The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in the Modern Imagination 9781350169722, 9781350169753, 9781350169739

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THE SMELLS AND SENSES OF ANTIQUITY IN THE MODERN IMAGINATION

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Imagines – Classical Receptions in the Visual and Performing Arts Series Editors: Filippo Carlà-Uhink and Martin Lindner

Other titles in this series Ancient Greece and Rome in Videogames: Representation, Play, Transmedia, by Ross Clare Ancient Violence in the Modern Imagination: The Fear and the Fury, edited by Irene Berti, Maria G. Castello, and Carla Scilabra Art Nouveau and the Classical Tradition, by Richard Warren Classical Antiquity in Heavy Metal Music, edited by K. F. B. Fletcher and Osman Umurhan Classical Antiquity in Video Games, edited by Christian Rollinger A Homeric Catalogue of Shapes, by Charlayn von Solms Orientalism and the Reception of Powerful Women from the Ancient World, edited by Filippo Carlà-Uhink and Anja Wieber Representations of Classical Greece in Theme Parks, by Filippo Carlà-Uhink The Ancient Mediterranean Sea in Modern Visual and Performing Arts, edited by Rosario Rovira Guardiola

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THE SMELLS AND SENSES OF ANTIQUITY IN THE MODERN IMAGINATION

Edited by Adeline Grand-Clément and Charlotte Ribeyrol

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BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2022 This edition published 2023 Copyright © Adeline Grand-Clément, Charlotte Ribeyrol and Contributors, 2022 Adeline Grand-Clément and Charlotte Ribeyrol have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editors of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. xiv constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover image © Heliogabalus, High Priest of the Sun by Simeon Solomon (1840–1905). Christie’s Images Ltd./SuperStock. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Grand-Clément, Adeline, 1977- editor. | Ribeyrol, Charlotte, editor. Title: The smells and senses of antiquity in the modern imagination / Adeline Grand-Clément and Charlotte Riberyrol (eds.). Other titles: Imagines - Classical receptions in the visual and performing arts. Description: New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2022. | Series: Imagines classical receptions in the visual and performing arts | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021029886 (print) | LCCN 2021029887 (ebook) | ISBN 9781350169722 (hardback) | ISBN 9781350169739 (ebook) | ISBN 9781350169746 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Odors in literature. | Odors in art. | Classical literature–History and criticism. | Art, Classical–History. | Civilization, Classical–Influence. Classification: LCC PA3015.O3 S64 2022 (print) | LCC PA3015.O3 (ebook) | DDC 880.09--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021029886 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021029887 ISBN:

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CONTENTS

List of Illustrations List of Colour Plates Notes on Contributors Acknowledgements Introduction: The Fragrant and the Foul: What did Antiquity Smell Like? Adeline Grand-Clément and Charlotte Ribeyrol

vii ix x xiv

1

Part I What Smell is the Sacred? The Sensoriality of Antique Rituals 1 2

‘Unguent from a Carven Jar’: Odour and Perfume in Arthur Machen’s The Hill of Dreams (1907) Catherine Maxwell

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Incense and Perfume for Isis: The Sensory Reconstruction of the Isiac Ritual in Pompeii in Visual Art Anna Guédon

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Part II Gendered Smells and Bodies 3

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From Gorgons to Goop: Scent Therapy and the Smell of Transformation in Antiquity and the Holistic Health Movement Margaret Day Elsner The Smell of Marble: The Warmth and Sensuality of Twenty-first-Century Classical Bodies Tiphaine-Annabelle Besnard and Fabien Bièvre-Perrin

77

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Part III Sensing Otherness from Canvas to Screen 5 6

Sensing the Past: Sensory Stimuli in Nineteenth-Century Depictions of Roman Baths Giacomo Savani

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Evoking Empathy: Smell in the Twenty-first-Century Reception of Antiquity Kim Beerden

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Part IV Recreating the Fragrance(s) of the Past 7 8

Archiving the Intangible: Preserving Smells, Historic Perfumes and Other Ways of Approaching the Scented Past Cecilia Bembibre

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The ‘Persistence’ of an Ancient Perfume: The Rose of Paestum Giulia Corrente

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Contents

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The Fragrance of Ancient Kyphi: An Experimental Workshop Interview with Amandine Declercq

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Part V Re-enacting the Fragrance(s) of the Past 10 ‘Balsama et crocum per gradus theatri fluere iussit’ (HA Hadr. 19.5): The Contemporary Reception of Smells and Senses in the Roman Theatre Raffaella Viccei

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11 Incense on the Grass: A Strongly Perfumed Libation Bearers (1999) Martina Treu

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12 ‘Untarnished Experiences?’ Re-enactors and Their Appraisal of Smell as Gateway into the Ancient World Martin Lindner

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Envoi ‘Scratch and Sniff ’: Recovering and Rediscovering Roman Aromas Mark Bradley

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Index

261

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ILLUSTRATIONS

0.1

Auguste Roubille, advertising poster for the Pinaud perfume ‘Thisbé’, Paris, 1911. 0.2 Attic red-figure amphora, 460–50 bce , Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum IV 772. 1.1 Lawrence Alma-Tadema, A Spring Festival (On the Road to the Temple of Ceres), 1880, private collection. 1.2 Plate XXVIII from John Edward Lee’s Isca Silurum; or, an Illustrated Catalogue of the Museum of Antiquities at Caerleon, 1862. 1.3 Aubrey Beardsley, drawing illustration for ‘Under the Hill’ in The Savoy, no. 1, January 1896. 1.4 Simeon Solomon, Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytilene, 1864, watercolour on paper, Tate, London. 1.5 Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Sappho and Alcaeus, 1881, oil on panel, Walters Museum, Baltimore. 2.1 Tripods in the temple of Isis. Screenshot from Arturo Ambrosio and Luigi Maggi’s 1908 film, Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei. 2.2 Illustration by Émile Adan of the ritual of Isis in the 1888 edition of G. de Nerval’s Les filles du feu. 4.1 Wilhelm von Gloeden, Four boys on the terrace used by Gloeden and by his cousin (Wilhelm von Pluschow) at Posillipo (Naples), 1896–8. 4.2 Fred Holland Day, Ebony and Ivory (J. Alexandre Skeete), c. 1897 (18.3cm × 20cm), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. 5.1 Théodore Chassériau, Tepidarium (detail), 1853, oil on canvas, Musée d’Orsay, Paris. 5.2 Auguste Thomas Marie Blanchard, after Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Summer, 1879, coloured engraving, private collection. 7.1 Historic fragrances in the Osmothèque archive. 7.2 Sketches for the limited-edition flask of the Parfum Royal recreation, by Jean Kerléo for Jean Patou, 1996. 8.1 Paestum, floral motif painting on fourth-century bce Lucanian gravestone, from the necropolis in Arcioni. 8.2 Thymiaterion in the form of a ‘flower woman’, from the sanctuary of Hera at the mouth of the River Sele. 10.1 Olfactory plate at the entrance of the Multimedia and Sensory Museum of the Milan Roman Theatre.

4 9 29 34 36 40 40 59 60 102 103 123 125 158 166 181 182 211

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Illustrations

10.2 Olfactory plate; Multimedia and Sensory Museum of the Milan Roman Theatre. 11.1 Electra and the chorus: Parodos. Coefore-Appunti per un’Orestiade italiana, produzione Teatridithalia, 1999. 11.2 Electra, Orestes and the chorus: Kommos. Coefore-Appunti per un’Orestiade italiana, produzione Teatridithalia. 11.3 Clytemnestra and Orestes: The matricide. Coefore-Appunti per un’Orestiade italiana, produzione Teatridithalia.

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211 234 235 236

COLOUR PLATES

1 2 3 4 5 6 7a 7b

7c

8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Frederick Sandys, Medea, 1866–8, oil on panel with gilded background. Simeon Solomon, Heliogabalus, High Priest of the Sun and Emperor of Rome, 1866, pencil and watercolour, private collection. Lawrence Alma-Tadema, The Roses of Heliogabalus, 1888, oil on canvas, private collection. Francis Millet Davis, Thesmophoria, 1895–7, oil on canvas, Brigham Young University Museum of Art, Utah. Lawrence Alma-Tadema, A Hearty Welcome, 1878, oil on canvas, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. The temple of Isis during the eruption of Vesuvius. Screenshot from Mario Bonnard and Sergio Leone’s 1959 film The Last Days of Pompeii. Nick Youngquest as Invictus, ‘Invictus | PACO RABANNE’ (screenshot), Paco Rabanne official YouTube account, posted on 13 January 2016. Brian Shimansky as Eros, ‘Versace Eros 2012 | Fragrances’ (screenshot), Versace official YouTube account, posted on 22 November 2012, https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsPsM6YYrfY. Luma Grothe as Olympéa, taking a bath on Olympus, ‘OLYMP É A / The new film 30s / Paco Rabanne’ (screenshot), Paco Rabanne official YouTube account, posted on 20 July 2015, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=F69lU6OzA6Q. Théodore Chassériau, Tepidarium, 1853, oil on canvas, Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Lawrence Alma-Tadema, A Favourite Custom, 1909, oil on wood, 66 cm x 45.1 cm, Tate Gallery, London. Limited-edition flask of the Parfum Royal recreation, by Jean Kerléo for Jean Patou, 1996. Samples from the ingredients mentioned in ancient recipes for kyphi. Kyphi pellets created in the course of experimental archeological research by the author. Plan of the Multimedia and Sensory Museum of the Milan Roman Theatre: Archaeological remains and sensory and multimedia installations. Cover of the scratch-and-sniff history book Roman Aromas (1997).

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CONTRIBUTORS

Kim Beerden is Assistant Professor in Ancient History at Leiden University. She has written about food studies, especially on Roman extravagance. See, for example, ‘Roman dolia and the Fattening of Dormice’, in Classical World 105, no. 2: 227–35 (2012) and the chapter in P. Erdkamp and C. Holleran (eds), Diet and Nutrition in the Roman World (2018). Cecilia Bembibre developed a framework to identify and preserve historic odours using a heritage science approach for her PhD project, ‘Smell of Heritage’. Working with museums and historic houses, she has preserved historic scents from a historic library, a seventeenth-century pot-pourri and the smell of mould in historic churches. Having previously researched smell at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Buenos Aires, Cecilia is interested in an interdisciplinary approach to smell and the preservation of olfactory heritage. She also collaborates with industries exploring the potential of GC-O characterization of historic odours. In Odeuropa, an EU Horizon 2020 research project, she works at the UCL Institute for Sustainable Heritage with historians, computer scientists, linguists and museologists to capture, preserve and communicate the olfactory heritage of Europe. Tiphaine-Annabelle Besnard is currently a PhD student at University de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour. She will defend her thesis on Greek and Roman Antiquity in contemporary art (from 1980 to the present) in 2021. Tiphaine-Annabelle was an Attaché Temporaire d’Enseignement at Aix-Marseille University from 2018 to 2020 and curator for the Age of Classics! L’Antiquité dans la culture pop exhibition at the Musée Saint Raymond of Toulouse from February to September 2019. She is a regular contributor for Anabases. Traditions et Réceptions de l’Antiquité and Antiquipop. To conduct her work, she received two grants from the French School at Athens in 2016 and 2018 and was a Daniel Arasse fellow at the Villa Médicis in 2018. Fabien Bièvre-Perrin is currently Maître de conférences of Reception of Antiquity at the Université de Lorraine within the research center ‘Hiscant Ma’. After obtaining a PhD in Greek archaeology in 2015 on funerary monuments in southern Italy, he extended his research in iconography, notably within the framework of his European Marie Curie project, Feminicon, dealing with the representation of the feminine in Magna Grecia and Illyria (https://magnagrecia.huma-num.fr/s/feminicon/). In parallel to his research in classical archaeology, he began his research on the classical reception in contemporary popular culture with his project ‘Antiquipop’ (https://antiquipop.hypotheses.org/) in 2015, and during a post-doctoral fellowship within the LabexMed, explored the uses of Greek Antiquity in local and national Italian politics. x

Contributors

Mark Bradley is Professor of Classics and Associate Pro-Vice-Chancellor at the University of Nottingham, UK. Together with Shane Butler (Johns Hopkins University, USA), he is editor of a series of volumes on ‘The Senses in Antiquity’ for Routledge, for which he has contributed a volume on Smell and the Ancient Senses (2015). Giulia Corrente teaches Classical Languages and Literature in Rome. She studied Classical Philology at the Sapienza University of Rome, graduating with a dissertation on the History of Ancient Drama. She earned her PhD in Greek and Roman Civilization and Tradition at the Roma Tre University with a dissertation entitled ‘I Fliaci e lo spettacolo comico. Testimonianze letterarie e archeologiche’. Her main research interests are Greek drama, ancient music and the reception of classical heritage in contemporary culture. Giulia is a member of MOISA, the International Society for the Study of Greek and Roman Music. Her publications include Tragedia attica e iconografia fliacica (2009), Aspetti della ‘musica nuova’ nelle raffigurazioni vascolari fliaciche (2014), The Phlyax Plays: Perfomative and Political Dimensions of an Original form of Mediterranean Theatricality (2017) and Mousike and Mimesis: Aspects of Western Greek Musical Culture (2018). Margaret Day Elsner obtained her PhD in Greek and Latin at the Ohio State University and now teaches Latin and English language arts in Tampa, Florida (USA). Her research focuses on the intersection of women and animals in Graeco-Roman literature and art, with a special emphasis on descriptions of internal hybridity in poetry and medicine. Currently, she is working on a monograph titled Bestial Minds and Female Bodies: Animalized Women in the Ancient Imagination, which argues that the rationalization of women-as-animals in Antiquity continues to affect the status and experience of women and animals today. Her work on animal- and antiquities-trafficking in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series has been published in the journal Eidolon. Amandine Declercq, after obtaining her PhD in Ancient History at the University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès, achieved a certification in «Construction d’une opération de culture scientifique et technique» at the Centre National des Arts et Métiers. She’s been preparing exhibitions, workshops and experimental archaeology grant applications for research laboratories, stakeholders in heritage conservation and other organizations since 2012. Adeline Grand-Clément is Professor of Ancient Greek History at the University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès, France. Her main field of research deals with the ancient perception of colour and the history of Greek sensibility; she has also worked on the modern reception of Antiquity, especially during the nineteenth century. Her publications include La fabrique des couleurs. Histoire du paysage sensible des Grecs anciens (2011) and Au plaisir des dieux. Expériences du sensible dans les rituels en Grèce ancienne (2023). Her enquiry is nourished by comparative dicussion and collaborations with anthropologists. She is currently working on the relationship between the Greeks and their environment. Anna Guédon is a PhD student in Ancient History at the University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès. She is writing a thesis on the reception of Isis in France in the nineteenth century

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Contributors

under the supervision of L. Bricault (Toulouse, PLH) and V. Krings (Toulouse, PLH). She took part in several scientific events devoted to the reception of Antiquity, in particular the international conference organized in October 2016 at the University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès by C. Bonnet, L. Bricault and C. Gomez on ‘The reception of the divinities of Isiac circle from Antiquity to the present day’. In October 2018, she participated in the organization, in Toulouse, of the international conference ‘The Fragrant and the Foul: the Smells and Senses of Antiquity in the Modern Imagination’. Martin Lindner obtained his PhD from the University of Oldenburg in 2007 with a study on Roman emperors in classical epic films. Since 2011, he has been teaching as Lecturer in Ancient History at the University of Göttingen and also acts as curator of the Tom Stern Collection, a film archive for the Classics. He has been Visiting Scholar and Professor at universities in Changchun, Exeter, Vienna and Vitoria-Gasteiz. Martin’s research interests include all kinds of classical reception (from historical board games and films to graphic novels and public history) as well as imperial Roman history and cultural history. His current projects focus on anthropophagy in the ancient world and on transformations of Antiquity in the Discworld novels of Terry Pratchett. Martin is also co-editor of two book series on classical reception: Rezeption der Antike and IMAGINES – Classical Receptions in the Visual and Performing Arts. Catherine Maxwell is Professor of Victorian Literature at Queen Mary University of London. She is the author of The Female Sublime from Milton to Swinburne: Bearing Blindness (2001), Swinburne (2006), Second Sight: The Visionary Imagination in Late Victorian Literature (2008) and numerous articles on Victorian literature. She was a Leverhulme Major Research Fellow for 2014–16, during which time she completed Scents and Sensibility: Perfume in Victorian Literary Culture (2017), which received the 2018 ESSE (European Society for the Study of English) award for Literatures in English. Charlotte Ribeyrol is Professor of English Literature at the Sorbonne in Paris and an Honorary Curator at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. Her main field of research is Victorian Hellenism and the reception of the colours of the past in nineteenth-century painting and literature. Her first monograph entitled “Etrangeté, passion, couleur”, L’hellénisme de Swinburne, Pater et Symonds came out in 2013. In 2014–16 she codirected a major interdisciplinary project on chromatic materiality (POLYRE, IDEX Sorbonne Universités) with chemists and archeologists, which led to the publication of a collection of essays entitled The Colours of the Past in Victorian England (Peterlang, Oxford, 2016). Following her Marie Sklodowska Curie Fellowship at Trinity College, Oxford (2016–18), she was awarded an ERC consolidator grant for her project CHROMOTOPE (2019–24) which explores the nineteenth-century ‘chromatic turn’. Her most recent publication to date is William Burges’s Great Bookcase (1859–62) and the Victorian Colour Revolution, Yale University Press (2023). Giacomo Savani is an RSE Saltire Early Career Fellow at the School of Classics, University of St Andrews. He works mainly on Roman social and cultural history, ancient environments, and the reception of Antiquity in Early Modern Europe. He is particularly xii

Contributors

interested in ancient baths and balneology, focusing on their reception in Renaissance Italy and eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England. Giacomo is currently transforming his PhD thesis into a book for Routledge, Rural Baths in Roman Britain: A Colonisation of the Senses, forthcoming in 2024. Martina Treu has studied at Pavia and Padua University, and she teaches Ancient Art and Drama at IULM University (Milan). She has published titles on Aristophanes and on reception of Greek drama, which are her main research areas. As a dramaturg, she has written and adapted classical texts for the stage. She is founder and member of CRIMTA at Pavia (http://crimta.unipv.it/) and is coordinator and speaker for the international research group Imagines Project (imagines-project.org). She is also a member of the Scientific Committees of the book series ‘Mito. Voci dal presente’, Anabases and Rezeption der Antike. Raffaella Viccei completed her PhD in Archaeology at the Catholic University of Milan. She has been awarded scholarships in archeology and in the history of theatre and a research grant in Greek literature (University of Sassari). Her interests and publications centre on Greek and Roman theatre; the archaeology of music and dance; contemporary theatre and theatrical spaces; the reception of Greek and Roman art; and the reception of Greek and Latin literature. Raffaella is member of the scientific committee of the journals Visioni del tragico. La tragedia greca sulla scena del XXI secolo and Archivi delle emozioni. Ricerche sulle componenti emotive nella letteratura, nell’arte, nella cultura materiale.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book was published with the support of the Institut Universitaire de France and Sorbonne Université. We would like to express our warmest thanks to the editors of the Bloomsbury collection Imagines – Classical Receptions in the Visual and Performing Arts and in particular to Filippo Carlà for his insightful comments on our introduction and for his constant support throughout the editing of this volume. We are also grateful to Christopher Lougheed, Paul Scade and Wendy Ribeyrol for their help translating some of the chapters.

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INTRODUCTION THE FRAGRANT AND THE FOUL: WHAT DID ANTIQUITY SMELL LIKE? Adeline Grand-Clément and Charlotte Ribeyrol

Smelling the past: Fragrant memories When in 2003 Fabienne Conte-Sévigné and Olivia and Francis Giacobetti joined the Sisheido group to create a new perfume brand, they chose to call it ‘Iunx’. This strangesounding word comes from ancient Greek and designates both an oddly-behaved bird, the wryneck, and a magic wheel designed by Aphrodite to act as a love philtre. When the wheel was turned, its whistling sound and its movements, similar to those of the bird of the same name, were supposed to arouse erotic desire in the spectator.1 While the name chosen for the newly created French brand may sound familiar to a Hellenist, it had to be explained to the general public, so the designers posted the following definition on their internet website: In ancient Greek, the word IUNX evokes the myth of a motionless hunt, a hunt in its most subtle and magical form, an absolute seduction whose only weapon is perfume. IUNX is a universe entirely dedicated to fragrances, a blend of poetry and modernity, a world apart where smells are a luxury, a madness a passion. Perfumes subtly escape from the luminous testers, l’Eau Blanche, L’Ether, L’Eau Ivre, l’Eau qui Pique, inspired by an instant, an image, a sensation . . . You catch yourself closing your eyes when you encounter a memory, an emotion . . .2 The explanation offered to the consumer does not really clarify the classical reference and even takes liberties with the origin of the name. Neither the bird nor the magic iunxwheel are directly associated with olfaction in the Greek imagination: their erotic power rather works through the stimulation of senses other than the sense of smell (the senses of sight and hearing). But this was of no concern to the designers of the brand. By resorting to the mysterious-sounding word iunx, they were making use of an ancient past which they reinvented and adapted to their sales pitch. The reference to Antiquity only served as a pretext for a sensory change of scene, an invitation to travel through time and space. The designers were also drawing on a long literary tradition praising perfumes as mediators between the past and the present.3 The French poet Charles Baudelaire often used Hellenic references to portray in his verses the awakening and the communion of the senses. Smells and perfumes occupy a decisive place in his work, along with colours, sounds, savours and textures.4 His poem ‘Le Fantôme’ includes a section entitled ‘Le 1

The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in the Modern Imagination

parfum’ in which incense blends with the animal scents of musk, fragrant products well known in ancient times: Reader, have you enjoyed the rare reward Of breathing deeply, in an ecstasy, Incense that fills a church, or greedily Inhaled the lingering musk a sachet stored? Consummate, magic joy when drunkenly, We, to the present, find the past restored!5 Baudelaire here extols the quasi-magic power of smells which trigger desire and bring forth memories buried in the past. The mnemonic properties of olfaction – which have been confirmed by neuroscientists – were also explored by Marcel Proust. In the famous passage relating to the smell and taste of the ‘petite madeleine’, the narrator describes the cake as possessing the faculty of ‘transporting’ and of abolishing time.6 The text gives precedence to olfaction over sight, by insisting on the persistence of volatile, invisible smells which, when closely linked to taste, survive even after human beings and objects have disappeared. A less well-known, but equally suggestive, passage situated a few lines further on in Proust’s novel bears witness to this. It concerns Aunt Léonie’s bedspread: [B]efore I went in to say good morning to my aunt I would be kept waiting a moment in the outer room where the sun, wintry still, had crept in to warm itself before the fire. [. . .] I would pace to and fro between the priedieu and the stamped velvet armchairs, each one always draped in its crocheted antimacassar, while the fire, baking like dough the appetising smells with which the air of the room was thickly clotted, which the moist and sunny freshness of the morning had already ‘raised’ and started to ‘set’, puffed them and glazed them and fluted them and swelled them into an invisible though not impalpable country pie, an immense ‘turnover’, to which, barely waiting to savour the crisper, more delicate, more reputable, but also drier aromas of the cupboard, the chest-of-drawers and the patterned wall-paper, I always returned with an unconfessed gluttony to wallow in the central, glutinous, insipid, indigestible, and fruity smell of the flowered bedspread.7 The narrator insists on the complexity of the smell of the bedspread which, though both unpleasant and desirable, becomes a source of pleasure as it awakens childhood memories. The length of the description shows how difficult it is to render the subtlety and the subjective dimension of olfactory impressions.8 The other senses (taste, touch, sight) are mobilized and brought into correspondence with each other in a synaesthetic construct which is part of the process of remembering. If smell combines so well with

2

Introduction

the other senses, it is because of its close link with the sphere of the emotions.9 Like the madeleine, the bedspread enables the narrator to recover sensations which one could describe as ‘primary’. By using the French word ‘englument’ (‘wallow’ in English), Proust underlines the invasive character of smells which seep into the innermost depths of the body. It is difficult to escape from the power of smells – which is also the message conveyed by the Iunx brand. This was not the first brand to have delved into Antiquity to stimulate the imagination of the consumer with mysterious references.10 Pinaud, the French cosmetics and perfume house founded in 1830 in Paris, created a perfume which was named after Thisbé, a heroine in Greek mythology whose tragic destiny was popularized by the Roman poet Ovid (Metamorphoses 4.55–166). The story takes place in Babylon at the time of Queen Semiramis: Pyramus and Thisbe, two young people who live next door to each other, fall in love against the express wishes of their parents. They decide to run away together and agree to meet one night beneath a white mulberry tree. Because of a misunderstanding, Pyramus believes his love to be dead and kills himself. Thisbe, who arrives on the scene a short time later, also commits suicide. The fate of the two Babylonian lovers was well known to nineteenth-century European scholars and had even inspired artists, particularly painters. Thisbe or The Listener painted by J. W. Waterhouse in 1909, just two years before the creation of the perfume by Pinaud, shows the young heroine with her ear to the wall, ready to converse in secret with her lover.11 Sound plays a significant role in Ovid’s tale alongside tactile references, for example when the two lovers attempt to reach out to each other from one house to the other. The chromatic dimension also plays an important part, as Ovid recounts that the blood of Pyramus colours red the white fruit of the mulberry tree beneath which he kills himself. However, there are no references to smells in the story of the Latin poet: nothing therefore justifies the association with a perfume, whereas other Greek mythological tales abound with references to the olfactory, in particular through figures such as Myrrha and Mintha.12 So why was an ‘odourless’ name chosen for the perfume? By calling his fragrance ‘Thisbé’, Pinaud may have simply wished to allude to the power of unconditional and passionate love within a sensually-charged ‘Oriental’ décor. But the advertising poster for the perfume designed by the artist Auguste Roubille (1872–1955) owed nothing at all to the myth (see Figure 0.1). The graphic composition of the poster simply captured the attention of the consumer by initiating a somewhat surprising dialogue between the present and a ‘restored past’. The poster shows a woman dressed in a classicizing style, like a figure on a Greek vase, offering a vial of perfume to a female aristocrat from la belle époque standing opposite to her, as if inviting her to smell the contents. The choice of two female characters highlights the gendered dimension of our olfactive imaginary, a point underlined by several contributors to this volume. Additionally, the figures belong to two very different periods, recalling the fact that smells play a mediating role between past and present: like ‘Iunx’, the perfume ‘Thisbé’ had the power to dispense with temporal boundaries.13

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The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in the Modern Imagination

Figure 0.1 Auguste Roubille, advertising poster for the Pinaud perfume ‘Thisbé’, Paris, 1911. Source: Je Sais Tout no. 80, 15 Septembre 1911.

Antiquity and the present: An ongoing dialogue The iconographic composition in the advertising poster for the perfume ‘Thisbé’ illustrates one of the many reuses of which Antiquity has been, and still is, the subject today. Such reinventions are precisely the focus of classical reception studies, a burgeoning field since the 1990s, which aim to shed a new, ‘oblique’14 light on forgotten aspects of ancient culture.15 Breaking away from the linear model of inheritance which had long dominated approaches to classical culture, these studies embrace artefacts as well as literary works, philosophical traditions as much as social, religious and political practice in order to emphasize the complexity of the ‘chain of receptions’.16 Antiquity should not be fossilized: this is not a dead past which has been handed down ‘en bloc’, monolithically and unambiguously, as Pascal Payen has – among many others – persuasively pointed out.17 The diversity of links which have been forged with a wide range of antiquities encourages us to speak of ‘receptions’ in the plural, as the variations are perceptible according to place and time as well as the public involved, the horizons of expectation and the different social categories concerned. 4

Introduction

The study of the reception of Antiquity therefore tells us less about Antiquity itself than about the societies which have decided to take up and own, or on the contrary to reject, part of the ancient past. Let us take the example of colour, a topic which the editors of this volume have previously explored: the debates generated in nineteenth-century Europe by the discovery of the polychromy of Greek and Roman sculpture and architecture led to a new reappraisal of the classical world.18 The controversies reflect the influence that Greek and Roman art exercised at that time on teaching, on the French fine arts schools and on artistic practices. The dominant trend at that period was neo-classicism, which had taken Antiquity as its model, by making a careful selection and by placing Greek classical art (as embodied by a Phidias or a Praxiteles) on the highest level. This ideological construct was based on the fiction that classical Greece was white, a myth primarily manufactured by the modern age but already present in Roman antiquity according to Philippe Jockey.19 It was therefore difficult for European scholars and artists to admit that ancient monuments and statues were originally painted in often very bright colours. The awareness of this came slowly and progressively: scientific studies carried out in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries were necessary to reveal the numerous vestiges of pigments on the surface of classical works for scholars and, to a certain extent for the public, to realize that the aesthetic preferences of the ancients were different from those of the modern era.20 Recent studies now insist on the necessity of recognizing the irrevocable otherness of the Hellenic past.21 The idea of investigating the smells of Antiquity emerged at the IMAGINES conference organized in Mainz in 2012, when the two editors of this volume presented a joint paper on the reception of the figure of Medea in nineteenth-century French and British painting. Our aim was to show that colours or pharmaka played a crucial role in the representation of Medea as a powerful magician.22 We explored in particular Frederick Sandys’ depiction of the sorceress (see Colour Plate 1), whose red necklace matches the red thread with which she is about to poison Creusa. But we realized afterwards that sight was not the only sense that the painting conjures up, as Medea’s open mouth suggests that she is probably singing incantations and inhaling the plumes of smoke rising from her aromatic potion. It comes as no surprise that the now welldocumented association of colour and smell should appear in the representation of an Oriental, dark-haired Medea – a marked stranger to the ideological construct of a purely masculine sculptural Antiquity.23 According to Catherine Maxwell and the medical historian Jonathan Reinarz, smell has often been used to mark out one group from another: ‘Christian from the heathen [. . .] blacks from whites, women from men, virgins from harlots, artisans from aristocracy’,24 particularly in popular representations of ‘past eras as noisome and our own time as inoffensively odorous and thus superior’.25 Our modern ‘hygienic’ world generally assumes that the past smelt bad.26 And yet, this only partly applies to the imaginary Antiquity celebrated by Neoclassicists, which contrary to other pasts such as the so-called Dark Ages, or the polluted Victorian industrial world, is still, more often than not, perceived as odourless. From the Renaissance to the eighteenth century, the classical tradition indeed confined Antiquity to an immaculate, sanitized whiteness: thus idealized, it was deprived of its multisensorial dimension and conveniently limited to the visual paradigm. 5

The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in the Modern Imagination

Today classicists must fight against a form of ‘olfactory amnesia’ in order to break with a certain sanitized – if not insipid – vision of the ancient past. In the same way as scholars had to recolour Antiquity, we must now reodorize it so that it will not be preserved forever in moth balls, ‘sous cloche’ to quote from Marcel Detienne.27 That is why we decided to explore the topic of antique smells, in keeping with the sensory turn which is now affecting the humanities, including classical reception studies.

Smell and the historians: The sensory turn This ‘olfactory amnesia’ reflects the controversial status of the sense of smell in Western thought. According to Robert Muchembled, the history of this sense has wavered between admiration and scorn.28 The very limited place given to smell in European philosophical thought is evidence of this. Since Antiquity, it has been relegated to the primitive. Aristotle associated smell (which is assigned an intermediate position within his hierarchy of the senses)29 with the lower ‘animal’ senses, taste and touch, rather than with the more valuable sight and hearing. He also believed that man’s sense of smell was less developed and less accurate than animals’: ‘man smells poorly’.30 Likewise Kant ‘dismissed smell as the most dispensable of the senses’.31 Not until the work of John Locke and especially that of Étienne Bonnot de Condillac did the sense of smell occupy a more important place in philosophical reflection devoted to sensory phenomena.32 Moreover the register of the olfactory was usually marked by ambivalence, an ambivalence which appears in Baudelaire’s poem with the balanced movement between incense and musk: on the one hand we find smells associated with spirituality and a relationship with the gods (incense), while on the other hand we find smells associated with deception, debauchery, excess, luxury and pleasure (musk). Olfactory sensations were to some extent rehabilitated by the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who considered that human experience was multisensory and that we should therefore take into account all the senses, and not just the visual, in order to better grasp perceptual and cognitive mechanisms.33 However, odours occupy only a limited space in his major work, entitled Phénoménologie de la perception (1945). Scholarly research into smell(s) was triggered by historians rather than philosophers. In France, the tradition of sensory studies dates back to the work of the historian Lucien Febvre, one of the founders of the École des Annales, who was a pioneer in the field. He wrote a paper in 1941 entitled ‘La sensibilité et l’histoire: comment reconstituer la vie affective d’autrefois?’, in which he explained that it was the duty of the historian to attempt to analyze the ‘affective apparatus’ of past societies, even though it was hard to do so, because of the lack or elusiveness of documentation.34 Following in his footsteps, Alain Corbin has greatly contributed to the history of the sensibilities: one of his key works deals with the sounds of village bells in the nineteenth-century French countryside (1994); another with the perception of smells and fragrances during the eighteenth and 6

Introduction

nineteenth centuries (1982). Le miasme et la jonquille was translated as The Foul and the Fragrant: Odor and the French Social Imagination, to which the title of this Introduction explicitly pays tribute. The book opened up a new field: the historical sociology and anthropology of smell. Corbin clearly showed that the smells associated with a given figure or social group convey a rich imagery which connotes specific values: perfumes, scents and foul odours both reflect and mould the ways a society thinks or acts. He pointed out the hygienistic shift that affected Western societies in the nineteenth century: a process of deodorization took place from the end of the eighteenth century onwards. This movement tended to relegate strong smells to the ranks of the popular classes, thereby devaluing them. The theory of miasma took hold of medicine and replaced the theory of the humours inherited from classical sources. According to doctors, foul odours were the vehicle for transmitting illnesses and as such were to be fought and eradicated. At the same time, some smells were valued because they were credited with possessing therapeutic properties: myrrh and chamomile for some, camphor and lemon balm for others.35 The sense of smell played a pre-eminent role among the other senses in helping to redefine the respective boundaries between the healthy and the unhealthy, but also to mark out the limits of identity groups. Corbin’s seminal study paved the way for new historical enquiries as well as more popular explorations of smell:36 a recent book has thus shown that smell was a powerful tool in the making of race and justifications for enslavement in the Western world, as well as, in return, a means for many enslaved peoples and racialized ‘others’ to assert their agency and perform acts of resistance.37 Moreover Corbin’s work still informs studies of the reception of the smells of the past, including Catherine Maxwell’s recent book on Scents and Sensibility (2017), which explores Victorian literature through scent and perfume.38 Odours, whether fragrant or foul, have now become a subject of scholarly interest. The Covid-19 pandemic, by bringing smell or the loss of smell (anosmia) to worldwide attention, will certainly encourage further multidisciplinary investigations in this field. Thanks to Corbin’s studies, it is now clear that the nineteenth century marked an olfactory turn in the history of Western smells. The development of chemistry brought about a great upheaval, not only in the manufacture and marketing of perfumes, but also in the very conception of them. In the second half of the nineteenth century, from 1868 onwards, the progress in organic chemistry enabled the perfume industry to break free from its natural origins by combining artificial components with traditional scented products, and thus developing innovative fragrances. Twelve years after having discovered in 1856 the first aniline dye called mauveine, William Henry Perkin synthesized the first artificial perfume called coumarine. As in the case of colour, the intervention of chemistry brought about a certain democratization of products which until then had been reserved for a refined elite. Perfumers were able to reduce prices and broaden their customer base. The emergence of marketing also triggered change in the scale of values, as communication about the product became progressively more important than the product itself. By becoming ‘disembodied’ and more commonplace, perfumes lost some of their original magic.39 The discourse of publicists aims to make up for this loss by playing on the imaginary, as we have seen with the Iunx brand and the perfume ‘Thisbé’. 7

The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in the Modern Imagination

Interest in smells also benefited from the sensory turn that occurred in anthropology and sociology. Since the pioneering work of Paul Stoller, who encouraged ethnographers to ‘learn how to smell’40 in the same way as the societies that they study do, significant attention has been paid to sensory data gathered in the field.41 David Howes and Constance Classen in particular have actively promoted the importance of studying the multiplicity of ways of sensing, which differ from one society to other. They have shown that the combination and hierarchy of the senses – what they call the ‘sensorium’ – are specific to each society under study and culturally constructed.42 In Aroma: The Cultural History of Smell (1994), Classen, Howes and Synnott specifically explore the sense of smell in order to ‘break the “olfactory silence” of modernity’. Their book, however, does not go back further than the medieval concept of the ‘odour of sanctity’.43 They also call for a new kind of museography, which could display artefacts in context and involve all the senses of the visitors and not only the visual.44 In the field of Classics, the study of odours has long been neglected. And whenever smell was considered, it was mostly perfumes, cosmetics and incense, without reference to the whole range of bad smells associated with figures of secondary importance (women, poor people, slaves, barbarians, etc.).45 But ancient societies did smell, and they also smelt bad, as Mark Bradley has pointed out in the volume he edited in 2015, Smell and the Ancient Senses.46 The collection in which this book is to be found, ‘The Senses in Antiquity’, demonstrates how dynamic studies devoted to the senses are today among classicists.47 These recent publications have shown that in Antiquity odours played a key role, not only in cosmetics (for women and athletes), but also in politics, rituals and funerals, medicine and magic.48 Fragrant products were regarded by the Greeks as powerful – and somehow dangerous – pharmaka, both poisons and remedies. They could be used by doctors as well as by sorceresses. Here the figure of Medea appears again as a case in point, as she knew how to mix herbs to produce strong smelling substances endowed with supernatural powers, such as that which made King Aeson young again.49 The efficacy of scented pharmaka was therefore not limited to the surface: the Greeks credited odours with the power to ‘act in depth’50 and transform bodies. The case of incense is emblematic: some resins and aromatics were to be burnt during rituals in order to attract the gods and to please them. The idea was that incense shared the same qualities as the divine, such as invisibility and incorruptibility.51 More recently, experimental research has been carried out in the field of archaeology to reconstruct some of the perfumes, unguents and aromatic products used by ancient peoples.52 The last section of our volume will explore some of these new developments which directly challenge our predominantly visual approach to Antiquity, epitomized by the quasi ‘odourless’ sculpture galleries of our modern museums where statues have lost the smell of their original habitat, as well as their colour. Evidently, Antiquity does not possess, for our modern noses, a smell as strong, as penetrating and as familiar as that of Aunt Léonie’s bedspread or the little madeleine. Reconstructing or re-enacting ancient odours therefore raises new questions in terms of reception, as we are no longer accustomed to some of the scents of the past, which in many cases would now seem 8

Introduction

overpowering or repulsive. Given how the history of smell has become a scholarly topic of interest, it is surprising that the reception of these ancient smells and perfumes has yet never been fully addressed.53 This book intends to shed light precisely upon the role played by the new media in re-evaluating these forgotten odours, both fragrant and foul, of Antiquity which popular culture is increasingly exploring, in particular in advertising, video games, television series, comic books and graphic novels, as well as in historical re-enactments, thereby reshaping the perception and experience of the antique for a broader audience.

Visualizing smell This, however, has not been an easy task as smell is elusive and cannot easily be captured visually. Representing smell has indeed always been a challenge for the performing and visual arts, even in Antiquity.54 And yet, just as Gustave Courbet succeeded, according to Paul Cézanne, in painting ‘the smell of wet leaves’, Greek vase-painters found ways of suggesting olfactory sensations.55 For instance, the presence of an incense-burner or a flower on an image could signal a pleasant – and sometimes divine – smell (see the flower held in a ritual scene on Figure 0.2).

Figure 0.2 Attic red-figure amphora, 460–50 bce , Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum IV 772. Picture credit: KHM-Museumsverband. 9

The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in the Modern Imagination

Elsewhere, the artisan might evoke a smell thanks to a gesture of a figure holding a flask of perfume (as in the advertising poster for the perfume ‘Thisbé’) or bringing a flower or the branch of a plant up to his or her nose.56 Here the sense of smell can only be suggested metonymically as is still often the case in painting, advertising or comic books.57 Olfactory props and substances will thus play a key role in several chapters in this volume, in particular in those devoted to modern representations of ancient rituals in the first section. The poly-sensorial dimension of the classical past first came to the fore in the nineteenth century as archeologists and anthropologists progressively unveiled lesserknown aspects of ancient material culture. This encouraged artists to explore new ways of representing the past. A close friend of the Hellenophile poet A. C. Swinburne, the aesthete Simeon Solomon was drawn to the sensual dimension of rituals.58 Although Solomon is best known for his depictions of Jewish life and homosexual desire, pagan rites also play a crucial role in his work, notably in Heliogabalus, High Priest of the Sun and Emperor of Rome, which we have chosen as the cover to this book (see Colour Plate 2). This watercolour on paper was first exhibited at the Dudley Gallery in 1868 where it received a mixed welcome. The subject of the painting was perceived as most ‘eccentric’, even if its golden colour was praised. It shows Elagabalus – the third-century Roman emperor known as Marcus Antoninus Augustus – leaning dreamily on a plinth with an incense burner in his left hand. Solomon often depicted male figures in such heightened perceptual states. Although brought up in the Jewish faith, Solomon was first and foremost a believer in art for art’s sake, who placed the aesthetic – in the Greek sense of ‘sensorial’ – experience over any religious or moral message.59 But if Elagabalus’ red robe evidently stands out, what is most striking in this painting is the emphasis on senses which are not so easy to depict: touch (illustrated by the reclining head of the emperor languidly resting on his hand) and – more importantly for our discussion – smell, suggested by the white smoke rising from the golden incense burner. Solomon was not the only artist to be fascinated by ritualism in all its forms, as the Ritualistic revival of the mid-nineteenth century had encouraged new debates on ancient liturgical practices and how they may be used to challenge the agnostic positivism of modern science. Some even advocated a return to pre-Reformation ceremonials, which explains why the detractors of the Ritualists and their relish for colourful vestments often likened Ritualism to popery or paganism.60 Solomon’s work illustrates this obsession with the more ‘external’ and material aspects of ritual applied to all kind of faiths. In this sense, his religious syncretism is quite unique and partly echoes Elagabalus’ attempt to ‘press all religions into his service’ in the painter’s own words.61 In ancient historiography, the Roman emperor was portrayed as a depraved being who spent more time indulging his male lovers and betraying ancestral Roman traditions than performing any religious duties.62 Edward Gibbon, the author of Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776), further described him as having ‘abandoned himself to the grossest pleasures with ungoverned fury’, in particular sex and food.63 Gibbon conjured up a most striking image of Roman decadence which sharply contrasts with J. J. Winckelmann’s contemporary praise of the perfection of the ancient Greeks, whose bodies he described 10

Introduction

as stainless and almost abstract. This opposition between two antiquities interestingly hinges on an implicit hierarchy of the senses – the more intellectual and elevated senses such as sight evidently conflicting with the more lowly and bodily senses like smell or taste. Following the Greek Revival of the mid-nineteenth century, Roman decadence became again a popular theme with writers and artists across Europe, and Elagabalus’ supposed perceptual deviances featured at the centre of major works by Victorian painters,64 including Alma-Tadema’s Roses of Hielogabalus (1888). This painting, discussed by several contributors to this book, shows the languid emperor calmly watching as his guests are stifled to death under a shower of roses (see Colour Plate 3).65 The modern viewer is easily misled here by the predominance of pink, which suggests a rather benign and altogether pleasant depiction of a classical banquet. Although the gendering of pink is a fairly recent phenomenon which Dominique Grisard dates back to the marketing strategies of the 1950s, the association of the colour of the rose (pink in French is ‘rose’) with soft, sweetly fragranced femininity was common in the Victorian age.66 But once the history behind this image is revealed, the positive connotations triggered by the rose’s colour and pleasant fragrance become subverted from a moral as well as perceptual perspective. Challenging traditional narratives of the Victorian ‘idealization’ of the classical past as well as the highly gendered ‘language’ of flowers and scents which the Victorians contributed to establishing, Alma-Tadema casts an ‘oblique’ light on the strangeness of the antique past no longer reduced to, or fossilized in, its odourless marmoreal purity. But such ‘perceptual deviance’ became suspicious to Max Nordau who was especially keen to track all signs of sensuous degeneration among his decadent contemporaries. In Degeneration (1892), Nordau, like Lombroso, uses historical anecdotes about decadent Roman emperors – like Nero – as scientific evidence of perversion. When discussing the works of the aesthetes and decadent writers – whom Solomon was close to – Nordau aligns ‘the perversion of smell’ with ‘the perversion of the sexual appetite’.67 Although he does not refer to the androgyny of Solomon’s emperor, this is typically the kind of work Nordau had in mind when he stigmatized the ‘decadent style’ of the writers and artists of his time, fuelled by Théophile Gautier’s description of the history of the declining Roman Empire as ‘gamy’ or ‘faisandé’: This style of decadence is the last effort of the Word called upon to express everything, and pushed to the utmost extremity. We may remind ourselves, in connection with it, of the language of the Later Roman Empire, already mottled with the greenness of decomposition, and, as it were, gamy, and of the complicated refinements of the Byzantine school, the last form of Greek art fallen into deliquescence. Such is the inevitable and fatal idiom of peoples and civilizations where factitious life has replaced the natural life, and developed in man unknown wants.68 Nordau’s ‘materialistic’ reading of decadent texts as deviant bodies however eludes a key aspect of some of these late nineteenth-century works. Solomon’s emphasis on smell should be envisaged not in moral or medical terms but as an aesthetic and perceptual 11

The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in the Modern Imagination

challenge: how can smell’s complex – if not contradictory – connection both to the body and to the spiritual be represented and visualized? This question is evidently central to most of the chapters of this volume, as we explore the wide-ranging representations of the fragrant or foul smells of a plurality of antiquities in different contexts of reception.

New approaches to antique smells Studies in the reception of Antiquity now tend to give precedence to material artefacts over textual sources to shed light on the complex chains of transmission which link the classical past to the present time. The IMAGINES project was precisely established in the wake of the boom in classical reception studies as an international and crossdisciplinary research network focusing on modern receptions of Antiquity in the visual and performing arts.69 Its ambition is to broaden approaches to classical reception by considering new media such as video games in order to understand the complex ways in which Antiquity has been shaping popular as much as elite culture since the nineteenth century, once the new sciences of anthropology and archeology started unsettling purely text-based readings of the classical heritage. This book is partly based on the sixth IMAGINES conference70 organized in Toulouse (France) which aimed to analyse the underexplored role of smell – both ‘fragrant and foul’ – in the modern rejection, reappraisal or idealization of Antiquity.71 In this volume, which is divided into five sections, we have tried to explore the subject further by adding new contributions on performance and re-enactment which we hope will highlight the various strategies elaborated by artists, archaeologists, designers, advertisers and performers to make Antiquity smell again. The first section deals with the sensoriality of ancient rituals. How do fragrances (incense, burnt offerings, perfumed oils) shape modern representations of ritualistic and magical practices from Antiquity? To what extent does the staging of ritualistic gestures and objects associated with smell (and notably the burning of incense) create a form of estrangement between past and present, and deepen the rift between polytheistic and monotheistic faiths? These questions were brought to prominence in the context of late Victorian paganism and decadence as Catherine Maxwell shows in her chapter on odour and perfume in Arthur Machen’s The Hill of Dreams (1907), which abounds in synaesthetic olfactory references. In this semi-autobiographical novel, ‘the memory of unctuous odours’ is triggered by the Roman remains of the fictional Welsh town of Caermaen, based on Machen’s native Caerleon. Personal and historical pasts blend as Machen recreates a world which is reminiscent of Sappho’s fragrant verse and of BulwerLytton’s and Alma-Tadema’s fictions of the past. The reception of Bulwer-Lytton’s Last Days of Pompeii (1834) is also analysed by Anna Guédon in a chapter devoted to the sensorial reconstruction of the Pompeian ritual of Isis. The ‘City of the Dead’, mentioned in several other chapters in this volume, evidently played a central part in shaping nineteenth-century perceptions of ancient life. In his apocalyptic novel, Bulwer-Lytton stages, partly in olfactory terms, the confrontation 12

Introduction

between the old Pagan faith of the Egyptian Arbaces, a sensualist devotee of Isis, with that of Christian martyrs. And yet, as Guédon shows, the key role played by smell in this ideological opposition has often been overlooked in modern cinematographic and television adaptations. The second part of the volume, entitled ‘Gendered Smells and Bodies’, focuses on the way smell triggers desire and raises the issue of gender as well as of social class. Smell indeed still plays a crucial role in gendered constructions of the classical body. In classical sources – especially in medical texts – the female body was sometimes believed to be the locus of bad smells. In her chapter on scent therapy, Margaret Day Elsner demonstrates how today Gwyneth Paltrow’s V-steam or vaginal fumigation implicitly plays on these ancient conceptions of women’s bodies as foul. Conversely, in Antiquity as today the body (both male and female) was made desirable thanks to the use of perfumes and cosmetics. As shown by Fabien Bièvre-Perrin and Tiphaine-Annabelle Besnard, television advertisements for perfumes like Paco Rabanne, Versace or Yves Saint Laurent often stage sweaty or tanned sculptural bodies or goddesses in flowing togas to establish a relation between the fragrant and the (homo)erotic. The next section (‘Sensing Otherness from Canvas to Screen’) further explores how antique smells are often associated with foreign and specifically Oriental bodies in the modern imagination, as if Western, white bodies – like the statues they inspired – were deprived of any physical odour. This ‘sensual otherness’ brought about by smell is discussed by Giacomo Savani in his analysis of nineteenth-century Orientalist representations of Roman baths and in particular of the works of Chassériau and AlmaTadema which, Savani argues, ‘challenge the idea of “pure” visuality promoted by nineteenth-century aesthetics’. This desirable otherness finds a very different expression in popular television series like HBO’s Rome which, as Kim Beerden explains, uses olfactory references to trigger what she calls ‘historical empathy’. Smell, by ‘embodying’ the series’ heroes Vorenus and Pullo, brings them closer to a modern audience, thereby challenging more elitist conceptions of a purely intellectualized Antiquity. Allusions to the ancient smellscape of the Urbs also probably echo modern concerns with urban pollution, which further bridges the gap between past and present. But according to Beerden, this search for historical accuracy was limited by the primary goal of the series makers: to entertain people and to make money. In order not to disorient the audience too much, Rome’s protagonists were therefore mostly depicted as experiencing smell like ‘us’ rather than like ancient Romans. Moreover, those endowed with bodily odours are often the ‘lowlier’ characters, as when Vorenus is described in fragrant terms by Cleopatra’s slave: ‘Flowers. Leather. Olives. Not bad.’ In keeping with the idea of antique smells as revealing ideologically-charged conceptions of the body, whether feminine or masculine, the last two sections of our book investigate the materiality of smell, of smell as a substance itself. In Part 4 we show what plants and objects were associated with Greek and Roman but also Egyptian smells and how they may be preserved and recreated for a modern audience. This is for instance the case of the historical fragrance known as the Parfum Royal which, as Cecilia 13

The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in the Modern Imagination

Bembibre argues, has been successfully archived ‘closely following original preparation methods, sometimes even replicating period-appropriate perfume-making tools’. Like the Parfum Royal, the Rose of Paestum, much celebrated in Antiquity, is part of our intangible cultural heritage which modern perfumers still strive to recreate, as Giulia Corrente explains. Her chapter returns to classical sources and nineteenth-century representations of antique roses to shed light on the aesthetic and olfactory persistence of the ancient perfume. Although themselves odourless, textual sources are the key to retrieving these smells which have not survived the test of time. With Amandine Declercq, who organized an experimental workshop at the Toulouse conference on which this volume is based, we learn how the fragrance of ancient kyphi – a solid substance which literally requires to be per fumare, that is, dispersed by smoke – may be recreated by following the recipes found for example in Dioscorides.72 Drawing on all these interdisciplinary methods, it is therefore now possible to make modern audiences smell and sense Antiquity. ‘Re-enacting the Fragrance(s) of the Past’ is the focus of our final section. The first two chapters address the role of smell on stage in the Roman theatre as well as in Greek tragedy. Raffaella Viccei analyses in particular the example of the olfactory plate displayed in the Multimedia and Sensory Museum of the Milan Roman Theatre to enable modern visitors to experience the world of Roman theatre in a radically new – in the paradoxical sense of ancient – way. Martina Treu, on the other hand, returns to the ‘strongly “perfumed” ’ text of Aeschylus’ Libation Bearers to discuss a specific 1999 performance of the Greek play directed by Elio De Capitani in which sounds, perfumes and smells played a key role. Moving away from the physical world of the theatre, Martin Lindner’s final chapter explores a different type of performance, that staged by re-enactors of ancient history, whom, as Lindner shows, used smell as a ‘gateway into the ancient world’. Based on a survey on authenticity in historical re-enactment, this chapter reveals how the long-forgotten sense of smell is now increasingly becoming key to popular representations of a ‘lived-in’ past, closer to us than its perfect, odourless, marmoreal monuments. In the envoi to the volume, Mark Bradley’s discussion of popular ‘scratch and sniff ’ books brings us back to the world of childhood, inviting us to embrace a past both fragrant and foul, like the Proustian narrator reminiscing about the strange smell of Aunt Léonie’s flowered bedspread.73

Notes 1. Marcel Detienne, Les jardins d’Adonis. La mythologie des aromates en Grèce (Paris: Gallimard, 1972), 124–8. On the workings of the magic instrument (still under debate), see A. S. F. Gow, ‘ΙΥΓΞ, ΡΟΜΒΟΣ , Rhombus, Turbo’, JHS 54 (1934): 1–13; Vinciane Pirenne Delforge, ‘L’Iynge dans le discours mythique et les procédures magiques’, Kernos 6 (1993): 277–89; Sarah Iles Johnston, ‘The Song of the Iynx: Magic and Rhetoric in Pythian 4’, TAPA 125 (1995): 177–220. 2. Translated from French. Source: http://www.iunx-parfums.com/fr/univers.html. 3. On the link between the poems of Baudelaire and the communication surrounding modern perfumes, which uses the same type of symbolic networks, see Jean-Pierre Albert, ‘Parfums et 14

Introduction mysticisme’, Voir. Les aspects culturels de la vision et les autres modalités perceptives 28–29 (2004): 42–56, particularly 45. 4. On the contribution of smells to the creation of a ‘sensory utopia’ in Baudelaire’s works, see for example Albert, ‘Parfums et mysticisme’, 48–9, and Jean-Pierre Albert, ‘Utopies sensorielles, contemplation mystique et sentiment de plénitude’, Mythos 11 (2017): 75–7. 5. Charles Baudelaire, ‘Le fantôme’, The Flowers of Evil, trans. Florence Louie Friedman (London: Elek Books, 1962), 68. 6. Joël Candau, Mémoire et expériences olfactives (Paris: PUF, 2000). For this passage, see Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time: Vol. 1, Swann’s Way, trans. C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, rev. D. J. Enright (New York, Modern Library, 1992), 63–4. 7. Proust, Swann’s Way, 67–8. 8. For an analysis of this passage, see Joël Candau, ‘L’odeur médiane du couvre-lit de tante Léonie’, Voir. Les aspects culturels de la vision et les autres modalités perceptives 28–29 (2004): 73–87, who attempts to define the limits of the ‘central smell’ which the narrator speaks of. 9. Lyall Watson, Jacobson’s Organ and the Remarkable Nature of Smell (London: Allen Lane, 1999), 182: ‘Smell is an emotional sense, rather than an intellectual one. It is more right brain than left, more intuitive than logical, and more open to synesthesic combinations with other senses.’ 10. For other perfumes with names from classical Antiquity, in particular Erichtho, see Christine Walde, ‘Canidia and Erichtho: Snapshots from their Postclassical Life,’ in Ancient Magic and the Supernatural in the Modern Visual and Performing Arts, ed. Filippo Carlà and Irene Berti (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 119–34. 11. John William Waterhouse, Thisbe or The Listener, 1909, oil on canvas, private collection. 12. Detienne, Les Jardins d’Adonis. 13. One could extend this observation to the luxury industry as a whole, for example the name of the Hermès brand. On the reuse of Antiquity in the creation of modern perfumes, see Bièvre and Besnard’s chapter in this volume. 14. Charles Martindale, ‘Thinking Through Reception’, in Classics and the Uses of Reception, ed. Charles Martindale and Richard F. Thomas (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), 4 (we underline). 15. See Lorna Hardwick and Christopher Stray (eds), A Companion to Classical Receptions (Maldon and Oxford: Blackwell, 2008); Lorna Hardwick, Reception Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). 16. Charles Martindale, Redeeming the Text: Latin Poetry and the Hermeneutics of Reception (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 7. 17. See Pascal Payen, ‘L’Antiquité après l’Antiquité: parcours et détours d’un projet éditorial’, Anabases 1 (2005): 5–13; Pascal Payen, ‘L’Antiquité et ses réceptions: un nouvel objet d’histoire. Éditorial’, Anabases 10 (2009): 9–23. In Toulouse, the research team PLH-ERASME has been exploring the reception of Antiquity for many years now, and its journal Anabases is now well known in France and abroad. https://journals.openedition.org/anabases/. 18. See for instance Charlotte Ribeyrol, ‘Étrangeté, passion, couleur’, L’hellénisme de Swinburne, Pater et Symonds (1865–1880) (Grenoble: ELLUG, 2013) and Charlotte Ribeyrol, The Colours of the Past in Victorian England (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2016); Adeline Grand-Clément, ‘Couleurs et polychromie dans l’Antiquité’, Perspective – la revue de l’INHA: actualités de la recherche en histoire de l’art (Institut national d’histoire de l’art / Armand Colin, 2018): 87–108.

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The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in the Modern Imagination 19. Philippe Jockey, Le Mythe de la Grèce blanche. Histoire d’un rêve occidental (Paris: Belin, 2013). 20. Many exhibitions offering polychrome reconstructions have made it possible to disseminate scientists’ results; see for instance Jan S. Østerggard and A. M. Niels (eds), Transformations: Classical Sculpture in Colour (Copenhagen: Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, 2014). On present-day debates spurred by polychrome reconstructions, see Adeline Grand-Clément, ‘Les marbres antiques retrouvent des couleurs: apport des recherches récentes et débats en cours’, Anabases 10 (2009), https://journals.openedition.org/anabases/721. 21. For an anthropological and comparative approach to these questions, see Marcello Carastro (ed.), L’Antiquité en couleurs. Catégories, pratiques, representations (Grenoble: J. Millon, 2009); Arnaud Dubois, Adeline Grand-Clément, Jean-Baptiste Eczet and Charlotte Ribeyrol (eds), Arcs-en-ciel et couleurs. Regards comparatifs (Paris: CNRS, 2018). 22. Adeline Grand-Clément and Charlotte Ribeyrol, ‘Colchidian pharmaka: The Colours of Medea in 19th Century Painting in France and England’, in Ancient Magic and the Supernatural in the Modern Visual and Performing Arts, ed. Irene Berti and Filippo Carlà (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 103–18. 23. See for instance Anery N. Gilbert, Robyn Martin and Sarah E. Kemp, ‘Cross-modal correspondence between vision and olfaction: the color of smells’, American Journal of Psychology 109 (1996): 331–51. 24. Jonathan Reinarz, Past Scents: Historical Perspectives on Smell (Urbana, Chicago and Springfield: University of Illinois Press), 18, quoted in Catherine Maxwell, Scents and Sensibility: Perfume in Victorian Literary Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 11. 25. Maxwell, Scents and Sensibility, 11. 26. On this topic, see in particular the interdisciplinary work of the researchers involved in the H2020 funded project Odeuropa, which explores Europe’s olfactory heritage. https://odeuropa.eu. 27. Marcel Detienne, Comparer l’incomparable (Paris: Seuil, 2000), 24: ‘La Grèce, déclarée éternelle, est mise sous cloche, placée sous vide.’ 28. Robert Muchembled, La civilisation des odeurs (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2017). 29. Aristotle, De sensu 5.16; see Robert Jutte, A History of the Senses: From Antiquity to Cyberspace (Cambridge, MA: Polity Press, 2005), 61. 30. Aristotle, De anima 2.9. 421a. For a detailed explanation of the Aristotelian theory of smell, see Thomas K. Johansen, ‘Aristotle on the sense of smell’, Phronesis 41, no. 1 (1996): 1–20. 31. Constance Classen, The Color of Angels: Cosmology, Gender and the Aesthetic Imagination (New York and London: Routledge, 1998), 58. 32. In his Traité des sensations (1754), Condillac claims that the superior faculties of the human mind are all born of sensation. To prove it, the philosopher staged the progressive awakening of a marble statue through the workings of the senses. It was the sense of smell which accompanied the first stage of the development, and was found to be closely associated with pleasure and the memory of emotions. 33. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception (Paris: Gallimard, 1945). See Matthieu Dubost, ‘Vers une réhabilitation phénoménologique du parfum. Réflexions autour de Maurice Merleau-Ponty et d’Edmond Roudnitska’, Alter, Revue de phenomenology. Image et œuvre d’art 15 (2007): 253–69. 34. Lucien Febvre, ‘La sensibilité et l’histoire, comment reconstituer la vie affective d’autrefois?’, Annales (1941): 221–38. 35. Alain Corbin, Le miasme et la jonquille: L’odorat et l’imaginaire social aux XVIII e et XIX e siècles (Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1982), 74.

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Introduction 36. Patrick Süskind’s bestseller Das Parfum (1985), which was strongly influenced by Le miasme et la jonquille, is set in the late eighteenth century which Corbin analyses as a turning point in the history of smell. The international success of the novel and of its film adaptation in 2006 may explain the ongoing scholarly and popular interest in understanding olfaction. 37. Andrew Kettler, The Smell of Slavery: Olfactory Racism and the Atlantic World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020). 38. Maxwell, Scents and Sensibility. 39. Annie Le Guérer, ‘Le parfum et la chair’, Terrain 47 (2006): 84–6. On the affinity which seems to exist between the powers of magic and of perfumes, see the inspiring reflections by the anthropologist Alfred Gell, ‘Magic, perfume, dream’, in Symbols and Sentiments, ed. I. Lewis (London: Academic, 1977), 25–38. 40. Paul Stoller, The Taste of Ethnographic Things: The Senses in Anthropology (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989). 41. David Le Breton, La Saveur du monde. Une anthropologie des sens (Paris: Métaillé, 2006). 42. See for instance Constance Classen and David Howes, Ways of Sensing: Understanding the Senses in Society (London: Routledge, 2013). 43. Constance Classen, Aroma. The Cultural History of Smell (New York, London: Routledge, 1994). 44. Constance Classen, The Museum of the Senses: Experiencing Art and Collections (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017). 45. For instance Paul Faure, Parfums et aromates de l’Antiquité (Paris: Fayard, 1987); Annie Verbanck-Piérard, Natacha Massar and Dominique Frère (eds), Parfums de l’Antiquité. La rose et l’encens en Méditerranée, cat. expo. Musée Royal de Mariemont (Mariemont: Musée Royal de Mariemont, 2008); Isabelle Bardiès-Fronty, Michèle Bimbenet-Privat and Philippe Walter (eds), Le Bain et le Miroir: Soins du corps et cosmétiques de l’Antiquité à la Renaissance (Paris: Gallimard, 2009). 46. Mark Bradley, ‘Foul bodies in Ancient Rome’, in Smell and the Ancient senses, ed. M. Bradley (Abingdon: Routledge, 2015), 133–45. See also Mark Bradley and K. Stow (eds), Rome, Pollution and Propriety: Dirt, Disease and Hygiene in the Eternal City from Antiquity to Modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). On the role played by aromatics in order to hide the odour of the corpse during Roman funerals, see David Clancy, ‘The Smell of Grief: Odour and Olfaction at the Roman Funeral’, in Thersites 9 (2019): Ancient Greek and Roman Multi-Sensory Spectacles of Grief, ed. Anastasia Bakogianni, 89–116. https://doi. org/10.34679/thersites.vol9.120. 47. For a historiographic review, see Adeline Grand-Clément and Anne-Caroline Rendu-Loisel, ‘Normes rituelles et expériences sensorielles dans les mondes anciens’, Mythos 11 (2017): 9–20. A website was recently created to promote studies of the senses in the ancient world: https:// sensorystudiesinantiquity.com/. 48. See, among many recent publications on the ancient senses, especially smells, Lydie Bodiou, Dominique Frère and Véronique Mehl (eds), Parfums et odeurs dans l’Antiquité (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2008); Shane Butler (ed.), Synaesthesia and the Ancient senses (Abingdon: Routledge, 2013); Jerry Toner, A Cultural History of the Senses in Antiquity (London: Bloomsbury, 2014); Giuseppe Squillace, Le lacrime di Mirra (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2015); Eleanor Betts, Senses of the Empire: Multisensory Approaches to Roman Culture (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017); Jean-Christophe Courtil and Régis Courtray, ‘Goûts et odeurs de l’Antiquité’, Pallas 106 (2018): 11–164; Vincenzo Bochicchio, Marco Mazzeo and Giuseppe Squillace (eds), A lume di naso. Olfatto, profumi, aromi tra mondo antico e contemporaneo (Macerata: Quodlibet Studio, 2019).

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The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in the Modern Imagination 49. On Medea as an expert in phamaka, see Adeline Grand-Clément and Sarah Rey, ‘Les filles de Médée. Figures de reines vénéneuses dans l’historiographie gréco-latine’, in Les vénéneuses. Figures d’empoisonneuses de l’Antiquité à nos jours, ed. L. Bodiou (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2015), 151–66. 50. Le Guérer, ‘Le parfum et la chair’, 69. 51. See for instance Philippe Borgeaud, ‘Fumigations antiques: L’odeur suave des dieux et des élus’, RSLR 41 (2005): 595–600. A conference on the uses and meanings of incense in Antiquity was held at the British School in Rome and the École française de Rome on 23–4 June 2017: Sensing Divinity: Incense, Religion and the Ancient Sensorium. The idea of the conference emerged from the two-year research programme called ‘Synaesthesia’, funded by the University of Toulouse, which focused on the sensorial aspects of ancient rituals, bringing together classicists and anthropologists (https://synaesthes. hypotheses.org/). 52. Jean-Pierre Brun and Xavier Fernandez, Parfums antiques. De l’archéologie au chimiste (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2015). An exhibition held in Toulouse in 2017–18 focused on the multisensoriality of Ancient Greek rituals: Adeline Grand-Clément and Evelyne Ugaglia (eds), Rituels grecs. Une expérience sensible. Catalogue de l’exposition présentée au Musée SaintRaymond, musée des Antiques de Toulouse, du 24 novembre 2017 au 25 mars 2018 (Toulouse: Musée Saint-Raymond, 2017). On the attempts at reconstructing the Egyptian incense called kyphi, see Jacques Boulogne, ‘Un parfum d’Égypte; le kuphi et son pouvoir imaginaire’, in Saveurs, senteurs: le goût de la Méditerranée, Actes du Colloque. Univ. de Perpignan (13–15 Novembre 1997), ed. T. Joël, P. Carmignani and J.-Y. Laurichesse (Perpignan: Presses Universitaires de Perpignan, 1998), 59–71, and the interview with A. Declercq in this volume. 53. For an attempt at analysing the role played by the senses in recalling Antiquity through mime, see Agnès Lhermitte, ‘Cinq sens pour évoquer l’antique: Mimes (1893) de Marcel Schwob’, in Le débat des cinq sens de l’Antiquité à nos jours, ed. G. Puccini (Pessac: Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux, 2013), 381–90. For a study of the role played by perfumes in the transition from Antiquity to the medieval age, see Béatrice Caseau, Euōdia: The Use and Meaning of Fragrances in the Ancient World and Their Christianization (100–900 ad) (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). 54. For a good overview of the contemporary attempts at creating an ‘olfactory art’ and integrating smells and perfumes in artistic performances, see Chantal Jaquet (ed.), L’art olfactif contemporain (Paris: Garnier, 2015). 55. Cézanne, who admired Courbet’s landscapes, credited the painter with ‘the introduction into 19th century painting of nature’s lyricism: the smell of wet leaves, the mossy rocks in the forest’. Quoted in Gustave Courbet, ed. Tas Skorupa, Dominique de Font-Réaulx (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2008), 227. 56. See Nikolina Kei, ‘La fleur: un signe de parfum dans la céramique attique’, in Parfums et odeurs dans l’Antiquité, ed. L. Bodiou, V. Mehl and D. Frère (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2008), 197–203. 57. For example, in the case of comic books, it is possible to evoke an olfactory sensation from visual information such as the representation of air movements (like billowing or wafting) which transport smells, the choice of certain colours which enable the reader to distinguish between pleasant and unpleasant smells, or a close-up on the source of the smell, which takes over the frame and attracts the attention of the reader. See Charles Combette, ‘La bande dessinée, un univers multisensoriel’, in Le débat des cinq sens de l’Antiquité à nos jours, ed. Géraldine Puccini (Pessac: Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux, 2013), 463–4. For an analysis

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Introduction of the way the visual plays with the contemporary imaginary of perfumes in ads, see Jacques Albert, ‘Dieu sensible au nez . . . Parfums et mysticisme dans le christianisme médiéval et ailleurs’, in Images du parfum, ed. A. Montandon and A. Perrin (Clermont-Ferrand: n.p., 1991), 28–30. 58. See for instance Solomon’s 1863 work entitled In the Temple of Venus. 59. The Greek word aesthesis means ‘perception’, a cognitive process achieved through the senses (Butler, Synaesthesia and the Ancient Senses, 1). The aesthetes explicitly acknowledged this Greek etymology in their own works. See for instance Charles Swinburne, ‘Whistler’s Lecture on Art’, in The Complete Works of A.C. Swinburne, vol. 16, ed. E. Gosse and T. J. Wise (London: William Heinemann, 1925–7), 27. 60. See Guédon’s chapter in this volume. 61. Colin Cruise, ‘ “Pressing all religions into his service”: Solomon’s Ritual Paintings and Their Contexts’, in Love Revealed: Simeon Solomon and the Pre-Raphaelites, ed. Colin Cruise (London: Merrel, 2005), 57–64. 62. See for instance Cassius Dio, Roman History 80. 13–6. For a recent monograph on this controversial emperor and his reception, see M. Icks, The Crimes of Elagabalus: The Life and Legacy of Rome’s Decadent Boy Emperor (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012). 63. Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (London: Strahan, 1776), vol. 1, 149. 64. See M. Icks, ‘The Depraved Devotion of Elagabalus: Images of the Priest-emperor in the Visual and Performing Arts’, in Ancient Magic and the Supernatural in the Visual and Performing Arts, ed. Irene Berti and Filippo Carlà (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 211–24. 65. See in particular the chapters by Corrente and Savani. The archaeological genre painter Alma-Tadema, whose highly sensual and yet historically accurate depiction of Egyptian, Greek and Roman antiquities, is also mentioned by Maxwell. 66. On John Ruskin and floral femininity, see his 1864 lecture ‘Of Queen’s Gardens’, in Sesame and Lilies: The Library Edition of the Works of John Ruskin, ed. E. T. Cook and A. Wedderburn, vol. 18, 109–44. On the gendering of pink/rose, see Dominique Grisard, ‘In the pink of things: gender, sexuality, and race’, in Pink: The History of a Punk, Pretty, Powerful Colour, ed. Valerie Steele (London: Thames & Hudson, 2018), 145–61. 67. Max Nordau, Degeneration (London: William Heinemann, 1913), 260. 68. Gautier, quoted by Nordau, Degeneration, 299. 69. The IMAGINES website: http://www.imagines-project.org. 70. The detail for all the previous conferences is to be found on the website (see n. 66 above). 71. The conference, entitled ‘The Fragrant and the Foul: The smells and senses of Antiquity in the Modern imagination’, took place from 18 to 20 October 2018. It was co-organized with Anna Guédon and was held with the administrative support of Enide Noupian (PLH) and funding from PLH-ERASME, the University of Toulouse 2, the University of Paris-Sorbonne and the Institut Universitaire de France. 72. See n. 24, above. 73. The affinity between smells and childhood has been confirmed by studies in the cognitive sciences, which show that olfaction plays a particularly important role between the ages of six and ten in the constitution of memories. See Simon Chu and Joseph Downes, ‘Long live Proust: the odour-cued autobiographical memory bump’, Cognition 75 (2000): 841–50.

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The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in the Modern Imagination

Bibliography Albert, Jean-Pierre. ‘Dieu sensible au nez . . . Parfums et mysticisme dans le christianisme médiéval et ailleurs’. In Images du parfum, edited by A. Montandon et A. Perrin, 7–33. Clermont-Ferrand: CRCD, 1991. Albert, Jean-Pierre. ‘Parfums et mysticisme’. Voir. Les aspects culturels de la vision et les autres modalités perceptives 28–29 (2004): 42–56. Albert, Jean-Pierre. ‘Utopies sensorielles, contemplation mystique et sentiment de plénitude’. Mythos 11 (2017): 69–82. Bardiès-Fronty, Isabelle, Michèle Bimbenet-Privat and Philippe Walter. Le Bain et le Miroir: Soins du corps et cosmétiques de l’Antiquité à la Renaissance. Paris: Gallimard, 2009. Baudelaire, Charles. The Flowers of Evil. Translated by Florence Louie Friedman. London: Elek Books, 1962. Berti, Irene and Carlà Filippo (eds). Magic and the Supernatural. London: Bloomsbury, 2015. Betts, Eleanor. Senses of the Empire: Multisensory Approaches to Roman Culture. Abingdon: Routledge, 2017. Bochicchio, Vincenzo, Marco Mazzeo and Giuseppe Squillace (eds). A lume di naso. Olfatto, profumi, aromi tra mondo antico e contemporaneo. Macerata: Quodlibet Studio, 2019. Bodiou, Lydie, Dominique Frère and Véronique Mehl (eds). Parfums et odeurs dans l’Antiquité. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2008. Borgeaud, Philippe. ‘Fumigations antiques: L’odeur suave des dieux et des élus’. RSLR 41 (2005): 595–600. Boulogne, Jacques. ‘Un parfum d’Égypte; le kuphi et son pouvoir imaginaire’. In Saveurs, senteurs: le goût de la Méditerranée, Actes du Colloque. Univ. de Perpignan (13–15 Novembre 1997), edited by T. Joël, P. Carmignani and J.-Y. Laurichesse, 59–71. Perpignan: Presses Universitaires de Perpignan, 1998. Bradley, Mark (ed.). Smell and the Ancient Senses. London: Routledge, 2015. Bradley, Mark and K. Stow (eds). Rome, Pollution and Propriety: Dirt, Disease and Hygiene in the Eternal City from Antiquity to Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Brun, Jean-Pierre and Xavier Fernandez. Parfums antiques. De l’archéologie au chimiste. Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2015. Butler, Shane (ed.). Synaesthesia and the Ancient Senses. London: Routledge, 2013. Candau, Joël. Mémoire et expériences olfactives. Paris: PUF, 2000. Candau, Joël. ‘L’odeur médiane du couvre-lit de tante Léonie’. Voir. Les aspects culturels de la vision et les autres modalités perceptives 28–29 (2004): 73–87. Carastro, Marcello (ed.). L’Antiquité en couleurs. Catégories, pratiques, représentations. Grenoble: J. Millon, 2009. Caseau, Béatrice. Euōdia: The Use and Meaning of Fragrances in the Ancient World and Their Christianization (100–900 ad). Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. Castillo Pascual, María José (ed.). Imagenes. La Antigüedad en las Artes escénicas y visuales. Logroño: Universidad de La Rioja, 2008. Chu, Simon and John Joseph Downes. ‘Long live Proust: The odour-cued autobiographical memory bump’. Cognition 75 (2000): 841–50. Ciani, Forza D. and Simone Francescato (eds). Perfume and Literature: The Persistence of the Ephemeral. Padova: Linea Edizioni, 2017. Clancy, David. ‘The Smell of Grief: Odour and Olfaction at the Roman Funeral’. In Thersites 9 (2019): Ancient Greek and Roman Multi-Sensory Spectacles of Grief, edited by Anastasia Bakogianni, 89–116. https://doi.org/10.34679/thersites.vol9.120. Classen, Constance. Aroma: The Cultural History of Smell. New York and London: Routledge, 1994. Classen, Constance. The Color of Angels: Cosmology, Gender and the Aesthetic Imagination. New York and London: Routledge, 1998. 20

Introduction Classen, Constance. The Museum of the Senses: Experiencing Art and Collections. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017. Classen, Constance and David Howes. Ways of Sensing: Understanding the Senses in Society. London, Routledge, 2013. Combette, Charles. ‘La bande dessinée, un univers multisensoriel’. In Le débat des cinq sens de l’Antiquité à nos jours, edited by Géraldine Puccini, 459–68. Pessac: Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux, 2013. Corbin, Alain. Le miasme et la jonquille: L’odorat et l’imaginaire social aux XVIII e et XIX e siècles. Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1982. Courtil, Jean-Christophe and Régis Courtray. ‘Goûts et odeurs dans l’Antiquité’. Pallas 106 (2018): 11–164. Cruise, Colin. ‘ “Pressing all religions into his service”: Solomon’s Ritual Paintings and Their Contexts’. In Love Revealed: Simeon Solomon and the Pre-Raphaelites, edited by Colin Cruise, 57–64. London: Merrel, 2005. Detienne, Marcel. Les jardins d’Adonis. La mythologie des aromates en Grèce. Paris: Gallimard, 1972. Detienne, Marcel. Comparer l’incomparable. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2000. Dio, Cassius. Roman History, vol. 9. Cambridge, MA: Loeb Classical Library, 1927. Dubois, Arnaud, Adeline Grand-Clément, Jean-Baptiste Eczet and Charlotte Ribeyrol (eds). Arcs-en-ciel et couleurs. Regards comparatifs. Paris: CNRS , 2018. Dubost, Matthieu. ‘Vers une réhabilitation phénoménologique du parfum. Réflexions autour de Maurice Merleau-Ponty et d’Edmond Roudnitska’. Alter, Revue de phénoménologie. Image et œuvre d’art 15 (2007): 253–69. Faure, Paul. Parfums et aromates de l’Antiquité. Paris: Fayard, 1987. Febvre, Lucien. ‘La sensibilité et l’histoire, comment reconstituer la vie affective d’autrefois?’ Annales (1941): 221–38. Gell, Alfred. ‘Magic, perfume, dream’. In Symbols and Sentiments, edited by I. Lewis, 25–38. London: Academic, 1977. Gibbon, Edward. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 6 vols. London: Strahan, 1776–89. Gilbert, Anery N., Robyn Martin and Sarah E. Kemp. ‘Cross-modal correspondence between vision and olfaction: The color of smells’. American Journal of Psychology 109 (1996): 331–51. Gow, A. S. F. ‘ΙΥΓΞ, ΡΟΜΒΟΣ , Rhombus, Turbo’. JHS 54 (1934): 1–13. Grand-Clément, Adeline. ‘Les marbres antiques retrouvent des couleurs: apport des recherches récentes et débats en cours’. Anabases 10 (2009). https://journals.openedition.org/ anabases/721 Grand-Clément, Adeline. La fabrique des couleurs. Histoire du paysage sensible des Grecs anciens. Paris: De Boccard, 2011. Grand-Clément, Adeline. ‘Couleurs et polychromie dans l’Antiquité’. Perspective – la revue de l’INHA: actualités de la recherche en histoire de l’art. Institut national d’histoire de l’art / Armand Colin (2018): 87–108. Grand-Clément, Adeline and Anne-Caroline Rendu-Loisel. ‘Normes rituelles et expériences sensorielles dans les mondes anciens’. Mythos 11 (2017): 9–20. Grand-Clément, Adeline and Sarah Rey. ‘Les filles de Médée. Figures de reines vénéneuses dans l’historiographie gréco-latine’. In Les vénéneuses. Figures d’empoisonneuses de l’Antiquité à nos jours, edited by L. Bodiou, 151–66. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2015. Grand-Clément, Adeline and Charlotte Ribeyrol. ‘Colchidian pharmaka: The Colours of Medea in 19th Century Painting in France and England’. In Ancient Magic and the Supernatural in the Modern Visual and Performing Arts, edited by Irene Berti and Filippo Carlà, 103–18. London: Bloomsbury, 2015. 21

The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in the Modern Imagination Grand-Clément, Adeline and Evelyne Ugaglia (eds). Rituels grecs. Une expérience sensible. Catalogue de l’exposition présentée au Musée Saint-Raymond, musée des Antiques de Toulouse, du 24 novembre 2017 au 25 mars 2018. Toulouse: Musée Saint-Raymond, 2017. Grisard, Dominique. ‘In the Pink of Things: Gender, Sexuality, and Race’. In Pink: The History of a Punk, Pretty, Powerful Colour, edited by Valerie Steele, 145–61. London: Thames & Hudson, 2018. Hardwick, Lorna. Reception Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Hardwick, Lorna and Christopher Stray (eds). A Companion to Classical Receptions. Maldon and Oxford: Blackwell, 2008. Icks, Martijin. The Crimes of Elagabalus: The Life and Legacy of Rome’s Decadent Boy Emperor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012. Icks, Martijin. ‘The Depraved Devotion of Elagabalus: Images of the Priest-emperor in the Visual and Performing Arts’. In Ancient Magic and the Supernatural in the Modern Visual and Performing Arts, edited by Irene Berti and Filippo Carlà, 211–24. London: Bloomsbury, 2015. Jaquet, Chantal (ed.). L’Art olfactif contemporain. Paris: Garnier, 2015. Jockey, Philippe. Le Mythe de la Grèce blanche. Histoire d’un rêve occidental. Paris: Belin, 2013. Johansen, Thomas K. ‘Aristotle on the sense of smell’. Phronesis 41, no. 1 (1996): 1–20. Johnston, Sarah Iles. ‘The Song of the Iynx: Magic and Rhetoric in Pythian 4’. TAPA 125 (1995): 177–20. Jutte, Robert. A History of the Senses: From Antiquity to Cyberspace. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press, 2005. Kei, Nikolina. ‘La fleur: un signe de parfum dans la céramique attique’. In Parfums et odeurs dans l’Antiquité, edited by Lydie Bodiou, Véronique Mehl and Dominique Frère, 197–203. Rennes: Presses Uuniversitaires de Rennes, 2008. Kettler, Andrew. The Smell of Slavery: Olfactory Racism and the Atlantic World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Knippschild, Silke and Marta Garcia Morcillo (eds). Seduction and Power: Antiquity in the Visual and Performing Arts. London, Bloomsbury, 2013. Le Breton, David. La saveur du monde. Une anthropologie des sens. Paris: Métaillé, 2006. Le Guérer, Annie. ‘Le parfum et la chair’. Terrain 47 (2006): 69–88. Lhermitte, Agnès. ‘Cinq sens pour évoquer l’antique: Mimes (1893) de Marcel Schwob’. In Le débat des cinq sens de l’Antiquité à nos jours, edited by G. Puccini, 381–90. Pessac: Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux, 2013. Martindale, Charles. Redeeming the Text: Latin Poetry and the Hermeneutics of Reception. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Martindale, Charles. ‘Thinking Through Reception’. In Classics and the Uses of Reception, edited by Charles Martindale and Richard F. Thomas, 1–13. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006. Maxwell, Catherine. Scents and Sensibility: Perfume in Victorian Literary Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phénoménologie de la perception. Paris: Gallimard, 1945. Muchembled, Robert. La civilisation des odeurs. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2017. Nordau, Max. Degeneration. London: William Heinemann, 1913. Østerggard, Jan S. and A. M. Nielsen (eds). Transformations: Classical Sculpture in Colour. Copenhagen: Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, 2014. Payen, Pascal. ‘L’Antiquité après l’Antiquité: parcours et détours d’un projet éditorial’. Anabases 1 (2005): 5–13. Payen, Pascal. ‘L’Antiquité et ses réceptions: un nouvel objet d’histoire. Éditorial’. Anabases 10 (2009): 9–23. Pirenne-Delforge, Vinciane. ‘L’Iynge dans le discours mythique et les procédures magiques’. Kernos 6 (1993): 277–89.

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Introduction Proust, Marcel. Swann’s Way. In In Search of Lost Time, vol. 1. Translated by C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin. Revised by D. J. Enright. New York: Modern Library, 1992. Ribeyrol, Charlotte. ‘Étrangeté, passion, couleur’, L’hellénisme de Swinburne, Pater et Symonds (1865–1880). Grenoble: ELLUG , 2013. Ribeyrol, Charlotte. The Colours of the Past in Victorian England. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2016. Ruskin, John. ‘Of Queen’s Gardens’. In Sesame and Lilies: In The Library Edition of the Works of John Ruskin, vol. 18. Edited by E. T. Cook and A. Wedderburn, 109–44. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Skorupa, Tas and Dominique de Font-Réaulx (eds). Gustave Courbet. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2008. Squillace, Giuseppe. Le lacrime di Mirra. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2015. Stoller, Paul. The Taste of Ethnographic Things: The Senses in Anthropology. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989. Swinburne, A. C. The Complete Works of A.C. Swinburne, 20 vols. Edited by E. Gosse and T. J. Wise. London: William Heinemann, 1925–7. Toner, Jerry. A Cultural History of the Senses in Antiquity. London: Bloomsbury, 2014. Verbanck-Piérard, Annie, Natacha Massar and Dominique Frère (eds). Parfums de l’Antiquité. La rose et l’encens en Méditerranée, cat. expo. Musée Royal de Mariemont. Morlanwelz: Musée Royal de Mariemont, 2008. Walde, Christine. ‘Canidia and Erichtho: Snapshots from their Postclassical Life’. In Ancient Magic and the Supernatural in the Modern Visual and Performing Arts, edited by Filippo Carlà and Irene Berti, 119–34. London: Bloomsbury, 2015. Watson, Lyall. Jacobson’s Organ and the Remarkable Nature of Smell. London: Allen Lane, 1999.

