in painting but also in sculpture, showing the general persistence of both this type of Cyclops and objective-participant selfhood for hundreds of years. Chapter Five covers Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. As this period contains no surviving, complete re-telling of the Cyclops story until around the 13th century CE (in Ireland, no less), my account focuses on scholiast glosses found in the manuscript tradition under Christian and (Neo-)Platonic influence. Here, we see interpretations and explanations from learned monks and thinkers around the different Cyclops myths, and these occasional, brief manuscript notes demonstrate a continued shift in emphasis away from the Homeric, objective-participant Cyclops toward a subjective-individualist understanding in a variety of ways. Later works, ranging from Irish epics to Turkish folktales to Spanish opera, provide full articulations of the Cyclops myth. While such works maintain vestiges of Homer’s Cyclops, they are overwhelmingly sentimentalist and subjective-individualist in their depictions. They thus reflect not only the European Romantic tradition but eventually also the Cartesian and Kantian emphases on interior subjectivity. The art historical record broadens substantially and continues to parallel this wider Cyclops-selfhood shift in a host of mediums. Chapter Six discusses the modern world, looking at how the Cyclops is re-figured in popular culture today. Taking represen-

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tative examples from graphic novels, comic books, film, and young adult novels, I argue that the modern Cyclops continues the trending changes from across the previous eras. In doing so, the modern Cyclops fully manifests a subjective-individualist selfhood, which Gill argued uniquely defined western modernity. I conclude with reflections about the myth’s durability, its role in culture and western history, and the role of selfhood in modern thought and self-understanding.

INTRODUCTION. SELFHOOD AND THE CYCLOPS MYTH W HAT IS SELFHOOD ?

This book makes an argument about the notion of selfhood and how it changes over time. Selfhood refers to the terms by which people understand themselves.1 It is the general framework within which personal or group identity occurs, both enabling and constraining different potential identities.2 Selfhood, in other words, is the broader cultural category within which various, sometimes conflicting identities are constructed. Identity can be thought of as a first-order characteristic: a person or group of people can and do provide their own, explicit, and specific markers of identity. Identity is a term used by and among people to describe themselves. People will easily and happily provide an account of their identity, for instance ‘I identify with/as X’. Selfhood, meanwhile, is a second-order characteristic: it is used by analysts, and is concerned with the types of features that people pick to construct their identity. Selfhood is not something for which a person or group of people typically provide explicit and clear markers to describe themselves. People will rarely if ever ascribe to themselves a selfhood, for instance ‘My selfhood is Y’. Selfhood describes general, implicit, socio-cultural frameworks, whereas identity describes the personal way that a A useful starting point: Sorabji, Self: Ancient and Modern Insights. Min-Sun Kim usefully describes selfhood as “an organized locus of the various, sometimes competing, understandings of how to be a person”, which in turn construct identity: Kim, Non-Western Perspectives On Human Communication, p. 8. 1 2

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particular human intersects with this wider socio-cultural framework(s).3 Identity is an individual or group negotiation of selfhood’s enablements and constraints that are implicit in culture. These enablements and constraints can be generalized for a given cultural-historical moment, but they will never be precisely predictive for individual thought and behavior.4 There will always be variation, negotiation, contestation, and sometimes radical creativity or paradigm violation. Overall, then, even if identity differs between people, they can share the same notion of selfhood due to deploying similar types of thinking. If two people identify with different ethnic groups, their identity differs but they still have a shared selfhood insofar as they both base their self-understanding on the concept of ethnicity. If two people have radically different personalities but still find personality significant as far as identity, likewise they have similar notions of selfhood. Cultures tend to have many variations in identity and few variations in selfhood: core cultural similarities in selfhood underpin different manifestations of identity. While selfhood and identity substantially overlap and might not always be so easily separable,5 this differentiation is central to my project.6

Or, identity vis-à-vis selfhood is “a concept that figuratively combines the intimate or personal world with the collective space of cultural forms and social relations”, Holland et al, Identity and Agency, p. 5. 4 The language of “enablements and constraints” is drawn from practice theory (variously also site ontology, or structuration), which specifies wider, social structures that guide action, but which ultimately cannot force an individual agent to act or abstain in any given moment. For practice theory, see Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice; for site ontology, see Schatzki, The Site of the Social; for structuration, see Giddens, The Constitution of Society. 5 Gill, for example, has argued for a distinction between character and personality that must be combined for a full understanding of a given person in their socio-historical context, much as I conceive for selfhood and identity: Gill, “The Character-Personality Distinction”, pp. 1-31; Idem, “The Question of Character and Personality in Greek Tragedy”, pp. 251-273. 6 Useful are the first two chapters in Oshana, The Importance of How we See Ourselves, where Oshana discusses the interplay between one’s self and the various ways that identity is structured, e.g. via practice-theory 3

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A NCIENT VERSUS MODERN SELFHOOD

A main conversation partner in this book is the philosopher and classicist Christopher Gill. In the introduction of his 1996 book and fully fleshed out in his 2006 study,7 Gill makes the persuasive case that there is a clear difference between ancient and modern notions of selfhood.8 For Gill, this difference exists in generally binary terms, between what Gill calls “objective-participant” selfhood on one end, and “subjective-individualist” selfhood on the other. According to Gill, the ancient Mediterranean world was defined by objective-participant selfhood, where selfhood is “structured” by what one’s wider social context objectively assigns based on public and external features such as birth, social obligations, and public personae.9 For the Greeks during the time of Homer, for example, the proper way to both reason and act was based on a right understanding of one’s communal role and expectations. This attitude reflected the performative and public nature of ancient Greek religion, politics, and economics, whose practices were shared, communal, mutually intersecting, and visible. Gill analyzed examples in ancient texts such as Homer’s Iliad, Platonic dialogues, and Greek tragedy, where he intriguingly argued that seemingly reflective, interior monologues (such as in Euripides’ play Medea) actually reflect the “primary role of participation in interpersonal and communal relationships” for providing “the acquisition of objective ethical knowledge” pertaining to right thought and action.10 and/or narrative. Gill and Oshana both conclude that a proper accounting of the self must combine multiple approaches. 7 Gill, Personality in Greek Epic; Idem, The Structured Self. 8 These two books drew from and also built upon Gill’s previous work: Gill, “The Ancient Self: Issues and Approaches”, pp. 35-56; Idem, “The Ancient Self: Where Now?”, pp. 77-99; Idem, “The Self and HellenisticRoman Philosophical Therapy”, pp. 359-395; Idem, “The Question of Character-Development”, pp. 469-487. 9 Note that ancient thought on selfhood was not necessarily unified, nor is Gill’s the only useful framework: see notably Long, “Ancient Philosophy’s Hardest Question: What to Make of Oneself?”, pp. 19-36; Idem, Greek Models of Mind and Self. 10 Gill, Personality, 10, emphases original. Gill carefully analyzes specific examples such as Odysseus’ monologue in Iliad 11.404-10, Plato’s

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We might add that objective-participant selfhood, a framework derived from external and social-communal structures, is found in not only literature and philosophy – Gill’s main evidence – but also in the kinship, political, and socio-religious structures of ancient Greece. Indeed, scholarship on ancient Athens, for instance, has shown the extent to which external, structuring elements such as birth, lineage, kinship, and geography played fundamental roles in constituting the lived reality of ancient Greeks. Politics were conceived along explicitly geographical and kinship ties.11 Tribal identity and negotiation were in many ways central to the Athenian civic state,12 with changes around and after the Persian Wars of the early fifth century BCE.13 This was the political state that today we tend to think of in terms of purportedly highfalutin democratic ideals,14 even as there was substantial contemporary evidence supporting or undermining democracy’s role in 5th/4th century Athens.15 The rise of the Athenian polis not only had non-Greek antecedents, but these antecedents also

Republic, and Medea’s reflections in Euripides’ Medea, 1078-80. For a discussion of how Polyphemus’ own monologues changed over re-tellings and historical periods, see Hutchinson, “The Monster and the Monologue”, pp. 22-39. 11 Walters, “Geography and Kinship as Political Infrastructures in Archaic Athens”, pp. 1-31. Walters’ work built on the previous work of Sealey (“Regionalism in Archaic Athens”, pp. 155-180), Lewis (“Cleisthenes and Attica”, pp. 22-40), and A. Andrews (The Greek Tyrants, pp. 102-104). These authors had influentially rejected the injection of modernist interpretations of politics (and therefore selfhood) back into ancient Athens such as around class and political affiliation, the latter of which in particular reflects modernity’s unique focus on individual choice and subjective preference leading to political affiliation. 12 Frost, “Tribal Politics and the Civic State”, pp. 66-75; Meier, The Greek Discovery of Politics, pp. 140-154. 13 Connor, New Politicians of Fifth-Century Athens. 14 Of course, the notion of individually ascribing to an abstract ideal over and against other forms of identity (locative, tribal, familial, etc.) is distinctly modern and western both, with analogues and precedents across western history. As most recent history has shown, however, even in the modern west such notions remain an ideal often contested in practice. 15 E.g., Aristophanes, Thucydides, Plato, the so-called Old Oligarch, and others.

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shared its communal, objective-participant nature.16 All of these spheres, in other words, support Gill’s point around the prominence of objective-participant selfhood in the ancient Mediterranean. This ancient Mediterranean, objective-participant selfhood can be contrasted with modern selfhood, which Gill labels “subjective-individualist”. Subjective-individualist selfhood is constituted by individual and internal beliefs, desires, emotions, and intentions. Indeed, Gill argues that the notion of the “self” – as a cohesive, individual unit determined by unique, internal characteristics and subjective preferences – is a distinctly modern term, with ancient Greek linguistic correlations better translated as “itself”.17 Building on Michel Foucault and others, Gill especially attributes this shift toward recognizing an individual “self” to René Descartes and the Cartesian dualism of internal mind and external body. Gill’s fundamental point is shared with and built upon previous work that has influentially detailed how the ancient world differed when it came to forming moral judgments and actions.18 A modern, subjective-individualist framework (in Gill’s parlance) focuses on the individual self-consciousness and subjectivity with post-Cartesian understandings of a unified “I” that frames its own unique, interior state and goals as ontologically central,19 as well as a post-Kantian focus on individual autonomy and will instead of communal ethics.20 In the modern west, we thus privilege individual beliefs, desires, and emotions, a legacy of both Romanticism and Cartesian/Kantian dualism.21

Starr, Individual and Community. See also Stanton, Athenian Politics c. 800-500 BC. 17 Long, Greek Models of Mind and Self. 18 MacIntyre, After Virtue and Williams, Shame and Necessity. 19 Gill, Personality, p. 12. 20 Gill, in personal correspondence, emphasized that while Cartesian and Kantian influences combined to constitute subjective-individualist selfhood, Descartes’ and Kant’s influences can be located in distinct spheres within this selfhood, as I’ve made explicit in this sentence with due gratitude. 21 See further discussion in Kim, Non-Western Perspectives. 16

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I think Gill is generally correct, but can be built upon, modified, and extended. For one, Gill does not detail the historical elements of this shift in selfhood from the ancient, objective-participant paradigm to the modern, subjective-individualist one. Nor does Gill provide explanations for this shift much beyond his discussion of Cartesian/Kantian ontology. For my part, although Gill’s dualism is useful for re-thinking, I see not a dualism between the ancient and modern worlds but rather a continuum, where the notion of selfhood changed incrementally and in fits and starts across western history. It was not the case, and Gill would doubtless agree, that Descartes penned his opus and the whole western world changed its self-understanding. Rather, Descartes had predecessors (Seneca, Epictetus, Paul, Augustine, Luther, etc.),22 as the seeds of Cartesian dualism and modern subjectivity were planted long before Descartes by authors whose texts we still read today.23 In this book, then, I not only attempt to modify Gill’s core framework, but also to detail where defined shifts in selfhood took place. I contend that we can identify particular texts in their historical eras as significant, and that these particular texts and eras reflect a gradual, piecemeal, and nonlinear shift from Homer to the Hellenistic and Roman eras, to the Middle Ages, to the modern period. Furthermore, I provide arguments as to why we see certain changes in different historical periods. My understanding of a continuum demands an account for movement along it, and therefore I suggest reasons from culture, society, and politics that might explain why certain shifts in (depictions of) selfhood took place. I also suggest an understanding of selfhood and its changes that depart in some ways from Gill’s own framing. As I will argue in my comparisons of the Cyclops myths, I find the main difference between ancient and modern selfhood to turn on the contrast between outer and inner selfhood. Outer selfhood is defined by social, communal, and status-based considerations, whereas inner selfhood is defined by psychological, emotional, and internalized 22 23

Anderson, Constructing the Self. Fine, “Subjectivity, Ancient and Modern”, pp. 192-231.

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considerations. In the large, I understand and equate this outer selfhood with Gill’s “objective-participant selfhood”, and this inner selfhood with Gill’s “subjective-individualist selfhood”. Yet herein lies a small if important difference: for Gill, the difference in these two types of selfhood turns not on the presence of emotions (which in my view is centrally subjective-individualist), but rather in terms of how emotion is framed, namely whether emotion is participatory (objective-particpant) or radically self-conscious (subjective-individualist). In this way, Gill reads the emotions of a character like Medea not in terms of their presence or volume, but rather in terms of whether or not they are rendered in public, participatory ways. By contrast, I read the emotions of different Cyclopes across western history by comparing the presence and volume of their emotions, seeing in this comparison the greater role for emotional interiority and hence a heightened subjective-individualist selfhood. For Gill, the pre-Descartes emotional world can still be seen securely within an objective-participant framework, whereas my own reading sees a notable but only partial shift from objectiveparticipant to subjective-individualist selfhood. My use and reproduction of Gill’s language and general framework turns on this difference in understanding. Overall, though, I find Gill’s ancient/modern selfhood differentiation to be largely accurate and crucial for any modern thinker’s understanding of the ancient world. Notwithstanding an awareness of other prominent theorists on ancient selfhood and potentially important critiques of Gill,24 I will be in running conversation with Gill’s framework throughout this book. However, As noted above, Long’s work diverges from Gill, and Long’s thinking and body of work merit note for their consistent excellence and have been hugely influential on my own understanding of selfhood, ancient and modern. For an example of the reception of Gill’s work that acclaims aspects but engages some of the finer distinctions and questions the firmer schematization, see Inwood, “Review of The Structured Self in Hellenistic and Roman Thought”, pp. 479-483. Critical responses to Gill tend to stem from these two areas: disagreements about his readings of particular authors and texts, and/or a more holistic argument against the ancient vs. modern selfhood distinction predicated on a post-Kantian notion of self. 24

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two caveats merit note. One, there have always been individuals with internal feelings, beliefs, emotions, and preferences. Two, external society and social forces will always play a role in most people’s ethical decisions and self-understandings. My argument is not at all that internal emotions were absent in the ancient world or that communal ethics don’t exist in modernity. My argument instead focuses on wider cultural understandings and depictions of selfhood, which are conceived in different terms in different cultural-historic times, and which fundamentally shape any individual’s ideas of identity and selfhood. Along these lines, the issue that I centrally pursue in this work is the examination of different emphases that particular historical-cultural periods placed on particular sides of the selfhood continuum. In the variable tug and pull between subjective-individualism and objective-participation selfhood, where does a particular historical era stand? To answer this question, I look at how these emphases change over time, specifically as manifested, reflected, and exemplified in re-tellings of the same mythological figure, the Cyclops. By looking at the Cyclops across time, I hope to show that each historical period’s version of this myth tells us something important about that period’s broader understandings of selfhood, even as each period contains internal changes, local variation, and contestation around these understandings.

THE CYCLOPS M YTH

The Cyclops myth is best known from the ancient Greek story of the Odyssey, attributed to the poet Homer perhaps around 750 BCE. In book nine of that epic tale, Homer’s protagonist Odysseus, sailing back after the decade-long Trojan War, encounters a giant, one-eyed brute named Polyphemus. After Polyphemus traps Odysseus and his crewmates in a cave, he violently devours several. Odysseus, desperate and in mortal danger, concocts a plan befitting of his epithet “wily”. In a celebrated escape, Odysseus gets the Cyclops so drunk he falls unconscious, stabs his eye with a fire-sharpened stake, and Odysseus then tucks his crewmates under sheep on their way out of the cave to avoid detection by the blindly groping Cyclops. This is the tale that would be told

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and re-told for centuries, and the tale that had the most influence on subsequent understandings of this thing called a “Cyclops”. But it is not the only story. Indeed, Homer’s Odyssey, like any mythological tale, drew from and innovated upon previously existing stories.25 Homer’s skillful innovation seems to have been his ability to weave together not only these disparate stories but also their diverging themes and elements of content (hospitality, food practices, piety, revenge, etc.) into a coherent whole.26 Indeed, we have substantial evidence that different versions of the Cyclops story were present in the ancient Mediterranean both before and long after Homer.27 There were likely a whole host of pre-Homeric stories with uncertain connection to selfhood due to our lack of strong evidence, but which seemingly connected the Cyclops to collective mythical understandings,28 smith-working and the Greek god of the forge Hephaestus,29 initiation rituals,30 Paleolithic practices such as fire-sharpening stakes for hunting and/or warfare,31 and even a potential tie between Polyphemus stories and volcanic eruptions occurring on Mount Etna.32 Such stories often combined with much later folk stories and traditions in a host of cultures across Europe and the Middle East into the early modern period. These later mythical-folktale combinations were noticed and

Mondi, “The Homeric Cyclopes: Folktale, Tradition, and Theme”, pp. 17–38. 26 Hernández, “Back in the Cave of the Cyclops”, pp. 345-366. 27 Bremmer, “Odysseus versus the Cyclops”, pp. 132-52. 28 Brelich, Gli eroi greci, pp. 332-336; Glenn, “The Polyphemus Myth: Its Origin and Interpretation”, pp. 141-155. 29 Detienne and Vernant, Cunning Intelligence, pp. 75-87, discussing the story of the Cyclops teaching smith-craft to Hephaestus. 30 Faraone, “Mystery Cults and Initiations”, pp.127-142. This also seems to be an early position of Walter Burkert regarding primal rituals and myths: Burkert, Structure and History in Greek Myth and Ritual; see discussion and dispute in Bremmer, “Odysseus”. For the evolution of Burkert’s thought and the initiatory position, see also Versnel, Transition and Reversal, p. 84 and pp. 168-9. 31 Auffarth, Der drohende Untergang, pp. 292-344. 32 Scarth, “Volcanic Origins of the Polyphemus Story in the “Odyssey”: A Non-Classicist’s Interpretation”, pp. 89-95. 25

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detailed by no less than Wilhelm Grimm of the famous fairy-tale compilers the Brothers Grimm.33 Homer’s Polyphemus was simply the most popular, and thus exerted outsize influence on subsequent re-tellings. Therefore, while I discuss some of the early Cyclops myths pre-dating and contemporary to Homer, and also occasionally mention where later myths seem to draw from non-Homeric sources, the persistence and influence of Homer’s version forms the early foundation of my study. By also foregrounding the Homeric version as the basis of my comparison for later myths, we are also able to keep the comparison consistent across different historical periods, showing how different stories of the Cyclops all compare to this same Homeric version. As we will see, this core Homeric story changes in notable ways in later periods, with subsequent authors and cultures departing from this version and focusing on different permutations of the myth. This is not a study of just Homer’s Cyclops, in other words, but rather a study of the ways in which this shared, Homeric departure point undergirds later changes in both myth and cultural understandings of selfhood. Finally, because of this focus on the Homeric version of the myth, most of my study revolves around the Cyclops Polyphemus. While Polyphemus wasn’t the only Cyclops on the mythical scene, both previous to Homer and in Homer’s influential account too, the other mythical Cyclopes play only a relatively minor role in subsequent retellings. This partly reflects, I think, the predominant influence of Homer’s account and mythical innovations noted above. But it also reflects the fact that Polyphemus as a singular, developed character provides so much more potential psychological depth and richness in contrast to a hero as compared to the generally faceless and impersonal Cyclopes found in Hesiod’s creation narrative (forgers of Zeus’ lightning), in Homer’s Odyssey (Polyphemus’ distant co-inhabitants on the island), and in some later accounts such as Virgil’s Aeneid (forgers of Aeneas’ armor). Following the content and emphases of the myths themselves, I therefore generally speak of the Cyclops in the singular, who from Homer onward is generally assumed to be 33

Grimm, Die Sage von Polyphem.

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Polyphemus or someone like him. Later authors’ intertextual engagements with the Cyclops myth overwhelming use Polyphemus as the foundation for their own re-telling, so “Polyphemus” – in all his guises, names, forms, and instantiations as Cyclops – occupies the core of our story of changing selfhood.

W HAT IS M YTH?

It is important to clarify what I mean by myth, a concept subject to a wide range of opinions and theories. In my mind, the best theory of myth comes from the theorist of religion Bruce Lincoln, who understands myth most simply as ‘ideology in narrative form’.34 In Lincoln’s view, myth reflects, reproduces, strengthens, and even creates certain cultural ideologies, ranging from the political to the social. Myth is not merely a story, but rather is a widely held story that indicates things about culture more broadly such as its values and self-understandings. Myth can also, in turn, be a major influence on its surrounding culture, such as on cultural values and understandings.35 There is a great deal of other scholarship that theorizes the category of myth that I do not explore in this book, but which has deeply edified me and therefore significantly shapes my understandings and descriptions.36 For example, the simple question of how to define something as a myth – in contrast to a fable, fairytale, or fiction – constitutes its own field of study.37 There are Most fully detailed in Lincoln, Theorizing Myth. Lincoln’s focus on ideology’s structuring power calls to mind Althusser, who explores the ways that an individual identity and wider ideologies intersect, with the latter’s “Interpellations” (what I might term the culture’s selfhood framework) shaping the former; see Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses”. 36 A couple notable starting points are the works of Segal and Johnston. 37 For example, see Page, The Homeric Odyssey, who argues that the story is better classified as a folktale, which might lead us to explain some narrative choices as simply genre conventions. While the distinction between myth and folktale isn’t particularly important for this study, I see the Odyssey, and the Cyclops story more broadly, as very much a myth for its focus on providing meaning and reifying cultural understandings as opposed to merely amusing stories of the fantastical; on this point see Kirk, Myth. 34 35

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many other views which depart from Lincoln’s definition and approach in ways both great and small, and which are useful in different ways for different types of questions. Indeed, while I am persuaded by Lincoln and use his approach as my organizing definition of myth, I don’t hold him to be unequivocal nor his work to be the last word on the matter. For the purposes of this book and its focus on selfhood and comparative literature, however, we need not get into the weeds around the many competing theories of myth. Many such books have been written, and an attempt to do complete justice to myth theory would take us far – too far – from the Cyclops and the self. At this juncture, it suffices to say that the Cyclops myth was simply a widely-known story that got told, modified, and re-told over the centuries. Therefore, following Lincoln, this myth is able to tell us things about different periods’ values and self-understandings, and this myth might have itself even influenced these same values and understandings. It is the widespread persistence of the Cyclops myth that interests me, not any sort of claim about its cultural or political essentiality. Thus, while I remain aware of insights and debates from myth theory apart from Lincoln, I mainly focus on the comparative reading of different Cyclops stories, and what this comparison of similarities and differences suggests about the changing values, ideologies, and understandings of different cultural-historical periods.

M YTH, CULTURE, AND CHANGE – OR, RECEPTION THEORY

This study explores notable literary and artistic moments that mark wider cultural shifts. My argument is not that these particular re-tellings of the Cyclops myth reflected or precipitated totalizing, homogeneous, epochal cultural shifts occurring in a short time. Rather, I argue that these re-tellings, often by the social elite, distilled and embodied wider cultural and historical trends that arose unevenly, in fits and starts, and which always contained substantial variance and contestation. In this way, I draw from the theories of a school of thought called New Historicism, particularly the authors Catharine Gallagher and Stephen Greenblatt who argue that there is both descriptive and explanatory value in looking for the general (here, cultural trends regarding

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selfhood) in the specific (here, re-tellings of the Cyclops myth).38 In Gallagher’s and Greenblatt’s view, “theoretical and methodological generalizations [arise] through dense networks of particulars”.39 Historical interpretation arises from the exploration of particular historical anecdotes as potentially reflective of wider cultural shifts.40 In the language of my project, by investigating specific modifications of the Cyclops myth that occurred during certain cultural periods, we can derive plausible conclusions about what particular cultures valued and how they understood things such as selfhood. The elements of Homeric myth that conform to the (contested and unevenly held) values of the Roman Empire will likely be retained and even strengthened in Roman re-tellings, for instance, while the elements of the Homeric myth that do not will likely be minimized or even removed entirely in Roman re-tellings. With an attention to what is retained and highlighted versus removed and diminished between various permutations of a given myth, we can identify different cultural values and understandings as well as the changes that occur across historical periods. Some readers may be familiar with such an approach under the title ‘reception studies’. Originating in literary theory, reception studies is a set of frameworks and approaches to reading works from the past that emphasizes how every historical period re-reads, understands, and appropriates previous works in ways reflective of and in service to current ideologies, knowledge structures, and power dynamics. Currently in vogue in the field of Classics, one of reception studies’ key contributions has been the recognition that every society and time period, indeed every individual reader,

Gallagher and Greenblatt, Practicing New Historicism. Ibid, p. 19. 40 For the application of this New Historicism approach in a manner influential to my own thought, see the theoretical grounding and discussion in Miller, “Shifting Selves in Late Antiquity”, pp. 15-39. Miller’s approach and understanding of selfhood differ widely from my own, but we share an interest in exploring particular texts or groupings of texts as having descriptive and explanatory power in the study of history, a task that New Historicism well emphasizes. 38 39

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engages a given work through a mediating, often subconscious network of contemporary influences.41 As with my use of myth theory, throughout this book I engage works and ideas from reception studies where relevant, but attempt to keep my focus squarely on the myths themselves instead of devoting lengthy treatments to different theories of reception. Ultimately, though, my core argument is fundamentally informed by a central tenant of reception theory: that every retelling of the Cyclops myth is an act of active negotiation with the past, one that fundamentally reflects and embodies wider structures at play in society. Much of reception studies today attempts to de-stabilize the notion of a “traditional” or “original” myth or mode of thought: we should recognize and embrace that every period tells its own story, and that each unique re-telling reflects certain interests, voices, and ideologies over others. In this way, each of my chapters details a particular act of cultural reception, as an ever-widening set of Cyclops stories gets passed through history and is selectively re-told in ways that reflect the ideologies of the day, such as selfhood. All sorts of different myths, stories, art, beliefs, practices, and modes of language do this work of reflecting certain interests and ideologies over others. Therefore it is likely that other myths, such as the Medusa or Medea, that are widely re-told across different periods could do similar work of highlighting and reflecting notable changes in the wider socio-historical context. To equal the Cyclops in explanatory power, however, another myth would need equally direct and substantial attestation across every single period in western history. The Cyclops is notable in this regard, not just specifically mentioned in every historical period – from the Homeric onward – but also given robust treatment in the literary and art-historical record. Other myth candidates such as the Medusa or Medea have neither the continuity from Homeric (and even pre-Homeric) times onward nor the robust attestation in every notable period in western history.

But one starting point among many: Martindale and Thomas, Classics and the Uses of Reception. 41

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As I also mentioned in the Preface, the Cyclops is further distinct as a recurring human-like character, unlike fantastic beasts so often encountered in other myths. This makes the Cyclops myth a prime candidate for reflecting on what makes humans human in comparison, contradistinction, or even in parallel to the stories of this one-eyed creature – in so many ways human, but not quite. The Cyclops as not-quite-human foil, in other words, marks out this myth in particular as uniquely suited for the task of comparatively reflecting different periods’ ideologies around proper human selfhood. By comparison, Medea is fully human, and might even be the hero of her myth; the Medusa is barely human-like and consistently afforded negligible self-expression. Yet in principle, I don’t see the Cyclops myth, or likely any author or writing, as constitutive or uniquely reflective of wider cultural shifts; I contend merely that it is our best and most representative example for the shift in selfhood. Indeed, such cultural shifts are complex, contested, uneven, and manifest in a host of ways. I thus do not locate a certain text, author, or even time as the precise place where or when a cultural change occurs. An identified change may well have pre-dated the text in question, and my study will recognize such a change only in a retelling of the Cyclops story that occurs perhaps much later. While some scholars have pointed to Seneca or Augustine as influential turning points in selfhood,42 I remain somewhat skeptical of our ability to speak in explanatory terms of any one author’s widespread influence, especially so far in the past. I prefer instead to conclude more descriptively, in terms of a given author reflecting and distilling wider trends already in motion, perhaps in remarkable ways. Certain of the authors and texts I discuss do seem to be outliers with respect to the wider culture. While Homer and Euripides, to differing degrees, reflected and reproduced wider cultural debates, trends, and values, historical figures in this study with extensive educations and/or elite social standing such as Plato, A brief sampling of modern views: Hundert, “Augustine and the Sources of the Divided Self”, pp. 86-104; Porter, “Time for Foucault?”, pp. 113-133; Toivanen, “Perceptual Self-Awareness in Seneca, Augustine, and Olivi”, pp. 355-382. 42

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Seneca, Epictetus, and various medieval scholiasts may have represented minority views on topics ranging from politics to cultural values to understandings of selfhood. In this way, however, they were also uniquely positioned to influence cultural notions like selfhood in novel directions. A culture full of believers in the status quo, in other words, would never change, and by analyzing these influential outliers in thought we are able to identify areas of innovation and novel focus that responded to, critiqued, and perhaps even shaped changing views of selfhood. Euripides and Plato, to take but two examples, were undoubtedly idiosyncratic and minority figures in their day, but their thought and writings subsequently had outsize influence in centuries to come. While some such thinkers stand out historically as novel in some crucial ways, we must also remember that they were often part of wider, previous circles of thought, and that it is difficult to pinpoint the influence of individual thinkers or texts on culture more broadly. Most of the data I discuss is literary, and the product of a highly educated, socio-cultural elite. In some ways, therefore, my conclusions relate to only certain, albeit often influential, depictions of selfhood by elite text-producers. At the same time, however, there was to varying degrees at least some cultural trickle-down from these influential authors. Homer and Euripides, for example, were doubtless highly educated compared to most of their contemporaries, but Homeric poetry and Athenian drama both were widely consumed, imitated, and used as the basis for education at a variety of levels for hundreds of years. These text-producers, and therefore their depictions of the Cyclops along with their views of social values such as around selfhood, extended widely and influentially throughout their societies. The art historical record independently parallels these literary shifts, a fact that lends additional plausibility to such conclusions.43 We can also tie literary and artistic data to other evidence, Touchefeu-Meynier, Thèmes odysséens dans l’art antique, pp. 10–41; Idem, “Odysseus”, pp. 943-970, esp. 957–60 for classical Cyclopean imagery. For a wider account of the myth’s history and its parallel developments in art, see recently Aguirre and Buxton, Cyclops. An increasing amount of scholarship has come to view ancient artistic depictions as separable from the Homeric stories: Snodgrass (1998), Burgress (2001), Lowenstam (1992), 43

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such as political changes, warfare, or other such socio-cultural data. But we must stay mindful that the texts discussed are evidence most of all of the attitudes and arguments of elite, cultural producers with their own individual motivations and field of concerns that could differ from many of their contemporaries.44 Further scepticism is warranted around any single text’s reflection of a more general cultural selfhood: the influences on an individual’s artistic production are enormously wide and run far beyond a single framework just as selfhood. It is for this exact reason that my comparison runs wide, exploring whether other cultural-historical shifts support the changes we find in a given author, as well as incorporating the entire breadth of the western written record on the Cyclops in order to detect broader trends. One data point in a given cultural era is intriguing and perhaps suggestive but ultimately inconclusive with respect to that era’s selfhood; by contrast, many data points, some contemporaneous, stretching across hundreds of years and a host of eras with supporting visual and socio-cultural data provides a much stronger case for the shift in general trends over time. Therefore, my conclusions about wider cultural shifts (in attitudes, values, understandings of selfhood) should be taken not as precise arguments for exactly when, by whom, or why these changes came about. Rather, my conclusions should be seen as broader indications and explanatory suggestions about changes that had already taken place, or were currently well afoot, or perhaps had just begun. While it is possible that the texts I analyze influentially precipitated cultural change, such as in the wider understanding of the notion of selfhood, I remain skeptical of not only the definitiveness of such a conclusion (how could we prove it?) but also of any one text’s ability to enact whole-scale change and Squire (2009), esp. pp. 122-39 where he argues that ancient images are not simply illustrations of ancient texts such as Homer’s Odyssey but rather represent their own, oftentimes different, set of stories and ideas. In this way, the art historical record helps triangulate and verify findings from the literary record; for a discussion of various positions in this discussion, see Aguirre and Buxton, pp. 19-22. 44 My language and understanding of cultural fields and elite production come from, among others, Bourdieu, e.g. The Field of Cultural Production.

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in a culture’s understanding. Culture is a nebulous, fuzzy category, which necessarily sublimates differences, conflicts, and even the notion of change itself. I use the term culture, and others like it, with full awareness of how very fraught this territory is. Along these lines, while I tend to speak in generalizing terms – such as about cultures (Greek, Roman), periods (Homeric, Hellenistic, Modernity), and broader, abstract notions (values, attitudes, worldviews, etc.) – I do so largely for the sake of convenience. I do not believe that there existed such perfectly demarcated categories such as the Hellenistic Period; nor that monolithic, essentialized views of culture or cultural attitudes have much currency; nor that all peoples at a given place and time shared the same set and understanding of values or attitudes such as regarding selfhood. Notably, I also use the terms ‘western’ and ‘western history’ consistently. Partly this usage stems from the word’s utility, in encompassing cultures and traditions in the ancient Mediterranean and West Asia that had an outsize effect on later Roman, European, and North American thought – the latter two being the likely audience for this book. Partly this usage also stems from real cultural and philosophical differences around the relationship between selfhood, the individual, and society between the modern cultures of western Europe and eastern Asia. But I must stress that my usage of such terms acknowledges substantial differences and contestations within these times and places; that the geographic and cultural boundaries are both fuzzy and shifting; that across time some ideas and ideologies are imposed on certain groups, often violently; and that terms such as ‘the west’ and ‘western civilization’ are appropriated – shallowly and often incorrectly – both historically and in modernity to support politically ideological myths such as around ethnic superiority. In all of the above cases, my frameworks and conclusions tend toward broader assertions, but I do so while underscoring the fact that this tells only part of the story necessary for historical understanding. This book provides more general frameworks and conclusions across places and time, while other scholars’ work provides narrower frameworks and conclusions specific to certain places and times. I see the two approaches not in tension, but in

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symbiosis, able to contextualize, deepen, and productively challenge the other to provide a fuller picture. Finally, I am well aware that this project may strike some readers as teleological. On the one hand, I reject the notion of inevitable, linear, cultural and mental progress over time, such as famously argued by Snell and critiqued by Williams.45 As I have stated in this introduction and will show throughout, there existed substantial contestation and variation in different periods’ articulations of selfhood, and certainly the shift from objectiveparticipant to subjective-individualist selfhood was neither inevitable nor necessarily an improvement. On the other hand, however, we do in fact see real, identifiable, and fundamental changes in understandings of selfhood from the ancient to the modern periods, and this project is an attempt to explore – in both broad cultural strokes and in specific textual analyses – what happened in the interim periods that was at least partially responsible for bringing us to where we are today. I hope the reader will grant me the latitude to speak in these general terms, not as reflective of my own beliefs in essentialized cultures or historical periods, but rather in order to identify generalized trends that we can locate with some accuracy and which likely reflected historically significant views. While definitively proving such conclusions might be impossible, my goal is that my readings of the primary sources, analyses and arguments, and engagement with other scholarship can provide conclusions that are at least plausibly suggestive. What is more, this grander type of exploration can productively open up new ways of thinking about the Cyclops myth and selfhood both.

45

Snell, Discovery of the Mind, p. 21 et passim.

CHAPTER ONE. THE ARCHAIC PERIOD: HOMER AND HESIOD THE “ORIGINAL” M YTHS AND THE OBJECTIVE-PARTICIPANT HOMERIC PARADIGM Ancient Cyclops Myths

The most famous Cyclops myth occurs in the Odyssey, an ancient Greek epic purportedly written by a poet named Homer, and a companion work to Homer’s other epic, the Iliad. While the Iliad covers events leading up to the end of the Trojan War, the Odyssey details the lengthy and obstacle-filled return home of the Greek hero Odysseus after the war. It is here, in the Odyssey, where we find our earliest complete myth of a Cyclops named Polyphemus, whom Odysseus encounters, fights, and bests, barely but heroically escaping with his life. This so-called Homeric version is the story which subsequent myths will both respond to and depart from, and which will therefore function as the baseline for all my Cyclops comparisons. The Homeric story of the Cyclops named Polyphemus is generally dated around the 8th century BCE, and roughly marks the beginning of the Archaic Period. Preceded by the so-called Dark Ages (1100-800 BCE) and before then by the Bronze Age (the time of the Trojan War), the Archaic Period saw important developments in Greek writing, exploration and trade, and the early development of the polis, the famous city unit of Greek politics. Significant material developments went hand in hand with cultural changes: the growth of an honor/shame culture tied to

21

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expansionary militarism, the foundational role of hospitality linked to Greek maritime networks, and the valuation of communal, socially-derived values tied to local poleis such as ethnicity, public piety, and collaborative behavior.1 Sometime around 750 BCE at the beginning of the Archaic Period, the set of oral stories comprising the Iliad and Odyssey became relatively fixed, with the versions as we know them today written down perhaps much later. There were undoubtedly other Cyclops myths preceding these stories,2 found not only in the artistic record but in competing poetic-oral strands tied to localized ethnicity and post-Trojan War identity.3 Some of these pre-Homeric mythical strands likely date back into Paleolithic times, extending this myth’s reach back into the thousands of years.4 The differences between this pre-Homeric content and what we find in the Odyssey suggests that the Homeric material was

A touchstone is Snodgrass, Archaic Greece; among others see Osborne, Greece in the Making: 1200–479 BC, and Raaflaub, A Companion to Archaic Greece. 2 Brown, “Odysseus and Polyphemus”, pp. 193-202. Brown draws from a host of earlier work detailing the pre-Homeric myths that informed the Odyssey, as well as the various non-Homeric strands of myth that persisted into later European folktales: Hackman, Die Polyphemsage in der Volksüberlieferung; Rademacher, “Die Erzählungen der Odyssee”, pp. 259; Frazer, Apollodorus II, pp. 404-55; Carpenter, Folk Tale; Page, Homeric Odyssey, pp. 1-20. 3 Alwine, “The Non-Homeric Cyclops”, pp. 223-233. Alwine nicely introduces the non-Homeric material, with reference to not only the artistic record (discussed further in this study) but also the various poeticoral/literary strands, competing on the basis of both localized ethnicity (recall objective-participant selfhood’s focus on locative and ethnic identity) and rival position-takings around the Trojan War. For local, “epichoric” myths, Alwine cites Nagy, Pindar’s Homer, pp. 70–72 et al., importantly arguing against lyric being the province of a burgeoning individualism, and for the central role of collectivism (i.e., objective-participant selfhood) during this time even in this particular oral-literary tradition. See also Nagy, The Best of the Achaeans, pp. 8–9, and Marks, “Alternative Odysseys”, pp. 209–226, esp. pp. 209–10. For rival Trojan accounts, Alwine cites Burgess, Tradition of the Trojan War, p. 134, and Pucci, Odysseus Polutropos, p. 29 n. 30. 4 D’Huy, “Polyphemus (Aa. Th. 1137)”, pp. 3-18. 1

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innovative.5 There seems to have been at least two distinct mythtraditions informing the Odyssey. One myth was of a man-eating monster, which in the Odyssey became the Cyclops Polyphemus who receives Odysseus and his crew by eating some of them. The other myth was seemingly based on Odysseus’ clever “No Man” response: when Odysseus first meets the Cyclops, he claims his name is “No Man”, thereby tricking the Cyclops whose eventual cries for help – ‘No Man is hurting me!’ – result in his fellow Cyclopes not coming to his aid. Both distinct myth strands can be found in folktales many hundreds of years later.6 Despite or because of these apparent innovations, the Homeric version of the story swiftly became the dominant one, both geographically and in subsequent literary and artistic imagination, even as non-Homeric versions likely continued in parallel in some form.7 The clearest non-Homeric account is found in another important Greek writer named Hesiod, a rough contemporary of Homer also dated to the 8th century BCE. Hesiod’s Theogony, a companion to his other major text Works and Days, is a poetic work that synthesized a host of ancient Greek traditions around cosmogony and the origins of various gods and other non- and pre-human beings. Whereas the Homeric version placed the Cyclops in a human encounter with Odysseus, Hesiod’s account stays firmly rooted in a mythical-divine context. In Hesiod’s Theogony, the Cyclopes were a powerful group of three divine, semi-human creatures who were cast down to the underworld Tartarus by their father Ouranos (= Sky/Heaven).8 This banishment, in part, incited the wrath of Ouranos’ wife Gaia (= Earth), who empowered her other son, a Titan named Kronos (= Time), to castrate Ouranos in revenge and seize power. Kronos’ subsequent rule proved no more popular than that of his Bremmer, “Odysseus and the Cyclops”, p. 139; see discussion in Rutherford 1996, pp. 1-8. Bremmer’s article effectively locates many of the primary-source footnotes cited subsequently, which are drawn directly from Bremmer. 6 See discussion in Page, The Homeric Odyssey. 7 Bremmer, p. 135; see Touchefeu-Meynier, p. 1017. 8 Hesiod names them: Brontes (“thunderer”, Βρόντης), Steropes (“lightning”, Στερόπης) and Arges (“bright”, Ἄργης). 5

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father, however, with Kronos’ own son Zeus, the Olympian god, rebelling against him by freeing the Cyclopes. In the epic battle that ensued, recounted in the now-lost text the Titanomachia (“Titan Battle”), the Cyclops forged for Zeus his thunder and lightning, for Hades his helmet of invisibility, and for Poseidon his trident, among other mythical items.9 Zeus and his fellow Olympian gods were thus able to overthrow Kronos and the other Titans, cementing their power and status. After the Titanomachia, the Cyclops myth and the importance of the Cyclopes splits into different traditions. Some later traditions see the Cyclopes or their sons killed by Apollo;10 other traditions see the Cyclopes settled away on remote islands as smith-helpers11 to the god Hephaestus.12 Aspects of this myth also survive in the mythographer Apollodorus of Athens13 and Orphic fragments.14 The Cyclopes’ skill as smiths and especially builders persisted durably in cultural memory, notably in the description of impressive “Cyclopean masonry”, such as in the walls of Mycenae and Tiryns that were built of unmortared, massive stone blocks expertly fit together, presumably by mythical giants.15 From Bremmer: Hes. Theog. 504-5; Apollod. 1.1.2 and 2.1, 3.10.4; see also Pind. fr. 266 Maehler; Nolle 1993: no. 3. 10 From Bremmer: Pherec. FGrH 3 fr. 35a; Eratosth. [Cat.] 29; Apollod. 3.10.4; Hyg. Fab. 49 (sons). 11 From Bremmer: See P Oxy. 10.1241; see also FGrH 334 fr. 71. 12 From Bremmer: Helpers: Eur. Cyc. 20; Thuc. 6.2; Callim. Hymn 3.46ff; Nisbet and Hubbard on Hor. Carm. 1.4.7; add PMich. 760. Roman art: Touchefeu-Meynier 1992: nos. 32-41. Inscriptions: SEG 30.1254, 34.1308. 13 From Bremmer: Pherec. FGrH 3 fr. 46; Hyg. Fab. 157. Apollodorus, writing in the second century CE, reproduces the Homeric version (trans. Aldrich): “A son of Poseidon and a nymphe named Thoose, an enormous man-eating wild man named Polyphemos, who had one eye in his forehead.” 14 From Bremmer: Orph. frs.178-80 Kern. 15 From Bremmer: Pind. fr. 169a.7 Maehler; Bacchyl. 11.77; Pherec. FGrH 3 fr. 12; Soph. fr. 227 Radt; Eur. HF 15, IA 1499; Hellanicus FGrH 4 fr. 88; Eratosth. [Cat.] 39 (altar); Verg. Aen. 6.631; Strabo 8.6.8; Apol- lod. 2.2.1; Paus. 2.25.8; Anth. Pal. 7.748; schol. on Eur. Or. 965; Et. Magnum 213.29; Eust. II. p. 286.21. See also the account of Pliny the Elder, who attributes this story to Aristotle: Pliny, Hist. Nat.vii.56.195: turres, ut Aristoteles, Cyclopes [invenerunt]. See further the account of Pausanias, 9

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The Homeric tale draws from and builds on aspects of these stories. The Odyssey depicts the Cyclopes as a divine race of giants with special strength, but also innovates in several ways. While this version of the story is familiar to many, it merits a brief retelling to lay the proper foundation for my argument here and across the rest of the book. Book nine of the Odyssey sees the Greek hero Odysseus trying to make his way home across the Aegean Sea after ten years spent at the Trojan War.16 En route, wandering Odysseus and his crew come upon an island. Odysseus anchors his boat and selects some of his crew to join him in exploring the new land. This reconnaissance party comes upon and enters a cave, where inside they discover some trappings of civilization such as equipment for keeping sheep, milking goats, and manufacturing cheese. Odysseus and his crew waste little time in helping themselves to this bounty. While Odysseus’ crew lobbies for taking the cheese and swiftly returning to their ship, Odysseus rebuffs this advice, desiring to see what kind of person lives in the cave and if they might grant him hospitality. Soon enough, the Cyclops Polyphemus returns to this cave, his home, herding sheep back for the night. Frightened by the monstrous Cyclops but with little opportunity to escape, Odysseus and his men are trapped inside the cave as Polyphemus pens his sheep and rolls an enormous boulder over the cave entrance to block the exit. Polyphemus lights a fire, sees the human interlopers, and after a brief exchange with Odysseus, where Polyphemus 2.16.5 and 2.25.8. A less mythological attribution for the walls is to the pre-historic Pelasgi people: see Reber, History of Ancient Art, pp. 178-94, and Gell, Walls of Ancient Greece. 16 This whole episode is a ‘story within a story’, as previous to book nine Odysseus has washed ashore as a suppliant in Phaeacia, at the court of the princess Nausicaa and king Alcinous who receive him kindly as a proper guest in clear contrast to Polyphemus’ violation of hospitality (xenia). Book nine mostly contains Odysseus’ further stories to Alcinous’ court about his travels and travails. For the dynamics of this storytelling as narrative device, see further Doherty, “The Narrative “Opening” in the Odyssey”, pp. 51-62, in conversation with Peradotto, Man in the Middle Voice. Further useful in understanding this embedded composition are the notes by Wyatt in Murray’s Loeb edition translation.

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THE CYCLOPS MYTH AND THE MAKING OF SELFHOOD

rejects Odysseus’ plea for hospitality, Polyphemus savagely devours some of Odysseus’ crew. With little other recourse, unable to overcome the monstrous Cyclops or to unroll the massive boulder, Odysseus and his men remain trapped in the cave while the pattern repeats itself on subsequent days. Ultimately, in the episode’s most famous series of events, wily Odysseus contrives a plan whereby he gets Polyphemus drunk on unmixed, extremely strong wine. When the Cyclops drunkenly falls unconscious, Odysseus and his crew capitalize by sharpening a wooden stake in fire and plunging it into Polyphemus’ single eye. Now blind, when Polyphemus rolls back the boulder in the morning to let out his flock, he feels each sheep as they leave the cave to be sure that no humans also escape. Odysseus’ wiliness wins out again, as he directs his remaining crew to cling to the undersides of the departing sheep and thereby avoid Polyphemus’ detection. Polyphemus eventually realizes he’s been duped, but Odysseus’ earlier, quick-witted claiming of his name as “Nobody” or “No Man” assures that Polyphemus’ cries for help to his fellow Cyclopes on the island (“Nobody blinded and robbed me!”) go unheeded. In a departing moment of hubris, however, Odysseus calls out his real name as he sails away, apparently hoping to gain fame and glory from besting Polyphemus. In response, Polyphemus casts a boulder at Odysseus’ boat, nearly capsizing it, and calls upon his father Poseidon to curse Odysseus, which prolongs and pains the remainder of his attempted return home. Selfhood in the Odyssey

What is especially interesting about this episode is the description of Polyphemus, especially as compared to Odysseus. The Homeric description of Polyphemus in contrast to Odysseus, I argue, reflects a specific notion of ancient selfhood that the classicist Christopher Gill has called “objective-participant” selfhood. Objectiveparticipant selfhood, discussed at greater length in my Introduction, is an understanding of selfhood that is determined by one’s objective social context and visible public ties, such as one’s lineage, place of birth, communal ties, and externally participatory activity such as public religion and performative hospitality.

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This type of objective-participant selfhood can be usefully contrasted with a “subjective-individualist” selfhood. Subjectiveindividualist selfhood is constituted by one’s psychological state, interior emotions, unique beliefs and preferences, and distinctive physical form, especially one’s specific facial features. The modern west is strongly defined by this subjective-individualist selfhood, which among other influences particularly reflects the influence of René Descartes in separating one’s self between the internal and external, the so-called Cartesian dualism of mind and body. In Christopher Gill’s account, objective-participant selfhood was the norm in the ancient Mediterranean, and his scholarship is extremely useful for re-thinking ancient texts and recognizing some fundamental differences between ancient and modern views of the self. In Gill’s first book, Personality in Greek Epic, Tragedy, and Philosophy (1996), he focuses on Greek epic, namely Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. Gill stresses the fact that Homeric heroes are defined in terms of their objective-participant virtues. These are virtues which are structured by cultural expectations based on their social role(s), their public actions, and other socially-evaluated features such as communal practice, performativity, place of birth, parentage and ancestry, occupation vis-à-vis others, and so forth. The Homeric description of Polyphemus in contrast to Odysseus provides an excellent illustration of Gill’s claim that Homer and ancient Greek thought embody an objective-participant view of selfhood. To both demonstrate Gill’s point and provide a foundation for my own discussion of selfhood, I will show how it is possible to “mirror read” the Homeric description of Polyphemus within an objective-participant framework. Mirror reading is a technique used to find the opposite (the “mirror”) of what a text is stating within a culture’s context.17 This mirror opposite can manifest in Mirror reading is also a contested methodology used in certain areas of New Testament studies, for example where scholars attempt to read the Christian apostle Paul’s letters in a way to derive likely historical facts about Paul’s opponents and audience: see, e.g., an influential such reading in Barclay, “Mirror-Reading a Polemical Letter”, pp. 73–93. My account of mirror reading here is slightly different than the New 17

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two ways. One type of mirroring is an indication of lived reality, what is occurring “on the ground”, so to speak. If a protagonist gives a long speech attacking a particular social practice such as praying in public, mirror reading would suggest that praying in public was actually occurring on the ground during this historical time, and is therefore of interest to the author. This type of reading has its problems, but it is both common and useful in studying the ancient world: the passage of a particular law against eating young cows might suggest, for instance, that there were people who were doing this very thing, or at least that there were some people who were worried that young cows could be eaten. The second type of mirror reading is more abstract, pertaining to cultural values, norms, or understandings of things like selfhood. Instead of indicating what people were physically doing, this type of mirror reading can suggest the types of things that people valued or ways that people understood something. If we have a text whose terrible antagonist is strongly defined by their opposition to prayer, for example, mirror reading would suggest that the author – and by extension the wider cultural framework – valued prayer highly. While not without problems, this type of mirror reading provides a useful way to read a text. We can mirror read the elements in a story to suggest things about wider cultural values, norms, and understandings, such as about a culture’s selfhood. It is in this second sense, of a text revealing a culture’s conception of selfhood,18 that the episode with Polyphemus reveals ancient Greek values in the Homeric period. Mirror reading Polyphemus, in other words, can indicate Homeric Greek understandings of selfhood. As we will see, Homeric understandings of the self as Testament method, as my method seeks not likely historical facts but rather cultural understandings implicit in literature. 18 For a different but insightful approach to this same intersection of text, selfhood, and culture, see Peradotto, Man in the Middle Voice, pp. 29-30. Peradotto orients his work around semiotic analysis, in contrast to my focus on myth-theory (Lincoln) and philosophy (Gill), in citing both Bartsch and Eco to argue that such analysis allows us to “make ideology explicit”. Despite our different theoretical orientations (though perhaps we’d overlap in our use of Althusser) and conclusion, I agree with Peradotto’s Odyssean selfhood project insofar as it attempts to use Homer’s choice of language as a lens to reveal wider cultural norms.