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PART I WHAT SMELL IS THE SACRED? THE SENSORIALITY OF ANTIQUE RITUALS

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CHAPTER 1 ‘UNGUENT FROM A CARVEN JAR’: ODOUR AND PERFUME IN ARTHUR MACHEN’S THE HILL OF DREAMS 1907 Catherine Maxwell

‘Why doesn’t some scientific man stop wasting his time over a lot of useless rubbish and discover a way of bottling the odour of the past?’ So muses Ambrose Meyrick, the protagonist of Arthur Machen’s novel, The Secret Glory, published in 1922.1 This chapter deals specifically with the smell of Antiquity as imagined by another of Machen’s heroes, Lucian Taylor, who appears in his earlier novel The Hill of Dreams, first published as a serial in 1904 and then in book form in 1907. But, before exploring The Hill of Dreams and its vision of odorous Antiquity, it is necessary to say a few prefatory words about its author, a figure still unfamiliar to many readers. Born and brought up in Wales, Arthur Machen (1863–1947) moved to London as a young man in the 1880s to start his writing career. The author of many short stories and essays, he worked early on in his career as a translator from the French, translating the Heptameron of Marguerite de Navarre, the fantastic tales of Béroalde de Verville and the Memoirs of Casanova. He later supported himself chiefly through his journalism, although, for a short period, he also took small supporting roles as a touring actor. In the 1890s he started to produce the supernatural fiction for which he is now best known, his most celebrated work being the novella The Great God Pan (1894), a horror story in which the pagan spirit of Pan returns to disturb and terrorize the present through the agency of a mysterious, beautiful but depraved woman called Helen Vaughan. Until recently, Machen was something of a niche taste, chiefly read by a small group of fans or by devotees of Gothic fiction, although lately he has gained a larger audience with academic articles appearing on him and his stories appearing in university courses on Gothic or fin-de-siècle literature. The year 2018 saw the publication of two annotated editions of his works, the first a selection of stories edited by Aaron Worth and published by Oxford University Press, the second a collection titled Decadent and Occult Works, edited by Dennis Denisoff for the MHRA series The Jewelled Tortoise. This collection, in addition to containing various short stories and non-fictional writings, contains the first annotated edition of The Hill of Dreams.2 Although Machen is now claimed as a decadent writer, we have a somewhat sketchy sense of his contact with the aesthetic and decadent literature of his day. From his autobiography we know he conceived an admiration for Swinburne’s poetry in 1880 after obtaining an edition of Songs before Sunrise (1871) and can assume that he then went on to read the earlier and more famous Poems and Ballads (1866), because the representative Swinburne poem he quotes, ‘The Hymn to Proserpine’, is actually from that collection.3 As recently shown in my Scents and Sensibility: Perfume in Victorian Literary Culture 27

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(2017), Swinburne, proud of his olfactory powers, sets the trend for scented decadence. His influential Poems and Ballads, his most perfumed collection, contains its own apprehensions of scented Antiquity in poems such as ‘Laus Veneris’, which explores the reappearance of the Roman goddess Venus in medieval times and her seduction of the Christian knight Tannhauser.4 Swinburne’s verse encouraged the seventeen-year-old Machen to write poetry including Eleusinia (1881), his first publication, a poem about the Eleusinian mysteries of Demeter and Persephone, which he said was inspired by the account provided by Sir William Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities.5 According to the critic Gwilym Games, Smith’s is the standard Victorian dictionary on the classical world, with the Eleusinian entry written by ‘the renowned expatriate German scholar Dr Leonard Schmitz’.6 Nonetheless we can assume that Machen would also have known Swinburne’s early poems in Poems and Ballads (1866), which honour Demeter or her daughter – ‘The Hymn to Proserpine’, ‘The Garden of Proserpine’ and ‘At Eleusis’, a monologue spoken by Demeter herself.7 Certainly, and perhaps more importantly, Swinburne’s awareness of perfume, especially when presented synaesthetically, finds its way into Eleusinia. In Swinburne’s ‘Laus Veneris’, Venus’ ‘beds are full of perfume and sad sounds’; in his ‘At Eleusis’, Demeter’s loss of her daughter is soothed by the prayers and offerings made in her honour: ‘all grace of scent and sound / In ear and nostril perfecting my praise’.8 Such olfactory/aural combinations surely inform the following synaesthetic lines in Machen’s poem that describe the procession of the Eleusinian celebrants from Athens to Eleusis: The sweet soft scent of roses fills the air With silent music, even as a dream The lilies anguish and the censers stream. Sweet sounds and scents are mingled everywhere . . .9 Machen may also have been encouraged in his subject matter by the vogue for Victorian paintings depicting classical subjects. He mentions that one of his earliest poems had been inspired by Harmony, a painting with a medieval subject shown in the Royal Academy Exhibition, supposedly in 1880 but actually in 1877, though subsequently acquired by the Academy as a permanent exhibit.10 It appears that Machen saw this painting for himself at the Academy in 1880.11 It is likely then that he saw Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s classically-inspired painting Spring Festival (On the Road to the Temple of Ceres), also displayed at the Royal Academy in 1880, though he might have seen a reproduction of it in a magazine, newspaper or shop window.12 Alma-Tadema’s picture depicts a celebratory procession of flower-crowned women revellers who dance their way towards the temple of the goddess Ceres (who doubles for Demeter in the Roman pantheon). Though Alma-Tadema portrays a Roman rather than a Greek festival, he illustrates the contemporary interest in depicting pagan antique rites and spectacles. A much later but more precise visual analogue for Machen’s ‘Eleusinia’ (though it postdates his poem) would be Thesmophoria (1895–7) (see Colour Plate 4), painted by Alma-Tadema’s friend, the American artist Francis Davis Millet, which 28

‘Unguent from a Carven Jar’

Figure 1.1 Lawrence Alma-Tadema, A Spring Festival (On the Road to the Temple of Ceres), 1880, private collection. Source: The FORBES Magazine Collection, New York/Bridgeman Images.

portrays another annual festival in honour of Demeter in which female celebrants process to her temple at Eleusis, carrying scented flowers and censers.13 Although Machen’s poetry writing petered out early, the association of a classical subject with fragrance and, in particular, a synaesthetic perception of scents recurs, as we shall see later in what might be called the ‘Roman interlude’ in The Hill of Dreams. Swinburne’s lineal successor both in terms of his literary and olfactory influence on English decadence is Walter Pater, another writer interested in the rites of classical Antiquity. Machen suggests that as a youth he had read some of Pater’s essays published in The Guardian, an Anglican newspaper delivered weekly to his father’s rectory.14 It would have been extraordinary if by the 1890s he had not also read Pater’s Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873) with its famous ‘Conclusion’, and his interest in the theme of the returned pagan god explored in The Great God Pan hints that he may have been familiar with Pater’s imaginary portrait ‘Denys L’Auxerrois’ (1886) about the reappearance of Dionysus in the medieval French town of Auxerre. Machen may also have read Pater’s essays on classical subjects such as ‘The Myth of Demeter and Persephone’ (1876), ‘A Study of Dionysus’ (1876) and ‘The Bacchanals of Euripides’ (1889), all later collected in Greek Studies (1895). Importantly, we know by his own admission that he read Pater’s novel Marius the Epicurean (1885), set in second century 29

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Rome, and after that the famous essay on ‘Style’ (1888), although he was less than enthusiastic about both. Marius, he said, ‘bored me’, and he did not finish it, although he acknowledged that ‘There are beautiful things scattered in [it].’15 Nonetheless some of the olfactory references he would have encountered early on in Pater’s Roman novel may have made an impression; for example, the account of the private Ambarvalia or rural fertility festival celebrated at the country home of the young Marius with its ‘sumptuous’ garlands and ‘fresh-gathered’ herbs: ‘Just then the young leaves were almost as fragrant as flowers, and the fresh scent of the bean-fields mingled pleasantly with the cloud of incense.’16 The subtitle of Marius the Epicurean is His Sensations and Ideas, and throughout the novel Pater emphasizes the links between the soul and the senses, as, for example, in chapter 3 where the narrator mentions the ‘valuable’ classical belief that ‘all the maladies of the soul might be reached through the gateways of the body’.17 This speaks to Machen’s own awareness of the soul as impacted by sensory stimuli, both for good or ill, and reminds us that in classical times and afterwards a primary use of perfume – which includes scented flowers and leaves – was to lift the mind to higher contemplation and meditation on the divine. Machen claimed not to have met many of the other leading contemporary decadent figures of the 1890s, including Aubrey Beardsley who provided the cover illustration for The Great God Pan, although echoes of Beardsley’s erotic novella Under the Hill, published in The Savoy in 1896, can be detected in The Hill of Dreams, which Machen was working on between 1895 and 1897.18 However, he did meet Oscar Wilde and he read with admiration The Picture of Dorian Gray when it was first published in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine in 1890. Later, writing about the influences on The Hill of Dreams, he admitted in a letter to a friend ‘Suppose you put down among its origins a certain chapter in “Dorian Gray” – which derived, by the way, from Huysmans.’19 The ‘certain chapter’ is chapter 9 in the magazine version (chapter 11 in the later book) in which Dorian, inspired by the protagonist of the ‘yellow book’ lent him by Lord Henry Wotton, displays his connoisseurship by collecting precious objects such as precious stones, rare musical instruments and exquisite textiles and by experimenting with perfumes. Dorian’s collecting habit is itself famously influenced by that of Des Esseintes, J. K. Huysmans’ aristocratic dandy-aesthete in À Rebours (1884), who is a much more serious perfume aficionado.20 Nonetheless, Wilde’s Dorian Gray, with its sonorous catalogues of beautiful objects that delight the senses, is permeated throughout with allusions to perfume and appears to be the primary influence. It is easy to imagine the novel’s obvious appeal to Machen, who, like many of his decadent contemporaries, was what we might call an olfactif, an individual with a refined sense of smell, and, in common with other decadent works of literature, his writings have a marked sensory appeal. In a biographical sketch, the critic Wesley D. Sweetser writes, ‘As might be expected of a thorough-going romantic, Machen did not ignore the things of the senses. In this respect, as in many others, he narrowed his field and specialized only in the particular, namely sight and taste.’21 Machen was certainly something of a gourmand who loved food and wine and contributed an introduction to a 1925 edition of The Physiology of Taste by the French gastronome Brillat-Savarin. As Brillat-Savarin himself concurs, taste 30

‘Unguent from a Carven Jar’

is 90 per cent smell; pinch your nose while eating or drinking and you will be able to detect only the basic sensations of sour, sweet, salt and bitter. Appreciation of wine necessarily involves the savouring of its aromas or bouquet. When Machen rhapsodizes about drinking what he calls Joué Noble (actually Touraine Noble Joué) during a fondly recalled trip to Tours, he remarks, ‘It was scented like flowers in June; it was in its entirely unpretending way quite exquisite.’22 Later in life he would actually purchase a vineyard in Touraine, which he let out, receiving half the produce by way of rental. In his consideration of Machen’s sensory acuity, Sweetser doesn’t mention smell per se, perhaps because, regarded as one of the lower senses, it didn’t strike him as noteworthy, but there are numerous allusions to smell throughout Machen’s oeuvre, and his home county of Monmouthshire in Wales, which he usually referred to by its medieval name of Gwent, is often recalled through its pastoral smells. Early in his autobiography, for example, we encounter him reminiscing about the odour of a particular plant: There was a certain herb of the fields that grew plentifully in Gwent, that even now I cannot regard without a kind of reverence; it bears a spire of small yellow blossoms, and its leaves when crushed give out a pungent, aromatic odour. This odour was to me a separate revelation or mystery, as if no one in the world had smelt it but myself, and I ceased not to admire even when a countryman told me it was good for stone, if you gathered it ‘under the planet Juniper’ [sic].23 ‘Juniper’ is the countryman’s misrendering of ‘Jupiter’, while ‘good for stone’ means effective in expelling kidney stones. Machen’s yellow-flowered plant is almost certainly goldenrod (Solidago virgaurea), a plant with aromatic leaves still noted for its efficacy in flushing out kidney stones. This description is reminiscent of classical predecessors – Machen’s ‘There was a certain herb of the fields’ chiming with, say, Virgil’s ‘There’s a flower of the meadows’ (Est etiam flos in pratis) in his Georgics (4.271), where he describes the appearance of ‘amellus’ or Michaelmas daisy, with its gold disk and purple petals, a bittertasting plant which, he says, boiled in fragrant wine, can be given to ailing bees as a tonic. (Indeed, the gathering of plants according to an astrological calendar recalls Virgil’s advice to farmers about cultivation by the stars or planets in the first book of his Georgics.) Machen also vividly recalls the smells associated with his earliest childhood. His father was a clergyman who often took his young son with him on his parish visits: I have recollections, still fresh and pleasant, of sitting still in old farm-house kitchens while my father was about his ghostly business. Always, even in the full blaze of summer, there would be a glint of fire on the cavernous hearth and a faint blue spire of wood smoke mounting the huge hollow of the chimney. The smell of this wood smoke scented and sweetened the air, in which there was usually a hint of apples stored away in loft or cellar, somewhere behind one or other of the black tarred doors.24 There is something primal about these homely rural smells – woodsmoke and apples – archetypal odours evoked by Ovid in his retelling of the story of Baucis and Philemon 31

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in Metamorphoses (Book 8, 611–724), and by other writers like Virgil (Eclogues 7), Martial and Longus – all writers well known to Machen. But he is also sensitive to less comforting odours. At the end of the The Great God Pan, one of the narrators, visiting the Welsh woodland where the god manifested himself, is struck by the ‘the heavy perfume of the elder whose mingled odour is like the odour of the room of the dead, a vapour of incense and corruption’.25 It seems likely that Machen is linking the elder shrub to the god Pan, described in Virgil’s tenth eclogue as staining his face with elderberries. Smells of other local plants and flowers pervade Machen’s writings inspired by his birthplace, which intoxicated him both for its scenic landscape and its history: ‘I shall always esteem it as the greatest piece of good fortune that has fallen to me, that I was born in that noble, fallen Caerleon-on-Usk, in the heart of Gwent,’ he wrote.26 The impression of the countryside around his home went deep – he said he ‘always saw it as a kind of fairyland’ – and from his adolescence it was his purpose ‘to invent a story which would recreate those vague impressions of wonder and awe and mystery that I had myself received from the form and shape of the land of my boyhood and youth’.27 Caerleon, a suburban town near Newport, was identified by the twelfth-century writer Geoffrey of Monmouth with Camelot, King Arthur’s legendary court, and was indeed visited by Alfred Tennyson in 1856 when planning his famous Arthurian epic Idylls of the King. However, it is also a site of considerable archeological significance, being the location of a notable Roman legionary fortress and an Iron Age fort. The name Caerleon is derived from the Welsh meaning ‘fortress of the legion’. In Roman times the site was known as Isca Augusta, with ‘Isca’ referring to the Usk river, and ‘Augusta’ after the second Augustan legion stationed there. In later times the site was commonly known as Isca Silurum, with ‘Silurum’ referring to the Silures tribe who lived in the area, although there is no evidence this name was ever actually used by the Romans. The modern-day National Roman Legion Museum at Caerleon houses a substantial display of artefacts found in the region where excavations of the Roman fort have revealed barracks said to be the finest in Europe, and a military amphitheatre which seats up to 6,000 spectators. Nearby is the Roman Baths Museum, built around a substantial military bathhouse.28 Twelve miles away, the town of Caerwent, founded by the Romans as the market town of Venta Silurum, is also said to have some of the best-preserved ruins in Europe including those of baths, shops and a temple. As might be deduced from someone whose first publication was on the Eleusinian mysteries, Machen was intrigued by classical Antiquity and had received a sound classical education at Hereford Cathedral School where he was placed at the top of the list for Classics in 1876.29 His writings allude to a broad range of classical authors and are peppered with Latin tags. Favourite Roman authors included Apuleius and Longus, whose tales The Golden Ass and Daphnis and Chloe are mentioned by name in The Hill of Dreams.30 Machen’s father was a subscribing member of the Monmouthshire and Caerleon Antiquarian Association who enjoyed discussing his interest in archaeology with his son.31 By the time the young Machen was responding to his surroundings, the Roman fort had long been a topic of interest to antiquarians, and some preliminary 32

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excavations had already taken place and a museum created.32 When listing the things that helped inspire The Hill of Dreams, Machen specifically mentioned ‘a fragment of enamel in the Caerleon Museum of a fervent and glowing blue’.33 From his boyhood, the Roman remains were certainly a stimulus to his imagination. ‘Could one,’ he writes ‘describe hills and valleys, woods and rivers, sunrise and sunset, buried temples and mouldering Roman walls so that a story should be suggested to the reader? Not, of course, a story of material incidents, not a story with a plot in the ordinary senses of the term, but an interior tale of the soul and its emotions.’34 Arguably that story of ‘a soul and its emotions’ as shaped by an influential landscape was the book that Machen tried to write throughout his life. He implied that his plans never came to fruition, speaking in his autobiography of ‘the “great” book which is not yet written’, but The Hill of Dreams, his own favourite among his many works, was undoubtedly the one that came closest.35 The Hill of Dreams, a semi-autobiographical novel, is the story of Lucian Taylor, the son of a cultivated but impoverished rural parish priest living near the Welsh town of Caermaen, the fictional counterpart of Caerleon. Like Machen’s, Lucian’s family is too poor to send him to university and he is similarly withdrawn from school early because they can no longer afford his school fees. Like Machen also, Lucian is obsessed with the power and beauty of the country around him and longs to be a writer. He is increasingly alienated by the snobbery, conservatism and philistinism of the middle-class inhabitants of Caermaen who look down on him for his poverty, his literary and artistic tastes and general lack of conformity. The cruelty of other people finally impinges itself on him in a scene in which a local peasant boy sadistically tortures a little dog. At this point, Lucian, always a dreamy introspective youth, develops a self-protective strategy by cultivating visions that allow him to absent himself from the disappointment and horror of everyday modern life. Having read occult works he is aware of how allegedly the student or adept ‘could transfer the sense of consciousness from the brain to the foot or hand, he could annihilate the world around him and pass into another sphere’.36 Inspired by the ancient sites around him, he assiduously develops in his imagination an alternative world, a supposed throwback to the ancient Roman settlement, which offers him the opportunity to create and explore scenes of great beauty. As Machen’s narrator puts it,‘he was gradually levelling to the dust the squalid kraals of modern times, and rebuilding the splendid and golden city of Siluria’.37 Chapter 4 of The Hill of Dreams is dedicated to the mental construction of this alternative city. As part of the groundwork, Lucian repeatedly revisits Caermaen ‘to view the amphitheatre more precisely, to note the exact position of the ancient walls’.38 We are also told that [. . .] he lingered in the museum where the relics of the Roman occupation had been stored; he was interested in the fragments of tessellated floors, in the glowing gold of drinking cups, the curious beads of fused and coloured glass, the carved amber-work, the scent-flagons that still retained the memory of unctuous odours, the necklaces, brooches, hairpins of gold and silver, and other intimate objects which had once belonged to Roman ladies.39 33

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The idea of ‘the scent-flagons that still retained the memory of unctuous odours’ may sound preposterous, but a catalogue of the museum of antiquities at Caerleon published in 1862 contains an entry on a scent bottle presumed to be Roman that sounds as if it, or a display caption derived from it, might be a source for Machen. In this entry, keyed to an illustrative drawing (Plate XXVIII), John Edward Lee, the author of the catalogue, records A small scent-bottle, found, with other Roman remains, in the churchyard. When first taken out of the ground, in warm summer weather, a very decidedly aromatic scent was perceptible: this gradually lessened, and in the cold weather seemed entirely lost; in the subsequent summer it was partially restored, but only when the weather proved exceedingly hot.40 This is a very literal bottling or rather unbottling of the scent of Antiquity, and the ‘unctuous odours’, along with the other Roman objects Lucian examines in the museum, help him in his project of constructing the city he calls Siluria, fleshing out his imaginative world as we see it portrayed in the following passage:

Figure 1.2 Plate XXVIII from John Edward Lee’s Isca Silurum; or, an Illustrated Catalogue of the Museum of Antiquities at Caerleon, 1862.

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And there were shops in the town in which he delighted, the shops of the perfume makers, and jewellers, and dealers in curious ware. He loved to see all things made for ladies’ use, to touch the gossamer silks that were to touch their bodies, to finger the beads of amber and the gold chains which would stir above their hearts, to handle the carved hairpins and brooches, to smell odours which were already dedicated to love.41 But the traces of perfume in the flagons in the museum are also an imaginative cue that works to actualize all the various fragrances we encounter later in the chapter and indeed to conjure up the spirit of the Roman past. As such, ‘the memory of unctuous odours’ bears a resemblance to the more apparently supernatural cue provided by Pater in his imaginary portrait ‘Denys L’Auxerrois’. In this story the medieval townsfolk of Auxerre working on a new cathedral unearth an ancient coffin containing ‘a flask of lively green glass’ which some perceive as ‘still redolent with the tawny sediment of the Roman wine it held so long ago’.42 When the flask is reused to distribute wine at a celebratory supper, this symbolically ushers in a new golden age and triggers the sudden appearance of the mysterious Denys, a seeming reincarnation of Dionysus. The name that Lucian takes for his own alter ego in Siluria is ‘Avallaunius’, a fusion of the Latin name ‘Vallaunius’, taken from an actual Roman memorial tablet as listed in Lee’s catalogue, and Avalon, the island of Arthurian legend.43 The original title of The Hill of Dreams was firstly Phantasmagoria and then The Garden of Avallaunius, and the opening scene of Lucian’s visionary imaginings takes place in this garden. The action of Machen’s novella is different from those fictional texts in which modern-day protagonists enter the classical past through some kind of time-slip or time travel – one thinks, for example, of the nineteenth-century hero of Théophile Gautier’s story ‘Arria Marcella’ (1852), who finds himself inhabiting classical Pompeii after he falls asleep in the ruins at night. In contrast, Lucian experiences Siluria as a higher form of willed vision even while he seems to be interacting with those around him in his everyday life: ‘He could listen to Mr. Dixon with apparent attention, while he was in reality enraptured by the entreating music of the double flute, played by a girl in the garden of Avallaunius.’44 However, in creating Siluria, Lucian imports an atmosphere which is very different from what one might expect to find in Roman Britain, even allowing for the possibility that the climate then might have been marginally warmer than that of Victorian Wales: He had made a curious and accurate map of the town he proposed to inhabit, in which every villa was set down and named. He drew his lines to scale with the gravity of a surveyor, and studied the plan till he was able to find his way from house to house on the darkest summer night. On the southern slopes about the town there were vineyards, always under a glowing sun, and sometimes he ventured to the furthest ridge of the forest, where the wild people still lingered, that he might catch the golden gleam of the city far away, as the light quivered and scintillated on the glittering tiles. And there were gardens outside the city gates where strange and 35

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brilliant flowers grew, filling the hot air with their odour, and scenting the breeze that blew along the streets.45 This is clearly a Mediterranean climate and indeed a city probably influenced by Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s The Last Days of Pompeii (1834) and Gautier’s ‘Arria Marcella’, mixed with a dash of Alma-Tadema. As Maria Wyke explains, ‘the representational strategies’ of Lytton’s strongly pictorial novel ‘stimulated the depiction of classical subjects by painters such as Lawrence Alma-Tadema and Edward John Poynter’.46 Machen may have had in mind an image like Alma-Tadema’s A Hearty Welcome (1878) (see Colour Plate 5), exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1879 and now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. This painting depicts the garden of a Roman villa complete with brilliant poppies and anachronistic sunflowers.47 However, to these possible sources Machen added something headier, for the ‘strange and brilliant flowers’ are also a decadent trope deriving from Pater’s ‘Conclusion’ to Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873), where ‘strange flowers’ are one of the things to be sought out by the aspiring aesthete along with ‘strange dyes’ and ‘curious odours’.48 When writing his novel, Machen was probably also influenced by Aubrey Beardsley’s Pater-derived description on the first page of Under the Hill of

Figure 1.3 Aubrey Beardsley, drawing illustration for ‘Under the Hill’ in The Savoy, no. 1, January 1896. Source: Victoria and Albert Museum. 36

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‘strange flowers, heavy with perfume, dripping with odour’, and accompanied in The Savoy by Beardsley’s own illustration.49 The intensity of brilliant light and warmth that pervades Lucian’s imaginative vision of Siluria and in particular the garden of Avallaunius diffuses odours and allows him to experience sensory effects that might otherwise be more elusive. In the important opening scene set in the garden, he enjoys an epicurean meditation on scent: The sun still beat upon the roses, and a little breeze bore the scent of them to his nostrils together with the smell of grapes and vine-leaves. He had become curious in sensation, and as he leant back upon the cushions covered with glistening yellow silk, he was trying to analyse a strange ingredient in the perfume of the air. He had penetrated far beyond the crude distinctions of modern times, beyond the rough: ‘there’s a smell of roses,’ ‘there must be sweetbriar somewhere.’ Modern perceptions of odour were, he knew, far below those of the savage in delicacy. The degraded black fellow of Australia could distinguish odours in a way that made the consumer of ‘damper’ stare in amazement, but the savage’s sensations were all strictly utilitarian.50 Lucian’s idyllic reinhabiting of the classical past also allows him to experience his senses, and especially the sense of smell, in a way that has little in common with the utilitarian olfactory sensitivity of what he calls the ‘savage’.51 His refined or ‘superior’ sense of smell is stimulated at the same time as he is listening to music being performed – the girl fluteplayer mentioned earlier is joined by a young boy who sings a love-song while being innocent of the passions it communicates. As the scene unfolds, the different sensory elements begin to fuse: To Lucian as he sat in the cool porch, his feet on the marble, the air came laden with scents as subtly and wonderfully interwoven and contrasted as the harmonica of a great master. The stained marble of the pavement gave a cool reminiscence of the Italian mountain, the blood-red roses palpitating in the sunlight sent out an odour mystical as passion itself, and there was the hint of inebriation in the perfume of the trellised vines. Besides these, the girl’s desire and the unripe innocence of the boy were as distinct as benzoin and myrrh, both delicious and exquisite, and exhaled as freely as the scent of the roses. But there was another element that puzzled him, an aromatic suggestion of the forest. He understood it at last; it was the vapour of the great red pines that grew beyond the garden; their spicy needles were burning in the sun, and the smell was as fragrant as the fume of incense blown from far. The soft entreaty of the flute and the swelling rapture of the boy’s voice beat on the air together, and Lucian wondered whether there were in the nature of things any true distinction between the impressions of sound and scent and colour. The violent blue of the sky, the song, and the odours seemed rather varied symbols of one mystery than distinct entities. He could almost imagine that the boy’s innocence was indeed a perfume, and that the palpitating roses had become a sonorous chant.52 37

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Clearly Lucian is experiencing a form of synaesthesia in which various sensory impressions blend into each other. In his Introduction to the collection A Cultural History of the Senses in Antiquity (2014), Jerry Toner writes: Synaesthesia is a term that can often be applied to the ways in which the ancients used the senses. Synaesthesia represents a mixing of the senses whereby different senses are used to stimulate each other. Antiquity was not a world which saw, as we in the modern West do, the senses as five clearly distinct registers, each with its own particularities. The ancient world was perceived in a way that mixed up the senses to create a rich and complex descriptive palette.53 A clue to the possible inspiration for Lucian’s synaesthesia may lie in the young boy’s performance, for, as we are told early on in the scene, ‘he began to sing one of Sappho’s love songs’.54 Recently a number of modern scholars have commented on the synaesthetic qualities of Sappho’s poetry. Anton Bieri writes, ‘In Sapphic poetry the visual dimension is generally blended with auditory, kinaesthetic, olfactory, and haptic “imagery” to produce an effect of synaesthesia.’55 Ashley Clements calls Sappho’s Fragment no. 2 a ‘lyric invocation of Aphrodite that seeks to summon the goddess to her temple in Lesbos and into the festivities of her celebrants by evoking the erotic “grace” (charis) of her sacred grove in its richly synaesthetic properties’.56 Here is Fragment 2 in Anne Carson’s translation slightly modified by Clements: Come to me from Crete to this holy temple where is your graceful grove of apple trees and altars fuming with frankincense Wherein cold water makes a clear sound through apple boughs, and with roses, the whole place is shaded and down from radiant-shaking leaves sleep comes dropping. Herein a meadow where horses graze Blooms with spring flowers and breezes Like honey are breathing . . . Here, O Cyprian, take [garlands?], In golden cups gently pour forth Nectar mingled together with our festivities.57 Clements refers to ‘the evocation of the sacred grove that is essentially Sappho’s poem, with its intoxicating imagery and accumulating appeals to scent: the frankincense of altars, the presence of apples and roses, meadows blooming with spring flowers, honied breezes, all these redolent things anticipate the goddess’ climactic bestowal of mingling nectar’.58 It is just possible that this very fragment may have been in Machen’s mind because of the way his ‘roses palpitating in the sunlight’ evoke the mention of roses in 38

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Sappho’s poem close to her description of ‘radiant-shaking leaves’. In her own notes on the poem, Anne Carson writes that ‘Sappho’s adjective aithussomenon (‘radiant-shaking’) blends visual and tactile sensations with a sound of rushing emptiness.’59 Katerina Ladianou also explores synaesthesia in Sappho’s poetry, noting its multiple mixed references to vision, touch, hearing and smell. Commenting on Fragment 2 along with other Sapphic fragments, she emphasizes the poems’ choric nature – the fact that they were most likely sung by groups of maidens. This musical vocalization only adds to their synaesthetic quality and is of course explicitly picked up by Machen in his description of the boy’s performance of ‘one of Sappho’s love songs’. Ladianou also suggests that Sappho was particularly celebrated for her reference to perfume or fragrance, illustrating this by citing one of the ekphrastic descriptions of painting by the third-century Greek writer Philostratus. In his vivid sensory description of a painting of a statue of Aphrodite ritually honoured by a group of singing maidens, Philostratus appears to connect the subject with Sappho’s poetry and its choric performance, imagining the maidens’ ‘ “honeyed voices” to use the charming expression of Sappho’, and asking ‘Do you wish us to pour a libation of discourse on the altar? For of frankincense and cinnamon and myrrh it has enough already, and it seems to me to give out also a fragrance as of Sappho.’ Ladianou notes not only that ‘Philostratus’ appeal to all the senses is also mimicking Sapphic poetry’, but that ‘There is then, it seems, a certain scent to a Sapphic song, a scent that the writer of the ekphrasis seems to emulate.’60 In an article written for the London Evening News in 1914, Machen tells us how he properly encountered Sappho for the first time: Holywell Street has vanished utterly, and Nutt’s in the Strand has been translated to Long Acre, I reverence Nutt’s in the Strand. I had wondered about Sappho for years. I had heard of the majesty and splendour of Sappho, of a lyric beauty that seemed more fit for the stars than for the earth. Sappho for me had become one of the things that are almost too good to be true; theoretically one admits their existence, but practically one does not expect to have actual experience of them [. . .] Well, one gloomy, rainy, gaslit afternoon in the autumn of 1881 I went into Nutt’s in the Strand, and said I wanted Sappho. I don’t think I would have been astonished if the shopman had ordered me out the shop. Instead, he went to his shelves, brought down a book in dark blue paper covers, and said, ‘Sappho; four shillings’. And so I read in Greek – I can’t read Greek now – of immortal Aphrodite, daughter of Zeus, high on her rainbow-throne; and felt almost like De Quincey when he bought opium on a wet afternoon from a chemist in the gloomy Pantheon, and found, all amazed, that happiness could be put in a bottle and sold for a little money, with change given.61 There was a thriving cult of Sappho in the nineteenth century: Tennyson and Swinburne, both favourite poets of Machen’s, were great admirers and incorporated her fragments in their poems, while artists such as Swinburne’s friend Simeon Solomon and 39

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Figure 1.4 Simeon Solomon, Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytilene, 1864, watercolour on paper, Tate, London. Source: Wikipedia.

Figure 1.5 Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Sappho and Alcaeus, 1881, oil on panel, Walters Museum, Baltimore. Source: Wikipedia.

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Alma-Tadema also celebrated her in paint in their respective works Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytilene (1864) and Sappho and Alcaeus (1881).62 Later on, she was imitated by decadent poets such as Theodore Wratislaw, and Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper, the two women who wrote under the name of ‘Michael Field’.63 Philostratus’ notion of ‘the fragrance of Sappho’ was emulated by the classicist John Addington Symonds in his Studies of the Greek Poets of 1873 in which he declares, ‘Of all the poets of the world, of all the illustrious artists of all literatures, Sappho is the one whose every word has a peculiar and unmistakable perfume, a seal of absolute perfection and inimitable grace.’64 And in a famous passage about Sappho and her fellow women poets, Symonds imitates the mingled sensory pleasures of Sappho’s verse: All the luxuries and elegances of life which that climate and the rich valleys of Lesbos could afford, were at their disposal; exquisite gardens, in which the rose and hyacinth, spread perfume; [. . .] marble cliffs, starred with jonquil and anemone in spring, aromatic with myrtle and lentisk and samphire and wild rosemary through all the months; nightingales that sang in May; temples dim with dusky gold and bright with ivory; statues and frescoes of heroic forms. In such scenes as these the Lesbian poets lived, and thought of Love. When we read their poems, we seem to have the perfumes, colours, sounds, and lights of that luxurious land distilled in verse.65 Machen perhaps echoes Symonds’ final sentence when Lucian, listening to the boy’s rendition of Sappho, wonders ‘whether there were in the nature of things any true distinction between the impressions of sound and scent and colour’. It is more than likely that Machen was familiar with this passage by Symonds because, even if he hadn’t read it in the original, it was included in Henry Thornton Wharton’s well-known collection Sappho: Memoir, Text, Selected Renderings and a Literal Translation of 1885.66 Wharton’s text appeared in a third edition by Machen’s own publisher John Lane in 1895 while he was working on The Hill of Dreams. In Fragment 2, in her invocation of Aphrodite, Sappho arguably mingles sense impressions for a spiritual purpose, lifting the mind, as incense does, to a higher spiritual realm. Like Philostratus and Symonds, who imagine Sappho’s poetry as possessing a fragrance, Machen also employs synaesthesia in a refined and complex way to more than material ends. In his descriptions, sensory impressions correlate with abstract ideas while abstractions themselves seem to have sensory correlates. Thus Lucian perceives that the blood-red roses give off ‘an odour mystical as passion itself ’, and almost imagines ‘the boy’s innocence was indeed a perfume’.67 The narrator writes, ‘The fancy that sensations are symbols and not realities hovered in his mind and led him to speculate as to whether they could not actually be transmuted one into another.’ He also concludes, ‘It was not the material banquet which really mattered but the thought of it.’68 The garden in which Lucian entertains these ideas is like the sacred Sapphic ‘graceful grove’ of Fragment 2 a place of refined fusion and transformation: ‘ “Only in the garden of Avallaunius,” said Lucian to himself, “is the true and exquisite science to be found.” ’69 41

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And, within it, his fantasy proceeds to another level as he projects his thoughts about synaesthetic experience a stage further: He could imagine a man who was able to live in one sense while he pleased; to whom, for example, every impression of touch, taste, hearing, or seeing should be translated into odour; who at the desired kiss should be ravished with the scent of dark violets, to whom music should be the perfume of a rose-garden at dawn.70 Lucian’s long hours of meditation in the garden lead him to the conviction ‘that man could, if he pleased, become lord of his own sensations. This, surely, was the true meaning concealed under the beautiful symbolism of alchemy.’71 As Machen knew from his own occult researches, esoteric alchemy, which in the Western tradition stretches back to Hellenistic Egypt, uses the symbolic language of refining base substances into gold as an allegory for the refinement of the soul, an idea Lucian develops in the following lines, where ‘spagyric art’ means ‘alchemy’: He saw the true gold into which the beggarly matter of existence may be transmuted by spagyric art; a succession of delicious moments, all the rare flavours of life concentrated, purged of their lees, and preserved in a beautiful vessel. The moonlight fell green on the fountain and on the curious pavements, and in the long sweet silence of the night he lay still and felt that thought itself was an acute pleasure, to be expressed perhaps in terms of odour or colour by the true artist.72 And slightly later we encounter Lucian still working on his synaesthetic alchemy: ‘Let us seek for more exquisite things,’ said Lucian to himself. He could almost imagine the magic transmutation of the senses accomplished, the strong sunlight was an odour in his nostrils; it poured down on the white marble and the palpitating roses like a flood.73 In the first of these extracts Lucian echoes the aesthetic philosophy of Walter Pater’s Conclusion to Studies in the History of the Renaissance, where the would-be aesthete is urged to pursue and cherish the peak or epiphanic moments that transfigure our existence and lift it out of the commonplace, although Lucian again suggests that this can be done by a willed act of vision.74 This results in a preserved essence – ‘all the rare flavours of life concentrated, purged of their lees, and preserved in a beautiful vessel’ – with this precious essence sounding like wine, or even perfume, but certainly something that the adept can access as he chooses. Lucian’s ideas about transcending the commonplace here parallel Machen’s own ideas about what he called ‘ecstasy’, which he thought the goal of life. The word ‘ecstasy’ derives from the Greek ekstasis meaning ‘standing outside of oneself ’ and is associated with religious frenzy or trance-like states. Arguably Lucian’s willed visions that take him out of his own everyday experience into his idealized Roman world are already a form of 42

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ecstasy, although his synaesthetic meditations intensify that state. Machen also thought ecstasy the goal of literature, and in his extended essay Hieroglyphics: A Note upon Ecstasy in Literature (1902), he declares that ‘fine literature is simply the expression of the eternal things that are in man, that it is beauty clothed in words, that it is always ecstasy, that it always draws itself away, and goes apart into lonely places, far from the common course of life’. He also remarks that ‘The ecstasy of the artist is but a recollection, a remnant from the childish vision,’ and that ‘When men are young, the inward ecstasy [. . .] is of such efficacy and virtue that the grossest and vilest matter is transmuted for them into pure gold, glistering and glorious as the sun.’75 Dionysus, god of wine, is also Eleutherios, the Deliverer, and thus the god of ecstasy – the one who delivers you, who takes you outside of yourself. In Hieroglyphics, among the texts Machen identifies as ‘ecstatic’ he includes Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel and Dickens’ Pickwick Papers on the basis that their celebration of wine and drinking links them to Dionysiac ecstasy: [T]he incidents of the Dionysus myth, the incidents of ‘Pantagruel’ and ‘Pickwick’ are not to be taken literally, but symbolically. We are not to conclude that the Greeks were a race of drunkards, or that Rabelais and Dickens preached habitual excess in drink as the highest virtue; we are to conclude that both the ancient people and the modern writers recognised Ecstasy as the supreme gift and state of man, and that they chose the Vine and the juice of the Vine as the most beautiful and significant symbol of that Power which withdraws a man from the common life and the common consciousness, and taking him from the dust of the earth, sets him in high places, in the eternal world of ideas.76 As mentioned earlier, smell is an important factor in enjoying ‘the juice of the vine’. In The Hill of Dreams, Lucian periodically leaves his garden to spend time at a Roman tavern outside the city walls ‘where wonderful people met to drink wonderful wine’.77 There he mixes with priests of Mithras and Isis, actors, soldiers, singers and dancing girls in another crucible of sensory impressions, with olfactory sensation vividly contributing to the atmosphere: And the odour of the place was both curious and memorable; something of the damp cold breath of the cave meeting the hot blast of summer, the strangely mingled aromas of rare wines as they fell plashing and ringing into the cups, the drugged vapour of the East that the priests of Mithras and Isis bore from their steaming temples; these were always strong and dominant. And the women were scented, sometimes with unctuous and overpowering perfumes, and to the artist the experiences of those present were hinted in subtle and delicate nuances of odour. They drank their wine and caressed all day in the tavern. The women threw their round white arms about their lovers’ necks, they intoxicated them with the scent of their hair, the priests muttered their fantastic jargon of Theurgy.78 43

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Like the juice of the vine, smell in the form of incense, perfume and the aroma of wine help promote ecstasy, withdrawing man from ‘the common life’ and setting him ‘in high places, in the eternal world of ideas’. In the mist of the potent tavern atmosphere, and influenced by it, Lucian muses on language and literature, touching on ideas that Machen will later develop in his own Hieroglyphics. Lucian starts by extolling the sensory aspects of literary language: Language, he understood, was chiefly important for the beauty of its sounds, by its possession of words resonant, glorious to the ear, by its capacity, when exquisitely arranged, of suggesting wonderful and indefinable impressions, perhaps more ravishing and farther removed from the domain of strict thought than the impressions excited by music itself. Here lay hidden the secret of the sensuous art of literature; it was the secret of suggestion, the art of causing delicious sensation by the use of words.79 However, he realizes that there are other elements present in addition to the logical thought and sensation: [B]esides these there were the indefinable inexpressible images which all fine literature summons to the mind. As the chemist in his experiments is sometimes astonished to find unknown, unexpected elements in the crucible or the receiver, as the world of material things is considered by some a thin veil of the immaterial universe, so he who reads wonderful prose or verse is conscious of suggestions that cannot be put into words, which do not rise from the logical sense, which are rather parallel to than connected with the sensuous delight.80 Later on in The Hill of Dreams, when Lucian is trying to become a writer in London, we find him trying to achieve ‘that indefinite something which is scarcely so much style as manner, or atmosphere’, ‘that quality that gives to words something beyond their sound and beyond their meaning, [. . .] this curious quality of suggestion’.81 The narrator declares of Lucian’s efforts, ‘To win the secret of words, to make a phrase that would murmur of summer and the bee, to summon the wind into a sentence, to conjure the odour of the night into the surge and fall and harmony of a line; this was the tale of the long evenings, of the candle flame white upon the paper and the eager pen.’82 Machen was derogatory about Pater’s 1888 essay on ‘Style’, which he called ‘altogether arid, uninspired, deficient, as I think, in the elements of Style as I understand it – the outward and invisible sign of an inward & spiritual grace (I quote from the Catechism of the English Church). And yet, I confess, Pater must have had the root of the matter in him.’83 Certainly, whether he liked it or not, Pater’s essay seems to infiltrate Machen’s thinking about the ineffably suggestive nature of style. For Pater, always interested in the fragrant atmosphere of a place and its impact on those within it, influential authors have what he calls a ‘soul perfume’. He contrasts ‘mind’ and ‘soul’ in style, with ‘soul’ experienced 44

‘Unguent from a Carven Jar’

as a kind of intimate personal contact or spiritual presence informing the text, which is intuited and cannot be pinned down to formal textual characteristics: ‘it does but suggest what can never be uttered’. Both ‘mind’ and ‘soul’ have distinct imperatives – soul seeking ‘unity of atmosphere’ and mind ‘unity of design’; ‘soul securing colour (or perfume, might we say?) as mind secures form, the latter being essentially finite, the former vague or infinite, as the influence of a living person is practically infinite’. And in conclusion Pater identifies mind as ‘reasonable structure’, and ‘soul’ as ‘colour and mystic perfume’.84 The influence of ‘soul’ is infinite because it cannot be contained by any specific form and moves beyond it, like perfume that expands and diffuses in the air; ‘soul’, the mysterious spiritual essence of a person, is experienced as a perfume aura diffused through style with an afterlife or presence outside the text. In Pater’s story ‘An English Poet’, a story that Machen could not have read because it was not published till 1931, we learn of the young protagonist’s pleasure in literature: ‘So written language came to be form and colour as well as sound to him, exotic perfume almost. Having nothing else to live on, he extracted all they could yield from words, and his sense of them came to be curiously cultivated at all points.’85 However, we have already seen how Sappho’s own synaesthetic verse was identified as a perfume by both an ancient commentator, Philostratus, and a Victorian contemporary, John Addington Symonds, so the notion of a text – here a classical text – as having a fragrant essence or ‘soul perfume’ is one that Machen could easily have encountered in these sources. Moreover, in that part of Pater’s Marius the Epicurean actually read by Machen, the pronouncements of the Latin writer Apuleius, one of his favourite authors, are also said to have a perfume to them. These sayings, which later become Apuleius’ Florida, are described as being ‘carved ivories of speech [. . .] with a fine savour of old musk about them’.86 In The Hill of Dreams the olfactory narrative, saturated with atmospheric fragrant reference, gratifies not merely a sensuous pleasure in language and evocative description. ‘Soul perfume’, the effect of a subtle and suggestive imagistic alchemy that takes the protagonist to a higher state of being, also arguably works to elevate the consciousness of readers who are taken with Lucian on his mental journeys. The novel also supplies us with two short inset narratives in which Machen hints at the enchantment of an atmospheric suggestive manner. In the Roman chapter, Lucian becomes the confidant of various people who tell him their stories of perverse love, one of these being a woman who becomes infatuated with her beautiful slave boy and tempts him for three years, before finally winning his love and then sending him to his death in the amphitheatre. Her story of seduction, as related to Lucian, involves gratifying all the boy’s senses including smell: She tried the experiment of curious odours: causing him to smell always about him the oil of roses, and burning in his presence rare gums from the East. [. . .] Three times a day they spread before him a delicious banquet, full of savour and odour and colour; three times a day they endeavoured to intoxicate him with delicate wine.87 45

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The rich sensuousness and sensuality of the woman’s tale as told to Lucian are heralded by a description that links the very fragrance that surrounds her to the seductive suggestive perfume of her speech: [S]he described her curious stratagems in mellow phrases. She was drinking a sweet yellow wine from a gold cup as she spoke, and the odour in her hair and the aroma of the precious wine seemed to mingle with the soft strange words that flowed like an unguent from a carven jar.88 Later Lucian as an author in London enjoys brief success with a story called The Amber Statuette about a beautiful Roman woman who at the shrine of Venus dedicates all her wealth and beauty to the goddess in return for love. Writing that tale, Lucian finds his nostrils ‘filled with the perfume of rare unguents, with the breath of the violet sea in Italy. His pleasure was an inebriation, an ecstasy of joy.’89 In both these cases the medium of these two Roman stories – ‘the soft strange words that flowed like an unguent from a carven jar’ and the aura of the emergent literary fiction ‘filled with the perfume of rare unguents’ – link fragrance with that suggestive atmosphere which for Machen releases ecstasy. And while that notion of perfumed atmosphere and its connection with ecstasy may be very much the creation of a Victorian author, there can be no doubt that for him its origins lie in his own imaginative reinterpretation of the soul-stirring fragrance of Antiquity.

Notes 1. Arthur Machen, The Secret Glory (London: Martin Secker, 1922), 225. 2. Arthur Machen, The Great God Pan and Other Horror Stories, ed. Aaron Worth, Oxford World’s Classics Hardback Collection (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018); Arthur Machen, Decadent and Occult Works, ed. Dennis Denisoff, MHRA Jewelled Tortoise, vol. 4 (Cambridge: MHRA, 2018). 3. Arthur Machen, The Autobiography of Arthur Machen (London: Richards Press, 1951), 91. 4. Catherine Maxwell, Scents and Sensibility: Perfume in Victorian Literary Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 85–117. 5. John Gawsworth, The Life of Arthur Machen, ed. Roger Dobson (London: Friends of Arthur Machen, Reini de Redondo, Tartarus Press, 2005), 29. 6. Gwilym Games, ‘ “Dim Legends Handed Down”: The Source of Eleusinia’, in Arthur Machen, Eleusinia, ed. Jonathan Preece (London: Friends of Arthur Machen, 2013), 35. This edition includes a facsimile of the original pamphlet which, instead of the author’s name, bears the attribution ‘By a former member of H. C. S.’ (signifying ‘Hereford Cathedral School’). 7. A point also made by Gwilym Games in his essay ‘ “Before the Greyness of the World Had Come”: The Origins and Significance of Eleusinia’, in Machen, Eleusinia, 32. Machen’s line ‘Before the greyness of the world had come’ in Eleusinia, 11 (facsimile); 9 (modern text), apparently references Swinburne’s ‘Hymn to Proserpine’: ‘Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown gray from thy breath’. See Algernon Charles Swinburne, ‘Hymn

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‘Unguent from a Carven Jar’ to Proserpine’, Poems and Ballads & Atalanta in Calydon, ed. Kenneth Haynes (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 2000), 57. 8. Swinburne, ‘Laus Veneris’, Poems and Ballads, 13; ‘At Eleusis’, 169. 9. Machen, Eleusinia, 12 (facsimile); 10 (modern text). 10. Harmony, subsequently described by Machen in unflattering terms in his Autobiography (92–3) and unattributed by him, is an early work by the Victorian painter Frank Dicksee (1853–1928), later Sir Frank Dicksee, displayed at the Royal Academy in 1877, where it won popular acclaim and was voted ‘Picture of the Year’ in a newspaper poll. It was subsequently bought for the nation through the funds of the newly available Chantrey Bequest, so remained in the Academy after 1877, moving after 1897 to the Tate Gallery, now Tate Britain. 11. In his journalistic essay ‘London Thirty Years Ago’, London Evening News (17 November 1913), collected in The London Adventure or the Art of Wandering (Leyburn: Tartarus Press, 2017), Machen reports of his 1880 trip to London, ‘I saw the exhibition at the Royal Academy and liked the pictures very much’ (181). 12. Robert Verhoogt indicates that prints of Alma-Tadema’s works were widely displayed in London’s Pall Mall and the Strand, much to the disgust of John Ruskin who strongly disapproved of ‘the present popular demand for art’ represented in these displays of artists such as ‘Doré, Gérome, and Tadema’, whom he regarded as vulgarly commercial. See Robert Verhoogt, Art in Reproduction: Nineteenth-century Prints after Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Jozef Israels and Ary Scheffer (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2007), 485, 486. 13. The American artist Francis Davis Millet (1846–1912) spent much time in England, staying with his family in the Cotswold village Broadway, where he painted the original mural of Thesmophoria for a lunette in the Bank of Pittsburgh (since demolished). The painting exists now only as a finished oil sketch in the Brigham Young University Museum of Art, Utah. Millet, a friend of Edmund Gosse, Henry James, Alma-Tadema and John Singer Sargent, would lose his life in the Titanic disaster of 1912. 14. Machen, Autobiography, 66. See also Walter Pater’s posthumous collection Essays from ‘The Guardian’ (London: Privately printed at the Chiswick Press, 1896). However, if Machen did read Pater’s essays in The Guardian, he must have done so after 1886, when Pater first published in this journal. 15. Letter to Munson Havens (14 April 1925), quoted in Gawsworth, The Life of Arthur Machen, 32. 16. Walter Pater, Marius the Epicurean, ed. Gerald Monsman (Richmond, VA: Valancourt, 2008), 10. 17. Pater, Marius the Epicurean, 22. 18. Beardsley’s illustration is reproduced on the cover of Machen’s Decadent and Occult Works (2018). 19. Machen, letter to Oliver Stonor (6 September 1940), quoted in Aidan Reynolds and William Charlton, with an introduction by D. B. Wyndham Lewis, Arthur Machen: A Short Account of his Life and Work (London: John Baker for the Richards Press, 1963), 59. 20. Machen apparently read Huysmans’ novel after publishing The Great God Pan when he was accused by reviewers of writing ‘an incompetent rehash of “Là-Bas” and “A Rebours” ’. See Arthur Machen, Introduction to The House of Souls (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1923), 17, cited by Dennis Denisoff, Introduction to Arthur Machen, Decadent and Occult Works, 2. 21. Wesley D. Sweetser, ‘Machen: A Biographical Sketch’, in Arthur Machen: A Miscellany, ed. Fr Brocard Sewell (Llandeilo: St Albert’s Press, 1960), 14. 22. Machen, Autobiography, 201.

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The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in the Modern Imagination 23. Machen, Autobiography, 32–3. 24. Machen, Autobiography, 20. 25. Machen, ‘The Great God Pan’, Decadent and Occult Works, 85. 26. Machen, Autobiography, 18. 27. Machen, Autobiography, 29, 28. 28. Fully excavated only in the twentieth century, the amphitheatre was, nonetheless, well known to Machen, who alludes to it in The Hill of Dreams, along with a mention of ‘the baths’. See Machen, ‘The Hill of Dreams, Decadent and Occult Works, 171, 180, 182. The military bathhouse was excavated between 1964 and 1983, but some evidence of other baths had been unearthed by Machen’s time, and baths would be assumed to be a feature of any substantial Roman settlement. 29. Later in life Machen tutored his own son in Latin and Greek using an eighteenth-century Ambrosian breviary and the letters of the younger Pliny. 30. Machen, ‘The Hill of Dreams’, Decadent and Occult Works, 179. 31. Gawsworth, The Life of Arthur Machen, 20. 32. In the conclusion to ‘The Great God Pan’ the narrator alludes to the museum at a Welsh town he calls Caermaen ‘containing for the most part Roman remains’ (Decadent and Occult Works, 86), which appears to be based on Caerleon. 33. Letter to Oliver Stonor (6 September 1940), quoted in Reynolds and Charlton, Arthur Machen: A Short Account of his Life and Work, 59. 34. Machen, Autobiography, 28. 35. Machen, Autobiography, 28. 36. Machen, ‘The Hill of Dreams’, 172. 37. Machen, ‘The Hill of Dreams’, 175. 38. Machen, ‘The Hill of Dreams’, 171. 39. Machen, ‘The Hill of Dreams’, 172. 40. John Edward Lee, Isca Silurum; or, an Illustrated Catalogue of the Museum of Antiquities at Caerleon (London: Longman, Green, Longmans, & Roberts, 1862), 52. In Plate XXVIII, the scent bottle is the item in the upper left-hand corner and numbered ‘1’. This catalogue can be accessed via archive.org. 41. Machen, ‘The Hill of Dreams’, 186. 42. Walter Pater, ‘Denys L’Auxerrois’, in Imaginary Portraits, ed. Lene Østermark-Johansen, MHRA Jewelled Tortoise, vol. 1 (London: MHRA, 2014), 174. 43. See Lee, Isca Silurum, 1 and Plate I. 44. Machen, ‘The Hill of Dreams’, 176. 45. Machen, ‘The Hill of Dreams’, 175. 46. Maria Wyke, Projecting the Past: Ancient Rome, Cinema and History (New York and London: Routledge, 1997), 154. 47. This 1878 painting was commissioned by Alma-Tadema’s physician, Sir Henry Thompson. As suggested earlier, Machen might have seen a reproduction of this painting and other works by Alma-Tadema in the print shops of Pall Mall and the Strand. 48. Walter Pater, ‘Conclusion’, Studies in the History of the Renaissance, ed. Matthew Beaumont (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 120.

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‘Unguent from a Carven Jar’ 49. Aubrey Beardsley, ‘Under the Hill’, The Savoy 1 (January 1896), 156. 50. Machen, ‘The Hill of Dreams’, 177. 51. It is common in the nineteenth century and earlier to cite the heightened olfactory ability of so-called ‘savages’ as opposed to supposed ‘civilized people’. In his 1905 book on the role of the senses in sexual selection, Havelock Ellis, discussing smell, is sceptical, but cites various footnotes by different authorities to this effect, including examples of the Torres Straits islanders and Australian ‘blacks’. See Havelock Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex: Sexual Selection in Man (Philadelphia: F. A. Davis Company, 1906), 48–9. 52. Machen, ‘The Hill of Dreams’, 177. 53. Jerry Toner, ‘Introduction: Sensing the Ancient Past’, in A Cultural History of the Senses in Antiquity, ed. Jerry Toner (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 2–3. 54. Machen, ‘The Hill of Dreams’, 176. 55. Anton Bieri, ‘Visualizing the Cologne Sappho: Mental Imagery through Chorality, the Sun, and Orpheus’, in The Look of Lyric: Greek Song and the Visual, ed. Vanessa Cazzato and André Lardinois. Studies in Archaic and Classical Greek Song, vol. 1. (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 313. 56. Ashley Clements, ‘Divine Scents and Presence’, in Smell and the Ancient Senses, ed. Mark Bradley (London and New York: Routledge, 2015), 55. 57. Anne Carson’s translation (modified), from If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho (New York: Vintage Books, 2003), 7, quoted in Clements, ‘Divine Scents and Presence’, 55. 58. Clements, ‘Divine Scents and Presence’, 55–6. 59. Carson, If Not, Winter, 359. 60. Katerina Ladianou, ‘Female Choruses and Gardens of Nymphs: Visualizing Chorality in Sappho’, in The Look of Lyric, 357, 358. 61. Machen, ‘When I was Young in London’, London Evening News (October–November 1913), collected in The London Adventure, 160–1. 62. Simeon Solomon’s Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytilene (1864), painted for the industrialist James Leathart and now in Tate Britain, was exhibited at London’s Goupil Gallery, Regent Street, in 1896 when Machen was working on The Hill of Dreams. AlmaTadema’s Sappho and Alcaeus was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1881, the same year that Machen bought his copy of Sappho. 63. See, for example, Theodore Wratislaw’s poem ‘῎Ερος δ’αὔτε . . .’ (‘Eros again’), which takes its title from one of Sappho’s best-known fragments, in his Orchids (London: Leonard Smithers, 1896), 24. See also Michael Field’s collection Long Ago (London: George Bell & Sons, 1889), in which the poems are inspired by Sappho’s fragments. 64. J. A. Symonds, Studies of the Greek Poets, 2 vols (London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1873–6), 1.129–30. 65. Symonds, Studies of the Greek Poets, 1.129–30. 66. Henry Thornton Wharton, Sappho: Memoir, Text, Selected Renderings and a Literal Translation (London: David Stott, 1885; 2nd edn 1887; John Lane, 3rd edn 1895; 4th edn 1898). The frontispiece image of Sappho’s head in Wharton’s collection is based on Alma-Tadema’s celebrated painting Sappho (1881), also known as Sappho and Alcaeus. 67. Machen, ‘The Hill of Dreams’, 177. 68. Machen, ‘The Hill of Dreams’, 178. 69. Machen, ‘The Hill of Dreams’, 178. 70. Machen, ‘The Hill of Dreams’, 178.

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The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in the Modern Imagination 71. Machen, ‘The Hill of Dreams’, 181. 72. Machen, ‘The Hill of Dreams’, 182. 73. Machen, ‘The Hill of Dreams’, 186. 74. Pater, ‘Conclusion’, Studies, 120–1. 75. Arthur Machen, Hieroglyphics: A Note upon Ecstasy in Literature (London: Grant Richards, 1902), 73, 96–7. Subsequent references given in the text. 76. Machen, Hieroglyphics, 111. 77. Machen, ‘The Hill of Dreams’, 182. 78. Machen, ‘The Hill of Dreams’, 184. 79. Machen, ‘The Hill of Dreams’, 184. 80. Machen, ‘The Hill of Dreams’, 185. 81. Machen, ‘The Hill of Dreams’, 197, 198. 82. Machen, ‘The Hill of Dreams’, 232. 83. Quoted in Gawsworth, The Life of Arthur Machen, 32. 84. Walter Pater, ‘Style’ (1888), Appreciations with an Essay on Style (London: Macmillan & Co., 1910), 27, 26–7, 38; my emphases. 85. Walter Pater, ‘An English Poet’, Imaginary Portraits, 110; my emphasis. 86. Pater, Marius, 121. 87. Machen, ‘The Hill of Dreams’, 188. 88. Machen, ‘The Hill of Dreams’, 187. 89. Machen, ‘The Hill of Dreams’, 246.

Bibliography Beardsley, Aubrey. ‘Under the Hill’. The Savoy 1 (January 1896): 151–70. Bieri, Anton. ‘Visualizing the Cologne Sappho: Mental Imagery through Chorality, the Sun, and Orpheus’. In The Look of Lyric: Greek Song and the Visual, edited by Vanessa Cazzato and André Lardinois, 307–42. Studies in Archaic and Classical Greek Song, vol. 1. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Clements, Ashley. ‘Divine Scents and Presence’. In Smell and the Ancient Senses, edited by Mark Bradley, 46–59. London and New York: Routledge, 2015. Ellis, Havelock. Studies in the Psychology of Sex: Sexual Selection in Man. Philadelphia: F. A. Davis Company, 1906. Field, Michael. Long Ago. London: George Bell & Sons, 1889. Games, Gwilym. ‘ “Before the Greyness of the World Had Come”: The Origins and Significance of Eleusinia’. In Arthur Machen, Eleusinia, edited by Jonathan Preece, 29–34. London: Friends of Arthur Machen, 2013. Games, Gwilym. ‘ “Dim Legends Handed Down”: The Source of Eleusinia’. In Arthur Machen, Eleusinia, edited by Jonathan Preece, 35–9. London: Friends of Arthur Machen, 2013. Gawsworth, John. The Life of Arthur Machen, edited by Roger Dobson. London: Friends of Arthur Machen, Reini de Redondo, Tartarus Press, 2005. Ladianou, Katerina. ‘Female Choruses and Gardens of Nymphs: Visualizing Chorality in Sappho’. In The Look of Lyric: Greek Song and the Visual, edited by Vanessa Cazzato and André Lardinois, 343–69. Studies in Archaic and Classical Greek Song, vol. 1. Leiden: Brill, 2016. 50

‘Unguent from a Carven Jar’ Lee, John Edward. Isca Silurum; or, an Illustrated Catalogue of the Museum of Antiquities at Caerleon. London: Longman, Green, Longmans, & Roberts, 1862. Machen, Arthur. Hieroglyphics: A Note upon Ecstasy in Literature. London: Grant Richards, 1902. Machen, Arthur. The Secret Glory. London: Martin Secker, 1922. Machen, Arthur. The Autobiography of Arthur Machen. London: Richards Press, 1951. Machen, Arthur. Eleusinia, edited by Jonathan Preece. London: Friends of Arthur Machen, 2013. Machen, Arthur. The London Adventure or the Art of Wandering. Leyburn: Tartarus Press, 2017. Machen, Arthur. Decadent and Occult Works, edited by Dennis Denisoff. MHRA Jewelled Tortoise, vol. 4. Cambridge: MHRA , 2018. Machen, Arthur. The Great God Pan and Other Horror Stories, edited by Aaron Worth. Oxford World’s Classics Hardback Collection. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Maxwell, Catherine. Scents and Sensibility: Perfume in Victorian Literary Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Pater, Walter. Essays from ‘The Guardian’. London: Privately printed at the Chiswick Press, 1896. Pater, Walter. Appreciations with an Essay on Style. London: Macmillan & Co., 1889/1910. Pater, Walter. Marius the Epicurean, edited by Gerald Monsman. Richmond, VA: Valancourt, 1885/2008. Pater, Walter. Studies in the History of the Renaissance, edited by Matthew Beaumont. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1873/2010. Pater, Walter. Imaginary Portraits, edited by Lene Østermark-Johansen. MHRA Jewelled Tortoise, vol. 1. London: MHRA , 1887/2014. Reynolds, Aidan and William Charlton, with an introduction by D. B. Wyndham Lewis. Arthur Machen: A Short Account of his Life and Work. London: John Baker for the Richards Press, 1963. Sappho. If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho. Translated by Anne Carson. New York: Vintage Books, 2003. Sweetser, Wesley D. ‘Machen: A Biographical Sketch’. In Arthur Machen: A Miscellany, edited by Fr Brocard Sewell, 1–19. Llandeilo: St Albert’s Press, 1960. Swinburne, Algernon Charles. Poems and Ballads & Atalanta in Calydon, edited by Kenneth Haynes. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 2000. Symonds, J. A. Studies of the Greek Poets, 2 vols. London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1873–6. Toner, Jerry. ‘Introduction: Sensing the Ancient Past’. In A Cultural History of the Senses in Antiquity, edited by Jerry Toner, 1–21. London: Bloomsbury, 2014. Verhoogt, Robert. Art in Reproduction: Nineteenth-century Prints after Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Jozef Israels and Ary Scheffer. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2007. Wharton, Henry Thornton. Sappho: Memoir, Text, Selected Renderings and a Literal Translation. London: David Stott, 1885; 2nd edn 1887; John Lane, 3rd edn 1895; 4th edn 1898. Wratislaw, Theodore. Orchids. London: Leonard Smithers, 1896. Wyke, Maria. Projecting the Past: Ancient Rome, Cinema and History. New York and London: Routledge, 1997.

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CHAPTER 2 INCENSE AND PERFUME FOR ISIS: THE SENSORY RECONSTRUCTION OF THE ISIAC RITUAL IN POMPEII IN VISUAL ART 1 Anna Guédon

Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s bestselling novel The Last Days of Pompeii (1834) beguiled contemporary readers with the love story of the Greek aristocrat Glaucus and the beautiful Ione, ward of the devious priest of Isis, Arbaces.2 The story is set in 79 ce , the fateful year in which Vesuvius reduced the Campanian city of Pompeii to ashes. This catastrophe plays out against a background of deep antagonism between the dominant but decadent cult of the Egyptian goddess and a small emerging Christian community. The story, which combines intrigue, exoticism, love and the end of the world, owes both its immediate success and its continued appeal in part to its treatment of the ruins of the buried city: Claude Aziza terms the book a veritable manual of archaeology.3 BulwerLytton’s main source in this matter was the work of Sir William Gell, first published in 1819 under the title of Pompeiana.4 As demonstrated by Eric M. Moormann, Gell’s very precise guide to the ruins of Pompeii, illustrated with drawings and plans by the architect John Peter Gandy, quickly became the standard reference work for Pompeian archaeology in English.5 The readers of The Last Days of Pompeii, therefore, were already fascinated by the fate of the buried city and familiar with the backdrop against which its story played out. Also explaining the popularity of the novel is the Victorian taste for various sorts of Egyptianizing works in the 1830s–1840s.6 The nascent field of Egyptology, fuelled by the successful deciphering of hieroglyphics in 1822 and a resulting renewal of Egyptophilia and Egyptomania in Great Britain, influenced Bulwer-Lytton himself and contributed to his readers’ interest in Arbaces and the cult of Isis.7 The description in The Last Days of Pompeii of Isiac ritual, that is, the sum of the prescriptions governing the celebration of the cult of the goddess, is as a polysensorial experience, in which flowers, incense and perfumes all stimulate the sense of smell of the celebrants. To name only one example, Bulwer-Lytton mentions that various parts of the sacrificial victim are burned with myrrh and incense after Arbaces offers a blood sacrifice to Isis. The novel, in this respect, echoes what we currently know about Isiac rites: Richard Veymiers has recently shown that its sensorial and especially olfactive dimension did indeed define the cult of Isis.8 Claude Aziza argues that Bulwer-Lytton’s novel also stands apart from other works of historical fiction by the range of other art forms, literary and visual alike, which it subsequently inspired, from film to comic books.9 Bulwer-Lytton’s success in recreating a complex sensory landscape, with a wide range of smells that speak to the reader through his rich verbal description, presented a challenge for screen adaptation.10 In order to shed light on the approaches taken to meet 52

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this challenge, we will analyse here a selection of examples, mainly from three cinematic adaptations of The Last Days of Pompeii.11 These include one of the first cinema versions of the novel, Arturo Ambrosio’s and Luigi Maggi’s 1908 silent film, along with the famous and internationally-successful peplum directed in 1959 by Mario Bonnard and Sergio Leone,12 which popularized Bulwer-Lytton’s story for a wider audience.13 I will also examine the 1984 Italo-American series, the last major adaptation of the novel for television.14 The sheer number of studies of films with ancient subjects over the last few years proves that these films are a valid object of study for historians15 and a key part of the broader study of the reception of Antiquity.16 As ‘distorted reflections’ of the past, to use the expression of Claude Aziza,17 films shed light both on modern perceptions of the ancient context and on the context in which the films were written.18 An analysis of these three adaptations of The Last Days of Pompeii will allow us to explore the role of smell in the reconstruction of Isiac ritual in particular, showing that modern directors tend to imagine smells as accessory to the decor, rather than as necessary instruments for establishing the communication with the goddess Isis desired by ancient worshippers. A brief study of the respective roles of smells in the ancient ritual and in the ritual as reconstructed by Bulwer-Lytton will shed light on the different levels of modern reception of the cult of Isis. We will then introduce the visual adaptations of Isiac ritual to be examined and explore three avenues of reflection. This chapter will first detail the iconographic means used to represent the olfactive dimension of the ritual, then consider several important cultic occasions in order to determine whether the directors associated them with different scents. Finally, it will examine, again through the prism of scents, the various relationships between Isiac and Christian rituals in the cinematographic adaptations of The Last Days of Pompeii.

The scents of Isiac ritual in Antiquity Perfume of the gods, perfume for the gods in ancient Egypt In his landmark study Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt, The One and the Many, Erik Hornung includes fragrances among the indicators of divine presence.19 Indeed, in his view, the Egyptian gods were seen as manifesting themselves above all in the giving off of exquisite smells. The historian of religion Philippe Borgeaud, in a study of the rapport between perfume and divine bodies in the ancient imagination, describes the relationship between gods and smells as twofold: the gods make their presence known through perfume while, conversely, pleasant smells can also be used to attract divine powers.20 Borgeaud draws on the example of the censings which the Greek magical papyri of Egypt sometimes describe as ‘bearing an intimate relation’ to the divinity being celebrated.21 The importance of smells is also clear from the layout and use of sacred spaces: Sylvie Cauville and Mohammed Ibrahim Ali have demonstrated that Egyptian temples contained dedicated spaces for perfumes.22 The various scented compounds – oils, gums, resins, incense and other plant substances – were stored in rooms in the naos, in direct 53

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proximity to the gods. Recipes proper to the specific cult site and the gods being celebrated have been found in these ‘laboratories’.23 In the temple library of Edfou, for example, there are nine recipes for complex perfumes such as kyphi and styrax recorded on papyri.24 At Philae, Dendara and Kom Ombo, the list of required ingredients was inscribed directly on the laboratory walls.25 The fragrances produced with these ingredients were used above all in the context of purification rituals, as Sylvie Cauville and Mohammed Ibrahim Ali’s transcription of a recipe from Kom Ombo demonstrates: ‘After sixty days, enter the laboratory of the temple, complete the ritual of purification of the second generation of gods in the same way as for the first generation, and perform its rites in the same way. Bring black styrax and handle it in accordance with the original ritual.’26 Smells thus occupy a central place in the religious rituals celebrated in Egypt, especially in the Hellenistic and Roman periods. The ritual importance of olfaction is specifically confirmed, as we will see, in the case of the Isis cults, which spread beyond Egypt in the Graeco-Roman period. Isiac ritual: A polysensorial experience Between the fourth century bce and the fourth century ce the cult of the Egyptian goddess Isis spread from the Nile valley to the entire Mediterranean basin.27 Following an initial expansion to the Eastern Mediterranean, Isis and her associated divinities become attested in the cities of the West as well, beginning in the second century bce . It was as part of this wider diffusion that Isis cults were established in the Italian peninsula and, famously, in Pompeii.28 The place of olfaction in the cult of Isis as practised outside of Egypt becomes apparent when we consider literary sources and material remains together. Recent studies have thus shown that Isiac rituals should be seen as polysensorial experiences.29 It is therefore necessary, as Laurent Bricault and Richard Veymiers emphasize, to consider the role of the various sensory stimuli which characterized them: ‘the noises and sounds of people, instruments and animals, the materials, shapes and colours of monuments and plants, the perfume of the hearths, altars and table stands are each sensory markers which determine ambiances and atmospheres, all of which we need to reconstruct in order to better understand the religious experiences and expectations of the participants’.30 In her thesis on Isiac rites in the cities of the Roman Empire, Ludivine Beaurin demonstrates the way in which the ceremony of the Navigium Isidis in March, marking the opening of the shipping season, mobilized the senses of the participants.31 Her study is largely based on the account of the Isiac procession in the second-century ce Metamorphoses of Apuleius of Madaurus, an eleven-book novel, in which a variety of olfactive means, mainly flowers and perfume, stimulate the sense of smell of the festival participants.32 Of the young women in the procession, for example, ‘[s]till others shook out drops of delightful balsam [balsamo] and other ointments [unguentis] to sprinkle the streets’,33 and the female initiates’ ‘hair was anointed’ (crines madidos) with perfume.34 The olfactive dimension is also important to the day-to-day workings of the cult of Isis, in which the cult statues were not only dressed and adorned with jewels, but also 54

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perfumed. Our literary sources in fact mention that the censing of incense, myrrh and kyphi was performed in order to purify the temples and to mark the atmosphere of the cult sites as sacred.35 The censers and perfume burners which have been found in the Isiac sanctuaries or are mentioned in their inventories further attest to the importance of olfaction in the rituals celebrated in honour of Isis.36

The sensory reconstruction of Isiac ritual in Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s The Last Days of Pompeii Isis in the modern imagination Isis and her cult lived on beyond Antiquity: Isiac ritual has, since the fourth century ce , been repeatedly reappropriated, rewritten, reinvented and loaded with new meaning which would resonate with new historical contexts. One event with special importance for the construction of a post-antique image of the goddess was the 1764 discovery, and complete unearthing by 1766, of the Iseum in Pompeii, during the excavations ordered by Charles of Bourbon, king of Naples.37 The excavators found, in addition to the architectural structure, high-quality frescoes, various artefacts and the petrified bodies of two priests, the movable items of which were transferred to the museum of Portici. As several studies on the modern and contemporary reception of Pompeii demonstrate, the temple of Isis has generated a wealth of scholarship and art from the eighteenth century onwards, becoming a source of creative inspiration soon after its discovery. In the words of Eric M. Moormann, ‘The temple of Isis provoked a mixture of fantasy, horror and realism that formed a sound basis for fiction.’38 The nineteenth century marks a new phase in the construction of the image of Isis. Literature, especially, reflects the growing interest in the goddess as the first large-scale archaeological missions were conducted in Egypt. Isiac ritual was thus reinvented in bestselling works such as Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s The Last Days of Pompeii (1834) and Gérard de Nerval’s Le Temple d’Isis. Souvenir de Pompéi (1845–54).39 Both texts include several scenes set in a mentally reconstructed Isis temple. Drawing on the results of the first excavations, both authors sought to recreate Isiac ritual with a specific sensorial atmosphere, so that in both works sensory stimulation is implicit and indeed explicit in the description of the rites. References to smell are a constant, either evoking already familiar smells or allowing the reader to place himself or herself in the sacred atmosphere of the temple of Isis. Describing the scents of the Isiac rites In the first books of The Last Days of Pompeii, Bulwer-Lytton presents a colourful, movement-filled and sound-and-smell-saturated world in which his characters seek out sensory pleasure. The quest for idleness and for pleasure entails an awakening of the sense of smell in particular. Olfactive references are therefore ubiquitous, from sea smells 55

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to the flowers sold by the young blind girl Nydia, to the garden of Glaucus and the baths where young patricians anoint themselves with unguents. The banquet which the high priest of Isis Arbaces holds to convince the young Apoecides to enter the service of Isis similarly offers an example of a voluptuous atmosphere created by olfactive accumulation: ‘A vast banquet-room stretched beyond, blazing with countless lights, which filled the warm air with the scents of frankincense, of jasmine, of violets, of myrrh; all that the most odorous flowers, all that the most costly spices could distil, seemed gathered into one ineffable and ambrosial essence.’40 The impact of the novel on Victorian visual culture was significant. To cite only one example of its popularity among later nineteenthcentury English painters, Lawrence Alma-Tadema shows ‘the Blind Flower Girl’41 Nydia at the side of Glaucus, the latter resting on a bed embroidered with wildflowers, in an 1867 painting.42 Following Bulwer-Lytton, the artist suggests a strong olfactive dimension, mainly floral, in this work. In the painting, Nydia holds a wreath of red and pink roses in her hand and there is a basket with the same flowers in front of her. Isiac ritual in the novel has its own distinctive smells. The fourth chapter of the first book is set in the temple of Isis, where the high priest Arbaces is officiating. The ‘flamen’ comes forward to sacrifice to the sound of ‘a long wind-instrument of music’. After the ‘aruspices’ [sic] examine the entrails, the portions of the victims sacred to the goddess are burned ‘amidst odours of myrrh and frankincense’.43 The animal sacrifice foreshadows the ceremony which Arbaces later conducts at the funeral of Apoecides in the eighth chapter of book four. Here the funerary rite requires the placement of the body of the deceased on a pyre of pine wood, to be burned amidst perfumes, after which the bones are ‘steeped in the rarest wine and the costliest odours’.44 While ‘the fragrant fire’ consumes the flesh of the deceased,45 female mourners take up a chant which describes the perfume of incense, nard, cassia and myrrh accompanying the soul of Apoecides to the afterlife: Lo! our silver censers swinging, Perfumes o’er thy path are flinging Ne’er o’er Tempe’s breathless valleys, Ne’er o’er Cypria’s cedarn alleys, Or the Rose-isle’s moonlit sea, Floated sweets more worthy thee. Lo! around our vases sending Myrrh and nard with cassia blending: Paving air with odorous meet, For thy silver-sandall’d feet!46 The aromatic essences described here – myrrh, incense, cassia and nard – would have evoked for the nineteenth-century reader a sensory otherness and would have identified the ritual as ancient, polytheist and Oriental. As Alain Corbin has shown, an olfactive revolution involving widescale ‘deodorization’ and the progressive condemnation of strong smells had been underway since the mid-eighteenth century.47 The smell of musk was especially eschewed by elites searching for lighter, more floral smells.48 It is thus 56

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reasonable to suppose that Bulwer-Lytton chose strong smells from luxurious perfumes to highlight the exotic character of the ritual. His reader, mentally transported by incense and myrrh to the ancient world and to Egypt, experiences a double otherness, spatial and temporal. Olfactive stimulation and, more generally, the sensory awakening which Arbaces seeks to encourage, also indicate sexual transgression. This idea is especially clear when the high priest decides to invite Ione to a banquet to instruct her in the mysteries of Isis. Here the goal of carnal pleasure and initiation, latent behind the religious motivations of the festivities, is made explicit: ‘I am about to invite her to a feast in my house: I wish to dazzle – to bewilder – to inflame her senses. Our arts – the arts by which Egypt trained her young novitiates – must be employed; and, under veil of the mysteries of religion, I will open to her the secrets of love.’ ‘Ah! now I understand: – one of those voluptuous banquets that, despite our dull vows of mortified coldness, we, the priests of Isis, have shared at thy house.’ ‘No, no! Thinkest thou her chaste eyes are ripe for such scenes?’49 Bulwer-Lytton was not alone in describing the cult of Isis as an olfactive experience. In Le Temple d’Isis. Souvenirs de Pompéi, the first edition of which appeared in 1845, Gérard de Nerval also envisaged the practices of Isiac ritual as stimulating the senses, and particularly the sense of smell, of the participants.50 Nicolas Popa has shown that Nerval’s French work closely adapts the 1809 article by Karl Böttiger entitled ‘Die Isis Vesper’,51 which reconstructed the day-to-day cult of the goddess based on remains from Pompeii and Herculaneum. In the first edition of the Temple d’Isis, Nerval, after recounting the narrator’s voyage to the Iseum of Pompeii, devotes four chapters to describing the cult of Isis. Following Böttiger, he describes its morning and evening ceremonies and specifies that the cult of Isis involved no blood sacrifice, only libations of water and milk and the burning of incense and perfume.52 The idea of an offering of fragrances only is also found in the eleventh chapter of Édouard Schuré’s 1907 novel La prêtresse d’Isis. Légende de Pompéi. Here the Roman equestrian Crispus, referring to the Pompeian priestess of Isis Alcyonée, declares, ‘I saw her in the temple of Isis during the sacrifice of fire and perfumes, the only sacrifices which devotees of Isis allow.’53 In these works, then, the reader’s experience of Isiac ritual, thanks to the narrative means employed by the authors, takes on a sensory and more specifically olfactive dimension. Two sorts of fragrant products, namely, perfumes and incense, are specific markers of the cult of Isis.54 While Nerval leaves the precise nature of his perfumes unspecified, Bulwer-Lytton mentions aromatic resins such as myrrh and products normally consumed as fragrant oils such as nard and cassia. The essences named here imply that the odours wafting over the Isiac cult were strong, heady and deliriuminducing. They evoked, in the imagination of the readers, an Oriental, luxurious and sulfurous atmosphere. It remains now to determine whether creators of visual adaptations of The Last Days of Pompeii associated the Egyptian goddess with the same range of smells. 57

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Tripods and smoke: Suggesting the scents of Isiac cult by iconographic means The first major film adaptation of The Last Days of Pompeii, the Italian Ultimi giorni di Pompei, had its theatrical release in 1908 and was directed by Arturo Ambrosio and Luigi Maggi, the latter of whom also played the role of the high priest Arbaces. According to Jean-Louis Leutrat, Film has several ‘limiting points,’ including sounds in silent film and colours in the black and white format. These ‘limiting points’ are always noteworthy and ‘revealing,’ since impossibility necessitates the search for an equivalent or substitute. In film, the verbal description of colour allows the viewer to apprehend its existence and even to see it; the same is true for perfumes.55 In the case of the Ultimi giorni di Pompei, the viewer is faced with three ‘limiting points’: perfumes, naturally, and also colours and sounds, since the film is silent and filmed in black and white. In this perspective, one would conclude that the olfactive atmosphere could only be evoked by comments from the characters in the subtitles. These comments are, however, lacking, as are gestures or poses which might indicate the presence of perfumes to the viewer. Smells are instead suggested, quite clearly, by visual markers and by elements of the décor: flowers and plants, for example, are a recurring motif in the first scenes of the film. From the opening credits, Nydia is filmed holding a bouquet of wildflowers in her left hand, in which we can make out two kinds of white flowers, small daisies and gerberas. In the first scene, she sells small bouquets of these same brightly-coloured flowers to Ione and her brother. These flowers have no particular link with the cult of Isis in either the classical or the modern literary tradition. Their purpose here is partly aesthetic, to play on the chromatic contrasts between black and white; at the same time, they allow the directors to highlight the innocence of the character. The loss of this innocence, symbolized by the disappearance of flowers from the visual field, occurs when Nydia visits a witch to obtain a love potion for Glaucus. The plant life which dominates the beginning of the film also contrasts with the mineral character of the final scenes, which show the volcano beginning to erupt. The two environments each transmit a set of contrasting odours to the viewers: floral smells at the beginning of the film and the smells of sulphur and smoke at the end. The passage from one olfactive atmosphere to another is marked by the intervention of the witch, whom Arbaces and Nydia both consult in turn in her cave under Vesuvius. In BulwerLytton’s novel, this character is associated with nauseating smells: ‘At the base of Vesuvius, less than a league from the city, there dwells a powerful witch; beneath the rank dews of the new moon, she has gathered the herbs which possess the virtue to chain Love in eternal fetters.’56 The allusion to smells is thus conveyed by two strong visual markers, namely, flowers and smoke. The scene most explicitly linked to Isis is that in which Arbaces attempts to seduce Ione in the temple, which is identifiable by a tripod which gives off clear grey smoke. The spectator next sees the statue of the goddess on a high 58

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Figure 2.1 Tripods in the temple of Isis. Screenshot from Arturo Ambrosio and Luigi Maggi’s 1908 film, Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei. © Italy: Società Anonima Ambrosio. pedestal to the right, with a low-relief carving with Egyptianized motifs in the background. The end of the scene, when Arbaces falls to his knees, reveals a second tripod. There is, however, no attempt to show or even suggest sacrifice. We find similar iconographic means used in Sergio Leone’s and Mario Bonnard’s 1959 adaptation of The Last Days of Pompeii.57 Here, too, the olfactive palette from the script appears to be very limited. There is, in fact, only one explicit verbal reference to scents, during the Isis festival scene. Here the wealthy patrician Julia Lavinia – revealed at the end of the film to be an Egyptian princess, come to Pompeii for the purpose of exacting revenge on the Romans – reproaches her husband, the prefect Ascanius, for having wine on his breath. She adds force to her comment by shrinking back and waving her fan. The words and body language of Julia thus combine to convey the olfactive dimension of the scent of wine. This example aside, however, the olfactive references of the film are always implicit and marked by a variety of purely visual means. As in the 1908 version, the main smell associated with the cult of Isis is that of the smoke rising from the two tripods in the temple. When the viewer first sees the cult site, these massive objects, placed on either side of the statue of Isis, attract their attention. After the Isis festival, furthermore, when Arbaces proceeds to the ritual, the upper portion of the altar at the centre of the screen is covered with thick white smoke. Here there is no verbal description of the nature of the product being burned and only its colour and density are 59

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Figure 2.2 Illustration by Émile Adan of the ritual of Isis in the 1888 edition of G. de Nerval’s Les filles du feu. Paris: Librairie des bibliophiles, page 178. Source: gallica.bnf.fr.

discernable to the viewer. In this adaptation of The Last Days of Pompeii, as in the earlier version, olfactive identifiers of a specifically Isiac ritual are absent, seemingly in order to represent a stereotyped temple scene.58 The inclusion of a tripod with flames and smoke rising from it evokes an older iconographic tradition. We see it, for example, in an illustration accompanying an1888 re-edition of Gérard de Nerval’s Filles du feu. Here the artist, Émile Adan, depicts a priestess of Isis, recognizable from her Hathor crown and the sistrum in her right hand, at the entrance of a temple decorated with Egyptianized motifs. In her left hand, the priestess holds a vase which must represent the sacred hydria, characteristic of Isiac cults.59 A ritual tripod with an open flame on it stands in the foreground of the image. Similar emanations of incense from a tripod often appear as an iconographic motif in modern visual representations of the ancient world and especially of the cult of Isis. A recent example is offered by Ernó Zórád’s 2013 comic book.60 Here a violet smoke, its colour associated in contemporary imagination with magic and mysteries,61 rises from a cup in the centre of the frame, placed before a massive statue of Isis. The smoke forms a thick band rising diagonally to the upper right corner of the image. In films, however, tripods and cups do not only figure in representations of Isis. To cite only one example, contemporary with the film of Maggi of Ambrosio, the 60

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1911 film La caduta di Troia, directed by Giovanni Pastrone and Luigi Romano Borgnetto, shows the Greek leaders standing before two smoking tripods to declare war against Troy.62 The tripod, clearly, simply evoked the sacred and, above all, the ancient character of the scene. Despite the codified usage of smoke, however, its purpose in the film of Mario Bonnard and Sergio Leone is not simply aesthetic. The smoke from the ritual in the temple of Isis is connected visually to that of the volcano. The image of Vesuvius, already in the opening credits, announces the final catastrophe to the viewer as a thick black smoke, mixed with the red of the embers, rises from the crater. It offers a striking contrast with the brilliance of the sea and the freshness of the gardens which serve as a backdrop for the subsequent scenes. The atmosphere of the last scenes of the film, finally, is again saturated with smoke, dust, the reddening of lava and crackling flames. For the spectator, then, the smoke of incense becomes a strong visual marker which signals impending destruction. For a modern viewer, the scents associated with Isiac rituals would be reminiscent of the odours which emanate from the volcano. This association becomes clearest when the smoke of the volcano begins to fill the inner sanctum of the temple of Isis itself. It is as Julia and Arbaces take refuge in the building to retrieve its sacred treasures that the emanations of Vesuvius invade the atmosphere (see Colour Plate 6). The statue of Isis disappears in a cloud of smoke, before cracking open and collapsing on the two characters. In the imagination of the viewers, the volcano thus transfers its unbreathable odours to the Egyptian goddess and her ritual, as the fatal volcanic fumes replace the pleasant smell of incense. The cases discussed above relate to the olfactive atmosphere of the temple of Isis itself. Isiac religious activities occurring elsewhere do, however, also appear in cinematic adaptations of The Last Days of Pompeii, especially in the 1984 version. Were particular scents associated with the Isiac feast, procession and initiation rituals? We will see that in these cases the sense of smell appears in conjunction with other senses in order to create polysensorial experiences.

A plurality of olfactive experiences? Isis rituals and their scents In Bonnard and Leone’s film, the cult of Isis involves a major celebration on the Ides of March, during which the entire city takes on a carnival air in honour of the goddess. The first scene shows Glaucus walking through the streets of Pompeii against the stream of a large, agitated and drunken crowd. Certain participants wear grotesque animal masks and dance with abandon to the sound of rhythmic and seductive music.63 The viewer then sees the banquet organized for the occasion and is there introduced to Julia, Ascanius and above all Arbaces, who urges Ione to show her enthusiasm for the festival of Isis. The viewer first hears the resounding laughter of the participants, then music which suggests the Eastern origin of the celebration by its tonality. The attention of the viewer is then drawn to the bright colours, to the dancers accompanied by a snake, the fire-breathers and the freely-flowing wine. Smoke, from the mouth of a fire-breather and above all from the censers, represents the olfactive dimension of the scene. 61

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The sensory dimension of the rituals is also highlighted in other cinematic adaptations of the novel. Peter Hunt, the director of the Italo-American television series adapted from The Last Days of Pompeii and first broadcast in 1984, includes in this version two Isiac rituals which do not feature in the 1908 and 1959 versions, namely, the procession and the initiation into the mysteries. The first episode of the series begins with an Isiac procession directly inspired by Apuleius’ Metamorphoses.64 The viewer follows the steps of the young blind girl Nydia, who holds a basket which, once again, contains white flowers. He or she then perceives the sounds of the procession, a rhythmical music dominated by percussion and brass instruments. The first glimpse of the procession is of a white bull, symbolizing the Egyptian god Apis. The devotees of Isis then file in, surrounded by the cheering inhabitants of Pompeii. The gaze of the viewer is drawn above all to a female person, seated on a throne-like sedan chair carried by bearers; this is Ione, the ward of Arbaces and intended future priestess of Isis. The young woman sports the characteristic hairstyle of the goddess, with cow horns surrounding the solar disk, and holds a sistrum in her hand. The scene ends at the harbour, where Arbaces consecrates a ship to Isis as protectress of navigation. Three visual elements suggest smells here. First, the white-clad young girls at the head of the procession throw (unidentifiable) white, yellow and red flowers in the streets.65 The scene echoes the passage in Apuleius in which young women with wreaths of spring flowers in their hair similarly throw petals in the streets during an Isiac parade in Cenchrea, the port of Corinth. In the work of Apuleius, the connection between Isis and flowers is not limited to this passage and is in fact crucial to the overall plot, as the protagonist Lucius, transformed into a donkey after accidentally swallowing a potion of the sorceress Pamphile through Fotis’ intervention, finally regains human form by consuming a rose. He receives the flower which delivers him from the high priest of Isis during the procession of the navigium Isidis.66 In Peter Hunt’s television series, the gaze of the viewer is focused, after the young girls with flowers, on three successive characters who walk in the rear of the procession, first a man holding a smoking leather vase, followed by Arbaces and Antonius. The smoking vase echoes the two censers which had been borne in front of the sedan chair and had spread a light smoke over the crowd. The smells of flowers and of incense are thus integral parts of a ritual defined by its polysensorial dimension, in which the senses of smell, hearing and sight of the viewer are all equally solicited. Besides the passage of Apuleius mentioned above, Hunt’s depiction of the Isiac procession might also draw on a series of paintings by the Orientalist artist Frederick Bridgman, completed between 1902 and 1903. These paintings also variously represent an Isiac procession, here set in Egypt.67 Here priests, identifiable by their shaved heads and white clothes, process bearing a boat which holds a gilded statue of Isis. Bridgman hints at the olfactive dimension of the scene by means of a censer which emits fine, clear grey smoke, held by the Pharaoh at the head of the procession. The flowers, painted with pastel colours, are again a strong visual marker which evokes scents as they adorn the neck of the Apis bull in braided wreaths, are thrown on the ground, trampled by the devotees of the cult and carried in baskets by three children. Another possible source of 62

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inspiration for Hunt might be Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s 1904 painting The Finding of Moses.68 Here the Egyptian princess is seated on a sedan chair, which might recall that of Ione, as she is led in procession. In the foreground, the hyssop flowers, painted in shades of blues and violets, define the olfactive atmosphere of the scene.69 The notion that this painting might have influenced Hunt draws its inherent plausibility from the clear influence of the works of Alma-Tadema on the aesthetics of peplum in general and on adaptations of The Last Days of Pompeii in particular.70 We also find a hint of a polysensorial experience in the initiation scene. After pronouncing his vows, Antonius is led into the hall of mysteries. The hymn which is chanted there suggests that the body of the initiate is fully engaged in the experience: ‘Isis is our mind, our body. Her power is all part of you.’ The sensory vertigo which reigns here is evoked by a rapid succession of still shots, whose subjects stimulate all the senses, including smell. The viewer is to infer the presence of strong smells from the smoke which fills the room, obscuring the reference points. The sensual quality of the initiation reaches its climax when Antonius abandons himself in the arms of two dancing girls. The procession and the initiation are thus marked, in Hunt’s television series, by a sensory overload which contrasts with the sobriety of Christian ritual.

Polytheistic smells versus monotheistic sobriety In Bulwer-Lytton’s novel, Arbaces admits to Apoecides that the smell-inducing elements prescribed by Isiac ritual are cynically calculated to appeal to the superstition of the crowds: I confessed to you that those deities for whom smoke so many altars were but inventions. I confessed to you that our rites and ceremonies were but mummeries, to delude and lure the herd to their proper good. I explained to you that from those delusions came the bonds of society, the harmony of the world, the power of the wise; that power is in the obedience of the vulgar.71 The scent of incense here helps to create a decorum which allows Arbaces to exert control over the devotees. ‘And what says Pythagoras “Frankincense to the gods, but praise to man.” ’72 The novel has a strong moral and religious dimension. Bulwer-Lytton creates an opposition between the decadent cult of Isis and the sobriety of Christianity, to which the two protagonists, Glaucus and Ione, end up converting. In the paintings of John Martin, which Bulwer-Lytton is known to have admired and which he imitates in this respect, the destruction of Pompeii is connected with that of the biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and the eruption of Vesuvius becomes a divine punishment.73 Seen in this light, the incense in the Isiac rituals of the novel symbolizes the perversion of pagan rites as opposed to the purity of the first Christians. The condemnation of incense in the novel might also reflect the religious context of the 1830s–1840s in Great Britain. Eric Moormann suggests that the very positive depiction of the Christians in The Last Days 63

The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in The Modern Imagination

of Pompeii might be explained by the adhesion of its author to the Oxford Movement, a High Church renewal movement in the Church of England: ‘The ancient communities of Christians were to serve as examples of a spiritual revival in which the Eucharist and the presence of Christ were the principal aim.’74 As well as being a ‘spiritual revival’, the Oxford Movement criticized excessively close ties between the British state and the Anglican Church. Seen in this perspective, Bulwer-Lytton could be understood as denouncing not incense as such but rather its artificial and political use. Showy ritual and liturgical practices, indeed, came under vigorous attack in Protestant circles during the nineteenth century in reaction to the Oxford Movement itself. Here the use of incense was one of the most potent symbols of Roman Catholicism.75 Reverent H. C. Leonard, for example, wrote in an 1879 pamphlet: The worship of the Pagan temples was highly ritualistic and imposing to the senses. Music charmed the ear, and the sweet perfume of incense filled the atmosphere. The priests wore vestments of gorgeous colors, those who offered sacrifice to Vesta only being clothed in white (alba). One of the orders instituted by Numa Pompilius wore a scarlet cassock (the salii). Another as ancient (the flamines) wore caps with a tuft on the top.76 As Claire Masurel-Murray has shown, the Reverend Leonard connects Catholicism and Anglican ritualism as two examples of ‘a transposition of the pagan religion of ancient Rome’. Incense, like candles, for example, was seen as one of the ‘vestiges of the idolatrous practices of the Romans’.77 For Nerval, on the other hand, references to odours were common to both devotees of Isis and the Christians. Camille Aubaude has shown that Nerval’s description of the ritual is to be understood in light of ‘the romantic motif of the fusion of beliefs’.78 According to Hisashi Mizuno, Nerval deliberately multiplies parallels between Christianity and the cult of Isis: ‘Nerval attempts to make the Egyptian ceremony more Christian in order to highlight the resemblance between the two religions.’79 In this perspective, Nerval’s decision to suppress blood sacrifice and to replace it with an offering of incense and perfume, fragrant substances also found in Christian rituals, is connected to his anticipation of the union of religions and the superseding of Christianity. For both Bulwer-Lytton and Nerval, though in different ways and for clearly different ends, the olfactive dimension of Isiac ritual is considered in the light of Christian practices.80 The opposition between the two rituals is particularly clear in Leone and Bonnard’s film. The festival of Isis contrasts in every respect with the subterranean meeting of the Christian community of Pompeii. The Christians, gathered around their deacon Olynthus, repeat their prayer in unison; when they are later imprisoned in the dungeons of the temple of Isis, they sing in unison. The desire of the directors of the 1959 adaptation to highlight the sobriety of Christian practices can be explained, as noted by Claude Aziza, by the fact that the producer, Paolo Moffa, drew on Opus Dei funds for the filming.81 Indeed, Eric Moormann argues that a positive portrayal of Christianity is an important theme in peplums more generally.82 The ritual smoke and its smells thus 64

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becomes a marker of the difference between polytheisms and monotheism, a difference also found in Peter Hunt’s television series. Here the sensory saturation which characterizes the procession and the initiation stands in striking contrast to the last scene of the series. While the smells wafting from flowers or from the burning of incense dominates the ‘olfactive painting’ of the Isiac rituals,83 Christian ritual seems to be fundamentally odourless. On the ship which allows his community to escape and survive, Olynthus turns to the ashes of Pompeii and offers a simple prayer, and then, in a final speech, juxtaposes the barbarity of the Romans with the sense of justice of the Christians, hatred with love, chaos with order. The series, first broadcast in 1984, thus presents differing religious practices as aspects of a larger conflict between antagonistic ideologies. In the context of renewed tension in relations between the Soviet and American blocs between the mid-1970s and the mid-1980s, the Christians in The Last Days of Pompeii come to represent the free world emancipating itself from a corrupt empire in its final days.84 *

*

*

Although Bulwer-Lytton’s The Last Days of Pompeii took pains to recreate some of the olfactive dimension for which the ancient cult was notable, the place of smells in the cinematic adaptations of the novel is relatively limited. In the 1908 and 1954 films, the representation of smells is made uniform and its possible markers are reduced to little more than the tripod and smoke that announce the eruption of Vesuvius and associate the final catastrophe with the decadence of the cult of Isis. Here iconographic means serve more to create a (sometimes stereotyped) ancient décor than to signal to the public the real importance of smells in Isiac rituals. This reduction of the setting to a set of codes, taken to its extreme in Leone and Bonnard’s film, necessarily limits the representations of the ritual and preserves the general focus on action and spectacular scenes. Against the profusion of strong visual effects, the ritual tends to lose its sensory dimension, except where sensory stimulation serves to mark the contrast between the cult of Isis and Christianity, as it does above all in the 1984 television series. The creators of this series re-emphasize the olfactive dimension of Isiac ritual in the procession and the initiation, by means of strong visual markers such as incense and flowers. They were, in this respect, inspired by an iconographic tradition first elaborated by the nineteenthcentury genre painters and were participating in both an ancient and modern literary tradition.

Notes 1. I would like to thank Adeline Grand-Clément and Charlotte Ribeyrol for their friendly rereading and constructive feedback on this text. I am also very grateful to Christopher Lougheed for his meticulous translation of my article. 2. Edward Bulwer-Lytton, The Last Days of Pompeii (Paris: Baudry’s European Library, 1834/1839).

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The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in The Modern Imagination 3. Claude Aziza, ‘Isis dans Les Derniers jours de Pompéi’, in Les mille et une vies d’Isis: La réception des divinités du cercle isiaque de la fin de l’Antiquité à nos jours, ed. Corinne Bonnet, Laurent Bricault and Carole Gomez (Toulouse: Presses universitaires du Midi, 2020), 244. 4. William Gell and John Peter Gandy, Pompeiana: The Topography, Edifices, and Ornaments of Pompeii (London: Rodwell and Martin, 1817–19). In his preface to The Last Days of Pompeii, Bulwer-Lytton dedicates his novel to Sir William Gell. On the contacts between BulwerLytton and Gell, see especially Claude Aziza, ‘Le roman historique est-il archéocompatible?’, Anabases: Traditions et réceptions de l’Antiquité 21 (2015): 181–3. 5. Eric M. Moormann, Pompeii’s Ashes: The Reception of the Cities Buried by Vesuvius in Literature, Music, and Drama (Boston: De Gruyter, 2015), 55–61. The work of Gell and Gandy was re-edited and translated several times. A supplement was published in 1832, two years before the publication of The Last Days of Pompeii. 6. For the reception of ancient Egypt in the modern imagination, see, for example, Stephanie Moser, ‘Reconstructing Ancient Worlds: Reception Studies, Archaeological Representation and the Interpretation of Ancient Egypt’, Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 22, no. 4 (2015): 1263–308. See also the recent works of Eleanor Dobson and Nichola Tonks, eds, Ancient Egypt in the Modern Imagination. Art, Literature and Culture (London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020), and of Miguel John Versluys, ed., Beyond Egyptomania: Objects, Style and Agency (Boston and Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020). For Victorian Egyptomania in particular, see James Stevens Curl, The Egyptian Revival: Ancient Egypt as an Inspiration for Design Motifs in the West (London and New York: Routledge, 1994/2005), 341–3; Chris Elliott, Egypt in England (Swindon: English Heritage, 2012); Stephanie Moser, Painting Antiquity: Ancient Egypt in the Art of Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Edward Poynter and Edwin Long (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020). 7. For the distinction between Egyptophilia, that is, a taste for or attraction to Egypt and its antiquities, and Egyptomania, a phenomenon which involves a reappropriation and artistic recreation of a fantastical Egypt, see especially Jean-Marcel Humbert, ‘L’égyptomanie: actualité d’un concept de la Renaissance au postmodernisme’, in Egyptomania: L’Égypte dans l’art occidental, 1730–1930, ed. Jean-Martin Humbert, Michael Pantazzi and Christiane Ziegler (Paris and Ottawa: Réunion des musées nationaux-Musée des beaux-arts du Canada, 1994), 21–6. 8. Richard Veymiers, ‘Introduction: Agents, Images and Practices’, in Individuals and Materials in the Graeco-Roman Cults of Isis: Agents, Images and Practices, ed. Valentino Gasparini and Richard Veymiers (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2018), 58 especially. The sources used by Bulwer-Lytton certainly explain the closeness of the ritual as reconstructed in The Last Days of Pompeii to the ancient ritual. As Stephen Harrison has shown, Bulwer-Lytton was particularly inspired by Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, a second-century ce novel in which the procession in honour of Isis is described as a polysensorial experience. See below, pp. 172. See also Stephen Harrison (2013), ‘Bulwer-Lytton’s The Last Days of Pompeii: Re-creating the City’, in Pompeii in the Public Imagination from its Rediscovery to Today, ed. Shelley Hales and Joanna Paul (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 75–89. Bulwer-Lytton also makes use of the archaeological remains described in William Gell’s Pompeiana, in which particular attention is paid to the sacrifices on the altar in front of the temple of Isis: ‘Before this building was the only altar upon which sacrifice had been offered; its top was burnt, and the bones of the victims remained; while the wall of the adjoining building was discoloured with the smoke.’ Gell and Gandy, Pompeiana, 251. 9. Aziza, ‘Isis dans Les Derniers jours de Pompéi’, 241–5. 10. Bulwer-Lytton’s olfactive palette specifically includes a wide variety of flowers, aromatics and incense, as well as fragrant resins such as myrrh.

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Incense and Perfume for Isis 11. It is very difficult to quantify with precision the number of films adapted from the novel as it had inspired so many directors. See Aziza, ‘Isis dans les Derniers jours de Pompéi’, 247. Among the many film adaptations, we have chosen three works created in three very distinct contexts and in which the cult of Isis occupied an important place. 12. The term was invented by cinephiles in the 1960s. We use it in this contribution to refer to any historical film with an ancient subject. For the peplum, see Claude Aziza, ‘L’Antiquité au cinéma’, Revue des études anciennes 120, no. 1 (2018): 146–7: ‘Le péplum n’a jamais existé.’ 13. Gli ultimi gioni di Pompei, film, dir. Arturo Ambrosio and Luigi Maggi (Italy: Società Anonima Ambrosio, 1908); The Last Days of Pompeii, film, dir. Mario Bonnard and Sergio Leone (FRG-Italy-Spain-Monaco, ABC-Filmverleih-United Artists, 1959). Aziza points out that Bonnard’s and Leone’s film was so successful that it made 830 million lira in gross profit. See Aziza, ‘Isis dans les Derniers jours de Pompéi’, 250. 14. The Last Days of Pompeii, TV programme (ABC, 6–8 May 1984). The above list of works is that compiled in Aziza, ‘Isis dans les Derniers jours de Pompéi’, 247–51. 15. For peplums as objects of historical study, see Claude Aziza, Guide de l’Antiquité imaginaire: roman, cinéma, bande dessinée (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2008/2016); see also Arthur J. Pomeroy. ed., A Companion to Ancient Greece and Rome on Screen (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2017). 16. According to Pascal Payen, the key question in the reception of Antiquity is the rapport between ancients and moderns and the nature of these interactions is fundamentally plural. Thus, ‘there are various modes of response to the suggestions of antiquity, various ways to “receive” them or hold them at arm’s length.’ See Pascal Payen, ‘L’Antiquité et ses réceptions: un nouvel objet d’histoire’, Anabases 10 (2009): 11. 17. Aziza, ‘L’Antiquité au cinéma’, 142. According to Marta García Morcillo and Pauline Hanesworth, films on ancient themes are ‘witnesses, symbols and protagonists of universal and national histories and of the passage of time’. See Marta García Morcillo and Pauline Hanesworth, ‘Introduction: Cinematic Cityscapes and the Ancient Past’, in Imagining Ancient Cities in Film: From Babylon to Cinecittà, ed. Marta García Morcillo, Pauline Hanesworth and Óscar Lapeña (London and New York: Routledge, 2015), 1. 18. Besides a cultural perspective, Vivien Bessières notes, however, that an aesthetic approach to peplums is also appropriate since these are also ‘works of art, in which story always counts more than history, despite their pretentions to realism’. See Viven Bessières, ‘Le péplum, et après: L’Antiquité dans les récits postmodernes’, Anabases 16 (2012): 280–1. 19. Erik Hornung, Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt, The One and the Many, trans. J. Baines (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1971/1982), 133–4. 20. Philippe Borgeaud, ‘Fumigations antiques. L’odeur suave des dieux et des élus’, in Exercices d’histoire des religions: Comparaisons, rites, mythes et émotions, ed. Daniel Barbu and Philippe Matthey (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2016), 219–25. In this article, Philippe Borgeaud focuses mainly on the role of olfaction in Greek cult but his approach is also comparative and here includes Judaism, Christianity and the gods of Egypt. 21. Borgeaud, ‘Fumigations antiques’, 224. 22. Mohamed Ali and Sylvie Cauville, Le temple égyptien et ses dieux: Philae – Kom Ombo – Edfou – Esna – Dendara: itinéraire du divin (Leuven and Paris: Peeters, 2017), 56–60 in particular. 23. Ibid., 57. 24. Ali and Cauville, Le temple égyptien et ses dieux, 57–8. For kyphi, see the interview with Amandine Declercq in this volume. As Ali and Cauville note, ‘styrax is made up of dry myrrh, reeds and wine; it took approximately three hundred days to prepare’ (57). 67

The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in The Modern Imagination 25. For Philae and Dendara, see Ali and Cauville, Le temple égyptien et ses dieux, 58. For Kom Ombo, see Ali and Cauville, Le temple égyptien et ses dieux, 59. 26. Ali and Cauville, Le temple égyptien et ses dieux, 59. 27. For the Isiac cults in general, see Laurent Bricault, Les cultes isiaques dans le monde grécoromain (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2013). 28. For the Isiac cults in the West, see Laurent Bricault, ed. Isis en Occident, Actes du II e colloque international sur les études isiaques organisé à Lyon les 16 et 17 mai 2002 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2004). For the temple of Isis at Pompeii, see Eric M. Moormann, ‘The temple of Isis at Pompeii’, in Nile into Tiber: Egypt in the Roman World, Actes du IIIe colloque international sur les études isiaques organisé à Leyde du 11 au 14 mai 2005, ed. Laurent Bricault, Paul G. P. Meyboom and Miguel John Versluys (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007), 137–54. 29. Veymiers, ‘Introduction: Agents, Images and Practices’. 30. Laurent Bricault and Richard Veymiers, ‘Jouer, chanter et danser pour Isis’, in Individuals and Materials in the Graeco-Roman Cults of Isis: Agents, Images and Practices, ed. Valentino Gasparini and Richard Veymiers (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2018), 692. 31. Ludivine Beaurin, ‘Honorer Isis. Les cérémonies isiaques dans les cités de l’Empire romain occidental’ (PhD diss., Université de Lille-Charles de Gaulle, Lille, 2013), 54–67. For the ceremony of the Navigium Isidis, see Laurent Bricault, Isis Pelagia: Images, Names and Cults of a Goddess of the Seas, trans. Gil. H. Renberg (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2020), 203–29. 32. Apuleius, Metamorphoses 11.9–10. 33. Apuleius, Metamorphoses 11.9. The translation of Apuleius provided here is that of J. Arthur Hanson (Loeb Classical Library, 1989). 34. Apuleius, Metamorphoses 11.10. The importance of perfumes in Isiac ritual is also perceptible in a second-to-third-century funerary epitaph from Megalopolis in which Dionysia, age sixty, is described as joining Isis after being purified in a lustral bath: ‘for a lustral bath cleansed her beautiful skin, and, having combed her sacred locks, she braided them, pouring on them moist [perfumes] drop by drop)’. The inscription appears in Laurent Bricault, ed., Recueil des inscriptions concernant les cultes isiaques (RICIS ) (Paris: de Boccard, 2005), 102/1702. For a discussion, see Michel Malaise and Richard Veymiers, ‘Les dévotes isiaques et les atours de leur déesse’, in Individuals and Materials in the Graeco-Roman Cults of Isis: Agents, Images and Practices, ed. Valentino Gasparini and Richard Veymiers (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2018), 491. 35. Bricault, Les cultes isiaques dans le monde gréco-romain, 358–62. 36. Censers and perfume burners are, for example, mentioned in the inventories of Serapeum C at Delos. See Bricault, Les cultes isiaques dans le monde gréco-romain, 360. See also Bricault, Les cultes isiaques dans le monde gréco-romain, 157–9 for a third-century ce perfume burner found at Ephesus, depicting Sarapis, consort of Isis. See also the early first-century ce bronze perfume burner in the shape of a sistrum player which has been recently studied by Laurent Bricault and Richard Veymiers: Bricault and Veymiers, ‘Jouer, chanter et danser pour Isis’, fig. 25–9 (Malibu: J. Paul Getty Museum, n°87.AB.144). 37. Chantal Grell, ‘Le temple d’Isis à Pompéi: entre déception et fascination’, in Les mille et une vies d’Isis. La réception des divinités du cercle isiaque de la fin de l’Antiquité à nos jours, ed. Corinne Bonnet, Laurent Bricault and Carole Gomez (Toulouse: Presses universitaires du Midi, 2020), 207–22. 38. Moormann, Pompeii’s Ashes, 144. To cite only one example of the enthusiasm of European artists for an Egypt outside of Egypt, the site of Pompeii and its temple of Isis served as inspiration for Mozart’s famous Magic Flute opera. Its first sets, created in Vienna in 1791 by Gayl and Nessthaler, in fact use the reconstructed iseum as a backdrop. See Grell, ‘Le temple 68

Incense and Perfume for Isis d’Isis à Pompéi’, 221–2. See also Jurgis Baltrušaitis, La quête d’Isis. Essai sur la légende d’un mythe (Paris: Flammarion, 1967/2009), 57–79, fig. 27. 39. The writings of Bulwer-Lytton and Nerval inspired Théophile Gautier to create his own short story, Arria Marcella: Souvenir de Pompéi. Here the temple of Isis appears as a one-off element of the décor: ‘the Frenchman and the citizen of Pompeii went by way of the streets of the Fountain of Abundance, the Theatres, passed the college and temple of Isis, the sculpture workshop, and entered the Odeon, or comic theatre, by a side vomitorium’. Théophile Gautier, ‘Arria Marcella: Souvenir de Pompéi’, in Romans et Contes (Paris: A. Lemerre, 1852/1897), 327. For the connections between Gautier, Bulwer-Lytton and Nerval, see Anne GeislerSzmulewicz, ‘Rien de nouveau sous le soleil: Pompéi, la ville morte, dans Arria Marcella (1852)’, Sociétés & représentations 41, no. 1 (2016): 31–46. 40. Bulwer-Lytton, The Last Days of Pompeii, 66. 41. Bulwer-Lytton, The Last Days of Pompeii, 5. 42. Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Glaucus and Nydia, oil on canvas (Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, 1867). Lawrence Alma-Tadema: At Home in Antiquity, ed. E. Prettejohn and P. Tritti (Munich, London and New York: Prestel, 2018), 21, fig. 5. The impact of the novel on Victorian visual culture can also be seen in the Pompeian House reconstructed in the Crystal Palace at Sydenham. In order to create the building, Matthew Digby Wyatt, the architect, drew inspiration both from the ‘House of the tragic poet’ described and illustrated by William Gell in Pompeiana and from the house of Glaucus described by Bulwer-Lytton in The Last Days of Pompeii. See Jan Piggott, Palace of the People: The Crystal Palace at Sydenham 1854–1936 (London: Hurst & Company, 2004), 98. 43. Bulwer-Lytton, The Last Days of Pompeii, 29. 44. Bulwer-Lytton, The Last Days of Pompeii, 261. 45. Bulwer-Lytton, The Last Days of Pompeii, 260. 46. Bulwer-Lytton, The Last Days of Pompeii, 259. Nard, often considered heady, is a perfume extracted from the rhizome of the plant of the same name and generally used in its oily form. Cassia is also a plant-based perfume. In the Bible, all three essences – myrrh, nard and cassia – are associated with the death and resurrection of Christ. 47. Alain Corbin, Le miasme et la jonquille. L’odorat et l’imaginaire social XVIIIe–XIXe siècles (Paris: Flammarion, 1982/2008). 48. Corbin, Le miasme et la jonquille, 102–5. 49. Bulwer-Lytton, The Last Days of Pompeii, 33. 50. Nerval wrote three different versions of his text. The first was published in 1845 under the title ‘Le Temple d’Isis. Souvenirs de Pompéi’ in the Fourierist journal la Phalange. The second appeared in 1847 in the journal l’Artiste with the title ‘L’Iseum. Souvenir de Pompéi’. The last version, simply titled ‘Isis’, was published in 1854 in the anthology of the Filles du feu. My article uses the first edition, prefaced and commented by Hisashi Mizuno: Gerard de Nerval, Le temple d’Isis. Souvenir de Pompéi (Tusson: Du Lérot, 1845/1997). 51. Nicolas Popa, ed, Les filles du feu (Paris: Champion, 1931); Karl-August Böttiger, ‘Les Vêpres d’Isis, d’après un tableau d’Herculanum’, Le magasin encyclopédique, 2 April 1810, 241–78. 52. Nerval, Le temple d’Isis. Souvenir de Pompéi, 76: ‘it goes without saying that no blood sacrifice was offered and that the flame of the altar never consumed throbbing flesh – Isis, the principle of life and the mother of all living beings, spurned blood sacrifice. Only the water of the sacred river or milk were poured out for her; for her also were burned incense and other perfumes.’

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The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in The Modern Imagination 53. Édouard Schuré, La prêtresse d’Isis. Légende de Pompéi (Paris: Librairie académique Perrin, 1907), 153. 54. In Antiquity, perfumes were found in an oily form whereas incense was intended to be burned. Bulwer-Lytton does not, however, specify in his novel whether the perfumes were used in their unguent or aqueous form. 55. Jean-Louis Leutrat, ‘L’invisible et la “figure d’intrusion”. Le parfum dans Narcisse noir’, Revue de la Maison française d’Oxford 11 (1999): 139. 56. Bulwer-Lytton, The Last Days of Pompeii, 178. In the novel, it is not Nydia but rather Julia who consults the witch. 57. The Last Days of Pompeii, film, dir. Mario Bonnard and Sergio Leone (Italy and USA, 1959). 58. To my knowledge, there are no studies devoted specifically to smells in peplums. 59. Isiac cults, starting in the reign of Augustus, used hydriae to hold the sacred water symbolizing the watery nature of Osiris, the brother and husband of Isis. See Bricault, Les cultes isiaques dans le monde gréco-romain, 227. On the importance of water in the Isiac cults, see Robert A. Wild, Water in the Cultic Worship of Isis and Sarapis (Leiden: Brill, 1981). 60. Ernó Zórád, The last days of Pompeii. Based on the book of Bulwer-Lytton (n.p.p.: Swatura, 1984/2013). 61. Michel Pastoureau, Les couleurs de nos souvenirs (Paris: Seuil, 2010). 62. La caduta di Troia, film, dir. Giovanni Pastrone and Luigi Romano Borgnetto (Italy: Itala Film, 1911). 63. The allusion is here to Apuleius’ description of the procession of the Navigium Isidis. In the Metamorphoses, the ceremony is opened by a priest of Isis holding a mask of the god Anubis. See Apuleius, Metamorphoses 11.11. For the Anubophoroi, see Laurent Bricault, Bulletin de la Société d’Égyptologie Genève 24, no. 2 (2001): 29–42; Giulia Sfameni Gasparro, ‘Identités religieuses isiaques: pour la définition d’une catégorie historico-religieuse’, in Individuals and Materials in the Graeco-Roman Cults of Isis: Agents, Images and Practices, ed. Valentino Gasparini and Richard Veymiers (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2018), 145–67. The festive aspect of Isiac ceremony in this film adaptation may also reflect the famous fresco found in Herculaneum which shows a dancer in the forecourt of the temple (Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, n°8919). For dancing in Isiac cult, see Bricault and Veymiers, ‘Jouer, chanter et danser pour Isis’. 64. Apuleius, Metamorphoses 11.9–11. See above, pp. 62. 65. Apuleius, Metamorphoses 11.9: ‘There were women gleaming with white vestments, rejoicing in their varied insignia, garlanded with flowers of spring; they strewed the flowers in their arms along the path where the sacred company would pass.’ Apuleius does not identify the flowers, but one might hazard that these are rose petals, since he connects this flower with Isis in his novel. 66. Apuleius, Metamorphoses 11.13: ‘the wreath, which gleamed with the lovely roses woven into it, I took up with greedy mouth and, eager for the promised results, most eagerly devoured’. 67. Frederick Bridgman, Procession in Honour of Isis, oil on canvas (private collection, 1902); Frederick Bridgman, Procession in Honour of Isis, oil on canvas (Pan Arabian Corporation, 1903). For these paintings, see J.-M. Humbert, L’Égyptomanie dans l’art occidental (Courbevoie: ACR édition, 1989), 248, 250–1, 255. 68. Lawrence Alma-Tadema, The Finding of Moses, oil on canvas (private collection, 1904). See Elizabeth Prettejohn and Peter Tritti, eds, Lawrence Alma-Tadema: At Home in Antiquity (Munich, London and New York: Prestel, 2018), 129, fig. 166. The painting was produced two

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Incense and Perfume for Isis years after the painter visited Egypt for the first time, in 1902, and ten years before his last, unfinished, Egyptian painting, Cleopatra at Philae at the Temple of Isis (1912). As Stephanie Moser has noted, the theatricality of the composition overwhelms both the human emotions and the archaeological precision which were Alma Tadema’s specialty. See Moser, Painting Antiquity, 297–8. 69. In the biblical texts, hyssop has purifying qualities. On this point, see Andrea Martignoni, ‘ “Le végétal en fête”. Retour sur la symbolique végétale dans le liturgie’, Questes: Revue pluridisciplinaire d’études médiévales 4 (2003): 8–10. 70. Peter Trippi, ‘All the World’s a Stage’, in Lawrence Alma-Tadema: At Home in Antiquity, ed. Elizabeth Prettejohn and Peter Trippi (Munich, London and New York: Prestel, 2018), 173–99; Prettejohn and Trippi, Lawrence Alma-Tadema, 190, fig. 129 and 190, fig. 232. Tritti draws a specific comparison between the set created by Decoroso Bonifati for Luigi Maggi’s film (Turin: Muzeo Nazionale del Cinema, 1908) and Alma-Tadema’s An Exedra (1871, watercolour on paper, Colección Pérez Simón, Mexico). 71. Bulwer-Lytton, The Last Days of Pompeii, 62. 72. Bulwer-Lytton, The Last Days of Pompeii, 54. 73. John Martin, The Destruction of Pompei and Herculaneum, oil on canvas (London, Tate, 1822). We also find the apocalyptic dimension of the destruction of Pompeii in a painting by Karl Bryullov (The Last Day of Pompeii, oil on canvas, St Petersburg, State Russian Museum, 1830–3). 74. Moormann, Pompeii’s Ashes, 229–31. For the Oxford Movement, see Peter B. Nockles, The Oxford Movement in Context: Anglican High Churchmanship, 1760–1857 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 75. See Nigel Yates, Anglican Ritualism in Victorian Britain, 1830–1910 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). See also Claire Masurel-Murray, Le calice vide: L’imaginaire catholique dans la littérature décadente anglaise (Paris: Presses Sorbonne nouvelle, 2011), 69. 76. Henry C. Leonard, ‘Ritualism Traced to its Pagan Origins’, a lecture published at the office of the Bournemouth Observer (1879): 7. 77. Masurel-Murray, Le calice vide, 69. 78. Camille Aubaude, ‘Le rituel isiaque dans “Le Temple d’Isis” de Gérard de Nerval’, in Isis, Narcisse, Psyché, entre Lumières et Romantisme: Mythe et écritures, écritures du mythe, ed. Pascale Auraix-Jonchière and Catherine Volpilhac-Auger (Clermont-Ferrand: Presses universitaires Blaise-Pascal, 2000), 127–40. 79. Nerval, Le temple d’Isis. Souvenir de Pompéi, 36. 80. Numerous studies have shown that perfumes were used in Christian rites in Antiquity, both in the form of smoke from the burning of incense, balms and oils for anointing and also in the form of flowers and plants often mentioned in the Bible. See, for example, Jean-Pierre Albert, Odeurs de sainteté. La mythologie chrétienne des aromates (Paris: Éditions de de l’EHESS, 1990); Béatrice Caseau, ‘Parfum et guérison dans le christianisme ancien et byzantin: des huiles parfumées au myron des saints byzantins’, in Les Pères de l’Église face à la science médicale de leur temps, ed. Véronique Boudon-Millot and Bernard Pouderon (Paris: Beauchesne, 2005), 141–91; Jean-Louis Benoît, ‘Autour de l’odeur de sainteté, les parfums dans le monde chrétien’, IRIS 33 (2012): 55–89. 81. Aziza, ‘Isis dans les Derniers jours de Pompéi’, 250. 82. Moormann, Pompeii’s Ashes, 383. 83. The expression is that of Alain Corbin. See Corbin, Le miasme et la jonquille, 303.

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The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in The Modern Imagination 84. For the representation of Christian religion in peplums, see Filippo Carlà-Uhink, ‘Thinking though the Ancient World: “Late Antique Movies” as a Mirror of Shifting Attitudes towards Christian Religion’, in A Companion to Ancient Greece and Rome on Screen, ed. A. J. Pomeroy (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2017), 307–28.

Bibliography Albert, Jean-Pierre. Odeurs de sainteté: La mythologie chrétienne des aromates. Paris: Éditions de l’EHESS , 1990. Ali, Mohamed and Sylvie Cauville. Le temple égyptien et ses dieux: Philae – Kom Ombo – Edfou – Esna – Dendara: itinéraire du divin. Leuven and Paris: Peeters, 2017. Aubaude, Camille. ‘Le rituel isiaque dans “Le Temple d’Isis” de Gérard de Nerval’. In Isis, Narcisse, Psyché, entre Lumières et Romantisme. Mythe et écritures, écritures du mythe, edited by Pascale Auraix-Jonchière and Catherine Volpilhac-Auger, 127–40. Clermont-Ferrand: Presses universitaires Blaise-Pascal, 2000. Aziza, Claude. ‘Le roman historique est-il archéocompatible?’ Anabases. Traditions et réceptions de l’Antiquité 21 (2015): 181–94. Aziza, Claude. Guide de l’Antiquité imaginaire: roman, cinéma, bande dessinée. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2008/2016. Aziza, Claude. ‘L’Antiquité au cinéma’. Revue des études anciennes 120, no. 1 (2018): 141–8. Aziza, Claude. ‘Isis dans les Derniers jours de Pompéi’. In Les mille et une vies d’Isis. La réception des divinités du cercle isiaque de la fin de l’Antiquité à nos jours, edited by Corinne Bonnet, Laurent Bricault and Carole Gomez, 241–51. Toulouse: Presses universitaires du Midi, 2020. Baltrušaitis, Jurgis. La quête d’Isis. Essai sur la légende d’un mythe. Paris: Flammarion, 1967/2009. Beaurin, Ludivine. ‘Honorer Isis. Les cérémonies isiaques dans les cités de l’Empire romain occidental’. PhD diss. Université de Lille-Charles de Gaulle, Lille, 2013. Benoît, Jean-Louis. ‘Autour de l’odeur de sainteté, les parfums dans le monde chrétien’. IRIS 33 (2012): 55–89. Bessières, Vivien. ‘Le péplum, et après. L’Antiquité dans les récits postmodernes’. Anabases 16 (2012): 280–5. Borgeaud, Philippe. ‘Fumigations antiques. L’odeur suave des dieux et des élus’. In Exercices d’histoire des religions. Comparaisons, rites, mythes et émotions, edited by Daniel Barbu and Philippe Matthey, 219–25. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2016. Böttiger, Karl-August. ‘Les Vêpres d’Isis, d’après un tableau d’Herculanum’. Le magasin encyclopédique, 2 April (1810): 241–78. Bricault, Laurent. ‘Les Anubophores’, Bulletin de la Société d’Égyptologie de Genève 24, no. 2 (2001): 29–42. Bricault, Laurent. Les cultes isiaques dans le monde gréco-romain. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2013. Bricault, Lauren. Isis Pelagia: Images, Names and Cults of a Goddess of the Seas. Translated by G. H. Renberg. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2020. Bricault, Laurent, ed. Isis en Occident, Actes du II e colloque international sur les études isiaques organisé à Lyon les 16 et 17 mai 2002. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2004. Bricault, Laurent, ed. Recueil des inscriptions concernant les cultes isiaques (RICIS ). Paris: de Boccard, 2005. Bricault, Laurent and Richard Veymiers. ‘Jouer, chanter et danser pour Isis’. In Individuals and Materials in the Graeco-Roman Cults of Isis: Agents, Images and Practices, edited by Valentino Gasparini and Richard Veymiers, 690–713. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2018. Bulwer-Lytton, Edward. The Last Days of Pompeii. Paris: Baudry’s European Library, 1834/1839.

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Incense and Perfume for Isis Carlà-Uhink, Filippo. ‘Thinking though the Ancient World: “Late Antique Movies” as a Mirror of Shifting Attitudes towards Christian Religion’. In A Companion to Ancient Greece and Rome on Screen, edited by Arthur J. Pomeroy, 307–28. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2017. Caseau, Béatrice. ‘Parfum et guérison dans le christianisme ancien et byzantin: des huiles parfumées au myron des saints byzantins’. In Les Pères de l’Église face à la science médicale de leur temps, edited by Véronique Boudon-Millot and Bernard Pouderon, 141–91. Paris: Beauchesne, 2005. Corbin, Alain. Le miasme et la jonquille. L’odorat et l’imaginaire social XVIII e–XIX e siècles. Paris: Flammarion, 1982/2008. Curl, James Stevens. The Egyptian Revival: Ancient Egypt as an Inspiration for Design Motifs in the West. London and New York: Routledge, 1994/2005. Dobson, Eleanor and Nichola Tonks, eds. Ancient Egypt in the Modern Imagination: Art, Literature and Culture. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. Elliott, Chris. Egypt in England. Swindon: English Heritage, 2012. García Morcillo, Marta and Pauline Hanesworth. ‘Introduction: Cinematic Cityscapes and the Ancient Past’. In Imagining Ancient Cities in Film: From Babylon to Cinecittà, edited by Marta García Morcillo, Pauline Hanesworth and Óscar Lapeña, 1–17. London and New York: Routledge, 2015. Gautier, Théophile. ‘Arria Marcella. Souvenir de Pompéi’. In Romans et Contes, 297–345. Paris: A. Lemerre, 1852/1897. Geisler-Szmulewicz, Anne. ‘Rien de nouveau sous le soleil: Pompéi, la ville morte, dans Arria Marcella (1852)’. Sociétés & représentations 41, no. 1 (2016): 31–46. Gell, William and John Peter Gandy. Pompeiana; the Topography, Edifices, and Ornaments of Pompeii. London: Rodwell and Martin, 1817–19. Gell, William and John Peter Gandy. Pompeiana. The Topography, Edifices, and Ornaments of Pompeii. London: Rodwell and Martin, 1817–19/1824. Grell, Chantal. Herculanum et Pompéi dans les récits des voyageurs français du XVIII e siècle. Naples: Publications du Centre Jean Bérard, 1982. Grell, Chantal. ‘Le temple d’Isis à Pompéi: entre déception et fascination’. In Les mille et une vies d’Isis. La réception des divinités du cercle isiaque de la fin de l’Antiquité à nos jours, edited by Corinne Bonnet, Laurent Bricault and Carole Gomez, 207–22. Toulouse: Presses universitaires du Midi, 2020. Harrison, Stephen. ‘Bulwer-Lytton’s The Last Days of Pompeii: Re-creating the City’. In Pompeii in the Public Imagination from its Rediscovery to Today, edited by Shelley Hales and Joanna Paul, 75–89. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Hornung, Erik. Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt, The One and the Many. Translated by J. Baines. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1971/1982. Humbert, Jean-Marcel. L’Égyptomanie dans l’art occidental. Courbevoie: ACR édition, 1989. Humbert, Jean-Marcel. ‘L’égyptomanie: actualité d’un concept de la Renaissance au postmodernisme’. In Egyptomania. L’Égypte dans l’art occidental, 1730–1930, edited by Jean-Marcel Humbert, Michaele Pantazzi and Christiane Ziegler, 21–6. Paris and Ottawa: Réunion des musées nationaux-Musée des beaux-arts du Canada, 1994. Leutrat, Jean-Louis. ‘L’invisible et la “figure d’intrusion”. Le parfum dans Narcisse noir’. Revue de la Maison française d’Oxford 11 (1999): 139–49. Malaise, Michel and Richard Veymiers. ‘Les dévotes isiaques et les atours de leur déesse’. In Individuals and Materials in the Graeco-Roman Cults of Isis: Agents, Images and Practices, edited by Valentino Gasparini and Richard Veymiers, 470–508. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2018. Martignoni, Andrea. ‘ “Le végétal en fête”. Retour sur la symbolique végétale dans la liturgie’. Questes. Revue pluridisciplinaire d’études médiévales 4 (2003): 8–10. Masurel-Murray, Claire. Le calice vide. L’imaginaire catholique dans la littérature décadente anglaise. Paris: Presses de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2011. 73

The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in The Modern Imagination Moormann, Eric M. ‘The temple of Isis at Pompeii’. In Nile into Tiber: Egypt in the Roman World, Actes du IIIe colloque international sur les études isiaques organisé à Leyde du 11 au 14 mai 2005, edited by Laurent Bricault, Paul G. P. Meyboom and Miguel J. Versluys, 137–54. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007. Moormann, Eric M. Pompeii’s Ashes: The Reception of the Cities Buried by Vesuvius in Literature, Music, and Drama. Boston: De Gruyter, 2015. Moser, Stephanie. ‘Reconstructing Ancient Worlds: Reception Studies, Archaeological Representation and the Interpretation of Ancient Egypt’. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 22, no. 4 (2015): 1263–308. Moser, Stephanie. Painting Antiquity: Ancient Egypt in the Art of Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Edward Poynter and Edwin Long. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020. Nerval, Gérard de. Le temple d’Isis. Souvenir de Pompéi. Tusson: Du Lérot, 1845/1997. Nockles, Peter B. The Oxford Movement in Context: Anglican High Churchmanship 1760–1857. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Pastoureau, Michel. Les couleurs de nos souvenirs. Paris: Seuil, 2010. Payen, Pascal. ‘L’Antiquité et ses réceptions: un nouvel objet d’histoire’. Anabases 10 (2009): 9–23. Piggott, Jan. Palace of the People: The Crystal Palace at Sydenham 1854–1936. London: Hurst & Company, 2004. Pomeroy, Arthur J., ed. A Companion to Ancient Greece and Rome on Screen. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2017. Popa, Nicolas, ed. Les filles du feu. Paris: Champion, 1931. Schuré, Edouard. La prêtresse d’Isis. Légende de Pompéi. Paris: Librairie académique Perrin, 1907. Sfameni Gasparro, Giulia. ‘Identités religieuses isiaques: pour la définition d’une catégorie historico-religieuse’. In Individuals and Materials in the Graeco-Roman Cults of Isis: Agents, Images and Practices, edited by Valentino Gasparini and Richard Veymiers, 145–67. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2018. Trippi, Peter. ‘All the World’s a Stage’. In Lawrence Alma-Tadema: At Home in Antiquity, edited by Elizabeth Prettejohn and Peter Trippi, 173–99. Munich, London and New York: Prestel, 2018. Versluys, Miguel J., ed. Beyond Egyptomania: Objects, Style and Agency. Boston and Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020. Veymiers, Richard. ‘Introduction: Agents, Images and Practices’. In Individuals and Materials in the Graeco-Roman Cults of Isis: Agents, Images and Practices, edited by Valentino Gasparini and Richard Veymiers, 1–58. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2018. Wild, Robert A. Water in the Cultic Worship of Isis and Sarapis. Leiden: Brill, 1981. Yates, Nigel. Anglican Ritualism in Victorian Britain, 1830–1910. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.

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PART II GENDERED SMELLS AND BODIES

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CHAPTER 3 FROM GORGONS TO GOOP: SCENT THERAPY AND THE SMELL OF TRANSFORMATION IN ANTIQUITY AND THE HOLISTIC HEALTH MOVEMENT Margaret Day Elsner

Popularized by Gwyneth Paltrow’s wellness brand Goop in 2015,1 vaginal steaming, a commercial form of scent therapy, an ancient technique, promises to cleanse the body of dangerous chemicals and toxins using an aromatic Sitz bath. Performed at home or in spas, participants sit on throne-like chairs as steamed or smoked herbs such as mugwort, pennyroyal and sage clear their bodies of hormonal imbalance and autoimmune disease.2 Smaller pagan or wiccan practitioners of V-steaming, like Steamy Chick,3 Ancient Essence4 and the Women’s Wellness Collective,5 often cite ancient authorities like Hippocrates, Soranus, Galen and Trota of Salerno in addition to non-Western and/or indigenous cultures to ground vaginal steaming, also known as a yoni-steam, chai-yok or womb cleanse, in both scientific and spiritual traditions. As part of a larger women’s spirituality movement, other practitioners of scent therapy, contemporary pagans and wiccans,6 legitimize their aromatic healing methods by grounding them in pro-woman, pre-modern practices.7 By co-opting the language of New Age spirituality,8 Goop claims to offer an alternative community for women who seek bodily autonomy and agency; but instead reinforces patriarchal ideas about the cleanliness – and in particular the smell – of the female body through its reliance on profit-driven influencer culture.9 Because Goop reinforces rather than dismantles ancient ideas about female odour and cleanliness, its endorsement of vaginal steaming has more in common with the misogynist agenda of ancient medicine than woman-centred magic. Whereas Greek and Roman doctors like the aforementioned authorities used vaginal fumigation to pathologize the female body as naturally sick or non-human,10 female healers and witches in classical literature drew on homeopathy to endorse and even celebrate women’s latent animality.11 The former prevails in ancient literature, where fears regarding women and their animalistic sense of smell abound. Fragrant goddesses, perfumed lovers and malodorous witches abound,12 particularly in mythology, where hybrid female monsters excrete foul smells and substances from their animalized lower halves.13 Two of these creatures, Medusa and Scylla, perform or undergo fumigations which confirm the olfactible nature of the uterus through menstrual blood and other bodily substances.14

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Methodology and framework Of all the different areas of sensory studies, though, odour may be the hardest to analyse. In his own work on smell in Antiquity, Mark Bradley admits the difficulty of separating bad smells from a ‘general primordial sense of dirt and “matter-out-of-place” ’.15 In the Greek and Roman imagination, women were, as a whole, most prone to this sense of dirt. Considered both polluted and porous, female bodies were leaky, smelly and open to transformation,16 both monstrous, like those found in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (first century ce ), and mundane, such as the physical changes brought on by pregnancy and childbirth. The difficulty of separating women’s body odour, then, from the material and thermal aspects of perfume, miasma and other bodily and environmental effusions lies in their intimacy: smell is a by-product of natural and chemical processes; one cannot exist without the other. Britta Ager argues that scent and magic were intimately connected in the ancient imagination, due to a deep mistrust of women who used herbs, perfumes and cosmetics in their daily lives.17 A redolent Roman matrona (matron) was just as dangerous as the witch Medea. Similarly, in her discussion of wise women and healers, Pauline Ripat argues that women who practised scent therapy were suspicious in the ancient world, especially in Rome, because they were able to manipulate female body odour – and alongside it, male intentions – with various perfumes and potions.18 Because vaginal fumigation, a specific form of scent therapy closely associated with magic,19 assumes that the uterus can be attracted or repelled by sweet- or foul-smelling substances like an animal,20 it can be a useful tool outside of medical and ritual contexts for analysing the ways in which ancient and contemporary sources explore the sensory aspects of femininity. Using these parameters, this chapter establishes the history of scent therapy in ancient medicine before using it to interpret female-to-animal transformations21 alongside the use of aromatherapy in contemporary wellness circles. It ends with a discussion of the animalized Bride in Nicola Hunter’s production of Lost Bodies (2016), a heady, aromatic work22 which challenges the submissive olfactory agenda which Goop and our ancient sources support. In comparing these works, this chapter argues that scent therapy operates on a power differential, wherein practitioners – divine, wealthy and preternaturally fragrant – profit from the habitually foul nature of their patients-turnedvictims.

Scent therapy in ancient medicine In Hippocratic medicine, women had a hodos, an internal pathway that connected the nose to the vagina (imagined as having a sense of smell).23 If it was not weighed down by pregnancy, the uterus travelled up and down this pathway causing all sorts of gynaecological ailments.24 To combat this issue, medical practitioners used scent therapy to move the uterus back into position.25 Attracted to sweet smells like incense and repelled by foul ones like sulphur and animal excrement,26 the uterus could be persuaded 78

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up and down the hodos using fumigation of the nose or vagina, application of perfumed ointments and insertion of herbal pessaries into the vaginal canal.27 Throughout the Diseases of Women (fifth century bce ), the earliest text where fumigation is found, the Hippocratic doctor prescribes both aromatic and emollient therapies which work simultaneously or successively to relieve pelvic and uterine pain. The most extensive description of vaginal fumigation is in Diseases of Women 2.146, where the author treats the physical and mental symptoms of breast cancer.28 Sitting on a special chair, the patient inserts an airtight reed into her vaginal canal before fumigating it with an aromatic vapor (here garlic steeped in water). Heat fuels the fumigation process; vapour ferries the medication. The Hippocratic doctor recommended repeat treatments throughout recovery. Although post-Hippocratic and Galenic medicine debated the reasons for its efficacy,29 scent therapy continued to offer relief for uterine prolapse, uterine suffocation and blocked menses in the Hellenistic and Roman worlds. Combined with herbal infusions and physical manipulation of the vulva, vaginal canal and uterus, fumigation could treat disease, determine or promote fertility and even test for virginity. It remained a popular treatment for excessive humours throughout the Middle Ages thanks to Islamic medicine and the Trotula.30 Folk medicine, however, used aromatic substances to treat gynaecological disfunction based on theories of attraction rather than repulsion.31 In ritual contexts, foul-smelling substances such as sulphur, asphalt, rotting fish and burning hair repelled demons and pests;32 similarly, homeopathic remedies used such materials to cure the diseased uterus. While herbs of all types were popular fumigating agents, Pliny records the efficacy of fumigation with a number of foul-, acrid- and putrid-smelling animal and human byproducts in his Natural History (first century ce ). When smoked or aerosolized, hyena fat, deer’s hair and ass’ hoof, among others, could induce labour and encourage menstruation.33 Burnt human hair repulsed snakes, as well as cured uterine strangulation.34 Since medical and other writers considered women habitually foul-smelling due to menstrual fluid and other vaginal discharges, the stench of burned hair, bone and fat rectified rather than exacerbated disease. Although all types of human and animal effluences could be used by homeopaths to treat disease, menstrual fluid had the most powerful properties. Pliny describes it as a polluting substance with the power to blunt the sharp edge of a barber’s razor (‘aciem in cultris tonsorum hebetari’, 28.23), dull mirrors at sight (‘hebetata aspectu specula’, 28.23) and create an offensive smell (‘virus odoris accipere’, 28.23),35 as well as a curative for tumours, boils, bacterial infection and other discharges.36 When burned and applied as an ashy paste, it even healed the sores of oxen and cured headaches.37 Ripat argues that Pliny’s particular distaste for the ingestion, application or fumigation of menstrual fluid, straight or mixed with other substances, suggests that this practice was widespread among female healers.38 When applied as a paste or inhaled as steam or smoke, menstrual fluid was believed to be a powerful curative, despite its destructive, wasting properties. This power lies at the heart of the Medusa myth, where her slit, hissing neck, the female hodos mythologized as a snake, creates new life through its human and animal by-products. 79

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Medusa, the fumigator of Libya Through the power of attraction, Medusa’s reproductive powers initially stem from her hair, changed by Minerva into snakes after she is raped by Neptune, according to the Roman version of the myth written by Ovid.39 One of Freud’s two olfactory seats (the other being the feet),40 Medusa’s hair, transformed in Ovid into filthy snakes (‘turpes hydros’, 4.801), elicits a strong odour indistinguishable from her foul mouth (‘squalentia ora’, 4.655). Because snakes produced two kinds of foul smells41 in the ancient imagination, venomous breath and fumes from their rotting flesh,42 Medusa’s kinship with miasmatic snake creatures like the Furies, Lamia and the basilisk amplify rather than detract from the effects of her eyes. Furies were, in particular, the most Gorgon and snake-like monsters in the ancient world; their breath was proverbially noisome. In the Eumenides (fifth century bce ), for example, Aeschylus describes them as snoring Gorgons with especially bad breath (‘ῥέγκουσι δ᾽ οὐ πλατοῖσι φυσιάμασιν’, 53). Juno’s familiar Alecto in Virgil’s Aeneid (first century ce ), herself infected with Gorgon poison (‘Gorgoneis [. . .] infecta venenis’, 7.341), fills the Latin queen Amata with her viperous breath (‘vipeream inspirans animam’, 7.351), causing Amata to go mad. In Ovid, at the command of Minerva and Juno respectively, the serpent-Fury Invidia43 blights Aglauros with a harmful stench (‘nocens virus’, 2.796), and Tisiphone maddens Athamas and Ino by filling them with her noxious breath (‘inspirantque graves animas’, 4.498).44 In all of these scenes, snake venom is not a liquid but a vapour, an infectious and deadly miasma when inhaled or absorbed. In Lucan’s Pharsalia (first century ce ), the longest work to explore the destructive and homeopathic abilities of Medusa’s corpse, Medusa is a kind of deadly Roman matrona, whose venom-combed hair45 and putrefying blood are absorbed into the landscape in a scene of fumigation. The passage, an excursus during Cato’s own march through Libya, seeks to explain the strange fertility of the land’s pestilential air (‘pestibus aer’, 9.619). The answer lies in the death of Medusa and the poison she exhales (‘spirasse veneno’, 9.679) upon her demise. While her gaze retains the power of petrification, her breath allows both her blood and her venom to mingle and vaporize, fumigating the earth below and creating a whole host of new snake creatures. Constantly bleeding from her severed neck, Medusa affects man and beast in ways similar to the effects of menstrual fluid in Pliny. Just as menstruating women can, among other things, blunt mirrors (‘speculorum fulgor [. . .] hebetatur’, 7.15) and spread strong, smelly odours (‘grave virus odoris accipere’, 28.23), so too can Medusa petrify humans while also filling the air with pestilential vapours. Cradled in Perseus’ bag, Medusa’s head scatters both blood and venom, her fumigating agents, across the Libyan desert: Although that earth was sterile and its fields producing nothing good, they took up the venom of Medusa dripping with decay and the terrible drops of her bestial blood, which the heat animated and cooked into the rotting sand. Here the putrefaction46 which first moved its head from the dust raised up the somniferous asp with its swollen neck.47 80

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Medusa’s venom and blood, rotting (‘tabe’, 9.697) and wild (‘fero’, 9.698), restores the desert’s fertility,48 her wasting, foul-smelling substances curing the barren landscape. Putrefying in the hot sand below, Medusa’s venom and poison, now vapours, produce individual snakes, whose poison thrives in the African heat (‘ardens facit Africa’, 9.729). Although all are bad in their own right, the worst of these is the basilisk, which Pliny says kills both by touch and by its breath (‘non contactos modo verum et adflatos’, Natural History 8.33), which is foul-smelling to boot (‘olfactu necantem’, 29.19). Thanks to Medusa’s olfactory powers, secondary in her own body, venomous breath becomes her serpent children’s primary tool. The noxious substances Medusa’s corpse produces, venom and blood, emerge more powerful and more deadly after her session of scent therapy in the Libyan desert. While Chrysaor and Pegasus emerge spontaneously when her neck/hodos is slit, the rest of her offspring are smoked into existence thanks to Libya’s innate heat. Even in reception of the myth in post-antique times, later versions impart this heat to Medusa’s own body. In Giorgio Vasari’s The Lives of the Most Excellent Architects, Painters and Sculptors (1550), Leonardo da Vinci models his own Medusa on a menagerie of dead animals, the result ‘emitt[ing] a poisonous breath from its throat’ and ‘belching forth venom [. . .] and smoke from its nostrils’.49 Able, finally, to gaze upon her head without consequence, art must amplify the horror of Medusa’s corpse at the same time as it is free to explore all of her senses, including the olfactory.50 Created out of fears surrounding women’s reproductive powers, Medusa is Galen’s and Pliny’s menstrual fluid51 made monstrous, her blood and body odour able to putrefy and produce.

Perfumes and aromatic pharmaka in ancient magic Although Medusa is an extreme example, female genitalia and vaginal discharge were still considered to be the worst culprits of female body odour52 in the ancient world. To mask this odour, women would turn to perfumes, unguents and other sweet-smelling substances, though some, like Lucretius’ mistress, could go too far.53 Whether dispersed as a fine mist or burned as incense,54 perfume signalled wealth and pleasure, in addition to moral superiority.55 It also evoked a strong response from men, who were either enticed by its promise of sex or repulsed by its associations with Eastern decadence.56 Medicinal, magical or cosmetic, herbs like marjoram and pennyroyal imparted a sweet scent associated with Aphrodite, the goddess of desire, pleasure and sex. While all gods were aromatic57 in a sense – sweet-smelling, often inhaling sacrifices, feasting on nectar and ambrosia, and so on – Aphrodite was the divinity most associated with the scent of women; she had the power, as we see in versions of the Lemnian women story,58 to praise her favourites with sweet smells and to punish her enemies with foul ones. Throughout classical and post-classical literature, we see divine and semi-divine witches using pharmaka for personal means; nearly all, as Ager points out, are sweetsmelling themselves, their elixirs ranging from pleasant to repugnant (depending on the situation).59 Divine redolence can be subtle, seducing an unsuspecting target. This aspect 81

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of magical pharmaka, its seductive quality, is used by Circe in her human-to-animal transformations. Crushing moly, a mysterious herb alternately identified with garlic (which smells pungent) and rue (malodorous),60 alongside cheese, barley, honey and wine, Circe is able to convince her victims to ingest or to apply her pharmaka without complaint.61 Only when they begin to transform do the unsuspecting men and women realize her true intentions. Circe’s specialty, using powerful drugs to draw out a human’s true animal form, rests on her ability to deceive her victims and their internal animal’s sense of smell. While in Homer’s Odyssey, she detains Odysseus and his crew with food, drink and unguents, Virgil describes the scent of her magic and the effects it has on men and beasts in the Aeneid (first century bce ).62 As Aeneas sails past Aeaea, he smells cedar wood burning and hears the roar of the island’s many beasts: In her lofty halls she burns fragrant cedar in the night’s light [. . .] From there we heard the groans and anger of lions, rebelling against their chains, as they raged all night long, fierce pigs and savage bears in their pens and the howls of huge wolves, which the savage goddess with her powerful herbs had changed from a human shape into the faces and backs of wild animals.63 As a daughter of the Sun and a witch, Circe’s command of heat and access to herbs make her not just a magical pharmacist, but a perfumer. Even after transformation, the animals at her command respond to her in agony, their voices confirming their own olfactible nature. Embodying ancient fears surrounding women’s command of scent,64 Circe’s magical form of perfumery takes on a deadly power differential not only against men, where she gains the upper hand, but also against women, whose sexual development she thwarts with her perfumed drugs.65

Scylla’s perfumed transformation Ovid plays with these two aspects of perfumery and pharmaka in his transformation of Scylla: first, he draws on the medico-magical belief that sweet smells attract the uterus, foul smells repel it; second, he employs the elements of perfumery – herbs, liquid and heat – to characterize Circe as not only a witch but also a perfumer-druggist whose spellcasting uses scent to entice and to trick her victims.66 The herbs which Circe uses, moly or some other vegetation, are described by Ovid as infamous (‘infamia’, 14.43), known for their awful sap (‘horrendis sucis’, 14.43) and strength (‘viribus’, 14.69). The poison (‘venenis’, 14.55) which comes from these herbs is noxious (‘nocenti’, 14.55), not deadly so much as primed to cause pain. As a perfumer, Circe uses water67 and heat to create an aromatic environment for her spell-casting to work. She creates a tincture in the pool, where she mixes her potion for the greatest effect. Corrupted beforehand (‘praevitiat’, 14.55) and stained (‘inquinat’, 14.56) with her herbs, the anointed water and general nature of the locus amoenus 82

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(pleasant place) masks Circe’s true intentions. Spurned by Glaucus, a newly transformed sea-god and himself a potential rapist, Circe turns to aromatic poison to stymie the sexual development of Glaucus’ love interest, Scylla, and feed her own envy: Travelling over the waves seething with heat, in which she stepped as though on solid ground, [Circe] crossed the deep sea with dry feet. There was a small pool, curved in a smooth arc that Scylla loved because it was quiet; here Scylla brought herself away from the sea and the sky, when at midday the sun is greatest and makes the smallest shadows at its peak. The goddess had contaminated this place and spread her powerful poisons; she sprinkled herbs pressed from toxic roots and muttered thrice nine times a magical spell. Scylla came and she descended only waist deep into the pool, when she found her groin polluted with growling monsters, and thinking at first that they were not part of her body, she flees and retreats and fears the dogs’ barking mouths, but that which she flees, she drags along with her, and seeking her body, her thighs, legs and feet, she finds Cerberus’ jaws: she stands and is surrounded by rabid dogs and from her cut off loins and uterus come the backs of beasts.68 Although Scylla’s transformation takes place in water, Ovid plays with heat, which allow us to read the passage through the lens of vaginal fumigation and magical perfumery. Circe crosses waves that are burning (‘ferventes’, 14.48) and hot (‘aestibus’, 14.48) with feet that remain dry (‘siccis’, 14.50). Scylla retreats to the pool away from the heat (‘ab aestu’, 52) when the sun is at its highest – and hottest. She expects a cool respite (‘quies’, 52) from the heat but is met instead with fiery, burning dogs.69 Circe uses toxic, poisonous drugs, drugs that are terrible (‘horrendis’, 14.43) and harmful (‘nocenti’, 14.51) to effect this transformation, but she couches them in fragrance. Attracted to the sweet smell of her aromatic pharmaka, Scylla’s canine uterus confirms that women are fundamentally dirty creatures, their internal, animal organs attracted to sweet smells and repelled by foul ones. By luring out Scylla’s animal uterus in the pool’s perfumed-yet-poisoned waters,70 Circe capitalizes on the liminal, animal nature of women and thwarts Scylla’s sexual development. Whereas in rational medicine, sweet smells attract the uterus down – but not outside – the hodos, in magic, an aromatic tincture can lure an internal animal outside the body without any olfactory warnings. Only when Scylla’s canine uterus emerges does the pool truly become polluted and foul. Newly transformed, Scylla’s canine-cum-piscine lower body takes on the stench of other half-woman, half-animal monsters in the classical tradition.71 Her uterus (womb), the word both Virgil and Ovid use to describe her human-animal hinge,72 is semantically connected to the venter (belly) of the Harpies.73 In the Argonautica (third century bce ), for example, Apollonius’ Harpies leave a foul stench (‘ὀδμὴ δὲ δυσάνσχετος’, 2.272) on the tables of Phineus; in his own version, Valerius Flaccus (first century ce ) also describes the Harpies befouling Phineus’ cups and leaving a stench (‘foedataque turbant / pocula, saevit odor’, 4.454–5).74 Virgil visualizes this smell as a gross discharge from the belly 83

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(‘foedissima ventris / proluvies’; Aeneid 3.216–17),75 an image taken up by Dante (c. 1308–20 ce ) in the Purgatorio. Enchanted by a seductive Siren, an elision of all three creatures, Dante learns that this woman is not as beautiful below as she is above, but instead possesses a monstrous belly (‘ventre’, 19.32) which emits a foul stench (‘puzzo che n’uscia’, 19.33).76 Like Medusa’s breath and her foul-smelling venom, the stench of the Siren Scylla serves as an olfactory warning of her vagina dentata. This odour pervades both encounters with Scylla in Madeline Miller’s Circe (2018), a novel which revisits the myths surrounding its eponymous character for a feminist audience. Angered by Glaucus’ affection for Scylla, Circe uses moly to punish her rival early on in her magical life. New to the power of herbs, she only hears about the transformation from others and does not witness its effects until she helps Daedalus sail past the monster on his way to Crete. Before she even sees her creation, framed throughout the novel as a foil for Circe’s human desires, Circe smells Scylla’s ‘reptilian stench [. . .] foul as snakes squirming underground’ (114). When Circe tempts her with a cure – in reality, a potion to petrify her – Scylla turns with breath which is ‘rotten’ and ‘hot as fire’ (115); she attacks the ships anyway, remaining a constant threat to Circe’s beloved mortals. The smell lingers in Circe’s memory for a lifetime: when she encounters Scylla again, near the end of the novel, Circe muses, ‘The smell struck me, familiar even after so long: rot and hate’ (367). Her breath comes in waves, ‘wash[ing]’ over Circe and Telemachus as ‘stink and searing heat’ (369). Where Ovid only uses liquid and heat to effect the transformation of Scylla, Miller creates a complete sensory experience, each belch from Scylla’s mouth a foul reminder of Circe’s youthful mistake. Only when she is fully transformed into a rock – framed as her death – does Scylla’s smell disappear. Over time, the nymph Scylla’s true form – her gross, base sexual nature – is unmasked by Circe through her own masked poisons.77 The magical perfumer’s ability to enhance her herbs with a deceptive fragrance has made perfume historically suspicious, women’s body odour even more so. Marketed as a cosmetic or wellness product, it is at best a pleasant mask for human musk and at worst an aromatic, costly form of poison benefiting the few, not the many.

Aromatherapy in the holistic health movement Today, perfume has been rebranded in wellness circles as aromatherapy and encompasses a bevy of products aimed at optimizing female health and wellbeing. In contemporary settings, it stems from neopagan and New Age practices which attempt to treat female illness and disease, both physical and mental, through holistic means.78 These holistic means have been co-opted by the holistic health movement, which aims to fill a gap between alternative spirituality and Western medicine. While neopaganism developed in the mid-twentieth century out of dissatisfaction with contemporary religious dogma79 and a desire to return to a pre-Christian, woman-centred form of spirituality,80 groups like Goop and Jessica Alba’s Honest Company spearheaded the contemporary holistic health movement of the late 2000s. By filling a gap between neopagan feminism and 84

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alternative spirituality, the contemporary holistic health movement offers women a community centred on the sharing of woman-tested practices neglected by the medical establishment. Part of an arsenal of products aimed at centring and improving women’s health, aromatherapy – encompassing a spectrum of products including essential oils, diffusers, candles, room sprays, incense and steam baths – promises to ‘optimize’ female health and wellbeing without using harmful chemicals or toxins. These types of aromatic treatments claim origins which straddle West and East, with groups grounding their practice in evidence from Egypt, Greece, China, India and North and South American indigenous communities. Buoyed by recent studies conducted in Indonesia, Korea, China and Taiwan, wellness practitioners offer fragrant options for digestive, hormonal, pelvic and mental health, all the while pushing their products and services on social media apps, particularly through influencers on Instagram. In contemporary influencer culture,81 women promote wellness-branded products and experiences to other women as part of a feminist, holistic lifestyle.82 Part of this wellness-focused lifestyle includes vaginal steaming, which uses traditional gynaecological pharmacopeia like yarrow and dandelion to ease pain, tighten the skin and improve mood. The most popular herb is mugwort, a bitter, pungent plant with a long gynaecological history. Gifted according to myth by Artemis to Chiron for medicinal use,83 mugwort was used in antiquity to induce menstruation, cause abortions and speed up delivery;84 today, users claim that it restores fertility, treats inflammation, regulates menstrual flow and speeds up post-partum recovery.85 Smoked or aerosolized, mugwort and other herbal steams claim to cure amenorrhea, expel lochial fluid, tone the pelvic floor and ease menstrual cramps. Popularized in a 2015 review of the Tikkun Holistic Spa on the Goop website, this type of vaginal steaming blends ancient aromatherapy with high tech wellness technology: Tikkun is the next level when it comes to Korean spas, combining high-tech farinfrared heat with traditional Korean sauna therapies. So if you want to lie down in a Himalayan-salt-brick-tiled sauna or sit in a Hwangto clay room, you get the added benefit of far-infrared heat [. . .] We’re burying the lede though, because the real golden ticket here is the Mugwort V-Steam: You sit on what is essentially a mini throne, and a combination of infrared and mugwort steam treats you to an energetic release. If you’re in LA, you just might have to try it.86 Goop’s promotion of mugwort, affirms mugwort’s historic role in female health and wellness: it not only restores balance to a malfunctioning female body but also perpetuates the idea that women’s bodies are constantly unclean and ill. If a woman is not regularly treating her vagina to, at the very least, an aromatic douche, she runs the risk of increasing inflammation, suffering from gastrointestinal distress and incurring a whole host of other problems.87 Capitalizing on Tikkun’s bougie, ‘feminist’ form of aromatherapy, Goop’s recommendation took off online among celebrities and influencers despite warnings 85

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from the medical community of unwanted side effects.88 Incidentally, however, the risks of vaginal steaming stem not from the psychotropic effects of its herbs (mugwort is a known hallucinogen and narcotic) but from its mechanics; a simple Google search of ‘vaginal steaming burns’ yields dozens of news articles describing second-degree burns on the vulva and vaginal canal since 2013. However, Goop’s foremost critic, Jennifer Gunter, warns that vaginal steaming can also disrupt the bacterial flora and Ph balance of the vagina: Vaginal absorption of medications requires the right medication [. . .] and the right delivery vehicle. Steam does not meet this criteria [sic]. Aerosolizing a medication is effective for lungs, but the vulva, vagina, and uterus are all quite deficient when it comes to inhalation and gas exchange mechanisms [. . .] I’m not sure what our gal GP thinks balancing hormones actually is [. . .] but I am confident when I say that steaming your vagina with wormwood or mugwort will not do anything to hormones because these plants are not hormones.89 While Goop seems to embrace female sexuality and wellbeing through its promotion of V-steaming and other forms of scent- and aroma-based therapies, it has a dark side, rooted in misogynist ideas about female pollution and dirtiness. Vaginal steaming promises to restore women to optimum health and offers a woman-centred approached to wellness that has traditionally been ignored or devalued by the medical establishment, but Paltrow and other influencers like her capitalize on this collective trauma by monetizing women’s search for authority and bodily autonomy.90

Nicola Hunter’s Harpy bride If we take Paltrow at her word and imagine that vaginal steaming provides some kind of aromatic health benefit for women, by women, we can see a new form of vaginal fumigation and pharmacopic metamorphosis emerge, one which cultivates women’s latent animality rather than suppresses (the medical form) or weaponizes it (the magical form). Nicola Hunter’s Lost Bodies, a 2016 performance art piece based on her earlier work with anasyrma (skirt-raising) in 2014,91 explores the aromatic connection to spirituality the female reproductive system enjoys. In it, Hunter’s bride undergoes a bitter but ultimately transcendent experience centred on her exposed head and vulva, the traditional beginning and end of the Hippocratic hodos and hinge of our classic uterine monsters. Performed by Hunter along with Alison Brierley and Sarah Glass, Lost Bodies reconnects the female body to nature by resurrecting the hidden ‘Wild Woman’ inside Hunter’s dead bride through neopagan aromatherapy.92 The performance begins with Brierley, a shamanic spiritual guide, preparing the performance space for Hunter’s journey with burning sage. Glass narrates as Hunter, her own blood befouling the stage, dies and is violently reborn in the form of a bird with only her head and pubic region 86

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remaining. Harpy-like, it is untouched by paint and feathers. The candle which she used earlier in the piece to join herself to the earth becomes the fumigating agent when placed in her mouth and lit by Bierley’s shaman. Only then, responding to the sage and heat of the candle, arms and legs outstretched, does Glass say that the bride knows herself: ‘Stripped back, she sees herself for the first time. In all of the darkness she was there. I met myself for the first time there. I met myself for the first time there. I met myself for the first time there.’93 The repetition of the last three sentences confirms that unlike Graeco-Roman metamorphosis, where women lose themselves in their new, smelly hybrid bodies, Hunter becomes herself, smelly body and all. In this sense, the smoking of Hunter’s face/vulva pushes her sexuality, her womanhood, out of the body and into the world. Bare and finally ready to be seen, the bride comes to a bitter sense of self-awareness and autonomy. Rejecting patriarchal notions of the female body, symbolized by the medieval throne on which the bride first sits, Hunter takes the audience on a neopagan journey to a preChristian understanding of female sexuality and power. Where Raising the Skirt, both a photo project and sexual health seminar, encourages women to connect with premodern goddesses94 and ancient female activists through touch, Lost Bodies sees this personal journey through using smell. Like Medusa, whose own blood, spilled and aerosolized from her face, restores fertility to the Libyan desert, Hunter’s blood, drawn via syringe from her forehead, reacts with the dirt, sage and heat of the candle to create the proper atmosphere for transformation. Unlike Scylla, who tries to push away the dogs which suddenly appear around her groin, Hunter’s bride welcomes her animal nature, plastering herself in Harpy-esque, tarred feathers before reaching, triumphantly, towards the sky. This new form of transformation, a vaginal fumigation which reveals rather than hides, revels in rather than exploits women’s wild nature, recoups the misogynist impulses of ancient medicine and magic at the same time as it promotes ancient ideas of odorous female animality – reimagined. Stripped of the commercial underpinnings of wellness-branded aromatherapy, Hunter’s piece asks us to reflect on woman’s place in the cycle of birth, death and decay.

Conclusion Hunter’s bride remains an anomaly, however, in the influencer-driven world of aromatherapy today. With their noses exploited for profit through virtual sales of essential oils, vaginal steaming and other wellness products, contemporary women remain mired in ancient fears surrounding the odorous female body; aromatherapy, at least, imparts a ‘good’ or ‘clean’ scent, even if it does not do much else. Hunter questions this commercialization of ancient scent therapy by celebrating the body, in all its fluids, smells and discharges, pleasant and pungent, fragrant and foul. If we place Hunter’s work aside, though, Paltrow’s promotion of vaginal steaming, which promises to cleanse the body of hormonal and digestive issues, leaves little room for an olfactory spectrum, preferring instead to rid the body of foul smells rather than revel in their strength and power. 87

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Whether known as a V-steam or an herbal pessary, a womb cleanse or perfumed vapour bath, vaginal fumigation offers a variety of outcomes depending on the intention of the fumigator. Medical practitioners and healers, both ancient and modern, attempt to provide relief from chronic pain and disease, even though our cultural imagination sees fumigation as confirming a woman’s innate, even animalized, difference from man. Women’s noses, fearful of smelling fishy, old or unclean, seek out products and therapies which promise to mask or eliminate unwanted odours. Hunter’s bride questions whether or not these odours should be unwanted in the first place. When we begin to revel, like Medusa, in the gory stench of our own bodies, we start to recover the transformative experience of women like Scylla, whose fumigation reveals the power inherent in the olfactible uterus. The animalized womb, able to find sweet smells and turn away from foul ones, becomes not a tool for but a source of power and influence; it flips the script on the historical and commercial understanding of the female body and its sense of smell by making female body odour the root of women’s wellbeing, not the disease.

Notes 1. Taffy Brodesser-Akner, ‘The Big Business of Being Gwyneth Paltrow’, New York Times, 25 July 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/25/magazine/big-business-gwyneth-paltrowwellness.html. 2. Amanda L. Burke, ‘The Ancient Wonders of Yoni Steaming: Embrace and Enjoy It’, Vinazine, 23 October 2018, https://vinazine.com/2018/10/23/the-ancient-wonders-of-yoni-steaming/. 3. Kristin Gonzalez, ‘Research: Bibliography of References to Vaginal Steaming’, Steamy Chick, http://www.steamychick.com/research/. 4. ‘Why does V-steaming work?’ Ancient Essence, https://www.ancientessence.org/why-does-vsteaming-work. 5. ‘Guide to Yoni Steaming’, Women’s Wellness Collective Journal, 24 September 2018, https:// thewomenswellnesscollective.com/journal/2018/9/24/guide-to-yoni-steaming. 6. Danny L. Jorgensen and Scott E. Russell, ‘American Neopaganism: The Participants, Social Identities’, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 38, no. 3 (September 1999): 325–38, doi: 10.2307/1387755. 7. Many of these rituals centre on the old-European ‘mother’ goddesses discussed by Marija Gimbutas in the 1960s and 1970s. Although Neopagan circles continue to embrace them, modern scholarship rejects these theories. See Linda Jencson, ‘Neopaganism and the Great Mother Goddess: Anthropology as Midwife to a New Religion’, Anthropology Today 5, no. 2 (April 1989): 4, doi: 10.2307/3033137, and Marija Gimbutas, The Language of the Goddess (New York: Harper and Row, 1989). 8. Emma Chekroun, ‘Witch Hunt: An Intimate Look into the Witch’s Cauldron’, The Wake, 19 November 2018, https://www.wakemag.org/features/2018/11/19/witch-hunt. 9. Brodesser-Akner, ‘The Big Business of Being Gwyneth Paltrow’. 10. Helen King, Hippocrates’ Woman: Reading the Female Body in Ancient Greece (New York: Routledge, 1998), 238–41. 11. Pauline Ripat, ‘Roman Women, Wise Women, and Witches’, Phoenix 70, no. 1–2 (Spring– Summer 2016): 104–28. For an overview of witches in Graeco-Roman literature, see Barbette 88

From Gorgons to Goop Stanley Spaeth, ‘From Goddess to Hag: The Greek and Roman Witch’, in Daughters of Hecate: Women and Magic in the Ancient World, ed. Kimberly B. Stratton and Dayna S. Kalleres (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 41–70. 12. Britta Ager, ‘Magic Perfumes and Deadly Herbs: The Scent of Witches’ Magic in Classical Literature’, Preternatural 8, no. 1 (2019): 1–34. 13. Centuries before Ovid transformed Medusa and Scylla into part-women, part-beasts, Hesiod’s Ceto gave birth to a number of hybrid creatures, including the Gorgons and Echidna, snake-maidens with prodigious offspring. See Jenny Strauss Clay, ‘The Generation of Monsters in Hesiod’, Classical Philology 88, no. 2 (1993): 105–16. 14. Graeco-Roman mythology associates both with stinking or fetid animals: Medusa with snakes, Scylla with dogs. See Daniel Ogden, Drakōn: Dragon Myth and Serpent Cult in the Greek and Roman Worlds (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), and Cristiana Franco, Shameless: The Canine and the Feminine in Ancient Greece (Oakland: University of California Press, 2014). 15. Mark Bradley, ‘Foul Bodies in Ancient Rome’, in Smell and the Ancient Senses, ed. Mark Bradley (London: Routledge, 2015), 133. 16. Anne Carson, ‘Putting Her in Her Place: Women, Dirt, and Desire’, in Before Sexuality: The Construction of the Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World, ed. David M. Halperin, John J. Winkler and Froma I. Zeitlin (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), 133, argues that this boundlessness allowed women to deteriorate into different, lesser forms in classical mythology and literature. 17. Ager, ‘Magic Perfumes and Deadly Herbs’. Amy Richlin, ‘Making Up a Woman: The Face of Roman Gender’, in Off with Her Head! The Denial of Women’s Identity in Myth, Religion, and Culture, ed. H. Eilberg-Schwartz and W. Doniger (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 185–213, has discussed the place of smell in her work on make-up in Ovid and Lucan, while Shane Butler, ‘Making Scents of Ancient Poetry’, in Smell and the Ancient Senses, ed. Mark Bradley (London: Routledge, 2015), 74–91, has discussed perfume in Virgil and Lucretius, but these authors treat, for the most part, the scents and senses of everyday Roman culture, not mythology or magic. 18. Ripat, ‘Roman Women, Wise Women, and Witches’. 19. Christopher Faraone, ‘Magical and Medical Approaches to the Wandering Womb in the Ancient Greek World’, Classical Antiquity 30, no. 1 (April 2011): 1–32. 20. Faraone, ‘Magical and Medical Approaches to the Wandering Womb’, 16. 21. On theriomorphic transformations, see Ingvild S. Gilhus, Animals, Gods and Humans: Changing Attitudes to Animals in Greek, Roman, and Early Christian Ideas (London: Routledge, 2006). 22. Greg, ‘Nicola Hunter: Lost Bodies’, Outline: Norwich Born and Read, 2016, http://www. outlineonline.co.uk/content/nicola-hunter-lost-bodies/theatre/120130/2498, and Lisa Sterz, ‘Nicola Hunter – Lost Bodies (2016)’, Incident Magazine, 2016, https://incidentmag.com/tag/ nicola-hunter/. 23. King, Hippocrates’ Woman, 119; Lesley A. Dean-Jones, Women’s Bodies in Classical Greek Science (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 73–4; Faraone, ‘Magical and Medical Approaches to the Wandering Womb’; and Rebecca Flemming, Medicine and the Making of Roman Women (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). 24. In the ancient imagination, vaginal fumigation stems from the ‘wandering’ animal womb, a theory first proposed by Plato in the Timaeus (fifth century bce ) and taken up by Aretaeus (On the Causes and Symptoms of Acute Diseases 2.11, first century ce ). The logic driving scent therapy stemmed from a belief that the womb, like the sentient penis, was an animal with 89

The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in The Modern Imagination clear thoughts, desires, and needs: ‘whenever the matrix or womb [. . .] being an internal animal that wants children, is childless for a long time, it becomes very upset and wanders all over the body, and it blocks the breath’s passageways and does not allow respiration, and it casts the body into dire straits and causes all kinds of diseases’ (‘αὖ μῆτραί τε καὶ ὑστέραι [. . .] ζῶον ἐπιθυμητικὸν ἐνὸν τῆς παιδοποιίας, ὅταν ἄκαρπον παρὰ τὴν ὥραν χρόνον πολὺν γίγνηται, χαλεπῶς ἀγανακτοῦν φέρει, καὶ πλανώμενον πάντη κατὰ τὸ σῶμα, τὰς τοῦ πνεύματος διεξόδους ἀποφράττον, ἀναπνεῖν οὐκ ἐῶν εἰς ἀπορίας τὰς ἐσχάτας ἐμβάλλει καὶ νόσους παντοδαπὰς ἄλλας παρέχει’, 91c–d). All translations are the author’s own unless noted otherwise. 25. Hippocrates, Diseases of Women 2.146, Nature of Women 96, and ‘Disease of Virgins’. 26. Faraone, ‘Magical and Medical Approaches to the Wandering Womb’, 16. 27. On additional treatments like amulets, see Véronique Dasen and Sandrine Ducaté-Paarman, ‘Hysteria and Metaphors of the Uterus in Classical Antiquity’, in Images and Gender: Contributions to the Hermeneutics of Reading Ancient Art, ed. S. Schroer (Fribourg: Academic Press, 2006), 239–62. 28. See full passage in Helen King, ‘Once Upon a Text: Hysteria from Hippocrates’, in Hysteria Beyond Freud, ed. Sander L. Gilman, H. King, Roy Porter, G. S. Rousseau and Elaine Showalter (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 21. 29. Soranus, Gynecology 1.8: ‘Although the uterus is not an animal (as it appeared to some people), it is, nevertheless, similar in certain respects, having a sense of touch, so that is contracted by cooling agents but relaxed by loosening ones.’ Translated by Oswei Temkin, Soranus’ Gynecology (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1956), 9–10. Cf. Galen, On the Affected Parts 6.5. 30. Monica H. Green, The Trotula: An English Translation of the Medieval Compendium of Women’s Medicine (Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 2003), 48. 31. Faraone, ‘Magical and Medical Approaches to the Wandering Womb’, 13–20. Sulphur, for example, could purify and cure disease, but it also caused suffocation, one of the wasting symptoms of envy. 32. Faraone, ‘Magical and Medical Approaches to the Wandering Womb’, 16. 33. Pliny, Natural History 28.77. 34. Pliny, Natural History 28.20: ‘If hair is burned, its odor drives snakes away, and by the same vapor, women strangled by a disease of the vulva breath’ (‘capilli si crementur, odore serpentes fugari, eodem nidore vulvae morbo strangulatas respirare’). 35. Pliny, Natural History 7.13. 36. Pliny, Natural History 28.23: ‘In fact, many say that such a great evil is a cure, in that smeared it cures gout, and that men are cured of scrofula, parotid tumors, superficial abscesses, erysipelas, boils and eye-fluxes by the touch of a woman in this state’ (‘multi vero inesse etiam remedia tanto malo, podagris inlini, strumas et parotidas et panos, sacros ignes, furunculos, epiphoras tractatu mulierum earum leniri’). 37. Pliny, Natural History 28.23: ‘In fact added to soot and wax, the ash of menstrual fluid, when burned, heals the sores of draft animals [. . .] the ash, mixed with rose oil, relieves headache when applied to the forehead’ (‘cinere eo iumentorum omnium ulcera sanari certum est addita caminorum farina et cera [. . .] cinerem per se rosaceo mixtum feminarum praecipue capitis dolores sedare inlitum fronti’). 38. Ripat, ‘Roman Women, Wise Women, and Witches’, 118. 39. Ovid, Metamorphoses 753–803.

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From Gorgons to Goop 40. Sigmund Freud, ‘Fetishism’ (1927), in Miscellaneous Papers, 1888–1938, Collected Papers vol. 5 (London: Hogarth Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1924–50), 198–204, https://cpb-us-w2. wpmucdn.com/portfolio.newschool.edu/dist/9/3921/files/2015/03/Freud-Fetishism-19272b52v1u.pdf. 41. Daniel Ogden, Drakōn and Dragons, Serpents, and Slayers in the Classical and Early Christian Worlds: A Sourcebook (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). The latter (2–4) notes that the Greek word δράκων and its Latin ‘equivalent’, draco, represent merely a subset of the ‘snake’ category, which can also include the terms ὄφις in Greek and anguis or serpens in Latin (the ‘garden variety’ snake we might fight outside the world of myth). See also the former (4, n. 6), where Ogden argues that the LSJ is wrong in equating δράκων with ὄφις. Δράκων, he suggests, only means, at the very least, a very large snake, never a small one. 42. Ogden, Drakōn, 229–30. 43. Throughout this section of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Invidia is not so much the fumigator as the fumigator’s tool, the embodiment of slow, wasting poison. In many ways, she is the doppelgänger of Medusa, whose own nature has similar powers of petrification. Invidia smiles like the fanged head of Medusa on Minerva’s aegis, a reminder of the goddesses’ power: ‘Her sight is never straight, her teeth are livid with decay, breast green with bile, and tongue suffused with venom. There’s never a smile on her face, except whenever she sees someone suffering [. . .]’ (‘nusquam recta acies, livent robigine dentes, / pectora felle virent, lingua est suffusa veneno; / risus abest, nisi quem visi movere dolores’, 2.776–82). From this sadistic smile emanates a stench which overcomes Aglauros: ‘afterward she entered the bedroom of Cecrop’s daughter, and she carried out [Minerva’s] command [. . .] she breathes her harmful stench and spreads black venom through [Aglauros’] bones and scatters it in her lungs’ (‘sed postquam thalamos intravit Cecrope natae, / iussa facit [. . .] inspiratque nocens virus piceumque per ossa / dissipat et medio spargit pulmone venenum’, 2.776–82 and 796–80). Aglauros slowly suffocates, her body blighted by Invidia’s ‘harmful stench’ (nocens virus, 2.796) before turning into a rock. 44. Both monsters are serpentine: as Furies, they carry out orders of divine vengeance via their blood, breath and body. In Book 2, Minerva orders Invidia to punish Aglauros for frustrating Mercury’s abduction of her sister Herse. Although the goddess is disgusted by Invidia’s gross, snakelike appearance (‘videt intus edentem / vipereas carnes, vitiorum alimenta suorum, / Invidiam visaque oculos avertit’, ‘she could see Invidia inside, eating the meat of vipers which fed Invidia’s own venom, and upon seeing her, she averted her eyes’, Ovid, Metamorphoses 773–5), she still orders Invidia to blight Aglauros with her venom: the transformation is not instantaneous but a slow, odorous process. See Charles Segal, ‘Ovid’s Metamorphic Bodies: Art, Gender, and Violence in the “Metamorphoses” ’, Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics 5, no. 3 (Winter 1998): 15. 45. Lucan, Pharsalia 9.632–5: ‘In a woman’s hair style, they hung loose down her back but rose straight up over her forehead. The vipers’ venom flowed when her hair was brushed’ (‘femineae cui more comae per terga solutae / surgunt aduersa subrectae fronte colubrae / uipereumque fluit depexo crine uenenum’). 46. I borrow ‘petrification’ for tabes here from Ogden, Dragons, Serpents, and Slayers, 89, which better captures the miasma and vaporization of Medusa’s fumigating agents than the more common ‘wasting’ or ‘decay’. 47. Lucan, Pharsalia 9.696–702 (‘illa tamen sterilis tellus fecundaque nulli / arua bono virus stillantis tabe Medusae / concipiunt dirosque fero de sanguine rores, / quos calor adiuvit putrique incoxit harenae. / hic quae prima caput mouit de puluere tabes / aspida somniferam tumida cervice leuauit’). 48. Ripat, ‘Roman Women, Wise Women, and Witches’, 116.

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The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in The Modern Imagination 49. Excerpted in Marjorie Garber and Nancy J. Vickers, The Medusa Reader (New York: Routledge, 2003), 60–1. 50. Cf. Peter Paul Ruben’s The Head of Medusa (1618), which shows snakes riggling out of her scalp and throat in a miasmatic display of spontaneous reproduction. See also Curtis Dozier, ‘Hungry Eyes: Medusa from the Ancient World to Sports Illustrated’, Eidolon, 27 April 2015, https://eidolon.pub/medusa-on-the-beach-d3c6c70bb6b0. 51. Galen, On the Affected Parts 6.15. For Pliny, see above. 52. Other offenders being breast milk, lochial fluid, urine and feces. See Laurence Totelin, ‘Smell as Sign and Cure in Ancient Medicine’, in Smell and the Ancient Senses, ed. Mark Bradley (London: Routledge, 2015), 24. 53. Lucretius, De Rerum Natura 4.1171–91; see Robert D. Brown, ‘Lucretius’ Malodorous Mistress (De Rerum Natura 4.1175)’, Classical Journal 113, no. 1 (September–November 2017): 26–43, and Butler, ‘Making Scents of Ancient Poetry’, 84–6. 54. Today, perfume is usually delivered by alcohol. Cf. discussion below on essential oils. 55. Jane Draycott, ‘Smelling Trees, Flowers, and Herbs’, in Smell and the Ancient Senses, ed. Mark Bradley (London: Routledge, 2015), 60–73. 56. Mireille M. Lee, ‘Body-Modifications in Classical Greece’, in Bodies and Boundaries in Graeco-Roman Antiquity, ed. Thorsten Fögen and Mireille M. Lee (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2009), 100; Bradley, ‘Foul Bodies in Ancient Rome’, 139. 57. David Potter, ‘The Scent of Roman Dining’, in Smell and the Ancient Senses, ed. Mark Bradley (London: Routledge, 2015), 121. 58. Absent from Apollonius’ Argonautica but a possibility in Apollodorus 1.114, the scholia to Pindar, Pythian 4.88b, and Zenobius 4.91, Aphrodite curses the Lemnian women with a foul smell, which repels their husbands, whom they eventually murder. See Steven Jackson, ‘Myrsilus of Methymna and the Dreadful Smell of the Lemnian Women’, Illinois Classical Studies 15, no. 1 (Spring 1990): 77–83, and Joel Christensen, ‘Gender, Smell and Lemnos: More Misogyny from Greek Myth’, Sententiae Antiquae, 7 April 2017, https://sententiaeantiquae. com/2017/04/07/gender-smell-and-lemnos-more-misogyny-from-greek-myth/. 59. Ager, ‘Magic Perfumes and Deadly Herbs’. 60. Though discussion of its odour is usually absent, even when discussing alliums and other strong-smelling plants. See Jerry Stannard, ‘The Plant Called Moly’, Osiris 142 (1962): 261, https://www.jstor.org/stable/301871. 61. Homer, Odyssey 10.230–41. 62. Richard Jenkyns, Virgil’s Experience: Nature and History: Times, Names, and Places (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 468, and God, Space, and City in the Roman Imagination (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 41. 63. Virgil, Aeneid 7.10–20 (‘tectisque superbis / urit odoratam nocturna in lumina cedrum [. . .] / hinc exaudiri gemitus iraeque leonum / vincla recusantum et sera sub nocte rudentum, / saetigerique sues atque in praesaepibus ursi / saevire ac formae magnorum ululare luporum, / quos hominum ex facie dea saeva potentibus herbis / induerat Circe in voltus ac terga ferarum’). 64. Ager, ‘Magic Perfumes and Deadly Herbs’. 65. For a further discussion of the post-Homeric reception of Circe, see Irene Berti, ‘Le metamorfosi di Circe: dea, maga e femme fatale’ in StatusQuaestiones no. 8 (2015): 110–40. 66. Ibid. 67. Ovid, Metamorphoses 14.56: ‘liquids pressed form noxious roots’ (pressos latices radice nocenti). 92

From Gorgons to Goop 68. Ovid, Metamorphoses 14.48–67 (‘ingreditur ferventes aestibus undas, / in quibus ut solida ponit vestigia terra / summaque decurrit pedibus super aequora siccis. / parvus erat gurges, curvos sinuatus in arcus, / grata quies Scyllae: quo se referebat ab aestu / et maris et caeli, medio cum plurimus orbe / sol erat et minimas a vertice fecerat umbras. / hunc dea praevitiat portentificisque venenis / inquinat; hic pressos latices radice nocenti / spargit et obscurum verborum ambage novorum / ter noviens carmen magico demurmurat ore. / Scylla venit mediaque tenus descenderat alvo, / cum sua foedari latrantibus inguina monstris / adspicit ac primo credens non corporis illas / esse sui partes, refugitque abigitque timetque / ora proterva canum, sed quos fugit, attrahit una / et corpus quaerens femorum crurumque pedumque / Cerbereos rictus pro partibus invenit illis: / statque canum rabie subiectaque terga ferarum / inguinibus truncis uteroque exstante coercet’). 69. In Hippocrates’ Regimen 2.46, ‘dog’s flesh dries, heats and strengthens’ (‘κύνεια ξηραίνει καὶ θερμαίνει καὶ ἰσχὺν ἐμποιεῖ’). See King, Hippocrates’ Woman, 25. The addition of dogs here, attested in the iconographic tradition and alluding to the Dog Star, only enhances the heat of the scene. See Hopman, Scylla 93–106. 70. Cf. Segal, ‘Ovid’s Metamorphic Bodies’, 31, on Scylla’s transformation as a monstrous birth. 71. Sarah Alison Miller, ‘Monstrous Sexuality: Variations on the Vagina Dentata’, in The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous, ed. Asa Simon Mittman and Peter J. Dendle (Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2017), 316–21. 72. Virgil, Aeneid 3.426–28: ‘Above she has a human appearance and all the way down her beautiful breast she is like a young virgin, but below her huge body lies a sea monster, the tails of dolphins attached to a womb of wolves’ (‘prima hominis facies et pulchro pectore virgo pube tenus, postrema immani corpore pistrix delphinum caudas utero commissa luporum’); Ovid, Metamorphoses 14.67, see above. 73. Nicholas Horsfall, Vergil, Aeneid 3: A Commentary (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 187–8; Miller, ‘Monstrous Sexuality’, 319, n. 80. 74. Paul Murgatroyd, Mythical Monsters in Classical Literature (London: Bloomsbury, 2007), 63–9. 75. Diana Felton, ‘Were Vergil’s Harpies Menstruating?’, Classical Journal 108, no. 4 (April 2013): 405–18. 76. Keala Jewell, Monsters in the Italian Literary Imagination (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2001), 110–25. Cf. Sin in John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667). See Miller, ‘Monstrous Sexuality’, 210, and Mandy Green, Milton’s Ovidian Eve (London: Routledge, 2016), 91. 77. For odiferous transformations such as Ino’s and Athamas’, see above discussion of Tisiphone and Invidia. Cf. Adonis’ fragrant transformation (Ovid, Metamorphoses 10.856–87), see discussion in Miriam Jacobson, Barbarous Antiquity: Reorienting the Past in the Poetry of Early Modern England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014). 78. New Age, integrative medicine combines both traditional and alternative medicine; integrative medical centres are now common throughout the United States. See David H. Freedman, ‘The Triumph of New Age Medicine’, The Atlantic, July/August 2011, https://www. theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/07/the-triumph-of-new-age-medicine/308554/. 79. Hugh Urban, New Age, Neopagan, and New Religious Movements: Alternative Spirituality in Contemporary America (Oakland: University of California Press, 2015), www.jstor.org/ stable/10.1525/j.ctv1wxrsk, 8–10 and 166–7. While neopaganism’s loosely organized structure make it difficult to study, it is distinctly separate from New Age spirituality, which has what Urban calls a ‘forward-thinking mentality’ (5). While both groups make use of similar practices such as meditation, aromatherapy, crystals, holistic medicine, etc., these new religious movements offer different but complementary assurances to those who follow them, particularly women (221–2). New Age medicine, also known as holistic, complementary or 93

The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in The Modern Imagination alternative medicine, offers health care which falls under both neopagan and New Age practices. 80. Although neopagan cults existed before the 1950s and 1960s in various forms, the publication of two books, Witchcraft Today (1955) and The Meaning of Witchcraft (1959) by Gerald Gardner, catalyzed the contemporary neopagan movement, particularly Wicca, Druidism and Dianism. See, Jencson, ‘Neopaganism and the Great Mother Goddess’. Scholars like Margaret Murray and Marija Gimbutas further influenced the development of various spiritual practices, namely worship of a primordial, pre-Bronze Age mother goddess or ‘Great Goddess’, within neopagan circles (Jencson, ‘Neopaganism and the Great Mother Goddess’, 4). In the 1980s and 1990s, adherents to neopaganism drew on the works of these and other scholars, especially Gimbutas’ fieldwork in Çatal Höyük and her archaeological illustrations, to inform their daily practices (Jencson, ‘Neopaganism and the Great Mother Goddess’, 4). While British Wicca claims to be the spiritual successor to a pre-modern, pre-Christian religion in Europe, North American Wicca in particular draws on esoteric practices from across the globe: shamanic traditions from North and Central America, goddess worship from Europe and North Africa, holistic medicine from East Asia, Voodoo from the Caribbean, etc. See Jorgensen and Russell, ‘American Neopaganism’. Many practitioners are feminists; neopaganism gained popularity in conjunction with second-wave feminism, which advocated cultural equality and gender equity. Neopaganism also gained traction alongside the environmentalist movement and advocates for the restoration of the earth through preChristian, Goddess-centred naturalism. Wiccans and other neopagans align women with the earth in way that is counter to ancient, male-centred philosophy: woman’s association with the earth heals rather than harms her (and by proxy the earth’s) body. See Urban, New Age, Neopagan, and New Religious Movements, 169–73. 81. Although men can be influencers too, data collected in 2018 on 2.11 million sponsored Instagram posts show that 84.6 per cent of influencers identify as female. See A. Guttman, ‘Distribution of influencers creating sponsored posts on Instagram worldwide in 2018, by gender’, Statista, 21 March 2019, https://www.statista.com/statistics/893749/share-influencerscreating-sponsored-posts-by-gender/. 82. When women in the 1980s and 1990s turned to women’s magazines and Oprah for advice on treating, for example, menopause without hormones or chemicals, today they turn to new media like Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, where Goop has a significant presence and impact on those sites’ users. See Jane Lewis, ‘Feminism, the Menopause and Hormone Replacement Therapy’, Feminist Review 43 (1993): 38–56, doi:10.2307/1395068, and Michele White, ‘Networked Bodies and Extended Corporealities: Theorizing the Relationship between the Body, Embodiment, and Contemporary New Media’, Feminist Studies 35, no. 3 (2009): 603–24, www.jstor.org/stable/40608394. 83. John M. Riddle, Goddesses, Elixirs, and Witches: Plants and Sexuality throughout Human History (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 83. 84. Riddle, Goddesses, Elixirs, and Witches, 79–113, and Helen King, ‘Floating wombs and fumigation – why Gwyneth Paltrow has “steam douching” all wrong’, The Conversation, 6 February 2015, https://theconversation.com/floating-wombs-and-fumigation-whygwyneth-paltrow-has-steam-douching-all-wrong-37006. 85. Hanne Blank, ‘A Pot of Herbs, a Plastic Sheet, and Thou: A Historian Goes for a “V-Steam” ’, Nursing Clio, 4 August 2015, https://nursingclio. org/2015/08/04/a-pot-of-herbs-a-plastic-sheet-and-thou-a-historian-goes-for-a-v-steam/. 86. ‘Tikkun Spa’, The Infrared Sauna and Spa Guide, Goop, 2015, https://goop.com/health-andbeauty/california/los-angeles/santa-monica/tikkun-spa/.

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From Gorgons to Goop 87. Amanda L. Jenkins, ‘ “Hairless, Odourless, Bleached, and Clean”: Exploring Women’s Experiences of the Vagina in Connection with Vaginal Cleansing Products’, PhD diss. (Guelph, Ontario: University of Guelph, 2019), 20–1. 88. Google trends show an increase in interest beginning in 2013 with a rise in 2015. The sharpest peak occurred in early 2019. 89. Jen Gunter, ‘Gwyneth Paltrow says steam your vagina, an OB/GYN says don’t’, Dr. Jen Gunter: Wielding the Lasso of Truth, 27 January 2015, https://drjengunter.wordpress.com/2015/01/27/ gwyneth-paltrow-says-steam-your-vagina-an-obgyn-says-dont/. 90. In an article for Scientific American, later pulled from the site after backlash from Gunter, Jennifer Block argued that Gunter risks further harming female agency by using her platform to debunk methods which thousands of women trust over their own doctors. For an overview of the situation, see Susan Matthews, ‘How Scientific American Ended Up at the Center of a Massive Twitter War’, Slate, 3 December 2019, https://slate.com/technology/2019/12/ jen-gunter-jennifer-block-scientific-american.html. 91. Greg, ‘Nicola Hunter’. 92. An edited video of the performance may be seen on Hunter’s website. See Hunter, Lost Bodies, Performance Art, 2016, https://www.nicolahunter.com/lost-bodies.html. 93. Emphasis by the author. 94. Baubo, Gorgo, Qudshu, the Sheela-na-gig, etc. See Nicola Hunter, Raising the Skirt, Performance Art, 2014–18, https://www.raisingtheskirt.com/.