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exemplified in the Polyphemus story perfectly exemplify what Gill called objective-participant selfhood. The Odyssey, via Odysseus’ own story-telling within the epic, introduces the Cyclops in this way (9.106-115):19 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115

We reached the land of the haughty, lawless Cyclopes, who, trusting in the gods immortal, neither plow nor plant trees with their hands, but everything grows unplowed and unsown, wheat and barley, and vines that bear clusters of grapes for wine, and Zeus’s rain makes them grow for them. They have neither advisory councils nor established laws, but they live on the peaks of high mountains, in hollow caves, and each one is the judge of his wives and children, but they don’t heed one another.

Shortly thereafter, the account expands, again via Odysseus, to talk about the land of the Cyclops more broadly (9.118-131): 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131

a wooded [island], on which there are countless wild goats, for the coming and going of men does not drive them away, nor do hunters enter it, who in forests suffer sorrows as they haunt mountain peaks. So, filled with neither flocks nor fields, all its days unplowed and unsown instead, the island is without men but feeds bleating goats. For the Cyclopes have no vermilion-cheeked ships, nor are men among them shipwrights, who would have built well-benched ships that could fulfill each one’s needs and take them to cities of mankind, much as men often cross the sea with ships to each other, and who would have made the island well-settled for them. For the island isn’t bad at all and would bear all things in season.

When Odysseus and his crewmates get to Polyphemus’ cave, the Cyclops himself is at last described (9.187-192): 187 A monstrous man spent the night there, who used to tend 188 his sheep alone and far away, and did not go among others, 189 but kept his distance and had a mood for lawlessness. Greek and English translations adapted from The Chicago Homer, eds Kahane et al. 19

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THE CYCLOPS MYTH AND THE MAKING OF SELFHOOD 190 For he’d been made a monstrous wonder, and did not seem 191 like a man who eats bread but like a wooded peak 192 of high mountains that appears apart from others.

Odysseus also notes his own inquiry into the Cyclops’ nature, asking “whether they’re wanton, unjust, and wild / or hospitable and have god-fearing minds” (175-176).20 He later describes the encounter, as “I would soon come upon a man clad in great might / a wild one, who knew well neither law nor justice” (214-215).21 In other words, Odysseus himself makes clear the social expectations he was looking for, and the ways that Polyphemus fell short of them: Polyphemus was wanton, unjust, and wild, and he was unhospitable, not god-fearing, and knew neither law nor justice. Finally, we can add the characteristics that Polyphemus shows in his interaction with Odysseus. Polyphemus has a “ruthless heart” (272),22 and the “Cyclopes don’t need aegis-bearer Zeus / or the blessed gods” as they believe themselves to be “far better” (275-276).23 What is more, Polyphemus “tests” Odysseus instead of engaging him politely in conversation (281),24 Polyphemus eats raw flesh instead of cooking it, he eats all the parts of an animal such as entrails and bones which are typically given as burnt offerings to the gods, and he even engages in cannibalism (291-293).25 Finally, he drinks raw, unmixed milk (297)26 and unmixed wine (346-361), the latter in excess to the point that the Cyclops drunkenly passes out and vomits forth wine and human flesh both (9.371-374).

ἤ ῥ’οἵ γ’ὑβρισταί τε καὶ ἄγριοι οὐδὲ δίκαιοι, (175) ἦε φιλόξεινοι, καί σφιν νόος ἐστὶ θεουδής. (176) 21 ἄνδρ’ἐπελεύσεσθαιµεγάλην ἐπιειµένον ἀλκήν, (214) ἄγριον, οὔτε δίκας ἐῢ εἰδότα οὔτε θέµιστας. (215) 22 νηλέϊ θυµῷ. 23 οὐ γὰρ Κύκλωπες Διὸς αἰγιόχου ἀλέγουσιν / οὐδὲ θεῶν µακάρων, ἐπεὶ ἦ πολὺ φέρτεροί εἰµεν. 24 πειράζων. 25 τοὺς δὲ διὰ µελεϊστὶ ταµὼν ὡπλίσσατο δόρπον: (291) ἤσθιε δ’ὥς τε λέων ὀρεσίτροφος, οὐδ’ ἀπέλειπεν, (292) ἔγκατά τε σάρκας τε καὶ ὀστέα µυελόεντα. (293) 26 ἐπ’ ἄκρητον γάλα πίνων. 20

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All of which is to say, Polyphemus does the exact opposite of showing proper hospitality. He verbally and physically does violence to Odysseus and his crew instead of treating them in a manner befitting proper hospitality, civility, lawfulness, and public piety. Indeed, Polyphemus’ selfish and uncivilized nature shows him to be ultimately lacking the public values of honor and shame by which ancient Mediterranean culture was defined.27 The Cyclops, in other words, does everything wrong according to Homeric Greek values. What is more, the Cyclops is introduced through Odysseus’ recounting of the episode to the Phaeacian people, after their princess Nausicaa found Odysseus shipwrecked on their island and brought him back to court. The interaction between Odysseus, a penniless and nameless foreigner waterlogged and washed ashore, and the court of king Alcinous is extremely telling. Alcinous behaves in all the proper ways according to an objective-participant framework, whereas Polyphemus behaves in all the improper ways within this same framework. Alcinous (and by extension also Odysseus) holds a proper feast, sacrifices different kinds of domesticated animals, mixes wine, discourses civilly, enters into a proper hospitality relationship with Odysseus, demonstrates proper manners, engages in settled living with rules, hierarchy, and laws, shows public piety to the gods (Odysseus arrives amidst a festival in honor of Poseidon), and so forth. By the time Homer describes Polyphemus, in other words, Homer has already foregrounded the proper way to behave according to his objective-participant framework, which was to uphold one’s social obligations faithfully and completely. In contrast to Alcinous’ behavior, we can summarize the ways that Homer describes both the land of the Cyclops and Polyphemus, thinking as we go about how the Cyclopes behave in a manner opposite to proper, objective-participant Greek values. The Cyclopes and their island have the following descriptors: there is neither plowing nor planting (108), food grows naturally (109) including vine grapes (110-111), there live countless wild Williams, Shame and Necessity; Konstan, “Shame in Ancient Greece”, pp. 1031-1060; Gill et al., Reciprocity in Ancient Greece. 27

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goats untouched by men (118-119), there are no hunters (120) and no flocks or fields (122). Indeed, even Polyphemus’ lush surroundings, which might seem like a utopia to modern eyes, seem to indicate a lack of proper civilization that involved the taming and shaping of nature.28 Such primal surroundings can even function as something of a warning sign of a savage and dangerous situation.29 We can likewise compile a set of summary descriptors for Polyphemus and the Cyclopes: haughty (106), lawless (106), trusting in the gods (107), neither councils nor laws (112), living atop mountains (113) and in caves (114), each his own master and judge (114-115), not heeding one another (115), possessing neither ships (125) nor ship craftsmen (126), having no movement, exploration, or trade with others (128-129), no other settlements (130), and no seasonal crops (131). Polyphemus himself is monstrous (187), tends his sheep alone and far away from others (188-189), preferred lawlessness (189), was a monstrous wonder (190), didn’t seem to eat bread (191), and was like “a wooded peak of high mountains” (191-192). He is also wanton, unjust, wild, inhospitable, and not god-fearing (175-176), knowing neither law nor justice (214-215). Finally, he was ruthless, thought himself better than the gods including Zeus, tests his guests instead of honoring them, eats meat uncooked and without giving the gods their portions,30 eats human flesh, and drinks not only unmixed milk but also unmixed wine, getting excessively drunk (272-297, 346-361). As Polyphemus is a clear antagonist in this episode, each of the above characteristics can be mirror read. In other words, the opposite of each of Polyphemus’ (and the Cyclopes’ and their island’s) characteristics defines Odysseus and by extension what it Bremmer, p. 141. This calls to mind the Epic of Gilgamesh and its contrast between wild, dangerous nature and civilization’s taming, extraction, and control of nature. 29 Gould, Myth, Ritual, Memory and Exchange, ch. 8. 30 On sacrifice as a marker of Greek civilized identity, see Vidal-Naquet, “Valeurs religieuses et mythiques de la terre et du sacrifice dans l’Odyssée”, pp. 1278-1297; on raw versus cooked food as a marker of savagery versus civilization, see D’Onofrio, “Ulisse e l’uomo selvaggio”, pp. 127-150. 28

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means to be a proper Homeric Greek. So while Polyphemus is lawless, a proper Greek has laws; while Polyphemus is solitary and remote, a proper Greek lives with others within a household and polis; while Polyphemus is impious, angry, and drunk, a proper Greek is publicly pious, doesn’t let his emotions control his actions, and knows how to properly mix wine and thus avoid excessive intoxication; while Polyphemus flouts every possible rule of public hospitality, a proper Greek manifests public hospitality, that most important of characteristics in the Homeric ancient Mediterranean.31 We can chart this relationship of the Cyclops to Odysseus, via mirror reading, on a one-to-one basis.32 Below is a complete list of the mirror-read characteristics, moving in rough order through their appearance in book nine. Polyphemus’ and the Cyclopean island’s descriptions are listed on the left, and the mirrorread equivalent for Odysseus and Homeric Greek values appear on the right: Cyclops

Human

Food grows naturally

Agriculture, planting, cultivation

Neither plowing nor planting

Plowing, planting, terraforming environment

MacIntyre, Shame and Necessity; Konstan, “Shame in Ancient Greece”; Gill, Reciprocity in Ancient Greece. 32 Compare the structuralist reading via the theories of Lévi-Strauss in Kirk, Myth, pp. 162-171, esp. his useful diagram on 169. Kirk’s account more compares the island’s other Cyclopes to Polyphemus, but his general argument – like mine here – is that the structure of the narrative is intentional, and is meant to reveal and point to social understandings. Differing from my account, Kirk sees more “ambiguities and complexities” around nomos/phusis (custom/nature), befitting his Cyclopes-to-Polyphemus comparison, whereas I see a clearer contrast in the Polyphemusto-Odysseus comparison, but we both fundamentally agree that “[p]articularly revealing is the demonstration of the relativity of one element to another”, p. 168. The Cyclops and Odysseus reveal two contrasting identities in relationship to one another, but within a shared selfhood frame. By detailing this structural contrast, the author of the Odyssey has therefore delimited the selfhood horizon via both hero and villain. 31

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Wine grapes spring from the ground

Cultivate domesticated grapes, make wine

No hunters

Hunt wild animals, tame nature

Countless wild goats

No flocks or fields Untamed nature Haughty

Animal husbandry of a variety of types Plant crops, domesticate animals

Civilized, refined, proper manners Humble

Lawless

Adherence to shared, human laws

No councils or laws

Participation in formal, civic institutions

Trusting in the gods

Living atop mountains Living in caves

Each his own master and judge Not heeding one another Possessing no ships No craftsmen

No trade/commerce No other settlements No seasonal crops

Plan, plant, trust in skill and craft to survive

Live in settled, hospitable areas

Live in houses, human-made dwellings Participation in the social contract

Attentive to external norms and values Build and sail ships

Specialized craftsmen, economy

Participation in trade, commerce, economy

Engage with own and other settlements Rotate crops seasonally

Monstrous

Civilized

Prefer lawlessness

Prefer a state of lawfulness

Tend sheep alone and removed Monstrous wonder Not eat bread

Similar to rugged nature Wanton Unjust Wild

Tend animals with others

Similar to other civilized Greeks Eat baked goods

Differentiated from rugged nature Self-control Just

Civilized

CHAPTER ONE. THE ARCHAIC PERIOD Inhospitable

Hospitable

Ignorant of law and justice

Foreground law and justice

Not god-fearing Ruthless/Angry

Regard self as superior to the gods/Zeus

Fear the gods

Consideration; do not let anger control you Be humble before the gods

Dishonor guests

Honor your guests regardless of who they are

Eat raw meat

Cook meat properly before consumption

Do not give portions to the gods Eats human flesh

Drink raw, unmixed milk Drink unmixed wine

Drink wine to excessive intoxication No hospitality

No honor/shame

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Offer gods their portions of organs, fat, bone Do not cannibalize

Drink strained milk

Mix wine to dilute its strength Drink wine moderately

Hospitality fundamental

Honor/shame fundamental

To recall the discussion around selfhood from my introductory chapter, it is not the specific characteristics on the left or right sides that determine selfhood. Rather, selfhood is determined by the kinds of characteristics chosen that define both sides. We can say that the specific characteristics determine the particular identities of Polyphemus versus Odysseus: as the above chart shows, their identities are fully opposite. But they share the same selfhood framework, because their different identities are determined within the same framework of socially-derived values, what Gill called objective-participant selfhood. Their shared selfhood derives from the same types of determinative characteristics; their differing identities derive from the particular characteristics that diverge within these shared types. In other words, whether or not Polyphemus is solitary is not the primary issue here. Undoubtedly, some Greeks also lived solitary lives. The primary takeaway is the fact that both Polyphemus

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and Odysseus are described in terms that reflect a social value of objective-participant characteristics. Living in solitude may have been the reality for some Greeks, for instance, but it was not the ideal as understood in the Homeric value system: a proper Greek lived in civilized contact with others. We thus see a host of characteristics that reflect an objective-participant selfhood, and in mapping these characteristics onto Polyphemus the Cyclops is found lacking. Homer’s Cyclops and the Archaic Period

In what follows, I will describe how Homer’s descriptions of Polyphemus clearly embody Gill’s framework of objective-participant selfhood. Polyphemus’ characteristics mirror read above are remarkably socially structured, and few if any speak to Polyphemus’ internal character, beliefs, desires, or intentions, all indicators of a subjective-individualist selfhood. While the above chart hopefully makes clear the nature of the Homeric selfhood framework, we can highlight a few of the most important characteristics on this list to detail their socially structured, objective-participant nature. In doing so, I will also link these Homeric descriptors to some of the wider currents defining the Archaic Period that I mentioned in this chapter’s introduction, such as the importance of honor/shame, hospitality, and socially-structured values of the city (polis) and household (oikos). Many of Polyphemus’ characteristics cluster together, especially the first several that concern the Cyclopes overall: adherence to laws, participation in formal institutions, living with proper manners and civility, and dwelling among or in contact with others in settlements. All four of these characteristics involve external, objective valuation of one’s proper conduct. Laws are explicit versions of this, valuing those who follow a social contract and punishing those who do not. This valuation/punishment occurs regardless of one’s internal, subjective intent: laws judge someone based on external action, not whether or not they internally agreed with or cared for the law itself. Similarly, formal institutions involve participation in rules and conduct that are determined externally, and apart from one’s internal, subjective valuations. To belong to and participate in a formal institution is to

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sublimate one’s own individual preferences in favor of that institution, much as with laws and the social contract. Both laws and institutions are present in the characteristic of living with/among others: every type of contact with another person involves negotiation of external and shared norms. After all, settlements will only survive if basic, shared, and externally agreed-upon rules are followed. Again, one can make a great neighbor by effectively participating in the objective, external rules of society, even if one has subjective preferences or desires that run contrary to those laws. It is the action that counts most in shared living. Indeed, manners and civility are those specifically cultural frameworks that mask or publicly efface one’s privately subjective feelings of difference. By publicly performing agreed-upon rules, those of vastly different subjective states are brought into uniformity and more harmonious living. One is judged by the extent to which such rules of civility are externally and objectively followed. The way that Polyphemus and the Cyclopes live further flout the objective-participant nature of Archaic Greek society. For an Archaic Greek according to Homer, a proper, civilized life seems to have involved three types of craft: building settlements, cultivating animals and crops to tame and make use of the land, and ship-building. All three reflect an objective-participant framework, as each necessitates cooperation and contact with others, likely other properly civilized Greeks sharing this same objectiveparticipant framework. Settlement building was certainly no one-man endeavor. Settlements themselves were of course collections of buildings, with the attendant objective-participant framework noted above. But the Greek household itself (the oikos) was very much a collective unit of objective relationality, quite different from the modern, western family and household.33 The Greek oikos was comprised of a hierarchy of family members, workers, slaves, and the like,

Patterson, The Family in Greek History provides a starting point of difference; for the tie between Greek oikos and economy, a significant difference from the modern separation of economics from family-relationship households, see Ault, “Oikos and Oikonomia”, pp. 259-265. 33

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each person with a defined, objectively-structured relationship to the other.34 Cultivating animals and crops was similar, insofar as they were seen as collective endeavors – collective both out of necessity in terms of the work required, and in terms of their output via the oikos as economic unit (oikonomia).35 We can say the same for ship-building, but to an even greater degree, as ship-building (and sailing) required many varieties of specialized skill, labor, materials production, and capital/goods investment, all of which reflect a robust set of social and economic relations.36 Ship-building also, as the Homeric account notes, implies a host of other relational activity: movement, exploration, encounter, trade, commercial activity, and ultimately cultural exchange as well via these maritime networks.37 The maritime focus of Archaic Greece undoubtedly exerted a major influence on the development of objective-participant social values such as hospitality (xenia), discussed further just below. Even certain activities that the urban, modern west tends to consider private and quotidian were public and externally-directed in Archaic Greece. While for many readers eating and drinking often occur in one’s private home or at a private table, both were understood to be highly public and political activities in the Archaic Period, with major importance attributed to public sacrifices and cooking of animals, religious banquet festivals, and communal drinking.38 Unlike the modern west where the killing of animals is usually invisible to those purchasing and consuming meat, it was expected of an Archaic Greek that the killing and cooking of an animal take place publicly, visible to all, and with

A few starting points: Wace, “Notes on the Homeric House”, pp. 203211; Finley, The World of Odysseus, esp. ch. 4; Bryant, Moral Codes and Social Structure in Ancient Greece; Ault, “Oikos and Oikonomia”, pp. 259265; Nevett, House and Society. 35 For a brief outline of similarities and differences vis-à-vis modern economics, see Leshem, “What Did the Ancient Greeks Mean by Oikonomia?”, pp. 225-238; for a broader discussion, see Finley, The Ancient Economy. 36 Casson, Ships and Seafaring in Ancient Times; Polzer, “Early Shipbuilding in the Ancient Mediterranean”. 37 Malkin, A Small Greek World; Hasebroek, Trade and Politics. 38 Rundin, “A Politics of Eating”, pp. 179-215. 34

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a view toward public piety.39 Likewise with drinking, which was a much more socially structured activity in Homeric Greece than we find in western modernity.40 Odysseus’ banqueting in the court of Alcinous, where he tells his Cyclops story, is a paradigmatic example of how an Archaic Greek was to properly conduct these consumptive activities, namely in an objectively-rendered, participatory way. This is not to say that public banqueting and communal drinking no longer occur; indeed we see such behavior persist in Mediterranean cultures in particular. But the many trends of the modern west, from urbanization to globalization to secularization, have resulted in a continually widening gap between the robustness and meaning of such practices today versus the ancient world. I conclude with the characteristics that most obviously invoke an objective-participatory structure: public piety, hospitality, and public honor/shame, all of which Polyphemus notably flouts. Compared to the ancient world, piety in the modern west tends to be private and interior, a legacy of Lutheran-Protestantism that privileged an introspective consciousness.41 In Homeric Greece, by contrast, piety involved a highly public and objective set of expectations around proper behavior vis-à-vis the gods, which involved procession, sacrifice, prayer, and so forth.42 What is more, such behaviors were collective endeavors in Archaic Greece, undertaken by the entire city (polis), rather than private relationships between individuals and major Olympian gods such as Zeus or Poseidon.43 As with food and drink, this is not to say Wright, The Mycenaean Feast, esp. Sheratt, “Feasting in Homeric Epic”, pp. 301-337; Dalby, Siren Feasts. 40 Papakonstantinou, “Wine and Wine Drinking in the Homeric World”, pp. 1-24. 41 Stendahl, “The Apostle Paul”, pp. 199-215. 42 Burkert, Greek Religion: “Greek religion, bound to the polis, is public religion to an extreme degree. Sacrificial processions and communal meals, loud prayers and vows, temples visible from afar with splendid votive displays – this is the image of eusebeia, this guarantees the integration of the individual into the community”, 276. 43 Burkert, ibid., well discusses how even the mystery cults were communal and objectively rendered. That said, scholars have increasingly looked to the private nature of ancient Mediterranean religion, from 39

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that public piety and worship do not continue today, especially among Mediterranean cultures, but simply that in comparison to ancient piety we see substantial and I would argue increasing differences. Even in modern-day Italy, Greece, Palestine, or Egypt, mayors and governors are not also the local high priests.44 Hospitality (xenia) was a paradigmatic Homeric Greek virtue that persisted across multiple periods,45 well exemplifying an objective-participatory nature. According to the laws of hospitality, strangers should be taken in, honored, cared for, and hosted generously.46 Not relevant were someone’s personal feelings about the stranger, or whether or not the stranger had a disagreeable personality. The determination about proper hospitality was objective and external: there were specific rules governing proper behavior, and everyone was expected to follow them. Hospitality was important as something that bound individuals,47 but even more so it was crucial in the linking together of households, lineages, and even city-states (poleis).48 Finally, the role of honor and shame has been mentioned at several points, but it is worth repeating by way of conclusion and linkage of all the previous characteristics. Archaic Greece, as well as the ancient Mediterranean more broadly dating at least back to the Iron Age,49 was largely governed by the external, public mystery cults to private votive offerings to household gods, e.g. recently Sofroniew, Household Gods. Two points should be noted in response: one, that such “private” religious practices were still often understood in these objective-participatory ways, as Burkert notes; and two, that the interest in more “private” relationships with the gods was something that arose in the Classical Period and increased over time into the Roman Period, e.g. the Eleusinian Mysteries and especially the Cult of Isis: see Green, Alexander to Actium, pp. 396, 399, 586, 590-591. This shift in religious behavior is discussed in later chapters, and supports my broader argument about a shift in selfhood toward subjective-individualism that would undergird such private relationships with gods. 44 Rare exceptions persist, for example in Iran and recently Afghanistan which are rare examples of theocracies in the modern world. 45 Basile, “Xenia: Ritualized-Friendship”, pp. 229-250. 46 An accessible summary: Scott, “Philos, Philotēs and Xenia”. 47 Donlan, “Reciprocities in Homer”, pp. 137-175. 48 Herman, Ritualised Friendship. 49 Antonaccio, “Iron Age Reciprocity”, pp. 104-111.

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values of honor and shame.50 Honor (timē, leading to glory, kleos) was the ultimate goal, and shame (aidōs) was to be avoided at all costs. By performing in line with socially-objective values, one achieved honor; shame arose from failing to fulfill such objectiveparticipatory values. Notably, honor and shame can be seen as the wider values underpinning all the objective-participatory values noted above: the concern with honor and shame renders one concerned with objective, participatory valuations derived from external society. The list of characteristics that positively identify Odysseus as opposed to Polyphemus can all be seen, to different degrees, as manifestations of Odysseus accepting the honor/shame framework and its objective-participatory valuations, over and against Polyphemus, who is defined extensively and specifically by his lack of proper honor/shame. Indeed, at points this is nearly made explicit, such as when Polyphemus talks about not honoring the gods, or when he shamelessly ignores Odysseus’ invocation of hospitality to devour Odysseus’ shipmates. All of these characteristics discussed, in other words, involve a fundamental linkage with wider society’s norms to determine one’s proper ethical framework, a linkage that fundamentally defines objective-participant selfhood. Polyphemus’ selfhood is determined not by his emotional depth, psychological complexity, or nuances of personality, but primarily by whether or not he conforms to ancient Mediterranean cultural expectations of fulfilling his wider social duties, ranging from religion to commerce to hosting strangers to his basic practices of eating, drinking, habitation, and sleeping. His brutishness is not a problem per se from the perspective of personality; rather, the problem is the public consequences of his brutishness vis-à-vis Odysseus and his crew. We can leave behind our mirror reading of Polyphemus to note a couple additional points that support this objective-participant selfhood reading. Firstly, it is notable that Polyphemus has something of a lineage. Lineage and ancestry are paradigmatic characteristics of structured selfhood, for they exist regardless of MacIntyre, Shame and Necessity; Konstan, “Shame in Ancient Greece”; Gill, Reciprocity. 50

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one’s individual, internal character and their value is objectively derived from the surrounding society.51 While Polyphemus’ lineage in the Odyssey differs from his lineage in Hesiod and others – the Homeric Polyphemus is Poseidon’s son;52 Hesiod’s Cyclops are sons of Uranus and helpers of Poseidon in the war against the Titans – the Odyssey nonetheless preserves this lineage despite Polyphemus’ antagonistic role. Again, Polyphemus’ identity is different from Odysseus’ (a different lineage) but they share the same framework of selfhood (the fundamental importance of lineage in determining identity).53 One can thus well contrast later accounts of the Cyclops that might lack this lineage, as well as lack other of the Cyclops’ particular characteristics that flout proper objective-participant behavior. Polyphemus may be a terrible brute for flouting all of society’s structured values, but he is still afforded a lineage, a clear signal that even antagonists are analyzed within and by the frame of objective-participant selfhood, not apart from it. We can also note Odysseus’ method of escape, which in the Homeric account is a joint effort. Odysseus is singularly wily, but the effort to overcome Polyphemus is a group endeavor, relying on several people working together to overcome their adversary. The same focus on several people working together is well reflected in the art-historical record, where Odysseus is nearly always accompanied by several companions in spearing Polyphemus’ eye. To Reference the values of the modern West, and particularly of the United States, where one’s ancestry and family are explicitly thought to be irrelevant to one accomplishing one’s dreams or succeeding in society, which in turn are based on the subjective-individualist ideologies of hard work, ambition, etc.; more on this contrast in later chapters. Of course, one’s lineage in the modern world matters in very practical ways such as wealth and professional networking, but those explicitly identifying by their family lineage (Kennedy, Bush, Kardashian) are the exception. Social introductions, resumés, dating – the list could be extended ad nauseum, and in each case the citing of one’s lineage in the modern world feels very out of place and remains rare. 52 Gellius 15.21.1. 53 Note Odysseus foregrounding his lineage and land in beginning his speech to king Alcinous at the beginning of Odyssey book 9, after which he tells the story of the Cyclops. 51

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briefly look ahead, later accounts tend to increasingly shed these additional crewmates in their telling or depiction of the myth. Odysseus succeeds, in other words, because his sociallystructured mode of interaction, namely alongside others in cooperation with a defined plan agreed upon beforehand,54 overcomes Polyphemus’ solitude. And Odysseus doesn’t only succeed with his companions, he succeeds for them: his explicit goal is to return home, but it is also to get his companions home safe. A goal unfulfilled, one cannot help but note, but one that nonetheless speaks to Odysseus’ social, ethical obligations that well defined his structured selfhood. We can usefully contrast the objective-participant findings of the above analysis with all the ways in which subjective-individualist selfhood is absent in the Homeric Polyphemus. In other words, we can also usefully highlight the types of characteristics that the Homeric account does not include. The types of characteristics that are absent in the Odyssey are notably subjective-individualist, and include the following: individual personality, ranges of emotion, psychological complexity, internalization, unique facial features, subjective perspectivalism, self-reflectiveness and reflexivity, and even meta-reflectiveness. These are subjective, individualist characteristics that are absent, applied to neither the Cyclops nor the hero Odysseus. They are simply not part of the selfhood framework that the Odyssey uses and understands as relevant for describing the identity of antagonist and protagonist. To again look ahead, we will see that such selfhood characteristics become increasingly emphasized in later historical-cultural periods, and we will be able to note their growing presence as evidence of a shift in selfhood away from objective-participation and toward subjective-individualism. One of the most notable absences in Homer’s Cyclops is Polyphemus’ lack of psychological complexity, expressed in terms of an individual personality, emotion, and internality. The two best possible candidates for such characteristics, reflective of a subjective-individualist selfhood, are arrogance and anger, which is how the Cyclops is often described in the Homeric tradition. In this 54

Akin to the nature of laws themselves, or any type of social contract.

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episode, arrogance refers to Polyphemus’ presumptuous regarding his lack of need to follow social expectations, both those of hospitality and proper piety toward the gods. There is little doubt that this is the case: Odysseus describes the Cyclops in exactly these terms as both “overbearing/arrogant” (ὑπερφίαλος) and “unlawful” (ἀθέµιστος) (9.106). But the Homeric sense, as befitting the public, honor/shame culture, is not the same as the modern sense of over-confident and overly self-assured to the point of being unpleasant to others. Rather, it is used to characterize those who behave publicly in ways that flout social obligation: not only the Cyclops but also the Centaurs and the suitors at Odysseus’ home.55 It has little to do with one’s inner personality, but rather pertains to the extent to which one exerted one’s power to a proper or improper degree.56 Interestingly, the word is rarely used after Homeric times (e.g., once in Bacchylides, 10.77, ὑπερφίαλοι), suggesting its lack of suitability for subsequent descriptions that might require a more internal, psychological character. The same can be said for anger, though it occurs much less in book nine than one might expect. Polyphemus simply eats Odysseus’ crew, for instance, with the text making no mention of him being angered by his uninvited, cheese-eating guests, or a longer meditation between the two characters; the interaction is one of speech and immediate action. The text even specifies that Polyphemus’ spirit lacks emotion (οὐδὲν ἀµείβετο νηλέι θυµῷ, 9.287). Our closest example occurs after Odysseus’ escape, when he taunts Polyphemus who reacts angrily and throws a mountainous boulder at the escaping ship. Here, though, the emotion of anger is not one of internal rage, but rather of being provoked by another’s action (ὁ δ᾽ ἔπειτα χολώσατο κηρόθι µᾶλλον, 9.480), namely Odysseus’ public mockery that brings shame to the Cyclops and thereby necessitates reaction. As with our treatment of “overbearing/arrogant” above, the key verb here, “angered/provoked” (χολόω) does not refer to one’s internal, subjective feelings but rather reflects the notion of provocation, either to do something

55 56

See lexical entries in the LSJ. Ibid.

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publicly or because of an interaction with another.57 The Cyclops’ anger, in other words, is not an internal state but rather manifests because of external factors and is described as of a part with public interaction, here the departing Odysseus, around who achieved honor by besting the other. The Cyclops’ anger, in other words, befits an objective-participant paradigm described by Gill instead of the subjective-individualist paradigm we would use to understand emotion today. The most notable instance of potential emotion and inward psychologizing seems to occur when Polyphemus speaks with his ram (9.447-460). In a famous episode just before he hurls a rock at the departing Odysseus, Polyphemus lets each of his sheep out of his cave, blindly feeling for Odysseus’ crew who cling undetected to the sheep from below. When Polyphemus gets to the ram, he pauses and speaks, asking why the ram is last to leave the cave when he is usually the first, suggesting that the ram grieves on his behalf: Surely you are sorrowing for the eye of your master [ἄνακτος ὀφθαλµὸν ποθέεις], which an evil man blinded along with his miserable fellows, when he had overpowered my wits with wine, even Noman, who, I tell you, has not yet escaped destruction. If only you could feel as I do, and could get the power of speech to tell me where he skulks away from my wrath [µένος], then should his brains be dashed on the ground here and there throughout the cave, when I had smitten him, and my heart should be lightened of the woes [ἐµὸν κῆρ λωφήσειε κακῶν] which good-for-nothing Noman has brought me. (452-460)58

As was the case with Polyphemus’ supposed arrogance and anger, a closer attention to Homer’s Greek reveals the ways that modern translations tend to provide subjective-individualist readings, attributing to Polyphemus an interior, emotional psychology that is not well supported in the original text.59 First, the ram’s “sorrowing for the eye of your master” is no internal sorrow at all, nevermind that it is the ram who might be grieving and not See lexical entries in the LSJ. English adapted and Greek from Murray (1919). 59 All such linguistic assertions refer to the index of meanings in the LSJ. 57 58

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Polyphemus himself. The verb (ποθέω) refers to desiring, striving for, or missing something, not a feeling of internal sorrow, but rather a desire to achieve or re-acquire something externally. Similar to the discussion of Polyphemus’ anger/provocation above, commonly translated as “wrath” or “anger” (µένος) properly refers to one’s “might” or “force”. It is not the Cyclops’ emotions that Odysseus flees, but rather the physical outcomes (death, dismemberment, brain-smashing, consumption) that would likely result from his public shaming of the Cyclops. And finally, while a modern selfhood would readily interpret “my heart should be lightened of the woes”, the Cyclops is not referring to manifestly emotional woes but rather “ills” or “evils” (κακῶν) done to him. Polyphemus speaks to his ram not of the ram’s and his own feelings, in other words, but of the desire to re-acquire something physical that has been lost (his eye), the violent action that would meet Odysseus’ own actions, and how Odysseus has not brought the Cyclops sadness but instead terrible tangible outcomes. All of these readings, supported lexically, well reflect an objective-participant paradigm, showing how the Cyclops’ dialogue60 with Odysseus and then the ram reflect not the pathos of inner psychological and self-reflective emotion, but rather the desire to make right the loss of goods and honor that Polyphemus has experienced through his encounter with Odysseus. A final, notable point on the Cyclops’ description should be highlighted, namely that the Odyssey devotes relatively little space to Polyphemus’ appearance: “It is part of Homer’s art that he does not stress the monstrous appearance of the Cyclopes.”61 While Homer’s account seems to imply great size, both through his description and his encounter with Odysseus’ crew, neither Homer nor Hesiod makes explicit reference to his size.62 To look ahead, future re-tellings of this episode jettison the dialogue, which is a public interaction (objective-participant), and present Polyphemus having the much more psychologically rich and interior monologue (subjective-individualist). 61 Bremmer, p. 141. 62 Aguirre and Buxton, Cyclops, pp. 79-86 survey the descriptors used in the ancient evidence, noting that our earliest evidence is suggestive but certainly non-explicit around physical descriptions of a Cyclops’ size: in 60

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Further, the Odyssey doesn’t even explicitly note that Polyphemus has one eye, as this inference only arises when Odysseus spears a single eye and thereby renders Polyphemus blind.63 While we might assume that Polyphemus’ single eye was well known to Homeric readers/listeners and therefore didn’t merit mention, other mythic traditions by contrast understood the Cyclops to have two or even three eyes. The term and noun “Cyclops”, which we today associate almost singularly with a beast with one eye,64 did not necessitate only one eye in the ancient world.65 Bremmer notes that Homer’s “physical description [of having only one eye] is only partly mirrored by the vase-painters. They clearly try to picture him as a hairy giant, but there are very few early representations of a one-eyed Cyclops; most vases give him two [eyes], and several, mostly later [vases], even three eyes”.66 Bremmer notes further that “Euripides’ Cyclops Polyphemus sometimes seems to be depicted as having two eyes, sometimes one eye, although Cratinus calls him monommatos.”67 Polyphemus is not singularly defined by having only one eye, in other words, as Homer and other traditions overlap only on the vaguer physical characteristics of his notable strength and brutishness. To put it more simply, Polyphemus’ facial features are given little to no explicit attention in both the Homeric and contemporary

Hesiod, “[t]he hugeness of the masons is never spelled out … In the Odyssey the size of Polyphemus’ fellow ogres is never mentioned explicitly”, 80. Aguirre and Buxton also note the useful comparison to the similar Cyclops description in Callimachus’ Hymn to Artemis, likewise with the same word, pelōr(ios). 63 Bremmer contrasts Homer’s oblique description with that of Burkert 1995, p. 149, who explains the omission not due to Homer’s light poetic touch but rather by accidental omission. 64 See further discussion in my last chapter, where this singular descriptor of ‘one eyedness’ in modernity forms a key component of my wider argument for changing selfhood. 65 For a wider discussion of the one-eyed nature of the Cyclops in both ancient literature and art, see Aguirre and Buxton, Cyclops, pp. 94-131. 66 Bremmer, pp. 141-142. 67 Ibid, p. 142. Bremmer cites Seaford 1984: 100 and F 156 K.-A.

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mythical material, a fact that generally extends more widely across the two surviving Homeric epics.68 In subsequent chapters, we will see that the Cyclops’ facial features become a point of increasing emphasis, a change that I argue reflects movement away from Homeric, objective-participant selfhood toward modern, subjective-individualist selfhood. This increased attention to facial features is accompanied by other changes in how the Cyclops is framed that likewise shift their emphases away from objective-participant selfhood, such as through an increasing attention to Polyphemus’ emotions, internal state, and even his self-reflectiveness. Such changes in the Cyclops myth, I argue, reflect changing notions of selfhood in subsequent historical periods and socio-cultural contexts. For now, we must highlight and keep in mind this chapter’s conclusion: Homer describes Polyphemus in a way that embodies the opposite of what constitutes proper Greek virtue. This oppositional framework between Polyphemus’ and Odysseus’ identities excellently reflects the Archaic Greek understanding of objective-participant selfhood, by which both the Cyclops and the hero Odysseus are judged. This Homeric, objective-participant selfhood clearly marks one end of the selfhood spectrum, on the far other side of which lies a modern, fully subjective-individualist selfhood. This Homeric starting-point of objective-participant selfhood will form the basis for our comparison of all subsequent Cyclops myths. Highly instructive is the teichoskopeia of Iliad 3.181-244, where Helen stands atop the walls of Troy and describes the Achaean leaders to Priam: the only physical feature mentioned is size, with no mention given of anyone’s head shape, face, or facial features such as eyes, teeth, nose, or hair. This same glossing over of facial features in Homer’s Cyclops can be usefully contrasted with an ever-increasing attention to facial features in subsequent re-tellings of the myth. A rare physical description of a body and face occurs with the character Thersites in the Iliad 2.210-219, a description which includes disfigured body and hair, but little by way of facial features. As with the teichoskopeia, it is telling how minor of a character Thersites is and how little facial description he is given despite the attention to his broader figure: if such description were culturally significant, one would expect the heroes and villains of the epics to receive extensive and specific such treatment. 68

CHAPTER TWO. THE CLASSICAL ERA: EURIPIDES’ CYCLOPS THE COMIC CYCLOPS AND THE FIRST A PPEARANCE OF SUBJECTIVE PREFERENCES, INTERIOR PSYCHOLOGY, AND I NDIVIDUAL FEATURES Euripides’ Cyclops

Euripides’ Cyclops, written in the 5th century BCE, is the only complete satyr play extant from ancient Greece.1 At the annual festival of the Athenian Dionysia, playwrights such as Euripides, Aeschylus, and Sophocles submitted sets of four plays in competition: three tragic dramas and one satyr play. Greek tragedies are overwhelmingly better known due to their weighty subject matter and the many surviving texts. The satyr play, meanwhile, was a ribald comedy that functioned as a counterpoint to the weightiness of the three tragedies. Euripides’ Cyclops is thus notable not only as a rare representative of a mostly lost literary art,2 but also as evidence of ancient humor. As a data point in my broader project The most recent edition is Shaw, Euripides. For discussion of dating and placing the play within its context, see Wright, “Cyclops and the Euripidean Tetralogy”, pp. 23-48. The bibliography on Cycylops and especially Euripides is enormous, so references will be selective. Greek and lightly adapted English translation from Kovacs, Euripides. Cyclops. Alcestis. Medea. 2 Satyr plays are also represented in the visual arts, especially Athenian vase painting: see discussion with references in Seaford, Euripides. Cyclops, 2-5, esp. n. 3; Brommer, Satyrspiele. 1

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detailing the continuum of selfhood, it thus usefully widens the types of evidence used to detail ancient cultural values and understandings such as selfhood. The Cyclops runs as follows, with four characters: the hero Odysseus, the Cyclops Polyphemus, a satyr named Silenus, and a chorus of other satyrs. The play begins on the island of the Cyclops, where he keeps as love slaves Silenus and his band of satyrs – essentially human/goat hybrids who were understood as paradigms of sexualized animalism in ancient Greece.3 Odysseus and his crew arrive, meet Silenus, and trade him wine for food. Soon Polyphemus arrives, and Silenus accuses Odysseus of stealing the food. Polyphemus and Odysseus then dialogue, with Odysseus vouching for proper hospitality and Polyphemus advocating a ‘might makes right’ philosophy. Polyphemus takes the Greeks into the cave, and violently devours several. Odysseus eventually decides to get the Cyclops drunk upon his return, after which Polyphemus retires amorously into the cave with Silenus, at which point Odysseus follows with his crew and violently blinds Polyphemus. Odysseus’ clever ruse of claiming his name as “No Man / No One” fools the Cyclops and guarantees no other Cyclopes comes to help.4 In his escape, however, Odysseus lets slip his real name which invites Polyphemus’ curse and thereby incites the wrath of Polyphemus’ father Poseidon. Overall, Euripides’ Cyclops clearly reproduces Homer’s general narrative from the Odyssey. We find some innovations in both narrative, namely the inclusion of the satyr Silenus and his satyr companions who have been enslaved by the Cyclops, and especially tone, namely drunken, sexualized, and violent comedy throughout.5 These comedic flourishes may have resulted from

See the Silenus mentioned in Virgil, Eclogue VI and Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 1. 4 In Greek there is also a pun around mē tis (“No One”) and mētis (cleverness, deception). 5 The foundation for the Euripides-Homer comparison is Lange, Euripides und Homer, esp. ch. 6, pp. 191-236 on Euripides’ Cyclops. 3

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alternate traditions of the Cyclops myth depicting Polyphemus as a glutton,6 which do not survive outside of a few fragments.7 Euripides’ depiction of the Cyclops Polyphemus remains largely the same as what we found in Homer: brutish, violent, and violating the rules of proper hospitality. Euripides’ narrative also runs in basically the same arc: Polyphemus receives Odysseus violently, Odysseus gets Polyphemus drunk and blinds him, and Odysseus escapes with his crew. These similarities indicate that the objective-participant selfhood of Homer’s Cyclops also appears in Euripides’ account. Yet several changes do occur, in both Euripides’ narrative and in his description of Polyphemus: the blinding and escape from Polyphemus is glossed over and therefore the group-effort aspects of Odysseus’ plan are erased; the land of the Cyclopes lacks some of the collective-civilized features that we found in Homer; Polyphemus begins to express some of his own, individual preferences in the form of subjective, (semi)sophisticated tastes; and Euripides gives some small attention to both Polyphemus’ appearance and psychological state as a result of being blinded. All of these changes, I argue, indicate a small but noticeable shift toward a more subjective-individualist selfhood. Mirror Reading Euripides and Objective-Participant Selfhood

On the core aspects of Polyphemus’ identity and selfhood in Euripides’ Cyclops, Polyphemus is extremely close to Homer’s account. Indeed, so close is Euripides’ account that we can apply the same form of mirror reading to Euripides’ Cyclops as we did to Homer’s, this time moving directly to a summary. In so doing, we see that Homer’s and Euripides’ Cyclops are described in remarkably similar terms. See discussion in, e.g., Seaford on lines 121-124: Seaford, Cyclops of Euripides; Idem, Euripides. Cyclops. 7 We have several other authors, roughly contemporary to Euripides, who also wrote on the Cyclops and whose works are preserved only in fragments: Epicharmos, Cyclops (6th-5th cent. BCE); Cratinus, Odysseis (5th cent. BCE); Aristias, the satiric Cyclops (5th cent. BCE?); Callias, Cyclops (5th century BCE?). All are discussed in Shaw, et alia. 6

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Euripides’ Cyclops is likewise possessed of a divine lineage via Poseidon (21, 212-3, 263, 286), is hostile to foreigners and even eats them (92-3, 125-8), ignores the custom of giving aid to travelers in need of water and food (96-8), lives alone in a cave instead of a house (22, 118), is solitary and obeys no king or other man (120), eats cheese, milk, and sheep instead of cultivated agriculture (121-2), impiously rejects the worship of the god Bacchus via singing, drinking, dancing, and instrument-playing (6881, 124, 203-5), and eats both the flesh of humans (116-7, 1268) and the meat of wild lions and deer (248-9) instead of domesticated animals. Polyphemus values wealth over the gods, ignores temples that mean nothing to him, and even thumbs his nose at Zeus’ thunderbolt by suggesting his own flatulence as its equal (31627). He relies on grass to feed his animals, views his own belly as “the greatest of divinities”, and explicitly rejects sacrifices and human laws (331-9). Ultimately, he explicitly seeks to gratify his own soul above all else (341-7). He is overall a “godless man” (ἀνδρὸς ἀνοσίου, 349), whose sacrifices are sacrilegious (365) as they arise from killing and eating human flesh (367-70). While he seems to be aware of proper ritual killing by slitting a victim’s throat (398-9) and throwing some pieces in the fire while others are saved to be cooked (402f.), elsewhere he simply bashes his victims to death in wanton violence (400-2). He later drinks huge quantities of unmixed wine (557-9, cf. 149-51), and before his drunken slumber attempts to take Silenus as his lover (583-9), which upholds Greek custom by using the proper language of himself as lover (τὸν ἐραστὴν, 588), even as he flouts Greek custom insofar as the old, animalistic, and grotesque Silenus is far from the ideal of a young, beautiful lover (583-4). As with Homer’s account, Euripides’ account can be mirror read to show how his Cyclops likewise personifies the opposite of Odysseus and the proper Greek virtue of Euripides’ era, the Classical Era. Again, we mostly see an objective-participant selfhood framework, with Polyphemus critiqued by opposition to values that are external and socially structured:

CHAPTER TWO. THE CLASSICAL ERA Cyclops

Odysseus

Cannibalize

Don’t eat human meat

Hostile to foreigners

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Accept and honor foreigners

Doesn’t give food and water to Always help travelers in need those in need

Lives alone away from civilization Live with and among others in settlements Obeys no king or other man

Obey social contract, both of rulers and others

Eats cheese, milk, and sheep

Cultivate agriculture and consume crops

Rejects Bacchus worship Eats wild meat of lions and deer Values wealth over the gods Ignores temples

Mocks Zeus’ thunderbolt

Always encourage proper worship of the gods Eat meat of domesticated animals

Value the gods over earthly wealth Always pay temples due respect

Always give due reverence to the gods

Relies on wild grass to feed his an- Grow grass to feed livestock imals Views own belly as a divinity Rejects sacrifices Rejects human laws

Humility of own needs before the gods

Embrace and encourage proper sacrifices Embrace and encourage human laws

Seeks to gratify own soul above all Prioritize gods before self else Godless

Pious

Sacrilegious

Perform proper rituals

Drinks massive quantities

Drink moderately

Improper sacrificial technique

Drinks unmixed wine

Lusts for older, grotesque lovers

Obey agreed upon rules for religious ritual Mix wine according to civilized proportions Love younger, beautiful boys

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Polyphemus rejects socially agreed upon rules, lives away from civilization, does not cooperate with others in activities such as agriculture or animal husbandry, performs ritual improperly if at all, rejects public piety, flouts social convention, and most of all rejects the foundational values of hospitality and honor/shame. Odysseus, in what seems to be a clearer contrast than what we find in Homer, is described in a host of ways that further strengthen the notion that the selfhood in Euripides is fundamentally of an objective-participant type. Odysseus describes himself as a king from a particular land (103), which answers Polyphemus’ question regarding his origins, country, and place of upbringing (276-9), a paradigmatic reflection of objective-participant selfhood figured around lineage, upbringing, and land. Odysseus speaks to the rightness of doing business in the daylight (137) and mentions both barter and money (160-3), clear references to civilized commerce and the rules attending things like contracts and coinage. He explicitly and severally states that friendly visitors and travelers are protected by the laws of the gods and men via the custom of hospitality (285-9, 299-304). He specifically rejects individual ambition in favor of saving his crewmates, describing a rejection of these public social ties as sacrilegious (480-3). He also specifically mentions his acts of public worship, such as keeping temples and sacred hollows safe, keeping the Greek gods safe from the Phrygians, and mentioning the public shame that is attached to the inability or unwillingness to do likewise (291f., cf. 309-10). He invokes the names of the gods (599-607) as well as eventually his own name as given by his father (690700), which invokes Polyphemus’ curse but which fully reflects objective-participant selfhood around lineage. We also see a potential awareness of proper (public) ritual behavior, as his plan for vengeance is described by the chorus-leader as a “blood libation” (469-71).8 Euripides’ account, in other words, is along nearly the exact same lines as what we saw with Homer, with

ἔστ᾽ οὖν ὅπως ἂν ὡσπερεὶ σπονδῆς θεοῦ (469) κἀγὼ λαβοίµην τοῦ τυφλοῦντος ὄµµατα (470) δαλοῦ; φόνου γὰρ τοῦδε κοινωνεῖν θέλω. (471) 8

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Euripides perhaps going even further than Homer in making explicit Odysseus’ proper and contrasting adherence to objectiveparticipant social values. The Appearance of Subjective-Individualist Selfhood in Euripides

There are a few ways that Euripides’ Cyclops notably differs from Homer’s Cyclops. These specific differences, I argue, all reflect a small but noticeable shift away from objective-participant selfhood and toward subjective-individualist selfhood: -

-

-

-

Odysseus’ blinding of Polyphemus takes place off stage, and therefore the group-effort aspects of Odysseus’ plan are glossed over The Cyclops’ island lacks collective-civilized features just as we found in Homer, but to a lesser degree Polyphemus begins to express some of his own, individual preferences in the form of subjective tastes around food and sex Euripides gives explicit attention to Polyphemus’ appearance, particularly his facial features, as a result of being blinded Euripides gives some small attention to Polyphemus’ psychological state

The first of these is the simplest. In Homer’s account, Odysseus planned with and for his crew, and it was a group effort to blind the Cyclops and escape, in order to try and get everyone home safely. In Euripides, there is likewise a group effort, as Odysseus goes back into the cave with his crew to blind the drunken Cyclops. But in Euripides’ version, the blinding itself takes place off stage, and receives no explicit narrative exposition.9 A partial

πάλαι µὲν ᾔδη σ᾽ ὄντα τοιοῦτον φύσει, (649) νῦν δ᾽ οἶδ᾽ ἄµεινον. τοῖσι δ᾽ οἰκείοις φίλοις (650) χρῆσθαί µ᾽ ἀνάγκη. χειρὶ δ᾽ εἰ µηδὲν σθένεις, (651) ἀλλ᾽ οὖν ἐπεγκέλευέ γ᾽, ὡς εὐψυχίαν (652) φίλων κελευσµοῖς τοῖσι σοῖς κτησώµεθα. (653) δράσω τάδ᾽. ἐν τῷ Καρὶ κινδυνεύσοµεν. (654) κελευσµάτων δ᾽ ἕκατι τυφέσθω Κύκλωψ. (655) 9

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explanation can be found in the genre conventions of the satyrplays, which followed ancient Greek tragedies in largely avoiding violence on-stage. But the lack of explicit narrative is notable, effacing the substantial planning and group execution we find in Homer’s version. We see something similar in the lack of stone in front of the cave, and therefore no dramatic escape of the Greeks clinging to the bottom of sheep, as we also saw with Homer. The role of the group is maintained in these aspects of the story, in other words, but receives much less emphasis. The story has become more about Odysseus and less about Odysseus along with his crew. The role of Odysseus as individual is thus strengthened. In Homer’s account, I also noted the ways that the Cyclopes’ island was described as lacking the trappings of collective, civilized life that reflected an objective-participant selfhood. Many similar such descriptions also appear in Euripides, but again we see modifications. Unlike the Homeric account where the Cyclops’ island was untouched by hunters, at the beginning of Euripides’ play Polyphemus is absent because he is out hunting with his dogs (130), a notably civilized activity. Polyphemus’ food consumption, although barbaric for the eating of wild lion and deer, does involve cow’s milk (136), suggesting some domestication of animals beyond just sheep and goats as we saw with Homer. Finally, despite both Euripides and Homer describing the Cyclops as not cultivating agriculture, Euripides omits the spontaneous growth of grains and grapes for wine (120-8). The contrast between the wild Cyclops and the civilized Greeks still remains – indeed the Cyclops subsists mostly on cheese, milk, and sheep, and without the cooperation required of formal agriculture – but this specific contrast around agriculture is weakened by the removal of the passage on spontaneous growth. Euripides also describes Polyphemus as having some individual preferences. Some commentators have gone so far as to describe Polyphemus as “a man of some sophistication”, due to the fact that Polyphemus has his satyr slaves clean his cave and prepare a meal while he away hunting, both marks of civilized sophistication.10 Despite Polyphemus’ savage consumption of human flesh, 10

Seaford, Euripides, p. 51.

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Euripides has Polyphemus’ consumption be the product not of blind savagery, but of preferential taste. Polyphemus states that he is tired of lion and deer, and desires human flesh, to which his satyr slaves respond that, essentially, variety is the spice of life (247-8). Unlike Homer’s Cyclops who killed and ate Odysseus’ crewmates raw, Euripides’ Cyclops desires to cook them properly over coals (244-6).11 He even spices them with salt (345-6)! Further in contrast to Homer, Euripides’ Cyclops shows cultural sophistication in his awareness of properly sacrificing animals for consumption, slitting some of Odysseus’ crewmates’ throats and burning some portions while cooking others (395, 402). Yet Polyphemus still, here in more Homeric fashion, violently smashes others of them to death (404). Euripides’ Cyclops, in other words, is still a savage brute that violently kills and eats humans, but he does so with some discrimination in terms of his cooking and eating practices. We might even extend this argument to Polyphemus’ sexual preference for the older and grotesque Silenus. Surely this preference partly reflects the genre conventions of a satyr-play around sexualized comedy that violates certain cultural norms. But the way that this play violates these norms is instructive. Here we see a cultural norm that embodies an objective-participant framework: an older male was expected to have a younger lover, regardless of either’s subjective sexual preferences. Yet Polyphemus’ perversion of this norm here is done so through the expression of an individual preference. It is not only that Polyphemus doesn’t do what is socially expected, but rather the fact that he follows his personal desires so explicitly makes this episode stand out. In both food and sex, in other words, Euripides’ Cyclops expresses, in at least some small way, individual tastes and preferences more befitting of a subjective-individualist selfhood. Euripides’ Cyclops is also the first (extant) place in the written record where we see the Cyclops specifically referred to as ugly with an attention to his facial features. Euripides describes Compare the similar visual depiction of “Polyphemus the demon chef” in the Campanian krater from Cumae, 350-325 BCE, in Aguirre and Buxton, Cyclops, p. 84. 11

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the Cyclops’ blinding as leaving him “destroyed”, “ugly”, and “wretched” (669-71).12 I’ll return to Polyphemus’ feelings of being “destroyed” and especially “wretched” below, but the description of Polyphemus as “ugly” (αἰσχρός), by the external observation of the satyrs no less, is especially notable. The word for “ugly” (αἰσχρός) is significant here. In its earliest appearances in Homer the word means “causing shame, dishonoring, reproaching”,13 meanings which all conform to the objective-participant paradigm around public shame and honor. But after Homer, the word also takes on a physiological sense, meaning “ugly, ill-favored, deformed”. From the Archaic to the Classical Periods, this word has expanded beyond a public-moral definition (objective-participant) to speak also or instead to one’s physical features (subjective-individualist). Most commentators on Euripides’ Cyclops translate αἰσχρός in this manifestly physiological sense of “ugly”, which lends additional support to my claim that Euripides shows greater concern with Polyphemus in a subjective-individualist sense. Indeed, the word’s change in meaning from the public-moral to the individual-physiological might itself be a small linguistic indication of a wider cultural shift toward subjective-individualist selfhood. Homer’s Polyphemus, by contrast, was never given this type of facial description. Homer’s Cyclops was described instead as being a “monstrous man” or simply “monstrous” (πελώριος). The word πελώριος in Greek has a variety of possible meanings, none of them with any sort of physical detail implied behind a vague understanding of abnormal size: “monstrous, mighty, portentous, huge, prodigious”.14 Indeed, even the sense of “monstrous”, which might in English imply a sort of grotesque face or form, in ancient 12

ἀπωλόµην, αἰσχρός, ἄθλιος: τί χρῆµ᾽ ἀυτεῖς, ὦ Κύκλωψ; ἀπωλόµην. (669) αἰσχρός γε φαίνῃ. (670) κἀπὶ τοῖσδέ γ᾽ ἄθλιος. (671)

All translations from Liddell & Scott, 9th ed. Reference discussion in Aguirre and Buxton, Cyclops, p. 80, likewise noting that size is implied by such a descriptor, but concluding that pelōr(ios) (Odyssey 9.187, 190, 257, 428) simply and most accurately “expresses the quality of going beyond the ordinary”. 13 14

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Greek refers instead to monstrous in the sense of powerful beyond human capacity.15 For Homer, as for Hesiod, neither the Cyclops’ ugliness/beauty nor his specific features are worthy of mention: “Hesiod tells us nothing about the attractiveness, or otherwise, of his one-eyed weapons-makers. In the Odyssey, Cyclopean ugliness is largely irrelevant.”16 Related to Euripides’ description of the Cyclops as “ugly” is Euripides’ specification that Polyphemus has only one eye (174).17 While this detail is implied in Homer due to Polyphemus’ blindness after losing one eye, it is notably never made explicit, and as I noted in my last chapter we shouldn’t assume that it was a given; many ancient images depict the Cyclops with two or even three eyes. The absence of the single-eye description in Homer, in notable contrast to Euripides, seems to well reflect Jan Bremmer’s point that for Homer the one-eyedness of Polyphemus – and indeed Polyphemus’ entire physical description – was much less important than his other objective-participant characteristics, such as his brutishness and violent lack of hospitality.18 As we will see, over time the Cyclops becomes increasingly defined by his facial features – both his ugliness/beauty and his single eye – and less defined by his relationship to structured A variety of analogues are possible: “terrible” (δεινός) has the connotation of “very bad” in modern English but its original meaning was something like “fearful, powerful, marvelous, dangerous”, hence the word “dinosaur” meaning “terrible lizard” not in the sense of “a very bad lizard” but a “mighty, huge, powerful lizard”. The same can be said for terms like “marvelous” and “awesome” which modern English understands as meaning essentially “very good” but which originally had meanings of “inspiring awe/marvel due to power and might”. 16 Aguirre and Buxton, Cyclops, p. 136. 17 ὀφθαλµὸν µέσον. 18 Bremmer, “Odysseus versus the Cyclops”, pp. 135-52. Bremmer sees the omission of substantial physical details as an intentional choice on the part of Homer; Bremmer frames this point contra Burkert (1995, 149), who thinks that Homer simply forgot to add such details. I side with Bremmer, as I argue that Homer’s intentional choice reflects his objective-participant selfhood, which saw the Cyclops’ specific physical features, in particular his face, as much less important than things like his genealogy and participation in socially structured selfhood characteristics such as hospitality. 15

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selfhood. Importance and attention granted to an individual’s facial features, I argue, is indicative of a more subjective-individualist selfhood. As such, we can map an increased focus on the Cyclops’ facial features onto an increase in subjective-individualist selfhood. To briefly look ahead, by the time we get to the modern era, the Cyclops becomes fully defined solely by his ugliness and single eye, with no inclusion of social mores or customs inherent to his selfhood. Euripides’ explicit inclusion of these descriptive facial features (ugliness, single eye) is the first small but important step in that direction. Subjective-individualist selfhood is also defined by interiority and psychologizing the individual subject. Indeed, we see that the other half of Euripides’ post-blindness description of Polyphemus, mentioned above, well fulfills this category. Euripides speaks briefly but explicitly to Polyphemus’ emotional state, specifically that his blinding has left him “destroyed” (ἀπωλόµην) and “wretched” (ἄθλιος). This latter word, “wretched”, gives short but real attention to Polyphemus’ interior, emotional state, pointing beyond what this blinding meant for Odysseus by also explicitly including the psychological ramifications for Polyphemus. As we saw with the linguistic shifts around “ugly” (αἰσχρός) above, so too does the word “wretched” (ἄθλιος) have significance. This word ἄθλιος during Homeric times had a different meaning: “winning the prize, running for the prize”. By the time of Euripides and after, it had come instead to indicate one’s psychological state: “wretched, miserable, unhappy, struggling, pitiful”. Instead of the Homeric definition which turned on public competition and attaining glory in a communal honor/shame paradigm, the definition by the time of Euripides had come to indicate one’s individual state, seeming at an interior, psychological level. As with Euripides’ word choice of “ugly” (αἰσχρός), the ways in which the meaning of “wretched” (ἄθλιος) changed from the Archaic to the Classical Periods indicate a shift in valuation away from objective-participant values and toward subjective-individualism. We can again usefully contrast Euripides’ Cyclops description with Homer’s. Homer’s Cyclops is racked by pain and physical suffering post blinding, but Homer offers up no such

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descriptor of Polyphemus’ emotional suffering or personal state. Homer’s Cyclops is enraged, physically pained, and certainly provoked,19 but we see no similar description to him being “wretched” in the sense of his interior, psychological condition. Perhaps the closest Homer comes is when Odysseus, in sailing away after his escape, tells Polyphemus that the “shameful blinding” of his eye was by “Odysseus … son of Laertes, whose home is in Ithaca”.20 Yet while we might be tempted to read Homer’s “shameful” here as a sort of meditation on Polyphemus’ interior feelings, shame in ancient Greece and especially Homeric times was a public and paradigmatic objective-participant value, a far cry from the modern notion of shame as an interior feeling.21 Euripides has again, in a small but noticeable way, marked out a difference from Homer which demonstrates a movement toward subjective-individualism. One final, more speculative point can be added around yet another of Euripides’ linguistic additions. When Euripides’ Odysseus parlays with Polyphemus, Odysseus states that he and his crew have come to the island not as slaves but as free men, and he begs the Cyclops “not to dare/suffer to kill those visitors coming to your house” (285-9).22 At issue here is the word translated as “dare” or, alternatively, “suffer” (τλάω). It bears mentioning that – unlike my discussion above of “ugly” (ἄθλιος) and “wretched” (ἄθλιος) where we saw a shift in meaning from the Archaic to the Classical Periods – both senses of “dare/suffer” 19 20

Κύκλωψ δὲ στενάχων τε καὶ ὠδίνων ὀδύνῃσι (Od. 9.415). Κύκλωψ, αἴ κέν τίς σε καταθνητῶν ἀνθρώπων (502). Recall discussion in

the previous chapter around the shared selfhood of the Homeric Odysseus and Polyphemus around the importance of lineage and land. ὀφθαλµοῦ εἴρηται ἀεικελίην ἀλαωτύν, (503) φάσθαι Ὀδυσσῆα πτολιπόρθιον ἐξαλαῶσαι, (504) υἱὸν Λαέρτεω, Ἰθάκῃ ἔνι οἰκί᾽ ἔχοντα. (505) 21 MacIntyre, Shame and Necessity; Konstan, “Shame in Ancient Greece”. 22 English here modified from the Kovacs. θεοῦ τὸ πρᾶγµα: µηδέν᾽ αἰτιῶ βροτῶν. (285) ἡµεῖς δέ σ᾽, ὦ θεοῦ ποντίου γενναῖε παῖ, (286) ἱκετεύοµέν τε καὶ ψέγοµεν ἐλευθέρως: (287) µὴ τλῇς πρὸς οἴκους σοὺς ἀφιγµένους φίλους (288) κτανεῖν βοράν τε δυσσεβῆ θέσθαι γνάθοις: (289)

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(τλάω) are attested roughly equally in both Homer and later writings. If we translate the word in the first sense, as “dare/venture” in the sense of “dare to kill”, then we get a reading that fits well into an objective-participant framework of public piety and hospitality, where one shouldn’t dare flout such rules due to the public, socially structured punishment that would result. But if we translate the word in the second sense, as “suffer, undergo (hardship)” in the sense of “do not suffer in/by killing us” or “do not suffer the act of killing us”, then we get a reading more in line with the subjective-individualist framework. In this reading, Odysseus seems to be having something of a real human moment with Polyphemus, warning him not only that there would be social and divine consequences (fully in line with objective-participant selfhood), but also that there would be perhaps emotional, internal, psychological consequences (subjective-individualist selfhood). Polyphemus would regret his actions and be pained by them on an individual, subjective level. Odysseus is aware of this and seems to show at least some concern, albeit of a doubtless self-interested kind. Nothing like this appears in Homer’s account. Instead, Homer’s Odysseus is solely concerned with public laws of piety and hospitality, as well as his own survival. Perhaps Euripides has here again innovated in a small way, retaining Homer’s objectiveparticipant selfhood but adding some valence of subjective-individualist selfhood. Euripides and the Classical Period

We’ve thus identified Euripides’ changes to the Cyclops myth and explained how these changes indicate a small but noticeable shift in the direction of subjective-individualist selfhood. Now, we can step back and reflect more broadly about how and why these shifts occurred. In my chapter on Homer, I made a few such suggestions, arguing that Homer’s Cyclops myth well reflected the objective-participant values of the Archaic Era that stemmed from that period’s distinctive material and cultural characteristics. For Euripides, we can do the same, but this time with an attention to the ways in which the Cyclops myth has changed. In particular, what was it about Euripides’ historical-cultural period

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that may have precipitated such changes in the myth? How might Euripides’ social-historical context explain the appearance of these changes, which in turn suggest changes in selfhood more broadly? Here I propose a couple possible answers to these questions. One important consideration is genre. As I discussed in this chapter, we should be mindful of the difference between Homeric epic, where explicit depictions of violence were common, and Greek theater, where such violence conventionally occurred off stage. Further, I noted that the specific genre of the satyr play foregrounded the violation of social norms, particularly around sex. In the areas of both violence and sexual activity, then, at least a partial explanation for innovations around the Cyclops myth can be found in the apples-to-oranges comparison between Homeric epic and Greek drama. Further, the conventions of a satyr play constrain possible depictions of the Cyclops, turning him into a figure meant to be mocked. We might expect, then, a certain amount of psychologizing due to this comedic genre as compared to Homeric epic: where epic focuses on sweeping tales of action, comedy and satire are notably smaller-scale and draw out particular elements of character for mockery and abuse. Two points suggest, however, that there may be additional explanations for the myth’s persistence and specific changes in Euripides. First, the Cyclops’ mere presence in the play is notable. While Greek myths often reappeared in different genres, with tragedy a common venue, only certain myths made the leap from Homeric story to theatrical production (e.g. Sophocles’ Ajax).23 Something about the Cyclops itself made it a prime candidate to become the subject of its own drama, and a satyr play no less. Euripides’ decision to make Polyphemus a central character in this smaller-scale, more personality-driven genre, in other words, might itself be evidence of Euripides’ shift toward subjective-individualistic selfhood.

For a brief overview of the relationship between epic and tragedy, with useful summary of Homeric stories appearing in now-lost plays, see Zimmermann, “Greek Epic and Tragedy”. 23

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Second, despite the above-noted changes in genre that would modify the myth in expected ways (sex, violence, mockery), this chapter has highlighted the notability of several specific narrative and descriptive differences in Euripides’ account as compared to Homer’s. We should expect a satyr play to involve bawdy and sexualized humor, but the introduction of such changes does not require the Cyclops to voice his own individual, subjective preferences for food, for example, nor does it require additional specifics devoted to describing the Cyclops’ face. Genre, in other words, provides only partial explanation for Euripides’ choices, and I suggest that additional explanation can be found in the wider historical, cultural, and political changes taking place during this time. Euripides lived roughly 480-406 BCE and was writing in the Classical Era, broadly known as “Classical Greece”. This period is generally dated from 510 BCE, when the Athenians (with Spartan help) threw off their last tyrant Hippias and ushered in a system of democracy under the guidance of the law-reformer Cleisthenes.24 This began a period of incredible reform, change, and innovation, with an unparalleled cultural flowering in the areas of politics, philosophy, science, technology, architecture, and art. This also precipitated, in fits and starts, Athens’ imperial expansion and thereby the spread of Athenian-Greek ideas and cultural practices, what came to be known as “Hellenism”, across the Mediterranean world. This culminated in the extraordinary military campaign of Alexander the Great, a Macedonian taking up Athens’ cultural lineage, who conquered most of the world known to the Greeks. The Classical Era is typically bookended at 323 BCE, with the death of Alexander. One reason for Euripides’ changes of the Cyclops myth might be found in the discussion around democracy taking place in the fifth century. We saw that Homer’s Cyclops well matched its cultural-historic era by responding to the Homeric framework of honor/shame and its fully objective-participant framework. In the same way, Euripides’ Cyclops seems well matched to its own, A nice overview: Fornara and Samons, Athens from Cleisthenes to Pericles. 24

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different cultural-historical era, by responding to an Atheniandemocratic framework that remained mostly objective-participatory but was becoming more subjective-individualist. A democracy’s values are largely objective-participant: they involve shared social norms, a clear social contract, and are manifestly public in terms of debate and political participation. Athenian democracy was even more so: it was limited to the landholding free citizenry, whose value to society was socially structured in extremely clear terms by and for the city (polis).25 The limitation of political participation to those born into certain relatively elite families is a perfect embodiment of objective-participant values.26 What is more, the basis of the polis was the household (oikos) which, as I noted in my discussion of Homer, clearly demarcated socially structured roles in a paradigmatic objectiveparticipant way.27 But even Athenian democracy involves at least some interest in the individual qua individual.28 Ultimately, the needs and interests of the city (polis) take precedence over the needs and interests of any one individual or even groupings of subjective-individualist interest.29 But democracy is essentially an aggregate of such individual needs and interests. For a democracy such as Athens to work, the individual, subjective views of each person must be valued and respected in their own right.30 To put this in the language of my wider argument, a democracy is mostly objectiveparticipatory, especially an Athenian democracy which involved public debate and which still retained Homeric values around honor, but democracy necessarily also invoked subjective-individualism through its valuations of the individual rights of citizenry.

Shear, Polis and Revolution. Davies, Athenian Propertied Families. 27 Roy, “Polis and Oikos in Classical Athens”, pp. 1-18. 28 Ober, The Athenian Revolution; Ober, Raaflaub, and Wallace, Origins of Democracy. 29 See, for example, how this works with a case study in religion in early Athens: Shear, “Religion and the Polis”, pp. 27-55. 30 Raaflaub, The Discovery of Freedom. 25 26

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In this context, some commentators have explained Euripides’ Cyclops as the embodiment of particular critiques of democracy taking place during the early Classical Era. Seaford, for example, suggests that “Euripides’ contribution may have been to extend the cannibal’s sophisticated Hellenism into the realm of the intellect. His first words to the Greeks characterize him as a man of the polis (275-6), and he then (283-4) displays a disconcerting familiarity with the fashionable topos condemnatory of the Trojan expedition”.31 Euripides’ Cyclops, in Seaford’s view, is very much a man of the times, reflecting the wider discussion around the role of the individual vis-à-vis society, especially democracy. Seaford explains: [In] general Euripides was a supporter of nomos and of democracy, though not of ochlocracy. Cyclops was almost certainly written shortly after 411 BC, in a period of fierce conflict in Athens between democrats and oligarchs. In the same period he wrote the Phoinissai, in which Polyneikes’ appeal to dike, and Jokasta’s attempt to avert the fratricide by appealing to the principle of equality, are both rejected by Eteokles (469-592) in terms reminiscent in their brutal realism of Polyphemos’ rejection of Odysseus’ plea. One aspect of the figure of Polyphemos in Cyclops is a caricature of a certain contemporary anti-democratic ideology. He is a man of substance equipped with slaves, cattle in addition to his Homeric sheep, and a sophisticated ideology.32

Euripides’ Cyclops is the personification of a paradigmatic opponent of democracy that existed during the fifth century. This means that Polyphemus shares with these opponents of democracy a wider cultural framework also shared with the Athenians, expressed in his own “sophisticated ideology”. Euripides’ Polyphemus, in other words, shares the same selfhood with Euripides’ pro-democratic allies, but he simply has a different identity. In this way, Euripides’ Cyclops functions as an oppositional foil just Seaford, Euripides. Cyclops, p. 52; see also p. 58: “The combination in the Homeric Polyphemos of the superhuman and the sub-human has been expressed by Euripides as a positive, intellectualized hostility to the basis of the contemporary polis”. 32 Ibid, p. 53. 31

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like Homer’s Cyclops, but the framework of that opposition has changed to reflect the times. Just as Homer used his Cyclops to contrast civilized Greeks to monstrous barbarians, Euripides’ Cyclops is similarly brought into a shared selfhood framework with this new Odysseus and then shown to be lacking in terms of this very framework. Euripides’ Polyphemus has a framework that is mostly objective-participant – recall all the ways he is still judged negatively according to such structured selfhood values such as public piety and hospitality – but also partly subjective-individualist – recall the limited but real attention Euripides gives to Polyphemus’ individual preferences and tastes as well as Polyphemus’ individual form and psychological state. Euripides’ Cyclops performs this contrasting antagonism to Odysseus through participation in this new, Classical Era framework of selfhood that is now partly subjective-individualist. It also bears repeating, in conclusion, the linguistic points I noted in Euripides’ description of his Cyclops. Euripides’ description of the Cyclops as “ugly” (αἰσχρός) and “wretched” (ἄθλιος) used specific words (αἰσχρός, ἄθλιος) whose meanings changed from the Homeric to the Classical Periods. I argued that the changes in both words – in αἰσχρός from the public-moral to the individual-physiological, and in ἄθλιος from public competition to an internal state – indicated a shift in valuation away from objective-participant and toward subjective-individualist values. At least in the case of language, with these two examples that are small but significant given their centrality to Euripides’ innovations in describing the Cyclops, we seem to see a change in cultural values that reflect a shift in selfhood. If we accept this suggestion, then the changing language in Euripides’ Cyclops is simply following wider changes in ancient Greek culture. This linguistic argument goes hand in hand with my conclusions just above. Euripides’ Cyclops not only embodies wider linguistic-cultural changes in his very description, but also reflects these wider cultural shifts in the areas of taste and preference, attention to one’s facial features, the importance granted to one’s psychological state, and perhaps even the role of the individual in early Athenian democracy.

CHAPTER THREE. THE HELLENISTIC AGE: THEOCRITUS THE ROMANTIC CYCLOPS OF GREEK BUCOLIC POETRY

In the Hellenistic Era, generally measured from the reign of Alexander the Great and through the rise of the Roman Empire (approx. 323–31 BCE), we see a clear and mostly novel shift in the Cyclops myth toward subjective-individualist selfhood. The previous Cyclopes of the Homeric and Classical periods were both described mostly in terms of brutish violence opposed to civilized Greekness, and thereby reflected a more structured, objectiveparticipant view of selfhood. In Euripides’ comedic play Cyclops, however, we did see small but notable innovations in the myth, as Euripides included several subjective-individualist elements around the Cyclops’ appearance (“ugly”) and individual state (“wretched”). Following the innovations of Euripidean realism,1 the Hellenistic Era continues and substantially expands these subjective-individualist innovations in the author Theocritus, whose two texts Idyll VI and Idyll XI for the first time depict the Cyclops as weepy and emotional.2 Theocritus makes several significant innovations in literary style, descriptive content, and aesthetic

Lloyd, “Realism in Euripides”, pp. 605–626. Useful framing of the issue of the origins of this innovation, and innovation more broadly in Hellenistic poetics, can be found in Mack, pp. 5167. 1 2

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emphasis that move toward subjective-individualist selfhood even more clearly and extensively.3 Theocritus was one of several sources in the late-Classical and early-Hellenistic periods that contain Cyclops myths which draw from but notably depart from the versions of Homer and Euripides, reflecting complicated intertextual relationships between Theocritus and Homer especially but also potentially Euripides. These departures may also reflect other myth traditions existing in parallel to the Odyssey’s version that might have even predated Homer himself. These different myths depict Polyphemus as an emotional and pained figure, pining romantically but fruitlessly for a sea-nymph named Galatea, and seem worlds apart from Homer’s and Euripides’ monstrous violence. This romantic re-telling of the Cyclops myth was apparently the subject of a pastoral burlesque by a certain Philoxenus of Cythera (4th-3rd century BCE) called The Cyclops that seems to have critiqued a local tyrant,4 and which survives only in fragments.5 This version of the myth also seems to appear in an idyll written by the bucolic poet Bion of Smyrna, around the year 100 BCE.6 This romantic version of the myth was influential, later re-appearing in the Roman Period in the authors Virgil and Ovid, discussed in the next chapter.

Opinions vary, but Theocritus seems to have been innovator in poetry both bucolic and pastoral; see the problem summarized in Krevans, “Is there Urban Pastoral?”, pp. 126-129. For discussion of Theocritus’ role around poetic genre, see Gutzwiller, A Guide to Hellenistic Literature, and further Gutzwiller, Theocritus’ Pastoral Analogies. 4 Hordern, “The Cyclops of Philoxenus”, pp. 445-455. Hordern reviews the data and arguments, and concludes that the role of Galatea in the narrative was likely small, which if correct suggests that Theocritus was notably innovative on expanding her role vis-à-vis Polyphemus, which in turn influenced later re-tellings such as Virgil and Ovid. See further Hordern, “Cyclopea”, pp. 285-292. 5 See Fragments 817 (from Scholiast on Theocritus 6), 818 (from Synesius, Letters), 819 (from Scholiast on Aristophanes, Plutus), 821 (from Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae), 822 (from Plutarch, Table Talk; also Scholiast on Theocritus 11), 823 (from the Suda), and 824 (from Zenobius, Proverbs). For recent discussion, see Fongoni, Philoxeni Cytherii. 6 Reed, Bion of Smyrna. 3

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Our main source, and really the only complete text, for the Hellenistic Era Cyclops comes from Theocritus, a bucolic poet of generally unknown biography who lived in the third century BCE.7 Theocritus is recognized as an innovator in, if not the inventor of, Greek bucolic poetry (also called “pastoral”),8 an artistic medium that romanticizes nature and rural life through both its subject-matter of the countryside and via its affected, poetic language.9 Theocritus’ Idylls (from the ancient Greek εἰδύλλιον, literally “scenes”, “vignettes”, or even “short poems”) are a series of thirty poems, of varying type and uncertain authenticity, which contain a host of meditations on rural, urban, and mythological themes, with a notably realistic aesthetic.10 Theocritus’ Idylls are often regarded as embodying the distinctive nature of the Hellenistic Age, with its focus on realistic aesthetics and individualistic emotions.11 Theocritus therefore not only provides us with a

For background on Theocritus and suggestions around possible biographical reconstructions, see esp. Walker, Theocritus; Payne, Theocritus; Foster, Theocritus of Syracuse. 8 Some date pastoral poetry as literary genre back to Hesiod’s Works and Days, which poetically describes an earlier age of humanity in a sort of idyllic symbiosis with nature; see discussion Halperin, Before Pastoral. 9 Segal, Poetry and Myth; see also Haber, Pastoral who critiques the notion of definite literary traditions by analyzing the ways that pastoral itself analyzed the contradictions inherent in the genre. For a sophisticated discussion of how Theocritus doesn’t represent a clean break from previous periods, but rather his poetry functions in a multi-layered way to dialogue with the poetic forms of the classical and archaic periods, see Hunter, Theocritus. 10 Theocritus seems to have been innovative in structuring individualism around the “description and opposition between rural and urban environments”: Fantuzzi and Hunter, Tradition and Innovation, p. 133; for a wider discussion of Theocritan innovation when it comes to ‘realism’, see Fantuzzi and Hunter’s whole chapter on “Theocritus and the Bucolic Genre”, pp. 133-167. Some useful discussion on Theocritus’ audience and his non-bucolic poems can be found in Griffiths, Theocritus at Court, pp. 1-8. 11 Hutchinson, Hellenistic Poetry, who is more careful than some in seeing some continuity with earlier periods, a position shared with Cameron, Callimachus and his Critics, pp. 27-28 et al. For a review critical about Hutchinson’s approach and conclusions, see White, “On Hellenistic 7

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generally new type of Cyclops story in form and content (likely following earlier innovators such as Philoxenus), but does so in a way that is thought to embody the distinctive nature of his historical period. Theocritus’ Idyll VI and Idyll XI are both bucolic poems that mention the Cyclops Polyphemus, or “Polyphamos” in Theocritus’ Doric dialect as opposed to Homer’s Ionic Greek.12 There is no certainty as to which Idyll was composed first, but both these Idylls are regarded as authentic texts of Theocritus, in contrast to some others which were pseudonymous, later compositions that came to form a bucolic corpus attached to Theocritus’ name.13 Both texts are written in dactylic hexameter, the same meter used by Homer in the Odyssey and Iliad as well as later authors such as Virgil and Ovid. And both texts, to different degrees but in similar ways, expand on the figure of the Cyclops in a manner that both embodies Hellenistic Age aesthetics and manifests a substantially more subjective-individualist selfhood than the earlier periods of Archaic and Classical Greece. Idyll VI

Idyll VI is the shorter of the two, around 500 words, and is addressed to a certain Aratus, a poet and friend of Theocritus.14 In Idyll VI, Theocritus recounts a singing contest between two shepherds named Daphnis and Damoetas, both lovers and rivals in song. The two sing of the Cyclops, who is re-cast in this bucolic tradition as a lovelorn romantic, pining for the sea-nymph Galatea in a beautiful natural setting. After a brief scene-setting introduction by Theocritus, Daphnis sings to Polyphemus about Galatea’s symbols of affection. Damoetas then answers in Polyphemus’ Poetry”, pp. 214-220. For a wider discussion of the role of poetry and physical poetic texts around this time, see further Hutchinson, Talking Books. 12 Gow, Theocritus. 13 For discussion of authorship and style, see Hunter, “The Sense of an Author”, pp. 89-108. Further discussion of Theocritan authorship can be found in Hunter, Theocritus, as well as widely in the commentaries. 14 A useful discussion of the issues can be found in Cusset, Cyclopodie: Édition critique.

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voice, acknowledging Galatea’s provocations and declaring that he is laying psychological snares by claiming to have a different woman and thereby lure Galatea’s love.15 Given the shortness of the poem, we can quote the relevant sections in their entirety here.16 First, Daphnis sings to Polyphemus: 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

Galatea is pelting your flocks, Polyphemus, with apples, and calling you names – goatherd and laggard in love; And you, poor fool, do not see, but sit sweetly piping. Look, there again! She’s hurling one at your sheepdog, And the bitch is looking out to sea and barking – You can see her silhouetted on the clear of the waves, as she runs along the edge of the gently sucking sands. Watch out that she doesn’t rush at the child’s knees, Emerging from the water, and claw her fairy flesh! She’s casting at you again, look – brittle as the down The torrid glare of summer leaves upon the thistle. You love, she flees; and when you leave loving, follows, Stalking her all upon a desperate move. Ah, Love! How often, Polyphemus, has he made unfair show fair.

Damoetas, in the voice of the Cyclops, answers back: 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

I saw, yes, by Pan, I saw when she pelted the flock. It did not escape me – no, by my one sweet eye: May I see with it to the last, and may Prophet Telamus carry His hostile mouthings home, to keep for his children! But I too can use the goad, so I take no notice, and tell her I’ve another woman now. Apollo! Hearing that, she’s all consumed with spite, And frenziedly spies, from the sea, on my cave and flocks. It was I set on the dog to bark at her, too.

Apparently the ancient literary trope of “dissimulatio amoris”: see Giangrande, Scripta Minora Alexandrina, p. 529. 16 For both idylls, English translation and line numbers adapted from Rist, The Poems of Theocritus; Greek and corresponding line numbers from Cholmeley, Idylls; n.b. that for both Idylls discussed here the Rist line numbers and the Cholmeley line numbers often diverge, which I’ve made an attempt to account for in my citations correlating the two languages. Other primary works consulted for English translation and commentary: Dover, Theocritus; Hopkinson, Hellenistic Anthology; Hunter, Theocritus; Verity and Hunter, Theocritus; Gow, Theocritus. 15

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THE CYCLOPS MYTH AND THE MAKING OF SELFHOOD 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41.

In the days of my courting, it used to lay its muzzle Against her groin and whine. When she’s seen enough Of this act of mine, perhaps she’ll send a messenger; But I’ll bar my door, until she vows in person to make my bed up fairly on this isle. Certainly I’m not ugly, as they call me; For lately I looked in the sea – there was a calm – and I thought my cheeks and my one eye showed up handsome, and my teeth shone back, whiter than Parian marble. But I spat three times into my bosom, As the witch Cotyttaris taught me, to turn away evil.

Theocritus’ style, of course, is quite different than what we found in Homer’s epic or Euripides’ comedy, a point to which I’ll return in this chapter’s conclusion. But of main importance here are the differences in content and descriptive language between Theocritus’ Cyclops and the Cyclops of Homer and Euripides, both of whose versions Theocritus likely knew extremely well.17 I argued that Euripides innovated from Homer in a subjective-individualist direction by describing both Polyphemus’ facial features and his post-blindness psychological state. Here in Theocritus’ Idyll VI, we also see attention given to the Cyclops’ facial features and his psychological state, but notably more of each. Indeed, while Euripides gave the Cyclops just a single word each for his appearance and state (“ugly” and “wretched”), Theocritus’ Cyclops receives extended meditation on his facial appearance and psychological state both. In the language of my wider argument, Theocritus’ Cyclops not only maintains the innovation we saw in Euripides around subjective-individualist selfhood, but Theocritus also adds to and widens it, making for an even more subjective-individualist Cyclops. In Idyll VI, Polyphemus reflects on his attempts to woo Galatea and states, “certainly I’m not ugly, as they call me; for lately For discussion of overlap in language, style, and themes between the Theocritean corpus and Homer, see Kurz, Le Corpus Theocriteum. The possible overlaps with Euripides are more speculative, discussed further below; I argue that Euripides provides an important conceptual shift toward subjective-individualism that Theocritus develops to a substantial degree. 17

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I looked in the sea – there was a calm – and I thought my cheeks and my one eye showed up handsome, and my teeth shone back, whiter than Parian marble” (36-9).18 Another translation puts it differently: “For truly I am not even ill-favoured, as they say; for of late I looked into the sea, and there was a calm, and fair, as my judgment goes, showed my beard and my one eye, and it reflected the gleam of my teeth whiter than Parian marble.”19 At issue here is the Greek of line 36, which forms the first line each of the above translations: καὶ γάρ θην οὐδ᾽ εἶδος ἔχω κακόν, ὥς µε λέγοντι.20 The question is whether we translate εἶδος ἔχω κακόν as having to do with one’s physical appearance, namely “ugly” (the first translation, by Rist), or whether we translate it more metaphorically, namely “ill-favoured” (the second translation, by Gow). While some metaphorical sense is surely possible, the lexical evidence overwhelmingly favors the physiological translation of εἶδος: “that which is seen, form, shape, physique, (especially of personal beauty, comeliness)”.21 The phrase εἶδος κακόν literally means “bad appearance” in the specific sense of a physical ugliness of form. Indeed, it forms a contrast to the word for “beauty” (καλὰ), which subsequently appears twice in line 38: καὶ καλὰ µὲν τὰ γένεια, καλὰ δέ µευ ἁ µίακώρα.22 This physiological nature of the Cyclops’ description is even clearer in Theocritus than what we saw with “ugly” (αἰσχρός) in Euripides. Moreover, Theocritus expands on this physiological description to have the Cyclops meditate on several specific facial characteristics that we did not see in Euripides: Polyphemus’ cheeks/beard, single eye, and even the white shine of his teeth. We have here, for the first time, a specific description of what the Cyclops’ face looked like. We also see the explicit attention Theocritus gives to the Cyclops’ single eye: µευ ἁ µία κώρα. Theocritus here describes the eye literally as “the single eye/pupil”, using

Trans. Rist. Trans. Gow. 20 Line 34 in the Cholmeley Greek edition. 21 Liddell & Scott, 9th ed. 22 Line 36 in the Cholmeley Greek edition. 18 19

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the adjective “one/single” (µία) to specify the number, and a relatively rare word form, κώρα, to mean the “pupil/eye”.23 As I noted in my discussion of Euripides, increased attention to one’s specific facial features is an indication of an increasingly subjective-individualist selfhood that privileges unique, individual features and physical identity. As we are starting to see, over time the Cyclops becomes increasingly and distinctively defined by his single-eyedness, with the loss of his other objective-participant characteristics. In both Theocritus’ description of the Cyclops’ facial features and the specificity around his one eye, we thus see the continuation and substantial developments of subjective-individualist trends begun in Euripides. Theocritus’ Idyll VI also introduces Polyphemus’ self-reflection, both physically and psychologically. Physically, whereas Euripides’ use of the word “ugly” (αἰσχρός) came external to the Cyclops from the chorus of satyrs, in Theocritus this physical description comes from Polyphemus himself: “Certainly I’m not ugly, as they call me; For lately I looked in the sea … and I thought my cheeks and my one eye showed up handsome, and my teeth shone back, whiter than Parian marble” (37-9). Here we have a key moment of subjective self-reflection: Polyphemus is able to recognize aspects of his appearance, how these aspects must come across to others, and ultimately provide his own, subjective judgment on his personal appearance that contrasts with the judgment of others. Furthermore, Polyphemus’ self-reflection on his appearance also has an abstract and psychological dimension. Whereas Euripides gave only the briefest description of Polyphemus’ psychological self-reflection when he called himself “wretched” (ἄθλιος), Theocritus’ description of the Cyclops’ physical features occurs in the context of Polyphemus’ reflections on his desirability and potential luck in romance. The physical self-reflection is notable in its own right, but it is also used by the Cyclops as an avenue for self-reflexivity. Polyphemus reflects on the implications of his

κώρα is a Doric form of κόρη or κούρη, usually meaning “girl/maiden”, but with a variety of other meanings possible, here “pupil”: see Liddell & Scott, 9th ed. esp. noting this very passage. 23

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specific features, such as his one eye, and what his features might mean for his individual, romantic desires for Galatea. As we will see even more clearly with Idyll XI below, such individual, romantic desires are clear markers of a subjective-individualism that distinguishes Theocritus’ Cyclops from the Homeric/Euripidean Cyclops. We can end our discussion of Idyll VI with this conclusion: Theocritus’ innovations around the Cyclops’ physical features and the Cyclops’ self-reflection both build on Euripides’ myth, but also depart from Euripides in both form and content further in the direction of a subjective-individualist selfhood. Idyll XI

Idyll XI is the better known and longer of the two idylls, at around 800 words. Like Idyll VI, it has an address, written to a certain Nicias, another poet friend of Theocritus as well as physician.24 It tells a more substantial story of Polyphemus, giving him an extensive poetic role whose form and content further develop the subjective-individualist elements that we saw in Idyll VI. Idyll XI recounts Polyphemus’ love-song to Galatea, lamenting their inability to be together given the division between land (Polyphemus as shepherd) and sea (Galatea as sea-nymph).25 We can quote at length several of the relevant sections for our discussion here, beginning with Theocritus’ introduction and moving onto Polyphemus’ own words:26 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

In the days of old, my countryman, the Cyclops Polyphemus, fared best with them, for one: he barely had a beard on lip or cheek, when he fell in love with the sea nymph Galatea. He wooed her, not with apples and roses and lovelocks, but with so fine a frenzy that all beside seemed pointless. Often enough his sheep had to find their own way home to the fold from the green pastures, while he sang of Galatea, sitting alone on the beach amid the sea wrack, languishing

Useful introductory remarks in Spofford, “Theocritus and Polyphemus”, pp. 22-35, and Schmiel, “Theocritus 11”, pp. 32-36. 25 See discussion in Prauscello, “A Homeric Echo”, pp. 90-96. 26 Trans. Rist, with consultation of Gow, etc.; see also Svarlien, “Cyclops (Theocritus 11)”, pp. 161-163. 24

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THE CYCLOPS MYTH AND THE MAKING OF SELFHOOD 15. 16. 17. 18.

from daybreak, with a deadly wound which might Cypris dealt him with her arrow, fixing it under his heart. Nevertheless, he found the cure, and seated high on a rock, looking out to sea, this is how he would sing.

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

‘O white Galatea, why do you spurn my love? – whiter than curds to look on, softer than a lambkin, more skittish than a calf, tarter than the swelling grape! How do you walk this way, so soon as sweet sleep laps me, and are gone as soon, whenever a sweet sleep leaves me, fleeing like a sheep when she spies the grey wolf coming! I fell in love with you, maiden, the first time you came, with my mother, 26. eager to cull the bluebells from our hillside: I was your guide. 27. Once seen, I could not forget you, nor to this day can I yet; 28. not that you care: God knows you do not, not a whit! 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47.

O, I know, my beauty, the reason why you shun me: the shaggy eyebrow that grins across my forehead, unbroken, ear to ear; the one eye beneath; and the nose squat over my lips. For all my looks, I’d have you know, I graze a thousand sheep, and draw the best milk for myself to drink. I am never without cheese, summer or fall: even in midwinter my cheese nets are laden. There’s not another Cyclops can play the flute as I can, and I can sing of you, my peach, always of me and you, till dead of night, quite often. I’m rearing eleven fawns, all with white collars, for you, and four bear cubs. Come to us, then; you’ll lack for nothing. Leave the green sea gulping against the dry shore. You’ll do better o’nights with me, in my cave; I’ve laurels there, and slender cypresses; black ivy growing, and the honey-fruited vine; and the water’s fresh that tree-dressed Etna sends me, a drink divine, distilled from pure white snow. Who’d choose instead to stay in the salt sea waves?

48. 49. 50. 51.

And if my looks repel you, seeming over-shaggy, I’ve heart of oak within, and under the ash a spark that’s never out. If you will fire me, gladly will I yield my life, or my one eye, the most precious thing I have.

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52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57.

O, why did not my mother bring me to birth with gills! Down I’d dive and kiss your hand – your lips if you’ll allow – and bring you white narcissus flowers, or soft poppies, with wide, red petals – not both at the same time, for one’s, you see, a winter, the other a summer flower. Even so, sweetheart, I’ve made a start: I’m going to learn to swim, 58. if some stranger comes this way, sailing in a ship, 59. and find out why it is you nymphs like living in the deep. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68.

O, won’t you come out, Galatea, and coming out forget, as I, as I sit here, forget to go back home! You’d learn to like to shepherd sheep with me, and milk, and set the curds for cheese, dropping in sharp rennet. Only my mother does me wrong, and it’s her I blame. She’s never said a single word on my behalf to you, for all she sees me growing thin, day after day. I shall tell her that my head and both my feet are throbbing: so I’ll be even, making her suffer, even as she makes me.

69. Cyclops, Cyclops! Where is this mad flight taking you? 70. You’d surely show more sense if you’d keep at your basket weaving, 71. and go father the olive shoots and give them to the lambs. 72. Milk the ewe that’s at hand: why chase the ram that’s fleeing? 73. Perhaps you’ll find another Galatea, and more fair. 74. Many a girlie calls me out to play with her by night, 75. and when I do their bidding, don’t they giggle gleefully! 76. I too am clearly somebody, and noticed – on dry land!

Theocritus here demonstrates clear awareness of the Homeric and probably also the Euripidean traditions of the Cyclops. Theocritus specifically mentions the Homeric name “Polyphemus”,27 as well as alludes to Homer’s Odyssey by mentioning a “stranger” arriving by “sailing in a ship” (58).28 We also see, I think, an allusion to Homer in Polyphemus’ concluding claim that “I am someone” Spoffard, “Theocritus and Polyphemus”, pp. 22-35. αἴκά τις σὺν ναῒ πλέων ξένος ὧδ᾽ ἀφίκηται; line 61 in Cholmeley. Again, English numbers reference the Rist while Greek follows the Cholmeley edition. 27 28

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(76, kēgōn tis phainomai ēmen) when on land, perhaps a pun on Odysseus’ famous claim that his name is “No One/Man” (outis / mē tis).29 Other more oblique references are also possible.30 Indeed, the humor and pathos of Theocritus’ version of the myth substantially derive from a direct acquaintance with Homer’s savage Cyclops, not only by Theocritus but by the reader as well, a complex relationship (source-text-author-reader) of knowing referentiality known as intertextuality.31 Though we don’t see similarly clear textual allusions to Euripides’ version, we see in Theocritus’ Cyclops an approachability and humanity that does seem to be conceptually closer to Euripides’ Cyclops, who was animated by sexual desire and possessing of something of a human personality. These overlaps notwithstanding, Theocritus innovates beyond the Cyclops of both Homer and Euripides in a clearly subjective-individualist selfhood direction, as Theocritus describes Polyphemus in a way that emphasizes his specific facial features, highlights his single eye, and paints an extensive portrait of the Cyclops as tragic, emotional, and internally reflective. Even more than Idyll VI, Idyll XI gives explicit attention to Polyphemus’ features. Theocritus begins his description by calling him “Polyphamos”, giving him the proper name absent from Idyll VI, and describing him as “he [who] barely had a beard on lip or cheek” (8-9).32 Theocritus later adds to the description of Polyphemus’ face, as Polyphemus describes himself thus: “O, I know, my beauty, the reason why you shun me: the shaggy eyebrow that

29

Both Theocritus’ and Homer’s stories use tis: Theocritus, κἠγώ τις

φαίνοµαι ἦµεν.

E.g., Polyphemus’ discussion of burning not only his soul but also his eye (50-53), perhaps a play off Euripides’ and especially Homer’s accounts where Odysseus used a fire-sharpened stake to stab and burn out the Cyclops’ eye. 31 A starting point in a huge field, one especially prevalent in Classical Studies given the complex use of Greek sources by later authors: Graham, Intertextuality, 2nd ed. Theocritus’ intertextual relationship to especially Homer is discussed further below. 30

32

ἄρτι γενειάσδων περὶ τὸ στόµα τὼς κροτάφως τε.

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grins across my forehead, unbroken, ear to ear; the one eye beneath; and the nose squat over my lips” (29-32).33 We thus have even more description than we saw in Idyll VI, as Theocritus adds several more specific facial features, such as the eyebrow, nose, and lips, providing a real picture of the Cyclops’ appearance. This description follows from Idyll VI where Polyphemus described his own physical features: unlike Euripides where “ugly” was an external label given by the satyrs, here in Idyll XI Polyphemus states for himself the specifics of his own physical features and therefore potential undesirability. In doing so, Theocritus provides another clear instance of self-reflection, where an emphasis on identity via one’s facial features and their implications points toward a subjective-individualist selfhood. Theocritus also twice describes Polyphemus’ single eye. As in the above quote, Polyphemus notes that below his giant eyebrow there is “the one eye beneath” (31).34 Later, when talking about his shagginess, he again mentions his single eye: “my one eye, the most precious thing I have” (51).35 These two explicit mentions of Polyphemus’ eye in Idyll XI compare to one in Idyll VI and also just one in Euripides. As I’ve noted, the Cyclops over time is increasingly described in terms of his single-eyedness, and in Theocritus we see an increased frequency as well as emphasis on this eye as a defining facial characteristic. Furthermore, Polyphemus’ self-description is not simply neutral, as he reflects on how his facial features will influence his desirability in romance. Polyphemus states that “I know, my beauty, the reason why you shun me”,36 namely his (presumably ugly) facial features (29). He is aware and afraid that his “looks repel” Galatea, who may find him unappealing for “seeming overshaggy” (48).37 He fears, in other words, that his specific features

ὥνεκά µοι λασία µὲν ὀφρῦς ἐπὶ παντὶ µετώπῳ (31) ἐξ ὠτὸς τέταται ποτὶ θὥτερον ὦς µία µακρά, (32) εἷς δ᾽ ὀφθαλµὸς ἔπεστι, πλατεῖα δὲ ῥὶς ἐπὶ χείλει. (33) 34 εἷς δ᾽ ὀφθαλµὸς ἔπεστι. 35 καὶ τὸν ἕν᾽ ὀφθαλµόν, τῶ µοι γλυκερώτερον οὐδέν. 36 γινώσκω χαρίεσσα κόρα, τίνος ὥνεκα φεύγεις. 37 αἰ δέ τοι αὐτὸς ἐγὼ δοκέω λασιώτερος ἦµεν. 33

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may diverge strongly from Galatea’s individual, subjective preferences. Polyphemus even attempts to answer Galatea’s likely subjective objection (“For all my looks”, 32) by telling Galatea that if she comes to him, “you’ll lack for nothing” (41), speaking to his desirability as mate.38 He adds to this even more of his positive qualities, such as his wealth in food and drink (32-6), speaking also to his potential desirability to those on land for a variety of such reasons (70-6). But this is the crux of Polyphemus’ problem: despite some objectively-desirable things – flocks, milk, etc. – he is not desirable because he is not subjectively beautiful to Galatea. He is attractive in an objective-participant framework of land and goods, but not in the framework of subjective-individualism, where one’s beauty and personality are most desirable. Theocritus’ Cyclops interestingly seems to be aware of this problem, and tries in vain to solve it by attempting to establish his artistic, subjective-individualistic bonafides. He notes that he can play the pipes like none of the other Cyclopes, and that he sings of Galatea at night (36-8). What is more, the Cyclops’ natural surroundings – which in Homer seemed to imply a threatening lack of settled civilization – become in Theocritus a positive décor, a lush type of pastoral beauty whose appeal lies not in its reflection of objective-participant civilization but rather in its reflection of artistic, subjective beauty. Polyphemus describes the beauty of different plants comprising his surroundings, including the fruit of vines (presumably a reference to wine-grapes) along with pure, cold water (43-6), offering to bring Galatea white snowdrops or scarlet flower petals (54-5). Like the Cyclops of Homer and Euripides, Theocritus’ Cyclops falls short of the text’s wider cultural ideals. Crucially, however, the cultural framework of judgment has changed, here framed in terms of artistry, beauty, and subjective desire. The Cyclops’ possessions from an earlier, objective-participant framework are apparently worth nothing in this new, aesthetic-focused reality. In what amounts to a fascinating meta-awareness, the Cyclops recognizes and attempts to participate in this new 38

ἀλλ᾽ ἀφίκευσο ποθ᾽ ἁµέ, καὶ ἑξεῖς οὐδὲν ἔλασσον.

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framework in his claims to musical skill and his home’s beauty. But at the end of the poem, in a moment of self-reflexivity, the Cyclops himself also notes that he knows he falls short according to this new framework on the basis of his ugly facial features and Galatea’s subjective preferences. Homer’s Cyclops knew he was flouting the objective-participant values of hospitality and public piety. So too does Theocritus’ Cyclops realize that he falls short according to the subjectiveindividualist values of aesthetic, physical beauty. Whereas Homer’s Cyclops didn’t care about falling short of those cultural values, however, Theocritus’ Cyclops is significantly more self-reflexive, both expressing his desire to manifest his culture’s wider values and bemoaning his failure to fully do so. Homer’s Cyclops has not a moment of regret; Theocritus’ Cyclops is wracked by self-reflective sadness and internal emotion. Euripides’ Cyclops existed at something of a middle ground, showing some awareness of and preference toward proper meat preparation and sexual desire for the satyr Silenus. Euripides’ provisional description of personal preference becomes, in Theocritus, a Cyclops with extensive internal desires, emotional depth, and personality, all reflecting a more subjective-individualist selfhood paradigm. Theocritus begins the poem stating that Polyphemus “fell in love with the sea nymph Galatea” (9), and that he was therefore pained, “languishing from daybreak, with a deadly wound which might Cypris dealt him with her arrow, fixing it under his heart” (14-6). In a reference to the flames of love, Theocritus’ Polyphemus tells Galatea, “If you will burn me, gladly will I yield” (50). In contrast to Euripides’ Cyclops with some subjective preferences layered over a foundation of base desires, Theocritus’ Cyclops is fully defined by love, emotions, psychological pain, and dramatic personal gestures. Theocritus’ Polyphemus also speaks of his personal relationship with his mother, a sea nymph named Thoösa.39 This inclusion of lineage partly upholds the objective-participant importance of lineage we saw in Homer and Euripides. At the same time, however, this lineage tie is here re-figured in terms of a personal, 39

Rist, Theocritus, 102.