Bibliography Ager, Britta. ‘Magic Perfumes and Deadly Herbs: The Scent of Witches’ Magic in Classical Literature’. Preternatural 8, no. 1 (2019): 1–34. Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy. Revised edition edited and translated by Charles S. Singleton. Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, 1973. Apollonius. Argonautica. Revised edition edited by William H. Race. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 2009. Beck, Lauren H. ‘I went to a spa for a uterus and this is my story’. Fast Company, 27 January 2015, https://www.fastcompany.com/3041307/i-went-to-a-spa-for-my-uterus-and-this-is-my-story. Berti, Irene. ‘Le metamorfosi di Circe: dea, maga e femme fatale’. StatusQuaestionis 8 (2015): 110–40, https://ojs.uniroma1.it/index.php/statusquaestionis/article/view/13143/12963. Blank, Hanne. ‘A Pot of Herbs, a Plastic Sheet, and Thou: A Historian Goes for a “V-Steam” ’. Nursing Clio, 4 August 2015, https://nursingclio. org/2015/08/04/a-pot-of-herbs-a-plastic-sheet-and-thou-a-historian-goes-for-a-v-steam/. Bradley, Mark. ‘Foul Bodies in Ancient Rome’. In Smell and the Ancient Senses, edited by Mark Bradley, 133–45. London: Routledge, 2015 (E-book). Brodesser-Akner, Taffy. ‘The Big Business of Being Gwyneth Paltrow’. New York Times, 25 July 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/25/magazine/big-business-gwyneth-paltrow-wellness.html. Brown, Robert D. ‘Lucretius’ Malodorous Mistress (De Rerum Natura 4.1175)’. Classical Journal 113, no. 1 (September–November 2017): 26–43. Burke, Amanda L. ‘The Ancient Wonders of Yoni Steaming: Embrace and Enjoy It’. Vinazine, 23 October 2018, https://vinazine.com/2018/10/23/the-ancient-wonders-of-yoni-steaming/. Butler, Shane. ‘Making Scents of Ancient Poetry’. In Smell and the Ancient Senses, edited by Mark Bradley, 74–91. London: Routledge, 2015.

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The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in The Modern Imagination Carson, Anne. ‘Putting Her in Her Place: Women, Dirt, and Desire’. In Before Sexuality: The Construction of the Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World, edited by David M. Halperin, John J. Winkler and Froma I. Zeitlin, 135–70. Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, 1990. Charlesworth, James H. The Good and Evil Serpent: How a Universal Symbol Became Christianized. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010. Chekroun, Emma. ‘Witch Hunt: An Intimate Look into the Witch’s Cauldron’. The Wake, 19 November 2018, https://www.wakemag.org/features/2018/11/19/witch-hunt. Christensen, Joel. ‘Gender, Smell and Lemnos: More Misogyny from Greek Myth’. Sententiae Antiquae, 7 April 2017, https://sententiaeantiquae.com/2017/04/07/gender-smell-andlemnos-more-misogyny-from-greek-myth/. Clay, Jenny Strauss. ‘The Generation of Monsters in Hesiod’. Classical Philology 88, no. 2 (1993): 105–16. Dasen, Véronique and Sandrine Ducaté-Paarman. ‘Hysteria and Metaphors of the Uterus in Classical Antiquity’. In Images and Gender: Contributions to the Hermeneutics of Reading Ancient Art, edited by S. Schroer, 239–62. Fribourg: Academic Press, 2006. Dean-Jones, Lesley A. Women’s Bodies in Classical Greek Science. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994. Demand, Nancy. Birth, Death, and Motherhood in Classical Greece. Baltimore, MD : Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994. Dozier, Curtis. ‘Hungry Eyes: Medusa from the Ancient World to Sports Illustrated’. Eidolon, 27 April 2015, https://eidolon.pub/medusa-on-the-beach-d3c6c70bb6b0. Draycott, Jane. ‘Smelling Trees, Flowers, and Herbs’. In Smell and the Ancient Senses, edited by Mark Bradley, 60–73. London: Routledge, 2015. Faraone, Christopher A. ‘Magical and Medical Approaches to the Wandering Womb in the Ancient Greek World’. Classical Antiquity 30, no. 1 (April 2011): 1–32. Felton, Diana. ‘Were Vergil’s Harpies Menstruating?’ Classical Journal 108, no. 4 (April 2013): 405–18. Flemming, Rebecca. Medicine and the Making of Roman Women. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Franco, Cristiana. Shameless: The Canine and the Feminine in Ancient Greece. Oakland: University of California Press, 2018. Freedman, David H. ‘The Triumph of New Age Medicine’. The Atlantic, July/August 2011, https:// www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/07/the-triumph-of-new-age-medicine/308554/. Freud, Sigmund. ‘Fetishism’ (1927). In Miscellaneous Papers, 1888–1938, Collected Papers, vol. 5, 198–204. London: Hogarth Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1924–50, https://cpb-us-w2. wpmucdn.com/portfolio.newschool.edu/dist/9/3921/files/2015/03/Freud-Fetishism-19272b52v1u.pdf. Galen. On the Affected Parts. Revised edition edited by Rudolph E. Siegel. Basel: S. Karger, 1976. Garber, Marjorie and Nancy J. Vickers. The Medusa Reader. New York: Routledge, 2003. Gilhus, Ingvild S. Animals, Gods and Humans: Changing Attitudes to Animals in Greek, Roman, and Early Christian Ideas. London: Routledge, 2006. Gimbutas, Marija. The Language of the Goddess. New York: Harper & Row, 1989. Gonzalez, Kristin. ‘Research: Bibliography of References to Vaginal Steaming’. Steamy Chick, http://www.steamychick.com/research/. Goode, Starr. Sheela na gig: The Dark Goddess of Sacred Power. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2016. Green, Mandy. Milton’s Ovidian Eve. London: Routledge, 2016. Green, Monica H., ed. The Trotula: An English Translation of the Medieval Compendium of Women’s Medicine. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003. Greg. ‘Nicola Hunter: Lost Bodies’. Outline: Norwich Born and Read, 2016, http://www. outlineonline.co.uk/content/nicola-hunter-lost-bodies/theatre/120130/2498. ‘Guide to Yoni Steaming’. Women’s Wellness Collective Journal, 24 September 2018, https:// thewomenswellnesscollective.com/journal/2018/9/24/guide-to-yoni-steaming. 96

From Gorgons to Goop Gunter, Jen. ‘Gwyneth Paltrow says steam your vagina, an OB/GYN says don’t’. Dr. Jen Gunter: Wielding the Lasso of Truth, 27 January 2015, https://drjengunter.wordpress.com/2015/01/27/ gwyneth-paltrow-says-steam-your-vagina-an-obgyn-says-dont/. Guttman, A. ‘Distribution of influencers creating sponsored posts on Instagram worldwide in 2018, by gender’. Statista, 21 March 2019, https://www.statista.com/statistics/893749/ share-influencers-creating-sponsored-posts-by-gender/. Hippocrates. ‘Disease of Virgins’. In Hippocrates, Volume IX . Revised edition edited by Paul Potter. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 2010. Hippocrates. Nature of Women. Revised edition edited by Paul Potter. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 2012. Hippocrates. Diseases of Women 1–2. Revised edition edited by Paul Potter. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 2018. Homer. Odyssey. Translated by At. Murray. Revised edition edited by George E. Dimock. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 1919. Hopman, Marianne Govers. Scylla: Myth, Metaphor, Paradox. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Horsfall, Nicholas. Vergil, Aeneid 3: A Commentary. Leiden: Brill, 2006. Howe, Thalia Phillies. ‘The Origin and Function of the Gorgon-Head’. American Journal of Archaeology (1954): 209–21. Hunter, Nicola. Raising the Skirt. Performance Art, 2014–18, https://www.raisingtheskirt.com/. Hunter, Nicola. Lost Bodies. Performance Art, 2016, https://www.nicolahunter.com/lost-bodies. html. Jackson, Steven. ‘Myrsilus of Methymna and the Dreadful Smell of the Lemnian Women’. Illinois Classical Studies 15, no. 1 (Spring 1990): 77–83 Jacobson, Miriam. Barbarous Antiquity: Reorienting the Past in the Poetry of Early Modern England. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014. Jencson, Linda. ‘Neopaganism and the Great Mother Goddess: Anthropology as Midwife to a New Religion’. Anthropology Today 5, no. 2 (April 1989): 2–4, doi: 10.2307/3033137. Jenkins, Amanda L. ‘ “Hairless, Odourless, Bleached, and Clean”: Exploring Women’s Experiences of the Vagina in Connection with Vaginal Cleansing Products’. PhD dissertation. Guelph, Ontario: University of Guelph, 2019. Jenkyns, Richard. Virgil’s Experience: Nature and History: Times, Names, and Places. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. Jenkyns, Richard. God, Space, and City in the Roman Imagination. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Jewell, Keala. Monsters in the Italian Literary Imagination. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2001. Jorgensen, Danny L. and Scott E. Russell. ‘American Neopaganism: The Participants’ Social Identities’. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 38, no. 3 (September 1999): 325–38, doi: 10.2307/1387755. Jouanna, Jacques. Hippocrates. Translated by M. B. DeBevoise. Baltimore, MD : Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. Jouanna, Jacques. Greek Medicine from Hippocrates to Galen: Select Papers. Translated by Neil Allies. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Khazan, Olga. ‘The Baffling Rise of Goop: How a new-agey website started by an actress became so popular – and what it says about the future of health journalism’. The Atlantic, 12 September 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/09/gooppopularity/539064/. King, Helen. ‘Once Upon a Text: Hysteria from Hippocrates’, in Hysteria Beyond Freud, edited by Sander L. Gilman, H. King, Roy Porter, G. S. Rousseau and Elaine Showalter, 3–90. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. 97

The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in The Modern Imagination King, Helen. Hippocrates’ Woman: Reading the Female Body in Ancient Greece. New York: Routledge, 1998. King, Helen. ‘Floating wombs and fumigation – why Gwyneth Paltrow has “steam douching” all wrong’. The Conversation, 6 February 2015, https://theconversation.com/floating-wombs-andfumigation-why-gwyneth-paltrow-has-steam-douching-all-wrong-37006. Lateiner, Donald. ‘Olfactoring Ancient Fictions’. In Rewiring the Ancient Novel, edited by Edmund Cueva, Stephen Harrison, Hugh Mason, William Owens and Saundra Schwartz, 312–53. Groningen: Barkuis and Groningen University Library, 2018. Lee, Mireille M. ‘Body-Modifications in Classical Greece’. In Bodies and Boundaries in GraecoRoman Antiquity, edited by Thorsten Fögen and Mireille M. Lee, 155–80. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2009. Lewis, Jane. ‘Feminism, the Menopause and Hormone Replacement Therapy’. Feminist Review 43 (1993): 38–56, doi:10.2307/1395068. Lubell, Winnifred Milius. The Metamorphosis of Baubo: Myths of Women’s Sexual Energy. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1994. Lucan. Pharsalia. Revised edition edited by J. D. Duff. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 1928. Matthews, Susan. ‘How Scientific American Ended Up at the Center of a Massive Twitter War’. Slate, 3 December 2019, https://slate.com/technology/2019/12/jen-gunter-jennifer-blockscientific-american.html. Miller, Madeline. Circe. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2018. Miller, Sarah Alison. ‘Monstrous Sexuality: Variations on the Vagina Dentata’. In The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous, edited by Asa Simon Mittman and Peter J. Dendle, 311–28. Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2017. Murgatroyd, Paul. Mythical Monsters in Classical Literature. London: Bloomsbury, 2007. Ogden, David. Dragons, Serpents, and Slayers in the Classical and Early Christian Worlds: A Sourcebook. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Ogden, David. Drakōn: Dragon Myth and Serpent Cult in the Greek and Roman Worlds. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Ovid. Metamorphoses. Revised edition edited by Frank Justus Miller. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 1916. Plato. Timaeus. Revised edition edited by R. G. Bury. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 1929. Pliny. Natural History. Revised edition edited by H. Rackham. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 1938. Potter, David. ‘The Scent of Roman Dining’. In Smell and the Ancient Senses, edited by Mark Bradley, 120–33. London: Routledge, 2015. Reynolds, Megan. ‘I exhausted myself relaxing at the “In Goop Health” summit’. Jezebel, 29 January 2018, https://jezebel. com/i-exhausted-myself-relaxing-at-the-in-goop-health-summi-1822496360. Richlin, Amy. ‘Making Up a Woman: The Face of Roman Gender’. In Off with Her Head! The Denial of Women’s Identity in Myth, Religion, and Culture, edited by Howard Eilberg-Schwartz and Wendy Doniger, 185–213. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. Riddle, John M. Goddesses, Elixirs, and Witches: Plants and Sexuality throughout Human History. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Ripat, Pauline. ‘Roman Women, Wise Women, and Witches’. Phoenix 70, no. 1–2 (Spring–Summer 2016): 104–28. Segal, Charles. ‘Ovid’s Metamorphic Bodies: Art, Gender, and Violence in the “Metamorphoses” ’. Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics 5, no. 3 (Winter 1998): 9–41. Soranus. Gynecology. Revised edition edited by Owsei Temkin. Baltimore, MD : Johns Hopkins University Press, 1956. 98

From Gorgons to Goop Spaeth, Barbette Stanley. ‘From Goddess to Hag: The Greek and Roman Witch’. In Daughters of Hecate: Women and Magic in the Ancient World, edited by Kimberly B. Stratton and Dayna S. Kalleres, 41–70. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Stannard, Jerry. ‘The Plant Called Moly’. Osiris 142 (1962): 254–307, https://www.jstor.org/ stable/301871. Stertz, Lisa. ‘Nicola Hunter – Lost Bodies (2016)’. Incident Magazine, 2016, https://incidentmag. com/tag/nicola-hunter/. ‘Tikkun Spa’. The Infrared Sauna and Spa Guide. Goop, 2015, https://goop.com/health-andbeauty/california/los-angeles/santa-monica/tikkun-spa/. Totelin, Laurence. ‘Smell as Sign and Cure in Ancient Medicine’. In Smell and the Ancient Senses, edited by Mark Bradley, 17–29. London: Routledge. 2015. Tsitsiou-Chelidoni, Chrysanthe. ‘Nomen Omen: Scylla’s Eloquent Name and Ovid’s Reply (Met. 8, 6–151)’. Materiali E Discussioni per L’analisi Dei Testi Classici 50 (2003): 195–203, doi:10.2307/40236436. Urban, Hugh B. New Age, Neopagan, and New Religious Movements: Alternative Spirituality in Contemporary America. Oakland: University of California Press, 2015, www.jstor.org/ stable/10.1525/j.ctv1wxrsk. Valerius Flaccus. Argonautica. Revised edition edited by J. H. Mozley. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 1934. Virgil. Aeneid. Revised edition edited by H. Rushton Fairclough. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 1999. White, Michele. ‘Networked Bodies and Extended Corporealities: Theorizing the Relationship between the Body, Embodiment, and Contemporary New Media’. Feminist Studies 35, no. 3 (2009): 603–24, www.jstor.org/stable/40608394. ‘Why does V-steaming work?’ Ancient Essence, https://www.ancientessence.org/why-does-vsteaming-work.

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CHAPTER 4 THE SMELL OF MARBLE: THE WARMTH AND SENSUALITY OF TWENTYFIRST CENTURY CLASSICAL BODIES 1 Tiphaine-Annabelle Besnard and Fabien Bièvre-Perrin

Introduction In contemporary visual productions in general, Antiquity is materialized through the intermediary of ideal bodies which take their inspiration from the vast corpus of ancient masterpieces and their neo-classical copies. By staging models, sportsmen and women, actors and actresses in the roles of the major figures of Antiquity or classical mythology, these productions convey an ideal of beauty and a very specific kind of sensuality. Notions of virility, femininity and sexuality are at the heart of these constructions which are linked to the history of the representation of the classical body in contemporary culture.2 This chapter will focus on photographic and filmographic images which have been strongly influenced by nationalist and militarist aesthetics, sports culture, cinema and advertising.3 Although the role of these different influences has been widely discussed in studies devoted to the history of the body, the part played by Antiquity has rarely been addressed even from a diachronic standpoint.4 Most studies concentrate on the twentieth century, but we will investigate the twenty-first. This chapter will not deal with the physical appearance of these bodies, and especially not the inspiration of the fascist aesthetic upon them, as Fabien Bièvre-Perrin and Élise Pampanay have already addressed the subject in 2018; rather, it will explore the effect that these bodies produce on the senses of the spectator.5 Yet, if the senses have made their way into classical studies, henceforth forming a recognized branch of research,6 smells have rarely been taken into account in classical reception despite their key role in advertising for example. In this chapter we will thus focus particularly on the perfumes launched by fashion houses and the photographic and videographic communication that accompanies them. We shall discuss the perfumes Kouros (1984–) by Yves Saint-Laurent; Invictus (2013) and Olympéa (2015) by Paco Rabanne (see Colour Plates 7a and 7c); and Eros (2012) and Eros pour femme (2015) by Versace (see Colour Plate 7b),7 for all of which publicity remains widespread. As these images are not isolated – they are part of a vast network of social representations – we shall also examine other photographic and videographic media: contemporary art, cinema, television and video games. We shall then attempt to highlight the way in which the authors and sponsors of these images seek to encourage their contemporaries to apprehend classical bodies by appealing to their senses, particularly sight and smell, and

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we will try to understand which social representations of Antiquity are mobilized to capture the attention of consumers and arouse their interest. We propose to identify the ends and the means by which the cold bodies of classical masterpieces are incarnated and made sensual in a marketing ploy aimed at attracting the consumer. We will observe how these productions influence the collective imagination with regard to Antiquity, sometimes perceived as affected by anosmia. We shall therefore turn our attention to colour and light which, because of their association with objects and phenomena, contribute to creating a kind of synesthesia, an inter-sensorial correspondence.8 Within the framework of our study we will focus especially on the intersection between sight and smell. But before we look at the physique of the models and their smells it is important to examine the surface of the skin, and particularly its colour and body hair.

White as marble? The metamorphoses of classical skin By giving life and flesh to their classical models, contemporary creators are very often faced with an important choice concerning the colour of the skin. The perfumes cited in our introduction are good examples of this: almost all the ancient bodies which people their productions have white skin. This choice ‘by default’ is connected to racism in the world of fashion, as the creators and their target audience are predominantly white; it is also linked to the history of the reception of Antiquity and to wider and more complex representations.9 The discovery of the polychromy of Greek sculpture is not a recent one. It was for a long time consciously and voluntarily denied in spite of the numerous archeological traces attesting to its existence.10 In 1764 Johann Joachim Winckelmann stated that ‘a beautiful body will be all the more beautiful the whiter it is’.11 Over the course of time this formula has become the rule and has left its mark on European history. However, a small number of photographers very early on eschewed this model. At the turn of the twentieth century Wilhelm von Gloeden (1856–1931) and Fred Holland Day (1864–1933) photographed young men with tanned skin, as well as non-Caucasian models in settings evoking Antiquity.12 Their photographs are striking also because of the generally unathletic appearance of the models.13 In the case of Fred Holland Day the contrast between the black body of his usual model, J. Alexander Skeete, and classical aesthetic norms seems to have been deliberate. Robert Aldric notes that ‘a black man with a Greek statue implies rather heretically at the time, that black beauty could be classically beautiful’.14 A century later, in the 1990s, the fashion photographer Herb Ritts (1952–2002) had the famous British model Naomi Campbell pose as a feminine version of Mercury or Pan.15 It seems significant that these photographers were well known for their homosexuality; by breaking free from the accepted norms of their milieu and their times, they may have been particularly keen to show a divergent vision of Antiquity.16 Today, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, in the wake of these two precursors, the skin colour of ‘classical’ figures is becoming more diverse in photographic productions. 101

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Figure 4.1 Wilhelm von Gloeden, Four boys on the terrace used by Gloeden and by his cousin (Wilhelm von Pluschow) at Posillipo (Naples), 1896–8.

The rise of icons of African descent in the fashion world is particularly noteworthy in the process. Rihanna posed as Medusa for the camera of Mariano Vivanco (1975–) at the request of Damien Hirst (1965–) for the 25th anniversary of the magazine British GQ ; Awol Erizku (1988–) photographed Beyoncé as black Venus for the series I have three hearts in 2017; and Olivier Rousteing has imposed his stamp on the collections of the haute couture fashion house Balmain.17 Television series are also risking this approach. Some characters in the English series Troy: Fall of a City (2018), especially Zeus and Achilles, are played by black actors.18 In the film 300 (2007), as in the comic book from which it was adapted, the dark skin of the great Persian king, along with his tall stature and distinctive voice, designated him as other and therefore as the enemy: any representation of an ancient body of colour does not aim at benevolence or inclusivity.19 These choices have continuously provoked violent reactions and protests not only from critics but also from supporters.20 We should emphasize the fact that the men and women of Antiquity did not perceive themselves as ‘white’, and that the Mediterranean world has always manifested great diversity in terms of skin colour.21 Beyond the ethnic diversification of actors, the development of digital photography and the possibilities it offers in comparison with its argentic predecessor has greatly

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Figure 4.2 Fred Holland Day, Ebony and Ivory (J. Alexander Skeete), c. 1897 (18.3cm x 20cm), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, inv. 33.43.166. Source: Wikipedia.

facilitated variations in ancient skin colour.22 Furthermore, these changes have led to different shades of ‘white’ skin which may now show signs of paleness or sometimes a more healthy glow following from the changing taste for tanned skin.23 To give just one example, the visuals which accompany the promotion of the perfume Eros by Versace play on significant contrasts in skin colour. To conclude on the question of the skin colour of classical bodies in contemporary culture, we could note the perfectly clear gendered dichotomy in the Versace advertisement, as in that for Invictus: whereas masculine skin covers a wide range of shades, from marble white to the shiniest black, feminine skin remains predominantly white and pale. This might illustrate a persistence of social and visual codes linking white to purity and to the feminine,24 but we could also see in this the endurance of ancient iconographic codes, the colour of the skin being the element of distinction between the sexes for the Greeks and the Romans.25 Video games constitute another area which requires further study. For the moment we have no no studies yet on the role that productions such as Assassin’s Creed Origins (2017) and Assassin’s Creed Odyssey (2018) might play in the perception of Antiquity by the general public and especially by young people. An important change has come about 103

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in the representation of sculptures in these two games, perhaps on the recommendation of historians working on the production team. The first game, set in Ptolemaic Egypt, shows classical sculpture often of immaculate whiteness, whereas the second game, set in Greece, reveals its polychromy.26 The colour of the skin is thus an important element of this subject, as is body hair, which, as we know, retains odours. In fact the productions under discussion are part of a general trend: only masculine bodies seem to have body hair. However, this characteristic remains rare and generally connotes a particular type of identity: the old man, the brute, or the enemy, such as, for instance, Maximus Decimus in Ridley Scott’s Gladiator (2000). On the other hand, women, whether they be old, evil or ugly, remain hairless. The variety in colour and appearance invites viewers to envisage flesh as living and warm, and not as something cold like stone or metal. It enables the spectator to desire these bodies and to identify with them or to discover in them an ideal model. Their hairless surface contributes to making the classical bodies used in publicity even more unreal, in spite of a certain taste today for masculine body hair and a recent questioning of the norms for women.27 The smooth and firm skin of bronze and marble models seems to be a point of reference, whereas the ancient Greeks’ relationship with it was much more complex, as Pierre Brulé has shown.28 Furthermore, the classical bodies of the twenty-first century have a slight tendency to glisten and to capture the light of the sun or the camera flash. By oiling their bodies, body builders, fervent admirers of Antiquity, know exactly what they are doing: the shape and substance of muscles are thus set in relief, as the light hugs their outline and exaggerates contrasts.29 By making them shine, contemporary creators make classical bodies more immediately present and reinforce the idea of power and strength. This observation is true of all the advertisements which refer back to Antiquity, and of numerous cinematographic and photographic images such as Orestes by Pierre et Gilles, the Dieux du Stade (the Stadium Gods) 2019 calendar photographed by Ludovic Baron or the compositions of David LaChapelle. The close link between publicity and its artistic and cultural environment can be explained in part by their permeability: Baron and LaChapelle are regular contributors to both fashion magazines and advertising campaigns. The glowing appearance of the body is consistent with an undeniably masculine universe associated with physical activity. It is linked to sport, war or the sexual act. Where these activities connect in our imagination, the figure of Spartacus and that of the Spartans seem particularly popular. The pornographic sector also plays on these codes to create orgiastic atmospheres at little cost. Once again we can observe a difference according to gender: gladiators and ancient warriors tend to inspire gay studios to a greater degree.30 Virile friendships coupled with the way pederastic Antiquity is imagined clearly come into play here. The sweaty or oiled body conjures up a sexual and erotic subtext: it suggests heat, secretions, effort and dampness. Ultimately, whatever the media, contemporary classical bodies are predominantly powerful and oiled, often unreal, to make them more attractive. Those who go against this canon are in general designated as counter-models or enemies, although attitudes are currently changing. 104

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The receiver: The effervescence of the senses and the appeal of the classical By suggesting the smell of sweat31 to spectators through visual effects (shiny skin), creators appeal to different systems of perception. Viewers looking at damp bodies can feel the projected strength and effort, both intimately associated with virility in Antiquity and also today, and they can thus participate through their gaze in the sexualization of the body. The artistic tendency which best highlights the way the photographic approach eroticizes classical bodies consists in mixing the classical originals with modern images. Naro Pinosa’s collages or the photoshopped images of Elmgreen and Dragset show for example Ganymede wearing a jockstrap.32 In the first case, the image produced builds a bridge between Antiquity and the present day and combines the coldness of ancient materials with the warmth of sweaty, tanned and hairy photographed flesh. In the second, the preference is for hiding and suggesting rather than showing, and playing on the anachronistic contrast which brings the perfect body of classical and neo-classical statues into our everyday lives. If some artists integrate classical references into the contemporary world with the aim of ‘bringing them up to date’, others attempt to put back the clock and get under the skin of the gods and goddesses of the Graeco-Roman pantheon. In order to do this the perfume industry associates its fragrances with graphic advertisements using a particular vocabulary and specific iconographic motifs. In the imagination, classical bodies are indeed closely linked to the promotion of perfumes which often has recourse to classical culture. Echoing this theme, Kouros (Yves Saint-Laurent), Eros (Versace) or Invictus and Olympéa (Paco Rabanne) all use classical bodies in their promotional pitch. In all cases it is the ideal body that epitomizes the product. There is, however, a strongly gendered differentiation which affects the perfume sector as a whole and not just the perfumes under discussion here, as unisex fragrances are rare.33 Advertising campaigns for feminine perfumes feature frail-looking models whose bodies are generally covered. This is not the case with advertisements for masculine perfumes, which show bare-chested, athleticlooking men in often exaggerated poses. It is useful to recall that in the archaic iconographic tradition the Kouroi, the young men who inspired Yves Saint-Laurent, have naked and muscular bodies, contrary to the Korai, their feminine equivalent. In advertisements for masculine perfumes the preference is for models with welldeveloped muscles, like the rugby player Nick Youngquest for Paco Rabanne. This in part refers back to the imagined perception of (fascist) Antiquity in the twentieth century.34 The gleaming appearance of most of these athletic bodies evokes sweat or perfumed oils, which is logical given the context. However, we should not forget the almost systematic presence of a visual element which accentuates this, especially in videos: water, liquid or steamy, clear or opaque; water which flows, washes or dissimulates according to its nature. Here again, the presence of the aquatic element seems logical in the imaginary world of perfumery, with its eaux de parfum bringing to mind freshness and bathing. The name of a perfume, the ‘accompaniment’ which Gérard Genette terms ‘paratext’,35 makes it possible to see more clearly how the creator takes up the classical reference by 105

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appealing to the collective imagination of the target audience. It gives decisive indications, points to a reference or conveys intentions. The name Eros seems to constitute a relatively clear and accessible reference to the divinity associated with desire and sexual prowess. In the same way, Olympéa refers to the home of the gods in the lofty realm of Olympus, and maybe to the athletic bodies of the Olympic Games. It is somewhat different for Invictus or Kouros as the ancient signifier is perhaps less immediately obvious for the general public, which is why it is important to combine text and image.36 In the case of Kouros, apart from the word ending, nothing seems to guide the uninitiated towards the original classical reference. Yves Saint-Laurent and Chantal Roos put their faith in the collective imagination and in an educated customer base to make a success of their new perfume.37 To conclude, we should emphasize the difference in sound of masculine and feminine names. The occlusive consonants of Kouros and Invictus are more aggressive and harsher to the ear than the softer nasals of Olympéa. As for the perfumes themselves and their aromatic ingredients, masculine fragrances play on notes considered to be virile and male in perfumery. Invictus has salty notes recalling physical exertion, and a woody base, as the advertising campaign points out, associating these notions with the theme of conquest: Heroic woody-fresh. Biting freshness and animal sensuality. Who wins? Grapefruit and guaiac wood collide. Vibrant meets muscular. Double victory.38 In the end, it is a perfume for the male seeking to reinforce his virility after he leaves the gym: the perfume prolongs his exertions and makes them perceptible even after he has showered and dressed. Pierre Bourdon, the designer of Kouros, has said of his creation: ‘[b]ecause of its animal notes, it is one of the most audacious perfumes I have ever made’.39 Eros by Versace also plays on strong woody notes: oriental wood, Calabrian lemon, tonka bean, vanilla and cedar. No ingredient in particular evokes Greece, but the lemon evokes Magna Grecia and the region of origin of the Versace family. Taken together they make Eros a fragrance ‘for a man who is both heroic and passionate, like a Greek God’, according to Donatella Versace who considers that a perfume breaks down the barrier between the human and the divine.40 Eros pour femme offers notes similar to those of the masculine version but softened by the addition of jasmine. Olympéa, the feminine equivalent of Invictus by Paco Rabanne, provides a ‘divine freshness’ according to the advertisement. It is composed of classic aromas used in feminine perfumes: water jasmine and ginger flower.41 In a final note on the difference between masculine and feminine perfumes, we might point out that unisex perfumes do not have recourse to the register of Antiquity. Though the aim is certainly not to recreate an ancient perfume,42 we may still observe an important coherent link between the composition of perfumes and the bodies used to promote them which hark back to a certain idea of classical Antiquity with its heat, Mediterranean smells and hygienist and bodily fantasies transmitted and reinforced by the fascist imagination.43 The text which presents the perfume Olympéa on the official Paco Rabanne website aims to be much clearer and incisive: 106

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Olympéa, a goddess for modern times [. . .] And if women regained power? She is an absolute icon. The special one. Olympea eau de parfum. A masterpiece of the gods. Its scent captivates and fascinates. Trouble in paradise. A sensual fragrance with notes of carnal salty vanilla, to which one bows. Sexy queen.44 Once again, in a mixture of languages and Graeco-Roman, biblical and contemporary references, the perfume promises its customers that they can reach beyond themselves and attain an Olympus, an Eden, and the divine.

The power of imagination and the smell of marble The images that we have referred to may raise a smile, but humour in an advertising campaign can boost sales. While the spectator in the majority of cases sees only a fantasized and idealized staging of Antiquity, it must be conceded that the images convey an ideal of strength and beauty aimed at both attracting the consumer and providing a model. The ideal to be reached is obviously not new, as it has been around since Antiquity.45 However, we note that it rests on the creation of a collective imaginary perception46 which has become firmly established over the last few decades. Today everything is conditioned by seeing and being seen: men must be virile and athletic and women well proportioned and desirable to satisfy the male gaze.47 If it seems possible to assert that ancient sources, particularly the sculptures exhibited in museums, are in part responsible for the dissemination of the canons of beauty, we should nonetheless emphasize the role played by all the visual arts, the history of art and even the history of research, as we have seen in the case of polychromy. Because of the way they deal with the classical, the different media contribute to the development and the eroticization of bodily norms, particularly through nudity. Take the example of the museum of Cycladic art in Athens, which has chosen to set in context archeological objects from its permanent collection by using retouched photographs as a background to the artefacts. The choice of photographs is significant: a naked man scrapes his body with a strigil – here again a reference to the classical taste for sports and athletic activities – and elsewhere another photograph shows a completely naked young man roasting meat on a spit.48 If in both cases the scenes selected are directly taken from the iconography of Greek vases,49 the effect of these images on the public today no doubt differs from how they were perceived in ancient times. One may, however, wonder about the narrow gap between our visual and/or olfactory perceptions and those of Antiquity. Take the example of skin colour. Florence Gherchanoc writes: [T]he ruddy complexion [. . .], or more precisely the bronzed complexion (‘the colour of well-mixed bronze’, in which copper and tin are in the right proportions), triumphant masculinity [. . .], and the unshaven body most often constitute [. . .] a constant feature of virility and classic elements of masculine beauty.50 107

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The author particularly refers to the Anacharsis by Lucian of Samosata (second century ce ), which contains a fictitious dialogue between Anacharsis, a philosopher of Thracian origin, and the Athenian Solon on the subject of exercise at the gymnasium in Athens in the sixth century bce : These young men of ours have a ruddy skin, coloured darker by the sun, and manly faces; they reveal great vitality and courage, they are aglow with such splendid ambition; they are neither lean and emaciated nor so full-bodied as to be heavy, but symmetrical in their lines; they have sweated away the useless and superfluous part of their tissues, but what made for strength and elasticity is left upon them uncontaminated by what is worthless, and they maintain it vigorously.51 The Greek ideal recommended by Solon does not seem so different from contemporary representations. But there are some notable variations. We should remember that the perfumes applied to the body in Antiquity were not in the liquid form we know today: they were greasy balms made from vegetable oils or animal fat.52 Applied to the body, these cosmetic products resulted in a somewhat shiny appearance. Lydie Boudiou recalls that during the classical period women were the principal consumers and users of these balms and perfumes: Women, coquettes and temptresses, who were accustomed to ornament and artifice, used and abused [these products]. Most often they used perfumed oil (elaion euôdês), that is a greasy substance which they spread on their skin no doubt to hydrate it but also to make it glisten and shine.53 A change has taken place over time, as women no longer want a shiny skin, but men do. The imaginary perception linked to the practice of sport is still predominant today in the reception of Antiquity, especially when referring to the Spartans. The historian Thucydides (fifth/fourth century bce ) already mentioned the application of oil to the naked bodies of young athletes: ‘[the Lacedaemonians] were the first that when they were to contend in the games stripped themselves naked and anointed their bodies with ointments’.54

Conclusions Have perfume creators made use of the olfactory imagination fed by Antiquity? Yves Saint-Laurent explained that it was first and foremost his own experience of contemporary Greece – holidays spent there and visits to museums – which inspired him in the composition, the visual identity and the name of Kouros: I had been fascinated by the blue of the sea, the sky, the intense freshness which emanated from this universe dedicated to beauty. At the same time, I saw the 108

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statues of these young men who are the splendour of Greek statuary – I had my new perfume. And its name.55 It seems then that the creators in our study have oriented their efforts towards the imaginary perception of what could be described as ‘Mediterranean’, a blend of the Latin and the Greek, of contrasted seascapes and Mediterranean flora, with hints of the gymnasium in the case of masculine perfumes.56 Since all attempts to use pheromones on the chemical level in perfumery have proved unsuccessful, it is through the image that they transform marble into flesh, thus contributing to the eroticization of these henceforth fantasized classical bodies.57 Classical models have been brought up to date thanks to the use of contemporary bodies and a clever mix of popular and artistic references. Both inaccessible and close to consumers, they provide an example to aim for. However, we should note the complex and as yet unfinished story concerning the broader range of models – the consequence of an ongoing situation deriving no doubt from a fashion world which lacks inclusivity and whose classical reception is somewhat xenophobic, if not racist, in spite of the importance of the skin in these images.58 Classical reference offers a pretext for nudity and sensuality, and makes it possible to play with the sensations of consumers through the intermediary of certain codes.59 Creators seek to suggest a form of synaesthesia by multiplying visual and auditory signifiers to encourage consumers to buy. The colour and texture of the flesh, its warmth, its brilliance and its damp appearance undeniably stimulate the olfactory imagination and make for the collaboration of the senses. For masculine perfumes the stratagem chosen by publicists associates the smell of physical exertion with that of the perfume, and this becomes a proof of virility. For feminine perfumes on the other hand, reference is made to imaginary bodily skin care and bathing, thus placing the spectator in the position of the voyeur (see Colour Plate 7c). The imaginary perception of classical bodies linked by publicity to sensations and to the perfume itself serves as a basis for the promotional message. The virility or the femininity of heroic and divine classical bodies is just a spray away.

Notes 1. This piece of work was partly carried out within the framework of the research laboratory of excellence, LabexMed – The humanities and social sciences centred on interdisciplinarity for the Mediterranean, reference: 10-LABX-0090. Fabien Bièvre-Perrin’s research was supported by a state grant managed by the National Research Agency (ANR) in respect of the project Investments for the Future A*MIDEX reference N° ANR-11-IDEX-0001-02. 2. See, for example, Daniel Wildmann, ‘Desired Bodies: Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia, Aryan Masculinity and the Classical Body’, in Brill’s Companion to the Classics, Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, ed. Helen Roche and Kyriakos N. Dēmētriou (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 60–81; Nadège Wolff, ‘L’Antiquité dans l’univers du bodybuilding: une injonction à quelle(s) virilité(s)?’ Antiquipop, 17 September 2017. 109

The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in The Modern Imagination 3. Athena S. Leoussi, Nationalism and Classicism: The Classical Body as National Symbol in Nineteenth-Century England and France (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1998); Françoise Liffran and Jean-Luc Pouthier, ‘Les dieux du stade’, in, Rome, 1920–1945. Le modèle fasciste, son Duce, sa mythologie, ed. Françoise Liffan (Paris: Autrement, 1991), 68–78. 4. See, for example, Antoine De Baecque, ‘Le glamour, ou la fabrication du corps séducteur’, in Histoire du corps 3. Les mutations du regard. Le XX e siècle, ed. Jean-Jacques Courtine (Paris: Seuil, 2006), 391–6; Antoine De Baecque, ‘Projections: la virilité à l’écran’, in Histoire de la virilité 3. La virilité en crise? XX e–XXI e siècle, ed. Jean-Jacques Courtine (Paris: Seuil, 2011), 441–70. 5. Élise Pampanay and Fabien Bièvre-Perrin, ‘Esthétique et fonction du corps antique dans la publicité du XXIe siècle’, Advertising Antiquity –Thersites 6 (2018): 199–240. 6. Jerry Toner (ed.), A Cultural History of the Senses in Antiquity (London: Bloomsbury, 2014); Annie Verbanck-Piérard, Natacha Massar and Dominique Frère (eds), Parfums de l’Antiquité. La rose et l’encens en Méditerranée (Mariemont, Belgium: Musée Royal de Mariemont, 2008). 7. Because of copyright issues it is difficult to include visuals of advertisements for perfumes in this chapter. They can, however, be easily found on the internet. Posters for Kouros (Yves Saint-Laurent, 1984–): https://parfumdepub.com/fr/publicite-Kouros-1992.html; video for Invictus by Paco Rabanne (2013): https://youtu.be/Q81xGGx0R04; video for Olympéa by Paco Rabanne (2015): https://youtu.be/F691U6OzA6Q; video for Eros (2012): https://youtu. be/gsPsM6YYrfY (accessed 1 March 2021); video for Eros pour femme by Versace (2015): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYdMgjCKTz4. 8. On the notion of synaesthesia in Antiquity, see Mark Bradley, ‘La couleur comme expérience synesthésique dans l’Antiquité’, Mythos 11 (2017): 95–112, and Mark Bradley, Colour and Meaning in Ancient Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 9. Scarlett L. Newman, Black Models Matter: Challenging the Racism of Aesthetics and the Facade of Inclusion in the Fashion Industry, CUNY Academic Works, 2017. From the end of the nineteenth century, Fred Holland Day worked on this question and suggested answers, cf. Figure 2 and note 13. 10. Philippe Jockey, Le Mythe de la Grèce blanche. Histoire d’un rêve occidental (Paris: Belin, 2013): the author develops his remarks on the original polychromy of Greek statuary and explains how, from the Renaissance onwards, the whiteness of classical statues and their copies was celebrated. 11. J. J. Winckelmann was, however, aware of the original polychromy of Greek statues; his definition rests of course upon an aesthetic choice. See Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Histoire de l’art dans l’Antiquité (1764) (Paris: Le Livre de poche, 2005), 244. 12. In the case of Wilhelm von Gloeden, this choice is also to be related to Orientalism. 13. On von Gloeden, Roland Barthes writes, ‘The photography of von Gloeden is “artistic” by means of its staging (the pose, the décor), not by means of its technique: few blurred or complex lighting effects. It’s simply the body [. . .]. This is why the art of von Gloeden is an adventure of the senses because it produces a world [. . .] which is both true and improbable, realistic and false, a counter oneirism, crazier than the most crazy dreams’ (translated from the French); Roland Barthes, ‘Wilhelm von Gloeden’, in Œuvres Complètes, vol. 3 (Paris: Seuil, 1998), 1015–16. 14. Robert Aldric, Colonialism and Homosexuality (London: Routledge, 2002). If for some his series of photographs entitled Nubia ‘furthered a long, controversial tradition of white artists exoticizing, and also eroticizing, people of colour as “other” ’ (cf. Art Institute of Chicago: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/66773/menelek), for others his portrait of J. Alexander Skeete as Menelek II (1897), the emblematic king of Ethiopia under whose command Ethiopia 110

The Smell of Marble defeated an Italian invasion (1896), illustrates his universalism and his commitment in favour of blacks, particularly Afro-Americans. Holland Day was very interested in classical culture, contributing in the 1880s to the creation of a study group, the Athenes Therapes Club, where Homer and Virgil were read and commented upon. See also E. E. Hirshler, ‘John Singer Sargent: Academician’, in Boston’s Apollo: Thomas Mckeller and John Singer Sargent (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2020), 109. 15. Peter Weiermair, Wilhelm von Gloeden (Cologne: Taschen, 1996). The photographs of Herb Ritts illustrate the theme ‘Heavenly bodies: the stuff of myths’ (in Vogue UK , December 1990, 180–7). In one photograph, Naomi Campbell appears bare-breasted and wearing a crown evoking the hair of Medusa, but captioned with the name of the god Pan and a quotation from John Milton: ‘Universal Pan. Knit with the graces and the hours in dance, led on the eternal spring.’ Another photograph shows her wearing a white pleated robe and a winged helmet, captioned with a quotation from John Keats: ‘Foot-feathered Mercury appeared sublime; Beyond the tall tree tops, and in less time; Than shoots the slanted hail-storm; Down he dropt; towards the ground’ (Endymion, book IV, 331–4) – Keats did not read Greek (contrary to Shelley and Byron); his relationship to Hellas was more sensuous than intellectual. In addition, one white model embodies Apollo and Aphrodite and two naked men are associated with Niké of Samothrace and Artemis. 16. Daniel Orrells, Classical Culture and Modern Masculinity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). On the link between Antiquity, homo-eroticism and colour, see Charlotte Ribeyrol, Étrangeté, Passion, Couleur. L’hellénisme de Swinburne, Pater et Symonds (1865–1880) (Grenoble: Ellug, 2013). 17. The official GQ Magazine website: https://www.gqmagazine.fr/sexe/idole/articles/rihanna-encouverture-du-numero-anniversaire-du-gq-anglais/8507; the official website of Beyoncé: https://www.beyonce.com/tag/i-have-three-hearts/.. 18. This was the case for the characters of Athena, Achilles and Zeus in the TV series Troy: Fall of a City, played by Shamilla Miller (from South Africa), David Gyasi (from Ghana) and Hakeem Kae-Kazim (from Niger). 19. Let’s recall that the treatment of skin colour is a particularly sensitive issue in the United States where questions of ‘race’ and cultural appropriation are regularly the cause of scandal. Margaret Talbot, ‘The Myth of Whiteness in Classical Sculpture’, New Yorker (2018); see the conclusion of Adeline Grand-Clément, ‘L’épiderme des statues grecques: quand le marbre se fait chair’, Images Re-vues 13 (2016); Philippe Jockey, Le Mythe de la Grèce blanche. 20. ‘Scholars Respond to Racist Backlash against Black Achilles, Part 3: What Makes a Homeric Hero a Hero?’, Pharos, 25 May 2018, https://pages.vassar.edu/pharos/2018/05/25/scholarsrespond-to-racist-backlash-against-black-achilles-part-3-what-makes-a-homeric-hero-a-hero/. 21. Grand-Clément, ‘L’épiderme des statues grecques’. 22. Lorna Roth, ‘Looking at Shirley, the Ultimate Norm: Colour Balance, Image Technologies, and Cognitive Equity’, Canadian Journal of Communication 34, no. 1 (2009): 111–36; cf. note 9. See, for example, the photoshoot ‘The new gods of Olympus’ by Ana Martínez and Mario Ville for NEO, http://www.kattaca.com/marioville/olympus/. 23. Christophe Granger, Les corps d’été, XX e siècle. Naissance d’une variation saisonnière (Paris: Autrement, 2009). 24. Peter Frost, ‘De la pâleur au bronzage. Les idéaux de la beauté féminine en France’, in De quelle couleur sont les Blancs ? Des ‘petits Blancs’ des colonies au ‘racisme anti-Blancs’, ed. S. Laurent and T. Leclère (Paris: La Découverte, 2013), 170–7. 25. Gendered roles and the geography of the genders, men outside, women inside, are probably at the heart of the colorimetric segregation of contemporary classical bodies. See Simon Byl, ‘Les 111

The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in The Modern Imagination obstacles à la connaissance dans la médecine d’hier et d’aujourd’hui’, in L’homme grec face à la nature et face à lui-même: en hommage à Antoine Thivel, ed. J.-M.Galy and M.-R. Guelfucci (Nice: Faculté de Lettres, Arts et Sciences humaines de Nice, 2000), 191–200. 26. Christian Rollinger (ed.), Classical Antiquity in Video Games: Playing with the Ancient World (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2020). 27. See, for example, the feminine magazine Grazia. On still dominant norms, see Stéphane Héas, Dominique Bodin, Luc Robène and Laurent Misery, ‘La représentation des poils dans les publicités magazines en France’, in Annales de Dermatologie et de Vénéréologie (2007): 752–6. 28. Pierre Brulé, Les sens du poil (grec) (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2015). 29. Nadège Wolff, ‘L’Antiquité dans l’univers du bodybuilding: une injonction à quelle(s) virilité(s)?’ Antiquipop, 17 September 2017, https://antiquipop.hypotheses.org/2750. 30. The phenomenon probably originates from erotic photography which, from the nineteenth century onwards, as we have seen with von Gloeden and Day, has staged models in more or less classical settings in order to escape censorship, cf. John Pultz, The Body and the Lens: Photography 1839 to the Present (New York: Calmann and King, 1995), 38–9, 61; Ulrich Pohlmann and Rudolf Scheutle, Nude visions: 150 Jahre Körperbilder in der fotografie (Heidelberg: Münchner Stadtmuseum / Sammlung, 2009). On 19 April 2020 a search concerning the following key words in English, ‘Gladiator’, ‘Roman Orgy’, ‘Ancient Roman’, ‘Spartacus’, ‘Centurion’ and ‘Spartan’, on the platform Pornhub shows a considerable gap between the general category (621/11,629,154, or 0.005%) and the ‘gay’ category (144/88,173, or 0.16%). The search for ‘peplum’ reveals a similar gap (160 videos against 89); the general section was notably made up of extracts from the series Spartacus (2010–13, Starz) and from the film Caligula (1979, Tinto Brass). 31. On the role played by the reference to sweat in the mobilization of the ancient virile imagination, see Martin Lindner’s chapter in this volume. 32. Fabien Bièvre-Perrin, ‘Les chimères antico-contemporaines de Naro Pinosa’, Antiquipop, 14 September 2016; Elmgreen and Dragset, Ganymede (Jockstrap), 2009, laser print mounted on aluminum and Plexiglas, 508cm x 379.7cm; private collection. 33. Marlène Thomas, ‘Parfum: le genre, appât d’odeur’, Libération, 21 December 2018. 34. Johann Chapoutot, Le national-socialisme et l’Antiquité (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2008); Élise Pampanay and Fabien Bièvre-Perrin, ‘Esthétique et fonction du corps antique dans la publicité du XXIe siècle’, Thersites 6 (2018): 199–240, http://www.thersites. uni-mainz.de/index.php/thr/article/view/63. 35. Gérard Genette, Palimpsestes (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1982), 7: ‘The accompaniment [the author’s name, a title, a preface, illustrations, etc.], of varying size and style, constitutes what I once christened elsewhere, in conformity with the frequently ambiguous meaning of this prefix in French [. . .] the paratext’ (translated from the French). On titles, see Pierre-Marc de Biasi, Marianne Jakobi and Ségolène Le Men, La Fabrique du titre. Nommer les œuvres d’art (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2012). The perfume Sappho, launched in 2019 by the popular cosmetic company Lushny, is especially relevant here as only the title refers to Antiquity: ingredients like tobacco, vanilla and tonka didn’t exist in the ancient Mediterranean world. 36. Élise Pampanay, ‘Invictus/Olympéa: quand les publicités de Paco Rabanne ont un parfum d’Antique’, Antiquipop, 9 October 2015. 37. Manon Renault, ‘Kouros d’Yves Saint Laurent et la masculinité: échanges avec Chantal Roos’, Antiquipop, 15 September 2018; Charlotte Chrétien, ‘KOUROS: les dieux vivants ont leur parfum’, Antiquipop, 21 October 2016.

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The Smell of Marble 38. Official website of Paco Rabanne: https://www.pacorabanne.com/uk/en/fragrance/p/ invictus--000000000065055742. 39. Jean-Pierre Chanial, ‘1981, Kouros d’Yves Saint Laurent’, Le Figaro Madame, 28 July 2012 (translated from the French). 40. Official Versace website: https://www.versace.com/international/en/world-of-versace/brand/ versace-fragrances/eros/. 41. We should emphasize the frequent use in feminine perfumes of elements that conjure up the Mediterranean (jasmine, orange flower, bergamot, etc.), beside more tropical smells (patchouli, ylang-ylang, white musk, etc.). 42. On this subject, see Giulia Corrente’s chapter in this book. 43. Johann Chapoutot, Le national-socialisme et l’Antiquité (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2008); Pampanay and Bièvre-Perrin, ‘Esthétique et fonction du corps antique dans la publicité du XXIe siècle’, 199–240. 44. https://www.pacorabanne.com/ww/en/fragrance/p/olympea--000000000065095775. 45. Florence Gherchanoc, Concours de beauté et beautés du corps en Grèce ancienne: Discours et pratiques (Bordeaux: Ausonius, 2016). 46. We use the term ‘imaginary’ as it is defined by Hélène Védrine and Jean-Jacques Wunenburger. In Hélène Védrine, Grandes Conceptions de l’imaginaire (Paris: Le Livre de Poche, 1990), 10. The imaginary brings together ‘a whole world of beliefs, ideas, myths, ideologies in which each individual and each civilization is immersed’. Jean-Jacques Wunenburger adds further details in Jean-Jacques Wunenburger, L’imaginaire (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2016), 35: ‘We would agree then to term “imaginary” a dynamic set of productions, either mental or materialized in pieces of work, based on visual (paintings, drawings, photographs) or linguistic images (metaphors, symbols, narratives), forming coherent and dynamic sets relating to a symbolic function in the sense of an interlocking of the literal and the figurative which modify or enrich the real as it is perceived or conceived’ (translated from the French). 47. In 1975, Laura Mulvey developed the notion of a ‘male gaze’ to characterize the objectification of women in cinema by male directors: Laura Mulvey, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, Screen 16, no. 3 (1975): 6–18; John Berger, Ways of Seeing (New York: Viking Press, 1973). 48. See specifically the showcases in the section ‘Scenes from Daily Life in Antiquity’ on the fourth floor of the museum, designed by Nicholas Chr. Stampolidis, Yorgos Tassoulas and Boris Micka. 49. See Tonio Hölscher, La vie des images grecques. Sociétés de statues, rôles des artistes et notions esthétiques dans l’art grec ancien (Paris: Hazan, 2015), 197–201, or the exhibition Naked! The Art of Nudity, held at the Antikenmuseum in Basel from 26 October to 28 April 2019. 50. Gherchanoc, Concours de beauté et beautés du corps en Grèce ancienne, 147–8 (translated from the French). 51. Lucian, Anacharsis 25, trans. A. M. Harmon, The Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961; New Haven, CT: Yale University Press; London: William Heineman Ltd). 52. Rachel Touzé, ‘Les matières premières employées dans la confection des huiles, onguents et poudres parfumées en Grèce ancienne. Les aromates à l’épreuve de l’expression’, in Parfums et odeurs dans l’Antiquité, ed. Lydia Boudiou, Véronique Mehl and Dominique Frère (Rennes: Presses universitaires, 2008), 45: ‘In this universe of smells, oils took pride of place. [. . .] These odorous substances were thicker, closer to our creams which are applied and not poured’ (translated from the French). 113

The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in The Modern Imagination 53. Lydia Boudiou and Véronique Mehl, ‘Sociologie des odeurs en pays grec’, in Parfums et odeurs dans l’Antiquité, ed. Lydia Boudiou, Véronique Mehl and Dominique Frère (Rennes: Presses universitaires, 2008), 153 (translated from the French). 54. Thucydides, 1.6.5; see Jean-Paul Thuillier, ‘Huile parfumée et sport dans les mondes étrusque et romain’, in Parfums et odeurs dans l’Antiquité, ed. Lydia Boudiou, Véronique Mehl and Dominique Frère (Rennes: Presses universitaires, 2008), 245. 55. Chanial, ‘1981, Kouros d’Yves Saint Laurent’ (translated from the French). 56. Anne Ruel, ‘L’invention de la Méditerranée’, Vingtième Siècle, revue d’histoire 32 (October– December 1991): 7–14. 57. Robin M. Hare, Sophie Schlatter, Gillian Rhodes and Leigh W. Simmons, ‘Putative sex-specific human pheromones do not affect gender perception, attractiveness ratings or unfaithfulness judgements of opposite sex faces’, Royal Society Open Science 4, no. 3 (2017). 58. Antoine Leclerc-Mougne, ‘La mode, le racisme et le spectre de l’activisme performatif ’, Mixte Magazine, 6 December 2020); Sarah E. Bond ‘Signs of the Times: Ancient Symbols Reused by Hate Groups’, History from Below, 15 September 2018. 59. Jean-Pierre Albert, ‘Dieu sensible au nez . . . Parfums et mysticisme dans le christianisme médiéval et ailleurs’, in Images du parfum, ed. A. Montandon and A. Perrin. (ClermontFerrand: Presses universitaires, 1991), 7–13.

Bibliography Albert, Jean-Pierre. ‘Dieu sensible au nez . . . Parfums et mysticisme dans le christianisme médiéval et ailleurs’. In Images du parfum, edited by A. Montandon and A. Perrin, 7–33. Clermont-Ferrand: Presses universitaires, 1991, https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ halshs-00333004. Aldric, Robert. Colonialism and Homosexuality. London: Routledge, 2002. Barthes, Roland. ‘Wilhelm von Gloeden’. In Œuvres Complètes, vol. 3, 1015–16. Paris: Seuil, 2002. Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. New York: Viking Press, 1973. Biasi, Pierre-Marc de, Marianne Jakobi and Ségolène Le Men. La Fabrique du titre. Nommer les œuvres d’art. Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2012. Bièvre-Perrin, Fabien. ‘Les chimères antico-contemporaines de Naro Pinosa’. Antiquipop, 14 September 2016, https://antiquipop.hypotheses.org/1666. Bond, Sarah E. ‘Signs of the Times: Ancient Symbols Reused by Hate Groups’. History from Below, 15 September 2018, https://sarahemilybond.com/2018/09/15/signs-of-the-times-ancientsymbols-reused-by-hate-groups/. Boudiou, Lydia and Véronique Mehl. ‘Sociologie des odeurs en pays grec’. In Parfums et odeurs dans l’Antiquité, edited by Lydia Boudiou, Véronique Mehl and Dominique Frère, 141–63. Rennes: Presses Universitaires, 2008. Bradley, Mark. Colour and Meaning in Ancient Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Bradley, Mark. ‘La couleur comme expérience synesthésique dans l’Antiquité’. Mythos 11 (2017): 95–112, http://journals.openedition.org/mythos/627.Brulé, Pierre. Les sens du poil (grec). Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2015. Byl, Simon. ‘Les obstacles à la connaissance dans la médecine d’hier et d’aujourd’hui’. In L’homme grec face à la nature et face à lui-même: en hommage à Antoine Thivel, edited by Jean-Michel Galy and Marie-Rose Guelfucci, 191–200. Nice: Association des Publications de la Faculté des lettres de Nice, 2000. 114

The Smell of Marble Chanial, Jean-Pierre. ‘1981, Kouros d’Yves Saint Laurent’. Le Figaro Madame, 28 July 2012, https:// madame.lefigaro.fr/beaute/1981-kouros-dyves-saint-laurent-280712-271558. Chapoutot, Johann. Le national-socialisme et l’Antiquité. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2008. Chrétien, Charlotte. ‘KOUROS: les dieux vivants ont leur parfum’. Antiquipop, 21 October 2016, https://antiquipop.hypotheses.org/2111. Constantin, Sarah. ‘Société: les poils sont-ils à la mode ?’ Grazia, 7 September 2019, https://www. grazia.fr/news-et-societe/societe/societe-les-poils-sont-ils-a-la-mode-930407. De Baecque, Antoine. ‘Le glamour, ou la fabrication du corps séducteur’. In Histoire du corps 3. Les mutations du regard. Le XX e siècle, edited by Jean-Jacques Courtine, 391–5. Paris: Seuil, 2006. De Baecque, Antoine. ‘Projections: la virilité à l’écran’. In Histoire de la virilité 3. La virilité en crise ? XX e–XXI e siècle, edited by Jean-Jacques Courtine, 441–70. Paris: Seuil, 2011. De Samosate, Lucien. ‘Anacharsis ou des exercices du gymnase’. In Œuvres complètes, edited by A.-M. Ozanam. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2018. Frost, Peter. ‘De la pâleur au bronzage. Les idéaux de la beauté féminine en France’. In De quelle couleur sont les Blancs? Des ‘petits Blancs’ des colonies au ‘racisme anti-Blancs’, edited by Sylvie Laurent and Thierry Leclère, 170–7. Paris: La Découverte, 2013. Genette, Gérard. Palimpsestes. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1982. Gherchanoc, Florence. Concours de beauté et beautés du corps en Grèce ancienne: Discours et pratiques. Bordeaux: Ausonius, 2016. Grand-Clément, Adeline. ‘L’épiderme des statues grecques: quand le marbre se fait chair’. Images Re-vues 13 (2016), http://journals.openedition.org/imagesrevues/3932. Granger, Christophe. Les corps d’été, XX e siècle. Naissance d’une variation saisonnière. Paris: Autrement, 2009. Hare, Robin M., Sophie Schlatter, Gillian Rhodes and Leigh W. Simmons. ‘Putative sex-specific human pheromones do not affect gender perception, attractiveness ratings or unfaithfulness judgements of opposite sex faces’. Royal Society Open Science 4, no. 3 (2017), https:// royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsos.160831. Héas, Stéphane, Dominique Bodin, Luc Robène and Laurent Misery. ‘La représentation des poils dans les publicités magazines en France’. Annales de Dermatologie et de Vénéréologie (2007): 752–6. Hirshler, E. E., ‘John Singer Sargent: Academician’. In Boston’s Apollo: Thomas Mckeller and John Singer Sargent, 99–115. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2020. Hölscher, Tonio. La vie des images grecques. Sociétés de statues, rôles des artistes et notions esthétiques dans l’art grec ancien. Paris: Hazan, 2015. Jockey, Philippe. Le Mythe de la Grèce blanche. Histoire d’un rêve occidental. Paris: Belin, 2013. Leclerc-Mougne, Antoine. ‘La mode, le racisme et le spectre de l’activisme performatif ’. Mixte Magazine, 6 December 2020, www.mixtemagazine.com/article/la-mode-le-racisme-et-lespectre-de-l-activisme-performatif. Leoussi, Athena S. Nationalism and Classicism: The Classical Body as National Symbol in Nineteenth-Century England and France. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1998. Liffran, Françoise and Jean-Luc Pouthier. ‘Les dieux du stade’. In Rome, 1920–1945. Le modèle fasciste, son Duce, sa mythologie, edited by Françoise Liffran, 68–78. Paris: Autrement, 1991. Mulvey, Laura. ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’. Screen 16, no. 3 (1975): 6–18. Newman, Scarlett L. Black Models Matter: Challenging the Racism of Aesthetics and the Facade of Inclusion in the Fashion Industry. CUNY Academic Works, 2017, https://academicworks.cuny. edu/gc_etds/2143. Pampanay, Élise. ‘Invictus/Olympéa: quand les publicités de Paco Rabanne ont un parfum d’Antique’. Antiquipop, 9 October 2015, https://antiquipop.hypotheses.org/1015. Pampanay, Élise and Fabien Bièvre-Perrin. ‘Esthétique et fonction du corps antique dans la publicité du XXIe siècle’. Thersites 6 (2018): 199–240, http://www.thersites.uni-mainz.de/ index.php/thr/article/view/63. 115

The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in The Modern Imagination Pohlmann, Ulrich and Rudolf Scheutle. Nude visions: 150 Jahre Körperbilder in der fotografie, exhibition catalogue. Heidelberg: Münchner Stadtmuseum / Sammlung, 2009. Pultz, John. The Body and the Lens: Photography 1839 to the Present. New York: Calmann and King, 1995. Renault, Manon. ‘Kouros d’Yves Saint Laurent et la masculinité: échanges avec Chantal Roos’. Antiquipop, 15 September 2018, https://antiquipop.hypotheses.org/4850. Renault, Manon. ‘Balmain: quand la mode rencontre la pop culture et s’enivre d’Égypte Antique’. Antiquipop, 11 March 2020, https://antiquipop.hypotheses.org/8228. Ribeyrol, Charlotte. Étrangeté, Passion, Couleur. L’hellénisme de Swinburne, Pater et Symonds (1865–1880). Grenoble: Ellug, 2013. Ritts, Herb. ‘Heavenly bodies: the stuff of myths’. Vogue UK , December 1990, 180–7. Roth, Lorna. ‘Looking at Shirley, the Ultimate Norm: Colour Balance, Image Technologies, and Cognitive Equity’. Canadian Journal of Communication 34, no. 1 (2009): 111–36, https://www. cjc-online.ca/index.php/journal/article/view/2196. Ruel, Anne. ‘L’invention de la Méditerranée’. Vingtième Siècle, revue d’histoire 32 (October– December 1991): 7–14. Schnitzler, Françoise and Séverine Dimier. ‘Un parfum d’antique’. In Archéopub. La survie de l’Antiquité dans les objets publicitaires, exhibition catalogue (Musée archéologique de Strasbourg, 20 October 2006–31 December 2007), 225–32. Strasbourg: Musées de Strasbourg, 2006. Shand-Tucci, Douglas. ‘American Aristocracy / Gods of Copley Square / Magic II ’. Open Letters Monthly, 1 June 2013, https://www.openlettersmonthlyarchive.com/main-articles-page/ american-aristocracy-gods-of-copley-square-magic-ii. Talbot, Margaret. ‘The Myth of Whiteness in Classical Sculpture’. New Yorker, 22 October 2018, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/29/the-myth-of-whiteness-in-classicalsculpture. Thomas, Marlène. ‘Parfum: le genre, appât d’odeur’. Libération, 21 December 2018, https://www. liberation.fr/france/2018/12/21/parfum-le-genre-appat-d-odeur_1699231. Thuillier, Jean-Paul. ‘Huile parfumée et sport dans les mondes étrusque et romain’. In Parfums et odeurs dans l’Antiquité, edited by Lydia Boudiou, Véronique Mehl and Dominique Frère, 245–52. Rennes: Presses universitaires, 2008. Toner, Jerry, ed. A Cultural History of the Senses in Antiquity. London: Bloomsbury, 2014. Touzé, Rachel. ‘Les matières premières employées dans la confection des huiles, onguents et poudres parfumées en Grèce ancienne. Les aromates à l’épreuve de l’expressions’. In Parfums et odeurs dans l’Antiquité, edited by Lydia Boudiou, Véronique Mehl and Dominique Frère, 45–59. Rennes: Presses universitaires, 2008. Védrine, Hélène. Grandes Conceptions de l’imaginaire. Paris: Le Livre de Poche, 1990. Verbanck-Piérard, Annie, Natacha Massar and Dominique Frère, eds. Parfums de l’Antiquité. La rose et l’encens en Méditerranée, exhibition catalogue (Musée Royal de Mariemont). Mariemont, Belgium: Musée Royal de Mariemont, 2008. Weiermair, Peter. Wilhelm von Gloeden. Cologne: Taschen, 1996. Wildmann, Daniel. ‘Desired Bodies: Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia, Aryan Masculinity and the Classical Body’. In Brill’s Companion to the Classics, Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, edited by Helen Roche and Kyriakos N. Dēmētriou. Leiden: Brill, 2017. Winckelmann, Johann Joachim. Histoire de l’art dans l’Antiquité (1764). Paris: Le Livre de Poche, 2005. Wolff, Nadège. ‘L’Antiquité dans l’univers du bodybuilding: une injonction à quelle(s) virilité(s)?’ Antiquipop, 17 September 2017, https://antiquipop.hypotheses.org/2750. Wunenburger, Jean-Jacques. L’imaginaire. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2016.

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PART III SENSING OTHERNESS FROM CANVAS TO SCREEN

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CHAPTER 5 SENSING THE PAST: SENSORY STIMULI IN NINETEENTHCENTURY DEPICTIONS OF ROMAN BATHS Giacomo Savani

Introduction Roman baths were sensorial spaces par excellence, where bathers engaged in a deeply synaesthetic experience. On arrival, sight would have been stimulated by the lavish decoration of painted wall plasters and mosaics, while the body swiftly reacted to temperature variations. There was the tactile perception of increasing humidity on the wet surfaces of the rooms, the scent of aromatic oils and the gentle bubbling of the water that accompanied conversations and consumption of delicacies. The aura of luxury and sensuality associated with these buildings, as well as the extraordinary technical achievements they represented, were already praised by classical authors like Martial1 and continued to spark the imagination of artists well after the fall of the Roman Empire. During the Renaissance, they became the subject of erudite dissertations and a source of inspiration for buildings and artworks.2 While imaginative renditions of ancient baths can already be found in medieval manuscripts3 and early-modern paintings,4 it is not until the second half of the nineteenth century that artists started to use identifiable ancient buildings as settings for their bathing scenes. This chapter looks at how nineteenth-century artists reinterpreted the rich sensorium of ancient baths, with a focus on the works of Théodore Chassériau (1819–56) and Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836–1912). Chassériau, a pupil of Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1780–1867), was the first major artist to attempt a pictorial reconstruction of a Roman bathhouse based on archaeological evidence. His Tepidarium (1853) inspired the homonymous sonnet (1875) by the Parnassian poet Maria de Heredia (1842–1905) and profoundly influenced artists like Gustave Boulanger (1824–88)5 and his circle, the socalled Néo-Grecs or Pompéistes, a small group of salon painters led by Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904).6 They, in turn, contributed to making the ancient bathing theme a popular variant of the so-called genre anecdotique, where nameless ancient figures were shown carrying out daily activities.7 To a certain extent, Alma-Tadema, a Dutch-born artist who built a successful career in England thanks to his lavish and archaeologically accurate interpretations of the ancient world, can be placed at the end of this chain of artistic influences.8 However, as we shall see, the originality of his work allowed him to infuse new life to the dialogue with Antiquity initiated by Chassériau. While there is a rich literature on the different ways Chassériau and Alma-Tadema engaged with Antiquity,9 their exploration of ancient senses has received less scholarly 119

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attention,10 and little has been said so far about their renditions of ancient baths’ smellscapes. Moreover, the lack of an established methodology for a ‘classical reception of the senses’ has often prevented an articulated and coherent response to the paintings’ array of sensory stimuli. When acknowledged, these stimuli are at best kept to the margins of the discussion, as an additional touch of colour. This chapter aims to offer a new theoretical framework that puts the senses centre stage. I build on the concept of sensorial assemblage developed by Yannis Hamilakis, who sees the sensorium, together with emotions and memories, as essential components of the materiality of a given place and time. This framework reveals how visual receptions of the past contain a complex stratigraphy of materiality, memory, imagination and the sensorial exchanges that keep them together. It also allows for a meaningful comparison between artworks from a sensorial point of view, tracing the ways these diverse components are balanced by artists to obtain distinct responses from the viewers.

Methods Sensory archaeology has recently become extremely fashionable,11 and classical scholars have started to apply this approach to diverse aspects of the ancient world.12 In so doing, they have tried to define what Robin Skeates has called ‘the range of sensory resources and practices used by different groups within a society, and to make out its variations over space and time’.13 While the theoretical frames underpinning the plethora of recent publications vary in quality,14 this trend is undoubtedly a significant turning point for a discipline (archaeology) that has traditionally been dominated by the sense of sight.15 As summarized by Eleanor Betts, traditional phenomenological approaches are now enriched by a new interest for ‘the diversity of human bodies and experiences, collective as well as individual identities, and the significance of the body in habituated spaces’.16 However, as early as 2010 Fredrik Fahlander and Anna Kjellström noted that ‘[t]here is no “ready-made” theory and method available especially designated for an “archaeology of the senses” ’,17 and this lack of a well-defined methodology remains a controversial issue.18 Methodological variability becomes even more evident when one looks at the way the senses have been addressed in the reception of classical Antiquity, an area of sensory studies that still requires a proper theoretical framework.19 Yannis Hamilakis’ conceptualization of the sensorium proves particularly useful to my analysis.20 In his view, the senses are deeply connected with memory and feelings and, together with objects and places, form what he calls ‘sensorial assemblages’.21 Because assemblages are ‘non-hierarchical, heterogeneous, contingent rather than permanent and stable’, this notion ‘foregrounds the co-presence of diverse entities, and at the same time connects the material with the sensorial and the mnemonic’.22 Applied to the process of reconstruction by artists like Chassériau and Alma-Tadema, the concept of sensorial assemblage can illuminate the rich, diachronic contamination between materiality, memory and imagination that underpin their creative engagement with the past.23 120

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Valuable insights come also from art history, which in the last decade has also seen a surge in the number of publications devoted to the senses.24 David Howes and Constance Classen note that during the nineteenth century, sight became the only sense through which one could experience art, the museum being ‘a “temple” of art that promoted “pure” visuality’.25 At the same time, artists kept engaging with non-visual sensations, and in the second half of the century, the sense of smell acquired a prominent role: ‘odour appear[ed] as a means for bypassing the material, visible world and accessing deeper realities’, a process especially evident in Symbolist art.26 Furthermore, references to smell were particularly frequent in scenes depicting female figures, in line with a tradition associating the irrationality of the ‘lower senses’ with women.27 Smell has long been recognized as a ‘primitive’, unfiltered sense, one that boosts ‘the most direct process system of any of the senses’,28 and it is therefore remarkably evocative. In the words of Marcel Proust,29 But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more immaterial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.30 As we shall see, Alma-Tadema played with the effect of familiarity that certain smells trigger in the memory of the viewer. In discussing his works, I therefore integrate Hamilakis’ holistic approach to the sensorium with an evaluation of the potential that olfactory stimuli have in bridging the gap between past and present.

Sensing the baths Bathing scenes with female nudes have constituted a popular genre since the Renaissance, but few of them take place in identifiable ancient buildings.31 Théodore Chassériau’s Tepidarium (1853) (see Colour Plate 8 and Figure 5.1) is among the first paintings set in a real ancient complex, the warm room of the Forum Baths in Pompeii.32 At the time of the canvas’ completion, Paris was ‘amid a veritable Pompeii revival’,33 which saw the publication of Théophile Gautier’s (1811–72) Arria Marcella (1852) and the construction of Prince Jérôme Napoléon’s (1784–1860) Maison pompéienne, a vast Parisian house inspired by the Villa of Diomedes in Pompeii.34 Like the architects involved in the construction of this extravagant building, Chassériau meticulously reconstructed the interior of the Pompeian tepidarium based on contemporary archaeological drawings and his sketches during a visit to the site in the summer of 1840.35 The artist then enriched the architectural frame with ancient objects36 and, more significantly, sensory stimuli: the ‘warm humidity’ of the room,37 the colours of the women’s dresses and their different skin tones, the mass of their bodies, the 121

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smoke rising from the large brazier in the background. As noted by Sarah Betzer, Chassériau’s ‘subtle rhythms of the senses’ accentuate ‘the life and warmth of the subjects depicted,’38 contributing to giving texture and substance to the past. The painting’s sensescape was beautifully rendered by the Parnassian poet José-Maria de Heredia in his sonnet Tepidarium, initially published in 1875 and later included in the collection Les trophées (1893).39 The poem, directly inspired by Chassériau’s canvas,40 is a remarkable example of cross-fertilization between visual art and poetry: La myrrhe a parfumé leurs membres assouplis; Elles rêvent, goûtant la tiédeur de Décembre, Et le brasier de bronze illuminant la chambre Jette la flamme et l’ombre à leurs beaux fronts pâlis. Aux coussins de byssus, dans la pourpre des lits, Sans bruit, parfois un corps de marbre rose ou d’ambre Ou se soulève à peine ou s’allonge ou se cambre; Le lin voluptueux dessine de longs plis. Sentant à sa chair nue errer l’ardent effluve, Une femme d’Asie, au milieu de l’étuve, Tord ses bras énervés en un ennui serein; Et le pâle troupeau des filles d’Ausonie S’enivre de la riche et sauvage harmonie Des noirs cheveux roulant sur un torse d’airain.41 The many sensory elements of the painting are distilled here in the evocative references to exotic perfumes (‘La myrrhe a parfumé leurs membres assouplis’), precious textiles (‘Aux coussins de byssus, dans la pourpre des lits’, ‘Le lin voluptueux’), colours (‘un corps de marbre rose ou d’ambre’) and lights (‘le brasier de bronze’). Moreover, as noted by Rachel Killick, the complex phonetic structure of the sonnet, rich in phonetic repetitions, ‘creates an overpowering effect, where richness verges on monotony, suggesting the numbing obsessiveness of the perfume, the fascinated lethargy of the women and the general atmosphere of claustrophobic enthralment’.42 Despite the immaterial and therefore unvisual quality of scents, perfumes dominate de Heredia’s interpretation of Chassériau’s work.43 The ancient smell of myrrh44 opens the composition, and the Asian woman at the centre of the first tercet is primarily characterized by ‘l’ardent effluve’ on her skin. This stress on olfactory stimuli is significant because they inevitably remain implicit in the painting. Betzer identifies one of the two women depicted on the far-left side of the canvas as a perfume carrier,45 a hint at the importance of smell in the ancient bathing process. Perfumes and oils were indeed routinely used by bathers, and fragments of perfume flasks are common finds at Roman sites. The two objects carried by the figure, however, do not correspond to any specific oil container from Antiquity. They are rather reminiscent of slipware bowls produced by the

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Figure 5.1 Théodore Chassériau, Tepidarium (BW detail), 1853, oil on canvas, Musée d’Orsay, Paris (see also Colour Plate 8). Copyright: Musée d’Orsay, Paris, France/Bridgeman Images. Source: BRIDGEMAN.

Kabyle people, a Berber group indigenous to north-east Algeria,46 a country Chassériau visited in the summer of 1846.47 Among the painting’s many oriental references, this detail suggests a sort of sensory transfer from the Orient to Antiquity, with Chassériau reviving the empty framework of the building with the bodies and fragrances of the East.48 A combination of the relatively familiar sensorial assemblages that the artist had experienced first-hand in Algeria helped him to fill the gaps of the fragmentary, and now sensory-deprived, assemblage of the bathhouse. The result is what we might call a sensorial palimpsest, a layered compound of the physical remains of the building and Chassériau’s memories of the site, integrated by his sensorial recollections of North Africa. A similar approach to the fragmentariness of the past emerges from the ancient bathing scenes depicted by Alma-Tadema. In A Favourite Custom (1909) (see Colour Plate 9), sensory and archaeological elements are merged into a compelling synthesis.49 Like Chassériau’s Tepidarium, the painting showcases renditions of real archaeological objects50 and is set in a recognizable ancient building: the Stabian Baths in Pompeii, excavated between 1853 and 1859.51 Alma-Tadema combines details from the men’s apodyterium of this edifice with the fluted ceiling of the men’s calidarium of the Forum Baths.52 He also covers with marble the surfaces of walls and floors, transforming an unpretentious provincial bathhouse into a sophisticated complex, worthy of Rome itself.53 The canvas evokes a rich array of sensory stimuli: the gurgling water entering the pool, the different textures of the surfaces, the scent of flowers, accentuated by a figure in the background who is smelling a rose. However, the sensorial palimpsest recreated by 123

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Alma-Tadema is very different from the one we have seen in Chassériau’s Tepidarium. The pale complexions and fair hair of the women in Alma-Tadema’s painting contrast with the different skin tones of Chassériau’s bathers, inspired by the ethnic diversity he encountered in North Africa. The smellscape is also remarkably distinct. The vase of flowers on the left of the composition recalls a bourgeois interior and conveys a sense of domesticity, in sharp contrast with the exotic scents evoked by Chassériau. Even the sensual implications of the rose would have been familiar to an audience accustomed to the ‘language of flowers’, the topic of several contemporary ‘guides for lovers’.54 While talking of ‘Victorians in togas’55 or ‘Victorianized Romans’56 now appears too simplistic,57 Alma-Tadema’s ability to superimpose on the past figures and sensory stimuli of his time and place was recognized by his contemporaries.58 Alma-Tadema repeatedly deployed similar olfactory triggers to generate responses of familiarity and alterity in the minds of viewers, his The Roses of Heliogabalus (1888, private collection) being the most remarkable example (see Colour Plate 3). Rosemary Barrow stresses how the visual richness of the painting mitigates its potentially horrifying subject (Heliogabalus suffocating his guests to death amid a sea of rose petals), leaving the spectator ‘intoxicated by the richness of detail’.59 The artist’s ability to overwhelm our senses, and our sense of smell, in particular, also emerges in Caracalla (1902, private collection), depicting the emperor entering the magnificent public baths bearing his name on a trail of rose petals. A similar portrait of Caracalla had initially appeared in Thermae Antoninianae (1899, private collection), albeit miniaturized and almost hidden in the back of the composition, which instead features in the foreground three women absorbed in conversation. Once again, a bunch of flowers is held by one of these figures, and garlanded flute players can be seen among the crowd of bathers, enhancing the sensual atmosphere of the vast, archaeological reconstruction of the Thermae.60 A more intimate and sophisticated sensorial space appears in Summer (see Figure 5.2), part of the series Four Seasons commissioned in 1877 by Pilgeram & Lefèvre, the successor of the famous dealer-publisher Ernest Gambart (1814–1902).61 Georg Ebers (1837–98), German Egyptologist, author and one of Alma-Tadema’s earliest biographers, describes the canvas thus: ‘Summer!’ A hot day! In the bath-room of an aristocratic house – lined throughout with exquisitely carved marble – a lovely, languid girl slowly fanning herself with an ostrich-feather fan, reclines in the oval basin sunk in the floor. The cool water ripples around her beautiful limbs, and on its surface float the gay petals of countless fragrant summer flowers. On the bench above the tub the bather’s beautiful sister is sleeping in indolent ease.62 The private bathroom shown here does not appear to have been directly inspired by any specific ancient building and looks remarkably modern, with its reflecting floors and the clear-cut edge of the pool. Sensory triggers abound: the soft feathers of the fan, the shining and variegated surfaces of the floor and walls, and, more importantly, the flowers 124

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Figure 5.2 Auguste Thomas Marie Blanchard, after Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Summer, 1879, coloured engraving, 47.7 cm x 26.7 cm, private collection. Photo © Inter-Antiquariaat Mefferdt & De Jonge, Amsterdam, with permission.

and the bottle of perfumed oil. The shape of this object recalls ancient unguentaria, but its intentionally exaggerated scale transforms it into a piece of modern design.63 It is also a phallic image, comparable to the strigils held by female bathers in A Bath (1876, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg) and Tepidarium (1881, Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight).64 Alma-Tadema uses sensory stimuli to enhance the erotic charge of the two figures, which appear oblivious to the gaze of the viewer. The result is no longer a palimpsest of ancient and modern sensorial assemblages. Rather, it is a sensual fantasy in costume that originated entirely from the imagination of the artist. The ancient setting becomes accessory, little more than an excuse ‘for a voyeuristic sortie into a world normally barred to Victorian men’.65

A fragmented past As noted by Marchella Ward in her discussion of the early-modern reception of Greek tragedy, texts need ‘to be read horizontally, as well as vertically; as a chainmail of receptions rather than a chain’.66 The same can be said of our paintings. Chassériau and 125

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Alma-Tadema’s reconstructions are palimpsests of different assemblages, made of materiality, memories, feelings and imagination, and held together by sensorial exchanges.67 While Chassériau summoned the range of sensory elements he had experienced during his travels in Algeria to revive the sensory-deprived framework of the Forum Baths in Pompeii, Alma-Tadema contaminated the past with the sensorial repertoire of his own time and place. He also played with the sensory expectations of the viewers, skilfully deploying olfactory stimuli to balance the perception of familiarity and alterity that ancient bathing scenes could generate. Despite their different approaches, the works of Chassériau and Alma-Tadema challenge the idea of ‘pure’ visuality promoted by nineteenth-century aesthetics. Their renditions of classical baths are in constant conversation with their present, allowing the physical remains of Antiquity to be enriched by the artists’ impressions and transfigured by their imagination. The senses play a central role in this process. They are the ‘glue’ that creates a coherent space for the variegated fragments of past and present to coexist.68 This is possible because, as noted by Hamilakis, ‘[t]he senses are multi-temporal, they are past and present at the same time, they entail the simultaneous co-existence and communion of perception and memory’.69 De Heredia compellingly put into words the diachronic potential of the senses in his sonnet inspired by Chassériau’s Tepidarium. To a certain extent, de Heredia’s poem is part of the same ‘chainmail of receptions’, the same sensorial palimpsest ultimately ascribable to the tepidarium of the Forum Baths in Pompeii. This palimpsest originated from Chassériau’s artistic response to a physical place and the memories it evoked. His painting emerged from the creative merging of different sensorial assemblages, which, in turn, gave de Heredia an opportunity to add new sensory triggers and further layers of meaning, enhancing complexity. Chassériau and Alma-Tadema populated their reconstructions with female figures, and the emphasis on olfactory stimuli recalls the traditional association between women and smell, the most primitive and irrational of the senses. Betzer sees in Chassériau’s Tepidarium an interest for the ‘affective and sensual bonds between women’, describing the scene as overflowing with ‘embodied desire, female desire, directed [. . .] towards other women’.70 The reference to Berber ceramics and perfumes would reinforce the impression of a self-sufficient female space since among the Kabyle people pottery was a female domestic activity.71 However, if this was the artist’s intention, it was immediately distorted by the critics’ interpretation, who took for granted a male viewer’s gaze and read the painting as a titillating harem scene populated by women of different ethnic backgrounds.72 In Alma-Tadema’s A Favourite Custom, ancient bodies are so close to their modern counterparts as to generate an illusion of immediacy,73 allowing male viewers to see contemporary women in a way that would have been considered immoral in any other context. In Summer, this tension intensifies, turning the picture into a voyeuristic fantasy under the veneer of respectability granted by the antique setting. This chronological blurriness encourages the ‘active, mastering male gaze’ of the viewer to ‘subject the passive, fragmented, and silenced image’ of the ancient/modern female body.74 126

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Conclusion This chapter has discussed the sensory and cultural influences underpinning Théodore Chassériau’s and Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s rendition of Roman baths. Expanding on Hamilakis’ concept of sensorial assemblages, I have proposed to read their paintings as sensorial palimpsests, where new sensory stimuli can revive the materiality of archaeological remains. Both artists challenge the idea of ‘pure’ visuality promoted by nineteenth-century aesthetics and play with the creative possibilities offered by a fragmented past. While Chassériau evokes the Orient to reconstruct the ancient sensescape of the baths, AlmaTadema’s Antiquity is a sensual compound of Victorian scents and Roman decadence. The central role that female figures play in these paintings accentuates the traditional association between women and the sense of smell. While it is difficult to reconstruct the intentions of the artists, with Chassériau perhaps more attentive to the ‘affective and sensual bonds’ between his characters, the erotic tension in the pictures encourages the male viewer’s gaze to enter an otherwise inaccessible world of feminine sensoriality. The concepts of assemblage and palimpsest offer a useful theoretical framework to evaluate and compare visual receptions of ancient senses. Furthermore, this holistic approach allows us to integrate and enrich the analysis of paintings with non-visual sources that originated from the same sensory ‘humus’, as in the case of de Heredia’s poem inspired by Chassériau’s Tepidarium. Considering the success of the ancient baths theme in the second half of the nineteenth century, there is scope to apply this framework to a larger body of works, assessing influences and variations in the way ancient senses were used to bring the past to life. Acknowledgements The research for this chapter was made possible by the generous support of the Irish Research Council. I am indebted to Dr Nolwenn Corriou and Dr Helen Dixon for their valuable comments on earlier drafts of this work. I would like to thank Robert de Jonge for kindly sending me a digital image of Auguste Thomas Marie Blanchard’s engraving after Alma-Tadema’s Summer (1879).

Notes 1. See G. G. Fagan, Bathing in Public in the Roman World (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002), Chapter 1, ‘A Visit to the Baths with Martial’, 12–39. 2. See U. Kiby, Bäder und Badekultur in Orient und Okzident. Antike bis Spätbarock (Cologne: Dumont, 1995); M. Schich, Rezeption und Tradierung als komplexes Netzwerk. Der CENSUS und visuelle Dokumente zu den Thermen in Rom (Munich: Biering & Brinkmann, 2009); G. Savani, ‘An Elusive Legacy: The Rediscovery of Roman Baths in Eighteenth-Century Britain’, Britannia 50 (2019): 13–48; G. Savani, ‘A Misleading Source: The Fortuna of a Sixteenth-Century Engraving and Its Impact on The History of Roman Baths Studies’, Classical Receptions Journal 11, no. 3 (2019): 296–335.

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The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in The Modern Imagination 3. See Kiby, Bäder, 20–42, with references to earlier literature; F. K. Yegül, ‘The Thermo-Mineral Complex at Baiae and De Balneis Puteolanis’, Art Bulletin 78, no. 1 (1996): 137–61; S. Maddalo, Il De balneis Puteolanis di Pietro da Eboli: realtà e simbolo nella tradizione figurata (Vatican City: Biblioteca apostolica vaticana, 2003). 4. See, for instance, The Baths of Pozzuoli (c. 1570/73, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence) by Girolamo Macchietti (c. 1535–92): M. Privitera, Girolamo Macchietti, un pittore dello studiolo di Francesco I, (Firenze 1535–1592) (Milan: Jandi Sapi editori, 1996), with full references to the older literature. 5. See M. M. Aubrun, ‘Gustave Boulanger, “peintre éclectique” ’, Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire de l’Art français (1986): 167–256. 6. Claude Vignon (1828–88) named the group Néo-Grecs in 1852: C. Vignon, Salon de 1852 (Paris: Dentu, 1852), 109–26. On Vignon, see D. A. Harvey, ‘Forgotten Feminist: Claude Vignon (1828–1888), Revolutionary and femme de lettres’, Women’s History Review 13, no. 4 (2004): 559–83. The name Pompéistes was coined in 1866 by Théophile Gautier (1811–72), who used Pompéistes and Néo-Grecs interchangeably. See G. M. Ackerman, ‘The Néo-Grecs: A Chink in the Wall of Neoclassicism’, in The French Academy: Classicism and its Antagonists, ed. J. House (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1990), 168–95; G. Blix, From Paris to Pompeii: French Romanticism and the Cultural Politics of Archaeology (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 206–8; B. Coers, Die Farbe des Vergangenen. Pompeji in der Kunst der Moderne (Berlin: Lit, 2018), 203–4. 7. The term was coined by French art historians in the 1860s. See Coers, Die Farbe, 218. 8. See J. Whiteley, ‘Alma-Tadema and the Néo-Grecs’, in Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, ed. E. Becker, E. Morris, E. Prettejohn and J. Treuherz (New York: Rizzoli International, 1997), 69–76. 9. On Chassériau, see S. Betzer, ‘Afterimage of the Eruption: An Archaeology of Chassériau’s Tepidarium (1853)’, Art History 33, no. 3 (2010): 467–89; S. Betzer, ‘Archaeology Meets Fantasy: Chassériau’s Pompeii in Nineteenth Century Paris’, in Pompeii in the Public Imagination from its Rediscovery to Today, ed. S. Hales and J. Paul (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 118–35. On Alma-Tadema, see V. G. Swanson, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema: The Painter of the Victorian Vision of the Ancient World (London: Ash and Grant, 1977); E. Prettejohn, ‘Antiquity Fragmented and Reconstructed: Alma-Tadema’s Compositions’, in Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, ed. E. Becker, E. Morris, E. Prettejohn and J. Treuherz (New York: Rizzoli International, 1997), 33–42; R. Barrow, Lawrence Alma-Tadema (London: Phaidon, 2001); E. Prettejohn, ‘Lawrence Alma-Tadema and the Modern City of Ancient Rome’, Art Bulletin 84, no. 1 (2002): 115–29; R. Barrow, The Use of Classical Art & Literature by Victorian Painters 1869–1912: Creating Continuity with the Traditions of High Art (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 2007); R. RoviraGuardiola, ‘Archaeology in Alma-Tadema’s Painting: The Influence of Pompeii’, in The Legacy of Antiquity: New Perspectives in the Reception of the Classical World, ed. L. Kouneni (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014), 161–77; R. Verhoogt, ‘Alma-Tadema’s Egyptian Dream: Ancient Egypt in the Work of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema’, NineteenthCentury Contexts 40, no. 4 (2018): 377–95; S. Moser, Painting Antiquity: Ancient Egypt in the Art of Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Edward Poynter and Edwin Long (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020). See also R. A. Lindheim, ‘Re-Presenting Sappho: The Classical Tradition in NineteenthCentury French Painting’ (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2005); Coers, Die Farbe. 10. See R. Barrow, ‘The Scent of Roses: Alma-Tadema and the Other Side of Rome’, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 42 (1997–8): 183–4, 201; Betzer, ‘Afterimage of the Eruption’, 480–1. 11. See, for instance, F. Fahlander and A. Kjellström (eds), Making Sense of Things: Archaeologies of Sensory Perception (Stockholm: Stockholm University, 2010); J. Day (ed.), Making Senses of

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Sensing the Past the Past: Towards a Sensory Archaeology (Carbondale: Center for Archaeological Investigations, Southern Illinois University Carbondale and Southern Illinois University Press, 2013); Y. Hamilakis, Archaeology and the Senses: Human Experience, Memory, and Affect (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014); R. Skeates and J. Day (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Sensory Archaeology (London and New York: Routledge, 2019). 12. See J. Toner (ed.), A Cultural History of the Senses in Antiquity (London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014); M. Bradley (ed.), Smell and the Ancient Senses (London and New York: Routledge, 2015); E. Betts (ed.), Senses of the Empire: Multisensory Approaches to Roman Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 2017). 13. R. Skeates, An Archaeology of the Senses: Prehistoric Malta (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 5. 14. See H. Hunter-Crawley, ‘Classical Archaeology and the Senses: A Paradigmatic Shift?’, in The Routledge Handbook of Sensory Archaeology, ed. R. Skeates and J. Day (London and New York: Routledge, 2019), 434–62. See also V. Buchli, An Archaeology of the Immaterial (London and New York: Routledge, 2016), 14–16. 15. See F. Fahlander and A. Kjellström, ‘Beyond Sight: Archaeologies of Sensory Perception’, in Making Sense of Things: Archaeologies of Sensory Perception, ed. F. Fahlander and A. Kjellström (Stockholm: Stockholm University, 2010), 1–13. 16. E. Betts, ‘Introduction: Senses of Empire’, in Senses of the Empire: Multisensory Approaches to Roman Culture, ed. E. Betts (London and New York: Routledge, 2017), 2. 17. Fahlander and Kjellström, ‘Beyond Sight’, 10. 18. See R. Skeates and J. Day, ‘Afterword: Sensory Archaeology – A work in Progress’, in The Routledge Handbook of Sensory Archaeology, ed. R. Skeates and J. Day (London and New York: Routledge, 2019), 556–62. 19. See Adeline Grand-Clément and Charlotte Ribeyrol’s introduction to this volume. 20. Hamilakis, Archaeology and the Senses, 118–28; Y. Hamilakis, ‘Sensorial Assemblages: Affect, Memory and Temporality in Assemblage Thinking’, Cambridge Archaeological Journal 27, no. 1 (2017): 169–82. 21. On the concept of ‘assemblage’ and assemblage theory, see G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. B. Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1980/1987); M. DeLanda, Assemblage Theory (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016). On its use in archaeology, see Y. Hamilakis and A. Jones, ‘Archaeology and Assemblage’, Cambridge Archaeological Journal 27, no. 1 (2017): 77–84. Marchella Ward has recently applied assemblage theory to the reception of ancient texts: M. Ward, ‘Assemblage Theory and the Uses of Classical Reception: The Case of Aristotle Knowsley’s Oedipus’, Classical Receptions Journal 11, no. 4 (2019): 508–23. 22. Hamilakis, Archaeology and the Senses, 126–7. 23. Liz Prettejohn uses the term ‘assemblage’ in relation to Alma-Tadema’s creative process, but does not elaborate on its implications: ‘Alma-Tadema’s compositional procedures systematically transformed the functions and contexts of individual artefacts by providing them with new roles in the assemblages invented by the artist. The “authentic” artefacts were thus recombined into a whole scene that was pure fiction’ (Prettejohn, ‘Antiquity Fragmented’, 38). On the role of art and imagination in reconstructing the past, see G. Savani and V. Thompson, ‘Ambiguity and Omission: Creative Mediation of the Unknowable Past’, in Researching the Archaeological Past through Imagined Narratives. A Necessary Fiction, ed. D. van Helden and R. Witcher (London and New York: Routledge, 2020), 210–37.