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emotional, psychological relationship. The mother-son relationship is now figured in subjective-individualist terms instead of objective-participant values. We can usefully compare Homer’s Polyphemus, who calls on his father Poseidon not in any sort of personal relationship type of way, but rather demands that Poseidon do violence to Odysseus who has wronged him; Homer’s lineage relationship is purely concerned with the external obligations of lineage, with no attention given to the personal, emotional, psychological aspects of Poseidon and Polyphemus as father and son. Theocritus’ Polyphemus, meanwhile, laments how his mother has wronged him, speaking of her lack of kindness as well as his subsequent personal suffering, both physical and psychological (64-8). Polyphemus desires not concrete retribution toward his mother, but rather that she feels internal, emotional suffering. He claims that by showing his mother how much he is pained, he’ll be “making her suffer, even as she makes me” (68),40 using a verb for “suffer” (ἀνιάω)41 whose meaning doesn’t refer to physical pain but rather overwhelmingly refers to internal, emotional suffering.42 This relationship is more complex and emotionally charged than the Cyclops’ relationships in Euripides, which were defined solely by the enslavement and drunken lust for the satyrs, much less Homer where the Cyclops was entirely apart from the other Cyclopes. What is more, in Theocritus we find a formerly reviled monster that is now re-thought as something of a sympathetic character, a change that stems from his specifically subjective-individualist emotions such as his desires and pains. Theocritus’ subjective-individualist innovations have here changed the nature of Polyphemus himself, opening the door for later, sympathetic understandings of the Cyclops as humanlike, or even a hero.

40

ὡς ἀνιαθῇ, ἐπεὶ κἠγὼν ἀνιῶµαι.

Note that this verb often translated as “suffer” differs from χολόω in Euripides, discussed in Chapter 2. 42 ἀνιαθῇ (passive) & ἀνιῶµαι (active), Doric forms of ἀνιάω, “I grieve, distress, vex; (passive) am grieved, distressed, vexed, disheartened”, Liddell & Scott, 9th ed. 41

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By way of conclusion, we can summarize Theocritus’ language and content as contrasted with the Cyclops in Homer and Euripides, where the main issues were the objective-participant values of hospitality and public piety. For Theocritus, the main issues are subjective physical and facial beauty, desire, romance, emotional satisfaction and/or pain, and one’s internal, psychological state. Such subjective-individualist values here take priority above all else, including above one’s social (i.e., objective-participant) obligations, as we see with Theocritus’ Polyphemus ignoring his sheep-herding duties in favor of emotionally-charged pining for Galatea (12-13). Theocritus’ Cyclops, in sum, contains major changes in its description and values relative to the Cyclops of Homer and (slightly less so) Euripides, reflecting a marked shift toward subjective-individualist selfhood, even as objective-participant elements remain such as the inclusion of Polyphemus’ lineage. Theocritus’ Cyclops and the Hellenistic Age

The textual and thematic differences between Theocritus, Euripides, and Homer should now be quite clear. As with Homer (e.g., honor/shame) and Euripides (e.g., linguistics; democracy), I think we can usefully emplace novel elements of Theocritus’ Cyclops myth in the wider historical-cultural context, and by doing so suggest some explanations for Theocritus’ innovations. I noted at the beginning of this chapter a few broader cultural changes occurring in and around the Hellenistic Age, particularly as they apply to selfhood becoming more subjective-individualist. Theocritus’ Cyclops seems to clearly reflect and manifest these wider cultural changes, and I’ll here highlight a few points of significant interface between Theocritus’ Cyclops and Hellenistic Age selfhood. Theocritus’ Polyphemus is notably the first Cyclops with extensive, internal dialogue, something that had also been largely absent in the literary record prior to the Hellenistic Age. This point has been recognized elsewhere and interpreted as significant in the history of philosophical thought: it demonstrates a mental self-reflexivity around the interrogation and self-determination of one’s

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principles, values, and desires.43 Internal dialogue, in this view, reflects and perhaps even precipitates a shift in ancient philosophy in the direction of what I (via Gill) have called a subjective-individualized selfhood, whereby one reflects about personal and social desires and then self-reflects and assesses the desirability of different options based on one’s individualistic, internal framework.44 This novelty of internal dialogue, in other words, goes hand in hand with major changes occurring in contemporary philosophical understandings and approaches, particularly around selfhood. As we will see, this type of self-reflexive philosophy becomes even more pronounced in the Roman Period, with the same internal and selfreflective interrogation of desires, values, and subjectivity. Meanwhile, this notion of Polyphemus’ internal dialogue, or “audible thought” as Walsh nicely puts it, reflects not only a philosophical shift around selfhood but also a shift in literary style around narrative form. Idyll VI, for instance, shifts from Damoetas and Daphnis as narrators to Polyphemus speaking in the first person. Idyll VI particularly embodies this narrative shift from third to first person, which seems to indicate a corresponding shift in selfhood even relative to the rest of Theocritus’ poems: “[even as the] impersonal, unobtrusive third-person narration of the primary narrator is reminiscent of that of the Homeric narrator, [this idyll] stands in contrast to the more involved songs of Daphnis and Damoeatas.”45 What Morrison notes in this quote is that this shift in perspective is in effect a movement away from impersonal, external narrative and its attendant objective-participant values, and a movement toward a more personally involved, perspectival telling with subjective-individualist values. The same can be said for Idyll XI with its similar shift in narrative locus, from Theocritus’ initial third-person narrative to Polyphemus again speaking and reflecting in the first person. Walsh, “Surprised by Self”, pp. 1-21; Idem, “Seeing and Feeling”, pp. 1-19. See also discussion in Bartsch, The Mirror of the Self, p. 234 and n. 10, who argues that, from the standpoint of ancient philosophy that was becoming ever more subjective-individualized (my/Gill’s phrase, not hers), the Theocritan Polyphemus’ “ability to eavesdrop on his own speech is the first step toward a therapeutic freedom from desire”. 45 Morrison, The Narrator, p. 263. 43 44

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The philosophical shift toward self-reflexive selfhood noted above is perhaps inextricably linked to this change in narrative perspective, with each enabling and hastening the other. A change in philosophical understanding can open up new narrative possibilities such as internal dialogue or audible thought; likewise, artistic experimentation around narrative perspective allows for the interrogation of what this new literary form means for potential understandings of the self. Changes in both philosophy and literary style, in other words, were co-occurring in the Hellenistic Age in ways that mutually stimulated each other’s shifts toward subjective-individualistic selfhood. The content of both Idyll VI and Idyll XI is also important. I noted that Theocritus’ Cyclops is strongly defined by his interest in emotional, romantic love – both the desire extended toward Galatea and his painful concern with the lack of desire returned.46 This love-centric Cyclops embodied a clear shift in the Cyclops’ character: Homer included no such concern with the Cyclops’ desires, and for Euripides the only desire was drunken, sexual desire for the satyr Silenus. Theocritus’ Cyclops not only manifests desire, but an intensely emotional, romantic one, too. The notion of love as an emotional, interior, romantic feeling is a distinctly modern phenomenon. Anthony Giddens has described, for example, how love previous to the nineteenth century was largely concerned with economic and/or passionate interests, which are objective-participant values. By contrast, individual, emotional romance, which is subjective-individualist, is distinctive to the modern west.47 Importantly, Giddens links this development in understandings of love to other developments that also reflect and even precipitate a shift away from objective-participant selfhood.48 With influences of Weber and Habermas, Giddens (among others) understands modernity especially in terms of the strong separation between different life spheres, such as the economic, political, sexual, and religious.49 As I discussed in my Useful discussion in Kelly, “The Cyclops in Love”. Giddens, Transformation of Intimacy, pp. 26-45. 48 Giddens, Consequences of Modernity. 49 Defining and analyzing modern selfhood via the Cyclops is the subject of my final chapter, with some starting points mentioned here: Habermas, 46 47

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chapter on Homer, in the ancient Mediterranean these spheres were widely overlapping, and understood as part of a public, objective-participant framework. In modernity, by contrast, one’s choice about, say, a romantic partner is typically thought to occur outside the purview of an objective-participant public framework; hence the paradigmatic “marry for love” of modernity.50 Theocritus’ Cyclops, I think, is one of the first, major steps toward the notion of a distinctly modern love, which is to say a love fully defined by the preferences of a subjective-individualist selfhood. Theocritus’ Idylls are, however, only the first step, as their view of love is still constrained and somewhat underdeveloped with respect to emotional expression and fulfillment – still, in other words, partially reflective of an objective-participant selfhood.51 When the poetic pastoral makes its way to Europe centuries later, this Hellenistic Age type of love, epitomized in Theocritus’ Idylls and mediated by the Roman poet Virgil’s Eclogues, becomes quite further developed.52 Such changes occur, I would add, even despite later European attempts to closely imitate ancient Greek and Roman ideas and forms.

“Modernity versus Postmodernity”, pp. 3-14; for a summary of Marx’s notion of defined values spheres, along with a critique, see Oakes, “Max Weber on Value Rationality and Values Spheres”, pp. 27-45; for a starting point on defining modernity in a manner that points toward subjectiveindividualist selfhood see Berger, “Western Individuality: Liberation and Loneliness”, and Rawls, Lectures on History. 50 See further, detailed discussion in my final chapter on “Modernity”. 51 Rosenmeyer, The Greek Cabinet, pp. 77-85, where he argues that Theocritan pastoral doesn’t allow love to come to fulfillment despite its prominent role: “The naturalness of love is tempered by its lack of consummation; the herdsman either refuses love, or he loves without success”, 85. Rosenmeyer contrasts this Theocritan portrayal to the later European tradition of pastoral, where love is given a fuller expression, e.g. varying in figures such as Rousseau, Marvell, et al. 52 For Theocritus and Virgil, see Lawall, Theocritus’ Coan Pastorals and Fantazzi, “Virgilian Pastoral and Roman Love Poetry”, pp. 171-191. For European pastoral, a few useful overview texts in addition to Rosenmeyer’s assessment noted just above: Buck, The Renaissance Pastoral Romance; Starke, The Heroines of English Pastoral Romance; Bernard, “Recent Studies in Renaissance Pastoral”, pp. 356-384.

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The love of Theocritus’ Cyclops, meanwhile, is also significant in a broader way, namely for the fact that it embodies the description of a character mainly in terms of their emotions. Theocritus’ foregrounding of emotion as fundamental to character description is a major innovation from the Homeric and Euripidean accounts, where Polyphemus had little by way of personality, emotion, or interiority. This point in itself reflects Theocritus’ wider aesthetic and literary innovations that emphasize emotions and emotional interiority, what we might call subjectivity, to a greater degree than what we see in previous periods. Theocritus’ literary innovations also call to mind the role of genre in explaining this version of the Cyclops myth, much as I suggested for Euripides’ Cyclops and the genre of the satyr play. Here, though, the use of genre to explain changes in the myth is much less certain: if Theocritus’ bucolic poetry was largely his own innovation, then the causality between genre and this episode in the myth is unclear. It is just as possible to conclude that this new version of the myth partly determined the genre conventions, and not the other way around. In either case, this new and quite different Cyclops is closely bound to this genre that privileges emotional expression, and future re-tellings of the myth that retain this emotionality but in different genre will thus become all the more notable. To briefly look ahead, when the emotional, more subjective-individualist version of the Cyclops persists in genres that don’t share the same emotional conventions as bucolic poetry, we will be forced to look to wider cultural forces and understandings – and not genre – as explanations for that version of the myth. In the meantime, these innovations around emotional interiority made Theocritus’ Cyclops into something of a sentimental icon of the Hellenistic Age.53 Indeed, Theocritus’ Cyclops well reflects a Hellenistic Age selfhood that is more emotional and interior, which allowed for the consideration of different types of human subjects for their interior character such as children and

53

Fantuzzi and Hunter, Tradition and Innovation, esp. ch. 6.

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women.54 This period’s more emotional and interior selfhood embodied what some have called a new and distinct “Hellenistic aesthetic.”55 This realistic, subjective, and individualized aesthetic manifested in a host of spheres: sculpture,56 music,57 poetry,58 and the interplay between art and the individual viewer.59 Indeed, the art historical record likewise becomes more individualistic, subjective, and emotive in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods,60 though importantly not embodying a complete break from previous eras.61 Theocritus’ emotional, subjective-individualized Cyclops, in other words, is part and parcel of this wider era’s similar aesthetic turn to the emotional, the subjective, the interior, and the individual. We can add one last broader point, around the notions of self-reflection and reflexivity.62 We see self-reflection embodied The art historical record is telling, with an increasingly strong focus on moving beyond the conventions of the Classical Era: Pollitt, Art in the Hellenistic Age; see framing discussion in Hemingway and Hemingway, “Art of the Hellenistic Age”; Ridgway, “Ancient Greek Women and Art”, pp. 399-409. 55 Fowler, The Hellenistic Aesthetic; see more recently the essays in Destrée and Murray, Companion to Ancient Aesthetics. 56 Examples of Hellenistic sculpture thought to reflect a significant focus on individual emotion are many. A few of the more well-known: Dying Gaul, Laocoön and His Sons, Old Drunkard, Seated Boxer, and the Barberini Faun. See discussion in Burn, Hellenistic Art, and Pollitt, Art in the Hellenistic Age. 57 Gibson, Aristoxenus of Tarentum. 58 Gutzwiller, “Literary Criticism”, pp. 337-365. 59 Zanker, Modes of Viewing; Prioux, Regards alexandrins. 60 See, e.g., Gutzwiller, Guide to Hellenistic Literature, esp. the section on “Aesthetics and Style”, where Gutzwiller focuses on poetry and certain common aesthetic principles of this time, which (despite Gutzwiller’s critics) is at least suggestive of a wider, cultural coherence. 61 The notion of a complete rupture in terms of aesthetics and self-understanding around and/or due to the conquests of Alexander has been recently, and I think rightly, challenged. See, e.g., Erskine and LlewellynJones, Creating a Hellenistic World. 62 Put simply, reflection can be a physical mirroring or a psychological consideration of the self, which is mirroring in another way; reflexivity, meanwhile, is involves self-consciousness about the nature of mirroring and reflection itself. A self-reflection might be thinking about what you 54

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in Polyphemus – both literal and psychological – as well as in the wider self-reflexivity of Hellenistic Age aesthetics, embodied in Theocritus himself. Both types of self-reflection and reflexivity, Polyphemus’ and Theocritus’, well mesh with my conclusions above regarding Hellenistic Age innovations in both philosophical views of the self and different notions of the self explored through shifting styles of narrative perspective. In Idyll VI, Polyphemus gazes at his own reflection in the ocean. This is a rare and therefore significant moment in ancient Greek literature when physical self-reflection is explicitly mentioned.63 Polyphemus’ literal self-reflection gives rise, in turn, to his more abstract self-reflections on his desirability in romance. This tie between the physical mirror of self-reflection and the abstract, internalizing, and self-reflective selfhood that accompanies it, is new to the Hellenistic and Roman Periods. Shadi Bartsch, whom I’ll discuss at length in the next chapter, has shown how this pairing of physical reflection (what she calls the Roman gaze) with internal reflection finds its roots in the Hellenic Age and its full manifestation in the Roman Period.64 Theocritus’ Cyclops, did and why you might have done it; self-reflexivity occurs at a higher cognitive order, a meta-consideration about the nature of your self-reflection itself. 63 Bartsch, The Mirror of the Self, discussed further in the next chapter; Grethlein, “Sight and Reflexivity”, pp. 85-106; see also Grethlein, “Vision and Reflexivity”, pp. 197-212. Grethlein importantly argues for sight’s reflexivity pre-dating the Imperial and Hellenistic Periods, where it is typically emplaced, back into the Homeric period due to prominent visual depictions of the eye, as well as the self-reflexivity found in epic songs such as the Odyssey as they themselves contain episodes of song. It must be noted, however, that Grethlein is arguing not for a self-reflexivity of interior, philosophical selfhood, as I do in this study, but rather of self-reflexivity regarding “the sympotic negotiation of identities”, which are tied to “other personae”, instances of ‘reflection and mimesis’ that well encapsulate what Gill would call an objective-participant selfhood. Indeed, the Symposium was a prime venue for the objective-participant construction of selfhood, existing as a communal, highly structured event where one negotiated proper ethics based on public behavior and social perception. 64 Bartsch, Mirror of the Self, p. 22, citing Diogenes Laertius, Plutarch, Seneca, Quintus Sextius; see further Bartsch, nn. 17-20, and discussion next chapter.

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gazing at his reflection in the ocean and bemoaning his romantic luck, is an important precursor to Roman Period changes in selfhood. We can also think in more meta terms about the self-reflexivity of Theocritus as author, along with other artists of the Hellenistic Age. Like Polyphemus, Theocritus is both physically and abstractly reflective and reflexive. Theocritus includes several clear allusions to Homer, physically marking his text as pointing to prior Cyclops myths.65 Theocritus also abstracts, not satisfied to merely point toward the prior myths but also modifying them in a self-reflexive way that indicates a sophisticated and multilayered negotiation with the Classical and Archaic Periods.66 This is not just limited to Homer and the mythical tradition, as Theocritus’ views of love likewise occur in the context of his own selfreflections and aesthetic reflexivity around love as expressed in earlier literary eras and genres.67 As Hunter well phrases it, this complex, self-reflexive negotiation with the past, what we might call a metapoetics, “is not only a central structuring mode of such poems, but also to some extent their very purpose.”68 Speaking more widely still, it seems that the Hellenistic Age and then Roman Period comprise when and where aesthetics itself became self-reflexive.69 We see the art during these periods shift from the intertwined and public, objective-participant domains of politics and religion to the subjective, individualized domain of aesthetics itself. Art had by this time become its own “autonomous province of meaning”, which is to say self-reflexive.70 This artistic reflexivity, in turn, seemingly parallels developments in self-reflexive selfhood more broadly, with the Hellenistic and Roman Periods – as we see embodied in Theocritus – being selfreflective and self-reflexive about their cultural, historical, and

Arnott, “The Preoccupations of Theocritus”. Discussed in earlier notes on Theocritus at the beginning of this chapter: see esp. Hunter, Theocritus and the Archaeology of Greek Poetry. 67 See, e.g., the reading of Idyll 22 in Hunter, Theocritus. 68 Hunter, Theocritus, pp. 51-52. 69 Tanner, Invention of Art History. 70 Ibid., p. 233. 65 66

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social relationship to the previous eras.71 Theocritus’ Cyclops was an exemplary literary manifestation of these wider cultural trends moving in the direction of self-reflection, reflexivity, and subjective-individualized selfhood. While certainly there were precursors – such as the author Philoxenus mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, part of wider Alexandrian trends toward innovation, parody, and sensationalism – we see in Theocritus’ account the full embodiment and encapsulation of this period’s broader shifts. Finally, we must mention the interaction between the individual and an essential site of public interaction in the Hellenistic Age, namely the polis. A traditional understanding of Greek history saw the polis at its peak in Classical Athens, after which a narrative of decline sees the Hellenistic polis a weakened institution in terms of both its force and the extent of individual engagement with polis civic life.72 This view presents a general framework of increasing subjective-individualist selfhood over time: with the decline of the extremely public life of the polis, a paradigmatic objective-participant institution, we see in its stead the rise of a greater individuality. In this understanding, changes in political structures, attributed to a host of factors ranging from internal power struggles to warfare, might explain the rise in subjective-individualist selfhood we see in the areas discussed above such as self-reflexivity and romantic, emotional interiority. This older view has been widely challenged, however. The reality seems to have been more nuanced, with a decline of traditional polis structures in some areas, but persistence and durability in others.73 An attention to specific case studies reveals complexity, with variable attitudes that uphold certain forms of public, civic identity such as euergetism while seeing a potential decline in individual engagement due to the loss of city-state

Tanner, Invention of Art History, ch. 5. A classic in the field, presenting a strongly argued Marxist perspective, is de Ste. Croix, Class Struggle. 73 See the recent, helpful review of several books on Hellenistic democracy in van der Vliet, “The Durability and Decline”, pp. 771-786. 71 72

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autonomy.74 At risk of over-simplifying a large and active debate, the picture is mixed in the Hellenistic Age: while public-facing elements of civic life that strongly underpin objective-participant selfhood do not seem to be what they had been during the Classical Period, still many of these elements remain. The argument from civic institutions for selfhood in this period follows directly from this mix of evidence, with objective-participant selfhood persisting, but not to the degree that it once had; in parallel we see that Theocritus’ Cyclops likewise moves notably toward subjective-individualism, but doesn’t entirely leave objective-participant selfhood behind. Hellenistic Age selfhood has become more, but still not fully, subjective-individualist.

CONCLUSION

Theocritus’ Idylls VI and XI both point toward a subjective-individualized selfhood. They do so partly by virtue of their bucolic, poetic medium that sentimentalizes Polyphemus, and partly in terms of the specific characteristics attached to the Cyclops. Theocritus’ innovations in narrative perspective represent a shift in selfhood, which was also paired with the beginnings of a philosophical shift in the Hellenistic Age around selfhood, two currents that I suggested can mutually implicate. Theocritus’ Cyclops also receives extensive description around his facial features and especially his eye, and Polyphemus both gazes at his own reflection and self-reflects about the implications of his face for his ill-fortune in love. Furthermore, he shows novel interest in romantic love, which is linked with his substantially developed interioremotional content. All of these characteristics paint Theocritus’ Cyclops as much more subjective-individualist than the Cyclops myths that came before. Theocritus’ Cyclops departs particularly from the Homeric version, casting aside Homer’s focus on brutishness, violence, lack of hospitality and piety, lawlessness, solitude, and so forth, all

A few representative examples of such recent scholarship: Ager, “Civic Identity in the Hellenistic World”, pp. 5-21; Harland, “The Declining Polis?”, pp. 21-50; Burstein, “Greek Identity in the Hellenistic Period”, pp. 59-78; Goldhill, “What is Local Identity?”. 74

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markers of objective-participant selfhood. Theocritus’ Polyphemus represents a similar departure from the Euripidean version which was mostly objective-participant. Importantly, however, we see Theocritus’ version accentuate the novel subjective-individualist elements added in Euripides, such as a consideration of Polyphemus’ specific facial features and his internal, emotional state. Both Theocritus’ Cyclops and Theocritus himself embody the wider trends of the Hellenistic Age, with burgeoning interests in emotion, interiority, self-reflection, and reflexivity in the text, author, and culture more broadly, which also seems to track the mixed evidence from the civic record around the role of the polis, an objective-participant institution. These particular characteristics are all manifestations of a subjective-individualist selfhood, signaling a notable shift away from the objective-participant selfhood of the Classical and especially Archaic Periods. Theocritus’ Cyclops still shows areas where selfhood is not fully modern and entirely subjective-individualist, such as the only initial expression of a modern type of romantic love or the maintenance of a lineage through the mention of his nymph mother. But overall, this Cyclops myth contains and reflects important changes in wider cultural understandings, particularly the Hellenistic Age’s notable shift in the direction of subjective-individualist selfhood. Finally, it merits mention that Theocritus provides a somewhat radical shift toward a more subjective-individualist Cyclops and selfhood, a shift that will to some extent be walked back and moderated during the period of the Roman Empire, discussed in the next chapter. As noted in my Introduction, changes in selfhood and society are not continuous, teleological, or inevitable. Within my general framework of a change from ancient objectiveparticipant selfhood to modern subjective-individualist selfhood, there will be substantial variance, contestation, and outliers. Theocritus’ strong shift toward a more emotional, subjective-individualist Cyclops – following Euripides’ merely incremental shift and in turn followed by Virgil and Ovid’s modulation between the two selfhood types – is evidence of this very fact, that changes in selfhood are not linear, teleological, or predetermined, and that the broader trajectory I argue for in this book is not rigid but rather

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contains a host of nuance, complexity, and variation along the way.

CHAPTER FOUR. THE ROMAN EMPIRE: VIRGIL AND OVID MULTIPLE CYCLOPS AND M IXED SELFHOOD

During the period of the Roman Empire,1 beginning in roughly 31 BCE and lasting through the end of the fifth century CE,2 the Cyclops myth became even more popular. This rise in popularity occurred to such a degree that “during the Roman Empire people even dreamt of the Cyclops or his cave”,3 as recounted in the dream manuals of the divination expert Artemidorus (second century CE).4 Given the innovations of Theocritus in the Hellenistic Era compared to the still well-known works of Homer and Euripides, however, Romans approaching the Cyclops myth were presented with an interpretive choice. Following the Homeric/Archaic and Euripidean/Classical Cyclops, one could think of the Cyclops mostly as a savage brute. Following the Theocritean/Hellenistic Cyclops, however, one could instead see the Cyclops mostly as a sad lover. In the Roman Period, specifically in the two authors Virgil and Ovid, we see an overall shift toward Theocritus’ sentimental A useful set of essays on the relationship between Greek literature and the Roman Empire can be found in Nagy, Greek Literature. This period is variously called the Roman Empire, the Roman Period, Imperial Rome, and so forth; I use them interchangeably. 2 The last western Roman emperor is typically considered to be Romulus Augustus (d. 476) or Julius Nepos (d. 480). The eastern Roman empire persisted, and came to be known as the Byzantine Empire. 3 Bremmer, “Odysseus versus the Cyclops”, p. 155. 4 Artemidorus, Oneirocritica 1.5.26, cited in Bremmer. 1

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version of the Cyclops, even as the violent and more impersonal Cyclops of Homer and Euripides remained influential.5 Alongside the changing myth, the Roman Period also witnesses cultural shifts around the notion of the self,6 namely a diminished sense of objective-participant selfhood and a heightened sense of subjective-individualist selfhood. We see subjective-individualism particularly reflected in the Roman Period’s greater focus on emotional interiority, its increasing amount of what we might term ‘self-talk’,7 and its focus on one’s subjective individuality in the spheres of politics,8 religion,9 and philosophy.10 Indeed, an author

Glenn, “Virgil’s Polyphemus”, pp. 47-59. Glenn here discusses the competing views that Virgil either reached directly back to Homer to describe his own Cyclops, or was predominantly influenced by the comic and pastoral associations of writers like Theocritus from the Hellenistic Age. While Glenn is more inclined to the former, the work of Hutchinson (discussed below) clearly demonstrates direct linguistic borrowing between Theocritus and Virgil’s Eclogues. This suggests that Virgil consciously drew from both sources (Homeric and Theocritean), and thus presented a Cyclops split between an objective-participant and subjective-individualist selfhood; my contention in this chapter is exactly this. 6 Rüpke and Woolf, Religious Dimensions. This work specifically picks up Foucault’s claims in The Care of the Self (1984) that there emerged in the Roman Empire, particularly later, a new sense of individualized, inwardturning selfhood. The conclusions in Rüpke and Woolf’s work are a bit uneven, discussed further throughout the present study. It is worth noting too Christopher Gill’s persuasive arguments against Foucault’s readings of the classical material, e.g. in Structured Self. 7 E.g., Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. I thank Zsuzsanna Várhelyi of Boston University for this phrase. 8 Farenga, Citizen and Self, which argues that ancient politics and selfhood are inextricably linked. Farenga’s descriptions of individual justice in ancient Greece fit squarely within Gill’s framework of objective-participant selfhood, concerning things like communal “scripts” and “communitarian” self-understandings. The implication of Farenga’s argument, for my purposes here, is that a changed political landscape – namely the loss of the polis as the constitutive political organ in Greece or even the Republican Senate in Rome, replaced by a much more top-down structure of Senators and the Emperor – will also result in changed views of the self. 9 Rüpke, Religious Individualization. 10 Some parallels to this shift were occurring in the philosophical realm on the subject of selfhood: Sorabji, “What is New on the Self in Stoicism after 5

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such as Ovid (discussed below) demonstrates the extent to which artistic spheres – encompassing both the literary and the visual arts – parallel, influence, and are influenced by changing notions of politics and ethics.11 The Cyclops of Virgil and Ovid, therefore, draws from two main influences. First, this Cyclops owes its nature in part to the Roman idolization of the previous Alexandrians such as Theocritus. While Homer and Euripides, and their Cyclops, were still widely known, the poetic influence of authors like Theocritus loomed large, and therefore the Roman Cyclops was considerably shaped by these earlier, foreign eras. At the same time, significant cultural, philosophical, and political currents during this period were informing a new notion of self that introduced new subjective-individualist dimensions while still retaining important objective-participant components. Virgil’s Eclogues

We begin with Virgil, a poet writing in Latin in the first century BCE and one of the most esteemed authors of the Roman Period. Virgil is best known for his epic poem the Aeneid, a work written in reception of and conversation with Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey (and Euripides and Theocritus),12 which ties the fall of Troy to the founding of Rome through the story of the Trojan prince Aeneas. 100 BC?”, pp. 141-162; Idem, “Graeco-Roman Varieties of Self”, pp. 1334; Trapp, Philosophy in the Roman Empire; Reydams-Schils, Roman Stoics. 11 Nigel Nicholson, the Walter Mintz Professor of Classics at Reed College, personal correspondence: “aesthetics is ethics and politics, not some separate realm, and thus that such vituperation of Ovid’s art is a response to a new morality and politics”. 12 Reception theory on Homer and Virgil is understandably vast: an early, influential treatment of Virgil’s use of Homer was Heinze, Virgil’s Epic Technique (1903), n.b. the historical summary of how reception theory changed the course of Virgilian studies in the “Preface to the Present Edition” (1993). Later treatments of Virgil’s reception of Homer followed the reclamation of Heinze and others, e.g. Anderson, “On Vergil’s Use of the Odyssey”, pp. 1-8. Such a position and orientation of reading Virgil intertextually is now de rigeur, e.g. Farrell, “The Virgilian Intertext”, pp. 222-238; the editor Martindale himself has written extensively on reception theory and Virgil.

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The Aeneid, written during the reign of the first Roman emperor Augustus (27 BCE – 14 CE), is considered both a work of artistic genius and a manifestly political text,13 which attempted to appropriate elements of Greek culture via the link to Homer, to establish Rome as the proper heir to Greek civilization via the link to Troy, and to depict imperial Rome as a glorious and divinely ordained empire.14 Indeed, Virgil’s patronization by the upper reaches of Roman society suggests substantial influence of the politics and values of the cultured elite on his writings. Virgil also wrote two other works previous to the Aeneid which are often paired together, the Eclogues and the Georgics, both notable and influential in their own right for their stylistic artistry and innovative content. The Georgics (literally “agricultural things” in Latin) was a set of four books that explored a variety of themes in the context of agricultural discussion.15 The Eclogues (literally “drafts” or “selections” in Latin, also called the Bucolics) was Virgil’s first official composition, comprised of a series of ten poems that essentially created and subsequently epitomized the Roman form of bucolic pastoral.16 Unlike Theocritus’ Idylls which were largely apolitical, Virgil’s Eclogues included strong themes from current Roman politics. Virgil innovatively paired these political strands with bucolic pastoral themes and language, drawing an even stronger connection between his texts and wider cultural values. Eclogue II consciously appropriates Theocritus’ version of the Cyclops myth,17 a fact that would have been obvious to educated readers, interpreting the Cyclops as a sad lover whom Virgil evokes allusively through a normal human named Corydon. Corydon, a rough shepherd, pines for a certain boy Alexis just as Polyphemus did for Galatea. Virgil’s description of Corydon closely tracks that of Theocritus’ Idyll XI, with clear verbal parallels to The political aims of the Aeneid are highly contested in scholarship; for recent background on these debates, see the introduction in Giusti, Carthage in Virgil’s Aeneid. 14 Adler, Vergil’s Empire; for a broader discussion see Quint, Epic and Empire. 15 An older but useful starting point: Wilkinson, The Georgics of Virgil. 16 An older but useful starting point: Coleman, Vergil: Eclogues. 17 Quesnay, “From Polyphemus to Corydon”, pp. 35-70. 13

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the Cyclops Polyphemus in lines 17-27 despite the difference between Theocritus’ Greek and Virgil’s Latin. We can quote relevant sections of Eclogue II here:18 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 56 57 58 59 68 69

Corydon fell in love with a beautiful boy Whose name was Alexis, the darling of his master. So every day of the week he took himself To the sense and gloomy shade of a beech-tree grove, And flung out his hopeless ardor in artless verses: “O cruel Alexis, why are you deaf to my songs? Have you no pity at all? You will drive me at least to death. … O fair boy, don’t put too much trust in your complexion: Remember that the privet blossoms fall, and dark hyacinths are culled. Perhaps you do not know, Alexis, who it is you scorn, how many cows I have, how abundant I am in white milk: A thousand lambs, my lambs, pasture upon these Sicilian hills; new milk never fails me, in summer or winter. I sing, when calling home the herds, like Amphion of Dirce on Attic Aracynthus. I am not bad-looking: the other day upon the shore I looked at myself, when the wind was still and the sea at peace; I should not fear Daphnis, with you for the judge, if the mirror never lies. … Corydon, you’re a yokel. Alexis doesn’t care for such gifts, Nor would Iollas concede if you compete with gifts. Alas, alas, what have unhappy I been hoping for? The south wind I have allowed upon my flowers, and boars to my crystal springs. … And I still burn with love; love knows no limits. Ah, Corydon, what madness has hold of you?

Translation adapted from Virgil and Ferry, “Eclogue II”, pp. 32-34; also consulted was Fairclough, Virgil. Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid, pp. 63-64. For the Latin, an older but useful starting point is Greenough, Vergil. Bucolics, Aeneid, and Georgics of Vergil. 18

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Virgil’s version maintains several of Theocritus’ innovations: the emotionality of the singer, particularly around romantic love; the focus on the subjective attraction of his face to his lover; the undesirability of objective-participant external outputs; and the connection between physical reflection and more abstract psychological reflection around romantic desirability. Virgil also adds a couple novel pieces. First, unlike Theocritus’ Cyclops who acknowledged subjective physical beauty but recognized that his face fell short on that account, Virgil’s “Cyclops” believes that his face is in fact physically beautiful (“not bad looking”, nec informis), using a word (informis) that expressly refers to one’s physical form and features.19 This individual’s unique face does seem to match the subjective preferences of his beloved, showing a “Cyclops” who has now personified the new ideal of subjective, physical beauty in one’s unique facial features. Second, as with Theocritus’ account, Virgil notes that the sea behaves like a mirror. But unlike Theocritus’ account, Virgil actually makes explicit the sea as mirror (imago, line 27). As I will discuss further below, in the Roman Period we find that mirrors become increasingly important, both as cultural-material objects and as manifestations of that period’s shift in selfhood toward reflection (both physical and psychological) and self-reflexivity. As I suggested in the last chapter, these trends find at least partial origin in Theocritus’ Hellenistic Age Cyclops. Virgil’s major departure from Theocritus is turning the Cyclops into a fully human shepherd. This change might seem to abandon the central role of the Cyclops in this myth and therefore in the construction of selfhood. Indeed, this change of character has in a sense “demythologized” the myth, with Virgil using a post-Theocritus version of the story in the interest of providing a more-human like “Cyclops”.20 In fact, however, I argue that this very choice to turn the Cyclops into a human shepherd indicates a further shift toward subjective-individualist selfhood: Virgil has kept aspects of the

Latin lexical entries from Lewis and Short, A Latin Dictionary. Hutchinson, Greek to Latin, p. 179; see also discussion on p. 309 regarding overlaps between other of Virgil’s Eclogues and Theocritus’ Idylls. 19 20

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Cyclops myth in the story structure, but fully removed the monstrous aspects of Polyphemus. What remains is an entirely human subject, with corresponding emphases on humanity’s subjective character and internal emotion. Through Virgil’s creative use of multiforms and models instead of more direct copies or versions, the more humanistic Cyclops of Theocritus’ Idylls has now become fully human in Virgil’s Eclogues. Virgil has essentially taken the Theocritian identities that the Cyclops adopts and projects them backwards to depict a Cyclops that is really human. When all the identity-markers of the Homeric and Euripidean versions, which are distinctly a-human, have been removed, there are no remaining reasons for the Cyclops to be a Cyclops aside from aesthetics.21 As we will see, this strand will be picked up in modernity where the Cyclops is reduced to its aesthetic monocular dimension. Theocritus’ substantially subjective-individualist Cyclops has now become even more so in this Virgilean version, and in an important, aesthetics-focused way that will persist into modernity. Virgil’s Aeneid

Virgil more fully and specifically discusses Polyphemus in the Aeneid. We can note right from the beginning how Theocritus’ artistic self-reflexivity with respect to past myths and cultural periods parallels Virgil’s own negotiation with Greek culture and its texts. In a continuation of such engagement that we saw in Eclogue II, Virgil’s Aeneid self-reflexively mirrors Homer’s Odyssey in Aeneas’ post-Trojan War wanderings in the first half of the book, while the Aeneid’s second half self-reflexively mirrors Homer’s Iliad in Aeneas’ wars once he finally gets to Italy. In book three, amidst Aeneas’ post-Troy, Odyssean wanderings across the Mediterranean, he and his crew come across the Cyclops’ island. There, they find Achaemenides, a former companion of Odysseus (now “Ulysses” in Latin) who, in Virgil’s retelling, was left behind when Odysseus and his crew made their daring escape recounted by Homer.22 Taking Achaemenides on My thanks to Camden Roy for this particular insight and phrasing. For background and discussion see Ramminger, “Imitation and Allusion”, pp. 53-71. 21 22

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board, Aeneas listens to his story, which specifically engages the episode from book nine of Homer’s Odyssey. Virgil’s account closely echoes Homer’s in many ways, but Achaemenides’ mere existence also functions as a corrective, showing not only Virgil’s direct acquaintance with Homer but also the complex intertextual relationship between the two.23 We can quote at some length from Virgil here (3.588-691):24 616 617 618 619 620 621 622 623 624 625 626 627 628 629 630 631 632 633 634 635 636 637 638 639

My comrades left me here in the Cyclops’ vast cave, forgetting me, as they hurriedly left that grim threshold. It’s a house of blood and gory feasts, vast and dark inside. He himself is gigantic, striking against the high stars – gods, remove plagues like that from the earth! – not pleasant to look at, affable to no one. He eats the dark blood and flesh of wretched men. I saw myself how he seized two of our number in his huge hands, and reclining in the centre of the cave, broke them on the rock, so the threshold, drenched, swam with blood: I saw how he gnawed their limbs, dripping with dark clots of gore, and the still-warm bodies quivered in his jaws. Yet he did not go unpunished: Ulysses didn’t suffer it, nor did the Ithacan forget himself in a crisis. As soon as the Cyclops, full of flesh and sated with wine, relaxed his neck, and lay, huge in size, across the cave, drooling gore and blood and wine-drenched fragments in his sleep, we prayed to the great gods, and our roles fixed, surrounded him on all sides, and stabbed his one huge eye, solitary, and half-hidden under his savage brow, like a round Greek shield, or the sun-disc of Phoebus, with a sharpened stake: and so we joyfully avenged the spirits of our friends. But fly from here, wretched men, and cut your mooring ropes. Since, like Polyphemus, who pens

The complex relationship between the works of Virgil and Homer (intertextuality) is the subject of a great deal of research. A few starting points: Farrell, Vergil’s Georgics, pp. 3-25; Dekel, Virgil’s Homeric Lens; Conte, The Rhetoric of Imitation; Minchin, “Poet, Audience, Time, and Text”, pp. 267– 288. 24 Latin again from Greenough; English translation adapted primarily from Kline, Virgil – The Aeneid. 23

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640 woolly flocks in the rocky cave, and milks their udders, there are 641 a hundred other appalling Cyclopes, the same in shape and size, 642 everywhere inhabiting the curved bay, and wandering the hills. … 655 He’d barely spoken, when we saw the shepherd Polyphemus 656 himself, moving his mountainous bulk on the hillside 657 among the flocks, and heading for the familiar shore, 658 a fearful monster, vast and shapeless, robbed of the light. 659 A lopped pine-trunk in his hand steadied and guided 660 his steps: his fleecy sheep accompanied him: 661 his sole delight and the solace for his evils. 662 As soon as he came to the sea and reached the deep water, 663 he washed away the blood oozing from the gouged eye-socket, 664 groaning and gnashing his teeth. Then he walked through 665 the depths of the waves, without the tide wetting his vast thighs. … 672 [Polyphemus] raised a mighty shout, at which the sea and all the waves 673 shook, and the land of Italy was frightened far inland, 674 and Etna bellowed from its winding caverns, but the tribe 675 of Cyclopes, roused from their woods and high mountains, 676 rushed to the harbour, and crowded the shore. 677 We saw them standing there, impotently, wild-eyed, 678 the Aetnean brotherhood, heads towering into the sky, 679 a fearsome gathering: like tall oaks rooted on a summit, 680 or cone-bearing cypresses, in Jove’s high wood or Diana’s grove.

Achaemenides describes the Cyclops in several notable ways here. First, Virgil uses the word “Cyclops” (Cyclopas/Cyclopes) and proper name “Polyphemus” (Polyphemus). This contrasts with Eclogue II, where the Cyclops was changed into a fully human subject. Second, Virgil describes Polyphemus as “gigantic, striking against the high stars”, and “not pleasant to look at, affable to no one” (6.19-21).25 Instead of simply describing the Cyclops as monstrous, in the sense of hugely awe-inspiring like we saw in Homer and Euripides, Virgil has here given a more precise physical ipse arduus, altaque pulsat (619) sidera—Di, talem terris avertite pestem!— (620) nec visu facilis nec dictu adfabilis ulli. (621) 25

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descriptor of size, “gigantic” (arduus), which literally means “high, elevated, lofty, steep.” Likewise, Virgil gives some attention to the Cyclops’ face, describing him as “not pleasant to look at” (nec visu facilis), literally “not easy/pleasant for looking (at).” This description explicitly invokes the notion of a subjective gaze through the word “gaze/looking” (visus), whose translations have connotations of physical sight and vision. The other part of Virgil’s description expands this intersection of subjective appeal and the physical gaze. The Cyclops is “affable to no one” (nec dictu adfabilis ulli), literally meaning that the Cyclops is not “easy to access, courteous, kind, affable, friendly”. The Cyclops’ ugly features are paired with the difficulty in engaging the Cyclops on a human-to-human level, as he is not only unpleasant in face but also unpleasant in individual personality. This strong correspondence between facial/physical appearance and inner character is one that is distinctive to the Roman Period, and one to which I’ll return below. Achaemenides also notes particulars about Polyphemus’ single eye. He recounts how Odysseus and his crew “stabbed his one huge eye, solitary, and half-hidden under his savage brow, like a round Greek shield, or the sun-disc of Phoebus” (634-7).26 The eye here is described as a lumen, literally “light” but which metaphorically can mean “the light of the eye” in the sense of “pupil”.27 This is paired with the description of both physical size, “huge”, and its positionality and appearance on the Cyclops’ forehead. Virgil provides specific description along with metaphors for detailed emphasis, drawing further attention to the Cyclops’ facial features and eye position. Aeneas and his crew get their own view of the Cyclops when he comes down to shore in his blinded state: “A lopped pine-trunk in his hand steadied and guided his steps; his fleecy sheep accompanied him, his sole delight and the solace for his evils. As soon numina sortitique vices, una undique circum (634) fundimur, et telo lumen terebramus acuto,— (635) ingens, quod torva solum sub fronte latebat, (636) Argolici clipei aut Phoebeae lampadis instar,— (637) 27 Recalling Theocritus’ description in Idyll VI: καὶ καλὰ µὲν τὰ γένεια, καλὰ δέ µευ ἁ µία κώρα. 26

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as he came to the sea and reached the deep water, he washed away the blood oozing from the gouged eye-socket, groaning and gnashing his teeth” (659-64).28 Virgil’s description has several subjective-individualist elements: what delights Polyphemus individually; his particular solace, speaking to an internal, emotive state; his evils, namely individual actions; and an attention to Polyphemus’ “groaning and gnashing”, speaking to Polyphemus’ individual condition both physical and psychological. Whereas Homer’s Polyphemus was just physically pained and angry,29 we see in Virgil – similarly to Euripides – a small but noticeable shift toward reflecting on the individual, subjective, interior, and emotional ramifications of being violently blinded. Overall, then, Virgil’s Aeneid retains important strands of the Homeric version of the myth, with Virgil’s Cyclops therefore partly reflecting an objective-participant selfhood: the Cyclops is a savage brute; he neglects hospitality; the other Cyclops are described in socially structured terms as a “tribe” and “brotherhood”; and so forth.30 But Virgil still maintains the additional focus on facial features and the Cyclops’ internal, psychological state and individual preferences that we saw in Euripides. Virgil even seems to move further than Euripides: whereas Euripides provided explicit but only single-word descriptions of the eye and Polyphemus’ condition, Virgil briefly expands both. It seems that Virgil’s Cyclops, to different degrees in Virgil’s two texts, contains substantial elements of both objective-participant and subjective-individualist selfhood. These two types of Cyclops and respective selfhoods also reflect what we might expect from genre: Virgil’s epic depicts the bloodthirsty Cyclops in

Trunca manu pinus regit et vestigia firmat; (659) lanigerae comitantur oves—ea sola voluptas (660) solamenque mali. (661) Postquam altos tetigit fluctus et ad aequora venit, (662) luminis effossi fluidum lavit inde cruorem, (663) dentibus infrendens gemitu, graditurque per aequor (664) iam medium, necdum fluctus latera ardua tinxit. (665) 29 Κύκλωψ δὲ στενάχων τε καὶ ὠδίνων ὀδύνῃσι, Od. 9.415; cf. τίπτ᾽ ἐθέλεις ἐρεθιζέµεν ἄγριον ἄνδρα, 9.494. 30 Moskalew, “The Cyclops, Achaemenides”, pp. 25-34. 28

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parallel to Homer; the poetic Eclogues follow Theocritus in showing an emotional and more sympathetic Cyclops. Virgil thus reflects the competing legacies of both myth and selfhood, straddling the divide by including both strands of selfhood-myth in a self-reflexive negotiation with the past. This straddling of the mythical-selfhood divide manifests in Virgil’s very choice of literature, as by continuing the Cyclops story in the genres of both epic and bucolic he upholds and passes along both understandings alongside one another, weighting neither more than the other. Finally, we can note but briefly that other of the Cyclops myths do persist in Virgil. In book eight (8.424-53), the Hesiodic (pre-Homeric?) Cyclopes that forged Zeus’ lightning are now tasked with forging Aeneas’ armor.31 As in the comparison between Hesiod and Homer, we see that the former version Cyclops myth is quite impersonal and brief, with the Cyclopes given names and task and little else. Meanwhile, the individual Cyclops Polyphemus of Homer and Virgil is given extended treatment, not only in the sheer textual volume Virgil affords him in both epic and bucolic texts but also in the extended descriptions and psychological depth we find in these accounts. The Cyclops myth’s wider instantiations remain in Virgil and are thus transmitted on, in other words, but they remain minor, not subject to innovation, and significantly under-emphasized as compared to the treatment given Polyphemus.

Latin again from Greenough, lines 424-432: Ferrum exercebant vasto Cyclopes in antro, Brontesque Steropesque et nudus membra Pyragmon. (425) His informatum manibus iam parte polita fulmen erat, toto genitor quae plurima caelo deicit in terras, pars inperfecta manebat. Tris imbris torti radios, tris nubis aquosae addiderant, rutili tris ignis et alitis austri: (430) fulgores nunc horrificos sonitumque metumque miscebant operi flammisque sequacibus iras. 31

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Ovid’s Metamorphoses

Ovid is a very different author from Virgil, despite also being an elite poet, living around the same time (43 BCE – 17/18 CE), and similarly writing under the emperor Augustus. Amidst a career of prolific literary output, especially love elegy and epic poetry, Ovid is known particularly for his more daring, experimental writings in contrast to Virgil’s more conservative bent. This likely contributed to Ovid’s exile from Rome even at the height of his popularity,32 but it also resulted in the Metamorphoses (in Latin, literally “Books of Transformations”), one of the most famous works in both Roman literature and in the entire western canon.33 Composed in the early first century CE, Ovid’s Metamorphoses is a 15-book epic poem whose wide-ranging subjects include myth, comedy, love, politics, philosophy, religion, art, and, of course, transformation.34 Ovid’s Metamorphoses contains two versions of the Cyclops myth: both the Theocritean sentimental Cyclops and the Homeric/Euripidean brutish Cyclops. In book 13, Ovid picks up the former myth tradition, depicting the Cyclops in sentimental terms familiar from Theocritus’ Idylls VI and XI. Ovid, however, also parodies Theocritus, moving from the sentimental to the violent. In book 14, Ovid depicts the Cyclops in brutal and violent terms familiar from Homer and Euripides. By placing both strands of the myth side by side in a single story, unlike Virgil who split the strands into different genres, Ovid’s work even more strongly suggests that Imperial Rome contained a self-reflexive tension between subjective-individualist and objective-participant selfhood. In book 13 of the Metamorphoses, Ovid re-tells elements of Theocritus’ story, having the nymph Galatea recount the ways Ovid cryptically described the cause of his Augustan exile as a “song and mistake” (carmen et error). Scholars have suggested explanations ranging from his involvement with political conspiracy, to his artistic boundary-pushing flouting the moral norms of the Augustan court, to a singular or wider clash of personality between himself and the emperor. 33 Dante, Chaucer, and Shakespeare are but three examples of the Metamorphoses’ colossal influence on later authors. 34 Amid an enormous bibliography, a recent translation and commentary: Melville and Kenney, Metamorphoses. 32

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that Polyphemus pined for her, despite her love of the shepherd Acis. Ovid deploys bucolic metaphors and descriptors similar to Theocritus, but Ovid also expands the tale with significantly more detail. Ovid’s Galatea describes Polyphemus thusly:35 That savage creature, the forest’s terror, whom no wayfarer set eyes upon unscathed, who scorned the gods of great Olympos, now felt pangs of love, burnt with a mighty passion, and forgot his flocks and cares. Now lovelorn Polyphemus cared for his looks, cared earnestly to please; now with a rake he combed his matted hair, and with a sickle trimmed his shaggy beard, and studied his fierce features in a pool and practised to compose them. His wild urge to kill, his fierceness and his lust for blood ceased and in safety ships might come and go.

Ovid describes Polyphemus as a “savage creature” (inmitis, “harsh, rough, rude, stern, fierce, savage”), a clear echo of Homer, whom Ovid echoes again at the end of this passage in alluding to Polyphemus’ Homeric bloodlust. But Ovid also includes three elements we have identified as subjective-individualist: (1) Polyphemus’ specifics of appearance; (2) Polyphemus caring about his appearance, a self-reflection both physical and psychological; and (3) Polyphemus’ internal, emotional state. We must keep in mind that Ovid’s account is meant to be humorous, a description poking fun at the Cyclops and his self-reflections in a manner befitting Ovid’s genre, an epic and poetic narrative meant to entertain, surprise, and delight the reader. But it is the very terms that Ovid uses to poke fun that speak to his implicit selfhood framework, and it is here that we see the co-occurrence of facial appearance, self-reflection, and internal emotion. Indeed, more than any previous author, Ovid describes specifics of Polyphemus’ facial characteristics, ranging from the consistency of his hair (“matted”, rigidos capillos), to the length and type of his beard (“shaggy”, hirsutam barbam), to an overall descriptor of his features (“fierce”, feros). Like Theocritus, Ovid’s Cyclops gazes at his reflection and then self-reflects on what he sees. Unlike in Theocritus, however, we see Ovid’s Cyclops actively grooming himself, not just English adapted from Melville; Latin from Magnus, Ovid. Metamorphoses. 35

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reflecting but also taking steps to improve himself: he literally “cared for his looks” (Iamque tibi formae), with the noun forma referring to one’s physical form and features. Ovid also describes Polyphemus as having felt emotions internally, namely “pangs of love” as he was “burnt with a mighty passion” (quid sit amor, sensit validaque cupidine captus uritur), a phrase that recalls the flame language in Theocritus.36 Ovid’s Cyclops, furthermore, not only had desire for others, but he also “cared earnestly to please” (tibi cura placendi).37 Theocritus’ Cyclops desired and wanted to be desired; by comparison, Ovid’s Cyclops is much more psychologically sophisticated: desiring and wanting to be desired, but also wanting to please others, a clear descriptor of his subjective, individual state in terms of his selfreflectiveness with respect to others’ internal happiness. Polyphemus himself speaks soon thereafter, describing exactly this in his own words: Lately, I examined myself, it’s true, and looked at my reflection in the clear water, and, seeing my self, it pleased me. Look how large I am: Jupiter, in the sky, since you are accustomed to saying some Jove or other rules there, has no bigger a body. Luxuriant hair hangs over my face, and shades my shoulders like a grove. And do not consider it ugly for my whole body to be bristling with thick prickly hair. A tree is ugly without its leaves: a horse is ugly unless a golden mane covers its neck: feathers hide the birds: their wool becomes the sheep: a beard and shaggy hair befits a man’s body. I only have one eye in the middle of my forehead, but it is as big as a large shield. Well? Does not the great Sun see all this from the sky? Yet the Sun’s orb is unique.

Polyphemus mentions “my self” and how it pleased him (placuitque mihi mea forma videnti). Literally translated as “my form” (mea forma), in the sense of his physical body and appearance, we saw much the same in Virgil and Theocritus with the importance of one’s physical form indicating a more subjective-individualist selfhood. 36 37

quid sit amor, sensit validaque cupidine captus uritur. Iamque tibi formae, iamque est tibi cura placendi.

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By now, much else in this passage should also be familiar as indications of a subjective-individualist selfhood: Ovid provides a host of specific physical and facial descriptors, including around the single eye and its exact location on the face (Unum est in media lumen mihi fronte); Ovid’s Polyphemus self-reflects on his own appearance, a key aspect of subjective-individualist monologue shared with Theocritus’ version;38 Polyphemus judges that his features are pleasing, embodying a shift in values toward physical and facial beauty; and Ovid recounts Polyphemus’ specific size, again using more narrowly descriptive terms rather than Homeric raw monstrosity. Importantly, Polyphemus reflects on how a feature which might be considered ugly (his single eye) should be considered good for its ability to mark an individual as unique. This reclamation of the different as unique and hence desirable feels strikingly modern, where uniqueness and individualism are understood as markers of laudable self-expression. More to the point, uniqueness as a positive quality is a distinct feature of subjective-individualistic selfhood. While objective-participant values are centered around commonly-held characteristics and therefore de-emphasize unique, individual facial features (for example the lack of facial descriptors in the Iliad and Odyssey, discussed earlier), a subjective-individualistic selfhood emphasizes uniqueness, seeing in distinct faces the core of identity. Special attention should also be given to Ovid’s description of the Cyclops’ “luxuriant hair”, specifying how it falls upon his shoulders (Coma plurima torvos prominet in vultus umerosque, ut lucus, obumbrat). Ovid also specifies that Polyphemus has a beard, both here (barba viros hirtaeque decent in corpore saetae) and in the prior passage via Galatea. We can again note the increased specificity and importance around particular features of the face and head, all of which point toward a more subjective-individualist selfhood. But this description of hair has even more significance. Culturally, “the social significance of hair is an anthropological and

38

Hutchinson, “The Monster and the Monologue”, pp. 22-39.

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sociological commonplace.”39 Generally speaking, hairiness is indexed to an animal nature, either positively (wildness of power, fertility, and freedom) or negatively (wildness of incivility, uncontrolled urges, and aggression).40 Certainly Ovid’s shaggy Polyphemus is meant to be contrasted to Acis, who is only barely beginning to grow his beard; the Cyclops is crude and wild, while Acis is civilized and beautiful.41 This general depiction of wild shagginess is generally the norm in the art-historical record too, especially in the most ancient sources but with increasing exceptions over time, mirroring the greater subjective-individualist humanism imparted to the Cyclops post-Theocritus.42 We can say more, however, than that hairness generally maps onto wildness cross-cultrally. By this period, substantial hair and a beard had come to take on the meaning of a philosopher or intellectual.43 During the Roman Empire, there arose an increasing attention to one’s habitus corporis (“habit of body”), which included one’s hair,44 and which scholars have identified as reflecting a Aguirre and Buxton, Cyclops, p. 87, and pp. 87-94 for wider discussion. Warner, From Beast to Blond, p. 371. 41 Reference the description of Polyphemus in Philostratus (Roman Imperial Period, ca. 200 CE), Imagines 2.18: “He is depicted as mountainous and terrible, tossing his hair, which stands erect and as dense as the foliage of a pine tree, showing a set of jagged teeth in his voracious jaw, shaggy [lasios] all over – brest and belly, everything right to his fingernails”, trans. from Aguirre and Buxton, Cyclops, p. 88. 42 Aguirre and Buxton, Cyclops, pp. 87-94 for discussion: while the earlier Cyclops images tend to be shaggy-haired, bearded, and some even with noticeable body hair (e.g., at Sperlonga), later Cyclops are more likely to be combed and trimmed, clean shaven, and lacking body hair, e.g. the “Tugged by the reigns of love” wall painting in the House of Livia, Palantine, Rome, 30-25 BCE. As Aguirre and Buxton note, “the representation of a feral Polyphemus in his full-body pelosity … seems more at home in Greek than in Roman visual imagery”, p. 92. 43 Zanker, The Mask of Socrates. 44 von der Osten, “Habitus Corporis”, pp. 192-217, esp. p. 209, where van der Osten makes the explicit point that maturation and intellection were associated with hair on both the body and head. The tie between maturation and body-hair is a long-standing cultural trope across many cultures stemming from shared biological underpinnings, but the tie between hair and intellectual sophistication varies widely, and became especially pronounced during the Roman Period. 39 40

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newly engaged focus with the individual self.45 A later telling – Lucian’s Dialogues of the Sea Gods, in the second century – sees Galatea claiming that Polyphemus’ “hairiness makes him seem manly”, a distinctively positive spin on hairness that departs in the Roman Period from more ancient critiques of hairiness’ wildness.46 Ovid’s Polyphemus, in his use of a comb and trimming his beard, well reflect the period’s increasing interest in the link between selfhood, comportment, grooming of the hair, and one’s features.47 Indeed, one’s physical features (e.g., presence or lack of hair) were thought to be inextricably linked to one’s rhetorical and artistic output, as well as one’s ethics.48 We see this same focus elsewhere in Ovid, as many of his episodes speak to not only the physiological particulars of the body, but also focus – in opposition to classical ideals – on the instability of the physical form,49 hence the title of the Metamorphoses.50

The originator of this idea was Foucault’s Care of the Self, but can also be seen in Perkins (1995), Edwards (1997), and Whitmarsh (2005), esp. p. 74, where Whitmarsh speaks specifically to the changes in selfhood around and stemming at least in part from the Second Sophistic. 46 Aguirre and Buxton, Cyclops, p. 93. Lucian, DMar 1, trans. MacLeod: [Galatea:] “His wild and hairy appearance, as you call it, isn’t ugly [amorphos]. It’s manly. And his eye goes very nicely with his forehead, and it sees just as well as if it were two.” 47 The link between the body and the self had long been present, but had more often turned on the link between comportment and oratorical delivery and persuasion: Fredal, Beyond the Fifth Canon. 48 E.g., the critiques of post-Cicero Roman oratory and literature in Seneca the Elder, Controversiae I.pref.6-10. Compare other notable figures highlighted for their ugliness, such as the earlier Socrates and Diogenes, or the later Christian apostle Paul as described in Acts. 49 Ovid makes this explicit at the beginning, I.1-2: “forms changed into new bodies”, in nova mutates formas / corpora. See also book 15, via Pythagoras’ speech: “Our bodies too are always, endlessly / Changing; what we have been, or are today, / We shall not be tomorrow”. 50 E.g., Ovid’s stories about Arachne (Met. VI.136-45), with the specific descriptors of the physical change from human to spider; about Marsyas (Met. VI.387-91), again with specific physical descriptors of blood, sinews, veins, tissues, and guts; and about Tiresias (Met. III.324-331) and Hermaphroditus (Met. IV.373-88), both undergoing sex-changes in real time. See discussion in Murray, “Bodies in Flux”, pp. 80-96. 45

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By way of caution, however, we should also note the presence of Polyphemus’ lineage (echoing the preservation of lineage in Theocritus’ mostly subjective-individualist account), as he mentions his father as ruling over the waves, undoubtedly a reference to Poseidon in echoing Homer.51 Thus, while in all of the ways discussed above Ovid parallels and even moves beyond Virgil toward subjective-individualist selfhood, this shift is partially balanced by the explicit presence of an important aspect of structured selfhood, namely one’s lineage. As with Virgil, Ovid is split between subjective-individualist and objective-participant selfhood. As we might expect between two authors and multiple texts, the exact nature of this split differs across the evidence, with Ovid seemingly more subjective-individualist in his more extended descriptions here. Indeed, our inability to categorize Ovid as fully subjectiveindividualist becomes even clearer at the end of book 13. Here, the brutish Cyclops returns, and upon seeing Galatea with Acis, Polyphemus throws an enormous rock and crushes Acis, thereby turning the youth into a river god. This swift turn from the bucolic to the violent not only reflects Ovid’s tendency to parody – here playing, I think, with the two mythical strands side by side – but bridges into book 14, where the brutish Cyclops is given full treatment. In book 14 (14.160f.), Ovid self-reflexively parallels Virgil, with Achaemenides recounting his time on the Cyclops’ island after the departure of Odysseus: When you escaped by flight from certain death, Polyphemus roamed over the whole of Aetna, groaning, and groping through the woods with his hands, stumbling, bereft of his sight, among the rocks. Stretching out his arms, spattered with blood, to the sea, he cursed the Greek race like the plague, saying: “O, if only chance would return Ulysses to me, or one of his companions, on whom I could vent my wrath, whose entrails I could eat, whose living body I could tear with my hands, whose blood could fill my gullet, and whose torn limbs

51

Adde, quod in vestro genitor meus aequore regnat (854)

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THE CYCLOPS MYTH AND THE MAKING OF SELFHOOD could quiver between my teeth: the damage to me of my lost sight would count little or nothing then!” Fiercely he shouted, this and more. I was pale with fear, looking at his face still dripping with gore, his cruel hands, the empty eye-socket, his limbs and beard coated with human blood. Death was in front of my eyes, but that was still the least of evils. Now he’ll catch me, I thought, now he’ll merge my innards with his own, and the image stuck in my mind of the moment when I saw him hurl two of my friends against the ground, three, four times, and crouching over them like a shaggy lion, he filled his greedy jaws with flesh and entrails, bones full of white marrow, and warm limbs.

Ovid’s account here is mostly of the brutish, Homeric type focusing on uncivilized, violent actions. Polyphemus is described as “fierce” (ferox, 198), more of a generalized, Homeric and Euripidean descriptor rather than one of Theocritan physical specificity, and Ovid even recalls Homer’s imagery of the Cyclops as an inhuman lion devouring human flesh. We see no substantial description of the Cyclops’ facial features aside from his eye socket and bloody beard (see below), no other internal emotion or turmoil aside from pure rage, and certainly no self-reflection – physically or psychologically – when the Cyclops comes down to the water to wash his eye, despite Ovid surely being aware of the sea-asmirror trope appearing in Theocritus and Virgil. However, as with Virgil’s Aeneid, we do see some small subjective-individualist elements relative to the Homeric version. Ovid notes Polyphemus’ anger, for example (ira, 193), an explicit inclusion of emotion if not a romantic one. Despite Polyphemus’ savage depiction, Ovid gives specific attention to some of Polyphemus’ particular physical features: his “face dripping with gore”, his hands, “the empty eye-socket”, and his blood-caked beard.52 These emphasize monstrous violence and lack the descriptive depth we’ve seen in more subjective-individualist accounts, such as even book 13, but Ovid does note the Cyclops’ eye

spectantem vultus etiamnum caede madentes (199) crudelesque manus et inanem luminis orbem (200) membraque et humano concretam sanguine barbam. (201) 52

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socket and beard, speaking at least somewhat to the relevance of such facial descriptors in Ovid’s cultural framework. Overall, perhaps unsurprisingly, we see a tension in the Metamorphoses. Ovid’s book 14 presents a Cyclops with some small subjective-individualist elements, but mostly follows Homer and Euripides in presenting the Cyclops in terms of savagery, thereby mostly maintaining an objective-participant selfhood framework. Book 13, by contrast, used a much more subjective-individualist framework in conversation with Theocritus. The reaction to Ovid in his own day was decidedly mixed. Some thinkers such as Seneca the Elder, for instance, attacked Ovid for both his literary aesthetic and personal ethics that diverged from classical ideals.53 Others praised Ovid for his aesthetic innovations that also furnished ethical challenges to the conservative, Augustan mores (e.g., mos maiorum) that harkened back to early, classical ideals.54 Indeed, Ovid’s narrative form represents this very split, both reflecting past forms but also self-reflexively rejecting them: Ovid masterfully reproduced dactylic hexameter required by the epic genre of Homer, a gesture back to a more objective-participant selfhood, but Ovid also completely rejected the classical notions Controversiae 2.2.12, trans Garrison (2019): “He used language by no means over-freely except in his poetry, where he was well aware of his faults, and enjoyed them. What can make this clear is that once, when he was asked by his friends to suppress three of his lines, he asked in return to be able to make an exception of three over which they should have no rights. This seemed a fair condition. They wrote in private the lines they wanted removed, while he wrote in the ones he wanted saved, and the sheets of both contained the same verses. ... It is clear from this that the great man lacked not the judgement but the will to restrain the licence of his poetry.” 54 Of course, despite his huge popularity, Ovid ended up banished due to his self-described “carmen et error”, speaking to the decidedly mixed contemporary reception of which even he was aware (Remedia Amoris VI.33-36). That Ovid’s popularity would only grow over time, to become dominant during the Middle Ages, further reinforces my point about different eras’ notions of selfhood mapping onto changing aesthetics. For discussion of Ovid’s reception in subsequent eras, see the essays in Miller and Newlands, A Handbook; see further Gatti, Ovid in Antike und Mittelalter, esp. chs. 2 and 4. 53

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of genre and proper content of an epic, a gesture toward a more subjective-individualist selfhood.55 Ovid’s mixed reception is at least partly reflective, I think, of Ovid’s juxtaposition in narrative style and therefore selfhood. Not only was Ovid himself mixed in his values, but his wider cultural context was also grappling with similar changes and tensions such as between types of selfhood. Selfhood in the Roman Empire

Virgil and Ovid engage both strands of the Cyclops myth and therefore selfhood, doing so in a self-reflexive way that maintains both frameworks in negotiated tension. If we tentatively read these two authors as representative of wider cultural forces, it seems that the Roman Period has one foot in the realm of objective-participant selfhood, and another in the realm of subjectiveindividualist selfhood. As with Homer (honor/shame), Euripides (linguistics; democracy) and Theocritus (aesthetics; philosophy), we can usefully contextualize Virgil’s and Ovid’s use of myth in terms of the wider political and cultural currents of their period. Virgil’s and Ovid’s use of both Cyclops myths (Homeric/Classical and Hellenistic) is, I think, a conscious attempt to move past the binary of identity found in earlier Cyclops myths, such as between civilized and non-civilized (Homer), or between Greek and barbarian (Euripides). The reproduction of both Cyclops types suggests an awareness of these earlier binaries of identity, but not a sole reliance on them. Instead, by placing the Hellenistic, romantic Cyclops alongside the others, Virgil and Ovid place them in tension, moving between them, and validating both but fully embracing neither. In engaging both selfhood types, both authors ultimately manifest a more uncertain, malleable, and shifting identity, which is indeed a central theme to Ovid’s work. The use of both Cyclops selfhood myth types, therefore, reflects how Virgil and Ovid, in different ways and to different degrees, deployed literary identities that were fluid and self-reflexive, trying to Made explicit in Aristotle’s Poetics, which argues that a plot must have a certain wholeness (beginning, middle, end) and magnitude (unity, dramatic and/or temporal). Ovid’s Metamorphoses seems to notably flout the latter, containing no dramatic unity and possessing instead a series of episodic plots, a type of narrative particularly deplored by Aristotle. 55

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negotiate with bifurcation and tension the different bodies of literature and cultural frameworks that continued to loom large in their day. We might seek historical parallels for these literary shifts in the confusion over what we might term “Romanness” in late Republican and early Imperial Rome. One early, important shift in political identity came when citizenship was suddenly extended to all non-warring Italian “Latini”.56 Such confusion and negotiation must have only become greater when citizenship was eventually extended to all peoples within the Empire.57 Indeed, the Imperial Period was a time of increasing fluidity, reflectiveness, and self-reflexivity. Military realities likely precipitated cultural shifts: the Roman Empire’s constant expansion and shifting borders across this period presented continuous and increasingly challenging questions around Romanness, identity, citizenry, cultural affiliation, and values such as selfhood.58 Selfhood was being contested and re-negotiated in a variety of spheres. Gender, for example, became increasingly important as a central locus for the intersections between aesthetics, ethics, and masculinity.59 In a clear shift from prior understandings of masculinity and gender, gender was re-thought in the Roman Period in an ongoing construction in light of other shifts in cultural The Lex Iulia de Civitate Latinis Danda, in 90 BCE, and the subsequent Lex Plautia Papiria. 57 The Constitutio Antoniniana, or the Edict of Carcalla, in 212 CE. 58 Scholarship has become increasingly sophisticated in unpacking how “Roman identity” was no monolithic entity, but a negotiated, shifting, geographically and temporally variable set of interlocking spheres and influences. A few representative selections: Dench, “Roman Identity”; Laurence and Berry, Cultural Identity; Arno, How Romans Became Roman; Mattingly, Imperialism, Power, and Identity; Huskinson, Experiencing Rome. 59 E.g., Seneca the Elder, Controversiae I.pref.6-10, who criticized the rhetorical and literary output of his day by tying it to a critique of the lack of masculinity of contemporary young men. For Seneca the Elder, as for most of this period, there was an inextricable link between literature, character, and politics: literature reflected and influenced the wider political structures, much as I am arguing here and throughout. For the link between rhetorical training and Roman ideals of manliness, see: Connolly, “Like the Labors of Heracles”, esp. p. 287; Gleason, Making Men Sophists, esp. p. 22; Gunderson, Staging Masculinity. 56

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discourse, social values, and political realities.60 This occurred not only in the popular realm but within the philosophical schools as well, for instance across the developments in Stoicism.61 Broader negotiations around human identity in the large were also occurring. Paul Zanker has argued for a change in aesthetics in the Roman Period that illustrates a different understanding of humanity and its place in the world.62 For Zanker, the Roman Period saw an increased focus on the importance of the physical image, as well as on the correspondence between one’s face, body, comportment, and one’s inner self.63 This growing focus on the importance of the individual form for identity and selfhood, particularly the face, is distinctly subjective-individualist. After our first such example in Euripides’ description of the Cyclops, this manifestation of subjective-individualist selfhood in the form of emphasized facial description only becomes more prominent in subsequent Cyclops re-tellings and historical periods both. In a parallel development, the reign of Augustus ushered in an increased focus on the public image of body and face. Examples abound, such as public monuments or imperial sculpture, which rendered Roman identity around the empire in terms of commonly beheld images.64 In Zanker’s account, the public image was essential to Augustus’ cultivation of not only power and imperial authority, but also of equating this personalized, imperial power with wider Roman identity. The subjective-individualist McDonnell, Roman Manliness; Masterson, “Studies of Ancient Masculinity”, pp. 17-30, particularly Masterson’s discussion of further reading, pp. 28-29, which nicely encapsulates the best work on the subject in the last two decades. 61 Bartsch, Mirror of the Self, p. 99: “If we trace within a single school, that of the Stoics, the development in attitudes toward same-sex love from the Hellenistic period to early imperial Rome, a clear shift is visible from the tolerant, even encouraging doctrines of a Zeno or Chrysippus to those of Musonius Rufus and Seneca, both Romans of the first century CE”. 62 Zanker, Mask of Socrates; Idem, Power of Images; see further Dillon, Ancient Greek Portrait Sculpture. 63 Zanker, Mask of Socrates. 64 Zanker, Power of Images. 60

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physical form, in other words, continued to maintain ties to wider, objective-participant understandings of a socially-exterior, publicly-constructed ‘Romanness’. Shadi Bartsch has focused on the nature of one’s public image in a very different way, namely around the gaze. Bartsch sees the gaze as constitutive of one’s selfhood, and her account of the role of the physical gaze in the Roman Period reflects both a structured, objective-participant view of selfhood and a subjective-individualist view.65 For Bartsch, the gaze is evidently an objectiveparticipant mechanism, especially in the Classical Era, where one is judged and structured externally based on objective, cultural criteria that can be physically seen in public spaces. Thus, we crucially see the rise in importance afforded publicly visible physical features such as the philosopher beard (noted by Zanker, and discussed above for the Cyclops). Yet the gaze is not simply an external, objectively structuring mechanism. The gaze also speaks much more than ever before to one’s interior, subjective, emotional state. Focusing particularly on Seneca,66 Bartsch shows how both Seneca’s works and the wider cultural milieu of the Roman Empire show a clear shift in terms of how the self is structured, with a rising emphasis on subjective, individualistic, emotive interiority.67 Indeed, a variety of major philosophical works during this time increasingly focused Bartsch, Mirror of the Self. For further on Seneca, see the essays in Bartsch and Wray, Seneca and the Self, esp. by Inwood who critiques this understanding as merely a literary technique (a critique levied against Gill’s work more broadly). Other essays take a more positive stance to Foucault, and represent many of the sources deployed more widely in the present study, e.g. Long, Gill, and Bartsch. 67 Bartsch, Mirror of the Self, argues for a scholarly “perspective [that] involves reconsidering the idea of reflexivity as essential to Senecan selfhood. This move attributes to Seneca a new development in thinking about the self … up to this point in the Greco-Roman world, I argue, reflexivity per se has not figured as a crucial component of thinking about the self”, 10. Bartsch sees this same shift in Epictetus (a view shared by A.A. Long), and situates both authors as not only innovators in the Roman Period but as also indicative of a wider cultural shift in understanding. 65 66

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on one’s subjective, individual, interior self: authors such as Marcus Aurelius (Meditations), Seneca the Younger (many essays and letters), and Epictetus (Discourses) all display an enhanced concern with one’s interior, emotive state. On the basis of such philosophical-literary evidence, Bartsch locates the rise of true self-reflectiveness, both the physical gaze and its self-reflective psychological dimension, in the Roman Period. Particularly looking to Seneca and Epictetus, Bartsch marshals substantial evidence to refute those who reject any ancient reflexivity as simply a post-Cartesian reading.68 Yet reflexivity, as a subjective-individualist selfhood focusing on interiority and subjective identity, is nonetheless figured through objective-participant means: the gaze, the mirror, and the image are all externally projected and objectified avenues to selfhood.69 Bartsch herself notes that in this period we don’t see the same division between inner and outer self that we find in modernity. She concludes that “specular insight as revealing something to the individual that is particularly personal and unique is absent”, because “self-knowledge itself was not usually conceived of as any kind of specular turning of the mind upon itself”.70 For Bartsch, in other words, while reflexivity notably increases in the Roman Period, there is still a real gap between Roman era selfhood (still not yet fully subjective-individualist) and modern selfhood around individual uniqueness (fully subjective-individualist). Bartsch’s account of the Imperial Roman gaze and image – as things that are public but also authentically reflective of one’s inner self – can be contrasted with previous eras, where one’s public image was thought to be useful but not an authentic self.71 Plato in the Classical Era, for example, rejected the use of the mirrored self as an authentic and true reflection of one’s real self.72 Yet Plato Ibid, p. 10. Vernant, Mortals and Immortals, p. 142; see discussion in Bartsch, p. 23. 70 Bartsch, Mirror of the Self, p. 24. 71 See my notes and discussion of Grethlein’s work in the previous chapter. 72 Bartsch, Mirror of the Self , p. 54, is forceful in this conclusion: “These formulations of the role of the mirror in antiquity, whether popular or 68 69

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nonetheless maintained the utility of “a process of coming to know the self that takes its impetus not from within, but from without”.73 The image was useful, in other words, but not authentically real. This tension and cultural negotiation between appearance/sight and self-knowledge manifested in other areas as well. The exhortation to “know thyself” (γνῶθι σεαυτόν) finds wide attribution in the ancient world and remained hugely influential during both Greek and Roman times.74 Yet the meaning of this famous injunction seems to change from the Classical Era into the Roman Period, a change born of shifting attitudes toward vision and sight that intriguingly parallel the changes in selfhood across these same periods as exemplified in the Cyclops myth. For Plato and Socrates, “know thyself”, despite seeming personal and inwardly focused to us in modernity, actually entailed acting in ways with a proper communal-ethical orientation. This is Christopher Gill’s exact argument when he discusses the objective-participant selfhood of ancient Greece, such as during the Classical Era. Later Platonic sympathizers, such as Cicero in his engagement with Plato’s Alcibiades I, continue this focus, speaking to the persistence of this objective-participant understanding of earlier philosophical thought.75 In the Roman Period, however, Seneca’s “understanding of the gnōthi sauton is that to know oneself is to watch oneself, to engage in an act of self-scrutiny that judges personal choices and

Platonic, should prevent us from making a precipitous leap to any idea that self-mirroring, as described here, leads to any form of selfknowledge that we might recognize as the individual coming to terms with his or her uniqueness and individuality, or that the Greco-Roman mirror has much to do with the Cartesian idea of the mind turned upon itself, self-transparent, self-available for contemplation in its entirety”. 73 Bartsch, Mirror of the Self, p. 51 and n. 106, citing concurrent conclusions in Denyer, Plato: Alcibiades, p. 333, and Brunschwig, “La deconstruction”, pp. 61-84, esp. p. 76. 74 Apparently on the gates of temple of the Delphic oracle, but also elsewhere, via Cicero (De Finibus V.44), Juvenal (Satire XI.27), and Pausanias. See discussion in Williams, “Know Thyself”, esp. pp. 11-48. 75 Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 1.22.52; see discussion in Bartsch, Mirror of the Self, p. 204.

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activities in disregard of the opinions of one’s peers”.76 In contradistinction to Socrates of the Classical Era who tried to improve his fellow citizens or Cicero who carried on notable strands of objective-participant philosophy, Seneca in the Roman Period “focuses more on self-improvement than on improving the citizens around him; Seneca’s own “elenctic” is often an internal dialogue rather than a spoken one”, which we see with Socrates by contrast.77 The comparison between the roughly contemporaneous Cicero and Seneca is particularly instructive, as these thinkers’ diverging viewpoints around philosophical selfhood well encapsulates the complexity of the Roman Period and its substantial tensions and negotiations around types of selfhood. Indeed, Cicero’s and Seneca’s lives at opposite ends of a transformative period in Roman political culture – dying in 43 BCE and 65 CE respectively – make for a particularly interesting comparison in terms of the internal differences of this period. Cicero’s more objective-participant philosophy gives way to Seneca’s more subjective-participant philosophy, even as Seneca and later contemporaries continue to struggle with and problematize the tension between the two selfhood types. This link, tension, and negotiation between external image and interior authenticity is nicely encapsulated by different periods’ understanding of the utility and accuracy of mirrors in terms of one’s authentic self. Much like the public image of the self, Classical Era understandings saw the mirror as useful but ultimately at a fundamental remove from the self. The paradigmatic Platonic view, for example, believed that the visible self which was mirrored externally was perhaps useful,78 but ultimately Bartsch, Mirror of the Self, p. 203. Ibid, p. 204. 78 Diogenes Laertius, writing in the third century CE, wrote that Socrates “recommended to the young the constant use of the mirror, to the end that handsome men might acquire a corresponding behavior, and ugly men conceal their defects by education”, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers II.33. Bartsch, p. 22 & 47, also found evidence of a late-Roman attitude, attributed to Socrates, that one’s appearance and self-knowledge are closely linked. It is telling, however, that both of these sources for 76 77

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false.79 Skepticism around the mirrored image as reflecting the true self may even have roots in an Etruscan, and doubtless wider Mediterranean, view that one’s external images had darker, magical implications that could harm the self.80 So great was the strength of this Greek and Etruscan/Mediterranean view that we see skepticism surrounding the mirror persisting for centuries, such as in the philosopher Sextus Empiricus writing in the third century CE.81 In the Roman Period, however, the earlier distinction between one’s false, mirrored self and one’s true self begins to collapse. In the trial of Apuleius (second century CE), the author of the Golden Ass, Apuleius is faced with charges including the sorcerous seduction of widows. As evidence, the prosecution highlights various aspects of Apuleius’ comportment, including his long hair and attention given his teeth, in addition to his focus on poetry.82 Parallels here to the changing Cyclops myth such as found in Theocritus and Ovid are clear and notable, recalling the later, subjective-individualist Polyphemus’ long hair, shiny teeth, and his poetic pining for Galatea. Apuleius is also attacked for owning a mirror, purportedly reflecting his extreme interest in his physical appearance. Yet Apuleius’ response is not to deny his mirror ownership or reject the charge itself. Instead, he owns the charge and argues instead that he uses the mirror in a properly philosophical way for insight and Socratic pro-mirroring are written in the late Roman Empire, likely reflecting later cultural understandings instead of Socrates’ original views. 79 Reference Plato’s Carmides, 167c-d: “[There] can be no kind of seeing that would be a seeing of itself”. See discussion in Bartsch, Mirror of the Self, p. 27 and n. 34; see further Annas, Oxford Studies, pp. 134-135. Note the role of vision as mere metaphor for (self-) knowledge in Alcibiades I: see discussion of vision as metaphor in Bartsch, Mirror of the Self, pp. 4749. 80 von Vacano, The Etruscans, p. 8. This attitude persists in the modern world, in modified form, in the persistence in the belief of the ‘evil eye’, and various apotropaic tokens widely available in modern Greece and many other Mediterranean countries used to avert it. 81 E.g., Sextus Empiricus (third century CE), Against the Logicians 310312, in Bury, Sextus Empiricus. 82 Apuleius, Apologia 4.14.

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improvement in his selfhood. Again we can recall how the Cyclops myth increasingly incorporates the ocean-as-mirror as a positive object along with other changes in a subjective-individualist direction. This pro-mirror stance is seemingly at odds with certain Roman views, again suggesting a bifurcation and tension around types of selfhood.83 Yet even Seneca’s negativity about the mirror is paired with his understanding that one’s physical appearance provides real insight into one’s character. Seneca’s “On Clemency” (De Clementia), for instance, proposes that Seneca himself act as a mirror in order to clearly reveal Nero’s personality to him. Seneca’s “On Anger” (De Ira) ties one’s emotional rage to the ugliness of the face, a link we see echoed in the Cyclops stories that soften Polyphemus’ ugliness in tandem with his softening emotions. In the language of my Introduction, it seems that Seneca and Ovid have different understandings of identity – with Seneca seeing the face in negative terms while Ovid’s Cyclops is proud of his image – but similar selfhoods in terms of their shared view of the fundamental relationship between face and inner self. This Senecan view – that although a mirror might reflect vanity and vice more broadly,84 the image itself accurately depicts

Seneca, Naturales Quaestiones I.17.10. Indeed, Shadi Bartsch concludes that the intersection between selfknowledge and the mirrored image actually leads to less insight in the Roman Period, Mirror of the Self, p. 5 and esp. p. 28: “for every invocation of the mirror of self-improvement, many more texts draw attention to the mirror’s implication in luxury, illusion, and even perversion”. I would propose that the prior, philosophical view espoused by Socrates that used the mirror to gain abstract insight based on a self/image split has been replaced by a closer link (or complete overlap) between self and image that has greater potential to produce confusion about one’s inner goodness. For Socrates (and Plato), the inner self is always good and ontologically more real, while the external image is just a means to an end as the body is fundamentally flawed and ontologically secondary; for those in the Roman Period, the image and the self are one and the same, and one cannot so easily disregard an ugly visage, such as that of Socrates himself, who was self- and variously-described as ugly: Theaetetus 143e; Symposium 215a-c, 216c-d, 221d-e; Xenophon’s Symposium 4.19, 5.5–7; and Aristophanes’ Clouds 362. 83 84

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one’s inner self85 – nicely captures the broader Roman understanding of the mirrored image and one’s appearance. While Aristotle articulated the tie between appearance and character, along with scattered references earlier in the Classic Period (recall here the brief and novel description of Polyphemus’ appearance as ugly in Euripides),86 the fundamental link between appearance and character becomes fully articulated and culturally dominant during the Roman Period.87 In the manuscript tradition, for instance, there survives an Arabic translation of the second century rhetor Polemon of Laodicea, who wrote a complete physiological and physiognomic treatise, doubtless based on predecessors.88 By Polemon’s time, an interest in physiognomy had veritably exploded, with discussion in a host of influential authors.89 Suetonius even describes how Augustus himself, on his death bed, had a mirror brought in to have his jaw propped up and hair combed to project his character even into death where only his visage would be visible.90 We can note parallels between emperor and Cyclops (!), with Ovid’s Polyphemus likewise judging it of vital importance to comb his hair. Seneca’s famous story of Hostius Quadra, a licentious Roman who used mirrors extensively in his deviant sexual practices,91 calls attention to the complete overlap between image and self in

So Seneca himself, Naturales Quaestiones I.17.4: “Mirrors were discovered in order that man might know himself”. 86 Prior Analytics 2.27; Generation of Animals IV.3; the pseudo-Aristotelian Physiognomonica, ca. 300 BCE; brief precedents also in Antisthenes and the Hippocratic Corpus. See background discussion in Raina, Pseudo Aristotele: Fisiognomica, esp. the introduction. 87 We see ancient articulations in Diogenes Laertius, Seneca, Quintus Sextius, and Plutarch: see discussion in Bartsch, Mirror of the Self, p. 22 nn. 17-20. 88 See the Latin translation in 1893 by Hoffmann. See discussion and analysis in Swain, Seeing the Face. 89 Evans, “The Study of Physiognomy”, pp. 96-108. Evans discusses not only Polemo, but also Maximus of Tyre, Dio Chrysostom, Lucian Apuleius, Julius Pollux, Phrynichus, Sextus Empiricus, Marcus Aurelius, Plutarch, Artenidorus, Aulus Gellius, Galen, and Clement of Alexandria. 90 Suetonius, Twelve Caesars, Augustus 99. 91 Naturales Quaestiones I.16.2. 85

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this period. Hostius so fully attributed his selfhood to the mirrored image that he completely loses touch with reality.92 Entirely collapsed here is the Platonic distinction between the true self and the external image. By the Roman Period, in other words, the image is the self; one’s appearance is one’s personality; the external both determines and accurately reflects one’s inner selfhood, for better or for worse. This conclusion aligns well with those of Bartsch, who argues that the authentic self in the Roman Period is constructed by the gaze, which is to say, one’s external image. Bartsch similarly sees a turn toward self-reflexivity, embodied by the mirror and one’s reflection, which she sees likewise in Ovid’s visually and emotionally-internally reflective Polyphemus. Ovid’s innovations with respect to Polyphemus’ reflectiveness (both visually and emotionally) exist elsewhere, such as in Ovid’s similarly novel re-telling of the Narcissus story.93 Here, Ovid not only specifically ties the story to self-knowledge,94 but “in Ovid alone, the story of Narcissus has been transformed into a story of coming to know the self, of moving from the naïve Narcissus to the knowing Narcissus”.95 This gaze (of both Polyphemus and Narcissus) is at once objective-participant, embodying external cultural structures of valuation such as about one’s appearance, but is likewise subjectiveindividualist, embodying one’s particular facial features as well as one’s unique inner character. This conclusion also well matches Bartsch’s wider analysis of philosophical developments during the Roman Period. Despite the continued rise in the philosophical importance afforded selfreflexivity in light of the external gaze and communal Ibid, I.16.9: Hostius says that because bringing the magnified images to reality is “not possible, I will feast myself on the illusion”. 93 Met. III.439-40, Narcissus likewise reflects on his appearance, a beautiful object of desire, unrequited longing, and ultimately emotionally suffers as a result, all like Polyphemus. 94 Met. III.407-510; see discussion in Bartsch, Mirror of the Self, p. 85 and n. 85 for useful secondary scholarship on this issue. 95 Bartsch, Mirror of the Self, p. 86, who likewise describes Ovid’s work as containing many “innovations” that are “significant” for their place in the wider socio-cultural understandings of sight, knowledge, and selfhood. 92

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judgments,96 embodying an objective-participant view of selfhood, Bartsch notes especially in Seneca the articulation “of the insignificance of societally driven values and mores”.97 While Seneca continues to deploy the trope of being externally viewed as a useful tool (like Plato), Seneca’s “injunctions on acquiring selfknowledge, then, would usually have us turn away from the assessing gaze of the community at large, and reject the observation and judgment of the community in general as a source of ethical self-shaping”.98 Bartsch concludes that, according to Seneca, “[t]his is the path to proper self-knowledge: self-scrutiny rather than public scrutiny, philosophy rather than the cursus honorum, interiority rather than display”.99 While Seneca still deploys the use of the external gaze as regulatory (a lingering influence of objective-participant selfhood), he has turned away from communal shaping of ethics and self-knowledge typical of a Platonic framework. Seneca has now turned toward personal interiority and his own subjective judgments about what constitutes proper ethics and universal virtue, a clear marker of subjective-individualist selfhood. Crucially, Bartsch finds in Seneca a reason for this shift in his understanding of selfhood, and it arises in the form of political change. Seneca lived and wrote during a period when the Roman Republic fully turned into the Roman Empire. During the latter, Seneca became all too familiar with the dangers and excesses of tyranny, witnessing the increasingly violent regimes of the emperors Tiberius, Caligula, and Nero. It was during Nero’s reign, swept up in the Pisonian conspiracy, that Seneca was forced by the emperor himself, his former student and advisee, to commit suicide.

Strongly present in Seneca (e.g., De Ira 3.36.3-4, 3.1), with prior iterations and influences in a variety of philosophical schools such as “Stoicism, Pythagoreanism, Epicureanism, Skepticism, and even in the way of life of Plato’s Socrates”, Bartsch, Mirror of the Self, p. 193, and subsequent discussion. 97 Bartsch, Mirror of the Self, p. 194, citing Seneca, Ep. 25.16. 98 Ibid, p. 198, emphasis original. 99 Ibid. 96

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This political change toward despotism resulted in a culture of fear and a social sense of moral decline. The so-called “Stoic opposition” sprang up in response to these and other changes, pushing back against perceived political, social, and moral decay.100 Epictetus describes two specific senators with overt ties to Stoicism who explicitly defied the emperor, Quintus Paconius Agrippinus and Helvidius Priscus,101 to which we can add Thrasea Paetus, another Stoic senator whose opposition to Nero resulted in his own forced suicide in 66 CE.102 According to Bartsch, while the importance of the external gaze persisted (i.e., continuing objective-participant selfhood), these political and social developments resulted in “a shift in the locus of the republican regulatory gaze”, as “[l]iving under a tyrant is vividly described in terms of the corruption of the gaze of one’s peers”.103 As a result of political tyranny and the consequently negative exterior social reality, in other words, Seneca’s own locus of selfhood shifts toward subjective-individualism, with “the substitution of a new source of ethical authority (the philosophical self) for the traditional role of the people and the Senate”.104 Seneca’s selfhood becomes, as a result, both objectiveparticipant (the external gaze) and subjective-individualist (internal, philosophical introspection).105 It is not just Seneca and the philosophical opposition to imperial tyranny, however, that speak to a wider shift in ancient Roman cultural values and understandings. Indeed, what we find in Seneca matches what we find in other roughly contemporary accounts, specifically in historians. Keeping in mind the needed Wistrand, “Stoic Opposition to the Principate”, pp. 93-101. Discourses 1.2.12-24. 102 Tacitus, Annals 13.49, 14.12, 14.48, 15.20-22, 16.21-35; Histories 2.91, 4.5; Pliny the Younger, Letters 3.16.10, 6.29.1-2, 8.22.3; Dio Cassius 61.15, 62.26; Juvenal, Satire 5.36. 103 Bartsch, Mirror of the Self, p. 206. 104 Ibid, pp. 207-208. 105 Bartsch, p. 209, calls this a “paradox of Senecan identity”, as the authentic subject is now “ambiguous” due to the tension between the external gaze and the interior reflectivity. I argue that this isn’t so much a paradox as it is a mid-point in selfhood between the objective-participant and the subjective-individualist framework proposed by Gill. 100 101

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caution in attributing objectivity to ancient historians, the ancient narrative is one of social decadence, political corruption, vast and increasing inequality, and civil war.106 Tacitus, a Republican idealist living from 56–117 CE,107 writes that the many civil wars around this time precipitated a mapping of political change onto social sentiment and ethics both: “Practically no one had seen truly Republican government. The country had been transformed, and there was nothing left of the fine old Roman character. Political equality was a thing of the past; all eyes watched for imperial commands.”108 The historian Livy (59 BCE – 17 CE) similarly detects a decline, particularly in the realm of social mores which he attributes to recent historical changes in material conditions: “Recently wealth has brought greed in its train, manifold amusements have led to people’s obsession with ruining themselves and with consuming all else through excess and self-indulgence.”109 Surviving narratives thus speak to a disconnect in Imperial Rome, as the Roman Republic (which flourished during the Hellenistic Age of Theocritus) saw its distinctive intersection of politics, ethics, and aesthetics all fall before the new Imperial-Augustan intersection of these same spheres. The perception of political and social change, in other words, was not limited to Seneca and a few philosophical outliers. Indeed, wider currents of historical

We might consider the late Hellenistic Age’s massive upheavals in these same areas as similarly contributing to Theocritus’ innovations in aesthetics vis-à-vis the Cyclops, and hence selfhood more broadly. Whereas ancient Greek hegemony only continued to disintegrate, however, the Roman Empire saw expansion, dominance, and the pax Romana, which might explain Theocritus’ move toward abandoning the earlier objective-participant selfhood via his emotive interiority, while for those in the Roman Period there seems to have been a re-entrenchment and step back toward admitting of both selfhood influences, objective-participant and subjective-individualist, as with Seneca, Epictetus, and Cicero. 107 Strunk, History after Liberty; for a view contrary to what I’ve asserted here around Tacitus’ Republican idealism, see the Tacitus chapters in Kapust, Republicanism, Rhetoric. 108 Tacitus, “From Augustus to Tiberius”. 109 Livy, The Rise of Rome, p. 4. 106

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change seem to precipitate re-thinking categories such as difference, identity, and ultimately selfhood itself.110

CONCLUSION

There was a convergence of changes around the notion of selfhood in the Roman Period. Selfhood has notably shifted in the retellings of the Cyclops myth in both Virgil and Ovid, two enormously influential authors of that period. Both authors’ works contain notable steps away from the objective-participant understanding of selfhood and toward subjective-individualism. This general selfhood shift also occurs in the philosophical discourse of this time, especially in Seneca but also in other authors such as Epictetus. Such writings reflect clear departures in understanding from Classical Era philosophers, such as Plato, around shared concerns such as sight, reflectiveness, desire, self-reflectiveness, and self-knowledge. Yet Seneca’s writings, as they depart from Plato in the direction of greater subjective-individualist selfhood, still contain elements of objective-participant selfhood. Objective-participant selfhood also notably persists in other roughly contemporary thinkers, such as the earlier Cicero. Thus selfhood in the Roman Empire can be rightly described as containing its own internal selfhood variations and transitions, as befits any historical-cultural period but especially this one with its major upheavals and changes. At the same time, in the large we can view the Roman Empire as something of a mid-point between the Homeric Age, with its fully objective-participant selfhood, and the modern era,

duBois, Centaurs and Amazons. duBois also argues that the Peloponnesian War was this moment of disjunction in the Classical Era, which is where I’ve also located the first moment of changing selfhood in Euripides’ Cyclops. duBois’ wider argument is that these times of disjunction and dislocation produce literary and aesthetic responses, focusing particularly on beasts such as centaurs and amazons who reflect and embody only partial humanity and thus tackle the problem of proper identity. My own argument about changing selfhood meshes in some notable ways with duBois here, as I see historical changes moving hand in hand with changing notions of selfhood as reflected in re-tellings of the Cyclops myth. 110

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which I will argue is fully subjective-individualist. This selfhood mid-point can be seen in Virgil and Ovid, whose texts contain both the objective-participant and the subjective-individualist strands of the Cyclops myth. Indeed, Virgil’s and Ovid’s inclusion of both Cyclops myths reflects an aesthetic tension of self-reflection and reflexivity that is not only itself subjective-individualist but also manifests in the figure of the Cyclops himself as well as the Roman Period’s negotiation of values more broadly. We can map these developments in literature and philosophy onto the contemporary political and social climate. Zanker’s and Bartsch’s work usefully situates changing philosophical views within wider cultural norms pertaining to the public figure and the gaze, as the nature of the public gaze and the subsequent understanding of self-knowledge undergoes a change during the Roman Period. Bartsch attributes this shift in part to the political and social climate, as Imperial Rome’s increasing tyranny in the first century precipitated a change in understandings of where to properly locate knowledge of the self. I find this explanation highly tenable, as we can match Bartsch’s analysis of Seneca’s response to tyranny with ancient, contemporary historians (Tacitus, Livy) who likewise identified intersecting shifts in the era’s politics, cultural understandings, and social values. These findings from philosophers and historians, in turn, well map onto what I discovered in Virgil and Ovid. Such a conclusion suggests that socio-cultural shifts, for example around selfhood, might find similar explanations in other periods, namely around political upheaval, shifting borders, contested identity, social inequality, and changing social mores. Finally, we can seek additional explanation in the role of genre. We saw that Theocritus’ bucolic poetry depicted an emotional, highly subjective-individualist Cyclops, while Homer’s epic depicted a generalized and monstrous, highly objective-participant Cyclops. This same divide in genre conventions certainly applies to Virgil: his account in the bucolic Eclogues is expectedly emotional and subjective-individualist, while his account in his epic, Homeric equivalent Aeneid is expectedly monstrous and objective-participant. What is notable here is that Virgil specifically

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includes both, choosing to reproduce two versions of the Cyclops myth instead of just one. Ovid, meanwhile, is the more interesting case, as in a single work – itself an influentally innovative type of literature – he reproduces both Cyclops types, and therefore includes both selfhood types side by side in adjacent chapters. Whereas Virgil’s genre choices well explain his two Cyclops types, the same cannot quite be said for Ovid. While the two types are still separated and distinct in the Metamorphoses, perhaps upholding to some degree the intersection between Cyclops selfhood types and different types of narrative, Ovid’s novel style shows well the persistence of this new Cyclops and selfhood type despite changes in genres and literary tastes. This conclusion recalls my final words in the previous chapter on Theocritus, reminding us that broader historical changes in selfhood are non-linear and are subject to a vast amount of complexity, nuance, and variation within given periods. This middleground of the Cyclops and selfhood we see in Virgil and Ovid is differently weighted and differently expressed between the two authors, reflecting their different use of genre, their different goals in writing, and their different status in society, to name but a few influential factors. What is more, the fact that both authors strike a balance between the two types of Cyclops and selfhood seems to represent a step back from Theocritus’ strongly but not fully subjective-individualist selfhod toward the more objectiveparticipant selfhood originating with the Homeric account. The general trajectory that this book posits from an ancient, objectiveparticipant selfhood to modern, subjective-individualist selfhood is no continuous line but a broader shift, one subject to substantial variance and negotiation along the way.

ART HISTORY EXCURSUS 1: THE GREEK AND ROMAN CYCLOPS, A SELECTIVE SUMMARY The art historical record,1 at least in what has survived, reflects this same selfhood split we have seen throughout this book, between the sentimental, subjective-individualist Polyphemus pining for Galatea2 and the brutish, objective-participant Cyclops doing violence.3 Previous to the Hellenistic Period, the art on Polyphemus mimicked the Homeric account, depicting the Cyclops as a large, monstrous creature, and focusing on the violence of the blinding episode. Thus proto-Attic, Attic, and Italic vases from the ancient Mediterranean overwhelmingly depict a Homeric Cyclops reflective of this objective-participant type (Figures 1, 2, and 3). Sculpture seems to follow suit, particularly the Tiberian sculpture group at Sperlonga (early first century CE), depicting in detail Odysseus and his crew climbing atop Polyphemus to blind him. See esp. Touchefeu-Meynier, Thèmes odysséens dans l’art antique, pp. 10–41; Idem, “Odysseus,” pp. 943-70, 957–60 for classical Cyclopean imagery. 2 See discussion in Michael Squire, Image and Text in Graeco-Roman Antiquity, esp. chs. 2 (“Towards an older Laocoon?”) and 5 (“Cyclopian iconotexts”). The latter in particular sees Squire exploring the intersection between the textual and visual depictions of the Cyclops myth, ultimately arguing that images and texts of this particular re-telling both do the same kind of work in alluding to but similarly departing from the Homeric story: “visual schemata work as a collective system that might bring to mind, through a process of complementation, expansion and fulfillment, related images, stories and responses”, 325. See further Squire, “Introductory Reflections: Making Sense of Ancient Sight”, pp. 1-35. 3 See images and discussion in Woodford, Images of Myths in Classical Antiquity. 1

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This sculpture group was apparently repeated in the Imperial palaces of Claudius, Nero, and at Hadrian’s Villa.4 His depiction here as a monstrous human is similarly found in a Cyclops head from the Hellenistic Period, perhaps part of a larger sculpture group, focusing on a single eye (Figure 4). While the Sperlonga sculpture group clearly depicts the violent episode from Homer, the Hellenistic Cyclops head could just as easily depict his longing for Galatea, especially given the lack of pained expression one might expect in a blinding episode. Indeed, the Hellenistic Cyclops head well fits that period’s wider artistic shifts, epitomized in Theocritus’ literary depictions that foreground a subjective-individualist Cyclops focusing on realism and human emotion. Post-Classical art parallels more concretely the shift from the Homeric, violent Polyphemus (objective-participant selfhood) to the more sentimental, Galatea-pining Polyphemus (subjective-individualist selfhood) that we see in the literary record. From the Hellenistic Period on (perhaps beginning with the Hellenistic Cyclops sculpture head, pictured here, that doesn’t seem to evince violence), art on Polyphemus tracks the Theocritean version, with a subjective-individualist Cyclops defined less by brutish violence and monstrous size, and more by his emotional pining for Galatea.5 A variety of frescos and mosaics from the first century BCE onward depict a bucolic Polyphemus, engaging in Theocritean activity such as playing pan-pipes or interacting with Galatea in a variety of ways such as wooing, receiving a message, or embracing (Figure 5). Even in occasional depictions that more closely track Homer’s version than Theocritus’,6 we see a de-emphasis on violence and a Carey, “A Tradition of Adventures in the Imperial Grotto”, pp. 44-61. Cf. the account of Philostratus the Elder, who seems to be describing a painting along these lines, Imagines 2.18. 6 An important strand of scholarship argues that early Greek art neither illustrated nor specifically reflected the Homeric story. See in particular Snodgrass, Homer and the Artists: Text and Picture in Early Greek Art, which builds on and expands Cook, “Art and Epic in Ancient Greece”, pp. 1-10, esp. 5: “there is little or no evidence that artists in this period [Homeric, early/pre-Classical] knew the Iliad and the Odyssey themselves”. These intriguing arguments notwithstanding, both these early artistic depictions and Homer’s story share an understanding of the Cyclops as a monstrous, violent brute. 4 5

ART HISTORY EXCURSUS 1. GREEK AND ROMAN CYCLOPS 137 depiction of the Cyclops as largely human-like. Indeed, the artists of the Hellenistic and Roman Periods have taken pains to specify the number of eyes (which can widely vary), and many of our surviving examples show the bucolic Polyphemus in acts of love and/or courtship, and engaged in civilized behavior. These periods’ artistic interest in the episode has moved away from wild, monstrous violence, tracking the literary shift from objective-participant to subjective-individualist selfhood.

Figure 1. Black-figured neck-amphora, attributed to Polyphemos Group (circa 520 BCE). Chalcidian, Italy. The British Museum, London.