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The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in The Modern Imagination 24. See, for instance, C. van Campen, The Hidden Sense: Synesthesia in Art and Science (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007); P. Di Bello and G. Koureas (eds), Art, History and the Senses: 1830 to the Present (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2010); F. Bacci and D. Melcher (eds), Art and the Senses (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); D. Howes and C. Classen, Ways of Sensing: Understanding the Senses in Society (London and New York: Routledge, 2014), Chapter 1, ‘Mixed Messages: Engaging the Senses in Art’, 17–36; A. E. Sanger and S. Tove Kulbrandstad Walker (eds), Sense and the Senses in Early Modern Art and Cultural Practice (London and New York: Routledge, 2015); S. Casini, ‘Synesthesia, Transformation and Synthesis: Toward a Multi-Sensory Pedagogy of the Image’, Senses and Society 12, no. 1 (2017): 1–17; H. Hunter-Crawley and E. O’Brien (eds), The Multi-Sensory Image from Antiquity to the Renaissance (London and New York: Routledge, 2019). 25. Howes and Classen, Ways of Sensing, 20. 26. Howes and Classen, Ways of Sensing, 25. 27. C. Classen, The Color of Angels: Cosmology, Gender and the Aesthetic Imagination (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), 5–6. 28. S. Ede, ‘Preface’, in Art and the Senses, ed. F. Bacci and D. Melcher (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), xiv. 29. M. Proust, In Search of Lost Time, Vol. 1: Swann’s Way, trans. C. K. Scott Moncrieff and T. Kilmartin (New York: Random House, 1913/2005), 54. 30. ‘Mais, quand d’un passé ancien rien ne subsiste, après la mort des êtres, après la destruction des choses, seules, plus frêles mais plus vivaces, plus immatérielles, plus persistantes, plus fidèles, l’odeur et la saveur restent encore longtemps, comme des âmes, à se rappeler, à attendre, à espérer, sur la ruine de tout le reste, à porter sans fléchir, sur leur gouttelette presque impalpable, l’édifice immense du souvenir.’ M. Proust, Du côté de chez Swann (Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1913), 57–8. 31. See A. de Marnhac, Femmes au bain: les métamorphoses de la beauté (Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1986); J. Bonnet, Femmes au bain. Du voyeurisme dans la peinture occidentale (Paris: Hazan, 2006), 17–77. 32. The painting is now in the Musée d’Orsay. Its extended title as included in the 1853 Salon pamphlet was Le Tepidarium: salle où les femmes de Pompéi venaient se reposer et se sécher en sortant du bain (The Tepidarium: The Room Where the Women of Pompeii Went to Dry Themselves and to Rest after Leaving the Bath). 33. Betzer, ‘Archaeology Meets Fantasy’, 119. 34. Betzer, ‘Archaeology Meets Fantasy’, 121–3, with further references. See also T. Gautier, A. Houssaye and C. Coligny, Le palais pompéien de l’avenue Montaigne. Études sur la maison gréco-romaine, ancienne résidence du prince Napoléon (Paris: Au palais pompéien et à la librairie internationale, 1866). For a comprehensive assessment of the influence that Pompeii had on nineteenth-century French culture, see Blix, From Paris to Pompeii. 35. See Chassériau’s watercolour Tepidarium at Pompeii (1840, Musée du Louvre, Paris), reproduced in L.-A. Prat, Inventaire Général des Dessins. École Française. Dessins de Théodore Chassériau (1819–1856), 2 vols (Paris: Éditions de la Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1988), vol. 1, 290, no. 629. See Betzer, ‘Afterimage of the Eruption’, 469–74. 36. The decorative elements of the room as well as the brazier in the background, still in situ. See Betzer, ‘Afterimage of the Eruption’, 471. 37. H. C. Marcel, ‘Théodore Chassériau’, in Chassériau, ed. J. Laran (Paris: La Renaissance du livre, 1900), 8: ‘la couleur y affecte cette richesse voilée, cette rutilance assourdie qui distinguent Delacroix; mais le galbe pur et cherché des corps féminins, qu’ils s’enveloppent frileusement 130

Sensing the Past des plis serrés des étoffes, ou qu’ils étirent leur nudité indolente dans la chaude moiteur de la chambre de bains, appartient en propre à l’artiste’. 38. Betzer, ‘Afterimage of the Eruption’, 481. 39. The sonnet originally appeared in Le Siècle littéraire of 15 November 1875. See J. Madeleine, ‘Chronologie des sonnets de José-Maria de Heredia’, Revue d’Histoire littéraire de la France 19, no. 2 (1912): 417; R. Killick, ‘Jose-Maria de Heredia and the Descriptive Sonnet: An Appreciation of Le Tepidarium, Antoine et Cléopâtre and Fuite de Centaures’, Australian Journal of French Studies 22 (1985): 251–8. On de Heredia, see also M. Ibrovac, Les sources des ‘Trophées’ (Paris: Les Presses Françaises, 1923); Y. Mortelette, ‘Les “Trophées” oubliés’, Revue d’Histoire littéraire de la France 106, no. 3 (2006): 695–707; Y. Mortelette (ed.), José-Maria de Heredia: poète du Parnasse (Paris: Presses Paris Sorbonne, 2006). 40. See J. Lavagne, ‘José Maria de Heredia’, Mémoires de la Société dunkerquoise pour l’encouragement des sciences, des lettres et des arts 43 (1906): 117. 41. J.-M. de Heredia, Les trophées (Paris: A. Lemerre, 1893), 69. An English translation can be found in J.-M. de Heredia, Les Trophées: The Sonnets, trans. H. Johnson (Paris: Chandler, 1910), 69: ‘The myrrh perfumes their limbs relaxed, as they / Now dreamily enjoy December’s warmth; / The bronzen brazier lights the room, and casts / A gleam, or shade, across their fair pale browns. / On byssus cushion or in purple couch / Sunk softly, now a pink or amber form / Will rise a little, bend, or stretch itself / And raise the linen in voluptuous folds. / An Asian woman, on whose hot flesh glide / The trickling drops, turns wearily her harms, / All nerveless, in the middle of the room; / The pale group of Ausonia’s daughters gaze / In ecstasy on that wild wealth of hair, / Black, bending with her body’s hue of bronze.’ 42. Killick, ‘de Heredia and the Descriptive Sonnet’, 257. 43. On the role of smells and perfumes in nineteenth-century poetry, see C. Maxwell, Scents and Sensibility: Perfume in Victorian Literary Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). 44. Myrrh (Commiphora myrrha) was indeed used as a fragrance as well as a fixative in ancient perfumes. See C. Castela, X. Fernandez, J.-J. Filippia and J.-P. Brunb, ‘Perfumes in Mediterranean Antiquity’, Flavour and Fragrance Journal 24 (2009): 326–34. 45. Betzer, ‘Afterimage of the Eruption’, 481. 46. See J. L. Myres, ‘Notes on the History of the Kabyle Pottery’, Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 32 (1902): 248–62; M. Vincentelli, ‘Reflections on a Kabyle Pot: Algerian Women and the Decorative Tradition’, Journal of Design History 2, no. 2–3 (1989): 123–38, with full references to the older literature. On the history of the Kabyle people, see A. Boulifa, Le Djurdjura à travers l’histoire depuis l’Antiquité jusqu’en 1830: organisation et indépendance des Zouaoua (grande Kabylie) (Algiers: J. Bringau, 1925); P. A. Silverstein, ‘The Kabyle Myth: Colonization and the Production of Ethnicity’, in From the Margins: Historical Anthropology and Its Futures, ed. B. Keith Axel (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), 122–55; G. M. Wysner, The Kabyle People (Redditch, UK: Read Books Ltd, 2013). 47. On Chassériau’s relationship with Algeria, see P. Benson Miller, ‘Théodore Chassériau and the French Colonial Project in Algeria’ (PhD diss., New York University, 2003). 48. See Betzer, ‘Afterimage of the Eruption’, 479–80. Ancient and Turkish baths were frequently assimilated in the nineteenth century, to the point that the Maison pompéienne was equipped with Turkish baths. In the description of the building by Gautier, Houssaye and Coligny, we read, ‘Vous pensiez arriver à des thermes, à un tepidarium, comme celui où Chasseriau a fait se reposer les femmes de Pompéi; pas du tout: vous tombez dans un bain turc’ (Gautier, Houssaye and Coligny, Le palais pompéien, 22).

131

The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in The Modern Imagination 49. Now in the Tate Gallery, London. V. G. Swanson, The Biography and Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (London: Garton & Co., 1990), no. 422. See R. Barrow, ‘A Favourite Custom’, in Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, ed. E. Becker, E. Morris, E. Prettejohn and J. Treuherz (New York: Rizzoli International, 1997), 262–3. 50. For example, a lion-legged table and the Hildesheim silver crater, discovered in Hildesheim (Germany) in 1868 together with several other exquisite silver vessels now in the Staatliche Museen, Berlin. See U. Gehrig, Hildesheimer Silberfund (Berlin: Staatliche Museen Berlin, 1967). Alma-Tadema had a replica of the silver crater in his studio and it appeared in several other paintings. See Whiteley, ‘Alma-Tadema and the Néo-Grecs’, 70; Barrow, ‘A Favourite Custom’, 84. 51. For a recent reassessment of the site, see M. Trümper, C. Brünenberg, J.-A. Dickmann, D. Esposito, A. F. Ferrandes, G. Pardini, A. Pegurri, M. Robinson and C. Rummel, ‘Stabian Baths in Pompeii: New Research on the Development of Ancient Bathing Culture’, Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts Römische Abteilung 125 (2019): 103–59. 52. Barrow, Alma-Tadema, 189. 53. Barrow, ‘A Favourite Custom’, 262. 54. Barrow, ‘The Scent of Roses’, 184. 55. This was the title of an exhibition held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York in 1973. 56. See G. P. Landow, ‘Victorianized Romans: Images of Rome in Victorian Painting’, Browning Institute Studies 12 (1984): 35–7. Similar approaches can be found in L. Lippincott, Lawrence Alma Tadema: Spring (Malibu, CA: Getty Museum Studies on Art, 1991); and R. Jenkyns, Dignity and Decadence: Victorian Art and the Classical Inheritance (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992). 57. See Moser, Painting Antiquity, 47, who stresses how ‘technical precision generated an acute sense of the material world and this was central to evoking a “lived-in” sense of the past’. 58. See, for instance, the humorous remarks of Ernest Chesneau (1833–90): ‘As a protest against the false dignity and commonplace stiffness which the impotent pedantry of Academies has introduced into their formal dramas and heroic poems, Alma-Tadema has, in a manner, put the antique world into slippers and dressing-gown. He represents his heroes as walking, sitting, rising, drinking, eating, and talking, not as the characters walked, sat, rose, drank, ate, and talked in the theatre of Talma and in the tragedies of Lebrun, but as we ourselves walk, sit, rise, drink, eat, and talk’ – E. Chesneau, The English School of Painting, trans. L. N. Etherington (London and New York: Cassell & Company, 1882/1885), 264. See also R. Muther, The History of Modern Painting, 4 vols (London: J. M. Dent, 1907), vol. 3, 350: ‘And the figures moving in [Alma-Tadema’s paintings] are Englishwomen. Among all the beautiful things in the world there are few so beautiful as English girls. Those tall, slender, vigorous figures that one sees upon the beach at Brighton are really like Greek women, and even the garb which they wear in playing tennis is as free and graceful as that of the Grecian people.’ 59. R. Barrow, ‘The Roses of Heliogabalus’, in Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, ed. E. Becker, E. Morris, E. Prettejohn and J. Treuherz (New York: Rizzoli International, 1997), 235; see also Barrow, ‘The Scent of Roses’, 198–202; Prettejohn, ‘Lawrence Alma-Tadema’, 120. 60. See Barrow, Alma-Tadema, 177; Prettejohn, ‘Lawrence Alma-Tadema’, 122–3. 61. See Swanson, Catalogue Raisonné, no. 214, 194–5. The painting is now in the Rosenback Foundation Museum in Philadelphia. Swanson notes that ‘[u]nfortunately, the picture remains to us only as a relic. It has been over-cleaned and over-painted by an extremely inept restorer.’ See also R. Verhoogt, Art in Reproduction: Nineteenth-Century Prints after Lawrence Alma-

132

Sensing the Past Tadema, Jozef Israels and Ary Scheffer (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2007), 443. On Pilgeram & Lefèvre’s commissions to Alma-Tadema and other artists, see R. Verhoogt, ‘Art Reproduction and the Nation: National Perspectives in an International Art Market’, in Art Crossing Borders: The Internationalisation of the Art Market in the Age of Nation States, 1750–1914, ed. J. Dirk Baetens and D. Lyna (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 300–26. 62. G. Ebers, Lorenz Alma Tadema: His Life and Works, trans. M. J. Safford (New York: W. S. Gottsberger, 1885/1886), 84. Ebers’ biography originally appeared as an article in Westermanns Monatshefte 59 (1885). 63. The model for the object depicted here was a so-called candlestick unguentarium of the club-shaped type, usually between 14 and 16 cm high: see C. Isings, Roman Glass from Dated Finds (Groningen: J. B Wolters, 1957), 97–9 (I would like to thank Thomas J. Derrick for this reference). These plays on scale are common in Alma-Tadema’s work, especially in the 1870s. See, for instance, the large fountain in the shape of a sphinx that appears in A Bath (1876, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg), inspired by a decorative motif on a piece of ancient furniture: E. Prettejohn, ‘A Bath (An Antique Custom)’, in Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, ed. E. Becker, E. Morris, E. Prettejohn and J. Treuherz (New York: Rizzoli International, 1997), 197. 64. See Prettejohn, ‘A Bath’; R. Barrow, ‘Tepidarium’, in Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, ed. E. Becker, E. Morris, E. Prettejohn and J. Treuherz (New York: Rizzoli International, 1997), 218. 65. As remarked by Russell Ash in his comment to Alma-Tadema’s The Frigidarium (1890, private collection): R. Ash, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1990), 58. 66. Ward, ‘Assemblage Theory’, 515. 67. Hamilakis, Archaeology and the Senses, 126. 68. Hamilakis, Archaeology and the Senses, 126. 69. Hamilakis, Archaeology and the Senses, 124. 70. Betzer, ‘Afterimage of the Eruption’, 478. 71. See Vincentelli, ‘Reflections on a Kabyle Pot’. 72. Betzer, ‘Afterimage of the Eruption’, 478–9. 73. In the words of a late nineteenth-century critic, Alma-Tadema’s paintings look like ‘bits out of a real world of which [Alma-Tadema] had been an eye-witness’: C. Monkhouse, ‘The Grosvenor Gallery III’, Academy, 23 December 1882, 457, quoted in Prettejohn, ‘Antiquity Fragmented’, 34. 74. J. Starr, ‘Men Looking at Women through Art: Male Gaze and Spectatorship in Three Nineteenth-Century French Novels’, Revue Frontenac 10, no. 11 (1993), 10.

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Sensing the Past Fagan, G. G. Bathing in Public in the Roman World. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002. Fahlander, F. and A. Kjellström. ‘Beyond Sight: Archaeologies of Sensory Perception’. In Making Sense of Things: Archaeologies of Sensory Perception, edited by F. Fahlander and A. Kjellström, 1–13. Stockholm: Stockholm University, 2010. Fahlander, F. and A. Kjellström, eds. Making Sense of Things: Archaeologies of Sensory Perception. Stockholm: Stockholm University, 2010. Gautier, T., A. Houssaye and C. Coligny. Le palais pompéien de l’avenue Montaigne. Études sur la maison gréco-romaine, ancienne résidence du prince Napoléon. Paris: Au palais pompéien et à la librairie internationale, 1866. Gehrig, U. Hildesheimer Silberfund. Berlin: Staatliche Museen Berlin, 1967. Hamilakis, Y. Archaeology and the Senses: Human Experience, Memory, and Affect. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Hamilakis, Y. ‘Sensorial Assemblages: Affect, Memory and Temporality in Assemblage Thinking’. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 27, no. 1 (2017): 169–82. Hamilakis, Y. and A. Jones. ‘Archaeology and Assemblage’. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 27, no. 1 (2017): 77–84. Harvey, D. A. ‘Forgotten Feminist: Claude Vignon (1828–1888), Revolutionary and femme de lettres’. Women’s History Review 13, no. 4 (2004): 559–83. Howes, D. and C. Classen. Ways of Sensing: Understanding the Senses in Society. London and New York: Routledge, 2014. Hunter-Crawley, H. ‘Classical Archaeology and the Senses: A Paradigmatic Shift?’. In The Routledge Handbook of Sensory Archaeology, edited by R. Skeates and J. Day, 434–62. London and New York: Routledge, 2019. Hunter-Crawley, H. and E. O’Brien, eds. The Multi-Sensory Image from Antiquity to the Renaissance. London and New York: Routledge, 2019. Ibrovac, M. Les sources des ‘Trophées’. Paris: Les Presses Françaises, 1923. Isings, C. Roman Glass from Dated Finds. Groningen: J. B Wolters, 1957. Jenkyns, R. Dignity and Decadence: Victorian Art and the Classical Inheritance. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992. Kiby, U. Bäder und Badekultur in Orient und Okzident. Antike bis Spätbarock. Cologne: Dumont, 1995. Killick, R. ‘Jose-Maria de Heredia and the Descriptive Sonnet: An Appreciation of Le Tepidarium, Antoine et Cléopâtre and Fuite de Centaures’. Australian Journal of French Studies 22 (1985): 248–70. Landow, G. P. ‘Victorianized Romans: Images of Rome in Victorian Painting’. Browning Institute Studies 12 (1984): 35–7. Lavagne, J. ‘José Maria de Heredia’. Mémoires de la Société dunkerquoise pour l’encouragement des sciences, des lettres et des arts 43 (1906): 107–21. Lindheim, R. A. ‘Re-Presenting Sappho: The Classical Tradition in Nineteenth-Century French Painting’. PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2005. Lippincott, L. Lawrence Alma Tadema: Spring. Malibu, CA: Getty Museum Studies on Art, 1991. Maddalo, S. Il De balneis Puteolanis di Pietro da Eboli: realtà e simbolo nella tradizione figurata. Vatican City : Biblioteca apostolica vaticana, 2003. Madeleine, J. ‘Chronologie des sonnets de José-Maria de Heredia’. Revue d’Histoire littéraire de la France 19, no. 2 (1912): 416–21. Marcel, H. C. ‘Théodore Chassériau’. In Chassériau, edited by J. Laran. Paris: La Renaissance du livre, 1900. Maxwell, C. Scents and Sensibility: Perfume in Victorian Literary Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Monkhouse, C. ‘The Grosvenor Gallery III’. Academy, 23 December 1882, 457. 135

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Sensing the Past Toner, J., ed. A Cultural History of the Senses in Antiquity. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014. Trümper, M., C. Brünenberg, J.-A. Dickmann, D. Esposito, A. F. Ferrandes, G. Pardini, A. Pegurri, M. Robinson and C. Rummel. ‘Stabian Baths in Pompeii: New Research on the Development of Ancient Bathing Culture’. Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts Römische Abteilung 125 (2019): 103–59. van Campen, C. The Hidden Sense: Synesthesia in Art and Science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007. Verhoogt, R. Art in Reproduction: Nineteenth-Century Prints after Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Jozef Israels and Ary Scheffer. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2007. Verhoogt, R. ‘Alma-Tadema’s Egyptian Dream: Ancient Egypt in the Work of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema’. Nineteenth-Century Contexts 40, no. 4 (2018): 377–95. Verhoogt, R. ‘Art Reproduction and the Nation: National Perspectives in an International Art Market’. In Art Crossing Borders: The Internationalisation of the Art Market in the Age of Nation States, 1750–1914, edited by J. Dirk Baetens and D. Lyna, 300–26. Leiden: Brill, 2019. Vignon, C. Salon de 1852. Paris: Dentu, 1852. Vincentelli, M. ‘Reflections on a Kabyle Pot: Algerian Women and the Decorative Tradition’. Journal of Design History 2, no. 2–3 (1989): 123–38. Ward, M. ‘Assemblage Theory and the Uses of Classical Reception: The Case of Aristotle Knowsley’s Oedipus’. Classical Receptions Journal 11, no. 4 (2019): 508–23. Whiteley, J. ‘Alma-Tadema and the Néo-Grecs’. In Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, edited by E. Becker, E. Morris, E. Prettejohn and J. Treuherz, 69–76. New York: Rizzoli International, 1997. Wysner, G. M. The Kabyle People. Redditch, UK: Read Books Ltd, 2013. Yegül, F. K. ‘The Thermo-Mineral Complex at Baiae and De Balneis Puteolanis’. Art Bulletin 78, no. 1 (1996): 137–61.

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CHAPTER 6 EVOKING EMPATHY: SMELL IN THE TWENTY FIRSTCENTURY RECEPTION OF ANTIQUITY * Kim Beerden

Introduction Many people consider history, and especially ancient history, to be something from such a long time ago and ever so distant: the past as a very foreign country.1 Some academics have contributed to this notion by arguing that the Greeks and Romans cannot truly be understood by us because they are ‘other’ or ‘alien’.2 When taken to its extreme and without its proper historiographical context, such a stance might turn ancient history into something irrelevant in the public imagination. The story of the ancient past would then become a story about unknowable ‘others’ that does not have much to do with how we understand our own societies. In my opinion, however, the main aim of the historian should be to find ways to understand the past in order to make it relevant to the present.3 The challenge facing the historian is to communicate this relevancy to a wider audience – without resorting to facile parallelism that denies the fundamental difference of the past or our own subjectivity. One way to do so is by appealing to ‘historical empathy’. In presenting Antiquity and other periods of history to a non-scholarly audience, we can certainly speak of an empathic trend.4 The idea is that, especially in secondary schools but also in other public contexts, historical individuals are put centre stage and are presented as ‘people like you and me’.5 The public is invited to explore the daily lives of individuals within a particular cultural context.6 Historical empathy is to ‘put yourself in someone else’s past’, what has also been called ‘perspective recognition’.7 This is supposed to lead to a more intense engagement with the past, a way to enthuse the general public by making it easier for them to identify with historical characters, thus stimulating them to want to learn more about a past society. Historical individuals are thought of as ‘same’ in terms of essential human cognitive features and ‘other’ in terms of historical context. Historical empathy is put into practice in novel ways of presenting history not only in school education, but also in museums and in popular culture, geared toward the presentation of everyday life and toward a depiction of a more sensuous experience (which is sometimes referred to as the ‘affective turn’).8 While historians disagree over whether or not historical empathy is a method that can or should be used in academic work – a discussion I will not address here – I certainly believe historical empathy to be a suitable first step in order to engage an audience. Barton and Levstik note that there are four steps involved when an individual learns about history: identification, analysis, moral response and display of knowledge.9 According to them, and also to many outside 138

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of academia, identification is an important step before people are willing to spend money and time on gaining historical knowledge. Sensory experiences – sight, touch, hearing, taste and smell – play an important part in strategies of evoking historical empathy. They can suggest the realities of daily life and make (ancient) history come alive, make people feel they are transported into the past. In this chapter I will focus on just one of the senses, smell, and tease out a number of issues related to olfactory experiences in the context of historical empathy. Smell, touch and to some extent taste have been somewhat neglected in our society, which is permeated with visual and auditory media.10 Although catching up quickly, research into the history of scent and smelling, especially in the Graeco-Roman world, still deserves some extra attention.11 More specifically, I will analyse the functions that odours and smelling fulfil in modern televised representations of ancient Rome, with the television series Rome (2005–7) as my case study. Obviously, in a television series there are no actual smells, only their evocation. To look at the evocation of smells might be a more fruitful line of exploration than perusing the recreation of actual smells, something that as of now generally is hampered by technological problems (to which we will return below). Analysis of the olfactory elements in Rome can help to create a framework for the exploration of olfaction in other examples of the moving image, and even beyond. But before we turn to our case study it is important to consider at some length the relationships that exist between empathy, smell and the moving image.

Smell and empathy Brooks’ analysis of the key elements of perspective recognition helps us to understand the mechanics of historical empathy: The first [element] is a sense of otherness or the recognition that other people’s values, attitudes, beliefs, and intentions may be different from one’s own. A sense of otherness combats what Wineburg labels ‘presentism’ – the natural tendency to view the past through the lens of the present. The second component, shared normalcy, is a willingness to entertain the possibility that others’ perspectives make sense and are not the result of ignorance, stupidity, or delusion. Thirdly, empathy requires historical contextualization, which is the ability to explain past actions and events in terms of historical values, attitudes, and beliefs. A fourth aspect of empathy is an acknowledgement of the multiplicity of historical perspectives or the understanding that individuals and groups held a variety of values, attitudes, and beliefs at any given time in history. The final sub competency of empathy, perhaps the most difficult to achieve, is a recognition that one’s own perspectives depend on historical context – contextualization of the present.12 The one thing lacking here is emotion. One might argue that with smell (probably more so than with other sensory experiences), emotion comes first.13 There has been much 139

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research done into the relationship between smell and empathy.14 One conclusion is that odours evoke the emotional component of empathy, have an impact on behaviour and affect mood and cognitive functions:15 ‘Smell, this most liminal of senses, carries a great subversive potential in its ability to violate boundaries, assault rationality, and evoke powerful emotions of disgust and attraction.’16 The relation between odours and history especially ‘allows us to engage with our history in a more emotional way’.17 In sum, the direct relationship between smell and empathy, including historical empathy, is quite a strong one.18

The moving image and the use of the smell-empathy connection The use of olfactory smellscapes to engage an audience goes a long way back – even to theatrical performances from the Graeco-Roman world19 – and it continues in present times.20 As for modern cinema, there have been several experimental attempts to create a smellscape for the audience with the aim of enlivening the cinematic experience, such as Smell-O-Vision and scratch-and-sniff cards.21 These generally unsuccessful attempts at engaging the audience show that there is a perennial wish to add smell (and touch) to our sight-and-sound-based media.22 In museums we see some comparable efforts at introducing scent.23 Instead, we are here concerned with the semblance of olfaction, by verbal reference to some odour, or by its visual representation, by characters sniffing or by other, more subtle hints of smell.24 It can be difficult to depict a particular smell in a film or in a television series. All depends on the audience being familiar with an odour. One would expect olfaction, when it is addressed in the moving image, to have an important function. Otherwise, why would a screenwriter, designer or director take the trouble to insert it? In fact, the sense of smell may prove an important tool to enhance audience response: not only does smell trigger memories and emotions, as noted above, but it even invites mimicry – research shows that when viewers see a character sniffing on the screen, they imitate this behaviour and also start sniffing, similar to the mimicry of yawning and laughing.25 This mimicry is relevant for investigations into historical empathy with onscreen characters because it again facilitates identification.26

Case study: The TV-series Rome (2005–7) Rome was an extremely successful television series produced by HBO–BBC, consisting of twenty-four episodes divided across two seasons.27 It was a large-scale undertaking, an unprecedented $100 million being invested in the first season alone. Prominent directors such as Michael Apted, Allen Coulter and Mikael Salomon were drafted in. The Forum Romanum and a couple of Roman streets were recreated on the backlot of Cinecittà in Rome – where ‘Rome’ has been recreated on many occasions. Rome relates the (mis)adventures of two soldiers, Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo, who live in the time of 140

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the Civil War between Pompey and Caesar and under Octavian. Their relatively humble lives are, on many levels, intertwined with the lives of those important politicians. That the series’ creators selected this well-documented historical background did have consequences, as we will see. There are several different genres of ‘televised history’, such as documentary, docudrama, re-enactment and many kinds of fiction – and each has a different aim or goal.28 As Hunt observes, ‘The purpose of television history is to entertain, educate and excite. If it can throw some intelligent light on the past through an engaging narrative while encouraging viewers to think more deeply about the subject, then it’s doing the job.’29 One might doubt whether Rome ‘did the job’ as Hunt envisioned it. Its producers most probably did not have the primary motives of educating their viewers and stimulating further thought. Remarkably enough, in the publicity before and after release, it was claimed that the most important reason, or at least a very important one, why Rome merited the viewers’ attention was its ‘historical authenticity’.30 This is in the best of Hollywood traditions, but it should not fool us: the main goal of Rome was to entertain – and to engage people in such a way to make them go on watching the series.31 It is essentially a ‘soap’ where we are supposed to identify and empathize with the main characters. Nevertheless, the viewer needs some historical contextualization to ‘convince’ them of the historicity of the background of the story. By watching, they must develop some understanding of how identities in ancient Rome were shaped and how these are similar to or different from the viewer’s identity. Thus, there are some selfimposed limits to how unhistorical the series can be – a point to which we will return in a moment. Smelly Rome/Rome The semblance of smell is one of the means employed by the makers of Rome to assist viewers in identifying and empathizing with the series’ characters. Establishing the humanity and individual identity of the characters allows the audience to bridge the gap between themselves and an imagined ancient Rome. But it is also a statement about history. Rome’s Rome is a smelly Rome, because the real ancient Rome was thought of by Rome’s creators as smelly. Historians and archaeologists have explained to us that the ancient world was not one of white marble against blue skies: it was colourful, the blue sky often obscured by smoke, and altogether very dirty. The makers of Rome have followed suit. Production designer Joseph Bennett wanted a different set, not grandiose, but garish and filthy: People think of Rome as white and cold and beautiful, powerful but distant. But based on the research, I don’t think it was like that at all. [. . .] The temples and sculptures were all brightly painted. Rome was like Pompeii, but much bigger. And Rome was so noisy it was impossible to sleep. It was like hell. Think of it as a combination of New York and Calcutta, with insane wealth and insane poverty. It was pretty extreme.32 141

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And as Bruno Heller, one of the series’ creators, explains: There was a lot of very recent scholarship at that time [of the production of the series] that transformed people’s sense of what Roman [history] was [. . .] There was much more about the everyday life of Roman people, about how people would have lived in apartment blocks in the insular working class life [sic], and looking at it from that modern perspective [. . .]. It’s lucky that practically every previous representation of Rome on any scale kind of went for the grand imperial late Edward Gibbon velvet drapes and marble columns. Even Gladiator went for that. Whereas, in fact, it looked much more like Calcutta or Bombay, and smelled like that.33 Obviously, smells were important to the makers of Rome, not merely for making the viewer relate to the characters in the series, but also for the historical ‘authenticity’ they say they were striving for – this is not a fantasy world, it is the real Late Republican Rome of history. We will now have a closer look at how this plays out, singling out a number of themes where scents and smelling are introduced. Gender The relation between smell and gender has been well researched.34 It seems that the scriptwriters of Rome wanted to stress gendered ideas about Roman women living secluded lives. There are two scenes where women are using their sense of smell during which it is clear that women are in an enclosed environment. In one, Octavia and her friend are smoking hemp and Atia remarks, ‘You are making the whole house stink.’35 On a different occasion, Octavia comments on what is probably incense being burned in Atia’s room: ‘You could choke Vulcan in here.’36 Here the point seems to be to underline by reference to heavily scented rooms what is already visualized: the supposedly historical fact of men moving about in the outside world, and the women living mostly indoors and making extensive use of scents. Death When Pullo and Vorenus are temporarily working as butchers, their conversation is as follows: ‘Smells like old times.’ ‘It does that.’37 They mean that the stench of the slaughterhouse reminds them, as ex-soldiers, of the battlefield. It is the mnemonic function of smell that is addressed here, but the scene of course also suggests what the passer-by would smell in a Roman street. The way death and its smell are evoked can be very explicit, as when Marc Anthony and Octavian have a brief conversation on the battlefield after the Battle at Philippi. Marc Anthony says, ‘Breathe deep, boy, the smell of victory,’ to which Octavian responds, ‘Smoke, shit and rotting flesh.’38 The smell of death can also be depicted in more implicit ways: for example, the sound of flies is heard and smoke is seen when there is a scene on the site of an earlier battle, implying the stench of 142

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slaughter.39 Indirectly connected to death and decay is the scene in which a woman buys an abortifacient: it is sniffed – and it clearly smells bad.40 Somewhat comparable is Servilia, who is always plotting, sniffing her glass of water before drinking, probably because she fears she will be poisoned.41 Generally, the function here is to fill in the historical background: dead bodies, carcasses, ghastly medicinal concoctions, which are quite distinct from the average viewer’s sanitized world. Religious identity Religious ritual occurs very regularly throughout the series. We see the burning of incense in a religious context, without the incense being commented on. For example, incense is visible at the Egyptian palace during what seems to be a religious ceremony.42 We see it during all kinds of religious processions and when Cleopatra appears.43 Obviously, incense is depicted as very specific to Egyptian religion, hinting at its ‘exotic nature’.44 Again, this provides some olfactory emphasis to the historical backdrop: there is a lot of ‘lived religion’ going on, and standing out amongst this is ‘oriental religion’ in particular.45 Socio-economic status Socio-economic status is another aspect of identity that is marked by smell. Pullo tells Eirene a personal memory about his mother: ‘She was a slave up north. [It] smelled of pine trees. Worked in the woodyards, probably.’ Memories evoked by the sense of smell widen the scope of Rome beyond the actual period in which we follow the characters – they provide background information and make the characters more rounded. But it also a subtle way to introduce the subject of slavery. A rather less subtle example of this is when Vorenus comes to collect his slaves from the slaveholder and waves his arms around and coughs to illustrate the stench. The slaveholder defends himself by saying, ‘I kept them here despite the stink, so you’d know I’d done you nothing dodgy.’46 So slavery can smell bad as well. Smell functions as an effective way to distinguish between high and low socio-economic status.47 Atia says to her young son Octavian when he arrives back in Rome, ‘Come inside and wash. Let’s get the stink of horse off you.’ The idea behind this is to restore Octavian to his high status – members of the elite are not smelly.48 The differences in social status are made even more explicit when Brutus describes the Gauls during a party in Rome: ‘You have to imagine long hair down to here, huge moustaches, the most horrific stench. They eat raw meat and never wash.’49 On the other side, when Timon attempts to make himself more attractive and cross the divide between lower and higher class, he uses perfume, to Atia’s dismay: ‘Are you wearing perfume? [. . .] It’s horrid, horse shit suits you much better.’50 So in these instances smell is used to underscore the Roman social hierarchy. Rural and urban: The quality of the air There are frequent comments relating to the quality of the air, which seem to function as a means to distinguish between urban Rome and the rural countryside. Timon’s brother 143

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says to Timon, ‘You breathe this fetid air of Rome, but you are not Roman.’51 Pullo complains to his wife about the brothel where they are living, that the ‘[w]hole place stinks like fish, doesn’t it?’52 Vorenus comments on a room where his children will be living that it benefits from ‘a good breeze from the river’.53 Pullo wants to move to the country and says, ‘I need clean air, room to move’ and on another occasion ‘I’m going to the country. Just for the day, to get some fresh air, stretch my legs.’54 Brutus remarks to Cicero in exile that ‘The sea air is bracing, at least.’55 And Servilia remarks to Octavia, ‘Lovely town, I’m told. Healthy air.’56 The quality of the air is further illustrated by the extensive use of smoke throughout the series. A history lesson again: ancient Rome was dirty, polluted, smoky. Food Eating is a universal function and very suitable for developing empathy with the characters, even when they commit (or are about to commit) a crime. Vorenus, during a family meal, says, ‘It smells delicious’, just when he is about to lose his temper due to the consequences of his changing position in society.57 The best example is probably that of Titus Pullo, who smells the ripe peaches (twice) in Cicero’s garden before he proceeds to kill Cicero.58 Here, smell fosters our identification with the characters by stressing their humanity. There is no attempt to inform the viewer about the kinds of food that Romans ate or their sometimes outlandish (to our taste) seasonings. Sexuality Sexuality is an important theme in the smellscape of Rome, and is mostly concerned with women. Servilia’s slave woman sniffs Servilia’s neck and arms and seems pleased, telling her mistress that she smells like flowers in bloom.59 In another scene, a slave strikes and ironic tone with Cleopatra, who is experiencing withdrawal symptoms from her drugs prior to a meeting with Ceasar: ‘Nothing like cold, stinking sweat to seduce a man.’60 Men can also be odorous, and it is Cleopatra who does the smelling in the following example: Cleopatra sniffs Vorenus when she wants to have sex with him and her slave woman comments, ‘Flowers. Leather. Olives. Not bad.’61 Again, these olfactory details seem intended to humanize the characters. The fact that women especially resort to smell for erotic ends seems mostly a narrative ploy: women are systematically sexualized in Rome and largely characterized by this feature.

Analysis and conclusions The rhetorical use of smell by way of the olfactory themes discussed above can be seen to have two main functions: on the one hand, to help the audience identify with the characters (they use their sense of smell like we do, and equally recognizable is the mnemonic function of smell that rounds out the characters); and on the other hand, to 144

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grasp some basic ideas about Roman society (it smelled different and it was different from our society). The first function is highlighted by the fact that sympathetic characters are smelling things more often than characters the audience is not meant to sympathize with: in both seasons 1 and 2, Pullo and Vorenus, our everyday heroes, are shown smelling more than any other characters. Of course, the main characters have the most screen time. Still, some complex characters with whom we are meant to have an ambiguous relationship, such as Servilia and Cleopatra in the first season as well as Octavia in the second, do not do as much smelling as might be expected. Servilia is cunning, Cleopatra forceful and Octavia unpleasant, not really inviting much empathy. There may very well be gender dynamics at play here: while a reference to smell has the immediate effect of making people in the series more like ‘real people’, apparently ‘people’ are mostly men. Perhaps the makers of the series believed that the audience would be mainly male – and that this would be the easiest route to evoke empathy. When we broaden our scope to the smellscapes of other recent television series, we find odours and smelling conspicuously absent. The worlds of Britannia (2017) and Troy: Fall of a City (2018) are generally very sterile and the likeability of the characters is low – or at least we are not invited to feel empathy for characters who could be ‘like us’, as in Rome. The television series Spartacus: Blood and Sand (season 1) is equally devoid of references to smell, with one telling exception which supports the argument concerning identification and empathy suggested above. The scene is in episode 4, where the owner of the ludus comes home in a sorry state and is desperate and says to his wife, ‘I should wash, I smell of death.’ His wife replies, ‘No, you smell like a man.’ This definitely invites us to feel some sympathy for this otherwise unpleasant character and his wife in a moment of crisis. The second function related to the use of smell, that of evoking an ‘authentic’ firstcentury bce Rome, makes use of a number of dichotomies: women and men, rich and poor, urban and rural, civilized and barbarian. Indeed, smell has a classificatory function, and gender, class and civilization are easily portrayed with the rhetoric of smell.62 Add some clouds of incense wafting by, and a pervasive smell of death, and we are presented with a smellscape that tries to say something about what Roman society actually smelled like and at the same time uses those odours to highlight some of its essential characteristics of identity. The smellscape of Rome could lead one to argue that its makers have indeed conceptualized and understood that they could produce their series in a more ‘authentic’ way on all levels, from details of production design to more abstract matters.63 ‘Authentic’ details, including smells, were intended to give us the ‘real Rome’. At the same time, they wanted their audiences to connect with their Romans. It is here that something went wrong: the admirable attempt to create a Rome smellier than previous fictional ‘Romes’ was derailed by the fictional Romans who obviously find that their world, especially the city of Rome, stinks – an opinion they share with the creators of the series, who, as quoted above, have gathered from recent research that Rome did indeed smell bad.64 They probably could not imagine that Romans reacted to the stench of their environment 145

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in a different way from modern Western individuals.65 In fact, it is somewhat pointless to stress the intense olfactory experience of the ancient world (and it is not too difficult to imagine what cesspits, animal dung, smoke, unwashed clothes and rotting teeth contributed to the smellscape – Rome could definitely have pushed the boundaries quite a bit further in this respect)66 without asking how the Romans themselves would have experienced this. There certainly is a strong case to be made that most of the towndwelling Romans were impervious to the stench of the Roman city – it was their accustomed smellscape – and might have thought the countryside rather pungent.67 So, Rome was tying into the general trend of writing about the senses in the past in order to get closer to ‘the people we are studying or watching’ and create historical empathy. Olfactory experiences are a forceful way of doing this and have been put to good use in the series. However, the characters in the series are not Romans that we meet at close range, but modern men and women dressed up as Romans. In Rome, othering takes place in terms of context only: the characters are like you and me, but the context of the lives of these characters is sprinkled with a high dose of ‘authenticity’ to meet its viewers need for ‘reality’. As such, the audience both has its cake and eats it too – and helped to make Rome a very successful series indeed. The viewer is seduced to feel empathy with characters who do not feel, behave or speak like ancient Romans, or even share their experience of smell. The series was designed to make money, therefore historical empathy was required and making the Romans not too different from modern viewers delivered this historical (or essentially unhistorical) empathy. However, if the characters in the series had reacted to the odours in their environment in a very different, and supposedly historically realistic, manner, this might have made them even more, and certainly not less, interesting to the audience. Exploring the ancient notions of foul and fragrant could have seduced the viewer, in an unobtrusive way, into thinking ‘more deeply about the subject’ of differences, similarities and parallels, continuity and discontinuity. Then, it would have ‘done the job’, to paraphrase Tristram Hunt. In my opinion, to introduce sensory experience into the presentation of history in order to evoke empathy is an effective strategy, but it will only deliver the results hoped for by historians and educators if the senses and the response to those senses are themselves approached from a historical perspective, and not used to equate, in a beguilingly facile manner, individuals from the past with our modern selves. Notes * I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers whose questions made me rethink much of my argument, and Frits Naerebout for his criticism and advice. 1. Misrepresenting D. Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985) – as is commonly done (and which Lowenthal would be the first to appreciate). 2. See the critical comments by H. S. Versnel, Coping with the Gods: Wayward Reading in Greek Theology (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 11–13.

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Evoking Empathy 3. The most frequently quoted definition of ‘history’ in Dutch historiography is by Johan Huizinga: ‘de geestelijke vorm, waarin een cultuur zich rekenschap geeft van haar verleden’; J. Huizinga, Verzamelde werken, vol. 7 (Haarlem: Tjeenk Willink, 1950), 102: ‘the intellectual form in which a civilization renders account of its past to itself’. Cf., 100–1: ‘for every cultural subgroup what historical questions are being asked depends on what things that subgroup considers to be relevant’. 4. S. Brooks, ‘Historical Empathy as Perspective Recognition and Care in One Secondary Social Studies Classroom’, Theory & Research in Social Education 39 (2011): 166–7; D. Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country – Revisited (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015): ‘[Lowenthal] shows how nostalgia and heritage now pervade every facet of public and popular culture. History embraces nature and the cosmos as well as humanity. The past is seen and touched and tasted and smelt [my emphasis] as well as heard and read about. Empathy, re-enactment, memory and commemoration overwhelm traditional history. A unified past once certified by experts and reliant on written texts has become a fragmented, contested history forged by us all’ (from the publisher’s blurb). 5. J. D. Stoddard, ‘Film as a “Thoughtful” Medium for Teaching History’, Learning, Media and Technology 37, no. 3 (2012): 271–88. 6. S. K. Sweeney, P. Newbil, T. Ogle and K. Terry, ‘Using Augmented Reality and Virtual Environments in Historic Places to Scaffold Historical Empathy’, TechTrends 62 (2018): 116. 7. J. Pereira da Silva, ‘Uma máquina do tempo movida à imaginação: RPG e empatia histórica no ensino de história’ (‘The machinery of time moved to imagination: RPG and empathy in historic history of education’), Antíteses 7, no. 14 (2014): 541–2, English abstract (RPG = role-playing games). Brooks, ‘Historical Empathy as Perspective Recognition’, 168. 8. R. Boddice, ‘The affective turn: historicizing the emotions’, in Psychology and History: Interdisciplinary Explorations, ed. C. Tileagă and Jovan Byford (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 147–65; H. Hunter-Crawley, ‘Classical archaeology and the senses: a paradigmatic shift?’, in The Routledge Handbook of Sensory Archaeology, ed. R. Skeates and J. Day (Abingdon: Routledge, 2020), 434–50. 9. K. C. Barton and L. S. Levstik, Teaching History for the Common Good (Mahwah, NJ: Routledge, 2004), 7. 10. The Covid-19 pandemic of 2020 brought smell and taste to general attention. One of the symptoms of an infection by this particular corona virus is the loss of smell and taste, temporarily or more permanently. This raised awareness of how essential smell and taste are to human quality of life; see S. M. A. Elkholi, M. K. Abdelwahab and M. Abdelhafeez, ‘Impact of the smell loss on the quality of life and adopted coping strategies in COVID-19 patients’, European Archives of Oto-Rhino-Laryngology, 19 January 2021, https://link.springer.com/ article/10.1007/s00405-020-06575-7. The recent study by R. Dunn and M. Sanchez, Delicious: The Evolution of Flavor and How It Made Us Human (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2021), argues that smell and taste are central to our humanity. Cf. P. A. Moore, The Hidden Power of Smell: How Chemicals Influence Our Lives and Behavior (Cham: Springer International Publishing Switzerland, 2016). 11. N. Morley, ‘Urban smells and Roman noses’, in Smell and the Ancient Senses, ed. M. Bradley (Abingdon: Routledge, 2015): 110–19, notes the descriptive nature of much writing on smells and smelling in the ancient world (and the distortions that are caused by an insufficiently critical reading of the sources) and states ‘that what we really need is an olfactory history of the Roman city that is comparable to the sophisticated studies of Roman visual culture that have appeared in recent years’ (112). Six years on, his comments are still as valid as when first published. 12. Brooks, ‘Historical Empathy as Perspective Recognition’, 168. This is very much what psychologists describe as cognitive empathy, and does not include affective or emotional

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The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in The Modern Imagination empathy. See the definition of empathy by F. B. M. de Waal, ‘Putting the Altruism Back into Altruism: The Evolution of Empathy’, Annual Review of Psychology 59 (2008): 279–300: ‘the capacity to (a) be affected by and share the emotional state of another, (b) assess the reasons for the other’s state, and (c) identify with the other, adopting his or her perspective’ (281). 13. R. S. Herz, ‘The Role of Odor-Evoked Memory in Psychological and Physiological Health’, Brain Sciences 6, no. 3 (2016), https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3425/6/3/22; R. S. Herz, J. Eliassen, S. Beland and T. Souza, ‘Neuroimaging Evidence for the Emotional Potency of Odor-evoked Memory’, Neuropsychologia 42 (2004): 371–8; G. M. Zucco, R. S. Herz and B. Schaal (eds), Olfactory Cognition: From Perception and Memory to Environmental Odours and Neuroscience (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2012). See also the introduction to this volume. 14. C. Bembibre and M. Strlič, ‘Smell of Heritage: A Framework for the Identification, Analysis and Archival of Historic Odours’, Heritage Science 5 (2015). https://heritagesciencejournal. springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/ s40494-016-0114-1. 15. Bembibre and Strlič, ‘Smell of Heritage’; W. Zhou and D. Chen, ‘Sociochemosensory and Emotional Functions: Behavioral Evidence for Shared Mechanisms’, Psychological Science 20 (2009): 1118–24. 16. D. Fjellestad, ‘Towards an aesthetics of smell, or, the foul and the fragrant in contemporary literature’, CAUCE, Revista de Filología y su Didáctica 24 (2001): 637–51, quote: 650. 17. Bembibre and Strlič, ‘Smell of Heritage’. 18. M. Spinella, ‘A Relationship between Smell Identification and Empathy’, International Journal of Neuroscience 112 (2002): 605–12, quote: 610. 19. M. Bradley, ‘Art and the Senses: The Artistry of Bodies, Stages and Cities in the Greco-Roman World’, in A Cultural History of the Senses in Antiquity, 500 BC–500 AD , ed. J. Toner (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014), 183–208, 202–4; M. Bradley, ‘Introduction: Smell and the Ancient Senses’, in Smell and the Ancient Senses, ed. M. Bradley (New York: Routledge, 2015), 1–16, 1. 20. See the chapter by Martina Treu in this volume. 21. An excellent overview with further references: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smell-O-Vision. See also Mark Bradley’s Envoi at the end of the book. 22. See, for instance, attempts to ‘transmit’ odours (not actual transmission, as we are dealing here with molecules instead of waves) on smartphones: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/ story/2014/06/now-available-on-the-web-smells/; Nicola Twilley, ‘Will Smell Ever Come to Smartphones?’, New Yorker, 27 April 2016, https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-oftechnology/is-digital-smell-doomed. In video games, visual approaches have been taken, such as representing smell by providing ‘colour filters’ on the screen during particular actions, but ‘scent domes’ and ‘nosephones’ have also been tried. See, for example, S. Niedenthal, ‘Skin Games: Fragrant Play, Scented Media and the Stench of Digital Games’, Eludamos: Journal for Computer Game Culture 6 (2012): 11–12; J. K. Olofsson et al., ‘Beyond Smell-O-Vision: Possibilities for Smell-Based Digital Media’, Simulation & Gaming 48 (2017): 455–79. P. Pelosi, On the Scent: A Journey Through the Science of Smell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 235–48: ‘Digital Olfaction: Detecting and Reproducing Smells’. 23. N. Levent and A. Pacual-Leone (eds), The Multisensory Museum: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Touch, Sound, Smell, Memory, and Space (Langam, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014). In fact, open-air museums with re-enactors ploughing their field, thatching their roof or baking cakes at their open fire are most successful in this respect, but usually go unmentioned. 24. S. Jiaying, ‘An Olfactory Cinema: Smelling Perfume’, Acta Univ. Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies 8 (2014): 113–27, discusses an example of the moving image (Tom Tykwer’s movie Perfume, 2016) that evokes scent and smelling at every turn, without having recourse to actual odours.

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Evoking Empathy 25. A. Arzi et al., ‘Mirror Sniffing: Humans Mimic Olfactory Sampling Behavior’, Chemical Senses 39 (2014): 277–81. More generally on mimicry, see B. J. Calvo-Merino et al., ‘Seeing or Doing? Influence of Visual and Motor Familiarity in Action Observation’, Current Biology 16 (2006): 1905–10. 26. M. Iacobini, ‘Imitation, Empathy, and Mirror Neurons’, Annual Review of Psychology 60 (2009): 653–70. 27. M. S. Cyrino, ‘Introduction’, in Rome Season One: History Makes Television, ed. M. S. Cyrino (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2008), 3. 28. J. de Groot, ‘Empathy and enfranchisement: Popular histories’, Rethinking History 10 (2006): 391–413. 29. T. Hunt, ‘Reality, Identity and Empathy: The Changing Face of Social History Television’, Journal of Social History 39 (2006): 843–58, quote: 843. 30. J. Paul, ‘Working with Film: Theories and Methodologies’, in A Companion to Classical Receptions, ed. L. Hardwick and C. Stray (London: Blackwell Publishing, 2011), 303–14. Paul distinguishes helpfully between a film or series as reception or as an illustrative tool. In the latter case, all kinds of problems appear; for instance, smells are employed as a rhetorical strategy and can be studied as such – to ask whether these smells are also ‘real’ is asking for trouble. But Rome, when imagining an ancient smellscape, does not do so for narrative purposes only, but also to inform about the past. So questions about historicity cannot really be avoided. Regarding the issue of authenticity in general, see F. G. Naerebout ‘ “Nice dance! But is it authentic?” What actually is this authenticity that everybody is going on about?’, in Dance as Intangible Heritage: Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Dance Research, Corfu, 2002, ed. A. Raftis (Athene: Dora Stratou/IOFA, 2002), 125–38. 31. K. Milnor, ‘What I Learned as a Historical Consultant for Rome’, in Rome, Season One: History Makes Television, ed. M. S. Cyrino (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2008), 42–8. Also, without heeding Milnor’s warnings, it is quite obvious that in script and direction – as opposed to design – we are returned to the clichés of a typical Hollywood or sword-andsandal Rome. Cf. F. G. Naerebout, ‘ “This film is not meant to make any sort of political statement”. Oudheidfilm, beeldvorming en ideologie’, Leidschrift. Historisch Tijdschrift 24, no. 3 (2009): 51–65, and F. G. Naerebout, ‘Gedroomd Rome’, Lampas. Tijdschrift voor Nederlandse classici 40 (2007): 361–70. 32. D. Winner, ‘A Blow to the Temples: Hollywood’s Ancient Rome – Bolder, Nobler and More Palatial than the Real Republic – is Scorned by Historians. But a Television Drama is Returning the City to its Rightful Squalor’, Financial Times, 29 January 2005 (Weekend Magazine, 34), https://search.proquest.com/docview/249650985. 33. https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/rome-long-road-original-hbo-epic/. 34. See, for instance, C. Classen, D. Howes and A. Synott, Aroma: The Cultural History of Smell (London: Routledge, 1994), 162–9. 35. Season 2, Episode 3, 7 minutes. 36. Season 2, Episode 10, 52 minutes. 37. Season 1, Episode 9, 10 minutes. 38. Season 2, Episode 6, 54 minutes. 39. Season 2, Episode 3, 17 minutes. 40. Season 2, Episode 7, 52 minutes. 41. Season 1, Episode 4, 17 minutes. 42. Season 1, Episode 8, 5 minutes. 149

The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in The Modern Imagination 43. Season 2, Episode 2, 6–7 minutes (and many other occasions). 44. Season 1, Episode 12, 4–5 minutes. 45. On ‘othering’ smell and its links with ‘orientalism’, see Savani and Guédon in this volume. 46. Season 1, Episode 5, 13–14 minutes. 47. Cyrino, ‘Introduction’, 6; Classen, Howes and Synnott, Aroma, 162–9. 48. Season 1, Episode 9, 13 minutes. 49. Season 1, Episode 1, 31 minutes 50. Season 1, Episode 3, 7 minutes. 51. Season 2, Episode 3, 13 minutes. 52. Season 2, Episode 6, 40 minutes. 53. Season 2, Episode 4, 10 minutes. 54. Season 1, Episode 10, 34 minutes; Season 1, Episode 12, 31 minutes. 55. Season 1, Episode 5, 33 minutes. 56. Season 1, Episode 7, 32 minutes. 57. Season 2, Episode 5, 56 minutes. 58. Season 2, Episode 6, 19 minutes. 59. Season 1, Episode 4, 18 minutes. 60. Season 1, Episode 8, 28–9 minutes. 61. Season 1, Episode 8, 30 minutes. 62. M. M. Smith, Sensory History (Oxford: Berg, 2007), 59, 65–74. 63. Paul, ‘Working with Film’, 303–14. See comments in note 30, above. 64. On the urban pollution in Rome, see P. Davies ‘Pollution, propriety and urbanism in Republican Rome’, in Rome, Pollution, and Propriety: Dirt, Disease, and Hygiene in the Eternal City from Antiquity to Modernity, British School at Rome Studies, ed. M. Bradley (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 67–80. 65. Milnor, ‘What I Learned as a Historical Consultant for Rome’, 48, argues that for the makers of Rome, authenticity is in the impressive details, but ‘they couldn’t conceptualize the extent to which the Romans were really different, not extravagantly but everyday different, different in how they smelled, the way they walked, why they laughed [. . .]’. True enough, but she uses ‘how they smelled’ probably in the sense of what odours they emitted, but also, and more importantly, we should understand it as ‘how their sense of smell operated’. 66. C. Classen, ‘The Aromas of Antiquity’, in Aroma: The Cultural History of Smell, ed. C. Classen, D. Howes and A. Synnott (London: Routledge 1994), 13–50. Very complete, but descriptive and uncritical, cf. note 11 above. 67. Morley, ‘Urban smells and Roman noses’, 116–19.

Bibliography Arzi, A., L. Shedlesky, L. Secundo and N. Sobel. ‘Mirror Sniffing: Humans Mimic Olfactory Sampling Behavior’. Chemical Senses 39 (2014): 277–81. Barton, K. C. and L. S. Levstik. Teaching History for the Common Good. Mahwah, NJ : Routledge, 2004. 150

Evoking Empathy Bembibre, C. and M. Strlič. ‘Smell of Heritage: A Framework for the Identification, Analysis and Archival of Historic Odours’. Heritage Science 5, no. 2 (2015). Boddice, R. ‘The affective turn: historicizing the emotions’. In Psychology and History. Interdisciplinary Explorations, edited by C. Tileagă and Jovan Byford, 147–65. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Bradley, M. ‘Art and the Senses: The Artistry of Bodies, Stages and Cities in the Greco-Roman World’. In A Cultural History of the Senses in Antiquity, 500 BC–500 AD , edited by J. Toner, 183–208. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014. Bradley, M. ‘Introduction: Smell and the Ancient Senses’. In Smell and the Ancient Senses, edited by M. Bradley, 1–16. New York: Routledge, 2015. Brooks, S. ‘Historical Empathy as Perspective Recognition and Care in One Secondary Social Studies Classroom’. Theory & Research in Social Education 39, no. 2 (2011): 166–202. Calvo-Merino, B. J. et al. ‘Seeing or Doing? Influence of Visual and Motor Familiarity in Action Observation’. Current Biology 16, no. 22 (2006): 1905–10. Classen, C., D. Howes and A. Synnott. Aroma: The Cultural History of Smell. London: Routledge, 1994. Cyrino, M. S. ‘Introduction’. In Rome Season One: History Makes Television, edited by M. S. Cyrino, 1–10. Malden, MA : Blackwell Publishing, 2008. Davies, P. ‘Pollution, propriety and urbanism in Republican Rome’. In Rome, Pollution, and Propriety: Dirt, Disease, and Hygiene in the Eternal City from Antiquity to Modernity, British School at Rome Studies, edited by M. Bradley, 67–80. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012. de Groot, J. ‘Empathy and enfranchisement: Popular histories’. Rethinking History 10, no. 3 (2006): 391–413. de Waal, F. B. M. ‘Putting the Altruism Back into Altruism: The Evolution of Empathy’. Annual Review of Psychology 59 (2008): 279–300. Dunn, R. and M. Sanchez. Delicious: The Evolution of Flavor and How It Made Us Human. Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, 2021. Elkholi, S. M. A., M. K. Abdelwahab and M. Abdelhafeez. ‘Impact of the smell loss on the quality of life and adopted coping strategies in COVID-19 patients’. European Archives of Oto-RhinoLaryngology, 19 January 2021, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00405-020-06575-7. Fjellestad, D. ‘Towards an aesthetics of smell, or, the foul and the fragrant in contemporary literature’. CAUCE, Revista de Filología y su Didáctica 24 (2001): 637–51. Herz, R. S. ‘The Role of Odor-Evoked Memory in Psychological and Physiological Health’. Brain Sciences 6, no. 3 (2016). Hobden, F. ‘The archaeological aesthetic in ancient world documentary’. Media, Culture & Society 35, no. 3 (2013): 366–81. Huizinga, J. Verzamelde werken, vol. 7. Haarlem: Tjeenk Willink, 1950. Hunt, T. ‘Reality, Identity and Empathy: The Changing Face of Social History Television’. Journal of Social History 39, no. 3 (2006): 843–58. Hunter-Crawley, H., ‘Classical archaeology and the senses: A paradigmatic shift?’. In The Routledge Handbook of Sensory Archaeology, edited by R. Skeates and J. Day, 434–50. Abingdon: Routledge, 2020. Iacobini, M. ‘Imitation, Empathy, and Mirror Neurons’. Annual Review of Psychology 60 (2009): 653–70. Jiaying, S. ‘An Olfactory Cinema: Smelling Perfume’. Acta Univ. Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies 8 (2014): 113–27. Levent, N. and A. Pascual-Leone, eds. The Multisensory Museum: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Touch, Sound, Smell, Memory, and Space. Lanham, MD : Rowman & Littlefield, 2014. Lowenthal, D. The Past Is a Foreign Country. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

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The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in The Modern Imagination Lowenthal, D. The Past Is a Foreign Country – Revisited. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Milnor, K. ‘What I Learned as a Historical Consultant for Rome’. In Rome, Season One: History Makes Television, edited by M. S. Cyrino, 42–8. Malden, MA : Blackwell Publishing, 2008. Moore, P. A. The Hidden Power of Smell: How Chemicals Influence Our Lives and Behavior. Cham: Springer International Publishing Switzerland, 2016. Morley, N. ‘Urban smells and Roman noses’. In Smell and the Ancient Senses, edited by M. Bradley, 110–19. Abingdon: Routledge, 2015. Naerebout, F. G. ‘ “Nice dance! But is it authentic?” What actually is this authenticity that everybody is going on about?’ In Dance as Intangible Heritage: Proceedings of the 16th international Conference on Dance Research, Corfu 2002, edited by A. Raftis, 125–38. Athene: Dora Stratou/IOFA , 2002. Naerebout F. G. ‘Gedroomd Rome’. Lampas: Tijdschrift voor Nederlandse classici 40 (2007): 361–70. Naerebout, F. G. ‘ “This film is not meant to make any sort of political statement”. Oudheidfilm, beeldvorming en ideologie’. Leidschrift. Historisch Tijdschrift 24, no. 3 (2009): 51–65. Niedenthal, S. ‘Skin Games: Fragrant Play, Scented Media and the Stench of Digital Games’. Eludamos: Journal for Computer Game Culture 6, no. 1 (2012): 1–31. Olofsson J. K. et al. ‘Beyond Smell-O-Vision: Possibilities for Smell-Based Digital Media’. Simulation & Gaming 48, no. 4 (2017): 455–79. Paul, J. ‘Working with Film: Theories and Methodologies’. In A Companion to Classical Receptions, edited by L. Hardwick and C. Stray, 303–14. London: Blackwell Publishing, 2011. Pelosi, P. On the Scent: A Journey Through the Science of Smell. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Pereira da Silva, J. ‘The machinery of time moved to imagination: RPG and empathy in historic history of education’. Antíteses 7, no. 14 (2014): 541–2 (English abstract). Smith, M. M. Sensory History. Oxford: Berg, 2007. Spinella, M. ‘A Relationship between Smell Identification and Empathy’. International Journal of Neuroscience 112, no. 6 (2002): 605–12. Stoddard, J. D. ‘Film as a “Thoughtful” Medium for Teaching History’. Learning, Media and Technology 37, no. 3 (2012): 271–88. Sweeney, S. K., P. Newbil, T. Ogle and K. Terry. ‘Using Augmented Reality and Virtual Environments in Historic Places to Scaffold Historical Empathy’. TechTrends 62 (2018): 114–18. Versnel, H. S. Coping with the Gods: Wayward Readings in Greek Theology. Leiden: Brill, 2011. Zhou, W. and D. Chen. ‘Sociochemosensory and Emotional Functions: Behavioral Evidence for Shared Mechanisms’. Psychological Science 20, no. 9 (2009): 1118–24. Zucco, G. M., R. S. Herz and B. Schaal, eds. Olfactory Cognition: From Perception and Memory to Environmental Odours and Neuroscience. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2012.

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PART IV RECREATING THE FRAGRANCE(S) OF THE PAST

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CHAPTER 7 ARCHIVING THE INTANGIBLE: PRESERVING SMELLS, HISTORIC PERFUMES AND OTHER WAYS OF APPROACHING THE SCENTED PAST Cecilia Bembibre

There are several gateways to the scented past: in this chapter we discuss some of the considerations related to experiencing historic smells through the contemporary nose. We review the practical and conceptual challenges of archiving the intangible and how they apply to odours; categorize archives of historic scents depending on their criteria and methodology; and offer examples of fragrances of the ancient world that can be experienced today, with a special attention to the Parfum Royal, a Roman scent which has been recreated and archived as intangible olfactory heritage. Finally, we discuss different ways of bringing a historic perfume back to life and the role of interpretation and authenticity in this process. In addition to identifying odour character descriptions and fragrant techniques, many studies of olfactory history provide tools to critically engage with this study, reminding us to query accounts of how the senses were used at a particular point in time and how this often reflected a preferred interpretation of reality.1 In addition to being aware of sensory hierarchies and their variations across time and space – for example, vision as a noble sense, olfaction and hearing as the lesser ones in modern European thought – and their connotations, these works help to dispel the idea that the classical world was smellier than the modern one: ‘it is worth emphasizing that the stench of excrement was probably most intense in historical settings marked by poverty and a rapid shift to urban living – moments and cultures better understood as experiencing or entering modernity – than as immured in some “primitive” state’.2 Additionally, it helps to take into account that records of historic smellscapes are not all-encompassing: for every scent description that has reached us, many more were discarded.

Archives of the scented past How can we access the smells of the past? Historic scent preservation is linked to olfactory heritage, an emerging, highly interdisciplinary field of research, focused on the cultural role of smells, the scientific techniques for analysing, documenting and preserving odours and the perspectives to understand their relevance. Recent findings show that certain smells are deeply linked with other aspects of heritage such as traditions3 and tourism,4 that they can be symbols of a shared past5 and enhance the museum experience for visitors.6 Recently, a framework to identify, analyse and document 155

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smells with cultural significance7 proposed a documentation process, including a historic odour wheel as a tool for historic smell preservation. There are no guidelines or best practices for archiving the olfactory. Many smells in archives tend to be incidental, such as the vinegar-scented papers, where the smell of a disinfectant provided an extra layer of meaning to letters written in the time of the plague, and therefore contributed to their understanding,8 or the original smell of the material source, a sensory attribute of the documents that archive users value, because it offers an experience that cannot be obtained by accessing the piece digitally.9 The greatest advances in scent archiving have been made with perfume and perfume materials; in this chapter we will review some examples of these archives and discuss their approaches. It has to be noted that, unlike the historic perfumes that will be presented in detail later, the archives discussed here are not specifically linked with Antiquity. Rather, the cases have been selected to reveal some approaches to smell preservation. The methodologies for preserving other examples of intangible cultural heritage (ICH),10 such as performance art and oral poetry and music, provide additional insights. Like smell, these cultural expressions are in their origin ephemeral and they tend to resist preservation and collection. In the case of archivists and librarians who work alongside performance artists, they are experienced in considering the ephemerality of the performances. Sources and traces are the only way of knowing the performances once they are gone. This is why archivists in this field focus on many different contexts which can account for the significance of a certain performance piece; they become ‘scholars’ allies in the interpretation process’, and they are ‘receptive to evidence which helps to increase understanding of the event’.11 Other expressions of intangible heritage are archived through a combined methodology of ethnographic methods (description, participative observation, interviews, audio and video recordings) and a detailed indexing and archiving process to preserve metadata as part of the significant documentation.12 One aspect that these examples of archiving intangible heritage consistently have in common is the role of peoples and communities in identifying and managing their heritage, as recommended by the Convention for the safeguarding of the ICH.13 In addition to understanding how expressions of intangible heritage are being preserved, it is worth considering the value of an affective perspective in archiving scent, especially around the process of deciding what can be of archival value. This is relevant because hedonic tone, or the pleasantness of a smell, has been identified as one of the primary dimensions in odour perception.14 Measuring affective responses to odours and their sources such as foods and cosmetics is a challenge that many scholars are trying to meet. The emotions aroused by a smell can be part of its significance, and connect it to meaningful places, practices or people. In fact, Patricia de Nicolaï, former president of the Osmothèque – the French perfume conservation institution – describes the archive as an ‘archive of emotions’. Therefore, supplementing decisions made through traditional, normative archival practices with a recognition of the dimension of feeling and emotion can result in an archive that holds meaning and value to the communities it serves.15 156

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Approaches to olfactory archives Historic texts are perhaps the most accessible smell archive, because long-gone olfactory environments are written about in historic diaries and documented in recipes and preparation guidelines, their sources and quality described. In the past few decades, sensory scholars have traced these smellscapes and their significance, revealing new information about the role scents played in ancient societies.16 Going further, the H2020 project Odeuropa aims to make sense of European textual and visual heritage digital data collections, using artificial intelligence to capture olfactory mentions between the seventeenth and twentieth century and produce an ‘olfactory knowledge graph’, an online archive of odours including descriptions, temporal and geographical coordinates and emotions associated with the scent.17 In addition, there are few olfactory archives in the sense of historical collections. Here we present some examples, categorized according to their focus on: (1) the preservation of the smell of a source (object/place/person) which is no longer there or soon to be extinct, including the preservation of historic perfumes, for the benefit of future generations; (2) the creation of an ‘olfactory image’ of the past without a direct representation in the real world; (3) a fragrant collection as autobiography; and (4) the interpretation of a historic scent via a contemporary sensibility. Antiquity is represented in at least three of these categories (1, 2 and 4). Historic fragrance and material collections The first category comprises established archives and private collections. Among them, the most significant for the value and diversity of its contents, its public access and its role in training and research, is the fragrance and historic perfumery materials collection at the Osmothèque. The institution, based in Versailles, was founded in 1990 by a group of senior perfumers including Jean Kerléo, Jean-Claude Ellena and Guy Robert. Although the preservation of fragrances is at the core of its mission, the Osmothèque also contributes to educating professionals and amateurs about perfume-making and its history. Opened by appointment, the institution allows for collection study and research and access to the private library. It also holds frequent seminars and perfume sessions open to all. A collection of 4,000 perfumes, of which 800 are unavailable anywhere else, is kept in a temperature-controlled room, with perfumes stored in dark glass flasks, to prevent light damage, and under a layer of argon, which protects from oxidation and evaporation. Parfum Royal, dating from the first century, is the oldest perfume in the archive. Late modern historic perfumes such as Fougère Royale (Paul Parquet, 1882), Jicky (Aimé Guerlain, 1900) and Chypre (François Coty, 1917) coexist with older reconstructions, such as L’Eau de la Reine de Hongrie (fourteenth century), Le Vinaigre aromatique des 4 voleurs (1800) or L’Eau de Cologne de Napoléon à Ste Hélène (1820). The Osmothèque acts as a guardian for historic perfume formulas and remakes unavailable perfumes following them, for archival and educational purposes. There is a concern for the authenticity of the original: if one or more raw materials are not available, 157

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Figure 7.1 Historic fragrances in the Osmothèque archive. © Osmothèque.

the fragrance is not reconstituted. In their own words, ‘the Osmothèque does not act as an interpreter but an archivist’.18 Reconstructing the fragrances using the original materials is, according to the team of osmocurators, essential to their authenticity. In addition to a faithfulness to the formula and the ingredients, Jean Kerléo, who has had a role in shaping the strategy of the organization since its foundation, observes that validation for the reconstruction also comes from the community, at least for the perfumes that are still in living memory: ‘There a lot of visitors, mostly women, who come to the Osmothèque and confirm the authenticity of the perfumes we remade by comparing them with their experience of the original.’19 In a similar sense to the role of performance art archivists in promoting the legacy of the pieces they preserve, as discussed above, the perfumers who founded and maintain the Osmothèque and the osmocurators who guide visitors also act as interpreters as well as custodians. In this archive, an awareness of the challenges that come with historic reconstructions has shaped the methodology: gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) – an analytical chemistry technique that can separate, identify and quantify odorants and which has been used to recognize and better understand historic smells20 – is not used for remaking these perfumes. ‘We don’t recreate historic fragrances from samples. We respect the instructions for raw materials mentioned in the formulas, with the maximum 158

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of precision about what we know about the use of each product. Chromatographic analysis makes it possible to identify the chemical ingredients of a perfume but lacks precision about natural raw materials, which are very complex and which make up the largest part of old perfumes.’21 The importance of the Osmothèque as an institution has been recognized by scholars and industry professionals, with perfumer Christophe Laudamiel proposing in his fragrance manifesto that ‘the Osmothèque® conservatory, the only international fragrance archives headquartered in Versailles, France, shall be treasured and honored like a Library of Congress’ [sic].22 The Parfum Royal (first century) is the oldest fragrance in the archive and an exception in this collection, because it was recreated from historic texts in the absence of a formula. We will discuss this piece in detail below. Natural scent preservation The preservation of natural scents, specifically the scent of plants and flowers on the edge of extinction, is the focus of a scent archive featured in the series of books published in 2004 and 2010 by Roman Kaiser, a fragrance chemist who pioneered the headspace technique to extract and analyse volatile organic compounds (VOC). His aim was to develop a methodology that ‘would allow trapping the scents emitted by living flower/ plants in a quality as perceived by the human nose’. His technique consists of inserting living flowers into a glass vessel. The air around the flower is trapped by a carbon-sorbent material using air pumps. The scent accumulated in the trap is washed with a solvent and taken to the laboratory for chemical analysis, including GC-MS. The identified list of scented compounds is quantified and documented, along with molecule structures and sensory notes. This information can be the base of future fragrance reconstructions.23 An archive of botanical materials also makes up for most of the Aftel Archive of Curious Scents, a museum dedicated to natural perfumery in California. A collection of historic extracts and materials no longer used in perfumery are presented along with their contemporary versions, with engravings, photographs and taxidermy pieces of the animals from which some ingredients used to be sourced, to give a sense of context.24 This archive, created by perfumer Mandy Aftel for educational purposes, also contains rare and historic books on perfumery. Multisensory collections Another private archive which aims to preserve past and existing scents is the one Sissel Tolaas, an olfactory artist, has been curating since 1990. ‘The smell archive. An alphabet for the nose’ contains almost 7,000 scents from all around the world. In each case, the material source of the smell has been preserved in an aluminium box. The preservation process involves extracting the oxygen from the box to make the smell last longer. The samples can be sniffed using a pump and a ventilator, a system designed for this purpose. The artist started the archive with a linguistic purpose, trying to gain an understanding 159

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of ‘the “alphabet” of smell and smelling’. Sample labels note the contents, place, time and reason for preserving the smell. A story related to the smell is also archived and a fictional language called NASALO is being developed to accompany this archive.25 A different method of historic smell preservation highlights the intangible aspect of fragrance by focusing not on the source but on the human experience of scent. Since 2013, the twitter account @smellstories has collected olfactory moments from social media users sharing their experiences. This archive of olfactory remembrances media is part of researcher Natalie Bouchard’s exploration of how olfactory memory can change perceptions of time and space in an urban environment: ‘[S]mells are little traveling machines; they have the power to create what I call Timescapes, it means that they alter the spatio-temporal structure of what we perceive of our surrounding.’26 In practice, Bouchard proposes that registering an individual’s perceptions of a smellscape might contribute to the mapping of a collective olfactory memory. Similarly, researcher Kate McLean sees her smellmapping practice as a series of scented temporalities building a common scentscape: ‘A smellscape shifts constantly in the wind; it evaporates and dissipates as odour molecules diffuse into the atmosphere; human beings perceive individually and over time, adding to each other’s subjective layers.’27

The creation of an ‘olfactory image’ While the aims of most of the scent archives discussed above is to preserve smell as an intangible attribute of an identifiable source, understanding the preservation process as an opportunity to document – or at least consider – formulas, history and significance, there are other ways of approaching historic scents. One is the development of ‘olfactory images’ that cannot be traced to a tangible source. This was the objective of a group of scientists and artists who, in 2008, developed a set of ‘extinct and impossible smells’ for an exhibition at the Reg Vardy gallery in Sunderland, UK. They set out to explore the potential of smells to create ‘olfactory images’ without a direct representation in the real world.28 Scented white squares are the starting point for ‘Cleopatra’, an interpretation of a sacred Egyptian scent as imagined on the skin of the queen; ‘Extinct Flowers’, a bouquet of fragrant blooms that cannot longer be naturally experienced; and ‘Surrender’, a fragrant study of the incense burnt inside an ancient city’s walls to be carried by the wind to an advancing army as a message of capitulation. The abstract nature of the proposition can be seen as a springboard for a synaesthetic moment, where the sniffing might bring up visual, auditory and tactile experiences, from memory or imagined.

Scent archives as autobiography The idea of an abstract smell, disengaged from a source and also from the familiar taxonomies of the perfume industry, was also explored by Tolaas with the brand Supersense in a ‘Smell Memory Kit’ (SMK), although this time the perception is not interpreted by a 160

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text giving context and highlighting significance: this task is left to the perceiver. The kit consists of a scent to be worn around the neck as a piece of jewellery or an ‘amulet’ and it rests on the established memory-evoking power of smells by subverting the chronology and reclaiming control over the remembrance. Once the wearer of the SMK decides that they are experiencing a moment they would like to remember, they break the glass vial in the necklace to release an ‘abstract’ smell, which has not yet been connected with any memory. ‘Whenever you want to eternally record and memorize a moment, you just break open the SMELL KIT AMPULE, release the abstract smell molecules and take a deep breath. From now on this smell will bring back the memory and the emotion of this very moment each and every time you open another of the same ampules.’29 Artist Andy Warhol, who maintained an extensive perfume collection, also considered the sense of smell to be a way into a personal memory archive, writing in From A to B and Back Again: The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, ‘I switch perfumes all the time. If I’ve been wearing one perfume for three months, I force myself to give it up, even if I still feel like wearing it, so whenever I smell it again it will always remind me of those three months. I never go back to wearing it again; it becomes part of my permanent smell collection.’ In this selection of autobiographical scents he found a way to manage his personal memories: ‘Seeing, hearing, touching, tasting are just not as powerful as smelling if you want your whole being to go back for a second to something. Usually I don’t want to, but by having smells stopped up in bottles, I can be in control and can only smell the smells I want to, when I want to, to get the memories I’m in the mood to have.’ Warhol also longed for the existence of a smell museum, where odours he liked could be saved from extinction, imagining valuable smells preserved as a memory of objects: ‘Sometimes I picture a botany book in the future saying something like, “The lilac is now extinct. Its fragrance is thought to have been similar to – ?” and then what can they say? Maybe they’ll be able to give it as a chemical formula. Maybe they already can.’30 Another collection of smells, this time fictional, as a way to assist one’s memory is the premise of Primo Levi’s short story The Mnemogogues. In it, Morandi, a young doctor, visits Dr Montesanto, whose practice he will be taking over. During the visit, Montesanto shares his collection of autobiographical scents, which he calls ‘arousers of memories’: ‘Open it and sniff it. What do you smell?’ Morandi inhaled deeply . . . ‘This would seem to be the smell of barracks.’ Montesanto in his turn sniffed. ‘Not exactly,’ he answered. ‘Or at least not so for me. It is the odor of elementary school rooms; in fact, of my room in my school . . . I understand that for you it’s nothing: for me it’s my childhood.’31 The idea of an archive that holds scents of personal significance has been taken further, in reality and in fiction. Perhaps the best example of this is the fragrance composed by the protagonist of Das Parfum. In this novel by Patrick Süskind, Grenouille, the main character, possesses a talent for creating beautiful perfumes, although he has no personal odour himself. 161

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He first makes up for this inhuman trait by composing the smell of the average person and wearing it as a perfume, which allows him to go unnoticed in the crowd. He wishes, however, to go further, to be extraordinary. This leads him to murder the most beautiful virgin women in the region – ‘those rare humans who inspire love’32 – and distil their scent, which he then mixes into a perfume. Wearing just a drop of this fragrance results in Grenouille being lusted after by the masses. However, once he feels the love of the humans he despises, Grenouille doses himself in the perfume and walks into an insatiable crowd, who devour him. This concept, central to the novel, of a smell capable of encompassing an idea, is perhaps most evident in the perfume world, where fragrances suggest heightened versions of natural scents: ‘To call Joy a floral is to misunderstand it, since the whole point of its formula (Henri Alméras, 1930) was to achieve the platonic idea of a flower, not one particular earthly manifestation.’33

Interpreting the past for the contemporary nose The final category of accessing historic scents is via the reconstruction or recreation of the perfumes of the past. We propose a distinction between reconstruction and recreation, centred on the methodology and the intention. With both techniques, considerations other than odorant quality become manifest and addressing them is essential for a critical engagement with the olfactory past (we will discuss this in the next section). Historical perfume reconstructions aim to achieve authenticity by reproducing a smell as it originally existed, even if it is to be experienced differently by the contemporary nose. The development of these fragrances often involves tracing original ingredients – or their nearest contemporary equivalents – and closely following original preparation methods, sometimes even replicating period-appropriate perfume-making tools.34 In comparison, historical fragrance recreations are often a composer’s interpretations of a smell of the past. Gaps in knowledge about formula, ingredients or preparation process are approached creatively, and authenticity is built through a complex process involving transparency in the disclosure of authorship and methodology. Many creators are aware of these differences between reconstruction and recreation and communicate them as part of the scent-development process. Contemporary versions of historic perfumes tend to be recreations because of the limitations of using historic texts as a source. Even if the ingredients are listed, they might not be readily available today; tools and processes can be replicated by those who aim to follow the original procedure, but the situational context is gone. Authenticity, however, can still be achieved, as we will discuss below. The following are some of the ancient perfumes that can be experienced today. Cyprinum A holistic view of reconstruction went into the creation of Cyprinum, a prized Egyptian scent described in Pliny’s Natural History, Book 13, chapter 2, as one of the preferred 162

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perfumes of Antiquity. In 2012, perfumer Laime Kiskune presented her version, containing ‘myrrh, heart from henna and calamus, head from cardamom, connected by an aromatic vine, as it was done in Antiquity’.35 In spite of a search for authentic ingredients, the perfumer recognizes that ‘even after collecting rich scientific data, it is not completely possible to clarify the exact formulas of historical perfumes. In order to fill the gaps, we cannot do without the intuition and creative audacity of the perfumer, without his knowledge and awareness of the subtleties of the library of fragrances’. Kyphi Perfumer Sandrine Videault developed several fragrances and installations based on the perfumes of Antiquity. In 2000, she reconstructed Kyphi for the Cairo museum. Several recipes exist for this Egyptian incense; Videault worked with Plutarch’s36 at the suggestion of Philippe Walter, researcher at the CNRS and the Center for Research and Restoration of Museums in France. The original preparation involved sixteen ingredients and the promise ‘to bring sleep, soothe anxiety, brighten dreams. Ingredients that unleash their magic, especially at night.’37 Videault understood both recreations and reconstructions of historic perfumes had different challenges: ‘the difference between olfactory reconstructions and interpretations has to be distinct. You are right: It is not the same work and the challenge is in both. Historical knowledge is required for both exercises. On the one hand, historical knowledge allows [one] to be more scientific. On the other hand, aiming for an interpretation allows one to be more creative.’38 Two other recent reconstructions of this scent use alternative sources. Dora Goldsmith based it on her own translation of a recipe (Edfu II, 203–4). Goldsmith, a PhD researcher exploring the smellscape of ancient Egypt, sees the recreation of historic perfumes as an opportunity to get closer to a culture: ‘[B]y following the ancient sources step-by-step and working with the materials, I believe that researchers can better understand the ancients and the way they perceived the world through scent.’39 Historian Amandine Declercq adapted Greek physician Dioscorides’ recipe40 to a preparation that can be achieved using modern ingredients as part of an experimental archaeology workshop at the end of the 2018 IMAGINES conference.41 Metopion and Mendesian The Egyptian ointments Metopion and Mendesian have also been reconstructed. Videault presented her version of the first one in the form of cones, which she called a ‘historical interpretation’, at the Sephora-Champs-Elysées in 1998. Mendesian – described as ‘the Chanel No. 5 of ancient Egypt’42 – was recreated by Dr Sean Coughlin and Dora Goldsmith in 2019, on the basis of historic texts. The idea for this recreation came from the discovery by archaeologists from the University of Hawaii at Mānoa in 2012 of the home of a perfume merchant, including amphoras and glass bottles with residue in them, in the ancient city of Thmuis. The vessels had no smell, but there was a dry residue; reports do not clarify whether the chemical analysis of the residue was used in any way 163

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to inform or validate the scent recreation. As Goldsmith explained, ‘My research goal with Sean Coughlin was to combine archaeology, philology and science to recreate the Mendesian, as it would have been found in the ancient world.’ She continued: We translated and followed the ancient sources step-by-step. The botanical identifications of the plants mentioned in the recipes played a key factor in our research. Sean used the most up-to-date botanical identifications in ancient Greek science. I compared these with the flora of ancient Egypt known to the Egyptians before the Greek-Roman period, and assessed which plants could have been available in pharaonic Egypt based on archaeological and philological evidence. We regarded the Mendesian as a case study for understanding the knowledge transfer of ancient Egyptian perfume recipes from pharaonic Egypt to Greek and Roman authors.43 Aphrodite’s fragrance An archaeological excavation in Cyprus in 2003 was the start of another ancient perfume reconstruction. When residues were found in a series of vessels and distillation equipment from 2000 bce , Maria Rosaria Belgiorno, the lead archaeologist, worked with the Antiquitates Centro di Archeologica Sperimentale to reconstruct the perfumes. They replicated the utensils, while analysis of the residues revealed compounds smelling of laurel, coriander and turpentine. The team sourced these ingredients from endemic plants and reconstructed the perfumes using the period utensils, creating four scents for the museum exhibition I profumi di Afrodite e il segreto dell’olio (14 March–2 September 2007). Labels informed visitors of the ingredients for each composition.44

Parfum Royal The royal perfume (Parfum Royal, regale unguentum) is the oldest historic perfume in the Osmothèque collection. Pliny’s description of the perfume’s high status and significance has been well documented among scholars,45 so we will focus on the contemporary recreation of the scent by Jean Kerléo for fragrance house Patou in 1996. Pliny identifies twenty-seven ingredients in his Natural History, Book 13, chapter 2: This is what is called the ‘regal’ unguent, from the fact that it is composed in these proportions for the kings of the Parthians. It consists of myrobalanus, costus, amomum, cinnamon, comacum, cardamum, spikenard, marum, myrrh, cassia, storax, ladanum, opobalsamum, Syrian calamus and Syrian sweet-rush, œnanthe, malobathrum, serichatum, cyprus, aspralathus, panax, saffron, cypirus, sweet marjoram, lotus, honey, and wine.46

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According to Jean Kerléo, the perfume was offered at banquets to whet guests’ appetite, as a sort of aperitif anticipating the fare to be served at the table. The practice of collectively applying scents at dinners and sporting celebrations was widespread in Antiquity, in contrast to the use of fragrance as a sign of individuality.47 The fragrance is one of the few historic perfumes in the Osmothèque collection that has not been reconstructed following a written formula but reinterpreted from a historic text by Kerléo’s expertise and creativity. ‘We had a list of the ingredients but no proportions,’ explained Isabelle Chazot, perfume writer and Osmothèque’s spokesperson, ‘it was a very long process.’ An investigation of the ingredients followed, which revealed that an understanding of the history of fragrance and ancient perfume-making techniques, plus a careful interpretation of the historical nomenclature, were essential to attempt an authentic recreation. Jean Kerléo notes that the documented ingredients used in the Roman perfume had little to do with the essential oils currently used. These essential oils did not exist in Rome, except that of turpentine (nothing to do with the current essence of turpentine, however). Indeed, the principle of distillation materialized in the practice of the still was applied only from the tenth century. The oils used in Rome were aromatic oils obtained according to the principle of maceration or digestion specific to the Greek perfumed oils already described. Another important process was enfleurage, the principle of absorption of pollen from flowers by fats. A third process consisted of the cold expression of the oils of certain plants, generally by means of a screw press. Other components were important in the development of perfumes, such as ben oil, widely used then but not found nowadays. It was a sweet and odourless oil, unlike hazelnut oil later assimilated (wrongly) with ben oil by some authors.48 The Parfum Royal was recreated at the suggestion of Michèle Teysseyre, who was working on a book inspired by the culinary art of the Roman cook Apicius (the book was published in 1996 under the title Saveurs et senteurs de la Rome Antique). Teysseyre, who is a visual artist as well as a writer, wanted to offer readers a multisensory reading of her text. On the occasion of the perfume launch, she designed a unique flask for a limited 300-bottle edition of Parfum Royal (see Figure 7.2 and Colour Plate 10). The contemporary interpretation of Parfum Royal uses three types of solvents: oil of ben, acacia honey and wine. After a period of maceration, these and the other ingredients are blended and put in a press to obtain a very oily perfume. The solid produce was made into Onguent Royal, also stored in the Osmothèque’s collection.49 As we have seen, historic perfume recreations tend to be the result of research practice or perfumers’ interpretations that are exceptional to their usual work in the creation of contemporary fragrance. In this sense, Parfum Royal can be considered unique because (a) it sits among an established collection of historic fragrances contextualized by the Osmothèque’s mission, and (b) the fragrance is a contemporary interpretation based on historic texts, while information on the materials and methodologies involved is accessible through the words of Jean Kerléo, a perfumer with an interest and experience in the recreation of olfactory heritage.50

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Figure 7.2 Sketches for the limited-edition flask of the Parfum Royal recreation, by Jean Kerléo for Jean Patou, 1996. © Michèle Teysseyre.

Bringing back historic scents: Authenticity and interpretation Researching and reconstituting the scents of the past to experience them in the present is a complex task which involves consideration of perception, authenticity and interpretation. In addition to the practical and conceptual challenges of reproducing sensory experiences from worlds that no longer exist, there is the added necessity of considering the plurality of perceptions from which those experiences might have been accessed. Firstly, findings around different modes of perceptions across cultures provide an idea about these complexities, as culture affects the way we make sense of the world: through learning and experience, a paper screen functions as an effective barrier to filter sounds in Japanese but not in German culture.51 Some scholars52 have suggested thinking about a ‘period nose’ that might have experienced the original smell. ‘What was rank or fetid to, say, a tenth-century Viking’s nostrils is not recoverable today, not least because that world – the world that shaped what smells existed and how they were perceived and understood by multiple constituencies – has evaporated.’53 Similarly, the aromatic vinegars recreated by Jean Kerléo for the Osmothèque were worn as a personal scent in the eighteenth century, when sensibility, hygiene habits and situational context were 166

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different, and can seem unpleasant when experienced today. While the objective of most historic fragrance recreations is to provide a sensory gateway to the past, some researchers aim to reconstruct ancient modes of perception, unfiltered by contemporary views. As Dora Goldsmith elaborated, ‘[T]hrough apprehending the olfactory sensation of the ancient Egyptians, which has never been investigated before, my research topic contributes to the better understanding of the ancient Egyptian culture as a whole.’54 In addition to odour assessment, the authenticity of the sensory experience comes into play in historic scent recreation. While chemical authenticity might not be possible for recreations where the original formula or ingredients are no longer available, research suggests that the perception of an authentic smell can still be achieved. A recent study found an artist’s interpretation being rated as effective in evoking the smell of old books as the lab-produced book extract. The historic library interpretation, created by a perfumer sniffing the original book smell and developing a scent based on her experience, was considered slightly better at evoking the scent of a historic library than the chemical reconstruction of the smell. An implication of these findings is that olfactory authenticity construction and perception in a heritage context is a complex process that goes beyond the presentation of a smell with material relation to the source (in this case, the labproduced scent was extracted from the actual book via a solvent). These are encouraging results in terms of the possibilities for collaboration between scientists and artists in the creation of olfactory meaning as part of the heritage experience.55 Beyond perception and authenticity, a contemporary evaluation of a historic scent recreation is very much a matter of interpretation: first, by the creator of the scent – so sharing the creative process becomes new metadata for the scent; and then by the public. In between, depending on the conditions in which the smell is sampled, other interpretative clues are offered. In the case of scratch-and-sniff books, such as If There Ever Was, a short essay situates the reader and highlights the accompanying scent significance.56 When the fragrance is presented in a heritage setting, such as a library, museum or gallery, there might be a museum professional guiding the sensory experience. There is no formal training for interpreting sensory materials in these settings. Caro Verbeek, art historian and researcher into olfactory museology, speculates that, in a mediated tour, ‘visitors might learn that, in ancient Greece, perfumes had many functions that have since been forgotten [. . .]. Smell was clearly embedded in many contexts and interwoven in almost all aspects of daily life. The thought that perfume should be cosmetic only, largely used to heighten personal attractiveness – as is predominantly the case today – was therefore foreign to an inhabitant of ancient Pyrgos.’57 In the case of the Osmothèque, a team of trained osmocurators support the visit with knowledge of the history of perfume and materials. After a facilitated tour of the perfume archive, Kerléo’s Parfum Royal has been described by contemporary fragrance reviewers. For one it was ‘a lovely study in simplicity’ which ‘glows with the firelight warmth of cinnamon, clove and honey. Rose would appear to be present too – smoothing away the rough edges as only it can – and there’s a distinct powdery facet in the drydown.’58 Another wrote that ‘the hedonistic parlours of ancient Rome sprang to life in a haze of cinnamon, honey and wine’,59 while yet another experienced ‘a syrupy old wine’.60 A link 167

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with current perfumery trends has also been noted, with one writer mentioning that the Romans ‘adopted the gourmand trend at least two thousand years before it went big’.61 *

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*

As we have shown, preserving a scent from the past can be a collaborative enterprise, where perfumery skill needs to be supported by an understanding of the relevance of the original smell and its associated context. It also requires finding ways to convey the significance of the scent to modern noses; this is key for an olfactory archive that has the power to not only preserve the smell but shape its legacy. Acknowledgements I am grateful to Jean Kerléo and Isabelle Chazot for generously providing their time and access to the Osmothèque collection, and for providing attendees to the IMAGINES conference with samples of the Parfum Royal recreation. I am also indebted to Michèle Teysseyre, who kindly attended the presentation in Toulouse and offered valuable insights into the recreation of this historic fragrance.