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Figure 2. Red-figured calyx-krater, attributed to Cyclops Painter (circa 420-410 BCE). Lucania, Greece. The British Museum, London.

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Figure 3. Black-figured oinochoe, attributed to The Painter of Vatican G49 (circa 500-490 BCE). Attica, Fikellura grave 10. The British Museum, London.

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Figure 4. Sculpture of stone, Dolomitic marble from Greek island of Thasos (circa 150 BCE or later). Greek or Roman. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

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Figure 5. Wall painting: Polyphemus and Galatea in a landscape, Fresco, from the imperial villa of Agrippa Postumus at Boscotrecase, near Pompeii (last decade of 1st century BCE). The Met, New York.

CHAPTER FIVE. THE POST-CLASSICAL WORLD AND THE MIDDLE AGES THE CHRISTIAN AND (NEO-)PLATONIC CYCLOPS OF MORALITY, I NTERNALITY, AND A BSTRACTION

The post-Roman world can be defined roughly from Late Antiquity through the late Middle Ages, approximately 5th-16th centuries CE.1 This is a significantly wider scope than undertaken for the previous chapters. Partly this breadth stems from the difficulty and inconclusiveness around defining periods after the fall of the Roman Empire, with historical demarcations possible by region, culture, or military/religious conquest, among others. With so much disagreement and doubt about narrower periodization, a broader scope provides a productive way forward. Additionally, however, this chapter’s wide scope reflects my view that we can detect distinctive trends developed and held in generally common ways across this time, particularly across western and central Europe as the locus of the Cyclops myth shifts away from the Mediterranean. Indeed, my findings of commonalities across these re-tellings of the Cyclops myth mesh with other studies of the Middle Ages, which have shown that this lengthy periodization of around a thousand years is justified by the identifiable continuities – mutatis mutandis – in understandings, values, and emotionality that fundamentally prefigured modern A useful starting point is Bowerstock, Brown, and Grabar, Late Antiquity, which only covers the period from 250-800 CE. The touchstone here is Brown, World of Late Antiquity. 1

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thought.2 So while other divisions of the post-Roman world are undoubtedly defensible,3 it is both useful and justifiable to group together all these texts as I do here to demonstrate their mutual shifts around the Cyclops myth and selfhood. Finally, while I suspect that further parallels could be found in the Middle East and West Asia,4 for the sake of focus I largely exclude consideration of that material. The 5th-16th centuries saw tremendous change in the West across a whole host of areas, and its expression of selfhood was no different. Religiously, the early Middle Ages was characterized by an increasingly individualized view of the self, one’s individual personality, and one’s relationship with god(s).5 Legally, the state comes to increasingly recognize and regulate individuality in terms of religion.6 Socially, we see in the Medieval Era gradual developments away from Roman imperial culture and a movement toward “emotional communities”, namely smaller groupings of society and culture that defined emotions, values, and

Colish, Medieval Foundations. In Colish’s view, the Middle Ages is distinct from Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian thought, with “distinctively medieval qualities” which “produced institutions and attitudes, ways of dealing with their sources and their own new ideas that emerge as distinctively western and that connect the Middle Ages with subsequent chapters of European intellectual history”, xi. Colish’s book identifies several aspects of medieval culture that notably prefigured modern notions of individualism, such as around personal religion, localized-nationalist sentiment that trended away from universalism, and private law: see “Conclusion”, for a summary of her findings which encompass trends of continuity alongside “diversity, inconsistency, and contradiction”, p. 359. 3 Colish, for instance, sees the Middle Ages as one lengthy period with notable continuities, but also substantial diversity and internal differences, such as the periods of the “early Middle Ages” from the late Roman empire through the 11th century, and the “high Middle Ages in the Renaissance of the twelfth century and its educational reforms”, p. xii. 4 Al-Farabi in particular seems to have potential: Riggs, “Elements of the Authentic Self”, pp. 61-80; Idem, “The Authentic Self”. 5 Rebillard and Rüpke, Group Identity; Brakke et al, Religion and the Self; Brown, “The Rise and Function of the Holy Man”, pp. 80-101. 6 Noethlichs, “The Legal Framework”. 2

CHAPTER FIVE. POST-CLASSICAL WORLD, MIDDLE AGES 145 understandings.7 Culturally, Roman mores such as around interpersonal desire eventually gave way to increasingly modern understandings of romance. Intellectually, we see the increased importance of Platonic, Neoplatonic, and Christian thought, all of which strongly influenced re-tellings of the Cyclops myth and selfhood both. While selfhood in the post-Roman Period still remained partially structured in an objective-participant way, developments in society, culture, and intellectual focus gave way to an increasingly individualized, internal, abstract, and personalitybased view of the self in a clear forerunner to the modern world’s fully subjective-individualist articulation.8 By way of example, we can note the act of confession as a central Christian practice beginning gradually from the seventh century onward. More broadly, we even might say that the remaining social structuring that occurred in these medieval “emotional communities” was of a subjective-individualist type.9 The stories of the Cyclops Polyphemus during the Middle Ages reflect and encapsulate these wider cultural-historical trends, just as they did during previous periods. Broadly speaking, we see Homer’s account largely drop away, with the sentimental, romantic Cyclops becoming predominant, largely on the transmission of Theocritus, Virgil, and Ovid. This sentimental, romantic Cyclops, in turn, becomes the subject of further innovations that focus on individual personality, intellection, rationality, and internal morality. These innovations are strongly subjective-

Rosenwein, Emotional Communities. It should be noted, though, that Rosenwein’s view is far from unequivocal among medievalists, especially around the notion that the medieval period involved any substantial change from previous historical-cultural eras. 8 See the ongoing work of the research group “Religious individualization in historical perspective”, supervised by Joas and Rüpke: https://www.uni-erfurt.de/fileadmin/user-docs/Kollegforschergruppe/Proposal_kfg_engl.pdf. 9 Jaeger, Origins of Courtliness. Jaeger has influentially argued that particular social communities, specifically medieval courts of the 10th and 11th centuries, created new emotional and behavioral norms around civility, thereby bridging the objective-participant and the subjective-individualist. 7

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individualist, and in my view (here perhaps in departure from Gill)10 are direct precursors to a modern, fully subjective-individualist selfhood. There is no full-scale retelling of the Cyclops myth in this period until quite late. However, we do have a host of sources that mention the Cyclops periodically from the 5th century onward, sufficient to paint a wider picture of the notable changes in this myth.11 These sources from the early Middle Ages are different from the fully articulated stories of the Cyclops we’ve seen before. Many of this period’s sources come from scholiasts and scholastics, collectors and transmitters of earlier texts who wrote their own notes on the stories, sometimes in the very margins of the manuscripts they used, copied, and distributed. By the late Middle Ages, these manuscript scholiasts give way to the early European humanists, learned scholars who retold in greater length and detail the stories of Greek and Roman past. Nonnus of Panopolis

Our first account comes courtesy of Nonnus of Panopolis, a poet living in Hellenized Egypt about whom little is known.12 Writing in the late fourth or early fifth century CE, Nonnus is an early bridge between the Roman Empire and the periods that followed. Nonnus has been the subject of increasing popularity for this very reason, as scholars have analyzed his role in bridging Christian Recalling my discussion in the Introduction, I see such stresses as embodying an internal selfhood I define as subjective-individualist; Gill would likely argue that personality, intellection, rationality, and morality are all possible within an objective-participant framework, but that they are constituted and defined externally in the pre-modern world. Diverging from Gill here, I see the focus on one’s inner characteristics in these medieval Cyclops stories to show a clear shift from the Cyclops of ancient Greece and Rome, which presages the fully inner selfhood focus of modernity’s subjective-individualism. 11 A useful starting point is Friedman, Monstrous Races. More recently, see the work of Cohen, Hybridity, Identity and Cohen, Of Giants. 12 Fornaro, “Nonnus”, 812-815; Livrea, “Il poeta e il vescovo”, pp. 97123; Piccardi, “Nonno e l’Egitto”, pp. 61-82 and 161-81; Cameron, “The Poet, the Bishop, and the Harlot”, pp. 81-90. For ancient sources see Scholasticus, Hist. 4.23, and the epigram in Palatine Anthology, 9.198. 10

CHAPTER FIVE. POST-CLASSICAL WORLD, MIDDLE AGES 147 and non-Christian texts in Late Antiquity.13 Two of Nonnus’ works survive, the Metabole,14 which re-tells the Gospel of John from the Christian New Testament, and the Dionysiaca.15 Nonnus’ Dionysiaca is an epic and lengthy poem written in Greek, which at over 20,000 lines in 48 books makes it the longest surviving poem from antiquity.16 Written in both Homeric dialect and dactylic hexameter, it describes the life and travels of the Greek god Dionysus, collecting and re-telling a host of earlier myths that would have been otherwise lost. It drew widely from the epic poets, especially Homer and Hesiod but also other Archaic poets, the so-called “cyclic poets” who wrote epics on the “cycle” of the Trojan War and whose texts mostly don’t survive.17 The Dionysiaca also drew extensively from Euripides, Theocritus, Virgil, and Ovid, among many others.18 Given Nonnus’ wide exposure to the full breadth of variations in the Cyclops myth in these earlier sources, as well as probably other sources that haven’t survived, his choices and changes around the Cyclops myth should be notable. We saw in the Roman Period that authors could choose between the Homeric/Euripidean savage Cyclops and the Theocritan emotional Cyclops, and that the choices of Virgil and Ovid reflected a tension in both the dual strands of myth and their corresponding dual strands of selfhood. Here in the post-Roman world we find a similar question of which Cyclops myths and versions of selfhood would persist, as well as which forces in the wider cultural-historical context might explain these changes to the myth.

A few selections: Shorrock, Myth of Paganism; Spanoudakis, Nonnus of Panopolis; Accorinti, Brill’s Companion. 14 Properly, Metabolē tou kata Iōannēn Euaggeliou. For modern translation, see Prost, Nonnos of Panopolis, The Paraphrase of the Gospel of John; there are also a host of translations in Italian of Nonnus’ work, book by book, grouped under the umbrella title Nonno di Panopoli, Parafrasi del Vangelo di S. Giovanni. 15 Rouse, with Rose and Lind, Nonnos, Dionysiaca; Maletta and Tissoni, Nonno di Panopoli, Le Dionisiache. 16 For introduction and discussion, see Hopkinson, Studies in Dionysiaca. 17 West, Greek Epic Fragments. 18 Fornaro, “Nonnus”. 13

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The Dionysiaca’s treatment of Polyphemus occurs across its many books with brief references, as often the Cyclops is mentioned by his lover the sea-nymph Galatea but doesn’t appear directly.19 Nonnus mostly picks up the Theocritan version, also in parts of Virgil and Ovid, through the description of the love affair between Galatea and Polyphemus. Nonnus’ first reference has the god Pan asking Galatea if she is seeking the “love-song of the Cyclops”, calling him “your Polyphemus” and later telling her to “leave your Polyphemus, the laggard” (6.300-17). This recalls Theocritus’ language but also clearly implies – unlike the accounts of Theocritus, Virgil, or Ovid – that Galatea and Polyphemus are romantically linked. Galatea answers that while she is familiar with “the song of the Cyclops”, even “though it is sweet” she claims to “care nothing for Polyphemus” (6.318-24). We again see the Theocritan version of Polyphemus as an emotional romantic whom Galatea claims, here at least, not to love. Nonnus later describes fierce battles between gods and various other figures where other Cyclopes make an appearance (14.52-67). Polyphemus is notably absent, which is attributed to his pining for Galatea: One alone was left behind from the war, Polyphemos, tall as the clouds, so mighty and so great, the Earth-shaker’s own son; he was kept in his place by another love, dearer than war, under the water ways, for he had seen Galateia half-hidden, and made the neighbouring sea resound as he poured out his love for a maiden in the wooing tones of his pipes.

Nonnus has presented the other Cyclopes in the framework of Hesiod and other cyclic poets (see also 28.255f. and 39.271-83 for similar framing), but the myth of this specific Cyclops Polyphemus has fully bifurcated, separating off into the emotional, subjective-individualist account found in Theocritus. This Polyphemus is described in terms of his height, is bound by love, and pours out his emotional desire through individual artistry.

Simon (1999), p. 84, collects all the Galatea/Polyphemus references. See especially 6.302-317, 6.319-324, 14.52-67, 28.225, 39.260-261 (and ff., through 283 at least), 40.555, 43.264-267, 43.390-393. 19

CHAPTER FIVE. POST-CLASSICAL WORLD, MIDDLE AGES 149 Nonnus eventually states clearly that Polyphemus is romantically linked with Galatea, and furthermore that she shares his desire and emotional connection (39.257-66): Galatea too came from the depths and moved half visible through the bosom of the deep sea, wrinkling the calm surface, and looking upon the sea-affrighting battle of murderous Cyclops she was shaken, and her cheeks changed colour from fear, for she thought she saw Polyphemos fighting for Lyaios against Deriades in this Indian War; and in dismay she besought Apohrodite of the sea to protect the heroic son of Poseidon, and she prayed the loving father Seabluehair to defend his son Polyphemos in battle.

Galatea witnesses these Hesiodic, titanic battles and so fears that Polyphemus is involved that she begs Aphrodite and his father Poseidon to help him. Galatea’s physical appearance is described in tandem with her emotional state, a subjective-individualist link familiar from Theocritus, as she so cares for Polyphemus that her fear changes the pallor of her skin. Nonnus later states that “Galatea has desire for melodious [melizomenou] Polyphemos; the deepsea maiden has a husband from the land, she migrates from sea to land, enchanted by the lute” (40.553-557). Here, Galatea has been successfully enchanted by his aesthetic gifts, so much so that Nonnus even describes them as husband and wife, a notable innovation in the myth. Furthermore, in describing Polyphemus as a “husband”, he seems to lose much of his monstrousness, no longer a savage beast but someone who has consummated his love. Nonnus gives two final mentions of Polyphemus, first when “Galatea [was] lifting the club of her lovesick Polyphemos” (43.264-7). Polyphemus is not only described as “lovesick” (duserōtos), a description of his emotional interiority, but it is implied that Galatea shares his love through the use of his club. Shortly thereafter, Galatea is said to sing at Poseidon and Beroë’s wedding as a result of Polyphemus’ tutelage: “Galateia twangled a marriage dance and restlessly twirled in capering step, and she sang the marriage verses, for she had learnt well how to sing, being taught by Polyphemos with a shepherd’s syrinx” (43.3903).

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In nearly all of these passages, Nonnus describes Polyphemus and Galatea as defined by their relationship, which is mostly one of desire, emotion, and reciprocal romantic love. Furthermore, at long last the love between Polyphemus and Galatea seems to have been consummated. This reciprocal, romantic love and consummation replaces the sterile pining of Theocritus, Virgil, and Ovid, which I argued showed an underdeveloped notion of love relative to modern romantic selfhood. Nonnus’ actualization of these subjective desires, in turn, stands much more in line with modern, romantic thinking. This is, in short, a development on the Theocritan Polyphemus, with all of its emotional, internal, subjective-individualist leanings. What is more, Nonnus has gone one step further in his development of Galatea’s reciprocal emotions and the consummation of their love, depicting the fulfillment of their subjective desires in a manner more akin to modern romance and therefore subjective-individualistic selfhood. That it is the romantic, emotional Cyclops which has persisted and expanded is significant, suggesting that the mixed selfhood of the Roman Empire is giving way, in Late Antiquity, to a more definitively subjective-individualist selfhood. Indeed, this view of the myth seems to have persisted, with one later account even describing the offspring of Polyphemus and Galateia, their son Galatos.20 As we will see in the remainder of this chapter, this type of Cyclops and therefore selfhood becomes increasingly the norm, with further innovations additionally pointing in that same direction. Scholars and Scholiasts of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages: Fulgentius, Boethius, Remigius, K and T Revisers, St. Gall glosses, and the Second Vatican Mythographer

With the post-Classical world comes an increasing focus on scholastic culture, with groups of learned elite – in religious contexts such as monastic and cathedral schools but also importantly in the context of royal courts – continuing to look back to classical

20

Etymologicum Magnum, 1150 CE.

CHAPTER FIVE. POST-CLASSICAL WORLD, MIDDLE AGES 151 myths in light of a changed world.21 Along with scholastic culture came scribes and their marginal notes called “scholia” that accompanied manuscript copying and transmission.22 In these scholia glosses, sometimes by authors who were notable thinkers in their own right, we can detect ways that this later cultural period understood, responded to, and self-reflected on earlier myths and cultural frameworks. The Cyclops myth continues to appear throughout this time, with different emphases and additions found in a variety of influential scholars and scholiasts: Fulgentius, Boethius, Remigius, the Second Vatican Mythographer, several other anonymous but significant revision traditions, and Bernardus. Each of these authors in different ways continues to depict the Cyclops in a more subjective-individualist direction, especially in their novel emphases on individual personality, abstract and rational intellection, and internal morality. Fabius Planciades Fulgentius, known as Fulgentius, was an author writing in Latin in the 5th-6th century CE, perhaps in north Africa, about whom we know little.23 Fulgentius is mostly known as a mythographer, with his major work Mythologiae (“Mythologies”) interpreting a host of classical myths allegorically. This allegorical interpretation was applied to Virgil in a work titled The Exposition of the Content of Virgil According to Moral Philosophy, or more simply, On the Content of Virgil. In the work, the shade of Virgil comes to the author in what seems to be a scribal setting, and explains the entirety of the Aeneid allegorically, likely drawing from earlier, similar interpretations. Fulgentius’ wholesale allegorical interpretation of classical myth subsequently became hugely influential in the Middle Ages. The use of allegory allowed the myths to be re-understood and redescribed in a period with increasingly changed values, ranging from Hellenic myths reworked in a Christian framework to the re-

A few starting points around different periods: on Late Antiquity, Garipanov, Graphic Signs; on medieval England, Bryan, Collaborative Meaning; for late medieval, Rouse and Rouse, Authentic Witnesses. 22 A recent starting point: Wissa, Scribal Practices. 23 Whitbread, Fulgentius the Mythographer; Hays, “The Date and Identity”, pp. 163-252; Wolff, Fulgence. 21

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framing of the Cyclops myth in a different paradigm of selfhood reflecting Neoplatonic influences. On the Content of Virgil contains, for the first time, a completely allegorical reading of the Cyclops based around his single eye. Fulgentius describes Virgil’s story of Achaemenides and the Cyclops in this way:24 The Cyclops is said to have one eye in its forehead because this wildness of youth takes neither a full nor a rational view of things, and the whole period of youth is roused to a pride like that of the Cyclops. So with the one eye in the head that sees and comprehends nothing but vanity. This is what the most wise Ulysses extinguishes: vainglory is blinded by the fire of the intellect. So I named him Polyphemus, as it were, apolunta femen, which in Latin we call loss of reputation. The blindness of adolescence follows youth’s pride and indifference to reputation.

Fulgentius interprets the Cyclops with his single eye as embodying the following qualities: “wildness of youth”, a “non-rational view of things”, “pride”, and “vanity”. The “loss of reputation”, which seems reminiscent of an honor/shame culture exemplified in Homer, is here rendered differently, in personal, intellectual terms. The Cyclops’ problem is not that he is motivated by anger and impiety that overcome social obligations, as in Homer. Rather, the Cyclops’ problem is pride, indifference, and lack of rationality. For Fulgentius and the scholiasts following him, Polyphemus and Odysseus (“Ulysses” in Fulgentius’ Latin) are no longer read in terms of their public behavior (Homer) or even their emotionality (Theocritus), but rather in terms of interior qualities of individual personality, intellection, rationality and moral temperament such as rationality, pride, vanity, recklessness, and indifference. Once again the Cyclops is presented as the foil to Odysseus, and once again the framework of values has shifted in a subjective-individualist direction. Fulgentius’ Cyclops thus contains two key changes from prior versions of the myth. First, Fulgentius’ Cyclops is now described nearly entirely in terms of his single eye. As noted in 24

Fulgentius, Content of Virgil, p. 15.

CHAPTER FIVE. POST-CLASSICAL WORLD, MIDDLE AGES 153 previous chapters, this move toward defining an individual by their unique facial features is reflective of an individualist-subjective selfhood framework. In Fulgentius we see exactly this, with the Cyclops solely defined by this one, distinctive facial feature. Objective-participant qualities such as his lineage are now entirely absent. Second, Fulgentius’ Cyclops is critiqued, as in previous myths, but here he is critiqued on the basis of his individual and interior qualities of personality, intellection, and moral temperament. This type of description moves even further beyond the emotionality we found in accounts such as Theocritus, Virgil, and Ovid. Instead of being defined by emotion (Theocritus), we have personal, interior qualities that are much more substantial and individually unique as compared to emotions. We also see a privileging of the rational mind as distinctively descriptive. To briefly look ahead, the privileging of the rational mind (in contrast to one’s emotions) as the locus of selfhood is a distinctly modern notion, popularized by René Descartes and his Cartesian dualism of mind versus body. Fulgentius’ description of the Cyclops contains this very shift toward a mind-based, subjective-individualized selfhood even more so than Theocritus’ emotionality. This understanding of the Cyclops as defined by his personality traits, intellect, rationality, and interior moral qualities increasingly becomes the norm. We see a somewhat similar account in the Roman philosopher and politician known as Boethius, writing in the 5th-6th century CE and described by Dante as “the last of the Romans and the first of the scholastics”.25 Boethius’ work, The Consolation of Philosophy (in Latin, De consolatione philosophiae) is a book whose colossal importance, influence, and popularity in the later medieval period is difficult to overstate.26 The Consolation provided a sprawling, learned engagement with a vast body of classical thought, and was widely translated and studied

Dante, Divine Comedy. The major touchstone here is Courcelle, La Consolation de Philosophie, with a host of other translations in the last couple decades. A more recent collection that rethinks some key areas of the field: Hoenen and Nauta, Boethius in the Middle Ages. 25 26

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across regions, languages, time periods, and types of readers.27 Written as Boethius was awaiting trial and eventual execution after a treacherous betrayal at the court of Ravenna, the Consolation describes Boethius in a type of Platonic dialogue with “Lady Philosophy”, and engages themes ranging from Neoplatonic knowledge to the Christian problem of evil. Boethius understood the story of the Cyclops as turning on the hero’s morality, a clear echo of Fulgentius’ interior reading. In Song VII of the Consolation, “The Hero’s Path”, Boethius describes Polyphemus:28 When by the cavern’s glimmering light, His comrades dear Odysseus saw In the huge Cyclops’ hideous maw Engulfed, he wept the piteous sight. But blinded soon, and wild with pain— In bitter tears and sore annoy— For that foul feast’s unholy joy Grim Polyphemus paid again.

The first part of this description is decidedly Homeric: Polyphemus is “huge”, with a “hideous maw”, and is soon blinded and “wild with pain”. Boethius then shifts to describe Polyphemus’ emotional response: he wept “bitter tears” and was “sorely annoyed” at his punishment for trying to make Odysseus his “foul feast’s unholy joy”. For Boethius, the description of Polyphemus is brief, lacking mention of the single eye but mentioning Polyphemus’ emotional state. In this way, Boethius’ account seems similar to Virgil and Ovid, containing earlier strands of both types of myth (Homer/Euripides and Theocritus) and hence both types of selfhood, holding them all together. Song VII of the Consolation, however, moves beyond this negotiated tension between myth and selfhood types. In Boethius’ account, what is at stake are the rewards of the intellect and soul, which are meant to rise above and beyond the earth. The hero, in Boethius, gains neither goods (as in Homer) nor emotional A sample of its notable readers across history: Alfred the Great, Chaucer, Queen Elizabeth I, Dante, Gibbon, and C.S. Lewis. 28 Trans. James, Consolation of Philosophy 27

CHAPTER FIVE. POST-CLASSICAL WORLD, MIDDLE AGES 155 happiness (as in Theocritus), but rather “heaven’s high glory” which is opposed to “Earth’s conflict”. The major threats on earth are internal qualities of personality, namely “cowardice” and “sloth”, which impede one’s intellection and divine progress. For Boethius as with previous authors, the Cyclops is opposed to the hero, but the framework of opposition is now constituted of the intellect, the soul, and one’s internal, moral qualities. Such intellectualizing metaphors, strongly indicative of a subjective-individualized selfhood and reflective of both Christian and Neo/Platonic influence, would be widely picked up in the later manuscript-scholiast tradition. A crucial link in this manuscript-scholiast tradition was Remigius of Auxerre, a Benedictine monk who lived mostly during the 9th century in France. Remigius wrote at the end of the Carolingian Period, a dynastic era coinciding with a revival in classical studies stimulated by Charlemagne (ruling 800-814 CE) and continued by a series of subsequent rulers such as Charles the Bald.29 Indeed, this period’s renewed imperial focus might suggest that the revival of classical studies could be understood simply as the codification and centralization of classical learning occurring throughout the period, as seems likely. Remigius played an essential role during this time in bridging earlier thinkers with the later medieval period. He collated a host of earlier and contemporary commentaries on Greek texts, such as by Boethius,30 and widely transmitted a variety of sources to later monks, copyists, scholars, and thinkers.31 He had a deep knowledge of both classical thought and the nature of manuscript transmission, and his scribal copies are filled with learned Some useful starting points: Trompf, “The Concept of the Carolingian Renaissance”, pp. 3–26; Nelson, “On the Limits of the Carolingian Renaissance”; Colish, Medieval Foundations, ch. 6. 30 Gibson, “Boethius in the Carolingian Schools”, pp. 43–56; Love, “The Latin Commentaries”; Stewart, “A Commentary by Remigius Autissiodorensis”, pp. 22-42; Bolton, “Remigian Commentaries”, pp. 381-94. 31 Lutz, Remigii Autissiodorensis commentum in Martianum Capellam. On the difficulty in extracting different voices in the manuscript transmission, see Discenza and Szarmach, Companion to Alfred the Great, esp. pp. 89-94 in response to Courcelle’s work on Boethius’ Consolation, noted above. 29

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commentaries and glosses written in the texts’ margins. These marginal notes, known as “glosses”, “scholia”, or “marginalia”,32 allow us to see in a very direct way the later understandings and reflections of those who were copying texts such as Virgil, Boethius, or even Boethius’ commentary on Virgil. Remigius understood Odysseus as a learned philosopher who exemplified cunning and wisdom, thereby fully articulating an understanding based on personality traits, rationality, intellection, and internal moral qualities. In a gloss on Boethius’ Consolation, Remigius makes explicit Boethius’ moral opposition between Odysseus and Polyphemus: Odysseus is described as moral and heaven-seeking, whereas Polyphemus is described as immoral and representing the earth.33 We have yet another oppositional framework between hero and Cyclops, and much like Boethius here the framework is entirely described in terms of intellectual abstraction, one’s soul, and internal moral qualities. Absent are the qualities of objective-participant goods, a partly subjective-individualist gaze, or the more strongly subjective-individualist emotional framework. Remigius’ selfhood is fully that of anti-materialist intellection. In a major innovation, however, Remigius also saw the Cyclops in a potentially positive light. Remigius specifically notes Polyphemus’ one eye, continuing the subjective-individualist importance of unique facial features. But Remigius then claims that this specific facial feature might actually make Polyphemus “most prudent”.34 This is because, Remigius reasons, the single eye turns the focus to the head – according to the philosophical understanding at the time, the head was the seat of intellectual and rational wisdom – instead of the flawed senses.35 This line of argument seems to have sprung from Remigius’ Platonic and Neoplatonic sympathies, which focused on internal intellection. As primarily late antique philosophical developments, such views represent a

Jackson, Marginalia. Consolatio 4 m7, lines 32-34. 34 Ibid. 35 Lutz, Remigii Autissiodorensis. 32 33

CHAPTER FIVE. POST-CLASSICAL WORLD, MIDDLE AGES 157 major break from philosophical traditions of an earlier age.36 Concurrent developments in philosophical thought, in other words, influenced Remigius’ view of the Cyclops and the self, much as we saw during the Roman Period. This symbolic understanding of the Cyclops in terms of his personality traits and internal, individual intellect was popular. Indeed, it became the dominant reading of Boethius.37 We have evidence of other scholiast traditions where brief marginal glosses also use Odysseus as an exemplar of abstract, intellectualized wisdom over and against Polyphemus’ rashness, pride, and pleasure.38 Centuries after Remigius, this occurred notably in William of Conches, a brilliant scholar of the twelfth century from the School of Chartres in France.39 William “took over some glosses from a version of the commentary of Remigius of Auxerre and made them the basis of his own” fuller commentary, which in turn had wide influence among other learned, scholarly circles in medieval Europe.40 William’s own Platonic influences continued the period’s increasing focus around abstraction, intellection, rationality, and internal personality traits. Some scholiasts closely followed this positive, symbolic reading. We see such evidence in the K and T Revisers, for example, Marenbon, From the Circle of Alcuin. Neoplatonic selfhood itself underwent some significant developments during Late Antiquity and into the Middle Ages: Riggs, “Authentic Selfhood in the Philosophy of Proclus”, pp. 177-204. This Neoplatonic notion of the ‘authentic self’ made its way into the Arabic (and thus early European medieval) philosophical tradition via Al-Farabi: Riggs, “Elements of the Authentic Self”, pp. 61-80; Idem, “The Authentic Self”. 37 Jeudy, “Remigii autissiodorensis opera (Clavis)”, pp. 457-500, esp. pp. 485-488; Wittig, “The ‘Remigian’ Glosses”, pp. 168-200; Gibson, Boethius in the Tenth Century, esp. p. 123. 38 Consolatio 4 m7: “Poliphemus interpretatur ‘perdens famam’ et ponitur pro puerile superbia quia nichil de fama sed de voluptate est curiosa”; see discussion in Chance, p. 408. For discussion of the tradition of Latin scholia on Boethius, see Love, “Latin Commentaries”, pp. 82-110, noting traditions such as St. Gall, Stiftsbibliothek 844 (G), discussed further below; see also Nauta, “The Consolation”. 39 Nauta, Guillelmi; Nauta, William of Conches. 40 Minnis and Nauta, “More Platonico loquitur”, pp. 1-34, 6 and discussion following, drawing from Stewart, Bolton, and Gibson, among others. 36

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which are names for anonymous but notable strands in the Carolingian manuscript tradition containing Boethius’ Consolation.41 The K Reviser and the St. Gall Major glosses, other similarly anonymous but important manuscript scholia traditions, likewise followed Fulgentius,42 interpreting the Cyclops metaphorically as a young, rash man representing (external) earthly attachment whom Odysseus overcomes through his (internal) spiritual, intellectual heroism.43 This reading’s influence continues in later, more well-known authors writing on the tradition, such as Bernardus Silvestris, Erasmus, and even Spenser.44 Throughout, we see an opposition based on intellection and individual personality traits, both paradigmatic features of a subjective-individualist selfhood. The St. Gall Minor manuscript tradition even adds the specific description of a “Cyclops having one eye in the front”, continuing the descriptive focus on the Cyclops’ single eye seen in earlier periods, while other elements of the Cyclops, such as his monstrousness, disappeared or became abstracted and intellectualized.45 Finally, we see the same in the Second Vatican Mythographer (11th century?), so named because it was one of seemingly three anonymous authors who wrote an important collection of mythography that survive together in a single manuscript at the Vatican.46 The Second Vatican Mythographer specifically names a single eye, adds a layer of physiological description, and even Bolton, “The Study of the Consolation”, pp. 33-78. See response to Bolton in Godden and Jayatilaka, “Counting the Heads of the Hydra”, esp. pp. 363-376. 42 Kaczynski, Greek in the Carolingian Age; Bach, Die althochdeutschen; Courcelle, pp. 403-404. The St. Gall manuscript collection is available digitally: St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/list/csg. 43 See discussion in Chance, Medieval Mythography, esp. pp. 218-233. 44 Silvestris, On Virgil’s Aeneid 3; Erasmus, Adagia 1.10.69; Spenser, Fairie Queene 4.5.20. See discussion in Brumble, Classical Myths, p. 88. 45 Consolation 4 m7; Naples MS 77r. 46 Pepin, The Vatican Mythographers; Kulcsár, Mythographi Vaticani I et II; Elliott and Elder, “Critical Edition of the Vatican Mythographers”, pp. 189–207. The manuscript: Vatican Reg. lat. 1401; the Second and Third Mythographers have additional attestations external to this single manuscript. 41

CHAPTER FIVE. POST-CLASSICAL WORLD, MIDDLE AGES 159 specifies, in an echo of Remigius, that this single eye made the Cyclops a “most prudent man” (vir prudentissimus).47 We see the full articulation here of maintaining the Cyclops’ notable physical characteristic, a single eye, while mapping this feature against considerations that are internal, intellectual, and personalitybased, all while entirely passing over the Cyclops’ previous monstrosity in both appearance and behavior.48 This particular type of description – physically detailing the eye in particular while focusing on the Cyclops’ personality, morality, and rational/intellectual character – is one that would extend all the way through modernity. Late Medieval Folktales and Story Collections

Later medieval works engaging with the Cyclops myth, though frequently written in secular contexts and often in the vernacular, reflect these same shifts in the Cyclops myth and hence selfhood through their emphases on personality traits, rational abstraction, and intellection. Such works either continue the Neoplatonic, intellectualizing aspects we saw in many of the medieval scholars, or reach back to the ancient world to reproduce an account in line with Theocritus’ emotional, sentimental Cyclops. The Homeric, objective-participant Cyclops has almost fully receded. A notable re-telling comes in the Merugud Uilix Meic Leirtis (“The Wandering of Ulixes son of Laertes”), an Irish epic folktale written down perhaps in the 13th century. Known as the “Irish Odyssey”, it re-tells the Cyclops myth through a mix of ancient Greek sources and more recent folklore, now at a huge remove in time and geography from ancient Greece.49 The Merugud tells the The Mythographer adds this physiological explanation: “quia perspicatius prudential quam corporeo intuit cernere videbatur”; see discussion in Chance, p. 339. 48 We see this as their sole characteristic when briefly mentioned in the 9th century Liber Monstrorum, as unum monoculum. See, however, Adam of Bremen’s History of the Archbishops of Hamburg, where he mentions not their eye but rather their giant size and bloodthirsty dogs. 49 Hillers, “The Odyssey of a Folktale”, pp. 63-79; Idem, The Medieval Irish Odyssey; O’Nolan, “Homer and the Irish Hero Tale”, pp. 7–20; Idem, “Homer and the Irish Narrative”, pp. 1-19. 47

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story of Odysseus (Uilix or Uilixis, Old Irish via the Latin “Ulysses”) who encounters, bests, and escapes the Cyclops, and even includes mention of his crew-member meeting Aeneas in a clear echo of Virgil’s Aeneid. The Merugud tells Homer’s basic story, with more extensive physical description of the Cyclops: the Cyclops’ exact size is given as “three paces of each man between his two nipples”, and his eye is also described in terms of his facial features, “one big eye that was in the front part of his forehead … between the two brows”.50 The Merugud’s Cyclops story also contains an interesting innovation. When Odysseus comes to the Cyclops’ cave, he finds that it contains a pot of gold at the center. Unlike Homer’s version where Odysseus helps himself to the Cyclops’ bounty along with his crew, the Merugud’s Odysseus is reflective and wary. When his crew proposes they take the gold, Odysseus poses the question, “How do you know that this is a good find?” (‘Cá fis daíb-si ón?) (26-27).51 This question is meant to be interpreted philosophically, as a metaphorical reflection on the dubious value of materialism.52 This philosophical stance is central to this version of the myth, with the Irish Uilix portrayed as anti-materialistic, wisdom-seeking, self-controlled, moral, and enlightened. These characteristics all occur seemingly in clear contrast to the Homeric Odysseus, and show a vastly different understanding of heroism and cultural valuation. The Irish Cyclops myth seems to thus continue the emphases found in the medieval scholiasts and scholars with their intellectualizing, moralizing anti-materialism, and Neo/Platonic influences,53 deploying characteristics which reflect a greater focus on internal, individual qualities (subjective-individualistic) instead of socially external (objective-participant) behavior. We can compare this Cyclops folk-epic with a different one on the other side of Europe. The Dede Korkut is a Turkish folk-

Trans. adapted from Meyer, Merugud Ulix maic Leirtis. Meyer, Merugud Uilix maic Leirtis. 52 Crampton, “Uses of Exaggeration”, pp. 58-82, esp. pp. 73-76. 53 For the conditions that might suggest a more direct link, see Meeder, The Irish Scholarly Presence at St. Gall. 50 51

CHAPTER FIVE. POST-CLASSICAL WORLD, MIDDLE AGES 161 epic, also written perhaps around the 13th century.54 This story contains a savage Cyclops named “Tepegoz”, a clear echo of the Homeric/Euripidean story as well as likely that of the early English epic Beowulf.55 Unlike the name “Polyphemus” whose relationship to a single eye is uncertain, “Tepegoz” literally means “high eye” in Turkish, in the sense of an eye sitting near the top of the head on the forehead. The Cyclops in this story has become fundamentally defined by his one-eyedness in his very name. Also unlike the Homeric/Euripidean Cyclops, Tepegoz is born and raised in society, and described as a “strange boy”, all distinctly human terms. Indeed, his father is no longer a god, but a human; his mother is a nymph. Despite Homer’s core story remaining, in other words, the Cyclops has become more humanized from birth, pointing toward a more subjective-individualist selfhood. Later European Cyclops myths that are not folktale-based but rather more scholastic re-tellings also describe the Cyclops in terms that reflect a more subjective-individualist selfhood. Francesco Petrarca, known as Petrarch, was a Renaissance Italian poet who is considered one of the earliest European humanists.56 His 14th century work Bucolicum Carmen is a collection of eclogues, pastoral poems in imitation of not only the ancient authors Theocritus and Virgil but also the more recent Dante. Amidst other highly metaphorical readings of classical myth reminiscent of the early medieval scholiasts and scholars, Petrarch alludes directly to the tradition found in Theocritus, Virgil, and Ovid where Polyphemus attempts to woo Galatea (7.1-3). Petrarch thus combines the ancient, emotional-sentimental type of subjective-individualism with the early medieval, metaphorical-moralizing type. Guido delle Colonne, an Italian judge and writer of the 13th century, wrote an immensely popular prose narrative of the Lewis, Book of Dede Korkut. Sahin, “A Mythic Journey to Polyphemus”, pp. 12-17. This link was apparently first noticed by the owner of the Dresden MS who published and discussed a translation: von Diez, Der neuentdeckte oghuzische Cyklop verglichen mit dem Homerischen; see discussion with bibliographic notes in Reichl, “Medieval Turkish Epic and Popular Literature”, pp. 681-700, esp. p. 693. 56 Nauert, Humanism; Kirkham and Maggi, Petrarch. 54 55

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Trojan War drawing on both ancient and more contemporary sources. This work, the History of the Destruction of Troy (Historia destructionis Troiae), innovatively describes Polyphemus (“Pollifemus”) as neither a Cyclops nor a monstrous giant.57 Instead, Guido’s Cyclops is someone who kidnaps the hero and is blinded as a result. Guido’s Cyclops, like Virgil’s Eclogue II, has become fully human and lost its monstrous characteristics, as some spare aspects of Homer’s objective-participant Cyclops are maintained (his oppositional status, his single eye that gets blinded) but most of which have disappeared, save the importance of the facial characteristic of the single eye. Guido’s story was picked up by a variety of authors in different languages, ranging from Catalan to Polish. John Lydgate, for example, a prolific English monk and poet living in the 14th-15th centuries, adapted Guido in English in his Troy Book.58 Here, Lydgate attempts to reconcile the non-Cyclopean Polyphemus of Guido with his own knowledge of Ovid. Lydgate thus combines Guido’s express humanism with the Ovidian/Theocritan emotionality, an even more subjective-individualist Cyclops yet. Both Guido and Lydgate, in turn, may well have been sources for the 16th century lost play Troy’s Revenge by Henry Chettle, seemingly a tragic, bucolic play.59 This attempt to synthesize different sources was common. Thomas Watson’s 16th century Hekatompathia, for instance, maintained the Cyclops’ blinded state in a gesture to Homer/Euripides. But instead of telling the violent tale, Sonnet X of the Hekatompathia has Polyphemus singing for love, focusing on the sentimentalist version from Theocritus as well as Virgil and Ovid. The Cyclops’ single, blinded eye maintains its importance as a defining facial feature, but the Cyclops’ state is nonetheless one of romantic sentimentalism instead of rage or revenge. In all of these post-medieval stories, we see subjective-individualist characteristics dominant in re-tellings of the Cyclops myth. The tragic, bucolic, humanistic, and

Griffin, Historia destructionis Troiae; Benson, History of Troy; Carlesso, “La fortuna della Historia destructionis”, pp. 230-251. 58 Edwards, Troy Book; Simpson, “John Lydgate”. 59 Henslowe-Alleyn Digitisation Project, MSS 7, f. 53v. 57

CHAPTER FIVE. POST-CLASSICAL WORLD, MIDDLE AGES 163 intellectualized-moralized re-tellings have nearly fully overtaken the objective-participant Cyclops from earlier periods. Early Modern Opera and Theater

The Polyphemus-Odysseus story also became immensely popular in the late medieval and early modern periods, with a host of poems, operas, and plays re-telling the myth. Again, we find that these versions of the Cyclops myth are overwhelmingly tilted toward the sentimentalist, romantic direction of Theocritus, with attention maintained to the Cyclops’ single eye. Meanwhile, the Renaissance accounts add novel elements around humanism, personality traits, and internal, abstract intellection. Between maintaining the Cyclops’ emotionality and the importance of his single eye while also adding these other, distinctly modern elements, this period’s aesthetics continue and strengthen previous trends toward a fully modern, subjective-individualistic selfhood. While examples could be easily multiplied, I will discuss just one in depth for reasons of space and its own merit: Luis de Góngora y Argote’s La Fábula de Pilofemo y Galatea, known simply as Polifemo.60 Luis de Góngora was a baroque lyric poet of the 16th17th centuries, regarded as one of the greatest Spanish poets. Góngora had extensive knowledge of the Greek and Latin literary tradition, and his work manifests a deep and wide-ranging engagement with western thought. The Polifemo is a highly artistic poem of around 500 lines published posthumously in 1627, drawing particularly from Ovid’s account of Polyphemus’ love for the nymph Galatea who in turn loves the shepherd Acis. Overall, Góngora’s Polifemo is fully bucolic and sentimentalist. Polifemo’s song from Stanza 48, for example, would fit well in Theocritus, Virgil’s Eclogues, or parts of Ovid’s Metamorphoses:61 Parker, Polyphemus and Galatea. Trans. Hanak, Fable of Polyphemus and Galatea. The Spanish original: Sorda hija del mar, cuyas orejas A mis gemidos son rocas al viento: O dormida te huerten a mis quejas Purpúreos troncos de corales ciento, O al disonante numero de almejas —marino, si agradable no, instrumento— 60 61

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Deaf daughter of the sea, your ears resistant Are to my dirges like to winds this boulder: Either, they’re blocked, when slumber makes you distant By coral trunks that in the sea waves molder. Or, the dissonant clash of clams persistent —An ocean music, yes, and none is bolder— Lures you to dancing; some day, you’ll discover My beauty in my voice, not in the lover.

Importantly, however, the Polifemo also focuses on intellect, inner beauty, moral corruption, and emotional pain and longing, as well as the narrative description of the single eye explicitly but also metaphorically.62 Góngora’s Cyclops, in other words, not only uses the sentimental, emotional Cyclops of the Theocritan/Ovidian tradition, but he also fully articulates the trends and innovations found in Boethius, Remigius, and the other scholiasts, as well as in the Merugud Uilix, around intellect, internal morality, personality traits, and abstract metaphors to read the Cyclops’ features. Furthermore, although the Polifemo contains some lingering objective-participant features – Acis and the Cyclops both present their divine lineages as desirable, and Polyphemus continues to list his material wealth – there are also several innovative features in Góngora’s Cyclops myth that reflect even further shifts toward a fully modern selfhood.63 Acis and Polyphemus vie for Galatea’s desire, in both the ancient versions and this Spanish re-telling. But while the Greek and Roman Polyphemus fell short by offering material goods, in Góngora it is Acis instead who gives physical gifts. Polyphemus, by contrast, embodies a “contemplative love” of intellection and rationality.64 This Cyclops thus closely follows the Neoplatonic shifts we saw earlier in the medieval works, with Góngora’s Coros tejiendo estés escuchas un día Mi voz, por dulce, cuando no por mía. 62 Lehrer, Classical Myth; Alonso, Estudios y Ensayos Gongorinos; see introduction and bilingual text in Dent-Young, Selected Poems, esp. pp. 173-175. 63 See related discussion with different argument and conclusions in Lehrer, Classical Myth, p. 28. 64 McCaw, “Turning a Blind Eye”, pp. 27-35.