Notes 1. M. M. Smith, The Smell of Battle, the Taste of Siege: A Sensory History of the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). 2. M. S. R. Jenner, ‘Follow Your Nose? Smell, Smelling, and Their Histories’, American Historical Review 116, no. 2 (2011): 340. 3. Ministry for the Environment, 2001, http://www.env.go.jp/press/press.php?serial=2941. 4. UNESCO, ‘Les savoir-faire liés au parfum en Pays de Grasse : la culture de la plante à parfum, la connaissance des matières premières et leur transformation, l’art de composer le parfum’, UNESCO, 2019, https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/the-skills-related-to-perfume-in-pays-degrasse-the-cultivation-of-perfume-plants-the-knowledge-and-processing-of-natural-rawmaterials-and-the-art-of-perfume-composition-01207. 5. A. Hirsch, ‘Nostalgia and odors’, Children’s Environments 9 (1992). 6. J. P. Aggleton and L. Waskett, ‘The ability of odours to serve as state-dependent cues for real-world memories: Can Viking smells aid the recall of Viking experiences?’, British Journal of Psychology 90, no. 1 (1999). 7. C. Bembibre and M. Strlič, ‘Smell of heritage: A framework for the identification, analysis and archival of historic odours’, Heritage Science 5, no. 2 (2017). 8. P. Duguid and J. Seely Brown, The Social Life of Information (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 2000). 9. G. Beentjes, ‘Digitizing archives: Does the user get the picture?’ MRres in Heritage Science thesis (University College London, 2013). 10. ICH is an aspect of cultural heritage which includes inherited traditions or living expressions such as oral traditions, performing arts, social practices, rituals, festive events, knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe or the knowledge and skills to produce traditional crafts. 168

Archiving the Intangible 11. F. Marini, ‘Archivists, Librarians, and Theatre Research’, Archivaria 63, no. 1 (2007): 26. 12. P. Stockinger, ‘An Archive on The Intangible Cultural Heritage of Andean Populations in Peru and Bolivia’, in Digital Audiovisual Archives (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 2013), 63–104. 13. UNESCO, ‘Convention for the safeguarding of the intangible cultural heritage’, UNESCO, 2003, https://doi.org/10.29171/azu_acku_pamphlet_ds353_c698_2003. 14. T. Engen and C. Pfaffmann, ‘The perception of odors’, American Journal of Psychology (1982); Y. Yeshurun and N. Sobel, ‘An Odor is Not Worth a Thousand Words: From Multidimensional Odors to Unidimensional Odor Objects’, Annual Review of Psychology 61 (2010): 219–41. 15. M. Cifor, ‘Affecting relations: introducing affect theory to archival discourse’, Archival Science 16 (2016): 7–31. 16. M. M. Smith, Sensory History (Oxford: Berg, 2007); Jenner, ‘Follow Your Nose?’; R. Muchembled, Smells: A Cultural History of Odours in Early Modern Times, trans. S. Pickfrod (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2020). 17. Odeuropa, ‘Negotiating Olfactory and Sensory Experiences in Cultural Heritage Practice and Research’, https://odeuropa.eu/. 18. Osmothèque, ‘Qu’est-ce que l’Osmothèque?’, 2020, https://www.osmotheque.fr/. 19. C. Bembibre, Interview with Jean Kerléo and Isabelle Chazot at L’Osmothèque, 2018. 20. Bembibre and Strlič, ‘Smell of heritage’; D. Counsell, Intoxicants in Ancient Egypt: The Application of Modern Forensic Analytical Techniques to Ancient Artefacts and Mummified Remains in the Evaluation of Drug Use by an Ancient Society: A Historical and Scientific Investigation (n.p.p.: ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2006). 21. I. Chazot, ‘Two Callot sœurs fragrances recreated at the Osmothèque’, Les Nouvelles de L’Osmothèque (2011): 5–7. 22. C. Laudamiel, ‘LIBERT É , É GALIT É , FRAGRANCIT É a fragrance manifesto’ (2016), 1, https://scentculture.institute/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/287f2-fragrancemanifesto07.pdf. 23. R. Kaiser, ‘Vanishing Flora – Lost Chemistry: The Scents of Endangered Plants around the World’, in Perspectives in Flavor and Fragrance Research, ed. P. Kraft, A. Karl and D. Swift (Zürich: Verlag Helvetica Chimica Acta, 2007), 15–29. 24. D. Needleman, ‘A Little Cottage Where You Can Smell the Natural History of Perfume’, New York Times, 7 July 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/07/t-magazine/mandy-aftelperfume-history-museum-berkeley.html. 25. S. Tolaas, ‘An Alphabet for the Nose’, Journal of Artistic Research (2011). 26. W. Mendez Vazquez, ‘The urban space is a world of (smell)stories’, Ciencia Puerto Rico, 26 February 2015, https://www.cienciapr.org/en/blogs/biotectonica/urban-space-worldsmellstories. 27. K. McLean, S. Lammes and C. Perkins, ‘Mapping the quixotic volatility of smellscapes: a trialogue-interview with Kate McLean’, in Time for Mapping, ed. S. Lammes, C. Perkins, A. Gekker, S. Hind, C. Wilmott and D. Evans (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018). 28. R. Blackson, If There Ever Was: A Book of Extinct and Impossible Smells (Manchester: Cornerhouse, 2008). 29. ‘The revolutionary SMELL MEMORY KIT’ (n.d.). 30. A. Warhol, From A to B and Back Again: The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (n.p.p.: Harvest Books, 1977). 31. P. Levi, If This is a Man, trans. Stuart Woolf (New York: Orion Press, 1959), 15. 169

The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in The Modern Imagination 32. P. Suskind, Perfume: The Story of Murder, trans. John E. Woods (New York: Albert Knopf, 1986). 33. L. Turin and T. Sanchez, Perfumes. The A–Z Guide (n.p.p.: Profile Books Ltd, 2009), 337. 34. For an example, see the process of the reconstruction of a historic rose-based Roman perfume carried out by archaeologist Jean-Pierre Brun and chemist Xavier Fernandez in the film Perfume Regained : L. Ronat, Le parfum retrouvé (Paris: CNRS ed., 2012).The discovery of perfume vessels in an archaeological excavation in Pompeii and other Italian sites started a thorough investigation of perfume ingredients and preparation techniques in Antiquity and their contemporary equivalents. See also J.-P. Brun and X. Fernandez, Parfums antiques – De l’archéologue au chimiste (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2015). 35. ‘Historical Perfume Cyprinum – UNDA PRISCA’ (n.d.), https://www.undaprisca.com/ perfumes/historical-perfume-cyprinum/. 36. Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride 80. 37. I. Cerboneschi, ‘Le kyphi, résurrection d’un parfum sacré’, Le Temps, 16 May 2002. 38. E. Vosnaki, ‘Interview with a Perfumer: Sandrine Videault’, Perfume Shrine, 4 February 2009, http://perfumeshrine.blogspot.com/2009/02/interview-with-perfumer-sandrine.html. 39. C. Verbeek, ‘Cleopatra’s Perfume Recovered? An in depth interview with Dora Goldsmith’, Futurist Scents, 29 August 2019, https://futuristscents.com/2019/08/29/cleopatras-perfumerecovered/. 40. Dioscorides, De materia medica 1.20. 41. See her contribution in this volume. 42. S. Imbler, ‘Researchers Concocted an Ancient Egyptian Perfume Perhaps Worn by Cleopatra’, Atlas Obscura, 6 August 2019, https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/cleopatras-ancientperfume-recreated. 43. Verbeek, ‘Cleopatra’s Perfume Recovered?’. 44. C. Verbeek, ‘Presenting Volatile Heritage: Two Case Studies on Olfactory Reconstructions in the Museum’, Future Anterior: Journal of Historic Preservation, History, Theory, and Criticism 13, no. 2 (2016): 33–42. 45. S. Butler, ‘Making Scents of Poetry’, in Smell and the Ancient Senses, ed. Mark Bradley (London: Routledge, 2014); C. Classen, D. Howes and A. Synnott, Aroma: The Cultural History of Smell (London: Routledge, 1994); H. Dugan, The Ephemeral History of Perfume: Scent and Sense in Early Modern England (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011). 46. Translation by J. Bostock and H. T. Riley: The Natural History of Pliny (London: H. G. Bohn, 1855–7). 47. Smith, Sensory History. 48. J. Kerléo, ‘Le Parfum Retrouvé’, in Saveurs et senteurs de la Rome antique: 80 recettes d’Apicius, ed. Renzo Pedrazzini (n.p.p.: Fontan & Barnouin, 1996), 155–8. 49. C. Bembibre, interview with Jean Kerléo and Isabelle Chazot at L’Osmothèque, 2018. 50. In addition to historic perfume recreations for the Osmothèque such as aromatic vinegars from the eighteenth century and Napoleon’s cologne, in 2004, Kerléo recreated a collection of smells based on his boarding school in Brittany. Among them were the ‘the extinguished candles, in the chapel, at the end of a service’; ‘the first “blond” cigarettes’; ‘the “chicory coffee” every morning’; and the ‘Hawthorn bush in spring, in Kermenez’ (Kerléo, letter to the president of the Osmothèque, 2006). 51. E. T. Hall, Distance In Man: The Hidden Dimension (Garden City, NY: Doubleday 1966).

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Archiving the Intangible 52. Verbeek, ‘Presenting Volatile Heritage’; J. Mchugh, ‘Seeing Scents: Methodological Reflections on the Intersensory Perception of Aromatics in South Asian Religions’, History of Religions 51, no. 2 (2011): 156–77. 53. R. M. Carp, ‘Perception and Material Culture: Historical and Cross-Cultural Perspectives’, Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques 23, no. 3 (1997): 269. 54. D. Goldsmith, ‘Fish, Fowl, and Stench in Ancient Egypt’, in Sounding Sensory Profiles in the Ancient Near East, ed. Annette Schellenberg and Thomas Krüger (ANEM 25: SBL Press, 2019): 335–60. 55. C. Bembibre and M. Strlič, ‘Preserving historic smells: The question of authenticity’, in Mediality of Smells (Cultural I), ed. J. A. Perras and E. Wicky (Bern: Peter Lang, 2021). 56. See also M. Bradley’s Envoi in this volume. 57. Verbeek, ‘Presenting Volatile Heritage’. 58. Persolaise, ‘The Osmothèque Reviews: Parfum Royal (circa 1st century ad) and Eau De La Raine De Hongrie (14th century)’, 10 April 2014, https://persolaise.com/2014/02/theosmotheque-reviews-parfum-roya.html. 59. L. Spinney, ‘Inside The World’s Only Perfume Conservatory In Versailles’, Vogue, 13 April 2020, https://www.vogue.co.uk/beauty/article/osmotheque-perfume-conservatory. 60. A. Vandorpe, ‘Lunch with the FT: Eau happy day’, Financial Times, 21 January 2005, https:// www.ft.com/content/187b1af4-6ab3-11d9-9357-00000e2511c8. 61. Persolaise. ‘The Osmothèque Reviews’.

Bibliography Aggleton, J. P. and L. Waskett. ‘The ability of odours to serve as state-dependent cues for realworld memories: Can Viking smells aid the recall of Viking experiences?’. British Journal of Psychology 90, no.1 (1999): 1–7, https://doi.org/10.1348/000712699161170. Beentjes, G. ‘Digitizing archives: Does the user get the picture?’ MRres in Heritage Science thesis, University College London, 2013. Bembibre, C. and M. Strlič. ‘Smell of heritage: A framework for the identification, analysis and archival of historic odours’. Heritage Science 5, no. 2 (2017): 1–11, https://doi.org/10.1186/ s40494-016-0114-1. Bembibre, C. and M. Strlič. ‘Preserving historic smells: The question of authenticity’. In Mediality of Smells (Cultural I), edited by J. A. Perras and E. Wicky. Bern: Peter Lang, 2021. Blackson, R. If There Ever Was: A Book of Extinct and Impossible Smells. Manchester: Cornerhouse, 2008. Bostock, J. and H. T. Riley. The Natural History of Pliny. London: H. G. Bohn, 1855–7. Brun, J.-P. and X. Fernandez. Parfums antiques – De l’archéologue au chimiste. Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2015. Butler, S. ‘Making Scents of Poetry’. In Smell and the Ancient Senses, edited by Mark Bradley, 74–89. London: Routledge, 2014. Carp, R. M. (1997). ‘Perception and Material Culture: Historical and Cross-Cultural Perspectives’. Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques 23, no. 3 (1997): 269. Cerboneschi, I. ‘Le kyphi, résurrection d’un parfum sacré’. Le Temps, 16 May 2002. Chazot, I. ‘Two Callot sœurs fragrances recreated at the Osmothèque’. Les Nouvelles de L’Osmothèque (2011): 5–7. Cifor, M. ‘Affecting relations: Introducing affect theory to archival discourse’. Archival Science 16 (2016): 7–31, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-015-9261-5. 171

The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in The Modern Imagination Classen, C., D. Howes and A. Synnott. Aroma: The Cultural History of Smell. London: Routledge, 1994. Counsell, D. Intoxicants in Ancient Egypt: The Application of Modern Forensic Analytical Techniques to Ancient Artefacts and Mummified Remains in the Evaluation of Drug Use by an Ancient Society: A Historical and Scientific Investigation. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2006, http://search.proquest.com/docview/2138186799/. Dugan, H. The Ephemeral History of Perfume: Scent and Sense in Early Modern England. Baltimore, MD : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011. Duguid, P. and J. Seely Brown. The Social Life of Information. Cambridge, MA : Harvard Business School Press, 2000. Engen, T. and C. Pfaffmann, ‘The perception of odors’. American Journal of Psychology (1982). Goldsmith, D. ‘Fish, Fowl, and Stench in Ancient Egypt’. In Sounding Sensory Profiles in the Ancient Near East, edited by Annette Schellenberg and Thomas Krüger, 335–60. ANEM 25: SBL Press, 2019, http://www.sbl-site.org/publications/Books_ANEmonographs.aspx. Hall, E. T. Distance in Man: The Hidden Dimension. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966. Hirsch, A. ‘Nostalgia and odors’. Children’s Environments 9 (1992). Historical Perfume Cyprinum – UNDA PRISCA, n.d., https://www.undaprisca.com/perfumes/ historical-perfume-cyprinum/. Imbler, S. ‘Researchers Concocted an Ancient Egyptian Perfume Perhaps Worn by Cleopatra’. Atlas Obscura, 6 August 2019, https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/cleopatras-ancientperfume-recreated. Jenner, M. S. R. ‘Follow Your Nose? Smell, Smelling, and Their Histories’. American Historical Review 116, no. 2 (2011): 335–51, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr.116.2.335. Kaiser, R. ‘Vanishing Flora – Lost Chemistry: The Scents of Endangered Plants around the World’. In Perspectives in Flavor and Fragrance Research, edited by P. Kraft, A. Karl and D. Swift, 15–29. Zürich: Verlag Helvetica Chimica Acta, 2007, https://doi.org/10.1002/9783906390475.ch2. Kerléo, J. ‘Le Parfum Retrouvé’. In Saveurs et senteurs de la Rome antique: 80 recettes d’Apicius, edited by Renzo Pedrazzini, 155–8. n.p.p.: Fontan & Barnouin, 1996. Laudamiel, C. ‘LIBERT É , É GALIT É , FRAGRANCIT É a fragrance manifesto’, 2016, https:// scentculture.institute/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/287f2-fragrancemanifesto07.pdf. Levi, P. If This is a Man. Translated by Stuart Woolf. New York: Orion Press, 1959. Marini, F. ‘Archivists, Librarians, and Theatre Research’. Archivaria 63, no. 1 (2007): 7–33. Mchugh, J. ‘Seeing Scents: Methodological Reflections on the Intersensory Perception of Aromatics in South Asian Religions’. History of Religions 51, no. 2 (2011): 156–77, https://doi. org/10.1086/660930. McLean, K., S. Lammes, and C. Perkins. ‘Mapping the quixotic volatility of smellscapes: a trialogue-interview with Kate McLean’. In Time for Mapping, edited by S. Lammes, C. Perkins, A. Gekker, S. Hind, C. Wilmott and D. Evans, 50–90. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018. Mendez Vazquez, W. ‘The urban space is a world of (smell)stories’. Ciencia Puerto Rico, 26 February 2015, https://www.cienciapr.org/en/blogs/biotectonica/urban-space-worldsmellstories. Muchembled, R. Smells: A Cultural History of Odours in Early Modern Times. Translated by S. Pickfrod. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2020. Needleman, D. ‘A Little Cottage Where You Can Smell the Natural History of Perfume’. New York Times, 7 July 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/07/t-magazine/mandy-aftel-perfumehistory-museum-berkeley.html. Osmothèque. ‘Qu’est-ce que l’Osmothèque ?’ 2020, https://www.osmotheque.fr/. Persolaise. ‘The Osmothèque Reviews: Parfum Royal (circa 1st century ad) and Eau De La Raine De Hongrie (14th century)’, 10 April 2014, https://persolaise.com/2014/02/the-osmothequereviews-parfum-roya.html. 172

Archiving the Intangible Ronat, L. Perfume Regained. Paris: CNRS ed., 2012. Smith, M. M. Sensory History. Oxford: Berg, 2007. Smith, M. M. The Smell of Battle, the Taste of Siege: A Sensory History of the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. Spinney, L. ‘Inside The World’s Only Perfume Conservatory In Versailles’. Vogue, 13 April 2020, https://www.vogue.co.uk/beauty/article/osmotheque-perfume-conservatory. Stockinger, P. ‘An Archive on The Intangible Cultural Heritage of Andean Populations in Peru and Bolivia’. In Digital Audiovisual Archives, 63–104. Hoboken, NJ : John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 2013. Suskind, P. Perfume: The Story of Murder. Translated by John E. Woods. New York: Albert Knopf, 1986. The revolutionary SMELL MEMORY KIT. n.d., http://smellmemorykit.supersense.com/. Tolaas, S. ‘An Alphabet for the Nose’, Journal of Artistic Research (2011). Turin, L. and T. Sanchez, T. Perfumes. The A–Z Guide. n.p.p.: Profile Books Ltd, 2009. UNESCO. ‘Convention for the safeguarding of the intangible cultural heritage’. UNESCO, 2003, https://doi.org/10.29171/azu_acku_pamphlet_ds353_c698_2003. UNESCO. ‘Les savoir-faire liés au parfum en Pays de Grasse : la culture de la plante à parfum, la connaissance des matières premières et leur transformation, l’art de composer le parfum’. UNESCO, 2019, https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/the-skills-related-to-perfume-in-pays-degrasse-the-cultivation-of-perfume-plants-the-knowledge-and-processing-of-natural-rawmaterials-and-the-art-of-perfume-composition-01207. Vandorpe, A. ‘Lunch with the FT: Eau happy day’. Financial Times, 21 January 2005, https://www. ft.com/content/187b1af4-6ab3-11d9-9357-00000e2511c8. Verbeek, C. ‘Presenting Volatile Heritage: Two Case Studies on Olfactory Reconstructions in the Museum’. Future Anterior: Journal of Historic Preservation, History, Theory, and Criticism 13, no. 2 (2016): 33–42, https://doi.org/10.5749/futuante.13.2.0033. Verbeek, C. ‘Cleopatra’s Perfume Recovered? An in depth interview with Dora Goldsmith’. Futurist Scents, 29 August 2019, https://futuristscents.com/2019/08/29/cleopatras-perfumerecovered/. Vosnaki, E. ‘Interview with a Perfumer: Sandrine Videault’. Perfume Shrine, 4 February 2009, http://perfumeshrine.blogspot.com/2009/02/interview-with-perfumer-sandrine.html. Warhol, A. From A to B and Back Again: The Philosophy of Andy Warhol. n.p.p.: Harvest Books, 1977. Yeshurun, Y. and N. Sobel. ‘An Odor is Not Worth a Thousand Words: From Multidimensional Odors to Unidimensional Odor Objects’. Annual Review of Psychology 61 (2010): 219–41.

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CHAPTER 8 THE ‘PERSISTENCE’ OF AN ANCIENT PERFUME: THE ROSE OF PAESTUM Giulia Corrente

Vidi ego odorati victura rosaria Paesti I’ve seen the blooming roses of the fragrant Paestum Propertius 4.5.61

The rose of Paestum in Antiquity: From the planting of the flower to the birth of a literary topos Research into a subject like smells, which are by nature ‘ephemeral’ and ‘volatile’, is difficult, but documents show the centrality of perfumes in the sensory universe of the Greeks and the Romans. Their importance is comparable in some respects to that of wine. Through perfumes the men and women of Antiquity expressed their relationship with the gods and the dead, their attitude towards seduction and the realm of eros, and to wealth and luxury, but also their position with regard to power as well as commercial and cultural exchanges with the peoples and the territories which produced the finest perfumed essences. If it is true that the ephemeral character of perfumes, particularly ancient perfumes, makes it difficult to read the traces they leave behind, it is also true that, as Proust writes, ‘when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more immaterial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time’.1 This is the case for the rose of Paestum perfume, which today, thanks to its evocative power, conjures up the idea of beauty associated with classical Antiquity in the modern imagination. Its fascinating history is inextricably linked to the ancient Greek colony of Poseidonia, renamed Paestum after the Roman conquest.2 As we shall try to show in this chapter, a long tradition, both literary (from Virgil to Giuseppe Ungaretti) and figurative (from the fourth-century bce painted tombs of Paestum to the paintings of Lawrence AlmaTadema), attests to the intensity of the smell of Paestum roses, of its permanence in the historic memory and its endurance as a literary and iconographic topos. Archeological and literary sources prove that the rose flower was greatly appreciated by the Greeks from the pre-Homeric age onwards, and maintained a strong link with the cult of the gods, Aphrodite in particular. The existence of rose oil from Cyprus, the island sacred to Aphrodite, had already been noted in the Mycenaean world of the second millennium bce in the inscribed tablets of the palace of Pylos, which listed the perfumed 174

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products delivered to the perfumers of the court: there we find the term wo.do.we, which might safely be translated as ‘rose oil’. The importance of the perfume industry in the Mycenaean world is known to us through physico-chemical laboratory research into organic residue, and through the study of the tablets in Linear B of palace archives, in particular from Knossos and Pylos, which hold lists of products used for the making of perfumed balms. The tablets provide important information concerning the variety of ingredients used in the manufacture of perfumes: alongside oil, which was the base for the production of perfumes, there are the names of aromatic substances and plants used in the creation of perfumes.3 The association of the rose with Aphrodite appears for the first time in the Homeric text. In a famous passage from Book 23 of the Iliad, we read: ἀλλὰ κύνας μὲν ἄλαλκε Διὸς θυγάτηρ Ἀφροδίτη ἤματα καὶ νύκτας, ῥοδόεντι δὲ χρῖεν ἐλαίῳ ἀμβροσίῳ, ἵνα μή μιν ἀποδρύφοι ἑλκυστάζων The daughter of Zeus, Aphrodite, kept dogs from him by day alike and by night, and with oil anointed she him, rose-sweet, ambrosial, to the end that Achilles might not tear him as he dragged him. Homer, Iliad 23. 185–7, trans. A. T. Murray In these lines, the poet states that the body of Hector was preserved thanks to the intervention of the goddess Aphrodite, who kept the dogs at bay and anointed the corpse with a rose balm to preserve its physical integrity after Achilles had dragged it behind his chariot. This is the first known mention in Greek literature of a specific balm which is not simply an ‘oil’ or a ‘balm’. In the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, probably composed towards the second half of the seventh century bce , an important sensory clue is connected to the theophany of the goddess of beauty: the εὐωδία, or sweet smell, an identifying element which links the goddess to flowers. Further evidence is to be found in a fragment of the Kypria (fr. 4 Bernabè, end of the seventh century bce ), which points out that Aphrodite ‘wore the clothes that the Charites and the Hours had made and immersed in spring flowers [. . .] and in the beautiful rose flower, sweet as nectar’. The close link between the rose and Aphrodite and the spheres of action under her jurisdiction (beauty, seduction, erotic love) find expression in archaic poetry (Sappho, Archilocus, Alcman, Anacreon) as well as in the figurative domain. A myth emphasizing the association between the rose and Aphrodite recounts that the goddess, at the moment of Adonis’ death, ran to help her lover and wounded her foot. The blood flowing from her foot gave the flower of the rose, initially white, the characteristic shade of bright red and perhaps its own fragrance. Among the many botanical characteristics of the rose, the one mentioned by Theophrastus in the treatise De odoribus is perhaps significant in the association with Aphrodite: the rose is the last to appear and the first to fade; the period during which the rose expresses its intense perfume is therefore brief. Moreover, contrary to other balms, rose oil immediately liberates its perfumed potential, but it evaporates easily. 175

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The link between the rose and the goddess Aphrodite was therefore not only the result of a poetic invention.4 The rose arrived in Greece from Persia and was probably introduced into the colonies of southern Italy and consequently into the Roman world, which made great use of it in both public and private contexts.5 Three of the most popular and most sought-after characteristics of the rose were its smell, the abundance of petals and the colour red. The uses of roses were numerous, ranging from decoration to the extraction of perfumed essences and also, although to a lesser degree, in food. The different uses of roses required large quantities of flowers and specialized plantations capable of responding to market demand and to the tastes of consumers. In Book 13 of The Natural History, devoted to plants and balms obtained from these crops, Pliny observes that the most widespread balms were those which were extracted from roses growing plentifully everywhere (‘divulgata maxime unguenta crediderim e rosa, quae plurima ubique gignitur’, 13.9). However, even if the cultivation of the rose covered an extensive area, some regions were more advantageous than others for the production of high-quality flowers in great quantities. The conditions required were as follows: large expanses of arable land, a mild climate, a favourable topographical situation and the technical expertise of rose growers. During the period of the Roman Empire, Campania had become the dominant region for the production of perfumed oil. Pliny recalls that the reasons for this were the availability of an excellent olive oil and wild roses which flowered twice a year. Furthermore, the region benefitted from a long manufacturing tradition, dating back to the Etruscan period, but also from the presence of merchants who imported spices from Arabia and India, and finally, from the labour of Oriental slaves or freedmen who were experts in fixing smells onto oil.6 Today archeology is able to indicate exactly where perfumes were produced thanks to excavations in Pompeii, Herculaneum and Paestum. Of particular interest in Paestum was the discovery of a perfumery built during the construction of the forum after the foundation of the Roman colony in 273 bce , and in which, at the time of the Flavians or at the beginning of the second century of our era, a stone press had been installed. The shop thus equipped had been used in the second century and probably the third century ce .7 The presence of such activities could be linked to flowers grown locally, notably roses, the essence of which was most in demand and used in the manufacture of perfumed oils. Literary sources help to highlight the characteristics of Paestum roses and reconstruct their history. Virgil and Propertius reveal that in the first century bce the reputation of Paestum and its roses was well established, proof that this territory had been dedicated to the cultivation of the flower and the production of its derivatives for a long time. Virgil, in a passage of great poetic intensity from the Georgics (4.116–19), celebrates the double flowering of the rose beds of Paestum: Atque equidem, extremo ni iam sub fine laborum vela traham, et terris festinem advertere proram, forsitan et pingues hortos quae cura colendi ornaret, canerem, biferique rosaria Paesti. 176

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And for my part, if I were not at the furthest end of my toil, furling my sails, and hurrying to turn my prow towards shore, perhaps I too would be singing how careful cultivation ornaments rich gardens, and of the twice-flowering rose-beds of Paestum.8 trans. A. S. Kline, 2001 Thus, in Virgil’s time the rose beds of Paestum had become one of the emblems of the city, destined to endure over time. Propertius, in Book 4 of the Elegies (4.5.59–62), praises the perfume of the Paestum rose gardens which are spread over the whole town: Dum vernat sanguis, dum rugis integer annus, utere, ne quid cras libet ab ore dies! vidi ego odorati victura rosaria Paesti sub matutino cocta iacere Noto. While it’s springtime in the blood, while your year’s free of wrinkles, make use of your face today lest it pleases none tomorrow! I’ve seen the budding roses of fragrant Paestum left scorched at dawn by the South Wind. trans. A. S. Kline, 2002 Ovid, another Augustan poet, also evokes the mildness of the climate of Paestum, its rose beds (‘tepidique Rosaria Paesti’, 15.708) and the smell of the roses in the Metamorphoses and the Epistulae ex Ponto (‘Paestanas vincet odore rosas’, 2.4.38).9 In his epigrams, Martial, a poet active in Rome under the Flavian dynasty, praises the red colour of the Paestum roses (‘Paestanis rubeant aemula labra rosis’, 4.42.10), their intense perfume (‘fragravit ore quod rosarium Paesti’, 5.37.9), the reputation of the rural landscape (‘tantaque Paestani gloria ruris erat’, 6.80; ‘Seu tu Paestanis genita es seu Tiburis arvis’, 9.60) and, like Virgil, the double flowering of the rose beds, in a context in which the poet enumerates the beauties of the hortus (garden) which Marcella gave him (12.31.1–3):10 Hoc nemus, hi fontes, haec textilis umbra supini palmitis, hoc riguae ductile flumen aquae, prataque nec bifero cessura rosaria Paesto. This grove, these founts, this matted shade of arching vine, this conduit of refreshing water, and the meadows, and the rose gardens that will not yield to twice-bearing Paestum. trans. W. C. A. Ker, 1920 The type of roses grown in Paestum had three main characteristics according to the literary tradition: the red colour, the intense perfume and the annual double flowering. Therefore, according to the modern classification, it was probably the rose that today we call rosa damascena.11 177

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After Martial, the rose beds of Paestum seem to be forgotten, and when the literary sources begin again to evoke them, in the fourth century of our era, they no longer reflect contemporary reality, but mainly recall the literary tradition which made the Paestum rose a veritable topos. Why this change? The politico-military crisis and the economic downturn which hit the empire from the third century ce certainly had an impact on the production of fresh flowers and high-quality perfumes extracted from roses. The Paestum plain went into decline and was abandoned by its inhabitants. The roses of Paestum are then no more than a sweet fragrant memory resonating in the poetry of authors at the end of the empire. Thus, in the Epithalamium for the marriage of Honorius and Maria, Claudianus, a court poet at the end of the fourth century ce , conjures up the roses of the Paestum countryside, using the reference as a refined poetic form (‘geminae Paestana rosae per iugera regnant’). The rose gardens of Paestum are described by Martianus Capella as being among ‘the things to remember about Italy’ (‘cetera Italiae memoranda nec poetae tacent [. . .] ut [. . .] Paestana Rosaria’).12 They are likewise a literary memory and a poetic fantasy more than a contemporary reality in the verses of the anonymous author of the poem De rosis nascentibus, in which the rose beds of Paestum appear to the poet in all their morning splendour. They give their bright colours to the dawn, while the horizon seems to set the scene for an imminent epiphany of Venus, the goddess of the morning star and flowers, in particular roses (De rosis nasc., Anth. Lat. 646).13 Vidi Paestano gaudere rosaria cultu exoriente novo roscida Lucifero. I saw such rose-beds as Paestum cultivates shining with dew, at the new light [Morning Star] of the day. trans. S. Gillespie, 2017 A significant example of the way in which the literary tradition has contributed not only to prolonging the memory of the Paestum roses, but also to reconstructing their history by recalling technical details which would otherwise have been forgotten, is to be found in the writings of Ennodius, the bishop of Pavia in the sixth century ce , who, while evoking the rose beds of Paestum from the point of view of tradition rather than the reality of his time, seems to provide interesting details about the techniques for the cultivation of the roses: ‘The labour of Paestum farmers has made it possible for thorn bushes to produce roses which sprout from the thorns like stars of the earth’ (‘Industria fecit quod Paestaneis rosas dumeta pepererunt, quas de spinis ceu terrae sidera labor exigit’, Dict. 8.6). In another passage, Ennodius refers to the colour of the roses and the breadth of the fields in Paestum, and also provides a useful description of the techniques of rosegrowing and underlines the skill in grafting of the settlers in Paestum by means of which they were able to produce roses on brambles, that is, on thorn bushes of the same family as rosacea.14 Practices of this kind required work not only on the graft itself, but also on 178

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the management of the hedges to support the plants. A fresco in Pompeii in the ‘House of the Golden bracelet’ (first century ce ), on which a rose plant supported by a cane can be seen, could be a reference to grafting.15

The survival until modern times of the textual and visual imagination The roses of Paestum, which have become a literary topos and an antonomasia, survive in the collective imagination and in the literary tradition of the Renaissance, in parallel and in coherence with the desire for a return to the classical tradition. Topos and antonomasia are to be found in a lyrical poem by Lorenzo de’ Medici (1449–92), The legend of red roses (Rime LXXIII), in which he describes the well-tended rose beds and the mild and sunny climate of Paestum: Non de’ verdi giardini ornati e cólti dello aprico e dolce aere Pestano, veniam, madonna, in la tua bianca mano, ma in aspre selve e valli ombrose còlti. We do not come from the ornate and cultivated gardens of the sunny and sweet air of Paestum, my lady, in your white hand, but we are picked in harsh forests and shady valleys. my translation In these lines, the roses themselves speak and recall the origin of their red colour, derived from the blood of Venus who was wounded by a thorn while she was running towards the dying Adonis. The poetic memory and the antonomasia referring to the roses of Paestum are again to be found in the masterpiece of Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, in which the intense colour of the roses is used to describe the blushing of the female warriors Bradamante and Marfisa (Or. Fu. 37.28): Lo spettacolo enorme e disonesto l’una e l’altra magnanima guerriera fe’ del color che nei giardin di Pesto esser la rosa suol da primavera. The huge and dishonest spectacle made both warrior women of the color that, in the gardens of Paestum, usually has the rose in spring. my translation Literary references to the roses of Paestum recur regularly in subsequent centuries, not only in Italian literature but also in European literature more generally, in particular in travel literature linked to the eighteenth-century Grand Tour, which developed in connection with the rediscovery of ancient classical monuments.16 179

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It is indeed in the middle of the eighteenth century that Paestum emerged from oblivion17 thanks to young, cosmopolitan scholars who included southern Italy on the educational itinerary of visitors, thus shedding a new light on the classical myth of Greece. Artists and researchers took inspiration from Paestum, picking up on both the geometry of its neo-classical architecture and the sublime atmosphere of its landscapes, which heralded the advent of Romanticism. The main advocate for the re-evaluation of Paestum was Johann Joaquim Winckelmann (1717–68), who in 1758 saw the site for the first time. No trace of the roses in Paestum remained, but the memory of the rose beds in the town had endured. In a letter to Maurizio Bianconi, dated 1 May 1758, Winckelmann wrote, ‘I did not find the roses of Paestum so highly praised by the ancients.’18 This nostalgic disappointment, which makes the memory of the roses even more powerful, seems to find its deepest and most suggestive significance in the words of Riccardo Bacchelli (1891–1985):19 All along the Amalfi coast and beyond, in many regions of the South, the roses of Paestum are said to be the most fragrant and most colorful thing. Sailors are believed to smell the scent all the way to the sea and roses are so red they look black. Yet, in Paestum, celebrated for its roses by Virgil and Ovid and other Latin poets, no roses or rosebushes are seen, not even the slightest appearance. Moreover, they flourish in the memory and speech of the people, and truly they are not death. The misfortune and the roses of Paestum equally overcome oblivion and the fall of the centuries. The importance of the rose and its link to the territory of Magna Graecia (especially Paestum) are not only evidenced in the literary tradition, as traces can also be detected in the figurative tradition, although the references here are not so explicit. We can find figurative and stylistic elements assuming the value of a topos which can be interpreted in different ways: it may have a decorative and ornamental role, a narrative function or a symbolic and allegorical dimension. An interesting example is the recurrence of the flower as a figurative motif in vase paintings or on painted tombstones in the antique city (see Figure 8.1).20 Figure 8.1 shows a tomb found in the Arcioni area, not far from the walls of the ancient town of Poseidonia, in a zone used as a necropolis from the fourth century bce . The slab belongs to a tomb chamber from the first half of the fourth century bce and has a floral motif decoration in which roses, albeit stylized ones, can be distinguished. The painted tombs of Paestum attest to the circulation of the rose motif as an already ancient decorative element. The motif is also to be found on the ceramics and the coroplast, as well as on the architectural decoration in Paestum and other sites in southern Italy. It is also interesting to note that among the funeral objects in the painted tombs of Paestum, ointment and perfume jars were found in greater numbers than elsewhere in Magna Graecia. However, we do not know to what extent this can be linked to the production of perfumes typical of those made in Poseidonia/Paestum during the preRoman period. 180

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Figure 8.1 Paestum, floral motif painting on fourth-century bce Lucanian gravestone, from the necropolis in Arcioni. Museo Archeologico di Paestum, inv. T.001 (from the photographic archive of the National Archaeological Museum of Paestum). The rose also appears on votive offerings or everyday objects.21 Figure 8.2 shows a thymiaterion (censer) found in the area of the sanctuary of Hera at the mouth of the River Sele, an ancient sanctuary nine kilometres from the ancient town of Poseidonia, uncovered between 1934 and 1940 by the archaeological excavations of Umberto Zanotti Bianco and Paola Zancani Montuori. The large number of similar specimens found in the excavation of Heraion of Foce del Sele indicates that the production of terracotta statuettes in the form of a flower woman was typical of Paestum. The censers had a votive function and could be compared to perfume burners made up of a female head surmounted by a plate which, in Paestum, had the form of a flower corolla, probably that of a rose. This iconographic evidence suggests that rose-growing dates back to the Greek period and to the most ancient phases in the history of Paestum. With the transfer to Roman domination, the production of roses intensified and the related economic sector developed; at the same time, in figurative art, the rose motif established itself not only as a decorative feature but also as an element with a strong symbolic influence.22 As a highquality luxury product, the rose, with time, became a sort of status symbol, a way of displaying and asserting one’s power.23 On this subject, the literary and figurative 181

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Figure 8.2 Thymiaterion in the form of a ‘flower woman’, from the sanctuary of Hera at the mouth of the River Sele. Museo Archeologico di Paestum, inv. 56652 (from the photographic archive of the National Archaeological Museum of Paestum).

traditions offer interesting and original illustrations, sometimes even with aspects of eccentricity. While they do not refer directly to the roses of Paestum, we believe they may be indirectly linked to the considerable production and to the different uses of the Paestum roses. One of the most striking examples concerns the Emperor Heliogabalus (218–222 ce ). According to the Vita Heliogabali (included in the Historia Augusta), the young emperor, of Syrian origin, showered the dining hall during some of his famous banquets with such a huge quantity of perfumed flowers that some of the guests suffocated and died (‘Oppressit in tricliniis versatilibus parasitos suos violis et floribus, sic ut animam aliqui efflaverint, cum erepere ad summum non possent’, Hist. Aug. Heliogabalus 21).24 The episode has had an extraordinary resonance in the artistic tradition, as it became the subject of a nineteenthcentury masterpiece, The Roses of Heliogabalus (see Colour Plate 3) by Lawrence AlmaTadema,25 a passionate and profound connoisseur of the antique world.26 In this painting, rose petals, the colour of which ranges from white to vermilion, rain down from curtains hanging from the ceiling onto the Roman emperor’s court (first the famous women in his life, his grandmother, his mother, his wife) and suffocate the guests, in a sea that one 182

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imagines is perfumed. The skill of the painter resides not only in the calligraphic precision with which he manages to represent the slightest details of the scene, but also in capturing the instant just before the tragedy takes place: the multi-hued blanket of roses falls gently from above without anyone anticipating the drama that is about to unfold. Thus, the rose takes on a double symbolic status: it may symbolize gentle seduction and pleasure and at the same time dangerous seduction and transience. And this could explain why Alma-Tadema, who adhered strictly to the antique source, only deviated from it in the choice of the rose as the sole protagonist of the scene (in the passage from the Historia Augusta the author speaks of ‘violets and other flowers’). Rosemary J. Barrow, the author of a study devoted to the significance of the rose in the works of AlmaTadema,27 suggests that if the painter chose the rose as the main character in the scene, it is because he was basing his work on the new meaning acquired by the flower by the end of Antiquity as the emblem of greed and excess, and consequently of Roman decadence during the imperial age.28 Heliogabalus, whose behaviour was characterized by excess and strangeness, transgression and vice according to the historiographic tradition, is without doubt one of the most emblematic figures of this decadence.29 In the Vita Heliogabali, the author emphasizes the fact that ‘his life was nothing if he could not experience new pleasures’ (Hist. Aug. Heliogabalus 19). It is not surprising, therefore, that Joris-Karl Huysmans, in À rebours (1884), redeemed the emperor’s reputation and expressly cited him among the decadent characters preferred by Des Esseintes, who himself seems to have many traits in common with Heliogabalus as he was portrayed in the Historia Augusta. Furthermore, it is possible that Alma-Tadema was familiar with Octave Delepierre’s 1856 essay on the rose and its symbolism, in which the link between Heliogabalus and this flower is firmly established.30 However, there are other, equally significant reasons that can help us to understand Alma-Tadema’s decision to give pride of place to the rose in the scene which he represents. One such reason might well be the widespread use of roses in various public and private contexts. As M. Piccioni observes in his paper on the myth of Heliogabalus, in the Historia Augusta we read that roses were used by Heliogabalus in various situations.31 It is plausible to suggest that Alma-Tadema combined several different episodes from the life of the emperor, for example when ‘he had triclinia, beds and arcades scattered with roses’ (Hist. Aug. Eliogabalus 19) as well as the scene of the suffocated guests. Inundating imperial banquets with a shower of rose petals seems to have been a widespread custom, attested by other literary sources before the Historia Augusta. In the Fasti, Ovid recalls that during banquets ‘garlands adorn the temples of the guests and festal tables are strewn with roses’ (Ovid, Fasti 335–6: ‘tempora sutilibus cinguntur tota coronis, et latet iniecta splendida mensa rosa’). Suetonius also notes, in his Vita Neronis, the presence of movable ceilings in the domus aurea from which flowers or perfumes fall onto guests (Suetonius, Nero 31.2).32 Roses were not only present during moments of conviviality; they were also associated with ceremonies in honour of the dead. During the imperial period, for example, Rosalia festivals were held: annual celebrations during which tombs were scattered with roses and decorated with garlands as offerings to the Manes. The festival was sometimes called rosatio (decorate with roses) or dies rosationis ‘the days of decorations with roses’. This 183

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was one of the rituals that the Romans practised in private to honour their dead. At the same time, it reflected the value attached to tradition, to family lineage and to commemorative monuments. As an expression of religious belief, the rosatio could also be offered to the cult statue of a divinity or to other venerated objects. As we have pointed out, many symbolic and ambivalent values underpin the extraordinary painterly rendering of the blanket of roses that smothers the scene in Alma-Tadema’s canvas. The ‘paintings-museums’ of this artist, a fine connoisseur and expert in archaeological matters, represent an extraordinary reinterpretation of the Roman world with all the associated paraphernalia of ancient artefacts, refined clothes and settings adorned with marble and a profusion of flowers. However, The Roses of Heliogabalus is not an archeological painting; it is a painting in which suggestions of, and references to, different periods and origins coexist in all their eclectic diversity. As for the roses which have replaced the violets and the other generic flowers mentioned in the Latin source, it is not unlikely that they are a reference to the roses of Paestum, as the artist surely knew of their reputation, their beauty and their value, celebrated in the literary tradition and fixed in the historic memory.

Recent attempts to revive the Paestum rose In May 1932, the great poet Giuseppe Ungaretti arrived in Paestum. He described his impressions of the majestic beauty of the temples and exclaimed, ‘This plain will soon see the return of its famous roses, but now the sky has roses, and this evening their brevity is lightning fast’ (Mirabar celerem fugitiva aetate rapinam; / et, dum nascuntur, consenuisse rosas).33 With these words, Ungaretti confirmed the endurance of the historic memory of the Paestum roses and at the same time expressed the hope that they would return to be present in this place of sublime beauty. Today, his wish has materialized, as for several years now the roses have flowered again within the walls of the ancient city thanks to a recent project launched by the Archeological Museum of Paestum, which has used paleo-botanical research and the experience of experts in local floriculture. The grafted roses, although not identical, are very similar to the roses praised by Virgil and the other poets in the classical tradition: it is the Rosa damascena bifera or four seasons, or semperflorens, thus named for the characteristic which makes it unique: its prolonged flowering. A local olfactory laboratory, Sirenae Essenze in Paestum, has also succeeded in recreating a specific essence called ‘Rhodon’ from the roses which once more flower on the lands of Magna Graecia. In this laboratory, established in 2012, perfumes are inspired by the tradition of the Paestum region and developed using only craft techniques (extraction by hand press and distillation). The essence of the perfume Rhodon is a very precious amber oil obtained from flowers gathered before dawn and treated that same day (by steam distillation) to avoid the fading of their velvety notes. Moreover, an important brand of Italian perfume, Eau d’Italie, has created an exclusive perfume called Paestum Rose as a tribute to the ancient tradition. On the website of 184

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‘Eau d’Italie. Essence of Italy’, we read, ‘In tribute to the legendary tradition of Italian perfumery, the famous Rosa Paestana is born again in the fine blending of incense and resins. Spicy notes of davana, coriander seeds, pink and black pepper, followed by a chiaroscuro of musk, myrrh and benzoin give depth and mystery to an intense and velvety Turkish rose.’34 Chandler Barr, an internationally renowned perfume critic and founder of the Department of Olfactory Art in the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, describes the perfume in the following words: Paestum Rose is a perfume that’s rich and filled with meaning like the intimate opalescent blacks Caravaggio painted, instantly known and strangely unfamiliar. In this perfume we smell ancient beauty made thrillingly new.35 These words emphasize the evocative and synaesthetic power of a perfume by suggesting the existence of a veritable ‘olfactory esthetic’. Charting the history of the rose from Paestum through the traces that remain in the literary and figurative traditions, but also through modern attempts to recreate, although imperfectly, its olfactory properties, allows us to get in touch with the world of smell and ancient perfume, an ephemeral world and for this reason long considered of secondary importance, yet one that is fascinating and culturally fruitful. The history of the rose of Paestum helps us understand and appreciate aspects of the beauty of Antiquity that would otherwise remain neglected, if not totally unknown. From this point of view, Shakespeare’s lines provide a suitable conclusion: O how much more doth beauty beauteous seem, By that sweet ornament which truth doth give! The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem For that sweet odour which doth in it live.36

Notes 1. Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time, Vol. 1: Swann’s Way, trans. C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised D. J. Enright (New York: Modern Library, 1992), 63–4. 2. In the extensive bibliography on Paestum, see A. M. Ardovino, I culti di Paestum antica e del suo territorio (Salerno: Banca Generoso Andria, 1986); M. Cipriani, Paestum: i templi e il museo (Firenze: Casa Editrice Bonechi, 2010); E. Greco, Paestum (Rome: Vision, 1985); M. Mello, Paestum Romana: Ricerche storiche (Rome: Istituto Italiano per la Storia Antica, 1974); M. Napoli, Paestum (Novara: Istituto Geografico De Agostini, 1970); A. Pontrandolfo and A. Rouveret, Le Tombe dipinte a Paestum (Modena: Franco Cosimo Panini, 1992); F. Zevi and M. Jodice, Paestum (Naples: Banco di Napoli, 1990). 3. Pylos tablet, Fr 1203. On the production of perfumes in Mycenaean palaces, see M. Wylock, ‘La fabrication des parfums à l’époque mycénienne d’après les tablettes Fr de Pylos’, Studi Micenei ed Egeo-Anatolici 11 (1970): 116–33, and M. S. Speciale, ‘L’industria dei profumi e l’amministrazione di Cnosso in età micenea’, Creta Antica 2 (2001): 149–58. On perfume in

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The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in The Modern Imagination Antiquity, see A. Carannante and M. D’Acunto, I profumi nelle società antiche. Produzione Commercio Usi Valori Simbolici (Paestum: Pandemos, 2012); M. Detienne, Les Jardins d’Adonis: La mythologie des parfums et des aromates en Grèce (Paris: Gallimard, 1972); P. Faure, Parfums et aromates de l’antiquité (Paris: Fayard, 1987); G. Squillace, Il profumo nel mondo antico (Firenze: Olschki, 2010); A. Verbanck-Piérard, N. Massar and D. Frère, Parfums de l’Antiquité. La rose et l’encens en Méditerranée (Mariemont: Musée royal de Mariemont, 2008). 4. On this subject, see M. R. Belgiorno, I profumi di Afrodite e il segreto dell’olio (Rome: Gangemi, 2007); A. Campanelli and M. Cipriani, Rosantico. Natura, bellezza, gusto, profumi tra Paestum, Padula, Velia (Naples: Arte’m, 2013); R. Goubeau, ‘Parfum de rose’, in EUKRATA. Mélanges offerts à Claude Vatin, ed. C. Amouretti and P. Villard (Aix-en-Provence: Université de Provence, 1994), 83–6; E. Irwin, ‘The Crocus and the Rose: A Study of the Interrelationship between the Natural and the Divine World in Early Greek Poetry’, in Greek Poetry and Philosophy: Studies in Honour of Leonard Woodbury, ed. D. E. Gerber (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1984), 147–68; A. Moreau, ‘Le fabuleux, le divin, le parfum: Aphrodite maîtresse des odeurs’, in Saveurs, senteurs: le goût de la Méditerranée, ed. P. Carmignani, J. Y. Laurichesse and J. Thomas (Perpignan: Presses Universitaires, 1998), 41–58; G. Squillace, I giardini di Saffo. Profumi e aromi nella Grecia antica (Rome: Carocci, 2014). 5. On this subject, see Fr. Allé, ‘Travail et identité professionnelle. Analyse lexicographique des termes relatifs aux métiers du parfum dans l’Occident romain’, L’Antiquité classique 79 (2010): 199–212; M. Bonsangue and N. Tran, ‘Le métier de parfumeur à Rome et dans l’Occident romain’, in Parfums et odeurs dans l’antiquité, ed. L. Bodiou, D. Frère and V. Mehl (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2008), 253–62; J.-P. Brun and N. Monteix, ‘Les parfumeries en Campanie antique’, in Artisanats antiques d’Italie et de Gaule. Mélanges offerts à MariaFrancesca Buonaiuto, ed. J.-P. Brun, (Naples: Centre Jean Bérard, 2009), 115–33; P. Faure, Parfums et aromates de l’antiquité (Paris: Fayard, 1987); M. Raepsaet-Charlier and F. Allé, ‘Les métiers du parfum à Rome: le témoignage des sources écrites’, in Parfums de l’Antiquité. La rose et l’encens en Méditerranée, ed. A. Verbanck-Piérard, N. Massar and D. Frère (Mariemont: Musée royal de Mariemont, 2008), 287–93. 6. Ancient perfumes were different from ours because they always used an oily base, often olive oil, onto which smells were fixed. The base had to be prepared very carefully using the following raw materials: Egyptian balsam (Balanites aegyptiaca), wild or green olives, Edipsos dates, poppies, sesame seeds and almonds. For a long time the oil was extracted from these fruits or seeds by pressing the paste through cloth bags which were twisted, as some Egyptian paintings show. This was probably the type of instrument used in the shops in Paestum in the third century bce before stone-based presses were installed. In the second century of our era, screw presses were introduced. The following stage was enfleurage. Most perfumed oils were made by soaking aromas and flower petals in a bath of oil and water, or heated together in a bath of water. The Campania region was famous for its rhodinon italikon. See J.-P. Brun, ‘Le profumerie del foro di Paestum’, in Rosantico. Natura, bellezza, gusto, profumi: tra Paestum, Padula e Velia, ed. A. Campanelli and M. Cipriani (Naples: Arte’m, 2013), 63–7. 7. See Ph. Borgard, J.-P. Brun, M. Leguilloux, N. Monteix and M. Cullin-Mingaud, ‘Recherches sur les productions artisanales à Pompéi et à Herculanum’, in Nuove ricerche archeologiche a Pompei ed Ercolano, ed. P. G. Guzzo and M.-P. Guidobaldi (Naples: Electa, 2005), 295–317; J.-P. Brun, ‘Une parfumerie sur le Forum de Paestum’, Mélanges de l’Ecole française de Rome, Antiquité 110 (1998): 419–72; Brun and Monteix, ‘Les parfumeries de Campanie antique’, 115–33. 8. These lines come just before the famous passage in which Virgil describes the garden of the old man of Corico (Georgics 4. 116–48).

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The ‘Persistence’ of an Ancient Perfume 9. In Book 15 of the Metamorphoses, Ovid recounts the return journey to Italy of the Roman embassy which had been sent to Epidaurus to consult the oracle of Asclepius, and describes in the following words the passage through Paestum: ‘then it heads towards the rose gardens of the warm Paestum’, 15. 708. In the Epistules ex Ponto, written during his exile on the Black Sea, Ovid, using the literary expedient of the absurd, again uses the roses of Paestum as the antonomasia for perfume, or rather as an absolute and inaccessible term for all comparisons (‘the calta will win the Paestum roses in the perfume’, Ep. 2. 4. 38). 10. On the importance of gardens in Rome, see M. Cima and E. Talamo, Gli horti di Roma antica (Milan: Electa, 2008); P. Grimal, Les jardins romains (Paris: E. de Boccard, 1943); W. Jashemski, The Gardens of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and the Villas destroyed by Vesuvius (New Rochelle, NY: Caratzas Brothers, 1993); S. Settis, Le pareti ingannevoli. La villa di Livia e le pitture di giardino (Milan: Electa Mondadori, 2002). 11. The researchers who looked into this aspect believe that the closest rose to that described as the Paestum rose is the damascena rosa semperflorens or bifera, also called ‘autumn damascena’ because of its tendency to flower in autumn, as well as at the beginning of summer. It was the only one capable of flowering twice a year. See E. McCurdy, Roses of Paestum (London: George Allen, 1900); R. Stepherd, Histoire de la rose (London: Macmillan Company, 1954); S. Coggiatti, Rose di ieri e di oggi (Milan: Mondadori, 1986); M. Mello, Rosae. Il fiore di Venere nella vita e nella cultura romana (Naples: Arte tipografica Editrice, 2003). 12. Martianus Capella, De Nuptiis Mercurii et Philologiae 6. 641. 13. In the elegy De rosis nascentibus, transferred to the Appendix Virgiliana but attributed to the Gallo-Roman poet Ausonius (fourth century ce ), the poet recounts a spring morning walk during which, with the diffusion of light, he sees ‘Paestano gaudere rosaria cultu’, ‘rose trees which rejoiced at the plantations of Paestum’, a qualification which highlights the quality of the roses by comparing them to the famed blooms of the town of Campania. 14. Some scholars have linked the practice of grafting to the classical myth of the red rose whose colour came from Venus’ blood when she wounded herself on a thorn. The white or yellow flowers of the plant, a bramble, turned red. See F. La Greca, ‘Rose nate sui rovi: ricerche sulle antiche rose di Paestum’, Annali storici di Principato Citra 8, no. 2 (2010): 5–16. 15. The fresco in the ‘House of the golden bracelet’ is one of the most faithful illustrations of a garden in style III, dating from the beginning of the first century of our era. The attention to detail with which the luxuriant flowered garden is represented produces a realistic effect which enables us to recognize different plant species of the period: the oleander, the viburnum, the palm tree, the rose, variegated ivy, as well as different types of birds. Each element is accompanied by its symbolic significance. See A. Ciarallo and S. Salvi, Il giardino dipinto nella Casa del Bracciale d’oro a Pompei e il suo restauro (Firenze: Centro editoriale Università Internazionale dell’Arte, 1991), 25–31; A. Ciarallo, Flora pompeiana (Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 2004); R. Ciardiello, ‘La Casa del Bracciale d’Oro (VI, 17, 42 Ins. Occ.)’, in Pompei (Regiones VI – VII) Insula Occidentalis, ed. M. Aoyagi and U. Pappalardo (Tokyo and Naples: Valtrend Editore, 2006), 70–256; Jashemski, The Gardens of Pompeii; E. M. Moormann, ‘Giardini ed altre pitture nella Casa del Frutteto e Bracciale d’oro a Pompei’, Mededelingen van het Nederlands Instituut te Rome 54 (1995): 214–28. 16. On the experience of the Grand Tour, see F. Sabba, Viaggi tra i libri. Le biblioteche italiane nella letteratura del Grand Tour (Pisa and Rome: Fabrizio Serra Editore, 2018). 17. This is the time when the modern era rediscovered the ancient. After the removal of the inhabitants to a healthier hilly region following the spread of marsh land which rendered the Paestum region unsafe, the town was completely abandoned. It was rediscovered in the middle of the eighteenth century when the reputation of its temples became known. Paestum

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The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in The Modern Imagination was included in the stages considered essential to the Grand Tour and was visited, along with Herculaneum and Pompeii, by European intellectuals and aristocrats. 18. See J. J. Winckelmann, Opere di G. G. Winckelmann, VI (Prato: Giachetti, 1831), 266. 19. The Italian writer, author of the famous novel Il Mulino del Po (1957), published an article entitled ‘Rose di Pesto’ in La Stampa in October 1927. 20. See A. Pontrandolfo, ‘Le necropoli e i riti funerari’, in La città greca antica. Istituzioni, società e forme urbane, ed. E. Greco (Rome: Donzelli, 1999), 55–81; A. Pontrandolfo and A. Rouveret, Le tombe dipinte di Paestum (Modena: Franco Cosimo Panini, 1992). 21. See A. M. Ardovino, I culti di Paestum antica e del suo territorio (Naples: Banca Generoso Andria, 1986); F. Cantone, La ‘donna fiore’ nel santuario di Hera alla foce del Sele. Un progetto per l’informatizzazione dei dati (Pozzuoli: Naus Editoria Archeologica, 2016); P. Zancani Montuoro and U. Zanotti Bianco, Heraion alla foce del Sele, I, II (Rome: Libreria dello Stato, 1951–4). 22. See M. L. Nava, M. Osanna and C. De Faveri, Antica flora lucana. Repertorio storico-archeologico (Venosa: Osanna Edizioni, 2007); H. Baumann, Greek Wild Flowers and Plant Lore in Ancient Greece (London: Herbert Press Ltd, 1993); G. Di Pasquale and A. D’Auria, ‘Le rose, la botanica e l’uomo’, in La rosa antica di Pompei, ed. E. De Carolis, A. Lagi, G. Di Pasquale, A. D’Auria and C. Avvisati (Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 2016), 52–69; Ch. Joret, La rose dans l’Antiquité et au Moyen Âge (Paris: Bouillon, 1892); M. Mello, Rosae: il fiore di Venere nella vita e nella cultura romana (Naples: Arte tipografica, 2003); N. Kei, La fleur. Signe de parfum dans la céramique attique, in Parfums et odeurs dans l’Antiquité, ed. L. Bodiou, D. Frère and V. Mehl (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2008), 197–203; J. E. Raven, W. T. Stearn, N. Jardine and M. Frasca-Spada, Plants and Plant Lore in Ancient Greece (Oxford: Leopard’s Head Press, 2000). 23. Cicero depicts Verres, the corrupt governor of Sicily, ‘as a king of Bithynia, gently reclining on a transparent pillow filled with Maltese roses, wearing a crown of the same flowers on his head’ (Cic. In Verrem 2. 5. 27). Suetonius says that Nero spent more than four million sesterces on a banquet with roses, and that in his Domus Aurea, probably after an Oriental model, he had built halls with perforated ivory ceilings so that he could shower his guests with flowers and perfumes (Suet. De Vita Caesarum 6. 27). 24. E. Lampridio, Vita di Eliogabalo. Delirio e passione di un imperatore romano, ed. S. Fumagalli (Milan: Mimesis, 2011). 25. The bibliography of the painting and the author is abundant: R. J. Barrow, Lawrence AlmaTadema (London: Phaidon Press Ltd, 2001); V. Gerard-Powell, Alma-Tadema e i pittori dell’800 inglese. La collezione Pérez Simón (Cinisello Balsamo: Silvana Editoriale, 2014), 71–5; E. Querci, Alma-Tadema (Firenze: Giunti, 2007); V. G. Swanson, The Biography and Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (London: Garton, 1990). On the specific subject of the perfume of the roses in relation to the painting, see R. J. Barrow, ‘The Scent of Roses: Alma-Tadema and the Other Side of Rome’, Bulletin de l’Institut d’études classiques 42 (1997–8): 183–202; M. Piccioni, ‘Una morte profumata. Il mito di Eliogabalo e l’ambiguità della rosa nel Decadentismo europeo’, La Rivista di Engramma 121 (2014): 8–28. 26. Alma-Tadema (1836–1912) knew Italy well, particularly the most important antique Graeco-Roman localities, thanks to his journeys there (1863, 1875, 1878, 1883). Visits to museums and archaeological sites during his long stay in 1863 and on subsequent occasions enabled him to discover Antiquity directly without any form of mediation. This afforded him the opportunity to choose the sites, the architecture and the archaeological finds for which he subsequently collected graphic and photographic material. The remains of monuments in Rome, but more importantly the ruins and the artefacts of Pompeii, Herculaneum and the wider Vesuvius region, were Alma-Tadema’s sources of inspiration. By virtue of a profound

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The ‘Persistence’ of an Ancient Perfume archaeological and literary knowledge of classical Antiquity, Alma-Tadema was capable of reviving a bygone age in which daily life and myth blended together harmoniously. See E. Querci and S. De Caro, Alma Tadema e la nostalgia dell’antico (Milan: Mondadori Electa, 2007); Gerard-Powell, Alma-Tadema e i pittori dell’800 inglese, 71–5. 27. Barrow, ‘The Scent of Roses’, 184. The rose, with its complex symbolic value, is also present in many of the paintings by nineteenth-century artists, notably in certain canvases by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (see, for example, Venus Verticordia, 1866, Bournemouth, Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum). 28. With the same symbolic value, roses also appear in other works by Alma-Tadema devoted to imperial figures during the reigns of the Severus emperors. In the painting entitled Caracalla (1902), rose petals are scattered on the ground by servants as the emperor enters; in Caracalla and Geta (1907), garlands of roses decorate the marble columns of the amphitheatre in which the scene takes place. 29. Along with Caligula and Nero, and perhaps more than either of them, he was the emperor whose biographers (Dion Cassius, Herodianus, Lampridius) sketched the controversial and worrying profile of a perfectly decadent figure in surprising and scandalous anecdotes. On Aelius Lampridius, the pseudo author of the Historia Augusta biography of Heliogabalus, see Elio Lampridio, Vita di Eliogabalo. Delirio e passione di un imperatore romano (Milan: Mimesis, 1994); A. Artaud, Héliogabale ou l’anarchiste couronné (Paris: Denoël & Steele, 1934). 30. See O. Delepierre, The Rose, its Cultivation, Use, and Symbolical Meaning in Antiquity, translated from the German (London: Smith, Elder and Company, 1856), 20. 31. Piccioni, ‘Una morte profumata’, 14. 32. As M. Piccioni has keenly observed, this passage inspired Henryk Sienkiewicz in his famous novel of 1896, Quo Vadis?, thus participating in the same cultural climate as Alma-Tadema’s The Roses of Heliogabalus. In the novel there is a banqueting scene during which, in the presence of Nero, on the guests ‘nothing but roses fell from the nets hanging from the ceiling’ and their scent made the air almost suffocating. See Piccioni, ‘Una morte profumata’, 14; H. Sienkiewicz, Quo Vadis?, trans. P. Valera (Milan: Ed. Sonzogno, 1915), 37. 33. Ungaretti describes his impressions of his visit to Paestum in an article published on 14 May 1932 in the Gazzetta del Popolo under the title ‘La rosa di Pesto’. The Latin verses are taken from De rosis nascentibus, vv. 34–5: ‘I marvelled at the swift ruin wrought by the fleeting season, to see the roses all withered even while they bloom’ (trans. S. Gillespie). See S. Gillespie, ‘De Rosis Nascentibus in English from the Renaissance to the Twentieth Century: A Collection of Translations’, Translation and Literature 26, no. 1 (2017): 73–94. 34. See ‘Eau d’Italie: l’histoire d’un parfum’, Sirenuse, 11 December 2013, www.sirenuse.it. 35. Chandler Barr is the perfume critic of the New York Times and author of The Emperor of Scent: A True Story of Perfume and Obsession (New York: Random House, 2003) and The Perfect Scent: A Year Inside the Perfume Industry in Paris and New York (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2008). 36. W. Shakespeare, Sonnets, 54, vv. 1–4. The complete text of the sonnet: ‘Oh how much more doth beauty beauteous seem / By that sweet ornament which truth doth give. / The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem / For that sweet odour, which doth in it live. / The canker blooms have full as deep a dye / As the perfumed tincture of the roses, / Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly / When summer’s breath their masked buds discloses: / But, for their virtue only is their show, / They live unwoo’d, and unrespected fade; / Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so; / Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made: / And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth, / When that shall fade, my verse distills your truth.’ See Helen Vendler, The Art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997). 189

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The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in The Modern Imagination Sabba, F. Viaggi tra i libri. Le biblioteche italiane nella letteratura del Grand Tour. Pisa and Rome: Fabrizio Serra Editore, 2018. Sena Chiesa, G. and A. Pontrandolfo. Mito e Natura. Dalla Grecia a Pompei. Milan: Electa Mondadori, 2015. Settis, S. La Villa di Livia. Le pareti ingannevoli. Milan: Electa Mondadori, 2008. Speciale, M. S. ‘L’industria dei profumi e l’amministrazione di Cnosso in età micenea’. Creta Antica 2 (2001): 149–58. Squillace, G. Il profumo nel mondo antico. Firenze: Olschki, 2010. Squillace, G. I giardini di Saffo. Profumi e aromi nella Grecia antica. Rome: Carocci, 2014. Stepherd, R. Histoire de la rose. New York: Macmillan Company, 1954. Swanson, V. G. The Biography and Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings of Sir Lawrence AlmaTadema. London: Garton, 1990. Vendler, H. The Art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 1997. Verbanck-Piérard A., N. Massar and D. Frère. Parfums de l’Antiquité. La rose et l’encens en Méditerranée. Mariemont: Musée Royal de Mariemont, 2008. Vermeule, E. Aspects of Death in Early Greek Art and Poetry. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1979. Wylock, M. ‘La fabrication des parfums à l’époque mycénienne d’après les tablettes Fr de Pylos’. Studi Micenei ed Egeo-Anatolici 11 (1970): 116–33. Zancani Montuoro, P. and U. Zanotti Bianco. Heraion alla foce del Sele, I, II . Rome: Libreria dello Stato, 1951–4. Zevi, F. and M. Jodice. Paestum. Naples: Banco di Napoli, 1990.

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CHAPTER 9 THE FRAGRANCE OF ANCIENT KYPHI: AN EXPERIMENTAL WORKSHOP * Interview with Amandine Declercq

1. You have chosen to work on kyphi1: What is special about this perfume? What role did it play in Antiquity? The word kyphi (κῦφι) is a Greek transliteration of the ancient Egyptian kp.t, translated as ‘incense’; its root kp has the general sense of ‘to suffuse with smoke’.2 Attested since the Pyramid Texts, the word eventually came to refer to a specific type of aromatic formula, passed on to posterity by Greek texts.3 There are several surviving recipes, which span the period from the second millennium bce to the thirteenth century ce and appear in a variety of contexts. The three second-to-first-century-bce versions from the temples of Edfou and of Philae, in Upper Egypt, for example, are engraved on the walls of the laboratories where they were made;4 intended for the initiates who prepared the perfumes, these texts were not exposed to public view. Indeed, in the Ptolemaic period, kyphi, or ‘parfum à brûler deux fois bon pour les choses divines’, to follow the French translation of Victor Loret,5 was an incense mainly used in ritual contexts. The medium was considered to be, like many other scented substances, particularly the oleo-gummoresins, a vector of communication with the divine. Its use purified the air, sacralized a space and honoured the divinities; Plutarch credits it with the power to change the quality of the atmosphere and to act on body and mind alike.6 The heady and relaxing exhalations of kyphi were not, however, reserved for cult sites alone: it owed its reputation and presence in the Greek medical sources to curative properties and medicinal use already recognized in earlier Egyptian culture.7 Dioscorides and Plutarch, in the first century ce , and Galen, in the second century, attest its use, diluted and drunk, as a purgative, depurative, emollient8 and adjuvant to antidotes.9 It was also administered to patients suffering from liver, lung and other internal organ problems.10 Even in a profane context, its magical associations transpired through the qualities attributed to kyphi – hence the curiosity which it aroused. From an experimental archaeology perspective, finally, this incense holds particular interest: despite lacunae around the identification of certain ingredients – especially in the Egyptian recipes – and the absence of quantities or proportions in some of the Greek versions, we can follow the evolution of its preparation over more than a millennium, from the protocol of the Ptolemaic temples (perhaps even from the second millennium bce , if we take into account the fumigation mentioned by the Ebers papyrus) up to the Dynameron of Nicolas Myrepsos of Alexandria, in the thirteenth century ce . This is rare enough to be intriguing . . . 193

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2. Which sources have you worked on? I had already studied most of the sources describing kyphi. The best recipe to use for the workshop soon became apparent: only the version in the On Medicinal Flora, attributed to Dioscorides, could actually be made given the logistical conditions I had to work with. It is not the most elaborate recipe in terms of the olfactive end-product, since kyphi appears here as a remedy to be administered orally to patients suffering from poisoning or lung problems. The author himself specifies that it can be prepared in several ways; the version which he transmits is clear and concise, intended for practitioners. It does not require any complex procedures – except the preliminary steps to purify the resin11 – or particularly rare ingredients. Although the selection was simple, the investigation was not. There are several editions of the Greek text attributed to Dioscorides, established on the authority of different manuscripts, and there is currently no recent complete French translation of the work, the last being that of Pietro Andrea Matthioli, an Italian doctor and botanist from the sixteenth century. My reference text was therefore the edition, facsimile and Spanish translation of the Greek manuscript of Salamanca, copied by a Byzantine monk at the end of the fifteenth century.12 Its lacunae were completed by the Wellman edition, established on the authority of several manuscripts,13 and by Loret’s French14 and Tess Ann Obaldeston’s English translations,15 the latter a revision of the 1655 work of John Goodyear. It was indeed necessary to compare these different references.

3. We know that ancient texts which detail ‘pharmacological’ preparations, like those which describe kitchen recipes, do not always provide proportions. How much experimentation was required to reconstruct kyphi? As you mentioned, surviving Greek and Latin culinary recipes do not provide proportions. It must be noted that these recipes are mostly not taken from specialized manuals, nor even necessarily intended for use: we find them in Athenaeus of Naucratis and in the Latin agronomists, for example, and scattered fortuitously through other sources. That being said, the only real cookbook which we have, the De re coquinaria attributed to Apicius, does not give quantities either. They are left to the reader’s judgement, presumably guided by habits and oral transmission, that is by practice and by tasting. This lack of information makes the process of experimentation all the more uncertain. In terms of medical and cosmetic potions, however, we are more fortunate: certain recipes survive relatively complete on media intended for craft practitioners. The kyphi formulae of Edfou and Philae, and those of Dioscorides, Galen and Nicolas Myrepsos, all specify weights and measures – when we can decipher them! For example, we had to fill a lacuna in the Greek text of our reference manuscript by consulting other manuscripts, leading us to revise the quantity of myrrh from the ‘12 minae’ (around 5.2 kg) specified in the translation to ‘12 drachmas’ (around 52 g). 194

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As for the role of experimentation, it is crucial: although it is essential to read the text again and again, the questions, contradictions, doubts and sometimes answers tend to emerge only at the moment that the instructions are put into practice. Even with a single recipe, each exploratory session brings up new perspectives as to how to approach the substance in question: one of the principles of experimental archaeology, indeed, is to always retry and test, without ever considering we have reached an exhaustive result. During the preparation of the workshop, it quickly became clear that the recipe required specialized tools and technical mastery: it was no easy task, with contemporary kitchen pestle and mortars, to grind the dry ingredients (myrrh, nutgrass,16 juniper berries, fragrant rushes) sufficiently finely to permit sifting. The equivalent tools used by ancient perfumers, druggists and doctors were heavier, better adapted to the task and higher-performing; presumably their users also operated them with more efficient motions. Next, we observed that the quality of the grinding and mixing of ingredients – and even the order in which they are added, in some cases – does in fact influence the aroma composed. The various products of the workshop itself did not all give off exactly the same scent, depending on the extent to which the wine and grapes were worked over and suffused with the aromatic substances by the participants. Also, none of the ancient recipes provide any indication as to the proper drying time for the resulting pellets (see Colour Plates 11 and 12). When we closed the session by censing the space with a sample of kyphi created more than a year earlier, we found that not only was it not stale, but it burned more intensely than the samples from pellets which had only dried for several weeks. A year of aging, clearly, had allowed the product to reach more of its full potential, a finding which could only have been discovered empirically. The revelations from practice were by no means only of a material nature. Several instructions in the recipe also invited us to reflect on our own cultural assumptions, as, for instance, with the prescription in the first line of Dioscorides to remove raisin seeds. The advice, which would tend to strike us as odd, is a reminder of the fact that we now select and produce sterile, seedless grapes for drying and therefore do not need to remove the seeds. The ancient Greeks in turn could have legitimately seen this as odd.

4. What can we say about the ‘reliability’ of the results? Did all samples of kyphi smell the same way? Were there local variants, or did recipes develop significant differences over time? There are always doubts as to the reliability of the results, of course: this is an expected part of the process. In Dioscorides’ recipe, for example, it remains unclear how best to identify aspalath, used as astringent, thickener and aromatic in perfume-making,17 though it is usually identified with Alhagi maurorum Medicus.18 This is also true, to a lesser extent, with fragrant rush, generally associated with Andropogon Schoenanthus L., a variety of citronella whose scent reminded the ancients of roses.19 There are also questions about the nature, consistency and smell of the resin (ῥητίνη), which could come from any one of a number of conifers (pines, junipers, cedars, cypress, spruces, larches . . .), but also from 195

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lentisk or terebinth pistachios. Moreover, the methods used to purify it, to which the author devotes an entire section, would also influence its texture and olfactive note.20 Even the most common substances, however, are vast fields of study in their own right: what do we really know about the ‘old wine’ and crystalized honey mentioned by the author? For that matter, even if we could firmly identify all the ingredients, the ecosystems have changed and the aromatic qualities of the vegetation have evolved with them. Finally, current botanical classifications are of limited use in analysing ancient texts, since extracts from species or varieties which are now clearly distinguished often went by the same name in Antiquity, as archaeological analysis attests.21 In any case, if we took the quest for precision to the extreme, we would miss the richness of the tradition transmitted to us: the Mediterranean basin provided, 2,000 years ago, many varieties of honey and old wines, yet the author does not specify, for example, whether the recipe calls for garden, forest, mountain, scrubland or even thyme honey, particularly favoured in Greece. In the same way, each restocking of raw materials would create a whole palette of unpredictable nuances in scents, depending on the dates of the harvests, the terroirs, weather conditions and so on. The author of On Odours, a treatise attributed to the fourth-to-third-century philosopher Theophrastus, the successor of Aristotle, says as much: ‘There is no fixed rule for the combination and mixture of spices in the sense that the same components will always produce a satisfactory and a uniform result: the result varies by reason of the varying quality of the virtues found in the spices. For this there are several reasons [. . .].’22 In other words, for ancient practitioners already, not all samples of kyphi smelled the same way: we know of at least seven different versions of this so-called incense, and each source leaves room for more or less subtle variations. The commonalities shared by all these recipes, however, do give it a clear olfactive identity, its aroma signature.

5. Have you looked at evocations of kyphi in films and popular culture? When Plutarch’s Isis and Osiris was translated into German in 1850, its detailed treatment of kyphi23 attracted keen interest, given the Orientalism then in vogue.24 Gustav Parthey, the translator, was inspired to commission three Greek recipes of kyphi from a Berlin pharmacist,25 and attempts at reconstruction were actually sold commercially in Vienna in the mid-nineteenth century, and later in England in the mid-twentieth.26 The first scholar to embark on the exploration of the Ptolemaic recipes was Victor Loret, whose article ‘Le kyphi, parfum sacré des anciens Égyptiens’, published in 1887 in the Journal asiatique, contributed to its rediscovery by European readers. The identification of the ingredients has since evolved, but already at this period Loret asked the perfumer Eugène Rimmel to carry out some experiments.27 Since the early 2000s, and especially in the last decade, the growing involvement of scientists in an interdisciplinary and sensory approach to Antiquity has led to the popularity of experimental archaeology, aided by advances in the means of physicochemical analysis. Several resulting proposed reconstructions of kyphi have been shared 196

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with the public in a variety of contexts, most notably at exhibits in Copenhagen (1998),28 Cairo (2002)29 and Grasse (2015).30 The Ägyptisches Museum in Berlin has recently organized practical workshops on ancient Egyptian perfumes, including kyphi.31 The Université européenne des senteurs et des saveurs 2011 ‘Double Sens’ festival, in turn, offered odorama film screenings,32 in which audience members could sample the scents.33 Since these various recreations of kyphi were not based on the same sources, translations or ingredients, they would have presented some olfactive differences, and it would have been interesting to compare them on that level. There are also now substances called kyphi sold online. Though some of these artisanal creations, like those packaged in bottles, have little to do with the kyphi formulas attested in the ancient sources, they do show the modern remembrance of this legendary fragrance.

6. What are the main differences between kyphi and modern or contemporary perfumes? To simplify, perfumes may be solid, oily or alcohol-based, the latter produced by distillation. In general, ancient perfumes applied to the skin differed in texture from their modern equivalents: in Antiquity, these were rich, viscous aromatic oils used as much for their nourishing and hygienic properties (in the Greek sense of ‘contributing to health’) as for their attractive scents and symbolic connotations. Beginning in the fourteenth, and above all since the seventeenth centuries, with the spread of Eau de Cologne, volatile alcoholic perfumes replaced the satiny feel of unguents, and synthesized molecules have gradually replaced the natural active ingredients of aromatics since the nineteenth century.34 Kyphi is a solid perfume, the latter word used in the literal sense of ‘per fumare’, that is, ‘which is diffused by smoke’. Our sources tell us, as we have seen, that it might be consumed in pellet form or ingested as a potion, in which case it was crushed and diluted in a drink (wine was then the most common excipient for remedies). Dioscorides, Plutarch and Galen do not describe it as a scented unguent applied to the skin, but their description of it as a medicinal drink does recall the Graeco-Roman custom of pouring perfume into the wine served at banquets in order to enhance the taste and so that the guests would benefit from the properties of these spices and exude a pleasant smell.35 We do not use perfumes internally anymore: their composition and the denatured alcohol base no longer lend themselves to this use. The idea has, however, been revived in the form of ‘Swallowable Perfume’36 capsules, presented in a media campaign in 2011 – though not sold commercially to date. Kyphi, of course, also differs from our contemporary products as a ritual incense and antidote. Few modern perfumers recite sacred texts (grammata hiera) or pronounce meaningful vowels as they prepare their products, as Plutarch37 and Nicolas of Alexandria38 indicate that kyphi makers did. Indeed, the ancient Egyptians, in making precious substances for cultic purposes, were not only concerned with the finished product: each step, rather, insofar as it followed a precise protocol and calendar, was an ‘alchemical’ process which somehow involved divine powers and cosmic elements. 197

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The ritual aspects of the making and the sacred uses of kyphi remain murky.39 Plutarch does, however, suggest that its associations, as a composite substance and as a scent offered daily to Isis and Osiris,40 were mainly nocturnal.41 The combination of its many ingredients, including some taken from plants ‘which are wont to thrive in [. . .] shadows and dews and dampness’, do evoke what the philosopher poetically describes as ‘the air of the night [. . .], made up of many lights and forces, even as though seeds from every star were showered down into one place’.42 This is why it was consumed by priests at dusk, unlike resin (ῥητίνη) and myrrh (σμύρνη), which, as ‘simple substances’ associated with the sun,43 were burned at dawn and at midday.44 Like the falcon god Horus, whose eyes symbolized the sun and moon45 and to whom kyphi was also offered – two copies of the recipe are engraved in his temple at Edfou46 – however, kyphi could appear under complementary lunar47 and solar guises48 depending on the ingredients used. Its mysterious nature, a product of composite elements synergized to create a new substance – Galen describes it as ‘neither a mixture nor a simple substance’49 – further connected it to Isis’ reconstitution of Osiris.50 It is worth noting that the list of its ingredients appears among the catalogue of offerings for the ritual of the mysteries of Osiris in the second-century-bce -to-second-century-ce temple of Hathor, at Denderah.51 In Antiquity, however, incense in the broad sense of ‘burnt aromatic substance’ was used for many functions, some of them profane (as far as this meaning can be relevant for ancient times). The mixture prepared to ‘suffuse with smoke’ detailed in the Ebers papyrus (here ‘kyphi’ is a generic name for ‘fumigation’ rather than a specific recipe), which dates to c. 1550 bce , was thus intended simply to ‘make pleasant the smell of the house’, of clothes and of the breath.52 In fact, incense continues to be regularly used today to deodorize and cleanse the air, as well as being consumed ritually in many cultures, even when the gesture has been disconnected from its spiritual or religious origins. In terms of the composition of kyphi, finally, one of the characteristics which distinguishes it from contemporary incense is its steeping of raisins imbued with wine, from which it derives its sweet smell, emphasized, in Dioscorides’ recipe, by the spicy and lightly astringent flavor of juniper berries.

7. Can these ancient smells still ‘speak’ to modern noses and act on today’s bodies and spirits? Certain smells still ‘speak’ to us; others are now discomforting. Millennia-old resins like myrrh and oliban have travelled well through time. Despite the widespread modern use of synthesized molecules, many aromatic substances known in Antiquity are still sought after today. Cade essence and pure galbanum, on the other hand, are generally disconcerting to a modern sense of smell. We do not, by any means, know the entire olfactive spectrum of ancient incenses, as many of them have been forgotten or entirely lost, while others cannot be identified. The lapse of time makes it difficult to determine the precise effect which these fragrances produced, especially in ritual contexts, on ancient senses and 198

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minds, since we have lost their symbolic ‘language’ for scents. For Egyptian and GraecoRoman cultures, scented vegetation was often associated with specific gods and virtues: it carried meaning and power, and its selection was not random.53 Plutarch does, however, provide a valuable treatment of the effects of kyphi, both on the body and, following an Aristotelian model of soul–body correlation, on the ‘psyche’.54 This passage allows us a glimpse of a view whereby incense, like the music which the Pythagoreans used for therapeutic purposes, had a special faculty to moderate and abate the passions, as well as to ‘dissolve and scatter the murky and turgid concretions in the surrounding atmosphere’, oppressing the senses and causing trouble to heart and spirit. The act of ‘revivifying and purifying the air’ thus makes it possible to ‘fan into fresh life the languished spirit innate in the body’, while the perfume ‘gently relaxes the brain, which is of its own nature cold and clammy’.55 Indeed, many ancient medical techniques involved treatment by means of a ‘good scent’, including but by no means limited to vaginal fumigation for wandering wombs.56 In the ancient perspective, these pleasant smells exerted a subtle influence on the brain and the heart, which Platonic philosophy identified as the seat of the soul.57 Thus in the Banquet of the Sophists, one of the characters, Masurius, explains a verse of Anacreon which counselled ‘perfuming the breast, below which is placed the heart, in order that the perfume might bring it calm, by its pleasant emissions’.58 The scents, which naturally circulated from the breast to the sense of smell, also had the ability, according to Masurius, to soothe and restore calm to the senses as they reached the brain: Ὦ δαιμόνιε ἀνδρῶν, οὐκ οἶδας ὅτι αἱ ἐν τῷ ἐγκεφάλῳ ἡμῶν αἰσθήσεις ὀδμαῖς ἡδείαις παρηγοροῦνται προσέτι τε θεραπεύονται, καθὰ καὶ Ἄλεξίς φησιν ἐν Πονήρᾳ οὕτως· Ὑγιείας μέρος μέγιστον ὀσμὰς ἐγκεφάλῳ χρηστὰς ποιεῖν. But, my most excellent friend, are you not aware that it is in our brain that our senses are soothed, and indeed reinvigorated, by sweet smells? as Alexis says in his Wicked Woman, where he speaks thus— ‘The best recipe for health Is to apply good scents unto the brain.’ Athenaeus, Deipnosophists 15.36 [687d], trans. C. D. Yonge, slightly modified Although notions surrounding the human body have changed and scientific vocabulary with them, it is clear that these fragrances still act on our physiology and psyche, even when we are unconscious of the process. Following on the (2004) Nobel-prize-winning work of American researchers Richard Axel and Linda Buck on the human sense of smell,59 studies have investigated the correlation between olfaction and the regions of the brain conventionally called the ‘limbic system’, interface between (conscious) cognitive life and (reflexive) vegetative life. This region is particularly closely involved in the activation of memory, emotions and instinctive behaviours connected to food,

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reproduction and defence, as well as in the control of autonomous vital functions. The cascades of information which the olfactory bulb gathers from the nervous tissue of the nasal mucus, made up of millions of neurons and approximately 400 types of receptors, directly infuence our physical and psychic experience, our mood and our health.60 The development of olfactotherapy, a branch of aromachology defined as a psychocorporeal method premised on the existence of subtle links between the sense of smell and the emotional sphere, is very much in line with this perspective. The psycho-active properties of oliban,61 like the increasing uses of chemotyped essential oils now inhaled for medical purposes in clinical settings, particularly in neurological and geriatric hospitals’ departments,62 have been proven. So, does kyphi still act on our bodies and minds? Clearly it does. Does it act on us in the same way that it did on the ancient Egyptians and Greeks who inhaled its aroma in a ritual or medical context? Probably not, since we no longer have the same sensory reference points nor the same cultural codes. Does it still ‘speak to’ and charm us? The importance attributed to scents in general has faded since Antiquity. The pyramid texts of Unas, for example, describe perfumes and drops of incense as elixirs able to breathe life into and perpetuate the existence of the deceased pharaoh in the afterlife.63 The philosopher Lucretius, writing in the first century bce , similarly credits unguents (unguenta) with the power to ‘recreate’ (recreare) life.64 Nowadays, perfume is mainly a means of seduction, a hygiene or decorum product, a social marker and a commercial dream factory65 (though all of these aspects are attested for ancient perfumes at the beginning of the common era as well). All the same, the appeal for antique fragrances has lasted and, 2,000 years later, we are still ‘speaking’ about it . . .

Notes * We warmly thank Christopher Lougheed for translating the French interview into English. 1. At the end of the IMAGINES conference, Amandine Declercq, who organizes workshops on the making of ancient cosmetics and perfumes in France, dedicated a session to the Egyptian fragrance known as kyphi. All the participants could thus attend the workshop and make their own kyphi, following the recipe attributed to Dioscorides. 2. Victor Loret, ‘Le kyphi, parfum sacré des anciens Egyptiens’, Journal Asiatique, 8e série, 10 (1887): 81–6. 3. Loret, ‘Le kyphi’, 82. 4. Émile Chassinat, Le temple d’Edfou, vol. 2 (Cairo: IFAO, 1934/1990), 203–4, 211–12. 5. Loret, ‘Le kyphi’, 85–7. 6. Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride 80. 7. Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride 80. 8. Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride 80. 9. Dioscoride, De materia medica 1.25. 10. Dioscoride, De materia medica 1.25; Galen, Antidotes 2.2. 11. See question 4 and note 20.

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The Fragrance of Ancient Kyphi 12. Dioscórides, Sobre los remedios medicinales, manuscrito de Salamanca, traducción de Antonio López Eire y Francisco Cortés Gabaudan, estudios de B. M. Gutiérrez Rodilla y M. C. Vásquez de Benito (Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad Salamanca, 2006). 13. Max Wellmann’s edition (Berlin: Weidmann, 1906–14) is based on the Constantinopolitanus, now Vindobonensis med. gr. 1 (Codex Aniciae Julianae); Neapolitanus, now Vindobonensis suppl. gr. 28; and Vindobonensis lat. 93 manuscripts. 14. This partial translation is based on the edition of C. Sprengel, Lipsiae, 1829. See Loret, ‘Le kyphi’, 85. 15. Dioscorides, De materia medica, English translation T. A. Osbaldeston and R. P. A. Wood (Johannesburg: Ibidis Press, 2000). 16. Cyperus esculentus L. 17. Theophrastus, De odoribus 33.3; Dioscorides, De materia medica 1.20; Pliny, Natural History 12.52, 24.68. 18. Theophrastus, Enquiry into plants 9.7.3; see Suzanne Amigues’ edition and French translation of Théophraste, Recherches sur les plantes (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2006), V, 112, n. 13. 19. Dioscorides, De materia medica 1.17; Pliny, Natural History 21.72. 20. The resin was in fact heated, worked and purified by various processes (with or without water) before it was incorporated into medicinal and cosmetic potions. See Dioscorides, De materia medica 1.71. 21. See especially Élisabeth Dodinet, ‘Odeurs et parfums en Méditerranée archaïque. Analyse critique des sources’, Pallas 106 (2018): 17–41; ‘L’encens antique, un singulier à mettre au pluriel?’, ArchéOrient – Le Blog, 29 Septembre 2017, https://archeorient.hypotheses. org/7786. 22. Theophrastus, De odoribus 27, trans. Arthur F. Hort. 23. Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride 80. 24. On Orientalism, see Giacomo Savani’s chapter in this volume. 25. The recipes are those of Dioscorides, Plutarch and Galen; see Loret, ‘Le kyphi’, 80. 26. Lise Manniche, Sacred Luxuries (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999), 55–7. 27. Loret, ‘Le kyphi’, 131. 28. Exhibit on ancient scents, International Museum of Copenhagen (1998). Experiments by Joel Katz. 29. ‘Parfums et cosmétiques dans l’Égypte ancienne’, Cairo Museum, Musée du Louvre, Musée archéologique de Marseille (2002). Experiments by Philippe Walter and Sandrine Videault. 30. ‘Parfums antiques: de l’archéologue au chimiste’, Musée international de la parfumerie de Grasse (2015–16). Experiments by Jean-Pierre Brun, Xavier Fernandez and Master 2 Professionnel Chimie FOQUAL of the Université de Nice-Sophia Antipolis. 31. Workshops led by Dora Goldsmith (2019) as part of her thesis on ‘The Archaeology of Smell in Ancient Egypt: A Cultural Anthropological Study Based on Written Sources’ (Freie Universität Berlin). 32. On the use of odorama techniques, see the chapter by M. Treu in this book. 33. Experiments by Annick le Guérer and Dominique Ropion. 34. Annick le Guérer, ‘Le parfum, des temples égyptiens aux temples de la consommation’, Mode de recherche 11 (2009): 9–15. 35. Theophrastus, De odoribus 8–9, 51, 67; Athenaeus, Deipnosophists 689c–d.