CHAPTER FIVE. POST-CLASSICAL WORLD, MIDDLE AGES 165 Cyclops representing individualized and internal Neoplatonic virtues such as ascent, inner cultivation, and abstraction.65 It is no longer Polyphemus’ external appearance that counts in this framework, as opposed to Acis’ sensorial materialism, but rather Polyphemus’ moral beauty. Indeed, we see this emphasized in Góngora’s choice to exclude ancient accounts of Polyphemus beautifying himself, such as by combing and trimming his hair. Although Acis is the beautiful lover who wins Galatea’s affection initially, Góngora’s poem is complex, showing the internal and intellectual appeal of Polyphemus despite his outward appearance.66 Some have even argued that Góngora’s Cyclops is a crucial forerunner of the modern value of beauty located in the abstract and the sublime.67 Given Góngora’s complexity, we might well see valuation in both Polyphemus and Acis, with the two existing in tension: Polyphemus represents the beauty of the intellectual, the interior, and the abstract sublime; Acis represents physical, erotic beauty and sexual attraction. Both types of love – intellectual and physical – are notably seen as essential to romance in modernity, which is part of why modern romance is so unique historically.68 Góngora’s Cyclops has come to represent an essential aspect of modern love. The Cyclops’ single eye, meanwhile, remains important in the Polifemo in this very way, of course as a marker of the subjective-individualism of facial features that we’ve seen before, but also here described as representative of the sun, a key Platonic and Neoplatonic symbol of truth and intellectual illumination.69 This positive type of reading finds echoes in both Ovid’s and Virgil’s account: Virgil’s Aeneid metaphorically describes the Cyclops’ eye like the sun-disc of Phoebus Apollo (3.363) while Ovid also uses the sun parallel to claim that the single eye is beautiful (14.853). Virgil’s and Ovid’s depictions are meant to show the Cyclops’ futility, with Ovid especially being both satirical and Ricapito, “Galatea’s Fall,” pp. 160-180. Lehrer, Classical Myth, p. 19. 67 Wagschal, “Mas no cabrás allá”, pp. 169-189. 68 See discussion in my chapter on the Hellenistic Age, noting Giddens, Transformation of Intimacy. 69 Ricapito, “Galatea’s Fall”. 65 66

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subversive. By contrast, Góngora’s Cyclops redeploys these same aspects in a distinctly positive light, likely reflecting, I think, the cultural-historical influence of Neoplatonic thought as well as the burgeoning influence of baroque aesthetics.70 Indeed, while we might be tempted to see Polyphemus’ intellection as a baroque-aesthetic critique of Neoplatonic influences, Góngora clearly passes up chances to redeploy ancient aspects of the myth that seem baroque in favor of more Neoplatonic material. Galatea in the ancient accounts, for example, is described using the metaphor of milk, a natural and artistic way to describe her physical form that would seem well at home in a baroque description. In Góngora, however, the milk imagery is absent, with Galatea instead described in metaphorical terms: “brighter than crystal” (más brillante que el cristal) and “more translucent than ice” (más luciente que el hielo). Such description seems to reflect a distinct feminine ideal found in the late Roman Neoplatonic tradition, which grew in popularity across the Middle Ages.71 These images, physical but also metaphorical, are meant to stimulate the gaze but also, at a deeper level, stimulate an intellectual, abstract type of desire. Such descriptions thus seemingly bridge the physically erotic and the rationally beautiful in a way that I suggested above presaged modern notions of romance, where one’s partner is ideally both physically and intellectually stimulating.72 This type of femininity also moves further from ancient social mores and toward modern values in Galatea’s greater expression of sexuality.73 Galatea is more sexually assertive than in the ancient accounts such as Theocritus, where I noted the Cyclopsnymph expression of love was limited and unconsummated. Not even Ovid, habitual boundary pusher, makes explicit whether or On some recent responses to defining and articulating a particular notion of what constitutes baroque, see the essays in Hills, Rethinking the Baroque. 71 Labastida, “Galatea o la leche”. 72 Barnard, “The Gaze and the Mirror”, pp. 69-85; Raulston, “Vision, Desire, and the Reader of the Polifemo”, pp. 17-27. Again for modernity see Giddens, Transformation of Intimacy. 73 Labastida, “Galatea o la leche”. 70

CHAPTER FIVE. POST-CLASSICAL WORLD, MIDDLE AGES 167 not the desire was consummated. It was only in Nonnus, discussed at the beginning of this chapter, when we see for the first time that Polyphemus and Galatea are not only romantically linked, but that they consummate their love with Polyphemus described as a husband. We can see Galatea’s greater expressions of female sexuality, perhaps with its earliest roots in the feminine subjects of Hellenistic Era art discussed in that chapter, as important precursors to modern sensibilities. I’ll conclude my discussion of the primary sources with the briefest summary of some other works around and after this time. There is substantial breadth in time, geography, emphases, aesthetics, innovations, and so forth, with each work meriting its own, lengthy study. But it is worth noting that the below works from the 16th-18th centuries contain this same focus on humanism, sentimentality, and romanticism originally found in Theocritus, Virgil, and Ovid, and which continued to be developed during the early and late Middle Ages. Operas, musicals, and sonnets abound in this period, focusing on the Cyclops’ pining for Galatea, as well as his emotional jealousy: Luis Carillo y Sotomayor’s 1611 Polifemo, Antoni Lliteres Carrió’s 1708 zarzuela Acis y Galatea, Tristan L’Hermite’s 1641 sonnet Polyphème en furie, Jean-Baptiste Lully’s 1686 opera Acis et Galatée, Giovanni Bononcini’s short opera 1703 Polifemo, Handel’s 1708 cantata Aci, Galatea e Polifemo and his subsequent pastoral opera Acis and Galatea in 1718 which would be re-worked by both Mozart and Mendelssohn, Joseph Haydn’s 1763 opera Acide e Galatea, and Johann Gottlieb Naumann’s 1801 comic opera Aci e Galatea: i ciclopi amanti. The list could be easily expanded with works into the 19th and 20th centuries. These musical pieces overwhelmingly tell the subjective-individualist version of the story found to increasing degrees across this book. Early and Late Medieval Society

The period covered in this chapter is much wider than the periods of the previous chapters. In some ways this reflects my hesitation to demarcate any post-Roman Empire periods, a subject of active debate. But this also reflects what I see as some continuous thematic currents from the 5th-16th centuries, ranging from Nonnus

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to Góngora. This chapter has identified several particular innovations in the Cyclops myth that were generally shared across this time: the reduction of the Cyclops to just his single eye; the focus on Polyphemus’ individual personality; the partial rehabilitation of Polyphemus as a positive figure; the key role of rationality, intellectualization, and abstraction; one’s inner morality; and the greater consummation of romantic, sexual, and marital love in the context of bucolic sentimentalism and emotion. As with my previous chapters, here I’ll make some suggestions for why these changes occurred, seeking as explanations wider currents during this cultural-historical era. Perhaps the simplest feature is the continued focus on Polyphemus’ eye, and defining the Cyclops physically almost solely along those lines. I’ve noted throughout this study and especially in the Introduction that modern, fully subjective-individualist selfhood is partly defined by the importance of unique facial features, discussed more fully in my final chapter. The distillation of “Cyclops” to essentially “the human-like thing with one eye” is an encapsulation of this trend. Other features which have tended to make Polyphemus less human have largely disappeared. Many of the examples discussed, for example, noted how the Cyclops is increasingly presented less as a monster and more as a human or very human-like. We might also seek explanation for the importance of one’s face in the increasing role of “emotional communities” in the Middle Ages, mentioned at this chapter’s outset.74 Indeed, a characteristic of the early Middle Ages in particular was the “replacement of central by localized institutions”, whose decentralization resulted in greater emphasis on local control, culture, and character.75 In such communities, relationships were defined to a greater and greater degree by one’s small-scale interactions, be it within a monastery or a relatively insular duchy. Such small-scale Rosenwein, Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages. Colish, Medieval Foundations, p. 160; see also p. 162 for the “decentralization” of the Ottonian Renaissance of the German empire, and pp. 171172 for the localization of communities due to local patronage networks which allowed community members to set their own guidelines, explicit and implicit. 74 75

CHAPTER FIVE. POST-CLASSICAL WORLD, MIDDLE AGES 169 interactions were worlds apart from the vast trading networks and military expansion of Imperial Rome. We can highlight an additional contrast here with the polis life that defined the Classica Era, which was also defined by small-scale communities of inter-personal interaction. Unlike the polis of Classical Athens, whose interactions were very much conducted in the public sphere and understood as external and participatory (therefore embodying objective-participant selfhood), the “emotional communities” of the early Middle Ages were framed instead around particular emotional styles and expressions (embodying subjective-individualist selfhood).76 At very small scales of human-to-human interaction, furthermore, perhaps one’s individual features become more important when general frameworks of geographically separated interaction diminish in importance.77 This type of small-scale community effect might also explain the increasing focus on the Cyclops’ personality traits. The uniqueness and importance of one’s personality and internal personality traits are exemplary characteristics of a fully modern, subjective-individualist selfhood. The focus on the Cyclops’ personality traits, especially begun by the early medieval scholiasts, is a clear forerunner of this trend. But we might find explanation for this trend in the nature of small-scale community effects: interactions become increasingly personal and intimate. Instead of being defined by lineage-relationships that might manifest a few times per generation, interaction is much more personal, constant, and emotionally deepened as a result. In such a small-scale community, one’s personality becomes increasingly emphasized in its own right, as well as seen as essential to the success and nature of village life. We might speculate the same So Rosenwein. Anthropologists, for example, have found differences between the generalizable types of facial recognition in large, modern, Western societies and small-scale societies: Crivelli and Fridlund, “Facial Displays are Tools for Social Influence”, pp. 388-399, who conclude that – in contrast to earlier studies showing universal facial-emotion types across human populations – new studies show “Diversity, Not Uniformity” to be the norm across populations; on facial-emotion universalism, see further Nelson and Russell, “Universality Revisited”, pp. 8-15. 76 77

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for individual, romantic desire: in a world of small-scale communities, physical and intellectual romance as well as mutually-articulated desire may have been the ideal, following from the increasing role of unique personality traits and individual, humanto-human relationships. The essential role of personality is especially important and merits additional emphasis. The Cyclops of the Middle Ages is increasingly described and understood in terms of his individual, internal personality traits. By contrast, Euripides devoted just a single word to the Cyclops’ internal personality, and Homer essentially none at all. Theocritus’ Cyclops was notably emotional, but still lacked the subjective, individual, and internal aspects of personality which we see in the medieval scholiasts who described Polyphemus as being rash, cowardly, and so forth. To briefly look ahead, these latter descriptors of individual, internal personality become central to the modern depiction of the Cyclops that we see in the Percy Jackson novels, whose Cyclops named Tyson is solely understood as a single-eyed, large human with a variety of unique, internal personality traits. The personality-based descriptions of the Cyclops of the Middle Ages are nearly all the way toward a fully modern, subjective-individualist selfhood that sees unique, individual, and internal personality as fundamental to identity. We can broaden these conclusions to emplace and explain them even more concretely in their wider context. This shift in emphasis from macro-structures (i.e., objective-participant selfhood) to micro-interactions (i.e., subjective-individualist selfhood) has been the subject of specific study in the Middle Ages.78 The medievalist Aaron Gurevich, for example, carefully studied perceptions of individualism in the Middle Ages in terms of religious sentiment, concluding that the rise in importance of individual personality occurred as early as the six century and identifiably by the eighth.79 Gurevich further concluded that this individualism co-occurred with a religious sensibility that still Recall Colish’s point, discussed above, around the “replacement of central by localized institutions”, Medieval Foundations, p. 160. 79 Gurevich, Historical Anthropology, esp. ch. 4. 78

CHAPTER FIVE. POST-CLASSICAL WORLD, MIDDLE AGES 171 emplaced individuals within a wider framework of social-cosmic significance.80 Religious judgment, which used to solely occur within a civilization-wide framework, became in the Middle Ages increasingly about one’s “human personality”, one’s “personal character”, and an “individual’s self-knowledge”.81 Gurevich posits that such changes can be explained through both internal factors, namely developments in emotion per se, and external factors, suggesting for instance the rise of individual-focused bookkeeping among the merchant class during this time.82 Gurevich followed up this work on religious sentiment with a wider study that traced individualism in its own right from the late Middle Ages through the rise of modern capitalism, focusing mostly on texts from the 11th through 14th centuries. In a partial parallel to my own argument, Gurevich shows in detail the rise – unevenly and in fits and starts – and eventual predominance of an individualist mindset in modernity.83 The Middle Ages contained key shifts toward subjective-individualism along the way. Indeed, the historian of autobiography Georg Misch likewise identified the notion of individualist self-knowledge and self-definition as belonging to the Middle Ages, not the later Renaissance period.84 Pre-Renaissance precursors of a fully modernist selfhood

Gurevich, Historical Anthropology, describes “personality in the cultural space of the Middle Ages” as “a space cleft between two worlds”, p. 89. He importantly notes a “duality” that is “inherent in medieval consciousness and imagination between the concepts of an immediate individual judgment and the collective judgement as connected with that age’s very special perception of personality”, p. 88. 81 Idem, p. 68, 87, 88, et al. 82 Idem. For the tension between internal change and external, materialist influence, see Ch. 1, “Historical Anthropology and the Science of History”; for the tie to mercantile book-keeping as a latter example of materialist influence, see p. 68. 83 Gurevich, Origins of European Individualism. 84 Misch, Geschichte der Autobiographie. 80

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can even be found in Byzantium,85 such as in its autobiographic literature of the 11th and 12th centuries.86 Individual desire also seems to be an area of notable change in the wider medieval period. We’ve seen the Cyclops myths of this period increasing defined by a more sophisticated notion of romance: it is consummated in some medieval stories, in a difference from the sanitized Theocritan pastoral love, and it also more robustly articulates different kinds of desires and agency. Such changes in the myth call to mind the famous work of Denis de Rougemont, whose wide-ranging philosophical account of love in the western world sees the medieval poems of the 12th and 13th centuries as key turning points in western thought.87 Medieval stories such as “Tristan and Iseult”, for example, pioneered the expression of romantic, emotional, and individual desire that became hugely influential on later western thinking about desire, including understandings that persist today. Related to the increasing importance of unique personality traits and individual desire is this period’s increasing interpretation of the Cyclops in terms of rationality, abstraction, intellection, and inner morality. Of this group, perhaps morality might be partially explained by the same small-scale community effect I mentioned above,88 with small communities tending to correlate with implicit moral norms as opposed to larger societies that rely on explicit institutions to perform moral policing.89 But an over-

Paramount in this area as well as Byzantine studies more widely is Alexander Kazhdan: see Franklin, “Bibliography of Works of Alexander Kazhdan”, pp. 5-26. 86 Papaioannou, “Byzantium and the Modernist Subject”. 87 de Rougemont, Love in Western World. 88 This is an active, ongoing, and contested area of study in fields such as evolutionary psychology and cognitive historiography; see Launay and Dunbar, “Does Implied Community Size Predict Likability of a Similar Stranger?”, pp. 32-37; Barrett et al., “Small-Scale Societies”, pp. 46884693; Santos et al., “Social Norms of Cooperation in Small-Scale Societies”. 89 Graeber, Debt: The First 5000 Years, argues that early debt in smallscale societies was simply commonly-known and therefore didn’t require institutional laws to describe it and prescribe related activity. It is only 85

CHAPTER FIVE. POST-CLASSICAL WORLD, MIDDLE AGES 173 arching explanation for all these characteristics can also be found in developments in philosophy, religion, and society occurring in the post-Roman world. Four in particular stand out: the increasing importance of Christianity; the continued influence of Platonic and Neoplatonic ideas, especially among the learned elite; the changes in book culture that culminated in the printing press; and the privileging of mind over body, a reflection of the Cartesian mind/body dualism articulated at the end of the Middle Ages. By the end of the fifth century CE, Christianity had already become mainstream in the Roman world, and the European Middle Ages saw Christianity as a dominant phenomenon in the daily life, cultural values, and intellectual understandings of western Europe. With this important change in religion, society, and culture, of course, came different understandings of selfhood. At risk of vastly oversimplifying a huge, complex, and variable phenomenon, I’ll make just three brief suggestions around the role of Christianity. First, that it intersected with mores around sex, desire, and marriage. Two, that it stimulated the insertion of explicit moralizing into Greek myth. And three, that it also encouraged elements of anti-materialism that we see expressed in many of the accounts analyzed above. First, we can note the changing mores of the Middle Ages around sex, desire, and marriage, which I partially discussed above, and which follow from the influence of the Christian church.90 Under the influence of Christianity, we might see Polyphemus’ description as Galatea’s “husband” as a reflection of changed mores around sexuality due to religion. Changed sexual mores might also explain Góngora’s account, which hundreds of years later might be showing religion’s loosened grip on the parameters of social and romantic relationships, or at least a challenge to Christian mores around the representation of sexual desire.91 in societies that achieve a certain size and complexity that these implicit understandings are required to be made explicit via institutions and laws. 90 A couple starting points: McCarthy, Love, Sex and Marriage; Duby, Love and Marriage. 91 Kluge, “Obscure Configurations of Desire”, pp. 290-312, who identifies the sixteenth-century Council of Trent’s explicit focus on marriage and

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Second, Christian myth differed from Greek myth in Christianity’s explicitly moral content. Certainly there were attempts by the Greeks and Romans to moralize and morally allegorize their myth, which generally understood gods as petty, cruel, sexualized, and flawed. But Christianity was partly distinctive in the ancient Mediterranean around the central role of selfless morality in the myth of Jesus.92 That moralizing readings of the Cyclops increased across a period that saw Christianity become predominant socially, culturally, religiously, and intellectually should therefore be of little surprise. Third, part of Christianity’s moral framework involved an anti-materialist outlook, epitomized in Jesus’ “Beatitudes” where he inverts the typical values of wealth, fame, blessings, and so forth.93 This morally-derived inversion went hand in hand with the prominence the Middle Ages afforded the philosophy of Plato and Neoplatonism, along with the persistence of minority currents like gnosticism,94 which all critiqued the material world as only an imperfect manifestation of abstract truth. The early and late Middle Ages saw an extensive attempt, across thinkers and time periods, to integrate Christian thought with Greek and Roman philosophy, and in Platonism and Neoplatonism they found a match through their mutual privileging of rationality, the role of intellection in apprehending the divine, and an anti-materialist stance that included living a sound, moral life.95 By way of caution, however, this anti-materialism should not be overstated: while anti-materialist strands of Christian thought are important and gain prominence during this period, other strands of Christian sexual desire as starting points for artistic response by baroque sonnet authors such as Góngora. 92 Of course with important precursors, e.g. myths around Socrates/Plato, Pythagoras, Jewish wisdom-moral traditions such as Honi the CircleDrawer, and so forth. 93 In the so-called “Sermon on the Mount”, in the Gospel of Matthew 5-7. Again, of course, with many precedents, ranging from the Hebrew Bible (Proverbs, etc.) to Greco-Roman philosophers such as the Stoics and Cynics. 94 A usefully wide-ranging introduction is Iwerson, “Gnosticism”. 95 See, e.g., the essays in Corrigan, Turner, Wakefield, Religion and Philosophy.

CHAPTER FIVE. POST-CLASSICAL WORLD, MIDDLE AGES 175 thought are explicitly materialist and embrace a more materialist presentation of the divine.96 No less a figure than Thomas Aquinas was attacked for his anti-Platonic views around the intrinsic importance of matter.97 As we have seen throughout, conceptual changes and new developments are neither sudden nor totalizing, as culture’s complexity and internal tensions forever remain the norm. Nonetheless, the increasing medieval prominence of Neoplatonic thought might suggest another explanation for a novel Cyclops development during this time, namely the reclamation of Polyphemus as a positive figure. Historically, the early Middle Ages were hugely responsible for the (re)introduction of Neoplatonic ideas. A seminal moment came under the classicizing patronage of the Carolingian emperor Charles the Bald in the late ninth century,98 when the scholar John Scotus Eriugena (apocryphally stabbed to death by his students’ pens) translated the Greek of the Neoplatonic thinker Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite.99 Pseudo-Dionysius’ works entered wider circulation and became influential, with Pseudo-Dionysus swiftly “regarded as a great authority in the Carolingian age” and following,100 as medieval thinkers erroneously conflated this later, likely 6th century work with the Dionysius the Areopagite of the Christian New Testament in Acts 17:34. Increasingly popular Neoplatonic modes of thinking in turn influenced the reception of the Cyclops myth. As we saw, the Cyclops became positive only when authors began to allegorize the myth, and to thereby posit meanings other than the manifestly negative portrayals in Homer, Euripides, and to a lesser extent Theocritus, Virgil, and Ovid. Indeed, we find that Neoplatonic The touchstone here is Ohly, “Vom geistigen Sinn des Wortes im Mittelalter”, pp. 1–23; for more recent reflections on Ohly, see Kumler and Lakey, “Res et significatio”, pp. 1-17. 97 Turner, Thomas Aquinas, p. 52, 97, et passim. 98 McKitterick, Frankish Kingdoms, esp. chs. 7 and 8. 99 Gersh, From Iamblichus to Eriugena. For the court of Charles the Bald, see Nelson, Charles the Bald and McKitterick, “Charles the Bald (823-877) and His Library”, pp. 28-47. 100 Colish, Medieval Foundations, p. 70. 96

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thinkers widely deployed allegory in their thinking, using it as a tool to ascend from earthly things to the realm of the divine.101 In fact, there is substantial evidence that Homer was a favorite target of such allegory, as Neoplatonic thinkers sought to derive philosophical-religious value from the great Greek poet.102 Thus the reconfiguration of the medieval Cyclops as a positive figure both moral and rational, fully articulated in Góngora’s contemplativeintellectualized Polifemo, exemplifies core Neoplatonic approaches that were common historically and especially during the Middle Ages. We might find further explanation for the role of rationality and intellection in re-tellings of the Cyclops myth in the continued development of book culture in the Middle Ages.103 This book culture was isolated in the first part of the Middle Ages, occurring at monasteries and secluded courts in the 6th-9th centuries, discussed earlier this chapter in terms of the early medieval scholia. Around the turn of the millennium, however, we start to see a cultural shift in the increasing importance of theologians, universities, and a more widespread book culture, with a corresponding increase in intellectual culture and its valuation.104 We see during and after the Carolingian Renaissance a wide “revitalization of monastic and cathedral schools”; the increase in local patronage around book-learning and intellection that laid the groundwork for subsequent manuscript copying and distribution; and that “rulers launched a number of programs for the educational and religious improvement of their subjects” which resulted in an increase in both the education and literacy of lay people.105 Although the Middle Ages began with a comparative dearth in the

Struck, “Allegory and Ascent in Neoplatonism”, pp. 57-70; Dillon, “Image, Symbol and Analogy”, pp. 247-262. 102 Lamberton, Homer the Theologian. 103 The touchstone here is Reynolds and Wilson, Scribes and Scholars, which covers not only the Middle Ages but periods both preceding and following. 104 A case study: Wei, Intellectual Culture. See Leiden’s series Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Book Culture for other focused studies. 105 Colish, Medieval Foundations, pp. 67-68. 101

CHAPTER FIVE. POST-CLASSICAL WORLD, MIDDLE AGES 177 general social value of intellection, this value only increased over the course of this period. This trend culminated in the 15th and 16th centuries, as movable type revolutionized Europe and a veritable explosion in the availability of books followed the printing press. The wide availability of books in turn influenced particular modes of thinking on a much wider social scale than before.106 The printing press not only allowed for a wider and more efficient dissemination of information, but it allowed a more removed, abstract, and intellectual association with culture.107 The new fixity of the word allowed for a “total and rationalized view” of culture, and especially the Greek and Roman past.108 Although the rationalization and intellection of the Renaissance were already well afoot by the time of the printing press, the printed word “changed the very conditions of intellection”, namely leading to “a more public rationality”.109 The book’s properties as material object, in other words, worked alongside earlier developments in intellectual book culture as well as medieval philosophy around increasingly Neoplatonic thought to support a distinctly positive, cultural value of rationalization and intellection that manifested in retellings of the Cyclops myth and Polyphemus’ specific description. So we see that the re-description of the Cyclops in the terms of rationalism, abstraction, intellectualism, and morality all well reflect Neoplatonic thinking which was widespread and growing among the medieval educated elite with increasing access to books. I would add that they also well meshed with Roman/western Christianity’s dominant influence during the Middle Ages, which itself had a robust, historical engagement with Neo/Platonic ideas. As we saw in periods such as the Hellenistic and Roman Periods – when developments in philosophy influenced and were likely influenced by developments in literature, aesthetics, and social values – so too does the Middle Ages contain a strong intersection between philosophical-religious developments and re-understandings of the Cyclops myth. Moss, Printed Commonplace-Books. Einstein, Printing Press. 108 Idem, p. 118, quoting Panovsky, emphasis added. 109 Leed, “Review Essay”, p. 419. 106 107

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The latest medieval articulations of philosophy would only continue this emphasis on rational, abstract, and internal intellection. By way of previewing and bridging into my next and final chapter on modernity, I’ll provide here just a few sentences detailing further developments on selfhood. With the work of the French philosopher René Descartes in the 17th century,110 European thought fully articulated what became known as “Cartesian dualism”.111 In this view, the self was not defined by one’s external characteristics or relationships; these externals were now points of fundamental epistemological skepticism in Descartes, Emmanuel Kant, and others.112 Instead, selfhood was to be found in one’s inner, unique, thinking self – this very conclusion lies at the heart of the following chapter’s argument. This thinking self was defined, meanwhile, under the influence of the Neo/Platonic tradition as rational, abstract, and ultimately internal, all understandings that as we’ve seen were brought to bear on the Cyclops myth during the Middle Ages. This intersection of Platonic and Cartesian philosophy was a potent one, which was brought to bear on the manuscript tradition from the earlier medieval period, such as on Boethius’ commentary.113 Little surprise, again, that major developments in philosophical thinking were likewise applied to understandings of the Cyclops, now occurring in this Neo/Platonic-Cartesian framework of rationalized and internal intellection. These major social, cultural, and intellectual developments at times overshadow the role of genre in the continuously changing re-tellings of the Cyclops myth across this extended period. In previous chapters, I suggested that genre was able to at least partly explain the different ways that the Cyclops myth was Descartes himself had predecessors, which some have traced back to Seneca or Augustine, and others to Martin Luther; further discussion in my Introduction as well as final chapter on modernity. 111 A couple introductory approaches: Baker and Morris, Descartes’ Dualism; Robertson, McOuat, and Vinci, Descartes and the Modern. 112 See the charting of modernity’s distinctive selfhood characteristics in Taylor, Sources of the Self. 113 Nauta, “Platonic and Cartesian Philosophy”, pp. 79-100; Hoenen and Nauta, Boethius in the Middle Ages. 110

CHAPTER FIVE. POST-CLASSICAL WORLD, MIDDLE AGES 179 retold, such as Euripides’ Cyclops reflecting theatrical conventions or the difference in Virgil’s accounts between his bucolic Eclogues and his epic Aeneid. Many of the sources from the first part of this chapter were manuscript glosses, whose content and style vary hugely. With no defined genre expectation around these scholia in the same way that there is for Homeric epic or bucolic poetry, we must seek other explanations from history, society, and culture, such as I have suggested here. Yet at other points, genre does play a larger role. Operas, sonnets, and musicals are expressly emotional in their content and, much like with Theocritus’ Idylls, we expectedly find in such works an account of the Cyclops that reflects the emotional, subjective-individualist type. Góngora’s work of lyric poetry, in imitation of Ovid and following the tradition of Theocritus, is a perfect fit for a sentimentalizing Cyclops. Importantly, however, Góngora departs from other parts of Ovid in not including the more monstrous, objective-participant Cyclops. As we have seen at points in the previous chapters, genre conventions can take us only so far, and must be supplemented with other explanatory frameworks (such as the role of Neoplatonic and internal moralizing) from the wider historical and social context.

CONCLUSION

We can conclude with some cautions. I have engaged with some medieval historians and literary scholars who see important continuities in thought, understandings, and values during what the Annales school of French historians called the “longue durée” of the Middle Ages.114 However, we must keep in mind that this was also a period of huge dynamism and widespread change.115 Even scholars who posit general continuities across this time frame still strongly emphasize substantial, internal variations due to time, geography, culture, and so forth.116 In fact, this very notion of See discussion in “Debating the longue durée”, special section of Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 70.2. 115 For a historical account focused on dynamism over continuity, see Smith, Europe after Rome. 116 Rosenwein, for instance, writes in favor of continuity that in “emotional codes and norms in the aggregate – within the entire European 114

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general continuities alongside specific and variable changes well captures my conclusion about the re-tellings of the Cyclops myth and its relationship to selfhood. The overall myth continues to persist, in recognizable and roughly similar form; the same can be said for selfhood. Both myth and notions of the self change in broad strokes in ways that eventually point toward a more subjective-individualist selfhood. But this change is uneven, non-linear, and sometimes haphazard. Thus, we should be attentive to many differences and local variations in the myth, especially so given the comparatively wider net I have cast in this chapter in terms of both time and geographic spread. The Irish Merugud’s Cyclops lacks any sentimental emotionality. Later scholiasts disagreed on whether and how the Cyclops might be thought of as any sort of positive character, with a wide variety of speculative readings appearing. Nonnus, the earliest author analyzed in this chapter, embraced the sentimental and emotional Cyclops much more strongly than many of the copyists and scholars who followed. Some frameworks re-thought the Cyclops myth in a moralizing way, seemingly more reflective of Christianity’s predominance in medieval Europe; other frameworks re-thought the Cyclops in an abstract and intellectualizing way, seemingly more reflective of Neoplatonic philosophy. Many of the authors analyzed above expressed some different combination of these influences, along with others. Variation, dispute, competing accounts, and non-linear change were all the norm, not the exception. These important points notwithstanding, the Cyclops myths we find at the beginning of the modern period reflect a real and substantial change from the Cyclops myths that came before. In a West, for example – we would see no difference between the emotional world” of different sites, merely local differences in how these macro similarities were interpreted, expressed, and contested, p. 199. Later, she comes down more in favor of difference: “we have seen not just that this or that emotion changed its meaning and valuation but more importantly that whole systems of emotion – integrally related to the traditions, values, needs, and goals of different groups – could come to the fore or fade away within a short span of time”, p. 202. Such equivocation is necessary to capture the inherent messiness, subtleties, and tensions of history.

CHAPTER FIVE. POST-CLASSICAL WORLD, MIDDLE AGES 181 period with widespread variations, we also can detect a general trend toward a certain type of Cyclops reflecting a subjective-individualist selfhood. This general trend culminates in the next, final chapter, when with modernity we will see a fully subjectiveindividualist Cyclops and selfhood both.

CHAPTER SIX. MODERNITY: GRAPHIC NOVELS, COMICS, FILM, YOUNG ADULT NOVELS THE FULLY SUBJECTIVE-I NDIVIDUALIST CYCLOPS OF MODERN POP CULTURE

We arrive at last at modernity, a post-medieval period variously split into the early modern (roughly 1500-1800), the modern (1800-2000), and even the post-modern (variously defined from the 1950s, 1980s/90s, and the turn of the millennium). As I noted in my last chapter, narrower differentiations of historical periods are surely possible and defensible on a variety of different grounds. What concerns me, however, are general, commonly held trends that can usefully hold together a broader swath of time for our consideration, here the time from the end of the late Middle Ages until today. In terms of selfhood, a notable point of transition from the Middle Ages to modernity comes in the work of René Descartes (1596-1650), whose philosophy helped usher in a fully subjective-individualist selfhood that Gill described as distinctive of modernity. These changes in philosophy occurred alongside a host of other huge changes in society: colonization, political revolutions, world wars, industrialization, information technology, globalization, and neoliberal capitalism. Certainly these and other forces also influenced society, culture, and selfhood, but in the interest of focus I will be describing just a couple in detail that I find particularly important around selfhood: philosophy from

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Descartes until today, and the influence of capitalism. Both these and other forces have led to a modern selfhood that is fully subjective and individualist. In modernity, we now stand on the far other end of our selfhood continuum relative to what we found in Homer: we began with Homer’s objective-participant Cyclops story, and we end here with modernity’s subjective-individualist stories. Much like the Middle Ages, modernity’s complexity and its wide range of cultural production have resulted in a host of different Cyclops stories. As I ended the last chapter’s Cyclops myths by discussing Luis de Góngora’s Polifemo of the 17th century, here I will be focusing on works produced during the 20th and 21st centuries. As with the late Middle Ages in particular, I cannot be exhaustive in modern works that re-tell the Cyclops myth, given its strong persistence and many manifestations.1 I make no claim to exhaustiveness in this chapter, instead providing what I believe to be an illustrative set of examples. I had several criteria for selection. First, the examples needed to be fairly digestible to not overwhelm and get too far afield – no Joyce, in other words. Second, the examples needed to provide notable illustrations of how the myth is re-told in modernity – no highly obscure works far outside mainstream consumption. Third, the examples needed to be interesting, to enliven our comparisons. Fourth and finally, in the interest of showing both the myth’s adaptability and modernity’s range of cultural production, the examples needed to be from different mediums – here I chose graphic novels, comic books, film, and young adult novels. As we will see, each of these myths and mediums reflect different aspects and different degrees of modernity’s fully subjective-individualist selfhood. As in previous chapters, we will specifically investigate which types of modifications occur in the modern re-tellings of these myths. With an attention to what is retained/removed and highlighted/diminished between two permutations of a given myth, we can more concretely identify cultural values and understandings distinctive to modernity.

1

Stanford, Ulysses Theme.

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Graphic Novels and Comic Books: Isabel Greenberg’s “Encyclopedia of Early Earth” and Marvel’s X-Men

The graphic novel and comic book are both prime examples of how ancient stories remain relevant for a modern audience. These two literary mediums are not necessarily separable, and I treat one example of each in order to show their close overlaps with each other as well as to broaden my set of comparative data. The explosion in graphic novel production in recent years, and the prior explosion of comic books in decades preceding, provides plenty of data for the types of modifications that occur around ancient myths. Graphic novels and comics might strike some as an odd choice for study due to their typically younger readership and status as “popular culture”. The latter is a designation that often (unfairly) denotes lowbrow concerns, interests, values, and understandings. Yet we must keep in mind two points. First, that Homeric myth – along with subsequent myths as found in Theocritus or Virgil – were not the paragons of highfalutin culture we often take them to be. While they were often esteemed by the aristocratic elite and therefore preserved, and also were often themselves the product of elite cultural and textual production, they (especially Homer and such stories) regularly formed the backbone of what one might call lowbrow culture. Homer and Virgil, for instance, were enjoyed by the most sophisticated literary elite of the ancient world, but they were equally enjoyed by the vast majority of the largely illiterate and not formally educated population who often heard these myths piecemeal in song, recitation, or any number of second-hand forms. We often assume that the popular culture of yesteryear is worth of study while the popular culture of today is not; this binary can and should be abandoned. Second, the idea that modern comics and graphic novels reflect a sort of lowbrow culture has not been tenable for decades now.2 Scholarship on popular culture – visual and otherwise – is Eco, for example, vigorously defended their inclusion into the study of academic literature in his influential Apocalittici e integrati. I thank Tuomas Rasimus for this insight. 2

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vast and sophisticated. Of course, the quality of the primary source art and writing can vary vastly, the same with any medium, but the last decade or two especially have given risen to extremely advanced pieces of composition, speaking to interests political, social, artistic, and even meta-awareness.3 Some comics win Pulitzer Prizes;4 Pulitzer Prize-winning authors choose to write comics.5 And this doesn’t even include discussion of other cultures, such as Japan and its long-standing history of highly developed graphic novels, which are read and widely acclaimed as peak artistic achievements. Graphic novels and comic books, along with their many popular culture cousins in television, film, art, and literature, are the vehicles for myth in the modern day. They re-tell ancient stories, synthesize accounts, and innovate and change based on audience, medium, and whim. While no monolithic reflection of modern culture, in no small part due to their sophistication in pushing against mainstream culture as well as pioneering novel ideas and formats, graphic novels and comic books are some of the clear inheritors of the Homeric legacy. I begin with graphic novels. Released in 2013, and landing on the magazine Time’s “Top 10 Fiction Books of 2013”, Isabel Greenberg’s The Encyclopedia of Early Earth re-tells many ancient Western myths in the context of its wider romantic narrative about a boy’s quest to find his true love. The mythological stories range from biblical subjects, such as the Tower of Babel, to ancient Greek epics like Homer’s Odyssey. These tales are at once familiar and unfamiliar, as they draw from famous stories in the distant past but re-tell these stories in ways that sometimes radically depart from the originals. This familiar-but-unfamiliar use of ancient mythology frequently appears in modern graphic novels. While the relationship between modern storyteller and ancient story becomes increasingly visible in the modern world due to the accessibility of texts and authors both, it has also become increasingly complex due to the now millennia that separate the original myths and their Moore’s Watchmen (1986-1987). Spiegelman’s Maus (1980-1991) was the first graphic novel to win the Pulitzer, in 1992. 5 Coates’ Black Panther (beginning 2016). 3 4

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current re-tellings. In such a context we can see how Greenberg’s account of the Cyclops retains some elements of ancient myth, while other elements are discarded or modified in certain ways. In the examples that follow, I will be especially concerned with comparing modern re-tellings of the Cyclops myth to the Homeric version. I do this both because modern stories tend to take Homer’s Odyssey as their starting point, and also in order to highlight the two ends of the selfhood continuum to demonstrate how far we’ve changed in terms of selfhood across this book’s discussion. As we are by now well familiar with the Cyclops in its Homeric and subsequent forms, consider how the Cyclops episode in Greenberg’s Encyclopedia contrasts with its predecessors (Figure 13 in Art History Excursus 2). The Cyclops tale in Greenberg’s Encyclopedia is much shorter than previous literary accounts. Visually, the Cyclops is presented as what appears to be a large, oneeyed human, complete with male anatomy and other fully human features. Greenberg’s depiction reflects what we’ve seen in previous chapters, as the increasing importance over time devoted to one’s facial features has increasingly resulted in a Cyclops that is mostly human-like and almost solely defined by a single eye. Despite this brief and humorous page of panels, furthermore, Greenberg’s account contains a couple notable differences that appear to reflect a modern, individualistic sensibility. For one, the hero is now fully alone, an individual; there are no sailors accompanying Greenberg’s hero, in marked contrast to the sailors found in the accounts of Homer, Virgil, and the medieval sources that followed them. Secondly, the nature of the escape here is humorously truncated, as compared to the more substantial interactions of human and Cyclops we’ve seen in previous accounts, particularly that of Homer. Greenberg has chosen the more well-known (to modernity) Homeric account here, instead of the more subversive Theocritan tradition, but has now modified the account of escape to a huge degree. Homer’s account, I argued, used the contrast between Odysseus’ and Polyphemus’ behavior to show their relative adherence to a fully objective-participant paradigm of selfhood. In Greenberg’s episode, by contrast, we see no such construction

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of selfhood around communal obligation. Instead, Greenberg focuses solely on the luck of the individual protagonist. There is no lineage, no clan, no geographically embedded location, and certainly no hospitality or even mention of piety. What is more, the focus on self-reflexive humor seems decidedly modern. The closest parallel we saw for this type of Cyclops was in Euripides’ Cyclops, a satyr play focusing on burlesque humor. What we have here, instead, is a self-reflexive subversion of the entire Homeric story, turning away from a layered mirror reading of civilized Greekness to a purely individualistic and humorous ‘better lucky than good’ story. As I discuss further below, this notion of self-reflexive individuality is especially distinctive to the modern world, particularly in understandings of a postmodern subject. Meanwhile, Greenberg shares with Homer a reflection on humanity and its place in a hostile, unpredictable world. Unlike Homer’s account, however, Greenberg’s wider story is concerned with situations of loneliness and individual confusion, both notably individualistic, as well as the hero’s thwarted, romantic love, a notably modern concept.6 The hero, in other words, is not driven by obligation but rather by individual preference; not by social ties but by emotion; not by public piety but by internal feelings; not by dialogue but by silence; not by teamwork but by solo adventure. The hostility of Homer’s world comes from those who do not share the proper obligations in an objective-participant paradigm; the hostility of Greenberg’s world comes from those who would directly thwart one’s individual feelings of romantic love. Greenberg’s account, in sum, cuts out all the objective-participant aspects of Homer’s story, and introduces markedly subjective-individualist concerns. We can compare Greenberg’s account with a different Cyclops prominent in modern popular culture, the Scott Summers of Marvel Comics’ X-Men fame. If my argument is correct, that Homeric concepts of socially structured identity eventually become entirely effaced when translated into modern culture, we should expect that a comparison of Homer’s Polyphemus and Marvel’s 6

Giddens, Transformation of Intimacy.

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Cyclops yields the same result: some core similarities in terms of physical form, perhaps, but large-scale differences in interactions and types of identity descriptors. Let’s turn to the Marvel Cyclops,7 to see what we can distill about Scott Summers’ superhero alter ego in order to compare it to Polyphemus. One of the widest criticisms levied against the Marvel Cyclops is that he notoriously lacks a personality. He is boring in temperament, overwhelmingly normal in appearance, and wholly devoid of the variety of types of quirks that define his fellow X-Men heroes. While he is not without his fans, Cyclops is often seen as far too staid for his own good: to engage with some decidedly non-scholarly material, online message boards in his defense often start from the very premise that his reputation is that of an extremely boring character.8 This is a central facet of the character, present since the comic’s inception in 1963 and persisting through the years despite a host of different iterations. Yet beyond being notable for being un-notable, what does define Marvel’s Cyclops? I suggest two things. First, Cyclops is known for his lack of personality. This definition by absence is important. Although his identity lacks personality, the notability of his lack of personality reflects the importance of personality in his culture’s wider understanding of selfhood. Just as Homer’s Cyclops’ lack of hospitality reflected his negative assessment in the ancient paradigm of objective-participant selfhood built around social obligation, so too does Marvel’s Cyclops lack of personality reflect his negative assessment in his modern paradigm of subjective-individualist selfhood built around personality. As I discussed in my introduction, lacking a characteristic in one’s identity can still point to that characteristic’s importance in the wider culture’s selfhood, so long as that characteristic’s absence is notable. An online kerfuffle about the Marvel Cyclops’ lack of personality reflects the centrality of personality in modernity’s understanding of selfhood. As I’ve discussed across this book, we’ve seen an ongoing shift in greater attention granted to The pre-AvX version, for comic readers. Of course, there are many versions of the comic Cyclops, and my account here makes no claim toward being exhaustive. 8 E.g., http://www.ign.com/boards/threads/cyclops-haterz-why.452869296/ 7

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personality in descriptions of the Cyclops, in a reflection of an increasingly subjective-individualist selfhood that sees one’s individual personality as fundamental. The Marvel Cyclops’ lack of personality as his notable identity characteristic fully manifests that trend. This point speaks directly to Cyclops’ second defining characteristic. This characteristic exists in his physical form, namely that he shoots beams of energy out of his eyes, which when in superhero costume becomes funneled out of a single, Cyclopean orifice on his head. When Scott Summers becomes Cyclops, in other words, he is defined purely by his single-beamed mask, his Cyclopean single eye. Nothing about Homer’s Cyclops recurs here, except this single facial feature. As I’ve highlighted throughout this book, a trend toward subjective-individualist selfhood is accompanied by a greater importance granted to an individual’s unique facial features. Marvel’s Cyclops has again fully manifested this trend. Such a caricature of a Cyclops is now the widely accepted version of the “myth”: everyone has a roughly similar idea in their mind of what a Cyclops looks like, and a cursory internet search of modern images reveals countless examples of aristic representations manifesting this caricature. We can usefully recall Homer’s physical description of Polyphemus by comparison. In my first chapter, I noted how Homer barely if at all described the Cyclops’ physical form, and didn’t even make explicit his facial features around his single eye. Likewise with the Cyclops’ personality and psychology, which were basically absent. For Homer, such issues were simply unimportant, as it was left to the later mythic tradition in literature and art to provide examples of the Cyclops’ eye(s) and to innovatively fill out his personality. For Homer, the Cyclops is defined solely in terms of how he reflected the negative mirror of objective-participant selfhood; for Marvel, the Cyclops is defined solely in terms of his (lack of) personality and his one-eyedness. The modern concept of “Cyclops” has now come to fully denote some type of special human with a single eye, and nothing more: all the objective-participant aspects have been lost along the way, as I’ve gradually shown across the previous chapters.

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Compare the aspects of selfhood that are maintained among readers of Marvel comics, and you’ll see hallmarks of subjectiveindividualist selfhood along the above lines of highlighting individual personality and unique facial features. Social media profiles such as Facebook contain subjective-individualist features such as likes, dislikes, beliefs, preferences, and opinions. What you will only rarely see is any indication of a person’s background, ancestry, family occupation, and city of birth as you would see in any Homeric description of a character. One suspects that the Homeric Odysseus’ Facebook profile would stand out in its prominent display of his ties to the land of Ithaca, his best and most recent offerings to the Olympian gods, and tangible gifts demonstrating his family’s relationship with the families of Menelaos and Alcinous. Marvel’s Cyclops, by contrast, is defined precisely along Facebook’s preferred lines, in terms of his personality and his unique facial features. This can partly be explained through genre: comics by nature and design focus on the visual elements of character and action. Much more can be conveyed by a single image, as the saying goes, than by extensive description in words. Notably, however, this is a genre that only appears after the predominant shift toward subjective-individualistic selfhood. Of course, images have always been present and popular in human culture, and there are clear economic explanations for the mass production of images cheaply available to the public. But the popularity of this medium in modernity is important, as it reflects the given cultural tastes and attitudes of the day. The most popular comics in modernity, in other words, don’t focus on landscapes or historical scenes in the large, but X-Men and others of its kind find their popularity by focusing on individual characters, each of whose distinctive facial features, characteristics, and personality are given extensive treatment. Selfhood in Modern Film: The Cyclops in Krull

We can keep the above points in mind as we move to a different example and medium, the Cyclops named Rell in the movie Krull (1983). Other cinematic depictions of the Cyclops are possible in modernity, ranging from the more literal interpretations of

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Homer (Ulysses, 1954; The Odyssey, 1997) to the more metaphorical (O Brother Where Art Thou?, 2000). Certainly these literal adaptations of Homer hew closely to that account, maintaining some aspects of Homer’s selfhood while modifying others such as by under-emphasizing objective-participant values such as hospitality and public piety. Meanwhile, the metaphorical re-tellings are worlds apart from Homer, describing the Cyclops as a human with single eye and notable personality. We see the full breadth of possible depictions in these accounts, in other words, well demonstrating the complexity of modernity’s engagement with the past which can range from literal reproduction to complete overhaul. However, I’ve deliberately chosen an example a bit further afield to liven and widen the breadth of my comparison. In Krull, the Cyclops was simply a strong man possessing one eye. He was distinctly noble, and he had no role in defining the character and society of the protagonist by contradistinction. Krull’s Cyclops was freely re-imagined as far as his personal, individual characteristics, but his character conformed to the ancient myth only in a way that wasn’t even essential to the ancient depiction in sole terms of his single eye. Homer’s Cyclops is gone, and all that remains is a single eye. That remaining eye and some type of personality seems to be how Krull’s Cyclops, like Marvel’s, is entirely defined. Krull’s Cyclops is also notable in that he is depicted in a positive way, as one of the band of heroes. He is not only part of this band, but also sacrifices himself on the group’s quest, a decidedly noble action for a Cyclops whose mythical context in the Homeric tale is distinctly negative. This modern Cyclops finds the closest parallels in the preceding historical era, in the Middle Ages where the Cyclops was innovatively re-thought as a positive figure. While the medieval Cyclops’ re-imagining arose in large part from the popularity of Neoplatonic allegory, both the medieval and especially the modern Cyclops are able to be reconfigured as positive due to the growing importance of personality during these times. The centrality of personality in selfhood opens up a space for these Cyclops-auteurs to think about their subject as more than just a vague, monstrous villain mirror read in opposition to the hero. When the Cyclops is granted a personality, a

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whole realm of possibility emerges to think about the Cyclops in a new, interesting way that might re-cast him differently. Changes in wider cultural values around selfhood have, once again, opened up a new potential avenue for re-thinking and re-telling the Cyclops myth. Selfhood in Modern Novels: Percy Jackson

The most recent, notable re-telling of the Cyclops myth in modernity is found in a series of young adult novels titled Percy Jackson and the Olympians, by Rick Riordan. Published from 2005-2009, the series includes five books, tracing the story of the hero Percy Jackson as he discovers his divine lineage and goes on a series of adventures that draw in a wide-ranging manner from Greek mythology. As highly popular retellings of Greek myth, the stories are excellent exemplars of myth’s continued influence and persistence in western thought, as well as its adaptability for new audiences and cultural-historical periods. Two Cyclopes appear in this series: one, a protagonist named Tyson, the half-brother of the series’ main protagonist Percy; and the other, the Cyclops Polyphemus, who closely follows Homer’s account in the Odyssey. Both Cyclopes, in different ways, personify a modern subjective-individualist selfhood, with the Polyphemus character showing influences of the Homeric story while Tyson, the main Cyclops in the novels, manifests a fully subjectiveindividualist selfhood. Tyson appears in the second book of the series, The Sea of Monsters. Tyson is described as a Cyclops and the half-brother of Percy due to their mutual father Poseidon. Riordan describes him as homeless and young, and he enters a prep school shared with Percy through a program for homeless youth. Tyson is described as wanting to be “the best little brother possible” and to “make his family proud”.9 Tyson’s personality is highlighted, specifically described as “different”, and “enthusiastic”,10 well reflecting the

The Last Olympian. Riordan, The Battle of the Labyrinth, p. 34: “I couldn’t help smiling, he was so enthusiastic about everything.” 9

10

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importance of personality in the modern, subjective-individualist selfhood framework. Physically, his descriptions are extensive and specific. He is tall, broad-shouldered, has one eye (although it is magically obscured so people see two eyes) that is now given a color (brown), messy brown hair, teeth that he doesn’t take care of (c.f. ancient descriptions of Polyphemus’ teeth gleaming like Parian marble), scarring on his back from an encounter with the sphinx, and also has some characteristics reflecting pre-Homeric myth, such as physical strength and metal-working ability. Tyson is described as physically ugly and smelly, the former well familiar from previous descriptions, and the latter an even more developed personal characteristic. Riordan also adds a few novel characteristics as well, namely an immunity to fire, extraordinary senses of smell and hearing, and some telepathic ability underwater as befitting his status as a son of Poseidon. Tyson’s personality and psychology are likewise given substantial attention, despite a preliminary description by Percy as being on the “monstrous” side.11 In Riordan’s account, a Cyclops becomes one of the protagonists, no longer framed in opposition to the text’s hero. Tyson is given extensive dialogue, a personality, and subjective tastes and preferences: he is described as childlike, naïve, clumsy, easily upset resulting in frequent crying, and fearful, but also quick to learn, loyal, likes pegasi and hippocampi as well as peanut butter,12 and across the series grows as a person. He even has a love interest, the harpy Ella, who makes Tyson blush as he admires her beauty; they eventually are described as dating. Despite Tyson mentioning (The Son of Neptune) objectiveparticipant obstacles to their romance – he is a Cyclops, Ella is a harpy – in a later book (The House of Hades) they are described as dating, a paradigmatic modern, subjective-individualist type of romance that privileges subjective preferences over objective-participant obstacles of race or lineage. Sea of Monsters: “He’s more like a half-brother on the monstrous side of the family. Like ... a half-brother twice removed or something.” 12 The Battle of the Labyrinth: “Now we can eat peanut butter sandwiches and ride fish ponies. We can fight monsters and see Annabeth and make things go BOOM!” 11

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We saw in the Hellenistic (Theocritus) and Roman (Virgil/Ovid) Periods how the Cyclops became his own character. These accounts increasingly described, humanized, and psychologized the Cyclops as compared to the earlier accounts of Homer and Euripides. The descriptions in the Percy Jackson novels now fully develop these earlier trends, with the Cyclops Tyson wholly manifesting a modern, subjective-individualist selfhood in his complete physical description, entirely humanized persona, and the fundamental importance granted to his complicated psyche. Notably, when dialoguing with Polyphemus (see below) who asks him to stay and become a “real Cyclops”, Tyson responds, “You are not my kind”. This ability to self-identify outside of an apparent ontological state, here being a Cyclops at all, is distinctly subjective-individualist, seen in modernity where notions of belonging and being arise not necessarily from objective, external markers but rather from self-affirmed identity. Meanwhile, the second book of the series sees the hero Percy and his companions, including Tyson, traveling to the island of the Cyclops and to Polyphemus’ cave, in order to find the Golden Fleece and rescue their friend. When the heroes encounter Polyphemus, we find no objective-participant framework of description as we saw in Homer. Despite a reference to the fact that this is very much the same Polyphemus that Odysseus interacted with – indeed, this Polyphemus is blind from a result of that episode, and remembers and hates the name “No Man / Nobody” – Riordan’s account includes none of the objective-participant values such as hospitality, public piety, and the like. Instead, the Cyclops spends his time with a captured friend of Percy, Glover, who Polyphemus desires to marry, mistaking him for a woman. Homer’s meditation on proper, socially structured values have now disappeared to be replaced by a semi-humorous account, much like we saw in Greenberg. Additionally, we see a gender-bending sequence for added humor that is worlds apart from Euripides’ own sexualized comedy, which commented on proper, socially structured mores around taking a male lover. What is more, Riordan’s Cyclops follows previous trends, as Polyphemus (like Tyson) receives an extensive physiological description, such as around his “rotten teeth” and later around his

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physical appearance, dress, smell, and especially the crucial aspect of his single-eyedness: His eye is still half blind from the last time somebody poked it out. … ‘I will smash you.’ Polyphemus yelled, doubling over in pain. His enormous hands cupped over his eye. … [Tyson] shook his head earnestly. ‘Makes us appreciate blessings, not be greedy and mean and fat like Polyphemus.’ … Polyphemus’s eyelids narrowed over his baleful milky eye, as if he were trying to see Clarisse more clearly. The Cyclops was an even more horrible sight than he had been in my dreams. Partly because his rancid smell was now up close and personal. Partly because he was dressed in his wedding outfit—a crude kilt and shoulder-wrap, stitched together from babyblue tuxedoes, as if the he’d skinned an entire wedding party.

Such extensive attention given to the Cyclops’ physical appearance and particularly his face continues and extends the trends we have seen in previous Cyclops myths. As I’ve noted throughout, such attention reflects a subjective-individualist selfhood typical of the modern world, with an importance granted to one’s unique facial features. Polyphemus, again continuing and extending previous trends around selfhood, is also highly emotional. He is described, for instance, as “breath[ing] heavily, trying to contain his anger”, he “bellowed furiously”, as all the humans were able to do were to “make him mad.” When Percy finally had the chance to kill the Cyclops, he stood over him with sword raised, and the Cyclops responded in a humanistic, pitiable way: ‘Please, noooo!’ the Cyclops moaned, pitifully staring up at me. His nose was bleeding. A tear welled in the corner of his half-blind eye. ‘M-m-my sheepies need me. Only trying to protect my sheep!’ He began to sob.

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… The Cyclops sounded so heartbroken, just like ... like Tyson. … But Polyphemus sobbed ... and for the first time it sank in that he was a son of Poseidon, too. Like Tyson. Like me. How could I just kill him in cold blood? … ‘We only want the Fleece,’ I told the monster. ‘Will you agree to let us take it?’ ‘No!’ Clarisse shouted. ‘Kill him!’ The monster sniffed. ‘My beautiful Fleece. Prize of my collection. Take it, cruel human. Take it and go in peace.’ … ‘Young one!’ the older Cyclops called. ‘Where are you? Help me!’ Tyson stopped. ‘You weren’t raised right!’ Polyphemus wailed, shaking his olive tree club. ‘Poor orphaned brother! Help me!’