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The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in The Modern Imagination 36. Concept by the artist Lucy McRae and the biologist Sheref Mansy, https://www.lucymcrae. net/swallowable-parfum. 37. Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride 80. 38. Nicolai Myrepsi Alexandrini, Medicamentorum opus, vol. 1: Antidotorum (Lyon: ed. Fuchs, 1549), 299. 39. Dioscorides and Galen say little on the subject: Dioscorides indicates that it is ‘a perfume for burning which is highly sought-after for cult, of which the Egyptian priests make extensive use’ (De materia medica 1.25), and Galen that ‘the Egyptians [. . .] burn it before some of their gods’ (Antidotes, ed. Kühn, II, 2). 40. The temple of Philae, in whose laboratory one of the Ptolemaic kyphi recipes inscriptions is found, is in fact dedicated to Isis. 41. Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride 80. 42. Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride 80, trans. Frank Cole Babbitt slightly modified, in Plutarch, Moralia, with an English translation by Frank Cole Babbitt (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1936). 43. ‘[. . .] resin and myrrh are the handiwork of the sun, whose heat drives out the sap of the plants which hold them and makes them flow as tears’ (Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride 80). 44. Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride 80. 45. See the Hymne à Horus l’Ancien de Kôm Ombo in André Barucq and François Daumas, Hymnes et prières de l’Égypte ancienne (Paris: Le Cerf, 1980), 166–8. 46. Egyptian temple accounts attest that it was also used for censing in honour of Harpocrates (‘the child Horus’) and of the crocodile god Socnopaios. For these occurrences as well as the uses of kyphi in connection with magic, see Hélène Chouliara-Raïos, ‘À propos du κῦφι de la lettre fragmentaire P. Warr. 13. Le kyphi dans les papyrus grecs’, Pallas 108 (2018): 225–40. 47. Paul of Aegina, De re medica 7.22; Aetius of Amida 13.117. 48. Alexander of Tralles, De arte medica 1.573. The recipes of these lunar and solar kyphi has not survived. 49. Galen (Antidotes, ed. Kühn, II, 2) is here quoting the physician Damocrates. 50. See Jacques Boulogne, ‘Un parfum d’Égypte; le kuphi et son pouvoir imaginaire’, in Saveurs, senteurs: le goût de la Méditerranée, ed. Joël Thomas, Paul Carmignani and Jean-Yves Laurichesse (Perpignan: PUP, 1998), 66. 51. Émile Chassinat, Le mystère d’Osiris au mois de Khoiak (Cairo: IFAO, 1966), fasc. I, 380 sq. 52. Thierry Bardinet, Les papyrus médicaux de l’Egypte pharaonique (Paris: Fayard, 1995), 362–3. 53. Sydney H. Aufrère, ‘Les végétaux sacrés de l’Égypte ancienne d’après les listes géographiques des temples d’Edfou et du Papyrus géographique de Tanis et les autres monographies sacrées’, in Encyclopédie religieuse de l’Univers végétal: Croyances phytoreligieuses de l’Égypte ancienne, ed. S. H. Aufrère (Montpellier: Université Montpellier III, 1999), vol. 1, 121–207. 54. Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride 79–80. 55. Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride 79–80, trans. Frank Cole Babbitt. For the theories of the humours which underlie this notion, see the Hippocratic Corpus, especially the development in the treatise On the Nature of Man. For other theories, see On Regimen, On Affections, On Diseases 1 and 4 and On the Places in Man 9.1 sq. 56. Hippocrates, On the Diseases of Women 2.195. This notion is already attested in ancient Egypt; cf. the vaginal fumigations advocated in the Ebers Papyrus, XCIV, 3–5 sq. See especially Aline Rousselle, ‘Observation féminine et idéologie masculine: le corps de la femme d’après les 202

The Fragrance of Ancient Kyphi médecins grecs’, Annales. Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations 35, no. 5 (1980): 1089–115, as well as M. Day Elsner’s chapter on vaginal fumigations in this book. 57. Plato, Symposium 218a; see also note 58. 58. ‘[F]or he recommends anointing the breast with unguent, as being the seat of the heart, and considering it an admitted point that is soothed with fragrant smells. And the ancients used to act thus, not only because scents do of their own nature ascend upwards from the breast to the seat of smelling, but also because they thought that the soul had its abode in the heart; as Praxagoras, and Philotimus the physician taught’; Athenaeus, Deipnosophists 15.36 (687e–f), trans. C. D. Yonge. 59. Linda Buck and Richard Axel, ‘A Novel Multigene Family may Encode Odorant Receptors: a Molecular Basis for Odor Recognition’, Cell 65 (1991): 175–87. 60. Rachel S. Herz, ‘The Role of Odor-Evoked Memory in Psychological and Physiological Health’, Brain Sciences 6, no. 3 (2016): 22, https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3425/6/3/22. 61. Arieh Moussaieff et al., ‘Incensole acetate, an incense component, elicits psychoactivity by activating TRPV3 channels in the brain’, Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology Journal 22, no. 8 (2008). 62. See especially the work of Patty Canac, an aromachologist, author and professor at ISIPCA, part of the neurological and geriatric departments of the hospitals La Pitié Salpêtrière (Paris), Ambroise Paré (Paris) and Raymond Poincarré (Garches). The Faculté des sciences pharmaceutiques et biologiques of the Université de Rennes 1 also offers a university diploma in ‘Aromatherapy and essential oils’, including the study of the physiology of smell and of taste, and of their psychosensorial and behavioural impacts. 63. Gaston Maspéro, Les inscriptions des pyramides de Saqqarah (Paris: Librairie Émile Bouillon, 1894), 5–6. 64. Lucretius, De rerum natura 6. 975. 65. See the chapter by T. A. Besnard and F. Bièvre-Perrin in this book.

Bibliography Aufrère, Sydney H. ‘Les végétaux sacrés de l’Égypte ancienne d’après les listes géographiques des temples d’Edfou et du Papyrus géographique de Tanis et les autres monographies sacrées’. In Encyclopédie religieuse de l’Univers végétal: Croyances phytoreligieuses de l’Égypte ancienne, edited by S. H Aufrère, , vol. 1, 121–207. Montpellier: Université Montpellier III , 1999. Boulogne, Jacques. ‘Un parfum d’Égypte; le kuphi et son pouvoir imaginaire’. In Saveurs, senteurs: le goût de la Méditerranée, edited by Joël Thomas, Paul Carmignani and Jean-Yves Laurichesse, 59–71. Perpignan: PUP, 1998. Buck, Linda and Richard Axel. ‘A Novel Multigene Family may Encode Odorant Receptors: a Molecular Basis for Odor Recognition’. Cell 65 (1991): 175–87. Chassinat, Émile. Le mystère d’Osiris au mois de Khoiak. Cairo: IFAO, 1966. Chassinat, Émile. Le temple d’Edfou, II . Cairo: IFAO, 1934/1990. Chouliara-Raïos, Hélène. ‘À propos du κῦφι de la lettre fragmentaire P. Warr. 13. Le kyphi dans les papyrus grecs’. Pallas 108 (2018): 225–40. Dodinet, Élisabeth. ‘Odeurs et parfums en Méditerranée archaïque. Analyse critique des sources’. Pallas 106 (2018): 17–41. Herz, Rachel S. ‘The Role of Odor-Evoked Memory in Psychological and Physiological Health’. Brain Sciences 6, no. 3 (2016): 22.

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The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in The Modern Imagination Le Guérer, Annick. ‘Le parfum, des temples égyptiens aux temples de la consommation’. Mode de recherche 11 (2009): 9–15. Loret, Victor. ‘Le kyphi, parfum sacré des anciens Egyptiens’. Journal Asiatique, 8e série, 10 (1887): 76–132. Manniche, Lise. Sacred Luxuries. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999. Maspéro, Gaston. Les inscriptions des pyramides de Saqqarah. Paris: Librairie Émile Bouillon, 1894. Moussaieff, Arieh et al. ‘Incensole acetate, an incense component, elicits psychoactivity by activating TRPV3 channels in the brain’. Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology Journal 22, no. 8 (2008): 3024–34. Rousselle, Aline. ‘Observation féminine et idéologie masculine: le corps de la femme d’après les médecins grecs’. Annales. Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations 35, no. 5 (1980): 1089–115.

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PART V RE-ENACTING THE FRAGRANCE(S) OF THE PAST

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CHAPTER 10 ‘ BALSAMA ET CROCUM PER GRADUS THEATRI FLUERE IUSSIT ’  HA HADR. 19.5: THE CONTEMPORARY RECEPTION OF SMELLS AND SENSES IN THE ROMAN THEATRE * Raffaella Viccei

The Roman theatre was a place that allowed people to experiment with a kaleidoscope of sensations; it was a special multisensory and synaesthetic system.1 The theatre is thus a privileged space for carrying out a research programme of a multisensory character: as a result of its architectural form and its uses, this specific type of building required the simultaneous involvement of a range of senses, among which the sense of smell occupies a central position, as will be seen in the following pages. The fragrant and foul smells that were spread in the theatres marked these buildings out from other forms of public architecture in Roman cities and designed boundaries that were not only spatial and concrete – that is to say architectonic2 – but also cultural and perceptual.3 These boundaries were permeable, due to the absence of fixed roofs over the theatres, and so the smells of the city could mix in varying degrees with those more typical of the theatre, coming from within. In order to reflect on the contents of and reasons for the Roman theatrical olfactory landscape, to consider methods for and types of re-enactment,4 I will focus in this chapter on a specific case: the Multimedia and Sensory Museum of the Milan Roman Theatre. Before getting to the heart of the matter, it will be necessary to briefly review the varied olfactory scenery of Roman theatres. The acquisition of knowledge about this smellscape, mainly drawn from literary and archaeological sources, was a necessary step in the research that led to the olfactory re-enactment in the Museum of Milan.5

Not only saffron: The various odours in Roman theatres and the creation of an elusive but inescapable smellscape (literary and archaeological sources) In the cities of the Roman Empire, theatrical performances took place above all in spring and summer, and mostly in the morning. As mentioned above, the theatres were not roofed, so the sun was able to shine down into the cavea, overheating the audience sitting there. The acrid smell of sweat mixed with bad breath and flatulence, normal side effects of the typical Roman diet.6 But the foul smell that pervaded the place was primarily due to the almost total lack of public latrines in the theatres or, when they did exist, their inadequacy in relation to the number of spectators present.7 This absence of suitable

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facilities led to audience members using as toilets both the stairs leading to the cavea and other parts of the building. To disinfect the theatrical space and make it fragrant, as well as to refresh the people present, ancient Romans created systems for sprinkling water enriched with saffron (sparsiones), normally the yellow sort (crocum) from Corycus (Cilicia), considered to be the most desirable because of its overpowering scent, or alternatively cultivated crocus (dialeucon, from its white colour) or orange crocus from Cyrene.8 The saffron was often mixed with sweet wine or floral oil and essences, with rose essence being particularly common. A significant example of this practice is attested in an excerpt – referred to in the title of this chapter – from the Vita Hadriani about honours given to Matidia and Trajan by Hadrian as a means of establishing himself as Trajan’s legitimate successor: Romae post ceteras immensissimas voluptates in honorem socrus suae aromatica populo donavit, in honorem Traiani balsama et crocum per gradus theatri fluere iussit In Rome, in addition to popular entertainments of unbounded extravagance, he gave spices to the people in honour of his mother-in-law, and in honour of Trajan he caused essences of balsam and saffron to be poured over the seats of the theatre.9 These light sprinklings of scented water, which in this particular imperial celebratory event (and on similar occasions) smelled not only of crocus but also of the highly precious balsam, rained down on the audience and actors by means of ad hoc plumbing.10 The ends of the hydraulic hoses, leaden and earthen, were often linked to sculptures fitted with holes, so-called Brunnenfiguren, usually placed on each side of the pulpitum or in the niches of the frons pulpiti.11 In the Roman Empire, involvement in theatrical performances was, first and foremost, a rite that was religious, political and cultural in character. The scents used were one of the most effective signs of the temporary interruption of ‘normality’. Indeed, there were scents specific to each festival, which identified the festival to the participant on an emotional and symbolic level.12 Thus, the sprinkling of water scented with saffron and roses inside the theatrical space also had a symbolic value: it broke set moment apart from the ‘normal’ succession of daily time that was characterized by other smells. In the Roman theatres, smells other than those previously described came from pulpita and orchestras. Indeed, scents and perfumes were integrated into dramatic performances, as Apuleius reports with regard to the pantomime of the Judgement of Paris;13 in funeral scenes, such as that described in the performative text Alcestis Barcinonensis;14 and in religious scenes, in which cases it is likely that flowers, spices and balsama were used and that incense, evoking the deity and the mystery of death, was burnt.15 In the numerous performances which involved the use of animals,16 their smell would also pervade the whole theatre. After the second century ce , the smell of the blood of killed animals was added: this odour came from the orchestras, which were often transformed into arenas to perform venationes, culminating in the slaying of fierce animals.17 208

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While watching these shows, the audience would also eat and drink,18 and as a result the people in the cavea would be able to smell such things as wine, fruits, candy, eggs and buns with cheese. From the seats filled by the upper-class members of the audience, intense perfume such as Rhodinum/Rhodinon, Mirtum-Laurum, Susinum or Melinon19 spread throughout the theatre. The more privileged groups within Roman society could afford to look after their bodies, as is known, and they could express this privilege through the use of the perfume, something that was almost a necessity on occasions when they had the opportunity to show themselves off, as when attending the theatre. So, in the civic and political space of the theatre, where the display of social prestige was made possible and was sought after, the ruling classes used perfume to stand out from the crowd. That is to say, perfume served as a marker of social and sensory hierarchy. So far, we have described smells that came from sources within the theatres but, as these architectonic structures did not have fixed roofs, smells arising from the city and its natural surroundings also made their way into the buildings. These external smellscapes affected the ways in which spectators attended performances – as individuals and as parts of a group – as well as affecting the acting of those on the stage, whether individual performers or the entire troupe on the pulpitum or in the orchestra.20 Smells thus crossed, and sometimes even pulled down, the borders between different worlds.

Museography, re-enactment, contemporary reception of ‘theatrical’ smells: The case of the Multimedia and Sensory Museum of the Milan Roman Theatre Smells, sounds and other sensory data, as extrapolated from the written and material evidence, may be measured and reconstructed, and these reconstructions then fieldtested.21 Empirical studies are essential for the full exploration of Roman sensescapes, for testing hypotheses about the multisensory experiences of a particular building, city or event, and for imagining how that place or building, with its smells, may have affected human experience or behaviour. Investigating the full array of sensory experience and establishing the methodologies necessary to achieve this goal has the potential to bring about a ‘paradigmatic shift’ in the way that we approach a culture, as well as in research into Roman theatrical culture in particular.22 It is important to remember that some smells are irretrievable, others inimitable. It should also be remembered that certain smells are perceived differently by different people at different times: odour perception (the human experience of smells) depends indeed on many factors, including familiarity, concentration and sensibility. How, then, can we reconstruct the impact that odours had on the public and on performers? To reconstruct the Roman theatrical olfactory landscape as completely as possible, it is necessary to go beyond normal historical, archaeological and anthropological methodologies and ensure that adequate attention is paid to scientific experimentation. A number of other factors should also be taken into account. Any adequate reconstruction must consider the subjectivity of the perception of odorous substances; the way in which 209

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a mixture of smells is perceived as a single odour; the unspecified and changeable limits of the olfactory objects; a general physiological decline in the sensitivity of the human faculty of smell from Antiquity to today,23 due more to cultural than to natural factors; and that individuals from different cultures have sensory modalities that are, owing to the diversity of their experiences, partly non-coincident. Sensory experience is socially constructed, depending on a culturally marked ‘sense education’. In the same way, it is difficult to deny the existence of olfactory fields created by the action of the natural environment and cultural traditions. However, we must not fall into the trap of treating these factors as if they are decisive. Studies, mainly anthropological, biochemical and neurological,24 have recorded that, although there is a marked variability in olfactory perception, many olfactory perceptions are determined by innate sensory and cognitive mechanisms which derive from properties of the human brain. As a result, sensory responses are in many ways common across different cultures.25 Since 2007, the set-up of the Multimedia and Sensory Museum of the Milan Roman Theatre – conceived by the architect Ettore Lariani in collaboration with the musician Francesco Rampichini (see Colour Plate 13) – has enabled the re-enactment of some of the main smells that spread everywhere within Roman theatres.26 A key element of this exhibition, which allows the visitor to understand the history of the site through all of their senses, is an olfactory installation: the so called ‘olfactory plate’.27 This is part of the first permanent installation designed according to the dictates of multisensory museography and of acousmetry as applied to archaeological sites.28 It is, thus, an integral component of a larger sensory system, in which olfaction, sound, sight and acousmetry coexist and communicate with one another. As far as Roman theatrical spaces are concerned, this type of sensory interplay and integration was implemented in Milan’s theatre for the first time from 2004 to 2007 and I am not aware that a similar multimedia and multisensory system for the valorization of a Roman theatre has been designed anywhere else in the years since.29 Strategically placed at the entrance of the museum, in a non-invasive location, but one which visitors must necessarily pass, the olfactory plate welcomes the visitor by simultaneously activating the olfactory and visual perception of the ruins (see Figure 10.1). In the museum, people can see and, thanks to an elevated transparent walkway, walk through the remains of the cavea30 substructures, a stretch of semicircular wall that supported the praecinctio31 and some architectural materials from the scaena and porticus post scaenam32 (first half of the first century ce ).33 A well and a furnace, probably built in the fourteenth–fifteenth century using what remained of the cavea, provide an interesting archaeological trace of the change in use of the theatre. The olfactory plate is made of brushed raw iron and painted with transparent nitro paint to slow down the oxidation process that will make it age with the museum and slowly rust. At the bottom, and bound to the iron support, are four aromatic diffusers (see Figure 10.2). In the rear part of the plate, openings slightly above the level of the diffusers allow them to be recharged as soon as the essences run out. As individuals approach, sensors activate the aromatic diffusers, which then release the following smells.34 First come the 210

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Figure 10.1 Olfactory plate at the entrance of the Multimedia and Sensory Museum of the Milan Roman Theatre. Photo: Ettore Lariani. Courtesy of the author. Copyright: Ettore Lariani.

Figure 10.2 Olfactory plate; at the bottom are four aromatic diffusers, activated via detectors when people get closer. Multimedia and Sensory Museum of the Milan Roman Theatre. Photo: Ettore Lariani. Courtesy of the author. Copyright: Ettore Lariani.

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artificial odours that were intentionally produced by the sprinkling of water infused with crocum, with the aim of disinfecting and scenting the theatre, replicated for the museum’s visitor by the smell of saffron. Next come perfumes, such as Rhodinum, for which the fragrance of rose was selected; then the smell of food and drink, represented by wine; and finally natural/bodily smells, a mixture of the foul human smells noted above and the smells of the animals involved in the performances. A poster is installed above each diffuser to provide a brief explanation of the four main kinds of smell, accompanied by the most significant ancient written sources.35 The aim of such an installation is not to mimic and slavishly reproduce the olfactory landscape of the antique theatre – an enterprise that would be impossible for many reasons. Rather, the installation seeks to reinterpret this landscape and to recover the memory of a distinctive trait involved in the experience of the theatre, that is both the theatrical space and the shows of the imperial age. This trait is meaningful because it is completely unique and it is therefore worth recovering as part of a research project that aims to enhance the archaeological remains of a Roman theatre. The reception of these smells, both individually and collectively, creates in the visitor to the museum a strong sense of estrangement – mental, physical, emotional – that could be identified by directly questioning visitors about their experience. In the first months after the opening of the museum, visitors were asked, once they had toured the archaeological area, to report their impressions in a notebook placed at the museum’s exit. Almost all of those who did so lingered on the olfactory installation and on the emotions aroused by a feeling of alienation. Many people revealed, with some sense of shame, that they felt disgusted when the fourth diffuser was activated, spreading natural/bodily smells. Similar feelings were recorded by myself and those of my colleagues who were involved in the project for the valorization of the Milan theatre, as we talked to visitors and observed their reactions. In substance, the prevalent sensations of estrangement and a feeling of curiosity can be considered to be similar – but not equal, for environmental, cultural and anthropological reasons – to those that Romans experienced when they first detected smells, such as that of saffron, which were sniffed in a context that differed from that which was usual: the context of the theatre, to be precise. In this respect, the olfactory re-enactment, made materially possible by the plate described above, also discloses a continuity in the reception of smells, a continuity that depends on the existence of a shared human sensorial heritage that transcends cultural differences and chronological distances. However, this continuity is completely lacking when the installation does not make the smell ‘visible’. By this I mean that the installation alone does not allow us to perceive the connection between, for example, the scent and colour of saffron, which was conveyed in ancient theatres by the splashes of water. As Ovid reports: Tunc neque marmoreo pendebant vela theatro nec fuerant liquido pulpita rubra croco; Back then, there were no curtains hanging in the marble theater, nor had the stage been reddened by liquid saffron.36 212

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Similarly, Martial writes: Hoc, rogo, non melius quam rubro pulpita nimbo spargere et effuso permaduisse croco? Is this not, I ask, better than spreading stages with a red cloud and being soaked in saffron effusions?37 This synaesthetically fragrant colour is a missing piece in the re-enactment that is of no secondary importance. It is similarly impossible to re-enact the smells that spread through a Roman city and which, as already mentioned, contributed significantly to the olfactory atmosphere of a theatre. The sense of disorientation felt by the visitor to the Sensory Museum also derives from the difficult and non-immediate recognition of smells. This is again the case with saffron, an aroma to which our sense of smell is unaccustomed, unlike the senses of the men and women of the imperial age. By contrast, the memory of an essence like that of rose is still very active, thanks to the notability of the fragrance and to olfactory custom. As a result, the visitor to the museum links the olfactory memory of the Milan theatre with concurrent visual and aural elements, mainly connecting them to the perfume of rose, then to the bad smells and finally to the aromas of wine. Research into the sensory experiences related to the Roman theatre has the potential to contribute greatly to the global understanding and reception of archaeological remains, which are more than just ruins to be viewed. Olfactory reconstruction – one of the many possible and desirable types of sensory reconstruction – can contribute to a shift in our cultural conception of theatrical museums and archaeological sites, as well as to their valorization. One way in which it can do this is by serving as an incentive for the devising of variations on the theme of sensorial reception in theatres, especially in those which are, unlike that in Milan, in a good state of conservation and which thus allow a wider scope for experimentation on a variety of levels. The same research can also act as a tool that can contribute to a more complete reconstruction of the performances held in these theatres. In order to understand the mechanisms of the theatrical performances in situ, and the ways in which the Roman public experienced the theatre, it is necessary to take account of the whole range of sensorial experiences of the audience, including the olfactory dimension.

Recreating performances in the smellscape of the Museum of the Milan Roman Theatre and new perspectives afforded by digital methods In the museum of Milan’s Roman Theatre, the multimedia installation ‘Reciting Statues’ enables visitors to benefit from a performance of the prologue of the Casina by Plautus.38 A detector, which is activated when the visitors arrive, triggers a projector that casts onto the white surface of two statues footage depicting half-busts of two actors. One of these actors (the famous Giorgio Albertazzi)39 recites the plautine verses to a woman who can 213

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be considered as either an actor or as an ideal image of a spectator. This exhibition of multimedia theatre is received by the visitor-spectator in a space in which the olfactory sense is stimulated along with the visual and aural senses. In fact, the Reciting Statues stand at the final point of the museum space and the visitor-spectator, once there, is already fully immersed in the olfactory atmosphere that was first triggered at the entrance of the archaeological area.40 In 2009, a pantomime performance based on the Alcestis Barcinonensis, a late Latin text which revisits the famous myth of Alcestis in a peculiar way,41 was staged in the museum at a point close to that of the Reciting Statues. This live performance was the final moment of a journey that sought to lead the visitor to an intellectual, sensory and emotional understanding of the remains of the Roman theatre. The performance was conceived in such a way as to be integrated within a highly characterized space. It was designed not to be reproducible elsewhere, but only several times in that same space and in the course of a single event (an extraordinary opening of the museum on 8 May 2009). Being able to enjoy this peculiar show in an all-encompassing and immersive theatrical space was a highly stimulating opportunity that allowed visitors and spectators to interact and engage with fragments of the kaleidoscopic Roman theatre culture. The re-enactment of the olfactory landscape, entrusted to the plate described above, actively fostered this immersion and engagement.42 The activation of the olfactory sensory channel – an unusual experience for a contemporary audience – provoked immediate and varied responses: surprise, curiosity, sensory disorientation,43 as well as an increased empathy with the actor-dancer of Alcestis.44 Disorientation, in particular during the live performance, was heightened not only by the pantomime’s association with the archaeological remains of the theatre but also with the actions of the actor-dancer: the range of sensory perception afforded to the audience of Alcestis was closer to the immersive totalization foreseen by pantomime, as emblematically attested by Apuleius’ Paridis iudicium. The smells diffused by the olfactory plate and the various related responses did not just affect the way in which the audience experienced the performance; the complete immersion in a theatrical space that was partly defined by aromas of saffron, perfumes, food and drink, and natural and bodily smells also had an impact on the acting, starting with the rehearsal of the play. The link between the staging of the Latin text and the particular smells diffused throughout the scenic-archaeological space also made the reception of Alcestis more memorable, in the literal sense, through the experience of the well-documented mnemonic dimension of smell.45 The multimedia performance as a whole highlighted the power of the sensory stimulations, including olfactory ones, to challenge perceptive habits, to give epistemological shocks and to make the spectators aware of the permeability of their bodies.46 Finally, the synaesthetic nature of theatre is at the centre of research and experimentation in the digital field.47 An important methodological step forward was taken by the convening of the international symposium of digital sensory archaeologies, under the title Capturing the Senses: Digital Methods for Sensory Archaeologies.48 One topic discussed at this conference was the application of innovative digital methodologies 214

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to archaeological research in order to stimulate the sensorial perception of ancient space, both urban and architectural. Participants also reflected on how digital methods could be used to grasp the social meaning of spaces through a multisensory perspective. While virtual archaeology has considerable potential, cyber-archaeology49 deserves greater attention. Thanks to its enormous potential and its ‘multivocality’, it opens up new perspectives ‘in the interpretation process, not imposing the final reconstruction, but suggesting, evocating, simulating multiple output, not “the past” but a potential past’.50 This vision of cyber archaeology is ‘holistic and constructivist’: ‘the reality of information is in the perception, in the capacity to identify the possible realities not THE REALITY’. And so, ‘in the reticular learning which is distributed through dynamic and interactive models, the cybernetic frame moves from the flat area of the display to embrace the environment and the observer in a diverse cognitive and perceptive logic, maybe still to be defined; but it is there, close to the margins of chaos, that the knowledge starts’.51 We cannot exclude from this new frontier of knowledge the multivocal culture of Roman theatres, which is constructed and defined also by the composite universe of smells.

Concluding remarks The study of the relationships between smells and theatres, and of their reception in a museum context or their re-enactment during a performance, opens up multiple paths for research, inviting new reflections on the possibility of recreating ancient sensory experiences in the present, as we have seen in this chapter. Following the order of the three issues addressed here, I would like to offer a few final comments and proposals. The reconstruction of the smellscape of Roman theatres through literary sources (section 1) can be considered well defined, as is clear from the main studies on the subject. An analytical reading of the sources reveals the existence not of a generic and all-encompassing smellscape but of different theatrical smellscapes, over time and in the wide and multifaceted geo-cultural spaces of the Roman world. It would be useful to create a database of all the Latin and Greek literary sources in which there are references to smells in Roman theatres in order to restore this heterogeneity.52 In the construction of this archive, data on the historical and cultural contexts of ancient texts must be included. This data will cast light on the intentions of the authors when they deal with the theme of odours in theatres and on their interpretations of these odours, which often contain moral considerations (such as pleasant smells being understood as unpleasant because they are linked to questionable behaviour, excesses, decadence, etc.). In the database, it will also be necessary to collect precise data on the theatrical architecture mentioned in the sources; on the types of ‘scented’ performances; on the reactions of the audience and of the actors; on economic matters (it is known, for example, that using saffron required a remarkable financial commitment); and on the impact of various ‘theatrical’ smells on the physical, mental and emotional experience of the theatre. In other words, the smells of the theatre to which Plautus alludes, in the 215

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specific genre of comedy and in an equally specific season of theatrical culture and social and political history (the third and second centuries bce ), cannot be compared in a casual manner to the smells in the theatres mentioned, for example, by Apuleius, who writes in a completely different context. The theatres of his time – the second century ce – differ from those of Plautus not only from an architectural point of view but also in terms of the performative system, the type of audience and so on. Research on written sources is also essential in relation to the issues raised in section 2. Although there are constants in the smellscapes of Roman theatres, in the museography, re-enactment and contemporary reception of ‘theatrical’ smells, the distinctive traits of the particular theatre under analysis must be taken into account. At the same time, it is necessary to pursue the following three goals. The first is the aim of restoring the memory of the specificities and variants of a given theatre when compared to others, specificities and variants that are not only architectural but also sensory and therefore olfactory. The second aim is to make the mechanisms responsible for the spread of smells, in particular that of sparsiones, understandable to those who visit the archaeological remains of a Roman theatre. The third aim is to explain the relationship between these mechanisms and the architectural space, and to revive, inside this space, the perceptions connected to the systems responsible for creating and diffusing smells. These perceptions are olfactory, tactile, visual, auditory and, especially in the case of sparsiones, synaesthetic: the aforementioned sprinkling of saffron-scented water stimulated the sense of smell and, at the same time, sight (the red colour of the crocum), hearing (the noise of the sprinkling) and touch (contact of the sprinkled water on the hands and, more generally, on the skin). In well-preserved Roman theatres, olfactory installations could be designed in a way that takes account of the theatrical architecture and could be placed accordingly in the architectural space. Such design considerations are important because the re-enactment of the spatialization of smells is another fundamental element for the global understanding of the cultural, historical and anthropological phenomenon of smell. In particular, wherever possible the installations should be connected with the latrinae: despite being rarely attested, they ought also to be musealized olfactively in an attempt to recreate and reactivate their odours within the wider theatrical smellscape. Only through the activation of correct and aware museographic proposals and re-enactments can an intelligent and active reception of ancient ‘theatrical’ smells be generated in a way that opens this experience up to lively comparisons with contemporary olfactory sensitivities and cultures. In Roman theatres that have been enhanced by sensory museography, Latin texts can be staged in new, experimental ways (section 3). This is also true of works which, although not written to be performed, can be brought to the stage, such as the Aeneid53 or contemporary texts inspired by Roman Antiquity (for example, Mémoires d’Hadrien by Marguerite Yourcenar).54 From the perspective of the sensory valorization of Roman theatres and the optimization of their synaesthetic perception, the archaeological remains can be better understood thanks to the staging of works in which the olfactory dimension is present, together with the other elements that make the performance a sensory experience. Digital methods and devices can offer significant contributions both 216

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to the activation of museographic and performative strategies and to the emergence of new reflections on the olfactory reception of Roman theatres, including those restored through virtual or cyber-archaeology.

Notes * I would like to thank Adeline Grand-Clément, Charlotte Ribeyrol, Mark Bradley, Filippo Carlà-Uhink and Martin Lindner for the precious exchange of ideas during the stimulating days of the international conference The Fragrant and the Foul: The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in the Modern Imagination (18–20 October 2018, Toulouse). Also, my sincere thanks to Paul Scade for his careful editing work. 1. Pivotal studies on smell and the senses in Antiquity, with special reference to sensory archaeology and the theatrical world, include Frederik Fahlander and Anna Kjellström (eds), Making Sense of Things: Archaeologies of Sensory Perception (Stockholm: PAG, 2010); Jo Day (ed.), Making Senses of the Past: Toward a Sensory Archaeology (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 2013); Yannis Hamilakis, Archaeology of the Senses: Human Experience, Memory, and Affect (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013); José Roberto Pellini, Andrés Zarankin and Melisa A. Salerno (eds), Coming to Senses Topics in Sensory Archaeology (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015); Kate Allen, ‘Stop and smell the Romans: Odor in Roman literature’, PhD diss., Classical Studies (University of Michigan, 2015); Jerry Toner (ed.), A Cultural History of the Senses in Antiquity (London: Bloomsbury, 2014); Mark Bradley, ‘Art and the Senses: The Artistry of Bodies, Stages, and Cities in the Greco-Roman World’, in A Cultural History of the Senses in Antiquity, ed. Jerry Toner (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 183–208, in particular 197–205; Benjamin Stevens, ‘Sensory Media: Representation, Communication, and Performance in Ancient Literature’, in A Cultural History of the Senses in Antiquity, ed. Jerry Toner (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 209–26; Mark Bradley (ed.), Smell and the Ancient Senses (London and New York: Routledge, 2015); Eleanor Betts (ed.), Senses of the Empire: Multisensory Approaches to Roman Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 2017), in particular Jo Day, ‘Scents of place and colours of smell: Fragranced entertainment in ancient Rome’, 176–92; Sylvain Forichon, ‘Essai de restitution des paysages olfactifs des édifices de spectacles de la Rome ancienne (théâtres, cirques et amphithéâtres)’, in Paysages sensoriels: Approches pluridisciplinaires, ed. Véronique Mehl and Laura Péaud (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2019), 147–57, valuable for the specific attention to the theme of the reconstruction of a particular olfactory landscape, specifically that of the spectacle buildings in Rome; Jo Day and Robin Skeates (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Sensory Archaeology (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2019); Hannah Platts, Multisensory Living in Ancient Rome: Power and Space in Roman Houses (London: Bloomsbury, 2019); and Davide Nadali and Frances Pinnock (eds), Sensing the Past: Detecting the Use of the Five Senses in Ancient Near Eastern Contexts (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2020). I would also like to note a recent doctoral thesis: Anna Trostnikova, ‘The experience of spectators at the festivals in early imperial Ancient Rome: A case study of multisensory approach to spectatorship at the festival of the Saecular Games in 17 bc’, PhD thesis (Royal Holloway, University of London, 2019). For further research paths and bibliography, see https://sensorystudiesinantiquity.com, and for material not confined to sensory studies in Antiquity, http://www.sensorystudies.org. These bibliographical references are the main works on which I draw in this chapter. 2. For a framework of Roman theatrical architecture, see at least Frank Sear, Roman Theatres: An Architectural Study (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006) and the recent Hans Peter Isler,

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The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in The Modern Imagination Antike Theaterbauten. Ein Handbuch (Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2017), 261–702. 3. A useful reference for setting problems and method: Anna Barbara and Anthony Perliss, Invisible Architecture: Experiencing Places through the Sense of Smell (Milan: Skira, 2006). 4. For an excellent and updated status quaestionis on the re-enactment: Vanessa Agnew, Jonathan Lamb and Juliane Tomann (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Reenactment Studies: Key Terms in the Field (London: Taylor & Francis, 2019). 5. Raffaella Viccei. ‘L’area archeologica del teatro romano di Milano. Monumento e valorizzazione’, Stratagemmi /Στρατηγήματα 10 (2009): 38–42. 6. Paul Erdkamp and Claire Holleran (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Diet and Nutrition in the Roman World (London and New York: Routledge, 2018). 7. As archaeological evidence, I would mention the latrinae of the theatres of Pompeii and Verona. 8. Apuleius, Metamorphoseon 9.10.34; Historia Augusta. Vita Hadriani 19.5; Horatius, Epistulae 2.1.79–80; Lucan, Pharsalia 9.808–10; Lucretius, De Rerum Natura 2.414–16; Martial, Epigrammata 5.25.7–8, 8.33.3–4, 9.38.5–6; Ovid, Ars amatoria 1.103–4; Plinius, Naturalis Historia 21.33; Propertius, Elegiae 4.1.15–16; Seneca, Ad Lucilium epistulae morales 14.90.15. 9. Historia Augusta. Vita Hadriani 19.5 (the underscore in the quotation is mine). Translation by David Magie, Historia Augusta, Volume I: Hadrian. Aelius. Antoninus Pius. Marcus Aurelius. L. Verus. Avidius Cassius. Commodus. Pertinax. Didius Julianus. Septimius Severus. Pescennius Niger. Clodius Albinus, Loeb Classical Library 139. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1921, 59. 10. The plural balsama (ThlL II 1710, 34 ss.) is often used to indicate the secretion, the perfumed resin or ointments produced by the plant of the balsamum which, according to Pliny (Naturalis Historia 12.111), grew only in Judaea. This very expensive perfume was much loved by members of the elite for its unique aroma and medical properties. 11. Michaela Fuchs, Untersuchungen zur Ausstattung römischer Theater in Italien und den Westprovinzen des Imperium Romanum (Mainz am Rhein: Ph. Von Zabern, 1987), 141–3. This use of statues was already known in the sixteenth century, as can be seen in a passage from De amphitheatro liber (1584), chapter 16 (‘Tubi occulti in amphitheatris ad sparsiones. Eas e croco diluito fuisse. Appuleius emendatus. Videri eumdem liquorem e statuis emissum. Pluria ad hanc rem exempla’) of Iustus Lipsius (Joost Lips), a work in which – it should be specified – the term amphitheatrus is often used synonymously with theatrus. Lipsio wrote, ‘Nec e fistulis solum hic imber, sed scito magis invento e statuis expressus, velut humanus quidam sudor. Lucanus clare indicat.’ (‘This rain not only from hydraulic hoses but also, thanks to a more sophisticated invention, from statues, looking like human sweat. Lucan says it clearly.’ My translation.) 12. Alessandro Gusman, Antropologia dell’olfatto (Rome and Bari: Laterza, 2004), 70–1, 82. 13. Bradley, Smell, 2. Apuleius, Metamorphoseon libri XI. 10.34.1–2: ‘Tunc de summo montis cacumine per quondam latentem fistulam in excelsum prorumpit vino crocus diluta, sparsimque defluens pascentes circa capellas odoro perpluit imbre, donec in meliorem maculatae speciem canitiem propriam luteo colore mutarent. Iamque tota suave fragrante cavea montem illum ligneum terrae vorago decepit.’ 14. Raffaella Viccei, L’immagine fuggente. Riflessioni teatrali sulla Alcesti di Barcellona (Bari: Edizioni di Pagina, 2020), 33–4, 39, 44–5, 76–7, 88. 15. David Peacock and David Williams (eds), Food for the Gods: New Light on the Ancient Incense Trade (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2007); Paola Di Terlizzi, ‘Considerazioni sulla presenza 218

The Contemporary Reception of Smells and Senses in the Roman Theatre dell’incenso’, in La Signora del Sarcofago. Una sepoltura di rango nella necropoli dell’Università Cattolica, ed. Maria Pia Rossignani, Marco Sannazaro and Giuseppina Legrottaglie (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 2005), 175–8. 16. Cicero, Ad familiares 7.1.2; Plutarch, Pompeius 53.5. Cristina Lo Giudice, ‘L’impiego degli animali negli spettacoli romani: venatio e damnatio ad bestias’, Italies 12 (2008); Torill Christine Lindstrøm, ‘The animals of the arena: how and why could their destruction and death be endured and enjoyed?’ World Archaeology 42, no. 2 (2010): 310–23, also for the theme of animal smells in the Ludi. 17. With specific reference to amphitheatres, Forichon, ‘Essai’, 153. 18. Martial, Epigrammata 1.11.1–2, 1.26.1–2, 7–8; Plautus Poenulus, 40–3; Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria 6.3.63; Juvenal, Saturae 10.81. 19. Plinius, Naturalis Historia 13.9, 13.12; Martial, Epigrammata 2.29.5. Saara Lilja, The Treatment of Odours in the Poetry of Antiquity (Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fennica, 1972); Carlo Giordano and Angelandrea Casale, Profumi, unguenti e acconciature in Pompei antica (Rome: Bardi, 1992). 20. Gusman, Antropologia, 44, 58–9. 21. See, for instance, the SONAT project devoted to the Roman theatre in Orange (France): https://sonat.hypotheses.org/. 22. Betts, Senses, 197. 23. Gusman, Antropologia, 28. 24. Bradley, Smell, 9. 25. Gusman, Antropologia, 146–7. 26. Ettore Lariani and Francesco Rampichini, ‘L’allestimento multimediale e il Museo sensibile’, in Raffaella Viccei, ‘L’area archeologica del teatro romano di Milano. Monumento e valorizzazione’, Stratagemmi / Στρατηγήματα 10 (2009): 35–8. 27. Lariani and Rampichini, ‘L’allestimento multimediale e il Museo sensibile’, 38. 28. The neologism ‘acousmetry’ (acousmetria in Italian) was forged by F. Rampichini in 2002. It refers to the sudy of the perception of geometric proportions by hearing. Ettore Lariani (ed.), Museo sensibile. Suono e ipertesti negli allestimenti (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2002); Francesco Rampichini (ed.), Acusmetria. Il suono visibile (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2004); http://www. studiolariani.it/pubblicazioni/libri/index.html; http://www.acusmetria.it/ita/index.html; http://www.musikatelier.it/Infrapedia_Acousmetry.html. 29. On multisensory museums, see Viv Golding, ‘Dreams and wishes: the multi-sensory museum space’, in Museum Materialities, ed. Sandra Dudley (London: Routledge, 2010), 224–40; Catherine P. Foster, ‘Beyond the display case: Creating a multisensory museum experience’, in Making Senses of the Past: Toward a Sensory Archaeology, ed. Jo Day (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 2013), 371–89; the fundamental Nina Levent, Pascual-Leone and Alvaro Pascual-Leone (eds), The Multisensory Museum: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Touch, Sound, Smell, Memory, and Space (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2014); David Howes, ‘Introduction to sensory museology’, Senses and Society 9 (2014): 259–67; Mark Clintberg, ‘The Senses in the Museum’, Senses and Society 11, no. 2 (2016): 214–18; Constance Classen, The Museum of the Senses: Experiencing Art and Collections (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017). 30. The cavea is the semicircular seating space in a Roman theatre. 31. The semicircular corridor of a Roman theatre that separated ima cavea from media and media from summa.

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The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in The Modern Imagination 32. The portico or passageway behind the scaena. 33. Regarding the remains and the history of Milan’s theatre, reconstructed through archaeological investigations and the study of literary and epigraphic sources, see Viccei, ‘L’area’, 9–30; Ead., ‘I teatri romani in Lombardia. Archeologia e valorizzazione’, Dionysus ex machina 5 (2014): 231–5, 244–53, 255–8, 260–1. For updates and insights, I refer to my forthcoming book, Roman Theatres and Theatrical Culture: Archaeology, Valorization and Sustainable Fruition in Lombardy. 34. The smells in the diffusers were made by Oikos Fragrance (http://www.oikosfragrances.com/). 35. References in Viccei, ‘L’area’, 39–42. 36. Ovidius, Ars amatoria 1.103–4. Translation by Julia Dyson Hejduk, The Offense of Love: Ars Amatoria, Remedia Amoris, and Tristia 2. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2014, 56. 37. Martial, Epigrammata 5.25, 7–8. My translation. 38. Lariani and Rampichini, ‘L’allestimento’, 38. 39. Giorgio Albertazzi, Un perdente di successo (Milan: Rizzoli, 1988); Giorgio Albertazzi and Dario Fo, La lezione. Storie del teatro in Italia (Milan: Rizzoli, 2012). 40. The exit and entrance of the museum coincide: the visitors, once they have reached the final point of the museum area – that of the Reciting Statues installation – must retrace their steps back through the museum and exit where they entered. 41. For the peculiar features of this revisitation of the myth, see Viccei, L’immagine. 42. Viccei, L’immagine, 123–4. 43. See also Jennie Morgan, ‘The Multisensory Museum’, Journal of the Ethnographic Institute (Serbia) 60, no. 1 (2012): 72–4. 44. On empathy and smell, see Berdeen’s chapter in this volume. 45. Trygg Engen, Odor, Sensation and Memory (New York, Westport, CT, and London: Praeger 1991). 46. On these themes, see Sally Banes and André Lepecki (eds), The Senses in Performance (New York: Routledge, 2007). 47. Raffaella Viccei, ‘Ricostruzioni digitali per la conoscenza e la valorizzazione dei teatri antichi: usi, significati, questioni aperte’, in Indagini archeologiche e ricostruzioni digitali per lo studio degli spazi teatrali greci e romani. Visioni e prospettive, ed. Massimo Limoncelli, Furio Sacchi and Raffaella Viccei (Milan: EDUCatt, 2019), 98–100. 48. https://sensorystudiesinantiquity.com/2017/07/03/review-of-capturing-the-senses-digitalmethods-for-sensory-archaeologies/. See also the study by Anna Foka, ‘(Digital) Bread and Circuses: Reframing Ancient Spectacle for Different Screens’. In this paper, presented at Digital Humanities Australasia 2014: Expanding Horizons (University of Western Australia, 18–21 March 2014, Perth, Western Australia), Foka proposes ‘new methodological tools for generating discourses that add layers of understanding to our contemporary knowledge of the Roman spectacle. A participatory (embodied – tangible computing) and multisensory (sound and vision) digital recreation of a Roman amphitheatre (along the lines of Betts: 2009, Drucker: 2009, and Favro: 2006) can engineer deeper and constructive analyses of the dynamics and systemic operations regarding [ancient and current] popular entertainment. It can generate questions about the cultural and emotional context of ancient spectacle as well as the potentials and limitations set by our current technological grasp.’ http://umu.divaportal.org/smash/record.jsf?language=en&pid=diva2%3A716970&dswid=-7136. ‘(Digital) Bread and Circuses’ (2013–17) is part of the Screens as Material project (HUMlab Umeå University, Sweden), for which Foka engaged in the study and development of ‘multisensory

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The Contemporary Reception of Smells and Senses in the Roman Theatre conceptual digital prototypes of ancient entertainment spaces (Greek Theatre, Roman Amphitheatre, Hippodrome)’; URL https://wiki.digitalclassicist.org/Digital_bread_and_ circuses. 49. Maurizio Forte, Cyber Archaeology (Oxford: BAR International Series 2177, 2010); Maurizio Forte, ‘Cyberarchaeology: a Post-Virtual Perspective’, in Humanities and the Digital: A Visioning Statement, ed. David Theo Goldberg and Patrik Svensson (Boston: MIT Press, 2015), 295–309. For research paths and further bibliography, see http://tele-immersion. citris-uc.org/cyberarchaeology. 50. Maurizio Forte, ‘Cyber-Archaeology: Notes on the Simulation of the Past’, Virtual Archaeology Review 2, no. 4 (2011): 7. 51. Forte, ‘Cyber-Archaeology’, 14, 16. Regarding smell, olfaction, digital olfaction and multimedia digitalization of smell, see the important studies of Jospeh Kaye, ‘Making Scents: aromatic output for HCI’, Interaction 11, no. 1 (2004): 48–61; Gheorghita Ghinea and Kemi Ademoye, ‘Olfaction-enhanced multimedia: perspectives and challenges’, Multimedia Tools and Applications 55, no. 3 (2011): 601–26; Devashish Gosain and Mohit Sajwan, ‘Aroma Tells a Thousand Pictures: Digital Scent Technology a New Chapter in IT Industry’, International Journal of Current Engineering and Technology 4, no. 4 (2014): 2804–12; Radhika Kandalgaonkar, Santosh Jadhav and Pragati Goel, ‘Experiencing Digital Live Fragrance (Digi-Frag): an Innovative Technology’, NCRD’s Technical Review 4 (2019): 1–9. 52. A first effective attempt in the Tableau in Forichon, ‘Essai’, 155–7, also extended to circi and amphitheatri. 53. Viccei, L’immagine, 80–3. See also the award-winning contemporary performance by Anagoor (https://www.anagoor.com/), Virgilio brucia, https://static1.squarespace.com/ static/5b9b84f912b13fbf8c114fa9/t/5df0d2c1b6832902414c4b00/1576063683227/ VIRGILIO+BRUCIA_ANAGOOR_DOSSIER_ENG.pdf. 54. The show staged at the Villa Adriana in Tivoli, with Giorgio Albertazzi in the title role, was unforgettable. On this performance, see Giorgio Albertazzi, Memorie di Adriano. La voce dell’imperatore dal romanzo di Marguerite Yourcenar (Rome: Minimum Fax) 2007.

Bibliography Agnew, Vanessa, Jonathan Lamb and Juliane Tomann, eds. The Routledge Handbook of Reenactment Studies: Key Terms in the Field. London: Taylor & Francis, 2019. Albertazzi, Giorgio. Un perdente di successo. Milan: Rizzoli, 1988. Albertazzi, Giorgio. Memorie di Adriano. La voce dell’imperatore dal romanzo di Marguerite Yourcenar. Rome: Minimum Fax, 2007. Albertazzi, Giorgio and Dario Fo. La lezione. Storie del teatro in Italia. Milan: Rizzoli, 2012. Allen, Kate. ‘Stop and smell the Romans: odor in Roman literature’. PhD dissertation (Classical Studies), University of Michigan, 2015. Banes, Sally and André Lepecki, eds. The Senses in Performance. New York: Routledge, 2007. Barbara, Anna and Anthony Perliss. Invisible Architecture: Experiencing Places through the Sense of Smell. Milan: Skira, 2006. Betts, Eleanor, ed. Senses of the Empire: Multisensory Approaches to Roman Culture. London and New York: Routledge, 2017. Bradley, Mark. ‘Art and the Senses: The Artistry of Bodies, Stages, and Cities in the Greco-Roman World’. In A Cultural History of the Senses in Antiquity, edited by Jerry Toner, 183–208. London: Bloomsbury, 2014.

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The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in The Modern Imagination Bradley, Mark, ed. Smell and the Ancient Senses. London and New York: Routledge, 2015. Classen, Constance. The Museum of the Senses: Experiencing Art and Collections. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017. Clintberg, Mark. ‘The Senses in the Museum’. Senses and Society 11, no. 2 (2016): 214–18. Day, Jo. ‘Scents of place and colours of smell: fragranced entertainment in ancient Rome’. In Senses of the Empire: Multisensory Approaches to Roman Culture, edited by Eleanor Betts, 176–92. London and New York: Routledge, 2017. Day, Jo, ed. Making Senses of the Past: Toward a Sensory Archaeology. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 2013. Di Terlizzi, Paola. ‘Considerazioni sulla presenza dell’incenso’. In La Signora del Sarcofago. Una sepoltura di rango nella necropoli dell’Università Cattolica, edited by Maria Pia Rossignani, Marco Sannazaro and Giuseppina Legrottaglie, 175–8. Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 2005. Engen, Trygg. Odor, Sensation and Memory. New York, Westport, CT, and London: Praeger 1991. Erdkamp, Paul and Claire Holleran, eds. The Routledge Handbook of Diet and Nutrition in the Roman World. London and New York: Routledge, 2018. Fahlander, Fredrik and Anna Kjellström, eds. Making Sense of Things: Archaeologies of Sensory Perception. Stockholm: PAG , 2010. Forichon, Sylvain. ‘Essai de restitution des paysages olfactifs des édifices de spectacles de la Rome ancienne (théâtres, cirques et amphithéâtres)’. In Paysages sensoriels: Approches pluridisciplinaires, edited by Véronique Mehl and Laura Péaud, 147–57. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2019. Forte, Maurizio. ‘Cyber-Archaeology: Notes on the Simulation of the Past’. Virtual Archaeology Review 2, no. 4 (2011): 7–18. Forte, Maurizio. ‘Cyberarchaeology: A Post-Virtual Perspective’. In Humanities and the Digital: A Visioning Statement, edited by David Theo Goldberg and Patrik Svensson, 295–309. Boston: MIT Press, 2015. Forte, Maurizio, ed. Cyber Archaeology. Oxford: BAR International Series 2177, 2010. Foster, Catherine P. ‘Beyond the display case: Creating a multisensory museum experience’. In Making Senses of the Past: Toward a Sensory Archaeology, edited by Jo Day, 371–89. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 2013. Fuchs, Michaela. Untersuchungen zur Ausstattung römischer Theater in Italien und den Westprovinzen des Imperium Romanum. Mainz am Rhein: Ph. Von Zabern, 1987. Ghinea, Gheorghita and Kemi Ademoye. ‘Olfaction-enhanced multimedia: Perspectives and challenges’. Multimedia Tools and Applications 55, no 3 (2011): 601–26. Giordano, Carlo and Angelandrea Casale. Profumi, unguenti e acconciature in Pompei antica. Rome: Bardi, 1992. Golding, Viv. ‘Dreams and wishes: The multi-sensory museum space’. In Museum Materialities, edited by Sandra Dudley, 224–40. London: Routledge, 2010. Gosain, Devashish and Mohit Sajwan. ‘Aroma Tells a Thousand Pictures: Digital Scent Technology a New Chapter in IT Industry’. International Journal of Current Engineering and Technology 4, no. 4 (2014): 2804–12. Gusman, Alessandro. Antropologia dell’olfatto. Rome and Bari: Laterza, 2004. Hamilakis, Yannis. Archaeology of the Senses: Human Experience, Memory, and Affect. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Howes, David. ‘Introduction to sensory museology’. Senses and Society 9 (2014): 259–67. Isler, Hans Peter. Antike Theaterbauten. Ein Handbuch. Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2017, i–iii. Kandalgaonkar, Radhika, Santosh Jadhav and Pragati Goel. ‘Experiencing Digital Live Fragrance (Digi-Frag): an Innovative Technology’. NCRD’s Technical Review 4 (2019): 1–9. Kaye, Joseph ‘Jofish’. ‘Making Scents: Aromatic output for HCI ’. Interaction 11, no. 1 (2004): 48–61. 222

The Contemporary Reception of Smells and Senses in the Roman Theatre Lariani, Ettore, ed. Museo sensibile. Suono e ipertesti negli allestimenti. Milan: Franco Angeli, 2002. Lariani, Ettore and Francesco Rampichini. ‘L’allestimento multimediale e il Museo sensibile’. In Raffaella Viccei, ‘L’area archeologica del teatro romano di Milan. Monumento e valorizzazione’. Stratagemmi / Στρατηγήματα 10 (2009): 35–8. Levent, Nina and Alvaro Pascual-Leone, eds. The Multisensory Museum: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Touch, Sound, Smell, Memory, and Space. Lanham, MD : Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2014. Lilja, Saara. The Treatment of Odours in the Poetry of Antiquity. Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fennica 1972. Lindstrøm, Torill Christine. ‘The animals of the arena: How and why could their destruction and death be endured and enjoyed?’ World Archaeology 42, no. 2 (2010): 310–23. Lo Giudice, Cristina. ‘L’impiego degli animali negli spettacoli romani: venatio e damnatio ad bestias’. Italies 12 (2008), http://journals.openedition.org/italies/1374. Morgan, Jennie. ‘The Multisensory Museum’. Journal of the Ethnographic Institute (Serbia) 60, no. 1 (2012): 65–77. Nadali, Davide and Frances Pinnock, eds. Sensing the Past: Detecting the Use of the Five Senses in Ancient Near Eastern Contexts. Proceedings of the Conference Held in Rome, Sapienza University, 4 June 2018. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2020. Peacock, David and David Williams, eds. Food for the Gods: New Light on the Ancient Incense Trade. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2007. Pellini, José Roberto, Andrés Zarankin and Melisa A. Salerno, eds. Coming to Senses Topics in Sensory Archaeology. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015. Platts, Hannah, Multisensory Living in Ancient Rome: Power and Space in Roman Houses. London: Bloomsbury, 2019. Rampichini, Francesco, ed. Acusmetria. Il suono visibile. Milan: Franco Angeli, 2004. Sear, Frank. Roman Theatres: An Architectural Study. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Skeates, Robin and Jo Day, eds. The Routledge Handbook of Sensory Archaeology. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2019. Stevens, Benjamin. ‘Sensory Media: Representation, Communication, and Performance in Ancient Literature’. In A Cultural History of the Senses in Antiquity, edited by Jerry Toner, 209–26. London: Bloomsbury, 2014. Toner, Jerry, ed. A Cultural History of the Senses in Antiquity. London: Bloomsbury, 2014. Trostnikova, Anna. ‘The experience of spectators at the festivals in early imperial Ancient Rome: A case study of multisensory approach to spectatorship at the festival of the Saecular Games in 17 bc ’. PhD thesis, Royal Holloway, University of London, 2019. Viccei, Raffaella. ‘L’area archeologica del teatro romano di Milano. Monumento e valorizzazione’. Stratagemmi /Στρατηγήματα 10 (2009): 9–56. Viccei, Raffaella. ‘I teatri romani in Lombardia. Archeologia e valorizzazione’. Dionysus ex machina 5 (2014): 220–310. Viccei, Raffaella. ‘Ricostruzioni digitali per la conoscenza e la valorizzazione dei teatri antichi: usi, significati, questioni aperte’. In Indagini archeologiche e ricostruzioni digitali per lo studio degli spazi teatrali greci e romani. Visioni e prospettive, edited by Massimo Limoncelli, Furio Sacchi and Raffaella Viccei, 83–148. Milan: EDUCatt, 2019. Viccei, Raffaella. L’immagine fuggente. Riflessioni teatrali sulla Alcesti di Barcellona. Bari: Edizioni di Pagina, 2020.

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CHAPTER 11 INCENSE ON THE GRASS: A STRONGLY PERFUMED LIBATION BEARERS 1999 1 Martina Treu

I love the smell of Napalm in the morning. Francis Ford Coppola, Apocalypse Now (1979)

Foreword What does a war smell like? How can anyone recreate its smell, or any other, in a performance, on stage, on film? Coppola’s cult movie Apocalypse Now (1979) may be cited as an iconic example of the evocative power of words, and related images, regarding olfactory perceptions, and various emotions associated with perfumes and smell. Those who watched the movie may also remember the images which support those words. Vietnam veterans may know, and remember, what napalm smells like. We don’t. And yet the mere mention of napalm makes us, instinctively, think of the Vietnam War even decades later. This is a famous case, from a ‘classical’ movie. As for Classics, and my specific field of research (ancient theatre and its reception), there are many comparable examples: for centuries, ancient poets, writers and playwrights have been evoking smells and perfumes through words, which in turn can be variously translated on stage or on screen. In the past decades, modern directors have been rediscovering Greek and Roman plays, but there is very little evidence for attempts to include olfactory perceptions in classical performances. In other words, even if ancient texts and dramas may refer to smells or perfumes, it seems that their potential is ignored, or only sporadically used, by theatre directors. On the one hand, it is difficult to appeal to the sensory organs of a theatre or movie audience in order to provoke a real olfactory perception. On the other hand, the same perception may be recreated by stimulating the audience’s imagination and memory, by recalling the olfactory experiences they had in the past (with words, images, colours and so on). Anyone may witness this process. When a smell is mentioned in a text, for instance, a director may translate it into corresponding or related images, in order to make us feel, somehow, that smell. Besides visual effects, ancient authors and artists, as well as modern directors, may also count on a ‘synaesthetic’ effect: that is, the production of a sense impression relating to one sense or part of the body by the stimulation of another sense or part of the body. In other words, an artist may help our imagination, and our olfactory memories, to recreate, in our mind, a particular smell: this may be done by stimulating our sight, and

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other senses, with a variety of direct and indirect suggestions. Among the best examples, besides napalm in Vietnam, we might cite the Trojan War: Homer frequently evokes a battlefield rich in smells, mainly of blood and sweat, covered with scattered corpses in various stages of putrefaction; some scenes evoke essences, perfumes and oils used for funeral rites, not to mention the wood pyres where flesh and bones are burnt.2 We may be encouraged to imagine those smells, in different ways, either if we read the poem or listen to those verses on stage, or on the radio, and even more – of course – if we watch a theatre play or film regarding the Trojan War. My chapter offers a brief overview of the issues cited above, with a specific focus on the inclusion of olfactory perceptions in modern performances of ancient texts, and particularly of Greek dramas. In the final part, one example is analysed in detail: a performance of Aeschylus’ Libation Bearers which aims at translating ancient rituals, and their smells, on the contemporary stage.3

Theatre and other medias: An overview of the past In concrete terms, there are visual (or reported) presentations of things that have smells (such as napalm), depending on the substitution of one sense for smell, which is otherwise not activated; on the other hand, real smells may be introduced as part of the mise-enscène. Among other media, films rely on powerful visual effects to evoke smells: in the past – especially in the 1950s – there were experiments in olfactory stimulation in cinemas, such as ‘AromaRama’, which unfortunately failed. As for theatre, outside the field of classical reception there have been isolated attempts at reproducing smell on stage, but they did not succeed. In France, particularly, a few artists have explored the possible implications of olfactory perception in the arts, including theatre, since the end of the eighteenth century, as a recent paper by Érika Wicky underlines:4 [. . .] perfumes offer a great potential for the performing arts, mainly because of the strong neurobiological links between olfaction, emotions, and memory. Odours can also play an important role in immersive experiences through their ability to create or to recreate an atmosphere (Cyr 2007). However, if perfumes can support and extend the means of performing artistic creations, experiments involving smell are fairly scarce in the history of the theatre, and in those rare instances, the reception of olfactory performances is generally, if not mixed, intensely negative. The idea of a ‘concert of perfumes’ was conceived in the seventeenth century by Fénelon and, in the nineteenth, by Huysmans in his novel À rebours (1884). Meanwhile, poets such as Baudelaire (for instance in his famous sonnet Correspondances, published in Fleurs du Mal, 1857), Verlaine and Rimbaud have explored the cross-references between senses by the poetic means of synaesthesia. This was the artistic background of an isolated 225

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experiment in ‘perfumed’ theatre, which is not a classical production, and yet is a key reference for our analysis and a turning point in the history of modern performances tout court. The Song of Songs (1891), a pioneer production directed by Pierre-Napoléon Roinard, may be defined as ‘multisensory and synaesthetic’, as it aimed at bringing all the senses together, including olfaction: the director made an artistic choice in bringing for the first time into the theatre perfume burners, vaporized essences of flowers, perfumes and flavours of all kinds. Among others, frankincense was burnt on stage and it is worth noting its central role: [B]urning incense during a theatre performance could have been interpreted as a reference to an historical and religious background particularly in line with the biblical text staged, the Song of Songs, and with the mysticism of Symbolist artists [. . .] Besides, according to the diary of Jules Renard, Roinard wanted to burn all the fragrances and was disappointed by the expedient of vaporization.5 This is a choice of particular interest for us: incense, as we will see, will appear in the main case study we examine later. In Catholic churches, the practice of burning incense was usual at that time, but Roinard sought inspiration in the Bible and in its ancient rituals. Moreover, the sensual content of the poem – a metaphorical dialogue between two lovers, full of erotic imagery – offered Roinard the perfect content, and context, for the sensorial experience he was aiming to create.6 Unluckily, his experiment did not succeed and was not repeated: according to testimonies, the audience was more disturbed than pleased by their olfactory perceptions. As Wicky remarks:7 Medical warnings against perfumes and the fear of chemical substances seriously affected the reception of the scented show [. . .] the fear of smell is also linked to the fear of contagion [. . .] the prevailing view considered miasmatic contagion responsible for diseases [. . .] in a theatre, the spectators are prevented from following their first and natural reflex: distancing themselves from the unpleasant smell, in order to minimize its absorption [. . .] This matter of distance and proximity is indeed the main problem for olfaction in theatre. Still today, I believe these issues are at stake: spectators and critics may refuse or even despise any perfume or artificial flavour, as they may perceive chemical essences as fake, unhealthy, even dangerous. Most of us, moreover, may be upset by the intimate and even sensual implications of perfumes, by their original connection to human bodies.8 However, some of the seeds which Roinard sowed survived and lived on in different art forms: in recent times, contemporary artists and performers have included smells and olfactory perceptions in their artworks, by using objects, flowers and devices able to spread perfume.9 Others recur in indirect suggestions, based on the synaesthesia, and techniques more or less inspired by the poetic theories of correspondences cited above. 226

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A few artists and directors include unpleasant smells (such as the sweat of performers, meat or animal parts) respectively in their artworks or productions. In doing so, their reasons and purposes vary: some aim at transforming the olfactory perception into an artistic choice, either by creating a ‘true’ effect, in a more accurate way, or by shocking the audiences. In extreme cases, they openly challenge our sensibility and push further and further the limit of the ‘acceptable’ presence of smell onstage.

Modern experiments: Pina Bausch, Marina Abramovicˇ and Trojan Women The German artist Pina Bausch offered us many examples, ever since her first performances inspired by Gluck’s music in two ‘classical’ operas: Iphigénie en Tauride (1974) and Orphée et Euridice (1975). Throughout her career she developed alongside her company (Tanztheater) an original technique which used all the senses, including the ‘less noble ones’ such as olfactory perceptions, in order to immerse the audience in a global effect of multisensory synaesthesia.10 For Bausch, above all, ‘theatre is an art of synthesis, an art of synesthesia’.11 The artist, in many productions she directed with her company, frequently combined real and ‘virtual’ stimulations, of all the senses, taking advantage of the audience’s memories and imagination: for instance by scattering on stage hundreds of red carnations, made of plastic, she virtually evokes the intense perfume of real flowers. The plastic flowers ‘stand for’ their perfume, their ‘truth’ lies in the audience’s unconscious, supported by objects, by memories and by all the suggestions created onstage. The real objects shown onstage are ‘completed’ by our imagination.12 While Pina Bausch was developing her theories, other contemporary artists – outside theatre – included smell in their performances: some of them created indirect connections to dramas and provoked in their audiences a ‘dramatic’ effect. The Serbian artist Marina Abramovič offered one of the best examples I am aware of, at the 1997 Venice Biennale: her artwork Balkan Baroque, inspired by the Yugoslav wars, was awarded the Gold Lion Prize. The performance took place only for a few days and was set in a dark, underground room, accessible by a few steps: a descent to the Underworld. Inside, the artist sat on a huge pile of animal bones, covered with meat, and she kept tidying them with a brush. The smell of the bones was so repulsive that most people could not stand it. When they entered the room, they covered their nose or tried breathing in their handkerchief, as reported by a video recording of the performance: ‘The smell was horrible, but the effect it created was exactly what Marina wanted: confrontation with the ongoing horrors.’13 In the past, I have cited this performance in a study regarding the reception of Sophocles’ Ajax inside and outside theatre. This choice may, at first, sound peculiar, because the play makes no direct reference to a particular smell: in the prologue, we see the effects of Ajax’s madness, while the main scene is dedicated to his suicide, and the final part to his funerals.14 As far as I know, no modern staging of Ajax has ever involved olfactory perceptions. On the other hand, Marina Abramovič did not cite Ajax, nor any Greek tragedy, as a direct source of inspiration. Nevertheless, given the context, I consider 227

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this tragedy – particularly the prologue – as an indirect source of inspiration for the performance. In both cases, the audience is offered a shocking, challenging and intimate experience: a sudden revelation of horror, madness and violence. In the Sophoclean tragedy, Odysseus is driven by Athena through the Greek camp, at night; he lurks around his rival’s tent and there he sees and smells the blood of animals slaughtered by the mad warrior.15 The spectators of Balkan Baroque, in a way, share Ulysses’ gaze, and his olfactory experience, as they enter the dark, hidden, secret space of the performance, and are hit by the smell of rotting meat. This smell, as was the artist’s intention, is meant to be a direct reference to the war in the Balkans; but in more general terms, it may refer to any war, including the Trojan War, whose scenery evokes blood, corpses and funeral rites. For this reason, I included Abramovič’s work in my survey: her performance perfectly fits the focus of my study, as she uses strong, effective suggestions, involving all our senses, and she forces us to compare ancient and modern wars and their traumas. Since the Vietnam War, Homeric heroes have been used as symbols, examples or archetypes in studies or projects on war veterans suffering from PTSD and combat trauma.16 More recently, single figures of defeated, lonesome or isolated warriors, such as Ajax and Philoctetes, inspired a new raft of performances dedicated to veterans suffering from PTSD and to their families. Many of them have taken part in public programmes, particularly in the USA.17 In the case of stage adaptations of Homer’s Iliad, or Greek tragedies about the Trojan War, further research could be aimed at verifying if olfactory experience is included, and if so, what devices are employed to evoke smells on stage. In this regard, I cite one example from my professional career, a production where I was hired as a dramaturg (the term, borrowed from German, internationally defines a consultant who assists a director, or company, in any issue or question regarding a text to be brought to the stage). In 2003, I took part in a theatre adaptation of Euripides’ Trojan Women, with inserts of Homeric verses, from the Iliad, as flashbacks: Troiane, directed by Serena Sinigaglia (2004).18 Regarding smell, one important suggestion comes from Cassandra’s wedding scene, as torches were part of the ancient rite: therefore, our core idea was to bring onstage actual torches, whose light and smell became a distinctive feature of Cassandra’s character throughout the play. C. W. Marshall refers to that scene in Trojan Women (‘Cassandra’s spectacular scene with torches’) in comparison to a similar scene in Euripides’ Helen, where ‘incense is part of the dramatic world, and the power of the sense of smell to trigger memories is a powerful lever Euripides employs in order to further authenticate Thenoë’s religious practice. The use of smoke and fire to mark an area as ritually pure is concomitant to Greek religious thoughts.’19 These comments seem particularly relevant to our theme. Moreover, regarding Helen, Marshall focuses on stage rules and directions: he points out the practical and ritual implications of braziers and torches, the evocative power of smells such as sulphur and incense and the general importance of including olfactory perceptions in performances. His words are worth citing, as they apply not only to Trojan Women but also to other productions I will examine later: 228

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However long the process takes, the introduction of a burning sulphur brazier and torch elevate the level of ritual formalism. To bring smoke or flame on stage, particularly in an indoor theatre, necessarily takes one aspect of the production out of the direct control of the performers and the directors. Any actual breeze might fan the flame, or carry the smoke in an unpredictable direction [. . .] A further consequence is that it becomes possible for the audience (or a portion of them, depending on the wind) to smell the sulphur or incense. The introduction of an olfactory component is significant, in that it creates a sensory experience that is not usually associated with the theatre: usually one can only smell one’s neighbours in the audience, and the spectator ignores such odours since they are not intended to represent anything within the dramatic world.20 These are some of the key issues with regard to smells in theatre productions, which I will discuss further. Regarding Serena Sinigaglia’s Trojan Women, it is worth noting that from the beginning of rehearsals, she made it clear that fire, flames, smoke and torches were meant to be part of Cassandra’s character, particularly in the wedding scene. In her view, the burnt wood and fire represented the smell of the whole city burning. Her experienced team, and the favourable conditions for the performances, met the technical challenge: the late Fabio Chiesa, among others, was a master in fire tricks, and Sandra Zoccolan (the actress and singer who played Cassandra) bravely danced with torches. From the outset, the audience reacted strongly to her appearance onstage. Over time, the director gradually extended her wedding scene and added two extra scenes as an additional prologue and epilogue (where Cassandra is respectively raped by Ajax, in Athena’s temple, and prepares to leave Troy with Agamemnon, equipped like a terrorist or a kamikaze fighter). As for fire, the director and her assistants took great care to look for the best material to burn in the torches, in order to respect safety issues and to guarantee a powerful effect. The result was impressive, as I can personally testify, having attended a few rehearsals and performances: at night, the light and visual impact of fire attracted and fascinated all spectators, as a concrete symbol of a whole city doomed to its fate. Secondly, the intense smell of burnt materials became part of the audience experience and made it unforgettable. Moreover, during the first indoor performances I attended, the close proximity of the actors and audiences allowed us to perceive the sweat of the bodies and the corresponding smell.

Corporal and unpleasant smells More recently, similar olfactory experiences were generated by two peculiar experiments in exceptionally long shows: they were both free adaptations based on a series of classical dramas, which required an enormous physical effort on the part of all the actors, but were also a demanding challenge for audiences. First, the artist and director Jan Fabre used the smell of sweat and raw meat in his production Mount Olympus To Glorify the Cult of Tragedy (2015), freely inspired by various Greek tragedies. The Italian premiere of 229

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this extraordinary theatre marathon (twenty-four hours long, with only short intervals), hosted by the Roma Europa Festival, took place in the Teatro Argentina in Rome on 17 October 2015. It was sold out, and the general response was excellent, as noted by many critics.21 Among those critics, Maddalena Giovannelli provided the most detailed description of the synaesthetic experience in this marathon.22 As she points out, not only were the performers constantly sweating, due to extreme fatigue, but their collective performance aimed at creating a strong empathy among them, as well as with the spectators. After a few hours, the air of the indoor theatre was saturated by corporal scent, by pieces of raw meat, which the actors threw at each other and wiped on their bodies, and by the smell of wine poured onstage: murder, sacrifice and sparagmos were evoked through this multisensory experience. Compared to the reaction to Roinard’s experiment (1891), this time the spectators and critics reacted with enthusiasm: the marathon was a great success, and very few spectators left the theatre before the end. A few months after Fabre’s premiere, the same kind of collective ‘rite’ was recreated by the Italian director Antonio Latella, in his theatre marathon Santa Estasi: Atridi – Otto ritratti di famiglia. This was a free adaptation of the myths of the Atreidae, which combined various texts by Aeschylus, Euripides, Seneca, Pasolini, Beckett, Yourcenar, Weil and Angelopoulos into eight episodes (called ‘Eight family portraits’ in the subtitle) written by young playwrights.23 Here, again, the corporal scents of performers and audience (which sat in the indoor theatre for sixteen hours, over two days) gave the show the status of ‘multisensory’ experiment and contributed to its success.24 So far, our overview has focused mostly on unpleasant smells, corporal scents, animal bones, raw and rotten meat, flesh burnt on pyres or in a state of putrefaction. Above all, the smell of blood is frequently mentioned in the homicide and revenge stories of ancient tragedies. As for Greek comedies, almost all the extant plays by Aristophanes include war, violence, bodies mortified by famine, plague, starvation and death. He usually connects these dreadful experiences to memories of awful smells, while on the contrary he associates his lifelong dream of peace with the joys and pleasures of life, including the smells of good food and the sensual perfumes of beautiful women.25 In his first extant comedy, Acharnians (425 bce ), the leading character, Dicaeopolis, ‘tastes’ three possible truces with Sparta: he smells the libations offered as a sign of peace, then he describes and celebrates their perfumes, compared to the terrible smell of war.26 In the same way, nasty stinks and nice perfumes are respectively associated with war and peace by the leading character and the chorus of peasants in Aristophanes’ Peace (421 bce ).27 Moreover, the prologue of the same comedy (as well as of Assemblywomen) is completely dedicated to nauseating smells and to scatological jokes: in Peace, the audience will discover only later that the ‘dung-eater’ is a real, giant dung beetle.28 Elsewhere, scatological and harsh jokes aim at mocking evil or weak characters, villains, enemies or victims of the poet’s personal abuse (psogos).29 Most likely, these instances offered ancient audiences many occasions to laugh, but it can be difficult for a modern director to translate them onstage: our sense of humour is very different today, and no one would think of representing unpleasant smell in a 230

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realistic way. A less controversial treatment could be reserved, in theory, for other, more pleasant smells: in Greek and Roman plays, a variety of food, wine, oil and honey may be mentioned or brought onstage, may be consumed in feasts or in funeral rites, or offered to gods or to dead relatives (such as Darius’ ghost in Aeschylus’ Persians). Fish and meat especially may be prepared or cooked or grilled (as in Aristophanes’ Acharnians, Peace and Birds).30 The so-called ‘women comedies’ (Lysistrata, Women at the Thesmophoria, Assemblywomen) also mention perfumed essences and oils in female toilets: they may be carried in vases and receptacles, or poured on the ground or offered to audience members (should they be so fortunate).31 In Frogs (405 bce ), before the poetic agon, incense is first mentioned by Dionysus and later offered by Aeschylus in a solemn, collective prayer to the Muses and to Demeter (Frogs, 871–88).

Libation Bearers (1999): A musical and perfumed performance I wish to conclude with one, singular performance, where smells and scents are of great importance. In 1998, the Italian director Elio De Capitani hired me as a dramaturg (in charge of combining and adapting the Greek text and Pasolini’s translation for the stage).32 He was planning a brand-new production, born from a previous, award-winning collaboration (I Turcs tal Friul, by Pasolini) with the famous Italian musicologist, singer and composer Giovanna Marini. For their second project, they chose another text by Pasolini: his adaptation of Aeschylus’ Oresteia.33 In 1959, Pasolini was already a poet and writer, but not yet a director, when Vittorio Gassman and Luciano Lucignani asked him for a new, poetic translation of the ancient trilogy.34 His free adaptation went onstage in a groundbreaking performance at the Greek theatre in Syracuse in 1960. As the author explained in his preface, he aimed at positioning tragedies closer to modern Italian audiences, whose culture was strongly Catholic.35 Religion and mysticism played an important part in Pasolini’s education and inspired many of his works: see, among others, his short film La ricotta (an episode of the collective movie RoGoPaG, 1963), where a modern crucifixion is staged, and his masterpiece Il vangelo secondo Matteo (‘The Gospel according to St. Matthew’, 1964). When he began working on Oresteia, he chose to translate most original concepts, names and rituals from ancient myths into their Christian equivalents: in Eumenides, for instance, Apollo’s temple becomes ‘a church’, the Pythia a ‘religious woman’ (‘religiosa’), and so on. This choice was fundamental for the director and the composer, when they decided to stage Pasolini’s text in 1998. They were interested not only in the author’s poetry but in its Catholic roots. Moreover, Giovanna Marini had been studying the funeral rites of southern Italy and the Mediterranean area for decades. There, until recent years, women used to perform specific, ritual songs of lament (in the past, some of these women, called prefiche, were professionals). These songs may be compared (in terms of sounds and movement) to the ancient funeral rites and threnoi of Greek tragedies. The connections between Mediterranean rituals and Aeschylus’ second play were so striking that the 231

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director and the composer agreed that the first production of their trilogy should not be Agamemnon, but Libation Bearers.36 This play takes its name from the liquid libations offered by Electra and the chorus as a funeral offering at Agamemnon’s tomb. As the chorus explains, in the parodos (entrance song), they have been charged by Queen Clytemnestra to appease her husband’s spirit in order to avert his wrath against her. The ancient funeral rites consisted, as far as we know, in pouring wine, milk and honey on the ground. These libations are mentioned frequently, indeed obsessively, in the first part of the play (see, for instance, vv. 15–23, 87, 92, 97, 109, 129, 149). The excellent analysis of the play by Marshall points out the central role of the chorus and of the libations, and includes a detailed consideration of stagecraft and props:37 The play is named for the initial entry of the chorus, as twelve slave women appear carrying liquid ritual offerings to the grave of the Greek hero Agamemnon, who was himself murdered. In Greek, they are Choēphoroi, carriers of choes, a type of pouring vessel used in funeral offerings. The chorus is therefore composed of women bringing liquid offerings to a tomb [. . .] The libation bearers in Libation Bearers enter bearing libations. This detail is easily overlooked, but it is important and needs to be argued. Published translations can overlook stage props in the Oresteia, and in this case there is some degree of freedom allowed by the page that cannot remain undecided in production. Liquid offerings are brought to the tomb, somehow. [. . .] If two choristers carry something, or one, or three or six, libations are brought on stage and there is something to be poured. I can see no reason why the answer could not be that all choristers are carrying grave offerings, however, and that instead of trying to minimize the issue of stage props, their presence was emphasized. [. . .] By giving the chorus props that are carried asymmetrically (either in one hand or on one shoulder), Aeschylus instantly creates a situation in which the choreography of the servile chorus is visually distinctive. The entrance song, or parodos, was a theatrical highlight, providing the first opportunity for the audience to observe the chorus’ collective character. [. . .] Part of the presumed awkwardness of bringing libations onstage in this way is that after this the chorus never leaves the performance area. As a result, their props also remain present throughout the play. In my view, this represents an important decision for the mise-en-scène of the play. The musical entry of the chorus employs ritual gestures that constitute ritually appropriate offerings to the deceased. Chorus members can place the jars down, move around them, pick them up, pour, put them down again: the choreographic opportunities are significant and offer novelty, an opportunity not shared by any other extant chorus. That novelty represents a theatrical virtue in this play, and adds visual interest to the scene. It also means that visible grave goods remain present at the thymelē throughout the play, providing a visual cue that Agamemnon has finally been appeased, even when the action shifts to the palace door. In 1999, the director and I reached the same conclusion after a careful reading of Aeschylus’ text: to keep the focus on libations. The entire drama, its chorus and its title 232

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inspired the core idea of bringing onstage a majestic funeral procession of women, all singing and bringing with them concrete ritual offers. For months before and during the rehearsals I worked on the original text and on Pasolini’s poetic version in an effort to translate words into objects, and actions, in close collaboration with the director, the company and the actors. We aimed to exploit by all means the full potential of the funeral prayer, based on the folk songs of Italian and Mediterranean tradition, and the setting, including sounds, perfumes and smells. For the whole company and the audience, as a result, the parodos and the kommos (the choral prayer to the dead) became the most emotional scenes of the play, and of the entire trilogy: a great part of the emotion was due to the chorus, who had to be the true focus of the play. In particular, Balkan music inspired the composer and the director, as in 1999 the same war evoked in Marina Abramovič’s artwork of 1997 (cited above) was still causing widespread bloodshed in Kosovo. The director asked the scene and costume designer (Carlo Sala) to set the scene on those mountains, in an agricultural environment; the female chorus members were dressed in traditional Kosovar costumes. As for the libations, it was clear from the beginning that vases with liquids should be carried onstage by the chorus, laid on the ground and used during the funeral song and the prayer. Besides liquids, the director added a symbolic equivalent of a modern ritual: incense, an essential component of all Catholic funeral rites, in Pasolini’s time as today, was ideal to stimulate the senses, evoke actual rites and emotions and bring most spectators back to their childhood memories. For this reason, the performance was introduced by a new, short prologue (a section of Aeschylus’ text is missing): Orestes and Pylades entered the stage, in silence, and the prayer to Hermes was uttered first by the recorded voice of a young boy.38 With this ‘flashback’ the director evoked young Orestes (who was sent away after Agamemnon’s death, as a child), and he stressed the link between the first and the second play: for years, Orestes has been praying to return to his homeland, one day, and exact punishment for his father’s murder. Therefore, in the performance the actor who played Orestes repeated the same prayer in Italian and in ancient Greek. By kneeling on the ground, he and Pylades prepared and displayed their ritual offerings to Agamemnon’s tomb, which is clearly the focus of the entire theatrical space. Returning to Aeschylus’ text, and its first performance, Marshall makes an astute point:39 I believe that the thymelē serves as the tomb of Agamemnon, establishing the motivation for Orestes’ action at the focal centre of each spectator’s visual field. It is possible that between Agamemnon and Libation Bearers there was some visual change to whatever was there to mark the burial, but ultimately that is not needed: the words of the text (LB 4) are sufficient to define the location unambiguously. In the director’s view, too, the tomb of Agamemnon is the symbolic centre of the play and the pole of the theatrical space. Here, in the prologue, a small fire was lit in a brazier, a lock of Orestes’ hair was burnt, and wine was poured and sipped by Orestes. Suddenly, the ritual was interrupted by the arrival of a group of women: the two men, hidden and 233

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Figure 11.1 Electra and the chorus: Parodos. Coefore-Appunti per un’Orestiade italiana, produzione Teatridithalia, 1999, photograph by Bruna Ginammi. unseen, watched the female chorus and Electra enter as an impressive funeral procession. The women were singing, bearing vases and carrying incense burners, which are still used in Italian churches. Smell and perfumes enriched the audience experience, exploiting all the senses and complemented the songs and gestures of both actors and chorus. Incense grains were buried onstage – so the scent of incense spread throughout – while liquids were poured on the tomb. The chorus and the actors had to maintain contact with the ground: they literally sought Agamemnon underground, whose spirit was evoked in the kommos. The long, intense choral song composed by Giovanna Marini from the original text was so effective that the spectators held their breath, almost hypnotized. The chorus kept singing, with few interruptions from parodos to kommos: while the chorus leader talked, they alternatively moved, sang, sat or stood in a circle around Orestes and Electra; brother and sister were mostly kneeling on Agamemnon’s tomb, as they talked to their father and prayed intensely to his spirit. They communicated with the dead directly, through the ground, by performing powerful songs and gestures, by pouring water and by making ritual offers. In the final part of the kommos, they lay prone on the tomb, face downwards, while the chorus sang, sat around them and beat them with long, thin sticks: the highly emotional sequence of funeral rites and prayers left the audience literally shocked, almost paralyzed. In order to empower the songs and gestures, the director asked the scenographer to cover the whole stage in a thick layer of grass. Although very difficult to obtain, and 234

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Figure 11.2 Electra, Orestes and the chorus: Kommos. Coefore-Appunti per un’Orestiade italiana, produzione Teatridithalia, 1999, photograph by Bruna Ginammi. expensive to maintain, it was constantly kept wet, so that its smell was particularly strong in the first, outdoor performances (July–August 1999). This ‘mantle’ became the symbolic and concrete context of the performance, and its ‘natural’ perfume was an important element of its impact. Thanks to this feature, the movements and gestures of the actors and chorus seemed more ‘real’ and effective: they actually grasped the grass in their hands and struck the ground in the prayer scene and later in the core scene between mother and son, before the matricide. In autumn, when the performances took place in the company indoor theatre (Teatro dell’Elfo, Milan), the grass became somewhat dry and dusty. Inevitably, its perfume changed and the burnt incense prevailed, but the olfactory perception remained a dominant, emotional and unforgettable aspect of the show. We received direct feedback on this element of the performance, as the audience displayed great enthusiasm and willingness to participate, while the reviews were extremely positive. In this regard, the director Elio De Capitani (whom I interviewed on this subject in January 2020) is an important witness because of his dramatic sensibility and prodigious memory (he is a talented actor in his own right, for example playing Apollo in the second part of the production of the Oresteia: Eumenidi in 2000). Regarding smell, he remembers well the warm, enthusiastic reactions of the audiences to the multisensory experience they were offered. Moreover, he judges the last outdoor performance we both attended in the archaeological area of Ostia Antica (24 July 1999) as the most effective. In the late afternoon, a heavy rain preceded the show, tempering the 235

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Figure 11.3 Clytemnestra and Orestes: The matricide. Coefore-Appunti per un’Orestiade italiana, produzione Teatridithalia, 1999, photograph by Bruna Ginammi.

heat and leaving a strong ‘muddy’ smell everywhere: in the air, on the ground and among the stones of the ancient Roman theatre. At nightfall, the intense smell, the beautiful rain-and-shine effect and the entire environment (the exceptional natural setting, the suggestive historical context) prepared the spectators for a full immersion in a multisensory dramatic experience.40 In comparison to the French production of Song of Songs by Roinard, cited above, the Italian production enjoyed several advantages: the talents of a great theatre company, powerful and effective music and a variety of favourable conditions (particularly during the outdoor performances). Last, but not least, these Libation Bearers drew a faithful audience of theatre lovers – including fans, supporters, connoisseurs – mostly made more sensitive and mature by over a century of experiences and performances (in different arts and medias). The efforts of the whole company, of course, made the greatest difference, but olfactory perception helped us all feel deeply, intimately and sensuously involved, as if we were taking part in the collective rite of Aeschylus’ tragedy.

Notes 1. I would like to thank Adeline Grand-Clément, Anastasia Bakogianni, Elio De Capitani, Maddalena Giovannelli and Toph Marshall for their suggestions, and Alessia Rondelli for the pictures (photos by Bruna Ginammi, courtesy of Teatro dell’Elfo, Milan, Italy).

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Incense on the Grass 2. The same persistent, unforgettable smells are not only present in Greek epics, or in war tales, but in other kinds of narratives and their stage adaptations: for instance, many witnesses who survived the Holocaust (or lived just outside the concentration camps) agreed that they could never forget the awful smell that came from the crematoria. Such memories inspired a drama by Renato Sarti about the Risiera di San Sabba, a concentration camp near Trieste, Italy: R. Sarti, I me ciamava per nome: 44787. Risiera di san Sabba (Milan: Baldini e Castoldi, 2001). The latest performance was in Piccolo Teatro, Milan, on Holocaust Memorial Day, 27 January 2020. See also Moni Ovadia, http://www.deportati.it/biblioteca/librionline/i_me_ciamava_ moni/. 3. On these complex topics, see A. Bakogianni, particularly ‘Introduction: Ancient Greek and Roman Multi-Sensory Spectacles of Grief ’, Thersites 9 (2019): Ancient Greek and Roman Multi-Sensory Spectacles of Grief, ed. A. Bakogianni, i–xiv; and A. Bakogianni, ‘Performing Grief: Mourning Does Indeed Become Electra’, Thersites 9 (2019): Ancient Greek and Roman Multi-Sensory Spectacles of Grief, ed. A. Bakogianni, 45–69. 4. É. Wicky, ‘Perfumed Performances: The Reception of Olfactory Theatrical Devices from the Fin-de-siècle to the Present Day’, in Media Archaeology and Intermedial Performance: Deep Time of the Theatre, ed. N. Wynants (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2019), 129. 5. Wicky, ‘Perfumed Performances’, 132. 6. For an accurate description of the production and bibliographical references, see Wicky, ‘Perfumed Performances’, 130–2. See also L. Allegri (ed.), Il teatro e le arti. Un confronto fra linguaggi (Rome: Carocci, 2017), 83–4: ‘Nel Cantico dei cantici Pierre-Napoléon Roinard elaborò una scena [. . .] rappresentante un cedro e un cipresso, con sullo sfondo una serie di gigli stilizzati, il tutto avvolto in una dimensione multisensoriale, grazie alla diffusione nella sala del teatro di fumi di incenso e di essenze di giglio, nel tentativo di ricreare sinestesicamente corrispondenze tra elementi cromatici, vocali, musicali, olfattivi.’ More information about olfactory perceptions in theatre may be found in D. Paquet, La dimension olfactive dans le théâtre contemporain: le corps en question (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2004) and C. Cyr, ‘Représentation et olfaction: le spectateur au parfum’, Jeu. Revue de Théâtre 125 (2007): 127–33. See also S. Banes, ‘Olfactory Performances’, Drama Review 45, no. 1 (2001): 68–76. 7. Wicky, ‘Perfumed Performances’, 136–7. 8. It is true, particularly in these troubled times in which we are living when theatre is menaced by a global pandemic and its very existence is at stake, more than other art forms and medias, due to the risks of proximity and the difficulty of adopting social distancing measures during a live performance. 9. For examples, see Wicky, ‘Perfumed Performances’. 10. C. Trifiletti, ‘Guardare il Tanztheater. Una riflessione sulla fruizione del teatro di Pina Bausch’. Stratagemmi. Prospettive teatrali 14 (2010): 49–50. 11. Trifiletti, ‘Guardare il Tanztheater’, 90–1: ‘il teatro è arte di sintesi [. . .] arte sinestesica’. 12. See Trifiletti, ‘Guardare il Tanztheater’, 94–5: ‘La verità del profumo è nella mente degli spettatori che, coinvolti dalle suggestioni sceniche, completano inconsciamente la realtà mediante la loro immaginazione, collegando così l’immagine del fiore rosso al suo profumo.’ See also C. Lo Iacono, ‘Pina Bausch e la coreografia dei cinque sensi’, in Sinestesie, percezioni sensoriali multiple nella cultura degli ultimi quarant’anni, ed. L. Secci, A Fattori and L. Tofi (Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1999) 23–33; and http://www.pinabausch.org/en/ foundation/foundation-about-us (online archive in progress). See also, on carnation essence, https://www.fragrantica.it/notes/Garofano-7.html. 13. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbswpr7ibBA.