All these are explicit descriptors of his emotional state instead of more oblique descriptions found in previous eras. This Polyphemus, despite his foul appearance and one eye, is rendered as a fully emotional and psychologically rich character, capable of a wide range of internal, subjective states, ranging from pity to sadness to anger to even manipulation of others’ emotions. Indeed, as the above quotes show, Percy finds Polyphemus to be no different, in his emoting and psychological depth, than Tyson and even himself. Polyphemus is now the object of sympathy via the story’s hero, and not only that but has the psychological sophistication to manipulate Percy and Tyson to get what he wants. While he may be monstrous in aspects of his appearance, this Cyclops manifests a fully subjective-individualist selfhood and agency. In sum, we thus see both of the Percy Jackson Cyclopes manifesting similar changes around selfhood, with their fully subjective-individualist descriptions acting as the culmination of developments starting in Homer and Euripides. The persistence of Homer’s account in Riordan’s Polyphemus speaks to the persistence of myth and certain of these stories, but we can also see how Homer’s core narrative remains even while a host of

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descriptive characteristics and emphases are subject to change. Indeed, the most important Cyclops in the Percy Jackson novels is not even Polyphemus himself, but rather an extremely humanlike character, Tyson, whose character receives complete development in terms of his subjective, individual characteristics. Tyson is, in other words, a fully modern Cyclops even as Riordan’s Polyphemus is a subjective-individualist agent with clear links to the Homeric story. Early Modern, Modern, and Post-Modern Society

Defining western modernity and a western, modern mentality is perhaps even more fraught territory than defining the Middle Ages and a medieval mentality. Nonetheless, there are a couple important developments in both history and cultural thought that allow us to describe aspects of what Gill called the subjectiveindividualist selfhood of modernity. In the realm of history, we see the rise of industrialization, accelerated technology, and scientific thinking, all of which culminated in the paradigm of neoliberal capitalism that is dominant in the modern west. In the realm of philosophy, René Descartes’ pioneering separation of body from mind and his privileging of the interior, thinking self continues to influence how recent philosophers identify, explore, and critique a modern selfhood based fundamentally on individualism and subjectivity. These currents of society and philosophy well describe and explain what we’ve seen in modern re-tellings of the Cyclops myths, with the Cyclops continuing trends from the Middle Ages to manifest what is now a fully subjective-individualist selfhood. Before exploring these two aspects of modernity (neoliberal capitalism; philosophical individualism) in greater detail, we can usefully characterize modernity in broader strokes. As we will see, this characterization closely reflects Gill’s characterization of a modernist, subjective-individualist selfhood. Some of these ideas have been constant currents throughout the book, but they merit an explicit and fuller treatment here to highlight similarities and especially differences with earlier periods, as well as to provide proper depth for the more specific points I’ll make about the

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relationship between this historic-cultural era and its particular re-tellings of the Cyclops myth. Put simply, western modernity and modern selfhood are defined by an increasing focus on the individual, and individualism more broadly. Modern political commentators even fret about Millennials’ increased individualism, taking for granted its endemic persistence, and seemingly referring to the purportedly increased focus by young people on personal, internal attributes such as subjective preferences, feelings, thoughts, and beliefs.13 We can define individualism similarly, as seeing the singular person as a bounded, cohesive locus of subjective identity, selfhood, value, meaning, and ontology. Scholars certainly disagree on the historical roots of individualism and some of its currents of development; I’ve noted aspects of subjective individualism in the ancient Greco-Roman world and more substantially in the Middle Ages. But there is a general consensus that subjective individualism is a fundamental feature of modernity that defines it against previous eras, and which is generally located in the pioneering philosophy of Descartes (1596-1650).14 Despite a healthy amount of perspectives casting doubt on the centrality and/or totality of Descartes’ subjective individualism,15 his writings are largely accepted as distilling and advancing a view of selfhood as individualistic, inward, and subjective.16 This view is best articulated in Descartes’ works Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy, which detail Descartes’ “methodic doubt” about external truth, namely Descartes’ skepticism about his ability to know anything truly or even that See, for example: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/opinion/ sunday/douthat-the-age-of-individualism.html 14 Renaut, Era of the Individual; Shanahan, Toward a Genealogy; Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity; Idem, Consequences of Modernity. 15 Just one example among many characterizing this view: Ferraiolo, “Individualism and Descartes”, pp. 71-86. 16 Amidst an enormous bibliography, some useful secondary sources: Dicker, Descartes; Frankfurt, “Descartes’s Discussion”, pp. 329-356; Larmore, “The First Meditation”; Markie, “The Cogito and Its Importance”; Peacocke, “Cogito Ergo Sum: Descartes Defended”, pp. 109-125; Popkin, History of Scepticism; Vinci, Cartesian Truth; Williams, “Descartes’s Use of Skepticism”; Williams, Unnatural Doubts. 13

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anything exists external to oneself. In response, Descartes turns inward, taking as his first principle that he knows at least that he is a thinking thing, encapsulated in his famous “I think therefore I am” (cogito ergo sum). This philosophical shift was a notable departure from relying on external guarantors of reality or truth, and as the new locus of truth, reality, and knowledge it focused on the thinking, individual self. This individualism has been long recognized by important scholars of politics, society, and art. The famous observer of American life Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), for instance, saw individualism as a real and rising phenomenon where communal relations of obligation became increasing severed in favor of a turn to “standing alone”.17 Tocqueville was ambivalent about individualism, seeing problems with this “standing alone”, but also admiring the ways that American democracy seemed to manifest a new and productive type of individualism. The prominent political theorist John Dewey (1859-1952), influenced by prior thinkers such as Baruch Spinoza and John Locke, likewise pointed to a rising individualism in society. Sharing both Tocqueville’s critiques of individualism and its potentially positive force, Dewey argued in favor of a new individualism that would drive productive changes in politics, society, and culture.18 Ambivalence around an increasing individualism in the modern west is a constant feature, as the reality of heightened individualism became an object for political, social, artistic, religious, and philosophical commentary.19 Yet individualism’s increasingly mainstream acceptance and positive valuation continued: Tocqueville and Dewey speak to this attitude in America, while the same became increasingly true in 19th century Europe, especially England, with a “gradual extension of the general public approval given to individualism”.20 de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, p. 368. Dewey, Individualism Old and New. 19 An illustrative example: Berger, “Western Individuality”, pp. 323-336. 20 Watt, Myths of Modern Individualism, p. 240; see also p. 241, where Watt notes the critiques of thinkers such as Mill, but still sees that “Gradually, however, individualism took on a more favorable meaning” in places such as England and Europe more widely. 17 18

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Critiques of individualism by prominent political philosophers such as Dewey and John Stuart Mill were directed against a capitalist individualism, which manifested negatively in art and politics which came under the overt sway of business.21 This critique of capitalistic individualism, especially as compared to a desirably enlightened individualism, found its clearest expression in the work of Karl Marx (1818-1883). It was Marx who changed our understanding of history, demonstrating how forces of economics, technology, and material production were fundamental shapers of society, politics, culture, and values. For Marx, such changes distilled and explained what was distinctive about the modern world relative to the medieval period.22 What is more, individual rationality continued to be privileged in the modern age in a continuation of trends found in the late Middle Ages, furthering the focus on individual assessment and truth construction.23 The modern break precipitated by changing technologies of material production led Max Weber (1864-1920), in turn, to define modernity as an era with demarcations in different spheres of life, what he called “value spheres”.24 In this view, pre-modern determinants of value were over-arching and broad, unifying areas such as religion and economics into a single, shared, pan-society, “unifying worldview”.25 In the pre-modern world, society and the individuals in it were structured by wider, shared obligations and values. Such an interpretation of pre-modern selfhood closely matches what Gill described as objective-participant On art, Dewey, Individualism, p. 20: “Those who are still called artists either put themselves, as writers and designers, at the disposal of organized businesses, or are pushed out to the edge as eccentric bohemians.” On business, p. 21: “The business mind, having its own conversation and language, its own interests, its own intimate groupings in which men of this mind, in their collective capacity, determine the tone of society at large as well as the government of industrial society, and have more political influence than the government itself.” 22 Katz, “Karl Marx on the Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism”, pp. 363-389. 23 Kalberg, “Max Weber’s Types of Rationality”, pp. 1145-1179. 24 Oakes, “Max Weber on Value Rationality and Values Spheres”, pp. 27-45. 25 Ibid. 21

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selfhood, which as we’ve seen was the predominant paradigm in ancient societies. In contrast, Weber saw modernity as determined by “value spheres” whereby society was split into “relatively autonomous domains of action oriented towards determinate, incommensurable, ultimate values: religion, art, politics, capitalist markets, erotic love, and science.”26 In this world, each individual could pick and choose which domain they participated in, to which degree, the extent and type of value granted that domain, and if and how that domain might influence their participation in others. Whereas premodern society had socially-structured, objective participant “value judgments” (Werturteile), neoliberal modernity turned these into “judgments of taste” (Geschmacksurteile),27 which were ultimately the object of individual, internal, subjective preferences, in other words a subjective-individualist frame of value.28 As Oakes well puts it, “according to Weber, a modern individual tends to act only on one’s own aesthetic impulse and arbitrary convictions”.29 At stake for thinkers like Marx and Weber – in a parallel to Tocqueville and Dewey – was the nature of the new individualism. All of them took for granted, in different ways, that individualism was on the rise, but each in their own way sought to critique a capitalist-materialist individualism that they felt trampled the human spirit, even as they tried to salvage a different, positive type of individualism. Weber, for example, asked, “How is it at all possible to salvage any remnants of ‘individual’ freedom of movement in any sense given this all-powerful trend”?30 Weber’s critique of communitarian thought likewise can be traced to the Kantian strain of selfhood thinking that focused on subjective-individualism.31 Even Marx’s socialist thought was developed in the direction of subjective-individualism, as Theodor Adorno (19031969) declared “today [we] are all really proletarians”, thereby Ibid. Weber, “Religious Rejections of the World and Their Directions”, p. 342. 28 Gay, The Way of the (Modern) World. 29 Oakes, “Max Weber on Value Rationality”. 30 Weber, “Parliament and Government in Germany Under a New Political Order”, p. 159. 31 Kim, “Max Weber”; see also Graf, “The German Theological Sources”. 26 27

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embracing the individuation born of social, economic, and political transformation.32 This various theorizing, critique, and embrace of modern, subjective individualism has taken an even further turn, toward what we might call a post-modern subjectivism. While modernity is defined in terms of subjective individualism and the demarcation of different spheres of life, post-modernity can be defined by a self-reflexive questioning of truths, values, knowledge, and identity.33 Graham Taylor, in conversation with Anthony Giddens who has articulated an individualistic view of modernity cited above,34 writes that “reflexivity” is the key to the most modern articulations of society and selfhood: “Identity links feelings and emotions with institutional and social change. Identity and the self are both grounded in reflexivity”.35 Selfhood, in the post-modern paradigm, is something highly negotiated, fungible, selectable, and ultimately based on internal “feelings and emotions” as they intersect with external context. A post-modern selfhood, in other words, is a self-reflexive one, where self-reflexivity as a concept is an even more extreme development of subjectivity and individualism. The more subjective, individualist, internal, and emotional, the more modern the selfhood. Taylor also notes one final piece of this type of selfhood, namely the role of the body: “The body is integral to modern selfidentity as it forms the embodiment of modern personhood”.36 The body is fundamental to selfhood, and in Taylor’s view it is through the body that one’s particular identity can arise, as the body is the site of “emotional investment of the self”, the “linking of the public and the private”, and the focus on “realism”.37 The most post/modern self, in other words, is one that privileges not Language adapted from Boucher, Adorno Reframed; also Adorno and Horkheimer, Towards a New Manifesto, p. 34. 33 A couple foundational essays in defining the modern and the postmodern: Habermas, “Modernity versus Postmodernity” pp. 3-14; Giddens, “Modernism and Post-Modernism”, pp. 15-18. 34 Giddens, Beyond Left and Right. 35 Taylor, The New Political Sociology, p. 85. 36 Ibid. 37 Idem, p. 86. 32

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only subjectivity and individualism, but also the specific aspects of emotionality, the privileging of the body in terms of identity, and the foregrounding concern of a realistic depiction of oneself. As we have seen, the Cyclops of the late 20th and early 21st centuries reflect this post/modern selfhood extremely closely, with a depiction that is emotional, subjective, and includes realistic physical descriptors. As we have seen across this book, over time the Cyclops’ physical identity (particularly the face) receives greater and greater attention, both in terms of the text devoted to its description and in the identity-construction tied to it. In modernity, the prominence of visual mediums (graphic novel, comic, film) in turn permits, and constrains toward, a greater focus on the visual, physical aesthetic of unique faces and forms; the medium is the message. Meanwhile, this wider constellation of political, social, and economic change manifested even in the artistic realm, as Ian Watt describes the modern novel’s “primary criterion [as] truth to individual experience – individual experience which is always unique and therefore true”.38 Watt specifically attributes this rise in individualism to the legacy of Descartes, whose “Meditations did much to bring about the modern assumption whereby the pursuit of truth is conceived of as a wholly individual matter”.39 In Watt’s account, in other words, we can draw a direct line between early modern philosophical developments, socio-political change in the interim, and the types of artistic production that occur in modernity. The parallels with my own argument about re-tellings of the Cyclops myth as reflecting changing socio-historic contexts couldn’t be clearer. This individual, subjective realism is not the end of the story, however. Some accounts of post-modern selfhood go even further. Previous thinkers on modern subjective individualism tended to think of the self as a single, unified subject. Descartes, for instance, clearly thought of a single, unified “I” in his famous “cogito ergo sum”. Kant likewise understood a certain unity of consciousness as

38 39

Watt, Rise of the Novel, p. 13. Ibid.

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central to his entire philosophical project.40 But post-modern thinkers like Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995) articulated an individualistic selfhood that took subjectivity to an extreme and argued against any sort of cohesive identity presumed by Descartes and Kant.41 This dissolution of the cohesive subject is fundamental to postmodernism, which embraced the notion that “schizophrenia is not only a human fact but also a possibility for thought.”42 Such a position not only self-reflexively critiques the cultural valuation of the cohesion of identity, but also questions notions of shared truth and empirical knowledge more broadly.43 Both the subjective-individualism of modern selfhood and the extreme subjectivity of a certain post-modern selfhood have been the subjects of substantial discussion and critique by modern philosophers. In what follows, I’ll trace just a few notable strands of 20th century philosophy relevant to the discussion, with two foci. First, that individualistic selfhood is also seen to be essential to modernity from the perspective of philosophy,44 in addition to the strands identified above from politics, society, technologyeconomy, and art. Second, that these philosophical perspectives, as befit their modern status, are decidedly mixed in their reception and assessment of the value of individualistic selfhood. Above, I’ve already described both Descartes’ mind/body dualism and Kant’s unified subject, two colossally important thinkers whose work hugely influenced modern selfhood in a fully subjective-individualist direction. To these we can add two other giants of modern philosophy, both of whom were familiar with Descartes and Kant, and who built upon them: Georg Hegel (17701831) and Martin Heidegger (1889-1976). I will follow these thinkers with some other notable philosophers in this same Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, pp. 135-137. Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, pp. 246-57. 42 Idem, p. 148; for a fully rendered work on this premise, see also Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus. 43 A distillation of this view as cultural-intellectual flashpoint was the socalled “Sokal Affair”: see Sokal and Bricmont, Fashionable Nonsense. 44 Two of the 20th century’s dominant philosophical views, phenomenology and existentialism, are so described here: Szabala, “The Individualism of Twentieth-Century”, pp. 165-175. 40 41

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intellectual lineage who are writing today, including Charles Taylor and Peter Sloterdijk. Hegel and Heidegger both see individualism as essential to modernity, but with a key difference: Hegel saw individualism as inevitable and seemingly positive, while Heidegger takes a more skeptical approach. David Kolb accurately summarizes the two positions, first on Hegel: “For Hegel history has been moving toward individual freedom. Individualism is essential to modernity, and although it will be tempered in the rational state, it will not be denied, since it is a necessary moment in the mediation of universal, particular, and individual within the motion of spirit”.45 Meanwhile, Heidegger “sees bourgeois individualism as only one of the possibilities opened up by the essence of the modern age. Heidegger would also emphasize more than Hegel the domineering aspects of modernity”.46 Heidegger, in other words, sees no positive teleology in Hegel, and even understands the subjective-individualism of modernity as a potentially negative outcome. Nonetheless, both thinkers see individualism as essential to the modern self. Heidegger sees a subjective-individualist outlook as the essential point of difference between the Middle Ages and modernity, and locates the breach specifically with Descartes: The essence of modernity can be seen in humanity’s freeing itself from the bonds of Middle Ages ... Certainly the modern age has, as a consequence of the liberation of humanity, introduced subjectivism and individualism. ... For up to Descartes ... The claim [of a self-supported, unshakable foundation of truth, in the sense of certainty] originates in that emancipation of man in which he frees himself from obligation to Christian revelational truth and Church doctrine to a legislating for himself that takes its stand upon itself.47

Heidegger’s point here is that previous to locating value and authority ultimately in one’s own, rational, thinking self (so Descartes and Kant), people looked to wider structures such as religion to provide the foundations for their life and being. Gill’s Kolb, Critique of Pure Modernity, p. 203. Ibid. 47 Heidegger, Off the Beaten Track, pp. 66-67. 45 46

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division between objective-participant and subjective-individualist selfhood is clearly expressed here. Yet unlike Hegel, Heidegger expresses a problematic relationship with this subjective individualism that is fundamental to modernity. At issue is the notion of authenticity, namely what can make for a true and meaningful life. Certainly Heidegger is aware that community can repress individual expression and potential. But Heidegger’s key notions such as Dasein and “Being-with-Others” fundamentally posit a communitarian or at least outward-connective orientation of the individual self.48 Descartes has helped precipitate a new reality, but Heidegger is suspicious of the tradeoffs involved in this new paradigm of selfhood and society. Heidegger’s suspicions were influential, and have been shared by various other philosophers’ discussions of modernity.49 Ferdinand Tönnies (1855-1936), for instance, was close to Tocqueville in arguing that an individualistic view of the self undermined social life.50 Likewise, Bellah et al. saw individualism as fundamentally leading to social detachment, leading to an empty, “unencumbered self”, but like Heidegger hoping for some new selfhood that also contains a notion of community.51 The prominent, living philosopher Charles Taylor has not only identified subjectivity and individualism as essential to modernity,52 but also called individualism one of the “three malaises of modernity”.53 Following both Heidegger and Edmund Husserl, one of the founders of modern phenomenology known for his work with “inter-subjectivity”,54 Taylor strongly critiques the values derived from a subjective-individualist selfhood that focuses on “self-fulfillment”, “self-choosing”, and a self-

Bessant, “Authenticity, Community, and Modernity”, pp. 1-32, esp. pp. 7-8. 49 Bessant, “Authenticity, Community, and Modernity” does an excellent job surveying an illustrative lineage; my account here largely follows Bessant. 50 Tönnies, Community and Society. 51 Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler, Tipton, Habits of the Heart, pp. 150153; see also Selznick, Moral Commonwealth, esp. pp. 69-70. 52 Bessant, “Authenticity, Community, and Modernity”, p. 18. 53 Taylor, Malaise of Modernity, esp. pp. 2-10. 54 Chelstrom, Social Phenomenology. 48

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reflexive type of self-definition.55 Without a socially structured (i.e., objective-participant) “horizon of significance”, Taylor believes that authenticity is impossible. The question of the authenticity of different kinds of selfhood takes its cue directly from Heidegger and other thinkers such as Adorno.56 Charles Guignon effectively encapsulates the problem, believing that modernity’s subjective-individualist selfhood has changed not only the terms of one’s self-understanding, but also changed for the worse our relationships with others. Comparing the socially structured, objective-participant modes of pre-modern life, Guignon contrasts the rationalistic individuality that results in a schism between one’s public self and one’s inner, purportedly “true” self.57 This modern, reflexive, highly subjective self that is “self-defining and self-contained” is now increasingly dislocated from more authentic, communal relationships of an objective-participant kind.58 We can finish our survey with another living philosopher, the provocative and wide-ranging thinker Peter Sloterdijk. Sloterdijk writes in explicit dialogue with Heidegger, diagnosing the same ills due to the individualism of the modern age, but departing from Heidegger in trying to emplace the self in terms of the place, space, and technologically-connective tissue of “existential spaciousness”.59 Sloterdijk finds meaning not in the selfcreated, self-reflexive, and self-constituted subjectivism of postmodernism, but rather (in Heideggerian speak) in the “intrusion of the Other into the Self or as a dissolution of the Self into the Other”.60 True authenticity and meaning is not found in the subjective-individualist self of modernity, and particularly not the extreme subjectivity of the post-modern self, but rather in the very “being-with” that constitutes our relational lives. The self is

Taylor, Malaise of Modernity, pp. 2-10. Adorno, Jargon of Authenticity. 57 Guignon, On Being Authentic, esp. p. 21. 58 Idem, p. 43. 59 Sloterdijk, Not Saved; full articulation of Sloterdijk’s meditations can be found in Sloterdijk, Bubbles. 60 Couture, Sloterdijk, p. 108. 55 56

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only authentic when it reaches outward and defines itself in relationship to other people, places, and things. We can see, by now, that modernity – in both its material changes and its philosophical changes – has turned strongly and perhaps irrevocably toward individualism and the subjective worldview that accompanies it. Both economic and intellectual production see subjective individualism as a defining force of the modern world in a way that precipitates a clear break from the eras that came before. Certainly whether this subjective individualism is a positive or negative development is up for debate; in the language of my Introduction, these thinkers surveyed advocate for a different identity within our new, shared selfhood paradigm. Indeed, the consensus is clear that selfhood has changed, substantially so and perhaps with negative consequences, from the ancient world. Both the economic-materialist view and the philosophical view, in other words, strongly support Gill’s contention that modern selfhood is defined by its individualist occupation on the far end of selfhood away from Homeric, communal selfhood. We see here, too, some important explanatory power for genre in these modern accounts of the Cyclops. With examples from film, comic, and novel, we have different media in which many different types of expression are possible, but where – especially in the visual mediums – depictions of face and figure are inherently privileged. There are certainly genre conventions for each of these mediums’ examples that differ from each other, and of course as in any era there are outliers and wide variations ranging from character-less films to abstract novels. But such examples of art tend to be thought of as avant-garde or confined to the label of “art-house”. Most people don’t watch movies or read books that lack characters with description and personality, much less characters entirely; a look at annual lists of the top-selling and most influential works in a given year easily confirms this. The most popular works of culture tend to reflect a particular era’s values such as selfhood, and in the modern world this selfhood is visual, individualistic, and aesthetically descriptive on face and form. As we’ve seen throughout this book, changes in the surrounding culture – be they cultural, material, political,

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philosophical, artistic, or otherwise – manifest and are reflected in cultural production. Modernity is no different. With the rise in individualism and subjectivism, we see likewise in a host of mediums that the Cyclopes of the modern world have become highly individualized and subjectivist, possessed of a notable humanism, complex psychology, inner emotion, unique tastes, and possessing distinctive physical features particularly in the face. Such changes in the myth reflect other cultural-historical changes, which in modernity I’ve particularly located above in areas such as material production, democratic politics, and philosophy, all of which likely mutually influence one another. As we have seen in every era, the changes in the wider cultural-historical era influence, and perhaps are also influenced by, stories of the Cyclops that continue to be told.

ART HISTORY EXCURSUS 2: THE POST-MEDIEVAL CYCLOPS, A SELECTIVE SUMMARY We saw in the ancient world that the art historical record shifted in a way that paralleled the literary accounts: Archaic and Classical art tended to depict a savage, monstrous Cyclops, while later Hellenistic and Roman art tended to depict an emotional, sentimental, and more human Cyclops. Likewise as we move from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance and Early Modern Periods, we see depictions that tend toward a subjective-individualist selfhood more typical of modernity. Visual depictions of Polyphemus focus less on the monster’s brutality, and increasingly more on his human-like characteristics while maintaining the focus on a single eye. Although doubtless not exhaustive, the below survey contains a robust sampling of the major works from the 17th century onward, showing how the Cyclops myth has been rendered predominantly in humanistic, artistic terms befitting a subjective-individualist selfhood. Notable paintings depict a more human-realistic Cyclops: Jacob Jordaens’ Odysseus in the Cave of Polyphemus (1635); Guido Reni’s Polifemo (1639-40) (Figure 7); Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein’s Polyphemus (1802) (Figure 10); and Arnold Böcklin’s Odysseus and Polyphemus (1896) (Figure 11). Other paintings focused on the pastoral Polyphemus from Theocritus and Ovid with all the attendant themes of sentimentality, humanism, and individualist-subjective selfhood: Annibale Carracci’s monumental fresco containing Polyphemus Attacking Acis and Galatea and Polyphemus in Love (1597-1604); Nicolas Poussin’s

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Landscape with Polyphemus (1649), and Poussin’s Acis and Galatea (1627) (Figure 6); the 1680-84 tapestry from Manufacture Royale des Gobelins of Acis and Galatea Discovered by Polyphemus (168084) (Figure 9); Corneille Van Clève’s marble Polyphemus Pining for the Nymph Galatea (1681); Jean Francois de Troy’s Acis and Galatea Discovered by Polyphemus; Charles-André van Loo’s Polyphemus Attacking Acis and Galatea; Jean-Baptiste van Loo’s Triumph of Galatea (1720); Gustave Ottin’s fountain sculpture Polyphemus Surprising Acis and Galatea (1866); Auguste Rodin’s Polyphemus (1888); and Gustave Moreau’s Galathea (1896) (Figure 12). A particularly notable example of the humanization of the Cyclops merits special mention, in Ulisse (!) Aldrovandi’s Monstrorum Historia (1642) (Figure 8). Here, the Cyclops is depicted as a human of normal proportions and even dressed in courtly attire. He is signaled as Cyclops only by the presence of his single eye, a visual that strongly anticipates modern understandings and depictions, such as found in the Percy Jackson novels.

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Figure 6. Acis and Galatea, by Nicolas Poussin. Oil on canvas (1627-1628). National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin.

Figure 7. Polifemo, by Guido Reni. Oil on canvas (16391640). Barberini Collection; Sacchetti Collection, at the Musei Capitolini, Rome.

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Figure 8. “Cyclops sive,” in Monstrorum Historia by Ulisse Aldrovandi. Woodcut illustration (1642). Bernard Becker Medical Library, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis.

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Figure 9. Acis and Galatea Discovered by Polyphemus, Manufacture Royale des Gobelins. Tapestry, wool and silk (circa 1680-1684). Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

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Figure 10. Polyphemus, by Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein. Painting, watercolor (1802). Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte Oldenburg, LMO 15.011.

Figure 11. Odysseus and Polyphemus, by Arnold Böcklin. Oil and tempera on panel (1896). Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

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Figure 12. Galatea, by Gustave Moreau. Ink, tempera, gouache, and watercolor on cardboard (1896). Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid.

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Figure 13. The Encyclopedia of Early Earth, by Isabel Greenberg (2013). Little, Brown and Company.

CONCLUSION This study provided an extensive, cross-historical reading of the changes in the Cyclops myth, from Homer until the present day. These re-tellings evince gradual but clear changes in various historical periods’ understanding of selfhood. Selfhood, as a framework that exists across times and cultures but which varies between them, is thus mapped against changing tellings of the Cyclops myth. These mythical re-tellings and consequent shifts in selfhood can be attributed to a host of historical shifts, ranging from the political to the religious to the philosophical. Furthermore, this centuries-long shift demonstrates a continuum of selfhood, from the Homeric selfhood that is entirely what the philosopher Christopher Gill called objective-participant selfhood, to a modern selfhood that Gill labels subjective-individualist. While Gill does well to make the case for this binary between ancient and modern selfhood, like most binaries it can be further developed, nuanced, and explained through careful literary and historical research. As the Cyclops myth was a widely known story re-told from Homeric times through various historical periods including the present day, it is thus a prime candidate to encapsulate and reflect changing notions of selfhood. My comparative readings of the Cyclops myth show that marked shifts in selfhood from objective-participant toward subjective-individualist occur in demonstrable ways and during particular times. This selfhood continuum is neither clean (i.e., there are outliers, such as Theocritus) nor definitive. For the former, variation is to be expected given the complexity of culture and the nonteleological nature of history. For the latter, no historical generalization of this kind can or should claim to be definitive. I have

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made this point at the conclusion of each chapter, but it should be stressed again here: the changes from ancient to modern selfhood reveal a world of variation, difference, and dispute. I’ve argued that my close readings of the various Cyclops myths have revealed strongly suggestive data points for general, large-scale shifts in selfhood over historical periods, but this shift is not linear and I see no historical teleology at play. Where possible, I have tied these proposed shifts to other developments in these historical times, ranging from aesthetic innovations (Hellenistic Age) to political developments (Roman Empire) to changes in social organization (Middle Age) to philosophy (Descartes and Modernity). These wider socio-historical developments lend additional plausibility to my claims and conclusions, and further speak to the mutual, ongoing influence of things like widely known myths, culturally specific self-understandings, and the socio-political climate. The Cyclops myth, as an enduring and significant story across western history, reflects, encapsulates, and even perhaps helps precipitate wider social changes, for example understandings of selfhood. Such changes may have preceded particular mythical re-tellings, developed in concert with mythical retellings (in response to the shifting socio-political climate, as with Ovid and Imperial Rome), or centrally stemmed from innovations regarding the Cyclops myth (a shift in aesthetic attitudes, as with Theocritus and the Hellenistic Age). Some mix of all of the above seems to my mind likely, as no single story of change, influence, or admixture of different types of socio-historical currents can fully explain the dynamic, complex, and at times random shifts of history. Nonetheless, the Cyclops story stands out, as much for its historical endurance as its adaptability to different times and cultural interests. Over time, we see this adaptability manifest in all sorts of different myths with their own stories, emphases, and depictions that can differ drastically even from roughly contemporary stories. Between the two poles on the selfhood continuum we therefore see various points along the way, with an overall change from structured/objective to individualized/subjective selfhood that generally tracks chronological change, but only generally so.

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Homer’s Polyphemus is the most structured, and we see notable mid-points and changing selfhood in the Hellenistic, Roman, and Medieval periods, with modern notions of selfhood wholly individualistic and almost entirely lacking the trappings of structured selfhood. This is where we stand today, in a culture that, by comparison with Homer’s Greece, is highly individualistic, subjective, interior, and centered much more on unique beliefs, desires, and dis/likes than on social roles and duties defined by one’s wider social frame. Despite such wide-ranging changes in identity, philosophical understandings, cultural and political frameworks, and artistic representations, the Cyclops myth – judging by the continued interest in media ranging from comics to film to popular novels – lives on, remaining as important as ever for our notion of self. The change from ancient structured selfhood (objective participant) to modern interior selfhood (subjective individualist) is today fully realized. On the Homeric side of the selfhood continuum, we see an under-emphasis on the Cyclops’ single eye (a physically notable characteristic) and a distinct emphasis on the ways that the Cyclops highlights a structured selfhood fully vested in society’s various relations. In the modern era, in graphic novels, comic books, and film, we see the mythic re-telling of the Cyclops in a way that rejects a structured selfhood in favor of an individualized selfhood based on individualistic, internal traits and the unique physical characteristic of a single eye. As we have seen at several points throughout the history of the myth, this shift toward a fully subjective-individualist selfhood often resulted in a notably human-like Cyclops. In my Introduction, I noted that the Cyclops’ nearly-human status makes it uniquely suited to reflect on proper selfhood. As the objective-participant qualities of the Cyclops fall away over time due to changing selfhood, the Cyclops’ non-human status becomes less important and its unique, personal qualities become more important. As the Cyclops has become more human, we have become closer to the Cyclops too.

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INDICES CONCEPTS & IDEAS

Corydon: 100-101 Cyclopean Masonry: 24 Cyclops, comedy by Euripides: 49-50, 188 Cyclops, in: Boethius: 154-155 Dede Korkut: 160-161 Euripides: 47, 50, 52-53, 57-58 60-61, 62, 65 Fulgentius: 151-152 Góngora: 164-167 Greenberg: 187-188 Guido delle Colonne: 162 Homer: 8-10, 21, 25, 29, 32-35, 41-42, 46-48, 58, 60-61 Krull: 191-193 Lydgate: 162 Merugud: 159-160 Nonnus: 148-150 Ovid: 99, 109, 114, 126, 131, 133-134 Percy Jackson and the Olympians: 193-198 Remigius: 156-158 Second Vatican Mythographer: 158-159

Acis: 113, 164 Aeneid, work by Virgil: 99-100, 103, 106-107, 133 Allegory: 151, 176 Annales school: 179 Anti-materialism: 160, 173 Athens: 4, 49, 64, 67 Ancestry (see Lineage) Audible thought (see Internal dialogue) Book culture: 176-177 Bucolic poetry: 69, 71, 88-89, 162, 163-164 Bucolicum Carmen, work by Petrarch: 161 Carolingian Period: 175-176 Christianity: 145, 146-147, 154-155. 173-174 Classical Period: 49, 58, 64-65, 121, 123 Comedy (see Drama) Consolation of Philosophy, The; work by Boetheius: 153-155

253

254

THE CYCLOPS MYTH AND THE MAKING OF SELFHOOD

Theocritus: 72, 81, 82, 84, 85-89, 94-95, 136 Virgil: 99, 102, 105, 131, 133-134 X-Men: 189-19 Island of: 31-32, 51, 82 Myth, General: 8-11, 190 Physical appearance of: 46-48, 57-60, 74-77, 80-82, 102, 105-106, 109, 112, 114, 120, 126-127, 152-153, 158, 162, 187, 190, 194, 195-196 Pre-Homeric: 22 Romance with Galatea (see Galatea) Symbolic understanding of: 156-158 Cyclopes: 23, 107 Dede Korkut: 160-161 Democracy: 64-67 Desire, Emotional/Romantic: 8788, 98, 111, 150, 165, 166, 170, 172, 173, 194 Sexual: 57, 82, 150, 165, 166 Dionysiaca, work by Nonnus: 147 Drama: 49, 63 Drinking: 30, 32, 39, 52 Dualism, Cartesian/Kantian: 5, 153, 178, 198, 205 Early Modern Period: 5, 163, 183 Eating: 30, 32, 38-39, 44, 52, 56

Eclogues, work by Virgil: 50, 88, 98, 100, 133 Emotions/Emotionality/Emotional states: 90, 93, 98, 152, 154, 161, 197, 203 Emotional communities: 144, 168 Encyclopedia of Early Earth, work by Isabel Greenberg: 186 Facebook: 191 Femininity: 166 First-person (see Narrative perspective) Galatea: 70, 72, 77, 83, 87, 109110, 114, 125, 136, 148, 149-150, 161, 164, 165, 173 Gaze: 106, 121-122, 127-129 Genre: 89, 178-179 Grooming: 111, 113-114, 127 Hair: 112-114, 125, 127 Hellenistic Age: 69, 71, 85, 88, 90-92, 95, 131, 136 History of the Destruction of Troy, work by Guido delle Colonne: 162 Honor & Shame Culture: 21, 31, 35, 39-41 Homeric Period: 22-23, 31, 36-41 Hospitality: 22, 26, 30, 33, 40, 54 Identity: 8, 35 Idyll VI, poem by Theocritus: 69, 72-77, 86, 106 Idyll XI, poem by Theocritus: 72, 77

INDICES Imperial Rome (see Roman Period) Individualism: 199-203, 204-210 Internal dialogue: 85-86 “Know thyself”: 123 Krull (1983): 191-192 La Fábula de Polifemo y Galatea, work by Luis de Góngora y Argote: 163-164 Lineage: 41-42, 52, 83-84, 107, 115, 161, 194 Marriage: 173 Marvel (see X-Men) Masculinity: 119 Merugud Ulix Meic Liertis: 159160 Metamorphoses, work by Ovid: 109-118, 134 Mirror: 75, 90-91, 102, 122, 125-127 Mirror-reading: 26-27, 33-35, 52-55 Modernity: 87, 183, 198-199, 209 Morality: 159 Moralizing understandings: 160, 161, 172-174, 179, 180 Myth: 11-12 Narcissus: 128 Narrative perspective: 86 Neoliberal capitalism: 183, 198, 202 Neoplatonism: 145, 154-155, 156, 160, 166, 174-177, 180 New Historicism: 12-13

255 Odysseus: 23, 25, 29-31, 42-44, 50, 54-56, 62, 115, 156, 160 On the Content of Virgil, work by Fulgentius: 151-152 Pastoral (see Bucolic poetry) Percy Jackson and the Olympians, series by Rick Riordan: 193-198 Personality traits: 43-45, 89, 153, 155, 157, 159, 164, 168-167, 189-190, 192 Philosophical individualism: 199-200, 204-210 Polifemo, work by Luis de Góngora y Argote (see La Fábula de Pilofemo y Galatea): 163-167, 176 Polis: 4, 21, 35, 40, 65, 93 Polyphemus (see Cyclops/Cyclopes) Popular culture: 185 Poseidon: 31, 42, 52, 115, 194 Post-modernity: 183, 203, 205 Printing Press: 177 Psychological states: 27, 55, 60, 74, 76, 107, 109, 121, 195 Public image: 119-121, 152 Rationality: 153, 156, 159, 172174, 177, 201 Reception theory: 13-14 Reflexivity (see Self-reflection) Rell (see Cyclops, in Krull) Roman Empire: 89, 91-92, 97, 98, 109, 113, 118-123, 124, 129, 131

256

THE CYCLOPS MYTH AND THE MAKING OF SELFHOOD

Roman Period (see Roman Empire) Romanticism: 5 Romantic love (see Desire) Satyr Play (see Drama) Scott Summers (see Cyclops, in X-Men) Selfhood, Definition of: 1 Subjective-individualist: 3-8, 27, 43, 48, 51, 55, 57, 58, 60, 63, 65-67, 76, 84, 85-86, 89-92, 94, 95, 98, 107, 109, 111-112, 115, 118, 120-121, 124, 130, 132, 153, 160, 169, 170, 179, 183, 188, 198-99, 203, 205 Objective-participant: 3-8, 26-27, 31, 35, 41, 48, 51, 54, 58, 65, 94, 115, 121, 124, 132, 160, 162, 169, 170, 188, 190, 194, 201202 Self-reflection: 76-77, 81-83, 90-92, 102, 122, 188, 203 Silenus: 50, 57, 87 Single-eye: 47, 59-60, 75-77, 8081, 106, 112, 136, 152, 156, 158-159, 161, 162, 165, 168, 188, 190, 194 Socially-structured (see Selfhood, objective-participant) Stoicism: 120-121, 130

St. Gall Manuscripts: 158 Tepegoz (see Cyclops, In Dede Korkut) Third-person (see Narrative perspective) Troy Book, work by John Lydgate: 162 Tyson (see Cyclops, in Percy Jackson and the Olympians) Ulysses (see Odysseus) Violence: 116-117 Xenia (see Hospitality) X-Men, Marvel comic: 188-191

AUTHORS, A NCIENT/PRIMARY SOURCES Adam of Bremen: 159 Aeschylus: 49 Al-Farabi: 144, 157 Apuleius: 125 Aristias: 51 Aristotle: 24, 118 Apollodorus: 24 Artemidorus: 97 Athenaeus: 70 Aurelius, Marcus: 98, 122 Bacchylides: 44 Bernardus Silvestris: 158 Bion of Smyrna: 70

INDICES

257

Boethius: 153-155, 178

Hyginus: 24

Callias: 51 Callimachus: 47 Cassius, Dio: 130 Chettle, Henry: 162 Cicero: 50, 123-124 Coates, Ta-Nehisi: 186 Cratinus: 47, 51

Juvenal: 123, 130

Dante: 153 Descartes, René: 5, 153, 178, 183, 198-99, 204 delle Colonne, Guido: 161 de Góngora y Argote, Luis: 163167 Dionysius the Areopagite (see Pseudo-Dionysius) Diogenes Laertius: 91, 127 Edmund Spenser: 158 Epicharmos: 51 Epictetus: 16, 121 Erasmus: 158 Eratosthenes: 24 Euripides: 5-7, 24, 49, 63, 64 Fulgentius: 151-152 Gellius: 42 Greenberg, Isabel: 186 Grimm, Wilhelm: 10 Homer: 9-10, 22-23, 25, 44-48, 104, 115, 187 Hegel, Georg: 205-206 Heidegger, Martin: 205-207 Hellanicus: 24 Hesiod: 23, 42, 47, 108

Livy: 131 Locke, John: 200 Lucian: 114 Lydgate, John: 162 Marx, Karl: 88, 201-203 Moore, Alan: 186 Nonnus of Panopolis: 146, 167 Ovid: 109, 114-115, 117-118, 167 Pausanias: 123 Petrarca, Francesco (see Petrarch) Petrarch: 161 Pherecydes: 24 Philostratus the Elder: 113 Philoxenus of Cythera: 70 Pindar: 24 Plato: 15, 123 Pliny the Elder: 24 Pliny the Younger: 130 Plutarch: 70, 91, 127 Plutus: 70 Polemon of Laodicea: 127 Pseudo-Dionysius: 175 Quintus Sextus: 91, 127 Remigius of Auxerre: 155-158 Riordan, Rick: 193 Second Vatican Mythographer, The: 158

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THE CYCLOPS MYTH AND THE MAKING OF SELFHOOD

Seneca the Elder: Seneca the Younger: 16, 91, 114, 119, 121, 122, 123, 124, 126-129 Sextus Empiricus: 125 Sophocles: 49, 63 Spiegelmann, Art: 186 Spinoza, Baruch: 200 Suetonius: 127 Tacitus: 130, 131 Theocritus: 69, 71-72, 74, 102103, 131 Virgil: 50, 88 Watson, Thomas: 162 William of Conches: 157 Zenobius: 70

AUTHORS, MODERN ACADEMIC Accorinti, D.: 147 Adler, Eve: 100 Adorno, Theodor: 202-203, 208 Ager, Sheila L.: 94 Aguirre, Mercedes: 16-17, 46, 47, 57, 58, 59, 113, 114 Althusser, Louis: 11, 27 Alwine, A.: 22 Anderson, Valérie-Nicole: 6 Anderson, William S.: 99 Andrews, A.: 4 Antonaccio, Carla: 40

Arno, Claudia I.: 119 Arnott, W.G.: 92 Auffarth, Christoph: 9 Alonso, Dámaso: 164 Ault, Bradley A.: 37, 38 Bach, W.: 158 Baker, Gordon: 178 Barclay, John M.G.: 27 Barnard, Mary E.: 166 Barrett, H. Clark: 172 Bartsch, Shadi: 27, 86, 91, 120127, 129-130, 133 Basile, Gaston Javier: 40 Bellah, R.N.: 207 Benson, C. David: 162 Berger, Peter L.: 88, 200 Bernard, Sue P.: 88 Berry, Joanne: 119 Bessant, Kenneth C. Bolton, Diane K.: 155, 158 Boucher, Geoff: 203 Bourdieu, Pierre: 2, 17 Bowerstock, G.W.: 143 Brakke, David: 144 Brelich, A.: 9 Bremmer, Jan N.: 9, 23-24, 32, 46, 47, 59, 97 Bricmont, Jean: 205 Brommer, F.: 49 Brown, Calvin S.: 22 Brown, Peter: 143 Brumble, H. David: 158 Brunschwig, J.: 123 Bryan, Elizabeth J.: 151 Bryant, Joseph M.: 38 Buck, Evonne Patricia: 88 Burgess, J.: 16, 22

INDICES Burkert, Walter: 9, 39, 59 Burn, Lucilla: 90 Burstein, Stanley: 94 Buxton, Richard: 16-17, 46, 47, 57, 58, 59, 113 Cameron, Alan: 147 Carey, Sorcha: 136 Carlesso, Giuliana: 162 Carpenter, R.: 22 Casson, Lionel: 38 Chance, Jane: 158 Chelstrom, Eric: 207 Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome: 147 Coleman, Robert: 100 Colish, Marcia L.: 144, 168, 170, 175, 176 Connolly, Joy: 119 Connor, Robert W.: 4 Conte, Gian Biagio: 104 Cook, Robert M.: 156 Corrigan, Kevin: 174 Couture, Pierre: 208 Crampton, Robert: 160 Crivelli, Carlos: 169 Courcelle, Pierre: 153 Cusset, Christophe: 72 Dalby, Andrew: 39 Davies, J.K.: 65 Dekel, Edan: 104 Dench, Emma: 119 Dent-Young, John: 164 Denyer, Nicholas: 123 Deleuze, Gilles: 205 Detienne, Marcel: 9 de Rougemont, Denis: 172 de Ste. Croix, G.E.M.: 93

259 de Tocqueville, Alexis: 200 Dewey, John: 200 D’Huy, Julien: 22 Dicker, Georges: 199 Dillon, John: 176 Dillon, Sheila: 120 Discenza, Nicole Guenther: 155 Doherty, Lillian E.: 25 Donlan, Walter: 40 D’Onofrio, S.: 32 DuBois, Paige: 132 Duby, George: 173 Dunbar, Robin I.: 172 Du Quesnay, Ian: 100 Eco, Umberto: 27, 185 Einstein, Elizabeth L.: 177 Elliot, Kathleen O.: 158 Elder, J.P.: 158 Erskine, A.: 90 Evans, Elizabeth C.: 127 Fantuzzi, M.: 71, 89 Faraone, Christopher A.: 9 Farenga, Vincent: 98 Farrell, Joseph: 99, 104 Ferraiolo, William: 199 Fine, Gail: 6 Finley, Moses I.: 38 Fongoni, Adelaide: 70 Fornaro, S.: 147 Foucault, Michel: 5, 98, 114 Fornara, Charles: 64 Foster, J. Andrew: 71 Fowler, Barbara Hughes: 90 Frankfurt, Harry: 199 Franklin, S.: 172 Fredal, James: 114

260

THE CYCLOPS MYTH AND THE MAKING OF SELFHOOD

Fridlund, Alan J. Friedman, John B.: 146 Frost, Frank J.: 4 Gallagher, Catharine: 12-13 Garipanov, Ildar: 151 Gatti, Perluidi Leone Gay, Craig M.: 202 Gell, W.: 25 Gersh, Stephen: 175 Giangrande, Giuseppe: 73 Gibson, Margaret T.: 155 Gibson, Sophie: 90 Giddens, Anthony: 87, 165, 166, 188, 199, 203 Gill, Christopher: 2-8, 26, 31, 41, 98, 123, 183, 198, 209 Giusti, Elena: 100 Gleason, Maud: 119 Glenn, Justin: 98 Godden, Malcolm: 158 Goldhill, Simon: 94 Gould, John: 32 Gow, A.: 72 Grabar, Oleg: 143 Graeber, David: 172 Graf, Friedrich Wilhelm: 202 Graham, Allen: 80 Green, P.: 40 Greenblatt, Stephen: 12-13 Grethlein, Jonas: 91 Griffin, Nathaniel Edward: 162 Griffiths, Frederick T.: 71 Guattari, Félix: 205 Guignon, Charles: 208 Gunderson, Erik: 119 Gurevich, Aaron: 170-172 Gutzwiller, Kathryn: 70, 90

Haber, Judith: 71 Habermas, Jürgen: 203 Hackman, O.: 22 Halperin, David M.: 71 Harland, Philip A.: 94 Hasebroek, Johannes: 38 Hays, Gregory: 151 Heinze, Richard: 99 Hemingway, Colette: 90 Hemingway, Seán: 90 Hernández, Pura Nieto: 9 Herman, Gabriel: 40 Hillers, Barbara: 159 Hills, Helen: 166 Holland, Dorothy: 2 Hoenen, Maarten: 153, 178 Hopkinson, N.: 73 Hordern, J.H.: 70 Horkheimer, Max: 203 Hundert, E.J.: 15 Hunter, Richard: 71, 72, 73, 89, 92 Huskinson, Janet Hutchinson, G.O.: 71, 102 Iwerson, Julia: 174 Jaeger, C. Stephen: 145 Jackson, H.J.: 156 Jayatilaka, Rohini: 158 Jeudy, Colette: 157 Joas, Hans: 145 Johnston, Sarah Iles: 11 Kaczynski, Bernice M.: 158 Kalberg, Stephen: 201 Kant, Immanuel: 204-205 Kapust, Daniel: 131

INDICES Katz, Cladio J.: 201 Kazhdan, Alexander: 172 Kelly, H.: 87 Kim, Min-Sun: 1 Kim, Sung Ho: 202 Kirk, G.S.: 11, 33 Kirkham, Victoria: 161 Kluge, Sofie: 173 Kolb, David: 206 Konstan, D.: 31 Krevans, N.: 70 Kulcsár, Péter: 158 Kumler, Aden: 175 Kurz, André: 74 Labastida, Ignasi Ribó: 166 Larmore, Charles: 199 Lakey, Christopher R.: 175 Lamberton, Robert: 176 Lange, Klaus: 50 Launey, Jaques Laurence, Ray: 119 Lawall, G.: 88 Leed, Eric J.: 177 Lehrer, Melinda Eve: 165 Leshem, Dotan: 38 Lincoln, Bruce: 11-12 Livrea, Enrico: 147 Llewellyn-Jones, L.: 90 Lloyd, Michael: 69 Long, Anthony A.: 3 Love, Rosalind C.: 155, 158 Lowenstam, S.: 16 Lutz, Cora E.: 155, 156 Madsen, R.: 207 Malkin, Irad: 38 Marenbon, John: 157

261 Marks, J.: 22 Martindale, Charles: 14, 99 MacIntyre, Alasdair: 33, 41, 61 Mack, Sara: 69 Maggi, Armando: 161 Markie, Peter: 199 Masterson, Mark: 120 Mattingly, David: 119 McCarthy, Conor: 173 McCaw, John: 164 McDonnell, Myles: 120 McKitterick, Rosamond: 175 McOuat, Gordon: 178 Meeder, Sven: 160 Meier, Christian: 4 Miller, Patricia Cox: 13 Minchin, Elizabeth: 104 Minnis, Alastair J.: 158 Misch, Georg: 171 Mondi, Robert: 9 Morris, Katherine J.: 178 Morrison, Andrew D.: 86 Moskalew, Walter: 107 Moss, Ann: 177 Murray, P.: 114 Nagy, G.: 22, 97 Nauert, Charles G.: 161 Nauta, Lodi: 153, 158, 178 Nelson, Janet L.: 155, 175 Nelson, Nicole: 169 Nevett, Lisa C.: 38 Nicholson, Nigel: 99 Noethlichs, Karl Leo: 144 Oakes, Guy: 88, 202 Ober, Josiah: 65 Ohly, Friedrich: 175

262

THE CYCLOPS MYTH AND THE MAKING OF SELFHOOD

O’Nolan, Kevin: 159 Oshana, Marina: 2 Osborne, Robin: 22 Polzer, Mark E.: 38 Page, Denys: 11, 23 Papaioannou, Stratis: 172 Papakonstantinou, Zinon: 39, 41 Parker, Alexander A.: 163 Payne, Mark: 71 Peradotto, John: 27 Patterson, Cynthia B.: 37 Peacocke, Christopher: 199 Pepin, Ronald E.: 158 Piccardi, D. Gigli: 147 Pollitt, Jerome J.: 90 Popkin, Richard H.: 199 Porter, James I.: 15 Prauscello, Lucia: 77 Prioux, É.: 90 Pucci, P.: 22 Quint, David: 100 Raaflaub, Kurt A.: 22, 65 Rademacher, L.: 22 Raina, Giampiera: 127 Ramminger, Johann: 103 Raulston, Stephen B.: 166 Rawls, John: 88 Rebillard, Éric: 144 Reed, J.D.: 70 Reichl, Karl: 161 Renaut, Alain: 199 Reydams-Schils, Gretchen: 99 Reynolds, L.D.: 176 Ricapito, Joseph V.: 165 Ridgway, Brunilde S.: 90

Riggs, Tim: 144, 158 Robertson, Neil: 178 Rosenmeyer, Thomas G.: 88 Rosenwein, Barbara H.: 145, 168, 179-180 Rouse, Mary A.: 147, 151 Rouse, Richard H.: 147, 151 Roy, J.: 65 Rundin, John: 38 Rüpke, Jörg: 98, 144, 145 Russell, James A.: 169 Sahin, Elmas: 161 Samons, Loren J.: 64 Santos, Fernando P.: 172 Scarth, Alwyn: 9 Schatzki, Theodore R.: 2 Schmiel, R.: 77 Scott, Mary: 40 Sealey, B.R.I: 4 Seaford, Richard: 47, 49, 51, 66 Segal, C.: 71 Segal, Robert A.: 11 Selznick, P.: 207 Shanahan, Daniel: 199 Shear, Julia L.: 65 Sheratt, Susan: 39 Shorrock, Robert: 147 Sloterdijk, Peter: 206, 210 Smith, Julia M.H.: 179 Snell, Bruno: 19 Snodgrass, Anthony: 16, 22, 136 Sofroniew, A.: 40 Sokal, Alan: 205 Sorabji, Richard: 1, 98 Spanoudakis, K.: 147 Spofford, Edward W.: 77 Squire, Michael: 17, 135

INDICES Stanford, W.B.: 184 Stanton, G.R.: 5 Starke, Sue P.: 88 Starr, Chester G.: 5 Stendahl, Kirster: 39 Stewart, H.F.: 155 Struck, Peter T.: 176 Strunk, Thomas: 131 Sullivan, W.M.: 207 Swidler, A.: 207 Szabala, Henryk: 205 Szarmach, Paul E.: 155 Tanner, Jeremy: 92, 93 Taylor, Charles: 178, 206 Taylor, Graham: 203, 210 Thomas, Richard F.: 14 Tipton, S.M.: 207 Toivanen, Juhana: 15 Tönnies, Ferdinand: 207 Touchefeu-Meynier, Odette: 16, 24, 135 Trapp, Michael: 99 Trompf, G.W.: 155 Turner, Denys: 175 Turner, John D.: 174 van der Vliet, E.Ch.L.: 93 Vernant, Jean-Pierre: 9, 142 Versnel, H.S. Vidal-Naquet, P.: 32 Vinci, Thomas V.: 178, 199 von Diez, Heinrich Friedrich: 161 von Reber, Franz: 25

263 von der Osten, Dorothee Elm: 113 von Vacano, Otto-Wilhelm: 125 Wace, Alan J.B.: 38 Wagschal, Steven: 165 Wakefield, Peter: 174 Walker, S.F.: 71 Wallace, Robert: 65 Walsh, G.B.: 86 Walters, K.R.: 4, Warner, Marina: 113 Watt, Ian: 200, 204 Weber, Max: 201-202 Wei, Ian P.: 176 Whitbread, Leslie George: 151 White, Heather: 71 Wilkinson, L.P.: 100 Williams, Bernard: 19, 31, 199 Williams, Eliza Gregory: 123 Williams, Michael: 199 Wilson, N.G.: 176 Wittig, Joseph S.: 157 Wissa, M.: 151 Wistrand, Erik: 130 Wolff, Étienne: 151 Woodford, Susan: 135 Woolf, Greg: 98 Wray, D.: 121 Wright, Matthew: 39, 49 Zanker, Graham: 90 Zanker, Paul: 113, 120, 133 Zimmermann, Bernhard: 63