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The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in The Modern Imagination 14. M. Treu, ‘Ajax’, in Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Sophocles, ed. R. Lauriola and K. Demetriou (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2017), 27–36. See also, on Ajax, war traumas and related subjects, A. Bakogianni, ‘Introduction: War as Spectacle: A Multi-sensory Event Worth Watching?’, in War as Spectacle: Ancient and Modern Perspectives on the Display of Armed Conflict, ed. A. Bakogianni and V. M. Hope (London: Bloomsbury 2015), 1–21; A. Bakogianni, ‘Shades of Ajax: In Search of the Tragic Hero in Modern War Movies’, in Locating Classical Receptions on Screen: Masks, Echoes, Shadows, ed. R. Apostol and A. Bakogianni (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 147–71; and A. Bakogianni, ‘Trapped between Fidelity and Adaptation? On the Reception of Ancient Greek Tragedy in Modern Greece’, in Adapting Greek Tragedy: Contemporary Contexts for Ancient Texts, ed. V. Liapis and A. Sidiropoulou (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 329–54. 15. Treu, ‘Ajax’, 27–36. 16. J. Shay, Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character (New York: Athenaeum, 1994). 17. Some of these projects, directed respectively by Peter Meineck and Bryan Doerries, received attention from US military institutions, spectators and critics: see R. Lauriola and K. Demetriou, Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Euripides (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2015), 87, and Treu, ‘Ajax’, 63–4. 18. Troiane da Euripide, dir. Serena Sinigaglia; prod. A.t.i.r., Milan. Cast: Fabio Chiesa, Mattia Fabris, Maria Pilar Perez Aspa, Arianna Scommegna, Sandra Zoccolan, Matilde Facheris, Alessandro Sanpaoli, Matteo Lanfranchi, Andrea Pinna, Stefania Giuliotti, Irene Serini, Chiara Stoppa, Giada Lo Russo, Vincenza Pastore, Lorenzo Piccolo and Alessandro Federico. Premiere 27 July 2004, Operaestate Festival, Bassano del Grappa (VI). See M. Treu, ‘Coro per voce sola, La coralità antica sulla scena contemporanea’, Dioniso 6 (2007): 286–311, and M. Treu, ‘Quattro donne, un coro: Euripide destrutturato. Riscritture e allestimenti recenti delle Troiane’, in Troiane classiche e contemporanee, ed. F. Citti, A. Iannucci and A. Ziosi (Hildesheim, Zurich and New York: Olms, 2017), 217–43. 19. C. W. Marshall, The Structure and Performance of Euripides’ Helen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 217. See also A. Bakogianni, ‘Trapped between Fidelity and Adaptation?’, 348. 20. Marshall, The Structure and Performance of Euripides’ Helen, 216–17. 21. See, for instance, the collective review of the show online, 20 October 2015: https://www. teatroecritica.net/2015/10/jan-fabre-mount-olympus-24-ore-di-follia-teatrale/. 22. M. Giovannelli ‘Ritorno al tragico. Mount Olympus, Santa Estasi e la ricerca di un nuovo rito collettivo’, Stratagemmi. Prospettive teatrali 34 (2016): 26. ‘In sala si genera presto una dimensione sinestesica.’ 23. Premiere at the Teatro delle Passioni, Modena, on 19 April, 2016, then at the Modena Vie Festival, October 2016, http://emiliaromagnateatro.com/en/production/santa-estasi/; Avignon Festival, 19–26 July 2017. See the online reviews by V. Polverelli, ‘Santa Estasi al Festival di Avignone’, Stratagemmi, 4 August 2017, https://www.stratagemmi.it/santa-estasi-al-festival-diavignone/ (in Italian) and by C. Candoni, ‘Santa Estasi, du boucan chez les Atrides’, Sceneweb, 21 July 2017, https://sceneweb.fr/santa-estasi-atridi-otto-ritratti-di-famiglia-dantonio-latella/ (in French). 24. According to Giovannelli, ‘Ritorno al tragico’, 11–41, both marathons aim at altering the audience’s perceptions by stimulating all the senses (‘un’alterazione percettiva e sensoriale dello spettatore’). In this regard, a whole section of her paper is worth citing (26): ‘Ed è proprio il corpo a rivelarsi il protagonista indiscusso di Mount Olympus, e a manifestarsi in una triplice dimensione: come simbolo, attraverso la carne macellata costantemente presente 238

Incense on the Grass sulla scena; come medium per raggiungere forme di conoscenza rimosse, o inaccessibili; infine come veicolo di empatia, innescata nello spettatore attraverso la percezione fisica della fatica dei performer [. . .] E al tempo stesso l’odore compare in riferimento allo sparagmòs, [. . .] Un ammasso sanguinolento di pezzi di carne compare in scena nella prima parte dello spettacolo, e utilizzato nei modi più diversi nel corso della performance: i brandelli vengono gettati sul palco, raccolti e poi gettati di nuovo, battuti violentemente sul petto o sfregati sulla pelle. In sala si genera presto una dimensione sinestetica, che mescola le molte suggestioni auditive e visive all’odore sovraccarico dell’aria a lungo respirata, al fetore della carne e del sangue, al profumo del vino versato sulla scena.’ 25. On smells in Greek comedies, see M. Telò, ‘Aristophanes, Cratinus and the smell of comedy’, in Synaesthesia and the Ancient Sense, ed. S. Butler and A. Purves (Utrecht: Acumen Publishing, 2013), 53–70. 26. See Aristophanes, Acharnians, 971–99; for a wider survey on this comedy, in French, see M. Treu, ‘Le poète comique comme maître de vérité: Les Acharniens d’Aristophane’, Pallas 91 (2013): 41–7. 27. See, for instance, Aristophanes, Peace, 431–4, 520–39, 814–15. 28. See Aristophanes, Peace, 1–49. 29. See M. Treu, ‘La violenza oltre la scena: lo psògos nelle commedie di Aristofane’, in La Violenza nel teatro antico greco e latino, Atti del XVI Congresso Internazionale di Studi sul Dramma Antico (11–13 settembre 1997), ed. C. Barone (Syracuse: Fondazione Inda, 2002), 367–81, and M. Treu, ‘Il “reato del corpo”. Esempi di invettiva in Aristofane’, in Corpi e storia. Donne e uomini dal mondo antico all’età contemporanea, ed. N. Filippini, T. Plebani and A. Scattigno (Rome: Viella, 2002), 283–301, respectively, for the main issues connected to violence, verbal and physical, and to mistreated bodies, particularly regarding the so-called ‘psogos’ (personal abuse) in Aristophanes’ comedies. 30. See, for instance, Aristophanes’Acharnians, 1000–47; Peace, 1039–116; Birds, 1266, 1515–24, 1715–18 (in particular, the smoke of grilled birds – opponents of the new regime – and the smoke of victims –usually offered to Gods in sacrifices – play a great part in the second part of Birds). 31. As for modern performances, wine may be offered to spectators, especially in the final feasts which close most of Aristophanes’ comedies: as for example in one adaptation of Assemblywomen I attended in the courtyard of Munich Glyptothek (in the summer of 1999), and in another directed by Serena Sinigaglia in the Piccolo Teatro, Milan (Le donne in parlamento: see Treu, ‘Coro per voce sola’). 32. Elio De Capitani is an Italian actor and artistic director of the Teatro dell’Elfo /Teatridithalia company in Milan, https://www.elfo.org/persone/elfo/eliodecapitani.html. His work is greatly indebted to Pina Bausch’s legacy (one performance space of their theatre, Elfo Puccini, is named after her). For a detailed survey on the whole project, my work and the production, see M. Treu, ‘Coefore – Appunti per un’Orestiade italiana di Eschilo secondo Pasolini’, Studi Italiani di Filologia Classica XCIII, vol. XVIII, part I (2000): 119–31. 33. The only extant Greek trilogy, currently known as Oresteia, was first performed at Athens in 458 bce . Its three dramas are titled Agamemnon, Libation Bearers and Eumenides (originally followed by a satyr play, now lost: Protheus). The first play dramatizes the return of King Agamemnon from the Trojan war to his hometown Argos, where he is trapped and killed by his wife Clytemnestra. In the second play, Agamemnon’s son Orestes comes back to Argos after a few years of exile; he meets his sister Electra at his father’s tomb, and with her aid, kills his mother and her lover, Aegisthus. In the final play, Orestes is persecuted by the Goddess of Revenge (Erynies): from Delphi, he escapes to Athens, where he is finally absolved by a human jury, appointed and chaired by the City Goddess, Athena.

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The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in The Modern Imagination 34. See M. Treu, ‘The history of ancient drama in modern Italy’, in A Handbook to the Reception of Greek Drama, ed. B. Van Zyl Smit (London: John Wiley and Sons, 2016), 221–37; M. Treu, ‘Classics the “Italian Way” a Long-Standing Paradox’, in Echoing Voices in Italian Literature: Tradition and Translation in the 20th Century, ed. Teresa Franco and Cecilia Piantanida (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2018), 107–8; and M. Treu, Cosmopolitico. Il teatro greco sulla scena italiana contemporanea (Milan: Arcipelago Edizioni, 2005), 151–98. On Pasolini, see also I. Berti, ‘Mito e Politica nell’Orestea di Pasolini’, in Imagines La Antiguedad En Las Artes Escenicas Y Visuales, ed. María José Castillo Pascual (Logroño: Universidad De La Rioja, 2008), 105–18, and F. Carlà, ‘Pasolini, Aristotle and Freud: Filmed Drama between Psychoanalysis and neoclassicism’, in Hellas on Screen: Cinematic Receptions of Ancient Literature, Myth, and History, ed. I. Berti and M. García Morcillo (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2008), 89–116, particularly 95–9. 35. P. P. Pasolini, L’Orestiade di Eschilo tradotta da Pier Paolo Pasolini (Turin: Einaudi, 1960), ‘Nota del traduttore’, 175–8. 36. The whole project was named after another film by Pasolini (Appunti per un’Orestiade Africana (‘Notes for an African Oresteia’), 1973). Each play of their production had the subtitle Appunti per un’Orestiade italiana. For the following year, they chose as a second production Eumenides (Eumenidi, 2000), in order to keep the tight connection established between Orestes and the female chorus in Libation Bearers (especially in its final scene, exceptionally impressive, where the chorus mutated from women into Furies by means of a powerful vocal metamorphosis). According to the company’s plans, the third and last production would have been Agamemnon, in the double function of a flashback and a new beginning for the entire trilogy. Unfortunately, the project was never completed, due to a lack of funds: see Treu, ‘Coefore – Appunti per un’Orestiade italiana di Eschilo secondo Pasolini’ and M. Treu, ‘Eumenidi – Appunti per un’Orestiade italiana di Eschilo secondo Pasolini’, Studi Italiani di Filologia Classica XCIV, vol. XIX, part II (2001): 227–38 (also in Treu, Cosmopolitico. Il teatro greco sulla scena italiana contemporanea, respectively 151–76 and 177–98). 37. C. W. Marshall, Aeschylus: Libation Bearers (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), 29–32. 38. The performance, filmed and edited by Francesco Frongia, is available at the Teatro Elfo Puccini Archive, but was also visible for a short period (23 May–13 June 2020), with French subtitles, on the website of the Italian Cultural Centre in Paris, https://iicparigi.esteri.it/iic_ parigi/it/gli_eventi/calendario/2020/05/iictheatrechezvous-choephores-notes.html / https:// vimeo.com/418803812. For cast and credits, see Treu, ‘Coefore – Appunti per un’Orestiade italiana di Eschilo secondo Pasolini’, 129; Treu, Cosmopolitico. Il teatro greco sulla scena italiana contemporanea, 170. 39. Marshall, Aeschylus: Libation Bearers, 29. 40. See R. Di Gianmarco, ‘In scena con gli Appunti per un’Orestiade italiana’, Repubblica, 24 July 1999, https://ricerca.repubblica.it/repubblica/archivio/repubblica/1999/07/24/in-scena-congli-appunti-per-un.html.

Bibliography Allegri L., ed. Il teatro e le arti. Un confronto fra linguaggi. Rome: Carocci, 2017. Bakogianni, A. ‘Shades of Ajax: In Search of the Tragic Hero in Modern War Movies’. In Locating Classical Receptions on Screen: Masks, Echoes, Shadows, edited by R. Apostol and A. Bakogianni. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018: 147–71.

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Incense on the Grass Bakogianni, A. ‘Introduction: Ancient Greek and Roman Multi-Sensory Spectacles of Grief ’. Thersites 9 (2019): Ancient Greek and Roman Multi-Sensory Spectacles of Grief, edited by Anastasia Bakogianni, i–xiv, https://www.thersites-journal.de/index.php/thr/issue/view/11. Bakogianni, A. ‘Performing Grief: Mourning Does Indeed Become Electra’. Thersites 9 (2019): Ancient Greek and Roman Multi-Sensory Spectacles of Grief, edited by A. Bakogianni, 45–69, https://www.thersites-journal.de/index.php/thr/issue/view/11. Bakogianni, A. ‘Performing Violence and War Trauma: Ajax on the Silver Screen’. In Ancient Violence in the Modern Imagination: The Fear and the Fury, edited by I. Berti, M. G. Castello and C. Scilabra, 57–71. London: Bloomsbury, 2020. Bakogianni, A. ‘Trapped between Fidelity and Adaptation? On the Reception of Ancient Greek Tragedy in Modern Greece’. In Adapting Greek Tragedy: Contemporary Contexts for Ancient Texts, edited by V. Liapis and A. Sidiropoulou, 329–54. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. Banes, S. ‘Olfactory Performances’. Drama Review 45, no. 1 (2001): 68–76. Berti, I. ‘Mito e Politica nell’Orestea di Pasolini’. In Imagines. La Antiguedad En Las Artes Escenicas Y Visuales, edited by M. J. Castillo Pascual, 105–18. Logroño: Universidad De La Rioja, 2008. Berti, I. and M. García Morcillo, eds. Hellas on Screen: Cinematic Receptions of Ancient Literature, Myth, and History. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2008. Candoni, C. ‘Santa Estasi, du boucan chez les Atrides’. Sceneweb, 21 July 2017, https://sceneweb.fr/ santa-estasi-atridi-otto-ritratti-di-famiglia-dantonio-latella/. Carlà, F. ‘Pasolini, Aristotle and Freud: Filmed Drama between Psychoanalysis and Neoclassicism’. In Hellas on Screen: Cinematic Receptions of Ancient Literature, Myth, and History, edited by I. Berti and M. García Morcillo, 89–116. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2008. Cyr, C. ‘Représentation et olfaction: le spectateur au parfum’. Jeu. Revue de Théâtre 125 (2007): 127–33. Di Gianmarco, R. ‘In scena con gli Appunti per un’Orestiade italiana’. Repubblica, 24 July 1999, https://ricerca.repubblica.it/repubblica/archivio/repubblica/1999/07/24/in-scena-con-gliappunti-per-un.html. Giovannelli, M. ‘Ritorno al tragico. Mount Olympus, Santa Estasi e la ricerca di un nuovo rito collettivo’. Stratagemmi. Prospettive teatrali 34 (2016): 11–41. Lauriola, R. and K. Demetriou, eds. Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Euripides. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2015. Lauriola, R. and K. Demetriou, eds. Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Sophocles. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2017. Lo Iacono, C. ‘Pina Bausch e la coreografia dei cinque sensi’. In Sinestesie, percezioni sensoriali multiple nella cultura degli ultimi quarant’anni, edited by L. Secci, A. Fattori and L. Tofi, 23–33. Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1999. Marshall, C. W. The Structure and Performance of Euripides’ Helen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Marshall, C. W. Aeschylus: Libation Bearers. London: Bloomsbury, 2017. Paquet, D. La dimension olfactive dans le théâtre contemporain: le corps en question. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2004. Pasolini, P. P. L’Orestiade di Eschilo tradotta da Pier Paolo Pasolini. Turin: Einaudi, 1960. Polverelli, V. ‘Santa Estasi al Festival di Avignone’. Stratagemmi, 4 August 2017, https://www. stratagemmi.it/santa-estasi-al-festival-di-avignone/. Sarti, R. I me ciamava per nome: 44787. Risiera di san Sabba. Milan: Baldini & Castoldi, 2001. Shay, J. Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character. New York: Athenaeum, 1994. Telò, M. ‘Aristophanes, Cratinus and the smell of comedy’. In Synaesthesia and the Ancient Sense, edited by S. Butler and A. Purves, 53–70. Utrecht: Acumen Publishing, 2013. 241

The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in The Modern Imagination Treu, M. ‘Coefore – Appunti per un’Orestiade italiana di Eschilo secondo Pasolini’. Studi Italiani di Filologia Classica XCIII, vol. XVIII , part I (2000): 119–31. Treu, M. ‘Eumenidi – Appunti per un’Orestiade italiana di Eschilo secondo Pasolini’. Studi Italiani di Filologia Classica XCIV, vol. XIX , part II (2001): 227–38. Treu, M. ‘La violenza oltre la scena: lo psògos nelle commedie di Aristofane’. In La Violenza nel teatro antico greco e latino, Atti del XVI Congresso Internazionale di Studi sul Dramma Antico (11–13 settembre 1997), edited by C. Barone, 367–81. Syracuse: Fondazione Inda, 2002. Treu, M. ‘Il “reato del corpo”. Esempi di invettiva in Aristofane’. In Corpi e storia. Donne e uomini dal mondo antico all’età contemporanea, edited by N. Filippini, T. Plebani and A. Scattigno, 283–301. Rome: Viella, 2002. Treu, M. Cosmopolitico. Il teatro greco sulla scena italiana contemporanea. Milan: Arcipelago Edizioni, 2005. Treu, M. ‘Coro per voce sola, La coralità antica sulla scena contemporanea’. Dioniso 6 (2007): 286–311. Treu, M. ‘Le poète comique comme maître de vérité: Les Acharniens d’Aristophane’. Pallas 91 (2013): 41–7. Treu, M. ‘The History of Ancient Drama In Modern Italy’. In A Handbook to the Reception of Greek Drama, edited by B. Van Zyl Smit, 221–37. London: John Wiley and Sons, 2016. Treu, M. ‘Ajax’. In Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Sophocles, edited by R. Lauriola and K. Demetriou, 27–76. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2017. Treu, M. ‘Quattro donne, un coro: Euripide destrutturato. Riscritture e allestimenti recenti delle Troiane’. In Troiane classiche e contemporanee, edited by F. Citti, A. Iannucci and A. Ziosi, 217–43. Hildesheim, Zurich and New York: Olms, 2017. Treu, M. ‘Classics the “Italian Way” a Long-Standing Paradox’. In Echoing Voices in Italian Literature: Tradition and Translation in the 20th Century, edited by Teresa Franco and Cecilia Piantanida, 100–19. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2018. Trifiletti, C. ‘Guardare il Tanztheater. Una riflessione sulla fruizione del teatro di Pina Bausch’. Stratagemmi. Prospettive teatrali 14 (2010): 49–96. Wicky, É. ‘Perfumed Performances: The Reception of Olfactory Theatrical Devices from the Fin de siècle to the present day’. In Media, Archaeology and Intermedial Performance: Deep Time of the Theatre, edited by N. Wynants, 129–43. London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2019.

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CHAPTER 12 ‘UNTARNISHED EXPERIENCES?’ REENACTORS AND THEIR APPRAISAL OF SMELL AS GATEWAY INTO THE ANCIENT WORLD Martin Lindner

When Anselm of Canterbury wrote his dialogue On Truth in the late eleventh century, he had one of his characters conclude that ‘we can define “truth” as “rightness perceptible only to the mind” ’.1 Postmodernists would argue that there is no abstract truth, except the one we create in our minds. This short chapter, however, will be dealing with a very specific point of view – one which is remarkably sympathetic towards Anselm’s dictum, while at the same time highly individual in its interpretation. The following results are the preliminary findings of a series of interviews that I have conducted over a period of seven and a half years with people engaged in Roman, Celtic or Germanic re-enactment in Austria, Germany and the UK.2 The results were intended as ‘proof of concept’ for a grant application in living history research which, for various reasons, has not gone beyond the initial stages so far. The thirty-two interviews are qualitative, not quantitative. They focus on in-depth discussion of certain ideas and concepts, but cannot claim representativeness for the whole re-enactment community or even for a specific subset.3 While a constant set of questions was used, the selection of interviewees (twenty male, twelve female) was guided by varying individual circumstances: nineteen were students of mine in Göttingen, Oldenburg and Vienna. The remaining thirteen I met at history festivals and similar occasions or when they approached me after one of my public presentations. Even with these limitations, the results allow us to identify basic tendencies and arguments, which could – and should – be explored in a broader and more systematic survey. The communication between re-enactors and researchers of public history4 is tricky at best. To make things worse, the seemingly harmless topic of olfactory experience was rather a by-product of a more loaded discussion. The interviews concentrated on the concept of authenticity and realism as guiding principles for the re-enactors’ activities. This topic is a touchy one even within the community. The reservations in discussing it with an outsider, let alone a potentially sceptical scientist, are enormous. Several interviewees insisted on anonymity, while others explicitly expected peer pressure. While I neither share nor condemn the ideas and dynamics of the respective re-enactment groups, I respect the interviewees’ wish for privacy and will limit the personal information to a minimum for the purpose at hand. That a survey on authenticity in historical re-enactment5 turned into a chapter on smell was an unexpected result of three questions in particular: 243

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‘What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of the epoch in which your re-enactment activity is set?’

●

‘Which elements do you consider essential for a realistic experience of historical re-enactment?’

●

‘How important are emotional aspects for your own assessment of a successful recreation of history?’

In hindsight, I should probably have expected to get feedback on olfactory experience, but I would never have bet on twenty-six out of thirty-two interviewees bringing it up on their own initiative. Smell can be a powerful emotional and mnemonic trigger, albeit one that bypasses self-reflective awareness easily. The most common association and answer to the first question was a single olfactory and/or tactile experience like the smell and touch of a specific piece of armour or garment.6 Most interviewees had problems describing the elements of the smell, which is mainly due to the fact that our language is ill fitted to do so. Almost all of them immediately linked it to a first experience, a process of manufacture, a beloved item or an event (including food booths, communal fires and various activities). It is difficult to ascertain whether the smell actually remained identical over several occasions, despite many re-enactors’ insistence on its unchanged nature and on their ability to recall it perfectly. Several interviewees seemed to be actively looking for a repetition of the olfactory experience as a kind of ingress into the recreated world.7 As one member of a Germanic group expressed it, ‘The smell of my woollen cloak and the dye – I dyed it myself on my balcony – takes me back all that time. It sets the mood. Without it, I am not really there.’ In some cases, a specific setting apparently can have the same effect, for example the smell of campfires, tents and food. These examples show another problem when analysing such kinds of past experience: it is immensely difficult to identify a single aspect from among the interwoven pattern of associations. We cannot objectively recreate an ephemeral set of aromas from a personal activity or festival many years ago to test its isolated effect against the claims.8 Even unpleasant smells can be important in this regard. One Roman re-enactor claimed that ‘the smell of the sweat can hit you hard, especially when we do several shows at the summer festival. I do not like it, but it is something that I associate with the things we do. If you sweat, and the smell of sweaty leather and metal and everything is there, and the smell of the oil you used on them, and the sweat of your comrades, then you are a part of it. After some time, you do not mind the smell as much. I don’t really like it, but I think I would miss it.’9 The statement also hints at the idea that olfactory experience may be highly individual, yet can be imagined as communal or shared in some way. The willingness to talk about smell when answering the second and the third of the above-mentioned questions seems to stem from different qualities ascribed to it: its immediacy and naturalness. When aiming for historic accuracy,10 practically all reenactors go to great lengths for the ‘correct’ visual effect. If you cannot get a hand-forged dagger or a hand-woven coat, at least you should use something that looks as similar as 244

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possible. Reenactors can be at odds with each other regarding the degree of authenticity thus created:11 should you be allowed to rely on a sewing machine or do you have to create visibly hand-crafted stitches? Is it acceptable to substitute a real wolf hide with an imitation fur?12 How authentic can the effect of historical make-up be if you substitute ingredients that we know to be poisonous or allergenic? With this focus on visual elements, olfactory ones appear to be less questionable.13 ‘Smell happens,’ another Roman re-enactor told me. ‘I never had given it much thought before I started. I never had polished brass or iron before. When you do it, you realize that it is simply what the metal does. It smells like this when you polish it, just like it has always done. I just never had realized this before.’ An archaeologist or ancient historian might argue that there are too many variables to guarantee that a smell is identical over the distance of two millennia. He or she might point out that the items used are still modern products or that the recipients are biased by a lifetime in a world of modern aromas. The important point, however, is that this concept of emergence from the material itself inoculates against criticism and doubt. The re-enactor indeed acted intentionally when he or she recreated the object to the best of his or her abilities. By contrast, the aroma was not planned and originated from the object perceived as historically correct. From his point of view, the object cannot lie – and neither can the smell.14 Along the same lines, the olfactory experience is imagined as being less subject to filters and manipulation. A Germanic re-enactor claimed that ‘it is like listening to music. I am not into classical music [. . .]. Still, I can see that they know their stuff, but I would not say: this is good music, because it is difficult. You cannot really argue about taste in music. Smell is the same. You feel it. It is what it is.’ A Celtic re-enactor went one step further: ‘Smelling something is real, it is natural. You cannot fake it. If you try, people notice. Smell can give you an untarnished impression.’ Olfactory experiences were usually not the first topic addressed when asked about ‘elements essential for a realistic experience of historical re-enactment’. Once they were mentioned, however, they were attributed remarkably positive qualities. Several of the statements repeated here have hinted at our third aspect: the emotive effects of smell and their role in rating the success of a historical recreation. Since the interviews did not aim at this point, longer discussions – and only six merited that description – about the effect of a particular aroma were mere happenstance. That reenactors often feel strongly about their subject and their processes is a truism. Whether they could feel the same without a familiar set of smells would be an interesting experiment. The re-enactors who talked to me about their ideals of historical recreation mentioned – frequently, but randomly – three main factors: very strong smells, very unusual smells and the absence of specific smells. The first one may be best explained with the help of a statement from a Germanic reenactor saying that ‘the smell is all around you. When the food is prepared, you can practically feel it in the air. The smell is stuck in my clothes long after it is all over. The roast, the fires, the rotting rubbish. It is intense. This is what it smelled like, and we experience it again. If you do it right, you get a nose full of it.’ This might play into 245

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concepts of grass roots history: the Antiquity to be recreated is not the clinical one of 1950s Hollywood epics or classical museums, but the harsh one as presented in TV series such as Rome or video games like Assassin’s Creed.15 It can be dirty, and – even if the other media cannot strictly speaking convey this – it can be smelly. By extension of this concept, a strong olfactory experience may be an indicator of a successful historical recreation. One Roman re-enactor noted how she had been surprised by a side effect of using oil lamps: ‘They were everywhere, so the smell was everywhere. Our lamps today don’t smell, so it took me some time to associate the smell with having artificial light around. By now, I have come to expect it. If you have the authentic light, this is what the rooms smell like.’ Sadly, I was unable to ascertain which oil was used in the events she referred to – but again, this would have missed the point anyway. Re-enactment leads into a world different from our own, so it sounds logical that at least some of its smells ought to be unfamiliar to us as well.16 The equivalent of this argument is authenticity by omission: a re-enactor from the same group remarked how the lack of modern transportation caused a difference in everyday olfactory experiences. If you cannot smell automobiles, this makes it easier to become engulfed in the recreation of Antiquity. It is possible to imagine other situations apart from re-enactment activity which could give you the chance not to smell exhaust fumes or hot rubber. That the interviewee did not ponder those illustrates that he thought of that particular smell as a potential threat only in specific circumstances. He was able to tolerate it in different modern world situations, but developed an aversion to its disturbing effect in others, because he defined the lack of the distinctly modern aroma as a prerequisite for a successful re-enactment experience. *

*

*

The conversations were documented by me in shorthand, so I cannot guarantee a wordperfect reproduction in any case. Nevertheless, the choice of vocabulary was so distinct that even small deviations seem negligible for the identification of the main tendencies: smell is often described in emotional terminology.17 It is powerful, because of its subconscious effects, which can become even more relevant once the re-enactor has noticed and internalized them. When confronted with Anselm’s approach of ‘defin[ing] “truth” as “rightness perceptible only to the mind” ’, the interviewees had no problem linking this line of thought to their olfactory experiences. Smells are, after all, something that emanates from the historically accurate setting, objects and performance. In some way, they are external truths to be perceived, mentally stored and incorporated in a set of expectations. The necessity of an absence of ahistorical aromas was rarely remarked upon. Admittedly, the interviews did not raise that point actively, so a new survey might yield different results. The presence of the ‘right’ smells, however, could be seen – or better: felt – as crucial authenticating factors. The limited size of my sample makes it methodologically doubtful for distinguishing between preferences in subgroups, but it would have been futile in any case. Women (ten out of twelve) were slightly more likely to mention the topic than men (sixteen out of 246

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twenty), although the difference was so minute as to be statistically irrelevant. Interviewees from Celtic, Germanic or Roman groups named different smells, but so did the various members of these subsets.18 While the dominating experience apparently may be a highly individual one, on the whole, the preference for a specific epoch or culture seems to have no effect on judging smells as part of the re-enactment activity. The olfactory experience is identified as – for lack of a better word – an honest ‘gateway’ into Antiquity. Notes 1. [D]efinire, quia veritas est rectitudo mente sola perceptibilis (Anselm. De Verit. 11), transl. J. Hopkins and S. Richardson. I thank Fiona Hobden for her feedback on the first draft of the manuscript. 2. Introductions to the various forms and subjects of re-enacted antiquity: M. Junkelmann, ‘Das Phänomen der zeitgenössischen “Römergruppen” ’, in Dino, Zeus und Asterix. Zeitzeuge Archäologie in Werbung, Kunst und Alltag heute, ed. I. Jensen and A. Wieczorek (Mannheim: Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen, 2002), 73–90; J. Bofinger and T. Hoppe, ‘Echt keltisch? Eisenzeitliche Geschichtsdarstellungen. Möglichkeiten und Grenzen’, in Lebendige Vergangenheit. Vom archäologischen Experiment zur Zeitreise, ed. E. Keefer (Stuttgart: Theiss, 2006), 83–7; G. Munier and P. A. Kanape, Les Germains. De la conquête romaine aux grandes invasions, 2nd edn (Paris: Éd. Errance, 2013); F. Carlà-Uhink and D. Fiore, ‘Performing Empresses and Matronae: Ancient Roman Women in Re-enactment’, Archäologische Informationen 39 (2016): 195–204; U. Otto, ‘History of the Field’, in The Routledge Handbook of Reenactment Studies, ed. V. Agnew, J. Lamb and J. Tomann (London: Routledge, 2020), 111–14. 3. For an alternative approach, see S. Samida and R. Liburkina, ‘Living History und Reenactment: Erste Ergebnisse einer Umfrage’, Archäologische Informationen 37 (2014): 191–7. 4. Understood here in the sense of M. Demantowsky, ‘What Is Public History?’, in Public History and School International Perspectives, ed. M. Demantowsky (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2019), 3–37. The lines between academic and public history are more blurred than researchers often tend to assume; see e.g., J. de Groot, Consuming History: Historians and Heritage in Contemporary Popular Culture, 2nd edn (London: Routledge, 2016), 13–32. 5. As W. Hochbruck, Geschichtstheater. Formen der ‘Living History’. Eine Typologie (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2013) and – to lesser extent – U. Otto, ‘Re: Reenactment. Geschichtstheater in Zeit der Geschichtlosigkeit’, in Theater als Zeitmaschine. Zur performativen Praxis des Reenactments, ed. J. Roselt and U. Otto (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2012), 229–54, and A. M. Tyson, ‘Reenacting and Reimagining the Past’, in A Companion to Public History, ed. D. Dean (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell, 2018), 351–63, have demonstrated, living history can be subdivided into categories such as ‘pageantry’ (recreating history in the form of fairs and parades), ‘live action role playing’ (similar to re-enactment, but with a focus on usually fictitious characters) and many more. During my survey, most interviewees showed strong preferences for certain activities, but had no problem with calling their group’s performance at a historical fair or festival ‘re-enactment’. The term will thus be used in this chapter as a common denominator accepted by the interviewees for their activities. See also n. 10 and D. Dean, ‘Living History’, in The Routledge Handbook of Reenactment Studies, ed. V. Agnew, J. Lamb and J. Tomann (London: Routledge, 2020), 120–4. 6. For similar responses, see S. Crumbach, ‘Archäologie in Bilder kleiden? Kostüme als Rekonstruktionsversuch und Vermittlungsmedium in der Öffentlichkeitsarbeit’,

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The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in The Modern Imagination Archäologische Informationen 39 (2016): 19–30 (with a focus on historical clothing and its production). 7. On the concept of re-enactment as time travel, see S. Samida, ‘Moderne Zeitreisen oder Die performative Aneignung vergangener Lebenswelten’, Forum Kritische Archäologie 3 (2014): 136–50. The transformative power of repetition in re-enactment is discussed by E. FischerLichte, ‘Die Wiederholung als Ereignis. Reenactment als Aneignung von Geschichte’, in Theater als Zeitmaschine. Zur performativen Praxis des Reenactments, ed. J. Roselt and U. Otto (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2012), 13–52. 8. On the technical challenges of preserving any kind of smell, see the chapter by C. Bembibre in this volume. 9. The hint at sweaty bodies is a strong reminder of the kind of imagery which is used in advertisements for male perfumes, playing with references to ancient athletics: see the chapter by Besnard and Bièvre-Perrin in this book. 10. ‘Authenticity’ in any form of living history is a terminological minefield that cannot be sensibly discussed here; see C. Holtorf, From Stonehenge to Las Vegas: Archaeology as Popular Culture (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira, 2005), 112–29; C. Lindholm, Culture and Authenticity (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008), 1–10; J. Brewer, ‘Reenactment and Neo-Realism’, in Historical Reenactment: From Realism to the Affective Turn, ed. I. McCalman and P. A. Pickering (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 79–89; E. U. Pirker and M. Rüdiger, ‘Authentizitätsfiktionen in populären Geschichtskulturen. Annäherungen’, in Echte Geschichte. Authentizitätsfiktionen in populären Geschichtskulturen, ed. E. U. Pirker et al. (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2010), 11–31; J. Walker, ‘Textual Realism and Reenactment’, in Historical Reenactment: From Realism to the Affective Turn, ed. I. McCalman and P. A. Pickering (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 90–108; T. Mager, Schillernde Unschärfe. Der Begriff der Authentizität im architektonischen Erbe (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016), 19–41; V. Agnew and J. Tomann, ‘Authenticity’, in The Routledge Handbook of Reenactment Studies, ed. V. Agnew, J. Lamb and J. Tomann (London: Routledge, 2020), 20–4; S. Gapps, ‘Practices of Authenticity’, in The Routledge Handbook of Reenactment Studies, ed. V. Agnew, J. Lamb and J. Tomann (London: Routledge, 2020), 183–6. 11. On the relations and conflicts between reconstruction as part of experimental archaeology, living history as edutainment and re-enactment as individual activity, see P. G. Stone, The Constructed Past: Experimental Archaeology, Education and the Public (London: Routledge, 1999); D. Mölders, ‘Archäologie als Edutainment. Können Reenactment und Living History historische Lebenswelten erklären?’, in Gestion et présentation des oppida. Un panorama européen, ed. I. Benková (Glux-en-Glenne: Centre Archéologique Européen, 2008), 155–64; M. C. Bishop, ‘Re-enactment and Living History: Issues about Authenticity’, in Presenting the Romans: Interpreting the Frontiers of the Roman Empire World Heritage Site, ed. N. Mills (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2013), 23–30; S. Willner, Geschichte en passant. Archäologisches Themenwandern in den Alpen als wissenskulturelle Praxis (Munster: Waxmann, 2017). 12. For a professional’s perspective on the subject, see now C. Scilabra and D. Fiore, ‘Re-enacting Soldiers and Dressing Roman Women: An Interview with Danielle Fiore’, in Ancient Violence in the Modern Imagination: The Fear and the Fury, ed. I. Bertis, M. G. Castello and C. Scilabra (London: Bloomsbury, 2020), 219–25. 13. Whether or not this extends to haptic experiences as well would be another interesting point for a broader survey – as would be the whole issue of a presumed ‘hierarchy of senses’. 14. The concept that an object can tell its own story – with history being the (objective) multitude of those stories – is well attested in didactic research; see L. S. Levstik, A. G. Henderson and J. S. Schlarb, ‘Digging for Clues: An Archaeological Exploration of Historical Cognition’, in

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‘Untarnished Experiences?’ Researching History Education: Theory, Method, and Context, ed. L. S. Levstik and K. C. Barton (New York: Routledge, 2008), 393–407. 15. See J. Solomon, ‘Televising Antiquity: From You Are There to Rome’, in Rome, Season One: History makes Television, ed. M. S. Cyrino (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008), 11–28; A. Prieto Arciniega, ‘ “Rome Is No Longer Rome”: In Search of the Eternal City in Cinema’, in Imagining Ancient Cities in Film: From Babylon to Cinecittá, ed. M. García Morcillo et al. (Oxford: Routledge, 2015), 163–83; T. French and A. Gardner, ‘Playing in the “Real” Past: Classical Action Games and Authenticity’, in Classical Antiquity in Video Games: Playing with the Ancient World, ed. C. Rollinger (London: Bloomsbury, 2020), 63–76. On Rome in particular, see also the chapter by K. Beerden in this book. 16. Similar reactions are reported to the recreation of the Paestum Rose perfume; see the chapter by G. Corrente in this volume. 17. Whether it is appropriate to interpret such findings as evidence for an ‘affective turn’ as hailed by V. Agnew, ‘History’s Affective Turn: Historical Reenactment and Its Work in the Present’, Rethinking History 11 (2007): 299–312, would require a lengthier discussion than is possible here; cf. I. McCalman and P. A. Pickering, ‘From Realism to the Affective Turn: An Agenda’, in Historical Reenactment: From Realism to the Affective Turn, ed. I. McCalman and P. A. Pickering (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 1–17. 18. Furthermore, the type of setting can already create a certain bias. For a majority of my interviewees, the primary focus was on ancient warfare and/or rural societies – which might explain why perfume or incense were hardly mentioned.

Bibliography Agnew, V. ‘History’s Affective Turn: Historical Reenactment and Its Work in the Present’. Rethinking History 11 (2007): 299–312. Agnew, V. and J. Tomann, ‘Authenticity’. In The Routledge Handbook of Reenactment Studies: Key Terms in the Field, edited by V. Agnew, J. Lamb and J. Tomann, 20–4. London: Routledge, 2020. Bishop, M. C. ‘Re-enactment and Living History: Issues about Authenticity’. In Presenting the Romans: Interpreting the Frontiers of the Roman Empire World Heritage Site, edited by N. Mills, 23–30. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2013. Bofinger, J. and T. Hoppe. ‘Echt keltisch? Eisenzeitliche Geschichtsdarstellungen. Möglichkeiten und Grenzen’. In Lebendige Vergangenheit. Vom archäologischen Experiment zur Zeitreise, edited by E. Keefer, 83–7. Stuttgart: Theiss, 2006. Brewer, J. ‘Reenactment and Neo-Realism’. In Historical Reenactment: From Realism to the Affective Turn, edited by I. McCalman and P. A. Pickering, 79–89. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Carlà-Uhink, F. and D. Fiore. ‘Performing Empresses and Matronae: Ancient Roman Women in Re-enactment’. Archäologische Informationen 39 (2016): 195–204. Crumbach, S. ‘Archäologie in Bilder kleiden? Kostüme als Rekonstruktionsversuch und Vermittlungsmedium in der Öffentlichkeitsarbeit’. Archäologische Informationen 39 (2016): 19–30. Dean, D. ‘Living History’. In The Routledge Handbook of Reenactment Studies: Key Terms in the Field, edited by V. Agnew, J. Lamb and J. Tomann, 120–4. London: Routledge, 2020. de Groot, J. Consuming History: Historians and Heritage in Contemporary Popular Culture, 2nd edn. London: Routledge, 2016. Demantowsky, M. ‘What is Public History?’. In Public History and School International Perspectives, edited by M. Demantowsky, 3–37. Munich: Oldenbourg, 2019.

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‘Untarnished Experiences?’ Stone, P. G. The Constructed Past: Experimental Archaeology, Education and the Public. London: Routledge, 1999. Tyson, A. M. ‘Reenacting and Reimagining the Past’. In A Companion to Public History, edited by D. Dean, 351–63. Hoboken, NJ : Wiley Blackwell, 2018. Walker, J. ‘Textual Realism and Reenactment’. In Historical Reenactment: From Realism to the Affective Turn, edited by I. McCalman and P. A. Pickering, 90–108. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Willner, S. Geschichte en passant. Archäologisches Themenwandern in den Alpen als wissenskulturelle Praxis. Munster: Waxmann, 2017.

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ENVOI ‘SCRATCH AND SNIFF’: RECOVERING AND REDISCOVERING ROMAN AROMAS Mark Bradley

Roman Aromas (1997) was one of the early contributions to Oxford University Press’ ‘Smelly Old History’ series of nine short, colourfully illustrated ‘scratch-and-sniff ’ textbooks written for children of ten years and older in the late 1990s. Highlights in this series included Greek Grime, Medieval Muck and Victorian Vapours; all nine books were written by a prominent scholar of infectious diseases, Mary J. Dobson, who was formerly Director of the Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine at Oxford. The books were translated into six languages and have since sold over a million copies worldwide. There is much we can learn from Roman Aromas about modern approaches to historical smells, and the appeal of odour to the child in all of us. The book’s colourful cover (see Colour Plate 14) immediately evokes an array of smells – all of them foul ones – through its cartoon worms, flies and maggots, and a scene from the Roman baths in which two sweaty Roman men rest amid vapours, one of them scraping himself with a strigil, while a nauseous-looking ornamental bronze fish spouts blue-green liquid into the pool. The visual cues for olfaction, which have been a recurring topic of scrutiny within this volume, work together to entice the young reader to pick the book up and explore what lies within. And what lies within is more of the same: cartoon cameos of Roman life alongside short snippets of entertaining text, and – as something of a unique selling point – on nearly every other page a scented panel made of microencapsulated scented oils for the reader to scratch and recreate the smells of the past. This was a technology that had been invented in the mid-1960s and has been applied to a wide range of cards, stickers and books ever since to capture the imagination of generations of young sniffers.1 The aim of this technology, it is often claimed, is to stimulate the memories, associations and emotions that typically accompany smell, as the editors explored in their discussion of classically inspired modern perfumes at the very start of this book.2 Roman Aromas, like other books in the ‘Smelly Old History’ series, was a roller coaster of olfactory creativity, and its contents evoke many of the themes explored throughout this volume. The text opens with ‘A Sense of the Past’: ‘Imagine living in Roman Britain nearly two thousand years ago, and smelling like a Roman! The Romans loved fragrant aromas and detested stinky ones. They spent hours at the baths and drenched themselves in oils and perfumes. But when they arrived in Britain, they found the Celts were much less fragrant.’3 As this volume has demonstrated, the smells of the past are fascinating in no small part because it is so difficult to identify, grasp and reconstruct them. Dobson 253

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begins her book with the premise that ‘of all the senses in the past, we often forget the sense of smell’. Roman Aromas, then, affords us the opportunity to time-travel back into ancient Rome and sense what it was really like. In far-off fifty-five BC Julius Caesar arrived by sea. With scented break and Roman nose He smelt just like a fragrant rose! His own good men with perfumed hair Were clean and brave, and did prepare To conquer Britain right away. And keep their legions there to stay. But then upon the beach they smelt The odours of the ancient Celt. The Romans soon felt pretty sick. Was this a stinking Celtic trick? The Romans found, to their dismay, It really was too foul to stay. The Brits were fierce, their tribes were strong And, what was worse, their rotting pong! The aromatic Roman lot Soon took control but left the spot For ninety years, so history tells. (It probably wasn’t just the smells.) At last, Old Claudius had a plan – He really was a clever man. With all his perfumed Roman rank He guessed just why the Britons stank! ‘Let’s give the Celts a bath and sewer, We’ll make Old England smell quite pure!’ With perfumes, incense, oil and more The Romans drenched the English shore. But Roman aromas declined and fell, And rotten rubbish replaced the smell. The Roman Empire was under strain And all good sense went down the drain.4 254

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With this entertaining ditty, the book establishes a preliminary dichotomy between the civilized, fragrant Romans and the uncivilized, foul-smelling Celts. Tellingly, it invites the young target British readers to associate themselves with the invading Romans, rather than the natives of ancient Britain. Elegant smells are written into this narrative about Romanization – the Romans bring pleasant smells with their civilized habits. Immediately, we encounter the binary opposition of good and bad, of fragrant and foul, that we have seen throughout this book and all studies of smell past and present. Good and bad smells are associated with the civilized and the uncivilized, and that in turn is connected to race and ‘otherness’, a theme that the chapters in Part 3 of this volume in particular have explored. The stinky Celts are also depicted wallowing in their filth alongside their pigs – a reminder of the enduring association of bad smells and animalistic behaviour. And, although the book is much more preoccupied with the pongs of Antiquity than its heavenly scents, it presents fragrant flowers and garlands competing with ‘the stinks of fish and refuse’. However, Roman Aromas is also alert to some of the cultural differences and ambiguities that characterize approaches to smell, hygiene and cleanliness: although the Romans and Celts are introduced as olfactory polar opposites, the Celt (we are told, and indeed invited to scratch-and-sniff ) has discovered how to use soap, while the Roman prefers to scrape dirt off rather than wash it off. Although the book’s young readers are spared some of the heavier and grittier aspects of moral reflection that this current volume has examined, there are a few nods towards the relationship between smell and propriety, such as the pervasive recognition through the book of the links between smell, medicine and health. In the account of extravagant Roman feasts, we are invited to contemplate dormice, rotting fish guts and bad breath from too much wine, and ‘Disgustus’ is depicted tickling the back of his throat with a perfumed peacock feather and throwing up on the dining-room floor. ‘Is it [this feast] really so appetising?’, we are asked. But at Roman Aromas’ feast, we also encounter another important theme: the slave girl, ‘Perfuma’, ‘knows how to disguise bad odours’ by sprinkling flowers over the banqueters and washing their sticky hands in rose water.5 There is a sort of complicity in the use of scents to cover up bad odours. And Perfuma is one of the very few female figures presented by the book: the stinks that dominate Roman Aromas are very much the domain of men, with only the occasional corrective female intervention. As Part 2 of our volume reminds us, smell can be very gendered. And as many chapters in this book have demonstrated, most smells begin and end with the body – the food we put in them, the fluids and gases we expel, the things we do with our bodies, and the behaviours and values they represent. Although Roman Aromas begins with an opposition between Romans and Celts, as the story unfolds it probes and scrutinizes all the habits that the Romans bring to Britain, and begins to show how this opposition between fragrant and foul really is not that simple: ‘Roman life wasn’t all a breath of fresh air.’6 Besides the rich banquets, it becomes clear that the sweat and oils of the gymnasium and baths were not always such a good thing, public latrines were downright unpleasant, and military life and gladiatorial games were full of ‘deadly vapours’.7 So, even in this simple children’s book, the ambiguities 255

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inherent to smell are exposed; even here we get a sniff of the Romans of the Decadence.8 As the closing verse above puts it, in the end ‘Roman aromas declined and fell’. This is one very small example of the fascination that ancient smells conjure up for the inquisitive young modern nose. This little children’s book reminds us of the intimate connection between odours and the materials and substances that emitted them. The seemingly paradoxical use of urine for cleaning Roman clothes, a foul practice not overlooked by Roman Aromas (for which it reserved a dedicated scratch-and-sniff panel), for example, has become a popular feature of children’s textbooks about Roman civilization, historical novels and museum displays.9 One of the earliest historical novels that was set in antiquity that I myself read as a child, Lindsey Davis’ The Silver Pigs (1989) – the first instalment of her long-running ‘Falco’ series – opens with a memorable and sensational scene from the bustling heart of imperial Rome: Lenia’s laundry. Steam billowed out to flatten us. Washerboys stamped the clothes, splashing up to their cracked little knees in hot tubs. There was a great deal of noise – slapping the linen, thumping and pounding it, clanging cauldrons – all in a close, echoing atmosphere. The laundry took up the whole ground floor, spilling out into the courtyard at the back [. . .] [. . .] I shall have to explain about the bucket and the bleach vat. A long time afterwards I described all this to someone I knew well, and we discussed what launderers used for whitening cloth. ‘Distilled woodash?’ my companion suggested doubtfully. They do use ash. They also use carbonate of soda, fuller’s earth, and pipeclay for the brilliant robes of election candidates. But the pristine togas of our magnificent Empire are effectively bleached with urine, obtained from the public latrines. The Emperor Vespasian, never slow to light on brisk new ways of squeezing out cash, had slapped a tax on this ancient trade in human waste. Lenia paid the tax, though on principle she increased her supply for nothing whenever she could. The woman I had been telling the story to commented, in her cool way, ‘I suppose in the salad season, when everyone’s eating beetroot, half the togas in the Forum are a delicate hue of pink?’ [. . .] [. . .] There was a furnace heating the well water used in the wash. There were garments spread over wicker frames above braziers of burning sulphur, which through some mysterious chemistry smokes in additional whiteness. There were several youths scoffing at my fury, and there was a dreadful smell.10 The use of urine as a detergent and a treatment was also among the most memorable pièces de résistance of the Jorvik Viking Centre in York, which I visited at the age of seven when it first opened in 1984, and which was one of the earliest (and best known) of the museums that set out to lure young visitors by re-enacting the sights, sounds and smells of the past.11 Since then, the recreation of odours both foul and fragrant in museums, exhibitions, tourist sites and theatrical performances has become increasingly

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commonplace, and Raffaella Viccei, Martina Treu and Martin Lindner have provided some splendid examples of this in the closing chapters of this book. All this is testament to the growing importance of reanimating the senses and sensations of Antiquity and, as Kim Berdeen puts it in this book, the ‘evocation of empathy’ in bridging past and present. But it was the 1970s and 1980s that marked a renaissance in both scholarly and popular interests in smell, perhaps the last of the senses to become the subject of comprehensive research. These decades marked the publication of Marcel Detienne’s Les jardins d’Adonis (1972) about the scents of ancient Greece, and Alain Corbin wrote his groundbreaking Le miasme et la jonquille (1982) about the olfactory experiences of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Paris. This was followed hard on its heels by Patrick Süskind’s extraordinary crime novel Das Parfum (1985), which followed the story of the hyperosmotic orphan Jean-Baptiste Grenouille through those same Parisian streets, scrutinizing good smells, bad smells, civilized and uncivilized behaviour and the world of animal instinct and sexuality. All three books were quickly translated into multiple languages and reinvigorated both popular and scholarly interest across the globe in the mysterious and enigmatic world of olfaction. This became such an important and alluring area of study in part because historical smells are so difficult to pin down and because we ourselves (the argument sometimes goes) are so keen to blot out and eradicate smells in our own environment. As Roy Porter stated in his preface to the English translation of Alain Corbin’s book, ‘Today’s history comes deodorized.’12 But this volume has demonstrated that Porter’s claim no longer holds true. Not only are there bold and effective efforts to excavate and reconstruct the smells of the past (as Cecilia Bembibre, Giulia Corrente and Amandine Declerq demonstrate in this book), but the ways in which the ancients detected, classified and understood those smells have now been the subject of decades of rich and fruitful research. Alongside this scrutiny of ancient olfaction, we are also now much more attuned to our own assumptions and prejudices about how smell works and what it means, and it is in the complex interface between ancient and modern approaches to smell that this volume makes a timely and important contribution. Its chapters set out with the premise that olfaction provides a number of significant perspectives on society, culture and civilization, and demonstrate that modern re-enactments and interpretations of those perspectives underscore the highly subjective, controversial and powerful position that smell occupies in the human imagination. Recognition of the pivotal social and cultural role of smell is not limited to recent decades either: Catherine Maxwell has shown us that a poet at the turn of the twentieth century was keenly aware of the potential for scent to evoke classical aesthetics, himself responding to generations of Victorian artists who (as Anna Guédon goes on to demonstrate) themselves reanimated the multisensoriality of Antiquity in their paintings. In addition, the olfactory reflections of Charles Baudelaire and Marcel Proust with which this volume began remind us that ‘the mnemonic properties of olfaction’ were recognized and exploited many generations ago. It could be argued that scholars have indeed fought a battle against the ‘olfactory amnesia’ that the editors warned us about in the Introduction, and have succeeded in their quest to make Antiquity smell again. 257

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For some of us, the past is a foreign country, a place where the sights, sounds, tastes and smells are unfamiliar, jarring, offensive – ‘out of place’, as Mary Douglas would have put it.13 As the editors claim in the Introduction, ‘Our modern “hygienic” world generally assumes that the past smelt bad.’ For others, however, Antiquity is a mirror of ourselves, where sensory stimuli are pleasant, admirable, in place. But even foul smells under the right circumstances can be recalibrated into something that our nostrils might welcome, something that is not out of place – a sumptuous cheese platter, fish roasting in the oven, the familiar smell of a family dog. Discourses of familiarity and alterity, as Giacomo Savani reminds us in this volume, are far from straightforward. Our scratch-and-sniff books and olescent museum displays, then, like all the diverse media explored across this book, invite us to contemplate and weigh up the rich and polysemic odours of civilization.

Notes 1. See Mohd Gayoor Khan, Vinod Gauttam, H. S. Chandel, Asra Ali and Kasma Tariq, ‘Development of microencapsulation: A review of literature’, International Journal of Scientific Study 5, no. 4: 264–8; G. F. Seattle, ‘Books and materials: How does scratch and sniff work?’, The Economist, 12 May 2014, https://www.economist.com/babbage/2014/05/12/how-doesscratch-and-sniff-work accessed July 2021. 2. See the Introduction to this volume. 3. Mary J. Dobson, Roman Aromas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 4. 4. Dobson, Roman Aromas, 5. 5. This is reminiscent of the imagery explored by Giulia Corrente in her chapter on the roses of Paestum in this book, as well as the well-known scene of Elagabalus’ roses. 6. Dobson, Roman Aromas, 15. 7. Dobson, Roman Aromas, 27. 8. On decadence and deviance, see the Introduction. 9. Dobson, Roman Aromas, 17. I have examined the reception of this custom in Mark Bradley, ‘ “It all comes out in the wash”: Looking harder at the Roman fullonica’, Journal of Roman Archaeology 15 (2002): 20–44. 10. Lindsey Davis, The Silver Pigs (London: Arrow Books, 1989), 7–10. 11. The museum is still popular, but no longer unique: see https://www.jorvikvikingcentre.co.uk/ accessed July 2021. For an assessment of the Centre’s significance in the development of museums, see Peter Addyman, ‘Reconstruction and interpretation: The example of the Jorvik Viking Centre, York’, in The Politics of the Past, ed. Peter Gathercole and David Lowenthal (London: Routledge, 1994), 257–64. 12. Alain Corbin, The Foul and the Fragrant: Odor and the French Social Imagination, trans. Miriam L. Kochan, foreword Roy Porter (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), 1. 13. Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London: Routledge, 1966), esp. 36.

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Bibliography Addyman, Peter. ‘Reconstruction and interpretation: The example of the Jorvik Viking Centre, York’, in The Politics of the Past, edited by Peter Gathercole and David Lowenthal, 257–64. London: Routledge, 1994. Bradley, Mark. ‘ “It all comes out in the wash”: Looking harder at the Roman fullonica’. Journal of Roman Archaeology 15 (2002): 20–44. Corbin, Alain. Le miasme et la jonquille: L’odorat et l’imaginaire social aux XVIIIe et XIXe siècles. Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1982. Corbin, Alain. The Foul and the Fragrant: Odor and the French Social Imagination. Translated by Miriam L. Kochan, with a foreword by Roy Porter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986. Davis, Lindsey. The Silver Pigs. London: Arrow Books, 1989. Detienne, Marcel. Les jardins d’Adonis. La mythologie des aromates en Grèce. Paris: Gallimard, 1972. Dobson, Mary. Roman Aromas. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Douglas, Mary. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. London: Routledge, 1966. Khan, Mohd Gayoor, Vinod Gauttam, H. S. Chandel, Asra Ali and Kasma Tariq. ‘Development of microencapsulation: A review of literature’. International Journal of Scientific Study 5, no. 4 (2017): 264–8. Seattle, G. F. ‘Books and materials: How does scratch and sniff work?’. The Economist, 12 May 2014, https://www.economist.com/babbage/2014/05/12/how-does-scratch-and-sniff-work. Süskind, Patrick. Das Parfum. Zurich: Diogenes, 1984.

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INDEX

The letter f after an entry indicates a page that includes a figure. À rebours (Huysmans, Joris-Karl) 30, 183, 225 Abrabovič, Marina Balkan Baroque 227–8 Acharnians (Aristophanes) 230, 231 acousmetry 219 n. 28 Adan, Émile illustration for Les filles du feu 60f Aeneid (Virgil) 80, 82, 83–4, 216 Aeschylus Eumenides 80, 231 Libation Bearers 14, 231–6 Oresteia 231 Persians 231 aesthete 10–11, 19, 30, 36, 42 affective turn, the 138 Aftel Archive of Curious Scents 159 air quality 143–5 Ajax (Sophocles) 227–8 Alcestis Barcinonensis 208, 214 alchemy 42 Alma-Tadema, Lawrence 11, 119–20, 121, 126, 127, 184 assemblages 120, 126 Bath, A 125 Caracalla 124 Favourite Custom, A 123–4, 126 Finding of Moses, The 63 Glaucus and Nydia 56 Hearty Welcome, A 36 Italy 188 n. 26 Roses of Hielogabalus, The 11, 124, 182–3, 184 Sappho 39–41 Sappho and Acaeus 40f, 41 Spring Festival (On the Road to the Temple of Ceres), A 28, 29f Summer 124–5f, 126 Tepidarium 125 Thermae Antoninianae 124 Ambrosio, Arturo and Maggi, Luigi ultimi giorni di Pompei, Gli 58 Anacharsis (Lucian of Samosata) 108 ancient societies 8, 38, 138 see also Egypt and Greece and Rome Cyprus 164 medicine 78–9 sculpture 5, 101

animals 208 Anselm of Canterbury, Saint On Truth 243, 246 anthropology 8 Antiquity see also Egypt and Greece and Rome ancient societies. See ancient societies present, and the 4–6 Aphrodite 81, 174, 175–6 Aphrodite’s fragrance 164 Apicius De re coquinaria 194 Apocalypse Now (Coppola, Francis Ford) 224 Apollonius Argonautica 83 Apuleius Florida 45 Golden Ass, The 32 Metamorphoses 54, 62 Paridis iudicium 214 archaeology 8 Capturing the Senses: Digital Methods for Sensory Archaeologies symposium 214–15 experimental 196–7 Heraion of Foce del Sele 181 Multimedia and Sensory Museum of the Milan Roman Theatre 207, 209–17 museum of Cycladic art 107 Pompeii 52, 55 Roman 32–4 scent 34, 35 sensory 120 virtual 215 Wales 32–4 Argonautica (Apollonius) 83 Argonautica (Valerius Flaccus, Gaius) 83 Ariosto, Ludovico Orlando Furioso 179 Aristophanes 230 Acharnians 230, 231 Assemblywomen 231 Birds 231 Frogs 231 Lysistrata 231 Peace 230, 231 Women at the Thesmophoria 231 Aristotle 6

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Index Aroma: The Cultural History of Smell (Classen, Constance, Howes, David and Synnott, Anthony) 8 ‘AromaRama’ 225 aromatherapy 84–6 ‘Arria Marcella’ (Gautier, Théophile) 35, 36 art 5, 9–12, 56, 226–7 see also art history genre anecdotique 119 Néo-Grecs/Pompéistes 119 art history 121 Assassin’s Creed video game 103–4, 246 Assemblywomen (Aristophanes) 231 ‘At Eleusis’ (Swinburne, Algernon Charles) 28 Athenaeus Deipnosophists (Banquet of the Sophists) 199 autobiography 160–2

Borgnetto, Luigi Romano and Pastrone, Giovanni caduta di Troia, La 61 Böttiger, Karl Isis Vesper, Die 57 Bouchard, Natalie 160 Bradley, Mark Smell and the Ancient Senses 8 breath 80, 81, 84 Bridgman, Frederick 62 Brierley, Alison 86–7 Brillat-Savarin, Jean Anthelme Physiology of Taste, The 30–1 Britannia (television series) 145 Brooks, Sarah 139 Bulwer-Lytton, Edward Last Days of Pompeii. See Last Days of Pompeii.

‘Bacchanals of Euripides, The’ (Pater, Walter) 29 Bacchelli, Riccardo 180 Balkan wars 227–8, 233 balsam 208 Baron, Ludovic 104 Barr, Chandler 185 Barrow, Rosemary J. 183 Dieux du Stade calendar 104 Barton, K. C. and Levstik, L. S. 138–9 Bath, A (Alma-Tadema, Laurence) 125 Baudelaire, Charles 1 Correspondances 225 ‘Fantôme, Le’ 1–2, 6 Bausch, Pina 227 Beardsley, Aubrey 30 Under the Hill 30, 36f–7 Belgiorno, Maria Rosaria 164 Bennett, Joseph 141 Betzer, Sarah 122, 126 Beyoncé 102 Birds (Aristophanes) 231 Blanchard, August Thomas Marie, after AlmaTadema, Lawrence Summer 125f blood 80, 81, 87, 208, 228, 230 bodies 100 blood 80, 81, 87, 208, 228, 230 hair 104 nudity 107, 121 oiling 104, 105, 108 sexualization 105 skin 101–4, 107–8, 124 sweat 104–5, 144, 207, 229–30, 244 Bonnard, Mario and Leone, Sergio Last Days of Pompeii, The 59–60, 61, 64, 65 Borgeaud, Philippe 53

caduta di Troia, La (Pastrone, Giovanni and Borgnetto, Luigi Romano) 61 Caerleon 32, 33–4 Campania 176 Campbell, Naomi 101 Capturing the Senses: Digital Methods for Sensory Archaeologies symposium 214–15 Caracalla (Alma-Tadema, Laurence) 124 Carson, Anne 38, 39 Casina (Plautus) 213 Catholicism 231 cedar 82, 106 Chassériau, Théodore 119–20, 123, 125–6, 127 assemblages 120, 126 Tepidarium 119, 121–23f, 126 chemistry 7 Chesneau, Ernest 132 n. 58 childhood 19 n. 73 Christianity 63–5 Chypre (Coty, François) 157 cinema 53, 58–60, 61, 64, 65, 224, 225 ‘AromaRama’ 225 Kyphi 196–7 mimicry 140 olfaction, semblance of 140 perfume recreation 170 n. 34 skin colour 102 smellscapes 140 Circe 82–3, 84 Circe (Miller, Madeline) 84 Classen, Constance 8 Classen, Constance, Howes, David and Synnott, Anthony Aroma: The Cultural History of Smell 8 classical bodies 100–5 perfume industry 105–7, 108–9 classical Greece. See Greece classical Rome. See Rome

262

Index classical reception studies 4–5, 12–14, 67 n. 16, 120 Claudianus Epithalamium for the marriage of Honorius and Maria 178 Clements, Ashley 38 ‘Cleopatra’ (Pearce, Steven) 160 colour 212–13 gender 11 sculpture 5, 101 skin 101–4, 107–8, 124 comic books 18 n. 57 Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt, The One and the Many (Hornung, Eric) 53 concert of perfumes 225 Condillac, Étienne Bonnot de 6 Coppola, Francis Ford Apocalypse Now 224 Corbin, Alain 6–7 miasme et la jonquille, Le 7, 257 Correspondances (Baudelaire, Charles) 225 Coughlin, Sean 163 crocus 208 Cultural History of the Senses in Antiquity, A (Toner, Jerry) 38 Cyprinum 162–3 Cyprus 164, 174–5 Dante Purgatorio 84 Daphnis and Chloe (Longus) 32 David, Lindsey Silver Pigs, The 256 Day, Fred Holland 101 De Capitani, Elio 231, 235–6 de Heredia, José Maria Tepidarium 119, 122, 126, 127 trophées, Les 122 De odoribus (Theophrastus) 175 De re coquinaria (Apicius) 194 De rosis nascentibus 178 death 142–3, 200 see also funerals roses 183–4 decadence 10, 11 flowers 36f–7 Machen, Arthur 27 sexual transgression 57 Swinburne, Algernon Charles 28 Decadent and Occult Works (Machen, Arthur) 27 Declercq, Amandine 163 interview with 193–200 Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Gibbon, Edward) 10 Degeneration (Nordau, Max) 11 Deipnosophists (Banquet of the Sophists) (Athenaeus) 199

‘Denys L’Auxerrois’ (Pater, Walter) 29, 35 Detienne, Marcel jardins d’Adonis, Les 257 Dickens, Charles Pickwick Papers 43 Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (Smith, William) 28 Dieux du Stade calendar (Baron, Ludovic) 104 Dionysus 43 Dioscorides On Medicinal Flora 194, 195 Diseases of Women (Hippocrates) 79 disinfectant 208 Dobson, Mary J. 253 Greek Grime 253 Medieval Muck 253 Roman Aromas 253–6 Victorian Vapours 253 Dynameron (Myrepsos, Nicolas) 193 L’Eau de Cologne de Napoléon à Ste Hélène 157 L’Eau de la Reine de Hongrie 157 Eau d’Italie 184–5 Paestum Rose 184–5 Ebers papyrus 198 Eclogues (Virgil) 32 ecstasy 42–4 Egypt 52, 53–4, 143 historic perfumes 163–4, 193 Isiac ritual 52, 53–60, 61–3, 64–5 Isis, cult of 54–60, 61–3, 64–5 Kyphi 193–200 ritual 197–8 Egyptology 52 Elagabalus 10, 11 Elegies (Propertius) 177 Eleusinia (Machen, Arthur) 28 Elmgreen and Dragset 105 emotion 139–40, 156, 199–200, 212, 224, 246 ‘English Poet, An’ (Pater, Walter) 45 Ennodius 178 Epistulae ex Ponto (Ovid) 177 Epithalamium for the marriage of Honorius and Maria (Claudianus) 178 Erizku, Awol have three hearts, I 102 Eros (Versace) 103, 105, 106 Eros pour femme (Versace) 106 estrangement 214 Eumenides (Aeschylus) 80, 231 Euripides Helen 228 Trojan Women 228, 229 excrement 155 ‘Extinct’ (Duchaufour, Bertrand) 160

263

Index Fabre, Jan Mount Olympus To Glorify the Cult of Tragedy 229–30 ‘Fantôme, Le’ (Baudelaire, Charles) 1–2, 6 Fasti (Ovid) 183 Favourite Custom, A (Alma-Tadema, Laurence) 123–4, 126 Febvre, Lucien 6 ‘sensibilité et l’histoire: comment reconstituer la vie affective d’autrefois, La?’ femininity 11, 78 perfume 103, 105, 106, 109 Fénelon, François 225 festivals 208 filles du feu, Les (Nerval, Gérard de) 60f Finding of Moses, The (Alma-Tadema, Laurence) 63 fire 229 see also smoke Florida (Apuleius) 45 flowers 36f–7, 58, 124 see also plants and roses crocus 208 as motifs 180–2f Foka, Anna 220 n. 52 food 144, 209, 231 honey 196 Fougère Royale (Parquet, Paul) 157 Four boys on the terrace used by Gloeden and by his cousin (Wilhelm von Pluschow) at Posillipo (Naples) (von Gloeden, Wilhelm) 102f Fragment 2 (Sappho) 38–9, 41, 45 Frogs (Aristophanes) 231 From A to B and Back Again: The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (Warhol, Andy) 161 fumigation 77–9 funerals 17 n. 46, 231, 232–4 Furies, the 80 ‘Garden of Proserpine, The’ (Swinburne, Algernon Charles) 28 Gargantua and Pantagruel (Rabelais, François) 43 gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) 158–9 Gautier, Théophile ‘Arria Marcella’ 35, 36, 121 GC-MS (gas chromatography-mass spectrometry) 158–9 Gell, William Pompeiana 52 gender 3, 104, 142 body hair 104 colour 11 names 106 perfume 105, 106, 109 skin colour 103, 107–8 genre anecdotique 119 Georgics (Virgil) 31, 176–7

264

Gherchanoc, Florence 107 Gibbon, Edward 10 Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire 10 ginger 106 Giovannelli, Maddalena 230 Gladiator (Scott, Ridley) 104 Glass, Sarah 85–6 Glaucus and Nydia (Alma-Tadema, Laurence) 56 Gluck, Christoph Willibald Iphigénie en Tauride 227 Orphée et Euridice 227 Golden Ass, The (Apuleius) 32 Goldsmith, Dora 163–4, 167 Goop 77, 84, 85–6 Great God Pan, The (Machen, Arthur) 27, 29, 30, 32 Greece 5, 8, 10–11, 167 see also Cyprus art 9 Heraion of Foce del Sele 181 Paestum 174, 176–81f roses 176–85 sculpture 101 Greek Grime (Dobson, Mary J.) 253 Greek Studies (Pater, Walter) 29 Gunter, Jennifer 86 hair 104 Hamilakis, Yannis 120, 126 Harmony (Dicksee, Frank) 28 Harpies, the 83–4 have three hearts, I (Erizku, Awol) 102 health 7 see also medicine holistic health 84–6 Hearty Welcome, A (Alma-Tadema, Laurence) 36 Helen (Euripides) 228 Heliogabalus (emperor) 182–3 Heliogabalus, High Priest of the Sun and Emperor of Rome (Solomon, Simeon) 10 Heller, Bruno 142 Heraion of Foce del Sele 181 Hieroglyphics: A Note upon Ecstasy in Literature (Machen, Arthur) 43 Hill of Dreams, The (Machen, Arthur) 12, 27, 30, 32, 33–9, 41–4, 45–6 Historia Augusta 182, 183, 208 historic perfumes 155, 157–9 authenticity and interpretation 166–8 oil as base 186 n. 6 reconstruction 162–8, 193–200 recreation 162–8 historical empathy 138–40, 146 history 138–9 see also re-enactment holistic health 84–6 Holland Day, Fred 101 Holocaust, the 237 n. 2 Homer 225

Index Iliad 175, 228 Odyssey 82 Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite 175 homosexuality 101 honey 196 Hornung, Eric Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt, The One and the Many 53 Howes, David 8 humour 230–1 Hunt, Peter Last Days of Pompeii, The 62, 65 Hunter, Nicola Lost Bodies 78, 86–7, 88 Raising the Skirt 86, 87 Huysmans, Joris-Karl À rebours 30, 183, 225 ‘Hymn to Proserpine, The’ (Swinburne, Algernon Charles) 28 ICH (intangible cultural heritage) 156 Idylls of the King (Tennyson, Alfred) 32 If There Ever Was (Blackson, Robert) 167 If There Ever Was – an exhibition of extinct and impossible smells 160 Iliad (Homer) 175, 228 imaginary perception 107–8 IMAGINES conference 5, 12 incense 8, 57, 198–9, 231 see also Kyphi Bulwer-Lytton, Edward 63–4 cinema 61 cult of Isis 60, 63 Libation Bearers 233, 234 religion 64, 143 theatres 226, 228–9 influencer culture 85 intangible cultural heritage (ICH) 156 Invictus (Paco Rabanne) 103, 105, 106 Iphigénie en Tauride (Gluck, Christoph Willibald) 227 Isiac ritual 52, 53–60, 61–3, 64, 65 Isis, cult of 54–60, 61–3, 64, 65 Isis and Osiris (Plutarch) 196 Isis Vesper, Die (Böttiger, Karl) 57 iunx 1 Iunx (Sisheido) 1 jardins d’Adonis, Les (Detienne, Marcel) 257 jasmine 56, 106, 113 Jicky (Guerlain, Aimé) 157 Jorvik Viking Centre 256 Joy (Patou) 162 Kaiser, Roman 159 Kerléo, Jean 158, 164, 165, 166 Kiskune, Laime 163

Kouros (Yves Saint-Laurent) 105, 106, 108–9 Kyphi 163, 193–200 ‘kyphi, parfum sacré des anciens Égyptiens, Le’ (Loret, Victor) 196 Kypria 175 LaChapelle, David 104 Ladianou, Katerina 39 language 44–5 Last Days of Pompeii (Bulwer-Lytton, Edward) 12–13, 36, 52, 63–4 aromatic resins 57 cinematic adaptions 52–3, 58–60, 61, 64, 65 Isiac ritual 55–7 television adaptations 62, 65 Last Days of Pompeii, The (Hunt, Peter) 62, 65 Last Days of Pompeii, The (Leone, Sergio and Bonnard, Mario) 59–60, 61, 64, 65 Latella, Antonio Santa Estasi: Atridi – Otto ritratti de famiglia 230 laundry 256 ‘Laus Veneris’ (Swinburne, Algernon Charles) 28 legend of red roses, The (Medici, Lorenzo de’) 179 lemon 7, 106 Leonardo da Vinci Medusa 81 Leone, Sergio and Bonnard, Mario Last Days of Pompeii, The 59–60, 61–2, 64, 65 Levi, Primo Mnemogogues, The 161 Libation Bearers (Aeschylus) 14, 231–6 libations 232, 233, 234 life 200 limbic system, the 199–200 Lives of the Most Excellent Architects, Painters and Sculptors, The (Vasari, Giorgio) 81 Longus Daphnis and Chloe 32 Loret, Victor ‘kyphi, parfum sacré des anciens Égyptiens, Le’ 196 Lost Bodies (Hunter, Nicola) 78, 86–7, 88 Lucan Pharsalia 80 Lucian of Samosata Anacharsis 108 Lysistrata (Aristophanes) 231 Machen, Arthur 27, 28, 29–30 alchemy 42 archaeology 32–3 classics, the 32 Decadent and Occult Works 27 ecstasy 42–4

265

Index Eleusinia 28 flowers 36–7 as gourmand 30–1 Great God Pan, The 27, 29, 30, 32 Hieroglyphics: A Note upon Ecstasy in Literature 43 Hill of Dreams, The 12, 27, 30, 32, 33–9, 41–4, 45–6 homely smells 31 plant smells 31, 32, 36, 37 Sappho 38–41 Secret Glory, The 27 style 44 synaesthesia 41–3 Welsh childhood 31, 32 wine, aroma of 43–4, 45 McLean, Kate 160 Maggi, Luigi and Ambrosio, Arturo ultimi giorni di Pompei, Gli 58 magic 77, 78 Circe 82–3, 84 pharmaka 81–2 Maison pompéienne 121 male gaze 107, 126 marble 16, 37, 41, 103–4, 109, 123–4, 141–2, 184, 189 n. 28, 212 Marini, Giovanna 231, 234 Marius the Epicurean (Pater, Walter) 29, 30, 45 Marshall, C. W. 228–9, 232, 233 Martial 177 Martianus Capella 178 Martin, John 63 masculinity 104, 107–8, 109 Maxwell, Catherine 5, 257 Scents and Sensibility: Perfume in Victorian Literary Culture 7, 27–8 Medea 5, 8 Medici, Lorenzo de’ legend of red roses, The 179 medicine 7, 8, 77, 199–200 holistic health 84–6 Kyphi 193, 194, 199 scent therapy 78–9 vaginal fumigation 77, 78, 79 women 77–9, 85 Medieval Muck (Dobson, Mary J.) 253 Medusa 80–1, 102 Medusa (Leonardo da Vinci) 81 Mémoires d’Hadrien (Yourcenar, Marguerite) 216 memory 2, 224–5 archives 160 autobiography 160–2 Baudelaire, Charles 2 Proust, Marcel 2–3 Mendesian 163–4 menstrual fluid 79

266

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 6 Phénoménologie de la perception 6 Metamorphoses (Apuleius) 54, 62 Metamorphoses (Ovid) 32, 78, 177 Metopian 163 miasme et la jonquille, Le (Corbin, Alain) 7, 257 Milan Roman Theatre 207, 209–17 Miller, Madeline Circe 84 Millet, Francis Davis Thesmophoria 28–9 mind 45 Mount Olympus To Glorify the Cult of Tragedy (Fabre, Jan) 229–30 Mnemogogues, The (Levi, Primo) 161 mnemonics 2 mugwort 85, 86 Multimedia and Sensory Museum of the Milan Roman Theatre 207, 209–17 multisensory collections 159–60 museography 209–13 museum of Cycladic art, Athens 107 musk 2, 6, 45, 56, 84, 113, 185 Myrepsos, Nicolas Dynameron 193 myrrh 7, 392, 39, 52, 55–7, 67, 69, 131, 163–4, 185, 198 myrtle 41 ‘Myth of Demeter and Persphone, The’ (Pater, Walter) 29 mythology 77 napalm 224 Napoléon, Prince Jèrôme 121 Natural History (Pliny) 79, 162, 164, 176 natural scent preservation 159 neo-classicism 5 Néo-Grecs 119 neopaganism 84 Nerval, Gérard de 64 filles du feu, Les 60f Temple d’Isis. Souvenir de Pompéi, Le 55, 57 Nordau, Max Degeneration 11 nudity 107, 121 odour perception 156, 209–10, 224 Odyssey (Homer) 82 oil as base 186 n. 6 oil lamps 246 ointment 180 olfactifs 30 olfactory amnesia 6 olfactory archives 156, 157–61 olfactory bulb 200 olfactory experience 243–7

Index olfactory heritage 155–6 olfactory images 160 olfactory perception 156, 209–10, 224 olfactory plate, Multimedia and Sensory Museum of the Milan Roman Theatre 210–12 olfactory reconstruction. See reconstruction/ recreation olfactotherapy 200 Olympéa (Paco Rabanne) 105, 106–7 On Medicinal Flora (Dioscorides) 194, 195 On Odours (Theophrastus) 196 On Truth (Anselm of Canterbury) 243, 246 orange-flower 208, 113 n. 46 Oresteia (Aeschylus) 231 Orestes (Pierre et Gilles) 104 Orlando Furioso (Ariosto, Ludovico) 179 Orphée et Euridice (Gluck, Christoph Willibald) 227 Osmothèque 157–9, 164, 165, 167 otherness 138, 139, 146, 255 Ovid 3, 80, 82 Epistulae ex Ponto 177 Fasti 183 Metamorphoses 32, 78, 177 Oxford Movement 64 Paestum 174, 176–7, 184–5 see also roses of Paestum painted tombs 180–1f Winckelmann, Johann Joaquim 180 Paestum Rose (Eau d’Italie) 184–5 Paltrow, Gwyneth 77, 86, 87 Parfum, Das (Süskind, Patrick) 161–2, 257 Parfum Royal 155, 157, 159, 164–6f, 167–8 Paridis iudicium (Apuleius) 214 Pasolini, Pier Paolo 231–3 ricotta, La 231 Turcs tal Friul, I 231 vangelo secondo Matteo, Il 231 Pastrone, Giovanni and Borgnetto, Luigi Romano caduta di Troia, La 61 patchouli 113 Pater, Walter 29 ‘Bacchanals of Euripides, The’ 29 ‘Denys L’Auxerrois’ 29, 35 ‘English Poet, An’ 45 Greek Studies 29 Marius the Epicurean 29–30, 45 ‘Myth of Demeter and Persphone, The’ 29 Studies in the History of the Renaissance 29, 36, 42 ‘Study of Dionysus, A’ 29 ‘Style’ 30, 44–5 peace 230 Peace (Aristophanes) 230, 231 perception 107–8, 166–7, 209–10, 215, 216

performance pieces 156 perfume industry 7, 100 classical bodies 105–7, 108–9 Perfume Regained (Ronat, Luc) 170 n. 34 perfumes 57, 81, 197 see also under individual names concert of perfumes 225 historic. See historic perfumes ingredients 106 names 105–6 rose of Paestum. See roses of Paestum production 176, 197 Roman 209 in wine 197 Persians (Aeschylus) 231 perspective recognition 138, 139 perversion 11 pharmaka 81–2 Pharsalia (Lucan) 80 Phénoménologie de la perception (Merleau-Ponty, Maurice) 6 Philostratus 39, 41 photography 101–3, 104–5 museum of Cycladic art 107 physical activity104–5 Physiology of Taste, The (Brillat-Savarin, Jean Anthelme) 30–1 Pickwick Papers (Dickens, Charles) 43 Picture of Dorian Gray, The (Wilde, Oscar) 30 Pierre et Gilles Orestes 104 Pinaud 3 pink 11 Pinosa, Naro 105 plants 31, 32, 36, 37, 195–6 see also flowers grass 234–5 mugwort 85, 86 saffron 208 Plautus Casina 213 Pliny Natural History 79, 162, 164, 176 plumbing 208 Plutarch 199 Isis and Osiris 196 Poems and Ballads (Swinburne, Algernon Charles) 27–8 poison 5, 80–4, 91 polysensorial experiences 62, 63 Pompeian House 69 n. 42 Pompeiana (Gell, William) 52 Pompeii 52, 55, 121, 170 n. 34 Pompéistes 119 popular culture 196–7 pornography 104 Porter, Roy 257

267

Index prêtresse d’Isis. Légende de Pompéi, La (Schurés, Édouard) 57 profumi di Afrodite e il segreto dell’olio, I exhibition 164 Propertius Elegies 177 propriety 255 Proust, Marcel 2–3, 121, 174 PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) 228 Purgatorio (Dante) 84 purification rituals 54 Pyramid Texts 193, 200 Rabelais, François Gargantua and Pantagruel 43 race/racism 7, 101 photography 101–2 skin colour 101–4, 124 television 102 Raising the Skirt (Hunter, Nicola) 86, 87 re-enactment 243–7 recipes 54, 164, 194–6 Reciting Statues installation 213–14 reconstruction/recreation 209–13, 256–7 Abrabovič, Marina 227–8 perfumes 162–8, 193–200 re-enactment 243–7 theatre 224–7, 228–34 Reinarz, Jonathan 5 religion 10, 54, 63–4, 208, 231 see also rituals Catholicism 231 Christianity 63–5 identity 143 incense 63, 64, 143, 226 Isiac ritual 52, 53–60, 61–3, 64–5 Isis, cult of 54–60, 61–3, 64–5 ritual 197–8 Rhodon (Sirenae Essenze) 184 ricotta, La (Pasolini, Pier Paolo) 231 Rihanna 102 Ritts, Herb 101 Ritualists, the 10 rituals 10 art 28–9 funeral 17 n. 46, 231, 232–4 Isiac 52, 53–60, 61–3, 64, 65 Marius the Epicurean 30 purification 54 Roinard, Pierre-Napoléon 226 Song of Songs 226, 236 Roman Aromas (Dobson, Mary J.) 253–6 Roman baths 119, 122 Alma-Tadema, Laurence 119–20, 121, 123–6, 127 Chassériau, Théodore 119, 121–3f, 126, 127 de Heredia, José Maria 119, 122, 126 nineteenth-century depictions 119–20, 125–7

268

Roman Catholicism 64 Roman theatre 207–17 Rome 10–11, 141–6, 253–6 see also Roman baths air quality 143–4 archaeology 32–4 Campania 176 death 142–3, 183–4 feasts 255 festivals 208 food 144, 196, 209, 231 gardens 187 n. 15 gender 142 imperial banquets 182–3 laundry 256 Parfum Royale 165, 167–8 perfume 165 perfumed oil production 176 Pompeii 52, 55, 121, 170 n. 34 religion 64, 143 roses 176–84 scent bottles 34f–5 sexuality 144 socio-economic status 143 theatre 207–17 Wales 32–4 washing 255 Rome television series 12, 139, 140–6, 246 air quality 143–4 death 142–3 food 144 gender 142 religion 143 sexuality 144 socio-economic status 143 Rosalia festivals 183–4 rose of Paestum perfume 174 roses 174–6, 212, 213 see also roses of Paestum imperial banquets 182–3 as motifs 180–3, 184 Rosalia festivals 183–4 status 181 symbolism 183 Roses of Hielogabalus, The (Alma-Tadema, Laurence) 11, 124, 182–3, 184 roses of Paestum Bacchelli, Riccardo 180 literary sources 176–9 as motifs 180–2f painted tombs 180–1f reviving 184–5 Winckelmann, Johann Joaquim 180 Roubille, Auguste 3, 4f Rousteing, Oliver 102 saffron 208, 212–13 212–13 Saint-Laurent, Yves 108–9

Index Sandys, Frederick 5 Santa Estasi: Atridi – Otto ritratti de famiglia (Latella, Antonio) 230 Sappho 38–41 Fragment 2 38–9, 41, 45 synaesthesia 38–9 Sappho and Acaeus (Alma-Tadema, Laurence) 40f, 41 Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytilene (Solomon, Simeon) 40f, 41 Sappho: Memoir, Text, Select Renderings and a Literal Translation (Wharton, Henry Thornton) 41 Saveurs et senteurs de la Rome Antique (Teysseyre, Michèle) 165 scent bottles 34f–5 scent therapy 78–9 Scents and Sensibility: Perfume in Victorian Literary Culture (Maxwell, Catherine) 7, 27–8 Schurés, Édouard prêtresse d’Isis. Légende de Pompéi, La 57 Scott, Ridley Gladiator 104 scratch-and-sniff 140, 167, 253–5 sculpture 5, 101 Scylla 82–4 Secret Glory, The (Machen, Arthur) 27 senses hierarchy of 6, 8, 11, 155 synaesthesia 38 ‘sensibilité et l’histoire: comment reconstituer la vie affective d’autrefois, La?’ (Febvre, Lucien) 6 sensorial assemblages 120, 126 sensorial palimpsests 123, 126, 127 sensorium 8, 120 sensory archaeology 120 sensory turn, the 6–9 sexual transgression 57 sexuality 144 Shakespeare, William 185 Silver Pigs, The (David, Lindsey) 256 Sinigaglia, Serena Troiane 228, 229 Sirenae Essenze 184 skin 101–4, 107–8, 124 slavery 7, 143 Smell and the Ancient Senses (Bradley, Mark) 8 ‘smell archive. An alphabet for the nose, The’ 159–60 ‘Smell Memory Kit’ (SMK) (Tolaas, Sissel and Supersense) 160–1 smells 5, 244, 246 see also perfumes animals 208 approaches to antique 12–14 art 121 automobiles 246

blood 80, 81, 87, 208, 228, 230 childhood 19 n. 73 cinema 58 comic books 18 n. 57 corporal 80, 81, 87, 104–5, 144, 207, 208, 228–31, 244 covering up 255 food 144, 196, 209, 231 history of 6–9 honey 196 funerals 17 n. 46 gods and 53, 81 incense. See incense lack of 246 medicine 7, 8 oil lamps 246 old books 167 olfactory amnesia 6 peace 230 perfume industry 7 perversion of 11 plants. See plants Proust, Marcel 2–3 race 7 reconstruction/recreation. See reconstruction/ recreation sensory turn, the 6–9 slavery 7 strong 56–7, 245–6 sweat 104–5, 144, 207, 229–30, 244 symbolism 208 war 224–5, 228, 230 Watson, Lyall 15 n. 9 unpleasant 8, 78, 155, 207–8, 227, 229–31, 244, 253–6, 258 visualizing 9–12 smellscapes 140, 145, 160 @smellstories 160 Smith, William Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities 28 SMK (‘Smell Memory Kit’) (Tolaas, Sissel and Supersense) 160–1 smoke 58, 59–61, 228–9 snakes 80, 81 social division 5, 7 socio-economic status 143, 209 sociology 8 Solomon, Simeon 10 Heliogabalus, High Priest of the Sun and Emperor of Rome 10 Sappho 39–41 Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytilene 40f, 41 Song of Songs (Roinard, Pierre-Napoléon) 226, 236 songs 231, 232, 234

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Index Songs before Sunrise (Swinburne, Algernon Charles) 27 Sophocles Ajax 227–8 soul, the 30, 42, 44–5 sound 231, 232, 234 Ovid 3 Spartacus: Blood and Sand (television series) 145 Spring Festival (On the Road to the Temple of Ceres), A (Alma-Tadema, Laurence) 2, 29f Studies in the History of the Renaissance (Pater, Walter) 29, 36, 42 Studies of the Greek Poets (Symonds, John Addington) 41 ‘Study of Dionysus, A’ (Pater, Walter) 29 ‘Style’ (Pater, Walter) 30, 44–5 Suetonius Vita Neronis 183 Summer (Alma-Tadema, Laurence) 124–5f, 126 Supersense and Tolaas, Sissel ‘Smell Memory Kit’ (SMK) 160–1 ‘Surrender’ (Millns, patrician and Baysa Kóan Jeff ) 160 Süskind, Patrick Parfum, Das 161–2, 257 Swallowable Perfume 197 sweat 104–5, 144, 207, 229–30, 244 Sweetser, Wesley D. 30, 31 Swinburne, Algernon Charles ‘At Eleusis’ 28 ‘Garden of Proserpine, The’ 28 ‘Hymn to Proserpine, The’ 28 ‘Laus Veneris’ 28 Poems and Ballads 27–8 Sappho 39 Songs before Sunrise 27 Symonds, John Addington Studies of the Greek Poets 41 synaesthesia 38–9, 41, 109, 225–7, 239 Bausch, Pina 227 theatre 215, 216, 226, 227 taste 31 television 62, 65 race 102 Temple d’Isis. Souvenir de Pompéi, Le (Nerval, Gérard de) 55, 57 Tennyson, Alfred Idylls of the King 32 Sappho 39 Tepidarium (Alma-Tadema, Laurence) 125 Tepidarium (Chassériau, Théodore) 119, 121–3f, 126 Tepidarium (de Heredia, José Maria) 119, 122, 126, 127 texts, perfumed 45

270

Teysseyre, Michèle 165 Saveurs et senteurs de la Rome Antique 165 theatre 224, 225–34 see also Roman theatre Theophrastus De odoribus 175 On Odours 196 Thermae Antoninianae (Alma-Tadema, Laurence) 124 Thesmophoria (Millet, Francis Davis) 28–9 Thisbé (character) 3 Thisbé (Pinaud) 3, 4f Thisbe or The Listener (Waterhouse, J. W.) 3 300 (Snyder, Zack) 102 Tikkun Holistic Spa 85 Tolaas, Sissel 159–60 ‘Smell Memory Kit’ (SMK) 160–1 Toner, Jerry Cultural History of the Senses in Antiquity, A 38 Troiane (Sinigaglia, Serena) 228, 229 Trojan War 225, 228 Trojan Women (Euripides) 228, 229 trophées, Les (de Heredia, José Maria) 122 Trotula 79 Troy: Fall of a City (television series) 102, 145 truth 243, 246 Turcs tal Friul, I (Pasolini, Pier Paolo) 231 ultimi giorni di Pompei, Gli (Ambrosio, Arturo and Maggi, Luigi) 58–9f Under the Hill (Beardsley, Aubrey) 30, 36f–7 Ungaretti, Giuseppe 184 urine, cleaning with 256 uterus the, 78–9 see also vaginal steaming vaginal fumigation 77, 78, 79, 88, 199 vaginal steaming 77, 78, 85–6, 87 Valerius Flaccus, Gaius Argonautica 83 vangelo secondo Matteo, Il (Pasolini, Pier Paolo) 231 Vasari, Giorgio Lives of the Most Excellent Architects, Painters and Sculptors, The 81 Verbeek, Caro 167 Victorian Vapours (Dobson, Mary J.) 253 Videault, Sandrine 163 video games 103–4 Vietnam War 224 Vinaigre aromatique des 4 voleurs, Le 157 violet 46, 60 Virgil Aeneid 80, 82, 83–4, 216 Eclogues 32 Georgics 31, 176–7 virtual archaeology 215 vision 5, 107, 121, 244–5 see also male gaze

Index Vita Hadriani 208 Vita Heliogabali 182, 183 Vita Neronis (Suetonius) 183 Vivanco, Mariano 102 von Gloeden, Wilhelm 101 Four boys on the terrace used by Gloeden and by his cousin (Wilhelm von Pluschow) at Posillipo (Naples) 102f Wales 31, 32–4 war 224–5, 228, 230, 233 war veterans 228 Warhol, Andy 161 From A to B and Back Again: The Philosophy of Andy Warhol 161 Waterhouse, J. W. Thisbe or The Listener 3 Wharton, Henry Thornton Sappho: Memoir, Text, Select Renderings and a Literal Translation 41 Wilde, Oscar Picture of Dorian Gray, The 30

Winckelmann, Johann Joaquim 180 wine 43–4, 59, 197 witch 58, 78, 82 women 77–8, 108, 121, 126, 255 see also femininity desire 126 hair 104 holistic health 84–6 magic 77, 78 medicine 79, 85 menstrual fluid 79 nudity 121 reproductive system, odours of 77–9, 81, 83–4, 87, 88 seclusion 142 sexuality 144 uterus the, 78–9 see also vaginal steaming vaginal fumigation 77, 78, 79, 88 vaginal steaming 77, 78, 85–6, 87 Women at the Thesmophoria (Aristophanes) 231 Yourcenar, Marguerite Mémoires d’Hadrien 216

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272

Plate 1 Frederick Sandys, Medea, 1866–8, oil on panel with gilded background, Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery. Source: Wikipedia.

Plate 2 Simeon Solomon, Heliogabalus, High Priest of the Sun and Emperor of Rome, 1866, pencil and watercolour, private collection. Source: Wikipedia.

Plate 3 Lawrence Alma-Tadema, The Roses of Heliogabalus, 1888, oil on canvas, private collection. Source: Wikipedia.

Plate 4 Francis Millet Davis, Thesmophoria, 1895–7, oil on canvas, Brigham Young University Museum of Art, Utah. Source: Wikipedia.

Plate 5 Lawrence Alma-Tadema, A Hearty Welcome, 1878, oil on canvas, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. © Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, UK/Bridgeman Images.

Plate 6 The temple of Isis during the eruption of Vesuvius. Screenshot from Mario Bonnard and Sergio Leone’s 1959 film The Last Days of Pompeii. © FRG-Italy-Spain-Monaco, ABC-FilmverleihUnited Artists.

Plate 7a Nick Youngquest as Invictus, ‘Invictus | PACO RABANNE’ (screenshot), Paco Rabanne official YouTube account, posted on 13 January 2016. © Alex Courtès (director), Les Télécréateurs (production), Mathematic (post-production, vfx), Agence Mademoiselle Noï for Paco Rabanne. Plate 7b Brian Shimansky as Eros, ‘Versace Eros 2012 | Fragrances’ (screenshot), Versace official YouTube account, posted on 22 November 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsPsM6YYrfY. © Mert & Marcus (director), Gösta Reiland (director of photography), HIS (production) for Versace. Plate 7c Luma Grothe as Olympéa, taking a bath on Olympus,‘OLYMPÉA / The new film 30s / Paco Rabanne’ (screenshot) Paco Rabanne official YouTube account, posted on 20 July 2015, https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=F69lU6OzA6Q. © Alex Courtès (director), Simon Chaudoir (director of photography), Les Télécréateurs (production), Erinn Lotthé Guillon (producer), Home Digital Pictures (film editing), Mikros Image (post-production), Agence Mademoiselle Noï for Paco Rabanne.

Plate 8 Théodore Chassériau, Tepidarium, 1853, oil on canvas, Musée d’Orsay, Paris. © Musée d’Orsay, Paris, France/Bridgeman Images. Source: BRIDGEMAN.

Plate 9 Lawrence Alma-Tadema, A Favourite Custom, 1909, oil on wood, Tate Gallery, London. Photo © Tate, with permission.

Plate 10 Limited-edition flask of the Parfum Royal recreation, by Jean Kerléo for Jean Patou, 1996. © Osmothèque.

Plate 11 Samples from the ingredients mentioned in ancient recipes for kyphi. Photo: Amandine Declercq.

Plate 12 Kyphi pellets created in the course of experimental archeological research by the author. Photo: Amandine Declercq.

Plate 13 Plan of the Multimedia and Sensory Museum of the Milan Roman Theatre: Archaeological remains and sensory and multimedia installations. Courtesy of the author, Ettore Lariani. Copyright: Ettore Lariani.

Plate 14 Cover of the scratch-and-sniff history book Roman Aromas (1997). Copyright: Oxford University Press.